Digesting Jung: Food for the Journey - Inner City Books

The Heroic Journey 73
release. Eventually the hero must return to his beginnings and bear
witness, that is, give something back to his culture (which marks
the hero as an individual as opposed to an individualist).
The night sea journey myths are an important subset of these
hero tales. They derive from the perceived behavior of the sun,
which, in Jung’s lyrical image, “sails over the sea like an immortal
god who every evening is immersed in the maternal waters and is
born anew in the morning.” 62 The sun going down, analogous to the
loss of energy in a depression, is thus the necessary prelude to rebirth.
Cleansed in the healing waters, the ego lives again. Or, in
another mythological image, it rises from the ashes, like the phoenix.
Psychologically, the whale-dragon-monster is the unconscious,
and in particular the parental complexes. The battles and suffering
that take place during the night sea journey symbolize the heroic
attempt to assimilate unconscious contents instead of being overwhelmed
by them. Symbolically, the vital organ that must be severed
is the umbilical cord, the regressive tie to the past. The potential
result is the release of energy—the sun on a new day—that has
hitherto been tied up with the complexes.
Few choose the hero’s journey. But when something in us demands
it we are obliged to strike out on our own, to live out our
personal journey whether we will or no.
Analysts cannot save people from the hazards to be faced, nor
should they even try. What nature has ordained, let no one interfere
with. The heroic journey is an inner imperative that must be allowed
to run its course. The most analysts can do is to accompany
their charges and alert them to some dangers along the way.
Because individuality and the development of personality are
deviations not congenial to the collective, historically only a few
have dared the adventure, but these are the ones we now invoke to
give us heart. As Jung notes:
62 Ibid., par. 306.