Part 2 of 2
[365] We know of other institutions for detaching man from natural conditions. I can’t go into much detail, but if you study the psychology of primitives, you find that all important events of life are connected with elaborate ceremonies whose purpose is to detach man from the preceding stage of existence and to help him to transfer his psychic energy into the next phase. When a girl marries, she ought to be detached from the parental images and should not become attached to a projection of the father-image into the husband. Therefore in Babylon a peculiar ritual was observed whose purpose was to detach the young girl from the father-image. This is the rite of temple prostitution, in which girls of good families had to hand themselves over to a stranger visiting the temple, who presumably would never return, and had to spend a night with him. We know of a similar institution in the Middle Ages, the jus primae noctis, the right of the first night which the feudal lord had in regard to his serfs. The bride had to spend her wedding-night with her feudal lord. By the rite of temple prostitution, a most impressive image was created which collided with the image of the man the young woman was going to marry, and so when there was trouble in marriage—for even in those days trouble occasionally arose—the regression which is the natural result would not go back to the father-image but to the stranger she had once met, the lover who came from unknown lands. Then she did not fall back into childhood but upon a human being suited to her age, and so was sufficiently protected against infantile regression.
[366] This ritual shows a very beautiful observation of the human psyche. For there is an archetypal image in women of a lover in a remote, unknown land, a man coming over the seas who meets her once and then goes away again. You know this motif from Wagner’s Flying Dutchman and from Ibsen’s Lady from the Sea. In both dramas the heroine is waiting for the stranger who will come from far over the seas to have the great love experience with her. In Wagner’s opera she has fallen in love with the actual image of him and knows him even before he arrives. The Lady from the Sea has met him once before and is under the compulsion of always going to the sea to await his return. In that Babylonian rite this archetypal image is lived concretely in order to detach the woman from the parental images which are real archetypal images and therefore exceedingly powerful. I have written a little book about the relations between the ego and the unconscious,6 where I have described a case of projection of the father-image by a woman who was under my treatment, and how the problem then developed through the analysis of the archetypal image which was at the basis of this father transference.
[367] The first stage of the treatment of the transference does not involve only the realization by the patient that he is still looking at the world from the angle of the nursery, school-room, and so on, by projecting and expecting all the positive and negative authoritative figures of his personal experience; this realization merely deals with the objective side. To establish a really mature attitude, he has to see the subjective value of all these images which seem to create trouble for him. He has to assimilate them into his own psychology; he has to find out in what way they are part of himself; how he attributes for instance a positive value to an object, when as a matter of fact it is he who could and should develop this value. And in the same way, when he projects negative qualities and therefore hates and loathes the object, he has to discover that he is projecting his own inferior side, his shadow, as it were, because he prefers to have an optimistic and one-sided image of himself. Freud, as you know, deals only with the objective side. But you cannot really help a patient to assimilate the contents of his neurosis by indulgence in a childish lack of responsibility, or by resignation to a blind fate of which he is the victim. His neurosis means him to become a total personality, and that includes recognition of and responsibility for his whole being, his good and his bad sides, his superior as well as his inferior functions.
[368] Let us now assume that the projection of personal images has been worked through and is sufficiently dealt with, but there is still a transference which you simply cannot dissolve. Then we come to the second stage in the therapy of transference. That is the discrimination between personal and impersonal contents. The personal projections, as we have seen, must be dissolved; and they can be dissolved through conscious realization. But the impersonal projections cannot be destroyed because they belong to the structural elements of the psyche. They are not relics of a past which has to be outgrown; they are, on the contrary, purposive and compensatory functions of the utmost importance. They are an important protection against situations in which a man might lose his head. In any situation of panic, whether external or internal, the archetypes intervene and allow a man to react in an instinctively adapted way, just as if he had always known the situation: he reacts in the way mankind has always reacted. Therefore the mechanism is of vital importance.
[369] It goes without saying that the projection of these impersonal images upon the analyst has to be withdrawn. But you merely dissolve the act of projection; you should not, and really cannot, dissolve its contents. Neither, of course, can the patient assimilate the impersonal contents into his personal psychology. The fact that they are impersonal contents is just the reason for projecting them; one feels that they do not belong to one’s subjective mind, they must be located somewhere outside one’s ego, and, for lack of a suitable form, a human object is made their receptacle. So you have to be exceedingly careful in handling impersonal projections. It would, for instance, be a great mistake to say to a patient: “You see, you simply project the saviour-image into me. What nonsense to expect a saviour and to make me responsible.” If you meet such an expectation, take it seriously; it is by no means nonsense. The whole world has a saviour expectation; you find it everywhere. Look at Italy, for instance, or look at Germany. At present you have no saviour in England, and in Switzerland we have none; but I don’t believe that we are so very different from the rest of Europe. The situation with us is slightly different from that of the Italians and Germans; they are perhaps a little bit less balanced; but even with us it would need precious little. In those countries you have the saviour complex as mass psychology. The saviour complex is an archetypal image of the collective unconscious, and it quite naturally becomes activated in an epoch so full of trouble and disorientation as ours. In these collective events, we merely see, as through a magnifying glass, what can also happen within the individual. It is in just such a moment of panic that the compensatory psychic elements come into action. It is not at all an abnormal phenomenon. It is perhaps strange to us that it should be expressed in political form. But the collective unconscious is a very irrational factor, and our rational consciousness cannot dictate to it how it should make its appearance. Of course, if left entirely to itself, its activation can be very destructive; it can, for instance, be a psychosis. Therefore, man’s relation to the collective unconscious has always been regulated; there is a characteristic form by which the archetypal images are expressed. For the collective unconscious is a function that always operates, and man has to keep in touch with it. His psychic and spiritual health is dependent on the co-operation of the impersonal images. Therefore man has always had his religions.
