June Singer – in her book “Boundaries of the soul” (1994) – presents some of the favorite themes of analytical psychology, a field whose father is Carl Gustav Jung. Below are these themes:
- The Conscious (ex. types) – ch. 11
- The Personal Unconscious (ex. complexes) – ch. 2
- The Collective Unconscious (ex. archetypes) – chs. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 & 8
- The dream analysis – ch. 9
- The active imagination – ch. 10
- The World (i.e. the Reality) – ch. 12
The first three themes are particularly important: 1) the Conscious, 2) the Personal Unconscious and 3) the Collective Unconscious. They can be understood either a) as three receptacles, or b) as three entities. Thus, the two possibilities (the psychic life as receptacles, and the psychic life as entities) will be presented in the details in the following lines.
a) In the first perspective, the psychic life is made up of three receptacles.
Thus, let’s imagine a large house, with several floors situated in the heart of a very restless city. This house houses several generations. The young generation occupies the ground and upper floors. They are in a constant rush, because all the weight of existence falls on their shoulders. The decisions they take, be they of an economic or emotional nature, have an important impact on the other residents of the house. For them, the only time that matters is the now, even if this now is reflected in the interpretation of old events long past on; or even if these events refer to a more or less distant future. So, everything depends on now.
One of those decisions of this generation was to arrange the cellars, to modernize them and offer them maximum comfort. Because the old people were relocated here – i.e. the grandparents and the great-grandparents. They have lost the notion of alert time and are bored in these luxurious rooms, but without natural light. They would also like to feel that they are living, like in the old days, which is why they sometimes make great orgies where they dance until exhaustion, or eat forbidden things – like cakes that increase the blood sugar, or the pork with a lot of cholesterol. Or they listen to tapes, with rock music, that hard music from the old days dawn. And all of these are to be understood as they are, for they are old and their sight, hearing and other senses are almost gone.
On the other hand, the young generation on the ground and upper floors is annoyed by this chaos. Their hunch is that their children and grandchildren, located in the attic of the house, do not know anything else but to get light in orgies with sex, drug, alcohol and tobacco. From time to time, they band on the central heating pipes, or on the ceilling with a broom, to express their displeasure. What they don’t really know is that this generation (their children and grandchildren) loves silence and meditation. They spend their lives in poverty, without a permanent source of income, with a great love of philosophy, religion, art, science and everything that is good, truth and beautiful.
b) In the second perspective, the psychic life is made up of several entities.
These entities – in number of four, as will be seen later – sit around a hot cauldron chanting incantations and mixing ingredients. It would not be wrong at all if one is imagining these four entities as the three witches of Macbeth (the play written by Shakespeare), or of Oedipus (the play written by Sophocles). Thus, the four witches are: the personal consciousness, the collective consciousness, the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. Neither Sigmund Freud, nor Carl Jung mentioned anything about the collective consciousness in their works. The impression of their followers, therefore, is that this type of consciousness is identical either with the personal unconscious (Freud) or with the collective unconscious (Jung). Nevertheless, I believe that there are four witches, and not three…
The witches are gathered around a boiling cauldron. It represents the psychic life with the magical potion resulting from an obscure process.
Three cats are also present at this process. All are black – this is what the magic ritual is all about. The first cat represents the conscious interpretation of the messages produced by the unconscious – in other words, the first cat stands for the interpretation of dreams. The second one represents the unconscious interpretation of the messages offered by the consciousness – and here, both Freud and Jung and all the later psychologists that followed them are saying nothing: they are considering the unconscious not as an interpreter, but as a blank slate (tabula rasa). Finally, the third cat represents the transcendent function that brings the consciousness in dialogue with the unconscious – so, the third cat stands for the active imagination.
Finally, the cauldron surrounded by witches and cats is situated in a context – i.e that could be called reality or the external world. There are many elements in this context: the haunted castle, the enchanted tree, the immortal birds, the eye of the moon, or the skeletons that are coming to life.
In conclusion, while the first vision – the one in which the psychic life is a house with several floors – was well illustrated in Carl Gustav Jung’s book “Memories, dreams, reflections”; however, the second vision – the one in which the psychic life is a potion to which some witches contribute – can also be illustrated by the image presented below.
The two perspectives of the psychic life, however, could be viewed with some circumspections. First of all, they are not the only right perspectives. And last but not least, I recommend abandoning them if they produce real and negative effects on those to whom they are applied.
Image:

Resources:
- Singer, June (1994): “Boundaries of the soul. The practice of Jung’s psychology”, Anchor