The Cat: Redeeming the feminine

X-ray of "Susanna and the Elders," Artemisia Gentileschi

[Image from Kathleen Gilje]


The following are selected excerpts of Marie-Louise von Franz's short but standout book exploring the fairy tale “The Cat,” and what is needed to redeem the feminine soul of the West.

So now we see that the cat is a shadow of the Virgin Mary. It is that part of feminine nature that the Virgin Mary did not represent but which would belong to a complete image of the feminine. Therefore you could say that the Virgin Mary herself has a cat shadow, and in our story, in eating the apples the empress penetrates into the mystery of good and evil within the feminine. The tension is not so much the tension between good and evil, but between the impersonal, collective sublime and what is personal, individual, vital and natural. It’s another polarity which is typical of the feminine realm. And Mary therefore curses the unborn girl and says she has to become a cat.

In fairy tales, the established powers – God, the Trinity, the Virgin Mary and very much also the Devil in Hell – always act against children. That means they want to block future development, and that inertia is typical. Established god-images, established religious archetypal systems and images, are liable to prevent further development and that’s why the curse of the Virgin Mary does not fall on the empress. She could have cursed the empress for having stolen the apples, but instead of that she curses her child. That means she does not want a new form of femininity to develop. And so the girl becomes the cat, which is just the new form of femininity

-----

The Virgin Mary has no contact with the flesh. She is never represented naked in sacred pictures. She is always well veiled and her body is not visible. Her flesh is discreetly hidden. So that is one part of the unredeemed shadow side of the feminine from the Christian standpoint. Our hero is quite naively and naturally hungry for that flesh and so far that would be easy. You could say the cat catches him by his physical desires and that, in a way, if we take it from a man’s standpoint, is natural because generally the anima first appears in a man as physical desire, for instance a sexual fantasy. Then when he goes after it, he finds it isn’t flesh but only a mirage of flesh and is actually a lot of precious stones.

It is a tantalizing situation and I’ll jump ahead now to say that we know the story from the man’s standpoint is about the assimilation of the anima, her redemption, and from a woman’s standpoint redemption of the feminine. The dead flesh is only a tease, a mirage, which the unconscious uses as bait but then takes away. We have to put the accent on the dead aspect. The anima and the feminine body is of no value if the man looks at it as being dead meat he can eat. If a man treats a woman as a good beefsteak to eat, then he misses the anima.

-----

“Take the serpent, and place it in the chariot with four wheels, and let it be turned about on the earth until it is immersed in the depths of the sea… And there let the chariot with the wheels remain, until so many fumes rise up from the serpent than the whole surface… becomes dry."

What is so important about the carriage is the four wheels. The carriage is a mandala with four wheels around it, and that can be compared to the chariot vision of Ezekiel. You can say that the total structure of consciousness is the carriage, because it is man-made. It doesn’t have much to do with instinct. As the structure of consciousness the carriage serves the gods. Through the vehicle of ego-consciousness the gods are incarnated or actualized. They cannot move a finger if human consciousness does not carry them. That, for instance, is the deeper reason for these processions where the gods are moved through the crowd on carriages; it is to remind people that the god is in a way banished in his temple, and he can’t do anything if he doesn’t move. He has to be carried by the consciousness of the people. That’s why in India, still today, sometimes people throw themselves under the carriage. That would be an unconscious gesture, as if to say, “I sacrifice my life to serve a consciousness that promotes the life of the gods.” That’s more or less what that gesture means. “I have to give up my ego. I sacrifice myself so that the gods can move, can go on living.”

If we are not conscious of the automonous life of the archetypes in the psyche, then they are seemingly nonexistent and, in fact, even destructive. That is why in a society where the archetypes are no longer honored in any way, believed in or taken care of consciously, you have surrogates, morbid political ideas, isms of all kinds, or drugs. You have all the destructive powers overtaking people, because the gods cannot move without humans. They are paralyzed if we don’t carry them.

-----

So, to come a long way back to her, if our cat is capable of calling up a fire or lightning carriage with a crack of a whip, she reveals in that moment that she’s a goddess and not just a cat. She is a goddess and she is the virgin Mary’s shadow, not a woman. And now you see more what the jewels behind the meat are. Our hero wanted the flesh and instead he fell into the jewels, the eternal or the divine. He has to realize that divine aspect of the flesh. It is not enough for instance, for a Christian who has up until now despised the flesh, to say, “now I’m going to throw my prudish prejudices overboard. I’m going to have juicy sex and enjoy it.” That would be eating the flesh. That’s nothing. If he does that he doesn’t move one inch out of the old kingdom, he’s still caught in it. He only adds the dimension of so-called sin to it. But nothing has happened. He has to realize that the flesh is a form of the divine, a divine revelation, and that sexuality is divine.

That’s what Jung fought with Freud about. He agreed completely with Freud that sex should be liberated and should be lived, not treated with prudish repression, but he wanted to say that sex is a religious experience as in Tantra. And if you live it, therefore, only with the idea, “That’s very healthy for my hormones and makes me physically better,” then you have missed the whole point. Then you have eaten dead meat, rotten meat. The redemption of the feminine means not the redemption of the flesh; it means the redemption of the divinity of the flesh, of the divine, archetypal, godlike aspect of the flesh…

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The old emperor is the old conscious Christian attitude. And if the old conscious attitude now wants to have that newly redeemed feminine for himself, that would look like Susanna and the elders, the lecherous old men; that’s a common theme of art and literature. Concretely it exists. We all know it exists. If you take it as symbolic, it’s the new wine in old bottles. The emperor symbolizes the old principle of consciousness that wants to integrate or to profit from the renewal of life that has come forth in another domain. He wants to assimilate it and would kill it if he could. The poor cat lady would be like an unhappy old hag within a year if she married the old man.