[370] What are religions? Religions are psychotherapeutic systems. What are we doing, we psychotherapists? We are trying to heal the suffering of the human mind, of the human psyche or the human soul, and religions deal with the same problem. Therefore our Lord himself is a healer; he is a doctor; he heals the sick and he deals with the troubles of the soul; and that is exactly what we call psychotherapy. It is not a play on words when I call religion a psychotherapeutic system. It is the most elaborate system, and there is a great practical truth behind it. I have a clientele which is pretty large and extends over a number of continents, and where I live we are practically surrounded by Catholics; but during the last thirty years I have not had more than about six practising Catholics among my patients. The vast majority were Protestants and Jews. I once sent round a questionnaire to people whom I did not know, asking: “If you were in psychological trouble what would you do? Would you go to the doctor or would you go to the priest or parson?” I cannot remember the actual figures; but I remember that about twenty per cent of the Protestants said they would go to the parson. All the rest were most emphatically against the parson and for the doctor, and the most emphatic were the relatives and children of parsons. There was one Chinese who replied, and he put it very nicely. He remarked: “When I am young I go to the doctor, and when I am old I go to the philosopher.” But about fifty-eight or sixty per cent of the Catholics answered that they would certainly go to the priest. That proves that the Catholic Church in particular, with its rigorous system of confession and its director of conscience, is a therapeutic institution. I have had some patients who, after having had analysis with me, even joined the Catholic Church, just as I have had some patients who now go to the so-called Oxford Group Movement—with my blessing! I think it is perfectly correct to make use of these psychotherapeutic institutions which history has given to us, and I wish I were still a medieval man who could join such a creed. Unfortunately it needs a somewhat medieval psychology to do it, and I am not sufficiently medieval. But you see from this that I take the archetypal images and a suitable form for their projection seriously, because the collective unconscious is really a serious factor in the human psyche.
[371] All those personal things like incestuous tendencies and other childish tunes are mere surface; what the unconscious really contains are the great collective events of the time. In the collective unconscious of the individual, history prepares itself; and when the archetypes are activated in a number of individuals and come to the surface, we are in the midst of history, as we are at present. The archetypal image which the moment requires gets into life, and everybody is seized by it. That is what we see today. I saw it coming, I said in 1918 that the “blond beast” is stirring in its sleep and that something will happen in Germany.7 No psychologist then understood at all what I meant, because people had simply no idea that our personal psychology is just a thin skin, a ripple upon the ocean of collective psychology. The powerful factor, the factor which changes our whole life, which changes the surface of our known world, which makes history, is collective psychology, and collective psychology moves according to laws entirely different from those of our consciousness. The archetypes are the great decisive forces, they bring about the real events, and not our personal reasoning and practical intellect. Before the Great War all intelligent people said: “We shall not have any more war, we are far too reasonable to let it happen, and our commerce and finance are so interlaced internationally that war is absolutely out of the question.” And then we produced the most gorgeous war ever seen. And now they begin to talk that foolish kind of talk about reason and peace plans and such things; they blindfold themselves by clinging to a childish optimism—and now look at reality! Sure enough, the archetypal images decide the fate of man. Man’s unconscious psychology decides, and not what we think and talk in the brain-chamber up in the attic.
[372] Who would have thought in 1900 that it would be possible thirty years later for such things to happen in Germany as are happening today? Would you have believed that a whole nation of highly intelligent and cultivated people could be seized by the fascinating power of an archetype? I saw it coming, and I can understand it because I know the power of the collective unconscious. But on the surface it looks simply incredible. Even my personal friends are under that fascination, and when I am in Germany, I believe it myself, I understand it all, I know it has to be as it is. One cannot resist it. It gets you below the belt and not in your mind, your brain just counts for nothing, your sympathetic system is gripped. It is a power that fascinates people from within, it is the collective unconscious which is activated, it is an archetype which is common to them all that has come to life. And because it is an archetype, it has historical aspects and we cannot understand the events without knowing history.8 It is German history that is being lived today, just as Fascism is living Italian history. We cannot be children about it, having intellectual and reasonable ideas and saying: this should not be. That is just childish. This is real history, this is what really happens to man and has always happened, and it is far more important than our personal little woes and our personal convictions. I know highly educated Germans who were just as reasonable as I think I am or as you think you are. But a wave went over them and just washed their reason away, and when you talk to them you have to admit that they could not do anything about it. An incomprehensible fate has seized them, and you cannot say it is right, or it is wrong. It has nothing to do with rational judgment, it is just history. And when your patient’s transference touches upon the archetypes, you touch upon a mine that may explode, just as we see it explode collectively. These impersonal images contain enormous dynamic power. Bernard Shaw says in Man and Superman: “This creature Man, who in his own selfish affairs is a coward to the backbone, will fight for an idea like a hero.”9 Of course, we would not call Fascism or Hitlerism ideas. They are archetypes, and so we would say: Give an archetype to the people and the whole crowd moves like one man, there is no resisting it.
