Many of the dream examples used by Jung to demonstrate the centrality of the quaternity to the psyche are actually based on the formula of the-dreamer-plus-three-others. Here are some of the examples from Psychology and Alchemy [Collected Works, vol 12] which Jung employed to show ongoing alchemical symbolism in modern man's unconscious. The dreamer in each case, I believe, is representative of the ego and the three others, the triune Self.
The dreamer finds himself with his father, mother and sister in a very dangerous situation on the platform of a tram-car. [One similar to this is recorded by P W Martin in Experiment in Depth: A Study of the Work of Jung, Eliot and Toynbee, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1976, page 52, which commences "We were in a car going from Geneva to Lausanne. There were four of us, my father, mother, younger brother and myself...". Indeed, many of the ancient triadic formulations were based on familial relationships, especially in Egypt.][29]
Four people are going down a river; the dreamer, his father, a certain friend and the unknown woman.[30]
The dreamer, the doctor, a pilot, and the unknown woman are travelling by aeroplane.[31]
The dreamer is in the Peter hofstatt in Zurich with the doctor, the man with the pointed beard, and the 'doll woman'.[32]
In a primeval forest. An elephant looms menacingly. Then a large ape-man, bear, or cave-man threatens to attack the dreamer with a club. Suddenly the man with the pointed beard appears and stares at the aggressor, so that he is spell-bound. But the dreamer is terrified. The voice says, "Everything must be ruled by light."[33]
In this final example Jung points out that the man with the beard is the archetypal symbol for God.
The symbolism of the other two figures the dreamer encounters can be interpreted as (the elephant for) nature and man, making a thematic nature, man and God. The success on the third - "third time lucky" - is a well-known formulation in fairy tales (and mythology) world-wide, the list almost endless: The Three Bears, Cinderella, The Three Little Pigs, Rumpel-Stilts-Skin, Aladin and the Lamp, The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs, etc. etc. (How von Franz manages to interpret The Three Feathers as success on the fourth is totally beyond me.)
The same theme underlies the universal hero being tested three times to gain spiritual power and immortality.
Emma Jung was deeply interested in Arthurian lore, writing with Marie-Louise von Franz a seminal volume on the Holy Grail,
and was familiar with the tale of : Sir gawain and The Green knight, it was certainly a great favourite with the Jungian-flavoured mythologist Joseph Campbell.
and was familiar with the tale of : Sir gawain and The Green knight, it was certainly a great favourite with the Jungian-flavoured mythologist Joseph Campbell.
The tale is one of death and resurrection, symbolised in the opening scene by the axe and the holly branch which the Green Knight carries with him into the court of King Arthur, and follows the standard formulation of the hero achieving the victorious goal after a series of trials based on the triple test (see below).
There is one final triadic example from this volume where Jung interprets an ace of clubs as a trinity becoming a cross. This again fits the formulation of an original likeness of the parts of the triality finding expression through the 'odd' fourth.
Perhaps the most important dream Jung had - for himself and his psychological system - was the one of Liverpool which marked the end of his midlife or creative trauma, and with it the finish of his mandala drawing and painting. Originally Jung published the dream in 1929, attributing it to "a patient", as indeed it still is in The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious[34].
However, the dream is related in his autobiography as his own. Moreover, the dream is slightly altered from the original account, the most telling being the opening scene. In the original version it commences thus:
The dreamer found himself with three younger travelling companions in Liverpool.
In the autobiographical version:
I found myself in a dirty, sooty city. It was night, and winter, and dark, and raining. I was in Liverpool. With a number of Swiss - say half a dozen - I walked through the dark streets.[35]
Both versions end with the discovery of a red-flowering magnolia, which is for Jung the centre of the psyche, the Self, beyond which it is impossible to go. This then is the end of his internal quest. The importance of this discovery cannot be underrated; Jung himself writes in the most pressing way to convey this sense of importance:
The dream depicted the climax of the whole process of development of the conscious....Without such a vision I might perhaps have lost my orientation and been compelled to abandon my undertaking. But here the meaning had been made clear. When I parted from Freud, I knew nothing; but I had taken the step into darkness. When that happens, and then such a dream comes, one feels it is an act of grace.[36]
This whole breakthrough is enacted by Jung and three others, but this is, for some reason, omitted from the later version in the '50s. This, I feel, is an unconscious attempt to devalue the importance of the trinity, which is nevertheless replaced by "say, half a dozen", the double trinity.
