The snake in the mandala: dialogical aspects of Jung ’ s ‘ A study in the process of individuation ’

: Jung ’ s study centres on the ampli ﬁ cation of pictures painted by a woman patient and posits their sequence as evincing the initial stages of the individuation process. His text performs a dialogue with its audience whereby Jung persuades us of this truth, and also reveals Jung ’ s dialogue with his patient and with his own ideas. The present paper revisits the clinical material ﬁ rst with a focus on the interaction between Jung and his patient. The second part compares the 1940 and 1950 versions of Jung ’ s study with attention to tensions that traverse them, such as Jung ’ s attitude to the animus and his two voices as a practitioner and a theorist.

'A study in the process of individuation' (henceforth 'the Study') has two English versions.The earlier one is an expanded version of a conference paper published in 1934 in German (Jung 1940).It was thoroughly revised a decade later and translated as the version included in the Collected Works (Jung 1950).Both centre on a series of paintings by a middle-aged American woman who came to Zurich in 1928.Her identity is now known (Kristine Mann) but the real person should be kept separate from the protagonist of the Study -' Miss X'-when considering the case's significance for Jung.'As a matter of fact, it was this very case that led me to the study of alchemy', claimed Jung (1940,p .51).He retrospectively amplified her imagery with instances from alchemy and Christian mysticism.The Study gives just enough clinical history as deemed necessary for background information about the pictures.The first picture shows a seashore and a woman; in the second, 'she' becomes an abstract sphere, and in subsequent pictures the sphere is transformed into mandalas.The 1940 publication includes reproductions of the first five pictures, whereas the Collected Works presents 24 colour plates, of which the first 17 were painted during 1928-1929 and the rest in the 1930s (Jung 1950, para. 615 n.172) 1 .
According to Jung, the goal of the individuation process is the integration of the personality, and the Study shows its initial stages in one individual.His premise is that the contents of her pictures issued forth from an inner domain wherein one's interactions with the unconscious are 'exactly as if a dialogue were taking place between two human beings' (Jung 1957, para. 186).As a piece of text, the Study performs a dialogue with its audience whereby Jung tries to persuade us of this truth.It reveals also Jung's dialogue with his own ideas.
Jung's 'dialogue' may well have some roots in his experiences documented in the Red Book, and it might be tempting to interpret the Study in relation to that; however, this paper's focus is on how Jung presented his ideas to his audience, not how he got his ideas.The Red Book was created about fifteen years before Jung treated Miss X, and what exactly he might have carried from it into this clinical case would be sheer conjecture on our part.Jung had kept the Red Book private for a reason that itself is historically significant.His reticence to disclose his fantasies accords with his striving to gain scientific credibility for analytical psychology (Jones 2019).Hence the published Study reveals Jung's persona as a scholar-practitioner, i.e. his adaptation to the demands of the scientific community of the day.
Since he continued to develop his ideas in the interim decades, some emphases differ across the two versions, and consequently the existence of the two texts provides insight into Jung's development as a theorist, although constraints of space prevent due expansion of this theme in the following.
The Study's significance for contemporary analytical psychology in general is manifold.It demonstrates the technique of active imagination, substantiates Jung's theory of the collective unconscious, and enriches Jungian alchemical studies.It raises issues of contemporary interest, such as Jung and gender (e.g.Young-Eisendrath 2012), the scientific status of Jungian hypotheses (e.g.Jones 2014, 2019), the assimilation of relational assumptions into analytical psychology (e.g.Colman 2013, Meredith-Owen 2013), and morealtogether more than can be explored in a single paper.This paper draws attention to dialogical aspects of the Study, and thereby raises a question about the role of dialogicality in the process of individuation.
The specification 'dialogical aspects' alludes to Bakhtin's dialogism, which encompasses more than mere conversation (Holquist 2002).Bakhtin (1984) spoke of 'the dialogic nature of human life itself', contending that 'to live means to participate in dialogue: to ask questions, to heed, to respond, to agree, and so forth' (p.293).In the Study we see Miss X asking questions, heeding Jung's advice, and so forth (expanded below).Marková (2003), a Bakhtin-inspired social psychologist, defines dialogicality as the 'fundamental capacity of the mind to conceive, create and communicate about social realities in terms of the Alter' (p.85).Jung clearly functions as the 'other' who enables Miss X to acquire a new perspective on herself.He insists that Miss X's pictures were spontaneous irruptions of the unconscious, and yet the text reveals the cocreation of a reality wherein the pictures acquire the significance that Jung accords to them.Does this invalidate Jung's assumptions about the naturalness of the process?
