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Consciousness and the Unconscious: Lectures Delivered at ETH Zurich, Volume 2: 1934
In psychology, we enter an incredibly vast and controversial field. It thus differs from other sciences, whose boundaries are more or less sharply delineated. The field known as psychology is completely unbounded, and one might even call it vague and nebulous. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 1
If one has traveled about the world a bit, and has seen various people, nations, and universities, one gains the impression that psychology consists of the sum of individual declarations of faith rather than of a system. Now each such declaration wants to exclude the others and to be the only one to tell the universally valid truth. As understandable as such a wish is, sometimes, however, such convictions are exaggerated. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 1
Psychology is, however, first of all about what is valid in general. It deals with what is known as the psyche or soul. Everything that is made and done by man ultimately goes back to this. Everything was once psychic, there is nothing that had not been psychic before, such as the fantasy of an artist or an engineer. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 1-2
Everything that we learn and experience is at first psychic. The only thing that is immediately given and perceptible is something psychic, that is, a psychic image. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 2
Reality— that is, what we call real—is the reality of our sensation. In the very first instance, sensation is what is real and what conveys to us the character of reality in the first place. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 2
There is, of course, an outer world, that is to say, things that exist beyond the psyche. I would obviously not go so far as to claim a solipsism that looks upon everything as psychic. And yet everything we experience is psychic. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 2
If, for instance, you see light, then this is something psychic, for there is no light “in itself,” nor is there sound. They exist merely in the brain, and what they look like there we do not know. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 2
Psychology is thus the science of that which occurs directly. Everything else is given to us only indirectly. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 2
Little wonder, then, that psychology touches upon a range of other sciences: pedagogics, medicine, philosophy, history, ethnology, mysticism, art, the philosophy of religion, and so on, and also parapsychology. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 2
Since the psyche is an immediate given, we all believe that it is the given per se. We must work a great deal on ourselves to realize that our own experience of the psyche is not the general experience. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 2
Here, however, I must at once draw your attention to a paradoxical fact. Although the psyche is in the first instance a general phenomenon, it is, on the other hand, a most personal matter. The individual is the living unity, for there is no other life than individual life. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 3
So it would of course be possible to also posit: Psychology is what is given individually. This is an antinomy, but in psychology we cannot advance unless we learn the very difficult art of paradoxical thinking. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 3
First and foremost, psychology finds expression in language, in social and religious convictions, and in institutions. We are highly dependent on the language in which we speak. One could almost identify language with the psyche. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 3
Indeed, the soil and the climate influence not only the psyche but even our anatomy, or, to say the least, our behavior. This can be seen primarily by observing the children of Europeans born on foreign soil, for instance, in the colonies. This is such a universal fact that English children born in the colonies are called “colonials,” meaning that something is “not right” with them. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 3
Professor Boas has measured the skulls of immigrants and of their children at Columbia University in New York. He found out that the shapes of their skulls had changed in the direction of the Yankee type. Now if even the body changes, you can imagine that naturally the soul does, too, as I observed in the case of colonials. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 4
On Boas and Jung, see Shamdasani
Psychology is not an arbitrary matter, however, but a phenomenology, a symptomatology, dealing with a great number of facts. But it is extremely difficult to accept these facts as they really are, because so many facts in psychology are outright tantalizing, so that we think, “This shouldn’t be like this! This should be different!” because we ourselves are directly affected, and most often arrive at a quite incorrect judgment. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 6
Often we have to describe certain facts or events and must resort to ordinary, everyday language to do so. The resulting picture may satisfy ourselves, but not the person to whom we are telling it. In fact, one should actually tell everyone certain facts in his own language. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 6
The fundamental psychological truths can never be couched in sharply delineated terms. A fitting psychological term is entirely indeterminate, but it is just capable of conveying something important. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 7
Nothing psychic can be isolated. If you seem to have been able to isolate a psychic process, rest assured that you have killed the psychic life in that process. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 7
The German Seele and the English “soul” have a strange etymology. They derive from Proto-Germanic seivalo and Gothic seivala. These are etymologically linked to the related Greek word aios, “to shine in glaring colors.” Aiolos, or Aeolus in Latin, the mighty mover, is the Greek God of the winds. Now this word has all but vanished in the word “soul,” and only Old Slavonic still has a related word. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 8
Jung repeatedly credited Heraclitus with coining this term. Although the concept is in fact in accordance with the latter’s philosophy, the term itself was not used by Heraclitus in the extant texts but first turned up in a later summary of his philosophy by Diogenes Laërtius. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 8, fn 18
