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137 - Arthur I. Miller [70]

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instance, he once found himself in the midst of a great row in a restaurant, and a man threatened to throw him out of the window on the first floor.* Then he grew afraid of himself. He did not understand how he got into such a situation. Anyone outside could see very clearly how he stumbled into it. But to himself, he was a victim of circumstances; he had no control over his outer conditions because he was still an embryo suspended in the amniotic fluid where things simply happen. He was a victim of circumstances in this way because he was not related. This is what happens to such a nice boy continuously. He has one affair after another, and is always the victim.

Recognizing himself, Jung adds, Pauli “says: ‘What could I do?’ like that, like a so-called innocent girl, ‘What could I do?’ He held my both hands and kissed me.” Through his dream work and his intuition, Jung has quickly accessed the depths of Pauli’s being and brought some of his most disquieting behavior into the light of day.


Pauli’s mother

Soon afterward Pauli dreams of his mother pouring water from one basin into another.

Later, Pauli has a sudden recollection: the other basin had belonged to his sister, Hertha. Perhaps the dream means that Pauli’s mother has transferred his anima—his feminine side—to his sister. His mother is superior to him, but his sister is his equal. Thus in this dream he is freeing himself from his mother’s domination and also from his infantile attitude toward life.

Pauli had always kept in touch with Hertha. At the age of seventeen she had left the gymnasium to study acting at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Vienna. Two years later she made her first stage appearance in Breslau, now the Polish city of Wroclav. She was such a dazzling success that the theater impresario, Max Reinhardt, swept her off to Berlin to join his famous German Theater. There she widened her scope to perform on radio and in film. Pauli often boasted about his glamorous sister and enjoyed visiting her backstage after performances. It was also a way to meet other actresses.

Pauli confesses to Jung that all the women he has ever fallen in love with either looked like Hertha or, like Käthe Deppner, were her friends. But he has never felt close to her. He tells Jung that Hertha was born in his seventh year. Seven is a mystical number: the number of planets on their spheres, the number of days in the week, the number of orifices in the head, the number of voices heard by Moses on Mount Sinai. And seven marks the moment when his anima—his feminine aspect—was born, when a female other than his mother entered his life and he was no longer the center of attention.

Jung predicts that his anima will soon pass from Hertha to an unknown woman mired in his unconscious whom he still confuses with his dark side or shadow. This process had already begun, when Hertha married a fellow actor named Carl Behr in 1929, a union Pauli disapproved of. Jung interprets this in psychological terms. Pauli had been critical of her marriage because it meant she could not carry his anima any more, and he now had to share her with another man. The loss of his mother substitute—Hertha—further added to his troubled state of mind.

To free himself from his mother and Hertha will be a gradual process, says Jung. He will need Jung’s help to work out his relationship to the as-yet unknown new woman.


The sun worshipper

A short time later Pauli dreams that an unknown woman is standing on a globe, worshipping the sun.

The unknown woman has appeared at last, says Jung. She is Pauli’s anima and he sees her as a sun worshipper because she belongs to the esoteric beliefs of the ancient world. By separating his intellect from his anima, Pauli has buried the anima in this ancient world. In the same way in the modern world, the dominance of rationality, essential for the development of science, has relegated the anima to a backwater in the human mind.

“Atmavictu,” totem carved by Jung in 1920. He claimed that it reminded him of the one he had carved as a boy and that his unconscious supplied

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