1. Carl Jung: CW 17 "The Development Of Personality" - Quotations

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Carl Jung: CW 17 “The Development of Personality” – Quotations

All the life which the parents could have lived, but of which they thwarted themselves for artificial motives, is passed on to the children in substitute form. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 328

We are like the sun, which nourishes the life of the earth and brings forth every kind of strange, wonderful, and evil thing; we are like the mothers who bear in their wombs untold happiness and suffering. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 290

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. Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 321

Each individual is a new experiment of life in her ever-changing moods, and an attempt at a new solution or new adaptation. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 173

No doubt theory is the best cloak for lack of experience and ignorance, but the consequences are depressing: bigotedness, superficiality, and scientific sectarianism. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 7

The so-called “misunderstood genius” is rather a doubtful phenomenon. Generally he turns out to be a good-for-nothing who is forever seeking a soothing explanation of himself. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 248

The Age of Enlightenment, which stripped nature and human institutions of gods, overlooked the God of Terror who dwells in the human soul. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 302

Children have an almost uncanny instinct for the teacher’s personal shortcomings. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 211

At first we do not know what deeds or misdeeds, what destiny, what good and evil we have in us, and only the autumn can show what the spring has engendered, only in the evening will it be seen what the morning began. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 290

The love problem is part of mankind’s heavy toll of suffering, and nobody should be ashamed of having to pay his tribute. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 219

There is no personality without definiteness, wholeness, and ripeness. These three qualities cannot and should not be expected of the child, as they would rob it of childhood. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 288

The fact that the conventions always flourish in one form or another only proves that the vast majority of mankind do not choose their own way, but convention, and consequently develop not themselves but a method and a collective mode of life at the cost of their own wholeness. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 296

So often among so-called “primitives” one comes across spiritual personalities who immediately inspire respect, as though they were the fully matured products of an undisturbed fate. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 336

What is it, in the end, that induces a man to go his own way and to rise out of unconscious identity with the mass as out of a swathing mist? Not necessity, for necessity comes to many, and they all take refuge in convention. Not moral decision, for nine times out of ten we decide for convention likewise. What is it, then, that inexorably tips the scales in favour of the extra-ordinary

It is what is commonly called vocation: an irrational factor that destines a man to emancipate himself from the herd and from its well-worn paths. True personality is always a vocation and puts its trust in it as in God, despite its being, as the ordinary man would say, only a personal feeling. But vocation acts like a law of God from which there is no escape.

The fact that many a man who goes his own way ends in ruin means nothing to one who has a vocation. He must obey his own law, as if it were a daemon whispering to him of new and wonderful paths. Anyone with a vocation hears the voice of the inner man: he is called. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 299

Most of what men say about feminine eroticism, and particularly about the emotional life of women, is derived from their own anima projections and distorted accordingly. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 338

The ways that lead to conscious realization are many, but they follow definite laws. In general, the change begins with the onset of the second half of life. The middle period of life is a time of enormous psychological importance. The child begins its psychological life within very narrow limits, inside the magic circle of the mother and the family. With progressive maturation it widens its horizon and its own sphere of influence; its hopes and intentions are directed to extending the scope of personal power and possessions; desire reaches out to the world in ever-widening range; the will of the individual becomes more and more identical with the natural goals pursued by unconscious motivations. Thus man breathes his own life into things, until finally they begin to live of themselves and to multiply; and imperceptibly he is overgrown by them.

Mothers are overtaken by their children, men by their own creations, and what was originally brought into being only with labour and the greatest effort can no longer be held in check. First it was passion, then it became duty, and finally an intolerable burden, a vampire that battens on the life of its creator. Middle life is the moment of greatest unfolding, when a man still gives himself to his work with his whole strength and his whole will. But in this very moment evening is born, and the second half of life begins.

Passion now changes her face and is called duty; “I want” becomes the inexorable “I must,” and the turnings of the pathway that once brought surprise and discovery become dulled by custom. The wine has fermented and begins to settle and clear. Conservative tendencies develop if all goes well; instead of looking forward one looks backward, most of the time involuntarily, and one begins to take stock, to see how one’s life has developed up to this point

. The real motivations are sought and real discoveries are made. The critical survey of himself and his fate enables a man to recognize his peculiarities. But these insights do not come to him easily; they are gained only through the severest shocks. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 331a

The container, on the other hand, who in accordance with his tendency to dissociation has an especial need to unify himself in undivided love for another, will be left far behind in this effort, which is naturally very difficult for him, by the simpler personality. While he is seeking in the latter all the subtleties and complexities that would complement and correspond to his own facets, he is disturbing the other’s simplicity. Since in normal circumstances simplicity always has the advantage over complexity, he will very soon be obliged to abandon his efforts to arouse subtle and intricate reactions in a simpler nature. Andsoon enough his partner, who in accordance with her simpler nature expects simple answers from him, will give him plenty to do by constellating his complexities with her everlasting insistence on simple answers.

Willy-nilly, he must withdraw into himself before the suasions of simplicity. Any mental effort, like the conscious process itself, is so much of a strain for the ordinary man that he invariably prefers the simple, even when it does not happen to be the truth. And when it represents at least a half-truth, then it is all up with him. The simpler nature works on the more complicated like a room that is too small, that does not allow him enough space.

The complicated nature, on the other hand, gives the simpler one too many rooms with too much space, so that she never knows where she really belongs. So it comes about quite naturally that the more complicated contains the simpler. The former cannot be absorbed in the latter, but encompasses it without being itself contained. Yet, since the more complicated has perhaps a greater need of being contained than the other, he feels himself outside the marriage and accordingly always plays the problematical role.

The more the contained clings, the more the container feels shut out of the relationship. The contained pushes into it by her clinging, and the more she pushes, the less the container is able to respond. He therefore tends to spy out of the window, no doubt unconsciously at first; but with the onset of middle age there awakens in him a more insistent longing for that unity and undividedness which is especially necessary to him on account of his dissociated nature.

At this juncture things are apt to occur that bring the conflict to a head.

He becomes conscious of the fact that he is seeking completion, seeking the contentedness and undividedness that have always been lacking.

For the contained this is only a confirmation of the insecurity she has always felt so painfully; she discovers that in the rooms which apparently belonged to her there dwell other, unwished-for guests.

The hope of security vanishes, and this disappointment drives her in on herself, unless by desperate and violent efforts she can succeed in forcing her partner to capitulate, and in extorting a confession that his longing for unity was nothing but a childish or morbid fantasy.

If these tactics do not succeed, her acceptance of failure may do her a real good, by forcing her to recognize that the security she was so desperately seeking in the other is to be found in herself. In this way she finds herself and discovers in her own simpler nature all those complexities which the container had sought for in vain. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 333

This is what happens very frequently about the midday of life, and in this wise our miraculous human nature enforces the transition that leads from the first half of life to the second. It is a metamorphosis from a state in which man is only a tool of instinctive nature, to another in which he is no longer a tool, but himself: a transformation of nature into culture, of instinct into spirit. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 335
The transformation I have briefly described above is the very essence of the psychological marriage relationship. Much could be said about the illusions that serve the ends of nature and bring about the transformations that are characteristic of middle life. The peculiar harmony that characterizes marriage during the first half of life-provided the adjustment is successful-is largely based on the projection of certain archetypal images, as the critical phase makes clear. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 337

The protean life of the psyche is a greater, if more inconvenient, truth than the rigid certainty of the one-eyed point of view. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 156.

Personality can never develop unless the individual chooses his own way, consciously and with moral deliberation. Not only the causal motive—necessity—but conscious moral decision must lend its strength to the process of building the personality. If the first is lacking, then the alleged development is a mere acrobatics of the will; if the second, it will get stuck in unconscious automatism. But a man can make a moral decision to go his own way only if he holds that way to be the best.

If any other way were held to be better, then he would live and develop that other personality instead of his own. The other ways are conventionalities of a moral, social, political, philosophical, or religious nature. The fact that the conventions always flourish in one form or another only proves that the vast majority of mankind do not choose their own way, but convention, and consequently develop not themselves but a method and a collective mode of life at the cost of their own wholeness. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 296

Personality is the supreme realization of the innate idiosyncrasy of a living being. It is an act of high courage flung in the face of life, the absolute affirmation of all that constitutes the individual, the most successful adaptation to the universal conditions of existence coupled with the greatest possible freedom for self-determination. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 289

To the extent that a man is untrue to the law of his being and does not rise to personality, he has failed to realize his life’s meaning. Fortunately, in her kindness and patience. Nature never puts the fatal question as to the meaning of their lives into the mouths of most people. And where no one asks, no one need answer. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 314

Personality is a seed that can only develop by slow stages throughout life. There is no personality without definiteness, wholeness, and ripeness. These three qualities cannot and should not be expected of the child, as they would rob it of childhood. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 288

In every adult there lurks a child—an eternal child, something that is always becoming, is never completed, and calls for unceasing care, attention, and education. That is the part of the human personality which wants to develop and become whole. But the man of today is far indeed from this wholeness. Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 286

Only the man who can consciously assent to the power of the inner voice becomes a personality; but if he succumbs to it he will be swept away by the blind flux of psychic events and destroyed. That is the great and liberating thing about any genuine personality: he voluntarily sacrifices himself to his vocation, and consciously translates into his own individual reality what would only lead to ruin if it were lived unconsciously by the group. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 308

Neither family nor society nor position can save him from this fate, nor yet the most successful adaptation to his environment, however smoothly he fits in. The development of personality is a favour that must be paid for dearly. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 294

No one develops his personality because somebody tells him that it would be useful or advisable to do so. Nature has never yet been taken in by well-meaning advice. The only thing that moves nature is causal necessity, and that goes for human nature too. Without necessity nothing budges, the human personality least of all. It is tremendously conservative, not to say torpid.

Only acute necessity is able to rouse it. The developing personality obeys no caprice, no command, no insight, only brute necessity; it needs the motivating force of inner or outer fatalities. Any other development would be no better than individualism. That is why the cry of “individualism” is a cheap insult when flung at the natural development of personality. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 295

To become a personality is not the absolute prerogative of the genius, for a man may be a genius without being a personality. In so far as every individual has the law of his life inborn in him, it is theoretically possible for any man to follow this law and so become a personality, that is, to achieve wholeness. But since life only exists in the form of living units, i.e., individuals, the law of life always tends towards a life individually lived. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 307

Anything new should always be questioned and tested with caution, for it may very easily turn out to be only a new disease. That is why true progress is impossible without mature judgment. But a well-balanced judgment requires a firm standpoint, and this in turn can only rest on a sound knowledge of what has been. The man who is unconscious of the historical context and lets slip his link with the past is in constant danger of succumbing to the crazes and delusions engendered by all novelties. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 251

Knowledge of the universal origins builds the bridge between the lost and abandoned world of the past and the still largely inconceivable world of the future. How should we lay hold of the future, how should we assimilate it, unless we are in possession of the human experience which the past has bequeathed to \x^} Dispossessed of this, we are without root and without perspective, defenceless dupes of whatever novelties the future may bring. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 250

The wheel of history cannot be put back; we can only strive towards an attitude that will allow us to live out our fate as undisturbedly as the primitive pagan in us really wants. Only on this condition can we be sure of not perverting spirituality into sensuality, and vice versa; for both must live, each drawing life from the other. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 336

Nothing is more repulsive than a furtively prurient spirituality; it is just as unsavoury as gross sensuality. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 336

If certain South American Indians really and truly call themselves red cockatoos and expressly repudiate a figurative interpretation of this fact, this has absolutely nothing to do with any sexual repression on “moral” grounds, but is due to the law of independence inherent in the thinking function and to its emancipation from the concretism of sensuous perceptions. We must assign a separate principle to the thinking function, a principle which coincides with the beginnings of sexuality only in the polyvalent germinal disposition of the very young child. To reduce the origins of thinking to mere sexuality is an undertaking that runs counter to the basic facts of human psychology. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 79

There are, besides the gifts of the head, also those of the heart, which are no whit less important, although they may easily be overlooked because in such cases the head is often the weaker organ. And yet people of this kind sometimes contribute more to the well-being of society, and are more valuable, than those with other talents. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 242

Observance of customs and laws can very easily be a cloak for a lie so subtle that our fellow human beings are unable to detect it. It may help us to escape all criticism, we may even be able to deceive ourselves in the belief of our obvious righteousness. But deep down, below the surface of the average man’s conscience, he hears a voice whispering, “There is something not right,” no matter how much his Tightness is supported by public opinion or by the moral code. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 80

The investigation of truth must begin afresh with each case, for each “case” is individual and not derivable from any preconceived formula. Each individual is a new experiment of life in her ever-changing moods, and an attempt at a new solution or new adaptation. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 173

Great gifts are the fairest, and often the most dangerous, fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang on the weakest branches, which easily break. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 244

The greatness of historical personalities has never lain in their abject submission to convention, but, on the contrary, in their deliverance from convention. They towered up like mountain peaks above the mass that still clung to its collective fears, its beliefs, laws, and systems, and boldly chose their own way.

To the man in the street it has always seemed miraculous that anyone should turn aside from the beaten track with its known destinations, and strike out on the steep and narrow path leading into the unknown. Hence it was always believed that such a man, if not actually crazy, was possessed by a daemon or a god; for the miracle of a man being able to act otherwise than as humanity has always acted could only be explained by the gift of daemonic power or divine spirit. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 298

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 genius will come through despite everything, for there is something absolute and indomitable in his nature. The so-called “misunderstood genius” is rather a doubtful phenomenon. Generally he turns out to be a good-for-nothing who is forever seeking a soothing explanation of himself. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 248

To rush ahead is to invite blows, and if you don’t get them from the teacher, you will get them from fate, and generally from both. The gifted child will do well to accustom himself early to the fact that any excellence puts him in an exceptional position and exposes him to a great many risks, the chief of which is an exaggerated self-confidence. Against this the only protection is humility and obedience, and even these do not always work. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 246

A gift develops in inverse ratio to the maturation of the personality as a whole, and often one has the impression that a creative personality grows at the expense of the human being. Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy between the genius and his human qualities that one has to ask oneself whether a little less talent might not have been better.

What after all is great talent beside moral inferiority? There are not a few gifted persons whose usefulness is paralyzed, not to say perverted, by their human shortcomings. A gift is not an absolute value, or rather, it is such a value only when the rest of the personality keeps pace with it. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 244

Theories in psychology are the very devil. It is true that we need certain points of view for their orienting and heuristic value; but they should always be regarded as mere auxiliary concepts that can be laid aside at any time. We still know so very little about the psyche that it is positively grotesque to think we are far enough advanced to frame general theories. We have not even established the empirical extent of the psyche’s phenomenology how then can we dream of general theories? No doubt theory is the best cloak for lack of experience and ignorance, but the consequences are depressing bigotedness, superficiality, and scientific sectarianism. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 7

The middle period of life is a time of enormous psychological importance. The child begins its psychological life within very narrow limits, inside the magic circle of the mother and the family. With progressive maturation it widens its horizon and its own sphere of influence; its hopes and intentions are directed to extending the scope of personal power and possessions; desire reaches out to the world in ever-widening range; the will of the individual becomes more and more identical with the natural goals pursued by unconscious motivations.

Thus man breathes his own life into things, until finally they begin to live of themselves and to multiply; and imperceptibly he is overgrown by them. Mothers are overtaken by their children, men by their own creations, and what was originally brought into being only with labour and the greatest effort can no longer be held in check. First it was passion, then it became duty, and finally an intolerable burden, a vampire that battens on the life of its creator. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 331a

Our personality develops in the course of our life from germs that are hard or impossible to discern, and it is only our deeds that reveal who we are. We are like the sun, which nourishes the life of the earth and brings forth every kind of strange, wonderful, and evil thing; we are like the mothers who bear in their wombs untold happiness and suffering. At first we do not know what deeds or misdeeds, what destiny, what good and evil we have in us, and only the autumn can show what the spring has engendered, only in the evening will it be seen what the morning began. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 290

Everything young grows old, all beauty fades, all heat cools, all brightness dims, and every truth becomes stale and trite. There is no human horror or fairground freak that has not lain in the womb of a loving mother. As the sun shines upon the just and the unjust, and as women who bear and give suck tend God’s children and the devil’s brood with equal compassion, unconcerned about the possible consequences, so we also are part and parcel of this amazing nature, and, like it, carry within us the seeds of the unpredictable. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 289

Fairytales seem to be the myths of childhood and they therefore contain among other things the mythology which children weave for themselves concerning sexual processes. The poetry of fairytale, whose magic is felt even by the adult, rests not least upon the fact that some of the old theories are still alive in our unconscious. We experience a strange and mysterious feeling whenever a fragment of our remotest youth stirs into life again, not actually reaching consciousness, but merely shedding a reflection of its emotional intensity on the conscious mind. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 44

All the life which the parents could have lived, but of which they thwarted themselves for artificial motives, is passed on to the children in substitute form. That is to say, the children are driven unconsciously in a direction that is intended to compensate for everything that was left unfulfilled in the lives of their parents. Hence it is that excessively moral-minded parents have what are called “unmoral” children, or an irresponsible wastrel of a father has a son with a positively morbid amount of ambition, and so on. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 328

Where unconditional adaptation to the powers of this world is accepted as the supreme principle of belief, it would of course be vain to expect psychological insight from a person in authority as a moral obligation. But anyone who professes a democratic view of the world cannot approve of such an authoritarian attitude, believing as he does in a fair distribution of burdens and advantages. It is not true that the educator is always the one who educates, and the child always the one to be educated.

The educator, too, is a fallible human being, and the child he educates will reflect his failings. Therefore it is wise to be as clear-sighted as possible about one’s subjective views, and particularly about one’s faults. As a man is, so will be his ultimate truth, and so also his strongest effect on others. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 211

One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 249

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

If there is anything that we wish to change in our children, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves. Take our enthusiasm for pedagogics. It may be that the boot is on the other leg. It may be that we misplace the pedagogical need because it would be an uncomfortable reminder that we ourselves are still children in many respects and still need a vast amount of educating. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 287

approach to the child who is to be educated, and from an equally one-sided lack of emphasis on the uneducatedness of the educator. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 284

It is an almost regular occurrence for a woman to be wholly contained, spiritually, in her husband, and for a husband to be wholly contained, emotionally, in his wife. One could describe this as the problem of the “contained” and the “container.” ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 331

Every man carries within him the eternal image of woman, not the image of this or that particular woman, but a definite feminine image. This image is fundamentally unconscious, an hereditary factor of primordial origin engraved in the living organic system of the man, an imprint or “archetype” of all the ancestral experiences of the female, a deposit, as it were, of all the impressions ever made by woman—in short, an inherited system of psychic adaptation.

Even if no women existed, it would still be possible, at any given time, to deduce from this unconscious image exactly how a woman would have to be constituted psychically. The same is true of the woman she too has her inborn image of man. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 338

What is it, in the end, that induces a man to go his own way and to rise out of unconscious identity with the mass. . . ? Is it what is commonly called vocation . . . [which] acts like a law of God from which there is no escape. . . . Anyone with a vocation hears the voice of the inner man: he is called. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, para. 299f.

The young person of marriageable age does, of course, possess an ego-consciousness (girls more than men, as a rule), but, since he has only recently emerged from the mists of original unconsciousness, he is certain to have wide areas which still lie in the shadow and which preclude to that extent the formation of psychological relationship.

This means, in practice, that the young man (or woman) can have only an incomplete understanding of himself and others, and is therefore imperfectly informed as to his, and there, motives. As a rule the motives he acts from are largely unconscious. Subjectively, of course, he thinks himself very conscious and knowing, for we constantly overestimate the existing content of consciousness, and it is a great and surprising discovery when we find that what we had supposed to be the final peak is nothing but the first step in a very long climb. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 327

Normal sex life, as a shared experience with apparently similar aims, further strengthens the feeling of unity and identity. This state is described as one of complete harmony, and is extolled as a great happiness (“one heart and one soul”)—not without good reason, since the return to that original condition of unconscious oneness is like a return to childhood.

Hence the childish gestures of all lovers. Even more is it a return to the mother’s womb, into the teeming depths of an as yet unconscious creativity. It is, in truth, a genuine and incontestable experience of the Divine, whose transcendent force obliterates and consumes everything individual; a real communion with life and the impersonal power of fate. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 330

So far as we know, consciousness is always ego-consciousness. In order to be conscious of myself, I must be able to distinguish myself from others. Relationship can only take place where this distinction exists. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 326

Unfortunately, it is almost a collective ideal for men and women to be as unconscious as possible in the ticklish affairs of love. But behind the mask of respectability and faithfulness the full fury of neglected love falls upon the children. You cannot blame the ordinary individual, as you cannot expect people to know the attitude they ought to adopt and how they are to solve their love problems within the framework of present-day ideals and conventions. Mostly they know only the negative measures of negligence, procrastination, suppression, and repression. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 218

So long as you feel the human contact, the atmosphere of mutual confidence, there is no danger; and even if you have to face the terrors of insanity, or the shadowy menace of suicide, there is still that area of human faith, that certainty of understanding and of being understood, no matter how black the night. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 181

Practical medicine is and has always been an art, and the same is true o£ practical analysis. True art is creation, and creation is beyond all theories. That is why I say to any beginner: Learn your theories as well as you can, but put them aside when you touch the miracle of the living soul. Not theories but your own creative individuality alone must decide. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 36i

Nobody should play with analysis as with an easy tool. Those who write superficial and cheap books about the subject are either unconscious of the far-reaching effects of analytical treatment or else ignorant of the real nature of the human soul. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 343

If we have to deal with the human soul we can only meet it on its own ground, and we are bound to do so whenever we are confronted with the real and crushing problems of life. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 81

Anyone who wishes to interpret a dream must himself be on approximately the same level as the dream, for nowhere can he see anything more than what he is himself. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 324

The protean life of the psyche is a greater, if more inconvenient, truth than the rigid certainty of the one-eyed point of view. It certainly does not make the problems of psychology any easier. But it does free us from the incubus of “nothing but,”* which is the insistent leitmotiv of all one-sidedness. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 156

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

The levelling down of the masses through suppression of the aristocratic or hierarchical structure natural to a community is bound, sooner or later, to lead to disaster. For when everything outstanding is levelled down, the signposts are lost, and the longing to be led becomes an urgent necessity. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 248

Creative life always stands outside convention. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 305

This is the World Power that vastly exceeds all other powers on earth. The Age of Enlightenment, which stripped nature and human institutions of gods, overlooked the God of Terror who dwells in the human soul. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 302

But fanaticism is always a compensation for hidden doubt. Religious persecutions occur only where heresy is a menace. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Page 81.

They [Dreams] do not deceive, they do not lie, they do not distort or disguise… They are invariably seeking to express something that the ego does not know and does not understand. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 189.

The religion of love was the exact psychological counterpart to the Roman devil-worship of power. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Paras 308-309.

Dreams…are invariably seeking to express something that the ego does not know and does not understand. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 187

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, Para 19.

In every adult there lurks a child–an eternal child, something that is always becoming, is never completed, and calls for unceasing care, attention, and education. That is the part of the personality which wants to develop and become whole. -C. G. Jung CW 17, Page 286

Nothing is more repulsive than a furtively prurient spirituality; it is just as unsavory as gross sensuality. ~Carl Jung; CW 17, Para. 336.

Jesus voluntarily exposed himself to the assaults [from within] of the imperialistic madness that filled everyone, conqueror and conquered alike. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, par. 309.

On the other hand I also lay stress on the significance of thinking and the importance of concept-building for the solution of psychic conflicts. It should be sufficiently clear from what follows that the initial sexual interest strives only figuratively towards an immediate sexual goal, but far more towards the development of thinking. Were this not so, the solution of the conflict could be reached solely through the attainment of a sexual goal, and not through the mediation of an intellectual concept. But precisely the latter is the case, from which we may conclude that infantile sexuality is not to be identified outright with adult sexuality, since adult sexuality cannot be adequately replaced by concept-building, but is in most cases only satisfied with the real sexual goal, namely the tribute of normal sexual functioning which nature exacts ~Carl Jung, CW 17 , Para 0

On the other hand, we know from experience that the infantile beginnings of sexuality can also lead to real sexual functioning masturbation when the conflicts are not resolved. The building of concepts, however, opens out to the libido a channel that is capable of further development, so that its continual, active realization is assured. Given a certain intensity of conflict, the absence of concept-building acts as a hindrance which thrusts the libido back into its initial sexuality, with the result that these beginnings or buddings are brought prematurely to an abnormal pitch of development. This produces an infantile neurosis. Gifted children in particular, whose mental demands begin to develop early on account of their intelligent disposition, run a serious risk of premature sexual realization through the suppression of what their parents and teachers would call an unsuitable curiosity ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 0

As these reflections show, I do not regard the thinking function as just a makeshift function of sexuality which sees itself hindered in its pleasurable realization and is therefore compelled to pass over into the thinking function; but, while perceiving in infantile sexuality the beginnings of a future sexual function, I also discern there the seeds of higher spiritual functions. The fact that infantile conflicts can be resolved through concept-building speaks in favour of this, and also the fact that even in adult life the vestiges of infantile sexuality are the seeds of vital spiritual functions. The fact that adult sexuality grows out of this polyvalent germinal disposition does not prove that infantile sexuality is “sexuality” pure and simple. I therefore dispute the rightness of Freud’s idea of the “polymorphous-perverse” disposition of the child. It is simply a polyvalent disposition. If we proceeded according to the Freudian formula, we should have to speak, in embryology, of the ectoderm as the brain, because from it the brain is ultimately developed. But much also develops from it besides the brain, for instance the sense organs and other things ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 0

Just as the birth of a little sister was the turning point in the history of “Little Hans,” so in this case it was the arrival of a baby brother, which took place when Anna had reached the age of four. The problem of where children come from, hardly touched upon so far, now became topical. The mother’s pregnancy had apparently passed unnoticed; that is to say, Anna had never made any observations on this subject. On the evening before the birth, when labour pains were just beginning, the child found herself in her father’s room. He took her on his knee and said, “Tell me, what would you say if you got a little brother tonight?” “I would kill him,” was the prompt answer. The expression “kill” looks very alarming, but in reality it is quite harmless, for “kill” and “die” in child language only mean to “get rid of, ” either actively or passively, as has already been pointed out a number of times by Freud ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 7

On the lips of a child, therefore, “kill” is a perfectly harmless expression, especially when one knows that Anna used it quite promiscuously for all possible kinds of destruction, removal, demolition, etc. All the same this tendency is worth noting ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 9

Here we meet with an important new feature in the little one’s life: reveries, the first stirrings of poetry, moods of an elegiac strain all of them things which are usually to be met with only at a later phase of life, at a time when the youth or maiden is preparing to sever the family tie, to step forth into life as an independent person, but is still inwardly held back by aching feelings of homesickness for the warmth of the family hearth. At such a time they begin weaving poetic fancies in order to compensate for what is lacking. To approximate the psychology of a four-year-old to that of the boy or girl approaching puberty may at first sight seem paradoxical; the affinity lies, however, not in the age but in the mechanism. The elegiac reveries express the fact that part of the love which formerly belonged, and should belong, to a real object, is now introverted that is, it is turned inwards into the subject and there produces an increased fantasy activity. Whence comes this introversion? Is it a psychological manifestation peculiar to this period, or does it come from a conflict? ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 13

This process is altogether typical. When life comes up against an obstacle, so that no adaptation can be achieved and the transference of libido to reality is suspended, then an introversion takes place. That is to say, instead of the libido working towards reality there is an increased fantasy activity which aims at removing the obstacle, or at least removing it in fantasy, and this may in time lead to a practical solution. Hence the exaggerated sexual fantasies of neurotics, who in this way try to overcome their specific repression; hence also the typical fantasy of stammerers, that they really possess a great talent for eloquence. (That they have some claims in this respect is brought home to us by Alfred Adler’s thoughtful studies on organ inferiority) ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 13

We should mention that the Messina earthquake had just occurred, and this event was much discussed at table. Anna was extraordinarily interested in everything to do with it, getting her grandmother to tell her over and over again how the earth shook and the houses tumbled down and how many people lost their lives. That was the beginning of her nocturnal fears; she could not be left alone, her mother had to go to her and stay with her, otherwise she was afraid that the earthquake would come and the house fall in and kill her. By day, too, she was intensely occupied with such thoughts; when out walking with her mother she would pester her with such questions as “Will the house be standing when we get home? Will Papa still be alive? Are you sure there’s no earthquake at home?” At every stone in the road she would ask whether it was from the earthquake. A house under construction was a house destroyed by the earthquake, and so on. Finally she used to cry out at night that the earthquake was coming, she could hear it rumbling. Every evening she had to be solemnly promised that no earthquake would come. Various ways of calming the three-year old child were tried, for instance she was told that earthquakes only occur where there are volcanoes. But then she had to be satisfied that the mountains surrounding the town were not volcanoes. This reasoning gradually led the child to an intense and, at her age, unnatural craving for knowledge, until finally all the geological pictures and atlases had to be fetched from her father’s library. For hours she would rummage through them looking for pictures of volcanoes and earthquakes, and asking endless questions ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 19

We see here an energetic attempt being made to sublimate fear into a desire for knowledge, which strikes us as decidedly premature at this age. But how many gifted children, suffering from exactly the same problem, do we not see being spoon-fed on this untimely sublimation, and by no means to their advantage. For if one fosters sublimation at this age one is only strengthening a neurosis. The root of the child’s desire for knowledge is fear, and the fear is the expression of converted libido, that is, of an introversion that has become neurotic and is neither necessary nor favourable to the development of the child at this age ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 20

Here as always it was impossible to ask for an explanation; the resistances were too great, and Anna would not have let herself be pinned down. This unique and rather officious announcement is very significant. For some three months the children had been spinning a stereotyped fantasy of a “big brother” who knew everything, could do everything, and had everything. He had been to all the places where they had not been, was allowed to do all the things they were not allowed to do, was the owner of enormous cows, horses, sheep, dogs ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 29

As the chief actor in a dream is always the dreamer himself under a definite aspect, the game of the day before finds complete interpretation ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 39

This instantly reminds us of the fairytales in which childless women finally make themselves pregnant by swallowing fruit, fish and the like. Anna was here trying to solve the problem of how children actually get into the mother. In so doing she takes up a position of inquiry which had never been formulated before so precisely. The solution follows in the form of an analogy, which is characteristic of the archaic thinking of the child. (Thinking in analogies is also found in the adult, in the stratum lying immediately below consciousness. Dreams bring the analogies to the surface, as also does dementia praecox [schizophrenia].) In German and numerous other foreign fairytales one frequently finds such childish comparisons. Fairytales seem to be the myths of childhood and they therefore contain among other things the mythology which children weave for themselves concerning sexual processes. The poetry of fairytale, whose magic is felt even by the adult, rests not least upon the fact that some of the old theories are still alive in our unconscious. We experience a strange and mysterious feeling whenever a fragment of our remotest youth stirs into life again, not actually reaching consciousness, but merely shedding a reflection of its emotional intensity on the conscious mind ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 44

The problem of how the child gets into the mother is a difficult one to solve. As the only way of getting things into the body is through the mouth, it stands to reason that the mother ate something like a fruit, which then grew inside her. But here another difficulty presents itself: one knows what comes out of the mother, but what is the use of the father? Now, it is an old rule of the mental economy to connect two unknowns and to use one to solve the other ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 45

This extremely precise question could no longer be evaded by the father. He explained to the child, who listened with the greatest attention, that the mother is like the soil and the father like the gardener; that the father provides the seed which grows in the mother and thus produces a baby. This answer gave her extraordinary satisfaction; she immediately ran to her mother and said, “Papa has told me everything, now I know it all.” But what it was she knew, she never told to anyone ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 60

The new knowledge was, however, put into practice the following day. Anna went up to her mother and said brightly: “Just think, Mama, Papa told me that Freddie was a little angel and was brought down from heaven by the stork.” Her mother was naturally astounded, and said, “I am quite certain your father never told you anything of the sort.” Whereupon the little one skipped away laughing ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 61

Consequently, however little advisable it is to give children false explanations which would only sow the seeds of mistrust, it is, so it seems to me, no less inadvisable to insist on the acceptance of the right explanation. For the freedom of the mind’s development would merely be suppressed through such rigid consistency, and the child forced into a concretism of outlook that would preclude further development. Side by side with the biological, the spiritual, too, has its inviolable rights. It is assuredly no accident that primitive peoples, even in adult life, make the most fantastic assertions about well-known sexual processes, as for instance that coitus has nothing to do with pregnancy. From this it has been concluded that these people do not even know there is such a connection. But more accurate investigation has shown that they know very well that with animals copulation is followed by pregnancy. Only for human beings is it denied not not known, but flatly denied that this is so, for the simple reason that they prefer a mythological explanation which has freed itself from the trammels of concretism ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 79

It is not hard to see that in these facts, so frequently observed among primitives, there lie the beginnings of abstraction, which is so very important for culture. We have every reason to suppose that this is also true of the psychology of the child. If certain South American Indians really and truly call themselves red cockatoos and expressly repudiate a figurative interpretation of this fact, this has absolutely nothing to do with any sexual repression on “moral” grounds, but is due to the law of independence inherent in the thinking function and to its emancipation from the concretism of sensuous perceptions. We must assign a separate principle to the thinking function, a principle which coincides with the beginnings of sexuality only in the polyvalent germinal disposition of the very young child. To reduce the origins of thinking to mere sexuality is an undertaking that runs counter to the basic facts of human psychology ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 79

For anyone acquainted with the psychology of primitives there is an obvious connection between this “identity” and Lévy-Bruhl’s idea of participation mystique. Strange to say, there are not a few ethnologists who still kick against this brilliant idea, for which the unfortunate expression “mystique” may have to shoulder no small part of the blame. The word “mystical” has indeed become the abode of all unclean spirits, although it was not meant like that originally, but has been debased by sordid usage. There is nothing “mystical” about identity, any more than there is anything mystical about the metabolism common to mother and embryo ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 83

Identity derives essentially from the notorious unconsciousness of the small child. Therein lies the connection with the primitive, for the primitive is as unconscious as a child. Unconsciousness means non-differentiation. There is as yet no clearly differentiated ego, only events which may belong to me or to another. It is sufficient that somebody should be affected by them. The extraordinary infectiousness of emotional reactions then makes it certain that everybody in the vicinity will involuntarily be affected. The weaker ego-consciousness is, the less it matters who is affected, and the less the individual is able to guard against it. He could only do that if he could say: you are excited or angry, but I am not, for I am not you. The child is in exactly the same position in the family: he is affected to the same degree and in the same way as the whole group ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 83

For all lovers of theory, the essential fact behind all this is that the things which have the most powerful effect upon children do not come from the conscious state of the parents but from their unconscious background. For the ethically minded person who may be a father or mother this presents an almost frightening problem, because the things we can manipulate more or less, namely consciousness and its contents, are seen to be ineffectual in comparison with these uncontrollable effects in the background, no matter how hard we may try. One is afflicted with a feeling of extreme moral uncertainty when one takes these unconscious processes with the seriousness they deserve ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 84

How are we to protect our children from ourselves, if conscious will and conscious effort are of no avail? There can be no doubt that it is of the utmost value for parents to view their children’s symptoms in the light of their own problems and conflicts. It is their duty as parents to do so. Their responsibility in this respect carries with it the obligation to do everything in their power not to lead a life that could harm the children. Generally far too little stress is laid upon how important the conduct of the parents is for the child, because it is not words that count, but deeds. Parents should always be conscious of the fact that they themselves are the principal cause of neurosis in their children ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 84

We must not, however, exaggerate the importance of unconscious effects, even though the mind’s love of causes finds dangerous satisfaction in doing precisely this. Nor should we exaggerate the importance of causality in general. Certainly causes exist, but the psyche is not a mechanism that reacts of necessity and in a regular way to a specific stimulus. Here as elsewhere in practical psychology we are constantly coming up against the experience that in a family of several children only one of them will react to the unconscious of the parents with a marked degree of identity, while the others show no such reaction. The specific constitution of the individual plays a part here that is practically decisive. For this reason, the biologically trained psychologist seizes upon the fact of organic heredity and is far more inclined to regard the whole mass of genealogical inheritance as the elucidating factor, rather than the psychic causality of the moment. This standpoint, however satisfying it may be by and large, is unfortunately of little relevance to individual cases because it offers no practical clue to psychological treatment. For it also happens to be true that psychic causality exists between parents and children regardless of all the laws of heredity; in fact, the heredity point of view, although undoubtedly justified, diverts the interest of the educator or therapist away from the practical importance of parental influence to some generalized and more or less fatalistic regard for the dead hand of heredity, from the consequences of which there is no escape ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 85

What usually has the strongest psychic effect on the child is the life which the parents (and ancestors too, for we are dealing here with the age-old psychological phenomenon of original sin) have not lived. This statement would be rather too perfunctory and superficial if we did not add by way of qualification: that part of their lives which might have been lived had not certain somewhat threadbare excuses prevented the parents from doing so. To put it bluntly, it is that part of life which they have always shirked, probably by means of a pious lie. That sows the most virulent germs ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 87

The causal significance of parental problems for the psyche of the child would be seriously misunderstood if they were always interpreted in an exaggeratedly personal way as moral problems. More often we seem to be dealing with some fate-like ethos beyond the reach of our conscious judgment. Such things as proletarian inclinations in the scions of noble families, outbursts of criminality in the offspring of the respectable or over-virtuous, a paralysing or impassioned laziness in the children of successful business men, are not just bits of life that have been left deliberately unlived, but compensations wrought by fate, functions of a natural ethos which casts down the high and mighty and exalts the humble. Against this neither education nor psychotherapy is of any avail. The most they can do, if reasonably applied, is to encourage the child to fulfil the task imposed upon him by the natural ethos. The guilt of the parents is impersonal, and the child should pay for it no less impersonally ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 90

Parental influence only becomes a moral problem in face of conditions which might have been changed by the parents, but were not, either from gross negligence, slothfulness, neurotic anxiety, or soulless conventionality. In this matter a grave responsibility often rests with the parents. And nature has no use for the plea that one “did not know” ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 91

Not knowing acts like guilt ~Carl Jung, CW17, Para 92

The psychology of “identity,” which precedes ego-consciousness, indicates what the child is by virtue of his parents. But what he is as an individuality distinct from his parents can hardly be explained by the causal relationship to the parents. We ought rather to say that it is not so much the parents as their ancestors the grandparents and great-grandparents who are the true progenitors, and that these explain the individuality of the children far more than the immediate and, so to speak, accidental parents. In the same way the true psychic individuality of the child is something new in respect of the parents and cannot be derived from their psyche. It is a combination of collective factors which are only potentially present in the parental psyche, and are sometimes wholly invisible. Not only the child’s body, but his soul, too, proceeds from his ancestry, in so far as it is individually distinct from the collective psyche of mankind ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 93

The child’s psyche, prior to the stage of ego-consciousness, is very far from being empty and devoid of content. Scarcely has speech developed when, in next to no time, consciousness is present; and this, with its momentary contents and its memories, exercises an intensive check upon the previous collective contents. That such contents exist in the child who has not yet attained to ego-consciousness is a well-attested fact. The most important evidence in this respect is the dreams of three- and four-year-old children, among which there are some so strikingly mythological and so fraught with meaning that one would take them at once for the dreams of grown-ups, did one not know who the dreamer was. They are the last vestiges of a dwindling collective psyche which dreamingly reiterates the perennial contents of the human soul. From this phase there spring many childish fears and dim, unchildlike premonitions which, rediscovered in later phases of life, form the basis of the belief in reincarnation. But from this sphere also spring those flashes of insight and lucidity which give rise to the proverb: Children and fools speak the truth ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 94

Because of its universal distribution the collective psyche, which is still so close to the small child, perceives not only the background of the parents, but, ranging further afield, the depths of good and evil in the human soul. The unconscious psyche of the child is truly limitless in extent and of incalculable age. Behind the longing to be a child again, or behind the anxiety dreams of children, there is, with all due respect to the parents, more than the joys of the cradle or a bad upbringing ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 95

Primitive peoples often hold the belief that the soul of the child is the incarnation of an ancestral spirit, for which reason it is dangerous to punish children, lest the ancestral spirit be provoked. This belief is only a more concrete formulation of the views I have outlined above ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 96

The infinity of the child’s preconscious soul may disappear with it, or it may be preserved. The remnants of the child-soul in the adult are his best and worst qualities; at all events they are the mysterious spiritus rector of our weightiest deeds and of our individual destinies, whether we are conscious of it or not. It is they which make kings or pawns of the insignificant figures who move about on the checker-board of life, turning some poor devil of a casual father into a ferocious tyrant, or a silly goose of an unwilling mother into a goddess of fate. For behind every individual father there stands the primordial image of the Father, and behind the fleeting personal mother the magical figure of the Magna Mater. These archetypes of the collective psyche, whose power is magnified in immortal works of art and in the fiery tenets of religion, are the dominants that rule the preconscious soul of the child and, when projected upon the human parents, lend them a fascination which often assumes monstrous proportions. From that there arises the false aetiology of neurosis which, in Freud, ossified into a system: the Oedipus complex. And that is also why, in the later life of the neurotic, the images of the parents can be criticized, corrected, and reduced to human dimensions, while yet continuing to work like divine agencies. Did the human father really possess this mysterious power, his sons would soon liquidate him or, even better, would refrain from becoming fathers themselves. For what ethical person could possibly bear so gigantic a responsibility? Far better to leave this sovereign power to the gods, with whom it had always rested before man became “enlightened” ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 97

The entire Freudian school still takes this view of psychoanalysis and refuses to recognize any causation of nervous disorders other than the sexual. Although originally subscribing to this method, I have, during the course of years, developed the conception of analytical psychology, which lays stress on the fact that psychological investigation along psychoanalytic lines has left the narrow confines of a medical technique, with its restriction to certain theoretical assumptions, and has passed over into the general field of normal psychology ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 99

But at the outset I must make it perfectly clear that I in no way support those views which maintain that the relation of the child to the parents, or to his brothers, sisters, comrades, is to be explained simply as the immature beginnings of the sexual function. Those views, surely not unknown to you, are in my opinion premature and one-sided generalizations which have already given rise to the most absurd misinterpretations. When pathological phenomena are present to a degree which would justify a psychological explanation along sexual lines, it is not the child’s own psychology that is fundamentally responsible, but the sexually disturbed psychology of the parents. The mind of the child is extremely susceptible and dependent, and is steeped for a long time in the atmosphere of his parental psychology, only freeing itself from this influence relatively late, if at all ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para C99

By virtue of its indefinite extension the unconscious might be compared to the sea, while consciousness is like an island rising out of its midst. This comparison, however, must not be pushed too far; for the relation of conscious to unconscious is essentially different from that of an island to the sea. It is not in any sense a stable relationship, but a ceaseless welling-up, a constant shifting of content; for, like the conscious, the unconscious is never at rest, never stagnant. It lives and works in a state of perpetual interaction with the conscious. Conscious contents that have lost their intensity, or their actuality, sink into the unconscious, and this we call forgetting. Conversely, out of the unconscious, there rise up new ideas and tendencies which, as they emerge into consciousness, are known to us as fantasies and impulses. The unconscious is the matrix out of which consciousness grows; for consciousness does not enter the world as a finished product, but is the end result of small beginnings ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 102

This development takes place in the child. During the first years of life there is hardly any consciousness, though the existence of psychic processes manifests itself at a very early stage. These processes, however, are not grouped round an organized ego; they have no centre and therefore no continuity, lacking which a conscious personality is impossible. Consequently the child has in our sense no memory, despite the plasticity and susceptibility of its psychic organ. Only when the child begins to say “I” is there any perceptible continuity of consciousness. But in between there are frequent periods of unconsciousness. One can actually see the conscious mind coming into existence through the gradual unification of fragments. This process continues throughout life but from puberty onwards it becomes slower, and fewer and fewer fragments of the unconscious are added to consciousness. The greatest and most extensive development takes place during the period between birth and the end of psychic puberty, a period that may normally extend, for a man of our climate and race, to the twenty-fifth year. In the case of a woman it usually ends when she is about nineteen or twenty. This development establishes a firm connection between the ego and the previously unconscious psychic processes, thus separating them from their source in the unconscious. In this way the conscious rises out of the unconscious like an island newly risen from the sea. We reinforce this process in children by education and culture. School is in fact a means of strengthening in a purposeful way the integration of consciousness ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 103

Now if we were to ask what would happen if there were no schools, and children were left entirely to themselves, we should have to answer that they would remain largely unconscious. What kind of a state would this be? It would be a primitive state, and when such children came of age they would, despite their native intelligence, still remain primitive savages, in fact, rather like a tribe of intelligent Negroes or Bushmen. They would not necessarily be stupid, but merely intelligent by instinct. They would be ignorant and therefore unconscious of themselves and the world. Beginning life on a very much lower cultural level, they would differentiate themselves only slightly from the primitive races. This possibility of regression to the primitive stage is explained by the fundamental biogenetic law which holds good not only for the development of the body, but also in all probability for that of the psyche. This possibility of regression to the primitive stage is explained by the fundamental biogenetic law which holds good not only for the development of the body, but also in all probability for that of the psyche ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 104

According to this law the evolution of the species repeats itself in the embryonic development of the individual. Thus, to a certain degree, man in his embryonic life passes through the anatomical forms of primeval times. If the same law holds for the mental development of mankind, it follows that the child develops out of an originally unconscious, animal condition into consciousness, primitive at first, and then slowly becoming more civilized ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 105

The condition during the first two or three years of the child’s life, when the child is unconscious of himself, may be compared to the animal state. Just as the child in embryo is practically nothing but a part of the mother’s body, and wholly dependent on her, so in early infancy the psyche is to a large extent part of the maternal psyche, and will soon become part of the paternal psyche as well. The prime psychological condition is one of fusion with the psychology of the parents, an individual psychology being only potentially present. Hence it is that the nervous and psychic disorders of children right up to school age depend very largely on disturbances in the psychic world of the parents. All parental difficulties reflect themselves without fail in the psyche of the child, sometimes with pathological results ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 106

The dreams of small children often refer more to the parents than to the child itself. Long ago I observed some very curious dreams in early childhood, for instance the first dreams patients could remember. They were “big dreams,” and their content was often so very unchildlike that at first I was convinced they could be explained by the psychology of the parents. There was the case of a boy who dreamt out the whole erotic and religious problem of his father. The father could remember no dreams at all, so for some time I analysed the father through the dreams of his eight-year-old son. Eventually the father began to dream himself, and the dreams of the child stopped. Later on I realized that the peculiar dreams of small children are genuine enough, since they contain archetypes which are the cause of their apparently adult character ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 106

A marked change occurs when the child develops consciousness of his ego, a fact which is registered by his referring to himself as “I.” This change normally takes place between the third and fifth year, but it may begin earlier. From this moment we can speak of the existence of an individual psyche, though normally the psyche attains relative independence only after puberty. Up till then it has been largely the plaything of instinct and environment. The child who enters school at six is still for the most part the psychic product of his parents, endowed, it is true, with the nucleus of ego-consciousness, but incapable of asserting his unconscious individuality. One is often tempted to interpret children who are peculiar, obstinate, disobedient, or difficult to handle as especially individual or self-willed. This is a mistake. In such cases we should always examine the parental milieu, its psychological conditions and history. Almost without exception we discover in the parents the only valid reasons for the child’s difficulties. His disquieting peculiarities are far less the expression of his own inner life than a reflection of disturbing influences in the home ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para CW17 ¶ 107

If the physician has to deal with nervous disorders in a child of this age, he will have to pay serious attention to the psychic state of the parents; to their problems, the way they live and do not live, the aspirations they have fulfilled or neglected, and to the predominant family atmosphere and the method of education. All these psychic conditions influence a child profoundly. In his early years the child lives in a state of participation mystique with his parents. Time and again it can be seen how he reacts immediately to any important developments in the parental psyche. Needless to say both the parents and the child are unconscious of what is going on. The infectious nature of the parents’ complexes can be seen from the effect their mannerisms have on their children. Even when they make completely successful efforts to control themselves, so that no adult could detect the least trace of a complex, the children will get wind of it somehow. I remember a very revealing case of three girls who had a most devoted mother. When they were approaching puberty they confessed shamefacedly to each other that for years they had suffered from horrible dreams about her. They dreamt of her as a witch or a dangerous animal, and they could not understand it at all, since their mother was so lovely and so utterly devoted to them. Years later the mother became insane, and in her insanity would exhibit a sort of lycanthropy in which she crawled about on all fours and imitated the grunting of pigs, the barking of dogs, and the growling of bears ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 107

This is an expression of primitive identity, from which the individual consciousness frees itself only gradually. In this battle for freedom the school plays a not unimportant part, as it is the first milieu the child finds outside his home. School comrades take the place of brothers and sisters; the teacher, if a man, acts as a substitute for the father, and, if a woman, for the mother. It is important that the teacher should be conscious of the role he is playing. He must not be satisfied with merely pounding the curriculum into the child; he must also influence him through his personality. This latter function is at least as important as the actual teaching, if not more so in certain cases. This attitude cannot be produced artificially; it can only come about in a natural way when the teacher does his duty as a man and a citizen. He must be an upright and healthy man himself, for good example still remains the best pedagogic method. But it is also true that the very best method avails nothing if its practitioner does not hold his position on his personal merits, ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 107

It would be different if the only thing that mattered in school life were the methodical teaching of the curriculum. But that is at most only half the meaning of school. The other half is the real psychological education made possible through the personality of the teacher. This education means guiding the child into the larger world and widening the scope of parental training. For however careful the latter is, it can never avoid a certain one-sidedness, as the milieu always remains the same, ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 107

School, on the other hand, is the first impact of the greater world which the child has to meet, and it ought to help him to free himself progressively from the parental environment. The child naturally brings to the teacher the kind of adaptation he has learned from his father; he projects the father-image upon him, with the added tendency to assimilate the personality of the teacher to the father-image. It is therefore necessary for the teacher to adopt the personal approach, or at any rate to leave the door open for such a contact. If the personal relationship of child to teacher is a good one, it matters very little whether the method of teaching is the most up to date. Success does not depend on the method, any more than it is the exclusive aim of school life to stuff the children’s heads with knowledge, but rather to make them real men and women, ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 107

We need not concern ourselves so much with the amount of specific information a child takes away with him from school; the thing of vital importance is that the school should succeed in freeing the young man from unconscious identity with his family, and should make him properly conscious of himself. Without this consciousness he will never know what he really wants, but will always remain dependent and imitative, with the feeling of being misunderstood and suppressed, ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 107

The dream is a spontaneous process resulting from the independent activity of the unconscious, and is as far removed from our conscious control as, shall we say, the physiological activity of digestion. Therefore, we have in it an absolutely objective process from the nature of which we can draw objective conclusions about the situation as it really is ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 113

That is all very well, you will say, but how in the world is it possible to draw trustworthy conclusions from the fortuitous and chaotic confusion of a dream? To this I hasten to reply that dreams are only apparently fortuitous and chaotic. On closer inspection we discover a remarkable sequence in the dream-images, both in relation to one another and in relation to the content of waking consciousness. This discovery was made by means of a relatively simple procedure which works as follows: ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 114

The body of the dream is divided into its separate portions or images, and all the free associations to each portion are collected. In doing this, we soon become aware of an extremely intimate connection between the dream-images and the things that occupy our thoughts in the waking state, although the meaning of this connection may not be immediately apparent. By collecting all the associations we complete the preliminary part of the dream analysis, thus establishing the context, which shows the manifold connections of the dream with the contents of consciousness and the intimate way in which it is bound up with the tendencies of the personality ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 114

I remember, as a young student, that I used to enjoy the privilege of hearing from one professor how little was known about the real nature of psychic processes, and from another exactly what the psyche had to be as a logical necessity. If one studies the origins of modern empirical psychology one is profoundly impressed by the fight which the earliest investigators had to wage against the firmly entrenched scholastic way of thinking. Philosophic thought, powerfully influenced by theology (“queen of sciences”), had a decidedly deductive tendency, and over it there reigned a mass of naïve, idealistic preconceptions which were bound sooner or later to lead to a reaction ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 127

This reaction took the form of the materialism of the nineteenth century, from whose outlook we are not yet completely freed even today. The success of the empirical method is so undeniable that the splendour of its victory has even begotten a materialistic philosophy, which in reality is more a psychological reaction than a justifiable scientific theory. The materialistic outlook is an exaggerated reaction against the medieval idealism and has nothing to do with the empirical method as such ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 127

Thus modern empirical psychology was cradled in an atmosphere of rank materialism. It was first and foremost a physiological psychology, thoroughly empirical in its experimental basis, viewing the psychic process exclusively from outside and mainly with an eye to its physiological manifestations. Such a state of affairs was fairly satisfactory so long as psychology was a department of philosophy or of the natural sciences. So long as it was restricted to the laboratory, psychology could remain purely experimental and could regard the psychic process entirely from outside. Instead of the old dogmatic psychology we now had a philosophical psychology no less academic in its origins ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 128

However, the peace of the academic laboratory was soon to be disturbed by the demands of those who needed psychology for practical purposes. These intruders were the doctors. The neurologist as well as the psychiatrist has to concern himself with psychic disorders and therefore feels the urgent need of a psychology that can be practically applied ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 128

Quite independently of the developments of academic psychology medical men had already discovered a means of access to the human mind and to the psychological treatment of its disorders. This was hypnotism, which grew out of what had been called “mesmerism” in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and “animal magnetism” at the beginning of the nineteenth. The development of hypnotism led, via Charcot, Liébeault, and Bernheim, to the kind of medical psychology represented by Pierre Janet. Another of Charcot’s pupils, Freud, in Vienna, used the hypnotic method at first very much in the same way as Janet, but he soon struck out on a different path. Whereas Janet remained for the most part descriptive, Freud penetrated further and more deeply into matters which, to the medical science of those days, hardly seemed worth investigating, namely the morbid fantasies of the patient and their activity in the realm of the unconscious mind. It would be unjust to imply that Janet overlooked this; indeed the contrary is the case. It is his great merit to have pointed out the existence and the importance of unconscious processes in the psychological structure of nervous and mental disorders. Freud’s particular merit lies not in the actual discovery of unconscious activity, but in unveiling the real nature of this activity, and above all in working out a practical method for exploring the unconscious ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 128

Independently of Freud, I too had approached the problem of a practical psychology firstly from the side of experimental psychopathology, employing chiefly the association method, and then from the study of the personality. As Freud made the hitherto neglected morbid fantasies of the patient his special field of research, so I directed my attention more particularly to the reasons why people made certain mistakes in the course of the association experiment. Like the fantasies of hysterics, the disturbances in the association experiment were regarded as valueless and meaningless, a purely fortuitous phenomenon, in a word, as so much materia vilis. I discovered, however, that these disturbances were due to the operation of unconscious processes which I called “feeling-toned complexes.” After having, so to speak, put my finger on the same psychological mechanisms as Freud, it was natural that I should become his pupil and collaborator over a period of many years. But while I always recognized the truth of his conclusions so far as the facts were concerned, I could not conceal my doubts as to the validity of his theories. His regrettable dogmatism was the main reason why I felt obliged to part company from him. My scientific conscience would not allow me to lend support to an almost fanatical dogma based on a one-sided interpretation of the facts ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 128

Freud was the first to make the bold attempt to throw open the secret doors of the dream. The discovery that dreams have a meaning, and that there is a way to an understanding of them, is perhaps the most significant and most valuable part of this remarkable edifice called psychoanalysis. I do not wish to belittle Freud’s achievement, but I feel I must be fair to all those who have wrestled with the great problems of medical psychology and who, through their labours, have laid the foundations without which neither Freud nor myself would have been able to accomplish our tasks. Thus Pierre Janet, Auguste Forel, Théodore Flournoy, Morton Prince, Eugen Bleuler, deserve gratitude and remembrance whenever we speak of the first steps of medical psychology ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 124

Freud’s work has shown that the functional neuroses are causally based on unconscious contents whose nature, when understood, allows us to see how the disease came about. The value of this discovery is as great as the discovery of the specific cause of tuberculosis and other infectious diseases. Moreover, quite apart from the therapeutic importance of analytical psychology, the psychology of the normal has been tremendously enriched, for the understanding of dreams has opened up an almost limitless vista, showing how consciousness develops out of the remotest and darkest depths of the unconscious, while the practical application of the analytical method has enabled us to distinguish typical functions and attitudes in the behaviour of normal individuals ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 130

In so far as psychoanalysis is a branch of medical psychology, it concerns itself solely with abnormal cases and should therefore be reserved for the physician; but dream psychology, studied for the light it throws upon normal human behaviour, will be of ever-increasing interest to thoughtful people generally, and especially to those with educational inclinations. It is in fact highly desirable that the educator, if he wishes really to understand the mentality of his pupils, should pay attention to the findings of analytical psychology. That, however, presupposes some knowledge of psychopathology, for the abnormal child is far harder to understand than the normal. Abnormality and disease are not far apart, and just as one expects some knowledge of the physical ailments of children from the all-round educated teacher, so one might expect from him a little knowledge of their psychic ailments ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 130

From these congenital and practically incurable, though not ineducable, types we must distinguish the child with arrested mental development. His development is very slow, at times almost imperceptible, and it often needs the expert diagnosis of a skilled psychiatrist to decide whether it is a case of mental defect or not. Such children frequently have the emotional reactions of imbeciles. I was once consulted about a boy of six years old who suffered from violent fits of rage, during which he used to smash his toys and threaten his parents and his nurse in quite a dangerous way. In addition he “refused to speak,” as his parents put it. He was a little fellow, well-fed, but terribly suspicious, malevolent, obstinate, and altogether negative. It was perfectly obvious that he was an imbecile and simply could not speak. He had never learnt how to do so. But his imbecility was not bad enough to account entirely for his inability to speak. His general behaviour pointed to a neurosis ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 133

Whenever a young child exhibits the symptoms of a neurosis one should not waste too much time examining his unconscious. One should begin one’s investigations elsewhere, starting with the mother; for almost invariably the parents are either the direct cause of the child’s neurosis or at least the most important element in it. Thus I found that the child was the only boy among seven girls. The mother was an ambitious, self-willed woman, who took it as an insult when I told her that her son was not normal. She had deliberately repressed all knowledge of the boy’s infirmity; he simply had to be intelligent, and if he was stupid, it was all due to his evil will and malicious obstinacy. Naturally the boy learnt far less than he would have done had he been lucky enough to possess a reasonable mother; in fact he learnt nothing at all. What is more, he duly became the very things his mother’s own ambition drove him to, namely, malicious and self-willed. Totally misunderstood, and therefore isolated within himself, he developed his fits of rage out of sheer despair. I know of another boy, of fourteen, in much the same family circumstances. He killed his stepfather with an axe during a paroxysm of rage. He too had been pushed too far ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 133

Arrested mental development is found not infrequently in first children, or in children whose parents are estranged through psychic incompatibilities. It may also result from the mother’s illness during pregnancy, or from prolonged labour, or from deformation of the skull and hemorrhage during delivery. If such children are not ruined by educational forcing, they normally attain a relative mental maturity in the course of time, though it may be later than with ordinary children ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 134

The second group comprises Psychopathic Children. In cases of moral insanity the disorder is either congenital or due to organic injury of parts of the brain by wounding or disease. Such cases are incurable. Occasionally they become criminals and they have in them the seeds of habitual criminality ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 135

From this group one must carefully distinguish the child with arrested moral development, the morbidly autoerotic type. These cases often display an alarming amount of egotism and premature sexual activity; in addition they are untruthful and unreliable, and almost completely lacking in human feeling and love. As a rule they are illegitimate or adopted children who have unfortunately never been warmed and nourished by the psychic atmosphere of a real father and mother. They suffer from an almost organic lack of something that every child needs as a vital necessity, namely the psychically nourishing care of parents, and especially of a mother. As a result, illegitimate children in particular are always exposed to psychic danger, and it is the moral sphere that suffers first and foremost. Many children can adapt to foster parents, but not all; and those who cannot, develop an extremely self-centred and ruthlessly egotistical attitude for the unconscious purpose of getting for themselves what the real parents have failed to give them. Such cases are not always incurable ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 136

I once saw a boy who violated his four-year-old sister when he was five, tried to kill his father when he was nine, but at the age of eighteen was developing into satisfactory normality, despite a diagnosis of incurable moral insanity. If the unbridled licentiousness to which such cases are sometimes prone is coupled with a good intelligence, and if there is no irreparable break with society, these patients can give up their criminal tendencies by using their heads. Nevertheless, it is to be observed that reason is a very flimsy barrier against pathological proclivities ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 136

The third group consists of Epileptic Children. These cases are unfortunately not uncommon. It is easy enough to recognize a true epileptic attack, but what is called “petit mal” is an exceedingly obscure and complicated condition. Here there are no obvious attacks, only very peculiar and often hardly perceptible alterations of consciousness, which nevertheless pass over into the severe mental disorder of the epileptic with his irritability, ferocity, greediness, his sticky sentimentality, his morbid passion for justice, his egotism, and his narrow range of interests ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 137

It is of course impossible to enumerate here all the manifold forms of epilepsy; but, in order to illustrate its symptomatology, I will mention the case of a small boy who began to behave strangely when he was about seven years old. The first thing to be noticed was that he used to disappear abruptly, and was then found hiding in the cellar or in a dark corner of the attic. It was impossible to get him to explain why he ran away so suddenly and hid himself. Sometimes he would leave off playing and bury his face in his mother’s skirts. At first these things happened so rarely that no attention was paid to his odd behaviour, but when he began to do the same thing at school, suddenly leaving his desk and running to the teacher, his family became alarmed. Nobody, however, had thought of the possibility of a serious disease. Occasionally, too, he would stop short for a few seconds in the middle of a game, or even in the middle of a sentence, without any explanation and apparently without even knowing that the lapse had occurred. Gradually he developed a rather disagreeable and irritable character. Sometimes he had fits of rage, and on one occasion he threw a pair of scissors at his little sister with such force that the point pierced the bone of the skull just above the eyes, nearly killing her. As the parents did not think of consulting a psychiatrist, the disease remained unrecognized, and he was treated simply as a bad boy ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 137

