monkey
03-10-2003, 10:35 PM
I realize the Jung card gets played to death with regards to Tool lyrics, but it's clear that they are heavily influenced by his work. I stumbled across this today by accident.
In Jung's "Memories, Dreams, Reflections", he writes of a time in his life (I believe around 50 years old) where he consciously began to confront his own unconscious. As he did this, he became confronted by memories of his childhood, specifically, at age 11. He determined (and of course, I'm paraphrasing) that by reenacting this memory, he is effectively bridging the gap between his childhood and his adult self. Specifically, he states "The small boy is still around, and possesses a creative life which I lack....For as a grown man it seemed impossible to me that I should be able to bridge the distance from the present back to my eleventh year".
Anyway, I'm not saying this defines Tool's original meaning, but I have a feeling it had some bearing. As many of us have learned, Tool songs tend to have multiple layers of meaning, generally ending somewhere in psychology/metaphysics. Very rarely do they mean at the deepest level what they seem. Prison Sex for example. My own thought (and I'm no psych student) is that it's an attempt, as Jung wrote, to confront the unconscious and attempt to regain the creativity of youth.
Anyway, just a thought, and clearly not my own.
In Jung's "Memories, Dreams, Reflections", he writes of a time in his life (I believe around 50 years old) where he consciously began to confront his own unconscious. As he did this, he became confronted by memories of his childhood, specifically, at age 11. He determined (and of course, I'm paraphrasing) that by reenacting this memory, he is effectively bridging the gap between his childhood and his adult self. Specifically, he states "The small boy is still around, and possesses a creative life which I lack....For as a grown man it seemed impossible to me that I should be able to bridge the distance from the present back to my eleventh year".
Anyway, I'm not saying this defines Tool's original meaning, but I have a feeling it had some bearing. As many of us have learned, Tool songs tend to have multiple layers of meaning, generally ending somewhere in psychology/metaphysics. Very rarely do they mean at the deepest level what they seem. Prison Sex for example. My own thought (and I'm no psych student) is that it's an attempt, as Jung wrote, to confront the unconscious and attempt to regain the creativity of youth.
Anyway, just a thought, and clearly not my own.