This essay will analyse the song Look Into the Mirror written by Johnny Clegg in 1984, from the album Stand Your Ground, using a Jungian or Analytical Psychology approach. I will begin by framing the Jungian attitude towards music, before analysing the song itself using an Archetypal Music Psychotherapy (AMP) approach, put forward by Kroeker (2019). It is important to note that my analysis will have a bearing on what is relevant to me, and you should read this as an example of how to approach the song for yourself.
When analysing a song from an Analytical Psychology perspective, or in other words, using a Jungian approach, I would argue that it is important to recognise that each person who encounters a song will have assumptions and associate about a specific musical symbol in a particular way (Kroeker, 2019). This means that for each person who listens to the song, one’s relationship to it will differ. In Archetypal Music Psychotherapy (AMP), the goal is to go deeper into the client’s psyche, using symbols that arise for the client while listening to a particular song (Kroeker, 2019). I will use the song Look Into the Mirror to go deeper into my own psyche as I share the associations that I have had while analysing the song.
In order to define music analytically, I will use Nagari’s (2018) definition, quoting Igor Stravinsky:
Music is, by its very nature, powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, a psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature. If, as is nearly always the case, music appears to express something, this is only an illusion and not a reality.
(Stravinsky, 1936, p. 91)
Kroeker (2019) highlights the expressive power, or lack of power, of music:
Music is often touted as a language of love or a universal language or even the language of the soul, but actually music is quite limited in its ability to communicate with the specificity of actual human languages. For example, it is not possible, through instrumental music alone, to communicate precisely a verbal message such as, “ Hi Darling, I’m going to the grocery store now an I’m wondering if there’s anything that you’d like me to pick up while I’m there or if you already managed to get to the store during your lunch break this afternoon.” A language can do that. Music cannot. In fact, it is less factual to call music a language and, as Winborn states in the forward to this book, more likely that language is an evolutionary artifact of music.
(Kroeker, 2019, pp. 23-24)
With this in mind, it is important to note the limitations of music for expressing oneself. However, what one can glean from music are symbolic meanings which can harmonise with one’s inner life (Kroeker, 2019). If one engages music with a therapist, this can go even deeper, although this is beyond the scope of this essay. Kroeker (2019) notes that musical thinking can reconnect one to one’s magnum opus (or major personal life project) and the personal individuation project, unlike magical thinking which undermines genuine psychological development (Ogden, 2010) by thinking about wishes and ideals that have no bearing on possibility. What music has is the symbolic which is “a waking dream loaded with the symbolic and when our music ego is capable of listening we become open to a tremendous capacity for richly embodied experience” (Kroeker, 2019, p. 70).
The song Look Into the Mirror by Johnny Clegg seems to me to speak directly to Jungian concepts with lyrics such as “Look into the mirror hanging on the wall,” “Shadows dance across your face,” “Can you remember?” and “the night has lost the moon” symbolising functions of the psyche. I would argue that “the mirror” can symbolise the process of becoming aware of the archetypes of the self with individuation being the overarching project, “[s]hadows” can symbolise the shadow, “remember[ing]” can symbolise the process of putting together what has happened in one’s life which is mediated by the archetypes (Farah, 2017c) and “the night” and “the moon” symbolise one’s dark side and femininity or anima respectively.
In order to understand the purpose of archetypes I will first outline what individuation is in a Jungian context. Individuation according to Jung is the idea that there is a way to realise yourself in the world which is ideal. It is the realisation of this ideal destiny which constitutes individuation for Jung (Farah, 2017d). The development of ego consciousness as we grow up interrupts the sense of wholeness that we have as children (Farah, 2017c). What music can do, is put us back in touch with this wholeness that we experienced as children (Kroeker, 2019), which Jung (1951) termed the self. This is because, one of the goals of individuation is to return to a state of wholeness, however one returns conscious, as opposed to the unconscious state of childhood (Farah, 2017c). Individuation is about making an impact in the world, being a great personality as well as doing it consciously. Not only would one be conscious and individuated, but also it is about meaning (Farah, 2017c). Individuation is about living a meaningful life (Farah, 2017c) and being connected to the big self. When the small self (the ego self) and the big self meet, it is a disaster for the small self. However, we do not want to get rid of the ego, we want a healthily constellated ego, which keeps the Self in check. The ego represents the personal and the Self represents the transpersonal (Farah, 2017c). Individuation is a synthesis of the ego and the Self to create a third thing. This is also the process of the conscious and the unconscious being brought intentionally into engagement with one another. Figuring out what one’s purpose is, is also an important part of what it means to individuate. Shadow work is the beginning of the road to individuation which starts the process of taking ownership of parts of one’s character that have been disavowed (Farah, 2017a), followed by an integration of the anima and animus in the psyche.
