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Collective unconscious

Collective unconscious (kollektives Unbewusstes) refers to the unconscious mind and shared mental concepts. It is generally associated with idealism and was coined by Carl Jung. According to Jung, the human collective unconscious is populated by instincts, as well as by archetypes: ancient primal symbols such as The Great Mother, the Wise Old Man, the Shadow, the Tower, Water, and the Tree of Life. Jung considered the collective unconscious to underpin and surround the unconscious mind, distinguishing it from the personal unconscious of Freudian psychoanalysis. He believed that the concept of the collective unconscious helps to explain why similar themes occur in mythologies around the world. He argued that the collective unconscious had a profound influence on the lives of individuals, who lived out its symbols and clothed them in meaning through their experiences. The psychotherapeutic practice of analytical psychology revolves around examining the patient's relationship to the collective unconscious.

Psychiatrist and Jungian analyst Lionel Corbett argues that the contemporary terms "autonomous psyche" or "objective psyche" are more commonly used today in the practice of depth psychology rather than the traditional term of the "collective unconscious". Critics of the collective unconscious concept have called it unscientific and fatalistic, or otherwise very difficult to test scientifically (due to the mystical aspect of the collective unconscious). Proponents suggest that it is borne out by findings of psychology, neuroscience, and anthropology.

Basic explanation
The term "collective unconscious" first appeared in Jung's 1916 essay, "The Structure of the Unconscious". This essay distinguishes between the "personal", Freudian unconscious, filled with sexual fantasies and repressed images, and the "collective" unconscious encompassing the soul of humanity at large.

In "The Significance of Constitution and Heredity in Psychology" (November 1929), Jung wrote: "And the essential thing, psychologically, is that in dreams, fantasies, and other exceptional states of mind the most far-fetched mythological motifs and symbols can appear autochthonously at any time, often, apparently, as the result of particular influences, traditions, and excitations working on the individual, but more often without any sign of them. These 'primordial images' or 'archetypes,' as I have called them, belong to the basic stock of the unconscious psyche and cannot be explained as personal acquisitions. Together they make up that psychic stratum which has been called the collective unconscious.

The existence of the collective unconscious means that individual consciousness is anything but a tabula rasa and is not immune to predetermining influences. On the contrary, it is in the highest degree influenced by inherited presuppositions, quite apart from the unavoidable influences exerted upon it by the environment. The collective unconscious comprises in itself the psychic life of our ancestors right back to the earliest beginnings. It is the matrix of all conscious psychic occurrences, and hence it exerts an influence that compromises the freedom of consciousness in the highest degree, since it is continually striving to lead all conscious processes back into the old paths."

On October 19, 1936, Jung delivered a lecture "The Concept of the Collective Unconscious" to the Abernethian Society at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London. He said:

"My thesis then, is as follows: in addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature and which we believe to be the only empirical psyche (even if we tack on the personal unconscious as an appendix), there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents."

Jung linked the collective unconscious to "what Freud called 'archaic remnants' – mental forms whose presence cannot be explained by anything in the individual's own life and which seem to be aboriginal, innate, and inherited shapes of the human mind". He credited Freud for developing his "primal horde" theory in Totem and Taboo and continued further with the idea of an archaic ancestor maintaining its influence in the minds of present-day humans. Every human being, he wrote, "however high his conscious development, is still an archaic man at the deeper levels of his psyche."

As modern humans go through their process of individuation, moving out of the collective unconscious into mature selves, they establish a persona—which can be understood simply as that small portion of the collective psyche which they embody, perform, and identify with.

The collective unconscious exerts overwhelming influence on the minds of individuals. These effects of course vary widely, however, since they involve virtually every emotion and situation. At times, the collective unconscious can terrify, but it can also heal.

Archetypes
In an early definition of the term, Jung writes: "Archetypes are typical modes of apprehension, and wherever we meet with uniform and regularly recurring modes of apprehension we are dealing with an archetype, no matter whether its mythological character is recognized or not." He traces the term back to Philo, Irenaeus, and the Corpus Hermeticum, which associate archetypes with divinity and the creation of the world, and notes the close relationship of Platonic ideas.

These archetypes dwell in a world beyond the chronology of a human lifespan, developing on an evolutionary timescale. Regarding the animus and anima, the male principle within the woman and the female principle within the man, Jung writes:

"They evidently live and function in the deeper layers of the unconscious, especially in that phylogenetic substratum which I have called the collective unconscious. This localization explains a good deal of their strangeness: they bring into our ephemeral consciousness an unknown psychic life belonging to a remote past. It is the mind of our unknown ancestors, their way of thinking and feeling, their way of experiencing life and the world, gods, and men. The existence of these archaic strata is presumably the source of man's belief in reincarnations and in memories of 'previous experiences'. Just as the human body is a museum, so to speak, of its phylogenetic history, so too is the psyche."

Jung also described archetypes as imprints of momentous or frequently recurring situations in the lengthy human past.

A complete list of archetypes cannot be made, nor can differences between archetypes be absolutely delineated. For example, the Eagle is a common archetype that may have a multiplicity of interpretations. It could mean the soul leaving the mortal body and connecting with the heavenly spheres, or it may mean that someone is sexually impotent, in that they have had their spiritual ego body engaged. In spite of this difficulty, Jungian analyst June Singer suggests a partial list of well-studied archetypes, listed in pairs of opposites:

Jung made reference to contents of this category of the unconscious psyche as being similar to Levy-Bruhl's use of collective representations or "représentations collectives", Mythological "motifs", Hubert and Mauss's "categories of the imagination", and Adolf Bastian's "primordial thoughts". He also called archetypes "dominants" because of their profound influence on mental life.

Instincts
Jung's exposition of the collective unconscious builds on the classic issue in psychology and biology regarding nature versus nurture. If we accept that nature, or heredity, has some influence on the individual psyche, we must examine the question of how this influence takes hold in the real world.

On exactly one night in its entire lifetime, the yucca moth discovers pollen in the opened flowers of the yucca plant, forms some into a pellet, and then transports this pellet, with one of its eggs, to the pistil of another yucca plant. This activity cannot be "learned"; it makes more sense to describe the yucca moth as experiencing intuition about how to act. Archetypes and instincts coexist in the collective unconscious as interdependent opposites, Jung would later clarify. Whereas for most animals intuitive understandings completely intertwine with instinct, in humans the archetypes have become a separate register of mental phenomena.

