Sermon - JUNGIAN TRANSFERENCE IN REAL LIFE - Images from the

Rosarium Philosophorum

© Barbara F. Meyers 2002. All Rights Reserved.

A sermon delivered at the Mission Peak Unitarian Universalist Congregation on August

27, 2002 by Barbara Meyers and Jackie Porter
Sermon - Jungian Transference in Real Life: Images from the Rosarium
Philosophorum

This service had its inception in a class that I took at seminary entitled "Introduction to
Jungian Thought". The final paper that I wrote for this class was an extremely revealing
and rewarding experience for me, and this will form the bulk of the sermon today. I'll
begin with a brief biography of Jung.

Brief Biography of Jung

Carl G. Jung was born in 1875 in Switzerland. He was the oldest child of a Swiss Reform
pastor, who had a variety of pastorates in Switzerland throughout Jung's childhood. The
picture that Jung in his youth is that of a solitary, bookish intellectual, puzzled by
religious and philosophical questions and curious about the world. After completion of
high school Jung enrolled in Basel University studying medicine and became interested
in psychology and psychopathology. He soon realized that psychiatry was his destined
field. In 1900 he assumed an appointment as an assistant at a mental hospital in Zurich.

The work of Sigmund Freud exerted a profound influence on his thinking. After
corresponding with Freud for several years, Freud invited Jung to visit him in Vienna in
1907. The two men were greatly attracted to each other, and at their first meeting, they
talked continuously for 13 hours, beginning a personal and professional relationship that
was to last for six years. Freud regarded Jung as his crown prince and successor.
However, Jung was an independent person and wished to pursue his own line of thought,
eventually leading to a complete break with Freud. After the split with Freud he spent a
fallow period of 3 years exploring his own unconscious by analyzing his dreams and
visions. He has said that it was this time of personal examination that allowed him to
reach his full potential.

Jung had a private psychiatric practice and began to develop his own view of psychology
and the structure of the personality. Early in his career, Jung learned that the unconscious
mind shows itself most clearly in so-called occult phenomena, religious symbolism,
mythology, astrology, and dreams. The central question for him in studying these
phenomena was what these subjects revealed about the mind.

Jung wrote prolifically about his findings and his collected works contain 19 volumes.
Today, his concepts and methods of treatment are disseminated by training institutes
located in cities around the world. The center of analytical psychology is Zurich, where
the C.G. Jung Institute, founded in 1948 is located. Jung died in 1961.
Readings in Alternating Voices
Barbara: Carl Jung believed that religion is a necessary fact of human experience. It binds
us to the immediate, primordial, individual experience of the numinous, that "dynamic
agency or effect not caused by an arbitrary act of will which seizes and controls the
human subject, who is always rather its victim than its creator."

Jackie: "Among all my patients in the second half of life - that is to say, over 35 - there
has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious
outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost what the
living religions of every age have given to their followers, and none of them has really
been healed who did not regain his religious outlook."

Barbara: The word 'archetype' means an original model after which other similar things
are patterned. For Jung, archetypes were patterns of human psychological behavior
common to human kind. Among those he identified were: birth, rebirth, death, power,
magic, the hero, the child, the trickster, God, the demon, the wise old man, the earth
mother, the feminine and the masculine. He said: "The archetypes are not intellectually
invented. They are always there and they produce certain processes in the unconscious
one would best compare with myths. That's the origin of mythology. Mythology is a
dramatization of a series of images that formulate the life of the archetypes."

Jackie: "Only after I had familiarized myself with alchemy did I realize that the
unconscious is a process, and that the psyche is transformed or developed by the
relationship of the ego to the contents of the unconscious. In individual cases that
transformation can be read from dreams and fantasies. In collective life it has left its
deposit principally in the various religious systems and their changing symbols."

