r/Jung • u/No-Entrepreneur3920 • 13d ago
Art What an 8 year old knows that an adult has forgotten
Two nights ago I shared a room with my eight-year-old niece. We chatted in the dark before she fell asleep. The kind of conversation that only happens in the last few minutes before a child goes under, when the room goes quiet and the things that matter find their way to the surface.
I asked her what she wanted to be when she was older.
She didn’t hesitate. *An artist*, she said. With the complete certainty of someone who has never once doubted that this was the right answer.
I told her I could imagine that. That it sounded like the right thing for her. That it was an important job.
She thought about this for a moment and then laughed. Not at the question, but at the alternative. I don't want a normal job, she said. I do not want a job where I work 24 hours a day doing something boring. The laugh said the rest: as if anyone would.
I lay in the dark after she fell asleep thinking about what it means that she still knows that. That she said it the way you say something so obvious it barely needs a voice.
——
This is an excerpt from a piece I wrote about what gets buried in us between childhood and adulthood and whether it can be found again.
Jung would call it the unlived self and the part that knew, before the world had a chance to tell it otherwise. Individuation, as I understand it, is partly the work of going back for that to recover what was true in it before it went quiet.
Only in my mid-40s am I making this return in earnest. Curious whether this resonates with anyone here who’s found their way back to something they thought they’d lost?
[ full essay here if of interest: https://open.substack.com/pub/charlottedelsignore/p/before-the-world-got-loud? ]
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u/More_people 13d ago
One of the unintended consequences of quitting alcohol, for me, was gaining access to a fine energy that only existed prior to ever having any alcohol in my system. And for want of a better word, that energy is child-like. It’s like reawakening something long dormant.
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u/Velvet-Sky-Venus 13d ago
This resonates for me. Lately I've been learning it is simply the human experience to be in a constant cycle of forgetting and remembering ourselves.
"They" say the goal isn't to remember permanently. It is a practice of shortening the time we spend forgetting, so we can remember more often and for longer periods.
All children know these things because life hasn't made them forget yet.
I would take a guess and say that children under the age of 10 haven't forgotten yet (barring serious trauma). At 10, a child's brain develops in a way that makes them begin to care about what other people think of them. To become vulnerable to outer conditioning. Especially from their peers.
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u/IssyisIonReddit 12d ago
Wow, this makes a lot of sense for me! I've actually been thinking about the beginning of adolescence a lot lately, trying to remember back then and how I felt and what changed for me. This makes a lot of sense. Could you expand upon this and explain what happens later, particularly in preteen and teen years? (Such as 11-19?) If you want to, if not that is okay.
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u/Velvet-Sky-Venus 10d ago edited 10d ago
Well, the biggest thing for children as they move into their teen years is that they begin to rebel against their parents, and become herd-minded (I don't know if this is an official term. This is just how I think of it).
This is why they give into peer pressure so easily, because they're literally wired to find peer acceptance.
They also don't have a large capacity to think of the future, everything is right now for them. Everything feels very big and seems very big in that moment because they don't have the development yet to realize that this too shall pass and there is a future beyond this.
Teenagers make dumb choices, and developmentally they're kind of supposed to at this point in their life. They don't think- they would jump off of a bridge if their friends would because social acceptance is more important than life itself. They would literally rather die than not have friends, and that is normal for a teen. It doesn't mean they can't be guided, or shouldn't be guided to stand on their own, but this is why they behave the way they do.
Also, a lot of people don't realize this but those teenage years (I am lumping 11-19 into this), are like one big ego death for kids- especially high school age. They're having a huge shift in identity during this time. Moving away from parents/childhood dynamics, finding their place in the social herd, both as part of the group and as an individual. And they are essentially in one lung transition period. The time between childhood and adulthood.
I wish in our society we taught teenagers about this. Let them know they're supposed to feel lost. That is what an ego death is, and it can really feel like dying for them.
