Carl Jung: What Eros wants is to make man ask a question. To questions Eros can answer.
LECTURE X 26 March 1930
Before we enter upon our discussion today, I have a proposition to make concerning the next seminar.
There are several among you who are going to be here for the summer term, and probably there will be a number of new members.
For them we should have a short resume of this term’s proceedings.
The actual dreams need not be mentioned, but it would be important to have a general exposition of the problem, how it evolved and with what variations-a psychological abstract of the general movement of that long serpent of our dream problem.
Then I should like to make another suggestion.
We have recently been making attempts at formulating archetypes in the dream material and we had considerable difficulty about it.
Now, since archetypes were originally derived, not from dreams, but from mythologicaLmaterial like fairy tales, legends and religious forms of thought, I think it would be advisable to try first to classify the archetypes from such matter.
I think it would be an interesting enterprise if some of you would choose different mythologies to work on-if one took Germanic mythology, and another Graeco-Roman, or primitive folklore, and so on.
You get an idea of classification by looking through the index of Psychology of the Unconscious, and there are English books along that line.
That rather uninteresting book “Cinderella” is nevertheless very valuable from the psychological point of view; there one sees how the archetypes are worked out.
There is a parallel in German literature called Astralmythen, by Stucken, and also Das Zeitalter des Sonnengottes, by Frobenius, where you find an enumeration of archetypal motifs and the methods by which these scholars have attained their results.
I make this proposition in the hope that some of you will be interested. Are there any questions?
Dr. Baynes: In reference to your first suggestion concerning the resume of this term’s proceedings, do you propose that various members should make an abstract and then submit the report and have the best or most comprehensive one multigraphed?
Dr. Jung: One person could make the report, simply a general abstract, like the report Dr. Deady made only less specific.
Dr. Deady: In what way would it differ from that?
Dr. Jung: I would not go into the detail of the dreams. I would simply try to describe the general development of the thought.
It would be a resume of the thought, not the actual dream material.
Dr. Baynes: I should think that your book would be the best for looking up the archetypal motifs.
Dr. Jung: I don’t want you to confine yourself to that.
The Cinderella motif is an exceptionally clear case. Then exceedingly interesting material is to be found in Indian mythology.
It would help you to see the same motifs occurring as in dreams.
Question: Do you want everyone to do it?
Dr. Jung: Not everyone. Only the people interested.
Suggestion: Orpheus, the Fisher is an interesting book which is in the library here. There is one by Bachhofen too, but that is not translated.
Dr. Baynes: The Holy Grail, by Jane Weston,3 shows the motifs in quite a scholarly way.
Dr. Deady: A new book has just appeared in England called The Lore of the Unicom, by Shepherd.
The writer seems to have read every book in the world which other people have not read.
The bibliography is extraordinary. He covers everything from legends to dreams-a remarkable piece of research.
Dr. Jung: Yes, but I am afraid that would be a monographic
discussion of one motif, which is not exactly what we are after are after a method of discerning archetypal motifs from wider material.
Of course, Cinderella is only one motif, from one point of view, but the method is excellent, and of course your unicorn book might have a good method also. Silberer’s book on mysticisms is very good indeed.
You will find there the cauldron motif and a number of others.
Well now, I find on my desk this document humain, but I don’t know the author, as it is not signed. I will read it to you.
Some Suggestions about the Dream-Mouse
The discussion of last seminar has created a certain amount of ill-feeling in the world of mice. In order to clear it up the mice have taken the liberty to send in the following conciliatory proposals.
Dr. Jung has said that when an animal appears in a dream, we must take it exactly as it is in reality, and try to find its meaning with the help of its own characteristics.
So we have stated that the mouse is small-shy lives in holes-comes out at night mostly-is greedy for lard and can disturb orderly households.
What was not pointed out besides these characteristics is the extraordinary fertility of the mouse, which is equalled perhaps only by the guinea-pig.
Every child who owns a couple of white mice knows this-knows that only massacres after the Herodian fashion will do anything against a growing crowd of continuously produced offspring.
It really seems as if the males also must bring forth.
It might be useful not to overlook this extraordinary fertility of the mouse-perhaps it will lead us somewhere.
Let’s say then that the mouse is an animal of darkness, of night, and of fertility.
This shows plainly its connection with moon-life, with all the symbolism of the moon, which the seminar will remember from former discussions.
But within this moonlit circle the mouse has its own special place, and what that may be we can find out best by considering woman’s behaviour at the sight of a mouse.
There is an old saying that a girl who is not afraid of mice has lost her virginity.
And it is certain too that women at the sight of a mouse show their fright in a very peculiar way-as if their virginity were attacked.
This is very curious, as a mouse is surely no danger for woman’s chastity.
Now, we must take our courage into both hands and say this: when in a room there is a man and a woman and a mouse-when the woman screams and the man thinks it doesn’t matter, it is in spite of all appearances very probable that it is the man who is frightened, and the woman is not.
Every man present may now come down on us and declare triumphantly that this would only be another proof of the falsehood and hypocrisy of woman—-:iust another crocodile’s tear in her deceitful eyes.
And at that one would have to say yes.
But after the men had enjoyed their triumph one might go on and say that we had better not stop at that.
When from Eve’s time on through the ages women at the sight of a mouse have always behaved in such a queer deceitful way, this way itself must mean something.
The sham perhaps has a good reason-perhaps it is no sham after all, but a sort of symbolical behaviour-as symbolical as the mouse itself.
The mouse, we believe, is a symbol of woman’s wish for fecundity.
This wish in all women is deeply rooted, because it is only by giving birth to children that woman fulfills her natural task and lives according to her destiny.
And one may not restrict this statement to the material and physical world of woman’s body and sex only.
It is just as true for the moon-mind of woman, which all the time also longs for the seed of the sons of light, in order to bring forth the spiritual children of the moon in dark but ever fervent creativeness.
The wish for physical and for spiritual conception is even so closely connected in women that often they mix the two up and must leave it to the discrimination of men to decide what they really want.
It can happen that a woman gives birth to one child after another, because she does not know that her moon-mind suffers from neglect, whilst on the other hand many a wife troubles her husband with her imperious wishes for spiritual relatedness, when in reality she ought to have some babies.
But however this may be, it seems very probable that the mouse is the symbol of the Yin principle in its readiness to conceive.
Just as in the material world it is only the womb that creates in woman, so in the spiritual world it is not intellectual or rational life which contains woman’s creative power.
On the rational side woman is the guardian, the mother.
But it is the warm, brown earth of irrational Eros that must receive the spiritual seed of man.
Now, Eros in its nature being so irrational, it lacks language completely-it can speak neither English nor French nor German.
And as it does not know the logical word at all, Eros can never say clearly what it wants and why it wants just this.
Therefore when Eros is at work in woman, all she can do is to act or talk in sometimes very queer symbolical ways, in order to attract man’s attention.
What Eros wants is to make man ask a question, because to questions Eros can answer.
The answer will always be a child-in the material world it will take nine months, in spiritual matters it can come much quicker.
Only man does not know all this.
Whenever Eros is concerned, man, who has not developed within himself all his female side, is as ignorant as Parsifal.
He really does not know-he is not even aware that at bottom he is frightened.
As Parsifal before the Holy Grail, so man stands before woman’s Eros.
And just as Parsifal was accepted to the Holy Grail only when he asked the question, so it is only at man’s question that woman’s Eros can be revealed.
The difference is that the Grail-being holy-remained silent and waited for the question, while short-lived, earth-bound woman cannot wait quite so well.
So great is her longing to conceive that she uses the most astonishing means to make man speak.
In the case of the mouse it is as if woman would adopt all the outward signs of man’s inward fear in order to awake his chivalry and courage and in order to make him see how superfluous fear is in this case.
When a woman screams at the sight of a mouse, it does not mean: “I am afraid.” It means: “Do you see the mouse? Don’t you understand it? Please ask now!-ask a question!”
It seems to us that the mouse is a very excellent symbol for the longings of Eros. As the mouse lives almost unseen in all countries and climates, so woman’s Eros, even if hidden in the deepest mousehole, is omnipresent.
Like the mouse it prefers the friendly shine of the moon to broad daylight, and feels best in the quietest room of the house.
And like the mouse it promises numberless offspring.
About these offspring the French law seems to be valid in all cases, namely: La recherche de la paternite est interdite.
Only the children of Eros can resemble their fathers so absolutely, that it’s sometimes almost a joke.
Perhaps one ought also to know why man at bottom is so afraid of the mouse. In a way man is very right there, his fear is a pious fear. Logos _must be afraid of Eros; because-in Eros he meets his opposite.
And-when the opposites don’t meet in exactly the right way, great harm is done.
So man’s fear works like an inward warning not to misuse woman’s blind, unreasonable wish.
We must not forget to state that also for our symbolical mouse-as for all mice-there exists a cat.
And this cat has destroyed many mice during the ages.
When the mice grow too noisy and fresh, it’s right that the cat should eat them.
But no cat should be allowed to eat more mice than is good for its stomach.
And yet one can see many a cat that swallows mice till it gets indigestion-or what’s worse, grows so fat with mouse-food that it becomes clumsy and bad-humoured.
The cat which eats the dream-mice is called Anima.
Therefore it is very nice and a good sign indeed that in our dream it is the dreamer’s wife who chases the mouse-and no cat anywhere near.
Dr. Jung: This is excellent. I congratulate the unknown writer. That the anima is the cat that eats the dream-mice is decidedly a new consideration.
Mrs. Baynes: You admit the truth of that?
Dr. Jung: Well, I am so surprised that I have to think about it.
Mrs. Baynes: Why do you suppose the mouse that wrote the article remains hidden? She deserves some cheese, I think.
Dr. Jung: I am not so certain! Well, are there any questions concerning the mouse that has been so exhaustively dealt with?
One would not have supposed that such a little thing could have caused such comments-caused the mountains to move, one might say.
Mrs. Sawyer: Why did the mouse go into the boys’ room?
Dr. Jung: It is true, we didn’t speak of that. Are there any suggestions?
Dr. Howells: A woman’s reaction to the sexual problem is that it can get into the children.
Dr. Jung: That is obviously her idea in the dream-that the mouse could injure the boys. There is an accent on the boys.
It might have been a girl-the Eros of the dreamer escaping into the girls’ room, but it is the boys’ room, which is quite remarkable.
What would you assume?
Mrs. Sawyer: How old are the boys?
Dr. Jung: Eight or ten perhaps.
Mrs. Sigg: It seems as if when parents give too much or too little libido to a certain part of their lives, the children are inclined to act the other way.
Dr. Jung: But we are concerned with the question of this Eros which goes to the boys.
When it goes to the girls’ room, it is perfectly evident that it would be incestuous libido, and when it goes to the boys’ what would it be?
Dr. Baynes: Homosexuality.
Dr. Jung.: Yes, incestuous homosexuality.
Such a repressed libido naturally reaches out for the next object-sometimes a daughter, sometimes a son.
Of course it is quite possible that the boys are also symbolic, but here we are in a pretty delicate situation, because the boys are just as real to him as his wife.
His wife is not symbolic, she is literal-we are clinging to the fact that the dream definitely means his wife.
Then here are the boys, his sons, no getting away from it; we are forced to admit that the dream really means that Eros escapes and goes to the boys and might injure them.
It is perfectly clear that if such a repressed Eros should take the form of an incestuous relationship, the fear of the wife would be justified.
The question is, why the boys and not the girls?-and I should say the answer was that in a former dream, under similar circumstances, it was the daughter.
The mouse-the libido-escaped to the daughter and brought about an incest situation.
When I analysed that dream, it gave him a severe shock; he saw it immediately, and that has probably blocked the way.
But the way to the boys is open.
He is absolutely disinclined to assume that he could be homosexual, and therefore it is the loophole for the devil.
When we say that such a thing is quite impossible, just there is the place where the devil can come in.
Our dreamer does not dream of the possibility, it is too utterly unlikely, and that is just the way of the mouse-the invisible way.
So the right instinct of the wife comes up and realizes the danger.
Mrs. Henley: Why doesn’t he try to kill the mouse if he has that strong feeling of sexuality about it?
Dr. Jung: He did try, but how could he kill a mouse when he was holding half a bed in his hands?
His wife had a stick, which is more practical, but his weapon was too unwieldy, it was not the right instrument.
That, of course, has a psychological meaning too, which hangs together with the meaning of the crib, where he was a child and could not injure himself or anybody else and could play safely.
Now the thing falls apart, and he still holds the means by which he has been fenced in.
He uses the same means to kill the mouse, the same infantile measures, but naturally such a thing is much too clumsy.
Dr. Deady: Could it not mean that he puts the Eros into the boys, passes on the responsibility, and so it remains at a low level?
Dr. Jung: Well, there is nothing conscious, so in this case we could hardly talk of responsibility.
If the homosexual incest should come off, if the mouse should ruin their lives, that would be in later life but not now.
It would mean merely indulgence now, sentimental love for his boys, or an identification, which is simply homosexual incest.
Then later on, the son would inherit the sins of the father and have to compensate for that inherited sin.
We are coming now to the next dream.
As you probably have noticed in the course of this seminar, it is very often the unexpected that happens, and a certain characteristic which we have left entirely out of consideration is the next point to turn up, namely, the fertility, the generative principle, of the mouse.
In the dreamer’s conscious mind that characteristic was the most remote.
Therefore this next dream dwells on that side.
Dream [26]
His wife is giving birth to three children at the same time-triplets (which is of course for a human being a somewhat unusual fertility), but the two first children are dead when born, only the third child
remains alive.
He says that this dream repeated itself in the same night, yet despite this fact, he cannot remember any other detail.
He only remembers that he assisted at the birth, that the midwife was there, and that she took the two dead children away with her.
Associations:
He says that triplets, or even twins, give him the impression of too much of a blessing all at once.
It seems to him quite sufficient if only the third child remains alive.
He dwells now upon these dead children and says that spiritualism and Yoga seem to him to be such unnecessary children which are removed by the midwife-associating me with the midwife notwithstanding my sex.
The third child seems to him to be a development of the relation between man and his anima or soul. (That part remains dark.)
Now, in this dream we have an extraordinary fertility.
For mice, who are accustomed to producing many more, it is very little, but for human beings it is remarkable.
What would you say about this dream, aside from the fact of fertility?
Dr. Deady: Is there a psychological connection between his hygienic attitude, which is repressed sexuality, and his theosophical attitude of mind?
Dr. Jung: There is a close association between his vegetarian, so-called hygienic interests, and his Yoga and spiritual interests.
Dr. Deady: I thought of him as exercising in the crib as a part of his hygiene, while the mouse, sexuality, repressed by the hygiene, is the real thing he wants.
Dr. Jung: Naturally, spiritualism and Yoga kept his interests aloof from the realities of life, and also the food craze-eating lettuce, or locusts and wild honey, is a very good means of repressing sex.
Dr. Deady: They are all methods of repression?
Dr. Jung: Yes, repressed below the bed, hidden away.
He is performing hygienic stunts on top of the bed and the mouse is underneath.
The more he practices those apotropaic cults, the more the crib breaks apart and the mouse escapes, so the whole thing has been in vain.
Now, between that dream and this new one the mouse has obviously accomplished something.
There were five days in between, and in those five days something has happened.
The mouse has caused an extraordinary fertility–caused his wife to bring forth triplets.
An astonishing fact. Naturally that has no reference to reality, she has never had triplets, she is quite normal in that respect, but she is clearly herself in the dream.
We cannot say it means his anima, for instance.
It is really his wife, and she is fertile.
He is inclined to think of her as perfectly sterile and to take that fertility as his own, because there is nothing of the sort visible in his wife’s case, and the only thing that has changed in the last six or seven years, he thinks, is that he has changed from his cult for spiritualism and Yoga to analysis.
His wife has apparently not lived at all, and therefore he is impressed with her absolute stability, her static condition of doing nothing.
But the dream says she is capable of producing triplets, which is a striking compensation.
That was an amazing blow between the eyes.
It was so unexpected that I didn’t discuss that aspect with him.
It would have passed him by because he was so convinced that his wife could not be different from-what he believed her to be, that it was perfectly futile to suggest it, so I left the thing practically in the condition in which he represented it-two still-born children in his development and one that lives on.
That was the only point of view which was then accessible to him, I felt very clearly.
The dream came as a tremendous surprise to me too, for I was so impressed by his description of his wife that I thought one hardly could assume triplets.
But, as subsequent events have shown, a tremendous change has taken place, most unexpected, so we do not know what the ultimate outcome will be.
At all events, the change brought about in her was so remarkable that one could at least speak of twins.
So I think it points to extraordinary happenings in the future-a case of psychological anticipation.
It is as if I should prophesy that now his wife would bring forth, like old man Abraham and his wife Sarah; her womb was already dead within her and how would it be possible ?-and he doubted the word of the Lord.
That would be this man’s condition, and I found no heart to support the dream because I myself was quite doubtful whether this could be true.
Yet according to all the rules of the game I should have said to him, “We cannot get away from the fact that your wife is your wife, and, sure enough, something is going to happen to her.”
As a matter of fact, two years later, it came off in a most astonishing way-I was surprised I must say.
One always is making the mistake of not counting on miracles.
But there are miracles only we don’t believe in them.
The fact that he associates the dead children with his occult investigations and the living child with his psychological interests is of value too; it is a parallel. It would mean that, just as he has made rather an astonishing transformation from spiritualism, through Yoga, to psychology, so in the same way his wife could change.
You might criticize me here for taking his wife not as a reality but as a mere projection, as his own feminine unconscious, and to a certain extent you would be perfectly right.
Here I break through the rules of the game, apparently.
But we cannot make these rules so strict that when a husband or wife appears in a dream in their proper form, they are nothing but that husband or wife. It is also the image of that husband or wife.
When he dreams of his wife, it is his wife, but also what his wife is to him-it is also an expression of himself.
We came here to a most important consideration: the fact that when one is analysing married people, or people who are in very close relationship even if it is not marriage, then one simply cannot
deal with their psychology as a separate factor; it is as if one were dealing with two people, and it is exceedingly difficult to disentangle the individual belongings from the relationship.
One finds invariably that the so-called individual psychology of such a case is only explicable under the assumption that another human being is functioning in that mind at the same time; in other words it is relationship psychology and not the psychology of an isolated human individual.
It is even very difficult to isolate the individual parts from the related parts. So we can hardly consider such a dream as his own property; it would be his wife’s just as much.
His psychology is in her as hers is in him, and every dream that each one has is more or less an expression of that relatedness.
It is as if a human being in close psychological relationship had lost his two legs and two arms and one head, and now had four legs and four arms and two heads and two lives.
The individual is permeated by the psychological sphere of the partner, and so the whole life problem, the whole spiritual problem, is directly interpenetrated.
The main bulk of their psychological material is relationship material, it carries the imprint of two psychologies.
Therefore if I should say that the wife in this dream was nothing but his wife, it would not be exact.
I would be neglecting the fact that she is an individual with her own belongings, and at the same time a piece of his psychology.
For instance, when he speaks of spiritual interests, he could just as well say that his wife had first intimated that he should study Yoga or any other occult science, and that she further had led him on to analysis.
That puts an entirely different face on the situation, but that is the psychological truth, because whatever he does is an expression of his relationship, to such an extent are we fused and interpenetrated.
If he should assume that his wife means practically his own unconscious and that his studies are certain moods or phases of the longings of his unconscious, that would be right; but he does not realize this, and inasmuch as the unconscious is to him fertile, he naturally assumes that his unconscious has brought forth the triplets, or the interests, without seeing that his wife is fertile.
Consciously his wife even repudiates those interests, but she has them all in her unconscious and therefore she develops and unconscious resistance, she doesn’t want to become aware of them.
That a man should have those particular psychological interests is sometimes loathsome to a certain type of woman.
She is really tremendously interested, but for certain reasons she represses it.
But in the case of marriage things are so entangled that one could just as well say that his wife had led him to those interests, which is practically what the dream says.
