zenomax:the submerged universe

I have committed to start 2013 by reading Infinite Jest with another LT group. I plan to read this and The man in the High castle alongside each other in January (although IJ may take longer from what I've heard). My interests tend to be in European fiction from the first half of the 20th century, so this will be a departure for me.

In my 2013 thread I also plan to read and comment on books about personality theory, of which there are many, and which fascinates me, not least because it is very esoteric, not scientific at all.

In fact earlier this morning I was reading The Arcades Project, as I often do, and came across the fact that the French Utopianist, Fourier, had developed 810 personality types, being combinations of 12 fundamental human 'passions'. These when combined with a male and female from each type, made up a 'phalanx' of 1620 people. The phalanx was the ideal unit of society. Society would be made up of numerous such phalanxes, each of 1620 people. Each phalanx would encompass all of human strength and weakness, as embodied in the makeup of each of the 810 types.

How fascinating. Really.

I'd like to revisit the work of the Surrealists and Dadaists in more detail this year as well. They were discoveries in my late teens and have been with me ever since. However earlier this year I did some work on the farm buildings where Kurt Scwhwitters lived his last months, and where he produced his third and final merzbau. This has made me want to go back and read the original works and history of these two movements again.

"The earth copulating with itself engenders the cherry; with Mercury, the strawberry; with Pallas, the blackcurrant; with Juno, the raisin..."

Armband and Maublanc, Fourier; quoted in The Arcades Project.

I'm also interested in distinctions between spirit and soul. Those of an esoteric outlook claim that science and organised religion have both devalued or dismissed the soul, preferring to base their defence or attack on the world of spirit. By this definition science and religion are opposites indeed, but opposites of the same coin.

I would like to try to work these distinctions into my reading as well.

James Hillman on the soul and the spirit:

'Spirit is fast, and it quickens what it touches. Its direction is vertical and ascending....spirit is after ultimates and it travels by means of a via negative, "Neti, Neti", it says, "not this, not that." Strait is the gate and only first or last things will do.'

'Soul sticks to the realm of experience and to reflections within experience. It moves indirectly in circular reasonings, where retreats are as important as advances, preferring labyrinths and corners....Soul is vulnerable and suffers; it is passive and remembers. It is water to the spirit's fire....'

'Soul is imagination...a confusion and richness....Whereas spirit chooses the better part and seeks to make all One. Look up, says spirit, gain distance; there is something beyond and above, and what is above is always, and always superior.'

Re-visioning Psychology

A working list of Books I would like to read or reread in 2013.

An 'ideal' which I will add to and subtract from over time.

Perhaps more correctly a cloud of ideas clustered around the concept (loosely in some cases) of imagination.

Personality Types

A vision, W B Yeats
Personality Type, an owners manual, Lenore Thomson (re read)
Personality types, Riso and Hudson
Psychological Types, Carl Jung (re read)
Gifts Differing, Isabel Briggs Myers (re read)
Compass of the Soul, John Giannini
Understanding the Enneagram, Riso & Hudson
Anything I can find on Fourier's types.
The 27 Enneagram Tritypes Revealed, D & K Fauvre
Archetypes of the Enneagram: Exploring the Life Themes of the 27 Enneagram Subtypes from the Perspective of Soul, Susan Rhodes

The esoteric

The book of disquiet, Fernando Pessoa (re read)
Fantasia of the unconscious and Psychoanalysis and the unconscious, D H Lawrence
Re-Visioning Psychology, James Hillman
Ego and Archetype, Edward Edinger
The I ching
The tarot workbook
The other side Alfred Kubin
The Rupture of Time: Synchronicity and Jung's Critique of Modern Western Culture, Roderick Main
The Inner West, Jay Kinney (ed.)
Alchemy: Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul, Titus Burckhardt
Symbol and Archetype: A Study of the Meaning of Existence, Martin Lings
Demian, Hesse
Travels in Consciousness,David Hey
Facets of Unity: The Enneagram of Holy Ideas,A H Almaas

The Abrahamic Religions

Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources, Martin Lings
The Qu'ran

Visions of America

Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
The man in the high castle, Philip K Dick

Dada and Surrealism

Dada, Art and Anti Art, Hans Richter (re read)
Dada, Leah Dickerman
Nadja, Andre Breton (re read)
A small yes and a big no, George Grosz
From the hidden storehouse, Benjamin Peret
Robert Desnos, Surrealism and the Everyday, Katharine Conley (re read)
Les Chants de Maldoror, Comte de Lautremont (re read)
Ubu Roi, Alfred Jarry (re read)

The English idyll

Lost world: England 1933-1936
Maiden Voyage, Denton Welch
The Journals of Denton Welch
The making of the British landscape, Francis Pryor
Pandaemonium: The coming of the machine as seen by contemporary observers, Humphrey Jennings
The Rings of Saturn, W G Sebald (re read)
Walter Sickert

Other books I want to read

Journals of Jules Renard
Eccentric Spaces, Robert Harbison
The quest for Corvo, A J A Symons

Authors I want to read

Thomas Bernhard
Andrei Bely
Elias Canetti

Impressive list zeno. Plenty there to dip in and out of.

not so sure about the submerged universe (where does this come from?) it sounds a little depressing.

I'm looking forward to the Infinite Jest read. I always enjoy reading your thread, although I usually leave confounded. Glad you'll be here in the new year.

I saw an exhibit of Kurt Schwitter's work at the Haus der Kunst in Munich. It was an immersive experience.

Bas, submerged in that it is hidden from view. The theme for me in 2013 will be, I believe, the imagination, which is a hidden world in many respects.

although I usually leave confounded...

You and me both, Kay.

I would have liked to have seen that Schwitters exhibition in Munich. I spoke to a German Art professor at my weekend at the Schwitters barn and she explained that he is still a major figure in Germany, taught in schools across the country.

The man in the high castle arrived this morning from the wilds of the Amazon.

Dipped in, got enthused and then went back to read the first chapter. (I am going to try to be more linear in 2013).

North America is divided between the victors of the Second World War, Germany and Japan. I've come across a piece already which I find interesting. Chapter 3 and Baynes, an American (eta actually Swedish it appears), is travelling by rocket with the German, Lotze ( it is Germany that is driving technological innovation in the world).

A comment Lotze makes 'it looks as if it were designed by a Jew' starts Baynes thinking about the German/Nazi mindset:

'Their view; it is cosmic. Not a man here, a child there, but an abstraction: race, land. Volk. Land. Blut. Ehre. Not of honourable men but of Ehre itself, honour; the abstract is real, the actual is invisible to them....It is their sense of space and time. They see through the here, the now, into the vast black deep beyond, the unchanging. And that is fatal to life.'

This is getting into the realms of Jung. In fact Dick writes in the following paragraph 'they are overcome by some powerful archetype.'

This seems to get closer to the meaning of things than countless histories about Hitler, Germany and the origins of the Nazi regime. For me, only Sebald (sort of from the inside) has given an as pervasive and convincing (although obtuse and understated) insight into this wave.

My first I Ching hexagram this morning. Interesting. It produced comments not too different from the enneagram tract I am reading at present.

Hi Zeno, and happy new year!

I read The Man in the High Castle a few years ago, and really enjoyed it. I was a bit worried that Dick was going to create stereotypical Japannese characters, but this proved an unnecessary worry.

