I.
Symbols express something unknown to us. They are meaningful in themselves, and not purely representative. They aren't signs as conscious thought is under the influence of the unconscious, which is always present.
The unconscious presents the thing (object) from sense experience without a word, language being necessary for self-conscious awareness. The unconscious is intentional, the content is repressed with an expenditure of energy for the purpose of being unconscious. Association with the word would remove our ability to think, use language, without bringing up unwanted thoughts.
The unconscious can be brought to conscious awareness by use of symbols. Ordinary discourse can distract from what is motivating our actions by introducing resistance. Free verbal association without resistance from the analyst can bring out what is repressed by concentrating on the meaning behind words, without forcing the meaning into another metaphor.
The unconscious does not afford exact localization in space. We are free to use concepts from natural science as metaphors, but should not reduce the unconscious to the physical metaphors.
The unconscious is not just a repository for archaic ideas from our personal past. The symbols we use in conscious interpersonal discourse get their power from a shared unconscious. Such inherited forms allow us to understand one another at a deeper level in discourse, symbolically, than as signs representing something else in the world.
II.
Dreams are our best way to explore the meaning of symbols, of exploring the unconscious. Dreams occur regularly and their content is the least regulated and restricted from awareness.
Dreams have their own meaning, they must be interpreted as they are. Dreams are fantastical and should not be reduced to the day's events or taken as literal truth but for their symbolic relation to the unconscious.
"The main task of dreams is to bring back a sort of "recollection" of the prehistoric, as well as the infantile world, right down to the level of the most primitive instincts."
This is where we begin, with the individual to their personal history and then to deeper instinctual drives in the unconscious.
Jung's dream: "I dreamed that I was in 'my home,' apparently on the first floor, in a cozy, pleasant sitting room furnished in the manner of the eighteenth century. I was astonished that I had never seen this room before, and began to wonder what the ground floor was like. I went downstairs and found the place was rather dark, with paneled walls and heavy furniture from the sixteenth century or even earlier. My surprise and curiosity increased. I wanted to see more of the whole structure of this house. So I went down to the cellar, where I found a door opening onto a flight of stone steps that led to a large vaulted room. The floor consisted of large slabs of stone and the walls seemed very ancient. I examined the mortar and found it was mixed with splinters of brick. Obviously the walls were of Roman origin. I became increasingly excited. In one corner, I saw an iron ring on a stone slab. I pulled up the slab and saw yet another narrow flight of steps leading to a kind of cave, which seemed to be a prehistoric tomb, containing two skulls, some bones, and broken shards of pottery. Then I woke up."
"The dream is in fact a short summary of my own life, more specifically of the development of my own mind. I grew up in a house 200 years old, our furniture consisted mostly of pieces about 300 years old, and mentally my hitherto greatest spiritual adventure had been to study the philosophies of Kant and Schopenhauer. The great news of the day was the work of Charles Darwin. Shortly before this, I had been living with the still medieval concepts of my parents, for whom the world and men were still presided over by divine omnipotence and providence. This world had become antiquated and obsolete. My Christian faith had become relative through its encounter with Eastern religions and Greek philosophy. It was for this reason that the ground floor was so still, dark, and obviously uninhabited.
"My intuition consisted of the sudden and most unexpected insight into the fact that my dream drapes the myself, my life and my world, my whole reality against a theoretical structure erected by another, strange kind for reasons and purposes of its own. It was not Freud's dream, it was mine; and I understood suddenly in a flash what my dream meant."
Dream analysis is individualistic, there are no ciphers.
"The individual is the only reality. The further we move away from the individual toward abstract ideas about Homo sapiens, the more likely we are to fall in error...but if we are to see things in their right perspective, we need to understand the past of man as well as his present."
We must understand the patient's predilection and forget our prejudices.
"Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it all when you are analyzing a dream"
Dreams have a compensatory role for individuals. The same dream can have different meanings.
Dream analysis is a dialectical technique between persons.
