C.G. Jung Quotations Collected Letters Sigmund Freud, Adolf Keller, James Kirsch, Victor White, Hans Schmidt, Sabina Spielrein, J.B. Rhine, Freud/Pfister, Wolfgang Pauli
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C.G. Jung Letters, Vol. 1: 1906-1950
Carl Jung Collected Letters Vol. 1
Actually you shouldn’t want to have visions, they should just come to “May it be good, happy, favorable, and propitious.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 111.
Don’t allow yourself to be led astray by the ravings of the animus.
He will try every stunt to get you out of the realization of stillness, which is truly the Self. C .G . ~Carl Jung, Letters Volume 1, Page 427
Heraclitus probably understood this darkness as little as I do, but I have so often come up against this judgment that I have finally accustomed myself to thinking that either my views or my style must be so involved that they confront ordinary so-called sound commonsense with insoluble riddles. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 116-117
And in later years I have gradually come to the conclusion that the muddle is not located in my head but in the heads of others, and that besides me there are a whole lot of people who still possess an uncontorted intelligence and can therefore think straight. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 116-117
You rightly surmise that I am an expensive customer. I have to be, otherwise I would be eaten up skin, bones, and all. Therefore I wanted to give you good advice and save you a lot of money. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 115
You must only learn how to make the effort, and that was what I meant when I once advised you to talk over your problems with my wife. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 116
So long as you think you don’t yet know what this is, you still have too much money to spend in useless speculation. But if you do with conviction the next and most necessary thing, you are always doing something meaningful and intended by fate. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 133
It is possible that a Dr. X. will turn to you. He pants for therapy, needs it too, because he consists essentially of only an intellectual halo wandering forlorn and footless through the world. He could be not uninteresting, but there’s no money in it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 140
It is true that I have insisted upon the difference between Jewish and Christian psychology1 since 1917, but Jewish authors have done the same long ago as well as recently.2 I am no anti-Semite. From all this I gained neither honours nor money, but I am glad that I could be of service to those in need. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 219
I take the liberty of sending you an offprint of a little paper I wrote about the Beatus Niklaus, a Swiss saint who for the mere lack of money has not ·been canonized yet, but he is on the list. His is a typical case of a non-dogmatic religious experience. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 270
The only thing that matters is what you do yourself. Nobody can “fence you in,” as you put it. But people who have no money, for instance, are fenced in by that very fact without being able to hold anybody else responsible. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 292
There are countless people with an inferior extraversion or with too much introversion or with too little money who in God’s name must plod along through life under such conditions. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 292
.Christianity as bequeathed to us by our fathers will be a necessity for a long time to come. – C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 191-192
… the anima is always associated with the source of wisdom and enlightenment, whose symbol is the Old Wise Man. As long as you are under the influence of the anima you are unconscious of that archetype, i.e., you are identical with it and that explains your preoccupation with Indian philosophy. You are then forced to play the role of the Old Wise Man. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 498-499
The psoriasis of the anima figure is due to certain contents which the anima has within her, as though in the blood, and which sweat out on the surface. This is also indicated by the snakelike patterns of the psoriasis. It is a kind of painting that appears on the skin. Very often this points to the need to portray certain contents or states graphically, and in colour … This “art” activity … these works of the anima are products of the feminine mind in a man. The feminine mind is pictorial and symbolic and comes close to what the ancients called Sophia. ~Carl Jung, Letters, Vol. I, Page 189
… start some dialogue with your anima … put a question or two to her: why she appears as Beatrice? why she is so big? why you are so small? why she nurses your wife and not yourself? … Treat her as a person, if you like as a patient or a goddess, but above all treat her as something that does exist … talk to this person … to see what she is about and to learn what her thoughts and character are. If you yourself step into your fantasy, then that overabundance of material will soon come to more reasonable proportion …. Keep your head and your own personality over against the overwhelming multitude of images … treat the anima as if she were a patient whose secret you ought to get at. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 458
This spiritual inflation is compensated by a distinct inferiority of feeling, a real undernourishment of your other side, the feminine earth (Yin) side, that of personal feeling. ~Carl Jung, Letters, Vol. I, Page 52
Now comes the first transformation: he [Goethe] discovers his countertype (“feeling is all”) and at the same time realizes the projection of the anima … Behind Gretchen stands the Gnostic sequence: Helen-Mary-Sophia. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 265
If she is old, this is an indication that one’s consciousness has become considerably more childish. If she is young, then one is too old in one’s conscious attitude. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 189
Of course, I did not invent the term Eros. I learnt it from Plato. But I never would have applied this term if I hadn’t observed facts that gave me a hint how to use this Platonic notion. With Plato Eros is still a daimonion or daemonium …~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 464-465
Individuation is as much a fatality as a fulfillment. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 529
One must be able to suffer God … my inner principle is: God and man. God needs man in order to become conscious, as He needs limitation in time and space. Let us therefore be for Him that limitation in time and space, an earthly tabernacle. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 65
… the anima emerges in exemplary fashion from the primeval slime, laden with all the pulpy and monstrous appendages of the deep. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 84
I am indeed convinced that creative imagination is the only primordial phenomenon accessible to us, the real Ground of the psyche, the only immediate reality. Therefore, I speak of esse in anima, the only form of being we can experience directly. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 60
And whenever I had the opportunity to talk to Americans, I tried to give them the right idea about your people and how important it be for them to give you all the rights of the American Citizen. ~ C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 101-102.
I dreamt of an Eastern prophet, followed by a woman who was almost hypnotized by his prophetic stammerings. Clearly my anima being completely fascinated by my shadow, who in his place is seized by the spirit of life (Mercury!). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 319
In principle I am always in favour of children leaving their parents as soon as possible once they have reached maturity. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 217
My evenings are taken up very largely with astrology. I make horoscopic calculations in order to find a clue to the core of psychological truth. Some remarkable things have turned up which will certainly appear incredible to you. In the case of one lady, the calculation of the positions of the stars at her nativity produced a quite definite character picture, with several biographical details which did not belong to her but to her mother – and the characteristics fitted the mother to a T. The lady suffers from an extraordinary mother complex. I dare say that we shall one day discover in astrology a good deal of knowledge that has been intuitively projected into the heavens. For instance, it appears that the signs of the zodiac are character pictures, in other words libido symbols which depict the typical qualities of the libido at a given moment. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 23-24
You are quite right in supposing that I reckon astrology among those movements which, like theosophy, etc., seek to assuage an irrational thirst for knowledge but actually lead it into a sidetrack. Astrology is knocking at the gates of our universities: a Tübingen professor has switched over to astrology and a course on astrology was given at Cardiff University last year. Astrology is not mere superstition but contains some psychological facts (like theosophy) which are of considerable importance. Astrology has actually nothing to do with the stars but is the 5000-year-old psychology of antiquity and the Middle Ages. Unfortunately I cannot explain or prove this to you in a letter. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 56
The fact that astrology nevertheless yields valid results proves that it is not the apparent positions of the stars which work, but rather the times which are measured or determined by arbitrarily named stellar positions. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 138-139
Parents must realize that they are trees from which the fruit falls in the autumn. Children don’t belong to their parents, and they are only apparently produced by them. In reality they come from a thousand-year-old stem, or rather from many stems, and often they are about as characteristic of their parents as an apple on a fir-tree. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 217-218
Beyond the human obligation to look after ageing parents and to maintain a friendly relation with them, there should be no other dependencies, for the young generation has to start life anew and can encumber itself with the past only in case of the greatest necessity. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 218
A genuine and proper ethical development cannot abandon Christianity but must grow up within it, must bring to fruition its hymn of love, the agony and ecstasy over the dying and resurgent god/ the mystic power of the wine, the awesome anthropophagy of the Last Supper-only this ethical development can serve the vital forces of religion. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 18
You rightly emphasize that man in my view is enclosed in the psyche (not in his psyche). Could you name me any idea that is not psychic?
Can man adopt any standpoint outside the psyche? He may assert that he can, but the assertion does not create a point outside, and were he there he would have no psyche. C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 555-557
I cannot and shall not exclude non-Aryan speakers. The only condition on which I insist is that everybody, Aryan or non-Aryan, refrains from making remarks apt to arus the political psychosis of our days. If a speaker should trespass this limit, I should stop him right away. A scientific Congrss is not the place to indulge in political follies. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 242.
And whenever I had the opportunity to talk to Americans, I tried to give them the right idea about your (Mountain Lake) people and how important it be for them to give you all the rights of the American Citizen. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 101
Hegel is fit to bust with presumption and vanity, Nietzsche drips with outraged sexuality, and so on. There is no thinking qua thinking, at times it is a pisspot of unconscious devils, just like any other function that lays claim to hegemony. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 332
Neurosis addles the brains of every philosopher because he is at odds with himself. His philosophy is then nothing but a systemized struggle with his own uncertainty. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 332
Excuse these blasphemies! They flow from my hygienic propensities, because I hate to see so many young minds infected by Heidegger. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 332
The “Bear-skinned” comes into the category of unorthodox beings, more specifically that of werewolves, “doctor animals,” leopard men, and “Beriserkr.” The man charged with mana, or numinous man, has theriomorphic attributes, since he surpasses the ordinary man not only upwards but downwards. Heroes have snake’s eyes (Nordic: ormr i auga), are half man half serpent (Kekrops, Erechtheus), have snake-souls and snake’s skin; the medicine-man can change into all sorts of animals. Among the American Indians, certain animals appear to the primitive medical candidate; there is an echo of this in the dove of the Holy Ghost at the unearthly baptismal birth (when the Christ came to Jesus). Another echo is the “Brother Wolf” of St. Francis. Characteristic of the Germanic mentality of Brother Klaus is the figure of the pilgrim reminiscent of Wotan, for whom “die Wütenden” [the raging ones], the Bear-skinned, are an excellent match. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 364
First and foremost because fear is a fundamental reaction of nature. Kierkegaard’s view that animals have no fear is totally disproved by the facts. There are whole species which consist of nothing but fear. A creature that loses its fear is condemned to death. When “cured” by missionaries of their natural and justified fear of demons, primitives degenerate. I have seen enough of this in Africa whatever the missionaries may say. Anyone who is afraid has reason to be. There are not a few patients who have to have fear driven into them because their instincts have atrophied. A man who has no more fear is on the brink of the abyss. Only if he suffers from a pathological excess of fear can he be cured with impunity. …. Docetism, a heresy of the early Christian Church taught that Christ was born without any participation in physical matter and that accordingly his body and his suffering were not real but only apparent ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 399
Wanting to know the truth is also a striving for power and pleasure. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 111.
The so-called “psychic” reactions of lower organisms are very well known to me, but there is no proof at all that these psychic reactions are conscious to an ego, they can be merely psychic. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 262.
Surely telepathy widens out our consciousness, but there is always an ego conscious of something. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 263.
The meaning of the dream is only that when the churches keep silent the psyche gives you food and drink. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 153.
The unconscious is the future in the form or disguise of the past. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 407.
I have tried all my life to din a bit of understanding into people. May others have better luck. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 407.
What happens when man introjects God? A superman psychosis, because every blockhead thinks that when he withdraws a projection its contents cease to exist. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 407.
To interrupt life before its time is to bring to a standstill an experiment which we have not set up. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 434.
If, aside from your work, you read a good book, as one reads the Bible, it can become a bridge for you leading inwards, along which good things may flow to you such as you perhaps cannot now imagine. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 434.
Whoever can suffer within himself the highest united with the lowest is healed, holy, whole. ~Carl Jung; Letters Vol. 1; Pages 365.
Dreams do not “jumble up the personalities.” On the contrary, everything is in its proper place, only you don’t understand it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, 327.
The fact of having dreams is not nearly enough. You also have a digestive system but this is not nearly enough to make you a physiological chemist. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 328.
Thus for me religious statements are not opinions but facts that one can look at as a botanist at his ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 327-328.
Religion consists of psychic realities which one cannot say are right or wrong. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 328.
Carl Jung never said: “The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.”
Credit goes to: ~Joseph Campbell, A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living, Page 9
Thus the fact that there is a genuine religiosity in the Catholic Church proves the existence of a need for fixed and immovable ideas and forms. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 396.
The individuation process is a development on the native soil of Christianity. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 397.
The Magna Mater has already had pagan children and as Ecclesia spiritualis she embraces a Christendom as huge as it is fragmented. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 397.
On account of my critical utterances I was “marked down” by the Gestapo, my books were banned in Germany, and in France they were for the most part destroyed. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 404
I can only hope and wish that no one becomes “Jungian.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 405
I proclaim no cut-and-dried doctrine and I abhor “blind adherents. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 405
I can only hope and wish that no one becomes “Jungian.” I stand for no doctrine but describe facts and put forward certain views which I hold worthy of discussion. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 405
It is a fact that the body very often apparently survives the soul, often even without a disease. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 438.
As far as we know at all there seems to be no immediate decomposition of the soul. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 438.
Light that wants to shine needs darkness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 514.
I may be all wrong, but I confess to have a feeling as if when you were in America a door had been shut, softly but tightly. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 514.
During the war I cultivated my own fields. I have raised corn, potatoes, beans and lately even wheat, also poppy for oil. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 425.
I understand the resistance better in the case of philosophers, since psychology saws off the branch they are sitting on by wickedly robbing them of the illusion that they represent the absolute spirit. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 388-389.
The work of art has its own specific psychology which is sometimes notably different from the psychology of the artist. Were it not so, the work of art would not be autonomous. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 388-389.
It is all escapism to feel dependent. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol.1, Page 463.
Please consider every word I say in this letter. Perhaps it puts some light into you. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol.1, Page 463.
It is certainly desirable to liberate oneself from the operation of opposites but one can only do it to a certain extent, because no sooner do you get out of the conflict than you get out of life altogether. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 247-248.
Occasionally we must also inquire whether something that wants to go upwards has not taken a false route downwards into the body. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 403.
The immense expanse of vaguely recognizable objects in the world has lured me forth to those twilit border zones where the figure I have meanwhile become steps towards me. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 404.
The long path I have traversed is littered with husks sloughed off, witnesses of countless moultings, those relicta one calls books. They conceal as much as they reveal. Every step is a symbol of those to follow. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 404.
He who mounts a flight of steps does not linger on them, nor look back at them, even though age invites him to linger or slow his pace. The great wind of the peaks roars ever more loudly in his ears. His gaze sweeps distances that flee away into the infinite. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 404.
The last steps are the loveliest and most precious, for they lead to that fullness to reach which the innermost essence of man is born. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 404.
One can indeed use analysis as an escape and one has to be quite particularly careful in your case that such a thing does not happen, because you must learn to use your own powers and the more one helps you to do so, the more one hinders you. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 441.
I am no more a black and endless sea of misery and suffering but a certain amount thereof contained in a divine vessel. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 450.
It seems to me as if I am ready to die, although as it looks to me some powerful thoughts are still flickering like lightnings in a summer night. Yet they are not mine, they belong to God, as everything else which bears mentioning. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 450.
The Americans are certainly a very humane nation, or at least imagine they are, but this does not prevent so-and-so many Negroes from being lynched every year. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 447.
Only for outsiders, who have never been inside, is penal servitude not a hellish cruelty. I know many cases from my psychiatric experience where death would have been a mercy in comparison with life in a prison. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 447
The unconscious is largely identical with the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems, which are the physiological counterparts of the polarity of unconscious contents. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 278.
Of course, I did not invent the term Eros. I learnt it from Plato. But I never would have applied this term if I hadn’t observed facts that gave me a hint of how to use this Platonic notion. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 465.
As I am thoroughly empirical I never took a philosophical concept for its own sake. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 465.
As my whole psychology derives from immediate experience with living people, it is a matter of course that my concept of Eros also originated in immediate experiences. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 465.
There is not one single thing in my psychology which is not substantiated essentially by actual experiences. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 465.
Psychology is concerned simply and solely with experienceable images whose nature and biological behaviour it investigates with the help of the comparative method. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 487.
The mistake, it seems to me, is that these critics actually believe only in words, without knowing it, and then think they have posited God. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 487.
Well, Christ is in us and we in him! Why shouldn’t the workings of God and the presence of the “Son of Man” in us be real and experienceable? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 487.
I thank God every day that I have been permitted to experience the reality of the imago Dei in me. Had that not been so, I would be a bitter enemy of Christianity and of the Church in particular. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 487.
Thanks to this actus gratiae my life has meaning, and my inner eye was opened to the beauty and grandeur of dogma. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 487.
The reigning prince of this world shuns the light of knowledge like the plague. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 488.
So if a Pueblo Indian should one day say to me “You Europeans are worse than ravaging beasts,” I would have to agree politely, for in no circumstances should I win his just estimation by shaking off from the start every trace of complicity. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 370.
There are not a few patients who have to have fear driven into them because their instincts have atrophied. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 399.
A man who has no more fear is on the brink of the abyss. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 399.
If Christ in Gethsemane had no fear then his passion is null and void and the believer can subscribe to docetism! ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 299
…as a psychotherapist I do not by any means try to deliver my patients from fear. Rather, I lead them to the reason for their fear, and then it becomes clear that it is justified. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 399.
You are not only informed enough but also intelligent enough to go on for a long stretch on the assumption that I’m buried and that there is no analyst for you under the changing moon except the one that is in your own heart. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 459.
Pride is a wonderful thing when you know how to fulfil its expectations. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 459.
Did you never ask yourself who my analyst is? Yet, when it comes to the last issue, we must be able to stand alone vis a vis the unconscious for better or worse. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 459.
One could say that the whole world with its turmoil and misery is in an individuation process. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 442.
Individuation is by no means a rare thing or a luxury of the few, but those who know that they are in such a process are considered to be lucky. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 442.
Individuation is just ordinary life and what you are made conscious of. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 442.
I only wish the theologians would accept the Kabbala and India and China as well, so as to proclaim still more clearly how God reveals himself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 391-393.
I am not out to build a conceptual system but use concepts to describe psychic facts and their peculiar modes of behaviour. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 406.
Hermeticism is not something you choose, it is a destiny, just as the ecclesia spiritualis is not an organization but an electio. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 351.
I am sorry for these people who have failed to hear the cock crowing for the third time. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 445.
Had, for instance, the Germans visited Switzerland, you would not now be able even to write to me anymore. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 443.
Anyone who has attained this emancipation has reached nirvana and thus made himself unreal. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 444.
It is a shame everything has to go to the devil, but human beings are such fools that they obviously deserve no better fate. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 456.
I think that if you immerse yourself in my thought-processes without regarding them as a new gospel, a light will gradually go up for you about the nature of psychotherapy. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 456.
The psychotherapist must be a philosopher in the old sense of the word. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 456.
It is of course essential for the psychotherapist to have a fair knowledge of himself, for anyone who does not understand himself cannot understand others and can never be psychotherapeutically effective unless he has first treated himself with the same medicine. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 456
The future might easily be so bad that the Church could be forced by circumstances to give up all her childish worldliness and socialism and to turn to the spiritual problem of man, which she has so sadly neglected. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 312.
It is all like talking about the weather in a howling storm at sea or in a snowstorm on a glacier. It does not matter and nobody hears it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 312.
The shrieking of the demons is the stillness of the spirit. It means a withdrawal unheard of, until one hears the great silence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 312.
The opus consists of three parts: insight, endurance, and action. Psychology is needed only in the first part, but in the second- and third-parts moral strength plays the predominant role. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 375.
You yourself are a conflict that rages in itself and against itself, in order to melt its incompatible substances, the male and the female, in the fire of suffering, and thus create that fixed and unalterable form which is the goal of life. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 375.
A life without inner contradiction is either only half a life or else a life in the Beyond, which is destined only for angels. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 375.
Norway is the northern country, i.e., the intuitive sector of the mandala. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 448.
…as I have inserted some rather extensive material illustrating the multiple “luminosities” of the unconscious, representing the “conscious-like” nuclei of volitional acts (presumably identical with archetypes). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 449.
The spirit shows its effective power only in the reshaping of matter. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 59.
idol is a petrified symbol used stereotypically for “magical” effects. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 59.
The Master speaks a ”power word” born of the richness of his vision, the disciple merely conjures with it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 60.
For the Master the communion means: I give you myself, my flesh, my blood. For the disciple this means I eat the god, his flesh and blood. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 60.
The magical word is one that lets “a primordial word resound behind it”‘, magical action releases primordial action. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 60.
I am indeed convinced that creative imagination is the only primordial phenomenon accessible to us, the real Ground of the psyche, the only immediate reality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 60.
For my private use I call the sphere of paradoxical existence, i.e., the instinctive unconscious, the Pleroma, a term borrowed from Gnosticism. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 60.
We can distinguish no form of being that is not psychic in the first place. All other realities are derived from and indirectly revealed by it, actually with the artificial aid named science. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 60.
With a disordered consciousness order can come out of the unconscious, just as conversely unconscious chaos can break into the too narrow cosmos of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 60.
At the founding of the great religions there was to begin with a collective disorientation which everywhere constellated in the unconscious an overwhelming principle of order (the collective longing for redemption.) ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 60.
Through his inner vision the prophet discerns from the needs of his time the helpful image in the collective unconscious and expresses it in the symbol: because it speaks out of the collective unconscious it speaks for everyone-le vrai mot de la situation! ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 60.
In the Pleroma, Above and Below lie together in a strange way and produce nothing; but when it is disturbed by the mistakes needs of the individual a waterfall arises between Above and Below, a dynamic something that is the symbol. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 61.
Yet real compulsion is one of the most hellish, devilish tortures, far worse than any organic disease. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 62.
…nowadays far too many Europeans are inclined to accept Oriental ideas and methods uncritically and to translate them into the mental language of the Occident. ~ Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 39
Like Wotan’s oaks, the gods were felled and a wholly incongruous Christianity, born of monotheism. The Germanic man is still suffering from this mutilation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 39.
This craving for things foreign and faraway is a morbid sign. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 40.
As you know, I am a doctor, and am therefore condemned to lay my speculations under the juggernaut of reality, though this has the advantage of ensuring that everything lacking in solidity will be crushed. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 40.
Man must after all be changed from within; otherwise he merely assimilates the new material to the old pattern. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 40.
Through my study of the early Christian writings I have gained a deep and indelible impression of how dreadfully serious an experience of God is. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 41.
It is so important to keep close to the earth, as the spirit is always soaring up to heaven like a flame as much destructive as enlightening. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 42.
I can easily say that (without blushing) because I know how resistant and how foolishly obstinate I was when they first visited me, and what a trouble it was until I could read this symbolic language, so much superior to my dull conscious mind. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 42.
Astrology has actually nothing to do with the Stars but is the 5000-year-old psychology of antiquity and the Middle Ages. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 56.
You mustn’t melt away or otherwise disappear or get ill but wicked desires should pin you to the earth so your work can go on. ~Carl Jung to Richard Wilhelm, Letters Vol. 1, Page 63.
Medicine is switching over to psychology with a vengeance, and that’s where the East comes in. There’s nothing to be done with the theologians and philosophers because of their arrogance. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 64
It has just struck me that in my commentary I have suggested using “logos” for “hun” instead of “animus,” because “animus” is a natural term for the “mind” of a woman, corresponding to the “anima” of a man. European philosophy must take into account the existence of feminine psychology. The “anima” of a woman might suitably be designated “Eros.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 69.
European philosophy must take into account the existence of feminine psychology. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 69.
The “anima” of a woman might suitably be designated “Eros.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 69.
We live in the age of the decline of Christianity, when the metaphysical premises of morality are collapsing. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 69-70.
When the confusion is at its height a new revelation comes, i.e. at the beginning of the fourth month of world history. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 69.
The fear is not of myself but of the myth in you. ~Carl Jung to Walter Corte, Letters Vol. 1, Page 70.
People like you must look at everything and think about it and communicate with the heaven that dwells deep within them and listen inwardly for a word to come. At the same time organize your outward life properly so that your voice carries weight. ~Carl Jung to Walter Corti, Letters Vol. 1, Page 70.
In the last resort the value of a person is never expressed in his relation to others but consists in itself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 78.
Therefore we should never let our self-confidence or self-esteem depend on the behaviour of another person however much we may be humanly affected by him. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 78.
Everything that happens to us, properly understood, leads us back to ourselves; it is as though there were some unconscious guidance whose aim it is to deliver us from all ties and all dependence and make us dependent on our-selves. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 78.
This is because dependence on the behaviour of others is a last vestige of childhood which we think we can’t do without. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 78.
God as the greatest becomes in man the smallest and most invisible, otherwise man cannot endure him. Only in that form of the self does God dwell in the macrocosm (which he himself is, though in the most unconscious form). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 337.
In man God sees himself from “outside” and thus becomes conscious of himself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 337.
The self must become as small as and yet smaller than the ego although it is the ocean of divinity: “God is as small as me,” says Angelus Silesius. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 336.
The self in its divinity (i.e., the archetype) is unconscious of itself It can be come conscious only within our consciousness. And it can do that only if the ego stands firm. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 336.
But every archetype before it is integrated consciously wants to manifest itself physically since it forces the subject into its own form. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 336.
It is a very good method to treat the anima as if she were a patient whose secret you ought to get at. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 461.
You must step into the fantasy yourself and compel the figures to give you an answer. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 561.
You barricade yourself from the world with exaggerated saviour fantasies. So climb down from the mountain of your humility and follow your nose. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 559.
Psychology as might be expected appears in the realm of physics in the field of theory-building. The outstanding question is a psychological critique of the space-time concept. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 494.
But reaching soon the station No. 74 of my trek through the lands, deserts, and seas of this three-dimensional world, I feel the burden of my years and the work not yet done. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 503.
I sincerely hope you don’t believe what people say about me. If I did, I should have buried myself long ago. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 503.
I cannot quite agree with your opinion about “individuation.” It is not “individualization” but a conscious realization of everything the existence of an individual implies: his needs, his tasks, his duties, his responsibilities, etc. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 504.
Individuation does not isolate, it connects. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 504
The animus of women is an answer to the spirit which rules the man. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 480.
Only after I had written about pages in folio, it began to dawn on me that Christ-not the man but the divine being-was my secret goal. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 480.
My further writing led me to the archetype of the God-man and to the phenomenon of synchronicity which adheres to the archetype. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 480.
Ad ”neurosis”: I mean, of course, that it is as a rule better to leave neurotics to themselves as long as they do not suffer and seek health. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 481.
Indeed I have often thought: if only I could have opened my own father’s eyes! But he died before I had caught the fish whose liver contains the wonderworking medicine. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 193-194.
It is a pleasure to receive the letter of a normally intelligent person in contrast to the evil flood of idiotic and malevolent insinuations I seemed to have released in the U.S.A. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 534.
It seems to me that at the bottom of all these problems lies the development of science and technology, which has destroyed man’s metaphysical foundation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 536.
Social welfare has replaced the kingdom of God. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 536.
Much better to know, therefore, that life on this earth is balanced between an equal amount of pleasure and misery, even when it is at its best, and that real progress is only the psychological adaptation to the various forms of individual misery. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 537.
Ancient Rome, not knowing how to deal with its own social problem, viz. slavery, succumbed to the onslaught of barbarous tribes. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 537.
We have not understood yet that the discovery of the unconscious means an enormous spiritual task, which must be accomplished if we wish to preserve our civilization. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 537.
Precognitive dreams can be recognized and verified as such only when the precognized event has actually happened. Otherwise the greatest uncertainty prevails. Also, such dreams are relatively rare. It is therefore not worth looking at the dreams for their future significance. One usually gets it wrong. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 460.
