Caitlyn King - An Example of the Collective Unconscious

 you can recognize yourself in paintings. not of yourself, and probably nothing good, but you can. i recognize myself in Goya's Saturn Devouring His Son. is that bad to say? maybe, but i'll say it anyway. Saturn, when hearing the prophecy telling his fate, felt so threatened that the only thing he could do was to eat his children. literally. but un-literally, Saturn felt that the only solution was to consume his children. a small difference of words, but an important one. the only solution was to become the same. to constrict his children, to absorb them so that they cannot live outside of him. do you understand?

(i am you. you are me. there is no reality in which you escape. you cannot destroy me, if i am you. if i adopt you, your personality, your mannerisms, into me, then you cannot hurt me without hurting yourself.)


Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan on 16 November 1581, i recognize myself in the horrific possibility of reality. his eyes are haunted with what he has done, and yet he clings to his son, who is unable to push him away. did his son want to push him away? does it matter, if in the end he was physically incapable? what would i do if, when i finally come back to my senses, my family is dead? if a horrible monster came along while i was preoccupied, and killed them. if that monster was me. if that monster was me, would i cradle the corpse too? would i recognize that even though i loved them, i was the one who killed them? did ivan the terrible wish that he was like Saturn, and could consume his son whole, to forever live within him? would i?


are those universal truths? generation after generation, there had to be thousands of people who felt the same. could someone pre city-states look at these paintings and feel the same thing, or would they not understand the greed and ego that would be required to commit those acts? could they only see violence and the lack of mercy? maybe they would only feel disgust. i wish i only felt disgust.

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