SPEEDING OVER THE HILL

The doctor asked, “Do you want a pneumonia shot?  You know, pneumonia is a Big Danger for older people.”  “Older people!”  I am turning 65 and now, suddenly, am classed in Older People?  I look at her, wondering if she can read my thoughts.  She is young, very young.  

Papering over my reaction to her comment, I say, “O.K.  If you recommend it.”  She has more bad news—osteoporosis, bone density test, low Vitamin D, mammogram.  She thinks I might have to take something for my bones.  I hear, “Looming osteoporosis, dowager’s hump, pain.”  I feel older.  I felt young, alive, vibrant when I came into this examining room.  I feel vulnerable.  I want to put my clothes back on.

I nod my head in agreement.  Inside my head, though, “Not me, Sister!  I took estrogen for years because my then so confident, knowing physician told me it was absolutely necessary to protect my bones.  Now I’m in for a litany of tests for breast cancer because He was so wrong 20 years ago.  Now YOU want me to take a new drug!  FORGETABOUT IT”

I would like to engage this young, self-assured primary care physician in a discussion about the history of miracle drugs.  Remember the women who took the drug that resulted in their daughters getting cancer?  Remember that?  Remember Thalidomide?  Lithium? Did you ever read the article in the NEW YORKER about the life cycle for wonder drugs?  Thirty years, three decades.  The first ten years the drugs are widely touted and prescribed.  The second ten years, questions and lawsuits arise.  The third ten years the poor innocent victims get sicker and sicker.  My mind refuses to go over the cliff that is the next ten years.  I write a book in my head but don’t open my mouth.

She is very busy and professional—too busy for this kind of chitchat.  She types intently into a computer.  In alarm, I flash forward to her typing out my death certificate.  My thoughts go to the fact that this is the young woman who will probably tend to me through my declining years to my death.  My spirits lag further.  She flashes me a smile and says, “Mitzi will be in to give you your pneumonia shot.”   

I lie back on the examining table.  My mind is reeling.  The image of the Grim Reaper appears.  What about my eulogy?  Where will I be buried?  I remember a friend once said the determining factor for funeral attendance is the weather.  I pray for good weather.   My God, I’ve got a lot to do, and I had better get busy!  I wonder if an older doctor might be a good idea, one not so chipper and matter-of-fact, one who knows we all grow older, one who is involved.   Immediately I veto the thought.  Too out-dated.  I need someone who knows about modern medicine.  I feel old.  

Mitzi comes in.  She looks young, very young—16 or 24.  She gives me my pneumonia shot.  Two days later I have a terrible reaction.  I end up in the ER, am admitted to the hospital to the neurological floor.  I am very busy.  I write an encyclopedia’s worth of stuff in my head.  No one seems to believe me when I say the pneumonia shot caused my problem.  Teams of white-coated nodding physicians stand by my bed.  Tests.  A lumbar puncture.  I translate “spinal tap” and rewrite “Miss Evers’ Boys.”  An MRI is scheduled.  My alarm grows.  My inner typist speeds up.  Then, A very big and important man pronounces ‘Bell’s palsy.”  They send me home.  I have aged ten years in a week. 

Reflections on the Symbolism of a Window

Window Symbolism: ego as window; self, what shines through.  Our foibles, sins, missteps cloud the glass, and our self consciousness acts as distortions in the frame that call attention to the ego.  Our eyes may actually serve as “meta windows” through which Some Other gazes out to gain a human perspective.  

Reflections on Jung's "Scrutinies" from the RED BOOK

 

I have long been interested in the “Scrutinies,” a part of C.G. Jung’s RED BOOK.  He began this section of his journaling in April 1914, five months after he embarked on his “confrontation with the unconscious.”

In the “Scrutinies” some part of Jung is taking Jung to task, that is, taking Jung’s ego consciousness to task for its sins, so this section is really a deep examination of consciousness.  This part of Jung is giving him a really hard time.  It tells Jung he has no correct self-esteem, that he must learn some skills if he is ever going to become capable, but warns he may not be teachable.  It is the very stern voice of conscience telling him he knows nothing about love or being loved  It won’t even allow Jung’s ego to speak because “if you speak, you will jump in and claim to be the soul speaking.”  

So, Jung, his ego consciousness, cannot be trusted by this conscience.  The voice tells Jung (paraphrased):  You are my bare, empty nothing.  You’re not even able, you are so worthless that you cannot even consider yourself worthless.  You are sensitive.  You’re filled with desirousness; you are righteous, unruly, mistrustful, pessimistic, cowardly, dishonest with yourself, venomous, vengeful.  You’re filled with unspeakable childish pride.  You crave power and esteem.  You are ambitious; you thirst for fame.  

It is a scathing indictment.  This conscience is very, very critical, tells Jung he is forever acting, that he is filled with pomposity; that he likes to tell people what to do and even tells people to do that which he himself is incapable of doing. He is vain, likes to complain about others.  He likes to complain about injustice; he enjoys being not understood and complaining about that.  He likes to think of himself as misinterpreted.  He is hurt easily.  He doesn’t like being ignored.  He doesn’t like being unrecognized, and he hates being falsely accused.  He lacks patience and seriousness.  He tells Jung that his “I” has ridiculed, blasphemed, and worst of all, he tells Jung “I am angry with you because “I am bound to you to the grave, and I cannot tolerate you.  I hate you.”  He even tells Jung that it is good that the old God is dead because if that God were still alive, it would have had pity on Jung and would have granted Jung mercy, thus letting him off the hook.  