How well an individual functions is partly determined socially, through relationships.
Obsessive and emotional dreams are of a different nature, relating to needs more fundamental than those of conscious origin.
Elements occur in dreams that aren't individual and not derived from personal experience. Aka archetypes, primordial images.
Dreams have their own meaning, they must be interpreted as they are. Dreams are fantastical and should not be reduced to the day's events or taken as literal truth but for their symbolic relation to the unconscious.
"The main task of dreams is to bring back a sort of "recollection" of the prehistoric, as well as the infantile world, right down to the level of the most primitive instincts."
This is where we begin, with the individual to their personal history and then to deeper instinctual drives in the unconscious.
Jung's dream: "I dreamed that I was in 'my home,' apparently on the first floor, in a cozy, pleasant sitting room furnished in the manner of the eighteenth century. I was astonished that I had never seen this room before, and began to wonder what the ground floor was like. I went downstairs and found the place was rather dark, with paneled walls and heavy furniture from the sixteenth century or even earlier. My surprise and curiosity increased. I wanted to see more of the whole structure of this house. So I went down to the cellar, where I found a door opening onto a flight of stone steps that led to a large vaulted room. The floor consisted of large slabs of stone and the walls seemed very ancient. I examined the mortar and found it was mixed with splinters of brick. Obviously the walls were of Roman origin. I became increasingly excited. In one corner, I saw an iron ring on a stone slab. I pulled up the slab and saw yet another narrow flight of steps leading to a kind of cave, which seemed to be a prehistoric tomb, containing two skulls, some bones, and broken shards of pottery. Then I woke up."
"The dream is in fact a short summary of my own life, more specifically of the development of my own mind. I grew up in a house 200 years old, our furniture consisted mostly of pieces about 300 years old, and mentally my hitherto greatest spiritual adventure had been to study the philosophies of Kant and Schopenhauer. The great news of the day was the work of Charles Darwin. Shortly before this, I had been living with the still medieval concepts of my parents, for whom the world and men were still presided over by divine omnipotence and providence. This world had become antiquated and obsolete. My Christian faith had become relative through its encounter with Eastern religions and Greek philosophy. It was for this reason that the ground floor was so still, dark, and obviously uninhabited.
"My intuition consisted of the sudden and most unexpected insight into the fact that my dream drapes the myself, my life and my world, my whole reality against a theoretical structure erected by another, strange kind for reasons and purposes of its own. It was not Freud's dream, it was mine; and I understood suddenly in a flash what my dream meant."
Dream analysis is individualistic, there are no ciphers.
"The individual is the only reality. The further we move away from the individual toward abstract ideas about Homo sapiens, the more likely we are to fall in error...but if we are to see things in their right perspective, we need to understand the past of man as well as his present."
We must understand the patient's predilection and forget our prejudices.
"Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it all when you are analyzing a dream"
Dreams have a compensatory role for individuals. The same dream can have different meanings.
Dream analysis is a dialectical technique between persons.
How well an individual functions is partly determined socially, through relationships.
Obsessive and emotional dreams are of a different nature, relating to needs more fundamental than those of conscious origin.
Elements occur in dreams that aren't individual and not derived from personal experience. Aka archetypes, primordial images.
III.
Motifs are not archetypes, as they are conscious representations. Not inherited.
"The term "archetype" is often misunderstood as meaning certain definite mythological images or motifs. But these are nothing more than conscious representations; it would be absurd to assume that such variable representations could be inherited."
"The archetype is a tendency to form such representations of a motif-representations that can vary a great deal in detail without losing their basic pattern.
Freud hinted at this with archaic remnants: "mental forms whose presence cannot be explained by anything in the individual's own life and which seem to be aboriginal, innate, and inherited shapes of the human mind". Freud however linked them with the biological drives of sexuality and death, reducing mental life to representing only biological imperatives. Archetypes represent needs beyond love and hunger owing to their inherited innate nature. They are self perpetuating.
Collective symbols are chiefly religious and both human and inhuman in origin, owing to the common descent of the species.