Happy to see your 2013 thread zeno, and interested to see familiar names in the Infinite Jest read. Not sure yet how I'll approach that project. Also of interest to you, I plan to get to Jung's Synchronicity this year.

Hey Dewald, happy new year to you. I'm pleased to hear that PKD didn't go for stereotypes in his Japanese characters.

I'm about a quarter of the way through and liking it very much indeed. Dick's fluid writing style, characterisations and his Jungian outlook make this right up my street.

Hi MJ, you must let me know what you think about Synchronicity, I'd be interested in your take on it.

Im 11 pages into IJ - I think I'm going to be reliant on Brent and others as it feels like it might be something of an endurance test, with many intricacies. But I see that as a good thing.

Do you have to go to work, Z, or do you ever sleep, w/a reading list like this? Impressive indeed. And I had no clue that D.H. Lawrence wrote about psychoanalysis and the unconscious -- though considering the little of his poetry I've read, I guess I'm not really surprised.

It seems to me, and of course not to ever think of adding to your already heavy list of reads you've got on your plate, but if the I, Ching and Man in the High Castle keep floating your boat, you may want to explore The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick at some point, and especially if many intricacies are favorable to you.

I've noted The Exegis of Philip K. Dick, EF.

I believe I will want to read more of and on PKD after this.

An amazing and fascinating list, looking forward to following your reading.

So currently reading 3 books:

The man in the high castle
Infinite jest
Understanding the Enneagram

All 3 fit nicely into my 2013 reading strategy to read fiction and non fiction around the subject of imagination. Posting elsewhere, it struck me that another way to describe this is as looking into the 'reality' behind 'reality'.

TMITHC & IJ promote the fact (as far as I have read them, not finished either yet) that there is another reality (maybe more than one?). UTE describes one version of what that reality might be.

As Joni Mitchell once said:

We are stardust.
We are golden.
And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.

Imagination = the realities behind reality....

This is fascinating. You've got me thinking what is the reality behind the reality of IJ? Or behind Hamlet. There's the paranormal in both, of course, but it's not just that, not just that obvious, that black and white.

In IJ, in the early sections, Hal repeatedly mentions (three times in a matter of a page or two) "justifying his seed" -- and on the surface he's talking about tennis rankings in his jr. division, but I think he's talking about more than that. Something generational related to his father and the very brief glimpse we'll get of his grandfather. Men who, as alcoholically flawed as Under the Volcano's anti-hero, Geoffrey Firmin, and obsessively driven as they were, still had preternatural vision. Just wait until you get to footnote 24. Talk about imagination. Hal's father was a cinematic conduit for it.

You're inspiring some enjoyable detective work, Z.

8

...Baynes thinking about the German/Nazi mindset:

'Their view; it is cosmic. Not a man here, a child there, but an abstraction: race, land. Volk. Land. Blut. Ehre. Not of honourable men but of Ehre itself, honour; the abstract is real, the actual is invisible to them....It is their sense of space and time. They see through the here, the now, into the vast black deep beyond, the unchanging. And that is fatal to life.'

and your comment

This is getting into the realms of Jung. In fact Dick writes in the following paragraph 'they are overcome by some powerful archetype.'

This seems to get closer to the meaning of things than countless histories about Hitler, Germany and the origins of the Nazi regime.

Interesting comments, Dennis. I recently finished Hermann Broch's The Spell which is exactly about this. In the novel, through some powerful symbolisms of Hitler and the Third Reich, Broch looks into the impulses in the individual's mind that drive mass-psychological occurrences. The Baynes quotation neatly sums up the basic philosophy that underlies the motivations of the book's characters. This is a book that actually goes closer to the meaning of things...." Here, the powerful archetype is ever present. I think you will find the novel interesting. I plan to post a short review of it on my thread later today actually.

EF glad to have inspired some detective work. There is nothing better than investigating leads and links through a series of books.

I am clear even from the first 2 chapters that IJ is very much an iceberg of a novel with much below the surface.

deebee, the Broch comments are interesting, look forward to your review. The first time that it struck me that Jung's worldview was more than of academic interest was when I read a line of his saying in effect that the German response to Hitler was a function of the collective subconscious, and a re emerging of a powerful archetype.

#17. I have often wondered about that Joni Mitchell quote which as everybody knows comes from her song Woodstock http://jonimitchell.com/music/song.cfm?id=75

The first line "I came upon a Child of God" leads one to think that the garden is the Garden of Eden, which is not real to many people. I prefer to read it as an exhortation to do what Voltaire'e Candide advised in the last sentence mais il faut cultiver notre jardin and that is very real for me.

I like that interpretation bas, it sits well with me. More as metaphor than as literal exhortation in my case.

>22 baswood: I like that interpretation. Being one of about five people in the world who doesn't appreciate Joni Mitchell, you saved that song for me! I should modify that to say I don't like her singing. I do like her art.

My Candide says il nous faut cultiver le jardin: an even stronger exhortation, but one I truly believe in, both metaphorically and literally, thus agreeing with both you and zenomax.

personality types #1
the esoteric #1

I am adopting titles for my posts in the style of this site, passed on by someone on one of the Snobs threads.

http://tsutpen.blogspot.co.uk/?m=1

As a preamble to subject matter which will no doubt come up over the course of this thread it might be useful to visit some Jungian terms. These may be pertinent to the concept of imagination, my central subject in 2013.

The question for me is where within this structure does imagination fit?

Ego : the centre of consciousness, the ego allows us to function in society. However, in the early years the ego knows only its own contents, and has no insight into the unconscious and its contents.

The ego sees itself as the centre of the psyche. In later life the ego comes into confrontation with the Self, providing an opportunity to come into terms with the fact that there is an unconscious element to the psyche.

Self : the Self is already existent when we are born and represents the whole personality. It contains both the conscious and unconscious elements within the psyche. The Self could be considered 'the god within us'.

Persona : the public face we put on, the persona provides protection to the ego in its fragility. If we see our true selves through our ego (although this is only part of us, the largely unknown or guessed at personal unconscious is the other part of us), we project a version of ourself through our persona.

The personal unconscious: 'contains lost memories, painful ideas that are repressed (i.e., forgotten on purpose), subliminal perceptions, by which are meant sense-perceptions that were not strong enough to reach consciousness, and finally, contents that are not yet ripe for consciousness.' "The Personal and the Collective Unconscious", Jung

The Shadow and the anima/animus reside in the personal unconscious, and are therefore each a part of our whole being, the Self.

The Shadow : part of the unconscious, contains repressed and childlike/primal manifestations. The shadow and personality are in constant flux in relation to each other.

The anima/animus : the anima is the inner, feminine side of man; the animus is the inner masculine side of woman. It stands in complementary relationship to the persona. As the persona is the outward projection of our personality, the anima/animus is the opposite, inner projection.

Just as there is a personal unconscious, there can also be said to exist a collective unconscious. This is fascinating, but for another day. However, this means there is also a collective shadow, reflecting the repressed manifestations of our time. This collective shadow can be said to be an archetype, one of huge importance.

'With a little self-criticism one can see through the shadow-so far as its nature is personal. But when it appears as an archetype, one encounters the same difficulties as with anima and animus. In other words, it is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to recognize the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil.' Jung,"The Shadow."