[373] On account of this tremendous dynamic power of archetypal images you cannot reason them away. Therefore the only thing to do at the third stage of the therapy of the transference is to differentiate the personal relationship to the analyst from impersonal factors. It is perfectly understandable that when you have carefully and honestly worked for a patient, he likes you, and because you have done a decent bit of work on a patient, you like him, whether it is a man or a woman. That is quite self-evident. It would be most unnatural and neurotic if there were not some personal recognition on the patient’s part for what you have done for him. A personal human reaction to you is normal and reasonable, therefore let it be, it deserves to live; it is not transference any more. But such an attitude to the analyst is possible in a human and decent form only when it is not vitiated by unrecognized impersonal values. This means that there has to be, on the other side, a full recognition of the importance of the archetypal images, many of which have a religious character. Whether you assume that the Nazi storm in Germany has a religious value or not does not matter. It has. Whether you think that the Duce is a religious figure or not does not matter, because he is a religious figure. You could even read the affirmation of it in a newspaper these days, when they quoted that verse about a Roman Caesar: “Ecce deus, deus ille, Menalca.”10 Fascism is the Latin form of religion, and its religious character explains why the whole thing has such a tremendous fascination.
[374] The consequence of this recognition of the importance of impersonal values may be that your patient joins a Church or a religious creed or whatever it may be. If he cannot bring together his experience of the collective unconscious within a given religious form, then the difficulty begins. Then the impersonal factors have no receptacle, and so the patient falls back into the transference, and the archetypal images spoil the human relation to the analyst. Then the analyst is the saviour, or curse him, he is not when he ought to be! For he is only a human being; he cannot be the saviour nor any other archetypal image which is activated in the patient’s unconscious.
[375] On account of that enormously difficult and important problem I have worked out a particular technique for restoring these projected impersonal values to the individual himself. It is a rather complicated technique, and last night I was just about to show you something of it in relation to that dream. For when the unconscious says that below the Christian Church is the secret chamber with the golden bowl and the golden dagger, it does not lie. The unconscious is nature, and nature never lies. There is gold, there is the treasure and the great value.
[376] If I had had the opportunity I would have gone on and told you something about that treasure and the means to secure it. And then you would have seen the justification for the method which enables the individual to keep in touch with his impersonal images. As it is. I can only allude to it and must refer you to my books for further material.11
[377] I call this fourth stage of the therapy of transference the objectivation of impersonal images. It is an essential part of the process of individuation.12 Its goal is to detach consciousness from the object so that the individual no longer places the guarantee of his happiness, or of his life even, in factors outside himself, whether they be persons, ideas, or circumstances, but comes to realize that everything depends on whether he holds the treasure or not. If the possession of that gold is realized, then the centre of gravity is in the individual and no longer in an object on which he depends. To reach such a condition of detachment is the aim of Eastern practices, and it is also the aim of all the teachings of the Church. In the various religions the treasure is projected into the sacred figures, but this hypostasis is no longer possible for the modern enlightened mind. A great number of individuals cannot express their impersonal values in historical symbols any more.
[378] They are therefore faced with the necessity of finding an individual method by which the impersonal images are given shape. For they have to take on form, they have to live their characteristic life, otherwise the individual is severed from the basic function of the psyche, and then he is neurotic, he is disorientated and in conflict with himself. But if he is able to objectify the impersonal images and relate to them, he is in touch with that vital psychological function which from the dawn of consciousness has been taken care of by religion.
[379] It is impossible for me to go into details of the problem, not only because the time for my lecture is over, but because it is beyond scientific conceptions to give adequate expression to a living psychic experience. All we can say rationally about this condition of detachment is to define it as a sort of centre within the psyche of the individual, but not within the ego. It is a non-ego centre. I am afraid I should have to give you a long dissertation on comparative religion in order to convey to you fully what I mean by a non-ego centre.13 So I can only mention the existence of this problem. It is really the essential problem of a great number of individuals who come to analysis, and therefore the psychotherapist has to try to find a method by which he can help them to solve it.
[380] If we adopt such a method, we take up the torch that was abandoned by our old colleagues of the seventeenth century when they put it down in order to become chemists. In so far as we psychologists are emerging from chemical and material conceptions of the psyche, we are taking up that torch again, contury—for alchemy was the work of the doctors who were busy with the mind.).]
DiscussionQuestion:
[381] May I ask Professor Jung a very elementary question: Would he give us a definition of neurosis?
