Carl Jung: CW 4 “Freud and Psychoanalysis” – Quotations

One could almost say that if all the world’s traditions were cut off at a single blow, the whole of mythology and the whole history of religion would start all over again with the next generation. ~Carl Jung , CW 4, Para 30

Error is just as important a condition of life’s progress as truth. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 451

I can only gaze with wonder and awe at the depths and heights of our psychic nature. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 784

Beside this picture I would like to place the spectacle of the starry heavens at night, for the only equivalent of the universe within is the universe without; and just as I reach this world through the medium of the body, so I reach that world through the medium of the psyche. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 784

The first phase embraces the first years of life; I call this period the pre-sexual stage. It corresponds to the caterpillar stage of butterflies, and is characterized almost exclusively by the functions of nutrition and growth. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 263

The second phase embraces the later years of childhood up to puberty, and might be called the prepubertal stage. Germination of sexuality takes place at this period. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 264

The third phase is the adult period from puberty on, and may be called the period of maturity. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 265

Religions are the great-healing systems for the ills of the soul. Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 751

There are experiences which one must go through and for which reason is no substitute. Such experiences are often of inestimable value to the patient. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 446

It is a favourite neurotic misunderstanding that the right attitude to the world is found by indulgence in sex. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 440

The neurotic is ill not because he has lost his old faith but because he has not yet found a new form for his finest aspirations. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 669

The unconscious is not just a receptacle for all unclean spirits and other odious legacies from the dead past—such as, for instance, that deposit of centuries of public opinion which constitutes Freud’s “superego.” ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 760

It is in very truth the eternally living, creative, germinal layer in each of us, and though it may make use of age-old symbolical images it nevertheless intends them to be understood in a new way. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 760

Concrete values cannot take the place of the symbol; only new and more effective symbols can be substituted for those that are antiquated and outworn and have lost their efficacy through the progress of intellectual analysis and understanding. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 680

The further development of the individual can be brought about only by means of symbols which represent something far in advance of himself and whose intellectual meanings cannot yet be grasped entirely. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 680

Man “possesses” many things which he has never acquired but has inherited from his ancestors. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 728

There are experiences which one must go through and for which reason is no substitute. Such experiences are often of inestimable value to the patient. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 446.

Naturally a new meaning does not come ready-made out of the unconscious, like Pallas Athene springing fully-armed from the head of Zeus; a living effect is achieved only when the products of the unconscious are brought into serious relationship with the conscious mind. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 760

The psyche does not merely react; it gives its own specific answer to the influences at work upon it. ~Carl Jung, CW 4; para 667

My consciousness is like an eye that penetrates to the most distant spaces, yet it is the psychic non-ego that fills them with non-spatial images. And these images are not pale shadows, but tremendously powerful psychic factors. . . . ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Page 331f.

In the past nothing can be altered, and in the present little, but the future is ours and capable of raising life’s intensity to the highest pitch. A little span of youth belongs to us, all the rest belongs to our children. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 668

I visualize the process of abstraction as a withdrawal of libido from the object, as a backflow of value from the object into a subjective, abstract content. For me, therefore, abstraction amounts to an energic devaluation of the object. In other words, abstraction is an introverting movement of libido. ~Carl Jung; CW 4; par. 679.

The belief, the self-confidence, perhaps also the devotion with which the analyst does his work, are far more important to the patient (imponderabilia though they may be), than the rehearsing of old traumata. ~Carl Jung; CW 4; par. 584.

We do not work with the “transference to the analyst,” but against it and in spite of it. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, par. 601.

. . . man brings with him at birth the ground-plan of his nature. . . . ~Carl Jung; CW 4, Page 728.

There are analysts who believe that they can get along without self-analysis. This is Munchausen psychology, and they will certainly remain stuck. They forget that one of the most important therapeutically effective factors is subjecting you to the objective judgment of another. As regards ourselves we remain blind, despite everything and everybody. Carl Jung, CW 4, Parafa 449.

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but on error also. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 74

Error is just as important a condition of life’s progress as truth. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 451

The first phase embraces the first years of life; I call this period the presexual stage. It corresponds to the caterpillar stage of butterflies, and is characterized almost exclusively by the functions of nutrition and growth. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 263

The second phase embraces the later years of childhood up to puberty, and might be called the prepubertal stage. Germination of sexuality takes place at this period. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 264

The third phase is the adult period from puberty on, and may be called the period of maturity. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 265

Religions are the great-healing systems for the ills of the soul. Carl Jung, CW 4, Paragraph 751

There are experiences which one must go through and for which reason is no substitute. Such experiences are often of inestimable value to the patient. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 446

It is a favourite neurotic misunderstanding that the right attitude to the world is found by indulgence in sex. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 440

The neurotic is ill not because he has lost his old faith but because he has not yet found a new form for his finest aspirations. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 669

Man “possesses” many things which he has never acquired but has inherited from his ancestors. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 728

There are experiences which one must go through and for which reason is no substitute. Such experiences are often of inestimable value to the patient. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 446.

The psyche does not merely react; it gives its own specific answer to the influences at work upon it. ~Carl Jung, CW 4; para 667

The psychological trouble in neurosis, and the neurosis itself, can be formulated as an act of adaptation that has failed. ~Carl Jung; CW 4; par. 574.

We yield too much to the ridiculous fear that we are at bottom quite impossible beings, that if everyone were to appear as he really is a frightful social catastrophe would ensue. Many people today take “man as he really is” to mean merely the eternally discontented, anarchic, rapacious element in human beings, quite forgetting that these same human beings have also erected those firmly established forms of civilization which possess greater strength and stability than all the anarchic undercurrents. The strengthening of his social personality is one of the essential conditions for man’s existence. Were it not so, humanity would cease to be. The selfishness and rebelliousness we meet in the neurotic’s psychology are not “man as he really is” but an infantile distortion. In reality the normal man is “civicminded and moral”; he created his laws and observes them, not because they are imposed on him from without—that is a childish delusion—but because he loves law and order more than he loves disorder and lawlessness. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 442

I can only gaze with wonder and awe at the depths and heights of our psychic nature. Its non-spatial universe conceals an untold abundance of images which have accumulated over millions of years of living development and become fixed in the organism. My consciousness is like an eye that penetrates to the most distant spaces, yet it is the psychic non-ego that fills them with non-spatial images. And these images are not pale shadows, but tremendously powerful psychic factors. The most we may be able to do is misunderstand them, but we can never rob them of their power by denying them. Beside this picture I would like to place the spectacle of the starry heavens at night, for the only equivalent of the universe within is the universe without; and just as I reach this world through the medium of the body, so I reach that world through the medium of the psyche. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 784

Even the so-called highly scientific suggestion therapy employs the wares of the medicine-man and the exorcising shaman. And why not? The public is not much more advanced either and continues to expect miraculous cures from the doctor. And indeed, we must rate those doctors wise worldly-wise in every sense—who know how to surround themselves with the aura of a medicine-man. They have not only the biggest practices but also get the best results. This is because, apart from the neuroses, countless physical illnesses are tainted and complicated with psychic material to an unsuspected degree. The medical exorcist betrays by his whole demeanour his full appreciation of that psychic component when he gives the patient the opportunity of fixing his faith firmly on the mysterious personality of the doctor. In this way he wins the sick man’s mind, which from then on helps him to restore his body to health. The cure works best when the doctor himself believes in his own formulae, otherwise he may be overcome by scientific doubt and so lose the proper convincing tone. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 578

Medicine in the hand of a fool was ever poison and death. Just as we demand from a surgeon, besides his technical knowledge, a skilled hand, courage, presence of mind, and power of decision, so we must expect from an analyst a very serious and thorough psychoanalytic training of his own personality before we are willing to entrust a patient to him. I would even go so far as to say that the acquisition and practice of the psychoanalytic technique presuppose not only a specific psychological gift but in the very first place a serious concern with the moulding of one’s own character. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 450

There are analysts who believe that they can get along with a self-analysis. This is Munchausen psychology, and they will certainly remain stuck. They forget that one of the most important therapeutically effective factors is subjecting yourself to the objective judgment of another. As regards ourselves we remain blind, despite everything and everybody. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 449

We would be doing our neurotic patients a grievous wrong if we tried to force them all into the category of the coerced. Among neurotics, there are not a few who do not require any reminders of their social duties and obligations, but are born and destined rather to be bearers of new cultural ideals. They are neurotic as long as they bow down before authority and refuse the freedom to which they are destined. As long as we look at life only retrospectively, as is the case in the psychoanalytic writings of the Viennese school, we shall never do justice to these persons and never bring them the longed-for deliverance. For in this way we train them only to be obedient children and thereby strengthen the very forces that made them ill—their conservative backwardness and submission to authority. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 658

The small world of the child, the family milieu, is the model for the big world. The more intensely the family sets its stamp on the child, the more he will be emotionally inclined, as an adult, to see in the great world his former small world. Of course this must not be taken as a conscious intellectual process. On the contrary, the patient feels and sees the difference between now and then, and tries as well as he can to adapt himself. Perhaps he will even believe himself perfectly adapted, since he may be able to grasp the situation intellectually, but that does not prevent his emotions from lagging far behind his intellectual insight. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 312

Nowadays we have no real sexual morality, only a legalistic attitude to sexuality; just as the Middle Ages had no real morality of money-making but only prejudices and a legalistic point of view. We are not yet far enough advanced to distinguish between moral and immoral behaviour in the realm of free sexual activity. This is clearly expressed in the customary treatment, or rather ill-treatment, of unmarried mothers. All the repulsive hypocrisy, the high tide of prostitution and of venereal diseases, we owe to the barbarous, wholesale legal condemnation of certain kinds of sexual behaviour, and to our inability to develop a finer moral sense for the enormous psychological differences that exist in the domain of free sexual activity. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, CW 666

We deceive ourselves greatly if we think that many married women are neurotic merely because they are unsatisfied sexually or because they have not found the right man or because they have an infantile sexual fixation. The real reason in many cases is that they cannot recognize the cultural task that is waiting for them. We all have far too much the standpoint of the “nothing but” psychology, that is, we still think that the new future which is pressing in at the door can be squeezed into the framework of what is already known. Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 668

Psychoanalysis cannot be considered a method of education, if by education we mean the topiary art of clipping a tree into a beautiful artificial shape. But those who have a higher conception of education will prize most the method of cultivating a tree so that it fulfils to perfection its own natural conditions of growth. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 442

The fact that by far the greater part of humanity not only needs guidance, but wishes for nothing better than to be guided and held in tutelage, justifies, in a sense, the moral value which the Church sets on confession. The priest, equipped with all the insignia of paternal authority, becomes the responsible leader and shepherd of his flock. He is the father confessor and the members of his parish are his penitent children. Thus priest and Church replace the parents, and to that extent they free the individual from the bonds of the family. In so far as the priest is a morally elevated personality with a natural nobility of soul and a mental culture to match, the institution of confession may be commended as brilliant method of social guidance and education, which did in fact perform a tremendous educative task for more than fifteen hundred years. So long as the medieval Church knew how to be the guardian of art and science—a role in which her success was due, in part, to her wide tolerance of worldly interests—confession was an admirable instrument of education. But it lost its educative value, at least for more highly developed people, as soon as the Church proved incapable of maintaining her leadership in the intellectual sphere—the inevitable consequence of spiritual rigidity. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 433

The discovery of the value of human personality is reserved for a riper age. For young people the search for personality values is very often a pretext for evading their biological duty. Conversely, the exaggerated longing of an older person for the sexual values of youth is a short-sighted and often cowardly evasion of a duty which demands recognition of the value of personality and submission to the hierarchy of cultural values. The young neurotic shrinks back in terror from the expansion of life’s duties, the old one from the dwindling of the treasures he has attained. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 664

The psyche does not merely react, it gives its own specific answer to the influences at work upon it, and at least half the resulting formation is entirely due to the psyche and the determinants inherent within it. Culture can never be understood as reaction to environment. That shallow explanation can safely be left to the past century. It is just these determinants that appear as psychological imperatives, and we have daily proof of their compelling power. What I call “biological duty” is identical with these determinants. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 665

Only those who regard the happenings in this world as a concatenation of errors and accidents, and who therefore believe that the pedagogic hand of the rationalist is constantly needed to guide us, can ever imagine that this path [of psychoanalysis] was an aberration from which we should have been warned off with a signboard. Besides the deeper insight into psychological determination, we owe to this “error” a method of inquiry of incalculable importance. It is for us to rejoice and be thankful that Freud had the courage to let himself be guided along this path. Not thus is the progress of science hindered, but rather by blind adherence to insights once gained, by the typical conservatism of authority, by the childish vanity of the savant and his fear of making mistakes. This lack of courage is considerably more injurious to the name of science than an honest error. When will there be an end to the incessant squabbling about who is right? One has only to look at the history of science how many have been right, and how few have remained right! ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 302

Dogma and science are incommensurable quantities which damage one another by mutual contamination. Dogma as a factor in religion is of inestimable value precisely because of its absolute standpoint. But when science dispenses with criticism and scepticism it degenerates into a sickly hot-house plant. One of the elements necessary to science is extreme uncertainty. Whenever science inclines towards dogma and shows a tendency to be impatient and fanatical, it is concealing a doubt which in all probability is justified and explaining away an uncertainty which is only too well founded. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 746

One-sidedness appears over and over again in the history of science. I am not saying this as a reproach on the contrary, we must be glad that there are people who are courageous enough to be immoderate and one-sided. It is to them that we owe our discoveries. What is regrettable is that each should defend his one-sidedness so passionately. Scientific theories are merely suggestions as to how things might be observed. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 241

In this overpoweringly humdrum existence, alas, there is little out of the ordinary that is healthy, and not much room for conspicuous heroism. Not that heroic demands are never put to us on the contrary—and this is just what is so irritating and irksome—the banal everyday makes banal demands on our patience, our devotion, perseverance, self-sacrifice; and for us to fulfil these demands (as we must) humbly and without courting applause through heroic gestures, a heroism is needed that cannot be seen from the outside. It does not glitter, is not belauded, and it always seeks concealment in everyday attire. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 72

Moral law is nothing other than an outward manifestation of man’s innate urge to dominate and control himself. This impulse to domestication and civilization is lost in the dim, unfathomable depths of man’s evolutionary history and can never be conceived as the consequence of laws imposed from without, Man himself, obeying his instincts, created his laws. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 486

We should never forget that what today seems to us a moral commandment will tomorrow be cast into the melting-pot and transformed, so that in the near or distant future it may serve as a basis for new ethical formations. This much we ought to have learnt from the history of civilization, that the forms of morality belong to the category of transitory things. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 667

Widely accepted ideas are never the personal property of their so-called author; on the contrary, he is the bondservant of his ideas. Impressive ideas which are hailed as truths have something peculiar about them. Although they come into being at a definite time, they are and have always been timeless; they arise from that realm of creative psychic life out of which the ephemeral mind of the single human being grows like a plant that blossoms, bears fruit and seed, and then withers and dies. Ideas spring from something greater than the personal human being. Man does not make his ideas; we could say that man’s ideas make him. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 769

We can understand at once the fear that the child and the primitive have of the great unknown. We have the same childish fear of our inner side, where we likewise touch upon a great unknown world. All we have is the affect, the fear, without knowing that this is a world-fear—for the world of affects is invisible. We have either purely theoretical prejudices against it, or superstitious ideas. One cannot even talk about the unconscious before many educated people without being accused of mysticism. The fear is legitimate in so far as our rational Weltanschauung with its scientific and moral certitudes—so hotly believed in because so deeply questionable—is shattered by the facts of the other side. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 324

Has mankind ever really got away from myths? Everyone who has his eyes and wits about him can see that the world is dead, cold, and unending. Never yet has he beheld a God, or been compelled to require the existence of such a God from the evidence of his senses. On the contrary, it needed the strongest inner compulsion, which can only be explained by the irrational force of instinct, for man to invent those religious beliefs whose absurdity was long since pointed out by Tertullian. In the same way one can withhold the material content of primitive myths from a child but not take from him the need for mythology, and still less his ability to manufacture it for himself. One could almost say that if all the world’s traditions were cut off at a single blow, the whole of mythology and the whole history of religion would start all over again with the next generation. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 30

It was of profound psychological significance when Christianity first proclaimed that the orientation to the future was the redeeming principle for mankind. In the past nothing can be altered, and in the present little, but the future is ours and capable of raising life’s intensity to the highest pitch. A little span of youth belongs to us, all the rest belongs to our children. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 668

We must never forget that the world is, in the first place, a subjective phenomenon. The impressions we receive from these accidental happenings are also our own doing. It is not true that the impressions are forced on us unconditionally; our own predisposition conditions the impression. A man whose libido is blocked will have, as a rule, quite different and very much more vivid impressions than one whose libido is organized in a wealth of activities. A person who is sensitive in one way or another will receive a deep impression from an event which would leave a less sensitive person cold. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 400

Is not every experience, even in the best of circumstances, at least fifty-per-cent subjective interpretation? On the other hand, the subject is also an objective fact, a piece of the world; and what comes from him comes, ultimately, from the stuff of the world itself, just as the rarest and strangest organism is none the less supported and nourished by the earth which is common to all. It is precisely the most subjective ideas which, being closest to nature and to our own essence, deserve to be called the truest. But: “What is truth?” ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 770

We know that the first impressions of childhood accompany us inalienably throughout life, and that, just as indestructibly, certain educational influences can keep people all their lives within those limits. In these circumstances it is not surprising that conflicts break out between the personality moulded by educational and other influences of the infantile milieu and one’s own individual style of life. It is a conflict which all those must face who are called upon to live a life that is independent and creative. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 310

Theology does not help those who are looking for the key, because theology demands faith, and faith cannot be made: it is in the truest sense a gift of grace. We moderns are faced with the necessity of rediscovering the life of the spirit; we must experience it anew for ourselves. It is the only way in which to break the spell that binds us to the cycle of biological events. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 780

