Jung & Symbolism

     Carl Jung approached the symbols as something that emerges from the unconscious mind, or the collective unconscious, as the primary way to communicate with the unconscious, and indeed the entire psyche. A symbol means something broader than the first direct meaning; the primary resource of the symbols is childhood experiences.

    For Jung, after childhood memorization, symbols are visible in dreams. He believed that the specific images in dreams have a greater salience to the entire personality of the individual, and he developed a word-association test for indicating the symbols within their meanings. Unconscious was actually helping and balancing between the conscious mind by making symbols and displaying them in the dreams so that nothing would be repressed and rejected. Yet, why the unconscious would choose any specific object as a symbol? He found that the collective level of meaning, the collective unconscious consists of a highly shared psychic material across all humans. 

    Jung developed his ideas about symbolism further regarding phantasies and their meaning in artistic creativity. He mentioned: ‘Symbols serve as a link between the archetype and consciousness and in a like manner between the artist, the work, and the audience, and the unconscious.’  thus, symbols might be observed for historical or aesthetical interest. They might be carried out in our unconscious participation even though they are not observable in today’s world as they are alike a personal shell with an archetypal core and source. Any kind of symbolic vision can be within us through our socio-cultural developments, as well as religious concepts. 

    I conceive that the drapery as veiling and a coffin can have a significant symbolic meaning throughout art history. The artist’s as Giotto, Da Vinci, Caravaggio, and so on have depicted the drapery in their own sense from an intrinsic point, from their own archetypes. For Jung, seeing a dress in the dream is a symbolical meaning of the ego and persona, an indication through the feeling toward oneself; and my claim is that the way the artists depicted the material of drapery was, in fact, a symbolization of their phantasies and death instincts.