Carl Jung: There are women who are feeling types
LECTURE VIII 25 June 1930
Here is a question from Dr. Howells: “Did the dreamer have any feeling of disintegration when he had this dream in which his anima escaped?”
One would assume that he would have a certain feeling about such an agitated dream, that he would feel it in the daytime even, but the fact of such a dream does not necessarily bring about a conscious realization of excitement or nervousness or anything of the sort.
We know that dreams are very often compensatory, so the conscious feeling might be quiet.
If there is no proper realization of the possible implications, there is no particular excitement.
The dream, rather, brings a sort of information about a storm that is beginning to rage in the unconscious.
So this man was not particularly restless or nervous. In this phase of his analysis, the dreams were more or less outside of him.
In the night he had funny dreams and in the daytime things were as they usually were.
Only commonplace and everyday things happened, and he was not in the least bothered, nor did he feel any direct connection with his dreams.
There is an indication in the latter part of this dream that for the first time he gets a sense of his profound relationship to them.
Hitherto, they have been quite interesting to him, and naturally he got a lot out of the interpretations, but it was as if they didn’t get under his skin.
I was for a long time in doubt as to what he would make of it, whether the thing would really grip him or not.
He was tremendously objective and scientific in his whole attitude, and I felt that that was the only relationship one had to him, or that the dreamer had to his unconscious; only occasionally was there a glimpse of something more.
If he had been deeply agitated in his conscious life, most probably his dreams would have mitigated the conditions, as is often the case.
Last week we were talking about the attack of the ape-man upon the anima, and how she succeeded in getting out of the window and into the world.
And when she shouted for help, people instantly came, and the ape-man desisted.
Then something quite typical happened, which happened already in the Bible, right in the beginning.
It seems to be a basic trouble of mankind, or perhaps one would say of men. What did Adam say when things became awkward?
Mrs. Baynes: He said that Eve tempted him.
Dr. Jung: Yes, there it is. The woman did it. So the ape-man said to her: Why the devil did you break the window?
She had to fight for her life and he complained that she had broken the window.
That is characteristic of the more or less civilized ape-man.
First he raises hell, and then he complains that he has to dust his coat off perhaps.
That shows the nature of the ape-man: he is terribly impulsive, he tries to violate her, and when it doesn’t work he says: “Oh, excuse me, I just wanted to ask you what time it is.”
He is a coward.
As long as he succeeds it is all right, but when he sees that he has failed, he instantly swings round and complains that she has disturbed the noble household by breaking those windows.
The next thing is that the anima goes away with the people outside, obviously for the police.
Now what have the police to do with the situation?
That is a very serious turn in the dream.
Mrs. Deady: They are the guardians of the collective situation.
Dr. Jung: Yes, but what is the collective situation?
Mr. Schmitz: The moral situation. The police are the protection of morality.
Dr. Jung: It is not exactly morality but it has to do with it. I told you what the father said to the son when he was twenty-one, but I will repeat it:
“You have come of age and I must tell you something that will be important for your later life: For stupid people there is the Bible, but for more intelligent people there is the penal code.”
That was his concept of morality.
Now here the police means a very particular degree of morality.
Our dreamer has never been bothered much with the moral problem, yet here it approaches in the form of the police.
Mrs. Crowley: It is not the individual standpoint but the collective conventional standpoint.
Dr. Jung: It is the most brutal form of the collective standpoint. When the policeman gets you, it is most convincing, most immediate.
It is a stone in at your window. Conflict and trouble.
And what is the problem which leads him into collision with the collective powers?
Mr. Schmitz: If one doesn’t assimilate the ape-man oneself, the police must interfere, because one gets into opposition to the civilized world.
Dr. Jung: But would you assume that he is played by the apeman?
Mr. Schmitz: If he is identical with the ape-man, he is in conflict with the police.
Dr. Jung: Have we evidence? It is the ape-man that makes the attack.
Mr. Schmitz: He allows the ape-man to make the attack in the unconscious.
Dr. Jung: But he does not allow it, it just happens.
There is a story of three old veterans and an officer who were defending a fortress.
The enemy attacks, and suddenly one of the veterans shouts: “I have made a prisoner!”
The colonel says: “Bring him here!” and the veteran shouts back: “He won’t let me!”