Since we know what happened between Jung and Miss X only through his text, the text itself is also in question here.Fairclough (2003), also following Bakhtin, defines the dialogicality of a text as 'the dialogue between the voice of the author of a text and other voices' (p.41) and proposes a 'scale of dialogicality': the most dialogical text includes other people's voices (e.g.attributing quotations to them) whereas the least dialogical text reports 'assumption, taking things as given' (p.61).The Study can be located on both ends of this scale.Jung conveys Miss X's reasoning about the pictures, even quotes her; and yet makes assumptions about the truth of his own word.'The word lives, as it were, on the boundary between its own context and another, alien, context ', averred Bakhtin (1981,p .284).Jung's word about Miss X lives not only on the boundary between its own context and various contexts in which we agree or disagree with Jung, but also on the boundary between the early and later versions of the Study (expanded later below).

Jung's assessment of her 'problem'
The Study introduces us to a woman with a scientific education, whose acquaintance Jung had made during the 1920s in the USA.After studying psychology for nine years, she travelled to Europe in 1928, aged 55,t o continue her studies under him.In the 1940 paper (likely to be read by her and others who could identify her), Jung stressed that she was 'in no way morbid or neurotic ' (1940,p .32).On the contrary, Miss Xwho comes across in his description as highly intelligent, motivated and independenttranspires as an embodiment of what he regarded as a 'normal' malaise of modernity.As Jung (1943) put it, 'disunity with oneself is the hallmark of civilized man' (para.16), a cultural 'pathogenic conflict' due to the 'progressive subjugation of the animal in man' (para.17).Her condition The snake in the mandala seemed to epitomize the psychic one-sidedness of 'civilized man', an imbalance manifesting in overvaluing rationality, autonomy and self-efficacy.
In the 1920s, Jung already articulated the concepts of anima and animus as the archetypal opposites of one's biological sex.He warned about being possessed by the counter-sexual archetype: 'A woman possessed by the animus is always in danger of losing her femininity ' (1928a, para. 337).In the early version he introduced the animus halfway through the case history apropos an element of the third picture (details later below), which he saw as signifying a transition point: 'Up to this time the patient lived in serious error suggested to her by the animus.… He had made her believe that man is only an ego who has to do everything himself ' (1940,p .38).The revised version introduces the animus right away in the opening paragraph: As the daughter of an exceptional father she had varied interests, was extremely cultured, and possessed a lively turn of mind.She was unmarried, but lived with the unconscious equivalent of a human partner, namely the animus (the personification of everything masculine in a woman), in that characteristic liaison so often met in women with an academic education.(Jung 1950, para. 525) He attributed her personality imbalance to 'a positive father complex: she was "fille à papa" and consequently did not have a good relation to her mother'-but assures us that 'her animus was not of the kind to give her cranky ideas.She was protected from this by her natural intelligence' (para.525).The caveat nonetheless reinforces a disconcerting Jungian attitude: 'Female authority has been belittled as "animus possession"' (Young-Eisendrath 2012,p .43).Miss X may be exceptional in avoiding crankiness (Jung implies) but she is a disunited woman who ought to harmonize culture and her feminine nature within herself.

Her journey in pictures
Whereas Jung attributed Miss X's 'problem' to a malaise of modernity, between the lines we may glean what Erik Erikson would describe as the 'generativity versus stagnation crisis' in midlife.Erikson did not yet formulate his theory of ego development in 1928, but Miss X herself provided a metaphor of stagnation.One of her reasons for the trip was a realization that 'she had reached a limit and "got stuck"', and that her impasse was due to a history of a distant relationship with her late mother (1950, para. 525).Before coming to Zurich she visited Denmark, her mother's homeland, in an attempt to feel closer to her long-dead mother, and hoping that this could get her 'unstuck'.The Danish landscape affected her so deeply that she started painting, something she had never done before.She painted what she saw.The day before meeting Jung she tried to paint a landscape from memory.Whilst painting, a fantasy came to her mind.She saw herself with the lower half of her body stuck in the earth on a rocky beach, and felt 'caught and helpless'; suddenly she saw Jung 'in the guise of a medieval sorcerer' and shouted for help; he came along, touched the rock with a magic wand, and the stone instantly burst open, releasing her unharmed (para.525).She painted this fantasy to the best of her limited ability.The picture shows a crudely-painted shore with rocks looking like grey eggs and pyramids.One rock morphs into a grey woman looking to the sea.In the sky there is a light-blue cloud with a yellow centre, supposedly showing Jung-the-sorcerer with his magic wand.
The fantasy may have irrupted on its own accord, but the allegory is transparent and was fully recognized by her.The significance of this picture is twofold.First, it indicated to Jung that what she really wanted to know was not how 'liberation might be possible' in general (intellectual knowledge) but 'how and in what way it could come about for her ' (1950, para. 528).Second, it suggested to him that in her case the process would work via painting.Whereas picture #1 was painted on impulse, #2 was produced with intention and planning.Jung advised her 'to try to make a picture' of the fantasy, and in view of her artistic limitations advised her to introduce as much 'fantasy' into the picture as she could, and also not to shy away from using vivid colours (para.530).Following his guidance, she tried to better #1 but allowed the composition to become abstract.In #2, the oval rocks are replaced with circles, the sorcerer is gone, and instead a zigzag flash of lightning reaches out from the top right and half-encircles a sphere with a red nucleus which is located at the centre of the picture (replacing the woman = herself).
In #3 the background is replaced with swashes of colour, while the sphere acquires a belt of curved lines and the number '12' inside it.The lightning is replaced with a small yellow snake placed away from the sphere.She knew Jung's 'stories of the dream life of African primitives ' (1950, para. 546), and this oriented her to her own dream life.The picture links to two 'big' dreams she had several years earlier.One dream centred on a snake in the sky -hence she added it to the picture 'as an afterthought' (para.545).The floating sphere and its equatorial band bearing the number '12' was taken from another dream.The number signified to her the hour of her birth (midnight) and connoted in-betweenness.She understood the sphere as 'symbolizing the "true personality"' -a meaning that Jung endorsed, though he queried her knowledge: 'it is not quite clear how she understands the relation of the ego to the "true personality"' (para.549).She told Jung that the moment of painting #3 felt like 'the "climax" of her life' (para.549).
If the images gushed forth like free associations, it could be because she was intent on painting the 'true' personality in accordance with her understanding of Jungian theory.She knew the kind of associations he liked to make, and initially compared the girdled sphere to the ring of Saturn, but reflected that whereas the latter is composed of disintegrated moons, her ring was 'the origin of future moons such as Jupiter possesses', and added that the black lines are 'lines of force' meant to indicate motion (1950, para. 545).Jung asked heuristically, 'Then it is the vibration of the band that keeps the sphere floating?'She replied, 'Naturally, they are the wings of Mercury, the messenger of the gods.The silver is quicksilver!' elaborating, 'Mercury, that is Hermes, is the Nous, the mind or reason, and is the animus, who is here outside instead of inside.He is like a veil that hides the true personality' (para.545).In a footnote (para.545,n .57), Jung informs us that she was paraphrasing a paper of his (1928a) that she had read in an English translation.Jung's amplification of #3 relates the sphere's mercurial band to alchemical and mythological motifs of a serpent circling the world.'She tells me that I call it the animus, because she takes the animus in a negative sense as the understanding that gives unsuitable interpretations', says Jung (1940, p. 36).It was an understanding that he strongly encouraged at the time (more on this below).Next, she set out to tackle the problematic of #3.It bothered her that the band of quicksilver (=animus, mercurial serpent) was outside when it ought to be inside the sphere (the integrated personality).
Little is said about the little snake in #3.If we focus on this element, however, the pictures may tell of a transformation in how she related herself to Jung.It started half-whimsically with Jung-the-sorcerer who rescues her (#1).'He' is coming down towards her from the far top-left corner of the picture.In #2 this element becomes a bold flash of lightning that cracks open the sphere (= her Self), moving downwards from the middle-right top.Then it turns into a distant thin snake (#3), which is situated in the same spot and orientation as the lightning but is smaller and does not touch the sphere.In #4, the snake becomes big, black, and phallus-like, half-encircling the top of the sphere, and penetrates it from above.The sphere now looks like the female organ stylized to resemble a flower with silver petals.The sexual reference is plain to see.Jung tells us, 'she could not accept the snake, because its sexual significance was only too clear to her without any assistance from me ' (1950, para. 559).She felt that the black snake was 'a "terrible danger", … threatening the "integrity of the sphere"', so much so that 'fire breaks out (emotion)' at the point where the snake penetrates the sphere (para.559).Jung reassured her that it was perfectly normal, a 'well-known process' that she could safely accept, and showed her similar drawings by a male patient.Later she told him, 'I suddenly understood the whole process in a more impersonal way' (para.559), and reflected that painting #4 was 'the most difficult, as if it denoted a turning point of the whole process' (para.562).
If the snake element evolved from Jung-the-sorcerer, did her emotional difficulty with it indicate a 'forbidden' fantasy about Jung?In any case, Jung swiftly deflected her away from the insinuation of physical intimacy.It would be too simplistic, however, to link his deflection to his animosity to Freud.In the 1920s, Jung acrimoniously condemned the Freudian tendency to attribute everything to sexreferring to Freud's premises as 'sick phantasies'; opining that 'Immense damage is done … through the Freudian doctrine' which created a regrettable state of affairs whereby 'people believe it is their duty to talk of sex incessantly ' (1928b, p. 347).However, in 1950 Jung himself tells us that the snake in #4 represents the phallus.He is aware of the sexual connotation but feels that there is a deeper meaning for this snake in her picture.On a visceral level, his dismissal of the sexual connotation might feel to her like a rejection, whilst simultaneously his steering seems to open up an understanding of the 'sexual' picture as a metaphor for her mind being fertilized by Jungian teaching.
