Introduction to Jungian Psychology: Notes of the Seminar on Analytical Psychology Given in 1925
These revelations happened to those people, they grew out of them just as the apple grows from the tree.
For us, they give great satisfaction to the intellect, but for uniting the pairs of opposites they serve nothing.
Suppose a patient comes to me with a great conflict and I say to him, “Read the Tao Tê Ching” or “Throw your sorrows on Christ.”
It is splendid advice, but what does it mean to the patient in helping his conflict?
Nothing.
To be sure, the thing for which Christ stands does work for Catholics and partly for Protestants, but it does not work for everybody; and nearly all my patients are people for whom the traditional symbols do not work.
So our way has to be one where the creative character is present, where there is a process of growth which has the quality of revelation.
Analysis should release an experience that grips us or falls upon us as from above, an experience that has substance and body, such as those things occurred to the ancients.
If I were going to symbolize it I would choose the Annunciation. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 88.
Carl Jung across the web: