COMMENTARY

Let's hope we'll not be "mutilating fishes" in our attempt to examine their meaning. Yet, in the foregoing dreams, the appearance of fish often evokes a strong response from the dreamer. There is often a sense of confrontation. And it is not always clear to the dreamer whether or not the beauty and promise of the fish is sufficient to maintain contending with the mysterious and somewhat threatening autonomy and unpredictability that is also in its nature. What does the fish offer the dreamer? When apprehended and transformed, the fish becomes life-sustaining food to the land dweller. Yet in its natural habitat, the fish is untamed, usually aloof and perhaps aggressive, but certainly wielding with relish a mind of its own. How is it to be securely caught?

As a symbol, the fish may suggest unactualized potential, raw-formed psychic elements which, when sacrificed and transmuted, add new dimensions to the conscious personality. These potentialities may be, in the particular case, sexual, emotional or intellectual; our relationship in life to these potentialities is seen in our activity with the fish. Yet the fish also is active itself. Here is the threatening side of the fish's nature, for as a creature of the waters of the unconscious, it might prove to be an autonomous potentiality that is upsetting to actualize.

In his study of the fish symbol in early Christianity, Cabalism, and alchemy, Jung has noted that it has been traditional simultaneously to esteem fish and to hate them. He sees the dual nature of the fish and our ambivalence toward them as complementary facts of the same process of consciousness unfolding. Jung reminds us of the esoteric principle, "... the Greatest in the guise of the Smallest, God Himself... may be caught like a fish in the deep sea... He may be drawn from the deep by a eucharistic act of integration and taken into the human body."

But, on the other hand, if you don't catch the fish and eat it, it may very well swallow you. The redeeming significance of the Christ-Fish's promise is that it provides the faithful an actual opportunity to be voluntarily consumed with full knowledge of certain and joyous rebirth. But then again, not every fish is Christ.