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.

 Becoming

Our unique personality is a curious thing and is part and parcel of our identity.  We don’t create either our identity or our personality though many people have the illusion that they do.  Rather, our real experience of self is more one of discovering who we are through life events, relationships, victories and defeats, losses, etc., and our reactions to them.  Much of what we come to know about ourselves has much more the nature of uncovering and unfolding rather than creating.  Of course, we have some influence over who we are and are becoming, but to a limited degree.  Consciousness can become the critical factor, particularly for our behaviors and values.

RELIGION AND THE NUMINOUS

 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.

 

 

Fundamentals of Jungian Psychology Course

Fall 2023  Virtual Lecture Series 

 

The Jung Society of St. Louis will offer an on-line “Fundamentals of Jungian Psychology” course in September and October of 2023.  The course will consist of eight lectures on basic concepts taught by a variety of analysts. Each lecture will be 90 minutes with lecture and ample time for discussion and Q & A.

 

Format:  online, eight sessions, 90-minute Lecture and discussion

 

Time and Dates:  Tuesdays, 12:00 – 1:30 pm, September 5, 12, 19, 26; October 3, 10, 17, 24.

                         

Fee:  $160       CEU’s:  12 (with an additional fee and attendance at all eight sessions.)

 

Registration:  Jung Society of St. Louis 

 

Topics/Presenters:

  September 5:            Jung – a brief biography; Therapy vs. Analysis – Rose Holt, MA

  September 12:          The Complex – Sheldon Culver, D. Min.

  September 19:          Shadow/Persona – Mary Dougherty, MFA, ATR, NCPsyA

  September 26:          Personality Types – John Beebe, M.D.  

  October 3:                 Dream Analysis – Ken James, Ph.D.

  October 10:               The Transcendent Function – Sara Sage, MS, LMHC

  October 17:               Anatomy of the Psyche – Boris Matthews, PhD, LCSW, 

  October 24:               Individuation – Ken James, Ph.D.

 

Sheldon Culver, M. Div., D. Div. is a Jungian Analyst with an active, soul-healing practice in Columbia, IL.  She is a graduate of Washington University and Eden Theological Seminary, both in St. Louis.  She is a Diplomate with the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts (IRSJA), graduating from this North American training program in 1996. Sheldon is the director of the Heartland Association of Jungian Analysts (HAJA) Training Seminar, a weekend program for individuals interesting in furthering their understanding of Jungian Psychology and/or training to become a Jungian Analyst.

 

Mary Dougherty, MFA, ATR, NCPsyA is a Jungian psychoanalyst and art psychotherapist in private practice in Chicago.  She is former President, Director of Training, and chair of the Program Committee of the Jung Institute of Chicago, former President of the Chicago Society of Jungian Analysts, and served eight years on the Executive Committee of the Council of North American Societies of Jungian Analysts.  She is contributing editor to the “Journal of Jungian theory and Practice” and has numerous publications in Analytical Psychology.  She lectures on the clinical implications of gender, the use of active imagination, and on the impact of Jung’s thought upon creative development and artistic production.

 

John Beebe, M.D. is the creator of the eight-function, eight-archetype model of psychological types. A Jungian analyst and past president of the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, he is the author of Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type: The Reservoir of Consciousness and co-editor, with Ernst Falzeder, of The Question of Psychological Types: The Correspondence of C. G. Jung and Hans Schmid-Guisan. John has spearheaded a Jungian typological approach to the analysis of film and has written the preface to the Routledge Classics edition of Jung's 1921 book, Psychological Types. 

 

Rose Holt, MA began her career in science and business, areas in which she worked for over 20 years. At mid-life, she changed over to counseling and psychology after discovering Jungian Psychology. Her thesis paper for Analytical Training is “Alchemy of the Small Group.” It describes the journey of a core group of women who worked weekly with their dreams over a ten-year period. Many alchemical themes that Jung ascribed to the individuation process appeared in group members’ dreams, convincing Rose that work in small, intimate groups is an effective way to facilitate individuation.  Rose holds degrees in physics and counseling and graduated from the training program of the Chicago Jung Institute in 2001.

