Where love stops, power begins, and violence, and terror.
Civilization in Transition CW 10
Recognition of the shadow, on the other hand, leads to the modesty we need in order to acknowledge imperfection.
And it is just this conscious recognition and consideration that are needed whenever a human relationship is to be established.
A human relationship is not based on differentiation and perfection, for these only emphasize the differences or call forth the exact opposite; it is based, rather, on imperfection, on what is weak, helpless and in need of support—the very ground and motive for dependence.
The perfect have no need of others, but weakness has, for it seeks support and does not confront its partner with anything that might force him into an inferior position and even humiliate him.
This humiliation may happen only too easily when high idealism plays too prominent a role.
Reflections of this kind should not be taken as superfluous sentimentalities.
The question of human relationship and of the inner cohesion of our society is an urgent one in view of the atomization of the pent-up mass man, whose personal relationships are undermined by general mistrust.
Wherever justice is uncertain and police spying and terror are at work, human beings fall into isolation, which, of course, is the aim and purpose of the dictator State, since it is based on the greatest possible accumulation of depotentiated social units.
To counter this danger, the free society needs a bond of an affective nature, a principle of a kind like caritas, the Christian love of your neighbour.
But it is just this love for one’s fellow man that suffers most of all from the lack of understanding wrought by projection.
It would therefore be very much in the interest of the free society to give some thought to the question of human relationship from the psychological point of view, for in this resides its real cohesion and consequently its strength.
Where love stops, power begins, and violence, and terror. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 579-580
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Blog