JUNG SOCIETY STUDY GROUP - ANSWER TO JOB Fall 2018

Reflections on Jung's "Answer to Job"

There is an account in fiction that might help us understand what Jung is getting at in his "Answer to Job." In considering this topic, we would do well to remember that when we talk about "God" that we are really talking about our images and ideas about God. GOD is precisely what we do not know because whatever the entity God is, that entity is far beyond our human understanding.

In our course [St. Louis Jung Society "Jung Readings"], we are grappling with our images of God, trying to make them conscious and, in doing so, trying to see if they fit our reality. Most of us received our personal God-image while we were very young. And for most of us, that God-image is like our eyeglasses, that is to say, simply something which we see the world through but of which we are usually unaware. That said, let me return to the fictional account that will serve as an example.

The example comes from Robertson Davies’ The Manticore, the second book in his Deptford Trilogy. David Staunton, a successful but very neurotic barrister from Toronto has suffered a mid-life crisis. His symptoms are so severe that he takes himself to Zurich where he enters analysis with Dr. Johanna von Haller. David suffers from a father-complex. He has been shaped, formed, and dominated by his father; and in spite of considerable evidence to the contrary, can only see his father in a positive light.

After about a year of analysis, working with dreams and gathering together the threads of his life story, David has developed a fuller and more complete picture of his father. He has a dream, biblical in style, which he reports to Dr. Von Haller.

"‘I dreamed I was standing on a plain, talking with my father. I was aware it was Father, though his face was turned away. He was very affectionate and simple in his manner, as I don’t think I ever knew him to be in his life. The odd thing was that I couldn’t really see his face. He wore an ordinary business suit. Then suddenly he turned from me and flew up into the air, and the astonishing thing was that as he rose, his trousers came down, and I saw his naked backside.’

‘And what are your associations?’

‘Well, obviously it’s the passage in Exodus where God promises Moses that he shall see Him, but must not see His face; and what Moses sees is God’s back parts. As a child I always thought it funny for God to show his rump. Funny, but also terribly real and true. Like those extraordinary people in the Bible who swore a solemn oath clutching one another’s testicles. But does it mean that I have seen the weakness, the shameful part of my father’s nature because . . . .?  I’ve done what I can with it, but nothing rings true.’

‘Of course not, because you have neglected one of the chief principles of what I have been able to tell you about the significance of dreams. That again is understandable, for when the dream is important and has something new to tell us, we often forget temporarily what we know to be true. But we have always agreed, haven’t we, that figures in dreams, whoever or whatever they may look like, are aspects of the dreamer? So who is this father with the obscured face and the naked buttocks?’

‘I suppose he is my idea of a father–of my own father?’

‘He is something we would have to talk about if you decided to go on to a deeper stage in the investigation of yourself. Because your real father, your historical father, the man whom you last saw lying so pitiably on the dock with his face obscured in filth, and then so disheveled in his coffin with his face destroyed by your stepmother’s ambitious meddling, is by no means the same thing as the archetype of fatherhood you carry in the depths of your being, and which comes from–well, for the present we won’t attempt to say where.’"

In this dialogue, Davies may have had in mind an interesting and controversial statement Jung makes:

"I look upon the receiving of the Holy Spirit as a highly revolutionary fact which cannot take place until the ambivalent nature of the Father is recognized." [Collected Works, Vol. 18, Para. 1551]

All of Davies’ Deptford Trilogy is an interesting read and in many ways a fine introduction to some basic concepts of Jungian Psychology. I selected this particular passage to help illuminate Jung’s Answer. The character David is not a religious man but he has an unconscious and very masculine God-image that has been mediated to him through his personal father and through other significant men in his life. The same is true also of his feminine God-image which was mediated to him through his personal mother and through other significant women, including his stepmother. For "God" in both these instances, you could simply substitute "Power" because it is these masculine and feminine power-images that have formed and shaped David’s worldview, that is to say, shaped how he sees the world and how he seems himself and his role in that world.

As long as his vision is truncated by a one-sided development, David necessarily holds a narrow and rather naive conscious view of himself and his world. His complexes around mother and father make him sensitive and prone to black moods and fits of anger. What he has repressed about both figures, the good and the bad, lies unconscious in his psyche and rises up to bite him in ways that eventually are debilitating. He cannot deal with his father’s cruel and controlling ways because he literally cannot see them. He cannot deal with his birth mother’s influence and power over him because he simply does not recognize them.

In his analysis, he is able to uncover aspects of his unconscious personality (also mediated to him through mother and father) that have bedeviled him for decades and to gain a certain degree of freedom from behaviors and compulsions that previously controlled him.

Of course, each of us is in some ways a "David Staunton." We each have had our worldview and our personality shaped and influenced by significant people in our history. We each are blind to certain influences and forces that are very real but fall outside our field of vision. The more completely we think we see, the more vast our blind spots.

The prevailing and unquestioned image of God that has been mediated for us is that of a loving, kind, benevolent, omniscient, all-powerful deity. No matter our personal experiences to the contrary, most of us cling to the prevailing God-image. Jung, in the essay we are studying, calls all these God-image assumptions into question. He does so in a way that was upsetting when he published this work in 1952 and is upsetting when we read this work still. We might do well to reflect on the question of WHY calling these God-images into question and examining them is so disturbing. After all, if Jung’s notions about the God-image are only ideas and theories, why do they upset?

INTRODUCTION TO READINGS COURSE

JUNG’S ANSWER TO JOB

In this course, we are going to take up one of Jung’s most controversial works, his Answer to Job. First, some background. Jung wrote Answer in 1951. On May 29, 1951, Jung wrote to Aniela Jaffé: "So it goes all the time: memories rise up and disappear again, as it suits them. In this way I have landed the great whale; I mean "Answer to Job." I can’t say I have fully digested this tour de force of the unconscious. It still goes on rumbling a bit, rather like an earthquake. I notice it when I am chiselling away at my inscription (which has made good progress). Then thoughts come to me, as for instance that consciousness is only an organ for perceiving the fourth dimension, i.e., the all-pervasive meaning, and itself produces no real ideas." [Letters, Vol. 2, pp 17-18.]

Again, on July 18, 1951, he wrote to Aniela Jaffé: "I am especially pleased that you could get into such close relationship with the second part of my book (Answer). So far most people have remained stuck in the first. I personally have the second more at heart because it is bound up with the present and future. If there is anything like the spirit seizing one by the scruff of the neck, it was the way this book came into being." [Letters, Vol. 2, p. 20]

Clearly, Jung felt more that his Answer to Job wrote him not vice versa. And he valued the second part of the work more than the first part. Let’s keep that in mind as we read and discuss the book. Which parts hold meaning for us?

In a letter to "Dr. H," dated August 30, 1951, Jung wrote: "You must pardon my long silence. In the spring I was plagued by my liver and had often to stay in bed and in the midst of this misere wrote a little essay (c.a. 100 typed pages) whose publication is causing me some trouble." [Letters, Vol. 2, p. 21]

Even before his Answer was published (in 1952), it provoked a firestorm of controversy, criticism, and rebuke. What was the firestorm all about? Jung’s biographer, Vincent Brome, writes:

"If one understands Jung’s thesis correctly, Job reveals a hubris which involves a higher form of justice than God himself and the challenge is met by the incarnation of Christ. In this interpretation Christ appears as a deliberate attempt to set right the balance between good and evil, to redeem the injustice God has committed toward Man. This perfection of God is achieved by union with Divine Wisdom or Sophia, the feminine counterpart of the Holy Spirit which reappears under the image of the Virgin Mary." [Jung, Man and Myth, p. 254]

Only two years earlier, the Catholic Church had issued a papal pronouncement on the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, an event Jung saw as an expression of the collective unconscious that was a sorely-need feminine compensation for the patriarchal one-sidedness of Christianity. As we shall see, Jung thought it was God’s estrangement with, or ‘forgetting’ of, Sophia that allowed him to treat Job so harshly.

