Compilation of Writings by Jung himself

My 2013-2015 dreams class and interpretation group in Boulder were based on Jungian dream analysis and opened up a whole new dimension of reality and self-awareness for me. Those crazy dreams actually provide clues to what is happening in daily life and what is active in the subconscious mind, if one can just figure out the symbolism.

Carl Jung studied the unconscious and how it interacts with the conscious, especially by communicating through images, symbols, and metaphors. Jung worked assiduously to take a SCIENTIFIC approach to his studies exploring the unconscious, to achieve credibility for his groundbreaking expansion of psychology. I am writing two more posts, while I work on this one; the next will describe some key Jungian concepts that help me figure out the different aspects of my psyche and how they act up and interact. Later, I’ll post some of what I have discovered about my psyche so far.

While in Boulder, I started reading and taking notes on Jung’s own writings on dreams that had been compiled into the book Dreams, published in 1974. Talk about heavy going—awesome but formidable! I only got through the first half. (Someday I’ll finish it!) He was a prolific researcher and writer during his long, illustrious career. Fortunately, there are many brilliant psychologists who have devoted their professional lives to studying Jung’s writings and distilling them down into more comprehensible form. However, Jung was so far out on the leading edge of psychology that people are STILL figuring out new depths of meaning in his work and clarifying it for the rest of us.

by Murray Stein

Soon after I returned home to Alaska, I met up with two teachers I knew at an art exhibit. They told me about a group they helped form, the C. G. Jung Society of Northern Alaska, and I was thrilled to learn about this local chapter. Two years later, it’s hard to remember my nervousness about first meeting many strangers. Now this group is a top priority, full of friends equally fascinated by dreams and personal growth, an unexpected gift in Fairbanks.

I’ve been part of the Jung book-study group, in the first year reading Jung’s Map of the Soul, by Murray Stein, 1998 & 2015, and  Pocket Jung, by Daryl Sharp, 2016, during the second year. Reading how Jungian scholars describe what Jung determined is a vast improvement over reading Jung’s own ponderous writings! Last summer, I read Jung the Mystic, by Gary Lachman, 2010, a biography that better suits my personal interest in Jung’s work, focusing on the overtly spiritual ramifications of his studies, which Jung himself and our group tend to downplay, emphasizing academic credibility.

Besides dream interpretation, I’ve been even more drawn to Jung’s studies of personal growth issues, his process of “individuation.”  I’m trying to identify which parts of my personality are actually my inherent nature and which are social conditioning built up like layers of an onion during my life—all of which I should re-examine and then choose which to purge. Many self-help and

by Gary Lachman

spiritual books try to make the ego sound like an enemy to kill. Jung’s approach justifies the ego’s usefulness in carrying out the wiser advice that bubbles up from the unconscious as we tap into it. He aims to tame the ego, not kill it. That sounds less traumatic to me.

Jung provides respected validation for all the spiritual and self-help authors’ claims that the best way to improve the world is by improving one’s own self—modeling how to become more conscious and compassionate.