Regulated Awareness ☼The goal of much psychoanalytic training is to learn and use central concepts and methods of the "trade". And the main problem that rises through that, may be that essential awareness or attention that is regulated from without, sooner or later becomes stiff and bored, and in such cases needs to freshen up by deep meditation and other congenial methods, including art. Hence, if you are trained to look on main phenomena in a set way, such as the Jungian way, you are in part steered by training and its constructs. But each upcoming case is unique, and deserves to be "taken in" (absorbed) as something that beats most sorts of training - that insight could be good for you and save you from becoming over-bossy, dogmatic and foolishly insistent - a know-all - instead of attuned to what is and transpires here-and-now. A little tentativeness may be good for all too in such a process. 1. Not regulated from outside and from on high out there
To be well governed produces opposition, next some neglect 2. Intensification
Be aware of the consequent sacrifices 3. Strive for conscious enough awareness your whole life
If the much unconscious mortal fails recurrently, So
What is regulated tends to be cemented or intensified somehow, sooner or later. For awareness to last, dive within by such as ◦ TM (Transcendental Meditation). It has many benefits.
Jungian Training ☼A fine suggestion may be taken to be a poem at first. It may improve one's general outlook. 1. Fooling influences have their mouthpieces to become aware of
To be well governed produces destruction and devastation of natural preserves
Some silent happenings can be the soul's mouthpieces 2. Valid expressivity conforms with the culture and main life-experiences
Be aware of the ordinary man-sacrifices 3. It is better to grow out of certain shortcomings than to cope by sacrificing love, sides to oneself, or others
If the much unconscious mortal fails recurrently,
Let the soul get its way, even by our failures and shortcomings - going to school a lot
summer as winter
Animal variety is another facet of what mankind is designed to meet and cope with, one way
or other.
Being at war often taxes So Influential mouthpieces conform to the culture of others, and not all of them represent sound personal development in time.
Quintessential Jung Deliberations and Jung Quotes ☼1. Interesting if permitted
Allow for irrational things in our own mind and how to deal with them. Koans and good riddles may help. There is that possibilityIt seems to be very hard for people to live with riddles or to let them live, although one would think that life is so full of riddles as it is that a few more things we cannot answer would make no difference. But perhaps it is just this that is so unendurable, that there are irrational things in our own mind which upset the conscious mind in its illusory certainties by confronting it with the riddle of its existence. - "The Philosophical Tree" (1945). In CW 13: Alchemical Studies. P. 307 Both East and West are embedded within Nature, and also function in complementary waysThe East seeks a sinking or deepening. Outer reality, with its bodiliness and weight, appears to make a much stronger and sharper impression on the European than it does on the Indian. . . . The Indian likes to turn back into the maternal depths of Nature. - "The Psychology of Eastern Meditation" (1943) In CW 11: Psychology of Religion: West and East. P. 936 Both Government and to be well governed produces opposition, next some neglectWhen there is a marked change in the individual's state of consciousness, the unconscious contents which are thereby constellated will also change. And the further the conscious situation moves away from a certain point of equilibrium, the more forceful and accordingly the more dangerous become the unconscious contents that are struggling to restore the balance. This leads ultimately to a dissociation: on the one hand, ego-consciousness makes convulsive efforts to shake off an invisible opponent (if it does not suspect its next-door neighbour of being the devil!), while on the other hand it increasingly falls victim to the tyrannical will of an internal "Government opposition" which displays all the characteristics of a daemonic subman and superman combined. When a few million people get into this state, it produces the sort of situation which has afforded us such an edifying object-lesson every day for the last ten years.* These contemporary events betray their psychological background by their very singularity. The insensate destruction and devastation are a reaction against the deflection of consciousness from the point of equilibrium. For an equilibrium does in fact exist between the psychic ego and non-ego, and that equilibrium is a religion a "careful consideration" of ever-present unconscious forces which we neglect at our peril. - "The Psychology of Transference" (1946). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.394 - *The years 1935-1945 Christ's elder brother was Old Nick to some inside early ChristianityOnly with Christ did the devil enter the world as the real counterpart of God, and in early Jewish Christian circles Satan was regarded as Christ's elder brother. - Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P. 113 Dynamic, faltering will that is dog-trained, can be harmed in more ways than oneSince the differentiated consciousness of civilised man has been granted an effective instrument for the practical realisation of its contents through the dynamics of his will, there is all the more danger, the more he trains his will, of his getting lost in one-sidedness and deviating further and further from the laws and roots of his being. - "The Psychology of the Child Archetype" (1940) In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. P.276 Female opinions of the worst kind disgust profound menUnconscious assumptions or opinions are the worst enemy of woman; they can even grow into a positively demonic passion that exasperates and disgusts men, and does the woman herself the greatest injury by gradually smothering the charm and meaning of her femininity and driving it into the background. Such a development naturally ends in profound psychological disunion, in short, in a neurosis. - "Woman in Europe" (1927) In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.245 For many people their neighbours are in control inside their own souls as wellWe always start with the naive assumption that we are masters in our own house. Hence we must first accustom ourselves to the thought that, in our most intimate psychic life as well, we live in a kind of house which has doors and windows to the world, but that, although the objects or contents of this world act upon us, they do not belong to us. For many people this hypothesis is by no means easy to conceive, just as they do not find it at all easy to understand and to accept the fact that their neighbour's psychology is not necessarily identical with their own. - "The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious" (1953) In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.329 It may be fit to understand many things with the so-called heart [Rogers' organismic feel is that] if suitably expressed and pertinently followed up in time, or in stepsOne can, it is true, understand many things with the heart, but then the head often finds it difficult to follow up with an intellectual formulation that gives suitable expression to what has been understood. There is also an understanding with the head, particularly of the scientific kind, where there is sometimes too little room for the heart. - "The Psychology of Eastern Meditation" (1943). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.934 Jung foresaw "transcendental nuclear physics" on top of psychology. It has comeSooner or later nuclear physics and the psychology of the unconscious will draw closer together as both of them, independently of one another and from opposite directions, push forward into transcendental territory, the one with the concept of the atom, the other with that of the archetype. - Aion (1951). CW 9: Part II: P. 412 Loving your neighbour is simply artificial or worse - extremely indecent or untrue, says JungI cannot love anyone if I hate myself. That is the reason why we feel so extremely uncomfortable in the presence of people who are noted for their special virtuousness, for they radiate an atmosphere of the torture they inflict on themselves. That is not a virtue but a vice. And thus, from so-called goodness, which was once really good, something has arisen which is no longer good; it has become an evasion. Nowadays any coward can make himself respectable by going to church and loving his neighbour. But it is simply an untrue state, an artificial world. - From the Basel Seminar (1934) Man's inherent system is designed for such as carbohydrates to find life interestingThe whole nature of man presupposes woman, both physically and spiritually. His system is tuned into woman from the start, just as it is prepared for a quite definite world where there is water, light, air, salt, carbohydrates etc.. - "Two Essays in Analytical Psychology" In CW 7: P. 188 Most sincere patterns of behaviour sympathise with inborn instincts, as a matter of factTo the extent that the archetypes intervene in the shaping of conscious contents by regulating, modifying, and motivating them, they act like instincts. It is therefore very natural to suppose that these factors are connected with the instincts and to enquire whether the typical situational patterns which these collective form-principles apparently represent are not in the end identical with the instinctual patterns, namely, with the patterns of behaviour. - "On the Nature of the Psyche" (1947). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.404 No natural expression has to be an execution of yourself and your own dear assetsSince [in the Middle Ages] the psychic relation to woman was expressed in the collective worship of Mary, the image of woman lost a value to which human beings had a natural right. This value could find its natural expression only through individual choice, and it sank into the unconscious when the individual form of expression was replaced by a collective one. In the unconscious the image of woman received an energy charge that activated the archaic and infantile dominants. And since all unconscious contents, when activated by dissociated libido, are projected upon the external object, the devaluation of the real woman was compensated by daemonic features. She no longer appeared as an object of love, but as a persecutor or witch. The consequence of increasing Mariolatry was the witch hunt . . . that indelible blot on the later Middle Ages. - Psychological Types (1921), CW 6. P.344 Opposites get best expressed though livingOpposites can be united . . . as an expression of both 'and of neither. Such an expression . . . can only be created through living. - Psychological Types (1921). CW 6: P.166 Psychological facts most often rest on observations, and they rest on mind. Let's hope it is sane, not neuroticThere is no Archimedean point from which to judge, since the mind is indistinguishable from its manifestations. The mind is the object of psychology, and-fatally enough-also its subject. There is no getting away from this fact. - "Psychology and Religion" (1938). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.8 Scientific descriptions can tame opponents on top of observations of some high class, if they are permitted or regularEvery science is descriptive at the point where it can no longer proceed experimentally, without on that account ceasing to be scientific. But an experimental science makes itself impossible when it delimits its field of work in accordance with theoretical concepts. The mind does not come to an end where some physiological assumption or other stops. In other words, in each individual case that we observe scientifically, we have to consider the manifestations of the mind in their totality. - "Concerning the Archetypes, with Special Reference to the Anima Concept" (1936). In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. P.113 Some silent happenings can be the soul's mouthpiecesThe doctrine that all evil thoughts come from the heart and that the human soul is a sink of iniquity must lie deep in the marrow of their bones. Were it so, then God had made a sorry job of creation, and it were high time for us to go over to Marcion the Gnostic and depose the incompetent demiurge. Ethically, of course, it is infinitely more convenient to leave God the sole responsibility for such a Home for Idiot Children, where no one is capable of putting a spoon into his own mouth. But it is worth man's while to take pains with himself, and he has something in his own soul that can grow. It is rewarding to watch patiently the silent happenings in the soul, and the most and the best happens when it is not regulated from outside and from above. - Psychology and Alchemy (1944). CW 12: P.126 The brilliant prototype inside yourself reaches outwards at timesHow else could it have occurred to man to divide the cosmos, on the analogy of day and night, summer and winter, into a bright day-world and a dark night-world peopled with fabulous monsters, unless he had the prototype of such a division in himself, in the polarity between the conscious and the invisible and unknowable unconscious? Primitive man's perception of objects is conditioned only partly by the objective behaviour of the things themselves, whereas a much greater part is often played by intrapsychic facts which are not related to the external objects except by way of projection. This is due to the simple fact that the primitive has not yet experienced that ascetic discipline of mind known to us as the critique of knowledge. To him the world is a more or less fluid phenomenon within the stream of his own fantasy, where subject and object are undifferentiated and in a state of mutual interpenetration. - "Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype" (1939) In CW 9, Part 1: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. P. 187 The man who has attained new knowledge suffers for it. The Aryan consideration is that tapas (wide sacrifice or penance) is the stuff that brings forth attainments of this kind. But it could help to be many about a new attainment and share itGenesis represents the act of becoming conscious as a taboo infringement, as though knowledge meant that a sacrosanct barrier had been impiously overstepped. I think that Genesis is right in so far as every step towards greater consciousness is a kind of Promethean guilt: through knowledge, the gods are as it were robbed of their fire, that is, something that was the property of the unconscious powers is torn out of its natural context and subordinated to the whims of the conscious mind. The man who has usurped the new knowledge suffers, however, a transformation or enlargement of consciousness, which no longer resembles that of his fellow men. He has raised himself above the human level of his age ("you shall become like God"), but in so doing has alienated himself from humanity. The pain of this loneliness is the vengeance of the gods, for never again can he return to mankind. He is, as the myth says, chained to the lonely cliffs of the Caucasus, forsaken of God and man. - "The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious" (1953) CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P. 243 The secret fear besmears man - an enemy has to make-believe, exhibit much, or understandThe remarkable potency of unconscious contents always indicates a corresponding weakness in the conscious mind and its functions. It is as though the latter were threatened with impotence. For primitive man this danger is one of the most terrifying instances of "magic." So we can understand why this secret fear is also to be found among civilised people. In serious cases it is the secret fear of going mad; in less serious, the fear of the unconscious-a fear which even the normal person exhibits in his resistance to psychological views and explanations. This resistance borders on the grotesque when it comes to scouting all psychological explanations of art, philosophy, and religion, as though the human mind had, or should have, absolutely nothing to do with these things. The doctor knows these well-defended zones from his consulting hours: they are reminiscent of island fortresses from which the neurotic tries to ward off the octopus. ("Happy neurosis island," as one of my patients called his conscious state!) The doctor is well aware that the patient needs an island and would be lost without it. It serves as a refuge for his consciousness and as the last stronghold against the threatening embrace of the unconscious. The same is true of the normal person's taboo regions which psychology must not touch. But since no war was ever won on the defensive, one must, in order to terminate hostilities, open negotiations with the enemy and see what his terms really are. Such is the intention of the doctor who volunteers to act as a mediator. He is far from wishing to disturb the somewhat precarious island idyll or pull down the fortifications. On the contrary, he is thankful that somewhere a firm foothold exists that does not first have to be fished up out of the chaos, always a desperately difficult task. He knows that the island is a bit cramped and that life on it is pretty meagre and plagued with all sorts of imaginary wants because too much life has been left outside, and that as a result a terrifying monster is created, or rather is roused out of its slumbers. He also knows that this seemingly alarming animal stands in a secret compensatory relationship to the island and could supply everything that the island lacks. - "The Psychology of Transference" (1946). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.374 The womb of a possibly loving mother is inside our concept "Nature"There is no human horror or fairground freak that has not lain in the womb of a loving mother. As the sun shines upon the just and the unjust, and as women who bear and give suck tend God's children and the devil's brood with equal compassion, unconcerned about the possible consequences, so we also are part and parcel of this amazing nature, and, like it, carry within us the seeds of the unpredictable. - "The Development of the Personality" (1934). In CW 17: The Development of the Personality. P.321 There is hardly a "real" thought that cannot . . . be thrust aside by an "unreal" one" as the sine qua non (essential) for understanding an outside world, says Carl JungFar from being a material world, this is a psychic world, which allows us to make only indirect and hypothetical inferences about the real nature of matter. The psychic alone has immediate reality, and this includes all forms of the psychic, even "unreal" ideas and thoughts which refer to nothing "external." We may call them "imagination" or "delusion," but that does not detract in any way from their effectiveness. Indeed, there is no "real" thought that cannot, at times, be thrust aside by an "unreal" one, thus proving that the latter is stronger and more effective than the former. Greater than all physical dangers are the tremendous effects of delusional ideas, which are yet denied all reality by our world-blinded consciousness. Our much vaunted reason and our boundlessly overestimated will are sometimes utterly powerless in the face of "unreal" thoughts. The world powers that rule over all mankind, for good or ill, are unconscious psychic factors, and it is they that bring consciousness into being and hence create the sine qua non for the existence of any world at all. We are steeped in a world that was created by our own mind. - "The Real and the Surreal" (1933). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.747 To be educated is for getting more amiable or tolerable to your own soul - it can happenInstead of waging war on himself it is surely better for a man to learn to tolerate himself, and to convert his inner difficulties into real experiences instead of expending them in useless fantasies. Then at least he lives, and does not waste his life in fruitless struggles. If people can be educated to see the lowly side of their own natures, it may be hoped that they will also learn to understand and to love their fellow men better. A little less hypocrisy and a little more tolerance towards oneself can only have good results in respect for our neighbour; for we are all too prone to transfer to our fellows the injustice and violence we inflict upon our own natures. - Appendix I: "New Paths in Psychology" (1912) Variant Readings. In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P. 439 To be fit is to treat ourselves candidly, yet decently, with no ado if possible"Love your neighbours is wonderful, since we then have nothing to do about ourselves; but when it is a question of "love your neighbour as thyself" we are no longer so sure, for we think it would be egoism to love ourselves. There was no need to preach "love thyself" to people in olden times, because they did so as a matter of course. But how is it nowadays? It would do us good to take this thing somewhat to heart, especially the phrase "as thyself." How can I love my neighbour if I do not love myself? How can we be altruistic if we do not treat ourselves decently? But if we treat ourselves decently, if we love ourselves, we make discoveries, and then we see what we are and what we should love. There is nothing for it but to put our foot into the serpent's mouth. He who cannot love can never transform the serpent, and then nothing is changed. - From the Basel Seminar (1934). We have a stern critic within us that cannot please us without sound minds or headsThe essential thing is that we should be able to stand up to our judgement of ourselves. From outside this attitude looks like self-righteousness, but it is so only if we are incapable of criticising ourselves. If we can exercise self criticism, criticism from outside will affect us only on the outside and not pierce to the heart, for we feel that we have a sterner critic within us than any who could judge us from without. And anyway, there are as many opinions as there are heads to think them. We come to realise that our own judgement has as much value as the judgement of others. One cannot please everybody, therefore it is better to be at peace with oneself. - "The Swiss Line in the European Spectrum" (1928). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.911 What is down can be helped somewhat by being more conscious, all in allWhere is a height without depth, and how can there be light that throws no shadow? There is no good that is not opposed by evil. "No man can be redeemed from a sin he has not committed," says Carpocrates; a deep saying for all who wish to understand, and a golden opportunity for all those who prefer to draw false conclusions. What is down below is not just an excuse for more pleasure, but something we fear because it demands to play its part in the life of the more conscious and more complete man. - "Woman In Europe" (1927). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.271 What is had by transgressing and venturing through obscurity and darkness can be gifts from the darknessWhen we must deal with problems, we instinctively resist trying the way that leads through obscurity and darkness. We wish to hear only of unequivocal results, and completely forget that these results can only be brought about when we have ventured into and emerged again from the darkness. But to penetrate the darkness we must summon all the powers of enlightenment that consciousness can offer. - "The Stages of Life" (1930). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.752 "I mistrust the principle of "pure observation . . . We must be satisfied if he does not see too subjectively" - It is often like that. ◇We see colours but not wave-lengths. This well-known fact must nowhere be taken to heart more seriously than in psychology. The effect of the personal equation begins already in the act of observation. One sees what one can best see oneself. Thus, first and foremost, one sees the mote in one's brother's eye. No doubt the mote is there, but the beam sits in one's own-and may considerably hamper the act of seeing. I mistrust the principle of "pure observation" in so-called objective psychology unless one confines oneself to the eyepieces of chronoscopes and tachistoscopes and suchlike "psychological" apparatus. With such methods one also guards against too embarrassing a yield of empirical psychological facts. But the personal equation asserts itself even more in the presentation and communication of one's own observations, to say nothing of the interpretation and abstract exposition of the empirical material. Nowhere is the basic requirement so indispensable as in psychology that the observer should be adequate to his object, in the sense of being able to see not only subjectively but also objectively. The demand that he should see only objectively is quite out of the question, for it is impossible. We must be satisfied if he does not see too subjectively - Psychological Types (1921). CW 6: P.91 "The more Christian one's consciousness is, the more heathenish does the unconscious behave": let's hope thatIn the unconscious is everything that has been rejected by consciousness, and the more Christian one's consciousness is, the more heathenish does the unconscious behave, if in the rejected heathenism there are values which are important for life. - "Answer to Job" (1952). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.713 "We have turned away from the certain guidance of instinct and are handed over to fear" and consciousness. And that may in the end not be able to serve us as well as natural belongingIt is just man's turning away from instinct - his opposing himself to instinct - that creates consciousness. Instinct is nature and seeks to perpetuate nature, whereas consciousness can only seek culture or its denial. Even when we turn back to nature, inspired by a Rousseauesque longing, we "cultivate" nature. As long as we are still submerged in nature we are unconscious, and we live in the security of instinct which knows no problems. Everything in us that still belongs to nature shrinks away from a problem, for its name is doubt, and wherever doubt holds sway there is uncertainty and the possibility of divergent ways. And where several ways seem possible, there we have turned away from the certain guidance of instinct and are handed over to fear. For consciousness is now called upon to do that which nature has always done for her children namely, to give a certain, unquestionable, and unequivocal decision. And here we are beset by an all-too-human fear that consciousness - our Promethean conquest - may in the end not be able to serve us as well as nature. - "The Stages of Life" (1930). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P 750 A big evil takes time to evolve at timesA small evil becomes a big one through being disregarded and repressed. The shadow is very much a part of human nature, and it is only at night that no shadows exist. - "A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity" (1942) In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.286 Beware of anthropomorphic projections concerning gods - possibly emblems deeply in tune with some unknown aspects of the inside manIt suits our hypertrophied and hubristic modern consciousness not to be mindful of the dangerous autonomy of the unconscious and to treat it negatively as an absence of consciousness. The hypothesis of invisible gods or daemons would be, psychologically, a far more appropriate formulation, even though it would be an anthropomorphic projection. But since the development of consciousness requires the withdrawal of all the projections we can lay our hands on, it is not possible to maintain any non-psychological doctrine about the gods. If the historical process of world despiritualisation continues as hitherto, then everything of a divine or daemonic character outside us must return to the mind, to the inside of the unknown man, whence it apparently originated. - "Psychology and Religion" (1938). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P 141 Common man is an enacting stage figure directed from behind and over his head, says Jung. Thus, to be a living puppet on a string is much identicalWhatever name we may put to the psychic background, the fact remains that our consciousness is influenced by it in the highest degree, and all the more so the less we are conscious of it. The layman can hardly conceive how much his inclinations, moods, and decisions are influenced by the dark forces of his mind, and how dangerous or helpful they may be in shaping his destiny. Our cerebral consciousness is like an actor who has forgotten that he is playing a role. But when the play comes to an end, he must remember his own subjective reality, for he can no longer continue to live as Julius Caesar or as Othello, but only as himself, from whom he has become estranged by a momentary sleight of consciousness. He must know once again that he was merely a figure on the stage who was playing a piece by Shakespeare, and that there was a producer as well as a director in the background who, as always, will have something very important to say about his acting. - "Zur Umerziehung des deutschen Volkes" (On the Re-education of the Germans). In Basler Nachrichten, Nr. 486, 16 November 1946. P.332 Externalisation of insatiable greed demands one ostensible cultureThe breathless drive for power and aggrandisement in the political, social, and intellectual sphere, gnawing at the soul of the Westerner with apparently insatiable greed, is spreading irresistibly in the East and threatens to have incalculable consequences. Not only in India but in China, too, much has already perished where once the soul lived and throve. The externalisation of culture may do away with a great many evils whose removal seems most desirable and beneficial, yet this step forward, as experience shows, is all too dearly paid for with a loss of spiritual culture. - "The Holy Men of India" (1944). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.962 From what unknown depths inside comes the depths of sleep?Our consciousness . . . wells up from unknown depths. In childhood it awakens gradually, and all through life it wakes each morning out of the depths of sleep from an unconscious condition. - "The Psychology of Eastern Meditation" (1943). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.935 Getting along as best one can with universal Being in Christ, or is it vice versa?"The Christian during contemplation would never say I am Christ," but will confess with Paul: "Not I, but Christ lives in me" (Gal. 2:20). Our sutra however, says: "You'll know you are the Buddha." At bottom the two confessions are identical, in that the Buddhist only attains this knowledge when he is anatman, 'without self.' But there is an immeasurable difference in the formulation. The Christian attains his end in Christ, the Buddhist knows he is the Buddha. The Christian gets out of the transitory and ego-bound world of consciousness, but the Buddhist still reposes on the eternal ground of his inner nature, whose oneness with Deity, or with universal Being, is confirmed in other Indian testimonies. - "The Psychology of Eastern Meditation" (1943) In CW 11: Psychology of Religion: West and East. P. 949 In part "a man only thinks or says or does what he himself is"Today we are convinced that in all fields of knowledge psychological premises exist which exert a decisive influence upon the choice of material, the method of investigation, the nature of the conclusions, and the formulation of hypotheses and theories. We have even come to believe that Kant's personality was a decisive conditioning factor of his Critique of Pure Reason. Not only our philosophers, but our own predilections in philosophy, and even what we are fond of calling our "best" truths are affected, if not dangerously undermined, by this recognition of a personal premise . . . Can it be possible that a man only thinks or says or does what he himself is? - "Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype" (1939). In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. P.150 It may pay to get bigoted in part, but richer in know-howOur material knowledge has increased, but not our intelligence. This means that we are just as bigoted in regard to new ideas, and just as impervious to them, as people were in the darkest days of antiquity. We have become rich in knowledge, but or in wisdom. - Symbols of Transformation (1952). CW 5: P. 23 Nurture a lot or life becomes fallenOur life is like the course of the sun. In the morning it gains continually in strength until it reaches the zenith heat of high noon. Then comes the enantiodromia: the steady forward movement no longer denotes an increase, but a decrease, in strength. Thus our task in handling a young person is different from the task of handling an older person. In the former case, it is enough to clear away all the obstacles that hinder expansion and ascent; in the latter, we must nurture everything that assists the descent. - "On the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1912). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology P. 114 The belief: "Everything the fooled man is not conscious of in himself will come to meet him as if from outside"A man who is unconscious of himself acts in a blind, instinctive way and is in addition fooled by all the illusions that arise when he sees everything that he is not conscious of in himself coming to meet him from outside as projections upon his neighbour. - "The Philosophical Tree" (1945). In CW 13: Alchemical Studies. P.335 To meet the unacceptables often activates something of it to usIncisive changes in history are generally attributed exclusively to external causes. It seems to me, however, that external circumstances often serve merely as occasions for a new attitude to life and the world, long prepared in the unconscious, to become manifest. Social, political, and religious conditions affect the collective unconscious in the sense that all those factors which are suppressed by the prevailing views or attitudes in the life of a society gradually accumulate in the collective unconscious and activate its contents. Certain individuals gifted with particularly strong intuition then become aware of the changes going on in it and translate these changes into communicable ideas. The new ideas spread rapidly because parallel changes have been taking place in the unconscious of other people. There is a general readiness to accept the new ideas, although on the other hand they often meet with violent resistance. New ideas are not just the enemies of the old; they also appear as a rule in an extremely unacceptable form. - "The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits" (1920). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 594 We stretch out our hands in vainLike greedy children we stretch out our hands. . . . But what we possess is no longer valid . . . More than one sorcerers apprentice has been drowned in the waters called up by himself - if he did not first succumb to the saving delusion that this wisdom was good and that was bad. It is from these adepts that there come those terrifying invalids . . . For the artificial sundering of true and false wisdom creates a tension (deep inside), and from this there arises a loneliness . . . who always hopes to find companions in his vice. - Psychology and Alchemy (1944). CW 12: P.31 Things and emblems rise like a lotus that was never in the crisp and clear light of conscious awareness before, to take on significanceJust as conscious contents can vanish into the unconscious, other contents can also arise from it. Besides a majority of mere recollections, really new thoughts and creative ideas can appear which have never been conscious before. They grow up from the dark depths like a lotus. - "Approaching the Unconscious" In Man and His Symbols (1964), In CW 18: P.37 2. Full of inborn meaning
"Where we can listen but may not meddle"The conscious mind allows itself to be trained like a parrot, but the unconscious . . . is an autonomous psychic entity; any efforts to drill it are only apparently successful, and moreover harmful to consciousness. It is and remains beyond the reach of subjective arbitrary control, a realm where nature and her secrets can be neither improved upon nor perverted, where we can listen but may not meddle. - Psychology and Alchemy (1944). CW 12: P.51 Here is the existential knowledge to deal with the psychological problems raised by the development of modern consciousnessEternal truth needs a human language that alters with the spirit of the times. The primordial images undergo ceaseless transformation and yet remain ever the same, but only in a new form can they be understood anew. Always they require a new interpretation if, as each formulation becomes obsolete, they are not to lose their spellbinding power over that fugax Mercurius and allow that useful though dangerous enemy to escape. What is that about "new wine in old bottles"? Where are the answers to the spiritual needs and troubles of a new epoch? And where the knowledge to deal with the psychological problems raised by the development of modern consciousness? Never before has "eternal" truth been faced with such a hubris of will and power. - "The Psychology of Transference" (1946). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.396 Images full of meaning and purpose help all-round education, shows JungThe mind consists essentially of images. It is a series of images in the truest sense, not an accidental juxtaposition or sequence, but a structure that is throughout full of meaning and purpose; it is a "picturing" of vital activities. And just as the material of the body that is ready for life has need of the mind in order to be capable of life, so the mind presupposes the living body in order that its images may live. - "Spirit and Life" (1926) In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. pp.618 in most cases the outwitted guys have no rewarding suspicion of war going in their unconsciousWe know that the wildest and most moving dramas are played not in the theatre but in the hearts of ordinary men and women who pass by without exciting attention, and who betray to the world nothing of the conflicts that rage within them except possibly by a nervous breakdown. What is so difficult for the layman to grasp is the fact that in most cases the patients themselves have no suspicion whatever of the internecine war raging in their unconscious. If we remember that there are many people who understand nothing at all about themselves, we shall be less surprised at the realisation that there are also people who are utterly unaware of their actual conflicts. - "New Paths in Psychology" (1912). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.425 The greater the will, the greater the tension of potentialThe greater the tension, the greater is the potential. Great energy springs from a correspondingly great tension between opposites. - "Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon" (1942). In CW 13: Alchemical Studies. P.154 The predominant attitude induces most people to follow the same road, no matter how bad it isEvery advance, every conceptual achievement of mankind, has been connected with an advance in self awareness: man differentiated himself from the object and faced Nature as something distinct from her. Any reorientation of psychological attitude will have to follow the same road. - "General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 523 We hear nothing suited to the purposeWe hear nothing of a murder question or a rage question; . . . the necessity for their suppression seems to us self-evident. Only in regard to sex do we feel the need of a question mark. This points to a doubt - (are the formative codes all around fit to express id full well? or suited to their purpose?). . . . (What helps is staunch) reaction against a too rigorous morality. . . . There are . . . serious misgivings as to whether our existing moral views have dealt fairly with the nature of sex. From this . . . there . . . arises . . . interest in any attempt to understand the nature of sex more truly and deeply. - "On Psychic Energy" (1928). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of Psyche. P.105 What you are as an individual and what you are as a collective being outside barbarism both matterThere is a deep gulf between what a man is and what he represents, between what he is as an individual and what he is as a collective being. His function is developed at the expense of the individuality. Should he excel, he is merely identical with his collective function; but should he not, then, though he may be highly esteemed as a function in society, his individuality is wholly on the level of his inferior, undeveloped functions, and he is simply a barbarian, while in the former case he has happily deceived himself as to his actual barbarism. - Psychological Types (1921). CW 6: P.iii A new beginning can be the one thing to boast of ◇No one can make history who is not willing to risk everything for it, to carry the experiment with his own life through to the bitter end, and to declare that his life is not a continuation of the past, but a new beginning. Mere continuation can be left to the animals, but inauguration is the prerogative of man, the one thing he can boast of that lifts him above the beasts. - "Woman in Europe" (1927). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P. 268 Inside the uncomfortable Christian myth or neurosisI had explained the myths of peoples of the past . . . But in what myth does man live nowadays? In the Christian myth, . . . "Do you live in it?" I asked myself. To be honest, the answer was no. "For me, it is not what I live by." "Then do we no longer have a myth?" "No, evidently we no longer have any myth." "But what then is your myth--the myth in which you do live?" At this point the dialogue with myself became uncomfortable, and I stopped thinking. I had reached a dead end. - Jung, C.G. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. New York: Pantheon, 1973. p. 171. Be aware of the consequent sacrifices ensuing from normal sexuality these daysObviously it is in the youthful period of life that we have most to gain from a thorough recognition of the instinctual side. A timely recognition of sexuality, for instance, can prevent that neurotic suppression of it which keeps a man unduly withdrawn from life, or else forces him into a wretched and unsuitable way of living with which he is bound to come into conflict. Proper recognition and appreciation of normal instincts leads the young person into life and entangles him with fate, thus involving him in life's necessities and the consequent sacrifices and efforts through which his character is developed and his experience matured. For the mature person, however, the continued expansion of life is obviously not the right principle, because the descent towards life's afternoon demands simplification, limitation, and intensification-in other words, individual culture. - "On Psychic Energy" (1928). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 113 The simile: "an island in the ocean" in step with the romantic John Donne's more mature outlook: "No man is an island"In the same way that the State has caught the individual, the individual imagines that he has caught the mind and holds her in the hollow of his hand. He is even making a science of her in the absurd supposition that the intellect, which is but a part and a function of the mind, is sufficient to comprehend the much greater whole. In reality the mind is the mother and the maker, the subject and even the possibility of consciousness itself. It reaches so far beyond the boundaries of consciousness that the latter could easily be compared to an island in the ocean. Whereas the island is small and narrow, the ocean is immensely wide and deep and contains a life infinitely surpassing, in kind and degree, anything known on the island-so that if it is a question of space, it does not matter whether the gods are "inside" or "outside." It might be objected that there is no proof that consciousness is nothing more than an island in the ocean. Certainly it is impossible to prove this, since the known range of consciousness is confronted with the unknown extension of the unconscious, of which we only know that it exists and by the very fact of its existence exerts a limiting effect on consciousness and its freedom- - "Psychology and Religion" (1938). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P 141 The sort of speculations that threaten philosophyNow we are coming to something which Nietzsche foresaw - the rise of psychology in its own right, so much so that it is even threatening to swallow philosophy. The inner resemblance between the two disciplines consists in this, that both are systems of opinion about objects which cannot be fully experienced and therefore cannot be adequately comprehended by a purely empirical approach. Both fields of study thus encourage speculation, with the result that opinions are formed in such variety and profusion that many heavy volumes are needed to contain them all. Neither discipline can do without the other, and the one invariably furnishes the unspoken-and generally unconscious-assumptions of the other. - "Basic Postulates of Analytical Psychology" (1931). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.659 The unconscious mind of man sees correctly - it has to be unconscious to be that correctThe unconscious mind of man sees correctly even when conscious reason is blind and impotent. - "Answer to Job" (1952). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.608 Things go less well through a higher level of consciousness than the background (turf) allows or affords. Widespread exploitation is a fruit of thatThe reason why consciousness exists, and why there is an urge to widen and deepen it, is very simple: without consciousness things go less well. This is obviously the reason why Mother Nature deigned to produce consciousness, that most remarkable of all nature's curiosities. Even the well-nigh unconscious primitive can adapt and assert himself, but only in his primitive world, and that is why under other conditions he falls victim to countless dangers which we on a higher level of consciousness can avoid without effort. True, a higher consciousness is exposed to dangers dreamt of by the primitive, but the fact remains that the conscious man has conquered the earth and not the unconscious one. Whether in the last analysis, and from a superhuman point of view, this is an advantage or a calamity we are not in a position to decide. - "Analytical Psychology and Weltanshauung" (1928). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 695. 3. Accepted to get an education
A higher level of consciousness is required to give us enough certainty and clarity at times. Artful denial of a problem will not produce conviction; on the contraryEvery one of us gladly turns away from his problems; if possible, they must not be mentioned, or, better still, their existence is denied. We wish to make our lives simple, certain, and smooth, and for that reason problems are taboo. We want to have certainties and no doubts-results and no experiments-without even seeing that certainties can arise only through doubt and results only through experiment. The artful denial of a problem will not produce conviction: on the contrary, a wider and higher consciousness is required to give us the certainty and clarity we need. - "The Stages of Life" (1930). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 751 An accepted paradox leads the human intellect in such as quantum physicsParadox . . . does more justice to the unknowable than clarity can do, for uniformity of meaning robs the mystery of its darkness and sets it up as something that is known. That is a usurpation, and it leads the human intellect into hybris by pretending that it, the intellect, has got hold of the transcendent mystery by a cognitive act and "grasped" it. The paradox therefore reflects a higher level of intellect and, by not forcibly representing the unknowable as known, gives a more faithful picture of the real state of affairs. - "Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious" (1935). In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. P. 1 Be allied with the specific content of your inherited ideationsThe original structural components of the mind are of no less surprising a uniformity than are those of the visible body. The archetypes are, so to speak, organs of the prerational mind. They are eternally inherited forms and ideas which have at first no specific content. Their specific content only appears in the course of the individual's life, when personal experience is taken up in precisely these form. - The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Foreword by C.G. Jung. (1954) In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P. 845 Beware of uneducated educators with one-sided approachesOur whole educational problem suffers from a one-sided approach to the child who is to be educated, and from an equally one-sided lack of emphasis on the uneducatedness of the educator. - "The Development of the Personality" (1934). In CW 17: The Development of the Personality. P.284 By getting aware of a lot - though we do not understand it - we slowly develop good ground for neutral, steady surveys or recognitions that help us later, and can also get an inkling of inside depths. There is no better fight to be hadNowhere are we closer to the sublime secret of all origination than in the recognition of our own selves, whom we always think we know already. Yet we know the immensities of space better than we know our own depths, where -even though we do not understand it-we can listen directly to the throb of creation itself. - "Analytical Psychology and Weltanshauung" (1928). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 737 From problems to conscious problems is suffering's general task or routePeople whose own temperaments offer problems are often neurotic, but it would be a serious misunderstanding to confuse the existence of problems with neurosis. There is a marked difference between the two in that the neurotic is ill because he is unconscious of his problems, while the person with a difficult temperament suffers from his conscious problems without being ill. "The Stages of Life" (1930). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.763 If the much unconscious mortal fails recurrently, he has to get an education, and all who get plenty of education, has been helped - let's hope thatI once made the acquaintance of a very venerable personage-in fact, one might easily call him a saint. I stalked round him for three whole days, but never a mortal failing did I find in him. My feeling of inferiority grew ominous, and I was beginning to think seriously of how I might better myself. Then, on the fourth day, his wife came to consult me. . .. Well, nothing of the sort has ever happened to me since. But this I did learn: that any man who becomes one with his persona can cheerfully let all disturbances manifest themselves through his wife without her noticing it, though she pays for her self-sacrifice with a bad neurosis. - "The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious" (1928). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.306 It pays to discover a pretext. To discover a pretext is always sharp, and genuineness is inside itThe discovery of the value of human personality is reserved for a riper age. For young people the search for personality values is very often a pretext for evading their biological duty. Conversely, the exaggerated longing of an older person for the sexual values of youth is a short-sighted and often cowardly evasion of a duty which demands recognition of the value of personality and submission to the hierarchy of cultural values. The young neurotic shrinks back in terror from the expansion of life's duties, the old one from the dwindling of the treasures he has attained. - CW 4: Freud and Psychoanalysis. P.664 Modern, specialised and soul pops upNeither our modern medical training nor academic psychology and philosophy can equip the doctor with the necessary education, or with the means, to deal effectively and understandingly with the often very urgent demands of his psychotherapeutic practice. It therefore behoves us, unembarrassed by our shortcomings as amateurs of history, to go to school once more with the medical philosophers of a distant past, when body and soul had not yet been wrenched asunder into different faculties. Although we are specialists par excellence, our specialised field, oddly enough, drives us to universalism and to the complete overcoming of the specialist attitude, if the totality of body and soul is not to be just a matter of words. - "Psychotherapy and a Philosophy of Life" (1943). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.190 Neurosis is to solve some old existential division, but bound - even entirely bound. It happensNeurosis is intimately bound up with the problem of our time and really represents an unsuccessful attempt on the part of the individual to solve the general problem in his own person. Neurosis is self-division. - "On the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1912). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology P. 18 No security in marriage, because the State took overWoman nowadays feels that there is no real security in marriage, for what does her husband's faithfulness mean when she knows that his feelings and thoughts are running after others and that he is merely too calculating or too cowardly to follow them? What does her own faithfulness mean when she knows that she is simply using it to exploit her legal right of possession, and warping her own soul? She has intimations of a higher fidelity to the spirit and to a love beyond human weakness and imperfection. - "Woman in Europe" (1927). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.270 The sound educator is burdened with corrupted offspring of others, or offspring that perpetuates up to disastrous, compulsive and awkward transactional patterns, shows Jung. Just accept that to be existentially punished is much similarEvery father is given the opportunity to corrupt his daughter's nature, and the educator, husband, or psychiatrist then has to face the music. For what has been spoiled by the father can only be made good by a father, just as what has been spoiled by the mother can only be repaired by a mother. The disastrous repetition of the family pattern could be described as the psychological original sin, or as the curse of the Atrides running through the generations. - Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955) CW 14: P. 232 To make us happy, at least three good neighbours have to be had to make us endure the interchange on gospel grounds. What evidently pays is to let the ratio between in and out be four to one or much better. This interesting summary is on top of both Jung and Jesus: "Love God (inside), yourself, and a neighbour of you own class"To live in perpetual flight from ourselves is a bitter thing, and to live with ourselves demands a number of Christian virtues which we then have to apply to our own case, such as patience, love, faith, hope, and humility. It is all very fine to make our neighbour happy by applying them to him, but the demon of self-admiration so easily claps us on the back and says, "Well done!" And because this is a great psychological truth, it must be stood on its head for an equal number of people so as to give the devil something to carp at. But-does it make us happy when we have to apply these virtues to ourselves? when I am the recipient of my own gifts, the least among my brothers whom I must take to my bosom? when I must admit that I need all my patience, my love, my faith, and even my humility, and that I myself am my own devil, the antagonist who always wants the opposite in everything? Can we ever really endure ourselves? "Do unto others . . ."-this is as true of evil as of good. - "The Psychology of Transference" (1946). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P. 522 A pitiless judge is conscience ✪In each of us there is a pitiless judge who makes us feel guilty even if we are not conscious of having done anything wrong. Although we do not know what it is, it is as though it were known somewhere. - "Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon" (1942) In CW 13: Alchemical Studies. P. 164 Childish elevations set in, and dignified positions may be had - it is to be expectedI have no wish to depreciate the tremendous differentiation of the western intellect compared with it the Eastern intellect must be described as childish. (Naturally this has nothing to do with intelligence.) If we should succeed in elevating another, and possibly even a third psychic function to the dignified position accorded to the intellect, then the West might expect to surpass the East by a very great margin. - tr. The Secret of the Golden Flower (1929). Commentary By C.G. Jung in CW 13: Alchemical Studies. P.8 God hesitates to admit demonic dynamism inside himself, and its bloody rampages, if man's natal make-up is in his imageIt is-a frightening thought that man also has a shadow side to him, consisting not just of little weaknesses- and foibles, but of a positively demonic dynamism. The individual seldom knows anything of this; to him, as an individual, it is incredible that he should ever in any circumstances go beyond himself. But let these harmless creatures form a mass, and there emerges a raging monster; and each individual is only one tiny cell in the monster's body, so that for better or worse he must accompany it on its bloody rampages and even assist it to the utmost. Having a dark suspicion of these grim possibilities, man turns a blind eye to the shadow-side of human nature. Blindly he strives against the salutary dogma of original sin, which is yet so prodigiously true. Yes, he even hesitates to admit the conflict of which he is so painfully aware. - "On the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1912). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.35 It should helps to leave open room for something unknown, even in your own conscious adaptationSince we do not know everything, practically every experience, fact, or object contains something unknown. Hence, if we speak of the totality of an experience, the word "totality" can refer only to the conscious part of it. As we cannot assume that our experience covers the totality of the object, it is clear that its absolute totality must necessarily contain the part that has not been experienced. The same holds true, as I have mentioned, of every experience and also of the mind, whose absolute totality covers a greater area than consciousness. In other words, the mind is no exception to the general rule that the universe can be established only so far as our psychic organism permits. - "Psychology and Religion" (1938). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.68 Psychology too is based on certain imagery, and very much inside it derives from lovely, mysterious, richly intuitive canon from outside it. Jung derived a lot from thereWhy is psychology the youngest of the empirical sciences? Why have we not long since discovered the unconscious and raised up its treasure-house of eternal images? Simply because we had a religious formula for everything psychic and one that is far more beautiful and comprehensive than immediate experience. Though the Christian view of the world has paled for many people, the symbolic treasure rooms of the East are still full of marvels that can nourish for a long time to come the passion for show and new clothes. What is more, these images-be they Christian or Buddhist or what you will-are lovely, mysterious,, richly intuitive. Naturally, the more familiar we are with them the more does constant usage polish them smooth, so that what remains is only banal superficiality and meaningless paradox. - "Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious" (1935). In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. P. 11 Sexuality is from the greatest creative power man possessesThe conflict between ethics and sex today is not just a collision between instinctuality and morality, but a struggle to give an instinct its rightful place in our lives, and to recognise in this instinct a power which seeks expression and evidently may not be trifled with, and therefore cannot be made to fit in with our well-meaning moral laws. Sexuality is not mere instinctuality; it is an indisputably creative power that is not only the basic cause of our individual lives, but a very serious factor in our psychic life as well. Today we know only too well the grave consequences that sexual disturbances can bring in their train. - "On Psychic Energy" (1928). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of Psyche. P.107 The common mind translates experiences into upright images that can be established at least hypotheticallyDespite the materialistic tendency to understand the mind as a mere reflection or imprint of physical and chemical processes, there is not a single proof of this hypothesis. Quite the contrary, innumerable facts prove that the mind translates physical processes into sequences of images which have hardly any recognisable connection with the objective process. The materialistic hypothesis is much too bold and flies in the face of experience with almost metaphysical presumption. The only thing that can be established with certainty, in the present state of our knowledge, is our ignorance of the nature of the mind. There is thus no ground at all for regarding the mind as something secondary or as an epiphenomenon; on the contrary, there is every reason to regard it, at least hypothetically, as a factor sui generis, and to go on doing so until it has been sufficiently proved that psychic processes can be fabricated in a retort. - "Concerning the Archetypes, with Special Reference to the Anima Concept" (1936.1954)In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. pp. 117 The thought up devil can be facets or forces of the blocked personalityThe so-called "forces of the unconscious" are not intellectual concepts that can be arbitrarily manipulated, but dangerous antagonists which can, among other things, work frightful devastation in the economy of the personality. They are everything one could wish for or fear in a psychic "You." The layman naturally thinks he is the victim of some obscure organic disease; but the theologian, who suspects it is the devil's work, is appreciably nearer to the psychological truth. - "Religion and Philosophy: A Reply to Martin Buber" (1952). In Jung, Gesammelte Werke, II: and in CW 18. P.659 What could help self-deceivers is much "sun" (i.e. to pretend less), to face the duties moreHysterical self-deceivers, and ordinary ones too, have at all times understood the art of misusing everything so as to avoid the demands and duties of life, and above all to shirk the duty of confronting themselves. They pretend to be seekers after God in order not to have to face the truth that they are ordinary egoists. - "The Visions of Zosimos" (1938). In CW 13: Alchemical Studies. P.142 A valuable personality is fit for both being protected with style and making something. And still it hardly pays in the long run to suppress and shut out much all right life ◇◇The ego lives in space and time and must adapt itself to their laws if it is to exist at all. If it is absorbed by the unconscious to such an extent that the latter alone has the power of decision, then the ego is stifled, and there is no longer any medium in which the unconscious could be integrated and in which the work of realisation could take place. The separation of the empirical ego from the "eternal" and universal man is therefore of vital importance, particularly today, when mass-degeneration of the personality is making such threatening strides. Mass-degeneration does not come only from without: it also comes from within, from the collective unconscious. Against the outside, some protection was afforded by the droits de I'homme which at present are lost to the greater part of Europe, and even where they are not actually lost we see political parties, as naive as they are powerful, doing their best to abolish them in favour of the slave state, with the bait of social security. Against the demonism from within, the Church offers some protection so long as it wields authority. But protection and security are only valuable when not excessively cramping to our existence; and in the same way the superiority of consciousness is desirable only if it does not suppress and shut out too much life. As always, life is a voyage between Scylla and Charybdis. - "The Psychology of Transference" (1946). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.502 Animal variety countsNatural man is not a "self"-he is the mass and a particle in the mass, collective to such a degree that he is not even sure of his own ego. That is why since time immemorial he has needed the transformation mysteries to turn him into something, and to rescue him from the animal collective mind, which is nothing but an assortment, a variety performance. - Psychology and Alchemy (1944). CW 12 P.104 Express yourself fluidly by infantile images like Jesus to get allied with some destiny inside mankind, to enable people to perish and people to endure, for you cannot help all a lotWhoever speaks in primordial images speaks with a thousand voices; he enthrals and overpowers, while at the same time he lifts the idea he is seeking to express out of the occasional and the transitory into the realm of the ever enduring. He transmutes our personal destiny into the destiny of mankind, and evokes in us all those beneficent forces that ever and anon have enabled humanity to find a refuge from every peril and to outlive the longest night. - "On the Relation of Analytical Psychology of Poetry" (1922). In CW 15: The Spirit in Man, Art and Literature. P.129 Good and decent psychology may include philosophy (read: speculation) and theology (i.e. stands, norms, credos, taboos)It does not surprise me that psychology debouches into philosophy, for the thinking that underlies philosophy is after all a psychic activity which, as such, is the proper study of psychology. I always think of psychology as encompassing the whole of the mind, and that includes philosophy and theology and many other things besides. For underlying all philosophies and all religions are the facts of the human soul, which may ultimately be the arbiters of truth and error. - "General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 5 Good business demands professionalism counter-attack, like sympathyEach new case that requires thorough treatment is pioneer work, and every trace of routine then proves to be a blind alley. Consequently the higher psychotherapy is a most exacting business, and sometimes it sets tasks which challenge not only our understanding or our sympathy but the whole man. The doctor is inclined to demand this total effort from his patients, yet he must realise that this same demand only works if he is aware that it also applies to himself. - "The Psychology of Transference" (1946). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.367 Grown-up life builds on top of a shared heap of emotions and many grown-ups still swarm with themThe world is as it ever has been, but our consciousness undergoes peculiar changes. First, in remote times (which can still be observed among primitives living today), the main body of psychic life was apparently in human and in nonhuman Objects: it was projected, as we should say now. Consciousness can hardly exist in a state of complete projection. At most it would be a heap of emotions. Through the withdrawal of projections, conscious knowledge slowly developed. Science, curiously enough, began with the discovery of astronomical laws, and hence with the withdrawal, so to speak, of the most distant projections. This was the first stage in the despiritualisation of the world. One step followed another: already in antiquity the gods were withdrawn from mountains and rivers, from trees and animals. Modern science has subtilised its projections to an almost unrecognisable degree, but our ordinary life still swarms with them. You can find them spread out in the newspapers, in books, rumours, and ordinary social gossip. All gaps in our actual knowledge are still filled out with projections. We are still so sure we know what other people think or what their true character is. - "Psychology and Religion" (1938) In CW II: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P. 140 Self-knowledge has to be linked to deep self-esteem, and may be grieved over if it is routed out after infancyThe "other" in us always seems alien and unacceptable; but if we let ourselves be aggrieved the feeling sinks in, and we are the richer for this little bit of self-knowledge. - "Psychological Aspects of the Kore" (1941). In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious. P. 918 To think and suppose hardly lead to grave errors if well led from the startAn inexperienced youth thinks one can let the old people go, because not much more can happen to them anyway: they have their lives behind them and are no better than petrified pillars of the past. But it is a great mistake to suppose that the meaning of life is exhausted with the period of youth and expansion; that, for example, a woman who has passed the menopause is "finished." The afternoon of life is just as full of meaning as the morning; only, its meaning and purpose are different. - "On the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1912). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology P. 114 Very womanish animus - who knows what it can be outside Dr. Jung's concoction or grand speculation along with such constructs?As the animus is partial to argument, he can best be seen at work in disputes where both parties know they are right. Men can argue in a very womanish way, too, when they are anima-possessed and have thus been transformed into the animus of their own anima. - Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.29 Be based on very cogent, practical insights of highly evolved minds wherever you find them, without looking askance to the vague expressions either. They may fit in many contexts (8)The East teaches us another, broader, more profound, and higher understanding-understanding through life. We know this only by hearsay, as a shadowy sentiment expressing a vague religiosity, and we are fond of putting "Oriental wisdom" in quotation marks and banishing it to the dim region of faith and superstition. But that is wholly to misunderstand the realism of the East. Texts of this kind do not consist of the sentimental, overwrought mystical intuitions of pathological cranks and recluses, but are based on the practical insights of highly evolved Chinese minds, which we have not the slightest justification for undervaluing. - tr. The Secret of the Golden Flower (1929). Commentary By C.G. Jung in CW 13: Alchemical Studies. P.2 Contemplation is not as bad as it soundsIn general, meditation and contemplation have a bad reputation in the West. They are regarded as a particularly reprehensible form of idleness or as pathological narcissism. No one has time for self-knowledge or believes that it could serve any sensible purpose. Also, one knows in advance that it is not worth the trouble to know oneself, for any fool can know what he is. We believe exclusively in doing and do not ask about the doer, who is judged only by achievements that have collective value. The general public seems to have taken cognisance of the existence of the unconscious mind more than the so-called experts, but still nobody has drawn any conclusions from the fact that Western man confronts himself as a stranger and that self knowledge is one of the most difficult and exacting of the arts. - Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955). CW 14. P. 709 Elevated thought-artistry may keep phenomena at arm's lengthThe truth is that we do not enjoy masterless freedom; we are continually threatened by psychic factors which, in the guise of "natural phenomena," may take possession of us at any moment. The withdrawal of metaphysical projections leaves us almost defenceless in the face of this happening, for we immediately identify with every impulse instead of giving it the name of the "other," which would at least hold it at arm's length and prevent it from storming the citadel of the ego. - "Psychology and Religion" (1938). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P. 143 Let your personality develop a lot like the slow-rising sun, says Carl Gustav JungOur personality develops in the course of our life from germs that are hard or impossible to discern, and it is only our deeds that reveal who we are. We are like the sun, which nourishes the life of the earth and brings forth every kind of strange, wonderful, and evil thing; we are like the mothers who bear in their wombs untold happiness and suffering. At first we do not know what deeds or misdeeds, what destiny, what good and evil we have in us, and only the autumn can show what the spring has engendered, only in the evening will it be seen what the morning began. - "The Development of the Personality" (1934). In CW 17: The Development of the Personality. P.290 The animus outcome is to fall in love through such as shared poisonWhen animus and anima meet, the animus draws his sword of power and the anima ejects her poison of illusion and seduction. The outcome need not always be negative, since the two are equally likely to fall in love (a special instance of love at first sight). - Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.338.30 Any sexual fixation can be there to deceive yourself full well (9)We deceive ourselves greatly if we think that many married women are neurotic merely because they are unsatisfied sexually or because they have not found the right man or because they have an infantile sexual fixation. The real reason in many cases is that they cannot recognise the cultural task that is waiting for them. We all have far too much the standpoint . . . that the new future which is pressing in at the door can be squeezed into the framework of what is already known. - In CW 4: Freud and Psychoanalysis. P. 668 The observed moment is a selected and framed picture, after allWhile the Western mind carefully sifts, weighs, selects, classifies, isolates, the Chinese picture of the moment encompasses everything down to the minutest nonsensical detail, because all of the ingredients make up the observed moment. - tr. I Ching or Book of Changes. Foreword by C.G. Jung in CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.969 Being at war inside often taxes the primitive mind (10)Nothing is so apt to challenge our self-awareness and alertness as being at war with oneself. One can hardly think of any other or more effective means of waking humanity out of the irresponsible and innocent half-sleep of the primitive mentality and bringing it to a state of conscious responsibility. - "Psychological Typology" (1936). In CW 6: Psychological Types. P. 964 Someone wanting to be led presupposes the educative taskThe greater part of humanity not only needs guidance, but wishes for nothing better than to be guided and held in tutelage . . . The priest, equipped with all the insignia of paternal authority, becomes the responsible leader . . . Thus priest and Church replace the parents . . . So long as the medieval Church knew how to be the guardian of art and science - a role in which her success was due, in part, to her wide tolerance of worldly interests - confession was an admirable instrument of education. But it lost its educative value . . . as soon as the Church proved incapable of maintaining her leadership in the intellectual sphere. - "The Theory of Psychoanalysis" (1913). In CW 4: Freud and Psychoanalysis. P.433 So One may let symbols and emblems to rise through the unconscious, and they may expressed in lots of ways, like the British lion, and so on. What the conformised and puerile society thinks is fit, may be largely different. Good opposites fulfil one another well, as mates had better do. Bad mating leads to calls for help, and some measure of of being deprived of independence and freedom. As a result, the immature State takes over more control - Better be warned. A mate is also to get help to develop.
Jungian Semi-Poetry ☼1. Some basic premises
Both government and being well governed produce opposition, next some neglect (1)The insensate destruction and devastation are a reaction against the deflection of consciousness from the point of equilibrium. For an equilibrium does in fact exist between the psychic ego and non-ego, and that equilibrium is a religion a "careful consideration" of ever-present unconscious forces which we neglect at our peril. - "The Psychology of Transference" (1946). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.394 - *The years 1935-1945 For many people their neighbours are in control inside their own souls as well (1)For many people this hypothesis is by no means easy to conceive, just as they do not find it at all easy to understand and to accept the fact that their neighbour's psychology is not necessarily identical with their own. - "The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious" (1953) In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.329 Some silent happenings can be the soul's mouthpieces (1)Ethically, of course, it is infinitely more convenient to leave God the sole responsibility for such a Home for Idiot Children, where no one is capable of putting a spoon into his own mouth. But it is worth man's while to take pains with himself, and he has something in his own soul that can grow. It is rewarding to watch patiently the silent happenings in the soul, and the most and the best happens when it is not regulated from outside and from above. - Psychology and Alchemy (1944). CW 12: P.126 The secret fear besmears man - an enemy has to make-believe, exhibit much, or understand (1)The remarkable potency of unconscious contents always indicates a corresponding weakness in the conscious mind and its functions. . . . The doctor knows these well-defended zones from his consulting hours: they are reminiscent of island fortresses from which the neurotic tries to ward off the octopus. ("Happy neurosis island," as one of my patients called his conscious state!) . . . as a result a terrifying monster is created, or rather is roused out of its slumbers. . . . this seemingly alarming animal stands in a secret compensatory relationship to the island and could supply everything that the island lacks. - "The Psychology of Transference" (1946). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.374 The belief: "Everything the fooled man is not conscious of in himself will come to meet him as if from outside" (2)A man who is unconscious of himself acts in a blind, instinctive way and is in addition fooled by all the illusions that arise when he sees everything that he is not conscious of in himself coming to meet him from outside as projections upon his neighbour. - "The Philosophical Tree" (1945). In CW 13: Alchemical Studies. P.335 2. Grounding (go for warm, fit acceptance)
Be aware of the consequent sacrifices ensuing from normal sexuality these days (4)For the mature person, however, the continued expansion of life is obviously not the right principle, because the descent towards life's afternoon demands simplification, limitation, and intensification-in other words, individual culture. - "On Psychic Energy" (1928). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 113 3. Possible implementations on top of block one and two, or 3
If the much unconscious mortal fails recurrently, he has to get an education, and all who get plenty of education, has been helped - let's hope that (5)I once made the acquaintance of a very venerable personage-in fact, one might easily call him a saint. I stalked round him for three whole days, but never a mortal failing did I find in him. My feeling of inferiority grew ominous, and I was beginning to think seriously of how I might better myself. Then, on the fourth day, his wife came to consult me. . .. - "The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious" (1928). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.306 Modern, specialised and soul pops up (5)It . . . behoves us, unembarrassed by our shortcomings as amateurs of history, to go to school once more with the medical philosophers of a distant past, when body and soul had not yet been wrenched asunder into different faculties. - "Psychotherapy and a Philosophy of Life" (1943). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.190 God hesitates to admit demonic dynamism inside himself, and its bloody rampages, if man's natal make-up is in his image (6)Blindly he strives against the salutary dogma of original sin, which is yet so prodigiously true. Yes, he even hesitates to admit the conflict of which he is so painfully aware. - "On the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1912). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.35 Animal variety counts (7)Natural man is not a "self" - he is the mass and a particle in the mass, collective to such a degree that he is not even sure of his own ego. - Psychology and Alchemy (1944). CW 12 P.104 The animus outcome is to fall in love through such as shared poison (8)When animus and anima meet, the animus draws his sword of power . . . The outcome need not always be negative, since the two are equally likely to fall in love (a special instance of love at first sight). - Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.338.30 Being at war inside often taxes the primitive mind (10)Being at war with oneself. One can hardly think of any other or more effective means of waking humanity out of the irresponsible and innocent half-sleep of the primitive mentality and bringing it to a state of conscious responsibility. - "Psychological Typology" (1936). In CW 6: Psychological Types. P. 964 So What is interesting if accepted, might lead to a sound education. Several key concepts of psychoanalysis are still standing. (Hergenhahn 2005) One may enlarge on that, after suggesting factors implied when Jung broke up with Freud. William Todd Schultz tells that Freud saw in Jung a younger man and a gentile who could take psychoanalysis into places denied the Jewish Freud himself. But after a few years there were charges and counter-charges, and Freud fainted several times in Jung's presence. Jung, who found intimacy with other males repulsive, came to feel a "religious crush" towards Freud. Quote: "Freud ... proclaimed it openly in a letter ... Jung is ... no less explicit ... and writes to Freud. "I have a boundless admiration for you both as a man and a researcher, and I bear you no conscious grudge" ... [but] my veneration for you has something of the character of a 'religious' crush ... I still feel it is disgusting and ridiculous because of its undeniable erotic undertone. This abominable feeling comes from the fact that as a boy I was the victim of a sexual assault by a man I once worshipped ... This feeling hampers me considerably." Jung used to have trouble sustaining close male friendships. Woman were another matter entirely. [1] Officially, the ties between Jung and Freud were broken when Jung published Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (1912, Symbols of Transformation), full of mythological images and motifs. In a letter to Freud he wrote: "If ever you should rid yourself entirely of your complexes and stop playing the father to your sons, and instead of aiming continually at their weak spots took a good look at your own for a change, then I will mend my ways and at one stroke uproot the vice of being in two minds about you." (Jung on December, 18, 1912). [2] The end of his father-son relationship with Freud had a profoundly disturbing effect on Jung. He withdrew from the psychoanalytic movement and suffered a six-year-long breakdown. Baldwin Hergenhahn summarises Freudian psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud's theory is broad, and concrete experients are missing. His patients were not representative of common people, and his own needs and expectations probably influenced his observations. His concepts, for example psychic energy, fear (dread) of being castrated, penis envy and the Oedipus complex, are too vague (read: unclarified) to be measured. It is not documented straightway that there really are such "things" as id, ego, and superego, or that they are just as Freud postulated. It all means that the main concepts of psychoanalysis are to be treated as speculation. Further, Freud puts too much and dogmatic emphasis on sex. Karl Popper says Freud's theory is unscientific because "it violates the norm of falsification," that is, it is put forward in such ways that it can neither be proved or disapproved. Freud does not furnish specific and concrete data, and does not care about other explanations than his own. Despite the critique many think that Freud offered valuable contributions to psychology and even the global society. Freud opened up for probings and expositions in many fields, such as child sexuality and angst (fear, dread, anxiety). He enlarged the scope of psychology, its field of activity. He came up with a new way of understanding neuroses and other mental disturbances, and what is called "normal behaviour" too. Psychoanalysis claimed to be able to explain phenomena of everyday life, religions, sport, politics, art, literature, and philosophy - but much of it cannot be tested [according to rigorous standards of contemporary science]. Psychoanalysis still is considered a milestone in the history of humankind for the reason that "scientific methodology is not the only criterion by which to judge a theory," as Hergenhahn says. Even though psykoanalysis is neither scientific nor narrative, humans evaluate theories by intuition too. And a theory that yields meanings on the personal level, may survive longer than a theory that is developed and tested in the scientific field. For all that, psychoanalytic thought goes unverified, and consists of proposals that many trust in. [Hergenhahn 2005 500-3, passim] What is more, key concepts in Jungian analysis go unverified too, for example the unconscious. To the degree we cannot be conscious of it, it and its content remains speculation. And this is to say that in this series of Jungian stuff you get postulates. I think many of them are fit, depending on interpretation. |
Hergenhahn, Baldwin R. An Introduction to the History of Psychology. 5th ed. Belmont, Wadsworth, 2005. Cw: Jung, Carl Gustav. Collected Works. New York: Pantheon (Bollingen Series, Vols 1-20), 1957-1979. Notes
Symbols, brackets, signs and text icons explained: (1) Text markers — (2) Digesting.
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