BOUNDARIES OF THE SOUL

circumference, embracing both consciousness and unconsciousness (Jung, CW 12,
par. 44). Like any archetype, the essential nature of the self is unknowable, but its
manifestations are the content of myth and legends (Sharp, 1991:119) where it is
often represented as a complexio oppositorum, a union of opposites (Jung, CW 6,
par. 790). The self seeks to project or embed itself into place and perhaps spirit of
place is a third element that emerges out of relationship as the self uses the ego in
order to locate itself in time and space. I n such instances place appears numinous
and, like the Dreaming of the Australian Aborigines, becomes a spiritual realm that
maintains a unity and continuity with the material world in the present. From this
process we may fathom the potential psychoid nature and multi-dimensionality of
place. Place is not so much an entity which is perceived, it is more a spectrum of
possible experiences analogous to various states of consciousness. The inner and
the outer places are not so much opposites or polarities for, to the psyche, each
involves the other, needs the other and is reciprocal to it. Thus, place has all the
qualities required of an archetypal energy or image and is a syzygy, a unity.
Place, in all of its guises, delineates the human condition, the collective and
individual identity, life and circumstances. The perceived physical, social,
geopolitical and historical boundaries of the places we inhabit produce equivalent
boundaries in our personas. We embed place in our language, within in our being;
for example, almost every child is familiar with the coupling of place to narrative
with the words, ... once upon a time in a land far away ..., narrative and place carry
each other. The birds, fish and animals and all animate creatures import place in to
their metaphorical language by scent marking places as their territory; by being
symbiotically related, indeed dependent, on the topography, climate and
geomorphic features of place, and the currents and water temperature of ocean
locales. Even the trees carry a place narrative for we can read the story of their
locale, their place, in the layers of their rings, the texture of their bark, their root
systems. Everything in a locale tells the story of place, and not just imaginatively.
The story of place leaves its imprint in so many ways that it is important for the
human inhabitant of place to know their story in relation to that particular place. A
deep appreciation, an understanding of the history and functioning of the places we
inhabit, is a necessary inspiration and guide for our own effective physical and
imaginative functioning as individuals and as a species. I ndeed, we are the soul and
story of every place in which we find ourselves.
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