She has the intention of making [the prince] a man and forcing him to take an absolute stand against the old emperor, not just to go away from it but to really say what is what. That is absolutely on the mark of what I feel too, namely that something new must not be peacefully inserted into the old habits. There are certain new things that one must have the honesty to call new and to stand up for, because otherwise the new energy is lost.

Jung once said something to me after I had been to visit a lot of old relatives and had a catastrophic dream that night. Now consciously I thought they were all old horrors and I made fun of them and went home, but that wasn’t enough. The unconscious said, “No, this is really dangerous,” and Jung said, “Yes. If one does not constantly walk forward, the past sucks one back. The past is like an enormous sucking wind that sucks one back all the time. If you don’t go forward you regress. You have constantly to carry the torch of the new light forward, so to speak, historically and also in your own life. As soon as you begin to look backward sadly, or even scornfully, it has you again. The past is a tremendous power.” So the overcoming of the old emperor means to be absolutely inexorable, ruthless about what is different and new.

There is a sense in this fairy tale that she, the cat, is the linen which the old emperor had yearned for and sent his sons out to find. The old order knows in some unconscious or fantasy way what it lacks, and when it comes into view it wants to take it over and claim it for its own, even though a generation has come between. There one has to leave the old emperor alone. One has to leave the past to itself. “Let the dead bury the dead,” as Christ said.

- Marie Louse von Franz, The Cat: A Tale of Feminine Redemption, pg. 61

"We are all deplorables"

Walking to work, and thinking about all the people who voted for Trump but claim not to be racist... who believe his promises to bring back coal jobs (he can't) and build a wall to keep the immigrants out (he won't) and Make America Great Again (too late.) These are the same people who say that they're angry at liberals because they look down on them and think that they're stupid and uneducated... but I'm thinking that I'm not wrong in thinking that they are, in fact, so ignorant and so lacking in the ability to think critically. So what's missing??? I know it has to do with my inferior feeling function, so what is it??

Then later that day I read this article, and I felt it:

My relatives in Maine are deplorables. I cannot write on their behalf. I can write in their defense. They live in towns and villages that have been ravaged by deindustrialization. The bank in Mechanic Falls, where my grandparents lived, is boarded up, along with nearly every downtown store. The paper mill closed decades ago. There is a strip club in the center of the town. The jobs, at least the good ones, are gone. Many of my relatives and their neighbors work up to 70 hours a week at three minimum-wage jobs, without benefits, to make perhaps $35,000 a year. Or they have no jobs. They cannot afford adequate health coverage under the scam of Obamacare. Alcoholism is rampant in the region. Heroin addiction is an epidemic. Labs producing the street drug methamphetamine make up a cottage industry. Suicide is common. Domestic abuse and sexual assault destroy families. Despair and rage among the population have fueled an inchoate racism, homophobia and Islamophobia and feed the latent and ever present poison of white supremacy...

Those cast aside by the neoliberal order have an economic identity that both the liberal class and the right wing are unwilling to acknowledge. This economic identity is one the white underclass shares with other discarded people, including the undocumented workers and the people of color demonized by the carnival barkers on cable news shows. This is an economic reality the power elites invest great energy in masking.

Martin Luther King Jr. understood the downward spiral of hating those who hate you. “In a real sense all life is inter-related,” he wrote in “Letter From a Birmingham Jail.” “All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. …”

It's empathy... but it goes beyond empathy; it's a "feeling with" that accepts weakness and reality, but opens the picture, away from cold, simple facts to a fuller world and relationship. It's sympathy but goes beyond sympathy; it's not mere compassion or pity, not a looking down upon, but a taking in of another's experience, a removal of the glass that's between us to allow us to connect, as one warm human animal to another.

Link:
We Are All Deplorables, by Chris Hedges (Truthdig)

Glossary: Ego

The center of the field of consciousness; the “I” of consciousness. The ego is just one complex among many but it’s very important as it organizes all other contents in the conscious. It's based on the archetype of the Self (the central complex of the total person, both conscious and unconscious); however, the ego is the central complex only of the relatively tiny, conscious part of the psyche. Can be the cause of many problems but necessary for individuation; a weak ego is too “small” to serve as a container for unconscious contents but a strong ego is able to both hold these experiences as well as make the necessary moral choice to undergo the often difficult and even painful experiences required for individuation.

The ego's chief job is discrimination; what is “me” and what is not me? Was that me or was that the persona, or animus, or some other complex? Again, a solid ego is necessary to discriminate the various complexes and relate to them without getting possessed or absorbed into the unconscious.

Anyone who has any ego-consciousness at all takes it for granted that he knows himself. But the ego knows only its own contents, not the unconscious and its contents. People measure their self-knowledge by what the average person in their social environment knows of himself, but not by the real psychic facts which are for the most part hidden from them. In this respect the psyche behaves like the body, of whose physiological and anatomical structure the average person knows very little too.

- The Undiscovered Self," CW 10, par. 491

The ego stands to the Self as the moved to the mover, or as object to subject, because the determining factors which radiate out from the Self surround the ego on all sides and are therefore supraordinate to it. The Self, like the unconscious, is an a priori existent out of which the ego evolves.

- Transformation Symbolism in the Mass," CW 11, par. 391

Through being realized, [the Self] "incarnates" itself, so to speak, in the moral life of the ego. If I had a gift for music like Beethoven's but never discovered or made use of it, it might as well not exist. Only the conscious ego is capable of realizing psychic contents. Even something as great, even divine, as the Self can only be realized by the ego. That is self-realization from a Jungian perspective.

- Marie Louise von Franz, Psychotherapy, p. 8

Jungianism: The eternal theory?

Jungian psychology is another such ship. Jung made a ship by creating certain hypotheses to which one can cling when one doesn't know up from down. When one is in danger of drowning in the unconscious, of having a huge inflation or something of the kind, falling into a possession or being overwhelmed by an affect, then such psychological concepts as Jung's can help.

- Marie Louise von Franz, The Cat: A Tale of Feminine Redemption


If every "ship," every religion/theory of the unconscious wears out, will Jungian psychology not also wear out and have to be replaced?

Maybe... maybe not? The ideas in the unconscious live for a long, long time. We're still finding riches in alchemy, and Greek and Egyptian myths. Maybe it's not the specific ideas which need to be replaced but the emphasis on the one side or the other, as originally we needed to get out of the Mother, and now we need to move back to Her. Certainly, as we collectively integrate more and more of our projections, and are able to see more of the world as it is, our understanding of things, including the unconscious, will change.

However, one thing won't change; the technique. The theory may evolve or even be completely replaced, but the technique of listening to the unconscious, and of the importance of relationship in overcoming psychological problems, will always be true.

Glossary: Dream Series

A series of dreams related by content or subject. Over a person’s life their relationship with internal content changes and grows, and these changes are reflected in the way they change in our dreams. The dreams show the progress of the dialogue between one’s ego and the unconscious. Each individual dream is just one page in a person’s life; you have to look at how the dreams change over time to understand the story of their life.

Glossary: Dream Analysis

Interpreting the symbolism of one’s dream in order to understand the unconscious’s view of a one’s situation. This is done by both looking at the individual’s personal associations with the person or object being looked at as well as through amplification.

Dreams are impartial, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche, outside the control of the will. They are pure nature; they show us the unvarnished, natural truth, and are therefore fitted, as nothing else is, to give us back an attitude that accords with our basic human nature when our consciousness has strayed too far from its foundations and run into an impasse.

- Jung, Collected Works Volume 10, paragraph 317

The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the psyche, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego consciousness may extend… All consciousness separates; but in dreams we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night. There is still the whole, and the whole is in him, indistinguishable from nature and bare of all egohood. Out of these all-uniting depths arises the dream, be it never so infantile, never so grotesque, never so immoral.

- Jung, Civilisation in Transition, Collected Works, Vol. 1

Glossary: Primary Function

A person’s strongest function; the one that comes easiest and therefore the one that’s the most highly developed and differentiated. The most socially adapted function, it allows us to survive and even succeed in the world. Because our primary function is the most developed of our four functions we tend to rely on our it the most. The opposite function will always be one’s inferior function.

Experience shows that it is practically impossible, owing to adverse circumstances in general, for anyone to develop all his psychological functions simultaneously. The demands of society compel a man to apply himself first and foremost to the differentiation of the function with which he is best equipped by nature, or which will secure him the greatest social success. Very frequently, indeed as a general rule, a man identifies more or less completely with the most favored and hence the most developed function. It is this that gives rise to the various psychological types.

- Definitions," CW 6, par. 763

The superior function is always an expression of the conscious personality, of its aims, will, and general performance, whereas the less differentiated functions fall into the category of things that simply "happen" to one.

- General Description of the Types," ibid., par. 575.

In deciding which of the four functions - thinking, feeling, sensation or intuition - is primary, one must closely observe which function is more or less completely under conscious control, and which functions have a haphazard or random character. The superior function (which can manifest in either an introverted or an extraverted way) is always more highly developed than the others, which possess infantile and primitive traits.

- http://www.psychceu.com/jung/sharplexicon.html


See also:
The plumb line of personality

Glossary: Countertransference

In analysis, the emotionally charged projection of unconscious contents by the analyst onto the analysand. See transference.

Even if the analyst has no neurosis, but only a rather more extensive area of unconsciousness than usual, this is sufficient to produce a sphere of mutual unconsciousness, i.e., a counter-transference. This phenomenon is one of the chief occupational hazards of psychotherapy. It causes psychic infections in both analyst and patient and brings the therapeutic process to a standstill. This state of unconscious identity is also the reason why an analyst can help his patient just so far as he himself has gone and not a step further.

- “Appendix," CW 16, par. 545

A transference is answered by a counter-transference from the analyst when it projects a content of which he is unconscious but which nevertheless exists in him. The counter-transference is then just as useful and meaningful, or as much of a hindrance, as the transference of the patient, according to whether or not it seeks to establish that better rapport which is essential for the realization of certain unconscious contents. Like the transference, the counter-transference is compulsive, a forcible tie, because it creates a "mystical" or unconscious identity with the object

- “General Aspects of Dream Psychology," CW 8, par. 519

Glossary: Contamination

The propensity for unconscious contents to blend with and get mixed up with each other. Part of the work of analysis is to differentiate these contents.

As these archetypal images are produced directly by the unconscious, it is not surprising that they exhibit its contamination of content to a very high degree. The best instances of this interconnection of everything with everything else can be found in dreams, which are very much nearer to the unconscious even than myths"

- CW 14, p. 293

Glossary: Constellation

Activation of an archetype or complex. E.g. feelings of vulnerability or abandonment can activate the child complex. A time-bound grouping of events.

This term simply expresses the fact that the outward situation releases a psychic process in which certain contents gather together and prepare for action. When we say that a person is "constellated" we mean that he has taken up a position from which he can be expected to react in a quite definite way… The constellated contents are definite complexes possessing their own specific energy.

- "A Review of the Complex Theory," CW 8, par. 198

Glossary: Analytical Psychology

"Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens."
 - C.G. Jung


A form of depth psychology that, like Freud’s psychoanalysis, theorizes that psychological problems (neuroses) arise from the unconscious. Therefore, the only true solution to such problems is to enter into a dialog with one’s unconscious. This begins with paying attention to one’s dreams, since dreams are one of the few places where the conscious and unconscious parts of the psyche meet.

In analytical psychology the important thing is that the analyst be psychologically healthy, as Jung held that the crucial healing factor was the analyst’s personality itself, not any technique that they may bring to the therapeutic encounter. The aim of therapy isn’t to “fix” a person but to provide support as they go through a time of challenge and growth and come out the other side a more integrated human being.

Analytical psychology is characterized by a radically anti-authoritarian approach. The analyst is to approach every encounter with an open mind and an open heart, with no pre-conceived notions of what the analysand needs. This is partly to avoid infantalizing the analysand but mostly because we never know what the unconscious is planning.

The aim of analysis is a widening of the conscious personality by integrating parts of ourselves that have fallen into the unconscious, usually starting with the shadow; continuing to the animus or anima; the Wise Old Woman/Man; and, finally, the Self. This leads to a strong, flexible, lively ego, and a life that is felt as deeply meaningful.

[Analysis] is only a means for removing the stones from the path of development, and not a method… of putting things into the patient that were not there before. It is better to renounce any attempt to give direction, and simply try to throw into relief everything that the analysis brings to light, so that the patient can see it clearly and be able to draw suitable conclusions. Anything he has not acquired himself he will not believe in the long run, and what he takes over from authority merely keeps him infantile. He should rather be put in a position to take his own life in hand. The art of analysis lies in following the patient on all his erring ways and so gathering his strayed sheep together.

- “Some Crucial Points in Psychoanalysis," CW 4, par. 643

That’s why in Jungian therapy we offer the patient an opportunity to establish a unique relationship which is not a technique of therapy, but a personal encounter. That’s why Jung said to forget all psychological theories when you meet the patient. Just meet him with your heart and your mind as a unique human being. Then every encounter is an adventure…

- Marie Louise von Franz (from Fraser Boa's "The Way of the Dream," p. 71)



Quotes on Jungian, or analytical, psychology:

The Jungian approach observes that our personality spontaneously produces images which symbolically communicate the means of resolving a given impasse and — more generally — the unique life course for each individual in pursuit of meaning and satisfaction to follow. In practical terms the Jungian focus studies dreams as a way of getting at this deeper source of knowledge. Such has been my enduring fascination: to learn the nature of our symbolic language, to understand its value in the therapeutic setting and to discover its relevance to solving human problems in general.

- J. Gary Sparks

Jungian analysis is the psychotherapeutic process of re-establishing a healthy balance between the conscious and unconscious parts of our personality as we strive towards wholeness, not perfection. In the process, our ego is strengthened by integration of what we call the shadow, or the unconscious parts of our personality. We strive to establish a healthier relationship with our contra-sexual side and ultimately to develop a connection with the greater personality, the Self. This is accomplished through work with dreams, which reveal what is missing from our conscious perception, through discussion of everyday events and problems and through any other creative medium, ie. sandplay, art, movement, etc. The result of this work is a mitigation of unhealthy behavior patterns and greater consciousness, leading to a healthier, more filling life.

Nancy Furlotti, M.A.

Analytical Psychology focuses on attending to the soul and thriving toward wholeness through the individuation process, the process of differentiating and integrating unconscious contents

Meredith Mitchell, Ph.D.

Jungian analysis supports the work of individuation by fostering a reciprocal relationship between conscious and unconscious, personal and transpersonal, spirit and matter, all of which includes the religious function of the psyche as the transforming agent.

Rose-Emily Rothenberg, M.A.

- C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles


Posts:

"What a Shaman Sees in a Mental Hospital" 



Further information:
The Society of Analytical Psychology


See also:
Only the individual can heal the individual, and only the individual can be healed


(Image from Jung Utah)

Why are dreams so hard to understand?

Question: If dreams are messages sent to inform our consciousness, why are they so obscure?

That has puzzled me too. I have often asked reproachfully, “Why does this damned unconscious talk such a Chinese difficult language? Why doesn’t it tell us clearly what’s the matter?” Now Jung’s answer was that it obviously can’t. It doesn’t speak the language of the rational mind. Dreams are the voice of our instinctive animal nature or ultimately the voice of cosmic matter in us. This is a very daring hypothesis, but I’ll venture to say that the collective unconscious and organic atomic matter are probably two aspects of the same thing. So the dreams are ultimately the voice of cosmic matter. Therefore, just as we cannot understand the behavior of atoms (look at the Chinese language modern physicists have to use to describe the behavior of an electron), so we have to use the same kind of language to describe the deeper layers of the dream world.

The dream takes us into the mysteries of nature strange to our rational mind. We can compare it to atomic physics, where the most complicated formulas are not sufficient to describe what is happening. I don’t know why nature has constructed our rational mind in a way that prevents us from understanding the whole of nature. We are born with a brain which seeming can understand only certain aspects., Perhaps there will be later mutations on another planet where Nature will invent a brain which can understand these things.

- Marie Louise von Franz (from Fraser Boa’s The Way of the Dream), p. 216

Glossary: Consciousness

The part of our psyche that we’re consciously aware of. Consists of all the thoughts and feelings that are presently inside the field of awareness. Things that are conscious are within the field of awareness of the ego, but this is a tiny fraction of what’s accessible to the Self. The aim of Jungian psychology is to bring into consciousness, i.e. to integrate into one’s ego, that which was split off from the ego and pushed down into the unconscious. We say we “become conscious” by bringing these split off parts of ourselves back into relationship with our conscious selves. The Jungian concept of consciousness differs from Freud in that while Freud believed that unconscious contents originated in conscious experience, Jung believed that the unconscious came first, creating consciousness, like an egg born from the primordial chaos.

Consciousness does not create itself-it wells up from unknown depths. In childhood it awakens gradually, and all through life it wakes each morning out of the depths of sleep from an unconscious condition. It is like a child that is born daily out of the primordial womb of the unconscious… It is not only influenced by the unconscious but continually emerges out of it in the form of numberless spontaneous ideas and sudden flashes of thought.

- "The Psychology of Eastern Meditation," CW 11, par. 935

There are two distinct ways in which consciousness arises. The one is a moment of high emotional tension, comparable to the scene in Parsifal where the hero, at the very moment of greatest temptation, suddenly realizes the meaning of Amfortas' wound. The other is a state of contemplation, in which ideas pass before the mind like dream-images. Suddenly there is a flash of association between two apparently disconnected and widely separated ideas, and this has the effect of releasing a latent tension. Such a moment often works like a revelation. In every case it seems to be the discharge of energy-tension, whether external or internal, which produces consciousness.

