Carl Jung: CW 8 “The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche” – Quotations

The dream rectifies the situation. It contributes the material that was lacking and thereby improves the patient’s attitude. That is the reason we need dream-analysis in our therapy. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 482.

Often the hands know how to solve a riddle with which the intellect has wrestled in vain. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 180

A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Pages 399-403.

The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Pages 399-403.

Culture lies outside the purpose of nature. Could by any chance culture be the meaning and purpose of the second half of life? ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Pages 399-403.

Life’s cessation, that is, death, can only be accepted as a reasonable goal either when existence is so wretched that we are only too glad for it to end, or when we are convinced that the sun strives to its setting “to illuminate distant races” with the same logical consistency it showed in rising to the zenith. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Pages 400

To the psychotherapist an old man who cannot bid farewell to life appears as feeble and sickly as a young man who is unable to embrace it. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Pages 399-403.

As a doctor I am convinced that it is hygienic—if I may use the word—to discover in death a goal towards which one can strive, and that shrinking away from it is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Pages 399-403.

The archetype as an image of instinct is a spiritual goal toward which the whole nature of man strives; it is the sea to which all rivers wend their way, the prize which the hero wrests from the fight with the dragon. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 415

In spite of the fact that the majority of people do not know why the body needs salt, everyone demands it nonetheless because of an instinctive need. It is the same with the things of the psyche. That is the working of the intellect. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 793

But besides that there is a thinking in primordial images, in symbols which are older than the historical man, which are inborn in him from the earliest times, and, eternally living, outlasting all generations, still make up the groundwork of the human psyche. It is only possible to live the fullest life when we are in harmony with these symbols; wisdom is a return to them. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 794

Before the nineteenth century the thyroid was regarded as a meaningless organ merely because it was not understood. It would be equally shortsighted of us today to call the primordial images senseless. For me these images are something like psychic organs, and I treat them with the very greatest respect. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 794

It happens sometimes that I must say to an older patient: “Your picture of God or your idea of immortality is atrophied, consequently your psychic metabolism is out of gear.” ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 794

For a young person it is almost a sin, or at least a danger, to be too preoccupied with himself; but for the ageing person it is a duty and a necessity to devote serious attention to himself. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 785.

…many old people prefer to be hypochondriacs, niggards, pedants, applauders of the past or else eternal adolescents—all lamentable substitutes for the illumination of the self, but inevitable consequences of the delusion that the second half of life must be governed by the principles of the first. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 785.

Spirit, like God, denotes an object of psychic experience which cannot be proved to exist in the external world and cannot be understood rationally. This is its meaning if we use the word “spirit” in its best sense. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 329, par. 626.

In archetypal conceptions and instinctual perceptions, spirit and matter confront one another on the psychic plane. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 420.

If so, the position of the archetype would be located beyond the psychic sphere, analogous to the position of physiological instinct, which is immediately rooted in the stuff of the organism and, with its psychoid nature, forms the bridge to matter in general. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 420.

The scarab is a classical rebirth symbol. According to the description in the ancient Egyptian book Am-Tuat, the dead sun God transforms himself at the tenth station into Khepri, the scarab, and as such mounts the barge at the twelfth station, which raises the rejuvenated sun into the morning sky ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 843.

The psyche as such cannot be explained in terms of physiological chemistry, if only because, together with “life” itself, it is the only “natural factor” capable of converting statistical organizations which are subject to natural law into “higher” or “unnatural” states, in opposition to the rule of entropy that runs throughout the inorganic realm. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 371-381

How life produces complex organic systems from the inorganic we do not know, though we have direct experience of how the psyche does it. Life therefore has a specific law of its own which cannot be deduced from the known physical laws of nature. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Paras 371-381

The psychic condition or quality begins where the function loses its outer and inner determinism and becomes capable of more extensive and freer application, that is, where it begins to show itself accessible to a will motivated from other sources. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Paras 371-381

Differentiation of function from compulsive instinctuality, and its voluntary application, are of paramount importance in the maintenance of life. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Paras 371-381.

Spirit and instinct are by nature autonomous and both limit in equal measure the applied field of the will. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Paras 371-381.

I once experienced a violent earthquake, and my first, immediate feeling was that I no longer stood on solid familiar earth, but on the skin of a gigantic animal that was heaving under my feet. It was this image that impressed itself on me, not the physical fact. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, par 331.

We are beset by an all-too-human fear that consciousness – our Promethean conquest – may in the end not be able to serve us as well as nature. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Par 750.

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

Since the depression was not manufactured by the conscious mind but is an unwelcome intrusion from the unconscious, the elaboration of the mood is, as it were, a picture of the contents and tendencies of the unconscious that were massed together in the depression. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 82.

These words belonged to the autonomous complex. When excited by an external stimulus, complexes can produce sudden confusions, or violent affects, depressions, anxiety-states, etc., or they may express themselves in hallucinations. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 313.

Statistics show a rise in the frequency of mental depressions in men about forty. In women the neurotic difficulties generally begin somewhat earlier. We see that in this phase of life—between thirty-five and forty—an important change in the human psyche is in preparation. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 395.

Youthful longing for the world and for life, for the attainment of high hopes and distant goals, is life’s obvious teleological urge which at once changes into fear of life, neurotic resistances, depressions, and phobias if at some point it remains caught in the past, or shrinks from risks without which the unseen goal cannot be attained. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 406.

Blue is the color of Mary’s celestial cloak; she is the earth covered by the blue tent of the sky… ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 87.

The question may be formulated simply as follows: ‘What is the purpose of this dream? What effect is it meant to have? These questions are not arbitrary inasmuch as they can be applied to every psychic activity. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, para. 462.

Numinosity, however, is wholly outside conscious volition, for it transports the subject into the state of rapture, which is a state of will-less surrender. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 383.

If consciousness had never split off from the unconscious—an eternally repeated event symbolized as the fall of the angels and the disobedience of the first parents—this problem would never have arisen, any more than would the question of environmental adaptation. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 339.

It seems to me probable that the real nature of the archetype is not capable of being made conscious, that it is transcendent, on which account I call it psychoid. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 417

But besides that [Intellect] there is a thinking in primordial images, in symbols which are older than the historical man, which are inborn in him from the earliest times, and, eternally living, outlasting all generations, still make up the groundwork of the human psyche. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 794

It is only possible to live the fullest life when we are in harmony with these symbols; wisdom is a return to them. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 794

Archetypes probably represent typical situations in life. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 254

The deposit of man’s whole ancestral experience—so rich in emotional imagery—of father, mother, child, husband and wife, of the magic personality, of dangers to body and soul, has exalted this group of archetypes into the supreme regulating principles of religious and even of political life, in unconscious recognition of their tremendous psychic power. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 337

Meaningful coincidences—which are to be distinguished from meaningless chance groupings—therefore seem to rest on an archetypal foundation. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 846

Complexes are in truth the living units of the unconscious psyche, and it is only through them that we are able to deduce its existence and its constitution. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 210

That is why Freud became the real discoverer of the unconscious in psychology, because he examined those dark places and did not simply dismiss them, with a disparaging euphemism, as “parapraxes.” ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 210

Where the realm of the complexes begins the freedom of the ego comes to an end, for complexes are psychic agencies whose deepest nature is still unfathomed. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 216.

What to the causal view is fact to the final view is symbol, and vice versa. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 45.

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

Apart from the efforts that have been made for centuries to extract a prophetic meaning from dreams, Freud’s discoveries are the first successful attempt in practice to find their real significance. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 447.

His [Freud’s] work merits the term “scientific” because he has evolved a technique which not only he but many other investigators assert achieves its object, namely the understanding of the meaning of the dream. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 447.

It is Freud’s great achievement to have put dream-interpretation on the right track. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 539

If we want to interpret a dream correctly, we need a thorough knowledge of the conscious situation at that moment, because the dream contains its unconscious complement, that is, the material which the conscious situation has constellated in the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 477

Experience has shown, however, that even professional analysts, who might be expected to have mastered the art of dream interpretation, often capitulate before their own dreams and have to call in the help of a colleague. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 141

We can therefore never hope for a thorough cure from a treatment restricted to the illness itself, but only from a treatment of the personality as a whole. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 684.

The greatest mistake an analyst can make is to assume that his patient has a psychology similar to his own. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 498

Childhood is important not only because various warpings of instinct have their origin there, but because this is the time when, terrifying or encouraging, those far-seeing dreams and images appear before the soul of the child, shaping his whole destiny, as well as those retrospective intuitions which reach back far beyond the range of childhood experience into the life of our ancestors. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 98

But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning; for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 784

The ego keeps its integrity only if it does not identify with one of the opposites, and if it understands how to hold the balance between them. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 425.

Numinosity, however, is wholly outside conscious volition, for it transports the subject into the state of rapture, which is a state of will-less surrender. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 383

Not infrequently the dreams show that there is a remarkable inner symbolical connection between an undoubted physical illness and a definite psychic problem, so that the physical disorder appears as a direct mimetic expression of the psychic situation. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 502

Dreams throw very interesting sidelights on the inter-functioning of body and psyche. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 502

The symptomatology of an illness is at the same time a natural attempt at healing. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 312

The meaning and purpose of a problem seem to lie not in its solution but in our working at it incessantly. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 771

I have frequently been able to trace back for over a year, in a dream-series, the indications of approaching death, even in cases where such thoughts were not prompted by the outward situation. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 809

Death, therefore, has its onset long before death. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 809

Beginning and end are unavoidable aspects of all processes. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 812.

We are so convinced that death is simply the end of a process that it does not ordinarily occur to us to conceive of death as a goal and a fulfilment, as we do without hesitation the aims and purposes of youthful life in its ascendance. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 797

A mathematician once remarked that everything in science was man-made except numbers, which had been created by God himself. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 356, note 24.

… number and synchronicity… were… always brought into connection with one another,… both possess numinosity and mystery as their common characteristics. Number has invariably been used to characterize some numinous object, and all numbers from 1 to 9 are ‘sacred,’ just as 10, 12, 13, 14, 28, 32, and 40 have a special significance. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 870.

The capacity for inner dialogue is a touchstone for outer objectivity. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 187

This peculiarity lends plausibility to the view that dreams are inspirations. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 574

Dream psychology opens the way to a general comparative psychology from which we may hope to gain the same understanding of the development and structure of the human psyche as comparative anatomy has given us concerning the human body. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 47

Man’s capacity for consciousness alone makes him man. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 412

Just as, in its lower reaches, the psyche loses itself in the organic-material substrate, so in its upper reaches it resolves itself into a “spiritual” form about which we know as little as we do about the functional basis of instinct. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 380

Natural life is the nourishing of the Soul ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 800.

If we are to do justice to the essence of the thing we call spirit, we should really speak of a “higher” consciousness rather than of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 643.

Just as we tend to assume that the world is as we see it, we naively suppose that people are as we imagine them to be. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 507.

Psychologically, however, the archetype as an image of instinct is a spiritual goal toward which the whole nature of man strives; it is the sea to which all rivers wend their way, the prize which the hero wrests from the fight with the dragon. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 415

You always become the thing you fight the most. ~Carl Jung, BBC Face to Face Interview, Para 119

We must not forget that only a very few people are artists in life; that the art of life is the most distinguished and rarest of all the arts. Whoever succeeded in draining the whole cup with grace? ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 789

To the psychotherapist an old man who cannot bid farewell to life appears as feeble and sickly as a young man who is unable to embrace it. And as a matter of fact, it is in many cases a question of the selfsame childish greediness, the same fear the same defiance and willfulness, in the one as in the other. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 792

From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 800

Everything that works from the unconscious appears projected on others. Not that these others are wholly without blame, for even the worst projection is at least hung on a hook, perhaps a very small one, but still a hook offered by the other person. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 99

What would the spirit be if it had no peer among the instincts to oppose it? It would be nothing but an empty form. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 107

Reflection is the cultural instinct par excellence, and its strength is shown in the power of culture to maintain itself in the face of untamed nature. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 115.

The collective unconscious…appears to consist of mythological motifs or primordial images, for which reason the myths of all nations are its real exponents. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Par. 325.

Actually the word adhista in Elgonyi means sun as well as God, although they deny that the sun is God. Only the moment when it rises is mungu or adhista. Spittle and breath mean soul-substance. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 411.

There are many spirits, both light and dark. We should, therefore, be prepared to accept the view that spirit is not absolute, but something relative that needs completing and perfecting through life. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 645

Everything is mediated through the mind, translated, filtered, allegorized, twisted, even falsified by it. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 623.

But because of its empirical freedom of choice, the will needs a supraordinate authority, something like a consciousness of itself, in order to modify the function. It must “know” of a goal different from the goal of the function. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 371.

This living being appears outwardly as the material body, but inwardly as a series of images of the vital activities taking place within it. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 619.

It seems to me probable that the real nature of the archetype is not capable of being made conscious, that it is transcendent, on which account I call it psychoid. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, para. 417.

For it is the function of consciousness not only to recognize and assimilate the external world through the gateway of the senses, but to translate into visible reality the world within us. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 342.

The serious problems in life…are never fully solved. If ever they should appear to be so it is a sure sign that something has been lost. The meaning and purpose of a problem seem to lie not in its solution but in our working at it incessantly. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 394.

Nature cares nothing whatsoever about a higher level of consciousness; quite the contrary. And then society does not value these feats of the psyche very highly; its prizes are always given for achievement and not for personality, the latter being rewarded for the most part posthumously. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 768

I said just now that we have no schools for forty-year olds. That is not quite true. Our religions were always such schools in the past, but how many people regard them like that today? How many of us older ones have been brought up in such a school and really prepared for the second half of life, for old age, death and eternity? ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 786

So difficult is it to understand a dream that for a long time I have made it a rule, when someone tells me a dream and asks for my opinion, to say first of all to myself: “I have no idea what this dream means.” After that I can begin to examine the dream. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 533

It was universally believed in the Middle Ages as well as in the Greco-Roman world that the soul is a substance. Indeed, mankind as a whole has held this belief from its earliest beginnings, and it was left for the second half of the nineteenth century to develop a “psychology without the soul.” ~Carl Jung; CW 8; Page 338

The real existence of an enemy upon whom one can foist off everything evil is an enormous relief to one’s conscience. You can then at least say, without hesitation, who the devil is; you are quite certain that the cause of your misfortune is outside, and not in your own attitude. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 518

Just as the body bears the traces of its phylogenetic development, so also does the human mind. Hence there is nothing surprising about the possibility that the figurative language of dreams is a survival from an archaic mode of thought. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 475

Ageing people should know that their lives are not mounting and expanding, but that an inexorable inner process enforces the contraction of life. For a young person it is almost a sin, or at least a danger, to be too preoccupied with himself; but for the ageing person it is a duty and a necessity to devote serious attention to himself. After having lavished its light upon the world, the sun withdraws its rays in order to illuminate itself. Instead of doing likewise, many old people prefer to be hypochondriacs, niggards, pedants, applauders of the past or else eternal adolescents —all lamentable substitutes for the illumination of the self, but inevitable consequences of the delusion that the second half of life must be governed by the principles of the first. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 785

The archetype or primordial image might suitably be described as the instinct’s perception of itself, or as the self portrait of the instinct, in exactly the same way as consciousness is an inward perception of the objective life process. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 277

The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and calm which is not easily disturbed, or else a brokenness that can hardly be healed. Conversely, it is just these intense conflicts and their conflagration which are needed in order to produce valuable and lasting results. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 50

Deviation from the truths of the blood begets neurotic restlessness, and we have had about enough of that these days. Restlessness begets meaninglessness, and the lack of meaning in life is a soul-sickness whose full extent and full import our age has not as yet begun to comprehend. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 815

Where is the wisdom of our old people, where are their precious secrets and their visions? For the most part our old people try to compete with the young. In the United States it is almost an ideal for a father to be the brother of his sons, and for the mother to be if possible the younger sister of her daughter. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 788.

But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the programme of life’s morning; for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 784

The method like all divinatory or intuitive techniques is based on an acausal or synchronistic connective principle. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 452.

As to the ultimate things we can know nothing, and only when we admit this do we return to a state of equilibrium. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 657

The realization of the shadow is the growing awareness of the inferior part of the personality. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 208.

The soul possesses in some degree a historical stratification, whereby the oldest stratum of which would correspond to the unconscious. ~Carl Jung. CW 8, § 51.

Man is not a machine in the sense that he can consistently maintain the same output of work. He can meet the demands of outer necessity in an ideal way only if he is also adapted to his own inner world, that is, if he is in harmony with himself. Conversely, he can only adapt to his inner world and achieve harmony with himself when he is adapted to the environmental conditions. ~Carl Jung; CW 8; par. 75.
~Carl Jung, CW 8, par. 143.

Be prepared to accept the view that spirit is not absolute, but something relative that needs completing and perfecting through life. –Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 645.

Every advance, every conceptual achievement of mankind, has been connected with an advance in self-awareness: man differentiated himself from the object and faced Nature as something distinct from her. Any reorientation of psychological attitude will have to follow the same road. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 523.

Gleaming islands, indeed whole continents, can still add themselves to our modern consciousness. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 387

Naturally, every age thinks that all ages before it were prejudiced, and today we think this more than ever and are just as wrong as all previous ages that thought so. How often have we not seen the truth condemned! It is sad but unfortunately true that man learns nothing from history. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 861.

It even seems as if young people who have had a hard struggle for existence are spared inner problems, while those who for some reason or other have no difficulty with adaptation run into problems of sex or conflicts arising from a sense of inferiority. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 762

The God-image thrown up by a spontaneous act of creation is a living figure, a being that exists in its own right and there-fore confronts its ostensible creator autonomously… As proof of this it may be mentioned that the relation between the creator and the created is a dialectical. ~Carl Jung; CW 8, para. 95-96.

There are no “purposeless” psychic processes; that is to say, it is a hypothesis of the greatest heuristic value that the psyche is essentially purposive and directed. ~Carl Jung; CW 8, para. 90.

Anyone sufficiently interested in the dream problem cannot have failed to observe that dreams also have a continuity forwards-if such an expression be permitted-since dreams occasionally exert a remarkable influence on the conscious mental life even of persons who cannot be considered superstitious or particularly abnormal. ~ Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 444

The psychic fact “God” is a typical autonomism, a collective archetype…It is therefore characteristic not only of all higher forms of religion, but appears spontaneously in the dreams of individuals. ~Carl Jung; CW 8; fn 29.

Just as the body bears the traces of its phylogenetic development, so also does the human mind. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 475.

Once we have freed ourselves from the prejudice that we have to refer to concepts of external experience or to a priori categories of reason, we can turn our attention and curiosity wholly to that strange and unknown thing we call spirit. ~Carl Jung, CW 8; Para 626

From the psychological point of view, the phenomenon of spirit, like every autonomous complex, appears as an intention of the unconscious superior to, or at least on a par with, intentions of the ego. If we are to do justice to the essence of the thing we call spirit, we should really speak of a “higher” consciousness rather than of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, para 643.

Greater than all physical dangers are the tremendous effects of delusional ideas […].The world powers that rule over humanity, for good or ill, are unconscious psychic factors, and it is they that bring unconsciousness into being […].We are steeped in a world that was created by our own psyche. Carl Jung, CW 8, Para Para 747

For higher than science or art as an end in itself stands man, the creator of his instruments. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 737

Every other science has so to speak an outside; not so psychology, whose object is the inside subject of all science. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 429

Every science is a function of the mind, and all knowledge is rooted in it. The mind is the greatest of all cosmic wonders. ~Carl Jung; CW 8; Page 357.

The starry vault of heaven is in truth the open book of cosmic projection, in which are reflected the mythologems, i.e., the archetypes. In this vision astrology and alchemy, the two classical functionaries of the psychology of the collective unconscious, join hands. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 195, Para 392.

Life is teleology par excellence; it is the intrinsic striving towards a goal, and the living organism is a system of directed aims which seek to fulfill themselves. ~Carl Jung; CW 8; para 798.

Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 143

What would the spirit be if it had no peer among the instincts to oppose it? It would be nothing but an empty form. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 107

The East, on the other hand, took spirit for its own, and by explaining away matter as mere illusion—Maya—continued to dream in Asiatic filth and misery. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 682

We should, therefore, be prepared to accept the view that spirit is not absolute, but something relative that needs completing and perfecting through life. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 645

Restlessness begets meaninglessness, and the lack of meaning in life is a soul-sickness whose full extent and full import our age has not as yet begun to comprehend. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 815

It is really high time academic psychologists came down to earth and wanted to hear about the human psyche as it really is and not merely about laboratory experiments. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 529

Many—far too many—aspects of life which should also have been experienced lie in the lumber-room among dusty memories; but sometimes, too, they are glowing coals under grey ashes. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 772

Primitive superstition lies just below the surface of even the most tough-minded individuals, and it is precisely those who most fight against it who are the first to succumb to its suggestive effects. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 25.

If he succeeds in giving collective validity to his widened consciousness, he creates a tension of opposites that provides the stimulation which culture needs for its further progress. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para iii

Ageing people should know that their lives are not mounting and expanding, but that an inexorable inner process enforces the contraction of life. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 785

A young man who does not fight and conquer has missed the best part of his youth, and an old man who does not know how to listen to the secrets of the brooks, as they tumbledown from the peaks to the valleys, makes no sense; he is a spiritual mummy who is nothing but a rigid relic of the past. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 801

Money-making, social achievement, family and posterity are nothing but plain nature, not culture. Culture lies outside the purpose of nature. Could by any chance culture be the meaning and purpose of the second half of life? ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 787

A dream, like every element in the psychic structure, is a product of the total psyche. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 527

Dreams may contain ineluctable truths, philosophical pronouncements, illusions, wild fantasies, memories, plans, anticipations, irrational experiences, even telepathic visions, and heaven knows what besides. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 317

The occurrence of prospective dreams cannot be denied. It would be wrong to call them prophetic, because at bottom they are no more prophetic than a medical diagnosis or a weather forecast. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 493

With regard to prognosis, therefore, dreams are often in a much more favourable position than consciousness. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 493

But as soon as you take the sexual metaphors as symbols for something unknown, your conception of the nature of dreams at once deepens. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 506

Synchronicity means the simultaneous occurrence of a psychic state with one or more external events, which appear as meaningful parallels to the momentary subjective state. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 441.

It is just man’s turning away from instinct—his opposing himself to instinct—that creates consciousness. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 750

Instinct is nature and seeks to perpetuate nature, whereas consciousness can only seek culture or its denial. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 750

It seems that the unconscious is in interested how one dies, that is whether the attitude of consciousness is adjusted to dying or not. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 223.

The psyche is the greatest of all cosmic wonders and the sine qua non of the world as an object. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Par. 357.

We must, however, constantly bear in mind that what we mean by “archetype” is in itself irrepresentable, but has effects which make visualisation of it possible, namely the archetypal images and ideas. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 214.

Whoever carries over into the afternoon the law of the morning, or the natural aim, must pay for it with damage to his soul, just as surely as a growing youth who tries to carry over his childish egoism into adult life must pay for this mistake with social failure. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 787.

As to the ultimate things we can know nothing, and only when we admit this do we return to a state of equilibrium. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 657

The method like all divinatory or intuitive techniques is based on an acausal or synchronistic connective principle. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 452.

From the middle of life, only he who is willing to die with life remains living. Since what takes place in the secret hour of life’s midday is the reversal of the parabola, the birth of death … ~Carl Jung CW 8, §800.

The wine of youth does not always clear with advancing years; sometimes it grows turbid. ~Carl Jung; CW 8; Para 774.

Since psyche and matter are contained in one and the same world, and moreover are in continuous contact with one another and ultimately rest on irrepresentable, transcendental factors, it is not only possible but fairly probable, even, that psyche and matter are two different aspects of one and the same thing. ~Carl Jung; CW 8, Para 420.

Nowhere are we closer to the sublime secret of all origination than in the recognition of our own selves, whom we always think we know already. Yet we know the immensities of space better than we know our own depths, where -even though we do not understand it-we can listen directly to the throb of creation itself. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 737

Just as the “psychic infra-red,” the biological instinctual psyche, gradually passes over into the physiology of the organism and thus merges with its chemical and physical conditions, so the “psychic ultra-violet,” the archetype, describes a field which exhibits none of the peculiarities of the physiological and yet, in the last analysis, can no longer be regarded as psychic. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 420.

The unconscious . . . is the source of the instinctual forces of the psyche and of the forms or categories that regulate them, namely the archetypes. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, par. 342.

Only a life lived in a certain spirit is worth living. It is a remarkable fact that a life lived entirely from the ego is dull not only for the person himself but for all concerned. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 645.

To speak of the morning and spring, of the evening and the autumn of life is not mere sentimental jargon. We thus give expression to psychological truths, and even more to physiological facts. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 780.

Give no guarantee of objective knowledge. What we do not understand in ourselves we do not understand in the other person either. So there is plenty to ensure that his image will be for the most part subjective. As we know, even an intimate friendship is no guarantee of objective knowledge. – Carl Jung, CW 8. Page 508

A psychology that treats the mind as an epiphenomenon would better call itself brain-psychology, and remain satisfied with the meager results that such a psycho-physiology can yield. The mind deserves to be taken as a phenomenon in its own right; there are no grounds at all for regarding it as a mere epiphenomenon, dependent though it may be on the functioning of the brain. One would be as little justified in regarding life as an epiphenomenon of the chemistry of carbon compounds. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 10

What I am trying to make clear is the remarkable fact that the will cannot transgress the bounds of the psychic sphere: it cannot coerce the instinct, nor has it power over the spirit, in so far as we understand by this something more than the intellect. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Paras 371-381.

Anyone sufficiently interested in the dream problem cannot have failed to observe that dreams also have a continuity forwards—if such an expression be permitted—since dreams occasionally exert a remarkable influence on the conscious mental life even of persons who cannot be considered superstitious or particularly abnormal. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 444

Dreams that form logically, morally, or aesthetically satisfying wholes are exceptional. Usually a dream is a strange and disconcerting product distinguished by many “bad” qualities, such as lack of logic, questionable morality, uncouth form, and apparent absurdity or nonsense. People are therefore only too glad to dismiss it as stupid, meaningless, and worthless. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 532

The psyche is a self-regulating system that maintains its equilibrium just as the body does. Every process that goes too far immediately and inevitably calls forth compensations, and without these there would be neither a normal metabolism nor a normal psyche. In this sense we can take the theory of compensation as a basic law of psychic behaviour. Too little on one side results in too much on the other. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 330

The more one-sided his conscious attitude is, and the further it deviates from the optimum, the greater becomes the possibility that vivid dreams with a strongly contrasting but purposive content will appear as an expression of the self-regulation of the psyche. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 488

The view that dreams are merely the imaginary fulfilments of repressed wishes is hopelessly out of date. There are, it is true, dreams which Dreams may contain ineluctable truths, philosophical pronouncements, illusions, wild fantasies, memories, plans, anticipations, irrational experiences, even telepathic visions, and heaven knows what besides. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 317

Under the influence of scientific materialism, everything that could not be seen with the eyes or touched with the hands was held in doubt; such things were even laughed at because of their supposed affinity with metaphysics. Nothing was considered “scientific” or admitted to be true unless it could be perceived by the senses or traced back to physical causes. ~Carl Jung; CW 8. para. 649.

