Part III: Insights on Analysis
One can of course live in defiance of the demands of the body and ruin its health, and the same can be done in regard to the psyche. Anyone who wants to live will refrain from these tricks and will at all times carefully inquire into the body’s and the psyche’s needs. Once a certain level of consciousness and intelligence has been reached, it is no longer possible to live one-sidedly, and the whole of the psychosomatic instincts, which still function in a natural way among primitives, must consciously be taken into account.
Jung (1945)[1]
Just as dreams do not conceal something already known, or express it under the disguise, but try rather to formulate an as yet unconscious fact as clearly as possible, so myths and alchemical symbols are not euhemeristic allegories that hide artificial secrets. On the contrary, they seek to translate natural secrets into the language of consciousness and to declare the truth that is the common property of mankind. By becoming conscious, the individual is threatened more and more with isolation, which is nevertheless the sine qua non of conscious differentiation. The greater this threat, the more it is compensated by the production of collective and archetypal symbols which are common to all men.
Jung (1945)[2]
What did these people do in order to bring about the development that set them free? As far as I could see they did nothing (Wu Wei) but let things happen. As Master Lao-tzu teaches in our text, the light circulates according to its own law if one does not give up one’s ordinary occupation. The art of letting things happen, action through non-action, letting go of oneself as taught by Meister Eckhart, became for me the key that opens the door to the way. We must be able to let things happen in the psyche. For us, this is an art of which most people know nothing. Consciousness is forever interfering, helping, correcting, and negating, never leaving the psychic processes to grow in peace. It would be simple enough, if only simplicity were not the most difficult of all things.
Jung (1929)[3]
Psychic disturbances, like somatic disturbances, are highly complex phenomena which cannot be explained by a purely etiological theory. Besides the cause and the unknown X of the individual’s disposition, we must also take into account the teleological aspect of fitness in biology, which in the psychic realm would have to be formulated as meaning.
Jung (1945)[4]
The final part of our essay on gems from CW 13 deals with insights on analysis that Jung gives us, more or less as sidelines to his concerns in the essays that form the content of this volume. We will consider this large topic under four headings: Qualifications and Symptoms, Features, Actions, and Goals
Qualifications and Symptoms
This heading deals with two questions: Who should go into analysis? and Who should become an analyst? Let’s take the first question first.
Who should go into analysis?
Jung:
“The emotional state of Sophia sunk in unconsciousness (agnoia), her formlessness, and the possibility of her getting lost in the darkness characterize very clearly the anima of a man who identifies himself absolutely with his reason and his spirituality. He is in danger of becoming dissociated from his anima and thus losing touch altogether with the compensating powers of the unconscious. In a case like this the unconscious usually responds with violent emotions, irritability, lack of control, arrogance, feelings of inferiority, moods, depressions, outbursts of rage, etc., coupled with lack of self-criticism and the misjudgments, mistakes, and delusions which this entails.”[5]
“In such a state a man soon loses touch with reality. His spirituality becomes ruthless, arrogant, and tyrannical. The more unadapted his ideology is, the more it demands recognition and is determined to gain it if necessary by force. This state is a definite pathos, a suffering of the soul, though at first it is not perceived as such because of lack of introspection, and only gradually comes to consciousness as a vague malaise. Eventually this feeling forces the mind to recognize that something is wrong, that one is indeed suffering. This is the moment when physical or psychological symptoms appear which can no longer be banished from consciousness.”[6]
Commentary:
At this point, the suffering person usually takes him/herself off to the doctor, who in most cases, will write a script for a pill. This, of course, will do nothing at all to address the “emotional state of Sophia,” the dissociation from the anima, or the loss of contact “with the compensating powers of the unconscious.” Some pills might address depression (with side effects), other might dampen the irritability (also with side effects), while self-medicating (with alcohol, licit or illicit drugs) might induce temporary relief. Jung would have none of this.[7] His prescription: analysis, so as to allow Sophia, the inner anima, to be recognized, heard and respected. Jung felt that only this would get at the real root of the condition, and superficial palliatives will only provide short-term fixes. Rationalists, who are up in their heads, focused on spirituality, rather than the needs of their souls, are unlikely to welcome Jung’s course of action. Extraverts (for whom inner reflection is uncongenial) can also achieve contact with the “compensating powers of the unconscious” in other ways, e.g. being out in Nature.
