The substantial stem of this Kumara plicatilis plant on a Tulbagh mountain shows how the youthful plant of long ago solved its rocky problem: Coping of necessity by growing at an angle in its early days, the upper branches corrected plant body bias in maturity, and it became a dominant, balanced member of its community.
The same phenomenon can happen in people, as Carl Jung proposed: Psychological development involves compensating for one-sided personality traits by integrating opposite functions or attitudes for wholeness later in life. The opposite traits are established in the unconscious, sometimes revealed in dreams.
As for the unconscious being active in trees, we haven’t quite advanced to know…