C. G. Jung & Depth Psychology

It’s already April, and at Experience Writing that means it’s time for NaPoWriMo (National /Global Poetry Writing Month) and the A-Z Challenge. Continuing this year’s theme, I’m writing about the A to Z of Depth.

Depth psychology refers to the psychological study of the unconscious.

Resources _{(these are amazon associate links)}: When I was a freshman in college, a senior art student gave me his copies of The Basic Writings of C. G. Jung (1990) and The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (1959: tenth printing 1990). He told me to hold onto them, I would want them some day. So I’ve held onto them and read parts from time to time. I also picked up a gorgeous hardcover of Man and his symbols (1964) conceived and edited by Carl G. Jung which I really enjoy.

Some things I read about Deep Image poets said the poets were influenced by the work of C. G. Jung and other Depth Psychologists. I think it’s fun when aspects of my depth study come together.

On the opening pages of The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Jung separates himself from his contemporary Freud by saying,

“For Freud, accordingly, the unconscious is of an exclusively personal nature, although he was aware of its archaic and mythological thought forms. A more or less superficial layer of the unconscious is undoubtedly personal. I call it the personal unconscious. But this personal unconscious rests upon a deeper layer, which does not derive from personal experience and is not a personal acquisition but is inborn. This deeper layer I call the collective unconscious. . . . We can therefore speak of an unconscious only in so far as we are able to demonstrate its contents. The contents of the personal unconscious are chiefly the feeling-toned complexes, as they are called; they constitute the personal and private side of the psychic life. The contents of the collective unconscious, on the other hand, are known as archetypes.”

The idea of feeling-toned complexes made me think of the symbolist theory of correspondences from the deep image poets. Let’s see if Depth Psychology can take us deeper into these correspondences.

In Man and his symbols Jung writes, “a word or an image is symbolic when it implies something more than its obvious and immediate meaning. It has a wider unconscious aspect that is never precisely defined or fully explained.”

Jung writes that a human life should be open conflict and open collaboration of conscious reason, and chaotic unconscious. He calls this conflict between the ego and the unconscious the individuation process, and says that this process leads to a uniting symbol. He also calls the union of conscious and unconscious contents in this symbol transcendent function which he says is the goal of any psychotherapy.

This uniting symbol with correlation in the realms of the conscious and unconscious could be what the deep image poets meant, making each of their poems a transcendent function.

Jung studied the unconscious through his patients’ dreams. He wrote, “It is easy to understand why dreamers tend to ignore and even deny the message of their dreams. Consciousness naturally resists anything unconscious and unknown. . . erecting psychological barriers to protect himself from the shock of facing something new.”

There’s a word for this, misoneism: a hatred, intolerance, or fear of innovation or change, essentially a dislike of new things or ideas.

After a lot of discussion of dream analysis, and a warning against “unintelligent or incompetent dream analysis”, Jung also wrote, “But symbols, I must point out, do not occur solely in dreams. They appear in all kinds of psychic manifestations. There are symbolic thoughts and feelings, symbolic acts and situations. It often seems that even inanimate objects co-operate with the unconscious in the arrangement of symbolic patterns.”

Jung focused on the mandala (meaning circle) as both a process and symbol for reaching transcendent function. He wrote, “Their basic motif is the premonition of a centre of personality, a kind of central point within the psyche, to which everything is related, by which everything is arranged, and which itself is a source of energy.”

Find Your Uniting Symbol

So let’s get Jungian and make a mandala:
1. Cut your paper into a square
2. Fill the square with a large circle
3. Draw the two intersecting center lines of your circle
4. Label the four outer points: T (thought), I (intuition), F (feeling), S (sensation)
5. Draw a circle around the center, and a larger circle between it and the outer circle.
6. Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Relax and clear your mind.
7. Think of a dream you remembered recently, note any images or symbols that come to mind.
8. Fill the entire circle with your images using any artistic media you choose. Work quickly.

To save you time, and make this as easy as possible. Here’s an outline I created. Print it out on some thick paper.

A series of videos have recently popped up on YouTube from Depth Psychology Hub. Each video has a stagnant image of Carl Jung and has annoying lines and dots moving across the screen (I guess an old film simulation) while the words being spoken about things Carl Jung said, presented as self-help, change from gray to white. You may want to take a look just for fun.

Today’s Poem

It’s In My Nature

Morning has come, another day
You are talking in your sleep
I must pack my bags and say

goodbye The next adventure awaits
new scents exciting to breathe
morning has come, another day

Another leap to brave
nothing and no one to keep
I must pack my bags and say

goodbye It’s getting harder to stay
the shadows so quickly creep
morning has come, another day

But you, you held my gaze
even colored a new dream, but
I must pack my bags and say

goodbye Because I can’t be tamed
and my sharp claws scrape deep
morning has come, another day
I must pack my bags and say goodbye

This poem was inspired by today’s prompts at NaPoWriMo and Writer’s Digest’s April Poem a Day (PAD) Challenge. The song lyric lines I chose are from “Hands to Heaven” by Breathe (1988).

Thank you so much for coming by and reading my post. Any thoughts or questions about Jung or Depth Psychology? Did you make your mandala? Find your uniting symbol? Come back tomorrow for more depth exploration and poetry.