Information came from this site:

http://www.psychceu.com/Jung/sharplexicon.html

And from Teach yourself Jung, Ruth Snowden

Aye Aye.

By way of experiment, if anyone dropping by in the next couple of days would like to add their favourite 3 creatures (animal, bird, insect, whatever) to my list, please feel free.

Please indicate which is first, which is second and which third.

My 3 favourites:

1. Aye aye
2. Robin
3. Leopard

Visions of America #1



The Man in the High Castle, Philip K Dick

(Review to follow)

That's quite a cover!

Shouldn't there be some red suns in that blue square also? Though I suppose the red stripes suffice.

Only three, eh? Darn near impossible.

1. French lop rabbit
2. Penguin
3. kangaroo

OK, for your experiment:

1. Cardinal
2. Cat
3. Coyote

Yes, they all start with C, once I got going I couldn't stop...hmmm

1. Cat
2. Horse
3. Owl

Actually, I like birds in general, but I wanted to be more specific in my list.

1. Cat
2. Owl
3. Chameleon

The arctic fox just missed out. As did the octopus and the lyre-bird and the raven. Give me half an hour and the whole list will have changed several times. Except for the cat.

1.cat
2. elephant
3. gecko

1. bumblebee
2. bat
3. rabbit

I can't do the favourite creatures thing, I'd fear someone would turn up and take others away from me later for not caring about them, or feel guilty next time a I see a plain little mouse that I never thought of listing high, but bumblebees yes (someone got there first). I saw a Korean film recently, its famous but right now I have forgotten its name, in which an octopus (three in fact) played a sad role (for each of which the actor said a Buddhist prayer), made me sad, I didn't watch much more. Ah yes it's called 'Old Boy'.

I have The Man in the High Castle and loved your comments, must read it now.

I had to make myself read your Jungian terminology post, I have some familiarity but these days find myself going through an incomplete process of trying to square circles and translate such things into Person Centred terms - annoying as that's not very Person Centred reading/listening. but it is one reason why i find it hard to go with you in some of your musings.

The Garden also makes me think of Marvell. I sometimes think that garden is only as big/small as we make it, imagination.

Elephant
Swallow
Spider.

I have problems whenever the unconscious is mentioned. Like TonH I like to be conscious and fully person centered, but will follow your musings with interest.

consciousness is greatly overrated, I find.

snarf!

Cats rule.

It would seem.

So thanks to those who joined the experiment. I think from memory the first named is supposed to be how you see yourself, the second named is how you think others see you, the third is more hazy, I think it was how you wanted to be.

I was toying with whether the first was associated with the ego, the second maybe the persona, the third maybe the self?

I know I have always associated with the aye aye - unusual, rare, rarely seen. Almost alien.

Does anyone else associate in any way with their choices?

Tony, my secret is that I write these things not to review books but to help me understand and clarify things in my mind. Any reviews that might seep out are a mere by product.

I guess my mind is not people centric, which may be a failing of mine in general.

Maybe when we get on to personality theory we might tease that out some more.

Bas, I understand your view, and partly share it. However, this remains an area of fascination for me, and I need to push as far as possible in areas that fascinate ... Almost a case of pushing so far that it snaps. If it doesn't snap, it remains potentially valid.

Remember, everything is provisional, anything is possible.

I didn't say anythign about consciousness. When I say Person Centred I mean Carl Rogers based theory, and the developments since and the humanistic third force...I wasn't saying you're not people centric by any means....it's just a different theoretical outlook, and the prospect of thinking through a laod of stuff from a slightly diiferent outlook is a challenge. I do have soem analyitcal psychology awareness, but i have to boto it up a bit. i love psychosynthesis as an approach, which does base itself on analysis to begin with I think. I didn't mean to be a part pooper with the animals thing.

and your secret to your posts is very cool aqnd long may it continue, soem I just find hard for these reasons, or going in different ways (which can be a Very Good Thing)

>39 zenomax: I can certainly relate to the independent, solitary nature of the cat. The nocturnal, cats, owls, well I have been described by friends and family (in jest, but many a true word...) as a hermit. I'm not a particularly social person, and have been known in grim times to retreat completely. The chameleon, I've always been fascinated by them. Would I want be able to camouflage myself depending on my surroundings, well not so much camouflage, more transform, present myself as a different type of person than I am just to get by? Yes, I often think I would, but it tends to be at that particular moment. When I look back at those situations, I generally find it's something I don't really want to be involved with, at least, not as someone who isn't me.

Words are failing me, does it show?

Regarding owls, a memory that has stayed with me is of a time a few years ago when I went camping with a very dear friend. One night we heard an owl calling - wonderful sound. She was all for grabbing a torch and seeing if we could spot it. This annoyed the daylights out of me, I really didn't understand the need to to go crashing through the bush (believe me, we'd be crashing), shining a light in the poor creature's face. Why not be content with just listening it, knowing it was perched somewhere close by, going about it's business?

Tony, thanks for the clarification. I should look into Carl Rogers in more detail.

My view of things is very much Jung Jung Jung, because he struck a chord with me. But I need to look at alternatives to get a healthy perspective.

Yes, going in different ways is a good thing. Which for me means that you, my dear readers, are not merely exotic insects which I have pinned to my wall as a showpiece, but are contributors to my understanding of things.

Although, come to think of it, seeing you all as exotic butterflies, each in it's own iridescent shaded plumage, is quite a novel concept.

Maybe it should be cats rather than butterflies....

Annalisse, thanks for your take on your favourite animals. The independence of the cat and the wisdom of the owl?

I'm thinking that you may be another example of that rare breed, an introverted Sydneysider! I class myself as one too, although I have not lived there for many years.

I love some of the jumps between favourites. From penguin to kangaroo, cardinal to coyote, elephant to gecko...Pim and Bas, I do like your choices as standing out from the crowd. And cats, rabbits and owls come through strongly.

I wonder if physical stature has anything to do with this? I say this because I see my personality as maybe associated with the aye aye, but physically I can see a likeness to a robin. I don't have a red breast, but I am small in stature and relatively light on my feet....?

Zeno, having met you, I'd agree with the robin.

We're a rare breed indeed.

The man in the high castle, P K Dick

The war has been over for around 14 years and North America is ruled by the victors in the war, Japan and Germany. In between these rulers a buffer American state exists, but without any powers.

I don't know what more to say other than that this is a story about alternative realities, which one you might choose to buy into depends on your character, your upbringing, and where you happen to be born.

If you are German, likelihood is you will be at least nominally a Nazi "...the abstract is real, the actual is invisible to them..." Or else someone of no faith, the Nazi party appear to have continued to conduct themselves in such nihilistic fashion, that it might leave those Germans who disdain them with nowhere to go.

The Japanese seem to have settled into a role as gentle imperialists, practising Taoist techniques, principally through devotion to the outcomes from the Book of Changes. The Americans are either still coming to terms with defeat and domination, or are adopting Japanese values.

The way Dick captures the thoughts, rules of politeness, and clipped English speech of both Japanese and American citizens of the Pacific States of America has a wonderful rhythm. Mr Tagomi, one of the key characters, displays the limitations of this cultural politeness and deference when he has to do things which he cannot comprehend. Things so outside his view of the world and code of conduct that he is left adrift from any reality he might have known.

