Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts Part 13

II. The functional category is characterized by the fact that the condition, structure or capacity for work of the individual consciousness (or the psychic apparatus) is itself portrayed. It is termed functional because it has nothing to do with the material or the contents of the act of thinking, but applies merely to manner and method in which consciousness functions (rapid, slow, easy, hard, obstructed, careless, joyful, forced; fruitless, successful; disunited, split into complexes, united, interchangeable, troubled, etc.). [It is immaterial whether these are conscious or unconscious. Thinking must be taken here in the widest possible sense. It means here all psychic processes that can have anything as an "object."]

Two typical examples will enable us at once clearly to understand the two categories and keep them separate.

A. Material Symbolism.-Conditions. In a drowsy state I reflect upon the nature of the judgments that are transsubjectively (= for all men) valid.

All at once the thread of the abstract thought is broken and autosymbolically in the place of it is presented the following hypnagogic hallucination:

Symbol. An enormous circle, or transparent sphere, floats in the air and men are putting their heads into this circle.

Interpretation. In this symbol everything that I was thinking of is expressed. The validity of the transsubjective concerns all men without exception; the circle goes through all the heads. This validity must have its cause in something common to all. The heads all belong to the same apparently h.o.m.ogeneous sphere. Not all judgments are transsubjective; with their bodies and limbs men are outside of and under the sphere and stand on the earth as separate individuals.

B. Functional Symbolism.-Conditions. Dreamy state as above. I reflect upon something or other, and yet in allowing myself to stray into bypaths of thought, I am diverted from my peculiar theme. When I want to get back the autosymbolic phenomenon appears.

Symbol. I am climbing mountains. The nearer mountains shut out my view of the more distant ones, from which I have come and to which I should like to return.

Meaning. I have got off the track. I have ventured too high and the ideas that I have entertained shut out my starting point like the mountains.

To the material category belongs, for example, the meaning of the strawberry dream explained in the second part of the introductory chapter.

Strawberry picking is a symbol for an imaged wish gratification (s.e.xual intercourse), and so for an image content. The symbolism is therefore a material one. The greatly preponderating part of psychoa.n.a.lytic dream literature is occupied with interpretation according to material categories.

To the functional categories belong, for example, the symbolism of falling asleep and waking up, which I have mentioned in the second part in connection with the interpretation of the parable.

The two categories of symbolism, if they never did anything but parallel each other, would afford us no a.n.a.logues for our problem of double meaning. Now the cases, however, are extremely rare where there is only functional or only material symbolism; the rule is an intimate interweaving of both. To be sure, one is frequently more emphasized than the other or more easily accessible, but we can generally find cases where long contexts of images are susceptible of material as well as functional interpretation, alike in detail and continuity of connection.

The following may serve as a very simple case in point. Lying one evening in bed and exhausted and about to fall asleep, I devoted my thoughts to the laborious progress of the human spirit in the dim transcendant province of the mothers-problem. (Faust, Part II.) More and more sleepy and ever less able to retain my thoughts, I saw suddenly with the vividness of an illusion a dream image. I stood on a lonely stone pier extending far into a dark sea. The waters of the sea blended at the horizon with an equally dark-toned mysterious, heavy air. The overpowering force of this tangible picture aroused me from my half sleeping state, and I at once recognized that the image, so nearly an hallucination, was but a visibly symbolic embodiment of my thought content that had been allowed to lapse as a result of my fatigue. The symbol is easily recognized as such.

The extension into the dark sea corresponds to the pushing on into a dark problem. The blending of atmosphere and water, the imperceptible gradation from one to the other means that with the "mothers" (as Mephistopheles pictures it) all times and places are fused, that there we have no boundaries between a "here" and a "there," an "above" and a "below," and for this reason Mephistopheles can say to Faust on his departure,

"Plunge then.-I could as well say soar."

We see therefore between the visualized image and the thought content, which is, as it were, represented by it, a number of relations. The whole image resolves itself insofar as it has characteristic features, almost entirely into such elements as are most closely related to the thought content. Apart from these connections of the material category, the image represents also my momentary psychic condition (transition to sleep).

Whoever is going to sleep is, as it were, in the mental state of sinking into a dark sea. (The sinking into water or darkness, entrance into a forest, etc., are frequently-occurring threshold symbols.) The clearness of ideas vanishes there and everything melts together just as did the water and the atmosphere in the image.

This example is but to ill.u.s.trate; it is in itself much too slight and simple to make any striking revelation of the remarkable interlacing of the two kinds of symbolism. I refer to my studies on symbolism and on dreams in the bibliography. Exhaustive treatment at this point would lead us too far afield. Let us rest satisfied then with the facts that the psychoa.n.a.lysts simultaneously deal with two fundamentally different lines of interpretation in a product of the phantasy (dream, etc.), quite apart from the multiple determinants which they can find within the material as well as in the functional categories; both lines of interpretation are supplied by the same fabric of images, indeed often by the same elements of this image fabric. This context therefore must have been sought out artfully enough by the creative unconscious to answer the double requirement.

The coexistence of the material meaning with the functional is not entirely puzzling to the student of psychoa.n.a.lysis. Two facts must be kept in mind throughout.

In the first place, we are acquainted with the principle of multiple determination or condensation. The multiplicity of the dimly moving latent dream thoughts condenses into a few clear dream forms or symbols, so that one symbol continually, as it were, appears as the representative of several ideas, and is therefore interpretable in several ways. That it should be susceptible of more than one interpretation can cause no surprise because the fundamental significance (the latent thoughts) were the very ones that, by a.s.sociation, caused the selection of the symbols from an infinite series of possibilities. In the shaping of the dream, and therefore in the unconscious dream work, only such pictorial elements could penetrate into consciousness as satisfied the requirements of the multiple determination. The principle of multiple determination is valid not only within the material and the functional categories, but makes the fusion of both in the symbol in question to some extent intelligible.

Elements of both categories take an active part in the choice of the symbol. On the one hand, a number of affects press on towards the symbolic representation of objects to which they direct themselves (objects of love, hate, etc.). On the other hand, the psyche takes cognizance of its own impulses, play of affects, etc., and this perception will gain representation. Both impulses take part in the choice of those symbols which thrust themselves into the nascent consciousness of phantasy, and so the dream, like the poem, etc., besides the symbolism of the wish tendencies (material categories) that animate them, bears the stamp of the psychic authorship (functional category) of the dreamer or the author.

[Ferenczi defends the view for the myth also that the material symbolism must coincide with the functional (Imago I, p. 283).]

Secondly, it has been shown in recent times in psychoa.n.a.lytic studies that symbols which were originally material pa.s.s over to functional use. If we thoroughly a.n.a.lyze for a sufficient time the dreams of a person we shall find that certain symbols which at first probably appeared only incidentally to signify some idea content, wish content, etc., return and become a persistent or typical form. And the more such a typical form is established and is impressed, the farther it is removed from its first ephemeral meaning, and the more it becomes a symbolic representative of a whole group of similar experiences, a spiritual capital, so to speak, till finally we can regard it simply as the representative of a spiritual current (love, hate, tendency to frivolity, to cruelty, to anxiety, etc.).

What has been accomplished there is a transition from the material to the functional on the path of a determination inward or intro-determination (verinnerlichung) as I shall call it. Later I shall have more to say about intro-determination. For the present this may suffice for the understanding, that the material and the functional symbolism, in spite of their at first apparently fundamental difference, are essentially related in some way, which is illuminated by the process of intro-determination.

The a.n.a.logue of the problem of multiple interpretation unfolded in the preceding section is shown to be a question that can be easily answered.

And we would bring our problem to a generally satisfactory position if we succeeded in showing that the anagogic interpretation, whose alignment with the psychoa.n.a.lytic seemed so impracticable, is a form of functional interpretation, or at least related to it. In this case it would be at once comprehensible how a product of the imagination harmonizes with several expositions (problem of multiple interpretation); because this variety of sense had already operated in the selection of the symbol and indeed, in those cases as well where we did not at first sight suspect the cooperation of the anagogic thoughts; secondly, the anagogic and the psychoa.n.a.lytic interpretations are somehow reconciled to each other, whereby possibly also the position of the natural science interpretation can be made somewhat clearer.

The possibility that the anagogic has some part in the creation of the functional, will be brought nearer by the fact that our previously offered anagogic expositions (fairy tales, parabola) markedly resemble functional interpretations. In the tale of the six swans. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k explains the reception of the maiden into the castle as the reception of sin into the heart; the seven children are the seven virtues (consequently spiritual tendencies). The small maiden is conscience, the tissues are processes of thought. In the story of the three feathers, again, one son is conscience; the secret door is the entrance to the inner life, to spiritual absorption, the three feathers are spiritual tendencies, etc. In the dream of the "flying post" conscience appears as the conductor. The "Mills of G.o.d," which psychologically also represents conscience, the more strikingly because the burden of sin, guilty feeling, drives them, also appear in the parable. The lion or the dragon which must be overcome on the mystic path is again a spiritual force. The approximation to the functional category is not to be denied. Processes that show an interplay of spiritual powers are symbolically represented there. But we are at once struck with a difference. The true functional phenomenon, as I have so far described it, pictures the actual psychic state or process; the anagogic image appears on the contrary to point to a state or process that is to be experienced in the future. We shall pa.s.s over for a time the last topic, which will not, however, be forgotten, and turn to the question as to the point on which the anagogic and the functional interpretations can best be brought together. This point appears to me to be introversion, first because it is related to the previously mentioned intro-determination, and second, because it is familiar to psychoa.n.a.lysis and is of great importance in anagogic method.

