Analysis
When
people come into analysis, they generally have a long tale to tell about
their troubles: their marriage, their profession, and so forth.
Generally they say they have come into analysis for such and such
reasons, and typically the reasons are based on the way in which
consciousness sees the situation and on the kind of snare in which the
patients believe themselves to be caught. Very few people
say that they have an inner problem, and even if it is an inner problem,
they describe it more as “the restless dragon.” When they
come to understand that the solution is to be found within their own
psyche
and not in the analyst or in some outer thing, the worry diminishes, the
restless dragon is appeased.
One
first accepts the situation as described above, but then one says, now we
have to see what the person’s psyche has to say. With
that the person is forced to stop worrying and to say, “Well, now I am faced
with the unknown and just have to wait.” Then the waters
of the unconscious rise. That would be the flow of the
unconscious fantasies in the night in the form of
dreams and in the daytime
fantasies, and the entire analytic work concentrates on that.
In that way everybody who starts an analysis drowns within his or her
own imaginative inner activity. This way we consciously
stop worrying about outer problems and solutions and put everything into a
retort, so to speak. Naturally, after a while, the waters
dry up a little, which means that some inner solution has been found.
Afterwards there is a natural tendency to return to outer contacts
and outer life. AAI 53
Analysis
is a temporary, artificial state of complete introversion which is not
carried on forever. Also, the waters dry up – for
instance, dream material lessens – and then the
libido naturally returns to
the outer world to a certain extent. There the great
danger is that people may just snap back into their former way of life,
forgetting all about the hot bath they had in analysis, and everything
becomes as before. To a certain extent that danger always
exists. But, as Dorn noticed, when analysis proceeds
properly, that kind of relapse does not happen: something precious has taken
place in an inner conception, which Dorn compares to an inner child.
In dreams, as many of you know, this conception is often represented
as a child, the Self being represented as a form of renewal.
AAI 54
Jung
often said that when analyzing someone, one of the important things to watch
is to see how much of the
personality listens. Some
people are very cooperative with their ego in analysis, bringing their
material and making a great effort. But other parts of
the personality do not listen and continue completely autonomously, as if
they had never heard of psychology.