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

Carl Jung on “Evil.” Anthology

Take pains to waken the dead. Dig deep mines and throw in sacrificial gifts, so that they reach the dead. Reflect in good heart upon evil, this is the way to the ascent. But before the ascent, everything is night and Hell. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 244.

I understood that the new God would be in the relative. If the God is absolute beauty and goodness, how should he encompass the fullness of life, which is beautiful and hateful, good and evil, laughable and serious, human and inhuman? ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 243.

Everything that becomes too old becomes evil, the same is true of your highest. Learn from the suffering of the crucified God that one can also betray and crucify a God, namely the God of the old year. If a God ceases being the way the zenith, he must fall secretly. The God becomes sick if he oversteps the height of the zenith. That is why the spirit of the depths took me when the spirit of this time had led me to the summit. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 241.

Man must recognize his complicity in the act of evil. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, LN 291.

“The Bhagavad gita says: whenever there is a decline of the law and ‘an increase in iniquity; then I put forth myself for the rescue of the pious and for the destruction of the evildoers, for the establishment of the law I am born in every age.” ~Jung’s marginal note, The Red Book, Footnote 281, Page 317.

Good and evil unite in the growth of the tree. In their divinity life and love stand opposed. ~Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 351.

Salome’s approach and her worshiping of me is obviously that side of the inferior function which is surrounded by an aura of evil. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 253. Footnote 211.

Evil is one-half of the world, one of the two pans of the scale. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 274, Footnote 72.

When my soul fell into the hands of evil, it was defenseless except for the weak fishing rod which it could use, again with its power, to pull the fish from the sea of emptiness. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 289.

It [Stupidity] is what separates and isolates the mixed seeds of life, affording us thus with a clear view of good and evil, and of what is reasonable and what not. ~Liber Novus, Page 316, Footnote 277.

No one saves us from the evil of becoming, unless we choose to go through Hell. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 318.

It is of no importance whether evil is here or there, but one can deal only with the evil in oneself, because it is within one’s reach, elsewhere one trespasses. ~C. G. Jung, Emma Jung and Toni Wolff – A Collection of Remembrances; Pages 51-70.

… it would be an arbitrary limitation of the concept of God to assume that He is only good and so deprive evil of real being. If God is only good, everything is good…. ~Carl Jung, Letters II, 519

The universal hero myth always refers to a powerful man or god-man who vanquishes evil in the form of dragons, serpents, monsters, demons, and so on, and who liberates his people from destruction and death. The narration or ritual repetition of sacred texts and ceremonies, and the worship of such a figure with dances, music, hymns, prayers, and sacrifices, grip the audience with numinous emotions and exalt the individual to an identification with the hero. ~Carl Jung; Man and His Symbols; Page 68.

He who wishes to take the Kingdom of Heaven by storm, to conquer and eradicate evil by force, is already in the hands of evil. ~ Carl Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung, Page 47.

Evil is that which obstructs meaningful vitality. It may show itself differently in each case. That which is above by reason of its charity, suppresses that, which is below; then the lower craves what is above. . ~Carl Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung, Page 47.

Instead of saying, “God is beyond good and evil,” we can say, “Life is both good and evil.” ~Carl Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung, Page 40.

We can only speak of the relativity of good and evil in individual cases. The categories of good and evil cannot be suspended; they are continually alive and cannot be attached to material things. ~Carl Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung, Page 47.

Instead of saying, “God is beyond good and evil,” we can say, “Life is both good and evil.” ~Carl Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung, Page 40.

The invasion of evil signifies that something previously good has turned into something harmful . . . the ruling moral principle, although excellent to begin with, in time loses its essential connection with life, since it no longer embraces life’s variety and abundance. What is rationally correct is too narrow a concept to grasp life in its totality and give it permanent expression. ~Carl Jung; Psychology and Religion; Answer to Job.

The final factors at work in us are nothing other than those talents which “a certain nobleman” entrusted to his “servants,” that they might trade with them (Luke 19:12 ff.). It does not require much imagination to see what this involvement in the ways of the world means in the moral sense. Only an infantile person can pretend that evil is not at work everywhere, and the more unconscious s/he is, the more the devil drives her/him. . . . Only ruthless self-knowledge o the widest scale, which sees good and evil in correct perspective and can weigh up the motives of human action, offers some guarantee that the end result will not turn out too badly ~Carl Jung; CW 9/2, par. 255.

The danger that faces us today is that the whole of reality will be replaced by words. This accounts for that terrible lack of instinct in modern man, particularly the city-dweller. He lacks all contact with life and the breath of nature. He knows a rabbit or a cow only from the illustrated paper, the dictionary, or the movies, and thinks he knows what it is really like-and is then amazed that cowsheds “smell,” because the dictionary didn’t say so. ~Carl Jung; “Good and Evil in Analytical Psychology” (1959); CW 10: Civilization in Transition; Page 882.

The immunity of the nation depends entirely upon the existence of a leading minority immune to the evil and capable of combating the powerful suggestive effect. ~Carl Gustav Jung, The Symbolic Life, Collected Works 18, par.1400

Good does not become better by being exaggerated, but worse, and a small evil becomes a big one through being disregarded and repressed. The Shadow is very much a part of human nature, and it is only at night that no shadows exist. ~Carl Jung; Carl Jung: “A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity (1942) In CW 11; Psychology and Religion: West and East. Page 286.

This libido is a force of nature, good and bad at once, or morally neutral. Uniting himself with it, Faust succeeds in accomplishing his real life’s work, at first with evil results and then for the benefit of mankind. ~Carl Jung; CW 5; Para 182.

Nobody is immune to a nationwide evil unless he is unshakably convinced of the danger of his own character being tainted by the same evil. Carl Jung, The Symbolic Life, CW 18, para 1400 .

