The essentials of the Jungian psychotherapeutic process

[Mats Winther]

One must first and foremost resolve the personal problems. Dreams typically seek to achieve a balanced standpoint in one's personal life. However, as they have established themselves in society, many people experience an existential emptiness. Jung saw this as essentially a religious problem. At this stage, libido tends to regress, and the unconscious starts to produce archetypal dreams. These are really religious dreams. The unconscious is searching after meaning in life. People who already are religious do seldom experience this regression of libido, because they already experience 'meaning' outside their societal engagement.

The "existential vacuum", as Victor Frankl calls it, is largely a modern phenomenon, caused by the decline of Christianity and the increased leisure time in modern society. Irvin D. Yalom wrote a good book about it: "Existential Psychotherapy", 1980 ( http://tiny.cc/tgxlaz ).

Jung, however, believed that the "confrontation with the unconscious" can substitute for a life of faith. He even describes a program where archetypes are integrated in due order. It has much in common with Swedenborgian Neoplatonism ( http://mlwi.magix.net/neoplatonism.htm ).

However, in later life, it seems that he became more pessimistic about the personal endeavour of archetypal integration, as very few people can manage it. (If it even works, it requires enormous time and effort.) Instead he began to see the activation of the unconscious archetypes as a sign of the sickness of our age. He began to entertain thoughts about the "re-enchantment of the world" (see Wiki, 'Disenchantment', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disenchantment). A culture in full bloom would harbour the archetypes in cultural symbols, and life would be experienced as meaningful. David Tacey has furthered this idea in his books.

Yet, arguably, this is a utopian concept, no less far-fetched than the heroic confrontation with the collective unconscious. Life has never been like that, at least not since we left the Garden of Eden. Life wasn't particularly fun in ancient Egypt, either, despite their multitude of gods.

If archetypes (potent symbols of meaning) appear in the dreams of analysands, it can be of great benefit to the patient who suffers from an existential vacuum. Marie-Louise von Franz ("Archetypal Dimensions", 1999, http://tiny.cc/wjxlaz ) relates a dream of an approximately forty-five-year-old woman:

"I entered my house toward evening. The entry hall was empty, without furniture; there was only the bare floor. On it, lying on a pile of straw, was a shabbily clothed man who looked like a tramp. I knew it was Christ. He shone with the whitest dazzling light, for his body was made out of glowing-hot metal! Smiling, he said to me, 'You could do me a favor. Take a bowl full of water and pour it over me to damp down my radiance.' I carried out his wish, and the water steamed from him with a hiss. Now his body was made of dark metal, but very limber and alive. He said with a smile, 'Thank you.'"

But since the unconscious is not an inexhaustible cornucopia, it is up to the conscious side of personality to make further headway. Life is very much about the initiative of consciousness. The unconscious provides the "divine" energy, and consciousness directs it. One cannot simply feed on the unconscious, as some Jungians seem to think. This would be equal to making the unconscious into a Mother goddess.