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Abstract
This essay examines a selection of dreams all seeming to converge in a synchronistic manner at various points during the COVID-19 pandemic. The shifting tides of humanity are easiest to witness and understand psychologically on the personal and cultural levels, whereas the overarching archetypal patterns are difficult to comprehend. Through the intermediary of the dream image, an indirect, intersectional experience between personal and archetypal, we can ascertain remote transitions taking place, affecting us without our direct awareness. In this phenomenological study, the dream interpretations seem to point toward a potential for Eros development, a process present in individual experience with collective implications, and conceived of as stemming from the archetypal realm. We are, no doubt, a civilization very much in transition. How might we better understand this in the context of symbolic knowledge?
Notes
1 The term objective psyche is used here interchangeably with collective unconscious and carries the same meaning: a part of the psyche which is not personal, has never been conscious, and is comprised of archetypes, or “definite forms in the psyche which seem to be present always and everywhere” (Jung, 1959/Citation1980, p. 42).
2 The so-called initial dream is the first dream in a new analysis that tends to show the presenting psychic situation, and thereby assists the analysis by giving a direction for the work.
3 I am grateful to the individuals who granted permission for their dreams to be recorded and published here, and for allowing their hand-drawn pictures of their dreams to also be included.
4 Whereas the term the “self” is often capitalized as the “Self” in order to, in part, differentiate it from other potential common-use meanings of the term, this author does not capitalize the “self” following the tradition set forth in anecdotal reports that Jung preferred no capitalization (T. Abt, personal communication, April 27, 2007).
5 In his letter to Raymond Symthies, Jung (1953/Citation1975, pp. 43–50) hypothesized the human brain to be a kind of transformer. Taken this way, psychic information (meaning experience of the psyche) both comes into, and also originates within, the body, where it has the possibility to be processed by consciousness and potentially go out again, back to the unconscious dimension beyond time and space.
6 This is the best approach to dreams, where the minimal amount of interpretation is applied so the dream itself remains its own best interpretation.
7 Here reference is made to the entire Volume 10 of the Collected Works of C. G. Jung, entitled Civilization in Transition (Jung, 1964/Citation1978).
8 The clinical question of narcissism has entered mainstream dialogue nowadays and, while the author prefers not to pathologize, the problem nonetheless needs to be understood in an effort to respond in a potentially redemptive way. Whether the problem is more prevalent than before or whether awareness amongst the general population is simply growing remains unclear. Either way, the widespread nature of individuals with narcissism, especially where empathy is grossly absent, can be considered a symptom of a split between the opposites of Eros and power, where Eros as relatedness to self and others is absent and only mimicked by the conscious ego personality. While clinical narcissism is known for being relatively untreatable, the question of reuniting the opposites symbolically within the partner individual who has been, for example, trauma bonded to the narcissistic individual, is possible. In the latter case, the redemption involves the development of Eros and also power, inasmuch as either is otherwise imbalanced and unintegrated into the ego identity in a healthy-enough way.
9 A dream always brings information not previously known to consciousness, thereby compensating an otherwise one-sided attitude. The compensation is not always comprehended consciously; sometimes it simply functions unconsciously in the background of the dreamer’s experience.
10 For an in-depth discussion of the problem of the feeling function in our times see the work of von Franz (Citation2008).
11 Individuation is defined as “open conflict and open collaboration at once…the way human life should be…the old game of hammer and anvil: between them the patient iron is forged into an indestructible whole, an ‘individual’” (Jung, 1959/Citation1980, p. 288). It means becoming who you truly are; that is, a whole personality by way of first experiencing and then transcending emotional conflict.
12 See Jung’s (1943/Citation1983) essay, “The Spirit Mercurius.”
13 Referring to the Platonic month of Pisces, the mythical paradigm of the two fishes in which our culture is currently situated while also moving toward the Aquarian water-bearer. See Jung’s psychohistory hypothesis in Aion (Jung, 1959/Citation1968).
14 It is important to remember how the psyche is not politically correct—it does not edit for the sensibilities of our egos; to the contrary, it expresses out of the mythologies of old to tell a dream story using a sequence of images.
