Symbols in an analysis

The beginning of the analysis

There is a widespread belief that the methods of Jungian psychology are applicable only to middle-aged people. True, many men and women reach middle age without achieving psychological maturity, and its is therefore necessary to help them through the neglected phases of their development. They have not completed the first part of the process of individuation that Dr. M.-L. Von Franz has described. But it is also true that a young person can encounter serious problems as he grows up. If a young person is afraid of life and finds it hard to adjust to reality, he might prefer to dwell in his fantasies or to remain a child. In such a young person (especially if he is introverted) one can sometimes discover unexpected treasures in the unconscious, and by bringing them into consciousness strengthen his ego and give him the psychic energy he needs to grow into a mature person. That is the function of the powerful symbolism of our dreams.

Dr. Jung assigned great importance to the first dream in an analysis, for, according to him, it often has anticipatory value. A decision to go into analysis is usually accompanied nu an emotional upheaval that disturbs the deep psychic levels from which archetypal symbols arise. The first dreams therefore often present “collective images” that provide a perspective for the analysis as a whole and can give the therapist insight into the dreamer's psychic conflicts.

People who rely totally on their rational thinking and dismiss or repass every manifestation of their psychic life often have an almost inexplicable inclination to superstition. They listen to oracles and prophecies and can be easily hoodwinked or influenced by magicians and conjurers. And because dreams compensate one's other life, the emphasis such people put in their intellect is offset by dreams in which they meet the irrational and cannot escape it.

One immediately notices the singularity and the exceptional meaning of the dream, its wealth of symbols, and its compactness.

C.G. Jung and some of his associates have tried to make clear the role played by the symbol-creating function in man's unconscious psyche and to point out some fields of application in this newly discovered area of life. We are still far from understanding the unconscious or the archetypes – those dynamic nuclei of the psyche – in all their implications. All we can see now is that the archetypes have an enormous impact on the individual, forming his emotions and his ethical and mental outlook, influencing his relationships with others, and thus affecting his whole destiny. We can also see that the arrangement of archetypal symbols follows a pattern of wholeness in the individual, and that an appropriate understanding of the symbols can have a healing effect. And we can see that the archetypes can act as creative or destructive forces in our mind: creative when they inspire new ideas, destructive when these same ideas stiffen into conscious prejudices that inhabit further discoveries. 

Jung has shown how subtle and differentiated all attempts at interpretation must be, in order not to weaken the specific individual and cultural values or archetypal ideas and symbols by leveling them out – i.e., by giving them a stereotyped, intellectually formulated meaning. Jung himself dedicated his entire life to such investigations and interpretative work. Naturally this article sketches only an infinitesmal part of his vast contribution to this new field of psychological discovery.

Dreams compensate more or less explicitly for the dreamer's conscious attitude of mind. Illustration by Elena.

Carl Jung and Psychology

Carl G. Jung was a pioneer and remained fully aware that an enormous number of further questions remained unanswered and call for further investigation. This is why his concepts and hypotheses are conceived on as wide a basis as possible (without making them too vague and all-embracing) and why his views form a so-called “open system” that does not close the door against possible new discoveries.

To Jung, his concepts were mere tools or heuristic hypotheses that might help us to explore the vast new area of reality opened up by the discovery of the unconscious - a discovery that has not merely widened our whole view of the world but has in fact doubled it. We must always as now whether a mental phenomenon is conscious or unconscious and, also, whether a “real” outer phenomenon is perceived by conscious or unconscious means.

The powerful forces of the unconscious most certainly appear not only in clinical material but also in the mythological, religious, artistic, and all the other cultural activities by which man expresses himself. Obviously, if all men have common inherited patterns of emotional and mental  behavior (which Jung called the archetypes), it is only to be expected that we shall find their products (symbolic fantasies, thoughts, and actions) in practically every field of human activity.

Important modern investigations of many of these fields have been deeply influenced by Jung's work. For instance, this influence can be seen in the study of literature, in such books as J.B. Priestley's Literature and Western Man, Gottfried Diener's Faust's Weg zu Helena, or James Kirsch's Shakespeare's Hamlet. Similarly, Jungian psychology has contributed to the study of art, as in the writings of Herbert Read or of Aniela Jaffé, Erich Neumann's examination of Henry Moore, or Michael Tippett's studies in music. Arnold Toynbee's work on history and Paul Radin's on anthropology have benefited from Jung's teachings, as have the contributions to sinology made by Richard Wilhelm, Enwin Rousselle, and Manfried Porkert. 

