Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionII. Psychodynamic
Theories- Jung: Analytical
Psychology
(^132) © The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2009
Beyond Biography Did Jung wish for the death of his wife?
For insight into Jung’s relationship with women and to see how one
of his big dreams may have reflected a wish for his wife’s death, see
our website at http://www.mhhe.com/feist7
The second kind of collective dreams is the typical dreams, those that are com-
mon to most people. These dreams include archetypal figures, such as mother, father,
God, devil, or wise old man. They may also touch on archetypal events, such as birth,
death, separation from parents, baptism, marriage, flying, or exploring a cave. They may
also include archetypal objects, such as sun, water, fish, snakes, or predatory animals.
The third category includes earliest dreams remembered. These dreams can be
traced back to about age 3 or 4 and contain mythological and symbolic images and
motifs that could not have reasonably been experienced by the individual child.
These early childhood dreams often contain archetypal motifs and symbols such as
the hero, the wise old man, the tree, the fish, and the mandala. Jung (1948/1960b)
wrote of these images and motifs: “Their frequent appearance in individual case ma-
terial, as well as their universal distribution, prove that the human psyche is unique
and subjective or personal only in part, and for the rest is collective and objective”
(p. 291).
Jung (1961) presented a vivid illustration in one of his earliest dreams, which
took place before his 4th birthday. He dreamed he was in a meadow when suddenly
he saw a dark rectangular hole in the ground. Fearfully, he descended a flight of stairs
and at the bottom encountered a doorway with a round arch covered by a heavy green
curtain. Behind the curtain was a dimly lit room with a red carpet running from the
entrance to a low platform. On the platform was a throne and on the throne was an
elongated object that appeared to Jung to be a large tree trunk. “It was a huge thing,
reaching almost to the ceiling. But it was of a curious composition: It was made of
skin and naked flesh, and on top there was something like a rounded head with no
face and no hair. On the very top of the head was a single eye, gazing motionlessly
upward” (p. 12). Filled with terror, the young boy heard his mother say, “Yes, just
look at him. That is the man-eater!” This comment frightened him even more and
jolted him awake.
Jung thought often about the dream, but 30 years would pass before the obvi-
ous phallus became apparent to him. An additional number of years were required
before he could accept the dream as an expression of his collective unconscious
rather than the product of a personal memory trace. In his own interpretation of the
dream, the rectangular hole represented death; the green curtain symbolized the
mystery of Earth with her green vegetation; the red carpet signified blood; and the
tree, resting majestically on a throne, was the erect penis, anatomically accurate in
every detail. After interpreting the dream, Jung was forced to conclude that no 3^1 / 2 -
year-old boy could produce such universally symbolic material solely from his own
experiences. A collective unconscious, common to the species, was his explanation
(Jung, 1961).
Active Imagination
A technique Jung used during his own self-analysis as well as with many of his pa-
tients was active imagination.This method requires a person to begin with any im-
pression—a dream image, vision, picture, or fantasy—and to concentrate until the
WWW
126 Part II Psychodynamic Theories