Archetypal literary criticism, psychotherapy and Magic Theater. Part 1. A.P. Chekhov. (How to get out of the Sisyphus scenario) The gods sentenced Sisyphus to lift a huge stone to the top of the mountain, from where this block invariably rolled down. They had reason to believe that there is no punishment more terrible than useless and hopeless work. Continuing the theme about Kronos and Hades [1], I want to show how the appeal to these archetypes works both in the Magic Theater and in Archetypal Literary Studies [2] (by the way, many realizations in Archetypal Literary Studies can be used as elements for working out individual internal plots in psychotherapy, in in particular, including these elaborations as elements of the method of short-term group psychotherapy that I created in 1992, the path of individuation and the method of cultural studies - Magic Theater [3], if the appropriate context arises). Let's consider several examples when a classic plot makes it possible to experience, for example, as an element Magic Theater, some kind of internal conflict, contradiction, to realize an implicit or repressed part of the personality... I will give examples from practice. These cases are clear and convenient for consideration. The first is a case of obsessive jealousy. It is interesting and characteristic that usually in such situations a person is inclined to listen much more willingly to the insinuating voice of jealousy and believe it more than, for example, the voice of common sense and others. I can’t help but remember Shakespeare’s Othello, to whom Iago whispered ideas about Desdemona’s betrayal. Despite the obvious falsity in Iago’s behavior, Othello repeatedly repeats with emotion, listening to his lies: “Most honest Iago!” - Here is the finished scene, where Iago, Othello and other characters are characters in the INNER world of the jealous person. A person is given the role of Iago in a sketch - a dialogue between Iago and Othello, and the sketch itself can be one of the parts of the Magic Theater, as an additional technique for a deep awareness of one’s own voice of jealousy. Such living of the role of Iago with a certain super-task set allows one to first get rid of the pathological fusion with the “honest little one” in oneself, recognize it as an introject or, conversely, a projection, and take a conscious position in relation to it. The consequence will be a change in the person's reaction and behavior in a fairly wide context of situations. In addition, the super task in this case will make it possible to use the emergence of jealousy as fuel for the work of the soul. Another example: Kent from King Lear. The plot can be used in a very common range of situations, when a person displaces his own voice of justice from the sphere of his consciousness (having previously slandered it). Lear ordered Kent, who stood up for the innocently injured honest Cordelia, to immediately leave the country on pain of death, declaring him a traitor. Kent, disguised beyond recognition, helps Lear through the most difficult trials to go through the path of redemption. – An excellent plot for integration with previously rejected intuition, serious mistakes and repentance... Who among us does not dream of finally breaking out of the routine of everyday life and starting a big, real business? And so sometimes we even come close to “starting to Live,” but, like Sisyphus, we roll back along with the stone... But the myth of Sisyphus only states a fact, it does not give us mechanisms that allow us to see HOW this happens. Here later classical works come to the rescue, richer in details and details that are not accidental... In our time, this plot is more vivid than ever and Chekhov's play "Three Sisters" is more relevant than ever. There are many characters there and each one means something important, right down to the nanny or lieutenants Fedotik and Rode, who appear sporadically. Dreams of a new life, of a breakthrough from routine, of a real big deal haunt many in this play and the three sisters Olga, Masha and Irina, and their brother Andrei, and Baron Tuzenbach, whose very last name isin German it means “a thousand streams, streams” - a thousand opportunities, a thousand missed opportunities, alas, like the sisters, like Andrei, like Dr. Chebutykin, who doesn’t even hope for anything anymore, and Vershinin, who only and repeats about “those who will live two or three hundred years after us” - repeats eight times... Tuzenbach exclaims at the beginning of the play (still with enthusiasm) - “The longing for work, oh my God, how familiar it is to me! I have never worked in my life... The time has come, a huge storm is approaching all of us, a healthy, strong storm is preparing that will sweep away laziness, indifference, neglect of work, and boredom from our society. And in just twenty-five years! Every person will work for years now! - alas, how I want the lazy brain, mired in its usual dominants of everyday life, to awaken, healthy strength to revive the body - Tuzenbach - this is a smoldering motivation, and in the play - the most enterprising hero of the drama - by the end he manages to come close, if not to a pie in the sky, then to a tit in hand, but... alas, Tuzenbach, who could have revived Irina, whose favor he nevertheless achieved, dies in a duel at the