Dream Method Guidelines: Edinger’s Alchemical Dream Motifs
Author: Christopher Chayban
Disclaimer: These methods are for testing and for educational or informational purposes. Please keep this material for your use and the group’s use only. Thank you.
These are some notes taken from the book, Anatomy of the psyche: Alchemical symbolism in psychotherapy that I have re-organized as what I think best suits our needs.
The Prima Materia:
Psychic Aspects-
1.Fixed, rigid aspects of the personality.
2.Innocence and Undifferentiated state.
3.Prerequisite for transformation.
4.Dark moods, personal reactions.
5.Aspects that are found in the shadow, things that are rejected, despised, painful, humiliating.
6.Fragments of an underlying unity.
7.Content that is without limits, chaos, terror, awe, infinite.
Calcinatio-
Psychic Aspects-
1.Instinctual or unacknowledged desire and concupiscence.
2.Pleasure and power desires- “I want” energy.
3.Prolonged frustration.
5.Frustrating and defeating of the Ego, leading to Self.
6.Deepening consciousness, making complexes consciousness.
7.Sexuality.
8.Calcining shadow and unconscious contamination.
9.Enduring affect and emotional Intensity.
10.Building Immunity and immortality.
11.Projection onto the afterlife.
12.Purifying and whitening.
13.The drying out process of passions and emotions.
14.Messages and connecting human with the divine.
15.The sacred and sacrifice.
16.The Intuitive Function.
Solutio-
Psychic Aspects-
1.A Return to the womb or primal and undifferentiated state (prima materia/prakriti) in order to be transformed into something better.
2.Dissolution, Dispersal, Dismemberment, Unification of separateness.
3.Containment of a lesser thing by a greater thing.
4.Rebirth, regeneration, rejuvenation, immersion in the creative energy flow.
5.Cleansing or purification ordeal and cleaning oneself from shadow projections.
6.Solution of problems.
7.Metling or softening.
8.Descent into or Confrontation with the unconscious.
9.Nostalgia, Longing, Ouroboric incest/union with the Mother
10.Death, Decay or Dissolving the old principle. Hypertrophy of the Ego.
11.Eroticism, lust.
12.Group identification, collectivization, orgiastic or collective sexuality to re-connect the lost connection with common humanity.
13.Encounter with the archetypal Feminine.
14.Spontaneity, energy, fertility, creativity, life.
15.Salvation, wholeness, greater solution is an encounter with the Self, prelude to the coming of a larger personality.
16.The feeling function.
Coagulatio-
Psychic Aspects-
1.Incarnating Soul/Deities/Archetypes and Desire. Connecting the Ego with the Self.
2.Regression into Childish pleasure and Paradise (Eating forbidden fruit).
3.Evil, Corruption.
4.Criminal aspect of Ego hood-Theft, Possession of new consciousness.
5.Will and Creation of Consciousness.
6.Guilt, limits of personality and capacity for redemption (of the deity).
7.The feminine (Yin/Matter) and relatedness, coagulating/attachments.
8.Bondage, embodiment, imprisonment
9.Death, Immortal body, new incarnation or transition.
- The experience and concrete realization of archetypes, union of the transpersonal spirit with ordinary human reality.
11.Unconcsious content being ready to be assimilated.
12.Promoting ego formation and development.
12.Depression, a fall, weakness of ego or desire.
13.Sweetness and process/fulfillment of individuation.
14.Creation, manifestation, solidification.
15.Personalization of archetypes.
16.Reality, Form and Visibility in the creation/created world.
17.Sensation Function.
Sublimatio-
Psychic Aspects-
1.Changing something inferior to superior.
2.Spiritualizing.
3.Seeing objectively or with reason, being abstract, conceptual.
- Ascending to Archetypal Standpoints, encounter with the numinous, contemplation of the higher (archetypal) realms and eternity.
5.Relieving anxiety, extracting the spirit (meaning) from matter (content or heavy moods).
5.Hammering, grinding out content, separation, ability of the psyche to dissociate and look at itself.
6.Lesser sublimatio descends but greater sublimatio translates temporal into eternity, individual consciousness or realization of wholeness in individuation. Making things eternal and a permanent addition to the psyche. An eternal fact (archetype) that is untouchable.
7.Upward eternalizes, downward personalizes. Repeated ascents and descents of all aspects of one’s being, which generates awareness of a transpersonal center uniting the conflicting factors (the opposites).
- Circulation or circumambulation around a center. Going around the complexes. Connecting the personal psyche below with the archetypal psyche above.
9.Evokes our higher and better nature.
20.Thinking Function.
Mortificatio/Putrefactio-
Psychic Aspects-
1.Growth, resurrection, rebirth.
2.Shadow material, beginning of the whiteness.
3.Happens when ego is one-sidedly identified with light.
4.Projections of shadow.
5.First stages (often poisonous) stages of the anima/animus (killing the dragon).
6.Death or transformation of the collective dominant.
7.Comes from the lesser coniunctio.
8.Chilhood state of purity and innocence must be sacrificed.
9.Dreams of powerful impact.
10.Wilderness and theme of the number 40.
11.Buried treasure, conception of the psychological stone, the incorruptible body being born out of death (the Self).
12.Concisous endurance of darkness and the conflict of opposites that nourish the Self.
13.The start of the work.
14.The rejected black that can turn into gold.
- The descent and encounter with the collective unconscious or the underworld.
Separatio-
Psychic Aspects-
1.Discrimination of component parts.
2.Order out of chaos.
3.Creation.
4.Awareness of opposites and emerging consciousness.
5.Seperating the I (subject) from the not I (object), withdrawing partipacion mystique and projections.
6.Making space for consciousness.
7.Separating out into four. Four functions, four quarters, the Self etc.
8.Carving contents out of the unconscious.
9.Separating opposites to make content visible but also brings conflicts.
9.Increasing conflict, comparison, judgement and choice.
10.Measuring, weighing, numbering, naming and quantifying consciousness.
11.Temporal reckoning in time and space.
12.Balance of opposites, finding the golden mean or relation (after separation) of Ego and Self.
13.Psychological crime of breaking into opposites, disrupting unity.
14.Extracting Soul or Spirit (Meaning) from the Body (Content), separating Spirit and Matter.
15.Separating personal from transpersonal.
16.The last judgement and indivisibility.
17.Prelude to the Greater Coniunctio.
Coniunctio-
Psychic Aspects-
1.Extraversion and Introversion coming together
2.Lesser coniunctio is a union or fusion of content that is not fully separated yet.
3.Greater coniunctio is the goal of the opus. Experience is both lesser and greater.
4.Lesser coniunctio leads to death or extinction of consciousness or identifying with contents of the unconscious i.e. shadow, anima/animus and the Self.
5.Alternating, yin and yang, male and female to improve.
6.A new standpoint that is both realizing and burdensome.
7.Prelude to deeper knowledge.
8.The reconciliation or union of the opposites and the psychological stone. A conscious relation or reconnection to the Self (Greater Coniunctio).
9.Discovery of the reality of the psyche.
10.Flowers precede coniunctio and can mean inflation of the Ego.
11.Uniting with something outside of time.
12.Caused by love, eros. Is the glue. Transpersonal cosmogonic love.
13.The second creation of the world, the Unus Mundus, uniting worlds. Knowing your inner city.
14.Multipication and contagious consciousnessnes. Multiplies itself in others.
15.Openness to the objective psyche.
16.Recriporcal action.
Resources:
Edinger, E. F. (2009). Anatomy of the psyche: Alchemical symbolism in psychotherapy.
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