Lecture III

Question by Miss Hannah

Has the brown cap got anything to do with the necessity of not feeling absurd in the collective unconscious? I mean getting such an attitude as a child has to the objective world?

Dr. Jung

Please explain. I don’t quite know what you mean.

Miss Hannah

I mean such a thing as you said about Faust feeling a fool when he talked to griffins and sphinxes. The man in wearing the cap felt like a fool, not in the aquarium, but when he came out into the visible world. How would you explain that? In coming out of the unconscious one feels a fool.

Dr. Jung

But why should one feel a fool? Have you ever seen people coming out of the movies, tears streaming down their faces, still obsessed by what they have seen inside? Just so our man is obsessed by a peculiar idea, something has gotten at him. You will see in later dreams how he felt. Caps and head-dresses have the meaning of a sort of general idea which covers the ground—to put it in philosophical language, a concept that unifies a number of smaller ones. The German language has a saying which covers that: “Alles unter einen Hut bringen.” ¹ So this man wears the cap of the brownies, he has been in the underworld, he looks at things from underneath, and has the point of view of a brownie, so he is not “a fit” in the outside world. He is now covered by that general idea, and that of course makes him feel foolish.

Dr. Schmitz

He is not yet adapted to the real world.

Dr. Jung

The point of view of the collective unconscious has no relation to his world. That uniting of the two points of view will be the result of a long analysis. In this dream he gets into something that would not fit into his world, something that could not be understood there, something that has estranged him to a certain extent. You will see from his next dream what the idea of the cap really works in him.

Next dream [14]

He dreams of a certain Greek merchant (he is half a merchant and half a planter) who has a cotton plantation on which he is growing a new species of cotton. He comes to the dreamer in order to bring him a number of immature capsules (cotton fruits in which the cotton is visible inside, but which have not yet opened) and he reports that in the country where he has his plantation, a new worm, a sort of cotton pest, has appeared and is causing immense damage. The dreamer asks him to show him the worm. He opens one of the capsules and the dreamer notices on one side a caterpillar-like worm and a sort of jelly-like substance similar to that which one sees on plums that are worm-eaten. The dreamer has some knowledge of the pests that destroy cotton crops, but this worm is like nothing he has ever seen before. It wriggles along and produces a black excrement. He is rather frightened, for evidently the worm has appeared in great numbers and has destroyed much of the crop. He thinks he should telegraph his agents, because this damage will injure the price of the crops, so he looks for his code-book (which will enable him to inform his firm without the knowledge of other agents) but finds that he has another book in his hand. His brother enters, while he is looking in the book, and the dreamer asks him for the code-book, saying he needs it to cable the condition of the crops. His brother laughs and tells him that he has already cabled a report of the crops. The dreamer is angry and thinks he should have been shown the cable, so that he would know what message had been sent.