For me this book, and Dick as a philosopher, peak when Mr Tagomi goes through his existential crisis. His way of thinking, bound by rules imbibed from childhood, are battered by the storm of his mental suffering. However, Dick keeps Tagomi's thoughts within the tight rein of expression allowed by the rules of his Japanese culture and upbringing. It is partly tragic, partly funny, partly almost poetic.

Mr Tagomi is one of the most endearing characters I have come across. Dick's writing is exceptionally good. There is humour as well as the need to belong, the fight against existential angst, and some hope at last that there is a superior reality working in the background.

Dick's philosophy of life and message are still being debated and worked through in my head.

I don't believe it! - A book review by zeno

Carl Rogers is worth spending some time with.

I'm trying to reform my character, bas.

Eta: was that said in a Victor Meldrew voice?

So, if imagination is either the reality behind reality, or the gap between the known and unknown worlds, how does Dick deal with it?

Well I think Dick shows us, through his different characters in TMITHC, that everyone has a different imagination. Some people are aware there may be an alternate reality (those who use the I Ching must have a de facto belief in a second reality above and beyond the everyday), others do not see beyond a current reality (which is in itself a harsh reality for many, being subjugated to imperial rule and the dictates of another culture).

If it is the gap between the known and unknown worlds, then things get quite tenuous, because what exactly is the unknown world? In fact what exactly is the known world?

This is maybe equally the strength and weakness of imagination. It allows us to posit possible realities, but there are no rules or boundaries, so nothing to do with imagination can ever be proved or truly known.

Maybe the lasting strength of imagination is that it allows us to think of the infinite. As long as we never find the answer, whatever it may be, we can never rest. Is this what drives us on as sentient beings?

#50 great post zeno

of course it was with a Victor Meldrew voice.

47, 50> You ought to consider officially posting your imaginative insights as a review.

personality types #2

I'm now reading some books on the enneagram. So we move head first into personality theory.

I encourage anyone who is interested in personality theory & typing to take the test on the following site. The benefit of this test is that it provides both an enneagram type and a Myers Briggs type from the one set of questions. Warning: there are 102 questions to answer.

http://similarminds.com/embj.html

If you already know your Enneagram or MBTI types, feel free to post them here.

If you feel adverse to such things feel equally free to register your feelings. We cater for all types here :)

Gnostics and Agnostics.

52 EF thanks for the vote of confidence, I think I'll pass for the moment, as I'm not convinced it is useful to anyone wanting to know whether to read TMITHC.

I don't think I see myself as a cat, although it would be nice to be as lazy and spoiled as my cats are. :)

I'm an ISTJ (very ISTJ--I'm not borderline on any of the axes AT ALL) and a Type 5.

aw I'm awfully late, but I'd formed my list before I saw the interpretation, so it holds, and is in fact pretty accurate:

1. cat (how unoriginal of me)
2. chook (aka hen, fowl, chicken, whatever your idiom)
3. lynx

I will do that test above.

ETA: just did it. I'm still INFP. And Type 2. Let's see if this code thing works:

Enneagram Test Results Type 1 Perfectionism |||||||||||| 46% Type 2 Helpfulness |||||||||||||||||| 76% Type 3 Image Focus |||||||||| 40% Type 4 Individualism |||||||||||||||||| 73% Type 5 Intellectualism |||||||||||| 43% Type 6 Security Focus |||||||||||| 46% Type 7 Adventurousness |||||||||| 33% Type 8 Aggressiveness |||| 16% Type 9 Calmness |||||||||||||| 56% Your main type is 2
Your variant is self pres Take Free Enneagram Word Personality Test
Personality Test by SimilarMinds.com

Enjoyed your puzzled review of The Man in the High Castle. On the back cover of Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, which is on my 2013 to-read list, there is a quote from Terry Gilliam.

"For everyone lost in the endlessly multiplicating realities of the modern world, remember: Philip K. Dick got there first."

I'm INFP (with a sizeable chunk of T, which I was quite pleased to show off to my ESTJ sister) and a type 4.

INFP too, but I have been others in the past but this fits at the mo, I was type 4 with same score as type 3, and when I did the 126 questions test I think it was type 6.

Is this a thread for introverts?

60> Maybe, INTJ here; used to be ENTJ, but was always borderline E/I. I was told at one point that the MBTI didn't change - what are your thoughts on that? I haven't checked out your link yet to see what the Enneagram reveals, but I am interested in checking it out.

Another INTJ here. Have always had the same results since my first test a couple of decades ago. No borderline figures either but wondering in what direction I moved marginally over this time, or if I moved at all.

>60 zenomax: Seems it is.

>60 zenomax: It would seem so. Somehow, I think an internet forum about books is a bit of an introvert magnet. It's like a book club where one doesn't have to say anything or even go to the meetings, if one doesn't feel like it.

>61 LisaMorr: Do you mean that one's types don't change over time? I first took the Myers-Briggs when I was 19 (it was the "real" test, interpreted by a trained MBTI person) and was told that I was young enough that my types could change as I got older. They haven't actually done so, but I've become ever so slightly less introverted and far more sensing. I think I used to test more intuitive because what I thought was intuition was really careful attention to minute detail.

The MBTI line is that we are born with our 'type' and that doesn't change.

However, I've come across 3 groups of people, those who have been 1 clear type and have never changed (a la casvelyn and deebee), those who have tested differently and feel that their type has changed over time (Lisa, for example), and those who seem to be on the border across 1 or more of the attributes and are almost all things to all people (a little like the 'hubs' in SDI).

Jung viewed our personality types as inborn, with preference for one or two over others. However, as part of the aging process he believed we came more open to our 3rd & 4 th attributes, moving towards them. Success in this helps us, in Jungs view, become more rounded individuals, and allows us to move towards individuation.

Z - interesting thoughts on PKD...interesting thoughts throughout. Not ready to take another M-B test...

but my animals were
1. Dogs - specifically Cavalier King Charles Spaniels - better yet, as puppies.
2. Cats - because I have two and I like them.
3. Sloths - because I'm one, or seem to try to be like one - the an animal, not he human adjective.

I think from memory the first named is supposed to be how you see yourself, the second named is how you think others see you, the third is more hazy, I think it was how you wanted to be.

LOL. I don't think anyone sees any cat in me, but I've been compared to a sloth. Saw some at the Miami zoo recently. I was fascinated.

dan, I've always liked sloths too. But tell me, do you favour the two toed or three toed?

Are you ready to declare your Myers Briggs type?

I'd be interested in your enneagram if you ever get time to do one.

As for me, my Myers Briggs type is INTJ.

My enneagram type is 5 (with a 4 wing - we might talk about wings later in this thread).

They both illustrate 2 different (but I think complementary) parts of my personality.



The difference between the 2 typing systems:

Myers Briggs = conscious behaviour (as influenced by the intermingling of 4 pairs of components - Extraversion & Introversion; Sensing & Intuition; Thinking & feeling; and Perceiving & Judging).

Enneagram = unconscious attitudes (based on a set of 9 attitudes sitting in one of 3 centres - the emotional, the mental & the instinctive).

Myers Briggs explains how a person behaves, the enneagram explains why they behave in that way.

