10 Great Movies You Didn't Know Had A Hidden Symbolic Meaning

6. The Jungian Process Of Individuation - The Wizard Of Oz

Few films are so widely open to symbolic interpretation as The Wizard of Oz - not only has it been seemingly contradictorily interpreted as both an allegory for religion and atheism, the classic film has also been viewed as a commentary on the collapse of the Populist Movement and American monetary policy and an allegory for the feminist movement and female empowerment. But perhaps the most intriguing symbolic interpretation relates to the process of individuation as outlined by the psychologist Carl Jung. Individuation - the process in which the conscious mind reads and integrates the archetypal symbols of mythology in order to bring about self-awareness - can be viewed on a number of levels in The Wizard of Oz: Dorothy's journey represents her spiritual quest, Toto the dog stands for the instinctual animal side, the Wicked Witch of the West represents the Jungian shadow - the realm of repressed dark thoughts which reside in the subconscious - and so on. With the assistance of her traveling companions, each of whom stand for various manifestations of Dorothy's psyche, she is able to overcome and integrate the apparent contradictory aspects of herself and achieve integration and self-actualization.