The Way of the Dream: Part One-Introduction to Jungian Analysis
The Way of the Dream: Introduction, Complexes & Concepts
Introduction to Jungian Analysis, Complexes, and Concepts
This is Part 1 of an original 3 part series written by Celine Lai.
Analytical psychology approaches psychotherapy and depth analysis in the tradition established by C. G. Jung. As originally defined by Jung, it is distinguished by a focus on the role of symbolic and spiritual experiences in human life and rests on Jung’s theory of archetypes and the existence of deep psychic space or collective unconscious.
I count myself as being fortunate to be drawn to Jungian analysis or Jungian psychology (also called analytical psychology) in my early twenties.
This was because my “dream time” was MY TIME, it was a space in which I knew that my “Self” was trying to help me, in different manners, and through content that was significant to varying degrees.
“Jung” is pronounced Yoong, and Carl Gustav Jung was born in Switzerland in 1875. Many of his experiences as a child would later inform the development of his theories about the psyche, including his own sense of having two distinct personalities — one a normal Swiss child, and the other a deeper, perhaps older, personality.
While initially a supporter of Sigmund Freud’s theories on dream meaning, Jung eventually split from Freud, in 1913. Through the 1920s Jung devoted himself to a deeper investigation of the collective unconscious, both by way of his clinical practice in Zurich and through extensive travels in North America, Africa, and Asia.
Certain of Jung’s concepts and terms have entered into everyday language, such as introversion and extroversion, complex and archetype.
Jung referred to integrating all aspects of the “Self” as “individuation.” Gradually we evolve our unique conscious personality from the unconscious through our encounters from the world around us.
A complex is a collection or a core pattern of images, ideas and feelings, in the personal unconscious organized around a common theme, and which may manifest in one’s dreams through symbols.
These complexes can be associated with particularly difficult experiences in the past or with archetypal qualities, such as masculinity or aggression, that the individual has not been able to harness or deal with.
Jung discovered from working with psychotic individuals that their experiences fell into certain patterns, and that, furthermore, each of our psyches is structured by these patterns which arise in or from the collective unconscious.
He called these patterns archetypes.
Jung said an archetype is an a priori historical condition, a kind of blue print, so to speak of, an instinct: “…the archetype [is] a structural quality peculiar to the psyche, which is somehow connected to the brain.” It is an autonomous element of the unconscious inherited with the brain’s structure. This kind of instinct is numinous — it cannot be known in a normal way and differs from purely biological instincts, i.e. not conditioned but adheres to laws inherent to autonomous rules of life itself.
Source: https://appliedjung.com/complex-archetype-symbol/
Jung understood one or more archetypes to be at the core of each complex. The collective unconscious relates in this way to the personal unconscious.
Dreams are a way for the subconscious mind to express itself.
Here is a link to a spectacular dream that I had 12 years ago, and its analysis, including the appearance of the archetype of “The Great Mother.”
Jung’s view is that the psyche has the unique capacity to translate physical events into archetypal images. Archetypal images can be projected onto others during waking conscious moments.
Projection is an unconscious, automatic process whereby a content which is unconscious to a subject transfers itself to an object, so it seems to belong to that object.
Respect your dreams, and guided by patience, intuition and knowledge, they will yield their secrets.
CONCEPTS
Before rushing out to look up a dictionary of dream symbols or archetypes, it would benefit the person interested in learning from their dreams, to understand some Jungian concepts.
Jung noted the relationship between our personal unconscious, which contains an individual’s personal memories and ideas, and a collective unconscious, a set of memories and ideas that is shared amongst all of humanity.
Shared concepts, which Jung described as archetypes, permeate the collective unconscious and emerge as themes and characters in our dreams and surface in our culture — in myths, books, films and paintings, for example.
Source: https://www.psychologistworld.com/cognitive/carl-jung-analytical-psychology
The Collective Unconscious
Jolande Jacobi in the book “Psychology of C.G. Jung” writes: “The collective unconscious is a supra-personal matrix, as the unlimited sum of fundamental psychic conditions accumulated over millions of years, in a realm of immeasurable breadth and depth.” (p.59)
The collective unconscious is key to Jung’s theories of the mind as it contains the archetypes. Jung proposed that we are each born with a collective unconscious.
Jung is credited with exploring unconsciousness as an objective and collective psyche, which he called the collective unconscious because it consists of images and behavioural patterns not acquired by an individual in his or her lifetime, yet accessible to all individuals in all times, unconscious because it can’t be reached through conscious awareness.
The Ego
To Jung, the ego is just one small portion of the Self, however; Jung believed that consciousness is selective, and the ego is the part of the self that selects the most relevant information from the environment and chooses a direction to take based on it, while the rest of the information sinks into the unconscious.
The ego is the center of the field of consciousness, the part of the psyche where our conscious awareness resides, our sense of identity and existence.