Awaking to your Shadow / your Unconscious - Becoming Whole / Real

  AT THE HEART OF FREUDIAN PSYCHOANALYSIS is the endeavour to make the unconscious conscious. One can look at this task through other interpretive prisms as well, such as the Jungian concept of individuation, reminiscent of the Socratic dictum about getting to know ourselves, or the commendable endeavour of the ego psychologists to strengthen the ego, as well as the ability of our liberated soul, or psyche, to have good relationships with others, and importantly, to love. But what did Freud really have in mind, we might perhaps wonder when we read James Strachey's "scientifically sounding" translations, in which he inter alia translates Freud's closing words of his New Introductory Lecture No. 31 as follows, "Where id was, there ego shall be." That is not how Freud himself put it. His text actually reads, "Wo Es war, soll Ich werden." That literally means, "What used to be IT, shall become I." Which of course means that what is unconsciou...

  “Myth is metaphor. The imagery of mythology is symbolic of spiritual powers within us: when these are interpreted as referring to historical or natural events which science in turn shows could not have occurred, then you throw the whole thing out. You see, myths do not come from a concept system; they come from a life system; they come out of a deeper center. We must not confuse mythology with ideology. Myths come from where the heart is, and where the experience is, even as the mind may wonder why people believe these things. The myth does not point to a fact; the myth points beyond facts to something that informs the fact. When you think, for instance, ‘God is thy father,’ do you think he is? No, that's a metaphor, and the metaphor points to two ends: one is psychological--that's why the dream is metaphoric; the other is metaphysical. Now, dream is metaphoric of the structures in the psyche, and your dream will correspond to the level of psychological realization that you...