ome fe i he

DR. MARIE-LOUISE VON FRANZ is the world's

foremost authority on analytical psychology and
probably C.G. Jung's most important living
disciple.
She did her personal analysis with Jung and
worked directly with him for over thirty years.
She is the author of numerous books on analytical
psychology and collaborated with Jung on two
of his major works, Man and his Symbols and
Mysterium Coniunctionis.
Dr. von Franz is the featured authority
in the documentary film series on Jungian
psychology, The Way of the Dream, on which
this book is based. The Way of the Dream was
| recorded in her consulting rooms overlooking
the Lake of Ziirich.

| | | ie)

|"
/\ :
\ ndne’
\\W FRASER BOA is a Jungian Analyst practising
/\ | | in Toronto, Canada. He is a graduate of the
a | MyM C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich, a member of
\ the International Association for Analytical
Psychology, the National Association of
Psychoanalysis, and is currently president of
the Ontario Association of Jungian Analysts.
He is the producer, director and host of the
documentary film series The Way of the Dream.
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The Way of the Dream
FIRST EDITION Prepublication $29.50 U.S.
FIRST PRINTING ? Thereafter $34.50 U.S.
In Canada, Canadian dollars

This work is based on the documentary film series

THE WAY OF THE DREAM

featuring Dr. Marie-Louise von Franz

produced and directed by Fraser Boa
a Windrose Films Production

Book and film series

distributed exclusively by
Windrose Films Ltd. P.O. Box 265, Station Q, Toronto, Canada M4T 2M1
\
The Way of the Dream

DR. MARIE-LOUISE VON FRANZ

in
conversation
with

FRASER BOA

WINDROSE

TORONTO
First Edition

Published by WINDROSE FILMS LTD.,

P.O. Box 265, Station Q,
Toronto, Ontario. Canada M4T 2Ml. (416) 923-7175

Copyright © 1988 Fraser Boa. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, utilized or trans-
mitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

Boa, Fraser, 1932-
The way of the dream
Includes index.
ISBN 0-9693254-0-1
|. Dreams. 2. Jung, C. G. (Carl Gustav), 1875-1961.
3. Symbolism (Psychology). 4. Franz, Marie-Louise
von, 1915- . I. Franz, Marie-Louise von,
1915- =. Ji. Tile,
BF1078.B62 1987 154.6'3 C88-093070-5

Edited by Fraser Boa, Jenny Donald

Additional Editing by Ross Woodman, Marion Woodman
Copy Edited by Peter Carver
Indexed by Rica Night
Designed by Jenny Donald
Printed and bound in Canada by T.H. Best Printing Company Ltd.
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 Cont c.nt S Preface and
Introduction by Fraser Boa viti

Part One: Introduction

One: Descent Into Dreamland 3

Part Two: The Basic Psychology of C..G. Jung

Two: Charting the Unconscious 21
Three: The Structure of Dreams 39
Four: The Living Symbol 57

Part Three: Dreams of Our Culture

Five: The Ladder to Heaven 81
Six: The Forgotten Language 97

Part Four: The Psychology of Men

Seven: Our Shadow Knows 113
Eight: The Devouring Mother 129
Nine: Slaying The Dragon 147
Ten: Looking Through the Moon 163
Eleven: The Inner Bride 181

Part Five: The Psychology of Women

Twelve: Hell Has No Mirrors 195
Thirteen: The Hanged Man 213
Fourteen: The Tyrant 231
Fifteen: Flying Through Roofs 251
Sixteen: The Inner Guide 269

Part Six: On Relationship

Seventeen: Liberation of the Heart 289
Eighteen: Liberation of Relationship 303

Part Seven: The Self

Nineteen: Dreams of a Lifetime 319
Twenty: The Maker of Dreams 333

Index 355
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 Acknowledgments

As this book stems directly from the motion

picture series, many people contributed to its
creation. I am particularly indebted to Chris
Aikenhead who worked with me for a year
writing the original scripts, organized and trav-
eled with the crew over 25,000 miles, and finally,
did much of the major editing of the films. And
to Richard Leiterman whose energy and expertise
as the cinematographer initiated many of the
street interviews. I would also like to thank the
many people referred to in my introduction who
told their dreams and associations upon which
this work is based.
Encouragement as well as help has come
from many quarters: from Daryl Sharp and Dr.
James Hall whose enthusiastic endorsement of
the initial concept changed an idea into a possi-
bility; the financial investor who believed in the
worth of creating such a resource; from Profes-
sor Ross Woodman and Marion Woodman, who
made many suggestions and editing changes.
Most of all, I would like to thank two peo-
ple. One is Jenny Donald, my life's partner, for
designing and editing the book with such con-
cern for its meaning and for her unfailing pa-
tience in coping with the whims of an intuitive.
The other is Dr. von Franz—whose book it really
is—for so generously giving of her time, her
knowledge, her vision and wisdom to me and to
this work.
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 Preface

Millions of individuals today are seeking to know

more about themselves. They wish to know
who they are so they can be who they are. On
the personal level, this need to understand
more about our inner being is reflected by the
upsurge of interest in self awareness groups and
the influx of books and articles expounding new
techniques for self realization. Similarly, in the
collective, corporations and businesses are be-
coming so concerned with burn-out, stress fac-
tors and the correlation between psychological
well-being and productivity, that many are now
restructuring their organizations and encourag-
ing employees to attend consciousness-raising
seminars.
This growing awareness corresponds to
the emergence of a neglected area of science,
namely the study of the influence of subjective
or "inner" experience on the health and be-
haviour of human beings. Obtaining objective
data presents a difficulty and some researchers
are now concentrating exclusively on dreams as
the means to systematically investigate this vast
inner universe. Initial discoveries.show that
dreams reveal a profound relationship between
our inner and outer states of being and give in-
sights into the depths of the human mind hith-
erto unplumbed by the conscious intellect.
Properly deciphered they contain important in-
formation about the physical and mental health
of the individual.
The Swiss psychiatrist, Dr. C. G. Jung, was
a pioneer in dream research. He discovered that
dreams attempt to regulate and balance both
our physical and mental energies. They not only
reveal the root cause of inner disharmony and
emotional distress, but also indicate the latent
potential for life within the individual. They
present creative solutions to everyday problems
and inspirational ideas for the creative potential
of life. He found that in sleep, through dreams,
people awaken to who they redlly are.
In this book, Jung's foremost living suc-
cessor, Dr. Marie-Louise von Franz, explains and
demonstrates the scientific theory of dream
analysis. Based on her research of over sixty-five
thousand dreams, Dr. von Franz concludes that
the healthiest thing human beings can do is pay
attention to their dreams. "Dreams show us
how to find a meaning in our lives, how to fulfil
our own destiny, how to realize the greater po-
tential of life within us."

PB:

xii
 Personal
Introduction
by Fraser Boa

One day a retired senior executive was playing

golf with a friend. As they walked along the
fairway, his friend asked how he was enjoying
retirement.
"Well," replied the retired executive, "let
me put it this way. I started at the bottom of
the ladder and I climbed, rung by rung, until I
got to the very top. And then I made a terrible
discovery. I had the ladder against the wrong
wall."
When I was thirty-nine years old I realized
I had the ladder against the wrong wall and
underwent what is now euphemistically called a
mid-life crisis. Simply put, my whole existence
suddenly added up to a loud, "So What?" Even
the two most vital aspects of my life were of
questionable value. My career which I had pre-
viously pursued with vigour and enthusiasm no
longer interested me, and my personal rela-
tionships with my wife and family failed to
contain my energies. Outwardly, I traveled the
straight road of a successful middle class man,
but inwardly not a day passed without the ma-
lignant thought, "Surely to God there is more to
life than this." The fundamental values upon
which I had constructed my life were eroding
and I had no replacements. Moreover, I didn't
know where to look for them. It was not a
question of searching for a needle in the
haystack. I knew of no haystack, let alone a
needle.
Perhaps, if we kick the stone long
enough and hard enough the god awakens and
smiles on us, or at us. In any case, fate ushered
me into the consulting rooms of Dr. E. A. Ben-
net at 99 Harley Street, London, England. Dr.
Bennet came highly recommended. He was a
Jungian analyst. Who's Who in England listed
him wipean MG.) MOBe. BoC). oP MM, MAL
M.Diy DSc. 41.PM, R.AM.G; Brigadier and
command psychiatrist, India Command 1942-45;
honorary consultant, Tavistock Clinic; staff psy-
chiatrist of the Royal Bethlehem and Maudsley
Hospitals. Surely, he would have the answer.
Dr. Bennet's first words were not
promising. "I cannot tell you what it is you are
looking for," he said. "You must discover that
for yourself." Then he added, "But I can tell you
where to start looking." If I had not known his
credentials, his next sentence would have ended
the consultation. With a_ tone of absolute

xiv
 certainty, he said. "The solution to your di-
lemma is within you. You will find it in your
dreams. Your dreams will give you the an-
swersst
"But I don't dream," I said. "I've never
had a dream in my life."
"We all dream," he said, "four or five
times every night. You've just never paid atten-
tion. Try to recall your dreams and bring
them to our sessions. We will work together to
discover their meaning."
I left his office feeling highly skeptical but
prepared to test his possible knowledge against
my certain ignorance. I hadn't found my needle
but he said he knew a haystack.
That night I fell off to sleep with a pencil
and pad beside my bed. When I awoke, I re-
called a dream, the first of many I discussed
with Dr. Bennet. I dreamt I was walking on the
ancient rocks of Georgian Bay. The unevenness
of the rock face made walking difficult. When I
looked down to steady myself, I realized that I
was walking on the face of Christ.
With the discovery of the dream came an
awakening to a new reality, a new vision of life,
with dimensions I had not previously imagined.
My work with Dr. Bennet verified his initial
prediction. The information I had been search-
ing for was certainly within me and my dreams
gave access to that subjective reality. They were
like bridges connecting me to vast areas of my-

XU
self which I had not known existed—thoughts,
feelings, interests, potentials and energies hid-
den away in my inner mind out of reach of
conscious intention. Rather than feeling con-
demned to the futility of a "So What?" exis-
tence, I felt alive, vital and, above all, that my
life was worth living.
My interest in dreams led to the C.G. Jung
Institute in Ztirich where I had the good fortune
to do my training analysis with Dr. Marie-Louise
von Franz. Working one-to-one with her was a
great privilege. Dr. von Franz was not only the
world's foremost authority on analytical psy-
chology, but also a superb teacher with the rare
capacity to ground complex psychological
theories. Like all great masters, her use of ex-
amples from everyday life made the material
alive and relevant.
Gradually, I became aware that my "So
What?" experience was in no way unique. There
were others in the same quandary and I often
wondered if it would be possible to share with
them my experience of this great analyst work-
ing on dreams in her consulting room. Surely
they too would welcome the information which
I had stumbled upon by fate.
I first discussed the idea of a film series
with Dr. von Franz at a conference in Oxford,
England. It was a rainy evening. We talked by
the fire over an English beer. I outlined a script
aimed at making Jungian psychology available to

xvi
 the general public. The format was simple. We
would have informal conversations on the basic
concepts of analytical psychology and she would
interpret dreams to illumine the theory. "Street
interviews" with people from various parts of
the world would further extend the series into
life. It was not an easy decision for her. By
making the films, she would agree to take the
public into her consulting room. (No analyst,
including Jung, had ever done this before.) She
would not be interpreting an ancient myth or a
piece of literature or a disguised case, but the
actual dreams of living people. I was surprised
by her response.
"IT will participate," she said, "but only
upon the condition that all dreams are told on
film by the dreamers themselves. No actors,
unless they tell their own dreams."
"That won't work," I said. "Amateurs will
be embarrassingly self-conscious."
"Then I will not participate," she said. "A
series with actors telling other people's dreams
would have no integrity. We must have people
telling their own dreams—real people and real
dreams."
We ordered another beer.
By the following spring, over fifty in-
dividuals had agreed to tell their dreams on
camera. These were hard choices which re-
quired considerable reflection for every person

xvii
knew that his or her dream might»be analyzed
in public by Dr. von Franz.
Those who participated in the project
were vindicated, however, by the standing ova-
tion from a capacity audience at the Boston
premiere which launched the films into the
theatres of Europe and North America. But
what I thought was to be a single birth, proved
to be twins. With the growing popularity of the
series, letters from people who saw the films
encouraged me to believe a transcript would be
valuable. Many felt that while they got an im-
pression from the films that Dr. von Franz was
an outstanding woman with interesting things to
say, they needed a book to study and reflect
upon the material. One man put it succinctly,
"You can't stop and argue with a film."
One of the great satisfactions of turning the
series into a book was to include much of the
material that had been painfully left on the cut-
ting room floor. In one sense, therefore, Marie-
Louise von Franz is more present, more fully
represented, in the book than in the films. In
another sense, the visual sense, she is, of
course, less present. Weighing up the gains and
losses (by no means obvious), we had to come
to grips with the very real differences between
the two media of film and book. A book to be
a book cannot be merely a transcript of the
original sound tracks of film. A film script is
organized by the visual technique of montage.

xviti
In The Waste Land, T. S. Eliot exploited this film
technique to image the fragmentary, dis-
continuous character of modern society. He set
out to give us what he called "a heap of broken
images." Our purpose, however, was not Eliot's.
It was, rather to communicate to the reader in a
far more direct manner. Information was our
primary concern and the kind of clear
understanding that hopefully arises from infor-
mation simply presented. Our task was not to
perplex and bewilder the mind in order to create
the illusion of a chaotic world that has lost its
meaning. Indeed our task was precisely the
reverse.
This book was written to help people
understand the world of the dream as a way of
understanding what is in essence a very coherent
world, whether seen from inside or without. It
was written to inform and to instruct in the
conviction that dreams themselves have the same
intention. It is my hope that the book will serve
as an easily accessible, in-depth guide to analytical
psychology and Jungian dream analysis by the
world's leading exponent, Dr. Marie-Louise von
Franz.
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Part One

INTRODUCTION
Chapter One

DESGEN I.

INTO

DREAMLAND

"_.. Dreams provide the most interesting

information for those who take the trouble to
understand their symbols. The results, it is
true, have little to do with such worldly con-
cerns as buying and selling. But the meaning of
life is not exhaustively explained by one's
business life, nor is the deep desire of the
human heart answered by a bank account."

—C. G. Jung
Marie-Louise
von Franz

Fraser Boa

Dr. Marie-Louise von Franz is a Jungian analyst

practising in Ktisnacht, Switzerland. She did her
personal analysis with C. G. Jung and worked di-
rectly with him for over thirty years. She is the
author of numerous books on analytical psychol-
ogy and collaborated with Jung on two of his
major works, Man and his Symbols and Mys-
terium_ Coniunctionis. Our conversations took
place in her consulting rooms overlooking the
Lake of Ztirich.
Dr. von Franz, how long have you been study-
ing dreams?
Well, I think about thirty years. I have figured
out that I have interpreted approximately some-
thing like sixty-five thousand dreams. That's a
minimum.

You must often have asked yourself a question

that's always puzzled me. When I go to sleep, I
enter a void. I no longer exist. Then suddenly
some inner power forces me to undergo an
experience that I do not initiate—flying, driving,
making love—and these experiences are as real
as those in my waking life. What is that power?
‘Who makes up the dreams?
That is the most mysterious thing of all. Who
makes the dreams? There is still a naive preju-
dice among many people that dreams express
our own wishes, or our own schemes or plots.
But the longer one looks at them, the more one
sees that cannot be true. Too many dreams
represent what we hate hearing.

"Nightmares!
I have nightmares not dreams.
One time I jumped out of bed
about two feet and landed on
my butt on the floor."
— California Taxi Driver
 "IT had a horrible dream
the other morning when I
fell back off to sleep just
before coming to work. My .
friend's mother was killed
and... that wasn't very nice."
—English Waitress

The basis from which dreams originate seems

to be, let's call it with a vague expression, Na-
ture—Nature itself. It's a natural phenomenon.
A dream comes from the same source as a tree,
or a wild pig. Now, you cannot say what makes
a wild pig. If you believe in God then you'll say,
"God makes the wild pig," but, in any case, it is
that unknown power or mysterious force which
makes all existence. So it's best, perhaps, to
call it by a vague expression, the Godhead or
Nature. In that way we don't pin it down to
anything special.
By observing dreams for a long time, how-
ever, we do observe certain qualities and func-
tions. They have a superior intelligence in them:
a wisdom and a saidinenscleverness which leads
uss»They sh ire f
show u: e ul
about danger; they predict some re t
they hint at the deeper meaning Si ourrahe and
they convey to us illuminating insights. If you
analyse dreams of artists or creative scientists,
for example, very often you find that new ideas
are revealed to them in their dreams. They
don't figure them out in their computer. Rather
they come from the unconscious as so-called
sudden ideas. We also have documents which
show that many scientists first dreamt mathe-
matical solutions before they worked them out
consciously. So we must conclude that there is a
psychic matrix which produces creative new in-
sights.
After observing the dreams of human be-
ings as a psychic life process, the only thing we
can perhaps say is that this matrix seems to
‘steer the ego consciousness into an adapted,
wise attitude toward life. For instance, if a young
neurotic person refuses to go into life, it gives
him a healthy push, or if aging persons cannot
accept old age and death, it represents the
meaning of old age and death to them in beau-
tiful pictures. That matrix which makes the
dreams in us has been called an inner spiritual
(gUideyran inner centre of the psyche. Most
primitive people just called it god, or a god.
The highest god of the Aztecs, for instance, was
the maker of dreams and guided people
through their oN A sean meu prob-

mmm af old Zen Master stated that the Bud-

dha once said that when one is on the right in-
ner path one has good dreams.
13 |

remember
the ones that
make me
most comfortable.
I'm sure
there are a lot
that I block out.
If you want to
remember a
dream, write it down
immediately and it
will tell you a lot
about how you
really feel."

—Toronto Actor

"Dreams
are compensation
and I suppose useful,
if you can remember
them, in finding out
what kind of games
you're playing with
yourself —and
then you can do
something about it.
That's how
I see dreams."

—lTIrish Writer
dreams and that the aim of dreams seems to be
an optimum of life for the individual.
The dreams cannot protect us from the
vicissitudes and illnesses and sad events of hu-
man existence. But they do give us a guiding line
on how to cope with them, how to find a
meaning in our life, how to fulfil our own des-
tiny, how to follow our own star, so to speak,
in order to realize the greater potential of life
within us.

Doctor von Franz, how did you first become

interested in the study of dreams?
When I first met Jung, he Sap a case Of a
woman who had a vision and he ite lalpretedA
n me. That gave me a here for I met
Een eee that for him inner events, like vi-
sions or dreams, were the reality. They were a
reality as real as what we call the outer reality.
That was a great revelation. Then I read the
books of Jung, and there I saw the importance
he gave to dreams and I felt I could never really
judge if what he was saying was true or not true,
right or not right, if I didn't go through an
analysis myself. So I took my whole courage in
my hands and asked him if I could have an
analysis with him, and he agreed. After that
every dream interpretation was arevelation. |
seemed to have, according to Jung, especially
difficult and complicated dreams so I never un-
derstood a word of my own dreams. They were
just Chinese puzzling nonsense. I would arrive
at Jung's with that nonsense, and with a big ef-
fort he would unfold the meaning of it. Some-
times he took a handkerchief and wiped his
head and said, "What would you do if you
hadn't a Jung to take you through that compli-
cated dream?"
It was always a surprising revelation that
lasted as long as I worked with him. Later, when
he got old, I didn't tell him so many dreams
because I saw that it tired him. (ream
interpretation takes a real physical effort. It's
not just a mental exercise.) But in the first years
of my analysis, the work mostly consisted of
unraveling those Chinese messages of the night.
I remember going to analysis in a tense, ner-
vous, often depressed mood, and coming back
after the hour with a feeling of "Ah, now I
know, now I see where the whole thing is go-
ing."
The vast majority of the people we interviewed
on the street said they did not recall their
dreams. One young man said laughingly, "The
main thing I remember about them is that I
can't remember them." Why is it that people
do not recall their dreams?

10
 I think because they don't pay attention. Some
people have come to me and laughingly said,
"You analyze people through their dreams ]

don't you? Well, you can't with me because I

never dream." And I have just grinned and said,
"Okay, let's see." The next night when they
went to bed they wondered, "Will I have a
dream?" And just asking that question often
tickled out a dream. It was simply mpl that they
didn't pay attenti on. So, in fact, I have never
UCN ad

met anybody who didn't dream. Except some-

times people in a very, very heavily depressed
state have what I call dream constipation. They
don't dream much and often feel better as soon
' as they begin to dream. Also the dreams get
fewer in very old people over eighty and then
they come up again shortly before death.

"Well now, I'll tell you. I don't have a very

good memory now. I'm pretty near ninety
years old and I just can't. . . [know I used
to dream a lot but I don't dream anymore."
—Toronto Shopper

11
 You mentioned that you needed a Jung to inter-
pret your dreams. Is it possible then for the
average person to learn the art of dream inter-
pretation or is it so complex that it is accessible
only to an elite?
I think it's like all the sciences; only an elite will
go into the intricacies and the scientific compli-
cations of dre terpretation and the ques-
tions it raises. ” Guaunnnaanieeesedineate
professional skill: The man in the street cannot
pick it up and know it as well. But like all sci-
ences, certain rules of the thumb, certain gen-
eralities, can be spread to the general public.
They are helpful to people who don't want to
go into analysis and who don't want to plunge
into the complicated scientific problems of
dream interpretation. Among twenty unintelli-
gible. dreams there are from time to time very
simple dreams which everybody can see at
once.
The unconscious is, among other things, a
great joker, a great jester, and from time to
time it speaks right out—bang! So that as you
write the dream down you explode with laugh-
ter and you know what it means. Just the other
day, for example, I was very ill and revolting
against my illness, and I dreamt that I was at a
festival to greet old soldiers coming home from
military service. And as they handed in their
carpenter's tools, I saw that they were terribly
old. They were a hundred years old, and some-

12
body said into my ear, "Yes, they have kept
those people much too long in active service."
Now you don't need to pay an analyst to
understand that dream. At once I drastically
reduced my work load.

"Last year while I was back visiting some people

in Illinois, Iwas wondering how I'd cope with life
if I didn't have certain things, particularly my relationship
with my girlfriend. That night I dreamt that I was on a
beach throwing rocks in the water, and a hand
grabbed me from behind and said, 'Don't ever let go
of the things you love.' I turned around and it was gone.
I suddenly realized that my fist was closed hard. I
opened up my hand and there was a picture of my
girlfriend. That dream really got me to thinking that I
shouldn't give up on her so quick, and I haven't.
That was about the most influential dream I ever had."
— California Surfer

But many of our dreams are not that obvious.

I've had dreams that I was sure I understood,
but later, after working with them, I was
shocked to see how I tricked myself.

13
That's why; in gener2

But when fincasere hein own drei

they tend to say, "Yes, I know what that
means." And then they project what they al-
ready know into the dream. "Oh, that's my
problem such and such," and so on and so on.
I have often seen patients who do that. They
come in and say, "I had a dream, but I know
what it means," and then they give a completely
banal explanation of something they've known
for years about themselves. And then I say,
"Wait, wait, wait, let's take the dream as it is,
slowly, from beginning to end." And it comes
out quite differently and surprisingly.
So to
interpret one's own dreams
is very,
very difficult. That's why Jung advised Jungian
analysts to go to colleagues from time to time
and exchange their views of dreams. He himself
often complained bitterly, "I have no Jung to
interpret my dreams." So he used to tell his
dreams to his pupils and even if they said
something stupid, it might give him another
slant on his dream and make him more objec-
tive.
The trouble with interpreting your own
dreams is that you can't see your own back. If
you show it to another person, he can see it,
but you can't. And dreams point to your back,
\

14
 <, lO und lerstand your

pa That's ie Ereat difficulty. And ie

causes SO many errors.
I remember a schizophrenic patient who
used to come with ready-made interpretations
which she took out of kitchen dream books.
"Oh, it means that I'll get some money," or "It
means I'll get that job," or "I won't get that
job," and so on. Naturally, they were utter non-
sense.

But, if it is so beneficial to see your own back,

why has mankind always been afraid of the
eS

_ dream world?
quel is good reason for this.

vour a person by way of day-dreaming, spin-

ning neurotic fantasies, or chasing unrealistic
ideas. You have only to go into a lunatic asylum
to see the victims of the dream world. Some-
one is living in the dream that he's Napoleon.
Another, when you begin to talk to him, tells
you confidentially that he is really Jesus Christ,
but nobody seems to understand him. They
have been swallowed by the dream world.

15
 rtf eee ARISE <n it,ino at the
same time remain in actual life. We must not
forget living. The duties of real living must not
be neglected. As soon as one begins to ignore
outer life—one's own body, eating, doing one's
ordinary job—then the dream world becomes
dangerous. We call that dangerous aspect of the
dream world the devouring unconscious, or the
devouring (motherIt can suck us away from
fea and a us into a neurotic or even a

Dr. von Franz, would you give a personal ex-

ample of that dialogue? Have you had dreams
which changed the course of your life?
Yes, I have had many dreams which changed
my life, which I experienced as a great revela-
tion. There is one in particular which I think is
the biggest dream I ever had. That dream I
dreamt between meeting Jung and asking him
for analysis. I was eighteen, and on Christmas
night I had what Jung would call an archetypal
dream, a religious dream. It was a very long
mythological descent into the underworld. One
could sum it up as a descent into Hades, finding
the mystical water of alchemy, and coming back
with it. A kind of shamanistic journey into the
land of death. I still consider it to be the biggest
\

16
dream of my life. I woke up deeply shaken. I
was so shaken that for a few hours I couldn't
move. I had to stay in bed shivering until I had
the (COURS to get up and put my clothes on

you had Something to a with Senenr When _ I

met you I knew that was so. And now we see."
And that dream laid the basis for a major work
of my life, my collaboration with Jung on the
symbolism of alchemy. DR, Vo FraANT.
Sana
bi) Sea.
Seer

Excuse me...

17
"My name is Fraser Boa
and we're doing a documentary film
series on dreams. Will you talk to us?" ~“

"On dreams? You gotta be kidding."

"What do you think about dreams?"
"What do I think about dreams? I
think they're nice."
"Do you remember any?"
(Ohesure,”
"Why? "

"Why do I remember them? I don't

know. Why do you remember that you
go to sleep or that you wake up?"
"Could you tell us one?"
"Yeah, the usual flying dreams I suppose.
For some reason or other every once
in a while I find myself flying around
in an Edsel. Don't ask me why. . .
An Edsel! I can't help it. You guys got to
be crazy! Why would anybody be doing
a documentary film on dreams?"
"Tell me about the Edsel. How well does it fly?"
"Oh, it's great. It's great! The only thing
is when you're flying you have to be sure
that you keep thinking about flying, because
if you don't the thing comes down."
"Did it ever crash on you?"
"Oh no, it just sort of floats down. You
know Edsels!"
"Thanks very much for talking with us."
"Enjoy, gentlemen...(Looking back over
his shoulder as he rides off) You guys
really are crazy!"
—Male Cyclist, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco.

18
Part Two

Beals

BASIC

PSY CHOTOG

OF

GG UNG
 . ete chi f Gin’ pos

> poy srMetles a

WADA
, ,

>

Po

‘ ‘ -
| ‘ y \ t

4
' *
Chapter Two

CHARTING
THE

UNCONSCIOUS

When Columbus discovered America, he took

great wealth back to Queen Isabella. But the
most valuable treasures were his maps by
which others could further explore the new
found land.
Dreams have been called the royal road to the
unconscious. C.G. Jung traveled down that road
and brought back a map of the human psyche.
\

2p
 The human mind is divided into two parts,
the conscious and the unconscious, with the
unconscious being by far the larger of the two.
To illustrate this, our unconscious mind might
be compared to a computer which contains
vast stores of information, while our conscious
mind is capable of retrieving only the small
amount which is visible on the screen at any
given moment. And, of course, the screen, our
field of consciousness, keeps constantly chang-
ing. What is conscious at one moment may be
unconscious the next. A common experience of
this is one's sudden inability to remember
names when introductions are in order, names
which one knew perfectly well a moment be-
fore, or having a well-known telephone number
stick right on the end of one's tongue. The in-
formation is in the mind, but stuck in the un-
conscious, and no amount of will power will ac-
cess that information to consciousness.
When we ask questions like, "Why am I
feeling the way I do?" or "Whatever is going on
inside my head?" we are attempting to bring
information from the unconscious mind to
consciousness. It's as if we know the solution is
somewhere within the computer but we can't
the screen. As Jung said, cor

23
 The great discovery of depth psychology is

and by recalling the dreams our conscious mind

has the opportunity to view contents of the un— :

Even if a dream is recalled, however, the in-

formation often appears as nonsense to the con-
scious mind and is not easily deciphered. (The
unconscious does not express itself in a rational
language readily accessible to the conscious
eae |
ite mie ANAFETVA. VDE

PERE meet associated with the meme of

the arts. Far from being objective, prosaic
expositions, dreams are often highly subjective,
personal encounters in which the ego, the "I,"
experiences emotions ranging from extreme fear
and exhilaration to sublime peace and beauty.
Like plays, poems and paintings, the language of
dreams conveys the power and subtlety of
feeling as well as rational thought.
After years of researching the language of
dreams, C.G. Jung discovered and named several
re-occurring figures and motifs which form the
basis of the language. Once understood, these
structures are easily recognizable and dreams
immediately begin to make some sense to the
conscious mind.

24
 Dr. von Franz, before going into an in-depth
analysis of dreams, will you explain the major
structural elements of the language of the un-
conscious and clarify the descriptive terms used
by analytical psychology? Some of these words
have quite different meanings in colloquial
speech. Let's start with the term "the uncon-
scious." We've said that dreams reveal the
unconscious of an individual. In Jungian psy-
chology, what is meant by "the unconscious"?

oR BON CCOE a Gene SOnCEDe We use

that negative concept in order not to have a
"prejudice. Some people call it supra-conscious,
others call it sub-conscious, others call it the di-
vine sphere or the existential ground of exis-
tence. There are a thousand names.
We prefer the word unconscious because it
says nothing. It says only that it is not conscious
and this leaves it as a mystery. We don't know

conscious. You can, for instance, fall into a

fantasy during the day-time and say, "It's a
completely weird fantasy. It's crazy. I don't
know what it means." So if you don't know
what it means and you think it's crazy, it's
obviously not conscious, because if it were

25
 conscious you would know what it means. You
would know to what it refers. Now it is a psy-
chic happening; it has not happened materially.
It has happened as a psychic event and that's
why we call the sum of all psychic events which
are not conscious the unconscious. —

Jung said that the human mind, or psyche, is

made up of ma CO1 es. In everyday
speech, however, we use aie word "complex"
to describe only a negative aspect of someone's
personality. We say that a person has an inferi-
ority complex, or a power complex, or a
mother complex. Would you explain what Jung
meant by the word "complex"? What is its
psychological feria
M/

“COMLEX

Sie pe dead. ou can experience a complex,

for example, when you are terribly bored and
suddenly something arouses your interest and
you become engaged. That is a comple being

SaneRTE in eect language, we use

complex only in its negative form. Then we say
someone has a sex complex or a money com-
plex or a father complex, which means that this

26
 special complex arouses the person's energy
but arouses it negatively. For example, in the
dream of a woman with a father complex you
might see all the energies of the dream focusing
around the central figure of the father.

"I dreamt that there was a phone call in the middle of

~ the night and my mother answered the phone. My grand-
mother was on the other end, and she said something about
my father. I went out onto the porch and noticed that my
father's car was still in the driveway. He was at the wheel
motionless, bent forward as if about to drive but not moving.
And I realized then that he might be dead and I should call
an ambulance. Then I looked around the driveway. It was a
circular driveway. The driveway was filled with balloons
—hundreds and hundreds of white balloons. And the
thought came to me then that before an ambulance could
get to my father every one of those balloons would have to
be burst."
— Young Mother

Zi:
 Dr. von Franz,.you have said that our dreams
reveal the unconscious mind. That is, all figures
in our dreams personify some aspect of our
total personality. Jung delineated wel of these
sci and named them, 4 dow, the-
mus and the Self” ie look first
at ie Ce

"There was a little tiny window and

in there was the wild woman. She'd
been there since 1928. She was so
wild that she couldn't keep still.
Her arms and legs kept moving, her
hair was everywhere. You couldn't
see her face at all. Somebody else
went over to talk to her and she
put a knife to their throat."
— English Homemaker

"l had a bad dream about a man who

was vicious to me or attacked me in
my dream, somebody I knew. I met
him on the street and I wanted to
punch him in the mouth."
—Canadian Accountant

28
 The Shadow is the name we generally use for a
person of the same sex as the dreamer appear-
ing in dreams. The shadow figure very often has
a slightly inferior or opposite quality to the ego
of
the dreamer. It can personify our inferior
side, our best enemy so to speak, but it can
also be just our other side. A beautiful ego and
shadow couple is, for instance, Don Quixote
and Sancho Panza. The one is unrealistic and full
of fantasies and the other is a body man, down
to earth. They can't live without each other.
They are a typical example of the ego and its
shadow in one of its thousand forms.

"In this dream I'm going to a David Bowie concert and I'm intent on
meeting David Bowie. The show begins and he sings a song called,
'Move on, Move on.' Come intermission time the stage is empty
and a crane appears. Its big hook swings out, grabs me, pulls me
up, brings me over and drops me onto the stage. I feel myself
falling and falling and falling and I realize that I messed this thing
up. I wake in an incredible panic realizing that I've missed an
opportunity. I've missed a chance for something."
—Male Psychotherapist

29
 Let's move on now to other figures in the
unconscious: the women in the dreams of men
and the men in the dreams of women, the fig-
ures which Jung named the anima and the ani-
mus. Analytical psychology says that psycho-
logically every man has an inner woman and ev-
ery woman has an inner man. Many people
have difficulty accepting that concept.
Well, we know that we are born from genes
and that only the predominance of male or fe-
male genes makes the gender of a child, and
that there are even sometimes androgynous
"I've creatures in whom nature can't quite make up
even its mind whether to produce a man or a
dreamt woman. Every man has breasts and nipples on
I was the breasts, a sketched feminine side, so to
dancing speak, and a woman has a clitoris and a
with sketched masculine side.
Humphrey The same is true for the psyche. Not only is
Bogart our body predominantly male or female, while
when having the other element in it, but also our
he hadn't psyche is predominantly male or female, while
gota
containing the other side. Our contra sexual na-
Stell Otla
ture is personified in dreams as the figure who
How
is the opposite sex of the dreamer, that is, as
about
that?" men in the dreams of women and women in
the dreams of men.
—English
Homemaker

30
 "There was a man
standing in front of
me and I realized he
was standing beside a
huge black sausage."
—Writer, Female

"Ah, I dream
about Greta Garbo,
whom I was mad
about for a long, long
times
—Professor, Male

"Woody Allen was

sitting across the
table from me! He
smiled knowingly
and then asked me to
dance!"
—Student, Female

"At that moment in

time I started to stroke
her and I inserted my
hand into the lower
part of her bikini and I
was fondling her and
stroking her, and
suddenly she said, 'I
want you to make love
to me."
—Canadian Executive,Male

ae
What does*the feminine side of a man look like
in life?
The feminine side of a man comes out in typical
feminine traits. Negatively, as passivity and
moodiness. In some men as vanity, an absolute
feminine vanity or a kind of touchy sulkiness.
Positively, his femininity allows a man to be re-
ceptive, capable of listening and waiting instead
of having to speak out and step into immediate
action.

And the masculinity in a woman?

That is nowadays very visible. Negatively, it dis-
plays itself in determined brutal remarks and
actions, a certain recklessness and cfitical sharp-
mindedness. But that is not the worst masculin-
ity of women. Even a very feminine woman can
have a hidden masculinity in the form of ajsilent
stubbornness which nothing can convince. She
just pinches her lips and thinks inwardly, "You
can talk but I know what I want and I'm going
for it." Positively, the masculinity in a woman is
her capacity for courage, intellect and spiri-

We've talked briefly about dream figures of the

same sex as the dreamer, the shadow, and of
the opposite sex, the anima and animus. Now,
to round out our map of the dream world,
could we examine the figure which Jung said is
at the centre of the psyche, the Self?

32
 In most religious systems, there is an allusion to
a divine centre from which all order and all
organization stems. That centre appears in the
dream itself, sometimes as a centre, as a man-
dala, as an inner city, as a circle or square or
some other abstract formation. Or it appears as
a divine saviour child, as a saviour figure, as a
wise old man or wise old woman, or a psy-
chopomp—someone who guides our psychic
life.
All these figures seem to point to that ulti-
mately unknown and unknowable greater centre
am our psyche. For Jung, the Self, written with a
capital, is meant to be that supra-ordinate, in-
ner, unknown, divine centre of the psyche
which we have to explore all our lifetime. No-
body knows what the Self in him or her is or
what it wants. We need the dreams. We can say
the dreams are the letters which the Self writes
to us every night, telling us to do a bit more of
this, or to do a bit less of that, or to go ahead
to the left, or to go ahead tothe right. If we
look back over life, we can see that there is a
pattern, as if the Self, with a capital, has a plan
for us, a kind of destiny.
There is a danger, however, of confusing
what Jung meant by the "Self" with what is
meant by self-realization in most psychological
literature where the term is used to mean the
building up of a strong ego consciousness. This
is also important, especially in the first half of

33
life, but has nothing to do with Jung's concept
of the Self which is not self-realization in the
ordinary sense of the word. Rather, it is an ad-
venturous encounter with a greater inner centre
within one's person.

What happens when a person is not living in

harmony with the Self? What happens to those
energies? What happens to the feelings that are
not expressed, or the potentials that are not re-
alized?
They are the sources of what we call neurosis,
neurotic symptoms. The most general neurotic
symptom to-day is restlessness. That isn't yet
looked at as a neurosis because everybody is so
restless, but it is actually. Restlessness is caused
by a surplus of bottled-up energy which makes
us fuss around all the time because we are not
connected with the dream world or the uncon-
scious. Or that energy can take the form of an
all-pervading anxiety, a fear that somewhere,
something dark is lurking and might happen at
any minute. Then one is anxious about nothing
all the time. These symptoms result from an
unawareness that there is bottled-up energy in
the unconscious which we do not tap and which
we do not integrate into consciousness. Irri-
tability, aggressiveness, over-sexiness, or a feel-
ing of complete meaninglessness or empti-
ness—all the symptoms of different neurotic
diseases come from that restlessness. So we
V

34
can say if you are not connected properly with
your own dream life, then you are liable to de-
velop some kind of neurotic behaviour.

Would you say more about the overall pattern

of dreams? How does this pattern unfold over
the course of an individual's lifetime?
In the first half of life, it's directed more toward
an outgoing adaptation to earthly, material,
outer life, and in the second half, it generally
begins to steer the individual toward withdrawal
and toward developing a certain wisdom and
insight into the background of life. The last
dreams of dying people are a clear preparation
‘for death. But ultimately we can't understand
the pattern.
Psychologically speaking, we don't know
where we come from, and we don't know
where we are going. We are part of that cosmic
mystery which is the existence of nature and of
all things. We don't know why there are galaxies
and stars; we don't know why there's a universe
but we are beginning to realize that there are
certain master patterns in outer matter. There is
a directing force. It's not a chaotic, random
thing or phenomenon. Similarly, it looks as if
our psychological inner life is also organized by
a master pattern. It's centred somewhere.
When people get very old they have,
therefore, an inclination to go over their lives.
They muse again over the big events in their life

oD
and their dreams: and they generally see a cer-
tain pattern in it. Problems which pose them-
selves and solve themselves, and then switch
over into new problems. There seems to be a
secret organization, and the centre of that
organization is what the mystics would call the
divine spark or the God image within us. The
Buddhists would call it the Buddha mind or they
would even call it the Self. The Hindu would call
it the Atman, the universal and personal Atman
in the human psyche.

Let's finish with that amazing dream of Jung's in

which he encounters the Self in the form of a
yogi. Jung dreamt he was walking along a little
road and came to a small chapel. He entered
and was surprised that there was no statue of
the virgin on the altar nor a crucifix either, but
onlya beautiful flower arrangement. And then
he saw on the floor in front of the altar a yogi
sitting in lotus posture, in deep meditation.
Jung realized with a shock that this was the yogi |
who was imagining him, and that in his trance, a
kind of active imagination, he was imagining the
life of Jung, dreaming him. Jung knew that
when the yogi woke up, he, Jung, would no
longer exist. The ordinary Professor Jung was
the dream of that greater inner figure.

And yet, at the same time, the yogi figure was a

dream of Doctor Jung's. That paradox reminds
me of the dream of Ch'uang T'se. \

36
Ch'uang T'se said that he once dreamt that he
was a butterfly. That dream left him puzzling
ever after whether he was a man who dreamt
that he was a butterfly or whether he was a but-
terfly who dreamt that he was a man. That is
very true; we cannot figure it out. A butterfly is
a symbol of the Self. Are we the dream of the
Self or is the Self our dream? We just don't
know.

oy.
 thie aca 48 ated o
», oor. Sa
st 7 7

. ste asus “ 2
: eal
a wn “
“a -_
— es

ine
Chapter Three

THE

STRUCTURE

OF DREAMS

A six-year-old girl dreamed she was with her grand-

mother. In the dream she said, "Grandma, I can
make myself disappear!"
"Nonsense, child!" the grandmother replied.
"Nobody can do that."
At that point the child woke up, sat up in bed,
looked around her darkened bedroom, then lay
down and went back to sleep.
As sometimes happens, she re-entered the same
dream, whereupon her dream grand-mother looked at
the girl and said, "Lord, child, how did you do that?"
Each one of the thousands of dreams we have
during our lifetime is unique. Some seem
straightforward while others are complex, but
all dreams are spontaneous and unpredictable.
It's surprising to observe therefore that many
dreams do in fact have an identifiable structure,
a framework within which the dream is orga-
nized. When we trace the outline of that struc-
ture, the random flow of images and events be-
gins to fall into place. \

40
 "Dreams probably reflect something
of the reality of everyday existence,
you know, but what, I'm not sure."
"I'm interested
—Canadian Architect, Male
in my life and
I believe dreams
reveal my life to me."

—Female Shopper, "You can imagine things and do things in dreams

Camden Market, that you can't do in real life."
London —French Teenager, Female

"With me I find dreams

that I remember have
elements of thoughts from
my day thrown together
in a different way than
they actually happened."
—Lawyer, Female

"I do remember my dreams, and sometimes they tell me what is

going to happen—or whatever happened during the day gets totally
changed at night, and the dreams say the way I wish it would have
happened." —English Sales Representative, Female

"I fly often. It's mental.

Just think about leaving and I do. I write them down often. They tell my future
or tell how I am feeling—most definitely. If something is heavy upon me...
I cannot move when things are heavy upon me or I be smashed by boulders or
some type of weird objects that are very heavy upon my head or shoulders."
—Street Entertainer, The Parrot Man, California

4]
 Doctor von Franz, how much of dream inter-
pretation is scientific and how much is an art?
I think there is something of both in it. There
are helpful rules of thumb which are purely
technical or scientific which you can apply and
whenever I don't understand a dream I go back
to them. I say, "Now what is the exposition of
the dream, what is the setting up, what is the
association?" And you can generally get quite far
with the technique. But naturally, there is a kind
of practitioner's skill which you develop and
can't impart to a beginner. It is like an old car-
penter. He can tell a young carpenter how to
use the tools and how to measure and how to
cut the wood, but there is a certain touch of the
wood which he cannot convey. The beginner
has to work twenty years with wood and then
he'll-have the same kind of touch. When one
has interpreted many dreams and puzzled about
many dreams, one gets a certain hang of it, so
to speak, a professional skill which has to do
with feeling, with a mediumistic feeling, with an
empathy into the other person.

"Well, they give me different

feelings you know. They're
emotional, dreams are, but I
can't, you know, I don't
understand what they do."

—American Executive

42
 "I think they're fun. I like analyzing them.
Not that I can— not that I know what they
mean—but it's fun to try to find meaning."

— Young Woman, Secretary

Is there a technique for approaching a dream to

discover its meaning?
In Jungian psychology, we have a technique. We
compare the dream to a drama and examine it
under three structural headings: first, the intro-
duction or exposition—the setting of the dream
and the naming of the problem; second, the
peripeteia—that would be the ups and downs of
the story; and finally, the lysis—the end solution
or, perhaps, catastrophe. And if I don't under-
stand a dream, I use that scheme. First I say to
myself, "Now what is the introduction?"

43
 "I'm walking
"I could fly!
"l was in a village through very deep
Straight up through
hall organizing a snow by myself.
the roof! Right to On my right there's
concert or some-
the clouds and..." thing with my quite a high fence,
husband..." and as I'm walking
—Stewardess along I'm thinking,
—English Homemaker 'If violence
is going to break
out, what am I
going to do?"

—Canadian Actress

The first sentence of a dream generally gives

the setting, and introduces the major characters.
For example, a dream might begin, "I am in my
childhood home with my friend Bob." You take
the first sentence and ask the dreamer for his
associations, "What was your childhood home
like? How did you feel there? Were you happy
there? How long did you stay there?" And then
you. ask about the friend, "How is your friend
Bob? What was he like? .. . Oh, I see, he was a
bore, but you did all your childhood mischief
together." And then you insert these associa-
tions into the text which then becomes, "I am
psychologically still in my boyhood situation,
and I am with a part of myself which is boring,
but also mischievous."
.

44
 Once you have that translation you have
naturally to think about how it applies to the
moment of the dream and to the dreamer's life.
In what way does the dreamer still have one leg
in his childhood home? Where in his life situ-
ation is he still reacting as he reacted as a boy?
You have to assume that the dream is speaking
about that corner of his personality.
After you've looked at the exposition in this
way you then go on to the naming of the prob-
lem. Let's say a car comes up the driveway and
two dark burglars jump out. Now you have a
dramatic development which means a specific
story is now being told. The two dark men
would be an invasion, something which is
breaking in. Burglars very often represent
something breaking into one's conscious sys-
tem. So the dream would then translate, "In the
corner of his psyche where the dreamer still
has childish reactions, something from the
collective unconscious is breaking in."
In this way we slowly go through the whole
dream. Now the ending of a dream, the lysis, is
always what the dream is driving at: a solution
or a catastrophe. I know these rules of in-
terpretation so well that I follow them half
unconsciously. But I always pay particular atten-
tion to the last sentence of the dream which
gives the unconscious solution if there is one.
Some dreams just peter out and they are not
favourable. They mean that the unconscious

45
itself has no solution. But, otherwise, whatever
happens at the end of the dream is the solution.
If you wake up with a cry, for example, that's
the solution. That's what gives you the waking
shock. That has to be especially realized. And
so I always ask the dreamer particularly about
the ending of the dream.
If you want to interpret your own dream,
it's best if you write the dream on one half of
the paper, and then for every word in the
dream write down your associations opposite.
By associations I mean whatever comes to your
mind spontaneously. Then try to see if you have
made a connection between the dream and
your associations.
For instance, if the first sentence said, "I am
in my childhood home," that means where I am
still, child-like, and "A burglar is coming," so
something is breaking in, you would have to ask
yourself the question, "What is it? Why does
something break into my psychological sys-
tem?" And you would also have to think of the
day before and what happened then, inwardly
and outwardly. You might, for instance, have
had some disagreeable experience the day be-
fore and those burglars may refer to that dis-
agreeable experience. Or, you might have had a
negative, destructive thought right from within;
that also might be represented by burglars,
something destructive or negative suddenly
breaking into your system.
i

46
 So you try to remember what happened
yesterday, outwardly and inwardly, and then you
can probably make a meaningful connection.
Then you say, "Aha, it refers to that thought
that I had yesterday, or that experience, and it
shows me that I behaved in the right way or in
the wrong way." It corrects one's attitude.

And some dreams are much more explicit than

others.

"Well, first of all let me say that I'm a very, very happily
married fellow. My wife's away in Arizona right now with
our child visiting her folks, and I don't know why but I had
this dream last night. I dreamt that I was at a high school
prom with one of the girls who works here. Now, there was
nothing /ustuous about the dream, but I have this little sense
of guilt about dreaming I was spending time with another
woman while my wife's away. I suppose that that's a natural
consequence. In fact, I even shared it with the girl this
morning just to alleviate any guilt I might have."

—State Park Superintendent, Hawaii

47
 You've been describing a method of ap-
proaching dreams through personal associa-
tions. But there are also dreams to which the
dreamer has no associations.
There are so-called archetypal dreams that have
a mythological meaning and with them generally
people have no associations. If you ask, "What
do you think about Jupiter?" They reply, "Oh,
Jupiter, it's a star." They don't know what to
associate; they have no personal things that
come to them. In that case you take the
associations of mankind. "What has mankind
fantasized about Jupiter?" Put that into the text
of the dream.

You've said that every element in a dream

represents some aspect of the dreamer's psy-
che. Yet there are dreams that reflect outer
reality. For example, people may dream that
someone close to them has died and later dis-
cover that the death actually occurred. How can
you tell whether the dream is referring to outer
or inner reality? If, for instance, a man dreams
that his wife is stealing his car, how do you de-
termine whether the dream is referring to an
outer problem in his martial relationship or a
problem within himself?
That is the most ticklish problem of all. The
dreamer will often be inclined to think, "There,
you see, that's exactly what she is doing. She is
forever taking away my ways of moving about.

48
She is always interfering." And one is not so
sure. It might just as well mean that it is a pro-
jection: namely, that his own feminine side is
stealing the car, and that he projects that onto
his wife. He thinks his wife does it, he sees it in
her, while in fact, he is really doing it un-
consciously to himself.
To interpret these dreams correctly, one
has to know the whole marital situation and
have an idea of the wife's objective behaviour.
Then one can evaluate whether it is a projection
or whether it refers really to the wife. Some-
times it refers to both. The problem is whether
to interpret the dream objectively or subjec-
tively: objectively, referring to an outer object,
the wife is really stealing the car; or subjectively,
referring to the subject, the feminine side of
the subject himself is stealing his own car with
his left hand so to speak. Generally, I would say
that about eighty-five percent of the dream
motifs are subjective, and therefore I recom-
mend interpreting most dreams subjectively.
One should always first ask, "What is it in me
that does that?" instead of taking the dream as a
warning against other people.

We talked with many people on the street who

felt their dreams were important and tried to
find a meaning in them.

49
"I dreamt I was in a house with a lake in front of it. My father, my step-
mother and I were all in bed upstairs when the top floor flipped over into
the front yard. I fell into the yard but my parents got flipped right out
into the lake.
I told my stepmother the dream and she said, 'Oh, yes, very significant,
because people falling into bed and into water is all very sexual.' But what I
didn't tell her was that when they fell into the lake, she and my father were
making love and that I didn't get flipped into the water. I didn't quite make it
into the sea of life or something."
—Canadian Student, Female

Why is it so difficult to interpret your own

dreams? I know analysts who have been in-
terpreting other people's dreams for years but
cannot interpret their own.
Because the dream never tells you what you
know already. It always points to something you
don't know, a blind spot. It's like trying to see
your own back. You can show your back to the
doctor and he can see what's the matter with it,
but you can't see it. And your own psychologi-
cal blind spot is like your back or your ass, so-
to-speak, you sit on it but you cannot look at it.
That's why sometimes even if the dream tells
LY

50
 you obvious things, you can't see them. You
need another person to tell you and then you
think, "O Lord, naturally, that's it."
It's very difficult to interpret one's own
dream. If one has to, one has to, but it is most
helpful to have another eye on it, even some-
body who doesn't know about dreams. For
while you're talking and explaining the dream to
the other person often its meaning suddenly
becomes clear. Jung, for instance, had nobody
to interpret his dreams, so he often told them
to a man who knew nothing about dreams. Jung
said laughingly, "Just the off-the-point remarks
of this man made me feel, 'No, it isn't that, but
I know now what it is."
Many people use dream dictionaries to help
them interpret their dreams.

"I was flying. Just flying somewhere and

going nowhere, you know. Just like going,
going, not reaching anything. It was really "Yeah, I dreamt I was
scary and I came to work and I told the girls. catching a fish, and
I got a book on dreams to find out what it every time it keeps
meant, but I couldn't find it." slippin' away. I mean
the dictionary says
—Shop Assistant, Female that means pregnancy,
eli"
— Salesperson, Female

51
Are these books valuable in interpreting
dreams?
I think these books are very, very bad. They
get you off the track because they give a static
interpretation. A snake means an illness, or
means the death of a relative; breaking teeth
means the loss of parents or whatever. There
are now modern dictionaries which are a bit
more differentiated, but still they have a fixed
meaning.
The dream symbolism in our experience is
very much more individual. You need the indi-
vidual associations. What's important is always
what the symbol means to the dreamer and
what the dreamer has experienced with it. You
can sometimes be inspired by looking at one of
these modern dictionaries to see what all the
possibilities are—the possible meanings of the
snake, or the possible meanings of the pea-
cock—but then you have to return to the dream
and ask, "What does it mean to the dreamer?"
and that is always much more specific.

In your analytical practice do you work with

anything else?
I work mostly with dreams. In our way of
thought we operate with dreams because the
dreams come out of one particular individual
and are unique to that person.
The great danger of all psychological
helping professions is the potential to interfere

52
with the other person's life. Think, for in-
stance, of the idea of what is normal. A
therapist may have an idea of normality, and
think the other person should become normal.
That's interference, that's a power attitude.
Perhaps destiny or God, or whatever you want
to call the greater powers in the world, don't
want this person to be normal. So how does he
know that the patient ought to be normal? On
top of that, what he thinks is normal? A thera-
pist's bourgeois ideas of normality should not
be forced upon a poor human being who is
destined to be very different.
When a human being comes to you with a
problem, if you're honest you have to say, "I
have no idea where the problem comes from."
Any ideas that you have about the patient are
just prejudices. In fact, you have to say, "I have
no idea why you have a psychological problem
or even what the problem is." We cannot know
a human being's destiny. For instance, the other
day, I saw dreams of a little seven year old girl
which were the dreams of a dying person.
Now, actually she had had a cancer operation
and will probably die within two or three years.
I didn't know it when I saw the dreams. They
were most unusual. She had the dreams of an
old, wise personality. So you see you cannot
have theories about how a human life ought to
be or should be. Dreams are the only things
which come out of the patient himself, and if

Do
 ws

we try to understand the dreams with as few

prejudices as possible, we may find out what
the psychological depth of that patient tells him
about himself. We, the psychotherapists, are
only the dream translators. :
Analysis amounts to saying to a man who is
too juvenile, "Your own psychic depth thinks
that you are a bit too juvenile, and that is
damaging your health." That's not my opinion;
that's what we have extracted from the man's
dream. Often that hits home because the
patient feels that it's not the analyst's opinion.
When a dream is interpreted properly, it clicks
with the analysand and he says, "Yes, that's it."
He is impressed, and that is likely to give him
the motivation to change his life. While if you
advise the same man, "Listen, you are behaving
too much like a young man and it's not good
for your health," he won't listen, because he
has heard all that before. You see, if his own
dream laughs at him in this way, then there is a
better chance that he will really change his
behaviour. I can tell you that in the actual case
of the man who was too juvenile, he blushed,
and that showed the message of his dream hit
home.
And so, in our school, we follow the
dreams. We work with the patient to discover
their meaning and we leave it there. Working
together in this way, the patient doesn't feel he
has been put into the straightjacket of the

54
analyst's conception of normality or adap-
tation. He follows his own inner intimations,
what his own psyche tells him. So analysis is
educating people to be able to hear their inner
voice and follow it with the help of dreams.

55
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x
Chapter Four

THE

LIVING

SYMBOL

Symbols are the language of dreams. In dreams,

the unconscious is revealed in symbols, and the
key to understanding a dream is knowledge of
the symbol.
 While we're actually asleep (unconscious), what-
ever we experience in dreams—flying, falling,
killing—makes perfect sense. Yet, later, when
we recall the dreams, it seems crazy, meaning-
less or simply bizarre. Our conscious mind
does not understand the symbol.
In colloquial speech we often use symbolic
language to describe some aspect of an individ-
ual's personality. For example, we say that
someone with an inflated opinion of his capaci-
ties is "beaded for a fall," or "His head is up in
the clouds," or "He needs to be brought down
to earth,"—all symbolic expressions which
rationally have no meaning. In dreams, the
symbol comes to life. The individual actually
flies. He experiences the sensations of flight.

58
 "| have flown in my dreams.
It's a high, right? It'san
excellent high. Like, when
you're up there, you're all
by yourself and you feel
that there's nobody around
you, just the clouds."
"Quite often
—Auto Mechanic, Male
I dream that
I'm flying,
which is quite
an exhilarating
| experience:
and suddenly
it occurs to
you that it's
faintly
ridiculous
that you're "I start running faster and faster
actually flying. I and faster. I don't use my arms
much. I don't have any other
support except just my body. I
ge a catias flap my arms a little bit, and the
longer leaps I take the higher
and the higher and the higher
I go until I am flying."

—English Sound Recorder

De,
Shortly before his death in 1961, C.G. Jung ex-
plained the relationship between symbolic lan-
guage and the unconscious in his book Man_and
his Symbols.

Man uses the spoken or written word

to express the meaning of what he
wants to convey. His language is full
of symbols, but he often employs
signs or images that are not strictly
descriptive. Some are more abbre-
viations or strings of initials, such as
UN, UNICEF, or UNESCO; others are
familiar trademarks, the names of
patent medicines, badges or insignia.
Although these are meaningless in
themselves, they have acquired a rec-
* ognizable meaning through common
usage or deliberate intent. Such things
are not symbols. They are signs, and
they do no more than denote the ob-
jects to which they are attached.
What we call a symbol is a term, a
name, or even a picture that may be
familiar in daily life, yet that pos-
sesses specific connotations in addi-
tion to its conventional and obvious
meaning. It implies something vague,
unknown and hidden from us. . . . For
example, take the case of the Indian
who, after a visit to England, told his

60
 friends at home that the English wor-
ship animals, because he had found
eagles, lions and oxen in old churches.
He was not aware that these animals are
symbols of the Evangelists and are
derived from the vision of Ezekiel, and
this in turn has an analogy to the
Egyptian sun god Horus and his four
sons. There are, moreover, such
objects as the wheel and the cross that
are known all over the world, yet have
a symbolic significance under certain
conditions. .. . Thus a word or an
image is symbolic when it implies
something more than its obvious and
immediate meaning. It has a wider
"unconscious" aspect that is never
precisely defined or fully explained.
Nor can one hope to define or explain
it... . Because there are innumerable
things beyond the range of human un-
derstanding, we constantly use sym-
bolic terms to represent concepts that
we cannot define or fully comprehend.
This is one reason why all religions
employ symbolic language or images.
But this conscious use of symbols is
only one aspect of a psychological fact
of great importance: Man also produces
symbols unconsciously and spon-
taneously, in the form of dreams.

61
"I was in a grassy
meadow feeling
very happy.
Gradually this
feeling changed
and I became edgy
and nervous. These "I had a really bad "I dreamt that I
feelings increased dream about a snake, was On some sort
until I felt panicky was afraid that I was of a building and
and scared— going to pass out, we were just
terrified! By my left you know, because hangin' around
foot was a snake. A I'm just terrified of over the ledge. We
horrific looking snakes. When I woke had our feet on top
thing with human up I was sweating all of the eavestrough,
teeth. I knew it was over. I was sweating and the eavestrough
going to do me cold and I was broke, and I kept
harm." very relieved that on falling. I don't
it wasn't true." know about any-
—Female, Painswick, body else, but I
England —Argentinian kept on falling."
Businessman, Paris
—Security Guard,
London

62
"Here's the dream.
I moved into a
house in Montreal
and it had a white "I dreamt I'm
staircase. For three driving ona
nights in a row I motorcycle down
fell down that cobbled streets, and
staircase screaming, just having no street "Yeah; i dream
and it never had left and falling. It was about snakes...and,
an end. It was awful! But I never hit well, when you look
terrible." the ground, which is it up it's supposed
good. Supposed to to mean enemies."
—Homemaker, die when you hit
Montreal the ground." —Shop Assistant,
Female, Toronto
—Female shopper,
Camden Market

63
Doctor von Franz, "falling" is a very common
dream motif. We've all fallen in dreams. What is
its symbolic meaning? Is it true that if we hit the
ground in a dream we're dead?
I have experienced falling and not being dead,
being caught up or waking up before I hit the
floor.

But, according to superstition, if you hit the

floor, you are supposed to be dead.
No, no, no. It simply means a shock collision
with reality. If you have dreams of falling, it
means that somewhere you are too high up.
Perhaps, you have too high an opinion of your-
self, or you have romantic, unreal ideas, or you
are living in a make-believe world, or in a the-
ory. Somewhere you are not in touch with real-
ity. Sudden fall dreams generally coincide with
outer, deep disappointment when one is sud-
denly faced with naked reality as it is. That can
be a deadly shock to the ego. One can be, so to
speak, blotted out by it for a while. The ego is
out. It has nothing to say. That is death by hit-
ting the floor.

I remember a dream in which I was shot dead,

stone cold dead, with one shot right through
the heart. But my murderer fired four more
shots. Each bullet he fired killed me anew. I re-
member thinking in the dream that it was
pointless for him to continue for I was already

64
dead. He'd killed me with his first shot. What
does it mean when the dreamer actually dies or
is killed in a dream?

It always means that the ego attitude as it is at

that moment has to go. I have had many
dreams in which I was officially executed, gen-
erally by being beheaded. They stated very
clearly that the head had to come off, that some
intellectual attitude had to be sacrificed. But if
you are shot that's rather like being hit by
something and means you need a shock to wake
you up. The death of the dreamer in dreams
means a radical complete change where ab-
‘solutely nothing of the old person or the old
attitude is left. So if one dreams of being killed,
executed, or shot or hanged or whatever the
form of death, it always points to the coming of
a radical change.

Rather than pursuing the meaning of various in-

dividual motifs, could we approach this subject
of symbols by first examining one particular
symbol in depth and then demonstrate how
that symbol communicates the unconscious in
an actual dream. Let's focus on one of the major
symbols of our culture, the star. What aspect of
the psyche has mankind projected onto the
stars to make them symbolic?
The realm of the stars was always looked at as
the realm of eternal, divine beings. Therefore in

65
 many parts of the world there is the folklore
tradition that, when you see a star shoot down,
that is the moment the soul comes to earth and
the child is born. In China and in the old Ro- |
man Empire, when a remarkable personality
died, the astrologers looked at the sky for a
new star because they thought that the dying
soul would return to the heavens and once again
become a Star.
Moreover, in the Egyptian death ritual, the
prayer goes, "Let me become one of the unset-
ting stars which circles around the North Pole."
The goal of the dead person was to become
one of the never-setting stars.
Also, in Egypt, the immortal, spiritual part
of the psyche was represented by the so-
called "Ba" which was born either as a bird or
as ‘a star. It symbolized that part of the person-
ality which outlasts death and after death
accompanies the Sun God over the sky as a
never-setting star. So the star has to do with the
eternity of the uniqueness of the personality.
That has been projected into a star.

"This is one of those rare dreams in which an authoritative

male voice told me unquestionably what it wanted me to do.
The voice said, 'This is your lodestar."
—Dreamer, Female
a

66
Does the star of Bethlehem have the
same symbolic meaning?
That fits exactly into that context; namely, that
when a remarkable, outstanding personality is
born, a new, bright star appears in the sky.
That is how the Magi, the three kings, inter-
preted it at once. When they saw the star of
Bethlehem, they knew that some outstanding,
important personality was born on earth and
that is why they went to see the child. That fit-
ted the general viewpoint of the time. A new
star meant that somewhere somebody—an em-
peror, a great ruler, or a personality who would
change the whole fate of mankind—had come
to earth.

Now let's look at a dream in which the star is

the central image. This dream comes from The
Gilgamesh Epic and is one of the oldest
recorded dreams of mankind. Gilgamesh was
king of the Sumerian walled city of Uruk. He
was a powerful ruler in the ancient world and
his dream was considered important enough to
be inscribed in stone. Here is the dream of
King Gilgamesh:

67
"In the middle of the night I
walked proudly up and down
among my people. There were
stars in the sky. Suddenly, one
of the stars of the sky-god Anu
fell upon me. I tried to lift it, but
it was too heavy for me. All Uruk
assembled around this star and
the people kissed its feet."

68
 This dream is about forty-six hundred years old.
Still to-day we can find modern parallels for the
language of the unconscious has changed much
less than the language of human consciousness.
So if we interpret this dream from a modern
stand-point we could say that up to the moment
before the star fell upon Gilgamesh, he fulfilled
the collective role of the king. He was the hero-
king. He is typical of a man who ambitiously
and successfully follows a collective pattern.
Nowadays, he might be a great politician or a
movie star—a man who has followed up certain
collective alleys and reached a goal. Looked at
from within, such a person reacts in a very
collective way fulfilling a collective role of
power. They are not generally very individual.
The star, on the contrary, represents his
uniqueness—every soul has one star in heaven.
We can say that up to the appearance of the
star Gilgamesh, with all his collective power
achievement, had not done anything unique. On
the contrary, he had only fulfilled the typical
pattern of a hero-king. Then, probably about
the middle of life (because that's when it most
frequently occurs), something changes.
While he is walking around among his sub-
jects, proud of his own power position, a star
falls from the sky onto his back. It turns out to
be a very heavy load. That is the moment when
his unique destiny befalls him, literally falls on
his back. That means that just as Christ had to

69
carry his cross, Gilgamesh now has to carry the
burden of having to become the unique, chosen
individual he was meant to be, a task which he
has avoided by being an ambitious, collective
man. ;
Now the star also means the immortal soul
of man. For instance, in Egypt that part of man
which survives after death is the Ba soul and is
drawn as a star. It is the eternal kernel of the
human psyche and has always represented the
unique, eternal man within us. And so he has
now to follow his unique destiny instead of ful-
filling a collective role. And this proves to be
no glorious call, but a heavy burden to him.
Until the star fell upon him, Gilgamesh
thought he was a great man. He was a king, he
was a hero, he was the fortress of his people.
But now he has to see that that is not much.
What the people worship is that star stone, that
greater thing in him and not his collective
power. In the dream, the people kiss the star's
feet and not the feet of Gilgamesh. They pros-
trate themselves before the star, which is his
true greatness. So that in the dream there is also
a little teaching for Gilgamesh: "Don't take all
the honour and all the compliments the people
give you for yourself. It is that star upon you
they worship. It's your necessity to become a
unique individual. That's what they worship in
you—not you. And that is your heaviest load."
And so from then on in the epic, Gilgamesh

70
becomes the servant of his unique, heroic task,
which is the search for his immortality.

Why is it that so few people follow their own

star? Why is the star such a heavy burden?
Because following your own star means isola-
tion, not knowing where to go, having to find
out a completely new way for yourself instead
of just going on the trodden path everybody
else runs along. That's why there's always been
a tendency in humans to project the uniqueness
and the greatness of their own inner self onto
outer personalities and become the servants,
the devoted servants, admirers, and imitators of
outer personalities. It is much easier to admire a
great personality and become a pupil or fol-
lower of a guru or a religious prophet, or an
admirer of a big, official personality—a Presi-
dent of the United States—or live your life for
some military general whom you admire. That
is much easier than following your own star.

What type of person attracts the projection of

the star?
If a person has by birth some outstanding quali-
ties, intelligence or some other talents, he or
she often attracts the projection of the star.
These gifted people are subject to projections
and the devotion of others creates a temptation
for them to develop an inflation. Now, an infla-
tion means an over-estimation of oneself. In-
stead of saying, "My talent isn't me and my

71
 .
intelligence isn't me. I have been born with a
good computer and that's all there is to it.
There is no merit," such people would tend to
identify with their gifts and get blown up.
Inflation means to be blown up like a balloon.
Whenever people have a success you see
inflation on a minor scale for they afterwards
display arrogant, condescending mannerisms.
Naturally many people who have made history
were inflated. Some Roman emperors, for
instance, suffered from what one calls the
madness of Caesars.

Inflation then is having an unrealistic opinion of

oneself. But is it possible not to be inflated?
Can people accurately estimate their own self
worth?
Well, the difficulty is that nobody has by nature
a very good estimation of his own value. No-
body knows how much or how little he or she
is worth. I mean, ask anybody, "Now, honestly,
are you a great person or are you a small per-
son? How small or how great are you com-
pared to others?" Anybody would have to ad-
mit that he has no idea. It is a subjective feeling.
Either one has an inferiority feeling and feels
oneself the last worm on earth, or one has a
superiority complex and feels oneself elected
far above the average. Most people switch back
and forth between these two. In neurotics it's
a

G2
extreme, and in normal people it's less ex-
treme, but everybody has days when one feels
below the weather and a nobody, and days
when one feels on top of the world. That is the
natural swing back and forth, and one could call
a personality normal when the estimation of
oneself approximates who one is, what one has
achieved, how the surroundings appear, and so
on. But it's a very indefinite thing, really.
Any lack of balance in this respect, either
too far below or too far above the mark, has an
irritating effect upon the surroundings. To know
if one has an inflation, a person has only to see
if he or she gets on other people's nerves. If
so, one is probably a bit overestimating one-
self, or underestimating oneself for with an in-
flation a person may have feelings of either su-
periority or inferiority. Feelings of inferiority
are just a veiled inflation. If one feels inferior,
that's really ambition; a person wants to be
more than one is. One wants to be a great per-
son and knows one isn't. Inferiority is also
inflation and, therefore, gets on people's
nerves.
Sometimes people come in and say, "Oh
well, you know, I can't do it. How do you think
I can do this? You know, I'm not capable, I'm
so stupid, I can't think," and so on. Then I say,
"Now stop that nonsense. Get on with your
job." They are really making a conceited dance
out of calling themselves inferior and incapable.

aD
It has a very irritating effect. So the only mea-
sure one can have, in the last view of life, be-
fore God, so to speak, is that nobody knows
who is important or who is not important.

We've talked about the danger of inflation for

the person who attracts the projection of the
star. But what happens to the person who does
the projecting, who projects his or her own
star onto someone else, who projects the Self
onto another person?
Let's first see the positive side. If the Self is
projected, one falls into a tremendous state of
admiring the person onto whom one projects
the Self, a kind of incredible fascination and de-
votion to that person, and that can have the ad-
vantage of learning from it. If one projects the
Self onto somebody who is really wise or supe-
rior, one can learn a lot. That is the secret of
many miraculous cures; people project the Self
onto a healer personality and by the incredible
fascination and faith they have in that healer
they are cured of all sorts of psychological or
psychosomatic illnesses. So it serves as a vehicle
for healing the individual. Much more fre-
quently, however, this fascination is negative and
leads to an infantile giving up of oneself, and
being, so to speak, flat on one's belly before
the other person, worshipping the great leader,
or the great spiritual guru, or whatever. By this
projection one loses oneself in an infantile way

74
and remains infantile. Such people are often
very fanatical in their admiration, defending that
person against enemies, and basking in the
glory of their master through an identification.
The projection saves them from making an ef-
fort themselves.
The great man or the great woman out
there is going to do it all for them, and their
task is only to applaud and admire. They have
to make no effort to become more intelligent
or wiser Or more independent themselves. Such
a projection can just annihilate the personality.
Naturally it also depends upon the person onto
whom the projection of the Self falls. If that
person has an inflation and misuses the power
to breed admirers and followers, it has disas-
trous consequences. But I know that in the Far
East there are masters who know about the
dangers of infantile dependence and won't ac-
cept the projection. They send those novices
and pupils back to their own inner task.

The psychology of an individual is often re-

flected in a society. What happens then when
an entire group collectively projects the Self
onto one individual?
Well, then you have monarchies or dictator-
ships. The kings of all countries, down to the
chief of a primitive tribe, are carriers of the
symbol of the Self. The advantages are that such

ee)
a tribe or population has a unifying symbol
which holds them together. It is a deeply
rooted need in man to project such a living
symbol of the Self. That's why a king has to be |
very virtuous and generous. He has: to display all
the qualities of a superior man. Whether he can
or can't is another question. But that's what's
expected from him. And if you look at the his-
tory of kingship it goes much deeper. In
primitive tribes they believe the king or what
we usually call the chief, is the actual life of the
tribe and therefore, if the chief becomes
impotent, he is killed. Otherwise the whole
tribe would become impotent and the fertility
of the fields would stop. He is the guarantee of
hive:
If a primitive chief falls ill, he is executed
because one cannot have a sick king. He is the
life principle. He is the incarnation of the di-
vine, totemic principle of the tribe. That is, a
projected symbol of the Self. And because
there is this need, when the monarchies were
largely abolished, dictators like Napoleon or
Hitler received the projection. This shows that
people need to project the Self onto some
leader figure. But this is an infantile gesture and
occurs because we want to remain children. We
don't want to take the responsibility.
Democracy is a very difficult task, because it
puts political responsibility on the individual
and most people don't want to take it. Here in

76
Switzerland, only about twenty-five percent of
the population vote. The others do not want to
be bothered. They don't want to wrack their
brains; they prefer to think that the father state
will do it for them. "After all," they say, "we do
have a group of leaders, and they are father fig-
ures, and they are the Self, and they will do it all
right." It's simply just mental and psychological
laziness.

CAZES: oP

When people try to evade problems you first

have to ask if it is not just laziness. Jung once
said, "Laziness is the greatest passion of man-
kind, even greater than power or sex or any-
thing."

Wy
 cen
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to iped Deep ae
Part Three

DREAMS

OF

OUR

CULTURE
Chapter Five

THE

LADDER

TO HEAVEN

"Christians often ask why God does not speak to

them, as he is believed to have done in former days.
. . .We are so captivated by and entangled in our
subjective consciousness that we have forgotten the
age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams
and visions. The Buddhist discards the world of un-
conscious fantasies as useless illusions; the Christian
puts his Church and his Bible between himself and
his unconscious; and the rational intellectual does not
yet know that his consciousness is not his total
psyche. . . . But if a theologian really believes in
God, by what authority does he suggest that God is
unable to speak through dreams?"
—C.G. Jung, Man and his Symbols
 ~

At the turn of this century, the early pioneers in

depth psychology did not discover the impor-
tance of dreams. They re-discovered it. Many
ancient civilizations took their dreams very se-
riously indeed. Ironically, today many people
who dismiss dreams as meaningless, unknow-
ingly accept and follow spiritual values, beliefs
and traditions which stem directly from the
dreams of individuals who lived thousands of
years ago. Throughout the religious history of
our Judaic-Christian culture dreams played a
central role in determining the fate of mankind.
They were thought to be the voice of God.

82
 Doctor von Franz, let's further explore the
symbolic approach to dream interpretation by
looking at some biblical dreams. Perhaps you
will explain as we go along how these symbols
can be read to-day in just the same way as they
were by those ancient peoples.
First, a dream that determined the course of
Judaic history, the dream of Jacob's ladder:

83
"And Jacob dreamed that there was a
ladder reaching from the earth up to
heaven. And the angels of the Lord
were ascending and descending on it.
The Lord stood above the ladder and
said, 'The land on which you lie I will
give to you and your descendants, and
by your descendants shall all the
families of the earth bless themselves.
Behold, I am with you, and will keep
you wherever you go."

84
Jacob's dream is one of the examples often
cited by theologians to justify taking dreams se-
riously. There are others in the Bible which
were taken as proof that God sends dreams.
These theologians even speak of God-sent
dreams.
Now as the sun is setting, Jacob gets near
to a place called Haran. It is dark and he lies
down and puts a stone as a pillow under his
head. That specific place is mentioned again at
the end of the text; Jacob says that it is truly the
house of God.
This is one of the oldest beliefs of man-
kind, that in the landscape there are certain
places where one has either communication
with the upper deities or with the lower deities.
For instance, a dark chasm or a hole in the
ground, was generally looked at by primitive
tribes as the entrance to the underworld where
one communicates with the gods below. It's the
place where the dead disappear, or the souls of
the children come up, and so on. And then
other places, especially mountain tops, are
places where there is a special communication
with the gods above. Think of Moses and Sinai,
for instance. On the mountain tops you are
closer, so to speak, to the upper gods. That's
why Zeus lives on Mount Olympus. In Greece
all gods and goddesses lived on high mountains.
In a flat country where there are no mountains
they live in other special places.

85
 w

Now Jacob didn't know that this was a sa-

cred place. He concluded that from his dream.
He said, "This must be a sacred place I am in
because the dream has come to me."
That touches a mystery which we haven't
yet solved; namely, we project our soul into a
landscape. There is a complete soul geography
in the world. Every nation and every civilization
has such a geography. They have a place where
one communicates with the gods above, a place
where one communicates with the gods below,
a place where there are good spirits, and a
place where there are evil spirits. It is as if
original man's unconscious psyche were spread
all over the landscape. Certain places even cause
us to shudder.
The Romans still believed that there was a
spirit to a place. They called it the genius loci.
When, for instance, they built a house or they
made a garden, they always placed a little statue
of a phallic symbol there to signify the spirit of
the place: "May the spirit of the place be
benevolent to me." And even to-day, if you go
through a landscape with an open heart, you
will notice that there are places you feel good
and you would like to stay, and there are other
places you feel uneasy and would like to leave.
You don't know why.
The same thing exists in a house. Even do-
mestic animals have favourite places where they
lie, and others where they won't go even if you

86
think they are suitable. One can rationalize and
Say it is because there is a cold draft or some-
thing like that, but that isn't always so. There
are times when there is no rational reason. The
animals just feel psychically comfortable in cer-
tain places and not in others. And we are just
the same. We have our favourite corners, and
we are angry if someone else sits there. We are
exactly like dogs. So Jacob hit upon such a
spot, a sacred place where, speaking psycho-
logically, his soul could open in a dream to a di-
vine influence. He put a stone under his head
and went to sleep.
Now the stone is one of mankind's oldest
symbols of the sacred. From the study of ex-
isting original tribes and archaeological excava-
tions, we know that original man probably
worshipped stones. Certain stones were felt to
contain sacred powers. For instance, still to-day
the Australian aborigine believes that the spirits
of the ancestor gods live in certain stones, and
if a woman passes by these stones she can con-
ceive a child. A child comes into her womb
from these stones. The same was true for the
Germans. They thought that the souls of new-
born children came out of the tomb stones on
the graves of their ancestors. These ancestors
would jump from the stones into the women's
wombs and impregnate them. So the stone is a
place where human life originates. It is very
similar to the star; the eternal, everlasting sub-

87
stance of the human being was projected into
the stone.
Now with the sacred stone under his head
as a kind of fetish which connected him with
the Beyond, Jacob went to sleep as-the sun set.
The setting of the sun could be interpreted as
going to sleep, the blocking out of conscious-
ness. He went deeply into the unconscious and
in that moment he saw a ladder going up to the
sky. Jacob's famous ladder on which angels go
up and down symbolizes a continuous con-
nection with the realm of the gods. For in-
stance, shamans in their initiation climb into
what they say is the sky although in reality it's
only a few metres. The tree or ladder or rope
which they climb is their connection to that
ghost world, the world of the gods.
* Also, the medicine men in Tibet and an-
cient China were called the Masters of the Cord,
because only they could make that connection.
Only they could climb up to the sky. In other
places it was a tree that they climbed. Each was
simply a means to go up, step by step, and
make a connection with the divine world. Later
in the Renaissance in the seventeenth century,
Jacob's ladder was interpreted symbolically as
being the sounds and vowels of human speech,
or the different qualities of the world, or the
different numbers of the world. The basic idea
of different systems of thought was projected
onto the ladder. But in all these cases,the ladder

88
symbolized a continuous, constant connection
with the divine powers of the unconscious. We
could say the dream itself is such a ladder. It
connects us with the unknown depth of our
psyche. Every dream is a rung on a ladder, so
to speak.
In that sacred place the Lord predicts Ja-
cob's future to him. At that time dreams were
mostly used as a means of predicting and
knowing the future and the Lord here predicts
to Jacob that he and his descendants will spread
over the earth and that the Lord will be with
them. This confirmation that God is with him
-gives the fleeing boy the courage to go on.
That's why when he wakes up, he calls this
place the House of the Lord, Bethel, and puts a
stone there as a mark. That's an age-old habit of
mankind. Stones have always been markers of
sacred places and they still are.

When you use the word "God," what do you

mean psychologically?
Psychologically, I am using the word to mean
anything which overwhelms us so completely
that our genuine reaction is to prostrate our-
selves to the floor, to venerate it, to fear it. It's
that which is fascinating or frightening in a sort
of blissful rapture. Anything which sweeps a
human being completely off his feet. That has
always been called God.

89
 s

Are you using the word "gods" in the same

way?
In the same way, yes. The difference is that
polytheistic religions characterize different ways
of being overwhelmed. If you are overwhelmed
by terror, then it is Shiva the destroyer; if you
are overwhelmed by bliss, then it is Vishnu. But
in all polytheistic religions there are always as-
surances that really all those many gods are in
fact just one.
And in a monotheistic religion, there is a
secret polytheism. There are really many gods.
For instance, in Christianity we have the Trinity
and saints and angels. So that monotheism and
polytheism penetrate each other. Sometimes
the accent is more on the one who is also
many, and sometimes the accent is on the many
who are also one.

Do you think the gods are alive and well in sub-

urbia?
Nowadays the gods are just where one doesn't
expect them. They are mostly in addictions: the
bottle of alcohol or some other drug. Wotan,
the God of Rage, is, for instance, in a terrorist.
He is simply dedicated to an overwhelming
rage. The rage has him; he has not the rage.
Rage is his God. So we have an endless number
of gods, but, because we don't venerate them
or even look at them, they are mostly nasty.
That's why when someone has his god ina

90
brandy bottle he must find a relationship to a
spiritual god. He must drive out the negative
spirit by a positive spirit.

