LECTURE VI 28 February 1929
Mr. Gibb's question is important and simple.
It goes back to leakage and chickens; they must be magic.
Mr. Gibb's question: "Referring to what you said about 'leakage' two weeks ago, would not the contradiction inherent in the duplicity of attitude always come out in dreams? Take for example, a man who has come for analysis, but who retains a secret fondness for Christian Science, Behaviourism, or Theosophy. He is consciously treating his experiences from an analytical point of view with one part of his mind, and also giving himself a different account of it in terms of his pet theory with another part of his mind. If this contradiction is not dealt with consciously, will it not inevitably produce unconscious conflict and therefore dreams?-in which case the matter would be dealt with in the course of analysis in the ordinary way.
"Would there be any difference in this respect due to the psychological type of the man? For example, the kind of conflict suggested above might be more disturbing in the case of a thinking type than in a more intuitive person.
"Or does the trouble really arise from such a person's unwillingness to give the associations of his dream material which might lead to the discovery of the contradiction?"
Dr. Jung: Such a conflict disturbs a thinking type more than an intuitive or feeling type; a thinking type is bound to be playing the game fully and to the best of his ability.
In the beginning of his analysis you can dismiss feeling; it will come later.
A feeling type must get his feeling clear first; he cannot bear to have dualistic feeling.
An intellectual type might have a whole magazine of contradictory feelings about you and it would make little difference.
You have to approach every type in his own way.
A contradictory point of view, a restriction mentale, is often retained as a sort of counterpole, a safeguard against a possible transference.
Then there is an unwillingness to give associations which might lead to the conflict, exactly like ladies who, when they are under the impression that an impending transference might be discovered, develop a great love for some other man and so construct a counterpole against a possible submission.
In Logos, also, one builds up a stronghold against possible submission. In the Catholic Church, for example, there is no such thing.
They have submitted entirely to authority, but the Protestant has lost all this.
He is running wild, yet his secret desire is to find a place where he can submit, but he doesn't dare to admit it.
Let us go on with the dream of last time.
We had come as far as the bath in the sea and the contemplation of the surf.
The picture is a bay, a sort of recess, into which the ocean is coming, in powerful and majestic waves breaking upon the farther shore.
The dreamer stands upon the shore and watches this spectacle.
He associates that the unconscious is sending its waves into the conscious, as the ocean is sending waves into the little bay.
From a theoretical point of view this is an interesting description. Try to paint it in your mind, what would it suggest?
Mr. Gibb: All the activity is coming from the ocean.
Dr. Schlegel: The amazing difference in size between the conscious and the unconscious.
Dr. Jung: Yes, the amazing difference in size.
We like-~te-think of the unconscious as something below the conscious, a little dirt left in the corner.
The dream itself brings an entirely different picture.
The little boy of the conscious is nothing beside the immensity of the ocean. That is how the unconscious depicts itself.
Walking up the hill is an approach to the unconscious in his associations.
What are the great waves coming in from the unconscious?
Dr. Binger: Powerful waves sweeping into consciousness.
Dr. Jung: How does he feel it?
Dr. Binger: As a dream.
Mrs. Sigg: As emotions.
Dr. Jung: What emotions? ls there evidence of emotion?
Dr. Binger: Fear.
Dr. Jung: Yes it might be fear, anything else?
Mrs. Sigg: It might be that he has an enormous transference on his doctor. He had not a good relation with his wife, he has much feeling in the background, and in analysis this sometimes happens to men.
Dr. .Jung: To try to ascertain that would be fatal; it would frighten the patient.
Whether those waves are an emotion of love connected with the transference is too delicate a thing to find out.
The patient rather denies feeling, he cannot admit it.
We need more evidence.
For the time being, it is decidedly fear. That would mean that the ocean is sending in waves of fear, but if that is so how can he admire it?
Mrs. Sigg: There might be some religious feeling. Admiration is sometimes mixed with fear in religion.
Mrs. Schevill: The rhythm is impressive regularity.
Dr. Jung: Yes that is impressive, but what does it remind you of?
Dr. Shaw: His sexuality.