The reality of evil and its incompatibility with good cleave the opposites asunder and lead inexorably to the crucifixion and suspension of everything that lives. Since ‘the soul is by nature Christian’ this result is bound to come as infallibly as it did in the life of Jesus: we all have to be ‘crucified with Christ,’ i.e., suspended in a moral suffering equivalent to veritable crucifixion. ~Carl Jung; Psychology and Alchemy; Paragraph 470.

The unconscious is not just evil by nature, it is also the source of the highest good: not only dark but also light, not only bestial, semihuman, and demonic but superhuman, spiritual, and, in the classical sense of the word, “divine.” ~Carl Jung; The Practice of Psychotherapy; Page 364.

The sad truth is that man’s real life consists of a complex of inexorable opposites . . . day and night . . . birth and death . . . happiness and misery . . . good and evil. ~Carl Jung; Man and His Symbols; Page 75.

Unconsciousness is the primal sin, evil itself, for the Logos. ~Carl Jung; Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype, ibid” par. 178.]

We still attribute to the other fellow all the evil and inferior qualities that we do not like to recognize in ourselves, and therefore have to criticize and attack him, when all that has happened is that an inferior “soul” has emigrated from one person to another. The world is still full of betes noires and scapegoats, just as it formerly teemed with witches and werewolves. ~Carl Jung; Civilization in Transition Page 130.

Psychology does not know what good and evil are in themselves; it knows them only as judgments about relationships. ~Carl Jung; Aion; Page 53.

With a little self-criticism one can see through the shadow-so far as its nature is personal. But when it appears as an archetype, one encounters the same difficulties as with anima and animus. In other words, it is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to recognize the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil. ~Carl Jung; CW 17; The Shadow; Page 338; par. 19.

If it has been believe d hitherto that the human shadow was the source of all evil, it can now be ascertained on closer investigation that the unconscious man, that is, his shadow, does not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses, etc. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 423.

It is in the nature of political bodies always to see the evil in the opposite group, just as the individual has an ineradicable tendency to get rid of everything he does not know and does not want to know about himself by foisting it off on somebody else. ~Carl Jung; The Undiscovered Self; Page 72.

It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts. ~Carl Jung; CW 10, para. 408.

We need more understanding of human nature, because the only real danger that exists is man himself . . . We know nothing of man, far too little. His psyche should be studied because we are the origin of all coming evil. ~Carl Jung, BBC interview, 1959.

It does not seem to fit God’s purpose to exempt man from conflict and hence from evil. ~Carl Jung, Answer to Job, Para 659.

The reason for evil in the world is that people are not able to tell their stories. ~Purportedly uttered by Dr. Jung but no citation yet found.

It is a pleasure to receive the letter of a normally intelligent person in contrast to the evil flood of idiotic and malevolent insinuations I seemed to have released in the U.S.A. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 534-537.

I don’t know T. S. Eliot. If you think that his book is worthwhile, then I don’t mind even poetry. I am only prejudiced against all forms of modern art. It is mostly morbid and evil on top [of that]. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 468-469.

If Neumann recommends the “inner voice” as the criterion of ethical behaviour instead of the Christian conscience, this is in complete agreement with the Eastern view that in everybody’s heart there dwells a judge who knows all his evil thoughts. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 518-522.

The goal which the alchemist sets himself, however, is not a direct redemption of the human being, nor is it a propitiation of the Deity nor a defence against evil. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 143.

The well-known sentence in the Lord’s Prayer, “Deliver us from evil”, meant, as it was first understood, deliver us from the evil principle of the Heimarmene. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 225.

The principle of evil is just as autonomous and eternal as the principle of good. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 215.

As God is the union, the reconciliation, of all the opposites, it is natural that both the good and evil principles should be in him potentially, should originate in him. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 215.

Mandalas are sometimes made with the express purpose of evil, to do people harm. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI, 3Feb1939, Page 71.

The God suffers when man does not accept his darkness. Consequently men must have a suffering God, so long as they suffer from evil. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 287.

The God suffers because you continue to suffer from loving evil. You do not suffer from evil because you recognize it, but because it affords you secret pleasure, and because you believe it promises the pleasure of an unknown opportunity. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 287.

Because I wanted to give birth to my God, I also wanted evil. He who wants to create an eternal fullness will also create eternal emptiness. You cannot undertake one without the other. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 289.

But if you want to escape evil, you will create no God, everything that you do is tepid and gray. I wanted my God for the sake of grace and disgrace. Hence I also want my evil. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 289.

If my God were not overpowering, neither would be my evil. But I want my God to be powerful and beyond all measure happy and lustrous. Only in this way do I love my God. And the luster of his beauty will also have me taste the very bottom of Hell. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 289.

I do not doubt: I also want evil for the sake of my God. I enter the unequal battle, since it is always unequal and without doubt a lost cause. How terrible and despairing would this battle be otherwise? But precisely this is how it should and will be. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 289.

There is nothing the emptiness can sacrifice, since it always suffers lack Only fullness can sacrifice, since it has fullness. Emptiness cannot sacrifice its hunger for fullness, since it cannot deny its own essence. Therefore we also need evil. But I can sacrifice my will to evil, because I previously received fullness. All strength flows back to me again, since the evil one has destroyed the image I had of the formation of the God. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 289.

We must regenerate ourselves. But as the creation of a God is a creative act of highest love, the restoration of our human life signifies an act of the Below. This is a great and dark mystery. Man cannot accomplish this act solely by himself but is assisted by evil, which does it instead of man. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 291.

But man must recognize his complicity in the act of evil. He must bear witness to this recognition by eating from the bloody sacrificial flesh. Through this act he testifies that he is a man, that he recognizes good as well as evil, and that he destroys the image of the God’s formation through withdrawing his life force, with which he also dissociates himself from the God. This occurs for the salvation of the soul, which is the true mother of the divine child. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 291.

Shadow pertains to light as evil to good, and vice versa. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 64.

For, if the unconscious is held to be nothing more than a receptacle for all the evil shadow-things in human nature, including deposits of primeval slime, we really do not see why we should linger longer than necessary on the edge of this swamp into which we once fell. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 67.

If it has been believed hitherto that the human shadow was the source of all evil, it can now be ascertained on closer investigation that the unconscious man, that is, his shadow, does not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses, etc. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 423.

In reality the orthodox Christian formula is not quite complete, because the dogmatic aspect of the evil principle is absent from the Trinity and leads a more or less awkward existence on its own as the devil. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 59.

All those things which have been neglected and rejected, even immoral things, even evil is needed for virtue cannot exist without evil, as light cannot exist without darkness. ~Carl Jung, Cornwall Lecture, Page 26.

“If as seems probable, the aeon of the fishes is ruled by the archetypal motif of the ‘hostile brothers,’ then the approach of the next Platonic month, namely Aquarius, will constellate the problem of the union of opposites. It will then no longer be possible to write off evil as a mere privatio boni; its real existence will have to be recognized”). ~~Liber Novus, Page 316, Footnote 275

If it has been believed hitherto that the human shadow was the source of all evil, it can now be ascertained on closer investigation that the unconscious man, that is, his shadow, does not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses, etc. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Par 423.

I must emphasize, however, that the grand plan on which the unconscious life of the psyche is constructed is so inaccessible to our understanding that we can never know what evil may not be necessary in order to produce good by enantiodromia, and what good may very possibly lead to evil. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Par 396.

I am strongly convinced that the evil principle prevailing in this world leads the unrecognized spiritual need into perdition if it is not counteracted either by real religious insight or by the protective wall of human community. ~Carl Jung, Jung/ Bill Wilson Letters.

The unconscious itself is neither tricky nor evil – it is Nature, both beautiful and terrible. . . . The best way of dealing with the unconscious is the creative way. . . ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 108-109.

The categories of good and evil cannot be suspended; they are continually alive and cannot be attached to material things. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 47.

Evil is that which obstructs meaningful vitality. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 47.

The problem that is central and closest to our hearts already contains the lurking danger of evil. We must therefore beware of impetuous decisions and enthusiastic radical attitudes. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 47.

It is indeed no small matter to know one’s own guilt and one’s own evil, and there is certainly nothing to be gained by losing sight of one’s shadow. When we are conscious of our guilt we are in a more favorable position – we can at least hope to change and improve ourselves. ~Carl Jung, CW X, Para 440.

Unconsciousness is the primal sin, evil itself, for the Logos. Therefore its first creative act of liberation is matricide. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 283.

Divine favour and daemonic evil or danger are archetypal. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 52-53.

It is a historical fact that the real devil only came into existence together with Christ. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 133-138

Though Christ was God, as Man he was detached from God and he watched the devil falling out of heaven, removed from God as he (Christ) was separated from God inasmuch as he was human. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 133-138

But let man, mindful of his hybris, be content with the lesser evil and beware of the Satanic temptation of the grand gesture, which is only intended for show and self-intoxication. C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 11-12.

The old popes and bishops succeeded in getting so much heathendom, barbarism and real evil out of the Church that it became much better than some centuries before: there were no Alexander VI, no auto-da-tes, no thumbscrews and racks anymore, so that the compensatory drastic virtues (asceticism etc.) lost their meaning to a certain extent. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 163-174

Since you cannot overthrow a whole world because it harbours also some evil, it will be a more individual or “local” fight with what you rightly call avidya. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 163-174

Since the world is largely sub principatu diaboli, it is unavoidable that there is just as much evil in the Church as everywhere else, and as everywhere else you have got to be careful. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 163-174

With no human consciousness to reflect themselves in, good and evil simply happen, or rather, there is no good and evil, but only a sequence of neutral events, or what the Buddhists call the Nidhanachain, the uninterrupted causal concatenation leading to suffering, old age, sickness, and death. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 310-311.

In these terrible days when evil is once again inundating the world in every conceivable form, I want you to know that I am thinking of you and of your family in Hungary, and hope with you that the avenging angel will pass by their door. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 336.

Noise is certainly only one of the evils of our time, though perhaps the most obtrusive. The others are the gramophone, the radio, and now the blight of television. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 387-392.

In spite of the fact that good and evil are relative and therefore not generally valid, the contrast exists and they are a pair of opposites basic to the structure of our mind. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 461-462

The opposition good – evil is universal in our experience, but one must always ask to whom? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 461-462

If God is only good, everything is good. There is not a shadow anywhere. Evil just would not exist, even man would be good and could not produce anything evil. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 518-519

I thank you for the unasked-for kindness of your letter. There is so much evil and bitterness in this world that one cannot be too grateful for the one good thing which happens from time to time. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 516

Only my experience can be good or evil, but I know that the superior will is based upon a foundation which transcends human imagination. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 525-526

Carl Jung on “Good and Evil” – Anthology.

There are times in the world’s history—and our own time may be one of them—when good must stand aside, so that anything destined to be better first appears in evil form.

This shows how extremely dangerous it is even to touch these problems, for evil can so easily slip in on the plea that it is, potentially, the better! Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 321

The inner voice makes us conscious of the evil from which the whole community is suffering, whether it be the nation or the whole human race.

But it presents this evil in an individual form, so that one might at first suppose it to be only an individual characteristic. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 319

We are so accustomed to hear that everybody has his “difficulties and problems” that we simply accept it as a banal fact, without considering what these difficulties and problems really mean.

Why is one never satisfied with oneself?

Why is one unreasonable?

Why is one not always good and why must one ever leave a cranny for evil?

Why does one do foolish things which could easily be avoided with a little forethought?

What is it that is always frustrating us and thwarting our best intentions?

Why are there people who never notice these things or cannot even admit their existence?

And finally, why do people in the mass beget the historical lunacy of the last thirty years?

Why couldn’t Pythagoras, twenty-four hundred years ago, have established the rule of wisdom once and for all, or Christianity have set up the kingdom of Heaven upon earth? ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 387

Look at all the incredible savagery going on in our so-called civilized world: it all comes from human beings and the spiritual condition they are in.

Look at the devilish

engines of destruction!

They are invented by completely innocuous gentlemen, reasonable, respectable citizens who are everything we could wish.

And when the whole thing blows up and an indescribable hell of destruction is let loose, nobody seems to be responsible.

It simply happens, and yet it is all man-made. ~Carl Jung, CW 74, Para 11, Para 85

The dammed-up instinctual forces in civilized man are immensely destructive and far more dangerous than the instincts of the primitive, who in a modest degree is constantly living out his negative instincts.

Consequently no war of the historical past can rival in grandiose horror the wars of civilized nations. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para230

The daemonism of nature, which man had apparently triumphed over, he has unwittingly swallowed into himself and so become the devil’s marionette.

This could happen only because he believed he had abolished the daemons by declaring them to be superstition.

He overlooked the fact that they were, at bottom, the products of certain factors in the human psyche.

When these products were dubbed unreal and illusory, their sources were in no way blocked up or rendered inoperative.

On the contrary, after it became impossible for the daemons to inhabit the rocks, woods, mountains, and rivers, they used human beings as much more dangerous dwelling places. ~Carl Jung, CW 15, Para 43

Let man but accumulate sufficient engines of destruction and the devil within him will soon be unable to resist putting them to their fated use.

It is well known that fire-arms go off of themselves if only enough of them are together. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, CW 163

Human imperfection is always a discord in the harmony of our ideals.

Unfortunately, no one lives in the world as we desire it, but in the world of actuality where good and evil clash and destroy one another, where no creating or building can be done without dirtying one’s hands.

Whenever things get really bad, there is always someone to assure us amid great applause that nothing has happened and everything is in order. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 263

The Church has the doctrine of the devil, of an evil principle, whom we like to imagine complete with cloven hoofs, horns, and tail, half man, half beast, a chthonic deity apparently escaped from the rout of Dionysus, the sole surviving champion of the sinful joys of paganism.

An excellent picture, and one which exactly describes the grotesque and sinister side of the unconscious; for we have never really come to grips with it and consequently it has remained in its original savage state.

Probably no one today would still be rash enough to assert that the European is a lamblike creature and not possessed by a devil

The frightful records of our age are plain for all to see, and they surpass in hideousness everything that any previous age, with its feeble instruments, could have hoped to accomplish. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 388

Only with Christ did the devil enter the world as the real counterpart of God, and in early Jewish-Christian circles Satan was regarded as Christ’s elder brother. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 113

The splendour of the “light” god has been enhanced beyond measure, but the darkness supposedly represented by the devil has localized itself in man.

This strange development was precipitated chiefly by the fact that Christianity, terrified of Manichaean dualism, strove to preserve its monotheism by main force.

But since the reality of darkness and evil could not be denied, there was no alternative but to make man responsible for it.

Even the devil was largely, if not entirely, abolished, with the result that this metaphysical figure, who at one time was an integral part

of the Deity, was introjected into man, who thereupon became the real carrier of the mysterium iniqtiitatis ‘. “omne bonum a Deo, omne malum ab homine.”

In recent times this development has suffered a diabolical reverse, and the wolf in sheep’s clothing now goes about whispering in our ear that evil is really nothing but a misunderstanding of good and an effective instrument of progress.

We think that the world of darkness has thus been abolished for good and all, and nobody realizes what a poisoning this is of man’s soul.

In this way he turns himself into the devil, for the devil is half of the archetype whose irresistible power makes even unbelievers ejaculate “Oh God!” on every suitable and unsuitable occasion. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 189

Evil needs to be pondered just as much as good, for good and evil are ultimately nothing but ideal extensions and abstractions of doing, and both belong to the chiaroscuro of life.

In the last resort there is no good that cannot produce evil and no evil that cannot produce good. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 36

Good and evil are feeling-values of human provenance, and we cannot extend them beyond the human realm.

What happens beyond this is beyond our judgment: God is not to be caught with human attributes.

Besides, where would the fear of God be if only good—i.e., what seems good to us—were to be expected from him. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 291

The view that good and evil are spiritual principles outside us, and that man is caught in the conflict between them is more bearable by far than the insight that the opposites are the ineradicable and indispensable preconditions of all psychic life, so much so that life itself is guilt.

Even a life dedicated to God is still lived by an ego, which speaks of an ego and asserts an ego in God’s despite, which does not instantly merge itself with God but reserves for itself a freedom and a will which it sets up outside God and against him. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 206

If something which seems to me an error shows itself to be more effective than a truth, then I must first follow up the error, for in it lie power and life which I lose if I hold to what seems to me true.

Light has need of darkness —otherwise how could it appear as light? ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 530

We know of course that without sin there is no repentance and without repentance no redeeming grace, also that without original sin the redemption of the world could never have come about; but we assiduously avoid investigating whether in this very power of evil God may not have placed some special purpose which it is most important for us to know.

One often feels driven to some such view when, like the psychotherapist, one has to deal with people who are confronted with their blackest shadow. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 36

Where is a height without depth, and how can there be light that throws no shadow?

There is no good that is not opposed by evil. “No man can be redeemed from a sin he has not committed,” says Carpocrates; a deep saying for all who wish to understand, and a golden opportunity for all those who prefer to draw false conclusions.

What is down below is not just an excuse for more pleasure, but something we fear because it demands to play its part in the life of the more conscious and more complete man. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 271

Man is constantly inclined to forget that what was once good does not remain good eternally.

He follows the old ways that once were good long after they have become bad and only with the greatest sacrifices and untold suffering can he rid himself of this delusion and see that what was once good is now perhaps grown old and is good no longer.

This is so in great things as in small. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 313

Whatever the metaphysical position of the devil may be, in psychological reality evil is an effective, not to say menacing, limitation of goodness, so that it is no exaggeration to assume that in this world good and evil more or less balance each other, like day and night, and that this is the reason why the victory of the good is always a special act of grace. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 253

We quite forget that we can be as deplorably overcome by a virtue as by a vice.

There is a sort of frenzied, orgiastic virtuousness which is just as infamous as a vice and leads to just as much injustice and violence. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 222

Good does not become better by being exaggerated, but worse, and a small evil becomes a big one through being disregarded and repressed.

The shadow is very much a part of human nature, and it is only at night that no shadows exist. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 286

We all have a great need to be good ourselves, and occasionally we like to show it by the appropriate actions.

If good can come of evil self-interest, then the two sides of human nature have co-operated.

But when in a fit of enthusiasm we begin with the good, our deep-rooted selfishness remains in the background, unsatisfied and resentful, only waiting for an opportunity to take its revenge in the most atrocious way. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 56

Society expects, and indeed must expect, every individual to play the part assigned to him as perfectly as possible.

so that a man who is a parson must not only carry out his official functions objectively, but must at all times and in all circumstances play the role of parson in a flawless manner.

Society demands this as a kind of surety; each must stand at his post, here a cobbler, there a poet. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 305

The persona is a complicated system of relations between individual consciousness and society, fittingly enough a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and, on the other, to conceal the true nature of the individual. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 305

Every calling or profession has its own characteristic persona.

It is easy to study these things nowadays, when the photographs of public personalities so frequently appear in the press.

A certain kind of behaviour is forced on them by the world, and professional people endeavour to come up to these expectations.

Only, the danger is that they become identical with their personas—the professor with his text-book, the tenor with his voice.

Then the damage is done; henceforth he lives exclusively against the background of his own biography. . . . The garment of Deianeira has grown fast to his skin, and a desperate decision like that of Heracles is needed if he is to tear this Nessus shirt from his body and step into the consuming fire of the flame of immortality,

in order to transform himself into what he really is.

One could say, with a little exaggeration, that the persona is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself.

A man cannot get rid of himself in favour of an artificial personality without punishment.

Even the attempt to do so brings on, in all ordinary cases, unconscious reactions in the form of bad moods, affects, phobias, compulsive ideas, backslidings, vices, etc.

The social “strong man” is in his private life often a mere child where his own states of feeling are concerned; his discipline in public (which he demands quite particularly of others) goes miserably to pieces in private.

His “happiness in his work” assumes a woeful countenance at home; his “spotless” public morality looks strange indeed behind the mask—we will not mention deeds, but only fantasies, and the wives of such men would have a pretty tale to tell.

As to his selfless altruism, his children have decided views about that. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 307

I once made the acquaintance of a very venerable personage—in fact, one might easily call him a saint.

I stalked round him for three whole days, but never a mortal failing did I find in him.

My feeling of inferiority grew ominous, and I was beginning to think seriously of how I might better myself.

Then, on the fourth day, his wife came to consult me. . . . Well, nothing of the sort has ever happened to me since.

But this I did learn: that any man who becomes one with his persona can cheerfully let all disturbances manifest themselves through his wife without her noticing it, though she pays for her self-sacrifice with a bad neurosis. 1048:306

The meeting with ourselves is one of the more unpleasant things that may be avoided as long as we possess living symbolic figures into which everything unknown in ourselves is projected.

The figure of the devil, in particular, is a most valuable possession and a great convenience, for as long as he goes about outside in the form of a roaring lion we know where the evil lurks: in that incarnate Old Harry where it has been in this or that form since primeval times.

With the rise of consciousness since the Middle Ages he has been considerably reduced in stature, but in his stead there are human beings to whom we gratefully surrender our shadows.

With what pleasure, for instance, we read newspaper reports of crime!

A bona fide criminal becomes a popular figure because he unburdens in no small degree the conscience of his fellow men, for now they know once more where the evil is to be found. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 69

It is a fact that cannot be denied : the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 408

Whoever looks into the mirror of the water will see first of all his own face.

Whoever goes to himself risks a confrontation with himself.

The mirror does not flatter, it faithfully shows whatever looks into it; namely, the face we never show to the world because we cover it with the persona, the mask of the actor.

But the mirror lies behind the mask and shows the true face. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 43

We can certainly hand it to Augustine that all natures are good, yet just not good enough to prevent their badness from being equally obvious. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 95

Simple things are always the most difficult.

In actual life it requires the greatest art to be simple, and so acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the acid test of one’s whole outlook on life.

That I feed the beggar, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ—all these are undoubtedly great virtues.

What I do unto the least of my brethren, that I do unto Christ.

But what if I should discover that the least amongst them all, the poorest of all beggars, the most impudent of all offenders, yea the very fiend himself—that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, that I myself am the enemy who must be loved—what then?

Then, as a rule, the whole truth of Christianity is reversed: there is then no more talk of love and long-suffering; we say to the brother within us “Raca,” and condemn and rage against ourselves.

We hide him from the world, we deny ever having met this least among the lowly in ourselves, and had it been God himself who drew near to us in this despicable form, we should have denied him a thousand times before a single cock had crowed. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 520

Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be.

Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.

If an inferiority is conscious, one always has a chance to correct it.

Furthermore, it is constantly in contact with other interests, so that it is continually subjected to modifications.

But if it is repressed and isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 131

It is a frightening thought that man also has a shadow side to him, consisting not just of little weaknesses, and foibles, but of a positively demonic dynamism.

The individual seldom knows anything of this; to him, as an individual, it is incredible that he should ever in any circumstances go beyond himself.

But let these harmless creatures form a mass, and there emerges a raging monster; and each individual is only one tiny cell in the monster’s body, so that for better or worse he must accompany it on its bloody rampages and even assist it to the utmost.

Having a dark suspicion of these grim possibilities, man turns a blind eye to the shadow-side of human nature.

Blindly he strives against the salutary dogma of original sin, which is yet so prodigiously true.

Yes, he even hesitates to admit the conflict of which he is so painfully aware. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 35

The educated man tries to repress the inferior man in himself, not realizing that by so doing he forces the latter into revolt. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 136

We carry our past with us, to wit, the primitive and inferior man with his desires and emotions, and it is only with an enormous effort that we can detach ourselves from this burden.

If it comes to a neurosis, we invariably have to deal with a considerably intensified shadow.

And if such a person wants to be cured it is necessary to find a way in which his conscious personality and his shadow can live together. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 132

As a rule those tendencies that represent the antisocial elements in man’s psychic structure—what I call the “statistical criminal” in everybody—are suppressed, that is, they are consciously and deliberately disposed of.

But tendencies that are merely repressed are usually of a somewhat doubtful character.

They are not so much antisocial as unconventional and socially awkward.

The reason why we repress them is equally doubtful.

Some people repress them from sheer cowardice, others from conventional morality, and others again for reasons of respectability.

Repression is a sort of half-conscious and half-hearted letting go of things, a dropping of hot cakes or a reviling of grapes which hang too high, or a looking the other way in order not to become conscious of one’s desires. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 129

We know that the wildest and most moving dramas are played not in the theatre but in the hearts of ordinary men and women who pass by without exciting attention, and who betray to the world nothing of the conflicts that rage within them except possibly by a nervous breakdown.

What is so difficult for the layman to grasp is the fact that in most cases the patients themselves have no suspicion whatever of the internecine war raging in their unconscious.

If we remember that there are many people who understand nothing at all about themselves, we shall be less surprised at the realization that there are also people who are utterly unaware of their actual conflicts. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 425

To cherish secrets and hold back emotion is a psychic misdemeanour for which nature finally visits us with sickness—that is, when we do these things in private.

But when they are done in communion with others they satisfy nature and may even count as useful virtues.

It is only restraint practised for oneself alone that is unwholesome.

It is as if man had an inalienable right to behold all that is dark, imperfect, stupid, and guilty in his fellow men—for such, of course, are the things we keep secret in order to protect ourselves.

It seems to be a sin in the eyes of nature to hide our inferiority—just as much as to live entirely on our inferior side. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 132

If the repressed tendencies, the shadow as I call them, were obviously evil, there would be no problem whatever.

But the shadow is merely somewhat inferior, primitive, unadapted, and awkward; not wholly bad.

It even contains childish or primitive qualities which would in a way vitalize and embellish human existence, but—convention forbids. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 134

In reality, the acceptance of the shadow-side of human nature verges on the impossible.

Consider for a moment what it means to grant the right of existence to what is unreasonable, senseless, and evil!

Yet it is just this that the modern man insists upon.

He wants to live with every side of himself—to know what he is.

That is why he casts history aside.

He wants to break with tradition so that he can experiment with his life and determine what value and meaning things have in themselves, apart from traditional presuppositions. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 528

Mere suppression of the shadow is as little of a remedy as beheading would be for headache.

To destroy a man’s morality does not help either, because it would kill his better self, without which even the shadow makes no sense.

The reconciliation of these opposites is a major problem, and even in antiquity it bothered certain minds. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 133

Taking it in its deepest sense, the shadow is the invisible saurian tail that man still drags behind him.

Carefully amputated, it becomes the healing serpent of the mysteries.

Only monkeys parade with it. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 93

If you imagine someone who is brave enough to withdraw all his projections, then you get an individual who is conscious of a pretty thick shadow.

Such a man has saddled himself with new problems and conflicts.

He has become a serious problem to himself, as he is now unable to say that they do this or that, they are wrong, and they must be fought against.

He lives in the “House of the Gathering.”

Such a man knows that whatever is wrong in the world is in himself, and if he only learns to deal with his own shadow he has done something real for the world.

He has succeeded in shouldering at least an infinitesimal part of the gigantic, unsolved social problems of our day. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 140

The shadow is a tight passage, a narrow door, whose painful constriction no one is spared who goes down to the deep well.

But one must learn to know oneself in order to know who one is.

For what comes after the door is, surprisingly enough, a boundless expanse full of unprecedented uncertainty, with apparently no inside and no outside, no above and no below, no here and no there, no mine and no thine, no good and no bad. It is the world of water, where all life floats in suspension; where the realm of the sympathetic system, the soul of everything living, begins; where I am indivisibly this and that; where I experience the other in myself and the other-than-myself experiences me. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 45

It is of course a fundamental mistake to imagine that when we see the non-value in a value or the untruth in a truth, the value or the truth ceases to exist.

It has only become relative.

Everything human is relative, because everything rests on an inner polarity; for everything is a phenomenon of energy.

Energy necessarily depends on a preexisting polarity, without which there could be no energy.

There must always be high and low, hot and cold, etc., so that the equilibrating process—which is energy—can take place.

Therefore the tendency to deny all previous values in favour of their opposites is just as much of an exaggeration as the earlier onesidedness.

And in so far as it is a question of rejecting universally accepted and indubitable values, the result is a fatal loss.

One who acts in this wav empties himself out with his values, as Nietzsche has already said. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 115

Nobody can fall so low unless he has a great depth.

If such a thing can happen to a man, it challenges his best and highest on the other side; that is to say, this depth corresponds to a potential height, and the blackest darkness to a hidden light. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 43

The difficulty lies in striking the dead centre.

For this an awareness of the two sides of man’s personality is essential, of their respective aims and origins.

These two aspects must never be separated through arrogance or cowardice. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 148

The tendency to separate the opposites as much as possible and to strive for singleness of meaning is absolutely necessary for clarity of consciousness, since discrimination is of its essence.

But when the separation is carried so far that the complementary opposite is lost sight of, and the blackness of the whiteness, the evil of the good, the depth of the heights, and so on, is no longer seen, the result is one-sided ness, which is then compensated from the unconscious without our help. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 470

Only unconsciousness makes no difference between good and evil. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 97

Our knowledge of good and evil has dwindled with our mounting knowledge and experience, and will dwindle still more in the future, without our being able to escape the demands of ethics.

In this utmost uncertainty we need the illumination of a holy and whole-making spirit—a spirit that can be anything rather than our reason. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 267

Even on the highest peak we shall never be “beyond good and evil,” and the more we experience of their inextricable entanglement the more uncertain and confused will our moral judgment be.

In this conflict, it will not help us in the least to throw the moral criterion on the rubbish heap and to set up new tablets after known patterns; for, as in the past, so in the future the wrong we have done, thought, or intended will wreak its vengeance on our souls, no matter whether we turn the world upside down or not. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 267

On paper the moral code looks clear and neat enough; but the same document written on the “living tables of the heart” is often a sorry tatter, particularly in the mouths of those who talk the loudest.

We are told on every side that evil is evil and that there can be no hesitation in condemning it, but that does not prevent evil from being the most problematical thing in the individual’s life and the one which demands the deepest reflection.

What above all deserves our keenest attention is the question “Exactly who is the doer?” For the answer to this question ultimately decides the value of the deed.

It is true that society attaches greater importance at first to what is done, because it is immediately obvious; but in the long run the right deed in the hands of the wrong man will also have a disastrous effect.

No one who is far-sighted will allow himself to be hoodwinked by the right deed by the wrong man, any more than by the wrong deed of the right man. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 36

The primitive form of conscience is paradoxical: to burn a heretic is on the one hand a pious and meritorious act as John Hus himself ironically recognized when, bound to the stake, he espied an old woman hobbling towards him with a bundle of faggots, and exclaimed, “O sancta simplicitas!”— and on the other hand a brutal manifestation of ruthless and savage lust for revenge, ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 845

Besides the “right” kind of conscience there is a “wrong” one, which exaggerates, perverts, and twists evil into good and good into evil just as our own scruples do; and it does so with the same compulsiveness and with the same emotional consequences as the “right” kind of conscience.

Were it not for this paradox the question of conscience would present no problem: we could then rely wholly on its decisions so far as morality is concerned.

But since there is great and justified uncertainty in this regard, it needs unusual courage or—what amounts to the same thing—unshakable faith for a person simply to follow the dictates of his own conscience.

As a rule one obeys only up to a certain point, which is determined in advance by the moral code.

This is where those dreaded conflicts of duty begin.

Generally they are answered according to the precepts of the moral code, but only in a very few cases are they really decided by an individual act of judgment.

For as soon as the moral code ceases to act as a support, conscience easily succumbs to a fit of weakness, ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 835

“Conscience,” in ordinary usage, means the consciousness of a factor which in the case of a “good conscience” affirms that a decision or an act accords with morality and, if it does not, condemns it as “immoral.”

This view, deriving as it does from the mores^ from what is customary, can properly be called “moral.”

Distinct from this is the ethical form of conscience, which appears when two decisions or ways of acting, both affirmed to be moral and therefore regarded as “duties,” collide with one another.

In these cases, not foreseen by the moral code because they are mostly very individual, a judgment is required which cannot properly be called “moral” or in accord with custom.

Here the decision has no custom at its disposal on which it could rely.

The deciding factor appears to be something else: it proceeds not from the traditional moral code but from the unconscious foundation of the personality.

The decision is drawn from dark and deep waters.

It is true these conflicts of duty are solved very often and very conveniently by a decision in accordance with custom, that is, by suppressing one of the opposites.

But this is not always so.

If one is sufficiently conscientious the conflict is endured to the end, and a creative solution emerges which is produced by the constellated archetype and possesses that compelling authority not unjustly characterized as the voice of God. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 856

In Christ’s sayings there are already indications of ideas which go beyond the traditionally “Christian” morality —for instance the parable of the unjust steward, the moral of which agrees with the logion of the Codex Bezae, and betrays an ethical standard very different from what is expected.

Here the moral criterion is consciousness, and not law or convention. One might also mention the strange fact that it is precisely Peter, who lacks self-control and is fickle in character, whom Christ wishes to make the rock and foundation of his Church.

These seem to me to be ideas which point to the inclusion of evil in what I would call a differential moral valuation.

For instance, it is good if evil is sensibly covered up, but to act unconsciously is evil.

One might almost suppose that such views were intended for a time when consideration is given to evil as well as to good, or rather, when it is not suppressed below the threshold in the dubious assumption that we always know exactly what evil is. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 696

Solicitude for the spiritual welfare of the erring sheep can explain even a Torquemada. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 391

If, as many are fain to believe, the unconscious were only nefarious, only evil, then the situation would be simple and the path clear: to do good and to eschew evil.

But what is “good” and what is “evil”?

The unconscious is not just evil by nature, it is also the source of the highest good: not only dark but also light, not only bestial, semi-human and demonic but superhuman, spiritual, and, in the classical sense of the word, “divine.” ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 389

Christianity has made the antinomy of good and evil into a world problem and, by formulating the conflict dogmatically, raised it to an absolute principle.

Into this as yet unresolved conflict the Christian is cast as a protagonist of good, a fellow player in the world drama.

Understood in its deepest sense, being Christ’s follower involves a suffering that is unendurable to the great majority of mankind.

Consequently the example of Christ is in reality followed either with reservation or not at all, and the pastoral practice of the Church even finds itself obliged to “lighten the yoke of Christ.”

This means a pretty considerable reduction in the severity and harshness of the conflict and hence, in practice, a relativism of good and evil.

Good is equivalent to the unconditional imitation of Christ and evil is its hindrance.

Man’s moral weakness and sloth are what chiefly hinder the imitation, and it is to these that probabilism extends a practical understanding which may sometimes, perhaps, come nearer to Christian tolerance, mildness, and love of one’s neighbour than the attitude of those who see in probabilism a mere laxity. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 25

“Love thy neighbour” is wonderful, since we then have nothing to do about ourselves; but when it is a question of “love thy neighbour as thyself” we are no longer so sure, for we think it would be egoism to love ourselves.

There was no need to preach “love thyself” to people in olden times, because they did so as a matter of course.

But how is it nowadays?

It would do us good to take this thing somewhat to heart, especially the phrase “as thyself.”

How can I love my neighbour if I do not love myself?

How can we be altruistic if we do not treat ourselves decently?

But if we treat ourselves decently, if we love ourselves, we make discoveries, and then we see what we are and what we should love.

There is nothing for it but to put our foot into the serpent’s mouth.

He who cannot love can never transform the serpent, and then nothing is changed. ~Carl Jung, Basel Seminar, Para 87

Christ espoused the sinner and did not condemn him.

The true follower of Christ will do the same, and, since one should do unto others as one would do unto oneself, one will also take the part of the sinner who is oneself.

And as little as we would accuse Christ of fraternizing with evil, so little should we reproach ourselves that to love the sinner who is oneself is to make a pact with the devil.

Love makes a man better, hate makes him worse—even when that man is oneself. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 37

The reality of evil and its incompatibility with good cleave the opposites asunder and lead inexorably to the crucifixion and suspension of everything that lives.

Since “the soul is by nature Christian” this result is bound to come as infallibly as it did in the life of Jesus: we all have to be “crucified with Christ,” i.e., suspended in a moral suffering equivalent to veritable crucifixion.

In practice this is only possible up to a point, and apart from that is so unbearable and inimical to life that the ordinary human being can afford to get into such a state only occasionally, in fact as seldom as possible.

For how could he remain ordinary in the face of such suffering! ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 24

It is no easy matter to live a life that is modelled on Christ’s, but it is unspeakably harder to live one’s own life as truly as Christ lived his.

Anyone who did this would run counter to the conditions of his own history, and though he might thus be fulfilling them, he would none the less be misjudged, derided, tortured, and crucified. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 522

Life demands for its completion and fulfilment a balance between joy and sorrow.

But because suffering is positively disagreeable, people naturally prefer not to ponder how much fear and sorrow fall to the lot of man.

So they speak soothingly about progress and the greatest possible happiness, forgetting that happiness is itself poisoned if the measure of suffering has not been fulfilled. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 185

Opposites can be united only in the form of compromise, or irrationally, some new thing arising between them which, though different from both, yet has the power to take up their energies in equal measure as an expression of both and of neither.

Such an expression cannot be contrived by reason, it can only be created through living. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 169

What takes place between light and darkness, what unites the opposites, has a share in both sides and can be judged just as well from the left as from the right, without our becoming any the wiser: indeed, we can only open up the opposition again.

Here only the symbol helps, for, in accordance with its paradoxical nature, it represents the “tertium” that in logic does not exist, but which in reality is the living truth. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 199

The symbol is the middle way along which the opposites flow together in a new movement, like a watercourse bringing fertility after a long drought. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 443

The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and calm which is not easily disturbed, or else a brokenness that can hardly be healed.

Conversely, it is just these intense conflicts and their conflagration which are needed in order to produce valuable and lasting results. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 50

The possession of complexes does not in itself signify neurosis, for complexes are the normal foci of psychic happenings, and the fact that they are painful is no proof of pathological disturbance.

Suffering is not an illness; it is the normal counterpole to happiness.

A complex becomes pathological only when we think we have not got it. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 179

Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 129

The wounding and painful shafts do not come from outside, through gossip which only pricks us only on the surface, but from the ambush of our own unconscious.

It is our own repressed desires that stick like arrows in our flesh. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 438

Deviation from the truths of the blood begets neurotic restlessness, and we have had about enough of that these days.

Restlessness begets meaninglessness, and the lack of meaning in life is a soul-sickness whose full extent and full import our age has not as yet begun to comprehend. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 815

The Christian doctrine of original sin on the one hand, and of the meaning and value of suffering on the other, is of profound therapeutic significance and is undoubtedly far better suited to Western man than Islamic fatalism.

Similarly the belief in immortality gives life that untroubled flow into the future so necessary if stoppages and regressions are to be avoided. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 186

A psychoneurosis must be understood, ultimately, as the suffering of a soul which has not discovered its meaning.

But all creativeness in the realm of the spirit as well as every psychic advance of man arises from the suffering of the soul, and the cause of the suffering is spiritual stagnation, or psychic sterility. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 497

Suffering that is not understood is hard to bear, while on the other hand it is often astounding to see how much a person can endure when he understands the why and the wherefore.

A philosophical or religious view of the world enables him to do this, and such views prove to be, at the very least, psychic methods of healing if not of salvation. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 692

To be adapted is certainly an ideal, but adaptation is not always possible. There are situations in which the only adaptation is patient endurance. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 427

Carl Jung Depth Psychology

For Educational Purposes Only

Carl Jung on “Evil” – Quotations

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