TIMELY WISDOM

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Carl Gustav Jung

Carl Gustav Jung

(1875-1961)
Ideas

- There are particular personality types characterized by extraversion or introversion, and four personality functions: sensation, thinking, feeling, and intuition.

- Within each individual is found a personal unconscious, which is composed of one's personal history, and a collective unconscious, which is composed of images or archetypes common to all people; these images appear frequently in dreams, fairy tales, and myths.

- Each individual is so constituted that he or she has an innate drive to fulfillment, or to his or her own destiny.

- Individuation, or the attainment of personal integrity, occurs in the second half of life.

- Dreams arise from the 'all-uniting depths' and tend to compensate for deficits in the individual's waking life, facilitating the person's awareness of deficiencies in the personality and thus enabling their development.
Biography

Swiss psychiatrist, one of the founding fathers of modern depth psychology. Jung's most famous concept, the collective unconscious, has had a deep influence not only on psychology but also on philosophy and the arts. Jung's break with Sigmund Freud is one of the famous stories in the early history of psychoanalytic thought. More than Freud, Jung has inspired the New Age movement with his interest in occultism, Eastern religions, the I Ching, and mythology.

'My situation is mirrored in my dreams,' Jung wrote in 1898 in his diary. With his cousin Helene ('Helly') Preiswerk, he conducted spiritistic experiments. In 1900 Jung graduated with a medical degree from the University of Basel and began his professional career at the University of Zürich.

At the Burghöltzi, the Zürich insane asylum and psychiatric clinic, he worked until 1909. These years were decisive for Jung's later development. His first published paper, Zur Psychologie und Pathologie sogenannter occulter Phänomene (On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena), appeared in 1902 and formed the basis for his doctoral thesis. Its material was partly based on his observations with Helene, whom he described in the work as 'a young girl somnambulist.' Throughout his career, Jung remained interested in parapsychology. He also consulted the Chinese oracle the I Ching, especially the translation made by Richard Wilhelm. 'The irrational fullness of life has taught me never to discard anything, Jung wrote, 'even when it goes against all our theories (so short-lived at best) or otherwise admits of no immediate explanation.'

In 1903 Jung married Emma Rauschenbach (1882-1955); they had five children. The family moved in 1909 to Küsnacht, near Zurich. Above the door of his house Jung had a motto carved: VOCATUS ATQUE NON VOCATUS DEUS ADERIT ('Summoned or not, the god will be there'). Jung's long affair with Toni Wolff, who become a therapist, nearly broke the marriage. Eventually Emma accepted the situation, but she was never happy that Toni Wolff was a regular guest for Sunday dinner.

Jung's study on schizophrenia, The Psychology of Dementia Praecox, led him into collaboration with Sigmund Freud; they first met in 1907 and talked about thirteen hours. 'I found him extremely intelligent, shrewd, and altogether remarkable,' Jung wrote on Freud. He opened a private practice and travelled with Freud in 1909 to the United States, lecturing and meeting amongst others the American philosopher and psychologist William James, whose thoughts deeply attracted Jung.

Jung's disagreement with Freud started over the latter's emphasis on sexuality alone as the dominant factor in unconscious motivation. 'Every form of addiction is bad,' Jung later said, 'no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.' Freud fainted twice in Jung's presence but the ties were broken with the publication of Jung's Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (1912, Symbols of Transformation), full of mythological images and motifs, and with his acts as the president of the International Congress of Psycho-Analysis. 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).

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 during which he had fantasies of mighty floods sweeping over northern Europe - prophetic visions of World War I. His inner experiences Jung recorded in the 'Red Book', illustrated with his own works in the art nouveau style. His first mandala Jung constructed in 1916. He interpreted the form as a symbol of the self, the wholeness of the personality.

Following his emergence from this period of crisis, Jung developed his own theories systematically under the name of Analytical Psychology. His concepts of the collective unconscious and of the archetypes led him to explore religion in the East and West, myths, alchemy, and later flying saucers. Jung gathered material for his studies by visits to the Pueblo Indians and the Elgonies in East Africa. Although Jung travelled quite extensively during his life, he never went to Rome. The omission was deliberate; he felt that the associations the place would evoke were too strong. When Jung visited New Mexico in 1925, one of the Publos told him: 'The whites always want something; they are always uneasy and restless. We do not know what they want. We do not understand them. We think they are mad.' In India Jung the Taj Mahal, and called it 'the secret of Islam.'

