WELCOME TO Module 9

This Jungian Life @ www.thisjungianlife.com

Lisa Marchiano, Jungian Analyst, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Joseph Lee, Jungian Analyst, Virginia Beach, Virginia

Deborah Stewart, Jungian Analyst, Cape Cod, Massachusetts

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Module 9: Complexes in Dreams

THIS JUNGIAN LIFE DREAM SCHOOL EDITED TRANSCRIPT

 

Deb: We are going to talk about complexes and how they show up in dreams. Freud said dreams were the royal road to the unconscious, but Jung said that the complex is the architect of the dream, making the complex the royal road to the unconscious. Complexes are therefore a central component of dreams and dream work. Jung also said that a complex is an image of a personified affect. In dreams a complex has a shape and a feeling tone, and we have a physical reaction when a complex has been activated. We see what a complex does and the feelings it evokes in dreams.

Lisa: I want to highlight what you said about a complex being personified affect. Jung says that a complex ‘clothes’ an emotion in a visual image.

Deb: Yes. A complex has a strong personal associations and emotional resonance. It’s loaded, so to speak, and it shoots straight through personal experiences to the archetypal layer of the psyche. So, although complexes carry a lot of personal history, they are also infused with energy from the universal, archetypal core of human experience. That’s what gives complexes their special ‘hot’ quality.

Joseph: When Jung said the complex is the royal road to the unconscious, we might imagine the ego, or waking personality, is on one side of a literal road. The archetypal world, invisible, mysterious, and unseen, is way across on the other side, and the complex is in the middle. The archetype is ‘clothed’ in personal experiences and memories—places, people, and interactive patterns. That’s how it’s knowable to the ego. If those experiences were painful, the extra surge of archetypal activation can stun the ego.

Deb: Another aspect of a complex is that it causes a physical reaction. The hair on the back of our necks may go up, we feel mobilized, or we just go blank, stopped dead in our tracks. But a complex is always connected with strong physical and emotional feeling.

Lisa: Complexes show up as circumstances in which we habitually get stirred up. Let’s say I’m working with someone who has a complex around feeling abandoned. It might be related how her father was never around, emotionally or physically. There’s a catch in her throat. I can hear her voice change as she talks about issues related to her father, and I can see her posture change as familiar feelings of abandonment arise. That complex, just like any others, can show up in dream images.

Deb: The archetypal core of that complex, like all complexes, is universal. We see abandonment imaged in mythology and fairytales, such as Hansel and Gretel and The Ugly Duckling. Abandonment and being orphaned were a big part of collective experience when life was not anywhere as predictable as we like to think it is now. Today abandonment is often emotional, which is more subtle, though just as powerful.

Joseph: Abandonment experiences coalesce in a kind of ‘gravitational field’ as an archetype of abandonment that is bigger and older than personal experience. As psyche has grappled with it over millennia, myths, fairytales, story-telling and ritual behaviors emerged. They are medicinal responses from collective humanity.

Deb: It’s important to add that we also come ‘preprogrammed,’ or hard-wired, for complexes, such as a mother, father, orphan and hero complex, to cite a few. These are universal patterns in the human psyche and history. This gets even more complicated as we realize that complexes are a normal part of how we function. I think of them as internal magnets. If we have unfortunate experiences around something, like abandonment, it’s as if that magnet accretes lots of iron filings that also become magnetized. Then the person is sensitized, and can get set off more easily, which manifests energetically, behaviorally, and in dreams.

Lisa: That’s a good way of describing it. When a complex gets activated, it distorts how we see things. For example, if a friend cancels a date, it may bring up an abandonment complex—an irrational fear that the friend doesn’t want the relationship anymore. A complex can lead us toward catastrophic thinking instead of seeing things matter-of-factly. One of the benefits of dream work is that it shows us our complexes, what they are doing in the psyche, and in our lives. For example, a woman I worked with had a painful complex around feeling rejected by her family. She always felt unwanted, like a black sheep. This complex took up a lot of space in her life and played out in many relationships. Then she had an amazing dream with a central image of a blue, spider-like animal about the size of a dog. It was frightening, but also rather numinous. This dream deepened her understanding of what she knew about her complex. It showed how out of proportion her thinking could be—like a giant blue spider–and how that tended to make relationships more difficult. But the image also called her attention to something she could not ignore and that could transform.

