Confirmation of our interpretation of salt as Eros (i.e., as a feeling relationship) is found in the fact that the bitterness is the origin of the colours .
We have only to look at thedrawings and paintings of patients who supplement their analysis by active imagination to see that colours are feeling-values.
Mostly, to begin with, only a pencil or pen is used to make rapid sketches of dreams, sudden ideas, and fantasies. But from a certain moment on the patients begin to make use of colour, and this is generally the moment when merely intellectual interest gives way to emotional participation.
Occasionally the same phenomenon can be observed in dreams, which at such moments are dreamt in colour, or a particularly vivid colour is insisted upon.
Disappointment, always a shock to the feelings, is not only the mother of bitterness but the strongest incentive to a differentiation of feeling.
The failure of a pet plan, the disappointing behaviour of someone one loves, can supply the impulse either for a more or less brutal outburst of affect or for a modification and adjustment of feeling,and hence for its higher development. This culminates in wisdom if feeling is supplemented by reflection and rational insight.
Wisdom is never violent: Where wisdom reigns there is no conflict between thinking and feeling.
- CARL JUNG
Salt is not a very common dream-symbol, but it does appear in the cubic form of a crystal, which in many patients’ drawings represents the centre and hence the self.
It is said in the mystic language of our sages, He who works without salt will never raise dead bodies. . . . He who works without salt draws a bow without a string.
For you must know that these sayings refer to a very different kind of salt from the common mineral. . . Sometimes they call the medicine itself ‘Salt.’
Apart from its lunar wetness and its terrestrial nature, the most outstanding properties of salt are bitterness and wisdom.
The factor common to both, however incommensurable the two ideas may seem, is, psychologically, the function of feeling.
Tears, sorrow, and disappointment are bitter, but wisdom is the comforter in all psychic suffering. Indeed, bitterness and wisdom form a pair of alternatives: where there is bitterness wisdom is lacking, and where wisdom is there can be no bitterness.
- CARL JUNG.
> The Self, signifies the unification of consciousness and unconsciousness in a person, and representing the psyche as a whole. It is realized as the product of individuation, which in his view is the process of integrating various aspects of one's personality.
> Jung considered that from birth every individual has an original sense of wholeness of the Self—but that with development a separate ego consciousness crystallizes out of the original feeling of unity.
> Self can refer to the notion of inherent subjective individuality, the idea of an abstract center or central orderingprinciple, and the account of a process developing over time'.
Let's now study Emotions....the colours as Jung says.
> Primary emotions are the first emotions that you feel for any given event.Secondary emotions are feelings you experience after primary emotion.
> Primary emotions are immediate, instinctual responses to stimuli (e.g., joy, fear, sadness). They’re universal and often linked to specific events or situations.
> Secondary emotions are reactions to primary emotions and are more complex, often influenced by personal experiences, beliefs, and thoughts.
> Any feeling can be a primary or secondary emotion, the key thing to remember: are secondary emotions push someone away or protecting a more profound emotion that might be too difficult to share.
> Primary emotions, include joy, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust, which are universally recognized and experienced by individuals across cultures.
> Secondary emotions are thought to arise from higher cognitive processes and come after the primary emotion. For instance, after feeling the primary emotion of anger, you may feel the secondary emotion of shame afterward; instead of feeling joy, you may feel relief or pride; instead of feeling fear, you may feel hateful.
> The purpose of secondary emotions is to cover up the sensitive primary emotions with something less sensitive. In this way, they are a way of protecting the self from being vulnerable.
> Some of the secondary emotions can lead to more hurt and pain as they build up over time, especially if they are emotions such as guilt, shame, resentment, frustration, and remorse. These emotions are often learned in childhood from parents or other people in our lives.
Closing lines :
JUNG’s investigation into alchemy in “Sal” leads him to see salt as the principle of Eros at the base of the self.
Let's remember those words ...
He who works without salt, will never raise dead bodies. . . . He who works without salt draws a bow without a string....