Jungian Transference in Real Life: Images from the Rosarium Philosophorum

Jackie:
In his work, Carl Jung discovered our deep unconscious ground of being which he named
the Collective Unconscious. He hypothesized that we begin life as a whole unconscious
being in utero; we are birthed, gradually separating from the mother. We form an identity
we call the ego which heroically goes forth to live life, adjusting to personal needs and
interests and learning how to succeed in the world. Then sometimes it happens in our
midlife or mature years we become dissatisfied with our life, feeling that we are living a
cultural role which is no longer working for us and we ask, WHO AM I, REALLY? The
journey into us to make this discovery is, I believe, another heroic undertaking. Jung
developed a process of psychotherapy to return us to our deep unconscious selves to find
the new answers. He studied the work of the ancient alchemists and found that their work
illuminated this process, which he called Individuation.

Barbara:
Jung studied a series of ten illustrations from an alchemical work, Rosarium
Philosophorum which was first published in 1550 and concluded that they could be used
to represent this process of individuation in psychoanalysis. For the alchemist, these
images were meant to illustrate events going on in the alchemical flask. For the human
psyche, these experiences happen in a vessel or container which can be an individual
psyche or a relationship between two people such as an analyst and patient.

I found these ancient images and Jung's interpretation of their symbolism extremely
helpful in understanding my journey of psychoanalysis. We want to share them briefly
with you this morning. Jackie will talk about the symbolism and I will describe my
experience of psychoanalysis and how it fit the ancient images of the Rosarium.

First Image: The Mercurial Fountain

Symbolism - Jackie
The Mercurial Fountain.
This first image
symbolizes the deep,
cosmic, reptilian and
elemental foundation of
the psyche. We can read
some of the symbology to
see how the alchemist
depicted this very deep
autonomic ground of
being. It is called the
Mercurial Fountain, or
Fountain of Mercury, the
venue for the mysterious,
transformative work to be
undertaken by the
alchemist. Mercury is the
universal alchemical
symbol for yin, the
feminine moist principle,
bodily fluids and the
element of water. Water
has always had the
symbolic power to cleanse
and make holy. The basin
contains water, like a uterus in which new life is created. Out of the water rises a fountain
with three spouts representing three manifestations of Mercury, The water of life,
Virgin's milk, and the bitter fount of vinegar. Above the fountain we see the sun and
moon, symbols of our masculine and feminine parents. This is all surrounded by a 2
headed serpent on top, each head spouting a vapor, from an ancient idea that the four
elements first derived from two vapors and then the 4 basic elements of creation, fire,
water, earth and air, depicted by the 4 stars in each corner. There is a fifth star in the
center which is created by the union of the 4. This picture symbolizes the deep
unconscious wholeness, the alchemical prima materia, where the transformation of the
individual can take place.

In My Life - Barbara
In October of 1978 I suffered a severe post partum depression for which I was
hospitalized. I was able to return to my job and my life, but for years I remained unhappy,
with deeply held feelings of self-hate and worthlessness. This was in spite of having a
good job, a wonderful, supporting home and family. In April of 1986 after having been in
this unhappy state for some time, I decided to enter a deeper exploration with my
psychiatrist to understand what was behind my unhappiness and make any changes in my
life that were required. The image of the Mercurial Fountain looks and feels to me like
the scary, electric place full of significant possibilities that I found myself in at the
beginning of this analysis.

The Second Image: The Opposites Appear, the King and Queen

Symbolism - Jackie
We now see that the original
unity has been split into two of
the opposites, The King and
Queen, who approach each
other. They stand respectively
on the Sun and the Moon,
indicating the masculine solar
nature and the feminine lunar
nature. They give each other
their left hands, signifying the
unconscious nature of the
union that is to be made. They
extend their right hands toward
each other, holding branches
with two flowers each,
representing the four elements.
A fifth flower comes from the
beak of a dove representing the
Holy Spirit who descends from
a star. Jung describes this
picture as symbolic of an
unconscious transference
relationship between a male
analyst and a female client.
This relationship becomes the
vessel to hold the work of transformation.
In My Life - Barbara
When I began analysis with my psychiatrist, I was not conscious of the animus, anima, or
all the possible relationships between us conscious and unconscious. The only one that I
was definitely aware of was between our two conscious selves. I respected and admired
him and his seemingly magical way of being able to pull me out of depression - using
psychoanalysis and drugs. Looking back on the situation, I realize that there was
unconscious communication going on; I'm pretty sure that he could pick up on my
unstated trust and faith, in him and my wanting to be liked by him. I sensed his feeling of
confidence and optimism that this therapy would work, and the feeling of competence
and importance that gave him. I was aware that he practiced Yoga faithfully every day
and I'm pretty sure that there was some unconscious communication of this spiritual
attitude to me. At the time this analysis started, I hadn't gone to church in 20 years and I
had no spiritual practice.

The Third Image: The Naked Truth

Symbolism - Jackie
The man and woman now
face each other without
wearing clothing. Their
banners indicate that they
expect to be married. This
stands for the situation
where there is sufficient
trust, and loving
acceptance of each other
for the patient to "undress"
for the analyst and to share
the truths which lie behind
her persona. The star has
disappeared and the
flowers they hold make a
star between them and the
dove. This indicates that a
transpersonal dimension
has been reached and a
spiritual energy has been
constellated in the human
vessel of the relationship,

In My Life - Barbara
Near the beginning of the
analysis, I remember telling my psychiatrist that the real truth between my parents and
me was that they would love me no matter what I did; that their love was unconditional. I
had never realized that before, because pleasing them had been my way of life since as
early as I could remember. He told me that he believed that was true, and that we could
start working on this issue first. Telling him something so elemental, important, and
uncharacteristic of any of my prior thoughts or behavior was exposing a truth behind my
persona. It felt like "undressing", as illustrated in this image.

The Fourth Image: Immersion in the Bath

Symbolism - Jackie
The King and Queen have
now descended and are
sitting in the waters of the
Mercurial fountain, the
mysterious unconscious
psyche. The client "begins
to feel the full comfortable
and contained in the
analytic situation". The
solidly ordered structure of
her ego is being questioned
and begins to loosen.

In My Life - Barbara
I worked very hard at the
analysis. I felt it was the
most important thing that I
was doing, and would
show me a way to live my
life free of self-hate, being who I was meant to be. That is, I was discovering who I was
so that I could freely be that person. Although we weren't doing "Jungian analysis", the
goal was definitely what I now understand to be individuation, as Jung defined it. I began
to get glimpses that this goal was at least partially possible. I was fully immersed in the
unconscious bath and actively challenging myself as bravely as I could. There was
definitely a feeling of forward motion, that this process was irreversible.
The Fifth Image: The
Conjunction, Union

Symbolism - Jackie
The King and Queen are
now under water and are
engaged in sexual union.
Dr. Edinger points out that
we really are not supposed
to see this, it is a sacred
mystery of the unconscious
depths. In the ancient
mystery schools the sacred
union was known as the
heiros gamos and
celebrated as the high point
followed by the birth a
holy child. In therapy we
see here in the transference
of feelings, the
unconscious experience of
connection or intimacy
between the analyst and client.

In My Life - Barbara

After we had been working for some weeks, my psychiatrist asked me if I did something
spiritually for myself. I said I didn't. He asked me if I would like to learn how to meditate
because many people find meditation to be very helpful in calming themselves. I agreed,
ready to try anything new in this process. He taught me meditation. I read a book about
meditation that he gave me, but I didn't start meditating regularly.

Because I unconsciously believed that my psychiatrist had magical powers, I began to

entertain the possibility that maybe my old way of looking at spiritual things was wrong,
and this new way was right. This wasn't a conscious process, but I believe this is what
was going on in my unconscious mind. This was the unconscious union between him and
me. Not too long after this, I found myself spontaneously happy. My psychiatrist was
happy for me, and told me my happiness came from inside me, something that I
immediately believed, and still believe today. Not long after this, I had a vision of seeing
halos above the heads of some of the "least significant" people in a meeting at work. I
saw this as a vision from God giving me an important truth about the world. This vision
turned my life around. I was elated, in fact manic, although I didn't know that at the time.
I told my psychiatrist that I was cured and didn't need to see him again. I believe he had a
countertransference reaction, picking up on my elation and was pleased at the role he
played in my 'recovery'. He bid me adieu. Since I was 'cured', I stopped taking my
psychotropic medication. Neither of us knew that this was only midway in the process of
my individuation.

