Carl Jung on "Energy" - Anthology - Carl Jung Depth Psychology

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Energy is not to be observed in nature; it does not exist. What exists in nature is natural force, like a waterfall, or a light, or a fire, or a chemical process. ~Carl Jung, The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga, Page 7.

There we apply the term energy, but energy in itself does not exist, despite the fact that you can buy it at the electrical works. But that is merely a metaphorical energy. Energy proper is an abstraction of a physical force, a certain amount of intensity. ~Carl Jung, The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga, Page 7.

For in reality energy is not substantial: it is a conformity of things, say, or the intensity of various physical or material processes. ~Carl Jung, The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga, Page 8.

The substance of energy so to speak is a dissipation of energy, that is, one never observes energy save as having movement and in a direction. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 93

Coming back to the original point about the ambitendency, energy is not split in itself, it is the pairs of opposites and also undivided—in other words, it presents a paradox. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 93

My personal view in this matter is that man’s vital energy or libido is the divine pneuma alright. ~Carl Jung to Victor White, 5Oct1945

Gravitation is purely transcendental. Its successful emancipation from space and time is achieved, above all, by virtue of the fact that it does not conform to the law of the conservation of energy as an elementary force; secondly, because by virtue of gravitation, corpus ibi agere non potest, ubi non est (a body does not exert effects in a place where the body itself is not); and thirdly, because it does not require time for its deployment, for it is absolutely constant. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 121

(As you know, by libido I mean very much what the ancients meant by the cosmogonic principle of Eros, or in modern language, “psychic energy.”) ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 661

This means, psychologically, that the libido, regarded as the force of desire and aspiration, as psychic energy in the widest sense, stands in part at the disposal of the ego, and in part confronts the ego autonomously, sometimes influencing it so powerfully that it is either put in a position of unwilling constraint, or else discovers in the libido itself a new and unexpected source of strength ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 98

The light and fire attributes depict the intensity of the feeling-tone and are therefore expressions for the psychic energy which manifests itself as libido ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 128

If one worships God, sun, or fire, one is worshipping intensity and power, in other words the phenomenon of psychic energy as such, the libido. Every force and every phenomenon is a special form of energy ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 128

Form is both an image and a mode of manifestation. It expresses two things: the energy which takes shape in it, and the medium in which that energy appears. On the one hand one can say that energy creates its own image, and on the other hand that the character of the medium forces it into a definite form ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 128

Since, psychologically speaking, the God-image is a complex of ideas of an archetypal nature, it must necessarily be regarded as representing a certain sum of energy (libido) which appears in projection ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 89

It is not man as such who has to be regenerated or born again as a renewed whole, but, according to the statements of mythology, it is the hero or god who rejuvenates himself. These figures are generally expressed or characterized by libido-symbols (light, fire, sun, etc.), so that it looks as if they represented psychic energy. They are, in fact, personifications of the libido ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 388

To anyone who understands libido merely as the psychic energy over which he has conscious control, the religious relationship, as we have defined it, is bound to appear as a ridiculous game of hide-and-seek with oneself. But it is rather a question of the energy which belongs to the archetype, to the unconscious, and which is therefore not his to dispose of. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 130

In either case the sun is the father-god from whom all living things draw life; he is the fructifier and creator, the source of energy for our world. ~Carl Jung, CW 5. Para 176