hands of the cynic Soleny, one involuntarily recalls the stanza from Hamlet “so our plans perish on a grand scale, which at first foreshadowed success after long delays" - motivation not implemented immediately and not fueled by the law of the dominant is doomed to death. But who is this Solyony, this semi-episodic, but such a key person in the play? “I’m strange, but who isn’t?” - his words, but Chekhov himself refers us to the answer, in Soleny’s short monologue: “But I have the character of Lermontov. I even look a little like Lermontov... that’s what they say” - yeah, this similarity can already be grasped, as well as Solyony’s own phrase addressed to Irina: “You rejected me, but I shouldn’t have happy rivals! I won’t allow it!” Solyony teases Tuzenbach several more times, repeating periodically, as if in oblivion: “Aleko,” but Aleko is a very strong image from Pushkin’s “Gypsies” and Rachmaninov’s opera of the same name “Aleko”, this is an image of revenge and murder out of jealousy - doesn’t Solyony carry within himself from the beginning of the action a thirst for killing Tuzenbach, here the comparison with Lermontov is very useful, Lermontov, rejected even in his youth, his beloved and unable to survive this drama until the end of his days, Lermontov with his “Demon” - and who is behind the Demon? - what archetype? - and behind Lermontov himself, and therefore, behind Solyony? - who sets back the stone of Sisyphus? - in Transactional Analysis there is a variation of one of the 6 basic scenario processes - “Again and Again”, but there is not a word about the mechanisms of this eternal repetition and sliding down - after all, in “Three Sisters” there are still many interesting characters and riddles - keys to our problems, not only, of course, in “Three Sisters”, but in the entire dramaturgy of Chekhov (and other classics, of course) - after all, no theater can ignore his plays... Let's listen to the lines typical of Lermontov: " I look at the future with fear, I look at the past with longing, and like a criminal before execution, I search around for my dear soul. Will the messenger of deliverance come to reveal to me the purpose of life, the goal of hopes and passions, to tell me what fate has in store for me, why it so bitterly contradicted the hopes of my youth!!!! Isn’t it Kronos? behind these poems and even behind the darkest figure of Lermontov-Soleny? and why? What is this “eternal return” for and what should we do with it? And here we are forced to turn to a thorough study of Kronos (I have given attempts at a psychological interpretation of this archetype). in the article “Hades and Kronos in Archetypal Work and Psychotherapy”)... he has the keys to Lermontov’s questions and to the death of Tusenbach, and to the “sky in diamonds”, which Chekhov’s heroes hope to see only beyond the threshold of earthly life, we have to look for the answer - why our inner Tuzenbach is dying, how to create motivation, how to revive the soul, how to make peace with Kronos and those who still stand with him behind the inner Lermontov and behind many other classical heroes... And now, returning toHaving begun to consider the plot of Chekhov's "Three Sisters", can we say that by living this plot, we show, or at least have the opportunity to show, courage? Stepping back from this question for a moment, I will explain that regardless of whether or not we have read classical works, fairy tales and myths, we carry these stories potentially within ourselves - they are archetypal, i.e. each of these plots is a path in the labyrinth of the Soul, which I described as a polytheistic non-structural rhizome[4]. And the more developed the soul, the more likely it is to walk along an increasing number of paths bumping into each other and intersecting here and there, to exhaust the maximum of archetypal plots and their variations with your life, or even to create new paths and new intersections with your life - continuing with each generation to create the World Soul. So, let’s look at the plot of “Three Sisters” again. This time we will use the method that Jung’s student Maria Louise von France[5] interpreted fairy tales. Three sisters: Irina, Masha and Olga - these are three main functions (sensual, intuitive and sensory), the fourth is a subordinate function (judging by the plot, most likely - thinking) - this is their brother Andrei, who showed promise, but as is destined to be a subordinate function , and remained undeveloped. Moreover, it is through this function that in the plot of “Three Sisters” we fall under the influence of the shadow Anima, manifested in the image of Andrei’s wife Natasha, Tuzenbach - motivation for the development of the sensory function (Irina, who dreams like other functions - to WORK), but the motivation is not desired , coming rather from the mind, and therefore simply doomed to death (Irina does not love Tuzenbach, and agrees to marry him, just so as not to remain an old maid like her older sister Irina, and try to start working after all). The main function is sensual, but it is also not involved in work, or more precisely, by definition of the main function - in work, but routine work, which he wants but cannot get rid of, having received at the end of the play only a promotion in the same routine work. Masha, who personifies the intuitive