emc, I dug this out from the archives of study done a long time ago.
It made sense to me then, and it helped a lot in raising the kids.
Although what I learned was more widely explained in terms of the Mother/Child relationship and how it impinges on the later relationship.
9. A Transpersonal Perspective on Primary Envy
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The coincidentia oppositorium is an idea that occupies an important place in Jung's psychology. It is particularly important to realize that what is at stake in this conjunction is not the basic recognition of opposites, nor the simple interplay of opposites in our experience, nor even the union or marriage of opposites, but the shocking realization of their conjunction in the same object or situation. The reason why the coincidentia oppositorium is so crucial is that it does not simply represent the opposition of hate and love, but represents hating and loving the same object. This, of course, is exactly the condition which can precipitate human envy, and is possibly a conflict that it is necessary for us to confront very early in our development, indeed throughout our lives. In this respect, it can be seen that envy is the central challenge to our psychic growth, i.e. resolving the "paradox" of loving and hating the same object. Jealousy is the outcome of the difficulties in sharing the loved object with someone else, and greed is merely asking, or demanding, too much from the loved object.
It is important to realize that hating one object, and loving another, is hardly a challenging experience. But hating and loving the same object, now that is a completely different matter!! And I want to argue that this is a theme, or what Jung would call a psychic truth, that must lie at the core of an existential-transpersonal model of human experience. It is almost certain that the fearful symmetry which William Blake refers to in his poem, The Tyger, is precisely this conjunction:
"Tyger, Tyger burning bright, In the forests of the night: What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?"
William Blake (The Tyger)
In my own study of Jung and Blake, I have proposed that it is precisely this conjunction that constitutes the God archetype, which Jung equates with the archetype of the Self (Hiles, 2001). Confrontation with this archetype reveals the tragic contradictoriness of the Self, and also of God (as Jung points out), and is experienced as the dark night of the soul. The coincidentia oppositorium is the crucial archetype of the human psyche, it is the ultimate challenge to human growth, it is the unconscious conflict at the core of human existence. And, with respect to what we are discussing here, it is clear that it presents itself to us at critical stages throughout life, from the earliest stages of human growth as primary envy (Klein, 1957), through the inevitable experiences of loss across the lifespan, to the later stages in the prospect of death. Placed in this context, Klein's theory of unconscious envy takes on a new significance. Envy is the expression of an archetype that lies at the core of our being, and it would seem, it is an archetype that must find expression very early in our unfoldment. Envy takes on a transpersonal significance, as an in-built mechanism for dealing with life's inherent limitations. Indeed, if we take this claim seriously, then it does not take much effort to realize that the God archetype could not manifest itself in human consciousness in any other way. It is therefore my claim that envy is a necessary condition for human growth.
Taken from:
http://www.psy.dmu.ac.uk/drhiles/ENVYpaper.htmCheers[
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