D4

IV. FROM FREUD TO JUNG

By Stephen Palmquist (stevepq@hkbu.edu.hk)

10. Psychoanalysis vs. Psychosynthesis

Last week we saw how Freud's revolutionary work established a new discipline, often called "depth psychology". In terms of the "butterfly" metaphor used to organize our course, we might say Freud began his work at a time when the "egg" of traditional psychological theory was still fully in tact, but found ways of "breaking the shell" so that psychology (especially psychotherapy) could emerge into a fundamentally new stage of development. Although Freud was the "ground-breaker" in this sense, most psychologists now agree that many of his theories need to be radically revised before they can be effectively applied today.

Of the many possible alternatives to Freud's version of depth psychology, the one that has had the most influence is that of Carl G. Jung (1875-1961). I believe Jung, not Freud, is the best representative to guide us through the "caterpillar" stage in our study of religion, psychology, and personal growth. With that in mind, we shall spend the next several weeks examining his theories in much greater detail than we did for Freud. Before beginning this task, however, I'd like to give you an opportunity to ask questions about anything we have discussed so far. Any questions about the "egg", before we throw away the shell and start looking at the "caterpillar" that has emerged from it?

Student H. Why does Freud think his theory of dream interpretation is "scientific"? Do you agree?

Good question. I agree that Freud's theory is scientific in the sense that it is not just an arbitrary invention, like the cipher and symbolic methods he rejected. He starts with a clearly defined, universally-applicable hypothesis, that all dreams fulfill a wish; then he confirms it through observations based on thousands of empirical examples. His theory of the origin and structure of the psyche provides a causal explanation for why dream analysis can promote the healing of psychological illnesses, and the widespread success of psychoanalysis throughout the 20th Century confirms that it really works.

I believe skilled interpreters, like Freud, can find a wish expressed in every dream; but this doesn't mean we should force every dream to fit his theory. Saying a theory or fact is "scientific" does not mean it is the only true way of describing a given object or situation. Science generates knowledge by being restrictive (i.e., by using well-defined hypotheses to eliminate other possibilities), and Freud's psychology is no exception. He finds wishes in dreams by focusing the dreamer's associations on a search for such interpretations. Freudian "free" association is not as free as it may seem; for without the guidance of the therapist's trained eye, the wishes conveyed by many dreams could never be recognized. We must keep in mind that scientists never reach the ultimate truth; old theories die away when new ones arise that explain the facts in a more meaningful way. So I disagree with Freud if he thinks he has established the science of dream interpretation, once and for all. Jung also claimed to base his theories on empirical, scientific methods; and many people nowadays think his results are even more impressive than Freud's.

Student I. What should I do if I can't find any evidence of wishes in my dreams?

First of all, be patient. Remember that we have only just finished the first "stage" in the life-cycle of our "butterfly". Stages Two and Three will provide you with many more ideas for alternative ways of interpreting the dreams you've already recorded. And the "butterfly" itself will not appear until Stage Four! As I said last week, you should be able to find examples of unfulfilled wishes in some of the dreams you record during this course. But don't expect every dream to fit neatly into Freud's mold. Remember also that unconscious wishes are likely to seem strange at first. If you find something you think could be a repressed wish, but you're not sure, then just record it in your interpretation section as a possibility. If it's a genuine wish, then other dreams will confirm your interpretation.

Student J. I've found the same unconscious wish in several of my dreams. Should I be trying to act out the wish in my waking life?

Probably not; but of course, this depends on what your wish is. Later in the course I shall give one more lecture on Freud, focusing on his psychology of religion (Lecture 31). At that point we'll see that Freud tended to reject the superego and befriend the id. Perhaps as a reaction against the overpowering superego of the Victorian Age, he encouraged a weakening of the superego so that his patients could explore their repressed instincts. But obviously, this "solution" to our psychological brokenness could backfire very badly. If we simply give in to the id, then we may be no better off than if we just remain satisfied with a neurosis. Instead of following our id blindly, Freud himself suggests it is better to "sublimate" our newfound psychic energies-that is, to redirect them into the creation of culturally meaningful achievements.

Let's say you have angry feelings welling up deep inside. Instead of kicking your dog or (even worse) abusing an innocent friend, you'd be better off cleaning your house, climbing a mountain, becoming a better basketball player, or improving whatever talent you may have. Such responses can be a sign of an unresolved neurosis (a problem many "great" people have had); but I believe if we are aware of the redirecting of our energies, and intentionally allow it to happen, then the "neurosis" (if such it be) ceases to be a problem and becomes a key to our success.

Student K. What should I do if I can't think of how a particular part of my dream should be interpreted?

This is an inevitable experience for anyone who works with dreams. Don't be disappointed. One suggestion is to treat your dream as if it is asking questions. That way, even if you are not sure about what the dream means, you can at least begin to shape an interpretation. I frequently include a list of unanswered questions in the interpretation section of my own dream diary. Then, when I go back over my dreams later on, I often find that subsequent dreams have provided clues for answering some of these questions. Our dreams will raise certain questions and provide clues to possible answers; but keep in mind that you will have to decide which answer is most appropriate.

