Man and His Symbols (1964) by Carl Jung is a guidebook to changing your life by harnessing the power of dreams. It is also one of the most profound works I have ever read.
This book helped me claw myself back from a pit of despair.
If you’re finding life a struggle right now, read Man and His Symbols.
This collection of five essays by five distinguished psychologists addressing the unconscious, ancient myths, individuation, and symbolism isn’t a self-help book in the traditional sense.
There’s no “Do X in order to solve Y”.
But if you read Man and His Symbols in a place of solitude, in a mood of contemplation, pen in hand, with a feeling of ever-burning anxiety desperate to be quelled…
You might just find that Carl Jung’s last work is a beacon that lights the way back to the path from which you strayed.
Here are 10 lessons learned from Man and His Symbols that I hope will tempt you into reading the book yourself.
- If you want to read/listen to Man and His Symbols for free, check out Audible through this link and you’ll get 2 free audiobooks.
1 – There is a God.
I don’t mean an omnipotent being in the sky who judges our every move.
I mean there is something else, which we cannot comprehend.
Something more.
‘Man has developed consciousness slowly and laboriously, in a process that took untold ages to reach the civilised state (which is arbitrarily date from the invention of script in about 4000 B.C.). And this evolution is far from complete, for large areas of the human mind are still shrouded in darkness. What we call the ‘psyche’ is by no means identical with our consciousness and its contents.’
I know Jung’s making a point about the psyche here, but the implication is more far-reaching than that.
We can’t even understand our own minds…
Why do we think we have the answers to the universe?
Why are we so cocksure of our atheism when quantum mechanics has already proven the existence of God?
Again… I do not mean God in any religious sense.
‘Our psyche is part of nature, and its enigma is limitless.’
We forget that we’re a product of nature.
The enigma may be limitless, but our consciousness is not.
That’s not how we evolved. Survival and reproduction simply does not require it.
‘We should understand that dream symbols are for the most part manifestations of a psyche that is beyond the control of the conscious mind. Meaning and purposefulness are not the prerogatives of the mind; they operate in the whole of living nature. There is no difference in principle between organic and psychic growth. As a plant produces its flower, so the psyche creates its symbols. Every dream is evidence of this process.’
Though we – particularly ‘intellectual’ types – gain our sense of identity with our minds, there is so much activity inside our minds that is beyond our control or recognition that we must concede that we are not wholly our minds…
And there is something inside our minds that is not wholly us.
2 – We need to get back to nature (and adopt a spirit animal)
When I meditate deeply and go into trance, I see magnificent birds soaring through the sky of my mind.
I see mighty oaks spawn from acorns and their branches clamber to heaven like streams of ink running across a canvas.
I see galloping horses, cavorting dolphins, and sled dogs running free from their reigns across snowy plains.
You’re looking at me like I’m crazy, aren’t you?
‘Many primitives assume that a man has a “bush soul” as well as his own, and that this bush soul is incarnate in a wild animal or a tree, with which the human individual has some kind of psychic identity.’
Man has long used animals in order understand his own nature. And every language on earth is packed with metaphors that anthropomorphise animals or see the line between man and his animal nature as blurred.
- In gay culture, large, hairy, rugged, stereotypically masculine men are referred to as ‘bears’.
- Unattractive children who blossom into beautiful adults are known as ‘ugly ducklings’.
- If you’re a skilled lover, one might say you’re a ‘tiger between the sheets’.
- Pro-war, draft-dodging hypocrites are referred to as ‘chickenhawks’.
- Outcasts of a group are often known as the ‘black sheep’.
Animals are mirrors that hold up the barbarity of our nature whilst also assuring us of our uniqueness.
‘What psychologists call psychic identity, or “mystical participation,” has been stripped off our world of things. But it is exactly this halo of unconscious associations that gives a colourful and fantastic aspect to the primitive’s world. We have lost it to such a degree that we do not recognise it when we meet it again. With us such things are kept below the threshold; when they occasionally reappear, we even insist that something is wrong.’
