Jungian analysis

Post Reply New Topic

I answered this in a new thread because it's a topic unto itself.

How many? Over 56 years, quite a lot. Jungian analysis saved my sanity and my life. Yes, it involves archetypes, introversion, extraversion, mythology, dreams, the ouboros. I used those, but not much re ouboros. Mandalas. Synchronicity.

Do you wish to discuss? Where to begin?

I am not sure exactly where to begin. Could you perhaps say a little about archetypes? Mandalas are from Buddhism I think (though not exclusive to there). Thank you for creating this thread!

Archetypes - starting easy? Ack! Well, here's something Jung wrote:

"My thesis, then, is as follows:

In addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature and which we believe to be the only empirical psyche (even if we tack on the personal unconscious as an appendix),

there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually, but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents."

C.G. Jung

I would add, when Jung says "inherited", in the context of archetypes he means inherited by the entire human race (although I might not have expressed that well.)

Big Huge Note re The Unconscious: the whole point is that we don't know what's in there. If we did know, it would be conscious, not unconscious. We can guess, but we must remember we're guessing.

How about an easier start?

What was your favourite childhood story?

Did it prefigure the path of your life?

Thank you. I remember reading something about collective consciousness a long time ago. These ideas sound very interesting!

I may need to think about this a little. I enjoyed both C. S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia series and Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I also enjoyed Arthurian legends, Greek and Norse mythologies and parts of the Bible. I also enjoyed Monkey.

At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald.

Wait a bit - when I was younger still The Wizard of Oz and its sequels and both Alice books, though particularly Through the Looking Glass.

Did any of these prefigure the path of my life (presumably up to the point I have currently reached)? I am not certain. Probably aspects of them have, it may be a matter of interpretation. This will require closer contemplation.

"Alchemic symbol of the ouboros (a serpent swallowing its own tail)"

Curious about it being Alchemic. I saw the very same image, rather large running around and just under the ceiling of a room. (snake eating its tail) The room was just be uncovered in the temple complex near Mexico City. Alchemic as belonging to a certain culture? My drift would be more in the terms of "known" world when I see this referance. It couldn't have been any plainer then what I saw back then. Probably a lot clearer then some of the symbols it has evolved through. Curious is all. I had always tacked an infinate, endless, forever, ongoing sense to the image. Not sure how the snake/serpant was exactly viewed from the Aztec point of view. May have had a good or bad feeling tacked on. Not even positive how old it was, but am sure it was in context with the pyramids, which didn't happen over night.

Doesn't really matter in the context of this thread, but it caught my eye.

Last edited by postpaleo on 08 Mar 2007, 8:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

This is a very interesting subject and one very close to my heart. I would love Jungian analysis, but I live in the back of beyond, so I study Jung's books instead. Claradoon, may I ask you, after having analysis, do you now interpret your dreams yourself?

That's odd - I lost track of this thread. Gotta read and be right back, sorry about that.

Wow. That's a lot of reading. Maybe I should have said fairy tale? My favorite was The Ugly Duckling - see how that can prefigure a life path? I found my swans at WP lol.

I hope nobody thinks I'm a guru of any kind. I'm just somebody that did my own Jungian analysis, and each one is unique. But there are ideas that can be shared.

First, by writing them down as soon as I wake. Or later, which is better than nothing. Even if you can only remember a tiny fragment of the dream, grab it, the rest might follow along.

Everything in the dream is me. For example, if I dream of a road, that's my path in life. I dream a lot of being on a bus - I'm not the driver, right? And it's not going exactly where I want to be, but close enough. Although sometimes it won't stop and I end up very far from where I want to be. Which means that I'm not controlling my own "destination" (plans, goals, etc.)

All the people in the dream are me. So if I dream of my sister, that could be my alter ego, or maybe my feelings about Sis whether they apply to her or not re the dream (sibling rivalry with somebody else?).

Water in a dream is very often the subconscious. I used to have swimming dreams, usually in a manmade canal, very straight, towards a bright city. It was better than taking the bus.

Do you want to talk about any dream images?

It does matter in the context of this thread, really. The snake swallowing its own tale is part of many world mythologies. I haven't seen the Aztec one, you saw this for real (not a dream), right?

Re Aztec ouroboros - could that have been the Aztec serpent God Queztacoatl? He was depicted as ouroboros.

Here's a page that talks about the image of the snake swallowing its own tail in myths all over the world -

http://images.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://www.crystalinks.com/ouroboros.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.crystalinks.com/ouroboros.html&h=218&w=175&sz=11&hl=en&start=18&tbnid=fHuFX4cQovjfzM:&tbnh=107&tbnw=86&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dsnake%2Bswallowing%2Btail%26gbv%3D2%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG

A feathered serpent I think (with regard to Quetzalcoatl). That is a very interesting myth. The strikingly different Tezcatlipoca [sic] is also interesting in a darker sort of way...

Not the same.

I would like to Claradoon, if you have time? I am 'stuck' at the moment. I interpret my own dreams, sometimes very slowly, lol. But over the past few months I have been having dreams with alchemical symbolism. Oh, I find this symbolism very difficult to interpret even when reading Jung's Mysterium Coniunctionis. (Which I find difficult to fully understand).

The symbols I don't understand are a sun, which is black, moving nearer to the moon, which is pearly white, as though it is made of mother-of-pearl. I am watching this happen in my dream. I think maybe this is a symbol for coniunctio, the sun and moon approaching each other like this, but the black sun...I don't understand why it is black. I take it the moon is the unconscious and the sun the conscious?