This activity of consciousness-the establishment of control in the world of things through conceptualization, rational thought, and the development of discipline and the abstractive repression of emotions-is an utterly vital and indispensable phase of psychic development. It leads from psychic primitive infancy to adulthood. Mythological tradition likens this development to the creation of the world from the original chaos to the establishment of a foothold on dry land away from the threat of drowning in the flood waters. Yet it is not the "dry land" of rational consciousness that contains and supports the ocean but conversely: the waters of the ocean contain the dry continents, and life upon them depends upon the waters. Similarly, it it the unconscious psyche, that gives rise to and maintains the world of consciousness. Consciousness with its concepts is a relatively minor part of the total psychic functioning, and in terms of dynamics certainly not the most powerful one. It establishes fixed points of rational reference-but at the price of a loss of emotional connection. Images, on the other hand, constellate emotional and imaginative qualities and thus reconstitute a connection which the abstractive process has severed.
