Copyright 1996, Donivan Bessinger. All rights
reserved.
1. Introduction
2. The nature of our dilemma
3. Modeling the psyche
4. The central symbol
5. The cosmos of the Ring
6. The story
7. The life cycle of the ring
8. Possessing the ring
During recent years, I have been interested in the connection between human nature and the global concerns of ethics. But how do we talk about human nature in our very pluralistic and secular global society? Each group has its own worldview. Each of us has a different idea about what it means to be human and about what good is to be sought in our own lives and in society. We have no satisfactory consensus language for talking about the dynamics of good and evil.
I had been thinking in such terms in June of 1990 when I watched the PBS telecast of the Metropolitan Opera's Ring cycle. I was familiar with the music and the story. I had heard some of the operas individually, but until then, I had not heard the Ring as a whole, as it was intended to be heard. It was among the many motifs of that astounding work that I found a "motif" which can help us think more deeply about psyche and ethic.
What I propose to do is to examine the myth of Wagner's Ring of the Nibelungs as a metaphor for the human personality, and let it be our device for seeking a fresh perspective on the problem of dealing with good and evil. Perhaps in this way, we can explore how a newly emerging life-systems understanding which guides us in the clinic, can guide us in larger society as well.
When we look at human problems, whether at the global perspective or at the level of our neighborhood and family concerns, we are confronted directly with the question of human nature. Who are we? Why are we like we are? What can we do about it? By what compass do we steer for human problem-solving?
The first thing that is obvious is that human nature is complex, so complex that we have difficulty describing it in its fullness. Several years ago in California there was a congress of psychotherapists with over a hundred thirty different schools of therapy represented, each with its own specific insight and descriptive language.
When we go shopping for an appropriate language and metaphor for the psyche, we quickly find that the psychological aisle of the supermarket gives us many choices. We may choose from the traditional religions, from Freud and other depth psychologies, from determinism and behaviourism, cognitivism, positivism, and from neurophysiology, computer science and life systems science. Each has its own description of what it means to be human. And in today's supermarket, each of these choices may be flavored with various new age spices. That's quite a selection indeed, and quite a tribute to the power of the free market of ideas!
Any model of the psyche must reflect the full richness of the human spiritual potential and its capacity for both good and evil. It is not adequate to say that the human religious spirit, which can be shown to be present in some aspect in all people, may be dismissed as mere illusion. However, because of the many and varied traditions of spiritual expression, if we are to affirm human spirituality, we must find a way to do deal with it generically, in the hope that we will alienate as few people as possible.
Any model of the psyche must also satisfy the requirements of reason, and accomodate whatever the scientific method can show to be true about our physiology and our cognitive processes. Yet there is another caution. Life-systems theory shows that as complexity increases, new complexities emerge. Because of this emergence aspect of psyche, a neurophysiological model will never be adequate to describe psychic function fully, even though it may powerfully enhance diagnosis and therapy. We can no more expect experimental science to define human nature than we can expect my word processor's circuit diagram to account for the contents of this paper.
When we study the complex outputs of the human mind, we have to use empirical observations, rather than laboratory experiments. Such observations inevitably bring us face to face with the world of myth. The great success of the Moyers-Campbell conversations on PBS has indicated a great resurgence of interest in and hunger for the "power of myth" in our own lives, and it is a mythic model of the psyche that we consider here.
Our model must also deal with the key concept of homeostasis. That is the principle of maintaining the steady-state or finely-tuned equilibrium which we find operating at all levels of life systems. Both the Freudian and Jungian models of the psyche rely on a concept of homeostasis, or finely-tuned balance of forces among the elements of the psyche.
A major difference between the two is in the chosen center-point or balance point. Freud's model is primarily centered around the healthy functioning of the Ego; it is centered in consciousness.
By contrast, Jung's model (Figure One) is Self-centered. That is, it is centered in the whole self, conscious and unconscious alike. Jung uses the term Self both for the unconscious center of balance, and for the whole psyche. Whereas Freud considered religion to derive from illusion, Jung considered religion to derive from the homeostatic working of the whole self, seeking to integrate the instinctive inner spirit with our lives in the outer world.
Jung's model also includes the concept of multiple centers of psychic energy, conscious and unconscious. The Ego itself is a complex of psychic energy concerned with sensing the world, with cognition, and with the types of general reactions normally expressed consciously by others of our own gender.
The unconscious contains the Self as the integrating center which seeks the good of a balanced person -- mind, body, and spirit alike. There is also a center for those instinctive energies most commonly expressed consciously by the opposite gender. Further, and somewhat similar to Freud's concept of Id, there is a Shadow complex which is the main focus of the energies of repression and frustration, whose forces unrecognized and uncountered lead to destructive expression, or evil. The human personality involves the interplay of all of these various centers.
The obvious question now is, What has all this to do with Wagner's Ring. Such a complex work as that leads to many interpretations. Among commonly ascribed themes are the setting aside of, or dying of, the gods for the emergence of modern man. Siegfried thus becomes a Nietzschean "superman" freed of illusion. The theme of redemption by love is certainly there, as are themes of life-denial, related to Wagner's admiration of Schopenhauer. However, linear and evolutionary interpretations such as those miss the central symbol of the Ring itself.
