Jung’s Model of the Psyche

From John Betts a Canadian Jungian Analyst

Listen to Dr. Betts podcast at the link above if you want a great primer on Jung. I can't recommend it enough.

Psyche is the totality of all psychic processes conscious and unconscious. Conscious plus unconscious plus body equals psyche. Jung does not divide the mind and body. We may experience the psyche consciously (like an idea), unconsciously (like a dream) or somatically (in the body like anxiety over an upcoming exam).

The unconscious is made of all of our memories whether we can recall them or not, all material not available to the conscious, and all repressed material.

Jung expressed the unconscious negatively in that the unconscious is all that is not in conscious.

In an opographical diagram, Jung’s model contains the conscious, the personal unconscious, the collective unconscious and the body.

Part I The first layer is the conscious

The structure of the conscious is the ego which has five functions.

1. Stability of personality: My personality remains reasonably stable over time. It would be difficult to relate to others if our personality changes frequently. Likewise it would be very difficult if our friends and family’s personality changed frequently. It would be very difficult to relate to them.
2. Stability of identity over time: Self awareness and self identity is stable over time. We know who we are, what we like and dislike, and what we stand for. When you look in the mirror at night you know you will still be yourself in the morning. Your identity did not change while you were asleep. Movies show us that a lack of stability of identity is deeply troubling. In the Bourne Identity, Jason Bourne cannot remember who he is and what he stands for after a trauma. He spends the rest of the movie working this out.
3. Cognition: The ability to process information, problem solve and store memory. If you see a friend, you remember who they are, what they like and dislike and what bothers them. You remember their shared experiences. Severe depression is a disorder that limits our ability to think through issues, to concentrate, and remember is impacted so we feel isolated.
4. Executive function: The ability to deal with everyday life and the demands of the world. For example, we know that we should put toothpaste on the toothbrush before we brush our teeth not after. We do thousands of these tasks daily. Aging friends or family who sink into dimensia show how important this function this is. They get lost in their own house and have trouble getting dressed.
5. Reality Testing: The line between conscious and unconscious is more blurry than we would believe. Ego performs reality testing to help us with. It is the ability to expect and obey the laws of physics. For example we know to open the car door before we get out of the car. We take the elevator to the ground floor of a building not just fly or jump. We need this function to get through the day. People who suffer from psychotic disorder lose this ability. They think they can fly from the fifteenth floor.

The second layer of Jung’s model of is the personal unconscious.

The part of the unconscious we can mostly access. It is unique to the individual. It structure is made of complexes. A complex is clusters of feeling turned associations around a common theme.

The Money Complex Example

We all have experiences of money. Starting from an early age when we are given some coins as a gift. We don’t understand what these coins are, but we know they are important from the way adults talk about money. We hear phrases like “Don’t spend it all in one place”, and “Money doesn’t grow on trees”. As we get older we realize we can purchase things with money. We go to the store and buy candy and begin to understand money has powerful significance. We may hear parents argue about money. We want something only to be told it’s too expensive. Later we start to earn money and realize a small sum of money requires a lot of hard work. We hear about banks, interest, and taxes and start to understand money is central to this world. As we start to work and pay bills perhaps we run out of money.

Each of these experiences has a strong feeling attached. These feelings turned association cluster together to create a complex. The same thing can happen with the father complex, mother complex, competence and many others. We all have many complexes.

So what? Well when we are triggered by a specific complex that lives in our personal unconscious can come up into consciousness and make us behave contrary to our everyday personality. One of the functions of ego is stability of personality over time. When we complex out, the ego takes a beating from the complex and suffers reduced ability to operate appropriately. The complex takes over for a short time. When this happens, others may say we behaved in a strange way. What they are saying is our normal personality behavior dropped off the radar for a time. Another personality popped up in its place. Nobody really likes that new person.

A complex when triggered impacts the ego’s functioning. Jung - “Everyone knows people have complexes. What is more important is complexes have people.” Here he is talking about archetypes.

The Third Layer is the Collective Unconscious

We cannot experience the collective unconscious directly like we experience complexes as it is deeply unconscious.

This layer is common to all of humanity. Some may doubt this due to lack of evidence. Jung provided evidence. Since his time there is little doubt the psyche has symbol producing capacity. For example, almost all humans are born with five fingers. Some may not due to genetic defect or problematic pregnancy, generally all do have five fingers. We don’t ever question this part of being human as it is self evident. The collective conscious is also self-evident.

Humans apart from being tool users, are also symbol makers and story-tellers. We create symbols daily and are surrounded by a symbol laden world. Advertising symbols is one example, objects in our world are symbols. Specifically, they are symbolic images or archetypal images. Structures in the collective unconscious are archetypes.

“Archetypes are the inherited part of the psyche. Structuring patterns of psychological performance linked to instinct. A hypothetical entity irrepresentable in itself and evident only through its manifestations.

An archetype is a symbol producing structure.

“Inherited part of the psyche” It is common to all humans. It is inherited like having five fingers on your left hand.

“Structuring patterns of psychological performance linked to instinct” Archetype creates or structures patterns or symbols ways of seeing or experiencing this is linked to instinct.

“Hypothetical Entity” A theoretical structure it does not exist at an anatomical level in the psyche. Example of an x-ray. We go to the x-ray room, put on a gown and the protective equipment and sit in a chair. Then we hear a click. We don’t see anything or perceive anything except a click. Later we see a dark film with a ghostly outline of our body. Something did happen but we experience it as the dark x-ray file.

Another example: a recipe.