In Jacob's time, angels were the messengers of

God. Obviously back then people believed in
angels. What aspect of the unconscious do they
personify? Where do we see angels to-day?
Well, I can tell you what happened to my
friend, Miss Hannah. We were driving into town
and suddenly she stepped on the brakes so
hard that I flew into the window. When I
looked up, there was nothing in front of us. At
that moment, a child jumped out from behind a
parked car and ran right in front of our car. But
we had already stopped. I said to Miss Hannah,
"How on earth did you do that? The child
wasn't visible when you stopped. It wasn't yet
visible at all." And she said, "Something in me
told me, 'Brake at once, brake at once.' I don't
know what that was." Now, ancient man would
have said, "My protecting angel told me that." It
was as if a benevolent presence had interfered.
Miss Hannah had no idea why she braked. She
just felt as if a voice in her ear was saying,
"Brake, brake!" and she did.
You often hear stories of people who
miraculously survive an accident. Someone falls
off a roof and gets caught up by a tree branch,
or has a bad car accident and theoretically
should be dead, but is practically unhurt. That

91
 s

experience makes them feel that there was

some intentional or meaningful agency at work
which helped them or saved their lives. More-
over, the presence was not just a mechanism,
because it acted with intelligence. .That's why
they feel as if it is a personality helping them,
something personal, something protecting and
personal.
We have also, naturally, evil angels, who
can lead us down the road to destruction. But,
generally, the idea of angels comes from mirac-
ulous experiences in which we feel that some
intelligent agency beyond us has helped us. We
feel a presence. Angels are also related to the
idea of the double. Most primitive people be-
lieve that humans are split as long as they live
on the earth. They believe that they have a
greater personality, an invisible double living
somewhere in the bush, or invisibly accom-
panying them from behind. This double ap-
pears at certain moments. Today we would say
that's the personification of the unconscious. If
they see that double in outer reality, then the
primitives say it is a symptom of death. So if a
primitive is saved in such a miraculous way from
an accident, he would think that his double had
done it. The double and the protecting angel
have a lot to do with each other.
To experience an angel is to experience
that something more intelligent and greater than
your ego is alive in you. It sometimes, arranges

92
 your fate against your own will and may make
you do things you do not plan. That is an expe-
rience I think everybody has had in their life at
some point. Naturally, in higher religions that
experience was transformed into the teachings
that there are angels, that everybody has a good
protecting angel and sometimes also an evil
seductive angel. It is the battle of half per-
sonified powers in our unconscious for which
we are not responsible. They were understood
as messengers of God. Primitive man thought
that God could not look after everything him-
self, so the angels are His delegates who look
after His creatures.

Many medieval paintings have angels as the

messengers of dreams. They show a protecting
angel bringing a dream to a sleeping person.
Yes, the angel was very often understood as
being the personified essence of a dream, be-
cause, you see, dreams also save our lives.
Sometimes we have a warning dream, and if we
attend to it we can avoid all sorts of disaster.
For instance, I would never take a flight if I had
a disastrous dream the night before, because I
think that, if the unconscious took the trouble
to give me a warning dream, I should attend to
ie
We cannot explain this, but our uncon-
scious does know more than we know. It is as if
the unconscious is expanded into outer nature

93
and has information which we cannot have.
Therefore in dreams you sometimes get warn-
ings or information about things you cannot
possibly know.

Jacob accepted the authority of the voice that

spoke to him in his dream and thereby his
personal destiny was determined. If the inner
authority remains unconscious, can it be pro-
jected onto a cause or an ideology which will
then become the goal of the person's life?
Yes, you can either project it onto the person-
ality of a spiritual or worldly leader or it can be-
come an ideology, an ism or a religious convic-
tion, which you then accept as the highest goal
and the determining factor of your life. That is
just as possible. That's why wherever you have
fanatical beliefs, be it in religion or in ideo-
logical systems, you have this projected outer
star, so to speak, which you follow.

Can you give some examples of leaders onto

whom people have projected the star?
Hitler was a malevolent star whom thousands of
Germans followed, and Christ was a beneficent
star whom millions followed. Naturally, there
are false prophets and true prophets, good
leaders and bad leaders. History finally decides.
You have the same _ situation when
somebody elects a guru, or has too great a
transference on a psychotherapist. The star, the

94
uniqueness of the personality, is projected and
one is fascinated by the person out there in-
stead of following one's inner authority.

How does this apply to movie stars?

Teenage girls around the world try to dress in
the same way as a feminine movie star, and try
to style their hair in the same way. She is their
star, their ideal, the feminine personality they
would like to become, and therefore they try to
imitate it. It's the same with male movie stars.
Boys imitate them. The "stars" represent the
ideal and as the ideal changes, there are always
new stars with a new style which then appeals
to a new generation.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing, or just a

phenomenon?
I think it neither a good thing nor a bad thing.
It depends on what one does with it. For in-
stance, if the British hadn't projected their star
on Churchill during the last world war they
probably would not have stood up through the
ordeal. Their complete belief in him gave them
the courage to face those very dark times. So
Churchill, being the star of the British nation
saved the British nation. In that case it had a
beneficent effect.

95
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Chapter Six

iiabes

FORGO EEN
LANGUAGE

"Behold, we were binding sheaves in the field

and lo, my sheaf arose and stood upright, and
your sheaves gathered around it and bowed
down to my sheaf. Then I dreamed that the sun,
the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down
to me."
Dreams have determined the destiny of indi-
vidual lives. They have also altered the fate of
entire cultures. Dreams were crucial.to the de-
velopment of our western civilization.

98
Dr. von Franz, first I would like you to interpret
the dream of a young boy, Joseph, who lived in
a nomadic desert tribe almost three thousand
years ago. His favoured position in the family
made his eleven brothers intensely jealous of
him. One day he told his brothers his dreams.
Joseph was a bit naive to tell his family these
dreams. Although they probably didn't inter-
pret them consciously, they were hit by them
and got angry.
The first dream says that the sheaves of
wheat bow before him. Now, the sheaves of
wheat were in those days a symbol for the
generations of human life. There is, for in-
stance, a whole symbolism in Egypt—and you
have allusions to it in the Bible—that man is like
wheat: he blossoms, he is cut down by death,
and from the roots he sprouts again. So the cy-
cle of life and death and returning to eternal life
has been projected onto the wheat. That
projection exists as well in the Greek Eleusinian
Mysteries and also in the biblical saying that if
the corn doesn't fall onto the earth it doesn't
bear fruit, and so on. Thus, when he dreams
that the sheaves of wheat bow before him, it
means that all earthly life, human beings as well
as vegetation, bow before him. The dream
shows his inner election as a leader.
It would be natural for some people to
admire Joseph and follow him and imitate him,

99
but not so with members of his personal fam-
ily. As often happens when one member of a
family is a genius, or outstanding in some way,
the family reacts negatively toward him or her.
Sometimes there are families who identify with
the genius child, run the show with it and bask
in its glory. But more frequently, if we read
the histories of gifted, outstanding people, they
generally have trouble with other members of
their families who misunderstand their out-
standing fate. They are jealous of them and de-
sire to hammer them into shape. However,
outstanding personalities generally have to pay
in some way for their outstandingness. They of-
ten have some unpleasant characteristics which
compensate for their greatness and are difficult
for those around them to swallow. Now, Joseph
naively tells his dream and the family's reaction
is well known. He then has an even worse
dream. The sun and moon and stars bow be-
fore him as if he were the new sun, the new
centre of the sky. The dream presents a very
exaggerated formulation of his election by the
Lord.
From a modern stand-point, one must
conclude that Joseph was not conscious of his
importance, that he rather underestimated him-
self. If he needed such a dream, it shows that
he probably consciously thought of himself as a
very ordinary person, and that's why the dream
hammers into him, "No, you are something

100
special, you have a special destiny, and the
sheaves of wheat and the luminaries in heaven
will bow down before you. You are the centre,
you are the important person, on you every-
thing will depend one day." That prepares him
to later take responsibility for his tribe. With
such a dream, he had the courage to take the
responsibility of a leader.

In your practice as an analyst, have you ever

encountered a dream like Joseph's, in which a
person was given his or her destiny?
Oh yes. I had for instance in my practice a
painter whose predilection, as well as training,
prepared him to paint very accurate renditions
of things, and therefore he earned his living by
very accurate old-fashioned, photograph-like
portrait painting. That was his fashion and he
had a violent resistance to what he called mod-
ern art. He despised its destructive and impos-
sible ways. Night after night he dreamt that he
had to change his painting style completely and
paint inner things and abstract things. For in-
stance, he always used dark colours, but he had
clear dreams that said he had to paint in bright
colours. And he had, among others, one very
disagreeable physical symptom; he was impo-
tent. But as soon as he began to obey the
dreams, his physical symptoms including his
impotence disappeared. He was cured by com-
pletely changing his artistic style. He did not

101
 have to change ‘his vocation. He had only to
change his style.
I have had other people who had to
change their profession, give up everything and
do something else instead. That's naturally al-
ways a terrible moment of fear and crisis. The
neurosis of people frequently comes from the
fact that they don't listen to their call, a call that
in my practice occurs very often.

Years later, Joseph interpreted this dream for

the Pharaoh. His interpretation saved both
Egypt and the Jewish people from a state of
starvation:

"Pharaoh dreamed he was

standing by the Nile and
behold, seven cows, sleek
and fat, came up out of the
river and fed in the reed grass.
And behold, seven other cows,
gaunt and lean, then came up
out of the Nile and ate up the
seven fat cows."

102
 If we want to understand Joseph's interpreta-
tion, we have to relate it to the thought of his
time. Now, the cow in Egypt was a mother
goddess. In their mythology a heavenly cow
covered the whole of heaven. A cow, sup-
ported by the god of air, Shu, was standing
over the sky and on her belly were all the con-
stellations of the stars so that when an Egyptian
looked up at the sky, he looked at the belly of
an enormous cow. Isis, the great feminine god-
dess, was also sometimes represented with a
cow's head as was the goddess Hathor. So the
cow had to do with the cosmic maternal prin-
ciple, with the principle of feminine fertility of
both the earth and the sky. The sky naturally
gave the rain in those dry countries so the rain
represented the milk of the heavenly cow
which guaranteed all life.
Now the number seven, according to the
thought of that time, was associated with the
seven planets and with the seven metals. It
stood for a complete cycle. After seven, the
cycle began again with the number eight. Still
to-day we have seven days in our week and the
eighth day is a re-beginning. The seven in the
tradition of number symbolism is associated
with a complete cycle of time.
So Joseph working along those lines,
thought there would be a complete cycle of
time, when the mother goddess would give
plenty, and this would be followed by a cycle

103
 where there would be poverty. He predicted to
the Pharaoh that there would be seven years of
plenty and then seven years of hunger and
drought, a prediction which fulfilled itself com-
pletely. That was the way he thought when he
interpreted the dream.

If the Pharaoh had given you that dream, would

you have made the same interpretation?
Yes. If I knew I had an old Egyptian pharaoh
before me in my practice, I would talk in that
language.

The third dream of destiny is one we've all

heard many times at the Christmas season, per-
haps without ever realizing that it is, in fact, a
dream. After he learned that his young, virgin
fiancée was pregnant, Joseph dreamt:

"Behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to

Joseph in a dream, saying, 'Do not fear to take
Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in
her is of the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son,
and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will
save his people from their sins."

104
 In the time of Joseph, people were still in-
clined, more than they are today, to believe in
supernatural events. Obviously Joseph also had
his very common and ordinary suspicions about
the pregnancy of his fiancée, and he needed
this dream to tell him that a supernatural and
divine conception had taken place. In all reli-
gions, the central teaching contains such para-
doxes, something which goes right against hu-
man experience. The essence of a religious say-
ing is this paradox which asserts the superiority
of the spirit over matter. In the materialistic
world, there is no such a thing as a virgin birth,
‘but by asserting it is so, the religious saying as-
serts the priority of certain inner, spiritual
things above outer, material things. And you
find the same thing in dreams.
Whenever people are too rational and too
materialistic, the dreams point to something
completely supernatural. I remember the
dream of a woman who dreamt that she saw a
little mechanical animal. It was made of dia-
monds, but it was alive and walked around on
the floor. She consulted Jung about the dream
and he said to her, "That is to prove to you that
the impossible is possible. You are still too ra-
tional. You think such a thing cannot happen.
You are not open to miracles and there are
miracles. In the realm of the psyche miracles
can happen."

105
 s
“

Dreams assert the impossible. They say,

"Look, you think that that's impossible, but it
exists in the realm of the psyche. It does not
exist in the realm of matter, but it does exist in
the realm of the psyche." And Joseph also
needed the angel, a messenger from God, to
tell him in a dream that Christ was born in a
supernatural way, conceived by the Holy Ghost.
That is how most mythological heroes in differ-
ent religions are born. The virgin birth is not
something unique to Christ; most supernatural
saviour figures are born in such a way or con-
ceived in such a way.
Joseph, according to the spirit of the time,
accepted the dream completely literally. He
stood up for the Virgin Mary, and protected the
child, and carried all the difficulties for her
without ever wavering in his faith. It must have
been difficult for them as one can easily imagine
that the people around them talked quite differ-
ently about this event. So we see here how the
dream unites certain people into a common ac-
tion and how dream life is a community-pro-
moting factor.
Some people think that by attending to
dreams, one becomes a solitary lunatic, a funny
kind of autistic person who follows his own
dream in an asocial way. But that is not true.
Very often dreams suggest a relationship with
someone or something which doesn't occur to
us at all in consciousness. They create social

106
bonds and new social behaviour just as they
sometimes sever old social ties. But the dream
is not at all an asocial phenomenon. Joseph
might have turned against his wife and been
destructive to her, but, through the help of a
dream, he completely changed his attitude and
supported her throughout life.

You've written about primitive cultures in which

dreams play an important role in social life.
Many so-called primitive tribes—I don't like the
word primitive, let's say people who still live in
a natural surrounding and preserve their own
‘natural culture intact from white influence—rely
very much on their dreams. The Senoi tribe,
for instance, educate their children to relate
their dreams from an early age. Dreams are dis-
cussed and interpreted both in the family and in
the tribe as a whole. Their social life and be-
haviour is based on and oriented toward their
dreams.
There is also an Australian aboriginal tribe
which has a festival, Kunapipi, which lasts thirty
years, a whole generation. Every year only a
part of the festival is performed. At the end of
each part of the festival, they assemble the tribe
and ask for dreams about the ceremony. The
dreams are then discussed and if there are pro-
posals in the dreams to change the ritual, it is
changed. So that the ritual always corresponds

107
 s
“

to their inner dream life, or their inner dream

life always has a say in their religious ritual.

In Canada, the Iroquois Indians took their

dreams very seriously. In fact, one of the mas-
sacres of the Jesuit fathers resulted from a
dream.
A study I read recently shows that the Iroquois
tribe relied greatly on their dreams and that
their visions and dreams were of primary inter-
est. During the time they were in difficulties
fighting the whites, they especially tried to have
dreams and to follow them. Some of their
prophets even foresaw the disaster of their
community in dreams. They also tried to prove
the reality of their spiritual experience by telling
their dreams to the white missionaries who
were trying to destroy their faith by labeling it
as superstition. The writer of this paper argues
that this view of dreams is probably true for
most primitive societies. But up till now an-
thropologists have overlooked asking about
dreams, and consequently have not gotten much
data on them. But it looks, from all we know at
present, that most primitive cultures and soci-
eties heavily relied, and still rely, on dreams.
In China, there has always been an inter-
preter of dreams. Even now in the streets of
Communist China there are specialists whom
you can pay to have a dream interpreted and
from the interpretations I have read, they sound

108
 most modern. These interpreters are very good
psychologists and they have intuitions about the
dreams of people which correspond com-
pletely to what we would say.

What can modern psychology learn from

studying how primitive societies relate to their
dreams?
That primitives are generally less technologically
and rationally oriented, and therefore have a
more natural outlook on life and on death and
on their own inner life. They are better related
to their instinctive life.
We have become too lop-sidedly intellec-
‘tual, and therefore we don't relate to our
dreams, or we think in waking up that our
dreams are silly and absurd. That's our first im-
pression. The primitive man, who thinks more
symbolically and has through his tribal traditions
a more mythological and symbolic knowledge,
has a better relationship to his dreams, and that
means he has a better relationship to his inner
life, to his instinctive life.

Is that part of the role of the analyst in modern

society, to re-connect the individual to his own
instinctive inner life?
Yes. 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

109
meet the patient: Just meet him with your heart
and your mind as a unique human being. Then
every encounter is an adventure and the dream
is that direct encounter. Among the thousands
of dreams I've interpreted, I've never met the
same dream twice. The dream is always unique
and always comes at the right moment. It's a
message from the powers of the instinct, the
powers of the collective unconscious, a message
which comes at a specific moment during a
particular night which is meant specifically for
the dreamer. The alchemists would say it's a
message from the unique to the unique. Namely,
from the divine centre of the psyche to the
unique individual pertaining to the unique situa-
tion one is in. That's why you can never predict
dreams. You can never go to bed and say, "I'll
probably dream about this or that." You will
always dream about something completely
different.
So at the source of the dream there is a
creative mystery which we cannot rationally ex-
plain. It's the creativity of nature. It's the same
creativity which has created what man could
never invent: the millions of species of animals
and flowers and plants on the earth. The
dreams are also like flowers or plants. They are
something unique which you can only marvel at.

110
Part Four

LOTTE

PO MGHOlOG i

OF
Chapter Seven

OUR

SHADOW
KNOWS

Two birds, inseparable friends, cling to the

same tree. One of them eats the sweet fruit,
the other looks on without eating.
—Mundaka Upanishad
Inside everyone lurks a shadow. Behind the
mask we wear for others, beneath the face we
show ourselves, lives a hidden side of our per-
sonality. At night, while we lie helpless in our
sleep, its image confronts us face to face.

114
Dr. von Franz, dreams reveal our unlived life
through the character of the shadow. Psycho-
logically, what is the meaning of the term
"shadow."
The word shadow is simply a name we use for
the fact that most people are not fully aware of
all their personality traits. We like to imagine
ourselves as being intelligent, or generous or
good-natured, or practically gifted, and what
not. But we have other qualities in our complete
personality, inferior qualities that we are not so
aware of. Our relationship to our surroundings
tells us about them, and in quarrels they come
“out. But we tend to push them into the shadow.
We don't look at them, and when we think
about ourselves we forget about these qualities,
for they often make us ashamed. Only our best
friends and people we live with can generally
point out these more inferior traits very clearly.

Perhaps you would interpret this dream which

shows how the unconscious uses close friends
to point out our shadow characteristics. It's an
amusing dream of a rather shy thirteen-year-old
boy. He's an introverted kid who likes to read,
play chess, ride a skate board. On the other
hand, his best friend Chris, who appears in the
dream, is exactly the opposite. He's an outgoing
type, athletic and competitive. The two boys
have been close friends for years.

ES
 ~

"I dreamt I was

a huge eagle,
and I was flying
over the town,
when I saw my
friends, Chris
and Mike, walking
to school. So I
swooped down
and I shit right
on top of Chris's
head, and he had
to go home to
wash his hair.
Then I was sitting
on top of his roof
and he was going
back to school
at lunchtime. So
I swooped down
and I shit right
on top of his head
again. And he went
crying inside to his
mother, and I
thought it was
the funniest thing
I had ever done."
—Dreamer, Thirteen-year-old boy

116
 The two boys are friends, but they are also a
contrast. The friend onto whom he shits is
more of an extraverted boy who likes collective
sports and wants to go out, and the dreamer
himself prefers individual games and seems to
be a more reflective character. And in the
dream he is an eagle and is flying.
In heraldry the eagle is the bird of kings
and leaders. As the lion is the king of the wild
animals so the eagle is the king of the birds. He
has something to do with the power drive, but
also with spiritual elation, with high flights in
thought and fantasy. It looks as if the dreamer
has a far greater capacity for fantasy than his ex-
traverted friend.
Now all introverted individualists secretly
envy the extravert because the extravert is more
successful collectively. In general, introverts
have a certain feeling of inferiority toward ex-
traverts. Extraverts also have them toward the
other, but they never admit it. But the intro-
verts generally admit that they envy the worldly,
successful friend. And therefore in the dream
the balance is restored.
Our dreamer as an eagle succeeds in shit-
ting on his friend's head and by that act humili-
ating him. The friend has to go and get mama's
help, and the dreamer has naturally an elated
feeling of triumph. One could look at the dream
a bit suspiciously and say that there's also a little
warning that he shouldn't elevate himself too

117
 ws
“~

much above the friend. But I think it rather

means a compensation. He feels a bit uncertain
or inferior toward his friend and therefore the
dream shows him this possibility: "Look here,
you are the real eagle, you can shit on his head,
so it's no problem."

Does the shadow only personify inferior aspects

of the personality?
Well, most people identify more with charac-
teristics which make them socially acceptable
and therefore the shadow is generally awkward,
inferior, and sometimes a bit evil or socially un-
adapted. But that is not always so. There are
people who prefer to live their worst side and
then their shadow is positive. Criminals, for ex-
ample, often live the worst side of their per-
sonality, and have a positive shadow. They have
a well-meaning-helper-of-man as a shadow fig-
ure. But the norm is to identify more with our
positive and developed traits of character, and
to push the more inferior side into the shadow.
The most famous example is Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde. That is a literary representation in which
we really see how man and his shadow live to-
gether and act upon each other.
Everybody casts a shadow, so to speak. If
we think a lot, for instance, our feeling side will
be relatively inferior or undeveloped because
we don't pay enough attention to it. Somebody
who works mostly with machines and technical

118
things tends to neglect his fantasy, or his artistic
gifts. But if we repress the shadow we are only
half people. That's why there are in literature
tales about the devil who steals the shadow
from people. Then they are, so to speak, in the
claws of the devil. We need a shadow. The
shadow keeps us down to earth, reminds us of
our incompleteness, and provides us with
complementary traits. We would be very poor
indeed if we were only what we imagined our-
selves to be.

Where do we see our shadow in everyday life?

‘Whenever we are tired or under pressure, an-
other personality often breaks through. For in-
stance, people who are very well-meaning and
helpful suddenly become ruthlessly egocentric.
They push everybody else aside, and become
very nasty. Also when people have the flu or
are ill, you suddenly see their shadow side
coming through. Or you have people who are
always in a good mood and cheerful and enter-
prising and then one day they become ill-tem-
pered bears, and you have the feeling, "I've
never seen that person that way before."
There's a sudden change of character. That's the
breaking through of the shadow. It can take on
a thousand forms. Let's say, you have a very
good friend and you lend him a book. Now it's
just that book that your friend loses. It was the

119
last thing he wanted to do, but his shadow
wanted to play a trick on you.
Also it happens very often that people
who are jealous play nasty tricks on each other.
They lose their objects, or they don't keep
their appointment, and so on. They have the
best of intentions, but their shadow plays nasty
tricks behind their back. It's also well known
that policemen and criminals have a shadow
relationship to each other. Many policemen
fight their own shadow in the outer form of a
criminal and would have a criminal inclination
themselves if they weren't policemen. That is
only one example which is well known to
criminologists. We all have our favourite ene-
mies, our best enemies, so to speak. They are
generally our shadows. If people do some harm
to you, then it's natural that you hate them. But
if somebody doesn't do special harm to you
and you just feel so madly irritated every time
that person enters the room that you could just
spit at him, then you can be sure that's the
shadow. The best way, then, is to sit down and
write a little paper on the characteristics of that
person. Then look at it and say, "That's me." I
did that once when I was eighteen and I blushed
so that I was sweating blue in the face when I
had finished. It's a real shock to see one's
shadow.

Can a shadow side of our personality take the

form of an animal in our dreams?

120
Yes, if a person represses or suppresses in-
stinctive emotional responses, a hostile animal
may occur in the dreams.

"Well, about three days ago, I had a dream which in-

volved a tiger that suddenly appeared at my house. I
never actually really saw the tiger's body; all I actually
saw was the head.
In our house here at Eton, we have a long, long
passage with doors on either side of our own individual
rooms. I remember being in the bathroom and this
tiger was trying to grab me around the door. It had its
head right underneath the door and its neck was thin
enough to actually get underneath the door. I
remember standing there pushing really, really hard.
I wasn't particularly frightened; it just appeared to
me that this tiger was really against me. I just didn't
want it to come in. Friends at the other end of the
bathroom weren't at all worried about it, but I was.
I was the only person that actually had any qualms
about this tiger trying to get in."

—Eton College Student

"Do you have a temper?"

"T just can't stand it if someone's got
it wrong and I know that I've got it right.
I do have a temper. Yeah. ..
How'd you know?"

121
The more that people are self-righteous and
never live their shadow side, the more they
project it and see others as the evil-doers. The
righteous live in a constant state of righteous
indignation hunting down their own shadow in
the form of the outer person. For instance,
clergymen have very problematic natures be-
cause the community always expects them to be
mild and friendly and helpful and virtuous. But
the poor man or woman has a shadow too, nat-
urally, which they can't live out. If they did, the
whole community would howl against them. So
they generally spend their relationship to evil
by seeing it in other people and preaching
against it.

Very often shadow figures pursue us in dreams

in the form of burglars or dangerous enemies.
In general, if something in the dream pursues
us, it wants to come to us. But, by being afraid
of it, we lend it an evil figure. If only we could
face up to this side of our nature and accept it,
it would probably become more benevolent.
Naturally all rules about dream interpretation are
paradoxical. We are sometimes pursued in the
dream by powers of the unconscious from
which it is right to escape. There are destructive
tendencies in the psyche which we have to
avoid. But eighty percent of what pursues us in
dreams is really some valuable aspect of our
personality which should be integrated.

122
 "I had the damndest dream. I was at the cottage, out in the woods
with my girlfriend (who's now my wife) and a mutual friend who
helped build the cottage. He's a really down-to-earth woodsy kind
of fellow—really good person. Suddenly a hairy ape guy appears
and is making a pass at my girlfriend. I didn't like that at all and I
was ready to lunge at him when my friend put his hand on my
shoulder and said, 'Wait a minute. We will take care of this together.'
I looked around and said, 'No, I'll deal with him.' So I started talking
to this hairy ape creature, telling him, 'No! You can't have her. She's
mine.' And it turned out to be quite reasonable. I was quite surprised.
Then it turned around and walked back into the woods."

—Social Worker, Toronto

not Ll CVil

ral 2 oe RATE and very

s. But education forces
our ego to wear a lot of masks and then we
behave in an unnatural way. We repress all

123
 ws

sorts of natural animal reactions and simple hu-

man reactions out of politeness or whatever the
social situation requires.
When people learn to know their shadow |
a bit more, ti be-
10 re more
sicsiamenmllbe pieENBTE TEGaRE, who
are perfect, inflict an inferiority on their sur-
rounding which irritates others. They act in a
manner superior to the all-too-human. That's
why one is so relieved when something nasty
happens to them. "Aha!" we say. "Thank God,
he's also only human."
Analysts often try to be very correct with
their patients, but sometimes they make a slip.
And I've noticed that when I produce a real
slip-off in an analytical hour for which the pa-
tient can powerfully reproach me, it improves
our relationship. They feel, "Oh, von Franz is
only human after all and now I feel above her
and I'll pardon her." That's a good feeling.
Then one has a more natural human being to
human being relationship. So you see the
shadow is really our best social function. It inte-
grates us into the group. With our good qualities
we are above the group. With our shadow we
are man among men and human, all-too-human.
And that's why a shadow is very often repre-
sented in dreams as something important which
should not be scorned but fully accepted with a
knowing smile. ‘

124
 "I dreamt I was in a large house, a mansion as it's called,
and there was an exhibition of paintings and drawings
there in a series of large rooms. The artist was a man
called Sczabo—and I remember this very clearly:
S-C-Z-A-B-O—a name that means absolutely nothing to
me. And yet the paintings, the drawings of animals
seemed familiar.
And then I was in another large room, outside the
exhibition. There were a lot of people there and it was
obvious we were getting ready for a cocktail party.
A man came up to me and said, 'What costume, what
cloak are you going to wear?' He starts to hand me a
painter's smock. I say, 'No, that's not me."

—Businessman

"How do you account for the man

offering you a smock? Do you
paint?"

"No, I don't. I think those paintings

are simply a metaphor for all the
writing I should have done and
haven't done. The smock is
probably the costume I should be
wearing if Iwere going to get
serious about some of the things I
should do."

at a group, or inafamilydoes some-

because now

not them.

125
 We havea proverb: "The good man pays
great attention if the other does evil." Then he
can say, "Ah, it's the other, it's not me." And
that plays a-great ‘role in «the mso-calied
"scapegoat" psychology. In certain groups, -
mainly in a family, a child or another member
of the family takes on the role of doing all the
evil the others would like to do and don't dare.
Then they push that person more and more
into that evil role. Probably even the criminal in
society has a similar role; he's like a negative
redeemer. He redeems society from having to
face its own shadow, because then they can say,
"It's that fellow who did the murder. I only
wished to do it, but didn't dare to." And if
somebody has a weak personality, a weak ego,
he can even succumb to suggestions and act out
shadow things which other people really desire.

though it's difficult, it is very important to

Otherwise, we weigh dagen

ee

Os pada our are with all our _unlived, nasty

hr COO soa
ualities. <d
In antiquity, the old Greeks and the old
Jews and many other societies had the idea of
the :
some people as_s s and s
or driving them out into the desea: They car-
ried with them the projection of all the sins of

126
 |
the community. They were the shadow. They
paid for it, and then the others felt all righ
» again.
Some people can remember a party where
the devil suddenly got into them. With a little
bit of alcohol, they misbehaved terribly, and
the next morning they couldn't understand why
they said and did all those things. That is
generally not only a breakthrough of their own
shadow but of the group shadow as well. The
evil they acted out was not only their own evil,
but also the evil of other people.

The Nazi party did exactly that. They projected

their shadow mainly onto the Jews. They ac-
cused the Jews of being greedy for money, of
sexually seducing and defiling all their women,
and of striving for world power while, in fact,
the Nazis themselves did precisely that. They
clearly strove for world power. Money was their
number one aim (for the sake of money they
threw over all their principles) and in Naziism
there was no recognition of the woman as a
human being at all. They even defiled their own
women by turning them into cows who had to
produce soldiers. So you can say that all these
things of which they accused the Jews were just
what they were doing themselves.

127
 At the beginning of the war, Hitler said of
Churchill, "That* criminal who pulls one little
country of Europe after the other under his
power and ruins it." Now tell me, who did that?
That's a powerful example of the horror that
can result from projecting a negative shadow
collectively but let's end our talk to-day on a
positive note. Many people feel that dreams
keep them in contact with their personal cre-
ativity. From your experience, does unlived
creative energy reveal itself in dreams as an as-
pect of the personal shadow?
I remember a man who had great gifts in writ-
ing and who should have written his thesis for
the Jung Institute. He had dreams that powerfull}
animals pursued him, which I interpreted as his
Tez 7 Tit
anting | ach him. But he didn't
Antin’g — tO T ec

accept it. He always said it was sexuality. Now,

actually, he had a woman friend and had lots of
very satisfactory sex and therefore I didn't be-
lieve his interpretation. But he didn't want to
write and couldn't write, until he dreamt that he
was pursued by a bull. He ran and ran, and the
bull was after him, coming closer and closer,
until at the last minute he jumped over a fence.
The bull stood still and went onto his hind legs.
And the dreamer looked back and saw the
erectypenis*of
the bull,and it was avball point?
So I said, "Well, there you are." After that he
wrote an excellent thesis.

128
Chapter Eight

THE

DEVOURING

MOTHER

You are crueller, you that we love,

Than hatred, hunger, or death;
You have eyes and breasts like a dove,
And you kill men's hearts with a breath.
—Charles Swinburne
Mother Nature is the womb of all life. She gives
endlessly without reservation. But she is also the
tomb. She ruthlessly kills and devours all living
things.
The first woman a man experiences is his
mother. Her sole purpose in his life is to feed
his hunger, care for his body, tend to his com-
fort. Her power is immense. Her kisses caress
his pain; her arms rock him off to sleep. She
fulfils his every physical and emotional need.
This maternal relationship between mother and
child is one of nature's most beautiful myster-
ies. But nature is also cruel.
On entering adulthood, a male must leave
the warmth of his childhood nest behind so
that be may go into the world and build one of
his own. Psychologically, to become a man he
must separate from his mother and be reborn
into a different mode of relating. Otherwise, he
may be devoured by the mother and remain a
son whose capacity for relationship is fixated in
the nightmare of infantile dependence and psy-
chological incest.

130
 "I always "Last night NT

had this Ihada have...

recurring nightmare I have
nightmare where I was nightmares,
when I murdered. I not dreams.
was little. was being Nightmares!
It was murdered... It's good
terrifying! Honestly! to have
Really I woke up dreams, but
terrifying!" crying. I wish
It was awful!" they were
—Salesperson, Paris not night-
—Shopper, mares.
Camden Market,
London Very often
I have
nightmares."

—WNew York Bus

Driver, Male

131
Dr. von Franz, what are nightmares? Why do
we have them?
Well, nightmares are substantial, vitally impor-
tant dreams. They wake us up with a cry; they
are the electro-shock nature uses on us when
nature wants to wake us up. The word night-
mare comes from mare, and the idea was that
an evil ghost in the form of a black horse was
riding you in the night and so you woke up with
a cry, completely exhausted.
The waking up point of the dream means
the bang with which the unconscious says,
"Now, that is it, now attend to that!" And so
the nightmare is really shock therapy. It wants
to shock us out of a deep, unconscious sleepi-
ness about some dangerous situation. When we
have nightmares, it means we are in a psycho-
logical danger of some sort and much too
sleepy and unaware it. Then we have a night-
mare to wake us up. The nightmare has a char-
acteristic of a certain urgency, as if the uncon-
scious would say, "Look here, that problem is
urgent!"
For instance, there may be an incubus, a
male oppressing the female partner, or, on the
other hand, a succubus, a female draining the
energy out of the male partner. If they are pre-
sent, the sexual problem is urgent, has to be
attended to, has to be made conscious. One
cannot just push it aside and pretend it doesn't
exist.

132
 The central female figure in this man's dream is
a succubus, a blood-sucking vampire.

"The dream began very strangely when, out of

the rain and the darkness, appears this very beautiful
black Brazilian lady. She had on a woollen—it may
have been a very dark green—woollen coat down to
her ankles, very thick and heavy, and her hair was
black and she was beautiful. Her hair and coat were
wringing wet as the result of being out in the rain,
but this didn't seem to bother her. She came
- toward me, and stood in front of me. And at that
moment in time something told me that I had met
this woman before. In fact something hinted to me
that maybe she was a vampire and not so beautiful as
she appeared to be, so I was hesitant to do anything
about her.
She smiled and beckoned me toward her.
But I was resistant. Finally, she opened her coat.
She had on a beautiful bikini, and her body was
very black and beautiful and shiny in the rain. I was
tempted and finally I went over and embraced her.
I slipped my hand down inside her bikini and
fondled her. Then I looked at her mouth
and noticed .

133
 “

that the two front teeth were missing, which gave

me a clue that maybe she really was a vampire. But I
wasn't absolutely positive. Then she said, 'John, I
don't want your hand, I want your penis. I-want you
to make love to me.' I said, 'No way, no way,’
because if I did that I'd be lost. Once I entered into
her, she would become a real vampire and then
I'd be finished.
And so I decided to withdraw and resist the
temptation. I moved backwards toward the door of
my house. She is very angry at this and somehow or
other I seize hold of a screwdriver to protect myself.
I want her to go away. I don't want her around me
so I rattle her teeth with the screwdriver. At that
point in time I notice that the side teeth have in fact
grown and extend down over her lips. They are
really fangs. In fact she really is a vampire. I wasn't
mistaken.
Iam even more afraid. So I run into the house,
and attempt to lock the door, but the door doesn't
seem to lock very well, and I don't know whether
I'm locking the door or I'm unlocking the door.
Then something tells me that the mechanism of the
door lock is faulty and it suddenly hits me that no
matter if I lock the door, this vampire has the ability
of transforming itself from whatever person or to
whatever place it wants. So there's really no escape."
— Dreamer, Male

134
 This man obviously has developed what we call
a tremendous mother fixation, and that amounts
to having a very lofty image of a woman.
Somewhere there's an ideal woman image in his
heart and the dream tries to warn him by telling
him his fantasy life, his sexual fantasy life, is
sucking his blood and is going to destroy him
because it is unrealistic.
Such men are not open to a permanent
relationship with a woman. They experience it
as a tie, as being devoured, as being pinned
down to earth. He tries to defend himself in the
dream by pushing a screwdriver into the mouth
of the vampire. The screwdriver probably
- (excuse me for using the word) has to do with
screwing. He thinks that he can escape the de-
vouring mother via the vampire, that he can
keep away from his neurotic estrangement from
himself by screwing a lot of women. But that's
not how he can de-potentiate the vampire.
The dream tries to tell him it's a ghost
which is haunting him because, actually, he's
haunted not by reality but by a fantasy which is
draining his whole psychic energy. He has the
impulse to dream about life and to make wishful
fantasies about life, instead of living life. That's
why vampires and "Draculas" and creatures suck
one's blood. The blood is the emotional, active
psyche in us, the affective psyche. After being
sucked by a vampire, people have no activity

135
left, or ne life activity left. They just sink into
passive, wishful dreams.
That is really the characteristic of most
negative or split-off complexes. If we reject or
split off some complex of our psyche, then it
begins to sap our energy secretly behind our
back. It turns slowly into what is aptly repre-
sented by the image of the vampire, something
which attacks us in the night and sucks all our
blood. Then people feel that they simply don't
know what is happening to them. They come
into analysis and they say, "I feel listless, I just
feel tired, I just don't want to do anything. I
wake in the morning already depressed. Noth-
ing means anything to me any more. I have no
interest or anything." And then one finds that
this vampire is a complex which has been split
off so radically and so powerfully that it can
only sap energy. It can no longer manifest in
any other way.

Would you give an example of how a split-off

complex might operate in a person's life?
Think, for instance, of a nun who says that she
has’ sacrificed her sexual desires to Christ. She
has no sexual fantasies or any sexual feelings to-
ward men. But, in fact, she has just cut off her
whole sexual personality. Or, for instance, peo-
ple very often cut off certain gifts. They may
have a gift for music but since their creativity
means hard work they decide, "My musicality is
\

136
 not significant enough to develop. I'm giving up
playing the piano because it will never lead any-
where." And with that decision they cut it off.
But there is something in that person which
want to express itself in music and that split-off
energy becomes a vampire.
Aggression can also be completely split
off. People then simply decide they have no af-
fects, that they are not annoyed by anything.
Feeling types do that. They like a harmonious
surrounding so even if their children and their
partners annoy them madly, they just assume
that they are not angry, that it doesn't matter.
They have a pardoning attitude but, in fact, like
~ every normal human being they are raving furi-
ous. However, they just don't want to have that
fury and they succeed in cutting it off.

Would you describe the roots of a split-off

mother complex in a man's unconscious? What
causes a man's feminine side to develop so
negatively?

She may not be the more impressive per-

sonality in reality but the boy might have been
more impressed by the mother than the father
or, perhaps,
than to the father.
You can see this happen in a family in
which there are several boys yet only one of

137
them deyelops a strong mother complex. He
reacted more to the mother from the very be-
ginning. Perhaps he was similar to her or felt
closer to her for some reason and therefore was
more impressed and influenced by the mother.
If he is impressed positively, he develops a
positive mother complex or, if he is impressed
negatively, a negative mother complex. Now it
isimportant tounderstand that every man has a
Coleen Nant negative or positive so
it is nothing pathological. It's merely a charac-
teristic of how a man has reacted to his parents
which precipitates the way he will react to the
opposite sex. What we are dealing with in this
dream is a very strong mother complex.
Now, genie uth: on the per-
sonal level may be demonstrated by the fact
that many women are

gin by being anxious, "Don't do that. It's dan-

gerous. Don't go out to play with the boys. You
could fall and wound yourself or get hit over the
head." They also have trouble when their sons
begin to date girls. They say, "I very much want
you to marry and I'll be very glad if you do, but
that one—that girl you bring home now—no )
no, she is not the right girl for you." They try
to keep the boys too much in their clutches.
That is the foreground of a woman who exag-
gerates her maternal, protective qualities.

138
 Dr. von Franz, would you describe a man's
subjective, inner experience of the devouring
mother complex? How does he experience his
feminine side within himself?
Generally she appears in men as an element of
romantic, unreal, mostly sexual fantasies. You
see her, for instance, in puberty when young
men are very active, and then suddenly they
become passive and dreamy. It's as if they are
not there. Their performance in school goes
down tremendously, and one has the feeling,
"Where has that young man gone?" He is up to
“the neck, so to speak,
At that age it is a normal transition,
- but if a man . gril indulging in wishful sex-
ual fantasies, he literally falls into the hands of
or y, ing
geass Fe loses his capacity to take his own
ife in hand. He loses his will-power. He loses all
his male efficiency, and just day-dreams all the
time about women and their curves and would-
be romantic adventures. He lives an unreal life.
Once I saw a man, forty-three years old,
who had never approached a woman. He was
still living with his mother. I asked him, "What
on earth are you doing with your sexuality?" He
gave a secretive smile and didn't confess but I
knew he just masturbated wildly every night.
Then he dreamt that he was living an ordinary
life in the day-time, but at night-time he was
living on a luscious island where he had wild

139
sexual adventures with women. That was the
fantasy world into which he had disappeared. In
a primitive tribe, one would say such a man had
been bewitched.

