Freud's own midlife breakdown took place while he was working on the dreambook. Ellenberger calls it a "creative illness" and compares it with those of Jung and Fechner. Freud's breakdown was his breakthrough into the realm of depth which his previous attempts via hypnosis, cocaine, and therapy with hysterics had not achieved. We must remember here that Freud's Traumdeutung is based almost entirely upon his own dreams, that it is a per-sonal descent and a personal report and a personal myth of the underworld, turned into a work of art with a body of teaching which has had validity for others, as did the nekyia of Dante and the other imaginal trips of the classics. They used images; Freud, concepts. Freud's feeling about his theory of dreams, however, attests to its archetypical significance. FREUD 21 The theory of dreams "marks a turning point," he says, "anal-ysis passed from being a psychotherapeutic method to being a psychology of the depths of human nature." His dream theory was for him "a new found land, which has been reclaimed from the regions of Folklore and Mysticism." Freud goes on to say that when he was often in doubt and confused about his work, it was to the dream and his theory of dreams that he turned, gaining thereby renewed confidence {NIL, pp. 15-16). 18 Ernest Jones, in writing about Freud's self-analysis (which constitutes the book on dreams), is also seized by the myth of the heroic descent to the underworld: ". . . Freud under-took his most heroic feat-a psycho-analysis of his own un-conscious . . . the uniqueness of the feat remains. Once done it is done for ever. For no one again can be the first to explore those depths. ... It was daring much, and risking much. What indomitable courage. . . ." On the next page, Jones calls it a "Herculean labour." 19 Freud's underworld experience, like Jung's own descent later, was the touchstone for an entire life. So, Freud wrote of his Traumdeutung: "Insight such as this falls to one's lot but once in a lifetime.
— James Hillman
Hillman catches something Jones cannot see, precisely because Jones is too close to the heroic grammar he's using. The language of "Herculean labour," "indomitable courage," "daring much" — this is the inflation that descents tend to generate in their survivors. The hero goes down, the hero comes back, and the coming back is the point. Freud himself uses a version of this: once-in-a-lifetime insight, new found land, a breakthrough that converted therapy into a science of depths. The myth of the heroic descent is already a way of managing what the descent actually was — a breakdown, confusion, cocaine, the long failures before the dreambook landed.
What Hillman is pointing to is how quickly the underworld gets converted into a founding achievement. Freud's nekyia becomes the Traumdeutung; the Traumdeutung becomes the authority that steadies him whenever doubt returns. He turns back to his own theory of dreams the way a man turns back to a religious text — not to descend again but to be confirmed. The descent became a credential. And credentials are one of the cleaner ways the soul has of not going back down. Jones helps by writing the hagiography. The heroic frame is erected precisely where the material was most unmanageable, and once erected it is very difficult to look under.
James Hillman·The Dream and the Underworld·1979