Children’s Dreams: Notes from the Seminar Given in 1936-1940 (Philemon Foundation Series)
Professor Jung:
This, too, would follow from the parents’ psychology.
In addition, the fear of the snake cannot be readily explained in the context of inheritance; it is simply there.
Either you fear a snake, or you don’t.
There are individuals for whom a stay in the tropics becomes a perfect hell because of their constant fear of running into a snake.
After all, it is very inconvenient to suddenly discover a snake in your bed, or in your shoes, in your trousers, in the cupboard, or in all sorts of impossible places.
Snakes are always where you don’t suspect them.
The uncanny thing with these animals is that they are completely inhuman; they aren’t in any rapport with human beings.
The snake wardens in the zoos know this.
For some time, the snakes let one do anything with them, and one day they wind themselves around the warden with lightning speed, trying to squeeze him to death.
You can make contact with nearly all animals, but there seems to be no possible psychic bridge to the cold-blooded animals any longer, although they let themselves be hypnotized, as we know.
No “niceties” any longer here. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams, Pages 252-253.