At The Water's Edge
Looking For Clues 9: Memories, Dreams, Reflections
That Christmas I bought "Memories, Dreams, Reflections" by the eminent psychologist Carl Jung. I'm not sure what prompted me to buy it; it may have been something to do with Sting from The Police talking about synchronicity and Jung's ideas around that time. As I write Looking For Clues I'm trying to avoid looking too closely at the books I've found along this path as I want to remember my original impressions rather than what I think now. And as regards Jung's book, I seem to remember that I found it an interesting but also a rather dense book, it certainly didn't move me in the same way that Richard Bach's books had nor Shirley Maclaine's.
What do I remember about Jung's book?
Strangely, nothing about "synchronicity" which is the phenomenon of putting meaning to coincidences. Perhaps because it doesn't really seem to fit into my "view" which I guess is that some of the coincidences that I have experienced seem to be guiding me along a path somehow.
What I do remember is what Jung termed "inviduation". From memory, my interpretation of this is that it is the process of how we become what we're truly meant to be, along similar lines of Maslow's "self-actualisation". I also think Jung spoke of "archetypes" too and by this I think he meant that many independent civilisations around the world have similar rituals, iconography and myths. I think this is also along the lines of what Joseph Campbell concluded in his research.
Sometimes what we get from books is related to at what point of our lives we read them and I wonder if I would get more from this book if I re-read it now.
