Carl Jung on the Academic Psychologi
st.
The academic psychologist is perfectly free to dismiss the phenomenon of emotion or the concept of the unconscious (or both) from his consideration.
Yet they remain facts to which the medical psychologist at least has to pay due attention; for emotional conflicts and the intervention of the unconscious are the classical features of his science.
If he treats a patient at all, he comes up against these irrationalities as hard facts irrespective of his ability to formulate them in intellectual terms.
It is, therefore, quite natural that people who have not had the medical psychologist’s experience find it difficult to follow what happens when psychology ceases to be a tranquil pursuit for the scientist in his laboratory and becomes an active part of the adventure of real life.
Target practice on a shooting range is far from the battlefield; the doctor has to deal with casualties in a genuine war.
He must concern himself with psychic realities, even if he cannot embody them in scientific definitions. That is why no textbook can teach psychology; one learns only by actual experience. ~Carl Jung; Man and His symbols; Page 83.
