LECTURE II 14 May 1930
Here are questions from Mrs. Sawyer and Mrs. Crowley.
I should like to settle Mrs. Sawyer's question first because it is more general.
She says: "You mention two mandalas, one Christian and one Egyptian, in which three functions are pictured with the heads of beasts and one function with a human head. The human-headed function is the conscious superior function and the other three are unconscious. Did you also say that in Christian psychology the three superior functions are carried by the Trinity and the inferior function by the devil? n such a case, is there practically no consciousness at all-all four functions being carried by symbols?"
I said that the three unconscious functions are carried by the Trinity and the one conscious function by the devil.
I spoke of the three animals, and that these three unconscious functions play a superior role.
But that means superior in the sense of power, not in the sense of differentiation.
For the primitive man is always under a superior guidance, something is on top of him, because it demands an extraordinary consciousness, an extraordinary self control, to say, "I will."
The primitive cannot say, "I will"-he is driven; the primitive is almost completely under the spell of his moods.
There is no question of choice, things decide themselves.
And that fact is portrayed by the superior power ascribed to their gods, who are, for instance, of powerful and gigantic size and demoniacal influence, against whom man is just nothing.
That is a portrait of the psychic situation of relatively primitive man, or in other words, of the relation of his conscious to his unconscious.
His unconscious is paramount to his conscious, and he projects that fact into metaphysical space in the form of tremendous gods.
While as soon as a man increases his consciousness, the gods decrease in size and in power.
One sees that very beautifully in the development of Buddhism, where an entirely new point of view is introduced.
There we see that the gods appear even at the birth of the Buddha, as they appear when he dies, and that even the gods have to become men to be redeemed.
They still have desires and fight each other like human beings.
And so the ambition of the Buddha was to liberate his people from such beliefs and to show them the higher degrees of consciousness, to give them release from the contradictory power of the gods.
You see, as long as there are three gods against one man, it means that man is completely inferior and of the devil.
Of course, it is obvious in the Christian dogma that man is bad from the beginning and would be entirely lost, were it not for the grace of God, which might eventually save him.
But that is an awfully uncertain business, you know, and if by chance you do not become one of the honorary members of the Church, back you go to hell where you came from-no chance at all.
I have mentioned before the fact of that famous passage from the New Testament: "When two or three are gathered together in my name, I am with them."
The original form, which was found in an Egyptian papyrus, was: "When there are two together, they are not without God, but when there is one alone, I say I am with him."
The Church interfered and separated man from grace when alone. There must be several together in order to have a chance, and if you are outside the Church there is for redemption.
That consciousness of man’s utter inferiority is portrayed in the Trinity as I said of three against one-simply more powerful-and naturally our dogma supposes that this Trinity is infinitely perfect, although it is obviously not yet so good that the devil is abolished.
The devil is still moving around like a bad dog.
My father was a clergyman and I used to argue with him about that. I said that when a person has a bad dog, the police interfere.
But when God or the Trinity lets such a dangerous devil roam about amongst quite nice people, nobody is there to punish God for it, which is an outrageous thing; what is not allowed to man should not be allowed to God.
Well then, three functions are represented by the Trinity.
One is obviously human because it is designated by a human head; that is man's consciousness, the one function that he has succeeded in detaching from the eternal sea of unconsciousness.
Naturally when he has only one, it would not be to him a superior function.
We have a psychological approach and so now we call it that, but with only one, there is no comparison, so why call it superior?
We should say rather the one function differentiated from the general unconscious, and that one function is a very miserable inferior thing in comparison with the unconscious.
Moreover, that it is stolen from the gods makes man feel inferior and sinful, and therefore we have to purify ourselves from the diabolic admixture of nature.
You can read about that in the text of the Catholic mass, where they even exorcize the salt that is to be mixed with the baptismal water, and the incense, because everything is supposed to be contaminated by the devil.
The smoke at the altar is in order to disinfect it spiritually.
"So may be absent all diabolical fraud,"s the Latin text expresses it. Circumcision is a rite of exorcism, to enable one to escape from impure natural elemental influences.
