Jungian Amplification and Myth

Author: Christopher Chayban

Amplification means to make something louder, and Jung was able to see at the Burgholzli clinic just how loud the complexes were, which are a web of associations held together by an emotional tone, in human beings can become. Jung intuited that certain complexes and their potential solutions were illustrated psychologically in mythology. For example, the power complex in the Gilgamesh myth, or the cure for the erotic complex in the book of Tobit (CW 8 pg.101).

With his patients, Jung wanted to amplify the myth before the myth amplified them. He writes, “We observe the same phenomenon in certain psychoses when the complexes get “loud” and appear as “voices” having a thoroughly personal character.” (CW 8 pg.98). He says it can destroy families morally and physically and that one should attend to the reality of the complexes. (CW 8 pg.100)

If one doesn’t “turn up the volume” so to speak, and amplify the myth operating in the individual, we may not relate to the person correctly or, we may amplify a dream and miss the meaning completely. John Hill points out that an analyst thought one dream of a patient meant that he had a problem with masturbation (body complex) and failed to see the death and rebirth motif at work, and the patient’s need to separate from the mother and develop his own creative life. (Jungian Psychoanalysis pg.113)

As Jung says, complexes overrun the will of the conscious ego, they diminish responsibility, and that it is commonly known that people have complexes but very rarely does anyone recognize that complexes have us (CW 8 pg.96). Mythology in clinical practice could be used to re-establish inner order by relating to the core of these complexes through the archetypal image. My will merged with thy will. Otherwise we will be at the mercy of the constellated image and react in predictable ways to outer circumstances (CW 8 pg.94). The image, Jung found in his own dreams and in the dreams of his patients, in what Walker calls ‘the strange mythology of the psyche.” (Jung and the Jungians on Myth pg.58).

Through the dream, it is important to be able to make the distinction between these images and assign them to the correct categories that they belong. One has to separate the image of the personal associations from what may be attributed to parents, the culture or God. (Jungian Psychoanalysis pg.111).

In making these distinctions and amplifications, the individual can relate to the images consciously, and anticipate meaning (Jungian Psychoanalysis pg.112) in their lives, and also carry the weight of archetypal collective meanings of culture (Jung and the Jungians on Myth pg.67). Jung understood the role of mythology ultimately as a way to connect back to our instinctual roots and return to living a natural and whole life, as opposed to the disembodied and heady one disconnected from nature. Through myth, one could proceed to live it out in an embodied way, in the search for greater meaning. (Jungian Psychoanalysis pg.110).

 Resources:

Hill, J. (2010). Amplification: Unveiling Emergent Patterns of Meaning. Excerpted from Jungian Psychoanalysis: Working in the Spirit of C. G. Jung. Chicago: Open Court.

Jung, C. (1969). Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 8: Structure & Dynamics of the Psyche (ADLER G. & HULL R., Eds.). PRINCETON, N. J.: Princeton University Press. 

Walker, S. F. (2002). Jung and the Jungians on myth. London: Routledge.

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