The intellect is only one among several fundamental psychic functions and therefore does not suffice to give a complete picture of the world. For this another function —feeling—is needed too. Feeling often arrives at convictions that are different from those of the intellect, and we cannot always prove that the convictions of feeling are necessarily inferior. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 600

The fatal error of every Weltanschauung so far has been that it claims to be an objectively valid truth, and ultimately a kind of scientific evidence of this truth. This would lead to the insufferable conclusion that, for instance, the same God must help the Germans, the French, the English, the Turks, and the heathen—in short, everybody against everybody else. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 734

If the picture we create of the world did not have a retroactive effect on us, we could be content with any sort of beautiful or diverting sham. But self-deception recoils on us, making us unreal, foolish, and ineffectual. Because we are tilting at a false picture of the world, we are overcome by the superior power of reality. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 699

Anyone who is conscious of his guiding principle knows with what indisputable authority it rules his life. But generally consciousness is too preoccupied with the attainment of some beckoning goal to consider the nature of the spirit that determines its course. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 642

Whenever contents of the collective unconscious become activated, they have a disturbing effect on the conscious mind, and contusion ensues. If the activation is due to the collapse of the individual’s hopes and expectations, there is a danger that the collective unconscious may take the place of reality. This state would be pathological. If, on the other hand, the activation is the result of psychological processes in the unconscious of the people, the individual may feel threatened or at any rate disoriented, but the resultant state is not pathological, at least so far as the individual is concerned. Nevertheless, the mental state of the people as a whole might well be compared to a psychosis. ~Carl Jung; CW 8, Page 595

Take for comparison the daily course of the sun—but a sun that is endowed with human feeling and man’s limited consciousness. In the morning it rises from the nocturnal sea of unconsciousness and looks upon the wide, bright world which lies before it in an expanse that steadily widens the higher it climbs in the firmament. In this extension of its field of action caused by its own rising, the sun will discover its significance; it will see the attainment of the greatest possible height, and the widest possible dissemination of its blessings, as its goal. In this conviction the sun pursues its course to the unforeseen zenith—unforeseen, because its career is unique and individual, and the culminating point could not be calculated in advance. At the stroke of noon the descent begins. And the descent means the reversal of all the ideals and values that were cherished in the morning, ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 778

Wholly unprepared, we embark upon the second half of life. Or are there perhaps colleges for forty-year-olds which prepare them for their coming life and its demands as the ordinary colleges introduce our young people to a knowledge of the world? No, thoroughly unprepared we take the step into the afternoon of life; worse still, we take this step with the false assumption that our truths and ideals will serve us as hitherto. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the programme of life’s morning; for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 784

The very frequent neurotic disturbances of adult years all have one thing in common they want to carry the psychology of the youthful phase over the threshold of the so-called years of discretion. Who does not know those touching old gentlemen who must always warm up the dish of their student days, who can fan the flame of life only by reminiscences of their heroic youth, but who, for the rest, are stuck in a hopelessly wooden Philistinism? As a rule, to be sure, they have this one merit which it would be wrong to undervalue they are not neurotic, but only boring and stereotyped. The neurotic is rather a person who can never have things as he would like them in the present, and who can therefore never enjoy the past either. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 776

In my naturally limited experience there are, among people of maturer age, very many for whom the development of individuality is an indispensable requirement. Hence I am privately of the opinion that it is just the mature person who, in our times, has the greatest need of some further education in individual culture after his youthful education in school or university has moulded him on exclusively collective lines and thoroughly imbued him with the collective mentality. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 112

Being old is highly unpopular. Nobody seems to consider that not being able to grow old is just as absurd as not being able to outgrow child’s-size shoes. A still infantile man of thirty is surely to be deplored, but a youthful septuagenarian—isn’t that delightful? And yet both are perverse, lacking in style, psychological monstrosities. A young man who does not fight and conquer has missed the best part of his youth, and an old man who does not know how to listen to the secrets of the brooks, as they tumble down from the peaks to the valleys, makes no sense; he is a spiritual mummy who is nothing but a rigid relic of the past. He stands apart from life, mechanically repeating himself to the last triviality! ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 801

A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning. The significance of the morning undoubtedly lies in the development of the individual, our entrenchment in the outer world, the propagation of our kind, and the care of our children. This is the obvious purpose of nature. But when this purpose has been attained —and more than attained—shall the earning of money, the extension of conquests, and the expansion of life go steadily on beyond the bounds of all reason and sense? Whoever carries over into the afternoon the law of the morning, or the natural aim, must pay for it with damage to his soul, just as surely as a growing youth who tries to carry over his childish egoism into adult life must pay for this mistake with social failure. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 787

Just as the childish person shrinks back from the unknown in the world and in human existence, so the grown man shrinks back from the second half of life. It is as if unknown and dangerous tasks awaited him, or as if he were threatened with sacrifices and losses which he does not wish to accept, or as if his life up to now seemed to him so fair and precious that he could not relinquish it. Is it perhaps at bottom the fear of death? That does not seem to me very probable, because as a rule death is still far in the distance and therefore somewhat abstract. Experience shows us, rather, that the basic cause of all the difficulties of this transition is to be found in a deep-seated and peculiar change within the psyche. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 777

The tragic thing is that psychology has no self-consistent mathematics at its disposal, but only a calculus of subjective prejudices. Also, it lacks the immense advantage of an Archimedean point such as physics enjoys. The latter observes the physical world from the psychic standpoint and can translate it into psychic terms. The psyche, on the other hand, observes itself and can only translate the psychic back into the psychic. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 421

It is really high time academic psychologists came down to earth and wanted to hear about the human psyche as it really is and not merely about laboratory experiments. It is insufferable that professors should forbid their students to have anything to do with analytical psychology, that they should prohibit the use of analytical concepts and accuse our psychology of taking account, in an unscientific manner, of “everyday experiences.” I know that psychology in general could derive the greatest benefit from a serious study of the dream problem once it could rid itself of the unjustified lay prejudice that dreams are caused solely by somatic stimuli. This overrating of the somatic factor in psychiatry is one of the basic reasons why psychopathology has made no advances unless directly fertilized by analytical procedures. The dogma that “mental diseases are diseases of the brain” is a hangover from the materialism of the 1870’s. It has become a prejudice which hinders all progress. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 529

However indignant people may get about “metaphysical phantoms” when cell-processes are explained vitalistically, they nevertheless continue to regard the physical hypothesis as “scientific,” although it is no less fantastic. But it fits in with the materialistic prejudice, and therefore every bit of nonsense, provided only that it turns the psychic into the physical, becomes scientifically sacrosanct. Let us hope that the time is not far off when this antiquated relic of ingrained and thoughtless materialism will be eradicated from the minds of our scientists. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 529

Until recently psychology was a special branch of philosophy, but now we are coming to something which Nietzsche foresaw—the rise of psychology in its own right, so much so that it is even threatening to swallow philosophy. The inner resemblance between the two disciplines consists in this, that both are systems of opinion about objects which cannot be fully experienced and therefore cannot be adequately comprehended by a purely empirical approach. Both fields of study thus encourage speculation, with the result that opinions are formed in such variety and profusion that many heavy volumes are needed to contain them all. Neither discipline can do without the other, and the one invariably furnishes the unspoken—and generally unconscious—assumptions of the other. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 659

There is not one modern psychology—there are dozens of them. This is curious enough when we remember that there is only one science of mathematics, of geology, zoology, botany, and so forth. But there are so many psychologies that an American university was able to publish a thick volume under the title Psychologies of 1930. I believe there are as many psychologies as philosophies, for there is also no single philosophy, but many. I mention this for the reason that philosophy and psychology are linked by indissoluble bonds which are kept in being by the interrelation of their subject-matters. Psychology takes the psyche for its subject, and philosophy—to put it briefly —takes the world. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 659

When we allow ourselves to be irritated out of our wits by something, let us not suppose that the cause of our irritation lies simply and solely outside us, in the irritating thing or person. In that way we simply endow them with the power to put us into the state of irritation, and possibly into one of insomnia or indigestion. We then turn around and unhesitatingly condemn the object of offence, while all the time we are raging against an unconscious part of ourselves which is projected into the exasperating object. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 516

We could call sexuality the spokesman of the instincts, which is why from the spiritual standpoint sex is the chief antagonist, not because sexual indulgence is in itself more immoral than excessive eating and drinking, avarice, tyranny, and other extravagances, but because the spirit senses in sexuality a counterpart equal and indeed akin to itself. For just as the spirit would press sexuality, like every other instinct, into its service, so sexuality has an ancient claim upon the spirit, which it once—in procreation, pregnancy, birth, and childhood—contained within itself, and whose passion the spirit can never dispense with in its creations. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 107

The spiritual principle does not, strictly speaking, conflict with instinct as such but only with blind instinctuality, which really amounts to an unjustified preponderance of the instinctual nature over the spiritual. The spiritual appears in the psyche also as an instinct, indeed as a real passion, a “consuming fire,” as Nietzsche once expressed it. It is not derived from any other instinct, as the psychologists of instinct would have us believe, but is a principle siti generis, a specific and necessary form of instinctual power. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 108

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

The fact that all immediate experience is psychic and that immediate reality can only be psychic explains why it is that primitive man puts spirits and magical influences on the same plane as physical events. He has not yet torn his original experience into antithetical parts. In his world, spirit and matter still interpenetrate each other, and his gods still wander through forest and field. He is like a child, only half born, still enclosed in his own psyche as in a dream, in a world not yet distorted by the difficulties of understanding that beset a dawning intelligence. When this aboriginal world fell apart into spirit and nature, the West rescued nature for itself. It was prone by temperament to a belief in nature, and only became the more entangled in it with every painful effort to make itself spiritual. The East, on the other hand, took spirit for its own, and by explaining away matter as mere illusion—Maya—continued to dream in Asiatic filth and misery. But since there is only one earth and one mankind. East and West cannot rend humanity into two different halves. Psychic reality still exists in its original oneness, and awaits man’s advance to a level of consciousness where he no longer believes in the one part and denies the other, but recognizes both as constituent elements of one psyche. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 682

Through scientific understanding, our world has become dehumanized. Man feels himself isolated in the cosmos. He is no longer involved in nature and has lost his emotional participation in natural events, which hitherto had a symbolic meaning for him. Thunder is no longer the voice of a god, nor is lightning his avenging missile. No river contains a spirit, no tree means a man’s life, no snake is the embodiment of wisdom, and no mountain still harbours a great demon. Neither do things speak to him nor can he speak to things, like stones, springs, plants, and animals. He no longer has a bush-soul identifying him with a wild animal. His immediate communication with nature is gone forever. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 95

The conflict between nature and spirit is itself a reflection of the paradox of psychic life. This reveals a physical and a spiritual aspect which appear a contradiction because, ultimately, we do not understand the nature of psychic life itself. Whenever, with our human understanding, we want to make a statement about something which in the last analysis we have not grasped and cannot grasp, then we must, if we are honest, be willing to contradict ourselves, we must pull this something into its antithetical parts in order to be able to deal with it at all. The conflict between the physical and the spiritual aspects only shows that psychic life is in the last analysis an incomprehensible “something.” ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 680

Consciousness determines Weltanschauung. All conscious awareness of motives and intentions is a Weltanschauung in the bud; every increase in experience and knowledge is a step in the development of a Weltanschauung. And with the picture that the thinking man fashions of the world he also changes himself. The man whose sun still moves round the earth is essentially different from the man whose earth is a satellite of the sun. Giordano Bruno’s reflections on infinity were not in vain they represent one of the most important beginnings of modern consciousness. The man whose cosmos hangs in the empyrean is different from one whose mind is illuminated by Kepler’s vision. The man who is still dubious about the sum of twice two is different from the thinker for whom nothing is less doubtful than the a priori truths of mathematics. In short, it is not a matter of indifference what sort of Weltanschauung we possess, since not only do we create a picture of the world, but this picture retroactively changes us. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 696

A science can never be a Weltanschauung but merely the tool with which to make one. Whether we take this tool in hand or not depends on the sort of Weltanschauung we already have. For no one is without a Weltanschauung of some sort. Even in an extreme case, he will at least have the Weltanschauung that education and environment have forced on him. If this tells him, to quote Goethe, that “the highest joy of man should be the growth of personality,” he will unhesitatingly seize upon science and its conclusions, and with this as a tool will build himself a Weltanschauung—to his own edification. But if his hereditary convictions tell him that science is not a tool but an end in itself, he will follow the watchword that has become more and more prevalent during the last one hundred and fifty years and has proved to be the decisive one in practice. Here and there single individuals have desperately resisted it, for to their way of thinking the meaning of life culminates in the perfection of the human personality and not in the differentiation of techniques, which inevitably leads to an extremely one-sided development of a single instinct, for instance the instinct for knowledge. If science is an end in itself, man’s raison d’etre lies in being a mere intellect. If art is an end in itself, then his sole value lies in the imaginative faculty, and the intellect is consigned to the lumber-room. If making money is an end in itself, both science and art can quietly shut up shop. No one can deny that our modern consciousness, in pursuing these mutually exclusive ends, has become hopelessly fragmented. The consequence is that people are trained to develop one quality only; they become tools themselves. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para

To have a Weltanschauung means to create a picture of the world and of oneself, to know what the world is and who I am. Taken literally, this would be too much. No one can know what the world is, just as little as can he know himself. But, cum grano salts, it means the best possible knowledge—a knowledge that esteems wisdom and abhors unfounded assumptions, arbitrary assertions, and didactic opinions. Such knowledge seeks the well-founded hypothesis, without forgetting that all knowledge is limited and subject to error. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 698

If we were conscious of the spirit of the age, we should know why we are so inclined to account for everything on physical grounds; we should know that it is because, up till now, too much was accounted for in terms of spirit. This realization would at once make us critical of our bias. We would say most likely we are now making exactly the same mistake on the other side. We delude ourselves with the thought that we know much more about matter than about a “metaphysical” mind or spirit, and so we overestimate material causation and believe that it alone affords us a true explanation of life. But matter is just as inscrutable as mind. As to the ultimate things we can know nothing, and only when we admit this do we return to a state of equilibrium. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 657

I know nothing of a “super-reality.” Reality contains everything I can know, for everything that acts upon me is real and actual. If it does not act upon me, then I notice nothing and can, therefore, know nothing about it. Hence I can make statements only about real things, but not about things that are unreal, or surreal, or subreal. Unless, of course, it should occur to someone to limit the concept of reality in such a way that the attribute “real” applied only to a particular segment of the world’s reality. This restriction to the so-called material or concrete reality of objects perceived by the senses is a product of a particular way of thinking—the thinking that underlies “sound common sense” and our ordinary use of language. It operates on the celebrated principle “Nihil est in intellectu quod non antea fuerit in sensu,” regardless of the fact that there are very many things in the mind which did not derive from the data of the senses. According to this view, everything is “real” which comes, or seems to come, directly or indirectly from the world revealed by the senses. This limited picture of the world is a reflection of the one-sidedness of Western man. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 742

A dream, like every element in the psychic structure, is a product of the total psyche. Hence we may expect to find in dreams everything that has ever been of significance in the life of humanity. Just as human life is not limited to this or that fundamental instinct, but builds itself up from a multiplicity of instincts, needs, desires, and physical and psychic conditions, etc., so the dream cannot be explained by this or that element in it, however beguilingly simple such an explanation may appear to be. We can be certain that it is incorrect, because no simple theory of instinct will ever be capable of grasping the human psyche, that mighty and mysterious thing, nor, consequently, its exponent, the dream. In order to do anything like justice to dreams, we need an interpretive equipment that must be laboriously fitted together from all branches of the humane sciences. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 527

Many people who know something, but not enough, about dreams and their meaning, and who are impressed by their subtle and apparently intentional compensation, are liable to succumb to the prejudice that the dream actually has a moral purpose, that it warns, rebukes, comforts, foretells the future, etc. If one believes that the unconscious always knows best, one can easily be betrayed into leaving the dreams to take the necessary decisions, and is then disappointed when the dreams become more and more trivial and meaningless. Experience has shown me that a slight knowledge of dream psychology is apt to lead to an overrating of the unconscious which impairs the power of conscious decision. The unconscious functions satisfactorily only when the conscious mind fulfils its tasks to the very limit. A dream may perhaps supply what is then lacking, or it may help us forward where our best conscious efforts have failed. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 568

Everyone who analyses the dreams of others should constantly bear in mind that there is no simple and generally known theory of psychic phenomena, neither with regard to their nature, nor to their causes, nor to their purpose. We therefore possess no general criterion of judgment. We know that there are all kinds of psychic phenomena, but we know nothing certain about their essential nature. We know only that, though the observation of the psyche from any one isolated standpoint can yield very valuable results, it can never produce a satisfactory theory from which one could make deductions. The sexual theory and the wish theory, like the power theory, are valuable points of view without, however, doing anything like justice to the profundity and richness of the human psyche. Had we a theory that did, we could then content ourselves with learning a method mechanically. It would then be simply a matter of reading certain signs that stood for fixed contents, and for this it would only be necessary to learn a few semiotic rules by heart. Knowledge and correct assessment of the conscious situation would then be as superfluous as in the performance of a lumbar puncture. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 498

It is characteristic that dreams never express themselves in a logical, abstract way but always in the language of parable or simile. This is also a characteristic of primitive languages, whose flowery turns of phrase are very striking. If we remember the monuments of ancient literature, we find that what nowadays is expressed by means of abstractions was then expressed mostly by similes. Even a philosopher like Plato did not disdain to express certain fundamental ideas in this way. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 474

As regards the much discussed symbolism of dreams, its evaluation varies according to whether it is considered from the causal or from the final standpoint. The causal approach of Freud starts from a desire or craving, that is, from the repressed dream-wish. This craving is always something comparatively simple and elementary, which can hide itself under manifold disguises. . . . Hence it is that the more rigorous adherents of the Freudian school have come to the point of interpreting—to give a gross example—pretty well all oblong objects in dreams as phallic symbols and all round or hollow objects as feminine symbols. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 470

Further researches, expressly referred to by Maeder, have shown that the sexual language of dreams is not always to be interpreted in a concretistic way—that it is, in fact, an archaic language which naturally uses all the analogies readiest to hand without their necessarily coinciding with a real sexual content. It is therefore unjustifiable to take the sexual language of dreams literally under all circumstances, while other contents are explained as symbolical. But as soon as you take the sexual metaphors as symbols for some thing unknown, your conception of the nature of dreams at once deepens. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 506

If, as happens in long and difficult treatments, the analyst observes a series of dreams often running into hundreds, there gradually forces itself upon him a phenomenon which, in an isolated dream, would remain hidden behind the compensation of the moment. This phenomenon is a kind of developmental process in the personality itself. At first it seems that each compensation is a momentary adjustment of one-sidedness or an equalization of disturbed balance. But with deeper insight and experience, these apparently separate acts of compensation arrange themselves into a kind of plan. They seem to hang together and in the deepest sense to be subordinated to a common goal, so that a long dream-series no longer appears as a senseless string of incoherent and isolated happenings, but resembles the successive steps in a planned and orderly process of development. I have called this unconscious process spontaneously expressing itself in the symbolism of a long dream-series the individuation process. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 550

If our dreams reproduce certain ideas these ideas are primarily our ideas, in the structure of which our whole being is interwoven. They are subjective factors, grouping themselves as they do in the dream, and expressing this or that meaning, not for extraneous reasons but from the most intimate promptings of our psyche. The whole dream work is essentially subjective, and a dream is a theatre in which the dreamer is himself the scene, the player, the prompter, the producer, the author, the public, and the critic. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 509

As in our waking state, real people and things enter our field of vision, so the dream-images enter like another kind of reality into the field of consciousness of the dream-ego. We do not feel as if we were producing the dreams, it is rather as if the dreams came to us. They are not subject to our control but obey their own laws. They are obviously autonomous psychic complexes which form them selves out of their own material. We do not know the source of their motives, and we therefore say that dreams come from the unconscious. In saying this, we assume that there are independent psychic complexes which elude our conscious control and come and go according to their own laws. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 580

The unconscious is the unknown at any given moment, so it is not surprising that dreams add to the conscious psychological situation of the moment all those aspects which are essential for a totally different point of view. It is evident that this function of dreams amounts to a psychological adjustment, a compensation absolutely necessary for properly balanced action. In a conscious process of reflection it is essential that, so far as possible, we should realize all the aspects and consequences of a problem in order to find the right solution. This process is continued automatically in the more or less unconscious state of sleep, where, as experience seems to show, all those aspects occur to the dreamer (at least by way of allusion) that during the day were insufficiently appreciated or even totally ignored in other words, were comparatively unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 469

Emptiness is a great feminine secret. It is something absolutely alien to man; the chasm, the unplumbed depths, the yin. The pitifulness of this vacuous nonentity goes to his heart (I speak here as a man), and one is tempted to say that this constitutes the whole “mystery” of woman. Such a female is fate itself. A man may say what he likes about it; be for it or against it, or both at once; in the end he falls, absurdly happy, into this pit, or, if he does not, he has missed and bungled his only chance of making a man of himself. In the first case one cannot disprove his foolish good luck to him, and in the second one cannot make his misfortune seem plausible. “The Mothers, the Mothers, how eerily it sounds!” ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 183

The causal point of view tends by its very nature towards uniformity of meaning, that is, towards a fixed significance of symbols. The final point of view, on the other hand, perceives in the altered dream-image the expression of an altered psychological situation. It recognizes no fixed meaning of symbols. From this standpoint, all the dream images are important in themselves, each one having a special significance of its own, to which, indeed, it owes its inclusion in the dream. . , . The symbol in the dream has more the value of a parable it does not conceal, it teaches. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 471

It is only in exceptional cases that somatic stimuli are the determining factor. Usually they coalesce completely with the symbolical expression of the unconscious dream content; in other words, they are used as a means of expression. Not infrequently the dreams show that there is a remarkable inner symbolical connection between an undoubted physical illness and a definite psychic problem, so that the physical disorder appears as a direct mimetic expression of the psychic situation. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 502

Considering a dream from the standpoint of finality, which I contrast with the causal standpoint of Freud, does not—as I would expressly like to emphasize—involve a denial of the dream’s causes, but rather a different interpretation of the associative material gathered round the dream. The material facts remain the same, but the criterion by which they are judged is different. The question may be formulated simply as follows: What is the purpose of this dream? What effect is it meant to have? These questions are not arbitrary inasmuch as they can be applied to every psychic activity. Everywhere the question of the “why” and the “wherefore” may be raised, because every organic structure consists of a complicated network of purposive functions, and each of these functions can be resolved into a series of individual facts with a purposive orientation. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 462

The prospective function, on the other hand, is an anticipation in the unconscious of future conscious achievements, something like a preliminary exercise or sketch, or a plan roughed out in advance. . . . The occurrence of prospective dreams cannot be denied. It would be wrong to call them prophetic, because at bottom they are no more prophetic than a medical diagnosis or a weather forecast. They are merely an anticipatory combination of probabilities which may coincide with the actual behaviour of things but need not necessarily agree in every detail. Only in the latter case can we speak of “prophecy.” That the prospective function of dreams is sometimes greatly superior to the combinations we can consciously foresee is not surprising, since a dream results from the fusion of subliminal elements and is thus a combination of all the perceptions, thoughts, and feelings which consciousness has not registered because of their feeble accentuation. In addition, dreams can rely on subliminal memory traces that are no longer able to influence consciousness effectively. With regard to prognosis, therefore, dreams are often in a much more favourable position than consciousness. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 493

Even the well-nigh unconscious primitive can adapt and assert himself, but only in his primitive world, and that is why under other conditions he falls victim to countless dangers which we on a higher level of consciousness can avoid without effort. True, a higher consciousness is exposed to dangers undreamt of by the primitive, but the fact remains that the conscious man has conquered the earth and not the unconscious one. Whether in the last analysis, and from a superhuman point of view, this is an advantage or a calamity we are not in a position to decide. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 695

We must constantly bear in mind that what we mean by “archetype” is in itself irrepresentable, but has effects which make visualizations of it possible, namely, the archetypal images and ideas. We meet with a similar situation in physics: there the smallest particles are themselves irrepresentable but have effects from the nature of which we can build up a model. The archetypal image, the motif or mythologem, is a construction of this kind. ~Carl Jung; CW 8, Page 417.

In my naturally limited experience there are, among people of maturer age, very many for whom the development of individuality is an indispensable requirement. Hence I am privately of the opinion that it is just the mature person who, in our times, has the greatest need of some further education in individual culture after his youthful education in school or university has molded him on exclusively collective lines and thoroughly imbued him with the collective mentality. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 112

The strong and natural love that binds the child to the father turns away, during the years when the child is outgrowing the family circle, to the higher forms of the father, to authority, to the “Fathers” of the Church and to the father-god visibly represented by them. Nevertheless, mythology is not lacking in consolations. Did not the Word become flesh? And did not the divine pneuma enter into the Virgin’s womb? The whirlwind of Anaxagoras was that same divine nous that produced the world out of itself. Why do we cherish the image of the Immaculate Mother even to this day?” ~Carl Jung; CW 8, para. 76.

In this latter case, unfortunately, there is no scientific test that would prove the discrepancy between perception and reality. Although the possibility of gross deception is infinitely greater here than in our perception of the physical world, we still go on naively projecting our own psychology into our fellow human beings. In this way everyone creates for himself a series of more or less imaginary relationships based essentially on projection. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 50

Incisive changes in history are generally attributed exclusively to external causes. It seems to me, however, that external circumstances often serve merely as occasions for a new attitude to life and the world, long prepared in the unconscious, to become manifest. Social, political, and religious conditions affect the collective unconscious in the sense that all those factors which are suppressed by the prevailing views or attitudes in the life of a society gradually accumulate in the collective unconscious and activate its contents. Certain individuals gifted with particularly strong intuition then become aware of the changes going on in it and translate these changes into communicable ideas. The new ideas spread rapidly because parallel changes have been taking place in the unconscious of other people. There is a general readiness to accept the new ideas, although on the other hand they often meet with violent resistance. New ideas are not just the enemies of the old; they also appear as a rule in an extremely unacceptable form. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 594

Whenever contents of the collective unconscious become activated, they have a disturbing effect on the conscious mind, and confusion ensues. If the activation is due to the collapse of the individual’s hopes and expectations, there is a danger that the collective unconscious may take the place of reality. This state would be pathological. If, on the other hand, the activation is the result of psychological processes in the unconscious of the people, the individual may feel threatened or at any rate disoriented, but the resultant state is not pathological, at least so far as the individual is concerned. Nevertheless, the mental state of the people as a whole might well be compared to a psychosis. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 595

The “common man,” who is predominantly a mass man, acts on the principle of realizing nothing, nor does he need to, because for him the only thing that commits mistakes is that vast anonymity conventionally known as the “State” or “Society.” But once a man knows that he is, or should be, responsible, he feels responsible also for his psychic constitution, the more so the more clearly he sees what he would have to be in order to become healthier, more stable, and more efficient. Once he is on the way to assimilating the unconscious he can be certain that he will escape no difficulty that is an integral part of his nature. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 410

How are we to explain religious processes, for instance, whose nature is essentially symbolical? In abstract form, symbols are religious ideas; in the form of action, they are rites or ceremonies. They are the manifestation and expression of excess libido. At the same time they are stepping-stones to new activities, which must be called cultural in order to distinguish them from the instinctual functions that run their regular course according to natural law. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, para 91.

The individual ego could be conceived as the commander of a small army in the struggle with his environment—a war not infrequently on two fronts, before him the struggle for existence, in the rear the struggle against his own rebellious instinctual nature. Even to those of us who are not pessimists our existence feels more like a struggle than anything else. The state of peace is a desideratum, and when a man has found peace with himself and the world it is indeed a noteworthy event, ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 693

The archetypal representations (images and ideas) mediated to us by the unconscious should not be confused with the archetype as such. They are very varied structures which all point back to one essentially “irrepresentable” basic form. The latter is characterized by certain formal elements and by certain fundamental meanings, although these can be grasped only approximately. The archetype as such is a psychoid factor that belongs, as it were, to the invisible, ultra-violet end of the psychic spectrum … It seems to me probable that the real nature of the archetype is not capable of being made conscious, that it is transcendent, on which account I call it psychoid [quasi-psychic]. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 417

In spite or perhaps because of its affinity with instinct, the archetype represents the authentic element of spirit, but a spirit which is not to be identified with the human intellect, since it is the latter’s spiritus rector. The essential content of all mythologies and all religions and all isms is archetypal. The archetype is spirit or anti-spirit what it ultimately proves to be depends on the attitude of the human mind. Archetype and instinct are the most polar opposites imaginable, as can easily be seen when one compares a man who is ruled by his instinctual drives with a man who is seized by the spirit. But, just as between all opposites there obtains so close a bond that no position can be established or even thought of without its corresponding negation, so in this case also “les extremes se touchent.” ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 406

Restriction to material reality carves an exceedingly large chunk out of reality as a whole, but it nevertheless remains a fragment only, and all round it is a dark penumbra which one would have to call unreal or surreal. This narrow perspective is alien to the Eastern view of the world, which therefore has no need of any philosophical conception of super-reality. Our arbitrarily delimited reality is continually menaced by the “supersensual,” the “supernatural,” the “superhuman,” and a whole lot more besides. Eastern reality includes all this as a matter of course. For us the zone of disturbance already begins with the concept of the “psychic.” In our reality the psychic cannot be anything except an effect at third hand, produced originally by physical causes; a “secretion of the brain,” or something equally savoury. At the same time, this appendage of the material world is credited with the power to pull itself up by its own bootstraps, so to speak; and not only to fathom the secrets of the physical world, but also, in the form of “mind,” to know itself. All this, without its being granted anything more than an indirect reality. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Pages 382-383

It does not surprise me that psychology debouches into philosophy, for the thinking that underlies philosophy is after all a psychic activity which, as such, is the proper study of psychology. I always think of psychology as encompassing the whole of the psyche, and that includes philosophy and theology and many other things besides. For underlying all philosophies and all religions are the facts of the human soul, which may ultimately be the arbiters of truth and error. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 535

It is just man’s turning away from instinct—his opposing himself to instinct—that creates consciousness. Instinct is nature and seeks to perpetuate nature, whereas consciousness can only seek culture or its denial. Even when we turn back to nature, inspired by a Rousseauesque longing, we “cultivate” nature. As long as we are still submerged in nature we are unconscious, and we live in the security of instinct which knows no problems. Everything in us that still belongs to nature shrinks away from a problem, for its name is doubt, and wherever doubt holds sway there is uncertainty and the possibility of divergent ways. And where several ways seem possible, there we have turned away from the certain guidance of instinct and are handed over to fear. For consciousness is now called upon to do that which nature has always done for her children namely, to give a certain, unquestionable, and unequivocal decision. And here we are beset by an all-too-human fear that consciousness—our Promethean conquest—may in the end not be able to serve us as well as nature. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 750

Far from being a material world, this is a psychic world, which allows us to make only indirect and hypothetical inferences about the real nature of matter. The psychic all forms of the psychic, even “unreal” ideas and thoughts which refer to nothing “external.” We may call them “imagination” or “delusion,” but that does not detract in any way from their effectiveness. Indeed, there is no “real” thought that cannot, at times, be thrust aside by an “unreal” one, thus proving that the latter is stronger and more effective than the former. Greater than all physical dangers are the tremendous effects of delusional ideas, which are yet denied all reality by our world-blinded consciousness. Our much vaunted reason and our boundlessly overestimated will are sometimes utterly powerless in the face of “unreal” thoughts. The world powers that rule over all mankind, for good or ill, are unconscious psychic factors, and it is they that bring consciousness into being and hence create the sine qua non for the existence of any world at all. We are steeped in a world that was created by our own psyche. ~Carl Jung CW 8, Para 747

The nature of the psyche reaches into obscurities far beyond the scope of our understanding. It contains as many riddles as the universe with its galactic systems, before whose majestic configurations only a mind lacking in imagination can fail to admit its own insufficiency. This extreme uncertainty of human comprehension makes the intellectualistic hubbub not only ridiculous, but also deplorably dull. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 815

When we must deal with problems, we instinctively resist trying the way that leads through obscurity and darkness. We wish to hear only of unequivocal results, and completely forget that these results can only be brought about when we have ventured into and emerged again from the darkness. But to penetrate the darkness we must summon all the powers of enlightenment that consciousness can offer. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 752

If psychic life consisted only of self-evident matters of fact—which on a primitive level is still the case—we could content ourselves with a sturdy empiricism. The psychic life of civilized man, however, is full of problems; we cannot even think of it except in terms of problems. Our psychic processes are made up to a large extent of reflections, doubts, experiments, all of which are almost completely foreign to the unconscious, instinctive mind of primitive man. It is the growth of consciousness which we must thank for the existence of problems; they are the Danaan gift of civilization, ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 750

There is no other way open to us; we are forced to resort to conscious decisions and solutions where formerly we trusted ourselves to natural happenings. Every problem, therefore, brings the possibility of a widening of consciousness, but also the necessity of saying goodbye to childlike unconsciousness and trust in nature. This necessity is a psychic fact of such importance that it constitutes one of the most essential symbolic teachings of the Christian religion. It is the sacrifice of the merely natural man, of the unconscious, ingenuous being whose tragic career began with the eating of the apple in Paradise. The biblical fall of man presents the dawn of consciousness as a curse. And as a matter of fact it is in this light that we first look upon every problem that forces us to greater consciousness and separates us even further from the paradise of unconscious childhood. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 751