The more highly developed men of our time do not want to be guided by a creed or a dogma; they want to understand. So it is not surprising if they throw aside everything they do not understand; and religious symbols, being the least intelligible of all, are generally the first to go overboard. The sacrifice of the intellect demanded by a positive belief is a violation against which the conscience of the more highly developed individual rebels. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 434

When someone knocks in a nail with a hammer in order to hang something up, we can understand every detail of the action; it is immediately evident. It is otherwise with the act of baptism, where every phase is problematic. We call these actions, whose meaning and purpose are not immediately evident, symbolic actions, or symbols. On the basis of this reasoning we call a dream symbolic because it is a psychological product whose origin, meaning, and purpose are obscure, and is therefore one of the purest products of unconscious constellation. As Freud aptly says, the dream is the via regia to the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 334

It will not have escaped you that the greatest difficulty lies in assigning limits to the pre-sexual stage. I am ready to confess my great uncertainty in regard to this problem. When I look back on my own psychoanalytic experiences with children-insufficiently numerous as yet, unfortunately-at the same time bearing in mind the observations made by Freud, it seems to me that the limits of this phase lie between the third and fifth year, subject, of course, to individual variation. This age is an important one in many respects. The child has already outgrown the helplessness of a baby, and a number of important psychological functions have acquired a reliable hold. From this period on, the profound darkness of the early infantile amnesia, or discontinuity of consciousness, begins to be illuminated by the sporadic continuity of memory. It seems as if, at this stage, an essential step forward is taken in the emancipation and centering of the new personality. So far as we know, the first signs of interests and activities which may fairly be called sexual also fall into this period, even though these indications still have the infantile characteristics of harmlessness and naiveté.” ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 266

Freud’s approach is not always mistaken, however, for consciousness is not always firmly established. This presupposes a good deal of experience of life and a certain amount of maturity. Young people, who are very far from knowing who they really are, would run a great risk if they obscured their knowledge of themselves still further by letting the “dark night of the soul” pour into their immature, labile consciousness. Here a certain depreciation of the unconscious is justified. Experience has convinced me that there are not only different temperaments (“types”), but different stages of psychological development, so that one can well say that there is an essential difference between the psychology of the first and the second half of life. Here again I differ from the others in maintaining that the same psychological criteria are not applicable to the different stages of life. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 762

For thousands of years, rites of initiation have been teaching rebirth from the spirit; yet, strangely enough, man forgets again and again the meaning of divine procreation. Though this may be poor testimony to the strength of the spirit, the penalty for misunderstanding is neurotic decay, embitterment, atrophy, and sterility. It is easy enough to drive the spirit out of the door, but when we have done so the meal has lost its savour—the salt of the earth. Fortunately, we have proof that the spirit always renews its strength in the fact that the essential teaching of the initiations is handed on from generation to generation. Ever and again there are human beings who understand what it means that God is their father. The equal balance of the flesh and the spirit is not lost to the world. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 783

The cure works best when the doctor himself believes in his own formulae, otherwise he may be overcome by scientific doubt and so lose the proper convincing tone. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 578.

That day saw the death of my connection with therapy by suggestion; the notoriety aroused by this case shamed and depressed me. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 581

If only one did not have a scientific conscience and that hankering after the truth! ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 582.

I even hold it to be an indispensable prerequisite that the psychoanalyst should first submit himself to the analytical process, as his personality is one of the main factors in the cure. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 586

To anticipate a possible objection, let me say at once that I did not give up hypnosis because I wanted to avoid dealing with the basic forces of the human psyche, but because I wanted to battle with them directly and openly. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 601

I strive not to be a fanatic—though there are not a few who accuse me of fanaticism. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 602

There are cases where psychoanalysis works worse than any other method. But who has ever claimed that psychoanalysis should be used always and everywhere? ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 604

Do not forget that Kepler once cast horoscopes for money, and that countless artists are condemned to work for a living wage. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 607

The relativity of “truth” has been known for ages and does not stand in the way of anything, and if it did would merely prevent belief in dogmas and authority. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 620

So-called chance is the law and order of psychoanalysis. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 625

With the unintelligent and bigoted ones [patients] you begin quietly with the analysis. In the unconscious of such folk you have a confederate who never lets you down. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 627

When the conscious material is exhausted you go on to dreams, which give you the subliminal material. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 628

As to the question of morality and education, let me say that these things belong to a later stage of the analysis, when they find—or should find—their own solution. You cannot make recipes out of psychoanalysis! ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 631

Again, psychoanalysis is not a method of examination in the nature of an intelligence test, though this mistake is common in certain circles. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 622

Psychoanalysis is a method which makes possible the analytical reduction of psychic contents to their simplest expression, and for discovering the line of least resistance in the development of a harmonious personality. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 623

My only working rule is to conduct the analysis as a perfectly ordinary, sensible conversation, and to avoid all appearance of medical magic. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 624

So-called chance is the law and order of psychoanalysis. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 625

With the unintelligent and bigoted ones you begin quietly with the analysis. In the unconscious of such folk you have a confederate who never lets you down. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 627

If people have no dreams, as they allege, or forget them, there is usually still some conscious material that ought to be produced and discussed, but is kept back owing to resistances. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 628

If the analyst demands that his patient shall get well out of love for him, the patient may easily reckon on reciprocal services, and will without doubt tr to extort them. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 639

Man as a herd-animal, too, has not by any manner of means to subordinate himself to laws imposed from without; he carries his social imperatives within himself, a priori, as an inborn necessity. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 641

Psychoanalysis is only a means for removing the stones from the path of development, and not a method (as hypnotism often claims to be) of putting things into the patient that were not there before. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 648

The art of analysis lies in following the patient on all his erring ways and so gathering his strayed sheep together. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 643

Experience has convinced me that patients rapidly begin to make use of ideas picked up from psychoanalysis, as is also apparent in their dreams. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 645