Humans experience five main types of instinct, wrote Jung: hunger, sexuality, activity, reflection, and creativity. These instincts, listed in order of increasing abstraction, elicit and constrain human behavior, but also leave room for freedom in their implementation and especially in their interplay. Even a simple hungry feeling can lead to many different responses, including metaphorical sublimation. These instincts could be compared to the "drives" discussed in psychoanalysis and other domains of psychology. Several readers of Jung have observed that in his treatment of the collective unconscious, Jung suggests an unusual mixture of primordial, "lower" forces, and spiritual, "higher" forces.

Exploration
Jung believed that proof of the existence of a collective unconscious, and insight into its nature, could be gleaned primarily from dreams and from active imagination, a waking exploration of fantasy.

Jung considered that 'the shadow' and the anima and animus differ from the other archetypes in the fact that their content is more directly related to the individual's personal situation'. These archetypes, a special focus of Jung's work, become autonomous personalities within an individual psyche. Jung encouraged direct conscious dialogue of the patients with these personalities within. While the shadow usually personifies the personal unconscious, the anima or the Wise Old Man can act as representatives of the collective unconscious.

Jung suggested that parapsychology, alchemy, and occult religious ideas could contribute understanding of the collective unconscious. Based on his interpretation of synchronicity and extra-sensory perception, Jung argued that psychic activity transcended the brain. In alchemy, Jung found that plain water, or seawater, corresponded to his concept of the collective unconscious.

In humans, the psyche mediates between the primal force of the collective unconscious and the experience of consciousness or dream. Therefore, symbols may require interpretation before they can be understood as archetypes. Jung writes:

"We have only to disregard the dependence of dream language on environment and substitute 'eagle' for 'aeroplane,' 'dragon' for 'automobile' or 'train,' 'snake-bite' for 'injection,' and so forth, in order to arrive at the more universal and more fundamental language of mythology. This give us access to the primordial images that underlie all thinking and have a considerable influence even on our scientific ideas."

A single archetype can manifest in many different ways. Regarding the Mother archetype, Jung suggests that not only can it apply to mothers, grandmothers, stepmothers, mothers-in-law, and mothers in mythology, but to various concepts, places, objects, and animals:

"Other symbols of the mother in a figurative sense appear in things representing the goal of our longing for redemption, such as Paradise, the Kingdom of God, the Heavenly Jerusalem. Many things arousing devotion or feelings of awe, as for instance the Church, university, city or country, heaven, earth, the woods, the sea or any still waters, matter even, the underworld and the moon, can be mother-symbols. The archetype is often associated with things and places standing for fertility and fruitfulness: the cornucopia, a ploughed field, a garden. It can be attached to a rock, a cave, a tree, a spring, a deep well, or to various vessels such as the baptismal font, or to vessel-shaped flowers like the rose or the lotus. Because of the protection it implies, the magic circle or mandala can be a form of mother archetype. Hollow objects such as ovens or cooking vessels are associated with the mother archetype, and, of course, the uterus, yoni, and anything of a like shape. Added to this list there are many animals, such as the cow, hare, and helpful animals in general."

Care must be taken, however, to determine the meaning of a symbol through further investigation; one cannot simply decode a dream by assuming these meanings are constant. Archetypal explanations work best when an already-known mythological narrative can clearly help to explain the confusing experience of an individual.

Evidence
In his clinical psychiatry practice, Jung identified mythological elements which seemed to recur in the minds of his patients—above and beyond the usual complexes which could be explained in terms of their personal lives. The most obvious patterns applied to the patient's parents: "Nobody knows better than the psychotherapist that the mythologizing of the parents is often pursued far into adulthood and is given up only with the greatest resistance."

Jung cited recurring themes as evidence of the existence of psychic elements shared among all humans. For example: "The snake-motif was certainly not an individual acquisition of the dreamer, for snake-dreams are very common even among city-dwellers who have probably never seen a real snake." Still better evidence, he felt, came when patients described complex images and narratives with obscure mythological parallels. Jung's leading example of this phenomenon was a paranoid-schizophrenic patient who could see the sun's dangling phallus, whose motion caused wind to blow on earth. Jung found a direct analogue of this idea in the "Mithras Liturgy", from the Greek Magical Papyri of Ancient Egypt—only just translated into German—which also discussed a phallic tube, hanging from the sun, and causing wind to blow on earth. He concluded that the patient's vision and the ancient Liturgy arose from the same source in the collective unconscious.

Going beyond the individual mind, Jung believed that "the whole of mythology could be taken as a sort of projection of the collective unconscious". Therefore, psychologists could learn about the collective unconscious by studying religions and spiritual practices of all cultures, as well as belief systems like astrology.

Criticism of Jung's evidence
Popperian critic Ray Scott Percival disputes some of Jung's examples and argues that his strongest claims are not falsifiable. Percival takes especial issue with Jung's claim that major scientific discoveries emanate from the collective unconscious and not from unpredictable or innovative work done by scientists. Percival charges Jung with excessive determinism and writes: "He could not countenance the possibility that people sometimes create ideas that cannot be predicted, even in principle." Regarding the claim that all humans exhibit certain patterns of mind, Percival argues that these common patterns could be explained by common environments (i.e. by shared nurture, not nature). Because all people have families, encounter plants and animals, and experience night and day, it should come as no surprise that they develop basic mental structures around these phenomena.

This latter example has been the subject of contentious debate, and Jung critic Richard Noll has argued against its authenticity.

Ethology and biology
Animals all have some innate psychological concepts which guide their mental development. The concept of imprinting in ethology is one well-studied example, dealing most famously with the Mother constructs of newborn animals. The many predetermined scripts for animal behavior are called innate releasing mechanisms.

Proponents of the collective unconscious theory in neuroscience suggest that mental commonalities in humans originate especially from the subcortical area of the brain: specifically, the thalamus and limbic system. These centrally located structures link the brain to the rest of the nervous system and are said to control vital processes including emotions and long-term memory.

Archetype research
A more common experimental approach investigates the unique effects of archetypal images. An influential study of this type, by Rosen, Smith, Huston, & Gonzalez in 1991, found that people could better remember symbols paired with words representing their archetypal meaning. Using data from the Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism and a jury of evaluators, Rosen et al. developed an "Archetypal Symbol Inventory" listing symbols and one-word connotations. Many of these connotations were obscure to laypeople. For example, a picture of a diamond represented "self"; a square represented "Earth". They found that even when subjects did not consciously associate the word with the symbol, they were better able to remember the pairing of the symbol with its chosen word. Brown & Hannigan replicated this result in 2013, and expanded the study slightly to include tests in English and in Spanish of people who spoke both languages.

