But the neurotic cases are not by a long way the most dangerous.
Two Essays on Analytical Psychology CW 7
We are greatly mistaken if we think that the unconscious is something harmless that could be made into an object of entertainment, a parlour game.
Certainly the unconscious is not always and in all circumstances dangerous, but as soon as a neurosis is present it is a sign of a special heaping up of energy in the unconscious, like a charge that may explode.
Here caution is indicated.
One never knows what one may be releasing when one begins to analyse dreams.
Something deeply buried and invisible may thereby be set in motion, very probably something that would have come to light sooner or later anyway—but again, it might not.
It is as if one were digging an artesian well and ran the risk of stumbling on a volcano.
When neurotic symptoms are present one must proceed very carefully.
But the neurotic cases are not by a long way the most dangerous.
There are cases of people, apparently quite normal, showing no especial neurotic symptoms—they may themselves be doctors and educators—priding themselves on their normality, models of good upbringing, with exceptionally normal views and habits of life, yet whose normality is an artificial compensation for a latent psychosis.
They themselves suspect nothing of their condition.
Their suspicions may perhaps find only an indirect expression in the fact that they are particularly interested in psychology and psychiatry, and are attracted to these things as a moth to the light.
But since the analytical technique activates the unconscious and brings it to the fore, in these cases the healthful compensation is destroyed, the unconscious breaks forth in the form of uncontrollable fantasies and overwrought states which may, in certain circumstances, lead to mental disorder and possibly even to suicide.
Unfortunately these latent psychoses are not so very uncommon. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 192
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Blog