Student L. I'm having trouble deciding which of several possible interpretations is best. What should I do when this happens?

This is rather different from the previous problem, but no less important to overcome. As I mentioned in Lecture 3, you should record all the interpretations that come to mind. While doing this, pay attention to your body. Sometimes when you hear or think of a new interpretation (or even a question the dream seems to be asking), your body will actually feel different. That special feeling we get in response to the "right" interpretation can be called "resonance". Think of your soul as being like the sounding box of a guitar. Your dream is like a guitar string stretched across the opening. Interpreting a dream is like plucking the string. Just as a well-played note sends sound waves throughout the sounding box, so also a good interpretation will send "meaning waves" throughout our body and soul, so that the dream harmonizes with many other things we already know to be true about ourselves. The best interpretation is the one that "resonates" (re-sounds) most beautifully within the dreamer.

Any other questions? We have time for one more.

Student M. If Freud's account of the mechanism of dreaming is right, then would a completely normal person have any dreams?

Presumably, Freud's answer would be "no". If a dream is a temporary psychosis, a person who always keeps firmly in contact with the outside world would have no need (indeed, no opportunity) to dream. But this assumes it would be possible for someone to be "completely normal". I think Freud would say human beings are all inevitably abnormal: we are born unconscious, and only gradually learn to distinguish between reality and illusion; nobody can ever learn this lesson so successfully that the ego takes over the entire psyche; so nobody will ever manage to live without dreams. In any case, the difficulty we have in giving a satisfactory answer to this question suggests that Freud's distinction between reality and illusion may be fundamentally flawed. As we shall see, this is one of the many aspects of Freudian psychology that Jung rejects.

In his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung not only tells his life story, but also reveals numerous important differences between his approach to psychology and that of Freud. If you only read one book written by Jung himself, this is the one you should choose. For it has a character quite distinctive from his other published works, providing a personal account of the "inner" side of Jung's own personal growth. Thus, he suggests that this book should not be included in his collected works; like the "dot" on the "i" of his other (more scholarly) writings, he asks that it always remain distinct (MDR 11,14). For the remainder of this lecture, let's look at what he says in this book about his early life, his relationship with Freud, and his general understanding of the nature and purpose of psychotherapy.

Jung's reflections on his early memories and dreams reveal that he was deeply interested in psychological issues from an early age. As a child, he used to imagine himself as having two distinct personalities, not unlike Chuang Tzu's butterfly dream (see Lecture 1). He later called them his "No. 1" and "No. 2" personalities. The former was the "Carl" he showed to the world: the good student, son of a Lutheran minister, etc. The latter, by contrast, was a much older person with many strange characteristics. He would sometimes sit alone on a large rock and imagine that the rock was his "No. 1" personality and he was "No. 2", or vice versa (59-60). Several important aspects of Jung's mature psychology can be regarded, as we shall see over the next few weeks, as ways of explaining this early experience.

One of Jung's concerns in MDR is to correct the common misconception that he was originally (or ever) a disciple of Freud's. In addition to relating relevant childhood experiences that predate his acquaintance with Freud, Jung stresses how different his approach to therapy had been, even while he was in medical school. Unlike Freud, who worked almost entirely with neurotics, Jung's early patients were psychotics. These were people who could not be helped by Freudian psychoanalysis, because they had lost contact with the "real world" that Freud took as both the starting point and goal of his therapy. Jung, by contrast, viewed psychotics not so much as having lost contact with reality, but as having created a new reality, one that enables them to cope with the old one. Jung believed he could help such patients by accepting their new reality as his own, by treating their so-called "illusions" as a genuine reality that holds the key to healing their illness.

Jung's account of one of his first successful treatments of a psychotic is particularly striking. He was working with a woman who would repeatedly utter apparently nonsensical statements, such as "I am Socrates' deputy" and "Naples and I must supply the world with noodles" (147). Instead of ignoring such statements as meaningless illusions, Jung treated them as meaningful descriptions of the reality this woman had to face each day. Gradually he recognized that the former statement accurately conveyed the fact that this woman felt "unjustly accused like Socrates" (cf. TP, Ch.4), while the latter "signified an increase in her self-valuation" (MDR 147). This woman was showing her "No. 2" personality to the world, while her "No. 1" personality remained hidden within. In other words, the problem was not that she ignored reality and replaced it with illusions, but that she reversed the proper order of two real sides of herself (the inner and the outer). By establishing a meaningful connection with both sides of her personality, Jung was soon able to facilitate the healing of her illness.