Jung classified personalities into introvert and extravert types, according to the individual's attitude to the external world. Jung considered himself introvert. His experience with patients made him define neurosis as 'the suffering of the soul which has not discovered its meaning.' Meaning can be found through dreams and their symbols in the form of archetypical images, arising from the collective unconscious. Freud dismissed the concept - '...I do not think that much is to be gained by introducing the concept of a 'collective' unconscious - the content of the unconscious is collective anyhow, a general possession of mankind,' he wrote in Moses and Monotheism (1939). Freud offered instead the idea of an 'archaic inheritance'.

Jung's view of literature was ambivalent. He was fascinated by Nietzsche, and lectured on Nietzsche's Zarathustra, but distrust of aestheticism colored his judgment of literary works. However, he had a special interest in trivial literature: 'Indeed. Literary products of highly dubious merits are often of the greatest interest to the psychologist.' From H. Rider Haggard's novel She, Jung found an embodiment of the anima. In particular Jung was interested in the mythic and archaic elements in literature.

His Symbols of Transformaton (1912) contains a lengthy discussion of Longfellow's Hiawatha, which is regarded as a poetic compilation of mythical motifs. The old Chinese text, The Secret of the Golded Flower, awakened Jung's interest in alchemy. His major study in this field, Psychologie und Alchemie, was published in German in 1944. In his own library Jung had a number of rare alchemical books and folios. For the four-hundreth anniversary of the death of the famous Swiss physician and alchemist Theophrastus Paracelsus, Jung delivered to addresses, 'Paracelsus the Physician' and 'Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon'.

The American writer F.Scott Fitzgerald mentions Jung several times in Tender is the Night (1934). When his wife Zelda had a psychotic episode in late 1930, Jung was Fitzgerald's alternative choice for consultation.- Hermann Hesse's novel Demian was inspired by Jung's theory of individuation. Among Jung's patients in the 1930s was James Joyce's daughter Lucia, who suffered from schizophrenia. Jung had earlier written a hostile analysis of Ulysses, and Joyce was left bitter at Jung's analysis of his daughter. He paid back in Finnegans Wake, joking with Jung's concepts of Animus and Anima. In his essay 'Ulysses' (1934) Jung saw Joyce's famous novel as an exploration of the spiritual condition of modern man, especially the brutalization of his feelings.

In 1933 Jung was nominated president of the General Medical Society for Psychotherapy, an organization which had Nazi connections. He also assumed the editorship of its publication, Zentralblatt für Psychotherapie. Jung's activities with the organization and his writings about racial differences in the magazine have later been severely criticized. However, Jung had already in 1918 explained his differences with other schools of psychotherapeutic practice with racial terms: '...I can understand very well that Freud's and Adler's reduction of everything psychic to primitive sexual wishes and power-drives has something about it that is beneficial and satisfying to the Jew, because it is a form of simplification.'

He also saw in National Socialism 'tensions and potentialities which medical psychology must consider in its evaluation of the unconscious.' From mythology Jung took the figure of Wotan, an old Nordic god, 'the truest expression and unsurpassed personification of a fundamental quality that is particularly characteristic of the Germans.'

In 1937 Jung said of Hitler less than critically: 'He is a medium, German policy is not made; it is revealed through Hitler. He is the mouthpiece of the Gods of old... He is the Sybil, the Delphic oracle' One of Jung's pupils, Sabina Spielrein, who was his patient first, and later mistress according to some sources, practised psychoanalysis in the USSR after completing her studies. She was killed with her two daughters by German soldiers in 1942.

Emma Jung died in 1955, before finishing her book on the Grail Legend. Jung began the final construction of his Bollingen house, or rather a castle of stone with towers, and reworked many earlier papers. The first tower of the house Jung built after the death of his mother. Working with the building meant more to Jung than just a pastime. 'At Bollingen I am in the midst of my true life, I am most deeply myself,' he said. Among his later publications are Aion (1951), Answer to Job (1952), and Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955-56). Jung died on June 6, 1961. His last recorded words were, 'Let's have a really good red wine tonight.' Jung's Memoirs, Dreams, Reflections appeared in English in 1962. It was based on Aniela Jaffé's interviews with Jung, who did not regard the book as his autobiography, but stated that it should be published under Jaffé's name.
Major Books of Carl Gustav Jung

- Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951
- Answer to Job, 1952
- The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1934-1954
- Basic Writings, 1959
- Man and His Symbols, with M.L. Franz, 1964
- Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1961
- Modern Man in Search of a Soul, 1933
- Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, 1956
- On the Nature of the Psyche, 1947
- Psychiatric Studies, 1902-1905
- The Psychogenesis of Mental Disease, 1907-1958
- Psychology and Alchemy, 1944
- Psychology and Religion, 1938
- The Psychology of Dementia Praecox, 1907
- Psychology of the Unconscious, 1912
- The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga, with S. Shamdasani, 1932
- Psychological Types, 1921
- The Red Book, 2009
- Symbols of Transformation, 1911
- Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, 1952
- Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 1917-1928
- The Undiscovered Self, 1957
Major Articles of Carl Gustav Jung

- 1910, The Association Method, The American Journal of Psychology
Quotes from Carl Gustav Jung

- "We had a [schizophrenic] patient with whom it was impossible to carry on a sane conversation; he produced only a crazy mixture of delusional ideas and queer words. This man once went down with a serious physical illness, and I expected it would be very difficult to treat him. But not at all. He was entirely changed; he became friendly and obliging, and carried out all the doctor's orders with patience and gratitude. His eyes lost their evil darting looks, and shone quietly and with understanding. One morning I came to his room with the usual greeting: "Good morning, how are you?" But the patient forestalled me with his well-known refrain: "Here comes another of the dog and monkey troupe wanting to play the Savior." Then I knew his physical trouble was over. From that moment the whole of his reason was as if blown away again." (from "The Content of the Psychoses", 1908)

- "The dogma that "mental diseases are diseases of the brain" is a hangover from the materialism of the 1870s. It has become a prejudice which hinders all progress, with nothing to justify it." (from "General Aspects of Dream Psychology", 1916)

- "The moment of the outbreak of neurosis is not just a matter of chance; as a rule it is most critical. It is usually the moment when a new psychological adjustment, that is, a new adaptation, is demanded." (from "Psychoanalysis and Neurosis", 1916)

- "What youth found and must find outside, the man of life's afternoon must find within himself." (from "Two Essays on Analytical Psychology", 1917)

- "Where love reigns, there is no will to power; and where the will to power is paramount, love is lacking." (from "Two Essays on Analytical Psychology", 1917)

- "[Visions] are like dreams, only they occur in the waking state." (from "The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Sprits", 1920)

- "The more a man's life is shaped by the collective norm, the greater is his individual immorality." (from "Psychological Types", 1921)

- "The more intelligent and cultured a man is, the more subtly he can humbug himself." (from "Analytical Psychology and Education", 1924)

- "One can easily throw dust into one's own eyes with theories." (from "Analytical Psychology and Education", 1924)

- "Consciousness rises out of the depths of unconscious psychic life, at first like separate islands, 'which gradually unite to form a "continent," a continuous landmass of consciousness. Progressive mental development means, in effect, extension of consciousness." (from "The Development of Personality", 1925)

- "Any attempt to create a spiritual attitude by splitting off and suppressing the instincts is a falsification. Nothing is more repulsive than a furtively prurient spirituality; it is just as unsavory as gross sensuality. ... Both [spirituality and sensuality] must live, each drawing life from the other." (from "Marriage as a Psychological Relationship", 1925)

- "First it was passion, then it became duty, and finally an intolerable burde." (from "Marriage as a Psychological Relationship", 1925)

- "History is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood." (from "Woman in Europe", 1927)

- "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." (from "Woman in Europe", 1927)

- "Conscious and unconscious are not necessarily in opposition to one another, but complement one another to form a totality, which is the self." (from "The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious", 1928)

- "His uncertainty forces the enthusiast to puff up his truths, of which he feels none too sure, and to win proselytes to his side in order that his followers may prove to himself the value and trustworthiness of his own convictions. ... Only when convincing someone else does he feel safe from gnawing doubts." (from "The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious", 1928)

