Carl Jung on “Causality” – Anthology.
Without necessity there is neither causality nor finality, although there are not a few people nowadays who treat the concept of causality very incautiously. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 157-158.
The 4 aspects of causality make possible a homogeneous causal viewpoint but not a total one. For this purpose, it seems to me, causality (in all its aspects) has to be complemented by acausality. Not simply because freedom also is guaranteed in a law-bound world, but because freedom, i .e., acausality, does in fact exist. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 157-158.
Our psyche can function as though space did not exist. The psyche can thus be independent of space, of time, and of causality. This explains the possibility of magic. ~C. G. Jung, Emma Jung and Toni Wolff – A Collection of Remembrances; Pages 51-70.
The articles of faith of science are: space, time and causality. The fourth is missing and rejected: the pleroma. ~Carl Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung, Page 59.
If we consider the psyche as a whole, we come to the conclusion that the unconscious psyche likewise exists in a space-time continuum, where time is no longer time and space no longer space. Accordingly, causality ceases too. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 546-548.
Religious experience is numinous, as Rudolf Otto calls it, and for me, as a psychologist, this experience differs from all others in the way it transcends the ordinary categories of time, space and causality. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking, Page 230.
To understand the God-Creator as absolute potential is to recognize a power which is endowed with meaning in space and time and in causality. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 41.
The four aspects, the quaternity of the Creator- God are space, time, causality and meaning. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 42.
Just as a causality describes the sequence of events, so synchronicity to the Chinese mind, deals with the coincidence of events. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 593.
If causality is axiomatic, i.e., absolute, there can be no freedom. But if it is only a statistical truth, as is in fact the case, then the possibility of freedom exists. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 102.
If space and time are psychically relative, then matter is too (telekinesis!) and then causality is only Statistically true, which means that there are plenty of acausal exceptions, q.e.d. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 126-127.
The latest developments of scientific thinking, especially in physics, but recently also in psychology, make it clear that “freedom” is a necessary correlate to the purely statistical nature of the concept of causality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 182-183.
Freedom could be put in doubt only because of the one-sided and uncritical overvaluation of causality, which has been elevated into an axiom although-strictly speaking-it is nothing but a mode of thought. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 182-183.
An American pupil of mine, Dr. Progoff (New York), has tried to adapt and to explain synchronicity to the average reader but he landed his ship on the rocks because he could not free his mind from the deep-rooted belief in the Sanctissima Trinitas of the axiomata time, space, and causality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 215-216.
Causality as a statistical truth presupposes the existence of acausality, otherwise it cannot be a statistical truth. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 317-319.
I have got stuck, on the one hand, in the acausality (or “synchronicity”) of certain phenomena of unconscious provenance and, on the other hand, in the qualitative statements of numbers, for here I set foot on territories where I cannot advance without the help and understanding of the other disciplines. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 351-352.
The trouble with parapsychology is that the very framework of our understanding and explanation, namely time, space, and causality, becomes questionable. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 373-375
Everything that can be repeated experimentally is necessarily causal, for the whole concept of causality is based on this statistical result. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 420-421
How it comes about that space and time are reduced by these meaningful chance occurrences cannot be understood in terms of causality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 420-421
Chance is an event, too, and if it didn’t exist causality would be axiomatic. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 414-416
Leibniz as well as Schopenhauer had inklings of it [meaningful coincidences], but they gave a false answer because they started with an axiomatic causality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 414-416
I deduce the fact that acausal phenomena must exist from the purely statistical nature of causality, since statistics are only possible anyway if there are also exceptions. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 425-426
On the other hand, it is obvious to me that synchronicity is the indispensable counterpart to causality and to that extent could be considered compensatory. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 425-426
It is unthinkable that a world could have existed before time and space, for whatever world we can imagine is always bound to time and space and hence to causality. The most we can imagine is that there are statistical exceptions to such a world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 445-449
Again, no psychological fact can ever be exhaustively explained in terms of causality alone; as a living phenomenon, it is always indissolubly bound up with the continuity of the vital process, so that it is not only something evolved but also continually evolving and creative. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 717
The average is a statistical truth, and this is a concept; but it implies that there must be exceptions, and there are exceptions to the general rule of space, time and causality. ~Carl Jung, Meetings with Jung, Page 101
There is no understanding of the fact that the mind itself has its causality; something from the inner life exerts its influence – ideas just arrive in the mind, or symptoms appear. ~Carl Jung, Meetings with Jung, Page 195
Again, no psychological fact can ever be exhaustively explained in terms of causality alone; as a living phenomenon, it is always indissolubly bound up with the continuity of the vital process, so that it is not only something evolved but also continually evolving and creative. Anything psychic is Janus-faced it looks both backwards and forwards. Because it is evolving, it is also preparing the future. Were this not so, intentions, aims, plans, calculations, predictions, and premonitions would be psychological impossibilities. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 718
Dreams contain images and thought associations which we do not create with conscious intent. They arise spontaneously without our assistance and are representatives of a psychic activity withdrawn from our arbitrary will. Therefore the dream is, properly speaking, a highly objective, natural product of the psyche, from which we might expect indications, or at least hints, about certain basic trends in the psychic process.
Now, since the psychic process, like any other life-process, is not just a causal sequence, but is also a process with a teleological orientation, we might expect dreams to give us certain indicia about the objective causality as well as about the objective tendencies, because they are nothing less than self-portraits of the psychic life-process. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 210
We distinctly resent the idea of invisible and arbitrary forces, for it is not so long ago that we made our escape from that frightening world of dreams and superstitions, and constructed for ourselves a picture of the cosmos worthy of our rational consciousness—that latest and greatest achievement of man. We are now surrounded by a world that is obedient to rational laws. It is true that we do not know the causes of everything, but in time they will be discovered, and these discoveries will accord with our reasoned expectations. There are, to be sure, also chance occurrences, but they are merely accidental, and we do not doubt that they have a causality of their own.
Chance happenings are repellent to the mind that loves order. They disturb the regular, predictable course of events in the most absurd and irritating way. We resent them as much as we resent invisible, arbitrary forces, for they remind us too much of Satanic imps or of the caprice of a deus ex machina. They are the worst enemies of our careful calculations and a continual threat to all our undertakings. Being admittedly contrary to reason, they deserve all our abuse, and yet we should not fail to give them their due. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 113
Again, no psychological fact can ever be exhaustively explained in terms of causality alone; as a living phenomenon, it is always indissolubly bound up with the continuity of the vital process, so that it is not only something evolved but also continually evolving and creative. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 718
Now, since the psychic process, like any other life-process, is not just a causal sequence, but is also a process with a teleological orientation, we might expect dreams to give us certain indicia about the objective causality as well as about the objective tendencies, because they are nothing less than self-portraits of the psychic life-process. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 210
“But since, according to our hypothesis, the unconscious possesses an aetiological significance, and since dreams are the direct expression of unconscious psychic activity, the attempt to analyse and interpret dreams is theoretically justified from a scientific standpoint. If successful, we may expect this attempt to give us scientific insight into the structure of psychic causality, quite apart from any therapeutic results that may be gained. The practitioner, however, tends to consider scientific discoveries as, at most, a gratifying by-product of his therapeutic work, so he is hardly likely to take the bare possibility of theoretical insight into the aetiological background as a sufficient reason for, much less an indication of, the practical use of dream-analysis.
may believe, of course, that the explanatory insight so gained is of therapeutic value, in which case he will elevate dream-analysis to a professional duty. It is well known that the Freudian school is of the firm opinion that very valuable therapeutic results are achieved by throwing light upon the unconscious causal factors- that is, by explaining them to the patient and thus making him fully conscious of the sources of his trouble. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 295
Now, since the psychic process, like any other life-process, is not just a causal sequence, but is also a process with a teleological orientation, we might expect dreams to give us certain indicia about the objective causality as well as about the objective tendencies, because they are nothing less than self-portraits of the psychic life-process. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 210