- "Analytical Psychology and Education," CW 17, par. 207

When one reflects upon what consciousness really is, one is profoundly impressed by the extreme wonder of the fact that an event which takes place outside in the cosmos simultaneously produces an internal image, that it takes place, so to speak, inside as well, which is to say: becomes conscious.

- CG. Jung, Basel Seminar, privately printed, 1934, p.1

The secret place

Legend has it that when the gods made the human race, they fell to arguing where to put the answers to life so the humans would have to search for them.

     One god said, “Let’s put the answers on top of a mountain. They will never look for them there.”
      “No,” said the others. “They’ll find them right away.”
      Another god said, “Let’s put them in the center of the earth. They will never look for them there.”
      “No,” said the others. “They’ll find them right away.”
      Then another spoke, “Let’s put them in the bottom of the sea. They will never look for them there.”
      “No,” said the others. “They’ll find them right away.”
      Silence fell…
      After a while another god spoke, “We can put the answers to life within them. They will never look for them there.”

      And so they did that.

- From Fraser Boa’s The Way of the Dream, p. 218

Glossary: Complex

Everyone knows nowadays that people "have complexes." What is not so well known, though far more important theoretically, is that complexes can have us.

- "A Review of the Complex Theory," par. 200


A collection of feelings and attitudes about a thing or person (e.g. the mother complex, a power complex, etc.). The complex forms around an archetype as one’s personal experiences accrue around it, like a pearl around a seed of sand. The Oedipus complex is probably the most famous complex but nearly anything can become a complex if there’s enough emotional experience. Some common complexes are: the mother complex, the father complex, a Jesus complex, the Don Juan complex, inferiority complex, superiority complex, God complex. Not all complexes are problematic but the same complex that is useful and well adapted in one person can be poorly adapted and neurotic in another.

Complexes are autonomous partial personalities that act like independent, though simplified, personalities in one’s psyche. Possession happens when one of these autonomous complexes invades the ego and takes over consciousness. One common example of this is possession by the animus or anima. The ego is also a complex; it’s one complex out of many but a very special complex and, unlike other complexes, is (hopefully) a fairly complete personality.

The difference between archetypes and complexes is that archetypes are the unconscious, universal symbol of a thing while complexes are the emotionally tinged expression of the archetype in a specific individual’s life. The archetype of a mother encompasses all aspects of the universal mother image, from nurturing to devouring. A person’s unique mother complex is shaped by personal experience but builds on the nucleus of the archetype; the mother archetype may be all things but one’s own mother complex will only express those things that you yourself experienced in your encounter with your personal mother.

Complexes interfere with the intentions of the will and disturb the conscious performance; they produce disturbances of memory and blockages in the flow of associations; they appear and disappear according to their own laws; they can temporarily obsess consciousness, or influence speech and action in an unconscious way. In a word, complexes behave like independent beings.

- “Psychological Factors in Human Behaviour," par. 253

Complexes obviously represent a kind of inferiority in the broadest sense… [but] to have complexes does not necessarily indicate inferiority. It only means that something discordant, unassimilated, and antagonistic exists, perhaps as an obstacle, but also as an incentive to greater effort, and so, perhaps, to new possibilities of achievement.

- “A Psychological Theory of Types," par. 925

The possession of complexes does not in itself signify neurosis… and the fact that they are painful is no proof of pathological disturbance. Suffering is not an illness; it is the normal counterpole to happiness. A complex becomes pathological only when we think we have not got it.

- “Psychotherapy and a Philosophy of Life," CW 16, par. 179

A complex can be really overcome only if it is lived out to the full. In other words, if we are to develop further we have to draw to us and drink down to the very dregs what, because of our complexes, we have held at a distance.

- "Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype," CW 9i, par. 184

Complexes are focal or nodal points of psychic life which we would not wish to do without; indeed, they should not be missing, for otherwise psychic activity would come to a fatal standstill.

- "A Psychological Theory of Types," CW 6, par. 925

Our entire psyche seems to consist of separate complexes which gather together into what one could call the psychic individuality, just as the Mendelian units of our hereditary factors together to form a unity.

We can clearly see in a small child, who still possesses a very labile ego-consciousness, how loosely the separate complexes live with each other in the moods which change like lightning and by means of which the youngster can switch from “loving child” to “devil” and vice versa, one moment completely affectionate, the next minute utterly engrossed in his play, one moment in deep despair, two minutes later joyful again, sucking a candy. These fluctuations decrease slowly as the conscious ego gradually builds itself up, but then the ego often experiences collisions of the individual complex-impulses within and must then learn to endure and control them. Once, when I was nine, I wanted to draw a picture of my dog whom I loved passionately, but he wouldn’t sit still. I was furious so I smacked him and shouted at him. I will never forget that dog’s innocent, offended look! I did not hit him again, but when I sat down to finish my drawing I felt clearly within me how the fury of my impatience and my love for the dog clashed painfully together. Jung conjectured once that ego consciousness first develops from collisions of the small child with the outer world and later from collisions of the growing ego with the impulses from its own inner world (as in the example of my fury with the dog). The “parliament of instincts,” as Konrad Lorenz would have called it, is not a peaceful organization within us; it is rather violent in there, and the President – the ego – often has difficulty asserting himself. From a practical point of view we can observe that whenever a complex becomes autonomous, then there always arise projections which disturb adaptation and blur the “mirror of inner truth.”

- Marie-Louise von Franz, Dreams


Link

"The Hidden Source of Self"

Glossary: Compensation

An automatic process by the unconscious to correct for excessive one-sidedness in the conscious personality. Counterbalance; the appearance of an opposite attitude when behavior is too one-sided. Along with dreams and neuroses, compensation is one of the mechanisms the unconscious uses to maintain balance in the psyche in its drive for wholeness.

