The Mind and I by James Joyce

Author:James Joyce
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-04-01T16:00:00+00:00

Be Careful

But a word of caution. If the analysis only accomplishes the unleashing of repressed creative needs and talents, then the analysis has failed. Being creative is important for emotional health but there’s much more repressed than creativity. Mostly we repress the id and libido stuff—the nasty, embarrassing stuff—the stuff we all share on the primitive plane. If this isn’t dealt with, and the therapy concentrates only on the spiritual and creative side of the patient, all the analyst has done is bring into being a creative neurotic. This is not a goal of therapy.

I had a dream that I was sure was Jungian in that it seemed to be prophetic, having nothing to do with repressed id and libido material. Barbara’s only sibling, Cheryl, and her husband, Jim, lived on their sailboat at Phuket, Thailand. Although I have known them for twenty-seven years they’d never shown up as symbols in my dreams. On the night of December 26, 2004, I dreamed that Jim and Cheryl were lost at sea.

When we turned on the TV in the morning we saw, to our horror, that a gigantic tidal wave, a “tsunami,” had hit Phuket. Hundreds of people were already reported dead and thousands were missing.

Barbara’s mom was visiting us for the holidays and as the awful day progressed, with reports of death and devastation increasing, they agonized over the possibility, probability, that Jim and Cheryl were dead. I, of course, knew they were. The chances were terribly slim that I would dream about them, after twenty-seven years of not doing so, on the same night a rare tsunami hit their location. There was no doubt in my mind they were lost. What else could they be symbolizing in my unconscious? But I kept my mouth shut just in case.

For twelve hours we watched in agony as the news got worse and worse. We were well aware they often anchored their boat just a few hundred yards off shore. From the television coverage we knew they could not possibly have survived. (Eventually the count reached 200,000 killed throughout Asia.)

About 9 p.m. our phone rang. “Hi, it’s Cheryl! We’re fine! We were inland when the tsunami hit!”

So dreams that seem to be, without doubt, Jungian and prophetic may not be. The only other possible meaning to this dream, then, was that it came from my id. I then remembered, upon waking, having the fleeting thought that if Cheryl was dead Barbara would be the sole heir, meaning twice as much money for us. So it was, after all, a wish fulfilling, greedy dream of the Freudian type, reinforcing, once more, that we human beings are self-centered two-year-olds in our ids.

Jungian psychology is the discipline of choice for many in the intellectual and academic community. Jung’s emphasis was on our higher nature encompassing creativity and spirituality, and his research and findings were wonderful additions to the body of knowledge. But we must also deal with our basic needs and desires which are most unpleasant and are at the core of emotional illness.

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