Through a Jungian Lens

On the inside looking out in Angkor Wat

Every where we travel, I find a way to take photos of my beautiful wife. Of course I also end up using a timer and a tripod to take photos of the two of us together at significant landmarks. I guess, that is part of the record-keeping that marks family, a practice we have had all through the years of raising children. In a way, it is proof to ourselves that we have been places, done things and have built up a wealth of positive memories.

Sometimes we need these proofs to pull us out of times when we find we feel isolated, stuck inside a dark place. Photos serve as a window out of the dark spaces allowing us to re-connect in our heads through memories. And the memories we see in the images turn into memories that have a deeper connection through our senses, body and soul memory.

Photos aren’t the only images that we draw on. We find inner images that do much the same, images that are not quite as two dimensional. The inner images have sound, smell, texture, emotional affect and well as depth. These inner images are not discriminatory as they are just as likely to record those moments in life that are our nightmares as well as those moments in life that we celebrate with joy.

Part of the journey of individuation is bringing these scenes into focus with a view of learning from them so that we can overcome hurdles we are meeting in the present. We bring our little home movies of mother and father into the process to understand better the strategies we have developed in relation, not only to our parents, but the the Great Mother and the Sky Father, those archetypes that are bigger than our biological parents, our collective sense of mother and father. On this journey, we meet Mother-complexes and Father-complexes which we must overcome (rather than continue to be owned, ruled by these complexes) so that we can get a fuller knowledge of our own inner connection to the archetype of Mother and Father.

Of course, this is not really about digging up the bones of the past in order to simply chew on those bones and staying stuck in the past. The focus is on the present, what do I do now that is pulling me into darkness that is stained by scripts we built while we were young children. The problem isn’t the parents or the abuse – the problem is living with life scripts and beliefs that we have crafted at an age when we didn’t have the conscious tools to craft more effective life scripts. Understanding that allows us to leave the self-built prisons of victim.