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The Revolutionary Use of Motion Pictures in a
Newly Emerging Archetypal Psychology
"At a time when we are finding new internal frontiers to explore within ourselves through drama, literature, and now film, I am excited about the seamless manner in which you have woven the media of our time together to help individuals I making these probes into one’s character and personality _ and providing a highway which is beautifully landscaped."
—Gabriel Ofiesh, Ed. D.—
Emeritus Professor of Educated Technology
Howard University
Washington, DC
The single most important change that has occurred for humankind since our earliest beginnings is the relocation of purpose and meaning from the collective consciousness into the individual psyche of the 21st century man or woman. No longer does the mythology of traditional culture reveal the purpose of our lives. The times are changing so quickly, we forget that prior to the industrial revolution, personal identity and the path to individuation was always found through group participation in powerful myths and religious rituals. The upheaval produced by this epoch making shift now requires that we discover new archetypal forms, and create new artistic representations of them to instruct and guide us on our journey through life.
The filmmaker has become the new creator of mythology. Informed by personal experience, the dream makers of Hollywood now possess an even more potent power than many of our spiritual guides of the past. The filmmaker's art is his or her personalized expression of myth, and therein lies the dilemma for the audience who knowingly, or not, looks to this art for universal or mythic clues to live by. The critical question becomes: Now that the focus has shifted out of the collective, how does the filmgoer extract personal guidance from that which is no longer a group vision, but the highly personal vision of the individual film maker?
Early in the 20th century, and not coincidentally in parallel with the development of motion pictures, depth psychology arose in response to a new set of challenges associated with the incarnation of the individual as the focus of society. While in the past, he or she received guidance through participation in collective myths and rituals, new tools were now necessary to assist the individual in navigating the journey toward wholeness. The technique of dream interpretation became the principal means for contacting and interpreting the messages of the unconscious. Whereas understanding had traditionally been sought within the collective dream that is mythology, now it was discovered within the individual's dream as his or her own personalized mythology. Joseph Campbell writes in The Hero With a Thousand Faces:
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"The bold and truly epoch-making writings of thepsychoanalysts are indispensable to the student of mythology; for, whatever may be thought of the detailed and sometimes contradictory interpretations of specific cases and problems, Freud, Jung, and their followers demonstrated irrefutably that the logic, the heroes, and the deeds of myth survive into modern times. In the absence of an effective general mythology, each of us has his private, unrecognized, rudimentary, yet secretly potent pantheon of dream. The latest incarnation of Oedipus, the continued romance of Beauty and the Beast, stand this afternoon on the corner of 42nd Street and 5th Avenue, waiting for the traffic light to change."
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As Charles Champlin, film editor from the Los Angeles Times so succinctly states, "For 100 years we've been watching the movies and seeing ourselves." The mediums of film and television have become the new "universal language" written for, and by, the individual. Movies are a new private mythology, born of the creative reflections and experience of our artists. Classic films are those that speak directly to the archetypal psychologist in each of us. We cherish and revere them because we sense that they have replaced the mythic storytellers of our ancestry. Both film and television have replaced other artistic forms as the chroniclers of our behavior in all its greatness and depravity, mirroring our very souls to us. This, in turn, has paved the way for a new expression of human psychology to be born.
As depth psychology emerged in the 20th century, giants in the field of psychoanalysis, Freud, Jung, Horney, and others observed from their clinical work that the human psyche was organized and structured. Seeing the importance of identifying such an underlying order, each sought to discover a comprehensive psychological typology. Although their efforts produced considerable insight into the structure of human character and personality, their ultimate goal remained elusive. None of their theories did full justice to the complexity of human nature. Unbeknownst to them, a nine-fold model of the psyche, the Enneagram, had been working its way into human consciousness, and was about to be discovered. Had they been exposed to the Enneagram in their research, modern psychology as we know it would have taken a very different course.
The word, Enneagram, derives from the Greek, meaning a nine-pointed star, or graph. An ancient symbolic representation of human nature, the Enneagram depicts nine archetypal character styles and their dynamic interrelations. These character styles are the building blocks of both our individual and collective psyches. When taken together, they form a graphic "blueprint" of our psychological infrastructure. In the field of human transformation, the Enneagram has been likened to the "philosopher's stone," the alchemical key for transforming the lead of our psycho/spiritual tendencies into gold.
To further facilitate our work as life coaches, we at Relationship Renaissance have created Contemplate the Stars, a multi-media approach to understanding the nine character styles of the Enneagram. For the first time ever, filmgoers who are also interested in self-discovery will enjoy the highly personalized visions of individual filmmakers while simultaneously seeing each of the nine character styles illustrated with film clips from Hollywood’s classic period. The most beloved stars of modern cinema become a potent form of mythic instruction and a replacement for the gods and goddesses of old. The strengths and weaknesses of the characters they depict illustrate the nine archetypal character styles of the Enneagram, a greatly needed popular vehicle for the transformation of human consciousness. What lies before us is the potential to communicate an effective personalized mythology both to, and for the individual.
Truly original in both concept and execution, Contemplate the Stars, has the power to revolutionize human consciousness while entertaining people of all ages, races, socio/economic backgrounds, and lifestyles. Viewers will be guided to discover their own particular character archetype by viewing a series of carefully selected film clips, thus making their experience a memorable and entertaining journey of self-discovery. When viewers perceive all nine character archetypes, the most exciting moment arrives when they discover their own. Seen in their entirety, the collection of film clips clearly illustrates the workings of each archetypal style and provides an immediate and shared vocabulary for examining the inner workings and the inherent affinity each person has for his or her particular style.
In the same way that filmmakers have grappled with audiences, and their changing needs and tastes in these tumultuous times, so too does psychology continue to search for greater relevance. Joseph Campbell was deeply alarmed by the cultural void created by the absence of an "effective general mythology" Contemplate the Stars addresses this loss by creating a means for film lovers everywhere to fulfill the most human endeavor of all, the eternal search for self and the meaning of life. As ineffectual vestiges of old traditions fall away, this new general mythology effectively provides individuals with an extraordinary means of understanding themselves and others as they navigate the process of self-discovery and individuation.
With the emergence of the Enneagram, we have for the first time an archetypal psychology that is universal in nature. Through the most important and loved medium of our time, motion pictures, we are able to appreciate and make use of this discovery as a guiding mythology. Now the full promise of the art form of our age is reached, as the Enneagram is illustrated with classic film. The personal myth of the filmmaker becomes the catalyst for the transformation of our deeper selves, and a companion on our journey to inner freedom and wholeness.
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