3 May 1933 Visions Seminar LECTURE I
Ladies and Gentlemen: Our last seminar ended with the vision of the terrible mother goddess, that most archaic and many breasted idol within another idol.
The patient did not know what to do about that figure, but finally told her guide that she would pass it, so she went on down the steep and narrow path.
Then she came to a precipice “and saw in the valley men in chariots rushing madly and frantically over another precipice, men and horses falling into a great void.”
We did not discuss this event thoroughly because we had not dealt sufficiently with the
mother figure, which is a bit strange; I assume that not all of you are clear about its meaning.
Of course, one can understand theoretically that as a man has a sort of archaic image of the father in his unconscious, so a woman might have an archaic image of the mother.
But a man might also have such an image of the mother, because father and mother are archetypal figures.
Now is such an archaic mother figure usual in the unconscious of a man? Or is it particularly characteristic for a woman’s psychology?
I must say it is a very difficult question. You see, these things are extremely remote. Such a symbol is far away, it is just on the borderline of visibility.
It has almost nothing to do with our conscious life as far as we can see, so it is extremely hard to judge it.
One understands much more readily that a man has an anima or a woman an animus; that is within the limits of human experience, one can see it in many cases.
But such a figure is beyond the level of animus and anima because it is a mother, though the animus and anima in the beginning are projected into the father and mother.
In a young girl the animus figure is identical with the father-he is the first representation of what one later calls the animus-as the mother is to the boy the first representation of the anima.
But that character normally soon vanishes.
Of course, certain men retain an anima figure all their lives in the form of the mother, but on account of that they are infantile and neurotic, as women are neurotic and animus-possessed who retain the animus figure in the form of the father.
But here is a mother figure in a woman’s case.
One could say it was the anima of a woman, but it is so archaic, the antiquity is so particularly emphasized, that one gets the impression that it must be something
exceedingly primitive, almost beyond experience, while the anima is not beyond experience.
If there is anything in a woman that one could call anima, it would be rather near the surface, something far more developed, more differentiated, not so absolutely primitive as this idol.
Perhaps you have seen such archaic mother figures in museums, in the British Museum, for instance.
One finds them in primitive tribes also, where they are always peculiarly obscene or grotesque, or they have grotesque attributes-as grotesque as the Artemis of Ephesus with the many breasts, and the images of animals and bees carved all over her body-they are her attributes too.
So these figures suggest something exceedingly strange and remote, denoting that they are almost inaccessible to personal experience except under certain conditions.
They would not be found in temples, however, and no cults would have grown up around them, had man not had a certain intuition of psychic factors which could be suitably expressed by them.
But their grotesque quality denotes that they do not fit in with our differentiated psychology; it is too paradoxical, too inexplicable or incomprehensible.
Therefore when we try to reduce such a figure to an actual psychological fact, we must
have recourse to experiences possessing that same character of remoteness and incomprehensibility, and perhaps even of obscenity.
Now do you know of such psychological facts? Are you conscious of such experiences?
You will never be able to understand this vision if you do not find something in your own psychology which is a parallel or in a certain connection with it.
If I asked if you recognized anything like the animus-or the anima-in your own psychology, you would say yes; you know what those things mean, they cover a definite experience.
But does this image cover a definite experience?
Miss Hannah: Yes, certainly.
Dr. Jung: Can you tell us what?
Miss Hannah: I would rather not. It hits one in one’s most vulnerable spot. It seems to me to be a primordial image coming up from under one’s shadow. It is awfully involved, I wish I had not begun on it.
Dr. Jung: Your remarks are most suggestive.
I wish someone would continue these allusions.
Mrs. Crowley: I think it can exist in both man and woman.
Dr. Jung: But what do the men say? You see, my idea is that it does not
exist in man as much as in woman, insofar as a man can understand or appreciate a woman.
Something similar may exist in him too, naturally, but that figure, according to my experience, does not play the same role.
Remark: Would he be in touch with it through his anima?
Dr. Jung: He must be if he is to understand it, because a man can only understand a woman via his own anima, and inasmuch as the anima is a female there must be such an archaic idol behind her too.
But inasmuch as a man is a man after all, his anima is still further away from that
grotesque figure than he is himself; and inasmuch as a woman is a woman, the figure is a bit nearer, it is more intimate.
Mrs. Sawyer: I should think in a man it would mean the terrible mother, but to a woman it would be different.
Dr. Jung: It is the terrible mother, but of course projected.
And when she is projected into the real mother and completely identified with her, as in the case of a man with a negative mother complex, it is an injustice to the mother, because she is just an ordinary person and by no means an archetypal witch.
But there is truth in it.
That projection covers a certain fact, expressed by this absurd, uncanny, demoniacal mother image, which is operative in a woman’s psychology in the mother’s peculiar
destructiveness; and it is more in the mother than in the man who projects it.
In a woman’s case it is much nearer, yet it is exceedingly remote, because the conscious psychology, particularly of mothers, is not allowed to see it, that is a secret image; just as a man is not allowed to see his insufficiencies and defects, because it would injure his self-assertion or self-confidence, he would be lamed by too much insight.
It would be almost dangerous for a mother to see these things clearly, because it
would check her maternal effort; she must believe in the constructiveness of her effort. Or, if she is not a mother but just a woman, she must believe in the constructiveness of her attitude, say, to a man; if she understands too much of that destructive picture, she would be disabled.
The necessary conscious attitude and psychology of a woman does not allow a full realization of this background image.
It is usually one of the most difficult parts in an analysis to make this figure conscious because it is most injurious to be aware of its reality.
Mrs. Crowley: Doesn’t it belong more to the Eastern psychology? They are quite accustomed to it in Kali.
Dr. Jung: They are just as unconscious of it in themselves as we are.
They projected it into Kali, so they have nothing to do; they pay so much to Kali and the case is settled.
That is the great advantage of having such cults. We have no such advantages.
If we discover it in ourselves, it is nowhere else, we are always identified with it; that is so much in the blood that it is an acrobatic feat to detach from such a vision.
Therefore our patient passed it by, she could not stay there, she would be afraid of
being wiped out.
Such a vision is morally undermining.
So it is very difficult to characterize the psychological contents of this archaic mother figure.
One could say, speaking biologically, that it contains the last remnants of merely animal attributes, as, for instance, the followers of Artemis were animals, the believers called themselves arktoi, bears; and the followers of Circe were transformed into swine.
This figure is simply a faraway reminiscence of such a mother cult that veiled an
animal maternal instinct, which is very close to destructiveness.
One can observe that in pigs.
If the young are not protected just after birth, the mother eats them; if they are protected for a while against her destructive instinct, she will accept them, but not in the first moment.
That is also true of criminal human beings; immediately after birth a murder may easily be committed by the mother, which a little later on becomes impossible.
Dr. Gordon: Is not the reason of that the fear that the young will be injured? Just as a young snake runs into its mother’s mouth for safety?
Dr. Jung: The little pigs don’t run into the mother’s mouth, she quite actively eats them up.
Dr. Gordon: But if you go away and don’t look and leave her in perfect quiet, she would not; it is a very primitive fear.
Dr. Jung: There may be such a fear behind it, but that does not take away the fact that the young are eaten.
I remember a litter of young hedgehogs which my dog discovered.
I was afraid that they might be injured, so I made a nest for them and left them in peace.
They were perfectly free, I only protected them against the dog, but the next morning
all the young were eaten, only the tails were left.
Probably the fact that the nest had been disturbed caused a panic in the mother, and she preferred to destroy the whole situation and wait for a better opportunity.
But the fact is that the mother ate the young.
When I was in Africa I heard an interesting story about a tribe in eastern Africa.
You know, not very long ago slave hunting was still going on.
