The Dog
Guardian of the threshold, and faithful guide.
The Dog: what does it mean in analytical psychology?
The dog guards the threshold and follows its master, and in many traditions it guides the dead. It is the instinct that serves, and the alchemists’ “Corascene dog and Armenian bitch,” whose union Jung discussed among the pairs of opposites.
The dog goes with the dead: Anubis the jackal-headed who embalms and weighs, Cerberus at the gate, the dogs that run with Hecate at the crossroads, and Xolotl, the dog-god of the Aztecs who guides the sun through the underworld, so that a dog was buried with the dead to lead them. Jung read the dog as the instinct that knows the way below.
Mephistopheles comes to Faust as a black poodle circling in narrowing spirals, and Jung noticed the circling: the devil enters as the dog, the familiar animal, by the round way.
The Dog: where does it appear in myth and tradition?
Cerberus at the gate of Hades, the jackal Anubis, Hecate’s dogs at the crossroads, Odysseus’ Argos, and the black poodle out of which Mephistopheles steps in Goethe’s Faust. Argos dying at the sight of Odysseus; Tobias’s dog; the dog in Dürer’s Melencolia I and Saint Jerome; the Dominicans, Domini canes, the hounds of the Lord.
From the Sources
Pliny calls the dog the most faithful friend of man and tells of a dog that defended its master against robbers and, though wounded, would not leave his body.
“…these, there are more particularly that most faithful friend of man, the dog, and the horse. We have an account of a dog that fought against a band of robbers, in defending its master; and although it was pierced with wounds, still it would not leave the body”
Pliny the Elder, The Natural History of Pliny, Vol. II, Book VIII, Chapter 61, "The Qualities of the Dog". Translated, with copious notes and illustrations, by the late John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S., and H. T. Riley, Esq., B.A.; London: Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden, MDCCCLV (Project Gutenberg eBook #60230). The text, read in part
In Bulfinch's account of Aeneas's descent, the travellers are met by the three-headed dog Cerberus, who barks until the Sibyl throws him a drugged cake and he falls asleep.
“There they were encountered by the three-headed dog, Cerberus, with his necks bristling with snakes. He barked with all his three throats till the Sibyl threw him a medicated cake which he eagerly devoured, and then stretched himself out in his den and fell asleep.”
Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch's Mythology: The Age of Fable, The Age of Chivalry, Legends of Charlemagne, The Age of Fable, Chapter XXXII, "The Infernal Regions". Complete in one volume, Project Gutenberg eBook #4928. The text, read in part
Each passage is quoted from the text named, which the press fetched and read, and was checked word for word against a fresh copy of it; the link opens that copy. Passages are given as printed, without the editors’ footnote numbers, and with words broken across lines joined.
Where to Read
- Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14
- Goethe, Faust, Part One, “Before the Gate”
- Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14
Jung’s writings are cited by the volume of the Collected Works (CW), Bollingen Series / Princeton, 1953–79.
Related Symbols
Also among Beasts
“Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it all when you are analysing a dream.”
Cite This Entry
“The Dog.” In Symbols of the Psyche, the Symbolarium. The Thinking Press, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/symbolarium/psyche/dog.
Nearby in the alphabet: Distillatio: Rising and falling again, until only the essence is left. The Divine Child: The future, not yet born into the world. The Double: Oneself met as another.