The Stone Speaks: The Memoir of a Personal Transformation

by Maud Oakes

While convalescing in the south of France after a terrible motor accident in the Peruvian Andes, Maud Oakes had occasion to accompany her filmmaker cousin to the home of C. G. Jung in Switzerland. There she encountered a block of stone that Jung had designed and carved with signs, symbols, and inscriptions that drew on Greco-Roman religious ideas and the symbolism of astrology and alchemy. The Stone Speaks is Miss Oakes’s meditation on the personal and transpersonal meaning of the Stone. Her extensive correspondence with Jung regarding her interpretations and her account of the healing and transformation that took place throughout her inner spiritual journey are a valuable document of individuation and health as the product of inner change, achieved by synthesis and integration. Miss Oakes’s amplification of the symbolism of Jung’s Stone goes a long way toward showing why the influence of the deeply embedded ideas of one’s culture need not be antithetical to the spontaneous production of symbolism for one who can enter into the creative spirit of giving meaningful expression in some art form to the non-rational contents of the unconscious, as Jung did when he brought into visible form what he saw on the face of his block of stone. Miss Oakes’s exposition of her own thoughts concerning the stone enables us to feel this unification of the different levels of experience. We cease to care, as we enter the circle of its inner meaning, whether the stone speaks of unconscious or of conscious matters. Then perhaps, even without being able to see the stone in Jung’s garden, the reader might hear it “whisper its misty lore of ancient roots and ancestral lives.” More than the story of a richly and mysteriously carved stone . . . it is the parable of her own inner life, her own search and discovery.” William McGuire Editor, The Bollingen Series The Collected Works of C. G. Jung

Genres: Psychology

176 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1987

Reviews

[John Kulm · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this would be a book specifically about the meaning of Jung’s carved stone at Bollingen. This was partially the author’s intention but, more than that, it’s an autobiographical account of her individuation process through therapy. This made the book more interesting to me because I’d wanted to find a description of the individuation process by someone who’d experienced it.

Here are some quotes from this autobiography, focusing on passages about the individuation process:

“I thought of what Dr. L. had one day said to me: ‘It is the task of the ego in the second half of life to redirect energy away from the physical world of the body towards the Self, and to do it consciously, so as to learn how to return to this central archetype at the approach of death.’
“As the ego is really the outer manifestation or projection of the Self, I visualize my ego as now returning to its original source: the seed of my soul, the Self.
“And this return, when accomplished, will symbolize the goal of my individuation: the ego, as the center of my outer world and the Self coming together; the pairs of opposites transformed into an image of ‘wholeness.’ The final ‘spiritual end’ which has no end, and is like an empty circle that holds all within it.” Pg. 55

(Quoting Jung) “The transference phenomenon is an inevitable feature of every thorough analysis, for it is imperative that the doctor should get into the closest possible touch with the patient’s line of psychological development … [I]n the same measure as the doctor assimilates the intimate psychic contents of the patient into himself, he is in turn assimilated as a figure into the patient’s psyche. I say ‘as a figure,’ because I mean that the patient sees him not as he really is, but as one of those persons who figured so significantly in his previous history … The transference therefore consists in a number of projections which act as a substitute for a real psychological relationship. They create an apparent relationship and this is very important since it comes at a time when the patient’s habitual failure to adapt has been artificially intensified by his analytical removal into the past.” Pg. 65

“The most helpful and creative aspect of my analysis was this transference made to my doctor and his counter-transference to me. I felt an unconscious flow between us and instinctively knew that we were experiencing together what I was going through.” Pg. 65

“Jung’s individuation process is usually experienced after middle age or toward the end of life. It is not a withdrawal from life, but life itself – a way between man-the-seen and his soul-the-unseen. It is a way of death-and-rebirth, transformation toward experiencing the wholeness. In analysis, the analytical psychologist knows whether the patient is ready for the individuation process and whether he or she is equal to it; for like the initiations of old, the way is dangerous and difficult, and not all analysands need or want such a drastic change to take place.” Pg. 69

“My next test was to face and recognize the unconscious masculine side of myself, my unknown man-enemy-friend, the negative-animus. According to Jung, the feminine aspect of a man, the anima, produces moods, while the male aspect of a woman, the animus, produces opinions. ‘…[As] the moods of a man issue from a shadowy background, so the opinions of a woman rest on equally unconscious prior assumptions.’” Pg. 79

“My test was to strive to reach a place where my animus became a function of relationship to the unconscious. It was not easy to accomplish this. It required staying on an even keel and being constantly aware of all my shortcomings. I also had to foster a deep feeling for my other half, my animus, even to the point of visualizing him and talking to him the way I would to an intimate friend or lover. Then he usually responded by becoming a helpful, creative partner.” Pg. 81

“The ‘Way’ next led from the stratum of the animus-anima into the depth of the collective unconscious. The path spiraled downward into the awesome abyss, the deep, black fathomless world of archetypes, perhaps a world beyond the fourth dimension. The collective unconscious is the storehouse shared by all mankind. It contains the archetypes formed by man’s evolutionary growth of body-mind and spirit-soul.
“Due to some integration of my animus, I had to be acutely aware of the danger of inflation – inflation of my ego. It could become possessed by the archetype of God-likeness, which Jung calls the mana personality. I had to watch for the emergence of any feelings of superiority or special wisdom, as I could be dominated by the idea that I was a great spiritual teacher, or who held all the answers, or I might even feel that I embodied the essence of saintliness. If this happened, I would lose all that I had gained in my experiences with the other half of my animus.” Pg. 82

[Julia Hendon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Picked this up because it was described as a memoir and I wanted to learn more about the author and what led her to live in a Guatemalan village. There was some biographical information but mostly the book is an account of her Jungian psychoanalysis which I found uninteresting.