It does not seem exactly probable to me that when Christ cuts off his shadow this is an immediate visionary experience, but chiefly a philosophical idea very drastically expressed. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 553.
It is of course extremely difficult, in judging Gnostic images, to tell how much is genuine inner experience and how much is philosophical superstructure. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 553.
Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 237.
If we consider the psyche as a whole, we come to the conclusion that the unconscious psyche likewise exists in a space-time continuum, where time is no longer time and space no longer space. Accordingly, causality ceases too. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 547.
But this is where the above-mentioned difficulty comes in: our knowledge of the instincts, i.e., of the underlying biological drives, is very inadequate, so that it is only with the greatest difficulty and great uncertainty that we can equate the archetypes with them. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 547.
Thus, as early as the dream-book of Artemidorus, we come across the case of a man dreaming that his father perished in a fire, and after a few days the dreamer himself died of a high fever. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 547.
This means that when we observe statistically we eliminate the synchronicity phenomenon, and conversely, when we establish synchronicity we must abandon the statistical method. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 548.
Finding the right measure is also a way of relating to the world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 527.
Fruitful introversion is possible only when there is also a relation to the outside. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 527.
No doubt the anima has a very important aspect as a giver of wisdom. She is the femme inspiratrice par excellence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 498.
She [The Anima] herself is the archetype of mere life that leads into experiences and awareness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 499.
Thus the anima is always associated with the source of wisdom and enlightenment, whose symbol is the Old Wise Man. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 499.
Blind are the eyes of anyone who does not know his own heart, and I always recommend the application of a little psychology so that he can understand things like the gospel still better. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 463.
The community is nothing without the individual and if a community consists of individuals that do not fulfil their individual telos, then the community has no telos or a very wrong one. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 464.
Each man has his telos and inasmuch as he tries to fulfil it he is a real citizen. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 464.
If we consider the psychic process as an energic one, we give it mass. This mass must be very small, otherwise it could be demonstrated physically. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 522.
I wouldn’t call the ego a creation of mind or consciousness, since, as we know, little children talk of themselves first in the third person and begin to say ‘I’ only when they have found their ego. The ego, therefore, is rather a find or an experience and not a creation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Volume 1; Pages 254-255.
That is something I would definitely like to know, what sin really is, seeing that theology has been talking about it for thousands of years. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 253-254
Men would never have talked of sin and the forgiveness of sin had this not been a fundamental psychological fact that existed long before there were any laws. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 253-254
That is as you see the reason why I said that I haven’t come across Buddhist mandalas based upon 3, 5, or 6 (2 x 3). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 222-223
Only those who can be alone without bitterness can attract the next one. He won’t even need to look for him because he will come to himself, and just the person he needed.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 89.
The dream is in my opinion a look behind the scenes into the age-old processes of the human mind, which might explain your special feeling of happiness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol I, Pages 221-222
I do not find it so bad that mechanistic and hormonistic points of view are repudiated, for in the last resort we treat neuroses neither with mechanisms nor hormones but psychically, and at present the idea that the psyche is a hormonal system still belongs to the realm of mythology. Hence I am all for the psychotherapist calmly acknowledging that he treats and cures neither with diet nor pills nor with the surgeon’s knife. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page180
I never denied the fact that my psychiatry comes from Bleuler’s clinic. I was there already in 1900. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 210-211
The toad that appears in your book generally signifies an anticipation of the human being on the level of the coldblooded creatures, and actually stands for the psyche associated with the lower spinal cord. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 213
The opus consists of three parts: insight, endurance and action…. It is conflicts of duty that make endurance and action so difficult. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page, 375
The West knows too much about sentimentalities to believe in them. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 213
I have always found it very difficult to discuss these problems with an artist, whereas I could have learnt a lot from Mantegna. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 249-250
The greatness of the Renaissance artist lies not least in the fact that he worked with the whole of his personality, while the artist of today assiduously avoids anything meaningful. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 249-250
In the end there is no legitimate having-to-go-beyond-ourselves. Hence I would not recommend anybody to wish to go beyond himself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 192-193
For what we are stuck with we have a certain responsibility, namely for the way we act towards it, but not for the fact that it exists. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 192-193
You are not responsible for your constitution but you are stuck with it, and so it is with the anima, which is likewise a constitutional factor one is stuck with. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 192-193
At any rate we can never treat the anima with moral reprimands; instead of this we have, or there is, wisdom, which in our days seems to have passed into oblivion. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 192-193
My daughter from Paris and her children are with us since the beginning of the war, happily enough. But her husband is still in Paris. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 288-289
We are following the exploits of the R.A.F. with the greatest admiration and we marvel at the way the British people are carrying on. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 288-289
My whole family, including 11 grandchildren, have gone to a refuge in the mountains near Saanen. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 282
Fear is aggressivity in reverse. Consequently, the thing we are afraid of involves a task. If you are afraid of your own thoughts, then your thoughts are the task. ~Carl Jung; Letters Volume 1; Page 507.
For untold years it has happened for the first time that I could not plant my potatoes and my corn anymore and weed has overgrown my piece of black earth, as if its owner were no more. Things and exterior life slip past me and leave me in a world of unworldly thought and in a time measured by centuries. I am glad that you and others carry on the work I once began. The world needs it badly. It seems to come to a general showdown, when the question will be settled whether the actually existing man is conscious enough to cope with his own demons or not. ~Carl Jung Collected Letters Vol 1, Pages 468-469.
Whatever happens in the fantasy must happen to you. You should not let yourself be represented by a fantasy figure. You must safeguard the ego and only let it be modified by the unconscious, just as the latter must be acknowledged with full justification and only prevented from suppressing and assimilating the ego. ~ Carl Jung, Collected Letters Vol 1, Page 561
You can’t protect your anima by Yoga exercises which only procure a conscious thrill, but you can protect her by catching the unconscious contents that well up from the depths of yourself. ~Carl Jung; Collected Letters Vol 1, Page 97.
If one could arrive at the truth by learning the words of wisdom, then the world would have been saved already in the remote times of Lao-tze. ~Carl Jung, Collected Letters Vol 1, Pages 559-560.
The truth is one and the same everywhere and I must say that Taoism is one of the most perfect formulations of it I ever became acquainted with. ~Carl Jung, Collected Letters Vol 1, Pages 559-560.
At all events wisdom cannot be taught by words. It is only possible by personal contact and by immediate experience. ~Carl Jung, Collected Letters Vol 1, Pages 559-560.
Nobody can set right a mismanaged life with a few words. But there is no pit you cannot climb out of provided you make the right effort at the right place. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 144
Sometimes a tree tells you more than can be read in books. ~ C.G. Jung; Letters Vol 1; Page 179.
Hermeticism is not something you choose, it is a destiny, just as the ecclesia spiritualis is not an organization but an electio. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol 1, Page 351.
The psychic seems to me to be in actual fact partly extra-spatial and extra-temporal. “Subtle body” may be a fitting expression for this part of the psyche. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 522.
I like to get reactions from my public, otherwise I am easily overcome by a feeling of isolation in the contemporary spiritual world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 466.
Go not outside, return into thyself: truth dwells in the inner man.” Augustine, Liber de vera religione. Motto to: “A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 466.
You can face eternity properly only when you have “forgotten the world.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 373.
Better to feel the weight of the earth too much than to hang out over the edge of it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 373-374.
Whenever the apples perfume the air, paradise is soon coming to an end. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 373.
From the alchemical saying:
Heaven above All that is above
Heaven below Also is below
Stars above Grasp this
Stars below And rejoice. ~Carl Jung, CW 1 6, par. 384.
I have made a great effort to explain what I mean by “psychic.” I call those biological phenomena “psychic” which show at least traces of a will that interferes with the regular and automatic functioning of instincts. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 457.
Your book is a remarkably clear survey of analytical psychology. ~Carl Jung to Esther Harding’s “Psychic Energy” Letters, Vol. 1, Page 468.
I don’t know T. S. Eliot. If you think that his book is worthwhile, then I don’t mind even poetry. I am only prejudiced against all forms of modern art. It is mostly morbid and evil on top [of that]. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 469.
For untold years it has happened for the first time that I could not plant my potatoes and my corn anymore and weed has overgrown my piece of black earth, as if its owner were no more. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 469.
Things and exterior life slip past me and leave me in a world of unworldly thought and in a time measured by centuries. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 469.
I am glad that you and others carry on the work I once began. The world needs it badly. ~Carl Jung to Esther Harding, Letters Vol. 1, Page 469.
Just now some hard chunks of reality have hit you and hit all the harder because I have spoilt you but you needed spoiling in order to approach closer to the earth, where you could get at the stone. Hardness increases in proportion to the speed of approach. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 362.
I realize that under the circumstances you have described you feel the need to see clearly. But your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Without, everything seems discordant; only within does it coalesce into unity. Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes. ~Carl Jung, Letters Volume I, Page 33.
Philosophical criticism must, to my way of thinking, start with a maximum of factual knowledge if it is not to remain hanging in midair and thus be condemned to sterility. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 331.
I can put up with any amount of criticism so long as it is based on facts or real knowledge. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 331.
Heidegger’s modus philosophandi is neurotic through and through and is ultimately rooted in his psychic crankiness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 331.
In the critical philosophy of the future there will be a chapter on “The Psychopathology of Philosophy.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 331-332.
The collective systems styled “party” or “State,” have a destructive effect on human relationships. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 472.
All big organizations that pursue exclusively materialistic aims are the pacemakers of mass-mindedness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 472.
The dissolution of the transference often consists in ceasing to describe the nature of one’s relationship as “transference.” This designation degrades the relationship to a mere projection, which it is not. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 475.
“Transference” consists in the illusion of its uniqueness, when seen from the collective and conventional standpoint. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 475
“Uniqueness” lies simply and solely in the relationship between individuated persons, who have no other relationships at all except individual, i.e., unique ones. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 475.
People talk of the State as though it were a living entity, when in fact it is only a conventional concept that could not live for a second unless man pumped the necessary life into it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 315.
I can scarcely keep pace and must watch out that the creative forces do not chase me round the universe at a gallop. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 321.
But you, just as naively, have intruded yourself as an Anima figure into this witches’ Sabbath and are therefore caught up in the dance as though you were nothing but an Anima. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 335.
Letters I get from there are with few exceptions either infantile or pig-headed or hysterical, which more than anything else confirms that my diagnosis of Germany’s spiritual condition was right. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 439.
Also my little book on transference is to appear soon. It’s a risky business, but when you are old you can say more than when life is still ahead. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 439.
He gets into the unconscious through the roof and as the corns on his feet are blind he can’t see what he’s climbing down into. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 439.
Here in Switzerland we are still rationed but can’t complain about anything since we were miraculously spared the Nazi madness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 401.
“God imagined the world. The Trinity is imaged in the creature.” In spite of exhaustive inquiries the source remains unidentified. But cf. von Franz, Aurora Consurgens: A Document Attributed to Thomas Aquinas, p. 186, n. 141: “God created all visible things through imagination and manifests himself in everything. Thus the creative fantasy of God is contained in the visible. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 400, Footnote 6.
I now see more clearly the terminological possibilities of a Babylonian confusion of tongues when one seriously sets about studying science as an object instead of practicing it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 330.
If it should later turn out that these means were not as good as those we shall have in a hundred years’ time, this is no reason for mortification today, since we know quite well that the better which is to come would never have hatched out had we not begotten the best that is possible now, however imperfect it may be. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 330.
It is also a plausible hypothesis that the archetype is produced by the original life urge and then gradually grows up into consciousness-with the qualification, however, that the innermost essence of the archetype can never become wholly conscious, since it is beyond the power of imagination and language to grasp and express its deepest nature. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 313.
Your conception of the archetype as a psychic gene is quite possible. ~ Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 313.
Inspired by Justinus Kerner’s Kleksographien, I made a whole collection of inkblots back in my high school days, because these irrational configurations stimulated my fantasy activity so delightfully that they often afforded me day-long enjoyment. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 323.
Although since 1918 I knew that a terrible fire would spread over Europe beginning in the North East, I have no vision beyond 1940 concerning the fate of Europe. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 285.
This year reminds me of the enormous earthquake in 26 B.C. that shook down the great temple of Karnak. It was the prelude to the destruction of all temples, because a new time had begun. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 285.
1940 is the year when we approach the meridian of the first star in Aquarius. It is the premonitory earthquake of the New Age. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 285.
I loathe the new style, the new Art, the new Music, Literature, Politics, and above all the new Man. It’s the old beast that has not changed since the troglodytes. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 286.
Your news that Churchill was not bored at our table was a great relief. Conversation with him was no easy matter since he directed his answers mostly to the House of Commons. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 443.
The reception Churchill had in Zurich was something you really have missed. Churchill told me afterwards that it was the best and most impressive reception he ever had in his life. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 446.
I keep to my daily regime: two hours of scientific work in the morning, and in the afternoon a rest plus a visitor. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 451.
I must confess I was against the C. G. Jung Institute only from aversion to the prominence given to my name. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 469.
You must go in quest of yourself, and you will find yourself again only in the simple and forgotten things. Why not go into the forest for a time, literally? Sometimes a tree tells you more than can be read in books… ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 479.
This centre was indirectly produced by an infernal deception through the figure of the Fuhrer. This happens in all societies where the spiritual centre has dropped out. Only in this spiritual centre is there any possibility of salvation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 470.
Only in this spiritual centre is there any possibility of salvation. The concept of the centre was called by the Chinese Tao, which the Jesuits in their day translated as Deus. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 470.
This centre is everywhere, i.e., in everybody, and when the individual does not possess this centre he infects all the others with this sickness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 471.
Concerning your view about Hatha-Yoga I can confirm your ideas entirely. Yoga as well as other “mystical” practices imitate nature and that explains their efficacy. Yoga postures are imitations of catatonic gestures, postures and mannerisms. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 498.
One could say that the classical catatonic condition is a fixed or congealed Yoga mechanism, i.e., a natural tendency released under pathological circumstances. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 498.
his [Hatha Yoga] is to be interpreted as a teleological attempt at self-cure, as it is a compensatory process produced under the stress of the schizophrenic dissociation of the mind. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 498.
The prana discipline has practically the same effect. It concentrates the psychic energy upon the inner ways in which the prana flows. The localization in the brain is doubtful, but in general it is correct to assume that the unconscious processes are chiefly located in the lower centres of the brain from the thalamus downwards. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 498.
Behind Gretchen stands the Gnostic sequence: Helen-Mary-Sophia. They represent a real Platonic world of ideas (thinking and sensation on the mystic level). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 265.
“For He [God] doth know that ye shall be as gods.” Gen. 3:5. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 266.
While I stood before the bed of the Old Man, I thought and felt: “I am not worthy Lord.” I know Him very well: He was my “guru” more than 30 years ago a real ghostly guru-but that is a long and-I am afraid-exceedingly strange story. It has been since confirmed to me by an old Hindu. You see, something has taken me out of Europe and the Occident and has opened for me the gates of the East as well, so that I should understand something of the human mind. ~Carl Jung on his vision of Philemon, Letters Vol. 1, Page 491.
The solitary man is either a beast or a god. ~Carl Jung citing Aristotle, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 492.
I wanted the proof of a living Spirit and I got it. Don’t ask me at what a price. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 492.
I don’t want to prescribe a way to other people, because I know that my way has been prescribed to me by a hand far above my reach. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 492.
My medical experience has increasingly compelled me to come to terms with Christian symbolism and here the Church Fathers were a great help. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 471.
The man of today is still boundlessly infantile, and therein lies the great danger and the continual incentive for the theological outlook to be equally infantile. Caution is indicated. The way up Mont Blanc consists of many little steps. But a beginning must be made. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 474.
As I am getting on in age and as I am going to be gathered to my ancestors and avatars within a measurable time, the Institute is meant to carry on the work. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 482.
The moment we enter the bridge, I fall on my knees, completely overcome by the sudden understanding that my father is going to lead me into the “supreme presence.” By sympathy he kneels at my side and I try to touch the ground with my forehead. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 491.
My eldest patient-a lady-has reached the stately age of 75. The psyche can be treated so long as a person has a psyche. The only people you can’t treat are those who are born without a psyche. And of these there are not a few. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol 1; Page 95.
You see, in spite of being a man in advanced age, you still have a young soul, a lovely anima, and she is confronted with the dangerous lizard. In other words, your soul is threatened by’ chthonic poison. Now this is exactly the situation of our Western mind. We think we can deal with such problems in an almost rationalistic way, by conscious attempts and efforts, imitating Yoga methods and such dangerous stuff, but we forget entirely that first of all we should establish a connection between the higher and the lower regions of our psyche ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 95-97.
My aged mother was sitting at a distance of about 3 meters near the window. I myself was outside the house in the garden and the servant was in the kitchen which is on the same floor. Nobody else was present in the house at that time. Suddenly the knife exploded inside the sideboard with the sound of an exploding pistol. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 180-181.
Beyond the human obligation to look after ageing parents and to maintain a friendly relation with them, there should be no other dependencies, for the young generation has to start life anew and can encumber itself with the past only in case of the greatest necessity. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 218.
I begin to feel my age and whenever I get a bit too tired I also feel my heart and that is decidedly disagreeable and makes me cross with the whole world, which is damnable anyhow. I went through a period of black depression during the first 4 days. Only yesterday I began to feel human again. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 307.
[Note: The “period of black depression was related to The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor 7 Dec. 1941.]
I just spent about 3 weeks in the tower where I finished the 3rd edition of a little book of mine much inspired by the peculiar atmosphere of the place. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 42.
Every relationship has its optimal distance, which of course has to be found by trial and error. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 53-54.
It will be good for your humility if you can accept the gifts of your unconscious guide that dwells in yourself, and it is good for your pride to humiliate itself to such an extent that you can accept what you receive. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 459
I’m therefore quite willing to help in your attempt in this direction, but I refuse in your own interest to plague myself with your material which is only helpful when you acquire its understanding by your own effort. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 459
One must never look to the things that ought to change. The main question is how we change ourselves. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 314
Everything to do with the masses is hateful to me. Anything popularized becomes common. Above all I would not disseminate Goethe, rather cook books. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 88-89.
Apart from a few poems, the only thing of Goethe’s that is alive for me is Faust. For me this was always a study-for relaxation I prefer English novels. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 88-89.
Everything else of Goethe’s pales beside Faust, although something immortal glitters in the poems too. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 88-89.
What one could “enjoy” of Goethe is, for me, too patriarchal, too much de l’epoque. What I value in Goethe I cannot “enjoy”; it is too big, too exciting, too profound. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 88-89.
It seems to me that one cannot meditate enough about Faust, for many of the mysteries of the second part are still unfathomed. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 88-89.
You must pay especially careful attention to your body because your intuitive extraversion, stretching over continents, pulls energies into its vortex which are drawn from the body. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 54-55
Above all things you must be clear that the uncovering of the unconscious, as it happens in analysis, is only the beginning of a journey that cannot be halted but must be continued to the end. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 142-143
The psychosis phobia is always a sign that the irrational psychic factors are piling up and want to be assimilated. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 142-143
This psychic substrate must necessarily be different from the so-called outer world, otherwise there would be no possibility of grasping it, for like cannot cognize like. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 142-143
One must have a far-reaching psychological understanding in order to enjoy the I Ching with advantage. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 159-150
So it will happen to you as it happens to most people. They die in exactly the same ways as they should have lived. Good Lord, how many impersonations do you reckon you need to understand this simple truth? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol 1, Pages 422-423.
But when you die, nobody else will die for you or instead of you. It will be entirely and exclusively your own affair. That has been expected of you through your whole life, that you live it as if you were dying. So it will happen to you as it happens to most people. They die in exactly the same ways as they should have lived. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol 1, Pages 422-423.
The only people you can’t treat are those who are born without a psyche. And of these there are not a few. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1; Page 95.
It frequently happens that when a person with whom one was intimate dies, either one is oneself drawn into the death, so to speak, or else this burden has the opposite effect of a task that has to be fulfilled in real life. ~Carl Jung, Letters 1, Page 239.
Everything in me has arisen from direct experience of the mentally ill or “seekers after truth.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Volume 1, Pages 59-61.
It [Music] expresses in sounds what fantasies and visions music express in Visual images…music represents the movement, development and transformation of motifs of the collective unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 542.
The statistical method of science stands in a relationship of complementarity to synchronicity. This means that when we observe statistically we eliminate the synchronicity phenomena and when we establish synchronicity we must abandon the statistical method. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 548.
If you look long enough into a dark hole you perceive what is looking in. This is also the principle of cognition in yoga, which derives all cognition from the absolute emptiness of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 174-175.
One cannot be simply Protestant or Catholic. That is much too facile, for in the end the one is the other’s brother and this cannot be got rid of simply by declaring one of them invalid. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 520.
We cannot simply restrict ourselves to our view of the world but must perforce find a standpoint from which a view will be possible that goes a little step beyond the Christian as well as the Buddhist, etc. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 520.
Actually it is not correct to say that there is no mother goddess in the Christian Trinity. The mother is simply veiled by the Holy Ghost (Sophia), which is the connecting link between Father and Son. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 90-93
I grant you that I am on the best way to delivering up the Christian concept of the spirit to the chaos of Gnosis again, from which it was so carefully insulated. But in my view the spirit is alive only when it is an adventure eternally renewed. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 90-93
It is not, however, the actual East we are dealing with but the collective unconscious which is omnipresent. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 87.
I have landed in the Eastern sphere through the waters of the unconscious, for the truths of the unconscious can never be thought up, they can be reached only by following a path which all cultures right down to the most primitive level have called the way of initiation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 87.
There is no point in delivering yourself over to the last drop. In my view it is absolutely essential always to have our consciousness well enough in hand to pay sufficient attention to our reality, to the Here and Now. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 239.
The unconscious itself is neither tricky nor evil – it is Nature, both beautiful and terrible. The best way of dealing with the unconscious is the creative way. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 108-109.
The hidden mystery of life is always hidden between Two, and it is the true mystery which cannot be betrayed by words or depleted by arguments. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 581.
The Divine Presence is more than anything else. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 491-492.
The dissolution of our time-bound form in eternity brings no loss of meaning. Rather does the little finger know itself a member of the hand. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 343.
God needs man in order to become conscious, just as he needs limitation in time and space. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 64-66
[I]t was my intention to write in such a way that fools get scared and only true scholars and seekers can enjoy its reading. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 425.
Why don’t people read my books conscientiously? Why do they gloss over the facts? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 345-350
And people do not see that I am gathering for tomorrow the factual material which will be desperately needed if the European of the future is to be convinced of anything at all. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 345-350
Should the facts be inconvenient for any kind of creed, then they are not to be got rid of by an authoritarian fiat or by faith. ~~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 345-350
Airplanes and such devilish inventions ought to be avoided. C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 198-200.
Body and spirit are to me mere aspects of the reality of the psyche. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 198-200.
Body is as metaphysical as spirit. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 198-200.
Ask the modern physicist what body is, they are coming fast across to the recognition of the reality of the psyche. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 198-200.
As you know I call intuition any kind of perception which takes place in a way that cannot be explained by the function of the senses. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol1, Pages 420-422.
The fact that extra-sensory perception is real proves that time and space are psychically relative. that means that they can be more or less annihilated. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol 1, Pages 420-422.
If a thing is capable of non-existence then we must assume that it is also capable of absolute existence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol 1, Pages 420-422.
One has to stand below others if one wants something to drop down from them into one’s lap. ~Carl Jung, Letters Volume 1, Page 435.
When I started analyzing I could usually endure only two cases a day because it was too much of a strain for me. ~Carl Jung, Letters Volume 1, Page 204.
But I cannot say that material things or spiritual things in themselves are of psychic nature, although it may be that. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 255.
I wouldn’t call the ego a creation of mind or consciousness, since, as we know, little children talk of themselves first in the third person and begin to say ‘I’ only when they have found their ego. ~ Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 254.
You can learn a great deal of psychology through studying books, but you will find that this psychology is not very helpful in practical life. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 236-237.
That is a thing which is utterly jacking in our universities: the relation of master and disciple. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 236-237.
My subjective attitude is that I hold every religious position in high esteem but draw an inexorable dividing line between the content of belief and the requirements of science. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 124-125.
With our human knowledge we always move in the human sphere, but in the things of God we should keep quiet and not make any arrogant assertions about what is greater than ourselves. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 124-125.
It seems to me, however, that when belief enters into practical life we are entitled to the opinion that it should be coupled with the Christian virtue of modesty, which does not brag about absoluteness but brings itself to admit the unfathomable ways of God which have nothing to do with the Christian revelation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 124-125.
It one thing I will tell you: the exploration of the unconscious has in fact and in truth discovered the age-old, timeless way of initiation. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 140-143.
Nothing is submerged for ever-that is the terrifying discovery everyone makes who has opened that portal. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 140-143.
We know very well that a man’s ambition is for his concepts to be realized in life, whereas it is the most secret longing of all women for their lives to be realized in concepts. ~ ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 151
I do not combat the Christian truth; I am only arguing with the modern mind. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 383-387.
You cannot preach to a man who does not understand the language. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 383-387.
Doubt is creative if it is answered by deeds, and so is neurosis if it exonerates itself as having been a phase—a crisis which is pathological only when chronic. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 332-334
Neurosis is a justified doubt in oneself and continually poses the ultimate question of trust in man and in God. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 332-334
But the moderns mistake morbidity for creative birth—part of the general lunacy of our time. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 332-334
Spirit cannot be learned, it is given to us by God’s grace, which cannot be had by force or reason. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 293.
You know time and space are only relative realities, which under certain conditions do not exist at all. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 303-304.
In wanting to understand, ethical and human as it sounds, there lurks the devil’s will, which though not at first perceptible to me, is perceptible to the other. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 31-32
So is healing given to us in the unlockable and ineffable symbol, for it prevents the devil from swallowing up the seed of life. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 31-32.
True understanding seems to be one which does not understand yet lives and works. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 31-32
Your dream is very remarkable in that it coincides almost literally with my first systematic fantasy which I had between the ages of 15 and 16. It engrossed me for weeks, always on the way to school, which took three-quarters of an hour. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 218.
A child, too, enters into this sublimity, and there detaches himself from this world and his manifold individuations more quickly than the aged. So easily does he become what you also are that he apparently vanishes. Sooner or later all the dead become what we also are. But in this reality we know little or nothing about that mode of being, and what shall we still know of this earth after death? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 343.
During the war my health wasn’t too good. As a matter of fact I was seriously ill and having reached the biblical age of 70, I’m none too efficient any more, though I have done a decent amount of scientific work lately. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 379.
While I thank you for your kind letter I must tell you that unfortunately I am obliged to limit my activity for reasons of age and health and so it will not be possible for me to write an article for the projected number of Polyphoniet. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 542.
At my age it means going “slow and with care,” nor is my working capacity what it was, especially when you have all sorts of things on your programme which you want to bring to the light of day. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 563.
We think we can deal with such problems in an almost rationalistic way, by conscious attempts and efforts, imitating Yoga methods and such dangerous stuff, but we forget entirely that first of all we should establish a connection between the higher and the lower regions of our psyche. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 96.
Thus the Western man has to develop that connection with his unconscious first, and then only he will understand really what the Eastern methods aim at. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 96.
You can protect your anima by Yoga exercises which only procure a conscious thrill, but you can protect her by catching the unconscious contents that well up from the depths of yourself. Try to see your fantasies are, no matter how disreputable they seem to be; that is your blackness, your shadow that ought to be swallowed. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 97.