We are resisting our nature.
We have lost it.
This feeling of loss pervades all that we do when we find ourselves out of balance from nature.
I’m in awe when I walk through the sprawling polluted metropolises of the world. I revere the geniuses who contributed to mobile phones and internet streaming services. And, from time to time, I enjoy a bar of chocolate with fifty ingredients printed on the wrapper.
But a sense of sadness pervades these things when you’ve cut yourself off from nature for too long.
When was the last time you stopped thinking and felt the pure joy of running barefoot through the grass with a dog?
When was the last time you turned off the TV and went outside to gaze at the stars while crickets sing around you?
When did you last dip into a mountain spring? Have you ever?
‘As scientific understanding has grown, so our world has become dehumanised. Man feels himself isolated in the cosmos, because he is no longer involved in nature and has lost his emotional “unconscious identity” with natural phenomena. These has slowly lost their symbolic implications. Thunder is no longer the voice of an angry god, nor is lightning his avenging missile. No river contains a spirit, no tree is the life principle of a man, no snake the embodiment of wisdom, no mountain cave the home of a great demon. No voices now speak to man from stones, plants, and animals, nor does he speak to them believing they can hear. His contact with nature has gone, and with it has gone the profound emotional energy that his symbolic connection supplied.’
To feel a sense of wonder and connection again, you must relinquish your over-reliance on rational thought.
Nature cannot be explained on the level of the conscious mind.
Feeling is knowing.
And we can access that feeling through aligning ourselves specifically with certain aspects of nature that strongly speak to us.
As Franz points out, humans have always been ‘intuitively aware’ of the existence of an ‘inner center’. The Greeks called it their inner daimon, the Egyptians called it the Ba-soul, the Romans worshipped the ‘genius’ unique to each individual, while primitive societies erecting totem poles and wore the skin of animals whose qualities they wished to absorb.
The Naskapi Indians wove beautiful dreamcatchers to bring the Great Man’s wisdom out from the depths of the unconscious.
Even people who never developed tribal customs or religious beliefs due to their isolation, such as the Naskapi Indians, intuitively understood the importance of relying on one’s own inner voice/companion/friend/Great Man to guide them:
‘Those Naskapi who pay attention to their dreams and who try to find their meaning and test their truth can enter into a deeper connection with the Great Man. He favours such people and sends them more and better dreams. Thus the major obligation of an individual Naskapi is to follow the instructions given by his dreams, and then to give permanent form to their contents in art. Lies and dishonesty drive the Great Man away from one’s inner real, whereas genoristy and love of one’s neighbours an of animals attract him and give him life. Dreams give the Naskapi complete ability to find his way in life, not only in the inner world but also in the outer world of nature.’
Find your way in nature, find your way in life, live according to the spirit that dwells inside you, express it in art, and feel complete.
Or don’t…
Continue to resist your nature, but heed Jaffé’s warning:
‘in man, the “animal being” (which lives in him as his instinctual psyche) may become dangerous if it is not recognised and integrated in life. Man is the only creature with the power to control instinct by his own will, but he is also able to suppress, distort, and wound it – and an animal, to speak metaphorically, is never so wild and dangerous as when it is wounded. Suppressed instincts can gain control of a man; they can even destroy him.’
You’re an animal.
That’s a fact.
But you make the choice whether to be an animal full in spirit and life, or an animal whose caught in a snare and slowly bleeding out over the years.
How do you know what part of you is wounded?
Look to your dreams:
‘The familiar dream in which the dreamer is pursued by an animal nearly always indicates that an instinct has been split off from the consciousness and ought to be (or is trying to be) readmitted and integrated into life. The more dangerous the behaviour of the animal in the dream, the more unconscious is the primitive and instinctual soul of the dreamer, and the more imperative is its integration into his life if some irreparable evil is to be forestalled.’
I recently dreamed that a wild monkey jumped onto my back, clung on tight, and bared its teeth.
It’s no secret that I’ve had a ‘monkey on my back’ for the past few months.
But I know I haven’t been dealing with the problem.
I’ve been running away, burying myself in frivolity, trying to escape my reality.
After that dream, I knew I had to look that fucking monkey in the face.
When I did that, I broke down. I haven’t cried in years. I knew I would. That’s why I avoided it for so long.
But once I finally touched that nerve, looked that monkey in the face, asked him what his problem was, and shook him off my back, a sense of calm and clarity washed over me.
My shoulders loosened, the weight of the world lifted, and I felt free.
‘Civilized man must heal the animal in himself and make it his friend.’
Look to your dreams.
If you dream of an animal, consider it a blessing, start deciphering, then make that animal your friend.
3 – We’re tight-walking between order and chaos
True control is having the ability to let go.
‘We talk about being able “to control ourselves,” but self-control is a rare and remarkable virtue. We may think we have ourselves under control; yet a friend can easily tell us things about ourselves of which we have no knowledge.’
Jung calls self-control a remarkable virtue, and rightly so.
But that doesn’t mean we erect a dam and cut off our natural flowing instincts.
There is great value in relinquishing control to a greater power – a power that exists inside all of us.
‘An ability to control one’s emotions that may be very desirable from one point of view would be a questionable accomplishment from another, for it would deprive social intercourse of variety, colour, and warmth.’
Laughter – true from-the-soul, gut-busting belly laughter – gives colour and life to our relationships.
Letting go in the sack and exploring your lover’s body like a beautiful new land – that’s warmth.
Allowing your truth to give life to your expressions and tone – what a treasure that can be.
‘In our conscious thoughts, we restrain ourselves within the limits of rational statements – statements that are much less colourful because we have stripped them of most of their psychic associations.’
Most people can’t handle a real conversation.
Truly letting go results in a manner of self-expression that most cannot understand, much less find palatable.
Most keep it on the surface.
But, my God, what a treat it is when you wear your heart on your sleeve and discover a kindred spirit.
‘The sad truth is that man’s real life consists of a complex of inexorable opposites – day and night, birth and death, happiness and misery, good and evil. We are not even sure that one will prevail against the other, that good will overcome evil, or joy defeat pain. Life is a battleground. It always has been, and always will be; and if it were not so, existence would come to an end.’
Don’t mistake aligning yourself with nature as finding happiness.
Happiness is not the goal.
I’d say there isn’t a goal at all.
Though if there were a goal, that would be harmony.
Finding your place teetering between the extremes of life – truly experiencing both, but never fully succumbing exclusively to one side.
4 – Breakthroughs are below the level of consciousness
Without fail, every good idea I’ve ever had has come to me while doing other things.
Running, swimming, showering, walking in nature, looking at art, driving, dreaming.
Why do psychologists use the Rorschach test with their patients?
What I see is different from what you see.
It’s not because those ink blots have any inherent pre-planned meaning.
You derive your own meaning from them utilising a part of you that is below the surface.
Leonardo da Vinci wrote this in one of his notebooks:
‘It should not be hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places in which… you may find really marvellous ideas.’
Stop trying to seek for ideas using the conscious mind.
Any ideas you arrive at will likely be uninspired.
This works for scientists and artists alike.
We all know the story of how Newton came to his law of universal gravitation.
And the 19-century chemist August Kekulé discovered that the molecular structure of benzene was a closed carbon ring because he dreamed of a snake with its tail in its mouth.
5 – There are many ways into the unconscious (not just through dreams)
Jung discovered that it ‘was not necessary to use a dream as the point of departure for the process of “free association”’. Rather, you could ‘reach the center directly from any point of the compass’:
‘One could begin from Cyrillic letters, from meditations upon a crystal ball, a prayer wheel, or a modern painting, or even from casual conversation about some trivial event.’
For me, I recently reached my unconscious, and unravelled a whole bunch of stuff that was eating me alive, through watching Martin McDonagh’s masterpiece Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
One line in one scene made me weep.
Suddenly a whole bunch of stuff I’d been shoving to the back of my mind this past year (or several years) came to the surface.
This was the scene:
The line was:
‘I did not come in this world alone. My mom was there. And I am not going out of it alone. ‘Cos you were there.’
Here’s Jung weighing in further on the origin of ideas and the unconscious:
‘It is a fact that, in addition to memories from a long-distant conscious past, completely new thoughts and creative ideas can also present themselves from the unconscious – thoughts and ideas that have never been conscious before. They grown up from the dark depths of the mind like a lotus and form a most important part of the subliminal psyche. We find this in everyday life, where dilemmas are sometimes solved by the most surprising new propositions; many artists, philosophers, and even scientists owe some of their best ideas to inspirations that appear suddenly from the unconscious. The ability to reach a rich vein of such material and to translate it effectively into philosophy, literature, music, or scientific discovery is one of the hallmarks of what is commonly called genius.’
Expose yourself to new experience.
Put yourself in novel and natural situations in which your unconscious can unravel itself.
6 – We have the feminine and masculine within us and sometimes they become unbalanced
The anima is the female element of the male unconscious, while the animus is the male element of the female unconscious.
Dreams sometimes show us a female figure (if you’re a man) or a male figure (if you’re a woman) because our conscious mind has become lopsided and begun painting a fiction – the archetype that shows up in the dream is then trying to reset the balance.
Franz has this to say about a man’s anima:
‘In its individual manifestation the character of a man’s anima is as a rule shaped by his mother. If he feels that his mother had a negative influence on him, his anima will often express itself in irritable, depressed moods, uncertainty, insecurity, and touchiness. (If, however he is able to overcome the negative assaults on himself, they can serve to reinforce his masculinity.) Within the should of such a man the negative mother-anima figure will endlessly repeat this theme: “I am nothing. Nothing makes any sense. With others its different, but for me… I enjoy nothing.” These “anima moods” cause a sort of dullness, a fear of disease, of impotence, or of accidents. The whole of life takes on a sad and oppressive aspect. Such dark moods can even lure a man to suicide, in which case the anima becomes a death demon.’
The anima, like the shadow, has two sides:
One side is benevolent.
The other side is maleficent.
Choosing whether to integrate or dispose with an aspect of one’s anima often depends on the guise in which they come to you.
Are they a death demon singing you a siren song like the Lorelei of Teutonic myth?
Franz had this to say about the hunter who followed the seductive water imps’ songs to his drowning:
‘In this tale the anima symbolises an unreal dream of love, happiness, and maternal warmth (her nest) – a dream that lures men away from reality. The hunter is drowned because he ran after a wishful fantasy that could not be fulfilled.’
I’m sure that message hits home for a lot of men.
Are you simply projecting onto someone who plays the role of coquette well?
Are you running after a wishful fantasy that can’t be fulfilled?
Do you know how close you are to drowning?
Of course, the anima has a light side that can guide you on your path:
‘But what does the role of the anima as guide to the inner world mean in practical terms? This positive function occurs when a man takes seriously the feelings, moods, expectations, and fantasies sent by his anima and when he fixes them in some form – for example, in writing, painting, sculpture, musical composition, or dancing. When he works at this patiently and slowly, other more deeply unconscious material wells up from the depths and connects in some specific form, it must be examined both intellectually and ethically, with an evaluating feeling action. And it is essential to regard it as being absolutely real; there must be no lurking doubt that this is “only a fantasy.”
Treat the messages sent to you by your unconscious as real.
Decipher their meaning.
Then set about fixing that which needs to be fixed.
7 – Dreams have significance – you just need to understand their nature
If you’ve read this far in this Man and His Symbols book review, you’ve likely already come to the conclusion that we need to take our dreams and unconscious messages seriously.
Many don’t take them seriously.
Given how charged with meaning they are, and their capacity to be a beacon out of the darkness, I think that’s a damn shame.
Perhaps people don’t take dreams seriously because they seem random or don’t possess the coherence of consciously sculpted narratives we find in waking life.
‘A story told by the conscious mind has a beginning, a development, and an end, but the same is not true of a dream. Its dimensions in time and space are quite different; to understand it you must examine it from every aspect – just as you may take an unknown object in your hands and turn it over and over until you are familiar with every detail of its shape.’
But how do you even begin to examine such an unknown object?
’The two fundamental points in dealing with dreams are these: First, the dream should be treated as a fact, about which one must make no previous assumption except that it somehow makes sense; and second, the dream is a specific expression of the unconsciousness.’
That’s where you begin.
Next, you must realise that civilised life has ‘stripped so many ideas of the emotional energy, we do not really respond to them anymore.’
But the dream world is not civilised life.
Jung says that every image is charged with ‘so much psychic energy that we are forced to pay attention to it.’
Why are these images so important?
Jung puts it this way:
‘Such messages from the unconscious are of greater importance that most people realize. In our conscious life, we are exposed to all kinds of influences. Other people stimulate or depress us, events at the office or in our social life distract us. Such things seduce us into following ways that are unsuitable to our individuality. Whether or not we are aware of the effect they have on our consciousness, it is disturbed by and exposed to them almost without defence.’
These messages are born from that which affects us in the waking world, and if we take the messages seriously we have an inner counsel that will prove invaluable in being even more effective in our day-to-day lives.
But how do we interpret these messages from the unconscious divine?
‘No dream symbol can be separated from the individual who dreams it, and there is no definite or straightforward interpretation of any dream.’
Jung’s gave this advice to his pupils:
‘Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it all when you are analysing a dream.’
8 – Dreams are as real as waking life
It’s been proven over and over again that our memories are subject to distortion to such degrees that they become complete fabrications.
Waking life too requires us to be so brutally selective as to what we retain – despite all of our sense organs being battered a billion times a day – that anyone believing in an objective reality through their own eyes must surely concede that their inner life is at least as truthful as their waking life.
‘Perhaps it may be easier to understand this point if we first realize the fact that the ideas with which we deal in our apparently disciplined waking life are by no means as precise as we like to believe. On the contrary, their meaning (and their emotional significance for us) becomes more imprecise the more closely we examine them. The reason for this is that anything we have heard or experienced can become subliminal – that is to say, can pass into the unconscious. And even what we retain in our conscious mind and can reproduce at will has acquired an unconscious undertone that will colour the idea each time it is recalled. Our conscious impressions, in fact, quickly assume an element of unconscious meaning that is physically significant for us, though we are not consciously aware of this existence of this subliminal meaning of the way in which is both extends and confuses the conventional meaning.’
Consciousness is coloured as richly with our individuality as our unconscious – so why revere one and scorn the other?
9 – Clarify your terms, and those of others
You and I could sit down and have a chat about “money” or “society” or “health” or the “state”.
We both assume we understand each other when we use those words, but we also know – however unconsciously – that this is not a full understanding.
‘Each word means something slightly different to each person, even among those who share the same cultural background. The reason for this variation is that a general notion is received into an individual context and is therefore understood and applied in a slightly individual way. And the difference of meaning is naturally greatest when people have widely different social, political, religious, or psychological experience.’
Jung points out that the different variations on the same word are subliminal and never realized until held under great scrutiny.
That means define your terms.
You’ll be surprised.
Ask your brother, lover, mother, friend what they mean when they use the word “society” or “money”. And keep digging. You’ll find that, even if you have the same family blood running through your veins, these words take on a different colour in their mind than the hue that gleams from it in your mind.
‘Even the most matter-of-fact contents of consciousness have a penumbra of uncertainty around them.’
