Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 7: Two Essays in Analytical Psychology by Jung C. G. Hull R. F.C. Adler Gerhard

Author:Jung, C. G., Hull, R. F.C., Adler, Gerhard [Jung, C. G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 1928-02-24T05:00:00+00:00

III

THE TECHNIQUE OF DIFFERENTIATION BETWEEN THE EGO AND THE FIGURES OF THE UNCONSCIOUS

[341] I owe it to the reader to give him a detailed example of the specific activity of animus and anima. Unfortunately this material is so enormous and demands so much explanation of symbols that I cannot include such an account within the compass of this essay. I have, however, published some of these products with all their symbolical associations in a separate work,1 and to this I must refer the reader. In that book I said nothing about the animus, because at that time this function was still unknown to me. Nevertheless, if I advise a woman patient to associate her unconscious contents, she will always produce the same kind of fantasy. The masculine hero figure who almost unfailingly appears is the animus, and the succession of fantasy-experiences demonstrates the gradual transformation and dissolution of the autonomous complex.

[342] This transformation is the aim of the analysis of the unconscious. If there is no transformation, it means that the determining influence of the unconscious is unabated, and that it will in some cases persist in maintaining neurotic symptoms in spite of all our analysis and all our understanding. Alternatively, a compulsive transference will take hold, which is just as bad as a neurosis. Obviously in such cases no amount of suggestion, good will, and purely reductive understanding has helped to break the power of the unconscious. This is not to say—once again I would like to emphasize this point very clearly—that all psychotherapeutic methods are, by and large, useless. I merely want to stress the fact that there are not a few cases where the doctor has to make up his mind to deal fundamentally with the unconscious, to come to a real settlement with it. This is of course something very different from interpretation. In the latter case it is taken for granted that the doctor knows beforehand, so as to be able to interpret. But in the case of a real settlement it is not a question of interpretation: it is a question of releasing unconscious processes and letting them come into the conscious mind in the form of fantasies. We can try our hand at interpreting these fantasies if we like. In many cases it may be quite important for the patient to have some idea of the meaning of the fantasies produced. But it is of vital importance that he should experience them to the full and, in so far as intellectual understanding belongs to the totality of experience, also understand them. Yet I would not give priority to understanding. Naturally the doctor must be able to assist the patient in his understanding, but, since he will not and indeed cannot understand everything, the doctor should assiduously guard against clever feats of interpretation. For the important thing is not to interpret and understand the fantasies, but primarily to experience them. Alfred Kubin has given a very good description of the unconscious in his book Die andere Seite; that is, he has described what he, as an artist, experienced of the unconscious.

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