Dr. Jung: Yes it is his sexuality that he fears. But to what did he compare the sea? You must all have mother complexes!
Mrs. Schevill: To the eternal mother.
Dr. Jung: Yes. It is very important to remember that in his association with the sea he called it "the primordial cause of life, the eternal mother, the womb of nature."
Dr. Binger: You could call it a regressive symbol, longing for the mother.
Mrs. Sigg: It is like the ocean against which Faust had to build a dam.
Dr. Jung: Yes, but the dam is not mentioned here. It is a sand dune, a natural dam. How would you value his associations with the sea?
Mrs. Muller: He associates it with the source of creative energy.
Dr. Jung: What is the quality of that association? Aesthetic, scientific, religious, sentimental, regressive?
Mrs. Muller: Biological.
Dr. Jung: No, decidedly not biological.
Miss Chapin: It is philosophical.
Dr. Jung: Of course. You can read those very morals in the old philosophy; "the womb of nature," "the evolution of the first germ."
This is not biology, but old-fashioned, rather romantic, archetypal philosophy. So when he contemplates the movement of the sea, it is as he has qualified it. It obviously arouses philosophical ideas in
him.
He looks at the sea with a kind of philosophical emotion.
Mrs. Sigg:· He has been forced to change his mind about sexuality, and therefore he is obliged to change his philosophy about it.
Dr. Jung: Yes, in the first part of his analysis he thought of sexuality as an uncomfortable thing in the corner, a personal difficulty which he did not feel up to at all.
The unconscious is slowly trying to open his eyes to a wider vision or conception of sex.
The pitiful symbol of the sewing-machine is now increased to almost cosmic size.
The rhythm of the sewing-machine is now the systole and diastole of life, which shows itself in sex, too, so he should look at sex as though it were the rhythm of the sea; the rhythm of the primordial mother, the rhythmical contraction of the womb of nature.
This gives him another aspect of sexuality.
It is no longer his miserable personal affair, something he has to put into the corner, but a great problem of life.
It is not a dirty intrigue, but it becomes a big thing, a generally human universal situation.
So he will mobilize quite different troops to deal with his sexuality than when he treated it as though it were a. case for the police court.
Now he sees his problem as the great rhythm of life, a problem of nature, which he looks upon philosophically, and now he can allow its creative functioning in himself.
First it was the sewing machine which did not function, then the steamroller which made the mysterious path creating the mandala, and now it is the ocean itself which has become a universal symbol.
This gives him a philosophical attitude and he has a greater chance to deal with his problem.
To have a personal attitude toward it would not do at all.
A young person would have to deal with such a problem personally, but a man of his age cannot deal with it personally; he must deal with it as gaining something for his spiritual development, and not
for the propagation of his particular blessed family.
In the next part of the dream, he tries to climb that hill of gravel with his youngest boy, and then he observes that the spray is dashing up on the rocks.
He thinks it is dangerous, the hill might be washed away and he retires.
This is an attempt to approach the unconscious in motion, exposing himself to the powerful waves.
Psychologically, this means he is going to deal with his problem, he is going to do something about it. What about his youngest boy who is with him?
Mrs. Sigg: That means progress. Before, the child was ill, dead, now it is alive, in health.
Dr. Jung: He is a substitute for the father (the patient).
He says this child is especially identified with him.
According to the primitive idea the child is truly the prolongation of the father, the replica of the father; bodily and spiritually he is the father.
There is the story of an old Negro who shouted at his grown son, and when he paid no heed the father said,
"There he goes with my body, and he does not even obey me!"
So the patient says he is now, with his new attempt (the boy), hopeful, progressive, beginning.
He says let us approach the sea, then he is afraid. What is the fear in the dream?
Dr. Binger: The fear of the unconscious and of the forces which might be let loose by it.
Dr. Jung: Yes, he has obviously undervalued the tremendous power of nature, but now he sees it could wash away the ground beneath his feet, his established situation.
That means that this force could wash away his natural, social, physical, philosophized position.
He is standing, interestingly enough, between the conscious and the unconscious.
These forces might wash away the hill on which he is standing, for it is all loose gravel and stones, it has no cohesion.