If you ever travel to Verona and visit the cathedral, you will see a saying in Latin that reads: In patientia vestra possidebitis animas vestras—“In your patience you will possess your souls.” ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 9
There is nothing simple in the psyche. There are said to be “simple” tests, but I assure you that no such thing exists. In the association experiment, for example, the questions are simple enough, but not the answers of the psyche. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 10
This unconscious is present at all times, not only when something special occurs. It is at any rate much more untiringly alive than consciousness. We spend one-third of our lives in sleep—that is, in an unconscious state—while we spend the remaining two-thirds only more or less conscious. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 11
This is the primordial condition of mankind. Primitives spend the largest part of their lives in this state. They sit around and “dream.” We assume they are thinking, but far from it! One primitive was most upset when I asked him what he was thinking about, because he believed that a person who is quiet and then engages in thought is mad. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 11
At this very moment, for instance, while we are all listening to this lecture, we are all simultaneously dreaming, each of us dreaming his own dream, but each of us in the dark and below the threshold. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 11
No one can claim to know his own life story; we know only a very small part of it. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 13
Consciousness can never be identical with the soul; it is only a part, perhaps a very small part, of the soul. The soul is the whole. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 15
With consciousness, you only get a person’s more or less good intentions. It was therefore a very good rule among students that one had to first fall prey to some decent intoxication to see which personality emerged, which is interesting indeed. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 15
Consciousness is to all intents and purposes an organ, an eye or an ear of the soul. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 15
When I once discussed this with a Pueblo Indian chieftain, I was somewhat embarrassed and at the moment wished I had a somewhat more elephant-like skin—for the white man does not look at all attractive in the consciousness of the underdog. “The Americans are all mad,” he told me. “They believe one thinks up there, but of course one thinks with the heart!” Later the Negroes told me that one thinks with the stomach. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 15
Matters become even more incomprehensible to us with the Negroes. What we live thinkingly, they live utterly unconsciously. What makes them think is fright, anger, or the sublime, the numinous, the mighty, everything that “upsets their stomach,” what causes jaundice or abdominal pain. We believe they have no sense of nature, but the primitive reacts very emotionally to the beauty of nature. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 16
Consciousness is not a universal condition but rather a structured organism. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 17
In essence, consciousness is a perceptual organ, one could also say, an orientation organ: that is, an organ whose sensory portals link it to the inner world, and which conveys the outside to the inside, and vice versa. Because the inside is not empty, as little as the outside. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 17
The first function that we come across is the sensation function. It serves the perception of what is given by the senses. The senses form organs through which the outer world enters the psyche. The psyche is an intricate organ, which perceives and registers the stimuli fed to the senses. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 17
For as soon as the sensory stimulus enters consciousness, it is accompanied by a psychic content that does not originate in the sensory sources but exists a priori, that is, prior to the sensory stimulus. Therefore, pure sensation exists only in theory. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 17
In reality, however, our eyes provide only a visual image, but they say nothing about what the actual thing is. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 17
By its nature, thinking is a psychic function that is associated only very indirectly
with the outer world. It can, but need not, be activated by events in the outer world. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 18
Feeling is first and foremost a reaction of the psyche in terms of acceptance or rejection of a perception: in other words, whether it makes a pleasurable or unpleasurable impression on us. It is an evaluation: “pleasant” or “unpleasant.” ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 18
Intuition is defined as a “function of perception by unconscious means.” There is no indication of either how intuition perceives or indeed what it perceives. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 20
Intuitive persons notice the most remarkable things. The most pronounced degree of intuition—what the Scots call “second sight”—occurs in so-called clairvoyants, who are able to divine incredibly much. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 20
A fair number of scientific discoveries have been made by intuition rather than by the thinking intellect. The intellect as such is a strangely sterile function, if it is not accompanied by the function of Ahnung. Intuition can perceive in a quite “illegitimate” way. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 20
Thus it strikes us that a certain contradiction exists between the functions of thinking and feeling. There exists an unchanging opposition, even a kind of war, between them. If you feel something about an object, then you cannot think about it properly at the same time, and if you think about it, you cannot feel it properly, because either the one or the other process will be disturbed. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 21
The cool objectivity of the intellect appears to the function of feeling as something like a crime against the sacred feeling. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 21
Highly intuitive persons often have a somewhat veiled look, so that you cannot even tell whom or what they are looking at; it is as if they were looking through things. Those people do not even look at you or your everyday face, but at something imponderable, atmospheric, at something perhaps that you might not want to know or believe. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 22