Jung:
“The anima belongs to those borderline phenomena which chiefly occur in special psychic situations. They are characterized by the more or less sudden collapse of a form or style of life which till then seemed the indispensable foundation of the individual’s whole career. When such a catastrophe occurs, not only are all bridges back into the past broken, but there seems to be no way forward into the future. One is confronted with a hopeless and impenetrable darkness, an abysmal void that is now suddenly filled with an alluring vision, the palpably real presence of a strange yet helpful being, in the same way that, when one lives for a long time in great solitude, the silence or the darkness becomes visibly, audibly, intangibly alive, and the unknown in oneself steps up in an unknown guise.”[8]
“And whenever the conscious mind clings to hard and fast concepts and gets caught in its own rules and regulations – as is unavoidable and of the essence of civilized consciousness – nature pops up with her inescapable demands.”[9]
Commentary:
Jung’s words here resonate with me, for they express pretty closely my situation in 1983. I was then a college professor, anticipating a long career in the “sylvan groves of academe,” with all the “clinging to hard and fast concepts” that go along with an Ivy League mind-set. And then I had the first of what I now call my “voice-over” dreams–just a voice in my sleep telling me that friends would die, family members would die, I would give up everything and my life would be transformed. Five days later I learned of the death of my friend Hazel Crafts, and everything in my life began to fall away: a “sudden collapse” indeed! Over the course of the next 3 years I did give up everything–home, friends, car, career, and, most difficult of all, my identity as a college professor. I knew I could not put the proverbial toothpaste back in the tube: “all bridges back into the past” were broken, and I had but a dim sense of the “way forward into the future.” All I knew in the years 1984 to 2005 that I was to live by the dreams that gave me guidance. At times, as Jung says, things did seem “hopeless,” and the darkness “impenetrable,” at least until I found a Jungian analyst and began my analysis. She was able to tell me that I was experiencing a well-recognized phenomenon in Jungian circles: the classic “mid-life crisis” that usually occurs “between the ages of thirty-five and forty”–the interval in life when Jung thought a life review was most appropriate. For me, such a review was imposed by my Inner Friend (the name I gave to my psyche, who–I came to understand over time–really does have my highest good and greatest happiness in mind).[10] Most people aren’t so deeply mired as I was in the “rules and regulations” of the conscious mind, but Jung recognized that civilization imposes many concepts and rules that do tend to suppress the demands of our souls. We get caught in these rules and regulations at our peril.
Jung:
“One can of course live in defiance of the demands of the body and ruin its health, and the same can be done in regard to the psyche. Anyone who wants to live will refrain from these tricks and will at all times carefully inquire into the body’s and the psyche’s needs. Once a certain level of consciousness and intelligence has been reached, it is no longer possible to live one-sidedly, and the whole of the psychosomatic instincts, which still function in a natural way among primitives, must consciously be taken into account.”[11]
Commentary:
Jung is reminding us here that we always face a choice: to live in accord with the demands of the body and psyche, or not. We can make the commitment to “at all times carefully inquire into the body’s and the psyche’s need.” Do we make such inquiries? I have wrestled with this question and came to conclude that the only way for me to do so was to give careful, deliberate attention to forming healthful habits–daily routines that take into account both what my body wants and my psyche needs–and then pay attention when I feel “off,” i.e. tired, achy, tense, or vaguely uncomfortable. In these times I know my body and/or psyche are asking me to go within and pose questions. I write these down in my dream journal and ask for guidance. I often find that I will have been given insight days before I recognized I had a problem (because the psyche exists outside time and space).[12] When Jung says it no longer is possible to “live one-sidedly,” he is acknowledging that we are no longer living relying only on the conscious, rational mind: we have incorporated the reality of the psyche, and its needs, into our daily living. This is a much more healthful and enjoyable, as well as balanced, way to live.
