Tag Archives: exchange between conscious and unconscious

April 7, 2015 · 12:29 pm

Jung on the Religious Factor

In Psychological Types, Jung traced the development of Western theology from the East-West schism in the eleventh century to Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation in the 1500’s to such a proliferation of isms today as would rival the world’s entire mythological pantheon. Add a legion of political ideologies and as many personal beliefs as there are hairs on the Cosmic Cow’s body, and you get an idea of evolution’s tendencies. 

Historically, religion is so intimately bound to individual development that the idea of the soul was integral to its philosophy. That’s changed. Ideal falls short of reality in all human behavior; today, however, the pretense has been dropped altogether, and the church is more a social-commercial institution than a path to spiritual communion.

A new collective ego-ideal now replaces the older view, and the higher spiritual authority once presupposed in the soul now yields to the science-fiction of objectivity and its shadow-side: the lures of commercial need-invention, social marketing, object-identification, and sensual gratification. But, below these reactions to the cult of reason, where do the real changes originate?

Jung wrote in The Practice Of Psychotherapy: “The positive meaning of the religious factor in a man’s philosophical outlook will not… prevent certain views and interpretations from losing their force and becoming obsolete, as a result of changes in the times, in the social conditions, and in the development of human consciousness. The old mythologems upon which all religion is ultimately based are… the expression of inner psychic events and experiences… they enable the conscious mind to preserve its link with the unconscious, which continues to send out… primordial images just as it did in the remote past.

“These images give adequate expression to the unconscious, and its instinctive movements can in that way be transmitted to the conscious mind without friction… If, however, certain of these images become antiquated, if… they lose all intelligible connection with our contemporary consciousness, then our conscious acts of choice and decision are sundered from their instinctive roots, and a partial disorientation results, because our judgment then lacks any feeling of definiteness and certitude, and there is no emotional driving force behind the decision.“

Psychologically, divine (numinous) refers to the unconscious feelings that attract consciousness to its development. Despite its negative connotations, instinct means natural functioning, and “animal” and “divine” are two opposite poles of an age-old psychic continuum. Without a sense of the symbolic function that would reconcile conscious contradictions to psychic reality, inner conflicts are projected onto external situations.

When enough people project enough unconscious emotion into ideological differences, they more closely resemble animals than divine beings. Somewhere in between the two lies a divine animal, and the extremes require an individual function to mediate them. We know how the unconscious group mind reacts to them.

“The collective representations that connect primitive man with the life of his ancestors… form the bridge to the unconscious for the civilized man also, who, if he is a believer, will see it as the world of divine presences. Today these bridges are in a state of partial collapse, and the doctor is in no position to hold those who are worse hit responsible for the disaster. He knows that it is due far more to a shifting of the whole psychic situation over many centuries, such as happened more than once in human history. In the face of such transformations the individual is powerless. The doctor can only look on and try to understand the attempts at restitution and cure which nature herself is making.

“… the unconscious produces compensating symbols which are meant to replace the broken bridges, but which can only do so with the active cooperation of consciousness. In other words, these symbols must, if they are to be effective, be “understood” by the conscious mind… A dream that is not understood remains a mere occurrence; understood, it becomes a living experience.“

Intellectual comprehension and emotional experience are different forms of understanding. The soul is a function of relation to both worlds; when it loses value as a guiding idea, the loss is compensated by an exaggerated certainty and a dangerous over-confidence in consciousness: the “partial disorientation” to which Jung referred:

“I therefore consider it my main task to examine the manifestations of the unconscious in order to learn its language. But since, on the one hand, the theoretical assumptions we have spoken of are of eminently historical interest, and, on the other hand, the symbols produced by the unconscious derive from archaic modes of psychic functioning, one must… have at one’s command a vast amount of historical material; and secondly, one must bring together and collate an equally large amount of empirical material based on direct observation.

“… I have come to the conclusion that the most individual thing about man is surely his consciousness… but that his shadow, by which I mean the uppermost layer of his unconscious, is far less individualized, the reason being that a man is distinguished from his fellows more by his virtues than his negative qualities. The unconscious, however, in its principal and most overpowering manifestations, can only be regarded as a collective phenomenon… and because it never seems to be at variance with itself, it may well possess a marvellous unity and self-consistency, the nature of which is at present shrouded in impenetrable darkness.“

As an intellectual function, science must repress emotion — and with it, the role it plays in conscious value-formation. When the soul is twisted into an impersonal object without a history, the individual’s creative attempts at solutions to inner problems is lost to the collective. The dialogue between them — a mirror of exchange between conscious and unconscious — is shut off.