#66 - being five toed, I have no preference. : )

dan, the only time I came across Joan Didion prior to your review was as an example of an enneagram type 5.....

personality types #3


Psychological Types, C G Jung


Gifts Differing, Isabel Briggs Myers

Psychological Types is the grandaddy of modern psychological type theory. Jung's theory of psychological types emerged from his long period of personal breakdown caused (it is speculated) by the breakdown of his relationship with Freud. Jung himself stated that the work "...sprang originally from my need to define the ways in which my outlook differed from Freud's and Adler's. In attempting to answer this question, I came across the problem of types."

As with most of Jung's writing the work is dense, with frequent reference to esoteric and obscure historical ideas and ideals. Before actually getting around to expounding his theory, Jung preambles through such areas as 'Psychology in the classical age', 'the problem of universals in Antiquity', 'A discussion on naive and sentimental poetry' and 'The relativity of the God-concept in Meister Eckhart'. Such is the thorough learning, the attention to archaic detail that Jung brings.

Although personality typing goes back to Ancient Egypt via Ancient Greece, with the humors of black bile, yellow bile, blood & phlegm, Jung was the first to establish the personality typing which is most commonly used in the world today (e.g. Myers Briggs, and related authors such as David Keirsey, Lenore Thomson, Socionics - an intreresting east European version, and the Osmond Group - but not those Osmonds).

When he gets around to talkng about his theory, Jung takes time to descibe the 8 personality types. For him type comes from combining one's introverted or extroverted attitude with one of the 4 personality preferences (these being sensing, intuition, feeling and thinking). Hence one can have a preference for introverted sensing, extroverted feeling, etc, giving the 8 personality types in their simplest from.

What Myers Briggs added was to develop Jung's thoughts on perceiving & judging in order to produce a codified system of 16 types where the primary and seconday preferences were both important (so, for instance, Jung's introverted sensor could, in Myers Briggs' terms, become either an ISTJ - where introverted sensing was helped by a secondary preference for extroverted thinking, or an ISFJ - where introverted sensing was helped by a secondary preference for extroverted feeling. Although both Myers Briggs types had a primary preference for introverted sensing, they got there in different ways, basing their judgment primarily on either logic (extraverted sensing) or values (extraverted feeling).

Now one other point to raise here, which I find fascinating, is that Jung typed himself as an introverted thinker. This would suggest, in Myers Briggs terminology, that he was either an INTP or ISTP. However, recent commentary on Jung assumes he was actually an introverted intuitive (either an INTJ or INFJ).

I find this of interest for 2 reasons. Firstly, that the creator of the theory could have mis-typed himself (although it must always remain speculation whether he did), and secondly because in his descriptions of his 8 personality types, Jung reserves the one piece of invective and emotion for that very type which many now speculate he himself was - the introverted intuitive. This is what he says about the introverted intuitive - and it always tickles me to read it:

"The peculiar nature of introverted intuition, if it gains the ascendancy, produces a peculiar type of man: the mystical dreamer and seer on the one hand, the artist and the crank on the other"

Sigh.

Oh well, such is life.

To be continued when i have time. Looking more at these two books, and perhaps Keirsey and Thomson as well.

I should also add that others have developed their own personality typing systems, with William James and W B Yeats developing types around or just prior to Jung.

WBY's theory came to him via a voice channeled through his wife...!?

Great post on Jung and Briggs Myers zeno

Great stuff, Z. This is the kind of information that might actually get me to read Jung some day. Oh, I scored ISTJ, by the way.

Not those Osmonds, eh? Why, Z, I think you're one bad apple. Har.

INFJ here. A man-freak.

I wish I could recommend A Dangerous Method (did you happen to see it?) but it's embarrassingly, painfully, disjointedly bad, and does not do Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud (or David Cronenberg for that matter), any justice whatsoever, especially whenever that excruciating Keira Knightley appears onscreen.

Running total Myers Briggs

ESFJ
ENFJ
ESFP
ENFP - mkboylan
ESTJ - lilisin
ENTJ
ESTP
ENTP
ISFJ
INFJ - EnriqueFreeque, Kidzdoc, March-Hare
ISFP
INFP - ChocolateMuse, letterpress, TonyH, avidmom
ISTJ - casvelyn, dchaikin, detailmuse
INTJ - LisaMorr, deebee, zenomax, rebeccanyc, NielsenGW
ISTP - stretch
INTP - fuzzy patters

Have I missed anyone? That's pretty much weighted in favour of introverts by my count.

As of 22 January:

17 introverts, 2 extrovert
14 intuitives, 5 sensors
11 thinkers, 8 feelers
12 judgers, 7 perceivers.

Interesting supposition (I am also an INTJ), but I think you have a bit of sampling bias. You're compiling a distribution of personality types for book readers when several of the MB questions focus on "quiet-time" activities. People on this site would necesarily drift that way, I suppose.

Hi NielsenGW. Yes, agree completely that LT is likely to be quite 'I' too. Not a scientific experiment.

But I hope to entice at least a handful of other types. There are 'E's out there in LT world. One or 2 active INTPs to my certain knowledge as well.

According to the first online test that popped up on Google I am ESTJ.

You have slight preference of Extraversion over Introversion (11%)
You have marginal or no preference of Sensing over Intuition (1%)
You have moderate preference of Thinking over Feeling (38%)
You have distinctive preference of Judging over Perceiving (67%)

I once had to take the Meyer-Briggs as part of a program I was in at my job (almost 30 years ago), and we had to read that Gifts Differing book you mention. At the time, I was INTJ.

I must get to those tests - perhaps tomorrow.

INTP here.

I'll have to retake the online version of Myers-Briggs, but the last time I took it I was INFJ.

Woohoo our first extrovert! Welcome lilisin.

Rebecca, I'd kind of half pencilled you in as a fellow INTJ.

Fuzzy, welcome. Our first INTP. My brother and my step son are INTPs. I tend to get on famously well with INTPs.

Darryl, you are a rarity (as a male INFJ), but already only the second on our list!

Bas, I will be interested in how you come out on the test.

75 list updated.

I come down strongly in the ISTP camp.

Welcome Stretch, not only our first ISTP, but our first entrant from Keirsey's artisan group.

So some snippets from Gifts Differing.

Perceiving

The theory, building on Jung, has it that we all perceive primarily in one of two possible ways. Some of us perceive mainly through sensing, "...by which we become aware of things directly through our five senses".

Others use intuition "...which is indirect perception by way of the unconscious..."

Jung states that the sensation preference leads one to be 'entirely dependent on external stimuli'.

For those with an intuition preference, Jung states s/he 'perceives the outer (world) primarily through the medium of the inner...'

So two very different ways of taking in information about the world.

Additionally, it should be noted, how an introvert and an extrovert deal with these, even when they share the same preference of perception, is quite different. If there is time we might delve into that further.

Jung's view in Psychological Types was that we all have both ways of perception available to us, but we are born with an innate bias towards one or the other.

Thus in the Myers Briggs scores reported above and summarised in #75, some report as S (they prefer to perceive the world through sensing) and some as N (they prefer to perceive the world through intuition).

To be continued.

A sidetrack, but this is Jung on the importance of symbols, and the depths at which we perceive them:

"Humanity came to its gods by accepting the reality of the symbol, that is, it came to the reality of thought, which has made man lord of the earth. Devotion, as Schiller correctly conceived it, is a regressive movement of libido towards the primordial, a diving down into the source of the first beginnings."

Woman (Jung was a creature of his time, using Man to mean all humankind) and Man may have evolved into sophisticated beings (at least in our own minds), but for Jung the 'primitive' or archaic was still deep within us and apt to manifest Itself from time to time.