 

Ken James, PhD maintains a private practice in Chicago, Illinois. His areas of expertise include dream work and psychoanalysis, archetypal dimensions of analytic practice, divination and synchronicity, and ways to sustain the vital relationship between body, mind, and spirit. He has done post-doctoral work in music therapy, the Kabbalah, spirituality, and theology, and uses these disciplines to inform his work as a Jungian analyst.

 

Boris Matthews, PhD, LCSW, NCPsyA graduated from the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago, and maintains a practice of analytical psychology in the Milwaukee and Madison, WI, areas. He is particularly interested in working with persons who recognize a need to develop a balanced adaptation to the “outside” and to the “inside” worlds, work that involves awareness of the individual’s psychological typology. Dreams, active imagination, and spiritual concerns are integral elements in the analytic work, the ultimate goal of which is to develop a functioning dialog with the non-ego center, the Self. He has served as Director of Training for the Chicago Jung Institute and lectures nationally and internationally.

 

Sara Sage, MS, LMHC is a therapist in private practice in South Bend, Indiana, and a senior candidate in the Analyst Training Program at the C.G. Jung Institute in Chicago. Sara’s practice focuses on depth work for mind, body and spirit and specializes in LGBTQ+ clients. A former teacher and professor, Sara has a lifelong interest in Jungian work that centers around psychological type and gender and otherness in ways that expand the concepts for working with transgender, nonbinary, and all queer people. Sara recently presented in Zurich at a conference celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Jung Institute.  

 

 

Value and Meaning of Jungian Psychology Today

Some years ago I gave a presentation for the C.G. Jung Society of St. Louis on the value and meaning of Jungian Psychology today (aka Analytical Psychology).  This is a link to a clip from that presentation:  https://youtu.be/pJX-5YBRFEY.  The video of the entire presentation is available from the St. Louis Society website at  https://jungstl.org.

 THE REALITY OF DREAMS

In his autobiographical work, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung writes about his relationship with Sigmund Freud in some detail--their discussions, their travels together, their working with each other’s dreams, and his view of Freud as a father figure.  Jung writes: “. . . . Freud, who had always made much of his irreligiosity, had now constructed a dogma; or rather, in the place of a jealous God whom he had lost, he had substituted another compelling image, that of sexuality.  It was no less insistent, exacting, domineering, threatening, and morally ambivalent that the original one.  Just as the psychically stronger agency is given ‘divine’ or ‘daemonic’ attributes, so the ‘sexual libido’ took over the role of the deus absconditus, a hidden or concealed god.” 

Freud, according to Jung, had assigned to “sexuality” all the attributes historically assigned to Yahweh.  Only the name had changed.  Jung makes this important assertion: “If psychology did not exist, but only concrete objects, the one would actually have been destroyed and replaced by the other.  But in reality, that is to say, in psychological experience, there is not one whit the less of urgency, anxiety, compulsiveness, etc.  The problem still remains:  how to overcome or escape our anxiety, bad conscience, guilt, compulsion, unconsciousness and instinctuality.”

 

Applying Jung’s comment about “concrete objects” to the interpretation of dreams can be extremely helpful.  To illustrate the point, I will use some specific dreams:

 

I discovered a secret tunnel in my parents’ basement that led to the world outside.  This dream marked a significant turning point for the dreamer.  Hithertofore, she had lived in a too-small psychic space (psychic but as real as the parental basement in her waking experience and just as limiting).  The unconscious structure of that basement served as a filter of her experiences in her grown-up word.  Her childhood home was an unhappy one.  She "lived " in it into adulthood.  

 

I was sitting in a waiting room when Bill came in, loud and boisterous, upsetting everyone in the room.  The analyst asked, “So, what happens when you get into a “waiting room?”  The dreamer remembered that on the day before the dream she had her car serviced at a dealership.  The dealership computer system went down so there was a long delay. She became very angry and complained loudly.  

