Facing the Dragon: Confronting Personal and Spiritual Grandiosity

by Robert L. Moore

  Freud on the Id and Superego. In the classical psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud, the “Great Self Within” was not perceived with the clarity about its structural cohesiveness that is possible today. Nevertheless, Freud did note and posit structures in the unconscious that manifest phenomena that I believe are generated by the same reality. Freud's structural theory described two powerful inner realities that manifested godlike claims in different ways: the id and the superego. The id (the it) was the driving force behind totalistic instinctual drives for sex and aggression, the insatiable appetites of the pleasure principle and archaic desire.5 One could say that the appetites of the id are larger than human, godlike in their totalistic and grandiose claims. The archaic superego, on the other hand, is not grandiose in its desire for instinctual discharge but in its total, perfectionist demand for compliance with the highest ideals and standards.

  Although Freud did not conceptualize these two systems together as comprising a “Great Self Within,” he did describe phenomena reflecting something within the self that makes grandiose, godlike claims on the individual, often leading to illness and worse if not properly confronted and regulated. Freud, therefore, was the first scientific psychological researcher to identify powerful grandiose forces in the psyche that the conscious ego must learn to recognize and relate to in a positive and effective way if life is to be served.

  Alfred Adler on the Superiority Complex. Alfred Adler's thought highlights the reality of the “Great Self Within” more clearly than does Freud's. In Adler's view, all psychopathology, including the experience of the “inferiority complex,” results from a usually hidden “superiority complex” that is not available to the consciousness of the individual. This unacknowledged claim to superiority leads the individual to feel entitled and exempt from the limits and claims of human existence, and subsequently to engage in a variety of dysfunctional and abusive behaviors. While Adler was more of a phenomenological psychologist who did not emphasize deep structures in the psyche, it is striking that he founded his theories on the idea that human destructiveness results from an unacknowledged unconscious psychological orientation with an antisocial claim to superiority, and that a psychological cure requires disidentification from this grandiose attitude.

  Carl Jung on the Archetypal Self. Carl Jung has given us the clearest delineation of the “Great Self Within.” Jung not only affirmed the existence of such an archetypal Self beyond the ego, but unlike many of his more naïve and romantic followers, he warned us to take great care lest this archetypal self overwhelm the ego with its grandiose energies.

  We must carefully distinguish Jung's position on this issue from those of some of his successors. Many who call themselves “archetypal psychologists” do not retain Jung's concept of the archetypal Self but represent a so-called “deconstructionist” position in psychology. Even though they focus on images and the imagination, they do not offer a coherent theory of psychological deep structures that ground the imagination, or articulate an understanding of any transegoic great Self rooted in the collective unconscious.

  My own research has convinced me that Jung was correct in his formulations, and that he can help us understand how the engines of human evil are grounded in the reality and power of an archetypal “Great Self Within.” How, then, does this inner reality relate to evil? Cultures around the world taught that the great engine of evil was arrogance, or hubris, as the Greeks called it. Tribal cultures often thought that the movement into arrogance resulted from possession by a god or demon. Psychoanalytic research has helped us understand how deeply insightful these early cultures were, but it has also helped us go beyond them in understanding the results of possession by these grandiose energies. We now know that the psyche splits and cannot maintain its structural integrity when it cannot relate to these “divine energies” in a conscious and constructive way.

  FACING THE DRAGON

  Throughout human history, spiritual masters and sages have utilized various mythological images to symbolize the presence and power of the grandiose energies they intuited to be present in the depths of the human psyche. My own research has found no mythic image for these energies used more often than that of the dragon. World mythology presents the dragon with two different faces: the dragon as enemy, and the dragon as a source of power and blessing.

  Western spiritual traditions have tended to emphasize the interpretation of the “dragon as enemy,” the nemesis of human life, a tradition best exemplified by the classic Beowulf (see Heaney 2000 and Rauer 2000). The task was to slay the great beast, called by many names, including Behemoth and Leviathan. Human life and civilization somehow depended on the success of the dragon-slayer.

  The other tradition is more characteristic of Eastern spiritual traditions, both Christian and non-Christian. Here the dragon, including the “Great Self Within,” is not demonized, but seen rather as a beneficent resource to be related to consciously for its transformative, regenerative energies.

  The lectures presented in the following chapters address the human concerns reflected in the Beowulf traditions: the necessity for vigilance in discerning the dragon's presence, and the dragon's threat to personal, social, and spiritual life when one encounters it unprepared. Lack of a sophisticated consciousness of the dragon within leaves us defenseless against the evil effects of its invasion into our personal and social lives. Any realistic hope for a promising personal or planetary future requires us, like Beowulf, to wake up and face the dragon of personal and spiritual grandiosity.

  NOTES

  1. For over two decades I have taught graduate seminars on the dynamics of the sacred and the dynamics of evil and the relationships between them. See my lectures on psychology and evil available from the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago.