You don’t eat a recipe but an instance of the recipe that has been created. This is much like the relationship between the archetype and the archetypal image.

There are many archetypes in the collective unconscious. We experience them as symbols of our world. We we dream, we recall these archetypal images or symbols.

Final Layer: The Body

There is no distinction between the mind and body in analytical psychology. The body expresses the workings of the psyche through a process called somatization. To make physical that which is psychological. We all experience this when we are in distress or waking from a nightmare.

The process can also work in reverse. Something may happen to the body that results in the psyche having to deal with it such as slipping and falling or a car accident.

Some patients report the pain of physical trauma is re-experienced when recalling the trauma in an analytical session.

Part II Jung’s Model of the Psyche

Key Topics

• Compensation is a critical aspect of the working of the psyche (psychodynamics).
• The psychodynamic result of a one-sided ego stance.
• The psyche is a self regulating system. This is called teleology. The central organizing archetype called the Self. The relationship between the ego and the Self is called the ego-Self axis.
• The concept of psychic energy.

Key book: Andrew Samuel’s Critical Dictionary of Analytics Psychology.

We will try to develop the model from part one in a way that explains how it works.

Compensation

Samuels

“Jung asserted that he found an empirically demonstrative compensatory function operative in psychological processes. This corresponds to the self-regulatory functions of the organism observable in the physiological sphere. Compensation means balancing, adjusting, supplementing. He regarded the compensatory activity of the unconscious as balancing any tendency toward one-sidedness on the part of consciousness.”

Compensation also ties into the one-sidedness of consciousness. The psyche is in a constant dynamic state, but a state where we go far beyond simple homeostasis. All aspects of the psyche are in a dynamic relationship with each other. It is like the traffic pattern in a city. We know that if something happens far down a busy highway, close to our destination, that it impacts our commute long before we get to that event. If a truck stalls on the highway, close to a major onramp, we notice traffic jams occur when we leave each day for our commute. The psyche as a system is constantly balancing itself adjusting to the demands of the inner and outer worlds. The ego tends to get one-sided and is compensated for by the unconscious. Or, the unconscious state is compensated for by the body.

This means the system of the psyche has a series of fundamental compensatory mechanisms. The first is between the ego and the unconscious. The one-sided stance the ego takes results in a compensatory response from the unconscious (often in dreams). We can see the results in dreams and the somatic response of the body to psychological issues. The beliefs and attitudes we hold in the conscious results in the body trying to balance this out using compensation.

Another mechanism is between the body and the unconscious. When I feel anxious and this stirs up unconscious content, the body expresses this distress through somatic responses. They body expresses the unconscious issues in a compensatory fashion.

Another compensatory mechanism is between the whole psyche and the environment. If the environment is threatening, In a threatening situation, say a car accident, the whole psyche responds with anxiety in the ego (I am aware I am anxious). This triggers material in the unconscious which reminds me of previous scary incidents I’ve been through and results in somatic reactions.

This process of compensation continues unabated throughout our day and night.

The one-sidedness tendency of consciousness results in the unconscious compensating for this one-sidedness.

Example: analysts often meet patients who have been successful in their careers and have made a good deal of money, but in analysis they are depressed, find their work meaningless, see no joy in their relationships, and don’t see a way out of the situation. They are described as having a mid-life crisis. These experiences often occur in mid-life (40s and 50s). They have become too one-sided in their work, family and lives. They have become a successful money-generating doctor, lawyer or businessperson. In the outside world of status and power they appear to have it all. Yet, their inner world they find themselves in poverty. They experience severe depression, somatic complaints, loss of hope, lower productivity and relationship problems - all the classic symptoms of depression. Why would someone so successful be struck with such suffering? The answer lies in the one-sided position of the conscious and the compensatory nature of the psyche. In pursuing career success and wealth, they have ignored the inner world of the psyche. These patients don’t recall their dreams, they seldom relax. They don’t play. They spend no time in the symbolic worlds of art and literature and have a dismal time with their family. They have become too one-sided. Their ego stance is that of success at all costs. The compensatory process is trying to use depression as a mechanism to alert the ego of the need for change.

This can be stated as: the psyche in its wisdom, knows that the one-sided way of living cannot continue as a person is living a very restricted life.

What does it mean that the psyche is trying to adjust the ego stance? The classic mid-life crisis person suffering depression that all layers of the psyche are impacted. The ego’s function is impacted in that the person has a harder time concentrating, is forgetful, is less productive and is making mistakes. The personal unconscious is impacted in that a series of complexes are constellated that drive the person to more work, longer hours and less time to themselves and this or her family. Complexes such as achievement or the negative father come to bear and make the person feel outside of his usual self.

Finally, the collective unconscious is involved by bringing powerful symbols to consciousness that often scare the living hell out of the person. The body also expresses the distress in ways we cannot ignore.

The one-sided stance of the ego thus produces a necessary but painful response from the unconscious that seeps through to all layers of the psyche. This is an example of the process of compensation.

The psyche creates the depression to force an adjustment. Compensation goes far beyond the simple process of homeostasis. Jung dealt with these ideas through the process called teleology.