The shadow is personal, it is those parts of the ego which have been cathected into the unconscious. We do not know our shadow, at least at the beginning of the individuation journey. It is also hard to get to know, because we do not identify with the shadow, and it is those parts of ourselves we don’t want to be, all the things we do not want to do (Farah, 2017c). It is important to get to know the shadow, because if we don’t know the shadow well we can project it onto the people around us. This means that we would blame other people for hurting us, when in fact, it is one’s failure to integrate the shadow parts of oneself, to allow us to see that we too can be like that. This is the beginning of developing an integrated ego through a process of becoming conscious of how the archetypes play out in one’s life. The shadow is a personal archetype, whereas the anima and animus which I will focus on next are archetypes of the collective unconscious.
I would now like to address the archetypes of the anima and the animus which are the contra-sexual functions of the psyche (in traditional terms)(Farah, 2017a) and the rationalthinking (animus) and irrational-feeling (anima) functions (in contemporary terms)(Farah, 2017b). For women, their anima is dominant and her soul is symbolised by the animus. For men, his animus is dominant and his soul is symbolised by the anima (Farah, 2017a). In classical terms, the anima and animus are:
Both […] psychic images, the fundamental forms of which underline the feminine aspects of a man and the masculine aspects of a woman. They are seen as opposites, they are subliminal to consciousness and function from within the unconscious psyche. They operate in relation to the dominant psychic principle of a man or a woman and act as psychopomps or guides of the soul and can become necessary links in the creative possibilities and instruments of individuation.
(Samuels et al., 1986, pp. 23-24)
In classical terms this means that the masculine has a soul which is feminine and the feminine has a soul that takes on the masculine form. The anima and animus do have personal and subjective elements, but they are more objective, transpersonal, historical, cultural and archetypal in character (Farah, 2017b). It is these archetypes which characterise relatedness. They are the bridge between inner and outer worlds. In Jungian terminology the way we feel and think about ourselves are the anima and the animus respectively. It is far less malleable than the shadow. Working with the anima and the animus is far more challenging than working with the shadow. It mediates the relationship one has with oneself. In classical terms, there is an a priori (pre-existing) archetypal image of the feminine or masculine archetypes from the collective unconscious. This finds its expression in the developmental history of the person, their earliest relationships with significant persons of the gender in question, such as the mother and the father (it is significant that Johnny’s father was absent). The anima and animus are the bridge to the collective unconscious, which houses one’s genealogy and connection to the culture one finds oneself in more generally (Farah, 2017a; Farah, 2017b).
In the postmodern zeitgeist, the anima and the animus would include things like toxic masculinity, feminism, racism and anti-racism, sexism and anti-sexism, agism and anti-agism etc. The anima would house the feeling aspects of these concepts and the animus would house the intellectual aspect of these concepts. In the context of this song I would argue that toxic masculinity, feminism, sexism and anti-sexism are the most relevant because the song is about self-reflection and self-awareness in the context of a relationship or marriage that has broken up. It has been mentioned in fan circles that Johnny was married before this song and that he went through a divorce around the time of this song. Johnny does not mention the specific aspects of his shadow or his anima and animus, but rather he tips his hat to these archetypes in the way he addresses the referent of this song. This is because I would argue that the song is about reflecting on Johnny Clegg’s experience of seeing (although distorted) images of someone, perhaps an ex-lover, who is the inspiration for him to reflect on himself. He doesn’t delve into what these things are, but he implies that they exist. The aspects of one’s culture through which our relatedness to the world are mediated are located in the archetypes of the anima and the animus.
However, when the anima or animus is not functioning ideally, or when dysfunctional, the opposite effect is experienced. Instead of having a rich medium by which one can connect to others, the world and the collective unconscious, it can create contraction and isolate you, closing you off from meaningful relatedness. An archetypal dream image that speaks of this idea, is where one is contained inside a glass chamber, or separated from the action by glass windows. A specific example is that where the dreamer dreams of being outside a restaurant where her friends were celebrating. The windows constituted a barrier through which the dreamer could see her friends but was unable to connect with them.
(Farah, 2017a)
The anima and animus “act as psycho pompi or guides of the soul and can become necessary links in the creative possibilities and instruments of individuation” (Farah, 2017a, p. 7). Jung was tied to a sexist model which tied men and women to prescriptive behaviours which the opposite gender was not capable of. However, in reality, in the world, gender is more diverse and fluid than Jung initially theorised (Farah, 2017a). I would suggest that by presenting his song in the first person, Johnny Clegg opens his song up to be experienced in the gender of whoever is listening to the song and is not limited to men or women, but may include non-binary and gender diverse people. I would say that the term androgynous applies here, because the song is not gendered in any particular way. I will now move to the contemporary view of the anima and the animus.