As long as we have not undergone these ceremonials, we are impure and contaminated and unacceptable to the grace of God. That is the beginning of man.
He feels his utter helplessness and misery in every respect; he knows how much depends upon his efforts, and he knows that all sorts of devils are against him.
Therefore the primitive symbolized his becoming a man by his ceremonies of initiation.
Now, I say that when he succeeds in detaching another function, he is about even with the gods.
Then he begins to have a psychology and realizes that, if he should be able to detach a third function, he might create for himself a sort of divinity.
That is really the case in the Eastern religions, where we see that the gods become more and more illusions.
The Easterner will admit that the gods are real, that Shiva, for instance, is a reality to inferior people; but with increase of consciousness, they also are illusions.
That is shown very beautifully in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Bardo Thodol, where the dead are instructed by the priests that the gods are illusions which have to be overcome.
It is one of the neatest pieces of psychology that I have ever seen.
Now, I hope you understand what I said about that acquired divinity. It doesn't mean that you are going to be gods.
The most confusing thing seems to be that people think the three functions must be specific functions.
That is not at all the case.
You see, there are always the types, and for certain people a certain one is differentiated and three are unconscious; that is, the majority of functions are unconscious.
That is what the Trinity means; it is by no means three specific functions.
Is that plain?
For those among you who don't know why we speak of four functions, I must explain that they are the four sides of our orientation in the field of consciousness.
I am unable to add anything to that.
The four functions are based upon the fact that our consciousness says there is something in the unconscious.
Sensation is a sort of perception, it knows the thing is there; thinking tells us what it is; feeling says what it is worth to one, whether one accepts or rejects it; and intuition tells us what it might become, its possibilities.
I must confess I don't know what more I could include.
I could discover no other.
With that everything is said.
And the peculiar fact that there are just these four coincides with the fact, which I only discovered much later, that in the East they hold the same conviction.
In their mandalas, the four gates of consciousness express the four functions, and the four colours express the qualities of the four functions.
You can see that very well in the text I mentioned, the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
Are there other questions concerning the functions?
Mrs. Henley: I think most of us are clear as to thinking, feeling, and sensation, but we are least clear about intuition. Could you say something more about that?
Dr. Jung: Sensation simply tells you the visible, tangible, sense qualities, while intuition is a sort of guess about its possibilities.
Your senses tell you that here is something, and your thinking tells you what it is, but it takes a lot of intuition to tell you what is behind the walls.
If you allow an unbeautiful way of .expressing it, intuition is a sort of elephant's trunk put into someone's spinal cord-to go into and behind it and smell it out.
Therefore good intuition is often expressed by the nose.
A primitive uses his nose, he smells out thieves and ghosts, and it is the same with mediums in our day; they go into a house and sniff and say "ghosts" if it is haunted.
One may discover a peculiar psychology by smell, as I told you recently.
You smell a rat-that is intuition.
Dr. Deady: What is the condition of the differentiation of the three functions still in the unconscious of the relatively primitive man? Could you say that they were differentiated?
Dr. Jung: No, they are not differentiated. Anything that is in the unconscious is contaminated with everything else.
Only the conscious function is differentiated, That is the split between man and the pleroma, or God, or the universal unconsciousness, whatever you like to call it.
He stole one function from the gods.
That is beautifully illustrated by the myth of Prometheus stealing fire from the gods.
Whatever consciousness man has acquired he had to steal from them.
He emerged from the thick cloud of general unconsciousness, and it was only by tearing loose one of the functions that he was enabled to become detached.
How that was brought about I don't know; it is a peculiar quality in the psychological structure of man; animals have not that ability to free themselves from the original psyche. It is a kind of dissociability.
That is mysterious, one can speculate about it; we do not know how that came about, but it was so.
Dr. Baynes: 1 think that some of the confusion which I have happened upon comes from the question of the auxiliary functions, that is, when any of the functions have actually appeared and operate
as auxiliary functions but have not attained the per se character of a major function. From your point of view you would use the term "differentiated" only for that function, or functions, which
has gained a per se value, wouldn't you?
Dr. Jung: Yes, quite.
Dr. Baynes: For instance, when you find thinking acting as a trace-horse to intuition, you would not give that the quality of a differentiated function?
