Synchronicity Seminar – Exercise 1
“I was in Paris, walking down a boulevard with two women who were my age; perhaps they were friends. We passed a large department store … and I persuaded my friends to go in with me.
“The aisles were filled with displays of luxury items, all priced in francs, which I had difficulty translating into dollars. There was one handkerchief that had a black and white kitten finely embroidered on it. As I tell you this, it occurs to me that I was looking for a gift for my mother. That handkerchief was what I wanted, but to my great surprise, it cost sixty-five dollars.
“The dreamer continued to relate: ‘And that reminds me, I got a letter from my mother the next day telling me they'd been adopted by a back and white kitten who showed up on their doorstep.’”
QUESTIONS
The dreamer, a female, is in her late thirties and is suffering from terminal cancer. The dream is from the nineteen sixties.
The problem or issue in the dream concerns some sort of purchase. To purchase something in a dream could relate to adding something to one's “personal inventory.” What would this translate into psychologically?
A complication is hinted at in the figures of the two friends. What would these parts refer to in the dreamer? What is the “complication;” what does the world persuade suggest? How might this tie into synchronicity?
To Paris, the dreamer associated that she had always wanted to go there. She had been a French major in college. The dreamer, we are told, is a person given to thinking rather too much. What would it mean, then, that she is shopping in Paris? What faculty of her personality would she find represented in Paris? In the effort of choosing something for her mother what potential in herself would she be developing? Again, how might this relate to synchronicity?
The dreamer had no personal associations to cat, so you will need to amplify and then interpret. The cat in the dream is embroidered in black and white. Thus it seems that both the light and the dark sides of the image we are interpreting is represented in the handkerchief. What is the meaning of that?
How is the purchase, further developed in this part of the dream?
What does the high cost of the handkerchief mean?
How does this represent the dream's conclusion?
Explain the importance of the synchronicity which followed the dream. What elements of the dream might the synchronicity be compensating? How would you explain that to the analysand? That is, how would you interpret the synchronicity?
From Jane Wheelwright’s Death of a Woman, pp. 101, 157ff.
jgsparks.net/folio
Synchronicity Seminar – Exercise 2
In 1956 Jung was sent a letter by an American man, and Jung’s reply is included in his collected letters. Here is how the editors of Jung’s letters summed up the letter from this American fellow:
“The writer, describing himself as a man of 71, who had ‘survived life’s struggle, successfully, financially, through capitalizing on a slight gift for writing,’ told of his three marriages: the first to a pianist who left him overnight after a happy marriage lasting 17 years; the second to a painter whose death in 1954 ended an ‘idyllic’ marriage of 22 years; and the third to an actress. Ever since the death of his second wife he heard ‘raps and taps’ in the bedroom (also heard by the third wife), doors swung open by themselves and mirrors tipped, the phenomena occurring about two or three times a week.”
QUESTIONS
How would you respond to this situation?
I’ll give you some hints from Jung’s reply. He refers to the man’s anima, to the man’s creativity which he distinguishes from the man’s talent, to the man’s rationality.
It is interesting to see in the letter how Jung handled the psychokinetic occurrences. How would you communicate an explanation of these to the correspondent?
How are these psychokinetic occurrences synchronicities?
From C.G. Jung, Letters, vol. 2, pp. 321f.
jgsparks.net/folio
Synchronicity Seminar – Exercise 3
In At the Heart of Matter, I discuss the dream of a woman who grew into selfhood through an extramarital affair. In the dream she traveled from planet earth to another one where she contacted her story “written long ago.” p.144 This suggested that the emotional chaos and pain of her affair led to her to the possibility of inner reflection symbolized by the second planet … an example of the dual mandala motif typical of moments of spiritual guidance through physical experiences. Subsequently the woman met yet another man and was considering an affair with him when she dreamed that she reached inside her vagina and pulled out a diamond. She then felt something still lodged inside her and, reaching in again, pulled a disco ball out of her vagina, one of the glitzy rotating light-reflecting balls one finds in discos, for example.
QUESTIONS
What is this second dream telling her? Why the difference between the diamond and the disco ball?
In this light consider a statement of Pauli’s. In 1952 he wrote to Jung: “More and More I see the psycho-physical problem as the key to the overall spiritual situation of our age.”
Pauli and Jung, Atom and Archetype, pp. 81f.
What is “our age” and what is its “spiritual situation”? What is the psycho-physical problem? Why “problem”? What does that have to do with the woman’s dreams just cited? How is the psycho-physical problem the “key”? How would you explain your responses to a colleague? to a Freudian analyst? to a person with a high school education? Can you bring Jung’s thesis in Aion in here?
In the same vein consider a statement of Jung’s in his Visions seminar: “Sometimes one is allowed by the gods to substitute wine for blood but that will come later.” p. 243 Put that in your own words. How would it apply to the woman above?
jgsparks.net/folio
Synchronicity Seminar – Exercise 4
A thirty-five year old woman suffering from a severely arthritic right wrist dreamt the following:
“I am in a large room where a large number of people are seated at tables, probably waiting for something to eat. I have to fill their glasses from heavy pitchers. It seems like I am the only one this task is entrusted to. I am being forced to do this by a man in the background who is wearing a benevolent grin. It was some kind of blackmail.”
QUESTIONS
How is this a synchronistic dream? What does it mean that the woman serves from heavy pitchers in the dream? How is that dream image related to her suffering wrist in reality? What is the message here? What does this tell us about the function of the body in psychological suffering, at least at times? How do we conceptualize this? Additionally, consider the blackmailer from an objective and subjective point of view.
The analyst who published this dream, Alfred Ziegler, wrote: “The healthiest aspect of this patient seems to be the inflammation of her wrist, the only effective means of blocking out the unending demands placed upon her.” Explain what he means.
From Alfred Ziegler, Archetypal Medicine, pp. 118f.
jgsparks.net/folio
Synchronicity Seminar – Exercise 5
Dream and commentary from a seventy year-old male clinical psychologist:
“I am looking at a small white house from the side. There is a fenced area on this side of the house that runs from front to the back of the house. The grass is very green. In the fenced yard area is a beautiful horse. It is owned by a black couple and I am told it is a champion. The horse’s name is Havercock.”
Comment: “Black couples do not typically own champion horses. The name Havercock is unusual and I have no conscious memory of encountering that name. I Googled the name on the Internet and got about five responses, none of which made any sense except one. I followed that lead to a restaurant in Tuscany in the town of Montalcino. The principal chef at an apparently famous restaurant is Guido Havercock. The restaurant is in a very old castle in this ancient town in Tuscany.
“My only connection with Tuscany is that two years ago I attended a Jungian conference in that area. I told one of the presenters that I found his style of analytic work a bit ‘cookbookish.’ He was gracious in his response, but I wondered if I inflicted a narcissistic injury.” [Some details of the dreamer’s commentary have been omitted to maintain confidentiality.]
“Eight days after this dream occurred I was in Barnes and Noble. As I was working my way out of the store I stopped at several display tables to look at books on display. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. On the last table I stopped at there was a book, A Vineyard in Tuscany: a Wine Lover’s Dream by Ferenc Máté. He and his family live in a 13th century friary in Montalcino, Tuscany. Yes, I purchased the book.”
From Publishers Weekly on Amazon.com:
“Hungarian-Canadian author and sailor Máté recounts in wry, candid detail how he rebuilt a Tuscan ruin into a world-class winery. Living in Tuscany with his artist wife and son while savoring the landscape, food and pleasant neighbors wasn't enough for Máté, who admits he thrives on adversity. He wanted his own castle and finagles the purchase of a 13th-century friary in Montalcino, with a proper forno (oven), and 60 acres of land—15 of which he fashions over three hard years of work into a vineyard sprouting robust harvests of Sangiovese, merlot, cabernet sauvignon and Syrah grapes. … While hacking in the forest, he finds the remains of a 3,000-year-old city, inviting the interest of archeologists.” [slightly edited for brevity]
From the book description on Amazon.com:
“The Mátés' future home and wine estate lies amid breathtaking scenery in a community brimming with warmth. In Italy's most prestigious wine zone, Montalcino, they restore a thirteenth-century friary nestled on two hills within sixty acres of forest, olives, and potential vineyards. Here they plant fifteen acres of vines, build the winery, and learn from their famous vintner neighbors, like Angelo Gaja, the secrets of how to grow the best grapes and make superb wines. Within the first years, the Máté wines receive international acclaim.
“This highly entertaining tale of how two dreamers struggle and thrive in idyllic Tuscany will enrich the lives of travelers and wine lovers alike.”
QUESTIONS
How does the synchronicity further amplify the “black couple”? Why do they have the horse? What does the horse represent? Why is the field green and the house white? How does the winery add to the meaning of the dream? Amplify and discuss the meaning of wine. Why is the word “adversity” so important? How would you explain all this to the analysand?
jgsparks.net/folio
Synchronicity Seminar – Exercise 8
The dream of a forty-seven year old man, discussed in Jung’s Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar. The analysand was in a sexless marriage and visited prostitutes in Eastern Europe. Jung cites this dream:
He finds himself in a hut in Africa, somewhere in the upper part of Egypt. In a corner he comes upon a crocodile and tries to chase it out, astonished to find such a beast, and somehow it disappears. Then his youngest son brings him a kettle containing all sorts of peculiar old things. He takes up a whole bundle of small scythes made, not of steel, but of sheet iron—simulacra, not the real thing. Below that in the kettle he finds handles of old swords, made of metal and other material, some made even of glass, but the blades were all broken off. Below that was a statue of Christ, made of sheet iron, with a sword as long as the figure, and he notices that one can easily remove it from the statue. He wants to carry the kettle away with all its contents, but a native suddenly appears and declares that one would use all those scythes, banked up on wall of the hut between small lamps in a sort of ceremonial. Then it dawns upon him that the hut is by no means ordinary but a kind of mosque, and the scythes are crescent moons, and he also realizes that the handles of the swords are Coptic cross symbols.”
