It often seems as if there was an impersonal karma within a family, which is passed on from parents to children. It always seemed to me that I had to answer questions which fate had posed to

must be able to talk to the dead, must be able to reconcile them. For the dead are the makers of illnesses, causing all the trouble to the tribe . . . [the medicine man] is supposed to be able to . . . make a compromise with them, to lay them or to integrate them properly. He has to collect these spirits and make them into a whole, integrate them;

I feel very strongly that I am under the influence of things or questions which were left incomplete and unanswered by my parents and grandparents and more distant ancestors.

The psyche might be that existence in which the hereafter or the land of the dead is located.

Developing a relationship with the historical family which is inherent in each individual, the contents of the unconscious, the mythic land of the dead and the ancestors, is the work of individuation and the way in which psyche is developed or transformed. Jung’s psychology rests on this foundation.

What remains unlived, unresolved, unredeemed and unanswered will be passed on to future generations.

From that time on, the dead have become ever more distinct for me as the voices of the Unanswered, Unresolved, and Unredeemed; for since the questions and demands which my destiny required me to answer did not come to me from the outside, they must have come from the inner world. These conversations with the dead formed a kind of prelude to what I

For example, at the personal level the image of mother is formed out of our personal experiences of mother. At the familial level, she is the long line of mothers in our ancestral lineage. At the cultural level, she is depicted in movies, art, and literature in a variety of forms.

Jung concludes that “inner peace and contentment” depends on whether or not one creates harmony between the “historical family”