The Major Symbols Inherent in the Ancient Stories of Britain - Essay Example

Carl Gustav Jung, a man who would later be known for dividing the newly launched field of psychoanalysis, was born in 1875 as a man already divided between the poor nearly faithless country minister who was his father and the well-bred, aristocratic yet somewhat desperate woman of a proud family who was his mother. He spent his life attempting to trace the various sources of the divisions he found within himself and perhaps discover some means by which he might forge a deeper connection with other people. His path of exploration followed to some degree the thoughts of the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, who was also his mentor for a while, but eventually veered off in their own direction causing an irreparable rift between the men. As a means of finding greater understanding, Jung expanded his research into Eastern traditions and attempted to break down the component parts of both the Eastern and Western concepts to discover points of convergence. Among the various areas of thought he explored were the significance of dreams, mythology, religion, art and philosophy and how they connected throughout the various traditions found in widely disparate and sometimes highly isolated areas of the world. These points of convergence created what Jung called archetypes, which appeared in our folklore, myths, religions and philosophies in such a way as to reinforce the appropriate response for future generations. These archetypes, Jung said, were evidence of what he termed the collective unconscious which thus appears in our dreams as messages to the soul. One can understand a great deal about Carl Jung’s theories regarding the significance of dreams by examining the role dreams played in his own life, by investigating his theories directly and by understanding how these theories have been adopted by others, such as his wife Emma, in applying these ideas to specific instances like the Grail legend. As a boy, Carl Jung never felt very close to his parents, which is made clear in his writings about his earliest memories. “Jung’s earliest memories were of sensuous experiences: the taste and smell of leaves, the sun dappling the leaves, his aunt pointing out the Alps in the distant sunset, their peaks glowing red. Pressed for his very first impressions, he recalled lying in a pram but there was no mention of his parents” (McLynn, 1996). According to Sigmund Freud, it is one’s first memory that most completely reveals the deepest personality of the individual. “It has been argued that Jung’s first impressions connote a problem with parental bonding and attachment and suggest a mental universe where the natural world represents security and the interpersonal one insecurity. Even when he does later remember his mother, it is her dress rather than her face or voice he remembers” (McLynn, 1996). When Jung was only three years old, his mother was sent to spend some time in a mental institution and she never was a stable personality for her son. According to his own writings, Jung’s mother represented confusion to him as she seemed to be first one person and then another as she struggled through bouts of depression. His father was often busy with his parish work so Carl as a boy spent much of his time alone, giving him a great deal of time to let his imagination loose. Within this setting, he was able to pay close attention to his dreams and impressions of the world. An important event in his early childhood was a dream he had in which he was in a dungeon and encountered “what he thought at first was a tree trunk, some twelve to fifteen feet high and about two feet thick. The object was made of skin and naked flesh, with a rounded head and a single eye on the very top of the head. Later he would recognize the object as a ritual phallus” (McLynn, 1996). The meanings of this dream continue to be debated today, but Jung saw it as a representation of his general creativity. His mother’s horrified warning heard in the dream, ‘That is the maneater’, served to frighten him and engender confusion within him regarding his own gender and sexuality as well as his imagination and curiosity. Other dreams had throughout his youth eventually led him into his field of study. “With a directional push from his dream life he had elected to study medicine, adding on science, philosophy, archaeology and history. He said yes to Plato, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Empedocles; no to the Aristotelian intellectualism of St. Thomas Acquinas and the Schoolmen” (Dunne, 2002: 20). At the same time, astrophysics was becoming popular and Jung became very interested in psychics and metaphysics. His cousin, Helene, was a psychic medium who agreed to work with him in his research. “Her abilities as a medium served as early pointers for Jung toward his discovery of the unconscious” (Dunne, 2002: 21). While science provided him with the facts and evidence he needed to understand and feel he truly ‘knew’ something could be, it lacked the connections and ability to meet the spiritual problems he had encountered, which were met through his studies of philosophy and metaphysics. Thus, he entered the field of psychology as a science that seemed to blend the two disparate sides of Jung’s interests together and would eventually lead to his alternate understanding of the meaning of dreams. It was only after a serious falling out with his mentor and sometime speaking companion Sigmund Freud that Jung suffered from his great mental