Scholarly record

THE INDIVIDUATION PROCESS IN THE RENAISSANCE DOUBLE PERSPECTIVE - ABYSSAL PSYCHOLOGY AND CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

M. I. Popescu, A. C. Citeia

Abstract

Despite the fraught relationship between abyssal psychology and cultural anthropology, both are applicable to human behavior. Anthropological analysis is directed from the exterior to the interior (i.e., the historical and cultural framework of the Renaissance), in contrast to the psychoanalytical perspective, which follows from the inside out the internal complexity of the human mind and its contribution to the cultural act. Anthropologically, the structural model of the psyche contains both the Freudian personal unconscious and the Jungian collective unconscious as cultural-historical universals. The individual and social psyches are interwoven, lacing a thick canvas of patterns that reveal the process of individuation. The Renaissance upholds mankind and its values in all areas - from art, philosophy, and literature to civil life. The Renaissance Man is forged under the influence of social, cultural, political, economic, and spiritual factors. The Renaissance recognizes and values a markedly human center of the universe, unearthing a new consciousness. Following the spiritual conditioning of the zeitgeist, the individuation process has many parallels in cultural history; the search for "alchemical gold", the polymathic endeavors of Da Vinci, and Ficino's radical philosophy on human freedom all represent examples of Renaissance individuation. The struggle between the Thanatos of the Dark Ages and the light of philosophical gold is still alive in the collective unconscious of the Renaissance; Pico dela Mirandola's writings and Michel de Montaigne's essays are born from this struggle. The lodestones on the Renaissance path to the Self and their archetypal manifestations depend on both individual factors and cultural and historical references; they are echoed in the visual-artistic representations of Botticelli, Bellini, Michelangelo, Tiziano, and Pietro dela Francesca and the writings of Petrarca, Boccaccio, and Dante. In the Renaissance, the evolution of thought simultaneously contributes to and is nourished by the cultural act. The Renaissance Man is in contact with spiritual and philosophical wisdom. Powered by symbolic language, the most intense feelings and thoughts are freely expressed in the shared sensorium of the arts, literature, philosophy, and sciences.

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