Carl Jung: The feeling of inner detachment and isolation
Letters of C. G. Jung: Volume I, 1906-1950 (Vol 1)
[Carl Jung: The feeling of inner detachment and isolation is not in itself an abnormal phenomenon…]
To Dr. S.
Dear Colleague, 22 February 1938
The feeling of inner detachment and isolation is not in itself an abnormal phenomenon but is normal in the sense that consciousness has withdrawn from the phenomenal world and got outside time and space.
You will find the clearest parallels in Indian philosophy, especially in Yoga.
In your case the feeling is reinforced by your psychological studies.
The assimilated unconscious apparently disappears in consciousness without trace, but it has the effect of detaching consciousness from its ties to the object.
I have described this development in my commentary on the Golden Flower. It is a sort of integration process and an anticipation of consciousness.
The cross is an indication of this, since it represents an integration of the 4 (functions).
It is perfectly understandable that, when consciousness detaches itself from the object, the feeling arises that one does not know where one stands.
Actually one is standing nowhere, because standing has a below and an above.
But there one has no below and above at all, because spatiality pertains to the world of the senses, and consciousness possesses spatiality only when it is in participation with that world.
It is a not-knowing, which has the same positive character as nirvana in the Buddhist definition, or the wu-wei, not-doing, of the Chinese, which does not mean doing nothing.
The profound doubt you seem to be suffering from is quite in order as it simply expresses the detachment of consciousness and the resultant explanation of the objective world as an illusion.
The neurotic character of your skepticism is due essentially to the fact that you cannot accept positively the development that is being prepared or is already in progress but fight against it for understandable reasons: it is a figurative death against which one naturally has all kinds of objections to make.
If your shadow exhibits no inferior features you can be sure that your consciousness is living in the shade, that is, is playing a negative role.
But that doesn’t necessarily make you a dark horse.
It only means that your consciousness is not yet able to see anything positive in this development towards not-being.
As a result, the shadow naturally gets a positive value.
There is indeed an important task you have left unfinished.
The development now being offered to you is not accepted positively, whereas it is the meaning and purpose of all life’s wisdom to go along with natural developments that spring from the functioning of the whole personality.
With best greetings and wishes;
Yours sincerely,
C.G. JUNG [Letters Volume 1; Pages 240-241]
The Animus, a Woman’s Inner Man
The embodiment of the unconscious of a woman as a figure of the opposite sex, the animus, also has positive and negative features.
The animus, however, does not express itself so often in women as an erotic fantasy or mood, but rather as “sacred” convictions.
When these latter are expressed loudly and energetically in a masculine style, this masculine side of a woman is easily recognizable.
However, it can also manifest in a woman who appears very feminine externally as a quiet but relentless power that is hard as iron.
Suddenly one comes up against something in her that is cold, stubborn, and completely inaccessible.
The favorite themes that the animus of the woman dredges up within her sound like this: “I am seeking nothing but love, but ‘he’ doesn’t love me.” Or, “There are only two possibilities in this situation,” both of which of course are unpleasant (the negative animus never believes in exceptions).
One can seldom contradict the animus, for it/he is always right; the only problem is that his opinion is not based on the actual situation.
For the most part he gives utterance to seemingly reasonable views, which, however, are slightly at a tangent to what is under discussion.
Just as the mother influence is formative with a man’s anima, the father has a determining influence on the animus of a daughter.
The father imbues his daughter’s mind with the specific coloring conferred by those indisputable views mentioned above, which in reality are so often missing in the daughter.
For this reason the animus is also sometimes represented as a demon of death.
A gypsy tale, for example, tells of a woman living alone who takes in an unknown handsome wanderer and lives with him in spite of the fact that a fearful dream has warned her that he is the king of the dead.
Again and again she presses him to say who he is.
At first he refuses to tell her, because he knows that she will then die, but she persists in her demand.
Then suddenly he tells her he is death.
The young woman is so frightened that she dies.
Looked at from the point of view of mythology, the unknown wanderer here is clearly a pagan father and god figure, who manifests as the leader of the dead (like Hades, who carried off Persephone).
He embodies a form of the animus that lures a woman away from all human relationships and especially holds her back from love with a real man.
A dreamy web of thoughts, remote from life and full of wishes and judgments about how things “ought to be,” prevents all contact with life.
The animus appears in many myths, not only as death, but also as a bandit and murderer, for example, as the knight Bluebeard, who murdered all his wives. Marie-Louise von Franz, Archetypal Dimensions of the Psyche, Page 319 – 320
