the contemporary West, ego is equal to I. Jung, who questioned the equation, began
at the ego and descended to the depths of the mind. In contrast, the medieval Japanese
I did not discriminate itself from others and accepted an existence which fused self
and other. But modern Japanese, including myself, are trying to find I as more
individual and are rising toward the light of discrimination. I met the Occident in
the field of analytical psychology. Jung’s psychology is quite deep and expansive, so,
in order to accept it, Westerners have tried to understand it in relation to ego. In
contrast, I have observed that Japanese or Asians in general have tried to understand
it in relation to Being itself before the division of self and other.
I in the dreamIt is well worth considering the active I in dreams when we think about the nature
of I. Obviously, this includes not only I in my own dream but also myself in another’s
dream. Therefore, I am aware of my dream, and also, as a therapist, I am attentive to
the appearance of myself in my analysands’ dreams. The latter give insight into various
points of ‘what I am.’ Here is one example. Near the termination of therapy a
school-phobic high school student dreamed as follows:
I come to Sensei’s [therapist’s] house, but there is no response, so I go around
to the back. In the backyard, people are sitting in a half circle. They look like
stone Jizo (the guardian deity of children). In the front row there are children,
and behind them are adults. Looking more carefully, I see that there are people
sitting the same way in the living room. In the center, Sensei is lying down.
(The half circle of people gives the strong impression of being half in the light
and half in darkness.) I yell loudly from the back, ‘I am here,’ or ‘I got here on
time,’ but no response. Soon Sensei stands up and tries to say something, but
no sound comes out. Everybody pushes him back and makes him lie down.
The whole scene looked like a picture of the Buddha’s Pari Nirvana (i.e. his
passing away while entering Nirvana).This client thought of this last scene as the death of his therapist, so he hesitated in
telling me about it, thinking that it might indicate bad fortune, but finally he told
me. Actually, I have ‘died’ several times in clients’ dreams. In almost all of them, this
was dreamed near the termination point of therapy. As a Jungian analyst, of course,
one does not think of a dream as ‘bad fortune.’ In the therapeutic process, the
experience of ‘death and rebirth’ manifests itself to the client as well as to the therapist
in dreams. This dream occurred close to termination and thus indicated
transformation not only of the image of the therapist, but also of the therapist himself
—of me, in this case. That is, it meant that some transformation already had taken
place, or was going to take place, within me.
The significance of the initial dream has often been pointed out. You can also say
that termination dreams have special significance. The above dream indicates that
the therapist has finished his role and is leaving. This client and I then discussed this.
WHAT IS I? 137