Joseph: That illustrates how the archetypal core of the complex manifests, and its potential to correct a person’s lived experience. Let’s use the mother complex, which everyone has, as another example. A person may have had negative personal experiences of mother–neglect or interference that caused distress in childhood. That person is left with a whole web of experiences that vibrate whenever the theme of mother arises. Let’s imagine this person is Catholic and has a tremendous devotion to Mary, the archetype of the divine mother. That archetypal mother can embrace and console, allowing the person to experience the positive aspect of mother that the personal mother didn’t provide. The archetypal core of a complex can activate and stretch the complex to include feelings like compassion and solace even though they were not experienced with the biological parent.

Deb: That shows how a negative mother complex can be healed by connecting with an archetype’s positive aspect, such as the divine mother. The positive aspects of the mother archetype can be related to and integrated into the personality. This shows why it’s important to work with complexes as they show up in dreams, behavior, and waking life. Complexes have an archetypal core, so they have both a negative and positive aspect. A negative experience with the personal mother can be counteracted by a positive experience with the divine mother. We can rebalance our psychic scales through connection to archetypal depths; the psyche seeks balance, wholeness.

Joseph: I want to add that the memories and experiences that make up the complex are not just emotional memories. They are memories of ideas, physical sensations and lived behaviors. So, when the archetype activates, it doesn’t only evoke intense emotion. It pushes us toward specific reactions in waking life—how we think, act and speak. This can make some complexes problematic, as they influence many behaviors and thought patterns in daily life. Learning about our complexes is a very practical matter.

Lisa: This relates to how Jungians think about symptoms. If there is a way that someone is not functioning well in his life, we tend to think of it as a complex that’s disturbing perception and ability to adapt. That is very different from thinking something is wrong and has to be counteracted or fixed.

Joseph: Jung was responsible for discovering, tracing, and explaining the power of complexes. He published his work with the Word Association Experiment early in his career as a psychiatrist. He would read a list of basic words–like tree, dog, pond, mother, table–and use a stopwatch to time how long it took for the subject to provide an association to the stimulus word—the immediate response. He noticed that some ordinary words were difficult to respond to quickly or effectively, which indicated that memories associated with the word interfered with normal ability to respond. A complex had been activated that disturbed consciousness. Later, through galvanic skin responses–still used in lie detector tests, by the way–Jung could discern that there was a physiological component to the distress triggered by a word. All that didn’t tell him exactly what the content of the complex was, but he could see patterns that disturbed the person that helped identify issues for psychotherapy.

Deb: Complexes have so much energy–from the Word Association Test to waking life to dreams. No wonder Jung called the complex the royal road to the unconscious. The concept of complexes is very different from the concept of defenses, which evokes images of walls or closed doors. We can try to repress and suppress things, or deny and avoid things, but there are autonomous energy centers in us. They may be roiling sometimes, but they want to be known and are in service to wholeness if we can pay thoughtful attention to them and make them conscious.

Lisa: Unlike defenses, complexes are dynamic. They are independent sub-personalities and contain the potential for transformation. Let’s turn to some examples of complexes in dreams.

Joseph: Here’s a dream submitted by a 43-year-old woman: I was sitting outside a house or cafe with a group of people on a pretty, wrought iron chair. I was waiting for something to resume–the game, or a song perhaps, and I’m messing around, so I almost fell off my chair. Then it was time to go and I started to dance away. A man at another table addressed me and started to question my sincerity and genuineness. He thought the dancing was an act. I said, “I often dance around rather than walking or running. It was just what I did, not an act at all.” Could he not see how I was walking along on my toes? I went into an empty and slightly abandoned building in which something was about to happen. It looked and felt dusty and disheveled. I saw an enormous bee carrying something, but I don’t know what. I felt that I really had to get out of the house as it might scare people and disrupt whatever was going to happen. One of the reasons we chose this dream is the complex seems clear. It’s highlighting childish behavior and the way the dream ego relates to the world. The way she’s thinking, feeling and behaving looks like a puella complex. Puella is a Latin term for a young girl.

Lisa: The dream ego was acting girlishly. I’m wondering if the man and the bee are images of complexes.

Deb: I’m thinking along similar lines. The dream ego seems very persona-identified. She’s sitting on a pretty, wrought iron chair, there’s a game or a song, and she’s dancing in some way. She feels young, attractive and happy—so cute. And then the man and the bee try to sting her. The man stings her by questioning her sincerity and genuineness. He thinks the dancing is just an act. Then there is a huge bee carrying something, and she has to get away—presumably because bees sting.

Joseph: It seems that the dream ego is identified with the puella complex and memories of joyful, childlike experiences. A male figure compensates by questioning her authenticity somewhat sternly. When we think about individuals who are in the child complex, whether it’s the Peter Pan puer or the doll-like puella, the confrontation is often about how sincere are you really? Are you being soulful and genuine or are you performing and tossing ideas around like a child in a playroom? The masculine figure seems to offer a ‘medicine’ of reality testing to a dream ego caught up in childlike behavior.

Lisa: This is a good example of a dream that depicts what psyche thinks about the attitude of the ego.

Deb: Yes, the dream ego is persona-identified, which is familiar to most of us because we’re taught by parents, teachers, and the culture how we should present ourselves. If that goes on for a long enough time, we come to believe that is who we really are, which creates a false self. That seems to be out-pictured in the dream. She believes this dancing around is genuinely her, but another part of the psyche says stop it–there’s more to you than that.

Lisa: I wonder whether the man in the dream is carrying positive father, because part of the psychological function of the good father is to settle us down and tell us to get serious about things—grow up.

Joseph: Even though the dream ego feels like she’s being reprimanded, the Self is talking to her through the image of the bee. Bees are industrious, busy all the time, working hard on behalf of the whole hive…

Lisa: …and this bee is carrying something…

Joseph: …transporting something. Some of the common-sense advice early Jungians had for puers or puellas was to engage in hard work. Work embodies the ability to make a commitment to a goal despite feeling young or overwhelmed. The bee is a symbol of something that doesn’t give up.

Lisa: It might be her father complex, or the Self, acting in its positive, corrective father aspect to address the dreamer’s puella complex. He challenges her to step into more maturity.

Deb: Let’s look at another dream and try to identify a complex: I have hazy details of the dream, but I clearly remember and can still feel the fear. I’m a young girl, about twenty. I’m running from someone. I don’t know who he is, but he is a giant male. I eventually reach a place surrounded by trees, a very scenic place with railings around. It looks like a mountainous area overlooking valleys. There’s a table under which I hide from the man I’m running away from. I see two guards bring him down. They catch him and tie him up in ropes. I’m seeing this from under the table. I’m very scared and nervous. What if he sees me and attacks me? What will these two guards do? I see the guards take out knives and start cutting off this man’s skin in specific places where they know it will weaken him. The man is moaning in pain and I feel sympathy surging in me for him. Even though I know how dangerous he can be to me, I still feel sympathy for him. The guards decapitate him and leave but I’m sure he still has his powers and will pounce on me at the first chance he gets. I am too scared to move out from under the table. We know right away what powerful emotional energy is being depicted here. This dream illustrates what Jung said about how a complex is personified—the giant male and guards–in contrast to the terrified dream ego.

Lisa: Well, just to complicate things, if this were truly a giant and not just a large man, then we would be in an archetypal dream. This illustrates how difficult it is to systematize dream work, or Jungian thought for that matter. We have to accept some ambiguity around these concepts. If we make them too specific or defined, we’re going to miss the forest for the trees. So yes, this could be an archetypal image of a giant, or a male who looks giant-sized. Either way it is depicting a major complex. What do we imagine that might be?

Deb: Both the giant male and the guards are perceived by the dream ego as scary and dangerous.

Joseph: That’s important: the dream ego perceives the giant man as dangerous, but we don’t really know how he would behave because it’s not permitted to happen.

Lisa: There’s a force in the psyche that prevents the giant man from taking any action.

Deb: There are two images of the masculine in this dream. There is a giant male that the dream ego believes means her harm, and there are the guards who cut off his skin and decapitate him. Both images of the masculine are violent and frightening.

Lisa: The giant has something magic associated with him–he seems to have special powers that are weakened by cutting off some of his skin. It reminds me of weakening Samson by cutting off his hair. He seems to be a danger even after he’s been decapitated, so this is no ordinary dude…

Deb: …but he hasn’t actually done anything! There is a complex around masculine energy, whether it’s imaged as a giant male’s malevolence, or as the cruelty of the guards. They are supposedly in the service of ‘law and order’ but behave in extreme and grisly ways. I wonder about the dreamer’s experiences with males and authority: family, school, organizations, and patriarchal influences in our culture.

Lisa: This might be a dream about a negative father complex—that seems like a good guess. We don’t know, but it gives us a place to start, a clinical hypothesis.

Joseph: When I think of a two- or three-foot tall child looking up mom or dad, I imagine he sees giants. If as a six-foot man, I looked up and saw a twenty-four-foot person, I would be intimidated. The father complex in this dream feels very powerful, and as it approaches the dream ego becomes small and young. Hiding under a table is what a child would do. Back in the fifties and sixties, the father would come home from work and be rather withdrawn, hence mysterious. The mother was familiar, but dad would come in, give you a peck on the cheek and read the paper. Dad might interact when it was time to discipline you or assign chores. When I think about the trajectory of the dream, one of the most important things is that the dream ego looks at the giant man and feels sympathy. She’s able to see that he suffers, modifying her initial perception of him as inhuman and unfeeling. Being able to see parents as struggling human beings is an enormous achievement. Maybe they’re sad or in pain or become ill, and all the godlike components we projected onto our parents begin to fall away. In this dream, the giant male—likely a father image–has been decapitated. It’s not fully resolved because she still distrusts his power and intentions. It seems he can’t really be killed.

