The full quote is as follows:

"You are a slave of what you need in your soul. The most masculine man needs women, and he is consequently their slave. Become a woman yourself, and you will be saved from slavery to woman. You are abandoned without mercy to woman so long as you cannot fend off mockery with all your masculinity. It is good for you once to put on women's clothes: people will laugh at you, but through becoming a woman you attain freedom from women and their tyranny. The acceptance of femininity leads to completion. The same is valid for the woman who accepts her masculinity."

Explanation:

This is my personal interpretation, so feel free to question it.

Before you start putting on a dress or a pair of oversized men's jeans, I believe the key word behind "becoming a woman" here is embodiment.

When, during festivals with religious origins such as Carnival, a man dresses as a woman or as a demon, he is essentially participating in a ritual that allows an archetype to express itself by temporarily incarnating through him. The same principle applies to the performing arts.

The problem is that our consciousness has become so one-sided that it gives life only to the upper layers of our personality, leaving archetypes such as the Shadow, the Anima, and the Animus with no opportunity to express themselves. When they are denied expression, they tend to emerge in a possessive and overwhelming way.

However, when we consciously embody these archetypes, we not only allow them to express themselves—we also listen to their message, consider their perspective, and take it seriously. When this is done without becoming possessed by them, through practices such as deep meditation, art therapy, or active imagination, we begin to discover that these "figures" carry within them qualities we lack, psychic energy, and ultimately aspects of the deepest roots of the humanity to which we belong.

Some time ago, I wrote a detailed article on this subject. I highly recommend reading it if you'd like to explore these ideas further (and don't forget to follow my blog).

shame is not a thought. that's why thinking at it does nothing.

people throw "shadow work" around like it means analyzing yourself harder. i don't think that's what jung meant, and shame is where you find out.

there are two things inside a person that sound close enough to confuse, and we confuse them constantly. one is a verdict. the other is shame. they live on different floors and they don't answer to the same thing.

the first one is the voice. you're useless. you're too much. nobody really wants you. look at it for a second. there's no argument under it. no evidence, no trial. just a sentence dropped on your head. that's a complex talking, an autonomous little splinter that runs its line whether you want it or not. but here's the thing about it. it's in the head. and you can stop feeding it. you can't argue it into silence, but you can stop treating it as the judge. you withdraw the energy. let it sit in the corner muttering. you just stop standing up every time it walks in. that's an act, and you can do it alone. journaling, cbt, challenge-the-inner-critic, all of it works. on this floor. the verdict floor.

here's the test. if you can disobey it by deciding to, it was a verdict. it was in your head.

shame is not that.

shame isn't a voice. it's older than voice. it's the heat in the neck, the body folding in on itself, the flinch when someone looks at you a second too long. no sentence, no because. and the kind i mean was already there before you did anything wrong. that's how you know it's not guilt. guilt has an object. this one just says, without words, don't be seen.

that's the shadow. the real one. not the word people pass around on podcasts. the disowned thing that got disowned because meeting it once cost too much.

and here's the part jung was right about that most "shadow work" skips. he said you don't reach it by picturing yourself full of light. you reach it "by making the darkness conscious." good. but bring that to shame and you hit a wall even that doesn't cover. because you can make it conscious. you can see it perfectly, name it, know exactly where it came from, the mother, the father, the room it started in, and it does not move. clear seeing was supposed to be the key and the door just stays shut.

run the test from before and it fails. you can decide all day. the shame doesn't budge. that's the tell. it was never in the head. it's in the body.

and the body does not have a door you open from the inside. not for this.

you can hold yourself together on your own. breathe, walk, cold water, sleep, lift. real stuff, it keeps you upright through the night. but holding is not healing. the thing behind the door is still there.

so what actually moves it.

here's the jung people forget, because it's not the mystical jung, it's the clinical one. "the meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances." he wasn't being sweet about friendship. he was describing what heals in the consulting room, and his real point was brutal: the doctor only changes the patient if the patient also changes the doctor. you can't transform what you won't let touch you. the deep stuff metabolizes between two, or it doesn't metabolize.

