the archetypal mythology of horses
Copyright
2004-2022 Beverley Kane, MD
Page 17 of 20
ENDNOTES
1. Hippotherapy is the treatment by horseback riding of severely disabled persons by a
physical therapist, speech therapist, or occupational therapist. Therapeutic riding is the
schooling of high-functioning disabled persons by specially trained and certified riding
instructors. Equine-assisted psychotherapy is the treatment of psychopathological
disorders by licensed clinical psychotherapists, credentialed counselors, and life coaches.
Equine experiential learning, also known as equine-facilitated growth or equine-guided
education, is conducted by a variety of practitioners and guides for the purpose of
psychospiritual growth and transformation. All four kinds of horse therapies require
partnership with the horse and a horse handler, or equine expert, as partners.
2. In the passage quoted below, Jung describes the role of the physiological in
engendering symbolic systems: (my emphasis)
The symbols of the self arise in the depths of the body and they
express its materiality every bit as much as the structure of the
perceiving consciousness. The symbol is thus a living body, corpus et
anima. The uniqueness of the psyche can never enter wholly into reality, it
can only be realized approximately, though it still remains the absolute basis
of all consciousness. The deeper layers of the psyche lose their individual
uniqueness as they retreat farther and farther into darkness. Lower down,
that is to say as they approach the autonomous functional systems, they
become increasingly collective until they are universalized and extinguished
in the body’s materiality, i.e., in chemical substances. The body’s carbon is
simply carbon. Hence at bottom the psyche is simply world. In the symbol
the world itself is speaking. The more archaic and deeper, that is the
more physiological, the symbol is, the more collective and universal,
the more material it is. The more abstract, differentiated, and specific it
is, and the more its nature approximates to conscious uniqueness and
individuality, the more it sloughs off its universal character. Having finally
attained full consciousness, it runs the risk of becoming a mere allegory
which nowhere oversteps the bounds of conscious comprehension, and it's
then exposed to all sorts of attempts at rationalistic and therefore
inadequate explanation.
Jung, C.G. (1966) p. 173
In this passage Jung admits to a curiously Cartesian division of body and soul. One can
agree in that in zoological terms, the more physiological a symbol is, the more universal.
However, the physiological seems to holographically retain the characteristics of the
whole self. We speak of cellular memory, unique fingerprints, and experiences that are
held by the body and released in body work.
3. Michael Shea has assigned the Shadow archetype to the Body. He implies that the
psyche projects its Shadow onto the body.
The body is part of my shadow because it contains a long suffering history of
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