  2. The processes of initiation have been a constant theme of my work for many years. See my recent collection of lectures and essays (Moore 2001).

  3. Mythology and folklore abound in references to evil, its nature and dynamics. See especially Forsythe (1987) and von Franz (1974).

  4. For my decoding of the inner structure and dynamics of these inner realities, see my lectures on “The Great Self Within,” available through the bookstore of the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago. Order information appears on my website at www.robertmoore-phd.com.

  5. Freud, then, was the modern researcher who rediscovered the horrific reality of “the thing.”

  CHAPTER 2

  The Archetype of Spiritual Warfare

  This longing to commit a madness stays with us throughout our lives. Who has not, when standing with someone by an abyss or high up on a tower, had a sudden impulse to push the other over? And how is it that we hurt those we love although we know that remorse will follow? Our whole being is nothing but a fight against the dark forces within ourselves.

  To live is to war with trolls in heart and soul. To write is to sit in judgment on oneself.

  —Henrik Ibsen

  WHEN WE COME FACE TO FACE WITH EVIL, WE ENTER the territory of spiritual warfare, one of the most powerful archetypal themes in human history. After a few words about my own interest in the topic, this discussion reviews some images from various religious traditions, and then considers the psychodynamics of various aspects of spiritual warfare.1

  Both as a psychoanalyst and as a professor of psychology and spirituality at the Chicago Theological Seminary, my chief concerns are psychology and religion as resources for the processes of human health and healing. Throughout my career I have studied the history of religions and comparative philosophy, ancient and modern. In what I call my proto-maturity, I became a Jungian, not because I knew nothing else, but because I decided that the Jungian point of view was the most adequate psychology of the human available. I am more sure of that today than ever.

  It is not that Jungians do not appreciate other points of view, because they are unique in how they appreciate other psychological schools and traditions and make places for them in their work. In today's cultural a
nd planetary context, the Jungian point of view is, in my judgment, the only point of view with the comprehensive scope and complexity to address the problems of being human in a pan-tribal, postmodern way. Jungian thought has excellent resources for a truly human spirituality and a species-inclusive approach to both the psyche and human community. To be quite frank, the Jungian way of thinking about both personal and social issues is one of the few resources available today that holds much promise for a way out of the current frightening political, cultural, and planetary situation, a situation fueled by lack of awareness of the archetypal dynamics we work with in this discussion.

  Therefore, although I am myself a professor, I do not consider this topic to have merely academic interest. It has great importance to us for many reasons. One, by no means the least important, is that only by studying this archetype of spiritual warfare can we really understand the power of the human penchant toward war and the spiritual and ethical implications of that instinct, and I do mean “instinct.” This is important for us on the sociopolitical level, and we want to look at it in some depth.

  Once you start trying to face and cope with the dragon energies in your life, you must take seriously the archetype of spiritual warfare and the psychological resources around it. If you do not have some sense of the warfare going on inside you at the psychological level, then you will be less able to do what you need to do to free yourself from the things trying to drag you down and imprison you and stifle your life. So a study of the archetype of spiritual warfare is important on both social and personal levels.

  We will think about this spiritual warfare in the context of the Jungian understanding of the shadow side of human personality. We often talk about the “shadow” as a factor in the development of the individual psyche, but this discussion considers something else as well, the relationship between the personal shadow and the archetypal shadow.

  RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS

  We begin with an examination of the religion of the magi. Zoroastrianism is one of the most interesting and least studied topics in the field of history of religions. Even the best departments of religion rarely have a course on Zoroastrianism, and yet it is one of the most influential traditions, and it is still alive today. It is a living tradition. When I was in India last summer, the Parsis, as they call the Zoroastrians in India, were very active. Their Towers of Silence, where they expose their dead to the vultures to be cleansed, as they put it, are a prominent feature of the landscape in some of the major Indian cities.

  To get at how some of these traditions interact, you may have heard that Zoroastrianism influenced Judaism, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and early Christianity, particularly in its imaging of a great apocalyptic warfare between two beings. Whether you call them both gods or not is a matter of interpretation, but in the Zoroastrian tradition, the divine reality is made up of two beings, one good and the other evil. The good god is Ahura Mazda, a name derived from words that have to do with light. The opposition is Ahriman. Different Zoroastrian traditions differ on the ultimate outcome of the cosmic struggle.

  Zoroastrianism has a battle occurring at all times between Ahura Mazda, the god of light, and Ahriman, who is either a god evil and darkness, or a very powerful demon, or daeva. Some traditions put them practically equal in power and suggest that the evil god is never defeated, that the struggle goes on and on forever. Other traditions suggest that at the end of time, Ahura Mazda will defeat Ahriman, and the war will end with good and light triumphing over evil and darkness. You can see how Judeo-Christian messianic reflection relates to this.