collapse. While it might have been brought on by the stress of his falling out with Freud or the exhaustion of traveling to various speaking engagements, this collapse might have also been brought on by Jung’s growing relationship with his mistress, who he would later call his second wife, Toni Wolff. “He [Jung] withdrew from the psychoanalytic movement and suffered a six-year-long breakdown during which he had fantasies of mighty floods sweeping over northern Europe – prophetic visions of World War I” (Liukkonen, 2008). Jung’s interest in the occult and what he would term the ‘collective unconscious’ was crystallized during this period of intense psychological turmoil and the vivid dreams he experienced during this time. In addition to the first dream in which he saw Europe engulfed by a flood, “he saw thousands of people drowning and civilization crumbling. Then, the waters turned into blood. This vision was followed, in the next few weeks by dreams of eternal winters and rivers of blood. He was afraid he was becoming psychotic” (Boeree, 2006). Upon the outbreak of World War I, Jung immediately found a connection between his dreams, the war and humanity in general that could not be easily explained away. The advent of World War I, then, had the effect on Jung of creating a new psychological dilemma that would require a great deal of self-exploration and philosophical investigation which would become the basis for all of his future theories. Throughout the war years, Jung kept a careful journal in which he painstakingly sketched out the details of his dreams, eventually coming to recognize several figures as representative of various aspects of himself, the Archetypes, and then becoming able to interpret the actions of these characters both in terms of how they affected him as well as how they reflected world events, providing him with a link to the collective unconscious. Finding these connections fuelled his interest in the processes of the unconscious, which he was now convinced reached much deeper than anyone suspected. This conviction led him to travel the world following the war, learning more about the ancient myths and legends of various regions as well as researching their philosophies regarding dreams, the mind and religious connections to the world. His travels took him to Africa, America and India among other places. As he traveled, he avidly studied the I Ching, the Tao and the fundamental principles of Hinduism and Buddhism all of which contributed something to his theories. Although Jung’s theories can be seen to have been influenced by Freud to a certain point, there remains a dividing line drawn sharply between the two theories. For example, Jung’s model of the human mind is divided into three parts much like the concepts of Freud. The first two divisions can even be loosely linked to Freud’s ideas of the id and the ego. However, the functions of these two aspects of the mind are significantly different from those of Freud. In Jung’s model, there is a conscious mind (the Ego) and a personal unconscious in which people store memories and events that can be recalled if desired as well as memories and events that have been suppressed for some reason. While it is similar to the id in that people don’t have full mastery of this area of their mind, Jung’s concept suggests its reasons for operating the way that it does could be quite different from the motivations suggested by Freud. However, what made Jung’s theory so extraordinary was his inclusion of the third element of the human psyche, the element of the collective unconscious. “You could call it your ‘psychic inheritance.’ It is the reservoir of our experiences as a species, a kind of knowledge we are all born with. And yet we can never be directly conscious of it. It influences all of our experiences and behaviours, most especially the emotional ones, but we only know about it indirectly, by looking at those influences” (Boeree, 2006). To help us understand the collective unconscious and thus perhaps gain a greater understanding of ourselves and of the world around us, Jung suggests we are provided with events of synchronicity, random occurrences that force us to make these sorts of connections. Understanding what they might mean is dependent on the concept of the archetypes which are released in the dream state. As building blocks of the collective unconscious, Jung suggested that archetypes could take just about any particular form, but almost always represented the same basic ideas. “Jung also called these components dominants or mythological primordial images. The archetype has no form of its own, but rather can be described as a need or an instinct. It is something that is not felt as a specific desire for any one particular thing” (Pierce, 2007). Pulling largely from the individual’s understandings of mythology and legend, the archetypes can provide a great deal of information about the various issues one might be dealing with personally, professionally and as a citizen of the world as they operate within the world of the dream. Some of the more common archetypes identified by Jung include the Mother, the Shadow, the Hero and the Teacher. These are not necessarily individuals or even specific faces that are seen in a dream, but are instead used to refer to sets of concepts such as the security, comfort and support one typically associates with images of mother, or the sequential growth process that occurs as a part of every hero journey. Understanding the archetypes and the messages of the dream includes not only