by Ruth Snowden
In 1916, Jung decided that he wanted to give some kind of concrete form to the ideas and insights that had come from Philemon. A restless, ominous atmosphere was beginning to gather in his home. The children had started seeing white figures at night, and had even had their blankets snatched away from them in bed. The doorbell rang frantically when there was nobody there, and the whole house felt thick with spirits. Eventually, a whole host of spirits apparently infiltrated the house, saying to Jung, ‘We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not what we sought.’ At this point, Jung put pen to paper and started writing – the writing poured out of him for three days. He called this writing Septem Sermones ad Mortuos (Seven Sermons to the Dead). This is a long poetic piece, in a very archaic style, written as if the author were addressing the dead. It represented an exteriorization of all that had been going on in Jung’s turbulent mind, and the spirits all vanished from the house as soon as he began to write it – the weird haunting was over.
Seven Sermons to the Dead was first published anonymously, and by his own request it was not included in the 20 volumes of Jung’s collected works. However, he saw the work as a prelude to what he wanted to communicate to the world about the unconscious. It is a difficult piece to understand, but it contains outlines of some of his most important ideas, such as the endless battle between opposites in the psyche, and the concept of individuation.
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Insight
Another very personally revealing volume of Jung’s work, The Red Book, was long kept secret by his family. It was finally published in 2009.
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Many of the ideas in it are derived from Gnostic writing, for example it mentions a god called Abraxas, who is a solar deity with a cock’s head. Abraxas combines good and evil in one form, an idea that Jung was to develop later in his thinking about the nature of God, when he wrote Answer to Job. In Seven Sermons he describes the Gnostic concept of the ‘pleroma’, which refers to God and everything that emanates from God. Because all things are contained in the pleroma, everything is balanced and therefore becomes void – a bit like the idea of matter and anti-matter cancelling one another out. However, in individual humans, although opposites are apparent, they are not balanced, and this is what gives us our individuality. Therefore, the task of the individual is to pursue his or her own distinctiveness in the long, soul-searching process of individuation.
Jung suggests that the spirits he encountered just before he wrote Seven Sermons to the Dead had in fact been parapsychological phenomena, somehow cause by his own highly charged emotional state.
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Insight
Paranormal things and events are ones that cannot be explained by normal, objective means within the framework of current understanding. Parapsychology is the science that explores them, especially in relation to the human mind.
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The fact that others in the household were clearly affected as well seems to support Jung’s idea that psychic activity, and indeed the archetypes themselves, can extend beyond the mind of the individual. In The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche (see Collected Works, Volume 8 in Further reading) he gives an example of archetypal imagery appearing in the hallucinations of one of his patients. The man in question was in his 30s and suffered from a paranoid form of schizophrenia, which meant that he presented a strange mixture of normal intelligence, fantastic ideas and hallucinations. During his quieter phases he was allowed to wander around the hospital corridors, and it was there that Jung found him one day, gazing at the sun out of a window. He explained to Jung that if one looked at the sun with eyes half shut, one could see the sun’s phallus. If one moved one’s head the sun-phallus would move too, and that was the origin of the wind. This notion seems totally crazy, but four years later Jung read about a Greek papyrus that had only recently been translated which gave an account of a vision where exactly the same phenomenon was described – a kind of tube, hanging from the disc of the sun, which is the ‘origin of the ministering wind’. The patient who had told him about the sun-phallus had been committed to the mental hospital before this translation was available – this was important for Jung because he realized that it could not be a case of cryptomnesia (from the Greek ‘hidden memory’), where an experience is forgotten before being later reproduced without the person recognizing it as a memory. He gradually found other references in art and mythology to a similar idea – that of the wind, or the divine spirit, emanating from the disc of the sun. Jung was fascinated by exploring archetypal thinking of this sort, and many other examples appear throughout his writing.
Mandalas
As mentioned in Chapter 1, towards the end of the First World War, Jung began to emerge from his period of great darkness. While he was stationed at Château d’Oex in 1918–19, he began to draw and experiment with ‘mandala’ drawings. The word ‘mandala’ comes from Sanskrit and means a ‘magic circle’. A basic mandala is usually a circle containing a square or occasionally some other symmetrical figure, but there are many variations. There is usually some kind of symbolic imagery, most commonly a cross, flower or wheel, usually with four as the basis of the structure. They are found in many cultures and contexts, for example they frequently appear in Yogic tradition, where they are used symbolically to depict the chakras, or energy centres of the body. They are also common in Christian art of the early Middle Ages. Even the earlier Celtic cross could be seen as a simple mandala.