Again, I quote from Brome’s biography:

"There were those who felt that Answer to Job simultaneously committed the sins of blasphemy and arrogance: blasphemy that he should attempt to unravel the metamorphoses of the Holy Spirit in the manner of a neo-Gnostic and arrogance in making it conform to his own theories. Fierce controversy followed, with one school reading the book simply as a psychological explanation of Man’s conception of God, while others recoiled from the notion that any imperfection had ever appeared in the Holy Spirit. Ellenberger believed that the book could also be understood ‘as a cry of existential anguish from a man desperately seeking for a solution of the greatest of all philosophical riddles, the problem of evil’

"There remained a hostile handful who claimed that Jung had now appointed himself psychiatrist to God, diagnosed a divine sickness and successfully cured the Patient by applying his own theories. Eric Neumann, his old friend in Israel, wrote on 5 December 1951, "[Answer to Job] is a book that grips me profoundly. I find it the most beautiful and deepest of your books. In a certain sense it is a dispute with God similar to Abraham’s when he pleaded with God on account of the destruction of Sodom. In particular it is for me–for me personally–also a book against God who let 6 million of his people be killed, for Job is really Israel too.’" [Brome, p 254]

Jung’s reply to Neumann (January 5, 1952) clearly shows that he recognizes just what his "little essay" displays: ". . . the arrogance I had to summon up in order to be able to insult God? This gave me a bigger bellyache than if I had the whole world against me." [Letters, p. 32]

There were many reactions to Jung’s Answer. Victor White, a Dominican priest and close collaborator/friend of Jung’s, wrote a scathing review of the book. His views were so counter to Jung’s that the difference eventually ended their relationship. "As one critic put it succinctly if inelegantly, the two scholars (Jung and White) were able to maintain a respectful and cordial tone to their disagreement until Jung ‘cornered God the Father, pinned him to the nearest couch and promptly set about psychoanalysing him.’ Jung found God ‘guilty of being unconscious, having projected his shadow upon humanity, and of perpetuating a considerable amount of injustice and evil.’ When Jung concluded that Christian theology deprived God of the possibility of having a shadow, White was bound by the tenets of his faith to declare him wrong." [Bair, Jung, A Biography, p. 546]

For anyone interested in God, or in the nature of God, or in one’s relations with God, Jung’s ‘little essay’ raises disturbing questions. How does one reconcile the sometimes warring, vengeful, dangerous God/Yahweh of the Old Testament with the loving, compassionate, merciful Son of God of the New Testament? How is it that God could forget the covenant he made with God’s People and turn against them with such wrath at times?

In our readings course we will be revisiting one of the early issues of Christianity, the Marcion heresy. Marcion lived in the second century CE and held beliefs that were counter to those prevailing in Christian circles at the time. He believed there was no way to reconcile the Gods of the Old and New Testaments; their differences were just too great. He also believed that Jesus had revealed certain ‘truths’ that were available only to a select few (Gnosticism). And he believed that Christ’s nature was divine without the human element that the early church insisted upon. All three of these beliefs were eventually declared heretical.

As we study Jung’s Answer, we will be revisiting these ancient heresies and examining them for ourselves. Did the early Church Fathers settle these issues once and for all? Why are they important today? What do they have to do with us? Why should we care? What is the true nature of this entity we call God, the nature of the Christ/Man? Can we know?

I think exploring these kinds of questions and considering possible answers for ourselves is important because such exploration can be of help in our uncovering, i.e., making conscious, and possibly reformulating a living myth for our own lives.

If our myth is of a kind, loving, compassionate Father God, how do we reconcile a world in which evil runs rampant? If we are made in the image and likeness of this God, from whence evil? What about this God who allowed six million of his chosen people to die in the Holocaust? Elie Weisel has said the holocaust should make us revisit everything we ever thought about God. And what of the tsunami that killed upwards of 100,000 people?

If, as Jung suggests, the role of the conscious human being is to stand with God against God, what does that mean for us? Of course, a kind, loving, compassionate, all-knowing, all-powerful God has no need for such a posture on our part.

One way of looking at our Judeo-Christian scriptures is to see them as the ‘story’ of an individual and collective and unfolding/development of consciousness. It begins with the evictions from the idyllic garden of Eden, that state of not-knowing and innocence of childhood. There is the Moses kind of consciousness that unifies the personality/culture with law and order, leads it out of bondage, through difficult and dangerous passages. What about the God that strikes Moses down for a simple act of disobedience after decades of faithful service? That Moses consciousness cannot enter the ‘promised land.’

We will be examining the Job-type consciousness that keeps insisting God remember his better nature and the covenant God has made. Job does indeed stand with God against God. But what kind of God is it that needs a human reflection to remember his nature? What is the level of consciousness of the human person who does not question, does not reflect, does not accept any mirroring that would crack his/her belief system? Such a one is in dire need of a ‘Job’ to expand the controlling myth of his/her life.

And there is the Jesus-type consciousness that stands all prior understanding of the nature of God on its head. Where Yahweh would flatten the enemy, destroy it totally, this new God-Man shows and lives out a totally different kind of victory. As Jack Miles’ explains, ". . . Christians who have bound themselves to Christ sacramentally in his death will find themselves bound to him as well in his glorious resurrection. Their victory and God’s will be over death itself rather than over any one death-dealing human enemy. God will have achieved this victory for them not by defeating his human enemies but by allowing himself to be defeated by them and then triumphing impersonally over the defeat itself rather than personally over he enemies who inflicted the defeat." [Miles, "The Disarmament of God," p. 3, http://www.jackmiles.com/default.asp?id=28 ]

Or, put more succinctly by Anthony de Mello in his little story, "The Coconut":

"A monkey on a tree hurled a coconut
at the head of a Sufi.
The man picked it up, drank the milk,
ate the flesh, and made a bowl from the shell.

Thank you for your criticism of me." [The Song of the Bird, p. 163]

If we view our actions, both personally and collectively, in the light of a scriptural mythology of developing consciousness, those actions tell us a great deal about the state of our consciousness. Do we focus on defeating our enemy and raining fire and shame on their heads or do we focus on defeating the defeat our enemy has visited upon us?

I started this introduction with background and will return to background here. Jung wrote Answer in 1951 when he was 76 years old. He spent three months of intense effort revising it. Deidre Bair in her recent biography writes about the last two decades of Jung’s life. (He died in 1961.)

"In the last two decades of Jung’s life, coinciding with the isolation and introspection imposed by the war, those who were close to him noticed changes in his attitude toward the world at large. In one of her succinct pronouncements, Jolande Jacobi described the major one: ‘He really wasn’t interested in anyone’s private life anymore. He was only interested in the ‘Big Dreams,’ in the collective archetypal world.’ Using his two infarcts as his excuse, he curtailed public appearances and refused to meet most new people. He . . . cut his analytic calendar drastically, seldom seeing more than four persons in any given day and then mostly for fifteen-minute conversations . . ."

His behavior created concerns for those around him. Jacobi put it this way: "‘When journalists came we were trembling and hoping that Muller the gardener gives the interviews because he is closer to reality. Jung lived now in another world.’

There were more visible extremes in his behavior as well. During the three months he took to revise the original text of Answer to Job, he closeted himself away for long hours each day, writing to the point of exhaustion. Jacobi described him as ‘moody in a rude and crude way, like a peasant . . . furious all the time.’ The usually fastidious Jung sometimes went several days without shaving or (as some of his intimates inferred) bathing, but Emma was always there to see that he wore clean clothing." [Jung, A Biography, p. 528]

REREADING MEMORIES, DREAMS, REFLECTIONS

During the spring of 2018, the C. G. Jung Society of St. Louis offered a study group, seminar format, during which two dozen people read and discussed Jung's MEMORIES, DREAMS, REFLECTIONS in two small groups.
  
For the last meeting of both groups, I summarized my own thoughts and shared them:

It was a pleasure reading through MDR at a leisurely pace with the benefit of others’ reflections and impressions.  Many memories of my own early life came flooding back as I read the first chapters.  Many of those memories I’ve revisited before in my journals, in conversations with my siblings and friends, in discussion groups like this one, and in many analytic sessions.  This time with our text, from an even more distant perspective, yielded new insights and depth of understanding of my own journey.  I came away with a firmer understanding of the role of my mother in my life and the impact of the death of my father when I was three years old, two areas of intense focus now for decades.

Jung’s discussion of his No. 1 and No. 2 personalities was particularly helpful.  I know I, too, suffered a similar split early on.  I, too, left behind my No. 1 to take up the tasks of adaptation—over-adaptation in my case—as a young adult.  Only with the complete failure of my No. 2 to deal with tragedy was I thrown back on myself in a way I came to see as essential.  But, oh, was it ever painful!

At age 30 I had a numinous experience in which my No. 1 personality broke through though I didn’t recognize what was happening.  I only registered something foreign but vaguely familiar from very early experiences.  I went to the Louvre and, turning a corner, I saw the Venus de Milo down a long corridor before me.  Suddenly I knew something new, and understood why all the emphasis on and study of art.  I didn’t know the word numinous then, but it was a numinous experience.

In my early 40’s, in the middle of a life crisis, I happened to go with a friend to a week-long program about dreams led by a Jungian Analyst.  The week got me extremely interested in dreams, but mostly I saw something in the analyst, undefinable to be sure, that I wanted for myself.  That week I began a pursuit that is still on-going.  I am somewhat clearer about what it was I glimpsed in that person and can now say that it is a way of being in process—a way of being and becoming that is life giving.  It is a process where the goal paradoxically is death.

There are many, many ideas and specific sentences in the book that grabbed me, particularly the paragraph on p. 325 where Jung talks about embodying the essential “or life is wasted.”  A harsh judgement!

