Life-and-Destruction                                                            Page 29

Judith Wright was influenced by the teaching of Carl Jung.  She says:

This certainly shows up in Woman To Man and in The Gateway, since I

found in it a great deal that excited me, and explained to me some of the

experiences I was having at the time.²⁹

The influence of Jung in her life was not academic. It was integrated into her

"experiences" and her understanding of Jung flowed from life-experience,

especially from her close relationship with her husband. It was she who

introduced Jack McKinney to Jung and they shared common conclusions:

Like Jung, he thought that much personal breakdown was in fact a

search for other ways of viewing the world (religious rather than

materialistic and rational) and that art, as an expression of the feeling

side of man, could act as a kind of bridge towards the next

development, and into the neglected inner world of feeling…³⁰

Jung explored the conscious and the unconscious in the context of analysis,

which for him always had to do with in the inner, symbolic world of people.

What he says about "analytical treatment" may be applied to life's experiences:

In so far as analytical treatment makes the "shadow" conscious, it

causes a cleavage and a tension of opposites which, in their rum seek

compensation in unity. The adjustment is achieved through symbols. If

all goes well the solution, seemingly of its own accord, appears out of

nature. Then and only then is it convincing. It is felt as "grace". Since

the solution proceeds out of the confrontation and clash of opposites, it

is usually an unfathomable mixture of conscious and unconscious

factors, and, therefore, a symbol, a coin split into two halves which fit

together precisely.  It represents the result of the joint labours of

consciousness and the unconscious. The clash (of opposites) which is at

first of a purely personal nature, is soon followed by the insight that the

subjective conflict is only a single instance of the universal conflict of

opposites. ³¹

²⁹ Letter to Shirley Walker, 10 August 1975, see Flame and Shadow p.211

³⁰ Letter to Walker, Flame and Shadow p.211

³¹ C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams and Reflections, Recorded and Edited by Aniela Jaffe

    Translators R & C Winston (Collins Fount Paperbacks: Great Britain, 1977) pp367-8

    One of the meanings of "symbolon" is the “tessera hospitalitatis” the broken coin which is

    shared between two parting friends, (see Jung, Memories, Dreams and Reflections note p.367)