We must constantly bear in mind that what we mean by “archetype” is in itself irrepresentable, but has effects which make visualizations of it possible, namely, the archetypal images and ideas. We meet with a similar situation in physics there the smallest particles are themselves irrepresentable but have effects from the nature of which we can build up a model. The archetypal image, the motif or mythologem, is a construction of this kind. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 417

To the extent that the archetypes intervene in the shaping of conscious contents by regulating, modifying, and motivating them, they act like instincts. It is therefore very natural to suppose that these factors are connected with the instincts and to enquire whether the typical situational patterns which these collective form-principles apparently represent are not in the end identical with the instinctual patterns, namely, with the patterns of behaviour. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 104

While we are all agreed that murder, stealing, and ruthlessness of any kind are obviously inadmissible, there is nevertheless what we call a “sexual question.” We hear nothing of a murder question or a rage question; social reform is never invoked against those who wreak their bad tempers on their fellow men. Yet these things are all examples of instinctual behaviour, and the necessity for their suppression seems to us self-evident. Only in regard to sex do we feel the need of a question mark. This points to a doubt —the doubt whether our existing moral concepts and the legal institutions founded on them are really adequate and suited to their purpose. No intelligent person will deny that in this field opinion is sharply divided. Indeed, there would be no problem at all if public opinion were united about it. It is obviously a reaction against a too rigorous morality. It is not simply an outbreak of primitive instinctually; such outbreaks, as we know, have never yet bothered themselves with moral laws and moral problems. There are, rather, serious misgivings as to whether our existing moral views have dealt fairly with the nature of sex. From this doubt there naturally arises a legitimate interest in any attempt to understand the nature of sex more truly and deeply. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 105

If we try to extract the common and essential factors from the almost inexhaustible variety of individual problems found in the period of youth, we meet in all cases with one particular feature a more or less patent clinging to the childhood level of consciousness, a resistance to the fateful forces in and around us which would involve us in the world. Something in us wishes to remain a child, to be unconscious or, at most, conscious only of the ego; to reject everything strange, or else subject it to our will; to do nothing, or else indulge our own craving for pleasure or power. In all this there is something of the inertia of matter; it is a persistence in the previous state whose range of consciousness is smaller, narrower, and more egoistic than that of the dualistic phase. For here the individual is faced with the necessity of recognizing and accepting what is different and strange as a part of his own life, as a kind of “also-I.” ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 764

The solution of the problems of youth by restricting ourselves to the attainable is only temporarily valid and not lasting in a deeper sense. Of course, to win for oneself a place in society and to transform one’s nature so that it is more or less fitted to this kind of existence is in all cases a considerable achievement. It is a fight waged within oneself as well as outside, comparable to the struggle of the child for an ego. That struggle is for the most part unobserved because it happens in the dark; but when we see how stubbornly childish illusions and assumptions and egoistic habits are still clung to in later years we can gain some idea of the energies that were needed to form them. And so it is with the ideals, convictions, guiding ideas and attitudes which in the period of youth lead us out into life, for which we struggle, suffer, and win victories they grow together with our own being, we apparently change into them, we seek to perpetuate them indefinitely and as a matter of course, just as the young person asserts his ego in spite of the world and often in spite of himself. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 771

And just as the material of the body that is ready for life has need of the psyche in order to be capable of life, so the psyche presupposes the living body in order that its images may live. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 325

Far from being a material world, this is a psychic world, which allows us to make only indirect and hypothetical inferences about the real nature of matter. ~Carl Jung CW 8, Para 747

We are steeped in a world that was created by our own psyche. ~Carl Jung CW 8, Para 747

The name’s people give to their experiences are often very revealing. What is the origin of the word Seele? Like the English word soul, it comes from the Gothic saiwalu and the old German saiwalô, and these can be connected etymologically with the Greek aiolos, ‘quick-moving, twinkling, iridescent’. The Greek word psyche also means ‘butterfly’. Saiwalô is related on the other side in the Old Slavonic sila, ‘strength’. These connections throw light on the original meaning of the word soul; it is moving force, that is, life-force. The- Latin words animus, ‘spirit’, and anima, ‘soul’, arc the same as the Greek anemos, ‘wind’. The other Greek word for ‘wind’, pneuma , also means ‘spirit’. In Gothic we find the same word in us-anan, ‘to breathe out’, and in Latin it is anhelare, ‘to pant’. In Old High German, spiritus sanctus was rendered by atum,‘breath’. In Arabic, ‘wind’ is rih, and rüh is ‘soul, spirit’. The Greek word psyche has similar connections; it is related to psychein, ‘to breathe’, psychos, ‘cool’, psychros, ‘cold, chill’, and physa, ‘bellows’. These connections show clearly how in Latin, Greek, and Arabic the names given to the soul are related to the notion of moving air, the “cold breath of the spirits.” And this is probably the reason why the primitive view also endows the soul with an invisible breath-body. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Paras 663-664)

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

The symbol in the dream has more the value of a parable it does not conceal, it teaches. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 471

Everywhere the question of the “why” and the “wherefore” may be raised, because every organic structure consists of a complicated network of purposive functions, and each of these functions can be resolved into a series of individual facts with a purposive orientation. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 462

With regard to prognosis, therefore, dreams are often in a much more favourable position than consciousness. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 493

Like a projectile flying to its goal, life ends in death. Even its ascent and its zenith are only steps and means to this goal. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 803

The birth of a human being is pregnant with meaning, why not death? ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 803

Instinct is nature and seeks to perpetuate nature, whereas consciousness can only seek culture or its denial. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 750

It is the growth of consciousness which we must thank for the existence of problems; they are the Danaan gift of civilization, ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 750

Every problem, therefore, brings the possibility of a widening of consciousness, but also the necessity of saying goodbye to childlike unconsciousness and trust in nature. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 751

The biblical fall of man presents the dawn of consciousness as a curse. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 751

Although the actual moment of conversion often seems quite sudden and unexpected, we know from experience that such a fundamental upheaval always requires a long period of incubation. It is only when this preparation is complete, that is to say when the individual is ripe for conversion, that the new insight breaks through with violent emotion. Saul, as he was then called, had unconsciously been a Christian for a long time, and this would explain his fanatical hatred of the Christians, because fanaticism is always found in those who have to stifle a secret doubt. That is why converts are always the worst fanatics. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 582

The ideas of the moral order and of God belong to the ineradicable substrate of the human soul. That is why any honest psychology, which is not blinded by the garish conceits of enlightenment, must come to terms with these facts. They cannot be explained away and killed with irony. In physics we can do without a God-image, but in psychology it is a definite fact that has got to be reckoned with, just as we have to reckon with “affect,” “instinct,” “mother,” etc. It is the fault of the everlasting contamination of object and image that people can make no conceptual distinction between “God” and “God-image,” and therefore think that when one speaks of the “God-image” one is speaking of God and offering “theological” explanations. It is not for psychology, as a science, to demand a hypostatization of the God-image. But the facts being what they are, it does have to reckon with the existence of a God-image. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 528

It would all be so much simpler if only we could deny the existence of the psyche. But here we are with our immediate experiences of something that is—something that has taken root in the midst of our measurable, ponderable, three dimensional reality, that differs mysteriously from this in every respect and in all its parts, and yet reflects it. The psyche could be regarded as a mathematical point and at the same time as a universe of fixed stars. It is small wonder, then, if, to the unsophisticated mind, such a paradoxical being borders on the divine. If it occupies no space, it has no body. Bodies die, but can something invisible and incorporeal disappear? What is more, life and psyche existed for me before I could say “I,” and when this “I” disappears, as in sleep or unconsciousness, life and psyche still go on, as our observation of other people and our own dreams inform us. Why should the simple mind deny, in the face of such experiences, that the “soul” lives in a realm beyond the body? ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 671

For the man of today the expansion of life and its culmination are plausible goals, but the idea of life after death seems to him questionable or beyond belief. Life’s cessation, that is, death, can only be accepted as a reasonable goal either when existence is so wretched that we are only too glad for it to end, or when we are convinced that the sun strives to its setting “to illuminate distant races” with the same logical consistency it showed in rising to the zenith. But to believe has become such a difficult art today that it is beyond the capacity of most people, particularly the educated part of humanity. They have become too accustomed to the thought that, with regard to immortality and such questions, there are innumerable contradictory opinions and no convincing proofs. And since “science” is the catchword that seems to carry the weight of absolute conviction in the temporary world, we ask for “scientific” proofs. But educated people who can think know very well that proof of this kind is a philosophical impossibility. We simply cannot know anything whatever about such things. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 790

Like a projectile flying to its goal, life ends in death. Even its ascent and its zenith are only steps and means to this goal. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 803

The birth of a human being is pregnant with meaning, why not death? For twenty years and more the growing man is being prepared for the complete unfolding of his individual nature, why should not the older man prepare
himself twenty years and more for his death? ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 803

Individuation does not shut one out from the world, but gathers the world to oneself. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 432

Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 143

The ego-conscious personality is only a part of the whole man, and its life does not yet represent his total life. The more he is merely “I,” the more he splits himself off from the collective man, of whom he is also a part, and may even find himself in opposition to him. But since everything living strives for wholeness, the inevitable one-sidedness of our conscious life is continually being corrected and compensated by the universal human being in us, whose goal is the ultimate integration of conscious and unconscious, or better, the assimilation of the ego to a wider personality. Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 557

To think otherwise than as our contemporaries think is somehow illegitimate and disturbing; it is even indecent, morbid or blasphemous, and therefore socially dangerous for the individual. He is stupidly swimming against the social current. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 653

Psychology teaches us that, in a certain sense, there is nothing in the psyche that is old; nothing that can really, finally die away. Even Paul was left with a thorn in the flesh. Whoever protects himself against what is new and strange and regresses to the past falls into the same neurotic condition as the man who identifies himself with the new and runs away from the past. The only difference is that the one has estranged himself from the past and the other from the future. In principle both are doing the same thing: they are reinforcing their narrow range of consciousness instead of shattering it in the tension of opposites and building up a state of wider and higher consciousness. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 767

The spirit of the age will not let itself be trifled with. It is a religion, or, better, a creed which has absolutely no connection with reason, but whose significance lies in the unpleasant fact that it is taken as the absolute measure of all truth and is supposed always to have common sense upon its side. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 652

The data of the senses. According to this view, everything is “real” which comes, or seems to come, directly or indirectly from the world revealed by the senses. This limited picture of the world is a reflection of the one-sidedness of Western man. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 742

But life is essential to spirit, since its truth is nothing if it cannot live. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 647

Just as there is a passion that strives for blind unrestricted life, so there is a passion that would like to sacrifice all life to the spirit because of its superior creative power. This passion turns the spirit into a malignant growth that senselessly destroys human life. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 646

Man finds himself simultaneously driven to act and free to reflect. This contrariety in his nature has no moral significance, for instinct is not in itself bad any more than spirit is good. Both can be both. Negative electricity is as good as positive electricity first and foremost it is electricity. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 406

Nowhere are we closer to the sublime secret of all origination than in the recognition of our own selves, whom we always think we know already. Yet we know the immensities of space better than we know our own depths, where —even though we do not understand it—we can listen directly to the throb of creation itself. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 737

Every advance, every conceptual achievement of mankind, has been connected with an advance in self-awareness man differentiated himself from the object and faced Nature as something distinct from her. Any reorientation of psychological attitude will have to follow the same road. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 523

Instead of waging war on himself it is surely better for a man to learn to tolerate himself, and to convert his inner difficulties into real experiences instead of expending them in useless fantasies. Then at least he lives, and does not waste his life in fruitless struggles. If people can be educated to see the lowly side of their own natures, it may be hoped that they will also learn to understand and to love their fellow men better. We understand another person in the same way as we understand, or seek to understand, ourselves. What we do not understand in ourselves we do not understand in the other person either. So there is plenty to ensure that his image will be for the most part subjective. As we know, even an intimate friendship is no guarantee of objective knowledge. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 508

Every one of us gladly turns away from his problems; if possible, they must not be mentioned, or, better still, their existence is denied. We wish to make our lives simple, certain, and smooth, and for that reason problems are taboo. We want to have certainties and no doubts—results and no experiments—without even seeing that certainties can arise only through doubt and results only through experiment. The artful denial of a problem will not produce conviction on the contrary, a wider and higher consciousness is required to give us the certainty and clarity we need. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 751

One of the greatest obstacles to psychological understanding is the inquisitive desire to know whether the psychological factor adduced is “true” or “correct.” If the description of it is not erroneous or false, then the factor is valid in itself and proves its validity by its very existence. One might just as well ask if the duck-billed platypus is a “true” or “correct” invention of the Creator’s will. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 192

What to the causal view is fact to the final view is symbol, and vice versa. Everything that is real and essential to the one is unreal and inessential to the other. We are therefore forced to resort to the antinomian postulate and must view the world, too, as a psychic phenomenon. Certainly it is necessary for science to know how things are “in themselves,” but even science cannot escape the psychological conditions of knowledge, and psychology must be peculiarly alive to these conditions. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Paras 54-45

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

Achievement, usefulness and so forth are the ideals that seem to point the way out of the confusions of the problematical state. They are the lodestars that guide us in the adventure of broadening and consolidating our physical existence; they help us to strike our roots in the world, but they cannot guide us in the development of that wider consciousness to which we give the name of culture. In the period of youth, however, this course is the normal one and in all circumstances preferable to merely tossing about in a welter of problems. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 769

The nearer we approach to the middle of life, and the better we have succeeded in entrenching ourselves in our personal attitudes and social positions, the more it appears as if we had discovered the right course and the right ideals and principles of behaviour. For this reason we suppose them to be eternally valid, and make a virtue of unchangeably clinging to them. We overlook the essential fact that the social goal is attained only at the cost of a diminution of personality. Many—far too many—aspects of life which should also have been experienced lie in the lumber-room among dusty memories; but sometimes, too, they are glowing coals under grey ashes. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 772

Reduction to the natural condition is neither an ideal state nor a panacea. I£ the natural state were really the ideal one, then the primitive would be leading an enviable existence.But that is by no means so, for aside from all the other sorrows and hardships of human life the primitive is tormented by superstitions, fears, and compulsions to such a degree that, if he lived in our civilization, he could not be described as other than profoundly neurotic, if not mad. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 94

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

The conflict between ethics and sex today is not just a collision between instinctuality and morality, but a struggle to give an instinct its rightful place in our lives, and to recognize in this instinct a power which seeks expression and evidently may not be trifled with, and therefore cannot be made to fit in with our well-meaning moral laws. Sexuality is not mere instinctuality; it is an indisputably creative power that is not only the basic cause of our individual lives, but a very serious factor in our psychic life as well. Today we know only too well the grave consequences that sexual disturbances can bring in their train. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 107

People whose own temperaments offer problems are often neurotic, but it would be a serious misunderstanding to confuse the existence of problems with neurosis. There is a marked difference between the two in that the neurotic is ill because he is unconscious of his problems, while the person with a difficult temperament suffers from his conscious problems without being ill. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 763

The greatest mistake an analyst can make is to assume that his patient has a psychology similar to his own. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 498

The elusiveness, capriciousness, haziness, and uniqueness that the lay mind always associates with the idea of the psyche applies only to consciousness, and not to the absolute unconscious …. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 230.

It is the psyche which is ‘the world’s pivot: not only is it the one great condition for the existence of a world at all, it is also an intervention in the existing natural order, and no one can say with certainty where this intervention will final end. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, para 423.

The reality of the psyche stands over against ‘common sense’, which tends to blunt the spirit and lull man into security. ~Carl Jung, Jung, C.W. 8, Page 48.

When excited by an external stimulus, complexes, may express themselves in hallucinations. In short, they behave in such a way that the primitive theory of spirits strikes one as being an uncommonly apt formulation for them ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 593

Depression constitutes an unwelcome intrusion from the unconscious condition not manufactured by the conscious mind ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 167

Depression results from an autonomous complex excited by an external stimulus in short, behaving is such a way that the primitive theory of spirits strikes one as being an uncommonly apt formulation for the condition ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 593

In alchemy, the world-soul is the anima catholica, an idea identical with the spirit of God ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 388

The fear of instinctuality is the eternal burden of the hero-myth and the theme of countless taboos. The closer one comes to the instinct-world, the more violent is the urge to shy away from it and to rescue the light of consciousness from the murks of the sultry abyss. Psychologically, however, the archetype as an image of instinct is a spiritual goal toward which the whole nature of man strives; it is the sea to which all rivers wend their way, the prize which the hero wrests from the fight with the dragon ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 415

Adaptation is never achieved once and for all and necessarily so, because the constant flow of life again and again demands fresh adaptation ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 143

Progression [of libido] could be defined as the daily advance of the process of psychological adaptation ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 60

We know that adaptation is not something that is achieved once and for all, though there is a tendency to believe the contrary. This is due to mistaking a person’s psychic attitude for actual adaptation. We can satisfy the demands of adaptation only by means of a suitably directed attitude. Consequently, the achievement of adaptation is completed in two stages: ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 60

A man’s attitude to reality is something extraordinarily persistent, but the more persistent his mental habitus is, the less permanent will be his effective achievement of adaptation. This is the necessary consequence of the continual changes in the environment and the new adaptations demanded by them ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 60

The progression of libido might therefore be said to consist in a continual satisfaction of the demands of environmental conditions. This is possible only by means of an attitude, which as such is necessarily directed and therefore characterized by a certain one-sidedness. Thus it may easily happen that an attitude can no longer satisfy the demands of adaptation because changes have occurred in the environmental conditions which require a different attitude ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 61

For example, a feeling-attitude that seeks to fulfil the demands of reality by means of empathy may easily encounter a situation that can only be solved through thinking. In this case the feeling-attitude breaks down and the progression of libido also ceases. The vital feeling that was present before disappears, and in its place the psychic value of certain conscious contents increases in an unpleasant way; subjective contents and reactions press to the fore and the situation becomes full of affect and ripe for explosions ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 61

These symptoms indicate a damming up of libido, and the stoppage is always marked by the breaking up of the pairs of opposites. During the progression of libido the pairs of opposites are united in the co-ordinated flow of psychic processes. Their working together makes possible the balanced regularity of these processes, which without this inner polarity would become one-sided and unreasonable 61

Hence it is essential for progression, which is the successful achievement of adaptation, that impulse and counter-impulse, positive and negative, should reach a state of regular interaction and mutual influence. This balancing and combining of pairs of opposites can be seen, for instance, in the process of reflection that precedes a difficult decision. But in the stoppage of libido that occurs when progression has become impossible, positive and negative can no longer unite in co-ordinated action, because both have attained an equal value which keeps the scales balanced ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 61

The longer the stoppage lasts, the more the value of the opposed positions increases; they become enriched with more and more associations and attach to themselves an ever-widening range of psychic material. The tension leads to conflict, the conflict leads to attempts at mutual repression, and if one of the opposing forces is successfully repressed a dissociation ensues, a splitting of the personality, or disunion with oneself ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 61

The stage is then set for a neurosis. The acts that follow from such a condition are uncoordinated, sometimes pathological, having the appearance of symptomatic actions. Although in part normal, they are based partly on the repressed opposite which, instead of working as an equilibrating force, has an obstructive effect, thus hindering the possibility of further progress ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 61

The struggle between the opposites would persist in this fruitless way if the process of regression, the backward movement of libido, did not set in with the outbreak of the conflict. Through their collision the opposites are gradually deprived of value and depotentiated ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 62

This loss of value steadily increases and is the only thing perceived by consciousness. It is synonymous with regression, for in proportion to the decrease in value of the conscious opposites there is an increase in the value of all those psychic processes which are not concerned with outward adaptation and therefore are seldom or never employed consciously. These psychic factors are for the most part unconscious ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 62

As the value of the subliminal elements and of the unconscious increases, it is to be expected that they will gain influence over the conscious mind. On account of the inhibiting influence which the conscious exercises over the unconscious, the unconscious values assert themselves at first only indirectly. The inhibition to which they are subjected is a result of the exclusive directedness of conscious contents. (This inhibition is identical with what Freud calls the “censor.”) The indirect manifestation of the unconscious takes the form of disturbances of conscious behaviour. In the association experiment they appear as complex-indicators, in daily life as the “symptomatic actions” first described by Freud, and in neurotic conditions they appear as symptoms ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 62

Since regression raises the value of contents that were previously excluded from the conscious process of adaptation, and hence are either totally unconscious or only “dimly conscious,” the psychic elements now being forced over the threshold are momentarily useless from the standpoint of adaptation, and for this reason are invariably kept at a distance by the directed psychic function What the regression brings to the surface certainly seems at first sight to be slime from the depths; but if one does not stop short at a superficial evaluation and refrains from passing judgment on the basis of a preconceived dogma, it will be found that this “slime” contains not merely incompatible and rejected remnants of everyday life, or inconvenient and objectionable animal tendencies, but also germs of new life and vital possibilities for the future ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 63

If we remember that the stoppage of libido was due to the failure of the conscious attitude, we can now understand what valuable seeds lie in the unconscious contents activated by regression. They contain the elements of that other function which was excluded by the conscious attitude and which would be capable of effectively complementing or even of replacing the inadequate conscious attitude ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 65

By activating an unconscious factor, regression confronts consciousness with the problem of the psyche as opposed to the problem of outward adaptation. It is natural that the conscious mind should fight against accepting the regressive contents, yet it is finally compelled by the impossibility of further progress to submit to the regressive values. In other words, regression leads to the necessity of adapting to the inner world of the psyche ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 66

Just as adaptation to the environment may fail because of the one-sidedness of the adapted function, so adaptation to the inner world may fail because of the one-sidedness of the function in question ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 67

For instance, if the stoppage of libido was due to the failure of the thinking attitude to cope with the demands of outward adaptation, and if the unconscious feeling function is activated by regression, there is only a feeling attitude towards the inner world. This may be sufficient at first, but in the long run it will cease to be adequate, and the thinking function will have to be enlisted too, just as the reverse was necessary when dealing with the outer world ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 67

Thus a complete orientation towards the inner world becomes necessary until such time as inner adaptation is attained. Once the adaptation is achieved, progression can begin again ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 67

One-sidedness is an unavoidable and necessary characteristic of the directed process [of consciousness], for direction implies one-sidedness. It is an advantage and a drawback at the same time ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 138

One-sidedness must necessarily be directed. It may easily happen that an attitude can no longer satisfy the demands of adaptation because changes have occurred in the environmental conditions which require a different attitude ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 61

Even when no outwardly visible drawback seems to be present, there is always an equally pronounced counter-position in the unconscious, unless it happens to be the ideal case where all the psychic components are tending in one and the same direction. This possibility cannot be disputed in theory, but in practice it very rarely happens. The counter-position in the unconscious is not dangerous so long as it does not possess any high energy-value ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 138

But if the tension increases as a result of too great one-sidedness, the counter-tendency breaks through into consciousness, usually just at the moment when it is most important to maintain the conscious direction ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 138

Thus the speaker makes a slip of the tongue just when he particularly wishes not to say something stupid. This moment is critical because it possesses a high energy tension which, when the unconscious is already charged, may easily “spark” and release the unconscious content ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 138

All life is a loss of balance and a struggling back into balance. We find this return home in religion and art. It is not the old, mindless unity that the artist strives for, but a felt reunion; not empty unity, but full unity; not the oneness of indifference, but the oneness attained through differentiation ( Karl Joël, Seele und Welt, pp. 153f. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 500

We are therefore justified in regarding all extravagant and exaggerated behaviour as a loss of balance, because the coordinating effect of the opposite impulse is obviously lacking. resulting from a one-sided and unreasonable attitude. A condition that is always marked by the breaking up of the pairs of opposites ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 61

The definiteness and directedness of the conscious mind are qualities that have been acquired relatively late in the history of the human race, and are for instance largely lacking among primitives today ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 134

The conscious mind exercises an inhibiting influence (identical with what Freud calls the “censor”) over the unconscious. The unconscious values assert themselves at first only indirectly. These inhibiting influences include: ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 62

Freud’s concept of the “censor” is identical with Jung’s view of the inhibition which the conscious mind exercises over the unconscious ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 62

The censor is an inhibiting characteristic of the conscious mind which prevents all incompatible material from coming to consciousness with the result that incompatible material sinks back into the unconscious ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 132

The process of adaptation requires a directed conscious function characterized by inner consistency and logical coherence ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 64

The directed function must exclude everything unsuitable in order to maintain its integrity of direction. The unsuitable elements are subjected to inhibition and thereby escape attention. Now experience shows that there is only one consciously directed function of adaptation. If, for example I have a thinking orientation I cannot at the same time orient myself by feeling, because thinking and feeling are two quite different functions. In fact, I must carefully exclude feeling if I am to satisfy the logical laws of thinking, so that the thought-process will not be disturbed by feeling ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 64

Orientation [by the function] is largely habitual; accordingly the other unsuitable functions, so far as they are incompatible with the prevailing attitude, are relatively unconscious, and hence unused, untrained, and undifferentiated ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 64

The auxiliary functions are relatively unconscious, and hence unused, untrained, and undifferentiated owing to the dominance of the directed conscious function ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 64

On the principle of coexistence they necessarily become associated with other contents of the unconscious, the inferior and incompatible quality Consequently, when these functions are activated by regression, and so reach consciousness, they appear in a somewhat incompatible form, disguised and covered up with the slime of the deep ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 64

Regression brings to the surface what appears, at first sight, to be slime from the depths this “slime” contains not merely incompatible and rejected remnants of everyday life, or inconvenient and objectionable animal tendencies, but also germs of new life and vital possibilities for the future ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 63

Regression raises the value of contents that were previously excluded from the conscious process of adaptation, and hence are either totally unconscious or only “dimly conscious” ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 63

The psychic elements now being forced over the threshold are momentarily useless from the standpoint of adaptation, and for this reason are invariable kept at a distance by the directed psychic function ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 63

The contents are not only of an infantile-sexual character, but are altogether incompatible contents and tendencies, partly immoral, partly unaesthetic, partly again of an irrational, imaginary nature. The obviously inferior character of these contents as regards adaptation has given rise to that depreciatory view of the psychic background which is habitual in psychoanalytic writings ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 63

The damming up of libido is analogous to a specific obstruction in the direction of the flow, such as a dike, which transforms the kinetic energy of the flow into the potential energy of a reservoir ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 72

Thus dammed back, the water is forced into another channel, if as a result of the damming it reaches a level that permits it to flow off in another direction. Perhaps it will flow into a channel where the energy arising from the difference in potential is transformed into electricity by means of a turbine 72

This transformation might serve as a model for the new progression brought about by the damming up and regression [of libido], its changed character being indicated by the new way in which the energy now manifests itself ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 72

In this process of transformation the principle of equivalence has a special heuristic value: the intensity of progression reappears in the intensity of regression ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 72

It is culture that provides the machine whereby the natural gradient is exploited for the performance of work. That man should ever have invented this machine must be due to something rooted deep in his nature, indeed in the nature of the living organism as such. For living matter is itself a transformer of energy, and in some way as yet unknown life participates in the transformation process ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 80

Life proceeds, as it were, by making use of natural physical and chemical conditions as a means to its own existence. The living body is a machine for converting the energies it uses into other dynamic manifestations that are their equivalents. We cannot say that physical energy is transformed into life, only that its transformation is the expression of life ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 80

In the same way that the living body as a whole is a machine, other adaptations to physical and chemical conditions have the value of machines that make other forms of transformation possible ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 81

Thus all the means an animal employs for safeguarding and furthering its existence apart from the direct nourishment of its bodycam be regarded as machines that exploit the natural gradient for the performance of work ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 81

When the beaver fells trees and dams up a river, this is a performance conditioned by its differentiation. Its differentiation is a product of what one might call “natural culture,” which function as a transformer of energy, as a machine ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 81

Similarly human culture, as a natural product of differentiation, is a machine; first of all a technical one that utilizes natural conditions for the transformation of physical and chemical energy, but also a psychic machine that utilizes psychic conditions for the transformation of libido ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 81

The men dig a hole in the ground, oval in shape and set about with bushes so that it looks like a woman’s genitals. Then they dance round this hole, holding their spears in front of them in imitation of an erect penis. As they dance round, they thrust their spears into the hole, shouting: “pulli nira, pulli nira, wataka!” (not a pit, not a pit, but a c!). During the ceremony none of the participants is allowed to look at a woman ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 83

By means of the hole the Wachandi make an analogue of the female genitals, the object of natural instinct. By the reiterated shouting and the ecstasy of the dance they suggest to themselves that the hole is really a vulva, and in order not to have this illusion disturbed by the real object of instinct, none may look at a woman ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 84

There can be no doubt that this is a canalization of energy and its transference to an analogue of the original object by means of the dance (which is really a mating-play, as with birds and other animals) and by imitating the sexual act ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 84

This dance has a special significance as an earth-impregnation ceremony and therefore takes place in the spring. It is a magical act for the purpose of transferring libido to the earth, whereby the earth acquires a special psychic value and becomes an object of expectation 8~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 5

The mind then busies itself with the earth, and in turn is affected by it, so that there is a possibility and even a probability that man will give it his attention, which is the psychological prerequisite for cultivation and the rise of agriculture ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 85

All major undertakings and efforts, such as tilling the soil, hunting, war, etc., are entered upon with ceremonies of magical analogy or with preparatory incantations which quite obviously have the psychological aim of canalizing libido into the necessary activity ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 86

The enormous complexity of such ceremonies shows how much is needed to divert the libido from its natural river-bed of everyday habit into some unaccustomed activity. The modern mind thinks this can be done by a mere decision of the will and that it can dispense with all magical ceremonies which explains why it was so long at a loss to understand them properly ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 87

When we remember that primitive man is much more unconscious, much more of a “natural phenomenon” than we are, and has next to no knowledge of what we call “will,” then it is easy to understand why he needs complicated ceremonies where a simple act of will is sufficient for us ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 87