His fantasies at the very beginning of the midlife trauma, which ended with the Liverpool dream, are also full of trinitarian symbolism, which again is overlooked by Jung as well as commentators on his life. On 12 December 1913 he withdrew his internal barriers and plunged into his transforming, creative illness, which was to last for four years.
Jung wrote, "I let myself drop." After "descending a thousand feet or more" he eventually meets three individuals, Elijah, Salome and a black serpent. He understands these characters as: "Elijah is the figure of the wise old prophet"; "Salome, the erotic element"; and "the snake was an indication of a hero myth". Not only is this an obvious triad but the three modalities of the Self are expressed in the formulation of Elijah=God, Salome=Nature and the snake=Man.
These characters eventually give way to three others, namely Philemon who develops out of Elijah, Ka[e] who was "a spirit of nature" and a woman, the anima, who "must be the 'soul', in the primitive sense".
As the alchemists discovered, the spirit Mercurius can be a good friend (as in the Liverpool dream) or the "dark tricephalus"[f], the tempter, deceiver and adversary of the universal hero. By overcoming the chthonic trinity the saviour not only becomes a demi-god but, in bringing the fruits of his victory to the tribe, ensures the spiritual and physical well-being of mankind.
One of the stories from Hindu mythology seems to prefigure the struggles of Buddha and Christ with the Evil One. In the case of Hinduism the Christ-like person is the son of a Brahman, Tvashiri, who is eventually killed by the god Indra. Tvashiri, in a bid to outdo Indra, created a three-headed son who possessed wondrous spiritual power which grew at such a rate it promised to absorb the universe.
The three heads had the separate functions of reading the Vedas, feeding himself, and observing all that existed: a combination of intellectual, physical and divine sustenance - the totality of life.
As in the accounts of the temptations of Christ and the trials of Gautama, the tricephalus Brahman is attacked three times: firstly through seduction by Heavenly maidens; secondly by a thunderbolt thrown by Indra which kills the hero; and lastly by a triple decapitation. The final onslaught, ordered by Indra because the body continued to glow with the light of spirituality, released a great flight of doves and other birds, symbolising the resurrection of the perfected spirit and is analogous to the enlightenment of Buddha and the defeat of Satan in the wilderness.
The attacks on Gautama by Mara are variations on the same ideas of seduction, attack by the actual god and attack by the god's henchman. The Buddha now becomes an enlightened being, losing his old material desires, and brings salvation to mankind.
In the Middle East there existed other notorious examples of the triple heroic test, and cannot be unconnected with the temptations of Christ.
In ancient Egypt one of the stories of Se-Osiris (reputedly the greatest Egyptian magician) from the 13th century BC show him in psychic battle with the Ethiopian the Son of Tnahsit who is the agent of Apophis, the Egyptian Devil. As in the other stories, Se-Osiris has to overcome his satanic adversary three times in order to prove himself and gain total victory.
Firstly, the Ethiopian manifests a huge serpent in front of the Pharoah, but Se-Osiris picks up this giant cobra, turns it into a small white worm and throws it out of the window.
Next the evil protagonist summons a large black cloud which resembles the darkness of the tomb or the dark cloud of smoke from burning bodies. Again, the hero easily decreases the threat to an infinitesimal size and throws it out of the window.
The final threat is in the shape of a sheet of flame moving towards Pharaoh, but the good magician reverses its movement back in the direction of his adversary, who is subsequently engulfed and totally defeated.
Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, writes of the triple life force released by the universal hero upon completion of his struggle with the internal monster; the bestowing of the secret treasure, the Holy Grail:
The effect of the successful adventure of the hero is the unlocking and release again of the flow of life into the body of the world. The miracle of this flow may be represented in physical terms as a circulation of food substance, dynamically as a stream of energy, or spiritually as a manifestation of Grace. Such varieties of image alternate easily, representing three degrees of condensation of the one life force.[37]
The hero's encounters infer a triality of character, with ramifications for typological classification. Tripartite man is a theme as old as that of the trinity, the two being inextricably linked in the relationship of micro and macrocosmic.
The origin of much of the tripartite formulations is to be found in the works of Plato, originator of the archetype theory of Form or Idea.
Plato's own threefold division of the soul is into spirit, reason and desire.
It is from these three segments that the layers of society in the utopian Republic are derived: the Guardians, the Auxiliaries and the Plebs.