Professor Jung:
[382] A neurosis is a dissociation of personality due to the existence of complexes. To have complexes is in itself normal; but if the complexes are incompatible, that part of the personality which is too contrary to the conscious part becomes split off. If the split reaches the organic structure, the dissociation is a psychosis, a schizophrenic condition, as the term denotes. Each complex then lives an existence of its own, with no personality left to tie them together.
[383] As the split-off complexes are unconscious, they find only an indirect means of expression, that is, through neurotic symptoms. Instead of suffering from a psychological conflict, one suffers from a neurosis. Any incompatibility of character can cause dissociation, and too great a split between the thinking and the feeling function, for instance, is already a slight neurosis. When you are not quite at one with yourself in a given matter, you are approaching a neurotic condition. The idea of psychic dissociation is the most general and cautious way I can define a neurosis. Of course it does not cover the symptomatology and phenomenology of neurosis; it is only the most general psychological formulation I am able to give.
Dr. H. G. Baynes:
[384] You said that transference is of no practical value in analysis. Is it not possible to give it a teleological value?
Professor Jung:
[385] I have not said it in so many words, but the teleological value of transference becomes apparent from an analysis of its archetypal contents. Its purposive value is also shown in what I said about transference as a function of compensation for a lack of rapport between the analyst and the patient—at least if one assumes that it is normal for human beings to be en rapport with each other. Of course I could imagine that an introverted philosopher is rather inclined to think that people have no contacts. For instance, Schopenhauer says that human egotism is so great that a man can kill his brother in order to smear his boots with his brother’s fat.
Dr. Henry V. Dicks:
[386] I think we can assume then, Professor Jung, that you regard the outbreak of a neurosis as an attempt at self-cure, as an attempt at compensation by bringing out the inferior function?
Professor Jung:
[387] Absolutely.
Dr. Dicks:
[388] I understand, then, that the outbreak of a neurotic illness, from the point of view of man’s development, is something favourable?
Professor Jung:
[389] That is so, and I am glad you bring up that idea. That is really my point of view. I am not altogether pessimistic about neurosis. In many cases we have to say: “Thank heaven he could make up his mind to be neurotic.” Neurosis is really an attempt at self-cure, just as any physical disease is part an attempt at selfcure. We cannot understand a disease as an ens per se any more, as something detached which not so long ago it was believed to be. Modern medicine—internal medicine, for instance— conceives of disease as a system composed of a harmful factor and a healing factor. It is exactly the same with neurosis. It is an attempt of the self-regulating psychic system to restore the balance, in no way different from the function of dreams—only rather more forceful and drastic.
Dr. J. A. Hadfield:
[390] Would Professor Jung give us a short account of the technique of active imagination?
Professor Jung:
[391] That was the subject I really wanted to tell you about today in consequence of the analysis of the Toledo dream, so I am very glad to take it up. You will realize that I shall not be able to present any empirical material, but I may succeed in giving you an idea of the method. I believe that the best way is to tell you of a case where it was very difficult to teach the patient the method.
[392] I was treating a young artist, and he had the greatest trouble in understanding what I meant by active imagination. He tried all sorts of things but he could not get at it. The difficulty with him was that he could not think. Musicians, painters, artists of all kinds, often can’t think at all, because they never intentionally use their brain. This man’s brain too was always working for itself; it had its artistic imaginations and he couldn’t use it psychologically, so he couldn’t understand. I gave him every chance to try, and he tried all sorts of stunts. I cannot tell you all the things he did, but I will tell you how he finally succeeded in using his imagination psychologically.
[393] I live outside the town, and he had to take the train to get to my place. It starts from a small station, and on the wall of that station was a poster. Each time he waited for his train he looked at that poster. The poster was an advertisement for Mürren in the Bernese Alps, a colourful picture of the waterfalls, of a green meadow and a hill in the centre, and on that hill were several cows. So he sat there staring at that poster and thinking that he could not find out what I meant by active imagination. And then one day he thought: “Perhaps I could start by having a fantasy about that poster. I might for instance imagine that I am myself in the poster, that the scenery is real and that I could walk up the hill among the cows and then look down on the other side, and then I might see what there is behind that hill.”
[394] So he went to the station for that purpose and imagined that he was in the poster. He saw the meadow and the road and walked up the hill among the cows, and then he came up to the top and looked down, and there was the meadow again, sloping down, and below was a hedge with a stile. So he walked down and over the stile, and there was a little footpath that ran round a ravine, and a rock, and when he came round that rock, there was a small chapel, with its door standing a little ajar. He thought he would like to enter, and so he pushed the door open and went in, and there upon an altar decorated with pretty flowers stood a wooden figure of the Mother of God. He looked up at her face, and in that exact moment something with pointed ears disappeared behind the altar. He thought, “Well, that’s all nonsense,” and instantly the whole fantasy was gone.