Teleology

Teleology: a process that is directed towards ends rather than causes. Jung diverges from the psychoanalytic tradition here. In classical psychoanalysis experiences are reduced to earlier events. The reductive approach of Freud points to earlier childhood issues in order to explain present day suffering is an example of a reductive or causative perspective. Jung’s teleological perspective looks at the current situation in terms of the following idea:

What is this current process trying to lead you towards? If someone is suffering from anxiety or depression Jung’s questions would be not only “How did you come to be at this point in your life”? (reductive) , but also “What is this place your in right now leading you towards?” Jung didn’t reject the reductive approach in fact insisted it needed to be addressed first, but then go a step further - what is the teleological purpose of the current situation? What are you being led towards? Where will you end up if you work this piece out? We can understand there is some system within the psyche that directs what happens and in certain situations creates psychological suffering in order to ameliorate deeper psychic suffering. This whole process is directed toward an end position. This is related to the central organizing archetype called the Self.

The Self

Archetypes are symbol producing aspects of the collective unconscious. We cannot see an archetype only the image it produces (an instance). The central archetype is the Self. It is the organizing archetype that regulates all the other archetypes and the rest of the psyche. The goal of this regulatory process is for the individual to confront the content of the unconscious and engage in the process of individuation. All that we are doing is regulated by the self. The aim of life or the teleological goal of life is union with the Self.

Samuels definition of the Self

“An archetypal image of man’s fullest potential and the unity of the personality as a whole. The Self as a unifying principle within the human psyche occupies the central position of authority in relation to psychological life and therefore the destiny of the individual. At times Jung speaks of the Self as initiatory of psychic life. At other times he refers to its realization as the goal.”

The wisdom of the self: the Self is continually altering the psychodynamics of the psyche to help toward the goal of realization of the Self. This is the inner wisdom of the psyche.

This process makes better sense when we consider it psychodynamically.

The Ego/Self Axis

1972 Book by Edinger “Ego and Archetype” deals with this topic. We begin life with a body and the Self. This is all we have until the ego is developed. A small ego emerges from the Self and becomes an entity in the psyche. During the first half of life the ego receives a lot of attention making it very powerful.

All parts of the psyche are in dynamic relation to each other. The ego in the first half of life becomes dominant and rules over all. At midlife the situation has gone too far and the ego becomes one-sided so something has to give.

The example of the successful professional who is struck by depression at midlife is a classic example of ego-Self separation. The ego is not dealing with the content of the unconscious and a poverty now exists. The poverty is a lack of connection with the inner symbolic riches of the unconscious.

The second half of life deals with making this reunification possible. The ego has to become more related to the Self and the rest of the psyche so if all goes well, the line between the ego and the Self shortens. The ego accepts the need to relate to the rest of the psyche that it had denied for most of the first half of life.

The first half of life involves ego-Self separation while the second half involves ego-Self re-unification. The ego and the Self need each other as they are in relationship. In some cases they become strained in their relationship but overall due to the efforts of the Self result in a healthier personality. Jung puts it this way: “The ego stands to the self as to the moved to the mover.”

Putting these ideas together compensation: the one-sidedness of the ego, the Self, teleology and the ego-Self axis.

As we develop our ego gains ascendency in the psyche. Consciousness become the be all and end all in our opinion. This is the result of us pushing ourselves harder and harder in the outside or ego based world to achieve and accumulate more and become more powerful. All the while the Self is trying to organize the rest of the psyche to deal with this situation through compensation. The more we strive, the more our world is based in the external. The further and further we find ourselves from the inner riches of the psyche. The ego-Self axis is stretched to the point that the ego feels very little connectedness with the psyche. Then the Self which has a teleological purpose strives to alter this one sidedness and brings us into contact with some often unpleasant feelings largely centered around the utter meaningless of our otherwise successful lives. This compensation may result in a affective disorder such as depression or anxiety around midlife. We suddenly thrust into a crippling depression and cannot understand why because all is well on the outside. The Self then brings us into greater contact with the rest of the psyche through powerful thoughts, unconscious symbols and somatic complaints.

If we interpret these experiences correctly, and heed the call of the psyche, the ego-Self axis retreats and the ego comes into greater contact with the symbolic inner world. It is almost as though the ego became too complacent or too powerful and forgot its origins. As the ego lessens this one-sided position, and meets the unconscious in a healthy way, the whole psyche shifts and if all goes well, we go through the depression and gain the meaning that it contains.

What was the depression all about? Depression and anxiety at midlife are examples of how the psyche tries to self-regulate and the Self is at the root of this experience. When we are depressed we have cognitive difficulties in that we can’t concentrate or recall so that our occupation becomes at risk. We have sleep difficulties and feel fatigued, don’t want to engage in social activities or have fun. We just want to isolate ourselves in a dark room, unplug the phone, switch off the TV and stare at the wall. All our normal distractions are dropped. We find ourselves in this dark space alone, miserable and desperately unhappy.

So we now ask, what is the depression trying to lead us from and where does it want us to go? The depression becomes teleological or purposeful in function forcing us to remove ourselves from the everyday, isolate and to think about what ails us? As we sit in that dark room and stare at the wall, we often think thoughts of the meaninglessness of our lives. We hear ourselves say “What’s the point of all this?” How can I have achieved so much yet be so unhappy? All these questions lead us to some conclusions. I’m living a one-sided life, feel disconnected from humanity, and more importantly from myself. I know there is something better, a way to be that’s less painful. There is a more balanced life. In these answers, we have the key. The depression is forcing us to reexamine our lives, and take steps to change. The change is to work with the psyche and access the inner riches of the unconscious. Once people start making these changes they find the depression starts to subside. The depression is functional and purposive - it is leading us away from a state of psychic poverty to a more balanced life.

The same system can be applied to a state of anxiety. There can be a great danger in eliminating the symptoms of depression without asking what is at its core. You can antidepressants and feel better but this would just be symptomatic. You may feel the inner restlessness that started the depression in the first place. Staying in the depression and working through it can bring immense relief (assuming the depression is not life-threatening).