That is the story of the ape-man. The complication is that the ape-man seems to be something quite apart as in reality the dreamer is by no means an ape-man, he is a very nice gentleman.
But it happens often that a very nice gentleman has some affiliation with the apeman though in a very remote degree.
And now this ape-man is loose and we don’t know how far he will go. In that former dream, the mouse escaped and now it is already the size of a gorilla, and the anima jumps out of the window and calls for help.
Nobody knows the ape-man is inside, but from the internal conflict the anima has escaped into the open.
Now that is a very special case, and it is not simple.
We ought to know what it means in order to understand why the police come in.
She is the reason for the police coming, for the mere presence of the ape-man does not call for the police.
Miss Sergeant: She wants protection.
Dr. Jung: That is mythological speech, and we should know how that applies to practical psychology, because I have to make the meaning clear to the dreamer.
He naturally would follow one’s argument and nod his head as if he understood, but then he goes away completely bewildered, unless something dawns on him on his way home.
So we must know what will happen.
Prof Eaton: The anima is not interested in the ape-man. She wants the other aspect of the man.
Dr. Jung: Yes. Otherwise she would have stayed, she would have had her time.
If he had shown some interest in her, she probably would not have run away, but he was indifferent and showed only ape-man activity.
Prof Eaton: Now she is calling the police because the other side, collective morality, wants the other aspect of his personality.
Dr. Jung: That is exactly true, but how would that work out in human life?
I must know in order to show the man how the thing appears on the surface of the world.
What does it mean in reality when the anima has escaped?
It is as if she were somewhere out in the world.
Dr. Draper: This may be the moment when he meets her as the concrete woman.
Dr .Jung: That is it.
When the anima is outside, she is projected into a real woman.
When the anima is a psychological spectre, it means just nothing to a matter-of-fact man, it is a theoretical conflict.
But when the anima is projected, when she turns up as a real woman, things get really awkward.
Now it dawns upon him that she no sooner escapes from his own house than she is incarnated in a woman, and at any moment he may meet her.
Then instantly he will be fascinated, caught, for she is reinforced by the whole collective unconscious.
And then there will be trouble, because he will be up against conventional morality.
It was that which I was trying to make clear to you when we were speaking of the mouse.
Of course it was not recognizable there, but most of his libido and his own personality escaped where it could not be reached, and that will probably return to him.
For all our split-off parts return, all the people we meet in life who have a fascinating influence upon us are really split-off parts of ourselves, things we have repressed which are brought back by other people, and that is the great value and the great danger and difficulty of human relationship.
In this case it is a very serious matter, because when the anima escapes, the whole woman side of this man has a chance to appear anywhere, he doesn’t know when or where.
Perhaps tomorrow he will step out into the street and along comes a woman who is the anima.
He cannot get away from her.
He may repress it but it will arouse a hell of sexual fantasies; he will become quite neurotic and be unable to deal with it properly, for the way to deal with such a problem is not generally known.
This very complicated situation is what he foresees, and this accounts for the conflict with the police, collective morality.
Now, in this great moment, the moment of the dawn of this insight, another man appears on the scene, the photographer, and he seems to be an extremely indifferent, detached individual, for he assures them that things are all right as far as he is concerned, because he has taken all the pictures and the whole thing will make a most interesting story. Now who is he?
Miss Sergeant: His mirror.
Dr. Jung: Yes, but what would that be literally, in concrete language?
Mr. Schmitz: It is a conflict of the mind. The man has understood everything and now he can go home, but nothing is changed.
Dr. Jung: Yes, that is the observer in him, probably his differentiated function.
His mind watches the performance in a more or less detached way, looking down at it, as if he were seeing rather an exciting scene in the movies; his mind takes records, photographs, of the whole performance.
As a matter of fact, the dreamer associates this whole series of dreams, all the pictures he has seen in his dreams with that photographer’s film.
He has a very personal relationship to his dreams; he values them very highly and has kept all the records and made a book of them.
He gave me this copy.
It is a most unique collection, very carefully done with associations, and drawings and pictures interspersed.
He is quite proud of having the whole collection and he treasures it; he feels that if everything goes to hell, he has at all events rescued this precious material, these precious thoughts.
That is a great consolation to him, it is something to stand on.