Jung:
“It would also be a great mistake to suppose that this is the path every neurotic must travel, or that it is the solution at every stage of the neurotic problem. It is appropriate only in those cases where consciousness has reached an abnormal degree of development and has to verged too far from the unconscious….”[13]
Commentary:
This was my problem: I had become too “heady,” too rational, intellectual, content to live in my head. But this was not anything I noticed, given my Ivy League intellectualism. If I had any complaint in life back in 1983, it was a vague awareness of aridity–a lack of creativity. I could summon prose when grants had to be written, or course materials had to be created, but there was no “juice” in it. My whole way of living and thinking had, as Jung said, “verged too far from the unconscious…”. Note Jung’s caveat: Analysis is not appropriate for everyone, not even for neurotics. Jung never took a “cookbook” approach to dealing with people; he never treated two patients the same way;[14] and he never believed analysis was the “solution at every stage of the neurotic problem.” But for some people, like me, it is part of one’s destiny in life.
Who should become an analyst?
Jung:
” The distinguishing mark of the spiritual man is that he seeks self-knowledge and knowledge of God.”[15]
“The really important psychic facts can neither be measured, weighed, nor seen in a test tube or under a microscope. They are therefore supposedly indeterminable, in other words they must be left to people who have an inner sense for them, just as colors must be shown to the seeing and not to the blind.”[16]
” Dorn says: ‘it is not possible for any mortal to understand this art unless he is previously enlightened by the divine light’.”[17]
“Every form of communication with the split-off part of the psyche is therapeutically effective…. Even when the discovery is no more than an assumption or a fantasy, it has a healing effect at least by suggestion if the analyst himself believes in it and makes a serious attempt to understand…”[18]
Commentary:
Being a Jungian analyst is also a fated life path, according to Jung.[19] Not everyone is meant to be a “spiritual man,” a seeker of “self-knowledge and knowledge of God,” nor is everyone gifted with an “inner sense” for the “indeterminable” things that the psyche throws up in the course of an analysis. Jung agreed with Gerhard Dorn (one of Jung’s favorite alchemists)[20] that being “enlightened by the divine light” is a requirement for this line of work, and such enlightenment is not given to everyone (although I believe the potential to attain enlightenment is possible for everyone).[21] In addition to spiritual seeking, the gift of an inner sense for handling psychic things, and enlightenment, the analyst needs to believe in the efficacy of what he/she is doing. Jung understood that such belief is not acquired by reading books: Only by lived experience–personal immersion in the analytic process over years of wrestling with the figures that populate one’s “inner city”[22]–can a person gain the trust in the wisdom of the psyche that supplants mere belief.[23] This is why Jung required all persons seeking certification as Jungian analysts to have years of personal analysis along with a training (supervised) analysis, and this is why the process of becoming a Jungian analyst takes years.