You know, Eastern Yoga is based upon man as he really is, but we have a conscious imagination about ourselves and think this is our Self, which is an appalling mistake. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 97.
Parents must realize that they are trees from which the fruit falls in the autumn. Children don’t belong to their parents, and they are only apparently produced by them. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 217.
Many thanks for kindly sending me your book on Rilke. I am reading it with pleasure, especially as I was always aware, since getting to know Rilke, of how much psychology there was hidden in him. In fact he came up against the same field of experience that has engrossed me for decades, though I approach it from a very different angle. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 483.
I was grieved for him. Now he has vanished and stepped outside time, as all of us will do after him. Life, so-called, is a short episode between two great mysteries, which yet are one. I cannot mourn the dead. They endure, but we pass over. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 485.
Life, so-called, is a short episode between two great mysteries, which yet are one. I cannot mourn the dead. They endure, but we pass over. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 483.
The psychiatrist understands nothing of psychotherapy in principle because he is never in the position of having to practice it. One could just as well subordinate internal medicine to surgery. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 163.
Unfortunately I know far too little of X.’s personal life to presume to an opinion, but with young people one must always be careful in this respect, because the demands of instinct are only too easily covered up by deceptive spiritual interests. …I would conjecture that this is so because middle life has set in too early in consequence of a relatively short life expectancy. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 169.
I was particularly satisfied with the fact that you clearly understand that I am not a mystic but an empiricist. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 237.
There is very much conscious purpose in what I say, for I am persuaded that the Christian Church is one of the most powerful instruments for keeping the great masses more or less right in the head. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 494.
My chief curiosity was always the question: What does the human mind, inasmuch as it is a natural involuntary functioning, produce if left to itself? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 237.
Such a thing is possible only when there is a detachment of the soul from the body. When that takes place and the patient lives on, one can almost with certainty expect a certain deterioration of the character inasmuch as the superior and most essential part of the soul has already left. Such an experience denotes a partial death. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 435-437.
But it is the lower man that keeps on living with the body and who is nothing else but the life of the body. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 437.
“Therefore strive first to know yourselves, because ye are the city and the city is the kingdom.” ~Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 654; Cited by Carl Jung; Letters Vol. 1, Page 524.
As a matter of fact a positive relationship between the individual and society or a group is essential, since no individual stands by himself but depends upon symbiosis with a group. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 508.
The self, the very centre of an individual, is of a conglomerate nature. It is, as it were, a group. It is a collectivity in itself and therefore always, when it works most positively, creates a group. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 508.
Inasmuch as fantasy is not forced and violated by and subjugated to an intellectually preconceived bastard of an idea, it is a legitimate and authentic offspring of the unconscious mind and thus far it provided me with unadulterated information about the things that transcend the writer’s conscious mind. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 509.
There is no objection against your reading my volumes on Zarathustra. They have nothing to do with Zarathustra the prophet, of course. And they should be read with criticism, since they are merely notes taken by members of my audience which I never corrected. They certainly contain quite a number of mistakes. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 512-514.
I find Blake a tantalizing study, since he has compiled a lot of half- or undigested knowledge in his fantasies. According to my idea, they are an artistic production rather than an authentic representation of unconscious processes. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 513.
I have visited the holy places of Buddhism in India and was profoundly impressed by them, quite apart from my reading of Buddhist literature. If I were an Indian I would definitely be a Buddhist. But in the West we have different presuppositions. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 538.
No Hindu pantheon lies behind us, instead we have a Judeo-Christian background and a Mediterranean culture, consequently different questions await an answer. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 538.
Buddha would settle our account too early, and then it would go with us as it did when we European barbarians had that sudden arid shattering collision with the ripest fruit of antiquity-Christianity-not to the advantage of our inner development. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 538.
But the ground-plan of these images [Archetypal] is universal and must be assumed to be pre-existent, since it can be demonstrated in the dreams of small children or uneducated persons who could not possibly have been influenced by tradition. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 538.
Thus the archetype as a phenomenon is conditioned by place and time, but on the other hand it is an invisible structural pattern independent of place and time, and like the instincts proves to be an essential component of the psyche. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 539.
Do not forget that the original meaning of all letters and numbers was a magical one! Hence the “perils of the soul.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 529.
It is very important for your mental health that you should on the one hand concern yourself with psychic material but on the other hand should do so as systematically and accurately as possible, other-wise you are running a dangerous risk. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 528.
I too am in a retrospective phase and am occupying myself, for the first time in 25 years, thoroughly with myself, collecting my old dreams and putting them together. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 516.
I am like an old car with 2 50,000 km. on its back that still can’t shake off the memory of its 20 horsepower. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 515-516.
Nevertheless, I console myself with the thought that only a fool expects wisdom. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 515-516.
There have been so many pupils of mine who have fabricated every sort of rubbish from what they took over from me. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 518.
If Neumann recommends the “inner voice” as the criterion of ethical behaviour instead of the Christian conscience, this is in complete agreement with the Eastern view that in everybody’s heart there dwells a judge who knows all his evil thoughts. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 519.
I only wish the Christians of today could see for once that what they stand for is not Christianity at all but a god-awful legalistic religion from which the founder himself tried to free them by following his voice and his vocation to the bitter end. Had he not done so there would never have been a Christianity. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 521.
When I came to Zurich, the most materialistic city of Switzerland, there was nobody ready-made for my needs. I then shaped some for me. They were meant for this experience. One could see it from their dreams. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 517.
One’s anxiety always points out our task. If you escape it you have lost a piece of yourself, and a most problematic piece at that, with which the Creator of things was going to experiment in His unforeseeable ways. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 517
The combination of priest and medicine man is not so impossible as you seem to think. They are based upon a common archetype, which will assert its right provided your inner development will continue as hitherto. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 517
I spent two delightful evenings with William James alone and I was tremendously impressed by the clearness of his mind and the complete absence of intellectual prejudices. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 531
We spent a very interesting week in Dr. Putnam’s camp in the Adirondacks and continued to be bewildered by the peculiar ways and ideas of the many native guests at that camp. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 532.
The unbeliever knows as well as anybody else that this world is in a frightful mess and always was. This knowledge alone has probably never yet prompted any modern man to believe. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 216.
Misery does not always teach prayer by any means but far more often cursing, violence, and criminality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 216.
That collective effects also occur is shown by the amazing success of the Oxford Movement. My own personal view is that this is merely a “Psychology of Crowds” with a prognosis to match. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 216.
A Church that has only the support of the masses can hardly be distinguished from the State. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 217.
There were and there are simply not enough doctors who have any reliable training in psychotherapy. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 543.
You know what my attitude is to the unconscious. There is no point in delivering oneself over to it to the last drop. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 239
In my view it is absolutely essential always to have our consciousness well enough in hand to pay sufficient attention to our reality, to the Here and Now. Otherwise we are in danger of being overrun by an unconscious which knows nothing of this human world of ours. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 240.
The unconscious can realize itself only with the help of consciousness and under its constant control. At the same time consciousness must keep one eye on the unconscious and the other focused just as clearly on the potentialities of human existence and human relationships. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 240.
We live in so many lives and so many lives live in us. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 440.
Above all, this is the day when I must remember with gratitude all the persevering and self-sacrificing work you [Jolande Jacobi] have done throughout the years to spread and develop my ideas. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 551.
But I am fully persuaded that if you settled a Siberian tribe for a few hundred years in Switzerland, regular Appenzellers would come out in the end. It is probably a matter of something like psychic mimicry. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 538.
I don’ t hold it against the Swiss for being officially one of the most unspiritual nations in Europe, on the contrary I sympathize, since their spirituality consists in their fear of the spirit. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 341.
Then the spirit comes in the form of the devil, as the cruel fate of Germany shows. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 341.
But this does not prevent us from being continually licked round by the flames of hell. All of us have to atone, inwardly and outwardly, for this guilt of unconsciousness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 342.
The Catholic Church arranges the codification of memories and the lessons of history so much better. The conservation of so much classical paganism is of inestimable value. Therefore the Catholic is the Christian Church par excellence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 340.
Your idea about the image of the medicine-man being the everlasting model for the impressive doctor is quite correct. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 301.
Like the physician who attended me, Dr. Haemmerl, he died on the eve of his fame. ~Carl Jung on Heinrich Zimmer, Letters Vol. 1, Page 345.
The quiet meditativeness that radiates from the fate you have described is rather like a verse from a hymn-book which one unexpectedly comes across again after 50 years. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 297.
The classic compulsion neurosis is an exception in that it is always due to a latent psychosis, which is also the reason why it is uncurable. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 299.
…it is advisable to approach every illness from the psychological side as well, because this may be extraordinarily important for the healing process. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 375.
When these two aspects [physical and psychological] work together, it may easily happen that the cure takes place in the intermediate realm, in other words that it consists of a complexio oppositorum, like the lapis. In this case the illness is in the fullest sense a stage of the individuation process…. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 375.
The feeling of inner detachment and isolation is not in itself an abnormal phenomenon but is normal in the sense that consciousness has withdrawn from the phenomenal world and got outside time and space. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 240.
As long as it is so difficult for us to understand the secrets of an atom or of the living protoplasm, we are surely not fit to touch upon a question like that of a continuation of life beyond material visibility. We don’t even understand it when it is in matter, how could we hope to have any insight into it without matter? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 242.
I also don’t know whether continuation of life beyond earthly existence would be a good or bad thing. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 241.
In such big matters I always argue that we are here and now and whatever the future here and now is will be seen when it is there. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 241.
Where the road branches off towards infinite multiplicity it has come to a stop in me and I have preferred the footpath. Since then I have lost all desire to speak of multiplicity because simplicity seems to me so much more useful. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 314.
We have all become “prisoners of God” miraculously without knowing it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 315.
I had almost lost the courage to publish this farrago. ~Carl Jung referring to Mysterium Coniunctionis, Letters Vol. 1, Page 343.
I’m pretty certain that psoriasis is a psychological disease, though I’m not able to establish a specific psychological cause for it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 294
These psychological skin diseases seem to be nothing else than a sort of psychological perspiration. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 294.
He [Hitler] really is the incarnation of the German’s psychopathic inferiority, which also accounts for the German’s feeling of national inferiority. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 367.
Why aren’t they told betimes that the “prince of this world” and lord of the air” takes good care that the tastier morsels are snapped up by the wicked ones they envy so much, and that marriage is not the end but the beginning of the romance? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 370.
That you have picked on me, of all people, as a speaker arouses very mixed feelings, because the problem of love seems to me a monster of a mountain which, for all my experience, has always soared to still greater heights -which, I thought I had almost reached the top. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 39.
And yet you are quite right when you say that the problem of love is the most important in human life. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 38.
I simply cannot conceive that there is anything Christian about churches whose main motive is division. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 246.
It is remarkable how people can act so dumb when dealing with inner figures. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 246.
I would not be surprised if one day we saw a far-reaching agreement between the basic formulations of psychology and physics. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 246.
To begin with I did not have the feeling at all that I was guilty of plagiarism with my [anima/animus] theory, but in the last 5 years it has become more and more uncanny as I have discovered quite suspicious traces of it also in the old alchemists, and now the mischief seems complete since it turns out that I was discovered already in the 18th century. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 248.
It is lovely to hear the word “friend” from you. Fate seems to have apportioned to us the role of two piers which support the bridge between East and West. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 66.
Please give X. my best greetings and tell him-because his love is all too easily injured-he should meditate on Paul’s words in the Epistle to the Corinthians: “Love endureth all things.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 120.
Anyone who solved the conflict for you would have got the better of you, for he would rob you of a reward on which all self-respect and manliness are ultimately grounded. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 121.
If you need human help, there are enough simple folk who from the simplicity of their hearts could give you the support you need. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 121.
Beyond that I have had experiences which are, so to speak, “ineffable,” “secret” because they can never be told properly and because nobody can understand them (I don’t know whether I have even approximately understood them myself), “dangerous” because 99% of humanity would declare l was mad if they heard such things from me, “catastrophic” because the prejudices aroused by their telling might block other people’s way to a living and wondrous mystery, “taboo” because they are “Holy” protected by “Fear of the Gods” as faithfully described by Goethe:
Shelter gives deep cave.
Lions around us stray,
Silent and tame they rove, And sacred honors pay to the holy shrine of love. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 141.
I think we must give it time to infiltrate into people from many centers, to revivify among intellectuals a feeling for symbol and myth, ever so gently to transform Christ back into the soothsaying god of the vine, which he was, and in this way absorb those ecstatic instinctual forces of Christianity for the one purpose of making the cult and the sacred myth what they once were a drunken feast of joy where man regained the ethos and holiness of an animal. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 18.
The ethical problem of sexual freedom really is enormous and worth the sweat of all noble souls. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 18.
The feminine mind is the earth waiting for the seed. That is the meaning of the transference. Always the more unconscious person gets spiritually fecundated by the more conscious one. Hence the guru in India. This is an age-old truth. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 172.
As soon as certain patients come to me for treatment, the type of dream changes. In the deepest sense we all dream not out of ourselves but out of what lies between us and the other. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 172.
Marriage is indeed a brutal reality, yet the experimentum crucis of life. I hope you learn to endure and not to struggle against the suppressing necessities of fate. Only thus you remain in the centre. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 172.
There always are and there always will be the two standpoints, the standpoint of the social leader who, if he is an idealist at all, seeks salvation in a more or less complete suppression of the individual, and the leader of minds who seeks improvement in the individual only. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 174.
Equally, psychological enlightenment after a psychotic attack can be extraordinarily helpful in some circumstances. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 371.
I am not convinced that schizophrenia is absolutely fatal any more than tuberculosis is. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 371.
Like neurosis, psychosis in its inner course is a process of individuation, but one that is usually not joined up with consciousness and therefore runs its course in the unconscious as an Ouroboros. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 371.
Hence I am all for the psychotherapist calmly acknowledging that he treats and cures neither with diet nor pills nor with the surgeon’s knife. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 180.
Discovery of the unconscious means an enormous spiritual task, which must be accomplished if we wish to preserve our civilization. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 537.
A genuine and proper ethical development cannot abandon Christianity but just grow up within it, must bring to fruition its hymn of love, the agony and ecstasy over the dying and resurgent god/ the mystic power of the wine, the awesome anthropophagy of the Last Supper-only this ethical development can serve the vital forces of religion. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 18.
Not being a prophet, it is impossible for me to predict where the world is going to. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 18.
There are doctrines which suit the Indians themselves very well but which one cannot even mention to a European because they provoke the most violent misunderstandings. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 160.
You seem to forget that I am first and foremost an empiricist, who was led to the question of Western and Eastern mysticism only for empirical reasons. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 195.
Dr. Meier has drawn my attention to your short review of Rosenberg’s book. For anyone who knows Jewish history, and in particular Hasidism, Rosenberg’s assertion that the Jews despise mysticism is a highly regrettable error. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 238.
Owing to rather obvious reasons Protestant theologians are rather reticent and they don’t know yet whether I should be condemned as a heretic or depreciated as a mystic. As you know, mysticism and hereticism enjoy about the same bad reputation in Protestantism. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 382.
The individual is all-important as he is the carrier of life, and his development and fulfillment are of paramount significance. It is vital for each living being to become its own entelechia and to grow into that which it was from the very beginning. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 19.
I positively do not believe that Christianity is the only and the highest manifestation of the truth. There is at least as much truth in Buddhism and in other religions too. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 127.
I only wish the theologians would accept the Kabbala and India and China as well so as to proclaim still more clearly how God reveals himself. If in the process Christianity should be relativized up to a point, this would be ad majorem Dei gloriam [for the greater glory of God] and would do no harm to Christian doctrine. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 392.
Your medical man is a stupid shitbag who ought to become a psychiatrist so that he can be better acquainted with X., whose sister I saved from the madhouse. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 65.
Hypertrophy of intellectual intuition” is a diagnosis I would apply also to Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and many others. I myself am one-sided in this respect. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 64
But we must see where we stand, otherwise we are immoral illusionists. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 65.
And what if this has no roots in the earth? If it is not a house of stone where the fire of God can dwell, but a wretched straw hut that flares up and vanishes? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 65.
One must be able to suffer God. That is the supreme task for the carrier of ideas. He must be the advocate of the earth. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 65
Zen is a true goldmine for the needs of the Western “psychologist.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 128
My acquaintance with the classical works of the Far East has given me no end of support in my psychological endeavours. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 128
Seldom in my analytical work have I been so struck by the “beauty” of neurosis as with this patient. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 5.
For Christmas my wife gave me a really superb photograph of Freud, ca. 12 x 20 cm. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 6.
I once said in the seminar it would be by no means impossible that the next savior might be a coloured man for the better humiliation of the white man’s spiritual inflation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 81.
His [Freud] is the honour of having discovered the first archetype, the Oedipus complex. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 525
I am only continuing what Freud began and I often regret that the Freudian school have not known how to develop their master’s fortunate discovery. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 536
There are indeed few authors, as you yourself have probably observed, who could wring from themselves an objective evaluation of my work. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 555
Can man adopt any standpoint outside the psyche? He may assert that he can, but the assertion does not create a point outside, and were he there he would have no psyche. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 556
Because it is tied to the timeless, the inferior function never wants to affirm the world of the moment, the world of time, since it ·would rather cling on to timelessness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 94
The Jahrbuch affair is a private matter to be settled between myself and Freud. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 28
But inner successes count more with me than the howling of the mob. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 28
I shall soon be able to give you news of Deuticke and Freud, if the latter does not deem it beneath his papal dignity to answer me. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 28
There might be a reason for such a sudden death in youth. Anyhow he did not know that he died. He vanished at the moment of joy. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 45
Perhaps other centuries will, in which case I am thankful to the Creator that man doesn’t live for 200 years, otherwise he would suddenly find himself in an age in which he would choke to death. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 114-115
Death is a faithful companion of life and follows it like its shadow. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 34.
We have still to understand how very much wanting to live = wanting to die. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 34.
Yes, it is true, such a death and such suffering seem to be pointless if one assumes that this life is the acme of all existence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 127
I have seen quite a number of people who died when they had reached the most they could. Obviously then the measure of their life was fulfilled, everything said and everything done and nothing remained. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 127
The answer to human life is not to be found within the limits of human life. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 127
Oh, I quite agree with you, intellect is a great sorcerer: it can make even itself disappear. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 134
The ego, therefore, is rather a find or an experience and not a creation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 254
We rather might say: the empirical existence of an ego is a condition through which continuous consciousness becomes possible. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 255.
But I cannot say that material things or spiritual things in themselves are of psychic nature, although it may be that there is no other kind of existence but a psychic one. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 255.
India, it seems to me, is still convinced of the possibility of metaphysical assertions. Perhaps she is right and perhaps not. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 255
Even as a child I had alchemical insights which would sound much more astonishing than anything I said about them in my libido book. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 275
James Hillman was asked by interviewer Cliff Bostock what he thought of Noll’s books on Jung. I hate them, Hillman replied. I think he’s a shit. ~James Hillman: Therapy and the Image, Creative Loafing
You rightly emphasize that man in my view is enclosed in the psyche (not in his psyche). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 556
When I was 3 years old I had my first anima-experience, the woman that was not my mother. It means a lot that escapes me for the time being. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 493
I would ask you to find the little book [Septem Sermones ad Mortuos,] a discreet resting place in your writing desk. I don’t want a profane hand to touch my memory of those limpid nights. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 34
I am essentially an empiricist and have discovered to my cost that when people do not understand me they think I have seen visions. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 122
Shame is a soul eating emotion. ~Carl Jung (purportedly; Citation Needed)
My mother drew my attention to Faust when I was about 15 years old. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 88.
Faust is out of this world and therefore it transports you; it is as much the future as the past and therefore the most living present. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 88.
The second part of it, the secretary-bird and the snake, has been correctly interpreted, in spite of the fact that the snake is not exactly Kundalini because the Kundalini serpent actually dissolves into light. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 95.
I’m terribly sorry X. has to suffer from cancer, in her case cancer really comes too early and it is a mean way of killing people anyhow. But nature is horrible in many respects. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 438.
When I treat Catholics who are suffering from neurosis I consider it my duty to lead them back to the bosom of the Church where they belong. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 191
Hegel seems to me a romantic thinker in contrast to Kant and hence a typical child of his time; and as a romantic he is already on the way to psychology. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 194
The actual persecution of the Jews in Germany is causing so much hatred that it is almost impossible for the smaller countries to keep their organization together because we are far outnumbered by the Germans. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 202.
Did you never ask yourself who my analyst is? Yet, when it comes to the last issue, we must be able to stand alone vis a vis the unconscious for better or worse. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 459.
We live not only inwardly, but also outwardly. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 455
So long as you keep to the physical side of the world, you can say pretty well anything that is more or less provable without incurring the prejudice of being unscientific, but if you touch on the psychological problem the little man, who also goes in for science, gets mad. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 177.
A “scream” is always just that – a noise and not music. ~ Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 107.
confess I am afraiI d of a long-drawn-out suffering. It seems to me as if I am ready to die, although as it looks to me some powerful thoughts are still flickering like lightnings in a summer night. Yet they are not mine, they belong to God, as everything else which bears mentioning. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 450.
It happens very often that your memory fails you in an almost diabolical way. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 262
For what we are stuck with we have a certain responsibility, namely for the way we act towards it, but not for the fact that it exists. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 193
Analysis is not only a “diagnosis” but rather an understanding and a moral support in the honest experimental attempt one calls “life.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol I, Page 47.
The transcendent function is not something one does oneself; it comes rather from experiencing the conflict of opposites. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 269
Eastern yoga is based upon man as he really is. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 97.
If I understand anything of the I Ching, then I should say it is the book that teaches you your own way and the all-importance of it. Not in vain has the book been the secret treasure of the sages. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 201
It may be said in passing that Chinese science is based on the principle of synchronicity, or parallelism in time, which is naturally regarded by us as superstition. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 178
Belief as a religious phenomenon cannot be discussed. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 125.
It seems to me, however, that when belief enters into practical life we are entitled to the opinion that it should be coupled with the Christian virtue of modesty, which does not brag about absoluteness but brings itself to admit the unfathomable ways of God which have nothing to do with the Christian revelation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 125.
God has never spoken to man except in and through the psyche, and the psyche understands it and we experience it as something psychic. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 98
God wants to be born in the flame of man’s consciousness, leaping ever higher. And what if this has no roots in the earth? If it is not a house of stone where the fire of God can dwell, but a wretched straw hut that flares up and vanishes. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 65-66
The unconscious is on no account an empty sack into which the refuse of consciousness is collected, as it appears to be in Freud’s view; it is the whole other half of the living psyche. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 143.
Your destiny is the result of the collaboration between the conscious and the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 283.
One can only say that it is advisable to approach every illness from the psychological side as well, because this may be extraordinarily important for the healing process. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 429
The materialistic premise is that the physical process causally determines the psychic process. The spiritualistic premise is the reverse of this. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 366.
Regarding organic illness (accidents, injuries, etc.) it can be stated with certainty that these things do at least have psychological syndromes, i.e., there is a concomitant psychic process which can sometimes also have an aetiological significance, so that it looks as though the illness were a psychic arrangement. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 429
I am indeed convinced that creative imagination is the only primordial phenomenon accessible to us, the real Ground of the psyche, the only immediate reality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 60
All the difficulties you overcome in such a fantasy are symbolic expressions of psychological difficulties in yourself, and inasmuch as you overcome them in your imagination you also overcome them in your psyche. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 109.
Switch off your noisy consciousness and listen quietly inwards and look at the images that appear before your inner eye or hearken to the words which the muscles of your speech apparatus are trying to form. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 82
I can’t wait for the dissertation “How is Death Possible?” or “The Philosophical Foundations of Death.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 273.
The tension between above and below [In Ancient Egypt] was undoubtedly extreme, hence the opposites could be held together only by means of equally rigid forms. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 259
The “duality” of the ruler is based on the primitive belief that the placenta is the brother of the new-born child, which as such often accompanies him throughout life in ghostly fashion, since it dies early and is ceremonially buried. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 259-260
The ka is probably a descendant of the placenta. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 260
The tension between above and below in ancient Egypt is in my opinion the real source of the Near Eastern saviour figures, whose patriarch is Osiris. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 260
The purpose of nearly all rebirth rites is to unite the above with the below. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 260
On the primitive level the totemistic rite of renewal is always a reversion to the half animal, half human condition of prehistoric times. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 260
But as you can see from the I Ching, heaven sometimes separates from the earth, thus producing a disorderly and unfavourable state of affairs. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 261
The possibility of the deepest insight existed at all times, but we were always too far away from it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 274.
A true understanding would say that there is no ground to cover and therefore no movement through space, but an inner awareness which cannot be expressed in spatial categories. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 275
All the same, I can very well imagine that for Jews living in Palestine the direct influence of the surroundings brings out the chthonic and ancient Jewish element in a much more pregnant form. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 251
It is clear that the devil has been up to his tricks again. As soon as one notices that one should say no more but withdraw into oneself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 252
Since we are bilingual in Switzerland my name is “Carl” as well as “Charles” (French), so there was not much of a mistake. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 219
It is true that I have insisted upon the difference between Jewish and Christian psychology since 1917, but Jewish authors have done the same long ago as well as recently. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 219
I am no anti-Semite. From all this I gained neither honours nor money, but I am glad that I could be of service to those in need. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 219
I have as little need to convince myself of how good the Catholic Church is for very many people. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 198
I have always known this as I had the advantage of a Christian education and have consequently never felt isolated or dried up. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 198
I am sincerely happy to know that you have found the atmosphere that agrees with you and that the meaning of the nearly two-thousand-year-old Christian religion has dawned upon you. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 198
It is a downright lie to quote me as saying that Jews are dishonest in analysis. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 161
The mere fact that I speak of a difference between Jewish and Christian psychology suffices to allow anyone to voice the prejudice that I am an anti-Semite. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 161
I have included in it an essay by a Jewish author on the psychology of the Old Testament, just to annoy the Nazis and all those who have decried me as an anti-Semite. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 163
I have the need to tell you once again of the special joy I felt yesterday evening when I saw how close we are in spirit to one another in our different ways. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 33
I would like to take this opportunity to rectify the error that I come from the Freudian school. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 122
I am a pupil of Bleuler’s and my experimental researches had already won me a name in science when I took up the cudgels for Freud and opened the discussion in real earnest in 1905. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 122
I am turning over and over in my mind the problem of antiquity. It’s a hard nut! ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 99
I have an idea that the Dionysian frenzy was a backwash of sexuality, a backwash whose historical significance has been insufficiently appreciated, essential elements of which overflowed into Christianity but in another compromise formation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 15
I don’t know whether I am writing you banalities or hieroglyphics. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 16
I found something very similar in Hindus, namely an extension or extensibility of consciousness into the subconscious mind which is not to be found or is at least very rare with non-Jews. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 223
There is a number of Jewish doctors who have studied with me, but the reason why you haven’t discovered them is that they are undiscoverable on account of their fear of being recognized as Jungians. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 224
As a matter of fact my first and most gifted pupils were Jews. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 224
One risks being labelled as anti-Semite or pro-Semite without being heard at all. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 224
I have not the faintest idea what “psyche” is in itself, yet, when I come to think and speak of it, I must speak of my abstractions, concepts, views, figures, knowing that they are our specific illusions. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 57
We have no idea of absolute reality, because “reality” is always something “observed.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 57
Jesus wants not to succumb to the temptation; then, thanks to the function that results from every conflict, a symbol appears: it is the idea of the Kingdom of Heaven, a spiritual kingdom rather than a material one. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 268
Two things are united in this symbol, the spiritual attitude of Christ and the devilish desire for power. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 268
Thus the encounter of Christ with the devil is a classic example of the transcendent function. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 268
You can find a detailed exposition of the transcendent function in Goethe’s Faust. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 268
The transcendent function is not something one does oneself; it comes rather from experiencing the conflict of opposites. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 269
In a certain sense the symbol has a life of its own which guides the subject and eases his task; but it cannot be invented or fabricated because the experience of it does not depend on our will. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 269
There can be no doubt that Dr. X.’s statements are projections of his “Jewish” anima. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 308
Watch your tongue, for it can sting. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 309
First we had (at the end of Oct.) a regrettable accident: my wife fell in the corridor (slipping on a carpet) and broke her right arm in the shoulder a nasty fracture indeed. I had her in the hospital for 2 months. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 539
This privatio boni business is odious to me on account of its dangerous consequences: it causes a negative inflation of man, who can’t help imagining himself, if not as a source of the [Evil], at least as a great destroyer, capable of devastating God’s beautiful creation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 540
I make no metaphysical assertions and even in my heart I am no Neo-Manichean; on the contrary I am deeply convinced of the unity of the self, as demonstrated by the mandala symbolism. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 541.