Psychic Energy

Psychic Energy or the libido can be thought of the energy involved in the psychodynamics of the psyche. We can imagine that all the processes in the psyche need energy to move. That energy is psychic energy.

Jung:

“An energy value which is able to communicate itself to any field of activity whatsoever be it power, hunger, hatred, sexuality or religion without it every being itself a specific instinct. A kind of neutral energy which is responsible for the formation of such symbols such as light, fire, sun and the like.”

Jung used the words libido and psychic energy interchangeably. This can be confusing but for now realize we need psychic energy for the psyche to do its work.

Principles of psychic energy:

Neutral, indestructible, follows a gradient, has an energetic amount or value, has a potential, can be blocked or channeled, obeys the laws of conservation and thermodynamics. Involves causality and finality, originates in the unconscious, and can progress and regress.

Neutral: it is not exclusively sexual as Freud suggested. It’s simply the gas needed in the psyche.

Indestructible: it cannot be destroyed only transformed into another state in the psyche. Does this mean we have a finite amount of psychic energy? No although Jung originally thought so.

Follows a gradient: It moves from a position of higher intensity to lower intensity.

Has an energetic amount or value: We can theoretically imagine it has a value to it. When an issue in the psyche has a very strong load or value to it, the psychic energy build up results in the need to move to a lower level.

It has a potential, and can be blocked or channelled: If we block psychic energy, its builds up and seeks an outlet in other areas. Simple example is someone feeling a great deal of anxiety. A great deal of energy builds up - the psyche wants the person to run away from the scary situation but instead the person becomes aggressive. The blocked energy is channeled into aggression.

Obeys the laws of conservation and thermodynamics: Based on the laws of thermodynamics in physics

Involves causality and finality: All psychic is directed toward a particular endpoint (teleology) and is implicated in the causes of the situation the psyche finds itself in.

Regression is a build up of psychic energy.

Projection, Shadow, Anima/Animus

The Shadow

The shadow represents the negative or unpleasant side of our psyche while the anima/animus side represents the contrasexual side.

Why are these important? The shadow is often the early archetype we encounter early on in analysis. It is the repository of all we find unpleasant or shameful in ourselves and we try to hide from others. Until we have come to terms with the shadow, we are at great risk of projecting the shadow onto others or to act the shadow out and do mean and nasty things to the people around us. This is why we have to meet the shadow and to understand it well.

Anima or Animus

This is the feminine side of a man and the masculine side of a woman. These are important as they serve as the fundamental basis for our choice of partners in the outer world. They also serve as links between consciousness ( the outer world) and the inner world of the unconscious.

Jung “The archetypes most clearly characterized from the empirical point of view are those that have the most frequent and most disturbing influence upon the ego. These are the shadow, the anima and the animus. The most accessible of these and the easiest to experience is the shadow. For its nature can in large measure be inferred from the content of the personal unconscious.” - Collected Works Part IX

Projection

The term projection is derived from classical psychoanalysis (Freud) and is regarded as a primitive ego defense mechanism.

An operation whereby qualities, feelings, wishes or even objects which the subject refuses to recognize or rejects in himself are expelled from the self and located in the another person or thing.

Jung

“Projection means the expulsion of subjective content into an object. It is the opposite of introjection in that it is a process of dissimulation in which a subject of content becomes alienated from the subject and is so to speak embodied in the object.”

Both definitions are structured in a similar way. Projection is a process or an operation in which subjective content such as qualities, feelings, wishes or even objects which an individual cannot recognize in him or herself are expelled and then located in another person or thing.

A key term: whatever is rejected or expelled is unconscious. We don’t know we are doing this and we seldom know what it is that is being projected. Projection is a very natural process in the psyche. We project all the time especially when dealing with other people.

Do you remember meeting someone for the first time and they felt familiar as though you knew them from before? As your conversation went on, you started to see that they spoke or behaved just like someone you already know say a sibling or an acquaintance. Then you began to realize that you expected them to hold certain attitudes or beliefs. Or you found yourself distancing yourself from the other person because you already know they held in terms of beliefs and you don’t like these beliefs. You found some of their attitudes unattractive. This was projection. Very little of the real information about this new person was actually present in this interaction as most of it came from within you.

An excellent summary of our definition is offered by Andrew Samuels: “Jung’s approach to projection builds upon a psychoanalytical base. Projection may be seen as normal or pathological and as a defense against anxiety. Difficult emotions and unacceptable parts of the personality may be located in a person or object external to the subject. The problematic content is thereby controlled and the individual feels a release and a sense of well being. In analytical psychology, stress has also been lain upon projection as the means by which the contents of the inner world are made available to ego consciousness. The assumption is that an encounter between the ego and such unconscious contents is of value. The external world of persons and things serves the internal world by provided the raw material to be activated by projection. This can be seen most clearly when one what is projected is also representative of a part of the psyche. Anima and animus projections are carried by real men and women. Without the carrier there would be no meeting. Similarly, the shadow is frequently encountered in projection. By definition the shadow is the repository of what is unacceptable to consciousness. It is therefore ripe for projection. For anything of value to be gained though it is necessary for some reintegration or recollection of that which is projected to take place. “

There a definite stages that we engage in when we project. When we become aware of the discrepancy between the real person and the projections we make onto that real person, we are starting to withdraw our projections. This means that we are seeing the person for whom he or she really is and not using them as a movie theater screen to project our movies onto.