Such a dream is only understandable when you take it as the expression of a relationship.
It is as if he and his wife had come together in the night and concocted a dream, issuing a statement that was equally true for either side.
He is perfectly satisfied with having brought forth so many interests, and she is perfectly satisfied that she has brought forth triplets.
But her role is for the time being overshadowed.
She is entirely unconscious of the fact that she is living in these interests and fertile within.
That she represses these things may be because of a superior unconscious that is responsible for extraordinary tricks.
We know by experience that when we want a thing consciously we kill it, but when we are perfectly unconscious, it comes through.
It is as though we were blotting a thing out by staring at it or desiring it, but apparently if we fear it it will be magically brought about.
Therefore people say one only needs to be afraid of things and they happen.
The other fellow does it, the most amazing things can be insinuated-not only working for good, but also for evil.
So the evil of which we are unconscious in ourselves will be insinuated into the surroundings and there it will work.
We can produce just as many evil effects as good effects.
Therefore we have to get away from it, yet it is so vast and contains so many hellish possibilities that we can hardly hope to exhaust that ocean of unconsciousness.
In this case, how could the dreamer know that his wife is only repressing her interests in these things and that there may be a superior aim in that repression.
It is a tremendous game, an amazing plot, so when we discover a few threads, they are just threads; but if we could pull at them, we might pull out an extraordinary web with an extraordinary pattern on it.
We cannot do it however, It is too superhumanly clever.
Now, that is what I have to say about this dream. Are there no questions? I am perfectly aware that it is a very difficult thought, this interpenetration through participation mystique.
I understand that you cannot perhaps swallow it right away, but it is an hypothesis without which it is simply impossible to explain certain things, and according to my experience, a vast majority of the dreams of married people are of this kind.
Also, of course, people who are not married but who are related to somebody.
Or even if they are not closely related to anybody, they are still interpenetrated by external factors.
For instance, it is quite possible in the case of a person living in a hotel that in the next room lives somebody with a peculiar kind of psychology, and a certain amount of that filters through
the walls into his dreams.
I know a man who had a terrible murder and suicide dream when sleeping in a certain room, and it turned out that he had got into the room where that happened, so he was penetrated by the atmosphere.
We can get infected in the same way where living people are concerned.
A mental contagion is amazingly strong; we hate the idea and repress it as well as we can.
We like the idea that we are isolated within ourselves, that there is nobody on our wires, that nobody can tamper with our directions and decisions.
But as a matter of fact there are certain doors which are open, and certain things can enter and disturb us, even where there is nothing which you could call a close relationship.
It is a sort of atmospheric thing in many cases, and it is not only peculiar to man.
Animals also can be interpenetrated, they sometimes behave according to men’s psychology because of that interpenetration, and if we do not admit such things, then we are the victims.
Also there are people who take on evil animal smells; they smell like a zoo, so that I have to open the windows. That is no joke.
I had a case once of a patient who developed a smell, not a real one, but I have an extra sense like the primitive medicine man who smells snakes.
So I smelled carrion, and it got to such a point that I could not have her in my study at all.
Fortunately it was warm weather, so I could take her to my garden house where there was a draft, for it almost made me sick.
One day I had dismissed that woman, and in came another case, a very intuitive lady.
She had not seen the woman leave, did not know her, and knew nothing about her.
As she entered the room, she took her parasol and began to fan vigorously, saying, “Such bad air in here!” I said, “But all the windows are open, it cannot be stuffy,” and she said, “You must have had a terrible case here!”-so I knew that she had smelt it too.
The patient herself didn’t know it, but soon after she had a dream in which the difficulty was brought up, and then we could solve it and the smell went away.
Now it is quite possible that animals smell~this. ~MY~ own sense has d~enerated ~ it iLay,,fally~v~ealLin:: comparison with that of a dog, but I am quite certain that animals are able to smell those things.
With us, it is a sense in between intuition, and one doesn’t know whether it is something physical or something psychological, but there are surely cases where, under the influence of complexes, people develop evil smells.
Are there any questions concerning this particular problem?
Dr. Baynes: There is one theoretical question that I should like to put, in reference to taking the wife on the subjective or objective plane.
Would you not in practice interpret the wife here as representing that problem which held him up and brought him to analysis, with all the fertile results which have flowed from it, rather than taking her as the actual wife, insofar as you did not know at that time that the wife was herself functioning in a fertile way?
Dr. Jung: At that time I took it only subjectively, because the objective side of the dream would not have entered his mind.
It would be too upsetting.
You see, the comprehension of a living participation mystique necessitates a preparation, and we had had only about fifteen or sixteen dreams.
That is not much, so it was best to wait for a later opportunity.
At a later stage, I would say that we must now be accurate, and could then show him what had occurred, that his wife in the dream really meant his wife and she was fertile, and that she was mixed up with his progression from
spiritualism and Yoga to analysis.
Therefore, he must not believe that she is absolutely sterile.
Dr. Baynes: Then you would give a subjective provisional interpretation for the time being?
Dr. Jung: Yes. At this time, practically in the beginning of his analysis, he was impressed by it, yet he is of a very cautious and careful mind, and you will see from his later dreams that he gets the whole thing in the intellectual sphere, not trusting himself entirely.
He thinks it is a very interesting sort of philosophy, but the question is, how far does it apply to reality?
We must be exceedingly careful to make sure upon what ground the patient is standing, and it was then a very thin edge.
He did not have the real feeling; it did not go deep under his skin.
So I left it to his interpretation that the still-born children are his past interests, and that the other now lives and is helpful to him, and at a later opportunity all the other considerations will come in.
It is enough, it is helpful.
As a matter of fact it took him a long time before he could see the peculiar fact of interpenetration, and I am quite certain that if I gave him that dream now and asked him the meaning, he would interpret it in the same old way.
Mrs. Crowley: Would you say that the closer the relationship was, the closer would be the identity in the unconscious? It really reflects her almost more than him.
Dr. Jung: No, it would reflect his point of view just as much.
I should say that this is a particularly strong unconscious relationship.
lt would be less strong in a couple where the conscious was more closely related.
There is more distance between people who are consciously connected than between people who are unconsciously connected.
In this marriage, where so much is unconscious, there is very strong interpenetration.
In a case where there is an enormous interpenetration, people have an enormous need to mark the difference.
I remember such a marriage, and a friend of mine made the remark that there were just twenty degrees difference between them.
In summer when it was frightfully hot, he was sitting at the fire, and she was sitting at the window fanning herself. She loved sugar and he hated it.
She loved brilliantly lit rooms and he liked dark rooms-all such differences that served the purpose of daily nagging because of their extraordinary participation mystique.
He was a highly intellectual man and she was his housekeeper, an awfully stupid woman, silly and ugly, and the devil knows why he married her.
She was the mouse who was formerly in the kitchen the highly intellectual man and his cook.
There was an unusual participation mystique, yet in the conscious there were miles of hopeless distance between them.
No coming together at all.
Mrs. Henley: In the case of unconscious interpenetration, do people take on new relationships if there is a divorce?
Dr. Jung: It may cause extraordinary situations, great disturbances.
If such a participation mystique is destroyed, it leaves an open wound, and most probably the same thing will happen again.
Mrs. Henley: Unfailingly?
Dr. Jung: Almost, because you are there.
Whatever condition you create, you will create again.
You do not change if you are a being without equilibrium; it doesn’t matter where you are.
In the long run, when a thing is unconscious, always the same pattern must be lived through; the unconscious things come through.
But in a second marriage there might be the very great difference that this participation mystique had become conscious.
When one is conscious something can be done with one’s little bit of personal will.
But the unconscious things are carried out by seven devils.
Mrs. Crowley: What happens if that participation mystique is assimilated in consciousness by one and not the other?
Dr. Jung: That is a difficult problem which one often meets in analysis.
Such a case creates a new potential.
The one who becomes conscious says, “I can’t stand this any longer. You must come along and get conscious too.”
Then there is also the possibility that something might happen even if only one of them is conscious, such as is happening to the wife of the dreamer.
All the time she is in analysis too. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Pages 550-564