The symbolism of our religions. When we try to understand the symbolism of religious stories, for example, we often mistake the psychic symbol for the physical reality, turning what is symbolic into something literal. This causes, in the words of Freud, “the truths contained in religious doctrines [to become] distorted and systematically disguised [so that] the mass of mankind cannot recognize them as truth” (Freud, 1961, p. 78). When symbolic stories are found out not to be literally true, the individual may then feel deceived and say: “Symbols are false; they contain no truths worthy of investigation. They are mere illusions, imaginary and not real, signifying nothing.” We must learn, however, to read the symbolic language of our dreams, and our religious and mythological stories in order to see the disguised truth behind their camouflage clothing.
The symbolism of our dreams. The same problem occurs when we try to understand the symbolism of our dreams. We are always comparing the symbols of dream events to the literally nature of events as they occur in physical reality. We use physical reality as the standard for interpreting the meaning of our dreams. When the temporal and spatial structure and organization of dream events do not match what we would expect to occur in physical events, we inevitably find the dream events confusing, chaotic, and meaningless and declare them false. There is only one standard of truth and fact and that is to be found in the physical world and in the literal interpretation of meaning.
The symbols are not to be mistaken for the reality they represent. Symbols are not to be taken literally, or mistaken for the reality they represent. As representations of unconscious knowledge, they are true; as representations of physical reality, they are false, in the same way that a map is not the territory, the menu is not the meal, and the sign is not the destination.
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10. Elucidated the influence of shadow-like elements of the psyche
Meeting the shadow. People encounter difficulty when they mistake the symbol for the reality during their encounter with the “dark side” of their personality or what Jung called the “Shadow.” The shadow consists of those so-called “instincts” and impulses that civilized humanity attributes to its “animal” nature, similar to the Freudian concept of the id. The Shadow is responsible for the emergence into conscious awareness of thoughts, feelings, images, and behavioral impulses considered to be socially reprehensible. Such thoughts, feelings, and actions, are usually automatically repressed by the ego back into the personal subconscious or hidden from public view behind the social mask of the “Persona” – the front we put on for other people and the role we play in response to the demands of social convention and tradition. As an archetype within the collective unconscious, the Shadow is the origin of Catholicism’s conception of original sin and the complex of images, ideas, feelings, and actions that compose individual notions of a “sinful” self (Hall & Lindsey, 1978, pp. 123-124).
Devils and demons as symbols of the Shadow. When the Shadow is projected outward, it becomes the devil or enemy. Devils, demons, and evil spirits are all symbols of the archetype of the Shadow. If we mistake the symbol for the reality, then we come to believe that devils and demons have an objective existence. Devils and demons have always represented portion’s of humanity’s own psychological reality – portions of the psyche that to some extent we as a species have not assimilated, but in a dissociative kind of expression, project instead outward from ourselves. By so doing, we separate and isolate ourselves from the responsibility of being held accountable for our acts that are considered debasing and cruel by imagining the existence of other forces – devils, demons, evil spirits – that “made me do it” or “commanded me to perform them.”
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