To Dream of a Labyrinth
From Aldo Carotenuto’s The Vertical Labyrinth
In psychotherapy, the initial dream frequently sums up the the whole psychic situation of the client. This is that first dream of an artist who was unable to do any more work, as told to the author, Aldo Carotenuto:
I am in a kind of limbo… An old woman with a claw appears; she assaults me and we fight… I run away to escape these figures and find myself in a strange place, a sort of labyrinth made up of pits or caves into which I will have to go at the risk of losing myself…
The author comments:
To escape the limbo and the claws of the old woman, Arion must therefore perform an initiatory rite; he must enter again the earth, dig, and see what is underneath….
By asking for help, Arion is asking to be freed from this confused mass: but his request will lead to great suffering, since it involves the withdrawal of outside projections, which means giving up the idea that others are to blame for his discomfort and accepting the fact of being unconsciously guided in the formation of his destiny by internal transpersonal forces.
[Quotations from pages 11-13]
The Vertical Labyrinth is a classic, well-written single case study in Jungian analysis….