Hitler and Stalin go on representing a mere “accidental lack of perfection.” [within Privatio boni] ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 541.
Evil is-psychologically speaking-terribly real. It is a fatal mistake to diminish its power and reality even merely metaphysically. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 541
Evil verily does not decrease by being hushed up as a non-reality or as mere negligence of man. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 541.
God is the mystery of all mysteries, a real Tremendum. Good and Evil are psychological relativities. And as such quite real, yet one does not know what they are. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 541.
It seems to be the Hierosgamos motif: the cut-down tree has been brought into the cave of the mother, in this case: the hold of a ship. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 566.
If the miracle of the Assumptio is not a living and present spiritual event but consists of a physical phenomenon that is reported or only believed to have happened some 2000 years ago, then it has nothing to do with the spirit, or just as little as any parapsychological stunt of today. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 567.
A physical fact never proves the existence and reality of the spirit. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 567.
It is more than probable that the idea of the Assumptio did not begin its real life in apostolic times but considerably later. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 567.
The miracle of the Assumptio obviously began to operate noticeably from the VI century onwards only. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 567.
If the Assumptio means anything, it means a spiritual fact which can be formulated as the integration of the female principle into the Christian conception of the Godhead. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 567.
If the Assumptio is an essentially concrete historical fact, then it is no more a living spiritual experience. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 567.
When insisting on historicity you risk not only the most awkward and unanswerable questions, but you also help everybody to tum his eyes away from the essential idea to the realistic crudity of a merely physical phenomenon, as it is only physical phenomena that happen in a distinct place at a distinct time, whereas the spirit is eternal and everywhere. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 568.
If we designate the Assumptio as a fact in time and space we ought to add that it happens really in eternity and everywhere, and what we perceive of it through our senses is corruptible matter, i.e., we don’t see it, but we infer or believe in the idea. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 568.
In addition, a good acquaintance with the fundamental facts of the unconscious is to be found in Paracelsus’ esoteric doctrine, and it is very important, particularly for the treatment of neuroses, to be acquainted with the symbolic forms that are expressive of pathogenic contents. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 565
Paracelsus passed on his knowledge of the fundamental facts of the unconscious to his pupils (and especially to Gerard Dorn) but they were lost later, thanks to the rise of rationalism and scientific materialism. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 565
One’s 75th birthday is a moment when one looks back with one laughing and one lachrymose eye on the long path one has left behind, hoping also that it will be of some benefit to one’s fellows. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 562.
The unio mystica is more a dissolution of the ego in the divine Ground-a very different experience. [from the Hieros Gamos] ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 544.
Not only am I deeply indebted to psychiatry, but I have always remained close to it inwardly, since from the very beginning one general problem engrossed me: From what psychic stratum do the immensely impressive ideas found in schizophrenia originate? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 562.
It is generally overlooked that the psyche cannot of necessity be based only on the instinct of sexuality, but rests on the totality of the instincts, and that this basis is only a biological foundation and not the whole edifice. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 564.
Reducing the total psyche to its darkest beginnings not only devalues it but shifts the problem on to an Inadmissibly simple plane, rather as if one were to reduce man to a cell, which, highly complicated though it is, even in the form of an amoeba is constructed very much more simply than a man. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 564.
If you take the concept of prayer in its widest sense and if you include also Buddhist contemplation And Hindu meditation (as being equivalent to prayer), one can say that it is the most universal form of religious or philosophical concentration of the mind and thus not only one of the most original but also the most frequent means to change the condition of mind. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 558.
I would only like to draw your attention to one small discrepancy: seen in psychological perspective, the concept of the self cannot be described as a summum bonum. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 529
Your [J.B. Rhine’s] experiments have established the fact of the relativity of time, space, and matter with reference to the psyche beyond any doubt. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 495
My chief concern is the theoretical problem of the connection between the psyche and the time-space-continuum of microphysics. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 495
It is not only possible, but for certain reasons quite probable, that the collective unconscious coincides in a strange and utterly inconceivable way with objective events. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 533.
Owing to rather obvious reasons Protestant theologians are rather reticent and they don’t know yet whether I should be condemned as a heretic or depreciated as a mystic. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 382.
To give you an idea: I do my own cooking and chop my own wood and raise my own potatoes. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 419.
I always had a sort of hunch that whatever I had learnt about the unconscious was due to a somewhat similar but internal catastrophe in my psychic neighborhood and that the war outside was a repetition on the collective scale. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 380.
Although I was fully aware of the most incredible powers of evil lurking in the depths, I never expected such a gigantic outburst of abysmal horrors. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 380.
Parapsychology plays a subtle part in psychology because it lurks everywhere behind the surface of things. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 379.
I am always profoundly impressed by the riches of Greek mythology, which have hitherto been presented so paltrily. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 376.
Nor can one cite the supposed planetary arrangement of electrons round the atomic nucleus, as this is only a controversial model by means of which certain physicists have envisioned the mathematical relation between electrons and the atomic nucleus. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 533.
Owing to rather obvious reasons Protestant theologians are rather reticent and they don’t know yet whether I should be condemned as a heretic or depreciated as a mystic. As you know, mysticism and hereticism enjoy about the same bad reputation in Protestantism. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 382.
I have plumb forgotten my Greek as I have to read mainly Latin texts, Greek ones being something of a rarity in alchemy. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 305.
Kant’s categorical imperative is of course a philosophical touching up of a psychic fact which, as you have quite correctly seen, is unquestionably a manifestation of the anima. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 305.
My anima constantly repeats the saying: “The power of truth is great and will prevail”. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 305-306
Particularly here in Switzerland we have the feeling that we can only live vertically. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 303
When we go on holiday my wife and I push a two-wheeled cart ahead of us with the luggage, which is not so sad but uncommonly amusing. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 303
Meanwhile I would like an older edition of the Vulgate and Septuagint and should be grateful if you could get these texts for me. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 324
Depending on the peculiar nature of the case the most primitive therapeutic methods can achieve even better results than the most refined. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 324
Nor is it the task of theory to paint a picture of life, but rather to create a workmanlike language which is satisfied with conventional signs. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 324
Your dream unquestionably refers to the archetypal problem of the extrusion of the soul from the body. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 306
One is forced to conclude ‘that in your case the soul is only loosely seated in your body. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 306
However, the friendly lion in the dream seems to indicate that the looseness of the soul is not exactly desirable, since the lion compensates your condition in a very obvious way: the Zurich lion represents your localized instinct, firmly rooted in your earth, just as the lion’s soul-as with all animals -is securely fixed in its body. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 306
Moreover you seem prone to eczema, which not infrequently indicates that one is not properly inside one’s body. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 306
If you devote yourself, intentionally and intellectually, to dangerous problems such as the squaring of the circle, this is yet another indication of a tendency to get away from the body, because this problem symbolizes an irrational state of wholeness which cannot be contrived but can only be experienced. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 306.
It is as though you were defecating yourself out of the anus, and this is a topsy-turvy procedure since you really ought to be producing yourself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 306.
Somewhere there is a place where you are not making yourself felt, not creating yourself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 307
You are squeezing yourself out behind, so to speak, acting not in accordance with your instinct but in accordance with reflections or inclinations which are the very reverse of instinctively correct actions. You jump out of your skin, but backwards. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 307
The valley of darkness has to be gone through in reality and not in fantasy, otherwise one could spare oneself an infinite number of unpleasantnesses which are nevertheless important for life. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 307
I think, therefore, that if you keep as closely as possible to concrete reality and try to create yourself there and illuminate the darkness, you will be on a more normal road than when you engross yourself in squaring the circle as a substitute. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 307
Best thanks for your New Year letter, with its welcome news that the pebbles ejected by the volcano on whose edge I am sitting have landed somewhere. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 309
You have hit the mark absolutely: all of a sudden and with terror it became clear to me that I have taken over Faust as my heritage, and moreover as the advocate and avenger of Philemon and Baucis, who, unlike Faust the superman, are the hosts of the gods in a ruthless and godforsaken age. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 309
I would give the earth to know whether Goethe himself knew why he called the two old people “Philemon” and “Baucis.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 310
I often mention your [J.B. Rhine] work to people over here and I think it is of the greatest importance for the understanding of certain peculiar phenomena of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 321
In our practical work we come across peculiar telepathic influences which throw a most significant light on the relativity of space and time in our unconscious psyche. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 321-322
Hitler himself (from what I heard) is more than half crazy. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 278
Is it not a nice time when food reigns supreme? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 325
Nothing would be more sterile than to squeeze the whole world into a psychological straitjacket. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 113.
You are quite right; the main interest of my work is not concerned with the treatment of neurosis but rather with the approach to the numinous. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 377.
Wisdom is not and never has been something for the many, because foolishness forever will be the main thing the world craves for. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 200
One shouldn’t attach the dead to the living, otherwise they both get estranged from their proper spheres and are thrown into a state of suffering. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 53
All things pass away, graves are the milestones of existence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 569
When you can give up the crazy will to live and when you seemingly fall into a bottomless mist, then the truly real life begins I saw its entrance illuminated by a thousand small flames of coconut oil. I knew I was to enter the temple and I would reach full knowledge. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 357-358
But at this moment a messenger from the world (which by then was a very insignificant corner of the universe) arrived and said that I was not allowed to depart and at this moment the whole vision collapsed completely. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 357-358
Death is the hardest thing from the outside and as long as we are outside of it. But once inside you taste of such completeness and peace and fulfillment that you don’t want to return. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 357-358
The self in its divinity (i.e., the archetype) is unconscious of itself. It can become conscious only within our consciousness. And it can do that only if the ego stands firm. ~Carl Jung; Letters Vol. 1; 335-336.
Psychological treatment cannot rid you of the basic facts of your nature; it can only give you the necessary insight, and only to the extent that you are capable of it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 292.]
The ego wants explanation always in order to assert its existence. Try to live without the ego. Whatever must come to you, will come. Don’t worry! Don’t allow yourself to be led astray by the ravings of the animus. He will try every stunt to get you out of the realization of stillness, which is truly the Self. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1; Page 427.
You trust your unconscious as if it were a loving father. But it is nature and cannot be made use of as if it were a reliable human being. It is inhuman and it needs the human mind to function usefully for man’s purposes. Nature is an incomparable guide if you know how to follow her. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 283.
The figures in the unconscious could be explained by a long-lasting primeval matriarchy if only we knew for certain that it ever existed, just as the flood myths could be explained by the myth of Atlantis if only we knew that there ever was an Atlantis. Equally, the contents of the unconscious could be explained by reincarnation if we knew that there is reincarnation. ~ Carl Jung to Baroness Tinti, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 208-209.
Accordingly the capacity to nullify space and time must somehow inhere in the psyche, or, to put it another way, the psyche does not exist wholly in time and space. ~Carl Jung, Letters Volume I, Page 256.
It is very probable that only what we call consciousness is contained in space and time, and that the rest of the psyche. The unconscious exists in a state of relative spacelessness and timelessness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Volume I, Page 256.
On the whole my illness proved to be a most valuable experience which gave me the inestimable opportunity of a glimpse behind the veil. The only difficulty is to get rid of the body, to get quite naked and void of the world and the ego-will. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 355-357
For the psyche this means a relative eternality and a relative non-separation from other psyches, or a oneness with them. ~Carl Jung, Letters Volume I, Page 256.
Hence there is only one collective unconscious, which is everywhere identical with itself, from which everything psychic takes shape before it is Personalized, modified, assimilated, etc. by external influences. ~Carl Jung, Letters Volume I, Page 408.
Hence there is only one collective unconscious, which is everywhere identical with itself, from which everything psychic takes shape before it is Personalized, modified, assimilated, etc. by external influences. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 408.
Hence there is only one collective unconscious, which is everywhere identical with itself, from which everything psychic takes shape before it is Personalized, modified, assimilated, etc. by external influences. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 408.
We are cut off from our earth through more than two thousand years of Christian training. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 96.
I’m busy as usual and as often as I can I work in the garden to prepare a field for potatoes ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 288-289.
Rightness is not a category that can be applied to religion anyway. Religion consists of psychic realities which one cannot say are right or wrong. Are lice or elephants right or wrong? It is enough that they exist. ~Carl Jung, Letters Volume 1, Page 327.
…the fact is that free will only exists within the limits of consciousness. Beyond those limits there is mere compulsion. ~Carl Jung; Letters Volume 1, Page 227
Analysis is not only a “diagnosis” but rather an understanding and a moral support in the honest experimental attempt one calls “life.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 47
God needs man in to become conscious, just as he needs limitation in time and space. Let us therefore be for him limitation in time and space an earthly tabernacle. ~Carl Jung, Letters, Vol 1, Page 65.
Jesus-Mani-Buddha-Lao-tse are for me the four pillars of the temple of the spirit. ~Carl Jung, Letters, Vol 1, Page 65.
Bergson is quite right when he thinks of the possibility of a relatively loose connection between the brain and consciousness, because despite our ordinary experience the connection might be less tight than we suppose. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 76.
There is no reason why one shouldn’t suppose that consciousness could exist detached from a brain. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 76.
It is, as far as I know, the pack of cards [Tarot] originally used by the Spanish gypsies, the oldest cards historically known. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 77.
The Great Mother is impregnated by the loneliness of him that seeks her. ~Carl Jung to Hermann Hesse, Letters Vol 1, Pages 573-574.
A good book, like every proper human life, must have an ending. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol 1, Pages 573-574.
Through the self we are plunged into the torrent of cosmic events. Everything essential happens in the self and the ego functions as a receiver, spectator, and transmitter. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol 1, Pages 325-326.
I have never asserted, nor do I think I know, what the unconscious is in itself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 196.
It was like dying. I did not want to live and to return into this fragmentary, restricted, narrow, almost mechanical life, where you were subject to the laws of gravity and cohesion, imprisoned in a system of 3 dimensions and whirled along with other bodies in the turbulent stream of time. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 357-358
You have paid a salutary tribute to the earth with your illness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 49-50
Dreams are always beautiful when the development of the personality has to proceed via the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 46-47
The neurotic constitution demands a bit more sacrifice and a bit more effort and a bit more patience than does the normal. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 35-36
The incest barrier can no more be explained by reduction to the possibility of real incest than the animal cult can be explained by reduction to real bestiality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 25-27
Between Freud’s speaking and writing there is “a gulf fixed” which is very wide. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 13-14
It is difficult to understand that there are still Americans who do not realize what the world situation really is. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 301-302
I learnt to split stones in the Bollingen quarries and the masons also taught me a lot and I learnt their art relatively quickly with a certain native intelligence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 168
The problem of “anti-Semitism” has been thrown up for the psychotherapists but not for the political daily press. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 154-155
Nor was it ever my intention to characterize personalities, for which reason I did not put my description of the types at the beginning of the book; rather I tried to produce a clear conceptual scheme based on empirically demonstrable factors. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 129-130
Hence my typology aims, not at characterizing personalities, but at classifying the empirical material in relatively simple and clear categories, just as it is presented to a practising psychologist and therapist. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 129-130
I have never thought of my typology as a characterological method and have never applied it in this sense. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 129-130
In the last resort every individual alone has to win his battle, nobody else can do it for him. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 127
The mythological motifs have never yet been classified, as their name is legion. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 66-67
The negative relationship to the mother is always an affront to nature, unnatural. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 52-53
Your one-sided spiritual tendency is probably meant, for anyone whose stature requires the size of a continent is not so very far away from Father Heaven (Zeus). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 52-53
If you always do the next thing that needs to be done, you will go most safely and sure-footedly along the path prescribed by your unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 133.
The fact that astrology nevertheless yields valid results proves that it is not the apparent positions of the stars which work, but rather the times which are measured or determined by arbitrarily named stellar positions. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 139
Time thus proves to be a stream of energy filled with qualities and not, as our philosophy would have it, an abstract concept or precondition of knowledge. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 139.
One of the most important and difficult tasks in the individuation process is to bridge the distance between people. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 53.
In cases of inferior feeling, a trauma very often has pathological consequences in the realm of sensation, e.g., physical pain unaccompanied by feeling. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 54.
My exterior is in strange contrast to my spirit. When I am dead, nobody will think that this is the corpse of one with spiritual aspirations. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 59
My whole psychology is such that it can be accepted only by someone who is ready for it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 131.
I have found over and over again that it is not worthwhile speaking to an unprepared public. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 131.
I have heard indirectly how badly it goes with him [X], and from the talk I had with him in Vienna this catastrophic decline could be foreseen, as nobody can defy life’s laws with impunity. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 120.
As you have observed, I am also well aware of the difference between myth and revelation, having concerned myself solely with myths and never with revealed truths. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 123.
I have even found that men are far more irrational than animals. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 119
The existence of telepathy in time and space is still denied only by positive ignoramuses. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 117.
It is clear that timeless and spaceless perceptions are possible only because the perceiving psyche is similarly constituted. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 117.
Timelessness and spacelessness must therefore be somehow inherent in its nature, and this in itself permits us to doubt the exclusive temporality of the soul, or if you prefer, makes time and space appear doubtful. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 117.
I can only agree with you when you equate St. Francis with the essence of primitive religiosity, but even so a special illumination is needed for a person living in more highly developed centuries to become as simple again as a primitive. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 118
Equally I share your conviction that genuine religiosity is the best cure for all psyche suffering. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 118
The Catholic Church must hold fast to what still remains from earlier times of living religiosity; I on the contrary must do pioneer work in a world where everything pristine has vanished. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 118
There lies the gravamen of the book, [Psychological Types] though most readers have not noticed this because they are first of all led into the temptation of classifying everything typologically, which in itself is a pretty sterile undertaking. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 186.
So it is not the case at all that I begin by classifying my patients into types and then give them the corresponding advice, as a colleague of mine whom God has endowed with a peculiar wit once asserted. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 186.
I’m busy as usual and I am going to give a seminar at the ETH in spring for the most elementary beginners, i.e., very young students who know nothing whatever. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 187
If things are going on like this, I shall in a few years’ time be giving a seminar in a nursery which I think would be still more profitable because this kind of teaching forces me to the utmost simplicity of expression. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 187
The feminine mind is pictorial and symbolic and comes close to what the ancients called Sophia. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 189
The psoriasis of the anima figure is due to certain contents which the anima has within her, as though in the blood, and which sweat out on the surface. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 189
The puerilization of the conscious attitude should not be understood as a regression; it is often necessary in order to produce an unprejudiced, naive, receptive consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 189
There are things which are simply incomprehensible to the tough brains of our race and time. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 190
Those are the reasons why I prefer not to communicate too many of my experiences. They would confront the scientific world with too upsetting problems. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 190
I would strongly advise you to do this bit of analysis with a woman, since experience has shown that analysis with a man always has an effect on the animus, which for its part loosens up the personality again, whereas analysis with a woman tends on the contrary to have a “precipitating” effect. C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 190-191
I would be very chary of the assumption of “make-believe.” I have good reasons for doubting whether there is such a thing in dreams at all. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 185-186
If, on the other hand, people who ordinarily dream very little suddenly get into a phase of dreaming very much, this is a sure sign that an overloading of the unconscious has set in, usually because there is a problematical situation which the dreamer has tended to overlook or has not mastered. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 182
As you know, in olden times the ancestral souls lived in pots in the kitchen. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 168
Incidentally, if I were a Jew-eater I would hardly bring out books together with Jews as I have just done or introduce books by Jewish authors. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 167
No one is more deeply convinced than I that the Jews are a people with a culture. Between culture and cultural form there is, as we know, an essential difference. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 167
For many years I’m closely following the progress of mediumistic research, but I must say that I hardly ever came across a more wonderful case of mediumism than the Margery case. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 166
It is no pleasure to be well known. You are then like a city on a mountain and cannot remain hidden. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 157
Its development in Germany will also be crucial for us. Freud once told me, very rightly: “The fate of psychotherapy will be decided in Germany.” Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 156.
What with the hue and cry against me it has been completely forgotten that by far the greatest number of psychotherapists in Germany are Jews. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 156
People do not know, nor is it said in public, that I have intervened personally with the regime on behalf of certain Jewish psychotherapists. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 156
I am absolutely not an opponent of the Jews even though I am an opponent of Freud’s. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 154.
I criticize him [Freud] because of his materialistic and intellectualistic and-last but not least-irreligious attitude and not because he is a Jew. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 154.
Infinite nuances are needed if justice is to be done to human beings. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 155.
My relation with Germany is very recent and is due to idiotic altruism and not at all to political sentiment. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 155
Personally a creative man can be an introvert, but in his work he is an extravert and vice versa. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 301.
His [Freud] general way of living was a genuinely introverted style, whereas Adler, whom I met as a young man, being of my age, gave me the impression of a neurotic introvert, in which case there is always a doubt as to the definite type. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 302.
As you know, Freud himself was neurotic his life-long. I myself analyzed him for a certain very disagreeable symptom which in consequence of the treatment was cured. That gave me the idea that Freud as· well as Adler underwent a change in their personal type. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 301.
Adler, I suppose, was personally never a real introvert, therefore as soon as he had a certain success he began to develop an extraverted behaviour. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 302.
As a matter of fact Freud was the far greater mind than Adler. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 302.
Either you begin your life with the shadow (putting the wrong foot forward) and later on you continue with your real personality, or vice versa. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 301-302
But the task of the Church is not the same as that of psychotherapy. The Church means serving the community, therapy serves the individual. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 235
Your honest words will be a thorn in the flesh for many. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 235
Very often certain apparently impossible intentions of the shadow are mere threats due to an unwillingness on the part of the ego to enter upon a serious consideration of the shadow. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 234.
As a matter of fact, you have to heat up such conflicts until they rage in full swing so that the opposites slowly melt together. It is a sort of alchemistic procedure rather than a rational choice and decision. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 234.
Every real solution is only reached by intense suffering. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 247.
I myself have personally treated very many Jews and know their psychology in its deepest recesses, so I can recognize the relation of their racial psychology to their religion, but it would be quite beyond me to relate Islam or the ancient Egyptian religion to its devotees as I lack any intimate knowledge of Arab and Egyptian psychology. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 233
Your dream is really the stuff artists work with. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 232
Action as we know can take place only in the third dimension, and the fourth dimension is that which actually wants to grow into our conscious three-dimensional world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 232
I find him [Kierkegaard] simply insupportable and cannot understand, or rather, I understand only too well, why the theological neurosis of our time has made such a fuss over him. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 231.
It is perfectly clear to me that everything I do is pioneer work which has still to be followed by a real laying of foundations, but there are gratifying signs that others are beginning to make forays into this territory. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 232.
I’m therefore quite willing to help in your attempt in this direction, but I refuse in your own interest to plague myself with your material which is only helpful when you acquire its understanding by your own effort. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 459
We are all terribly sorry for England and France. If they should lose the war, we also shall not escape the reign of the Antichrist. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 282
I myself am too old to do active service, but I have been asked to “stand for Parliament.” That means, a large group of people seem to want me as a member of the Conseil National (which would be the House of Commons in England.) ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 277.
The Germans as far as I know them are partially terrified and partially drunk with blood and victory. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 278.
If ever there was a mental epidemic it is the actual mental condition in Germany. Hitler himself (from what I heard) is more than half crazy. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 278.
There is not the ghost of a plan for my going to America during the war. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 276
We naturally hope not to be implicated in the war, but there is only one conviction in Switzerland, that if it has to be, it will be on the side of the Allies. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 276
The symbolic form of love (animus-anima) shrinks from nothing, least of all from sexual union. Carl Jung, Letters Volume 1, Pages 213-214.
There is no doubt and no hesitation; the unanimous conviction in Switzerland is that Germany has lost her national honour to an unspeakable degree, and the Germans inasmuch as they still think know it too. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 276
What the public still doesn’t know and can’t get into its head is that the collective man is subhuman, nothing but a beast-man, as was clearly demonstrated by the exquisite bestiality of the young German fighters during the Blitzkrieg in Poland. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 282
Any organization in which the voice of the individual is no longer heard is in danger of degenerating into a subhuman monster. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 282
So for the time being we need not worry about future congresses, delegate meetings, translators, etc. Hitler is reaching his climax and with him the German psychosis. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 275-276
Man has to cope with the problem of suffering. The Oriental wants to get rid of suffering by casting it off. Western man tries to suppress suffering with drugs. But suffering has to be overcome, and the only way to overcome it is to endure it. We learn that only from him.” [And here he pointed to the Crucified.] ~ Carl Jung, Letters, Vol 1, Page 236.
A political situation is the manifestation of a parallel psychological problem in millions of individuals. This problem is largely unconscious (which makes it a particularly dangerous one!) ~Carl Gustav Jung, Letters, Vol 1, Page 535.
The unconscious is useless without the human mind. It always seeks its collective purposes and never your individual destiny. ~Carl Jung; Letters; Vol. 1; Page 283.
There are always two standpoints and there always will be: namely, the standpoint of the social leader, who, insofar as he is an idealist, sees the general welfare in the more or less total suppression of the individual; and the spiritual leader, who looks for improvement only in the individual. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 226
When the confusion is at its height a new revelation comes, i.e., at the beginning of the fourth month of world history. ~Carl Jung, Letters, Vol. I, Page 12.
On this empirical foundation every religion has erected its temple, and the two intolerant ones among them, Christianity and Islam, vie with each. other in raising the totalitarian claim that their temple is the only right one. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 346
Then we have the exercises of Loyola, stemming from Islam. All these various Christian methods of contemplation and meditation have one thing in common: the image to be meditated upon as well as the kind of meditation are presented to the candidate from outside. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 416
Carl Jung: “Collected Letters Vol. II”
Letters of C. G. Jung: Volume 2, 1951-1961
Solitude is for me a fount of healing which makes my life worth living. Talking is often torment for me, and I need many days of silence to recover from the futility of words. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol II, Page 363.
