Type Train

Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune.

"Only a period of helplessness at the hands of the unconscious can promote openness to the unconscious’s own solutions that is the analyst’s stock in trade. Such radical openness is never achieved through a graded series of gentle shocks. Rather, it is almost always the effect of at least one sudden, unexpected wounding, what James Hillman has called “betrayal.”

"Take the unconscious in one of its handiest forms, say a spontaneous fantasy, a dream, an irrational mood, an affect, or something of the kind, and operate with it. Give it your special attention, concentrate on it, and observe its alterations objectively. Spare no effort to devote yourself to this task, follow the subsequent transformations of the spontaneous fantasy attentively and carefully. Above all, don't let anything from outside, that does not belong to it, get into it, for the fantasy-image has "everything it needs." In this way one is certain of not interfering by conscious caprice and of giving the unconscious a free hand. In short, the alchemical operation seems to us the equivalent of the psychological process of active imagination."

The inferior function is very much under the control of the unconcious, which limits what we can do with it . Nevertheless this much of the unconcius belongs in a sense to the ego - and even provides the bridge to the Self that the other differentiated functions cannot.