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Current book(s) you're reading?

1508787972-Year-in-Space-Memoir.jpg
 
Somerville 140 1879-2019: A celebration of Somerville College, Oxford in 140 objects

Employee Engagement with Sustainable Business: How to change the world whilst keeping your day job by Nadine Exter
 
I'm reading Man and His Symbols. I don't fully get it, even if it's supposed to be divulgative material.

As far as I can tell, it's a layman exposition of Jung's theory of the unconscious, and how the collective unconscious expresses itself through symbols adquired by the primitive humans at some point in their evolutionary history. I have only read the first chapter, about a third of the book.

Half of me thinks it's interesting, the other half sees his theory as deeply unscientific and of dubious use in practice. It's the last book Jung wrote, and sometimes it feels like the efforts of an old man to justify his life-work to a myriad of people who consider it useless.
 
Trophonius said:
I'm reading Man and His Symbols. I don't fully get it, even if it's supposed to be divulgative material.

As far as I can tell, it's a layman exposition of Jung's theory of the unconscious, and how the collective unconscious expresses itself through symbols adquired by the primitive humans at some point in their evolutionary history. I have only read the first chapter, about a third of the book.

Half of me thinks it's interesting, the other half sees his theory as deeply unscientific and of dubious use in practice. It's the last book Jung wrote, and sometimes it feels like the efforts of an old man to justify his life-work to a myriad of people who consider it useless.
Click to expand...

How does the collective unconscious express itself through symbols? What sort of symbols?
 
Kalinychta said:
How does the collective unconscious express itself through symbols? What sort of symbols?
Click to expand...
Jung idea is that mythological/religious symbols were acquired at some point by the primitive man, they express most notably when consciousness is supressed, which occurs during dreams, some meditative states, or people's fantasies (in children's thoughts, or sometimes during schizophrenia). In the first chapter he says that what the images that occur during dreams or fantasies are not always to be found in people's personal experience: "the images and ideas that dreams contain cannot possibly be explained solely in terms of memory," these images are similar to what Freud called "archaic remnants." Some of this ideas or patterns are innate and they repeat themselves in people's mind and practices across cultures, this patterns are what Jung called archetypes. In this book he says "the archetype is a tendency to form such representations of a motif - representations that can vary a great deal in detail without losing their basic pattern," also later in the first chapter: "What we properly call instincts are physiological urgees, and are pareceived by teh senses. But at the same time, they also manifest themselves in fantasies and often reveal their presence only by symbol images. These manifestations are what I call the archetypes. The are without known origin: and they reproduce themselves in any time or in any part of the world."

I don't know what kind of symbols, but he seems to believe that many of this symbol can be found in the commonalities of mythological and religious thought. The symbols are the different forms through which the archetypes express themselves, alledgedly because this kind of pictorical representation through the unconscious is what precedes conscious linguistic and rational representations. This symbols are different in the specifics but share the different archetypal patterns.

See here a few I copied from the book:



The alledged clinical use is that, according to Jung, unconscious iinformation can present itself through symbolic representation through dreams. Dream analysis for Jung, implies identifying variation of these symbols, and considering the meaning that has been given to them and it's presumably innate (thus, making conscious what the unconscious is trying to communicate through symbolic representation, the only tool of the primitive mind), although variation in the symbols is to be expected due to life experiences.
 
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Trophonius said:
Jung idea is that mythological/religious symbols were acquired at some point by the primitive man, they express most notably when consciousness is supressed, which occurs during dreams, some meditative states, or people's fantasies (in children's thoughts, or sometimes during schizophrenia). In the first chapter he says that what the images that occur during dreams or fantasies are not always to be found in people's personal experience: "the images and ideas that dreams contain cannot possibly be explained solely in terms of memory," these images are similar to what Freud called "archaic remnants." Some of this ideas or patterns are innate and they repeat themselves in people's mind and practices across cultures, this patterns are what Jung called archetypes. In this book he says "the archetype is a tendency to form such representations of a motif - representations that can vary a great deal in detail without losing their basic pattern," also later in the first chapter: "What we properly call instincts are physiological urgees, and are pareceived by teh senses. But at the same time, they also manifest themselves in fantasies and often reveal their presence only by symbol images. These manifestations are what I call the archetypes. The are without known origin: and they reproduce themselves in any time or in any part of the world."

I don't know what kind of symbols, but he seems to believe that many of this symbol can be found in the commonalities of mythological and religious thought. The symbols are the different forms through which the archetypes express themselves, alledgedly because this kind of pictorical representation through the unconscious is what precedes conscious linguistic and rational representations. This symbols are different in the specifics but share the different archetypal patterns.

See here a few I copied from the book:



The alledged clinical use is that, according to Jung, unconscious iinformation can present itself through symbolic representation through dreams. Dream analysis for Jung, implies identifying variation of these symbols, and considering the meaning that has been given to them and it's presumably innate (thus, making conscious what the unconscious is trying to communicate through symbolic representation, the only tool of the primitive mind), although variation in the symbols is to be expected due to life experiences.
Click to expand...

I’ve been pondering this. So it’s like psychic DNA. Maybe this is why different religions often have the exact same stories and mythologies. I never actually understood about dream symbolism before until reading what you wrote. What do you think about that?
 
The Rooster Bar- Grisham
Rewire your Brain -John Arden, Ph.D
Get Over Your Dam Self- Romi Neustadt
(Blueprint to building a life changing business
And finally a excellent selection referred by a extremely intelligent forum member here: :)

Choke- Chuck Palahniuk

I also need to figure out a per diem contract for a medical professional. It's a toss up, book, lawyer, or internet search. Uck. Uck. Uck.
 
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