03/10/2007

Writer's dark Self

Today I was struck by this realization: I haven't smiled in ages.

I know the reason. It's the novel I am writing. But, it isn't just the subject, however serious it may be. It's the intensity with which I approach writing of this particular work.

I am constantly drunk, and not from the wine that accompanies my writing, but from the intense attention I devote to writing. My head spins, I can't find interest in anything but the novel. Every thing else is unimportant. When something gets in the way of writing I get extremely irritated, be it household chores, the meal times, the need to remain civil to family members, and so on. You can probably tell my state of mind from the angry posts I wrote here about the evil that permeates the world.

Yeah, I do not smile. I do not find humor around me or within me. I prefer solitude. I am turning into one of them crabby, anti-social, reclusive writers.

And then I read the following from Jung:
The dark side of the Self is the most dangerous thing of all, precisely because the Self is the greatest power in the psyche. It can cause people to 'spin' megalomanic or other delusory fantasies that catch them up and 'possess' them. A person in this state thinks with mounting excitement that he has grasped and solved the great cosmic riddles; he therefore loses all touch with human reality. A reliable symptom of this condition is the loss of one's sense of humor and of human contacts.

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