Abyssinian robbers came down to North Kenya and stole slaves there and then sold them to the Arabs; in fact, Arab leaders usually organized the raids.
Since the British rule in the country they have been stopped, but that was only a
short time ago.
In one of those raids the inhabitants of a Negro village heard of the robbers coming, so they hid themselves in an exceedingly dense jungle, a perfectly safe place where they would not be found.
But of course those robbers were very experienced in their particular line of interest, and while searching they passed very close to the place where the Negroes were hidden.
Now in order to protect themselves the mothers held their little children by the throat, and in the moment when a child began to cry they just suffocated it, killed it on the spot.
The mothers did it.
You see, that is this fierceness which is all the more unexpected because it comes from the mother.
If the father did it, it would be more understandable, but that the mother should do it is
shocking.
That is the grotesqueness.
Remark: But I think it is easier for a woman to kill a child herself.
Dr. Jung: Well, it may be in a way easier for the mother, but here we are concerned with the experience of the child.
This image would not look the same to the mother.
I mean, if there were a first mother she would not have such an image, but the first child would have it.
You know mothers are exceedingly sweet, but they are also exceedingly fierce and
cruel, like animals.
I am quite certain that young tiger girls have terrible mother images, because at first the tiger mother is awfully sweet.
They are marvellous mothers, but suddenly, when the children are grown up, the mother snarls at them and bites them away from the food, she fights them in the nastiest way, and then they get an entirely different picture of the mother.
That is the shock which causes this terrible image; with human beings it works out in the same way.
Not long ago I saw a mother who had two children with whom she was absolutely identical; she brought them up in the most devoted way and I had all the trouble in
the world to free the daughter from her influence, the mother would not let her go.
And when I finally succeeded in tearing the girl away, the mother collapsed, she had a bad neurosis.
I thought she must be grieving over the loss of her daughter and probably had resistances against me.
But that was not the case, she said: “You have done my daughter so
much good, I wish you would do the same for me. I am sick of those
children, I want to live my own life.”
Completely cured. And half a year
ago nothing but the children, nothing but love and devotion and why
don’t you write to me.
Dr. Schlegel: It is of a certain interest that a murder committed soon
after birth is punished much less than later.
Dr. Jung: That is on account of the assumption that the mental condition
of the woman is disturbed.
As in the case of theft, it is always a
question whether a woman was having the monthly period or not; if a
theft is committed at that time a woman is considered less responsible
and is therefore less severely punished.
But I don’t think legislators have
thought of the destructive mother of antiquity.
Mr. Henley: What is the connection between the child-eating ogre and
the terrible mother?
Dr. Jung: The ogre that eats children is like Cyclops in the Homeric legend, who was going to eat Ulysses himself if he could catch him.
That is a picture of the destructive father, not the mother; the father can be equally destructive naturally. Kronos in Greek mythology, and Uranos, are examples.
They also eat their young.
That is the corresponding negative archaic father image in a man, which we know a good deal about in other mythologies as well.
Children were sacrificed to Baal and to Astarte, so they would be the destructive father and mother.
When they excavated the foundations of the temple of Astarte at Carthage, they found in jars the bones of hundreds of children who had been burned.
That would be more the activity of the mother naturally, the mother eating the first born; she herself does not eat it, she offers her child to the goddess instead.
Mrs. Baynes: If a woman tries to get in contact with this figure, is that best done through her shadow?
Dr. Jung: It is not a question of doing it, it happens.
Naturally the shadow covers that whole field of experience, but this image is behind
the shadow.
The shadow taken as a symbolic figure is much nearer to the normal personality, while this thing is unheard of, something which only comes into existence in extraordinary situations.
Mrs. Baynes: One could not use the shadow as a go-between, so to speak?
Dr. Jung: The shadow would be a cover, I should say; but it is just the beginning of the dark world, it is personal, it is something you can agree with, something you may even be conscious of.
If you are capable of a little self-criticism you naturally would understand the shadow, but you would not understand this mother, as a father would not understand that he contains an ogre.