Dr. Jung: The function which has the per se character, the superior or differentiated function, can really be handled, but the auxiliary function is only relatively manageable; with that, already the trouble begins.
Dr. Baynes: Like those figures, half animal, half man.
Dr. Jung: Yes, one figure is human-headed, another ape-headed, and when one begins to base oneself on the ape-headed function, there is trouble; one contacts the animal kingdom and in comes the unconscious.
It has happened to everybody that he meets a problem which he cannot settle with the superior function-say a thinker who discovers that he needs feeling.
Then his sensation or intuition will lead him to a new world.
In the famous dream of the mouse, that could be called just as well the intuitive function, since this man is no longer able to settle his life-problem through his intellect.
No sooner has he discovered this than the mouse runs away; the autonomous factor begins to rule because he is no longer at the head of the show.
Then life begins to unfold.
That is the reason why we understood the mouse as a sort of sign or symptom that something new is due to come.
Mrs. Baynes: You said you thought of primitive man as being three against one. Do you think of modern man as being two against two?
Dr. Jung: That is very difficult to say, but I am inclined to think so from certain signs of the times.
A very simple example is the peculiar fact that only in the course of the nineteenth century have attempts been made to rehabilitate old Judas.
That means a sense of justice coming up over against the gods.
Very respectable, wellmeaning people have made desperate attempts at it, and they have their following, a large audience who appreciate that attempt at rehabilitation.
That is only one small symptom, but there are many others, the fact of Bible criticism for instance, a scientific enterprise meaning that taboos are now checked, which can be due only to the fact that man feels competent to manage them.
The authority that was formerly indubitable and unquestionable has now decreased in importance, and man has advanced correspondingly, he is able to criticize it, he can face it without fear of a thunderbolt.
But there are other thunderbolts which come from below.
We always look above, but we need no umbrella against thunderbolts the devil comes from an entirely different quarter.
Now we come to the other question.
Mrs. Crowley says: "Will you some time give us more of the symbolism and analysis of the hermaphroditic figure? You said before that you would go into it more fully."
The hermaphrodite is an important symbol that often occurs at a particular stage of psychological development. It is an archetype.
A German scholar has recently written a book about it; he collected a lot of material about this being of two sexes that plays a role in all sorts of mystical beliefs, and also in the old Hermetic philosophy.
I don't want to enter into the history of that symbol now, I will only call your attention to the fact that the Platonic all-round being is a hermaphrodite, a bisexual condition which means asexual, because
the two conditions check each other.
lt is the symbol for the infantile not-yet-differentiated state, for as soon as the sexes are differentiated there is consciousness.
Therefore in the analytical development the hermaphrodite is a symbol for the preconscious condition, when the definite thing that the person should become is not yet conscious.
But since it is in the unconscious, such a symbol might occur in their dreams.
In the case of our patient, it is the intimation of a superior guiding factor, of a superior self, but still in the hermaphroditic condition.
You see, consciousness means discernment, separation; but here the pairs of opposites are not yet separated, so there is no consciousness.
It is what I designate as a pleromatic condition, a very apt term which I take from an old philosophy to designate a potential condition of things, where nothing has become, yet everything is there.
That is the condition in the unconscious; the functions are not yet differentiated, black is white and white is black.
I told you that interesting fact in the differentiation of words, that in both English and German, the adjectives better, best, come from the same root as bad.
That is a case of the original state of identity of the opposites.
It is the state of paradise when the wolf is still sleeping with the lamb and nobody eats his neighbour except for fun, where things are in the primordial peace together, the original unconscious pleromatic condition, symbolized by the hermaphrodite.
It is an unconscious anticipation of a future ideal
condition, as the history of paradise shows.
You see, the original wonderful garden of paradise was lost forever, and, according to old cabalistic lore, when Adam and Eve were exiled, God put paradise into the future, which means that the original condition, an undifferentiated unconscious, becomes a goal, and the things which were separated after the first sin shall come together again.
That is a bit of the history of the development of consciousness.
For in the beginning man feels an exile, he is practically alone in his consciousness, and it is only by increase of consciousness that he discovers his real identity with nature again.