Pure intuitives possess a truly remarkable capacity for non-observation. For instance, they can spend months in a room without being able to tell its color, how it is furnished, etc. They will make certain statements about it without, however, being able to verify them through observation. They will be able to intuit what is inside the drawers but will have no idea what the chest of drawers or cupboard looks like. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 22
If you adopt a “reasonable” attitude when observing, you will not see the unexpected. The same is true for intuition; you cannot intuit with some sophisticated intention in mind. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 23
To a certain extent, these functions can be used at will: that is to say, we can apply them—intensify or diminish them. In principle, this is true for all the functions, with one restriction, however. No one can use all four in equal measure. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 23
Every highly developed function is opposed by an underdeveloped one. This is not a value judgment. I simply mean that the latter function is inferior, not adjusted and undifferentiated in comparison to the developed function. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 23
It is well known that many great thinkers dread women very much, because women affect their feelings. The thinker avoids situations that stir up his feelings, and so he ends up marrying his housekeeper! ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 23-24
If these functions are not applied consciously, they will work automatically. “It thinks” in you, without your wanting it to, or “it feels” in you. The third possibility is that the process occurs entirely in the unconscious. “It thinks in you without your noticing it.” ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 24
The I is a complex of all kinds of psychic and organic facts; it is given by the physical reality of the body and by the general feelings related to the body. People thus point to their bodies and say: “That’s me.” But psychic processes, too, are an undeniable reality. When you say: “I think, therefore I am,” you perceive the psychic process of thinking: cogito, ergo sum. But it would also be perfectly possible to say: “I feel, therefore I am.” Or: “I am thought, therefore I am.” Or: “I am felt.” ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 24
Of all the functions, intuition seems the most unpredictable and unmanageable, and most people only know of intuition as the vaguest hunches coming from heaven knows where. There are also people, however, who literally live by this function and behold everything intuitively, as if they were drawing out the soul from things. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 27
Likewise one can feel unconsciously. In effect, this occurs quite often, especially in love relationships, when we have unconscious feelings we ourselves are not aware of, but which are nonetheless registered by our environment—particularly by intuitive types—in our facial expressions, which are usually beyond our control. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 27
The entire primitive and Eastern science rests upon the principle of the random series. This is important to note because everything that the East has developed to such a degree is lacking in our conscious mind, is completely underdeveloped with us, and lies in the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 29
The East already discovered the laws of coincidence long ago. The same applies to the primitives, for whom there is no doubt that if one unfavorable thing should occur, several others will immediately come to pass. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 29
“ ‘Magic is the science of the jungle,’ a famous explorer once said. Civilized man contemptuously looks down on primitive superstitions, which is about as sensible as turning up one’s nose at the pikes and halberds, the fortresses and tall-spired cathedrals of the Middle Ages. Primitive methods are just as effective under primitive conditions as machine-guns or the radio are under modern conditions.” ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 29, fn 54
I did not discover these functions [types] by myself. I only stumbled on this treasure trove, for the functions are an ancient fact. age-old knowledge, which has long existed in the East, particularly in India and China. I was not aware of this, and only found the parallels to my own discoveries later on. There these functions are designated by colors, which indicate a valuation and different “feeling tones.” ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 31
Thus the different functions [types] are allocated to colors with lesser or greater correspondence, just like sounds for that matter; for instance, the sound of a trumpet is a glaring blue or white, and so forth. Certain people experience certain consonances of sense, so-called synesthesias. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 31-32
The vast majority of people describe thinking as blue, because it has the properties of air. A thought is an air-like entity. A thought, or a prayer to God, is depicted as a bird or feather by the primitives. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 32
Feeling is very often represented by red, because of its associations with the heart and with blood. Intuition—but here uncertainty begins—is often given in white, or in yellow or gold, the color of the sun. Sensation, the perception of concrete objects, is often given in green, like the green surface of the Earth. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 32
We must also mention intermediate functions. These are zones in which two functions intermingle, as in speculative thinking for instance, which was the case with Schopenhauer, who was primarily a thinker, while intuition took second place. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 32
Nietzsche, by contrast, was primarily an intuitive type, and only secondarily a thinker. On the other side of intuition there is intuitive feeling. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 32
Then there is the intermediate stage between thinking and sensation, that is, empirical thinking, which is characteristic of natural scientists. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 33
For the sake of clarity, let me briefly define intuition:
- Intuition is a basic psychological function. It is the particular function that conveys perceptions in an unconscious manner.