Mr. Allemann: Is this figure only negative? I think the breasts show a positive side.
Dr. Jung: It is also positive, but the negative aspect is more prevailing.
We shall probably see that it has a very positive aspect too.
For instance, Artemis of Ephesus was the goddess of fertility, which is positive, favorable.
Now when our patient passed this figure, she had a vision of men and horses rushing over a precipice where they fell into the great void.
What does that denote?
Miss Hannah: You said last time that if you passed by a fundamental fact like the shadow, you immediately fall into animus opinions and then there is war.
Dr. Jung: Yes, men and soldiers are always animus figures.
In this case the riders and horses and chariots are destroyed.
Mr. Allemann: Is it panic, due to this figure?
Dr. Jung: Yes, those horses and men rushing over the precipice are like a herd of frightened sheep.
It is a stampede, her animus is stampeding, it is a typical animus panic.
Mrs. Sawyer: It is as if this image had turned them into swine.
Dr. Jung: You are thinking of the swine in the New Testament.
Christ cast the devils out of those men into the swine that then precipitated
themselves down a steep place into the sea.
That is a different case.
But it is true that the energy of the emotion or the shock is not left where it should be, in the idol; it goes over into those animus figures and that catastrophe follows.
Now what is an animus panic?
Miss de Witt: When a person flies into a passion?
Dr. Jung: Not necessarily.
When I fly into a passion, I never assume that it is an animus panic.
An animus panic is a very specific experience, very typical.
You should have some experiences handy.
Miss Wolff One gets an opinion into one’s head, a disagreeable fear perhaps, or a negative expectation, and then one has no critique about it and falls into an awful panic. This opinion is altogether wrong for a much deeper unconscious reason, but it does not show in the conscious.
Dr. Jung: Yes, I have observed that very often in analysis.
Say I use a certain term in the usual way.
But that particular morning the term suddenly sounds to my dear patient as if it meant something entirely different “If the doctor says such things he must have very queer ideas about me!”-and then come torrents of tears.
Then I have to say: “Now just wait, where did you start? I said so-and-so, and I meant what I ordinarily mean by that term.”
Mr. Henley: In this case, though, the animus figures are destroying themselves, are they not?
Dr. Jung: Yes, that is also typical, an animus panic ends in the void.
For instance, if I do not succeed in making it clear that my word sounded as it always sounded before, and if my patient is in such a state that she cannot hear my words, I say: “Good-bye, bad weather today, I shall see you next Tuesday.”
And then she comes along. “I was an awful fool last time, I don’t know how it started, I went raging on until I got home, and then I asked myself what I was raging about, so the whole thing ended in smoke.”
That was an animus panic, but it can look like anything in the moment if one takes it too seriously.
Though if one does not take it seriously it is still worse. “You don’t even take me seriously!”
Now here we have a very good example of an animus attack, and it comes from the
fact that our patient passed that idol.
She passed it because it was so unspeakably ugly, she disliked it and probably she was secretly afraid of it.
So by that sort of mistake-when one is unnecessarily afraid-it is projected, and then naturally one has a wrong opinion about the thing, and the result is an animus panic.
And men fall into anima panics, but in that case it is less a dramatic scene than a sort of gloom arising from a negative anima feeling or intuition about something.
Of course, if one would take the trouble to think the matter over carefully, it would not
occur, but on just that morning at half past seven, it looks gloomy, and it may mean gloom for a fortnight.
Then that turns out to be smoke too.
We come now to the next vision. It is the second circle.
She says:In terror I stepped back against a great wall of rock. (This is a continuation of the vision before but with a new theme.) I looked up and saw the rock in the shape of an old hag with green eyes. She said: “At last I have you. You shall go no further into the valley. I will destroy you and the flame upon your breast.” I said: “I am not afraid, I will enter into you.” I spoke, and the rock opened and closed. I was inside a dark rocky cavern.