Through these ceremonies the deeper emotional forces are released; conviction becomes blind auto-suggestion, and the psychic field of vision is narrowed to one fixed point on which the whole weight of the unconscious forces is concentrated. And it is, indeed, an objective fact that success attends the sure rather than the unsure ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 87

The Wachandi’s hole in the earth is not a sign for the genitals of a woman, but a symbol that stands for the idea of the earth woman who is to be made fruitful. To mistake it for a human woman would be to interpret the symbol semiotically, and this would fatally disturb the value of the ceremony ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 88

It is for this reason that none of the dancers may look at a woman. The mechanism would be destroyed by a semiotic interpretation it would be like smashing the supply-pipe of a turbine on the ground that it was a very unnatural waterfall that owed its existence to the repression of natural conditions ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 88

I am far from suggesting that the semiotic interpretation is meaningless; it is not only a possible interpretation but also a very true one. Its usefulness is undisputed in all those cases where nature is merely thwarted without any effective work resulting from it ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 88

But the semiotic interpretation becomes meaningless when it is applied exclusively and schematically when, in short, it ignores the real nature of the symbol and debases it to a mere sign ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 88

The first achievement wrested by primitive man from instinctual energy, through analogy-building, is magic. A ceremony is magical so long as it does not result in effective work but preserves the state of expectancy ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 89

In that case the energy is canalized into a new object and produces a new dynamism, which in turn remains magical so long as it does not create effective work ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 89

The advantage accruing from a magical ceremony is that the newly invested object acquires a working potential in relation to the psyche. Because of its value it has a determining and stimulating effect on the imagination, so that for a long time the mind is fascinated and possessed by it ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 89

This gives rise to actions that are performed in a half-playful way on the magical object, most of them rhythmical in character. A good example is those South American rock-drawings which consist of furrows deeply engraved in the hard stone. They were made by the Indians playfully retracing the furrows again and again with stones, over hundreds of years. The content of the drawings is difficult to interpret, but the activity bound up with them is incomparably more significant ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 89

The influence exerted on the mind by the magically effective object has other possible consequences. Through a sustained playful interest in the object, a man may make all sorts of discoveries about it which would otherwise have escaped him. As we know, many discoveries have actually been made in this way. Not for nothing is magic called the “mother of science” ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 90

Until late in the Middle Ages what we today call science was nothing other than magic. A striking example of this is alchemy, whose symbolism shows quite unmistakably the principle of transformation of energy described above, and indeed the later alchemists were fully conscious of this fact ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 90

But only through the development of magic into science, that is, through the advance from the stage of mere expectation to real technical work on the object, have we acquired that mastery over the forces of nature of which the age of magic dreamed. Even the alchemist’s dream of the transmutation of the elements has been fulfilled, and magical action at a distance has been realized by the discovery of electricity ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 90

So we have every reason to value symbol-formation and to render homage to the symbol as an inestimable means of utilizing the mere instinctual flow of energy for effective work ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 90

A waterfall is certainly more beautiful than a power-station, but dire necessity teaches us to value electric light and electrified industry more highly than the superb wastefulness of a waterfall that delights us for a quarter of an hour on a holiday walk ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 90

I have called a symbol that converts energy a “libido analogue.” By this I mean an idea that can give equivalent expression to the libido and canalize it into a form different from the original one ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 92

Mythology offers numerous equivalents of this kind, ranging from sacred objects such as churingas, fetishes, etc., to the figures of gods. The rites with which the sacred objects are surrounded often reveal very clearly their nature as transformers of energy ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 92

Thus the primitive rubs his churinga rhythmically and takes the magic power of the fetish into his himself, at the same time giving it a fresh “charge” ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 92

A higher stage of the same line of thought is the idea of the totem, which is closely bound up with the beginnings of tribal life and leads straight to the idea of the palladium, the tutelary tribal deity, and to the idea of an organized human community in general ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 92

The transformation of libido through the symbol is a process that has been going on ever since the beginnings of humanity and continues still. Symbols were never devised consciously, but were always produced out of the unconscious by way of revelation or intuition ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 92

In practical work with our patients we come upon symbol-formations at every turn, the purpose of which is the transformation of libido ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 93

At the beginning of treatment we find the symbol-forming process at work, but in an unsuitable form that offers the libido too low a gradient. Instead of being converted into effective work, the libido flows off unconsciously along the old channels, that is, into archaic sexual fantasies and fantasy activities. Accordingly the patient remains at war with himself, in other words, neurotic ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 93

In such cases analysis in the strict sense is indicated, i.e., the reductive psychoanalytic method inaugurated by Freud, which breaks down all inappropriate symbol-formations and reduces them to their natural elements ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 93

The reductive process should not be continued further. Once the natural course of things is restored. Instead, symbol-formation should be reinforced in a synthetic direction until a more favorable gradient for the excess libido is found ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 94

Aside from all the other sorrows and hardships of human life the primitive is tormented by superstitions, fears, and compulsions to such a degree that, if he lived in our civilization, he could not be described as other than profoundly neurotic, if not mad ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 94

Mankind was freed from these fears by a continual process of symbol-formation that leads to culture ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 95

It is in the youthful period of life that we have most to gain from a thorough recognition of the instinctual side. A timely recognition of sexuality, for instance, can prevent that neurotic suppression of it which keeps a man unduly withdrawn from life, or else forces him into a wretched and unsuitable way of living with which he is bound to come into conflict ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 113

Proper recognition and appreciation of normal instincts leads the young person into life and entangles him with fate, thus involving him in life’s necessities and the consequent sacrifices and efforts through which his character is developed and his experience matured ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 113

The natural man is characterized by unmitigated instinctuality, by his being completely at the mercy of his instincts. The inheritance that opposes this condition consists of mnemonic deposits accruing from all the experience of his ancestors. People are inclined to view this hypothesis with scepticism, thinking that “inherited ideas” are meant. There is naturally no question of that. It is rather a question of inherited possibilities of ideas, “pathways” gradually traced out through the cumulative experience of our ancestors ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 99

Instinct is an essentially collective, i.e., universal and regularly occurring phenomena which has nothing to do with individuality. Archetypes have this quality in common with the instincts and are likewise collective phenomena ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 270

The unconscious is the source of the instincts, for the archetypes are simply the forms which the instincts assume ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 339

Instincts are typical modes of action, and wherever we meet with uniform and regularly recurring modes of action and reaction we are dealing with instinct, no matter whether it is associated with a conscious motive or not ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 273

This [mana] is what works to effect everything which is beyond the power of the ordinary man, outside the common processes of nature ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 123

It is present in the atmosphere of life, attaches itself to persons and things, and is manifested by results which can only be ascribed to its operation ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 123

It is a power or influence, not physical, and in a way supernatural; but shows itself in physical force, or any kind of power or influence which a man possesses ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 123

This mana is not fixed in anything, and can be conveyed in almost anything; but spirits, whether disembodied souls or supernatural beings, have it and can impart it ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 123

It essentially belongs to personal beings to originate it, though it may act through the medium of water, or a stone, or a bone ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 123

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

The basic conception of mana crops up again on the animistic level in personified form. Here it is souls, demons, gods, who produce the extraordinary effect. Nothing “divine” attaches to mana, so that one cannot see in mana the original form of an idea of God. Nonetheless, it cannot be denied that mana is a necessary or at least a very important precondition for the development of an idea of God ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 129

This [mana] is what works to effect everything which is beyond the power of the ordinary man, outside the common processes of nature ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 123

It is present in the atmosphere of life, attaches itself to persons and things, and is manifested by results which can only be ascribed to its operation ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 123

It is a power or influence, not physical, and in a way supernatural; but shows itself in physical force, or any kind of power or influence which a man possesses ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 123

This mana is not fixed in anything, and can be conveyed in almost anything; but spirits, whether disembodied souls or supernatural beings, have it and can impart it ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 123

It essentially belongs to personal beings to originate it, though it may act through the medium of water, or a stone, or a bone ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 123

The basic conception of mana crops up again on the animistic level in personified form. Here it is souls, demons, gods, who produce the extraordinary effect. Nothing “divine” attaches to mana, so that one cannot see in mana the original form ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para of an idea of God. Nonetheless, it cannot be denied that mana is a necessary or at least a very important precondition for the development of an idea of God 129

Demons as forms of mana on the animistic level ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 129

Emotions and affects are often personified as daemons [demons].When we are “besides ourselves with rage” we are obviously no longer identical with ourselves, but are possessed by a daemon or spirit ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 627

We can also put it the other way round and say that the conscious behaves in a complementary manner towards the unconscious. The reasons for this relationship are: ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 132

Consciousness possesses a threshold intensity which its contents must have attained, so that all elements that are too weak remain in the unconscious ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 132

Consciousness, because of its directed functions, exercises an inhibition (which Freud calls censorship) on all incompatible material, with the result that it sinks back into the unconscious ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 132

Consciousness constitutes the momentary process of adaptation, whereas the unconscious contains not only all the forgotten material of the individual’s own past, but all the inherited behavior traces constituting the structure of the mind ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 132

The unconscious contains all the fantasy combinations which have not yet attained the threshold intensity, but which in the course of time and under suitable conditions will enter the light of consciousness ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 132

The neurotic is a person who can never have things as he would like them in the present, and who can therefore never enjoy the past either ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 776

The qualities of definiteness and directedness of the conscious mind are often impaired in the neurotic patient, who differs from the normal person in that his threshold of consciousness gets shifted more easily; in other words, the partition between conscious and unconscious is much more permeable ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 134

The neurotic is forced by his neurosis to take this step [to face the negative projections he has attributed to others], but the normal person is not ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 518

This moment is critical because it possesses a high energy tension which, when the unconscious is already charged, may easily “spark” and release the unconscious content ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 138

A slip of the tongue indicates that unconscious material has slipped into consciousness content that is generally more useful for the reductive method of analysis than the constructive one ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 154

Complexes seem to delight in playing impish tricks. They slip just the wrong word into one’s mouth and make one forget the name of the person one is about to introduce ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 202

We have learnt so much from this for our practical life that we deem it unwise to expect an elimination or standstill of the unconscious after the so-called completion of the treatment ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 140

Many patients, obscurely recognizing this state of affairs, have great difficulty in deciding to give up the analysis, although both they and the analyst find the feeling of dependency irksome. Often they are afraid to risk standing on their own feet, because they know from experience that the unconscious can intervene again and again in their lives in a disturbing and apparently unpredictable manner ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 140

It was formerly assumed that patients were ready to cope with normal life as soon as they had acquired enough practical self-knowledge to understand their own dreams. Experience has shown, however, that even professional analysts, who might be expected to have mastered the art of dream interpretation, often capitulate before their own dreams and have to call in the help of a colleague ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 141

If even one who purports to be an expert in the method proves unable to interpret his own dreams satisfactorily, how much less can this be expected of the patient ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 141

Freud’s hope that the unconscious could be “exhausted” has not been fulfilled. Dream-life and intrusions from the unconscious continue mutatis mutandis unimpeded ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 141

There is a widespread prejudice that analysis is something like a “cure,” to which one submits for a time and is then discharged healed. That is a layman’s error left over from the early days of psychoanalysis ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 142

Analytical treatment could be described as a readjustment of psychological attitude achieved with the help of the doctor. Naturally this newly won attitude, which is better suited to the inner and outer conditions, can last a considerable time, but there are very few cases where a single “cure” is permanently successful ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 142

It is true that medical optimism has never stinted itself of publicity and has always been able to report definitive cures. We must, however, not let ourselves be deceived by the all-too-human attitude of the practitioner, but should always remember that the life of the unconscious goes on and continually produces problematical situations ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 142

There is no need for pessimism; we have seen too many excellent results achieved with good luck and honest work for that. But this need not prevent us from recognizing that analysis is no once-and-for-all “cure”; it is no more, at first, than a more or less thorough readjustment ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 142

There is no change that is unconditionally valid over a long period of time. Life has always to be tackled anew. There are, of course, extremely durable collective attitudes which permit the solution of typical conflicts ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 142

A collective attitude enables the individual to fit into society without friction, since it acts upon him like any other condition of life ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 142

But the patient’s difficulty consists precisely in the fact that his individual problem cannot be fitted without friction into a collective norm; it requires the solution of an individual conflict if the whole of his personality is to remain viable. No rational solution can do justice to this task, and there is absolutely no collective norm that could replace an individual solution without loss ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 142

The new attitude gained in the course of analysis tends sooner or later to become inadequate in one way or another, and necessarily so, because the constant flow of life again and again demands fresh adaptation. Adaptation is never achieved once and for all ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 143

One might certainly demand of analysis that it should enable the patient to gain new orientations in later life, too, without undue difficulty. And experience shows that this is true up to a point. We often find that patients who have gone through a thorough analysis have considerably less difficulty with new adjustments later on ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 143

Nevertheless, these difficulties prove to be fairly frequent and may at times be really troublesome. That is why even patients who have had a thorough analysis often turn to their old analyst for help at some later period. In the light of medical practice in general there is nothing very unusual about this, but it does contradict a certain misplaced enthusiasm on the part of the therapist as well as the view that analysis constitutes a unique “cure” ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 143

In the last resort it is highly improbable that there could ever be a therapy that got rid of all difficulties. Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health. What concerns us here is only an excessive amount of them ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 143

When the unconscious counteraction is suppressed it loses its regulating influence It then begins to have an accelerating and intensifying effect on the conscious process, as though the counteraction had lost its regulating influence and its energy, altogether ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 160

A condition then arises in which not only no inhibiting counteraction takes place, but in which its [the unconscious] energy seems to add itself to that of the conscious direction ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 160

The discovery of the “higher” man, and also the “ugliest” man, expresses the regulating influence [of the unconscious] ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 162

For the “higher “men want to drag Zarathustra down to the collective sphere of average humanity as it always has been ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 162

While the “ugliest” man is actually the personification of the counteraction ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 162

But the roaring lion of Zarathustra’s moral conviction forces all these influences, above all the feeling of pity, back again into the cave of the unconscious ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 162

Thus the regulating influence is suppressed, but not the secret counteraction of the unconscious, which from now on becomes clearly noticeable in Nietzsche’s writings ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 162

First he [Nietzsche] seeks his adversary in Wagner, whom he cannot forgive for Parsifal, but soon his whole wrath turns against Christianity and in particular against St. Paul, who in some ways suffered a fate similar to Nietzsche’s. As is well known, Nietzsche’s psychosis first produced an identification with the “Crucified Christ” and then with the dismembered Dionysus ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 162

With this catastrophe the counteraction at last broke through to the surface ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 162

In the second part of the dream the tree becomes personified, so that it is easy to see that the great tree is the dreaming king himself. Daniel interprets the dream in this sense. Its meaning is obviously an attempt to compensate the king’s megalomania which, according to the story, developed into a real psychosis ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 485

Nebuchadnezzar at the height of his power had a dream which foretold disaster if he did not humble himself ( Daniel 4 ). Daniel interpreted the dream quite expertly, but without getting a hearing. Subsequent events showed that his interpretation was correct, for Nebuchadnezzar, after suppressing the unconscious regulating influence, fell victim to a psychosis that contained the very counteraction he had sought to escape: he, the lord of the earth, was degraded to an animal ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 163

n order, therefore, to gain possession of the energy that is in the wrong place, he [the subject] must make the emotional state the basis or starting point of the procedure ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 167

He must make himself as conscious as possible of the mood he is in, sinking himself in it without reserve and noting down on paper all the fantasies and other associations that come up ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 167

Fantasy must be allowed the freest possible play, yet not in such a manner that it leaves the orbit of its object, namely the affect, by setting off a kind of “chain reaction” association process. This “free association,” as Freud called it, leads away from the object to all sorts of complexes, and one can never be sure that they relate to the affect and are not displacements which have appeared in its stead ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 167

(The whole procedure is a kind of enrichment and clarification of the affect, whereby the affect and its contents are brought nearer to consciousness, becoming at the same time more impressive and more understandable ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 167

This work by itself can have a favourable and vitalizing influence. At all events, it creates a new situation, since the previously unrelated affect has become a more or less clear and articulate idea, thanks to the assistance and co-operation of the conscious mind ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 167

Affect may be enriched and clarified he [the patient] must make himself as conscious as possible of the mood he is in, sinking himself in it without reserve and noting down on paper all the fantasies and other associations that come up.it creates a new situation, since the previously unrelated affect has become a more or less clear and articulate idea ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 167

Every affect tends to become an autonomous complex, to break away from the hierarchy of consciousness and, if possible, to drag the ego after it 628

The archetypes have a “specific charge” and develop numinous effects which express themselves as affects. The affect produces a partial abaissement du niveau mental which has the following effects: ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 841

Although it [the affect] raises a particular content to a supernormal degree of luminosity, it does so by withdrawing so much energy from other possible contents of consciousness that they become darkened and eventually unconscious ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 841

Owing to the restriction of consciousness produced by the affect so long as it lasts, there is a corresponding lowering of orientation which in turn gives the unconscious a favorable opportunity to slip into the space vacated ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 841

Thus we regularly find that unexpected or otherwise inhibited unconscious contents break through and find expression in the affect. Such contents are very often of an inferior or primitive nature and thus betray their archetypal origin ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 841

Such people can profitably work with plastic materials [modeling or sculpture] ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 171

Often it is necessary to clarify a vague content by giving it a visible form. This can be done by drawing, painting, or modeling. Often the hands know how to solve a riddle with which the intellect has wrestled in vain. By shaping it, one goes on dreaming the dream in greater detail in the waking state ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 180

To this question there is no a priori answer; it is only when the conscious mind confronts the products of the unconscious that a provisional reaction will ensue which determines the subsequent procedure. Practical experience alone can give us a clue. So far as my experience goes, there appear to be two main tendencies. One is the way of creative formulation, the other the way of understanding ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 172

Where the principle of creative [aesthetic] formulation predominates, the material is continually varied and increased until a kind of condensation of motifs into more or less stereotyped symbols takes place. These stimulate the creative fantasy and serve chiefly as aesthetic motifs. This tendency leads to the aesthetic problem of artistic formulation ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 173

Where, on the other hand, the principle of understanding predominates, the aesthetic aspect is of relatively little interest and may occasionally even be felt as a hindrance. Instead, there is an intensive struggle to understand the meaning of the unconscious product ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 174

Whereas aesthetic formulation tends to concentrate on the formal aspect of the motif, an intuitive understanding often tries to catch the meaning from barely adequate hints in the material, without considering those elements which would come to light in a more careful formulation ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 175

One tendency seems to be the regulating principle of the other; both are bound together in a compensatory relationship. Experience bears out this formula. So far as it is possible at this stage to draw more general conclusions, we could say that aesthetic formulation needs understanding of the meaning, and understanding needs aesthetic formulation. The two supplement each other to form the transcendent function ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 177

The first steps along both paths follow the same principle: consciousness puts its media of expression at the disposal of the unconscious content. It must not do more than this at first, so as not to exert undue influence. In giving the content form, the lead must be left as far as possible to the chance ideas and associations thrown up by the unconscious. This is naturally something of a setback for the conscious standpoint and is often felt as painful. It is not difficult to understand this when we remember how the contents of the unconscious usually present themselves: as things which are too weak by nature to cross the threshold, or as incompatible elements that were repressed for a variety of reasons. Mostly they are unwelcome, unexpected, irrational contents, disregard or repression of which seems altogether understandable ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 178

Only a small part of them has any unusual value, either from the collective or from the subjective standpoint. But contents that are collectively valueless may be exceedingly valuable when seen from the standpoint of the individual. This fact expresses itself in their affective tone, no matter whether the subject feels it as negative or positive. Society, too, is divided in its acceptance of new and unknown ideas which obtrude their emotionality. The purpose of the initial procedure is to discover the feeling-toned contents, for in these cases we are always dealing with situations where the one sidedness of consciousness meets with the resistance of the instinctual sphere ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 178

The two ways do not divide until the aesthetic problem becomes decisive for the one type of person and the intellectual-moral problem for the other. The ideal case would be if these two aspects could exist side by side or rhythmically succeed each other; that is, if there were an alternation of creation and understanding. It hardly seems possible for the one to exist without the other, though it sometimes does happen in practice: the creative urge seizes possession of the object at the cost of its meaning, or the urge to understand overrides the necessity of giving it form. The unconscious contents want first of all to be seen clearly, which can only be done by giving them shape, and to be judged only when everything they have to say is tangibly present. It was for this reason that Freud got the dream-contents, as it were, to express themselves in the form of “free associations” before he began interpreting them ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 179

It does not suffice in all cases to elucidate only the conceptual context of a dream-content. Often it is necessary to clarify a vague content by giving it a visible form. This can be done by drawing, painting, or modelling. Often the hands know how to solve a riddle with which the intellect has wrestled in vain. By shaping it, one goes on dreaming the dream in greater detail in the waking state, and the initially incomprehensible, isolated event is integrated into the sphere of the total personality, even though it remains at first unconscious to the subject. Aesthetic formulation leaves it at that and gives up any idea of discovering a meaning ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 180

This sometimes leads patients to fancy themselves artists misunderstood ones, naturally. The desire to understand, if it dispenses with careful formulation, starts with the chance idea or association and therefore lacks an adequate basis. It has better prospects of success if it begins only with the formulated product. The less the initial material is shaped and developed, the greater is the danger that understanding will be governed not by the empirical facts but by theoretical and moral considerations. The kind of understanding with which we are concerned at this stage consists in a reconstruction of the meaning that seems to be immanent in the original “chance” idea ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 180

It is evident that such a procedure can legitimately take place only when there is a sufficient motive for it. Equally, the lead can be left to the unconscious only if it already contains the will to lead. This naturally happens only when the conscious mind finds itself in a critical situation ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 181

Once the unconscious content has been given form and the meaning of the formulation is understood, the question arises as to how the ego will relate to this position, and how the ego and the unconscious are to come to terms. This is the second and more important stage of the procedure, the bringing together of opposites for the production of a third: the transcendent function. At this stage it is no longer the unconscious that takes the lead, but the ego ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 181

We shall not define the individual ego here, but shall leave it in its banal reality as that continuous centre of consciousness whose presence has made itself felt since the days of childhood. It is confronted with a psychic product that owes its existence mainly to an unconscious process and is therefore in some degree opposed to the ego and its tendencies ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 182

This standpoint is essential in coming to terms with the unconscious. The position of the ego must be maintained as being of equal value to the counter-position of the unconscious, and vice versa ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 183

But the confrontation with the unconscious must be a many-sided one, for the transcendent function is not a partial process running a conditioned course; it is a total and integral event in which all aspects are, or should be, included. The affect must therefore be deployed in its full strength. Aestheticization and intellectualization are excellent weapons against dangerous affects, but they should be used only when there is a vital threat, and not for the purpose of avoiding a necessary task ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 183

Coming to terms with the counter-position is a serious matter on which sometimes a very great deal depends. Taking the other side seriously is an essential prerequisite of the process, for only in that way can the regulating factors exert an influence on our actions. Taking it seriously does not mean taking it literally, but it does mean giving the unconscious credit, so that it has a chance to co-operate with consciousness instead of automatically disturbing it ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 184

Thus, in coming to terms with the unconscious, not only is the standpoint of the ego justified, but the unconscious is granted the same authority. The ego takes the lead, but the unconscious must be allowed to have its say to audiatur et altera pars ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 185

The way this can be done is best shown by those cases in which the “other” voice is more or less distinctly heard. For such people it is technically very simple to note down the “other” voice in writing and to answer its statements from the standpoint of the ego. It is exactly as if a dialogue were taking place between two human beings with equal rights, each of whom gives the other credit for a valid argument and considers it worth while to modify the conflicting standpoints by means of thorough comparison and discussion or else to distinguish them clearly from one another. Since the way to agreement seldom stands open, in most cases a long conflict will have to be borne, demanding sacrifices from both sides. Such a rapprochement could just as well take place between patient and analyst, the role of devil’s advocate easily falling to the latter ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 186

The shuttling to and fro of arguments and affects represents the transcendent function of opposites. The confrontation of the two positions generates a tension charged with energy and creates a living, third thing not a logical stillbirth in accordance with the principle tertium non datur but a movement out of the suspension between opposites, a living birth that leads to a new level of being, a new situation. The transcendent function manifests itself as a quality of conjoined opposites. So long as these are kept apart naturally for the purpose of avoiding conflict they do not function and remain inert ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 189

The tendencies of the conscious and the unconscious are the two factors that together make up the transcendent function. It is called “transcendent” because it makes the transition from one attitude to another organically possible, without loss of the unconscious. The constructive or synthetic method of treatment presupposes insights which are at least potentially present in the patient and can therefore be made conscious ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 145

We must now make clear what is required to produce the transcendent function. First and foremost, we need the unconscious material. The most readily accessible expression of unconscious processes is undoubtedly dreams. The dream is, so to speak, a pure product of the unconscious. The alterations which the dream undergoes in the process of reaching consciousness, although undeniable, can be considered irrelevant, since they too derive from the unconscious and are not intentional distortions ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 152

Another source is spontaneous fantasies. They usually have a more composed and coherent character and often contain much that is obviously significant. Some patients are able to produce fantasies at any time, allowing them to rise up freely simply by eliminating critical attention. Such fantasies can be used, though this particular talent is none too common ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 155

As we have seen, we need the unconscious contents to supplement the conscious attitude. If the conscious attitude were only to a slight degree “directed,” the unconscious could flow in quite of its own accord. This is what does in fact happen with all those people who have a low level of conscious tension, as for instance primitives ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 158

The reader will no doubt ask: why cannot the unconscious be left to its own devices? Those who have not already had a few bad experiences in this respect will naturally see no reason to control the unconscious. But anyone with sufficiently bad experience will eagerly welcome the bare possibility of doing so ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 159

Now it is a peculiarity of psychic functioning that when the unconscious counteraction is suppressed it loses its regulating influence. It then begins to have an accelerating and intensifying effect on the conscious process. It is as though the counteraction had lost its regulating influence, and hence its energy, altogether, for a condition then arises in which not only no inhibiting counteraction takes place, but in which its energy seems to add itself to that of the conscious direction ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 160

To begin with, this naturally facilitates the execution of the conscious intentions, but because they are unchecked, they may easily assert themselves at the cost of the whole. For instance, when someone makes a rather bold assertion and suppresses the counteraction, namely a well-placed doubt, he will insist on it all the more, to his own detriment ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 160

The ease with which the counteraction can be eliminated is proportional to the degree of dissociability of the psyche and leads to loss of instinct. This is characteristic of, as well as very necessary for, civilized man, since instincts in their original strength can render social adaptation almost impossible. It is not a real atrophy of instinct but, in most cases, only a relatively lasting product of education, and would never have struck such deep roots had it not served the interests of the individual ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 161

Anyone who has seen these things happen over and over again in every conceivable shade of dramatic intensity is bound to ponder. He becomes aware how easy it is to overlook the regulating influences, and that he should endeavour to pay attention to the unconscious regulation which is so necessary for our mental and physical health. Accordingly he will try to help himself by practising self-observation and self-criticism. But mere self-observation and intellectual self-analysis are entirely inadequate as a means to establishing contact with the unconscious. Although no human being can be spared bad experiences, everyone shrinks from risking them, especially if he sees any way by which they might be circumvented ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 165

Knowledge of the regulating influences of the unconscious offers just such a possibility and actually does render much bad experience unnecessary. We can avoid a great many detours that are distinguished by no particular attraction but only by tiresome conflicts. It is bad enough to make detours and painful mistakes in unknown and unexplored territory, but to get lost in inhabited country on broad highways is merely exasperating. What, then, are the means at our disposal of obtaining knowledge of the regulating factors? ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 165

If there is no capacity to produce fantasies freely, we have to resort to artificial aid. The reason for invoking such aid is generally a depressed or disturbed state of mind for which no adequate cause can be found. Naturally the patient can give any number of rationalistic reasons the bad weather alone suffices as a reason. But none of them is really satisfying as an explanation, for a causal explanation of these states is usually satisfying only to an outsider, and then only up to a point ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 166

The outsider is content if his causal requirements are more or less satisfied; it is sufficient for him to know where the thing comes from; he does not feel the challenge which, for the patient, lies in the depression. The patient would like to know what it is all for and how to gain relief. In the intensity of the emotional disturbance itself lies the value, the energy which he should have at his disposal in order to remedy the state of reduced adaptation. Nothing is achieved by repressing this state or devaluing it rationally ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 166

In order, therefore, to gain possession of the energy that is in the wrong place, he [the subject] must make the emotional state the basis or starting point of the procedure. He must make himself as conscious as possible of the mood he is in, sinking himself in it without reserve and noting down on paper all the fantasies and other associations that come ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 167

Fantasy must be allowed the freest possible play, yet not in such a manner that it leaves the orbit of its object, namely the affect, by setting off a kind of “chain-reaction” association process. This “free association,” as Freud called it, leads away from the object to all sorts of complexes, and one can never be sure that they relate to the affect and are not displacements which have appeared in its stead ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 167

Out of this preoccupation with the object there comes a more or less complete expression of the mood, which reproduces the content of the depression in some way, either concretely or symbolically. Since the depression was not manufactured by the conscious mind but is an unwelcome intrusion from the unconscious, the elaboration of the mood is, as it were, a picture of the contents and tendencies of the unconscious that were massed together in the depression ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 167

The whole procedure is a kind of enrichment and clarification of the affect, whereby the affect and its contents are brought nearer to consciousness, becoming at the same time more impressive and more understandable. This work by itself can have a favourable and vitalizing influence. At all events, it creates a new situation, since the previously unrelated affect has become a more or less clear and articulate idea, thanks to the assistance and co-operation of the conscious mind. This is the beginning of the transcendent function, i.e., of the collaboration of conscious and unconscious data ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 167

The emotional disturbance can also be dealt with in another way, not by clarifying it intellectually but by giving it visible shape. Patients who possess some talent for drawing or painting can give expression to their mood by means of a picture. It is not important for the picture to be technically or aesthetically satisfying, but merely for the fantasy to have free play and for the whole thing to be done as well as possible. In principle this procedure agrees with the one first described. Here too a product is created which is influenced by both conscious and unconscious, embodying the striving of the unconscious for the light and the striving of the conscious for substance ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 168