Broadly, the philosophers, the spiritually enlightened, rule over and guide society, the military types carry out the directives of the elite, applying the rules to the governorship of the materialistic majority.
It is from these three segments that the layers of society in the utopian Republic are derived: the Guardians, the Auxiliaries and the Plebs.
Broadly, the philosophers, the spiritually enlightened, rule over and guide society, the military types carry out the directives of the elite, applying the rules to the governorship of the materialistic majority.
This hierarchical view of tripartness is counter-balanced by an egalitarian formulation allegorised in the Phaedrus by a charioteer and two horses. One horse is an expression of honour and modesty whilst the other stands for man's animal desires, with their unity in the hands of the charioteer, the middle conjoining factor.
The Gnostics use this platonic schema in their soteriological explanations - the saved spiritual type, the pneumatic, the damned materialists, the hylic, and those with the possibility of choice, the psychic - described in the Jung codex of the Nag Hammadi library.
I say this because he was one of the old-school of psychologists much admired by Jung. Interestingly, Dostoyevsky was also a great fan and one wonders if the three Karamazov brothers, Dmitri, Ivan and Alyosha, characterising respectively blind social obedience, the human intellect and mystical-propheticism, were not Carus-inspired.
My Note
Edinger too, notes much in his , 'Creation of Consciousness', the God-Imago, is represented in the dreams of mental patients , as , 'an ape-man figure , with no neck, who 'expels flatus loudly', he equates this figure with the description of Yahweh in the Book of Job.
He also notes, that this figure, is 'whirling', something echoed in the movements/artistic productions, of AUTISTIC CHILDREN.
He notes; the 'Self', must be given attention! as the egocentricity, is 'inside', ie, in an identification [usually negative]
This has been the case, reported by victims of trauma-induced 'mind control', especially in the USA.
Honesty, Ruthless Honesty, is required.
Prince's Dock,Liverpool.Other therapy can prove redemptive;
Abstract
In 1939, Margaret Lowenfeld, a child psychiatrist in London, created a therapeutic medium with which children could freely communicate and express themselves. Through the influence of Jungian, Dora Kalff, and the Jungian theories she applied to it, this new technique spread throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan. Termed 
Sandplay
by Kalff, it is recognized as a highly effective and creative modality used mostly in child therapy, but also in Jungian analysis with adults. As a sandplay therapist who specializes in sexual abuse treatment, I have experienced the healing power of sandplay in the treatment of traumatized children, especially those who were sexually abused. The focus of this article is on the inner world expression and process of a boy I call Adam, who was a participant in my doctoral dissertation study on sandplay with sexually abused children. The article describes Adam's twelve-tray sandplay process and the theories behind the assessments that I made, based on Jungian psychology, Kalffian sandplay theory, and previous research.
Sandplay by Kalff, it is recognized as a highly effective and creative modality used mostly in child therapy, but also in Jungian analysis with adults. As a sandplay therapist who specializes in sexual abuse treatment, I have experienced the healing power of sandplay in the treatment of traumatized children, especially those who were sexually abused. The focus of this article is on the inner world expression and process of a boy I call Adam, who was a participant in my doctoral dissertation study on sandplay with sexually abused children. The article describes Adam's twelve-tray sandplay process and the theories behind the assessments that I made, based on Jungian psychology, Kalffian sandplay theory, and previous research.
Victims of 'Magicians', [negative ego-identified people, who do not understand themselves]
are usually male.Sexual abuse is part of their 'apprenticeship'.
But, in the world of negative -identifications, lies are made to appear as 'truths'.
An examination of the 'nadi's', in esoteric literature, will show some unusual, 'energy paths' etc.
I, posted this Picture to illustrate, some ,relatively, 'unknown', pathways or 'Channels', that 'Spiritual', seekers are known to use in India etc, for example.
The Chinese, call, some, of, these, 'Channels', by,other names, Acupuncture', points, etc.
It, would follow, logically, that the Psyche, too, has 'Channels'......
The Chinese, call, some, of, these, 'Channels', by,other names, Acupuncture', points, etc.
It, would follow, logically, that the Psyche, too, has 'Channels'......
Jung made the connection to Liverpool being the 'Pool of Life' being somehow related to the 'Liver' in the Human body but I suspect He had no idea about the Origins of the word..
There are many Theories but My own thinking is it relates in many ways to the Cormorant depicted
as a stylised replacement for the original 'Eagle' on the Royal Seal of King John which was lost some time after 1207
No comments:
Post a Comment