ISBN: 978-0-593-49999-3

My rating: 87/100

See Book Notes for other books I have read. If you like my notes, go buy it!

A full text version can be found at https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.117195/2015.117195.Man-And-His-Symbols_djvu.txt

Key Points and Themes

• In Jung’s definition: Feeling is rational (ordering), as opposed to intuition which is irrational (perceiving).
• Contemporary man … is blind to the fact that, with all his rationality and efficiency, he is possessed by “powers” that are beyond his control. His gods and demons have not disappeared at all.
• Everything in a dream should be treated as fact, despite not making any sense upon waking. Dreams are specific expressions of the unconscious.
• Things [Christmas trees, Easter eggs] were generally done first and that it was only a long time afterward that somebody asked why they were done.
• Jung called the totality of the psyche the “Self”, and the small portion at the center of that the “Ego”.
• The process of individuation – is the conscious coming-to-terms with one’s inner center, or Self, and begins with a shocking wound to the personality that amounts to a “call”.
• [In a crisis] there is only one thing that seems to work; and that is to turn directly toward the approaching darkness without prejudice and totally naively, and to try to find out what its secret aim is and what it wants from you.
• Just as the character of a man’s anima (the feminine side of a man) is shaped by his mother, so the animus (the masculine side of a woman) is basically influenced by a woman’s father.
• The anima or animus has both a positive and a negative side. The negative animus cuts one off from reality by harboring unrealistic fantasies. The positive animus can provide initiative, courage, objectivity, conviction, and spiritual wisdom. The negative anima is obstinate, cold, and completely inaccessible. The positive anima provides love, spiritual devotion, wisdom, and empathy.
• Mass repression leads to the same results as individual repression; that is, to neurotic dissociation and psychological illness. All such attempts to repress the reactions of the unconscious must fail in the long run, for they are basically opposed to our instincts.
• Only in an interplay of consciousness and the unconscious can the unconscious prove its value, and perhaps even show a way to overcome the melancholy of the void.
• When the dreamer himself appears in a dream, he usually represents only his conscious ego; the other figures stand for his more or less unknown, unconscious qualities.

 

Introduction – John Freeman

Jung’s thinking has colored the world of modern psychology more than many of those with casual knowledge realize. Such familiar terms, for instance, as “extrovert,” “introvert,” and “archetype” are all Jungian concepts.

Part 1 Approaching the Unconscious – Carl G. Jung

A word or an image is symbolic when it implies something more than its obvious and immediate meaning.

Consciousness is a very recent acquisition of nature, and it is still in an “experimental” state. It is frail, menaced by specific dangers, and easily injured.

The “anima” is the female element in the male unconscious. “Animus” in the female unconscious.

It is easy to understand why dreamers tend to ignore and even deny the message of their dreams. Consciousness naturally resists anything unconscious and unknown.

“Misoneism,” a deep and superstitious fear of novelty. The primitives manifest all the reactions of the wild animal against untoward events. But “civilized” man reacts to new ideas in much the same say, erecting psychological barriers to protect himself from the shock of facing something new.

Past and future in the unconscious

The two fundamental points in dealing with dreams are these: First, the dream should be treated as a fact, about which one must make no previous assumption except that it somehow makes sense; and second, the dream is a specific expression of the unconscious.

cryptomnesia – concealed recollection

I myself found a fascinating example of this in Nietzsche’s book Thus Spake Zarathustra where the author reproduces almost word for word an incident reported in a ship’s log for the year 1686. By sheer chance I had read this seaman’s yarn in a book published about 1835 (half a century before Nietzsche wrote); and when I found the similar passage in Thus Spake Zarathustra, I was struck by its peculiar style, which was different from Nietzsche’s usual language. I was convinced that Nietzsche must also have seen the old book, though he made no reference to it. I wrote to his sister, who was still alive, and she confirmed that she and her brother had in fact read the book together when he was 11 years old. I think, from the context, it is inconceivable that Nietzsche had any idea that he was plagiarizing this story. I believe that fifty years later it had unexpectedly slipped into focus in his conscious mind.

