Carl Jung: Life is an energy-process
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Facebook Group
Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche
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.
In the long run everything that happens is, as it were, no more than the initial disturbance of a perpetual state of rest which forever attempts to re-establish itself.
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 fulfil themselves.
The end of every process is its goal.
All energy-flow is like a runner who strives with the greatest effort and the utmost expenditure of strength to reach his goal.
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.
With the attainment of maturity and at the zenith of biological existence, life’s drive towards a goal in no wise halts.
With the same intensity and irresistibility with which it strove upward before middle age, life now descends; for the goal no longer lies on the summit, but in the valley where the ascent began.
The curve of life is like the parabola of a projectile which, disturbed from its initial state of rest, rises and then returns to a state of repose. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 798