What about this adventure?
Miss Hannah: Would this hag not be another form of the woman she has refused?
Dr. Jung: Exactly. That idol was a goddess of the interior of the earth, an exceedingly chthonic figure; all the chthonic goddesses have that element of incomprehensibility, grotesqueness, absurdity, and so on.
Also the gods. I discovered a marvellous animus figure in the museum in Constantinople, a statue higher than this ceiling, really quite enormous.
It is a Syrian version of the Egyptian god Bes.
That little god Bes has a beard and very powerful shoulders and arms and is usually rather obscene-looking; he is the tutor of Horus, and he is always connected with the mother goddess. In Karnak, at the entrance of the temple of Mut, there are two figures of Bes, one on either side, he is the animus of the mother.
If you have read Der Tote Tag by Barlach, a sort of mythological drama, you will remember a figure there with the grotesque name Steissbart, he is also the dwarfish gnomelike mind of the mother.
This figure is a most characteristic chthonic god.
There were plenty of such divinities in the later syncretistic times also, in the Ptolemaic period.
And the gods in primitive tribes usually look absurd and paradoxical, because they express the earth element.
Now that idol, the archaic mother, is a sort of personification of the earthly origin of man, so in the next variation of the fantasy she is the rock itself.
Therefore the rock has the shape of an old hag with green eyes. Why with green eyes?
Mr. Dell: Is it a connection between the rock and the green of water? Water is brought out of the rock in the biblical legend.
Dr. Jung: But there is no particular connection between water and this nice old lady. Other things are green with a better right than water.
Remark: “Green with envy.”
Dr. Jung: That is proverbial.
Mrs. Sawyer: Green eyes might mean evil, but green could also mean nature.
Dr. Jung: Green is the color of vegetation, and that contains demons as well; anyone with such green eyes might be a demon.
In this case it is probably the green of vegetation but in its negative demoniacal aspect.
Of course any positive-looking symbol can also be negative, just as such an uncanny god as Bes can be favorable.
One is often astonished at the tales about those grotesque gods, they seem to be awful and terrifying, and then they turn out to be quite benevolent.
The dwarfs in Grimm’s Fairy Tales are really rather benevolent, though they have another tricky aspect and do a lot of damage, they bewitch the cattle and poison the
milk, they do all sorts of evil things.
So Bes is a very doubtful creature.
This rock, then, is the earth, personified as an old woman; it is the same goddess that our patient passed before.
And now she is gripped by her, meaning that she cannot detach from the earth; she returns from the animus attack and falls into the power of the earth.
The old hag says:
“You shall go no further into the valley.”
So there is no going beyond for the time being, she has to accept the fact of the earth, and this earth mother is angry, she obviously has no particularly good intentions when
she says: “I will destroy you and the flame upon your breast.”
This is again the terrible destructive mother.
Now why is she destructive since she is the earth? The earth is not destructive. Why has she the negative aspect here?
Mrs. Sawyer: Because the patient is really afraid of her.
Dr. Jung: Yes, she passed her, neglected her, she did not sacrifice to her or propitiate her in any way.
In such a case, a negative content becomes more negative.
People who disregard the chthonic factor are injured by the chthonic factor.
This sounds very abstract, but what happens in real life if anyone neglects the chthonic factor and is injured thereby?
Miss de Witt: They get out of touch altogether.
Dr. Jung: But how does it show if I get out of touch with nature? Or if you get out of touch with nature, what would happen?
Miss de Witt: I would get altogether artificial, a sort of bookish person.
Dr. Jung: But that is awfully nice.
Miss de Witt: If you should get out of touch with nature, you would have no imagination.
Dr. Jung: Well, that is not very pleasant, but am I positively injured?
Mrs. Sawyer: Something compulsive will happen.
Dr. Jung: Oh, anything compulsive can happen when you neglect the chthonic factor, but I am referring to something specific.
Answer: You might get into a difficult situation financially.