The term "introversion" comes from C. G. Jung. It means sinking into one's own soul; the withdrawal of interest from the outer world; the seeking for joys that can be afforded by the inner world. The psychology of the neuroses has led to the concept of introversion, a province, therefore, which princ.i.p.ally treats of morbid forms and functions of introversion.

The sinking of oneself into one's own soul also appears exactly as a morbid losing of oneself in it. We can speak of introversion neuroses.

Jung regards dementia prec.o.x as an introversion neurosis. Freud, who has adopted the concept of introversion [with some restrictions] regards the introversion of the libido as a regular and necessary precondition of every psychoneurosis. Jung (Jb. ps. F., III, p. 159) speaks of "certain mental disturbances [he means dementia prec.o.x] which are induced by the fact that the patients retire more and more from reality, sink into their phantasy, whereby in proportion as reality loses its force, the inner world takes on a reality and determining power." We may also define introversion as a resignation of the joys of the outer world (probably unattainable or become troubled) and a seeking for the libido sources in one's own ego. So we see how generally self-chastis.e.m.e.nt, introversion and autoerotism are connected.

The turning away from the outer world and turning in to the inner, is required by all those methods which lead to intensive exercise of religion and a mystic life. The experts in mysteries provide for opportunities that should encourage introversion. Cloisters and churches are inst.i.tutions of introversion. The symbolism of religious doctrine and rite is full of images of introversion, which is, in short, one of the most important presuppositions of mysticism.

Religious and mythical symbolism has countless images for introversion; e.g., dying, going down, subterranean crypts, vaults, dark temples, into the underworld, h.e.l.l, the sea, etc.; being swallowed by a monster or a fish (as Jonah), stay in the wilderness, etc. The symbols for introversion correspond in large part with those that I have described for going to sleep and waking (threshold symbolism), a fact that can be readily appreciated from their actual similarity. The descent of Faust to the mothers is an introversion symbol. Introversion fulfills here clearly the aim of bringing to reality, i.e., to psychological reality, something that is attainable only by phantasy (world of the past, Helen).

In Jacob Boehme (De Vita Mentali) the disciple says to the master, "How may I attain suprasensuous life, so that I may see G.o.d and hear him speak?" The master says, "When you can lift yourself for one moment into that realm where no creature dwelleth, you will hear what G.o.d speaks." The disciple says, "Is that near or far?" The master says, "It is in yourself."

The hermetics often urge retirement, prayer and meditation, as prerequisites for the work; it is treated of still more in the hieroglyphic pictures themselves. The picture of death is already familiar to us from the hermetic writings, but in the technical language there are still other expressions for introversion, e.g., the shutting up in the receptacle, the solution in the mercury of the sages, the return of the substance to its radical condition (by means of the "radical" or root dampness).

Similar features in our parable are the wandering in the dense forest, the stay in the lion's den, the going through the dark pa.s.sage into the garden, the being shut up in the prison or, in the language of alchemy, the receptacle.

Introversion is continually connected with regression. Regression, as may be recalled from the 2d section of Part I, is a harking back to more primitive psychic activities, from thinking to gazing, from doing to hallucinating; a striving back towards childhood and the pleasures of childhood. Introversion accordingly is accompanied by a desire for symbolic form of expression (the mystical education is carried on in symbols), and causes the infantile imagos to revive-chiefly the mother image. It was pre-eminently father and mother who appeared as objects of childish love, as well as of defiance. They are unique and imperishable, and in the life of adults there is no difficulty in reawakening and making active those memories and those imagos. We easily comprehend the fact that the symbolic aim of the previously mentioned katabasis always has a maternal character; earth, hole, sea, belly of fish, etc., that all are symbols for mother and womb. Regression revives the dipus complex with its thoughts of incest, etc. Regression leads back to all these relics now done away with in life and repressed. It actually leads into a sort of underworld, into the world of t.i.tanic wishes, as I have called them. How far this was the case in the alchemistic parable, I have fully shown in the psychoa.n.a.lytic treatment of it. Here I need merely to refer to the maternal nature of the symbols cited: receptacle, mercury of the sages ("mother of metals") and radical moisture, also called "milk" and the like.