A ring or circle is the most ancient representation of the wholeness of the cosmos, seen, for example, in the pi'i discs of earliest Chinese art. Let us attempt to use the symbology of rings, and of The Ring, to express some thoughts on the current problem of understanding human nature.
Before I continue, however, let me be clear about what I am NOT doing. I am not attempting an analysis of Wagner himself, even though that would be an interesting study. Further, I am not saying that my interpretation contains Wagner's meaning, or that Wagner would be sympathetic with this interpretation. Or for that matter, that anyone else would be! Nor am I presenting the Ring as metaphor for trends in society, or in history. I simply want to show the Ring, a ring, in its wholeness, as we saw in the PBS telecast.
Now the Ring of the Nibelungs is complicated. It is not your typical opera in four acts. It is an opera in four nights! (Figure Two gives the dates of Wagner's work, and of the first performances.) In order to keep the story straight, I took down a dusty copy of Milton Cross' Stories of the Great Operas, to trace the genealogy of the characters and to list the chain of possession of the ring. In doing so, I saw the ring in quite a new way.
Of course, as I did further research, I realized quickly that I was not the first to see a Jungian theme there. Robert Donington has presented an extensive Jungian analysis, scene-by-scene. Finding that gave me considerable help and encouragement to continue, but what follows takes a different tack from Donington's work. [NOTE] First,let us take a quick look at the cosmology and characters of the Ring.
The cosmos of the Ring (Figure Three), like the cosmos of the psyche, has its conscious and its unconscious worlds. The ordinary life of mortals takes place in the forest realm of consciousness. The immortals of Valhalla inhabit an exalted realm of consciousness reflected from our conscious aspirations to immortality. Beneath it all is the unconscious flow of the Rhine, the flow of life, the realm of the Rhinemaidens whose banks are guarded by a castle; and there is the chthonic realm of the underworld, Nibelheim, the home of spiritual mists and of shadow.
At first glance, the characters of the Ring are an unseemly lot, guilty of all the sins of human nature, murder and incest included. However, before we become too judgmental, let us make the point that (at least for this interpretation), the characters are not "other people." These characters are the psychic energies that people our own psyches. The story of the ring is the story of self. Incest takes on a different aspect when it represents a union of twin elements in our inner world.
In Figure Four we see the relationships of the various races of mortals and immortals: the immortal inhabitants of Valhalla, the Valkyries who are warrior-messengers between the worlds, the mortal Vaelsungs of the Forest, the Giants of Earth, the Gibichungs who inhabit the Rhine Castle, the Nibelung dwarfs of the shadows, and the Rhinemaidens who inhabit the source of life.
The story hinges on a succession of struggles over a ring that gives great power. Yet when we list its chain of possession (Figure Five), we see that this is no ordinary chain. Possession starts with the Rhinemaidens and ends with Flosshilde. But Flosshilde is a Rhinemaiden. The chain turns upon itself to form a ring
The Rhinemaidens, spiritual guardians of the flow of life, reject the deformed Alberich, fueling his frustration, anger, and evil. He steals the gold, then forges a ring which he loses through Wotan's deceit. The ring is paid to the Giants Fasolt and Fafner as ransom for Freia, the goddess of Youth and Beauty. She was the price for Wotan's castle-building. Wotan then contrives to have a mortal son, Siegmund, and then grandson, Siegfried to win back the ring.
Siegfried wins the ring through struggle with Fafner, who has taken the form of a dragon. The ring then becomes a love gift from Siegfried to Bruennhilde, but he gets it back under the influence of Hagen's deceit -- Hagen is the son of evil Alberich. Bruennhilde gets the ring again at Siegfried's death. Flosshilde gets it when Bruennhilde joins Siegfried on his pyre. The pyre collapses into the Rhine in the "twilight of the gods." The ring's life-cycle is completed. It is returned to its point of origin.
Though there are many symbols in the story, four symbols of personal power are central to our theme:
We set out to relate the life-cycle of the ring to the life-cycle of the psyche. Figure Six suggests how this might be done. The story begins in the realm of the Self, which has its origin in the flow of the Rhine, whose Rhinemaidens protect the value of life. Here lie the homeostatic function and the creativity of life. Alberich and his son Hagen inhabit the realm of Shadow, where reside rejection, frustration, anger, hate, evil. Wotan and his castle building express the realm of Ego inflation in which he and we deal with the giants of earth.
But re-establishing balance in the psyche requires an heroic struggle. Siegfried's slaying of the dragon represents the start of that process. His love of Bruennhilde represents the necessary union between the conscious realm and the realm of spirit. In Siegfried's death we see the death of ego dominance, and in Bruennhilde's immolation, the burning away of the ego-self distinction.