The analyst must exercise all possible care and self-criticism not to let himself be led astray by his patient’s dreams. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 649

Among neurotics, there are not a few who do not require any reminders of their social duties and obligations, but are born and destined rather to be bearers of new cultural ideals. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 658

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

If the analyst himself is neurotic and insufficiently adapted to the demands of life or of his own personality, the patient will copy this defect and reflect it in his own attitudes: with what results you can imagine. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 661

I ought not to conceal from you at this point that the stubborn assertion of sexual values would not be maintained so tenaciously if they did not have a profound significance for that period of life in which propagation is of primary importance. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 664

Conversely, the exaggerated longing of an older person for the sexual values of youth is a short-sighted and often cowardly evasion of a duty which demands recognition of the value of personality and submission to the hierarchy of cultural values. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 664

The young neurotic shrinks back in terror from the expansion of life’s duties, the old one from the dwindling of the treasures he has attained. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 664

External causes can account for at most half the reaction, the other half is due to the peculiar attributes of living matter itself, without which the specific reaction formation could never come about at all. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 665

Culture can never be understood as reaction to environment. That shallow explanation can safely be left to the past century. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 665

But in certain cases it is a recognized fact that “immoral” tendencies are not got rid of by analysis, but appear more and more clearly until it becomes evident that they belong to the biological duties of the individual. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 665

We are not yet far enough advanced to distinguish between moral and immoral behaviour in the realm of free sexual activity. This is clearly expressed in the customary treatment, or rather ill-treatment, of unmarried mothers. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 666

All the repulsive hypocrisy, the high tide of prostitution and of venereal diseases, we owe to the barbarous, wholesale legal condemnation of certain kinds of sexual behaviour, and to our inability to develop a finer moral sense for the enormous psychological differences that exist in the domain of free sexual activity. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 666

The existence of this exceedingly complicated and significant contemporary problem may serve to make clear to you why we so often find among our patients people who, because of their spiritual and social gifts, are quite specifically called to take an active part in the work of civilization—that is their biological destiny. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 667

Five per cent on money lent is fair interest, twenty per cent is despicable usury. We have to apply this view to the sexual situation as well. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 667

It was of profound psychological significance when Christianity first proclaimed that the orientation to the future was the redeeming principle for mankind. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 668

The dream presents itself to us as a more or less unintelligible jumble of elements not at first conscious and only recognized afterwards through their associations. It should be added that not all parts of the dream have a recognizable quality from which their conscious character can be deduced; they are often, and indeed mostly, unrecognizable at first. Only afterwards does it occur to us that we have consciously experienced this or that part of the dream. From this standpoint alone we may regard the dream as a product of unconscious origin ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 324

Freud attaches great significance to verbal expression one of the most important components of our thinking because the double meaning of words is a favourite channel for the displacement and improper expression of affects ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 46

I mention this point because it is of fundamental importance in the psychology of neurosis ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 46

An object in which, on the contrary, I feel much interest will evoke numerous associations and preoccupy me for a long while. Every emotion produces a more or less extensive complex of associations which I have called the “feeling-toned complex of ideas” ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 67

In studying an individual case history we always discover that the complex exerts the strongest “constellating” force, from which we conclude that in any analysis we shall meet with it from the start ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 67

The complexes appear as the chief components of the psychological disposition in every psychic structure. In the dream, for example, we encounter the emotional components, for it is easy to understand that all the products of psychic activity depend above all upon the strongest “constellating” influences ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 67

In Freud’s definition the term libido connotes an exclusively sexual need, hence everything that Freud means by libido must be understood as sexual need or sexual desire ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 252

In medicine the term libido is certainly used for sexual desire, and specifically for sexual lust ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para CW4 ¶ 252

But the classical use of the word [libido] as found in Cicero, Sallust, and others was not so exclusive; there it is used in the more general sense of passionate desire ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 252

I mention this fact now, because further on it will play an important part in our argument, and because it is important to know that the term libido really has a much wider range of meaning than it has in medicine ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 252

The symptoms of a neurosis must be regarded as exaggerated functions over-invested with libido ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 254

The energy used for this purpose has been taken from somewhere else, and it is the task of the psychoanalyst to discover the place it was taken from or where it was never applied ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 254

The question has to be reversed in the case of those syndromes characterized mainly by lack of libido, for instance apathetic states ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 255

Here we have to ask, where did the libido go? The patient gives us the impression of having no libido, and there are many doctors who take him at face value ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 255

Such doctors have a primitive way of thinking, like a savage who, seeing an eclipse of the sun, believes that the sun has been swallowed and killed. But the sun is only hidden, and so it is with these patients. The libido is there, but it is not visible and is inaccessible to the patient himself. Superficially, we have here a lack of libido ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 255

It is the task of psychoanalysis to search out that hidden place where the libido dwells and where the patient himself cannot get at it ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 255

The hidden place is the “non-conscious,” which we may also call the “unconscious” without attributing to it any mystical significance ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 255

We shall now try to fit the new conception of libido into the theory of infantile sexuality, which is so very important for the theory of neurosis ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 290

In infants we find that libido as energy, as a vital activity, first manifests itself in the nutritional zone, where, in the act of sucking, food is taken in with a rhythmic movement and with every sign of satisfaction ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 290

With the growth of the individual and development of his organs the libido creates for itself new avenues of activity ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 290

The primary model of rhythmic movement [in infants], producing pleasure and satisfaction, is now transferred to the zone of the other functions, with sexuality as its ultimate goal ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 290

A considerable portion of the “alimentary libido” has to convert itself into “sexual libido” ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 290

This transition does not take place quite suddenly at puberty, but only very gradually during the course of childhood. The libido can free itself only with difficulty and quite slowly from the modality of the nutritive function in order to pass over into the sexual function ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 290

In this transitional stage there are, so far as I am able to judge, two distinct phases: the phase of sucking, and the phase of displaced rhythmic activity ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 291

Sucking belongs by its very nature to the sphere of the nutritive function, but outgrows it by ceasing to be a function of nutrition and becoming a rhythmic activity aiming at pleasure and satisfaction without intake of nourishment ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 291

