Carl Jung on “Words” – Quotations – Carl Jung Depth Psychology

Carl Jung on “Words” – Anthology

I must learn that the dregs of my thought, my dreams, are the speech of my soul. I must carry them in my heart, and go back and forth over them in my mind, like the words of the person dearest to me. Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 232.

The God of words is cold and dead and shines from afar like the moon, mysteriously and inaccessibly: Let the word return to its creator, to man, and thus the word will be heightened in man. Man should be light, limits, measure. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 271.

My speech is imperfect. Not because I want to shine with words, but out of the impossibility of finding those words, I speak in images. With nothing else can I express the words from the depths. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 230.

Notice what the ancients said in images: the word is a creative act. The ancients said: in the beginning was the Word. Consider this and think upon it. The words that oscillate between nonsense and supreme meaning are the oldest and truest. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 236.

There are hellish webs of words, only words, but what are words? Be tentative with words, value them well, take safe words, words without catches, do not spin them with one another so that no webs arise, for you are the first who is ensnared in them. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 300.

He who breaks the wall of words overthrows Gods and defiles temples. The solitary is a murderer. He murders the people, because he thus thinks and thereby breaks down ancient sacred walls. He calls up the daimons of the boundless. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 270.

With words you pull up the underworld. Word, the paltriest and the mightiest. In words the emptiness and the fullness flow together. Hence the word is an image of God. The word is the greatest and the smallest that man created, just as what is created through man is the greatest and the smallest. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 299.

For our spirit has become an impertinent whore, a slave to words created by men and no longer the divine word itself. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 300.

Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 233.

If one could arrive at the truth by learning the words of wisdom, then the world would have been saved already in the remote times of Lao-tze. ~Carl Jung, Letters Volume 1, Pages 559-560.

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 constntly 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

When someone says, in the words of the “Our Father, ” “Thy will be done,” we must find out, if he is capable of taking both the inside and the outside, the ego and the world, into account. ~Carl Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung, Page 36.

When we say “Our Father,” the Father also symbolizes that self which is hidden in Heaven, in the unconscious. The Son (Christ) is the consciously achieved self. The Holy Spirit is the Paraclete promised by Christ in the Words “Ye are as gods,” or “Greater things will be done by you.” ~Carl Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung, Page 35.

The primordial experience is the source of [creativity]. … In itself it offers no words or images, for it is a vision seen “as in a glass, darkly.” It is merely a deep presentiment that strives to find expression. It is like a whirlwind that seizes everything within reach and, by carrying it aloft, assume a visible shape. ~Carl Jung; Modern Man in Search of a Soul

Love “bears all things” and “endures all things’* (i Cor. 13:7). These words say all there is to be said; nothing can be added to them. For we are in the deepest sense the victims and the instruments of cosmogonic “love.” ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 354

Words are animals alive with a will of their own. ~Carl Jung. [Citation needed to prove Dr. Jung said this[

When these two aspects [physical and psychological] work together, it may easily happen that the cure takes place in the intermediate realm, in other words that it consists of a complexio oppositorum, like the lapis. In this case the illness is in the fullest sense a stage of the individuation process…. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 375.

Please give X. my best greetings and tell him-because his love is all too easily injured-he should meditate on Paul’s words in the Epistle to the Corinthians: “Love endureth all things.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 120-121.

The “Aurora Consurgens” asks the question: “What is the science? It is the gift and sanctuary of the Deity, it is a divine thing, and is hidden by the Wise in symbolical words and in many ways.” ~Cited in ETH Lectures, Page 175.

We get, it is true, a foggy idea of such terms as Dhyana and Samadhi, the words sound wonderful to us, but such words are no mere concepts, and they mean nothing unless one has oneself experienced the states they denote. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 9Dec38, Page 41.

These words belonged to the autonomous complex. When excited by an external stimulus, complexes can produce sudden confusions, or violent affects, depressions, anxiety-states, etc., or they may express themselves in hallucinations. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 313.

Consider, for example, the word “Unconscious.” I have just finished reading a book by a Chinese Zen Buddhist. And it seemed to me that we were talking about the same thing, and that the only difference between us was that we gave different words to the same reality. ~Carl Jung, Two Friendships, Page 100.

The hidden mystery of life is always hidden between Two, and it is the true mystery which cannot be betrayed by words or depleted by arguments. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 581.

The words of the Bible and the sayings of Christ are paradox. We too must be paradox, for only then do we live our lives, only then do we reach completeness and integration of our personalities. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 40.

That is one of the reasons why the Church attracts quite a number of intelligent and responsible men in the secret (or unconscious?) hope that they will be strong enough to carry its meaning and not its words into the future. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 163-174

All statements about and beyond the “ultimate” are anthropomorphisms and, if anyone should think that when he says “God” he has also predicated God, he is endowing his words with magical power. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 257-264.

The unconscious itself characterizes this “Man” with the same symbols it applies to God, from which we can conclude that this figure corresponds to the Anthropos, in other words God’s son, or God represented in the form of a man. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 341-343.

Your attempts to formulate it are not vain or futile; on the contrary, our labours are witnesses to the living Mystery, honest attempts to find words for the Ineffable. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 392-396

While I am writing this I observe a little demon trying to abscond my words and even my thoughts and turning them over into the rapidly flowing river of images, surging from the mists of the past, portraits of a little boy, bewildered and wondering at an incomprehensibly beautiful and hideously profane and deceitful world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 408

This ancient psychological insight expresses the fact that what is enclosed in the mother is a germinating seed that will one day burst through, as you have shown with other words and convincing examples. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 418-420

This can be expressed in other words by saying that there is a relativity of the psychic and physical categories-a relativity of being and of the seemingly axiomatic existence of time and space. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 445-449

You will surely have noticed in reading my writings that I do not mince my words and clearly and expressly point out that the regard for mythological parallels is conducive to a religious attitude. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 468

Words have become much too cheap. Being is more difficult and is therefore fondly replaced by verbalizing. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 502-503

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

The living mystery of life is always hidden between Two, and it is the true mystery which cannot be betrayed by words and depleted by arguments. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 581

He felt the need to represent his innermost thoughts in stone and to build a completely primitive dwelling: “Bollingen was a great matter for me, because words and paper were not real enough. I had to put down a confession in stone.” ~Sonu Shamdasani, Introduction 1925 Seminar, Page xiii

In words the emptiness and the fullness flow together. Hence the word is an image of God. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 299

We would do well to harbour no illusions in this respect: no understanding by means of words and no imitation can replace actual experience. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 482

Switch off your noisy consciousness and listen quietly inwards and look at the images that appear before your inner eye, or hearken to the words which the muscles of your speech apparatus are trying to form. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 82

Your honest words will be a thorn in the flesh for many. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 235

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

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

Carl Jung Depth Psychology

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Carl Jung on “Words” – Quotations

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