The Sixth Image: Death in the Tomb

Symbolism
- Jackie
The King
and Queen
are dead
and have
melded into
a single
being with
two heads
and one
large
crown.
Both
masculine
and
feminine
aspects of
the being
are
explicitly present lying in a sarcophagus filled with water. Some marriages stay in this
unconscious union for a lifetime. However, if and when you discover that you have lost
your identity that is a terrible blow to the ego and is experienced as death. When it
becomes conscious this is represented in dreams as the death of some figure. It does not
usually mean literal death but a large attitudinal change. The old governing principles of
the ego are going to be modified or altered.

In My Life - Barbara
About a week after I ecstatically bid a "final farewell" to my psychiatrist and stopped
taking my medication, I began to get the clear feeling that I was going to die. This feeling
became stronger and stronger. I woke up in the early hours of the morning after having
dreamt I was dying. Soon, these ideas came during my waking hours as well. Finally, one
day while at work I became convinced that I would die that day. I shared these thoughts
with a friend, who became alarmed when he couldn't reason with me, and he called my
husband. My husband and my friend took me to the psychiatric hospital where I was
involuntarily committed. As I entered the hospital, I was smiling broadly, believing I was
entering heaven and would become a soul to be reborn. I became close to catatonic,
believing I was in a tomb. After I recovered, I wondered for a long time how I ever got
the idea of death. None of the hospital psychiatrists could make anything out of it, and
my own psychiatrist was out of town. Jung's use of the Rosarium Philosophorum image
of a metaphoric death during analysis fits this situation very well.

The Seventh Image: The Ascent of the Soul

Symbolism - Jackie
Now the tiny Divine Child,
an age old symbol of the
soul, is seen separating
from the body at the
moment of death. The
child ascends into the
cloud, an ageless symbol
of the Divine.

This identity loss of the

ego is serious enough to
bring about a serious
reevaluation of the
structures of the
personality. "There is a
collapse of the existing
ego-consciousness. It is
closely analogous to the
schizophrenic state, and it
should be taken very
seriously because this is
the moment that psychoses
may become acute. This
collapse and disorientation
is one of the most difficult
transitions the analyst has to deal with, demanding the greatest patience, courage, and
faith on the part of both doctor and patient...This critical state is akin to the "loss of soul"
that frequently attacks primitives." The "old structures that upheld an earlier sense of
identity must give way for an anew psychological orientation"

In My Life - Barbara
I clearly believed my soul had departed my body and was awaiting rebirth. To the mental
hospital, I was psychotic. They could clearly see that I wasn't dead, even though I thought
I was. The other patients were waiting to be reborn, also, but the staff members weren't.

It is very significant and interesting to me that Jung describes this stage of analysis as
being dangerous in that one can loose contact with reality and the "psychoses may
become acute." Although I knew nothing of this theory, this is precisely what happened
to me at this stage of analysis. I certainly had lost contact with the commonly accepted
form of reality, and at that point I had no guide to help me through it.

The Eighth Image: Purification

Symbolism - Jackie
Here we see Heavenly dew
is falling on the grave. The
dew is that miraculous
water from heaven which
will purify and revive the
dead body, which,
remember is
psychologically her dead
ego. The patient realizes
that she has projected her
authority onto others and is
now learning "that what
she sought outside herself
must be found within, not
only intellectually, or
practically, but with new
feeling, a loving
relationship toward and
acceptance of herself." The
falling dew symbolizes the
realization in the client of
the change which is
happening and the hope of
resurrection and new life
which it brings.

In My Life - Barbara
As I began the role of patient in the psychiatric ward, including medication and therapy, I
started to engage with other patients who I at first thought were other souls waiting to be
reborn as I was. As the days went on and the medication began to take affect, I remember
telling one of the psychiatrists that I was "starting to see some evidence ... " that I was
alive. I remember him laughing and showing off that he could accurately throw a paper
wad into the waste basket on the other side of the room. The psychiatrist explained that
"people just don't get better this fast from having visual and auditory hallucinations." I
realized that he didn't know what was happening with me. I think the doctors were happy
when my psychiatrist returned from vacation. He told me he hadn't expected to see me
there and clearly he felt bad because one of his "successes" had unraveled so quickly.
The Ninth Image: The Return of the Soul

Symbolism - Jackie
The soul dives down from
heaven to breathe life into
the dead body which has
been purified. At this point
in the analysis, the patient
has the task of
reconstructing her
conscious personality after
her experience of the death
of the ego. Jung realized
that to live in this world,
the rational person must
learn to live in space and
time with others in society.
At this point, the analyst
will help the patient
actualize her new sense of
Self, validating her own
feelings and experiences in
order to reconstruct the
personality.