Dr. Jung: When one lives above one’s finances, the overdraft will make itself felt.
But that is not exactly a self-injury, though personally, by way of one’s bank balance, it is an injury, sure enough.
Remark: You would get ill.
Dr. Jung: Yes, physically ill. One sees that, for instance, with very intuitive people.
They are always tempted to live beyond themselves, because they know so many possibilities that they can almost live in them-as though one could live like that-disregarding the actual possibility, the actual facts.
So the typical diseases of intuitive people affect the abdomen, because that corresponds to the earth; if you neglect the earth, you neglect the abdomen, and you may get ulcers of the stomach for instance.
The body always takes its revenge when disregarded.
So the idea that people formerly expressed by sacrificing to the chthonic gods takes
the form today of looking after the chthonic factor, realizing the fact that one lives in the body.
To the primitive man the body is a demoniacal factor, a mana factor.
We cannot understand that now because we are not under the same threat as the primitive man, who has a weak consciousness which can be put out at any time, a consciousness which is quite identical with the body. If anything happens to the body, the light of consciousness is gone, and the primitive is terribly afraid of that possibility.
He therefore avoids all those situations where he might be affected in that way, and pays attention to possibilities which we disregard completely.
He feels that if something happens to his body, it is not only his body that is injured-he could get over a wound, for instance-it is inflicted upon his soul at the same time, inasmuch as his consciousness has been put out by the shock.
Therefore he worships the chthonic gods in order to propitiate them, so that any wound he may receive shall be an ordinary one, and not a magic wound which is also a wound of his soul.
If he has not worshipped the gods, the wound is magic and may kill him, or at least disable him to a much greater extent than an ordinary wound.
We also know about simple diseases and complicated diseases.
A cold, for instance, is a simple disease, for one knows that it is nothing but a
straightforward cold, which is annoying but it has to take its course; one takes it easily and it is not complicated in the least.
But if one asks oneself, now why do I catch cold under such and such conditions?-! would not have caught it had things been different, there is then a psychological
complication, and the more that is the case, the more one poisons oneself; one can augment the morbidity to a very great extent by a mental complication.
These complications are by no means invented, a disease or an injury is often an expression of a mental disturbance, and such a disease, no matter how unimportant, has great psychological importance; one is unusually worried by it, or it injures one in an unusual way.
Doctors see that very often.
People have a relatively unimportant illness, yet on account of a certain mental complication it appears to them dangerous and to contain possibilities of a frightful nature.
Then if the doctor says it is nothing, just an ordinary infection, the character of the disease changes immediately; the pulse gets better, the breathing gets better, the fever falls, and the whole picture improves just on account of that quiet opinion.
Of course, the contrary may happen too, the disease may be complicated by adverse opinions.
So the primitive, in order to avoid these complications coming from wrong ideas or imagination, sets his mind at rest by propitiating the chthonic gods.
Then when an injury comes along he says: “Oh, this is merely a wound caused by an
arrow, but I have sacrificed a black cock to the gods, and that settles it,
they are at peace with me.”
He has to sacrifice to the gods above as well as to the gods below, he has to be at peace, and when he is quiet things work out much more simply.
Unfortunately we are no longer capable of believing in the chthonic gods so we cannot sacrifice to them.
We understand them too psychologically and cannot see how one could sacrifice
to psychological functions.
Now this rock goddess says: “I will destroy you and the flame upon your breast.”
We have had long dissertations about this little flame.
Miss Hannah: It was her consciousness, was it not?
Dr. Jung: Well, that the goddess says she will destroy her means that she will destroy her mind, her body, her consciousness, everything that she is.
Then on top of all that, the flame on her breast. What is that flame?
Mrs. Fierz: The Self, the Purusha.
Dr. Jung: Yes, it is the little flame in the lower apex of the triangle in the center of anahata, the breast center; in the Tantric yoga this is the vision or apparition of the Purusha.