Often, however, we find cases where there is no tangible mood or depression at all, but just a general, dull discontent, a feeling of resistance to everything, a sort of boredom or vague disgust, an indefinable but excruciating emptiness. In these cases no definite starting point exists it would first have to be created. Here a special introversion of libido is necessary, supported perhaps by favourable external conditions, such as complete rest, especially at night, when the libido has in any case a tendency to introversion ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 169

Critical attention must be eliminated. Visual types should concentrate on the expectation that an inner image will be produced. As a rule such a fantasy-picture will actually appear perhaps hypnagogically and should be carefully observed and noted down in writing. Audio-verbal types usually hear inner words, perhaps mere fragments of apparently meaningless sentences to begin with, which however should be carefully noted down too ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 170

Others at such times simply hear their “other” voice. There are, indeed, not a few people who are well aware that they possess a sort of inner critic or judge who immediately comments on everything they say or do. Insane people hear this voice directly as auditory hallucinations. But normal people too, if their inner life is fairly well developed, are able to reproduce this inaudible voice without difficulty, though as it is notoriously irritating and refractory it is almost always repressed. Such persons have little difficulty in procuring the unconscious material and thus laying the foundation of the transcendent function ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 170

There are others, again, who neither see nor hear anything inside themselves, but whose hands have the knack of giving expression to the contents of the unconscious. Such people can profitably work with plastic materials. Those who are able to express the unconscious by means of bodily movements are rather rare. The disadvantage that movements cannot easily be fixed in the mind must be met by making careful drawings of the movements afterwards, so that they shall not be lost to the memory. Still rarer, but equally valuable, is automatic writing, direct or with the planchette. This, too, yields useful results ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 171

Where the principle of creative formulation predominates, the material is continually varied and increased until a kind of condensation of motifs into more or less stereotyped symbols takes place. These stimulate the creative fantasy and serve chiefly as aesthetic motifs. This tendency leads to the aesthetic problem of artistic formulation ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 173

The danger of the aesthetic tendency [creative formulation] is overvaluation of the formal or “artistic” worth of the fantasy-productions; the libido is diverted from the real goal of the transcendent function and sidetracked into purely aesthetic problems of artistic expression ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 176

In the same way that the ego suppressed the unconscious before, a liberated unconscious can thrust the ego aside and overwhelm it ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 183

There is a danger of the ego losing its head, so to speak, that it will not be able to defend itself against the pressure of affective factors a situation often encountered at the beginning of schizophrenia. This danger would not exist, or would not be so acute, if the process of having it out with the unconscious could somehow divest the affects of their dynamism. And this is what does in fact happen when the counter-position is aestheticized or intellectualized ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 183

Aestheticized and intellectualized are both excellent weapons against dangerous affects, but they should be used only when there is a vital threat, and not for the purpose of avoiding a necessary task ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 183

We find unmistakable traces of them [complexes] in all peoples and in all epochs. The oldest literary records bear witness to them; thus the Gilgamesh Epic describes in masterly fashion the psychology of the power-complex, and the Book of Tobit in the Old Testament gives the history of an erotic complex together with its cure ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 209

Complexes are in truth the living units of the unconscious psyche, and it is only through them that we are able to deduce its existence and constitution. The unconscious would in fact be as it is in Wundt’s psychology nothing but a vestige of dim or “obscure” representations, or a “fringe of consciousness,” as William James calls it, were it not for the existence of complexes ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 210

Complexes are not entirely morbid by nature but are characteristic expressions of the psyche, irrespective of whether this psyche is differentiated or primitive ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 209

The constellated contents are definite complexes possessing their own specific energy ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 198

Certain complexes arise on account of painful or distressing experiences in a person’s life, experiences of an emotional nature which leave lasting psychic wounds behind them. A bad experience of this sort often crushes valuable qualities in an individual ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 594

All these produce unconscious complexes of a personal nature. A primitive would rightly speak of a loss of soul, because certain portions of the psyche have indeed disappeared. A great may autonomous complexes arise in this way ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 594

Naïver and more primitive people did not “psychologize” disturbing complexes as we do, but regarded them as beings in their own right, that is, as demons ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 204

Every constellation of a complex postulates a disturbed state of consciousness. The unity of consciousness is disrupted and the intentions of the will are impeded or made impossible. Even memory is often noticeably affected ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 200

An active complex puts us momentarily under a state of duress, of compulsive thinking and acting, for which under certain conditions the only appropriate term would be the judicial concept of diminished responsibility ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 200

My findings in regard to complexes corroborate this somewhat disquieting picture of the possibilities of psychic disintegration, for fundamentally there is no difference in principle between a fragmentary personality and a complex. They have all the essential features in common, until we come to the delicate question of fragmented consciousness. Personality fragments undoubtedly have their own consciousness, but whether such small psychic fragments as complexes are also capable of a consciousness of their own is a still unanswered question ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 202

The word “complex” in its psychological sense has passed into common speech both in German and in English. Everyone knows nowadays that people “have complexes.” What is not so well known, though far more important theoretically, is that complexes can have us ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 200

Even the soberest formulation of the phenomenology of complexes cannot get round the impressive fact of their autonomy, and the deeper one penetrates into their nature I might almost say into their biology the more clearly do they reveal their character as splinter psyches ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 203

The complex in its original strength, sometimes exceeds even that of the ego-complex. Only then can one understand that the ego had every reason for practising the magic of names on complexes, for it is obvious enough that what I fear is something sinister that threatens to swallow me up ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 208

When it [a complex] attacks us then one must be a doctor in order to appreciate what an appalling menace a complex can be. Only when you have seen whole families destroyed by them, morally and physically, and the unexampled tragedy and hopeless misery that follow in their train, do you feel the full impact of the reality of complexes ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 209

The existence of complexes throws serious doubt on the naïve assumption of the unity of consciousness, which is equated with “psyche,” and on the supremacy of the will ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 200

Complexes are objects of inner experience and are not to be met in the street and in public places ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 209

The via regia to the unconscious, however, is not the dream, but the complex, which is the architect of dreams and of symptoms. Nor is this via so very “royal,” either, since the way pointed out by the complex is more like a rough and uncommonly devious footpath that often loses itself in the undergrowth and generally leads not into the heart of the unconscious but past it ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 210

Casting about for a medical comparison, one could best compare them with infections or malign tumors, both of which arise without the least assistance from the conscious mind ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 209

They are the actors in our dreams, whom we confront so powerlessly; they are the elfin beings so aptly characterized in Danish folklore by the story of the clergyman who tried to teach the Lord’s prayer to two elves. They took the greatest pains to repeat the words after him correctly, but at the very first sentence they could not avoid saying: “Our Father, who art not in heaven.” As one might expect on theoretical grounds, these impish complexes are unteachable ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 202

Dream psychology shows us as plainly as could be wished how complexes appear in personified form when there is no inhibiting consciousness to suppress them, exactly like the hobgoblins of folklore who go crashing round the house at night. We observe the same phenomenon in certain psychoses when the complexes get “loud” and appear as “voices” having a thoroughly personal character ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 203

It is on them that the weal and woe of personal life depends; they are the lares and penates who await us at the fireside and whose peaceableness it is dangerous to extol; they are the “little people” whose pranks disturb our nights ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 209

Complexes behave like Descartes’ devils and seem to delight in playing impish tricks. They slip just the wrong word into one’s mouth, they make one forget the name of the person one is about to introduce, they cause a tickle in the throat just when the softest passage is being played on the piano at a concert, they make the tiptoeing latecomer trip over a chair with resounding crash. They bid us congratulate the mourners at a burial instead of condoling with them, they are the instigators of all those maddening things ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 202

Complexes appear to be such trivial things, such ridiculous “nothings,” in fact, that we are positively ashamed of them and do everything possible to conceal them. But if they were really “nothing” they could not be so painful. Painful is what causes pain something decidedly unpleasant, therefore, which for that reason is important in itself and deserves to be taken seriously ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 207

Intuition is an unconscious process in that its result is the irruption into consciousness of an unconscious content, a sudden idea or “hunch.” It resembles a process of perception, but unlike the conscious activity of the senses and introspection the perception is unconscious ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 269

That is why we speak of intuition as an “instinctive” act of comprehension. It is a process analogous to instinct, with the difference that whereas instinct is a purposive impulse to carry out some highly complicated action, intuition is the unconscious, purposive apprehension of a highly complicated situation ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 269

In a sense, therefore, intuition is the reverse of instinct, neither more nor less wonderful than it. But we should never forget that what we call complicated or even wonderful is not at all wonderful for Nature, but quite ordinary ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 269

We always tend to project into things our own difficulties of understanding and to call them complicated, when in reality they are very simple and know nothing of our intellectual problems ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 269

The unconscious is the source of the instincts, for the archetypes are simply the forms which the instincts assume ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 339

The primordial image might suitably be described as the instinct’s perception of itself, or as the self-portrait of the instinct, in exactly the same way as consciousness is an inward perception of the objective life-process ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 277

Just as conscious apprehension gives our actions form and direction, so unconscious apprehension through the archetype determines the form and direction of instinct ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 277

If we call instinct “refined,” then the “intuition” which brings the instinct into play, in other words the apprehension by means of the archetype, must be something incredibly precise ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 277

Thus the yucca moth must carry within it an image, as it were, of the situation that “triggers off” its instinct. This image enables it to “recognize” the yucca flower and its structure ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 277

The criterion of the all-or-none reaction proposed by Rivers has helped us to discover the operation of instinct everywhere in human psychology, and it may be that the concept of the primordial image will perform a similar service with regard to acts of intuitive apprehension ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 278

Intuitional activity can be observed most easily among primitives. There we constantly meet with certain typical images and motifs which are the foundations of their mythologies. These images are autochthonous and occur with great regularity; everywhere we find the idea of a magic power or substance, of spirits and their doings, of heroes and gods and their legends ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 278

In the great religions of the world we see the perfection of those images and at the same time their progressive incrustation with rational forms. They even appear in the exact sciences, as the foundation of certain indispensable auxiliary concepts such as energy, ether, and the atom ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 278

In philosophy, Bergson affords an example of the revival of a primordial image with his conception of “durée créatrice,” which can be found in Proclus and, in its original form, in Heraclitus ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 278

Analytical psychology is daily concerned, in the normal and sick alike, with disturbances of conscious apprehension caused by the admixture of archetypal images. The exaggerated actions due to the interference of instinct are caused by intuitive modes of apprehension actuated by archetypes and all too likely to lead to over-intense and often distorted impressions ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 279

Archetypes are typical modes of apprehension, and wherever we meet with uniform and regularly recurring modes of apprehension we are dealing with an archetype, no matter whether its mythological character is recognized or not ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 280

The collective unconscious consists of the sum of the instincts and their correlates, the archetypes. Just as everybody possesses instincts, so he also possesses a stock of archetypal images. The most striking proof of this is the psychopathology of mental disturbances that are characterized by an irruption of the collective unconscious ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 281

Such is the case in schizophrenia; here we can often observe the emergence of archaic impulses in conjunction with unmistakable mythological images ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 281

In my view it is impossible to say which comes first apprehension of the situation, or the impulse to act. It seems to me that both are aspects of the same vital activity, which we have to think of as two distinct processes simply for the purpose of better understanding ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 282

In the course of my life I have often reflected on the theme of this short essay, and the conclusion I have come to are set down in a paper entitled “On the Nature of the Psyche” [cf. infra, pars. 343ff.], where the problem of instinct and archetype in its later developments is dealt with in considerable detail ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 282

Archetypes are “patterns of behavior.” At the same time they have a “specific charge” and develop numinous effects which express themselves as affects ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 841

The archetypes are simply the forms which the instincts assume ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 339

The archetypes constitute the structure of the collective unconscious. The latter represents a psyche that is identical in all individuals. It cannot be directly perceived or “represented,” in contrast to the perceptible psychic phenomena, and on account of its “irrepresentable” nature I have called it “psychoid” 840

Archetypes, so far as we can observe and experience them at all, manifest themselves only through their ability to organize images and ideas, and this is always an unconscious process which cannot be detected until afterwards ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 440

I call it “collective” because, unlike the personal unconscious, it is not made up of individual and more or less unique contents but of those which are universal and of regular occurrence ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 270

The collective unconscious as the ancestral heritage of possibilities of representation, is not individual but common to all men, and perhaps to all animals, and is the true basis of the individual psyche ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 321

The collective unconscious contains the whole spiritual heritage of mankind’s evolution, born anew in the brain structure of every individual. His conscious mind is an ephemeral phenomenon that accomplishes all provisional adaptations and orientations, for which reason one can best compare its function orientation in space ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 342

The unconscious, on the other hand, is the source of the instinctual forces of the psyche and of the forms or categories that regulate them, namely the archetypes. All the most powerful ideas in history go back to archetypes ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 342

This is particularly true of religious ideas, but the central concepts of science, philosophy, and ethics are no exception to this rule. In their present form they are variants of archetypal ideas, created by consciously applying and adapting these ideas to reality ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 342

The collective unconscious translated the patient’s experiences with women into the snake-bite dream [par. 305 – Case Summary: Army Officer] and thus turned them into a regular mythological motif ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 312

There are certain collective unconscious conditions which act as regulators and stimulators of creative fantasy-activity and call forth corresponding formations by availing themselves of the existing conscious material. They behave exactly like the motive forces of dreams, for which reason active imagination, as I have called this method, to some extent takes the place of dreams ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 403

It is, of course, not easy to prove the existence of the collective unconscious in a normal person, but occasionally mythological ideas are represented in his dreams. These contents can be seen most clearly seen in cases of mental derangement, especially in schizophrenia, where mythological images often pour out in astonishing variety ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 589

Insane people frequently produce combinations of ideas and symbols that could never be accounted for by experiences in their individual lives, but only by the history of the human mind ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 589

The attacks had begun about two months previously, and the patient had been exempted from military service on account of his occasional inability to walk. Various cures had availed nothing ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 303

Close investigation into the previous history of his illness gave no clue, and he himself had no idea what the cause might be. He gave the impression of having a cheerful, rather light-hearted nature, perhaps a bit on the tough side, as though saying theatrically: “you can’t keep us down” ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 303

As the anamnesis revealed nothing, I asked about his dreams. It at once became apparent what the cause was. Just before the beginning of his neurosis the girl with whom he was in love jilted him and got engaged to another man. In talking to me he dismissed this whole story as irrelevant “a stupid girl, if she doesn’t want me it’s easy enough to get another one. A man like me isn’t upset by a thing like that” ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 303

That was the way he treated his disappointment and his real grief. But now the affects came to the surface. The pains in his heart soon disappeared, and the lump in his throat vanished after a few bouts of weeping ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 303

“Heartache” is a poeticism, but here it became an actual fact because his pride would not allow him to suffer the pain in his soul. The “lump in the throat,” the so-called globus hystericus, comes, as everyone knows, from swallowed tears ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 303

But now for the third symptom. The pains in the heel did not disappear. They do not belong in the picture we have just sketched, for the heart is in no way connected with the heel, nor does one express sorrow through the heel. From the rational point of view, one cannot see why the other two syndromes should not have sufficed. Theoretically, it would have been entirely satisfactory if the conscious realization of the repressed psychic pain had resulted in normal grief and hence in a cure ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 304

Here, then, we have a content that propels itself into the unconscious zone in a singular manner, and probably derives from some deeper layer that cannot be fathomed rationally. The nearest analogy to this dream is obviously the neurosis itself. When the girl jilted him, she gave him a wound that paralyzed him and made him ill ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 306

But to what kind of mentality does the symbolical or metaphorical way of expression correspond? It corresponds to the mentality of the primitive, whose language possesses no abstractions but only natural and “unnatural” analogies. This primeval mentality is as foreign to the psyche that produced the heartache and the lump in the throat as a brontosaurus is to a racehorse ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 309

I would like for the sake of completeness, to make a few more remarks about the snake-dream. It seems as if this hypothetical deeper layer of the unconscious the collective unconscious, as I shall now speak of it had translated the patient’s experiences with women into the snake-bite dream and thus turned them into a regular mythological motif ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 312

The reasoner rather, the purpose of this is at first somewhat obscure. But if we remember the fundamental principle that the symptomatology of an illness is at the same time a natural attempt at healing the heartaches, for example, being an attempt to produce an emotional outburst then we must regard the heel symptom as an attempt at healing too ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 312

As the dream shows, not only the recent disappointment in love, but all other disappointments, in school and elsewhere, are raised by this symptom to the level of a mythological event, as though this would in some way help the patient ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 312

Further analysis of the dream elicited something from his previous history that now became clear to the patient for the first time: He had been the darling of a somewhat hysterical mother. She had pitied him, admired him, pampered him so much that he never got along properly at school because he was too girlish ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 306

The patient’s conscious knowledge of the Bible was at a lamentable minimum. Probably he had once heard of the serpent biting the heel and then quickly forgotten it. But something deep in his unconscious heard it and did not forget: it remembered this story at a suitable opportunity. This part of the unconscious evidently likes to express itself mythologically, because this way of expression is in keeping with its nature ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 308

We are concerned here, then, with the psychological phenomenon that lies at the root of magic by analogy. We should not think that is an ancient superstition which we have long since outgrown ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 314

If you read the Latin text of the Mass carefully, you will constantly come upon the famous “sicut”; this always introduces an analogy by means of which a change is to be produced ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 314

Another striking example of analogy is the making fire on Holy Saturday. In former times, the new fire was struck from the stone, and still earlier it was obtained by boring into a piece of wood, which was the prerogative of the Church ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 314

Therefore in the prayer of the priest it is said: O God, who through thy Son, who is called the cornerstone, hast brought the fire of thy light to the faithful, make holy for our future use this new fire struck from the firestone ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 314

By the analogy of Christ with the cornerstone, the firestone is raised to the level of Christ himself, who again kindles a new fire ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 314

The rationalist may laugh at this. But something deep in us is stirred, and not in us alone but in millions of Christian men and women, though we may call it only a feeling for beauty. What is stirred in us is that faraway background, those immemorial patterns of the human mind, which we have not acquired, but have inherited from the dim ages of the past ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 315

The case is that of a man in his thirties, who was suffering from a paranoid form of schizophrenia. He became ill in his early twenties. He had always presented a strange mixture of intelligence, wrong-headedness, and fantastic ideas. He was an ordinary clerk, employed in a consulate ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 317

Evidently as a compensation for his very modest existence he was seized with megalomania and believed himself to be the Saviour. He suffered from frequent hallucinations and was allowed to go unattended in the corridor ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 317

One day I came across him there, blinking through the window up at the sun, and moving his head from side to side in a curious manner. He took me by the arm and said he wanted to show me something. He said I must look at the sun with eyes half shut, and I could see the sun’s phallus. If I moved my head from side to side the sun-phallus would move too, and that was the origin of the wind ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 317

I made this observation about 1906. In the course of the year 1910, when I was engrossed in mythological studies, a book of Dieterich’s came into my hands. It was part of the so-called Paris magic papyrus and was thought by Dieterich to be a liturgy of the Mithraic cult ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 318

It consisted of a series of instructions, invocations, and visions. One of these visions is described in the following words: And likewise the so-called tube, the origin of the ministering wind. For you will see hanging down from the disc of the sun something that looks like a tube. And towards the regions westward it is as though there were an infinite east wind. But if the other wind should prevail towards the regions of the east, you will in like manner see the vision veering in that direction ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 318

The Greek word for tube, ‘means a wind-instrument, and the combination in Homer meansa thick jet of blood.’ So evidently a stream of wind is blowing through the tube out of the sun ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 318

The vision of my patient in 1906, and the Greek text first edited in 1910, should be sufficiently far apart to rule out the possibility of cryptomnesia on his side and of thought-transference on mine. The obvious parallelism of the two visions cannot be disputed, though one might object that the similarity is purely fortuitous. In that case we should expect the vision to have no connections with analogous ideas, nor any inner meaning ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 319

But this expectation is not fulfilled, for in certain medieval paintings this tube is actually depicted as a sort of hose-pipe reaching down from heaven under the robe of Mary. In it the Holy Ghost flies down in the form of a dove to impregnate the Virgin ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 319

As we know from the miracle of Pentecost, the Holy Ghost was originally conceived as a mighty rushing wind, the, “the wind that bloweth where it listeth.” In a Latin text we read: “Animo descensus per orbem solis tribuitur” (They say that the spirit descends through the disc of the sun). This conception is common to the whole of late classical and medieval philosophy ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 319

The personal unconscious includes all those psychic contents which have been forgotten during the course of the individual’s life. Traces of them are still preserved in the unconscious, even if all conscious memory of them has been lost ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 588

The personal unconscious contains all psychic contents that are incompatible with the conscious attitude. This comprises a whole group of contents, chiefly those which appear morally, aesthetically, or intellectually inadmissible and are repressed on account of their incompatibility ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 588

It contains complexes that belong to the individual and form an intrinsic part of his psychic life ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 590

The personal unconscious also contains all subliminal impressions or perceptions which have too little energy to reach consciousness. To these we must add unconscious combinations of ideas that are still too feeble and too indistinct to cross over the threshold ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 588

The personal unconscious consists firstly of all those contents that became unconscious either because they lost their intensity and were forgotten or because consciousness was withdrawn from them (repression), and secondly of contents, some of them sense-impressions, which never had sufficient intensity to reach consciousness but have somehow entered the psyche ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 321

Just as the constellations were projected into the heavens, similar figures were projected into legends and fairy-tales or upon historical persons. We can therefore study the collective unconscious in two ways, either in mythology or in the analysis of the individual ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 325

The essential content of all mythologies and all religions and all isms is archetypal. The archetype being spirit or anti-spirit ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 406

The daily course of the sun and the regular alternation of the day and night must have imprinted themselves on the psyche in the form of an image from primordial times ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 326

We cannot demonstrate the existence of this image, but find instead more or less fantastic analogies of the physical process. Every morning a divine hero is born from the sea and mounts the chariot of the sun. In the West a Great Mother awaits him, and he is devoured by her in the evening. In the belly of a dragon he traverses the depths of the midnight sea. After a frightful combat with the serpent of night he is born again in the morning ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 326

What we can safely say about mythical images is that the physical process imprinted itself on the psyche in this fantastic, distorted form and was preserved there, so that the unconscious still reproduces similar images today. Naturally the question now arises: why does the psyche not register the actual process, instead of mere fantasies about the physical process? ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 328

If you can put yourself in the mind of the primitive, you will at once understand why this is so. He lives in such “participation mystique” with his world, as Lévy-Bruhl calls it, that there is nothing like that absolute distinction between subject and object which exists in our minds. What happens outside also happens in him, and what happens in him also happens outside ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 329

(There are mythological theories that explain everything as coming from the sun and lunar theories that do the same for the moon. This is due to the simple fact that there are countless myths about the moon, among them a whole host in which the moon is the wife of the sun ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 330

The moon is the changing experience of the night, and thus coincides with the primitive’s sexual experience of woman, who for him is also the experience of the night ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 330

But the moon can equally well be the injured brother of the sun, for at night affect-laden and evil thoughts of power and revenge may disturb sleep ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 330

The moon, too, is a disturber of sleep, and is also the abode of departed souls, for at night the dead return in dreams and the phantoms of the past terrify the sleepless ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 330

Thus the moon also signifies madness (“lunacy”). It is such experiences as these that have impressed themselves on the mind, rather than the changing image of the moon ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 330

It is not storms, not thunder and lightning, not rain and cloud that remain as images in the psyche, but the fantasies caused by the affects they arouse. I once experienced a violent earthquake, and my first, immediate feeling was that I no longer stood on the solid and familiar earth, but on the skin of a gigantic animal that was heaving under my feet. It was this image that impressed itself on me, not the physical fact ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 331

Man’s curses against devastating thunderstorms, his terror of the unchained elements these affects anthropomorphize the passion of nature, and the purely physical element becomes an angry god ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 331

Like the physical conditions of man’s environment, the physiological conditions, glandular secretions, etc., also can arouse fantasies charged with affect. Sexuality appears as a god of fertility, as a fiercely sensual, feminine daemon, as the devil himself with Dionysian goat’s legs and obscene gestures, or as a terrifying serpent that squeezes its victims to death ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 332

Hunger makes food into gods. Certain Mexican tribes even give their food-gods an annual holiday to allow them to recuperate, and during this time the staple food is not eaten ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 333

The ancient Pharaohs were worshipped as eaters of gods. Osiris is the wheat, the son of the earth, and to this day the Host must be made of wheat-meal, i.e., a god to be eaten, as also was Iacchos, the mysterious god of the Eleusinian mysteries. The bull of Mithras is the edible fruitfulness of the earth ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 333

The psychological conditions of the environment naturally leave similar mythical traces behind them. Dangerous situations, be they dangers to the body or to the soul, arouse affect-laden fantasies, and, in so far as such situations typically repeat themselves, they give rise to archetypes, as I have termed myth-motifs in general ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 334

How is it then, you may ask, with the most ordinary everyday events, with immediate realities like husband, wife, father, mother, child? These ordinary everyday facts, which are eternally repeated, create the mightiest archetypes of all, whose ceaseless activity is everywhere apparent even in a rationalistic age like ours ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 336

Let us take as an example the Christian dogma. The Trinity consists of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, who is represented by the bird of Astarte, the dove, and who in early Christian times was called Sophia and thought of as feminine. The worship of Mary in the later Church is an obvious substitute for this. Here we have the archetype of the family ‘in a supracelestial place,’ as Plato expresses it, enthroned as a formulation of the ultimate mystery ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 336

Christ is the bridegroom, the Church is the bride, the baptismal font is the womb of the Church, as it is still called in the text of the Benedictio fontis. The holy water has salt put into it, with the idea of making it like the amniotic fluid, or like sea-water ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 336

A hierosgamos or sacred wedding is performed on Holy Saturday before Easter, which I have just mentioned, and a burning candle as a phallic symbol is plunged three times into the font, in order to fertilize it and lend it the power to bear the baptized child anew (quasimodo genitus) ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 336

The mana personality, the medicine-man, is the pontifex maximus, the Papa; the Church is mater ecclesia, the magna mater of magical power, and mankind are children in need of help and grace ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 336

The deposit of mankind’s whole ancestral experiences rich in emotional imagery of father, mother, child, husband and wife, of the magic personality, of dangers to body and soul, has exalted this group of archetypes into the supreme regulating principles of religious and even of political life, in unconscious recognition of their tremendous psychic power ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 337

I have found that a rational understanding of these things in no way detracts from their value; on the contrary, it helps us not only to feel but to gain insight into their immense significance. These mighty projections enable the Catholic to experience large tracts of his collective unconscious in tangible reality. He has no need to go in search of authority, superior power, revelation, or something that would link him with the eternal and the timeless. These are always present and available for him: there, in the Holy of Holies on every altar, dwells the presence of God ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 338

It is the Protestant and the Jew who have to seek, the one because he has, in a manner of speaking, destroyed the earthly body of the Deity, the other because he can never find it. For both of them the archetypes, which to the Catholic world have become a visible and living reality, lie in the unconscious ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 338

The Trinity consists of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, who is represented by the bird of Astarte, the dove, and who in early Christian times was called Sophia and thought of as feminine. The worship of Mary in the later Church is an obvious substitute for this ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 336

Here we have the archetype of the family ‘in a supracelestial place,’ as Plato expresses it, enthroned as a formulation of the ultimate mystery ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 336

Christ is the bridegroom, the Church is the bride, the baptismal font is the womb of the Church, as it is still called in the text of the Benedictio fontis ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 336

A hierosgamos or sacred wedding, is performed on Holy Saturday before Easter, and a burning candle as a phallic symbol is plunged three times into the font, in order to fertilize it and lend it the power to bear the baptized child anew (quasimodo genitus) ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 336

The unconscious, as the totality of all archetypes, is the deposit of all human experience right back to its remotest beginnings. Not, indeed, a dead deposit, a sort of abandoned rubbish-heap, but a living system of reactions and aptitudes that determine the individual’s life in invisible ways all the more effective because invisible ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 339

It is not just a gigantic historical prejudice, so to speak, an a priori historical condition; it is also the source of the instincts, for the archetypes are simply the forms which the instincts assume ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 339

From the living fountain of instinct flows everything that is creative; hence the unconscious is not merely conditioned by history, but is the very source of the creative impulse ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 339

It is like Nature herself prodigiously conservative, and yet transcending her own historical conditions in her acts of creation. No wonder, then, that it has always been a burning question for humanity how best to adapt to these invisible determinants ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 339

If consciousness had never split off from the unconscious an eternally repeated event symbolized as the fall of the angels and the disobedience of the first parents this problem would never have arisen, any more than would the question of environmental adaptation ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 339

As the name indicates, its contents are not personal but collective; that is, they do not belong to one individual alone but to a whole group of individuals, and generally to a whole nation, or even to the whole of mankind ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 589

It is an instance of primitive, mythological thinking, which reproduces its own primordial images, and is not a reproduction of conscious experiences ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 589

Although they may be enriched by associations, they are not corrected, but are conserved in their original form, as can easily be ascertained from the continuous and uniform effect they have upon the conscious mind ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 383

Similarly, they take on the uninfluenceable and compulsive character of an automatism, of which they can be divested only if they are made conscious. This latter procedure is rightly regarded as one of the most important therapeutic factors ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 383

In the end such complexes presumably in proportion to their distance from consciousness assume, by self-amplification, an archaic and mythological character and hence a certain numinosity, as is perfectly clear in schizophrenic dissociations ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 383

Numinosity, however, is wholly outside conscious volition, for it transports the subject into the state of rapture, which is a state of will-less surrender ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 383

Using the analogy of the spectrum, we could compare the lowering of unconscious contents to a displacement towards the red end of the color band, a comparison which is especially edifying in that red, the blood colour, has always signified emotion and instinct ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 384

Red, the blood colour, has always signified emotion and instinct ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 384

Red is not such a bad match for instinct ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 414

Red is the “warm” color, and is used for feelings and emotions

Red had a spiritual significance for Goethe, but that was in accord with his creed of feeling ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 384

On the animal and primitive level there is a mere “luminosity,” differing hardly at all from the glancing fragments of a dissociated ego ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 387

Here, as on the infantile level, consciousness is not a unity, being as yet uncentered by a firmly-knit ego-complex, and just flickering into life here and there wherever outer or inner events, instincts, and affects happen to call it awake ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 387