- "Identification with one's office or one's title is very attractive. ... In vain would one look for a personality behind the husk. Underneath all the padding one would find a very pitiable little creature. That is why the office-or whatever this outer husk may be-is so attractive: it offers easy compensation for personal deficiencies." (from "The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious", 1928)

- "Our admiration for great organizations dwindles when once we become aware of the other side of the wonder: the tremendous piling up and accentuation of all that is primitive in man, and the unavoidable destruction of his individuality in the interests of the monstrosity that every great organization in fact is. The man of today, who resembles more or less the collective ideal, has made his heart into a den of murderers ... even though he himself is not in the least disturbed by it." (from "The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious", 1928)

- "The unconscious [at times] produces contents which are valid not only for the person concerned, but for others as well, in fact for a great many people and possible for all." (from "The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious", 1928)

- "Our fearsome gods have only changed their names: they now rhyme with—ism." (from "The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious", 1928)

- "Since society as a whole needs the magically effective figure, it uses the needful will to power in the individual, and the will to submit in the mass, as a vehicle, and thus brings about the creation of personal prestige." (from "The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious", 1928)

- "Without freedom there can be no morality." (from "The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious", 1928)

- "All religions are therapies for the sorrows and disorders of the soul." (from "Commentary to The Secret of the Golden Flower", 1929)

- "By understanding the unconscious we free ourselves from its domination." (from "Commentary to The Secret of the Golden Flower", 1929)

- "[Life's greatest problems] can never by solved but only outgrown." (from "Commentary to The Secret of the Golden Flower", 1929)

- "Science is not... a perfect instrument, but it is a superb and invaluable tool that works harm only when taken as an end in itself." (from "Commentary to The Secret of the Golden Flower", 1929)

- "To translate meaning into life ... is to realize the Tao." (from "Commentary to The Secret of the Golden Flower", 1929)

- "Nothing exerts a stronger psychic effect upon the environment, and especially upon children, than the [unlived] life [of] the parents." (from "Paracelsus", 1929)

- "The biographies of great artists make it abundantly clear that the creative urge is often so imperious that it battens on their humanity and yokes everything to the service of the work, even at the cost of health and ordinary human happiness. The unborn work in the psyche of the artist is a force of nature that achieves its end either with tyrannical might or with the subtle cunning of nature herself, quite regardless of the personal fate of the man who is its vehicle." (from "The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature", 1930)

- "The tyrannical demagogue Moses." (from "The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature", 1930)

- "Deep down, below the surface of the average man's conscience, he hears a voice whispering, "There is something not right," no matter how much his Tightness is supported by public opinion or by the moral code." (from "The Development of Personality", 1931)

- "The nearer we approach to the middle of life, and the better we have succeeded in entrenching ourselves in our personal attitudes and social positions, the more it appears as if we had discovered the right course and the right ideals and principles of behavior. For this reason we suppose them to be eternally valid, and make a virtue of unchangeably clinging to them." (from "The Stages of Life", 1931)

- "Sentimentality is the superstructure erected upon brutality." (from "'Ulysses': A Monologue", 1932)

- "In [the Middle Ages] they spoke of the devil, today we call it a neurosis." (from "The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man", 1933)

- "A special ability means a heavy expenditure of energy in a particular direction, with a consequent drain from some other side of life." (from "Modern Man in Search of a Soul", 1933)

- "The archetypal image of the wise man, the savior or redeemer, lies buried and dormant in man's unconscious since the dawn of culture; it is awakened whenever the times are out of joint and a human society is committed to a serious error." (from "Modern Man in Search of a Soul", 1933)

- "Faith cannot be made: it is in the truest sense a gift of grace." (from "Modern Man in Search of a Soul", 1933)

- "It is ... only in the state of complete abandonment and loneliness that we experience the helpful powers of our own natures." (from "Modern Man in Search of a Soul", 1933)

- "Neurosis is an inner cleavage-the state of being at war with one-. self. ... What drives people to war with themselves is the intuition or the knowledge that they consist of two persons in opposition to one another." (from "Modern Man in Search of a Soul", 1933)

- "The primordial experience is the source of [creativity]. ... In itself it offers no words or images, for it is a vision seen "as in a glass, darkly." It is merely a deep presentiment that strives to find expression. It is like a whirlwind that seizes everything within reach and, by carrying it aloft, assume a visible shape." (from "Modern Man in Search of a Soul", 1933)

