There's me, there is Sandi Peters and there is Carl Jung. You know me a little bit. You may not have heard of Sandi Peters but she is the main author of "Aging with Agency" written with a co-author, Prof. of Philosophy Drew Leder at Loyola University in Baltimore. Carl Jung is world-famous as the next big psychiatric thinker after Sigmund Freud.
The book Aging with Agency was already known to us through a friend. I read the books her book group picks aloud to her and the next book is this Agency. By the way, "agency" has picked up the meaning of something like 'control, purpose and participation'. So, the title means being an older person with some control over one's aging and life.
As I read it, I saw that the wording was more advanced and agreeable but it wasn't until chapter 3 that I got more enthusiastic and respectful of the book. Chapter 3 is about the work of Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist and friend of Freud. Freud is often referred to as the father of recognition of humans having other thinking parts than the conscious mind. From the little I know about either man, Sigmund Freud was a bit too focused on ideas of sexual thoughts and repression but Jung evidently was more aware of parts of our heads and memories that influence us but that are not consciously chosen.
I have a doctorate degree and so does my wife. We and friends who have the same degree are aware that on the morning of our orals, when we sit with several professors who are going to talk with us and render a decision as to our qualification to be doctors, that morning we ask ourselves if we are properly prepared. We put our minds to the question: Do we know enough? And the answer is No!!! There are hundreds of important articles we haven't read, there are dozens we didn't understand! What if questions are asked in other languages???
Yet, despite not having studied our own memories and convictions, we do have memories and convictions. We don't know why we picked those memories and not dozens of others that we could have picked to hang on to but didn't. It is handy if we have had the experience of living through orals and if we understand that parts of us are in use all the time, even in sleep!, that we don't know about, don't have control of, don't understand but are still influenced by. Carl Jung realized this weird truth.