She felt that #5 'followed naturally … with no difficulty' (para.564).The sphere's nucleus now divides cell-like, representing natural growth.The black snake has detached from the sphere and now stands alone on the right-hand side of the sphere.Following the clockwise movement of this element from Jung-the-sorcerer in front of her on the top left of #1, 'he' has arrived to be behind her in #5.He may be behind her in the sense that she 'got over' the forbidden attraction, and in the sense of pushing her forward.Jung saw the emergence of differentiation in this picture, which depicts a sphere enclosing four symmetrically placed spirals.Miss X had read his works and (as he points out), based on her knowledge of analytical psychology, she interpreted the four shapes as the four functions of consciousness (1950, para. 565).He had defined individuation as 'a process of differentiation ' (1921, para. 757), referring to the differentiation of the functions of consciousness (thinking, feeling, sensation, intuition).However, Jung dismissed her interpretation, and had another explanation for why the imagery of #5 represented differentiationinsisting that this meaning was 'not due to any conscious reflection' on her part (para.564).Her conscious reflection was based on intellectual knowledge, hence inauthentic.
Irrespective of what Jung regarded as the authentic meaning and how astute his interpretation was, here we see Miss X positioning herself as the good student versed in his teaching, and see him implicitly repositioning her as a misguided woman led astray by studying too much.If she is to retain her selfpositioning as the good studentindeed as an acolyteshe must internalize his positioning of her as animus-possessed.We glimpse here the process that social constructionists describe as the discursive production of selves (cf.Jones 2007).We glimpse also the inception of a narrative truth about her development.Spence (1982) drew attention to how 'something may become true simply by being put into words' by the analyst (p.175).
In #6 the snake disappears, and no functionally equivalent element seems to take its place here or for the remainder of the series.Nevertheless, when the sphere's background and nucleus become black in #7, Jung interpreted it as an intrapsychic assimilation of 'the blackness of the snake' (para.574).Interestingly, he did not associate blackness with her depression, although he remarked regarding a cross in #7 that the cross connotes suffering for Christians, and that the 'mood of this picture is one of more or less painful suspension … over the dark abyss of inner loneliness' (para.574).If my observation of the 'positioning' process is near the mark, it is not surprising to read: 'She now discovered that her "rapport" with me, her analyst (= father), was unnatural and unsatisfactory'; she wallows in self-depreciation, saying that she 'was giving herself airs' and 'posing as an intelligent, understanding pupil' (para.586).She admitted that she 'was very silly', and could now see 'at last that sex was "not … merely a mechanism for producing children and not … only an expression of supreme passion, but was also banally physiological and autoerotic"' (para.586).
This realization made it possible for her to draw the next picture.There is more blackness in #8, but the plant-like shape within the mandala continues to grow.In #9 five small green snakes appear inside the mandala, along with a goat, birds, and four hexagrams from the I Ching.Jung comments that 'the connection with the East is deliberately stressed by the patient' by virtue of these hexagrams (1950, para. 597).Nevertheless, he comments that although she put them in the mandala on purpose, they were 'authentic results' of her preoccupation with the I Ching and Eastern therapies (para.602).Genuine as her interest was, however, the hexagrams were hardly spontaneous projections of the unconsciousshe chose these four out of the oracle's sixty fourand the choice was clearly tailored to Jung, who was keenly interested in the I Ching during the 1920s.Superimposing his own interpretations on the ancient Chinese commentaries per hexagram, Jung reads them in this order (hexagrams 16, 41, 46, 50): 'a movement coming from the unconscious, and is expressed by music and dancing'; 'self-restraint and reserve, i.e. a seeing decrease of oneself'; 'growth and development of the personality, like a plant pushing out of the earth'; 'the personality becomes differentiated' (paras.598-601).To me, it looks like a self-narrative of individuation designed to be read by Jung.
Picture #9 was painted in November 1928.In January 1929 she left Zurich with #10 unfinished, though she finished it later.There are now two semihuman goats, birds, and a new element: crabs.The picture was sent to Jung without any interpretation, but he knew that she knew the horoscope and that Cancer was her birth-sign.Pictures #10 through to #24 include more animate and environmental objects, now skilfully painted: the sun, moon, rainbow, human figures, etc., and backgrounds of city and sea.The later mandalas are aesthetically pleasing and give the impression of an artist experimenting with composition, colour, and content.She painted #24 in May 1938 on her last visit to Zurich.The centre of the mandala is a large white lotus-looking flower with stylized leaves and two golden snakes below it.Pretty as it is, the picture lacks the dynamism and rawness of her initial paintings.Jung says nothing about it.