This is a way to understand projection. That of a movie screen. It is almost as if when we meet someone and start to project we are treating them like a movie screen a blank canvas that we then fill with images from a movie that the unconscious generates about this person. Although none of the projections are based on hard core facts, the are psychically real.

The Shadow

The very name gives us a key to what we are dealing with: something in the shadows, something not quite in the light; something dark.

Jung

“A closer examination of the dark characteristics, that is the inferiorities constituting the shadow, reveals that they have an emotional nature, a kind of autonomy and accordingly and a obsessive or better possessive quality.” Collected Works IX II

The shadow is highly emotionally loaded with a life of its own at times. We know this because of what happens when we begin to project the shadow. It feels as though it takes us over for a little while.

Try this exercise: Think of someone the same gender as you are. Someone who you really dislike. Someone who’s habits and behaviors are quite disgusting to you. Someone who really irritates you with their behavior. List the qualities that they have that you dislike:

• Selfish
• Lacks compassion
• Judgmental
• Mean
• Rejects -Hate for the other
• Lacks a moral compass
• Vindictive

This person is a real, living walking example of your shadow. The qualities that you dislike about them so much are your own qualities: the qualities of your shadow. You have met your shadow and it is you. Feeling a little uncomfortable right now? You and I both know that you keep these qualities to yourself, very well hidden because if people knew about your shadow side, they would never want to be around you.

Jung

“Though the shadow is a motif that is well known to mythology, as anima and animus, it represents first and foremost the personal unconscious and its contents can therefore be made conscious without too much difficulty. In this it differs from anima and animus for as the shadow can be seen and recognized fairly easily, the anima and the animus are much farther away from consciousness. In normal circumstances are seldom if ever realized. With a little self-criticism, one can see through the shadow so far as its nature is personal. But, when it appears as an archetype, one encounters the same difficulties as with the anima and animus. In other words, it is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to recognize that relatively evil side of his nature but it is a rare and shattering experience to gaze into the face of absolute evil.“

• Collective Works XI II

We can think of the shadow as a complex. Recall that complexes are the structures we find within the personal unconscious. We can imagine the complex to have three layers almost like an onion.

The outer layer is the personal shadow. The middle layer is the cultural shadow, the core or inner part is the archetype of the shadow. Remember complexes belong to the personal unconscious and archetypes belong to the collective unconscious. So this core of the complex contains an archetype that is connected to the archetype in the collective unconscious.

The first layer of the shadow is built up with all of experiences with the darker part of life. As an infant we get early messages from our parents certain behaviors are bad or naughty. We try to stop these behaviors but they all wind up adding to this first layer of the shadow complex in the form of the personal shadow. So this layer is composed of all the nasty or shameful parts of yourself that you prefer no one else knows about. Your spitefulness, your bigotry, your racism, your cruelty, etc…

Jung

The shadow “ is the thing the person has no wish to be.”

• Collected Works XVI

The next layer is the cultural shadow. Think of how the society you grew up in has a dark side. A side in which people are discriminated against, persecuted. Your cultural shadow is the manner in which Native Americans have been stripped of their lands, their language, and their culture. Another cultural shadow in the wholesale degradation of the natural world (clear cutting of the forests for example). All societies have a dark side.

The inner layer is the shadow archetype. We know this archetype well as we have seen the archetypal image that derives from it in a variety of places. For example, people raised in the Christian religion know that the devil is the embodiment of the archetypal shadow. We often tend to think of historical figures as being the embodiment of the archetypal shadow: people such as Hitler or Stalin. If we consider what these individuals did in their time, we can understand they enacted something beyond simple bigotry; something far more powerful than simple discrimination. They enacted archetypal forces of the shadow. The holocaust is a horrific example of just how terrifying the archetypal shadow can be. What is very important in our understanding of the shadow is how well we actually know it. Jung was clear that we could never eliminate the shadow but only come to terms with it. There is a very good reason why we cannot eliminate the shadow. At the core of the shadow complex is an archetype. The archetype of the shadow and we are not able to alter our archetypes, only to become more conscious of their impact on the rest of the psyche. This means that we know what our shadow qualities are, cringe whenever we think about these qualities but endeavor not to enact them on others. As Luke Skywalker finds in Star Wars, the evil we see around us is within us too. This means that if we are conscious of our shadow, we are also far less prone to project the shadow onto others, and even better, we have an less tendency to enact the shadow.

The Anima and the Animus

Samuels

“The inner figure of woman held by a man and the figure of man at work in a woman’s psyche”

The anima exists in a man and the animus in a woman. Don’t make the common mistake we all do when we begin Jungian Psychology in thinking they both exist in a man or a woman. They are archetypal images and they are not available immediately to consciousness. Both are of vital importance to the psyche’s functioning but because they are unconscious, they can also be projected.

Samuels

“They act as a psychopomp or guides of soul and they can become necessary links with creative possibilities and instruments of individuation. Because of their archetypal connections anima and animus have been represented in many collective forms and figures. As Aphrodite, Athena, Helen of Troy, Mary, Sapientia, and Beatrice, or as Hermes, Apollo, Hercules, Alexander the Great or Romeo. In projection they are attract attention and emotional fervor as public figures but also as friends, lovers, commonplace and ordinary wives and husbands. We meet them as consorts in our dreams. As personified components of psyche they connect and involve us with life. ”

The idea of personification is really important to our model. We tend to project a sense of otherness in other words as a man I project the personification of the anima onto women. Because this personification is quite other to me, it is not me in its form. So as a man the otherness is projected as female. For a woman this otherness is projected as male. In so doing, the anima and animus act as mediators between the ego and consciousness and the unconscious. These two archetypes are contentious issues in our day. When Jung published his ideas, being a man of his time he wrote about these two archetypes in a very stereotyped fashion. And it is this manner of writing that has led to the controversy. Whether you agree with the constructs or not, start with beginning to understand them in terms of the psychodynamics of the psyche. Once you consider yourself fluent in their use, then go a little further and try to find alternative ways to represent otherness in the psyche. If you are interested in this material, great book “Jung, a feminist revision”.

