Carl Jung Depth Psychology Facebook Group
I came to Dr. Jung today with all my material of the ghastly animus who beats, kills, decapitates babies and is generally a scoundrel, rascal and murderer.
I read him all my animus stuff, which ended with the animus’s mother finally leaving and going off to America and getting ten years younger while the animus went down into the underworld ( or into a mine in the story to liberate entombed miners) – to liberate people down there; which means that the miners are a bit of my mind in darkness, and the animus goes to give it life, like les eaux nouvelles or milk after birth which comes to keep the infant alive.
This condition of the animus is a preparatory condition, Dr. Jung said.
The time in the analysis which precedes the birth of the animus is terribly trying, or has been for me until I bore that son.
Up until then the son was identical with myself, a bad shadow.
The animus will now be helpful, Dr. Jung added.
I asked how.
He said that he would light up the unconscious and bring back valuable thoughts. “How will I know it?” I asked.
“You will know it all right,” answered Jung. I did not quite see it at the time, but in the last few days, I have seen it, or glimpsed it at intervals.
As the Animus is now divorced from me, I am not one with it anymore.
The baleful shadow of its ghastly personality has lifted and allowed me to glimpse unconscious contents which may be stuff to rejuvenate and embellish my life, as in the story I wrote, when the mother left the son and she became younger and unrecognizable.
I gave birth to my animus as I did to a child, and at the time suffered as in childbirth, but it was worth it.
Then Dr. Jung got up and went out and brought back a typewritten manuscript, a translation from the Greek into French, copied by Mrs. [Cary] Baynes.
It was wonderfully well written.
At first Dr. Jung said I would not understand it, so couldn’t have it.
But as he read, and I seemed to comprehend, he said I could take it to copy the passage I wanted.
(I noticed that he had seen where I was going, and the road I was taking after the birth of the animus.)
Jung also said that it is a very difficult enterprise to go to yourself.
Often even the Catholic Church is in doubt whether a person has a vocation or not to become a priest.
The way to the self, if you have the power to take it, is a difficult way – if you have the power to do it.
Most people indulge themselves but they don’t work on themselves.
Dr. Jung said, “I sometimes have to show them how they indulge in their fantasy.
It is different to read a book in order to work with it or just to indulge in it.
People think that when they are going to the self they can dodge something.
They go to the self as if to cheat the world, as an indulgence.
In whatever situation you find yourself, you have to accept it, and if you do not take up your job in this world and do what your situation demands then you have lost your last value – your servitude.”
He continued, the difficult entanglements, in which one finds oneself, are one’s roots.
If you don’t touch the soil, and instead lead an artificial, cut-off existence, then the self has no real feet- it is a ghost and should never have been born.
It is a futile indulgence to neglect a job to indulge in self.
People who think they can escape the servitude to which they are called through fate and life, by indulging in their own ego, are cast out on the shore of life and are of no account.
If you accept the servitude [to the self] then you have the right to your own way.
But that way can only be trodden if you accept the fact that you are your own law.
Can you take such a stand against the collective?
There is no judge nor law book as severe as oneself.
It is better not to continue on the path to the self, if one cannot stand against the collective conscious opinion.
Jung added that if you can stand the sight of yourself as a murderer, or an offender, then you might be strong enough to continue on the right path. ~Katy Cabot, Jung My Mother and I, November 25, 1935, Pages 107-109