Jung had produced his first mandala painting in 1916, after writing Seven Sermons, but he had not understood it properly at the time. Now he began to sketch small circular drawings of this type every morning in his notebook. He observed the ways in which they changed from day to day and found that they helped him to chart his own psychic development – the ever-changing state of his inner self. He realized that the image of the mandala may represent the universe itself, or the ‘inner universe’ – the wholeness of what he referred to as the Self (this is often spelt with a capital S to distinguish it from everyday usage of the same word). The Self is the central archetype and it is the archetype of wholeness and order, which transcends the ego.
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Insight
Notice that what Jung means by the Self is the archetype of wholeness of the psyche, which transcends the ego. Confusion often arises here because the ego is the part of the psyche which reacts to external reality and which a person usually tends to think of as the ‘self’. In other words, the ego is the centre of consciousness and the sense of identity. The Self is more all-encompassing than this. It is perhaps clearer to refer to the ego as the ‘small self’ and the Self as the ‘higher self.’
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Figure 3.3 Jung used the mandala to explore his ever-changing inner self.
Mandalas fascinated Jung for many years and he gradually came to understand that they represent the way in which all paths in the psyche lead eventually to a mid-point, the centre of the mandala, which is the core or essence of the Self. The goal of psychic development is the discovery of this unique Self. This process is what Jung called ‘individuation’: the conscious realization and fulfilment of a person’s unique being. It is one of the core concepts of analytical psychology. Jung explained that the evolution of the psyche is not linear, but a process of ‘circumambulation (walking around) of the self’.
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Insight
Individuation is in fact the conscious realization and fulfilment of the Self. Most people have to work at this throughout their lives and some never even embark on the journey, because it is easier simply to act out of familiar learned behaviour patterns and emotional responses.
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Jung found that mandalas tended to appear when the psyche was in a state of turmoil and disorientation. The archetype that appears on the mandala represents a pattern of order and balancing. He compared this to a psychological ‘viewfinder’, marked with a cross or circle divided into four. This is superimposed on the psychic chaos, so that everything
falls into its correct place and is held together by the outer circle. Jung found that his own mandala drawings linked up with external experiences in his everyday life and also with his dreams. For example, he did two mandalas that seemed to be related to one another. The first was inspired by a dream where he was in Liverpool amid rain and fog. Suddenly he came upon an island with a magnolia tree in full blossom upon it. This dream felt very important – Liverpool was the ‘pool of life’. When he painted this mandala, he felt it was in some way Chinese. Later he did another mandala with a golden castle at the centre of it.
Soon after this, Jung received a letter containing a manuscript of 1,000-year-old Taoist alchemical writing from China. It was called The Secret of the Golden Flower. He related the symbol of the golden flower to the golden castle he had drawn and the beautiful magnolia tree he had dreamed of. In both cases, the circular pattern with the goal in the centre somehow expressed for him the totality of the individual, in both conscious and unconscious aspects. In Eastern religions the mandala is often used in a similar way, as a centring device to help with meditation exercises. From Jung’s mandala work emerged inklings of his own personal myth, his all-important ‘story’ that expressed his real being.
The tower at Bollingen
Jung felt that he was able gradually to put his dreams and fantasies onto a more solid footing and begin to understand the unconscious in more scientific terms. He also wanted to make a representation of his innermost thoughts and knowledge in a more permanent, solid way than simply writing them down on paper. In 1922, he bought some land at Bollingen, near the shore of the upper lake of Zürich, about 40 km away from the family home at Küsnacht. To fulfill this yearning for self-expression, and also as a quiet retreat, he began to construct a second home here. At first he had the idea of a simple round structure with a hearth in the centre, like a primitive dwelling hut. This arrangement would give a feeling of simplicity and wholeness, with the life of the family centring around the hearth. However, as he began to build, Jung realized that this was too simple, and the structure gradually evolved into a medieval-looking building complete with a tower.
Jung kept on adding to this building throughout his long life, the new bits all representing different parts of his ever-evolving psyche. He felt that this was an important part of his own individuation process, as if he was being reborn in stone. From the beginning he saw the tower as a place symbolizing maturation, a ‘maternal womb’ in which he could express his developing being. Everything there was connected to him and he himself was inextricably linked with the surrounding landscape. There is an inscription above the original entrance which reads, ‘Sanctuary of Philemon, penitence of Faust’. The reference to Faust is connected to a classic German legend, about a philosopher who encounters his own demonic shadow side.
Life at Bollingen was kept deliberately simple – there was no electricity, and Jung chopped all his own wood, drew water from a well and cooked all his own food. He remarked that these simple acts made him feel simple himself – something which is difficult for man to achieve. He enjoyed the sense of silence in the place and living in harmony with nature. This allowed thoughts from long ago to rise to the surface. The land upon which the tower was built was steeped in history, having formerly belonged to the monastery of St Gall; Jung also felt a sense of time stretching ahead into a remote future, so that he saw life ‘in the round’ as a continuous flow.