Maloney (1999) asked people questions about their feelings to variations on images featuring the same archetype: some positive, some negative, and some non-anthropomorphic. He found that although the images did not elicit significantly different responses to questions about whether they were "interesting" or "pleasant", but did provoke highly significant differences in response to the statement: "If I were to keep this image with me forever, I would be". Maloney suggested that this question led the respondents to process the archetypal images on a deeper level, which strongly reflected their positive or negative valence.

Ultimately, although Jung referred to the collective unconscious as an empirical concept, based on evidence, its elusive nature does create a barrier to traditional experimental research. June Singer writes: "But the collective unconscious lies beyond the conceptual limitations of individual human consciousness, and thus cannot possibly be encompassed by them. We cannot, therefore, make controlled experiments to prove the existence of the collective unconscious, for the psyche of man, holistically conceived, cannot be brought under laboratory conditions without doing violence to its nature. ... In this respect, psychology may be compared to astronomy, the phenomena of which also cannot be enclosed within a controlled setting. The heavenly bodies must be observed where they exist in the natural universe, under their own conditions, rather than under conditions we might propose to set for them."

Application to psychotherapy
Psychotherapy based on analytical psychology would seek to analyze the relationship between a person's individual consciousness and the deeper common structures which underlie them. Personal experiences both activate archetypes in the mind and give them meaning and substance for individual. At the same time, archetypes covertly organize human experience and memory, their powerful effects becoming apparent only indirectly and in retrospect. Understanding the power of the collective unconscious can help an individual to navigate through life.

In the interpretation of analytical psychologist Mary Williams, a patient who understands the impact of the archetype can help to dissociate the underlying symbol from the real person who embodies the symbol for the patient. In this way, the patient no longer uncritically transfers their feelings about the archetype onto people in everyday life, and as a result, can develop healthier and more personal relationships.

Practitioners of analytic psychotherapy, Jung cautioned, could become so fascinated with manifestations of the collective unconscious that they facilitated their appearance at the expense of their patient's well-being. Individuals with schizophrenia, it is said, fully identify with the collective unconscious, lacking a functioning ego to help them deal with actual difficulties of life.

Application to politics and society
Elements from the collective unconscious can manifest among groups of people, who by definition all share a connection to these elements. Groups of people can become especially receptive to specific symbols due to the historical situation they find themselves in. The common importance of the collective unconscious makes people ripe for political manipulation, especially in the era of mass politics. Jung compared mass movements to mass psychoses, comparable to demonic possession in which people uncritically channel unconscious symbolism through the social dynamic of the mob and the leader.

Although civilization leads people to disavow their links with the mythological world of uncivilized societies, Jung argued that aspects of the primitive unconscious would nevertheless reassert themselves in the form of superstitions, everyday practices, and unquestioned traditions such as the Christmas tree.

Based on empirical inquiry, Jung felt that all humans, regardless of racial and geographic differences, share the same collective pool of instincts and images, though these manifest differently due to the moulding influence of culture. However, above and in addition to the primordial collective unconscious, people within a certain culture may share additional bodies of primal collective ideas.

Jung called the UFO phenomenon a "living myth", a legend in the process of consolidation. Belief in a messianic encounter with UFOs demonstrated the point, Jung argued, that even if a rationalistic modern ideology repressed the images of the collective unconscious, its fundamental aspects would inevitably resurface. The circular shape of the flying saucer confirms its symbolic connection to repressed but psychically necessary ideas of divinity.

The universal applicability of archetypes has not escaped the attention of marketing specialists, who observe that branding can resonate with consumers through appeal to archetypes of the collective unconscious.

Distinction from related concepts
Jung contrasted the collective unconscious with the personal unconscious, the unique aspects of an individual study which Jung says constitute the focus of Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler. Psychotherapy patients, it seemed to Jung, often described fantasies and dreams which repeated elements from ancient mythology. These elements appeared even in patients who were probably not exposed to the original story. For example, mythology offers many examples of the "dual mother" narrative, according to which a child has a biological mother and a divine mother. Therefore, argues Jung, Freudian psychoanalysis would neglect important sources for unconscious ideas, in the case of a patient with neurosis around a dual-mother image.

This divergence over the nature of the unconscious has been cited as a key aspect of Jung's famous split from Sigmund Freud and his school of psychoanalysis. Some commentators have rejected Jung's characterization of Freud, observing that in texts such as Totem and Taboo (1913) Freud directly addresses the interface between the unconscious and society at large. Jung himself said that Freud had discovered a collective archetype, the Oedipus complex, but that it "was the first archetype Freud discovered, the first and only one".

Jung also distinguished the collective unconscious and collective consciousness, between which lay "an almost unbridgeable gulf over which the subject finds himself suspended". According to Jung, collective consciousness (meaning something along the lines of consensus reality) offered only generalizations, simplistic ideas, and the fashionable ideologies of the age. This tension between collective unconscious and collective consciousness corresponds roughly to the "everlasting cosmic tug of war between good and evil" and has worsened in the time of the mass man.

Organized religion, exemplified by the Catholic Church, lies more with the collective consciousness; but, through its all-encompassing dogma it channels and molds the images which inevitably pass from the collective unconscious into the minds of people. (Conversely, religious critics including Martin Buber accused Jung of wrongly placing psychology above transcendental factors in explaining human experience.)

Minimal and maximal interpretations
In a minimalist interpretation of what would then appear as "Jung's much misunderstood idea of the collective unconscious", his idea was "simply that certain structures and predispositions of the unconscious are common to all of us ... [on] an inherited, species-specific, genetic basis". Thus "one could as easily speak of the 'collective arm' – meaning the basic pattern of bones and muscles which all human arms share in common."

Others point out however that "there does seem to be a basic ambiguity in Jung's various descriptions of the Collective Unconscious. Sometimes he seems to regard the predisposition to experience certain images as understandable in terms of some genetic model" – as with the collective arm. However, Jung was "also at pains to stress the numinous quality of these experiences, and there can be no doubt that he was attracted to the idea that the archetypes afford evidence of some communion with some divine or world mind', and perhaps 'his popularity as a thinker derives precisely from this" – the maximal interpretation.

Marie-Louise von Franz accepted that "it is naturally very tempting to identify the hypothesis of the collective unconscious historically and regressively with the ancient idea of an all-extensive world-soul." New Age writer Sherry Healy goes further, claiming that Jung himself "dared to suggest that the human mind could link to ideas and motivations called the collective unconscious ... a body of unconscious energy that lives forever." This is the idea of monopsychism.

