Lately I often catch myself thinking how the outer world is teeming with images of ourselves, or rather images of our inner world. How selectively and accurately consciousness captures and creates images in which, as if in a mirror, what is happening to us in our soul is reflected. We always talk about ourselves, no matter what we talk about, and we always see ourselves, no matter what or who we look at. I literally began to catch images of myself in people and events that somehow emotionally hooked me, and I’ll tell you, it’s a most exciting activity to solve the riddles of such images. For example, you saw an old woman on the street who was swearing at the top of her lungs, and she seemed so unpleasant to you that even for a moment you wanted to become Raskolnikov, and all day you were haunted by her rattling loud voice and unpleasant image. Or you saw a stray dog ​​that caused you an incomprehensible attack of pity; you wanted to come over, warm it, feed it, tell it that it has you. Both the dog and the old woman are images of yourself, but the image of the old woman reflected your “shadow”, a part of the personality that you do not accept in yourself, and the image of a lonely dog ​​is your own inner loneliness, the feeling of abandonment that you experience primarily from yourself . There are riddles that are more complicated. I want to share the story of one such riddle. The story happened quite a long time ago, but it well reflects “the phenomena of images of the unconscious in the world.” I was returning home and already in the yard, on the way to the entrance, I suddenly noticed that a guy about 16-17 years old, thin, with a hooligan-gangster look, was hiding under the visor. Despite the heavy rain, I stopped and stared at him with all my eyes, he captivated me so much. Some kind of curiosity, mixed with fear at the same time, came over me, but staring at people is indecent, and when they look like a bandit, it’s also unsafe, so I hurried back home. For a long time, the image of this guy did not leave my head, I mentally returned to him and finally decided to understand why it bothered me so much. Already at that moment I understood that the unconscious was involved in the matter, and it was necessary to understand the meaning of the image. And here, as they say, it doesn’t matter “whether there was a boy” or who he really was, what is important here is the perception of his image. Who is a "bandit"? For me, this is, first of all, a person capable of breaking generally accepted laws, therefore partly uncontrollable, living in some kind of “borderline” zone, obeying his own morality, his own code, a person who harms other people. But I must say, at that time I felt especially acutely my adaptability, dependence on other people’s opinions, it was easy to lead me with the help of feelings of guilt and other similar things. I tried to be very reasonable and correct, and most importantly, to be good for others and in no case cause them offense or sorrow. But somewhere in the depths of my soul, this constant service to the “light” really stressed me out. Probably not everyone will understand me, but someone inside me envied the peculiar freedom of this “bully”; he seemed to whisper: “He can be bad, but you can’t, you’re afraid that they will drive you away, condemn you.” And it’s a disgusting feeling, you know, when “being good” is not your choice, but some kind of internal condition, and you constantly follow it so that you don’t “drive away.” It was the complete opposite of the image of a “bandit-street child” to what I was then that aroused such curiosity, attraction and fear in me. Everything fell into place, I realized that this image is a reflection of my inner need for emotional independence, the search for my “code”, my coordinate system, going beyond the boundaries of the enclosure where the “good little girl” lived. It was not without reason that my unconscious slipped me the grotesque opposite of my prudence and positivity; something inside me began to boil and, with some kind of gangster recklessness, was going to overthrow the old system by force. Somewhere inside I'm so tired.