Digesting Jung: Food for the Journey - Inner City Books

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Personal Analysis
Analysis should release an experience that grips us or falls
upon us from above, an experience that has substance and body
such as those things which occurred to the ancients. If I were
going to symbolize it I would choose the Annunciation. 44
You can appreciate the scope of Jung’s work, and you can read everything
he ever wrote, but the real opportunity offered by analytical
psychology only becomes apparent when you go into analysis.
That’s when Jung’s potentially healing message stops being merely
an interesting idea and becomes an experiential reality.
Analysis is not a suitable discipline for everyone, nor do all
benefit from it or need it. Although there may be as many ways of
practicing Jungian analysis as there are analysts, the process itself
facilitates healing because it relates what is going on in the unconscious
to what is happening in everyday life.
We generally seek a quick fix to our problems. We want an answer,
a prescription; we want our pain to be treated, our suffering
relieved. We want a solution, and we look for it from an outside
authority. This is a legitimate expectation for many physical ills,
but it doesn’t work with psychological problems, where you are
obliged to take personal responsibility for the way things are. Then
you have to consider your shadow—and everyone else’s—and all
the other complexes that drive you and your loved ones up the wall.
What people want and what they need are seldom the same
thing. You go into analysis hurting and with some goals and expectations
in mind. But pretty soon your personal agenda goes out the
window and you find yourself grappling with issues you hadn’t
thought of and sore spots you didn’t know were there—or knew but
44 Jung, Seminar 1925, p. 111.
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