Other researchers, including Alexander Fowler, have proposed using the minimal interpretation of his work and incorporating it into that of the theory of biological evolution (i.e., sexual selection) or to unify disparate theoretical orientations within psychology such as neuropsychology, evolutionary psychology and analytical psychology as Jung's postulation of an evidenced mechanism for the genetic transmission of information through sexual selection provides a singular explanation for unanswered questions held by those of varied theoretical orientations.

Translated texts by Jung

 * "On the Nature of the Psyche" – full text hosted at American Buddha Online Library
 * "The Concept of the Collective Unconscious" – Bahá'í Studies Web Server

Secondary literature

 * Brown, Jeffrey M., & Terence P. Hannigan. "An Empirical Test of Carl Jung's Collective Unconscious (Archetypal) Memory ". Journal of Border Education Research 5, Fall 2006.
 * DelVecchio, Milan. "We Archipelago: A Productive Reaction to the Collective Unconscious, in a Conscious State". 2013 Critical Information conference, School of Visual Arts.
 * Greenwood, Susan F. "Emile Durkheim and C. G. Jung: Structuring a Transpersonal Sociology of Religion". Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 29.4, 1990; International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 32.2.
 * Hossain, Shaikat. "The Internet as a Tool for Studying the Collective Unconscious". Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche 6.2, 2012.
 * Niesser, Arthur. "Neuroscience and Jung's Model of the Psyche: A Close Fit" (archived). International Association for Analytical Psychology, 2004 Conference.
 * Rosen, D. H.; S. M. Smith; H. L. Huston; & G. Gonzalez. "Empirical Study of Associations Between Symbols and Their Meanings: Evidence of Collective Unconscious (Archetypal) Memory". Journal of Analytical Psychology 36, 1991.
 * Sedivi, Amy Elizabeth. "Unveiling the Unconscious: The Influence of Jungian Psychology on Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko". B.A. thesis accepted at College of William and Mary, May 6, 2009.
 * Shelburne, Walter Avory. "C. G. Jung's Theory of the Collective Unconscious: A Rational Reconstruction". PhD dissertation accepted at University of Florida, June 1976.
 * Sheldrake, Rupert. "Society, Spirit & Ritual: Morphic Resonance and the Collective Unconscious - Part II". Psychological Perspectives 18.2, Fall 1987.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Collective unconscious


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User:GABaker

I have enjoyed working on Wikipedia. I came here after seeing an article on Kuro5hin, checked it out, and found that I could make a positive contribution.

Biographical Information
Full name: Gregory Albert Baker (there are a lot of us in this world) Birth: September 20, 1955, in Washington, D.C. Education: B.Sci, University of Maryland; Empire State Military Academy, Army OCS; couple of computer schools

City: Odenton, Odenton, Watch Your Step, Odenton, Maryland Profession: Technical writer and substitute teacher; occasional writer of fiction and nonfiction Family: wife, daughter, two cats

mailto:nyekulturniy@hotmail.com&subject=Wikipedia

Interests and Hobbies

 * International broadcasting
 * Shortwave radio; I've been listening since 1968
 * Open-source intelligence gathering
 * Music, listening and playing

Dumb Facts About Me

 * I was born in the eye of a hurricane. No, I'm not Jumping Jack Flash.
 * I'm a distant cousin of former Vice President Albert Gore.

Contributions to the Wikipedia
Articles started:
 * Voice of America
 * Broadcasting
 * International broadcasting
 * Civil Air Patrol
 * Longwave
 * Mediumwave
 * Black comedy
 * Alas, Babylon
 * Fail-Safe
 * Soviet submarine Komsomolets
 * Fort George G. Meade
 * Knots
 * Ded reckoning
 * Lord Haw-Haw
 * Northwest Ordinance
 * STANAG
 * Motion picture rating systems
 * Ace
 * Ship prefix
 * Order of battle
 * Business process improvement
 * IBM Message Queue Interface

Articles to which I contributed more than minor material:
 * Propaganda
 * Dictionary attack
 * Shortwave
 * Winfield Scott
 * BBC World Service
 * World War III
 * Detective
 * Battle of Tsushima
 * Military doctrine
 * Chechnya
 * William Joyce
 * George Washington
 * Arab League
 * Russian submarine Kursk
 * Military intelligence
 * Merkava

Please note: I truly value working collaboratively with other people on this project, and do not want to be seen as grabbing credit in a collaborative work. However, I am also proud of what I write; furthermore, if anyone has a specific criticism of my facts or my style, I would be glad to address that. As Huey Long once said, "He who does not toot his own horn, the same shall not be tooted."

Other Stuff

 * The Battle of Hell, Kentucky; An Essay in Creative History
 * Contributions to the UNCLE/Callahan series on alt.callahans. including the Bunnies
 * Contributions to Plastic.com

title: User:GABaker


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User talk:GABaker

Hello there GABaker, welcome to the 'pedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you ever need editing help visit How does one edit a page and experiment at Sandbox. If you need pointers on how we title pages visit Naming conventions or how to format them visit our manual of style. If you have any other questions about the project then check out Help or add a question to the Village pump. BTW, I like you additions to the propaganda aticle. Cheers! --maveric149

I'm not sure I agree with your changes to Christian mythology and Islamic mythology. What makes you think those statements were not NPOV. (Since you appear to be new, to respond to this message, click on my name and go to the Talk Page, add your response to the bottom of that) Tokerboy 15:17 Oct 28, 2002 (UTC)

Hi. I was just looking at the article on Ace and I was wondering why you decided not to have a table for WWI aces. Do you think this deserves a page on it's own? Mintguy

The only reason I haven't done WWI yet is because I haven't had the time to do it. The WWII and other wars need updating as well. --GABaker

Hi there! I notice that you started the VoA article - do you have any idea what law prohibits it being broadcast in the US, and why? Thanks, Mark Richards 07:34, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Foreign Policy and learning
Hi, we are wondering what you may have meant when you added the sentence (Israel possesses nuclear weapons.) This poses a problem to American foreign policy, which by law must sanction Middle Eastern state with nuclear weapons. to Israel and weapons of mass destruction.?

