Word: jungly
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Need for Symbols. In this process, symbols help. One which particularly fascinates Jung is the mandala,** a square and-wheel pattern embodying the number four or a multiple of it. A precious stone, often equated with the philosopher's stone of the alchemists, can symbolize the Self. The interlaced, banyanlike Tree of Life is often seen to bear a single luminous blossom-perhaps the Orient's Golden Flower, or a Christmas-tree star-which signifies the way of life that is life itself...
What place have such symbols in modern psychology? Says Jung: they are facts. They appear day after day in the dreams and doodlings of patients. If, for instance, a patient dreams of a snake held skyward, a Freudian analyst will automatically call it a phallic symbol. Jung concedes that it may mean that. But it is also a fact that the serpent has a much broader significance. For instance, to the Ophite Gnostics (2nd century A.D.) the serpent symbolized the redeeming principle of the world. It can stand, says Jung, for the recognition of the shadow side of life...
...religious age, according to Jung, man would not need to get consciously acquainted with his archetypes, because religion provides its own symbols. But Christianity has become so weakened in this respect - largely through the Protestant Reformation, says Protestant Jung -that to millions its symbols now mean nothing. For this reason, says Jung, Roman Catholicism is generally more effective today than other churches, and he rarely finds Catholics in need of individuation. Says Jung: "[Catholicism] is a full-fledged religion. Protestantism is not. Religions consist of a doctrine and a rite. The ritual does not exist in Protestantism : it has only...
Unconsciously at least, says Jung, many...
...modern man seeks the comfort and security of religious symbols. That is why many try to import strange Eastern religions ; others turn to demagogues and isms (which Jung regards as volcanic eruptions of the unconscious), and still others go to the analyst. "Our heart glows, and secret unrest gnaws at the roots of our being . . . Dealing with the unconscious has become a question of life for us." Hence the man who cannot find religious symbols must be helped by the analyst to understand the symbols in his own unconscious. "I have treated many hundreds of patients . . . Among [those...