Lit from within Research design and findings .

Chapter Text.

Research design.

We now approach the heart of this study. As noted above, my dissertation began with a general aim — that of exploring the experiences of the complex in the gifted. My original research design was based on this intention, while the focus on telos came later.

To begin with, I selected a number of autobiographies, collections of letters, and diaries written by individuals who I felt could be reasonably understood as gifted. My measure of giftedness was qualitative: my subjects^{footnote 1} included those possessing high ability in their fields^{footnote 2} and demonstrating qualities commonly associated with giftedness.^{footnote 3} With these written accounts in hand, I sifted for experiences which bore the hallmarks of the personal complex, especially keeping in mind Jung’s^{footnote 4} and Shargel’s descriptors.^{footnote 5} Having transcribed these extracts, I applied the HP approach — epoché, reduction, hermeneutic spiral, and meaning-seeking.^{footnote 6} When the theme of telos began to stand out as essential,^{footnote 7} I returned to the hermeneutic spiral, this time reading with a teleological awareness in mind. Throughout the entire process, I used van Manen’s writing-as-research orientation,^{footnote 8} keeping a research journal to cultivate an awareness of my own process, as well as the insights that arose from the literature.

The results of my study are as follows.

The experience of telos in the complexes of the gifted.

I observed a number of themes as I reviewed my subject accounts: the power of affect in the constellated complex, the use of meditative techniques to manage those complexes, and an unusually intense awareness of one’s inner world. But the feature most prevalent and essential in the phenomenological sense, was the recurrence of complexes bearing a distinct sense of telos.

On the whole, that telos arose in three broad categories, which I will call:

1. the autonomous-creative,
2. the daimonic voice, and
3. ‘the moment’

I have also included a fourth category for complex-behaviors which appeared less frequently and did not fall into one of these three subheadings.

The autonomous-creative

The experiential accounts in this category tended to be of two sorts. The first includes those writers who dealt with fiction (as novels or in film) and expressed a clear sense of their characters as whole people who acted autonomously and/or lived ‘real’ lives. For instance:

David: If a character comes along and you’re the only writer around, they [the character] kind of introduce themselves to you and then you know them … and there’s stuff that’s surprising.^{footnote 9}

Cath: I miss the companionship of the character … I had grown to depend on her companionship more than I realized. So often she set the pace herself, and she pulled at me until I was hers more than she was mine.^{footnote 10}

In his third Tavistock lecture, Jung affirms this connection between fictional characters and the complex, suggesting that complexes live their own lives apart from our intentions … [which] explains a lot.^{footnote 11} In particular, it explains how a writer, when he creates a character … thinks it is merely a product of his imagination; but that character in a certain secret way has made itself.^{footnote 12} The complex clothes itself in a ‘costume’ of words and imagery, fashioning itself as a fictional character.

In other cases, it was the project itself which seemed to have an autonomy directed toward the aim of its own creation. Shirley, a novelist, had been struggling with finding the right name for one of her characters, and had become so frustrated that she considered giving up on her book project entirely:^{footnote 13}

Shirley: The next morning, when I went to my desk, I found a sheet of typing paper; it had been taken from the pile at one side of the desk and set right in the middle. On the paper was written, ‘oh no oh no Shirley not dead Theodora Theodora.’ It was written in my own handwriting, but as though it had been written in the dark. I don’t think I have ever been so frightened.^{footnote 14}

Taking Jung as a guide, we can see that Shirley’s nacent work — the artistic project, itself, and not merely its characters — can be understood as form of autonomous complex.^{footnote 15} The book wanted Shirley to know that it was not dead, and the character in question should be named Theodora.

