Lit from within Methodology and literature review .

Resources on giftedness

Though I had been a student of Jung for some time before I began researching giftedness, I was surprised discover that Jung had written an essay on the topic, The Gifted Child.^{footnote 11} Based on the note accompanying the piece in the Collected Works, it seems the paper was a response to an inquiry made by the Basel School Council, an attempt to determine if gifted children should be educated in a class separate from their cognitively normal peers.^{footnote 12} In conveying his opposition to the proposal,^{footnote 13} Jung spends some time discussing the traits of gifted children as he understands them. In fact, a number of his points have been refuted by contemporary research. For instance, in contrast to Jung’s view that we should not underline [the gifted student’s] exceptional position by transferring him to a special class,^{footnote 14} we currently have robust evidence that ability grouping can be very beneficial to gifted children.^{footnote 15} What is most valuable about this piece, I believe, is that it establishes Jung as an early voice in giftedness studies. Additionally, as noted above, it was this essay which provided the first instance of the torch-bearer image which would ultimately become so experientially and thematically central in this dissertation.^{footnote 16}

The clinical psychologist Deirdre Lovecky offers a trio of articles which offer insights into the trait of entelechy^{footnote 17} among the gifted.^{footnote 18} What is useful about these pieces, phenomenologically speaking, is Lovecky’s frequent use of anecdote and lived experience to convey her ideas. For instance, I will feature of Lovecky’s story of an entelechic, gifted child who opposes an injustice.^{footnote 19} Related examples come from more well-known figures: Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. and poet Langston Hughes among them.^{footnote 20} Through Lovecky’s application of clinical wisdom, one gains a sense of entelechy as a particular type of motivation, inner strength, and vital force directing life which plays out in the experience of gifted individuals.^{footnote 21}

In The Gifted Adult, Mary-Elaine Jacobsen uses the term drive rather than entelechy, but she clearly refers to a similar phenomenon: that of being motivationally different.^{footnote 22} What is unique to her approach is that she considers this drive to appear in three forms: collapsed, exaggerated, or balanced.^{footnote 23} Balance, Jacobsen posits, might manifest as self-directedness, while the extremes of exaggeration and collapse may appear as an inability to shift in midstream, and a sense of being easily defeated, respectively.^{footnote 24} Of additional relevance is the author’s contention that drive is powerfully linked to a devotion to the envisioned ideal,^{footnote 25} a connection which arises in my study, as well. Though her book is intended for general, rather than academic, readership, Jacobsen is another practicing clinician with much to offer researchers interested in the gifted experience.

As educators, F. Christopher Reynolds and Jane Piirto apply a pedagogical lens to the phenomenology of giftedness. For Hillman enthusiasts, especially, their article Depth Psychology and Giftedness: Bringing Soul to the Field of Talent Development and Giftedness highlights a cluster of ways that archetypal psychology and gifted studies might interact.^{footnote 26} Of special interest to this dissertation is the authors’ a) account of the wide range of gifted experiences, ranging from light to shadow, as well as b) their evident respect for the daimon and its historical connection to the concept of genius.^{footnote 27} Interestingly, Reynold and Piirto note that gifted drive can only be defined phenomenologically^{footnote 28} — a spot of encouragement that the methodology for this dissertation is on-track.

Resources on the complex

Given the centrality of the complex in Jung’s psychology,^{footnote 29} it is unsurprising that he wrote a great deal on the subject. In developing my thinking for this dissertation, I consulted a number of these works, and found a few particularly useful. The first is Jung’s A Review of the Complex Theory which explores the complex both theoretically and phenomenologically.^{footnote 30} This essential resource provides numerous markers of the complex, ranging from its autonomy to its powerfully affective stance.^{footnote 31} These markers became increasingly important as I moved through my research design, described below.

Given that the view of complexes is frequently less than hopeful,^{footnote 32} I appreciated paragraphs 923-926 of Jung’s A Psychological Theory of Types,^{footnote 33} which regards the complex as a potentially positive structure of psyche. Jung’s contention that the complex can act as an incentive to greater effort and … new possibilities of achievement,^{footnote 34} harmonizes nicely with his work in On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry,^{footnote 35} another excellent resource for considering the complex in relation to the gifted. There, he discusses the role of the complex in creative projects^{footnote 36} — a topic which relates strongly to the entelechic gifted. Particularly helpful was Jung’s assertion that the nascent work in the psyche of the artist is a complex,^{footnote 37} an idea which might also be reasonably applied to creative projects of all types, ranging from scientific study to scholarly research.