It had been heaped up by the sea, made by the power of nature.
This is the way we are, just loose gravel, stuff washed up by the power of nature with no cohesion.
It is not our merit. We have not yet found cement to get this stuff together.
This is the task of the dream.
When I explained the mandala I spoke of this loose stuff, the grains of different materials which must be brought together by a sort of alchemical procedure, so that this action of the sea cannot destroy it again.
Our patient is still in fragments, all is loose, so he is quite right in not trusting the hill, for it could easily be washed away.
That means he has no individuality yet, nothing is cemented in him, so he can be dissolved by the power of the unconscious.
He had better go back.
Dr. Shaw: Does the child show him how to approach his problem in a trustful attitude?
Dr. Jung: Yes, the patient was trying to build up a philosophy of an old virgin about his sexuality.
He tried to be one of the eleven thousand virgins just initiated, not taking nature into account.
He is more or less identified with the child, and the child with him.
He approaches his problem in a sort of childish enthusiasm, and jumps at it. Patients often jump and break a leg.
Mrs. Sigg: Female patients often build a philosophy without sex. Why must he be cleansed by sea-baths and by fire?
Dr. Jung: The fire was very lightly referred to.
The bath is purification.
Whenever we touch nature we get clean.
Savages are not dirty-only we are dirty.
Domesticated animals are dirty, but never wild animals.
Matter in the wrong place is dirt.
People who have got dirty through too much civilization take a walk in the woods, or a bath in the sea.
They may rationalize it in this or that way, but they shake off the fetters and allow nature to touch them.
It can be done within or without.
Walking in the woods, lying on the grass, taking a bath in the sea, are from the outside; entering the unconcious, entering yourself through dreams, is touching nature from the inside and this is the same thing, things are put right again.
All these things have been used in initiations in past ages.
They are all in the old mysteries, the loneliness of nature, the contemplation of the stars, the incubation sleep in the temple.
In Malta an underground temple of the Neolithic Age has been found, which has dormitories for the initiates, and there are small statuettes showing prehistoric women in the sleep of incubation.
They suggest the Venus of Brassempouy, an ivory carving found in France, a Paleolithic statuette in which all the secondary sex characteristics, the hind parts, the breasts, etc., are greatly exaggerated.
In the incubation dormitories at Malta the m1tiates were plunged into the unconscious for rebirth.
Curiously enough there was a corridor leading from the incubation niches to a square hole, six feet deep, dug in the floor and filled with water.
The temple itself was quite dark, so that when the initiate walked along the corridor he must have fallen into the cold water, and so he had his cold bath and incubation sleep all together.
After this last dream there followed a very peculiar reaction. The patient wrote me several notes about his family.
He has three children and he writes certain observations about them.
"For several days I have observed that there is something wrong with my wife.
When I asked her what was wrong she said, with some hesitation, that she was afraid that the children were not quite happy with their parents.
She said that the daughter had behaved queerly, she had suddenly gone out of the room weeping and couldn't say why."
Dr. Jung: That doesn't mean that there was a reason, she might have been weeping just because she thought it was nice to weep.
[Had she been a boy it would have been different!]
"Then she is afraid that the boy might be tubercular because he coughed. The youngest boy is not psychologically what he should be, egoistical and a bit neurotic; he also has been weeping, but his mother assumed that he thought he might get something by it."
The dreamer writes this the day after his last analysis.
Here is a good example of practical psychology.
How do you explain all this reaction?
The patient was obviously quite frightened by all this badness, his wife was in a bad mood, etc.
Miss Chapin: He feels some connection between his family and his psychological condition, so he writes the notes.
Dr. Jung: Yes, but what is the connection? Why does he have this feeling just after the last dream?
Dr. Binger: The gravel is being washed away.
Dr. Jung: Mind you, it is his wife who comes out with these things.
Dr. Shaw: Her unconscious is infected by his problem.
Dr. Jung: You are coming to it now.
He has been working on this problem for some time.
The sewing-machine, the steamroller, the mandala, the sea.
He has observed his wife getting worse for several days.
After the last dream when he asked her what was the matter she comes out with all her fears about the children.
She is infected with his problems.