How does a man whose femininity is locked in

.

the mother complex experience women in

outer life?
If a man has too close a tie to his mother,
especially a positive one, then he tends to ide-
alize women. He sees in every woman the Beat-
rice of Dante, so to speak, or the Virgin Mary,
and then such men cannot approach women
with their lower parts, with sexuality, and in or-
dinary human life. Or they have a a
situation; they ble,
eir
They cannot
bring the two together. One can say that love
involves these two extreme opposite elements.
On the one side, a romantic spiritual ideal; on
the other, a biological drive for the procreation
of the race, something very much on the animal
level. And

For such a man, an outer relationship with

a woman can work as long as it is an adventure
or a love affair and the woman fills out his needs
\

140
 and fantasies. The trouble begins if he marries
her and has to e
There is : there is
There is
There is also an archetypal background to
this which is shown in fairytales by the motif of
the princess locked in the tower. In one of the
most famous, the princess, Rapunzel is im-
prisoned by a witch. It's the mother figure be-
hind the scene which brings forth the
constellation. And when this happens both
lovers cannot meet on earth. Only when
Rapunzel has come down to earth from her
tower and the prince has wandered around in
’ the desert in misery and pain can they finally
meet.
I think nowadays movies touch many of
these essential psychological facts and replace
fairytale telling and myth telling of former
times. Movies are our modern form of myths
and fairytales, and therefore movies which tell
about the inner world, as fairytales do, are at-
tractive to the public, because we really need
myths to have an orientation toward, a mapping
out of, the dream world or the unconscious.
In past time there were the innumerable
myths of vampires which fascinated people.
These tales were retold all over the world. In
China, for instance, there are a whole host of
ghost stories in which a man meets a fox, and
then the fox turns out to be really the ghost of

141
the dead who turns up again as a beautifully
made-up girl. He has a marvellous life with her
until one day he discovers that she is an evil de-
mon. She is a skeleton. And then sometimes it
ends badly. She pulls him into death, or, with
the help of priests and magicians, he frees him-
self from the demon. In the Swiss Alps, also,
we have stories about cow herdsmen who live
high up in the mountains for the whole summer
without having women. Every night the Doggeli,
a female ghost, comes invisibly to the door and
rides them all the night so that they have
dreams of sexual pollution. In the morning they
wake up completely exhausted and can hardly
move. They are overwhelmed, so to speak, by
sexual fantasies and by the unlived life.
You know men very often experience that same
energy drain in their relation to an institution.
They feel split. They are torn between their
feelings of security in an unfulfilling job and
their desire to leave the company and pursue
their own creative energies in life. Many do not
leave, however, because they are unable to sac-
rifice the material rewards afforded by the cor-
poration. Will a man with a mother fixation
carry that mode of relationship over into other
aspects of his life? Can the devouring mother
complex also be projected onto a collective
institution?

142
Yes, wherever there is an institution, people
tend to become infantile and wish to suck that
institution for money, to ask for loans and
stipends, to use it as benevolent mother. The
universities are even called, or they were in the
past called Alma Mater, the benevolent mother.
I think one element of the devouring mother
archetype is what one could call inertia. All big
institutions have the tendency toward a certain
inertia. They are not flexible, and therefore they
are, so to speak, material blocks, situations
which are just so and men who have a mother
complex feel content and well in that situation.
So the mother, the devouring mother, can be
easily projected onto a plant, or a big
organization, or an institute, or university or
even a country. Some even have feminine
names and in former times were often repre-
sented as a fat woman. America is still repre-
sented by a fat woman. But at least she's hold-
ing up a light. That's making it a bit better.

Are you suggesting that the era of the mother is

coming to an end? It seems to me that like the
man who was unable to leave his mother's
home, we are now being forced to separate
from the security of our traditional modes of
relationship to search for new means of relating
with each other. It's as if mankind collectively is
going through an initiation rite. What do you see
as the underlying cause of this upheaval in
human relations?

143
Well, I would say that the panicky feeling pro-
duced by the threat of a nuclear war combined
with the sudden realization of the problems of
pollution, has created a basic change in our atti-
tude toward relationship, mainly perhaps in the,
young people, but I think my generation as
well.
Humanity is fully aware of the fact that we
will have to change our way of life in some fun-
damental way. There is still a lot of quarrelling
and discussing how and why and in what form
and so on, but I think everybody agrees that we
have to find some way to peacefully live to-
gether and not destroy each other by a nuclear
war and that we have to deal differently with
nature than we have done up till now. Also, we
have to change our too rational mode of life. In
the book by Marilyn Ferguson, The Aquarian
Conspiracy, you see what we are going through,
that everywhere there is a parallel change of
attitude which the Germans call a zeitgeist, a
spirit of the age.
In history, this type of change is well
known. For instance, if you look at the art of
the thirteenth century as compared to Renais-
sance art, you see how much the spirit of the
time had changed in those few hundred years.
Suddenly, as if collectively, the whole of man-
kind had a different outlook. In the medieval
art, everything is concentrated on the divine.
There is little perspective, practically no land-
\

144
 scape. There's no representation of animals,
trees, and worldly things. And then, in the
Renaissance, suddenly there is a switch to dis-
covering nature, the human body and the per-
spective of space. That is only one very striking
change which everybody knows in retrospect,
but such a striking change seems to me to be
constellated again today.
That's why keenly interested, intellectual
people cannot avoid asking the question, "What
is the change of our time? What is our situa-
tion?" Especially under the threat of a nuclear
war which preoccupies practically everybody's
mind, there is a kind of desperate look at the
-Sky, "What does it mean? How could we
change? What is coming?" This kind of anxiety
is everywhere.
We are still living in an age, at the end of
an age, where the opposites, Jupiter and Saturn,
good and evil, spirit and instinctive physical
drive, are in great opposition. We are torn
apart by opposites which in political terms
would amount to having a war at any minute.
We have even on one side of the Iron Curtain
an anti-Christian principle ruling, and on the
other side officially still, a Christian outlook rul-
ing. So the Iron Curtain is dividing Jupiter and
Saturn, so to speak. That's only the earthly im-
age of what is happening on a much deeper
level in the human psyche of every individual.

145
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Chapter Nine

SLAYING

THE

DRAGON

For all Christ's work this Venus is not quelled

But reddened at the mouth with blood of men,
Sucking between small teeth the sap o' the veins,
Dabbling with death her little tender lips —
A bitter beauty, poisonous-pearled mouth. . .
—Charles Swinburne
The dragon to be slain is the negative mother
complex. The devouring dragon is the devour-
ing mother and the violence of the encounter is
proportionate to the tyrannical hold of the
mother, a hold that saps the son of his
strength.
When the mother complex is overcome,
the man is freed to develop the feminine side
of his nature. This side Jung called the "anima"
which is Latin for "soul". She animates life and
connects a man to the deepest reaches of his
being. But because his femininity is initially
identified with the mother, it is essential for
psychic growth that this identification be bro-
ken, that the anima be detached from the
mother. When the separation does take place,
the son may then go on to establish a mature
relationship with a woman, one in which she is
neither idealized nor degraded.

148
"She came up slowly toward me and she sat down next to me, you
see. And at this moment I became acutely aware of her presence,
because I could feel her wet leg against my wet leg."
— College Student, Male

"To the right was a window in which sat ayoung

woman in her early twenties. She had long mousy
brown hair. It was greasy and... ah, almost dead.
Her face, too, was dead. She simply sat staring out
into the street, and yet not staring at anything."
—Dance Choreographer, Male

"Finally she opened her coat. She had on a beautiful bikini, and her
body was very black and beautiful and shiny in the rain."
—English Executive, Male

"Yeah, I've got a woman in my dreams. Brown,

sun-tanned, blue eyes, blonde—typical California
girl. That's what I'm here for."
—Australian Student

"Yeah, I have dreams, wet ones all the time!"

—Barrow Boy, London Market

"Oh, she's about five foot five, a hundred and

thirty pounds, looks pretty nice... ah,
measurements is 36-24-36. Healthy!" —salesman

"Dreams? I have good ones. My dreams are usually things sexual.

They usually come true. You know, usually about my girlfriends."
— Young Frenchman, Paris

"Normal dreams of a man are surely about wives,

you see. That is absolutely normal."
—Swiss Shopkeeper, Male

"No, no, I haven't seen her yet. But I'm still looking though."
—Bus Driver, Male
Dr. von Franz, one of the most famous dragon
slayers was the king of ancient Thebes, Oedipus
Rex. The Oedipal myth has become a part of
our everyday vocabulary. How did Oedipus
overcome his mother complex? .

The Oedipal myth is a very complicated thing,

in spite of what the Freudians say, and cannot
really be looked at separately from the Greek
culture. In Greek traditions, a man had to over-
come the mother demon. This encounter oc-
curs in the Oedipal myth when Oedipus has to
answer the riddle of the Sphinx, the Sphinx
being a maternal mother demon, a devouring
mother figure. He did it by giving a witty, intel-
lectual answer.
That is one way certain men escape the
devouring mother. They do not slay the dragon;
they outwit the dragon. They build up a kind of
mental, masculine realm of their own where
their mothers cannot follow them. Nowadays,
they might be the men who study theoretical
physics and become very intelligent. In Greece,
such an escape into the intellectual or scientific
realm was accomplished by the society around
Socrates and Plato. It was an escape into the
pure men's society of philosophers and _ scien-
tists where they would live among themselves.
And we know that they were mostly homo-
sexual, and that Socrates, for one, didn't get on
with his wife, Xanthippe, at all. He had a very
unhappy marriage.

150
 In other words, in the Oedipal myth, the
problem of the feminine and getting away from
the mother are only seemingly achieved. There
must be another round in the battle with the
great mother. And that is what the Oedipus
myth mirrors. Oedipus thinks he has answered
the riddle of the Sphinx, and happily goes off,
believing he has outwitted her. But it is an illu-
sion. She, by her evil witch-like behaviour, has
tricked him by pretending to commit suicide.
"Now," he thinks, "I have overcome the mo-
ther with the powers of the mind." But he is
deceived. He simply runs into marrying his own
mother, and consequently suffers the divine
‘punishment bestowed on those who partake of
incest. So this myth shows that a masculine, in-
tellectual overcoming of the devouring powers
of the unconscious is not enough. It has to be
done by the way one lives, not by the way one
thinks.
For example, I once listened to the dream
of a young man who was living still with his
mama. He was twenty-nine years old and had
never had a girl in his room. We seriously dis-
cussed the possibility of his getting a room out-
side his mother's home. He was terrified. He
was a very sensitive, delicate boy, and his
mother had a very brutal, strong personality
and he was just terrified of the moment he
would have to tell mother, "Look here, I'm go-
ing to take a room outside, and I'm not going

151
to live with you anymore." When he was trying
to make up his mind to move out, he dreamt
that he had to slay the dragon. Though telling
his mother that he had to move out seems like
such a little thing to us, for bim that was slaying .
the dragon. It was overcoming a: monstrous
neurotic within himself. His whole
difficulty
mother complex was involved, not only facing
the scene with his actual mother, but @ver-
COMiINE alSO INe C 4 anha (Ne « OT

dnshiman anisousness aston obbe.He had to

overcome c
that terrifi fear to make that step.
And that is an archetypal motif all over the
world. The young man has to do the heroic
deed of killing his mother, or the mother
dragon, or the mother demon, which is his
lethargy, or anxiety, or fear of living a masculine
life. And it won't help the young man only to
understand that he has a mother complex and
that his neurotic symptoms come from his
mother tie. He has to actually take the other
room and stand the battle.

If be takes the other room, does he have to

understand why he is doing it?
Yes, certainly. Otherwise at the next occasion,
when he runs out of money, he moves back to
mama again. Perhaps he might find a disagree-
able landlady in his first room, so he moves
back home again. It is vitally essential for him to
\

I5Z
 understand why he separates from his mother,
that it is not just a technical change in his life.

Many societies had rituals to help boys separate

from the mother and enter into the world of
men.Would you describe some of these passage
rites? What was their function?
If we observe our own lives, we can see that
aging is not a process of slowly getting older.
We do not gradually evolve. It goes in jumps.
Think, for instance, of the tremendous leap
from childhood to adulthood which occurs at
puberty. The awakening of sexuality going to-
gether with the awakening of religious longings
_ and feelings of philosophical needs. Suddenly
the child asks, "What is the meaning of life? Is
there a God?" and so on. No one asks more
profound philosophical questions than young-
sters in puberty. At that age these are burning
spiritual questions. As well, on the other side,
they discover their own sexuality and experi-
ence all the fantasies involved with it.
Another big step occurs for women at
menopause when the tremendous physiological
change necessitates a re-adaptation to life. Not
so visible, but now generally recognized is the
mid-life crisis which men suffer. This very often
becomes a marriage crisis. So you see we do
not gradually grow up and get old but rather life
moves in swift, crucial transitions.

153
 Now, if there is a neurotic disposition or
some other mental disease, it generally breaks
out at these moments of transition. Then the
personality is blasted apart or becomes psy-
chologically sick. This was observed even by
original man and therefore, in those societies,
all the big transitions in life were accompanied
by so-called rites de passage , rites of transition,
rituals to help people make the step over the
threshold.
Funeral rites are one of these great rituals.
The symbolic performances are to help the
dead person get away from this earth into the
beyond and also to aid the survivors in re-
establishing their psychic balance. The ritual has
really a therapeutic function; it protects man
from the dangerous invasions of the uncon-
scious. We have spoken before of how the un-
conscious world of fantasy can be very danger-
ous because it can pull us away from our adap-
tation to reality. The rituals provide a pro-
tection. By enacting so to speak a collective
dream, we stop the unconscious fantasies from
invading our personal lives. For example, a
woman might lose her husband and mourn too
much and sink into a deep depression. The fu-
neral ritual comforts her and helps her to re-es-
tablish her role in life. That's why funeral rites
in primitive societies often end with a great
positive drunken feast and a lot of sexuality. By

154
 going through the ritual, they make an assertion
of life, as if to say, "Now that is over and now
we want to live again."
And so all rituals on earth are healing ges-
tures. They are symbolic performances which
heal the psychic wounds and help us to make
the great transitions in life. But through the ac-
tivities of our missions and the giving up of our
Christian rites we have destroyed the rituals and
more and more modern man is lost when he
comes to such crucial situations as the death of a
relative or making the step toward becoming
adult or getting married. These are now the
moments when modern people very often be-
- come neurotic, or fall into a crisis. They can't
make the step. Dreams at these times can be
most helpful. Very often you can see that the
healing dreams, the positive dreams, are help-
ing to take the place of a ritual. They tell us
what we need to know. For instance, somebody
who has not been comforted by a meaningful
funeral of a dead friend might dream of a won-
derful feast together with that friend in the
night. By attending to the dreams one is re-
turning to the original psychic source from
which the ritual stemmed.
Now so-called primitive societies have
many of these rituals. The most famous, the one
which has been studied most by ethnologists, is
the ritual of initiation where the young men are
initiated into the secrets of the tribal law and

155
even the secrets of sexuality. They have to leave
mother and their home; they are secluded in
the bush; they are symbolically devoured by a
maternal monster; they are reborn; they have
to generally stand a lot of torture. They are
sometimes also homosexually assaulted by the
older men with the idea of injecting them with
their masculinity. At the same time, they are in-
structed in the secret law of the tribe and its
religious traditions. When a young man has un-
dergone all this ritual of transition, he is a full
member of the tribe. He is a man. Many tribes
call the ones who are afraid, or for some other
reason not initiated, an animal. They say, "He's
not initiated, he's an animal," meaning he is still
with the mother. He has remained in an uncon-
scious animal condition. He has not taken the
step necessary to become a human being.

Are there any societies that don't have these

rites of initiation, where men do not break the
dependent relationship with the mother?
Well, we have not many sociological matri-
archies. But I once read a book about a South
American Indian tribe where there was actually
a sociological (not religious but sociological)
matriarchy. There the women were happy, fat
whores ordering the men about, and the men
were lean, submissive, nervous creatures who
planted the fields and did the work for the
women. On the positive side, there was earthly
\

156
 wealth and gratification of sexual drives. But on
the negative side, there was no spirit whatso-
ever. It was a world of total stupidity, of only
living; living very agreeably, but no thinking, no
idea of spiritual realization at all. And the men,
accordingly, were unhappy, submissive, rather
poor creatures.

You've just reminded me of an article I read re-

cently in which an American journalist satirically
described North American society in a very
similar way. He said it is producing women who
are jackhammers and men who are wimps.
There is a certain danger that we may develop
_ in that direction and just end up like that Indian
tribe. But generally, these things balance back
and forth. There will be another generation of
men who will, in male protest, put things into a
middle position—or try to put things into a
middle position. The ideal seems to be that
neither men dominate nor women dominate,
but that there is a kind of equal relationship. A
balance of opposites.

That same balance of power is exactly what the

unconscious is striving for in the psyche of the
individual. This next dream illustrates the tre-
mendous power of the mother complex and
the struggle involved in a man freeing his anima
from the black moods of the devouring
mother.

157
 >.

"It was a hot summer's day and I was walking

with a gorgeous black woman through rolling
green country along the side of a jungle. We'd
known each other for a long time and I called
her my goddess. It was my pet name for her.
Suddenly she stopped and said, 'I have a
problem.' I didn't understand what she meant,
but instead of telling me with words she pulled
down the strap of her dress and bared her
shoulder. Her black skin on the top of her
shoulder was peeling where it had been exposed
to the sun and under the top skin, underneath
the black, her skin was golden-white. She
looked at me and said, 'If I keep seeing you,
it's going to happen all over my body. I've got
to talk to my mother and get some advice from
her about what to do.'
We walked on and as we approached some
farm implements two black guys suddenly came
running out of the jungle screaming that they
were going to take her back to their village.
I said, 'Hell, I'd rather die than have that
happen. You're not going to do that. You're
not going to take her back.'
We started to fight and when I woke I was
winning and I knew I was going to win."

—Dreamer, Male

158
 The transformation of this beautiful black
woman on a hot summer day reminds one of a
very old tradition. The Songs of Solomon begin:
"Iam black, but comely, O ye daughters of
Jerusalem." There we have the black Schulamite
who is later transformed, according to medieval
tradition, into a white woman. She is redeemed
by Christ, her bridegroom, into becoming a
white woman. This motif has also played a
tremendous role in the legend of the Queen of
Sheba who was the ancestress of the Ethiopian
kings. She is a black woman who came to meet
Solomon and was identified with the Schulamite
of The Songs of Solomon. She was a_ black
- woman who was the beloved of a white man. A
white man meeting with a black woman and
transforming her over time into a white woman
has always fascinated Western mythology.
The same motif exists also in the grail leg-
end where Gamuret marries Belacane. Their son
is Feirefis, best friend and half brother of
Perceval. He is speckled black and white, a
mixing of black and white, the mixing of the
opposites of the light and the dark.
In the alchemical tradition, the transforma-
tion of the Schulamite or the Queen of Sheba
also plays a tremendous role. One of the recur-
ring fantasies of the alchemists was that the
matter which they wanted to transform into
gold was initially black. They compared it to a

159
black woman who then takes off her skin or
black garment ‘and is transformed into pure
gold. Notice that in this-dream the woman's
skin is golden white under the black.
The black garment represents a typical
.

feature of the undeveloped inner anima figure.

Just as we shall see that the animus in women is
sometimes destructive and negative, the black
anima is relatively negative in a man. The piace
anima indicates that his whole capacity to love is
mostly autoerotic. When a man has not devel-
oped his anima, his feminine side, he is gener-
ally very narcissistic. That's what a women
painfully feels when a man is meowing under
her window like a tomcat. He really loves his
own fantasy. He loves his own being in love,
but that's a long way from learning to love her
and not merely enjoying his own being in love.
And often in literature, a young man, when he
first discovers the experience of love, is com-
pletely autoerotic. It is a fantasy out of which,
through a painful development, he has to learn
to love the woman, not as the object of his ro-
mantic fantasies, but as a human partner.
The peeling of the skin of the black female
and the transformation into a white golden an-
ima is the transformation of the loving capaci-
ties of a man, the transformation of his Eros
from a primitive autoerotic fantasy into a true
human capacity for love.

160
 As soon as this transformation takes place,
he then is attacked by primitives who want the
woman to remain black and stay with the blacks
in a black village in the jungle which would
mean the dreamer would lose his relationship
with her. This shows the regressive power of
the mother complex. He has a strong primitive
tendency to relapse again into the old attitude.
But the dreamer can successfully fight it off.

It has been said that in our society the woman

most in need of liberation is the woman within
every man. I've dreamt of all types of women:
old and young, thin and fat, virgins and prosti-
tutes, ugly and beautiful. . . my sister, my
mother. I've even had dreams about you. How
can a man make sense out of the profusion of
forms his femininity takes in his dreams?
The anima has many stages and embraces a
great range of psychological facts. Jung said
there were four major images of the anima: Eve,
Helen, Mary, and Sophia, the wisdom of God.
Eve would be the biological woman, and
when she appears as a man's anima she would
be biological sex, physical attraction, mother-
hood, the image of the ordinary attractive fe-
male. Helen is on a higher stage. She would
represent the hetaira of the Greeks, their form
of the geisha. She represents cultivated women
with whom one can have not only a sexual ad-
venture, but also exchange poetry and have

161
philosophical conversations. She would be the
spiritual companion—companionship together
with romantic sex. The next stage is the anima
figure in Christianity. She is the Virgin Mary,
who is the highest form of spirituality, but a bit
too one-sidedly high up. The Virgin Mary is
lacking the dark, Eve side of woman, the earthy
shadow side, the more biological, wider, more
natural side of the anima. So she is a bit too
lofty an ideal. Therefore, the fourth stage, the
wisdom of God, is, as Jung smilingly noted, a
come-down, because wisdom is not such a vir-
tuous spirituality. Wisdom is closer to life. It is
present when a man knows how to love women
and knows how to relate to women and has
wisdom at the same time, a wisdom which pro-
tects him from their devouring side. The high-
est form of love is also something with a grain
of salt in it.

What do you mean by that?

I won't say.

Psychologically, how do you explain love?

I flatly refuse to explain that! It's above me.

162
Chapter Ten

LOOKING
THROUGH
THE MOON

"... Beside this picture I would like to place the

spectacle of the starry heavens at night, for the only
equivalent of the universe within is the universe
without; and just as I reach this world through the
medium of the body, so I reach that world through
the medium of the psyche."
—C.G. Jung
Throughout history men have projected their
inner woman, their anima, onto nature. But of
all the many manifestations of nature which have
carried this projection, the one which retains its
numinosity even today is the moon.
\

164
The Moon

And, like a dying lady lean and pale,

Who totters forth, wrapp'd in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose up in the murky east
A white and shapeless mass.

Art thou pale for weariness

Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That find no object worth its constancy?

—Percy Bysshe Shelley

The moon also symbolizes a man's feminine

nature in these dreams of a university professor.

165
"A few months ago I had a
dream which I can recall very
vividly. I was driving in a car
with a young woman. At the
beginning of the dream, she
seemed to be a particular
person I know, in fact a former
student of mine. The central
part of the dream involved an
episode where I could look out
through the top of the car. It
was at night and I could see the
whole dome of the sky very
vividly. The stars seemed to be
extremely close. I could see
them not as points of light, but
as spheres, as solid spheres,
and I could make out all kinds
of details such as the rings on
the planets Saturn and Jupiter,
which one wouldn't normally
see. Even in the dream itself I
remember being very, very
impressed by this. I remember
remarking to my companion
that it would be a beautiful
night to go for a walk."
—Dreamer, Male

166
When this dream begins, he is driving by night
with a female companion. Therefore he is not at
home; he is not in his professional situation at
the university; he is not milling around in a pub
with other people; he is driving at night with a
female companion. One could then ask him,
"How does one feel in such a situation?" That's
a situation where one relaxes, puts aside one's
daily worries and feels close to nature. One is
Open to seeing something new. What else he
has in mind depends on his relationship to the
feminine companion. It suggests a situation of
positive companionship in contrast to intellec-
tual effort or social amusement.
It is night. In the night we are inclined to
be more open, more romantic, more reflec-
tive, because our attention is not drawn away by
telephones and other things. It is a moment of
relaxed reflection in which the feelings and the
repressed sides of the personality come up.
Now he looks up to the sky. The sky has always
been one of the most fascinating sights for
man, and in history, the stars were divine fig-
ures, gods. Even the bushmen in the Kalahari
Desert see in every star constellation the Great
Hunter or the Great God. The stars are the
realm where, according to myths, our soul
comes from and where it returns after death.
Think of the history of astrology which has
spread not only in the West but also to India,
China, and to every high civilization. They all

167
have theif astrological traditions. The stars serve
to prognosticate the future not only of a per-
son, but of mankind. In China a whole group of
astrologers had to watch the sky day and night
and report to the Emperor all the signs they
saw, which were then interpreted as relating to
the fate of the Chinese Empire. In a similar way,
in antiquity, everything was seen in the sky.

Dr. von Franz, do you feel there's a relationship

between the constellation of stars in the sky and
the destiny of individuals or even of mankind?
The constellations in the sky represent the
background constellations of great historical
events, as if in our deep unconscious we are not
isolated, but we are somehow linked up with
the whole of mankind and mankind is dreaming
an on-going dream. This is what accounts for
the changes in politics and religions.
If you think for a moment how much the
outlook of mankind has changed in just the last
thirty years, you will see how quickly such big
collective changes take place. Naturally intelli-
gent human beings reflect upon the deeper
processes behind outer historical events. To
look at the sky could therefore be seen as the
dreamer looking at the deeper constellations
not only of his own personal life but also of our
society. The word constellation itself comes
from the word stella and therefore means star
togetherness, mankind together with the stars.
\

168
 He needs an orientation: "Where am I in
this time? What is my task?" So he looks up to
the sky and sees all those beautiful planet con-
stellations especially Jupiter and Saturn which
are very close together. Now the conjunction of
Jupiter and Saturn has a long history. It oc-
curred twenty times quite close to the birth of
Christ, actually seven years before Christ was
born according to historical tradition.
Now Saturn, as is well known, is an evil
doer. Scorpions, serpents, the donkey, and so
on, belong to his realm. He is a dark, destruc-
tive spirit. Jupiter, on the other hand, is in gen-
eral the star of the kings, of the King of Justice,
-of worldly expansion, of magnanimity and all
the positive qualities of a royal personality.
Christianity was thought to have originated in a
time of these extreme contrasts coming to-
gether, the dark and the light and the body and
the spirit. Everything was torn apart into enor-
mous opposites and conflicts. The whole idea
was that the age of Christianity would be
characterized first by the domination of Christ,
the Jupiter spirit, and then by the anti-Christ,
the Saturn spirit.
The combination of Saturn and the moon
(which we will have in the next dream) was seen
as predicting a time of revolution, great religious
doubt and change. So when he looks for the
constellation of this particular time and also of
his own life, the dream tells the dreamer that

169
there is a combination of extreme opposites. It is
a moment of change in which destructive and
constructive forces are constellated simultane-
ously.
In the dream he is only impressed by the
beauty of the nocturnal scene, and proposes to
leave the car and go for a walk. This is a big step
forward, however, for he gives up his car, his
mechanical way of moving through life. When
you walk you are slowed down and in much
closer touch with nature. You go step by step;
you feel the country; you feel the earth; you feel
the trees and the air around you. That is the
positive change which comes about from this
vision of the sky.

This idea of finding his orientation in the night

sky is repeated in his second dream of the same
night.

170
 "I was standing outside my parents'
house in Dover, England, looking up
at the sky at night. I could see a moon.
It was a crescent moon, with three very
bright stars grouped underneath it,
more or less following the curve of the
moon. This configuration struck me as
very unusual. I wanted to see it more
closely, so I looked at it through some
kind of lens arrangement (I think I had
a simple lens in my hand). When I
looked through the lens at the moon
and the stars, I then saw the moon as
full, but the three stars were still visible
behind the moon, through the actual
substance of the moon itself.
Then, as I continued to logk, I
could see the moon divided. It was like
the moon appears when it's crescent
and you can see the ghost form of the
full moon continuing around the
crescent, but the two parts were
substantial and completely balanced.
In the dream, I thought of the division
of the moon in this way as some kind
of Yin/Yang symbol...

171
The moon in historical tradition was always
looked upon as dominating the transient,
changeable world. There were also the mascu-
line, eternal constellations, the realm of the Pla-
tonic ideas, so to speak, where nothing |
changed, or changed only through very long
historical processes. But the moon was an ever-
changing, feminine constellation. It ruled over
the menstruation of women, birth and death on
earth, over the animals, the tides, and so on.
The prominence of the moon in the sky in
this dream can be seen as reflecting a collective
situation, namely, the coming up of the femi-
nine archetype. A typical characteristic of our
time is the emergence of a strong feminine el-
ement. It can be seen both in the liberation of
women and also in the psychology of men. That
is shown in the dream by the fact that the
moon is now dominant.

And the three stars that are shining through the

moon?
I would think that the three stars represent the
Christian Trinity, which are three male divine
powers from which the fourth element the
moon, the feminine, has been excluded. When
the Christian tradition is characterized as being
purely patriarchal and purely spirit oriented, it
does not include the feminine, the earth, the
body—the element which is now coming up.

172
 Then the dreamer looks closer, and he
sees that the three stars are behind the moon as
if they had disappeared behind the moon and
the moon is now covering them up. They are
still shining through, however. It is only that the
moon is now in the forefront, so to speak. That
would mean that the feminine is now moving
into the foreground. The Christian Trinity is not
eclipsed, but it has to step into the background
behind the feminine principle of the moon.
The moon when it is new or nearly eclipsed is
very close to the sun which means that the
feminine principle which is coming up is not to
dominate as the masculine has done before but
rather that it is striving to be in connection with
the masculine, to have a conjunction of sun and
moon.
He associates, in the dream, the outline of
the full moon and the dividing line that indicates
where the new moon actually is shining with the
Yin/Yang symbol, the well-known symbol of
the play of opposites in Taoistic philosophy. In
that case, the dark side would be dominant,
though it is about to topple over into the light
side. That would be, so to speak, the crucial
moment when the dark side, which has been
dominant in our time, is about to give way to a
new light.

15
"At this point in the dream
I went inside the house, and
as soon as I had gone inside
I had the feeling of being a
little child again. I was being
left alone in the house and
I was worried about the
door being locked securely.
I noticed there was
some activity going on at
the back of the house. My
father was there unloading
some kind of material from
a truck. He seemed to be
bringing in some sand...

174
For this type of intellectual man, tasks of every-
day life—cooking, sewing, looking after the
kitchen, money, and so on—are a heavy bur-
‘den, and sand generally carries the association
of meaninglessness, sterile, earthly things. So,
for him, up till now, the earth is meaningless
and sterile, a bother, so to speak, which he
drags along but would like to avoid. That had
probably been his father's problem and has
now become his. It is as if the dream says,
"That problem of your father is with you too.
You too have this problem."
His father is unloading sand from a truck.
That would mean more of the sand is coming.
The heaps and heaps of earthly things which he
will have to deal with are going to accumulate.
This is due to the fact that the moon now
dominates the scene. Now the feminine, the
changing world of the body is important. Now
he has to attend to his physical life.

175
"The scene then changed again in the
dream, and this time I was in some kind
of jet or rocket ship very, very high up.
The stratosphere is the identification that
came to mind. I was stretched out full-
length in the rocket ship, somehow con-
strained by having my thumbs hooked
into two rings. I was alone in this craft,
except I had the sense that my father was
also there. I knew he was there, although
there was no explicit communication
between us.
At various points while we were
on this flight, other similar rocket ships,
crafts, came close, terrifyingly close in fact,
but they never hit us. There was no danger
apparently of a collision. Then I became
very frightened about something. I couldn't
quite identify what the problem was. There
was some physical sensation that was
affecting me. I thought maybe it was
hunger or thirst, but it didn't seem to be
that, and eventually I decided it was the
extreme rarification of the air. It was difficult
to breathe. I knew I must leave the space
ship and return to earth."

—Dreamer, Male

176
 The situation in the dream has to do with the
fact that the dreamer is a professor who has
obviously a brilliant, far-sighted mind. He is
someone who doesn't bother about little
things, but goes directly to the essentials of the
problem in his field of modern literature. But
he himself is terribly confined within that
spaceship; his thumbs, in particular, are tied.
He can hardly move, and it feels suddenly terri-
bly uncomfortable.
The thumb, if you think of the fairytale
character of the dumbling, is the dwarf of the
fingers and has mainly to do with creativity,
with creative fantasy. Up till now he has obvi-
- ously confined his own creativity. Perhaps he
should become a writer on his own instead of
studying the writing of other people, or in
some other way become more artistically cre-
ative.
The dumbling or the thumb is also the
trickster. It is a spirit which enjoys its freedom
and plays tricks on the dominating bourgeois
world. This side, the trickster side, the mis-
chievous, creative side of his personality, has
been completely confined, probably because of
his professional situation, and it should now be
liberated.
So he suddenly realizes that he is confined
in his intellectual realm, that the air high up in
university circles is very thin to breathe, and

177
that his treativity is hampered. The positive
message he receives from the dream is in the
last sentence. The last sentence is always the
solution, if there is a solution. He realizes he has
to come down to earth. He has to leave the .

space ship and return to earth.

How does the dream address the dreamer's

unique, individual psyche, as well as the much
larger collective problem of the feminine prin-
ciple in our time?
The dream first answers questions which he
must have had in his conscious mind, deep
questions: "What is the situation of our time? In
what kind of age do we live?" Naturally with his
interest in literature he is concerned with these
questions because the whole of modern litera-
ture keeps asking them. And, as poets have also
always been prophets there is a secret longing
to look in modern literature for the signs of the
time. The dream deals with that, answers that,
and only toward the end returns to his life
situation. It makes an excursion into the situa-
tion of our time to say that the feminine—the
body, the earthly, the ever-changing, material
world—is now becoming important. It has to
be lovingly attended to. And then the dream
focuses on him personally, "And for you that
means you should come out of your space ship
and return to earth."

178
 The dream closely parallels the dream of King
Gilgamesh we looked at earlier. Would you say
that this modern dreamer faces a similar life sit-
uation to Gilgamesh?
Like Gilgamesh, the dreamer of this modern
dream is also in the situation where the first half
of his life has been fulfilled and he now is
looking to the sky for orientation. The first
thing he sees is the conjunction of Jupiter and
Saturn. It tells him that he belongs to the age of
extreme opposites and that Saturn, the animal
man, and Jupiter, the spiritual man, are in op-
position as they are in Christianity.
Then in the second dream he sees the
moon, the feminine principle, and after that he
realizes suddenly that he is in a spaceship and
has to come down to Earth. We can say that
this realization at the end of his dream, that he
has to come down to Earth, is exactly what Gil-
gamesh had to realize after the star had fallen
upon him. Namely, he had to realize and make
friends with the earthly man, who, in the Gil-
gamesh Epic, first attacked Gilgamesh. They had
a battle before becoming friends and going off
on their heroic journey together. So we can ex-
pect that this dreamer will now have to meet
the earthly man alluded to in the figure of his
father who is carrying a sack of sand. This sack
is the load of earthly tasks and bodily existence
which the dreamer must integrate into his own
life before he can go on to fulfil his fate.

179
 His fate will have to do with an integration of
the feminine principle which is the moon. That
fate is different from the Gilgamesh epic. At that
time, the matriarchal world of unconsciousness
had to be overcome by the hero. Nowadays,
some four thousand years later, the situation is
reversed. The feminine principle has to be inte-
grated not overcome. But, in both situations, the
star and the appearance of the star have to do
with trying to read or realize the unique meaning
of one's own importance within the cosmos.
We are just a particle of dust, somewhere
living on a particle of dust, somewhere in the
cosmic universe. If we look with scientific and
collective standards at our life, it is completely
transient and meaningless. But if we look within
and we look at the stars, then we come to realize
that within that cosmic infinity, we have a unique
task to fulfil, which we generally experience as
what we call the meaning of our life.

180
Chapter Eleven

THE

INNER

BRIDE

"The anima is the mover, the instigator of change,

whose fascination drives, lures, and encourages
the male to all the adventures of the soul and
spirit, of action and creation in the inner and the
outward world."
—Erich Neumann,
The Great Mother
The anima in her developed form acts as a me-
diator between the man's ego and the Self. It
relates him to the source of his being. These
dreams show the feminine component of the
male psyche transforming into this link which
connects the dreamer to the source of life.
\

182
 "In the beginning of the dream they were rehearsing
a play in a church in modern times, and two actresses.
were nailing the Christ figure to the cross. The cross
was lying flat on the transept of the church, and I could
hear the sound of nailing, which was terrifying. Yet
somehow they were only tying the person onto the
cross—not nailing. When that was finished they raised it
up in the church, and the figure on the cross was very
high. It was extremely dangerous for that person.
Then the scene changed to the actual performance
in the church. The actor who will play the Christ comes
solemnly processing down the isle, and to my amazement,
it's a woman. Not only that, but my wife, although not
my actual wife in reality. She's dressed in a simple grey
cloak held at the neck with a broach, and she's heavily
pregnant. The whole crucifixion scene is repeated as in
the rehearsal, and she's raised up high. It's very moving
and absolutely magnificent.
Then the scene changes again. It's after the play and
we're walking home. I look at my wife who's walking
on my left side. She has fair short-cropped hair and a
slim boyish figure despite the pregnancy. She reminded
me, I thought afterwards, of the actress Jean Seberg in the
film of Joan of Arc . And as I look at her, I'm filled with
pride and love for her. But...ah...none of this I say to her.
I keep it all to myself. Then the dream ends."
—Dreamer, Male

183
First we, have to look at the fact that the main
figure of the dream is the pregnant wife of the
dreamer, but not his actual wife. It is a figure
whom he associates with Joan of Arc. If a per-
son dreams of a husband or wife, who does not|
resemble their actual partner, it means the in-
ner wife, or the inner husband. That is, the
main anima and animus figure to whom they
are, so to speak, always inwardly married. It's
the inner marriage.
At the beginning of the dream, there is a
kind of mystery play which enacts the crucifix-
ion of Christ. It is a bit dangerous because the
cross is high, but still it is only acting. This mir-
rors exactly the religious situation of our time.
Christianity has become, in one way, an histori-
cal reminiscence. It is as if we are rehearsing
some of our historical past, turning that past
into an outer imitation.
The problem is that the churches have
taught us to imitate Christ in the wrong way,
namely, to imitate his outer actions. I would call
that to ape Christ, and this aping of Christ has
not gone under our skin. We have not become
Christianized. If you look at the history of the
Western world and its wars and bloody fights,
you see that the Christianization has not reached
us. We are Christians with our lips and out-
wardly, but when it comes to psychological
facts, we are complete pagan barbarians. We
make pious historical reminiscences: We read
‘

184
the gospels. We have them repeated in church,
but many people are not touched by it.
This dream tells the dreamer that now
something unusual is going to happen. Namely,
this mysterious, pregnant wife of his is going to
be crucified in the place of Christ, and he
trembles in realizing the solemn performance.
That is the crucial moment when the Christian
teaching, or the mystery of what Christ repre-
sents, reaches his own soul.
This inner wife who is crucified is the
dreamer's soul. It is his anima. The anima in a
man is his feeling personality, his sensitivity, his
awareness of inner things. If a man has a posi-
-tive relationship to his anima, he is receptive to
the spiritual processes in the depth of the psy-
che. That is his feminine side. And the crucifix-
ion, which symbolically means being extended
between the opposites, to suffer the utmost
clash of opposites, is caused by his anima. The
two opposites are brought clashing together.
That's why when Christ was on the cross he
said, "My God, my God, why has thou forsaken
me?" He was absolutely torn between the op-
posites, blotted out between the opposites.
This central teaching of the Christian mys-
tery is now going to be realized by the
dreamer's soul. That means he will suffer it; he
will go through it, and will then begin to feel
that the Christian teaching is a psychological re-
ality. It's not some gesture out there which we

185
have tosape, or some kind of conventional be-
haviour which is being taught to us by parsons
and priests. It is something which touches us
and concerns our innermost psychic being.
It has been taught by certain Christian,
mystics that we should be Christified, that the
true imitation of Christ is to become Christ
ourselves, to be transformed into Christ our-
selves, inwardly or psychologically, and that is
what the dream predicts is happening to the
dreamer. After that experience, he will now be
a Christian. He will know what it means to be
crucified between the opposites, and he will
know what it means to carry his own cross and
to carry his own destiny to the ultimate.
Christ, in a way, is the model of a man
who went along with his own fate and carried
his own cross and fulfilled his own task without
wavering or giving in to any collective pressure.
That's why we worship him as a man who has
become God, as God who becomes man in
him. He carries that out. And the dreamer is
now carrying it out. The Christian teaching is
now reaching his soul.
He associates this crucified woman with
Joan of Arc, which is an appropriate association
because Joan of Arc was such a crucified figure.
She didn't ape Christ; she imitated Christ by
living her own individual destiny, right through
the cross and right through even outer death.

