Symbols of Transformation (Collected Works of C.G. Jung Vol.5)
It is hard to believe that this teeming world is too poor to provide an object for human love – it offers boundless opportunities to everyone.
It is rather the inability to love which robs a person of these opportunities.
The world is empty only to him who does not know how to direct his libido towards things and people, and to render them alive and beautiful.
What compels us to create a substitute from within ourselves is not an external lack, but our own inability to include anything outside ourselves in our love.
Certainly the difficulties and adversities of the struggle for existence may oppress us, yet even the worst conditions need not hinder love; on the contrary, they often spur us on to greater efforts. – Symbols of Transformation (1952). CW 5: P.253
