Above left: While searching for Danny late in the movie, a panic-stricken Wendy happens to look through a bedroom doorway, and sees someone wearing brown, with their buttocks exposed, leaning over another person's lap such that they could be performing oral sex on this person. Above right: The person wearing brown turns out to be someone wearing an animal costume resembling a bear, and the other person is a man wearing formal clothing. Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875-1961) considered the bear to be the symbol of the dangerous aspect of the unconscious.
Jungian psychology (also known as analytical psychology) is a school of psychology that originated from the ideas of Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist Carl Jung. Analytical psychology is fundamentally distinct from the psychoanalytic school of Sigmund Freud. In Jungian psychology, a person's shadow is an unconscious complex defined as the repressed, suppressed or disowned qualities of his or her conscious mind; the animus is the unconscious masculine component in women; and a person's Self represents his or her psyche as a whole, and signifies the unification of consciousness and unconsciousness in a person. The Self, according to Jung, is realized as the product of individuation, which in Jung's view is the process of integrating one's personality.[a]
To explain the meaning of certain unusual sights in The Shining, such as the person in the bear suit, the woman in room 237, etc., we need to look at Jung's The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, and specifically, to the section in part IV titled "The Psychological Aspects of the Kore." Below are quoted the relevant passages from Jung (all emphasis is in original).[b]
"Not only is the figure of Demeter and the Kore in its three-fold aspect as maiden, mother, and Hecate not unknown to the psychology of the unconscious, it is even something of a practical problem. The "Kore" has her psychological counterpart in those archetypes which I have called the self or supraordinate personality on the one hand, and the anima on the other. ..."
"The figure of the Kore that interests us here belongs...to the type of supraordinate personality. It is an essential character of psychic figures that they are duplex or at least capable of duplication; ..."
Recall the twins in the movie - they could be considered to be duplicates of some 'unknown young girl' (see immediately below).
"As a matter of practical observation, the Kore often appears in woman as an unknown young girl...An occasional variant is the nixie or water-sprite, who betrays her superhuman nature by her fishtail."
The young woman in the tub in room 237, initially with her lower body submerged (see screencap below), is the "water-sprite."
"Sometimes the Kore and mother-figures slither down altogether to the animal kingdom, the favourite representatives then being the cat or the snake or the bear, or else some black monster of the underworld like the crocodile, or other salamander-like, saurian creatures. The maiden's helplessness exposes her to all sorts of dangers...Sometimes it is a true nekyia, a descent into Hades and a quest for the "treasure hard to attain", occasionally connected with orgiastic sexual rites or offerings of menstrual blood to the moon...There are drinkings of blood and bathings in blood, ..."
Wendy (below left) is in a state of helplessness while she's searching for Danny. She is, metaphorically speaking, in Hades, as indicated by the roomful of skeletons that she sees (below right). The 'bear' and the man shown in the two screencaps at the top of this post, could be taken to be engaged in an orgiastic sexual rite.
The menstrual blood Jung mentions appears to Wendy as this 'river of blood' (above left), which as we said in part 1, represents the Phlegethon, a river of blood in Hell. The man Wendy sees with blood streaming down his face (above right) is holding a drinking glass that appears to contain alcohol mixed with blood; this suggests Jung's "drinkings of blood".
One of the general ideas to be taken from all of the above, is that the person in the bear suit, the twins, and the young woman in room 237 (who transforms into a rotted old woman while interacting with Jack in the room - see screencap at left), all represent aspects of Wendy's Jungian Self.
Since the Self is same-sex, this implies that the person in the bear suit is a woman.
One 'complication' with the bear in the dream is that if the viewer looks carefully, he or she will notice that the face of the animal also somewhat resembles that of a pig - it is as if the creature is a 'combination' of bear and pig. To address this, we must turn to the writings of Jungian analyst Jolande Jacobi (in Jung's Man and His Symbols):[c] "In alchemy, the "prime material" was often represented by such monstrous and fabulous creatures - mixed forms of animals. In psychological terms, they would probably symbolize the original total unconsciousness, out of which the individual ego can rise and begin to develop toward maturity." Jacobi also points out that "In the minds of many people, the pig is closely associated to dirty sexuality. (Circe, for example, changed the men who desired her into swine.)" The fact that Wendy's 'bear person' has a portion of its costume removed to expose the buttocks, is no doubt meant to suggest the idea of anal sex, which could be considered a form of dirty sexuality.
The animal that Wendy sees also looks somewhat like a dog. Again, from Jacobi in Man and His Symbols: "[A] dog may stand for loyalty, but also for promiscuity, because it shows no discrimination in its choice of partners."[c] In this context, the bear scenario represents Wendy cheating on her husband with another man. Since Wendy is, in part, the dream-representation of Susan Robertson herself, this in turn suggests that Susan, at some point, considered cheating on her own husband, which is consistent with what we said earlier about her wanting to leave him.
The fact that Jack Torrance, who is, in part, a dream-representation of Susan Robertson's husband, is shown 'ogling' two women at the hotel (see screencap at left), is an indication that Susan knew her own husband was considering cheating on her, or that he was, at least, losing interest in her. Susan's fear that her own husband was considering being unfaithful to her, is also what is indicated by the fact that in her dream, Jack does not wear a wedding band, whereas Wendy does wear one (see screencaps below).
Above left: Wendy wears a wedding band throughout the movie, for example, when she goes to the Gold Room bar to get Jack's help (click image to enlarge). Above right: Note the absence of a wedding band on Jack's hand, in this shot from the scene in which Wendy serves him breakfast in their bedroom at the Overlook.
a. Wikipedia, 'Analytical psychology'. Web, n.d. URL = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_psychology.
b. Jung, C.G. "The Psychological Aspects of the Kore" in The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Vol. 9, part 1. Princeton University Press, 1969. pp. 182, 183, 184.
c. Jacobi, Jolande. "Symbols in an Individual Analysis" in Carl Jung ed., Man and His Symbols. London: Aldus Books, 1964. p. 266.
