Interpreting Dream Language, II

My last post dealt provided a brief introduction to Jung’s understanding of dreams and dream interpretation. The following post finishes this introduction by discussing Jung’s requirements for undertaking the interpretation of symbols and archetypes that make up dream content (as well as the content found in active imagination).   In looking at dreams as texts,…

The Language of the Unconscious, II: Archetypes

My last post discussed how the unconscious speaks to an individual through symbols. This post describes how the unconscious speaks to the individual through archetypes, personifications of unconscious material that present themselves to a person.   For Jung, archetypes represent “riverbeds along which the current of psychic life has always flowed.”[1] He defined archetypes as…

3 Objections to a Jungian Approach to Literature

My previous post presented two examples of a Jungian approach to The Master and Margarita and offers my addition to a Jungian interpretation of the novel. Gareth Williams warns that while “some of the more puzzling issues raised by the novel” may be interpreted psychologically as Bulgakov’s desire to express “this or that painful aspect…

Why Jung?

My previous post introduced my alternative interpretation of The Master and Margarita: as part of Bulgakov’s process of psychological adaption to and recovery from persecution in the Soviet Union. This post focuses on why I chose the analytical psychology of C. G. Jung as the tool of my interpretation. Jung called the process of psychological…