Therefore we would do well to think of ego-consciousness as being surrounded by a multitude of little luminosities ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 388

The scintillae radiate or gleam as white sparks from the world-soul which is identical with the spirit of God ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 388

The light of nature, the lumen naturae, is a light with a fiery longing to enkindle: ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 391

The light of nature is a light which is lit from the Holy Ghost, and goeth not out, for it is well lit and the light is of a kind that desireth to burn therefore in the light of nature is a fiery longing to enkindle ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 391

It is an “invisible” light: Now it follows that in the invisible alone hath man his wisdom, his art, from the light of nature. Man is a “prophet of the natural light” ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 391

He “learns” the lumen naturae through dreams, among other things. “As the light of nature cannot speak, it buildeth shapes in sleep from the power of the word” (of God) ( Liber de Caducis, IV, p. 274; VIII, p. 298 ) ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 391

In later authors [of alchemy] these fish’s eyes are always cropping up. There is a variant in Sir George Ripley, stating that on the “desiccation of the sea” a substance is left behind which “glitters like a fish’s eye “an obvious allusion to the gold and the sun (God’s eye). ( Opera omnia chemica, 1649, p. 159 ) ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 394

These are the seven eyes of the Lord that run to and from through the whole earth. These seven eyes are evidently the seven planets which, like the sun and moon, are the eyes of God, never resting, ubiquitous and all-seeing ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 394

The same motif is probably at the bottom of the many-eyed giant Argus. He is nicknamed `the All-Seeing,’ and is supposed to symbolize the starry heavens. Sometimes he is one-eyed, sometimes four-eyed, sometimes hundred-eyed, and even myriad-eyed. Besides which he never sleeps ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 394

Hera transferred the eyes of Argus Panoptes to the peacock’s tail ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 394

Like the guardian Argus, the constellation of the Dragon [Draco] is also given an all-surveying position in the Aratus citations of Hippolytus. He is there described as the one “who from the height of the Pole looks down upon all things and sees all things, so that nothing that happens shall be hidden from him.” This dragon is sleepless, because the Pole “never sets” ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 394

Sometimes the serpent bears six signs of the zodiac upon his back. As Eisler has remarked, on account of the time symbolism the all-seeing quality of the dragon is transferred to Chronos ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 394

The Uroboros has the meaning of eternity and cosmos in Horapollo ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 394

The identification of the All-Seeing with Time probably explains the eyes on the wheels in Ezekiel’s vision ( A.V., 1 : 18 : As for their rings, they were so high that they were dreadful; and their rings were full of eyes round about them four) ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 394

We mention this identification because of its special importance: it indicates the relation between the mundus archetypus of the unconscious and the “phenomenon” of Time in other words, it points to the synchronicity of archetypal events ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 394

I had often observed patients whose dreams pointed to a rich store of fantasy-material. Equally, from the patients themselves, I got the impression that they were stuffed full of fantasies, without their being able to tell me just where the inner pressure lay ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 400

I therefore took up a dream-image or an association of the patient’s, and, with this as a point of departure, set him the task of elaborating or developing his theme by giving free rein to his fantasy ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 400

This, according to individual taste and talent, could be done in any number of ways: dramatic, dialectic, visual, acoustic, or in the form of dancing, painting, drawing, or modelling ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 400

The result of this technique was a vast number of complicated designs whose diversity puzzled me for years, until I was able to recognize that in this method I was witnessing the spontaneous manifestation of an unconscious process which was merely assisted by the technical ability of the patient, and to which I later gave the name, “individuation process” ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 400

But, long before this recognition dawned on me, I had made the discovery that this method often diminished, to a considerable degree, the frequency and intensity of the dreams, thus reducing the inexplicable pressure exerted by the unconscious. In many cases, this brought a large measure of therapeutic success, which encouraged both myself and the patient to press forward despite the baffling nature of the results ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 400

The more I suspected these configurations of harboring a certain purposefulness, the less inclined I was to risk any theories about them. This reticence was not made easy for me, since in many cases I was dealing with patients who needed an intellectual point d’appui [point of support] if they were not to get totally lost in the darkness ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 400

The chaotic assortment of images that first confronted me reduced itself in the course of the work to certain well-defined themes and formal elements, which repeated themselves in identical or analogous form with the most varied individuals ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 401

Triadic formations, apart from the complexio oppositorum in a third, were relatively rare and formed notable exceptions which could be explained by special conditions ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 401

The centering process is, in my experience, the never-to-be-surpassed climax of the whole development, and is characterized as such by the fact that it brings with it the greatest possible therapeutic effect ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 401

They behave exactly like the motive forces of dreams, for which reason active imagination, as I have called this method, to some extent takes the place of dreams ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 403

The existence of unconscious regulators I sometimes refer to them as “dominants” because of their mode of functioning seemed to me so important that I based upon it my hypothesis of an impersonal collective unconscious ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 403

The most remarkable thing about this method, I felt, was that it did not involve a reductio in primam figuram [reduction of conscious contents to their simplest denominator], but rather, a synthesis supported by an attitude voluntarily adopted, though for the rest wholly natural of passive conscious material and unconscious influences, hence a kind of spontaneous amplification of the archetypes ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 403

The images are not to be thought of as a reduction of conscious contents to their simplest denominator, as this would be the direct road to the primordial images which I said previously was unimaginable; they make their appearance only in the course of amplification ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 403

On this natural amplification process I also base my method of eliciting the meaning of dreams, for dreams behave in exactly the same way as active imagination; only the support of conscious content is lacking ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 404

In its effects it is anything but unambiguous. It can be healing or destructive, but never indifferent, provided of course that it has attained a certain degree of clarity. This aspect deserves the epithet “spiritual” above all else ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 405

It not infrequently happens that the archetype appears in the form of a spirit in dreams or fantasy-products, or even comports itself like a ghost. There is a mystical aura about its numinosity, and it has a corresponding effect upon the emotions ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 405

It mobilizes philosophical and religious convictions in the very people who deemed themselves miles above any such fits of weakness ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 405

Often it drives with unexampled passion and remorseless logic towards its goal and draws the subject under its spell, from which despite the most desperate resistance he is unable, and finally no longer even willing, to break free, because the experience brings with it a depth and fulness of meaning that was unthinkable before ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 405

I fully appreciate the resistance that all rooted convictions are bound to put up against psychological discoveries of this kind. With more foreboding than real knowledge, most people feel afraid of the menacing power that lies fettered in each of us, only waiting for the magic word to release it from the spell ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 405

This magic word, which always ends up in “ism,” works most successfully with those who have the least access to their interior selves and have strayed the furthest from their instinctual roots into the truly chaotic world of collective unconscious ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 405

`Isms’ are only a sophisticated substitute for the lost link with psychic reality. The mass psyche that infallibly results destroys the meaning of the individual and of culture generally ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 427

The spirit / instinct antithesis is only one of the commonest formulations, but it has the advantage of reducing the greatest number of the most important and most complex psychic processes to a common denominator ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 407

Psychic processes seem to be balances of energy flowing between spirit and instinct, though the question of whether a process is to be described as spiritual or as instinctual remains shrouded in darkness. Such evaluation or interpretation depends entirely upon the standpoint or state of the conscious mind ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 407

A poorly developed consciousness, for instance, which because of massed projections is inordinately impressed by concrete or apparently concrete things and states, will naturally see in the instinctual drives the source of all reality ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 407

Conversely, a consciousness that finds itself in opposition to the instincts can, in consequence of the enormous influence then exerted by the archetypes, so subordinate instinct to spirit that the most grotesque “spiritual” complications may arise out of what are undoubtedly biological happenings. Here the instinctuality of the fanaticism needed for such an operation is ignored ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 407

Psychic processes therefore behave like a scale along which consciousness “slides”. At one moment it finds itself in the vicinity of instinct, and falls under its influence; at another, it slides along to the other end where spirit predominates and even assimilates the instinctual processes most opposed to it ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 408

These counter-positions, so fruitful of illusion, are by no means symptoms of the abnormal; on the contrary, they form the twin poles of that psychic one-sidedness which is typical of the normal man today. Naturally this does not manifest itself only in the spirit / instinct antithesis; it assumes many other forms, as I have shown in my Psychological Types ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 408

The dynamism of instinct is lodged as it were in the infra-red part of the spectrum, whereas the instinctual image lies in the ultra-violet part ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 414

If we remember our colour symbolism, then, as I have said, red is not such a bad match for instinct. Bur for spirit, as might be expected, blue would be a better match than violet ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 414

This expectation is based on the experience that blue, the colour of air and sky, is most readily used for depicting spiritual contents, whereas red, the “warm” colour, is used for feelings and emotions ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 414

Violet is the “mystic” colour, and it certainly reflects the indubitably “mystic” or paradoxical quality of the archetype in a most satisfactory way. Violet is a compound of blue and red, although in the spectrum it is a colour in its own right. Now, it is, as it happens, rather more than just an edifying thought if we feel bound to emphasize that the archetype is more accurately characterized by violet, for, as well as being an image in its own right, it is at the same time a dynamism which makes itself felt in the numinosity and fascinating power of the archetypal image ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 414

The archetype is a psychoid factor that belongs, as it were, to the invisible, ultra-violet end of the psychic spectrum. It does not appear, in itself, to be capable of reaching consciousness. On which account I call it psychoid ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 417

I doubt my ability to give a proper account of the change [of ego-consciousness] that comes over the subject under the influence of the individuation process. It is a relatively rare occurrence, which is experienced only by those who have gone through the wearisome but, if the unconscious is to be integrated, indispensable business of coming to terms with the unconscious components of the personality ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 430

Once these unconscious components are made conscious, it results not only in their assimilation to the already existing ego-personality, but in a transformation of the latter [ego-personality]. The main difficulty is to describe the manner of this transformation ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 430

Generally speaking the ego is a hard-and-fast complex which, because tied to consciousness and its continuity, cannot easily be altered, and should not be altered unless one wants to bring on pathological disturbances ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 430

The closest analogies to an alteration of the ego are to be found in the field of psychopathology, where we meet not only with neurotic dissociations but also with the schizophrenic fragmentation, or even dissolution, of the ego ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 430

In this field, too, we can observe pathological attempts at integration if such an expression be permitted. These consist in more or less violent irruptions of unconscious contents into consciousness, the ego proving itself incapable of assimilating the intruders ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 430

But if the structure of the ego-complex is strong enough to withstand their assault without having its framework fatally dislocated, then assimilation can take place. In that event there is an alteration of the ego as well as of the unconscious contents ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 430

Although the it is able to preserve its structure, the ego is ousted from its central and dominating position and thus finds itself in the role of a passive observer who lacks the power to assert its will under all circumstances, not so much because it has been weakened in any way, as because certain considerations give it pause ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 430

That is, the ego cannot help discovering that the afflux of unconscious contents has vitalized the personality, enriched it and created a figure that somehow dwarfs the ego in scope and intensity ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 430

This experience paralyzes an over-egocentric will and convinces the ego that in spite of all difficulties it is better to be taken down a peg than to get involved in a hopeless struggle in which one is invariably handed the dirty end of the stick ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 430

In this way the will, as disposable energy, gradually subordinates itself to the stronger factor, namely to the new totality-figure I call the Self ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 430

Naturally, in these circumstances there is the greatest temptation simply to follow the power-instinct and to identify the ego with the Self outright, in order to keep up the illusion of the ego’s mastery ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 430

In other cases the ego proves too weak to offer the necessary resistance to the influx of unconscious contents and is thereupon assimilated by the unconscious, which produces a blurring or darkening of ego-consciousness and its identification with a preconscious wholeness ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 430

Both these developments make the realization of the Self impossible, and at the same time are fatal to the maintenance of ego-consciousness. They amount, therefore, to pathological effects ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 430

The psychic phenomena recently observable in Germany [WWII] fall into this category. It is abundantly clear that such an abaissement du niveau mental, i.e., the overpowering of the ego by unconscious contents and the consequent identification with a preconscious wholeness, possesses a prodigious psychic virulence, or power of contagion, and is capable of the most disastrous results ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 430

Developments of this kind should, therefore, be watched very carefully; they require the closest control. I would recommend anyone who feels himself threatened by such tendencies to hang a picture of St. Christopher on the wall and to meditate upon it ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 430

For the Self has a functional meaning only when it can act compensatorily to ego-consciousness. If the ego is dissolved in identification with the Self, it gives rise to a sort of nebulous superman with a puffed-up ego and a deflated Self ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 430

Such a personage, however saviourlike or baleful his demeanour, lacks the scintilla, the soul-spark, the little wisp of divine light that never burns more brightly than when it has to struggle against the invading darkness. What would the rainbow be were it not limned against the lowering cloud? ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 430

Libido is essentially qualitative and not quantitative ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 441

In psychology the exact measurement of quantities is replaced by an approximate determination of intensities, for which purpose, in strictest contrast to physics, we enlist the function of feeling (valuation) ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 441

The psychic intensities and their graduated differences point to quantitative processes which are inaccessible to direct observation and measurement 4~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 41

A dream is a psychic product originating in the sleeping state without conscious motivation. In a dream, consciousness is not entirely extinguished; there is always a small remnant left. In most dreams, for instance, there is still some consciousness of the ego, although it is a very limited and curiously distorted ego known as the dream-ego ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 580

Consciousness exists only when psychic contents are associated with the ego, and the ego is a psychic complex of a particularly solid kind 5~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 80

As sleep is seldom quite dreamless, we may assume that activity is as a rule only restricted by sleep 58~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 80

The psychic contents associated with it in a dream confront the ego in much the same way as do the outward circumstances in real life, so that in dreams we generally find ourselves in situations such as we could not conceive when awake, but which are very like the situations we are confronted with in reality ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 580

As in our waking state, real people and things enter our field of vision, so the dream-images enter like another kind of reality into the field of consciousness of the dream-ego ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 580

We do not feel as if we were producing the dreams, it is rather as if the dreams came to us. They are not subject to our control but obey their own laws ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 580

It is probably in consequence of this loose connection with the other contents of consciousness that the recollected dream is so extremely unstable. Many dreams baffle all attempts at reproduction, even immediately after waking; others can be remembered only with doubtful accuracy, and comparatively few can be called really distinct and clearly reproducible ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 445

Dreams, then, convey to us in figurative language that is, in sensuous, concrete imagery thoughts, judgments, views, directives, tendencies, which were unconscious either because of repression or through mere lack of realization. Precisely because they are contents of the unconscious, and the dream is a derivative of unconscious processes, it contains a reflection of the unconscious contents. It is not a reflection of unconscious contents in general but only of certain contents, which are linked together associatively and are selected by the conscious situation of the moment ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 477

Dreams are not entirely cut off from the continuity of consciousness, for in almost every dream certain details can be found which have their origin in the impressions, thoughts, and moods of the preceding day or days ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 444

The via regia to the unconscious, however, is not the dream, but the complex, which is the architect of dreams and of symptoms ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 210

They are obviously autonomous psychic complexes which form themselves out of their own material. We do not know the source of their motives, and we therefore say that dreams come from the unconscious ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 580

A certain continuity does exist, though at first sight it points backwards. But anyone sufficiently interested in the dream problem cannot have failed to observe that dreams also have a continuity forwards if such an expression be permitted since dreams occasionally exert a remarkable influence on the conscious mental life even of persons who cannot be considered superstitious or particularly abnormal. These after-effects consist mostly in more or less distinct alterations of mood ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 444

Dreams that form logically, morally, or aesthetically satisfying wholes are exceptional. Usually a dream is a strange and disconcerting product distinguished by many “bad qualities,” such as lack of logic, questionable morality, uncouth form, and apparent absurdity or nonsense. People are therefore only too glad to dismiss it as stupid, meaningless, and worthless ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 532

The dream does in fact concern itself with both health and sickness, and since, by virtue of its source in the unconscious, it draws upon a wealth of subliminal perceptions, it can sometimes produce things that are very well worth knowing ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 531

Since the entire psychic content of a life could ultimately be disclosed from any single starting point, theoretically the whole of a person’s previous life-experience might be found in every dream. We need to collect only just so much material as is absolutely necessary in order to understand the dream’s meaning ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 454

The material collected must now be sifted and examined according to principles which are always applied to the examination of historical or any other empirical material. The method is essentially a comparative one, which obviously does not work automatically but is largely dependent on the skill and aim of the investigator ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 455

By finality I mean merely the immanent psychological striving for a  goal. Instead of “striving for a goal” one could also say “sense of purpose.” All psychological phenomena have some such sense of purpose inherent in them, even merely reactive phenomena like emotional reactions. Anger over an insult has its purpose in revenge; the purpose of ostentatious mourning is to arouse the sympathy of others, and so on ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 456

Considering a dream from the standpoint of finality does not involve a denial of the dream’s causes, but rather a different interpretation of the associative material gathered round the dream. The material facts remain the same, but the criterion by which they are judged is different ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 462

From the standpoint of finality the images in a dream each have an intrinsic value of their own. From this standpoint, the significance lies precisely in the diversity of symbolical expressions in the dream and not in their uniformity of meaning. The symbol in the dream has more the value of a parable: it does not conceal, it teaches ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 471

Applying the causal point of view to the material associated with the dream, we reduce the manifest dream-content to certain fundamental tendencies or ideas exhibited by the material. These, as one would expect, are of an elementary and general nature ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 457

The causal point of view tends by its very nature towards uniformity of meaning, that is, towards a fixed significance of symbols ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 471

To this I must remark that understanding is not an exclusively intellectual process for, as experience shows, a man may be influenced, and indeed convinced in the most effective way, by innumerable things of which he has no intellectual understanding. I need only remind my readers of the effectiveness of religious symbols ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 468

If dreams produce such essential compensations, why are they not understandable? I have often been asked this question. The answer must be that the dream is a natural occurrence, and that nature shows no inclination to offer her fruits gratis or according to human expectations ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 560

Consciousness exists only when psychic contents are associated with the ego, and the ego is a psychic complex of a particularly solid kind ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 580

As sleep is seldom quite dreamless, we may assume that activity is as a rule only restricted by sleep ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 580

We do not feel as if we were producing the dreams, it is rather as if the dreams came to us. They are not subject to our control but obey their own laws ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 580

The via regia to the unconscious, however, is not the dream, but the complex, which is the architect of dreams and of symptoms ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 210

Compensation must be strictly distinguished from complementation. The concept of a complement is too narrow and too restricting; it does not suffice to explain the function of dreams, because it designates a relationship in which two things supplement one another more or less mechanically ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 545

Compensation, on the other hand, as the term implies, means balancing and comparing different data or points of view so as to produce an adjustment or a rectification ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 545

In this regard [compensation] there are three possibilities. If the conscious attitude to the life situation is in large degree one-sided, then the dream takes the opposite side ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 546

If the conscious has a position fairly near the “middle,” the dream is satisfied with variations ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 546

If the conscious attitude is “correct” (adequate), then the dream coincides with and emphasizes this tendency, though without forfeiting its peculiar autonomy ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 546

The dream may either repudiate the dreamer in a most painful way, or bolster him up morally ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 567

The first is likely to happen to people who, have too good an opinion of themselves; the second to those whose self-valuation is too low ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 567

Occasionally, however, the arrogant person is not simply humiliated in the dream, but is raised to an altogether improbable and absurd eminence ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 567

While the all-too-humble individual is just as improbably degraded, in order to “rub it in,” as the English say ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 567

On the basis of the compensation theory, one would be inclined to assume, for instance, that anyone with a too pessimistic attitude to life must have very cheerful and optimistic dreams. This expectation is true only in the case of someone whose nature allows him to be stimulated and encouraged in this way ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 489

But if he has a rather different nature, his dreams will purposely assume a much blacker character than his conscious attitude. They can then follow the principle of like curing like ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 489

The processes of psychic compensatory are almost always of a very individual nature, and this makes the task of proving their compensatory character considerably more difficult. Because of this peculiarity, it is often very difficult, especially for the beginner, to see how far a dream-content has a compensatory significance ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 489

They appear to be better and more valuable than they really are. Their outward success is naturally never paid for out of their individual resources alone, but very largely out of the dynamic reserves generated by collective suggestion ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 496

Such people climb above their natural level thanks to the influence of a collective ideal or the lure of some social advantage, or the support offered by society ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 496

They have not grown inwardly to the level of their outward eminence, for which reason the unconscious in all these cases has a negatively compensating, or reductive, function ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 496

Our knowledge of the reductive function of the unconscious we owe mainly to the researches of Freud. His dream-interpretation limits itself in essentials to the repressed personal background of the individual and its infantile-sexual aspects. Subsequent researches then established the bridge to the archaic elements, to the suprapersonal, historical, phylogenetic functional residues in the unconscious ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 497

The reproduction of such elements, with their thoroughly retrospective character, does more than anything else to undermine effectively a position that is too high, and to reduce the individual to his human nullity and to his dependence on physiological, historical, and phylogenetic conditions ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 497

Every appearance of false grandeur and importance melts away before the reductive imagery of the dream, which analyses his conscious attitude with pitiless criticism and brings up devastating material containing a complete inventory of all his most painful weaknesses ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 497

One is precluded at the outset from calling such a dream prospective, for everything in it, down to the last detail, is retrospective and can be traced back to a past which the dreamer imagined long since been buried ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 497

This naturally does not prevent the dream-content from being compensatory to the conscious content and finally oriented, since the reductive tendency may sometimes be of the utmost importance for adaptation ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 497

There is a type of dream which could be called simple a reaction-dream. One would be inclined to class in this category all those dreams which seem to be nothing more than the reproduction of an experience charged with affect, did not the analysis of such dreams disclose the deeper reason why these experiences are reproduced so faithfully ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 499

It turns out that these experiences also have a symbolical side which escaped the dreamer, and only because of this side is the experience reproduced in the dream ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 499

These dreams, however, do not belong to the reaction type, but only those in respect of which certain objective events have caused a trauma that is not merely psychic but at the same time a physical lesion of the nervous system. Such cases of severe shock were produced in abundance by the war, and here we may expect a large number of pure reaction-dreams in which the trauma is the determining factor ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 499

Although it is certainly very important for the over-all functioning of the psyche that the traumatic content gradually loses its autonomy by frequent repetition and in this way takes its place again in the psychic hierarchy, a dream of this kind, which is essentially only a reproduction of the trauma, can hardly be called compensatory ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 500

Apparently it [reductive-type dream] brings back a split-off, autonomous part of the psyche, but it soon proves that conscious assimilation of the fragment reproduced by the dream does not by any means put an end to the disturbance which determined the dream. The dream calmly goes on “reproducing”: that is to say, the content of the trauma, now become autonomous, goes on working and will continue to do so until the traumatic stimulus has exhausted itself. Until that happens, conscious “realization” is useless ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 500

In practice it is not easy to decide whether a dream is essentially reactive or is merely reproducing a traumatic situation symbolically. But analysis can decide the question, because in the latter case the reproduction of the traumatic scene ceases at once if the interpretation is correct, whereas reactive reproduction is left undisturbed by dream-analysis ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 501

In every case one must consider the possibilities of concordance of associations ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 503

Parallel psychic processes which have been shown to play a very great role especially in families, and which also manifest themselves in an identity or far-reaching similarity of attitude ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 503

Equally one must take into account the possibility of cryptomnesia, It sometimes causes the most astounding phenomena. Since any kind of subliminal material shows up in dreams, it is not at all surprising that cryptomnesia sometimes appears as a determining factor ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 503

Although the possibility of gross deception is infinitely greater here than in our perception of the physical world, we still go on naïvely projecting our own psychology into our fellow human beings. In this way everyone creates for himself a series of more or less imaginary relationships based essentially on projection. Among neurotics there are even cases where fantasy projections provide the sole means of human relationship ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 507

A person whom I perceive mainly through my projections is an imago or, alternatively, a carrier of imagos or symbols. All the contents of our unconscious are constantly being projected into our surroundings, and it is only by recognizing certain properties of the objects as projections or imagos that we are able to distinguish them from the real properties of the objects. But if we are not aware that a property of the object is a projection, we cannot do anything else but be naïvely convinced that it really does belong to the object ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 507

All human relationships swarm with these projections; anyone who cannot see this in his personal life need only have his attention drawn to the psychology of the press in wartime. Cum grano salis, we always see our own unavowed mistakes in our opponent. Excellent examples of this are to be found in all personal quarrels. Unless we are possessed of an unusual degree of self-awareness we shall never see through our projections but must always succumb to them, because the mind in its natural state presupposes the existence of such projections. It is the natural and given thing for unconscious contents to be projected ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 507

In a comparatively primitive person this creates that characteristic relationship to the object which Lévy-Bruhl has fittingly called “mystic identity” or “participation mystique.” Thus every normal person of our time, who is not reflective beyond the average, is bound to his environment by a whole system of projections. So long as all goes well, he is totally unaware of the compulsive, i.e., “magical” or “mystical,” character of these relationships. But if a paranoid disturbance sets in, then these unconscious relationships turn into so many compulsive ties, decked out, as a rule, with the same unconscious material that formed the content of these projections during the normal state. So long as the libido can use these projections as agreeable and convenient bridges to the world, they will alleviate life in a positive way. But as soon as the libido wants to strike out on another path, and for this purpose begins running back along the previous bridges of projection, they will work as the greatest hindrances it is possible to imagine, for they effectively prevent any real detachment from the former object ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 507

We then witness the characteristic phenomenon of a person trying to devalue the former object as much as possible in order to detach his libido from it. But as the previous identity is due to the projection of subjective contents, complete and final detachment can only take place when the imago that mirrored itself in the object is restored, together with its meaning, to the subject. This restoration is achieved through conscious recognition of the projected content, that is, by acknowledging the “symbolic value” of the object ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 507

The frequency of such projections is as certain as the fact that they are never seen through. That being so, it is hardly surprising that the naïve person takes it as self-evident from the start that when he dreams of Mr. X this dream-image is identical with the real Mr. X. It is an assumption that is entirely in accord with his ordinary, uncritical conscious attitude, which makes no distinction between the object as such and the idea one has of it. But there is no denying that, looked at critically, the dream-image has only an outward and very limited connection with the object. In reality it is a complex of psychic factors that has fashioned itself albeit under the influence of certain external stimuli and therefore consists mainly of subjective factors that are peculiar to the subject and often have very little to do with the real object ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 508

We understand another person in the same way as we understand, or seek to understand, ourselves. What we do not understand in ourselves we do not understand in the other person either. So there is plenty to ensure that his image will be for the most part subjective. As we know, even an intimate friendship is no guarantee of objective knowledge ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 508

Although it is a truism to say that an imago is subjective, this statement nevertheless has a somewhat philosophical ring that sounds unpleasant to certain ears. Why this should be so is immediately apparent from what was said above, that the naïve mind at once identifies the imago with the object. Anything that disturbs this assumption has an irritating effect on this class of people. The idea of a subjective level is equally repugnant to them because it disturbs the naïve assumption that conscious contents are identical with objects ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 516

As events in wartime have clearly shown, our mentality is distinguished by the shameless naïveté with which we judge our enemy, and in the judgment we pronounce upon him we unwittingly reveal our own defects: we simply accuse our enemy of our own unadmitted faults. We see everything in the other, we criticize and condemn the other, we even want to improve and educate the other ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 516

Primitive man has a minimum of self-awareness combined with a maximum of attachment to the object; hence the object can exercise a direct magical compulsion upon him. All primitive magic and religion are based on these magical attachments, which simply consist in the projection of unconscious contents into the object ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 516

Self-awareness gradually developed out of this initial state of identity and went hand in hand with the differentiation of subject and object. This differentiation was followed by the realization that certain qualities which, formerly, were naïvely attributed to the object are in reality subjective contents. Although the men of antiquity no longer believed that they were red cockatoos or brothers to the crocodile, they were still enveloped in magical fantasies. In this respect, it was not until the Age of Enlightenment that any essential advance was made. But as everyone knows, our self-awareness is still a long way behind our actual knowledge ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 516

When we allow ourselves to be irritated out of our wits by something, let us not assume that the cause of our irritation lies simply and solely outside us, in the irritating thing or person. In that way we endow them with the power to put us into the state of irritation, and possibly even one of insomnia or indigestion. We then turn round and unhesitatingly condemn the object of offence, while all the time we are raging against an unconscious part of ourselves which is projected into the exasperating object ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 516

Such projections are legion. Some of them are favourable, serving as bridges for easing off the libido, some of them are unfavourable, but in practice these are never regarded as obstacles because the unfavourable projections usually settle outside our circle of intimate relationships ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 517

To this the neurotic is an exception: consciously or unconsciously, he has such an intensive relationship to his immediate surroundings that he cannot prevent even the unfavourable projections from flowing into the objects closest to him and arousing conflicts. He is therefore compelled if he wants to be cured to gain insight into his primitive projections to a far higher degree than the normal person does ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 517

It is true that the normal person makes the same projections, but they are better distributed: for the favourable ones the object is close at hand, for the unfavourable ones it is at a distance. It is the same for the primitive: anything strange is hostile and evil. This line of division serves a purpose, which is why the normal person feels under no obligation to make these projections conscious, although they are dangerously illusory ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 517

War psychology has made this abundantly clear: everything my country does is good, everything the others do is bad. The center of all iniquity is invariably found to lie a few miles behind the enemy lines. Because the individual has this same primitive psychology, every attempt to bring these age-old projections to consciousness is felt as irritating. Naturally one would like to have better relations with one’s fellows, but only on the condition that they live up to our expectations in other words, that they become willing carriers of our projections ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 517

Yet if we make ourselves conscious of these projections, it may easily act as an impediment to our relations with others, for there is then no bridge of illusion across which love and hate can stream off so relievingly, and no way of disposing so simply and satisfactorily of all those alleged virtues that are intended to edify and improve others ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 517

In consequence of this obstruction there is a damming up of libido, as a result of which the negative projections become increasingly conscious. The individual is then faced with the task of putting down to his own account all the iniquity, devilry, etc. which he has blandly attributed to others and about which he has been indignant all his life ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 517