QUESTIONS
Jung says of the crocodile: “I have seen such a symbol in other cases when a man can no longer arrange his life arbitrarily. It might be a threatening symbol. For a man who has played with his life, from now on it is serious.” p. 327 Explain. Can you describe the crocodile with a “Jungian word”?
Knowing what you do of the man’s suffering, what would the swords and crescents refer to in his personal psychology? Consider also the collective meaning of the dream. What does it mean that they are in a pot of sorts? What would this mean for the man and for history on the collective level (one aspect of the possible synchronistic meaning of the dream). Prior to Jung’s discussing this dream in the seminar another patient of Jung’s, who was also in the seminar (but, of course not yet knowing of this dream under discussion here) drew the picture which accompanies this dream [FIG]. Note what this adds to the dream. How would this drawing be synchronistic? How might the collective meaning of the dream be further elucidated by this synchronicity? Can you think of another major work of Jung’s that touches on these themes?
Why Coptic?
Jung, Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar, pp. 317ff.
jgsparks.net/folio
for Exercise 8
Jung, Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar, page 418
jgsparks.net/folio
Synchronicity Seminar – Exercise 11
Wolfgang Pauli’s dream of January 10, 1951 i) “I am driving uphill in a car, next to me sits the somewhat younger physicist W. Then the skin on my left leg begins to peel away and it falls away in a heap. Under it a rose colored skin is visible. We come to the end of the road, only a footpath continues further. I stop.
“Now W. brings me a hat with false (among my various) monograms. I give it back to him as not belonging to me. At that W. cuts the letters out of another hat and wants to give me this hat. But I also do not recognize this as one of mine and I give it back to him. – I see that now it would only be possible to go further by foot by the light of the moon, which, however, I consider dangerous; the endpoint of this path is doubtful as well. (I awake.)”
ii) “The Stranger is with me. He says that I must go to an official celebration in Küsnacht and that he will come later by way of a detour.
“I walk and enter the Gasthof [restaurant/pub]; its name, ‘Old Sun,’ is written on the building. (It looks similar to the way the Johannisburg looks in reality.) There I find the dignitaries of the community sitting at a table. A blonde young woman also sits at the table and she is very sad. She is crying and says that she will lose her Swiss citizenship because she is marrying a German.
“At the end, one of the community dignitaries says, ‘Fräulein von Franz is also to marry here.’”
“Waiting for the Stranger, I awake”
QUESTIONS
These dreams occurred during the time Pauli was beginning a friendship with Marie-Louise von Franz, a friendship characterized by strong erotic feelings.
(i) Why does the skin on Pauli’s left leg begin to peal away under these circumstances? What is one of the oldest archetypes of transformation and how is that evident here? What is the dream about, then? Why “rose-colored” skin? Why a footpath instead of a road? Explain the physicist’s giving Pauli a hat without his real monogram. Why is that so important? What does going forward “by the light of the moon” refer to … particularly in light of your knowing this dream occurred in the context of erotic feelings for a woman? Why is von Franz in Pauli’s life? What is the meaning of his erotic feelings for her? What does all this have to do with synchronicity?
(ii) The Stranger is a form of Mercurius in Pauli’s own estimation. Who is Mercurius and why should we care? What does that have to do with synchronicity? Why the reference to the “Old Sun.” Again, what does that have to do with synchronicity? Why are the dignitaries present? What would it mean if an anima figure of Pauli’s marries a German (think of the idealism thread of German philosophy)? Why does that image follow the dignitaries image? Why is she blond? Why is she sad? Explain the reference to von Franz at the end of the dream. Would you understand that image objectively or subjectively?
From van Erkelens, Wolfgang Pauli und der Gesit der Materie, pp. 75ff.; see also my At the Heart of Matter, pp. 109ff.
jgsparks.net/folio
Synchronicity Seminar – Exercise 12
Dream of a Woman:
“In the garden there was a large sandpit in which layers of rubbish had been deposited. In one of these layers she discovered thin, slate plates of green serpentine. One of them had black squares on it, arranged concentrically. The black was not painted on, but was ingrained in the stone, like the markings in an agate [FIG]. Similar marks were found on two or three other plates, which Mr. A. (a slight acquaintance) then took away from her.”