Is it that obvious, Zeno? You're pretty good at this typing thing!

#88 lol

Well I do tend to have a 'possible INTJ' sign pop up in my head sometimes. It's only because I am one myself that I think I do that.

Strange to say I find it easy to find 'possible INTJs' on LT, but harder to identify them in real life. We put up a front sometimes in real life I believe.

Oh, you would not know I'm an INTJ if you met me in real life! I would be friendly and charming and interested in what you had to say! Nobody who knows me now can believe I was painfully shy as a child.

Well I have to say most INTJs on LT are friendly, charming and interested (actually all the ones I know of are).

However, I understand what you mean, many of us find it more difficult to express ourselves in the real world.

Actually it is probably true of most introverts...

Mark me ISTJ. In different jobs/roles I can call on the other "sides" but it's exhausting. ISTJ is always my preference.

thanks MJ. Added to the list.

...hidden sea of feelings...

A quote from a Socionics page (the east European version of Jung's theory of psychological types) which I liked. It relates to the INFJ.

"...hidden sea of feelings..."

You ain't whistlin' Dixie!

Is Man and His Symbols a decent enough place to begin w/Jung? Pulled a clean copy out of a box in my garage this week.

96 EF I liked that phrase and the way it vividly painted a picture. The article was Russian, but translated into English. Such translated phrases often pinpoint the issue more colourfully, but exactly, than our attempts in our native tongue.

I believe that Jung book is often read as an intro. So should be fine.

Don't listen to any claims he may make for himself as a scientist. He is an esoteric philosopher. His view of the world and his take on things is what makes him special. He makes you see the world, the universe, causality, the randomness of things in a different light.

Be prepared to like or dislike his views quite intensely. There seems to be no middle ground.

Judging

So we have seen that, according to Myers Briggs theory, we each have a preferred way of taking in information, or perceiving. We either prefer to sense (i.e. take information in through our 5 senses) or intuit (i.e. extract information from our unconscious). The one trusts what they see, hear, touch, they go with what they have experienced, the other is prepared to jump from the merest piece of experience into the realms of possibility.

Once we have taken in information, we need to somehow judge how to react to it. This is where our judging preference comes in.

Those with a preference for feeling tend to make decisions by conferring a subjective value on things, and by deciding how to act based on their reaction to that value.

Those with a preference for thinking tend to make decisions by taking an objective view of the facts as they see them, and by deciding how to act based on their view of what is objectively right.

So we each take in information by sensing or intuition, and we each judge how to react that information through feeling or thinking.

Naturally we have the ability to use all 4 of these 'tools', but the theory assumes we have preferences which are innate.

Therefore we will each have a combination of S/I and T/F in our Myers Briggs type code.

Thought you would find this satirical list mildly amusing:

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/additional-myers-briggs-personality-types

That's a fabulous list.

It turns out my son, who I thought was an ENFJ, was actually an ESVP all along!

Most 20th century American novelists seem to have been WDDDs.

I would quite like to be seen as an OSTQ.

90> I think most people would say that I'm an extrovert because I'm good with groups, good with people. And I am, but I find it draining and I would much rather be with a smaller number of people, maybe just one other, and enjoy my alone time very much. I had to take a test as part of a promotion process that indicated that it takes energy out of me to 'schmooze' and that this would most likely limit me going forward - they shared some kind of statistic that the majority of CEOs gain energy from being with lots of people. I think that's OK - I don't think I want my career path to require that I have be 100% schmoozing all the time. I can't remember what the name of that test was though.

Been enjoying your reading reviews and commentary on personality types.

INFJ 4w5

Well zeno - not only do we only have 8 books in common, but I am ENFP of course! I keep finding this with many in this group and yet I am loving the threads. You made me remember a wonderful psych prof who taught personality theory by having students choose a biography to read and apply any personality theory to - is that fun or what? and no Buddhist psych books on your list? Such an interesting field. Can you have a personality with no self?

Have to stop reading your thread to post my 3 fav creatures, the I'll finish:

tiger - cause tigers are all furry and cute and pretty and fun to wrestle with but do NOT mess with them
elephant - I don't know why - I kissed one once and it was very fun, until I got home from the park and googled elephant in captivity - very depressing
bonobos because they are so practical and cut through the bull.

Merrikay

ETA - oh my and I am the only ENFP. I do think I am SO much less extroverted than I was a couple of decades ago when I took the test (I think in decades now) and I think in my case it's a healthy maturity thing.

Very fun thread.

102 Lisa, in the company I work for, the most senior managers in the UK are almost invariably ISTPs and ESTPs!

I would say it is often the culture of a company that determines who gets to the top. I would argue our company used to be STP. We are now part of a global company run out of the Netherlands, which is much more NTJ/STJ in outlook.

103,104 welcome March-Hare and Merrikay.

Another INFJ! And a 4w5. Interesting. We share a lot in common on both those scales.

Let's put out the bunting too. Because we have attracted another Extrovert, and our first ENFP. I had to smile Merrikay, because from your description of tigers and elephants I would have said ENFP even if you hadn't told us that was your type!

104 - Buddhism - not yet, but the enneagram and Jung both have/had elements of buddhism in them.

I think there may be elements of both Islam and Buddhism emerging from this. Possibly also the cabbalah, which then leads on to the tarot deck too!

>106 zenomax:

Agreed. After other NFs it seems easiest for me to "get" INTxs. I also think enneagram type makes a big difference.

For the moment, I will resist adding the numerous qualifications I naturally want to add.

If you keep up with the spirtuality line I will be back.

106 well I've just added 2 books to the list of potential reads this year (see ~4 and look under 'The Esoteric' heading). These are books by David Hey and A H Almaas, both of which link Enneagram to spirituality.

I am mainly looking at the Enneagram concept from a personality typing point of view, but the spirituality side is edging in over the doorstep.

I think INFJs and INTJs are much more alike than you would think at first glance. The only types to have to live in the real world wielding the small weapon of introverted intuition.

Again agreed. Ni doms definitely share a worldview. This year I'm doing some reading under the theme of philosophy as a spiritual exercise. I'll be back later to post some thoughts on this and it's possible relation to personality types.

So the summary of the various preferences from Gifts Differing:


Extroverts & Introverts

Extroverts act based on the objective conditions of a situation. They are 'afterthinkers': "cannot understand life until they have lived it".

For Jung, extroverts 'turned outward'. They are influenced by the object.

Introverts act based on subjective ideas about a situation. They are 'forethinkers': "cannot live life until they understand it".

Jung saw introversion as a 'turning inward', where "interest does not move towards the object but withdraws from it into the subject".

Therefore, it could be argued that introverts are more influenced by internal processes, dealing mostly in concepts and ideas, extroverts are more influenced by external objects, being influenced mostly by objects and people.

Sensing & Intuiting

Sensing types depend on their 5 senses to understand the world. They 'face life observantly'. Reality is the cornerstione.

Intuiting types commune with their inner voice and use the smallest amount of sensing as a base of knowledge. They 'face life expectantly'. Possibilities are they key.

Cool stuff about Meyers-Briggs. The first time I took the MB I was an INFJ, took it last year and came out an INFP.

I took the test on similar minds.com and came out INTJ

However INTJ just doesn't describe me.

