Multiplicity

Multiplicity stands as one of the most consequential and contested terms in the depth-psychology corpus, operating simultaneously as ontological description, psychological diagnosis, and theological provocation. The tradition divides, broadly, into two camps: those who treat multiplicity as a condition to be overcome on the path toward unity or individuation, and those — most forcefully Hillman and his archetypal psychology lineage — who rehabilitate multiplicity as the very structure of psychic life and of reality itself. Plotinus establishes the metaphysical ground: multiplicity is the necessary consequence of any intellective act, since vision requires a visible object, and action requires diversity; yet for him multiplicity remains subordinate to the One from which it emanates. Hillman inverts this hierarchy, drawing on Jung’s own admission that the psyche is compounded of many souls (Origen: ‘Each of us is not one, but many’) to argue that psychic multiplicity is the norm, not pathology. Bosnak extends this to embodied imagination, where a multiplicity of subjectivities inhabits the body simultaneously. Miller’s polytheism and Padel’s Greek tragic self both corroborate this plural structure at the level of divinity and of inner experience respectively. Clarke frames the tension precisely: individuation can mistakenly be read as aiming at homogeneous unity, whereas it requires the revelation of multiplicity within apparent unity. The term thus marks a fundamental fault-line between monotheistic and polytheistic psychologies, between the drive toward the integrated self and the equally potent drive toward irreducible plurality.

In the library 16 passages

To the dreaming model of embodied imagination, a multiplicity of subjectivities is the norm, not the pathology. There is no single subject but a host of substantive beings, each manifesting its own subjectivity mixed with the medium of our physical bodies.

Bosnak argues that embodied imagination normalizes psychic multiplicity, treating the simultaneous co-presence of plural subjectivities as the foundational condition of imaginal life rather than as dissociation.

Bosnak, Robert, Embodiment: Creative Imagination in Medicine, Art and Travel, 2007thesis

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multiplicity of souls is commonly found by anthropologists investigating the psychological conceptions of pre-literate peoples. These different kinds of soul express the idea that there is a psychic aspect, or animation, within or attached to every bit of physical nature.

Hillman situates psychic multiplicity within a cross-cultural and alchemical tradition, presenting the plurality of souls as a near-universal conception that challenges the modern mono-psychic assumption.

Hillman, James, Anima: An Anatomy of a Personified Notion, 1985thesis

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Unless there is something beyond bare unity, there can be no vision: vision must converge with a visible object. And this which the seer is to see can be only a multiple, no undistinguishable unity; nor could a universal unity find anything upon which to exercise any act.

Plotinus establishes that multiplicity is the ontological precondition for intellective activity: any act of knowing or vision necessarily requires diversity, making multiplicity the structural complement to the One.

Plotinus, The Six Enneads, 270thesis

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the animus is defined as a multiplicity (CW 10, §81 — ‘he is not so much a unity as a plurality’). ‘The woman’s incubus consists of a host of masculine demons; the man’s succubus is a vampire.’

Hillman examines Jung’s asymmetric treatment of anima and animus, where the animus is constitutively multiple while the anima is defined as a unity, revealing how multiplicity is gendered and structured within Jungian metapsychology.

Hillman, James, Anima: An Anatomy of a Personified Notion, 1985thesis

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The emergence of a fuller and more balanced self through this activity is by no means smooth and easy, but requires the breaking down of the psyche, and the revelation of multiplicity within its apparent unity.

Clarke clarifies that Jungian individuation does not aim at homogeneity but requires the active disclosure of internal multiplicity as a constitutive stage in psychic transformation.

Clarke, J. J., Jung and Eastern Thought: A Dialogue with the Orient, 1994thesis

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Imagining insects numerically threatens the individualized fantasy of a unique and unitary human being. Usually, bug dreams are interpreted as signs of fragmentation and the lowering of individualized consciousness to an undifferentiated, merely numerical or statistical level.

Hillman uses insect multiplicity as a phenomenological challenge to the fantasy of unitary selfhood, revealing how sheer numerical abundance in nature exposes the fragility of individualistic psychology.

