Dipping into Jung - Again!

I have already reviewed a book by Robert A. Johnson, viz., Owning Your Own Shadow  in this blog before here. This time I wish to review another one from Dr. Johnson's pen, namely Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth, HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins, 1989.

My copy of this little classic

Robert A. Johnson is an internationally recognized Jungian analyst, lecturer and author who is now in his early nineties.  Dr. Johnson is to be praised for popularizing the work of Professor Carl Gustav Jung in the United States of America especially, but also much more widely around the world.  He is universally lauded for the accessibility of his texts and lectures to the man and woman in the street.  He studied at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich where Jung's wife Emma was his main analyst.  He also steeped himself in both Eastern and Western mysticism, the former by dialogue with Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895 – 1986 ) (See here) and the latter by living for some four years with the Episcopalian Benedictine Order.  He would also spend time in India studying Eastern philosophy and meditation.

In this book, Dr Johnson provides a four step approach to enable us moderns to bridge the gap between the unconscious and conscious worlds of our psyche.  He teaches that if we follow his four step plan steadily and purposefully we shall be enabled to enrich our lives and discover our true individuated selves.  Individuation was Carl Jung's term for what was/is known in general Humanistic Psycho-therapeutic circles as self-actualization.   In short, Inner Work offers a four-step programme to search the hidden depths of our unconscious to find the extraordinary depths and resources that dwell therein.

In sum, Johnson's four step approach is as follows in interpreting dreams and other associated messages from the unconscious: (i) Making associations, (ii) Connecting dream images to one's own inner dynamics, (iii)Interpreting and (iv) Doing rituals to make the dream concrete.  

In step 1, he insists that these associations should not be random ones that can lead anywhere, that is, away from the actual image being brought to mind (consciousness).  He recommends a circular process, not a linear one, as the circle leads back to the image in question all the time. (See page 55 for a useful illustration of his technique here).  Such associations should involve personal meanings and hence they will be different for every individual, just like our fingerprints.

Step 2 is all about getting to know and appreciate one's own inner dynamics.  Here we connect each dream image to a specific dynamic in our inner lives.  This is no easy task and it requires perseverance and no little discernment (to use a term much loved by St Ignatius of Loyola).  It involves reflecting a lot on the totality of our lives: past and recent experiences, our feelings and then specific events particular to our own lives in order to see if any of these areas have sparked off the images in our dreams.

All of the above Dr Johnson illustrates for us by using examples of dreams.  Thereby, he helps us by giving us concrete examples of how the process actually works.  All the while this process is accompanied by the systematic questioning of the inner self and the dream: "What part of me is that? Where have I seen it functioning in my life lately? Where do I see that same trait in my personality? Who is it, inside me, who feels like that or behaves like that?" (See p. 65).  He also provides us with a good description of what he calls our "inner personalities." (See p.  76-78)  Interestingly, he sees all these "inner personalities" as manifestations of the many little selves inside us.  Now our job is the unifying of all these little selves into the One Real Self.  In this regard, I believe, Dr Johnson gives a wonderfully accurate and precise definition of what Jung meant by individuation by claiming that it is "not only the becoming conscious of these inner energy systems (inner persons within us), it is also bringing relatedness and unity among them." (See p. 49)

Step 3 is that of interpretation.  By this, Johnson means "the end result of all the work you have put into the earlier steps of dream work." (See p. 87)  This, if you like, is forming an overall picture of the meaning of the dream by tying all the different personal associations together under a bigger umbrella of a larger personal story or narrative.  In this process he indicates that we will have to use discernment and be able (i) to choose between alternative interpretations, (ii) to pay attention to the energy intensity around certain images, (iii)  to follow clues like a detective, (iv) to argue from opposites and (v) to exercise patience and try to fit a dream's significance into the flow of our life over a time interval.

Step 4 is the performance of rituals to honour the meaning and significance of the dream. In this stage of the process, the dream analyst is answering this question: "What am I going to do about my dream?" Well, quite simply this means engaging in concrete actions.  They may be acts like saying "no" when I am asked to do yet another job because I am a "yes" person generally or vice versa, saying "yes" if I am generally a "no" person.  It may mean paying my bills on time, speaking up for myself, straightening out a bad relationship, apologizing, going on a holiday, taking a break from work, starting a painting or writing or sewing.  They may also be ritual acts like placing flowers on a grave or before a favourite statue - such rituals bring home the meaning of the dream in a powerful way.  Ritualizing something could even mean dancing, bowing down in awe before something in  nature or throwing flowers into the sea.  Interestingly, Johnson points out that there is a two-way movement at work in any ritual:

Rituals provide us a way of taking principles from the unconscious and impressing them vividly on the conscious mind.  But rituals also have an effect on the unconscious.   A highly conscious ritual sends a powerful message back to the unconscious, causing changes to take place at the deep levels where our attitudes and values originate.  (p. 100)

The final part of Dr Johnson's book relates to explaining just exactly was Jung meant by the technique of Active Imagination. (A.I.) Here, our therapist issues a word of stern warning that anyone who tries this technique should have someone readily available for the participant to go to or to call in case they become overwhelmed by the imagination and simply cannot cut it off.  Here is the author's description of A.I. :

(It) is a dialogue you enter into with the different parts of yourself that live in the unconscious... You allow the images to rise up out of the unconscious and they come to you on the level of the imagination just as they would come to you in a dream if you were asleep.  In the imagination you begin to talk to your images and interact with them.  They answer back.  You are startled to find out that they express radically different viewpoints from those of your conscious mind.  They tell you things you never conscious knew and express thoughts that you never consciously thought. (p. 138)

The three books lying at my feet as I typed this article

Once again Dr Johnson uses a fourfold process in working through A.I.  These four movements are parallel to the ones used in the dream process, viz., (i) The Invitation, (ii) The Dialogue, (iii) The Values and (iv) The Rituals.  I will desist from going through all four and leave that to you, dear reader, should you be interested in reading this wonderfully insightful book on Jungian analysis.

In sum, Dr. Johnson offers the courageous reader a path to access the inner self and to make more of his/her unconscious world conscious.  In short, he is offering a course in self-development or in Jungian individuation.  However, this path is not one for the fainthearted as we already instinctively know what he tells us practically at the outset of this wonderful little classic that when we are approaching the unconscious we are dealing with "one of the most powerful and autonomous forces in the human psyche." (p. 17)

Safe journey, my friends! Shalom! Peace be with you! Namaste!