It is just as well that she got all her psychology from books, as she would have busted every decent and competent analyst. I sincerely hope that she is going on dreaming of winners, because such people need money to keep them afloat. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 24
Every doctor in the tropics would like nothing better than to build his own hospital on his lonely outpost, but unhappily he hasn’t Schweitzer’s talent for using money-making lectures and soul-stirring organ recitals for this purpose. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 140
Research of this kind requires teamwork and money, and we have neither at present. Above all, superior intelligence and psychological competence are needed. Both are hard to find. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 538
The intellect can make its profound statement that there is no absolute Truth. But if somebody loses his money, his mo11ey is lost and this is as good as an absolute Truth, which means that he will not be consoled by intellectual profundity. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 595
Dear Miss Oakes, January 31, 1956
As you can imagine, I am quite astonished to hear about your project although I am fully aware of the fact that an imaginative person could easily write not one but several volumes about my stone. All the volumes I had written are “in nuce” contained in it. The mandala itself is just a sort of hieroglyph, hinting at and trying to express a vast background in a most abbreviated form. Your method to realize its contents through your subjective experience is unexceptionable, as a matter of fact the only correct way of reading its message. That is just the virtue of symbolic expression that it can be read in many different ways by many different individuals. And if they are honest, the reading will be correct. Thus, as you see, I am prepared for the shock to get the MS about a thing most emphatically belonging to my innermost self. I only ask you to be patient with the slow ways of old age-Deo concedente you will get an answer. -Inshallah! [If God Wills It.] ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 17-18
Dear Miss Oakes, February 2, 1956
I have read your meditation about the stone with much interest. Your method of reading its messages is adequate and in this case the only one yielding positive results. You understand the stone as a statement about a more or less limitless world of thought-images. I quite agree with your view. One can read the symbols like that. When I hewed the stone I did not think, however. I just brought into shape what I saw on its face. Sometimes you express yourself (in the MS), as if my symbols and my text were sort of a confession of a belief. Thus it looks as if I were moving in the vicinity of Theosophy. In America, especially, one blames me for my so-called mysticism. Since I don’t claim at all to be the happy proprietor of metaphysical truths, I should prefer that you attribute to my symbols the same tentativeness which characterizes your explanatory attempts. You see, I have no religious or otherwise convictions about my symbols. They can change tomorrow. They are mere allusions, they hint at something, they stammer and often lose their way. They try only to point in a certain direction, viz. to those dim horizons beyond which lies the secret of existence. They are just no Gnosis, no metaphysical assertions. They are partly even futile or dubious attempts at pronouncing the ineffable. Their number therefore is infinite and the validity of each is to be doubted. They are nothing but humble attempts to formulate, to define, to shape the inexpressible. “Wo fass ich Dich, unendliche Namur?” (Faust) It is not a doctrine, but a mere expression of and a reaction to the experience of an ineffable mystery. There is one point more I want to mention: the stone is not a product only of thought images, but just as much of feeling and local atmosphere i.e. of the specific ambiente of the place. The stone belongs to its secluded place between the lake and hill where it expresses the beata solitudo and the genius loci the spell of the chosen and walled-in spot. It could be nowhere else and cannot be thought of or properly understood without the secret web of threads that relate to its surroundings. Only there in its solitude it can say: Orphanus sum and only there it makes sense. It is there for its own sake and only seen by a few. Under such conditions only the stone will whisper its misty lore of ancient roots and ancestral lives. Thank you for letting me see your typescript. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages, 18-19
I don’t overlook God’s fearful greatness, but I should consider myself a coward and immoral if I allowed myself to be deterred from asking questions. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 61
It is unfortunately true: (the human) has and holds a mystery in his hands and at the same time is contained in his mystery. What can he proclaim? Himself or God? Or neither? The truth is that he doesn’t know who he is talking of, God or himself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 255
I can understand modern works of art only as idols from the underworld, and they become accessible to me only through a knowledge of the psychology of the unconscious. They do not affect me aesthetically. It may very well be that my attitude is that of a Philistine, but God knows I can’t find them beautiful. Perhaps other centuries will, in which case I am thankful to the Creator that man doesn’t live for 200 years, otherwise he would suddenly find himself in an age in which he would choke to death. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 114-115
Without thorough knowledge of ‘good and evil,’ ego and shadow, there is no recognition of the Self. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 154
It is quite possible that we look at the world from the wrong side and that we might find the right answer by changing our point of view and looking at it from the other side, i.e., not from outside, but from inside. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol.. II, Page 580
For several years now I have been lecturing about the process of individuation. First I gave an account of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra,1 then of two Buddhist treatises concerning the attainment of Buddahood. The third course was about the Exercitia Spiritualia of St. Ignatius. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 300
The four classic Yoga Sutras compiled and commented on by Patanjali, whose historical personality is still controversial. The first three Sutras may date from the 2nd cent. B.C., the fourth is apparently later (cf. Zimmer, Philosophies of India, p. 282). The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali represent a philosophical systematization of ancient Yoga theories and practices. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 300, Footnote 1
The world beyond conscious comprehension is a reality, an experiential fact. We simply cannot understand it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 435
We can in imagination and belief go beyond the psyche, just as in fantasy we can go beyond the three-dimensional world. But we can have immediate knowledge only of the psychic ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 487
In the end you have no alternative but to take the conflicts on yourself by ceasing to identify now with one side and now with the other. You become what happens in the middle. Then you are in the flow, and for this you need the high heart of the warrior. . .. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 291
There is great excitement in the Catholic church and much discussion about the new dogma [Assumption of Mary.] am just reading about it. The pope has caught them neatly at their own game of fostering creeds that have no foundation in the scriptures. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 30-31
ANIMUS, the other, the ANIMA” (London, 1911, p. 133).] To begin with I did not have the feeling at all that I was guilty of plagiarism with my [anima/animus] theory, but in the last 5 years … I have discovered … traces of it also in the old alchemists … I can only think that Laurence Sterne drew upon the secret teachings (presumably Rosicrucian) of his time. They contain the Royal Secret of the King and Queen, who were none other than the animus and anima, or Deus and Dea. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 248
… for the archetypes are universal and belong to the collective psyche over which the ego has no control. Thus animus and anima are images representing archetypal figures which mediate between consciousness and the unconscious. Though they can be made conscious they cannot be integrated into the ego-personality, since as archetypes they are also autonomous. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 342
Surveying the sum of experiences of this kind, you come to the conclusion that there is something like an “absolute knowledge” which is not accessible to consciousness but probably is to the unconscious, though only under certain conditions … the unconscious seems to have access to this “absolute knowledge” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 18
The anima, being psychologically the female counterpart of the masculine consciousness, based upon the minority of female genes in a masculine body … ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 483
Take for instance animus and anima. No philosopher in his senses would invent such irrational and clumsy ideas. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 192
I am a psychologist and empiricist, and for me the meaning of life does not lie in annulling it for the sake of an alleged “possibility of transcendental existence” which nobody knows how to envisage. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 381
We are men and not gods. The meaning of human development is to be found in the fulfilment of this life. It is rich enough in marvels. And not in detachment from this world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 381
How can I fulfil the meaning of my life if the goal I set myself is the “disappearance of individual consciousness”? What am I without this individual consciousness of mine? Even what I have called the “self” functions only by virtue of an ego which hears the voice of that greater being. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 381
But science cannot possibly establish that, or to what extent, this unknowable substrate is in both cases God. This can be decided only by dogmatics or faith, as for instance in Islamic philosophy (Al-Ghazzali), which explained gravitation as the will of Allah. This is Gnosticism with its characteristic overstepping of epistemological barriers. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 54
The myth goes on, now as before, as the Assumptio proves, which obviously belongs to the Christian world of ideas and not to that of Islam or Buddhism. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 67
And with-it Christ becomes a formulable psychological experience: the self is a living person and has always been there. It is an insight upon which Hindu philosophy the equivalent of Western theology), Buddhism, Taoism, mystical Islamic sects, and Christianity are all agreed. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 84
The depth of the psyche, the unconscious, is not made by man but is divinely created nature, which should on no account be reviled by man even though it causes him the greatest difficulties. Its fire, which “refines” us “in the furnace of affliction,” is according to Isaiah 48:10 the divine will itself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 236-237
I think all forms of ESP (telepathy, precognition, etc.) including [psychokinesis] have essentially the same underlying principle, viz. the identity of a subjective and an objective arrangement coinciding in time. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 180-181
How does the self-complex compare with the Lapis Philosophorum in Hermetic philosophy and with the Christ-figure in patristic allegories, with Al Chadir in Islamic tradition, with Tifereth in the Kabbalah, with Mithras, Attis, Odin, Krishna, and so on? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 571
Woman is world and fate, that is why she is so important to the man. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page xxxii
Most people cannot reach their destinies anyway without a streak of craziness, and so long as they haven’t it is better not to exorcize their demons. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 47
My modus procedendi is naturally empirical: how to give a satisfactory description of the phenomenon “Christ” from the standpoint of psychological experience? The existing statements about Christ are, in part, about an empirical man, but for the other and greater part about a mythological God-man. Out of these different statements you can reconstruct a personality who, as an empirical man, was identical with the traditional Son of Man type, as presented in the then widely read Book of Enoch. Wherever such identities occur, characteristic archetypal effects appear, that is, numinosity and synchronistic phenomena, hence tales of miracles are inseparable from the Christ figure. The former explains the irresistible suggestive power of his personality, for only the one who is “gripped” has a “gripping” effect on others; the latter occur chiefly in the field of force of an archetype and, because of their aspatial and atemporal character, are acausal, i.e., “miracles” …. The (Ethiopic) Book of Enoch, 2nd1st cent. B.C., the most important of the apocryphal or pseudo-apocryphal Biblical writings. (There is also a Slavonic Book of Enoch and a Book of the Secrets of Enoch.) In Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English, II (1913). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 21
First of all, the regression that occurs in the rebirth or integration process is in itself a normal phenomenon inasmuch as you observe it also with people that don’t suffer from any kind of psychopathic ailment. When it is matter of a schizoid condition, you observe very much the same, but with the difference that there is a marked tendency of the patient to get stuck in the archetypal material. In this case, the rebirth process is repeated time and again. This is the reason why the classical schizophrenia develops stereotype conditions. Up to a certain point, you have the same experience with neurotic individuals. This is so because the archetypal material has a curious fascinating influence which tries to assimilate the individuals altogether. They are tempted to identify with any of the archetypal figures characteristic of the rebirth process. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 148
For this reason schizophrenic cases retain nearly always a certain markedly childish behaviour. You can observe approximately the same with neurotic patients; either they develop inflations on account of identification with the archetypal figures, or they develop a childish behavior on account of the identity with the divine child. In all these cases the real difficulty is to free the patients from the fascination. Schizoid cases as well as neurotic ones very often repeat their personal infancy story. This is a favourable sign in so far as it is an attempt to grow up into the world again as they had done before, viz, in their infancy. They are children again after rebirth exactly as you say happened in the Taurobolia. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 148.
Astrology is a naïvely projected psychology in which the different attitudes and temperaments of man are represented as gods and identified with planets and zodiacal constellations. While studying astrology I have applied it to concrete cases many times. There are remarkable coincidences, e.g., the position of Mars in the zenith in the famous horoscope of Wilhelm II, the so-called “Friedenskaiser.” This position is said already in a medieval treatise to mean always a casus ab alto, a fall from the height. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol II, Pages 463-463
The ruler of my birth, old Saturnus, slowed down my maturation process to such an extent that I became aware of my own ideas only at the beginning of the second half of my life, i.e., exactly with 36 years. I beg your pardon for using old astrological metaphors. “Astrology” is another of those “random phenomena” wiped off the desk by the idol of the average, which everybody believes to be reality itself while it is a mere abstract. Soon a little book of mine which I have published with the physicist Prof. W. Pauli will come out in English. It is even more shocking than Job, but this time to the scientist, not the theologian. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 232-233
The [astrological] experiment [included in “Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle”] is most suggestive to a versatile mind, unreliable in the hands of the unimaginative, and dangerous in the hands of a fool, as intuitive methods always are. If intelligently used the experiment is useful in cases where it is a matter of an opaque structure. It often provides surprising insights. The most definite limit of the experiment is lack of intelligence and literal-mindedness of the observer. It is an intelligent aperçu like the shape of the hand or the expression of the face –things of which a stupid and unimaginative mind can make nothing and from which a superstitious mind draws the wrong conclusions. Astrological “truths” as statistical results are questionable or even unlikely . . .The superstitious use (prediction of the future or statement of facts beyond psychological possibilities) is false. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 463-364
Astrology differs very much from alchemy, as its historical literature consists merely of different methods of casting a horoscope and of interpretation, and not of philosophical texts as is the case in alchemy. There is no psychological explanation of astrology yet, on account of the fact that the empirical foundation in the sense of a science has not yet been laid. The reason for this is that astrology does not follow the principle of causality, but depends, like all intuitive methods, on acausality. Undoubtedly astrology today is flourishing as never before in the past, but it is still most unsatisfactorily explored despite very frequent use. It is an apt tool only when used intelligently. It is not at all foolproof and when used by a rationalistic and narrow mind it is a definite nuisance. ~Carl Jung, Letters Volume II, Pages 463-464
Where your fear is, there is your task!!! ~Carl Jung, Letters Volume II, Page 206
I found your differential definition of the historical and psychological approach [of Jung’s work, treated in Schmid’s rectoral address of 1957, entitled “Recent Aspects of Spiritual History”] most illuminating, and I can only agree with what you say. I must add, however, that this applies only to a psychology which is still exclusively concerned with culture-promoting personalities and is therefore restricted to the sphere of individual phenomena. This is an aspect of psychology which affords us the greatest insight and is at the same time the unavoidable path leading down to the deeper levels from which those biological masterpieces we call personalities are produced. At these greater depths more general laws become discernible and more comprehensive figures stand out which eliminate the divisive factor of individual development and give psychology a homogeneity or inner coherence which raises it to the rank of a biological science. By these deeper levels I mean the determining archetypes which are supradordinate to, or underlie, individual development and presumably are responsible for the supreme meaning of individual life. Seen from this level, not only is psychological experience a continuum, but the psychological approach also enables us to gain some knowledge of the inner connection between historical events. The archetypes have a life of their own which extends through the centuries and gives the aeons their peculiar stamp. Perhaps I might draw your attention to my historical contribution in Aion, where I have attempted to outline the evolutionary history of the Anthropos, which begins with the earliest Egyptian records. The material I have presented there may serve to illustrate these remarks of mine. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 345
Sitting in the central mussel-shell, we [the Swiss] are the “sons of the mother.” Hence the old astrological tradition says that our zodiacal sign is Virgo. However, there is no unanimity on this score, since the other version says that our sign is Taurus. It is a virile, creative sign, but earthly like Virgo. This ancient psychological insight expresses the fact that what is enclosed in the mother is a germinating seed that will one day burst through. . .. The stolidity, inaccessibility, obstinacy, and whatever else of the kind the Swiss are accused of are all marks of the feminine element Virgo. The union of and alludes to the principium individuationis as a supreme union of opposites . . . ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, 25, Page 419
Astrology is not a mantic method but appears to be based on proton radiation (from the sun). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 22-23.
All the grapes of the same site produce about the same wine. This is the truth stated by astrology and experience since time immemorial. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 353-355.
The fact, however, is that our whole astrological determination of time does not correspond to any actual constellation in the heavens because the vernal equinox has long since moved out of Aries into Pisces and from the time of Hipparchus has been artificially set at 0° Aries. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 428-430.
Consequently the correlations with the planetary houses are purely fictitious, and this rules out the possibility of a causal connection with the actual positions of the stars, so that the astrological determination of time is purely symbolic. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 428-430.
Astrology is a naively projected psychology in which the different attitudes and temperaments of man are represented as gods and identified with planets and zodiacal constellations. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 463-464
There is no psychological exposition of astrology yet, on account of the fact that the empirical foundation in the sense of a science has not yet been laid. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 463-464
As a rule, you haven’t to take care of making patients revive their infantile reminiscences; generally they produce it all by themselves, because it is an unavoidable mechanism, and, as I said, a teleological attempt to grow up again. If you go quietly along with the material the patients produce, you will see that they can’t help getting into their infantile reminiscences and habits and ways, and that they project particularly the parental images. Wherever there is a transference, you get unavoidably involved and integrated into the patient’s family atmosphere. The insistence of the Freudians upon making people revive their past simply shows that in the Freudian analysis people don’t naturally take to living their past again, simply because they have resistance against the analyst. If you let the unconscious have its natural way, then you may be sure everything the patient needs to know will be brought up, and you may be equally sure that everything you bring out from the patient by insistence on theoretical grounds will not be integrated into the patient’s personality, at least not as a positive value, but maybe as a lasting resistance. Did it never occur to you that in my analysis we talked very little of “resistance,” while in the Freudian analysis it is the term that most frequently occurs? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 148.
When it comes to schizoid patients, there of course the difficulty of liberating them from the grip of the unconscious is much greater than in ordinary neurotic cases. Often they can’t find their way back from their archetypal world to the equivalent personal infantile world where there would be a chance for liberation. Not in vain Christ insists upon “becoming like unto children,” which means a conscious resolution to accept the attitude of the child as long as such an attitude is demanded by the circumstances. Since it is always the problem of accepting the shadow, it needs the simplicity of a child to submit to such a seemingly impossible task. So when you find that the rebirth process shows a tendency to repeat itself, you must realize that the fascination of the archetypal material has still to be overcome, perhaps because your help has been insufficient or the patient’s attitude was unfavourable to it. But this aetiological question matters little. You simply must try again to convert the archetypal fascination into a child-like simplicity. There are of course many cases where our help is insufficient or comes too late, but that is so in all branches of medicine. I always try to follow the path of nature and I avoid as much as possible the application of theoretical viewpoints, and I have never regretted this principle. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 149
Most of your psychologists, as it looks to me, are still in the 18th century inasmuch as they believe that the human psyche is tabula rasa at birth, while all somewhat differentiated animals are born with specific instincts. Man’s psyche seems to be less [differentiated] than a weaver bird’s or a bee’s. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 150
Your suggestion that I should tell you how Answer to Job came to be written sets me a difficult task, because the history of this book can hardly be told in a few words. I have been occupied with its central problem for years. Many different sources nourished the stream of its thoughts, until one day and after a long reflection the time was ripe to put them into words. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 281.
The most immediate cause of the book being written is perhaps to be found in certain problems discussed in my book Aion, especially the problems of Christ as a symbolic figure and of the antagonism Christ-Antichrist, represented in the traditional zodiacal symbolism of the two fishes. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 281
In connection with the discussion of these problems and of the doctrine of Redemption, I criticized the idea of the privatio boni as not agreeing with the psychological findings. Psychological experience shows that whatever we call “good” is balanced by an equally substantial “bad” or “evil.” If “evil” is a nonexistent then whatever there is must needs be “good.” Dogmatically, neither “good” nor “evil” can be derived from man, since the “Evil One” existed before man as one of the “Sons of God.” The idea of the privatio boni began to play a role in the Church only after Mani. Before this heresy, Clement of Rome taught that God rules the world with a right and a left hand, the right being Christ, the left Satan. Clement’s view is clearly monotheistic, as it unites the opposites of God. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 281
Later Christianity, however, is dualistic, inasmuch as it splits off one half of the opposites, personified in Satan, and he is eternal in his state of damnation. The crucial question of (whence evil?) forms the point de départ of the Christian theory of Redemption. It is therefore of prime importance. If Christianity claims to be a monotheism, it becomes unavoidable to assume the opposites as being contained in God. But then we are confronted with a major religious problem: the problem of Job. It is the aim of my booklet to point out its historical evolution since the time of Job down through the centuries to the most recent symbolic phenomena like the Assumptio Mariae, etc. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 282
Moreover the study of medieval natural philosophy [alchemy]of the greatest importance to psychology made me try to find an answer to the question: what image of god did those old philosophers have? Or rather: how should the symbols which supplement their image of God be understood? All this pointed to a complexio oppositorum and thus recalled again the story of Job to my mind: Job who expected help from God against God. This most peculiar fact presupposes a similar conception of the opposites in God. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 282
The “Christ archetype” is a false concept, as you say. Christ is not an archetype but a personification of the archetype. This is reflected in the idea of the Anthropos, the homo maximus or Primordial Man (Adam Kadmon). In India it is Purusha, and in China Chên-jên (the whole or true man) as a goal to be attained. Purusha as creator sacrifices himself in order to bring the world into being: God dissolves in his own creation. (This thought occurs in a modern dream.) The Incarnation results from Christ “emptying himself of divinity” and taking the form of a slave. Thus he is in bondage to man as the demiurge is in bondage to the world. (Concerning the bondage of the creator to his creature, cf. Answer to Job, his identification with the two monsters and his inability to understand man). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 304
The spiritual (as contrasted with the worldly) Messiah, Christ, Mithras, Osiris, Dionysus, Buddha are all visualizations or personifications of the irrepresentable archetype which, borrowing from Ezekiel and Daniel, I call the Anthropos. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 305
Bernet’s book is illogical because he simply cannot understand that we are not speaking of God himself but only of an image we have of him. Through this epistemological slipperiness theology gets caught in its own toils. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 305
If it was God’s purpose to try us, why then must an innocent child suffer? This question touches on a problem that is clearly answered in the Book of Job. Yahweh’s amorality or notorious injustice changes only with the Incarnation into the exclusive goodness of God. This transformation is connected with his becoming man and therefore exists only if it is made real through the conscious fulfillment of God’s will in man. If this realization does not occur, not only the Creator’s amorality is revealed but also his unconsciousness. With no human consciousness to reflect themselves in, good and evil simply happen, or rather, there is no good and evil, but only a sequence of neutral events, or what the Buddhists call the Nidhana chain, the uninterrupted causal concatenation leading to suffering, old age, sickness, and death. Buddha’s insight and the Incarnation in Christ break the chain through the intervention of the enlightened human consciousness, which thereby acquires a metaphysical and cosmic significance. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 305
In the light of this realization, the mishap changes into a happening which, if taken to heart, allows us to glimpse deeply into the cruel and pitiless imperfections of Creation and also into the mystery of the Incarnation. The happening then turns into that felix culpa which Adam brought on himself by his disobedience. Suffering, Meister Eckhart says, is the “swiftest steed that bears you to perfection.” The boon of increased self-awareness is the sufficient answer even to life’s suffering, otherwise it would be meaningless and unendurable. Though the suffering of the Creation which God left imperfect cannot be done away with by the revelation of the good God’s will to man, yet it can be mitigated and made meaningful. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 311.
‘Rilke drew from the same deep springs as I did – the collective unconscious. He as poet and visionary. I as a psychologist and empiricist’ ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 381–2
The “secret of life” is my life, which is enacted round about me, my life and my death; for when the vine has grown old it is torn up by the roots. All the tendrils that would not bear grapes are pruned away. Its life is remorselessly cut down to its essence, and the sweetness of the grape is turned into wine, dry and heady, a son of the earth who serves his blood to the multitude and causes the drunkenness which unites the divided and brings back the memory of possessing all and of the kingship, a time of loosening, and a time of peace. There is much more to follow, but it can no longer be told. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 514-515
I have appeared in the world, if that is good for me. My name enjoys an existence quasi-independent of myself. My real self is actually chopping wood in Bollingen and cooking the meals, trying to forget the trial of an eightieth birthday. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 270
Since man’s nature is temperamentally set against wisdom, it is incumbent upon us to pay its price by what seems foolish to us. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II Page 306
Understood as a psychological phenomenon, UFOs compensate our insecurity in this world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 492
It Where you are not conscious, there can obviously be no freedom. Through the analysis of the unconscious, you increase the amount of freedom is always important to have something to bring into a relationship, and solitude is often the means by which you acquire it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 139
I quite agree with you: it is not easy to reach utmost poverty and simplicity. But it meets you, unbidden, on the way to the end of this existence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 512.
What you think of as a few days of spiritual communion would be unendurable for me with anyone, even my closest friends. The rest is silence! This realization becomes clearer every day as the need to communicate dwindles. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 363.
Individuation does not only mean that man has become truly human as distinct from animal, but that he is to become partially divine as well. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 316.
That [Individuation] means practically that he becomes adult, responsible for his existence, knowing that he does not only depend on God, but that God also depends on man. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 316.
As for instance the ordinary physician neither imagines nor hopes to make of his patient an ideal athlete, so the psychological doctor does not dream of being able to produce saints. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 474.
Everything essential happens in the Self and the ego functions as a receiver, spectator, and transmitter. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 236.
individuation is an empirical process and not a way of initiation at all. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 304.
Thank you for telling me about your interesting experience. It is a case of what we would call clairvoyance. But since this is just a word that signifies nothing further, it explains nothing. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 17.
If one views modern art prospectively, as I think one can, it plainly announces the uprush of the dissolvent forces of disorder. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 82.
I’m no artist. I only try to get things into stone of which I think it is important that they appear in hard matter and stay on for a reasonably long time. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 83.
Astrology, like the collective unconscious with which psychology is concerned, consists of symbolic configurations: The “planets” are the gods, symbols of the powers of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 175.
Time in itself consists of nothing. It is only a modus cogitandi that is used to express and formulate the flux of things and events, just as space is nothing but a way of describing the existence of a body. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 176.
The main difficulty with synchronicity (and also with ESP) is that one thinks of it as being produced by the subject, while I think it is rather in the nature of objective events. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 181.
Although ESP is a gift of certain individuals and seems to depend upon an emotional perception, the picture it produces is that of an objective fact. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 181.
My conceptions are empirical and not at all speculative. If you understand them from a philosophical standpoint you go completely astray, since they are not rational but mere names of groups of irrational phenomena. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 302.
Nobody has ever been entirely liberated from the opposites, because no living being could possibly attain to such a state, as nobody escapes pain and pleasure as long as he functions physiologically. He may have occasional ecstatic experiences when he gets the intuition of a complete liberation, f.i. in reaching the state of sat-chit-ananda. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 303.
The sensitiveness to noise persists. I always seek silence. I am a bundle of opposites and can only endure myself when I observe myself as an objective phenomenon. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 78.
Archetypes are not mere concepts but are entities, exactly like whole numbers, which are not merely aids to counting but possess irrational qualities that do not result from the concept of counting, as for instance the prime numbers and their behaviour. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 22.
Hence the mathematician Kronecker could say: Man created mathematics, but God created whole numbers. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 23.
I am trying to get nearer to the remarkable psychology of the Buddha himself, or at least of that which his contemporaries assumed him to be. It is chiefly the question of karma and rebirth which has renewed my interest in Buddha. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 548.
I was particularly interested in the dream which, in mid-August 1955, anticipated the death of my wife. It probably expresses the idea of life’s perfection: the epitome of all fruits, rounded into a bullet, struck her like karma. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 310.
I’m no artist. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 83.
I only try to get things into stone of which I think it is important that they appear in hard matter and stay on for a reasonably long time. Or I try to give form to something that seems to be in the stone and makes me restless. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 83.
You have experienced in your marriage what is an almost universal fact-that individuals are different from one another. Basically, each remains for the other an unfathomable enigma. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 27.
If nevertheless you are still tormented by guilt feelings, then consider for once what sins you have not committed which you would have liked to commit. This might perhaps cure you of your guilt feelings towards your wife. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 27.
The serious illness of my wife has consumed all my spare time. She has undergone an operation so far successfully, but it has left her in a feeble state needing careful nursing for several weeks to come. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 251.
Before we strive after perfection, we ought to be able to live the ordinary man without self-mutilation. As for instance the ordinary physician neither imagines nor hopes to make of his patient an ideal athlete, so the psychological doctor does not dream of being able to produce saints. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 474.
Unfortunately I have no copy of the letter to the Prot. Theologian. But I will send you an offprint of my answer to Buber who has called me a Gnostic. He does not understand psychic reality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 61.
I would abandon the term “Gnostic” without compunction were it not a swearword in the mouths of theologians. They accuse me of the very same fault they commit themselves: presumptuous disregard of epistemological barriers. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 147.