- "[The unconscious] is dangerous only when our conscious attitude towards it becomes hopelessly false. And this danger grows in the measure that we practice repressions. But as soon as the patient begins to assimilate the contents that were previously unconscious, the danger from the side of the unconscious diminishes." (from "Modern Man in Search of a Soul", 1933)

- "We are susceptible only to those suggestions with which we are already secretly in accord." (from "Modern Man in Search of a Soul", 1933)

- "Whereas I formerly believed it to be my bounden duty to call other persons to order, I now admit that I need calling to order myself." (from "Modern Man in Search of a Soul", 1933)

- "A more or less superficial layer of the unconscious is undoubtedly personal. I call it the personal unconscious. But this personal unconscious rests upon a deeper layer, which does not derive from personal experience and is not a personal acquisition but is inborn. The deeper layer I call the collective unconscious. I have chosen the term "collective" because this part of the unconscious is not individual but universal; in contrast to the personal psyche, it has contents and modes of behavior that are more or less the same everywhere and in all individuals." (from "The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious", 1934)

- "The descent into the depths always seems to precede the ascent." (from "The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious", 1934)

- "To ask the right question is already half the solution of a problem." (from "The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious", 1934)

- "Whoever looks into the mirror of the water will see first of all his own face. Whoever goes to himself risks a confrontation with himself. The mirror does not flatter, it faithfully shows whatever looks into it. ... The mirror lies behind the mask and shows the true face.
This confrontation is the first test of courage on the inner way, a test sufficient to frighten off most people." (from "The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious", 1934)

- "The inner voice is at once our greatest danger and an indispensable help." (from "The Development of Personality", 1934)

- "If there is anything that we wish to change in our children, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves." (from "The Development of Personality", 1934)

- "It is only our deeds that reveal who we are." (from "The Development of Personality", 1934)

- "To the man in the street it has always seemed miraculous that anyone should turn aside from the beaten track with its known destinations, and strike out on the steep and narrow path leading into the unknown. Hence it was always believed that such a man, if not actually, crazy, was possessed by a demon or a god; for the miracle of a man being able to act otherwise than as humanity has always acted could only be explained by the gift of demonic power or divine spirit." (from "The Development of Personality", 1934)

- "The cure works best when the doctor himself believes in his own formulae, otherwise he may be overcome by scientific doubt and so lose the proper convincing tone." (from "Some Crucial Points in Psychoanalysis", 1934)

- "The doctor should not strive to heal at all costs. One has to be exceedingly careful not to impose one's own will and conviction on the patient. ... Sometimes it is really a question whether you are allowed to rescue a man from the fate he must undergo for the sake of his further development." (from "Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice", 1935)

- "There is no recrossing the Rubicon." (from "Individual Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy", 1935)

- "[In] the Christian reformation of the Jewish concept of the Deity, the morally ambiguous Yahweh became an exclusively good God, while everything evil was united in the devil. ... The moral splitting of the divinity into two halves." (from "Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype", 1938)

- "Nature is not at all lenient with sinners who are unconscious of their sins. She punishes them just as severely as if they had committed a conscious offense." (from "Psychology and Religion", 1938)

- "No matter what the world thinks about religious experience, the one who has it possesses a great treasure, a thing that has become for him a source of life, meaning, and beauty, and that has given a new splendor to the world and to mankind. ... Where is the criterion by which you could say that such a life is not legitimate, that such an experience is not valid?" (from "Psychology and Religion", 1938)

- "Religious experience is absolute; it cannot be disputed. You can only say that you have never had such an experience, whereupon your opponent will reply: "Sorry, I have." And there the discussion will end." (from "Psychology and Religion", 1938)

- "What is ordinarily called "religion" is a substitute. ... The substitute has the obvious purpose of replacing immediate [religious] experience by a choice of suitable symbols supported by an organised dogma and ritual." (from "Psychology and Religion", 1938)

- "In psychotherapy, enthusiasm is the secret of success." (from "On the Psychogenesis of Schizophrenia", 1939)

- "[The psychiatrist] is inclined to suspect the mental sanity of anybody who sees more than plain madness in the ravings of a lunatic." (from "On the Psychogenesis of Schizophrenia", 1939)

