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I have slept a few nights at Art Janov's claim that “the unconscious is constantly neglected”. For my part, I maintain that I’m obsessed / spellbound by our unconscious. Getting there has gone for instance by the insights Art has brought me on the Primal Principle and Evolution in Reverse. Countless other writers exemplified by Dostoyevsky, Proust, de Beauvoir, Miller and Gladwell have shown me how boundless comprehensive our unconscious is in its ability to draw from pain, repression, truth, lies and create fantasies / symbols and identify human characteristics when they are at their best and worst.
When our parents do not meet our basic needs for love, hugs and kisses, Evolution provides us with necessary talents to compensate for shortcomings. It’s fascinating and horrifying that these compensatory talents become both physical and intellectual intoxications that must be repeated to keep the painful lack of love repressed. This agonizing struggle comes at the price that we over-tax our internal organs, which shortens and degrades the quality of our lives. Health Care and the pharmaceutical industry, each with their intellectual backups are the two visible, grotesquely inflated symbols of our endless symptoms of the diseases.
The interesting and hopeful is that our, often vital, compensating talents have taken us to the point where we, in fortunate circumstances, can learn “to lean back and feel a stab of pain” caused by the lack of love and attention and / or early traumas due to neglect or stupidity. I have personally experienced how neuroses, compulsive behavior, high blood pressure and epilepsy have reduced dramatically when there is much less residue of pain to drive the symptoms.
Through my dreams, I have over the years gradually developed a trusting relationship with my unconscious. Over many years, my life was dominated by nightmares, and when these were not satisfied to let me fall freely or to be tortured and suffocated, they sparked fits and grand mal seizures. I can now, after patiently for many years re-living my birth trauma awake, remember, interpret and re-live the pain in my dream. These processes occur in connection to that I experienced something during the day that had a symbolic connection, often to my birth trauma.
My latter years sleeping routines have taken me to the point where I in my dream decide to defy the fear, to lay back and feel a stab of anxiety. Often I wake up relieved, enlightened and refreshed. Memories of the nights experiences give me a reason and sometimes content to a blog / comment.
Jan Johnsson
Carl Jung also said the unconscious was the last frontier. But he was still immersed in the world of symbolism and that is what keeps his followers endlessly interested. Trainees in Jungian Psychology get to qualify by also developing an art of one kind or another. Indeed developing some kind of art is seen by the Jungians as a prerequisite to healing. After all, the symbols are just so fascinating aren't they? They are a mystery and like our hunter gatherer forebears from the ancient world we keep on hunting them out as if they were a matter of LIFE or DEATH. Each new discovery a 'kernel' of truth and some 'nourishment' for our soul. . .
Anyone who describes themselves as a priest today or a thousand years ago is just milking the hunt for those old 'chestnuts'. . . Sequestered by those 'squirrels' in our minds, living in the 'winters of our discontents', waiting for the 'spring of our youths'. . .
Had enough yet? Or shall I carry on "waxing lyrical"?
Fortunately for the real world, people like you Jan can tell us how those symbols really 'fit' into our lives.
Thanks Jan for your great posts. I must read up Gladwell. Sounds like a pragmatic kind of person.
Paul G.