I have found again and again in my professional work that the images and ideas that dreams contain cannot possibly be explained solely in terms of memory. They express new thoughts that have never yet reached the threshold of consciousness.

The function of dreams

The images produced in dreams are much more picturesque and vivid than the concepts and experiences that are their waking counterparts. One of the reasons for this is that, in a dream, such concepts can express their unconscious meaning.

It is plain foolishness to believe in ready-made systematic guides to dream interpretation, as if one could simply buy a reference book and look up a particular symbol.

The analysis of dreams

The problem of types

Feeling as I mean it is (like thinking) a rational (i.e., ordering) function, whereas intuition is an irrational (i.e., perceiving) function.

The subliminal state retains ideas and images at a much lower level of tension than they possess in consciousness. In the subliminal condition they lose clarity of definition; the relations between them are less consequential and more vaguely analogous, less rational and therefore more “incomprehensible.”

Confession … in many ways anticipated modern psychological techniques.

The archetype in dream symbolism

Here I must clarify the relation between instincts and archetypes: What we properly call instincts are physiological urges, and are perceived by the senses. But at the same time, they also manifest themselves in fantasies and often reveal their presence only by symbolic images. These manifestations are what I call the archetypes. They are without known origin; and they reproduce themselves in any time or in any part of the world – even where transmission by direct descent or “cross fertilization” through migration must be ruled out.

You may ask many civilized people in vain for the real meaning of the Christmas tree or the Easter egg. The fact is, they do things without knowing why they do them. I am inclined to the view that things were generally done first and that it was only a long time afterward that somebody asked why they were done.

It is true, however, that in recent times civilized man has acquired a certain amount of will power, which he can apply where he pleases. He has learned to do his work efficiently without recourse to chanting and drumming to hypnotized him into the state of doing. He can even disperse with a daily prayer for divine aid. He can carry out what he proposes to do, and he can apparently translate his ideas into action without a hitch, whereas the primitive seems to be hampered at each step by fears, superstitions, and other unseen obstacles to action. The motto “Where there’s a will, there’s a way” s the superstition of modern man. PP Yet in order to sustain his creed, contemporary man pays the price in a remarkable lack of introspection. He is blind to the fact that, with all his rationality and efficiency, he is possessed by “powers” that are beyond his control. His gods and demons have not disappeared at all; they have merely got new names. They keep him on the run with restlessness, vague apprehensions, psychological complications, an insatiable need for pills, alcohol, tobacco, food – and, above all, a large array of neuroses.

The soul of man

Even if we did not know by reason our need for salt in our food, we should nonetheless profit from its use. We might argue that the use of salt is a mere illusion of taste or a superstition; but it would still contribute to our well-being. Why, then, should we deprive ourselves of views that would prove helpful in crises and would give a meaning to our existence?

The role of symbols

Healing the spirit

We are so captivated by and entangled in our subjective consciousness that we have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions. The Buddhist discards the world of unconscious fantasies as useless illusions, the Christian puts his Church and his Bible between himself and his unconscious; and the rational intellectual does not yet know that his consciousness is not his total psyche.

Part 2 Ancient Myths and Modern Man by Joseph L. Henderson

The eternal symbols

Heroes and hero makers

Over and over again one hears a tale describing a hero’s miraculous but humble birth, his early proof of superhuman strength, his rapid rise to prominence or power, his triuphant struggle with the forces of evil, his fallibility to the sin of pride, and his fall through betrayal or a “heroic” sacrifice that ends in his death.

Once the individual has passed his initial test and can enter the mature phase of life, the hero myth loses its relevance. The hero’s symbolic death becomes, as it were, the achievement of that maturity.

Dr. Radin noted four distinct cycles in the evolution of the hero myth. He named them the Trickster cycle, the Hare cycle, the Red Horn cycle, and the Twin cycle.

1. The Trickster cycle corresponds to the earliest and least developed period of life. Trickster is a figure whose physical appetites dominate his behavior; he has the mentality of an infant. Lacking any purpose beyond the gratification of his primary needs, he is cruel, cynical, and unfeeling. (Our stories of Brer Rabbit or Reynard the Fox preserve the essentials of the Trickster myth).

