C. G. Jung and the Dead: Visions, Active Imagination and the Unconscious Terrain

Analyst P. Kugler discusses this dream, pointing out that Jung shifts his interpretation of the dream from a subjective to the objective level because his approach ‘had become tired, worn out, and monotonous’ and that in his older age spirits became ‘experientially real’ for him.

I am inclined to assume that she is more probably a spirit than an archetype, although she presumably represents both at the same time. Altogether, it seems to me that spirits tend increasingly to coalesce with archetypes. For archetypes can behave exactly like real spirits, so that communications like Betty’s could just as well come from an indubi

because; ‘The dead heroes transform into serpents in the underworld.’

During Jung’s lifetime he vacillated as to whether spirits could be defined as split-off parts of a subjective psyche or whether they actually existed unto themselves, in se.9

Analyst Jeffrey Raff designates encounters with spirits and the dead to the psychoid realm, which can be defined as an objective unconscious with transpersonal elements.

This is best demonstrated when he asks if ‘the ghost or the voice is identical with the dead person or is a psychic projection’ and if what we attribute as information coming from the dead might be content that already exists in the unconscious.10

state: ‘Some people do believe that communication between the living and dead is a reality, and we do not have evidence to the contrary.’11

He raised doubts that the dead were ‘possessors of great knowledge’ in order to explain how his own experiences at times seemed to prove otherwise.

He discusses in detail the opinion that ‘souls . . . “know” only what they knew at the moment of death’.