Robert, a trauma survivor who carries a diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder (DID), had similar experiences:

Robert: I have almost no memory of how the book emerged. All I remember is sitting down at the computer … and transcribing what already seemed to be written.^{footnote 16}

This novelist, meanwhile, experienced himself as a host of writers:

Phil: There is no doubt that quite frankly I do not in any real sense write my novels; they do come from some non-I part of me … I feel I have been a lot of different people. Many people have sat at this typewriter, using my fingers. Writing my books.^{footnote 17}

Artistic projects are not the only ones that act autonomously. This physicist was working on a new theory of atomic particles … [and] the work had been announced to him in a dream.^{footnote 18} Here is the dream:

Ernst: I suddenly [discover] two children … Both say to me ‘We have been here already for three days. We find it very nice here; but nobody has noticed us.’ Excitedly, I call my wife, knowing that she will relate to the children; because of her the children will stay.^{footnote 19}

Here, the project — Ernst’s theory — has come in the form of two children who want to stay, but are in need of attention and care. On a personal note, I will add that, in my own experience as a novelist, writing projects in their early phases frequently personify in my dreams as infants or pregnancies.

The daimonic voice

In this batch of experiences, we see the complex expressing in the form of a knowing inner voice. This phenomenon has a long history. Plato’s Socrates, certainly a model of giftedness, gives us this excellent account: It began in early childhood, a sort of voice which comes to me, and when it comes it always dissuades me from what I am proposing to do, and never urges me on.^{footnote 20}

Sometimes referring to such inner voices as daimonic^{footnote 21} Jung writes that the inner voice can [call us] awake,^{footnote 22} speaking as the voice of a fuller life, of a wider, more comprehensive consciousness.^{footnote 23} Jung connects the voice, as well as the daimon, to the domain of vocation, pointing out that the original meaning of ‘to have a vocation’ is ‘to be addressed by a voice.’^{footnote 24}

Interestingly, Jung, himself, experienced a daimon which expresse[ed] itself absolutely and ruthlessly,^{footnote 25} though whether this figure was voiced or unvoiced is unclear. In my research, daimonic voices are not always as tonally severe as the daimon Jung describes, but they are occasionally stern. For this dedicated Zen practitioner, a voice corrected her when her thinking went astray:

Anne: ‘Here it all is, but I don’t get it,’ I thought glumly …

Drop ‘I don’t get it,’ just keep ‘Here it all is,’ came the internal voice.^{footnote 26}

On multiple occasions, the voice aimed to draw Anne into a deeper understanding of Zen practice. Here, approaching an upcoming challenge, Anne prayed:

Anne: ‘Please get me through this peacefully. It make it a prison with my mind. Let me make it a wonderful experience with my mind, oh, please!!!’

’Don’t make anything with your mind!’ came back a voice from who knows where.^{footnote 27}

Phil’s inner voice, which he variously [referred] to as his tutor, his unconscious, the Spirit … the Sybil … [and] the AI voice,^{footnote 28} took a distinctly different tone:

Phil: Last night … I heard her (you know, my anima, the sybil), singing along with a choir: You must put your slippers on / To walk toward the dawn. With advice like that, how can I lose? … I sure have odd nights.^{footnote 29}

He experienced this inner speaker as both a child and an adult figure,^{footnote 30} but no matter her appearance, he valued her tutelage:

Phil: I certainly am on good terms with her, inasmuch as she is informing and correcting me, speaking words of wisdom … I listen to her; I crave to hear anything she can or will say. She is wiser than I. I see her as mediatrix standing between this world (me) and the next … Behind her I have seen the Godhead … it was my anima who first spoke to me, in the 3-eyed form I called the sybil, and informed me … ‘You are in danger; do this, do that.’^{footnote 31}

‘The moment’

Marked with a sense of both the vocational and the teleological, the following passages exemplify what I call ‘the moment.’ This is an instant of annunciation^{footnote 32} in which a person awakens to a particular path, project, or vocation. In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung experiences such a moment when he discovers his life’s work: My heart suddenly began to pound. I had to stand up and draw a deep breath. My excitation was intense, for it had become clear to me, in a flash of illumination, that the only possible goal was psychiatry.^{footnote 33}

This astronomer had her first ‘moment’ as a pre-teen:

Aomawa: When I was twelve, my school class was shown the movie Space Camp, about a bunch of kids who accidentally get launched into space while they’re at space camp over the summer. As I watched, I got really still. You know, the way you get when everything about something is you — all for you — and you know it, even if no one else does yet.^{footnote 34}

Later, as an adult, Aomawa would experience a similar teleological moment that she described as a shockwave.^{footnote 35} David, too, reported a massive release of energy — in his case, when he discovered that he was meant to paint:

David: In ninth grade I meet [a friend] and he tells me his father is a painter … a fine-art painter — and, literally, boom! A bomb goes off in my head. All these things must’ve just flown together like a hydrogen bomb and that was it, that’s all I wanted to do.^{footnote 36}

As with Aomawa, David would experience a similar combustion later in life, when he was offered a particular film project:

David: A hydrogen bomb went off in my brain. I said, ‘That’s it.’ It was like I knew it from somewhere in the deep past. That was absolutely the one.^{footnote 37}

This subject’s moment of awakening was arguably less dramatic, but carried the same telic flavor:

Marie: When I was young, I didn’t know what I should study … And then one night I dreamt that I was sitting on the Acropolis … and suddenly, from the right, all the Olympic gods entered in a big procession, and … they stretched out their hands begging … I had nothing except a loaf of bread. So I cut the loaf into bits, and I gave every god a piece, apologizing and saying, ‘I’m very sorry, but that’s all I have.’ And after that, I decided to study classical languages, because the gods wanted something from me.^{footnote 38}

Other telic expressions of the complex

Other, less frequently-occurring forms of telic complexes appeared, as well. Of course, the question of lower frequency, here, may have more to do with small sample size rather than actual prevalence.

In an attack strongly reminiscent of Kalsched’s self-care system, Robert’s complex defended its telic aim:

Robert: I was obsessed with success, feeling fleeting glee when I achieved it, then on to the next challenge. But failure, even partial failure or even almost-success, filled me with searing guilt and self-loathing … I would scream at myself: ‘You’re stupid! A stupid idiot! I hate you!’ I pummeled myself with clenched fists … and then hammered my forehead against a tree or a wall.^{footnote 39}

In this next passage, David’s complex reacted defensively to a colleague’s concern that David may not be ‘up to’ the demands of a project. Note: this is the same film whose importance set off a ‘hydrogen bomb’ for David, above. Not only did David leave the scene, he also experienced a powerful somatic reaction — perhaps a form of panic in response to the possibility of losing the film.

David: I said, ‘What?’ Then I stood up and said, ‘I’m outta here.’ I went upstairs and couldn’t sleep, and I got a high fever and was sweating like crazy all night long. Like, torment.^{footnote 40}

David’s telic complex also protected itself from the wrong projects:

David: I went in and met [a filmmaker] and he started talking to me about [a science fiction film project]. I was flattered in a way … but … [that project] is not my cup of tea. Anyway, he’s talking to me and I started getting a headache that got steadily worse … I couldn’t wait to get out of there … Later, from the airport … I felt crazed and had to tell [my agent as soon as possible] … ‘I can’t do it.’^{footnote 41}

Finally, there are gifted individuals who demonstrate complexes with potentially conflicting aims. Again, Jung offers us an example from his own experience, also in relation to his choice of vocation. What had been two apparently disparate aims becomes a single, conjoined image: It was as though two rivers had united and in one grand torrent were bearing me inexorably toward distant goals.^{footnote 42}

Aomawa spoke to the need to engage unacknowledged, seemingly conflicting parts of herself:

Aomawa: I was starving for something — anything — that would allow the dormant parts of my personality to be a part of my everyday work.^{footnote 43}

Later, having integrated her two loves, performance art and science, she reflected:

Aomawa: The trick is to stay free, to keep saving my own life, over and over … To work at being comfortable with choosing, then choosing again, and again, then finding, at last, the perfect combination of avenues and interests and outlets to feel yourself 100 percent represented and expressed. Even then, there will be times when you doubt, and fail … and forget, and then remember … and then get up and step forward. This is what it is to be human.^{footnote 44}