Hillman, James, Animal Presences, 2008thesis

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in virtue of their infinite nature their unity is a multiplicity, many in one and one over many, a unit-plurality. They act as entire upon entire; even upon the partial thing they act as entire.

Plotinus articulates the Intellectual Beings as a coincidence of unity and multiplicity — a ‘unit-plurality’ — offering the metaphysical model for how the One can be present entire in each of its many expressions.

Plotinus, The Six Enneads, 270supporting

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it must then have been defined as the Life of a unity including multiplicity; certainly too each item of the multiplicity is determined, determined as multiple by the multiplicity of Life but as a unity by the fact of limit.

Plotinus analyzes how determinate Life integrates multiplicity: each particular Intellectual-Principle is both a unity through its limit and multiple through its participation in the collective Life.

Plotinus, The Six Enneads, 270supporting

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‘The many contains the unity of the one without losing the possibilities of the many.’ This restates the Neoplatonist idea of skopos: the thematic unity of intention… which gives an internal necessity and fittingness to each part.

Miller advances a polytheistic psychology in which multiplicity is not dissolved by unity but rather contains it, restating the Neoplatonist skopos as the model for a psychology that honors both the one and the many.

Miller, David L., The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974supporting

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‘Reality consists of a multiplicity of things. But one is not a number, the first number is two, and with it multiplicity and reality begin.’ CW 14, §659.

Hillman cites Jung’s alchemical writings to ground the claim that multiplicity is coextensive with reality itself, since the number ‘one’ has no numerical standing — twoness and plurality inaugurate existence.

Hillman, James, Healing Fiction, 1983supporting

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In the Iliad, multiplicity, and damage, is a condition predominantly of the external body, but from Homer onward, the innards’ damage is seen as madness. Tragedy, unlike Homer, specializes in insight into the disunity of, and damage done to, mind.

Padel traces multiplicity from Homeric bodily fragmentation to the tragic internalization of psychic disunity, showing how Greek culture progressively located plural and conflicting forces within the inner life.

Padel, Ruth, In and Out of the Mind Greek Images of the Tragic Self, 1994supporting

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Bergson’s alternative to the multiplicity of things externally juxtaposed is the ‘multiplicity of fusion and interpenetration’ of consciousness. He proceeds by way of dilution, speaking of consciousness as if it were a liquid in which instants and positions dissolve.

Merleau-Ponty critically rehearses Bergson’s distinction between an external spatial multiplicity and an internal temporal multiplicity of fusion, positioning phenomenology beyond both.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Phenomenology of Perception, 1962supporting

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the second modifies that unity so as to support the manifestation of the Many in One and One in Many; the third further modifies it so as to support the evolution of a diversified individuality which, by the action of Ignorance, becomes in us at a lower level the illusion of the separate ego.

Aurobindo maps three supramental postures through which the divine moves from unitary self-extension to the support of multiplicity and ultimately individualized diversity, treating the Many-in-One as a structural level of consciousness.

Aurobindo, Sri, The Life Divine, 1939supporting

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This God is to be known but not understood… The God whom I know is this and that and just as much this other and that other. Therefore no one can understand this God.

In the Red Book, Philemon teaches that the divine exceeds any singular definition, implicitly invoking multiplicity as the proper mode of knowing a god who is irreducibly ‘this and that and just as much this other.’

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009aside

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Even if the psyche is a plurality of complexes, each with its soul-spark, one man, one anima is the formula.

Hillman notes that despite acknowledging a plurality of psychic complexes, Jung’s anima theory imposes a restrictive unity — one soul-image per man — generating a tension between psychic plurality and anima singularity.

Hillman, James, Anima: An Anatomy of a Personified Notion, 1985aside

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Only when stepping back and theorizing in the reflective stance about polytheistic consciousness can we speak about radical relativism… consciousness is reflecting Hercules at the crossroads.

Hillman cautions that the multiplicity of polytheistic consciousness is not experienced as relativism but as dramatic fate; speaking of it as multiple alternatives is itself an ego-stance, not the lived condition.

Hillman, James, Mythic Figures, 2007aside

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