Carl Jung on “Directed Thinking” – Quotations – Anthology
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We have, therefore, two kinds of thinking: directed thinking, and dreaming or fantasy-thinking.
The former operates with speech elements for the purpose of communication and is difficult and exhausting; the latter is effortless, working as it were spontaneously, with the contents ready to hand, and guided by unconscious motives.
The one produces innovations and adaptation, copies reality, and tries to act upon it; the other turns away from reality, sets free subjective tendencies, and as regards adaptation, is unproductive ~Carl Jung, CW 5, para. 20.
Directed thinking or, as we might also call it, thinking in words, is manifestly an instrument of culture, and we shall not be wrong in saying that the tremendous work of education which past centuries have devoted to directed thinking, thereby forcing it to develop from the subjective, individual sphere to the objective, social sphere, has produced a readjustment of the human mind to which we owe our modern empiricism and technics ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 17
The whole laborious achievement of our lives is adaptation to reality, part of which consists in directed thinking.
In biological terms it is simply a process of psychic assimilation that leaves behind a corresponding state of exhaustion, like any other vital achievement ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 11
There is only one answer to this: the ancients, with a few illustrious exceptions, entirely lacked the capacity to concentrate their interest on the transformations of inanimate matter and to reproduce the natural artificially, by which means alone they could have gained control of the forces of nature.
What they lacked was training in directed thinking ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 17
The secret of cultural development is the mobility and disposability of psychic energy.
Directed thinking, as we know it today, is a more or less modern acquisition which earlier ages lacked ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 17
Directed thinking operates with speech elements for the purpose of communication and is difficult and exhausting.
It produces innovations and adaptation, copies reality, and tries to act upon it. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 20
History shows that directed thinking was not always as developed as it is today.
The clearest expression of modern directed thinking is science and the techniques fostered by it.
Both owe their existence simply and solely to energetic training in directed thinking. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 21
Our thinking then lacks all leading ideas and the sense of direction emanating from them. We no longer compel our thoughts along a definite track, but let them float, sink or rise according to their specific gravity.
In Kuelpe’s view, thinking is a sort of “inner act of will,” and its absence necessarily leads to an “automatic play of ideas” (Outlines, p. 448). William James regards non-directed thinking, or “merely associative” thinking as the ordinary kind (Principles, II, p. 325) ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 18
Scholasticism took its subjects from fantasies of the past, but it gave the mind a dialectical training in directed thinking. The one goal of success that shone before the thinker was rhetorical victory in disputation, and not the visible transformation of reality ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 21
Directed thinking becomes absolutely impossible when the sensual has too high a threshold value. Because the sensual value is too high it constantly intrudes into the psyche, where it disrupts and destroys the function of directed thinking which is based on the exclusion of everything incompatible with thought. ~Carl Jung, CW 6 Para 38
Jung claimed that the ancients lacked a capacity for directed thinking, which was a modern acquisition. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Red Book, Page 197
In the process of directed thinking, thoughts are handled as tools, they are made to serve the purposes of the thinker; while in passive thinking thoughts are like individuals going about on their own as it were. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 28