Jung’s discussion about stumbling onto alchemy and its contributions to his psychological theories was enriching.  I liked, once again, reading about his discovery of a myth that gave meaning to his existence.  The search for meaning may be every bit as critical to one's existence as the discovery of that meaning.  Meaning has provided me dignity and purpose and has made all the difference in my life.

My main takeaway from these weeks of reading and discussion is the vital importance Jung assigned to his inner life.  His emphasis on the interior process put me, more than ever, in touch with my own.  Reading about his experiences, his insights, his reflections made me more keenly appreciative of my own.

Somewhere Jung argues that one must fall in love with one’s own life.  I did that one more time during these past weeks.

Thank you, All, for this rich experience.

May 6, 2018

HEALING THROUGH THE NUMINOUS

I have long been interested in C. G. Jung’s work, especially as it relates to healing the personality, my own and that of others. We live in a culture in which “personality” is often equated with ego and the ego equated with personhood. Jung amply demonstrated that there is potentially a good deal more to the personality than simply one’s ego and one’s ego self-image.

For someone identified with the ego, that is, someone who believes he/she is the sum total of the ego’s understanding, alienation is a necessary condition. You might ask, alienation from what? Jung’s answer is alienation from the collective heritage of humankind, from the healing balm of unconscious processes and contents that seek to enliven and enrich the ego but cannot find a welcoming window in the ego structure.

The first step for the person isolated in the ego shell is to posit the existence of the unconscious and its healing factors. [The enormous success of the Alcoholics Anonymous movement rests on this supposition. Interestingly enough, Jung’s work was instrumental in the origins of AA.]

The usual condition of the alienated ego is suffering, the natural consequence of the individual encountering a situation for which the coping mechanisms of the ego are inadequate. Such a situation brings enormous dissonance and disillusionment with it—anguish, disorientation, suffering, and depression--sometimes accompanied by physical illness. Common expressions for this experience are “midlife crisis” and “nervous breakdown.” There are myriad symptoms that accompany this condition. Common treatments are prescription drugs, alcohol, busyness, exercise, shopping, etc; all serving the purpose of distraction, repression, and reduced suffering.

If the individual has a religious orientation with beliefs, dogma, and images sufficient to connect the ego with the deeper strata of human existence, that is, with the healing balm of unconscious processes, all will eventually go well. Through scriptural stories, ritual, sacramental acts, and community, he/she will receive the blessings humankind has long relied upon religion to facilitate and will weather the crisis. The individual is graced. Blessings and grace are old-fashioned words that fit well a certain psychological state that is experienced as the end of alienation.

However, if the individual has a remote connection with religion or none at all, the window to the healing effects of the unconscious is not only closed, it cannot even be imagined. Blessings and grace are foreign concepts. For these people Jung’s approach to psychology can be life saving.

Jung discovered that there are very important “nuclear processes” in the unconscious—actual images of the goal (the goal being the union of the ego with these unconscious processes), which can appear in dreams or fantasies. These images appear when there is a certain condition of ego need, a sort of hunger. Of course, the ego seeks familiar and favorite dishes, unable to imagine some outlandish food unknown to it. What the individual experiences is a longing but a longing for which there is no object. Nothing satisfies. An old Peggy Lee song, “Is That All There Is?” well describes this experience

Jung writes about this occurrence: “The goal which beckons to this psychic need, the image which promises to heal, to make whole, is at first strange beyond all measure to the conscious mind, so that it can find entry only with the very greatest difficulty.” Entry and servings of “outlandish food,” come through the numinous. The ego is confronted with numinous experience that is awe-inspiring and naturally demanding of attention.

Addressing the key role of religion to provide healing, Jung goes on:
“Of course it is quite different for people who live in a time and environment when such images of the goal have dogmatic validity. These images are then eo ipso held up to consciousness, and the unconscious is thus shown its own secret reflection, in which it recognizes itself and so joins forces with the conscious (ego) mind.”

Jung is speaking here of the symbol systems, imagery, mythology, etc., that are effective as bridges between the ego and the unconscious. That is why the Catholic Mass, Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, sacred rituals of world religions, Hasidic story, parables, astrology, etc., work so effectively for so many people. These methodologies allow the unconscious, in “its own secret reflection” to be recognized by the individual ego so that the two can be joined in a unity. Jung called that unity “individuation.”

In the numinous experience, the ego encounters a reality incomprehensible to it, a power far greater than itself. The relativising effect on the ego can also release the individual from impossible responsibilities and overwhelming feelings of inadequacy. [Humankind throughout history has always left certain life tasks to the gods. Where there are no gods, the individual feels compelled to fill the role.]

Jungian Psychology, then, is uniquely suited for those people who cannot find a comfortable home in any religious tradition. People who study Jung’s ideas, who gather to hear presentations on various facets of his work, or who enter deeply into Jungian psychoanalysis have discovered the psychological path to healing of the personality. The meandering path of individuation, the cooperative dance of ego individuality and unconscious processes, is enormously enriching. In this dance the healing effects so many of us seek today are revealed and actualized.



This article was first published in The Pathfinder newspaper, September-October, 2013 issue, pathfindnews.com.
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SEMINARS AT CARE AND COUNSELING, April 11 and 25, 2018

Care and Counseling, 12141 Ladue Road, St. Louis, MO, 63141, has invited me to present two seminars, "Elements of Jungian Psychology and Their Application in Counseling," on April 11 and 25, 10:30 am - 11:45 am.  The first seminar will focus on the efficacy of the dream for identifying and resolving troubling issues in the personality.  The second seminar will cover (1) the role of symbols in understanding, (2) the relationship between psychology and religion, and (3) Consciousness and its relationship to the Collective Unconscious.

For additional information or to register for these and other Care and Counseling seminars, please visit www.careandcounseling.org

Description:

C. G. Jung’s understanding of patterns in the unconscious and their influence on conscious functioning can be helpful for approaching seemingly intractable problems, problems that cause terrible suffering due to the dissonance between those patterns and an individual’s adapted consciousness.  These two seminars will include discussion of ways of identifying factors in the unconscious that give rise to maladapted functioning as well as approaches for resolving troublesome behaviors. We will also touch on Jung’s ideas about fuller functioning for normal individuals whose issues, though troubling, do not rise to the level of psychopathology.  Jungian analysis has aptly been described as rebuilding one’s ship while at sea because of the structural changes that take place in the personality.

Learning Objectives:

*Identify troubling behaviors that have their source in hidden (unconscious) parts of the client’s
  personality.
*Help clients see more deeply into reasons/sources of their difficulties so that they are able to adapt to
  challenging circumstances more effectively and with a deeper sense of satisfaction.
*Understand that dream images and storylines are experiences that, when properly understood,
  always provide helpful information and can reveal an inner urge toward grown and development of
  the personality.

PRESENTATION: JUNG ON HIS OWN DREAMS

Jung on His Own Dreams

Presented by Rose F. Holt, M.A., Jungian Analyst

Friday, February. 9, 2018    7:00 - 9:00 PM
First Congregational Church UCC 
6501 Wydown Blvd., Clayton, MO, 63105
Fee: Friends $15/ Students $5 / Others: $20 (2 CEUs)

Visit C. G. Jung Society of St. Louis website, www.cgjungstl.org, for more information or to register.

In his autobiographical work, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, C. G. Jung (1875-1961) recounts pivotal dreams from his long life and discusses the meaning and direction he took from them. In this lecture Rose will use Jung’s work with his dreams to illustrate effective ways of approaching our own dreams. Everyone dreams. Jung, more than any other psychological theorist, helps us unpack the meaning and value to be found in dreams. For Jung, the dream is a part of nature, to be explored just as we would any other natural phenomenon. When we examine our own dream, we are exploring important elements of our own nature. Dreams emerge from an unconscious part of our personality. Exploration of the dream can reveal a great deal about parts usually opaque to our understanding but glaringly obvious to others. As with any topic, the more we understand, the deeper the meaning and value we are able to glean from it. When the topic is our own personality, the work can be both troubling and richly rewarding. 

Rose F. Holt, M.A. is a Jungian analyst in private practice in St. Louis and is a member of both the Chicago Association of Jungian Analysts and the Interregional Society of Jungian Analysts. She received her Diploma in Analytical Psychology from the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago in 2001 where she is active in the Analyst Training Program. She served as Advisory Analyst to the C.G. Jung Society of St. Louis for twelve years. Rose has lectured widely, taught numerous courses in all facets of Jungian Psychology, and has published articles and essays on the topic.

Chiron Publications Interview with Murray Stein

Chiron Publications has posted a thoughtful, in-depth interview with Murray Stein entitled "Keep Calm and Carry On" about the Trump era.  It is well worth reading.  You can find it at:  http://chironpublications.com/keep-calm-carry-interview-murray-stein-donald-trump/

STUDY GROUP - Jung Readings - Analytical Psychology

I will be leading a Jung Readings Study Group this Fall.  We will discuss C.G. Jung's Analytical Psychology, a series of five lectures he gave at the Tavistock Clinic in England in 1935.  The group will be limited to ten participants and will meet for a total of six Monday evenings.  For detailed information or to register, please visit www.cgjungstl.org and click on the "Study Groups" tab.