  The Zoroastrians have this immense struggle. They capture what many later Christians and Jews lost, a sense of the spiritual struggle, or spirituality as a struggle. In studying spirituality today, you find many so-called spiritual masters selling themselves as peace-oriented gurus. Not world peace-oriented, but the kind of peace that says to meditate and get mellow. This kind of peace has no sense of the enormity of the human spiritual struggle. It misleads people, because it is fundamentally an enormous denial of what it takes to individuate.

  Jung knew better. His emphasis was more like this: “You do not want to struggle? Then do not start toward individuation, because it will be all you can deal with and more to work toward your individuation.” If you are not willing to struggle, it is best that you just allow a regressive restoration of your persona, and just take your medication and forget it, because struggle is the reality.

  Audience: Some conservative and fundamentalist Christian groups, and some that might be classified as sects, have more of the idea of a spiritual battle where evil is a real power.

  Moore: Exactly! That is one of their strengths, because anyone who is not overwhelmed with massive denial knows that it is a struggle. Human beings who are awake and dealing with their lives with fairly non-rose-colored glasses know that people are involved in an enormous struggle. They may not have a good education or a sophisticated psychological point of view, but when someone comes to them with images that capture the struggle of human experience, it is very attractive to them and speaks to their authentic experience.

  That is why Islam is so powerful today, because it is based on the concept of jihad (Arabic for “effort” or “strife”). The problem with it is the same problem that fundamentalist Christians have, the phenomenon of splitting. The more primitive and borderline you are emotionally and developmentally, the more you will tend to split apart segments of your inner life, which means that you will tend to locate more of your enemy outside yourself and say, “You out there are my problem. If it were not for you, I would not have any problems.”

  In all fundamentalisms in all religions, the more fundamentalist you are, the more you engage in this psychological mechanism called splitting which means, “I am good, and you are bad. We are the people of God, and you are the people of Satan. We are the faithful, and you are the heathen.” Splitting creates a crusade mentality. The demonic thing about the Crusades was that the Muslims operated out of the same kind of immature, regressive operation of this archetypal configuration as the Christians did. So you had these wonderful, courageous Muslim knights fighting these wonderful, courageous Christian knights, killing each other, all under the same archetypal configuration.

  Audience: Do you think that this evaluation of a religion where people split things would bear out in psychological testing of individuals in the group? You seem to be describing something different from the way those groups would describe it, but what if you tested them on an individual level?

  Moore: That is a good question for empirical scientific research. I would hypothesize that you will find more people who would diagnose as borderline personalities in high-intensity fundamentalist groups than in other religious bodies that use a more subtle diagnostics. Statistically, however, it would not be one-to-one, because this splitting phenomenon also occurs among radical liberals. It's just a question of who gets the demon projection. Ronald Reagan and the conservatives carry it for the left, and the liberals carry it for the fundamentalists. So in terms of psychological diagnostics, and spiritual hermeneutics as well, you have to look for how often people locate their enemy outside their own group.

  This is not to doubt that real human enemies really do exist “out there,” but the enemy is also “in here,” inside each person. To the extent that you refuse to acknowledge the enemy within you, then emotionally you must project it somewhere else. In Jungian terms, you refuse to admit, “Yes, I have a shadow, and it is part of my problem, and it is part of your problem, and I am trying to deal with it the best I can.” One of the borderline dynamics that results is that you have to expel your badness onto someone else. You can do a whole psychology of religious tribalism by looking at people who deny the badness within themselves and try to put it all out there on other people. That is one of the key dynamics in how the archetype of spiritual warfare operates.

  It is not enough, however, to say like some Jungians that the evil is all inside, and any trouble I ha
ve with you is just because I have it in my shadow. “If I could just integrate my shadow then I would see you for the wonderful, complete, perfect person that you are.” That is not true either. Such a position taken to extreme would suggest that if the Jews had just integrated their shadows in the late thirties, then Adolf Hitler would have seemed like a nice fellow. That can't be right. No matter how much the people in the ghettoes integrated their Jewish shadows, Hitler was still an objective reality out there in the real world trying to kill them. Remember the old joke, “Just because you are paranoid does not mean they are not out to get you.” That is true in psychology as well.

  Audience: Some groups like EST and Silva Mind Control seem to say, “It is all in your attitude,” but they don't seem to consider the reality of things like starvation in Ethiopia.

  Moore: That is right. That is an exact example: the whole idea that all the world's problems are just in you. That is not true, of course. All the world's problems are not just in you. The idea that my problems are big enough to cause all the world's problems shows a rampant grandiosity. We all have our own grandiose fantasies of omnipotence, but that one is ridiculous!

  The Zoroastrian tradition approaches what philosophy calls dualism: two beings, one of light and goodness, and one of darkness and evil. When you study world traditions it is amazing the extent to which you find this concept imaged everywhere throughout history and all over the world. Some traditions do not make the opposition into a full-fledged god, but they might portray it as a great dragon or a very powerful demon.