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A JUNGIAN STUDY OF A TALE OF TWO CITIES BY CHARLES DICKENS

ABSTRACT

This study is an attempt to show that how Charles Dickens in this novel A tale of twocites shows the poor people of France that represents collective shadow disturbs the

whole society by creating a mass hysteria or madness in the form of revolution. It means

when conscious part do not care about the shadow of unconscious it can be dangerous forwhole personality or whole society, shadow can be destructive for ego and super ego or at

the whole consciousness. Charles dickens by this novel urges us to accept the un

developed side of the society to prevent the society from revolution or destruction by the

shadow or undeveloped part of the whole society. It is very necessary for peaceful coexistence.

Edward E. WilsonIntroduction to Jungian PsychologyCarl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychoanalyst. Though he was an early associate of Freud he split off

to form his own school of thought, is largely responsible for starting what is now known as depth

psychology and brought us such concepts as introversion and synchronicity. The following is a brief

introduction to some of the macro level concepts of his thought. Ill be writing more about Jungian

Psychological concepts in later articles and Ive already touched on synchronicity.

Psyche and Self

Jungian psychology is a holistic approach to the mind of man. He calls the total field of mental

phenomenon the psyche and avers that we can never know its totality. This psyche is the

metaphoric space that other psychic phenomena inhabit. The central organizing principle of the

psyche is called the Self. This is the higher self of many mystical traditions, the holy guardian angel

of the golden dawn or the true will of Thelema.

Conscious and Unconscious

The space of the psyche is divided into the conscious and the unconscious. The conscious is that

part of the mind that we generally have conscious access to and includes rational thought and sense

awareness. The central organizing principle of the conscious is the Ego. The Ego is your day to day

sense of self, your personality and personal history as you are consciously aware of it. The

unconscious is that portion of the psyche that operates outside of conscious awareness. The central

organizing principle of the unconscious is called the shadow. The shadow is those aspects of self

that are outside of our awareness or actively repressed. The shadow is the Mr. Hyde to the egos Dr.

Jekyll. In order to approach the wholeness of the self we must engage in a transformative process

of integrating the ego and the shadow.

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Shadow

The shadow, as it exists in the unconscious, is not something we can see directly but something we

can follow like an animal in the bushes, by watching for its tracks. The primary places where we can

see sign of the shadow are in unintentional slips, aspects of ourselves that others see and we do

not, negative aspects of others that we overreact to, in our humour and in our dreams. The most

interesting place to look is in our overreactions to others. They are sign of what Jungians refer to

asprojection. When we react out of measure to a fault in others it can be a sign of an aspect of

ourselves that we have repressed, an aspect of our shadows, that we have projected onto others.

Our slips are things that we do that we cant accept as from us so we experience them as accidents

rather than as purposeful actions.

Personal and Collective

Jung further divides the psychic field into the personal and the collective. On the conscious side, the

personal is the memories and thoughts available to simple introspection, while the collective is the

social relations and is governed by the persona. On the unconscious side the personal is thepersonal history and desires that have been forgotten or repressed into an unconscious state while

the collective unconscious is a deeper matter of the psychic drives and factors that are common to

all mankind. It is out of the collective unconscious that the archetypes arise.

Archetypes

These archetypes are personifications and symbols of the basic drives, needs and fundamental

issues of mankind. While they are common to us all they are uniquely expressed by each culture

and indeed by each individual. Because of these archetypes, the collective unconscious takes on a

mythic aspect and indeed many of the worlds myths, some would say all of them, are narrative

expressions of archetypal conflicts from the collective unconscious.

Dreams

Dreams are a major focal point for Jungian psychology. They are a place where we can

most easily learn to see aspects of the unconscious. Dreams operate using a kind of

symbol language, remixing them with experiences from our waking lives to solve

problems and rehearse skills to aid learning. If we can learn to remember and interpret

our dreams we have a window into the unconscious operating of our mind and can use

the dreams to create a kind of communication with our unconscious. When we start

changing our actions in response to dream information we will establish a feedback loop

which will increase the informational value of the dream material. It is by integrating the

unconscious material into our conscious awareness that we move closer to Self from our

limited perspective of conscious ego. Dreams, due to their role in the unconscious

processing of our ongoing existences, will reveal material from our personal unconscious,

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such as how we really feel about someone, and collective unconscious themes of

archetypal meaning.