“The demands of the unconscious act at first like a paralysing poison on a man’s energy and resourcefulness, so that it may well be compared to the bite of a poisonous snake. Apparently it is a hostile demon who robs him of energy, but in actual fact it is his own unconscious whose alien tendencies are beginning to check the forward striving of the conscious mind. The cause of this process is often extremely obscure, the more so as it is complicated by all kinds of external factors and subsidiary causes, such as difficulties in work, disappointments, failures, reduced efficiency due to age, depressing family problems, and so on and so forth. According to the myths it is the woman who secretly enslaves a man, so that he can no longer free himself from her and becomes a child again. It is also significant that Isis, the sister-wife of the sun-god, creates the poisonous serpent from his spittle, which, like all bodily secretions, has a magical significance, being a libido equivalent. She creates the serpent from the libido of the god, and by this means weakens him and makes him dependent on her. Delilah acts in the same way with Samson: by cutting off his hair, the sun’s rays, she robs him of his strength. This demon-woman of mythology is in truth the “sister-wife-mother,” the woman in the man, who unexpectedly turns up during the second half of life and tries to effect a forcible change of personality. I have dealt with certain aspects of this change in my essay on “The Stages of Life.” It consists in a partial feminization of the man and a corresponding masculinization of the woman. Often it takes place under very dramatic circumstances: the man’s strongest quality, his Logos principle, turns against him and as it were betrays him. The same thing happens with the Eros of the woman. The man becomes rigidly set in his previous attitude, while the woman remains caught in her emotional ties and fails to develop her reason and understanding, whose place is then taken by equally obstinate and inept “animus” opinions. The fossilization of the man shrouds itself in a smoke-screen of moods, ridiculous irritability, feelings of distrust and resentment, which are meant to justify his rigid attitude. A perfect example of this type of psychology is Schreber’s account of his own psychosis, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 458

A fantasm is an idee-force. Fantasy as imaginative activity is identical with the flow of psychic energy. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 722

But the complicated outer conditions under which we live, and the even more complicated conditions of our individual psychic make-up seldom permit a completely undisturbed flow of psychic energy. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Paras 6-7

The birth of a saviour is equivalent to a great catastrophe, because a new and powerful life springs up just where there had seemed to be no life and no power and no possibility of further development. It comes streaming out of the unconscious, from that unknown part of the psyche which is treated as nothing by all rationalists. From this discredited and rejected region comes the new afflux of energy, the renewal of life. But what is this discredited and rejected source of vitality? It consists of all those psychic contents that were repressed because of their incompatibility with conscious values—everything hateful, immoral, wrong, unsuitable, useless, etc., which means everything that at one time or another appeared so to the individual concerned. The danger is that when these things reappear in a new and wonderful guise, they may make such an impact on him that he will forget or repudiate all his former values. What he once despised now becomes the supreme principle, and what was once truth now becomes error. This reversal of values amounts to the destruction of the old ones and is similar to the devastation of a country by floods. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 449

Since [in the Middle Ages] the psychic relation to woman was expressed in the collective worship of Mary, the image of woman lost a value to which human beings had a natural right. This value could find its natural expression only through individual choice, and it sank into the unconscious when the individual form of expression was replaced by a collective one. In the unconscious the image of woman received an energy charge that activated the archaic and infantile dominants. And since all unconscious contents, when activated by dissociated libido, are projected upon the external object, the devaluation of the real woman was compensated by daemonic features. She no longer appeared as an object of love, but as a persecutor or witch. The consequence of increasing Mariolatry was the witch hunt, that indelible blot on the later Middle Ages. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 399

No social legislation will ever be able to overcome the psychological differences between men, this most necessary factor for generating the vital energy of a human society. It may serve a useful purpose, therefore, to speak of the heterogeneity of men. These differences involve such different requirements for happiness that no legislation, however perfect, could afford them even approximate satisfaction. No outward form of life could be devised, however equitable and just it might appear, that would not involve injustice for one or the other human type. That, in spite of this, every kind of enthusiast—political, social, philosophical, and religious—is busily endeavouring to find those uniform external conditions which would bring with them greater opportunities for the happiness of all seems to me connected with a general attitude to life too exclusively. Although it is certainly a fine thing that every man should stand equal before the law, that every man should have his political vote, and that no man, through hereditary social position and privilege, should have unjust advantage over his brother, it is distinctly less fine when the idea of equality is extended to other walks of life. A man must have a very clouded vision, or view human society from a very misty distance, to cherish the notion that the uniform regulation of life would automatically ensure a uniform distribution of happiness. He must be pretty far gone in delusion if he imagines that equality of income, or equal opportunities for all, would have approximately the same value for everyone. But, if he were a legislator, what would he do about all those people whose greatest opportunities lie not without, but within? If he were just, he would have to give at least twice as much money to the one as to the other, since to the one it means much, to the other little. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 845

The God-concept coincides with the particular ideational complex which concentrates in itself the maximum amount of libido, or psychic energy ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 67

Everything human is relative, because everything rests on an inner polarity; for everything is a phenomenon of energy. Energy necessarily depends on a pre-existing polarity, without which there could be no energy. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Pages 74-75.

It is a condition of panic; a letting go in face of apparently hopeless complications. Mostly it was preceded by desperate efforts to master the difficulty by force of will; then came the collapse, and the once guiding will crumble completely. The energy thus freed disappears from consciousness and falls into the unconscious. As a matter of fact, it is at these moments that the first signs of unconscious activity appear. Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 252

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 one-sidedness. 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

“The transition from morning to afternoon means a revaluation of the earlier values. There comes the urgent need to appreciate the value of the opposite of our former ideals, to perceive the error in our former convictions, to recognize the untruth in our former truth, and to feel how much antagonism and even hatred lay in what, until now, had passed for love. Not a few of those who are drawn into the conflict of opposites jettison everything that had previously seemed to them good and worth striving for; they try to live in complete opposition to their former ego. Changes of profession, divorces, religious convulsions, apostasies of every description, are the symptoms of this swing over to the opposite. The snag about a radical conversion into one’s opposite is that one’s former life suffers repression and thus produces just as unbalanced a state as existed before, when the counterparts of the conscious virtues and values were still repressed and unconscious. Just as before, perhaps, neurotic disorders arose because the opposing fantasies were unconscious, so now other disorders arise through the repression of former idols. 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 pre-existing 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 one-sidedness. 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 way empties himself out with his values, as Nietzsche has already said. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 115

In the intensity of the emotional disturbance itself lies the value, the energy which he should have at his disposal in order to remedy the state of reduced adaptation. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 82

But the formation of a symbol cannot take place until the mind has dwelt long enough on the elementary facts, that is to say until the inner or outer necessities of the life-process have brought about a transformation of energy. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 47.

Man living in the state of nature is in no sense merely “natural” like an animal, but sees, believes, fears, worships things whose meaning is not at all discoverable from the conditions of his natural environment. Their underlying meaning leads us in fact far away from all that is natural, obvious, and easily intelligible, and quite often contrasts most sharply with the natural instincts. We have only to think of all those gruesome rites and customs against which every natural feeling rises in revolt, or of all those beliefs and ideas which stand in insuperable contradiction to the evidence of the facts. All this drives us to the assumption that the spiritual principle (whatever that may be) asserts itself against the merely natural conditions with incredible strength. One can say that this too is “natural,” and that both have their origin in one and the same “nature.” I do not in the least doubt this origin but must point out that this “natural” something consists of a conflict between two principles, to which you can give this or that name according to taste, and that this opposition is the expression, and perhaps also the basis, of the tension we call psychic energy. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 98

Obviously it is in the youthful period of life that we have most to gain from a thorough recognition of the instinctual side. A timely recognition of sexuality, for instance, can prevent that neurotic suppression of it which keeps a man unduly withdrawn from life, or else forces him into a wretched and unsuitable way of living with which he is bound to come into conflict. Proper recognition and appreciation of normal instincts leads the young person into life and entangles him with fate, thus involving him in life’s necessities and the consequent sacrifices and efforts through which his character is developed and his experience matured. For the mature person, however, the continued expansion of life is obviously not the right principle, because the descent towards life’s afternoon demands simplification, limitation, and intensification- in other words, individual culture. A man in the first half of life with its biological orientation can usually, thanks to the youthfulness of his whole organism, afford to expand his life and make something of value out of it. But the man in the second half of life is oriented towards culture, the diminishing powers of his organism allowing him to subordinate his instincts to cultural goals. Not a few are wrecked during the transition from the biological to the cultural sphere. Our collective education makes practically no provision for this transitional period. Concerned solely with the education of the young, we disregard the education of the adult, of whom it is always assumed-on what grounds who can say? -that he needs no more education. There is an almost total lack of guidance for this extraordinarily important transition from the biological to the cultural attitude, for the transformation of energy from the biological form into the cultural form. This transformation process is an individual one and cannot be enforced by general rules and maxims. It is achieved by means of the symbol. Symbol-formation is a fundamental problem that cannot be discussed here. I must refer the reader to Chapter V in my Psychological Types, where I have dealt with this question in detail.” ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 113

When Nature is left to herself, energy is transformed along the line of its natural “gradient.” In this way natural phenomena are produced, but not “work.” So also man when left to himself lives as a natural phenomenon, and, in the proper meaning of the word, produces no work. It is culture that provides the machine whereby the natural gradient is exploited for the performance of work. That man should ever have invented this machine must be due to something rooted deep in his nature, indeed in the nature of the living organism as such. For living matter is itself a transformer of energy, and in some way as yet unknown life participates in the transformation process. Life proceeds, as it were, by making use of natural physical and chemical conditions as a means to its own existence. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 80

It is undoubtedly true that instinctually conflicts with our moral views most frequently and most conspicuously in the realm of sex. The conflict between infantile instinctuality and ethics can never be avoided. It is, it seems to me, the sine qua non of psychic energy. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 105

In his classic study of mana Lehmann defines it as something “extraordinarily effective. We cannot escape the impression that the primitive view of mana is a forerunner of our concept of psychic energy and, most probably, of energy in general ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 128

[In America] the men and women are giving their vital energy to everything except the relation between themselves. In that relation all is confusion. The women are the mothers of their husbands as well as of their children, yet at the same time there is in them the old primitive desire to be possessed, to yield, to surrender. And there is nothing in the man for her to surrender to except his kindness, his courtesy, his generosity, his chivalry. His competitor, his rival in business must yield, but she need not. ~Carl Jung, NY Times, 30 Sept 1912

I am convinced that a truly scientific attitude in psychology must lead to the conclusion that the dynamic processes o£ the psyche cannot be reduced to this or that concrete instinct—we should merely find ourselves back at the stage of the phlogiston theory. We shall be obliged to take the instincts as constituent parts of the psyche, and then abstract our principle of explanation from their mutual relationship. I have therefore pointed out that we would do well to posit a hypothetical quantity, an “energy,” as a psychological explanatory principle, and to call it “libido” in the classical sense of the word, without harbouring any prejudice with regard to its substantiality. With the help of such a quantity, the psychodynamic processes could be explained in an unobjectionable manner, without that unavoidable distortion which a concrete ground of explanation necessarily entails. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 7

Traditionally, man is regarded as the marriage breaker. This legend comes from times long past, when men still had leisure to pursue all sorts of pastimes. But today life makes so many demands on men that the noble hidalgo, Don Juan, is to be seen nowhere save in the theatre. More than ever man loves his comfort, for ours is an age of neurasthenia, impotence, and easy chairs. There is no energy left for window-climbing and duels. If anything is to happen in the way of adultery it must not be too difficult. In no respect must it cost too much, hence the adventure can only be of a transitory kind. The man of today is thoroughly scared of jeopardizing marriage as an institution. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 248

The greater the tension, the greater is the potential. Great energy springs from a correspondingly great tension between opposites. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 154

In order to mitigate this cramp of conscience, Freud invented the idea of sublimation. Sublimation means nothing less than the alchemist’s trick of turning the base into the noble, the bad into the good, the useless into the useful. Anyone who knew how to do this would be certain of immortal fame. Unfortunately, the secret of converting energy without the consumption of a still greater quantity of energy has never yet been discovered by the physicists. Sublimation remains, for the present, a pious wish-fulfilment invented for silencing inopportune questions. ~Carl Jung, CW 15 Para 53

A person must pay dearly for the divine gift of creative fire. It is as though each of us was born with a limited store of energy. In the artist, the strongest force in his make-up, that is, his creativeness, will seize and all but monopolize this energy, leaving so little over that nothing of value can come of it. The creative impulse can drain him of his humanity to such a degree that the personal ego can exist only on a primitive or inferior level and is driven to develop all sorts of defects—ruthlessness, selfishness (“autoeroticism”), vanity, and other infantile traits. These inferiorities are the only means by which it can maintain its vitality and prevent itself from being wholly depleted. ~Carl Jung, CW 15, Para 158

The remarkable effects produced by unconscious contents allow us to infer something about their energy. All unconscious contents, once they are activated i.e., have made themselves felt possess as it were a specific energy which enables them to manifest themselves everywhere (like the incest motif, for instance). But this energy is normally not sufficient to thrust the content into consciousness. For that there must be a certain predisposition on the part of the conscious mind, namely a deficit in the form of loss of energy. The energy so lost raises the psychic potency of certain compensating contents in the unconscious. The abaissement du niveau mental, the energy lost to consciousness, is a phenomenon which shows itself most drastically in the “loss of soul” among primitive peoples, who also have interesting psychotherapeutic methods for recapturing the soul that has gone astray. Similar phenomena can be observed in civilized man. He too is liable to a sudden loss of initiative for no apparent reason. The discovery of the real reason is no easy task and generally leads to a somewhat ticklish discussion of things lying in the background. Carelessness of all kinds, neglected duties, tasks postponed, wilful outbursts of defiance, and so on, all these can dam up his vitality to such an extent that certain quanta of energy, no longer finding a conscious outlet, stream off into the unconscious, where they activate other compensating contents, which in turn begin to exert a compulsive influence on the conscious mind. (Hence the very common combination of extreme neglect of duty and a compulsion neurosis) ~Carl Jung, CW 16 Para 372

This is one way in which loss of energy may come about. The other way causes loss not through a malfunctioning of the conscious mind but through a “spontaneous” activation of unconscious contents, which react secondarily upon consciousness. There are moments in human life when a new page is turned. New interests and tendencies appear which have hitherto received no attention, or there is a sudden change of personality (a so-called mutation of character). During the incubation period of such a change we can often observe a loss of conscious energy: the new development has drawn off the energy it needs from consciousness. This lowering of energy can be seen most clearly before the onset of certain psychoses and also in the empty stillness which precedes creative work. ~Carl Jung, CW 16 Para 373

The fact is that the high ideal of educating the personality is not for children: for what is usually meant by personality a well-rounded psychic whole that is capable of resistance and abounding in energy is an adult ideal. Carl Jung, CW 17 Para 286

Creative life always stands outside convention. That is why, when the mere routine of life predominates in the form of convention and tradition, there is bound to be a destructive outbreak of creative energy. This outbreak is a catastrophe only when it is a mass phenomenon, but never in the individual who consciously submits to these higher powers and serves them with all his strength. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 305

The high ideal of educating the personality is not for children for what is usually meant by personality—a well-rounded psychic whole that is capable of resistance and abounding in energy—is an adult ideal. It is only in an age like ours, when the individual is unconscious of the problems of adult life, or—what is worse—when he consciously shirks them, that people could wish to foist this ideal on to childhood. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 286

Modern spiritual [healing] therapy uses the same principle: pain or illness is compared with the sufferings of Christ, and this idea gives consolation. The individual is lifted out of his miserable loneliness and represented as undergoing a heroic meaningful fate which is ultimately good for the whole world, like the suffering and death of a god. When an ancient Egyptian was shown that he was undergoing the fate of Ra, the sun-god, he was immediately ranked with the Pharaoh, who was the son and representative of the gods, and so the ordinary man was a god himself, and this brought such a release of energy that we can understand quite well how he was lifted out of his pain. In a particular frame of mind people can endure a great deal. Primitives can walk on glowing coals and inflict the most terrible injuries on themselves under certain circumstances without feeling any pain. And so it is quite likely that an impressive and adequate symbol can mobilize the forces of the unconscious to such an extent that even the nervous system becomes affected and the body begins to react in a normal way again. ~Carl Jung, CW 18 Para 231

At a time when all available energy is spent in the investigation of nature, very little attention is paid to the essence of man, which is his psyche, although many researches are made into its conscious functions. But the really unknown part, which produces symbols, is still virtually unexplored. We receive signals from it every night, yet deciphering these communications seems to be such an odious task that very few people in the whole civilized world can be bothered with it. Man’s greatest instrument, his psyche, is little thought of, if not actually mistrusted and despised. “It’s only psychological” too often means it is nothing. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 102

It [The State] does not know that energy only works when accumulated. Its energy is money. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para

We cannot even conceive of a thing that is not a form of energy, and energy is inevitably based upon opposites. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 1640

Your book is a remarkably clear survey of analytical psychology. ~Carl Jung to Esther Harding’s “Psychic Energy” Letters, Vol. 1, Page 468.

The prana discipline has practically the same effect. It concentrates the psychic energy upon the inner ways in which the prana flows. The localization in the brain is doubtful, but in general it is correct to assume that the unconscious processes are chiefly located in the lower centres of the brain from the thalamus downwards. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 498.

Time thus proves to be a stream of energy filled with qualities and not, as our philosophy would have it, an abstract concept or precondition of knowledge. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 139.

Energy is mass and mass is extended. At all events, a body with a speed higher than that of light vanishes from sight and one may have all sorts of doubts about what would happen to such a body otherwise. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 45.

Naturally this [car accident] may have an inner connection with what you are writing, for experience shows that accidents of this sort are very often connected with creative energy which turns against us because somehow it is not given due heed. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 162.

How psychic energy can transform itself into physically sound phenomena is a problem in itself. I don’t know how it is done. We only know that it is done. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 322

The works I completed this year [1957] have cost me energy and time enough, and I hope I may now be granted a longish spell of leisure without any new questions forcing me to new answers. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 396.

If anybody should find himself after his humble completion still left with a sufficient amount of energy, then he may begin his career as a saint. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 475.

Moreover the science of all moving as well as living bodies is based upon the concept of energy. Energy itself is a tension between opposites. Our psychology is no exception to the principle that embraces about the whole of natural science. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 501.

For me the archetype means: an image of a probable sequence of events, an habitual current of psychic energy. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 505.

It was ridiculous for Freud to say there was only one kind of energy, we don’t know what energy is. ~Carl Jung, Meetings with Jung, Page 63

Typology is a description of specific manifestations of energy. ~Carl Jung, Meetings with Jung, Page 299

The anima, on the other hand, is the ‘energy of the heavy and the turbid’; it clings to the bodily, fleshly heart. ‘Desires and impulses to anger’ are its effects. ‘Whoever is sombre and moody on waking is fettered by the anima.’ ~Carl Jung, Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 114.

The homosexual resistances in men are simply astounding and open up mind-boggling possibilities. Removal of the moral stigma from homosexuality as a method of contraception is a cause to be promoted with the utmost energy. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. I, Page 298.

Frgetting is a normal process, in which certain conscious ideas lose their specific energy because one’s attention has been deflected. ~Carl Jung; Man and His symbols; Page 20

Archetypes, in spite of their conservative nature, are not static but in a continuous dramatic flux. Thus the self as a monad or continuous unit would be dead. But it lives inasmuch as it splits and unites again. There is no energy without opposites! This is unavoidable, for consciousness can keep only a few images in full clarity at one time, and even this clarity fluctuates. ~Carl Jung; Man and His symbols; Page 20.

The snake symbolizes the freeing of the energy, the aim at an object, aggressiveness, and drive. The turning red of the mouse shows that the heat of the soul develops out of the material soul, so that passionate wishing is no longer experienced as imposed by the outside, but as an inner compulsion. Before, the shadow entered into the mouse, now the animus is revived; the male instinctual force is awakened, which wants to conquer the world to possess it. And each new conquest feeds the fire and the heat. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 349

If you leave all your energy and will in the superior function you slowly go to hell—it sucks you dry. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 74

Today to bring up the inferior function is to live, but we pay dearly for it both in mistakes and in energy. Sometimes it is not our choice—the inferior function takes us unawares. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 74

Only those who have energy enough, or who have been gripped in spite of themselves, can go through this process, but once in it you have to bleed for it. It is a process that is going on all over the world today. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 74

I like to reserve the concept of will for that small amount of energy that is disposable by us in consciousness. Now if you put this small amount toward activating the instinctive process, the latter then goes on with a force much bigger than yours. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Pages 76-77

I started with the primitive idea of the flowing out and the flowing in of energy, and from this I constructed the theory of the introverted and extraverted types. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 86

The opposition is a necessary condition of libido flow, and so you may say that by virtue of that fact one is committed to a dualistic conception of the world; but you can also say that the “flow”—that is, the energy—is one, and that is monism. If there is no high and low, no water flows; if there is high and low and no water, nothing happens; thus there is at the same time duality and oneness in the world, and it is a matter of temperament which viewpoint you choose to assume. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 86

If we release the energy of the collective unconscious until we have no more, then we arrive at differentiation. The archetypes are sources of energy. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 99

The substance of energy so to speak is a dissipation of energy, that is, one never observes energy save as having movement and in a direction. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 93

The process of energy which produces the union of the opposites in this case is the human personality which is the carrier of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Pages 71-72.

There is what we might call a fifth function over all these four functions: the will. This is a peculiar function set above the others with a certain quantity of disposable energy in direct relation to the ego. ~Carl Jung, Lecture V 25May1934, Page 107.

Alert consciousness is a very rare condition, it is tiring and expensive, and as it requires so much energy we prefer to let ourselves live in a kind of torpor. ~Carl Jung, Lecture II, 27April1934, Pages 96.

Just as all energy proceeds from opposition, so the psyche too possesses its inner polarity, this being the indispensable prerequisite for its aliveness, as Heraclitus realized long ago. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 346

Where the land is flat there is no flow of water; it has nowhere to go; it stagnates. In order to produce energy you must have opposites—an above and a below. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters, Pages 244-251

The striving for the creation of impersonal values deprives the introvert of a considerable sum of energy in the development of his personality, so that he, just as much as the extravert, in a certain sense falls behind himself (though in the opposite way than does the extravert). ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Page 80

The term “introversion” thus describes an inward turning of the psychic energy, which I called “libido,” because the introvert does not comprehend the object directly, but by means of abstraction, that is, by a thinking process that is inserted between himself and the object. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Guisan Correspondence, Page 160

It is a human being’s eternally impossible attempt to direct the soul away from the earth, to adapt collective energy and its specific formation to his sol, and to tum the Eternally Becoming into the only content of this soul. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 16

We [Jews] made a vital mistake by rejecting Christ. Christ is the repressed complex of the Jew. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 43

For instance, there are many big business men who are impotent because their full energy is going into money making or dictating the roles to everybody ‐ else. That is much more interesting to them than the affairs of women. ~Carl Jung, Conversations Evans, Page 12.

Fantasy is, you see, a form of energy, despite the fact that we can’t measure it. It is a manifestation of something, and that is a reality. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 22.

Now in order not to presume or to prejudice things, I speak simply of energy, and energy is a quantity of energy that can manifest itself via sexuality or via any other instinct. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 26.

Psychological energy does not exist, it is a concept, but in the physical or phenomenal equivalent of energy in these conditions we find the same peculiarity, namely, that this creative power is after a while exhausted, and then everything sinks back into the condition it was in before. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 118-119

When we suffer from lack of psychic energy, we say we have a depression or an inhibition, not realising that part of our mental hierarchy has one away beyond our control, that we have, in fact, lost our soul. ~Carl Jung, Cornwall Seminar, Page 13.

I started with the primitive idea of the flowing out and the flowing in of energy, and from this I constructed the theory of the introverted and extraverted types. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 86

If we release the energy of the collective unconscious until we have no more, then we arrive at differentiation. The archetypes are sources of energy. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 99

Conversely, he can only adapt to his inner world and achieve harmony with himself when he is adapted to the environmental conditions. ~Carl Jung, “On Psychic Energy,” par. 75.

As I have often heard him remark on other occasions, he spoke that night of what difficult days we live in, for the archetypal images of the collective unconscious are no longer content to flow into the prevailing religion. They have come loose from their moorings, so to speak, and are troubling modern man with the restless state of the energy which has been contained in the Christian religion for the last two thousand years. Some of this energy has gone into science, it is true, but that is too narrow and rational to satisfy anything like all of the floating archetypal images. This is the reason for our many isms today, and it confronts the modern free individual with the task of coming to terms with them in his own life. “Then Jung said to his audience-and this is what struck so many of them as last words-that we could only follow Christ’s example and live our lives as fully as possible, even if it is based on a mistake. No one has ever found the whole truth; but if we will only live with the same integrity and devotion as Christ, he hoped we would all, like Christ, win through to a resurrected body. ~Barbara Hannah, Jung by Gerhard Wehr, Page 294.

It [Transcendent Function] is a natural process, a manifestation of the energy that springs from the tension of opposites, and it consists in a sequence of fantasy-occurrences which appear spontaneously in dreams and visions. ~Carl Jung, “Jung” by Gerhard Wehr, Page 206

Analysis is Work, hard, tedious and at times discouraging but I am sure the results justify all the work and energy one puts into it. It is of course just as lonely for me as it is for Jim but the extraordinary reestablishment of Janey’s health has justified the long stay in Switzerland. ~Katy Cabot, Jung My Mother and I, Page 50

In the mythological productions of the unconscious psyche, underworld divinities are particularly likely to appear in triadic form. According to Jung, they represent the flow of psychic energy, indicating a connection with time and fate. ~Carl Jung, Number and Time, Page 104

All emotional, and therefore energy laden, psychic processes evince a striking tendency to become rhythmical. ~Carl Jung, Number and Time, Page 157

talks of energy although he has nothing measurable to manipulate, besides which the concept of energy is a strictly defined mathematical quantity which cannot be applied as such to anything psychic. If psychology nevertheless insists on employing its own concept of energy for the purpose of expressing the dynamism of the psyche, it is not of course being used as a mathematical formula, but only as its analogy. But note: the analogy is itself an older intuitive idea from which the concept of physical energy originally developed. The latter rests on an earlier application of an l:vepyeta a not mathematically defined, which can be traced back to the primitive or archaic idea of the “extraordinarily potent.” This is the concept of mana. The use of the term libido in the newer medical psychology has surprising affinities with the primitive mana. This archetypal idea is therefore far from being only primitive but differs from the physicist’s conception of energy by the fact that it is essentially qualitative and not quantitative. In psychology the exact measurement of quantities is replaced by an approximate determination of intensities, for which purpose we enlist the function of feeling (valu1ation). ~Carl Jung, Number and Time, Page 56-157

As long as Peter identified his spiritual being with Jung, as though he were God, his own creative energy was unable to flow. ~Diana Baynes, Jung’s Apprentice, Page 268

We are born out of the maternal fluid of the womb and out of the living waters of the unconscious. Speaking of his theory regarding the primary source of life energy, Dr. Szent Gyorgi, one of the world’s foremost biochemists, says: “The body’s water ceases to be just a neutral medium and becomes part of the living material, part of the living machine, part of the basic life process. ~Maud Oakes, The Stone Speaks, Page 39

Jung thought of this energy as “a psychic analogue of physical energy.” ~Maud Oakes, The Stone Speaks, Page 42

When I look back on my childhood, I realize that most of my training and education were suited for a sensory or outer world existence only. My inner world was almost completely neglected. ~Maud Oakes, The Stone Speaks, Page 42

While I was engrossed in thinking of the opposites a voice seemed to say to me: “Look at me in the center of Jung’s Stone. I stand between the opposites. As the center of this mandala I am between the four radiating lines of energy. I am between the Moon and the Sun and Jupiter and Venus; Mars is beneath my feet and Saturn is above my head. ~Maud Oakes, The Stone Speaks, Pages 43-44

Thus, for example, motion takes place only if a body is inert. Potential can turn to kinetic energy only in the presence of gravitational attraction, and a chemical discharge only in the presence of affinity. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 209