The dirty uterus: when incest is remembered (miscarriage)

I sable was 28 years old and had successive miscarriages, suffering four spontaneous abortions in the past six years. Clinical exams had been unable to detect any organic problems.

While working with the imagination with her eyes closed, Isabel, in touch with her body, “saw” a smelly, dirty uterus. During active imagination she visualised that she pulled a rope from within her uterus. Slowly coming out with the rope were pieces of a noxious and putrid fetus. At the same moment Isabel started to remember that when she was a child her mother put her to sleep after lunch in the same room with her grandfather. She recalled that her grandfather fondled her and obliged her to fondle him.

As the grandfather became more abusive Isabel did not want to lie down with him any more but her mother made her obey and go to “sleep.” Isabel remembered subsequently that when she was not able to sleep her maid used to masturbate her to calm her down (at about six or seven years of age).

These situations are remembered with repugnance and revulsion during the analysis and later were amplified when she remembered that at the age of 12 she saw her father kissing the maid. The father denied the fact and the mother accused her of trying to destroy the marriage. Nevertheless, the father later left the house to marry the then pregnant maid.

The therapy consisted of “cleaning the uterus” through imagination techniques and reliving the repressed unconscious emotions associated with the images that started to pour out. Memories of incest and lies, which hid illicit sexual relations, were the filth that contaminated her uterus.

After eight months of therapy Isabel got pregnant and had a normal pregnancy. She refused rest and to take hormones and saw her uterus as a clean a beautiful nest where a baby could grow and live. Today she has three healthy children.

This last case shows the power of the symbolic body in the form of the pregnant and contaminated body. This image impregnated in the patient’s organism informed her that there was no place for pregnancy, for her uterus was already filled by a decomposing uterus. No matter how much she wished for a child, the memory registered in her body’s cells defensively avoided a new traumatic situation. You could even say that the abortions were a defence protecting Isabel from an “incestuous pregnancy,” in that her being was highly contaminated by incestuous abusive relations.

Case Summary

In all theses cases, once an emotion was evoked or expressed, a physiological change also took place. The work through active imagination and sandplay allowed for consciousness of the emerging images that referred directly to each patient’s organic symptoms. By comprehending these images it was possible to perceive the nature of the dysfunction in the ego/Self axis. The transcendent function was used in these cases presented by Denise Gimenez Ramos (2004) in a way that gives a great illustration of how the symbol/symptom is mirrored in the psychic structure and/or vice versa. It is possible that for these patients the primary parental figure that is critical in modulating the infant’s psychological and physiological arousal, by not mediating between psyche and body, made the symbolic, transcendent function stay stuck fast in the body, rather than transforming itself into fantasies and images that could be assimilated by the ego.

Concluding remarks

The transcendent function still remains essentially a mysterious process that Jung outlined as an integral part of his psychology in 1916, immediately after his own unsettling confrontation with the unconscious, and was seen by Jung as uniting the opposites, transforming the psyche, and central to the individuation process. It essentially facilitates the extraction of the symbol to consciousness and thereby is central to Jung’s vision of healing. It also reflects the fruits of his own confrontation with the unconscious. Jung portrayed the transcendent function as operating through symbol and fantasy and mediating between the opposites of consciousness and the unconscious to prompt the emergence of a new, third posture that transcends the two. The transcendent function itself can be seen as a method, a process, an outcome or a mixture of all three. It can also be seen as a function that unites the opposites for a new attitude to emerge or it can be seen more archetypally as our relationship or interaction with the unknown or other.

The symbolic contents of the transcendent function can be seen in the many symbols that Jung studied relating to individuation, especially in the images of alchemy. The alchemical fourth can also be seen as a way of perceiving reality and has come to be known as alchemical thinking, a way of not only seeing the opposites in tension but simultaneously the invisible connection that binds them. A paradoxical vision of reality that previously was the domain of the mystic or poet.

Furthermore, we have looked at some cases where the work of some Jungians, using the transcendent function and active imagination, is having an impact in fields like medicine. It goes to show that the symbolic approach to healing organic illness is not only effective but very much the medicine of the future.

We are not machines or gears.

The cause of our illness

Does not reside in the malfunctioning of our mechanisms

But in the wounds of our souls.

In the depth of our emotional self.

And it takes a long, very long time, to heal these wounds

Only patience and time can help us,

And a laborious repentance,

The long and difficult confirmation

That our vision of life is mistaken,

An error that humanity seems intent on repeating.

D.H. Lawrence

"Healing”

Appendix A

Editors Preface to The Transcendent Function

Written by James Hillman

This is James Hillman’s preface from A.R. Pope’s original translation. Printed privately for students in 1957 at the Jung Institute in Zurich.

This essay, which has not before appeared in print either in English or German, was written in 1916. Because it has not been revised by Dr. Jung, but stands in its original form, this note may serve to place the essay within its historical context.

In 1916, Dr. Jung was working out those two fundamental formulation of analytical psychology which, after many revisals, are now known in English as “Two Essays on Analytical Psychology.” The first of these essays, in its 1916 version (see: Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology, 2nd ed., 1917, Chap. 14), mentions the transcendent function, which comes about as a result of “a new method of treating psychological materials such as dreams and phantasies.” Since he had discovered that dreams and fantasies had a prospective aspect which could not be reduced to past events, the reductive methods of the Vienna School became only partial methods. Therefore, it had become necessary to evolve this new synthetic or constructive method to deal with these prospective aspects. As a detailed description of this new method of the Zurich School in its relation to the transcendent function, this paper fits in as an important complement to the work of that period. The term “transcendent function”, used here for the “union of the conscious and unconscious”, is not so much in use today, having been replaced in a wider sense by the self and in a narrower sense by the concept of the reconciling symbol, both of which are prefigured in this paper, thereby giving us further witness to the logical and empirical development of Dr. Jung’s ideas. Also, as Miss Barbara Hannah points out in her short summary of this hitherto unpublished manuscript (see: “Some Remarks on Active Imagination”, Spring 1953), we have here an early and very clear account of active imagination as available nowhere else in Dr. Jung’s writings.

