The iceberg illustration shows that we have a conscious and an unconscious part that constitutes a whole, with the conscious showing itself above the surface, and the unconscious concealing itself beneath the surface, making only the conscious visible to us. This illustration puts these two parts as higher and lower to another diametrically, and this is symbolically true as seen in our language. Thoughts just “come up” and feelings “well up” from inside of us. Peterson’s characterization of psychoanalysis is that of a house. He claims that Jung thinks that it is a house haunted by gods and demons. To wrestle with these ghosts and demons is the purpose of dream interpretation, for that is when the voices of such gods and demons are not overshadowed by that of our own conscious thoughts. Putting these two together, a human person is like house that contains all sorts of powers, structured like an iceberg. There are some powers that are made known to the person, while there are many more powers both unknown to him, or out of his control. In Egyptian mythology, the sun god has to go down into the underworld every night, go through trials led by demon dogs, and win in order for the sun to rise again. That is what we undergo every night when we go to sleep. It is like a little death and rebirth. We give up what we know (the conscious), surrender ourselves to the unconscious, and is subject to the various voices of the unconscious. We either come out victorious and elevated, or defeated and one step closer to death. The unconscious contains powers that can lead us to both. Peterson, building on Jung's brilliance, was capable of seeing that mythological worlds are macrocosms of our psyche. They symbolize our psyche at a cosmic scale. The Freudian iceberg, on the other hand, simplified the idea into a simple illustration that does not escape the modern person's instincts unlike mythological worlds. While language might shift from generation to generation, author to author, what remains is that our psyche contains opposing forces that which is dark, inhabits the low, and mushy amongst other things and that which is bright, inhabits the high, and solid. The English glossary of adjectives would not exhaust their meaning, but the Chinese would refer to them simply as Yin and Yang. --- **Related:** [[Navigating the Unconscious]] · [[Mythological Conceptions of Personality]] · [[Jung V18 Notes]]