Carl Jung: Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.
Modern Man in Search of a Soul
The morbid symptom in Freud’s psychology is this:
it is based upon a view of the world that is uncriticized, or even unconscious, and this is apt to narrow the field of human experience and understanding to a considerable extent.
It was a great mistake on Freud’s part to turn his back on philosophy.
Not once does he criticize his premises or even the assumptions that underlie his personal outlook.
Yet to do so was necessary, as may be inferred from what I have said above; for had he critically examined his assumptions, he would never have put his peculiar mental disposition naively on view, as he has done in The Interpretation of Dreams.
At all events, he would have had a taste of the difficulties which I have met with.
I have never refused the bitter-sweet drink of philosophical criticism, but have taken it with caution, a little at a time.
All too little, my opponents will say; almost too much, my own feeling tells me.
All too easily does self-criticism poison one’s naivete, that priceless possession, or rather gift which no creative man can be without.
At any rate, philosophical criticism has helped me to see that every psychology-my own included-has the character of a subjective confession.
And yet I must prevent my critical powers from destroying my creativeness.
I know well enough that every word I utter carries with it something of myself-of my special and unique self with its particular history and its own particular world.
Even when I deal with empirical data, I am necessarily speaking about myself.
But it is only by accepting this as inevitable that I can serve the cause of man’s knowledge of man-the cause which Freud also wished to serve, and which, in spite of everything, he has served.
Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also. ~Carl Jung, Modern Man in the Search of the Soul, Page 119
Carl Jung on Error -Anthology
Thinking protects against the way of error, and therefore it leads to petrification. ~Carl Jung and Elijah, Liber Novus, Page 248.
There, that’s the err0r, one must not seek happiness. The happiness that one seeks is a usurped one.
Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also. ~Carl Jung; Modern Man in Search of a Soul
If you avoid err9r you do not live. ~Carl Jung, Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking, p. 98.
Without err0r and sin there is no experience of grace, that is, no union of God and man. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 267-268.
Carl Jung: My soul, I heard of errors. You were my error.
- V. 17,
My soul, I heard of errors. You were my error.
Yes, you were my participation in the opposites, in good and evil. I did good as good, evil as evil.
I should have done what was to be done, but I did good as good and evil as evil.
Soul: So you did. I didn’t know that it was an error before I sloughed off bird and serpent off from me and took the form of a woman. So I see what error was previously. I am not a human being. What am I then? Oh Philemon, what am I?
Philemon: You are my matter, my space, you are my right and left, my yes and no. My eternal way leads through you. Man is your son, and I am the son of my son.
S. My sublime one, where do I stay if you take the path of the luminous one?
Ph. You are the mantle of man, you are mother and misstep to him, counsel and deception. ~The Black Books, Vol. VI, Page 300
“Self” “Soul” and “Soul Image” – Quotations; Anthology
Self:
The archetype of wholeness and the regulating center of the psyche; a transpersonal power that transcends the ego.
As an empirical concept, the self designates the whole range of psychic phenomena in man. It expresses the unity of the personality as a whole. But in so far as the total personality, on account of its unconscious component, can be only in part conscious, the concept of the self is, in part, only potentially empirical and is to that extent a postulate.
In other words, it encompasses both the experienceable and the inexperienceable (or the not yet experienced). . . . It is a transcendental concept, for it presupposes the existence of unconscious factors on empirical grounds and thus characterizes an entity that can be described only in part.[“Definitions,” CW 6, par. 789.]
The self is not only the centre, but also the whole circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious; it is the centre of this totality, just as the ego is the centre of consciousness. [“Introduction,” CW 12, par. 44.]
Like any archetype, the essential nature of the self is unknowable, but its manifestations are the content of myth and legend.
The self appears in dreams, myths, and fairytales in the figure of the “supraordinate personality,” such as a king, hero, prophet, saviour, etc., or in the form of a totality symbol, such as the circle, square, quadratura circuli, cross, etc. When it represents a complexio oppositorum, a union of opposites, it can also appear as a united duality, in the form, for instance, of tao as the interplay of yang and yin, or of the hostile brothers, or of the hero and his adversary (arch-enemy, dragon), Faust and Mephistopheles, etc. Empirically, therefore, the self appears as a play of light and shadow, although conceived as a totality and unity in which the opposites are united.[“Definitions,” CW 6, par. 790.]
The realization of the self as an autonomous psychic factor is often stimulated by the irruption of unconscious contents over which the ego has no control. This can result in neurosis and a subsequent renewal of the personality, or in an inflated identification with the greater power.
The ego cannot help discovering that the afflux of unconscious contents has vitalized the personality, enriched it and created a figure that somehow dwarfs the ego in scope and intensity. . . . Naturally, in these circumstances there is the greatest temptation simply to follow the power-instinct and to identify the ego with the self outright, in order to keep up the illusion of the ego’s mastery. . . . [But] the self has a functional meaning only when it can act compensatorily to ego-consciousness. If the ego is dissolved in identification with the self, it gives rise to a sort of nebulous superman with a puffed-up ego.[“On the Nature of the Psyche,” CW 8, par. 430.]
Experiences of the self possess a numinosity characteristic of religious revelations. Hence Jung believed there was no essential difference between the self as an experiential, psychological reality and the traditional concept of a supreme deity.
It might equally be called the “God within us.”[“The Mana-Personality,” CW 7, par. 399.
Soul:
A functional complex in the psyche. (See also Eros, Logos and soul-image.)
While Jung often used the word soul in its traditional theological sense, he strictly limited its psychological meaning.
I have been compelled, in my investigations into the structure of the unconscious, to make a conceptual distinction between soul and psyche. By psyche I understand the totality of all psychic processes, conscious as well as unconscious. By soul, on the other hand, I understand a clearly demarcated functional complex that can best be described as a “personality.” [“Definitions,” CW 6, par. 797]
With this understanding, Jung outlined partial manifestations of the soul in terms of anima/animus and persona. In his later writing on the transference, informed by his study of the alchemical opus-which Jung understood as psychologically analogous to the individuation process–he was more specific.
The “soul” which accrues to ego-consciousness during the opus has a feminine character in the man and a masculine character in a woman. His anima wants to reconcile and unite; her animus tries to discern and discriminate.[“The Psychology of the Transference,” CW 16, par. 522.]
Soul-image:
The representation, in dreams or other products of the unconscious, of the inner personality, usually contrasexual. (See also anima and animus.)
Wherever an impassioned, almost magical, relationship exists between the sexes, it is invariably a question of a projected soul-image. Since these relationships are very common, the soul must be unconscious just as frequently.[“Definitions,” CW 6, par. 809.]
The soul-image is a specific archetypal image produced by the unconscious, commonly experienced in projection onto a person of the opposite sex.
For an idealistic woman, a depraved man is often the bearer of the soul-image; hence the “saviour-fantasy” so frequent in such cases. The same thing happens with men, when the prostitute is surrounded with the halo of a soul crying for succour.[Ibid., par. 811.]
Where consciousness itself is identified with the soul, the soul-image is more likely to be an aspect of the persona.
In that event, the persona, being unconscious, will be projected on a person of the same sex, thus providing a foundation for many cases of open or latent homosexuality, and of father-transferences in men or mother-transferences in women. In such cases there is always a defective adaptation to external reality and a lack of relatedness, because identification with the soul produces an attitude predominantly oriented to the perception of inner processes.[Ibid., par. 809.]
Many relationships begin and initially thrive on the basis of projected soul-images. Inherently symbiotic, they often end badly.
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