Deb: We start out small, and grownups are big, so a huge part of this complex is the power differential. As children, our parents are gods—they have archetypal powers. In this dream, the giant man’s power is associated with fear and being harmed, but the guards are the ones who are violent.

Lisa: My fantasy is that the guards are an image of how she defends against this complex—she has an internal dynamic that is vicious. We noted that we don’t know what the giant would do if he reached her, but he has destructive powers. Under the torments of the guards, he has the pathos of a suffering god: he’s moaning in pain and her sympathy surges. She feels a kinship or connection with him. If this dreamer did an active imagination with the giant man, and confronted him, more affect and wisdom could come through. He is a force in her psyche to be known and transformed, but her guard complex kills it off.

Joseph: We can also see the guards as defenses and as metaphors. If we think of the overwhelming father complex approaching, something in the dreamer’s psyche takes on the attitude of these guards. Their knifes, skinning him, are a way to try to get under the surface: I’m going to peel this part away and if that doesn’t work, I’ll do more. This is trying to open something up in a way that can’t and doesn’t work, so decapitation ensues—and that doesn’t work, either. The complex still has power in the psyche.

Deb: When this complex is activated—Jungians say constellated—the dream ego gets terribly frightened. Then the guards in her psyche show up with knives and attack…

Lisa: …and decapitate the giant male energy in her. That makes me wonder about trauma and if some dissociation is going on, a kind of freezing, because when this complex is constellated, she’s unable to move. At the end of the dream she’s still under the table, scared. This reminds me of Donald Kalsched’s work and how the archetypal self-care system cuts off feelings that would overwhelm the ego.

Joseph: The decapitation could also be the de-potentiation of relationships that feel threatening. If she has a friend or family member who feels too powerful, big or aggressive, it could trigger her feeling small and defenseless. This sets loose violent retaliation from her inner guards and cuts the relationship off.

Lisa: There is certainly a cutting off in this dream! All parts of a dream–and certainly this dream–image aspects of the dreamer, so she is cutting herself off from relationship with parts of her own psyche, even though they appear as very ‘other’ others.

Deb: This is not a dream about external world relationships because the dream figures are not people she knows. The psychic turning point is that she feels sympathy for the giant male and is anguished by the brutality of the guards. She has more feelings than fear, especially a sympathetic connection to the giant male.

Joseph: That seems like an important first step in building up knowledge, tolerance and connection to a part of herself, perhaps her aggression, that she has seen only as threatening. We can see the complex beginning to transform.

Lisa: Here’s a dream from a 36-year-old man that illustrates the concept of complex: It started with my old school friends being together, walking around my hometown, but we looked like teenagers and were having a good laugh through conversations of past times. I left my friends and went to this large house that I didn’t recognize but I knew I lived there with my mother. This large house was attached to a church that was also being used. When I came home, there were cats and guinea pigs roaming around. But then, in every room I went into there was a young girl, of various ages from eight to fourteen. I was trying to speak to them, but everything became chaotic very quickly with lots of girlfriends and boyfriends arriving. They all ended up outside. Somehow, I found out my mother had gone on holiday and the children had been placed in our home by social services. I felt overwhelmed and phoned the police to get assistance. The female police operator was understanding. I was using a cordless landline and was moving through the building to find peace and quiet to talk. I ended up in the church building where the priests found me and told me to sit down as he would be with me soon. I sat down and just wept. How can we think of this dream in terms of complexes?

Joseph: At the start of the dream, the dream ego is rather carefree, happy and socializing. He feels like a young teen, but as he approaches his home–which always carries a complex–things begin to change. We also see that the home and the church are attached.

Lisa: It’s a house he doesn’t recognize. All he knows is that he lives there with his mother. And it’s important that it’s attached to the church—that’s unique. The scene in the house is chaotic and overwhelming, but there is access to a transpersonal space.

Deb: The house he lives in with his mother is a chaotic mess of needy creatures and kids placed there by social services. It’s overwhelming. The church and priests suggest a Catholic church, the mother church, where he finds the comfort his absent personal mother doesn’t provide. The priests find him and says ‘he’ will be with the dream ego him soon, and the dream ego weeps.

Lisa: Because his mother has gone—an image of a big mother complex.

Joseph: There is no ordering function at the outset of the dream. Instinctual life runs the gamut–guinea pigs to girlfriends and boyfriends. The home is chaotic and overwhelming, and his psyche is imaging that.

Lisa: The ordering principle comes in at the end with the female police operator and the priests’ promise that ‘he’ will be with the dream ego soon. That could be access to the transpersonal father since we don’t know who the ‘he’ refers to. This seems to image a negative mother complex. I would be interested in what this man’s relationship with his mother might have been between the ages of eight and fourteen, because there are girls of these ages in different rooms. The mother is absent, the dream ego is shocked by the chaos, and feels responsible for managing it.

Deb: I’m wondering about the mother’s absence as a ‘holiday,’ as if abandonment is no big deal. The children—other aspects of the dreamer’s psyche–are placed there by social services, implying a distant organization is in charge. There is no human connection until the dream ego speaks to an understanding female police operator—who is also at a distance. Then he takes refuge in the archetypal world, the mother church, which like social services, is impersonal. What if the female police officer had shown up and taken some action? Or the priests had had a conversation with him? Those would be humanizing images.

Lisa: That’s an interesting point. The dream pictures a negative mother complex in the dreamer, and when that complex is activated, he feels abandoned, chaotic, and overwhelmed…

Joseph: …and seeks peace and solace in the spiritual realm.

Lisa: If we look at this dynamically, there is an element of cause and effect: when the female police operator offers assistance and understanding, then the dream ego finds himself in church. It’s significant that he’s able to call for help. That shifts the energy in the dream: he’s able to go to the church, a place of safety and care.

Joseph: There’s a promise of connection to the Self in the church. Once religious symbolism appears in a dream, there’s a possibility that the Self, the transcendent ordering principle, is emerging.

Deb: So far we have tried to track complexes through images of affect in three dreams: a young woman who dances rather than walks, a giant male and punitive guards, and a chaotic house with girls and animal life. All these dreams carried an emotional charge indicating a complex. We tracked the action, the feeling tone of interactions between dream figures, the arc of the story, and its resolution or lack.

Lisa: These images of complexes in dreams underscore the autonomy of complexes. The dream with the giant male, for example, is an image of how the ego becomes overwhelmed by other forces in the psyche—something happens that is outside ego’s control.

Deb: It’s the same in the dream of the chaotic house and absent mother. Complexes can evoke images—and experiences—of feeling out of control and helpless and many other emotions. We want to be able to recognize complexes and bring them into consciousness so they don’t operate ‘on automatic pilot’ and run our lives unseen, behind the scenes. Ready for another dream? This one is from a 26-year-old woman: I am in my childhood home, redecorating and arranging my childhood bedroom. I go downstairs to get something out of the storage room. On the way down, I meet a man who my dream self knows to be the new father figure. He shows no resemblance to my biological father who was alcoholic, violent, and estranged. This father figure is kind but one dimensional and flat. I continue on my way and take a table out of storage and place it in my room near the window. I feel happy and pleased about the new addition. I begin to notice bugs around my room that look like beetles. I’m disgusted and nauseous. I look around for the source of the bugs. Upon closer inspection, I see that the table is rotting and hundreds of bugs are around the table. The bugs are emerging from the center of the table and slowly walking in a spiral outward. When a bug reaches the end of the spiral and the edge of the table, it flies around the room. I try not to freak out and ask my mother for bug spray. She’s downstairs and yells that the bug spray is in her room. I’m frustrated by her lack of help. I try to use the bug spray but it’s dried up. I find the father figure and ask him to help me move the table. He goes upstairs to do so and I see my mother. My mother reaches out and plucks a few bugs out of my hair. She tells me these bugs are called green lantern bugs. The name of the bugs is emphasized. I ask her not to tell the father figure about the bugs in my hair. The father brings the table down the stairs, leaves it in the front hallway, and leaves. I feel anxious about the table with the bugs still in the house. Then a group of army men who are young and in training come in through the front door. They say they are there to clear the house. I ask them to take the table outside, they do, and I feel relieved.

Joseph: I’m thinking about the dramatic structure of the dream. There is crisis and suspense over what will happen, and a clear narrative arc that ends in resolution.

Lisa: What a remarkable dream. The dreamer gives us a lot of information in the context. She stated that she has been working through childhood trauma related to bad experiences with her father. In this dream we see a father complex in the process of transformation.

Deb: I think we also see a mother complex: in the dream she is not very helpful. She shouts from downstairs where the bug spray is, but it doesn’t work, and she doesn’t take an interest or help except for picking a few bugs out of her daughter’s hair. There is also something special about green lantern bugs. There is more than one complex operating in this dream, with the father complex in the forefront.