An underutilized article which provides the experiential markers of a constellated complex is Delia Shargel’s Psychological and Astrological Complexes: An Evolving Perspective.^{footnote 38} As these pages will show, I frequently turn to Shargel for help in spotting the ‘behaviors’ of the personal complex.^{footnote 39} She provides an at-a-glance list of such behaviors, as well as a clinically-informed ‘unpacking’ of those qualities: the complex’s magnetic nature, its all-or-nothing thinking, its creation of emotional lockdown and much more.^{footnote 40} My project is richer for having spent time with Shargel’s analysis.

I would be remiss if I did not mention Roger Brooke’s Jung and Phenomenology^{footnote 41} and Matthew Gildersleeve’s The Phenomenology and Ontology of Complexes,^{footnote 42} as both attend to the phenomenology of the complex. Ultimately, however, I confess to being uncomfortable with both resources, as I sense that their approach to phenomenology is more exegetical than phenomenal.^{footnote 43} In essence, I feel both authors deal more with the expansion of theories of phenomenology than their more concrete application,^{footnote 44} which is the approach I favor for this project. That said, Brooke does offer one point helpful to the development of my project. He describes personal complexes as intentionalities, a concept suggesting that consciousness (presumably including the non-egoic consciousness of the complex) is always and necessarily directed towards an object that is other than consciousness itself.^{footnote 45} Such intentionality evokes a sense of telos: an intention toward something.^{footnote 46} In this way, Brooke’s terminology supports my sense of telos as phenomenologically essential in this study. In future studies, such ‘intentionality’ may be a fresh, useful term for describing the experience of the complex.

Not long after I shifted the focus of this dissertation specifically to the telos in the complexes of the gifted, I sensed that I needed to re-read Suzanne Cremen’s depth psychological vocational guide, From Career to Calling.^{footnote 47} I vaguely recalled that Cremen had discussed the relationship of complex and calling. What I had not recalled is that Cremen has written one of the most usable, insightful accounts of telos in the complex that I have encountered in the literature. It is as if psyche itself, through the activated complex, has a hidden goal in mind … a larger teleological purpose, writes Cremen.^{footnote 48} Here, experiential accounts highlight the way in which complexes engage us in preoccupations which, in time, become meaningful occupations^{footnote 49} — an image that jibes nicely with the phenomenon of gifted entelechy. Cremen has also assembled a helpful collection of Jung’s insights on the positive, prospective significance of the complex^{footnote 50} — another constructive approach to the complex. Cremen’s text is particularly friendly to a phenomenological understanding of how complexes speak their telos.^{footnote 51} In many respects, From Career to Calling is the resource that helped me understand this dissertation as a single, cohesive image.

Resources on telos and teleology

When a web search uncovered a newly published book, Garth Amundson’s Psychological and Philosophical Studies of Jung’s Teleology, a frisson rippled through me. The timing of the book’s publication and the arising of telos as a central theme in my research seemed connected in a fortuitous way. In particular, Amundson’s Jung’s Teleology: Its Historical Origins and Place in His Theory felt like just the thing I needed: a survey of telos both in Jung and in Plato, as well as the acknowledgement that Jung is heavily indebted to Plato.^{footnote 52} These connections, underscored by the author’s observation that Plato was the first Western philosopher to spell out a cosmic teleology,^{footnote 53} accent for me the importance of including Plato’s teleological myth in these pages. Also of special interest are Amundson’s comments about the importance of meaning in Jung’s psychology and its relevance to telos^{footnote 54} a confluence that will become important in the final sections of this dissertation.

Hillman’s The Soul’s Code^{footnote 55} is an account of the power of the daimon in the life of eminent, gifted individuals. The book is highly anecdotal, an ideal resource for a phenomenological exploration of how giftedness, entelechy, and destiny intertwine. His chapter, Fate, played a critical role as I developed my understanding of telos, as Hillman offers explorations of the mythology, etymology, and phenomenology of teleology and Necessity (as both intrapsychic force and deity).^{footnote 56} The book also provides a thought-provoking snapshot of the ‘personality’ of the daimon, including its capacity for both grandeur of … vision and outright temper tantrums.^{footnote 57} It is not only the book’s subject matter which has been an aid, but also Hillman’s reliance on archetype, generally. Thanks to Hillman, I felt confident in pursuing the image of Ananke as a central motif.

Finally, both I and this dissertation owe a soul-debt to Plato’s myth of Er.^{footnote 58} Though the paraphrased myth first came to me in The Soul’s Code years ago, there is no substitute for a close reading of Plato’s text. Teleology, the myth tells us, has roots in the divine and in the individual. Studying Plato’s account of Ananke^{footnote 59} in tandem with Necessity as a torch-bearer, pictured above,^{footnote 60} provides a powerful set of images to help personify and explore telos and entelechy in psyche.