Individuation is as much a fatality as a fulfillment.
To Armin Kesser
Dear Herr Kesser, 18 June 1949
I would like to thank you very much for your amiable review of my book Symbolik des Geistes.
You have succeeded in handling this difficult material in a way that gives the reader a real impression of my ideas.
I would only like to draw your attention to one small discrepancy: seen in psychological perspective, the concept of the self cannot be described as a summum bonum.
I have never done so anywhere.
This would be a contradiction in terms, since the self by definition represents the virtual union of all opposites.
It cannot be described as a summum bonum even in the metaphorical sense, because it is not a summum desideratum but rather a dira necessitas which is characterized by all the corresponding unpleasant qualities.
Individuation is as much a fatality as a fulfillment.
The psychology of the self is not philosophy but an empirical process which, being a natural process, could run its course smoothly if it did not take a tragic turn in man by colliding with his consciousness.
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 529