He can open a business, he can sell that film!
His mind has achieved something quite positive that is capable of establishing a continuity of experience.
Of course, the undifferentiated function in him has a primitive character.
Primitives never take note of experiences and there is no continuity in their minds, everything is like dreams interrupted by conflicting impulses; like children and animals, they cannot concentrate.
An animal that has been on the point of death in the next moment begins to play again.
That is the inferior function.
It makes no history because it is all the time living in the moment that is eternity.
But the differentiated function has the quality of the historian, it records things, it gives continuity, and one can always withdraw more or less upon that continuity, upon that sort of historical consciousness; that has been to many people really a refuge, the foundation of an island.
For sometimes things move with such rapidity, with such turmoil and chaos, that nobody could keep track of them, and the only thing which holds such people straight and humanly quiet is the continuity of their records.
I suppose you have seen that film of the Titanic.
There is one man, a journalist, who sticks to his records within the turmoil, where everybody becomes unreasonable and goes to pieces.
He is the only one who goes under in a complete way, quiet, because he succeeded in withdrawing to the standpoint of the timeless observer.
His life is before his eyes, it is moving away, and yet he is peaceful. That is the superiority of the differentiated function.
Prof Eaton: If feeling were the superior function instead of thinking, would it be the same?
Dr. Jung: Oh yes, because feeling is only in quality a different function, it has the same general principle.
So the real religious principle, the idea of God, inner religiousness, is an intellectual as well as a feeling and emotional value.
The feeling type is perfectly able to detach his feeling from the turmoil and hold it against external circumstances; it is amazing what he can do, he can hold his feeling in a hypothetical way just by being able to cling, to persevere.
The ancients could not do that.
For instance, they had all the knowledge of the mechanical processes which would have enabled them to invent machines that worked, but they did not invent them.
They only put together a few pieces and a nice toy resulted. Instead of continuing with whatever manifested in that experimental arrangement, they began to play with it and it became a mere curiosity.
One still sees that play quality in early machines: they were always decorated with goat’s legs and Corinthian columns and all sorts of figures which have nothing whatever to do with the meaning of a machine.
The real machine is only a very recent discovery, and it has made its own style, but the old machines were covered with flowers and parts of human beings and God knows what, perhaps little angels sitting on the wheels, which simply shows that the artist or inventor was not quite capable of being matter of fact.
That playfulness is the reason why children cannot think like adult people; they cannot be entirely concrete and matter-of-fact.
And that is the reason why, even in the Middle Ages, men were not able to use all the knowledge they possessed; and, of course, that was still more obvious in antiquity, not to speak of the primitive
man who for a hundred thousand years got nowhere at all because he had no power of concentration.
That is not merely a point of view, an apercu; it is actually most impressive to see how the mind of the primitive man is easily tired-perfectly strong men, fine male figures of savages.
At a palaver, for instance, where one asks them very simple questions, whether they believe in ghosts for instance, after two hours everybody goes to sleep.
They say: we are so tired, can’t you finish the palaver?-for they cannot go away till the magic word is spoken by the elder, the word meaning: now the business is at an end.
But then the same men are able to hunt game for forty-eight hours without eating or sleeping.
When they are carrying letters, they walk a hundred and twenty kilometres in one stretch, because in doing that their instinct is roused and the)'” can do things which we cannot do.
They can walk in terrible heat sixty two kilometres, with loads of sixty pounds on their heads.
I had all the trouble in the world to keep up with them without carrying such a load-they were almost running.
They die at an early age about fifty-from overwork.
They spend themselves utterly, which we are too reasonable to do; we would become doubtful, but they spend themselves to the last breath if they are acting with the instinct. Against the instinct they are very easily tired. .
And that is the same with the primitive in us: the primitive undifferentiated functions are not concentrated, they are vague, they are easily interrupted, they have no continuity.
These qualities are the virtues of the differentiated function, whatever it is.
It doesn’t matter which function is differentiated, its main point is that it can
hold out against ever-changing nature.
It is like the human structure that holds out against every change in environment; or a house, which is a shelter that does not tumble down or lose its leaves; or a road, which is not interrupted, which has bridges, for instance.
If one follows an elephant’s trail, it is perhaps quite smooth for a while, one can travel it on one’s bicycle, and then suddenly it gets lost in a swamp and there is an end to it.
Civilization is characterized by the fact that it holds out against the changes of nature; and that is the virtue of the superior function.
Mr. Schmitz: How would a feeling type behave, as a parallel to the journalist on the Titanic?
Dr. Jung: A loving woman can hold a situation against everything, against death and the devil, and create a duration in chaos with complete conviction.
In thought, Galileo could hold out against torture-well, he did make denial, but immediately after, he got up and he said, “E pur si muove.”
That is holding out against the disintegrating powers of nature, and it is the same with feeling.
Feeling is a most powerful function.
Mr. Schmitz: We know how the journalist on the Titanic behaved. How would a corresponding feeling type behave?
Dr. Jung: A feeling type would behave like his wife, for instance. She simply loved him, and she stood death and panic with him.
It was done very beautifully.
He was identical with his philosophical observation of the situation and quite aloof.
He was already in a timeless land. And she too, through love. That is feeling.
Mr. Schmitz: But love is not a capacity of the feeling type only.
Dr. Jung: Naturally, for the feeling of a woman, even the thinking of a woman, can be detached only with the aid of Eros, as the thought of a man can be detached only with the help of Logos.
Therefore the highest forms of the great helpful powers of the unconscious correspond to those principles.
The highest form of thinking in a man coincides with Logos, as the highest form of feeling in a woman coincides with Eros.
It was only through the aid of the gods that man was able to detach himself from the meaninglessness of nature.
Therefore, the greatest redeemer of whom we know, Jesus Christ, has been called the Logos.
He was the light that rescued us from that darkness.
Mr. Schmitz: But I have the impression that in a feeling type the capacity for loving is greater.
Dr. Jung: No, love is a feeling, yet the principle of Eros is not necessarily loving, it can be hating too.
Eros is the principle of relationship, and that is surely the main element in woman’s psychology, as Logos is the main element in man’s psychology.
But the Logos naturally is in relation to feeling as well as to thinking.
One can have sensation and intuition more under the influence of Logos or more under the influence of Eros.
The functions are interrelated as well as permeated by the two basic principles.
Mr. Schmitz: The fact of being a feeling type does not give one a greater capacity for loving?
Dr. Jung: No, it has nothing to do with loving.
A feeling type can be as cold as ice if there is not Eros.
He can maintain a feeling of hatred through death and the devil, he can die with hatred all over him, or he may have a feeling of indifference and hold out against anything.
Mr. Schmitz: But also a woman, a feeling type, can be incapable of love?
Dr. Jung: Absolutely.
There are women who are feeling types and yet who are entirely cold and without sex.
The feeling type is never particularly warm, because the differentiated function is often lacking in human qualities.
Yu must never mix up feelings with love.
That is due to a miserable shortcoming of language.
For instance, in the war, the political department issued declarations beginning:
The President has a feeling about such and such a thing.
Perfectly ridiculous. It should be: he has an opinion about such and such a thing.
That suggests again an entirely different application of the word “feeling.”
Then there are feelings of duty, of admiration, ten thousand ways of using the word.
In the German language it is still worse; even Goethe confuses sensation and sentiment.
chiefly on the intuitional and intellectual side, and therefore feeling and sensation are all muddled up.
Differentiated sensation is the fonction du reel, the perception of reality, and it has nothing to do with the functions of the body.
People think they are developing sensation when they have sexual experiences, or when they eat and drink well, or when they take a hot bath.
Mr. Schmitz: Yet they are sensations.
Dr. Jung: But in a psychological sense it has nothing to do with sensation.
The psychological function of sensation is the perception of reality, and the standpoint of the sensation type is simply the standpoint of facts.
When a person practices recognition of facts, he is doing something for his sensation; but taking a hot bath or painting himself with iodine has nothing to do with it.
That is an intuitive misconstruction, he is mixing up the sensations of the body with the principle of sensation, which is really the principle of facts.
Among the Latin peoples the recognition of sensation, of reality, expresses itself in their language, and sentiment and sensation can never be mixed up.
But they are badly mixed up in the German language.
Dr. Schlegel: Is not the so-called feeling of love an emotional element which does not enter into the frame of the functions, as you understand it?