"And what about Bill?" the analyst inquired, introducing a bit of humor into a delicate situation as they both smiled, silently remembering the film, "What about Bob."  "Bill is a man I work with.  He makes mountains out of molehills."   

Bingo!  The “waiting room” in her psyche was very real and very troubling.  When she got into such a place in her real life, her unconscious "Bill," a very real factor in her psychic economy, was her trigger for anger as he grossly exaggerated small issues.  The dreamer had suffered an unconscious complex that had caused her much trouble in her life.  Information delivered by the dream freed her from that complex.

 

In both dreams, it was obvious to the analyst (and probably to others) what the dreamers’ problems were, but she knew a direct approach to them would raise up great resistances and would serve no purpose.  The analyst was also well aware that people will accept a lesson from a dream that not even a saint could deliver with mere words.  

Both these examples illustrate another, sometimes extremely subtle fact:  What is real is that which has real effects in the world.  They also point to the ways dreams can help us to, "overcome or escape our anxiety, bad conscience, guilt, compulsion, unconsciousness and instinctuality.”   

---

Jung, C.G., Memories, Dreams, Reflections

The Spirit of Our Times

In our country we are living through a frantic time in which there is an urgency to do something yet an ignorance of just what to do.  As ordinary citizens all we can do is vote, and a single vote seems inadequate to the challenges we face.  

 

The spirit of our times may come from a deeper place, from the spirit of the depths seeking expression.  At the end of his long life, C.G. Jung wrote that he merely sits at the stream and dips from it from time to time.  Something about study of Jungian Psychology helps put us in touch with and dip from the spirits of the depths.

 

The very thing that the depths seem to want to express and give voice to may be the "crippledness of the world."  No small wonder that many of us would rather seek a stream with only consummate beauty to offer, a nice desire but an idealism sure to alienate us from the depths.

 

In Jung's Redbook, he describes a fantasy of encountering the anchorite in the desert.  The anchorite is symbolic of his desire for a removed and remote contemplation of the world rather than intense encounter of his real self with the real world.  Jung found he could live out his real anchorite impulses at Bollingen, his retreat home, but had an obligation to live out other parts of himself by plunging into and encountering the real world.  

 

If Jung left us with an enduring message it is:  Be real, live an intensely felt life in a real but crippled world.  It is our human obligation, the payment we owe our ancestors.  How?  By meeting every moment with all the integrity, we can muster even though we fall short.  Of course, we cannot know how well we have succeeded or how it will turn out.  But then, neither did the Son of Man.

Vote.

 

Fundamentals of Jungian Psychology Course

Fall 2023  Virtual Lecture Series 

 

The Jung Society of St. Louis will offer an on-line “Fundamentals of Jungian Psychology” course in September and October of 2023.  The course will consist of eight lectures on basic concepts taught by a variety of analysts. Each lecture will be 90 minutes with lecture and ample time for discussion and Q & A.

 

Format:  online, eight sessions, 90-minute Lecture and discussion

 

Time and Dates:  Tuesdays, 12:00 – 1:30 pm, September 5, 12, 19, 26; October 3, 10, 17, 24.

                         

Fee:  $160       CEU’s:  12 (with an additional fee and attendance at all eight sessions.)

 

Registration:  Jung Society of St. Louis or C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago

 

Topics/Presenters:

  September 5:            Jung – a brief biography; Therapy vs. Analysis – Rose Holt, MA

  September 12:          The Complex – Sheldon Culver, D. Min.

  September 19:          Shadow/Persona – Mary Dougherty, MFA, ATR, NCPsyA

  September 26:          Personality Types – John Beebe, M.D.  

  October 3:                 Dream Analysis – Ken James, Ph.D.

  October 10:               The Transcendent Function – Sara Sage, MS, LMHC

  October 17:               Anatomy of the Psyche – Boris Matthews, PhD, LCSW, 

  October 24:               Individuation – Ken James, Ph.D.

 

Sheldon Culver, M. Div., D. Div. is a Jungian Analyst with an active, soul-healing practice in Columbia, IL.  She is a graduate of Washington University and Eden Theological Seminary, both in St. Louis.  She is a Diplomate with the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts (IRSJA), graduating from this North American training program in 1996. Sheldon is the director of the Heartland Association of Jungian Analysts (HAJA) Training Seminar, a weekend program for individuals interesting in furthering their understanding of Jungian Psychology and/or training to become a Jungian Analyst.

 

Mary Dougherty, MFA, ATR, NCPsyA is a Jungian psychoanalyst and art psychotherapist in private practice in Chicago.  She is former President, Director of Training, and chair of the Program Committee of the Jung Institute of Chicago, former President of the Chicago Society of Jungian Analysts, and served eight years on the Executive Committee of the Council of North American Societies of Jungian Analysts.  She is contributing editor to the “Journal of Jungian theory and Practice” and has numerous publications in Analytical Psychology.  She lectures on the clinical implications of gender, the use of active imagination, and on the impact of Jung’s thought upon creative development and artistic production.

 

John Beebe, M.D. is the creator of the eight-function, eight-archetype model of psychological types. A Jungian analyst and past president of the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, he is the author of Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type: The Reservoir of Consciousness and co-editor, with Ernst Falzeder, of The Question of Psychological Types: The Correspondence of C. G. Jung and Hans Schmid-Guisan. John has spearheaded a Jungian typological approach to the analysis of film and has written the preface to the Routledge Classics edition of Jung's 1921 book, Psychological Types. 

 

Rose Holt, MA began her career in science and business, areas in which she worked for over 20 years. At mid-life, she changed over to counseling and psychology after discovering Jungian Psychology. Her thesis paper for Analytical Training is “Alchemy of the Small Group.” It describes the journey of a core group of women who worked weekly with their dreams over a ten-year period. Many alchemical themes that Jung ascribed to the individuation process appeared in group members’ dreams, convincing Rose that work in small, intimate groups is an effective way to facilitate individuation.  Rose holds degrees in physics and counseling and graduated from the training program of the Chicago Jung Institute in 2001.

 

Ken James, PhD maintains a private practice in Chicago, Illinois. His areas of expertise include dream work and psychoanalysis, archetypal dimensions of analytic practice, divination and synchronicity, and ways to sustain the vital relationship between body, mind, and spirit. He has done post-doctoral work in music therapy, the Kabbalah, spirituality, and theology, and uses these disciplines to inform his work as a Jungian analyst.

 

Boris Matthews, PhD, LCSW, NCPsyA graduated from the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago, and maintains a practice of analytical psychology in the Milwaukee and Madison, WI, areas. He is particularly interested in working with persons who recognize a need to develop a balanced adaptation to the “outside” and to the “inside” worlds, work that involves awareness of the individual’s psychological typology. Dreams, active imagination, and spiritual concerns are integral elements in the analytic work, the ultimate goal of which is to develop a functioning dialog with the non-ego center, the Self. He has served as Director of Training for the Chicago Jung Institute and lectures nationally and internationally.

 

Sara Sage, MS, LMHC is a therapist in private practice in South Bend, Indiana, and a senior candidate in the Analyst Training Program at the C.G. Jung Institute in Chicago. Sara’s practice focuses on depth work for mind, body and spirit and specializes in LGBTQ+ clients. A former teacher and professor, Sara has a lifelong interest in Jungian work that centers around psychological type and gender and otherness in ways that expand the concepts for working with transgender, nonbinary, and all queer people. Sara recently presented in Zurich at a conference celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Jung Institute.  

 

 

 

 

C.G. JUNG – GUIDE TO THE INNER LIFE

By Rose F. Holt, Jungian Psychoanalyst

“Shadow Cornered” by C.G. Jung

”One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” 

Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) was a lot of things—psychiatrist, theologian, historian, anthropologist—but above all else, he was an explorer. He explored first his own inner life, his interiority, through what he called his “confrontation with the unconscious,” then he helped many, many of his patients explore their own interiority. All this work was his primary field of research from which he developed a powerful theoretical construct, a “map” for those of us who dare to go on our own voyage into the interior. Today that field of endeavor is called Jungian Psychology or Analytical Psychology.