Therefore the very culmination of Eastern wisdom is tat tvam asi, which means "That art Thou"-each thing myself, myself in everything, the final identity of all things again-yet conscious in that state of paradise.
But in the hermaphroditic condition nothing is conscious.
So that original condition of pleroma, of paradise, is really the mother from which consciousness emerges.
The symbol of that original condition turns up again and again in different forms during the development of consciousness, always portraying a thing that is in the past, yet it is also a symbol for the future.
For there will be nothing in the future that has not been in the past, because we can only work out of the material that is given us.
The original condition is the symbol for the future condition, the idea of the kingdom of heaven is a repetition of paradise.
One sees these symbols in the drawings of patients, in the circle or globe, for instance, expressing the all round perfect being, containing, as it were, the other half, which is the idea of the primordial Platonic being.
Here is Mrs. Crowley's second question:
"Will you suggest how the dreamer might have alighted from his air excursion had feeling not been the inferior function-had that been his superior function, for example?"
It would have been exactly the same, because it does not matter what the three unconscious functions are.
Mrs. Crowley: Would his reaction be the same? I was wondering how we could learn to differentiate more carefully, and in the case of an individual with whom feeling was the superior function, what
the reaction in such a dream would be.
Dr. Jung: The reaction would be the same on principle, yet of course the dream would have been a little different.
Mrs. Crowley: I meant more from the angle of approaching reality from the feeling point of view.
Dr. Jung: Whether you rationalize the world through thinking or feeling comes to the same thing in the long run. The ultimate result would be exactly the same.
Mrs. Crowley: Yes, you really answered my question earlier.
Dr. Jung: Well now, we have not yet finished the dream.
We still have not dealt with the alighting from the aeroplane.
The man falls down and has difficulty in getting up again.
And his right hand is injured, it begins to swell and seems to be broken.
You remember our dreamer associates with the right hand energy, the activity of man, his efficiency in material or practical life.
How do you understand that?
Mrs. Baynes: He must give up his rational attitude. He must turn to the left and find another way in the unconscious.
Dr. Jung: Yes, but what does that mean in practical life?
Mr. Henderson: It affects his business.
Dr. Jung: That is it.
At about the time when he had this dream, he showed signs of unrest, which I thought might have to do with his finances, but it now slowly becomes obvious that he really is not interested in his business, it is no longer of importance to him.
He lays the only thing he is interested in is the human being and life in general.
Well, he can afford it, that problem was not so bad.
People who have to be interested in their business for their livelihood would not be so interested in the problem of the other side.
For it is all balanced, all regulated.
Of course, everybody believes that his problem is the worst, but in reality it is not the impossible that is expected of the human being.
But that his power is broken is what a man of his calibre minds the most.
You see, the right arm is always the symbol of power.
Those of you who have read my Psychology of the Unconscious will have found there the motif of twisting the arm out of action; or the hip, like the legend of Jacob in the Old Testament, where he was wrestling with the angel of the Lord all night, and the angel twisted his hips.
That is the destruction of man's selfish power, and that is inevitable.
The differentiated function is nearly always misused for one's own selfish power.
It is an invaluable means to have as a weapon in the beginning, but usually one uses it for too selfish ends and then comes the compensation of the unconscious.
Then something will come up which takes the weapon out of your hands.
Therefore in the hero myth, in the supreme struggle, the hero has to fight with his bare hands, even his usual weapon fails him; the hero who has overcome the monster with cunning from within finds his arm twisted.
He is deprived of his superior function for the sake of the next function which is waiting for differentiation, for it seems that nature is continuing that desire to dissociate man from his original unconscious condition.
As nature has pushed one function out into consciousness, so she seems to force man to become conscious of a second one, and for that purpose-because the next one has to be developed-the differentiated function suddenly becomes useless.
I think it will be useful if I make a diagram again, it helps to a clearer understanding.
We always represent the four functions in the form of a cross, and as I put thinking in the East, feeling would be in the West, because feeling is opposite to thinking.
One has to omit the standpoint of thinking very carefully in order to realize one's feeling, and vice versa.
