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Jung Brought Me Back

© Lauri Jean Crowe

In July I submitted what I thought was to be my last article on dreams for Suite 101. I left with a note of sadness, as the leave was brought about not by a desire to cease writing but what I felt was a need to pay more attention to my roles as spouse and new mother.

I have one child who's thirteen months old, and am expecting a second come Halloween. The closeness of the pregnancies brought on many health concerns, along with doctor prescribed bedrest and close monitoring. This, along with the fact that my husband and I are building a home from the ground up for our ever growing family left me with little time to engage in anything but family responsibilities.

However, when I quit writing for the Suite I became increasingly irritable, agitated and generally unpleasant to be around. The part of my self I had cut out, in order to pay more attention to what I thought were more pressing issues, instead turned into an opposing catalyst to the care I intended to give. Rather than being able to spend more time with my husband and child I became someone not altogether nice to be around.

Fortunately, Jung brought me back. In the Jungian theory of personality development and dream expression, the human psyche is constantly moving toward an ultimate goal -- that of maturity, completion and fulfillment. In other words, life is a series of transformations and metamorphoses. When an individual is in a time of crisis (for me, all the stressors related to a new baby, a second complicated pregnancy, and building a house) what's known as archetypal symbolism generally becomes more prevalent in the person's dreams. When these archetypal energies are confronted, and the crises they represent either assimilated or overcome the individual matures, heading toward their ultimate goal.

The word archetype derives from the Greek word for the mask that actors would wear in dramatic productions. As we enact various social roles every day -- mother, spouse, student, teacher, writer, etc. -- we invest a certain amount of ourselves in order to precipitate successful interactions with others, be it in a family or professional setting. However, when we become over-involved in any one of these roles we often times neglect the person behind the mask. This expenditure of energy in social roles is known in Jungian theory as the persona archetype.

When I recognized that I was ignoring the person behind the mask by denying my contribution to Suite 101 in the area of dreams, I realized this was why I was being so awful despite my best

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