Memories, Dreams, Reflections

I've just finished reading Jung's "Memories, Dreams, Reflections" and it was as absorbing on a second reading as it was thirty or so years ago. In this book, he writes that "it is really the individual's task to differentiate himself from all the others and stand on his own feet. All collective identities, such as membership in organizations, support of 'isms' and so on, interfere with the fulfillment of this task. Such collective identities are crutches for the lame, shields for the timid, beds for the lazy, nurseries for the irresponsible ...". His words are not to be thought of as trumpeting the ego because it is fundamental to Jung's view of the psyche that the ego is only a small part of a much larger and far more ancient whole. This wholeness can only be grasped however, after the individual has disidentified with organization and 'isms'.

Reading the book reminded me of Jung's lifetime study of the psyche and how modern education largely lacks any psychological content. Most students undertake subjects like Mathematics, Science, Business Studies, Economics, Geography etc. and even though Psychology can be studied in some syllabi I would imagine that there is little emphasis placed on introspection. The courses studied offer students no opportunity for self-reflection, no encouragement to examine their inner life. If a school provides instruction in the religion that parents have foisted on the student, there are usually no incentives given to examine or question the belief system that underlies the religion. Any self-examination needs to take place outside of the education system.

The entire education process leads the student away from their inner life and toward involvement in the outer world. There's nothing wrong with that except that the process is overwhelmingly orientated toward the outer world at the almost complete neglect of the inner. Any attempt to redress this imbalance is likely to perceived by parents who follow a particular religion as embracing the devil or undermining the faith of the students. Heaven forbid that, in the classroom, a discussion might take place about dreams or that students be encouraged to keep a dream diary.

After leaving school, students' absorption in the outer world is so one-sided that the psyche compensates. The inner world asserts itself, often suddenly and powerfully, and the adolescent is drawn to cults, religious extremism, drugs or suffers a mental breakdown. My closest friend at school began to display symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia in his last year of high school and suffered a complete mental collapse in his early twenties. He came from a quite religious family but the empty rituals that characterized this religion did nothing to satisfy the demands of his inner life for meaning and a sense of wholeness. He became a passionate reader of Nietzche, recognizing in the philosopher a kindred spirit but, like him, eventually succumbed to ego-inflation and insanity. My friend firmly believed that he had started World War III.