During his teenage and medical school years, Jung was an avid reader of philosophy. At one point, for example, he laments that he was so busy that he "was able to study Kant only on Sundays" (122). Unlike Freud, whose psychological theory assumes a rather naive (and unphilosophical) faith in reductionistic science, Jung immersed himself in the ideas of numerous philosophers, most notably Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. As a result, Jung's psychology has deep philosophical roots. Numerous close parallels exist between Kant's philosophy and Jung's psychology. To cite just one example, Jung emphasizes in a seminar he led in 1928 that "we don't see into the substance of the world, into what Kant called 'the thing in itself.' That would be the unconscious of things, and inasmuch as they are unconscious they are unknown to us" (DA 52; see also 47). Whereas Freud tended to speak as if the goal of psychotherapy is to rid the unconscious of its mystery, reducing it to rational, scientifically knowable data, Jung always maintained a deep respect for the inevitably mysterious irrationality of the unconscious (94).

Jung's refutation of the conventional account of his relationship with Freud reaches its height when he describes the event that eventually led to the break-up of their friendship. They took a trip to the U.S.A. together in 1909 (just two years after they first met), during which they "analysed each other's dreams" (MDR 181). While interpreting one dream, Jung asked Freud to share "some additional details from his private life" so that his interpretation could be more meaningful. Freud responded suspiciously (182): "I cannot risk my authority!" This confirmed that "Freud was placing personal authority above truth." Freud viewed Jung not as an equal colleague, but as a "follower" and chief "successor"-a view Freud was responsible for popularizing, and which can still be found in many psychology textbooks. Jung makes no attempt to hide the great influence Freud's ideas had on his own development (see e.g., 169-171); but he insists he was never merely a "disciple".

After publicly breaking away from Freud and the psychoanalytic movement in 1911, Jung realized it was necessary to give his new approach its own name. I believe his choice, "analytic psychology", was a bad one. Its similarity to "psychoanalysis" gives the impression that his only reason for adopting a new name was to avoid being identified as a Freudian. Although their views have numerous significant differences, the names make their approaches look like two ways of doing essentially the same thing. A better choice would have been "psychosynthesis". For although Jung did follow Freud's practice of dividing dream texts into phrases or short sentences in order to analyze each part, he did not follow Freud's tendency to leave the dream in this dissected form. Jung always aimed to see the dream as a whole by stressing the connections between the different parts. The reason for dividing our dreams into parts is not to make it easier to find hidden wishes, but to allow the dream to speak for itself. The ultimate goal is to synthesize the parts into a meaningful whole. "Psychosynthesis" would have expressed this key difference of emphasis far more effectively. (In the meantime another, relatively minor school of counseling psychology has adopted this name [see PCA], though we shall not be studying that approach in this course.)

Jung believed the central problem of modern society is not sexual repression but meaninglessness. Psychological illnesses (both neurotic and psychotic) all stem from people's inability to put together (synthesize) the different fragments of their life into a coherent whole. The therapist's job is to help patients interpret the suffering of their souls in a way that can reveal its true meaning. In order to heal the soul effectively, therapists must have actually experienced such suffering in themselves and learned how to synthesize it in a meaningful way. As Jung was fond of saying, "only the wounded physician can heal." This is obviously quite different from Freud's view of therapy as a way of helping patients cope with unconscious illusions by adapting to the status quo. We have already seen how Jung attempted to enter into his patients' way of thinking to help point them toward the deeper meaning revealed in their symptoms. In the next lecture we shall consider two of the most significant concepts he used to show patients the reality of their own unconscious life.

11. Soul-Loving Stories and Symbols

In moving from Freud's psychoanalytic approach to Jung's "psychosynthetic" approach to depth psychology, we have seen several important differences. Freud worked mainly with neurotics, encouraging them to face reality analytically; hence he ends up treating the unconscious like the "trash can" of the psyche (MHS 32), where the ego collects all its "refuse" (illusory wishes). Jung, by contrast, worked mainly with psychotics, accepting their "abnormalities" as meaningful clues whose proper synthesis into the psyche can result in healing; hence he regarded the unconscious more like the treasure chest of the psyche, where all the deepest and most significant aspects of an individual's personality are located. Such differences are rooted in their conceptions of the nature of science (see CJBW 4) and extend to their views on how therapists ought to interact with patients. In keeping with his reductionistic, mechanistic view of science (i.e., searching for the cause of each psychic event), Freud approached his patients as an authority figure, sitting behind them as they reclined passively on a couch. Jung's teleological view of science (i.e., searching for the purpose of each psychic event), on the other hand, led him to regard the therapist more as a coworker, sitting face-to-face with the patient as they search together for meaning.

Instead of asking his patients to take control of themselves in a war against the unconscious (as Freud did), Jung encouraged them to become aware of what is in their unconscious and accept it as a source of higher wisdom and guidance. Accordingly, he thought of himself as "a lover of the soul" (quoted in JC ix). This phrase inspired me several years ago to coin the new term "philopsycher" to refer to philosophically-minded psychologists and psychologically-aware philosophers whose scholarship is aimed more at loving truth than preserving past authority, more at imaginative creativity than at securing prestige. In its broadest sense "philopsychy" includes any academic study that encourages the kind of soul-loving attitude characteristic not only of Jungian psychology but also of Kant's "Critical" approach to philosophy (as opposed to the more extreme approaches Kant called "skepticism" and "dogmatism" [see TP, Ch.7]).

Jung's philopsychy-his soul-loving search for meaning-aimed to help his patients rediscover the story of their own life. The word "story" here refers not so much to the external facts about a person's life, but to one's inner self, the focus of the "Who am I?" question raised in Lecture 1. Each person's inner story, Jung claims, develops according to one or more basic underlying "myths" that govern how we understand our own past, present and future. (For a more detailed discussion of this use of the word "myth", see TP, Ch.2.) Jung describes his own discovery of the importance of myth in the fourth edition Preface to Symbols of Transformation, where he explains how this book was first written at the main turning-point in his life (in 1911), just as his break with Freud was leading to a major "mental transformation" (CJBW 4-7; cf. MDR 195):

I suspected that myth had a meaning which I was sure to miss if I lived outside it in the haze of my own speculations. I was driven to ask myself in all seriousness: "What is the myth you are living?" I found no answer to this question, and had to admit that I was not living with a myth, or even in a myth ... I did not know that I was living in a myth ... So ... I took it upon myself to get to know "my" myth, and I regarded this as the task of tasks ...

What Jung discovered is that the meaninglessness of modern society is directly connected to our loss of a "mythical consciousness"; for myths are the ancient stories that connect with our personal stories to make them meaningful.

This course in general, and the dream diary project in particular, will be meaningful to you only if you allow your life story to intersect with mine, just as I have allowed mine to intersect with the stories of past philopsychers such as Kant and Jung. I've tried to facilitate this process by basing the entire course on the ancient Chinese myth of Chuang Chou and the butterfly, and by using my own dreams to illustrate the theories we are learning. But ultimately, it is up to you to determine how meaningful the course will be. Dream interpretation is essentially a kind of story-telling, based on the "mini-myths" provided by the unconscious in the form of dreams. At some point in your dream diary you should try to identify aspects of certain dreams that you think provide clues as to what your story, your life's myth, actually is. You should then have the courage to share at least some of your newfound insights with your family and/or friends (e.g., by using the questions/ topics provided at the end of each Week for that purpose).

As Lemming explains in his essay on Jung's mythical consciousness, both the loss of meaning in modern society and the inability of many people to identify and retell the details of their "story" are directly related to the scientific worldview that has dominated western culture for the last two or three centuries. In all ancient and primitive cultures family and friends used to spend their evenings sharing stories. Truth was directly associated with the tradition that was passed down in this way, and life was meaningful because of a person's awareness of being a part of that tradition. As cultures developed, the primitive myths were transformed into more organized religious traditions. The problem is that science often sets itself up as an alternative to religion. That is, the claim of many scientists that science is the only road to truth-a belief that is itself a myth, though scientists often fail to recognize this fact-convinces many people that all myth and religion is nothing but illusion.

Scientific truth is inherently meaningless, because in order to become "scientific" a piece of knowledge must be divested of all the subjective elements that make something meaningful; yet science offers us no alternative source of meaning. Anyone who looks only to science for guidance as to what is and is not "true" therefore runs the risk of living a life without a story-i.e., of losing all connection with the myths of their past. The growing popularity of the entertainment industry represents a false substitute for genuine story-telling: "escape" novels, "trash" television and Hollywood-style films provide imaginary narratives that we passively "watch" without participating in any meaningful way.

Jung developed his psychology largely for such people, who could not find meaning from traditional religious myths, and yet recognized the need for something more than what reductionistic science could offer. Some people, of course, are able to continue participating meaningfully in traditional religions even though they live in a predominantly scientific world. Such people, Jung claims, have no real need of his psychology; for their life already has a genuine meaning. But many people-including some who "play the game" of being "religious"-are unable to escape the threat of meaninglessness created by the dominant tendency to see the world as nothing but a collection of scientific facts.

Freud's psychology, as we shall see in Week XI, leads to a grim and ultimately hopeless view of human life precisely because it accepts the scientific worldview as the only reality, regarding mythical consciousness as essentially illusory. Jung criticizes this aspect of Freud's psychology, arguing that the high place given to sex in his theory reveals that Freud, too, had a myth. Despite his highly negative attitude towards religion, Freud himself unconsciously treated his doctrine of the sexual nature of the unconscious as "something to be religiously observed" (MDR 174): "Freud, who had always made much of his irreligiosity, had now constructed a dogma; or rather, in the place of a jealous God whom he had lost, he had substituted another compelling image, that of sexuality." The lesson to be learned here is that we cannot run away from mythical thinking: if we reject religion consciously, "unconscious religious factors" will erupt in other areas of our life.

Jung coined the term "individuation" to refer to the lifelong process whereby the unconscious uses the power of myth to shape and mold a person into a distinct individual. In a psychologically healthy person, this process happens automatically; for such a person will develop natural ways of dialoguing with the unconscious. By sharing our story with family and friends, we take both ourselves and others on an inner journey through our own soul. The problem is that all too often we get in the way of this process, usually because of our ego-centered assumption that we already know everything that is important about "reality". In such cases, special psychological methods of dialoguing with the unconscious (such as dream interpretation) can provide very useful ways of removing the blockage, so that we can free ourselves once again to learn about and promote our journey along the inward path to the realization of our true identity. However, when we focus in this course on learning about our own individuation, we must keep in mind that our knowledge will only become fully effective when we give it away. That is, only when we tell our story does our self-knowledge produce fruit in our own soul. This is one of the main reasons that love will turn out to be such an important theme in this course (see Week X).

If you are a religious person, you should not worry that "learning your story" might require you to give up your religion. For Jung believes a proper approach to religion, one that is genuinely rooted in a mythical consciousness, will normally promote individuation. The problem (as we shall see in more detail in Week XI) is that for many people in the modern world, religion no longer functions in this way. Either they have adopted the scientific worldview in such a way that religion becomes unbelievable (as with Freud), or else they have become religious in a literalistic way that removes the all-important mythical element. In either case such false attitudes toward religion end up blocking a person from progressing normally along the path of individuation. (As such, they can be identified as "sin" [see Figure II.1].) During the second half of his life, most of Jung's patients were of this type. Therefore, Jung devoted a great deal of effort to constructing an approach to psychology that could be acceptable to thoroughly modern individuals and yet would show them the same reality (and so, provide their life with the same kind of meaning) that religion offers. Often his patients discovered that, despite their rejection of traditional organized religion, they were deeply religious on the "inside".

Each of you should view your dream diary project as an opportunity to discover something new about your own individuation. When interpreting a new dream, ask yourself: "What does this dream tell me about my story?" That is, discover what insights (positive and negative) it conveys about who you are (your present state), who you have been (your past experience/memory) or who you hope to be (your future potential). Over the next few weeks we shall be talking much more about individuation; but for now let's turn our attention to one of the key elements that point us to the most meaningful aspects of any story, and especially of the stories revealed in our dreams: symbols.

According to Jung, virtually everything that occurs in a dream can be regarded as a symbol, for symbolism is the language of the unconscious. Just as our ordinary, waking language is most at home with "analytic logic" (i.e., the logic that assumes laws of consistency, such as A=A and A≠-A), so also the unconscious prefers to use "synthetic logic" (i.e., the logic that assumes laws of paradox, such as A≠A and A=-A). I have already discussed this logical (linguistic) aspect of symbolism in some detail in The Tree (Ch.23), focusing on Paul Tillich's theory. That Jung's view is virtually identical to Tillich's is evident in passages such as the following (CJBW 287; see also MHS 41):

The symbol is not a sign that veils something everybody knows.... It represents an attempt to elucidate, by means of analogy, something that still belongs entirely to the domain of the unknown.

Locating and interpreting the symbols in our dreams is of utmost importance for Jung, because the symbol is a conscious depiction of an unconscious reality. As such, symbols are the "missing link" that provide us with the only possible way of becoming aware of the unconscious.

Figure 23.2 of The Tree depicts the crucial distinction between symbols and signs in terms of a map very similar to the one given here in Figure IV.1. The small circle and square at either end of each arrow are suggested by the fact that the word "symbol" comes from the Greek words "sym", meaning "together", and "ballein", meaning "to throw". Symbols and signs both bring together very diverse realities; the main difference is that signs preserve the difference between the inner nature

of these realities, whereas symbols do not (as represented by the shading). For a symbol enables us to experience (albeit in a mysterious way) the inner nature of the reality being symbolized.

Though I did not mention this last week, Freud also had much to say about the symbolic value of dreams. One of the reasons I passed over his theory is that it is not genuinely symbolic, in the sense defined above. For Freud, dream images are taken not as concrete representations of a mysterious hid-den reality, but as discrete cover-

Figure IV.1: Two Types

of Transformation-

Symbols and Signs

ings for sexual wishes. His concern is not to raise our dream images to the level of symbols, but to reduce them to the level of mere signs. Probably the best example is his well-known tendency to interpret anything long and thin as a "phallic symbol". In so doing Freud is treating the dream image as a sign, pointing directly to an object in the real world (the penis). By contrast, Jung stresses the transcendent meaning of all such images, so much so that even the penis itself could be regarded as symbolic. This is because the focus of our interpretations should not be on the sexual organs, but on the spiritual meaning they represent for anyone genuinely interested in personal growth.

Next week we'll take a closer look at symbols and their function in the unconscious. At that point I shall provide numerous examples of how symbols can be interpreted. For now, though, I shall conclude this lecture by briefly describing Jung's view of the purpose and function of dream symbols in general. The main purpose or aim of all symbols is soul-making-i.e., the psychic development Jung calls "individuation". Our conscious minds tend to find symbolism awkward and difficult to put to any concrete use; but our unconscious naturally knows how symbolism works, and automatically responds in symbolic ways to all our life-situations. This is why learning to interpret the symbols that appear in our dreams is so important: we are thereby put in touch with a part of ourselves (the soul-making part) that otherwise remains inaccessible.

The symbols produced by our unconscious have two basic functions. First, they satisfy some instinctual impulse, just as Freud argued so persuasively. As we shall see in the next lecture, however, Jung believed the way they do this is much broader than just "wish-fulfillment", but includes many other forms of what he calls "compensation". The second function of dream symbols is to transform our instincts into the real cultural and spiritual values that make human life worth living. Ideally, every dream ought to show us evidence of these two functions of our unconscious; for they correspond, respectively, to the cause of a dream in our past (i.e., its determinative function) and to its purpose in our future (i.e., its teleological function). Only by taking both of these into consideration can dream interpretation be authentically soul-loving.

12. The Principle of Compensation

Jung's psychology aims, more than anything else, at understanding and encouraging wholeness in the human soul. As we shall see in Week VII, this is the ultimate goal of the individuation process. Psychologically healthy people (i.e., people who do not suffer from psychosis or any serious neurosis) can benefit from learning the Jungian approach to dream interpretation because his methods are designed specifically to assist ordinary people to work toward wholeness. With this goal in mind, Jung suggests an alternative to Freud's principle of wish-fulfillment: the principle of "compensation" incorporates all the insights of its predecessor, yet goes far beyond it by revealing how dreams can lead us to a more meaningful view of life (see e.g., CJBW 369-372; MHS 34).

According to Jung, the human psyche is a self-regulating organism that always seeks balance. Our conscious mind by its very nature (i.e., by its dependence on analytic logic) leads us into various kinds of extremes. We learn that if something is "black" then it cannot be "white", if something is "good" then it cannot be "bad", etc. Our self-image (i.e., our way of answering the "Who am I?" question) is initially constructed out of just such extremes: "I am greedy" or "I am intelligent" or "I am male", we might assert. Left on its own, the conscious mind that gives us such one-sided ideas would be incapable of maintaining balance: a greedy person cannot be generous; an intelligent person cannot be stupid; a male cannot be female. The unconscious, however, compensates for these conscious extremes by introducing opposites into the psyche (by means of synthetic logic): the greedy person can also be generous, the intelligent can also be stupid, etc. We become aware of such opposites mainly by listening to our dreams. As Jung puts it (DA 20): "The dream is an attempt to make us assimilate things not yet digested. It is an attempt at healing."

A psychologically healthy person's dreams will automatically regulate psychic balance, whether or not they are interpreted (or even remembered). If the psyche is like a set of scales, then each time the ego places something on one side, the unconscious seeks to place something equally weighty on the opposite side. But for most of us in the modern world, these "scales" do not always work flawlessly. We can assist their proper operation, though, by interpreting our dreams with this principle of compensation in mind. This "builds a bridge" or "opens a window", as it were, between the conscious and unconscious sides of our psyche, thus enhancing the psyche's ability to self-regulate. Dream interpretation "oils the gears" of our psychic mechanism, so that the unconscious can do its compensatory work more smoothly, thus promoting personal growth.

We must keep in mind, however, that these are only analogies. The psyche is not a machine that operates according to a fixed, causal law. In contrast to Freud's mechanistic attitude toward applying the principle of wish-fulfillment, Jung insists that his principle of compensation should be applied in the most flexible way possible. Because the psyche is an organism, just like the body, "[t]here is no [single] therapeutic technique or doctrine that is of general [i.e., universal] application" (MHS 53-54). Jung defends compensation not as a universal rule that must always be followed, but as a useful empirical guideline that in his own experience of dream interpretation "opened up the most promising approach to the nature of particular dreams" (50). Thus, he cites obvious examples of how a man with an extremely high sense of "moral superiority" dreamt of "a drunken tramp rolling in a ditch" and how a man with an inferiority complex "constantly had encounters with great historical figures, such as Napolean" (51). In both cases the unconscious was responding to the patient's imbalanced self-image by generating dream images that showed the psyche's potential to exhibit the opposite character trait.

The flexibility of the principle of compensation is evident when we consider the difference between two of the most common ways of applying it: the unconscious can compensate for conscious imbalances by depicting in a dream either the opposite extreme, or else an exaggerated version of the same position held by the conscious mind. Thus, for instance, a man who eats too much but has no conscious awareness that this could be a problem might dream either of starving to death or of eating so much that he explodes. Either dream could be regarded as an unconscious compensation for the bad habit that is justified in waking life as being "harmless". Such a dream would probably not mean the person really is in immediate danger of dying; rather, its purpose is to call to the attention of the conscious mind an unhealthy character trait that needs to be transformed in order for personal growth to continue.

Jung stresses that a dream cannot be properly interpreted apart from the context of the dreamer's own life. The therapist must therefore get to know the conscious life of the patient, so that accurate and meaningful judgments can be made as to how compensation ought to be used to elucidate each dream. When you are interpreting your own dreams (or those of a friend), always pay close attention to the relation between the dreamer's report of waking-life associations and the dream's report of unconscious responses. Ask yourself which aspects of your (or your friend's) waking life are being balanced by the dream. When a particular aspect is not very extreme in the dreamer's waking life, the compensation may be very subtle, calling for only minor adjustments; but even if the dream appears simply to "reflect" (i.e., mirror) your recent experiences, you can still use it as an opportunity to reflect upon (i.e., think about) how your waking attitudes might have been imbalanced in that situation. Of course, when a dream relates to an aspect that is obviously very extreme, the compensation is usually easier to detect.

If a person's ego does not work toward achieving a balanced psyche, but pushes itself to such an extreme conscious position that the normal functions of the unconscious (such as dreams) cannot succeed in maintaining psychic balance, then the unconscious will cause physical and/or emotional symptoms to erupt. A neurosis, then, is a failed attempt to compensate for a person's overly extreme conscious attitude. It is a way of forging new meanings when the psyche is already too far out of balance to be set right by natural processes alone-like the wheels of a car spinning in the mud, the motor (compensation) is running, but the car (maintaining balance) is going nowhere. The aim of therapy in such cases is for the therapist to develop a relationship with the patient that itself takes over the compensating function. This is what Freud called "transference". Jung believes transference leads to a patient's healing precisely because it is the first step toward reestablishing the natural compensatory function of the patient's own psyche (cf. CJBW 109-117).

Compensation is superior to wish-fulfillment as a basic principle for dream interpretation because it is more flexible and less presumptuous. Saying a dream is an unconscious wish-fulfillment often seems so incredible that it hardly sheds any light on the dreamer's true psychological state. Yet interpreting the same dream as an unconscious compensation can be remarkably meaningful, because the choice of what exactly is being compensated will depend much more on the personal situation of the dreamer. For example, relating the short sample dream quoted at the end of Lecture 2 to a legitimate wish (conscious or unconscious) would be exceedingly difficult. If I had been having difficulty sleeping during that time, then the statement that "sleep has a structure" might have been the expression of a wish for more regular sleep patterns. But this was not the case. The principle of compensation, by contrast, allows for the latter possibility, but also for many other, non-wish-dependent interpretations. Thus, the dream could be compensating for my conscious tendency to think of sleep as a chaotic and meaningless waste of time that intrudes on the tasks I need to fulfill in waking life. If this "feels right", then the conclusion to be drawn is not that the dream's point of view is 100% correct, but that both perspectives (the conscious feeling that sleep is chaotic and the unconscious claim that "sleep has a structure") have a measure of validity that should not be taken as excluding the opposite. The interpretation should thereby serve as a stimulus for coming up with a third point of view that balances these opposites.

Of course, applying the Jungian principle of compensation to dreams will in some cases reveal repressed wishes of a sexual nature, just as Freud argued. But if a person's conscious mind has not repressed their sexuality in the way Freud's patient's typically had, then that person's unconscious will have no need to produce dreams that express such wishes; instead it will utilize other symbols that serve to balance whatever has been pushed out of the conscious mind. In order to achieve wholeness, the psyche must incorporate and integrate both sides of each extreme. So whatever the conscious mind emphasizes, the unconscious mind will reflect in an opposite manner.

Jung's essay in Man and His Symbols gives an excellent example of how the dreamer's situation must determine the way a dream is interpreted. He describes how two of his patients had nearly identical dreams about a group of men riding on horses and falling into a ditch. One of them was young and introverted; for this person the dream was compensating by encouraging a more active and daring life-style. The other dreamer was an older person who was not satisfied with the quiet life-style he was forced to live; for him this dream compensated by warning him against the dangers of a more active and daring life-style (MHS 56).

Let's look now at how Jung's theory of compensation can be used to elucidate different aspects of the longer sample dream, quoted at the beginning of Lecture 3. First, the dream could be a rather trivial compensation for my conscious opinions about Bill and Hillary Clinton's relationship. Recall that my actual response to their past marital problems (the first time I saw them, on a television talk show) was quite opposite to the one expressed in the dream: I remember thinking that if they had worked through such difficulties, then their marriage is likely to survive. In the dream (§III), by contrast, I express exactly the opposite opinion: "everybody suspects that [divorce] will eventually happen to them." A similar reversal is that in waking life the focus of public attention tends to be on Bill's extra-marital affairs, while in the dream Hillary is the one who is flirtatious and anticipating a divorce. These simple oppositions could reveal compensation working at the most rudimentary level. If the Clintons were personal friends of mine, then such a literal interpretation might be meaningful. But since I rarely even think about them in waking life, this is unlikely to be of much use.

An approach more likely to be meaningful is to view the Clintons as a symbolic representation of my own marriage. If, at the time this dream occurred, my relationship with my wife had been very harmonious, then the Clinton's difficulties would have been compensating by warning me not to take such harmony for granted. If, by contrast, our relationship had been full of open discord, the dream's compensatory function would have been quite different-perhaps encouraging more awareness of how bad the situation really was. In the first case my leaving the house in §IV might have symbolized my conscious tendency to ignore the potential danger that comes from complacency; in the second case, the same dream-event might have symbolized my need to step back from the conflict and just "enjoy the view". In reality, however, neither of these scenarios was quite true.

At the time of the dream any harmony or discord I many have been experiencing at home was being overshadowed by trouble I was having at work. For this reason the dream's reference to divorce probably has less to do with my own marriage than with my experience of feeling "separated" from my work, due to the problems relating to Dr. M. The dream portrays me as being in a position to give advice to Dr. M (about how to cook the turkey without letting the meat get dry), but as choosing instead simply to leave the room (perhaps symbolizing an unconscious desire to quit my job). At the time this dream occurred, I was disturbed by a series of administrative decisions involving Dr. M, and had not been hiding my displeasure from my colleagues. My unconscious compensated for my conscious agitation by having me simply "step outside" and forget about the whole matter.

To assume from this interpretation that the dream really was telling me to quit my job would have been a big mistake. Rather, the proper response to a compensatory dream image is usually to search for a way of synthesizing the conscious and unconscious points of view. In this situation I decided to adopt a less outspoken approach to the problem I was then experiencing. In terms of the dream symbolism, I decided to "remain in the kitchen" in hopes of showing support to "Bill" (Dr. M) as a friend, but without being so presumptuous as to give him advice about how to do his job.

A closer look at the symbolism of the "Bill"-image supports this interpretation nicely. In contrast to the Freudian approach, whereby the dream supposedly reveals a repressed desire to subjugate Dr. M (by making him, in effect, into a "housewife" [see Lecture 9]), a Jungian approach would view Bill's meek personality in the dream as compensating for my conscious anger by showing me the opposite side of Dr. M's personality. The dream shows me that Dr. M's overbearing approach to leadership might be a result of his own uncertainty as to how to "cook the turkey" (i.e., how to be an effective leader). This interpretation genuinely helped me to have a more balanced attitude toward Dr. M. in waking life. At this point, the compensation has clearly reached the point of being personally meaningful.

On a still higher level (one that we'll examine in more detail in Lectures 13 and 21), Bill and Hillary Clinton could be regarded as symbolizing the "mystical marriage" that Jung regards as a mythical expression of the goal of all individuation (see e.g., CW 16.353)-i.e., the union of opposites. In this case, this dream would be compensating for my conscious belief that I am facing up to the challenge of personal growth. For in the dream I do everything I can to avoid facing up to difficulties: when the line is too long at the bank, I leave; when Hillary makes an advance at me, I go to the kitchen; when Bill asks for advice, I go outside. If the house symbolizes my psyche, then going outside could suggest that I tend to use my love of logical mapping (symbolized here by taking photos of the London skyline) as a way of avoiding the true task of facing up to my own problems. Once again, this does not mean that my true situation is as bleak as that symbolized in the dream. Instead, it means my conscious and unconscious are split, and need to be brought together. In other words, I must not become complacent about my own personal growth, casually turning my back to the unresolved problems in my life, but must continue to face them, so that the "divorce" forewarned in this dream will not take place.

I'd like to conclude today's lecture by explaining a strange but important secondary principle that arises when Jung's principle of compensation is applied to science. The science generated by our conscious mind is based on the principle of causality (see e.g., TP, Ch.17). To compensate for this, the unconscious generates an "acausal determining principle", which Jung calls "synchronicity". He uses this new principle to explain "coincidences" that happen to us in ways that prove to be meaningful. The story of the old man whose clock stopped at the exact moment of his death would be one example. Whenever two or more significant events come "together" (syn-) at the same "time" (chronos), Jung thinks we should regard this as more than just a case of "chance". For these synchronicities sometimes end up being such a meaningful part of our life story that it seems inappropriate to regard them as totally undetermined. They are not determined in any causal (scientifically detectable) way; rather, they exhibit what we might regard as a symbolic determinism.

By liberating us from an overly strict understanding of science, as based entirely on naturalistic determinism, Jung's synchronicity principle can assist us in maintaining a generally more meaningful outlook on life. Instead of viewing daily events as part of a causally-determined drudgery that we must endure, we are freed to watch for those little unexpected "connections" that science cannot explain. Each of us has experienced at least one example of synchronicity: the moment of our conception was surely an event that could have had thousands, if not millions, of other outcomes. But because a particular sperm happened to be in the right place at the right time, you were born!

As you work on your dream diary, watch for any evidence of synchronicity, both in your dreams and in your daily life. Perhaps you meet an old friend twice in one day after not having met for several years. Or maybe an important event happens to you on the same date this year that some other important event happened last year. Take note of such connections, and ask yourself if any of your dreams shed light on their "coincidental" meaning. If so, then you may wish to discuss such synchronicities in the Interpretation section of your diary. Next week, when we look more closely at Jung's theory of the unconscious and how it manifests itself in dreams, the symbolic value of synchronicity should become more clear.

QUESTIONS/TOPICS FOR GROUP DISCUSSION

1. Can depth psychology ever become a science, in the fullest sense of that word?

2. Do you think dreams always fulfill a compensatory function?

3. What ancient myth seems most relevant to your own life story?

4. Share a symbol that has appeared in one of your recent dreams, and interpret its meaning.