[In Backpages 18.1] The culture of new writing

The influence of writing workshops on the content of plays is discussed.

Jung’s cultural writing: spiral essays and performing symbols (in literature)

Performance is a key ingredient of Jung’s writings on culture and of the function of the Jungian symbol in literature. This paper will compare and contrast Jung’s performance of cultural analysis and healing in his essays with the way his notion of the symbol works in literature to knit the individual psyche into the collective. It will explore Jung’s unique essay form of the spiral as a literary innovation, and look at the way a Jungian reading of literary reveals a significant contribution to cultural studies. [From the Author]

Discourse and soul: Jung, literature, science and tragedy as mythical writing

This paper will propose that literature and science, far from being discrete spheres of cultural activity, are, in fact, the cultural expressions of interlocking myths. They therefore overlap and even take each other’s places, as examination of the ‘science’ of C.G. Jung and the ‘art’ of a writer such as John Cowper Powys, will show. ‘Dis-course’, I argue, is the material aspect of the mythical structuring of psychic experience. In the work of Jung and Powys, discourse is the articulation of the soul in the world that spans personal, social, natural and cosmic space. [From the Author]

Writing about war: Jung, Much Ado About Nothing, and the Troy novels of Lindsay Clarke

Arguably, in a time of war literature, and indeed all writing, is saturated with deep psychic responses to conflict. So that not only in literary genres such as epic and tragedy, but also in the novel and comedy, can writing about war be discerned. C.G. Jung, Shakespeare and Lindsay Clarke are fundamentally writers of war who share allied literary strategies. Moreover, they diagnose similar origins to the malaise of a culture tending to war in the neglect of aspects of the feminine that patriarchy prefers to ignore. In repressing or evading the dark feminine, cultures as dissimilar as ancient Greece, the 21st century, Shakespeare's England and Jung's Europe prevent the healing energies of the conjunctio of masculine and feminine from stabilising an increasingly fragile consciousness. In the Troy novels of Clarke, Answer to Job by Jung and Much Ado About Nothing by Shakespeare, some attempt at spiritual nourishment is made through the writing. [From the Publisher]

Reaching across organisational, sectoral and geographical boundaries: exploring the learning potential of an EU cross-border project

Research This paper outlines some of the key findings from an evaluation of the project and demonstrates that EC funded projects such as this, which seek to promote cross border collaboration and understanding (i.e. across organisational, sectoral and geographical boundaries) offer considerable learning potential – not least about variances in health politics across different communities. However, for this learning to be realised a comprehensive system of knowledge management needs to be an integral part of project planning alongside a system for sustaining embryonic professional networks. The concept of managing relationships was also a key part of the projects success. Executing a project funded by the EU demands the development of complex organisational skills to negotiate all the administrative challenges en route to successful completion and this project in particular relied for its success on the development of social relationships of trust and mutual respect across national, professional and social boundaries. Context A three–year European Commission funded project designed to exchange a wide range of staff (professional semiprofessional and voluntary staff in health and social care) project led by the University of Greenwich (UK) and the Université Catholique de Lille, France was completed this year (February 2008). The project was complex because it involved working in different national contexts, was multi-disciplinary, and demanded the negotiation of multiple boundaries. Theories A mixed method evaluation including written reports gathered immediately after each exchange visit and a post hoc series of individual interviews and focus groups was conducted in order to gain qualitative information (from the participants perspective) on their experiences and to identify any learning gained. Results Analysis of the data provided evidence of learning on a number of levels; personally, inter and intra professionally and organisationally as well as across sectors and also from a project management perspective. The learning crystallised around the extent of the differences noted by the participants between the UK and the French health and social care systems despite geographical proximity, common membership of the EU and many shared challenges in health and social care. The extent of these differences, noted at every level from policy to practice proved a rich source for reflection on organisational philosophies, ways of working, distribution of resources, professional roles and autonomy and professional registration and mobility - in short on health politics at ‘macro’ and ‘micro’ levels.