But why bother to clarify your terms?
Doesn’t that seem like unnecessary work?
Well, it’s not unnecessary if you want more than incessant babble and actually communicate meaningfully with the people in your life.
‘The mere use of words is futile when you do not know what they stand for. This is particularly true in psychology, where we speak of archetypes like the anima and animus, the wise man, the great mother, and so on. You can know all about the saints, sages, prophets, and other godly men, and all the great mothers of the world. But if they are mere images whose numinosity you have never experienced, it will be as if you were talking in a dream, for you will not known what you are talking about. The mere words you use will be empty and valueless. They gain life and meaning only when you try to take into account their numinosity – i.e. Their relationship to the living individual. Only then do you begin to understand that their names mean very little, whereas the way they are related to you is all-important.’
I had to look up that word numinosity.
I suggest you check out the meaning yourself.
There is absolutely no point discussing the big ideas in life if you don’t know what they mean – truly, spiritually, divinely, uniquely mean – to the person with whom you are discussing them.
You might as well be talking through a tin-can phone that’s had its string snipped.
10 – “The individual is the only reality” – Wake up, we’re killing ourselves
The constant refrain throughout Man and His Symbols is that everything is predicated on the individual.
Dream dictionaries suck because they neglect the individual.
I see a monkey in my dream and it means something completely different from the monkey in your dream.
But here’s the (seemingly contradictory) rub:
It is through the individual that the collective finds freedom.
‘The further we move away from the individual toward abstract ideas about Homo sapiens, the more likely we are to fall into error. In these times of social upheaval and rapid change, it is desirable to know much more than we do about the individual human being, for so much depends upon his mental and moral qualities.’
The problem is that most individuals are asleep.
They don’t use their minds or, if they do use their minds, they do so in a stupid way.
People don’t know how to see properly. Many never become connected to their body.
‘It is this state of affairs that explains the peculiar feeling of helplessness of so many people in Western societies. They have begun to realize that the difficulties confronting us are moral problems, and that the attempts to answer them by a policy of piling up nuclear arms or by economic “competition” is achieving little, for it cuts both ways. Many of us now understand that moral and mental means would be more efficient, since they could provide us with psychic immunity against the ever-increasing infection.’
If we continue to delude ourselves that the problem is out there, with someone else, with the other, we continue to create a hell on earth for ourselves and our brothers and sisters.
It’s cliché for a reason.
It’s true:
If you want to change the world, you have to first change yourself.
‘As any change must begin somewhere, it is the single individual who will experience it and carry it through. The change must indeed begin with an individual; it might be any one of us. Nobody can afford to look round and to wait for somebody else to do what he is loath to do himself. But since nobody seems to know what to do, it might be worth while for each of us to ask himself whether by any chance his or her unconscious may know something that will help us.’
What’s the alternative?
‘In view of the rapidly increasing avalanche of world population, man has already begun to seek ways and means of keeping the rising flood at bay. But nature may anticipate all our attempts by turning against man his own creative mind. The H-bomb, for instance, would put an effective stop to overpopulation. In spite of our proud domination of nature, we are still her victims, for we have not even learned to control our own nature. Slowly, but it appears, inevitably, we are courting disaster.’
So how do you change yourself?
There is no universal answer to that question.
Everyone has a different destiny, a destiny unique to themselves, and to fulfil it is, as Franz says, ‘the greatest human achievement’.
It’s pointless looking to others to know how to fulfil YOUR destiny. Because every one is different.
Don’t look to others.
Look within.
Look to your dreams.
There is a lot more to learn from Man and His Symbols
I could continue and go into the hero-myth and how the individual is their own hero.
I could talk about the importance of delusion.
We could talk about art, morality, the shadow.
But I think it’s best you check out this book for yourself.
There aren’t many books that I fervently implore everyone to read, but Man and His Symbols is most certainly an exception.
Read it and renew your life.