In a letter dated June 12, 1933 C.G. Jung wrote, "You have a mind just as well as any other human being and you can use it if you only know how to apply it. Any of my pupils could give you much insight and understanding that you could treat yourself if you don't succumb to the prejudice that you receive healing through others. In the last resort every individual alone has to win his battle, nobody else can do it for him."
No one else can win our battles. We alone have to face the monsters and beasts within our psychic dungeons. They lurk during waking hours in the forms of other people and troubling attitudes that challenge us and our conscious way of thinking, seeing, feeling. At night they emerge as dreams or nightmares that frighten, even terrorize.
A woman confided, "A hideous man, a monster really, appeared in my dream. I was in a nightmare. But, he turned into a shaman, touched me on the forehead and I entered into a sacred cave where I was to dwell."
Her parents were demanding that she enter medical school. Her heartfelt desire had always been to become a depth psychotherapist. She commented, "By going into my own depth therapy and becoming this sort of healer, I feel like I'm entering a sacred cave. This is my life and my life's work." The nightmares subsided with this insight. She applied to and entered depth psychotherapeutic training.
Over time she learned to treat herself, to listen to dreams and spontaneous images that would arise in her mind throughout the day. Personal psychotherapy helped to set her on this path. To this day, she continues to do what only she can do for herself, in the words of Jung, to alone win her battle.