Video on Jung's "Scrutinies," in THE RED BOOK

In 2011 Dickson Beale interviewed me about Jung's "Scrutinies" for The St. Louisan.  You can see the video of that short interview by googling, "Rose F. Holt on The Scrutinies."  I thought the video was no longer available so was happy to see it again.  Thank you, Dickson!

Jung's self examination in his "Scrutinies" (included in THE RED BOOK) is extremely interesting and revealing of the tremendous conflict Jung experienced between his inner life and his outer life, his Number 1 Personality and his Number 2 Personality.  (See MEMORIES, DREAMS, REFLECTIONS for Jung's explanation of the two personalities he understood inhabited his personality.)  The entire RED BOOK can be understood as his work to resolve this conflict, his reconciliation to the real person he was, or, as he was to call it later, his individuation process.

Before Jung's time this process of reconciliation was primarily understood in traditionally religious terms.  Jung does a translation of the work into psychological terms.  After his six-plus years recording his experiences in his "Confrontation with the Unconscious," he spent a good deal of his life writing and speaking about the parallels and differences between the two approaches to the work.

REPORT ON "CASTING SHADOWS" PLAY PRODUCTION

FINAL REPORT

“Casting Shadows” Play Production, February 17, 18, 19, 2017
A new play by Carol Haake
Directed by Carol Haake and Susie Bradley

The goals of the play production project were (1) to offer some essential principles of Jungian Psychology to a new and broad audience, and (2) to break even financially.  We far exceeded both goals.

Goal 1:  The play had embedded in the storyline an essential Jungian idea, that of the continuing development of the personality over the entire lifespan.  The story plus Carol’s and an accompanying analyst’s discussion with the audience after each performance added to the first goal.  About half of each audience was new to the Jung Society, and some unknown fraction was new to Jung’s ideas.  Our initial plans were to do two or three performances.  As it developed, three performances were necessary, and all three were sold out.  About 250 people total saw the play.  That number included paid ticket holders, invited guests, and workers for each performance.

The Jung Society Board decided to have Visual Alchemy (Rick Vaughn and Ken Clayton) videotape one play performance.  Taping was done during dress rehearsal the evening before opening night.  Visual Alchemy also videotaped an interview with Carol Haake, the playwright, and Donna Leone, a Society board member.  Both will be available on the Jung Society website soon (www.cgjungstl.org).

Goal 2:  Given the cost of The Chapel Theater (none) with refreshments (part of the Theater gifting for one performance), the low-cost use of Unity Church facilities for rehearsals, the donations of time, treasure, and the talent from many people (especially Carol Haake, Susie Bradley, Julie Schulte, Don Weseman, and Sandy Cooper), the production should have came in under budget.  Jung Society Sales of the play DVD’s over time should add to revenue.

There were many factors that added to the over-the-top success of this project.  They include:

A)  Having “Casting Shadows” a fine story and play, one that lended itself to explication of Jungian themes.  (Thanks, Carol Haake!)

B)  Securing The Chapel Theater and fixing the dates on the calendar a year in advance of the performances.  (Thanks, Kathryn Stinson!)

B)  Having arresting artwork that provided an image early in the project for garnering interest.  (Thanks, Ginger Adkins!)

C)  Getting simple  “Save the Date” post card (with the image) notices to over 800 people on the Jung Society mailing list.  (Thanks, to all who helped with the mailing!)

D)  Having the help of an experienced play director.  (Thanks, Susie Bradley!)

E)  Getting the assistance of sound and lighting experts.  (Thanks, Rick Vaughn and Ken Clayton!)

F)  Having the fine cooperation of the coordinator of The Chapel Theater.  (Thanks, Wilson West!)

G)  Having imaginative set and costume design/implementation, posters, and picture boards.  (Thanks, Julie Schulte and Don Wesemann!)

H)  Taking on the role of the magician when two original cast members had to bow out.  (Thanks, Francesca Ferrentelli!)

I)  Having the Society Registrar carefully track ticket reservations and report progress.  (Thanks, Jeri Malone!)

J)  Having the coordination of efforts between the play production committee and the Jung Society Board of Directors. (Thanks, Sandy Cooper!)

K)  Having dedicated cast members who gave so generously of their time and talent to bring words on paper to enlivening, joy-filled performances.  (Thanks, Cast Members!)

L)  Having the Jung Society underwrite, publicize, and support all facets of the Production.  (Thanks, Jung Society Board Members, Subscribing Friends, and Anonymous Donors!)

M) Having photographs for posting on the Jung Society website (cgjungstl.org).  (Thanks, Julie Schulte, Donna Leone, R.J. Fitch!)

No doubt I have missed acknowledging people’s efforts.  My apologies to them.

This whole play production project, from vague idea to accomplished reality, is itself an example of a fundamental principle of Jungian Psychology.  That principle:  There are forces at work in us and in the world beyond those of simple cause and effect.  Plentiful evidence suggests that when something is to be fulfilled in the future, a gathering of forces—particular people, talents, materials, resources, places, events—converge to insure that fulfillment.  Human intention and discernment are critical to insuring any fulfillment is of a benign and benevolent nature.

This is actually an ancient notion:

“Write the vision down;
make it plain on tablets,
so they may run who read it.
For still the vision awaits its appointed time;
it hastens to the end—it will not lie.
If it seems slow, wait for it;
it will surely come;
it will not delay."
         [Habakkuk 2:2-3]


Rose F. Holt

Review: THE UNEXPECTED ADVENTURE OF GROWING OLD

Leah Friedman's The Unexpected Adventure of Growing Old is an exploration of many of the facets of a subject our culture avoids, primarily out of fear and misunderstanding, but also abetted by a consumer society that rewards youth and ignores the elderly. Add to those factors, a medical mentality and a pharmaceutical industry focused almost entirely on all that is wrong, awry, dysfunctional, and diseased, ageism is the inevitable by-product.


One of the delights of the book is the author's clear understanding of Jungian concepts which she uses to help elucidate a process of growth and development that has the potential of delivering fine rewards of creativity and satisfaction well into very old age.  If you are interested in the prospects of a late life that is a celebration of growing old, this is the book for you.

Dr. Friedman, in her 89th year, takes on the topic of aging directly and without apology, writing while standing on the shoulders of giants who have lived long and well, and while being attentive to and conscious of her own aging process. She in no way minimizes the issues she and many aging people (a group that includes everyone of us!) encounter but dares to explore with clear eye and warm heart many of the experiences of her last three decades--some enriching, rewarding, life-enhancing; others, vexing, heart-breaking, challenging almost beyond human endurance; all imbued with valuable life lessons.

In my initial read, I was happy to jump from chapter to chapter, engaging the text randomly as the author invites the reader to do. Soon, though, I returned to page one and read straight through, having realized the order of the chapters, like the aging process itself, parallels a growing, deepening understanding.

I am in my eighth decade and was delighted to have many of my own assumptions about aging up-ended, especially the most general one of all, that growing old is difficult, unpleasant, troublesome, and to be postponed as long as possible (an actual impossibility) by every means available. Personal experiences of loved ones entering periods of illness that short-circuited and truncated their lives had cast an unconscious pall over my own ideas of growing old. I found practical benefits in having some of my own implicit assumptions called into question and corrected. I know full well that we often find in life what we expect to find, that we both live our own story and can be seduced into living stories others too-frequently and often eagerly write for us. One's own stories about growing old are important, even life defining.

The Unexpected Adventure of Growing Old is well researched and well written. The author has an engaging and deceptively simple style that makes for a smooth read; there is no stumbling over awkward verbiage or jarring style. There are many occasional delights of sentence structure that help shine a light on unexpected rewards in very trying circumstances, even humor in pathos. A paragraph I particularly noted was the description of the author’s own acquisition of a desirable patience as her husband declined into dementia. “. . . there was one period when he told me hundred of times each day how important it is to have compassion, advice which, due to its tiresome recurrence, greatly tested my capacity to follow his worthy instruction.”

Dr. Friedman has given us a brilliant and uplifting new narrative for growing old in a time of increasing longevity and opportunity, a narrative necessary for a changing reality. In typing the book title, I accidentally wrote “The Unexpected Adventure of Growin Gold.” With an added apostrophe, I think that might well serve as a silent subtitle.

REFLECTIONS

SOME QUESTIONS/RESPONSES FOR REFLECTION

1.  Why do you think dreams are important?  Dreams are an important way unconscious contents reach consciousness.  Even a cursory self-reflection reveals that our attitudes and behaviors are influenced by unconscious ideas, assumptions, dynamics, feelings, memories, and imaginings.  Dreams are a way we may be able to better understand these influences and deal with them more effectively—eliminating some, exaggerating others, developing and implementing those that are helpful.