Features of Analysis
Jung:
“In accordance with the principle of compensation which runs through the whole of nature, every psychic development, whether individual or collective, possesses an optimum which, when exceeded, produces an enantiodromia, that is, turns into its opposite. Compensatory tendencies emanating from the unconscious may be noted even during the approach to the critical turning-point, though if consciousness persists in its course they are completely repressed. The stirrings in the darkness necessarily seem like a devilish betrayal of the ideal of spiritual development. Reason cannot help condemning as unreasonable everything that contradicts it or deviates from its laws, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Morality can permit itself no capacity for change, for whatever it does not agree with is inevitably immoral and has therefore to be repressed. It is not difficult to imagine the multitude of energies which must flow off into the unconscious under such conscious domination.”[24]
Commentary:
It was early in my analysis that my analyst told me about Jung’s “principle of compensation,” and how the unconscious works constantly to maintain balances in our systems, physical and psychic. So, when I showed up in dreams of being Wonder Woman, flying through the sky, accomplishing miracles, while my conscious emotional state was depressed or hopeless, the psyche was reminding me “This also is true.” Many a time I resonated with Jung’s words about how the “stirrings in the darkness” seems like a “devilish betrayal of the ideal of spiritual development.” In my condition back in the 1980’s, my work on myself did not seem much like fostering “spiritual development.” My reasoning was, indeed, off base, stuck in old assumptions and beliefs–all of which also had to be given up, as that initial dream predicted. It was this which I found most difficult: It is comparatively easy to give up what you know you have–house, car, career, friends, family–but much harder to give up what is unconscious–scripts, schemas, patterns of thinking or interpreting reality. Many a time I questioned what was being demanded of me, until I came to learn (with my analyst’s prompting) that the Self (our divine core/God within) is amoral: Morals are man-made, and relative to the culture in which they are created. The Self does not conform to human systems; it transcends our limited thinking,[25] and its goal is not perfection in line with some human ideal, but completeness, aligned with our soul’s destiny.
Jung:
“That is the specific definition of this experience of the coniunctio: the self which includes me includes many others also, for the unconscious that is “conceived in our mind” does not belong to me and is not peculiar to me, but is everywhere. It is the quintessence of the individual and at the same time the collective.”[26]
Commentary:
The coniunctio is the alchemical term for the archetype of union. Over time, in analysis, we come to realize that we are all one. The Buddhist notion of dependent origination[27] is right: There’s no such thing as the “lone ranger.” We are all connected and part of a unity of all life. The Self is not “mine,” “does not belong to me and is not peculiar to me,” being the “quintessence [the higher, or fifth essence] of the individual and at the same time the collective.” This is why Jung’s focus on self-development is not selfish: it recognizes and aims for us also to recognize the unus mundus, that we all live in and are part of one world.
Jung:
” The figures of Christ and the devil are both based on archetypal patterns, and were never invented but rather experienced. Their existence preceded all cognition of them, and the intellect had no hand in the matter, except to assimilate them and if possible give them a place in its philosophy. Only the most superficial intellectualism can overlook this fundamental fact. We are actually confronted with two different images of the self, which in all likelihood presented a duality even in their original form. This duality was not invented, but is an autonomous phenomenon.”[28]
Commentary:
Christ and Anti-Christ (devil) are two faces of the Self, “different images” of the archetype of wholeness. Jung wants us to note that these are not concepts humans made up, but rather are archetypal patterns living in all people which we experience. We might think about them, and theologians specialize in thinking about them, but thinking does not make them up: “the intellect had no hand in the matter,” but it can work to assimilate them (both of them–the positive, enlightened part of ourselves, and the dark, negative shadow part of ourselves). As for giving them “a place in its philosophy,” this was an oblique reference Jung made to the fact that he was constantly arguing with theologians about the reality of evil.[29] Thanks to its fear of Gnostic heresy,[30] the early Christian church decided to regard evil simply as a privatio boni: an absence of good, rather than as something coeval and on a par with Christ. Jung found it astonishing, in the face of World War I, World War II, the Holocaust, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the totalitarianism of the Soviets and Stalin’s purges, that people could deny the reality of evil. He would remind us that both Christ and Lucifer live within us, and a thorough analysis helps us discover these inner energies and hold the tension they generate.
Jung:
“Just as dreams do not conceal something already known, or express it under the disguise, but try rather to formulate an as yet unconscious fact as clearly as possible, so myths and alchemical symbols are not euhemeristic allegories that hide artificial secrets. On the contrary, they seek to translate natural secrets into the language of consciousness and to declare the truth that is the common property of mankind. By becoming conscious, the individual is threatened more and more with isolation, which is nevertheless the sine qua non of conscious differentiation. The greater this threat, the more it is compensated by the production of collective and archetypal symbols which are common to all men.”
