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Although the Demontange Saga is fiction, St. Lucia is a real place with a wonderful story of its own. We are psychotherapists with an intimate knowledge of psychological processes and motivations. The columns in this section provide insight into the settings, culture and characters in our works as well as perceptions about the writing process... We want to share this material and our perceptions with other authors but believe that many of our readers will find these columns of interest as well.
Recently we took back all our rights to A Dream Across Time and are now self publishing the Demontagne Saga. It is very gratifying to have the entire publishing process under our control.
If you would like to see what we have been up to and to see some of what we are dealing with as we move to self publish, go to our blog at http://letmedigress.blogspot.com. We want it to be interactive so join in. The columns from the Author to Author section will also appear in the blog.
At the end of the latest column, you'll find clicks for past columns.
Column 19
Carl Jung, Mythology and the Demontagne Saga
A Dream Across Time and A Circle of Dreams are the first two books in the Demontagne saga. The mystical elements in these books are reflections of our acquaintance with the work of Carl Jung. His world is a strange and wonderful place which he brought to us in his insightful writings and extraordinary research.
We are all creatures of our times but there are occasional people who are timeless. Jung was among the timeless and stood apart from his peers.
It is useful to contrast him with his contemporary, Sigmund Freud. Freud was brilliant and a groundbreaker although we have moved well beyond his contributions to psychiatry and psychology. He was a creature of the Victorian era and his critics in later years faulted him for being too embedded in Austrian society in that his assessment of human frailties often reflected the frailties of well to do Viennese women.
In fairness Freud helped move us away from rigid beliefs about demonic possession and into a place where we could explain our psyche in reality based terms. His expositions on id, ego and superego still have utility today. If nothing else he gave us a system by which we could begin to evaluate and research many components of human experience. While he focused on psychopathology, he opened doors of understanding to human behavior in general.
Freud was the effective father of psychiatry which is the study of psychopathology. In contrast psychology is the study of human behavior. Period. Jung was considered a psychiatrist but went beyond psychiatry into psychology in that his works relate to a broad range of normal human behavior.
His intellectual explorations led him deep into mythology. The man was truly a scholar and explored the human experience in literature and art going back into ancient times. His insights led to many works including Psychological Types. The Myers Briggs Type Indicator, often used in industry, is based in his work on psychological personality types. Rather than being a catalogue of pathology it systematizes a comprehensive system of normal personality variation. Introversion and extraversion are Jung’s concepts. The word “normal” in this context is very important.
Jung’s diverse works are endlessly fascinating. His obscure work on alchemy is interesting although seemingly impenetrable. In the work he posits that alchemy is the reflection of the changes inherent in the movement from the middle ages to the age of enlightenment. Alchemy was not about turning lead into gold. It was about humankind preparing themselves for the revolutions of art and science. In these insights he seemed to have anticipated the work of Leslie A. White, the father of culturology.
Jung anticipated White’s work when he proposed the existence of the collective unconscious. His belief in a collective human consciousness seems odd until it is examined in the context of White’s extrasomatic cultural stream or culture. Jung was actually talking about culture and cultural diffusion. What an amazing mind.
By now you must be asking yourself what this has to do with the Demontagne saga. It has everything to do with it because Jung opened the door to OUR thinking about mythology. These books incorporate the myths we sighted and experienced in the Caribbean and they have been woven together with personal myths. These books are not just stories. They are the human experience and are enhanced by a mystical element which echoes mythological themes. Jung has helped us bring these stories to light and enrich them. In the second book of the Demontagne saga , A Circle of Dreams, we meet Dr. Hans Friedrich who is a Jungian analyst. He will help Jamie and Andre understand what is happening to their family.
Past Columns
Column 1 - St. Lucia
Column 2 - Jamie Elliott
Column 3 - Andre Demontagne
Column 4 - Paul and Danielle
Column 5 - Marcus Deroche
Column 6 - Bertille Deroche
Column 7 - What It's Like Living in the Tropics, Part 1
Column 8 - What It's Like Living in the Tropics, Part 2
Column 9 - Taylor, Clarisse and Barbara
Column 10 - How Does Our Writing Partnership Work?
Column 11 - Goal, Motivation, Conflict and Creativity
Column 12 - Family Life is a Saga
Column 13 - Toward A Circle of Dreams; I don't believe in ghosts.
Column 14 - A Book Walked in the Door
Column 15 - Every Woman Knows This Story
Column 16 - The Bridge
Column 17 - Why the Mystical Element in A Dream Across Time?
Column 18 - Gaia and myth in the Demontagne Saga
Column 19 - Carl Jung, Mythology and the Demontagne Saga
Column 20 - Carl Jung's Concepts in the Demontagne Saga
Column 21 - Martinique
Column 22 – Janine-Yvette Demontange (Yvie)
Column 23 – Anne-Clarisse Demontagne (Lissa)
Column 24 - Philippe Diamant Demontagne (Philippe)
Copyright© 1987-2006 Annie Rogers LLC dba Bivens and Jensen Publishing. All rights reserved |
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