2.  Where do you agree with Jung’s ideas?  Where do you disagree?  For the most part, I agree with Jung’s ideas and theories, especially the ones we have touched on in our study together.  Jung was,  (as are we), confined in his milieu so that some of his notions appear to us as archaic or misogynistic.
 
3.  Why do you think the concept of the unconscious is difficult for some?  People for whom the unconscious becomes a reality HAVE to come to terms with it.  For many others, a quiescent unconscious puts no demands on them, hence they have no need to deal with it, even believe in its existence.  Some would argue they are the lucky ones.

4.  Why do you think the relationship between consciousness and the unconscious is important?  Or unimportant?  The relationship is important, even vital, for someone for whom the unconscious has become a disturbing influence in his/her life.  Usually the unconscious makes its disturbing presence felt through compulsions, depression, overwhelming life events—any issue for which ego consciousness alone cannot muster an adequate, adaptive response.  As long as ego consciousness functions well, a relationship with the unconscious is unimportant, perhaps undesirable.

5.  What is your understanding of archetypes?  Archetypes are patterns of behavior.  A simple example is the bird building its nest.  Presumably, it is adhering to some instinctive imprint that informs its behavior.  How do archetypes fit into one’s approach to the dream?  When archetypal themes begin to appear in dreams, it marks an important milestone in the development of the personality.  The layer of insulation between consciousness and the unconscious, i.e., the personal unconscious, has become sufficiently permeable that elements from the unconscious begin to show themselves to ego consciousness.  The personal unconscious consists of one’s own history—forgotten or repressed contents, undeveloped and undesirable personality traits sometimes apparent to others but not to oneself, deeds we do not want to acknowledge.  The deeper unconscious, which Jung calls the collective unconscious, is the repository of all humankind and is teeming with creative energies and patterns seeking realization and incarnation in a responsive and responsible individual consciousness.

6.  What are important considerations to keep in mind when considering a dream?  The most important and the most difficult consideration is that the dream is bringing NEW information to consciousness.  Our natural tendency is to immediately place the information into existing categories where nothing new can enter in.  Our consciousness, by its very construction is a Procrustean bed.  [The notion of the Immaculate Conception, understood symbolically, is that in a sufficiently cleansed consciousness, something new has a chance for insemination and eventual birth—the saving thing.]

7.  Why do dreams convince when no amount of logical argument can?  I don’t know, but I do know this is a true statement.

8.  Why are dreams so discounted in modern life?  Our collective consciousness is all about keeping itself intact and turning the individual to its service.  Dreams, by emphasizing individual development and fostering an anything-but-the-herd mentality, are naturally unwelcome to the collective.
 
9.  Is there a resurgence of interest in dreams?  Perhaps.  I would be interested in others' opinion about this question.

10.  There is no account of Jesus’ ever sharing a dream in the N.T.  Why might that be?  A real puzzle.  Maybe Jesus’ statement, “I and the Father are one,” is an indication that his relationship with the unconscious was so well formed that he and it had no need for the corrections and compensations that dreams bring.  Or it could be the case that Jesus lived in a multidimensional reality in which he did not distinguish waking consciousness from any other state of being?  If the latter case is true, his final victory would be that of achieving a state which in itself is eternal.  

11.  What might the unconscious be seeking from a cooperating ego consciousness?  Ah, the Big Question!  Truly a mystery akin to that of the fate of the Son of Man.  Did he know all before the Passion or did he live it in blind obedience to the unknown—as we must do?

 12. Why does contact with deep layers of the psyche (the unconscious) have a healing effect?  I don’t know, but I do know that is a true statement.

C. G. Jung Society of St. Louis - Newsletter

The new issue of the St. Louis Jung Society Newsletter is out.  To access it, go to www.cgjungstl.org.  The Society always offers interesting programs and study groups.  This issue also contains information about the Society's play production, "Casting Shadows;" about the 2017 Writing Contest; and about the 2017 Jung in the Heartland Conference.

The Society has many videotapes of past programs available for purchase.  That information is also available at www.cgjungstl.org    The upcoming play will be filmed and available on DVD as will the major talks of the 2017 Conference by Lionel Corbett and Chelsea Wakefield.

The newsletter featured this quote, so fitting for our times:

“Just as the conscious mind can put out the question, ‘Why is there this frightful conflict between good and evil?’ so the unconscious mind can reply, ‘Look closer! Each needs the other. The best, just because it is the best, holds the seeds of evil, and there is nothing so bad but good can come of it.’”

                                              C.G. Jung, from "The Relations between Ego and the Unconscious”

A FUN PROJECT

SAVE THE DATE! “Casting Shadows”

A new play by Carol Haake

Directed by Susie Bradley

February 17 & 18,  7:30 pm

February 19,  2:00 pm

Reserve seats now at

www.cgjungstl.org

$10-$15 in advance; $15-$20 at the door

The Chapel Theater

6238 Alexander Drive, St. Louis, MO  63105

CASTING CALL:  If you are interested in auditioning for a part in this production, please read on!

 “Casting Shadows” depicts the Jungian process of individuation, the inner impulse in a person that can urge one on to a fuller, more creative existence.

The play is a fairy tale about an aging queen who is caught in cultural and family expectations about women, aging, and her role as queen. A tragedy sends her running away into the woods where she meets persons from her past, unremembered parts of herself, and other helpful characters. Her experiences help her to become comfortable with herself as an aging woman and a ruler. 

Cast of Characters

Magician: Androgynous character, introduces and closes show, also appears in second scene.

Queen: the main character, a middle aged or older woman

Queen’s shadow: The unacknowledged part of the queen, always with her, giving advice or comments.

Angry woman: Another unacknowledged part of the queen, always with her, takes over and answers for the queen periodically

King: older man, appears with queen in first scene

King’s shadow: Unacknowledged part of king, always with him, giving advice and comments

Father: Makes 3 brief appearances in second scene, once as older man, twice as younger

Mother: Makes 3 brief appearances in second scene, once as older woman, twice as younger

Trickster: Dashes in, causes trouble, dashes out, in second and third scenes, body language important.

Old woman: Older wiser part of the queen, appears in second and third scenes

Young girl: Teen age (or at least young) part of the queen, appears in second the third scenes

Young man: Young man representing the masculine side of queen, appears in second and third scenes

Prime minister: Mature, haughty man, appears in third scene.

Prime minister’s shadow: Unacknowledged part of prime minister, always with him giving advice and comments.

If you are interested in auditioning for one of these amateur roles, please send an e-mail to www.cgjungstl@yahoo.com    Auditions will be held during the second week of December.

ELECTION DAY IN AMERICA

Voters in the U.S. go to the polls today.  Never in American history have we faced a clearer choice--continuing slow progress toward consciousness or a dangerous backsliding into darkness.  I personally believe the long arc of history does indeed bend in the direction of peace and justice.  However, just as in the individual, divisive and dangerous tendencies can arise from the unconscious and infect entire nations.  The reminder of Nazi Germany alone is proof.

The tip weight in the critical balance between light and dark is the tiny light of consciousness that each of us carries.  Without the understanding of our own processes of development and memory of our personal history, we can too quickly succumb to energies that, rather than enhance our lives, can damage and even destroy them.  Nations, too, face a parallel danger.

Dr. Jung believed the impetus toward individuation could arise in two different ways, from a crisis in the life of an individual or from a cataclysmic event in the world.  Today there is a clash in the world between light and dark, between order and chaos, between barbaric and civilized behaviors.  We in the U.S. have seen this played out in our national politics and, alarmingly, in our government.

There are people in the U.S. Congress who have abandoned long-standing rules of decorum and duty, whose one goal is winning, who serve the gods of money and power.  Only the spoils of victory will do for these people.  These people and the gods they serve have Donald Trump as their fitting champion.  Hillary Clinton offers a critically important alternative.

Most women and many, many men, because of instinctual energies that protect and preserve their children, energies that serve evolution, have a natural civilizing influence on society and are much more likely to serve a very different god.  In themselves, money and power, though seductive and important, are insufficient to carry, give birth to, and nurture children.  Another god is required, one deeply rooted in reality and generative impulses.  Ambition, conflict, warring, disbelief in evolution--all are inimical to raising children.

Hillary Clinton understands the nature of ALL warring gods well.  She appears to have experienced many of them in her own psyche and has had to come to terms with them--even to have used her consciousness to forge a warring peace among them.  I believe for Secretary Clinton money and power are now in the service of another and higher god, one amenable to tempering by human reason and feeling.