186
"What did you get from this dream?"

"That I have to pay much more attention

and give more value to this feminine, Song
feeling side of my personality. It is not
easy for a man to develop his feminine
side because you can't just say, 'Ah, this Lady, Lady on the Cross
is my inner femininity. I've found it. I've Was it I who crucified you?
got it. Good! It's in my pocket. Now I And am I too up there
beside you?
don't have to bother anymore.'
Like a robber to deride you
That's only the beginning. If a man Lustre mixed with dross?
is going to integrate his femininity, he
has to give up some of his masculine Pregnant Lady on the Cross
Will the man-child that's
achievement. Then he is going to feel within you
badly about that. And so it is a conscious Bursting forth, all stiffening
difficult struggle. It's a pendulum that sinews,
Live his life but not
swings to and fro from one side to the
unpin you?
other and each time it hurts because Gain but at what a cost.
each time it means giving up something
which is himself." In this act I play the Pilate
Lifting the curtain for a start.
Author and producer
"I understand that you use your dreams in There's nothing finer
relation to your creativity?" Than to be both audience
and stage designer.
"Writing songs is the most important When I'm down and at a loss,
way that I've always used to further That's the time I seek to
explore my dreams. I take perhaps not free you
But give me the strength to
the whole dream, but only one image as nail and be you
the beginning of a song which I write, Splayed upon that
just using the guitar and strumming to suffering tree
myself. And then, once I've got the You pregnant Lady of
the Cross,
song, I look at it to see in what way the Pregnant Lady of the Cross.
song has expanded the dream; in what
way it has got me deeper into the
— Dreamer
image. This moves the image around to
get at bits that I don't know, because
the dream is certainly trying to tell me
something that I don't know."
—Dreamer

187
Dr. von ¥ranz,, in contrast to the other ani ma
figures we have seen in men's dreams, the
woman in this next dream doesn't instigate
dramatic action. Rather, her beauty creates a
sublime mood. The dreamer said it was the most.
beautiful dream he could remember.

"IT dreamt that I was walking along beside

an enormous river, the current was swift,
and the light was flashing back off the water.
On top of a hill was a castle surrounded by
a moat. I walked across the drawbridge
and into a central courtyard of the castle.
A woman was sitting on the wall of a well
in the centre of the courtyard. She had a
ladle which she lowered down into the well
and held out to me. I took it and drank the
water. Then she again dipped the ladle and
gave it to me a second time. I drank and
she repeated the same procedure a third
time. I drank again and then sat down on the
edge of the well facing her. She had on a sky-
blue gown—an exceptionally beautiful woman.
Just sitting there with her filled me with an
incredible feeling of peace."
—Dreamer, Male

188
We have seen before that the dream world and
the unconscious psyche show their positive face
to us only if we go with life, if we don't refuse
to live.
Let's look first at the river beside which
the dreamer walks. We often speak of the river
as the flow of life, the flow of time. Time is a
river which ends in the ocean of eternity. Life is
a river which begins with the youthful spring
and finally ends in the sea of the Godhead, and
so on. The river is a famous simile for the ever-
moving, ever-changing facts of life which are
really the ever-moving changing of our psychic
substance which carries us.
Think for a minute of this strange thing:
our ego consciousness is blotted out for hours
every night and returns identical the next
morning. Why should we not wake up and be
somebody else? We are completely continuous
with ourselves. So there is something which
apparently carries our identity through all our
life. Even though our body changes its cells ev-
ery seven years and we have practically no old
cells left in our body after seven years, we still
remain ourselves. There is something like an
essential psychic substance in us which carries
our identity throughout life. That is this river,
this mysterious flow of life. And there, by the
river, he meets the woman at the well.
One thinks of Christ's conversation with
the Samaritan woman, one of the few meetings

189
where Ghrist in a meaningful way encounters
the feminine and takes up contact with it.
The anima in her developed form is in
man the capacity for love in contrast to the
power drive. It is loving for love's sake in the .
highest form. That's why this woman appears in
a medieval castle surrounded by a moat. She is
in the so-called French courts d'amour, courts
of love, where for the first time in Western
Christian civilization there was a realization of
the anima. There each knight elected a woman
of his choice, who was not his wife and who
represented his beloved anima figure. He made
poems for her, and he did his heroic deeds for
her. He worshipped her like a goddess. Those
men grew out of their barbarian warriors' be-
haviour and became cultivated people. They
were men who could relate to women, men
who cultivated their capacity for love, their sen-
sitivity. It was the time of the grail legends, of
the troubadours, of the story of Tristan and
Isolde.
The church didn't like this development as
it led to all sorts of complications and made
people a bit too independent, so they sup-
pressed it. Interestingly enough, when those
courts d'amour were suppressed and the
knights were made to worship the Virgin Mary
instead of their idealized mistresses, the witch-
hunting began. The feminine became negative,
and alluring, interesting women were pursued as
\

190
witches all because the beginning development
of love life was suppressed.
Now, when we are confronted with the
problem of renewing the relationship between
the sexes and finding new forms of relating be-
tween man and woman, we have to go back to
the Middle Ages, to where the problem was left
behind, in this castle with the moat. There the
problem was deserted and left to form the one-
sided masculine rational development of the
West. We, therefore, have to return. In our
time the anima development is most important
for men, as is the animus development for
women.

In the dream what is the symbolic meaning of

the anima offering ladles of water?
This dream speaks through its beauty and its
feeling value and needs not much rational expla-
nation. The only action is that the anima figure
three times gives the dreamer some of the wa-
ter of life to drink. The anima has the water of
life and the water of life is difficult to define. Let
me put it this way. We know that when people
feel well they say they feel alive. Even if they
might have sufferings and difficulties in their
life, there are times when people feel alive.
Then, when people are in a neurotic fix or in
some trouble, they say, "I'm dead, I'm inwardly
dead, I don't live." This shows that being alive
is not only a physical fact; it is a psychic fact.

191
We aresalive when we feel alive, and what makes
us feel alive is the contact with that flow of the
unconscious psyche. That's why dreams are so
important. You can say that each ladle full of the
water of life is a dream. That's what a dream is,
Every night, we get, so to speak, a sip of the
water of life, and, if we understand the dream,
we are vivified.We feel in contact with our psy-
chic depth and with our own living substance,
and then we subjectively feel that life is flowing,
that we are alive.

When I'm down and at a loss,

That's the time that I seek to free you,
But give me the strength to nail and be you,
Splayed upon that suffering tree
You pregnant Lady of the Cross,
Pregnant Lady of the Cross.
— Dreamer

192
Part Five

THE

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Chapter Twelve

HEL.

HAS eNO

MIRRORS

"Whoever you are—I have always depended on

the kindness of strangers."
—Blanche DuBois
A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
Modern women are rejecting the bondage of
our patriarchal heritage. They are conscious of a
greater potential of life within them and no
longer experience self-worth in only being an
object of a man's desire.

196
 "Women's great problem
today is that they are living
under the curse of Daddy, a
Pygmalion Daddy, who has a
very clear idea of what he
wants his little girl to be. He's
saying, 'Be what I want you
to be, damn it!'! And she
grows up thinking all the
time what Daddy is thinking
about what she is doing. And
she's dissatisfied with herself
if she doesn't live up to his
standard."
—Dreamer, Female

197
 The following dreams, although individual, echo
the unconscious psyche of many women. They
show the unlived shadow in the unconscious,
which can be integrated, a creative resource
which can give life a new direction. .

"I dreamt that a woman was trying to see herself in a

mirror, and she said, 'My husband has taken it away so
he doesn't have to look at me.' And her friend who was
a woman said, 'My husband has done the same thing
and I could kill him.'
Then there was the figure of a woman floundering in
the sea, and a male voice said, 'She always used to like
to swim naked like this early in her career.' It was
Marilyn Monroe, luminous and white, with her yellow
hair spread out on the wave, much like the calendar shot
where her yellow hair is over the red velvet. The only
problem was she didn't have any legs or any arms, just
her trunk. She seemed to notice that I was watching and
turned her whole torso, or what there was of it, toward
me. (It was just the trunk, luminous and white and sad-
looking, floundering in the water.) And I caught the
expression on her mouth which was painted and red,
but so sad. And I said, 'She always turns when she
knows she is being watched, hoping to catch desire
in the eyes of sailors."
—Dreamer, Female

198
At the beginning of the dream is the strange
disappearance of the mirror twice. One would
think that if the mirror is taken away the
woman could not look at herself again. But the
dream says the husband takes the mirror away
so that he need not look at her, which is a
complete dream absurdity.
So we have to first ask ourselves, "What is
the mirror?" In the mirror we reflect, the mir-
ror reflects, our image. The word reflect has a
double meaning. It also means to reflect upon
oneself. To think, to reflect, means to bend
back upon oneself, to find one's own identity.
And the mirror shows one's true face objec-
tively. Therefore, it's very often a shock to look
at oneself in the mirror. And if you think of the
mirror in the fairytale of Snow White, it tells the
truth to the old witch. It says that Snow White
is more beautiful than she and the witch gets
furious at that. So the mirror is what shows the
true reflection, what shows the true identity.
Now both these women at the beginning
of the dream accuse their husbands of having
taken away the possibility of seeing their own
identities. That is what some members of the
women's liberation movement say, "It's our
husbands who steal our identity." They do not
have their own identity. They feel raped, or
they feel that their own feminine identity has
been stolen from them, and the cheapest re-
sponse is to accuse the husband.

199
 Now, the.husband may have contributed to
this response because men naturally carry in
themselves all sorts of aesthetic and romantic
ideas about the ideal woman. Generally the image
they carry is influenced by their mother. If they
loved their mothers, their wives should be as like
their mothers as_ possible. If they hated their
mothers, their wives should be as different from
their mothers as possible. And, as women have a
natural tendency to comply with the wishes of
their surroundings, to relate personally to their
surroundings, they very often feel forced to play
a role toward their husband, to fulfil his expecta-
tions instead of being themselves. Naturally, they
then feel bitter, as if their husbands had stolen
from them all possibility of being themselves.
But, in general, that is a projection. It is
really their own masculine drive, their animus,
that has estranged them from their feminine
identity. It's the result of social life in general and
not of their husbands. But the plain result in the
dream is a feeling of despair, of having lost the
mirror, which is the possibility of seeing oneself
as one really is.

"What are your

associations to the dream?"

"Well, there are two plays. One, A Streetcar

Named Desire, in which Blanche seeks her
identity in the kindness of strangers. I saw the
eye of the sailor in the dream as being that kind \
of mirror. The other play is Jean Paul Sartre's
No Exit in which three people are in hell. One
woman is a nymphomaniac. Because there are
no mirrors in hell, she does not exist unless one
of the other two characters looks at her. She
has so little self-identity."
— Dreamer

200
 Now, Marilyn Monroe is a very ambi
guous
figure because she played the ideal feminine
fig-
ure to millions of men. She was trained by
her
mother to play that role from a very early age,
and so she acquired the tragic fate of an actress
dis-identified from herself. She played a. star
role and lost the feeling of who she was in pri-
vate life. She had an obsessive fantasy in her
youth that she was entering a cathedral and the
whole congregation, which had been looking
toward the altar, turned around and stared at
her. Nobody looked at the altar, the place
where God appears, becomes real, or incar-
nates in the human world. They looked at her.
She was the goddess.
This being identified with the goddess is
naturally extremely dangerous. That is the infla-
tion we talked about before. And so Marilyn
Monroe in reality lost her identity and died a
tragic death, as everyone knows.

"When I had this dream, it seemed to me that

it was a collective dream that mirrored some-
thing very wrong with women in our time, some
terrible problem of women whose lack of self-
identity makes them look for mirrors in the eyes
of strangers or lovers, instead of thinking of
loving themselves. And the fact is that Marilyn,
who was the goddess of love, was incapable of
love, and killed herself in despair because she
felt she was not loved. But her real horror was
that she could not love."
— Dreamer

201
How does a woman learn to play the anima of a
man?
Learning to play the anima to a man is begun very
early. The little girl notices that when Daddy |
comes home tired in the evening and she gives
him a darling smile he allows her to do all the
things that mother had forbidden her to do all
day. And in this way she discovers her power as a
woman.
Now a little bit of that is very good because
it gives her her feminine self-confidence. She
discovers that as a woman she is somebody. Why
she can even put Daddy at her feet. But if she
succumbs to this power drive and makes it her
profession to rule men with her charming smile
then she gets off the track. For if a woman has
this tendency of playing the anima to her father,
shé assumes a divine role because animus and
anima are mythological and belong to the dream
world and not the outer reality. Therefore a
daughter who is flirting too much with her father
and getting into too close an incestuous rela-
tionship with him generally assumes a secret
inflation. She elevates herself to the dignity of a
queen and assumes that every man has to be at
her feet, exactly as she forced her father to be.
Gradually, she develops a certain haughtiness and
feels herself to be something special. She
becomes unapproachable to ordinary men and
those men who try to approach her feel that
\

202
 she is a princess and not someone you can
comfortably take into your bed and have an
animal relationship with. Girls who have father's
princess-like attitudes, therefore, have great dif-
ficulties in relating to men and are in danger of
not marrying and bearing children because, as
soon as it is a question of a man advancing to-
ward them sexually in ordinary human life, they
are walled up by a kind of wall of invisible
unapproachability. Father's dear little girls often
become princesses locked in a tower un-
approachable to ordinary men.
And so we can interpret this dream in a
double way and say, "Thank God that Marilyn
-Monroe has died in that woman." The woman
in her who wants to play a role, who wants to
make a social career, who wants to be stared at
by every man, that woman in her has died and
the only good thing would be to give her a de-
cent funeral. But we can also see it from an-
other aspect. Marilyn Monroe represented to
her public, as her own fantasy shows, the god-
dess that is lacking in the Christian church. She
and other film stars like her are elevated to di-
vine rank. Greta Garbo suffered the same tragic
fate. She was too identified with the goddess,
but fortunately, she was frightened by it and fi-
nally ran away. Their tragic situation exposes a
problem of our civilization: we have no official
goddess to worship. Some actresses or beautiful
women are worshipped instead, but they can't

203
 carry that projection. They don't know how to
carry that projection. So you can say that the
drowned Marilyn Monroe figure in the dream is
the divine woman within the dreamer who
should have developed as the inner divine nu-
cleus of her personality, her star, so to speak,
her inner star which got lost in an ordinary
worldly career. Understood in this way, Marilyn
Monroe should not be buried, but rescued and
brought back to life again.
The two interpretations seem to contradict
each other, but they don't. They are two halves
of the same coin. The dream is ambiguous. It
simply shows the dreamer her situation as it is.
What she does with it and the way she reacts to
it is still open to possibility.

Would you comment on the fact that in the

dream Marilyn Monroe has no arms or legs?
The arms are generally the organs of action, and
the legs are the organs by which we stand in
reality. So that divine feminine image cannot act
because it is not anchored in reality. It is com-
pletely mutilated.
"Although I realized
that I might also
participate in
this dream, I didn't
see it as particularly
personal until a
The same woman dreamt this next dream al-
year later. Then I
suddenly realized most three years after her "Marilyn Monroe
that for fifty years I dream."
hadn't used my
hands. I had cut
off my arms. So I
set up my studio
and started to paint."

— Dreamer

204
 "Well, I dreamt I came home to my dark living room, a
well-like, sunken living room with stairs leading up to a
sleeping area. Apparently it was my own living room although
it resembled the well-like lobby of an inn where I was
entertained the evening before the dream. I went upstairs and
in the middle of the room was a strange dark-haired foreign
woman whom I had never seen before in my life. I said,
'What are you doing here?' And she said in broken English
that she had come to look after my things while I was away
to see that nothing was stolen. I said, 'I don't believe you.
How dare you intrude into my private space!' I struck her
first on one cheek and then on the other. I was surprised at
my violence, and she ran away in tears.
Then the scene changed into a kind of basement cafeteria,
apparently under my apartment building though in the dream
it reminded me of the location of the social event I had
attended the night before. The manager, who was in reality
my host from the evening before the dream, was instructing
the waitresses how to run things, and I noticed that one of
the waitresses was the dark, young woman intruder whom I
had encountered earlier in my apartment. I looked at the
manager but I couldn't make out his face. It was not in focus
just like during a vision test I'd had the previous day when I
couldn't see the examination card. And then I overheard a
conversation in which it became clear that the manager had
sent this young woman to my apartment. I become acutely...

205
embarrassed that everyone would know I slapped her and
I begin to feel rather badly that I dismissed her so summarily.
Next, I'm upstairs in a narrow bed in a room of my own.
The room is very narrow, very like the room of someone
who's left a marriage, a very bare cramped hotel room and
entirely unlike my own bedroom with its armchairs and
bookshelves and paintings and tables loaded with sculpture
and things. But in the dream I plainly recognize this narrow
room as my own. I am trying to pursue some study or
interest when I look up from whatever is absorbing me and
sitting beside my bed in a little tiny chair is a little tiny boy
about two years old with pink and white skin. He looks like
a little rose petal. He is so exquisite. I lean down to look at
him and he's got a little bag of pink and white candies the
same colour as he is. And I think, 'He's a sweet baby. He's
not disturbing me. He can stay there.' So I go on with what-
ever I was doing, and then I turn to look at him again and
he's turned into an older child, a girl, dark instead of blonde,
naked, who's eating something with bloody hands. Then I
notice that her vagina is split open and is filled with blood.
And I think, 'Oh, how horrible, she's mutilated herself.'
And the idea of the child's self-destructiveness fills me with
overwhelming sorrow. But then the thought occurs, 'Perhaps,
she has been violated.' Then I realize that this is the child of
the dark woman intruder."

—Dreamer, Female

206
When we look at this dream we have to first
look at the geography of the place. There is a
sunken living room below and the bedrooms
above. The bedrooms have the quality of pri-
vate life, a private territory where she doesn't
want any intruders. Downstairs on a lower level
(the dream puts it on a lower level) is her social
life. Now, this woman has made a great profes-
sional career for herself and has been living a
lively social life, but the dream puts all that
down. It's put on the ground floor. The im-
portant thing is higher up. The problem which
now has priority is higher up. The problem is
in the bedroom.
When she comes up to the bedroom, she
finds this dark-haired, unknown intruder and is
so furious at having an unknown intruder in her
private life that she slaps her twice. We don't
know who that dark-haired woman is. We can
therefore only conclude that it is a part of her
personality of which she is ignorant. It's an-
other part of herself which she doesn't know,
feels strange about, and wants to reject because
she is unaccustomed to it.
Very often during life, we are suddenly as-
saulted by a new part of our personality. We
have new feelings or reactions which we have
never had before, and very often, out of sheer
habit, we hate that new experience. We don't
like to change. "What's that? Why am I sud-
denly feeling very differently?" We feel it's

207
uncanny and anything uncanny we try to slap
down within us, instead of being open to it and
saying, "What new feelings or reactions am I
having? Let's look at them." So the dreamer
rejects this part of herself. .
Then, in the next part of the dream, she
discovers that this unknown woman whom she
has slapped is, in fact, a waitress in the down-
stairs room. This gives us a little clue who that
woman is. It is a part of her femininity which,
up till now, has concentrated only on serving
other people instead of looking after herself.
Then the dreamer comes again back to the
upstairs bedroom. It's like a cramped hotel
room quite in contrast to her actual bedroom
which is comfortable with wide armchairs and
bookshelves. So it represents her private life,
her intimate life. The dream tells her, "Look
here, there is not enough space." And as we
know now space and time are the same thing,
"There is not enough space-time for your pri-
vate life."
This is a woman who probably lives her
professional and social life much too extravert-
edly. She doesn't make enough room, space-
time, to be with herself. The result is that her
psychological bedroom has become a cramped
hotel room. Now a hotel room is a place where
strangers live and where strangers can walk in
and out so she has no real privacy. She has no

208
realm of introversion where she can be herself,
where she can have her personal secrets. It's all
given away to other people. Part of her femi-
ninity which should look after her inner child is
acting as a waitress to other people. That is like
Marilyn Monroe in the other dream, who is an
actress, acting for other people. Here, this per-
son is waiting on other people, serving other
people, instead of looking after her own busi-
ness. This dark-haired woman should have
looked after her little daughter instead of allow-
ing her to be raped while she was waiting on
the others downstairs.
Then the dreamer discovers in this
cramped bedroom a beautiful little boy who is
delicate and smiling—an absolutely charming,
divine little figure. Now, a boy in a woman's
dream generally means a new enterprise be-
cause young boys, if you look at them, are the
epitome of doing something all the time. Jung
said that a boy symbolizes an honest enterprise.
And this boy, her honest enterprise, probably
personifies the fact that she had begun painting.
Painting was her first undertaking, where she
did something for her own psyche, for her own
self, where there was an honest enterprise
which was not looking for success but was sim-
ply doing a thing for its own sake. That's the
little boy and he personifies a new aspect of her
personality coming into being.

209
 But, because her little boy then changes
into a little girl, the painting is only instrumental
and has no purpose of its own. It is only in-
strumental in bringing forth a new part of her
feminine personality, the little girl. That little,
girl is her true femininity. That little daughter of
the dark-haired woman is her true feminine
identity which is still very young and growing.
Now the dreamer has only the first inkling
of her new identity and that's why it's still per-
sonified as a little girl. But then she discovers
with horror that the little girl is bleeding in the
vagina and has probably been raped and vio-
lated and ill-treated.

Who raped this little girl?

One can naturally accuse the husband if one
wants to escape the problem, but if we ask,
"Who raped that little girl?" we must answer
that she herself, or her animus, her masculine
side. Behind her own back, her social career-
mindedness raped her true femininity which
wanted to grow within her. But the girl is not
dead. The problem in the dream can be
mended. In a very dramatic form, the dream
says to her, "If you go on with your extraverted
social life and your career-mindedness, you will
rape something within yourself which is just
born and wants to grow into a new kind of
woman within you."

210
Is there any relationship between this dream
and her Marilyn Monroe dream?
We see in the first dream of Marilyn Monroe
that something is dying, or has died, within this
woman, and in the second dream something
has been born. Constantly in dreams, parts of
our personality undergo deaths and births.
During life, rightly or sometimes wrongly,
parts of our personality die within us and other
parts are born. We could even make the as-
sumption that the raped little girl is the reborn
Marilyn Monroe. In that wrong form of acting
and hunting social success, this figure has to die,
but then it comes back again in its new form
—the new life of a young growing personality.

"The morning prior to this

dream I had had an eye test
and was feeling very sorry
for myself. I had had a
second operation for
detaching retinas and I
hadn't been able to focus
so I'd given up working in
the studio and been very
morose. Six days after this
dream, I went in and set up
my sculpture studio. The
dream was telling me that
I'd been mutilating myself
with my self-pity."
—Dreamer

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Chapter Thirteen

THE

HANGED

MAN

"If I travel in a car or train without looking out, it is

only the stops, starts, and sudden turns that make me
realize Iam moving at all."
—NMarie-Louise von Franz,
Man and his Symbols
Jung called the male personification of the
unconscious in a woman's dreams the "animus",
which is the Latin word for "spirit". Like the an-
ima in a man, the animus exhibits four stages of
development. In Man and His Symbols, Dr. von
Franz outlines these stages:

He first appears as a personification of

mere physical power, for instance, as an
athletic champion or "muscle man". In the
next stage he possesses initiative and the
capacity for planned action. In the third
stage, the animus becomes the "word". . .
and finally, in his fourth manifestation, the
animus is the incarnation of meaning. On
this highest level he becomes (like the
anima) a mediator of the religious
experience whereby life acquires a new
meaning. He gives the woman spiritual
firmness, an invisible inner support that
compensates for her outer softness.
\

214
 But, like the vampire anima in a man, the
animus in his negative form is a parasite. He
personifies brutality, coldness and obstinacy
and paralyses a woman's growth.
To transform the animus involves immense
suffering for it means nothing less than forsak-
ing an old identity for a new one. It takes a
great deal of courage. But the journey is well
undertaken for the rewards are immeasurable.
The next three dreams were dreamt by a
woman over a period of three years. In the first
dream, there is no masculine figure present; in
the second dream the animus appears, and in
the third dream, he makes his presence felt!

215
"At the time of this dream I was the centre
of an institution called marriage and I had
the impressive title Mother. My beautiful
children never asked without getting, and my
handsome husband never got without asking.
Outwardly, life was joy and bliss. .. .
In the dream I am lying flat on an
enormous king-sized mattress. I mean huge!
It is suspended, floating in the air. There is
nothing else around it. No sheets, nothing.
Over to my right I feel that something is
approaching. It's a woman walking along at a
distance with two Doberman dogs on leashes
—black Dobermans. As she comes toward
me, I keep watching her. She comes closer
and closer. When she gets to about three feet,
she looks straight down at me with disgust.
(She has a babushka tied around her head.)
She looks at me, lets go of the leashes, and
the two dogs leap—zap!—tright at my throat.
And then I woke up. I couldn't breathe. I
sat up in bed gasping for breath.
All the next day I couldn't shake the
terror. I kept asking myself what it could mean.
This was extraordinary because I had never
been vaguely interested in my dreams before."
—Dreamer, Female

216
 The whole problem is stated in the first sen-
tence of the dream where the dreamer says, "I
was lying on a mattress, floating in the air." The
dream shows that the dreamer has no relation-
ship to the earth. She does not have her feet on
the ground. She has no contact with reality.
That means also that she has no real contact
with her own body. She is living in the world of
ideas and illusions, theoretical conceptions of
life.
Then a woman comes toward her with two
Doberman pinschers. They symbolize the
earthly forces, the instinctive forces. A dog
represents our domesticated instinct. But here
‘these dogs are hostile. They are associated with
the Nazis who used them as guard dogs. The
woman who controls the dogs has a babushka
on her head, which reminds her of her mother.

"What is your
association with
a babushka?"

"Well, I'm Polish

and that's a very
common Polish
tradition. Many
Polish women
wear a babushka
either on the head
or around the
shoulders. My
mother wore one."

Now, the mother for a woman represents the — Dreamer

instinctive basis, the matrix, the whole area of

217
 the uterus. If,a woman has trouble with her
mother, she very often has trouble with men-
struation, with her own sexual functions, and
with her maternal feelings. The mother is, so to
speak, the earth on which she lives. But this+
mother figure lets the Dobermans loose on her
and the instincts in their fierce, hostile, negative
aspect attack the dreamer. So the dream says,
"Because you are floating in mid-air, because
you have lost touch with reality, the instinctive
basis of your femininity has become hostile and
is threatening you." This denial of her instincts
goes very well with the fact that she became ill
afterwards. If one goes against one's own animal
instincts then illness is in the offing.

"T had this dream twice.

Shortly after having it the
second time, I went into
the hospital with a serious
pelvic infection."
— Dreamer

Dr. von Franz, is it possible then to diagnose

the onset of disease from a dream?
After the event one could say so, but I wouldn't
dare to say that ahead of time. I would only say,
"You are living against your instincts and that
will very likely end up in some kind of disease."

218
It is obvious, if you eat too much or too little,
or sleep too much or too little, or if you do
anything against your instinct, you are likely to
catch a disease.

Is there a significance to the fact that the dogs

attack the throat?
Well, I think, first of all, that when a dog wants
to really kill, he attacks the throat. He bites the
artery in the throat. That is the killing move-
ment. So it shows that the dogs really mean
business. They are not attacking playfully. The
attack is really dangerous. But we can also look
at the symbolism of the throat. The throat, in
‘the Hindu teaching of the Chakra centrums, is
the centre of the world of the Logos, of the
spoken word. It is called the Vishuda Centra
and that is what is being attacked. She believes
in the world of words. She doesn't listen to
what her instincts say when they speak from
the stomach or from deeper centres. This re-
fusal to listen goes together with her floating in
the air. She probably mirrors herself in her
own reflection as a successful woman who lives
in a world of ideas and words.

The same woman dreamt this next dream ap-

proximately two years later. Here, unlike in the
previous dream, her animus, her masculine side
is personified but it is quite lifeless.

Pay)
"I had this dream following my marriage separation. The fear
of taking sole responsibility for my own life and also, this
was more disturbing, for the children's lives plagued me.
In the dream I am in a room with my mother and a male.
It's a very tiny room. There is hardly any furniture except a
bed on one side. There is not much going on. Then I get a
feeling that there's a body outside the door. I open it and,
sure enough, there's a body lying in the hallway. It's wrapped
in a sheet, but I know it's a male. I shut the door.
Now we have to go out the back door. But to get out we
have to go down an incredibly steep wooden staircase. It's
just an unbelievable drop. The stairs are not closed in and it's
really dangerous. My mother goes first, then the male and I go
behind her. She starts down a couple of steps. I am coming
behind being very, very cautious. Then, all of a sudden, she
does this beautiful leap and lands on the ground with both feet.
It's a beautiful jump! Olympic calibre! I'm just in awe.
Then everything changes. I am by myself walking through
a small town. It is quite barren. There's a lot of sand. As I
approach the centre of the town square, there is a platform
with about three or four steps leading up to it. It's a hanging
man's platform, an absolute square, made out of wood, an old,
weathered kind of wood. There are four pillars at the corners,
and in the centre there is the hanging man's pole. I approach
it, look at it, and see that there's a man hanging there. I look
again and realize that he's hanging by his feet. I'm not alarmed.
I just look at him closely, and then I walk by."
—Dreamer, Female

220
 Though the animus is often spoken of as a nui-
sance in the woman, he also performs very
positive and important functions because a
woman whose animus is wounded or not func-
tioning is too passive. She is too exposed to the
vicissitudes of life. She cannot take her own
destiny into her own hands. The animus, there-
fore, is a very positive figure. This dream shows
that the woman is very wrapped up in her
mother. She is dominantly feminine, and has
not developed her own masculinity. Her mas-
culinity is shown in the dream wrapped up in
linen lying dead outside the door. That is the
part of her personality which has died and
_ should be resuscitated. She therefore has to
leave the place where she is. That is, she has to
change her life situation.
The path leads downwards, a rather
dangerous step. She has to come down to a
deeper level of reality, become more realistic
and realize her practical life situation. She suc-
ceeds in doing so, and then she comes to a vil-
lage, an old-fashioned village, which probably
mirrors an old-fashioned way of life where
women were not allowed to have any initiative
of their own. There she finds a man hung up in
the centre square of the village. In that atmo-
sphere of old-fashioned femininity, all the posi-
tive masculine forces in women are suspended,
literally suspended. They are killed. They cannot
act. The dream, therefore, shows that being in

221
 a very difficult outer situation, she might be in-
clined to think that it's a matter of bad luck.
But the dream shows her that the real trouble is
that her own masculinity is dead and has to be
rescued and revived again. :

"Later, I was talking toa

friend about my guilt and
anxiety at leaving the marriage.
I felt there was something
terribly wrong with me,
that I was lacking some quality
that everyone else had by
nature. My friend said,
'The only thing wrong with
you is that you think there
is something wrong with you.'
I laughed at the simplicity of
it all. But it changed my
view-point. Instead of looking
for what was wrong, I started to
look for what was right in me."
— Dreamer

Would you amplify that image of the hanging

man?

Baz
[etion is a Haneedo man. It means the moment
of being elevated into the spiritual realm and
being recognized as a god, but at the expense
of human reality. One is, so to speak, hung up
in eternity, and the human reality is dead. That's
why, for instance, the old Germans hung up
their prisoners in honour of Wotan. When the
wind blew them back and forth on the gallows
or the trees where they were hanging, it meant
that Wotan, the spinual God, was daling them

cation, ae you want to ney Kane 5G fhe eo be

it! But, in a negative foun: agp ee also means

hanging.
So it means that all her masculine intelli-
gence, her courage and capacity for action exist,
but are suspended. What's more they are
turned upside down. They are not touching
reality. Where the man should have his head up,
so she should have her head up. She should
think her situation over and take it in hand like
a man. Her masculine qualities are suspended,
condemned to inaction, because of an old-
fashioned attitude toward life on the one hand,
and too great an identification with her mother
on the other.

229
 ~

"Two years later my life was great. I had re-established my

professional reputation and was quite enjoying my children
and my new-found independence. Casual dating was fun.
Then, unexpectedly, I was in love. I told the man how I felt
about him and he said that his feelings were not mutual.
I felt very rejected. That night I had this dream.
I am in the balcony of a theatre when suddenly I have
to go to the bathroom. I get up from my seat and walk
toward the back of the theatre. There's an usherette
standing there and we go to the washroom together. But
it's not really a washroom at all, but a storage area somehow,
like a closet. She opens the door and holds it for me, and
l_ enter,
I suddenly realize that if I sit down to pee I can't
lock the door. As I'm thinking that, a man in a suit enters.
I'm outraged because this is a ladies' washroom. So I tell
him to get out. Then I see another man coming toward
me. He is quite short and stockily built. I'm furious that
these men are in the ladies' bathroom. The stocky man
keeps coming right toward me. I turn to the other man
who looks over at the stocky man and says to me, 'He's
a tae-kwon-do master.' I whip around to look at him and
he has assumed a karate stance—the martial arts attack
stance. Then in a leap he's at my throat. I wake up terrified."

—Dreamer, Female

224
 First, let's look at the bathroom. The bathroom BATHCOOM
has to do with the painaie purification symbol-
ismof water. Baptismal symbolism, for exam-
ple, is a purification from demonic possession.
When people come out of the water, they put
on white clothes to show that they are purified
and now begin a new life. And in all religions,
not only in the Christian religion, water has
generally the connotation of being the great pu-
rifier. It washes off the sins and the contamina-
tions. Now, just as in concrete life we constantly
pick up dirt by working and by rubbing our-
selves against outer objects and other peep SO
S also— uP dirtaS CERR ERY Ve par

the papers or we ee ‘mia with what

the writer in the papers says and thenswe

NAKED

speak of the naked fant So fin the bathroom

you look at yourself in the mirror and you see
the naked truth which is not always agreeable.
The dreamer had been terribly hit before
this dream by the negative answer of her part-
ner. Now the dream changes that hit, or repre-
sents that shocking hit, but in a different form.
First, it shows that it happened when the
dreamer wanted to pee in the bathroom. To GEN WA ©
pee generally has the symbolism of expressing OHCahE RE aa =
EYXR
es feo.

Pavey)
oneself ‘genuinely. Peeing is one of the few
functions people cannot repress. We can re-
press sleep for a while, we can repress eating
for a while, but peeing is just above us. It rules
us, and therefore it is an expression of, "Here |]
am, that's how I am." It always means to be
genuine. The dream says, "Look here, for once
you have tried to be genuine when you asked
this man, 'Do you love me?' and inferred at the
same time that you loved him. That was your
true feeling and you got hit, but you did not get
hit really by your partner who told you he was
not interested in you. You got hit by somebody
else. You got hit by this karate hero, by that
horrible man who hits your throat with a karate
gesture."
Now this karate man is within her. It is as
if the dream says, "You did not get the shock
from outside. You got it from your own na-
ture." It reminds us of what Jung once said,
"There is no difficulty that does not ultimately
stem from ourselves." We are our own diffi-
culty. Her love difficulty is within herself. She
has such a karate fellow in her. She can there-
fore develop further or become herself only if
she realizes that the terrible shock she fetched
from the outer world is something in her own
nature. She has to face up to the fact that she
has a hard-fighting man in herself who devalues
her as a woman.

226
Let's talk further about this karate figure who
attacks women when they become genuine in
their feelings. Do you feel this image relates to
society in general as well as to the personal
psychology of this dreamer?
Well, I would say the modern style in Western
societies, and beginning also now in China and
in the Marxist societies, is to organize the
masses with computers and discourage every
personal feeling. In the West, for instance, it's a
rule in big business to rotate men around in
different places in order to prevent too much
personal attachment. Personal attachment is
looked upon as forming a clique. Personal feel-
ing is discouraged.
You see it also in political debates nowa-
days. One of the most negative things one can
say about an opponent is that his arguments are
governed by his feelings. "He is not logical"—as
if logic were the only way to argue. One can also
argue with the heart. One can also protest with
one's feelings. But nowadays, the fashion, the
absolute fashion, is to be rational. Many schools
of modern psychology are also rational. If
some thing is wrong in the marriage, one has to
rationally reorganize one's sex life, have ex-
tramarital affairs, use practical new positions,
Kama Sutra positions. One has to fix up the
marriage rationally as if a human were a broken-
down car. That is absolutely destructive to feel-
ings and it hits both men and women. It hits

227
women @éven more than men because. women
generally put more emphasis on personal rela-
tionships and personal feelings.
Women are hit first, and that's why women
are nowadays so unhappy. That's why they are in «

revolt against many things. They feel that their

lives are thwarted. Naturally it hits men too, be-
cause, if women go crazy and become disagree-
able and cold, it reverberates on the sons and on
the partners. But a man can endure a rationally
organized world a bit longer than a woman can.
He is not finally happy in it either, but he can
stand it a bit longer.

This denial of personal feeling seems to be in vi-

olation of a natural human connection. It favours
the head over the body. Would you say that the
growing popularity of fitness programs such as
Jogging, T'ai Chi, yoga and so on is an attempt to
restore the balance?
This tremendous emphasis on the body nowa-
days in psychotherapy is a compensatory move-
ment. Based on my own experience, my feeling
is that those exercises to get back into the body,
T'ai Chi and all sorts of group experience, are a
bit too technical. They're too intentional. I think
that going into nature and living with nature is a
better way of sinking back into the body. It's a
more natural way. But not everybody can do that,
and those exercises are certainly sometimes very
helpful.

228
 What happens when a person does connect the
bead to the body?
Well, generally when people sink into their
bodies, they first contact the emotions which
are the bridge between the head and the body.
They probably activate the lymphatic system
which affects the emotions. Generally when
people try to get into their bodies through ex-
ercise, they first release a wild resentment
against father or mother or something like
that.They generally contact negative emotions
which have been repressed, and the first step is
to let those emotions out, to let those come up,
not to suppress them with the head. Then gen-
erally there is an outburst of tears and sweat and
other physical reactions. After that comes a re-
laxation and then, with it, a better connection
with the body.
One can say that what is wrong is that the
whole collective consciousness doesn't value
Eros anymore. Eros is personal; it is from one
being to another being in a unique and personal
way. It doesn't count for anything in our soci-
ety. You cannot say, "I do this because I love so
and so," or "I do that against the rules because I
love=so. and so.’ The rules are the rules; ‘The
computer has spelled them out, this way or that
way, and that's the way it has to be. The whole
depersonalization and the whole mass organi-
zation of modern society is destructive of feel-
ings, and that drives women mad.

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08
Chapter Fourteen

THE

TYRANT

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,

In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who
Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you:
I thought even the bones would do.
—Sylvia Plath, Daddy
In its negative form a woman's inner man, the
animus, is a power of evil destructive to human
life. He separates a woman from her own femi-
ninity. He cuts her off from human warmth and
kindness, and leaves her isolated in a meaning-
less world, martyred by unseen hands. She ex-
periences herself as a victim, a captive, trapped
either by external circumstance or by a cruel
fate. Eventually, she may come to believe that
her awful aloneness cannot be alleviated in this
world and may be drawn into fantasies of death.
The following poem was written in a state
of such animus possession and expresses the
terrifying loneliness of a woman cut off from
her femininity:

252
 I search
but the desert is everywhere;
I gasp
but there is no water to quench;
I cry
but there are no arms to enfold;
I yearn
but there is no breast to suck;
I long
but there is no milk to nourish;
I need
but there is no phallus to embrace;
I feel
only the exploitation of my friends;
I fear
that death may be the same.

father complex can raise hell in the uncon-

scious of a woman. Its authority can be absolute
and may effectively block her from contacting
her own creative spirit.
This dream shows @ woman's masculinity
in-a-highly critical form, chastising the dreamer
and driving her into a state of bitter isolation.

233
"I'm sitting on the floor of a remote cabin. I'm brushing
the hair of a cat. I can't see the cat, but I know it's got
orange fur because I'm pulling the fur of the cat out of
the brush. A woman behind me is using the phone. I'm
sitting beside a man I don't recognize but I know in the
dream is my father. He's very tall and strongly built with
short hair. He is the chief of police, and we live in the
police department of a remote settlement.
The woman finishes using the phone and hangs it up
and leaves. My father walks over to where she has been
and tidies up something, then turns and walks toward
me and says, 'They're crazy. They're just plain crazy!
The woman has been making incestuous overtures to
someone on the phone.
Then I'm standing beside my father. He has found
a note that I've written to a boyfriend, and he is in a
murderous rage. The boy is standing in front of him.
I start to tremble violently and run from the room
through a door that is usually locked by a hook high up
on the door. I run through into the bathroom. There's
a man sitting on the floor in there who doesn't pay any
attention to me. I'm wearing a parka and a hat, and I
vomit into the toilet.
As I'm doing this, I can see that my father is going
to tie my hands together, hang me from the rafters in
the cabin, and beat me with a stick. I wake up from the
dream shouting, 'Harry! Harry!"
—Dreamer, Female

234
Usually the first man that a woman meets is her
father, and he has, therefore, a very decisive
influence on a young girl. If the relationship to
the father constellates itself negatively, the girl
will react negatively toward the father. Now the
father may or may not be an evil or difficult
man in himself. The girl may simply just not
like him. But, in any case, if the relationship is
negative, later on she generally has difficulties
with men, and difficulties in finding her own
masculine side. In the extreme case she might
not be able to approach men at all. The first
man she met in her life was a horror and there-
fore all men are horrors. She might even be-
come lesbian or shun men entirely. Certainly,
she would be afraid of men. If it is not such an
extreme case, she would be what one would call
a very difficult woman. She would argue with
men, challenge them, criticize them and try to
pull them down. She would expect negativity
from them and this expectation would naturally
put difficulties on her partner.
In other words, the animus, her own
masculinity, would be a problem to her. Such a
woman would tend to behave toward herself as
her father behaved toward her. If the father was
tyrannical, even after his death, the woman
would still tyrannize herself with ideas and
opinions which came from the father image.
And so a girl's relationship to her father and

235
her detaehment from the father always play a
big role in her development as a woman.
At the beginning of the dream, she's
brushing an orange cat. The cat in our country
stems originally from Egypt where it was once a
divine animal. There, they had a‘cat goddess
who was the goddess of music, sexuality, plea-
sure in life, and life-embracing feminine fertil-
ity. The cat, in contrast to the dog, has never
sold its soul to man. It has a kind of egocentric
reserve. The cat says, "You may stroke me and
you may serve me," but it never becomes your
slave. And if you annoy it, it just walks out on
you. In women's dreams, therefore, the cat of-
ten is an image of something feminine, inde-
pendent and sure of itself, just what modern
women so often lack. That's why the cat god-
dess comes up in women's dreams as a positive
model of feminine behaviour. It is not brutal; it
does not display any masculine features. It is
feminine and, at the same time, very firm, very
identical with itself. The cat is not very amiable,
but very true to itself.
So, at the beginning of the dream she's
trying to approach and look after her own
femininity and at that very moment the father
walks up. It's not her real father, but the chief
of police, who in the dream is called her father.
We can see therefore that this woman tyran-
nizes herself with the police chief's rules of be-
haviour.

236
 Now in actual life she has decided to be-
come a good mother, and forces herself in a
tyrannical manner to be a good mother. Her
home, her children, her family life have to be
the way she thinks is right. That's why the
dream says her inner father, her inner authority,
is the chief of police. Policemen are mainly
concerned that things continue in a very collec-
tive, undifferentiated, orderly way. Thus, the
chief of police is that animus in woman who
wants orderly conventional behaviour that will
not be shocking to anyone. Just the opposite of
a cat. A chief of police and a cat never get on
very well, and that poor woman has both of
them in her at the same time.
Then, in the dream, the chief of police
declares that the woman is crazy. That's the se-
cret voice in her that says, whenever she fol-
lows her own feeling, "No, that's crazy! Don't
do that. You are crazy if you do that." Many
people repress things within themselves by
calling them crazy.
Then her police chief father catches her
out like a little girl. He discovers that she has
written a note to her boyfriend. Here again we
have the image of the tyrant. Naturally there ex-
ist in reality fathers who think they have to
anxiously protect the integrity of their daughters
and pursue them when they write notes to their
first boyfriends. But here, this is no longer the
case as this woman is married and away from

237
home. Rather.this means that she is doing to
herself what her father did to her.
That is the greatest tragedy arising from the
negative animus. It flares up with its power
whenever a woman loves. It tries to cut women *
off from any kind of relationship by belittling it
or calling it crazy. The negative animus mainly
manifests itself as an opinionated resistance to
any feelings of love. If a woman has a tendency
to fall in love or even to be interested in a man,
her negative animus comes up and makes her
ruin the relationship.
Subjectively, she doesn't know what is
happening. She thinks she is under a curse. Just
when she wants to talk to the man she loves,
something in her makes a tearful scene. And
then she goes home and cries. She may project
and say, "He was so nasty to me," but if she's a
bit more honest she will say, "I wanted to have
a good relationship with him and just because I
wanted the relationship 7 made a scene." And
she doesn't know what devil's mechanism made
her do it. If a woman hits you as a man, you can
be sure she's interested in you. She would really
like to love you, but she doesn't know how.
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.

238
 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 strawber-
ries. If she had bought the strawberries, every-
thing would have gone well, but she had re-
pressed her own feelings.

Now when you say the animus "says" this to a

woman, what do you mean? Subjectively, how
does the woman experience that? Does she ac-
tually hear a voice?
No, the 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.

239
 The» problem 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 my-
self? Naturally, 7don'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 the animus is herself. Only when, or
if, she wakes up does she come to realize, "No,
thafisinotsimes!

When describing a woman locked into the neg-

ative animus, you used the word "possession".
It is usually associated with religion and
witchcraft.
Well, mediums go into a trance and are then
possessed by a certain godhead. In Haiti, for
instance, people go into a trance and male or
female godheads enter them. They are then
possessed by a god. They speak in a changed
voice as the god speaks through them. They
become the horse, and the god becomes the
rider. I have a book on Haitian states of pos-
session in which there is a photograph of three
different male mediums incorporating the same
‘

240
god, Legbe. In the trace all three mediums
make exactly the same movements. When they
are possessed they all behave in the same way.
They are, we would say, possessed by an
archetypal figure. When they wake up, these
mediums sometimes don't remember what
they have said in the trance state.
Now these mediums are the extreme form
of something which is normal in every human
being. All day long our field of consciousness is
entered by autonomous complexes. You will
realize this if you watch the trend of your
thoughts during the day. You may be in a
friendly, loving mood until you suddenly think
of something negative; then hatred and bitter-
ness enter the scene. A quarter of an hour later,
you may be musing on your revenge for some-
thing that has been done to you. And then, as
you think of something else, your inner scene
changes again. If we watch ourselves we dis-
cover there is a different person for every
switch of mood.
I could give you a whole list of the persons
I can be. I am an old peasant woman who
thinks of cooking and of the house. I am a
scholar who thinks about deciphering manu-
scripts. I am a psychotherapist who thinks
about how to interpret people's dreams. I am a
mischievous little boy who enjoys the company
of a ten-year-old and playing mischievous tricks
on adults, and so on. I could give you twenty

241
more such characters. They suddenly enter you,
but if you see what is happening you can keep
them out of your system, or play with them and
put them aside again. But if you are possessed,
they enter you involuntarily and you act them
out involuntarily. For instance, I can call up the
mischievous person and send him back to sleep
again when I feel, "Now, there's enough."
That's not possession. One of the aims of psy-
chotherapy is to help people keep a constant
identity and to get along with their inner family
of souls without being possessed by them.
Now the animus is the most frequent form
of possession in a woman. She is suddenly en-
tered by a mood of cold male determination,
taken over. by abstract opinionated thinking,
and driven by an impulse toward rash, brutal,
determined action—none of which is at all in
her feminine character. When a women gets
possessed by the animus, the feminine charac-
ter of her face changes, her eyes and the
expression of her mouth become hard. I notice
that when I get in the animus I pull up my
shoulders like somebody who is preparing for
battle. When I do that, I say to myself, "Oh,
oh, stop and relax."

Men often have problems relating to a woman

when she is possessed by the animus.

I would say that is an understatement!

242
Men say that when a woman is possessed by the
negative animus she seems to have one goal and
one goal only —to create an argument and then
win at any cost, no holds barred. But, when the
man fights back, the woman changes into a hurt
little girl.
When women are in the animus they love to do
that double play on a man. First they brutally
attack, usually viciously with their tongues, and
when the man hits back they become delicate,
frightened little children being attacked by a
brutal man, even though they attacked first. I
call that the gangster animus. He puts a little girl
in front of him as a shield so that no one can
shoot the gangster down. Women with a gang-
ster animus are on the one hand uncertain,
touchy little girls whom the man dares not say
boo to, while at the same time, brutal beasts
who viciously attack. They complain that the
man doesn't listen to them yet chide him with
aggressive remarks.
Then generally the men feel very awkward
because the women's tears make them feel
guilty. But it's a trick. These women try to
make men feel guilty, and so men feel guilty,
that they are brutes who made the woman cry.
The men feel uncomfortable and react in some
inappropriate way because they feel cornered.

Can this negative animus interfere in a woman's

relationship with her children?

243
Yes, thesanimus actually does interfere with ma-
ternal feelings in certain women if they don't
have a strong maternal instinct. For instance,
let's say a child misbehaves, whines, and spills
the soup over the plate. A natural reaction is to.
get angry and to shout a bit. If it doesn't go too
far, it's quite normal for the child to accept
that. But then the chief of police animus says to
the mother inwardly, "No, that's not good edu-
cation. The child will have a trauma." So she
swallows her anger and does something much
worse to the child. That's why, in this dream,
the woman goes to the toilet and vomits. She
obviously swallows too much that she can't
swallow, that she should not swallow. You vomit
if you have eaten something you shouldn't eat,
which your stomach refuses. She stomachs too
much. So I would guess that, very often, her
children annoy her and, instead of howling at
the top of her voice, "You are impossible
brats. Go to hell!", she swallows everything. But
children like strong reactions if they are carried
by a loving undertone. I was once in an Italian
inn where a woman was cooking for the whole
inn and around her were about twelve little
children. She constantly howled at them and
banged them over the head. I've never seen
such blossoming children because it was all car-
ried on in a warm atmosphere of maternal love.
On the other hand, a child does not react
only to the action a mother does and how she
\

244
behaves. There are mothers who seemingly are
very good mothers but there might be some-
thing wrong in their unconscious. A horrible
story comes to mind of the mother of two little
girls. She was a loving mother who took great
care of her children. She was not overly severe
or indulgent. But the two little girls repeatedly
dreamt that the mother came as a wolf in the
night into their bedroom and threatened them.
After some years the mother suddenly became
psychotic. In this case, the little girls didn't re-
act to the mother's good behaviour, they re-
acted to her sick unconscious. They felt threat-
ened by her sick unconscious nature. So you
see there may be a thousand reasons why a little
child reacts negatively.
There are invisible affects going from the
parent to the child much more even than the
visible affects. One comes to families where
there is a happy family life and one can't
understand why the children suddenly become
neurotic and go wrong but if one digs up the
situation, there are invisible affects behind the
back of all the participants.
The invisible atmosphere is much more
powerful than what is seen. That's why Jung
never wrote much about pedagogics. He said it
doesn't matter what you say or do with chil-
dren. The important thing is that you are your-
self healthy in order that you emanate a healthy
positive atmosphere. Then it doesn't matter

245
what yout say to the children. They don't listen
to it anyhow. They react to your background.
The children are, so to speak, still swimming in
the unconscious, in the atmosphere of a situa-
tion, and they react to that. .

That sounds so simple for a parent, "Just be

psychically healthy yourself and your kids will
turn out alright!" But that's not easy. Every
woman in our society is bombarded with
instructions telling her how to best raise her
children. The television tells her, the magazines
tell her, even her own mother has a list, "You
should do this! You should do that!" The whole
world tells her what she's doing wrong.
That's the negative animus. Those collective
opinions rape the woman of her own individual
thoughts or feeling reactions.
For instance, when I have indulged in de-
structive thoughts about myself or about my
work, I have often dreamt of being pursued by
hostile men. The dream is saying, "Those nega-
tive thoughts are not you. They are the hostile
animi in you. You should run away from those
destructive thoughts. They will destroy you if
you stay with them."
Just take, for example, the woman who is
annoyed with her little boy spilling the soup.
Her natural feeling would be to say, "Damn it!
Now you have again spilled the soup." But then
the pedagogic animus in her says, "You musn't
‘

246
shout at your little boy. That's pedagogically not
wise." Then she rapes her individual feeling re-
action with her collective pedagogic animus. She
rapes her natural feminine reaction by saying
that she shouldn't have a natural feminine reac-
tion.

Can a woman's dream of rape be interpreted

positively? Can it be she is being overwhelmed
by something constructive?
I would say that depends on who rapes her. If
she dreams that a powerful, healthy, or in any
other way positive, figure rapes her, then I
would still not like it because it's such a passive
situation. You could argue that she's over-
whelmed by something positive. Nevertheless
rape, if you use the word rape, means that she
is too passive. She hasn't said "yes" to it so it
isn't quite right. It's a kind of a psychological
happening rather than an accepted situation. So,
even if the raping partner is positive, it is not
quite right.

Is there an archetypal image of this negative

animus figure?
The classical example of the destructive animus,
which the woman has at all costs to escape, is
illustrated in the famous fairytale of Bluebeard in
which the heroine gets into a castle where she
secretly discovers that the owner has cut up and

247
 slaughtered aH his former wives. After discov-
ering this terrible secret she, with the borersof
her brothers, barely manages to escape. Blu
beard is the classical image of the destructive
animus. If a woman cannot escape the self-de-*
structive and self-annihilating thoughts of the
negative animus, it may lead to a severe psy-
chological disturbance. Women who. can't es-
cape their Bluebeard generally become isolated,
bitter women whom men cannot love, who
find no partners, and who live in bitter isola-
tion, if not in an even worse situation.

"Then I saw Satan coming out of him,

and Satan was like those figures I saw
in catechism texts. He's got two horns
and he's got hair which is black, and
then he just went right out through
the window."
—Civil Servant, Female

Men have always created the image of an ideal

woman. Marilyn Monroe, for example, was
worshipped like a goddess. Does the animus
also take this idealized form? ‘

248
What Marilyn Monroe was to men, Valentino
was to women. He represented the ideal demon
lover, who would carry the woman away into a
romantic ecstasy where she could create fan-
tasies about the Sheik. Of course, being carried
away by the demon lover into a romantic us-
two-aloneness goes on in modern films as well.
Generally, if women are unhappy in their rela-
tionships with their husbands or their lovers,
they dream and fantasize about being carried
away and having a secret, nocturnal love affair
with their animus.

"And then I was followed in the

dream by a tall blond man who
wrapped me up in his cloak and
took me to his gypsy caravan."
—English Actress

The demon lover figure exerts a kind of de-

monic or divine fascination on the woman and
makes her incapable of relating to an ordinary
human being. He is personified as Heathcliff in
Emily Bronté's Wuthering Heights. In the novel,
Bronte shows the power of the identification

249
by having her heroine say, "I don't love Heath-
cliff... . . Iam Heathcliff." It's interesting: that
Emily Bronte, herself, even had the idea that
her genius, her great gift as a writer, had made
her into a lonely tragic figure. Generally having”
such a demon lover ends tragically. People be-
come incapable of living and relating to others;
they are sucked away into the dream world and
into the unconscious.
There is great psychological danger in the
figures which Jung called animus and anima.
These contra-sexual elements can estrange a
human being completely from reality and so-
ciety. The animus, like the anima, is a very am-
biguous, very dangerous inner figure which
must be approached with great wisdom.

250
Chapter Fifteen

FLYING

THROUGH

ROOFS

"Beauty said, "Yes, dear Beast, I will marry you.'

At this the castle filled with a blaze of light and the
sound of music. Beast disappeared and in his place
stood a handsome prince who told Beauty he had
been enchanted by a witch. The spell was ordained
to last until a beautiful girl should love Beast for his
goodness alone."
—Beauty and the Beast
I was once told that it wasn't important if I un-
derstood my dreams. What was important was
that the dreams understood me. My attitude to-
ward my dreams would determine their attitude
toward me. It's a living dialogue. When we lis-
ten to dreams, we change, and when dreams
are heard, they change. AY

252
Dr. von Franz, these four dreams of an airline
stewardess demonstrate how the unconscious
responds to conscious attention. The male fig-
ures in her dreams transform when she takes a
firm stand and enters into a feeling relationship
with them.
This first dream is difficult to interpret, because
in her outer situation the dreamer is an airline
stewardess. The flying, therefore, has a double
connotation. It refers to what she is actually
doing in life, but it also has a symbolic meaning
that describes how she is behaving psychologi-
cally. Naturally, one can also say that it is not by
chance she has chosen her profession as an air
stewardess, so, in a deeper sense, the two
meanings are one.

253
"I had this dream
about flying. I could
fly, sort of like
Samantha in Bewitched,
just straight up through
the roof and disappear.
I was flying through
the roofs up into the
clouds. And I could
produce a grey mist
which encircled me
so that nobody could
see me. I could still
see through it. I could
still see other people,
but nobody could see
me. I flew up about
cloud level, and just
sort of sat there
weightless, and had
tea with somebody."

—Dreamer, Female

254
 She is flying in mid-air, and can even produce a
grey mist which makes her invisible. Here I
would rather take the slightly negative connota-
tion of the flying. Her weightless state and sip-
ping tea on a cloud show a very light and unre- -
alistic attitude—delightful, but unrealistic. There
is no earth. For the English, having a cup of tea
expresses having a light, chatty, social contact
with people. Tea is a stimulating drink but it
doesn't nourish.
The grey mist indicates the role a stew-
ardess must play. She has to be the charming
geisha. She is the waitress of the air. Nobody is
interested in her private life, in her as a woman
or as a human being. Because of the erratic
scheduling of their time, stewards and stew-
ardesses have a constant temptation to have
slight flirtations and not to have deep, on-going
relationships. The time program makes it a very
difficult life. That's why in the next dream she is
in prison.

255
"I was in a jailhouse,
one of the old-fashioned
kind, like in Western
movies. It was a wooden
building and I could see
two or three jail cells
behind the one main desk.
The guards were talking
about how there had been
a lot of jail breaks recently.
There were also two prisoners.
One came out of the shower,
and the other went to take
a shower and escaped. The
two guards were discussing
this and said it was very
strange that there had been
two jailbreaks in one evening.
Then they all turned around
and looked at me. I thought
it Was very suspicious and
woke up."
—Dreamer, Female

256
 I would take the prison as the timetable in
which she is imprisoned. It is a very difficult
profession because . . . well, let's say, the
stewardess, the dreamer, meets a man she likes.
She can stay with him for two hours at airport
so and so, but she has to take the next airplane
back that evening. So she is constantly in
prison, and, except for short holidays, cannot
_ break free from that. As well, there is the
physical discomfort of jet lag in this profession.
The irregularity of sleep and physical discomfort
make these people even more uprooted, even
more disconnected from their bodies and from
their own depths. Even the dreaming business
is difficult for a stewardess. She sleeps once in
the day-time, once early in the evening, once
late in the night. When has she time to record
and think over her dreams? So it is a very diffi-
cult profession. It's good for young people who
like the spirit of adventure connected with it,
but when one gets older a strong wish comes to
retire. There is a desire in the dreamer to break
free from that prison and to have a life of her
own. The dream says there is a need to form
her own life.

257,
"T dreamt that I was living with my friend,
Sue. The two of us were sharing a large, two-
bedroom apartment. Sue was out of work
though, and quite often when I came home
from work I would find the place disorderly
and messy. It really got on my nerves.
This time I came off a flight, got home,
and Suzie was there. She had spilt red wine all
over our light grey carpet. I was really annoyed
because the stains are hard to get out. So we
went down to Simpson's and spent a whole
day looking for cleaning utensils. Up one floor
and down another just to buy a sponge and
some bleach. We went home and finally cleaned
up the mess.
_Then my mother came for a visit. Sue left.
My mother and I were talking about the two-
bedroom apartment, and wondering if it really
was worthwhile having this extra space for the
hassle it was causing. I went downstairs to see
if maybe I shouldn't go back to living by myself
in my mother's one-bedroom apartment. As
we were talking, my mother just faded out of
the dream.
Then I came back from the flight and I
wanted to do my laundry, but for some reason I
didn't do it in our building. I packed it up and

205
 took it to a girlfriend's place. She and her
husband started arguing that this was kind of
silly. Why was I there doing my laundry? I
really shouldn't have been there at all.
Then a party started and people were dancing.
I was dancing with a woman who was weightless.
She was a big person and I had to keep holding
her up. Then the laundry was finished and I
started back to my apartment.
Then I was walking along a balcony which ran
along the outside of my apartment building. All
the apartment doors opened off one side but
the other side was open except for a railing
which protected me from falling down to the
ground below. I was twelve floors up. As I
approached my apartment door, I saw a man
hanging on the railing. It was my brother. He
had been tied up there by Suzie. He was
unconscious. It was tricky to untie him without
letting him fall the twelve floors to the ground.
So I went into the apartment and got scissors
and stuff and started untying him really carefully.
Then I pulled him off the railing and over the
balcony, and dragged him into my apartment.
I put blankets all over him and knew he was
going to be all right."
—Dreamer, Female

259
Cleaning and.washing is mostly a woman's con-
nection with the earth, with the body, with the
material world. It is an expression of love to-
wards matter, devotion to the principle of mat-
ter. Because of this dreamer's profession, psy-
chologically and outwardly she cannot express
this devotion. If the dreamer could live the
Suzie side of her personality, there wouldn't be
such a difficulty. But she cannot live the side of
herself which likes to do the housework, likes
to live introvertedly daydreaming while washing
up. You know, washing up is a marvellously
creative recreation. One can hang on one's own
fantasies and thoughts, think over one's dreams,
and such things—all that the dreamer cannot
do. So Suzie is cantankerous, and makes mis-
chief and all sorts of trouble. In the end we see
that she even hangs the brother of the dreamer.
You notice that when the dreamer goes to
do the laundry, she doesn't do it in her own
house. She goes to some friends further away
and washes the dirty linen there. Washing dirty
linen is to sort out all of the little shadow things
one has done, in order to dwell on them. Gen-
erally, if we do some mischief against our will, if
we do some harm to our friends, or forget
something important, we are for a moment
aware, but then we push it aside and forget
about it as quickly as possible. By the afternoon
we have already forgotten. So we accumulate a
lot of dirty linen and have from time to time to
a

260
do some washing. People say, "My friend said
this about me, gossiped against me, and I got
angry." Then they both project the shadow on
each other and it comes out in petty little quar-
rels and jealousies. That's dirty linen. Actually,
psychotherapeutic treatment is mostly washing
dirty linen. But you see in the dream that the
dreamer does not do her laundry at home.
Rather she goes to a friend's house where she
finds a strange weightless woman with whom
she dances and has to hold up.
That weightless woman is yet another
shadow figure side of her, another part of her
personality which has no weight, no substance.
In colloquial speech we may say about some-
one, "What they say has no weight," or "As a
personality, they are a lightweight," which
means that they have no psychic validity, no
substance. Strangely enough, what gives us sub-
stance is our shadow. Our shadow is the
positive thing. That girl's shadow is weightless
because she does the washing of the dirty linen
outside her own apartment. That means she
probably enjoys a lot of gossip, criticizing other
people among colleagues and so on. But, she
never takes it home to herself. She never asks
herself, "What am / doing to the others?" She
doesn't bear the weight of that responsibility.
She hasn't realized her shadow yet, and,
therefore, her other personality is weightless in
a negative sense.

261
 Then in the last part of the dream she dis-
covers a catastrophic situation, namely, that her
friend/enemy, Sue, has hung up her brother
from the balcony on the twelfth floor. Now, in
reality the dreamer contributes substantially to a

the education of that younger brother and is

mothering him. So we can take the young
brother who is hung up as her own possibility
of studying and making an intellectual career. It
is the masculine side of the woman, her in-
tellectual mind. She probably neglects that side
of herself or, rather, she cannot live it in her
present profession, and therefore projects it
onto her brother. She gives her money and de-
votion to her brother and vicariously enjoys
him getting his education, when actually she
should be doing it herself. By projecting onto
her brother, she quits her own development.
Obviously, she should not stay in the air hostess
business. She has a good mind and should elect
for a change of profession.
But her Sue-shadow hangs her brother up.
Her Sue-shadow is the mechanism which pro-
jects the-man-who-makes-a-career onto her
brother so that the dreamer sees her masculin-
ity fulfilled in her brother instead of seeing it as
a part of herself. She has therefore to take
down her brother and get him into her own
space. But that's a dangerous undertaking. He
might drop twelve floors. Psychologically, the
great danger is that she may be overwhelmed

262
 by the realization that she herself must do what
she is paying her brother to do for her and
therefore drop the entire undertaking before
ever beginning.
Now, to suddenly drop in a dream has
generally to do with a sudden disappointment in
outer reality, with giving everything up, with
falling into nothingness. That would be a reac-
tion in her to say, "Oh, I am hopeless. Nothing
will ever come out of me. I can't make it. I give
up." And then just throw herself away into the
street, literally, and not make the effort to build
up her own personal life. It is dangerous for her
to ask, "Why am I paying for the career of my
brother? Is it not me myself who needs to do
something more than being an airline hostess?"
That would be bringing the brother home into
her own inner realm, bringing him home to her
real self. That is the dangerous enterprise which
is recommended at the end of the dream. And
in the dream she seems to succeed.

What is the significance to that part of the

dream in which the dreamer discusses with her
mother the possibility of leaving Sue and living
alone in her mother's one bedroom apartment?
The dreamer's mother in outer life is a down-
to-earth, practical person who probably repre-
sents in the dreamer someone who always of-
fers a short-cut, practical solution. Now, if your
shadow annoys you, the short-cut, the practical

263
solution*is to avoid it, to go away and have your
flat on your own—not to live with Sue, so to
speak. In other words, the most practical thing
is to repress the shadow. You see that when
you want to talk to people about their shadow; -
they just switch the conversation. They say,
"Oh, by the way, I wanted to tell you... ." and
they talk about something else. That's the prac-
tical way of getting rid of Sue. But it's not really
practical. It's practical at the moment, but one
pays for it later.

Why do dreams use close friends to personify

the shadow aspects of our personality?
Because we make friends with people who live
out our shadow. Friends can do the things we
cannot do. Tell me who your friends are, and I
have the whole panorama of your good and bad
qualities. Our bad qualities as well as our good
ones hold an attraction, a fascination for us. The
friend is often the person whom one envies.
The friend is more elegant, or dances better, or
can move about better in outer life, or has
depth, or has a better mind. So if one hasn't
worked on one's shadow, there is always a kind
of love-hate relationship with the shadow and
with one's friends.

In her next dream a male figure appears in a

very negative form, but the dreamer handles
him very firmly and directly.

204
 "I had this dream about being in a large
city airport. It was very crowded, people
everywhere. There were a lot of guns and
people were shooting. One guy seemed to
have it in for me and kept following me
around. I kept hiding, but wherever I went
he would find me. He kept aiming this rifle
at me and IJ didn't like it. I got really
frightened. Finally, I looked at him and
said, 'Look, I don't want to die. I don't
like this stuff with you aiming your rifle at
me.' And he went away. He just got up
and left."
—Dreamer, Female

Now, here we have a dream in which the male

figure, the animus, plays a prominent role.
There are rifles everywhere and shooting all
around. It's a scary situation and an unknown
man points a rifle at her. Thinking of the
dreamer as an air hostess, we can say that what
with modern terrorists, she might at any mo-
ment find herself in exactly that situation in
outer life. The dream picks up that fantasy, that
situation, and brings it into reality.

205
 There is psychological chaos in the mascu-
line side of her personality. This has to do with
the fact that the dreamer had very little contact
with her father. Because this first experience of
a man is practically missing, she has this chaotic @

situation. In such cases, there is no preforma-

tion in the woman to help her relate positively
to a man in later life. She doesn't really know
what men are and how to relate to them. She
knows how to put that grey mist around her
and appear as an attractive woman to men, but
when it comes to establishing a human relation-
ship, she falls into a scary chaos. But then in the
dream one man singles himself out. But he is
unknown. This is the way she experiences men
in outer life as well as her own inner masculin-
ity. She is not familiar with the masculine side of
her personality, the side who knows what she
wants, is goal oriented, has will power,
strength—all the qualities which she needs.

In the previous dream, the male figure, her

brother, was hung up—completely immobi-
lized. Here he is certainly very active, negative
but active.
This man is pointing a rifle at her. A rifle is a
phallic, masculine symbol and points to goal
orientation, to accuracy, to being able to want
something, to have a goal accurately in mind
and go for it. Because these qualities are gener-
ally unconscious in a woman, they are either
\

266
projected onto men or appear as an inner mas-
culine figure in her dreams. This man points the
rifle negatively at her. He threatens her, and she
becomes frightened. Then she suddenly realizes
that he is responsible for her scary situation.
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 mean-
inglessly 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 grey 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."
I remember once I dreamt a murderous
burglar came into my bedroom, and I woke up
with a cry of fear. I went through what I had
thought the evening before. I had had a very

267
peaceful, quiet day which could not account for
such a terrible dream. Then I remembered that
before going to bed I had thought, "The book I
am writing is all nonsense and I must throw it
away." I thought that J really thought that. Then>
when I reflected on the dream, I thought, "No,
I don't think that. It thinks that in me and I
needn't believe’ it: I dontiithink *thaarial
Then I could disentangle myself from the nega-
tive thought. I didn't accept it. 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.

Is it really that simple? Can the negative animus

bé transformed simply by bringing it to con-
SCLOUSNESS?

It's as difficult and as simple as that. The dream

shows her that if only she can wake up and see
that the critical judgments and negative opinions
about herself are not really what she thinks, she
can send that devil back to hell. Then she can
develop as a woman.

268
Chapter Sixteen

THE

INNER

GUIDE

"The positive animus is an innermost instinctive

awareness of the inner truth, a basic inner
truthfulness which guides the spiritual woman in
her individuation, toward becoming her own self."
—Marie-Louise von Franz
In, The Great Mother, Erich Neumann points out
that in childbearing, a woman is the organ and
instrument of transformation of both herself
and her child. Her body is an unconscious vehi-
cle by which nature reproduces. By giving
birth, the woman herself is transformed into a
mother and, unlike the male, she becomes the
mother out of which she came. That which is
born from her belongs to her and remains
subject to her. To nourish and protect, to keep
warm and hold fast are the functions of the ma-
ternal feminine in relation to a child. This in-
stinctive maternal energy is an awesome power
in a woman.

270
 "In this dream I was coming up
Pitchcombe Hill on a bicycle
and I was amazed by how much
puff I had. I felt full of vitality.
When we got near the top of
the hill, I noticed that great
clouds were coming, and that
we were going to have a storm.
Some of the men I was with
suggested that we stop and wait
till the storm passed. So we got
off our bicycles and looked
down across the valley. Then
we saw a huge wave in the
distance, and out of this wave
came an enormous fish which
slithered along the ground and
came toward us. One of the men
said that he thought that the
Armageddon was coming. At
this I felt slight panic, but also a
comfortable feeling because I
was surrounded by friends and
I felt that it would be all right."
—English Woman in eighth month
of pregnancy

PAA
"A few weeks ago, when I was entering my fifth
month of pregnancy, I had a very unsettling dream.
I'd been having quite a few of them, and so had the
other women in my prenatal class. One woman said
she always dreamt of killing her cat. She was in the
kitchen cutting off her cat's head or doing some
other horrible thing to it. She'd had it over and over
again. This one of mine was particularly upsetting.
I was standing in a field. On my left there was a
big, old farmhouse. I realized that I was part of some
sort of a ranch farm commune. Just then I saw some
cowboys coming down a hill. When they reached the
bottom, they started shooting at people coming out
of the house, mainly pregnant women and children. I
was very upset and asked them what they were doing.
They said that the only way they could make a profit
was to get rid of the surplus people, that the commune
could feed everyone, but to make a really good profit
they'd have to get rid of some people. Then I realized
they would probably kill me too. So I snuck into the
house and got dressed like a cowboy. The only
problem was my stomach was so big that I couldn't
do up my pants. I had on this cowboy outfit with
my huge stomach hanging out in front. I walked out
of the house and snuck away. As I looked back,
they were throwing the bodies onto a bonfire."
— Young woman, first pregnancy

272
Dr. von Franz, why do pregnant women often
have disturbing dreams?
These are typical dreams of pregnant women.
The state of pregnancy, especially for a mod-
ern, active woman, is very difficult, because, for
the sake of pregnancy and for the coming child,
the woman should fall into a state of musing,
brooding, quietness. Pregnant women should
live a quiet life, following their natural rhythms.
However, their own impulse toward action and
outer activity comes into conflict with that.
Jung once said, "Women are absolutely
lovely and charming and chase the men till they
reach the point of being married, and then they
transform into devils and harass the man from
morning till night."
That is because marriage is also being
pinned down to a specific destiny and situation,
and something in the woman resents it. Before
a woman is married, she can dream about what
she could do or would do. She can dream about
marrying a TV reporter and travelling all over
the world, or marrying a rich man and doing
whatever she likes, or marrying a farmer and
having her own farm—her life is full of possi-
bilities. But, as soon as she marries the man she
loves, she is pinned down to him for better or
for worse, and the freedom-loving person in
the woman resents it.
That is why these male figures, the animi,
often come up in her dreams and attack her.

2/3
The attacks become even worse during preg-
nancy because as long as there is no child a
woman can still toy with the idea of divorce,
but when a child is on the way she is really
pinned down for the next ten or fifteen years.-
And the wild, freedom-loving sideof a woman's
personality revolts.
In the second dream, the woman dreams
of all those cowboys who are attacking and
shooting down pregnant women and even
burning them on the bonfire. The cowboys
would represent within her not something evil
but rather her own temperamental impulse to-
ward action, toward living an active life, which is
not in accordance with her pregnant state. The
cowboys want to make the farm richer and
make more profit but this is not a time to work
for outer profit or outer goals. Pregnancy is a
time of introversion for a woman and therefore,
if a woman has led a very active life up to her
pregnancy, she generally has a conflict about it
which is mirrored in the dream. But the dream
ends well because she realizes she can manage
to escape.

How can a pregnant woman deal with this?

Generally it's projected and the poor husband
has to pay for that. He's the one that caused it.
He put her into that pregnant situation, into that
pinned-down situation, and a modern woman
says, "Now I'm always confined to this flat, and
\

274
I cannot fulfil my personality, and I cannot do
what I want to do, and it's your fault." Though
she wanted to marry him and have the child,
it's now his fault.

Is there a constructive solution?

A modern woman with children has a difficult

task for on the one hand she wishes to fulfil the
demands of her maternal nature and, at the
same time, develop her own personality. I feel
she should maintain a balance. She should say,
"I have my husband and I wanted him. I have a
child and I wanted that child. But they don't
prevent me from developing whatever else |
have and want to do. I have simply to do both,
continue to develop my independent personal-
ity while accepting this confinement." Naturally,
one can't have the penny and the cake. I often
say to young women, "Look here, you wanted
that husband. You wanted those children. Now
you can't throw it all over and go to the univer-
sity and become a university professor. You
have to reach a compromise. But you can, for
instance, do some studying in spite of having
children, and prepare to build up a more mas-
culine career later when the children are older
and are going to school." There's still a second
half of life ahead when a woman can fulfil her
more masculine desires.

27>
 This neXt dream comes from the second half of
a woman's life and we see in it a different kind
of birth, the birth of a spiritual guide who
comes from the womb, not of a physical, but
of a spiritual mother. .

"In this dream I was swimming in a

very dark, deep cave. The water was
also very dark. At the far end of the
cave there was an enormous rock.
On the rock there was a small,
ginger-coloured, furry dog with gold
eyes. The animal was smiling at me,
and I knew that this little dog
represented the Christ. I don't know
how I knew that, but I knew it."
—Dreamer, Female

276
Now, here is the symbol of the inner Christ in
the depths of the soul. He is not out there in
the sky, as Christian teaching wants to have it,
or in some metaphysical spiritual realm. He is in
the depths of the earth, and the earth is an im-
age of matter, of our body, of our physical
existence. The cave has always been a sacred
place in former ages. Long after man no longer
lived in caves, they remained sanctuaries. They
were, so to speak, the womb of the earth god-
dess, or the goddess of nature. So the cave
symbolizes the depth of the inner nature.
Now, this dream says that Christ is not
some model figure you have to follow as you
have been taught. On the contrary, he is a being
which you find when you go into the depth of
your own being. You find him in the womb of
Mother Earth. But He appears in a strange
form. He appears as a dog. The zoologist Kon-
rad Lorenz once said that taming the dog and
making him his companion is the greatest and
best conquest man ever made. The dog is that
representative of the animal kingdom who has
adapted most to us. That is why we can take
him into our houses. Compared to the cat, he is
much more domesticated. He has really given
up his whole way of life, sacrificed it to become
our companion. In former times the dog was
probably accepted by man because of his
hunting ability. He helped the hunting societies
in their hunts, and later became the sheep dog

29.
who prdétected and kept the herds together,
and also the watch dog, protecting man from
robbers and burglars and danger. So the dog
has become a cherished helper of man. He,
therefore, carries the projection of being the~
companion, the best friend of man, the psy-
chopomp.
In modern dreams, the dog often repre-
sents our instinctive nature. Now, dogs are ori-
ented by their nose. They are short-sighted and
don't see very far, but they hear very well and
their noses are twenty times better than ours.
So he represents the instinctive flare or intuition
which our computerized mind has blunted. The
dog sniffs it. Symbolically, dogs have a strange
relationship to the other world, to the land of
the dead, the land of the ghosts, the land where
the dreams come from, to what we call the un-
conscious. This relationship stems from their
instinctive nature. For instance, in practically all
religions of the world, the dog is the guide of
the dead in the other world. It was once be-
lieved that when people died they had trouble
finding the beyond, the land-of the ancestors,
or the paradise, or the underworld, or whatever
the beyond of the dead was called in the
religion. A dog had to be used as a guide to
bring the dead to this place. In some older
civilizations, the Mongolian civilization for in-
stance, the dog was always buried with his mas-
ter together with the horse. When a pregnant

278
woman died, two dogs were placed in the
grave, one for her, and one for the not-yet-
born child to guide them in the other world.
Also, in old Persia, when somebody was dying,
a dog was brought in, and the dying person had
to give it a bit of bread or meat so that the dog
would come and guide him in the other world.
In many places—in Africa for instance—dogs
are sacrificed on the graves of people for the
same reason. So the dog has a strange relation-
ship to the underworld, which we still have in
the Greek three-headed dog, Cerberus.
The most famous dog figure that guided the
dead to the land of the beyond was the Egyp-
tian god Anubis, who had a jackal head. He was
the god who presided at embalming which
Egyptians believed transformed the dead per-
son into an immortal, divine person, a deifica-
tion of the dead by treating the corpse.
(Actually, while the embalming rite of deifica-
tion was being performed, a priest with a jackal
head mask supervised it.) Anubis was called the
agent of the resurrection. He was the guide to
the other world. Now, there is absolutely no
distinction between the unconscious and the
land of the dead. What most mythologies and
religions describe as the land of the dead is
what we would call the unconscious. Therefore,
you could say the dog is the one true leader to
the other world. In relation to the dream world,
he is the guiding god in the unconscious. That's

279
why in Our dream it is very fitting that Christ is a
dog, because he's a guardian of souls. He
watches over the dreamer's soul and guides her
in the darkness of the unknown.
The golden quality which is stressed in the
dream refers to immortality. Gold is the only
metal ancient people knew which is not cor-
roded by old age or by acids. Gold can be
buried for five thousand years, and be absolutely
unaltered, while silver, copper and iron rust and
disintegrate. And so gold has always carried the
projection of immortality, eternity, the sub-
stance of highest value. Even today we still have
gold as the value standard of our monetary sys-
tem, despite the fact that many people say that
it's quite useless from a practical stand-point. But
it still has a symbolic value, and that's why, in
most civilizations, divine figures and statues are
painted and decorated in gold. This stresses that
they are eternal, shining, immortal, everlasting.
In the dream the woman realizes that the
golden dog is Christ. It's the way Christ appears
within her. He is an image of what we call the
Self, the inner guiding principle.

Is this image of the Self masculine or feminine?

The dog in this dream is still more or less a mas-
culine figure identified with Christ, and that is
one of the problems of our civilization. We have
no divine, feminine figure. If a divine feminine

280
 figure appears, it is generally in the form of an
Earth Mother goddess or a wise old woman. I
remember a dream of a pregnant woman who
was very annoyed by her pregnancy. She had a
negative relationship to her own mother, and
women who have a negative relationship to
their own mothers generally have difficulty with
pregnancies. They resent having a child, vomit a
lot, suffer physical discomfort. They don't en-
joy pregnancy, and she was one of those
women.
Then she dreamt that she was sitting on
the earth in a cave looking at her pregnant
belly. Suddenly, she realized there was a trans-
parent floor above the cave and on this floor
was a woman she actually knew, onto whom she
had projected the Self. She would have said it
was a wise woman who knew about the secrets
of life. This wise woman above her was per-
forming a ritual by praying to the stars. Through
her prayer the water of life dripped from the
stars, flowed through the transparent floor, as-
sembled in her womb, and quickened and
nourished the child. She realized that this wise
woman figure was helping her to carry the child
so that the child would come out right. She
woke up really relieved, and from then on she
could accept her pregnancy. There the Self ap-
peared to her in order to help her to fulfil her
task as a mother.

