Joseph Campbell — Jung and the Shadow System

[Music] now down below there we have the shadow as young cause it it's like the blind spot for ego that about yourself of which your ego is completely unconscious of which it has no knowledge whatsoever I've rendered it in a series of separate strokes this shadow in Jung's terminology corresponds almost precisely to the Freudian unconscious the Freudian unconscious is constituted of repressed experiences repressed shocks that the infant first the infant and then later the growing child has experienced Jung's first interest in Freud was in Freud's theory of the mechanism of repression what is it in the psyche that so puts these things out of sight that consciousness is completely unaware of them and it is these shocks that have set up the slant the posture the the structuring attitude of the individual to life it's these that constitute the personal unconscious the shocks that will have upset and transformed the life experience of one person will not be precisely the same as those that will have done so for another and so the shadow is the order of what Jung calls the personal unconscious on the other hand the self is a function of the biology of the body we have two things here we have a basic human biology and we have then a system of individual experiences both in the unconscious realm as far as our ego knowledge is concerned it's out of those centers then that dreams come and dreams of course will be primarily personally oriented they will have come from the shadow system mostly but the shadow system rests on the deeper ground when we come to myths the imagery is out of the general system and Jung speaks of two orders have dreamed there'll be one order of symbols that you can interpret by personal associations the free association technique that Freud uses but there will be then other images in your dreams at certain critical moments in your life that you cannot interpret through personal associations they will be strictly mythological in their character I had a very amusing experience it's only a couple of days ago I was lecturing and after the lecture we were having a little party and one of the young women when I say young woman I mean woman around 40 years old came to me and she said she'd had a dream well I don't like to hear people's dreams but she insisted and she said this was one that mental great theater and she didn't know what it was all about well I said okay and so she said that first she said what owls mean I can't say what else mean they it would matter what the owl has done to you in your dream but also associated with wisdom principally because they're associated with Athens and Athena well she said she was standing in front of a cave and she was unwilling to go into the cave but felt it was something important in there for her and some owls came out with round shining eyes and immediately the garment that she was wearing caught fire and in the ashes she saw little round gold pieces and her problem now was to fetch the gold out of the ash well that's very obvious now this is a mythological dream that the dark cave is the abyss of the unconscious the psyche the ground out of which we've all come any messenger coming out of there is a message out from the unconscious system owls are associated with this because their night fliers so it bats be associated and I said here comes something out of your unconscious a realization that has come to you and the round shining eyes of the owls are the energy the life the fire and it ignites your garment that is to say your notion of yourself your social posture and everything else about yourself and you have undergone a transformation of consciousness here and there's gold they're the same size as the aisles eyes of the owl and it's your business now to to fetch out to pull out the message that the owls would bring you from the unconscious perfect mythological thing you didn't have to know the woman anything about her life and she said it fit nor a couple of people there who knew her and said that this had been crying so forth and so on so that's an example of a mythologically grounded dream with elementary ideas all the way you

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Keywords: archetypes of the collective unconscious, C.G. Jung, Jungian Shadow, Joseph Campbell, dram and myth

Id: GzYsi3SV1bY

Length: 6min 3sec (363 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 15 2019