Individuation, according to Jung, is the task of harnessing god-like energies in the unconscious psyche and guiding them toward higher purposes so that they can enhance the lives of individuals and societies.  I count myself lucky to live in a culture that makes room for people like Hillary Clinton and the gifts she brings to all of us.

For these reasons, I am with her.

NEWSLETTER - C. G. JUNG SOCIETY OF ST. LOUIS Fall 2016

The C. G. Jung Society of St. Louis has gone green!

The theme at our "Jung in the Heartland: Altar of the Earth" conference prompted us to examine our own carbon footprint. To make it smaller, our newsletter is now available in electronic format.  To receive a pdf of the Newsletter and to be added to the mailing list, please send your request to cgjungstl@yahoo.com.  You may also request a printed one be mailed to you.

C. G. Jung Society of St. Louis Fall '16 Programs

The C. G. Jung Society of St. Louis has just announced its Fall '16 programs.  For detailed information or to enroll, please visit www.cgjungstl.org

One study group is of particular interest because it offers both an overview of Jungian Psychology and because it will be presented by seven different Jungian Analysts.  This is a rare opportunity for gaining insight into facets of Jung's works and for meeting individuals steeped in the Jungian tradition.

Fundamentals of Jungian Psychology

Presented by Seven Jungian Analysts

7 Sundays, 2:00 – 3:30 pm

September 11, 18, 25; October 2, 9, 16, 30

Fee:  Friends:  $195; Others: $215 (Includes $36 for Personality Type Assessment Materials)

CEU’s:  10 1/2

Description:  This course, taught by seven Jungian Analysts, will provide participants with a solid understanding of some basic ideas and theories that underlie Jungian Psychology.  The course is designed for counselors, social workers, artists, teachers, and others interested in ways Jungian thinking can enhance one’s work, relationships, and creativity.

Date/Presenter/Topic

September 11/Virginia Krauft/C.G. Jung:  His Life and Times

September 18/Jan Stannard/Structure of the Psyche

September 25/Sheldon Culver/Complex and Archetype

October 02/Deborah Stutsman/Self and Individuation      

October 09/Pam Behnen/Jung and the Creative Process

October 16/Shirley Fontenot/Psychological Types

October 30/Rose Holt/Summary Discussion

Classes will be held in the First Congregational Church, UCC, 6501 Wydown, Clayton, MO.  If you have questions or would like additional information, please contact me (Rose Holt,) phone (314) 726-2032 or email:  rosefholt@gmail.com

PLAY ABOUT JUNGIAN CONCEPT OF INDIVIDUATION

C. G. JUNG SOCIETY OF ST. LOUIS PLAY COMMITTEE MEETING AT THE CHAPEL THEATER 

On Thursday, June 29, 2016, the coordinator for The Chapel Theater hosted some of the group preparing for production of a play, “Casting Shadows,” at the Chapel Theater next February.  The theater is a warm and welcoming place, just the kind of space this play calls for.

“Casting Shadows” is about the full flowering of the personality of a woman who is called to become the heroine of her own life in a decidedly conscious way.  For the C.G. Jung Society of St. Louis, this play is a new avenue for promoting the concepts of Jungian Psychology and its emphasis on consciousness and individual development.

SAVE THE DATE:  “Casting Shadows,” performances on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, February 17, 18, and 19, 2017.   The Chapel Theater, 6238 Alexander Drive, St. Louis, MO  63105

For more information, please visit www.cgjungstl.org

Chicago Society of Jungian Analysts - Two-Year Jungian Studies Program

The Chicago Society of Jungian Analysts is accepting applications (deadline July 1, 2016!) for its two-year program of Jungian studies.  Go to www.jungchicago.org for detailed information and for   application.

The program is excellent, always fills to maximum, and is offered in a weekend format so that people from any geographical area can attend.  

JUNG IN THE HEARTLAND CONFERENCE - October 5-8, 2017

CONFERENCE IN FAIRBANKS, ALASKA, June 24-25, 2016

The C.  .G Jung Society of Northern Alaska will have its first Jung Midnight Sun Conference: Psyche, Nature, and Culture on June 24 and 25, 2016, in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Detailed information available at:  http://jungalaskaconference.com

Jung Institute of Chicago Study Programs

For anyone interested in formal study in Jungian Psychology, here is a link to programs the Jung Institute of Chicago offers:  http://jungchicago.org/pages.php?page=ctp_overview

AN APPROACH TO THE DREAM

On Friday evening, January 29, 2016, I gave a lecture on the topic of dreams for the C.G. Jung Society of St. Louis.  Here is the text of that lecture:

AN APPROACH TO THE DREAM

     Peoples throughout history have been fascinated by their dreams, have sought to understand them, and have used them for guidance.  It is only we moderns who have somewhat lost touch with the dreamworld and with how to understand or work with it.  The language of dreams is symbolic.
     We can largely credit Sigmund Freud with giving dreams their due.  Freud understood the unconscious as a sort of “trash heap” of consciousness, the repository for all things discarded by consciousness because unpleasant, not fitting with the conscious attitude, or interfering with the fulfillment of the ego desires.  Dreams were a product of the trash heap; any value they might hold came only from their shaping by consciousness.
     To Freud, dreams were a facade behind which the individual repressed painful memories, censored unacceptable thoughts, and hid unpleasant realities.  The function of psychoanalysis was to lay bare these hidden memories, thoughts, and realities so the individual could grow up, form a superego strong enough to deal with the unconscious id desires and energies.  A nifty arrangement if you were the analyst; not so great for the patient trying to make his/her psychic energies fit into a someone else’s psychological and theoretical frame.
     C. G. Jung read Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams shortly after its publication in 1900, and became a follower of and collaborator with Freud for about a decade.  The two men kept up a voluminous correspondence, met many times, and traveled together.  Jung had a father transference to Freud, who was older by 19 years.  Freud insisted on the father-son dynamic, and Jung began to chafe under it.  You probably know that all Jung’s major life decisions grew out of his dreams and his active imaginations.  The break with Freud was presaged by dreams Jung had during a seven-week-long trip the two men took together to the United States in 1909.  During the trip they were together every day and analyzed each other’s dreams.
     I am going to dwell on one of Jung’s dreams during that trip because it so well illustrates his general way of working with and understanding dreams.  This particular dream was one of several experiences that led Jung to develop the concept of the collective unconscious, which I’ll talk more about later on.  Jung recounts this dream in his autobiographical work, Memories, Dreams, Reflections:

I was in a house I did not know, which had two stories.  It was “my house.”  I found myself in the upper story, where there was a kind of salon furnished with fine old pieces in rococo style.  On the walls hung a number of precious old paintings.  I wondered that this should be my house, and thought, “Not bad”  But then it occurred to me that I did not know what the lower floor looked like.  Descending the stairs, I reached the ground floor.  There everything was much older, and I realized that this part of the house must date from about the fifteenth or sixteenth century.  The furnishings were medieval; the floors were of red brick.  Everywhere it was rather dark.  I went from one room to another, thinking, “Now I really must explore the whole house.”  I came upon a heavy door, and opened it.  Beyond it, I discovered a stone stairway that led down into the cellar.  Descending again, I found myself in a beautifully vaulted room which looked exceedingly ancient.  Examining the walls, I discovered layers of brick among the ordinary stone blocks and chips of brick in the mortar.  As soon as I saw this I knew that the walls dated from Roman times.  My interest by now was intense.  I looked more closely at the floor.  It was of stone slabs, and in one of these I discovered a ring.  When I pulled it, the stone slab lifted, and again I saw a stairway of narrow stone steps leading down into the depths.  These, too, I descended, and entered a low cave cut into the rock.  Thick dust lay on the floor, and in the dust were scattered bones and broken pottery, like remains of a primitive culture.  I discovered two human skulls, obviously very old and half disintegrated.  [p. 158-59]

     When Jung recounted the dream to Freud, Freud focussed on the two skulls and urged Jung to find the wish connected with them, the death-wish having a prominent place in Freud’s theory.  A man has to “kill” the father to grow up.  Rather than explore the dream for what it might have to reveal, Freud insisted on taking refuge in his theory.  Jung, 34 years old at the time, didn’t have sufficient foundation within himself to challenge the famous authority Dr. Freud, so kept his thoughts to himself.
     His own reflections on the dream, no doubt developed over decades since he is recounting it in MDR at age 85, hold some gems of understanding for us in working with our own dreams.