Nobody would assume that the biological pattern is a philosophical assumption like the Platonic idea or a Gnostic hypostasis. The same is true of the archetype. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 152.
You overlook the facts and then think that the name is the fact, and thus you reach the nonsensical conclusion that I hypostatize ideas and am therefore a “Gnostic.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 245.
Considering that the light of Christ is accompanied by the “dark night of the soul” that St. John of the Cross spoke about, and by what the Gnostics of lrenaeus called the umbra Christi, which is identical with the chthonic aspect mentioned above, the life of Christ is identical in us, from the psychological point of view, with the unconscious tendency toward individuation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 268.
Somehow, as the Gnostics surmised, we have “collected” ourselves from out of the cosmos. That is why the idea of “gathering the seeds of light” played such an important role in their systems and in Manichaeism. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 268.
Buber has been led astray by a poem in Gnostic style I made 44 years ago for a friend’s birthday celebration (a private print!), a poetic paraphrase of the psychology of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 571.
We can’t remind God of anything or prescribe anything for him, except when he tries to force something on us that our human limitation cannot endure. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 120.
For if God needs us as regulators of his incarnation and his coming to consciousness, it is because in his boundlessness he exceeds all the bounds that are necessary for becoming conscious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 120.
Becoming conscious means continual renunciation because it is an ever-deepening concentration. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 120.
The innermost self of every man and animal, of plants and crystals, is God, but infinitely diminished and approximated to his ultimate individual form. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 120.
Can you imagine a real prophet or saviour in our days of television and press reportage? He would perish by his own popularity within a few weeks. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 172.
Gifted children are often pushed out into the world and its neurotic turmoil much too early for their situation, and then their gift is soon exhausted. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 178.
They belong to you, and you have painted them as a support for your own individuation process. They shouldn’t be here, and nowhere else but with yourself, as they represent the approximation of the two worlds of spirit and body or of ego and self. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 179.
On Jan. 23rd I had a slight embolism followed by not too severe heart cramps. I was under house arrest for a month, forbidden all mental activity, i.e., active concentration. However, it didn’t stop me from my long planned (renewed) reading of Buddhist texts, whose content I am leaving to simmer inside me. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 544.
Thanks to my isolation I have been slipping away from the world and holding converse not with the men of today but with voices long past. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 544.
The imminence of death and the vision of the world in conspectu mortis is in truth a curious experience: the sense of the present stretches out beyond today, looking back into centuries gone by, and forward into futures yet unborn. ~Carl Jung, Letters, Vol. II, Page 10.
And that’s how it would be for you too with the Russians, for they also are universal saviours who want to cure the whole world with their own disease, just as the Nazis did. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 11.
The quaternity is an empirical fact, not a doctrine. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 13.
The unconscious expresses itself chiefly in quaternities, irrespective of Christian tradition. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 13.
The quaternity is of Old Testament as well as Egyptian origin. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 13.
Since the incarnatio Dei conveys nothing intelligible to modern man, “became flesh” has to be translated for better or worse, e.g., “has assumed definite empirical form.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 13.
Fanaticism always means overcompensated doubt. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 30.
Becoming conscious does not in itself lead to hell by any means. It leads to this unpleasant place only if you are conscious of certain things and not of others. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 30.
In the case of both these two, Eliot and above all Sartre, the talk is always of consciousness, never of the objective psyche, the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 30.
It is quite natural that if in your consciousness you are always running round in a circle you will finally end up in hell. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 30.
Some of the main islands [of peace] are my garden, the view of distant mountains, my country place where I withdraw from the noise of city life, my library. Also small things like books, pictures, and stones. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 40.
I forgot to tell you that I Ching 16 place 1 refers to “putting in music” the problem of priv. boni, i.e., understanding it as a feeling problem. You would get a more complete picture if you contemplate such ideas not only from an intellectual but also from a feeling standpoint. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 79.
My discussion of the privatio boni with Victor [White] was a very unsatisfactory experience. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 93.
Every country or people has its own angel, just as the earth has a soul. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 432.
Until now I have smoked 1 pipe with water condensation on beginning work in the morning, a miniature cigar after lunch, equal to 1-2 cigarettes, another pipe at 4 o’clock, after supper another little cigar, and generally another pipe about 9:30. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 103.
A little tobacco helps me to concentrate and conduces to my peace of mind. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 103.
Man has only very limited possibilities amongst which-so far as his consciousness extends-he can choose with practical freedom. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 102.
If causality is axiomatic, i.e., absolute, there can be no freedom. But if it is only a statistical truth, as is in fact the case, then the possibility of freedom exists. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 102.
It illuminates the evening of my days and fills me with joyful serenity that I was granted the favour of putting my best abilities at the service of a great cause. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 104.
What you write about the effect of Job on analysts accords with my own experience: the number of individuals capable of reacting is relatively very small and analysts are no exception. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 104
Today I finished a long essay on the “Philosophical Tree,” which kept me company during my illness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 104
Writing it [Philosophical Tree] was an enjoyable substitute for the fact that so few of my contemporaries can understand what is meant by the psychology of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 104
You should have seen the press reviews of Job! The naive stupidity of it all is beyond imagination. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 104
For a time I faithfully observed the rigorous rules of abstinence until my impatience drove me again to a few pipes. Of the 2 evils the pipe seems to me the lesser. Everything went very well from the moment I gave up the digitalis. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 105
I know Suzuki personally. I have studied Zen not in the practical sense but only from the psychological angle. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 101.
Many paths lead to the central experience. But the nearer one gets to the centre the easier it is to understand the other paths that lead there. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 101.
The spectacle of eternal Nature gives me a painful sense of my weakness and perishability, and I find no joy in imagining an equanimity in conspectu mortis. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 119.
As I once dreamt, my will to live is a glowing daimon, who makes the consciousness of my mortality hellish difficult for me at times. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 119.
But the daimon reeks nothing of that, for life, at the core, is steel on stone. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 119.
I know a case in my own experience where children who have been brought up in a too rationalistic way, that is have been deprived of a proper knowledge of the fairy world, have invented fairy tales all by themselves, obviously to fill the gap left by the stupid prejudices of the adults. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 131.
Now, this derogatory way of judging Amenophis IV got my goat and I expressed myself pretty strongly. That was the immediate cause of Freud’s accident. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 133.
Nobody ever asks me how things really were; one only gives a one-sided and twisted representation of my relation to him [Freud]. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 133.
I only can say that as far as consciousness reaches, the will is understood to be free, i.e., that the feeling of freedom accompanies your decisions no matter if they are really free or not. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 139.
If unconscious contents approaching the sphere of consciousness are not analysed and integrated, then the sphere of your freedom is even diminished through the fact that such contents are activated and gain more compelling influence upon consciousness than when they were completely unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 139.
Being a scientist I prefer not to be a prophet if I can help it. I am in no position to ascertain facts of the future. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 513.
Follow that will and that way which experience confirms to be your own, i.e., the true expression of your individuality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 592.
Science seeks the truth because it feels it does not possess it. The church possesses the truth and therefore does not seek it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 346.
Old age is only half as funny as one is inclined to think. It is at all events the gradual breaking down of the bodily machine, with which foolishness identifies as ourselves. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 580.
Live thoroughly and very consciously for many years in order to understand what your will is and what Its will is. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 301.
As “contemporary” symbols of the opposites, the fishes have a tendency to devour each other if only they are left alone. In the end you have no alternative but to take the conflicts on yourself by ceasing to identify now with one side and now with the other. You become what happens in the middle. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 291.
You see, I have no religious or other convictions about my symbols. They can change tomorrow. They are mere allusions, they hint at something, they stammer and often they lose their way. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 291.
In America especially one blames me for my so-called mysticism. Since I don’t claim at all to be the happy proprietor of metaphysical truths, I should much prefer that you attribute to my symbols the same tentativeness which characterizes your explanatory attempt. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 291.
They [Symbols] are just no Gnosis, no metaphysical assertions. They are partly even futile or dubious attempts at pronouncing the ineffable. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 291.
You can rest assured that having studied the Gospels for a life-time (I am nearly 83!) ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 346.
Surely the times of primitive Christianity were bad too, but not as bad as the world is now. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 346.
Knowing more about the soul and its mysteries you could free yourself from the fascination which makes you suffer. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 402.
In the second half of life one should begin to get acquainted with the inner world. That is a general problem. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 402.
The projection of anima and animus causes mutual fascination. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 402.
There is a little book by Frieda Fordham: Introduction to Jung’s Psychology (Pelican Books), which I recommend to you. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 402.
I am concerned with the world as it is today, namely godless and spiritually disoriented. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 346.
The coincidence of the Fibonacci numbers (or sectio aurea) with plant growth is a sort of analogy with synchronicity inasmuch as the latter consists in the coincidence of a psychic process with an external physical event of the same character or meaning. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 288.
I often thought of Meister Eckhart, who was entombed for six hundred years, and asked myself time and again why there are no men in our epoch who could see at least what I was wrestling with. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 586.
Inasmuch as karma means either a personal or at least an individual inherited determinant of character and fate, it represents the individually differentiated manifestation of the instinctual behaviour pattern, i.e., the general archetypal disposition. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 289
I avoid the term of karma because it includes metaphysical assumptions for which I have no evidence, f.i. that karma is a fate I have acquired in a previous existence or that it is the result of an individual life left over and by chance becoming my own. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 289.
Not in my livery, but “naked and bare I must go down to the grave,” fully aware of the outrage my nakedness will provoke. But what is that compared with the arrogance I had to summon up in order to be able to insult God? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 32.
Only my intellect has anything to do with purusha-atman or Tao, but not my living thralldom. This is local, barbaric, infantile, and abysmally unscientific. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 33
I have much more sympathy with Sophia than with the demiurge but faced with the reality of both my sympathy counts for nothing. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 33
Sophia is always ahead, the demiurge always behind. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 33.
God is an ailment man has to cure. For this purpose God penetrates into man. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 33.
In order to reach man, God has to show himself in his true form, or man would be everlastingly praising his goodness and justice and so deny him admission. This can be effected only by Satan, a fact which should not be taken as a justification for Satanic actions, otherwise God would not be recognized for what he really is. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 34.
As for the nigredo, it is certain that no one is redeemed from a sin he not committed, and that a man who stands on a peak cannot climb it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 35.
Nobody has ever seen an archetype, and nobody has ever seen an atom either. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 54.
When I say “atom” I am talking of the model made of it; when I say “archetype” I am talking of ideas corresponding to it, but never of the thing-in itself, which in both cases is a transcendental mystery. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 54.
One must therefore assume that the effective archetypal ideas, including our model of the archetype, rest on something actual even though unknowable, just as the model of the atom rests on certain unknowable qualities of matter. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 54.
I postulate the psyche as something real. But this hypothesis can hardly be called “gnostic” any more than the atomic theory can. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 55.
But I wonder how it comes that so many people think I am a gnostic while equally many others accuse me of being an agnostic. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 55.
It is evident that Buber has a bad conscience, as he publishes only his letters and does not represent me fairly, since I am a mere Gnostic, though he hasn’t the faintest idea of what the Gnostic was moved by. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 101.
There is no reason whatever to assume that all so-called psychic phenomena are illusory effects of our mental processes. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 333.
I do not think that so-called personal messages from the dead can be dismissed in globo as self-deceptions. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 334.
I don’t think that all reports of so-called miraculous phenomena (such as precognition, telepathy, supranormal knowledge, etc.) are doubtful. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 118.
I consider myself a Christian, but that didn’t do Savonarola or Servetus much good, and not even Christ himself escaped this fate. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 130.
I don’t do anything to God at all, how could I? I criticize merely our conceptions of God. I have no idea what God is in himself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 129.
I am not a philosopher who might be able to achieve something as ambitious as that, but an empiricist who describes the progress of his experiences; thus my work has no absolute beginning and no all-encompassing end. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 180.
It is like the life of an individual, which suddenly becomes visible somewhere but rests on definite though invisible foundations, so has no proper beginning and no proper end, ceasing just as suddenly and leaving questions behind which should have been answered. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 180.
As for the writings of Ouspenski and Gurdjieff, I know enough to satisfy me that I have no time for them. I seek real knowledge and therefore avoid all unverifiable speculation. I have seen enough of that as a psychiatrist. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 180
I naturally agree with what you say about freedom of thought. The Communist doesn’t come into this category, since he doesn’t think; but his actions are a danger to the public. If he thought, he would have found out his deceit long ago. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 180
The question of religion is not so simple as you see it: it is not at all a matter of intellectual conviction or philosophy or even belief, but rather a matter of inner experience. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 183.
St. Paul for instance was not converted to Christianity by intellectual or philosophical endeavour or by a belief, but by the force of his immediate inner experience. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 183.
I want to thank you [Aniela Jaffe] for your efforts on behalf of my so-called “Autobiography” and to reaffirm that I do not regard this book as my undertaking ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 550.
I can answer your question about life after death just as well by letter as by word of mouth. Actually this question exceeds the capacity of the human mind, which cannot assert anything beyond itself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 561.
I quite agree with you that those people in our world who have insight and good will enough should concern themselves with their own “souls” more than with preaching to the masses or trying to find out the best way for them. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 549.
Surely modern art is trying its best to make man acquainted with a world full of darkness, but alas, the artists themselves are unconscious of what they are doing. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 549.
All steps forward in the improvement of the human psyche have been paid for by blood. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 549.
But alas, it is a sad truth that usually those who know nothing for themselves take to teaching others, in spite of the fact that they know the best method of education is the good example. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 549.
I may say that I know what is infinite and eternal; I may even assert that I have experienced it; but that one could actually know it is impossible because man is neither an infinite nor an eternal being. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 375.
If I have a vision of Christ, this is far from proving that it was Christ, as we know only too well from our psychiatric practice. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 377.
Actually after this vision Nicholas should have preached: “God is terrible.” But he believed his own interpretation instead of the immediate experience. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 377.
Transcendence is simply that which is unconscious to us, and it cannot be established whether this is permanently inaccessible or only at present. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 379.
Times go on and inexorably one is left behind, sometimes more, sometimes less, and one has to realize that there are things beyond our reach one shouldn’t grieve for, as such grieving is still a remnant of too youthful an ambition. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 398.
Our libido certainly would go on reaching for the stars if fate didn’t make it clear beyond any reasonable doubt that we shouldn’t seek completion without, but within alas! ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 178.
God is not a statistical truth; hence it is just as stupid to try to prove the existence of God as to deny him. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 31.
What mankind has called “God” from time immemorial you experience every day. You only give him another, so-called “rational” name-for instance, you call him “affect.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 91.
Outer world and God are the two primordial experiences and the one is as great as the other, and both have a thousand names, which one and all do not alter the facts. The roots of both are unknown. The psyche mirrors both. It is perhaps the point where they touch. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 5.
We have blotted it out with so-called “spiritual development,” which means that we live by self-fabricated electric light and-to heighten the comedy-believe or don’t believe in the sun. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 5.
Atlantis: a mythical phantasm. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 5.
- Frobenius: an imaginative and somewhat credulous original. Great collector of material. Less good as a thinker. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 4.
God: an inner experience, not discussable as such but impressive. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 4.
I think it [UFO’s] is chiefly an obstinate rumour, but the question whether there is something real behind it is not answered. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 6.
God always speaks mythologically. If he didn’t, he would reveal reason and science. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 9.
Now that the Catholic Church has taken the momentous step of the assumption, Protestantism is really and truly nailed fast to the Patriarchal line of the Old Testament and way behindhand in the matter of dogmatic development. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 9.
There is physically transmitted (outer world) experience and inner (spiritual) experience. The one is as valid as the other. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 4.
Sooner or later it will grow into a question of first-class importance for humanity, since we are rapidly approaching the time when the feeding of the world’s population will come up against a barrier that cannot be crossed. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 15.
The term individuation ought to be reserved for the legitimate evolution of the individual entelechy. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 16.
I am no particular friend of [William] Blake, whom I am always inclined to criticize. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 17.
Then thoughts come to me, as for instance that consciousness is only an organ for perceiving the fourth dimension, i.e., the all-pervasive meaning, and itself produces no real ideas. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 18.
I see with regret from your letter that you are suffering very much from your noises in the ear. The unconscious often uses symptoms of this kind in order to make psychic contents audible, i.e., the symptoms are intensified by a psychogenic afflux and only then do they acquire the proper tormenting character that forces your attention inwards, where of course it gets caught in the disturbing noises. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 20.
Astrology is not a mantic method but appears to be based on proton radiation (from the sun). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 23.
I have seen Mrs. X. and I assure you she is quite an eyeful and beyond! We had an interesting conversation and I must admit she is quite remarkable. If ever there was an anima it is she, and there is no doubt about it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 24.
It isn’t possible to kill part of your “self” unless you kill yourself first. If you ruin your conscious personality, the so-called ego-personality, you deprive the self of its real goal, namely, to become real itself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 25.
The goal of life is the realization of the self. If you kill yourself you abolish that will of the self that guides you through life to that eventual goal. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 25.
An attempt at suicide doesn’t affect the intention of the self to become real, but it may arrest your personal development inasmuch as it is not explained. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 25.
But, since I appear in your dream, I cannot refrain from making the remark that I like thick walls and I like trees and green things, and I like many books. Perhaps you are in need of these three good things. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 27.
I’m inclined to believe that something of the human soul remains after death, since already in this conscious life we have evidence that the psyche exists in a relative space and in a relative time, that is in a relatively non-extended and eternal state. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 29.
Only through submission to detestable duties does one gain a certain feeling of liberation which induces a creative mood. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 32.
You know that one of the unfortunate qualities of introverts is that they so often cannot help putting the wrong foot forward. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 35.
You are quite right when you say that the modern world prefers living en masse and thus forgets the bond with the past which is characteristic of every culture. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 36.
Those for whom tradition means mere knowledge and book-learning will not be able to interpret the past as the living present. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 37.
It seems to me perfectly possible to teach history in the widest sense not as dry-as-dust, lifeless book-knowledge but to understand it in terms of the fully alive present. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 37.
A wider horizon benefits all of us and is also more natural to the human spirit than specialist knowledge that leads to a spiritual bottleneck. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 37.
In the long run one cannot steal creation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 32.
Freud’s letters in my possession are not particularly important. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 40.
My personal recollections on the other hand are a chapter for itself. They have very much to do with Freud’s psychology, but since there is no witness except myself I prefer to refrain from unsubstantiated tales about the dead. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 41.
Moreover I know from experience that philosophers don’t understand my uncouth language. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 155.
Your view is rather confirmed, as it seems to me, by the peculiar fact that on the one hand consciousness has so exceedingly little direct information of the body from within, and that on the other hand the unconscious (i.e., dreams and other products of the “unconscious”) refers very rarely to the body and, if it does, it is always in the most roundabout way, i.e., through highly “symbolized” images. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 44
At all events the assumption of a perceptual body postulates a corresponding perceptual space that separates the mind from physical space in the same way as the subtle body causes the gap between the mind and the physical body. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 44.
I submit that the factor of time proves to be equally “elastic” as space under ESP conditions. If this is the case, we are confronted with two four-dimensional systems in a contingent contiguity. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 44.
On the other hand one might ask the question whether we can as hitherto go on thinking in terms of space and time, while modern physics begins to relinquish these terms in favour of a time-space continuum, in which space is no more space and time no more time. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 44.
The question is, in short: shouldn’t we give up the time-space categories altogether when we are dealing with psychic existence? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 45.
It might be that psyche should be understood as unextended intensity and not as a body moving with time. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 45
One might assume the psyche gradually rising from minute extensity to infinite intensity, transcending for instance the velocity of light and thus irrealizing the body. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 45.
Energy is mass and mass is extended. At all events, a body with a speed higher than that of light vanishes from sight and one may have all sorts of doubts about what would happen to such a body otherwise. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 45.
In the light of this view the brain might be a transformer station, in which the relatively infinite tension or intensity of the psyche proper is transformed into perceptible frequencies or “extensions.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 45.
Psyche = highest intensity in the smallest space. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 45.
Terms like thought-transmission, telepathy, clairvoyance, mean nothing. How can one imagine a causal explanation for a case of precognition? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 45.
Emotions follow an instinctual pattern, i.e., an archetype. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 46.
It looks as if the collective character of the archetypes would manifest itself also in meaningful coincidences, i.e., as if the archetype (or the collective unconscious) were not only inside the individual, but also outside, viz. in one’s environment, as if sender and percipient were in the same psychic space, or in the same time (in precognition cases). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 46.
Where an archetype prevails, we can expect synchronistic phenomena, i.e., acausal correspondences, which consist in a parallel arrangement of facts in time. The arrangement is not the effect of a cause. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 46.
Well, I am approaching my 78th year, and complaints are pointless. My next goal seems to be a thorough contemplation of the spiritual life of lizards and similar cold-blooded animals. But the world does not let me go so easily. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 51.
I am afraid I cannot conceive of any religious belief which is less than a violation of my ego-consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 51.
Divine favour and daemonic evil or danger are archetypal. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 52.
The way in which opposites are reconciled or united in God we just don’t know. Nor do we understand how they are united in the self. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 52.
Excuse my bad writing. I am in the garden and there is no table but my knee. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 53.
I practice psychology in the first place as a science, in the second place as an instrument of psychotherapy. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 56.
The psyche for me is something objective that sends up effects into my consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 57.
The unconscious (the objective psyche) doesn’t belong to me; rightly or wrongly I belong to it. By making it conscious I separate myself from it, and by so objectivating it I can integrate it consciously. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 57.
When someone talks so long and so emphatically about his 100 thalers this is no proof whatever that he has them in his pocket. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 61.
I have observed the case of a man who had no dreams, but his nine-year-old son had all his father’s dreams which I could analyse for the benefit of the father. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 63.
As you know, I apply my method not only to my patients but also to all historical and contemporary products of the mind. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 64.
In strictest contrast to Gnosticism and theology, I confine myself to the psychology of anthropomorphic ideas and have never maintained that I possess the slightest trace of metaphysical knowledge. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 64.
Just as the physicist regards the atom as a model, I regard archetypal ideas as sketches for the purpose of visualizing the unknown background. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 65.
I consider it unfortunate that most theologians believe they have named God when they say “God.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 65.
Ideas of God are first of all myths, statements about things that are philosophically and scientifically indeterminable; that is, they are psychological objects which are amenable to discussion. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 66.
I share your opinion entirely that man lives wholly when, and only when, he is related to God, to that which steps up to him and determines his destiny. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 66.
One is not just a Protestant or a Catholic but a human being with paganism still ingrained in his very bones. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 67.
If you will conscientiously reread what I have said about individuation you cannot possibly conclude that I mean Nirvana or that I overlook the Resurrection. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 67.
It would perhaps be worth the effort to make Christianity comprehensible to educated people today instead of leaving this urgent task to the psychiatrist. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 68.
The Rhine forms not only a political frontier but also a psychological one. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 69.
The psychology of the witch-hunting epidemic has never been worked out properly. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 69.
The realm of the psyche is immeasurably great and filled with living reality. At its brink lies the secret of matter and of spirit. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 71.
I do not know, for example, how God could ever be experienced apart from human experience. If I do not experience him, how can I say that he exists? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 71.
I do not feel called upon to found a religion, nor to proclaim my belief in one. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 70.
I am not engaged in philosophy, but merely in thinking within the framework of the special task that is laid upon me: to be a proper psychiatrist, a healer of the soul. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 71.
I am, more specifically, simply a psychiatrist, for my essential problem, to which all my efforts are directed, is psychic disturbance: its phenomenology, aetiology, and teleology. Everything else is secondary for me. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 70.
Unequivocalness makes sense only in establishing facts but not in interpreting them; for “meaning” is not a tautology but always includes more in itself than the concrete object of which it is predicated. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 70.
The language I speak must be ambiguous, must have two meanings, in order to do justice to the dual aspect of our psychic nature. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 70.
I strive quite consciously and deliberately for ambiguity of expression, because it is superior to unequivocalness and reflects the nature of life. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 70
When I say “God” the dual aspect of the ens absolutum and the hydrogen atom (or particle + wave) is already implicit in it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 70.
I live in a “perceptual world” but not in a self-subsistent one. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 70.
It seems to me a sort of all-encompassing system of relationships, in which “material” and “spiritual” are primarily designations for potentialities that transcend consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 70.
For me the psyche is an almost infinite phenomenon. I absolutely don’t know what it is in itself and know only very vaguely what it is not. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 69.
Were I not old and ill I would take the trouble to explain to you personally why human ideas of God are not necessarily right. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 86.
God is something unknowable. An old German mystic has said: “God is a sigh in our souls.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 87.
No doubt the archetypes are present everywhere, but there is also a widespread resistance to this “mythology.” That is why even the gospel has to be “demythologized.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 84.
To be sure “Christ” gave the myth a new meaning for the man of antiquity. But when we still go on stressing the newness 2000 years later, we must point out what exactly is the news for us, which we haven’t yet heard and understood. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 84.
That Christ is the self of man is implicit in the gospel, but the conclusion Christ = self has never been explicitly drawn. This is an assignment of new meaning, a further stage in the incarnation or actualization of Christ. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 84.
And with-it Christ becomes a formulable psychological experience: the self is a living person and has always been there. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 84.
A good example is Albert Schweitzer, who is urgently needed in Europe but prefers to be a touching saviour of savages and to hang his theology on the wall. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 85.
We have a justification for missionizing only when we have straightened ourselves out here, otherwise we are merely spreading our own disease. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 85.
One of the greatest obstacles to our psychic development, it seems to me, is the drowning out of the inner voice in the interests of some collective, conventional ideal which makes us insensitive to the damage done to our own house and gives us the right to impart good advice to our neighbours. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 86.
Your idea of my spiritual affinity or at least sympathy with Jakob Burckhardt is amazingly true. Burckhardt’s pessimistic forebodings were undoubtedly right. It doesn’t pay not to see the dark side. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 80.
I do not feel quite happy about my way of using the English language, since I seem to cause many misunderstandings. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 94.
As a matter of fact (since 1948) I have published everything sustainable which I have thought about the documentary phenomenon of Christ and its psychological reconstruction. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 94.
I am dealing with psychic phenomena and I am not at all concerned with the naive and, as a rule, unanswerable question whether a thing is historically, i.e., concretely, true or not. It is enough that it has been said and believed. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 97.
I am rather certain that the sefiroth tree contains the whole symbolism of Jewish development parallel to the Christian idea. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 92.
The characteristic difference is that God’s incarnation is understood to be a historical fact in the Christian belief, while in the Jewish Gnosis it is an entirely pleromatic process symbolized by the concentration of the supreme triad of Kether, Hokhmah, and Binah in the figure of Tifereth. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 92.
- is certainly all wet when he thinks that the Jewish Gnosis contains nothing of the Christian mystery. It contains practically the whole of it, but in its unrevealed pleromatic state. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 92.
I am pretty certain that the extraordinary and venomous response of the orthodox rabbis against the Kabbalah is based upon the undeniable fact of this most remarkable Judeo-Christian parallelism. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 92.
We cannot create a true picture of Hermetic philosophy in the IVth century if we dismiss half of the libelli contained in the Corpus Hermeticum. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 88.
If Jesus had indeed been nothing but a great teacher hopelessly mistaken in His messianic expectations, we should be at a complete loss in understanding His historical effect, which is so clearly visible in the New Testament. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 89.
Sure enough, we must believe in Reason. But it should not prevent us from recognizing a mystery when we meet one. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 90.
Nobody knows whether there is reincarnation, and equally one does not know that there is none. Buddha himself was convinced of reincarnation, but he himself on being asked twice by his disciples about it, left it quite open whether there is a continuity of your personality or not. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 103.
