Highlights
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The first is about dreams. To Jungians the dream is not a kind of standardized ^ref-4728 Page: 6
To Jungians the dream is not a kind of standardized cryptogram that can be decoded by a glossary of symbol meanings. It is an integral, important, and personal expression of the individual unconscious. ^ref-58194 Page: 4
For it very soon came to my knowledge that Jung’s reason for selecting me was essentially that he regarded me as being of reasonable, but not exceptional, intelligence and without the slightest serious knowledge of psychology. Thus I was to Jung the “average reader” of this book; what I could understand would be intelligible to all who would be interested; what I boggled at might possibly be too difficult or obscure for some. Not unduly flattered by this estimate of my role, I have none the less scrupulously insisted (sometimes, I fear, to the exasperation of the authors) on having every paragraph written and, if necessary, rewritten to a degree of clarity and directness that enables me to say with confidence that this book in its entirety is designed for and addressed to the general reader, and that the complex subjects it deals with are treated with a rare and encouraging simplicity. ^ref-40101 Page: 7
The second point I wish to make is about a particular characteristic of argumentative method that is common to all the writers of this book—perhaps of all Jungians. Those who have limited themselves to living entirely in the world of the conscious and who reject communication with the unconscious bind themselves by the laws of conscious, formal life. With the infallible (but often meaningless) logic of the algebraic equation, they argue from assumed premises to incontestably deduced conclusions. Jung and his colleagues seem to me (whether they know it or not) to reject the limitations of this method of argument. It is not that they ignore logic, but they appear all the time to be arguing to the unconscious as well as to the conscious. Their dialectical method is itself symbolic and often devious. They convince not by means of the narrowly focused spotlight of the syllogism, but by skirting, by repetition, by presenting a recurring view of the same subject seen each time from a slightly different angle—until suddenly the reader who has never been aware of a single, conclusive moment of proof finds that he has unknowingly embraced and taken into himself some wider truth. ^ref-62267 Page: 12
Because there are innumerable things beyond the range of human understanding, we constantly use symbolic terms to represent concepts that we cannot define or fully comprehend. This is one reason why all religions employ symbolic language or images. ^ref-5913 Page: 14
It is on such evidence that psychologists assume the existence of an unconscious psyche—though many scientists and philosophers deny its existence. They argue naïvely that such an assumption implies the existence of two “subjects,” or (to put it in a common phrase) two personalities within the same individual. But this is exactly what it does imply—quite correctly. And it is one of the curses of modern man that many people suffer from this divided personality. It is by no means a pathological symptom; it is a normal fact that can be observed at any time and everywhere. It is not merely the neurotic whose right hand does not know what the left hand is doing. This predicament is a symptom of a general unconsciousness that is the undeniable common inheritance of all mankind. ^ref-52954 Page: 15
Whoever denies the existence of the unconscious is in fact assuming that our present knowledge of the psyche is total. ^ref-6188 Page: 17
An ability to control one’s emotions that may be very desirable from one point of view would be a questionable accomplishment from another, for it would deprive social intercourse of variety, color, and warmth. ^ref-27077 Page: 18
Freud made the simple but penetrating observation that if a dreamer is encouraged to go on talking about his dream images and the thoughts that these prompt in his mind, he will give himself away and reveal the unconscious background of his ailments, in both what he says and what he deliberately omits saying. His ideas may seem irrational and irrelevant, but after a time it becomes relatively easy to see what it is that he is trying to avoid, what unpleasant thought or experience he is suppressing. No matter how he tries to camouflage it, everything he says points to the core of his predicament. ^ref-7186 Page: 18
But if the analyst who is confronted by this dream material uses Freud’s original technique of “free association,” he finds that dreams can eventually be reduced to certain basic patterns. This technique played an important part in the development of psychoanalysis, for it enabled Freud to use dreams as the starting point from which the unconscious problem of the patient might be explored. Freud made the simple but penetrating observation that if a dreamer is encouraged to go on talking about his dream images and the thoughts that these prompt in his mind, he will give himself away and reveal the unconscious background of his ailments, in both what he says and what he deliberately omits saying. His ideas may seem irrational and irrelevant, but after a time it becomes relatively easy to see what it is that he is trying to avoid, what unpleasant thought or experience he is suppressing. No matter how he tries to camouflage it, everything he says points to the core of his predicament. ^ref-8697 Page: 20