At the age of twelve the boy had his first observed epileptic fit, and only then was his disease understood. Despite great difficulties I was able to find out from the boy that when he was about six he began to be seized with terror of some unknown being. When he was alone, he had the feeling that someone unseen was present. Later he came to see a short man with a beard, a man he had never seen before, but whose features he could describe in great detail. This man suddenly appeared before him and frightened him so much that he ran away and hid himself. It was difficult to discover why the man was so terrifying. The boy was obviously upset about something, which he treated as a dreadful secret. It took me hours to win his confidence, but eventually he confessed. “This man tried to make me take something terrible from him. I can’t tell you what it was, it was frightful. He came nearer and nearer and kept on insisting that I must take it, but I was so frightened that I always ran away and did not take it.” As he said this he turned pale and began to tremble with fear. When at last I succeeded in calming him down, he said, “This man tried to make me take a sin.” “But what sort of a sin?” I asked. The boy stood up, looked suspiciously all round him, and then whispered, “It was murder” ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 137

When he was eight years old he had, as I mentioned above, made a violent attack on his sister. Later, the attacks of fear continued, but the vision changed. The terrible man did not return; but in his stead there appeared the figure of a nun, a sort of nurse. At first her face was veiled, but later it was unveiled, revealing a most terrifying expression, a pale, deathlike face. Between the ages of nine and twelve he was haunted by this figure. The fits of rage, despite his growing irritability, ceased, but the manifest epileptic attacks began to appear instead. Clearly, the vision of the nun signified the changing of the incompatible criminal tendency symbolized by the bearded man into obvious disease ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 137

Sometimes such cases are still mainly functional and not yet organic, so that it is possible to do something for them with psychotherapy. That is why I have mentioned this case in some detail. It may give some idea of what goes on in the child’s mind behind the scenes ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 138

The fourth group comprises the various forms of Psychosis. Although such cases are not common among children, one can find at least the first stages of that pathological mental development which later, after puberty, leads to schizophrenia in all its manifold forms. As a rule these children behave in a strange and even bizarre way; they are incomprehensible, often quite un-get-at-able, hypersensitive, shut in, emotionally abnormal, being either torpid or liable to explode over the most trifling causes ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 139

I once had to examine a boy of fourteen in whom sexual activity had begun suddenly and somewhat prematurely in a rather disquieting way, so that it disturbed his sleep and upset his general health. The trouble began when the boy went to a dance and a certain girl refused to dance with him. He went away in high dudgeon. When he got home he tried to learn his school lessons, but found it was impossible because of a mounting and indescribable emotion compounded of fear, rage, and despair, which took hold of him more and more until at last he rushed out into the garden and rolled on the ground in an almost unconscious condition. After a couple of hours the emotion passed and the sexual trouble began. There were several cases of schizophrenia in this boy’s family. This is a typical pathological emotion characteristic of children with a bad family inheritance ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 140

The fifth group consists of Neurotic Children. It is of course quite beyond the scope of a single lecture to describe all the symptoms and forms of a childhood neurosis. Anything may be found, ranging from abnormally naughty behaviour to definitely hysterical attacks and states. The trouble can be apparently physical, for instance hysterical fever or abnormally low temperature, convulsions, paralysis, pain, digestive disturbances, etc., or it can be mental and moral, taking the form of excitement or depression, lying, sexual perversion, stealing, and so forth ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 141

I remember the case of a little girl of four who had suffered from the most chronic constipation since the first year of her life. She had already undergone every imaginable and unimaginable kind of physical treatment. All were useless, because the doctors overlooked the one important factor in the child’s life, namely her mother. As soon as I saw the mother I realized that she was the real cause, and so I suggested treating her and advised her at the same time to give up the child. Another person took the mother’s place, and the next day the trouble was gone, and did not return, as I was able to follow up the case for many years afterward. The solution of this problem was quite simple as regards the child, though of course it would not have been so had not the pathogenic influence coming from the mother been removed through analysis. The little girl was a youngest child, the regular pet of a neurotic mother. The latter projected all her phobias onto the child and surrounded her with so much anxious care that she was never free from tension, and such a state is notoriously unfavourable to the peristaltic function ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 141

To analyse children is a most difficult and delicate task. The conditions under which we have to work are altogether different from those governing the analysis of grown-ups. The child has a special psychology. Just as its body during the embryonic period is part of the mother’s body, so its mind is for many years part of the parents’ mental atmosphere. That explains why so many neuroses of children are more symptoms of the mental condition of the parents than a genuine illness of the child. Only a very little of the child’s psychic life is its own; for the most part it is still dependent on that of the parents. Such dependence is normal, and to disturb it is injurious to the natural growth of the child’s mind. It is therefore understandable that premature and indelicate enlightenment on the facts of sex can have a disastrous effect on his relations with his parents, and such an effect is almost inevitable if you base your analysis on the dogma that the relations between parents and children are necessarily sexual ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 143

It is no less unjustifiable to give the so-called Oedipus complex the status of a prime cause. The Oedipus complex is a symptom. Just as any strong attachment to a person or a thing may be described as a “marriage,” and just as the primitive mind can express almost anything by using a sexual metaphor, so the regressive tendency of a child may be described in sexual terms as an “incestuous longing for the mother.” But it is no more than a figurative way of speaking. The word “incest” has a definite meaning, and designates a definite thing, and as a general rule can only be applied to an adult who is psychologically incapable of linking his sexuality to its proper object. To apply the same term to the difficulties in the development of a child’s consciousness is highly misleading ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 144

This is not to say that sexual precocity does not exist. But such cases are distinctly exceptional and abnormal, and there is nothing to justify the doctor in extending the concepts of pathology to the sphere of the normal. Just as it is hardly permissible to call blushing a skin disease, or joy a fit of madness, so cruelty is not necessarily sadism, pleasure is not necessarily lust, and firmness is not necessarily sexual repression ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para CW17 ¶ 145

I was called in to deal with four children. In each case the history pointed back unmistakably to the mother’s secret. Eventually I learned her story. She was a talented, vivacious woman, who in her young days had received a strict, very one-sided and narrow education. With the utmost severity towards herself and with remarkable strength of character she had adhered all her life to the principles implanted in her, and allowed herself no exceptions. She had not long been married when she got to know a friend of her husband’s, and fell obviously in love with him. It was equally obvious to her that this love was fully reciprocated. But her principles made no provision for such an eventuality, therefore it had no right to exist. She always behaved as if nothing were amiss, and she kept up the part for over twenty years until the death of this man, with never a word spoken on either side. Her relations with her husband were distant and correct. In later years she suffered from periodic melancholia ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 152

Naturally such a state of affairs could not fail to create a very oppressive atmosphere in the home, and nothing influences children more than these silent facts in the background. They have an extremely contagious effect on the children. The daughters unconsciously imitated their mother’s attitude, while the sons sought compensation by remaining, as it were, unconscious lovers, the unconscious love being over-compensated by their conscious rejection of women ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 153

I think that an all-round conscious realization of the situation and its implications would have had a salutary effect. Conscious realization prevents the unmentionable atmosphere, the general cluelessness, the blank disregard of the troublesome object; in short, it stops the painful content from being repressed. And though this may seem to cause the individual more suffering, he is at least suffering meaningfully and from something real ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 154

Repression has the apparent advantage of clearing the conscious mind of worry, and the spirit of all its troubles, but, to counter that, it causes an indirect suffering from something unreal, namely a neurosis. Neurotic suffering is an unconscious fraud and has no moral merit, as has real suffering. Apart, however, from producing a neurosis the repressed cause of the suffering has other effects: it radiates out into the environment and, if there are children, infects them too. In this way neurotic states are often passed on from generation to generation, like the curse of Atreus. The children are infected indirectly through the attitude they instinctively adopt towards their parents’ state of mind: either they fight against it with unspoken protest (though occasionally the protest is vociferous) or else they succumb to a paralysing and compulsive imitation. In both cases they are obliged to do, to feel, and to live not as they want, but as their parents want ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 154

The more “impressive” the parents are, and the less they accept their own problems (mostly on the excuse of “sparing the children”), the longer the children will have to suffer from the unlived life of their parents and the more they will be forced into fulfilling all the things the parents have repressed and kept unconscious. It is not a question of the parents having to be “perfect” in order to have no deleterious effects on their children. If they really were perfect, it would be a positive catastrophe, for the children would then have no alternative but moral inferiority, unless of course they chose to fight the parents with their own weapons, that is, copy them. But this trick only postpones the final reckoning till the third generation ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 154

The repressed problems and the suffering thus fraudulently avoided secrete an insidious poison which seeps into the soul of the child through the thickest walls of silence and through the whited sepulchres of deceit, complacency, and evasion. The child is helplessly exposed to the psychic influence of the parents and is bound to copy their self-deception, their insincerity, hypocrisy, cowardice, self-righteousness, and selfish regard for their own comfort, just as wax takes up the imprint of the seal. The only thing that can save the child from unnatural injury is the efforts of the parents not to shirk the psychic difficulties of life by deceitful manoeuvres or by remaining artificially unconscious, but rather to accept them as tasks, to be as honest with themselves as possible, and to shed a beam of light into the darkest corners of their souls. If they can confess to an understanding ear, so much the better. If for certain reasons they cannot, that is admittedly an aggravation, but not a disadvantage on the contrary, it is often an advantage, for they are then forced to cope unaided with the thing that is most difficult for them ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 154

The collective unconscious is a problem that seldom enters into practical work with children: their problem lies mainly in adapting themselves to their surroundings. Indeed, their connection with the primordial unconsciousness must be severed, as its persistence would present a formidable obstacle to the development of consciousness, which is what they need more than anything else. But if I were discussing the psychology of people beyond middle life, I should have a good deal more to say about the significance of the collective unconscious. You should always bear in mind that our psychology varies not only according to the momentary predominance of certain instinctive impulses and certain complexes, but according to the individual’s life phase. You should be careful, therefore, not to impute an adult’s psychology to a child. You cannot treat a child as you would an adult. Above all, the work can never be as systematic as with adults. A real, systematic dream-analysis is hardly possible, because with children the unconscious should not be stressed unnecessarily: one can easily arouse an unwholesome curiosity, or induce an abnormal precociousness and self-consciousness, by going into psychological details which are of interest only to the adult ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 211

When you have to handle difficult children, it is better to keep your knowledge of psychology to yourself, as simplicity and common sense are what they need most. Your analytical knowledge should serve your own attitude as an educator first of all, because it is a well-known fact that children have an almost uncanny instinct for the teacher’s personal shortcomings. They know the false from the true far better than one likes to admit. Therefore the teacher should watch his own psychic condition, so that he can spot the source of the trouble when anything goes wrong with the children entrusted to his care. He himself may easily be the unconscious cause of evil. Naturally we must not be too naïve in this matter: there are people, doctors as well as teachers, who secretly believe that a person in authority has the right to behave just as he likes, and that it is up to the child to adapt as best he may, because sooner or later he will have to adapt to real life which will treat him no better ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 211

The psychology of children’s neuroses can only be described very inadequately in general systematic terms, for, with few exceptions, the unique or individual features are overwhelmingly preponderant, as is usually also the case with the neuroses of adults. Here as there diagnoses and classifications have little meaning when weighed against the individual peculiarity of each case ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 212

The mother finally admitted to the psychologist that she and her husband did not get on together, but said that they never discussed their difficulties in front of the child, who was completely unconscious of them. The mother wanted a divorce, but could not make up her mind to face the upheaval it would involve. So everything remained in mid air, and in the meantime the parents made no effort to solve any of the difficulties causing their unhappiness. Both of them had an unduly possessive attachment to the child, who in turn had a terrific father-complex. She slept in her father’s room in a little bed next to his and got into his bed in the mornings. She gave the following dream: ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 216

Several times she had dreams about Granny. Once Granny was all mouth, wide open. Another time she dreamt of “a big snake, which came out from under my bed and played with me.” She often spoke of the snake dream, and had one or two others like it. The dream about her Granny she told with reluctance, but then confessed that every time her father went away she was frightened he would never come back. She had sized up her parents’ situation, and told the psychologist that she knew her mother did not like her father, but she did not want to talk about it, “because it would make them feel bad.” When her father was away on business trips she was always afraid he would leave them. She had also noticed that her mother was always happier then. The mother realized that she was no help to the child, but on the contrary only made her ill by leaving the situation unsolved ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 217

The parents had either to tackle their difficulties together and try to come to a real understanding, or, if this should prove impossible, decide to separate. Eventually, they chose the latter course, and explained the situation to the child. The mother had been convinced that a separation would harm the child, instead of which her health improved as soon as the real situation came out into the open. She was told that she would not be parted from either parent but would have two homes instead; and although a divided home seems a poor arrangement for any child, her relief at no longer being a prey to vague fears and forebodings was so great that she returned to normal health and to real enjoyment of school and play ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 217

A case like this is often a great puzzle to the general practitioner. He looks in vain for an organic cause of the trouble, not knowing that he ought to look elsewhere, for no medical textbook would admit the possibility that psychic difficulties between father and mother could be responsible for the child’s subnormal temperature. But to the analyst such causes are by no means unknown or strange. The child is so much a part of the psychological atmosphere of the parents that secret and unsolved problems between them can influence its health profoundly. The participation mystique, or primitive identity, causes the child to feel the conflicts of the parents and to suffer from them as if they were its own. It is hardly ever the open conflict or the manifest difficulty that has such a poisonous effect, but almost always parental problems that have been kept hidden or allowed to become unconscious. The author of these neurotic disturbances is, without exception, the unconscious. Things that hang in the air and are vaguely felt by the child, the oppressive atmosphere of apprehension and foreboding, these slowly seep into the child’s soul like a poisonous vapour, ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 217

What this child seemed to feel most was the unconscious of her father. If a man has no real relations with his wife, then obviously he seeks another outlet. And if he is not conscious of what he is seeking, or if he represses fantasies of that kind, his interest will regress on the one side to the memory-image of his mother, and on the other side it invariably fastens on his daughter, if there is one. This is what might be called unconscious incest. You can hardly hold a man responsible for his unconsciousness, but the fact remains that in this matter nature knows neither patience nor pity, and takes her revenge directly or indirectly through illness and unlucky accidents of all kinds. Unfortunately, it is almost a collective ideal for men and women to be as unconscious as possible in the ticklish affairs of love. But behind the mask of respectability and faithfulness the full fury of neglected love falls upon the children. You cannot blame the ordinary individual, as you cannot expect people to know the attitude they ought to adopt and how they are to solve their love problems within the framework of present-day ideals and conventions. Mostly they know only the negative measures of negligence, procrastination, suppression, and repression. And to know of anything better is admittedly very difficult ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 218

The dream about the grandmother shows how the unconscious psychology of the father is penetrating that of the child. It is he who wishes to kiss his mother, and the child feels forced to kiss her in the dream. The grandmother who is “all mouth” suggests swallowing and devouring ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 219

This is the manifestation of an archetype, namely that of the deadly, devouring mother. Cf. the fairytales of Red Riding Hood and of Hansel and Gretel, and the South Seas myth of Maui and Hine-nui-te-po, the tribal ancestress who sleeps with her mouth open. Maui creeps into the mouth and is swallowed ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 219

Obviously the child is in danger of being swallowed by her father’s regressive libido. That is why she dreams of the snake; for the snake, since ancient times, has always been the symbol of danger: of being caught in coils, or swallowed, or poisoned. This case also shows how apt children are to see very much more than their parents suspect. It is of course not possible for parents to have no complexes at all. That would be superhuman. But they should at least come to terms with them consciously; they should make it a duty to work out their inner difficulties for the sake of the children. They should not take the easy road of repressing them in order to avoid painful discussions. The love problem is part of mankind’s heavy toll of suffering, and nobody should be ashamed of having to pay his tribute. It is a thousand times better in every respect for parents frankly to discuss their problems, instead of leaving their complexes to fester in the unconscious ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 219

Nothing is more stunting than the efforts of a mother to embody herself in her child, without ever considering that a child is not a mere appendage, but a new and individual creature, often furnished with a character which is not in the least like that of the parents and sometimes seems to be quite frighteningly alien. The reason for this is that children are only nominally descended from their parents, but are actually born from the ancestral stock. Occasionally you have to go back several hundred years to see the family likeness ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 222