"If archetypes were representations that originated in our consciousness...we should surely understand them"
Instincts are physiological urges perceived by the senses, having a mental as well as a behavioral aspect. They manifest themselves in fantasy and are revealed in symbols. Their manifestations are archetypes. Without known origin, reproduced across time and place.
"It is even conceivable that the early origins of mans capacity to reflect come from the painful consequences of violent emotional clashes...the shock of a similar emotional experience is often needed to make people wake up and pay attention to what they are doing."
Our consciousness is an ephemeral adaptation to the needs of the unconscious self.
"The unconscious, however, seems to be guided chiefly by instinctive trends, represented by corresponding thought forms-that is, by the archetypes."
The unconscious is more descriptive of our mental life and our self than the conscious is.
Dreams can be predictive. It doesn't ignore like consciousness does. It can be guided by trends, corresponding to known archetypes. Archetypes are dynamic.
"Something that is of a more or less unknown nature has been intuitively grasped by the unconscious and submitted to an archetypal treatment. This suggests that, instead of the process of reasoning that conscious thought would have applied, the archetypal mind has stepped in and taken over the task of prognostication. The archetypes thus have their own intuitive and their own specific energy. These powers enable them both to produce a meaningful interpretation (in their own symbolic style) and to interfere in a given situation with their own impulses and their own thought formations. Complexes compensate for faulty attitudes, myths compensate for the sufferings of mankind in general."
Complexes are compensations in the personal unconscious, myths are compensations for the collective unconscious.
IV
The self is the totality of our conscious, personal unconscious, and the shared collective unconscious which are made manifest through the ego. The shadow self is what isn't reconciled into our self and remains in opposition, closest to our irrational and more primitive instincts. In the collective unconscious the self and the shadow are the hero are type and the villain archetype, protagonist and antagonist.
Motifs are not archetypes, as they are conscious representations. Not inherited.
"The term "archetype" is often misunderstood as meaning certain definite mythological images or motifs. But these are nothing more than conscious representations; it would be absurd to assume that such variable representations could be inherited."
"The archetype is a tendency to form such representations of a motif-representations that can vary a great deal in detail without losing their basic pattern.
Freud hinted at this with archaic remnants: "mental forms whose presence cannot be explained by anything in the individual's own life and which seem to be aboriginal, innate, and inherited shapes of the human mind". Freud however linked them with the biological drives of sexuality and death, reducing mental life to representing only biological imperatives. Archetypes represent needs beyond love and hunger owing to their inherited innate nature. They are self perpetuating.
Collective symbols are chiefly religious and both human and inhuman in origin, owing to the common descent of the species.
"If archetypes were representations that originated in our consciousness...we should surely understand them"
Instincts are physiological urges perceived by the senses, having a mental as well as a behavioral aspect. They manifest themselves in fantasy and are revealed in symbols. Their manifestations are archetypes. Without known origin, reproduced across time and place.
"It is even conceivable that the early origins of mans capacity to reflect come from the painful consequences of violent emotional clashes...the shock of a similar emotional experience is often needed to make people wake up and pay attention to what they are doing."
Our consciousness is an ephemeral adaptation to the needs of the unconscious self.
"The unconscious, however, seems to be guided chiefly by instinctive trends, represented by corresponding thought forms-that is, by the archetypes."
The unconscious is more descriptive of our mental life and our self than the conscious is.
Dreams can be predictive. It doesn't ignore like consciousness does. It can be guided by trends, corresponding to known archetypes. Archetypes are dynamic.
"Something that is of a more or less unknown nature has been intuitively grasped by the unconscious and submitted to an archetypal treatment. This suggests that, instead of the process of reasoning that conscious thought would have applied, the archetypal mind has stepped in and taken over the task of prognostication. The archetypes thus have their own intuitive and their own specific energy. These powers enable them both to produce a meaningful interpretation (in their own symbolic style) and to interfere in a given situation with their own impulses and their own thought formations. Complexes compensate for faulty attitudes, myths compensate for the sufferings of mankind in general."
