Dam

Jung described consciousness as a dam blocking free flow of the river of the unconscious. Temperance acts as a kind of sluice, letting the waters through at a controlled rate. The Tower blows away the dam completely, releasing the locked up energy as a flood.

Pollack employs the dam as a central Jungian metaphor for consciousness as containment structure, whose violent dissolution by the Tower archetype releases repressed psychic energy.

Pollack, Rachel, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness, 1980thesis

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dam-, dɛmāna-, nmāna- (equivalent forms which are distributed according to the date of the texts), ‘family’ and ‘house.’ The second form, dɛmāna-, is derived from the first, dam-, by suffixation.

Benveniste establishes dam- as the Proto-Indo-European root signifying both ‘house’ and ‘family,’ tracing its morphological evolution across Avestan, Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin cognates.

Benveniste, Émile, Indo European Language and Society, 1973thesis

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i)w [n.] ‘house’ (11.). < IE *dam ‘house’ … Schmidt 1889: 222ff. derived it from *dam, the root noun belonging to δόμος, etc.

Beekes confirms the derivation of Greek δῶ ‘house’ from IE *dam, situating the root within a broader network of gift and dwelling terminology.

Beekes, Robert, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010supporting

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his inner But because he would lose his ‘dam-tshig’ the power and by dragging devotion, by trying to explain what goes beyond words … In the Tibetan systems of meditation the divine forms … are divided in ‘ye-Ses-pa’ and ‘dam-tshig-pa’.

Govinda introduces dam-tshig (samaya) as the Tibetan sacred vow or bond that constrains and empowers meditative visualization, functioning as a psychic container analogous to the dam metaphor.

Govinda, Lama Anagarika, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, 1960supporting

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following many forms of higher brain damage, an individual’s ‘center of being’ or ‘sense of self’ appears to be intact.

Panksepp notes that even extensive brain damage does not necessarily dissolve the subjective sense of self, raising questions about the neurological substrate of personal identity.

Panksepp, Jaak, Affective Neuroscience The Foundations of Human and Animal, 1998aside

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dam, 438 n. 1

Onians includes dam in a Sanskrit index entry, cross-referencing it within a comparative study of ancient European thought, affirming its philological currency.

Onians, R B, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988aside

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