Dr. Jung: The feeling function has to do with the feeling of values, and that has nothing necessarily to do with love.
Love is relatedness. One can feel without having relationship.
When admiring a beautiful woman, one does not necessarily have a relationship with her or love her.
Love has to do with Eros.
If love had only to do with feeling, a thinking type couldn’t love.
We have to use these intuitive concepts, but there are two principles which are beyond functions.
Mr. Schmitz: A thinking type is not necessarily connected with Logos? He can be a blockhead?
Mrs. Baynes: A thinking type cannot be a blockhead surely, for most differentiated functions can. do something!
Dr. Jung: Only in as much as the type is influenced by other functions.
Mrs. Baynes: He said the thinking type could be a blockhead, and it seems to me that that is contradictory. If he is a blockhead, he becomes some other type.
Dr. Jung: You are quite right in the case of a really differentiated thinking type.
Prof Eaton: Is Logos constructive planning?
.
Dr Jung: It can be constructive planning.
Logos is the principle of discrimination, in contrast to Eros, which is the principle of relatedness.
Eros brings things together, establishes dynamic relations between things, while the relations which Logos brings about are perhaps analogies or logical conclusions.
It is typical that Logos relationships are devoid of emotional dynamics.
Prof Eaton: More abstract than concrete?
Dr. Jung:
You can see these qualities best through practical examples.
For instance, the Logos element, being a principle of discrimination, not only allows one but forces one to give equal dignity to any object of thinking or observation.
It enables a man to devote himself with almost religious concentration to the classification of lice, or to the different qualities of faeces, to put it quite drastically,6 as well as to counting the stars.
To make a picture of it, suppose there are a series of laboratories.
In No. 1 is the observatory of a man who has devoted himself for years to astronomical researches.
In the next laboratory is the man who is classifying lice, sixty thousand different specimens, a most interesting enterprise.
And in the third is a man tremendously interested in the different qualities of faeces, a very unsavoury undertaking.
Yet every man is working with the same concentration, the same spirit.
Now what is Eros, represented by a woman, doing in that situation?
Let us say she is the charwoman in the place.
She finds the astronomer a terribly disagreeable man, hard and cold; he never gives her a tip, and naturally he is a bachelor.
Mr. Professor Concerned with lice would be quite a nice man if he were not always interested in those ugly things; he occasionally gives her a tip, he is married and has very nice children, he is perfectly respectable and he has a great-uncle somewhere.
She knows all that. That is relatedness, you see. It is an entirely different aspect of the world.
The man devoted to the stars, who sits there passionately attending to his work, is absolutely unaware of the fact that he can fall in love with a woman.
He thinks that falling in love is a kind of illness which happens in early youth and which one combats by marrying –as a man said to me “Just in order to get through with the damned thing.”
That is Logos.
I didn’t mean to lose myself in a discussion of these principles, but apparently they still give rise to all sorts of doubts.
I find on my desk a question which has just rained down from heaven, apparently, but I am afraid we cannot discuss every item of the theory of psychological functions now.
The question is about the perception of the inner reality, in contradistinction to the introverted sensation function.
That is a complicated question which I am quite unable to answer now; it would lead us too far away from our dream into the theory of functions.
Perhaps for the time being we could leave it with the statement that the functions are vehicles for the forces, or influences, or activities, which emanate from those two principles, those two gods, Logos and Eros.
And perhaps you can also understand that if there were no principles whatever outside of the functions, one could never hope to detach anything from the unconscious.
There must be something which helps one to detach a function, some principle outside which allows one to tear it away from the original lump of unconsciousness.
One could say that both principles play a tremendous role in the history of the thought of redemption, which is really a psychological affair.
For instance, in Christianity it is not only Logos that plays the role of redeemer, it is also Eros in the form of the principle of love.
There again one sees the incorporation of the two principles.
I may add here that the ideal Logos can only be when it contains the Eros; otherwise the Logos is not dynamic at all.
A man with only Logos may have a very sharp intellect, but it is nothing but dry rationalism.
And Eros without the Logos inside never understands, there is nothing but blind relatedness.
Such people can be related to God knows what-like certain women who are dissolved completely in little happy families-cousins, relations-and there is nothing in the whole damned thing, it is all perfectly empty.
Exactly like the low sort of Logos people, those classifying fellows with a low understanding.
