Today I ran a workshop for a group of colleagues on the Myers Briggs Type Indicator and we had great fun exploring psychological preference. Jung’s typology is, of course, at the heart of the MBTI instrument. I don’t pretend to understand all of Jung’s writings, but what I have managed to synthesize in my not-particularly-academic mind, has captivated me – I love the concept of the collective unconscious, for example, which I interpret to be a sort of inherited memory. To me, inherited memory is a real and tangible thing – I can sense the Ancestors breathing and sometimes, thinking and feeling through me.
These days there is such an obsession with preserving one’s youth into our middle and even old age – we seem to have forgotten how to value the natural and joyful process of inexorable change, and deny ourselves the peace which comes from being part of the flow of the Universe. This seems to be a sad thing. Jung sums it up rather well, and this is a quote I have used in many a 40th and 50th birthday card, in my bid to encourage people to value elderhood:
We cannot live the afternoon of life according to the programme of life’s morning, for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening become a lie.
C G Jung Modern Man in Search of a Soul
Narbled Gonsense 