From the author: The novel about a white whale I read as a child left the impression of a naive adventure work. How different a profane view is from an analytical one! Jungian Commentary on Moby Dick. Dear friends, when describing the Jungian algorithm for interpreting a drawing, I spoke about the four functions of consciousness identified by K.G. Jung and their circulation in the process of interpretation. And now I have in my hands a wonderful book by E. Edinger “Jungian commentary on the novel “Moby Dick” by G. Malville.” I am ready to present to your attention a review of a chapter from this book, illustrating either the “tricks” of our unconscious (Melville’s unconscious), or “far-fetched” associations in determining the leading and subordinate functions of the author of this work. You decide. But it was done beautifully! Thus, we have the opportunity to expand the scope of our analysis from drawings to dreams and other works of creativity. How much can a work reflect the inner world of its creator? “The psychological method is different from the literary or scientific method. He is not particularly interested in locating the literary or cultural sources of a theme or image; he views his subject, in this case the novel Moby Dick, as a manifestation of the soul and tries to understand the soul through the study of its manifestation. This is a strictly empirical and phenomenological method, which considers a work of art to be a natural organism, a living mental product of autonomous imagination, and not an objective invention of conscious will,” writes E. Edinger. It must be said that the entire book, which is a commentary on this novel, deserves close interest depth psychologists, today I will present something that is close on the topic to the analysis of the drawing. So: “The prophesying idol Queequeg Yojo said that the choice of the ship should be made by Ishmael completely without outside help. This is the key point: the ego has a responsibility to make conscious and responsible choices. Ishmael chooses the whaling ship Pequod. The ship's name comes from the Indian Pequot, the name of a tribe in Massachusetts that was the strongest during the arrival of the first Puritan settlers. The name translates as "destroyer, fighter" - an appropriate name for the ship whose crew aims to kill Moby Dick. (It is interesting to note that Perseus, with whom the whale hunters were later also associated, also means “destroyer.” Such are the connotations of the name of the ship - a ship heavily laden with the bitter thirst of primitive man to avenge the cruel atrocities of the Christian consciousness.” [E. Edinger Jungian commentary on the novel “Moby Dick”] “The journey begins on Christmas, which is the current form of the centuries-old tradition of celebrating the winter solstice. Calendar symbolism is combined here with the symbolic meaning of the journey. The winter solstice, long before the birth of Christ, was celebrated as the birthday of the Sun. dark in the year, the old sun reaches its lowest point, and a new sun, a new light, is born from the darkness and from the death of the old. This natural phenomenon reflects the death of the old ruling psychological principle and the birth of a new one. In Christian symbolism, Christ is the new sun, bringing salvation. The Christmas departure of the Pequod suggests that the center of dramatic action shifts from one principal figure to another. Up to this point, the central figure of the narrative has been Ishmael, identified with the ego; From now on, until the end of the book, the focus will be on Captain Ahab. Ishmael remains the narrator, but now occupies a subordinate position. Ahab is the newborn sun, a new dynamic principle emerging from the unconscious to guide the upcoming voyage." [Ibid]. "In the 26th and 27th chapters, the leadership of the Pequod comes into action. These are four people: Captain Ahab, First Mate Starbuck, Second Mate Stubb and Third Mate Flask. They represent the Quaternarythe hierarchical structure of the four typological functions proposed by Jung. The rank order of the leaders of the Pequod reflects the relative development of the mental functions represented by each of these four sailors. Ahab, as a captain, advocates the leading function - thinking, which we will see later, after we study the three his subordinates. The captain's first mate is Starbeck. It is a helper function. Starbeck is the real name of a well-known wealthy family of whaler captains in Nantucket. Hence the association of the surname with firmness, responsibility, and success. This is confirmed in Melville’s descriptions of Starbeck: “He was like a revived Egyptian mummy, ready to endure with unfailing fortitude whatever the coming centuries might throw at him; for whether it was the polar snows or the sultry sun, his vitality, like a patented chronometer, was guaranteed for any climate... he was a reliable, steadfast man.” (Chapter 26) In other words, the mental function that Starbeck represents is well developed, well adapted and differentiated. But what is this function? The following passage gives us the answer: “And yet, with all his unshakable sobriety and fortitude, there were other qualities in him that sometimes also had their effect, and in some cases completely outweighed everything else. Constant loneliness in the stormy expanses of the sea and an attentive and reverent attitude towards the world, rare for a sailor, developed in him a strong tendency towards superstition; but it was a special kind of superstition, coming, as happens with others, not so much from ignorance, but, on the contrary, from reason. He believed in external omens and internal premonitions.” (Chapter 26) Belief in external omens and internal premonitions are markers of the intuitive function. Starbeck is a cautious person. His father and brother were killed during a whale hunt (which connects Ahab, who lives with memories of the injuries caused by an encounter with a whale, and Melville, who lost his father and brother). Starbuck's reaction to this tragedy is sober, practical: “I am here, in this terrible ocean, to kill whales for food, and not so that they kill me for food.” (Chapter 26) This indicates a high level of development of the function represented by the first mate, that is, intuition. Stubb is third in the Pequod management team. He is a “cheerful, good-natured, carefree” person. Thoughts of death, if he had any, were easily dispelled after a good dinner. He is an avid smoker and: “... just as during a cholera epidemic some people walk with a handkerchief soaked in camphor to their mouth, in the same way, perhaps, tobacco smoke served for Stubb as a kind of disinfectant against all human anxieties.” (Chapter 27)This describes sensation as a relatively undeveloped function; he needs a good dinner and a pipe full of tobacco to maintain normal contact with life. As the story progresses, Ahab makes a remark about Starbeck and Stubb: “You are two opposite poles of the same thing. Starbeck is Stubb in reverse, and Stubb is Starbeck reversed.” This observation corresponds to the psychological fact that sensation and intuition are opposite poles of the faculty of perception. Flask, the third assistant, is the last in rank of the four, and therefore, according to our scheme, represents the inferior, that is, the less developed function. And therefore the description of his personality is very brief: the subordinate function, being largely unconscious, is always very difficult for its owner to understand and describe it; it remains rather vague and unformed. We are only told that Flask: “... a short, corpulent young man, extremely warlike towards whales, as if he considered the mighty leviathans his personal and hereditary enemies and considered it a matter of honor to kill them at every meeting.” (Chapter 27)Through a personal insult that demands retribution, the primitive speaks,!