Of course, this does not mean that the special features of art and literature (including their interpretation) can be understood only from their archetypal foundation.  These fields all have their own laws of activity; like all really creative achievements, they cannot ultimately be rationally explained. But within their areas of action one can recognize the archetypal patterns as a dynamic background activity. And one can often decipher in them (as in dreams) the message of some seemingly purposive, evolutionary tendency of the unconscious.

The fruitfulness of Jung's ideas is more immediately understandable within the area of the cultural activities of man: Obviously, if the archetypes determine our mental behavior, they must appear in all these fields. But, unexpectedly, Jung's concepts have also opened up new ways of looking at things in the realm of the natural sciences as well – for instance, in biology.

The physicist Wolfgang Pauli has pointed out that, due to new discoveries, our idea of the evolution of life requires a revision that might take into account an area of interrelation between the unconscious psyche and biological processes. Until recently it was assumed that the mutation of species happened at random and that a selection took place by means of which the “meaningful”, well-adapted varieties survived, and the others disappeared. But modern evolutionists have pointed out that the selections of such mutations by pure chance would have taken much longer than the know age of our planet allows.

Creative ideas show their value in that, like keys, they help to unlock hitherto unintelligible connections of facts and thus enable man to penetrate deeper into the mystery of life. Illustration by Elena.

Halo Cryptum

Halo Cryptum: The Forerunner Saga

By Greg Bear

Truly, the Deep Reverence seemed like a great tree riddled through by the wandering whimsy of a single, awful termite. The higher we progressed with the fortress – and progress is not the correct word – the deeper the sense the sense of undisciplined decay. I wondered if the Confirmer had for the last thousand years spent his time building useless follies throughout the decks, above and below, draining the ship's resources and perverting its original design.

We came finally to a space warm enough and with sufficient oxygen to relieve the burden of our armor. This hiss of replenishment was like a gasp as our ancillas sucked in reserves for what they, too, seemed to think might be a desperate time.

The Confirmer's command center was hung with tattered draperies of a design I could not recognize. Within the drapes, pushing up through or rising between, were dozens of sculptures made of stone and metal, some quite large, and all wrought with a grace and skill that was evident whatever their subjects might have been – abstractions or representations, who could tell?

But as a command center, this space was no more functional than the empty vault we had first entered. Clearly, the fortress had become a cluttered ghost of its former might.

The Confirmer ordrered up seatin arrangements. With creaks and groans, the deck produced only two chairs suitable for Prometheans, plus a small bump that might have been meant for me. Some of the drapes drew aside, rpping and falling in dusty shreds... and three sculptures toppled, one of them nearly striking me before it landed on the deck with a solid thunk and split in two.

The Confirmer carried bottles from a broad cabinet half-hidden in the drapes, walking with a left-leaning lurch. “The best I have to offer,” he said, and poured out three glasses of a greenish liquid. He sat and offered a glass to the Didact and one to me. Neither of the glasses were clean. “You remember kasna,” he said, lifting his own glass in toast. The liquid inside smelled sweet and sour – pungent – and left a stain on the glass. “The San'Shyuum have always excelled in the arts of intoxication. This is from their finest reserve.

The Didact looked at his glass, then downed it in a gulp – to the Confirmer's dismay.

“That's rare stuff,” he chided.

“You allow the San'Shyuum to travel between their two worlds?” the Didact asked, returning the glass to the dusty tray.

“They are confined within the boundary of the quarantine,” the Confirmer said. “There's no reason to hold them fast.”

“In many ways, there were worse than humans,” the Didact said.

 “You've not had contact with any other warrior in how many years?”

“The living? Centuries, centuries,” the Confirmer said. “The last shipment of...” He stopped himself, looked about with curtained chamber with eyes that had lost nearly all focus. “Many colleagues are brought here, you know. Exiled with less dignity than the Council allowed you. They've fought, and lost, many political battles since you vanished.”

“Where are they?”

“A few were allowed their own Cryptums. The rest... the Council shipped us their Durances.”

“The Deep Reverence has become a graveyard?” The Didact asked, the last color departing his already pale features.

“Missed and misguided, they now claim.”

Space ships. Illustration by Elena.

