Carl Jung on “Noise” – Anthology
I personally detest noise and flee it whenever and wherever possible, because it not only disturbs the concentration needed for my work but forces me to make the additional psychic effort of shutting it out. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 387-392.
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.
The alarming pollution of our water supplies, the steady increase of radioactivity, and the sombre threat of overpopulation with its genocidal tendencies have already led to a widespread though not generally conscious fear which loves noise because it stops the fear from being heard. Noise is welcome because it drowns the inner instinctive warning. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 387-392.
Noise protects us from painful reflection, it scatters our anxious dreams, it assures us that we are all in the same boat and creating such a racket that nobody will dare to attack us. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 387-392.
Noise is so insistent, so overwhelmingly real, that everything else becomes a pale phantom. It relieves us of the effort to say or do anything, for the very air reverberates with the invincible power of our modernity. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 387-392.
There are far more people than one supposes who are not disturbed by noise, for they have nothing in them that could be disturbed; on the contrary, noise gives them something to live for. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 387-392.
The man who is only wise and only holy interests me about as much as the skeleton of a rare saurian, which would not move me to tears.
The insane contradiction, on the other hand, between existence beyond Maya in the cosmic Self, and that amiable human weakness which fruitfully sinks many roots into the black earth, repeating for all eternity the weaving and rending of the veil as the ageless melody of India—this contradiction fascinates me; for how else can one perceive the light without the shadow, hear the silence without the noise, attain wisdom without foolishness? ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 953
I am alone, but I fill my solitariness with my life. I am man enough. I am noise, conversation, comfort, and help enough unto myself. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 277
The sensitiveness to noise persists. I always seek silence. I am a bundle of opposites and can only endure myself when I observe myself as an objective phenomenon. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 78.
A “scream” is always just that – a noise and not music. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 107.
I see with regret from your letter that you are suffering very much from your noises in the ear. The unconscious often uses symptoms of this kind in order to make psychic contents audible, i.e., the symptoms are intensified by a psychogenic afflux and only then do they acquire the proper tormenting character that forces your attention inwards, where of course it gets caught in the disturbing noises. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 20-21.
Some of the main islands [of peace] are: my garden, the view of distant mountains, my country place where I withdraw from the noise of city life, my library. Also small things like books, pictures, and stones. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 40.
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