Given that I am already here I would also like to know if you would be interested in a learning project I describe on my page. Get-back-world-respect 15:28, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing
Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 2000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:
 * Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
 * Multi-Licensing Guide
 * Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the " " template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

 * Option 1
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR
 * Option 2
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions to any U.S. state, county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace " " with "  ". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

Coast Guard
GABaker. Nice work with the Coast Guard page, I think that it looks much better. I'm still going to re-add the cleanup tag, because the article still seems very disorganized, especially with the history. The table of contents also seems unnecessarily long.
 * There's a lot more to be added, but there's a reason it's in short sections; we're trying to make things more organized and easier to find. GABaker

USCGC Munro
Back in February, you added, "A cutter, the USCGC Munro, was commissioned in his honor in 1944, and the name has remained in commission ever since." to the USCG page. The Coast Guard doen't seem to have anything on this ship, and all Google seems to have are echoes of Wikipedia. Is this a mistaken reference to the Navy ship, USS Douglas A. Munro (DE-422)? —wwoods 22:26, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

 * No, there's a cutter Munro, or at least Coast Guard Magazine thinks so! GABaker

 * There certainly is now a cutter Munro: USCGC Munro (WHEC-724). She was commissioned in 1971, and is still on active service. http://www.uscg.mil/pacarea/Munro/History.html
 * And there certainly was a ship named in Munro's honor, and commissioned in 1944: USS Douglas A. Munro (DE-422), a Navy destroyer escort. She was decommissioned 24 June 1960. http://www.history.navy.mil/danfs/d5/douglas_a_munro.htm

 * But was there an earlier cutter? The Coast Guard's website doesn't list one (http://www.uscg.mil/hq/g-cp/history/CutterList.html). Do you have a copy of the Coast Guard Magazine article? What exactly does it say?
 * —wwoods 07:19, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

 * The link is . The USGCG Munro is currently in the Persian Gulf. Recent operations were with RFA Wave Knight in interdicting smuggling. GABaker

 * But that's USCGC Munro (WHEC-724) again, not her hypothetical predecessor from the 1940s. Here's a bunch of press releases from January, when she was doing tsunami relief: . I've updated the article on Munro, adding the Persian Gulf.
 * —wwoods 19:49, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

New radio station articles
Can you had the categories to these when you create them? Also remember to add the last 3 letters of the call sign to sort them in the categories. Vegaswikian 20:18, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Enjoyed the article which you started on WWRC AM 1260. The mergers, acquisitions and closings can all be a bit confusing to follow without the overview of a good history--I used to listen to WWDC AM 1260 back in the day and wondered about its transformation. I also liked the frequency grid at bottom and plan now to browse through it a bit to learn what may have happened to other stations such as WHFS 99.1 FM. I noticed you did not list the initial stub as part of your contributions to Wikipedia, perhaps because of its brevity relative to your other contributions. Nonetheless, may I suggest you do so. And I hope you will continue to write about radio in the Washington, DC, metro area. Thank you. WashDC 69.72.30.139 14:58, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikicity
You seem like a big Harry Turtledove fan. I help at the Turtledove wikicity and we need as much help as we can get. Anyone is invited. Raylan 15:05, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

War and Remembrance
Very nice contributions to the article on this major 20th cent novel. Would you be able to add something to the "Plot summary" section, it is ages since I read it so would struggle myself. Just as a guide try looking at WikiProject Novels/ArticleTemplate for some other section prompts, idea and style ideas. Hope it helps. Thanks again. :: Kevinalewis  :  (Talk Page)  16:18, 22 March 2006 (UTC) GABaker 20:58, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I've been watching the miniseries on some rather scratchy VCR tapes and reading the novel again. I have enjoyed doing so. GABaker 22 March 2005 20:58 (UTC)

Trooping the Colour - BBC2 references
Hi - I have been doing extensive cleanup on this in trying to raise it to Featured Article standard. Regarding your refs to the BBC2 broadcasts in 2005 and 2006. I am presuming that you have put these in because you have contributed to these in the past and used the commentary in the article in some way, esp. if you have referred to them on video. That, to me, can be the only reason for including the broadcasts which are not available to the worldwide Wiki audience.

The Beeb 2 broadcasts are generally highlights; is there any reason why you don't refer to the BBC1 version shown in the morning? In any event, could you please format those references with full dates and times to conform to Wikipedia guidelines?

Please post your reply on Talk:Trooping the Colour. -- FClef (Talk) 02:32, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Unspecified source for Image:CoastGuardEnsign.jpg
Thanks for uploading Image:CoastGuardEnsign.jpg. I notice the file's description page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you have not created this file yourself, then there needs to be an argument why we have the right to use it on Wikipedia (see copyright tagging below). If you did not create the file yourself, then you need to specify where it was found, i.e., in most cases link to the website where it was taken from, and the terms of use for content from that page.

If the file also doesn't have a copyright tag, then one should be added. If you created/took the picture, audio, or video then the GFDL-self tag can be used to release it under the GFDL. If you believe the media meets the criteria at Fair use, use a tag such as or one of the other tags listed at Image copyright tags. See Image copyright tags for the full list of copyright tags that you can use.

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WGMS Comment
Please do not add the comment "poorly written update rewritten" on the WGMS page. I could say the same about the WFAX page (please don't put additions below the links). The article in question on WGMS was taken from DCRTV.com directly, so no one on Wikipedia wrote that article. Contact DCRTV.com to let them know that their writting skills aren't up to par. Even if someone writes something here on Wiki, give 'em a break....we aren't all great writers. Thanks....SVRTVDude 04:10, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Coast Guard article mergers
Hi there. I have proposed merging Federal Maritime Security Coordinator, Officer in Charge Marine Inspections, Federal On Scene Coordinator (USCG), and the U.S. section of Captain of the Port into Sector Commander. Just wanted to see if you have any thoughts on the topic. --Pesco 23:22, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Apparent copyright violation
Please be careful not to post copyrighted material to Wikipedia without permission from the copyright holder as you seem to have done to USAT Dorchester. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions will be deleted. You may use external websites as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences. The text you added is included verbatim in the document to which you linked and also in other places, like this blog. Thank you. --Moonriddengirl 17:24, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

--There cannot be a copyright violation, since as a work of the United States Government, Coast Guard public affairs releases are in the public domain. --GABaker 17:42, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

 * Thank you for the clarification. But please put comments on talk pages and not userpages. :) --Moonriddengirl 21:28, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
 * oh, and I'm sorry for the misidentification. And for forgetting to include that crucial component in my last response. --Moonriddengirl 21:50, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