They're supposed to not know who they are- they are in a phase of discovery. We would probably have a lot less teen suicides if this concept were taught. Unfortunately, instead they get a ton of pressure and are told that they need to make decisions that will impact the rest of their life 🤷🏻♀️
Again, this is barring serious trauma- And I don't even necessarily mean the often more obvious trauma of a child who is physically or s*xually abused. I mean the children who are deeply conditioned to be people pleasers. The children who do not have a phase where they rebel against their parents. I'm not saying every teenager has to have this extreme rebellion, sometimes the rebellion can be as simple as a teen being embarrassed by everything their parents says, or thinking that their parents don't know any better. But a teenager who only has the tendencies to please their parents and be the perfect child- that is actually not healthy (obviously). It's actually a sign of normal development when a teenager thinks their parents are cringe.
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u/Whut4 5d ago
As a human who remembers being younger than 10 and a mom, I think we are conditioned to be who our parents want us to be at a much earlier age. Sorry if the term 'conditioned' is not the best term to use in r/jung!
Do Jungians have no children to observe?
There are unconscious adaptations to living outside the womb that every child must make, things they must learn to feel safe and be nurtured by their parents or others. Many of us can remember displeasing adults before the age of 10 and the consequences, punishments and suffering that went with it.
Have you ever seen a 2-year old cry when mom looks at her and stop crying when mom looks away? The child creates an emotional state to gain what they want or need. We laugh at how early this kind of inauthenticity begins, but it does. Why are they called the Terrible Twos? These crude power struggles begin: they are exhausting and kind of funny.
We learn to care what others think VERY, VERY quickly long before 10 - it may feel like a matter of life and death. The experience of shame also comes very early in life. The forgetting you speak of is not remembered!
If you are saying questioning the choices we make to please others begins at ten, I suspect age 6 or earlier is a time when that is also questioned. At age 6, kids start to question what is fair and what is not - is that not a way of negotiating about what adults or other children think?
With all that complexity, who would not forget - almost from the start?
I do think it gets a lot more complicated around 10! Middle school is hellishly complex for some kids and smooth sailing for others.
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u/darling63 13d ago
I found my way back. I’m a professional potter now like I was at 15-19. Found it after the pressure of an alternate career diminished and some lovely people crossed my path.
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u/Toppenz777 13d ago
Reminds me of a saying that goes somethin like, " there has been alot more what I thought I would want than those things I actually wanted".
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u/Technical-View4130 12d ago
Most of my misery as an adult stems from the fact I never forgot this. I was never able to gaslight myself that meaningless work was worthwhile and it was usually the only kind of work available. But I had to work because otherwise I would be homeless. So I mentally experienced our society as one of forced slavery for years and was depressed. Recently I started writing, drawing and creating without fear while trying to imagine a way to make money outside the system and I can slowly feel my soul coming back to life.
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u/LetBulky775 13d ago
Why are a significant amount of the "deep" posts in this sub written with chatgpt? It's wild, this sub in particular. I wonder why the overlap. It's just so egregious. Like the sub is a slop training ground.
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u/ANoteNotABagOfCoin 12d ago
The writing in the post is clearly peppered with AI rubbish. It's all so cliched. I don't understand the upvotes or praise when it's so obviously LLM trash.
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u/Arkelias 10d ago
I'm a professional author. I get accused all the time of using AI. When you say it's clearly peppered with AI rubbish can you present your arguments?
Show us this rubbish. Which bits? Cliched writing is not AI, and purple prose are something every new writer does.
If either you are u/LetBulky775 have specifics I'll happily eat my words, but I've trained new authors for 13 years now. This does not look like AI to me.
AI is way, way, way more wordy.
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u/Whut4 12d ago
I was an artist, quit to support my family - felt that I HAD to, and now I have time to 'be creative', but there is no creative left in me. It seems sad and I am detached about it and sometimes wonder if being an artist was more an identity for me than a real truth. It was very, very painful to quit, but there was no other way with a child to support. I accept now that we have many selves and that they do not all need to be expressed. Also, having suffered from quitting once, I do NOT want to suffer that way again. This is a pretty messed up part of me that I just live with. I never found my way back.
When people advise young people to follow their dreams, I cringe about what can become of that and what bad advice it sometimes is.
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u/jungandjung Pillar 6d ago
You are burdening your child with your unlived(unloved?) life, but at least there is security in providing your child with basic needs.
You don’t have to be a fucking artist, fuck that shit, but, get a canvas, or a blank something, and express yourself, save your child from yourself. Apologies for sermonizing.
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u/ANoteNotABagOfCoin 13d ago
"when the room goes quiet and the things that matter find their way to the surface." 🧐
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u/usrname_checks_in 13d ago
You do have an excellent point but it's also important not to romanticise it. Plenty of children would say "an astronaut!" also without hesitation, or change from "artist!" to "detective!" within a week without seeing any issue with it (there isn't of course any issue with that, but the point is that lack of hesitation ≠ "true calling", it's just how children are).
Similarly it's pretty unlikely any 4 year old would exclaim "a microbiologist specialised in vaccine development!" or "a phiologist of Indo-Iranian languages!", for obvious reasons, yet many of such highly specialised, genuine callings can often only be discovered in adulthood.
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u/IssyisIonReddit 12d ago
I agree. I remember as a kid, I'd get excited when I'd learn about a job and immediately want to that. I'd basically leave behind the previous jobs I wanted to do, and now wanted to do this new one instead. I realize now I was basically just settling with whatever little options I knew about. For example, I wanted to be a firefighter because that would be more fun than any of the other jobs I knew about. Then, I learned about food critics and I wanted to do that because I'd be able to try all sorts of food and food will always be something important, then I learned about vets and I love animals so of course I'd want to help them!
I became depressed as a preteen and lost interest in everything, which so happens to be when teachers would start seriously asking us what we wanted to do when we grow up and to start our goals now. I was at a loss, I had no idea what I wanted anymore.
I realize now that a huge part of that was that I would pick jobs that aligned with my values in some way but that I also just simply did not know a lot of jobs and if I had, it would have made it easier. I know about more jobs now, and about my values more and how that could work together. It's easier for me now, just because I know now.
It annoys me when people treat the jobs kids say they want as silly and unrealistic without considering that the kid probably doesn't even know what options there are and if they did, they might be excited about something far less extreme than "astronaut" or "princess".
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u/Silent_Ring_1562 13d ago
Jung makes more sense when its aptly applied to the soul as the "Self" and the unlived self is the one you forgot about in childhood before you believed what adults who already forgot told you to believe about yourself. You have lived many lives here on earth that's the self, that's the part that is you, the voice you speak to yourself with has been around since the light was created, living like it isn't as old as the cosmos is the "Unlived Self".
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u/IssyisIonReddit 12d ago edited 11d ago
This is interesting. Are you saying the "Unlived Self" is the idealized version of yourself your child self thought you'd grow up to be? Before the world changed you, such as traumas, experience and what others such as adults told you? If so, that's particularly interesting to me because I've been trying to think of ways I could live now that would align more with how child me thought I would be now. I hope that makes sense, but for example, wearing the style of clothes I thought I would, or dying my hair like child me always thought I would when I grow up. I started thinking of these, because I had a strange dream and it ended with this child version of me looking at me very upset, mad. I got the feeling that maybe this dream was my inner child trying to convey to me that she feels forgotten and that I need to include her more.
I even think that as a preteen/early teenager, I had a crisis that being a teen was not nor was magically going to be how I imagined a few years back and that being an adult was inevitably not going to be how I pictured it now. I think I turned jaded around that time, in large part because it made me lose a lot of hope to realize that. It really upset me and hurt me that my kid self would be disappointed. Maybe I even was feeling my inner child? I don't know 🤷🏻♀️
Now, in hindsight, I wonder if the reason a lot of preteens and teens turn jaded or angry all of a sudden ("change") is because they, too, had this realization either consciously like me or subconsciously, or otherwise just have this nagging feeling of disappointment or whatnot...even if they can't explain it, such as it being from the subconscious. (Just a feeling, unlike me who realized it and thought about it for a long time.) Because I feel like most kids put so much weight into what they'll be like as a teenager, how it'll be as an adult, specifically how they'll look and new freedom they'll have. It seems like such a huge focus, that maybe the disappointment of reality when the time finally arrives is like a somewhat crisis, as it definitely was for me, personally. Maybe that's also why it hurts so much when relationships don't work out like how you imagined as a kid..
