Carl Jung Depth Psychology Facebook Group
Modern Man in Search of a Soul
I do not think that I underestimate the risk of this undertaking.
It is as if one began to build a bridge out into space. Indeed, one might even allege-as has often been done-that in following this procedure the doctor and his patient are both together indulging in mere fantasies.
And I do not consider this an objection, but quite to the point.
I even make an effort to second the patient in his fantasies.
Truth to tell, I have a very high opinion of fantasy.
To me, it is actually the maternally creative side of the masculine spirit.
When all is said and done, we are never proof against fantasy.
It is true that there are worthless, inadequate, morbid and unsatisfying fantasies whose sterile nature will be quickly recognized by every person endowed with commonsense; but this of course proves nothing against the value of creative imagination.
All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy.
What right have we then to depreciate imagination?
In the ordinary course of things, fantasy does not easily go astray; it is too deep for that, and too closely bound up with the tap-root of human and animal instinct.
In surprising ways it always rights itself again.
The creative activity of the imagination frees man from his bondage to the “nothing but” and liberates in him the spirit of play.
As Schiller says, man is completely human only when he is playing. ~Carl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Page 66