My experiences in working in Human Resources has made me deeply suspicious of personality tests. I was trained in applying tests with a well known group of testers, but I never took any notice of the results - far too deeply flawed.

avidmom I've added you as an INFP in message 75. bas, I've left you unclassified for the moment. You are right to be sceptical. These theories are not scientific as far as I can see.

However, I find them useful. They have given me a degree of insight into myself and others.

Just you wait to we get to the enneagram. Heavily weighted in favour of the esoteric over the rational....

Thinking & Feeling

"Thinking and feeling are rival instruments if decision. Both are reasonable and internally consistent, but each works by its own standards." (Gifts Differing).

Thinking uses logic to make decisions, Feeling bases decisions on values.

Judging & Perceiving

Judging types like things to be organised and settled. Perceiving types like to keep things open ended.

Judging types tend to be decisive. Perceiving types tend to curious.

(From Gifts Differing).

In my experience Js see the alarm clock as a useful invention whereas Ps see it as an instrument of torture.

I've been thinking about a 3 way Venn diagram illustrating science, the spiritual and the soulful. Where the overlaps occur what would they contain?

Science and the spiritual contain a mutual zero sum game, a belief in the ultimate, a set of rules to be followed.

The spiritual and the soulful contain a belief in the inexplicable. A personalisation of the principles of the universe.

The soulful and the scientific contain very little other James Lovelock as far as I can see.

What of the triple overlap at the centre? Perhaps the godhead, whatever that might conceivable be.

Eta: thinking about this further does Jung join Lovelock? He always claimed he based his theories on scientific principles.

I think Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Feynman, Bohr, Goethe quite a few would dispute little being in the soulful/scientific overlap...or Nabokov maybe....but maybe I am not using them in your terms...Tolstoy too according to Berlin? (or was that spiritual and scientific, I can't help add soulful too and then maybe we're gettign near your godhead centre!) sorry I hope this isn't a harsh reaction, I'm destined to come at this from another point of view.

I'm a P (at the moment), always saw alarm clocks as instrumetns of torture, but my digital one set to radio 3 is changing my mind by the day.

where do generalisations fit in in this scheme of things?

I love generalisations! That's my weakness Tony.

I made up an aphorism once, but think others have hit this one too -- all generalisations are dangerous, even this one.

I do a lot of generalising, also a weakness, one I generally try to fight.

Do I remember right and you like wittgenstein? he's interestign on freud, wonder where it would leave Jung. Partly I wonder if he'd be seen as speaking of what should not be spoken, on the other hand he may not have minded I wonder, hm am not sure, I had the impression he loved what he stopped himself speakign of. he did like reading freud too of course i think, just developed a certain view of it.

I believe I've mentioned Wittgenstein in passing once or twice. I covet that idea of liking most those things which you stop yourself speaking of...

Definitely Goethe and Newton fit into the soulful/scientific overlap. You are right there...maybe more overlap on that nexus than I had thought!

Let us not forget that science partly emerged from alchemy. The overlap has perhaps always been there.

This may be useful.

Here is Foucault on "the spiritual" from The Hermeneutics of the Subject page 15-16

"We will call, if you like, "philosophy" the form of thought that asks, not of course what is true and what is false, but what determines that there is and can be truth and falsehood and whether or not we can separate the the true and the false. We will call "philosophy" the form of thought that asks what it is that enables the subject to have access to the truth and which attempts to determine the conditions and limits of the subjects access to the truth. If we call this "philosophy," then I think we would call "spirituality" the search, practice, and experience through which the subject carries out the necessary transformations on himself in order to have access to the truth. We will call "spirituality" then the set of these researches, practices, and experiences, which may be purifications, ascetic exercises, renunciations, conversions of looking, modifications of existence, etc., which are, not for knowledge but for the subject, for the subject's very being, the price to be paid for access to the truth. Let's say that spirituality as it appears in the West at least, has three characteristics.

Spirituality postulates that the truth is never given to the subject by right...It postulates that for the subject to have right of access to the truth he must be changed, transformed, shifted, and become, to some extent and up to a certain point, other than himself....

It follow that from this point of view there can be no truth without a conversion or a transformation of the subject...Eros and askesis are, I think the two major forms in Western spirituality for conceptualizing the modalities by which the subject must be transformed in order to be finally capable of the truth...

Finally, spirituality postulates that once access to the truth has been really opened up, it produces effects that are of course, the consequence of the spiritual approach taken in order to achieve this, but which at the same time are something quite different and much more: effects which I will call "rebound" ("de retour,"), efffects of the truth on the subject. For spirituality the truth is not just given to the subject, as reward for the act of knowledge as it were and to fufill the act of knowledge. The truth enlightens the subject; the truth gives beatitude to the subject; the truth gives the subject tranquility of soul"

>Js see the alarm clock as a useful invention whereas Ps see it as an instrument of torture
LOL; and another generalization, if a bit dated:
Why do extroverts have voicemail? (To never miss a call)
Why do introverts have voicemail? (To never answer the phone)

>118 zenomax:, 123 dense and intriguing posts; I must come back to these.

>124 detailmuse: As an introvert (and an INTJ, apparently), I have to say the voicemail generalization feels spot on!

124 so darn funny!

Why do introverts have voicemail? (To never answer the phone)

Why else would they have invented voicemail?

Yep. I'm definitely an introvert then! LOL!

Totally, about voice mail!

>124 detailmuse: Ha! Another introvert here, especially at home. I have to answer dozens of calls every day at work, so I relish the luxury of not having to do so at home.

I think text messaging must have been invented by an introvert. For which I thank him or her.

Oh no, not me. I hate text messaging! It's way too immediate and demanding.

I do like talking on the phone -- just when I want to, not when somebody else wants to. Love caller ID too.

#123 - March-Hare - thanks for posting this.

132>
really? but you don't have to answer a text immediately, but with a phonecall you do. I HATE phone calls. I grind my teeth when someone calls me, even if it's someone I'm quite happy to talk to.

Oh me too. That feeling when it rings... makes me want to stab something. And I have a young friend who's always calling at 9:30 at night, just when I'm about to start doing all the necessary things I've been putting off all evening, and she says it's just a "quick call" and talks for two hours. I spend the whole time gritting my teeth and saying "mm," and "uh huh" and trying hard to control my temper. The one time I ignored her call I felt so bad that I told her I'd done it *sigh*.

It's nice to know I'm not alone in this!

#134 Well, I get almost no texts, but it seems to me that they're always about urgent matters and people expect an urgent response. You don't HAVE to answer a phone call, you know. That's what voice mail and turning the ringer off are for!

I know, but if you don't answer it, it rings and rings and rings and rings and rings and rings and rings, aiyo gan!

Amen.

HHhH, Laurent Binet.

Holiday reading. I wanted to dislike this book as it mixed the author's personal feelings, thoughts and activities with the story of Heydrich's assassination by 2 soldiers from the special ops unit of the free Czech army.

However, the build up of chapters (some chapters only 1 sentence long), and the mix of the personal, the factual, and the speculative, combined with the author's musings as to whether he was doing the right thing, produced a rich, layered story which a dry exposition of the facts would never have accomplished.

I think the key was that I identified with the author's view of events. Although his means of attacking the story at first appeared frivolous, he clearly felt strongly about the events and wanted to find a way of paying proper homage, not solely to the perpetrators of the assassination, but to those families who helped them. Most of these families paid with their lives.