The return of the ring into the deep currents of the flow of life completes this life cycle. The self is made whole. The cognitive conscious world of Ego is reconciled with its spiritual origin; the Self is reconciled with the outer world of daily experience in which survival problems must be solved.
But it is not quite that simple. Running along inside this smooth circular flow is considerable turbulence, many eddy currents at each sector of the cycle. Wagner first planned one opera, to be called Siegfried's Death. However, these maelstroms are so wild that he had to expand the story to four operas, just to accomodate it all!
In these storms of life are all the human ills -- theft, deceit, betrayal, murder, incest, and all such. This is the considerable shadow energy of the psyche, seen in Alberich's evil reaction to rejection, in Wotan's awful betrayal of Youth and Beauty (Freia) to build his castle; in his stripping Bruennhilde of her immortality and his imprisoning her in the ring of fire in order to regain the ring of power.
Shadow energy is also seen in the struggle between Siegfried and Mime, his evil stepfather -- the orphaned Siegfried is raised by his shadow, Alberich's brother! That same shadow energy also provides resistance to the reintegration of the psyche. Siegfried had to slay a dragon, but he also had to struggle with the Gibichungs. They defend the castle which guards access to the Rhine. But there is also a paradox: The same shadow also provides the painful final link by which the psyche is made whole.
[TOP] / Figure Six
/ Repeat "Life-cycle" text
It is in such inner struggles that we meet our own capacity for evil, and defuse or defeat it, if the good of homeostasis is to triumph in ourselves and in the world. Erich Fromm, in his landmark study Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, defines two competing character types -- the biophilic (life-loving), and the necrophilic (death-loving) types. In this ring-interpretation of human nature, we meet both types, head-on.
Like the psyche, Wagner's work has had influence for both good and evil. Nietzsche and Hitler both much admired Wagner's work, and that nihilistic chain of influence was to give in our century full expression to the malignant death-loving exaltation of destruction and evil. Yet the same work also had a considerable influence on Albert Schweitzer, whose well-integrated self gave expression in his life and writings to the profound ethical principle of reverence for life.
As we look back on the first century after Wagner, it often seems as if the necrophilic shadow aspects of our collective psyche have had the upper hand. In Goetterdaemmerung, one of the three Fates sings that the rope of the world's destiny has been severely frayed by evil. As she sings that, the rope breaks completely. But that was premature. It is not broken quite yet, not quite completely.
We now are in the midst of a turbulent transition from a cold war to some new type of world-order at the threshold of another millennium. If the biophilic life-affirming aspect of the psyche is eventually to come into full ascendency, we will need to find new ways to give expression to a sense of human spirituality and oneness. If that can be so, the twilight of the gods will not be the twilight before the darkness, but before a new dawn. It will not represent the extinguishing of Psyche's gods, but their integration into wholeness of life.
Let me leave you, not with a prescription, but with some serious prognostic questions:
Collectively, we cannot begin to answer such questions until we come into possession of an understanding of the whole-system aspect of the human personality. Individually, we must learn to see that the good is not the so-called good of malignant ego gratification; the good is homeostasis, integrating our inner and outer polarities into a balance that brings the psyche into alignment with the homeostatic order of creation.
In other words, we must complete the ring to "possess the ring." It is that psychological circle of wholeness which gives each of us power over our world. The struggle to obtain it is an heroic one, but surely the effort is worthwhile. Possessing this ring confers great power indeed.
The General Index to the Collected Works of Jung contains a number
of entries to "Wagner" and the "Ring". An index of
these entries is provided as a separate file.
Ludwig von Bertalanffy. General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications. New York: George Braziler, 1968.
Deryck Cooke. I Saw the World End: A study of Wagner's `Ring'. London: Oxford University Press, 1979.
The New Milton Cross' Complete Stories of the Great Operas. Karl Kohrs, Editor. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955.
Robert Donington. Wagner's `Ring': The music and the myth. London: Faber & Faber, 1963.
Erich Fromm. The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. New York: Holt Rhinehart Winston, 1973.
Martin Gregor-Dellin. Richard Wagner, His Life, His Work, His Century. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983.
Bryan Magee. Aspects of Wagner. London: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Carl Gustav Jung et al. Man and His Symbols. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964.
Albert Schweitzer. Out of My Life and Thought. New York: Henry Holt, 1933.
John Toland. Adolf Hitler. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976.
The Wagner Companion. Peter Burbidge and Richard Sutton, Editors. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
`Richard Wagner'. Encyclopedia Britannica. 14th and 15th Editions.
[TOP]
[HOMEPAGE] Donivan Bessinger. Address email to
donibess@aol.com
Carl G. Jung, A brief
introduction to his ideas, by Donivan Bessinger
Index to Jung resources on the internet,
compiled by Matthew W. Clapp
Index to "Richard Wagner" in Collected
Works of Carl G. Jung
This internet version, adapted from a talk given in 1991, is copyright 1996 by Donivan Bessinger. All rights are reserved. Permission is granted for personal noncommercial use only. No further publication by any means is authorized, nor does this internet publication constitute a waiver of any rights.