The structure of the psyche is not unipolar. Just as sex is a force that sways man with its compelling impulses, so there is a natural force of self-assertion in him which enables him to resist emotional explosions. Even among primitives we find the severest restrictions imposed not only on sex but on other instincts too, without there being any need of the Ten Commandments or of the precepts of the catechism ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 156

All restrictions on the blind operation of sex derive from the instinct of self-preservation, which is what Adler’s self-assertion amounts to in practice. Unfortunately, Adler in his turn goes too far and, by almost entirely neglecting the Freudian point of view, falls into the same error of one-sidedness and exaggeration. His psychology is the psychology of all the self-assertive tendencies in the human psyche. I admit that a one-sided truth has the advantage of simplicity, but whether it is an adequate hypothesis is another matter. We ought to be able to see that there is much in the psyche that depends on sex sometimes, indeed, everything; but that at other times very little depends on sex and nearly everything on the instinct of self-preservation, or the power instinct, as Adler called it ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 156

Both Freud and Adler make the mistake of assuming the continuous operation of one and the same instinct, as though it were a chemical component that was always present in the same quantity, like the two hydrogen atoms in water. If that were the case, man would be mainly sexual, according to Freud, and mainly self-assertive, according to Adler. But he cannot be both at the same time ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 156

Everyone knows that the instincts vary in intensity. Sometimes sex predominates, sometimes self-assertion or some other instinct. That is the simple fact which both investigators have overlooked. When sex predominates, everything becomes sexualized, since everything then expresses or serves the sexual purpose. When hunger predominates, practically everything has to be explained in terms of food ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 156

Why do we say, “Don’t take him seriously, it’s his bad day today”? Because we know that a man’s psychology can be profoundly altered by a bad mood. This is even more true when dealing with powerful instincts. Freud and Adler can easily be reconciled if only we will take the trouble to regard the psyche not as a rigid and unalterable system, but as a fluid stream of events which change kaleidoscopically under the alternating influence of different instincts. Hence we may have to explain a man on the Freudian basis before his marriage, and on the Adlerian basis afterwards, which common sense has done all along ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 156

As soon as the discussion comes to grips with the problem of instinct, everything gets into a dreadful muddle. How are we to distinguish the instincts from one another? How many instincts are there? What are instincts anyway? Thus you immediately get involved in biology and find yourself in more of a muddle than ever. I would therefore advise restriction to the psychological sphere without any assumptions as to the nature of the underlying biological process. The day may come when the biologist, and maybe even the physiologist, will be able to reach out his hand to the psychologist at the point where they meet after tunnelling from opposite sides through the mountain of the unknown. In the meantime, we must learn to be a little more modest in the face of the psychological facts: instead of knowing so exactly that certain things are “nothing but” sex or “nothing but” the will to power, we should take them more at their face value ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 157

Consider religious experience, for instance. Can science be so sure that there is no such thing as a “religious instinct”? Can we really suppose that the religious phenomenon is nothing but a secondary function based on the repression of sex? Can anyone show us those “normal” peoples or races who are free from such silly repressions? But if no one can point to any race, or even a tribe, which is quite free from religious phenomena, then I really do not see how one can justify the argument that religious phenomena are not genuine and are merely repressions of sex. Moreover, has not history provided us with plenty of examples where sex is actually an integral part of religious experience? The same is true of art, which is likewise supposed to be the result of sexual repressions, although even animals have aesthetic and artistic instincts ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 157

This ridiculous and well-nigh pathological exaggeration of the importance of sex is itself a symptom of the contemporary spiritual unbalance, owing chiefly to the fact that our age lacks a true understanding of sexuality. Whenever an instinct has been underrated, an abnormal overvaluation is bound to follow. And the more unjust the undervaluation the more unhealthy the subsequent overvaluation. As a matter of fact, no moral condemnation could make sex as hateful as the obscenity and blatant vulgarity of those who exaggerate its importance. The intellectual crudeness of the sexual interpretation makes a right valuation of sex impossible. Thus, probably very much against the personal aspirations of Freud himself, the literature that has followed in his wake is effectively carrying on the work of repression. Before Freud nothing was allowed to be sexual, now everything is nothing but sexual ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 157

Father and mother are, whether we know it or not, replaced by something analogous to themif, that is to say, we succeed in detaching ourselves from them at all. The detachment is possible only if we can step on to the next level. For example, the place of the father is now taken by the doctor, a phenomenon which Freud called the “transference.” But in the place of the mother there is substituted the wisdom of a doctrine. And indeed the great prototype in the Middle Ages was the substitution of Mother Church for the family ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 158

In recent times worldly allegiances have taken the place of the spiritual organization of society, for to remain a permanent member of the family has very undesirable psychic consequences and is for that reason rendered impossible even in primitive society by the initiation ceremonies. Man needs a wider community than the family, in whose leading-strings he will be stunted both spiritually and morally. If he is burdened with too much family, if, in later life, his tie to the parents is too strong, he will simply transfer the parental tie to the family he himself has raised (if he ever gets that far), thus creating for his own progeny the same suffocating psychic atmosphere from which he suffered in his youth ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 158

Whatever the shortsighted and doctrinaire rationalist may say about the meaning of culture, the fact remains that there is a culture-creating spirit. This spirit is a living spirit and not a mere rationalizing intellect. Accordingly, it makes use of a religious symbolism superordinate to reason, and where this symbolism is lacking or has met with incomprehension, things can only go badly with us. Once we have lost the capacity to orient ourselves by religious truth, there is absolutely nothing which can deliver man from his original biological bondage to the family, as he will simply transfer his infantile principles, uncorrected, to the world at large, and will find there a father who, so far from guiding him, leads him to perdition ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 159

The first and simplest method is the Association Method. I do not think I need go into details here, as this method has been known for the last fifty years. Its principle is to discover the main complexes through disturbances in the association experiment. As an introduction to analytical psychology and to the symptomatology of complexes, this method is recommended for every beginner ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 175

The second method, Symptom-Analysis, has a merely historical value and was given up by Freud, its originator, long ago. By means of hypnotic suggestion it was attempted to get the patient to reproduce the memories underlying certain pathological symptoms. The method works very well in all cases where a shock, a psychic injury, or a trauma is the chief cause of the neurosis. It was on this method that Freud based his earlier trauma theory of hysteria. But since most cases of hysteria are not of traumatic origin, this theory was soon discarded along with its method of investigation. In a case of shock the method can have a therapeutic effect through “abreaction” of the traumatic content. During and after the first world war it was useful in treating shell-shock and similar disorders ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 176

The third method, Anamnestic Analysis, is of greater importance as a method both of investigation and of therapy. In practice it consists in a careful anamnesis or reconstruction of the historical development of the neurosis. The material elicited in this way is a more or less coherent sequence of facts told to the doctor by the patient, so far as he can remember them. He naturally omits many details which either seem unimportant to him or which he has forgotten. The experienced analyst who knows the usual course of neurotic development will put questions which help the patient to fill in some of the gaps. Very often this procedure by itself is of great therapeutic value, as it enables the patient to understand the chief factors of his neurosis and may eventually bring him to a decisive change of attitude. It is of course as unavoidable as it is necessary for the doctor not only to ask questions, but to give hints and explanations in order to point out important connections of which the patient is unconscious ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 177

While serving as an officer in the Swiss Army Medical Corps, I often had occasion to use this anamnestic method. For instance, there was a nineteen-year-old recruit who reported sick. When I saw the young man he told me straight out that he was suffering from inflammation of the kidneys and that it was the cause of his pains. I wondered how he knew his diagnosis so definitely, whereupon he said that an uncle of his had the same trouble and the same pains in the back.

The examination, however, revealed no trace of organic disease. It was obviously a neurosis. I asked for his previous history. The main fact was that the young man had lost both parents rather early and now lived with the uncle he had just mentioned.

This uncle was his foster-father, of whom he was very fond. The day before he reported sick he received a letter from his uncle, telling him that he was laid up again with nephritis. The letter affected him unpleasantly and he threw it away at once, without realizing the true cause of the emotion he was trying to repress. Actually, he was very much afraid lest his foster-father should die, and this put him in mind again of his grief at the loss of his parents.

As soon as he realized this he had a violent fit of weeping, with the result that he joined the ranks again next morning. It was a case of identification with the uncle, which was uncovered by the anamnesis. The realization of his suppressed emotions had a therapeutic effect ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 177

A similar case was that of another recruit, who for weeks before I saw him had been having medical treatment for stomach trouble. I suspected that he was neurotic. The anamnesis revealed that the trouble began when he heard the news that his aunt, who was like a mother to him, had to undergo an operation for cancer of the stomach.

Here again the uncovering of the hidden connection had curative results. Simple cases of this kind are quite common, and are accessible to anamnestic analysis. In addition to the favourable effect produced by the realization of previously unconscious connections, it is usual for the doctor to give some good advice, or encouragement, or even a reproof ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 178

Anamnestic analysis is the best practical method for the treatment of neurotic children. With children you cannot very well apply the method of dream-analysis, as it penetrates deep into the unconscious. In the majority of cases you have simply to clear away certain obstacles, and this can be done without much technical knowledge. Generally speaking, a child’s neurosis would be a very simple matter were it not that there is an invariable connection between it and the wrong attitude of the parents. This complication buttresses the child’s neurosis against all therapeutic intervention ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 179

The fourth method is the Analysis of the Unconscious. Despite the fact that anamnestic analysis can reveal certain facts of which the patient is unconscious, it is not what Freud would have called “psychoanalysis.” In reality there is a remarkable difference between the two methods. The anamnestic method, as I pointed out, deals with conscious contents, or with contents ready for reproduction, while the analysis of the unconscious only begins when the conscious material is exhausted.

I beg to point out that I do not call this fourth method “psychoanalysis,” as I wish to leave that term entirely to the Freudians. What they understand by psychoanalysis is no mere technique, but a method which is dogmatically bound up with and based upon Freud’s sexual theory. When Freud publicly declared that psychoanalysis and his sexual theory were indissolubly wedded, I was obliged to strike out on a different path, as I was unable to endorse his one-sided views. That is also the reason why I prefer to call this fourth method the analysis of the unconscious ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 180

The anamnestic method often serves as an introduction to the fourth method, [analysis of the unconscious]. By careful examination of his conscious mind you get to know your patient; you establish what the old hypnotists used to call “rapport.” This personal contact is of prime importance, because it forms the only safe basis from which to tackle the unconscious

. This is a factor that is frequently overlooked, and when it is neglected it may easily lead to all sorts of blunders. Even the most experienced judge of human psychology cannot possibly know the psyche of another individual, so he must depend upon goodwill, i.e., good contact with the patient, and trust him to tell the analyst when anything goes wrong ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 181

Very often misunderstandings occur right at the beginning of the treatment, sometimes through no fault of the doctor. Owing to the very nature of his neurosis, the patient will harbour all kinds of prejudices which are often the direct cause of his neurosis and help to keep it alive. If these misunderstandings are not thoroughly cleared up, they can easily leave behind them a feeling of resentment which reduces all your subsequent efforts to nothing ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 181

Of course, if you begin the analysis with a fixed belief in some theory which purports to know all about the nature of neurosis, you apparently make your task very much easier; but you are nevertheless in danger of riding roughshod over the real psychology of your patient and of disregarding his individuality. I have seen any number of cases where the cure was hindered by theoretical considerations. Without exception the failure was due to lack of contact.

It is only the most scrupulous observation of this rule that can prevent unforeseen catastrophes. So long as you feel the human contact, the atmosphere of mutual confidence, there is no danger; and even if you have to face the terrors of insanity, or the shadowy menace of suicide, there is still that area of human faith, that certainty of understanding and of being understood, no matter how black the night ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 181

It is by no means easy to establish such a contact, and you cannot achieve it at all except by a careful comparison of both points of view and by mutual freedom from prejudice. Mistrust on either side is a bad beginning, and so is the forcible breaking down of resistances through persuasion or other coercive measures. Even conscious suggestion as part of the analytical procedure is a mistake, because the patient’s feeling of being free to make up his own mind must at all costs be preserved ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 181

Whenever I discover the slightest trace of mistrust or resistance I try to take it with the utmost seriousness so as to give the patient a chance to re-establish the contact. The patient should always have a firm foothold in his conscious relation to the doctor, who in his turn needs that contact if he is to be sufficiently informed about the actual state of the patient’s consciousness.

He needs this knowledge for very practical reasons. Without it, he would not be able to understand his patient’s dreams correctly. Therefore, not only in the beginning, but during the whole course of an analysis the personal contact must be the main point of observation, because it alone can prevent extremely disagreeable and surprising discoveries, as well as fatal issues so far as is humanly possible. And not only that, it is above all else a means for correcting the false attitude of the patient, in such a way that he does not feel he is being persuaded against his will or actually outwitted ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 181

I should like to give you an illustration of this. A young man of about thirty, obviously very clever and highly intellectual, came to see me, not, he said, for treatment, but only in order to ask one question. He produced a voluminous manuscript, which, so he said, contained the history and analysis of his case. He called it a compulsion neurosis quite correctly, as I saw when I read the document. It was a sort of psychoanalytical autobiography, most intelligently worked out and showing really remarkable insight. It was a regular scientific treatise, based on wide reading and a thorough study of the literature.

I congratulated him on his achievement and asked him what he had really come for. “Well,” he said, “you have read what I have written. Can you tell me why, with all my insight, I am still as neurotic as ever? In theory I should be cured, as I have recalled even my earliest memories. I have read of many people who, with infinitely less insight than I have, were nevertheless cured. Why should I be an exception? Please tell me what it is I have overlooked or am still repressing” ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 182

I told him I could not at the moment see any reason why his really astonishing insight had not touched his neurosis. “But,” I said, “allow me to ask you for a little more information about yourself personally.” “With pleasure,” he replied. So I went on: “You mention in your autobiography that you often spend the winter in Nice and the summer in St. Moritz.

I take it that you are the son of wealthy parents?” “Oh, no,” he said, “they are not wealthy at all.” “Then no doubt you have made your money yourself?” “Oh, no,” he replied, smiling. “But how is it then?” I asked with some hesitation. “Oh, that does not matter,” he said, “I got the money from a woman, she is thirty-six, a teacher in a council school.” And he added, “It’s a liaison, you know” ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 182

As a matter of fact this woman, who was a few years older than himself, lived in very modest circumstances on her meagre earnings as a teacher. She saved the money by stinting herself, naturally in the hope of a later marriage, which this delightful gentleman was not even remotely contemplating. “Don’t you think,” I asked, “that the fact that you are financially supported by this poor woman might be one of the chief reasons why you are not yet cured?”

But he laughed at what he called my absurd moral innuendo, which according him had nothing to do with the scientific structure of his neurosis. “Moreover,” he said, “I have discussed this point with her, and we are both agreed that it is of no importance.” “So you think that by the mere fact of having discussed this situation you have talked the other fact the fact of your being supported by a poor woman out of existence?

Do you imagine you have any lawful right to the money jingling in your pockets?” Whereupon he rose and indignantly left the room, muttering something about moral prejudices. He was one of the many who believe that morals have nothing to do with neurosis and that sinning on purpose is not sinning at all, because it can be intellectualized out of existence ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 182

Obviously I had to tell this young gentleman what I thought of him. If we could have reached agreement on this point, treatment would have been possible. But if we had begun our work by ignoring the impossible basis of his life, it would have been useless. With views like his only a criminal can adapt to life. But this patient was not really a criminal, only a so-called intellectual who believed so much in the power of reason that he even thought he could unthink a wrong he had committed.