- "The dreams of redemption, whereby God descends into the human realm and man mounts up to the realm of divinity." (from "A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity", 1942)

- "Just as man was once revealed out of God, so, when the circle closes, God may be revealed out of man." (from "A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity", 1942)

- "If God wishes to be born as man and to unite mankind in the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, He suffers the terrible torment of having to bear the world in its reality. It is a crux, indeed, He Himself is His own cross. The world is God's suffering, and every individual human being who wishes even to approach his own wholeness knows very well that this means bearing his own cross. But the eternal promise for him who bears his own cross is the Paraclete." (from "A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity", 1942)

- "We are the manger in which the Lord is born." (from "A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity", 1942)

- "The greater the tension, the greater is the potential. Great energy springs from a correspondingly great tension of opposites." (from "Alchemical Studies", 1942)

- "Nature must not win the game, but she cannot lose." (from "Alchemical Studies", 1942)

- "Excellence ... exposes him to a great many risks, the chief of which is an exaggerated self-confidence." (from "The Development of Personality", 1942)

- "Personality can never develop unless the individual chooses his own way, consciously and with moral deliberation." (from "The Development of Personality", 1942)

- "Without necessity nothing budges, the human personality least of all. It is tremendously conservative, not to say torpid. Only acute necessity is able to rouse it. The developing personality obeys no caprice, no command, no insight, only brute necessity." (from "The Development of Personality", 1942)

- "An understanding heart is everything, in a teacher. ... One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child." (from "The Gifted Child", 1942)

- "Christian civilization has proved hollow to a terrifying degree: it is all veneer, but the inner man has remained untouched, and therefore unchanged. His soul is out of key with his external beliefs; in his soul the Christian has not kept pace with external developments. Yes, everything is to be found outside-in image and in word, in Church and Bible-but never inside. Inside reign the archaic gods, supreme as of old." (from "Psychology and Alchemy", 1944)

- "Everything that the modern mind cannot define it regards as insane." (from "Psychology and Alchemy", 1944)

- "Once the exploration of the unconscious has [begun] ... , the individual is confronted with the abysmal contradictions of human nature, and this confrontation in turn leads to the possibility of a direct experience of light and darkness, of Christ and the devil." (from "Psychology and Alchemy", 1944)

- "People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls." (from "Psychology and Alchemy", 1944)

- "Everything living strives for wholeness." (from "On the Nature of Dreams", 1945)

- "The dream may either repudiate the dreamer in a most painful way, or bolster him up morally. The first is likely to happen to people who ... have too good an opinion of themselves; the second to those whose self-valuation is too low." (from "On the Nature of Dreams", 1945)

- "Out of opposition, a new birth." (from "Psychology of the Transference", 1946)

- "Individuation does not shut one out from the world, but gathers the world to oneself." (from "On the Nature of the Psyche", 1947)

- "The spirit ... is two-faced and paradoxical: a great help and an equally great danger." (from "On the Nature of the Psyche", 1947)

- "Intuition [is] perception via the unconscious." (from "The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious", 1950)

- "Real increase of personality means consciousness of an enlargement that flows from inner sources." (from "The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious", 1950)

- "At present we educate people only up to the point where they can earn a living and marry; then education ceases altogether, as though a complete mental outfit had been acquired. ... Vast numbers of men and women thus spend their entire lives in complete ignorance of the most important things." (from "The Development of Personality", 1954)

- "A man's foremost interest should be his work. But [for] a woman-man is her work and her business. Yes, I know it sounds like a convenient philosophy of the selfish male when I say that. But marriage means a home. And home is like a nest- not enough room for both birds at once. One sits inside, the other perches on the edge and looks about and attends to all outside business." (from "Men, Women, and God", 1955)

- "The brain is viewed as an appendage of the genital glands." (from "The Old Wise Man" published in Time, 1955)

- "I could not say I believe. I know! I have had the experience of being gripped by something stronger than myself, something that people call God." (from "The Old Wise Man" published in Time, 1955)

- "As at the beginning of the Christian Era, so again today we are faced with the problem of the moral backwardness which has failed to keep pace with our scientific, technical and social developments." (from "The Undiscovered Self", 1957)

- "The Christian symbol is a living thing that carries in itself the seeds of further development." (from "The Undiscovered Self", 1957)