One of the core issues in the anima and the animus is that one can be gripped by these powerful images and this may cause an alteration in your behavior.

Samuels

“Possession by either anima or animus transforms a personality in such a way as to give prominence to those traits which are seen as being psychologically characteristic of the opposite sex. Either way a person loses individuality first of all and then in either case both charm and values. In a man he becomes dominated by anima and eros principles with connotations of restlessness, promiscuity, moodiness, sentimentality, whatever could be described as unconstrained emotionality. A woman subject to the authority of the animus and logos is managerial, obstinate, ruthless and domineering. Both become one-sided. He is seduced by inferior people and forms meaningless attachments. She being taken in by second rate thinking, marches forward under the banner of unrelated convictions.“

You can see just from this very loaded language that these constructs are hot topics in analytical psychology. We also note from the above quote what would happen to us if we are dominated by the anima or the animus.

Let’s try a quick experiment:

Think of your ideal partner. So for a straight male imagine the ideal woman. What would she look like? How tall is she? What does her body, her hair and her skin look like? How does she behave? What does she do for a living? How is she in bed? How does she comfort you when you are having a bad day? Is she strong and dominant or more submissive? Does she write poetry or paint? Is she good enough to be the mother of your children? Now that you have this ideal woman in your mind, realize that you have just personified aspects of your anima.

For a straight woman imagine the ideal man. Do the same thing. What does he look like? How tall is he? What does his body, skin and hair look like? Is he strong or is he weak? Does he protect you or lead the way? Does he initiate activities? Is he nurturing and communicative or silent and deep? How is he in bed? What does he do when you feel upset or scared after a hard day at work? This ideal male is a personification of the animus.

Jung: Collective Work XI under definitions.

The Persona

Samuels

The term derived from the latin word for the mask actors wore in classical times. Hence, persona refers to the mask or face a person puts on to confront the world. Persona can refer to gender identity, or a stage of development such as adolescence, a social status, a job or profession. Over a lifetime many personas will be worn and several may be combined at any one moment.

What does this mean for you and I? We all have at least one persona. More likely, we have far more than that. Often our person is based on something we do or are expected to do in society such as being an employee, or lawyer or a supporter of a football team. When we are in this role, we tend to act in ways that are consistent with how others are expected to view us. As the lawyer, we may always try to be arrodite or wise. As a football team supporter, we wear particular team colors, assemble with other supporters and are often loud in public. All the time we are acting out a persona. I find it useful to pay attention to not only what we are doing in terms of our behaviour, but also what clothes we wear, how we speak and especially what we actually say and think. Very important here is to note that we have to have a persona. Without it, we are naked in the world and have nothing between us and (the ego) and the external world (the unconscious). We have nothing to hide behind, no clear sense of how to act, or what to wear or what to say. So you can see you have to have a persona.

Those poor souls who have weak personas suffer tremendously in the world because they don’t know who to be in any particular moment and feel that people can see right through them and that they have no defenses. I often think of persona as a form of defense against the world. Remember when we were small, how we didn’t really care what the grown ups thought of us. We just wanted to play and to have some fun. We had very basic personas and these personas were not consciously chosen. They just developed out of the psyche. We were known as a serious little child or a very boisterous little girl. But at the end of the day, we really didn’t care so long as we could have fun and to play. What makes small children so endearing to us is not only their ability to move between reality and play (or the conscious and the unconscious worlds) but also how they don’t have strong personas so we are able to see the real child at all times.

This is so different when we are adults as we learn to persona up and not let our guard down. As we grew older and went to school at around five or six, we suddenly realized that certain kids like certain behaviours and we started to act out these behaviors. Here is where we consciously began to adjust our personas and started to realize that we can have more than one. We can have a persona for inside the classroom, one for recess, and one for home. As we progress through school we really started to work on our personas. Because we know that this is the way to ensure our friendships and connections with other kids at school. Then puberty sets in and the young adolescent finds themselves in quite a pickle because now we aren’t really sure which personas really work. We then go to extremes often first with the external quality persona of our clothing. All of these are attempts to find an identity. The persona is crucial in this process.

One of the functions of the ego is to provide stability of identity and personality over time. The persona is involved in this process. Remember those times when having the right clothes was really really important? How you had to get the right bicycle or the right toy? Nowadays this must be really difficult for adolescents as they not only have adjust their internal way of being, but have to be aware of rapidly changing trends in clothing. Which brand is in and which one is out. Or which video game console is more trendy and which one isn’t. Even worse, which cell phone or web service we should use. All of this contributes to the rapid development and alteration of the persona. When you next see adolescents on the street or in your home, and you shake your head or their strange clothing or body piercing or language remember that all they are trying to do is to test out which persona works for them. Those of you that have been through this with your own children know that very shortly the extreme behaviors and clothing will end and your kids develop a fairly consistent persona which involves not only what to wear but also what subjects to take at school, what music to listen to, and which friends to keep.