Before Jung, few people dared go beyond the collective understanding of human nature. Like the maps of old, the collective understanding was edged by mythical monsters, so there was a frightening prohibition against journeying there. The primary function of religions was to protect people from venturing into those areas where the roads ended-- areas of mystery, death, birth, sacred experience. Religious rites and sacraments served as containers for the sacred. They were prescriptions to keep people safe, confined within an area of understanding determined by others and sometimes misused in the interest of power. It was unthinkable, even dangerous, for people to venture on their own without benefit of the shelter of a given religious understanding. There were (and are) severe penalties for those who did so. Some who ventured successfully we remember as mystics, saints, or founders of new religions. They described their discoveries, but until Jung, few could adequately guide others to their own unique and individual discovery of their interiority. Interiority was assigned or assumed by faith and dogma, not discovered.

Jung opened the way for the many. He eventually understood that an early part of the journey is an exploration of one’s personal unconscious—that area of psyche to which experiences, thoughts, feelings, impressions unacceptable to conscious understanding were unwittingly banished. Initially, these unconscious contents reach consciousness through projection, i.e., some quality that rightfully belongs to the individual is assigned to some loved or hated “other.” Through careful attention to one’s feeling reactions, to thoughts, and to dream images and motifs, one can eventually withdraw the projection and begin to integrate this hitherto unacceptable quality—good or bad—into one’s own personality. Such withdrawal requires humility in accepting what was unacceptable and a sense of responsibility for either managing or developing the newly-discovered quality. No wonder, then, that many of us shirk the duty to work toward increased consciousness!

With continued work on oneself, these personal unconscious contents become more differentiated. There will be the projections onto people of the same gender, of the opposite gender, onto heroes and hags, onto saviors and demons. Once this clearing out of the personal unconscious is more or less complete, an entirely new territory begins to show itself, the collective unconscious, as Jung called it. 

Jung demonstrated that all humankind shares not just a collective consciousness but also a collective UNconsciousness. In the territory of the collective unconscious one finds the archetypal [arche = ancient and typos = imprint] images, motifs and patterns that underlie the common experience of humankind. It is a collective heritage to which everyone may lay claim. For Jung archetypes are simply the typical patterns of human behavior. Some important ones include the journey, mother, father, the hero, home, the child, birth, the savior, king, queen. Underlying all other archetypes, Jung describes the central organizing principle of the psyche and of individuality—the Self. It is the Self that gives rise to consciousness and our sense of individual existence.

An important tool in one’s journey into interiority is the dream. Like a key, the dream has no logic to its shape. Its logic is that it turns the lock. An example might be a dream in which a loved one dies. Taken at face value the dream is disturbing, even terrifying. Like a key, however, a symbolic understanding might allow the dreamer to “open” a message that something ‘alive’ in the unconscious has died, i.e., is no longer active there. Whatever energy the figure represented might now be available to the dreamer on a more conscious level and, therefore, more amenable to the will. Same dream, vastly different approaches to it, vastly different effect on the dreamer. In working with dreams we make a kind of "Pascal's Wager." We can't know with certitude what a dream means. Therefore, let's wager on a meaning that promotes growth and enhances life because we have everything to gain and nothing to lose. 

Jung demonstrated clearly that dreams carry messages from the unconscious to consciousness, and they do so in a manner finely tuned to the attitudes, needs, and desires of the dreamer. Attitude is of critical importance. The dream messenger is Janus-faced. If one dismisses the dream as unimportant or irrelevant, that is just what dreams become. However, if one takes dreams seriously and pays attention to them, dreams speak with increasing and sometimes astonishing clarity. 

If one thinks about all this, it makes very good sense. Humankind has always and everywhere felt the need for story. Dreams are primarily story. They can be extremely important because they are deeply personal and capable of providing meaning and value to the individual. Research has shown that, deprived of dream sleep, an individual will become ill in a very short time. Almost everyone has had an impressive, unforgettable, even numinous dream. Almost everyone has had the experience of waking in a particular mood determined by a dream. The old adage, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” particularly applies in working with dream images. It hardly needs be said that dreams have always been an important component of psychic life and development. Only we moderns, with our “not invented here, therefore not of value” attitude, have denigrated the dream.