Kristine Mann continued to paint mandalas.I 'hear' her own voice surfacing in precisely those elements that bypass the Jungian fixation with the arcane.In #14, the mandala floats above Fifth Avenue New York, a cityscape with skyscrapers and cars of the era.In #15 it floats between Manhattan and the sea; and in #17, over a lake or lagoonas if picking up something she had let drop after her initial compulsion to paint the Danish landscape.Darlington (2015) reports that on the back of #24, Mann identified the flower as a 'night blooming cereus', the flower of an American cactus: 'Mann is not copying a lotus from the mythologies of India or the medieval mystical white rose.... Instead, she defines her own American source of inspiration' (p.388).To me, however, Miss X's journey-in-pictures culminates in #9, when the dialogue-with-the-unconscious settles into populating mandalas with known symbolism and personal associations.

'What happens afterwards'
Since Jung (1950) begins with information about a patient, a naïve reader might expect a clinical case studya narrative with a beginning (background), a middle (describing a course of treatment), and a happy ending (the patient is cured, ergo the treatment was effective).Yet, as Palmer ( 2003)r e flects, 'Jung tells us that this series of pictures "illustrates the initial stages of individuation", but unfortunately we do not know whether they provided Miss X with any therapeutic benefit' (p.146).Jung defends the omission of an ending: Our series of pictures illustrates the initial stages of individuation.It would be desirable to know what happens afterwards.But … nobody has ever been able to tell the story the whole way, at least not to mortal ears, for it is not the story-teller but death who speaks the final 'consummatum est.' (1950, para. 617) Jung informs us that Miss X died of breast cancer 16 years after her stay in Zurich (1950, para. 608).Back in the USA she painted many more mandalas, which she bequeathed to him.He selected a few to include in the revised version, but refrained from commenting on these because they came into his possession 'unfortunately without text or commentary' (para.616).
Jung's caveat is that he cannot 'demonstrate how an entire lifetime expresses itself in symbolic form ' (1950, para. 616).Such expression occurs in dreams and other fantasy images, but the individuation process requires paying attention to their messages: 'The ego takes the lead, but the unconscious must be allowed to have its sayaudiatur et altera pars' (Jung 1957, para. 185).He seems blind to the likelihood that Miss X was allowing her unconscious to have its say as long as it spoke Jungianism.Sceptics might opine that she duped him, but I am inclined to see a co-construction of meaning in a relationship defined by the power asymmetry of doctor-patient, teacher-pupil, The snake in the mandala and mentor-apprentice.She came wanting him to liberate her, and found liberation through his works.Analytical psychology allowed her to find within herself something bigger than herself.
The Study tells a story complete unto itself.Like traditional folktales, the ordeal adventure genre (cf.Bakhtin 1981) or indeed the 'archetypal' hero's journey, it begins with something amiss which mobilizes the hero.Miss X feels 'stuck' and travels to Europe.As in tales of this genre, there follows a sustained ordeal.Miss X struggles through analysis, confronts the villainy of her animus, and so on.There is a happy ending: she goes home to paint pretty mandalas.What happened afterwards depends, however, on whether we have Miss X or Kristine Mann in mind.Negatively read, the text depicts an unfulfilled, overeducated old spinster desperately seeking 'Jung'.A different impression emerges when we read it with foreknowledge of Mann's achievements and contribution to the Jungian movement in the USA.
Dr Kristine Mann , daughter of a Swedenborgian minister, received her medical degree in 1913 and devoted her life to women's health and education.Bair (2003) lists her among 'the many remarkable women who were profoundly influenced by Jungian psychology' and actively promoted it in Britain and the USA, and yet 'have always been relegated to secondary status, as little more than helpmates' to male champions of Jungian theory (p.305-6).Mann was indeed a most remarkable woman according to accounts collated by Darlington (2015; see also Anthony 2017).She opened her own Jungian practice, one of the first in the USA, in 1921.I n1936, Mann and her friends, Ester Harding and Eleanor Bertine, created the Analytical Psychology Club of New York, which later became the Kristine Mann Library, now the world's most extensive collection in analytical psychology.It could be reflected that through the impact that her own work post-1928 had in the USA, her analysis with Jung had impact beyond her personal journey.On a personal level, Mann and Jung maintained contact to her last days.Having learned of her terminal illness, Jung immediately wrote to her (1 February 1945) imparting his own near-death experience, and concluding, 'Be patient and regard it as another difficult task, this time the last one' (reprinted in Darlington 2015,p .394).

