The Exploding Self: The Creative and Destructive Nucleus of the Personality

There may be in each of us an impulse, however fleeting, to destroy the world with its evil, its problems and conflicts, either in momentary anger or in the hope of starting afresh. Now that we have the technical means to make this fantasy come true, it behooves us to explore its sources in a very serious way.

It is obvious that groups, like individuals, sometimes enact the dark part of their nature in mass movements or "accidental" events, even when this dark part is only a small part of a whole with the best intentions and genuine ideals.

In spite of detente, therefore, the destruction of the world by nuclear means, massive pollution, or political explosion remains a distinct possibility unless our hidden destructiveness is better understood.

Creative regression, living closer to one's fun­damental nature, is what we are learning about today. But how to apply our knowledge on a world scale so as collectively to avoid violent swings and explosions is., of course, the unsolved problem of our era of massive blindness and consequent mass behaviors.

Joseph Redfearn, M.D., was born in 1921 in a Yorkshire mining town and educated at John Hopkins, Baltimore, and Maudsley Hospital, London. Since 1968 he has been a training ana­lyst for the Society of Analytical Psychology in London. He is a past chair and was its director of training for many years. He continues to practice in London.

Table of Contents

Introduction
The Bomb in Dreams: Unfaceable
Aspects of the Self
From Concrete Behaviour to the Ability to Use Metaphors and Symbols in Therapy
The Interdependence of Our
Outer and Inner Worlds
The Explosive Self and the Maternal Container
Trees, Fountains, Eggs, Volcanoes, and Bombs: Symbols of Renewal or Breakthrough of Varying Degrees of Violence
Atom Bomb and Divine Child: Regression and Responsibility
History Seen Partly as Concretized Mythology: The Interaction of the Subpersonalities
of the Self
Human Sacrifice
The Rise of the Male Gods and the Separation of the Opposites
Pavlov, Freud, and Jung on the Meeting of Opposites
he Democratization of the Divine Self
The Healing Apocalypse
The Task of Healin
Summary and Conclusions