- Everything can be the object of this perception, both outer and inner objects, or connections between them.
III. It is important to note that intuition is neither a function of sensation nor of feeling or thinking.
- Like sensation, intuition is an irrational perceptional unction.
- As in the case of sensation, the contents of intuition have the character of a given, of a given fact, quite in contrast to the thinking or feeling functions, whose contents have the character of something derived or deduced.
- Intuition is not an intra-psychic function, but can cover everything: death, life, health, illness, the weather, the stock exchange, anything that exists in nature.
VII. You will find intuitive types among hunters, stock exchange speculators—the fortunate ones, that is—and in all possible professions in which a systematic, routine kind of work is less needed, but rather ingenious apprehension. The intuitive type abounds among artists, doctors, and judges of character in general. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 35
While serial cases do exist, every given situation is like a prison for the intuitive type, which is quite a contrast to the sensation
type. Intuitives feverishly search for new possibilities, but can use their function only to a very limited extent in a particular situation. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 36
Intuition is like that; it can only be used to gain a certain modest advantage. If an intuitive is really down to his last penny, intuition appears to have an interest in giving him just enough to go on with, but no more. If you are a clairvoyant, for instance, this will not be enough to make a fortune. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 36
You cannot move mountains with sheer instinct, but it will help you pan just the amount of gold you need to survive. If you want more, you will have to make use of a second function. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 36
Intuition does not always work; nor does thinking. There are certain things you cannot think about. So we also have feeling and the other functions to be able to adjust to situations that cannot be thought about. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 36
There is one peculiar function that is set above the others and is characteristic of consciousness: that is the function of the volitional faculty [Willensvermögen], in short, the will. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 36
The will is not an instinct, however, but an achievement of our cultural history. We have gradually created a reserve of will, which has been wrested from nature. The will is a distinct cultural phenomenon. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 37
When the will is depicted in an image or dreamt of, it is always represented as an instrument, as a weapon, an apparatus, a knife, or something similar. This means that it is something humans made. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 37
That is, I cannot have a single thought without first having an inner notion of it. For the mind is neither a tabula rasa nor a blank slate. We make the great mistake of thinking that children are born as a tabula rasa, but this is not the case. There exists an unconscious, in which all representations of ideas are already given in the genetic material, so to speak. Everything is already laid down in the inherited memory of mankind. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 39
The term “affect” means a condition that has been brought about; the Latin affectum indicates that which has been done to me. “Emotion,” on the other hand, refers to something that breaks out or erupts; emotio = an outward movement. In a state of affect, I am affected: “He did it to me!” ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 39
Feeling always involves evaluation, it is a valuing function, whereas emotion is involuntary; in affect you are always a victim. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 39-40
Genuine affect exists whenever I am overwhelmed by an emotional state. You are not at all human in a state of affect, but a senseless mass. Affects are kinds of explosions that come from the inside. Consequently, emotions have nothing to do with feeling; they are psycho-physical states. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 40
There is a considerable difference between the “I” and “individuality”: The I is the consciousness of one’s “suchness” [So-sein], whereas individuality is that suchness. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 41
The fact that we are conscious of our I does not mean that we know anything about our character and so on; for that matter, it is only in the course of life, indeed in the evening of life, that we can say who we really are. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 41
We postulate, however, that the things of which we are not conscious at this moment somehow nevertheless exist, in the shape of memory traces, for instance, or of dispositions, which are stored like Platonic “ideas” in heaven. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 43
We can thus assume that the unconscious is a kind of Platonic heaven, where images of the things exist, and wait to become conscious. It looks as if they led an existence in the unconscious from which they walk out at the right opportunities. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 43
Just recently a French scholar told me that it would indeed be a very mystical idea to assume that a collective unconscious existed. I replied that I saw nothing mystical about it, for it was really a very practical idea. After all, it would be outright impossible for human beings to communicate if they had no common basis of human mental functioning. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 44
Human emotions are everywhere the same. But also in animals: If you take an apple from a monkey he will get angry exactly like a human. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 44