The activity of consciousness is selective. Selection demands direction. But direction requires the exclusion of everything irrelevant. This is bound to make the conscious orientation one-sided. The contents that are excluded and inhibited by the chosen direction sink into the unconscious, where they form a counterweight to the conscious orientation. The strengthening of this counterposition keeps pace with the increase of conscious one-sidedness until finally… the repressed unconscious contents break through in the form of dreams and spontaneous images… As a rule, the unconscious compensation does not run counter to consciousness, but is rather a balancing or supplementing of the conscious orientation. In dreams, for instance, the unconscious supplies all those contents that are constellated by the conscious situation but are inhibited by conscious selection, although a knowledge of them would be indispensable for complete adaptation

- "Definitions," CW 6, par. 694

We have observed that this equilibrium is a function of the self. The Self, the innermost regulating center of the psyche, seems to aim at keeping the whole psychological system in a fluid balance. We call that the law of compensation. Whenever one takes on a lop-sided attitude in consciousness – too rational, too spiritual, too materialistic, too driven by a single drive – then the dreams compensate by bringing up that which outweigh it on the other side, that’s why Saint Augustine after his conversion to a higher spirituality said, “Thank God, I am not responsible for my dreams.” He must have had dreams which pulled him right down to earth.

This law of compensation, however, is not a mechanical compensation: if I try to be good, my dreams will be bad, or, if I try to be too cheerful, my dreams will be melancholy. It’s not a mechanical way of bringing in the opposite. Rather, it is a compensation in the service of the totality. It is as if the dream says, “You are lop-sided compared to your inner totality.” That is the essential wisdom of the dream: to preserve a balance among all our psychic opposites and establish a kind of middle ay. The unconscious seems to be in favor of the Chinese Yin/Yang philosophy, or the idea of the Tao as being a subtle balance of opposites.

- Marie Louise von Franz (from Fraser Boa’s The Way of the Dream), p. 226

Glossary: Collective unconscious

The part of the psyche that contains universal contents (the archetypes), not from personal experience but inherited from all humanity, and further back even, to our animal ancestors. The inborn, psychological aspect of our inborn instincts. Explains the universality of archetypes. In the same way that all humans have the inborn capacity for language and sight, they have inborn templates for universal human experiences (mothering, birth, death, etc.). The forms of the archetypes are hereditary and comparable to instinctive behavior patterns found in all animals. Compare with the personal unconscious.

First, fantasies (including dreams) of a personal character, which go back unquestionably to personal experiences, things forgotten or repressed, and can thus be completely explained by individual anamnesis. Second, fantasies (including dreams) of an impersonal character, which cannot be reduced to experiences in the individual's past, and thus cannot be explained as something individually acquired. These fantasy-images undoubtedly have their closest analogues in mythological types. . . . These cases are so numerous that we are obliged to assume the existence of a collective psychic substratum. I have called this the collective unconscious.

- "The Psychology of the Child Archetype," CW 9i, par. 262

The thin thread

As I was watching a video about Jung this particular section hit me hard. Trump is America's screaming Id in human form. Now more than ever we need to do everything in our power to prevent catastrophe in our own time.

When you observe the world you see people, you see houses, you see the sky, you see tangible objects. But when you observe yourself within you see moving images, a world of images, generally known as fantasies. Yet these fantasies are fact. It is a fact that a man has such and such fantasy, and it is such a tangible fact that when a man has a certain fantasy another man may lose his life. Or a bridge is built. These houses were all fantasies. Everything you do here, all of it was fantasy to begin with, and fantasy has a proper reality that is not to be forgotten. Fantasy is not nothing! It is of course not a tangible object but it is a fact nevertheless. It is, say, a form of energy, despite the fact we can’t measure it. It is a manifestation of something. And that is a reality that is just a reality as, for instance, the peace treaty of Versailles or something like that. It is no more… you can’t show it, but it has been a fact! And so psychical events are facts, are realities, and when you observe the stream of images within you observe an aspect of the world, the world within.

… The man who is going by the external world, by the influences of the external world - say, society or sense perceptions - thinks that he is more valid because this is valid, this is real, and the man who goes by the subjective factor is is not valid because the subjective factor is “nothing.” No, that man is just as well based because he bases himself upon the world from within, and so he is quite right even if he says “Oh, it’s nothing but my fantasy.” Of course that is the introvert, the introvert is always afraid of the external world. He will tell you when you ask him… he will be apologetic about it. “Of course, yes I know, it’s only my fantasy.” And he has always a resentment, against the world in general. Particularly America is extroverted like hell. The introvert has no place. Because he doesn’t know that he beholds the world from within. And that gives him dignity, and that gives him certainty because (nowadays particularly) the world hangs on a thin thread, and that is the psyche of man. Assume that certain fellows in Moscow lose their nerve, or their common sense, and the whole world is in fire and flames!

Nowadays we are not threatened by elemental catastrophes. There’s no such thing as an H-bomb [in nature]. That is all man’s doing. We are the great danger, psyche is the great danger. What if something goes wrong with the psyche? So you see it is demonstrated to us in our days, what power the psyche is, how important it is to know something about it, but we know nothing about it.

From: "The World Within: C.G. Jung In His Own Words" (go to 10:00)

Dealing with the negative animus

When the contrasexual inner figure in a woman is negative, like this rifleman, it personifies very sharp negative judgments about herself: “You are a nobody. You will never make it. Men don’t like you. They only want to have sex with you. Nobody loves you. You’ll never find a husband. You are not really a good woman. Your life will always go on as meaninglessly as it is now.” These self-destructive thoughts cut her off from her femininity and block her possibility of relating to an outer man in a positive way. It is, therefore, great progress in the dream that she suddenly stops running away by hiding in her gray mist and thinks, “It’s not me; it’s that man who is responsible for my fearful situation.” It’s as if at that moment she disentangles herself and realizes that those negative thoughts are something outside of her. They are not her thoughts. It’s as if she said, “It’s not me thinking that; it’s only something in me thinking those thoughts, and I don’t need to believe them.”