[395] He went away and said, “Now again I haven’t understood what active imagination is.” And then, suddenly, the thought struck him: “Well, perhaps that really was there: perhaps that thing behind the Mother of God, with the pointed ears, that disappeared like a flash, really happened.” Therefore he said to himself: “I will just try it all over as a test.” So he imagined that he was back in the station looking at the poster, and again he fantasied that he was walking up the hill. And when he came to the top of the hill, he wondered what he would see on the other side. And there was the hedge and the stile and the hill sloping down. He said. “Well, so far so good. Things haven’t moved since, apparently.” And he went round the rock, and there was the chapel. He said: “There is the chapel, that at least is no illusion. It is all quite in order.” The door stood ajar and he was quite pleased. He hesitated a moment and said: “Now, when I push that door open and I see the Madonna on the altar, then that thing with the pointed ears should jump down behind the Madonna, and if it doesn’t, then the whole thing is bunk!” And so he pushed the door open and looked—and there it all was and the thing jumped down, as before, and then he was convinced. From then on he had the key and knew he could rely on his imagination, and so he learned to use it.
[396] There is no time to tell you about the development of his images, nor how other patients arrive at the method. For of course everybody gets at it in his own way. I can only mention that it might also be a dream or an impression of a hypnagogic nature from which active imagination can start. I really prefer the term “imagination” to “fantasy,” because there is a difference between the two which the old doctors had in mind when they said that “opus nostrum,” our work, ought to be done “per veram imaginationem et non phantastica”—by true imagination and not by a fantastical one.13 In other words, if you take the correct meaning of this definition, fantasy is mere nonsense, a phantasm, a fleeting impression; but imagination is active, purposeful creation. And this is exactly the distinction I make too.
[397] A fantasy is more or less your own invention, and remains on the surface of personal things and conscious expectations. But active imagination, as the term denotes, means that the images have a life of their own and that the symbolic events develop according to their own logic— that is, of course, if your conscious reason does not interfere. You begin by concentrating upon a starting point. I will give you an example from my own experience. When I was a little boy, I had a spinster aunt who lived in a nice old-fashioned house. It was full of beautiful old coloured engravings. Among them was a picture of my grandfather on my mother’s side. He was a sort of bishop, and he was represented as coming out of his house and standing on a little terrace. There were handrails and stairs coming down from the terrace, and a footpath leading to the cathedral. He was in full regalia, standing there at the top of the terrace. Every Sunday morning I was allowed to pay a call on my aunt, and then I knelt on a chair and looked at that picture until grandfather came down the steps. And each time my aunt would say, “But, my dear, he doesn’t walk, he is still standing there.” But I knew I had seen him walking down.
[398] You see how it happened that the picture began to move. And in the same way, when you concentrate on a mental picture, it begins to stir, the image becomes enriched by details, it moves and develops. Each time, naturally, you mistrust it and have the idea that you have just made it up, that it is merely your own invention. But you have to overcome that doubt, because it is not true. We can really produce precious little by our conscious mind. All the time we are dependent upon the things that literally fall into our consciousness; therefore in German we call them Einfälle. For instance, if my unconscious should prefer not to give me ideas, I could not proceed with my lecture, because I could not invent the next step. You all know the experience when you want to mention a name or a word which you know quite well, and it simply does not present itself; but some time later it drops into your memory. We depend entirely upon the benevolent co-operation of our unconscious. If it does not co-operate, we are completely lost. Therefore I am convinced that we cannot do much in the way of conscious invention; we over-estimate the power of intention and the will. And so when we concentrate on an inner picture and when we are careful not to interrupt the natural flow of events, our unconscious will produce a series of images which make a complete story.
[399] I have tried that method with many patients and for many years, and I possess a large collection of such “opera.” It is most interesting to watch the process. Of course I don’t use active imagination as a panacea; there have to be definite indications that the method is suitable for the individual, and there are a number of patients with whom it would be wrong to force it upon them. But often in the later stage of analysis, the objectivation of images replaces the dreams. The images anticipate the dreams, and so the dream-material begins to peter out. The unconscious becomes deflated in so far as the conscious mind relates to it. Then you get all the material in a creative form and this has great advantages over dream-material. It quickens the process of maturation, for analysis is a process of quickened maturation. This definition is not my own invention; the old professor Stanley Hall invented the term.
[400] Since by active imagination all the material is produced in a conscious state of mind, the material is far more rounded out than the dreams with their precarious language. And it contains much more than dreams do; for instance, the feeling-values are in it, and one can judge it by feeling. Quite often, the patients themselves feel that certain material contains a tendency to visibility. They say, for instance: “That dream was so impressive, if I only could paint I would try to express its atmosphere.” Or they feel that a certain idea should be expressed not rationally but in symbols. Or they are gripped by an emotion which, if given form, would be explainable, and so on. And so they begin to draw, to paint, or to shape their images plastically, and women sometimes do weaving. I have even had one or two women who danced their unconscious figures. Of course, they can also be expressed in writing.