Progression and tensions across the two texts
The 1950 text is substantially longer, consisting of 64 pages compared to 21 smaller pages of the 1940 edition.The anonymous 'woman patient' of 1940 becomes 'Miss X' in 1950.There is more information about their clinical conversations, and the text describes considerably more pictures.Jung adds material and removes less essential content towards making the same basic argument.The bulk of new material reflects interests that Jung had pursued since the 1930s.Certain tensions traverse both texts (and the Jungian corpus in general) though not in equal measures.Like shifting one's weight from foot to foot when walking, these shifts of weight that are placed on particular themes make the project of the Study 'walk' from 1928 -when Miss X was in analysisthrough writing about it in 1940 to rewriting it for the 1950 publication.

The devil in the details
Both texts report that she identified the vibrating belt around the sphere in #3 as the animus.As mentioned, it bothered her that it was outside the sphere; and when she tried to correct it in #4, the big black snake appeared.The 1940 text turns to discuss the animus at this pointa point at which Jung sees a positive transformation happening in the patient.Until then, she 'had lived in serious error … the animus … had made her believe that man is only an ego' (1940,p .38).This detail thus appears at a stage analogous to describing the effects of a medical treatment.In contrast, the 1950 text introduces the animus from the outset as a diagnostic datum.
In 1940, Jung did not spare damning words when describing the snake: 'The black snake is like a demon.Evil is enfolding her …'(p.37); 'The devil here is also the animus' (p.37); 'an error suggested to her by the animus, the black serpent, the devil' (p.38); 'The serpent demon, however, takes us in with the idea that we … can direct our lives.He is the devil.… All this devilish presumption of the ego …' (p.39).None of that is repeated in 1950, where the snake acquires also a spiritual aspect: 'the snake is black, dark, chthonic, a subterranean and ithyphallic Hermes; but it has the golden wings of Mercury and consequently possesses his pneumatic nature' (para.556).The 1950 amplification of #4, which spans six pages, highlights positives: 'Since the snake evolved out of the flash of lightning', says Jung (referring to the lightning in #2), 'I would like to instance parallels where lightning has the same illuminating, vivifying, fertilizing, transforming and healing function that in our case falls to the snake' (para.558).The snake's healing function could not be more diametrically opposed to the evil animus of 1940.I n1950, Jung invokes also the Biblical serpentwho 'defiled Eve and also used Adam as a catamite'-but he does so via a Gnostic account of 'the serpent, who is the tree of knowledge of good and evil' (para.560).He now comments apropos 'the attack by the snake, who represents knowledge' in #4 that 'we fear knowledge of the truth, in this case, the shadow' (para.560).Hence, the truth to which Jung refers has changed.Earlier it was her nascent understanding that the ego controls only a small part of 'psychic happening'; alluding to the rock-bound woman in #1, he stated, 'this truth provides her with the formula that enables her to free herself from her identity with earth' (1940,p .39).

The snake in the mandala
The change in Jung's attitude to the mythological serpent did not alter his basic understanding of the significance of the snake in #4.But in 1940 the big black snake led him to rant about 'the devilish presumption of the ego' which denies the existence of forces that 'are not "my wishes", "my desires"', and to propose that the unconscious compensates for this one-sidedness by wishing 'to force evil upon usobviously to show us that we know nothing ' (1940, p. 39).The heat of confrontation with evil is gone in 1950.Why was he initially so angry with the black snake?Was his attack a defensive reaction, a case of fighting his own demons?How or why did this hostility dissipate years later?Whatever the answer, when the two texts are regarded as consecutive chapters, the later chapter conveys a sense of closure, of making peace with the beast.

East and West
Jung turns to the East as the 'Other' of the West.The earlier text opens with a quotation of two entire verses (20 and 21) from Tao Te Ching (1940,p.30-31).There follows a long preamble in which Jung justifies having to turn to the East: the ancient Chinese knew something that 'white man' in the West has not figured out; namely, how to let things take their natural course.The Study tells how a woman patient had 'let it happen'.I n1940, Jung states that the 'point of this case history is that the unconscious led my patient to that insight which [people] ought to attain if they are to experience the illumination of the "inner region"' (p.41).A decade later, Jung described the Study as 'a groping attempt to make the inner processes of the mandala more intelligible ' (1950, para. 623).By this time, the term 'mandala' became a Jungian trope for the integrated personality, and little of his earlier engagement with Eastern thought is carried into the revision.The 1950 text retains only Verse 21 of the Tao Te Ching (in a different English translation), now presented as an epigraph without any elucidation of its relevance for the case study.Even in 1940, despite introducing the Study with borrowed Eastern wisdom, Jung amplified the clinical material with Western alchemy and Christian mysticism.Such content is greatly expanded in the 1950 text whereas the 'let it happen' lesson from the East has become submerged.