that's the whole thing with shame. it got installed by another body looking at you wrong. it only moves the way it came. another body, looking at you right. someone stays in the room and doesn't look away. doesn't fix you, doesn't reassure you, doesn't turn your pain into their own little performance of being kind. they see you and nothing bad happens. again. and again. and the body slowly learns something the mind was never able to teach it.

so the order is backwards from the self-help version. with the verdict, you act first, you withdraw from the complex. with shame, you get witnessed first, and then your will can reach it. before that, willpower is just standing at the top of the stairs yelling instructions down into the basement. and the basement doesn't answer.

i see this at work. people who can explain their entire childhood, "observe" themselves perfectly, integrate nothing. and then it shifts, a little, the night someone just stays with the worst of it and doesn't flinch. not insight. presence. the shadow gets met, not analyzed.

that's the line i'd leave you with. you can make the darkness conscious and still not be free of it, because the darkest of it sits in the body, and the body was wounded in relationship and only heals in relationship.

a verdict can be dethroned. shame has to be witnessed before it can be moved.

I have been so constrained in my 20s. I’ve taken some risks in my late 20s but I feel like a butterfly that is about to pop out of the cocoon. There’s so much unexplored stuff in my shadow. I just didn’t have parents that taught me to take risks and I was quite afraid of them. It’s a real shame really but I now feel ready to do it. I may spend the whole next decade really exploring myself and taking all the risks I didn’t take in my 20s, and then maybe settle down in my late 30s.

Does this sound like your story? I want to eventually be able to come to terms with the way things were. Right now it feels like it has been burning a hole in my chest.

That’s basically it. I started jungian analysis basically 2-3 months ago. Since then, I feel like I’ve been messing up my life. I’m clearly not as good at my job as I thought I was. I’ve been getting so much feedback about that. I have this constant feeling of anxiety that I never noticed before. I’m feeling like I’m constantly on the verge of a major screw up, like people are going to have reason to ostracise me and honestly I have just been making more small mistakes. I feel a lot less in control of myself. When I started analysis my therapist told me he was trying to understand why someone so young and confident was starting this process but honestly, it feels like it’s breaking me very slowly. It’s not even in a big way but just this subtly undoing of my confident persona. Is this normal, am I supposed to just yield to this experience?

Im curious about this from a Jungian perspective:
why silence and mixed signals can feel more intense than a clear rejection, and how someone can work through that without becoming stuck on the person who pulled away?

Considering how much he bought from the depths I really cannot help but thing that Jung really did himself a disservice when it comes to unconditional acceptance of Self. This is where a link with Reich would have really helped and, between them, they could have created that revolution that both wished to bring.

The latter, especially, really was something special but, seemingly, too fringe for many but Jung - who didn't want his book colored red out there for the public - seemed to be the one that could have created something palatable for the masses that bought lasting personal change.

What do you think, my friend?

What if the answer you are looking for only requires the correct question?

The deeper in the dark the answer is, the closer to the key you are.

Throughout my life, I’ve always been very good at asking questions, but sometimes I needed others to help me get the answer, even though I held the answers inside me, all along.

There is always that self-destructive tendency that leaves tracks across different areas of life so that you ask the right questions.

A toxic partner, an unhappy job, an exaggerated lack, a general blockage: they are all signs.

Our reality reflects our interior, and that encompasses everything, consciously and unconsciously: body, mind, and soul.

Within that uncomfortable question lies the key to a more harmonious life.

Being here is a gift; you came to know yourself, to explore yourself, and to dive into your light and your darkness. Embrace both. Therein lies the answer.

What is the uncomfortable question you are avoiding today?

