tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375512083268389933.post7053339915878104345..comments2023-09-30T10:36:23.154-05:00Comments on Accidental Historian: W@H: 27 JennifersGedshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15047239425466517786noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375512083268389933.post-61616511703279407602009-01-02T09:16:00.000-06:002009-01-02T09:16:00.000-06:00That, I can agree with. The real person can still ...That, I can agree with. The real person can still be glamorous, can still <I>evoke</I> lots of GHP-type wonder and awe. From time to time. If the the light hits them just right as they're waking up with bed hair, or if they do something totally sweet when you'd expected crabbiness. And you say "Wow! I'm so glad I'm with this person!"<BR/><BR/>Problems arise, as you and Bly and Eldredge all agree, when the lover expects this evocation of the imagined ideal to be continuous. To remain unsullied by a real other person's desires, actions and choices.<BR/><BR/>"What can I tell you?" indeed. You can tell plenty! I only quibble because I think you are 95% right on the money in this post. As opposed to 100% rightness most of the time. You don't see me arguing with the rest of it. :)Fiat Lexhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10441862977921307080noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375512083268389933.post-64461329858652150102009-01-02T03:13:00.000-06:002009-01-02T03:13:00.000-06:00I maintain that the Golden-Haired Person, if allow...I maintain that the Golden-Haired Person, if allowed to become a real person and appreciated as such, maintains some aspects of the Golden-Hairedness.<BR/><BR/>Then again, what do I know, anyway? When it comes to dating and women, I might as well be a leper. And you know they hardly ever give a leper a chance, Golden-Haired or not.Gedshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15047239425466517786noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375512083268389933.post-88622443376959432512009-01-01T13:42:00.000-06:002009-01-01T13:42:00.000-06:00The only aspect of this post with which I disagree...The only aspect of this post with which I disagree is your description of what happens when the woman who has been mistaken for the GHW turns out to be a real person.<BR/><BR/>This quote from the end is illustrative:<BR/><I>The Golden-Haired Woman. The ordinary woman who wakes up with bed-head, loses her temper, and whose shit most definitely stinks.<BR/>They are the same person. It just depends who is looking and how.</I><BR/><BR/>The real woman is <B>real</B>.<BR/>The GHW is <B>imaginary</B>.<BR/><BR/>They are manifestly not "the same person". And while I don't think you are confused on that score in your own mind, in a discussion like this you've gotta make the definition explicit or it causes problems later on. Like if you launched a shuttle to the moon and your flight path calculations had a couple of digits wrong at the third or fourth decimal place.<BR/><BR/>The GHW, I will continue to insist, is the Muse. In Jungian terms, the contra-sexual image, that is, the archetype used by a person's unconscious mind to embody all that is desirable. Which qualities a man's GHW possesses are a reflection on himself. And in an important sense, the idealized Beloved only exists within the personality of the Lover.<BR/><BR/>There's a chapter in Gareth Knight's big book of crazyness that deals with this subject in detail. It really helped me out when I was a teenager struggling to understand this experience for the first time:<BR/><I>[T]he archetypes of the unconscious, particularly the contra-sexual image, are images of the Individuality of man.<BR/>[...]<BR/><BR/>When, however, contact with the Individuality, essentially an inner experience, is confused with objective reality by projection upon another, then obviously there is going to be trouble, whether in more modern times as a bad marriage or tragic love affair or in Homeric legend as the launching of a thousand ships and the ten year siege and burning of a city. These are the lengths to which glamour can lead man and glamour is still very much with us.</I><BR/><BR/>That moment when the "GHW" turns out to be a real woman is one of disillusionment. The problems you describe so aptly come into play when someone attempts to retain the illusion that the GHW (or GHM, whatever) can be a person who exists objectively. If he tries to hold onto the fantasy of a flesh-and-blood Muse, the disillusionment drives the man away from the GHW, who has lost her glamor. If, on the other hand, he is able to separate the glamorous ideal from the real woman, then he can keep both without doing harm to either.Fiat Lexhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10441862977921307080noreply@blogger.com