City as Soul: The Serpent under the Stones

ABSTRACT

The milieu out of which doctor and patient emerge together is the city itself, which lives out its own life. The city emerged through several historical layers of social structures, each of which maintain a life in the underworld of the city, often in conflict with other layers. The city has a “center” in the sense of the Renaissance image of the circle with a center that is everywhere and a circumference that is nowhere. The city never dies but is constantly emergent in the service of perpetual innovation and adjustment out of its core being. Service to the city requires an imagination of caring for its soul.

KEY WORDS:

• anima mundi,
• communitas,
• emergent
• polis
• soul

Note

References to The Collected Works of C. G. Jung are cited in the text as CW, volume number, and paragraph number. The Collected Works are published in English by Routledge (UK) and Princeton University Press (USA).

Notes

^1. The city, with all its networks, needs a center for informal exchange. We now have the Internet, but traditionally the town plaza or market served this purpose or the function was performed by the town ombudsman. In Gioachino Rossini’s opera, The Barber of Seville, the ombudsman is the town barber, Figaro, who introduces himself as the most fortunate of men with the most excellent job in the world. He is without equal at what he does. He can do everything for people—cut hair, give a shave, draw blood, apply ointment, acquire tickets, and deliver messages, and his specialty is in making sure the most discreet of messages, those between ladies and gentlemen, arrive at their proper destination. In fact, his services are so highly sought after that, at times, he has to hold people off or else he would go out of his mind, but in the end, everyone is served according to their desires, and Figaro is the most fortunate of men, without equal, the best barber in town, the center of the life of the city.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ronald Schenk

RONALD SCHENK, MSW, PhD, practices in Dallas and Houston and is a member of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts, where he has acted in several administrative capacities, most recently as president. He is currently president of the Council of North American Societies of Jungian Analysts. In addition to numerous essays on a variety of topics, he has published four books—The Soul of Beauty: A Psychological Investigation of Appearance; Dark Light: The Appearance of Death in Everyday Life; The Sunken Quest, The Wasted Fisher, The Pregnant Fish: Post-modern Reflections on Depth Psychology; and American Soul: A Cultural Narrative.