This episode opened my eyes to the fact that it was not necessary to use a dream as the point of departure for the process of “free association” if one wished to discover the complexes of a patient. It showed ^ref-63834 Page: 25
If somebody with little experience and knowledge of dreams thinks that dreams are just chaotic occurrences without meaning, he is at liberty to do so. But if one assumes that they are normal events (which, as a matter of fact, they are), one is bound to consider that they are either causal—i.e., that there is a rational cause for their existence—or in a certain way purposive, or both. ^ref-6820 Page: 25
Let us now look a little more closely at the ways in which the conscious and unconscious contents of the mind are linked together. Take an example with which everyone is familiar. Suddenly you find you can’t remember what you were going to say next, though a moment ago the thought was perfectly clear. Or perhaps you were about to introduce a friend, and his name escapes you as you were about to utter it. You say you can’t remember; in fact, though, the thought has become unconscious, or at least momentarily separated from consciousness. We find the same phenomenon with our senses. If we listen to a continuous note on the fringe of audibility, the sound seems to stop at regular intervals and then start again. Such oscillations are due to a periodic decrease and increase in one’s attention, not to any change in the note. ^ref-24392 Page: 30
I myself found a fascinating example of this in Nietzsche’s book Thus Spake Zarathustra, where the author reproduces almost word for word an incident reported in a ship’s log for the year 1686. By sheer chance I had read this seaman’s yarn in a book published about 1835 (half a century before Nietzsche wrote); and when I found the similar passage in Thus Spake Zarathustra, I was struck by its peculiar style, which was different from Nietzsche’s usual language. I was convinced that Nietzsche must also have seen the old book, though he made no reference to it. I wrote to his sister, who was still alive, and she confirmed that she and her brother had in fact read the book together when he was 11 years old. I think, from the context, it is inconceivable that Nietzsche had any idea that he was plagiarizing this story. I believe that fifty years later it had unexpectedly slipped into focus in his conscious mind. ^ref-41169 Page: 36
I recall one dream of my own that I found difficult to interpret. In this dream, a certain man was trying to get behind me and jump on my back. I knew nothing of this man except that I was aware that he had somehow picked up a remark I had made and had twisted it into a grotesque travesty of my meaning. But I could not see the connection between this fact and his attempts in the dream to jump on me. In my professional life, however, it has often happened that someone has misrepresented what I have said—so often that I have scarcely bothered to wonder whether this kind of misrepresentation makes me angry. Now there is a certain value in keeping a conscious control over one’s emotional reactions; and this, I soon realized, was the point the dream had made. It had taken an Austrian colloquialism and translated it into a pictorial image. This phrase, common enough in ordinary speech, is Du kannst mir auf den Buckel steigen (You can climb on my back), which means “I don’t care what you say about me.” An American equivalent, which could easily appear in a similar dream, would be “Go jump in the lake.” ^ref-17543 Page: 42
Thus, dreams may sometimes announce certain situations long before they actually happen. This is not necessarily a miracle or a form of precognition. Many crises in our lives have a long unconscious history. We move toward them step by step, unaware of the dangers that are accumulating. But what we consciously fail to see is frequently perceived by our unconscious, which can pass the information on through dreams. Dreams may often warn us in this way; but just as often, it seems, they do not. Therefore, any assumption of a benevolent hand restraining us in time is dubious. Or, to state it more positively, it seems that a benevolent agency is sometimes at work and sometimes not. The mysterious hand may even point the way to perdition; dreams sometimes prove to be traps, or appear to be so. They sometimes behave like the Delphic oracle that told King Croesus that if he crossed the Halys River he would destroy a large kingdom. It was only after he had been completely defeated in battle after the crossing that he discovered that the kingdom meant by the oracle was his own. ^ref-37041 Page: 48
