Glossary of Terms

 

The focus of Jungian thinking
The psychology of Carl G. Jung is helpful, hopeful and unique ways of experiencing the human mind; it also embraces the collective history of humanity. With its emphasis on individuation, wholeness and centering, there is a focus on the healthy elements of the human mind and soul and a search for balance.

Art as a tool
Art can help us see what we’re missing. Sometimes, we will see another person’s point of view; sometimes we will see how limited our own point of view is, and sometimes we will see that we aren’t alone. Seeing more or seeing better always improves the quality of our decisions and how effectively we work with other people.

What is a metaphor?
A figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, making a comparison "sea of troubles" and "The high-rise garbage repository" is a metaphor for both accomplishment and failure" When we talk in metaphors we can map out whole sets of ideas. Some examples of metaphors:

• unkempt or well-tended gardens
• cityscapes with slums
• ships
• islands
• golf courses
• castles

Symbolic use of Archetype
Dreams and myths are constellations of archetypal images. They are not free compositions by an artist who plans them for artistic or informational effects. Dreams and myths happen to human beings. The archetype speaks through us. It is a presence and a possibility of "significance." The ancients called them "gods" and "goddesses."

What then is an archetype?
Jung discovered that humans have a "preconscious psychic disposition that enables a (man) to react in a human manner." These potentials for creation are actualized when they enter consciousness as images. There is a very important distinction between the "unconscious, pre- existent disposition" and the "archetypal image." The archetype may emerge into consciousness in myriads of variations.

There are a very few basic archetypes or patterns which exist at the unconscious level, but there are an infinite variety of specific images which point back to these few patterns. Since these potentials for significance are not under conscious control, we may tend to fear them and deny their existence through repression. This has been a marked tendency in Modern Man, the man created by the French Revolution, the man who seeks to lead a life that is totally rational and under conscious control.

What is a symbol?
A symbol is a concrete object that makes present an invisible Reality. Do we wish to disregard invisible Realities? Let's explore the question before reaching a decision. Symbols are the "stuff" that dreams are made of. Erich Fromm, the psychologist, points out that "all myths and all dreams have one thing in common; they are all 'written' in the same language, symbolic language. What then is symbolic language? Fromm continues:

Symbolic language is a language in which inner experiences, feelings and thoughts are expressed as if they were sensory experiences, events in the outer world....It is the one universal language the human race has ever developed the same for all cultures and throughout history. Fromm's point can be put in this way. Our experiences of concrete objects in the world outside can, and often do, become metaphors through which we experience the invisible realities of the human soul or psyche.

How are dreams and myths related? A dream is a private myth. A myth is a social dream. The Greek word myth means "a telling word," a language picture by which we tell about our experiences of invisible realities. We do not create these pictures. They arise out of our Unconscious, that part of the universal human mind that we all share, according to Carl G. Jung. When such a language picture is discovered and shared within a community as a way of picturing what Reality is, we call it a myth. When such a language picture occurs only to the individual, we call it a dream. In either case it is governed by the laws of symbolic language. We can extend this comparison even more. A myth reveals the deep and hidden structures of the universe in which we live to a community. A dream reveals the deep and hidden structures of the universe as we experience them personally in our psyche or soul.

Symbols must not be confused with signs. Signs, like the red octagon mounted on a post beside the highway, are created by social agreement. Governments throughout the world decided that all states would use the red octagon as a shorthand message to drivers telling them to come to a full stop. Fromm calls such a sign a conventional symbol. A sign stands for a rationally stated set of instructions which you must learn before the sign is meaningful.

Symbols are innately understood through the action of the psyche or soul regardless of the culture one lives in. They have universal "meaning" because the life and structure of the human psyche are the same in all times and in all cultures, just as all people have the five senses of taste, touch, smell, hearing, and seeing. If we elect to neglect symbols, we are choosing to neglect our souls.

 

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