A Fool Such As I

Two years ago, at just about this time of year, I was preparing to take the Propaedeuticum -- or Stage 1 exams -- at the Jung Institute of Boston. This set of exams is major rite of passage at the Institute, as it marks the transition from the theoretical and academic phase of the program to the practice-oriented phase. To be in this second stage of training is roughly equivalent to beginning a residency in medicine. With the guidance of experienced analysts, the Stage 2 diploma candidate now becomes immersed in learning to become a practicing Jungian Analyst.
 
As my exam date drew nearer, I had this dream: I am getting ready to be tested. I introduce myself and say, “I am a fool. I don’t care what you think.”

Now, being a good Jungian, I take my dreams very seriously. That this dream referred to my exams seems quite clear. However, it’s that last phrase that I take to be the key to the dream. On the one hand, you could read the last part of the dream to mean, “I would be a fool to not care what others (i.e., the examiners) think.” After all, the point of an exam is to submit yourself to another’s judgment. It matters what others think because they have the power to pass you or fail you.

Being concerned about what others think, though, is not my problem. Or, rather, it is my problem, because I tend to worry too much about what others think about me. I spend far too much mental and emotional energy trying to accommodate myself to what I perceive to be the needs of others, trying to make myself into an “acceptable” version of myself. And though this can appear humble or self-effacing, it has a strong narcissistic quality to it. I want people to like me, so I present a likable self. In the end, I lose myself. In Jungian terms, I defend my persona, but am cut off from the Self — the wholeness of my being.

Given my tendency to care too much about what others think, perhaps the way to read the dream, then, is as an unambiguous statement regarding the attitude I needed as I approached my exams. That is, I needed to be able to say, “I am a fool. I don’t care what you think.” 

Jung’s attitude to dreams is very different from Freud’s. Where Freud sees the dream as a disguised fulfillment of an unconscious wish, Jung believes that the dream is a self-portrait of the individual’s psychic situation. In other words, the dream doesn’t disguise anything. It says what it means.

So, what does it mean to be a fool?

The figure of the Fool, however, does not originally have those connotations. It is a symbol of freedom and wisdom. As Joseph Campbell describes this image, it signifies a condition of human consciousness in which the individual is “careless of the bites of the world … a wandering sage.”

 

It represents a state of being in which the individual has attained a certain detachment from the cares of the world, in particular, from those cares that keep us limited in our narrow ego perspectives — wealth, possessions, achievements, social pressures. It is, to be sure, a subversive figure, but not a malevolent one. This subversive quality of the Fool is most clearly seen in those characters that populate Shakespeare’s plays. The Fool, like the one in King Lear, satirizes the dominant attitudes of the court. He speaks truths to the King that no one else has license to speak.

Now, I am nowhere near being a realized sage, but in light of all these considerations, I took this image from my dream as pointing to the danger of taking myself too seriously. If I went into my exams trying to prove to my examiners how good I was, I would be in danger of going off track. On the other hand, if I could say, “I don’t care what you think,” then I would be freed to confidently express what I thought and not try to present myself in some supposed “suitable” way. It was important that I owned and trusted my particular understanding of the material. 

Prompted by my dream, I determined that instead of continuing to be anxious about learning the material, I needed to focus more on getting myself in the right frame of mind. To do this, I decided to watch what I believe is  the greatest motivational speech ever committed to celluloid:  Win one for the Gipper?  Too obvious. Kenneth Branagh’s St. Crispin’s Day speech from the film, Henry V? Wonderful, but too bloody. Besides, I needed some Fool energy, not Kingly power. 

No, this masterpiece was the cure for what was ailing me: