Laurel Howe, M.A.
Jungian Analysis

Jungian Analysis

The crowned hermaphrodite is an alchemical symbol for wholeness. It is a creature living according to its own sometimes paradoxical inner nature. The hermaphrodite’s bat wings, the serpents, the green lion, the sun tree, and the pelican are aspects of psychological development and often come up in Jungian analysis, as dream images, in these and other forms.
The crowned hermaphrodite is an alchemical symbol for wholeness. It is a creature living according to its own sometimes paradoxical inner nature. The hermaphrodite’s bat wings, the serpents, the green lion, the sun tree, and the pelican are aspects of psychological development and often come up in Jungian analysis, as dream images, in these and other forms.

Jungian Analysis is a deep, ongoing experience of the objective psyche and its urge towards consciousness in the individual and in the collective.

The goal of Jungian analysis is individuation, a long-term process in which you develop an ongoing relationship with your inner life by carefully recording and examining dreams, fantasy images, and life events, and try to understand them from a symbolic, or transpersonal, perspective.

It is almost impossible to interpret your own dreams without a friend or analyst’s objective perspective. But dream interpretation is one of the most important elements of an individuation process because it brings you into deep connection with your reason for being.

Through the process of individuation, you develop a relationship with the inner center and the totality of your personality, which C.G. Jung called the greater Self. In Hindu mythology this inner center on an individual level is called Atman, and is an aspect of the universal self or soul, called Brahman.

C. G. Jung analyzed at least 80,000 dreams in his career and discovered that dreams, mythology, and religious symbolism all come from the same place — the objective psyche. Our dreams, therefore, can contain images from ancient times, even though we live in the 21st century.

Understanding the historic meaning of our dream images brings us to a closer relationship with our ancestral roots. Realizing their symbolic meaning connects us to the transpersonal, creative drive seeking recognition within us.