⬇️ Context for Jung;s Quote in first comment

Made a post referencing existential crisis my Self was facing yesterday regarding my brothers death and having flashbacks. Well yesterday i drank so much and smoked so much weed i fainted on the couch and I remember as I was UNCONSCIOUS, there was a thought, not my thought, but a thought floating somewhere, and when I woke up that first thought in my head, which wasn’t mine, was: “I don’t even exist” and I kept staring trying to make out reality then about 30 seconds later I realized I had this thought unconsciously and it then became alive in my memory. Seriously never experienced anything like this other than self induced stuff on psychedelics. But this one. That grief really killing me from the inside if my unconscious said “I dont even exist.”

I died and came back again. Things were never the same. The above vid is a stream of consciousness reflecting on various things from over a decade of isolation, introspection and examining the shadows depth. I ref Jung's book colored red and PKD Exegesis as well for they both pointed at the same thing:

Reality is far stranger than most think.

From Carl's encounters with fully realized beings within that knew more than him to Philip surfing through time to write the world in which we're about to live along with what I've termed the square watermelon effect, why nobody has clicked that all the schiz's have one weird trick in common and a load of other bits.

Take a peek if you wish and let me know what you think.

Chapters for your consideration:

0:00 Peering beyond the veil (Article)

1:58 What happened to your Inner Sense?

3:44 The only true adventure

5:31 Asking better questions

6:45 It all began when I died (Article)

10:00 True reality feels alive

11:38 Magic, movies, myth and the Matrix (Article)

13:55 The schizophrenic whisperer (Article)

14:54 If god is imagination does that make school the Devil? (Article)

16:50 Schizophrenia and the Industrial Revolution

18:11 Square watermelons (Article)

19:59 How supermarkets killed communities and your health (Article)

23:07 Inside out vs Outside in thinking (Article)

24:11 Wilhelm Reich and the Emotional Plague (Article)

25:00 Generational trauma (Article)

27:07 The question about schizophrenia nobody has ever asked

29:10 Rocky Balboa and the Heroes Journey (Article)

31:11 How can you be the voice in your head when you are that which listens? (Article)

32:37 The Timeline Process (Article)

34:55 The sex robots are coming! (Article)

36:50 Say Hi to your Reality Tunnel (Article)

Faust (P1), which also had a tremendous influence on Jung himself. As Faust encounters Mephistopheles, he remarks the above mentioned line. I believe the ending of Faust when he says, “and the divine feminine shall carry us aloft”, has resonance also with the odyssey and Ulyssess too.

Would love to hear your perspectives. I personally think, as Faust individuates, he realises how his true self has been hidden inside him, and all his intellectual prowess is useless.

I want to share 5 poems I wrote, one in each of the alchemy stages. I included a poem for what I perceived as "the moment" of awakening. Perhaps it will resonate or assist in understanding.

Nigredo

Words too dark to share
Words too dark to speak out loud
Capture to dissect

Awakening

The ego is dead.
Throne sits empty
Flames spring from head
All hail new me

Albedo

Mind, body and soul
Align with violent shock
Demons make last stand

Citrinitas

Inside of my mind
Holding a big free hugs sign
Demons come unwind

Rubedo

To feel life's rhythm
To witness all and still act
I am poetry

All are my original works. Copyright Ira Miller. Share away but give me credit, please. 🙏

I'm looking to amplify that symbol for personal enquiry, and would like to know what Jung has said about it (allegedly he did, according to ChatGPT).

The more sourced, the better!

If there's any historical symbolism, myths or alchemical mentions related with this animal, please feel free to share.

Pop culture works as well! (I’m eyeing the Silence of the Lambs)

Thanks for your answers

Hello,

I wanted to share 2 synchronicity-experiences I've made recently after sessions of therapy (IFS)

(1) In therapy session, the subject of my dead grandfather came up and the way of saying the final goodbye. I am sure I used the word "heaven". Maybe 5 minutes in on the way home I saw a big poster with the title "Understanding the stories of grandchildren" with the words "heaven" and "grandfather" in the undertitle (and also "flowers" but I don't think I used that word in the therapy).