Binet also admits an appreciation of certain aspects of Heydrich. This actually adds to the story and to his credibility as a story teller in my view.

The whole is a layered, colourful 'story' of how events unfolded and what it all actually meant.

I wanted to dislike this book

I've thought I would dislike this book, but your review is making me think twice.

HHhH sounds intriguing, I like the idea of the author speculating on the factual information at hand and then adapting it to produce a book that looks back on the sometimes deceptive line between fact and fiction

Did you read it in French?.

bas, if I was reading it in French I'd still be reading it now! The translation seems fine, it flowed really well.

Every now and then you grace us with a review. Good stuff on HHhH.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_mj5YT3wi2c

Nature worships nature.

140 Rebecca, looking back with the benefit of the passage of time I think the book still holds up every bit as well.

I hadn't appreciated how much this 'confessional' style was prevalent in modern writing. If I had I might have been more put off by the intrusion of the author's personality in the story.

However it remains a richly layered story which is still with me now.

143 thanks dan.

Currently reading:

Symbol & Archetype, Martin Lings
Travels in Consciousness, David Hey
balancing Heaven and Earth, Robert A Johnson

I've also been reading wider and deeper online and via some purchases on the Enneagram. For those of you who know their Enneagram type, including those who did the test in 53 above, I'll review some of my reading in this area shortly. Fascinating topic for me.

The other noteworthy point to make is that I am now making the majority of purchases via the kindle app on my ipad. Very few real books coming through the door these days. This pleases my wife, but I am astonished how quickly it has happened!

An interesting point, the David Hey book matches each Enneagram type against a major religious strand.

Thus enneagram type 2 is seen as represented by the Catholic Church, Islam, particularly the Sufi strain is reflected in type 4, etc.

The enneagram types and Hey's religious correlations. I've included the 'basic desire' of each type as well - thought it would be interesting to see how these mesh with each respective religious strand

Type 1, The Reformer. Basic desire = goodness, integrity. Religious or spiritual equivalent = Protestantism

Type 2, The Giver. Basic desire = to feel loved. Religious or spiritual equivalent = Catholicism

Type 3, The Achiever. Basic desire = to feel valuable. Religious or spiritual equivalent = Karma Yoga strand of Hinduism

Type 4, The Individualist. Basic desire = to be themselves. Religious or spiritual equivalent = Islam

Type 5, The Observer . Basic desire = to be capable and competent. Religious or spiritual equivalent = Therevada strand of Buddhism.

Type 6, The Loyalist or Sceptic (phobic and counter phobic) . Basic desire = to have support and guidance. Religious or spiritual equivalent = Judaism

Type 7, The Enthusiast . Basic desire = to be satisfied and content. Religious or spiritual equivalent = the "path of celebration"

Type 8, The Challenger. Basic desire = to protect themselves and their independence. Religious or spiritual equivalent = Advaita or non dualism

Type 9, The Peacemaker . Basic desire = to Have peace of mind and wholeness. Religious or spiritual equivalent = Tibetan Buddhism.

Just downloaded The Once and Future King and Idylls of the Kings to my app...it's too ridiculously easy to do!

Will be interested to see how the 'Englishness' of these tracts compare with the 'Welshness' or perhaps 'Briton-ness' of Porius.

Careful zeno you mentioned the "P" book

I have just bought Owen Glendower: it has more pages than "p" and so if you don't see me on these threads for a month you will know what I am doing.

I seem to be more than one type.

148 thanks for posting that. Very interesting.

159 me too. Shocking! :)

150 bas, More pages than the P book? Is that possible? I imagine you will be like a python who has just eaten a deer - stunned into torpitude for the period it takes you to digest it....

Thanks Merrikay. I have read a few books on the enneagram recently and need to get my thoughts out here at some stage.

I'm currently reading about active imagination which is very interesting to me. Inner Work by Robert Johnson.

Back from holiday in Australia where, amongst other things I met the RL (and lovely) Chocolatemuse.

Last day before returning to work, and I have just purchased 3 books from Blackwells in Oxford (I'm writing this from their coffee shop):

The Red Book, Carl Jung. Now in an affordable edition without CGJ's illustr.ations.

The Qu'ran, in N J Dawood's translation (although it is translated as 'The Koran' which I find an infinitely less attractive title).

The history of magic, Eliphas Levi. A treasure trove of a book.

"Magic has been confounded too long with the jugglery of mountebanks, the hallucinations of disordered minds and the crimes of certain unusual malefactors."

The opening words of Levi's book...

I can assure his friends here that RL zeno is lovely also. We had a great few hours in Sydney.

Zeno, we were saying that my enneagram was 4, but we were wrong, looking back it is 2. That does seem a bit more true, I think - much as I'd like the idea of being an individualist!

Hey a 2! My step daughter is a 2.... But you have a lot of 4 in you as well I think..

Thanks :) I'd like to think so!

Awesome that you guys met up. (Muse - where are you posting these days, if you're posting?)

Dan, this sounds awfully exclusive and snobby but the fact is I'm only in private groups these days! But I am by no means wanting to avoid old friends like you. I just found your thread and have sheepishly made my entrance there.

#160 Muse - I'm a little sad I can't follow along, but don't see that as snobbish or anything of the sort. Glad you found my thread.

#160
So that's why I had not seen a thread from you this year. Oh well :( Have fun with whatever you are reading - even if we don't get to hear about it.

So I've been reading a lot on the enneagram of late. Both the enneagram and Jung's ideas posit reasons for individual behaviour. Jung also argues that the zeitgeist is driven by the collective subconscious and the archetypes.

This has lead me to think more about the Nazis. Whilst the enneagram gives me some possible insights into Hitler's state of mind, Jung provides an interesting point of conjecture on the phenomenon of the Nazis and the general compliance of the German people.

Sebald and P K Dick, as I believe I mentioned above, have given me the best metaphysical explanations for the Nazis.

Here us an interesting piece on Sebald that I came across today.

http://www.closeupfilmcentre.com/vertigo_magazine/volume-4-issue-3-summer-2009/a...

Currently reading Judas Iscariote, by Leonid Andreyev and taking an interest in both he and his son, Daniil.

Daniil wrote the mystical text Roza Mira.

Both father and son seemed to have a special relationship with the concept of Judas.

In his story Judas Iscariote, Andreyev pere relates the actions of a complex figure, both trickster and loyalist, blinded by his animated yet conflicted mental thoughts, and yet perfectly clear in terms of what has to be done, hurt to his very core by what he knows he must do to Christ yet contemptuous of the gullibility and weaknesses of Jesus' followers.

Andreyev fils, meanwhile, in his mystical text of the ways of the universe, alleges that the inner most layer of a complex, multilayered hell is populated by just one being - Judas Iscariot....

Hey Zenomax,

You maybe able to help me out with something.

I'm looking for a book that describes the way that MBTI developed the Jungian cognitive functions. If you read Psychological Types the cognitive functions are not that developed structurally. Basically, you have a dominant function and that's it (if my memory serves). I'm interested in the theoretical development that gets you to a functional "stack".

Any recommendations?

Sorry, back late to this. Gifts Differing is the classic Myers Briggs book.

David Keirsey and Lenore Thomson have both developed Myers Briggs further.