My note: Are these four related to the four archetypes Warrior, Lover, King, Magician?

2. The next figure is Hare. He has not yet attained mature human stature, but all the same he appears as the founder of human culture – the Transformer. … Savior … Culture Hero … he is becoming a socialized being, correcting the instinctual and infantile urges found in the Trickster cycle.

3. Red Horn. … archetypal hero by passing tests as winning a race and by proving himself in battle.

4. Twins. In these two children we see the two sides of man’s nature. One of them, Flesh, is acquiescent, mild, and without initiative; the other, Stump, is dynamic and rebellious.

In both the Red Horn cycle and that of the Twins, we see the theme of sacrifice or death of the hero as necessary cure for hybris, the pride that has over-reached itself.

The archetype of initiation

Ancient history and the rituals of contemporary primitive societies have provided us with a wealth of material about myths and rites of initiation, whereby young men and women are weaned away from their parents and forcibly made members of their clan or tribe. But in making this break with the childhood world, the original parent archetype will be injured, and the damage must be made good by a healing process of assimilation into the life of the group.

Initiatory events are not confined to the psychology of youth. Every new phase of development throughout an individual’s life is accompanied by a repetition of the original conflict between the claims of the Self and the claims of the ego.

Beauty and the Beast

Orpheus and the Son of Man

Symbols of transcendence

My note: I was not a huge fan of this writer, especially this section which felt like Nostradamus predicting the future. Just keep stating symbols of transcendence until one of them fits, literally anything: birds, pilgrimages, snakes, animals of any kind, shamen, rodents, lizards, etc.

There is another kind of symbolism, belonging to the earliest known sacred traditions, that is also connected with the periods of transition in a person’s life. … they point to man’s need for liberation from any state of being that is too immature, too fixed or final. They concern man’s release from – or transcendence of – any confining pattern of existence, as he moves toward a superior or more mature stage in his development.

“Symbols of transcendence”

At the most archaic level of this symbolism we again meet the Trickster theme. But this time he no longer appears as a lawless would-be hero. He has become the shamen whose magical practices and flights of intuition stamp him as a primitive master of initiation. … bird.

One of the commonest dream symbols for this type of release through transcendence is the theme of the lonely journey or pilgrimage, which the initiate becomes acquainted with the nature of death.

It is the moment that T.S. Eliot describes in “The Waste Land,” when one faces

The awful daring of a moment’s surrender, which an age of prudence can never retract.

(i.e. take decisive steps into life alone)

If their lives have been adventurous, insecure, or full of change, they may long for a settled life and the consolations of religious certainty. But if they have lived chiefly within the social pattern in which they were born, they may desperately need a liberating change.

Part 3 The Process of Individuation by Marie-Louis von Franz

By observing a great many people and studying their dreams (he estimated that he interpreted at least 80,000 dreams), Jung discovered not only that all dreams are relevant in varying degrees to the life of the dreamer, but that they are all parts of one great web of psychological factors. He also found that, on the whole, they seem to follow an arrangement or pattern. This pattern Jung called “the process of individuation.”

Many people even dream repeatedly of the same figures, landscapes, or situations; and if one follows these through the whole series, one will see that they change slowly but perceptibly.

The organizing center from which the regulatory effect stems seems to be a sort of “nuclear atom” in our psychic system. One could also call it the inventor, organizer, and source of dream images. Jung called this center the “Self” and described it as the totality of the whole psyche, in order to distinguish it from the “ego,” which constitutes only a small part of the total psyche.

One sometimes feels that the unconscious is leading the way in accordance with a secret design. It is as if something is looking at me, something that I do not see but that sees me – perhaps that Great Man in the heart, who tells me his opinions about me by means of the dreams.