Mr. Schmitz: But there is a certain affinity between Logos and thinking and between Eros and feeling?
Dr. Jung: As between all other functions.
Don’t mix up the word “feeling” with love as relationship.
As I said, feeling is the function of values. I grant you that in reality nothing is separate, everything is flowing in the same space, so if one talks long enough of psychology, one gets quite mad and confused.
As Goethe says: Names, concepts of men, are sound and smoke, feeling is everything.
Everything can function in Eros, and everything can function in Logos.
Dr. Draper: l still don’t understand what the dreamer’s reaction was with that wandering anima. What was his response when he found her outside?
Dr. Jung: Oh, he was afraid of the police, and then comes the discovery with which we are now concerned.
Since he is a man with differentiated thinking and differentiated sensation, he has a very accurate observation of reality, and that is expressed by the photographer.
And the superior function, as I explained, is exceedingly valuable, it gives that man a standpoint of refuge in the great turmoil, a refuge to which he can return.
It gives him a sense of continuity and safety which he would not have in his inferior functions.
There the ape-man comes in and there is no discrimination, no reliability; everything is muddled, there is no relatedness.
But in this supreme moment when danger appears in all forms, he remembers that he can withdraw, with the recognition:
If all else fails, at least I have my inner continuity, I have my records, these images.
And when you remember what he has gotten in these dreams, what his vision is, you understand that he has a treasure, something exceedingly valuable.
People who have no differentiated function are very badly off indeed in such a turmoil, they are nothing but panic and confusion; but such a man has the chance at least of not necessarily getting into a panic, because he has a basis to stand on.
In many cases of neurosis, it is very important that one builds up first such a differentiated function to which one can retire, and that gives one a chance.
When a patient has no such basis, how can one talk to him?
There is no place to talk together, the scene shifts and shifts, and the doctor never knows with whom he is talking.
While with a man who has a differentiated function, one can always return to some sort of initial statement.
One can always say: now we return to our agreement; or now we return to reason; or to actual scientific truth; or to the reliability of a personal relatedness; we return to the fact that you recognize that I am a decent fell ow and not a humbug, and that you are a human being and not a criminal.
Now, the photographer simply makes the statement that he has those photographs and that he is going to take them to a safe place, and afterwards, in the end, he turns up again and says the whole
situation is indifferent to him because his records are safe and that they will be a great success.
But just before that is a new scene, and there the danger really begins.
On the other side of the river soldiers appear and even artillery, and the dreamer assumes that the bombardment will now take place, that they are going to shoot at his house.
This is a very dangerous situation and the symbolism is quite distinct.
He makes here a very involved remark in his associations about the external world being hostile to the ego, but I will not translate that again as it is not very important.
The important point here is that he understands this attack upon his house as an attack of the external world upon his own safety, and that is on account of the fact that the anima has escaped into that external world.
We have already seen that the possible incarnation of the anima in a real woman would constitute a typical danger which would bring him into conflict with conventional morality, so it is a logical conclusion that the police would become interested in the case. But here the thing goes much further.
You see, it would be quite enough if two or three policemen came.
The dreamer himself would offer no resistance.
Neither would the photographer inasmuch as he has rescued his records; the situation is perfectly indifferent to him. So there remains only the ape-man, and perhaps three or four policemen would be quite sufficient to get him down.
It seems exaggerated to bring artillery, but the unconscious has probably certain reasons for bringing it into play.
How would you explain that?
Mr. Baumann: The photographer has taken the pictures and wants to go off with the films to a safe place.
Dr. Jung: There is no evidence in the dream which would explain why it should be an offence that the photographer gets away with his films.
That is no reason for artillery and would not even explain the police, for they are only concerned with public morality.
We can allow for the police, but soldiers and artillery-such an upheaval against one single ape-man is going too far.
Dr. Schlegel: It means that the fact must be a very serious one.
Dr.Jung: Yes, it is very serious. If one very determined criminal Is defending himself with a gun, the police are needed.
And if it is a whole crowd of criminals, soldiers must be called in; they would get one or two cannons into position against such a mob.
So here it must be something like that, something very serious which goes quite beyond his individual case.
Mrs. Jaeger: He remarked in the dream that there was a river in between. Perhaps the artillery was needed to shoot across.