understanding the myths from which they come, but also the underlying sociological meanings behind them. For example, the concept of the anima or animus reveals the constraints that society places on us because of our physical gender and exposes those elements of the psyche that do not fit within this narrow definition. The anima provides the man with a means of expressing his softer, ‘feminine’ side while the animus gives the woman a chance to know her stronger, ‘masculine’ tendencies. “The anima or animus is the archetype through which you communicate with the collective unconscious generally, and it is important to get into touch with it. It is also the archetype that is responsible for much of our love life: We are, as an ancient Greek myth suggests, always looking for our other half, the half that the Gods took from us, in members of the opposite sex” (Boeree, 2006). In terms of sexual imagery, Jung associates this with the concept of mana, or spiritual power, rather than overt sexual tendencies as Freud would have done. As might be clear from his developed theories, Jung felt that dreams would continue to present carefully selected symbols as a purposeful means of communicating specific meaning to the dreamer rather than attempting to hide these concepts. At the same time, he felt unconscious symbols were often used as well to help us understand and accept those aspects of ourselves that we have ignored or attempted to disown or to present archetypal figures that help us connect with the collective. “Jung thought that dreams could help us grow and heal through use of archetypal symbols. … Various archetypes are represented within myths, fairy tales, and religions, as well as dreams” (Bixler-Thomas, 1998). He believed the most effective method for dream interpretation was the use of series correlation (Hutchinson, 2000).  He gave hope to all dreamers who were looking for the meaning in their dreams without having to hire a ‘professional.’ Series correlation is a process involving the analysis of dreams over time.  Jung suggested keeping a dream journal and attempting to merge them into a big picture by determining whether they resemble any waking life experiences or situations and then figuring out physical action that might resolve these issues (Jung, 1976).  When attempting to determine the meaning of dreams, Jung frequently sought to define the shape and function of the image, analyze the alterations and actions the image goes through, identify personal positive and negative feelings regarding the issue and what the image might be associated with in real life. Thus, the biggest differences between Jung and Freud’s dream theories are the ability of the individual in interpreting their own dreams, the direct connection with waking life and the lack of focus upon instinctual desires in preference of more complex issues such as power and comfort. Jung’s ideas were well-known to his wife, who then applied them to the major symbols inherent in the ancient stories of Britain. The deep symbolism of Celtic lore identified by Emma Jung can be found throughout much of Western literature and has therefore attained a relatively shared meaning among numerous individuals. “It’s not too great a stretch to call the Matter of Britain, the cycles of legends surrounding King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, the definitive myth of Western civilization” (Adcox, 2004). As she illustrated in her writings, Emma Jung indicated how an understanding of what these meanings might be as well as how they appear, in what relationship with other objects and at what stage of the dream they appear, as well as our understandings of the myths with which they are associated, can help us understand the process of individuation, or growing up, through which we all traverse as we pursue our own hero’s journey. Before an examination of how the Celtic symbolic objects represent the Jungian concepts of the process of individuation, it is necessary to outline the basic forms of this process. Individuation is the three stage process by which Jung indicated we matured into full adults. The first of these stages is when we become aware that some kind of action is required. “Some kind of shock occurs that makes one aware of the self” (Garbis, 2002). This shock initiates the maturation process typically around the early teen years. The second stage is termed the initiation stage and it usually takes place during the teen years as individuals begin separating from their parents during which the cycle of the hero myth occurs. “Jung says that unless we pass through this second stage the individual can’t really become an adult. The function of the hero myth is to develop a person’s awareness of his strengths and weaknesses in order to face life’s problems” (Garbis, 2002). Within this myth, the death of the hero functions as a key to the concept that the individual has gained maturity and has been reborn into the image of the father or mentor. The third stage of the individuation process is known as transcendence and is that stage in the maturation process in which the unconscious and the conscious minds merge to enable the person to experience their full potential. All of this is demonstrated through the story of Arthur and his knights in various ways, allowing for differences in details within the myths and in personal understanding. Perhaps the most influential of the four ancient symbols is the ambiguous but ever-present Grail. Although the exact shape of the Grail has never been definitively determined, this