15 Blue, symbolically speaking, is a masculine color related to the sky and to the spiritual realm (Abt, Citation2005), and here indicates a kind of spiritualized and masculinized aspect of the feminine principle.
16 “Evolution of consciousness” refers to the evolution of consciousness for all collective humanity.
17 The rings of the tree trunk indicate the passage of time through material reality.
18 The fourfold nature of the self can be thought of as the opposites taken together with their corresponding bipolarity. For example, conscious-unconscious-future-past can be conceived of as conscious-future, unconscious-future, conscious-past, and unconscious-past.
19 See the story of the dream figure of the yogi with Jung’s own face in Jung’s (Citation1989) autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (p. 323).
20 Mercurius, the spirit of the unconscious, appears here as the wind.
21 If the psychological process remains too unconscious in the individual, the personality may become rigidly situated in one attitude, or one could say “petrified,” thereby unable to acquire insight or develop additional aspects to become more balanced in conscious self-awareness.
22 In many cultures the moon is feminine, such as “Selene in Greek and Luna in Roman as opposed to Helios/Sol/Sun, which is masculine” (P. Iversen, personal communication, May 30, 2023).
23 As a man-made structure, the symbolic pier is a kind of psychological element able to support the dream ego as it ventures out over the waters of the unconscious, thereby able to be in relationship with the unconscious without being down inside it. In this way, consciousness can relate to the unconscious without becoming lost or overwhelmed by its reality.
24 The negative side of the animus in the psyche of a woman often instills collective thinking that results in should and ought statements, which the individual then perceives to be her own ego values. Such thoughts are better understood as values stemming from the negative animus that can be noticed and set aside by consciousness.
25 Alchemically speaking, the moon is the shadow of the sun.
26 The alchemical motif of the murderess of her husband represents an anima attractivity that has at its core a telos aiming toward renewal of the masculine personality where the symbolic killing is a necessary ingredient for the ending of the old attitude in consciousness, making for a new self-awareness. (See Abt, Citation2009.)
27 “The Greek epithet psychopompos, meaning ‘escorter of the soul,’ was given to the god Hermes, who was said to escort the soul down to the underworld” (P. Iversen, personal communication, May 30, 2023).
28 While conceived in a linear way, this process can enter or re-enter any stage of development at any time.
29 This corresponds conceptually with the Antichrist, the dark side of the god-image, and, in the language of Jung’s analytical psychology, the dark side of the self.
30 Here, zeitgeist means the conscious reigning attitudes embraced unequivocally by collective culture; or rather, that embrace the culture like a wind sweeping it away.
31 For further exploration of this subject see Volume 8 of The Collected Works (Jung, 1960/Citation1981).
32 Jung goes on as follows: “Seen from the one-sided point of view of the conscious attitude, the shadow is an inferior component of the personality and is consequently repressed through intensive resistance. But the repressed content must be made conscious so as to produce a tension of opposites, without which no forward movement is possible” (Jung, 1953/Citation1966, para. 78).
33 Here the term response-ability is meant to be taken as the ability to respond to the inner situation regardless of outer circumstances. In this way, the ego has the potential to take responsibility for itself in relation to the inner drama, the dimension where all things can be worked out symbolically, and where the possibility for meaning or spiritual aspects behind emotion resides.
34 His narcissism was a configuration of power reigning absolute as protection against an otherwise overwhelming vulnerability forever hidden in the shadow.
35 Of course, presenting my own dream with such a hypothesis also requires consideration of a counter-hypothesis toward an opposite outcome: some kind of fragmentation instead. I think, however, that the supporting amplifications and synchronistic patterns support this hypothesis.
36 With every dream interpretation where a hypothesis is developed, a counter-hypothesis must also be considered so that the bipolarity of the psyche is held in balance.
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Holly J. Fincher
Holly J. Fincher, PhD, is a Jungian analyst and clinical psychologist for whom research, writing, and practice are focused on the reality of the living objective psyche and its manifestations in everyday life. She completed her analytic training at both the Center for Research and Training in Depth Psychology According to C. G. Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz in Zürich, and the C. G. Jung Study Center of Southern California. A native Californian, she currently lives in rural New Hampshire where an old farmhouse, a small flock of sheep, and three border collies keep her grounded and busy.