“As against this I take the view, reinforced by experience, that a dream is quite capable, if it wants to, of naming the most painful and disagreeable things without the least regard for the feelings of the dreamer. If the dream does not in fact do so, there is no sufficient reason for supposing that it means something other than what it says.”[31]
Commentary:
“Euhemeristic” is an adjective referring to the theory of the ancient Greek writer Euhemerus, who held that the gods were just deified men and women;[32] “euhemeristic allegories” would just be allegories related to actual history, shorn of any deeper or symbolic meaning. In the first paragraph Jung is taking exception to Freud’s handling of dreams. Freud felt dreams concealed or disguised the real (i.e. sexual) meaning.[33] Jung found this interpretation far too limiting and, in most cases, flatly erroneous. Dreams say what they say, but often using symbols and mythic allusions that need to be recognized and worked with. Jung felt that the unconscious speaks in symbols, and an analysis can help us gain skill in handling symbols and interpreting our dreams. This was Jung’s goal: empowerment. As one heals a neurosis in the analysis, one learns the ways and means to “speak” the mythic and symbolic language of one’s own unconscious. Why did doing this result in “isolation”? In part, because your unconscious and its language is unique to you (which is why Jung never dealt with two patients the same way), and also because there aren’t a lot of people in our current society who are into this work. So many times when people find the Jungian Center (either in person or via our Web site), they feel relief at finding a community of like-minded people sharing their interest in the inner life, dreams, symbols, personal growth and empowerment. The second paragraph is another riposte to Freud: a dream says what it means, and sometimes it does so bluntly, as my initial “voice-over” did in 1983. No mincing of words, no “regard for the feelings of the dreamer.”
Activities Involved in Analysis
Jung:
“What did these people do in order to bring about the development that set them free? As far as I could see they did nothing (Wu Wei) but let things happen. As Master Lao-tzu teaches in our text, the light circulates according to its own law if one does not give up one’s ordinary occupation. The art of letting things happen, action through non-action, letting go of oneself as taught by Meister Eckhart, became for me the key that opens the door to the way. We must be able to let things happen in the psyche. For us, this is an art of which most people know nothing. Consciousness is forever interfering, helping, correcting, and negating, never leaving the psychic processes to grow in peace. It would be simple enough, if only simplicity were not the most difficult of all things.”[34] Commentary:
We begin with a paradox (something Jung valued):[35] Our focus in this section is on activities and right off it seems like Jung is suggesting we do nothing. Wu wei–action through non-action–presents the typical Western mind with a mind cramp: Analysis involves “action through non-action.” Duh. By “letting things happen” and “letting go of oneself,” we relax into trust in the psyche. We give up trying to control or hasten the process (for it always seems too slow, taking too long). I tell my students it is a bit like watching grass grow: struggle and striving to get the grass higher does nothing. Better to “leave the psychic processes to grow in peace,” as Jung says. This is indeed an “art of which most people know nothing,” but, like other arts, it is something we can learn, if we have enough patience, determination, and an attitude that is open to trusting the psyche (a most helpful attitude, but one that takes years to develop).
