The throne

 

A new drawing has been hung on the wall of Lucian’s office.
Ignatius, sometimes frowning, sometimes looking surprised, sits in a low armchair, holding his cane, a plain stick that clashes with the elegance of his suit.
Lucian, standing a little apart, speaks softly.

Lucian
Ignatius, let’s look again at this drawing… the throne, the maw, the red tongue, the little man in dark clothes. You told me, the last time we spoke, that you no longer knew “who was devouring whom.”

Ignatius
Yes. There’s a face-off here, but also a kind of loop: the figure hides behind a gaping mouth and looks at another, identical one. It’s as if he were confronted with his own monstrous reflection.

Lucian
Precisely. That’s what I’d like to explore today: this confrontation, but through two possible readings, two ways of understanding what is shown here.

Ignatius (leaning forward slightly)
I’m listening.

Lucian
For Freud, this drawing would represent a psychic conflict.
He’d see the ego, that small, elegant, fragile, reasonable figure, struggling with the archaic forces of the id. The throne, coming alive, turning into a mouth, embodies the threat of overflow: the apparent power of the ego rests on a sleeping beast.

Ignatius
So the seat of power… is also the seat of danger?

Lucian
Exactly. What we believe we control is as foundational to us as it is threatening.
It’s the very image of repression: what we had to contain in order to become civilized, yet which still rumbles beneath the structure.

Ignatius (thinking)
So Freud would see in that red tongue a drive, a remnant of raw life?

Lucian
Yes. A movement of desire or vitality seeking expression, but since it cannot speak directly, it’s transformed into flame. It’s the same energy, merely displaced. The erotic becomes spiritual; the mouth becomes fire.

Ignatius
And the character’s fear?

Lucian
That’s the fear of losing control, the dread of regression.
Freud would say: the scene depicts the risk of being swallowed by one’s own drives, by what the superego deems unacceptable.

Ignatius
A struggle between reason and matter… or rather, between the superego and the id.

Lucian
Yes, and the ego, caught in between, tries to keep its balance.
For Freud, the drawing is an image of repression: it externalizes what the figure fears, so as to hold it at bay.

Ignatius
And for Jung? I imagine he’d be less wary of the monster.

Lucian (smiling)
Much less. Jung would see here a scene of passage, an initiatory moment.
What Freud calls a “monster,” he would call a “symbol of the Self.”

Ignatius
The Self, in the sense of totality?

Lucian
Exactly. The Self is the whole of what we are, conscious and unconscious, light and shadow. Jung would say: this open maw isn’t a trap, it’s a portal. It invites us to descend into our own depths in order to be made whole.

Ignatius
So, where Freud sees a risk of regression, Jung sees a process of expansion.

Lucian
Beautifully put. Freud seeks to keep the ego in balance; Jung invites it to be permeated by the unconscious, to grow larger. For him, the mouth no longer devours; it marks the threshold of transformation.

Ignatius
And the tongue of fire?

Lucian
Still an energy, but of a different order.
It’s no longer a drive to repress or sublimate, but the fire of the Self: the living spirit striving to communicate with consciousness.
The same inner heat, seen not as danger, but as inspiration.

Ignatius (pensively)
Strange… The same image can be read as a threat or as a calling.

Lucian
That’s the essence of depth psychology: what terrifies us in the dark is often what longs to be born into the light.

Ignatius
But then, Lucian… in both cases, the ego, that little man, is in a weak position.
With Freud, he defends himself; with Jung, he hesitates.
Is there ever a moment when he acts?

Lucian
In Freud, action means maintaining the barrier.
In Jung, it means consenting to cross it.
In other words: for Freud, salvation comes through control; for Jung, through surrender, or, let’s say, through trust.

Ignatius
And you, between those two views?

Lucian (after a pause)
I’d say they describe two sides of the same mountain.
Freud speaks of the ascent, the effort to separate oneself from the beast.
Jung speaks of the descent, the moment we realize the beast is also ourselves.
One guards the boundary; the other crosses it.

Ignatius (nodding)
Perhaps it’s a matter of inner maturity.
Freud for the building of the self; Jung for its transcendence.

Lucian
You’ve said it all. We begin by learning to stand upright before the monster — and one day, we discover it was extending its hand to us all along.

Ignatius
Then, if I understand correctly… Freud would say, “Beware of that fire, it might consume you.”
And Jung: “Go toward it — it might illuminate you.”

Lucian (smiling)
Yes. One speaks of the peril of desire, the other of its transformative virtue.
But both agree that this fire is the very heart of psychic life.

Ignatius (after a long silence)
And I, who thought I had drawn a nightmare… perhaps it was a self-portrait in full blaze.

Lucian
Perhaps. But remember, Ignatius: in the inner fire, the task is not to flee, it’s to learn not to burn away, and sometimes… to become light oneself.

Lucian falls silent.I gnatius keeps looking at the drawing. His face has softened.