function, also does not develop, she has settled down, so to speak, in the petty-bourgeois world that her stupid old husband Kulygin personifies, and only the appearance of a romantic love for Vershinin, a love for something unreal, for what, according to Vershinin himself will not be here very soon - two or three hundred years after us, only the appearance of this love brings in a fresh whiff of the breeze that has flown in for a short time and allows only nostalgia for what could have been - ethereal dreams that one so wants to believe in, and which are completely unrealistic for auxiliary intuitive function, and on the ground floor lives an old friend of the family, who at one time was hopelessly in love with the late mother of the sisters and Andrei, the old drunken doctor Chebutykin, personifying unfulfilled dreams, melancholy and a burden of memories, from which moments of spontaneity and even cheerfulness and mischief sometimes distract , in the images of the young cheerful officers Fedotik and Rode, but they, alas, are so short-lived, so episodic... Staff Captain Solyony, whom we already talked about above, is also episodic, but episodic in his own way - he constantly looms in the background, just like momento more - he is, in essence, not only a reminder of death, but that shadow figure in which death (at least for the far-fetched motivation - Tuzenbach) has already matured from the beginning of the action and has only waited in the wings at the end of it. The vengeful Aleko, the depressed Lermontov, the rejected lover are still waiting for their shot. A small death, the death of illusion, hope, and the inevitable collision after that with Kronos - this can make sense... if, passing, at least briefly, through this plot in some context of our lives, we find the courage not to run away from Kronos, and drink up the lesson prepared for us! All the classics teach: Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy... Chekhov does not teach. He leads the soul to the fork in the road where one can meet Kronos and leaves us there. In EVERY play and in many stories. Chekhov and moreThe keys to meeting Kronos are scattered throughout the plays. He doesn't evaluate anyone. He shows - this is it. He has almost no clear-cut characters who are good or bad. There are people with their existential vacuum. And some of them, and therefore certain parts of our personality, are not afraid to admit to themselves that they are losers (which is what modern people, zombified by advertising, are so afraid of). And these are very important (!!!) inner voices that can be clearly heard in moments of despair: Andrey (“Three Sisters”) “I’ll just say it and leave. Now... First of all, you have something against Natasha, my wife, and I have noticed this since the very day of my wedding. If you want to know, Natasha is a wonderful, honest person, straightforward and noble - that’s my opinion. I love and respect my wife, you understand, I respect and demand that others respect her too. I repeat, she is an honest, noble person, and all your displeasures, forgive me, are just whims... (Pause.) Secondly, you seem to be angry because I’m not a professor, I’m not involved in science. But I serve in the zemstvo, I am a member of the zemstvo council, and I consider this service to be as sacred and high as service to science. I am a member of the zemstvo council and am proud of it, if you want to know... (Pause.) Thirdly... I also have to say... I mortgaged the house without asking your permission... I am to blame for this, yes, and please excuse me. I was prompted to do this by debts... thirty-five thousand... I no longer play cards, I quit a long time ago, but the main thing I can say in my defense is that you girls, you get a pension, but I didn’t. .. earning money, so to speak... (Pause.) They don’t listen. Natasha is an excellent, honest person. (Walks across the stage in silence, then stops.) When I got married, I thought that we would be happy... everyone would be happy... But my God... (Cries.) My dear sisters, dear sisters, don’t believe me, don’t believe me...” Chebutykin (“Three Sisters”) “Damn everyone... damn them... They think I’m a doctor, I know how to treat all sorts of diseases, but I know absolutely nothing, I’ve forgotten everything I knew, nothing I remember absolutely nothing. Damn it. Last Wednesday I treated a woman on Zasyp - she died, and it was my fault that she died. Yes... I knew something twenty-five years ago, but now I don’t remember anything. Nothing... My head is empty, my soul is cold. Maybe I’m not a person, but I’m only pretending that I have arms and legs... and a head; Maybe I don’t exist at all, but it only seems to me that I walk, eat, sleep. (Cries.) Oh, if only I didn’t exist! (Stops crying, sullenly.) The devil knows... The day before yesterday there was a conversation at the club; they say Shakespeare, Voltaire... I didn’t read, I didn’t read at all, but on my face I showed that I had read. And others too, like me. Vulgarity! Meanness! And the woman who killed him on Wednesday was remembered... and everything was remembered, and my soul felt crooked, disgusting, disgusting... I went and started drinking..." Treplev ("The Seagull"): "It started from that evening, when my play failed so stupidly. Women do not forgive failure. I burned everything