Jung made a special resting room within the tower where no one but he was allowed to go without permission. Here he did paintings on the walls and found that he could truly be himself. He found a great sense of inner peace and spiritual concentration when he visited the tower. Whenever he was there he felt most deeply himself, able to relax into personality Number 2, the creative part of himself which existed outside the confines of time. All around the tower he carved stones, with inscriptions expressing different insights. One of these, carved in 1950, bears various images and inscriptions, including lines quoted from a Latin verse by alchemist Arnaldus Villanova (died c. 1313):
Here stands the mean uncomely stone,
‘tis very cheap in price!
The more it is despised by fools,
the more loved by the wise.
The verse refers to the alchemist’s stone, the ‘Lapis Philosophorum’, which represents spiritual insight that is not understood by most people and hence is despised and rejected. Jung said that this stone was like an explanation of the meaning of the tower and its occupant, which reminded him of the legend of Merlin’s life in the forest after he had vanished from the world. Men still heard his cries, but nobody could understand or interpret them.
The creative play aspect that Jung enjoyed at Bollingen was very important for him as a means for accessing his unconscious. He found that most people found it very difficult to explore and understand their own unconscious, but emphasized that only through doing so can we become whole.
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THINGS TO REMEMBER
Jung had a mid-life crisis that he used in a constructive way to explore his own psyche and develop his ideas about the ways in which the psyche operates.
Myths were very important to Jung because he saw them as expressions of ideas from the collective unconscious.
Through listening to his inner thoughts and feelings Jung discovered the importance of creative play as a way of unlocking the unconscious. He himself used this technique throughout his life whenever he needed to relax or find inspiration.
He also worked with dreams, visions and fantasies, both his own and those of his patients, finding that these often gave insight into the person’s inner world.
Archetypes are psychic patterns that are present in all humans from birth and reside as energy at a deep level of the unconscious.
Archetypal encounters were important to Jung because they helped him to personify aspects of his unconscious and so bring them into relationship with his conscious mind.
The real goal of psychic development is individuation – the discovery of the true Self. Jung found that the mandala was an excellent symbol of this process and a useful way of mapping progress.
Jung built himself a tower as a spiritual retreat where he could go to live a simple life and do stone carving.
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4
Exploring the psyche
In this chapter you will learn:
Jung’s theories about the structure and dynamics of the psyche
the part played by the personal and the collective unconscious
how balancing pairs of opposites operate in the psyche.
The structure of the psyche
Jung’s ideas about the psyche are not always easy to grasp and people are still disagreeing about exactly what he meant by concepts such as archetypes. This is partly because he was trying to formulate scientific theories about abstract concepts. When he talks about the psyche, Jung means the whole of the mind or spirit, both conscious and unconscious. He uses the words ‘psyche’ and ‘psychic’, rather than ‘mind’ and ‘mental’, because the latter usually refer only to a conscious state. He talks about the psyche more as if it were a process than a thing. The individual psyche is always changing as it seeks growth and wholeness, and should not to be confused with the Self, which is the goal that the psyche is constantly seeking and moving towards. Conscious attitudes within the psyche are always balanced by unconscious attitudes – if a conscious attitude grows too strong then the unconscious will always seek to restore equilibrium. The unconscious will express its ideas by means of dreams, fantasies, spontaneous imagery, slips of the tongue and so on. If the unconscious message is ignored, then neurosis or even physical disease may result.
In order to understand Jung’s ideas about the structure of the psyche, it will help first to look at what Freud had said, because his ideas reflected the cutting-edge thinking of the times. In accordance with his insistence upon scientific thinking, Freud grappled with trying to formulate a theory about the structure of the p
syche. This was obviously difficult to achieve – one cannot capture the psyche under a microscope or measure it in the laboratory. One of the main difficulties was that, although Freud believed that the brain was the organ that controlled human consciousness, he realized, as Jung did later, that the ‘divisions’ of the psyche he described could not be physical divisions of this organ. They really just provided a descriptive model to try to help us towards a better understanding of what was going on in the psyche.
To begin with, Freud decided that there were two states of consciousness:
The conscious mind is the part of the mind that is aware of its own thoughts and actions. This is where all conscious thought processes occur – it is the source of conscious thinking, ideas and understanding. It is concerned with logical thinking, reality and civilized behaviour.
The unconscious is seen by Freud as the part of the mind that is repressed, the place where we put all the ideas and thoughts that our conditioning does not allow us to look at. Information in the unconscious cannot easily be accessed. Much of our past history lies here too, some of which can only be recalled under hypnosis.
After a while, Freud decided that this simple division was not quite right, so he proposed the existence of a third level: