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In this thought-provoking paper Blomeyer discusses the change which certain Jungian attitudes have undergone in the course of time. He warns us not to regard dreams and
symbols as ‘holy and numinous’ and not to value the unconscious more highly than the conscious. Definitions, Blomeyer says, depend on typological positions. Investigations by Plaut and Bradway have shown that most Jungians (rightly or wrongly) consider themselves to be introverted intuitive feeling types. This leads to an overestimation of symbols.
Blomeyer contrasts Freud's understanding of symbols as repressed concrete wishes and fears, with Jung's view of archetypal images as concretisations of ‘non-material and invisible’ archetypes. Jung's attitude to symbols leads to sublimation and transformation. The author sees symbols as information bearers of archetypes, and holds that not all symbols contain opposites. Symbols probably play a rôle in simple compensatory processes between conscious and unconscious. He sees transcendence as a special case of this. Transformation and individuation should not only be understood as union of opposites (which Blomeyer sees represented by the anima) but also as separation, and deintegration (represented by the animus) which play an important part in the formation of the ego (Fordham).
He points out that separation can be destructive (death) but also differentiating and constructive. He sees anima and animus not as counter-sexual complexes but as non-sexual functions both pertaining to men and women. Symbols, like the old oracles, can be helpful and liberating but also misleading and destructive. They can also contain defensive tendencies (defensive mandala pictures by children or rigid mandala pictures by schizophrenics as shown by the London School) and images in malignant regressions (Balint). He then illustrates how a prospective promising symbol (related to the self image) may express a regression to genetically earlier structures. He likens this to Spitz's c