- "It is in the nature of political bodies always to see the evil in the opposite group, just as the individual has an ineradicable tendency to get rid of everything he does not know and does not want to know about himself by foisting it off on somebody else.
Nothing has a more divisive and alienating effect upon society than this moral complacency and lack of responsibility, and nothing promotes understanding and rapprochement more than the mutual withdrawal of projections." (from "The Undiscovered Self", 1957)

- "Wherever justice is uncertain and police spying and terror are at work, human beings fall into isolation, which, of course, is the aim and purpose of the dictator State, since it is based on the greatest possible accumulation of depotentiated social units." (from "The Undiscovered Self", 1957)

- "Yahweh is both just and unjust, kindly and cruel, truthful and deceitful." (from "A Psychological View of Conscience", 1958)

- "Always behind what we imagine are our best deeds stands the devil, patting us paternally on the shoulder and whispering, "Well done!"" (from "Civilization in Transition", 1958)

- "Within each one of us there is another whom we do not know. He speaks to us in dreams and tells us how differently he sees us from how we see ourselves. When, therefore, we find ourselves in a difficult situation, to which there is no solution, he can sometimes kindle a light that radically alters our attitude, the very attitude that led us into the difficult situation." (from "Civilization in Transition", 1958)

- "Conscience itself [asserts] that it is a voice of God." (from "Civilization in Transition", 1958)

- "Emotion is the moment when steel meets flint and a spark is struck forth, for emotion is the chief source of consciousness. There is no change from darkness to light or from inertia to movement without emotion." (from "The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious", 1950)

- "It seems to me ... that external circumstances often serve as occasions for a new attitude to life and the world, long prepared in the unconscious, to become manifest." (from "The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche", 1960)

- "Not all dreams are of equal importance. Even primitives distinguish between "little" and "big" dreams. ... "Little" dreams are the nightly fragments of fantasy coming from the subjective and personal sphere, and their meaning is limited to the affairs of everyday. That is why such dreams are easily forgotten, just because their validity extends no further than the day-to-day fluctuations of the psychic balance. Significant dreams, on the other hand, are often remembered for a lifetime, and not infrequently prove to be the richest jewel in the treasure house of psychic experience." (from "The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche", 1960)

- "The real existence of an enemy upon whom one can foist off everything evil is an enormous relief to one's conscience. You can then at least say, without hesitation, who the devil is; you are quite certain that the cause of your misfortune is outside, and not in your own attitude." (from "The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche", 1960)

- "Medicine in the hand of a fool was ever poison and death." (from "Freud and Psychoanalysis", 1961)

- "The more uncertain I have felt about myself, the more there has grown up in me a feeling of kinship with all things. In fact, it seems to me as if that alienation which so long separated me from the world has become transferred into my own inner world, and has revealed to me an unexpected unfamiliarity with myself." (from "Memories, Dreams, Reflections", 1962)

- "A dogma, ... an indisputable confession of faith, is set up only when the aim is to suppress doubts once and for all. But that no longer has anything to do with scientific judgment; only with a personal power drive." (from "Memories, Dreams, Reflections", 1962)

- "A fact which can[not] be scientifically verified . . . finds no place in an official view of the world." (from "Memories, Dreams, Reflections", 1962)

- "All my writings may be considered tasks imposed from within, their source was a fateful compulsion. What I wrote were things that assailed me from within myself. I permitted the spirit that moved me to speak out." (from "Memories, Dreams, Reflections", 1962)

- "As far we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being." (from "Memories, Dreams, Reflections", 1962)

- "The crucial point is that I confront the patient as one human being to another. Analysis is a dialogue demanding two partners. ... The doctor has something to say, but so has the patient." (from "Memories, Dreams, Reflections", 1962)

- "Freud had a dream-I would not think it right to air the problem it involved. I interpreted it as best I could, but added that a great deal more could be said about it if he would supply me with some additional details from his private life. Freud's response to these words was a curious look-a look of the utmost suspicion. Then he said, "But I cannot risk my authority!" At that moment he lost it altogether. That sentence burned itself into my memory; and in it the end of our relationship was already foreshadowed. Freud was placing personal authority above truth." (from "Memories, Dreams, Reflections", 1962)

