Man and His Symbols

By Bobby Neal Winters

I’ve recently read a book by Carl Jung et al called “Man and His Symbols.”  I say “read,” but I mean “listened to” because I’ve got it as an audiobook.  There is a difference. Written books are better, but you do what you can.

Anyway, Jung was a Swiss psychologist who’d been a student of Freud’s but then he had some ideas that differed from Freud so Freud broke it off.  These ideas had to do with the unconscious mind.

Here is a place we want to be careful about nomenclature.  In Jung it is “unconscious” mind not “subconscious” mind. There is no assumption made about the conscious being in charge.

Before I get too much further in, I want to say something because some of you might be interested in reading or listening to this book, and that’s fine, but you need to know something first.  Whenever I am listening to people who talk about Jung’s ideas I get the impression I’m talking to people who are very smart (smarter than me at least) who also might be a little crazy.

I am okay with that.  Dealing with such people at times constituted the majority of what I do.  Anybody who works with me, might also say the same thing, if you know what I mean. But, anyway, I just thought you might need to know before you got started on a book.

Jung was interested in symbols. Jung was interested in dreams. It makes sense that Jung was interested in symbols in dreams.

If I understand it right--and quite frankly if someone comes to me and says it all means something quite different than what I say, I can’t argue back--but if I understand it right, everybody you meet in your dream is an aspect of your unconscious mind.

There are times when these unconscious parts of yourself are trying to communicate with your conscious mind, and one of the means the elements of your unconscious use to communicate is dreams.

I do believe in the unconscious mind. There are a lot of things that each of us do without thinking.  We don’t have to think when we walk--at least when we are healthy.  We don’t have to think about picking up the left foot and putting it down, and then picking up the right foot and so on.  Our unconscious mind does that for us.  Right now as I type, I am not thinking about typing.  I am not thinking about spelling words. It just happens.  As I go back rereading what I’ve written, it becomes apparent that my unconscious mind is a really bad speller.

That’s my story and I am sticking to it.

I think most of us my age or better have had the experience of seeing someone you know and not being able to come up with their name until an hour, a day, or a week later.  That is the unconscious mind at work.  It keeps digging through your pile of memories until it finds something.

So the existence of an unconscious mind does make sense.  The unconscious trying to communicate through dreams also makes sense.  I mean, it’s there in your head, what else could it be, right?

When we get to the point of interpretation of dreams, there’s where it becomes more of an art.  

One of Jung’s co-authors--part of et al--was describing the analysis process a young man was going through. After hearing a brief description of the case, the part of my unconscious mind that sometimes speaks in my dad’s voice said, he needs to stop thinking so much and get himself a girlfriend. My dad’s voice used earthier terms.

The book described the young man’s dreams and gave them interpretation.  This was a process that went on for months.  Towards the end, there was a dream that is described at length.

This is toward the end of the book so I was trying to apply what I’d learned along the way to give my interpretation.  The author gave theirs--totally different than mine saying, clearly.

No. No. Not clearly.

But in any case the course the young man chose to take was to stop thinking so much and get a girlfriend.  

I think the young man knew unconsciously this is what he needed to do.  I think everyone in his life knew this is what he needed to do.  If anyone had just out and out told him, he would’ve pushed back, because we are all kind of hard-headed.

I think he needed the process in order to come to this. It may have been that his therapist needed a boat, as there are a lot of beautiful mountain lakes in Switzerland. (I jest.  I don’t want to discourage anyone from getting therapy. I’ve known too many people who it has helped. Would that a few more got it.)

It is interesting stuff.  To me, at least.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.