very hazy detail only contributes to the emphasis upon meaning inherent in the object. The Grail has been described as everything from a stone that falls from the sky to a Celtic cauldron, a chalice of various levels of decoration and even the womb of a woman, Mary Magdalene in particular. As a result, it is most heavily identified with the concept of the feminine. In addition to the feminine, though, it is often referred to as a sacred vessel, whether in relation to the old pagan myths or as a result of the Christian links that will be discussed later. Through these connotations, the vessel becomes important not just because of its outer shape, but also as a result of its inner contents (Jones, 2007). This then becomes synonymous with the brain and the mind in which the shape of the contents determines the aspect of the self. While the shape of the Grail may not be fully identified or even consistent among tales, the importance of it remains in its relationship to the inner life of the self. This is particularly emphasized in the nature of the Grail quest, in which the action to be taken is an action of the mind rather than a physical battle of the body. The Grail is also associated with numerous supernatural or mystic principles. It is linked with the Christian tradition in that it is reputed to have been the vessel used by Joseph of Arimathea to collect the blood of Christ upon his descent from the cross. Therefore, to find the Grail is to also find the redemption brought forward through the actions of Jesus Christ. Emma Jung has also linked the Grail with the principles of alchemy, suggesting that it introduces an alternative Christianity in which the concepts of spirituality that did not completely conform with the strict letter of the Orthodox church could be discussed and investigated. “Where orthodox Christianity failed the individual by insisting on a one-sided, positive, rational spiritual order, the alchemists and the Grail writers included the magical darkness, chaos and uncertainty of real inner experience. Where orthodoxy decreed salvation only through the mediation of priest and clergy, the Grail quest proposes a new vision. From now on each individual can become the Christ, the ideal Self, through his own stumbling efforts” (Jones, 2007). This again emphasizes the process of individuation identified by Jung as well as indicates that the process is never fully completed. In the symbols of the ancient myth, whether the legends themselves are known in exactly the same terms or framing narratives is not necessarily as important as the understanding of the individual regarding what these symbols might mean. For example, just because a harp appears in a dream does not necessarily translate into a specific, pre-determined and easily defined notion set forth by Jung or any other scientific expert. Jung himself wrote of the danger of this type of literal translation as he emphasized the importance of the individual knowledge-base and understandings in the translation of such images: “Again and again I encounter the mistaken notion that an archetype is determined in regard to its content, in other words that it is a kind of unconscious idea (if such as expression be admissible). It is necessary to point out once more that archetypes are not determined as regards their content, but only as regards their form and then only to a very limited degree. A primordial image is determined as to its content when it has become conscious and is therefore filled out with the material of conscious experience” (Jung, 1981). The individual must remember the images that appear to them in their sleep, they must recognize them for what they are, they must have their own understanding of the stories or traditions from which these images spring and they must make the connections between these images and their own conscious activities or mental states during their waking hours. A union of the unconscious and the conscious cannot take place if one side of the equation is missing. If the unconscious symbols are not recognized, little positive action can be taken. If the conscious connections are not made, there is similarly no positive, purposeful action. However, if the archetypes are recognized and assimilated, interpreted and related to conscious waking life, Jungian theory suggests that these archetypes can provide an individual with a roadmap not only of where they’ve been, but also where they are and where they are going in terms of the maturation process. References Adcox, John. (2004). “The Sword and the Grail: Restoring the Forgotten Archetype in Arthurian Myth.” The Widening Gyre. (2004). Available January 17, 2009 from Bixler-Thomas, Gail. (November 1998). “Understanding Dreams.” On Dreaming. Available January 18, 2009 from Boeree, C. George. (2006) “Carl Jung.” Personality Theories. Available January 17, 2009 from Dunne, Clare. (2002). Carl Jung: Wounded Healer of the Soul. London: Continuum International Publishing Group. Garbis, Michelle R. (2007). Archetypes. Available January 17, 2009 from Hutchinson, Linton. (2000). Dream Lynx. Available January 17, 2009 from Jones, Gwyneth. (2007). “The Holy Grail.” Available January 17, 2009 from Jung, Carl. (1976). The Portable Jung. New York: Penguin. Liukkonen, Petri. (2008). “Carl Gustav Jung.” Books and Writers. (2008). Available January 17, 2009 from McLynn, Frank. (1996). “Carl Gustav Jung.” New York Times. Pierce, M.J. (March 24, 2007). “The Life of Carl G. Jung and His Contributions to Psychology.” Quazen. Available January 17, 2009 from Read More