In the contemporary view, the anima is the irrational-feeling function and the animus is the rational-thinking function of the psyche (Farah, 2017b). The animus is concerned with objective truth, and the anima is concerned with personal or subjective, inner truth. Importantly, it doesn’t mean that the kind of thinking or feeling we are referring to are occurring in their optimal state, but rather just that there is some operation of these functions (Farah, 2017b). The animus describes structure or form, and the anima describes flow or energy. I would argue that the flow of music can be symbolised by the anima and an analysis of the instrumentation by the animus. My animus would be evidenced by the idea that the song appeals to my love of the psyche and that it has an African aesthetic while appealing to ideas about self-knowledge which I like. This liking is anima. It makes me feel giddy with patriotism for South Africa and my home.
Irrational in this sense does not mean “overthrowing reality, or goes against rationality” (Farah, 2017, p. 6), but rather it refers to non-rationality, in that it does not utilise the rational function. I would argue that thinking affects feeling and feeling affects thinking. The functions communicate with one another, and in a world with non-binary and gender expansive identities, these functions are not directly connected to genders, but rather operate as functions of the psyche (Farah, 2017b). By listening to music one can be driven forwards in life, because through engagement with the symbols that emerge from song, we can discover things about the self (both ego and Self). When we get to know the anima and animus we are usually engaged in a relatedness with people. I would argue that the sexual nature of the classical formulation is obsolete in the contemporary formulation and is more a project of integration of the functions of the psyche, which all people have. Therefore, even though this song appears to be about someone important to Johnny Clegg, and it may be sexual and even refer to people of specific genders, the project of the integration of the anima and animus in contemporary Jungian psychology is not inherently sexual or gendered. We all as people have the project of shadow work and integrating the thinking-animus and the feeling-anima into our personalities.
Importantly, music is unlike language:
Music is often touted as a language of love or a universal language or even the language of the soul, but actually music is quite limited in its ability to communicate with the specificity of actual human languages.
(Kroeker, 2019, p. 23)
In this way, I would argue that the anima of music is lacking in language, it is deficient. However, it is generative symbolically (Kroeker, 2019). Johnny Clegg uses the Zulu neologisms, “Yela, wolala, hum wo sithi yelele hala,” which as Kroeker (2019) states:
When we hear something, we want to know with certainty that our mental image of it is the correct one and it can be disorienting when our interpretation differs from that of the collective.
(Kroeker, 2019, p. 25)
These neologisms could symbolise different things for different people and may operate in the way De Certeau (1996) speaks of Glossolalia, where they embody the action of ‘can speak,’ while what is spoken is liminal. We could say that language is logos-oriented whereas music’s ineffability opens up dynamics in the psyche between sound and lyrics that are not communicable by language (Kroeker, 2019). I would say that the instrumentation of this song typifies the African aesthetic that Johnny Clegg adopts in his songwriting. When I listen to the song, rather than analyse it, I feel energised and spurred on by the celebratory tone that I perceive in the song. My impression of the song Look Into the Mirror as beautiful is an example of the operation of my anima, whereas I am limited in my ability to assess the song by means of my animus, by means of assessing the instrumentation for example (Farah, 2017b).
We could say that the referent of this song appears to be a woman, and as a result in the classical sense, Johnny Clegg is reporting on his experience of the relatedness of the anima-animus archetypes. The particular shadows that Johnny Clegg is referring to “Shadows dance across your face, it doesn't look like you at all” appears to be in reference to a particular person, one could assume it to be a woman. “I have this funny feeling I've known you from before” seems to suggest that Johnny is reminded of someone that he has known i this lyric. When I think of these two lines what comes to mind is a face which has been obscured by shadows making lines on a person’s face, obscuring the facial features of this person. The funny feeling that Johnny gets can be seen as a reminder of a person that he’s known, maybe because he doesn’t recognise the referent of the song, because of the shadows. One could argue that the shadow, the parts of his character that have been disavowed (Farah, 2017a), which represent the beginning of the individuation journey (Farah, 2017d) are still hard to recognise. These aspects of the shadow are the personal and subjective aspects of the personality that require integration (Farah, 2017a). If Johnny doesn’t recognise this face, because it’s obscured by shadows, then we could interpret that he partially recognises his own shadow.
