Alas, my Gaggia Classic has gone off to the repair shop in Seven Hills. I was in the middle of running a descaling solution through the machine yesterday when the group head stopped running water from the boiler, a likely sign that the latter was dead. This identical failure happened five years ago with the same result. The repair bill will not be cheap but a new machine is expensive and I would really like to keep old faithful going into the future. It makes great coffee.

Now about half-way through Jung's Man and his Symbols. It is not a difficult book to read per se but conceptually it is challenging. For example, Jung argues that archetypes are primitive remnants or structures in the collective unconscious (our common inheritance from evolution). To quote from a neat little summary in Wikipedia,

"They are inherited potentials which are actualized when they enter consciousness as images or manifest in behaviour on interaction with the outside world."

The individual, therefore, is the agent by which these ancient patterns become manifest. They don't come as formed images in the subconscious.

It is not easy to grasp because there is a mystical element that defies clear explanation. The closest thing in popular culture that offers an exemplar is the archetype of the hero. This is manifested in such fictional characters as Superman or Luke Skywalker or any of the pantheon of
modern superheroes. Their ancient counterparts included King Arthur, Achilles or Perseus. It is best to resist such simple classifications though because archetypes do not exist as characters in the subconscious but are potentialities only.

A very smart fellow at the blogsite, On trying to see reality, created this diagram setting out Jungian terminology regarding the psyche. I made one small, but crucial addition to the original, in order to take account of the most recent thinking.