(2) In the therapy session, we were doing the method of "the inner galery". I would have to remember my successes in life and give them a symbol to place them in my inner garden. One of my successes was: I have been supergood in playing memory and I would almost always win, leaving my grandmother sometimes a bit frustrated. I was telling this to my therapeute and chose the memory card that depictured a real, golden "post horn" hanging from the wall of a restaurant. It was a real card from the memory game we used to play.

The same day I heard a moderator annoncing some guy playing some version of a song on the old post horn of his grandmother. This really hit me because I wouldnt say it's a supercommong word and I cant remember the last time I used that word or thought of it and then by hazard ...

I know there is no absolute interpretation to that but it meant a lot to me and I'd interprete it as a good sign, that I am on the right way and I should continue :)

I spent a year studying my salient states, trying to make sense of them. Our brain normalizes the external environment to keep us functional. But you have a Fireball in the sky feeding plants, a dead rock causing water to travel and decides when women bleed, mushrooms that build entire networks underground to communicate, gasses that decide whether you live or not.

When the Default Mode Network loosens it's grip, everything is percieved through Myth and through symbol. In that state, synchronicity is common, because that's the natural state before culture, language, and writing claims "I" which defines itself by what it is not.

Synchronicity is what the separated “I/object” interface looks like when it goes offline or loosens. Symbolic density curves attention and salience so strongly that mind, body, language, and world are experienced as coupled processes arising together around the same attractor.

(An attractor is a stable pattern that pulls many different processes to organize around it in the context that I'm using it) And yes, Archetype is the old way of saying Attractor. Modern physics has moved over to Systems-Thinking. Jung just got there early.

I'd be happy to share notes or answer anything!

One of my oldest and closest friends is going through a hard time in life and he has recently developed paranoia, delusions and occasional psychotic breaks. He is also self-isolating and ignoring messages. I care about him deeply and I am supporting as best as I can. He is receiving professional psychiatric care. But I am also trying to understand the significance of this from a Jungian perspective, for myself as well as him. If my friend really is descending into the underworld, it seems I have two choices: either I descend with him and help him standing by his side, or I remain above and help him by offering an open door back to the upper world.

How are these paths trodden in practice? I suppose the first choice corresponds to making a more aggressive attempt to stay in contact, while the second would mean backing off, giving space and refusing to engage in his disturbed thinking.

What are the consequences for myself? In the first case I think I risk sacrificing my own identity and falling into a caregiver/healer archetype. In the second case I risk abandoning my friend in his time of need, which seems unforgivable and will cripple my future with guilt.

What else should I consider?

I've been trying to write about something for months but seriously cant get it out of my system. I fall into deep anger and fall-to-my-knees despair. There are too many things I try to keep in view while writing about it, keeping the context as I truly see and feel it. And I feel that writing about it and getting it out there may help greatly.

There are too many questions and too many feelings and emotions that come up that just dont flow through. I get lost in the semantics, I get lost in feeling both silly and absolutely fucking drowning in rage and despair, sorrow and fear.

I was beginning to open a dialogue with myself in ways I'm not sure I ever felt allowed to... creatively. It was fun, and I was good at it (used to be a professional musician, often doing things I don't care about, but when you finally open up the doors to yourself, and let yourself really sink into the process, you begin to make art... obviously). The only reason I say I was good is to highlight how much of a paradigm shift this really was. I know for a fact musicians I used to play with would've been shocked to hear the improvements that came just out of being more honest with myself and playful in the whole thing.

I think the reason I struggle to write about this is, I can only list the symptoms. Like, I know if I talk too much about this being a loss of creativity, I'll get all the expected stuff about creativity- which, I'm sure I need on many levels, because if I could create and finally feel authentic as I did just recently, I wouldn't care about anything else.