Person-centered Approach

A Directional Process in Life

Practice, theory, and research make it clear that the person-centered approach rests on a basic trust in human beings, and in all organisms. There is evidence from many disciplines to support an even broader statement. We can say that there is in every organism, at whatever level, an underlying flow of movement toward constructive fulfillment of its inherent possibilities. In human beings, too, there is a natural tendency toward a more complex and complete development. The term that has most often been used for this is the “actualizing technology”, and it is present in all living organisms.

Whether we are speaking of a flower or an oak tree, of an earthworm or a beautiful bird, of an ape or a person, we will do well, I believe, to recognize that lie is an active process, not a passive one. Whether the stimulus arises from within or without, whether the environment is favorable or unfavorable, the behaviors of an organism can be counted on to be in the direction of maintaining, enhancing, and reproducing itself. This is the very nature of the process we call life. This tendency is operative at all times. Indeed, only the presence or absence of this total directional process enables us to tell whether a given organism is alive or dead.

The actualizing tendency can, of course, be thwarted or warped, but it cannot be destroyed without destroying the organism. I remember that in my childhood, the bin in which we stored our winter's supply of potatoes was in the basement, several feet below a small window. The conditions were unfavorable, but the potatoes would begin to sprout – pale with sprouts, so unlike the healthy green shoots they sent up when planted in the soil in the spring. But these sad, spindly sprouts would grow 2 or 3 feet in length as they reached toward the distant light of the window. The sprouts were, in their bizarre, futile growth, a sort of desperate expression of the directional tendency. They would never become plants, never mature, never fulfill their real potential. But under the most adverse circumstances, they were striving to become.

Life would not give up, even if it could not flourish. In dealing with clients whose lives have been terribly warped, in working with men and women on the back wards of state hospitals, I often think of those potato sprouts. So unfavorable have been the conditions in which these people have developed that their lives often seem abnormal, twisted, scarcely human. Yet, the directional tendency in the can be trusted. The clue to understanding their behavior is that they are striving, in the only ways that they perceive as available to them, to move toward growth, toward becoming. To healthy persons, the results may seem bizarre and futile, but they are life's desperate attempt to become itself. This potent constructive tendency is an underlying basis of the person-centered approach. 

(Aspects of a Person-Centered Approach, the Foundations of a Person-Centered Approach. A Way of Being by Carl R. Rogers).

Organisms are always seeking, always initiating, always "up to something." Picture by Elena.

Thoughts Regarding Death

Thoughts Regarding Death

… And then there is the ending of life... Ten or fifteen years ago I felt quite certain that death was the total end of the person. I still regard that as the most likely prospect; however, it does not seem to me a tragic or awful prospect. I have been able to live my life – not to the full, certainly, but with a satisfying degree of fullness – and it seems natural that my life should come to an end. I already have a degree of immortality in other persons. I have sometimes said that, psychologically, I have strong people close to me all over the world, Also, I believe that the ideas and the way of being that I and others have helped to develop will continue, for some time at least. So if I, as an individual, come to a complete and final end, aspects of me will still live on in a variety of growing ways, and that is a pleasant thought.

I think that no one can know weather he or she fears death until it arrives. Certainly, death is the ultimate leap in the dark, and I think it is highly probable that the apprehension I feel when going under an anesthetic will be duplicated or increased when I face death. Yet I don't experience a really deep fear of the process. So far as I am aware, my fears concerning death relate to its circumstances. I have a dread of any long and painful illness leading to death. I dread the thought of senility or of partial brain damage due to a stroke. My preference would be to die quickly, before it is too late to die with dignity. I think of Winston Churchill. I didn't mourn his death. I mourned the fact that death had not come sooner, when he could have died with the dignity he deserved.

My belief that death is the end has, however, been modified by some of learning. I am impressed with the accounts by Raymond Moody (1975) of the experience of persons who have been so near death as to be declared dead, but who have come back to life. I am impressed by some of the reports of reincarnation, although reincarnation seems a very dubious blessing indeed. I am interested in the work of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and the conclusions she has reached about life after death. I find definitely appealing the views of Arthur Koesler that individual consciousness is but a fragment of a cosmic consciousness, the fragment being reabsorbed into the whole upon the death of the individual. I like his analogy of the individual river eventually flowing into the tidal waters of the ocean, dropping its muddy silt as it enters the boundless sea.

So I consider death with, I believe, an openness to the experience. It will be what it will be, and I trust I can accept it as either an end to, or a continuation of life.

(A Way of Being, by Carl. R. Rogers. Personal experiences and perspectives).

Being alive involves taking a chance, acting on less than certainty, engaging with life. Illustration by Elena.