[401] I have many complete series of such pictures. They yield an enormous amount of archetypal material. Just now I am about to work out the historical parallels of some of them. I compare them with the pictorial material produced in similar attempts in past centuries, particularly in the early Middle Ages. Certain elements of the symbolism go back to Egypt. In the East we find many interesting parallels to our unconscious material, even down to the last details. This comparative work gives us a most valuable insight into the structure of the unconscious. You have to hand the necessary parallels to the patients too, not of course in such an elaborate way as you would present it in a scientific study, but as much as each individual needs in order to understand his archetypal images. For he can see their real meaning only when they are not just a queer subjective experience with no external connections, but a typical, ever-recurring expression of the objective facts and processes of the human psyche. By objectifying his impersonal images, and understanding their inherent ideas, the patient is able to work out all the values of his archetypal material. Then he can really see it, and the unconscious becomes understandable to him. Moreover, this work has a definite effect upon him. Whatever he has put into it works back on him and produces a change of attitude which I tried to define by mentioning the non-ego centre.
[402] I will give you an interesting example. I had a case, a university man, a very one-sided intellectual. His unconscious had become troubled and activated; so it projected itself into other men who appeared to be his enemies, and he felt terribly lonely, because everybody seemed to be against him. Then he began to drink in order to forget his troubles, but he got exceedingly irritable and in these moods he began to quarrel with other men, and several times he had very disagreeable encounters, and once he was thrown out of a restaurant and got beaten up. And there were more incidents of that sort. Then things became really too thick for his endurance, and he came to me to ask my advice about what he should do. In that interview, I got a very definite impression of him: I saw that he was chock-full of archaic material, and I said to myself: “Now I am going to make an interesting experiment to get that material absolutely pure, without any influence from myself, and therefore I won’t touch it.” So I sent him to a woman doctor who was then just a beginner and who did not know much about archetypal material. Thus I was absolutely sure that she would not tamper with it. The patient was in such low spirits that he did not object to my proposition. So he worked with her and did everything she said.14
[403] She told him to watch his dreams, and he wrote them all down carefully, from the first to the last. I now have a series of about thirteen hundred dreams of his. They contain the most marvellous series of archetypal images. And quite naturally, without being told to do so, he began to draw a number of pictures which he saw in his dreams, because he felt them to be very important. And in this work on his dreams and on these pictures he did exactly the kind of work which other patients do by active imagination. He even invented active imagination for himself in order to work out certain most intricate problems which his dreams presented him with, as for instance how to balance the contents of a circle, and more things like this. He worked out the problem of the perpetuum mobile, not in a crazy way but in a symbolic way. He worked on all the problems which medieval philosophy was so keen on and of which our rational mind says. “That is all nonsense.” Such a statement only shows that we do not understand. They did understand: we are the fools, not they.
[404] In the course of this analysis, which took him through about the first four hundred dreams, he was not under my surveillance. After the first interview I did not see him at all for eight months. He was five months with that doctor, and then for three months he was doing the work all by himself, continuing the observation of his unconscious with minute accuracy. He was very gifted in this respect. In the end, for about two months, he had a number of interviews with me. But I did not have to explain much of the symbolism to him.
[405] The effect of this work with his unconscious was that he became a perfectly normal and reasonable person. He did not drink any more, he became completely adapted and in every respect completely normal. The reason for this is quite obvious: that man—he was not married—had lived in a very one-sided intellectual way, and naturally had certain desires and needs also. But he had no chance with women at all, because he had no differentiation of feeling whatsoever. So he made a fool of himself with women at once, and of course they had no patience with him. And he made himself very disagreeable to men, so he was frightfully lonely. But now he had found something that fascinated him; he had a new centre of interest. He soon discovered that his dreams pointed to something very meaningful, and so his whole intuitive and scientific interest was aroused. Instead of feeling like a lost sheep, he thought: “Ah, when I am through with my work in the evening, I go to my study, and then I shall see what happens. I will work over my dreams, and then I shall discover extraordinary things.” And so it was. Of course rational judgment would say that he just fell violently into his fantasies. But that was not the case at all. He did a real bit of hard work on his unconscious, and he worked out his images scientifically. When he came to me after his three months alone, he was already almost normal. Only he still felt uncertain; he was troubled because he could not understand some of the material he had dug up from the unconscious. He asked my advice about it, and I most carefully gave him certain hints as to its meaning, but only so far as this could help him to keep on with the work and carry it through.
[406] At the end of the year I am going to publish a selection from his first four hundred dreams, where I show the development of one motif only, the central motif of these archetypal images.15 There will be an English translation later, and then you will have the opportunity to see how the method works in a case absolutely untouched by myself, or by any other outside suggestion. It is a most amazing series of images and really shows what active imagination can do. You understand, in this case it was only partially a method for objectifying the images in plastic form, because many of the symbols appeared directly in the dreams; but all the same it shows the kind of atmosphere which active imagination can produce. I have patients who, evening after evening, work at these images, painting and shaping their observations and experiences. The work has a fascination for them; it is the fascination which the archetypes always exert upon consciousness. But by objectifying them, the danger of their inundating consciousness is averted and their positive effect is made accessible. It is almost impossible to define this effect in rational terms; it is a sort of “magical” effect, that is, a suggestive influence which goes out from the images to the individual, and in this way his unconscious is extended and is changed.