At this point the hand comes in as an auxiliary organ. It appears even more clearly as an auxiliary organ in the phase of displaced rhythmic activity for pleasure, which then leaves the oral zone and turns to other regions ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 291

As a rule, it is the other body-openings that become the first objects of libidinal interests; then the skin, or special parts of it ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 291

The activities carried out in these places, taking the form of rubbing, boring, picking, pulling, and so forth, follow a certain rhythm and serve to produce pleasure ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 291

After lingering for a while at these stations, the libido continues its wanderings until it reaches the sexual zone, where it may provide occasion for the first attempts at masturbation ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 291

In the course of its migrations the libido carries traces of the nutritional phase into its new field of operations, which readily accounts for the many intimate connections between the nutritive and the sexual function ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 291

This migration of libido takes place during the presexual stage, whose special distinguishing-mark is that the libido gradually sloughs off the character of the nutritive instinct and assumes that of the sexual instinct. At the stage of nutrition, therefore, we cannot yet speak of a true sexual libido ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 291

It is characteristic that the babyish word for mother, “mamma,” is the name for the maternal breast ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 346

Dr. Beatrice Hinkle has informed me, interrogation of small children elicited the fact that they defined “mother” as the person who gives food, chocolate, etc. ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para ¶ 346

One could hardly assert that for children of this age food is only a symbol for sex, though this is sometimes true for adults ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 346

A superficial glance at the history of civilization will show just how enormous the nutritive source of pleasure is. The colossal feasts of Rome in its decadence were an expression of anything you like, only not of repressed sexuality, for that is the last thing one could accuse the Romans of in those days ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 346

There is no doubt that these excesses were some kind of substitute, but not for sexuality; they were far more a substitute for neglected moral functions, which we are too prone to regard as laws forced on man from outside. Men have the laws which they make for themselves ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 346

I [Jung] do not identify the feeling of pleasure eo ipso with sexuality. Sexuality has an increasingly small share in pleasure-sensations the further back we go in childhood ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 347

Nevertheless, jealousy can play a large role, for it too is something that does not belong entirely to the sexual sphere, since the desire for food has itself much to do with the first stirrings of jealousy one has only to think of animals! ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 347

Certainly jealousy is reinforced by a budding eroticism relatively early ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 347

It is characteristic that the babyish word for mother, “mamma,” is the name for the maternal breast ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 346

Dr. Beatrice Hinkle has informed me, interrogation of small children elicited the fact that they defined “mother” as the person who gives food, chocolate, etc. ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 346

One could hardly assert that for children of this age food is only a symbol for sex, though this is sometimes true for adults ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 346

I [Jung] do not identify the feeling of pleasure eo ipso with sexuality. Sexuality has an increasingly small share in pleasure-sensations the further back we go in childhood ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 347

Certainly jealousy is reinforced by a budding eroticism relatively early ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 347

A very gradual transition occurs during the course of childhood. The libido can free itself only with difficulty and quite slowly from the modality of the nutritive function in order to pass over into the sexual function ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 290

I [Jung] do not identify the feeling of pleasure eo ipso with sexuality. Sexuality has an increasingly small share in pleasure-sensations the further back we go in childhood ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 347

Certainly jealousy is reinforced by a budding eroticism relatively early ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 347

This element gains in strength as the years go on, so that the Oedipus complex soon assumes its classical form ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 347

We have seen that psychoanalytic theory started from a traumatic experience in childhood, which later on was found to be partly or wholly unreal. In consequence, the theory made a change of front and sought the aetiologically significant factor in the development of abnormal fantasies ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 353

The investigation of the unconscious, continued over a period of ten years with the help of an increasing number of workers, gradually brought to light a mass of empirical material which showed that the incest complex was a highly important and never-failing element in pathological fantasy ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 353

But it was found that the incest complex was not a special complex of neurotic people; it proved to be a component of the normal infantile psyche. We cannot tell from its mere existence whether this complex will give rise to a neurosis or not. To become pathogenic, it must precipitate a conflict; the complex, which in itself is inactive, must be activated and intensified to the point where a conflict breaks out ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 353

This brings us to a new and important question. If the infantile “nuclear complex” is only a general form, not in itself pathogenic but requiring special activation, then the whole aetiological problem is altered ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 354

In that case we would dig in vain among the reminiscences of earliest childhood, since they give us only the general forms of later conflicts but not the actual conflict. It makes no difference that there were already conflicts in childhood, for the conflicts of childhood are different from the conflicts of adults ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 354

Those who have suffered ever since childhood from a chronic neurosis do not suffer now from the same conflict they suffered from then. Maybe the neurosis broke out when they first had to go to school as children. Then it was the conflict between indulgence and duty, between love for their parents and the necessity of going to school. But now it is the conflict between, say, the joys of a comfortable bourgeois existence and the strenuous demands of professional life. It only seems to be the same conflict ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 354

Each of these tendencies has its psychological prehistory, and in our case it can clearly be shown that the peculiar resistance at the bottom of the patient’s critical sensitiveness was in fact bound up historically with certain infantile sexual activities, and also with that so-called traumatic experience things which may very well cast a shadow on sexuality ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 396

From this standpoint we cannot assert that our patient’s peculiar prehistory was to blame for her sensitiveness at the critical moment; it would be more correct to say that this sensitiveness was inborn and naturally manifested itself most strongly in any unusual situation ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 397

This excessive sensitiveness very often brings an enrichment of the personality and contributes more to its charm than to the undoing of a person’s character. Only, when difficult and unusual situations arise, the advantage frequently turns into a very great disadvantage, since calm consideration is then disturbed by untimely affects ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 398

Nothing could be more mistaken, though, than to regard this excessive sensitiveness as in itself a pathological character component. If that were really so, we should have to rate about one quarter of humanity as pathological. Yet if this sensitiveness has such destructive consequences for the individual, we must admit that it can no longer be considered quite normal 398

Primitive people and animals have nothing like that capacity for reviving memories of unique impressions which we find among civilized people 403