In My Life - Barbara
I stayed in the hospital for
three weeks, gradually
spending more and more of the day at home with my family, and returning at night to the
hospital. I regained a sense of self and sanity - that I was returning to some form of life,
but as a changed person. I didn't care as much for many of the things that I had previously
valued - status, possessions, good regard of others. I started attending church for the first
time in 20 years and for the first time let spiritual ideas take an important role in my life. I
learned how to weave, which remains my main form of creative artistic expression. I
became a more complete person. Through all of this, I had regular sessions with my
psychiatrist. He was encouraging and positive, but also realistic and challenged me when
I needed to be challenged. I wasn't as fragile as I had been before, and his criticism didn't
wound me - I took it as constructive. My soul had returned.
The Tenth Image: The New Birth

Symbolism - Jackie The

new united body,
combining both King and
Queen is now alive and
erect, standing on the
moon above the earth. It is
a winged Being
representing spirituality. In
her right hand is a chalice
of three snakes and in her
left one a loose snake. All
are crowned. Dr. Edinger
says that perhaps this
alludes to our reptilian
psyche, our ground of
being, which has been
visited and transformed.
Out of the earth on the left
a sun moon tree is coming
from the earth and on the
right stands a bird, symbol
of spirit. The new
consciousness that emerges
has brought together a new
synthesis of opposites,
enlarging her sense of Self
so as to be at home with both aspects of her masculine and feminine self, her humanity
and divinity, her ground of being and her spirituality.

In My Life - Barbara
The process of rebirth for me has been an ongoing journey. I have established a strong
presence of spirituality in my life and have learned to value my nurturing, creative side.
A stint as a member of the faculty on loan to a minority university taught me the
blessings of a life of service. This experience led me to start a group to help others with
mental illness, and that in turn led me to enter seminary with the goal of helping the
mentally ill. I now have a healthy relationship with my animus and value both masculine
and feminine parts of my nature. Comparing myself now to who I was before I began
analysis, I have definitely been reborn.

Conclusions

When I first read Jung's book The Psychology of Transference, I had no idea how closely
my own experience would follow the psychological process I had been through. For
years, after my experience with "death", I sought to understand what had happened. My
own psychiatrist didn't know, or wouldn't tell me. The other psychiatrists seemed to be
baffled and I couldn't find anything written about it. The closest description came from
my dream-work professor Jeremy Taylor who told me that death in dreams usually
signifies a transformation in one's personality.

Clearly, there is something universal and archetypal about the stages one goes through in
the process of individuation; I had no knowledge of this aspect of Jung's work until now,
16 years after the fact, and yet I can see that I was exhibiting classic behavior of each of
the stages in the order specified. This includes becoming psychotic at the exact stage that
Jung says one can become psychotic! I find this very remarkable, and uncanny. Until I
wrote this paper for my class, I hadn't realized the degree to which archetypes can be
acted out without the person's knowledge, and can be a very accurate picture of what is
really going on. This stuff is real. I wonder why none of the psychiatrists seemed to know
what was happening. Clearly, they weren't Jungian analysts!

I am very glad that I had the opportunity to make this exploration using Jung's metaphor
of the psychoanalytical process from the Rosarium Philosophorum. It is the clearest and
most helpful explanation of my experience that I have gained to date.

Lest my tale scare someone here from considering therapy, I need to tell you that most
people undergoing the process of individuation do not end up in the psychiatric ward
thinking they are dead. Mine was a particularly literal way of acting out this rebirth
process. Most people undergo a transformation in a much more subtle way than I did, but
they too are changed in deep and significant ways.

From this example of Jung's work, I think you can see that his religious sense came from
exploring the inner lives of people, helping them to discover their own inherent spiritual
beings. This is certainly what happened with me.