Based on Jungian symbolic psychology, this book attributes an archetypal
foundation to the ego defense mechanisms of psychoanalysis and describes
the possibility that all psychological functions are creative or
defensive. Analyzing Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus, Carlos Amadeu
Botelho Byington describes envy as functioning creatively and
defensively in the relationship between Mozart and Salieri. He
demonstrates how psychoanalysis followed the biblical book of Genesis
and the Christian doctrine of original sin and "scientifically"
stigmatized envy. He asserts that this bias originated in severe
cultural pathology, which greatly distorted the Christian myth by
repressing creative envy because of its extraordinary revolutionary
potential for individual and cultural development.
This book defends the thesis that envy is a normal and important
function for the development of Individual and Cultural Consciousness,
and that it only becomes destructive when its creative function is
frustrated.
By analyzing the relationship between Mozart's genius and Salieri's
creative insecurity, the author goes back to Genesis, to the concept of
original sin in Christianity and to psychoanalysis to show that envy has
been disdained and repressed in the history of humanity by the fear we
have of our creative power. Envy is a sister of ambition. Both strive
equally for development. Ambition stimulates the Ego, and envy covets
what belongs to the other. Traditional Consciousness is manichaeistic
and radically divides psychic functions into Good and Evil, right and
wrong, beautiful and ugly. This obliges Consciousness to become
unilateral, repressing the side it judges to be bad. The repressed
contents form an intense shadow in the Unconscious, which are projected
onto others and treated with hostility. This is the ternary and paranoid
history of Humanity, in which the Ego sees Good and Evil in Others and
not in itself.
At the heart of Carlos Byington's thinking is his description of the
Alterity Archetype. This is a four-sided pattern of Individual and
Collective Consciousness in which the Ego becomes aware of the
Consciousness-Shadow polarity in itself and in the Other. The Alterity
Archetype is the paradigm of Love. Creativity, Social Democracy and
Sustainable Economics. It enables us to see all psychic functions.
including envy, acting for Good or for Evil, in Consciousness and the
Shadow of Individuals and Culture.
CARLOS AMADEU BOTELHO BYINGTON is a doctor, psychiatrist, educator
and historian. He went to secondary school in the United States of
America, qualified in medicine and psychiatry in Rio de Janeiro and
completed his post-graduate studies at the Jung Institute in Zurich,
Switzerland. On Returning to Brazil, in 1965, Byington expanded Jung's
archetypal concept to include Individual and Collective Consciousness.
In 1983, by studying the sociocultural transformation process in Latin
America, he formulated the Archetypal Theory of History, based on the
ideas of Hegel, Jung, Bachofen, and Erich Neumann's Mythological Theory
of Consciousness. According to Byington, all psychic functions are
archetypal structuring functions of consciousness. He attributes a
central position to envy, as important as sexuality, love, strive for
power, jealousy and fear.
