Carl Jung on “Language” – Anthology
The spirit of the depths even taught me to consider my action and my decision as dependent on dreams. Dreams pave the way for life, and they determine you without you understanding their language. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 233.
To put it in modern language, spirit is the dynamic principle, forming for that very reason the classical antithesis of matter-the antithesis, that is, of its stasis and inertia. Basically it is the contrast between life and death. The subsequent differentiation of this contrast leads to the actually very remarkable opposition of spirit and nature. ~Carl Jung; CW 9i; Para 390.
The language of religion defines God as “love,” there is always the great danger of confusing the love which works in man with the workings of God. ~Carl Jung; Symbols of Transformation; para. 98.
. . . no man can converse with an animus for five minutes without becoming the victim of his own anima. Anyone who still had enough sense of humour to listen objectively to the ensuing dialogue would be staggered by the vast number of commonplaces, misapplied truisms, clichés from newspapers and novels, shop-soiled platitudes of every description interspersed with vulgar abuse and brain-splitting lack of logic. It is a dialogue which, irrespective of its participants, is repeated millions and millions of times in all languages of the world and always remains essentially the same. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 392 and Aion, CW 9, ii, Page 15
Archetypes speak the language of high rhetoric, even of bombast. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Chapter 6.
. . . we constantly use symbolic terms to represent concepts that we cannot define or fully comprehend. This is one of the reasons why all religions employ symbolic language or images. ~Carl Jung; Man and His symbols; P. 4
Just as the body bears the traces of its phylogenetic development, so also does the human mind. Hence there is nothing surprising about the possibility that the figurative language of dreams is a survival from an archaic mode of thought. ~Carl Jung; General Aspects of Dream Psychology; and CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche; Page 475.
We must read the Bible or we shall not understand psychology. Our psychology, whole lives, our language and imagery are built upon the Bible. ~Carl Jung, The Visions Seminar Vol. 1; Page 156.
You cannot preach to a man who does not understand the language. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 383-387.
…nowadays far too many Europeans are inclined to accept Oriental ideas and methods uncritically and to translate them into the mental language of the Occident. ~ Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 39-41
I can easily say that (without blushing) because I know how resistant and how foolishly obstinate I was when they first visited me, and what a trouble it was until I could read this symbolic language, so much superior to my dull conscious mind. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 42.
It is also a plausible hypothesis that the archetype is produced by the original life urge and then gradually grows up into consciousness-with the qualification, however, that the innermost essence of the archetype can never become wholly conscious, since it is beyond the power of imagination and language to grasp and express its deepest nature. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 313.
I falter before the task of finding the language which might adequately express the incalculable paradoxes of love. ~Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Page 353.
Alchemy began about the same time as Christianity, in fact we find alchemical ideas in China long before our era, so one can only be sure that the symbolism and language of the Fathers of the Church play an enormous role in alchemy. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Pages 161-162.
The dogma claims that Christ was God who became man. In psychological language this means that the Self approached the consciousness of man, or that human consciousness began to realise the Self, as a real human fact. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 200.
In psychological language: between the forms, tangible and visible to our senses, and the disappearance of all forms, there is a between world, the psyche. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XIII 17Feb1939, Page 86.
What, then, is yoga? The word means literally “yoking,” i.e., the disciplining of the instinctual forces of the psyche, which in Sanskrit are called kleshas. The yoking aims at controlling these forces that fetter human beings to the world. The kleshas would correspond, in the language of St. Augustine, to superhia and concupiscentia. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 912.
After my wife’s death. . . I felt an inner obligation to become what I myself am. To put it in the language of the Bollingen house, I suddenly realized that the small central section which crouched so low, so hidden was myself! ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 225.
The interpretation of dreams enriches consciousness to such an extent that it relearns the forgotten language of the instincts. ~Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols, Page 52.
Moreover I know from experience that philosophers don’t understand my uncouth language. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 43-47.
The language I speak must be ambiguous, must have two meanings, in order to do justice to the dual aspect of our psychic nature. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 69-71
I do not feel quite happy about my way of using the English language, since I seem to cause many misunderstandings. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 95-98
Speaking with tongues (glossolalia) is observed in cases of ekstasis (= abaissement du niveau mental, predominance of the unconscious) It is probable that the strangeness of the unconscious contents not yet integrated in consciousness demands an equally strange language. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 227-229
Presumably you are thinking of my psychology which, though born of the Christian spirit, seeks to give adequate answers to the spirit of this age: the voice of a doctor struggling to heal the psychic confusion of his time and thus compelled to use a language very different from yours. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 225-226.
For most people my Christian standpoint remains hidden, and because of the strangeness of my language and the incomprehensibility of my interests I am given a wide berth. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 225-226.
Since my language is a reflection of my thinking and feeling, I cannot, when faced with a wider public, express myself otherwise than as I am, and I am anything but uncomplicated. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 357-358.
I could never have published what I have discovered without a highly differentiated language, which I had to polish endlessly for this purpose, so much so that finally, when I try to express my ideas, I can no longer speak in any other way-unless, as I have said, it be to a particular individual with whom I can enter into an empathetic relationship. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 357-358.
Everyone insists on his standpoint and imagines he possesses the sole truth; therefore I counsel modesty, or rather the willingness to suppose that God can express himself in different languages. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 367-368
Often he [Rilke] reminds me of a medieval man: half troubadour, half monk. His language and the form he gave his images have something transparent about them, like the windows of Gothic cathedrals. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 381-382.
To deal with the coniunctio in human words is a disconcerting task, since you are forced to express and formulate a process taking place “in Mercurio” and not on the level of human thought and human language, i.e., not within the sphere of discriminating consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 392-396
His [Hegel’s] impossible language, which he shares with his blood-brother Heidegger, denotes that his philosophy is a highly rationalized and lavishly decorated confession of his unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 500-502
In dealing with a definitely historical text it is absolutely essential to know the language and the whole available tradition of the milieu in question and not to adduce amplifications from a later cultural milieu. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 507-508
My concepts are merely meant to serve as a means of communication through colloquial language. As principles however I should say that they are in themselves immensely Complicated structures which can hardly fulfil the role of scientific principles. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 550-552
The minute a thing goes into language it is ipso facto conditioned in its objectivity. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Pages 63-64
His craving for alcohol was the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in medieval language: the union with God. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 623-624
You have got to accept what the unconscious produces, and you have to understand its language. It is Nature, and it has to be translated into human forms. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters, Pages 359-364
Why, when Pope Pius XII in one of his last discourses deplored that the world was no longer conscious enough of the presence of angels, he was saying to his faithful Catholics in Christian terms exactly what I am trying to say in terms of psychology to those who stand more chance of understanding this language than any other. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters, Pages 410-423
By giving it shape, the artist translates it into the language of the present, and so makes it possible for us to find our way back to the deepest springs of life. ~Carl Jung, CW 15, Para 130
Nor is it the task of theory to paint a picture of life, but rather to create a workmanlike language which is satisfied with conventional signs. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 324