He has never discussed them with her, she is at a stage where everything psychological is taboo.
Mr. Gibb: Isn't he projecting it all?
Dr. Jung: No, this is real, he is a very objective person.
He comes out with the fears and complaints of his wife, obviously repeating what she says.
Mrs. Binger: As soon as his problem takes on less personal terms then he can approach it, but for the wife it becomes dangerous.
Dr. Jung: Yes, as long as she can keep the whole thing down, so that it cannot be approached in a personal way, she can hold it, but as soon as it takes on an important aspect she smells a rat.
Not that he has ever mentioned it, but at that very moment, as it were, when he envisages the problem philosophically, feels the fresh air of dawn, and is no more arrested, no more split, she becomes
affected.
It reaches her through the atmosphere somehow.
There are a good many marriages in which this happens.
He might have looked a bit more enterprising that day, he went up a few degrees, and she went down.
She couldn't see that there was anything the matter with him, so she put it on the children.
This is the way with mothers, it is either husband or children. In this case it is too obviously not the husband, therefore it must be the children.
Why the children?
Mrs. Sigg: Children are the symbols of a new thing coming. His children are such a symbol.
Dr. Jung: In this case the children are the mother's symbols.
This is the mother's psychology.
The children are symbols of the undeveloped things in her.
She is going the wrong way, she develops resistances against analysis, the thing that might be good for him; and she projects her fear into the children, and poisons them thereby.
lt is always tlius with mothers. The real mother is never wrong. Why should she be wrong?
She is a mother and has three children and she is married.
If anything is wrong it must be with her husband or the children.
The children are not bad, therefore they must be sick.
Mothers can get their children sick in no time, they can project sickness into them.
The devil will make tuberculosis or what not.
You project tuberculosis into a child and it comes.
Often you have to take children away from certain families to relieve them from the terrific pressure of wrong assumptions.
The --point-is-thauhings-are-wrong-with-the-wife-;-So-the-patient-is-alarmed.
He is a very nice family man. His wife understands how to She gets his attention away from his analysis by talking of the children's sickness.
In this way the bogey can be handled by the wife, so he wastes at least half an hour with me over these non-existent diseases.
I told him to get a doctor for them and to stop worrying.
He was wasting his time, and it was not his business.
Thus progress can be hampered by a wife who refuses to be interested in what her husband is doing.
She has terrible power, she can raise hell all over the place, she can kill the children even.
She is always perfectly right, but she is killing her children.
I have treated a woman who actually murdered her pet child. It does happen.
Not in vain are little children afraid of their own mothers in the night. Primitive mothers can kill their children.
It is absolutely incompatible with the daytime, for then they are most devoted mothers.
But in the night they take away the mask and become witches; they upset children psychically, even kill them.
The more they are devoted to them in the wrong way the worse it is.
I told the patient that he should talk with his wife, to try to make her realize what analysis really is, otherwise the children would be really ill and the wife, realizing later that it was her fault, would
be a wreck.
You can do something to stop it, when you know that situation in the very beginning.
I was quite certain that she could stop everything, infect the children, and take him from his analysis without solving his problem.
It sounds superstitious, but I know such things do happen, like the mother who let her child drink infected water and even gave it to the younger child with the secret hope that the children would die.
I had a patient who succeeded, after trying three times, in killing his wife in a beautifully indirect way.
Then he went into a bad neurosis.
I found out the whole story and told him that he had murdered his wife, then his whole psychosis cleared up and he was cured.
Since then 1 am amply convinced that when a woman begins like this, one must be careful and stop it.
Four days later the patient had the following dream [6]:
"My brother-in-law tells me that something has happened in the business. [The brother-in-law took the patient's place in the firm.] Some stock that had been sold was not sent away when it should have
been, long ago. It is now June, and it should have been sent in May. It was forgotten then and a second time in June. I got quite angry and said to my brother-in-law that if the buyer should claim
damages one would be forced to meet his claim."
Associations: "My brother-in-law, who entered our firm as a partner, wrote me yesterday that he had been on a business trip, and he wanted to ask me certain things about affairs connected with
the business. But he did not tell me what they were, and in the dream I wondered what it was he wanted to discuss with me. There is something wrong or he would have told me in the letter."
