Diving into the Myth
Adrienne Rich and the individuation of American democracy
By Ipek S. Burnett
“I am bent on fathoming what it means to love my country,” writes poet Adrienne Rich. “A patriot is one who wrestles for the soul of her country as she wrestles for her own being.”
In recent years, countless headlines have announced mounting concerns about the fate of democracy in the United States. In poll after poll, figures suggest a severe decline in American citizens’ satisfaction with and trust in government, with many voters believing that democracy is under threat.
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As a form of government, democracy must deliver results for its constituents such as economic opportunity, public safety, and a foundation for collective well-being. It must be both practical and principled—responsive to everyday needs such as access to health care and education, as well as deeper aspirations for justice, equity, and a better future for all. For democracy to function effectively, it demands citizens’ commitment and engagement in shared visions. As in psychotherapy, partaking in collective purpose and responsibility necessitates trust, tolerance for frustration, complexity, and compromise. Even dissent, a key component of a healthy democracy, requires respect for difference, disagreement, and diversity. All of this makes empathy and moral imagination critical for a healthy democracy. These relational and ethical imperatives that sustain civic duties are deeply psychological. Without a strong psychological foundation, which both supports and is supported by healthy social conditions, democracy cannot function.
Adrienne Rich’s words above underscore the ethical dimensions of loving one’s country, striving for critical reflection and honest recognition, which can only be carried out effectively through love itself. In this light, wrestling with the soul of the country can resemble the psychological process that C. G. Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, called individuation: the lifelong, nonlinear journey toward self-awareness, integration, and wholeness. Just as individuation requires confronting the unconscious, facing the shadow, and holding the tension of opposites, in our wrestling we might recognize that democracy too can evolve through struggle and self-examination. This perspective may challenge our notion of American democracy as a given, inviting deeper reflection about its undemocratic foundations and the psychological work necessary to engage with that legacy. Current fears about the erosion of democracy present an opportunity to do just that.
Diving into the Wreck
In her renowned poem “Diving into the Wreck,” Rich descends into the depths of the ocean to explore a shipwreck. She writes:
First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.…
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
…the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
The deep-sea dive Rich describes is a commentary on social transformation and self-realization, political activism and psychological discovery. The poem extends an invitation to immerse ourselves in the waters of American democracy. Rich describes the descent:
First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
At sea level, American democracy promises popular sovereignty, upholds fundamental human rights, operates according to the rule of law, and embraces civic participation and pluralism. But diving into the wreck illuminates darker realities beneath the surface: systemic racism and voter suppression, shadow lobbying, special interest funding, and wealth-driven political agendas.
The thing I came for is not the story of the wreck, Rich insists. Not the myth, but the thing itself.
What is America, if not a nation built on myths? The New World, the city upon a hill, Manifest Destiny, the American Dream, the melting pot, the pursuit of happiness. American collective consciousness, like that of many societies, is anchored in myths. Inscribing ideals and sustaining ideologies, myths define Americans’ experience as members of this nation and the wider world in which they live.
Myths originate in the archetypal world of imagination, but as such they are not confined to mental subjectivity. Instead, they are embodied and enacted in different facets of social and public life. They craft creeds, ideologies, even shape public and foreign policies. Every day myths are on display, from political speeches to schoolbooks, talk shows to billboards. They not only represent and follow but also form and reinforce America’s perception of history, politics, and culture.
From a Jungian perspective, myths are not falsehoods to discredit; rather, they are expressions of psychic truths and archetypal forces. They are shared symbolic structures through which the psyche makes sense of itself and the world. In this view, myths do not necessarily denote something untrue; rather, they reveal deeper psychological or spiritual layers of meaning and experience. When we engage myths reflectively and consciously, they can serve as a path toward greater self-awareness. However, when myths are lived unconsciously, when they are taken as literal, assumed to be absolute, or left unexamined, they can become rigid, simplistic, and even destructive. They can foster illusions or delusions rather than psychological insight and transformation.
Examining our collective myths with curiosity and receptivity allows us a certain honesty and humility. This new self-awareness grants us the freedom and courage to see the difficult memories, limitations, losses, traumas, and harms which have previously been hidden from our view. As with therapy focused on the individual, reflection on the collective enables us to recognize and reintegrate the repressed or rejected parts of ourselves. The task at hand is first and foremost psychological; its consequences are far-reaching.