Fairy tales have frequently a very pretty functional symbolism for the way in which introversion leads to the mother imago. Thus the simpleton in the fairy tale of the feathers comes through the gate of introversion exactly into the family circle, to the mother that cares for him. There his love finds its satisfaction. There he even gets a daughter, replica of the mother imago, for a wife.

In the parable the wandering in the forest (introversion) is followed by the battle (suggestive of incest) with the lion (father or mother in their awe inspiring form); the inclusion in the receptacle (introversion) by the accomplishment of the incest.

If it is now clear also that in introversion, as a result of the regression that is connected with it, visions of "t.i.tanic" emotions (incest, separating of parents, etc.) are encountered, yet it has not become in the slightest degree comprehensible how these visions are related to the treatment of anagogic ideas. And that is indeed the question.

We can really understand these striking facts better if we recall what I have said above about the type formation and the intro-determination of the symbols, namely, that symbols can depart from their original narrower meaning and become types for an entire cla.s.s of experiences whereby an advance is made from the material to the functional meaning. Some examples will elucidate this.

I have observed particularly fine cases of intro-determination in a series of experiments in basin divination (lecanomancy) which I have carried on for several years. Lecanomancy resembles crystal gazing, except that the gazer looks into a basin of water. In the visions of my subject, Lea, typical forms were pictured, which always recurred. Regarded as symbols they were, as subsequent a.n.a.lysis showed, almost all subjected to inward accentuation or intro-determination. Thus, for instance, a black cat appeared. At first it appeared as representative of Lea's grandmother, who was cat-like, malicious and fawning. Later the cat stood for the corresponding traits that she perceived in herself. Above all the cat is the symbol of her grandmother, so the grandmother (or cat) is a mental current of Lea. Frequently there appears in the image a Dyas, sometimes in the shape of a two-headed snake, of two hands, of two feet, or of a woman with two faces, etc. Above all, every ant.i.thesis appears to have some external meaning, two men who love each other, etc. So it becomes clear that the common element which finds its most pregnant expression in the double faced woman is the Dyas in itself and that it means bis.e.xuality, psychic hermaphroditism. More than that it is definitely certain that the deepest sense of the symbol means a complete dissociation of Lea's character into two different personalities, one of which may be called the savage and the other the mild. (Lea herself uses the expressions cynical and ideal personality.) In one of the later experiments Lea saw her cynic double vividly personified and spoke in this character, which is closely related to the "black cat." The Dyas in the symbols has the value first of a representation of externals (two lovers, etc.), then as symbols of bis.e.xuality. The s.e.xual Dyas can again be conceived as a symbol or characteristic of a still more general and comprehensive dissociation of the ego. A further symbol and one still more tending towards intro-determination was death. Starting from connections with definite external experiences and ideas of actual death, the meaning of the symbol became more and more spiritual, till it reached the meaning of the fading away of psychic impulses. What died symbolically or had to die was represented by an old man who sacrificed himself after suffering all kinds of fortune. The dying of this old man signified, as a.n.a.lysis showed, the same thing that we call the "putting off the old Adam" (turning over a new leaf). The figure of the old man, originally Lea's grandfather, then her father, came to have this meaning only after a long process of intro-determination.

A few more examples for typical figures.

In many dreams of a woman a.n.a.lyzed by me (Pauline, in my treatise Zur Symbolbildung), a cow appears as a typical image. The alternation of this cow with more or less definite mother symbols leads to identification of the cow with the mother. Two circ.u.mstantial dreams that were fully a.n.a.lyzed showed, however, that the cow and other forms with which she alternated cannot be translated so correctly by the concept of mother as by that of the maternal authority and finally still more correctly by self-criticism or conscience, of which maternal authority is but a type.

Children figure in Pauline's case as a result of various experiences, as typical of obstacles.

In the case of another dreamer the father stands in similar relation as the determinant that paralyzes his resolutions.

The climbing of an ascent, usually a symbol of coitus (hurrying upward which makes us out of breath), turns out often in a deeper relation as the effort to get from the disagreeable things of life to a place of retreat (lonely attics, etc.), inaccessible to other persons (= thoughts); and now we see that this deeper meaning appears without prejudice to the first, for even coitus, like all transport, is only a special case of flight from the outer life, one of the forms of spiritual oblivion. Hence in part the mythologically and psychopathologically important comparison of intoxication, intoxicating drink and sperm, soma and s.e.m.e.n. Ascent = coitus is in this case a type for a quite comprehensive cla.s.s of experience.

