A Civilizational Diagnosis of Modern Consciousness
Essays (Articles)
Introductory reflections that develop the project’s central claims in conceptual, philosophical, and historical form.
What Is Addiction? A Philosophical Definition
by Brenton L. Delp Addiction is often defined today under the authority of medical science, and not without reason. The medical model did not become dominant by accident. It became dominant because it corrected older brutalities. It helped displace the view that addiction is simply vice, weakness, or bad character. It named dependence, craving, relapse,…
To Be or Not to Be
By Brenton L. Delp Avicenna, Shakespeare and the Modern Condition “Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,And thou no breath at all?” King Lear (5.3.306–307) Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) and William Shakespeare do not belong to the same world, and that fact must be stated clearly at the outset if the connection between them…
Jung and the Archetype
by Brenton L. Delp Jung’s notion of the archetype becomes weakest when it is made too clear. The temptation is always the same: one wants a stable object, a symbolic inventory, a small theology of psychic figures. One wants to say that the archetype is this image, this motif, this mythic personage, this recurring pattern,…
More About Alcoholism
by Brenton L. Delp Margo’s Got Money Troubles ”There would be no one to perform sanity for.” When Margo’s father says that if he got his own place he would surely relapse, the statement sounds at first like simple fear. But it is more revealing than fear. It is a confession about structure. He is…
The First Noble Truth
by Brenton L. Delp The Birth of Consciousness The first noble truth is usually weakened at precisely the point where it becomes difficult. One is told that Buddhism does not really say life is suffering, only that life contains some suffering, or that certain experiences are unpleasant, or that attachment occasionally makes us unhappy. All…
Psychology Without Soul
by Brenton L. Delp “Since uncle Jack died you’ve never been the same.” “Well of course I haven’t, I don’t have uncle Jack anymore, have I?” (Magical Mystery Tour, The Beatles) A peculiar confusion governs much contemporary discourse about mental life. The language is now almost automatic. The brain prioritizes. The brain evaluates. The brain…
Jung, Hegel and the Problem of Opposites
by Brenton L. Delp The comparison between Hegel and Jung becomes most interesting precisely at the point where easy comparison fails. At first glance they can seem to be confronting the same fundamental issue. Both are preoccupied with opposition. Both reject one-sidedness. Both believe that truth does not lie on one side of a division…
When Medicine Became Morality by Other Means
by Brenton L. Delp The modern medical world speaks as though it were simply reporting facts. It presents itself as descriptive, empirical, evidence-based, and therefore beyond the old vulgarities of blame and sermon. Yet anyone who has spent time around discussions of addiction, obesity, depression, sexuality, trauma, chronic illness, or “compliance” knows that medicine very…
Kurt Cobain
Success, Addiction, and Civilizational Neurosis by Brenton L. Delp Around the anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death, the culture remembers him too quickly as icon, victim, or martyr. But Cobain remains more important than remembrance. He is diagnostic. He reveals something about a civilization that can recognize a gift, reward it, amplify it, and still destroy…
How does it feel to be one of the Beautiful People?
Your Friends & Neighbors by Brenton L. Delp “How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?” In the Beatles lyric, the question does not sound innocent. It carries the strange aftertaste of arrival. It is not the voice of someone merely gazing upward in envy. It is the voice of someone who…
Madness and the World
Why Individual Diagnosis is by Definition Incomplete by Brenton L. Delp An individual cannot be adequately diagnosed until the world that contributed to his formation is also brought under examination. This does not mean that personal suffering is unreal, that severe disturbance is merely political, or that every psychic crisis is a disguised social critique.…
Why Did Jung Turn to the Obscure: Was it Madness?
Catastrophe, spiritual poverty, and the necessity of the later works by Brenton L. Delp Jung’s later writings are too often approached in one of two inadequate ways. They are either revered from a distance, as though they belonged to a sacred but inaccessible chamber of his thought, or they are appropriated in fragments, flattened into…