Everyone is familiar with the idea of the Freudian slip, when a slip of the tongue or pen -- despite being a mere error, made unintentionally -- reveals a person's subconscious (or conscious but unexpressed) thoughts. To use one of Freud's own examples, a converted Jew, the houseguest of a woman who turns out to be an anti-Semite, is afraid that his two young sons may thoughtlessly reveal their family's background, and so he tells them, "Go outside and play, Jews" -- unintentionally saying Juden ("Jews") instead of Jungen ("boys").
The more I study the historical development of the Tarot, the more I become convinced that there is such a thing as what we might call a Jungian slip -- another class of revelatory error, where what comes through is not some individual's suppressed fear or preoccupation, but something deeper and more universal, something akin to Jung's world of the archetypes.
2 comments:
Sounds fascinating - but you haven't made clear what you mean.
My guess is that you are talking about 'mask slipping' sorts of thing - as when secular modern Leftists find themselves deploying multiple examples of traditionally Satanic symbolism and ritual - despite that they feel complete scepticism and express extreme ridicule about the the demonic supernatural.
In other words, they accidentally reveal the dark archetypes that they are actually living-by; rather than projecting the light archetypes they assert of themselves (wise old man, compassionate earth mother, heroic youth etc).
Is that what you mean?
Actually, that's not the sort of thing I had in mind at all, but now that you mention it, I think the concept is applicable there as well.
As I mentioned in the post, what I had in mind was the historical development of Tarot cards. Many, many times, manifest errors in the copying and interpretation of the cards have had the result of deepening and improving their symbolism. I discuss this at some length in my old post on the Magician card (qv).
Perhaps your misunderstanding of what I meant in this post was itself almost an example of Jungian slip!
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