In Search of Father
I’ve had a couple of dreams lately where I like a boy in elementary school or high school, and he wants nothing to do with me. These seem like a blast from the past, but they illuminate the immature male part of my innermost soul, split off from the rest of myself. The male expression of the female’s soul, the animus, is associated to the faculties of discrimination, cognition, logical thinking, and is archetypally modeled by the father. My dreams demonstrate a personal truth, as I have felt powerless over my food choices, having slipped back into an all-permissive diet, where my choices are controlled by my feeling function, not my thinking function. I feel like I should have real icecream, quesadillas, cookies, and biscuits, although I know that I shouldn’t: these foods inflame my gastro-intestinal tract. My feelings have been winning, dominating my logical capacity. My Logos, my animus, as demonstrated by these dreams, is a dwarfed little boy who doesn’t love me, whom I am hopelessly out of touch with. My Eros, my feeling, corresponds to my absent mother, as demonstrated by my actions, my memories, my dear sweet mother who loved me, and fed me delicious, often sugary and starchy food.
My feeling function and my thinking function are embattled in my psyche. This I have become conscious of in the last few weeks, as I have been reading “The Essential Jung.”
So this Sunday morning, I woke up at a reasonable time, and instead of getting up, I decided to sleep in a little more, it being my one day off. Knowing I dream vividly during the later morning, I asked that I have a dream in which I access some good positive father energy, in my attempts to empower my logos, my thinking function.
The dream that came to me was of a family sing-along. I was with my husband’s family. I was perched at the edge of a fountain. Chris’s sister was doing some kitchen gymnastics, putting her heels up the wall of cupboards, and lowering her head down against the kitchen island, and inching up, inverting her body as she did so. I too tried this trick, but I couldn’t do it. I lost it, and flung a motor-bike against a car in a fit of rage. I got on a bicycle and rode, hard, down the highway, crying loudly, in a singing kind of way.
I ended up trying to ride up a grassy hill where my mother was, and I fell in the grass and cried and cried, and woke myself up, crying.
The image of Chris’s father was faint in the background as I had had my tantrum. I remember my own father’s illogical angry outbursts; in fact, these characterize him for me. But what is significant to me is that this dim fatherly presence was permissive (or perhaps just passive) in regards to my tantrum, where I think my biological dad would have tried to outshout me to suppress my outburst. The problematic nature of this is evident, as pertains to the development (or lack thereof) of a strong and positive logical function. This dream father allowed me, however illogical or emotion-ridden. This is a step in allowing me to get closer to him once again, and perhaps learn to be guided somewhat by reason, when appropriate.
My image search of fountains led me to these images of the Trevi Fountain in Rome. How they speak to me, how appropriate they seem to my quest!
I have come to find out that the God-like figure at the head of this fountain is the sea God Poseidon. His son is half man, half fish, and in addition to having a trident, has a conch shell, which, when he blows upon it, can calm the waves of the sea, or raise them up. (My wailing in the dream… to calm my raging emotions?)
I looked up what Jung has written of water, which is what spirit turns into when it becomes heavy. It led me to this powerful idea, from Jung, Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, 16.
We must surely go the way of the waters, which always tend downward, if we would raise up the treasure, the precious inheritance of the father. In the Gnostic hymn to the soul, the son is sent forth by his parents to seek the pearl that fell from the King’s crown. It lies at the bottom of a deep well, guarded by a dragon, in the land of the Egyptians– that land of fleshpots and drunkenness with all its material and spiritual riches. The son and heir sets out to fetch the jewel, but forgets himself and his task in the orgies of Egyptian worldliness, until a letter from his father reminds him what his duty is. He then sets out for the water and plunges into the dark depths of the well, where he finds the pearl on the bottom, and in the end offers it to the highest divinity.
This hymn, ascribed to Bardesanes, dates from an age that resembled ours in more than one respect. Mankind looked and waited, and it was a fish– “levatus de profundo” (drawn from the deep) — that became the symbol of the saviour, the bringer of healing.
It is my somatic impulses that bring the message of healing, the pain in my gut, rather the the cravings of my consciousness. It is through listening to my voice from the depths that I will be saved, and in recovering the positive image of father.
Nina-Lois Turtledove is deeply interested in philosophy, psychology, peace studies, nutrition, tradition, and progress. When she's not slinging meatloaf and gingerbread at a highly acclaimed Denver restaurant, she is helping found an online music school. She is writing a manual designed to improving people's lives through yoga, cooking, and gardening (among other things). This is an online collection of her journal.