Jung:
“As Master Lao-tzu teaches: “When occupations come to us, we must accept them; when things come to us, we must understand them from the ground up.” One man will now take chiefly what comes to him from outside, and the other what comes from inside. Moreover, the law of life demands that what they take from outside and inside will be the very things that were always excluded before. This reversal of one’s nature brings an enlargement, a heightening and enrichment of the personality, if the previous values are retained alongside the change – provided that these values are not mere illusions. If they are not held fast, the individual will swing too far to the other side, slipping from fitness into unfitness, from adaptedness into unadaptedness, and even from rationality into insanity. The way is not without danger. Everything good is costly, and the development of personality is one of the most costly of all things. It is a matter of saying yea to oneself, of taking oneself as the most serious of tasks, of being conscious of everything
one does, and keeping it constantly before one’s eyes in all its dubious aspects – truly a task that taxes us to the utmost.”[36]
Commentary:
Lao-tzu was the semi-legendary author of a key Taoist text, The Tao Te Ching, and Jung quoted him repeatedly in his Collected Works.[37] The quote reflects the same Taoist openness to psychic things as we found in the notion of wu wei. When life presents us with something, we must just get on with it, working to understand what the psyche is demanding, or what we are being called to do. Depending on our type, we will respond differently: the Extravert will take “what comes from outside,” while the Introvert will take “what comes from inside.” In both cases, the result will be the development of the inferior function, i.e. “the very things that were always excluded before”–the things or activities that make us feel inept or gauche. For the Thinking type, this might be the free, open expression of feelings; for the Feeling type, undertaking a rigorous course at the university. The point in every case is, as Jung says, an “enlargement, a heightening and enrichment of the personality.” But for this to happen, we must retain solid, appropriate values (values linked to false persona must fall away). Failing to do this can lead to our slipping into the opposite condition: Thinking types becoming wooly-headed, Feeling types, cruelly analytical. As Jung says, this can be dangerous, even leading to insanity. Having to give up everything and re-learn how to live, I can agree with Jung that the work of “saying yea to oneself, taking oneself as the most serious of tasks, of being conscious of everything one does, and keeping it constantly before one’s eyes in all its dubious aspects” is “a task that taxes us to the utmost.” Jung was not exaggerating.[38]
Jung:
“…This does not mean that the adept ceased to work in the laboratory, only that he kept an eye on the symbolic aspect of his transmutations. This corresponds exactly to the situation in the modern psychology of the unconscious: while personal problems are not overlooked (the patient himself takes very good care of that!), the analyst keeps an eye on their symbolic aspects, for healing comes only from what leads the patient beyond himself and beyond his entanglement in the ego.”[39]
Commentary:
Jung’s alchemical works are full of passages like this, where Jung sees parallels between what the alchemist did in his laboratory and what goes on in analysis.[40] There are two perspectives or levels on which the work proceeds: the personal and the archetypal or symbolic. The patient, naturally, focuses on the former, while the analyst tends to both, but especially on the symbols, since most laymen have little familiarity with the archetypal level. Why bother with symbols and archetypes? Because the unconscious speaks to us via symbols, and by their very nature symbols hold healing power, the ability to move us off the dime and into new, growth-provoking terrain. The Jungian analyst works with archetypes when the psyche presents them because these help to delineate the process, offering something akin to signposts along the non-linear way, and they also set the whole endeavor in a larger, universal or collective context. In my own analysis, at first I didn’t like this: As a Feeling type, I found the archetypal level too cold, impersonal (it is impersonal), and also foreign: In my over-developed rationality I had long before dismissed myths and legends as the stuff of little kids, and here I was being told that I was living this stuff!! It took a while (years) before I came around to appreciating the power of the archetypes to “lead [me] beyond [myself] and [my] entanglement in the ego.”
Jung:
“The integration of the unconscious takes place spontaneously only in rare cases. As a rule special efforts are needed in order to understand the contents spontaneously produced by the unconscious. Where certain general ideas, which are regarded as valid or are still efficacious, already exist, they act as a guide to understanding, and the newly acquired experience is articulated with or subordinated to the existing system of thought.”[41]
“As I have said, the confrontation with the unconscious usually begins in the realm of the personal unconscious, that is, of personally acquired contents which constitute the shadow, and from there leads to archetypal symbols which represent the collective unconscious. The aim of the confrontation is to abolish the dissociation. In order to reach this goal, either nature herself or medical intervention precipitates the conflict of opposites without which no union is possible. This means not only bringing the conflict to consciousness; it also involves an experience of a special kind, namely, the recognition of an alien “other” in oneself, or the objective presence of another will.”[42]
“I hope I have also made it clear to the reader, that merely intellectual understanding is not sufficient. It supplies us only with verbal concepts, but it does not give us their true content, which is to be found in the living experience of the process as applied to ourselves. We would do well to harbor no illusions in this respect: no understanding by means of words and no imitation can replace actual experience.”[43]
Commentary:
These three paragraphs describe what it means to “confront” the unconscious. Jung is being understated when he notes that “special efforts are needed:” The process can be lengthy, taxing of one’s patience, confusing and humbling to the ego (which repeatedly experiences “crucifixion” to encourage its submission to the wisdom of the Self).[44] If someone is fortunate enough to enter analysis possessing ideas that are “valid or still efficacious,” the going might be easier, but confronting one’s shadow (even if it is a “white” shadow)[45] is never easy, as it requires a fundamental reorientation of one’s sense of oneself. It also implies dealing with “the conflict of opposites,” which, as Jung notes, is essential for the union of consciousness and unconsciousness. The shadow can feel very “alien,” or, as in my case, the whole experience presents the reality that “another will” is living one’s life. When my “upending experience” began I did not want to give up every feature of my life, did not want to relinquish control over my existence, and surely had no trust in the Self (about which I knew nothing). The whole business of analysis is not a head trip. This is what Jung means in saying “that merely intellectual understanding is not sufficient.” The true content and nature of analysis requires “the living experience of the process as applied to ourselves.” This is yet another reason why Jung required his student trainees to have both their own personal analysis and a training analysis.
Goals of Analysis
Jung:
“Psychic disturbances, like somatic disturbances, are highly complex phenomena which cannot be explained by a purely etiological theory. Besides the cause and the unknown X
of the individual’s disposition, we must also take into account the teleological aspect of fitness in biology, which in the psychic realm would have to be formulated as meaning.”
“In the same way that the body needs food, and not just any kind of food but only that which suits it, the psyche needs to know the meaning of its existence – not just any meaning, but the meaning of those images and ideas which reflect its nature …”[46]
Commentary:
Jung had a teleological perspective on analysis. That is, he felt the Self had some goal or purpose in developing disturbances (psychic or somatic), and he brought this perspective to his work with patients. Rather than seek a diagnosis, Jung asked himself what the intention was–what did this neurosis, or that illness mean? What did the Self want of this individual? Jung’s orientation was to the future and to the empowerment of the person. Unlike Freud, who focused on the etiological–how the problem came about–using an orientation to the past, Jung used the anamnesis[47] to help amplify the images and symbols which the psyche offered up, toward an understanding of “the meaning of its existence.” and the “meaning of those images and ideas which reflect its nature…”
Jung:
“Such a symbolic unity cannot be attained by the conscious will because consciousness is always partisan. Its opponent is the collective unconscious,…”[48]
“… healing comes only from what leads the patient beyond himself and beyond his entanglement in the ego.”[49]
“… the symptom is then put at the disposal of consciousness, causing an increase of vitality on the one hand and a reduction of useless inhibitions and suchlike disturbances on the other.”[50]
Commentary:
The integration of consciousness and unconsciousness is one goal of analysis, and this goal is not something we can “figure out.” How often my students resort to trying to “figure out” their dreams and the intentions of the psyche! But this is not how the process works and Jung in our first passage explains why: “consciousness is always partisan.” That is, it does not have a holistic view; it doesn’t see the bigger picture; it has no sense of what the psyche intends, what the soul’s goals are, or how to transcend its own limits and, in most instances, it does not want to deal with the collective unconscious. The domain of the ego is consciousness, and we live “entangled in the ego”[51]–a condition that is full of stresses, anxieties, projections, discontents, confusions, even illness and neuroses. Healing these conditions requires our growing beyond ourselves, and the only source of that growth lies within, in the confrontation with the unconscious. Most of the time we come to the doctor hoping to be rid of our symptoms, ideally with a simple pill we pop for a while to make it go away. Jung took a different view: He regarded symptoms as valuable components of the healing process, components which he “put at the disposal of consciousness.” The result was “an increase of vitality and a reduction of useless inhibitions …”. Why more vitality? Because considerable libido (psychic energy) had gone into repression of the root causes of the symptom.[52] Once this repression was removed, that energy was free to foster life. That was what Jung’s psychology was all about: empowerment, enlargement of the frame within which one is living, a widening of personal horizons, and a deepened recognition of one’s connection to the cosmos.
