Collected Papers on Analytical PsychologyJung, C. G. (Carl Gustav)
Science
Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology
Jung, C. G. (Carl Gustav)
Psychoanalysis
Gazing at the beautiful
figures she received a feeling of delicious blessedness. More rarely
there were terrible visions of a dæmonic nature. These were entirely
confined to the night or to dark rooms. Occasionally S. W. saw black
figures in the neighbouring streets or in her room; once out in the dark
courtyard she saw a terrible copper-red face which suddenly stared at
her and frightened her. I could not learn anything satisfactory about
the first occurrence of the vision. She states that once at night, in
her fifth or sixth year, she saw her "guide," her grandfather (whom she
had never known). I could not get any objective confirmation from her
relatives of this early vision. Nothing of the kind is said to have
happened until her first séance. With the exception of the hypnagogic
brightness and the flashes, there were no rudimentary hallucinations,
but from the beginning they were of a systematic nature, involving all
the sense-organs equally. So far as concerns the intellectual reaction
to these phenomena it is remarkable with what curious sincerity she
regarded her dreams. Her entire somnambulic development, the innumerable
puzzling events, seemed to her quite natural. She looked at her whole
past in this light. Every striking event of earlier years stood to her
in necessary and clear relationship to her present condition. She was
happy in the consciousness of having found her real life-task. Naturally
she was unswervingly convinced of the reality of her visions. I often
tried to present her with some sceptical explanation, but she invariably
turned this aside; in her usual condition she did not clearly grasp a
reasoned explanation, and in the semi-somnambulic state she regarded
it as senseless in view of the facts staring her in the face. She once
said: "I do not know if what the spirits say and teach me is true,
neither do I know if they are those by whose names they call themselves,
but that my spirits exist there is no question. I see them before me, I
can touch them, I speak to them about everything I wish, as naturally
as I'm now talking to you. They must be real." She absolutely would
not listen to the idea that the manifestations were a kind of illness.
Doubts about her health or about the reality of her dream would distress
her deeply; she felt so hurt by my remarks that when I was present she
became reserved, and for a long time refused to experiment if I was
there; hence I took care not to express my doubts and thoughts aloud.
From her immediate relatives and acquaintances she received undivided
allegiance and admiration--they asked her advice about all kinds of
things. In time she obtained such an influence upon her followers that
three of her brothers and sisters likewise began to have hallucinations
of a similar kind. Their hallucinations generally began as night-dreams
of a very vivid and dramatic kind; these gradually extended into the
waking time, partly hypnagogic, partly hypnopompic. A married sister
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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