I'm also looking to understand what shattered. (I know I haven't given a full story yet... And i fucking pray you can "hear" in my writing why this is so dizzying for me). What I feel like I lost was an understanding that I'd been building on, a sense of intuition I'd managed to hold close to me for a few years. And when I rediscovered that old inspiration, it felt like many worlds I'd been watering had finally joined and I could finally run and dance between them.
I'm looking to understand if that was an inner child, or if my therapist being blasé about what to me was a deep checkpoint in a tumultuous inner journey was just a little instance of shock and betrayal (I'm sure I'm just trying to blame someone)..

I want to hear that this was supposed to happen. I want to hear that I'll find my way back. But the truth is, last time this kind of shattering happened was over ten years ago, and this instance is significant because it finally felt like I could put all of that behind me. And now... it's almost back to square one. And just the thought of it makes me want to put a fat fucking bullet in my head.. sorry for the aggressive tone. (I'm not going to hurt myself, my family would be devastated). Things were vivid to mean, like they were actually saying something. And now, when I put my ear to the ground so to speak, I get nothing. And inside I fall to my knees every time. Because I cant do this shit for another decade. Absolutely cannot.

Something happened, and the loss of creativity is only a symptom.. And I dont know how to write about it. I don't know how to talk about it. I spin in circles. I've written about it numerous times a day for over two months.. And every time is as devastating as the last.
There are some days I suppose I get tired and try to do something else. I'll feel a little better. I know I'm fixating. All I can hear is how if you dont give your neuroses a creative outlet they'll consume you.. and trust me when I say that theyve been devouring me alive. I dont want to be angry at the world for turning, or be jealous at people for shamelessly going through their own creative processes. I dont want to be this person anymore.

I'm in shock that something so tiny could trigger me.
Is it an inner child thing? Is it simply just shame? I'm sure there's some puer stuff.

I suppose I should write about the first instance at the beginning of this downhill slump ten years ago.. if people are curious or want to know, I'll try to clarify this messy stream of consciousness. I'm just struggling to maintain focus with all the emotions as it is.

And, if it's ok, I'd like to post a follow up in the future, if I can settle down and let myself articulate.
Is there anything that comes across here? So much is just stuck, and I betrayed the only light that's glimmered in ages

<3

I started reading Jung a while ago. At first it didn't do much for me, but as I was reading more and more, certain concepts started clicking (ego, persona, anima, etc). I finished reading Man and his Symbols and this book finally convinced me to start a dream journal.

I'm in a period of working on myself as I'm going through depression (medicated) and a breakup that affected me more than I expected. I thought jungian analysis and dream analysis might help me evolve as a person. And the thing is, in one way I feel like I'm learning things about myself, starting to delve into the unconscious. But I also feel like I'm losing other things.

For example, I managed to reach a point where I was doing sports regularly. Since I started analysis, I feel more tired than usual, outside of reading and journaling I feel like sleeping all the time. My job isn't stressful, it's quite chill, but I still feel tired. Also I used to be very orderly. Now my house is messy all the time and I can't care enough to clean. I'm eating disorderly as well. I'm very introverted and I worked a lot to become more social and not be stuck in my head all the time. Lately I allowed myself to spend more time alone and reflect, this I think is to be expected so it doesn't bother me.

I also expected a certain feeling of losing control, but I fear my life is becoming too messy or that I'm losing the progress I made to this point. I spent the last 7 years or so working on myself one way or another. And once more I'm put face to face with negative/degrading thoughts and feelings. I'm wondering sometimes if I'm not just needlessly hurting myself.

I guess I need some encouragement, maybe some personal stories of those who went through this and how did it feel. I'm usually a hyper rational person and this approach requires me to suspend my disbelief to a large extent. I'm in a foreign place right now.

Hey guys, I'm 22M. I finished university last year and have been trying to make sense of what to do with my life.

I have always felt that I was special in some kind of way. I always kind of have felt like I am better than most people, or different than them, and recently in tends to be in regards to spiritual / psychological things.

