There were a group of poets in the last fifties that were concerned with what they called the “deep image.”   Their ideas grew from the work of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, whose work was still relatively new. The proposition is that there are images—pictures of things put into words—that are deeply embedded in the human psyche. Freud approaches these images through dream analysis.   Jung approached them through what he called the collective unconscious. Nowadays, in places like Austin, we are very familiar with these concepts. Jung focused on archetypes, the base, foundational concepts of energy and behavior that are often found in myth. Think of things like a flood, a desert, a king, a ring, a virgin, a sword, a warrior. The deep images are a bit more primal than other images, like say, a steering wheel, a computer, or an accountant. Continue reading →