Then down below would be sensation and up above be intuition.
Now let us assume that the differentiated function would be intuition and the auxiliary function thinking; then the division would be about here (A). That makes man largely conscious of intuition, and then the line of division (BC) between the conscious and the unconscious in a pure intuitive type would be as I have indicated.
Now, if he gets into a situation in which his intuition doesn't help him-say, for instance, when he should think about things-then his intuition is of no use, it is the worst nonsense. -
When the necessity comes of his understanding what the situation is, instead of always running ahead chasing new possibilities, he has to suppress intuition to a certain extent; for intuition will go on overcrowding his conscious with new contents, and whenever he begins something new he has to run after it.
Therefore he must twist out the arm intuition and give all that power to his thought, and that is usually done through an act of concentration, which is largely a matter of will.
Or if a man is unable to concentrate, then something will happen to him that enforces it.
Very often those intuitive types get a physical illness, tuberculosis or ulcers of the stomach and other abdominal troubles chiefly; also peculiar hysterical troubles, which may produce all sorts of symptoms that immobilize such people, lay them low, and force them to exclude possibilities.
Then they have to keep still and cannot run after things; they are put into situations where they cannot escape thinking, where the only thing they can do is to think furiously.
That is how a function is paralyzed or killed for the sake of another function.
In this case the individual moves on here (D), and here he approaches the sphere of unconsciousness.
So here is terrible danger, the inferior function which is opposite to the superior one; that is the very devil.
That neighbourhood becomes most uncanny, one shuns it as much as possible, one is afraid of all that might be behind that wall of the unconscious.
Therefore we make a different move, we go to the lesser danger, in this case feeling (F), and only when we have the three on that side do we dare to attack that thing.
There must be three against one, it is the acquisition of the triangle that fights the one.
Now if you remember still those verses by Lowell which our dreamer has quoted (why do you laugh?), you will see that they fit in with the spirit at least of all our deliberations.
It is as if his associations arose from his having overheard our discussion here, so we are well within the scope of the dreamer's feeling.
I think we can put that dream aside now and go on to the next one, which I have already mentioned, the dream about the triplets [26].
It was read in the last seminar, but I will go over it again as quickly as possible for the benefit of the new members.
He says that his wife has borne triplets, two of them still-born, but the third remains alive.
That is the whole dream, and he says that it repeated itself despite the fact that he can remember nothing else connected with it.
He only remembers that he was present at the birth and that the midwife was there and took away the dead children.
In his associations, he says that twins or triplets give him the impression of too much of a blessing. It seems to him perfectly sufficient if only the third child remains alive.
He thought a good deal about what they meant and came to the conclusion that they were spiritual children, as they certainly had nothing to do with his real children.
The peculiar fact that two children are still-born he cannot bring down to concrete reality, so he makes the assumption that they are still-born attempts, because children as psychological symbols often have that meaning, just as every man is an attempt of nature.
So he thinks the two dead children represent his spiritualistic and Yoga studies, which seem to him today to be perfectly superfluous spiritual abortions.
He says that I am the midwife who took the dead ones away, because after he came to me he saw no point in those other attempts, the theosophical interests.
I never said a word against them, because there is something quite definitely interesting in those things.
I know that if there is anything in them for him he will cling to them, and if not, he will leave them.
He says he played with those subjects for a while, and the third attempt, the child that is alive, is the slow development of his relationship to his soul through analysis.
He uses the German word Seele, which may mean the anima or the more Christian concept of the soul.
He obviously means his relationship to the inner world of experience.
The dream seems to be very simple, but there is a theoretical catch in it.
He is quite satisfied with his interpretation of it: that the triplets are three attempts at a new form of life, because to him it was an entirely new enterprise to seek spiritual development.
Formerly he was the head of a big business, and when he withdrew he was left to face the question "And what now?"
He was forty-five years old, and what to do becomes a very serious question when one is confronted with the problem of having nothing to do, yet having to find an outlet somewhere.
He took up so-called spiritual things first, for people who are ignorant of psychology easily take an interest in ghost seances, telepathy, and occultism in general.