In addition to its historical value, the essay is also highly up-to-date. Active imagination is here discussed in terms of the compensatory relationship of the conscious and unconscious, that is the transcendent function is presented in terms of the psyche as a self-regulating system. This view is analogous to later ideas of self-regulation which are now much in vogue in contemporary psychology: the concept of homeostasis in physiology (Cannon, 1932) and the concept of the feed-back circuit in cybernetics (Wiener, 1948). Those views, however, the self-regulation is a biological or mechanical process. As such, the coming into balance (homeostasis) of self-steering (cybernetics) can not only e experienced, but also influenced by consciousness. Furthermore, as this paper shows, this influence of consciousness is necessary, because in civilized man self-regulation cannot be taken for granted as an automatic process. Without the participation of consciousness, there occurs an accelerated one-sidedness comparable to the physiologist’s description of run-away, positive feedback, i.e. “a machine, whose speed regulation is so insensitive that it can continue to function to a point of self-injury” to use the remarkably contemporary words of Dr. Jung (p. 14 below). Seen in the light of these current ideas, active imagination, as an instance of the transcendent function of self-regulation, becomes a way of directly influencing psychological balance, and so it can have far-reaching significance, particularly for the field of psycho-somatics.

Because of the importance of this essay, the students are very proud and grateful that Dr. Jung gave us the honor of bringing it to print. We thank Dr. Jung most cordially for entrusting it to us. We also want to thank Miss Barbara Hannah most warmly for her generous help in going through the translation, and Mrs. Aniela Jaffe for her kind cooperation in many ways.

References List

Beebe, J. (1992). “Response to A.Agnel: Another degree of complexity.” In M.A. Matoon (Ed.). The transcendent Function, Proceedings of the Twelfth International Congress of analytical Psychology, August 23-28, 1992.

Groddeck, G (1992.) Estudios psicananliticos sobre psicossomatica, Sao Paulo: Editora Perspectiva

Hubback, J. (1966). “ VII sermons ad Mortuos.” Journal of Analytical Psychology 11 (2) 95-111

Joseph, S. M. (1997). “Presence and absence through the mirror of the transference: A model of the transcendent function.” Journal of Analytical Psychology 42 (1), 139-56

Jung, C.G. (1953/1992) The Collected Works of Carl.G. Jung (Bollingen Series XX), Princeton: Princeton University Press.

- (1953) Two essays on analytical psychology, Collected Works: 7.

- (1954) The Practice of Psychotherapy, Collected works: 16.

- (1956) Symbols of Transformation, Collected Works: 5 (4^th Ed.).

- (1958) Psychology and Religion, Collected Works: 11 (2^nd Ed.).

- (1959) The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, Collected works: 9 Part 1 (2^nd Ed.).

- (1960) On the Nature of the Psyche, Collected works: 8.

- (1963) Mysterium Coniunctionis, Collected Works: 14.

- (1971) Psychological Types, Collected Works: 6 (8^th Ed.).

- (1973a) Letter to A. Zarine, May 3, 1939. C. G. Jung Letters, Vol.1, 1906-1951.

- (1984) Dream analysis: Notes of the seminar given in 1928-1930.

Jung, C.G. (1957) The transcendent function (A. R. Pope, Trans.). [Pamphlet]. Zurich: Student association, C.G. Jung Institute.

Jung, C.G. (1989c) Memories, Dreams and Reflections. New York. Vintage.

Jung, C.G. (1953/1992) The Collected Works of Carl. G. Jung (Bollingen Series XX),London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

(1968) Psychology and Alchemy, Collected Works: 12 (2^nd Ed.).

- (1970) Symbols of Transformation, Collected works: 5 (4^th Ed.).

- (1972) The Structure and dynamics of the Psyche, Collected Works: 8.

- (1974) Aion, Collected Works: 9 (II).

- (1998) Nietzshe’s Zarathustra, Bollingen Series XCIX, Vol 1.

Miller, J. (2004) The Transcendent Function. State University of New York Press.

Ramos, D, R. The Psyche of the Body. Brunner-Routeledge.

Powell, S. (1985) A bridge to understanding: The transcendent function in the analyst. Journal of analytical Psychology 30, 29-4

Sandner, D.F. (1992). “Response to Jef Dehib.” In M.A. Matoon (Ed.). The transcendent Function, Proceedings of the Twelfth International Congress of analytical Psychology, August 23-28, 1992.

Solomon, H M. (1992). Hegel’s dialectical vision and the transcendent function. In M.A. Matoon (Ed.). The transcendent Function, Proceedings of the Twelfth International Congress of analytical Psychology, August 23-28, 1992.

Scwarrtz - Salant, N. (1998). The mystery of human relationship: Alchemy and the transformation of the self. New York: Routledge

Bibliography

Bolen, J. (1990 ). Gods in Everyman. HarperPerenial

Carotenuto, Aldo. ( 1990 ) Eros and Pathos: The Far Side of Passion. Inner City Books.

Edinger, E. (1973) EGO and Archetype. Penguin Books Australia Ltd.

Edinger, E. (1986 ) Anatomy of the Psyche. Open Court Publishing Company

Edinger, E. (1995) The Mysterium Lectures. Inner City Books