Someone on Twitter asked Rian Johnson if he read “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” while prepping for Episode 8, and he answered ‘No, but I reread some Jung and listened to a bunch of Robert Bly lectures. Close.’ The person then asked, ‘Anything in particular jump out at you from those two?’ 1/2

starwarsnonsense:

to which Rian responded ‘Modern Man In Search of a Soul is a good place to start for Jung. Bly – A Little Book About The Human Shadow’. This seems interesting! 2/2

That is extremely interesting – thank you very much for bringing this to my attention. I have only a very superficial understanding of Jung, and hadn’t heard of Robert Bly before you brought Rian’s tweets to my attention. Nonetheless, I did some homework and am very excited by what I found.

The works he mentions specifically have the following summaries:

The writing covers a broad array of subjects such as gnosticism, theosophy, Eastern philosophy and spirituality in general. The first part of the book deals with dream analysis in its practical application, the problems and aims of modern psychotherapy, and also his own theory of psychological types. The middle section addresses Jung’s beliefs about the stages of life and Archaic man. He also contrasts his own theories with those of Sigmund Freud.

In the latter parts of the book Jung discusses the psychology and literature and devotes a chapter to basic postulates of analytical psychology. The last two chapters are devoted to the spiritual problem of modern man in aftermath of World War I. He compares it to the flowering of gnosticism in the 2nd century and investigates how psychotherapists are like the clergy.

Modern Man In Search of a Soul by Carl Jung

Robert Bly, renowned poet and author of the ground-breaking bestseller Iron John, mingles essay and verse to explore the Shadow – the dark side of the human personality – and the importance of confronting it.

A Little Book About The Human Shadow by Robert Bly

This is all extremely interesting stuff to ponder, and I’m especially intrigued by the idea that Rian might – on some level – be drawing on Gnosticism to inform his film. I’m relatively well versed in Gnosticism (read The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels for a great primer) and it’s a straight-up fascinating area to study. I haven’t noticed any striking Gnostic parallels in The Force Awakens as of yet, so that may well be something personal that Rian is bringing to the saga for his film.

Gnosticism aside, the characters this seems most likely to relate to are Rey, Luke and (especially) Kylo. Robert Bly in particular, is a leading figure of the mythopoetic men’s movement. I hadn’t heard of it before, but the endless font of wisdom that is Wikipedia explains that it essentially takes the standpoint that the modern man is in a dangerous position because modern societal constraints have created circumstances that either drive men to dangerous aggression and hyper-masculinity or excessive feminisation. It’s essentially a movement about celebrating a more healthy kind of masculinity, which seems to be achieved by celebrating mythic archetypes and encouraging male-to-male socialisation.,

Since Kylo Ren can be interpreted as striving for some mythic, hyper-masculine identity for himself (complete with bristling tension and sporadic displays of uncontrollable violence), I can see Rian’s interest in Robert Bly being connected to that. 

My dearest wish for VIII is that it delves into the underlying psychological forces motivating the characters, and Rian’s reading list is strong evidence suggesting that that’s exactly what we’re getting.