In order to gain a direct line of sight into our shadow, one can use dreams. The shadow is that part of the personality, which:
[…] represents unknown, or little known, characteristics of the ego. The shadow is the inferior being in us all, it wants to do all the things that we do not allow ourselves to do, and that we don’t want to be. It is our uncivilized desires and emotions, our dark side, those aspects of ourselves that exist but which we do not acknowledge or with which we do not identify. It is the unconscious aspect of our personality, usually hidden and repressed. It is all we are ashamed of, such as egotism, laziness, lustfulness, selfishness, greed, envy, anger, rage. Whatever we see as evil, inferior or unacceptable and deny within ourselves becomes part of our shadow.
(Farah, 2017c, p. 3)
This is really interesting, because what Johnny Clegg could be deemed to be saying, is that he does not yet fully recognise this woman (person) whom he is addressing. He could also be recognising that the negative qualities that he sees in this person, are because he does not yet recognise them in himself. This could be because he is recognising that he has not fully individuated his own shadow. The implications of this in relatedness to another person could imply that Johnny may not be able to see how his reactions to this person may be tainted by a lack of insight. This could further symbolise that Johnny does not recognise that within himself which led to the estrangement in the first place. This would mean that Johnny needs to engage in shadow work in order to fully recognise himself and by extension this person. This may be why there seems to be a parting between Johnny and this referent. Johnny mentions, “In a dream or someplace else or from another life, I'm not sure” which I would argue highlights the dreamlike quality of his experience, which is very similar to music (Kroeker, 2019). Stephen Farah (2017c) notes that:
Dreams are probably the most well-known and best route to the shadow. To quote Freud, “dreams are the royal road to the unconscious”. It is in our dreams that we encounter the many unsavoury aspects and shadowy characters that in waking life we may shy away from. We learn from depth psychology that all of the dynamics that are acted out in our dreams are aspects of ourselves. In our dream state the conscious censor is sidestepped and we see directly into the unconscious. Once we learn to interpret and understand our dreams, we gain a direct line of sight on our shadows. In dreams, myths and stories, the shadow is often symbolized by an inferior figure such as a tramp, beggar, servant, drug addict, pervert, thief, gypsy, prostitute or by something dark and threatening like a zombie.
(Farah, 2017c, p. 4)
This opens up the potential for individuation, for growth and for maturity which engenders the optimism of this song. However, the hedging, saying, “I’m not sure” where he recognises this person from, also highlights the uncertainty with which Johnny is approaching these connections.
How can we meaningfully harness the profound merit of auditory symbols to take us down into the deepest level of value in a way that also takes us further into our individuation journey?
(Kroeker, 2019, p. 68)
Johnny does not explicitly mention the individuation journey in the song Look Into the Mirror, however I would argue that the mirror that he begins the song with the injunction to look into, may imply that he is advocating for this process of self-reflection as the means of individuation. I would argue that the anima and animus of the song take us deeper into the collective unconscious, something else which is not explicitly mentioned. An interesting line, further on in the song is “Sleep is hard to come by, the night has lost the moon” which could reference that it is hard for Johnny to access his dreams. The moon usually symbolises femininity, but also the anima. If one were to lose the anima, or the feeling-tone of experience, this would symbolise a kind of dissociation from the reality of things and even psychopathology. The intensity with which night is usually accompanied can be seen as missing. Yet, Johnny sings, “Sometimes in an instant, I notice in your eyes/ Behind them moved something I knew and longed for all my life” that even though he’s lost this feelingtone, in this person’s eyes he is able to come into contact with his soul. The two different versions of this person who is the referent of Johnny’s song, can symbolise that which Johnny has access to, those parts of his shadow, anima and animus which he has individuated, as opposed to the dissociation that was referenced earlier in the song. This level of selfawareness would have been necessary to write a song with themes of self-awareness. The paradox is that if one is asleep, one cannot write about being asleep. This means that Johnny must be conscious and somewhere along the journey to individuation if he is able to see where he is, with regards to recognising his shadow, his anima and his animus.
Ah, when I see your face, look into the mirror
I remember
Ah, I feel afraid, look into the mirror
Can you remember?
Ah, something in the way, look into the mirror
I feel on the inside
Ah, just a little trace, look into the mirror
Of another time
If one considers the abovementioned lyrics from the song, I would argue that what Johnny remembers are interactions of “another time”. He remembers and he asks this person whether they remember. Of what he remembers, I would argue, is a key theme in this song, because looking “… into the mirror” involves a remembering, a feeling, of another time. From a Jungian perspective, the personality is made up of complexes, which are dialectical and teleological entities which reside within the personality and enact a singular telos. One of the results of individuation is an awareness of how these complexes play out in life, and therefore the ability to act from the Self, and an integrated ego, which is capable of more nuanced and principled approaches to the world rather than a complex-based reactive relationship to the world and other people would. While Johnny doesn’t mention what these complexes are, I would argue that this is a reference to there being such an awareness that he has (even if he hasn’t shared it), and that he is somewhat, although not fully, aware of himself in relation to this person.