Consider the New World, a myth that has captured the hearts and minds of countless settlers. For many, America represented a second chance where one could pursue religious or political freedom, acquire land, seek wealth or new possibilities. When viewed through a psychological lens, the myth reveals a deep longing for redemption and rebirth. But when taken as literal truth or historical fact, it can become a tool for justifying oppression, exploitation, and violence. Before the settlers arrived on the American continent, Indigenous tribes lived here, hunting, praying, and communing with nature. Bison grazed, rivers flowed, and trees were rooted in the soil. There was nothing new about the land, about this world. Yet the literal reading of the myth of the New World and its discovery recast life on this land as invisible. It sought to omit Natives, mask their massacre, and turn the ancient world into a virgin land, a blank page, a fresh start. The myth was about new beginnings, redemption and rebirth; the thing itself was the justification of the violence and repression of history in the name of the myth.
The 19th-century doctrine of Manifest Destiny proclaiming Americans’ right to expand across the continent as God’s provision: the myth. Land cession, fraudulent treaties, deceitful officials, crude force and massacres, an insatiable hunger for land, gold, and silver: the thing itself.
The American Dream’s promise of prosperity and upward mobility for all hard-working individuals: the myth. Unequal access to health care, housing, education, and economic opportunities: the thing itself.
Land of the free: the myth. Slavery, racism, the prison-industrial complex, immigrant detention centers: the thing itself.
Blue, bluer and then green and then black. Rich’s deep-sea journey takes us into the Underworld, which brims with contradictions waiting to be wrestled and reckoned with.
Revisiting the Declaration of Independence offers another opportunity for national self-examination. “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Although eloquent and inspiring, this rhetoric was of course not absolute. Because the self-evident truth when the declaration was read publicly on July 4, 1776, was that these rights did not apply to everyone. For the 56 delegates who signed the Declaration of Independence, the words addressed white men with property. They were the only Americans whose rights were acknowledged, whose life, liberty, and happiness mattered, and whose votes were to be counted. Not wage laborers, indentured servants, the enslaved, Native Americans, or women.
The thing itself is the dissonance between political promises and social reality, the disparities between national ideals and the lived experiences of the people.
If democracy is built on the ideals that the declaration put forth, then it is also built upon the disparities and contradictions that were—and still are—inseparable from those ideals. “The American democratic experiment is unique in human history not because we are God’s chosen people to lead the world, nor because we are always a force for good in the world, but because of our refusal to acknowledge the deeply racist and imperial roots of our democratic project,” writes philosopher and social activist Cornel West. “We are exceptional because of our denial of the antidemocratic foundation stones of American democracy.”
The thing itself is the refusal to see our cultural myths for what they are. Everyday realities remind us that our myths and ideals are never absolute. No matter how evocative the myth, how noble the ideal, neither can stand alone as historical or empirical fact. Part of the work—which is both psychological and political—is thus to imagine, understand, and own the realities overshadowed by the rhetoric of pride and power. To dive into the wreck, behold the history lying on the seabed in pieces, rotting in the dark.
From a Jungian perspective, myths are not falsehoods to discredit; rather, they are expressions of psychic truths and archetypal forces. They are shared symbolic structures through which the psyche makes sense of itself and the world.
Something More Permanent
In Rich’s poem, the mission of the deep-sea journey is to see the damage that was done, then seek the treasures that prevail. She writes:
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed.
American democracy: Imperfect. Problematic. Unfinished. Yet this does not mean it must be condemned or abandoned. The trauma is not the whole of the story, but only a part. As with a traumatized person, there is something more permanent, the sum of what is broken and unbroken, remembered and forgotten, spoken and silenced, claimed and yearned for. Personal and the universal. Something more permanent that is felt, known, lived. An essence, to which Rich refers as “the soul of the country.”
In what Jung termed analytic psychology, the unifying principle of the entire psyche is recognized as the Self. Encompassing both the conscious and the unconscious, the Self is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere, according to Jung. This principle delineates the expansive nature of the Self and challenges the inflated nature of the ego, which as the center of the conscious mind is only a part of the Self. For Jung, although ego is important for conscious awareness, it does not represent the center or the totality of the psyche.
The goal of individuation, as Jung describes it, is the gradual realization of the Self over a lifetime. Individuation is not a state, not a goal, not a destination, or an outcome, but a process. It is never completed. Rather, it is a movement toward wholeness by means of an integration of conscious and unconscious parts of the personality through continuous reflection, remembering, and reevaluation. This effort implies recognition and acceptance of certain parts of oneself that may be initially disturbing, surprising, negative, or hard to accept. The thing itself and not the myth.