281
 Wessee in the next dream the animus re-
lating the woman to the Self. He functions as
the guide toward inner truth.

"I dreamt I was translating Anglo-Saxon

and I came to an extremely difficult passage.
It was the second chapter of Matthew and
I came to the second verse. I couldn't
understand it. Then a male voice said to me
with absolute authority, 'This is your lodestar.
I woke up."
— Dreamer, Female

In this case it is a male voice, but very often in

the dreams of women male angels direct the
dreamer. If you think of the French saint, Joan
of Arc, for instance, she was guided by the
archangel Michael who advised her in her politi-
cal and heroic career. That is the positive ani-
mus whom I would call an innermost instinctive
awareness of the inner truth, a basic inner
‘

282
truthfulness which guides the spiritual woman in
her individuation toward becoming her own
self. That is the opposite to the negative animus
who is a big swindler.
She is occupied in translating the Christian
revelation into her own psychological set-up
and language. The translating is a process of
assimilation, of understanding the revelation in
her own way instead of just believing what she's
been told. And there she has difficulty with the
"When I woke up I looked
passage, "That's your lodestar."
up the passage in the Bible
and it read, 'Where is he
that is born King of the
Jews? for we have seen his
star in the east, and are
come to worship
him.' And then I looked
up the word lodestar in
the dictionary and found
that /odestar is a guiding
star, a star on which one
fixes all one's hopes and
The lodestar means the guiding star, like the star attention, and it acts asa

of Bethlehem to which it afterwards alludes magnet for the soul that's

following it."
quite clearly. It is that passage which alludes to
— Dreamer
the star of Bethlehem which guided the kings
toward the new-born child, Jesus. We have al-
ready seen in the dream of Gilgamesh that the
guiding star is the principle of individuation. It's
that which guides one toward the absolute indi-
vidual meaning of one's own individual life,
one's innermost divine or cosmic destiny. The

283
dreamer’ has difficulty finding the meaning of
that lodestar, but then she discovers it in
Matthew 2:2, which alludes to the star of Beth-
lehem. It's a star which indicates a divine birth.
In antiquity one always thought that, if a>
new bright star appeared in the sky, a future
ruler or wise man would: appear on earth who
would save mankind. And that is behind the
story of the star of Bethlehem. So the dream
tells her that though she still has difficulties
understanding, she will in her innermost being
find that the Christ is born within her own soul.
The Christ child represents the saving factor
which is born within oneself. We are not di-
vine, but we are the stable in which something
divine is born.

Once a woman has become conscious of this

new found masculine spirit in her, once she has
identified that energy and feels it within herself,
is there not a danger that by developing her
masculine side, say by pursuing a professional
career, ber femininity may suffer? It seems like
a very delicate balance.
Well, certainly a woman should be educated and
have a career, but she should not be possessed
by it. She should not be carried away by it.
Otherwise she loses her feminine identity. But if
she keeps her feminine identity, then her ca-
reer adds a spiritual dimension of activity, intel-
ligence and will-power to her personality, all
‘

284
positive qualities. It makes her into a personal-
ity. Jung was always very much in favour of
women studying. He said that women who
don't have a career, or study, or have a profes-
sion have generally a very negative animus. They
lead a seemingly feminine life at home as moth-
ers and householders, but their masculinity
sours, turns negative, and the women use it to
torture their husbands. It's much better to oc-
cupy the animus. Then he makes less mischief.
The masculinity in women is just as ex-
ceedingly positive as it is negative. It's only in
certain aspects negative when women don't
know how to relate to it with wisdom. A
woman who has no animus has no pep, no en-
terprise, no intelligence, no initiative. She is a
very poor creature. She is just a womb pro-
ducing children and a hand cooking in the
kitchen. A woman without an animus is noth-
ing. So the animus is an exceedingly positive
thing. It is the intelligence. It is the spiritual
longing. The whole spirituality of women is
connected with the animus. So you can say that
in a woman, the animus, her masculine side,
extends from Devil to Holy Ghost.

285
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Part Six

ON

RELATIONSHIP
Chapter Seventeen

LIBERATION

OF THE

HEART

"In our modern world, we have achieved

sexual freedom. Now comes the much bigger
problem—liberation of the heart."

—Marie-Louise von Franz

Curiosity is one of the prime energies of the
human psyche. At an early age a child quietly
takes a toy apart to see what makes it work and
throughout our lives we continue to ask,
"What's that? and "Who am I?"
In our age, humanity's quest for knowledge
has produced startling achievements. We've put
men on the moon and made artificial hearts.
But after all is said and done, what people most
want from life is simply to love and be loved
and no one's yet figured out what makes a hu-
man relationship work. God knows we've tried.
We've created sexual freedom, birth control,
singles bars, computerized dating, but these
external solutions have failed. Still there's not a
day goes by when a psychoanalyst doesn't meet
a person with a broken heart.
Dr. von Franz, let's tale now about the
problems involved in human relationships by
first looking at a dream of a successful modern
woman.

290
 "I dreamt I was in a desolate tourist resort like the
beach in the film Death In Venice. 1 saw a man
standing by a wall. And then I saw a woman walking
toward him. She approached him and kissed him,
and then the two walked away. I was very curious,
so I decided to follow them.
Then I was in a house with a shoji screen, a
Japanese household. Then I saw the man at the
entrance. He was going to enter. Suddenly he stopped
and looked suspiciously down at the shadow of
the woman on the floor. So I turned around, and
saw that the woman had changed into a geisha. She
was all made up. She didn't look like a very classical
geisha with oriental eyes. She looked more like a
Caucasian woman, but in a geisha outfit. She was
very pale. Her eyes were red, and there was blood
in the corner of her mouth. I said to the man, 'She's
regressed to her past life.'
As I said that, the geisha knelt down and placed
a tray of food on the table. The man was now in the
process of changing into a samurai. There was agony
in his face, as if he were in a convulsion. I wasn't
sure if the agony was associated with the physical
transformation, or whether it was because he was
with this woman. That was the end of the dream."

—Dreamer, Female

291
This dreamer, has made a successful career for
herself and has given all her energies to it. But
her love life has been neglected, and therefore,
in the dream, the side she has suppressed
emerges. She's not yet rooted in life; she
doesn't know where she belongs and suddenly
the question arises, "What do an ordinary man
and a woman do with each other? How do they
relate to each other? What's the meaning of
love?"
The dreamer is in a tourist place which is
the opposite of a place where one lives and has
one's roots put down. It's a temporary place
where one is by chance. There she watches a
man in the street picking up a woman he's in-
terested in and the dreamer follows them to
find out what is going on. So we see that the
problem of the relationship between man and
woman begins to constellate.
She then follows them to a Japanese flat
decorated with screens. (Later, in the dream,
we will see that the Japanese play a special role
in her set-up, so I'll not deal with that now. It
means simply that the problem is still screened
discreetly. She doesn't yet know what is hap-
pening.) And then she sees that the man is
staring suspiciously at the silhouette of the
woman on the floor, the shadow silhouette, and
that the woman is playing the role of a geisha,
which is pure acting, a way of not being herself.

292
 "Well, I was always
interested in geishas
when I was growing up,
because they looked so
plastic. The face looks
like a mask, and I was
always wondering what
lay behind this mask.
Geishas represent
It is the geisha's task to fulfil all the wishful fan- refinement, the ultimate
tasies of what men think is ideal femininity. She form of Japanese aesthetics.
cannot live her own feminine reality. She has to I don't know if I think
play-act, and therefore she casts a shadow. Her they are attractive at all.
real femininity remains in the shadow, and in But there's a certain
the dream the man is suspicious of the shadow sense of sophistication
of the woman. "What's the shadow of a geisha associated with geishas."
like? What is a geisha like when she is not — Dreamer

painted, when she doesn't play her role? What

kind of a woman is she then?" This is the type
of question this woman has in mind.
The geisha's mouth runs with blood and her
eyes are bloodshot, which shows that she's in
some terrible pain or torture, that acting out
the wishful fantasies of a man, instead of being a
woman in her own right, is a torture to her.
This has long been the lot of geishas. For ex-
ample, the Chinese bound the feet of their up-
per class women, so that they were completely
crippled. And they couldn't complain. They
had to satisfy the fantasies of men by becoming

293
 elegantly unreal, as if they didn't touch the
floor, as if they hadn't heavy peasant feet.
Men fear the woman's earthiness. Her
earthiness is her power, her connection with
earthy reality and men fear it because, as Jung
realized, women are really the tougher sex.
That's why men are afraid of the earthy side of
women. By binding the feet of the upper class
Chinese girls, they transformed them into but-
terflies, into delicate, unearthly, romantic crea-
tures. But for the women this was a mutilation,
and naturally the geishas are completely muti-
lated. They had to repress all their natural femi-
nine reactions in order to play the geisha role.
Just as the geisha has bloodshot eyes, so
the man is also undergoing some torture. His
transformation into a samurai seems to cause
him tremendous pain. Now, the samurai carries
a personal projection for this dreamer.
"When I was growing up
in Hong Kong, Japanese
films were very popular.
The samurais were hero
figures to the teen-agers.
They were physically
attractive and had a
good sense of right
The samurai is the romantic beloved of her
and wrong. All the girls
were crazy about teens and the man in the dream painfully trans-
Japanese samurais, forms himself into that ideal. Even in the dream
compared to the Chinese the dreamer recognizes that this is a regression.
men. Generally, Chinese
men are physically
smaller than samurais."
— Dreamer

294
The woman is regressing to a past life which
hints what the dream is really aiming toward.
The dreamer has emigrated to Canada, and
has concentrated her energies into making a ca-
reer. Now that she's at the top of her career,
the love problem comes up. It's the problem
of finding a partner, of fulfilling her dreams of
love, and here she cannot go to any Western
model of relationship between man and
woman. Therefore, there is a huge regression to
the historical past, to the Far East where the
medieval model of relationship between man
and woman was a samurai and a geisha. But
since the figures who play the samurai and
geisha both suffer such great torture, it means
that the dreamer cannot go back to that model.
It would completely constrain her modern
femininity. But since she has no other, she has
to go back for the moment to that medieval
model, but only to then jump forward again to
create or to find in her soul a new model of
femininity. The torture in the dream is the birth
pangs of searching for and having not yet found
her own feminine image or identity.

On a collective level, modern woman's search

for her own feminine identity has led to a re-
bellion against the patriarchy. But, paradoxi-
cally, it's led many women straight back into
geisha-like relationships. They desire compan-
ionship and sexuality divorced from personal
feeling. How do you account for this?

295
I think»it has two roots. The deeper one is that
many North American women are very un-
happy because social life in North America is
not rooted enough. People move about too
much; women have very little chance to estab;
lish their roots in the earth, in 4 garden, in a
house, in a community, in a surrounding where
they can stay. This constant moving rather
pleases men, but is very unfortunate for
women. It damages their instincts. Then women
want to replace it by sex, because that is their
last possibility of having a connection with their
own bodies, a confirmation of their own physi-
cal existence. But it's a desperate move which is
a surrogate for something quite different. It's a
surrogate for having no feminine life, no femi-
nine rhythm of life.
The whole rhythm of North American life
is too hectic for a woman. It damages women
more than men. It's not good for men either,
but it damages women even more. And then
there is the whole world of advertising, and the
social idea of success—girls having to date boys,
and inquiring, "Are you dating a boy already?"
and so on. The whole relationship between the
sexes becomes an affair of success, of social
achievement, instead of feeling.
Women can run sex with the head, com-
pletely cool, without feeling, as a means to con-
firm their self esteem. They think, "I must have
a man. I must have an affair in order to
XV

296
prove myself normal." But that has nothing to
do with the real instinctive feeling of a woman.
She runs over those feelings with a theoretical
idea of having to have a man and having to have
sex with him. The whole thing is a cold power
game which leads to nothing.
The sexual instinct is one instinct, but
there are many other instincts as well. There is
the instinct of self-preservation, and there are
social instincts and aggressive instincts. There is
a whole host of different instincts. No animal,
for instance, ever consists solely of sexual de-
sire. A dog has aggression, the need for food,
the need for affection, the need for being with
other dogs and so on and on. If a woman sin-
gles out the sexual instinct as the only instinct
and runs it with her head, it is contra-instinctive
because it's out of balance. Nature never
chooses one instinct against all the others. Na-
ture keeps a kind of homeostasis, or general
equilibrium between the instincts. It turns one
instinct on and another off, and so on. If we
observe animal life we see that it is periodical. It
has periods for the sexual instincts, situations
for the aggressive instinct, situations for the
collective herd instinct. Its rhythms are regu-
lated by a totality, by the wholeness of its be-
ing. Only the human is stupid enough to isolate
one instinct and govern life by it. Naturally, by
so doing he goes against the wholeness of the

297
instinctive werld and does harm to his own
body and to his whole life.
If a woman has not a strong connection to
her own instinctive, feminine nature, she falls
for that kind of nonsense. And then she runs*
her relationships by trying to conquer men. She
puts them in her pocket and then boasts to her
girlfriends about it. This, of course, has nothing
to do with her real feminine feelings.

But it seems these women fear their real femi-

nine feelings. They want a relationship without
emotional commitment. In fact, if personal
feelings do become involved, they often end
the relationship.
That is because an emotional commitment
brings conflict. If one is emotionally committed
to another human being, one is easily hurt and
risks a lot of misunderstandings. Even the best
partner will hurt you from time to time. You
are exposed; you are vulnerable; you are de-
pendent. Such women don't want to get into
that. They are afraid of it. They are afraid of the
complications of the heart. They prefer to run a
relationship like a cold business man, just have
the pleasure of it and say good-bye. "Nothing to
do with you personally." It is a rejection of the
feminine fate which is to be personally inter-
ested in the man and to be, therefore, vulnera-
ble. What about losing your partner? What
about your partner going away with another
A

298
woman? What about your partner traveling for
years in foreign countries and not returning to
you? That is the eternal pain of women.
Women want a lasting personal relationship,
and men very often do not care about it, or
lead a life where they cannot care about it. They
have to attend to their own business. That is the
tragedy between men and women and women
who don't want personal commitment want to
escape that tragedy. They want to escape suf-
fering, and they naturally get into much worse
suffering.
In our modern world, women have
achieved their sexual freedom. A woman can
now live her sexual life as she likes; that is no
longer a problem. Now comes the much bigger
problem: the liberation of the heart. That is the
program of the next fifty years.

Liberation of the heart... ?

There are two types of human connection. One
is technical: the boss and the employee, the
bus conductor and the passenger. It is orga-
nized by rules, even nowadays by psychological
rules. (There are even training programs for
managers on how to manage the employees.)
The other type of human connection is through
feeling, the liking and the disliking, and nowa-
days that doesn't count for much. A woman
would sometimes like to say, "This sounds all
very logical, but I have a strong feeling against

299
it." Nobody would pay any attention to that
nowadays. If she cannot formulate it as a logical
deduction, they just ignore it. To say, "My feel-
ing instinct tells me this is no good," is not
enough. Men do the same thing to themselves. *
They have feelings too, but they ‘ignore them.
They may have a funny feeling in their stom-
achs, but they think, "Oh, that is jet lag or
something." They rationalize it away. They don't
listen to the reactions of the heart.
That is why so many so-called primitive
people, in the so-called under-developed coun-
tries reproach us, and quite rightly. Whatever
their shortcomings, they listen more to their
feelings. You could still say to an Australian
aborigine, "Today I have a bad feeling. I won't
move out of the camp." Or you can say, "That
fellow seems to be making a very good offer to
us, but I somehow don't like it and I'll there-
fore keep away from him." You can still say that
to an Australian aborigine, but, if you say it to a
white American business man, he'll just think,
"Oh well, women!"

Do you feel we are in danger of building a wall

of rationality in our society which feeling can't
penetrate? Are we losing our capacity to love
and be loved?
I think that is the number one problem of the
Aquarian Age. The only thing which might save
us, in the East and the West, from falling into an

300
overly rational, overly organized mass society
which suffocates the individual is a re-evaluation
of the importance of personal feeling. Fortu-
nately, people are waking up to the negative ef-
fects of this computerizing of humanity. We
have now, for instance, political slogans abhor-
ring too much state and too much organization.
This massification of society stems from an
over-population of the planet which demands
an organization that suffocates the individual.
The problem is that there are too many rules,
and rules are always impersonal; they are for
everybody.
If you study primitive communities or
older agricultural communities, everybody knew
everybody, and related to each other person-
ally. A lot of idiots and mentally sick people
didn't need to be institutionalized, because the
community just suffered them. They laughed
and said, "Oh well, you know so-and-so." I
remember on the first day when we moved
into the village where I grew up, a man came
and said, "My father is a kleptomaniac. He
steals everything. So, if things are stolen from
you, please don't go to the police. Just come to
me, and I'll hand them back to you." So the
poor old kleptomaniac didn't need to go to an
asylum. Everybody knew his little fault and
compensated for it. That is personal relation-
ship. He, including his faults, belonged person-
ally to the community. In such a society there

301
are fewer criminals, and fewer people ready for
the lunatic asylum. The society carries the indi-
vidual and stands the individual. It gives him a
certain leeway of freedom with a pardoning
shrug of the shoulders which says, "Oh well, he:
is like that, or she is like that." People are taken
for what they are. That's what we have lost, and
that's what we have to restore again in some
new form.

302
Chapter Eighteen

LIBERATION

OF

RELATIONSHIP

"If one loves the other really, one wants him to

be free, not to put him on a leash like a dog."
—Marie-Louise von Franz
Dr. von Franz, over the years I've heard love
defined by poets and philosophers in a thou-
sand different ways and even though in our ear-
lier discussions you flatly refused to define love,
I think your expression "liberation of the heart"
is just that—a definition of love.

304
Well, feeling is my inferior function so I have a
certain difficulty articulating that. The feeling
function is something which is completely ne-
glected nowadays. Generally we identify feeling
with affect and emotion, but that is only inferior
feeling. For instance, young people in their
happenings, their rock concerts, liberate their
feelings, but it mostly comes out in strong
emotion, in a feeling of loving everybody or
destroying everything. Their feelings spill all
over the place. They are not individually
pointed.
Differentiated feeling, on the contrary, is
to love that unique person for his or her
uniqueness. It is difficult, for it presupposes that
you are capable of seeing the uniqueness of the
other person, of getting rid of all schematic
psychological judgments. It is ultimately some-
thing irrational that has to do with one's own
development. The more one becomes a unique
individual oneself, the more one individuates in
the Jungian sense of the word, the more one
becomes able to see the other person as a
unique person and not have some cliché judge-
ment about him or her. If you listen to how
people gossip about each other, you notice that
much of what they say is a cliché that misses the
uniqueness of the other person. It doesn't de-
fine their uniqueness.
So liberation of the heart would mean to
become slowly capable of feeling and sensing

305
the uniqueness of the other's personality and to
love that uniqueness. That doesn't mean this
Christian all-pardoning, sweetie pie, strawberry
sauce love which loves and pardons everything.
It means, on the contrary, a very great preci»
sion of feeling. People with differentiated feel-
ing are even shocked if you talk to them in a
not-quite-genuine tone or make a not-quite-gen-
uine gesture with the hand. They feel your
uniqueness, and they want you to be yourself.
That is the most important thing for a psychol-
ogist, to love the genuine person of the patient
and to openly dislike what is not genuine. This
brings out what he or she really is or is meant
to be by nature. That is real love—the love
which heals and makes the other person whole.
It has nothing to do with sentimentality, or be-
ing just sweet or polite.

Exactly the opposite!

Exactly the opposite. It's very tiring. It's con-
stantly having a quick precise reaction to the
way the other really is, or is not, or should be.
You find it sometimes in the anecdotes of the
Zen masters. A novice comes with an ungen-
uine answer, or with a tricky intellectual ques-
tion, and the Zen Master just hits him in the
core of his real being.

Can you think of one of those anecdotes?

306
A novice came in and the master said, "Look in
the stove and see if there is still some fire under
the embers." The novice looked and said,
"There is no fire under the embers." The mas-
ter gave him a hit over the head and said,
"There is fire under the embers." At that mo-
ment the novice woke up.

That absence of "genuineness" is what a man

experiences when he is attacked by a woman's
animus. He feels she is not being herself, is not
being genuine. It creates a delicate problem and
a man usually doesn't know how to handle it. A
wise woman once said, "When animus meets
anima, you're guaranteed one thing—animos-
ity!!!" What can a man do when he is attacked
by a woman's animus?
A man could try to talk with her reasonably,
but usually he just gets irritated, goes into an
anima mood and then can't talk to her at all.
She blames him for all her misery in a childish,
plaintive, reproachful voice, and he, with his
weak feeling, feels awkward and gets irritated,
and doesn't answer, or slams the door, or picks
up the newspaper, or turns on the television
and sulks. Then she gets wilder and wilder. The
animus and anima constellate each other into
the typical marriage battle.
Now, generally, if a woman attacks a man
with the animus he usually feels helpless. He has
the vague feeling that if only he could restore

307
her to the role of a woman, she would be all
right. That's what sometimes gives him the im-
pulse to grab her, put her on the bed, and say,
"You are a woman. Don't be a man." He ex-
presses by that, "Be a woman. You are my-
wife. You are not a man." It helps sometimes.
The German word for convincing somebody is
tiberzeugen, to over-generate the other, and a
man can sometimes convince the animus that
way. I have quite often known the husband to
grab his wife and say, "Now, come on, stop
babbling all that nonsense," and put her right in
the feminine position.

Are you saying there is a place for male domi-

nance in a relationship?
Naturally, there's a place for a man to be a man
and a woman to be a woman, otherwise nature
wouldn't have made them that way. It doesn't
need to be an attitude of dominance. You can
just as well say, "Make love to her." It's just as
much an expression of love; a man can some-
times break the animus possession of his wife
simply by making love to her. It all depends
how he does it. If he has real feelings they will
reach her. If he acts without feeling, nothing
will happen. It will only go wrong. That is why I
never advise a man in analysis with me to do
such a thing, because he would just be acting.
He would do it because I told him to, and then
it would certainly go wrong. It only goes right if
\

308
he really has a positive feeling, a wave of posi-
tive, warm feeling toward her.

But when a woman is sobbing, "How could you

do this to me? I'm leaving if you're going to
treat me this way!" Then surely, he must
sympathize and understand her.
He doesn't have to take all that bullshit, because
it will only get worse and worse. He has to
refuse that nonsense and say, "When you talk all
sorts of nonsense in that whiney, baby way, I'm
not even going to listen." But he must at the
same time make a gesture that tells the woman
that, if only she were herself, he would love
her.
For a man to deal with an animus-pos-
sessed woman, it is necessary to love her and
slap the animus at the same time. Then the
woman feels, "When I am myself, he still loves
me; when I'm not myself, he gets angry." In
that way, the man can help the woman out.
Then she begins to notice what is herself and
what is not herself. It is very difficult for a
woman with a strong negative animus to distin-
guish the difference.
Think, for instance, of a wife who learns
that her husband is having an affair. Her femi-
nine feelings and her personal feelings are
deeply hurt. If she could react in a feminine way
she would dramatically express to her husband

309
that she is hurt. Instead of that her masculine
side, her animus, says, "Such a thing cannot go
on. Either we must divorce, or you must stop
this affair. I'll set you a time. You must give up
this relationship by the end of next month or
we're finished."
Now this is the animus talking like a
lawyer. It is not talking like a woman. And,
even if she doesn't feel that way, her friends
will tell her that she must tell her husband all
that. And then she sails on and tells her hus-
band, "Look here, this has to stop. This can't
go on forever. I can't stand it. You have to
make up your mind." And so on, and so on,
and so on—always talking like a lawyer. Now the
husband only vaguely feels, "This is not my
wife. This is a lawyer speaking to me." So he
explodes and gets sulky, or, as men often do
when the woman comes on as a man, he gets
possessed by his anima and sneaks out and be-
gins to lie. This infuriates her even more. Then
you have the classic marriage battle, the animus
versus the anima, which is the same all over the
world from China to Canada. You can make a
cliché of it; it's always the same exchange of
words. But the woman doesn't realize that she's
not expressing her feelings. She thinks what she
expresses is her true feeling and her true opin-
ion, but, if you look at it, the sentence generally
begins with, "One cannot do that, one cannot."
It is generally just an impersonal cliché. "Such a

310
situation cannot carry on. Such situations always
end like that." There is no individual feeling
reaction.

Well, if ber husband is having an affair, what can

she do?
There is no general rule. She has to follow her
own feeling. It depends on what kind of an af-
fair her husband is having, if she feels he needs
it, or if she feels he is running into a disaster
and she ought to prevent him if possible. It
depends on a thousand details. That's why there
is no general recipe. The husband might not
have wanted to fall in love at all. He might have
fallen into it against his own will, so why should
the woman then be furious with him? She
should rather look at him as being sick. If he
has the flu, she nurses him, but if he has love
flu, she won't put up with it.
You see if a woman stays with her feeling,
then she can see the personal implications. She
can see the whole situation in a very personal
and differentiated way and generally can find the
wisdom in herself to handle it. If she falls into
the animus, however, the collective rules cut
her off from her true feeling.

Relationships often begin by two people falling

2 love. They meet their other half, their "soul
Vhat happens when that projection is
vithdrawn? Is the relationship over?

11
One cannot say that in advance. Generally when
people fall in love in one second like that, it is
mostly based on projection, and many mar-
riages begin on the basis of a strong projection.
Then inevitably a period of disillusionment fol-
lows when both partners discover that the
other is very different from what he or she had
thought. They are two strangers staring at each
other's face and saying to themselves, "How
could I?" And then comes the great test. Can
they build up a real relationship after the pro-
jection is gone, or is there nothing left?

How can they know if a real relationship is pos-

sible?
From looking at the dreams. I have analyzed
married couples who after having worked
through the blind infatuation of animus-anima
projection, have dreamt that at last they could
get married. This time for good. One or both
dreamt of going to church and having a mar-
riage ceremony, as if removing the projection
made it possible for them to be really related,
loving with open eyes. Knowingly saying "yes"
to each other for the first time.

In our Western society many of us make the

most important decision of our lives based on
that projection. What do you think of choosing
a mate in this manner?

312
I think it's the best possible way. Otherwise,
historically, the families arrange marriages for
money reasons, power reasons, family political
reasons. That tradition is still carried on in good
families in India and China to-day. And that isn't
very satisfactory either.
I would say let fate play its part. Then the
choice is made by projection in many cases,
but if the people are instinctively healthy they
do not only project. If there is not a father im-
age or a mother image disturbing the situation,
they have a healthy instinct for choosing the
right partner, and then, even if it goes wrong,
they have learned something. If you had pre-
vented them, they wouldn't have learned any-
thing; they would have remained blind puppies.
So I think projections, and error, and
possible divorce are sometimes a detour which
cannot be avoided. It's tragic and very sad, but
we are now for the first time in the history of
mankind experimenting with free love. Origi-
nally, as an institution, marriage had nothing to
do with love. But we can't do that any more;
it's too impersonal, it's too collective. So, if we
want to find personal relationship, we have to
experiment ourselves. I think there will be a lot
of painful suffering, men torturing women and
women torturing men, till we wake up to a
possibility of relating better to each other.
It's a unique experiment in history; it be-
gan with the Courts d'amour in France when the

313
knights could choose a woman they loved,
where they had free love relationships. But the
Catholic church promptly repressed it. There
were too many illegitimate children, family
complications, and inheritance problems. Man's
legalizing tendency suppressed ig,
I say to analysands when they are in love
difficulties, "This is pioneering country you are
in now." For the first time in history, we are
really trying to relate man and woman on a hu-
man basis, and there is bound to be a lot of er-
ror and trouble at first.
The modern developments in psychology
don't want to abolish marriage, but they want
to make it a bit less rigid, less tyrannically tight,
especially when the children get older. Young
children needa tightly knit family life and,
therefore, biological drives usually knit couples
together in the early part of their marriage, but
after a certain period this close family unit as-
sumes less importance. It probably has a social
motivation. If the community consists only of
little, happy, tightly knit families, there is no
general communal life. There are only little
packages not relating to each other saying, "My
children are better than your children," so to
speak. As the children get older, therefore,
there is generally a tendency of the unconscious
not to dissolve marriage but to loosen it, to
demand more freedom for both partners.

314
 So I'm for a certain freedom for the men,
but just as much for the women. I feel there
should be mutual freedom in marriage. Married
> each other more mutual
ecohesn en mutual understanding.
And what about fidelity?
Well the question is, "What is fidelity?" Is fi-
delity what the law decides—namely, that you
may not go to bed with another pas which
pele mean aeuertne: Jung «

rey paving a bed andes which means nothing.

So what is adultery? What is fidelity? I do not
think fidelity should be defined in such a SB,

But that doesn't exclude taking a cer-

tain freedom, or leaving the other to have a
certain freedom. On the contrary, if one loves
the other really, one wants him to be free, not
to put him on a leash like a dog.

315
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Part Seven

ICjalie

Spill ms
Chapter Nineteen

DREAMS

OF

A LIFETIME

"The seed of a mountain pine contains the whole future

tree in a latent form; but each seed falls at a certain time
onto a particular place, in which there are a number of
special factors, such as the quality of the soil and the
stones, the slope of the land, and its exposure to sun and
wind. The latent totality of the pine in the seed reacts to
these circumstances by avoiding the stones and inclining
toward the sun, with the result that the tree's growth is
shaped. Thus an individual pine slowly comes into
existence, constituting the fulfilment of its totality, its
emergence into the realm of reality. Without the living
tree, the image of the pine is only a possibility or an
abstract idea... . The realization of this uniqueness in
the individual is the goal of the process of individuation."
—C.G. Jung, Man and his Symbols
Dreams tell us where our energy is and where it
wants to go. Every dream is a helpful message,
giving insight into the particular meaning of a
particular situation in our lives. Night after night,
these messages keep coming, more than one
hundred thousand during the course of an aver-
age lifetime. If we study our dreams over a pe-
riod of time, we begin to see meaningful con-
nections between them. There seems to be an
overall guiding force at work steering each of us
toward our own unique destiny.

320
Dr. von Franz, in analyzing people's dreams,
have you observed an overall pattern in the
dream life of an individual?
There is still a lot of research to be done, but I
have noted my own dreams for forty years, and
some of my analysands have taken down their
dreams regularly over years. I also have about
three thousand eight hundred dreams given to
me by a patient who died. He was a very con-
scientious noter of dreams and wrote his
dreams down for years and years.
Another of my analysands picked out
themes from his dreams: the theme of fighting,
the theme of the father, the theme of sports.
He noted that these themes appeared and dis-
appeared, only to reappear again. There is
something periodical about it. When he fol-
lowed a single theme, he could see the way it
slowly changed. There was a gradual change.
People in analysis very often get dis-
couraged and say, "I'm still dreaming about Fa-
ther shouting at me. That's a dream I've had
since the beginning of my analysis. I haven't
developed at all." But I say, "Wait a minute, if
we look at it very closely, if we follow up all the
dreams you have had about your father, you will
see there is a slight change." The change is very
gradual. It is as if something in the depth of the
person was cooking the theme and sending up
messages from time to time. A negative father

321
figure, for instance, becomes more and more
amiable. Or there is a dangerous situation which
occurs in early dreams and in later dreams the
same situation re-occurs, but there is a solution
to it. It's as if nature slowly broods on the~
problems, developing them slowly. In dream
interpretation we observe this slow develop-
ment. Our conscious attention can speed up
that maturing process by cooperating with na-
ture in working out problems. Analysis is
nothing else than the concentration of our con-
scious attention upon that natural maturing pro-
cess in order to speed it up. It's like adding
fire, so that the process will go faster.

Our conscious life appears to develop through

definite stages: childhood, adolescence, and so
on. Do dreams show a parallel development?
.

There is an essential difference between the

dreams of very young people and those of aging
people and in the middle of life there is a tran-
sition stage. You can say that in general the
dreams of very young people try to help them
to adapt to life. There is a movement towards
outward adaptation, to the fulfilment of the love
life, personal ambition and so on. Between
thirty-five and forty, dreams shift to an adapta-
tion towards the inner life, to finding the
meaning of one's own life. Nowadays, however,
the inner life sometimes becomes urgent even

322
for young people. We are so crushed by the
mass-mindedness of our civilization due to the
problem of over-population that many of us
feel superfluous. We feel, "If I were removed to
the cemetery nothing would be changed. There
would be one less mouth to feed, and that
would be really a blessing. Mankind would just
continue to teem on on this planet." The mass-
mindedness governing our civilization crushes
us and makes us feel superfluous and unimpor-
tant. In our professional lives we can always be
replaced by twenty others who want the same
post. And that has a very destructive effect on
modern man. Either he compensates by be-
coming a megalomaniac who wants to be the
top dog and at least achieve something, or he
feels completely crushed and superfluous so
that a kind of sneaky depression creeps up in
him. You find that depression nowadays in
many young people. In some hidden way they
feel deeply depressed and discouraged. They
don't believe in their own lives or in the
meaning of their own existence.
Now, all dreams point out to the individual
the unique meaning of his or her unique life.
That is perhaps the most important feature of
dream life. It is as if there are two thousand
trees in a forest and they are all just trees, but
when looked at closely and accurately each has
an unique personality. No two trees are alike.

323
They are aH personalities. Nature fulfils its
pattern in unique, individuated beings. That's
why statistical thinking is so detrimental, so
harmful. We can say that in a heap of stones the
average weight is one kilo. But, if we look at the
stones individually, there is not one stone which
weighs one kilo. One stone weighs two kilos,
one weighs a half kilo, and so on. We have to
learn to see and respect the uniqueness of the
real thing. Reality consists of an enormous
number of unique beings, and dreams help us
to find the unique pattern of our life. In modern
psychological practice people complain over
and over again, "My life has no meaning." They
shrug their shoulders and say, "What for? What
am I here for? What's the use of it? I could just
as well not exist." And here the dream is
uniquely helpful in pointing out what the
unconscious wants of that person, what it wants
that person to become.
It's often very surprising. When people
come to me, I sometimes try to guess what
their destiny or task is. | wonder what will be-
come of them. Is this a creative problem? Will
that girl who is so unhappily in love get her Jack
or John? I never guess right. What comes out is
a complete surprise. And after the event one
says, "That is uniquely the solution for that per-
son. That's not a collective solution."
That is why publishing case material can
sometimes be very discouraging. People think,

324
"Ah, that's the solution to my depressive
problem," or "That's the solution to my un-
happy marriage." But it isn't. It is only the
solution for that person in that particular case.
Another case is different. All solutions are
unique. That's why it's even dangerous to pub-
lish case material, because people identify and
think it's their solution. But it's not their solu-
tion. It's that other person's solution. That's
what makes the work on dreams so exciting. It
never repeats. You can never guess accurately.
Nature always provides a creative answer.

Do you believe in predestination, Dr. von

Franz? Do dreams show life is pre-determined?
Naturally a lot of a human life has a pre-existing
pattern. You are born as a man or a woman, as
a white man or a Chinese woman, in this place
and not in another place, in this family and not
in another. There is a given pattern, but there is
also a certain leeway or freedom. Otherwise we
could give up therapy and say that people have
to fulfil the pattern of their lives, and that
there's nothing that can be done about it. But
by reading the pattern, by making it conscious,
by interpreting the dreams, we cannot escape
our fate, but we can give it a more positive
meaning. It makes a difference whether we say
"yes" to our fate and fulfil it positively, or say
"no" and are dragged by it against our will. So
we can say that although there is a certain

325
predestination; it's not absolute. It's not like
the fatalistic idea of Allah who decides every-
thing so it just goes that way. We can change
things, and that's why therapy has a meaning.
We can change things by understanding the*
pattern of our life, thereby avoiding certain
negative consequences of it. We can give it a
relatively more positive aspect.

You have said that dreams in the first half of life

aid ego development and in the second half fo-
cus on a search for meaning. What then do
dreams say when death is on the horizon, when
a person is terminally ill?
Well, I have just started a study of the last
dreams of people before they enter the coma.
The dreams of dying people are not about
death, but generally about a journey. They have
to get ready for a journey, or they have to go
through a dark tunnel and be reborn into an-
other world, or they have to go through a dis-
agreeable darkness or through a dark cloud to
come out into another space, or they are going
to finally meet their beloved partner. This
meeting is the famous motif of death as a mar-
riage, marriage with one's own other inner half.
Or, when someone is so strongly identified with
their body that they are inclined to think that
when the body is finished, everything is fin-
ished, then they have dreams which try to de-
tach them from the body. I remember also the
\

326
dream of an officer in the cavalry who dreamt,
just before he died, that a soldier came to him
and said, "Officer, look at what I have to show
you." And he showed him the decaying corpse
of his horse. Jung interpreted the dream, "The
warm-blooded animal which you are is going to
die. That's what's going to happen to it, but it's
not you. It's only the warm-blooded animal
body which is going to decay, but not you
yourself." Jung made this interpretation because
the dreamer's consciousness still existed in the
dream. He was able to look at the corpse.
The dreams of dying people show a
tremendous variety. Generally they contain the
same archetypal motifs which comparative eth-
nology has discovered in its study of death ritu-
als and the beliefs about life after death among
the different human populations: that it is a re-
birth, that it is a long, long journey into another
country, that it is a transformation, that it is a
partial destruction out of which something sur-
vives. There are many motifs.

At lunch to-day you told me the dream of a

dying woman.
Yes, she was a very simple woman, and she told
the nurse in the morning after breakfast, "Last
night I had a strange dream. I dreamt that there
was a candle on the window sill. It was slowly
burning down and it began to flicker. I pan-
icked and I thought, 'My God, now the great

O27
darkneSs is coming, the great darkness is com-
ing.' And then, suddenly, there was a change,
and the candle was outside the window sill on
the outer part of the window and was big and
burning quietly again." Isn't that a strange
dream? Four hours after that dream she died.
The dream seems to tell her, "Yes, the
candle of your life is flickering. It's going out.
But life will continue in another medium, in an-
other sphere. Beyond the isolating threshold of
the window, that very same life will be going
on." She was very comforted by the dream
without understanding it. And that is a typical
dream of a dying person.
I remember another dream which was
published by a medical doctor. A man dreamt
that he saw an abyss, and at the bottom of the
abyss was a growing tree which was slowly los-
ing its roots. Suddenly there was an earthquake,
and the tree started falling and the dreamer
thought, "That's the end." Just at that moment,
the tree began to hover in mid-air and it con-
tinued to exist in mid-air without having roots in
the earth. It just hung there in mid-air as if the
unconscious were saying, "Your tree of life is
losing its contact with earthly reality, but it is
not dying. The life process is going on in an-
other medium."
That's the gist of most dreams of the dying
and that's why it is very worthwhile to continue

328
 analysis with dying people. Many psychological
schools don't bother about old or dying peo-
ple, because they think they have no further
need of adaptation to life. After all, sex prob-
lems don't exist when you're on your death
bed. But you can see that the voice of nature or
the voice of instinct, which is the dream, helps
the people to die in peace. It comforts them.
Many people to whom I told such dreams
objected that it is wishful thinking, that dreams
are wish fulfilments, but I don't believe it. As
you see from the dream of the decaying horse,
nature does say quite unsentimentally that the
end is coming. In that woman's dream, the
~ flickering candle does go out. But at the same
time as the dream says that something is com-
ing to an end, it also says that something is
continuing in another medium. It's very difficult
to imagine how it's going on, or what is going
on. We can only take it as such.

Are there dreams that announce death, that say

a person is actually going to die?
Well, I would say that until they are actually dead
you are never quite sure. A woman consulted
me once who had cancer, metastases all over
the body. She had shocking death dreams. She
dreamt that her watch had stopped. She
brought it to the watch-maker, and he said it
couldn't be repaired. She dreamt her favourite
tree was felled in the garden. I didn't even have

329
to intérpret the dreams for her. She said sadly,
"That clearly tells the outcome of my illness."
The doctors told her in the usual way, "You will
get better. You will be all right." But she was
sure she was dying and that terrible shock made
her pull up her socks and face her problems.
She had a problem she hadn't faced, and I can
only say she's still alive after fifteen years. She
had death dreams to give her a death shock.
She could have died, and she could have not
died. Out of shock, she chose to live.
After that experience I would say that,
even if people have death dreams, it might only
mean that they should face death. It doesn't
mean that death will actually happen but that
they must come to a naked confrontation with
the fact that their life might come to an end.
That may give them either a salutary shock so
that they continue to live, or it may mean,
"Now it is finished." I would never dare to say
what it means before the end has come.
But there is also sometimes a kind of un-
canny smell around certain dreams where one
has the feeling, "Umm... that forebodes death."
But that's more of a parapsychological, mediu-
mistic feeling one has about it. Scientifically, I
couldn't give any reasons why one dream means
actual death, while another means only the
problem of death. Sometimes I get a gruesome
shiver when people tell me a death dream as if

330
my sympathetic nervous system is saying,
"Watch out, this really means death."

Does your work with dreams lead you to

believe in life after death?
I wouldn't say I believe in it. That is a bit too
strong. I would say that it seems to me from
the dreams that there is a life after death. I
think that dreams do not cheat and because
they are not wish-fulfilments, there must be an
aspect. of life or-the. psyche .going .on., The
question I would not dare to answer un-
equivocally is, "Does life go on impersonally or
does individual identity continue?" The dreams
give contradictory evidence about that.
For instance, if you take the dream of that
tree, you can say, "Yes, the life process of that
man is going on, but not his ego. He himself is
no longer around." On the other hand, there
are other dreams which point to the fact that
even the conscious identity continues. So it re-
mains, for me, an open question.