Admittedly, the human species has probably spent the most part of its existence in an amphibian state, and that is why animal traces predominate in us, just like the possibly one-million-year-old traces of primitive prehistoric man. In the latter case we can provide even stronger evidence for them; all essential traits of the primitive are still present in us. We can
see them quite clearly; we only believe they are modern. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 45
We, too, still do things that we do not understand, because we have not yet fully woken up. We still live things that we have not yet thought. People do certain things when “it is thinking in them.” 46
Saliva is considered a substance of life that contains mana. It has a healing effect. In the New Testament, Christ makes a dough out of saliva and earth to heal the blind man. 46-47
Everything springs from the collective unconscious. Many teachings of Jesus, for instance, can already be found in his cousin, Mithras. The contents of the collective unconscious—the incursions that squeeze through the personal layer—assume its mode of manifestation, that is, the qualities of personal life. This collective unconscious is a source. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 47
This is the problem of our times. We suppress primitive thinking. We are intellectual, place ourselves above humanity, and are therefore no longer able to feel how humans have
always felt. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 48
The unconscious is not just a container filled with various things, but a living being with a meaning and a purpose in itself. It is purposive, living, and not simply arranged along causal lines. It strives toward a goal, and it constantly seeks a way to attain this goal. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 48
The same is true of the collective unconscious. It does not seek to find your personal way, however, but the way of man, of all mankind. This insight marks the beginning of the efforts of Western man to abandon the path of his narrow-minded intellectual way. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 48
The collective unconscious is not only a receptaculum of the past, but also a living organism containing the future development as well as the past. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 49
The historical past casts its shadows into our souls, and even greater shadows in fact. The shadow of the future allows us to learn even more and greater things about somebody than the shadow of the past. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 49
Our childhood memories are everlasting, and can break forth or be revoked at any time. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 49
Given the power of history in man, it is even more astonishing that the future—that is, what does not yet exist—is also powerful. In the unconscious, however, it seems as if these things already somehow existed, like a seed that is difficult to decipher. But in reality these things are not seedlike at all, but are present in their full force, although we cannot explain them. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 49-50
The term “archetype” goes back to Augustine, and designates something like Plato’s “eidola,” that is, images laid down in the human soul since time immemorial. These are images of typical situations, in which mankind has moved time and again. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 50
It is uncanny, the archetype of the eerie forest. Naturally, this stirs up the collective unconscious among the primitives. Their collective unconscious is much closer to the surface, whereas ours is concealed by the trivia of our culture. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 52
Page 53 Diagram
After all, the human being is the noblest task of science, towering above all its other tasks. It is the highest and most interesting task, in my unauthoritative opinion. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 55
Neurotics often breathe poorly—that is, their breath is too shallow. From time to time they have to catch up with their breathing, and heave a sigh. Now these things are often habitual with neurotics, in that they cannot breathe properly. One would think that people should at least be able to breathe normally, but even this is a problem! ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 62
Sometimes, the lungs do not receive enough air, with very unpleasant consequences. The contracted breathing volume due to chronic complexes can lead to lung apex diseases and tuberculosis. This is why lung tuberculosis is very often associated with psychogenic conditions, to the extent that in many cases tuberculosis can be said to be a psychogenic illness. Certain tuberculosis cases can therefore be cured with psychic treatment. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 64
These psychological types [Exraverted, Introverted, Anima, Animus] are not meant to serve the purpose of labeling individuals, like “You now belong to the introverted tribe,” etc., but they are a critical apparatus for the discovery of empirical psychological materials. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 65
I have been accused of the most incredible things, for instance that I practice demonology and so forth. This is so stupid that one actually feels disgusted. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 66
Let us suppose that someone committed murder. In this case, he must of course have a corresponding complex, and it must be possible—if the matter holds water— to verify that complex through the experiment. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 66
If it is a matter of an actual, indictable theft, then things
are more critical. I have managed to solve thefts in this way, and students of mine have done likewise in Europe and America. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 67