My personal religious convictions are not shaken in the slightest by the fearful contradictions in the Biblical texts. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 87.
I have had a number of TB patients in my time and some really excellent results with psychotherapy, but it is true that the average somatic case generally has a resistance to a psychological approach, particularly the TB patients, since TB is, in a way a “pneumatic” disease, that is, affecting the life-giving breath. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 101.
Concerning Mr. Buber, I can tell you that to my knowledge there has never been the slightest personal friction between us, and I do not think that Buber has ever been impolite to me. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 101.
The only trouble with him [Buber] is that he does not understand what I am talking about. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 102.
I have no personal opinion of Buber since I have met him only a few times and I dislike forming opinions on insufficient grounds. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 102.
Certainly we do not know where we come from, nor where we are going, or why we are here at the present time. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 103.
I have observed a great many ESP cases with my patients in the course of time. The only trouble is to find suitable methods by which the state of the unconscious can be established objectively. We have begun to try out such methods. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 106.
It was above all the simplicity and directness of his [Einstein] genius as a thinker that impressed me mightily and exerted a lasting influence on my own intellectual work. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 109.
It was Einstein who first started me off thinking about a possible relativity of time as well as space, and their psychic conditionality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 109.
With Einstein’s departure from Zurich my relation with him ceased, and I hardly think he has any recollection of me. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 109.
I fully realize that Catholic analysts are faced with very particular problems which, on the one hand, are an aggravation of the work, which is difficult in itself already, yet on the other hand, an asset, since you start within a world of thought and feeling based upon archetypal realities. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 153.
As the result of a dream I completely laid off smoking five days ago. …At present I’m still in a foul mood. What would the gods do without smoke offerings? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 110.
It seems to me to be in itself an ominous symptom of the mental and moral condition of our world that such problems [Artificial Insemination] have to be discussed at all. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 111.
Man confuses himself with God, is identical with the demiurge and begins to usurp cosmic powers of destruction, i.e., to arrange a second Deluge. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 112.
The Church stands on two feet, Protestantism only on sola fide, therefore faith is so important to it but not to the Catholic. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 112.
This is the correct definition of the self and means that just as Christ is related to all individuals, so all individuals are related to Christ. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 114.
Every self has the quality of belonging to the “self of all selves,” and the self of all selves consists of individual selves. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 114.
It is really not easy to talk with theologians: they don’t listen to the other person (who is wrong from the start) but only to themselves (and call this the Word of God). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 114.
Perhaps this comes from their having to preach down from the pulpit, with nobody allowed to answer back. This attitude, which I met practically everywhere, has shooed me out of the Church like so many others. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 114.
Yet I must tell you how delighted I was by your [Henry Corbin] work. It was an extraordinary joy to me, and not only the rarest of experiences but even a unique experience, to be fully understood. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 115.
I am accustomed to living in a more or less complete intellectual vacuum, and my Answer to Job has done nothing to diminish it. On the contrary, it has released an avalanche of prejudice, misunderstanding, and, above all, atrocious stupidity. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 115.
The book [Answer to Job] “came to me” during the fever of an illness. It was as if accompanied by the great music of a Bach or a Handel. I don’t belong to the auditory type. So I did not hear anything, I just had the feeling of listening to a great composition, or rather of being at a concert. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 116.
As a rule the shadow appears only in the singular. If it occasionally appears as a duality this is, so to speak, a “seeing double”: a conscious and an unconscious half, one figure above the horizon, the other below. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 117.
I can understand that South Africa has no attractions for you. A colony nowadays is about the most disagreeable thing one can imagine. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 123.
…I had to think of the question recently raised by a mathematician, as to whether it was possible to produce absolute chance groupings. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 127.
If man’s psychic health and happiness depended upon the proper food and other physical conditions of living, then all wealthy people should be healthy and happy, and all poor people mentally unbalanced, physically ill, and unhappy. But the contrary is true. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 124.
The great dangers threatening the life of millions are not physical factors, but mental folly and diabolical schemes causing mental epidemics in the mentally defenseless masses. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 124.
A prize should be given to people who successfully suppress the outburst of political madness, or of panic (Churchill), or who produce great ideas enlarging the mental and spiritual horizon of man. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 124.
People who know that there are such things [para-psychical] need no further confirmation, and people not wanting to know are free, as hitherto, to say that one tells them fairy tales. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 126.
I have encountered so much discouraging resistance that I am amply convinced of the stupidity of the learned guild. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 126.
I think the attempt to link up ESP with any personalistic psychology is absolutely hopeless. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 127.
The all-important aspect of ESP is that it relativizes the space as well as the time factor. This is far beyond psychology. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 127.
If space and time are psychically relative, then matter is too (telekinesis!) and then causality is only Statistically true, which means that there are plenty of acausal exceptions, q.e.d. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 127.
To my terror I was forced into a pulpit, which gave me such a shock that I have never spoken in a church again. I hadn’t realized how much a sacred and hallowed precinct meant to me. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 128.
The profane use Protestants make of their churches I regard as a grave error. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 128.
God may be everywhere, but this in no way absolves believers from the duty of offering him a place that is declared holy, otherwise one could just as well get together for religious purposes in the 3rd class waiting-room of a railway station. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 128.
The Protestant is not even granted a quiet, pious place where he can withdraw from the turmoil of the world. And nowhere does there exist for God a sanctified temenos which serves only one and a sacred purpose. No wonder so few people attend church. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 128.
Unfortunately I did not know at the time when the stone was made that my father was described as Dr. theol. instead of Dr. phil. He graduated as an Orientalist, in Arabic. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 129.
It is a historical fact that the real devil only came into existence together with Christ. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 134.
Though Christ was God, as Man he was detached from God and he watched the devil falling out of heaven, removed from God as he (Christ) was separated from God inasmuch as he was human. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 134.
The Godhead has a double aspect, and as Master Eckhart says: God is not blissful in his mere Godhead, and that is the reason for his incarnation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 134.
But becoming Man, he becomes at the same time a definite being, which is this and not that. Thus the very first thing Christ must do is to sever himself from his shadow and call it the devil (sorry, but the Gnostics of Irenaeus already knew it!). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 135.
As a matter of fact, our society has not even begun to face its shadow or to develop those Christian virtues so badly needed in dealing with the powers of darkness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 136.
Our society cannot afford the luxury of cutting itself loose from the imitatio Christi, even if it should know that the conflict with the shadow, i.e., Christ versus Satan, is only the first step on the way to the far-away goal of the unity of the self in God. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 135.
It is true however that the imitatio Christi leads you into your own very real and Christ-like conflict with darkness, and the more you are engaged in this war and in these attempts at peacemaking helped by the anima, the more you begin to look forward beyond the Christian Aeon to the Oneness of the Holy Spirit. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 135.
He is the pneumatic state the creator attains to through the phase of incarnation. He is the experience of every individual that has undergone the complete abolition of his ego through the absolute opposition expressed by the symbol Christ versus Satan. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 135
The state of the Holy Spirit means a restitution of the original oneness of the unconscious on the level of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 135.
We are actually in the state of darkness viewed from the standpoint of history. We are still within the Christian Aeon and just beginning to realize the age of darkness where we shall need Christian virtues to the utmost. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 136
The adventus diabolic does not invalidate the Christian symbol of the self, on the contrary: it complements it. It is a mysterious transmutation of both. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 136
Since we are living in a society that is unconscious of this development and far from understanding the importance of the Christian symbol, we are called upon to hinder its invalidation, although some of us are granted the vision of a future development. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 136.
Anybody going ahead is alone or thinks he is lonely at times, no matter whether he is in the church or in the world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 137.
Moreover we are still in the Christian Aeon, threatened with a complete annihilation of our world. As there are not only the many but also the few, somebody is entrusted with the task of looking ahead and talking of the things to be. That is partially my job, but I have to be very careful not to destroy the things that are. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 137
Thus I am approaching the end of the Christian Aeon and I am to take up Gioacchino’s anticipation and Christ’s prediction of the coming of the Paraclete. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 138.
This archetypal drama is at the same time exquisitely psychological and historical. We are actually living in the time of the splitting of the world and of the invalidation of Christ. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 138.
As for your colleague’s dream, I have since discovered that in the Midrashim the symbol of the eagle is ascribed to the prophet Elijah, who soars like an eagle over the earth and spies out the secrets of the human heart. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 132.
The provisionalness of life is indescribable. Everything you do, whether watching a cloud or cooking soup, is done on the edge of eternity and is followed by the suffix of infinity. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 126.
But let man, mindful of his hybris, be content with the lesser evil and beware of the Satanic temptation of the grand gesture, which is only intended for show and self-intoxication. C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 12.
But I must confess that nihilism was never a problem for me. I had enough and more than enough reality on my own doorstep. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 144.
The dream of the horse represents the union with the animal soul, which you have missed for a long time. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 145.
Our unconscious definitely prefers the Hindu interpretation of immortality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 146.
Man is the mirror which God holds up before him, or the sense organ with which he apprehends his being.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 112.
There is no loneliness, but all-ness or infinitely increasing completeness. Such dreams occur at the gateway of death. They interpret the mystery of death. They don’t predict it, but they show you the right way to approach the end. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 146.
Did it never occur to you that in my analysis we talked very little of “resistance,” while in the Freudian analysis it is the term that most frequently occurs? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 149.
I always try to follow the path of nature and I avoid as much as possible the application of theoretical viewpoints, and I have never regretted this principle. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 149.
I am afraid that your [American] educational system produces the same technological and scientific one-sidedness and the same social welfare idealism as Russia. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 150.
Most of your [American] psychologists, as it looks to me, are still in the XVIIIth century inasmuch as they believe that the human psyche is tabula rasa at birth, while all somewhat differentiated animals are born with specific instincts. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 150.
When a theologian says “God,” then God has to be, and be just as the magician wants, without the latter feeling in any way impelled to make clear to himself and his public exactly which concept he is using. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 147.
I never look for archetypes and don’t try to find them; enough when they come all by themselves. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 160.
The “archetype” is practically synonymous with the biological concept of the behaviour pattern. But as the latter designates external phenomena chiefly, I have chosen the term “archetype” for “psychic pattern.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 151.
As no animal is born without its instinctual patterns, there is no reason whatever to believe that man should be born without his specific forms of physiological and psychological reactions. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 152.
The Midrashim are quite aware of it, and the Christian church had to invent that awful syllogism, the privatio boni, in order to annihilate the original ambivalence of the Jewish God. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 153.
But theologians suffer from the fact that when they say “God,” then that God is. But when I say “God,” I know I have expressed my image of such a being and I am honestly not quite sure whether he is just like my image or not, even if I believe in God’s existence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 154.
My God-image corresponds to an autonomous archetypal pattern. Therefore I can experience God as if he were an object, but I need not assume that it is the only image. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 154.
I scarcely think that the Jews have to accept the Christ symbol. They need only understand its meaning. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 151.
The Jew has the advantage of having long since anticipated the development of consciousness in his own spiritual history. By this I mean the Lurianic stage of the Kabbalah, the breaking of the vessels and man’s help in restoring them. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 151.
It (Bollingen Foundation) is a shining beacon in the darkness of the atomic age. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 151.
Allow me to tell you that I am profoundly grateful to you for your most remarkably objective review of my uncouth attempt [Answer to Job] to disturb the obnoxious somnolence of the guardians. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 155.
The attribute “coarse” is mild in comparison to what you feel when God dislocates your hip or when he slays the firstborn. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 156.
Christ is the Anthropos that seems to be a prefiguration of what the Holy Ghost is going to bring forth in the human being. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 157.
In a tract of the Lurianic Kabbalah, the remarkable idea is developed that man is destined to become God’s helper in the attempt to restore the vessels which were broken when God thought to create a world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 157.
Without necessity there is neither causality nor finality, although there are not a few people nowadays who treat the concept of causality very incautiously. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 158.
The 4 aspects of causality make possible a homogeneous causal viewpoint but not a total one. For this purpose, it seems to me, causality (in all its aspects) has to be complemented by acausality. Not simply because freedom also is guaranteed in a law-bound world, but because freedom, i.e., acausality, does in fact exist. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 158.
The integration of the collective unconscious amounts roughly to taking cognizance of the world and adapting to it. This does not mean that one would have to learn to know the whole world, or that one must have lived in all climates and continents of the world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 159.
I am personally convinced that our mind corresponds with the physiological life of the body, but the way in which it is connected with the body is for obvious reasons unintelligible. To speculate about such unknowable things is mere waste of time. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 160.
If you want to be quite accurate, both statements, viz. that the psyche is founded upon an organic process of the body, or that the psyche is independent of the body, are unanswerable. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 132.
The question of brain localization is an extremely delicate one, because when you destroy a certain part of the brain you destroy a certain function. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 160.
Yet you do not know whether you have really destroyed the function because it is quite possible that you have only destroyed the transmitter of that function, as if you have taken away the telephone apparatus which does not mean that you have killed its owner. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 160.
There is even no absolute certainty about the psyche being definitely dependent upon the brain since we know that there are facts proving that the mind can relativize space and time, as the Rhine experiments and general experience have proved sufficiently. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 160.
Also with regard to instincts, it is questionable if they continue to exist when you have destroyed their transmitter, i.e., whether they have been killed themselves. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 160.
I should not worry about all this localization talk. It’s practically all foolishness, and a remnant of the old brain mythology like the explanation of sleep through the contraction of the ganglia, which is by no means more intelligent than the localization of the psyche in the pituitary gland. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 161.
The [car] accident has affected only the outer shell, but evidently you and your wife were not affected physically by this broad hint. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 161.
Naturally this [car accident] may have an inner connection with what you are writing, for experience shows that accidents of this sort are very often connected with creative energy which turns against us because somehow it is not given due heed. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 162.
I would be glad to welcome you here on October 10th, but you know how it is in old age: one promises something and knows that everything is only provisional. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 162.
Now the weather is beastlier than ever, so that one can only huddle behind the stove. I busy myself chiefly with cooking, eating and sleeping. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 163.
In between I am writing a long letter to Pater White. He has-thanks be to God-chosen the better course of facing his difficulties with complete honesty. I now see clearly what a fatal challenge my psychology is for a theologian but, it seems, not only for him. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 163.
I am just as much in doubt about myself as before, the more so the more I try to say something definite. It is as though familiarity with oneself alienated one from oneself still further. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 163.
I often ask myself why by far the most of my “critics” are so unfriendly and unobjective? Is my style so irritating, or what is it in me that the world finds so offensive? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 162.
I have never claimed f.i. to know much about the nature of archetypes, how they originated or whether they originated at all, whether they are inherited or planted by the grace of God in every individual anew. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 185.
It is not my responsibility that alchemy is occult and mystical, and I am just as little guilty of the mystical delusions of the insane or the peculiar creeds of mankind. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 186.
I shall always remember the time when Freud disturbed the peaceful slumber of the medical and philosophical faculties by his shocking discoveries, which are now taken into serious consideration. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 187.
The latest developments of scientific thinking, especially in physics, but recently also in psychology, make it clear that “freedom” is a necessary correlate to the purely statistical nature of the concept of causality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 183.
Freedom could be put in doubt only because of the one-sided and uncritical overvaluation of causality, which has been elevated into an axiom although-strictly speaking-it is nothing but a mode of thought. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 183.
The petition for “daily bread” is appropriate under all circumstances, although in Matthew 6: 11 it reads: “Panem nostrum supersubstantialis da nobis hodie” (Give us this day our super-substantial bread). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 182.
It is an astonishing fact, indeed, that the collective unconscious seems to be in contact with nearly everything. There is of course no empirical evidence for such a generalization, but plenty of it for its indefinite extension. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 164.
Concerning the omniscience it is important to know that Adam already was equipped with supernatural knowledge according to Jewish and Christian tradition, all the more so Christ. I think that the great split in those days was by no means a mistake but a very important collective fact of synchronistic correspondence with the then new Aeon of Pisces. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 165
Archetypes, in spite of their conservative nature, are not static but in a continuous dramatic flux. Thus the self as a monad or continuous unit would be dead. But it lives inasmuch as it splits and unites again. There is no energy without opposites! ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 165.
It was an enormous step forward when Yahweh revealed himself as a jealous God, letting his chosen people feel that he was after them with blessings and with punishments, and that God’s goal was man. Not knowing better, they cheated him by obeying his Law literally. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 165.
The old popes and bishops succeeded in getting so much heathendom, barbarism and real evil out of the Church that it became much better than some centuries before there were no Alexander VI, no auto-da-tes, no thumbscrews and racks anymore, so that the compensatory drastic virtues (asceticism etc.) lost their meaning to a certain extent. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 166.
When Christ withstood Satan’s temptation, that was the fatal moment when the shadow was cut off. Yet it had to be cut off in order to enable man to become morally conscious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 166.
The tree brings back all that has been lost through Christ’s extreme spiritualization, namely the elements of nature. Through its branches and leaves the tree gathers the powers of light and air, and through its roots those of the earth and the water. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 166.
The symbolic history of the Christ’s life shows, as the essential teleological tendency, the crucifixion, viz. the union of Christ with the symbol of the tree. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 167.
But it is possible that the Christian symbolism expresses man’s mental condition in the Aeon of Pisces, as the ram and the bull gods do for the ages of Aries and Taurus. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 167.
In this case the post-mortal solution would be symbolic of an entirely new psychological status, viz. that of Aquarius, which is certainly a oneness, presumably that of the Anthropos, the realization of Christ’s allusion: “Dii estis.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 167.
This is a formidable secret and difficult to understand, because it means that man will be essentially God and God man. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 167.
The signs pointing in this direction consist in the fact that the cosmic power of self-destruction is given into the hands of man and that man inherits the dual nature of the Father. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 167.
He [Man] will [mis] understand it and he will be tempted to ruin the universal life of the earth by radioactivity. Materialism and atheism, the negation of God, are indirect means to attain this goal. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 168
There is need of people knowing about their shadow, because there must be somebody who does not project. They ought to be in a visible position where they would be expected to project and unexpectedly they do not project! They can thus set a visible example which would not be seen if they were invisible. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 168.
Since you cannot overthrow a whole world because it harbours also some evil, it will be a more individual or “local” fight with what you rightly call avidya. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 168.
The introverted thinker is very much in need of a developed feeling, i.e., of a less autoerotic, sentimental, melodramatic and emotional relatedness to people and things. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 168.
We should recognize that life is a transitus. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 168.
All old truths want a new interpretation, so that they can live on in a new form. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 169.
If you try to be literal about the doctrine, you are putting yourself aside until there is nobody left that would represent it but corpse. If, on the other hand, you truly assimilate the doctrine, you will alter it creatively by your individual understanding and thus give life to it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 169.
That is one of the reasons why the Church attracts quite a number of intelligent and responsible men in the secret (or unconscious?) hope that they will be strong enough to carry its meaning and not its words into the future. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 170.
The old trick of law obedience is still going strong, but the original Christian teaching is a reminder. The man who allows the institution to swallow him is not a good servant. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 170
It is quite understandable that the ecclesiastical authorities must protect the Church against subversive influences. But it would be sabotage if this principle were carried to the extreme, because it would kill the attempts at improvement also. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 170.
Since the world is largely sub principatu diaboli, it is unavoidable that there is just as much evil in the Church as everywhere else, and as everywhere else you have got to be careful. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 170.
Doubt and insecurity are indispensable components of a complete life. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 171.
A “complete” life does not consist in a theoretical completeness, but in the fact that one accepts, without reservation, the particular fatal tissue in which one finds oneself embedded, and that one tries to make sense of it or to create a cosmos from the chaotic mess into which one is born. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 171.
We think it is enough to discover new things, but we don’t realize that knowing more demands a corresponding development of morality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 173.
The winter, though very cold, has dealt leniently with me. Both my wife and myself are tired, though still active, but in a very restricted way. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 174.
Even if the ego should be (as I think) the supreme point of the self, a mountain infinitely higher than Mt. Everest, It would be nothing but a little grain of rock or ice, never the whole mountain. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 195.
If the self could be wholly experienced, it would be a limited experience whereas in reality its experience is unlimited and endless. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 195.
The ego receives the light from the self. Though we know of the self, yet it is not known. The ego is contained in the self as it is contained in the universe of which we know only the tiniest section. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 194.
Although we receive the light of consciousness from the self and although we know it to be the source of our illumination, we do not know whether it possesses anything we would call consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 194.
You should not mix up your own enlightenment with the self-revelation of the self. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 195.
When you recognize yourself, you have not necessarily recognized the self but perhaps only an infinitesimal Part of it, though the self has given you the light. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 195.
You all seem to be interested in how to get back to the self, instead of looking for what the self wants you to do in the world, where-for the time being at least-we are located, presumably for a certain purpose. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 195.
Nobody can be more convinced of the importance of the self than me. But as a young man does not stay in his father’s house but goes out into the world, so I don’t look back to the self but collect it out of manifold experiences and put it together again. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 195.
Although the self is my origin, it is also the goal of my quest. When it was my origin, I did not know myself, and when I did learn about myself, I did not know the self. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 196.
That is one of the reasons why I must study symbolism, otherwise I risk not recognizing my own father and mother when I meet them again after the many years of my absence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 196.
Hence all advice that begins with “you ought” usually proves to be completely ineffective. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 190.
Even a million noughts do not add up to one. I therefore espouse the unpopular view that a better understanding in the world can come only from the individual and be promoted only by him. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 190.
We should have schools for adults, where one could inculcate into them at least the elements of self-knowledge and knowledge of human nature. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 190.
Unfortunately the so-called religions have never proved to be vehicles of general human understanding, since with few exceptions they suffer from totalitarian claims and in this respect at least hardly differ from any other -ism, and actually disrupt human relationships at the critical point. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 191.
If one is in the position of a doctor, as I am, to become intimately acquainted with very many educated people, one is continually amazed at the terrifying unconsciousness of modern civilized man. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 191.
Mythological motifs are facts; they never change; only theories change. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 192.
Your succour comes at a time when it is badly needed; soon a little book of mine will be published in England which my publishers in USA did not dare to print. Its title is: Answer to Job. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 192.
The German edition [Answer to Job] over here has already upset the representatives of three religions, not because it is irreligious but because it takes their statements and premises seriously. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 193.
A person carries the torch only a stretch of the way and must then lay it down, not because he has reached a goal but because his strength is at an end. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 194.
An interesting conversation never disturbs my sleep. Only an arduous talk to no purpose disturbs it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 197.
I do not write for believers who already possess the whole truth, rather for unbelieving but intelligent people who want to understand something. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 197.
Every religion makes use of two feet: faith on one side and ritual on the other. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 208.
In the two Christian churches, the importance and the psychological significance of rites are not generally appreciated; to some people they are acts of faith or of habit; to others, acts of magic. But in reality there is a third aspect: the aspect of the rite as a symbolic act, giving expression to the archetypal expectation of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 208.
What I mean by this is that every epoch of our biological life has a numinous character: birth, puberty, marriage, illness, death, etc. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 208-209.
Rites give satisfaction to the collective and numinous aspects of the moment, beyond their purely personal significance. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 209.
The proper kind of rite is not magically but psychologically efficacious. That is why a well-conducted Mass produces a powerful effect, particularly when the meaning of the ceremony can be followed. But once lost, lost forever! That is the tragedy of Protestantism. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 209.
If there was ever a truly apocalyptic era, it is ours. God has put the means for a universal holocaust into the hands of men. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 209.
People hate the human soul; it is nothing but “psychological.” They don’t understand that it has needs, and they throw its treasures into the street without understanding them. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 209.
Already Philip Toynbee has reviewed it [Answer to Job] in an “abysmally stupid” way as R.F.C. Hull, the translator, rightly says (in a letter to me). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 213.
I have been up against the wall of stupidity for 50 years. That is just so, and nothing can be done about it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 213.
My last work, Mysterium Coniunctionis, is now with the printer, and I have no ideas any more-thank Heavens. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 214.
If we want to maintain the spiritual contents of 2000 years of Christian tradition, we must understand what it is all about. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 214.
As religious assertions never make sense when understood concretely, they needs must be comprehended as a symbolic psychic phenomenon. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 214.
I am now in my 80th and I must say I am grateful to whomever administers my fate that I have met in you [Upton Sinclair] a kindred spirit interested in and talking of things that seem to be vital to you. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 215.
An American pupil of mine, Dr. Progoff (New York), has tried to adapt and to explain synchronicity to the average reader but he landed his ship on the rocks because he could not free his mind from the deep-rooted belief in the Sanctissima Trinitas of the axiomata time, space, and causality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 215.
But wherever a philosophy based upon the sciences prevails (as in the USA), the individual man loses his foothold and becomes “vermasst,” turned into a mass particle, because as an “exception” he is valueless, not very different from the Russian. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 216.
I am obliged to you for your [R.F.C. Hull] courageous answer. There are damned few who have the guts to stand up for me. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 217.
It is true however that it is the asses that make public opinion. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 217.
People have wondered belatedly about the psychology of the German Army-no wonder! Every single soldier and officer was just a particle in the mass, swayed by suggestion and stripped of moral responsibility. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 218.
A group of inferior people is never better than any one of them; it is just as inferior as they, and a State composed of nothing, but sheep is never anything else but a herd of sheep, even though it is led by a shepherd with a vicious dog. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 220.
But in view of the notorious tendency of people to lean on others and cling to various -isms instead of finding security and independence within themselves, which is the prime requisite, there is a danger that the individual will equate the group with father and mother and so remain just as dependent, insecure, and infantile as before. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 220.
Sure, if society consisted of valuable individuals only, adaptation would be worthwhile; but in reality it is composed mainly of nincompoops and moral weaklings, and its level is far below that of its better representatives, in addition to which the mass as such stifles all individual values. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 220.
Admittedly there has been scientific and technological progress, but no one has yet heard that people in general have become more intelligent let alone morally better. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 220.
…it is now about 50 years since I first pointed out the psychology of the illness that was then still known as Dementia praecox. Sometimes I seem an anachronism to myself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 233.
There are damned few who have the guts to stand up for me. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 217.
In other words: the essence of Christian tradition is by no means the simple man Jesus whom we seek in vain in the Gospels, but the lore of the God-man and his cosmic drama. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 206.
Natural “laws” are in the main mere abstractions (being statistical averages) instead of reality, and they abolish individual existence as being merely exceptional. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 207.
What we need is the development of the inner spiritual man, the unique individual whose treasure is hidden on the one hand in the symbols of our mythological tradition, and on the other hand in man’s unconscious psyche. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 207.
Theologians call their creed a symbolum, but they refuse to call their truth “symbolic.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 207.
I am amazed at the fact that you [Upton Sinclair] should have difficulties in finding a publisher. What is America coming to, when her most capable authors cannot reach their public anymore? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 208.
I give the adaptation of the individual to society its full due. But I still stand up for the inalienable rights of the individual since alone is the carrier of life and is gravely threatened by the social levelling process today. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 221.
I am no preacher of “splendid isolation” and have the greatest difficulty in shielding myself from the crushing demands of people and human relationships. Without values of one’s own even social relationships lack significance. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 221.
Speaking with tongues (glossolalia) is observed in cases of ekstasis (= abaissement du niveau mental, predominance of the unconscious) It is probable that the strangeness of the unconscious contents not yet integrated in consciousness demands an equally strange language. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 227.
The healing function is not necessarily a characteristic of individuation; it is a thing in itself. It also doesn’t work exclusively through transference; that is a Freudian prejudice. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 228.