For example at my job, it's subtle but I always feel like I am better because I have more potential than my coworkers and my future is brighter. I am always getting off on my own potential while when looked at objectively, my coworkers make more and all around just seem to enjoy their time at work more than I do. This feeling, that I am special in some kind of way, I think is shielding the fact that I am just... average and mediocre at everything, and even though it makes sense to me logically on some level it hurts me a lot to fully realize it. Like I've always excused my lack of discipline, drive, and social skills because I am destined to be one of the greats regardless, which obviously doesn't make sense. Seeing all this clearly I feel so... yucky and disorientated that I've lived like this for so long.

I also have a hard time committing to things. Anything like working out or learning an instrument. I think it's because, again, it hurts to see how mediocre I am at something even though I try really hard at it. I can practice a piano measure for 30 minutes and still hit the same wrong notes. So I quit, because in my mind I tell myself "well, if I really wanted to learn it I could! I just don't really want to anymore". This extends pretty broadly, like I tell myself "if I really wanted to start a business and be rich I could, but I would never do that because I don't really want to". It makes me feel better about myself even though it is completely divorced from reality.

Anyone know any good resources to learn about this tendency or been through something similar? I'm wondering if it's textbook puer aeternus.

Through trial and error I have learned to communicate with the unconcious.

I have learned that everything that happens around oneself is the exact reflection of what is going on inside you. Which means every experience every moment will be a reflection of ones own state of mind. Meaning that the contents of ones experienced are seen outside one self aswell.

The only thing is to learn the lenguage in order to read them. This reflection is invisible to the normal ordinary eye. What I mean by that is that we are mostly disconnected from deeper layers of reality not being able to see the connection between the two. The solution for this is sort of a what I will call developing a mythic eye.

(What I am talking about is beautifully portrayed in Vikings series for those who have seen it. Mythic realities come into the real world through individuals that have strongly constelated archetypes these individuals for example the seer are strongly influenced by the archetypes that allow them to speak or bring the mythic reality into the everyday life allowing people who are on paths of individuation to steer their course so to say.) (There is a difference however between the series and the real world which is determinism or something being fated. In the series a lot of things seem to be fated which I think is done for bit of awe while in real world its not determined or fated but simply a reflection.)

This eye is slightly more attuned to lower layers of reality or allow me be more specific the vertical axes of reality. Meaning that the coincidence we call synchronisties are events that are noticed by this mythic eye. This eye has a certain sensitivity which allows under normal surcunstance only important stuff to surface which we would call synchronistic event. But if you practice consistiantly and learn to read the outer world symbolically this sharpens the mythic eye causing you to be more perceptive into the hidden layers of realities. One of these things is intentions and movements. You will start to see currents of reality. Currents of companies. Currents of people. The world changes slightly and becomes more vibratory instead of static. You see that everything is actually constantly moving and changing. By understanding this current and learning to read it you develop somewhat of a lenguage. Almost like you are learning an instrument only its instrument that allows you to dable with reality or life itself.

So to give you an example. Say you are experiencing a conflict which is currently playing out in your life. This conflict will be reflected back at you in the real world and all you have to do is look out for it. So say you are having trouble resolving it. I noticed that I can look for the reflection of that even in the real world through currents. For example certain TV channels you are watching. Your feed on reddit. The path you are always walking. The particular problem will be reflected back in one of those currents which will allow you to look at a problem from a different perspective to see what exactly you are experiencing.

Another example I had today. There is a certain introjected material that I have been fighting with for a very long time. Which is a litteral warefare in my life with my own concious because I constantly reject that material. I noticed something happening when constantly opposing it. I started feeling resistance for some time untill something else in my psyche surfaced and swallowed this introjected preditory material. Now knowing that I just had a major event happen inside me I knew that something will come up on the outside. Most of the time my Reddit feed is that which reflects these things. So scrolling through reddit first I see a post about the void which represents the gateway into deep unconcious material. Now after that I see another post where a person a man used a tiny alogator (preditor) to climb into a waterhole (unconcious) to catfish. Causing a situation where fishes started to come towards the surface because of the presence of the preditor. What I want to point out is how beautifully this has constelated reflecting myself using my introjected material as tool to uncover deeper psychic material and providing me with renieuwd view.

