June Newsletter

This is our space for reflections on quotes from Jung. We invite you to share a favorite quote along with your thoughts (you can email by clicking here). This month, as tribute to June Singer, we will look at a passage from her book, "Boundaries of the Soul." This title, originally published in 1972, is still much sought after and continues to be an incredible resource for those new to Jung's ideas as well as to analysts.

We enter into life, but despite the actuarial tables and the learned doctors' prognoses there is no way of knowing whether we shall die in the spring or summer of life or cling to our last breath in the icy cold of winter. Only one thing is certain, life proceeds onward toward its goal, which is death, and it is the knowledge of that fact which determines much that we do, and the choices that we make. I heard a television announcement the other day asking for contributions to aid research on a fatal children's disease. The sentence that caught my attention was, "Did you know that some children are born dying?" I started for a moment and then I knew why the words had stabbed me-I know that all children are born dying, we are all born dying! This is the central fact of life, of analysis; it is the core of the individuation process. . . . At every stage of life, the individuation process is going on. . . . Since in every life the same goal is reached, and what lies beyond remains a mystery, the process is the only thing that matters. The sooner we realize it, the sooner we identify with the flowing stream (or any other metaphor of process which presents itself), the more likely we are to be able to become free of pointless struggles and fruitless conflicts. (pp. 409-410)

This excerpt is from the chapter entitled, "We Were Born Dying" and illustrates Singer's view, concordant with Jung's, that "death is not an end but a goal." This is such a difficult concept for us to accept in modern American culture where, on average, five times as much is spent on health care in the last year of life than during any other year. From this, we might speculate that our fear of dying is great. Instead, how can we, as Singer notes, "identify with the flowing stream" and understand both life and death as a process?

It's interesting to note that Singer was only 50 when she wrote "Boundaries of the Soul" and such a perspective on death is not typical for one that age, but she had become a widow quite unexpectedly years earlier. Whatever her experience was, we are all confronted with the finality not only of our own and loved ones' lives, but too, with the process of beginning that is always entangled with the process of ending. There are universal truths and stories that enlighten these processes, and having some understanding of these can allow us to "become free of pointless struggles and fruitless conflicts." This is the focus of Dan Ross's presentation; I hope many of you will attend on the 20th.