Story: A wandering carpenter, called Stone, saw on his travels a gigantic old oak tree standing in a field near an earth-altar. The carpenter said to his apprentice, who was admiring the oak: “This is a useless tree. If you wanted to make a ship, it would soon rot; if you wanted to make tools, they would break. You can’t do anything useful with this tree, and that’s why it has become so old.” PP But in an inn, that same evening, when the carpenter went to sleep, the old oak tree appeared to him in his dream and said: “Why do you compare me to your cultivated trees such as whitethorn, pear, orange, and apple trees, and all the others that bear fruit? Even before they can ripen their fruit, people attack and violate them. Their branches are broken, their twigs are torn. Their own gifts bring harm to them, and they cannot live out their natural span. That is what happens everywhere, and that is why I have long since tried to become completely useless. You poor mortal! Imagine if I had been useful in any way, would I have reached this size? Furthermore, you and I are both creatures, and how can one creature set himself so high as to judge another creature? You useless mortal man, what do you know about useless trees? PP The carpenter woke up and meditated upon his dream, and later, when his apprentice asked him why just this one tree served to protect the earth-altar, he answered, “Keep your mouth shut! Let’s hear no more about it! The tree grew here on purpose because anywhere else people would have ill-treated it. If it were not the tree of the earth-altar, it might have been chopped down.”

My note: This translation of the story is not correct as written, for Western readers and for carpenters especially. The Oak tree is typically a fantastic wood to build with and many carpenters love it (myself included), so really it would be better translated as some other tree that’s not as useful like Cottonwood or Sycamore.

The carpenter obviously understood his dream. He saw that simply to fulfill one’s destiny is the greatest human achievement, and that our utilitarian notions have to give way in the face of the demands of our unconscious psyche. If we translate this metaphor into psychological language, the tree symbolized the process of individuation, giving a lesson to our shortsighted ego. PP Under the tree that fulfilled its destiny, there was – in Chuang Tzu’s story – an earth-altar. This was a crude, un-wrought stone upon which people made sacrifices to the local god who “owned” this piece of land. The symbol of the earth-altar points to the fact that in order to bring the individuation process into reality, one must surrender consciously to the power of the unconscious, instead of thinking in terms of what one should do, or of what is generally thought right, or of what usually happens. One must simply listen, in order to learn what the inner totality – the Self – wants to do here and now in a particular situation. PP Our attitude must be like that of the mountain pine mentioned above: It does not get annoyed when its growth is obstructed by a stone, nor does it make plans about how to overcome the obstacles. It merely tries to feel whether it should grow more toward the left or the right, toward the slope or away from it. Like the tree, we should give in to this almost imperceptible, yet powerfully dominating, impulse – an impulse that comes from the urge toward unique, creative self-realization. And this is a process in which one must repeatedly seek out and find something that is not yet known to anyone. The guiding hints or impulses come, not from the ego, but from the totality of the psyche: the Self.

The first approach of the unconscious

The actual process of individuation – the conscious coming-to-terms with one’s own inner center (psychic nucleus) or Self – generally begins with a wounding of the personality and the suffering that accompanies it. This initial shock amounts to a sort of “call,” although it is not often recognized as such. On the contrary, the ego feels hampered in its will or its desire and usually projects the obstruction onto something external. That is, the ego accuses God or the economic situation or the boss or the marriage partner of being responsible for whatever is obstructing it. Or perhaps everything seems outwardly all right, but beneath the surface a person is suffering from a deadly boredom that makes everything seem meaningless and empty. Many myths and fairy tales symbolically describe this initial stage in the process of individuation by telling of a kind who has fallen ill or grown old. Other familiar story patterns are that a royal couple is barren; or that a monster steals all the women, children, horses, and wealth of the kingdom; or that a demon keeps the king’s army or his ship from proceeding on its course; or that darkness hangs over the lands, wells dry up, and flood, drought, and frost afflict the country. Thus it seems as if the initial encounter with the Self casts a dark shadow ahead of time, or as if the “inner friend” comes at first like a trapper to catch the helplessly struggling ego in his snare. PP In myths one finds that the magic or talisman that can cure the misfortune of the king or his country always proves to be something very special. In one tale “a white blackbird” or “a fish that carries a golden ring in its gills” is needed to restore the king’s health. In another, the king wants “the water of life” or “three golden hairs from the head of the devil” or “a woman’s golden plait” (and afterward, naturally, the owner of the plait). Whatever it is, the thing that can drive away the evil is always unique and hard to find. PP It is exactly the same in the initial crisis in the life of an individual. One is seeking something that is impossible to find or about which nothing is known. In such moments all well-meant, sensible advice is completely useless – advice that urges one to try to be responsible, to take a holiday, not to work so hard (or to work harder), to have more (or less) human contact, or to take up a hobby. None of that helps, or at best only rarely. There is only one thing that seems to work; and that is to turn directly toward the approaching darkness without prejudice and totally naively, and to try to find out what its secret aim is and what it wants from you. PP The hidden purpose of the oncoming darkness is generally something so unusual, so unique and unexpected, that as a rule one can find out what it is only by means of dreams and fantasies welling up from the unconscious. If one focuses attention on the unconscious without rash assumptions or emotional rejection, it often breaks through in a flow of helpful symbolic images. But not always. Sometimes it first offers a series of painful realizations of what is wrong with oneself and one’s conscious attitudes. Then one must begin the process by swallowing all sorts of bitter truths.