The East/West dichotomy enters the 1950 text at a more fundamental level, most explicitly apropos #9.While Jung comments that Miss X deliberately stressed the connection with the East by putting hexagrams in the mandala, he dismisses any parallel with Buddhist mandalas because her mandala 'is divided into an upper and a lower half'; and he picks up Christian and European mythological associations: 'Above, there hover three white birds (pneumata signifying the Trinity); below, … two ravens (Wotan's birds) ' (1950, para. 597).The Eastern references in #9 could reflect a genuine interest; but the picturean utterance meant to be 'heard' by Jungperforms also a visual declaration that she follows his own interests.In the 1920s Jung delved into Eastern thought.He painted his first mandala in 1916, then many more, and gradually during 1918-1920 came to realize that the image symbolizes 'the self, the wholeness of the personality, which is above all harmonious' (Jung 1989,p .196).The months in which he treated Miss X precipitated his exhaustive 'Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower' (Jung 1929) in which, inter alia, he identified peculiarities of 'European mandalas' drawn by 'patients'.

The universal and the particular
Like the mandala, which became a trope for the whole Self, alchemy became a Jungian trope for the individuation process.As this process unfolds in the Study, Miss X disappears backstage.Her function in Jung's storytelling is instrumental, like a fictional character created by an author to push the plot onward.In the 1950 text, the section 'Picture 1' still centres on her situation; but in 'Picture 2' a brief account of her explanation of the painting quickly turns to Jung's dense interrogation of esoteric symbolism, replete with quotations from the 17 th century Christian mystic Böhme.This spans about six pages before 'remembering' Miss X's picture.Picture by picture, her case is pushed aside as Jung delves into esoterica.As seen apropos the snake, however, his choice of specific instances later on may reflect changes in his own understanding (as opposed to merely increased bibliographic knowledge).Put another way, he is 'amplifying' his theory of psychic universals.
In Jungian clinical practice, amplification serves as a heuristic technique whereby mythological and other parallels of images produced by the patient help to make the patient's personal issues more visible.The focus is on the particular case, and a measure of the technique's usefulness is the meaningfulness of particular parallels for the patient.In contrast, the Study appropriates particulars of both the clinical case and esoterica as an empirical proof for universal process and structure.Jung's amplification overwrites the meaning that Miss X's images may have held for her personally.Indeed, he could share with Miss X very few, if any, of the parallels cited in 1950 or even 1940, since (as he repeatedly stresses in both texts) he knew none of it in 1928.He ruled out the likelihood that he had 'unwittingly infected her with alchemical ideas', for at the time he could only recognize the circle she painted as 'a mandala, the psychological expression of the totality of the self' (1950, para. 542).Although the 1940 text already cites alchemical instances, he reiterates that he had no knowledge of these when she first came to him, and that she herself 'was not acquainted with the peculiar symbolism of ancient alchemy ' (1940,p .51).In 1940, Jung felt that he should mention the fact that his patient 'had been influenced to some extent by The snake in the mandala Swedenborgianism' (p.47).2He interpreted her dream-image of the yellow snake (incorporated into #3) by reference to Swedenborg's ideasbut insisted that Swedenborg's works do not contain sufficient information to have 'infected' his patient with 'alchemistic philosophy' (p.47).The connection with Swedenborg is omitted in the 1950 text.
The fact that this woman painted symbolic representations that only later he discovered also in esoteric sources that she couldn't have known led him to surmise that her pictures were 'genuine creations of the unconscious' (1950, para. 542).He labours at great length on the common occurrence of specific elementsfigurative, abstract shapes, colours, and numbersin Miss X's pictures and in alchemy and Gnosticism, which he believes are functionally equivalent in terms of symbolic representation.It could be argued that a common denominator such as 'snake', '12', 'red' etc. is too broad to be viable evidence for convergent meanings.Elsewhere Jung himself cautioned against conflating 'a dream about a snake with the mythological occurrence of snakes, for who is to guarantee that the functional meaning of the snake in the dream is the same as in the mythological setting?' (1954, para. 103).
Furthermore, the validity of his evidential base can be queried in view of his highly selective harvesting of sources.Early on, he might not have known the specific Gnostic source cited in 1950, but he certainly knew the Biblical story (not cited in 1940).When deciding to include this mythological instance in 1950, why did he opt for an esoteric construal of the serpent as representing knowledge?Perhaps because the Gnostic serpent (the bringer of light) resonated with the 'later' Jung due to the direction that his own theory had taken since the 1930s.Another example: the night before painting #6 Miss X dreamed of a tree growing inside her room, and therefore included a plant motif in the picture.Jung (1950) mentions in passing an association with the maternala meaning that might be poignant to her as a childless woman in her fiftiesbut immediately turns to tree symbolism in Gnostic texts, the classics, and the Bible.He returns brieflyt o# 6 only to recall another patent's dream of a laurel, and then discusses traditions concerning the laurel.Miss X neither dreamed nor painted a laurel (we don't see it in #6 and are not told whether the tree in her dream was of a recognizable species).Different inferences might be drawn if he had chanced on someone's dream of an ash, a birch or a rowan, and decided to amplify it with druid tree lore, for instance.Jung's focus on the laurel seems to reflect his own free associations.