     THE HOUSE - An image of the psyche with hitherto unconscious additions.  The house is a frequent image in dreams.  People often bring dreams of new spaces, parts of their house they didn’t know existed.  These are important dreams.  One in particular I will relate.  [And in every case, I use only client material for which I have the permission of the client to cite.]  The dreamer, (I’ll call her Alice), was a young woman who had suffered a traumatic childhood.  She believed her mother hated herself and hated her.  Her parents’ marriage was turbulent, marked by violent fights, separations and reconciliations.  At around age 12, Alice was turned over to her maternal grandmother permanently, a woman far more kind and loving.  Alice’s early dreams revealed a psychic house that reflected her childhood home—chaotic, disturbing, terrifying at times.  About some two years into our work together, she dreamed she was in that early home and discovered underground tunnels that connected to the houses on either side, houses in which two of her childhood friends lived.   Her associations with those friends and the kinds of houses they lived in were revealing.  The friends were cherished by their parents; their homes were a refuge for Alice when things grew unbearable at home.  The tunnels represented for Alice the possibility of escape from a psychic space dominated by crushing parental complexes.  As you can imagine, Alice’s self-identity and her world view began to change.  Rather than experiencing mostly painful situations and people she saw as hostile, she began to venture out more, make friends, find supportive figures at the university she had attended sporadically before.  As indicated by the dream, she made new connections to friendlier places.
       In general, our parents (and other authorities) are the architects and builders of our psychological and emotional houses.  When these authorities are adequate and sufficiently strong, yet flexible and adaptive to the developing individual and a changing world, all goes well.  Such an individual will have in place parental imagos, i.e., unconscious parental guides, that provide guidance and wisdom for life’s journey.  Institutions, like these individuals, encode and preserve collective guidance and wisdom.  The problem as well as the blessing, of course, is that both a predetermined ego consciousness in the individual and in the institution is highly-resistant to change.  An individual sufficiently contained in such structures is never forced to venture beyond the part of his/her “house” that exists above ground.  It is from this type rigid structure that we hear arguments like “Well, we’ve always done it this way before.”  As well, as, “We can’t go there, do that; there are disasters ahead, “giants loose in the land.”
     Often times a dream will show figures who go ahead of the dream ego, who enter unknown places.  These are the “scouts” of the psyche who help allay anxiety and fear.  [And by dream ego, I simply mean the individual having the dream who plays a role in it.  The dream ego is some facet or part of the entire personality.]
     When the parents are not good enough, missing, abusive, alcoholic, etc., the individual can grow up ill-equipped to handle the vicissitudes of life.  These people may follow the pattern their parent or parents set.  They may become neurotic, even psychotic.  Jung argued that these are the individuals—the misfits, the ill-adapted, the miserable, the broken—who, lacking the unconscious mechanisms that guide ego consciousness more or less successfully—who can become creative, can provide the leadership to move the culture beyond established norms.  Of course, these people can also become extremely problematic and destructive, passing their own sins “down to the fourth generation.”
     Jung’s “house” dream, which he noted as an extremely important one, marked the beginning of an understanding that much lay below the domain of ego consciousness.  He determined to discover as much as possible about that other domain.
     From earlier experiences and from this dream and its architecture, he came to see that human consciousness, civilization, and culture rests on historic layers of an ordered history that gives shape and structure.  One of Jung’s Red Book paintings is of his conception of the ordering he perceived.
     Another way he found to express his lifetime of understanding was in his Bollingen retreat house which he built over several decades.  He wrote that Bollingen was, “a representation in stone of my innermost thoughts and of the knowledge I had acquired and a concretization of the individuation process.”
     Jung eventually postulated the existence of archetypes, patterns of human behavior that inform the personal but that lie below the surface.  When individuals like Alice connect with different patterns, ones that are healthier and more life-giving, they are drawing upon archetypal dimensions of the psyche, patterns that exist at a level below (or above and around) personal consciousness. These patterns serve to broaden one’s self identity and one’s conscious awareness.  An individual may express this increased sense of self and personal history as “Oh, so there is much more to me than I ever knew.”
     Of course, it was Freud who paved the way for the exploration of the unconscious and the patterns it contains.  You might say Freud was caught in one archetypal pattern that much informed his theoretical frame, the pattern of Oedipus.  Remember, according to the Greek myth, Oedipus unwittingly murders his father and marries his mother.  [And, of course, Jung added later the parallel figure of Electra who competes with the mother for the father’s affections.]   The Oedipus and Electra dramas depict one archetypal pattern, that of conflict between child and parent, but consider two others—those of Odysseus and Demeter.

. . . “Odysseus had been warned by an oracle:  ‘If you go to Troy, you will not return until the twentieth year, and then alone and destitute.’  He, therefore feigned madness, and Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Palamedes found him wearing a peasant’s felt cap shaped like a half-egg, and plowing with an ass and an ox yoked together, and flinging salt over his shoulder as he went.  When he pretended not to recognize his distinguished guests Palamedes snatched the infant Telemachus from Penelope’s arms and set him on the ground before the advancing team.  Odysseus hastily reigned them in to avoid killing his only son and his sanity having thus been established, was obliged to join the expedition.”  

     An early attempt at draft dodging.
     Not even threat of a 20 year servitude in war could sever the love between this parent and child. Many, if not most parents do go into long servitude to raise a beloved child to adulthood.  They put their personal wishes and ambitions aside to assure the welfare of their children.
     And remember when Persephone is swept into the underworld, Demeter, her mother, is inconsolable.  All four of these ancient tales speak of patterns of relationship between parent and child, archetypal patterns that get replayed endlessly in actual relationships, mostly unconsciously.  These patterns and many others are encoded in story, mythology, scripture, and fairy tales.  Often an individual will remember a favorite fairy tale from childhood that expresses his/her fundamental pattern. Television shows and movies can also serve to mirror and echo one’s personal story, and they serve to expand one’s possibilities for story.
     These stories and many like them are our stories.  They can help us understand and explain our behaviors, our relationships, and our ways of being in the world.  Dreams are always working to reunite us with the deeper stories that are ours and that shape our psychic structures.  Presumably, understanding the psychic patterns in play within us empowers us to affect them consciously rather than to be only affected by them.
     No one knows quite how or why it happens, but the individual who connects with the archetypal dimensions that undergird his/her personal consciousness experiences healing and a renewed sense of life and value.  There is a reconciliation with an unfathomable “other,” which traditionally has been expressed in religious terms.  Jung defined this other as the Self which is the organizing principle within the psyche, the archetype that organizes archetypes.
     Of course, we do not know what or who this other is, only that there is something like ancient wisdom gathered in the collective unconscious that has fashioned and preserved life-giving  elements and patterns of existence, a sort of museum of natural history.  Darwin explained the evolution of species.  Jung explains the evolution of consciousness in a parallel way.  Keys and doors to this museum appear all the time in dreams, in everyday experiences, in relationships, in startling thoughts, in the imagination.  Art, painting, and literature hold keys to this domain.  Mostly we moderns are far too busy and involved in our 24/7 lives to care about visiting this inner museum, but the reality of sleep forces us into it daily.  Sometimes we emerge with a lasting dream that tells us something about that underlying reality and our place and role in it.
     My guess is that everyone here has recall of a dream from long ago that lingers in the memory.  It is as if the dream clings to us, stays alive in us through no intentionality of our own.  Those are important dreams.
     We all make assumptions about dreams.  They were caused by the snack I had at midnight.  They are frivolous and lack meaning.  They may mean something, but who knows what?
     I want to offer a few hypotheses for understanding the dream and its function.

*There is something like an “eye” of a camera or a “watcher” that captures the dream and presents it as a memory to waking consciousness.
*Every dream is an attempt to help us heal and move us toward wholeness.
*Every dream is a comment on our life situation.
*Threads from any dream can and do lead into many, many areas of our lives.
*Through patient attention to our dreams, we can make contact with and enter into a meaningful dialogue with the unconscious. [By unconscious, I simply mean the source of those factors that influence and impact our lives in unknown ways.]
*The unconscious turns to us the face we turn to it.  We ignore it; it ignores us.
*Every dream is given to us for the purpose of healing past hurts, enlarging our perspective, and/or integrating portions of our personality.
*The dream brings new information to compensate or complement our waking attitudes.
*Our life energy, or libido, is personified in dreams, as if the psyche or the unconscious wants to draw us into a living relationship.
*Relationships with inner figures can be as important, enriching, and rewarding as relationships with people in our outer lives.   [SLIDE 9]
*Our inner and outer lives are in some way mirrors of each other. Dream work can provide for a more harmonious balance between the two.
*The psyche has a teleological aspect, i.e., it is working towards a goal or purpose. Further, it seeks our participation and cooperation.
*The unconscious both conceals and reveals itself. It both yearns to be seen, yet is reluctant.
*In analysis, a secured-symbolizing field is certainly necessary for the individual. Such a field is also necessary for the unconscious. [Therapeutic containers are the “safe and secured spheres or circles in which ‘heavy’ things can safely happen.” This is the sense in which I use the phrase, “secured-symbolizing field.”]  The element of trust is of utmost importance in any depth work with another person.  In Jungian circles the expression “sacred temenos” is often used to describe the field that needs to be established for analysis.
*The dream can speak with more authority than any human voice.