The realization of the shadow

If people observe their own unconscious tendencies in other people, this is called a “projection.”

Whatever form it takes, the function of the shadow is to represent the opposite side of the ego and to embody just those qualities that one dislikes most in other people.

“For over five years this man has been chasing around Europe like a madman in search of something he could set on fire. Unfortunately he again and again finds hirelings who open the gates of their country to this international incendiary.” – Rather than face our defects as revealed by the shadow, we project them onto others – for instance, on to our political enemies. Hitler during a speech; the quotation is his description of Churchill.

The anima: the woman within

One day a lonely hunter sees a beautiful woman emerging from the deep forest on the other side of the river. She waves at him and sings:

Oh, come, lonely hunter in the stillness of dusk.

Come, come! I miss you, I miss you!

Now I will embrace you, embrace you!

Come, come! My nest is near, my nest is near.

Come, come, lonely hunter, now in the stillness of dusk.

He throws off his clothes and swims across the river, but suddenly she flies away in the form of an owl, laughing mockingly at him. When he tries to swim back to find his clothes, he drowns in the cold river.

In this tale the anima symbolizes an unreal dream of love, happiness, and maternal warmth (her nest) – a dream that lures away from reality. The hunter is drowned because he ran after a wishful fantasy that could not be fulfilled. PP Another way in which the negative anima in a man’s personality can be revealed is in waspish, poisonous, effeminate remarks by which he devalues everything. Remarks of this sort always contain a cheap twisting of the truth and are in a subtle way destructive.

As Jung has demonstrated, the nucleus of the psyche (the Self) normally expresses itself in some kind of fourfold structure. The number four is also connected with the anima because, as Jung noted, there are four stages in its development. The first stage is best symbolized by the figure Eve, which represents purely instinctual and biological relations. The second can be seen in Faust’s Helen: She personifies a romantic and aestheic level that is, however, still characterized by sexual elements. The third is represented, for instance, by the Virgin Mary – a figure who raises love (eros) to the heights of spiritual devotion. The fourth type is symbolized by Sapientia, wisdom transcending even the most holy and the most pure. Of this another symbol is the Shulamite in the Song of Solomon. (In the psychic development of modern man this stage is rarely reached. The Mona Lisa comes nearest to such a wisdom anima.)

In a medieval mystical text, an anima figure explains her own nature as follows:

I am the flower of the field and the lily of the valleys. I am the mother of fair love and of fear and of knowledge and of holy hope … I am the mediator of the elements, making one to agree with another; that which is warm I make cold and the reverse, and that which is dry I make moist and the reverse, and that which is hard I soften … I am the law in the priest and the word in the prophet and the counsel in the wise. I will kill and I will make to live and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.

The animus: the man within

One may suddenly find oneself up against something in a woman that is obstinate, cold, and completely inaccessible. PP One of the favorite themes that the animus repeats endlessly in the ruminations of this kind of woman goes like this: “The only thing in the world I want is love – and he doesn’t love me”; or “In this situation there are only two possibilities – and both are equally bad.” (The animus never believes in exceptions.)

Just as the character of a man’s anima is shaped by his mother, so the animus is basically influenced by a woman’s father.