Sue Mehrtens is the author of this essay.
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________ (1979), General Index to the Collected Works of C.G. Jung, compiled by Barbara Forryan & Janet Glover. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1964), “Approaching the Unconscious,” Man and His Symbols, ed. C.G. Jung. New York: Dell Publishing.
________ (2007), The Jung-White Letters, ed. Ann Conrad Lammers & Adrian Cunningham. New York: Routledge Philemon Series.
Mizuno, Kogen (1987), Basic Buddhist Concepts. Tokyo: Kosei Publishing Co.
[1] Collected Works 13 ¶475. Hereafter Collected Works will be abbreviated CW, and unless otherwise specified, all paragraph citations will refer to CW 13.
[2] ¶395.
[3] ¶20.
[4] ¶464.
[5] ¶454
[6] ¶455.
[7] For a detailed account of Jung’s attitude toward drugs, see the essay “Jung on Our Opioid Crisis,” archived on this Web site.
[8] ¶216.
[9] ¶229.
[10] I did not make up the term “Inner Friend:” I first encountered it while reading Marie-Louise von Franz’s essay “The Process of Individuation,” in Jung (1964), 162. She noted how the Naskapi Indians of Labrador used this phrase (Mista-peo, in their language) to refer to the source of their dreams, on which they relied for survival.
[11] ¶475.
[12] CW 8 ¶440 and note 131.
[13] ¶16.
[14] Hannah (1976), 202.
[15] ¶126.
[16] ¶285.
[17] ¶443.
[18] ¶465.
[19] CW 16 ¶365.
[20] Jung cited Dorn 88 times in his Collected Works; CW 20, p. 28.
[21] I share this view with the Quakers and Buddhists.
[22] This is the term Daryl Sharp uses to refer to the many figures which lie within us; he created a Jung-focused publishing house with this name; see Inner City Books’ Web site on the Internet.
[23] CW 10 ¶521.
[24] ¶294.
[25] I.e. the Self transcends our ego consciousness, with its culture-bound notions of right and wrong; CW 12 ¶s 247 & 305.
[26] ¶226.
[27] Mizuno (1987), 54-58.
[28] ¶297.
[29] Especially with Father Victor White; see Jung (2007). For a more detailed examination of Jung on the reality of evil, see the essay “Jung on the Devil and the Reality of Evil,” archived on this Web site.
[30] CW 9i ¶189.
[31] ¶469.
[32] World Book Encyclopedia Dictionary, I, 677.
[33] CW 17 ¶162.
[34] ¶20.
[35] In this, Jung was much like the alchemists; cf. ¶7 and CW 14 ¶36.
[36] ¶24.
[37] Twenty-eight citations refer to Lao-tzu in the Index to Jung’s Collected Works; see especially CW 8 ¶s918-922 and CW 6 ¶s 360-364.
[38] Looking back with 30+ years of hinesight, I can say that all the really important things, things are central to my identity and happiness, came back to me, once I learned how to live true to my real nature.
[39] ¶397.
[40] CW 18 ¶s1700-1704.
[41] ¶477.
[42] ¶481.
[43] ¶482.
[44] CW 14 ¶704 and CW 9ii ¶79.
[45] I learned this term from my first analyst, who used it to refer to my low level of self-esteem; I failed to recognize my positive qualities.
[46] ¶464.
[47] I.e. the personal history of the patient; CW 17 ¶177-180 discusses anamnesis in depth.
[48] ¶44
[49] ¶397.
[50] ¶436.
[51] ¶397.
[52] CW 4 ¶515.