[407] I am told that Dr. Bennet has brought some pictures by a patient. Will he be so kind as to show them?
This picture (Figure 14) is meant to represent a bowl or vase. Of course it is very clumsily expressed and is a mere attempt, a suggestion of a vase or bowl. The motif of the vessel is itself an archetypal image which has a certain purpose, and I can prove from this picture what the purpose is. A vessel is an instrument for containing things. It contains for instance liquids, and prevents them from getting dispersed. Our German word for vessel is Gefäss, which is the noun of fassen, that is, to set, to contain, to take hold of. The word Fassung means the setting, and also, metaphorically, composure, to remain collected. So the vessel in this picture indicates the movement of containing in order to gather in and to hold together. You have to hold something together which otherwise would fall asunder. From the way this picture is composed, and from certain features in it, it is obvious that the psychology of this man contains a number of disparate elements. It is a picture characteristic of a schizophrenic condition. I do not know the case at all, but Dr. Bennet confirms that my conclusion is correct. You see the disparate elements all over the picture; there are a number of things which are not motivated and which don’t belong together. Moreover, you see peculiar lines dividing the field. These lines are characteristic of a schizophrenic mentality; I call them the breaking lines. When a schizophrenic paints a picture of himself, he naturally expresses the schizophrenic split in his own mental structure, and so you find these breaking lines which often go right through a particular figure, like the breaking lines in a mirror. In this picture, the figures themselves show no breaking lines; they only go all over the field.
FIG.14. Painting by a patient[408] This man, then, tries to gather in all the disparate elements into the vessel. The vessel is meant to be the receptacle for his whole being, for all the incompatible units. If he tried to gather them into his ego, it would be an impossible task, because the ego can be identical only with one part at a time. So he indicates by the symbol of the vessel that he is trying to find a container for everything, and therefore he gives a hint at a non-ego centre by that sort of ball or globe in the middle.
[409] The picture is an attempt at self-cure. It brings all the disparate elements into the light, and it also tries to put them together into that vessel. This idea of a receptacle is an archetypal idea. You find it everywhere, and it is one of the central motifs of unconscious pictures. It is the idea of the magic circle which is drawn round something that has to be prevented from escaping or protected against hostile influences. The magic circle as an apotropaic charm is an archaic idea which you still find in folklore. For instance, if a man digs for a treasure, he draws the magic circle round the field in order to keep the devil out. When the ground-plan of a city was set out, there used to be a ritual walk or ride round the circumference in order to protect the place within. In some Swiss villages, it is still the custom for the priest and the town council to ride round the fields when the blessing is administered for the protection of the harvest. In the centre of the magic circle or sacred precinct is the temple. One of the most wonderful examples of this idea is the temple of Borobudur in Java. The walk round, the circumambulatio, is done in a spiral: the pilgrims pass the figures of all the different lives of the Buddha, until on the top there is the invisible Buddha, the Buddha yet to come. The groundplan of Borobudur is a circle within a square. This structure is called in Sanskrit a mandala. The word means a circle, particularly a magic circle. In the East, you find the mandala not only as the ground-plan of temples, but as pictures in the temples, or drawn for the day of certain religious festivals. In the very centre of the mandala there is the god or the symbol of divine energy, the diamond thunderbolt. Round this innermost circle is a cloister with four gates. Then comes a garden, and round this there is another circle which is the outer circumference.
[410] The symbol of the mandala has exactly this meaning of a holy place, a temenos, to protect the centre. And it is a symbol which is one of the most important motifs in the objectivation of unconscious images.16 It is a means of protecting the centre of the personality from being drawn out and from being influenced from outside.
[411] This picture by Dr. Bennet’s patient is an attempt to draw such a mandala. It has a centre, and it contains all his psychic elements, and the vase would be the magic circle, the temenos, round which he has to do the circumambulatio. Attention is thus directed towards the centre, and at the same time all the disparate elements come under observation and an attempt is made to unify them. The cirumambulatio had always to be done clockwise. If one turned round in the other direction it was very unfavourable. The idea of the circumambulatio in this picture is the patient’s first attempt to find a centre and a container for his whole psyche. But he does not succeed. The design shows no balance, and the vase is toppling over. It even topples over towards the left, towards the side of the unconscious. So the unconscious is still too powerful. If he wants his apotropaic magic to work, he must do it in a different way. We shall see what he does in the next picture.