About selling and forgetting: "I was always very careful to live up to any obligations. I took the business very seriously, and when I left I was a bit afraid that my brother-in-law would not give the
business this particular kind of attention. If now, according to the dream, things are forgotten like that in the short time since I am away from my post, things are wrong with the business, which
would cause no end of damage. My brother-in-law is something like my shadow, he is younger than I am, entering the firm after me and holding the position I held formerly."
It is as though his brother-in-law, being his shadow, informs him that there is disorder in the business, that is, disorder in his life (in his unconsciqus), so that he does not live up to obligations that are fully recognized.
Such forgetfulness could only be made good by allowing for the damages.
That is a.clear dream, now how do you explain it?
Mrs. Sigg: He thinks perhaps that it is his own fault that his wife is upset.
Dr. Jung: Yes, he feels it is his own fault, but how do you explain the dream?
Miss Chapin: Has he talked to his wife?
Dr. Jung: Yes a little, but it was not much good. It has nothing to do with this.
Mrs. Sigg: It is an obligation to that part of his being that is not continued, something to do with his soul.
Dr. Jung: Yes, the thing developed in a sort of childish enthusiasm.
In the previous dream he was trying to throw himself into the fulness of life.
He tries to throw himself into the fulness of nature, into the waves of the ocean of love.
Then he sees that his situation is a bit dangerous, and he withdraws, lest the loose gravel and stones be washed away from the hill where he is standing.
This is as it should be. Then his wife smells a rat and threatens to kill his children.
This is her revenge.
It is as though she said ''Oh, if you dare to change, I will kill the children”
Naturally that gets him going and it takes him away from his task.
He is concerned with the children, so he desists. He might have gone further in this task of cementing the ground together.
He was interested, but his wife threatens and he stops. Then up comes the dream and says,
"That is the disorder in your business. You left it to your shadow and he forgot his obligations. Your business is with the sea, you must deal with it. Fortify your island, establish yourself. Your business is not with the little illnesses, like an old nurse."
He should know that his wife is jealous, but that is all. The dream is holding him to his job.
Dr. Binger: It seems to me that it might be just a guilty conscience dream. He might feel that he had been neglecting his wife.
Dr. Jung: But as a matter of fact he has done all he could do.
He is trying to do the right thing all along the way.
He has tried to talk with his wife. He is going into analysis, trying to solve his problem.
That would be in favour of his children too.
It is better for the children to have a well father.
His fault is that he was going at it a bit rashly perhaps, acting on boyish enthusiasm.
The waves were pretty high.
His wife's reaction began with his withdrawal.
He is just, reliable, and clear in his mind, so I really assume that he has been led away too much.
That is often so in analysis, external circumstances make it impossible to go ahead, he is not quite ready to take the next step, or he still has resistances.
The next dream [7] one day later: He sees a peculiar machine, which is a new device for rooting up weeds.
It was so peculiar looking that he could not describe it.
He only knew, in the dream, that he should apply it.
Associations: "I have read recently in the paper a sort of sentimental article about an old road maker, who watches a new machine cleaning the streets. This machine works one hundred times more efficiently than he did. Therefore the meaning of the dream is quite clear to me. I should apply the machine to my case."
Mrs. Sigg: It seems to me that he has not dealt sufficiently with all the material in the first dream, so the machine has to come again.
Dr.Jung: Yes, he has to take up the machine again.
The former dream said, "In case the buyer puts in a claim, one must pay damages."
So much time may have been lost, and now the machine is for pulling up weeds, and it is one hundred times more efficient than when one works alone.
This dream shows where the damage lies. The regression he made was concerned with his wife; he got infected with his wife, and he got the idea that he could pull up his own weeds and then he would not have any trouble in his family.
The dream shows him that instead of giving up analysis, he should apply this machine for pulling up the weeds which have sprung up.
Always remember the Hymn of Ra: Isis, his lovely wife, was making the worm.
The next dream [8] one day later:
"I am touring in my car near the Riviera.
Som one tells me the route d' en haut et route d' en bas can be used from now on only by those who stay for two months in the country, that all cars have to go one way on the lower road, and the other way on the upper. These regulations change every day. Monday it is so, while on Tuesday it goes the other way, so that one could enjoy the beautiful view from every direction. Someone shows me a map with a plan of the two roads; green and white circles indicate the days of the week and the direction to be observed by the visitors, east-west and west-east.
"The visitors who were there for only a short time need not observe the regulations, and I thought it rather illogical that they could go just as they pleased. I also heard that other visitors were protesting against these regulations, because one had to pay for permission to travel on these roads for not less than six years. We all thought that terribly exaggerated."
Associations: "I have never been on the Riviera but I have a beautiful fantasy of this country, as of eternal spring, like in the Island of the Blessed. I thought I would go down in my car, because travelling there would be such a wonderful excursion. I am not certain whether there are really two. roads. I suppose travelling on these roads symbolizes life, if one lives it systematically without changing too often. The fact that those staying two months have to submit to the regulations, but those who are only there for a few days can do as they please, would not fit my life, but it could fit my travelling into the unconscious. Perhaps it is just as interesting and beautiful as travelling on the Riviera. If one wants to stay two months or longer, one must submit to the regulations even if they do not appear to be very logical and even if the people who are there for only a short time do not have to observe the rules. Under the right conditions, one can travel up above on the mountains or down below in the valley; there on can see thing right and left. White and green-show a free course-only red means stop."
Permission to travel for six years: The patient thought that I had told him that a complete renewal of attitude would take him six years.
But I could not remember telling him anything of this sort.
I might have told him of a case which took six years. There can be nothing arbitrary about the length of time for an analysis. What is a complete renewal anyway?
Certainly I did not say what he had made of it. Now what do you make of this?
Remember we are beginning again, and again there is a machine.
Dr. Binger: It seems to me that it is a commentary on his analysis. If he stays only a short time there is not much progress, but if two months or more he must keep to the regulations. There is resistance
to regulation and the time element, also to the two roads, high and low.
Dr. Jung: Sure enough, the whole thing has to do with his analysis, and you meet the same kind of resistance as in the mandala dream with the roads.
Here he is travelling on roads, the machine is the car. He is again afloat.
The weed-pulling machine is a sedentary thing, slow like the steamroller, and you could not travel with it.
But with a car you can go fast and far. When you use the road you want to get somewhere.
The goal is "The Island of the Blessed," "Atlantis," where Immortals live.
But it is a bit awkward because in that country they have certain regulations. It is as though these regulations were forced upon him by the country.
It is the unconscious where he wants to go, and it is the nature of that country that he must go in this peculiar way. In the mandala the way was all wound up.
In this it goes first one way, then another, there is one impulse, then the contrary one! This is a fine, accurate description of the unconscious.
Often it is a sort of weaving impulse, or a pump going up and down.
This is typical of the unconscious; not only are there pairs of opposites, but contrasting impulses going right and left.
When he follows first one road and then the other he has ample time to see. the country from all points of view.
It is optimistically expressed.
You must put yourself in the position of the patient.
He is a man of the world, a good business man, he is used to doing things accurately, to directing his affairs with no waste of time.
Suddenly he finds himself in the unconscious, where everything is up and down, to and fro, with the most contradictory impulses and opinions.
We talk of this and that, and he cannot understand what the devil it is all about. He is lost, he loathes it, and he cannot understand that this peculiar experience is the main thing.
He cannot mature until he has exposed himself to such a process of obstacles.
They are the tests of the initiate in the old initiations, like the twelve labours of Hercules. Sometimes they seem useless things, like cleaning the Augean Stables, or strangling the hydra headed-serpent.
The business man would say, it is none of my affair to clean the stables, or to kill the lion that lives somewhere.
But in the unconscious he must submit to the slow progress of to and fro; to a sort of balancing deliberation, a sort of torture.
One day you think you have come to a clear decision, next day it is gone.
You feel like a fool and curse it until you learn that this thing is pairs of opposites, and you are not the opposite.
If you learn that, you have got your lesson.
This man has not learned it. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Pages 137-149
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