I believe firmly in the power and dignity of the intellect, but only if it does not violate the feeling-values. These are not just infantile resistances. This example shows what a decisive factor the personal contact is ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 183

Thus we apply a largely reductive point of view in all cases where it is a question of illusions, fictions, and exaggerated attitudes. On the other hand, a constructive point of view must be considered for all cases where the conscious attitude is more or less normal, but capable of greater development and refinement, or where unconscious tendencies, also capable of development, are being misunderstood and kept under by the conscious mind ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 195

The reductive standpoint is the distinguishing feature of Freudian interpretation. It always leads back to the primitive and elementary. The constructive standpoint, on the other hand, tries to synthesize, to build up, to direct one’s gaze forwards. It is less pessimistic than the other, which is always on the look-out for the morbid and thus tries to break down something complicated into something simple. It may occasionally be necessary for the treatment to destroy pathological structures; but treatment consists just as often, or even oftener, in strengthening and protecting what is healthy and worth preserving, so as to deprive the morbidities of any foothold ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 195

You can, if you like, regard not only every dream, but every symptom of illness, every characteristic, every manifestation of life from the reductive point of view, and thus arrive at the possibility of a negative judgment. If you go far enough back in your investigations, then we are all descended from thieves and murderers, and it is easy to show how all humility is rooted in spiritual pride, and every virtue in its corresponding vice.

Which point of view he shall decide to adopt in any given case must be left to the insight and experience of the analyst. He will avail himself now of the one and now of the other in accordance with his knowledge of the character and conscious situation of his patient Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 195

As in all practical work with psychology, mere intellect is not enough; one also needs feeling, because otherwise the exceedingly important feeling-values of the dream are neglected. Without these, dream-analysis is impossible. As the dream is dreamed by the whole man, it follows that anyone who tries to interpret the dream must be engaged as a whole man too. “Ars totum requirit hominem, ” says an old alchemist.

Understanding and knowledge there must be, but they should not set themselves up above the heart, which in its turn must not give way to sentiment. All in all, dream-interpretation is an art, like diagnosis, surgery, and therapeutics in general difficult, but capable of being learned by those whose gift and destiny it is ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 198

Such is the material you have to deal with in the first part of a practical analysis. Some of these unconscious contents have the special quality of being actively repressed by the conscious mind. Through the more or less deliberate withdrawal of attention from certain conscious contents, and through active resistance to them, they are eventually expelled from consciousness.

A continual mood of resistance keeps these contents artificially below the threshold of potential consciousness. This is a regular occurrence in hysteria. It is the beginning of the personality split which is one of the most conspicuous features of this illness. Despite the fact that repression also occurs in relatively normal individuals, the total loss of repressed memories is a pathological symptom, ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 199

Repression, however, should be clearly distinguished from suppression. Whenever you want to switch your attention from something in order to concentrate it on something else, you have to suppress the previously existing contents of consciousness, because, if you cannot disregard them, you will not be able to change your object of interest. Normally you can go back to the suppressed contents any time you like; they are always recoverable.

But if they resist recovery, it may be a case of repression. In that case there must be some interest somewhere which wants to forget. Suppression does not cause forgetting, but repression definitely does. There is of course a perfectly normal process of forgetting which has nothing to do with repression, ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para CW17: 199a 199

Repression is an artificial loss of memory, a self-suggested amnesia. It is not, in my experience, justifiable to assume that the unconscious consists wholly or for the greater part of repressed material. Repression is an exceptional and abnormal process, and the most striking evidence of this is the loss of feeling-toned contents, which one might think would persist in consciousness and remain easily recoverable. It can have effects very similar to those produced by concussion and by other brain injuries (e.g., by poisoning), for these cause an equally striking loss of memory.

But whereas in the latter case absolutely all memories of a certain period are affected, repression causes what is called a systematic amnesia, where only specific memories or groups of ideas are withdrawn from recollection. In such cases a certain attitude or tendency can be detected on the part of the conscious mind, a deliberate intention to avoid even the bare possibility of recollection, for the very good reason that it would be painful or disagreeable, CW17: 199a ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 199

The idea of repression is quite in place here. This phenomenon can be observed most easily in the association experiment, where certain stimulus words hit the feeling-toned complexes. When they are touched, lapses or falsifications of memory (amnesia or paramnesia) are very common occurrences. Generally the complexes have to do with unpleasant things which one would rather forget and of which one has no wish to be reminded. The complexes themselves are the result, as a rule, of painful experiences and impressions, ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 199

These principles are not, in my experience, reversible. But even in the very common phenomenon of repression the antinomial principle is already at work, since the principle “The chief mechanism of neurosis lies in repression” must be reversed because instead of repression we often find its exact opposite, the drawing away of a content, its subtraction or abduction, which corresponds to the “loss of soul” so frequently observed among primitives. “Loss of soul” is not due to repression but is clearly a species of seizure, and is therefore explained as sorcery. These phenomena, originally belonging to the realm of magic, have not by any means died out in so-called civilized people ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 204

A general theory of neurosis is therefore a premature undertaking, because our grasp of the facts is still far from complete. Comparative research into the unconscious has only begun ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 205

Prematurely conceived theories are not without their dangers. Thus the theory of repression, whose validity in a definite field of pathology is incontestable up to the point where it has to be reversed! Has been extended to creative processes, and the creation of culture relegated to second place, as a mere ersatz product.

At the same time the wholeness and healthiness of the creative function is seen in the murky light of neurosis, which is of course an undoubted product of repression in many cases. In this way creativity becomes indistinguishable from morbidity, and the creative individual immediately suspects himself of some kind of illness, while the neurotic has lately begun to believe that his neurosis is an art, or at least a source of art.

These would-be artists, however, develop one characteristic symptom: they one and all shun psychology like the plague, because they are terrified that this monster will gobble up their so-called artistic ability. As if a whole army of psychologists could do anything against the power of a god! ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 206

True productivity is a spring that can never be stopped up. Is there any trickery on earth which could have prevented Mozart or Beethoven from creating? Creative power is mightier than its possessor. If it is not so, then it is a feeble thing, and given favourable conditions will nourish an endearing talent, but no more.

If, on the other hand, it is a neurosis, it often takes only a word or a look for the illusion to go up in smoke. Then the supposed poet can no longer write, and the painter’s ideas become fewer and drearier than ever, and for all this psychology is to blame.

I should be delighted if a knowledge of psychology did have this sanative effect and if it put an end to the neuroticism which makes contemporary art such an unenjoyable problem. Disease has never yet fostered creative work; on the contrary, it is the most formidable obstacle to creation. No breaking down of repressions can ever destroy true creativeness, just as no analysis can ever exhaust the unconscious ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 206

In every case it seems to be the discharge of energy-tension, whether external or internal, which produces consciousness. Many, though not all, of the earliest memories of infancy still retain traces of these sudden flashes of consciousness. Like the records handed down from the dawn of history, some of them are remnants of real happenings, others are purely mythical; in other words, some were objective in origin, and some subjective. The latter are often extremely symbolical and of great importance for the subsequent psychic life of the individual ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 207

The gifted child may even be notoriously absent-minded, have his head full of other things, be indolent, slovenly, inattentive, badly behaved, self-willed, or evoke the impression of being half asleep. From external observation alone it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the gifted child from a mental defective ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 235

Nor should we forget that gifted children are not always precocious, but may on the contrary develop slowly, so that the gift remains latent for a long time. The giftedness can then be spotted only with difficulty. On the other hand too much goodwill and optimism on the part of the teacher can imagine talents that later turn out to be blanks, as in the biography which says: “No signs of genius were observable up to his fortieth yearn or indeed afterwards” ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 236

Sometimes the only thing that helps in diagnosing a gift is careful observation of the child’s individuality both in school and at home, which alone enables us to see what is primary disposition and what is secondary reaction. In the gifted child inattentiveness, absent-mindedness, and day-dreaming may prove to be a secondary defense against outside influences, in order that the interior fantasy processes may be pursued undisturbed. Admittedly the mere existence of lively fantasies or peculiar interests is no proof of special gifts, as the same predominance of aimless fantasies and abnormal interests may also be found in the previous history of neurotics and psychotics ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 237

What does reveal the gift, however, is the nature of these fantasies. For this one must be able to distinguish an intelligent fantasy from a stupid one. A good criterion of judgment is the originality, consistency, intensity, and subtlety of the fantasy structure, as well as the latent possibility of its realization. One must also consider how far the fantasy extends into the child’s actual life, for instance in the form of hobbies systematically pursued and other interests ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 237

The psychic disposition of the gifted child always moves in violent contrasts. That is to say, it is extremely rare for the gift to affect all regions of the psyche uniformly. The general rule is that one or the other region will be so little developed as to entitle us to speak of a defect.

Above all the degree of maturity differs enormously. In the region of the gift abnormal precocity may prevail, while outside that region the mental attainment may be below normal for a child of that age. Occasionally this gives rise to a misleading picture: one thinks one is dealing with a rather undeveloped and mentally backward child and, in consequence, fails to credit him with any ability above the normal. Or it may be that a precocious intellect is not accompanied by a corresponding development of verbal facility, so that the child is driven to express himself in a seemingly confused or unintelligible way ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 238

While I am on this subject I must not omit to point out that very erroneous views used to be held at one time concerning the gift for mathematics. It was believed that the capacity for logical and abstract thought was, so to speak, incarnate in mathematics and that this was therefore the best discipline if one wanted to think logically.

But the mathematical gift, like the musical gift to which it is biologically related, is identical neither with logic nor with intellect, although it makes use of them just as all philosophy and science do. One can be musical without possessing a scrap of intellect, and in the same way astounding feats of calculation can be performed by imbeciles. Mathematical sense can be inculcated as little as can musical sense, for it is a specific gift ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 239

Fortunately, however, many gifts of the gifted child seem to have a peculiar ability to take care of themselves, and the closer a child comes to being a genius the more his creative capacity as the very word “genius” implies acts like a personality far in advance of his years, one might even say like a divine daemon who not only needs no educating, but against whom it is more necessary to protect the child. Great gifts are the fairest, and often the most dangerous, fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang on the weakest branches, which easily break ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 244

It therefore seems to me better to educate the gifted child along with the other children in a normal class, and not to underline his exceptional position by transferring him to a special class. When all is said and done, school is a part of the great world and contains in miniature all those factors which the child will encounter in later life and with which he will have to come to terms. Some at least of this necessary adaptation can and should be learnt at school. Occasional clashes are not a catastrophe. Misunderstanding is fatal only when chronic, or when the child’s sensitivity is unusually acute and there is no possibility of finding another teacher.

That often brings favourable results, but only when the cause of the trouble really does lie with the teacher. This is by no means the rule, for in many cases the teacher has to suffer for the ruin wrought by the child’s upbringing at home. Far too often parents who were unable to fulfil their own ambitions, embody them in their gifted child, whom they either pamper or else whip up into a showpiece, sometimes very much to his detriment in later years, as is sufficiently evident from the lives of certain infant prodigies ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 247

A powerful talent, and especially the Danaän gift of genius, is a fateful factor that throws its shadow early before. The genius will come through despite everything, for there is something absolute and indomitable in its nature. The so-called “misunderstood genius” is rather a doubtful phenomenon. Generally he turns out to be a good-for-nothing who is forever seeking a soothing explanation of himself. Once, in my professional capacity, I was forced to confront a “genius” of this type with the alternative: “Or perhaps you are nothing but a lazy hound?” It was not long before we found ourselves in whole-hearted agreement on this point ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 248

Talent, on the other hand, can either be hampered, crippled, and perverted, or fostered, developed, and improved. The genius is as rare a bird as the phoenix, an apparition not to be counted upon. Consciously or unconsciously, genius is something that by God’s grace is there from the start, in full strength. But talent is a statistical regularity and does not always have a dynamism to match. Like genius, it is exceedingly diverse in its forms, giving rise to individual differentiations which the educator ought not to overlook; for a differentiated personality, or one capable of differentiation, is of the utmost value to the community ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 248

The levelling down of the masses through suppression of the aristocratic or hierarchical structure natural to a community is bound, sooner or later, to lead to disaster. For, when everything outstanding is levelled down, the signposts are lost, and the longing to be led becomes an urgent necessity.

Human leadership being fallible, the leader himself has always been, and always will be, subject to the great symbolical principles, even as the individual cannot give his life point and meaning unless he puts his ego at the service of a spiritual authority superordinate to man. The need to do this arises from the fact that the ego never constitutes the whole of a man, but only the conscious part of him. The unconscious part, of unlimited extent, alone can complete him and make him a real totality ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 248

Although the institution of a trained school psychiatrist is thoroughly to be recommended and need not be a mere concession to the craze for what is technically right, I would say, in the light of my own experience, that an understanding heart is everything in a teacher, and cannot be esteemed highly enough. One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 249

Education Through Example. This kind of education can proceed wholly unconsciously and is therefore the oldest and perhaps the most effective form of all. It is aided by the fact that the child is psychologically more or less identical with its environment, and especially with its parents. This peculiarity is one of the most conspicuous features of the primitive psyche, for which the French anthropologist, Lévy-Bruhl, coined the term participation mystique.

Because unconscious education through example rests on one of the oldest psychic characteristics, it is effective where all other direct methods fail, as for instance in insanity. Many insane patients have to be made to work in order to keep them from degenerating: to give them advice, or to try to order them about, is in most cases quite useless. But if you just send them along with a group of workers, eventually they get infected by the example of the others and begin to work themselves ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 253

In the last analysis, all education rests on this fundamental fact of psychic identity, and in all cases the deciding factor is this seemingly automatic contagion through example. This is so important that even the best methods of conscious education can sometimes be completely nullified by bad example ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 253

Collective Education. By collective education I do not necessarily mean education en masse (as in schools), but education according to rules, principles, and methods. These three things are necessarily of a collective nature, since it is assumed that they are at least valid for and applicable to the large majority of individuals. It is further assumed that they are effective instruments in the hands of all those who have learnt how to manipulate them. We can take it for granted that this kind of education will not produce anything except what is already contained in its premises, and that the individuals it turns out will be moulded by general rules, principles, and methods ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 254

Collective education is indeed a necessity and cannot be replaced by anything else. We live in a collective world, and we need collective norms just as much as we need a common language. On no account must the principle of collective education be sacrificed for the sake of developing individual idiosyncrasies, however much we may desire to prevent the more valuable ones from being stifled.

We must bear in mind that individual uniqueness is not under all circumstances an asset, not even for the individual himself. When we examine the type of child who resists collective education, we often find that these children are afflicted with various psychic abnormalities, either congenital or acquired. Among them I would also include spoiled and demoralized children.

Many such children actually work out their own salvation by throwing themselves on the support of a normally functioning group. In this way they achieve a certain degree of uniformity, and can protect themselves from the injurious effects of their own individualities ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 256

I do not at all subscribe to the view that fundamentally man is always good, and that his evil qualities are merely misunderstood good. On the contrary, I hold that there are very many persons who represent such an inferior combination of inherited characteristics that it would be far better both for society and for themselves if they refrained from expressing their individual idiosyncrasies.

We can therefore claim with a clear conscience that collective education is, at bottom, of undoubted value, and absolutely sufficient for most people. We must not, however, make it the sovereign principle of education, for there exists a large group of children who require the third form of education, namely individual education ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 256

Individual Education. In applying this method, all rules, principles, and systems must be subordinated to the one purpose of bringing out the specific individuality of the pupil. This aim is directly opposed to that of collective education, which seeks to level out and make uniform. All children who successfully resist this require individual attention. Among these we naturally find the most diverse types. First of all, there are those who are ineducable as a result of pathological degeneration. These generally fall into the category of mental defectives. Then there are others who, far from being ineducable, exhibit special aptitudes, though of a peculiar or one-sided nature ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 257

The most frequent of such peculiarities is the incapacity to understand any form of mathematics not expressed in concrete numbers. For this reason higher mathematics ought always to be optional in schools, since it is in no way connected with the development of logical thinking. For these pupils, mathematics is quite meaningless, and a source of needless torment.

