The Mirror
Reflection, and the truth one would rather not see.
The Mirror: what does it mean in analytical psychology?
The mirror shows what cannot be seen directly: one’s own face, and the face one does not wish to see. Jung wrote that whoever looks into the water of the unconscious sees first his own face, and meets the shadow.
Jung wrote that the mirror does not flatter: it shows faithfully what looks into it, the face we never show the world because we hide it behind the persona, and that this is the first test of courage on the inner way. Perseus could look at Medusa only in the mirror of his shield: the terrible content of the unconscious met by reflection, not head-on.
The alchemists called their art the mirror of nature, and the Rosarium woodcuts show the king and queen with a mirror as the soul descends: knowledge of oneself as the condition of the union.
The Mirror: where does it appear in myth and tradition?
Narcissus at the pool, Perseus seeing Medusa in his shield, the queen’s mirror in Snow White, “through a glass, darkly.”. The mirror of Amaterasu, which drew her from the cave; Tezcatlipoca, “smoking mirror”; the mirror of Lady Shalott; Alice through the glass; the Lacanian mirror stage.
From the Sources
In the Grimms' tale the queen's looking-glass, consulted as usual, one day answers that she is fair, but Snowdrop is lovelier far.
“Then the glass one day answered the queen, when she went to look in it as usual: 'Thou, queen, art fair, and beauteous to see, But Snowdrop is lovelier far than thee!'”
Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm, Grimms' Fairy Tales, "Snowdrop". Text based on translations from the Grimms' Kinder und Hausmärchen by Edgar Taylor and Marian Edwardes. The text, read in part
James likens a hearer of the word who is not a doer to a man who beholds his natural face in a glass, goes his way, and straightway forgets what manner of man he was.
“For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: 1:24 For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.”
The King James Version of the Bible, James 1:23-24. King James Version, Project Gutenberg eBook #10. 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
- “Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious,” CW 9i
- “Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious,” CW 9i, ¶ 43
- “The Psychology of the Transference,” CW 16
Jung’s writings are cited by the volume of the Collected Works (CW), Bollingen Series / Princeton, 1953–79.
Related Symbols
Also among Things Held and Worn
“Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it all when you are analysing a dream.”
Cite This Entry
“The Mirror.” In Symbols of the Psyche, the Symbolarium. The Thinking Press, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/symbolarium/psyche/mirror.
Nearby in the alphabet: Metamorphosis: Changed into another form, and changed back. The Miraculous Birth: Born another way, and so not wholly of this world. The Moon: The light of the night, waning and returning. Mortificatio: The killing of what has ruled too long.