The anahata center is the one where judgment begins; and in the fact that one can detach from unconsciousness and from the identity with things, from participation mystique, is the first manifestation of the independent Self.
You see I myself, my consciousness, my life, my body, all that can be quite unconscious. Therefore one always should ask whether a human being is with or without that flame, for where that spark is lacking, one knows that person is below the diaphragm, he is in the manipura or svadhisthana center.
Where the spark exists, you know that anahata psychology is reached at least, there is already a recognition of the Purusha.
From that remark in the fantasy we know that this woman has reached, to a certain extent, the stage of the anahata psychology, she has that little flame on her breast.
So in speaking of her, one really should say, Mrs. So-and-So and her little flame, because that is not self-evident.
Now do you think it would be possible for this earth mother to destroy her without destroying the little flame?
Miss Hannah: Yes, because the Purusha is absolutely indestructible.
Dr. Jung: But she says she would destroy the Purusha in her, herself and the Purusha.
Mr. Allemann: If she comes down again from anahata, the flame is destroyed.
Dr. Jung: Yes, for the earth mother is muladhara, and if she fetches her down, she naturally slips back into manipura, and from manipura into svadhisthana, and finally lands down at the bottom in muladhara, and then the flame is gone.
Mrs. Sawyer: But it is not destroyed. If she goes down into muladhara she loses connection with it, but she does not destroy it.
Dr. Jung: But that may not be simply a going down and coming up again.
The earth mother means the body, and if the body says no, the mind may be unable to go further.
I have seen many a case that got stuck on a certain level, and it was either very questionable whether they could go on, or they quite definitely could not.
And in a sense that happens to everybody.
The body allows us to go only to a certain limit, and if we go too far we shall have to deal with the body, either in physical illness, or it may mean death.
Or it may cause the destruction of the brain.
That possibility is pointed out in the Tantric yoga and it is perfectly true.
It is a very serious question how much one’s body can stand, one must always
consider the reaction of the body.
One assumes that of course the mind can go on more or less indefinitely, but it is a great question whether the body will allow it.
If someone passes by the Great Mother and goes too far, it is quite possible that he will be stopped in a most effective way; he may be ill, incapacitated, or he may lose his mind, or die, and then the flame is gone.
The Purusha, the absolute being, is beyond time and space, and so indestructible, but the question is not whether it exists, the question is whether we can attain to that condition.
If we cannot, it is for us as if it did not exist.
What is the use of tons of gold in a valley where we cannot get at it, or the gold that is supposed to be in the moon, or in the center of the earth? It does not help us in the least.
So it is a psychological question whether the Purusha is an ever-living flame or whether it can be put out.
The patient obviously feels that this situation is pretty serious, she cannot get away, so she submits and says she is not afraid.
Of course she is afraid, but she makes the best of it and goes inside the rock.
What would entering the earth mean in practical psychological life?
Mrs. Crowley: More relation to the instincts.
Dr. Jung: That is too abstract. If I dreamed that I was entering the earth, I would not be satisfied with that explanation.
To what extent am I at one with my instincts? After all, I don’t know.
You see, entering the earth is a very great adventure.
Dr. Gordon: She is getting down to her most elemental constituents.
Dr. Jung: That is quite all right, but how does it look in reality when Mr.
So-and-So comes down to his most elemental constituents?
Mr. Allemann: Accepting the laws of nature in every respect.
Dr. Jung: That is true but we must be more concrete.
Remark: She returns in to her body.
Dr. Jung: That is nearer, she returns into her body as if she had never been there before.
Do you think it is possible that she has not been in her body? Are you in your body?
Miss Hannah: Not very well. The connections seem to be a bit loose.
Dr. Jung: Is anyone else in that condition? Do you think you know whether you are in your body or not?
Miss Taylor: I am not. I am just beginning to go in.
Dr. Jung: So more than one is in that plight.
Dr. Gordon: I feel entitled to my body, I cling to it as tightly as I can.
Miss Hannah: I think most intuitives are a bit outside, whether they know it or not.
Dr. Jung: What can you tell us, Miss Taylor, about the relationship to the body?
Miss Taylor: I think I know when I am in, and not quite in.
Dr. Jung: Evidently there are people who are not so sure whether they are inside or outside the body, and I can confirm that.
Now how is it when one is outside? Could you characterize such a condition, Dr. Gordon?
Dr. Gordon: Then one dreams one’s images from without.
Dr. Jung: Does that suit you, Miss Taylor?
Miss Taylor: Not exactly, I think it is difficult to express.
Dr. Jung: There must be some difference, you see.
Mr. Baumann: There is a German expression, ausser sick sein.
Dr. Jung: To be outside of oneself with rage for instance, is ausser sicl; sein.
Mr. Baumann: I think you have that feeling of being outside of yourself when a part of the psychology is autonomous.
Dr. Jung: That would be an explosive condition, the explosion of an affect, for instance; then one would be outside of oneself. Now we have something practical.
Mrs. Dick: If one looks into a mirror without recognizing oneself at once, it is being outside oneself. It happens to me sometimes.
Dr. Jung: I am quite certain such things happen.
I knew a woman who always carried a mirror in her pocket, not to see whether she still had powder on her nose, but in order to establish her identity; otherwise she forgot entirely who she was.
Mr. Allemann: Can this happen to anybody besides intuitives?
Dr. Jung: It must happen to other people too because of that general way of putting it, ausser sick sein is proverbial.
But this uncertainty is typically intuitive.
Such a person is so unacquainted with herself that she forgets how she looks and must look in the glass to reassure herself.
This is a fact.
Frau Stutz: If we have no relationship to the body, if we demand too much from a mental point of view and pay no attention to the force that is in reality in the body, then one part is not accepted, and there is no relationship to the demands of reality.
Dr. Jung: Quite so. In studying the pathology of this relationship to the body, one finds the most extraordinary things.
Certain people are utterly unconscious of their own movements, for instance, they don’t know how to move; or they do not feel the natural rhythm of breathing, they have to learn it artificially; or they are unconscious of whole groups of muscles.
That expresses itself in the pathology of hysteria in the fact that large and wandering areas of skin sensibility are wiped out; perhaps the skin of both lower limbs is entirely without or with only partial sensibility.
Or certain groups of muscles are lame so that it affects particular actions; such people cannot walk perhaps, but they can dance.
Or they may have disturbances in the functions of the eye, they can see only in the center of the eye but not in the periphery, or they cannot see certain parts of things; they cannot see heads, for instance, they walk through the streets and see people walking about with no heads.
That is quite impossible to explain from the organic construction of the eye; it is a
psychical disturbance which cuts out perception, based of course upon a certain specific resistance against the body.
Our patient belongs to those who are either occasionally or habitually outside of their body, and she must now become acquainted with it, she must really be inside and connected with it.
You see it has a peculiar influence on one’s psychology, for when one is outside the body one disregards certain spheres of reality.
People who are not conscious of their abdomen cannot digest properly, they don’t know when they are hungry, or when they have had enough food.
Or if they are not sufficiently acquainted with their breathing or heart to realize its function, they overstrain it; they demand things of the body which it can never
produce.
There are a lot of typical ailments which come from such conditions, I often see that in physical illness.
I remember a girl who was by no means insane, who informed me that she was rather upset by the fact that when she was walking on the pavement she did not feel her steps. It was an extraordinary case.
She was twenty-eight years old, and in the course of her examination she said she had never seen her body.
“But you take baths, you must see it then.” “No, I cover the bath tub in order not to see it.”
So I told that girl to go home and undress and study her body.
Then she dreamed she was on top of a balloon and I was aiming at her and brought her down.
That was an exceedingly intuitive type.
Our patient is also intuitive, so this is a recognition of the fact of her body, what it does, and what reality it can stand or to what it must yield. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 955-969