AfD discussion
I thought that you, as a contributor to List of fictional books, might want to add your opinion to this discussion of the possible deletion of List of fictional books within the Harry Potter series.-- Shelf Skewed  Talk  18:32, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Kosovo War
Yesterday, you reverted the article on Kosovo War so that it now shows that participation of Mujahideen units in it is claimed by Serbia but disputed by KLA (which implies: claimed only by Serbia, and no one else). You also claimed that it is a concensus. However, if you look at the talk page, you will see that most users agree that the fact should be in the article, and no one mentions addition of the text you have reverted, so that is clearly not the concensus. Furthermore, no one mentioned that this fact is claimed by Serbia, actually not a single source provided was from Serbia, and no on mentioned that it is disputed by KLA. So, I urge you to not hastily revert in the future. Nikola 19:16, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Motor vessel Pegasus
A template has been added to the article Motor vessel Pegasus, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but this article may not satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and the deletion notice explains why (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may contest the proposed deletion by removing the  notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page. Also, please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. If you endorse deletion of the article, and you are the only person who has made substantial edits to the page, please tag it with db-author. NawlinWiki 20:54, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

1824: The Arkansas War, Eric Flint, Arkansas Army Flag
Hi-- thought I'd point out that you have the Arkansas army flag wrong. You just got a bit mixed up. The triangle is not smack dab in the middle, it's sideways from the hoist. It's called a chevron, I believe; though I think there might be another name. You can see an image of it on the cover of the Arkansas War-- the title is the flag. http://www.amazon.com/1824-Arkansas-War-Eric-Flint/dp/0345465695/ref=pd_bbs_2/002-8585063-6879216?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194643264&sr=8-2

The Arkansas Army flag is also identical to the national flag, but the national (before Driscoll altered it) was just a salmon field with the triangle. I was also under the impression that all the stripes/bars/whatever were the same size, but on that I could easily be wrong.

You also said it was described in Rivers of War, and even though that doesn't really matter, it wasn't-- 1824 was The Arkansas War, and in 1812: The Rivers of War Arkansas didn't exist as a nation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Walker-121 (talk • contribs) 21:50, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Cool. I'll fix it and repost-GAB.

Comment on user page
You left the following comment on my user page:
 * Okay, you got the joke and removed it. Fine. --GABaker 1719 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you are referring to here and I don't know why you put it on my user page as opposed to my talk page. (I actually hadn't realised that user pages were editable by other users.) I have deliberately kept my user page blank for years so that my username is red on history pages, and therefore easier to find. This is no longer the case and I'm not sure if there is a way to go back.

I have moved the comment to my talk page. Cjrother 03:05, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Kargil War
I'm pretty sure I added that a while back; maybe it got removed along the way, somehow. Good catch, at any rate. El_C 15:06, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Chippawa, Ontario
What is the reason that you undid my revision to Chippawa, Ontario? R00m c (talk) 04:25, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I prefer addding information, or improving the quality of information; in this case, could you try again with a more comprehensive revision? GABaker (talk) 17:01, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
 * But you can't just copy and past the work of some one else. According to Copyrights "Never use materials that infringe the copyrights of others. This could create legal liabilities and seriously hurt the project. If in doubt, write it yourself." You can use The Village of Chippawa - a history as a source of your information but you can not copy it directly. R00m c (talk) 20:52, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
 * True, and I didn't notice the copyright notice. With attribution and rewriting, it could be a very useful asset, however. Chippawa is important in U.S. military history because of the American victory there in 1814.GABaker (talk) 21:00, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree.R00m c (talk) 21:16, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Wars and conflicts between India and Pakistan
I have nominated Wars and conflicts between India and Pakistan, an article that you created, for deletion. I do not think that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at Articles for deletion/Wars and conflicts between India and Pakistan. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time.Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. Doctor muthu's muthu   wanna talk ? 23:00, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Articles for deletion nomination of Slobbovia
I have nominated Slobbovia, an article that you created, for deletion. I do not think that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at Articles for deletion/Slobbovia. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time.Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. Robofish (talk) 17:16, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Nomination of Disinformation for deletion
The article Disinformation is being discussed concerning whether it is suitable for inclusion as an article according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Articles for deletion/Disinformation until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on good quality evidence, and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. Tentontunic (talk) 13:16, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:51, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Better source request for File:Motor Vessel Pegasus salvage 2007.jpg
Thanks for your upload to Wikipedia: You provided a source, but it is difficult for other users to examine the copyright status of the image because the source is incomplete. Please consider clarifying the exact source so that the copyright status may be checked more easily. It is best to specify the exact Web page where you found the image, rather than only giving the source domain, search engine, pinboard, aggregator, or the URL of the image file itself. Please update the image description with a URL that will be more helpful to other users in determining the copyright status.
 * File:Motor Vessel Pegasus salvage 2007.jpg

If you have uploaded other files, consider checking that you have specified their source in a complete manner. You can find a list of files you have uploaded by following [ this link]. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page or me at my talk page. Thank you. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 22:02, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of WGAY (internet radio)

The article WGAY (internet radio) has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern: "Fails WP:GNG and WP:NMEDIA. There is no significant coverage of this internet radio station in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject."

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Nomination of Institutions in the Southern Victory Series for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Institutions in the Southern Victory Series, to which you have significantly contributed, is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or if it should be deleted.

The discussion will take place at Articles for deletion/Historical characters in the Southern Victory Series until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article.

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File source problem with File:Motor Vessel Pegasus salvage 2007.jpg
Thank you for uploading File:Motor Vessel Pegasus salvage 2007.jpg. I noticed that the file's description page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you did not create this file yourself, you will need to specify the owner of the copyright. If you obtained it from a website, please add a link to the page from which it was taken, together with a brief restatement of the website's terms of use of its content. If the original copyright holder is a party unaffiliated with the website, that author should also be credited. Please add this information by editing the image description page.

