Carl Jung: “Memories, Dreams, Reflections”

Writer and artist Austin Kleon offers this wonderful visualization of Carl Jung’s final book “Memories, Dreams, Reflections”:

If you know Jung, you will find loads of meaning in it. If you don’t know Jung, perhaps consider it to be a map of the human psyche, a touchstone for how much depth of source material we, as writers, have as we dig into our characters.

A quote from “MDR”:

Our age has shifted all emphasis to the here and now, and thus brought about a daemonization of man and his world. The phenomenon of dictators and all the misery they have wrought springs from the fact that man has been robbed of transcendence by the shortsightedness of the super-intellectuals. Like them, he has fallen a victim to unconsciousness. But man’s task is the exact opposite: to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious. Neither should he persist in his unconsciousness, nor remain identical with the unconscious elements of his being, thus evading his destiny, which is to create more and more consciousness. As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being. It may even be assumed that just as the unconscious affects us, so the increase in our consciousness affects the unconscious.

“But man’s task is the exact opposite: to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious.”

I believe this is at the core of most Protagonist’s metamorphosis journeys in movies.

“The sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.”

One way of looking at Plot: It exists to compel the Protagonist to bring the dark aspects of their psyche into the light.

For more of Jung, go here.

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