Medea, Jason, and their illusions of the Golden Fleece: a Jungian contribution to transference dreaming

Intense projections of love and power regularly occur in the transference relationship. They often objectify archetypal aspects that a client might be struggling to understand. The tale of the Golden Fleece, which stands as a symbol for an inappropriately overvalued attachment, reveals that Jason and Medea were too captivated by their own desires, which they projected onto the Golden Fleece. They failed to appreciate the unattainable – and sacred – nature of the object. The author uses this myth to draw a parallel with certain dynamics of the transference relationship, when the therapist becomes the obscure object of the client's desire or envy. Transference dreaming opens the door to a critical examination of this relationship. The dreamer frequently sees something in the dream that does not add up. This internal uncertainty within the dream indicates that the therapist needs to examine what is happening in the transference or countertransference that heretofore has been accepted uncritically. Three key questions about the analytic relationship are addressed as aspects of what merits further attention in order to be understood and processed collaboratively to make therapeutic space for doubt and illusion.