So it was quite natural, and apparently what he says about the little dream is satisfactory, yet there is a catch in it.
If you rigorously follows the principles of dream interpretation, you will know what it is.
Mrs. Sigg: It seems that these three children are born at the same time, but it was not at the same time that he began those studies.
Dr. Jung: Yes, that is really a bit strange, and he pays no attention to it, but that is a minor catch-a little mouse-hole in comparison to a trap-door. Where is the real tunnel?
Mrs. Nordfeldt: It was his wife who had the children.
Dr. Jung: Yes, and what did I tell you about that?
I will repeat that famous rule of thumb which aroused the animus.
If the dreamer dreams of his wife, then it is his wife.
When you dream of a person who is in vital relation to you, either by actual blood relationship or in any really vital connection-anybody who has a hand in your psychological structure-then you must look at the person in the dream, at least for a while, as if he was really the person himself and not a symbol for something in yourself.
For instance, there is a pretty vital relation between the patient and the analyst, and when a patient dreams of him we can assume that the analyst is meant; if it should be something unfavourable, the analyst is confronted by the criticism, perhaps a new discovery about himself which is possibly true; at all events, he has to take that possibility as real, and only when it is duly considered and nothing has been found, even with a great deal of consideration, is he allowed to assume that it might be something rather subjective in the patient.
Also, the analyst sometimes dreams of the patient with whom he has a more or less vital relationship.
For the relationship between the analyst and patient is vital; if not, it is dead.
Some are more vital than others-the most vital when he doesn't understand, when he has struck a snag somehow.
Then he might dream of the patient, and the best policy is to inform him or her because there might be something in it which the patient would see right away.
Naturally, it is only relatively advanced cases which give one such trouble.
Otherwise one doesn't dream of them at all. I tell you that to show you how serious I am about taking such figures as real.
So when the patient dreams that his wife has brought forth triplets, I am in the disagreeable situation of having to explain why his wife should have brought forth triplets.
If we had not such a rule of thumb I could be perfectly satisfied with his explanation of the dream; he was quite ready to go to sleep on it, leave it at that.
Yet there is that string-he dreams of his wife and it must be his wife, I am confronted with that fact.
Then Mrs. Sigg has brought up the fact that his spiritual children, Yoga and theosophy and analysis, were not born at the same time, and one couldn't call them triplets when one was born in 1927, one in 1928, and the other in 1929.
The idea of triplets includes the fact that they must have been born at the same time practically, it is the same pregnancy.
That is very difficult-where does his wife come in?
Obviously we have to take his associations pretty seriously that these children are attempts, that is the most reasonable explanation.
You see, it makes a tremendous difference when we say that it is his wife who brings forth. Can you explain that puzzle? You remember we alluded to it in the last seminar.7
Mrs. Crowley: It was a sort of psychic reaction.
Mrs. Baynes: You said about this specific case, when you discussed this phase of the dream, that it was as if he were in such close participation mystique with his wife that he could take her as himself subjectively, and it was true that she also was going to be productive.
Dr. Jung: That is it.
As you know, this man has practically no relation with his wife, he cannot talk to her because she much prefers to cling to traditional things, to stay in a safe refuge against the chaotic possibilities of the mind, as many a man clings to a safe marriage against erotic possibilities.
This absence of relationship is compensated in the unconscious.
You see, when you are living with somebody with whom you have no real relationship, you are unconsciously connected.
And that peculiar unconscious relationship produces a psychological condition which could be compared to a sort of continuum where both function, as if they were both in the same tank under water.
They are under the same cover, in the same boat, which makes a particular kind of immediate relationship.
This unconscious relationship produces most peculiar phenomena, such as dreams which clearly do not belong to the individual.
So when it is a matter of husband and wife, the husband may dream the dreams of the wife, or the other way around; or one of them may .be forced to do something which proceeds not from his own psychology but from the psychology of the other.
Those are symptoms of such a participation mystique.
Obviously that man’s conscious relation to his wife is insufficient, so here we can assume an unconscious contamination in which he as well as his wife functions.
You see, his wife has a marked resistance against any kind of thinking, as he has against his Eros side. She will not use her mind.