Psychologically [the animus] represents a particular form of the animus that lures women away from all human relationships and especially from all contacts with real men. He personifies a cocoon of dreamy thoughts, filled with desire and judgements about how things “ought to be,” which cut a woman off from the reality of life.

In myths and fairy tales he plays the role of robber and murderer. One example is Bluebeard, who secretly kills all his wives in a hidden chamber.

She may decide to keep the children from marrying – a deeply hidden form of evil that rarely comes to the surface of the mother’s conscious mind.

… it seems as if we ourselves are having such thoughts and feelings. The ego identifies with them to the point where it is unable to detach them and see them for what they are.

[the animus] too has a very positive and valuable side.

Her animus can turn into an invaluable inner companion who endows her with the masculine qualities of initiative, courage, objectivity, and spiritual wisdom. PP The animus, just like the anima, exhibits four stages of development. He first appears as a personification of mere physical power – for instance, as an atheletic champion or “muscle man.” In the next stage he possesses initiative and the capacity for planned action. In the third phase, the animus becomes the “word,” often appearing as a professor or clergyman. Finally, in his forth manifestation, the animus is the incarnation of meaning. On this highest level he becomes (like the anima) a mediator of the religious experience whereby life acquires new meaning. He gives the woman spiritual firmness, an invisible support that compensates for her outer softness.

The Self: symbols of totality

(Active imagination is a certain way of meditating imaginatively, by which one may deliberately enter into contact with the unconscious and make a conscious connection with psychic phenomena. Active imagination is among the most important of Jung’s discoveries. While it is in a sense comparable to Eastern forms of meditation, such as the technique of Zen Buddhism or of Tantric Yoga, or to Western techniques like those of the Jesuit Exercitia, it is fundamentally different in that the meditator remains completely devoid of any conscious goal or program. Thus the meditation becomes the solitary experiment of a free individual, which is the reverse of a guided attempt to master the unconscious. This, however, is not the place to enter into a detailed analysis of active imagination; the reader will find one of Jung’s descriptions of it in his paper on “The Transcendent Function.”)

The Self if symbolized with special frequency in the form of a stone, precious or otherwise. … In many dreams the nuclear center, the Self, also appears as a crystal.

The relation to the Self

The social aspect of the Self

Today the enormous growth of population, especially obvious in large cities, inevitably has a depressing effect on us. We think, “Oh, well, I am only so-and-so living at such-and-such an address, like thousands of other people. If a few of them get killed, what difference can it make? There are far too many people in any case.” And when we read in the paper about the deaths of innumerable unknown people who personally mean nothing to us, the feeling that our lives count for nothing is further increased. This is the moment when attention to the unconscious brings the greatest help, for dreams show the dreamer how each detail of his life is interwoven with the most significant realities.

Practical experience and accurate observation show that one cannot influence one’s own dreams. (my note: von Franz said she estimated that she interpreted ~65,000 dreams in her lifetime.) There are people, it is true who assert that they can influence them. But if you look into the dream material, you find that they do only what I do with my disobedient dog: I order him to do things I notice he wants to do anyhow, so that I can preserve my illusion of authority.

Mass repression leads to the same results as individual repression; that is, to neurotic dissociation and psychological illness. All such attempts to repress the reactions of the unconscious must fail in the long run, for they are basically opposed to our instincts.

Part 4 Symbolism in the Visual Arts by Aniela Jaffé

Sacred symbols – the stone and the animal

The familiar dream in which the dreamer is pursued by an animal nearly always indicates that an instinct has been split off from the consciousness and ought to be (or is trying to be) readmitted and integrated into life. The more dangerous the behavior of the animal in the dream, the more unconscious is the primitive and instinctual soul of the dreamer, and the more imperative is its integration into his life if some irreparable evil is to be forestalled.

Primitive man must tame the animal in himself and make it his helpful companion; civilized man must heal the animal in himself and make it his friend.

