ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out some of the elements of the Jungian textual terroir to make more explicit some of the tensions within the subterranean ideas and perspectives that infuse the field, and which can make it challenging for non-Jungians to engage with. There was an aspiration for the ‘theory of literature to attain some of the logical hardness and rigour of mathematics’, beginning with semiotics. The signifier of the mythological trope meets the signified of the archetypal image, and its meaning is explained and known. The post-structuralist perspective recognises inherent instability of meaning, with post-Jungians understanding ‘symbols’ as best possible formulation of otherwise unknown thing, and collective unconscious as that active agent which creates ‘sense of continuity’, subject, in coming to consciousness. This viewpoint encourages a more radical investigation of the text, with a deconstructive aim of opening up texts to focus on the traces of the unconscious workings of the psyche.