When one has ventured deeply enough into one’s own interiority that archetypal patterns, figures, and motifs begin to appear, something happens of singular importance. One begins to experience healing—often illusive, difficult to explain or prove, but definitively a feeling of wellness. In religious terms, this feeling is characterized by the word “salvation,” or as something akin to “God’s in his/her heaven, all’s right with the world,” but viewed experientially the feeling is a psychological fact. One’s life becomes imbued with meaning and purpose, and even a seemingly mundane existence takes on great value to one gifted in this way.

Jung writes poetically about this state:

“The state of imperfect transformation, merely hoped for and waited for, does not seem to be one of torment only, but of positive, if hidden happiness. It is the state of someone who, in his/her wanderings among the mazes of his/her psychic transformation comes upon a secret happiness which reconciles him/her to his/her apparent loneliness. In communing with him/herself, he/she finds not deadly boredom and melancholy but an inner partner, more than that, a relationship that seems like a secret love, or like a hidden springtime, when the green seed sprouts from the barren earth, holding out the promise of future harvests.” [From Vol. 14, Mysterium Coniunctionis, Para. 623, modified slightly in the interest of inclusive language.]

I think Jung is describing here the state of someone who has glimpsed that the Self is at work in his/her life and is sustained by that glimpse.

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE EARTH

 

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE EARTH

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE EARTH

     The C. G. Jung Society of St. Louis released a book of the finest essays from the Society’s third writing contest, this one on the theme of “Honoring the Altar of the Earth.”  The book was available at the Jung in the Heartland Conference - “The Altar of the Earth” held at King’s House Retreat Center September 10-13, 2015.

     When Kathryn Stinson, the editor of the book, invited me to write a blurb for the back cover, I offered this: 

     Jung’s view was that one could not be reconciled with one’s own deepest nature without becoming reconciled with Nature itself.  These essays illustrate ways in which the authors, finely attuned to their own delicate and precious natures, are also finely attuned to our exquisitely-balanced Earth.  Civilization requires sufficient numbers of such individuals to save itself, and in doing so, save our small home in the great cosmos. 

     This short statement leads to critical questions.  What does it mean to become reconciled with one’s own deepest nature?  How does one effect reconciliation?  For people steeped in religion, the tenets and dogma of their tradition provide working answers.  Others, for whom religious institutions no longer hold value or provide answers, may not bother to ask, or even to know, the questions.  Yet reconciliation, though an old-fashioned notion, can be a pressing need that arises from one’s deepest nature and requires some kind of response.
     Often an individual’s first response to vague feelings of discontent and dissatisfaction is a combination of denial and repression.  He or she tries to soldier on, to pretend nothing is awry.  In extreme cases the result of so much energy invested in defenses that do not work is extreme ennui or depression.  What is behind such disturbing feelings is an inner force for fuller development that initially seems hostile because it is often foreign and upsetting to the status quo.
     At the onset of this inner urge from one’s truest and deepest nature, an individual may have threatening and difficult dreams, even nightmares.  Repressed unconscious contents presenting themselves and seeking reconciliation with waking consciousness appear as people breaking into one’s home, threatening animals, angry teachers, condemning or indifferent parental figures, or situations in which windows and doors cannot be kept shut.  Another recurring motif is the lost wallet, purse, keys, car, baggage.  Other common dreams feature dismemberment motifs and are accompanied by feelings of being torn apart by inner conflict. 
     These contents from the deep can also be life-giving and expanding.  The dreams may show the dreamer finding new wings of his/her house, discovering hidden tunnels, entering fascinating caves or ancient temples, opening ancient texts, meeting wisdom figures.
     One’s deepest nature (the “Self” in Jungian terms) seems to want to tear away parts of the individual’s self-identity yet at the same time preserve essential elements and add to them.  It is as if the “sculptor” of one’s being molds delicate material to one’s armature structure while carving away at existing casting, all at the same time.  To the individual experiencing this process, it is disconcerting, disturbing, and at times terrifying. There are also moments of joy, of numinous insight, of secret delight.  Mostly, it is a set of experiences that can hardly be communicated to anyone, a secret one cannot disclose.
     This is the painful and exhilarating process C. G. Jung calls “individuation,” a word that means “not divided.”  It is the movement of the whole person toward reconciliation of consciousness with the unknown and with the seemingly unknowable backdrop of the unconscious. Jung’s lasting gift is a rough guide through this difficult but rewarding process which apparently ends only in death. 
     The value of immersing oneself in and tending to this long-term careful process of development is that one becomes an instrument for harmony, a sort of tuning fork of nature.  If one feels horribly awry within one’s being, the first questions to answer are:  Where might I be at odds with the Self, and what thoughts, attitudes, behaviors do I need to change?  Almost miraculously, “fixing” oneself, i.e., reconciling oneself, brings harmony to an outer situation.  Perhaps just as frequently, one determines to change one’s outer situation.
      And that brings us back to my book blurb.  Are we reaching a critical mass, a sufficient number of reconciled individuals to effect the change necessary to save our small home in the cosmos?