There are many symbols, however (among them the most important), that are not individual but collective in their nature and origin. These are chiefly religious images. The believer assumes that they are of divine origin—that they have been revealed to man. The skeptic says flatly that they have been invented. Both are wrong. It is true, as the skeptic notes, that religious symbols and concepts have for centuries been the object of careful and quite conscious elaboration. It is equally true, as the believer implies, that their origin is so far buried in the mystery of the past that they seem to have no human source. But they are in fact “collective representations,” emanating from primeval dreams and creative fantasies. As such, these images are involuntary spontaneous manifestations and by no means intentional inventions. ^ref-10645 Page: 50
because I had learned that this theme was not popular with him. He cherished the peculiar idea that I anticipated his early death. And he drew this conclusion from the fact that I had shown much interest in the mummified corpses in the so-called Bleikeller in Bremen, which we visited together in 1909 on our way to take the boat to America. ^ref-58124 Page: 50
He cherished the peculiar idea that I anticipated his early death. And he drew this conclusion from the fact that I had shown much interest in the mummified corpses in the so-called Bleikeller in Bremen, which we ^ref-54872 Page: 51
flash what my dream meant. This conflict illustrates a vital point about dream analysis. It is not so much a technique that can be learned and applied according to the rules as it is a dialectical exchange between two personalities. If it is handled as a mechanical technique, the individual psychic personality of the dreamer gets lost ^ref-57472 Page: 51
This conflict illustrates a vital point about dream analysis. It is not so much a technique that can be learned and applied according to the rules as it is a dialectical exchange between two personalities. If it is handled as a mechanical technique, the individual psychic personality of the dreamer gets lost and the therapeutic problem is reduced to the simple question: Which of the two people concerned—the analyst or the dreamer—will dominate the other? I gave up hypnotic treatment for this very reason, because I did not want to impose my will on others. I wanted the healing processes to grow out of the patient’s own personality, not from suggestions by me that would have only a passing effect. My aim was to protect and preserve my patient’s dignity and freedom, so that he could live his life according to his own wishes. ^ref-13362 Page: 52
A sane and normal society is one in which people habitually disagree, because general agreement is relatively rare outside the sphere of instinctive human qualities. ^ref-11716 Page: 53
In spite of the fact that dreams demand individual treatment, some generalities are necessary in order to classify and clarify the material that the psychologist collects by studying many individuals. It would obviously be impossible to formulate any psychological theory, or to teach it, by describing large numbers of separate cases without any effort to see what they have in common and how they differ. Any general characteristic can be chosen as a basis. One can, for instance, make a relatively simple distinction between individuals who have “extraverted” personalities and others who are “introverted.” This is only one of many possible generalizations, but it enables one to see immediately the difficulties that can arise if the analyst should happen to be one type and his patient the other. Since any deeper analysis of dreams leads to the confrontation of two individuals, it will obviously make a great difference whether their types of attitude are the same or not. ^ref-55059 Page: 55
They seemed devoid of all imagination, and they entirely and exclusively depended upon their sense-perception. Chances and possibilities did not exist in their world, and in “today” there was no real “tomorrow.” The future was just the repetition of the past. ^ref-16792 Page: 55
Some lived without being aware of the state of their own bodies. There are others who seemed to live in a most curious condition of consciousness, as if the state they had arrived at today were final, with no possibility of change, or as if the world and the psyche were static and would remain so forever. They seemed devoid of all imagination, and they entirely and exclusively depended upon their sense-perception. Chances and ^ref-7789 Page: 55
There are others who seemed to live in a most curious condition of consciousness, as if the state they had arrived at today were final, with no possibility of change, or as if the world and the psyche were static and would remain so forever. They seemed devoid of all imagination, and they entirely and exclusively depended upon their sense-perception. Chances and possibilities did not exist in their world, and in “today” there was no real “tomorrow.” The future was just the repetition of the past. ^ref-49315 Page: 56