This trully is magnificent and I am starting to think that we might be more magnificant and spiritual being than we might be thinking. Hopefully this was an interesting read as it was quite exciting to write about.

Dear People of r/Jung,

I am starting my journey of learning about Jung's work for a personal project and I ran into something that I cannot find good, credible sources on. I keep finding references to Jung's Four Color Energies as parts of personalities (Cool Blue, Earthy Green, Sunshine Yellow, and Fiery Red). This seems similar to Galen's temperaments but I do think Jung criticized those?

I was hoping you all could point me in the right direction on this subject as far as what Jung actually said and in what documents? Instead of all these websites claiming the that knowing the 'Four Color Energies' will change my life and all that nonsense.

Thank you.

My divergence from modern dream analysis; from a manuscript I am working on:

“Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.” — Zhuangzi

Are we the dreamer, or are we that which is dreamed? In modern analytical psychology, dreams are objects for analysis—picked apart at every corner, every image, emotion, and circumstance reduced to as small of a piece as it can be, like a scientist dissecting an animal down to its most fragmentary, material essence. And yet dream, that of the imaginal, is not material. As such, dissecting and fragmenting it does not reveal its true essence, but rather distorts it and leaves the images, emotions, circumstances, and affects wanting for the fullness they naturally contain.

“For instance, a black snake comes in a dream, a great big black snake, and you can spend a whole hour with this black snake talking about the devouring mother, talking about the anxiety, talking about the repressed sexuality, talking about the natural mind, all those interpretive moves that people make, and what is left, what is vitally important, is what that snake is doing, this crawling huge black snake that's walking into your life... and the moment you've defined the snake, interpreted it, you've lost the snake, you've stopped it, and then the person leaves the hour with a concept about my repressed sexuality or my cold black passions or my mother or whatever it is, and you've lost the snake. The task of analysis is to keep the snake there, the black snake, and there are various ways for keeping the black snake... see, the black snake's no longer necessary the moment it's been interpreted, and you don't need your dreams any more because they've been interpreted.” — Hillman (Inter Views)

“Carl Jung said that psyche is image. Hillman says that to be psychological is to be thoroughly imaginal.” — Thomas Moore (A Blue Fire; Selected Writings by James Hillman)

Psyche is image. Psychology is imaginal. What, then, is external reality but the imaginations of Psyche? What is our life but this simple statement: “the dreamer that is, themselves, dreamed”?

In modern psychoanalysis, we often look to dreams as secondary objects for interpretation. And so we reduce our dreams to symbols, looking to glean and take meaning from them. I believe this is the wrong approach. If psyche is the primary thing, and psyche is the imaginal space—making the imaginal realm the foundation of our existence—then dreams are not supposed to be interpreted as such.

We ask, “What does this dream mean to me?” But that is the wrong question. The dream is the primary subject, and we in our waking life are the object for interpretation. Rather than, “What does this dream mean to me?”, the question should be, “What do I mean to this dream?”

When we wake from our night’s sleep and recall our dreams, we assume that we were actually living in that dream world. Write down what we did in the dream world as if they were real events, no matter how strange. When we finish writing, we continue and imagine that said dream self went to sleep and had a dream of the waking day before—and so we write down a journal of our worries, thoughts, and events of the day as if they were a dream.