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This bot DID NOT nominate any file(s) for deletion; please refer to the page history of each individual file for details. Thanks, FastilyBot (talk) 01:01, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Nomination of 76.1 FM for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article 76.1 FM is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Articles for deletion/76.1 FM until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Several other radio frequency articles have also been nominated for deletion. Eastmain (talk • contribs) 02:47, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

title: User talk:GABaker


text: User:Spring~enwiki

title: User:Spring~enwiki


text:
User talk:Spring~enwiki

Hello there Spring, welcome to the 'pedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you ever need editing help visit How does one edit a page and experiment at Sandbox. If you need pointers on how we title pages visit Naming conventions or how to format them visit our manual of style. If you have any other questions about the project then check out Help or add a question to the Village pump. BTW, nice copyedits all 'round. We need more people like you. Cheers! --maveric149

Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called Spring. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name Spring~enwiki that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name. If you think you might own all of the accounts with this name and this message is in error, please visit Special:MergeAccount to check and attach all of your accounts to prevent them from being renamed.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours, Keegan Peterzell Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation 03:09, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed
 This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can |log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: . -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 19:09, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Spring~enwiki


text: User:Pathew

title: User:Pathew


text:
User talk:Pathew

Hello there Pathew, welcome to the 'pedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you ever need editing help visit How does one edit a page and experiment at Sandbox. If you need pointers on how we title pages visit Naming conventions or how to format them visit our manual of style. If you have any other questions about the project then check out Help or add a question to the Village pump. Cheers! --maveric149

title: User talk:Pathew


text:
User:EddEdmondson

I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

title: User:EddEdmondson


text:
User talk:EddEdmondson

Hi. It appears we have a problem in common? Reddi keeps reverting my changes to HAARP to include some cut-n-paste from the Telsa page, and any attempt to get him to either remove it or edit it are met with outright reverts. It appears this is happening to the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect page as well, and I note he has reverted it again. Maury 13:32, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * Yes, Reddi and I did have a bit of an editing battle, although I think it's died down and the major points that were wrong in the original article have stabilised. There are still points that I think might be wrong, and some external links he's added which I'd have said were on the borders of the subject, but I've decided to leave those for some other user to argue over. In fairness to Reddi he did build on some of the edits rather than directly reverting, which would have caused difficulties. EddEdmondson 14:39, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hi there. Thanks a lot for the note, I didn't notice it was still there. Yeah, that's the second time recently that I've had a page not go away when I tried to delete it. Last time I asked another admin, and he couldn't get it to delete either. Far as I know, that page is still there. Weird. Happy editing, Isomorphic 00:48, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Re: Speedy Deletion
Thanks for the comments you left on my talk page! I'll remember the Speedy Deletion tag from now on. :) Vesta 02:52, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It happens. Don't worry about it :) Dysprosia 12:59, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for support
Many thanks for your recent support for me as sysop. I think that I'll take some time playing myself in before I go mad! Cutler 12:24, Jul 9, 2004 (UTC)

What Cutler said! Neutrality 20:42, Jul 9, 2004 (UTC)

Quadell's nomination
At risk of increasing your Wikistress after your brain has had a bit of rest, I wanted to let you know that Jimbo Wales has given his opinion on the matter of the Khalid bin Mahfouz issues and Quadell's role in it. You may see this information at VfA. I would be grateful if you would read the material and see if it changes your opinion on the nomination (yet again). Thanks, Cecropia | Talk 03:57, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * Done EddEdmondson 06:51, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Page merging
Thanks for your help on the lightsabre thing Ed, sorry I'm still pretty new and didn't realise this.

Phil S

Article Licensing
Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 2000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:
 * Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
 * Multi-Licensing Guide
 * Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the " " template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

 * Option 1
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR
 * Option 2
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions to any U.S. state, county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace " " with "  ". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

Giant Pacific Octopus
you are right, the Giant Pacific octopus is larger than the 7 arm octopus, I reverted the articles calling the seven arm octopus the second largest. That may or may not be true though, but I posted on the seven armed octopus discussion page about a half dozen links that back up my claim, one froom the royal British Columbia museum claims to have records of a 600 lb Giant Pacific Octopus, that's huge. I cannot imagine an octopus that large. TotallyTempo 04:23, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:51, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:EddEdmondson


text: User:Sandvik

title: User:Sandvik


text:
User talk:Sandvik

Hello there Sandvik, welcome to the 'pedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you ever need editing help visit How does one edit a page and experiment at Sandbox. If you need pointers on how we title pages visit Naming conventions or how to format them visit our manual of style. If you have any other questions about the project then check out Help or add a question to the Village pump. BTW, nice work on the Tibet-related articles. Cheers! --maveric149

title: User talk:Sandvik


text:
Coming Home (1978 film)

Coming Home is a 1978 American romantic war drama film directed by Hal Ashby from a screenplay written by Waldo Salt and Robert C. Jones with story by Nancy Dowd. It stars Jane Fonda, Jon Voight, Bruce Dern, Penelope Milford, Robert Carradine and Robert Ginty. The film's narrative follows a perplexed woman, her Marine husband, and a paraplegic Vietnam War veteran with whom she develops a romantic relationship while her husband is deployed in Vietnam.

Coming Home was theatrically released on February 15, 1978, to critical and commercial success. Reviewers praised its direction, screenplay, and performances, while the film grossed $36 million worldwide against its $3 million budget, becoming the 15th highest-grossing film of 1978. It also premiered at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival, where it competed for the Palme d'Or, with Voight winning the Best Actor Prize.

The film received various awards and nominations. At the 36th Golden Globe Awards, it received six nominations including for the Best Motion Picture – Drama, with Voight and Fonda winning Best Actor and Best Actress. At the 51st Academy Awards, it received eight nominations including for the Best Picture, winning three; Best Original Screenplay with Voight and Fonda winning Best Actor and Best Actress.

Plot
In 1968 California, Sally, a loyal and conservative military wife, is married to Bob Hyde, a captain in the United States Marine Corps, who is about to be deployed to Vietnam. As a dedicated military officer, Bob sees the deployment primarily as an opportunity for career progress. At first, Sally dreads being left alone, but after a while, she feels liberated. Forced to find housing away from the base, she moves into a new apartment by the beach and buys a sports car. With nothing else to do, she decides to volunteer at a local Veterans Administration (VA) hospital, partially inspired by her bohemian friend Vi Munson, whose brother Billy has come home with grave emotional problems after just two weeks in Vietnam and now resides in the VA hospital.

At the hospital, Sally meets Luke Martin, a former high-school classmate. Like his friend Billy, Luke had gone to Vietnam but came back wounded. He is recuperating at the hospital from the injuries he sustained, which left him a paraplegic. Filled with pain, anger, and frustration, Luke is now opposed to the war. He is at first a bitter young man, but as he is increasingly thrown into contact with Sally, a relationship develops. Eventually, Luke is released from the hospital, and, newly mobile with his own wheelchair, begins to rebuild his life. His relationship with Sally deepens. She is also transformed by him, and her outlook on life starts to change. They have happy times, play at the beach, and fall in love. Meanwhile, Billy, traumatized by his experiences at war, commits suicide by injecting air into his veins. Driven by Billy's suicide, Luke chains himself to the gates of a local recruitment center in a vain attempt to stop others from enlisting.