… And so with this air stewardess’s dream, she must realize that the negative man in her that always says “You are nobody. You’ll never relate properly to a man, blah, blah, blah,” is not her. Then the miracle happens! At that moment that rifleman gets up and walks away.

- Marie Louise von Franz (from Fraser Boa’s The Way of the Dream, p. 174)

The cruel, jealous lover

The negative animus behaves here like a jealous lover. He wants to keep the woman for himself by cutting her off from all men. When she has some loving feelings toward any man, then up comes this “You should not do that” animus. Or it’s projected.

I know a classic case of a woman who once attacked Jung violently with the animus during the analytical hour. They later went into what happened, and Jung told her, “Whenever you have a feeling, that’s when you attack.” What happened was that on the way to meet with Jung, she had seen some beautiful strawberries. Her first impulse was, “Let’s buy them and bring them to him.” And then the animus said, “Oh, Jung will say that strawberries have an erotic meaning and he’ll mock you.” So she didn’t buy the strawberries and arrived in a fierce mood and attacked Jung the entire hour. All because she had suppressed the strawberries. If she had bought the strawberries everything would have gone well, but she had repressed her own feelings.

--------------------

[T]he worst thing is that she experiences it as if she thinks it herself. You see, the animus thinks in her “Jung is going to laugh at the strawberries,” and then she believes that she thinks that. That is one of the great difficulties in analytical work: to make women distinguish between what they really think themselves and what it thinks in them.

The problems is that they think animus thoughts are their own. Even after working for years on that, I sometimes still have negative thoughts against myself, and if you asked me at that moment, I would say, “Yes, that’s what I think about myself.” Later, I would have a dream of a man raping me, and realize, “No, that was an evil animus in me who thought that.” And then I could disidentify and wonder, “Why on earth did I ever think that about myself? Naturally, I don’t think that.” But, you see, that is the essence of what one calls possession. When a woman is possessed by the animus, she thinks that he animus is herself. Only when, or if, she wakes up does she comes to realize, “No, that’s not me.”

- Marie Louise von Franz, from Fraser Boa’s The Way of the Dream, p. 158

Glossary: Chthonic

Pertaining to the underworld, i.e. the unconscious. Persephone and Hades are considered chthonic gods. The opposite of chthonic is olympian (e.g., the gods of consciousness; the gods who live on Mount Olympus; Zeus, Hera, Apollo, Athena, etc.)

Glossary: Auxiliary function

The second strongest and most developed of the four psychological functions. One function will always be the strongest; this is called the "primary function." In addition, there's a second function that will also generally be under the conscious control of the ego. This second function is never the opposite of the primary function; e.g. those whose feeling function is superior can have either intuition or sensation as their auxiliary function, but never the thinking function.(1)

While this second function is never quite as firmly under our control as our dominant function, it is still fairly well adapted to the external world. In an extrovert this secondary function supports the primary function, assisting it as the ego strives to prosper in the world. If the primary function is "rational" (thinking or feeling), the ego uses the auxiliary function to get information that the primary function then judges. If the primary function is "irrational" (intuition or sensation), then the auxiliary function gives the ego a way to judge the information that it takes in.

In introverts, however, the auxiliary function works differently. Extroverts turn their primary function towards the external world; when you meet an extrovert you can quickly make out their primary function because that is the one with which they will greet you. Introverts turn their primary function inwards; the function they turn to the world is actually their auxiliary function. For example, if you meet an extroverted feeling type who secondarily relies on their sensation, you will see a feeling type. But if you meet an introverted feeling/sensation type, you will initially perceive their auxiliary function, sensation. This is because introverts rely on their auxiliary function to get through life. Introverts hide their primary function (in this case, feeling), unless they get to know you well. This makes introverts seem a bit awkward because they're generally using their second best function when dealing with the world.(2)


The auxiliary function as the "growth state"(2)

A useful way of thinking about the various functions is to imagine the four functions as passengers in a car. The first function would be the Driver; the second, in the seat next to the driver, is the Co-Pilot (or the auxiliary function). The two other functions are the two kids in the back seats, the tertiary or "10 Year Old" function and the inferior or "3 Year Old" function. The car looks something like this:

(from Personality Hacker)

The auxiliary function, or the Co-Pilot in the Car Model, is of huge importance; it's what Personality Hacker calls our "growth state." Time and effort spent developing this particular function takes us to a whole new level. This is because it makes up for the weaknesses of our Driver function; it allows us to introvert if our Driver is extroverted (and vice versa), and to make decisions if our Driver is a perceiving function (and vice versa). It also stops us from running to our 10 Year Old process and act out the worst aspects of that function in an effort to defend ourselves, which we often do precisely because we don't want to do the difficult task of living in our Co-Pilot.

The Co-Pilot is always hard. We're not used to living in that world (introverted or extroverted). It's scary and intimidating, and difficult... but it's the exact thing we need to do if we want to accomplish great things. As an example, my Driver is introverted thinking. It's very easy for me to run to my 10 Year Old function of introverted sensation when the going gets tough; when I'm hurt, or especially when I'm scared to go into the outside world. What this looks like is staying at home, where I feel safe and comfortable. If someone of my type (INTP) does this too much, their world becomes very small. They may even become shut-ins, unable to bring themselves to leave the safety of their homes. Even worse, if I do this too much then it will begin warping even my primary function; I will no longer be able to think clearly, my ideas about things will probably be wrong.

The antidote to this is my Co-Pilot, extroverted intuition (or Exploration). It's tends to be scary and difficult for me to do but it's precisely what INTPs need. Going to my Exploration function gets me out of the house. It allows me to test my theories, to put them into practice in the real world. If I keep all the cool ideas to myself, what good are they? Going to my Co-Pilot lets me actually make a difference in the world.