The truth is that mathematics presupposes a definite mental aptitude which by no means everybody possesses and which cannot be acquired. For those who do not possess it, mathematics can only be learnt by rote like a jumble of meaningless words. Such persons may be highly gifted in every other way, and may possess the capacity for logical thinking already, or can acquire it more easily through direct instruction in logic ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 257

First we assemble all the available material which the dreamer himself can give as regards the dream images. We next exclude any statements that depend upon particular theoretical assumptions, for those are generally quite arbitrary attempts at interpretation. We then inquire into the happenings of the previous day, as well as into the mood and the general plans and purposes of the dreamer in the days and weeks preceding the dream. A more or less intimate knowledge of his circumstances and character is of course a necessary prerequisite ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 263

Great care and attention must be given to this preparatory work if we want to get at the meaning of the dream. I have no faith in dream interpretations made on the spur of the moment and concocted out of some preconceived theory. One must be careful not to impose any theoretical assumptions on the dream; in fact, it is always best to proceed as if the dream had no meaning at all, so as to be on one’s guard against any possible bias ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 263

Dream-analysis may yield entirely unforeseen results, and facts of an exceedingly disagreeable nature may sometimes come to light whose discussion would certainly have been avoided at all costs had we been able to anticipate them ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 263

We may also get results that are obscure and unintelligible at first, because our conscious standpoint has still not plumbed the secrets of the psyche. In such cases it is better to adopt a waiting attitude than to attempt a forced explanation. In this kind of work one has to put up with a great many question marks ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 263

Nowadays, “personality training” has become an educational ideal that turns its back upon the standardized, mass-produced, “normal” human being demanded by the machine age. It thus pays tribute to the historical fact that the great liberating deeds of world history have sprung from leading personalities and never from the inert mass, which is at all times secondary and can only be prodded into activity by the demagogue ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 284

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

How many parents have come to me with the laudable intention of sparing their children the unhappy experiences they had to go through in their own childhood! And when I ask, “Are you quite sure you have overcome these mistakes yourself?” they are firmly convinced that the damage has long since been repaired. In actual fact it has not.

If as children they were brought up too strictly, then they spoil their own children with a tolerance bordering on bad taste; if certain matters were painfully concealed from them in childhood, these are revealed with a lack of reticence that is just as painful. They have merely gone to the opposite extreme, the strongest evidence for the tragic survival of the old sine fact which has altogether escaped them ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 286

There is no personality without definiteness, wholeness, and ripeness. These three qualities cannot and should not be expected of the child, as they would rob it of childhood. It would be nothing but an abortion, a premature pseudo-adult; yet our modern education has already given birth to such monsters, particularly in those cases where parents set themselves the fanatical task of always “doing their best” for the children and “living only for them.”

This clamant ideal effectively prevents the parents from doing anything about their own development and allows them to thrust their “best” down their children’s throats. This so-called “best” turns out to be the very things the parents have most badly neglected in themselves. In this way the children are goaded on to achieve their parents’ most dismal failures, and are loaded with ambitions that are never fulfilled. Such methods and ideals only engender educational monstrosities ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 288

Clearly, no one develops his personality because somebody tells him that it would be useful or advisable to do so. Nature has never yet been taken in by well-meaning advice. The only thing that moves nature is causal necessity, and that goes for human nature too.

Without necessity nothing budges, the human personality least of all. It is tremendously conservative, not to say torpid. Only acute necessity is able to rouse it. The developing personality obeys no caprice, no command, no insight, only brute necessity; it needs the motivating force of inner or outer fatalities. Any other development would be no better than individualism. That is why the cry of “individualism” is a cheap insult when flung at the natural development of personality ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 293

The words “many are called, but few are chosen” are singularly appropriate here, for the development of personality from the germ-state to full consciousness is at once a charisma and a curse, because its first fruit is the conscious and unavoidable segregation of the single individual from the undifferentiated and unconscious herd.

This means isolation, and there is no more comforting word for it. Neither family nor society nor position can save him from this fate, nor yet the most successful adaptation to his environment, however smoothly he fits in. The development of personality is a favour that must be paid for dearly. But the people who talk most loudly about developing their personalities are the very ones who are least mindful of the results, which are such as to frighten away all weaker spirits ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 294

Yet the development of personality means more than just the fear of hatching forth monsters, or of isolation. It also means fidelity to the law of one’s own being ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 295

For the word “fidelity” I should prefer, in this context, the Greek word used in the New Testament, pistis, which is erroneously translated “faith.” It really means “trust,” “trustful loyalty.” Fidelity to the law of one’s own being is a trust in this law, a loyal perseverance and confident hope; in short, an attitude such as a religious man should have towards God ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 296

It can now be seen how portentous is the dilemma that emerges from behind our problem: personality can never develop unless the individual chooses his own way, consciously and with moral deliberation. Not only the causal motive necessity but conscious moral decision must lend its strength to the process of building the personality. If the first is lacking, then the alleged development is a mere acrobatics of the will; if the second, it will get stuck in unconscious automatism ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 296

But a man can make a moral decision to go his own way only if he holds that way to be the best. If any other way were held to be better, then he would live and develop that other personality instead of his own. The other ways are conventionalities of a moral, social, political, philosophical, or religious nature. The fact that the conventions always flourish in one form or another only proves that the vast majority of mankind do not choose their own way, but convention, and consequently develop not themselves but a method and a collective mode of life at the cost of their own wholeness ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 296

Just as the psychic and social life of mankind at the primitive level is exclusively a group life with a high degree of unconsciousness among the individuals composing it, so the historical process of development that comes afterwards is in the main collective and will doubtless remain so. That is why I believe convention to be a collective necessity. It is a stopgap and not an ideal, either in the moral or in the religious sense, for submission to it always means renouncing one’s wholeness and running away from the final consequences of one’s own being ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 297

Hence it was always believed that such a man, if not actually crazy, was possessed by a daemon or a god; for the miracle of a man being able to act otherwise than as humanity has always acted could only be explained by the gift of daemonic power or divine spirit. How could anyone but a god counterbalance the dead weight of humanity in the mass, with its everlasting convention and habit? From the beginning, therefore, the heroes were endowed with godlike attributes.

According to the Nordic view they had snake’s eyes, and there was something peculiar about their birth or descent; certain heroes of ancient Greece were snake-souled, others had a personal daemon, were magicians or the elect of God. All these attributes, which could be multiplied at will, show that for the ordinary man the outstanding personality is something supernatural, a phenomenon that can only be explained by the intervention of some daemonic factor ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 298

But vocation acts like a law of God from which there is no escape. The fact that many a man who goes his own way ends in ruin means nothing to one who has a vocation. He must obey his own law, as if it were a daemon whispering to him of new and wonderful paths. Anyone with a vocation hears the voice of the inner man: he is called.

That is why the legends say that he possesses a private daemon who counsels him and whose mandates he must obey. The best known example of this is Faust, and an historical instance is provided by the daemon of Socrates. Primitive medicine-men have their snake spirits, and Aesculapius, the tutelary patron of physicians, has for his emblem the Serpent of Epidaurus. He also had, as his private daemon, the Cabir Telesphoros, who is said to have dictated or inspired his medical prescriptions ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 300

The original meaning of “to have a vocation” is “to be addressed by a voice.” The clearest examples of this are to be found in the avowals of the Old Testament prophets. That it is not just a quaint old-fashioned way of speaking is proved by the confessions of historical personalities such as Goethe and Napoleon, to mention only two familiar examples, who made no secret of their feeling of vocation ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 301

Vocation, or the feeling of it, is not, however, the prerogative of great personalities; it is also appropriate to the small ones all the way down to the “midget” personalities, but as the size decreases the voice becomes more and more muffled and unconscious.

It is as if the voice of the daemon within were moving further and further off, and spoke more rarely and more indistinctly. The smaller the personality, the dimmer and more unconscious it becomes, until finally it merges indistinguishably with the surrounding society, thus surrendering its own wholeness and dissolving into the wholeness of the group. In the place of the inner voice there is the voice of the group with its conventions, and vocation is replaced by collective necessities ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 302

But what has the individual personality to do with the plight of the many? In the first place he is part of the people as a whole, and is as much at the mercy of the power that moves the whole as anybody else. The only thing that distinguishes him from all the others is his vocation. He has been called by that all-powerful, all-tyrannizing psychic necessity that is his own and his people’s affliction.

If he hearkens to the voice, he is at once set apart and isolated, as he has resolved to obey the law that commands him from within. “His own law!” everybody will cry. But he knows better: it is the law, the vocation for which he is destined, no more “his own” than the lion that fells him, although it is undoubtedly this particular lion that kills him and not any other lion. Only in this sense is he entitled to speak of “his” vocation, “his” law ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 304

So although the objective psyche can only be conceived as a universal and uniform datum, which means that all men share the same primary, psychic condition, this objective psyche must nevertheless individuate itself if it is to become actualized, for there is no other way in which it could express itself except through the individual human being ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 307

One of the most shining examples of the meaning of personality that history has preserved for us is the life of Christ. In Christianity, which, be it mentioned in passing, was the only religion really persecuted by the Romans, there rose up a direct opponent of the Caesarean madness that afflicted not only the emperor, but every Roman as well: civis Romanus sum. The opposition showed itself wherever the worship of Caesar clashed with Christianity. But, as we know from what the evangelists tell us about the psychic development of Christ’s personality, this opposition was fought out just as decisively in the soul of its founder ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 309

The story of the Temptation clearly reveals the nature of the psychic power with which Jesus came into collision: it was the power-intoxicated devil of the prevailing Caesarean psychology that led him into dire temptation in the wilderness. This devil was the objective psyche that held all the peoples of the Roman Empire under its sway, and that is why it promised Jesus all the kingdoms of the earth, as if it were trying to make a Caesar of him ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 309

Obeying the inner call of his vocation, Jesus voluntarily exposed himself to the assaults of the imperialistic madness that filled everyone, conqueror and conquered alike. In this way he recognized the nature of the objective psyche which had plunged the whole world into misery and had begotten a yearning for salvation that found expression even in the pagan poets. Far from suppressing or allowing himself to be suppressed by this psychic onslaught, he let it act on him consciously, and assimilated it ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 309

Thus was world-conquering Caesarism transformed into spiritual kingship, and the Roman Empire into the universal kingdom of God that was not of this world. While the whole Jewish nation was expecting an imperialistically minded and politically active hero as a Messiah, Jesus fulfilled the Messianic mission not so much for his own nation as for the whole Roman world, and pointed out to humanity the old truth that where force rules there is no love, and where love reigns force does not count. The religion of love was the exact psychological counterpart to the Roman devil-worship of power ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 309

Hence the eternal doubt whether what appears to be the objective psyche is really objective, or whether it might not be imagination after all. But then the question at once arises: have I imagined such and such a thing on purpose, or has it been imagined by something in me? It is a similar problem to that of the neurotic who suffers from an imaginary carcinoma.

He knows, and has been told a hundred times before, that it is all imagination, and yet he asks me brokenly, “But why do I imagine such a thing? I don’t want to do it!” To which the answer is: the idea of the carcinoma has imagined itself in him without his knowledge and without his consent.

The reason is that a psychic growth, a “proliferation,” is taking place in his unconscious without his being able to make it conscious. In the face of this interior activity he feels afraid. But since he is entirely persuaded that there can be nothing in his own soul that he does not know about, he must relate his fear to a physical carcinoma which he knows does not exist.

And if he should still be afraid of it, there are a hundred doctors to convince him that his fear is entirely groundless. The neurosis is thus a defense against the objective, inner activity of the psyche, or an attempt, somewhat dearly paid for, to escape from the inner voice and hence from the vocation ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 313

For this “growth” is the objective activity of the psyche, which, independently of conscious volition, is trying to speak to the conscious mind through the inner voice and lead him towards wholeness. Behind the neurotic perversion is concealed his vocation, his destiny: the growth of personality, the full realization of the life-will that is born with the individual. It is the man without amor fati who is the neurotic; he, truly, has missed his vocation, and never will he be able to say with Cromwell, “None climbeth so high as he who knoweth not whither his destiny leadeth him” ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 313

Just as the great personality acts upon society to liberate, to redeem, to transform, and to heal, so the birth of personality in oneself has a therapeutic effect. It is as if a river that had run to waste in sluggish side-streams and marshes suddenly found its way back to its proper bed, or as if a stone lying on a germinating seed were lifted away so that the shoot could begin its natural growth ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 317

The inner voice is the voice of a fuller life, of a wider, more comprehensive consciousness. That is why, in mythology, the birth of the hero or the symbolic rebirth coincides with sunrise, for the growth of personality is synonymous with an increase of self-consciousness. For the same reason most heroes are characterized by solar attributes, and the moment of birth of their greater personality is known as illumination ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 318

The fear that most people naturally have of the inner voice is not so childish as might be supposed. The contents that rise up and confront a limited consciousness are far from harmless, as is shown by the classic example of the temptation of Christ, or the equally significant Mara episode in the Buddha legend. As a rule, they signify the specific danger to which the person concerned is liable to succumb. What the inner voice whispers to us is generally something negative, if not actually evil.

This must be so, first of all because we are usually not as unconscious of our virtues as of our vices, and then because we suffer less from the good than from the bad in us. The inner voice, as I have explained above, 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

The inner voice brings the evil before us in a very tempting and convincing way in order to make us succumb. If we do not partially succumb, nothing of this apparent evil enters into us, and no regeneration or healing can take place. (I say “apparent, ” though this may sound too optimistic.)

If we succumb completely, then the contents expressed by the inner voice act as so many devils, and a catastrophe ensues. But if we can succumb only in part, and if by self-assertion the ego can save itself from being completely swallowed, then it can assimilate the voice, and we realize that the evil was, after all, only a semblance of evil, but in reality a bringer of healing and illumination ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 319

In fact, the inner voice is a “Lucifer” in the strictest and most unequivocal sense of the word, and it faces people with ultimate moral decisions without which they can never achieve full consciousness and become personalities. The highest and the lowest, the best and the vilest, the truest and the most deceptive things are often blended together in the inner voice in the most baffling way, thus opening up in us an abyss of confusion, falsehood, and despair ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 319

It is naturally absurd for people to accuse the voice of Nature, the all-sustainer and all-destroyer of evil. If she appears inveterately evil to us, this is mainly due to the old truth that the good is always the enemy of the better. We would be foolish indeed if we did not cling to the traditional good for as long as possible. But as Faust says: Whenever in this world we reach the good, We call the better all a lie, a sham! ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 320

A good thing is unfortunately not a good forever, for otherwise there would be nothing better. If better is to come, good must stand aside. Therefore Meister Eckhart says, “God is not good, or else he could be better” ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 320

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! The problems of the inner voice are full of pitfalls and hidden snares. Treacherous, slippery ground, as dangerous and pathless as life itself once one lets go of the railings. But he who cannot lose his life, neither shall he save it.

The hero’s birth and the heroic life are always threatened. The serpents sent by Hera to destroy the infant Hercules, the python that tries to strangle Apollo at birth, the massacre of the innocents all these tell the same story. To develop the personality is a gamble, and the tragedy is that the daemon of the inner voice is at once our greatest danger and an indispensable help. It is tragic, but logical, for it is the nature of things to be so ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 321

Dr. Jung never said: “There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

What Dr. Jung said in two separate and unrelated statements was:

Seldom, or perhaps never, does a marriage develop into an individual relationship smoothly and without crises; there is no coming to consciousness without pain. ~Carl Jung, Contributions to Analytical Psychology, P. 193

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. They will practise Indian yoga and all its exercises, observe a strict regimen of diet, learn theosophy by heart, or mechanically repeat mystic texts from the literature of the whole world—all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not the slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their own souls. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 99