Marcinowski found in his a.n.a.lyses that the father in dream life often was a "symbol of an outlived, obsolete att.i.tude." (Z. Bl. f. Ps., II, 9.)

Other examples of types are the phallus, the sun and other religiously revered objects, if we regard them as does Jung (Wandl. u. Sym., Jb. ps.

F., III-IV) as a symbol of the libido. [The concept of which is extended by Jung almost to Schopenhauer's Will.] The typical character of divine personalities is moreover quite clearly emphasized by Jung himself.

The snake, about whose significance as a "negative phallus," etc.

[developed in detail by Jung], we shall have more to say, can also be regarded as a typical image. Bull, cow and other animal forms are in mythology as in dreams typical trans.m.u.tations, with unlimited possibility of intro-determination. Dogs are often in dreams the representations of animal propensities. The beast is often "la bete humaine" in the dreamer's own inner life. We have become acquainted with the terrible lions, the bears, etc., as father types; here we get a new perspective which makes clear the one-sidedness of our first conception.

Since psychoa.n.a.lysis has found acceptation, many of its followers believe they are able to solve, with their work of a.n.a.lysis alone, all the psychological, esthetic and mythological problems that come up. We understand only half of the psychic impulses, as indeed we do all spiritual development, if we look merely at the root. We have to regard not merely whence we come but also whither we go. Then only can the course of the psyche be comprehended, ontogenetically as well as phylogenetically, according to a dynamic scheme as it were.

If we apply this fundamental principle to symbolism there develops therefrom the obligation to keep both visible poles in view, between which the advance of significance, the process of intro-determination is completed. (An externalization is also possible, yet the internalization or intro-determination must be regarded as the normal process.) [It corresponds namely to the process of education and progress of culture.

This will soon be cleared up.] To the most general type belong then, without doubt, those symbols or frequently disguised images, concerning which we wondered before, that besides representing "t.i.tanic" tendencies, they are fitted to represent the anagogic. The solution of the riddle is found the instant we regard these images as types with a certain degree of intro-determination, as types for a few fundamental forces of the soul, with which we are all endowed, and whose typical symbols are for that reason of general applicability. [I will therefore call these types the human elementary types.] For example, if by psychoa.n.a.lysis we deduce father and mother, etc., from some of the symbols appearing in dreams, we have in these representations of the psychic images, as the psychoa.n.a.lyst calls them, in reality derived mere types whose meaning will change according to the ways of viewing them, somewhat as the color of many minerals changes according to the angle at which we hold them to the light. The actual father or mother, the experiences that surrounded them, were the material used in the formation of the types; they were external things even if important, while later the father, etc., emerging as symbol, may have significance as a type of the spiritual power of the very person in question; a spiritual power to be sure, which the person in question feels to be like a father for otherwise the father figure would not be suited for the symbol. And we can go so far as to call this spiritual power a father image. That should not however, mislead us into taking that real person, who in the individual case generally (though not always) has furnished the type, for the real or the most essential. The innermost lies in ourselves and is only fashioned and exercised upon persons of the external world.

So then we get for the typical symbol a double perspective. The types are given, we can look through them forward and backward. In both cases there will be distortions of the image; we shall frequently see projected upon each other, things that do not belong together, we shall perceive convergences at vanishing points which are to be ascribed only to perspective. I might for brevity's sake call the errors so resulting errors of superposition. The significance of this concept will, I hope, come to have still greater validity in psychoa.n.a.lysis. [This error of superposition C. G. Jung attempts to unmask, when he writes: "As libido has a forward tendency, so in a way, incest is that which tends backward into childhood. It is not incest for the child, and only for the adult, who possesses a well const.i.tuted s.e.xuality, does this regressive tendency become incest in that he is no longer a child, but has a s.e.xuality that really no longer can suffer a regressive application." (Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious.) It may moreover be remarked that Freud also is careful not to take the incest disclosed by psychoa.n.a.lysis in too physical a sense.] This error of superposition is found not only in the view backward but in the forward view. So what I, as interpreter of mystical symbolism, may say about the possible development of the soul will be affected by this error of superposition. It is not in my power to correct it. In spite of everything, the treatment of symbolism from the two points of view must be superior to the onesided treatment; in order to approximate a fundamental comprehension, which to be sure remains an ideal, the different aspects must be combined and in order to make this clear I have added a synthetic treatment to the a.n.a.lytic part of my work.