Night Writing: Carl Jung.

 

For me, the genius of Carl Jung lay in his willingness to allow dreams to influence his thinking. Jung wrote, ‘I knew no reasons for the assumption that the tricks of consciousness can be extended to the natural processes of the unconscious. On the contrary, daily experience taught me what intense resistance the unconscious opposes to the tendencies of the conscious mind.’[1] In dreams, houses often refer to the psyche of the dreamer. Following one such dream about a dwelling Jung developed his theory of the collective unconscious. Jung interpreted the dream as follows,

‘It was plain to me that the house represented a kind of image of the psyche – that is to say, of my own then state of consciousness, with hitherto unconscious additions. Consciousness was represented by the salon. It had an inhabited atmosphere, in spite of its antiquated style,

The ground floor stood for the first level of the unconscious. The deeper I went, the more alien and the darker the scene became. In the cave, I discovered remains of a primitive culture, that is, the world of primitive man within myself – a world which can scarcely be reached or illuminated by consciousness. The primitive psyche of man borders on the life of the animal soul, just as the caves of prehistoric times were usually inhabited by animals before men laid claim to them’[2]

Jung wrote that it just clicked, ‘This was my first inkling of a collective a priori beneath the personal psyche. This I first took to be the traces of earlier modes of functioning. Later, with increased experience and on the basis of reliable knowledge, I recognised them as forms of instinct, that is, archetypes.’[3] Nancy Swift Furlotti and Erel Shalit describe archetypes as universal motifs or patterns, ‘The word archetype is derived from arche or “first principal,” which points to the creative source which cannot be represented or seen, and from typos, “impression” or “imprint,” which refers to a manifestation of the first principal.’[4]

Jung could have dismissed this dream but instead he interpreted it and allowed it to inform his practice. John Freeman in his introduction to Man and his Symbols describes how Jung was asked to produce a book that would be accessible to non-specialist readers. Jung though about it and said no.[5] He then had a dream where, ‘… instead of sitting in his study talking to the great doctors and psychiatrists who used to call on him from all over the world, he was standing in a public space and addressing a multitude of people who were listening to him with rapt attention and understanding what he said….’[6] Jung then said yes to writing the book providing it was a collaborative effort with his closest associates; the book Man and his Symbols was almost finished just before his death.[7]

Many of my ideas come from my dreams. Like Jung, I believe that the unconscious always knows what we should do, what our purpose is so to speak. The problem lies in understanding the messages the unconscious conveys to us. The messages are often obscure or metaphorical, they are not logical.

Dreams are probably the most direct communications from the unconscious, but they speak in a language of images. Jolande Jacobi suggests that, ‘Every interpretation is a hypothesis, a mere attempt to decipher an unknown text.’[8] Dreams may not be the only way the unconscious speaks to us. Synchronicity, coincidences, hauntings and hallucinations may be other forms of unconscious communications but these, luckily in some cases, are few and far between.

Jolande Jacobi writes that Jung observed, ‘… too often the individual travels so far from the primordial twilight psyche that his natural instincts are lost.’[9] This leads to an arid existence,

‘Life has grown desiccated and cramped, crying out for the rediscovery of the fountainhead. But the fountainhead can only be rediscovered if the conscious mind will suffer itself to be lead back to the “land of childhood,” there to receive guidance from the unconscious as before.’[10]

Allowing the twilight realms of the psyche to inform the creative process enriches our lives, can help prevent artistic blocks and be a source of inspiration. Dreams could be about many aspects of our lives. Sometimes the dream is obviously about creativity, or a dream motif will suggest that the dream is about the creative process, such as seeing a drawing in a dream when drawing is my primary creative practice. The dream may provide a solution to a creative problem and for me these types of dream occur in the restless state between sleeping and waking. Other times I may assume that the dream is about the creative process because I asked a question before going to sleep about some aspect of my creative practice. Basically, asking before sleeping and having an answer on waking.

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[1] C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, (London: Fontana Press, 1995), p. 185.

[2] C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, (London: Fontana Press, 1995), p.184.

[3] C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, (London: Fontana Press, 1995), p. 185.

[4] Eril Shalit and Nancy Swift Furlotti, “The Amplified World of Dreams,” in Eril Shalit and Nancy Swift Furlotti, The Dream and Its Amplification: The Fisher king Review Volume 2, (Skiatook: Fisher King Press, 2013), 8.

[5] John Freeman, “Introduction,” in Carl G. Jung, Man and his Symbols, (London: Arkana, 1990), 9.

[6] John Freeman, “Introduction,” in Carl G. Jung, Man and his Symbols, (London: Arkana, 1990), 9.

[7] John Freeman, “Introduction,” in Carl G. Jung, Man and his Symbols, (London: Arkana, 1990), 10-11.

[8] Jolande Jacobi, The Psychology of C.G. Jung (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1973), 75-76.

[9] Jolande Jacobi, The Psychology of C.G. Jung (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1973), 80.

[10] Jolande Jacobi, The Psychology of C.G. Jung (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1973), 80.