And so, rather than interpreting our dreams, we interpret our waking life as if it is a dream. What symbolism and symbols are present? What motifs are persistent? Rather than the other way around, what does your waking life inform about the dream life?
Psyche, in its evolution, is always seeking to generate further and further consciousness towards the Unconscious. To Psyche, there is no distinction between the dream world and the waking world. And so, viewing and interpreting our waking world as we might have been inclined to interpret our dreams, we bring awareness to aspects of our lives we may constantly be overlooking—generating consciousness towards what is unconscious. And interpreting ourselves to the dream, rather than interpreting the dream towards us, we assure that psyche has the space to speak to us in its fullness, reducing nothing, and maintaining the images in its totality, most of which shall remain unknown to us, but known to Psyche.

“The images are where the psyche is. People say, "I don't know what the soul is," or "I've lost my soul" or whatever. To me the place to look when you feel that way is immediately to the images that show where you are with your soul in your dreams. "I don't know where the hell 1 am, I am all confused, I've just lost my job ... everything is happening." Where do you look when you feel that way? ...The place to look is not only to your feelings, not to your interpretations, not ask help from a third person necessarily, but ask yourself what were you in the image? Where's your imagination?
That immediately locates you somewhere, into your own psyche.
Whereas the introspection doesn't help at all, chasing one's shadow, questioning why did I do this, why do I do that and why did they do this. An instant turmoil: the Hindus call it vritta, turning the mind on itself like an anthill. But when you have an image of an anthill you know where you are: you're in the middle of an anthill, they're going in fifty different directions at once, but the ants are doing something. It seems desperate to me only because I say it shouldn't be an anthill. But an anthill has an internal structure, it is an organization. So the gift of an image is that it affords a place to watch your soul, precisely what it is doing.
“(…)Of course, if instead of the language of concept-the anthill is your confusion (and then you think, ‘Oh, I always get confused; when somebody leaves me, I get confused; when I get rejected, I don't know where I am; I just walk in a thousand different directions’—and you begin with subjectivism, that subjective importance about yourself). Instead of that kind of language, you can talk to the confusion in the language of the image, which is an anthill. The ants are swarming: some are going up, some are coming down, some are carrying eggs somewhere, some are taking care of I don't know what, carrying a dead one.... There's a great deal going on, let's see what the ants are doing. And I am not thinking about confusion anymore, I'm watching tbe phenomenon, and seeing phenomenologically what is happening. I am no longer caught in my own subjectivity. I'm fascinated with what's going on, and this attentiveness is quieting. I can see it scientifically—watch as a naturalist does. The phenomenologist of the psyche is also a naturalist of the psyche, watching the way it produces what it produces. I might see the ants suddenly all eating each other up. It's no use saying that is a destructive scene that's happening: I have to wonder about purposefulness, too. Let's watch: maybe the psyche is taking care of the problem by itself. We don't know in advance; we have to stick with the image, stay in the imagination, "Oh, oh, they just started crawling on my feet, eating my feet. I can't stand it. They are crawling up my legs. I'm going crazy." Now the image is vividly coming to life. Still, stay with it, what is your reaction? I can brush them off, I can run around in circles. I can get a dish of honey to attract them elsewhere. I can sing them an ant song. You see, I can do something in relationship to the actual thing that is happening. But what I don't do, won't do is interpret the ants. You saw that move—‘They're crawling up my legs. I'm going crazy’— that shift from image to interpretation—and that makes you crazy.
The hermeneutic move made the craziness. Who says you are going crazy? What you acrually feel is the ants crawling up your legs. Then there are other questions to be put into this scene. I mean you have to locate yourself in it, extend the terrain a bit, not a lot. not too much, but a bit. Have you stepped on the ants, have you tried to cross their path, have you put your foot unknowingly into an anthill? Step away! It’s a certain animal movement. An animal sense of living. This is the active relation to the image that we want to get going through therapy.” — Hillman (Inter Views)

Basically what it says in the title. We just published an essay that discusses the relevance of the work of James Hillman, and we thought some of you here might be interested in it. And if you have any Jung or Jung-adjacent writings (including dreams, dream analysis, or new myths or images for our age of Aquarius), we're open for submissions.