Very young children are not nearly as impressionable as older children. The higher development of the mental faculties is an indispensable prerequisite for impressionability. We can therefore safely assume that the earlier a patient places some impressive experience in his childhood, the more likely it is to be a fantastic and regressive one 403

Deeper impressions are to be expected only from experiences in late childhood. At any rate, we generally have to attribute only regressive significance to the events of early infancy, that is, from the fifth year back 403

In later years, too, regression can sometimes play an overwhelming role, but even so one must not attribute too little importance to accidental events. In the later course of a neurosis, accidental events and regression together form a vicious circle: retreat from life leads to regression, and regression heightens resistance to life 403

The non-fulfillment of the demands of adaptation, or the shrinking of the neurotic from difficulties, is, at bottom, the hesitation of every organism in the face of a new effort to adapt ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 410

The training of animals provides instructive examples in this respect, and in many cases such an explanation is, in principle, sufficient. From this standpoint the earlier mode of explanation, which maintained that the resistance of the neurotic was due to his bondage to fantasies, appears incorrect ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 410

But it would be very one-sided to take our stand solely on a point of principle. There is also a bondage to fantasies, even though the fantasies are, as a rule, secondary. The neurotic’s bondage to fantasies (illusions, prejudices, etc.) develops gradually, as a habit, out of innumerable regressions from obstacles since earliest childhood ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 410

All this grows into a regular habit familiar to every student of neurosis; we all know those patients who use their neurosis as an excuse for running away from difficulties and shirking their duty ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 410

Their habitual evasion produces a habit of mind which makes them take it for granted that they should live out their fantasies instead of fulfilling disagreeable obligations. And this bondage to fantasy makes reality seem less real to the neurotic, less valuable and less interesting, than it does to the normal person ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 410

The libido which is not used for this purpose stagnates, and will then make the inevitable regression to former objects or modes of adaptation ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 470

The result is a striking activation of the incest complex. The libido withdraws from the object which is so difficult to attain and which demands such great efforts, and turns instead to the easier ones, and finally to the easiest of all, the infantile fantasies, which are then elaborated into real incest fantasies ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 470

The fact that, whenever there is a disturbance of psychological adaptation, we always find an excessive development of these fantasies must likewise be conceived as a regressive phenomenon. That is to say, the incest fantasy is of secondary and not of causal significance, while the primary cause is the resistance of human nature to any kind of exertion ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 470

Accordingly, drawing back from certain tasks cannot be explained by saying that man prefers the incestuous relationship, rather he falls back into it because he shuns exertion ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 470

Otherwise we would have to say that resistance to conscious effort is identical with preference for the incestuous relationship ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 470

This would be obvious nonsense, since not only primitive man but animals too have a mighty dislike of all intentional effort, and are addicted to absolute laziness until circumstances prod them into action ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 470

Neither of primitive people nor of animals can it be asserted that preference for incestuous relationships is the cause of their aversion to efforts at adaptation, for, especially in the case of animals, there can be absolutely no question of an incestuous relationship ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 470

Before we start analysing this dream, I must mention its parallels with certain mythological ideas. Since ancient times the thunderstorm has had the meaning of an earth-fecundating act, it is the cohabitation of Father Heaven and Mother Earth, where the lightning takes over the role of the winged phallus ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 507

The stork in flight is just the same thing, a winged phallus, and its psychosexual meaning is known to every child ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 507

But the psychosexual meaning of the thunderstorm is not known to everyone, and certainly not to our little patient. In view of the whole psychological constellation previously described, the stork must unquestionably be given a psychosexual interpretation ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 507

The fact that the thunderstorm is connected with the stork and, like it, has a psychosexual meaning seems difficult to accept at first ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 507

To return to the analysis of the dream: the associations that led to the heart of this image began with the idea of rain during a thunderstorm. Her actual words were: I think of watery uncle was drowned in the water it must be awful to be stuck in the water like that, in the dark but wouldn’t the baby drown in the water, too? Does it drink the water that is in the stomach? Queer, when I was ill Mama sent my water to the doctor. I thought he was going to mix something with it like syrup, which babies grow from, and Mama would have to drink it ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 508

We see with unquestionable clearness from this string of associations that the child connected psychosexual ideas specifically relating to fertilization with the rain during the thunderstorm ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 509

Here again we see that remarkable parallelism between mythology and the individual fantasies of our own day. This series of associations is so rich in symbolical connections that a whole dissertation could be written about them. The symbolism of drowning was brilliantly interpreted by the child herself as a pregnancy fantasy, an explanation given in the psychoanalytic literature long ago ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 510

The stork in flight is just the same thing, a winged phallus, and its psychosexual meaning is known to every child ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 507

The fact that the thunderstorm is connected with the stork and, like it, has a psychosexual meaning seems difficult to accept at first ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 507

The psychoanalyst naturally makes his anamnesis as carefully as any other specialist. But this is merely the patient’s history and must not be confused with analysis ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para CW4 ¶ 525

Analysis is the reduction of actual contents of consciousness, ostensibly of a fortuitous nature, to their psychological determinants. This process has nothing to do with the anamnestic reconstruction of the history of the illness ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 525

In contradistinction to all previous methods, psychoanalysis endeavours to overcome the disorders of the neurotic psyche through the unconscious, and not from the conscious side. In this work we naturally have need of the patient’s conscious contents, for only in this way can we reach the unconscious. The conscious content from which our work starts is the material supplied by the anamnesis ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 528

In many cases the anamnesis provides useful clues which make the psychic origin of his symptoms clear to the patient. This, of course, is necessary only when he is convinced that his neurosis is organic in origin ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 528

But even in those cases where the patient is convinced from the start of the psychic nature of his illness, a critical survey of the anamnesis can be of advantage, for it discloses a psychological context of which he was unaware before ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 528

In this way problems that need special discussion are frequently brought to the surface. This work may occupy many sittings ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 528

Finally, the elucidation of the conscious material comes to an end when neither the analyst nor the patient can contribute anything further of decisive importance. In the most favourable cases the end comes with the formulation of the problem which, very often, proves insoluble ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 528