As we finish our schooling or university life, and head out into careers, we know that each particular career has a specific persona. We soon realize from watching role models in our chosen profession, how we are supposed to behave. What to drink, what to eat and what to wear. But most importantly, what way to act in the company of others. This can be quite daunting at first. How is a lawyer, doctor, or a dentist supposed to act? Not only in their consulting room but out in the company of others. We tend to develop particular personas through identifying with roles models already in these professions.

I’m sure you know people who stay in their professional persona all the time. If you have a doctor friend and that person is always acting the doctor, dispensing advice at dinner parties or other social gatherings, you can see that he or she is stuck in their persona. After a while it becomes really irritating and you want to shake them up and say “Just be real!”

There is a strong risk that we over identify with our persona. This leads to one-sidedness (something we touched on earlier) and a great deal of trouble in later life. But equally problematic is someone who changes their persona too often. If we see them at work they are so different from at a party or at the theatre or at the a game. We get confused with whom we are dealing. And we want to go up to these folks and give them a shake too and say “Just be consistent!”

Jung saw the persona as an archetype. In all humans there is a need to engage with other people in a variety of settings. So a klan chief had to act in a certain way. The young males and females were expected to act in equally defined ways. We know that even in our massive societal structures, we need people to behave in certain ways. Meaning we need them to stay in a certain persona that is consistent with their function, office or occupation. We get shocked when we hear of people acting outside of their role. So if we hear of a police arrested for drunk driving, it bothers us far more than some nameless person arrested for the same thing. We expect our judges to be wise and never to display instinctual or irrational behavior. So if a judge makes a statement from the bench that is inconsistent with that role, we find it troubling and often want that judge to resign his or her position. The same can be said for teach, a doctor , a priest, or any other such occupation for that matter. Isn’t is interesting that we all seem to have a fairly consistent cultural expectation of occupational personas. These personas often vary across cultures but within cultures we all have a solid sense of what is expected of how particular personas should be displayed in public.

If we look at how comics often lampoon politicians in public it is so interesting to see how they often choose behaviors or actions that vastly opposite from their public personas. It is when we over identify with a persona where we land in trouble because what happens when the ego over identifies with a rigid persona, is that the unconscious tends to burst into consciousness in severe and unpredictable ways.

For example, if we think back to the people in a clinical setting I described in episode three, which I called the model of the psyche, we had an over identification with the persona and severe depression resulted. This is an example of the compensatory nature of the psyche. When things are too heavily weighted in one area of the psyche, say the persona, the unconscious tends to load up with psychic energy and at some point a massive unloading results in unconscious material erupting into consciousness. Often this eruption is in a severe affective disorder such as depression or anxiety or may even result in somatization.

You can see why this aspect of the model outlined earlier is so important to our psychodynamic understanding of the psyche. The same lack of balance exists in individual who has a very weak persona. You may encounter these individuals and they seem to need to exist in their own fantasy world, their own inner world which on the face of it is a good thing as we all need to encounter and confront the unconscious, but if we retreat into the unconscious too far, we really struggle to keep one foot in the external ego based world and the other in the internal unconscious world.

Overall we need the persona to be a compliment for the workings of the psyche. The ego is vital in this relationship because if it is rigidly identified with the persona, it is an ego that looks outwards only; outwards into the external world and is quite blind to the inner world of the unconscious. Patients in this stage may say oh I haven’t had a dream for years. We know this cannot be the case as we all dream every night. It’s just that we don’t recall our dreams. These patients as they begin their work in analysis and start to recognize their unconscious often find themselves having intense dreams each night that they are able to recall. It is almost as if the ego which we need to help us to recall dreams each night suddenly looks over its back and says oh yeah I remember that stuff. All that stuff about the unconscious and dreams and symbols - I haven’t seen that side of myself since I was very small. This is a way for us to see that when we pay attention to the inner world, and begin to lessen our excessive attention to the outer world, a balancing or compensatory action in the psyche is stimulated. So the persona is a mediator between the external world of others and the ego. It can be thought of as a defense for the ego. The anima and animus are mediators between the internal world and the ego. The persona and the anima or animus can be thought of as opposites. They fulfill very opposite roles. For the persona dealing with external world and the ego, and the anima/animus dealing with the ego and the internal world. Both are critical in the process of adaptation.

Enantiodromia

Greek word meaning running contrary-wise or things turn into their opposite. This refers in part to an aspect of compensation.

Example (joke): regular old boring accountant who slogs away at his business for years, neglects his wife and kids and lives a very sterile life. Then in mid-life suddenly looks up from his desk at his young assistant, tells her to grab her passport , buys a red sports car and drives away with her to Mexico where he acts out his new lust for life. Then, six weeks later he come back to his wife and family terribly ashamed because he finally realizes what he has done and what he has neglected all his adult life: the world of the symbolic, the relatedness between his conscious and unconscious and between himself and other people in the world .

This is enantiodromia. From this serious, sterile persona identified accountant to the wreckless playboy. He has turned into his opposite. Jung felt this word represents a principle in the psyche in which eventually, everything turns into its opposite. Because we know something about psychic energy from earlier we can speak of enantiodromia in a more psychodynamic way. If an extreme one-sided way exists in consciousness, psychic energy has to balance this one-sided position. This means that psychic energy loads up in the unconscious to balance out the ego stance. Finally, this intense psychic energy in the unconscious breaks through and erupts into consciousness with all the concomitant problems.

This eruption takes the form of dreams, intense affects or more seriously strong somatic reactions. We will soon turn to interpretation of dreams. We now have and strong enough understanding of psychodynamic processes and structures to begin to make sense of dreams from a Jungian perspective.