[412] In this picture (Figure 15) he makes an attempt at symmetry. Now these disparate, monstrous things which he could not grasp before are collected and assimilated into more favourable, less pathological forms. He can now gather the living units of his unconscious, in the form of snakes, into the sacred vase. And the vase stands firm, it does not topple over any more, and its shape has improved. He does not succeed yet with his intention; but at least he can give his animals some form. They are all animals of the underworld, fishes that live in the deep sea, and snakes of the darkness. They symbolize the lower centres of his psychology, the sympathetic system. A most remarkable thing is that he also gathers in the stars. That means that the cosmos, his world, is collected into the picture. It is an allusion to the unconscious astrology which is in our bones, though we are unaware of it. At the top of the whole picture is the personification of the unconscious, a naked anima-figure who turns her back. That is a typical position; in the beginning of the objectivation of these images the anima-figure often turns her back. At the foot of the vase are eight figures of the crescent moon; the moon is also a symbol of the unconscious. A man’s unconscious is the lunar world, for it is the night world, and this is characterized by the moon, and Luna is a feminine designation, because the unconscious is feminine. There are still various breaking lines which disturb the harmony. But I should assume that if no particular trouble interferes, the patient will most likely continue along this constructive line. I should say that there is hope that he might come round altogether, because the appearance of the anima is rather a positive sign. She also is a sort of vase, for in the beginning she incorporates the whole of the unconscious, instead of its being scattered in all the various units. Also, the patient tries to separate the motifs to the right and to the left, and this indicates an attempt at conscious orientation. The ball or globe in the first picture has disappeared, but this is not a negative sign. The whole vessel is the centre, and he has corrected the toppling over of the vase, it stands quite firmly on its base. All this shows that he is really making an attempt to put himself right.
FIG.15. Painting by a patient[413] The pictures should be given back to the patient because they are very important. You can get copies; patients like to do copies for the doctor. But he should leave the originals with the patients, because they want to look at them; and when they look at them they feel that their unconscious is expressed. The objective form works back on them and they become enchanted. The suggestive influence of the picture reacts on the psychological system of the patient and induces the same effect which he put into the picture. That is the reason for idols, for the magic use of sacred images, of icons. They cast their magic into our system and put us right, provided we put ourselves into them. If you put yourself into the icon, the icon will speak to you. Take a Lamaic mandala which has a Budda in the centre, or a Shiva, and, to the extent that you can put yourself into it, it answers and comes into you. It has a magic effect.
[414] Because these pictures of the unconscious express the actual psychological condition of the individual, you can use them for the purpose of diagnosis. You can tell right away from such a picture where the patient stands, whether he has a schizophrenic disposition or is merely neurotic. You can even tell what his prognosis is. It only needs some experience to make these paintings exceedingly helpful. Of course, one should be careful. One should not be dogmatic and say to every patient, “Now you paint.” There are people who think: “Dr. Jung’s treatment consists in telling his patients to paint,” just as formerly they thought: “He divides them into introverts and extraverts and says ‘you should live in such and such a way, because you belong to this type or that.’ That is certainly not treatment. Each patient is a new problem for the doctor, and he will only be cured of his neurosis if you help him to find his individual way to the solution of his conflicts.
The Chairman:
[415] Ladies and Gentlemen, you have been expressing by your applause something of what you feel about Professor Jung. This is the last time in this group of talks that we will have the honour and pleasure and privilege of hearing Professor Jung. We have only inadequate ways of expressing our thanks to him for these lectures which have been so stimulating, so challenging, which have left us with so many things to think about in the future, things which to all of us, especially those who are practising psychotherapy, are enormously suggestive. I think that is what you meant to do for us, Sir, and that is what you have done. We in this Institute are extremely proud to have had you here talking to us, and all of us, I think, are harbouring the idea that before long you will be back in England to talk to us again and make us think more about these great problems.
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Notes:1 [The case is discussed more fully in “The Realities of Practical Psychotherapy” (C.W., vol. 16, 2nd edn.), appendix. See also “Concerning Mandala Symbolism” (C.W., vol. 9, i), pars. 656–659 and figs. 7, 8, and 9, showing mandalas painted by this patient.]
2 [Supra, pars. 322f.]
3 [This is actually the same case that was discussed supra, pars. 334f.]
4 [For Jung’s later views on this problem, see “The Psychology of the Transference” (C.W., vol. 16).]
5 Two Essays (C.W., vol. 7), pars. 374ff.
6 Two Essays, pars. 206ff.
7 “The Role of the Unconscious” (C.W., vol. 10), par. 17.
8 “Wotan” (C.W., vol. 10).
9 [Act III. in a speech by Don Juan (Penguin edn., 1952, p. 149).]
10 [Cf. Virgil, Eclogue V, 64: “ipsa sonant arbusta: ‘deus, deus ille, Menalca!’” (the very groves ring out: “A god is he, a god, Menalcas!”).]
11 See particularly the “Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower” (C.W., vol. 13, and “The Aims of Psychotherapy” (C.W., vol. 16).
12 See Psychological Types, Def. 29, and Two Essays, pars, 266ff. [Also “A Study in the Process of Individuation” C.W., vol. 9. iv.]
13 [Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, pars. 44, 126, 129, 135, 325ff.] [Cf. Psychology and Alchemy (C.W., vol. 12), par. 360.]
14 This case provided the material for Part II of Psychology and Alchemy.]
15 “Traumsymbole des Individuationsprozesses,” in the Eranos-Jahrbuch 1935. [Now Part II of Psychology and Alchemy.]
16 [Cf. “Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower” (C.W., vol. 13) and “Concerning Mandala Symbolism” (C.W. vol. 9, 1