Table of Contents
Man and his Symbols is Jung’s introduction to the unconscious. Initially, Freud saw the unconscious as the place that holds repressed memories or unwanted desires. Many of the best ideas by artists, philosophers, scientists are sudden manifestations of the unconscious. But Jung sees the psyche as representative of the Self as well. The unconscious is not what the person secretly wants, but also who they deeply are.
Jung’s contribution, over decades of investigation, was to point out to us the universality of dreams symbols and what they mean to people undergoing different stages of psychic development.
The Limitations of Civilized Man
Modern man has lost the colorful and mystical unconscious associations of primitive man, such as when the latter fully identifies with animals in nature. we are more rational today, we do not fear demons or think of ourselves as anything other than human, but the terrors of our elaborate civilization may be far more threatening than what those primitive people attribute to demons.
Civilized man can use his willpower to do whatever he pleases, he does not need to chant or drum to hypnotize himself into a state of doing, like primitive man. Civilized man can even dispose with divine iaid, and he can carry out his actions uninterrupted, whereas primitive man cannot act without encountering fears, superstitions, and other unseen obstacles.
The superstitions of modern man is, “When there’s a will, there’s a way.” But modern man, to sustain is creed, pays the price by an incredible lack of introspection,
He is blind to the fact that despite his rationality and efficiency he is possessed by powers that are outside his control. His gods and demons have no disappeared, they have merely taken new names. They keep him on the run with restlessness, vague apprehensions, psychological complications, an insatiable need for pills, alcohol, tobacco, food, and an array of endless neuroses.
The Shadow of the West
The west has tolerated, secretly and with shame (the diplomatic lie, systematic deception, veiled threats) – these come back into the open and in full force from the East and ties Westerners into neurotic knots.
It is the face of his own evil shadow that grins at Western man from the other side of the Iron Curtain.
Man and His Symbols, Carl Jung
This explains the strange feeling of helplessness of so many people in the West. They have realized that the biggest difficulties confronting them are moral problems, and to answer these concerns with nuclear stockpiling or economic competition is a mistake, since it cuts both ways.
The Eternal Conflict
The sad truth is that man’s real life is made up of opposites: day and night, birth and death, happiness, and misery, good and evil. We do not know which will prevail over the other, whether good will overcome evil, or whether joy will defeat pain. Life has always been a battleground and will continue to be this way. If it were not, existence would come to an end.
It was this conflict that led the early Christians to hope for the end of the world, or the Buddhists to reject all earthly desires. These basic answers would be suicidal if they were not linked with peculiar mental and moral ideas and practices that characterize both religions, and that, modify their denial of the world.
This is an important point because in our time, millions of people have lost faith in any kind of religion. These people do not understand their religion any longer. Life can run smoothly without religion, the loss remains unnoticed. But when suffering comes, it is a different matter. That is when people look for a way out, and reflect about the meaning of life, and the its bewildering and painful experiences.
Modern man may assert that he does not need them since there is scientific evidence of their truth, or he might regret the loss of his convictions. But since God is unknowable, there is no point bothering about evidence. Even if we did not know by reason our need for salt in food, we should still benefit from its use. We can argue that the use of salt is merely an illusion of taste or a superstition, but it would still make us better off. Why, then, should we deprive ourselves from views that would help in crises and give meaning to our lives?
Many would agree with the idea that these religious ideas are probably illusions, but they do not realize that this denial is as impossible to prove as the assertion of religious belief. We are free to choose our point of view, but it will be an arbitrary decision. But there is good empirical reason for us to cultivate thoughts that cannot be proved. Man needs general ideas and convictions that will give his life meaning and help him find a place for himself in the universe. He can withstand the most severe hardships when he is convinced that they make sense. But he is crushed when on top of all his misfortunes, he must admit that is playing a part in a “tale told by an idiot.”
It is a common illusion to believe that we know today is all we can ever know. Nothing is more vulnerable than scientific theory, which is an ephemeral attempt to explain facts and not an everlasting truth in itself.