The neurotic is forced by his neurosis to take this step, but the normal person is not. Instead, he acts out his psychic disturbances socially and politically, in the form of mass psychoses like wars and revolutions. The real existence of an enemy upon whom one can foist off everything evil is an enormous relief to one’s conscience. You can then at least say, without hesitation, who the devil is; you are quite certain that the cause of your misfortune is outside, and not in your own attitude ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 518

If we want to interpret a dream correctly, we need a thorough knowledge of the conscious situation at the moment, because the dream contains its unconscious complement, that is, the material which the conscious situation has constellated in the unconscious. Without this knowledge it impossible to interpret a dream correctly, except by a lucky fluke ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 477

Dream interpretation requires that one decide: which is the more important, the “objective level” or the “subjective level”? I can really think of no valid objection to the theoretical probability of a subjective level. But the second problem is considerably more difficult. For just as the image of an object is composed subjectively on the one side, it is conditioned objectively on the other side. When I reproduce it in myself, I am producing something that is determined as much subjectively as objectively. In order to decide which side predominates in any given case, it must first be shown whether the image is reproduced for its subjective or for its objective significance ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 510

Enlightening as interpretation on the subjective level may be it may be entirely worthless when a vitally important relationship is the content and cause of the conflict. Here the dream-figure must be related to the real object. The criterion can always be discovered from the conscious material, except in cases where the transference enters into the problem ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 515

But if it is possible to shift the figure of the analyst on to the subjective level, all the projected contents can be restored to the patient with their original value ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 515

The whole dream-work is essentially subjective, and a dream is a theatre in which the dreamer is himself the scene, the player, the prompter, the producer, the author, the public, and the critic. This simple truth forms the basis for a conception of the dream’s meaning which I have called interpretation on the subjective level. Such an interpretation, as the term implies conceives all the figures in the dream as personified features of the dreamer’s own personality ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 509

To interpret the dream-imagos on the subjective level has therefore the same meaning for modern man as taking away his ancestral figures and fetishes would have for primitive man, and trying to convince him that his “medicine” is a spiritual force which dwells not in the object but in the human psyche ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 524

The primitive feels a legitimate resistance against this heretical assumption, and in the same way modern man feels that it is disagreeable, perhaps even somehow dangerous, to dissolve the time-honored and sacrosanct identity between imago and object ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 524

The consequences for our psychology, too, can scarcely be imagined: we would no longer have anybody to rail against, nobody whom we could make responsible, nobody to instruct, improve, and punish! On the contrary we would have to begin, in all things, with ourselves; we would have to demand of ourselves, and of no one else, all the things which we habitually demand of others ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 524

For the purpose of ascertaining the meaning of the dream, I have developed a procedure which I call “taking up the context” ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 542

Every interpretation of a dream is a psychological statement about certain of its contents. This is not without danger, as the dreamer, like most people, usually displays an astonishing sensitiveness to critical remarks, not only if they are wrong, but even more if they are right. Since it is not possible, except under very special conditions, to work out the meaning of a dream without the collaboration of the dreamer, an extraordinary amount of tact is required not to violate his self-respect unnecessarily ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 533

The interpretation on the subjective level should not, of course, be carried to extremes. It is simply a question of a rather more critical examination of what is pertinent and what is not. Something that strikes me about the object may very well be a real property of that object. But the more subjective and emotional this impression is, the more likely it is that the property will be a projection. Yet here we must make a not unimportant distinction: between the quality actually present in the object, without which a projection could not take place, and the value, significance, or energy of this quality ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 519

It is not impossible for a quality to be projected upon the object of which the object shows barely any trace in reality (for instance, the primitive projection of magical qualities into inanimate objects). But it is different with the ordinary projection of traits of character or momentary attitudes. Here it frequently happens that the object offers a hook to the projection, and even lures it out. This is generally the case when the object himself (or herself) is not conscious of the quality in question: in that way it works directly upon the unconscious of the projicient ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 519

For all projections provoke counter-projections when the object is unconscious of the quality projected upon it by the subject, in the same way that a transference is answered by a counter-transference from the analyst when it projects a content of which he is unconscious but which nevertheless exists in him. The counter-transference is then just as useful and meaningful, or as much of a hindrance, as the transference of the patient, according to whether or not it seeks to establish that better rapport which is essential for the realization of certain unconscious contents ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 519

Like the transference, the counter-transference is compulsive, a forcible tie, because it creates a “mystical” or unconscious identity with the object. Against these unconscious ties there are always resistancesconscious resistances if the subject’s attitude allows him to give his libido only voluntarily, but not to have it coaxed or forced out of him; unconscious resistances if he likes nothing better than having his libido taken away from him. Thus transference and counter-transference, if their contents remain unconscious, create abnormal and untenable relationships which aim at their own destruction ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 519

But even supposing some trace of the projected quality can be found in the object, the projection still has a purely subjective significance in practice and recoils upon the subject, because it gives an exaggerated value to whatever trace of that quality was present in the object ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 520

When the projection corresponds to a quality actually present in the object, the projected content is nevertheless present in the subject too, where it forms apart of the object-imago. The object-imago itself is a psychological entity that is distinct from the actual perception of the object; it is an image existing independently of, and yet based on, all perception, and the relative autonomy of this image remains unconscious so long as it coincides with the actual behaviour of the object ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 521

The autonomy of the imago is therefore not recognized by the conscious mind and is unconsciously projected on the objectin other words, it is contaminated with the autonomy of the object. This naturally endows the object with a compelling reality in relation to the subject and gives it an exaggerated value. This value springs from the projection of the imago on the object, from its a priori identity with it, with the result that the outer object becomes at the same time an inner one ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 521

In this way the outer object can exert, via the unconscious, a direct psychic influence on the subject, since, by virtue of its identity with the imago, it has so to speak a direct hand in the psychic mechanism of the subject. Consequently the object can gain “magical” power over the subject. Excellent examples of this can be found among primitives, who treat their children or any other objects with “souls” exactly as they treat their own psyches. They dare not do anything to them for fear of offending the soul of the child or object. That is why the children are given as little education as possible until the age of puberty, when suddenly a belated education is thrust upon them, often a rather gruesome one (initiation) ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 521

I have just said that the autonomy of the imago remains unconscious because it is identified with that of the object. The death of the object would, accordingly, be bound to produce remarkable psychological effects, since the object does not disappear completely but goes on existing in intangible form. This is indeed the case. The unconscious imago, which no longer has an object to correspond to it, becomes a ghost and now exerts influences on the subject which cannot be distinguished in principle from psychic phenomena ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 522

The subject’s unconscious projections, which canalize unconscious contents into the imago and identify it with the object, outlive the actual loss of the object and play an important part in the life of primitives as well as of all civilized peoples past and present. These phenomena offer striking proof of the autonomous existence of the object-imagos in the unconscious. They are evidently in the unconscious because they have never been consciously differentiated from the object ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 522

As one never knows with certainty how to evaluate the conscious situation of a patient, dream-interpretation is naturally impossible without questioning the dreamer. But even if we know the conscious situation we know nothing of the attitude of the unconscious. As the unconscious is the matrix not only of dreams but also of psychogenic symptoms, the question of the attitude of the unconscious is of great practical importance ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 546

The unconscious, not caring whether I and those about me feel my attitude to be right, may so to speak be of “another mind.” This, especially in the case of a neurosis, is not a matter of indifference, as the unconscious is quite capable of bringing about all kinds of unwelcome disturbances “by mistake,” often with serious consequences, or of provoking neurotic symptoms. These disturbances are due to lack of harmony between conscious and unconscious ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 546

Dreams illuminate the patient’s situation in a way that can be exceedingly beneficial to health. They bring him memories, insights, experiences, awaken dormant qualities in the personality, and reveal the unconscious element in his relationships ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 549

So it seldom happens that anyone who has taken the trouble to work over his dreams with qualified assistance for a longer period of time remains without enrichment and a broadening of his mental horizon ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 549

Just because of their compensatory behaviour, a methodical analysis of dreams discloses new points of view and new ways of getting over the dreaded impasse ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 549

But as happens in long and difficult treatments, the analyst observes a series of dreams often running into hundreds, there gradually forces itself upon him a phenomenon which, in an isolated dream, would remain hidden behind the compensation of the moment ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 550

This phenomenon is a kind of developmental process in the personality itself. At first it seems that each compensation is a momentary adjustment of one-sidedness or an equalization of disturbed balance ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 550

But with deeper insight and experience, these apparently separate acts of compensation arrange themselves into a kind of plan. They seem to hang together and in the deepest sense to be subordinated to a common goal ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 550

So that a long dream-series no longer appears as a senseless string of incoherent and isolated happenings, but resembles the successive steps in a planned and orderly process of development. I have called this unconscious process spontaneously expressing itself in the symbolism of a long dream-series the individuation process ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 550

“Big” [or significant] dreams are often remembered for a lifetime, and not infrequently prove to be the richest jewel in the treasure-house of psychic experience. How many people I have encountered who at the first meeting could not refrain from saying: “I once had a dream!” Sometimes it was the first dream they could ever remember, and one that occurred between the ages of three and five ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 554

The “big” or “meaningful” dreams come from this deeper level [of the psyche]. They reveal their significance quite apart from the subjective impression they make by their plastic form, which often has a poetic force and beauty ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 555

Such dreams occur mostly during critical phases of life, in early youth, puberty, at the onset of middle age (36-40) and within sight of death ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 555

Their interpretation often involves considerable difficulties, because the material which the dreamer is able to contribute is too meagre ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 555

For these archetypal products are no longer concerned with personal experiences but with general ideas, whose chief significance lies in their intrinsic meaning and not in any personal experience and its associations ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 555

The `big’ dreams employ numerous mythological motifs that characterize the life of the hero, of that greater man who is semi-divine by nature ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 558

Here we find the dangerous adventures and ordeals such as occur in initiations. We meet dragons, helpful animals, and demons; also the Wise Old Man, the animal-man, the wishing tree, the hidden treasure, the well, the cave, the walled garden, the transformative processes and substances of alchemy, and so forth all things which in no way touch the banalities of everyday ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 558

The reason for this is that they [the dreams] have to do with the realization of a part of the personality which has not yet come into existence but is still in the process of becoming ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 558

The tree is growing (in a quite unbiblical manner) out of the king’s navel: it is therefore the genealogical tree of Christ’s ancestors, that grows from the navel of Adam, the tribal father ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 559

For this reason it bears in its branches the pelican, who nourishes its young with its blood a well-known allegory of Christ ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 559

Apart from that the pelican, together with the four birds that take the place of the four symbols of the evangelists, form a quincunx ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 559

This quincunx reappears lower down in the stag, another symbol of Christ, with the four animals looking expectantly upwards ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 559

These two quaternities have the closest connections with alchemical ideas: above the volatilia, below the terrena, the former traditionally represented by birds, the latter as quadrupeds ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 559

Thus not only has the Christian conception of the genealogical tree and of the evangelical quaternity insinuated itself into the picture, but also the alchemical idea of the double quaternity (“superius est sicut quod inferius”) ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 559

This contamination shows in the most vivid way how individual dreams make use of archetypes. The archetypes are condensed, interwoven, and blended not only with one another (as here), but also with unique individual elements ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 559

They say that the deer, after he has swallowed a serpent, hastens to the water, that by a draught of water he may eject the poison, and then cast his horns and his hair and so take new (Migne, P.L., vol. 172, col. 847) ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 559

In the Saint-Graal ( III, pp. 219 and 224 ), it is related that Christ sometimes appeared to the disciples as a white stag with four lions (= four evangelists) 559

In alchemy Mercurius is allegorized as the stag because the stag can renew itself ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 559

Looked at from the historical standpoint, it is not at all surprising that they [eminent men] used the belief in spirits as the most effective weapon against the mere truth of the senses, for belief in spirits has the same functional significance also for the primitive man ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 572

His utter dependence on circumstances and environment, the manifold distresses and tribulations of his life, surrounded by hostile neighbors, dangerous beasts of prey, and often exposed to the pitiless forces of nature; his keen senses, his cupidity, and his uncontrolled emotions ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 572

All these things bind him [the primitive] to the physical realities, so that he is in constant danger of adopting a purely materialistic attitude and becoming degenerate ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 572

His belief in spirits, or rather, his awareness of a spiritual world, pulls him again and again out of that bondage in which his senses would hold him; it forces on him the certainty of a spiritual reality whose laws he must observe as carefully and as guardedly as the laws of his physical environment ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 572

Primitive man, therefore, really lives in two worlds. Physical reality is at the same time spiritual reality. The physical world is undeniable, and for him the world of spirits has an equally real existence, not just because he thinks so, but because of his naïve awareness of things spiritual ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 572

Wherever this naïveté is lost through contact with civilization and its disastrous “enlightenment,” he forfeits his dependence on spiritual law and accordingly degenerates. Even Christianity cannot save him from corruption, for a highly developed religion like Christianity demands a highly developed psyche if its beneficial effects are to be felt ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 572

For the primitive, the phenomenon of spirits is direct evidence for the reality for a spiritual world. If we inquire what these spirit-phenomena mean to him, and in what they consist, we find that the most frequent phenomenon is the seeing of apparitions, or ghosts. It is generally assumed that the seeing of apparitions is far commoner among primitives than among civilized people, the inference being that this is nothing but superstition, because civilized people do not have such visions unless they are ill ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 573

One of the most important sources of the primitive belief in spirits is dreams. People very often appear as the actors in dreams, and the primitive readily believes them to be spirits or ghosts. The dream has for him an incomparably higher value than it has for civilized man ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 574

Not only does he talk a great deal about his dreams, he also attributes an extraordinary importance to them, so that it often seems as though he were unable to distinguish between them and reality ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 574

Another source of the belief in spirits is psychogenic diseases, nervous disorders, especially those of an hysterical character, which are not rare among primitives. Since these illnesses stem from psychic conflicts, mostly unconscious, it seems to the primitive that they are caused by certain persons, living or dead, who are in some way connected with his subjective conflict ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 575

If the person is dead, it is naturally assumed that his spirit is having an injurious influence. As pathogenic conflicts usually go back to childhood and are connected with memories of the parents, we can understand why the primitive attaches special importance to the spirits of dead relatives ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 575

This accounts for the wide incidence of ancestor-worship, which is primarily a protection against the malice of the dead. Anyone who has had experience of nervous illnesses knows how great is the importance of parental influences on patients. Many patients feel persecuted by their parents long after they are dead. The psychological after-effects of the parents are so powerful that many cultures have developed a whole system of ancestor-worship to propitiate them ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 575

(Illnesses [mental] among primitive peoples, so far as is known, are mostly of a delirious, hallucinatory or catatonic nature, belonging apparently to the broad domain of schizophrenia, an illness which covers the great majority of chronically insane patients. In all ages and all over the world, insane people have been regarded as possessed by evil spirits, and this belief is supported by the patient’s own hallucinations. To the naïve mind, the hallucinations naturally appear to be caused by spirits ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 576

Among primitive peoples these [mental] illnesses, so far as is known, are mostly of a delirious, hallucinatory or catatonic nature, belonging apparently to the broad domain of schizophrenia, an illness which covers the great majority of chronically insane patients ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 576

In all ages and all over the world, insane people have been regarded as possessed by evil spirits, and this belief is supported by the patient’s own hallucinations ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 576

The patients are tormented less by visions than by auditory hallucinations: they hear “voices.” Very often these voices are those of relatives or of persons in some way connected with the patient’s conflicts. To the naïve mind, the hallucinations naturally appear to be caused by spirits ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 576

Since, according to primitive belief, a spirit is usually the ghost of one dead, it must once have been the soul of a living person. This is particularly the case wherever the belief is held that people have only one soul ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 577

But this assumption does not prevail everywhere; it is frequently supposed that people have two or more souls, one of which survives death and is immortal. In this case the spirit of the dead is only one of the several souls of the living. It is thus only a part of the total soul a psychic fragment, so to speak 577

The primitive feels the loss of soul as if it were a sickness; indeed, he often attributes serious physical diseases to the loss of soul. There are innumerable rites for calling the “soul-bird” back into the sick person ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 586

Children may not be struck because their souls might feel insulted and depart ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 586

Thus, for the primitive, the soul is something that seems normally to belong to him, but spirits seem to be something that normally should not be near him. He avoids places haunted by spirits, or visits them only with fear, for religious or magical purposes ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 586

Consciousness exists only when psychic contents are associated with the ego, and the ego is a psychic complex of a particularly solid kind ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 580

As sleep is seldom quite dreamless, we may assume that activity is as a rule only restricted by sleep ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 580

We do not feel as if we were producing the dreams, it is rather as if the dreams came to us. They are not subject to our control but obey their own laws ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 580

Dreams seem to remain spontaneously in the memory for just so long as they correctly sum up the psychological situation of the individual ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 78

The via regia to the unconscious, however, is not the dream, but the complex, which is the architect of dreams and of symptoms ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 210

In our waking life, we imagine we make our own thoughts and can have them when we want them. We also think we know where they come from, and why and to what end we have them ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 580

Whenever a thought comes to us against our will, or suddenly vanishes against our will, we feel as if something exceptional or even morbid has happened ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 580

The difference between psychic activity in the waking and in the sleeping state seems, therefore, to be an important one. In the waking state the psyche is apparently under the control of the conscious will, but in the sleeping state it produces contents that are strange and incomprehensible, as though they came from another world ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 580

We suppose, of course, that our thoughts are in our heads, but when it comes to our feelings we begin to be uncertain; they appear to dwell more in the region of the heart. Our sensations are distributed over the whole body. Our theory is that the seat of consciousness is in the head, but the Pueblo Indians told me that the Americans were mad because they believed their thoughts were in their heads, whereas any sensible man knows that he thinks with his heart. Certain Negro tribes locate their psychic functioning neither in the head nor in the heart, but in the belly ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 669

Visions are like dreams, only they occur in the waking state. They enter consciousness along with conscious perceptions and are nothing other than the momentary irruption of an unconscious content ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 581

The same phenomenon also happens in mental disturbances. Quite out of the blue, apparently, against the background of noises in the environment and sound-waves coming from outside, the ear, excited from within, hears psychic contents that have nothing to do with the immediate concerns of the conscious mind ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 581

Besides judgments formed by intellect and feeling from definite premises, opinions and convictions thrust themselves on the patient, apparently deriving from real perceptions but actually from unconscious factors within him. These are delusional ideas ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 581

People unhesitatingly project their own assumptions about others on to the persons concerned and hate or love them accordingly ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 584

Since reflection is so troublesome and difficult, they prefer to judge without restraint, not realizing that they are merely projecting and making themselves the victims of a stupid illusion ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 584

They take no account of the injustice and uncharitableness of such a procedure, and above all they never consider the serious loss of personality they suffer when, from sheer negligence, they allow themselves the luxury of foisting their own mistakes or merits onto others ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 584

It is exceedingly unwise to think that other people are as stupid and inferior as one is oneself, and one should also realize the damage one does by assigning one’s own good qualities to moral highwaymen with an eye to the main chance ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 584

Autonomous complexes appear most clearly in dreams, visions, pathological hallucinations, and delusional ideas ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 584

The complex interferes with the conscious will and disturbs its intentions. That is why we call it autonomous ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 593

In dreams they are represented by other people, in visions they are projected, as it were, into space, just like the voices in insanity when not ascribed to persons in the patient’s environment ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 584

In a neurotic or insane person, we find that the complexes which disturb the reactions are at the same time essential components of the psychic disturbance. They cause not only the disturbances of reaction but also the symptoms. I have seen cases where certain stimulus-words were followed by strange and apparently nonsensical answers, by words that came out of the test-person’s mouth quite unexpectedly, as though a strange being had spoken through him. These words belonged to the autonomous complex ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 593

When excited by an external stimulus, complexes can produce sudden confusions, or violent affects, depressions, anxiety-states, etc., or they may express themselves in hallucinations. In short, they behave in such a away that the primitive theory of spirits strikes one as being an uncommonly apt formulation for them ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 593

Every affect tends to become an autonomous complex, to break away from the hierarchy of consciousness and, if possible, to drag the ego after it 628

An unconscious tendency makes the autonomy of the complex unreal by giving it a different name, an example of “apotropaic” thinking, which is quite on par with the euphemistic names bestowed by the ancients, a classic example of which is the `hospitable sea.’ Just as the Erinyes (“Furies”) were called, cautiously and propitiatingly, the Eumenides (“Kindly Ones”), so the modern mind conceives all inner disturbances as its own activity: it simply assimilates them ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 206

People unhesitatingly project their own assumptions about others on to the persons concerned and hate or love them accordingly ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 584

The soul-complexes seem to belong to the ego and the loss of them appears pathological ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 587

We therefore have to postulate the existence of unconscious complexes that normally belong to the ego, and of those that normally should not become associated with it. The former are the soul-complexes, the latter the spirit-complexes ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 587

It contains complexes that belong to the individual and form an intrinsic part of his psychic life ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 590

This brain is inherited from its ancestors; it is the deposit of the psychic functioning of the whole human race. The child therefore brings with it an organ ready to function in the same way as it has functioned throughout human history ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 589

In the brain the instincts are preformed, and so are the primordial images which have always been the basis of man’s thinking the whole treasure-house of mythological motifs ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 589

The personal unconscious contains complexes that belong to the individual and form an intrinsic part of his psychic life. When any complex which ought to be associated with the ego becomes unconscious, either by being repressed or by sinking below the threshold, the individual experiences a sense of loss ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 590

Conversely, when a lost complex is made conscious again, for instance through psychotherapeutic treatment, he experiences an increase of power. Many neuroses are cured in this way ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 590

When a complex of the collective unconscious becomes associated with the ego, i.e., becomes conscious, it is felt as strange, uncanny, and at the same time fascinating ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 590

At all events the conscious mind falls under its spell, [the collective unconscious] either feeling it as something pathological, or else being alienated by it from normal life ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 590

The association of a collective content with the ego always produces a state of alienation, because something is added to the individual’s consciousness which ought really to remain unconscious, that is, separated from the ego ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 590

If the content can be removed from consciousness again, the patient will feel relieved and more normal. The irruption of these alien contents is a characteristic symptom marking the onset of many mental illnesses ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 590

The patients are seized by weird and monstrous thoughts, the whole world seems changed, people have horrible, distorted faces, and so on ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 590

While the contents of the personal unconscious are felt as belonging to one’s own psyche, the contents of the collective unconscious seem alien, as if they came from the outside. The reintegration of a personal complex has the effect of release and often of healing, whereas the invasion of a complex from the collective unconscious is a very disagreeable and even dangerous phenomenon ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 591

The parallel with the primitive belief in souls and spirits is obvious: souls correspond to the autonomous complexes of the personal unconscious, and spirits to those of the collective unconscious ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 591

We, from the scientific standpoint, prosaically call the awful beings that dwell in the shadows of the primeval forests “psychic complexes.” Yet if we consider the extraordinary role played by the belief in souls and spirits in the history of mankind, we cannot be content with merely establishing the existence of such complexes, but must go rather more deeply into their nature ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 591

All these produce unconscious complexes of a personal nature. A primitive would rightly speak a loss of soul, because certain portions of the psyche have indeed disappeared. A great many autonomous complexes arise in this way ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 594

But there are others that come from quite a different source. While the first source is easily understood, since it concerns the outward life everyone can see, this other source is obscure and difficult to understand because it has to do with perceptions or impressions of the collective unconscious. Usually the individual tries to rationalize these inner perceptions in terms of external causes, but that does not get at the root of the matter ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 594

At bottom they are irrational contents of which the individual had never been conscious before, and which he therefore vainly seeks to discover somewhere outside him. The primitive expresses this very aptly when he says that some spirit is interfering with him ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 594

So far as I can judge, these experiences occur either when something so devastating happens to the individual that his whole previous attitude to life breaks down, or when for some reason the contents of the collective unconscious accumulate so much energy that they start influencing the conscious mind ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 594

In my view this happens when the life of a large social group or of a nation undergoes a profound change of a political, social, or religious nature. Such a change always involves an alteration of the psychological attitude. Incisive changes in history are generally attributed exclusively to external causes. It seems to me, however, that external circumstances often serve merely as occasions for a new attitude to life and the world, long prepared in the unconscious, to become manifest ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 594

Spirit, in Old High German Geist, and in Anglo Saxon gast, meant a supernatural being in contradistinction to the body ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 627

According to Kluge, the fundamental meaning of the word [spirit] is not quite certain, though there seem to be connections with the Old Norse geisa, to rage,' with the Gothic us-gaisyan,to be beside oneself,’ with the Swiss-German üf-gaistä, `to fly into a passion,’ and with the English aghast ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 627

These connections are substantiated by other figures of speech. For a person “to be seized with rage” means that something falls on him, sits on him, rides him, he is ridden by the devil, he is possessed, something has got into him, etc. When we are “beside ourselves with rage” we are obviously no longer identical with ourselves, but are possessed by a daemon or spirit ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 627

The primitive atmosphere in which the word “spirit” came to birth exists in us still, though of course on a psychic level somewhere below consciousness. But as modern spiritualism shows, it needs very little to bring that bit of primitive mentality to the surface ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 628

If the etymological derivation (which in itself is quite plausible) holds good, the “spirit” in this sense would be the image of a personified affect. For instance, when a person lets himself be carried away by impudent talk, we say, his tongue has run away with him, which is the equivalent to saying that his talk has become an independent being that has snatched him up and run off with him ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 628

Psychologically we would say: every affect tends to become an autonomous complex, to break away from the hierarchy of consciousness and, if possible, to drag the ego after it ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 628

No wonder, then, that the primitive mind sees in this the activity of a strange invisible being, a spirit. Spirit in this case is the reflection of an autonomous affect, which is why the ancients, very appropriately, called the spirits imagines, `images’ ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 628

Let us now turn to other usages of the concept of the “spirit”. The phrase “he acts in the spirit of his dead father” still has a double meaning, for here the word “spirit” refers as much to the spirit of the dead as to an attitude of mind. Other idioms are “doing something in a new spirit,” or, “a new spirit is growing up,” meaning a renewal of mental attitude ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 629

The basic idea is again that of possession by a spirit, which has become, say, the “guiding spirit” of a group. A more sombre note is struck when we say: “An evil spirit reigns in that family” ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 629

Here we are dealing not with personifications of affects but with visualizations of a whole frame of mind or to put it psychologically an attitude. A bad attitude expressed as an evil spirit therefore has, if naïvely conceived, nearly the same psychological function as a personified affect ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 630

The concept of “spirit” goes far beyond the animistic frame of reference. Aphorisms and proverbs are as a rule the result of much experience and individual effort, a summing up of insights and conclusions in a few pregnant words. Those sayings or ideals that store up the richest experience of life and the deepest reflection constitute what we call `spirit’ in the best sense of the word ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 633

When a ruling principle of this kind attains absolute mastery we speak of the life lived under its guidance as “ruled by the spirit,” or as a “spiritual life” ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 633

The more absolute and compelling the ruling idea, the more it has the nature of an autonomous complex that confronts the ego-consciousness as an unshakable fact ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 633

Spirit that can be translated into a definite concept is a psychic complex lying within the orbit of our ego-consciousness. It will not bring forth anything, nor will it achieve anything more than we have put into it ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 644

But spirit that demands a symbol for its expression is a psychic complex that contains the seeds of incalculable possibilities. The most obvious and best example of this is the effectiveness of the Christian symbols, whose power changed the face of history. If one looks without prejudice at the way the spirit of early Christianity worked on the mind of the average man of the second century, one can only be amazed. But then, no spirit was ever as creative as this. No wonder it was felt to be of godlike superiority ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 644

Life is a touchstone for the truth of the spirit. Spirit that drags a man away from life, seeking fulfillment only in itself, is a false spirit though the man too is to blame, since he can choose whether he will give himself up to this spirit or not ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 647

Life and spirit are two powers or necessities between which man is placed. Spirit gives meaning to his life, and the possibility of its greatest development. But life is essential to spirit, since its truth is nothing if it cannot live ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 648

Spirits are complexes of the collective unconscious which appear when the individual loses his adaptation to reality, or which seek to replace the inadequate attitude of a whole people by a new one. They are therefore either pathological fantasies or new but as yet unknown ideas ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 597

Spirits are not under all circumstances dangerous and harmful. They can, when translated into ideas, also have beneficial effects. A well-known example of this transformation of a content of the collective unconscious into communicable language is the miracle of the Pentecost. From the point of view of the onlookers, the apostles were in a state of ecstatic intoxication ( “These men are full of new wine”: Acts 2 : 13 ). But it was just when they were in this state that they communicated the new teaching which gave expression to the unconscious expectations of the people and spread with astonishing rapidity through the whole Roman Empire ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 596

When a person dies, the feelings and emotions that bound his relatives to him lose their application to reality and sink into the unconscious, where they activate a collective content that has a deleterious effect on consciousness ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 598

The Bataks and many other primitives therefore say that when a man dies his character deteriorates, so that he is always trying to harm the living in some way ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 598

This view is obviously based on the experience that a persistent attachment to the dead makes life seem less worth living, and may even be the cause of psychic illnesses. The harmful effect shows itself in the form of loss of libido, depression, and physical debility. There are also universal reports of these post-mortem phenomena in the form of ghost and hauntings ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 598

The psychotherapeutic endeavors of the so-called spirits are aimed at the living either directly, or indirectly through the deceased person, in order to make them more conscious ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 599

Spiritualism as a collective phenomenon thus pursues the same goals as medical psychology, and in doing so produces, the same basic ideas and images styling themselves the “teachings of the spirits “which are characteristic of the nature of the collective unconscious ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 599

The body cannot be understood as a mere heaping together of inert matter, but must be regarded as a material system ready for life and making life possible, with the proviso that for all its readiness it could not live without the addition of a “living being.” For setting aside the possible significance of “living being,” there is lacking to the body by itself something that is necessary to its life, namely a psychic factor ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 605

We know this directly from our own experience of ourselves, and indirectly from our experience of our fellow men. We also know it through our scientific study of the higher vertebrates, and, for total lack of evidence to the contrary, we must suppose that some such factor is present in lower organisms and even in plants ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 605

Mind and body are the expression of a single entity whose essential nature is not knowable either from its outward, material manifestation or from inner, direct perception ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 619

According to an ancient belief, man arose from the coming together of a soul and a body. It would probably be more correct to speak of an unknowable living being, concerning the ultimate nature of which nothing can be said except that it vaguely expresses the quintessence of “life” ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 619