The best examples of such regressions are found in hysterical cases where a disappointment in love or marriage has precipitated a neurosis ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 569

There we find those well-known digestive disorders, loss of appetite, dyspeptic symptoms of all sorts, etc. In these cases the regressive libido, turning back from the task of adaptation, gains power over the nutritive function and produces marked disturbances ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 569

Similar effects can be observed in cases where there is no disturbance of the nutritive function but, instead, a regressive revival of reminiscences from the distant past ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 569

We then find a reactivation of the parental imagos, of the Oedipus complex. Here the events of early infancy never before important suddenly become so. They have become regressively reactivated ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 569

Remove the obstacle from the path of life and this whole system of infantile fantasies at once breaks down and becomes as inactive and ineffective as before ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 569

But let us not forget that, to a certain extent, it is at work all the time, influencing us in unseen ways ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 569

A sensitive and somewhat unbalanced person, as a neurotic always is, will meet with special difficulties and perhaps with more unusual tasks in life than a normal individual, who as a rule has only to follow the well worn path of an ordinary existence ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 572

For the neurotic there is no established way of life, because his aims and tasks are apt to be of a highly individual character ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 572

He tries to go the more or less uncontrolled and half-conscious way of normal people, not realizing that his own critical and very different nature demands of him more effort than the normal person is required to exert ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 572

There are neurotics who have shown their heightened sensitiveness and their resistance to adaptation in the very first weeks of life, in the difficulty they have in taking the mother’s breast [breast feeding] and in their exaggerated nervous reactions, etc. ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 572

For this peculiarity in the neurotic predisposition it will always be impossible to find a psychological aetiology, because it is anterior to all psychology ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 572

This predisposition you can call it “congenital sensitiveness” or what you likes the cause of the first resistances to adaptation ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 572

As the way to adaptation is blocked, the biological energy we call libido does not find its appropriate outlet or activity, with the result that a suitable form of adaptation is replaced by an abnormal or primitive one ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 572

Interpretations of earlier symbols will themselves be used again as fresh symbols in later dreams ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 649

It often happens, for instance, that sexual situations which appeared in earlier dreams in symbolic form will appear “undisguised” in later ones once more, be it noted, in symbolic form as analysable expressions for ideas of a different nature hidden behind them ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 649

Thus the not infrequent dream of incestuous cohabitation is by no means an “undisguised” content, but a dream as freshly symbolic and capable of analysis as all others ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 649

For one type of person (called the infantile-rebel) a positive transference is, to begin with, an important achievement with a healing significance; for the other (the infantile-obedient) it is dangerous backsliding, a convenient way of evading life’s duties 659

For the first a negative transference denotes increased insubordination, hence a backsliding and an evasion of life’s duties, for the second it is a step forward with a healing significance ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 659

The terrifying spectres of a black man and a black snake threaten the dreamer as well as his mother. “Black” indicates something dark, the unconscious ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 737

The snake’s attack on the boy’s face, the part that “sees,” represents the danger to consciousness (blinding) ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 737

This little example shows what goes on in the psyche of an eight-year-old child who is over dependent on his parents, the blame for this lying partly on the too strict father and the too tender mother ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 738

The boy’s identification with his mother and fear of his father are in this individual instance an infantile neurosis, but they represent at the same time the original human situation, the clinging of primitive consciousness to the unconscious, and the compensating impulse which strives to tear consciousness away from the embrace of the darkness ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 738

Because man has a dim premonition of this original situation behind his individual experience, he has always tried to give it generally valid expression through the universal motif of the divine hero’s fight with the mother dragon, whose purpose is to deliver man from the power of darkness ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 738

This [hero] myth has a “saving,” i.e., therapeutic significance, since it gives adequate expression to the dynamism underlying the individual entanglement. The myth is not to be casually explained as the consequence of a personal father-complex, but should be understood teleologically, as an attempt of the unconscious itself to rescue consciousness from the danger of regression ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 738

The terrifying spectres of a black man and a black snake threaten the dreamer as well as his mother. “Black” indicates something dark, the unconscious ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 737

It is a means of unlocking the unconscious directly, although mostly it is simply a technique for obtaining a wide selection of faulty reactions which can then be used for exploring the unconscious by psychoanalysis ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 339

The process of regression is beautifully illustrated in an image used by Freud. The libido can be compared with a river which, when it meets with an obstruction, gets dammed up and causes an inundation ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 367

If later an obstruction occurs, so that the damming up of libido reactivates the old channels, this state is properly speaking a new and at the same time an abnormal one ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 368

The earlier, infantile state represents a normal application of libido, whereas the reversion of libido to infantile ways is something abnormal ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 368

I am therefore of the opinion that Freud is not justified in calling the infantile sexual manifestations “perverse,” since a normal manifestation should not be designated by a pathological term. This incorrect usage has had pernicious consequences in confusing the scientific public. Such a terminology is a misapplication to normal people of insights gained from neurotic psychology, on the assumption that the abnormal by-path taken by the libido in neurotics is still the same phenomenon as in children ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 368

The moment of the outbreak of neurosis is not just a matter of chance; as a rule it is most critical. It is usually the moment when a new psychological adjustment, that is, a new adaptation, is demanded. Such moments facilitate the outbreak of a neurosis, as every experienced neurologist knows ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 563

When the parents have long been dead and have lost, or should have lost, all significance, the situation of the patient having perhaps completely changed since then, they are still somehow present and as important as if they were still alive ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 305

The patient’s love, admiration, resistance, hatred, and rebelliousness still cling to their effigies, transfigured by affection or distorted by envy, and often bearing little resemblance to the erstwhile reality ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 305

It was this fact that compelled me to speak no longer of “father” and “mother” but to employ instead the term “imago,” because these fantasies are not concerned any more with the real father and mother but with subjective and often very much distorted images of them which lead a shadowy but nonetheless potent existence in the mind of the patient ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 305

Carl Jung Depth Psychology

For Educational Purposes Only

Carl Jung: CW 4 “Freud and Psychoanalysis” – Quotations

Like this:

Related

Share this:

Like this:

Related