Dream Series 05 – A Goose That Returns to the Feeder
A Dream Interpretation
Watch the video on YouTube
Step 1 – Write The Dream Down
A group of geese are eating triangle-shaped potato chips. One of the geese stops and comes back loyally to the center, where the man who is throwing the chips is standing.
Step 2 – Identify the Key Symbols and Provide Spontaneous Associations
potato chips ~ chips are addictive and unhealthy
goose < (amplification) the goose is the representation of an instinct which has the eros quality of focusing on the self, in opposition to an egocentric attitude.
triangle-shaped < trinity; Three is the number for egohood, for the rhythm of individuation as experienced by the ego.
the man who is throwing the chips < Christ at the Last Supper; an image of the self
Step 3 – Provide the Personal Context
I was reading Jung’s essay on sacrifice (see previous video).
Step 4 – Feel into the Inner Dynamics of a Dream
Skipped
Step 5 – Find the Right Interpretation
Subjective interpretation: “Beautiful image of the ego-self axis. Describes the attitude that one should have: yes, there is food outside (it is addictive and unhealthy!) but the right attitude is to come back to the center, to the man throwing the chips.”
Objective interpretation: The man throwing chips to the geese is an image of the self establishing a transpersonal connection with the ego. The triangle-shaped potato chips are the food, the numinous content that helps to develop the ego. Their addictive and unhealthy nature implies that, like the prima materia, they must be transformed. The goose that comes back to the center is the eros instinct that comes back to the self.
Step 6 – Make the Dream Concrete With a Symbolic Act
Skipped
Articles
Working With Complexes – A Practical Alternative
Books quoted
Marie-Lousie von Franz. C.G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time
Carl G. Jung. Memories, Dreams, Reflections
Ladson Hinton. “The Goose Girl” Puella and Transformation
Edward F. Edinger. Ego and Archetype
Edward F. Edinger. The Christian Archetype
Carl G. Jung. C.G. Jung Letters, Vol. 1: 1906-1950
I recently found this quote that fits the end of the video
The alchemists seem to have perceived the danger that the work and its realization may get stuck in one of the conscious functions. Consequently they stress the importance of the theoria, i.e., intellectual understanding as opposed to the practica, which consisted merely of chemical experiments. We might say that the practica corresponds to pure perception, and that this must be supplemented by apperception. But this second stage still does not bring complete realization. What is still lacking is heart or feeling, which imparts an abiding value to anything we have understood. The books must therefore be “destroyed” lest thinking impair feeling and thus hinder the return of the soul.
These difficulties are familiar ground to the psychotherapist. It often happens that the patient is quite satisfied with merely registering a dream or fantasy, especially if he has pretensions to aestheticism. He will then fight against even intellectual understanding because it seems an affront to the reality of his psychic life. Others try to understand with their brains only, and want to skip the purely practical stage. And when they have understood, they think they have done their full share of realization. That they should also have a feeling-relationship to the contents of the unconscious seems strange to them or even ridiculous. Intellectual understanding and aestheticism both produce the deceptive, treacherous sense of liberation and superiority which is liable to collapse if feeling intervenes. Feeling always binds one to the reality and meaning of symbolic contents, and these in turn impose binding standards of ethical behaviour from which aestheticism and intellectualism are only too ready to emancipate themselves.
Carl Jung, The Psychology of Transference, CW 16, par 488-489
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