The family is like an atmosphere, like the mother’s bosom, in which we were all once secure as infants, and were consequently in an unconscious state. When we are still in a relatively unconscious state, we are also in a primitive state of mind. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 71
These autonomous contents are often possessed of the liveliest energy; a man beats his wife or ill-treats his children; someone else gets hysterics or a neurosis—the primitives call it all being possessed by a devil. Today we call the devils complexes, but it is a matter of indifference to the devil by what name we call him. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 81
If we assume that we are just egos and can, so to speak, count our chickens before they are hatched, we are likely to find out that we miscalculated. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 82
There are people who are so infamous that they are able to do all kinds of things without developing a complex. Thus, a bad conscience or moral guilt does not always result in a complex. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 83
By way of confession, the Roman Catholic Church enables people to get away from their complexes and to return to the community. This ancient therapy is a consecration by initiation, which includes the avowal of sins. This is by no means an invention of the Catholic Church, but was one of the means of initiation before being introduced to the mysteries. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 84
The fact that we have done away with confession in the Protestant church is one of the reasons for the compensatory movement. At least 80 percent of my patients over the last thirty years have been Protestants. I have also had a good number of Jews, but only very few Catholics, because if the latter use confession rightly they do not become neurotic or separated from other people. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 85
The dream, like the complex, is an invasion from the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 85
All my Somali boys carried dream books with them and pondered their dreams every morning. As you know, we do not share this appreciation of dreams among the primitives, at least not officially. No one dares admit to being much impressed by a dream. Our peasants laugh at the idea of their cows being bewitched, just as a councilman will not dare admit that he is superstitious. And yet they seize the first opportunity to secretly visit the Capuchin monk, because they are still deeply impressed by these primeval truths. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 87
When dealing with illness, doctors, too, are inclined to overrate the objective side, but the subjective plays a large role, especially with neurotics. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 87
Dreams never exactly repeat an experience, they always have a meaning. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 88
Dreams possess an incredible wealth of possibilities, with only a few images or words. If they were translated into conscious
language, it would take a very long time. It is as if another time reigned in the dream, and as if something existed there that knew and saw much more than we do. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 89
A dream should always be written down at once, otherwise we inevitably lie to ourselves. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 95
Here we have the so-called motif of the two mothers. Heroes and pharaohs have always entertained the notion that they have two different pairs of parents, human and divine ones. On the outer walls of the pyramids, the actual story is depicted, while inside, in the “birth chamber,” there is a depiction of two Gods copulating. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 96
We find the same motif in the heroes of Greek mythology, even if it was only the milk that was divine, as in the case of Heracles: “She wrested her breast from his mouth, and the milk spurted
over the heavens and formed the Milky Way.” This motif of the double origin lies in the collective unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 96
He just remarked, “When the animal moved to the right, it went to its death.” The left side is always meant from the perspective of our body. It is the side of the heart. The left side is the semi-conscious, emotional side, where things happen to us as it were accidentally. The right side, on the other hand, is the purposeful, acting side, and controlled by the head. What we do on the right side is therefore “right,” it is “directed.” Very often “the right hand knoweth not what the left hand doeth,” and very often the left side does something which the right one would prefer not to know about. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 97
According to ancient understanding, the act of seeing involves the emission of a fluid or aura. If we behold a lion or snake in the jungle for a long time, for instance, and remain still enough, then “the wiser head backs down,” and the lion or the snake goes away. It is possible to bewitch people in the same way. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 98
It seems that our life can stream out of our eyes and enter the object, which will then move toward us. By contemplating and beholding this monster for such a long time, the dreamer actually attempts to make it move and bring it to life again, although he was not aware of this. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 99
We will always be confronted with our past. It follows after us like the train carriages, or goes ahead like the engine that pulls us. ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 99
As you know, there is a well-known biography where it says: “Up until the age of forty, he showed no signs of bearing the imprint of genius. And none afterward either!” ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 100
This is the delusion of our age, to believe that there is continual progress, but continuous regression also exists! ~Carl Jung, Consciousness and the Unconscious, ETH Lectures, Page 101