Someday coming soon I knew we'd meet again
Someday coming soon
Someday coming soon I knew we'd meet again
I know the other you
I know the other you
These next verses are interesting, because Johnny speaks of knowing that he would meet this person again, however the person he sees is not the person he is familiar with. For this to be the case, we would need to consider that a person can be a trigger for associations, and imagery that spur development or individuation in a particular direction. What Johnny is saying here, I argue, is that the direction that she is sending him now is totally different to the direction the person he once knew would send him. This is very interesting, because it does not take this person at face value, but rather considers that a person has the power to promote individuation. The archetypes that would likely be at play are the anima and the animus. This means that the insights Johnny is likely to gain are deep insights into the connection between how people play out social schema and how this relates to his complexes, ego or Self. The connection between culture and personality is an important one in Jungian psychology, because the archetypes link how our particular stories are woven onto the universal patterns that we all possess from birth, that are the archetypes. Johnny knows “the other you” and not the person he has met once again. However, his absent father could mean that he did not have a real-world object to symbolise the animus or the thinking-function which may have been the cause of Johnny’s deficits in consciousness.
This could also symbolise that the particular self he sees in himself in this person’s presence is a different version of himself, not a different version of the other person, necessarily. It could be that Johnny has changed and he doesn’t recognise that he sees this person differently. This song captures the experience of looking into the mirror of selfreflection, because it highlights how what we see is not a one-to-one association between what is really in the world, and what we see when we look at it. What we see is always asymmetrical.
Written in 2017, the song I’ve Been Looking speaks to the song Look Into the Mirror, because the themes of I’ve Been Looking speak to themes of finding oneself, and speaking about the things in oneself that one sees. It is these things which Johnny and Jesse sing, are the “things I can’t replace.” The song I’ve Been Looking is different to Look Into the Mirror because the referent this time is father and son and the value of their close relationship.
I've been looking for something to lose
I've been looking for something to prove
Oh well, it's hard to even tell
I've been looking for a brighter day
I've been looking for the words to say
Oh well, it's hard to find yourself
Looking at the sky and wondering how I got here
All I wanna do is tell you 'bout my fear
Standing on the edge and looking at your face
To tell you how I feel, to tell you how I feel
These are the things I can't replace
These lyrics highlight that for the father and son duo, it is important to speak about how one feels, how finding oneself is hard and how they both value this journey of seeking wholeness, or individuation in Jungian terms. For Johnny, whose father was absent, it is significant that he is there for his own son. This means that from an object relations perspective, Jesse’s animus has a real-world object, Johnny, to symbolise, reflect (“Look Into the Mirror”) and relate through.
This paper highlights how the individuation project is set in motion by self-reflection upon the archetypes of one’s shadow, one’s anima and animus. In order to gain an understanding of what may be going on in the song Look Into the Mirror, I have engaged the music of the song, the knowledge from fan circles that this song was likely about a past lover, and articulated the psychological concepts that I believe to be in play by using an Archetypal Music Psychotherapy (AMP) approach (Kroeker, 2019).
Reference List
De Certeau, M. (1996). Vocal utopias: Glossolalias. Representations, 56, 29-47.
Farah, S. (2017a). Anima and animus classic. Centre for Applied Jungian Studies.
Farah, S. (2017b). Anima and animus contemporary. Centre for Applied Jungian Studies.
Farah, S. (2017c). Archetypes explored. Centre for Applied Jungian Studies.
Farah, S. (2017d). Individuation. Centre for Applied Jungian Studies.
Jung, C. G. (1951). Aion: Researches into the phenomenology of the self: Collected words 9ii
(R. Hull, Trans.). Princeton University Press.
Kroeker, J. (2019). Jungian music psychotherapy: When psyche sings. Routledge.
Nagari, B. (2018). Music in film: Its functions as image. In L. Hockley (Ed.), The Routledge
international handbook of Jungian film studies. Routledge.
Ogden, T. H. (2010). On three forms of thinking: Magical thinking, dream thinking, and
transformative thinking. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 79(2), 317-347.
Samuels, A., Shorter, B., & Plaut, F. (1986). A critical dictionary of Jungian analysis.
Routledge.
Stravinsky, I. (1936). Chronicle of my life. Gollancz.
Comments