[From a conversation of 15 years ago. Dr. Jung:]
Ernest experienced the hidden pressure of people’s expectations. This is a real and not a metaphorical force. It has real effects, that may be used, well or badly, but will in any case be experienced. As with anything else in life, the more consciously used, the better, as conscious control puts the conscious personality where it should be, deciding. Surely this is obvious.
Lincoln became President of the United States, and his very election brought to a head a crisis that had been building nearly his entire adult life. He found himself at the center of the storm from the first moment, and had to grow into acceptance of the role fate had in mind. By his depth of character, by the human qualities that gradually became evident to people, by his ability to articulate what his people felt but could not express, he came to mean more and more. By his identification with Emancipation, he moved from partisan to statesman to iconic figure. And of course by his martyrdom he perfectly fulfilled the savior archetype in modern guise, and this — combined with the success of his twin causes of Union and Emancipation — assured that his reputation would continue to grow. People’s affection grew. People’s hatred or incomprehension lessened, with time. But all the time his cultural effect grew. He became more central to the myth of the American experiment; not merely the political but the social experiment.
As he lived he was the recipient of people’s prayers and curses. After he had finished living, still he was the recipient of prayers and curses. This did not and does not leave him untouched. There is no such thing as an electric current that flows without flowing. There is no such thing as nonphysical connections among people of similar vibrations flowing without flowing. Lincoln limits and channels and also frees and directs people’s energies to the degree that they allow themselves to be affected. But those in bodies can easily choose whether to be consciously affected. Those not in bodies cannot.
You will notice that my [Jung’s] work was done in the most sheltered part of Europe that was yet central. Portugal, for instance, was equally sheltered, but was a backwater. Austria, Germany, England were all central but not sheltered. My work had to be done quietly, steadily, without distraction but without isolation. In short, my life’s circumstances were an alchemical retort, within which life proceeded to experiment and produce new combinations.
When my work came to be carried on, one strand of it came to be Robert Clarke, living an entirely obscure, humble existence in an English backwater. Externally he had no credentials but experience; no connections, no way to make his work known. But when he was ready, how easily the way opened. A letter to Colin Wilson, a referral to you, and the publication of two books. Then, when he was safely dying, the entrusting of three more books to you. None of this, you see, was produced or affected by the pressure of other people’s expectations. His alchemical retort was entire privacy through obscurity. Thus three examples of how fame, or constricted specialized fame, or entire obscurity may shape a life’s work.
Hemingway is an example of a life lived itself as an example of wholeness, of gusto. The image, however, became increasingly skewed and skewed his life accordingly. And continues to do so 50 years after his death.
Papa, do you understand what Dr. Jung means here, and do you agree?
I brought up the subject, remember.
So — either of you — how does an image reduce someone’s options, or, as it was put, skew his life, after he’s no longer in a body to have his life skewed?
[EH] You might as well ask how mind-control works, or if somebody can be hypnotized, or if you can call spirits from the vasty deep. It’s all the same thing. You are treating people as if they were unconnected, or as if death disconnected them. You know better in another part of your mind. Apply what you know.
In other words, we are all one thing, so of course we affect each other.
Even the grammar of the language makes it nearly impossible to make a clear statement in that direction, doesn’t it?
Well — I’m getting the idea, I think. But I never thought that the pressure of people’s expectations continues after we’re gone.
Well, think about it a little. What is the pressure of people’s expectations, except psychic pressure? It isn’t like anybody is physically pressuring you. (Of course they might — putting on economic pressure, or threats to your safety or your family’s, but these are just means by which to exert the real pressure, which is psychic pressure.) It’s actually easier to resist such pressure, if you are aware that it exists, when you have a body and a physical set of surroundings and circumstances to help you do it. “The body and its stupidity,” as Yeats said. Once you’re out of that particular buffer, the pressure exists and your means of resistance to it are greatly lessened. Fortunately, as soon as you’re dead, most people don’t realize there’s more they can do [to you] than write obituaries and biographies and lying articles, so they leave you alone more. But those who do know don’t let up, unless it costs them more than it gains them.
Now don’t go getting the idea that we are defenseless on the side, exactly, and of course don’t get the idea that influence is a one-way street. But that’s the question you asked: How can we still be affected 50 years later.