Lisa: The dream says the new father figure is kind but one dimensional, flat, and somewhat ineffective. He brings the bug-infested table downstairs but that doesn’t entirely address the problem. It seems a more benevolent relationship with an inner father is not yet well established in her psyche. The group of army men, young and robust but still in training, come through the front door of consciousness. That makes me optimistic about the direction her father complex is going.

Deb: A group, the army men, indicates the masculine principle hasn’t coalesced into a more personalized image, but they perform a role of ordering and capability by removing the table and they have plenty of energy. The telos—forward movement in the psyche—indicates that a more positive image of the masculine is developing.

Lisa: The rub in this dream, once again, is the ego attitude. The ego attitude toward the table is that it is disgusting, the bugs are bad, and she needs to throw it out. I’m not sure this is quite so simple on a psychological level.

Joseph: The process of decay in a dream is interesting, and often amplified using alchemical metaphors. The bug-infested table is an image of putrefacteo, and part of this aspect of transformation–perhaps transformation of the father figure–is that old attitudes and complexes go through a decaying and de-potentiating process that can be hard to tolerate. The dreamer finds the table disgusting and wants it out, but insects are nature’s cleaning crew. When a creature dies in the forest, insects clean it down to the bones.

Deb: The bugs emerging from the center of the table and walking outward in a spiral is an interesting image. When they get to the end of the spiral, they fly. These are pretty impressive bugs.

Lisa: These bugs are following an archetypal pattern—spiraling–a cosmologic ordering image.

Joseph: It’s an unwinding pattern. If they were spinning towards the center, things would be getting tighter but if they’re spiraling to the outside, things are getting loosened and released.

Lisa: There actually is a green lantern bug that is interesting looking. They can be pests, they’re invasive, and there are green ones. There is also a movie, The Green Lantern, in which the hero was sworn to protect intergalactic order. I wonder what all this means for the dreamer, but clearly something very important is going on with these bugs. I think it’s positive that the army men take the table outside, but it’s also important that she takes it out of storage in the first place. If she’s taking something out of her unconscious storehouse, maybe it’s an unprocessed psychological trauma that can now be dealt with, but for now, at an appropriate distance.

Deb: This dream begins with the psychological situation represented by the setting: I’m in my childhood home, redecorating and rearranging my childhood bedroom. The psychic situation the dreamer is working on in this dream is her childhood psychic space, her bedroom–your posters, special pillow, stuffed animals and dolls. It’s a unique, personalized space. Once she’s there, she gets the table out of storage, is pleased, and puts it near the window. There is an image at the outset of new intent and the energy to effect it…

Joseph: …and the dream ego doesn’t freak out when something surprising and grotesque happens. She tries to find solutions. Some work and some don’t, but she stays active in the process. She asks for help from the mother and father. All that shows ability to mobilize constructive energy.

We hope we’ve been able to introduce a way of viewing dreams as a way of seeing how complexes act in and on the psyche. Dreams confront the dreamer about a complex and how it behaves. Dreams often reflect a process that is incremental. As we’ve seen in some of the dreams, the dream maker contributes explicit ‘medicine,’ like the industrious bee that carried energy that compensated for and counteracted the complex.

 

© This Jungian Life 2021 all rights reserved throughout the universe in perpetuity, in any and all media now known or hereinafter devised.

 

By Joseph Lee

Complexes organize our inner life and link it to the outer world. Without them, we would not recognize everyday items, places, or people. Our memories and sense impressions would be a Milky Way of scattered stars across our psyches. Human consciousness necessitates complexes.

 We enter the world by leaving union with our mothers’ bodies, where there was no differentiation or striving. In that warm, containing environment, we didn’t even need to breathe, but once we emerged into the outer world and struck a tiny hand against an unyielding crib bar, we encountered that-which-we-are-not. Through such initial discoveries of otherness, the ego complex constellates. It accretes innumerable impressions to itself, clustering them into cognitive nodal points with associated emotions–the foundation of consciousness.

 Everything we recognize is informed by a complex. When we regard a chair, all our memories of chairs light up, and the archetype of chair provides a framework for meaning. Access to the pattern of chair allows us to recognize unfamiliar types of chairs, even primitive or minimalist modern ones. Similarly, when traveling abroad we recognize a flower even when its shape, color, and environment are radically different from previous experience. The typicality of flowers lights up so we can categorize the new plant. Complexes are the natural structure of our psyche.

 So what’s happening when a complex creates problems? Although there is a universal, archetypal core of every complex, we are most affected by the personal experiences associated with it. This is called mediation of the archetype. If personal experiences and memories associated with feline/cat were painful, negative feelings will be associated with that archetype. Not surprisingly, those that carry the most powerful emotional charge are usually mother and father. The complex is then said to be activated, or constellated.

