Symptom as Archetypal Image

Edinger’s contribution is the bridge between Jungian symptom-as-compensation and the alchemical reading of suffering as the matter of the opus. “Every symptom derives from the image of some archetypal situation. For instance, many anxiety symptoms have as their archetypal context the hero’s fight with the dragon, or perhaps the rites of initiation” (Edinger 1972, p. 116). The symptom is read by amplification: parallel images from myth, ritual, scripture, alchemy are gathered around the patient’s complaint until the archetypal-image beneath becomes visible.

Edinger’s case of the transvestite illustrates the method. The patient’s compulsion to wear a piece of feminine clothing — through which “he felt confident, effective, and sexually potent” — is amplified through Ino’s veil in Odyssey V (the sea goddess giving Odysseus her enchanted veil for crossing the storm) and through the priests of the Magna Mater wearing feminine dress in service of the Great Mother. The veil represents “the support and containment which the mother archetype can provide the ego during a dangerous activation of the unconscious” (Edinger 1972, p. 115).

The transformation Edinger describes is not the symptom’s removal but its re-location: from compulsion to symbol, from sign of pathology to expression of the ego-self-axis under strain. “To be able to recognize the archetype, to see the symbolic image behind the symptom, immediately transforms the experience. It may be just as painful, but now it has meaning. Instead of isolating the sufferer from his fellow humans, it unites him with them in a deeper rapport” (p. 116). The symptom becomes the prima materia of the opus.

Relationships

Primary sources

edinger-ego-and-archetype (Edinger 1972, pp. 114–116)