Carl Jung quotations

Carl Jung quotations

When one considers that for over 50 years there has been a definite conception of the unconscious which is supported by empirically demonstrable facts, it is little short of amazing that philosophers still haven’t found the time to do anything but pooh-pooh it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 559-560

Consequently, the sight of a child or a primitive will arouse certain longings in adult, civilized persons longings which relate to the unfulfilled desires and needs of those parts of the personality which have been blotted out of the total picture in favor of the adapted persona. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 244

Under these circumstances I do make the claim of being “scientific” because I do exactly what you describe as the “scientific method.” I observe, I classify, I establish relations and sequences between the observed data, and I even show the possibility of prediction. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 567

in these days we live by our brains alone and ignore the very definite laws of our body and the instinctive world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 567

If I speak of the collective unconscious I don’t assume it as a principle,
I only give a name to the totality of observable facts, i.e., archetypes. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 567

I don’t see where you get the impression that I might be discouraged in this respect, since I was the first to emphasize the enormous role religion plays particularly in the individuation process, as I was the first to raise the question of the relation between psychotherapy and religion in its practical aspects. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 566

The question ought to be formulated: what is physical, biological, psychological, legal, and philosophical evidence? By which principle could one show that physical evidence is superior to any other evidence? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 565-566

Moreover there are not a few introverts who are so painfully aware of the shortcomings of their attitude that they have learned to imitate the extraverts and behave accordingly, and vice versa there are extraverts who like to give themselves the air of the introvert because they think they are then more interesting. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 564-565

Although I have never made a statistique of this kind I have always been impressed by the fact that pipe-smokers are usually introverted. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 564-565

The typical extravert is too much of a busybody to bother and fuss with the pipe which demands infinitely more nursing than a cigarette that can be lighted or thrown away in a second. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages, 564-565

That does not prevent me from having found heavy cigarette-smokers among my introverts and not a few pipe-smokers among the extraverts, but normally with empty pipes. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 564-565

I cannot omit to remark that the diagnosis is not rarely hampered by the fact that it is chiefly extraverts who resent being called extraverts, as if it were a derogatory designation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 564-565

Your question as to who invented the legends of the stars naturally cannot be answered. All sources are lacking. But from time immemorial, that is to say from the time of the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians, the stars and constellations have had their names. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 563.

From what we know of genuine primitives today, the stars play an astonishingly small role in their lives, a fact which may justify the assumption that the projection of the constellations and their interpretation coincided with the beginnings of a reflecting consciousness, i.e., with the first steps in civilization. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 563.

We must bear in mind that we do not make projections, rather they happen to us. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 563.

With the feeling, however, that it would not be granted me to pierce through to his [Victor White] understanding. It was then that I sinned against my better insight, but at least it served as a pretext for my asking his forgiveness and offering him a touch of human feeling in the hope that this would afford him some small relief. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 563

Somehow, as the Gnostics surmised, we have “collected” ourselves from out of the cosmos. That is why the idea of “gathering the seeds of light played such an important role in their systems and in Manichaeism. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 563.

As I have so earnestly shared in his [Victor White] life and inner development, his death has become another tragic experience for me. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 563

It was always my fear that he would have to spend his last days in the professional chill of a hospital or in the atmosphere of a monastery cell. Thank God that was spared him. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 563

Helas-he [Socretes] lived at a time when the wobbly polis still needed the homosexual glue. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 531-533

Socrates’ “naivete” is his greatness, still greater than ours. His humbleness is the ideal we have not reached yet. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 531-533

We still consider his [Socrates] daimonion as an individual peculiarity if not worse. Such people, says Buddha, “after their death reach the wrong way, the bad track, down to the depth, into an infernal world.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 531-533

In pathological cases, as you know, unconscious love also becomes a source of heightened fear of the object for the introvert, and, conversely, unconscious fear becomes a source of powerful attraction to the object for the extravert. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

The introvert does feel, too, and very intensely so, only in a different way than the extravert does. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

The representation of the extravert refers completely to the object and is, therefore, in complete agreement with outer reality, while his thinking is in agreement with his own inner reality. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

This explains the often- observed fact that the introvert thinks and preaches all sorts of nice things but does not do them himself, in fact, does the contrary; whereas the extravert does all sorts of good and nice things but does not think them, in fact, often the contrary. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

The extravert knows, by feeling himself into others, by what human means people can be won over, whereas the introvert tries to create values in himself with which he tries to impress and force others toward him, or even bring them to his knees. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

Conversely, the introvert strains the pleasure- unpleasure mechanism in his unconscious by the conscious, idealistic desire to create the highest values proper to force others to come to him, thus degrading people to objects of his desire. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

The ideally oriented introverted person is faced with the fact that he scares away from himself precisely the human love and joy that he is really trying to find behind all his desire to impress and to be superior, and that he keeps and chains to himself only those inferior persons who know best how to cater to his desire. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

While the introvert’s conscious attitude is an impersonal and just attitude of power, his unconscious attitude aims at inferior lust and pleasure; and while the extravert’s conscious attitude is a personal love for human beings, his unconscious attitude aims at unjust, tyrannical power. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

I would say: the introvert also tries, through the hypothesis of abstraction, to reach the object, actually reality, which seems to him chaotic only because of the projection of his unused and therefore undeveloped feeling. He tries to conquer the object by thinking. But he wants to reach the object quite as much as the extravert. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

Introversion: I have to realize that my object, apart from its reality, is also a symbol of my pleasure, which I unconsciously try to gratify with its help. Extraversion: I have to realize that my object, apart from its reality, is also a symbol of my power, the approval of which I try to obtain from it. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

Good and bad must always be united first if the symbol is to be created. The symbol can neither be thought up nor found; it becomes. Its becoming is like the becoming of human life in the womb. Pregnancy comes about through voluntary copulation. It goes on through willing attention. But if the depths have conceived, then the symbol grows out of itself and is born from the mind, as befits a God. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 311.

The outer opposition is an image of my inner opposition. Once I realize this, I remain silent and think of the chasm of antagonism in my soul. Outer oppositions are easy to overcome. They indeed exist, but nevertheless you can be united with yourself. They will indeed burn and freeze your soles, but only your soles. It hurts, but you continue and look toward distant goals. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 279.

With existentialism our words come to an end in complete meaninglessness and our art in total inexpressivity, and our world has acquired the means to blast us into cosmic dust. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 531-533

Just like the animal, man too is caught up in the conflict between archetypal drives and environmental conditions. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 504-506

I have a huge correspondence, see innumerable people but have only two real friends with whom I can speak about my own difficulties; the one is Erich Neumann and he lives in Israel and the other is Father Victor White in England. ~Carl Jung, The Jung–White Letters, Page 334

The starry vault of heaven is in truth the open book of cosmic projection, in which are reflected the mythologems, i.e., the archetypes. In this vision astrology and alchemy, the two classical functionaries of the psychology of the collective unconscious, join hands. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 195, Para 392.

. . . my father did not dare to think, because he was consumed by inward doubts. He was taking refuge from himself and therefore insisted on blind faith. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 73.

In my own case the release of the unconscious was demanded. The conscious had become practically a tabula rasa, and the contents underneath had to be freed. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 55

Just as the dream seeks to maintain a psychological balance by filling out the daytime conscious attitude by the unconscious elements, so art balances the general public tendency of a given time. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 57

The criterion of art is that it grips you. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 57

So modern art leads us away from the too great scattering of the libido on the external object, back to the creative source within us, back to the inner values. In other words, it leads us by the same path analysis tries to lead us, only it is not a conscious leadership on the part of the artist. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 60

I had killed my intellect, helped on to the deed by a personification of the collective unconscious, the little brown man with me. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 62

Analysis would have been unthinkable in the Middle Ages, because those men were freely expressing those values from which we have cut ourselves off today. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 60

“He (Carl Jung) saw “a huge round block of stone sitting on a high plateau, and at the foot of the stone were engraved the words: “And this Shall all be a sign unto you of Wholeness and Oneness.” ~Miguel Serrano, C.G. Jung and Hermann Hesse, Page 104

The fear the introvert feels rests on the unconscious assumption that the object is too much animated, and this is a part of the ancient belief in magic. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 65

If I just tell the anima that she is working off some collective notion on me which I have no idea of accepting as part of my individuality, that does no good at all—when I am in the grip of an emotion it is no support to me to say it is a collective reaction. . ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 49

Our mental processes cannot escape the intermingling with these preexisting images, so it is easy to see why a new idea always has to fight for its life against these ancestral predispositions. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 64

The minute a thing goes into language it is ipso facto conditioned in its objectivity. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Pages 63-64

The extravert is controlled by his relation to the thing without, the introvert by his relation to the thing within. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 64

only through consciousness that the discrimination between inner and outer experience is achieved, and only by consciousness that a man can know he is connected with the outer object to the neglect of the inner and vice versa. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Pages 64-65

The conscious extravert values his connection with the outer object and fears his own inner self. The introvert has no fear of himself, but great fear of the object, which he comes to endow with extraordinary terrors. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 65

The extravert, on the other hand, takes his unconscious material in an introverted way, that is, with extreme caution and with many incantations to exorcise the inner power the object exercises over him. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 66

When the intellect or any superior function is pushed that far, it becomes bloodless and takes on an airy, gas-like character. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 66

The same is true with feeling, and a differentiated feeling type must reach the point where the thing most loved is the thing most hated, before refuge will be sought in another function. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 66