The voice of conscience goes on to tell Jung that “your progress since the middle ages appears to have been minuscule, your ego consciousness historical and collective.  There is no individuality to it.”

When my class read Jung’s “Scrutinies,” we all agree that everyone is guilty of some of this stuff, but hardly any of us ever takes ourselves seriously to task as Jung does in his “Scrutinies.”

Another Interesting Conversation

 My grandnephew, John, now in graduate school, again visited me last Sunday.  We always have engrossing conversations when he comes through St. Louis.  (See my Blog entry dated October 13, 2025, for an example.). One of his interests is music, and our conversation included my telling him that for days I had had the Beatle song refrain, "Mother Mary came to me, speaking words of wisdom, 'Let it be. Let it be.'"  He looked the song up on an app (Genius: Song Lyrics Finder) on his phone that provides background for the lyrics of a song. 

Turns out Paul McCartney, whose mother died when he was 14, had a dream in 1968 during a troubling period in his life.  His mother appeared to him in the dream and delivered a simple message (essentially, "Let it be.")  that he translated into song.  His mother's name was Mary McCartney. I better understood why that song was playing over and over in my head.

FOUR FIRES IN MY LIFE

 The fire of vision that was kindled in me at a young age has mostly served me well.  Even when I lost sight of it, it seems not to have abandoned me.  Rather, it waited patiently for my attention and devotion to return, for me to take up the tasks it required for its fulfillment.  Though it has often found me lacking, it has never totally given up on me.  I am both its victim and its tool.

The fire of the heart has its own knowing and chooses its own objects of affection whether they be people, clothing, furniture, cars, gadgets, whatever.  This fire is prone to burnout and changing its mind, never a problem with things for which were a passing fancy, but sometimes a cause of heartache in relationships.   Not always discerning, the fire of the heart sometimes confused love and lust, sometimes sought the wrong kind of fuels to keep itself going.  It particularly likes bonfires and can grow impatient at the slow,  careful feeding the home hearth requires. The fire of the heart is in love with love.

The creative fire seems to have peculiar characteristics.  It seeks out and engulfs extremely odd and inchoate things in its expression.  Or it finds something, tucks it away in the recesses of memory, and brings it up at odd times for its own purpose.  It insists on an image, a book, a song, an article, an experience and sets aside some tidbit to be incorporated into a future work.  Over my life, the creative fire has built its own artist's studio of fuels.  It has often made garish pieces which it later tore up, but it never throws away anything.  The creative fire consumes but does not destroy that which fuels it.  Of the four, the creative fire seems the most patient, waiting sometimes decades for its fulfillment. 
The soul's fire has always given me the most trouble.  Often its agenda and my own were vastly different, and so we suffered through decades of conflict.  Only in the last fifteen or so years have I come to recognize, ever so reluctantly, that our agendas are more alike than different.  My soul's fire seems to need conflict as a way of clarifying what it truly wants.  And I need the conflict with my soul in order to understand and know myself and my soul.  In this troubled journey, my soul and I have come to discover that we are one.

In tending to myself, to my relationships, to my daily wants and needs, to the creature comforts my body demands, to the small tasks that living and working with others require,  I am able to rejuvenate myself and tend to the keeping of these four fires.  Long walks, engrossing conversations, rewarding work, taking up of responsibility for the things life places squarely in my path, some willingness to risk, adequate rest, good nutrition--these are the ways of renewal for me.  

If I could condense all this to a simple message, it is this: I have learned to say "yes" to loving this one, fleeting, precious fiery life.

This in-person event was cancelled due to a winter storm, and the lecture/discussion was instead held virtually.  A similar in-person event will be scheduled for sometime in the spring, 2026.  Information about it will be posted here.

Fundamentals of Jungian (Analytical) Psychology

Sunday, January 25, 2026 — 2:00 to 3:30 PM Central

Location: St. Louis County Library – Clark Family Branch, 1640 S Lindbergh Blvd, St. Louis, MO 63131 (Room A)

Join us at Saint Louis County Library’s Clark Family Branch for this free, in-person-only offering! Jungian analyst Rose Holt outlines some of the history of the Freud-Jung relationship in the early 1900s and the differences that led to the rupture of that friendship, then turns her focus to the contributions that Jung made during his decades-long work in the field of psychology and psychotherapy.

Topics will include: 

(1) the broad scope of Jungian Psychology as it is practiced today; 

(2) Jung’s Association Test; 

(3) his work to define personality typology (which led to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator/MBTI instrument widely used today; 

(4) views of and methods for working with dreams; 

(5) the archetypal nature of the Collective Unconscious; 

(6) the relationship between the ego and the unconscious; 

(7) the concept of individuation; 

8) the concept of synchronicity; 

(9) a psychotherapy for both well and ill persons.

Learning Objectives  

    Attendees will:

1. Gain a broad understanding of the range of human thought and creativity
2. Develop some understanding of the helpful concepts and practices of a psychological understanding that have proved to be of lasting value
3. Be able to relate to their dreams and fantasies in a fruitful manner
4. Be able to relate psychological theory to religious understanding