Rose F. Holt
Jungian Psychoanalyst
August 11, 2015

On the Energies that Move Us

 For those of us who pay attention to the energies that move us from within, changes or shifts in those energies are critically important.  I remember my mother laughingly saying, "I can do nothing until the spirit moves me."

In my own life I have suffered through or enjoyed energy shifts as they occurred.  They included changes in important relationships, a passionate interest giving way to another, or at times the unavailability of any energy that ushered in a depressive period.  

For decades I thought I was the one doing the shifting, making the changes, accepting or rejecting challenges, suffering the ennui while inexplicably believing I was responsible for it.   Only after months of Jungian psychoanalysis did I begin to realize these energy shifts did not originate in my will; they were largely autonomous and carried me along with them.  Learning that I was not in control of them was both liberating and frightening.  If not I, then who assigned me my passions and, seemingly ripped them away or shifted them so irrationally?  For a time, I blamed others.  I blamed the fates.  I blamed death.  

Step by step, I learned that resistance was futile.  The shifts, though both liberating and painful, were like small rivers yielding their volume and force to something larger.  I learned to "go with the flow," generally liking the outcomes or at least adapting to them.

I learned, with Jung, that the energies that flow through us can be both divine and demonic, and must be dealt with that way.  They are autonomous.  I also learned I could wrestle some of them to the ground only to have them emerge in a different guise.  I learned I could cooperate with others and be exhilarated in doing so.  Each defeat and each victory convinced be anew just how autonomous the energies are.

Through these experiences I eventually came to realize I had dramatically revised my god-image.  The god of my childhood, sort of a super-Santa who kept track of my every transgression, gave way to a more mature understanding.  My revised god-image is that of an incarnating bipolar god whose energies are channeled through me and whose standing in my world are affected and only partially determined by me.  But the small part assigned to or accepted by me gives my life dignity and meaning.  It's not an exaggeration to say I have had to humanize autonomus energies.  The mystery is that they appear to desire being brought into the world but need help from the human realm.  

It appears that demonic energies also desire incarnation into the world.  The tip weight seems to be the human will hanging in the balance.  Even a small benevolent willful energy can effect significant change.

 

 

INVISIBLE REALITY

      Jung writes, “What is real is that which has real effects.”  In our rigid three-dimensional conscious constructs, we tend to define reality as that which is concrete and tangible, excluding anything of a spiritual nature.  Yet, the spiritual has real effects.  Even a cursory self-reflection will confirm the validity of Jung’s statement.  The spiritual is real.

     When I was growing up, it was the custom in our small Catholic community to pray the rosary as part of a funeral wake.  The effect on my young self was extreme boredom mixed with wonderment that adults behaved this way.  However, in thinking about this ritual as an adult, I can see the real effects of rote recitation and meditation on the mysteries of the rosary—the joyful, the sorrowful, and the glorious.  What human life hasn’t been touched by joy, sorrow, and glory?  What resonances are set up in the depths of the souls of the living?  What evokes the sacredness of life like those intoned prayers, drawing mourners into an unconscious unity of spirit?  Who knows what the effects were on those people around me?  On me?  On the departed soul?  Surely it had at least as much impact as an invisible wind rustling through trees.