Sally and Luke eventually make love, confronting his handicap, with Sally experiencing her first orgasm. However, she does not seek a divorce from her husband, and both she and Luke know that their relationship will have to end when Bob returns home. Bob does return, too soon, claiming that he had accidentally wounded himself in the leg. He is also suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from what he has seen in combat. Bob discovers Sally's affair from Army Intelligence, who has been spying on Luke since the gate incident, and Sally and Luke agree that Sally should try to patch things up with Bob. Bob loses control, confronting the lovers with a loaded rifle, but ultimately turns away. Bob places his neatly folded Marine dress uniform on the beach, takes off his wedding ring, and swims naked out into the ocean to commit suicide.

Production
Coming Home was conceived by Jane Fonda as the first feature for her own production company, IPC Films (for the Indochina Peace Campaign), with her associate producer Bruce Gilbert, a friend from her protest days. Fonda wished to make a film about the Vietnam War inspired by her friendship with Ron Kovic, a paraplegic Vietnam War veteran, whom she had met at an antiwar rally. At that time, Kovic had recently completed his autobiographical book Born on the Fourth of July, which later became an Oscar-winning motion picture of the same name directed by Oliver Stone, starring Tom Cruise as Kovic.

In 1972, Fonda hired Nancy Dowd, a friend from her days in the feminist movement, to write a script about the consequences of the war as seen through the eyes of a military wife. Originally, Dowd's story, tentatively titled Buffalo Ghosts, focused on two women, volunteers at a veterans' hospital, who must come to grips with the emotional toll that the war takes on its casualties and their families. The project dragged on for years until Gilbert and producer Jerome Hellman took it. The screenplay was reshaped significantly by the circle of talent who eventually brought it to the screen: Fonda, Ashby, Wexler, Jon Voight, producer Hellman and screenwriters Waldo Salt and Robert C. Jones. They were united by their opposition to the Vietnam War and by their concern for the veterans who were returning to America and facing difficulties adapting to life back home. Rudy Wurlitzer contributed uncredited work to the script.

John Schlesinger, who had worked with producers Hellman and Voight on Midnight Cowboy, was originally named the director but he left the project after feeling uncomfortable with the subject matter. The script was then passed to Michael Cimino, who at the time was interested in making another film about Vietnam. He declined, however, as he felt it was "bad fiction", which imposed a political idea rather than the truth of the stories of returning veterans. According to Cimino, the ending written in the original script was changed by Fonda: "'What was shot was Jane's ending — she was a pacifist and had to find a way for guilt to kill the character. In the original ending, Bruce Dern's character got himself a heavy machine gun, in a moment of madness went into the L.A. freeway, five lanes of traffic in both directions, and started shooting away, destroying everything in sight, an inferno. And she turned it into a Norman Maine complex, 'oh my God I'm so guilty for what I did in Vietnam that I'm going to kill myself by going in the sea'.'" Hal Ashby was next sent the script, who agreed to direct the film. Fonda was cast from the beginning as Sally Hyde, the housewife. A top box-office star was sought for the male lead to offset the grim nature of the story. Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson and Sylvester Stallone were all offered the part, but declined. Jon Voight had been considered for the role of the husband, but after becoming involved with the film, he campaigned to play the paraplegic veteran. Voight had participated in the anti-war movement and was a friend of Fonda, who was instrumental in helping him land the role, even though he had fallen from popularity since his Midnight Cowboy heyday. Bruce Dern, long stereotyped in sadistic roles, was chosen as the husband. The screenplay was written and rewritten until the project could wait no longer. Jane Fonda, who just finished Julia (1977), was soon to star in Alan J. Pakula's Comes a Horseman (1978). For director Ashby, this was his second film about the 1960s, in addition to his 1975 film Shampoo.

Ashby had cast singer-songwriter Guthrie Thomas to portray the role of Bill Munson after reviewing Thomas' screen test. Thomas joined his close friend Ashby and the entire cast at a restaurant by Malibu Beach before the start of production. Thomas had been previously cast in a previous Ashby film, Bound for Glory, starring David Carradine. Upon completion of the cast meeting, Thomas privately spoke with Ashby and told him, "Hal, I am a singer-songwriter as you know, and not an actor. In all fairness to you and this amazing cast, you need an extremely talented actor for this role and not a poor singer. I recommend either Bobby Carradine or Keith Carradine." Robert Carradine was cast and portrayed the role of Bill Munson.

Soundtrack

 * The Beatles: Hey Jude, Strawberry Fields Forever; (EMI Records Inc.)
 * Big Brother and the Holding Company Featuring Janis Joplin: Call On Me; (Columbia Records)
 * Tim Buckley: Once I Was; (Elektra Records)
 * Buffalo Springfield: Expecting to Fly, For What It's Worth; (Atlantic Records)
 * The Chambers Brothers: Time Has Come Today; (Columbia Records)
 * Bob Dylan: Just Like a Woman; (Columbia Records)
 * Aretha Franklin: Save Me; (Atlantic Recording Corporation)
 * Richie Havens: Follow; (M&M Records Inc.)
 * Jimi Hendrix: Manic Depression; (Warner Bros. Records)
 * Jefferson Airplane: White Rabbit; (RCA Records)
 * The Rolling Stones: Out of Time, No Expectations, Jumpin' Jack Flash, My Girl, Ruby Tuesday, Sympathy for the Devil (ABKCO Records Inc.)
 * Simon & Garfunkel: Bookends; (Columbia Records)
 * Steppenwolf: Born to Be Wild; (ABC Records Inc.)

Reception
Coming Home premiered at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival, where Voight won the award for Best Actor for his performance.

The film was released in the U.S. in February 1978. It proved popular with audiences and received generally good reviews. Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times commented that: "Despite an over-explicit soundtrack and some moments when the story in fact became a sermon, the movie effectively translated a changed national consciousness into credible and touching personal terms." The Toronto Sun called the film "The Best Years of Our Lives c. 1978 with the same high standards and the same lofty morals of an earlier era."

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 83% based on 29 reviews, with a rating average of 7.4/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Coming Home's stellar cast elevates the love triangle in the center of its story - and adds a necessary human component to its none-too-subtle political message."

The New York Times placed the film on its Best 1000 Movies Ever list.

Awards and nominations
American Film Institute lists
 * AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions – #78

title: Coming Home (1978 film)