- "From the beginning I had a sense of destiny, as though my life was assigned to me by fate and had to be fulfilled. This gave me an inner security, and though I could never prove it to myself, it proved itself to me. I did not have this certainty, if had me. Nobody could rob me of the conviction that it was enjoined upon me to do what God wanted and not what I wanted. That gave me the strength to go my own way. Often I had the feeling that in all decisive matters I was no longer among men, but was alone with God." (from "Memories, Dreams, Reflections", 1962)

- "I regret many follies which sprang from my obstinacy; but without that trait I would not have reached my goal." (from "Memories, Dreams, Reflections", 1962)

- "I prefer the term "the unconscious," knowing that I might equally well speak of "God" or "daimon" if I wished to express myself in mythic language." (from "Memories, Dreams, Reflections", 1962)

- "If a man knows more than others, he becomes lonely." (from "Memories, Dreams, Reflections", 1962)

- "The kernel of all jealousy is lack of love." (from "Memories, Dreams, Reflections", 1962)

- "The majority of my patients consisted not of believers but of those who had lost their faith. The ones who came to me were the lost sheep." (from "Memories, Dreams, Reflections", 1962)

- "Man always has some mental reservation, even in the face of divine decrees. Otherwise, where would be his freedom? And what would be the use of that freedom if it could not threaten Him who threatens it?" (from "Memories, Dreams, Reflections", 1962)

- "Myth is the revelation of divine life in man. It is not we who invent myth, rather it speaks to us as a Word of God." (from "Memories, Dreams, Reflections", 1962)

- "Nothing so promotes the growth of consciousness as [the] inner confrontation of opposites." (from "Memories, Dreams, Reflections", 1962)

- "Those inner states were so fantastically beautiful that by comparison this world appeared downright ridiculous. ...
It is impossible to convey the beauty and intensity of emotion during those visions. They were the most tremendous things I have ever experienced." (from "Memories, Dreams, Reflections", 1962)

- "Under the impress of Freud's personality I had, as far as possible, cast aside my own judgments and repressed my criticisms. That was the prerequisite for collaborating with him." (from "Memories, Dreams, Reflections", 1962)

- "As any change must begin somewhere, it is the single individual who will experience it and carry it through. The change must indeed begin with an individual; it might be any one of us. Nobody can afford to look round and to wait for somebody else to do what he is loath to do himself." (from "Man and His Symbols", 1964)

- "No judgment can be considered to be final in which its reversibility has not been taken into account." (from "Man and His Symbols", 1964)

- "The two fundamental points in dealing with dreams are these: First, the dream should be treated as a fact, about which one must make no previous assumption except that it somehow makes sense; and second, the dream is a specific expression of the unconscious." (from "Man and His Symbols", 1964)

- "We have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions." (from "Man and His Symbols", 1964)

- "A decent oligarchy-call it aristocracy if you like-is the most ideal form of government. It depends on the quality of a nation whether they evolve a decent oligarchy or not. ...
Without the aristocratic ideal there is no stability. You in England owe it to the "gentlemen" that you possess the world." (from "C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters" edited by William McGuire and R. F. C. Hull)

- "Free will is doing gladly and freely that which one must do." (from "C. G.Jung, Emma Jung and Toni Wolff: A Collection of Remembrances" edited by Feme Jensen)

- "If left to himself, [man] can naturally bring about his own salvation. Who has produced Christ? Who has produced Buddha?" (from "C. G.Jung, Emma Jung and Toni Wolff: A Collection of Remembrances" edited by Feme Jensen)

- "The right time comes when one is ready." (from "C. G.Jung, Emma Jung and Toni Wolff: A Collection of Remembrances" edited by Feme Jensen)

- "The world hangs on a thin thread, and that thread is the psyche of man." (from "Conversations with Carl Jung, and Reactions from Ernest Jone" by Richard I. Evans)

- "Learn your theories well but put them aside when you confront the mystery of the living soul." (from "Madness, Heresy, and the Rumor of Angels: The Revolt Against the Mental Health System" by Seth Farber)

- "[One of my patients] dreamed that she was commanded to descend into "a pit filled with hot stuff." This she did, till only one shoulder was sticking out of the pit. Then Jung came along, pushed her right down into the hot stuff, exclaiming "Not out but through!"" (from "From the Life and Work of C. G. Jung" by Aniela Jaffe)

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