The commercial deception and manipulation; the political double-talk, violence and ideological greed, the exaggerated certainty of the new extraversion: are these the spiritual legacy the Sons of Abraham will leave for their children?

Read a poetic example of how this inner dialogue begins.

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August 15, 2014 · 8:14 am

Relations Between Conscious and Unconscious: The Exchange Process

Jung once wrote that it’s not so important to interpret dreams as it is to experience them. This is especially so at mid-life, when one may feel the need to make conscious emotions out of the educational stages which fortify ego into a separate identity — one stable enough to overcome its sensual illusions and confront an objective reality inside.

While it’s instructive (and somewhat flattering) to work a dream into a form acceptable to intellect, nature works over centuries to produce even smaller fruits of Eden ripe enough to be ingested by the conscious part. They attain the clarity to appear as associable ideas only by the added energy of attention. That (somewhat figuratively) is how Jung’s energic theory describes the exchange between conscious and unconscious.

A dream doesn’t stop working when something valuable is discovered in it. At mid-life, it’s only the beginning of a process designed to form a relationship, just as two strangers might establish common ground. But, the figures confronting you inside are vital parts of you who want attention doubly on that account.

They’re sometimes comforting, but at other times, too, are very contrary — even hostile — especially when they want you to inspect needful things that you may have been taught were of no importance by a backward (causal) and collective ego-worship.

At such a point, I dreamed of a small white poodle busily re-arranging my house. As I watched, I became incensed. The damn thing set up a fan in my kitchen to draw outside air in through the window — in the winter! I screamed at it: “This is my fucking house!” Yet it went right on, paying no attention to my ranting.

I associated the black poodle of Goethe’s, Faust: the supportive instinctual form of the creative force of Lucifer (the Light-bearer) yet to shine the light of consciousness onto darker conflicts. I awoke anxiously but fell back asleep. The dream continued: the white poodle was in my bed stimulating me sexually!

I considered the color white, a reference to consciousness — the opposite of unconscious blackness. I thought about Jung’s premise that sexuality symbolizes creative nature in its most profound sense — an instinctual function of relationship. When I became hostile and screamed, it was the reaction of an anxious and defensive ego being re-arranged to make room for creative (fucking) processes outside its perception.

It portended intimate relations (the bed and the sexual stimulation) with this feminine poodle (the unconscious), to compensate a rational, too-masculine ego. I saw myself as an action figure, as I was expected to be in the outer world; an actor, a worn-out Sylvester Stallone: an aging, faked-up hero-idol clinging to a moribund masculine image.

Along with other dreams, I went back to it again and again over the next two years. That was ten years ago; I couldn’t describe it symbolically then as now. But — I felt it, intuited it; able only through devotion (conscious attention) and the aid of Jung’s ideas. When I’d experienced its emotions enough to satisfy the unconscious that I was ready to move on, it changed into my black lab who’d died years before. She’d come back in my dreams!

But, her friendly form didn’t last long. Over the next year, she became threatening, snarling, biting at me. Toward the end of that dream-series, I could only ward her off on my back, with my feet (my deepest conflicts), as she attacked me viciously.

In a later dream, I explained to a shadowy figure that she’d had a psychotic episode. I had more dreams about dogs turning “psychotically” against me. Over the next year, still more dreams embraced religious ideas, and they slowly bore their core meaning into my stubborn consciousness. The dream which tipped the scale found me shouting at an old, disheveled woman in a square with a dark pond surrounded by apartments: “You’re crazy!” I screamed as she stared uncannily.

My soul, which I had accepted was of so little importance in a world of men; of power, wealth and social striving, was sick — in full rebellion of the way I treated it. I felt sick. Well, I was — but not in the way I thought…

My dreams showed me that it wasn’t she or I who was crazy; I only thought the unconscious was crazy! It reflected back to me the way I was looking at it. I saw it as crazy — which it is in the sense that it’s irrational, beyond collective judgment.

Within a year, I was writing poetry, making emotions out of the strange dreams which continue to reveal who I am — outside the ego I identified with. Three more years of intense self-analysis, guided by my dreams and Jung’s ideas, found me constructing the symbolic tale of my own inner journey. It’s as profound and insightful as the figures which lurk behind it, and though it may appear strange to the rational mindset — it is a reality.

Along with my posts, the book is one small man’s effort to shine just a little new light on its mystery. Read more about the events leading to it here, or visit Amazon.

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