This living being appears outwardly as the material body, but inwardly as a series of images of the vital activities taking place within it. They are two sides of the same coin, and we cannot rid ourselves of the doubt that perhaps this whole separation of mind and body may finally prove to be merely a device of reason for the purpose of conscious discrimination ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 619

Spirit, in Old High German Geist, and in Anglo Saxon gast, meant a supernatural being in contradistinction to the body ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 627

When a ruling principle of this kind attains absolute mastery we speak of the life lived under its guidance as “ruled by the spirit,” or as a “spiritual life” ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 633

The more absolute and compelling the ruling idea, the more it has the nature of an autonomous complex that confronts the ego-consciousness as an unshakable fact ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 633

We are dealing not with personifications of affects but with visualizations of a whole frame of mind or to put it psychologically an attitude. A bad attitude expressed as an evil spirit therefore has, if naïvely conceived, nearly the same psychological function as a personified affect. This may be surprising to many people, since “attitude” is ordinarily understood as taking an attitude towards something, an ego-activity in short, implying purposefulness ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 630

However, an attitude, or frame of mind is by no means always a product of volition; more often it owes its peculiarity to mental contagion, i.e., to example and the influence of the environment ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 630

It is a well-known fact that there are people whose bad attitude poisons the atmosphere; their bad example is contagious, they make others nervous by their intolerableness. At school a single mischief-maker can spoil the spirit of a whole class; and conversely, the joyous, innocent disposition of a child can brighten and irradiate the otherwise dreary atmosphere of a family, which is naturally only possible when the attitude of each individual in it is bettered by the good example ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 630

An attitude can also take effect even against the conscious will “bad company spoils good manners.” This is particularly evident in mass-suggestion ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 630

The attitude or disposition, then, can thrust itself on consciousness from the outside or from the inside, like an affect, and can therefore be expressed by the same figures of speech ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 631

An attitude seems, at first glance, to be something very much more complicated than an affect. On closer inspection, however, we find that this is not so, because most attitudes are based, consciously or unconsciously, on some kind of maxim, which often has the character of a proverb ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 631

In some attitudes one can immediately detect the underlying maxim and even discover where it was picked up. Often the attitude is distinguished only by a single word, which as a rule stands for an ideal ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 631

Not infrequently, the quintessence of an attitude is neither a maxim nor an ideal but a personality who is revered and emulated ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 631

That soul has substance, is of a divine nature and therefore immortal ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 654

That there is a power inherent within it which builds up the body, sustains its life, heals its ills, and enables the soul to live independently of the body ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 654

That there are incorporeal spirits with which the soul associates ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 654

That beyond our empirical present there is a spiritual world from which the soul receives knowledge of spiritual things whose origins cannot be discovered in this visible world ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 654

According to a primitive view the soul is a fire or flame, because warmth is likewise a sign of life ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 665

The ancient view held that the soul was essentially the life of the body, the life-breath, or a kind of life force which assumed spatial and corporeal form at the moment of conception, or during pregnancy, or at birth, and left the dying body again after the final breath ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 662

The soul in itself was a being without extension, and because it existed before taking corporeal form and afterwards as well, it was considered timeless and hence, immortal ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 662

The standpoint of past ages, which, knowing the untold treasures of experience lying hidden beneath the threshold of the ephemeral individual consciousness, always held the individual soul to be dependent on a spiritual world-system. Not only did they make this hypothesis, they assumed without question that this system was a being with a will and consciousness was even a person and they called this being God, the quintessence of reality ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 677

He [God] was for them the most real of beings, the first cause, through whom alone the soul could be explained ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 677

The Gothic saiwala and the Old German saiwalo, can be connected etymologically with the Greek aiolos, quick moving,'twinkling,’ iridescent.' The Greek word psyche also meansbutterfly.’ Saiwalo is related on the other side to the Old Slavonic sila, `strength.’ These connections throw light on the original meaning of the word soul: it is a moving force, that is, life-force ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 663

Soul' derives from the Latin anima, the same as the Greek anemos,wind’ ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 664

These connections show clearly how in Latin, Greek, and Arabic the names given to the soul are related to the notion of moving air, the “cold breath of the spirits.” And this is probably the reason why the primitive view also endows the soul with an invisible breath-body ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 664

The primitive senses in the depths of his soul the springs of life; he is deeply impressed by the life-giving activity of his soul, and he therefore believes in everything that affects it in magical practices of every kind ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 668

That is why, for him, the soul is life itself. He does not imagine that he directs it, but feels himself dependent on it in every respect ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 668

However preposterous the idea of the immortality of the soul may seem to us, it is nothing extraordinary to the primitive. The soul is, after all, something out of the common. While everything else that exists takes up a certain amount of room, the soul cannot be located in space ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 669

Whenever a thought comes to us against our will, or suddenly vanishes against our will, we feel as if something exceptional or even morbid has happened ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 580

The term expresses not only a conception of the world this meaning could be translated without much difficulty but also the way in which one views the world ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 689

The word “philosophy” implies something similar, but restricted to the intellectual sphere, whereas Weltanschauung embraces all sorts of attitudes to the world, including the philosophical. Thus there is an aesthetic, a religious, an idealistic, a romantic, a practical Weltanschauung to mention only a few possibilities ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 689

In this sense a Weltanschauung has much in common with an attitude. Accordingly, we could defined Weltanschauung as an attitude that has been formulated into concepts ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 689

What is the use of a Weltanschauung, you may ask, if one can get on perfectly well without it? You might just as well ask why have consciousness if one can do without it! For what, after all, is a Weltanschauung but a widened or deepened consciousness? ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 695

The reason why consciousness exists, and why there is an urge to widen and deepen it, is very simple: without consciousness things go less well. This is obviously the reason why Mother Nature deigned to produce consciousness, that most remarkable of all nature’s curiosities ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 695

There are many scientists who avoid having a Weltanschauung because this is supposed not to be scientific. It has obviously not dawned on these people what they are really doing ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 697

For what actually happens is this: by deliberately leaving themselves in the dark as to their guiding ideas they cling to a lower, more primitive level of consciousness than would correspond to their true capacities ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 697

If, therefore, I had to name the most essential thing that analytical psychology can add to our Weltanschauung, I should say it is the recognition that there exist certain unconscious contents which make demands that cannot be denied, or send forth influences with which the conscious mind must come to terms, whether it will or no ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 713

The image of the individual mother is impressive, but its peculiar impressiveness is due to the fact that it is blended with an unconscious aptitude or inborn image [the mother archetype], which is the result of the symbiotic relationship of mother and child that has existed from eternity ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 720

Where the individual mother fails in this or that respect, a loss is felt, and this amounts to a demand of the collective mother-image for fulfillment. An instinct has been balked, so to speak. This very often gives rise to neurotic disturbances, or at any rate to peculiarities of character ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 720

But why should this collective image arouse such longing? It is not very easy to answer this question. Yet if we could get a clear idea of the nature and meaning of this collective image, which I have called the archetype, then its effects could readily be understood: ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 722

Thus there is inherent in the archetype, in the collectively inherited mother-image, the same extraordinary intensity of relationship which instinctively impels the child to cling to its mother ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 723

With the passing of the years, the man grows naturally away from the mother provided, of course, that he is no longer in a condition of almost animal-like primitivity and has attained some degree of consciousness and culture but he does not outgrow the archetype in the same natural way ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 723

Consciousness only recognizes contents that are individually acquired; hence it recognizes only the individual mother and does not know that she is at the same time the carrier and representative of the archetype, of the “eternal” mother ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 723

The primitive mind, while not understanding this dilemma [separation from the parents], felt it all the more keenly and accordingly instituted highly important rites between childhood and adulthood, puberty-rites and initiation ceremonies, for the quite unmistakable purpose of effecting the separation from the parents by magical means ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 725

This institution would be entirely superfluous if the relation to the parents were not felt to be equally magical. But “magical” means everything where unconscious influences are at work ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 725

The purpose of these rites, however, is not only separation from the parents, but induction into the adult state. There must be no more longing backward glances at childhood, and for this it is necessary that the claims of the injured archetype should be met ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 725

This is done by substituting for the intimate relationship with the parents another relationship, namely that with the clan or tribe ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 725

The infliction of certain marks on the body, such as circumcision and scars, is intended to serve this end, as also the mystical instruction which the young man receives during his initiation. Often these initiations have a decidedly cruel character ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 725

This is the way the primitive, for reasons unknown to him, attempts to fulfill the claims of the archetype. A simple parting from the parents is not sufficient; there must be a drastic ceremony that looks very like sacrifice to the powers which might hold the young man back. This shows us at a glance the power of the archetype: it forces the primitive to act against nature so that he shall not become her victim ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 726

This is indeed the beginning of all culture, the inevitable result of consciousness and of the possibility of deviating from unconscious law ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 726

This necessity is a psychic fact of such importance that it constitutes one of the most essential symbolic teachings of the Christian religion. It is the sacrifice of the merely natural man, of the unconscious, ingenuous being whose tragic career began with the eating of the apple in Paradise ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 751

The biblical fall of man presents the dawn of consciousness as a curse. And as a matter of fact it is in this light that we first look upon every problem that forces us to greater consciousness and separates us even further from the paradise of unconscious childhood ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 751

If, therefore, we ask ourselves the unavoidable question, “Why does man, in obvious contrast to the animal world, have problems at all?” we run into that inextricable tangle of thoughts which many thousands of incisive minds have woven in the course of the centuries ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 753

There are no problems without consciousness. We must therefore put the question in another way and ask, “How does consciousness arise in the first place?” Nobody can say with certainty; but we can observe small children in the process of becoming conscious. Every parent can see it if he pays attention. And what we see is this: when the child recognizes someone or something when he “knows” a person or a thing then we feel that the child has consciousness ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 754

In the childish stage of consciousness there are as yet no problems; nothing depends upon the subject, for the child itself is still wholly dependent on its parents. It is as though it were not yet completely born, but were still enclosed in the psychic atmosphere of it parents ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 756

For most people it is the demands of life which harshly put an end to the dream of childhood. But if one clings to illusions that are contrary to reality, then problems will surely arise. No one can take the step into life without making certain assumptions, and occasionally these assumptions are false that is, they do not fit the conditions into which one is thrown. Often it is a question of exaggerated expectations, underestimation of difficulties, unjustified optimism, or a negative attitude. One could compile quite a list of the false assumptions that give rise to the first conscious problems ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 761

It is not always the contradiction between subjective assumptions and external facts that gives rise to problems; it may just as often be inner psychic difficulties. They may exist even when things run smoothly in the outside world. Very often it is the disturbance of psychic equilibrium caused by the sexual instinct; equally often it is the feeling of inferiority which springs from an unbearable sensitivity ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 762

The serious problems in life, however, are never fully solved. If ever they should appear to be so it is a sure sign that something has been lost. The meaning and purpose of a problem seem to lie not in its solution but in our working at it incessantly. This alone preserves us from stultification and petrification ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 771

The period of middle life begins between the thirty-fifth and fortieth year just after the period of youth ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 759

We overlook the essential fact that the social goal is attained only at the cost of a diminution of personality. Many far too many aspects of life which should also have been experienced lie in the lumber-room among dusty memories; but sometimes, too, they are glowing coals under grey ashes ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 772

Statistics show a rise in the frequency of mental depressions in men about forty. In women the neurotic difficulties generally begin somewhat earlier. We see that in this phase of life between thirty-five and forty an important change in the human psyche is in preparation ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 773

At first it is not a conscious and striking change; it is rather a matter of indirect signs of a change which seems to take its rise in the unconscious. Often it is something like a slow change in a person’s character; in another case certain traits may come to light which had disappeared since childhood; or again, one’s previous inclinations and interests begin to weaken and others take their place ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 773

Conversely and this happens very frequently one’s cherished convictions and principles, especially the moral ones, begin to harden and to grow increasingly rigid until, somewhere around the age of fifty, a period of intolerance and fanaticism is reached. It is as if the existence of these principles were endangered and it were therefore necessary to emphasize them all the more ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 773

The wine of youth does not always clear with advancing years; sometimes it grows turbid. All the phenomena mentioned above can best be seen in rather one-sided people, turning up sometimes sooner and sometimes later ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 774

Their appearance, it seems to me, is often delayed by the fact that the parents of the person in question are still alive. It is then as if the period of youth were being unduly drawn out. I have seen this especially in the case of men whose fathers were long-lived. The death of the father then has the effect of a precipitate and almost catastrophic ripening ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 774

There is something sunlike within us, and to speak of the morning and spring, of the evening and autumn of life is not mere sentimental jargon ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 780

We thus give expression to psychological truths and, and even more, to physiological facts, for the reversal of sun at noon changes even bodily characteristics ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 780

We cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program life’s morning; for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 784

The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 787

The significance of the morning undoubtedly lies in the development of the individual, our entrenchment in the outer world, the propagation of our kind, and the care of our children. This is the obvious purpose of nature ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 787

Whoever carries over into the afternoon the law of the morning, or the natural aim [of nature], must pay for it with damage to his soul, just as surely as a growing youth who tries to carry over his childish egoism into adult life must pay for this mistake with social failure ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 787

A man consumes his large supply of masculine substance and has left over only the smaller amount of feminine substance, which must now be put to use ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 782

Especially among southern races one can observe that older women develop deep, rough voices, incipient moustaches, rather hard features and other masculine traits. On the other hand the masculine physique is toned down by feminine features, such as adiposity and softer facial expressions ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 780

This change is even more noticeable in the psychic realm than in the physical. How often it happens that a man of forty-five or fifty winds up his business, and the wife then dons the trousers and opens a little shop where he perhaps performs the duties of a handyman ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 783

There are many women who only awaken to social responsibility and to social consciousness after their fortieth year ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 783

In modern business life, especially in America, nervous breakdowns in the forties are a very common occurrence ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 783

If one examines the victims one finds that what has broken down is the masculine style of life which held the field up to now, and that what is left over is an effeminate man ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 783

Contrariwise, one can observe women in these self-same business spheres who have developed in the second half of life an uncommonly masculine tough-mindedness which thrusts the feelings and the heart aside ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 783

Very often these changes are accompanied by all sorts of catastrophes in marriage, for it is not hard to imagine what will happen when the husband discovers his tender feelings and the wife her sharpness of mind ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 783

The worst of it all is that intelligent and cultivated people live their lives without even knowing of the possibilities of such transformations. Wholly unprepared, they embark upon the second half of life ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 784

We cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning; for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 784

It is hygienic to discover in death a goal towards which one can strive, and that shrinking away from it is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 792

From the standpoint of psychotherapy it would therefore be desirable to think of death as only a transition, as part of a life process whose extent and duration are beyond our knowledge ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 792

The majority of religions are complicated systems of preparation for death, so much so that life, actually has no significance except as a preparation for the ultimate goal of death. In both the greatest living religions, Christianity and Buddhism, the meaning of existence is consummated in its end ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 804

It would seem to be more in accord with the collective psyche of humanity to regard death as the fulfillment of life’s meaning and as its goal in the truest sense, instead of a mere meaningless cessation ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 807

Thoughts of death pile up to an astonishing degree as the years increase. Willynilly, the ageing person prepares himself for death ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 808

As a rule the approaching end is indicated by those symbols which, in normal life also, proclaim changes of psychological condition rebirth symbols such as changes of locality, journeys, and the like ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 809

I have frequently been able to trace back for over a year, in a dream-series, the indications of approaching death, Moreover, this often shows itself in peculiar changes of personality which may precede death by quite a long time ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 809

On the whole, I was astonished to see how little ado the unconscious psyche makes of death. It would seem as though death were something relatively unimportant, or perhaps our psyche does not bother about what happens to the individual ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 809

But it seems that the unconscious is all the more interested in how one dies; that is, whether the attitude of consciousness is adjusted to dying or not ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 809

Life is an energy-process. Like every energy-process, it is in principle irreversible and is therefore directed towards a goal. That goal is a state of rest. Life is a teleology par excellence; it is the intrinsic striving towards a goal, and the living organism is a system of directed aims which seek to fulfil themselves. The end of every process is its goal ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 798

We grant goal and purpose to the ascent of life, so why not to the descent? The birth of a human being is pregnant with meaning, why not death? For twenty years and more the growing man is being prepared for the complete unfolding of his individual nature, why should not the older man prepare himself twenty years and more for his death? ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 803

Rhine’s experiments show that in relation to the psyche, space and time are, so to speak, “elastic” and can apparently be reduced almost to vanishing point, as though they were dependent on psychic conditions and did not exist in themselves but were only “postulated” by the conscious mind ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 840

The experiment consists, in principle, in an experimenter turning up, one after another, a series of numbered cards bearing simple geometric patterns. At the same time the subject, separated by a screen from the experimenter, is given the task of guessing the signs as they are turned up ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 833

A pack of twenty-five cards is used, each five of which carry the same sign. Five cards are marked with a star, five with a square, five with a circle, five with wavy lines, and five with a cross. The experimenter naturally does not know the order in which the pack is arranged, nor has the subject any opportunity of seeing the cards ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 833

Many of the experiments were negative, since the result did not exceed the probability of five chance hits. In the case of certain subjects, however, some results were distinctly above probability ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 833

The fact that distance has no effect in principle shows that the thing in question cannot be a phenomenon of force or energy, for otherwise the distance to be overcome and the diffusion in space would cause a diminution of the effect, and it is more than probable that the score would fall proportionately to the square of the distance ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 835

Time does not appear in principle to be a prohibitive factor fact which points to a psychic relativity of time, since the experiments were concerned with perceptions of events which had not yet occurred ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 836

One consistent experience in all these experiments is the fact that the number of hits scored tends to sink after the first attempt, and the results then become negative. But if, for some inner or outer reason, there is a freshening of interest on the subject’s part, the score rises again ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 838

Lack of interest and boredom are negative factors; enthusiasm, positive expectation, hope, and belief in the possibility of ESP make for good results and seem to be the real conditions which determine whether there are going to be any results at all ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 838

The subject’s answer is not the result of his observing the physical cards, it is a product of pure imagination, of “chance” ideas which reveal the structure of that which produces them, namely the unconscious ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 840

In Rhine’s experiment it is the “impossibility” of the task that ultimately fixes the subject’s attention on the processes going on inside him, and thus give the unconscious a chance to manifest itself. The questions set by the ESP experiment have an emotional effect right from the start, since they postulate something unknowable as being potentially knowable and in that way take the possibility of a miracle seriously into account ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 848

This, regardless of the subject’s skepticism, immediately appeals to his unconscious readiness to witness a miracle, and to the hope, latent in all men, that such a thing may yet be possible ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 848

In man’s original view of the world, as we find it among the primitives, space and time have a very precarious existence. They become “fixed” concepts only in the course of his mental development, thanks largely to the introduction of measurement ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 840

In themselves, space and time consist of nothing. They are hypostatized concepts born of the discriminating activity of the conscious mind, and they form the indispensable co-ordinates for describing the behavior of bodies in motion. They are, therefore, essentially psychic in origin ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 840

If space and time are only apparently properties of bodies in motion and are created by the intellectual needs of the observer, then their relativization by psychic conditions is no longer a matter for astonishment but is brought within the bounds of possibility ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 840

This possibility presents itself when the psyche observes, not external bodies, but itself. That is precisely what happens in Rhine’s experiments ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 840

The fact that distance has no effect in principle [is seen in Rhine’s experiments].we have no alternative but to assume that distance is psychically variable, and may in certain circumstances be reduced to vanishing point by a psychic condition ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 835

Even more remarkable is the fact that time is not in principle a prohibiting factor a fact which points to a psychic relativity of time, since the experiment was concerned with perceptions of events which had not yet occurred ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 836

The extraordinary spatial orientation of animals may also point to the psychic relativity of space and time ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 842

Space and time, the conceptual co-ordinates of bodies in motion, are probably at bottom one and the same (which is why we speak of a long or short “space of time”) ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 855

The woman’s excellent education had provided her with a weapon ideally suited to this purpose, namely a highly polished Cartesian rationalism with an impeccably “geometrical” idea of reality ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 982

It was an extraordinarily difficult case to treat, and up to the time of the dream little or no progress had been made. I should explain that the main reason for this was my patient’s animus, which was steeped in Cartesian philosophy and clung so rigidly to its own ideas of reality that the efforts of three doctors I was the third had not been able to weaken it. Evidently something quite irrational was needed which was beyond my powers to produce ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 84

After several fruitless attempts to sweeten her rationalism with a somewhat more human understanding, I had to confine myself to the hope that something unexpected and irrational would turn up, something that would burst the intellectual retort into which she had sealed herself ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 982

While she was still telling me this dream, I heard something behind me gently tapping on the window. I turned around and saw that it was a fairly large flying insect that was knocking against the window pane from the outside in the obvious effort to get into the dark room. This seemed to me very strange. I opened the window immediately and caught the insect in the air as it flew in ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 982

The insect was a scarabaeid beetle, the common rose-chafer (Cetonia aurata) whose golden-green color most nearly resembles that of a golden scarab and who, contrary to its usual habits, had evidently felt the urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment. I handed the beetle to my patient with the words, “Here is your scarab” ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 982

This experience punctured the desired hole in her rationalism and broke the ice of her intellectual resistance the treatment could now be continued with satisfactory results ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 982

I would like to call attention to a possible misunderstanding which may be occasioned by the term “synchronicity.” I chose this term because the simultaneous occurrence of two meaningfully but not causally connected events seemed to me an essential criterion ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 849

I am therefore using the general concept of synchronicity in the special sense of a coincidence in time of two or more causally unrelated events which have the same or a similar meaning, in contrast to “synchronism,” which simply means the simultaneous occurrence of two events 8~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 49

Synchronicity therefore means the simultaneous occurrence of a certain psychic state with one or more external events which appear as meaningful parallels to the momentary subjective state and, in certain cases, vice versa ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 850

Synchronistic events rest on the simultaneous occurrence of two different psychic states. One of them is the normal, probable state (i.e., the one that is causally explicable), and the other, the critical experience, is the one that cannot be derived causally from the first. In the case of sudden death the critical experience cannot be recognized immediately as “extra-sensory perception” but can only be verified as such afterwards ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 855

This must be born in mind particularly when it is a question of future events. They are evidently not synchronous but are synchronistic, since they are experienced as psychic images in the present, as though the objective event already existed ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 855

Space and time, the conceptual co-ordinates of bodies in motion, are probably at bottom one and the same (which is why we speak of a long or short “space of time”), and Philo Judaeus said long ago that “the extension of heavenly motion is time” ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 855

Synchronicity in space can equally well be conceived as perception in time, but remarkably enough it is not so easy to understand synchronicity in time as spatial, for we cannot imagine any space in which future events are objectively present and could be experienced as such through a reduction of this spatial distance. But since experience has shown that under certain conditions space and time can be reduced almost to zero, causality disappears along with them, because causality is bound up with the existence of space and time and physical changes, and consists essentially in the succession of cause and effect ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 855

For this reason synchronistic phenomena cannot in principle be associated with any conceptions of causality. Hence the interconnection of meaningfully coincident factors must necessarily be thought of as acausal ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 855

In view of the levelling influence which the statistical method has on the quantitative determination of synchronicity, we must ask how it was that Rhine succeeded in obtaining positive results. I maintain that he would never have got the results he did if he had carried out his experiments with a single subject, or only a few. He needed a constant renewal of interest, an emotion with its characteristic abaissement mental, which tips the scales in favour of the unconscious. Only in this way can space and time be relativized to a certain extent, thereby reducing the chances of a causal process ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 912

The effective (numinous) agents in the unconscious are the archetypes. By far the greatest number of spontaneous synchronistic phenomena that I have had occasion to observe and analyse can easily be shown to have a direct connection with an archetype ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 912

This [the archetype], in itself, is an irrepresentable, psychoid factor of the collective unconscious. The latter [psychoid factor] cannot be localized, since either it is complete in principle in every individual or is found to be the same everywhere. You can never say with certainty whether what appears to be going on in the collective unconscious of a single individual is not also happening in other individuals or organisms or things or situations ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 912

If and it seems plausible the meaningful coincidence or “cross-connection” of events cannot be explained causally, then the connecting principle must lie in the equal significance of parallel events; in other words, their tertium comparationis is meaning ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 915

We are so accustomed to regard meaning as a psychic process or content that it never enters our heads to suppose that it could also exist outside the psyche. But we do know at least enough about the psyche not to attribute to it any magical power, and still less can we attribute any magical power to the conscious mind ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 915

The causality principle asserts that the connection between cause and effect is a necessary one. The synchronicity principle asserts that the terms of a meaningful coincidence are connected by simultaneity and meaning ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 916

So if we assume that the ESP experiments and numerous other observations are established facts, we must conclude that besides the connection between cause and effect there is another factor in nature which expresses itself in the arrangement of events and appears to us as meaning. Although meaning is an anthropomorphic interpretation it nevertheless forms the indispensable criterion of synchronicity ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 916

The synchronicity principle possesses properties that may help to clear up the body-soul problem. Above all it is the fact of causeless order, or rather, of meaningful orderedness, that may throw light on psychophysical parallelism ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 948

The “absolute knowledge” which is characteristic of synchronistic phenomena, a knowledge not mediated by the sense organs, supports the hypothesis of a self-subsistent meaning, or even expresses its existence. Such a form of existence can only be transcendental, since, as the knowledge of future or spatially distant events shows, it is contained in a psychically relative space and time, that is to say in an irrepresentable space-time continuum ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 948

Space, time, and causality, the triad of classical physics, would then be supplemented by the synchronicity factor and become a tetrad, a quaternio which makes possible a whole judgment: ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 961

Here synchronicity is to the three other principles as the one-dimensionality of time is to the three-dimensionality of space, or as the recalcitrant “Fourth” in the Timaeus, which, Plato says, can only be added “by force” to the other three ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 962

Just as the introduction of time as the fourth dimension in modern physics postulates an irrepresentable space-time continuum, so the idea of synchronicity with its inherent quality of meaning produces a picture of the world so irrepresentable as to be completely baffling ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 962

The advantage, however, of adding this concept is that it makes possible a view which includes the psychoid factor in our description and knowledge of nature that is, an a priori meaning or “equivalence” ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 962

The I Ching is one of the oldest known methods for grasping a situation as a whole and thus placing the details against a cosmic background the interplay of Yin and Yang. It is the intuitive technique for grasping the total situation which is so characteristic of Chinese thought ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 863

Two Chinese sages, King Wên and the Duke of Choubasing themselves on the hypothesis of the unity of nature, sought to explain the simultaneous occurrence of a psychic state with a physical process as an equivalence of meaning ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 865

In other words, they supposed that the same living reality was expressing itself in the psychic state as in the physical ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 865

But, in order to verify such an hypothesis, some limiting condition was needed in this apparently limitless experiment, namely a definitive form of physical procedure, a method or technique which forced nature to answer in even and odd numbers ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 865

These, as representatives of Yin and Yang, are found both in the unconscious and in nature in the characteristic form of opposites, as the “mother” and the “father” of everything that happens, and they therefore form the tertium comparationis between the psychic inner world and the physical outer world ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 865

Thus the two sages devised a method by which an inner state could be represented as an outer one and vice versa. This naturally presupposes an intuitive knowledge of the meaning of each oracle figure ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 865

The I Ching, therefore, consists of a collection of sixty-four interpretations in which the meaning of each of the possible Yin-Yang combinations is worked out. These interpretations formulate the inner unconscious knowledge that corresponds to the state of consciousness at the moment ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 865

This psychological situation coincides with the chance results of the method, that is, with the odd and even numbers resulting from the fall of the coins or the division of the yarrow stalks 86~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 5

Number has invariably been used to characterize some numinous object, and all numbers from 1 to 9 are “sacred,” as are 10, 12, 13, 14, 28, 32, and 40 have a special significance ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 870

The most elementary quality about an object is whether it is one or many ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 870

Number helps more than anything else to bring order into the chaos of appearances. It is the predestined instrument for creating order, or for apprehending an already existing, but still unknown, regular arrangement or “orderedness” ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 870

It may well be the most primitive element of order in the human mind, seeing that the numbers 1 to 4 occur with the greatest frequency and have the widest incidence. In other words, primitive patterns of order are mostly triads and tetrads ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 870

That numbers have an archetypal foundation is not, by the way, a conjecture of mine but of certain mathematicians ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 870

Hence it is not such an audacious conclusion after all if we define number psychologically as an archetype of order which has become conscious ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 870

Remarkable enough, the psychic images of wholeness which are spontaneously produced by the unconscious, the symbols of the Self in mandala form, also have a mathematical structure. They are as a rule quaternities (or their multiples) ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 870

These [psychic] structures not only express order, they also create it. That is why they generally appear in times of psychic disorientation in order to compensate a chaotic state or as formulations of numinous experiences ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 870

It must be emphasized yet again that they are not inventions of the conscious mind but are spontaneous products of the unconscious, as has been sufficiently shown by experience. Naturally the conscious mind can imitate these patterns of order, but such imitations do not prove that the originals are conscious inventions. From this it follows irrefutably that the unconscious uses number as an ordering factor ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 870

In that case they [numbers] are not only concepts but something more autonomous entities which somehow contain more than just quantities. They possess a relative autonomy analogous to that of the archetypes ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 871

They would then have, in common with the latter [archetypes], the quality of being pre-existent to consciousness, and hence, on occasion, of conditioning it rather than being conditioned by it ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 871

T he accompanying feeling of levitation, alteration of the angle of vision, and extinction of hearing and of coenaesthetic perceptions indicate a shift in the localization of consciousness, a sort of separation from the body, or from the cerebral cortex or cerebrum which is conjectured to be the seat of conscious phenomena ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 955

If we are correct in this assumption, then we must ask ourselves whether there is some other nervous substrate in us, apart from the cerebrum, that can think and perceive, or whether the psychic processes that go on in us during loss of consciousness are synchronistic phenomena, i.e., events which have no causal connection with organic processes ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 955

This last possibility cannot be rejected out of hand in view of the existence of ESP, i.e., of perceptions independent of space and time which cannot be explained as processes in the biological substrate ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 955

Carl Jung Depth Psychology

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Carl Jung: CW 8 “The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche” – Quotations