The symbol of the circle

Modern painting as a symbol

The secret soul of things

Jean Bazaine wrote: “An object awakens our love just because it seems to be the bearer of powers that are greater than itself.” PP Sayings of this kind recall the old alchemical concept of a “spirit in matter,” believed to be the spirit in and behind inanimate objects like metal or stone. Psychologically interpreted, this spirit is the unconscious. It always manifests itself when conscious or rational knowledge has reached its limits and mystery sets in, for man tends to fill the inexplicable and mysterious with the contents of his unconscious.

The British author Sir Herbert Read once wrote of Chagall that he never quite crossed the threshold into the unconscious, but “has always kept one foot on the earth that had nourished him.” This is exactly the “right” relation to the unconscious.

Consciousness alone is competent to determine the meaning of the images and to recognize their significance for man here and now, in the concrete reality of the present. Only in an interplay of consciousness and the unconscious can the unconscious prove its value, and perhaps even show a way to overcome the melancholy of the void.

The retreat from reality

Franz Marc once said: “The art that is coming will give formal expression to our scientific conviction.”

The conversation between Marini and Roditi explains the transformation of “sensory” art into abstraction that should be clear to anyone who has ever walked open-eyed through an exhibition of modern art. However much he may appreciate or admire its formal qualities, he can scarcely fail to sense the fear, despair, aggression, and mockery that sounds like a cry from many works. The “metaphysical anxiety” that is expressed by the distress in these pictures and sculptures may have arisen from the despair of a doomed world, as it did with Marini. In other cases, the emphasis may lie on the religious factor, on the feeling that God is dead. There is a close connection between the two.

Envy, lust, sensuality, lies, and all known vices are the negative, “dark” aspect of the unconscious, which can manifest itself in two ways. In the positive sense, it appears as a “spirit of nature,” creatively animating man, things, and the world. It is the “chthonic spirit” that has been mentioned so often in this chapter. In the negative sense, the unconscious (that same spirit) manifests itself as a spirit of evil, as a drive to destroy. PP As has already been pointed out, the alchemists personified this spirit as “the spirit Mercurius” and called it, with good reason, Mercurius duplex (the two-faced, dual Mercurius). In the religious language of Christianity, it is called the devil. But, however improbable it may seem, the devil too has a dual aspect. In the positive sense, he appears as Lucifer – literally, the light bringer.

Union of opposites

Part 5 Symbols in an Individual Analysis by Jolande Jacobi

The beginning of the analysis

The initial dream

When the dreamer himself appears in a dream, he usually represents only his conscious ego; the other figures stand for his more or less unknown, unconscious qualities.

Fear of the unconscious

The saint and the prostitute

If dreams are not wish-fulfillments (as Freud taught) but rather, as Jung assumed, “self-representations of the unconscious”

How the analysis developed

The oracle dream

People who rely totally on their rational thinking and dismiss of repress every manifestation of their psychic life often have an almost inexplicable inclination to superstition. … dreams compensate one’s outer life, the emphasis such people put in their intellect is offset by dreams in which they meet the irrational and cannot escape it.

The Self (if the dreamer is young and has a relatively low level of spiritual development) is usually symbolized by an object from the realm of his personal experience – often a banal object, which compensates the dreamer’s high aspirations. Only in the mature person acquainted with the images of his soul is the Self realized in a symbol that corresponds to its unique value.

Facing the irrational

The final dream

The Black man is for some people the archetypal image of the “dark primal creature” and thus a personification of certain contents of the unconscious. Perhaps this is one reason why Black people are so often rejected and feared by the people of the white race. In him the white man sees his living counterpart, his hidden, dark side brought before his eyes. (This is just what most people try to avoid; they want to cut it off and repress it.) White men project onto Black men the drives, the archaic powers, the uncontrolled instincts that they do not want to admit in themselves, of which they are unconscious, and that they therefore designate as the corresponding qualities of other people.

Conclusion: Science and the Unconscious by Marie Louis von Franz

Science and the unconscious

Our conscious representations are sometimes ordered (or arranged in a pattern) before they have become conscious to us.

Where before men looked for causal (i.e. rational) explanations of phenomena, Jung introduced the idea of looking for the meaning (or perhaps we could say, the “purpose”). That is, rather than ask why something happened (i.e., what caused it), Jung asked: What did it happen for?