Jung’s psychological method proposes that while seeking what lies beyond the ego-consciousness, one gets to confront not only the shadow, the darkness hidden within the depths of one’s own psyche, but also the dark side of “the whole ancestral heritage.” By this, Jung referred to the psychic inheritance passed down through generations, such as shameful or difficult historical legacies, or unresolved traumas of one’s family or culture, even humanity at large. Ancestors as archetypal presences beyond bloodlines. In the words of Jungian analyst Erich Neumann, such a confrontation causes “a basic shift of the psychological center of gravity in a downward direction.” What Neuman describes is a movement from the ego consciousness toward deeper, unconscious layers of the psyche, particularly the collective unconscious and the archetypal foundations of the psyche. This shift destabilizes and challenges simplistic and reductionist self-understandings. It shows us that the deeply personal is not merely subjective, and that our stories are connected to history and culture, connected to other stories. Ironically, individuation serves as a way out of solipsism—as a kind of expansion beyond the individual. This is where treasures prevail.
With its emphasis on inclusivity, individuation resembles the ideal of the democratic process. It acknowledges the diversity within and values plurality over the singular authority of the ego. Because in Jungian psychology, integration is about cultivating a conscious relationship with all the figures, fantasies, and tensions that constitute the psyche. It is about creating space for the many views and voices within and encouraging participation and dialogue, just as a healthy democracy must.
Individuation is not a state, not a goal, not a destination, or an outcome, but a process. … it is a movement toward wholeness by means of an integration of conscious and unconscious parts of the personality through continuous reflection, remembering, and reevaluation.
We Are, I Am, You Are
Having reviewed the history of American democracy to uncover some of its motives, ambiguities, and contradictions, Susan Griffin, the feminist poet and essayist, recognizes that all of those are parts of herself, too. She writes: “In the mysterious alchemy through which we are all created, we are shaped by histories that we do not know, as much as by those we do.” The inner work of democratic consciousness exposes inextricable ties between the self and social reality, showing how wrestling for the soul of her country and wrestling with one’s own being are processes that go hand in hand.
This is also where poetic inquiries enter the picture. Poetry’s exploratory, expressive, and meaning-making capacity stands to challenge the dichotomies between private and public lives, and between emotional and intellectual truths. This is an intuitive, imaginative process as it is with individuation. This is also how Rich uses poetry as part of her feminist practice to reveal connective tissues deep within the self and in the world, in personal and political places:
We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.
Citizens. Communities. Nations. What would transpire if all embraced inner democratic work in service of integration, healing, and wisdom?
An Ethic of Love
Beyond casting votes, democracy invites citizens to strive to be well-informed, active participants who do not shy away from questions and self-reflection, who are willing to imagine, understand, and own the hard realities that are often overshadowed by the rhetoric of pride and power, who are open to candid and at times difficult conversations about their country, its myths, and policies.
This kind of activism can start within but is not to be confined to the interior realm of the psyche; because it is never sufficient to hope that individual healing will lead to social recovery. For those who are compelled to address the world’s complex problems and are in pursuit of social, cultural, political transformation, it is crucial that inner purpose and social responsibility remain in constant dialogue, that they show up and step forth in solidarity. Carrying psychological insights into the social and political world, and valuing both reflection and action, working deliberately to bridge them has to be an ongoing commitment. Moreover, strong institutional structures—educational systems, the press, courts, legislatures—are also essential for democratic processes. There must be an intentional effort to bolster an understanding of the codependence between individual responsibility and institutional integrity. Most importantly, this understanding must be put into practice. Just as it is in the process of individuation, this critical work is complex and continuous.
Movement by movement, milestone by milestone, democracy calls for recognition, resistance, and reconciliation. In this way, the individuation of American democracy can be seen as an intimate, ongoing, open-ended conversation that undoes blind patriotism and begets a different kind of love for one’s nation, as evident in Rich’s poetic inquiry. In the words of feminist scholar and activist bell hooks, this is an ethic of love that is founded upon honest, critical social consciousness. An ethic of love that does not attempt to repress that which is problematic or turn away from contradictions but embraces complexity and even uncertainty. An ethic of love as not just feeling but choice and action.
The ethic of love is the oxygen we need to continue diving in deep waters, searching beneath and beyond the myths of pride, power, and progress and toward something whole and more permanent.
Whether or not our names appear in the book of myths, our ethical struggles as citizens can reverberate through our communities, inspiring a legacy of care, courage, resilience, and a commitment to democratic processes within ourselves and in the world. More than ever, we must now go on wrestling for the soul of our country as we wrestle for our own being.
Ipek S. Burnett, PhD, is the author of A Jungian Inquiry into the American Psyche and editor of Re-Visioning the American Psyche. A published novelist and essayist in Turkey, she is based in San Francisco and works with social justice and human rights organizations.
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This is a brilliant essay. Especially important to read pre No Kings Day Saturday.