     The psychological impact of formal prayer is that it tends to align consciousness with semi-conscious, established patterns that have served humankind well for a very long time.  For a consciousness mired in some less-than-healthy unconscious pattern, prayer can be a way of getting  “unstuck.”  The mysteries of the rosary are built on New Testament stories which recount the life story of one of the most developed personalities in human history, someone fully individuated, i.e., who completely realized both the human and the spiritual dimensions of existence.  

     For another example of invisible effects, consider gazing on a full moon.  Even thinking about the image of a full moon right now conjures up emotion, memory, awe, and mystery.  I rarely look at a full moon without wondering about peoples over millennia who saw this same sight, who relied on it to mark the passage of time, to know when to move or to harvest crops; who began to associate it with the cycle of a woman’s life and the mysterious absence of the cycle with an impending birth, to predict the movements of the tides, even eventually to know when to celebrate the Paschal Mystery itself.   What knowledge the spirit of the moon has imparted to humanity over the ages!  What knowledge does the physical world hold, awaiting a consciousness sufficiently capacious to apprehend it?

     If you haven’t seen the movie, “Moonstruck,” I urge you to watch it.  It will awaken some spiritual awareness without ever touching on anything religious or dogmatic.  I would argue that we are all a bit moonstruck and it would do us well to recognize and celebrate it.

     Whenever anything intangible and haunting is evoked in us, whether it be in seeing the flag, in hearing a moving poem, in playing and replaying a song in our minds, in being visited by the memory of a deceased loved one, or in a thousand other ways in which a current experience ties us back to an old memory trace, we experience the movement of an invisible spirit. 

     A favorite poem of mine is “elegy” by W.S. Merwyn:

who would i tell it to

That simple sentence, sans capitalization or punctuation, always evokes such depth of emotion in me that I know it brings me into solidarity with every other human being who has grieved in ways beyond language or explanation.  Why is it that the Gerard Manley Hopkins’ opening line, “Margaret, are you grieving over goldengrove unleaving,” pops into my mind frequently and at odd times?  I can only conclude that there is some unseen but very real force at work in my being.  It is a force of some power, and it is arresting.

     Of course, in our romance-besotted modern life, no one among us would deny the effects of love or its life-changing, life-enhancing power.  Yet, few of us would identify love as a spirit, but in the truest sense of the word, it is spiritual.  And in the sense that Jung defines “real,” it is real.  “What I did for Love” is more than a lovely song; it is a testament to the power of love.  

     Jung was interested in the psychology of the human person and in the ways reality, seen and unseen, can call forth richness of experience and wholeness of personality.  Whether we approach the spiritual through a formal religion or through a religious, reverent attitude toward the people and the world within and around us matters little.  What is important, from a psychological point of view, is that we not neglect all of experience.  

     To live in a reality that consists only of things, one that must be explained by cause and effect is to live in a carved-out, desiccated existence.  To live in a world of things is to see and understand people and ourselves only as objects to be manipulated and managed.  To live in a strict cause-and-effect universe is to miss perhaps the largest parts of existence, the parts that respond to mythic patterns, the forces that, rather than pushing us from the past, are pulling us into the future. 

     It is a basic tenet of Analytical (Jungian) Psychology that we as conscious moderns have a responsibility to understand the spiritual forces that move us as best we can, learn to cooperate with those that are benevolent, and resist those that are not.  External authority, while important for civil living, can also lead us very much in undesirable directions if it is not reconciled with the individual spirits that inhabit all of us.     

     A careful reflection about spiritual forces leads me to conclude that there are a myriad of invisible agencies that have very real effects and that are shaping our lives, our relationships, and our actions in unknown and sometimes undesirable ways.  What our individual and collective futures become is, in no small part, of our own choosing and attitude toward the real.