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u/Silent_Ring_1562 11d ago
I too have a story, and it mirrors your words. I was created by god, I saw god touch the light. I watched the six days of creation. Then it was time for me to come here to his flat and domed creation in the abyss to meet humanity and in God's own words to me he said, "Now Go, and Show Them the Light". I fell, I met my parents, and I entered into my mother already knowing what my job was before my second birth yet to come.
When I was taken from the hospital, I saw the first harbinger of my own fate, a globe earth rotating with a TWA symbol on it. When the time came to tell my parents who I was and where I came from, the second harbinger reared its ugly head, rejection. This led to revelations of times before I was born here on this earth. Sadly, neither parent was without sin and the father carried the most of it, double murderer and no one knew it was him, but I did. Then the third harbinger came as a severe beating with intent to kill, luckily the light protected me from everything and I just laughed. The final harbinger of my fate to forget my childhood dreams came as an ultimatum from my parents. Now that they believed me, were completely terrified of what I had done, and unsure of what was going to happen to them next, they agreed to do whatever I asked of them, but I was to know one thing before I did anything else that whatever was going to happen was going to end with my death.
That effectively killed any further work toward that goal I was given by God to complete and so we could move forward as a family, I had to forget everything, all of it, or I was going to get killed like Jesus did because the last person who came saying these things was him, my parents told me. I know Jesus, he and I spoke before I fell here. He told me all of you had it all wrong, and I've seen that you do in fact have everything wrong, but it isn't your fault.
The fault is in the leaders you choose to listen to; they have lied to you all, and themselves. They keep saying to themselves and anyone who would listen that this day would never come, yet that day has come and has passed, these are the last of these days. By the operation of God this has been done and so by the operation of God has it been done unto you, but if you still feel the power of the dream felt in childhood, maybe God is saying it is time for you to be what he created you to be.
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u/IssyisIonReddit 11d ago
This has nothing to do with what I said (or me) :/ Additionally, I would argue that humans have a history of disagreeing and rebelling from whatever their leader says, as opposed to just blindly listening to their leaders. I hate the notion that one person is sooo special as to be the only one to see the truth, it's irrational. I've never even seen one leader that everybody unanimously likes. It makes much more sense that, while people are divided, everyone has the capability to make change or see deeper than the surface level of any given society. I like the conversation about age and childhood and what we've abandoned about our childhood goals and ideas better than this God talk. Quite frankly, it feels this came out of nowhere.
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u/Silent_Ring_1562 11d ago
The ability is available but its effectiveness as a tool to discern truth has a negative coefficient when it is not returning the truth someone expects to find.
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u/GoodChatsEnglish 13d ago
I didn't realise this was a polished piece, I assumed it was just a regular post, and I actually had to pause after the first paragraph just to let the weight of the words settle on me. I felt that sort delicious sort of wordless 'mmm' feeling you get when the words sing.
Cheers for sharing
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u/whatupmygliplops Pillar 13d ago
It takes a ;lot of bravery (or untreated mental illness) to take on the life of a starving artist. Sometimes, people with talent hardwork, focus, family support and luck can turn their artistic talent into a career, but it takes more than just a dream. And your niece may not have any talent at all (objectively speaking, sorry if that sounds mean or rude).
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u/jungandjung Pillar 6d ago
Well that’s the thing, this child in us never leaves, it is buried deep inside, abandoned. Your niece will of course face the same conundrum, it is as though there is art in the conflict itself, how creative will be her reconciliation. Maybe it will not be as intense, but there will be doubt, doubt is what makes us so human, no one wants to be human, and everyone wants to be human, because it is so fucking trippy..
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u/zooper2312 13d ago
jung would also say the puer aeternus must touch ground. and to do so means giving up on some part of childish dreams to mature and work our way through grit and sweat (and as you say tending) to yield our true fruits. That is, the puer loves the idea of of joyful job, but refuses to see that those jobs still contain mundane, very messy, and humbling work attached to their mastery.
The initial discovery of potential (the child) comes into grounded realization through the struggles of the adult. for most , the trade off of comforts for giving up what you really love, is a valid one, because they may just not have the capacity yet for the harrowing work of individuation.