A thing must be ready-made and safe, guaranteed for at least two thousand years, backed up by the highest authority, before she will accept it.
It must be absolutely water- and air-tight and nothing to be changed.
Of course, that is perfectly unnatural; it is abnormal and machine-like; something has been killed, and it has therefore been compensated in her unconscious, where she produces extraordinary things of which we do not know.
There she thinks furiously, there she is busy with all sorts of radical things, perhaps with religion.
If we had her dreams we would see all that.
Her unconscious is in a real turmoil, and it is repressed and cannot boil over into the conscious, but in the night it creeps into the open canals of her husband's brains.
His mind is open and he speaks it out and shocks her out of her wits, because it is her own stuff he is talking, the stuff she is talking in the night with the devils.
And likewise, on the other side, what she says in the conscious is to a great extent brought forth by the unconscious feelings of his anima.
When the patient had this dream I didn't tell him all this, because at that stage it would have been wrong to preach too much wisdom.
It was more important that he should learn to make his own way in analysis, catch the feeling that he could handle the stuff.
At first it was very strange to him, but now we shall see his attempts to interpret the dreams coming to the foreground, and I did not want to interfere with that. In the case of such a man it is very important
to be on good terms with his superior function, as in the same way it is wrong to put oneself in opposition to a woman's Eros.
Otherwise one works against a great power, which is too much waste of energy.
Now, all this would explain that dream and also to a certain extent the strange fact that the triplets, the efforts, were born all at the same time.
That is an intimation that when a thing happens in time it becomes history, but in the unconscious there is no time, it is eternal.
The unconscious can speak of things which are absolutely separated through long intervals of time as being together; to us they are separated but to the unconscious they are not.
They are like the pairs of opposites, like black and white, light and dark, the future and the past-in the unconscious there is no difference.
So these triplets are all born at once, yet there are years between.
The three attempts are really one attempt; it was one particular stimulation which probably came from his wife.
It was the moment when he felt that he had come to an end with his rational intellectual attitude and when Eros came up in him.
It was an entirely unconscious moment.
I think that certain very intuitive people might be able to realize such a moment, but usually it happens completely in the unconscious.
In analysing dreams at such a time, one is confronted with the most disagreeable problems.
Something tremendous has happened, and the patient says he knows nothing of it, that it is perfect nonsense.
The analyst knows that something has happened but is not yet visible; it has happened in the pleroma and has not come through into time.
It must have been a very definite moment when our dreamer unconsciously felt that thing had come to an end, and at the same moment in his wife, only the reverse naturally.
And that was the moment when the triplets were born. It is like a child dreaming of his future.
I have seen cases where children have anticipated the main points of their coming life in very simple terms; they were anticipations of a whole lifetime, everything together, and happening in reality thirty, forty, or fifty years hence.
Even most extraordinary problems can be dreamt by children, when one cannot see at all how a child could conceive of such things.
Is it that they get it through their parents?
We still don't know. I think it must have to do with the collective unconscious, but that is another question which we will not go into now.
Dr. Baynes: There seems to be some connection between the depotentiation of the Trinity and the birth of the triplets.
Dr. Jung: Yes, that is the real interpretation of the dream, that there is a continuity.
When the aeroplane comes down, it means that the Trinity is depotentiated, dissolved, and here it appears again; it is now born out of man.
The Trinity that has been in an unconscious condition before is now reborn into consciousness.
Miss Wolff' In that case I should say that it is important that the triplets are born of a woman, because the Christian religion leaves out the woman, excepting the Virgin.
Dr. Jung: It is well that somebody stands up for the woman.
You see, when good old Sophia became a member of the Trinity, as the wife of the Lord God, the old Fathers never liked it, and she was abolished except in the Coptic Church; they had only the
Virgin Mary as a sort of spiritual midwife in the neighbourhood.
Since then the female element has been absent from the Trinity, but now she comes back.
It is a very remarkable fact that now the woman should bring. forth the lost Trinity.
Dr. Draper: Why should two of them be dead?
Dr. Jung: That is a very serious question.
We must know now who the dead children are.
That dream is full of hooks. Keep that question in mind. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Pages 587-602
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