"Dream, you are the most pathetic excuse for an anthropomorphic incarnation on this or any other plane of existence!" *bip*
Ah, Sandman was absolutely a living, breathing part of my college environment, and Death and Dream from the magnificent first family gathering adorned my dorm room door.
I have the issues up until the Kindly Ones, but unfortunately the artwork in that series was not my cup of tea, I knew it was going to a very dark place after the death of Orpheus, and I never did read anything with Daniel.
When you say "we do choose the characters that fascinate us most", you are speaking of "we" as if we were all conscious. We're not. There's a tiny part that's running through our minds, like the part of a computer that is presently on your computer screen. But there is a much larger portion of our psyche of which we are not consciously aware. That's where memories, dreams, wants, needs, hopes, fears, traumas, urges, and a great deal of "us" is determined. The ego -- the part that says "I", the part that can add and subtract, the part that says "I will take the Kung Pao chicken" is being dictated to by that farther-down layer of which you are not consciously aware.
It is you. And yet it isn't. You don't control it, in the sense that you don't know what's going on down there. Rikku gives a classic example. She actually remembers the incident that caused her to be afraid of lightning, and can trace her fear back to a specific moment. But there is a great deal more of us like that, and we usually don't remember or don't identify the experiences that have coalesced down in our unconscious into complexes which in turn may give us fear of lightning, or make us gravitate towards pro wrestling, or prefer Rikku to Lulu or vice versa.
The idea of depth psychology is to respect the fact that the ego, the decision-making conscious part of the mind, is like a boat floating on the surface of the sea, and there is a huge amount below the sea which the ego isn't controlling, isn't aware of, and can't do anything about until it "breaks the surface". To some extent, psychoanalysis, dream interpretation, and the creative process ("active imagination") may help you become aware of what's down there, and then, yes, you may be able to dictate or shape it, but it's still rather autonomous.
There is also the question of whether we have just one "self". Sure, there's the one in charge, but a lot of psychological studies show that there is a wide range between total multiple personality, where all those urges, experiences, and complexes have shattered into conscious entities that aren't aware of one another, and a monotone, flat, unified person with no other selves that have goals, wishes, and urges slightly contradictory to one another.
And gah, I'm not explaining any of this very well but I just had a loooong day of work and my brain is fried, sorry. :)
Re: Narny narny nar
"Dream, you are the most pathetic excuse for an anthropomorphic incarnation on this or any other plane of existence!" *bip*
Ah, Sandman was absolutely a living, breathing part of my college environment, and Death and Dream from the magnificent first family gathering adorned my dorm room door.
I have the issues up until the Kindly Ones, but unfortunately the artwork in that series was not my cup of tea, I knew it was going to a very dark place after the death of Orpheus, and I never did read anything with Daniel.
When you say "we do choose the characters that fascinate us most", you are speaking of "we" as if we were all conscious. We're not. There's a tiny part that's running through our minds, like the part of a computer that is presently on your computer screen. But there is a much larger portion of our psyche of which we are not consciously aware. That's where memories, dreams, wants, needs, hopes, fears, traumas, urges, and a great deal of "us" is determined. The ego -- the part that says "I", the part that can add and subtract, the part that says "I will take the Kung Pao chicken" is being dictated to by that farther-down layer of which you are not consciously aware.
It is you. And yet it isn't. You don't control it, in the sense that you don't know what's going on down there. Rikku gives a classic example. She actually remembers the incident that caused her to be afraid of lightning, and can trace her fear back to a specific moment. But there is a great deal more of us like that, and we usually don't remember or don't identify the experiences that have coalesced down in our unconscious into complexes which in turn may give us fear of lightning, or make us gravitate towards pro wrestling, or prefer Rikku to Lulu or vice versa.
The idea of depth psychology is to respect the fact that the ego, the decision-making conscious part of the mind, is like a boat floating on the surface of the sea, and there is a huge amount below the sea which the ego isn't controlling, isn't aware of, and can't do anything about until it "breaks the surface". To some extent, psychoanalysis, dream interpretation, and the creative process ("active imagination") may help you become aware of what's down there, and then, yes, you may be able to dictate or shape it, but it's still rather autonomous.
There is also the question of whether we have just one "self". Sure, there's the one in charge, but a lot of psychological studies show that there is a wide range between total multiple personality, where all those urges, experiences, and complexes have shattered into conscious entities that aren't aware of one another, and a monotone, flat, unified person with no other selves that have goals, wishes, and urges slightly contradictory to one another.
And gah, I'm not explaining any of this very well but I just had a loooong day of work and my brain is fried, sorry. :)