Man and His Symbols, Carl Jung
And modern man, far from being a rationalistic skeptic, retains many old-fashioned prejudices, outdated habits of thoughts, and blind ignorance.
The Function of Dreams
The purpose of dreams is to try to restore psychic balance by producing dream material that re-establishes total psychic equilibrium. People who have unrealistic ideas about themselves dream of flying or falling.
The recurring dream is an interesting phenomenon – it is an attempt to compensate for a certain defect in the dreamer’s attitude to life, or may come from a traumatic moment that left behind some prejudice, or may anticipate an important future event.
Individuation
For men, the first half of life is when you identify with the masculine, the second half is the integration of the persona with the Self.
Dream life creates a pattern in which individual tendencies become apparent, then vanish, and finally return again. If one observes this meandering process for long enough, they will notice a hidden regulating or directing tendency at work, creating a slow, barely noticeable process of psychic growth – that is individuation.
The Self is the inner guiding factor that is different from the conscious personality, and can only be grasped through the investigation of one’s own dreams.
The ego, it seems, has not been produced by nature to follow its own arbitrary commands, but help make the totality – the whole psyche. The ego serves to light up the entire system, allowing it to become conscious and realized. If you have an artistic talent that your ego is not conscious of, nothing will happen to it. The gift may as well not exist. The inborn but hidden totality of the psyche is not the same as the whole-ness that is realized and experienced.
Many believe that Jungian psychological can only apply to middle-aged people. While it is true that those who reach middle=age without psychological maturity require help for neglecting phases of their development – the first part of the process of individuation. But it is also true that the young person can encounter serious problems as he grows up.
If he is afraid of life and finds it difficult to adjust to reality, he may prefer to dwell in his fantasies or remain a child. In such a young person, especially if introverted, one can discover unexpected treasures in the unconscious, and by bringing them into consciousness, he can strengthen his ego and give him the necessary psychic energy to grow into a mature person. That is the function of the powerful symbolism found in dreams.
The Shadow
When a person tries to see his shadow, he becomes aware and ashamed of the qualities that he denies in himself but clearly sees in others. These include egotism, mental laziness and sloppiness, unreal fantasies, schemes, and plots; carelessness and cowardice; inordinate love of money and possessions. In short, all the little sins about which he may have told himself: “That doesn’t matter; nobody will notice it, and in any case other people do it too.”
Sometimes, a person lives out the worse side of his nature and represses his better side. In this case, the shadow is a positive figure in his dreams. But to a person who lives out his natural emotions and feelings, the shadow may appear as a cold and negative intellectual; it then personifies poisonous judgements and negative thoughts that have been repressed.
The Anima
The anima is a personification of all feminine psychological tendencies in a man’s psyche, such as vague feelings and moods, hunches, receptiveness to the irrational, feeling for nature, and his relation to the unconscious.
In its individual manifestation, the character of a man’s anima is shaped by his mother. If he feels his mother had a negative influence on him, his anima will express itself in irritable depressed moods, uncertainty, insecurity, and touchiness.
But if a man’s experience of his mother has been positive, this can affect him in a typical but different ways, with the result that he either becomes effeminate or is preyed upon by women and thus unable to cope with life’s hardships. An anima of this kind can turn men into sentimentalists.
The anima in this form involves men in a destructive intellectual game, where they engage in pseudointellectual dialogues that stop them from living life and dealing with real decisions. He reflects about life so much that he cannot live it and loses all spontaneity and outgoing feeling.
Criticism of Jung
Jung is criticized for not systematizing his approach enough, but the material itself is a living experience charged with emotion, which does not lend itself for systematization. Modern depth psychology has reached the same limits that face microphysics. When we deal with statistical averages, a systematic description of facts is possible. But when trying to describe a single psychic event, we can do no more than present an honest picture of it from as many angles as possible.
To put it in simple, nonscientific terms, nuclear physics has robbed the basic units of matter of their absolute concreteness. It has made matter mysterious. Paradoxically, mass and energy, wave a n d particle, have proved to be interchangeable. The laws of cause and effect have become valid only up to a certain point.
Man and His Symbols, Carl Jung