to the last scrap. If you only knew how unhappy I am! Your cooling is terrible, incredible, as if I woke up and saw as if this lake had suddenly dried up or flowed into the ground. You just said that you are too simple to understand me. Oh, what is there to understand?! I didn’t like the play, you despise my inspiration, you already consider me ordinary, insignificant, like many... (Stamping his foot) How well I understand, how I understand!” They all fell into a new eternal return, behind which stands Kronos. Other voices confuse us at these moments and we roll back to where we were. And the effect of exiting the Sisyphus scenario will come if you unearth Andrei, Kostya Treplev, Ivanov, Chebutykin within yourself, hear them and accept them, let this truth (even if it was contextual) take place - and here comes the exit to a new path of the labyrinth. Sometimes something dies something old and outdated, like a dear childhood memory - this is Firs in the finale of The Cherry Orchard. And a stronger ego is born, perhaps Ermolai Lopakhin is an example of a strong ego. He has serious plans. He finds a solution - to cut down the primitive garden, to make dachas. So, having gained strength, we set off fromromanticism towards busy business, etc. This is not the end of individuation. This is her turning point. Lopakhin’s monologue: “I bought it!” Wait, gentlemen, do me a favor, my head is clouded, I can’t speak... (Laughs.) We came to the auction, Deriganov was already there. Leonid Andreich had only fifteen thousand, and Deriganov immediately gave thirty thousand on top of the debt. I see this is the case, I tackled him and gave him forty. He's forty-five. I'm fifty-five. That means he adds five, I add ten... Well, it’s over. I gave ninety in excess of my debt; that was left to me. The cherry orchard is now mine! My! (Laughs.) My God, my God, my cherry orchard! Tell me that I’m drunk, out of my mind, that I’m imagining all this... (Stamps his feet.) Don’t laugh at me! If only my father and grandfather would get up from their graves and look at the whole incident, like their Ermolai, the beaten, illiterate Ermolai, who ran barefoot in the winter, how this same Ermolai bought an estate, the most beautiful of which there is nothing in the world. I bought an estate where my grandfather and father were slaves, where they were not even allowed into the kitchen. I’m dreaming, I’m only imagining this, it’s only seeming... This is a figment of your imagination, covered in the Darkness of the unknown... (Raises the keys, smiling affectionately.) She threw the keys, wants to show that she is no longer the mistress here... (Rings keys.) Well, it doesn’t matter. Hey musicians, play, I want to listen to you! Come and watch how Ermolai Lopakhin takes an ax to the cherry orchard and how the trees fall to the ground! We will set up our dachas, and our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will see a new life here... Music, play! Music, play clearly! Let everything be as I wish! (With irony.) A new landowner is coming, the owner of a cherry orchard! I can pay for everything!” But aren’t we sorry to part with the Cherry Orchard? The sentimentalism and confusion of Ranevskaya and Gaev, the clumsiness and complex of the superfluous person and loser Epikhodov... There are many questions, acute, unresolved questions, which a weak ego faces. An attempt to solve them, not to run into other images, which sometimes are not living experiences, but only simulacra distracting for a minute, an hour, a day (copies from a non-existent or long-lost original, which they so carefully feed us, lulling and zombifying the media and standing behind them is Morpheus - for some reason he is needed in this whole labyrinth!) - so, an attempt to solve them, to come face to face with Kronos, Hades, Persephone... provides an opportunity for death-transformation of a weak ego, for openness to something new and new plots, for the creation of new plots - life creativity... The work of the soul begins somewhere here, just where Chekhov’s plots end... What have we come to? Jung’s student and reformer, creator of Archetypal Psychology, James Hillman writes: “Myths rule our lives. The irrationality, absurdity and horror of the experiments of nature among which we try to live are absorbed into the images and motifs of myth and somehow become explainable. Some people have to live their whole lives wrong and then leave it wrong. The fascinating tension of such life and death reveals the work of certain forces beyond the human. Myth, which ensures the full presence of any kind of villainy, offers a more objective approach to the study of such life and death than any study of personal motivation. Hillman, as a postmodernist, opens us to many choices. This variety of answers allows us to identify one of the premises of archetypal psychology, namely: there are multiple answers to all the basic archetypal questions depending on the god and the mythological theme that determines our answer, dispassionate and Apollonian, abstract and Saturnian, in the form of Dionysian discharge or divine love, heroic deeds or Hephaestus artifacts. Apparently, there is no single method of self-knowledge, even in cases where psychology gives preference to the method of introspection. And here is the abstractness of the Saturnian -.