Dr. von Franz, you've demonstrated how

dreams reveal the fate of humanity, how they
work at regulating the human psyche and are
the key which unlocks the mystery of living
one's own destiny. You've shown how they ad-
dress even the most profound questions of life
and death. But still one question puzzles me. If
dreams are messages sent to inform our con-
sciousness, why are they so obscure?

gat
That has puzzled me too. I have often asked
reproachfully, "Why does this damned uncon-
scious talk such a Chinese difficult language?
Why doesn't it tell us clearly what's the mat-
ter?" Now Jung's answer was that it obviously
can't. It doesn't speak the language of the ra-
tional mind. Dreams are the voice of our in-
stinctive, animal nature or ultimately the voice
of cosmic matter in us. This is a very daring hy-
pothesis but I'll venture to say that the collec-
tive unconscious and organic atomic matter are
probably two aspects of the same thing. So the
dreams are ultimately the voice of cosmic mat-
ter. Therefore, just as we cannot understand the
behaviour of atoms (look at the Chinese lan-
guage modern physicists have to use to describe
the behaviour 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 de-
scribe 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 seemingly 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.

J52
Chapter Twenty

Hale

MAKER OF

DREAMS

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 centre 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 tell’.
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.
Analytical psychology focuses on four major
archetypes of the unconscious: the shadow, the
anima, the animus and the Self. Throughout this
book we have examined dreams which reveal
the first three. Now we come to the fourth and
central archetype, the Self.
The Self is the regulating and unifying cen-
tre of the total psyche both conscious and
unconscious. Symbolically it has been expressed
throughout the history of mankind as the inner
Godhead, or the image of God.
This dream not only reveals the energies of
the Self but also explains the function of dreams
in the human psyche. Ny

334
 "I had this dream when I
doing my analytical training in
Zurich. The evening prior, a
friend and I discussed our
anxiety about interpreting
other people's dreams.
The dream holds a very
deep mystery for me. In the
dream, I was myself and yet I
was not myself. The dream ego
had a wisdom and a knowledge
that I do not have. It was as if
the J, who is me in the dream
(rather than in waking life), was
present during our discussion
and provides the understanding."
— Dreamer, Male

335
 .

"At the beginning of the dream, I was sitting cross-legged on the ground
in the central square of an ancient walled city. A young man full of life
and vitality entered the square. He was naked to the waist and the sun
reflected through his long blonde hair. He sat down opposite me and
told me a dream which I interpreted. As I interpreted his dream, rocks,
huge boulders, fell out of the sky and hit the dream causing it to split.
Chunks flew off revealing an inner structure to the dream made up
entirely of nuts and bolts.
And, as he continued to relate his dream, other boulders fell from
the sky. On impact, more chunks flew off the dream progressively
revealing an inner skeleton which eventually took the form of a kind of
abstract modern sculpture made of iron. I walked over and picked up a
chunk that had been knocked off the dream. It was made of bread. I
said to the young man, 'This demonstrates how a dream must be inter-
preted. You must know what to discard. It's just like life.'
Then the dream changed. The youth and I still sat opposite each
other, but on the bank of a river. The structure which previously ex-
pressed his dream had changed. Rather than being composed of an iron
skeleton and chunks of bread, the dream now took the shape of a pyramid.
It was multi-coloured with each colour forming either a triangle or a square.
It seemed as if this pyramid, about five feet high, was shingled on all sides

336
with thousands of these small, coloured squares and triangles. And the
colours kept changing, an incredible flux of colour change. As the colour
changed in one of the shingles, then another colour had to change in an-
other part of the pyramid. The energies were in constant motion. I
explained to the youth that this balancing of energy was what dreams
were all about. They compensate psychic energy.
Then again the dream changed. The pyramid which had been so
beautiful with all the many colours was now composed entirely of shit.
And there was another pyramid on top of the base pyramid, but it was
invisible. Moreover, the top pyramid was upside down so that the tips
of the two pyramids came together into a central point. But that apex
was also invisible. This puzzled me because that point was necessary to
hold the structure together. Then the apex began to glow with an intense
white light. There should have been something there, but there was only
light. I looked down at the base pyramid and as I peered deeply
into the pyramid of shit I realized, 'The hand of God is in the shit.'
Those were the exact words that came to me.
Then I knew why I couldn't see the invisible point. That glowing
white point was the face of God and no one looks at the face of God and
lives. Just like a hole in a fence. You can't see the hole if you haven't got
the fence. What's visible makes the invisible visible. Then I woke up."

—Dreamer, Male

Do7
 "At the beginning of the dream, I was
sitting cross-legged on the ground in
the central square of an ancient walled
city. A young man full of life and vitality
entered the square. He was naked to the
waist and the sun reflected through his
long blonde hair. He sat down opposite
me and told me a dream which I
interpreted ee

The evening before the dreamer had puzzled

about where dreams come from and how one
interprets them. Because this is such a vitally
important question, the unconscious revealed
this beautiful dream as if the Self, as the centre
of the dream, introduced Itself to him, and said,
"I am the maker of the dream. Look at what it
1s3"
First he is in the square of a walled city.
Since Roman times, old European walled cities
were laid out as a square or a circle with a cross
in the middle, in mandala form. The original
mythological idea behind it was that the centre
\

338
represented the centre of the world. You find it
in the pattern of Roman towns, in all Roman
foundations, and later in most medieval towns.
It is really a mandala, a world centre. The
dreamer is in the centre of just such a place, in
the centre of human life and human civilization,
and there also sits the young man who tells the
dream. He is a blond haired youth, an unknown
young man who is full of vitality. We could
compare him to a sun hero, because blond hair
is generally associated with solar qualities. He is
the enlightened one and also the healthy one
within the dreamer. We could even see in him
an aspect of the Self of the personality, because
ultimately the Self is the dreamer, the sender of
the dream and the interpreter of the dream.
We are only the clown who watches it all.

".., As I interpreted his dream, rocks,

huge boulders, fell out of the sky and hit
the dream causing it to split. Chunks flew
off it revealing an inner structure to the
dream made up entirely of nuts and bolts.
And, as he continued to relate the dream,
other boulders fell from the sky. On im-
pact, more chunks flew off the dream
progressively revealing this inner skeleton
which eventually took the form of a kind
of abstract modern sculpture made
OfcifOnl 2: x

339
 A large boulder falls from heaven and hits
the dream. That has to be seen together with
the fact that he asked himself, "How does one
interpret dreams?" Interpreting a dream is not
something one can do by rational effort alone.
One depends a bit on the help of the uncon-
scious, on hunches coming from the uncon-
scious which hit the mark. The art of dream in-
terpretation is to aim in the right way and hit
the mark that clicks in the dreamer. That's why,
when someone discusses dreams with others
and they all voice a different theory about what
it might mean, the dreamer has the feeling,
"Yes, it could mean this, it could mean that."
Then all of a sudden somebody says something
and it clicks. The dreamer then feels, "That's it!
Now I feel that's it." That's when the boulder
falls from heaven.
I always feel when I interpret dreams to
people that, if the unconscious doesn't give me
the right hunch, I am lost. I can stammer for-
ever, but the unconscious, thank God, is very
interested in the understanding of dreams and
generally helps one to hit the mark. But it is re-
ally an act of grace that falls from heaven.
What remains is a structure made up of
bolts and nuts. The bolts could be looked at as
a masculine symbol and the nuts as a feminine
symbol. In German the nuts are called Mutter—
mother. Therefore, this structure is a union of
the masculine and feminine principles. It is a

340
union of opposites. The bolts with the nuts are
there to connect, to make connections.

How does this relate to dream interpretation?

Well, every dream makes an essential connec-
tion between our ego consciousness and our in-
ner centre. A lasting connection. Everyone who
has observed and watched his own dreams over
years will have a series of dreams in mind of
which he will inwardly say, "That dream and
what it meant, I will never forget." One is for-
ever linked with it and through that dream, one
is linked with one's inner centre.

"... 1 walked over and picked up a chunk

that had been knocked off the dream. It
was made of bread. I said to the young man,
'This demonstrates how a dream must be
interpreted. You must know what to discard.
is just.like life...

Now, as soon as the interpretation hits the

mark, or hits home, as we say, then it turns
into the bread of life. Whenever we understand
a dream properly, we feel nourished. We feel,
so to speak, the supernatural nourishment we
need inside, which comes from the uncon-
scious. That is very often represented in dreams

341
as either the bread of life or the water of life,
because, when it hits the mark, one is vivified
and nourished, and one has a kind of happy,
satisfied feeling, like the feeling you have after
eating a good meal. One feels, "That's it. Now I
know where I am going. Now I can go on."
Something becomes peaceful and _ satisfied
within one.
When those boulders hit down, some of
the substance, the bread, flies away, and what
remains are bolts and nuts which slowly build
up a strange pyramid-like structure. So there is,
so to speak, an outer form of the dream and
the dream essence. And we can say, "Yes, the
outer form of the dream is the sequence of im-
ages which we have to understand, which we
have to follow up."
But then, and this is the most difficult part
of dream interpretation, we have to ask our-
selves, "Now what is the essence of the dream
message? What does the dream tell us?" Then
we have to penetrate to the essence of the
message, the divine message which is contained
in that strange shell, that sequence of absurd
pictures, those difficult-to-understand images.
This essence points to the Self. Dreams always
point to the inner centre. They are like hun-
dreds of forms all pointing to the inner centre.
Every dream is an attempt of nature to centre
us, to relate us again back to our innermost
centre, to stabilize our personality.

342
 The major question in dream interpretation
is explained to the dreamer: namely, what to
discard and what to keep. "It's like life." The
dream, like life, has a surface which one has to
discard. For instance, dreams, being pure na-
ture, use some very absurd similes, some of
them in very bad taste. I remember, for in-
stance, a painter analysand who dreamt that he
was taking a shit and he produced so much,
more and more, that the toilet overflowed with
it. Then we found out what had happened. The
evening before he had started a painting on a
small canvas. Then he had a lot more fantasies
but he couldn't find room for them on the
small canvas. So, you see, because he was a bit
stingy and didn't want to buy a bigger canvas,
the dream clearly told him what it thought of
his attitude.
So you see, the dream does not follow the
rules of our good education or the ideas of good
manners. It speaks a natural language. The sur-
face is sometimes very repellent, or just stupid.
People will say, "Last night I had an absurd,
stupid dream." Then they have to discard the
image so they can break through to the mean-
ing. The imagery is not the important thing.
The meaning, the message, is the important
thing. And, as the dream says, it's the same in
life.

343
 ".. Then the dream changed. The youth
and I still sat opposite each other, but on
.

the bank of a river. . .

It is as if the first part of the dream tried to ex-

plain to the dreamer what the dreams are in
their essence and where they come from, while
the second part of the dream tried to explain to
the dreamer how dreams function within the
course of life which is symbolized by the river.
The river is an image of the flow of time.
So it's not merely a question of what this or that
dream means, but rather what is the meaning of
the whole river of dream life that we enter ev-
ery night? What is it? What's the meaning of it?
Where does that river come from or what's the
basic principle of its aliveness?

"... The form which his dream had

previously taken had changed. Rather than
being composed of the nuts and bolts
skeleton and chunks of bread, the dream
now formed a pyramid of many colours
with each colour forming either a triangle
or a square. It was as if this pyramid,
about five feet high, was shingled on all
sides with thousands of these small,
coloured squares and triangles. . .
\

344
 In the dream, by the side of the river, the
structure of bolts and nuts changes into a pyra-
mid shingled with thousands of coloured quad-
rangles and triangles which is constantly alive
and moving.
Now, the pyramid is a symbol of what
Jung calls the Self, the innermost divine centre
of the psyche. It is an image of the Self for
both men and woman. If the Self is personified
in a man, it's usually a wise old man; and if it is
personified in a woman, it is generally a wise
old woman. When it is not personified, how-
ever, when it is what one would call a mandala,
beyond the differences of sex, it simply means
the innermost centre of the human psyche.
Here, the image of the Self is a four-sided
pyramid with each side being a triangle.
The Egyptian pyramids were built in this
form and the uppermost stone which crowned
the pyramid was in itself a small miniature of
the large pyramid. We can't see those upper-
most stones any more because they have fallen
off but probably they were covered with gold,
and were oriented in such a way that the first
ray of the rising sun reflected off them. The
idea was that the moment when the sun hit the
point of the pyramid, the dead would be resur-
rected. At that moment the dead king who
rested in the pyramid would rise from his
grave and go up along the path of the Sun God
and over the horizon. The stone, the pointed

345
stone on top of the Egyptian pyramids, was
called Ben Ben. It was a sacred stone and was
also connected with the word Benu which is the
word for phoenix, the symbol of resurrection.
So the pyramid is always associated with the
eternal part of the dead person. The pyramid is
a grave which survives death and resurrects the
dead to an eternal life in communion with the
Sun God. When the rays of the rising sun hit
the Ben Ben stone, the dead Pharaoh in his
grave was enlightened. He rose from the dead,
and awakened again from the underworld.

"... And the colours kept changing, an

incredible flux of colour change. As the
colour changed in one of the shingles then
another colour had to change in another
» part of the pyramid. The energies were in
constant motion. I explained to the youth
that this balancing of energy was what
dreams were all about. They compensate
psychic energy. . .

The dream stresses that the many triangular and

quadrangular shingles which cover the pyramid
are coloured in a thousand nuances. Because it is
a living thing, the pyramid is constantly chang-
ing. Whenever one colour nuance changes on
one side, another colour must change on an-
other side in order that a fluid equilibrium is
preserved throughout the whole pyramid.

346
 We have observed that this equilibrium is a
function of the Self. The Self, the innermost
regulating centre of our psyche, seems to aim at
keeping the whole psychological system in a
fluid balance. We call that the law of compensa-
tion. Whenever one takes on a lop-sided atti-
tude in consciousness—too rational, too spiri-
tual, too materialistic, too driven by a single
drive— then the dreams compensate by bring-
ing up that which outweighs it on the other
side. That's why Saint Augustine after his con-
version 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 op-
posite. Rather, it is a compensation in the ser-
vice of the totality. It is as if the dream says,
"You are lop-sided compared to your inner to-
tality." That is the essential wisdom of the
dream: to preserve a balance among all our
psychic opposites and establish a kind of mid-
dle way. The unconscious seems to be in favour
of the Chinese Yin/Yang philosophy, or the
idea of the Tao as being a subtle balance of
opposites.

347
 Ss
~

".. Then again the dream changed. The

pyramid which had been so beautiful with
all the many colours was now composed
entirely of shit. . .

Here we have again a union of extreme oppo-

sites: divine light and shit, the most eternal and
the most transient, the most treasured and the
most valueless. We discard shit. We cannot di-
gest it so we get rid of it. It is the thrown away
stuff.

"., And there was another pyramid on

top of the base pyramid, but it was
invisible. Moreover, the top pyramid was
upside down so that the tips of the two
~pyramids came together into a central
point. But that apex was also invisible.
This puzzled me because that point was
necessary to hold the structure together.
Then the apex began to glow with an
intense white light. It was strange looking
into that space. There should have been
something there, but there was only light. . .

Just as in the real Egyptian pyramid the upper-

most point is the most luminous and important
part of the whole structure, so it is in this
dream pyramid. The upper point is empty
space, something invisible, which is at the same

348
time radiating a light. One is naturally reminded
of the Buddhist teaching that Nirvana is the up-
permost point of emptiness, that the Self is not
an empty emptiness, but an emptiness full of
light that has no specific definable content,
while being the source of inner enlightenment.
I think now that Zen Buddhism and many
other Eastern meditation techniques have so
widely spread, it is not necessary to comment
much more on this symbol. It is that state
which the peoples of the East are striving for in
their meditation exercises and techniques. Hu-
manity, so to speak, is aiming at realizing that
point of the pyramid. It represents the highest
value in the psyche, or the Godhead, or the
inner Buddha. The different schools give it
different names, but it is always that same inner
thing.

"..I looked down. And, as if my eyes

had somehow penetrated the pyramid of
shit, I suddenly realized, 'The hand of
God is in the shit.' Those were the exact
words that came to me...

This point is made visible in the dream by the

fact that the pyramid consists of solid shit. One
is reminded that the alchemists always thought
that gold was found in shit. The highest is found
in the lowest. And, in certain Eastern schools of
meditation it has been pointed out that after

349
having reached™illumination one returns to the
very ordinary life—the very ordinary life is also
part of one's illuminated life. There is no
contrast between having an inner illumination
and living the shitty life of every day. Even
.

those opposites belong together.

".. Then I knew why I couldn't see

the invisible point. That glowing point
of light was the face of God and no one
looks at the face of God and lives. Then
somehow I realized it was like a hole in
a fence. We can't see the hole if there
isn't a fence—what's visible makes the
invisible visible. Then I woke up."

But the light makes the hand of God visible in

the shit and if we can see the hand of God in
the shit, then we can stand the shit. Otherwise
we suffocate in it. That's it! That's the message
of the dream pyramid.

350
He
dreamt
he was a
butterfly.
And ever
after he
was puzzling
whether he
was a man
who dreamt
that he was
a butterfly,
or a butterfly
who dreamt
it was a man.

Are we
the dream
of the Self
or is the Self
our dream?

We just
don't know.
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 vndex Italics indicate
description of an actual dream.

Affair, extramarital, 309-11

Bedroom, dreams of, 206, 207, 208
Aging, 7, 11, 35-36
Beginning of dream. See
Aggressiveness, 34
Introduction/exposition
Airport, dreams of, 265 Biblical dreams, 83
Alchemy, dreams of, 16-17 Bicycle, dreams of, 271
Allen, Woody, dreams of, 31 Bird, dreams of, 116
Analysis, 322 Black man/woman, dreams of, 158
Androgyny, 30 Blonde hair, dreams of, 336, 338, 339
Angels, 91-93, 282 Blood, dreams of, 206
dreams of, 104 Bluebeard, 247-48
Anima, 30-32, 49, 137-45, 148, 160, Body, in psychotherapy, 228
161-62, 164-65, 181-92, 202-04 Body, dead, dreams of, 220, 221
Anima/animus, 28, 30-32, 307, 310, Bogart, Humphrey, dreams of, 30
311-14 Bonfire, dreams of, 272, 274
Animals, dreams of, 105, 120-21, 121, Bound hands, dreams of, 234
125, 128 Bowie, David, dreams of, 29
Animus, 30-32, 160, 184, 200, 215, 221, Boyfriend, dreams of, 234, 236
239-40, 247-50, 273-74, 284-85, Boy, young, dreams of, 206, 209-10
307-11 Bread, dreams of, 336, 341, 341-42
four stages of development, 214-15 Brother, dreams of, 259, 260, 262-63, 266
negative, 215, 232, 238-40, 243-47, 268 Burglars, dreams of, 45, 46, 122
positive, 269, 282-83 Butterfly, dreams of, 37, 351
possession by, 242, 307-11
Animus, gangster, 243
Anxiety, 34 Cabin, dreams of, 234
Ape creature, dreams of, 123 Cafeteria, dreams of, 205
Archetypal dream, 16-17, 48 Candle, dreams of, 327-28, 328, 329
Arms, dreams of, 198, 204 Cars, dreams of. See Automobiles
Art/artists, dreams of, 125 Castle, dreams of, 188, 190, 191
Associations, 42, 44, 46, 48, 52 Cat, dreams of, 234, 236-37, 272
Attacks, dreams of, 28, 205, 207-08, 216, Catastrophe, 43, 45. See also Lysis
219, 224 Cave, dreams of, 276, 277
Automobiles, dreams of, 18, 48-49, 166, Celebrities, dreams of, 29, 30, 31, 183, 198
170 Centre, divine inner, 32-34. See also Self
Childbearing, 270
Children, dreams of, 206, 209-10
Babushka, dreams of, 216, 217 Christ figure, dreams of, 276, 277, 280
Balance, 347 Ch'uang T'se, dream by, 36-37
Balcony, dreams of, 259 Church, 190-91
Balloons, dreams of, 27 dreams of, 36, 183, 184
Basement, dreams of, 205, 207 City, walled, dreams of a, 336, 338, 338-39
Bathroom, dreams of, 121, 224, 225, 234 Civilization, Western, 98

353
 “

Cleaning, dreams of, 258, 260 Disease, 218-19. See also Illness
Cloak, dreams of a, 183 Divine centre, 32-34
Clouds, dreams of, 271 Divine feminine figure, 280-81, 281
Collective unconscious, 110 Dogs, 216, 217-18, 219, 276, 277-80
Coloured shingles, dreams of, 336, 346, Doors, dreams of, 134, 174 :
346, 348 Double, invisible, 92
Commune, dreams of a, 272 Dragon, 148, 152
Complexes, 26-27 Dramatic structure of dreams, 43
father, 233-38 Dream constipation, 11
inferiority, 72-73 Dream dictionaries, 51-52
mother, 130, 137-45, 148, 150, 61 Dream interpretation. See Interpretation
negative, 136 of dreams
split-off, 136-38 Dream
superiority, 72-73 of an airport, 265
Confinement, dreams of, 177 of alchemy, 16-17
Conscience, 8 of Allen, Woody, 37
Conscious mind, 23, 58 of angels, 104
Consciousness, 23, 69, 268 of animals, 105, 120-21, 121, 123, 125, 128
ego, 189, 341 of arms, 198, 204
field of, 23 of art/artists, 125
subjective, 81 of attacks, 28, 205, 207-08, 216, 219, 224
Constipation, dream, 11 of automobiles, 18, 48-49, 166, 170
Contrasexual inner figure. See of a babushka, 216, 217
Anima/animus of a balcony, 259
Cowboys, dreams of, 272 of balloons, 27
Cows, 103 of a basement, 205, 207
dreams of, 101 of a bathroom, 121, 224, 225, 234
Creativity, 6-7, 128, 187 of a bedroom, 206, 207, 208
Cross, dreams of, 183 of a bicycle, 271
Crucifixion, dreams of, 183, 184-86 of birds, 7116
Cultures, primitive, 107-09 of a black man/woman, 158
of blonde hair, 336, 338, 339
Dancing, dreams of, 30, 31, 259 of blood, 206
Daydreaming, 15 of Bogart, Humphrey, 30
Death/dying of a bonfire, 272, 274
and dreams, 7, 11, 35, 326-31 of bound hands, 234
dreams of, 6, 16-17, 48, 53, 64-65, of Bowie, David, 29
64-65, 329, 330 of a boy, 206, 209-10
Demon lover, 248-50 of a boyfriend, 234, 236
Destiny, 33, 97-110, 101-02 of bread, 336, 341, 341-42
Devouring mother complex, 16, of a brother, 259, 260, 262-63, 266
138-45, 142-43, 148 of burglars, 46, 122
Devouring unconscious, the, 15, 16 of a butterfly, 37, 351
Differentiated feeling, 305-07 of a cabin, 234 .

354
Dream con't of food, 31
of a cafeteria, 205 of a foreign woman, 205, 207
of a candle, 327-28, 328, 329 of friends, 116, 121, 123, 258-59, 260,
of cars. See Dreams, of automobiles 271 ;
of a castle, 788, 190, 191 of Garbo, Greta, 31
of a cat, 234, 236-37, 272 of a geisha, 291, 293-95
of a cave, 276, 277 of girlfriend, 13, 123
of celebrities, 29, 30, 31, 183, 198 of a girl, 206, 209-10
of children, 206, 209-10 of God, 84, 337, 349, 350, 350
of a Christ figure, 276, 277, 280 of golden eyes, 276, 280
of church, 183, 184 of grandmother, 27, 39
of cleaning, 258, 260 of grey mist, 254, 255
of clouds, 271 of guilt, 47
of coloured shingles, 336, 346, 346, of hair, 749
348 of hanging, 259, 260, 262-63
of acommune, 272 of a hanging man, 220, 221-23
of confinement, 776, 177 of hiding, 265, 267
of cowboys, 272 of a hotel room, 206, 208
of cows, 101 of husband, 198, 199-200
of a cross, 183 of interpreting dreams, 336-37, 341, 342-43
of crucifixion, 183, 184 of intruders, 205, 207
of dancing, 30, 31, 259 of invisibility, 254, 255, 337, 348, 348-50,
of a dead body, 220, 221 350
of death/dying, 6, 16-17, 64-65, 64-65, of Jacob's ladder, 83-89, 84, 85
329, 330 of jail, 256, 257
of dogs, 216, 217-18, 219, 276, 277-80 of Japanese, 291, 292
of doors, 134, 174 of Joan of Arc, 183, 184, 186
of a dragon, 152 of jungles, 158
of dreams, 336-37, 338, 340 of Jupiter, 166, 169, 179
of drinking tea, 254, 255 of a karate master, 224, 226-27
of driving, 166, 167 of laundry, 258, 260-61
of an eagle, 116 of leaping, 220
of enemies, 122 of legs, 198, 204
of escape, 256, 257 of light, 337, 348, 349-50
of falling, 62-63 of a living room, 205, 207
of farm implements, 758 of locks, 134, 174
of father, 27, 174, 175, 176, 179, 234, of lodestar, 282, 283-84
235-36 of loss, 8
of fear, 134, 176 of lovemaking, 31, 50, 134
of fighting, 158 of a male voice, 282, 282
of fish, 51, 271 of a mattress, 216, 217
of floating, 216, 217 of mirrors, 198
of flying, 18, 44, 51, 58, 59, 116, 253, of mist, grey, 254, 255
254 of a moat, 788, 190, 191

525)
 “

Dream con't of shadows, 291, 292-93

of Monroe, Marilyn, 198, 201, 203-04 of shingles, coloured, 336, 346, 346,
of the moon, 100, 165, 169, 171, 172-73, 348
179-80 of shit, 716, 117-18, 337, 348, 348, 349,
of mother, 27, 116, 158, 220, 221, 223, 349-50 .
258, 260 of shooting, 64-65, 64-65, 265, 272
of the mouth, 297, 293-94 of skin peeling, 158
of murder, 131 of sky, 165-70, 166, 179
of night, 166, 167 of snakes, 62-63
of numbers, 101 of a space ship, 776, 178, 179
of nuts and bolts, 336, 338, 340-41 of spouse, 48-49, 183, 198
of pain, 291, 294-95 of a square in a walled city, 336, 338,
of parents, 27, 50, 116, 158, 171, 174, 338-39
220 of stars, 67-68, 69-72, 100, 165-70, 166,
of a party, 125 171, 172-73
of a penis, 128, 134 of stealing, 48-49
of planets, 166, 169 of a steep staircase, 220, 221
of a play, 183, 184 of a storm, 271
of police chief, 234, 236-38 of the sun, 700
of pregnancy, 183, 184, 272, 274 of a sunken living room, 205, 207
of prison, 256, 257 of tea, 254, 255
of pursuit, 122, 128 of teeth, 134
of pyramids, 336-37, 342, 344, 345-47, of the telephone, 234
348, 349, 350 of theatres, 224
of rain, 133 ‘ of the throat, 276, 219
of rape, 206, 209-10, 247 of thumbs, 176
of red eyes, 291, 293-94 of a tiger, 721
of regression, 291, 294-95 of transformations, 158, 159-61
of a remote cabin, 234 of translating a language, 282, 283
of a resort, 291, 292 of trees, 328, 328
of rifles, 265, 265-67 of an unknown man, 265, 265-68
of rivers, 188, 189, 336, 344 of urine, 224, 225-26
of a rocket ship, 176, 178, 179 of a vampire, 133, 135
of rocks, 13, 276, 336, 339, 340 of a village, 158, 220, 221
of a roommate, 258 of vomiting, 234, 244
of a samurai, 291, 294-95 of a waitress, 205-06, 208, 209
of sand, 174, 175, 179, 220 of walking, 766, 170
of Saturn, 166, 169, 179 of a walled city, 336, 338, 338-39
of a sausage, 31 of a washroom, 224, 225
of school, 47, 116 of water, 50, 188, 191-92
of a screen, 291, 292 of waves, 271
of a screwdriver, 134, 135 of a weightless woman, 259, 261
of Seberg, Jean, 183 of a well, 188
of sex, 31, 50, 134 of wife, 183, 184 \

356
Dream con't Fidelity and freedom, 315
of a window, 28, 149, 328, 328 Field of consciousness, 23
of women, 188, 190, 198, 199 Fighting, dreams of, 158
Dream symbolism, 52 Fish, dreams of, 51, 271
Drinking tea, dreams of, 254, 255 Floating, dreams of, 216, 217
Drinking water, dreams of, 188, 191-92 Flying, dreams of, 18, 44, 51, 58, 59,
Driving, dreams of, 166, 167 1106, 253, 254
Food, dreams of, 31
Freedom
Eagle, dreams of, 116, 117-18 and predestination, 325-26
Ego consciousness, 189, 341 in marriage, 314-15
Ego development, 322-35, 326 Friends
Emotions, 229 dreams of, 116, 121, 123, 258-59, 260,
End of dream, 45-46. See also Lysis yl.
Enemies, dreams of, 122 and the shadow, 115, 264
Eros, 160 Funeral rites, 154
Escape, dreams of, 256, 257
Excrement. See Urine, Shit.
Exposition, of dreams, 42. See also Gangster animus, 243
Introduction/exposition Garbo, Greta, 203dreams of, 37
Extraverts, 117 Geisha, dreams of, 291, 293-95
Eyes Gilgamesh, King, 67-71, 179-80
golden, dreams of, 276, 280 Girl, dreams of, 206, 209-10
red, dreams of, 291, 293-94 Girlfriend, dreams of, 13, 123
God, 89, 334
and dreams, 6, 7, 36, 81-82, 85
Falling, dreams of, 62-63, 64, 263 dreams of, 84, 337, 349, 350, 350
Fantasies, 201 Gods, 90, 90-91
sexual, 135, 139-40, 142 Gold, as symbol, 280
Father, dreams of, 27, 174, 175, 176, Golden eyes, dreams of, 276, 280
179, 234, 235-36 Grandmother, dreams of, 27, 39
Father complex, 233 Guiding force, 320
Fear Guiding star, 283-84
of dreams, 15-16 Guilt, 8
and the Self, 34 dreams of, 47
dreams of, 134, 176
Feces. See Shit
Feelings Hair, dreams of, 149, 336, 338, 339
differentiated, 305-07 Hands, dreams of, 234
of inferiority, 305 Hanging, dreams of, 259, 260, 262-63
personal, 227-29, 299-302 Hanging man, dreams of a, 220, 221-23
Feminine identity and animus, 200 Heart, liberation of, 299-302, 304,
Feminine side of men (anima), 30-32, 305-07
49, 137-45, 148, 178, 187 Hiding, dreams of, 265, 267

B27
 ‘

Hotel room, dreams of, 206, 208 Joseph of Canaan, dream had by, 97,
Human relations, 143-45 99-101, 700
Husband Joseph, husband of Mary, dream by,
dreams of, 198, 199-200 104, 104-07
inner, 184. See also Animus Jung, C.G., dream had by, 36
Jungle, dreams of, 158 :
Jupiter, dreams of, 166, 169, 179
Ideas, 6-7
Illness, 12-13. See also Disease
Images in dreams, 24 Karate master, dreams of, 224, 226-27
Inertia, 143
Infantile dependence, 74-75, 76
Inferior feeling, 305 Landscape, 85-86
Inferiority complex, 72-73 Language
Inflation;*7 1-72, 71-75,°75,. 201 of conscious/unconscious, 69
Inner centre, 32-34, 341 of dreams, 24, 25, 57
Inner husband, 184. See also Animus Laundry, dreams of, 258, 260-61
Inner life, 109-10 Law of compensation, 347
Inner man, 215. See also Animus Laziness, 77
Inner wife/woman, 184, 185. See also Leadership, 99
Anima Leaping, dreams of, 220
Insight, 320 Legs, dreams of, 198, 204
Inspiration, 6-7 Liberation of the heart, 299-302, 304,
Instinctive life, 109-10 305-07
Interpretation of dreams, 9-10, 12-15, Life after death, 331
42-52, 103-04, 125, 340 Life, inner, 109-10
dreams of, 336-37, 341, 342-43 Life principle, 76
Introduction/exposition, 43-44. See also Light, dreams of, 337, 348, 349-50
Dramatic structure of dreams Living room, dreams of, 205, 207
Introverts, 117 Locks, dreams of, 134, 174
Intruders, dreams of, 205, 207 Lodestar, dreams of, 282, 283-84
Intuition, 299-300 Love, 311-14
Invisibility, dreams of, 254, 255, 337, dreams of, 183
348, 348-50, 350 Lovemaking, 308-09
Invisible double, 92 dreams of, 31, 50, 134
Irritability, 34 Lysis, 43, 45-46. See also Dramatic
structure of dreams

Jacob's ladder, dreams of, 83-89, 84, 85

Jail, dreams of, 256, 257 Man
Japanese, dreams of, 291, 292 hanging, dreams of, 220, 221-23
Joan of Arc, dreams of, 183, 184, 186 inner. See Animus
Jokes, dreams as, 12 unknown, dreams of, 265, 265-68
\

358
Marriage Obscurity of dreams, 331-32
in crisis, 153 Obsessive fantasy, 201
freedom in, 314-15 Oedipus, 150-51
Masculine side of woman, 30-32, 221-22, Older persons, in dreams, 33, 35-36,
266. See also Animus 281, 345
Matriarchy, 156-57 Outer reality reflected in dreams, 48-49
Mattress, dreams of, 216, 217
Meaninglessness, feeling of, 34
Meaning, search for, 322-35, 326 Pain, dreams of, 291, 294-95
Menopause, 153 Parents, dreams of, 27, 50, 116, 125,
Metaphor, 24 158, 171, 174, 220, 258
Mid-life crisis, male, 153 Party, dreams of a, 125
Mirrors, dreams of, 198 Pattern of dreams, 35-36, 321-22
Mist, grey, dreams of, 254, 255 Penis, dreams of, 128, 134
Moat, dreams of, 788, 190, 191 Peripeteia, 43. See also Dramatic
Monroe, Marilyn, 201, 203 structure of dreams
dreams of, 198, 201, 203-04, 209, 211 Personal feeling, 295-99, 299-302
Moon, 172-73, 175 Personality and the shadow, 115-28
dreams of, 100, 165, 169, 171, 172-73, Pharaoh, dream by, 701
179-80 Planets, dreams of, 166, 169
Mother, dreams of, 27, 116, 158, 220, Play, dreams of, 783, 184
221, 223, 258, 260 Police chief, dreams of, 234, 236-38
Mother complex, 130, 137-45, 138, 140, Positive animus, 269, 282-83
148, 150-61, 157-62, 161 Possession, 240-42
Mother, devouring. See Devouring Predestination, 325-26
mother complex Predictions, 6, 329-31
Mother fixation, 135 Pregnancy, 187, 274-75
Motifs in dreams, 24, 49, 327 dreams during, 273-74
Mouth, bloody, dreams of, 291, 293-94 dreams of, 183, 184-85, 272, 274
Movie stars, 95, 204 Pride, dreams of, 183
Murder, dreams of, 131 Primitive cultures, 107-09
Myths, 141-42 Prison, dreams of, 256, 257
Projection
of anima/animus, 164-80, 311-14. See
Negative animus, 243-47, 268. See also also Anima/animus, Anima,
Animus Animus of devouring mother
Neuroses/neurotic symptoms, 15, 16, complex, 142-43
34, 72-73, 152 of the shadow, 127-28
Night, dreams of, 166, 167 of star/Self, 49, 71-74, 74-75, 75-77,
Nightmares, 5, 731, 132 86, 94-95, 95, 204
Numbers, dreams of, 101 Psyche, 105-06, 178
Nuts and bolts, dreams of, 336, 338, Psychopomp, 33, 278
340-41 Puberty, 153
Pursuit, dreams of, 122, 128

ope.
 ~

Pyramids, dreams of, 336-37, 342, 344, Sex, opposite (figures in dreams). See
345-47, 348, 349, 350 Anima, Animus
Shadow, the, 28-29, 114, 115, 120, 120-
21, 122, 123-24, 127-28, 260-61, 261
Rain, dreams of, 133 awareness of, 119, 120, 122, 124-26 .

Rape, dreams of, 206, 209-10, 247 and close friends, 115, 264
Rationality, 105, 109 denying, 122, 124, 263-64
Reality, outer, 48-49 emergence of, 119-20, 127
Red eyes, dreams of, 291, 293-94 and personality, 115-19, 115-28, 118
Regression, dreams of, 291, 294-95 role of, 119, 124
Relations, human, 143-45 Shadows, dreams of, 291, 292-93
Religion, 81, 107-08 Shingles, coloured, dreams of, 336, 346,
Religious dreams, 16-17 346, 348
Remembering dreams, 8, 10, 18 Shit, dreams of, 716, 117-18, 337, 348,
Resort, tourist, dreams of, 291, 292 348, 349, 349-50
Restlessness, 34 Shooting, dreams of, 64-65, 64-65,
Rifle, dreams of, 265, 265-67 265,272
Rites of passage, 153-57 Sickness, 12-13. See also Disease
Rituals, 154-57 Skin peeling, dreams of, 158
River, dreams of, 188, 189, 336, 344, 344 Sky, dreams of, 165-70, 166, 179
Rocket ship, dreams of, 776, 178, 179 Slapping, dreams of, 205, 207-08
Rocks, dreams of, 13, 276, 336, 339, 340 Snakes, dreams of, 62-63
Roommate, dreams of, 258 Solution of dream, 43, 45-46.
See also Lysis
Source of dreams, 5-9
Samurai, dreams of, 291, 294-95 Space ship, dreams of, 176, 178, 179
Sand, dreams of, 174, 175, 179, 220 Spirit of an age, 144-45
Saturn, dreams of, 166, 169, 179 Spouse, dreams of, 48-49, 183, 198
Sausage, dreams of, 31 Staircase, dreams of a, 220, 221
Saviour figure, 33 Star, 65-75, 87-88, 94-95, 172-73, 180,
Scapegoat, 125-27 283-84. See also Self
School, dreams of, 47, 116 Star of Bethlehem, 67
Screens, dreams of, 291, 292 Stars, dreams of, 67-68, 69-72, 100,
Screwdriver, dreams of, 134, 135 165-70, 166, 171, 172-73
Seberg, Jean, dreams of, 783 Stealing. dreams of, 48-49
Self-realization, 33-34 Stone, as symbol, 87, 89
Self, the, 28, 32-37, 74-77, 182, 215, 280, Storms, dreams of, 271
334, 338, 339, 342, 345, 347, 351. Structure of dreams, 39-55
See also Star Sub-conscious, the, 25. See also
Self-worth, 72-73 Unconscious, the
Setting of dreams, 42, 43, 44 Subjective consciousness, 81
Seven, as symbol, 103 Sun, dreams of, 700
Sex, 295-99 Sunset, as symbol, 88
dreams of, 31, 50, 134 Superiority complex, 72-73 ,

360
Symbolism, 24, 52, 57, 57-77, 58, 60, Unconscious, the, 12, 21-37, 69, 81, 89,
60-61, 61 91-94, 122, 132, 198, 245-47, 253,
of cave, 277 278, 340
of cows, 103 and the shadow, 115, 198
of crucifixion, 185 and symbols, 57, 60-61
of death/dying, 64-65, 64-65 Understanding dreams, 252
of dogs, 217 Uniqueness of dreams, 110, 323-25
of dragons, 148 Unknown man, dreams of an, 265, 265-68
of eagle, 1 117-18 Urine, dreams of, 224, 225-26
of falling, 62-63, 64
of gold, 280 Vampires,
of Jacob's ladder, 88-89 dreams of, 133, 135
of numbers, 103 myths of, 141-42
of river, 344 Village, dreams of, 158, 220, 221
of the number seven, 103 Violence. See Attacks, Fighting, Murder,
of the Star of Bethlehem, 67 Shooting
of stars, 65-72, 87-88, 180 Voice, male, dreams of, 282, 282
of stones, 87, 89 Vomiting, dreams of, 234, 244
of sunset, 88
of urine, 225-26 Waitress, dreams of, 205-06, 208, 209
of water, 225 Walking, dreams of, 166, 170
of wheat, 99 Walled city, square in, dreams of, 336,
of young boys, 209 338, 338-39
Warnings in dreams, 6, 93-94, 117-18
Washroom, dreams of. See Bathroom
Tea drinking, dreams of, 254, 255 Water
Teeth, dreams of, 134 dreams of, 50
Telephone, dreams of, 234 as symbol, 225
Theatre, dreams of, 224 Waves, dreams of, 271
Throat, dreams of, 216, 219 Weightless woman, dreams of, 259, 261
Thumbs, 177 Well, dreams of, 188
Tiger, dreams of, 121 Wet dreams, 149
Tourist resort, dreams of, 291, 292 Wheat, as symbol, 99
Transformations, dreams of, 158, 159-61 Wife
Translating a language, dreams of, 282, 283 dreams of, 48-49, 149, 183, 184-86
Trees, dreams of, 328, 328 inner, 184. See also Anima
Tribes, primitive, 107-09 Window, dreams of, 28, 149, 328, 328
Wisdom, 6, 7, 35
Wish fulfilment, 5
Unconscious, the collective, 110 Women
Unconscious, the devouring, 15, 16 dreams of, 188, 190, 198, 199
Unconscious solution of dreams, 45-46 and father figure, 197, 202-04
foreign, dreams of, 205, 207
myths about, 142

361
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