Dr. Jung: They could shoot with rifles, they would not need artillery.
Moreover, if the anima escaped, we may suppose that there is a bridge.
Therefore we may assume that the river is there merely to designate a division, but is not really an obstacle.
Make a picture of it in your minds, a house, a river, and the artillery on the opposite side.
You see, that is obviously again a story of pairs of opposites.
A river always symbolizes the river of life, the river of energy, the living energy that __ draws its dynamism from opposition.
Without I I opposition, there is no energy.
Where there –is opposition, where the opposites clash, energy will result.
The river is an eternal image, and fording a river and bridging a river are important symbols for the contact of the opposites that cause energy.
It is obvious from the dream that here is such a case.
On one side, the ape-man, an impulsive thing with no moral considerations, and on the other side the revolt of the collective moral standpoint.
That is the standpoint which is revealed by this picture.
You see, it is not a very individual conflict apparently, because you would not bring big guns into action in that case.
It would be terribly exaggerated to turn a battery of big guns on that single ape-man-like shooting sparrows with cannon.
Therefore we assume that the ape-man stands for more than the personal unconscious, he must stand for collectivity, the whole crowd.
Only if a whole herd of ape-men attacked the anima would it be reasonable to bring up the artillery.
So the tremendous emotion which the dream brings out suggests that this problem of the ape-man is by no means a personal one.
Naturally the dreamer would be inclined to assume that it was all his personal shortcoming, for which there was no redemption.
People think of their conflicts as subjective only, and therefore they are isolated; they think they are the only ones who have such problems, and that even to a very grotesque degree.
I remember a young man of eighteen who came into my office, saying that he had something terrible to tell me, and requested me to shut the door into my library which I always leave open.
I asked if he had committed a murder, and he replied: “If it were only that!”
I have a little picture with a curtain over it, and he wanted to know if there was not a window behind where a secretary might sit and listen-that is the usual supposition.
Then when everything was absolutely sure and tight he said, “I have to confess something very terrible; if it were known the world would cease to exist.”
He had discovered masturbation, and he assumed that if it were known, no-one would propagate and the race would die out.
People with the neurotic conflict always feel that it is quite subjective in every detail, happening perhaps for the first time in the world; they admit that other people suffer from similar difficulties, but it is not the same.
When a person is in love, it seems that there is no love in the world that could be as beautiful.
In supreme passions, one always has the feeling of being isolated, and it is true that one is isolated in any kind of extreme emotion; one loses contact with other people, one becomes completely autoerotic.
So the dreamer in this conflict labours under the prejudice that he is the only one in such a situation, particularly of course because he cannot talk to his wife.
One of the reasons of the success of the analytical treatment is that people can at least confess
their secrets, for the more secrets one has the more one is isolated.
His feeling is that it is his apeman, but the unconscious says, no, it is the ape-man, the ape-man that is in everybody, and it is because it is a public danger that artillery is brought into action.
This naturally reminded him of the war, which we then discussed, with the result that he saw that in the war the ape-man got loose, that people were mutually killing the ape-men in each other.
For wherever the ape-man appears there is destruction.
Naturally the. dreamer cannot realize at once that the conflict is not peculiar to himself, that it is in the entire world, and that it is the coming up of the primitive man in the actual world which has that destructive influence.
Therefore we draw up artillery and make wars, seeing the enemy in our neighbours because we are unable to see it in ourselves.
The coming up of the ape-man is a release of man’s instinctual nature, so we have all sorts of problems; our philosophical and religious feelings go to hell and we are more or less helpless.
Formerly we had religious feelings, but now we are disoriented and nobody really knows what we should believe.
And our unrest expresses itself in other forms.
In art, for instance, the Negro, who we have always thought was a born slave, is now the most admired artist.
We admire his dancing; Negro actors play a great role; we find Negro spirituals exceedingly beautiful.
We could not possibly tolerate the hypocrisy of other revivalist meetings, but in these Negro spirituals there is living faith, there is something immediate and touching.
Don’t forget that from the Jews, the most despised people of antiquity, living in the most despicable corner of Palestine or Galilee, came the redeemer of Rome.
Why should not our redeemer be a Negro? It would be logical and psychologically correct. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Pages 690-706