     These are the assumptions, the working hypotheses that I’ve settled on over decades of working with dreams, my own and those of many others.
      I am fond of this quote from Jung:  “If you pay attention to your dreams long enough, you will develop an opinion about the unconscious.  More importantly, the unconscious will develop an opinion about you.”
     Another way of saying much the same thing is that over time you will understand the nature of the relationship that your conscious self has with its unconscious backdrop.  Dreams will inform you about that relationship.
     Is something (the Self, the “Other”) in the unconscious critical of me, pleased with me, helping me, wanting something from me, giving me a warning?  The dream storyline and characters present a drama in which the dream ego usually plays a role.  (The dream ego is the part of the dreamer’s personality depicted in the dream.)  Is the role cooperative, adversarial, passive, etc? Does the dream depict me as a responsible, worthy adult or as a petulant child, angry, obdurate, difficult?  The dream seems to hold an opinion about our ego, and will tell us that opinion in no uncertain terms.  That is precisely the reason so many people ignore and/or dismiss their dreams. Who likes criticism?
     If you pay attention to your dreams, jot down notes and reflections about them, you will, over time see that the dreams begin to respond to your attention.  That is when it gets really interesting.
     There is solid empirical evidence for all this, so don’t take it as an article of faith but as a possible working hypothesis for personality development. I do assume you are here because of an interest in dreams and their function.
     That is a lot about dreams and assumptions about dreams, what about specific guides for approaching the dream?  The best approach is a simple one that Jung himself describes in MDR:

“After the parting of the ways with Freud, a period of inner uncertainty began for me. … I felt it necessary to develop a new attitude toward my patients. I resolved for the present not to bring any theoretical premises to bear upon them, but to wait and see what they would tell of their own accord. My aim became to leave things to chance. The result was that the patients would spontaneously report their dreams and fantasies to me, and I would merely ask, ‘What occurs to you in connection with that?’ or, ‘How do you mean that, where does that come from, what do you think about it?’ The interpretations seemed to follow of their own accord from the patients’ replies and associations. I avoided all theoretical points of view and simply helped the patients to understand the dream-images by themselves, without application of rules and theories. Soon I realized that it was right to take the dreams in this way as the basis of interpretation, for that is how dreams are intended. They are the facts from which we must proceed.” [Pp. 170-71]

     Let’s move on now to discuss some specific dreams, dreams that proved helpful to the individual.  After all, what good is any understanding if it doesn’t in some way enhance our day-to-day living?  What I most like about Jungian Psychology is that it has practical and helpful application, nowhere more than in its use of dream interpretation
     The very first dream an individual brings into analysis is often extremely important and sets the trajectory for the entire work.  This was such a presenting dream:

     I was running along a ridge, following behind a group of runners.  We came to a deep chasm, and they all just leapt across.  I stopped, knowing there was no way I could jump across.  It was too wide.  Then, a man and woman appeared on my side of the chasm and went up to a switch that turned off the current of the electric fence at the bottom.  They then walked arm and arm down the hill and up the other side.  I realized that I could just keep practicing jumping and maybe eventually be able to jump over.

     The dreamer’s (I will call her Marion) answers to the questions about her associations all centered about a personal dilemma she was feeling very strongly.  Revisiting the dream a few years later, she wrote the following:

“I had been deeply upset, saddened and depressed over (a personal matter).  It was a death of sorts, and I couldn’t get over it.  The chasm certainly symbolized that to me.  The couple knew how to “disconnect” the current to get across.  After much discussion, I realized that I needed to disconnect from feelings that were holding me back.  Often, it seemed disloyal or unfeeling to move on, but the dream showed me how to disconnect from feelings that kept me blocked from going where I wanted to go.”

     There is a lot packed into this first dream, symbols of the chasm, a strong current that stops the dreamer; another connection of a man and a woman, a coupling, who represent helpful elements in the unconscious; and the hope and promise of change.  Figures in the dream show Marion the way through her dilemma.  The dream had a profound and lasting effect.  And, of course, the “watcher” provided the dreamer a broader perspective on her situation.
     This dream illustrates something more about the way dreams work.  Dreams seem not to operate under the rules of our three-dimensional world, rules about time, cause and effect, spacial relationships.  Rather than cause and effect, the dream uses more of a “when-then” logic.  In this dream, when the coupling happens, i.e., the joining of some masculine and some feminine energies, then something else can be disconnected, that is, the restricting current, which Marion believed was her strong feelings about certain troubling situations.  There are hints in this dream about restructuring of defense systems when they no longer serve.
     This one dream had far-reaching consequences for Marion in how she lived, and it immediately convinced her of the value of working with her dreams.  Her conscious view of her situation was limited.  The dream greatly expanded that view.
     Now I want to share a sequence of dreams where the personal and the archetypal are so intertwined that no interpretation on my part was necessary.
     Sara was a woman in her mid-30’s who had gone through a painful divorce, and after several years alone, had remarried. She was eager to have a child as she felt her biological clock might run out on her. She had this dream:

     I discovered that my mother and her two sisters had been secretly keeping my grandmother (their mother) alive for years. However, when I was face to face with my grandmother, I saw that her eyes were brown instead of the vivid blue they were when was alive. I said, “No, this is not Grandma. Her eyes were blue.” At that moment I touched her arm. Her eyes turned blue, and I knew it was she.

     Shortly after this dream, Sara discovered she was pregnant. The night before the child was born, she dreamed that her grandmother came through the front door of her house. Later she told me that when she awoke she knew the dream was announcing the birth. Sure enough, on that day she went into labor.
     Some four months went by, and Sara brought a new and puzzling dream:

          My grandmother comes to my house. She tells me she is bored and needs a new craft.

     I asked her what she made of this Grand Mother dream. She looked very startled. Later she told me that on the way home she bought a pregnancy test. She discovered, much to her surprise, that she was again pregnant.
     On the day Sara’s second child was born, her sister called to tell her that she had had a dream about their grandmother in which the grandmother had assured her that Sara and her little family would be just fine. As Sara told me later, she (Sara) immediately wondered if the sister were herself pregnant. The sister was but didn’t yet know it.   By this time, as you can guess,  the whole family is on the alert for appearances of this grandmother.     Some years go by. Sara brings this dream, which she had the night before she was to have a hysterectomy:

     My grandmother comes to tell me her work is done. The scene shifts. There is to be an elaborate funeral for her in a huge theater. All my grandmother’s progeny are ushered into the place. The funeral service is more beautiful and moving than I can possibly describe. It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. 

     These dreams were all deeply moving and held great meaning for Sara. She felt very much supported and loved by this grandmother who, when she was a young child, had been so loving and gracious to her. The dreams helped her realize that this loving and supportive Great Mother continued her presence in Sara’s life.  No earthly person could have reassured and supported Sara in the ways these dreams did.
     Here is a dream of someone (I’ll call her Joanne) who has done her life’s homework.  She is a woman in her 70’s, is married, has raised a family, is a talented artist, and has enjoyed a successful career.  She still works part time.  The dream:

     President Obama is on the deck behind our house.  He is bowing reverently before my madonna statue.

     For Joann this was a profound, even numinous, dream.  She experienced it as a gift. In her associations she talked about her admiration for the president, how she felt he had his values in the right place, and was able to press on in spite of extremely trying circumstances.  A cradle Catholic, for Joann the madonna is a symbol of great import though she left the Catholic church a long time ago.  Joann always made her role as mother a priority and is now playing a formative role in the lives of her grandchildren. She spoke at length about all that her maternal dedication still requires of her.
     From an archetypal and symbolic perspective, this dream says a great deal.  The “president” presides over the “united states.”  Psychologically the united states speaks to consciousness with its amalgamation of various complexes and feeling states, integrated sufficiently that the states remain in a fixed position, no state going rogue or acting entirely independently of the others.  The borders between the states are porous and make for easy access.  Each has it own governing organization, yet all allow and bow to a higher authority.
      The madonna, Mary, the “mother of god,” is another archetypal image.  She is the goddess incarnate.  Tradition has it that Mary was conceived without “sin,” i.e., she represents an uncontaminated consciousness that can bring forth something of a “saving nature” without sullying it with preconceived ideas or assumptions
     I think most creative people would say their work involves, even requires, a kind of “divine spark,” as well as the willingness to persevere under extremely difficult circumstances.  Another archetypal image, not imaged in this dream is that of the annunciation, the moment the angel Gabriel whispers the inspiration to Mary.
     We can infer something about the state of Joann’s consciousness from these archetypal associations.  I especially appreciate dreams of this sort because they give us a fine idea of the psychological relevance of scriptural stories.  It is one thing to believe the stories relate to events millennia ago.  It is quite another to realize the stories describe developments possible and occurring in the personality of an individual today.
     I have dwelt on the Great Mother for good reason.  Ultimately, she is the unconscious itself.  She is the source; she gives birth to consciousness.  Dreams reconnect us with her.  We all come from the goddess-mother, and to her we shall return.