Complexes are compensations in the personal unconscious, myths are compensations for the collective unconscious.
IV
The self is the totality of our conscious, personal unconscious, and the shared collective unconscious which are made manifest through the ego. The shadow self is what isn't reconciled into our self and remains in opposition, closest to our irrational and more primitive instincts. In the collective unconscious the self and the shadow are the hero are type and the villain archetype, protagonist and antagonist.
Individuation reconciles opposites within the psyche. Life is the process of becoming an individual.
"These four functional types correspond to the obvious means by which consciousness obtains its orientation to experience. Sensation (I.e sense perception) tells you that something exists; thinking tells you what it is; feeling tells you whether it is agreeable or not; and intuition tells you whence it comes and where it is going"
There are also extrovert and introvert personalities. Extroverts are driven toward the outer world, toward others, while introverts have their energy directed inward, toward mind and feeling.
The persona is how our ego presents itself to the external social world which adapts the ego to the outer world instead of reconciling or accepting the deep aspects of the self, what becomes manifested in the shadow self.
Personality relates to the persona, character relates to the self. Personality is our conscious relation to the world, by sensing, thinking, feeling, intuition, extroversion or introversion. A composite type is presented to the world to meet our instinctual needs. The complexes compensate for what is missing in conscious life and remains in the unconscious, personal and collective.
The anima and animus are the respective female and male aspects of ourselves. These feminine and masculine aspects remain in the personal unconscious because of our bisexual constitution, our birth from a mother and a father.
Fundamental to the anima/animus is the passive/active orientation toward the world developed during youth, during the anal stage, which relate to the introvert/extrovert orientation towards the world. We strive for self-mastery as we separate from others early in life and must provide for our needs. We learn to receive as well as to provide. In potty training, when to withhold and contain and when to expel and direct.
The Mother Earth and God the father are manifestations of anima/animus from the collective unconscious, relating to the metaphysical division between matter and form, the ovum and the sperm, the passive-receiving aspect and the active-providing aspect of the world. The demiurge master craftsman forms the earth from preexisting matter.
"These four functional types correspond to the obvious means by which consciousness obtains its orientation to experience. Sensation (I.e sense perception) tells you that something exists; thinking tells you what it is; feeling tells you whether it is agreeable or not; and intuition tells you whence it comes and where it is going"
There are also extrovert and introvert personalities. Extroverts are driven toward the outer world, toward others, while introverts have their energy directed inward, toward mind and feeling.
The persona is how our ego presents itself to the external social world which adapts the ego to the outer world instead of reconciling or accepting the deep aspects of the self, what becomes manifested in the shadow self.
Personality relates to the persona, character relates to the self. Personality is our conscious relation to the world, by sensing, thinking, feeling, intuition, extroversion or introversion. A composite type is presented to the world to meet our instinctual needs. The complexes compensate for what is missing in conscious life and remains in the unconscious, personal and collective.
The anima and animus are the respective female and male aspects of ourselves. These feminine and masculine aspects remain in the personal unconscious because of our bisexual constitution, our birth from a mother and a father.
Fundamental to the anima/animus is the passive/active orientation toward the world developed during youth, during the anal stage, which relate to the introvert/extrovert orientation towards the world. We strive for self-mastery as we separate from others early in life and must provide for our needs. We learn to receive as well as to provide. In potty training, when to withhold and contain and when to expel and direct.
The Mother Earth and God the father are manifestations of anima/animus from the collective unconscious, relating to the metaphysical division between matter and form, the ovum and the sperm, the passive-receiving aspect and the active-providing aspect of the world. The demiurge master craftsman forms the earth from preexisting matter.
(All quotes from the chapter "Approaching the Unconscious" by Carl Jung in Man and His Symbols. I expanded on what is in the chapter to better explicate Jung's thinking, and my own which is why I put this together. Roman numerals just an organizational tool.)
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