| Even in the midst of psychic disintegration, schizophrenics have visions and dreams of the center, a symbol of wholeness. This was the discovery of C. G. Jung and J. Weir Perry, who developed Jung's ideas about schizophrenia and is the subject of the first part of this study. A Jungian investigation of schizophrenia uses myth to understand the productions of the psyche. Perry found in Ancient Near Eastern festivals of death and renewal the same motifs as the dreams and visions of schizophrenics. He also found, as Jung did before him, that schizophrenia has a large amount of collective content—or content that is common to all psyches, as opposed to the personalistic problems of neurosis.;The results of the exploration of the psyche will be used to perform a literary analysis. This work thus contrasts with another type of literary investigation that looks at schizophrenia through its representation in literature alone, without regard to the actual experience of being schizophrenic.;When the results of the psychological analysis are used to analyze fictional works, this leads to an unusual kind of applied psychoanalysis, one that is able to approach a literary work for its collective content. It could be opposed to Freudian psychoanalysis, which is very good at character analysis. Two works of fiction are examined for images of the center: a movie entitled The Fisher King and Kafka's Description of a Struggle. The latter is not explicitly about a schizophrenic but in Jungian psychology the transition from the schizophrenic psyche to the “normal” psyche is easily made. This is because Jung's psychology is an Einheitspsychologie or one that holds the view that schizophrenics share the same psychology as all individuals. The problems of schizophrenics differ only in degree from those of “sane” people.;Throughout, I will not assume that analytical psychology is an authoritative discourse. From the beginning of the work, criticisms of Jungian constructs are presented. I also discuss the elitism of Jungian analysts. Elsewhere I try to uncover Perry's biases by examining his fascination with Mircea Eliade's formulations of the center. |
