Week 8 Jung's Man And His Symbols

[AfternoonTarot]

This week we’ll finish up our chapter by reading sections The Role of Symbols and Healing the Split, pp. 93 - 103.  As usual, feel free to post reflections and observations multiple times during the week if you wish. 

 

 

[AfternoonTarot]

This reading went more specifically into the nature and purpose of symbols and the importance of archetypes and unconscious material.  He states that unless we are mindful of the unconscious material, reflect on it, and synthesize it it can “cause real fear...spread through the whole personality in form of a neurosis.”  

 

Jung made a interesting statement that “...archetypes are to a considerable extent interchangeable” - referring to an unhealthy situation when a person disregards symbols and their numinosity and substitutes mindfulness and personal reflection with an attitude of “everything meaning everything.”  They may actually glide from one archetype to another.  He also explained that an archetype consists of the image and an emotion and that without the emotion or “special feeling tone” we end up with a “jumble of mythological concepts, which can be strung together to show that everything means anything - or nothing at all.”  He goes on to explain that the meaning of the archetype must be understood within the context of its relationship to the individual.  

 

I’ve read ahead in the book and am almost finished with it.  I wanted to mention one chapter in particular, Chapter 3 The Process of Individual by Marie-Louis vonFranz.  Its a deep read, but well worth it and goes into some detail about the Shadow, the Anima, and the Animus.