The River

In the song “The River,” Bruce Springsteen uses the symbols and archetypes of river, swimming, and youth to express the theme of life’s disappointments. According to Stevens, “the river is also an obstacle to migration” (11).   At first swimming in the river was a “feeling [of being] at home” but through life’s disappointments turned into a “horror of being overwhelmed” (Stevens 421).  A child is a symbol of youth: “the child points to the future and carries within itself the seeds of its own maturity and completion” (Stevens 240).

Archetypal Photography

Quotes from Ariadne's Clue

I find Jung's idea interesting, he says, "We possess an innate symbol-forming propensity which exists as a healthy, creative, and integral part of our total psychic equipment. Although possessing a flexible capacity for local variations, this symbolizing ability proceeds on an archetypal basis which gives rise to characteristic symbolic manifestations (p.10)."
There are two quotes I found insightful the first is when Kekule says, "Let us learn to dream, gentlemen, and then we may perhaps find the truth (p.14)." The other is, "A thing is a thing. Its symbolic value is derived from the meanings and emotions it evokes in us. In other words, a thing becomes a symbol when something has been added to it. This does not alter its nature or its practical significance: it loads it with an increased weight of meaning (p.6-7)."
The quote I find most confusing is "the indicidual has a copy of that pattern in its CNS[central nervous sytem] and is structured to react in special kinds of ways when it perceives a matching pattern in the environment (p.24)."

My Dream

Last night I had a dream about my brother’s unborn baby.  The baby is not born yet, but I saw him in my dream, and imagined it being a boy. In my dream I could feel and smell him. As I held him in my arms, I became overfilled with joy and pride.  While I stared into his big brown eyes, I felt his hand grab on tightly to my finger, and at that moment I knew I would love him forever.