 If a complex has a lot of emotional charge it takes very little to wake it up. A single word, a particular image, or a scent can flip the switch, and that feeling-toned complex lights up and leans into the ego. Jung was sobered by this phenomenon, and likened a strong complex to a sub-personality with its own independent consciousness. Complexes can force us to think, feel and act in ways that are radically different from how we like to think of ourselves, which can be problematic. Statements like “I don’t know what got into me,” or “I just wasn’t myself” express the feeling of being in a complex very well.

 Let’s bring this home with a clinical example: every time a successful woman business owner attempted to pay her quarterly income taxes, she was overcome by a feeling of dread. She faced the task with brave intent, but as she began, her heart raced, her breath constricted, and she sat paralyzed in front of piles of receipts, documents, and forms. She could not approach the essential data her accountant needed and was behind in paying her taxes.

 She had tried regulating her breathing, redirecting negative thoughts, journaling, and some psychotherapeutic modalities; even Xanax had had little effect. She entered analysis and our work began in a familiar way: discussing her issues, tracking family narratives, holding areas of trauma in awareness, and attending to dreams. Once ground was established, we began walking around the complex, a metaphor for the practice of initiatory circumambulation that Jung considered useful for inner work.

 Ancient temples commonly had a front portion for devotees to pray and worship, and a secret, often cubical area in the back, the hallowed place of the altar on which lay the sacred symbol of the central mystery. This might be an ancient scroll, a significant artifact, or an image of the deity accessible only to initiates. The approach to the central mystery was structured and progressive. Each phase revealed teachings and provided images designed to activate the unconscious and provide spiritual understanding. Circumambulation of the walls of the temple was a routine practice. As the initiate walked around the interior of the temple, wall by wall, he would occasionally encounter a helpful or confrontational event that oriented him to an additional aspect of the mystery. Eventually, he (then almost always a he) earned access to the secret chamber and the altar.

 Jung advised approaching a complex in a similar manner. Each wall now corresponded to one of the four functions of consciousness he had identified: intuition, sensation, thinking, and feeling. (The ancient world symbolized these functions as fire, earth, air, and water.) My analysand had greatest access to the bodily sensations constellated by her tax complex. As in ancient temples, we did not hurry from wall to wall, but focused on sensation until it revealed its mysteries. As weeks went by, we stayed with her physical process, and as she faced the dread it took the form of a frightening guardian, challenging her as an initiate. She tracked the feeling through her belly and into her lower back. Then it took more distinct form (a personified image) as a banshee, wailing, terrified and terrifying.

 After a number of encounters with her banshee, something rose to the surface of consciousness: a glimpse of a wooden table behind and to the right of the banshee. I asked her to touch the table; the banshee’s agitation intensified and my analysand burst into tears. Then, feeling about seven years old, she stepped into her childhood dining room. She saw her father with his face in his hands and her white-faced mother’s hands curled into fists. The table was strewn with papers. The buried remnant of family history was an IRS audit that had cost her father his business. Now, in the temple of her psyche, she could feel her father’s shame and despair and her mother’s fury.

 This traumatic image of parental distress was never mediated by explanation or reassurance. It floated wordless and untethered in her psyche and eventually found expression as her tax complex. Some part of her had likely heard the word taxes at the table and she had experienced parental distress linked to finances. Our placing the physical sensations associated with the complex in the center of the temple and circumambulating them weekly had brought a central piece of the mystery to consciousness. She did not feel the complex had lost all its power but her dread diminished. The remaining temple walls, intuition, thinking and feeling, remained to be given their portion of attention.

 My analysand and I continued to circumambulate her tax complex, encouraged by her triumph over the banshee guardian. She could now tolerate the presence of her documents and receipts with little gut discomfort, but her capacity to think continued evaporate in the face of the task, leaving her confused and demoralized. We traversed the eastern wall, the place of wind and thought, and tried to rouse its sentinels to no avail.

 A dream came to our aid. Jung famously said that the complex is the architect of the dream, and many have debated what he meant. I believe the answer lies in the compensatory nature of the dream. Throughout the day, the unconscious observes the waking personality, tracking the ego’s dominant attitudes and behaviors. Since complexes often throw the ego off balance and into one-sided attitudes, the unconscious mobilizes corrections through dreams.