Learnedness versus way-of-doing
The oscillation between an exposition of universal principles and a particular clinical case emerges as a site of dialogical tension in the Study insofar as two voices compete in the text: Jung-the-practitioner and Jung-the-theorist.This duality seems to have been problematic for Jung in the 1920s, when he still struggled to establish the credibility of analytical psychology.Speaking at the 1924 International Congress of Education in London, Jung characterized analytical psychology as an 'eminently practical' discipline that 'does not investigate for the sake of investigation, but for the very immediate purpose of giving help.… abstract science is its by-product, but not its main purpose ' (1928b, p. 349).As if reinforcing this claim, the Daoist verses opening the 1940 text commence 'Give up your learnedness', and the text concludes that 'the understanding of the origins of all things' comes about 'Through the Tao!' i.e. the Way (p. 30,31).Jung wanted the case study to show that the process of individuation requires little or no academic learnedness.
The Study shows a way of doing individuation.My emphasis on doing does not conflict with Jung's(1940) insistence on the Eastern wisdom of 'not-doing, letting be, which is quite different from doing nothing' (p.31-2).Miss X did individuation by not-doing insofar as she did not try to follow some formulaic programme of steps; 'doing nothing' would mean failing to heed what the unconscious was telling her.The integration of personality, according to Jung, is possible through conscious engagement with our fantasy imagesa 'psychological "transcendent function"' which 'arises from the union of conscious and unconscious contents ' (1957, para. 131).For Miss X, painting served as the best vehicle for the unconscious to have its say, but other people may find other media more suitable (as Jung averred); hence, there is no formula.He termed this way-of-doing the method of active imagination.Although he had used it since the 1910s, he published little about it (the most relevant paper was written in 1916 but first published in 1957).Yet, although the Study demonstrates active imagination in action, the technique is named only in the 1950 text, and is mentioned there only twice.Jung comments apropos the first picture that 'Since Miss X had discovered all by herself the method of active imagination', he could broach her personal issues through it (1950, para.528); and then, as an aside in the Conclusion, he reflects that the study may also serve to redress his hitherto insufficient exposition of this therapeutic method (para.623).In the final analysis, the voice of Jung-the-theorist dominates the Study.

Conclusion
The case history and the catalogue of esoteric symbolism in the Study form separate storylines which are overlain like waft and warp.Their interweaving is crucial for the theoretical case that Jung is making; the fabric of his argument unravels when we pull out either of these threads.If we focus on the clinical material (as I have done), his forays into ancient and medieval mysticism become 'free associations' that do not contribute to the healing of The snake in the mandala this patient (who was not even aware of them).Conversely, if we focus on the alchemical and religious symbolism (cf.Palmer 2003), her personal journey becomes inconsequential, since the pictures instantiate a general principle.The distinction drawn here could be likened to the difference between inquiring what walking from A to B meant to the walker, and proving that humans can walk (or studying how humans walk) by showing that someone walked from A to B, someone else walked from C to D, and so on.Both options are valid inquiries.A dialogical tension inheres in the Study because Jung speaks in two voices, as it were, trying to follow both directions at once.
Ultimately, however, Jung tells a universal story even when presenting a clinical case.His aforementioned comment that he could not interpret Miss X's later paintings in the absence of her input, conflicts with the claim that the individuation process is universal (hence transcends the idiographic).Viewing this inconsistency as undermining the cogency of his theory would erect an antinomy.Miss X's 'individuation' is believed to be either a natural process happening to her or the outcome of an unwitting collusion whereby Jung and his patient constructed a narrative according to a compelling theory that he had formulated.Both options can't be true, the antinomy implies.Another option is to attribute the inconsistency to an epistemological bias, a so-called 'fugitive dialogical' (Jones 2007): Jung denies the ontological necessity of dialogicality even when asserting its practical necessity.
The Study portrays Jung-the-practitioner as a Socratic midwife who skilfully assists the natural birth of self-realization that was growing inside his patient.My contention is that he fathered her development.He did so by providing a definite discoursein the Foucauldian sense of a system of statements, and Wittgenstein's sense of a language gamefor articulating and consequently pursuing a specific understanding of selfhood.This should not be taken to trivialize the developmental process.On the contrary, my position is that the process is authentic because it is fundamentally dialogical.Our human capacity to co-construct articulable (hence diverse and divergent) meanings of universal human experiences makes it possible to change the nature of our self-experiences.