A few posters now have been subjected (victimized?) by my Jungian intepretation of their dreams.   Jung is an important pioneer of the field of psychiatry.   His thought is extremely complex, but is profoundly relevant to spirituality and well worth the effort.  I've briefly discussed his notion of the shadow self.  I've yet to discuss his other basic concepts like the "anima," the inner feminine that guides men into the unconscious and spiritual experiences in dreams and the imagination.  The inner masculine (the "animus") performs the same role for women.   I will be leaving the site for a couple of months, but when I return, I hope to expand on Jung's theory to assist posters in analyzing their dreams and fantasy life.  For now I thought I'd just offer as a tease some of Jung's early boyhood experiences that shape his future insights.    Jung is my favorite intellectual thinker and is every bit the mystic that Swedenborg is.

A. 3 CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES THAT DARKEN PSYCHIASTRIST CARL JUNG'S IMAGE OF CHRIST:

Jung's concept of archetypes is shaped by his childhood dreams and fantasy activities.  3 early childhood experiences darken his image of Christ and prepare him for his earliest recalled dream, a dream that illustrates the role of archetypes.

(1) "Spooked" by all the men in black at funerals, he once asked what happened to the man in the box.  He was told, "The Lord Jesus has taken him to himself."  Without a concept of human death, he imagined that Jesus had done something terrible to the man.

(2) His mother taught him a prayer which he misunderstood to mean that Jesus eats little boys ("Satan may devour us, but Jesus. . .").  

(3) He was surprised and frightened by a Jesuit--a man in black dressed (in young Carl's eyes) like a woman--coming towards him over a hill.  Carl's father, a Protestant minister, once expressed the opinion in Carl's presence that Jesuits were theologically dangerous.  Carl, was too young to understand this use of "dangerous"  Because he associated Jesuits with Jesus, he concluded that Jesus was "up to no good."  After the dream discussed below, Carl bloodied his knee in a fall on the steps of a Catholic church.  This made him even more suspicious of Jesuits and (by extension) of Jesus.

B. THE ORIGIN OF JUNG'S BELIEF THAT OUR EARLIEST RECALLED DREAM SYMBOLIZES THE AGENDA FOR OUR LIFE PURPOSE OR AT LEAST THE PURPOSE OF OUR EARLY YEARS:

It took 50 years for Jung to understand his earliest recalled dream.  He entered a hole (= the grave) in a meadow.  He saw a green curtain (= mystery of Mother Earth) in a doorway, walked through the doorway, and saw a red carpet leading up to a giant phallus on a throne.   (Both the phallus and the enthroned god are archetypes!)  On top of the phallus was an eye gazing up into the brightness.  Amazingly, unknown to young Carl, "phallus" in Greek means "bright."  He then heard his mother's voice saying, "That is the man-eater!"  But he was unclear whether the man-eater was the phallus or Jesus.  He concluded that the phallus was "some sort of unknown god not to be named."  Many years later Jung learned that a phallus was a symbol for Telesphorus, the Greek god of inner transformation and a companion of Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine.  Also the Roman grave phallus, like Jesus, supposedly guarantees our resurrection.   So the dream taught Jung that God can reveal Himself at different times with various symbols.  Since the word "That" in the phrase "That is the man-eater!"  can refer to Christ or the phallus, the point emerges that God can be revealed through both Christ and the pagan images of the divine.

Jung becomes convinced that one's earliest recalled dream contains a piece of inner fate.  He cites other dreams that seem to signify the nature of the child-dreamer's future life or at least the first part of that life.  In his case, the dream informs him that he is destined to help pioneer the field of psychiatry.  After all, psychiatry deals with both inner transformation (like Telesphoros) and medicine (like Asclepius).

C. TWO LATER CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES THAT HELP JUNG DISCOVER THE NATURE AND FUNCTION OF "ARCHETYPES:"

(1)  The Jungian "shadow" is the dark side self or the self you struggle to suppress.  Jung first becomes aware of his shadow archetype when, as an adult, he recalls how his early association with his schoolmates (hence, mischief, pranks, etc.) alienated him from his a authentic self.  To deal with his self-alienation young Carl carved a man in black at the end of his ruler and place it in his pencil box.  He placed the box in his attic which he was forbidden to enter.  He found a smooth black stone near the river with which he found a vague sense of identification.  He placed the stone in the box.  When he felt alienated from himself, he would visit the attic, handle the stone, and placed a small scroll with secret writing in the box.  Then he would feel better.  He later learns that the soul stone is a common symbol among primitive peoples (e.g. the Australian aborigines) who use it to ensure that their souls never become lost.  The little scrolls for his secret writing enable the phallus archetype to be activated because Telesphorus (symbolized by a phallus = inner transformation) is portrayed in statues as reading a scroll to Asklepius, the Greek god of medicine.  The man in black is for Carl a Jesuit image that allows him to transform this fantasy into an experience of Jesus' guidance.
[An important point: Jung's theory of archetypes is primarily inspired by later reflection on this pencil box fantasy rather than by later reflection on his earliest recalled dream.]

(2)  Another of Jung's childhood encounters with God again involves the throne archetype and occurs when he stands admiring a cathedral's beauty in Zurich's city square.  He imagines that God sits on a throne above the cathedral, admiring how beautiful everything is.  Then Carl feels an unidentified wicked thought struggling to find expression.  He feels that he will commit an unpardonable sin if he expresses this thought.  After struggling to suppress it for several days, he suddenly realizes that God actually intended Adam and Eve to sin in the garden so that they might discover the difference between good and evil.  With that he allows the dreadful thought to be expressed.   God excretes a giant "turd" from His throne that shatters the cathedral's roof and fouls the sanctuary.  What an image of the institutional church's abuse of Christ's teaching!  Instead of condemnation, young Carl feels a profound sense of gratitude.  God put him through this ordeal to allow him a profound experience of divine grace.  He feels sad that his minister-father limits the possibilities for experiencing God's presence so much that he has never really experienced God's grace.

Don