Destruction And Creation

The 14th Congress for Analytical Psychology was held 23-28 August 1998 in the ancient city of Florence, Italy. The theme, 'Destruction and Creation: Personal and Cultural Transformations', is especially appropriate to the Italian setting, with that nation's history of destruction, both from nature and from human activity, and its tradition -- especially in Florence -- of creative individuals and institutions. The theme is fitting, also, to the context of Jungian psychology, with its emphasis on these and other pairs of opposites, with their integral role in psychic wholeness. Acknowledging, also, that destruction is indispensable to creation, some Jungians prefer the term 'creative unconscious' to the traditional 'collective unconscious'.

Harold James examines the vulnerability and fragility of processes of globalization, both historically and in the present. This book applies lessons from past breakdowns of globalization—above all in the Great Depression—to show how financial crises provoke backlashes against global integration: against the mobility of capital or goods, but also against flows of migration. By a parallel examination of the financial panics of 1929 and 1931 as well as that of 2008, he shows how banking and monetary collapses suddenly and radically alter the rules of engagement for every other type of economic activity. Increased calls for state action in countercyclical fiscal policy bring demands for trade protection. In the open economy of the twenty-first century, such calls are only viable in very large states—probably only in the United States and China. By contrast, in smaller countries demand trickles out of the national container, creating jobs in other countries. The international community is thus paralyzed, and international institutions are challenged by conflicts of interest. The book shows the looming psychological and material consequences of an interconnected world for people and the institutions they create.

"Words are more than hieroglyphs, constanents, and syllables. They hold power. They can build or destroy. Once spoken they cannot be taken back nor ignored." Paraphrased from Yuko Ichihara - xxxholic

This volume considers the American manufacturing industry, and develops a statistical portait of the microeconomic adjustments that affect business and workers. The authors focus on the employer rather than worker side of the process aiming to show the processes that will be relevant to economists.

In 1989, David Tsumura published a monograph entitled The Earth and the Waters in Genesis 1 and 2: A Linguistic Evaluation, in which he demonstrated that the oft-recited claim that the early chapters of Genesis betrayed a background or adaptation by Israel of mythological terms and/or motifs from other ancient Near Eastern literature could not be supported by a close examination of the linguistic data. Despite the book's positive reception, the notion that the Chaoskampf motif lies behind the early chapters of Genesis continues to be rehearsed in the literature as if the data were incontrovertible. In this revised and expanded edition of the 1989 book, Tsumura carries the discussion forward. In part 1, the general thesis of the original work is restated in a significantly revised and expanded form; in the second part of this monograph, he expands the scope of his research to include a number of poetic texts outside the Primeval History, texts for which scholars often have posited an ancient Near Eastern mythological substratum. Among the questions asked are the following: What are the functions of "waters" and "flood" in biblical poetry? Do the so-called chaos dragons in the Old Testament, such as Leviathan, Rahab, and Yam, have anything to do with the creation motif in the biblical tradition? What is the relationship between these poetic texts and the Ugaritic myths of the Baal-Yam conflict? Are Psalms 18 and 29 "adaptations" of Canaanite hymns, as suggested by some scholars? Among the conclusions that Tsumura reaches are these: (1) The phrase tohû wabohû has nothing to do with the idea of a chaotic state of the earth. (2) The term tehà ́m in Gen 1:2 is a Hebrew form derived from the Proto-Semitic *tiham-, "ocean," and it usually refers to the underground water that was overflowing and covering the entire surface of the earth in the initial state of creation. (3) The earth-water relationship in Gen 2:5-6 is different from that in Gen 1:2. In Gen 1:2, the earth was totally under the water; in Gen 2:5-6, only a part of the earth, the land, was watered by the 'ed-water, which was overflowing from an underground source. (4) The biblical poetic texts that are claimed to have been influenced by the Chaoskampf-motif of the ancient Near East in fact use the language of storms and floods metaphorically and have nothing to do with primordial combat.

However people remember Jackson, no one can deny that, in cultural terms, Jackson remains a compelling subject: an icon of the late 20th century, he reflects not only the changes in the circumstances of the African American population, but changes in white America. Jackson was idolized, perhaps even reified and, for many, objectified into an extraordinary being, an Other, for whom there were no established reference points in white people's conceptions. The Destruction and Creation of Michael Jackson places Jackson at the center of its argument, but maintains he was a creation of, at first, American and, later, global culture at a time when it seemed desirable, if not necessary to exalt a Black person on merit. America had become a society in which someone of Jackson's indisputable genius not only can, but must, rise to the top.

The Quest for Gold is an edited version of writings by visionary Andrew Fekete – a painter, architect, poet and writer, who died in 1986 from an Aids-related illness. Andrew, flâneur, walked the city; he was a man whose writings, to adapt the words of Baudelaire, serve as a mirror as vast as the crowd itself. This anthology, collated by his brother Peter, comprises key works from Andrew Fekete’s opus, and deals with his development as an artist, his visions and his experiment in Jungian alchemy – the intentional creation of visionary experiences to manifest unconscious archetypes to consciousness. The title is taken from an autobiographical novella that Andrew wrote in 1982, with extracts from his diaries also provided. The culmination of the anthology is the poem Punishment for the Transgressors in which Andrew confronts his impending death, thereby illustrating the connection between art and life. The work, which is open to multiple interpretations, is witty and entertaining, dramatic and engaging, full of deep sentiment and self-reflection. We journey with Andrew in his Quest for Gold that occurs against the background of his sexuality and his membership of the gay community. We see into the mind of a man undertaking an experiment in the exploration of what Jung calls the contents of the collective unconscious in an attempt at self-healing and expansion of consciousness. You can find out more about Andrew Fekete at www.andrewfekete.net and see a retroscpective of his work at the Victoria Gallery and Museum, Liverpool until April 2017.