Every type does something similar when they hide in their 10 Year Old function. Every type will be well served by working on their Co-Pilot. The good thing is that this second function is actually something that we can get quite good at; believe it or not, it's actually an area of natural talent. After spending some time developing our Co-Pilot, it becomes a part of our personality. It may always require a little more effort than our Driver; while the Driver is our area of unconscious competence, our Co-Pilot is our area of conscious competence. Energy spent here, though, is some of the highest leveraged work we can do. It pushes us to develop the weaker parts of ourselves. It makes us a more complete person.

For a more in-depth look at your type, and your Co-Pilot function, check out Personality Hacker.

Absolute sovereignty always belongs, empirically, to one function alone, and can belong only to one function, because the equally independent intervention of another function would necessarily produce a different orientation which, partially at least, would contradict the first. But since it is a vital condition for the conscious process of adaptation always to have clear and unambiguous aims, the presence of a second function of equal power is naturally ruled out. This other function, therefore, can have only a secondary importance… Its secondary importance is due to the fact that it is not, like the primary function… an absolutely reliable and decisive factor, but comes into play more as an auxiliary or complementary function.

- "General Description of the Types," CW 6, par. 667.

I have frequently observed how an analyst, confronted with a terrific thinking type, for instance, will do his utmost to develop the feeling function directly out of the unconscious. Such an attempt is foredoomed to failure, because it involves too great a violation of the conscious standpoint. Should the violation nevertheless be successful, a really compulsive dependence of the patient on the analyst ensues, a transference that can only be brutally terminated, because, having been left without a standpoint, the patient has made his standpoint the analyst… (Therefore) in order to cushion the impact of the unconscious, an irrational type needs a stronger development of the rational auxiliary function present in consciousness (and vice versa).

- “General Description of the Types,” CW 6, par. 670

The process of working through the auxiliary functions goes on somewhat as follows: Suppose you have sensation strongly developed but are not fanatical about it. Then you can admit about every situation a certain aura of possibilities; that is to say, you permit an intuitive element to come in. Sensation as an auxiliary function would allow intuition to exist. But inasmuch as sensation (in the example) is a partisan of the intellect, intuition sides with the feeling, here the inferior function. Therefore the intellect will not agree with intuition, in this case, and will vote for its exclusion. Intellect will not hold together sensation and intuition, rather it will separate them. Such a destructive attempt will be checked by feeling, which backs up intuition.

Looking at it the other way around, if you are an intuitive type, you can’t get to your sensations directly. They are full of monsters, and so you have to go by way of your intellect or feeling, whichever is the auxiliary in the conscious. It needs very cool reasoning for such a man to keep himself down to reality. To sum up then, the way is from the superior to the auxiliary, from the latter to the function opposite to the auxiliary. Usually this first conflict that is aroused between the auxiliary function in the conscious and its opposite function in the unconscious is the fight that takes place in analysis. This may be called the preliminary conflict. The knock-down battle between the superior and inferior functions only takes place in life.

- Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar


(1) Inferior function
(2) John Betts, Jungian's Podcast, Episode 13
(3) Antonia Dodge, "The Car Model" (Personality Hacker)


Link:
"Why is the Co-Pilot Process Vital for Growth?" (Personality Hacker)
"Personality Development Tools: The Car Model" (Personality Hacker)
"When You ALMOST Know Your Personality Type" (Personality Hacker)


See also:
Primary function
Tertiary function
Inferior function
Rational function
Irrational function
Psychological functions
Integrating the functions

Response: Can women have an anima?

[The original article by Karen Hodges, “Reflections on Women, Depression, and Soul-image,” is available on the internet as a download (I can't get a link to include in this post - you're going to have to search Google for it. And you should, it's a great essay.)]


I don't know what this woman experienced, whether she does in fact have an anima or she's mistaken. Maybe what she's experiencing is actually the anima. Or maybe it's the Self/the Wise Woman. The powerful, Goddess-like woman with a scythe is the Goddess of Death, the most mysterious part of our lives (along with rebirth - we come from Mystery and return to Mystery, this Goddess is both the usherer of the mystery as well as the Mystery itself.)

The more I think about it, the more her description of her experience feels like she encountered the Wise Woman, or possibly an inner Goddess figure (i.e. the Self). We women need contact with the deep, powerful, numinous feminine in our lives; it's such a desert out there. This may be why so many feminists dislike the Jungian concept of the animus and anima. The most obvious reason is because they (and others - I've actually found men's rights activist Jungians!!!) confuse archetypal attributes with blanket statements about all members of a specific gender ("Jung says the anima is nurturing, and the animus is good at thinking! That means he thinks women can't think!!!") Clearly, I don't think this is what he was saying but I'll save that for another post.

The truth is, there's not enough of the feminine out there, whether it's the nurturing side, or the Goddess as the devourer. The nurturing Great Mother and the sexy Aphrodite Goddess of attraction may be more sought after, but even they're not really given respect. The Great Mother is demeaned as "merely" a stay-at-home-mom, while Aphrodite is called a slut and a whore. The only Goddess who gets any respect is the meek, inoffensive Maiden. But even the Great Mother and Aphrodite are treated better in this society than the Reaper Goddess; a woman may be denigrated for being a mother or a sexual being but society will try to obliterate her if she manifests Kali. I believe that what offends the author, and other women, is the lack of space for, and respect for, all the different parts of us; the ugly, the terrible, the horrifying, as well as the pretty and nice parts.

Then again, the point isn't to prove what's "right" and tell people what they "should" believe. It's not a goddam religion. From my perspective it looks like this and not that. That's what's important; if anyone else gets a little shock of recognition that shocks them into understanding their truth, then that's great. But the important thing is for us to discover our own truth, as much as possible. Then we can see if maybe it has value for others.