Although such a relationship is indispensable for any understanding and is therefore of self-evident necessity, one must remind oneself again and again that it is more important in therapy for the patient to understand than for the analyst’s theoretical expectations to be satisfied. The patient’s resistance to the analyst’s interpretation is not necessarily wrong; it is rather a sure sign that something does not “click.” Either the patient has not yet reached the point where he understands, or the interpretation does not fit. ^ref-30352 Page: 60
Thus, a dream cannot produce a definite thought. If it begins to do so, it ceases to be a dream because it crosses the threshold of consciousness. That is why dreams seem to skip the very points that are most important to the conscious mind, and seem rather to manifest the “fringe of consciousness,” like the faint gleam of stars during a total eclipse of the sun. ^ref-58153 Page: 62
The original shock had been such that alone he had been unable to face it. He needed the help of another, and the therapeutic task was the slow establishment of confidence, rather than the demonstration of a clinical theory. ^ref-25438 Page: 64
In such cases, we have to take into consideration the fact (first observed and commented on by Freud) that elements often occur in a dream that are not individual and that cannot be derived from the dreamer’s personal experience. These elements, as I have previously mentioned, are what Freud called “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. ^ref-62788 Page: 65
My views about the “archaic remnants,” which I call “archetypes” or “primordial images,” have been constantly criticized by people who lack a sufficient knowledge of the psychology of dreams and of mythology. 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. There are, for instance, many representations of the motif of the hostile brethren, but the motif itself remains the same. My critics have incorrectly assumed that I am dealing with “inherited representations,” and on that ground they have dismissed the idea of the archetype as mere superstition. They have failed to take into account the fact that if archetypes were representations that originated in our consciousness (or were acquired by consciousness), we should surely understand them, and not be bewildered and astonished when they present themselves in our consciousness. They are, indeed, an instinctive trend, as marked as the impulse of birds to build nests, or ants to form organized colonies. ^ref-28578 Page: 72
and inherited. They function, when the occasion arises, in more or less ^ref-17145 Page: 72
Naturally, if you identify the psyche with consciousness, you can easily fall into the erroneous idea that man comes into the world with a psyche that is empty, and that in later years it contains nothing more than what it has learned by individual experience. But the psyche is more than consciousness. Animals have little consciousness, but many impulses and reactions that denote the existence of a psyche; and primitives do a lot of things whose meaning is unknown to them. ^ref-32643 Page: 73
The fact is, they do things without knowing why they do them. I am inclined to the view that things were generally done first and that it was ^ref-4944 Page: 73
I am inclined to the view that things were generally done first and that it was only a long time afterward that somebody asked why they were done. ^ref-41077 Page: 74
It so happened that a colleague of mine was once suffering from a deadly gangrenous fever—in fact, a phlegmone. A former patient of his, who had no knowledge of the nature of his doctor’s illness, dreamed that the doctor died in a great fire. At that time the doctor had just entered a hospital and the disease was only beginning. The dreamer knew nothing but the bare fact that his doctor was ill and in a hospital. Three weeks later, the doctor died. As this example shows, dreams may have an anticipatory or prognostic aspect, and anybody trying to interpret them must take this into consideration, especially where an obviously meaningful dream does not provide a context sufficient to explain it. Such a dream often comes right out of the blue, and one wonders what could have prompted it. Of course, if one knew its ulterior message, its cause would be clear. For it is only our consciousness that does not yet know; the unconscious seems already informed, and to have come to a conclusion that is expressed in the dream. In fact, the unconscious seems to be able to examine and to draw conclusions from facts, much as consciousness does. It can even use certain facts, and anticipate their possible results, just because we are not conscious of them. In a cartoon by James Thurber, a henpecked husband sees his home and his wife as the same being. ^ref-26478 Page: 77
On a much greater scale, the Christian era itself owes its name and significance to the antique mystery of the god-man, which has its roots in the archetypal Osiris-Horus myth of ancient Egypt.