 She dreamed: I am hiking in a mountain range that is familiar. I think I started out with friends but now I am alone on a high ridge. It is exquisite. I can see a hundred miles across a green forest. The occasional cloud creates a shadow that creeps across the forest canopy. I am suddenly terrified and scan around for danger. I cannot see anything dangerous but I know something is coming for me. I hear a sound and crawl to the edge of the ridge to look. Perhaps 100 feet down a middle-aged man is staggering on a small ledge; the skin on his face is peeling off and it’s bleeding. I am frantic and cannot figure out what to do. I suddenly think how chubby he is and how impossible it would be for a man like that to have scaled the rock wall to get there. This seems hilarious to me and I laugh uncontrollably. I feel ashamed.

 It was difficult for her to share the dream. She was embarrassed to think of herself as someone who laughed at a person in distress, yet she fought back a grin. We placed the dream at the center of our temple and started our circumambulation. As she described how difficult it was to think about the dream images, she used a phrase that sounded similar to how she had described her tax complex. We explored instances of mountaintop exultation turning to man-on-the-ledge panic but she had no associations from her personal history. We discussed the image the lone hiker and its parallel to her career ascent–but that rang hollow, too.

 Then we regarded the man on the ledge. At first, she had no associations but continued to fight back the giggles. Then I ventured, “Could that be your father?” Her eyes flashed with anger, often a sign that something is resisting acknowledgement. It felt like a staring contest, and then she closed her eyes. After a minute, I ventured, “This scene seems to point to the hidden dynamics of your family’s financial crisis. I wonder if your father’s early business success left him exalted then horrified at its unraveling–and you carry his trauma.” She nodded. I continued, “I also wonder if the family secretly scorned your father, found his weakness intolerable, and distanced from it. Perhaps he felt that way toward himself.” As we discussed this, and she sighed repeatedly, and calm entered the room. Something had simply, finally–settled. Within the month my analysand could think through her accounting process and engage help to complete backlogged tasks.

 Working with complexes is a slow, patient process, much like circumambulating the perimeter of a temple. Willingness to approach our deepest and most confounding psychic patterns can eventually reveal the secret at the center of a complex–and the dream maker is very likely to help.

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1. The following dream is that of a 29-year-old woman. Where is the complex pictured in this dream? What might we understand about the nature of this complex?

I was in a wood shop class in a school. A person- though seemed to have a almost demon like quality- was following me and taking my hand and slicing my fingers with a razor. It was very painful and I was bleeding quite a bit. The person looked down and almost had feeling of being one of the bad people from the bird box movie. I politely and calmly asked the people around me in the class if they could please help stop the person from hurting me. Then I woke up.

2. Select a recent dream of your own. Write a paragraph or two about what the dream reveals about your complexes.

I’m in a building–an older building, I think–where a number of people are milling around. One of them is the psychologist Thomas Moore, who in waking life is a mentor of mine, though I’ve never met him. All of a sudden, Moore is possessed by a demon. I exorcise the demon. But in doing so, I become aware that having been possessed Moore is likely to be possessed again. This realization is unsettling, so I keep my eye on him. After a while (we’re all still in the same room), I notice Moore behaving strangely next to a kitchen sink that’s located in the room. I go over to investigate, and see that he’s beginning to eat one of those two-sided, green-and-yellow scouring pads. The end of the pad that he’s trying to put into his mouth, however, is not just a pad: it has morphed into the head of a small owl or raptor. Ordinarily, I’m fond of both owls and raptors, but this one disturbs me because it’s the face of the demon trying to take control of Moore. I begin to exorcise this demon too. Its name—somehow, I know this–is Marcus Antonius (Marc Antony). “Marcus Antonius,” I call out. “I exorcise you.” I keep saying this loudly as the demon struggles to stay. I succeed in exorcising the demon, but at some cost: it’s furious with me. I know it means me harm, but for the moment it leaves, through a nearby window, and flies out into the night. In the terror of the experience I wake up. I’ve been calling out in my sleep. The last echoes of “Marcus Antonius” are in my ear as I wake.

Main feelings in the dream: terror

Context and Associations: The main context is an ongoing experience with cancer. Two years ago, I had a close call with sarcoma in my leg. Last year my partner was diagnosed with breast cancer, and is still in the process of recovery. Uncertainty surrounds her future. She has episodes of anxiety that affect us both. Thomas Moore and James Hillman are important figures for us. The archetypal psychology they’ve introduced us to has played a significant role in both of our cancer experiences. Our shared imaginal life is extremely rich. I’m not sure where specifically “Marcus Antonius” comes from, but he’s a natural part of my world, since I teach Latin (among other things). While I have a certain sympathy for Antony as the lover of Cleopatra (I’ve always had a soft spot for lovers), I dislike him otherwise. He’s chiefly associated in my mind with the murder of Cicero.