There is another process that we need to review before we launch into dreams: the difference between a symbol and a sign and how to expand or amplify a symbol.

Signs

What exactly is a sign and how does it differ from a symbol? A sign is something with a fixed meaning. This meaning is culturally or universally understood even though there might be slight variations across cultures. An example of a sign is the octagonal red sign we use for a traffic stop sign. It has only one meaning - that of bring your vehicle to a complete halt just before this red sign. It doesn’t mean drive through, yield or buy a hamburger or fries. In pretty much all cultures the same sign, the stop sign, is used to mean the same thing.

Another sign would be the red exit sign that we see above the exit door in a movie theatre or in an office. It only means leave this place through the door. It is often red in color so that we can all see it in an emergency. Most if not all of us know that in an emergency you need to exit at this place.

So a sign is a word, a shape or an object that has a single, fixed meaning. Here is where we run into some difficulties when we speak of symbols and signs. In classical Freudian psychoanalysis will know that many of the objects that Freud interpreted in dreams say hills or tunnels or apples of bananas were referred to in a way that made them signs. The apple equals the female breast in Freudian dream interpretation or the banana means the male penis. One sign has one meaning. So it is quite incorrect from a Jungian perspective to interpret dream imagery in fixed ways. From this perspective, stay away from those dreadful dream dictionaries you find at bookstores that tell you if you dreamt of an apple it means a breast or any other such fixed meaning. These dreams should be called dream sign dictionaries and not dream symbol dictionaries.

Symbols

How do signs differ from symbols? A crucial difference is that a symbol does not have a fixed, singular meaning. Jung, in dealing with the difference between Freudian sign interpretation and his own symbol interpretation said the following:

“The true symbol differs essentially from this and should be understood as an intuitive idea that cannot yet be formulated in any other or better way.“

“A symbol always presupposes that the chosen expression is the best possible description or formulation of a relatively unknown fact. Which is nonetheless known to exist or is postulated as existing.” Collective Works XI

This leaves us in some difficulty. How then do we know what a symbol means? What if I get it wrong and say it means something completely different from someone else? In this situation you are quite safe because you know what a symbol means to you better than anyone else. Because you get a meaning about a symbol from your own unconscious; your own feelings, and your own experiences. Example: say you dreamt of a horse. You told your dream to a friend and began to explain the meaning of a horse. In other words you begin to enlarge on the meaning of the symbol. As a child you may have been thrown from a horse and broken your arm, and never ridden one since. You may dislike and fear horses as a result and find the appearance of a horse symbol in your dream to be scary and threatening. The meaning of the horse symbol to you is very negative. Your friend on the other hand, may have been raised on a cattle ranch and spent many hours of his childhood on the back of a horse rounding up cattle. He may have had a favorite horse that he trained and rode for the years that he spent at home on the ranch. To him, the horse is a solid, powerful, dependable creature that help do his ranch chores, was his good friend and helped him get through some difficult terrain or times. The horse symbol for him is one of a positive, loyal, dependable friend. This is quite different to your meaning of the horse. Which one is wrong on the meaning of the horse symbol? This answer is neither. You are both absolutely correct as you are developing a meaning of the horse symbol from your actual lived experience.

The meaning of a symbol becomes accurate largely from your own experience. Symbol dictionaries are best used to see the more universal aspects of a symbols meaning. You are the best symbol dictionary in the world. As you rely on your own psyche to provide the meaning. This isn’t where it all ends. All we have really done is develop are personal associations to the symbol. From this association we do need to enlarge this symbol by tapping into its more universal nature. As images are such powerful images and exist in the collective unconscious, we need to see how different cultures attribute meaning to a different symbol. This means that the core meaning of a symbols is the same across cultures, but each culture will add something specific to its own cultural meaning of a symbol. Here the symbol dictionary is useful.

Amplification

Samuels

Amplification involves use of mythic, historical and cultural parallels in order to clarify and make ample the metaphorical content of dream symbolism.

Jung

The psychological tissue in which the image is embedded. Amplification enables the dreamer to abandon a purely personal and individualistic attitude toward the dream image. It emphasizes a metaphorical hence approximate rather than a literal translation of dream content and prepares the dreamer to exercise choice. This is done by acknowledging what is most immediately relevant for the dreamer and then allowing for further understanding as a consequence of reflection.

An additional possibility, though one not specifically formulated by Jung, is that by way of amplification one consciously experiences oneself within and as part of archetypal energies rather than as their object.

This refers to enlarging our personal meaning of a dream using the process of amplification. So what we are actually doing in the process of amplification is focusing our attention on the archetypal image that the symbol is and going beyond our own associations to the same image. There is something greater to the symbol of the horse than simply saying it is the thing that threw me and caused me to break my arm. The first part of our work in interpreting a symbol was to develop personal associations to that symbol. The next phase is to develop universal meaning of the symbol, but there is a serious danger in symbol amplification of becoming overly intellectual. The key here is to do the research required for the amplification but to stay with the material that grips your attention. As soon as you find yourself reading about some arcane symbol meaning, in some specific culture you don’t feel anything anymore for the symbol, you know you’ve gone too far. This is especially so in amplifying your dream symbols. The symbols that you have in your dream are yours and are their for a very specific reason. So amplify only until you feel the symbol begins to lose its value or energy. Don’t thrash a symbol to death in amplifying it, just add something that really peaks your interest or has specific relevance to your dream or to your life. This is a very difficult thing to do as we are all used to overworking the meaning of symbols when we begin this process.