If you discuss religious problems and you bring in a psychological point of view, you instantly collide with the concretism of religious belief. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 228.
I am very glad that Time has brought out a decent article; I was afraid they would make a caricature of it as is usually the case. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 228.
Another aspect of this concretism is the rigidity of scholastic philosophy, through which Father “White” is wriggling as well as he can. He is at bottom an honest and sincere man who cannot but admit the importance of psychology, but the trouble is that he gets into an awful stew about it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 228.
It is so because these inventions-the uranium and hydrogen bomb-are produced by the human mind, instigated by the great genocide the unconscious is planning in order to compensate the incessant and inevitable increase of populations, which must eventually lead to gigantic catastrophes if miraculous and unforeseen inventions do not intervene. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 230.
But fortunately enough, to judge from the satisfactory sale of my books, the public does not heed such inadequate criticism. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 231.
Alcoholism is a terrible threat to a nation. Look at France! ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 231.
My Answer to Job was left by the Bollingen Press to the English publishers, since they were apparently afraid of something like “Unamerican activities” and the loss of prestige presumably. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 231.
The ruler of my birth, old Saturnus, slowed down my maturation process to such an extent that I became aware of my own ideas only at the beginning of the second half of my life, i.e., exactly with 36 years. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 232.
The idea that mescalin could produce a transcendental experience is shocking. The drug merely uncovers the normally unconscious functional layer of perceptional and emotional variants, which are only psychologically transcendent but by no means “transcendental,” i.e., metaphysical. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 222-224.
There is finally a question which I am unable to answer, as I have no corresponding experience: it concerns the possibility that a drug opening the door to the unconscious could also release a latent, potential psychosis. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 222-224
“Astrology” is another of those “random phenomena” wiped off the desk by the idol of the average, which everybody believes to be reality itself while it is a mere abstract. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 232.
Soon a little book of mine which I have published with the physicist Prof. W. Pauli will come out in English. It is even more shocking than Job, but this time to the scientist, not the theologian. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 232.
The way in which the scientific world reacts reminds me strongly of those remote times when I stood up all alone for Freud against a world blindfolded by prejudice, and ever since I have been the subject of calumny, irritation, and contempt, although I have harvested a good deal of appreciation paradoxically enough just from universities (among them Oxford and Harvard). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 232.
Although I have never taken the drug [Mescalin] myself nor given it to another individual, I have at least devoted 40 years of my life to the study of that psychic sphere which is disclosed by the said drug; that is the sphere of numinous experiences. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 222.
There are some poor impoverished creatures, perhaps, for whom mescalin would be a heaven-sent gift without a counter poison, but I am profoundly mistrustful of the “pure gifts of the Gods.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II to Victor White dated 10 April 1954.
That is the mistake Aldous Huxley makes: he does not know that he is in the role of the “Zauberlehrling,” who learned from his master how to call the ghosts but did not know how to get rid of them again. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II to Victor White dated 10 April 1954.
I should indeed be obliged to you if you could let me see the material they get with LSD. It is quite awful that the alienists have caught hold of a new poison to play with, without the faintest knowledge or feeling of responsibility. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II to Victor White dated 10 April 1954.
Question: Do you occasionally resort to stimulants of any kind (alcohol, morphine, hashish, etc.)? Answer: Oh no! Never! A new idea is intoxicating enough. Carl Jung, CW 18, Page 787
Mescalin is a short cut and therefore yields as a result only a perhaps awe-inspiring aesthetic impression, which remains an isolated, unintegrated experience contributing very little to the development of human personality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 223.
But I never could accept mescalin as a means to convince people of the possibility of spiritual experience over against their materialism. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 224.
It is on the contrary an excellent demonstration of Marxist materialism: mescalin is the drug by which you can manipulate the brain so that it produces even so-called “spiritual” experiences. That is the ideal case for Bolshevik philosophy and its “brave new world.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 224.
My thoughts about “this world” were not-and are not-enjoyable. The drive of the unconscious towards mass murder on a global scale is not exactly a cheering prospect. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 229
Transitions between the aeons always seem to have been melancholy and despairing times, as for instance the collapse of the Old Kingdom in Egypt (“The Dialogue of a World; Weary Man with His Soul”) between Taurus and Aries, or the melancholy of the Augustinian age between Aries and Pisces. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 229.
And now we are moving into Aquarius, of which the Sibylline Books say: Luciferi vires accendit Aquarius acres (Aquarius inflames the savage forces of Lucifer). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 229.
Already I am a great-grandfather twice over and see those distant generations growing up who long after we are gone will spend their lives in that darkness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 229
I would accuse myself of senile pessimism did I not know that the H-bomb is lying ready to hand-a fact that unfortunately can no longer be doubted. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 230.
The vernal equinox is moving out of the sign of Pisces into the sign of Aquarius, just as it did out of Taurus (the old bull gods) into Aries (the ram-horned gods) and then out of Aries (the sacrificed lamb) into Pisces. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 229.
1500 years ago St. Benedict could pour the new wine into new bottles; or rather, the seeds of a new culture germinating in the decay were bedded in the new spirit of Christianity. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 225.
Our apocalyptic epoch likewise contains the seeds of a different, unprecedented, and still inconceivable future which could be bedded in the Christian spirit if only this would renew itself, as happened with the seeds that sprouted from the decay of classical culture. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 225.
The coming new age will be as vastly different from ours as the world of the 19th century was from that of the 20th with its atomic physics and its psychology of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 225.
The dignitas humani generis has swollen into a truly diabolical grandeur. What answer will the genius of mankind give? Or what will God do about it? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 225.
Presumably you are thinking of my psychology which, though born of the Christian spirit, seeks to give adequate answers to the spirit of this age: the voice of a doctor struggling to heal the psychic confusion of his time and thus compelled to use a language very different from yours. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 226.
Analytical psychology unfortunately just touches the vulnerable spot of the church, viz. the untenable concretism of its beliefs, and the syllogistic character of Thomistic philosophy. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 228
You are quite right; with the dogma of the Assumptio the unconscious “wells into the Church,” since Woman is its (the unconscious) representative on earth. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 231.
For most people my Christian standpoint remains hidden, and because of the strangeness of my language and the incomprehensibility of my interests I am given a wide berth. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 226.
Now once again we are in a time of decay and transition, as around 2000 B.C, when the Old Kingdom of Egypt collapsed, and at the beginning of the Christian era, when the New Kingdom finally came to an end and with-it classical Greece. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 225.
The idea that mescaline could produce a transcendental experience is shocking. The drug merely uncovers the normally unconscious functional layer of perceptional and emotional variants, which are only psychologically transcendent but by no means “transcendental,” i.e., metaphysical. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 223.
On the way back through the history of mankind we integrate much that belongs to us and, deep down, also something of brother animal, who is actually holier than us since he cannot deviate from the divine will implanted in him because his dark consciousness shows him no other paths. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 235.
I find that all my thoughts circle round God like the planets round the sun and are as irresistibly attracted by him. I would feel it the most heinous sin were I to offer any resistance to this compelling force. I feel it is God’s will that I should exercise the gift of thinking that has been vouchsafed me. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 236.
Man’s understanding and will are challenged and can help, but they can never pretend to have plumbed the depths of the spirit and to have quenched the fire raging within it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 237.
Even the Redeemer on the Cross uttered no joyful cry despite his having been credited with completely overcoming the world and himself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 237.
An “object” (as you put it), i.e., a human being who does not know that he has enkindled love in you does not feel loved but humiliated because he is simply subjected or exposed to your own psychic state in which he himself has no part. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 237.
Much as I can go along with you in the process of “becoming whole and holy,” or individuation, I cannot subscribe to your statements about the “ego in complete possession of itself” and unrelated universal love, although they bring you perilously close to the ideal of Yoga: nirdvandva (free from the opposites). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 238.
I know these moments of liberation come flashing out of the process, but I shun them because I always feel at such a moment that I have thrown off the burden of being human and that it will fall back on me with redoubled weight. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 238.
As we have not yet reached the state of eternal bliss, we are still suspended on the Cross between ascent and descent, not only for our own but for God’s sake and mankind’s. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 238.
My special interest besides my psychiatric work is research in the field of comparative psychology of religious symbolism. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 244.
As long as you [Victor White] do not identify yourself with the avenging angel, I can feel your humanity and I can tell you that I am really sorry for my misdeeds and sore about God’s ways with the poor anthropoids that were meant to have a brain enabling them to think critically. ~Carl Jung, Letters, Vol. II, Page 239.
Man must know that he is man’s worst enemy just as much as God had to learn from Job about His own antithetical nature. ~Carl Jung, Letters, Vol. II, Page 239.
The apostles and the early Fathers of the Church had no easy life and moreover no Christian is meant to go to sleep in a safe pew. ~Carl Jung, Letters, Vol. II, Page 239.
I know, it is the mistake of Libra people: they are afraid of anything disturbing the balance. But they can maintain it only by “studying what troubles them.” ~Carl Jung, Letters, Vol. II, Page 241.
There is no comfort and no consolation anywhere except in the submission to and the Acceptance of the self, or you may call it the God that suffers in His own creation. ~Carl Jung, Letters, Vol. II, Page 241.
I have discovered in my private life that a true Christian is not bedded upon roses and he is not meant for peace and tranquility of mind but for war. ~Carl Jung, Letters, Vol. II, Page 242.
And again I am realizing profoundly that not everybody’s nature is as bellicose as mine, although I have attained Deo concedente-a certain state of peace within, paid for by a rather uncomfortable state of war without. ~Carl Jung, Letters, Vol. II, Page 242.
If turmoil and torment become too great, there is still the oneness of the self, the divine spark within its inviolable precincts, offering its extramundane peace. ~Carl Jung, Letters, Vol. II, Page 242.
It is your theological standpoint that is a gnosis, not my empiricism, of which you obviously haven’t the faintest inkling. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 245.
Faust II has been my companion all my life, but it was only 20 years ago that certain things began to dawn on me, especially when I read Christian Rosencreutz’s Chymical Wedding, which Goethe also knew but, interestingly enough, did not mention among the alchemical literature of his Leipzig days. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 246.
So far as we know, Goethe used only the relatively late alchemical literature, and it was the study of the classical and early medieval texts which first convinced me that Faust I and II is an opus alchymicum in the best sense. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 246.
If a man’s life consists half of happiness and half of unhappiness, this is probably the optimum that can be reached, and it remains forever an unresolved question whether suffering is educative or demoralizing. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 248.
It seems to me that transcendental judgments of the intellect are absolutely impossible and therefore vacuous. But in spite of Kant and epistemology they crop up again and again and can evidently not be suppressed. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 249.
What is more, medical experience shows that it is advisable to take numinous experiences seriously, as they have a great deal to do with the fate of the individual. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 250.
Even the saints cast a shadow. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 253.
Becoming conscious reconciles the opposites and thus creates a higher third. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 254.
It seems to me one more proof of the overweening gnostic tendency in philosophical thinking to ascribe to God qualities which are the product of our own anthropomorphic formulations. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 254.
If we describe God as “evolving,” we must bear in mind at the same time that perhaps he is so vast that the process of cognition only moves along his contours, as it were, so that the attribute “evolving” applies more to it than to him. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 254.
I hold the contrary view that there are certain experiences (of the most varied kinds) which we characterize by the attribute “divine” without being able to offer the slightest proof that they are caused by a Being with any definite qualities. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 254.
For me “God” is on the one hand a mystery that cannot be unveiled, and to which I must attribute only one quality: that it exists in the form of a particular psychic event which I feel to be numinous and cannot trace back to any sufficient cause lying within my field of experience. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 255.
On the other hand “God” is a verbal image, a predicate or mythologem founded on archetypal premises which underlie the structure of the psyche as images of the instincts (“instinctual patterns”). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 260.
“God” in this sense is a biological, instinctual and elemental “model,” an archetypal “arrangement” of individual, contemporary and historical contents, which, despite its numinosity, is and must be exposed to intellectual and moral criticism, just like the image of the “evolving” God or of Yahweh or the Summum Bonum or the Trinity. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 255.
Mythology as a vital psychic phenomenon is as necessary as it is unavoidable. In this discussion, it seems to me, the gnostic danger of ousting the unknowable and incomprehensible and unutterable God by philosophems and mythologems must be clearly recognized, so that nothing is shoved in between human consciousness and the primordial numinous experience. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 256.
As a young man I drew the conclusion that you must obviously fulfill your destiny in order to get to the point where a donum gratiae might happen along. But I was far from certain, and always kept the possibility in mind that on this road I might end up in a black hole. I have remained true to this attitude all my life. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 257.
It was the tragedy of my youth to see my father cracking up before my eyes on the problem of his faith and dying an early death. This was the objective outer event that opened my eyes to the importance of religion. Subjective inner experiences prevented me from drawing negative conclusions about religion from my father’s fate, much as I was tempted to do so. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 257.
From this you can easily see the origin of my psychology: only by going my own way, integrating my capacities headlong (like Paul), and thus creating a foundation for myself, could something be vouchsafed to me or built upon it, no matter where it came from, and of which I could be reasonably sure that it was not merely one of my own neglected capacities. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 258.
I don’t know whether the archetype is “true” or not. I only know that it lives and that I have not made it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 258.
With increasing approximation to the centre there is a corresponding depotentiation of the ego in favour of the influence of the “empty” centre, which is certainly not identical with the archetype but is the thing the archetype points to. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 258.
As the Chinese would say, the archetype is only the name of Tao, not Tao itself. Just as the Jesuits translated Tao as “God,” so we can describe the “emptiness” of the centre as “God.” Emptiness in this sense doesn’t mean “absence” or “vacancy,” but something unknowable which is endowed with the highest intensity. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 258.
If I call this unknowable the “self,” all that has happened is that the effects of the unknowable have been given an aggregate name, but its contents are not affected in any way. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 258.
The ego has to acknowledge many gods before it attains the centre where no god helps it any longer against another god. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 259.
The up surging archetypal material is the stuff of which mental illnesses are made. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 260.
All statements about and beyond the “ultimate” are anthropomorphisms and, if anyone should think that when he says “God” he has also predicated God, he is endowing his words with magical power. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 260.
I have in all conscience never supposed that in discussing the psychic structure of the God-image I have taken God himself in hand. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 260.
I am not a word-magician or word-fetishist who thinks he can posit or call up a metaphysical reality with his incantations. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 260.
People still believe that they can posit or replace reality by words, or that something has happened when a thing is given a different name. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 261.
They [Archetypes] guide but they also mislead; how much I reserve my criticism for them you can see in Answer to Job, where I subject archetypal statements to what you call “blasphemous” criticism. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 261.
If theologians think that whenever they say “God” then God is, they are deifying anthropomorphisms, psychic structures and myths. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 261.
It is not God who is insulted by the worm but the theologian, who can’t or won’t admit that his concept is anthropomorphic. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 254.
If God were to reveal himself to us we have nothing except our psychic organs to register his revelation and could not express it except in the images of our everyday speech. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 262.
The reason why mythic statements invariably lead to word-magic is that the archetype possesses a numinous autonomy and has a psychic life of its own. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 264.
Tantra Yoga gives the classic localizations of thought: anahata, thinking (or localization of consciousness) in the chest region (phrenes); visuddha (localized in the larynx), verbal thinking; and ajna, vision, symbolized by an eye in the forehead, which is attained only when verbal image and object are no longer identical, i.e., when their participation mystique is abolished. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 264.
Individuation is ultimately a religious process which requires a corresponding religious attitude = the ego-will submits to God’s will. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 265.
Analytical psychology only helps us to find the way to the religious experience that makes us whole. It is not this experience itself, nor does it bring it about. But we do know that analytical psychology teaches us that attitude which meets a transcendent reality halfway. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 265.
If you know anything of my anima theory, [James] Joyce and his daughter are a classic example of it. She was definitely his femme inspiratrice, which explains his obstinate reluctance to have her certified. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 266.
His [James Joyce] own anima, i.e., unconscious psyche, was so solidly identified with her that to have her certified would have been as much as an admission that he himself had a latent psychosis. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 266.
His “psychological” style is definitely schizophrenic, with the difference, however, that the ordinary patient cannot help talking and thinking in such a way, while [James] Joyce willed it and moreover developed it with all his creative forces. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 266.
I cannot prove the identity of an historical personage with a psychological archetype. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 267.
Inasmuch as we attribute to the Holy Spirit the faculty of procreating in matter, we must unavoidably grant it a nature capable of contact with material existence, i.e., a chthonic aspect, as the alchemists did; otherwise it could not influence Physis. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 267.
Without error and sin there is no experience of grace, that is, no union of God and man. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 268.
A complete life, unconditionally lived, is the work of the Holy Spirit. It leads us into all dangers and defeats, and into the light of knowledge, which is to say, into maximal consciousness. This is the aim of the incarnation as well as the Creation, which wants each being to attain its perfection. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 268.
My education offered me nothing but arguments against religion on the one hand, and on the other the charisma of faith was denied me. I was thrown back on experience alone. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 257.
The archetype is not just the formal condition for mythological statements but an overwhelming force comparable to nothing I know. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 260.
I have in fact seen cases where the carcinoma broke out under the conditions you envisage, when a person comes to a halt at some essential point in his individuation or cannot get over an obstacle. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 297.
Just as carcinoma can develop for psychic reasons, it can also disappear for psychic reasons. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 297.
He answered that f.i. I used the term Hierosgamos, which is a very usual term in comparative religion, and there is nothing esoteric about it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 297.
No matter whether it was a Jewish or a Christian or any other belief, he [Freud] was unable to admit anything beyond the horizon of his scientific materialism. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 295.
Naturally he [Freud] assumed that my more positive ideas about religion and its importance for our psychological life were nothing but an outcrop of my unrealized resistances against my clergyman father, whereas in reality my problem and my personal prejudice were never centred in my father but most emphatically in my mother. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 296.
I have always wondered how it comes that just the theologians are often so particularly fond of the Freudian theory, as one could hardly find anything more hostile to their alleged beliefs. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 296.
I do not theorize about how neuroses originate; I describe what you find in neuroses. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 296.
I have resigned myself to being posthumous. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 299.
I don’t use free association at all since it is in any case an unreliable method of getting at the real dream material. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 293.
That is to say, by means of “free” association you will always get at your complexes, but this does not mean at all that they are the material dreamt about. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 294.
The individuation process is the experience of a natural law and may or may not be perceived by consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 294.
I am glad at last that I have been able (though not through my merit) to spare my wife [Emma] what follows on the loss of a lifelong partner-the silence that has no answer. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 293.
But if you are now in the dumps and up to your ears in the mire, you must tell yourself that you were obviously flying too high and that a dose of undiluted hellish blackness was indicated. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 298.
You should regard your present situation as a mud bath from which after a while a small morning sun will burst forth again. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 298.
The devil can best be beaten with patience, having none himself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 298.
The question of colours or rather absence of colours in dreams, depends on the relations between consciousness and the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 299.
In a situation where an approximation of the unconscious to consciousness is desirable, or vice versa, the unconscious acquires a special tone, which can express itself in the colourfulness of its images (dreams, visions, etc.) or in other impressive qualities (beauty, depth, intensity). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 299.
When Huxley says that a symbol is uncoloured, this is an error. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 300.
The psychological criterion of the “Will of God” is forever the dynamic superiority. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 301
You have to live thoroughly and very consciously for many years in order to understand what your will is and what Its will is. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 301.
So try to live as consciously, as conscientiously, and as completely as possible and learn who you are and who or what it is that ultimately decides. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 301.
Whole numbers may well be the discovery of God’s “primal thoughts,” as for instance the significant number four, which has distinctive qualities. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 302.
After all, man cannot dissect God’s primal thoughts. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 302.
Your dream seems to me a genuine revelation: God and Number as the principle of order belong together. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 302.
Number, like Meaning, inheres in the nature of all things as an expression of God’s dissolution in the world of appearances. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 302.
Christ is not an archetype but a personification of the archetype. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 304.
Purusha as creator sacrifices himself in order to bring the world into being: God dissolves in his own creation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 304.
The Incarnation results from Christ “emptying himself of divinity” and taking the form of a slave. Thus he is in bondage to man as the demiurge is in bondage to the world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 305.
The spiritual (as contrasted with the worldly) Messiah, Christ, Mithras, Osiris, Dionysos, Buddha are all visualizations or personifications of the irrepresentable archetype which, borrowing from Ezekiel and Daniel, I call the Anthropos. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 313.
Our fantasies are always hovering on the point of our insufficiency where a defect ought to be compensated. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 306.
It is only within the last decade that his psychology was really taken notice of by academic minds and has penetrated the mental tenebrosities of the greater public. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 307.
I cannot force people to take my work seriously and I cannot persuade them to study it really. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 307.
How can I popularize things so difficult, and demanding such an unusual amount of specific knowledge, to a public that does not or cannot take the trouble to settle down to a careful study of the facts collected in many volumes? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 308.
Both disciplines [physics/psychology] have, for all their diametrical opposition, one most important point in common, namely the fact that they both approach the hitherto “transcendental” region of the Invisible and Intangible, the world of merely analogous thought. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 308.
The problem nearest to Freud’s heart was unquestionably the psychology of the unconscious, but none of his immediate followers has done anything about it. I happen to be the only one of his heirs that has carried out some further research along the lines he intuitively foresaw. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 309.
An exclusively causal view is permissible only in the realm of physical or inorganic processes. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 310.
With no human consciousness to reflect themselves in, good and evil simply happen, or rather, there is no good and evil, but only a sequence of neutral events, or what the Buddhists call the Nidhana chain, the uninterrupted causal concatenation leading to suffering, old age, sickness, and death. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 311.
Buddha’s insight and the Incarnation in Christ break the chain through the intervention of the enlightened human consciousness, which thereby acquires a metaphysical and cosmic significance. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 311.
The boon of increased self-awareness is the sufficient answer even to life’s suffering, otherwise it would be meaningless and unendurable. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 311.
Though the suffering of the Creation which God left imperfect cannot be done away with by the revelation of the good God’s will to man, yet it can be mitigated and made meaningful. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 311.
Individuation and individual existence are indispensable for the transformation of God the Creator. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 314.
We ought to remember that the Fathers of the Church have insisted upon the fact that God has given Himself to man’s death on the Cross so that we may become gods. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 315.
The Deity has taken its abode in man with the obvious intention of realizing Its Good in man. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 315.
Christianity has envisaged the religious problem as a sequence of dramatic events, whereas the East holds a thoroughly static view, i.e., a cyclic view. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 315.
The significance of man is enhanced by the incarnation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 315.
We have become participants of the divine life and we have to assume a new responsibility, viz. the continuation of the divine self-realization, which expresses itself in the task of our individuation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 316.
Individuation does not only mean that man has become truly human as distinct from animal, but that he is to become partially divine as well. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 316.
Mama’s [Emma Jung] death has left a gap for me that cannot be filled. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 317.
Causality as a statistical truth presupposes the existence of acausality, otherwise it cannot be a statistical truth. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 318.
The archetype itself (nota bene not the archetypal representation!) is psychoid, i.e., transcendental and thus relatively beyond the categories of number, space, and time. That means, it approximates to oneness and immutability. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 326.
It should be added that the religions, so long as they are alive, have never ceased to foster the relation to the unconscious in one form or another. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 320.
I hope you will find time to commit your plant counterparts to the earth and tend their growth, for the earth always wants children-houses, trees, flowers-to grow out of her and celebrate the marriage of the human psyche with the Great Mother, the best counter-magic against rootless extraversion! ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 320
The choice of your wives was characteristic. They were temporary incarnations of what I call your anima. In practice it means that the woman of your choice represents your own task you did not understand. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 321.
The Middle Ages already knew about this peculiar psychic fact [Anima] and said: omnis vir feminam suam secum portat. [“Each man carries his woman with him.”] ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 321.
How psychic energy can transform itself into physically sound phenomena is a problem in itself. I don’t know how it is done. We only know that it is done. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 322
Now as ever I am of the opinion that Protestant theologians would have every reason to take my views seriously, for otherwise the same thing could happen here as has already happened in China and will happen in India: that the traditional religious ideas die of literal-mindedness or are spewed out en masse because of their indigestibility. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 322.
In China, for instance, a philosopher like Hu Shih is ashamed to know anything of the I Ching, the profound significance of Tao has got lost, and instead people worship locomotives and aeroplanes. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 322.
The mind is like a tree bringing forth its characteristic blossom and fruit; it is just so. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 252.
God is an immediate experience of a very primordial nature, one of the most natural products of our mental life, as the birds sing, as the wind whistles, like the thunder of the surf. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 253.
People who think that they know the reasons for everything are unaware of the obvious fact that the existence of the universe itself is one big unfathomable secret, and so is our human existence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 284.
It is true that one cannot fully realize something that is not yet there, for one does not know what the pattern is which a still living person fills out. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 317.
The essential dream-image: The Man, the Tree, the Stone, looks quite inaccessible, but only to our modern consciousness which is, as a rule, unconscious of its historical roots. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 325.
The fact is that the numbers pre-existing in nature are presumably the most fundamental archetypes, being the very matrix of all others. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 327.
Our psychic foundations are shrouded in such great and inchoate darkness that, as soon as you peer into it, it is instantly compensated by mythic forms. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 328.
It is a mathematical structure, which first made me hit on the idea that the unconscious somehow avails itself of the properties of whole numbers. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 328.
From this it appears that whole numbers are individuals, and that they Possess properties which cannot be explained on the assumption that they are multiple units. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 328.
The idea that numbers were invented for counting is obviously untenable, since they are not only pre-existent to judgment but possess properties which were discovered only in the course of the centuries, and presumably possess a number of others which will be brought to light only by the future development of mathematics. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 328.
Like all the inner foundations of judgment, numbers are archetypal by nature and consequently partake of the psychic qualities of the archetype. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 328-329.
It would be a worthy task for a mathematician to collect all the known properties of numbers and also all their “inescapable” statements which should be quite possible up to 10-and in this way project a biological picture of whole numbers. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 329.
It should be noted that music is a primitive means of putting people into a state of frenzy; one has only to think of the drumming at the dances of shamans and medicine-men, or of the flute-playing at the Dionysian orgies. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 331.
The rat-catching Pied Piper himself must have been possessed by the spirit of Wotan, which swept all those who were liable to such transports-in this case children-into a state of collective frenzy. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 331.
Wotan was banished by Christianity to the realm of the devil, or identified with him, and the devil is the Lord of rats and flies. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 332.
I don’t know where you picked up this rather childish yarn about directors of world affairs located in Tibetan lamaseries… At all events I can tell you that I am not a member of such a wholly fantastical organization. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 332.
The idea that I convert people, as it were, to the new denomination Jungianism” or better “Jungian Church” is sheer defamation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 334.
I am definitely inside Christianity and, as far as I am capable of judging about myself, on the direct line of historical development. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 334.
If the Reformation is a heresy, I am certainly a heretic too. It is of course a thorn in the flesh of the churches that I do not belong to any of the recognized sects. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 335.
But Number is a factor pre-existent to man, with unforeseen qualities yet to be discovered by him. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 327.
In these terrible days when evil is once again inundating the world in every conceivable form, I want you to know that I am thinking of you and of your family in Hungary and hope with you that the avenging angel will pass by their door. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 336.
The fate of Hungary cries to heaven, and in the West stupidity and delusion have reached a fatal climax. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 336.
Mediterranean culture is founded on a three- to four-thousand-year-old rule of order, both political and religious, which had long outgrown the locally conditioned, semi-barbarian forms of society. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 337.
As far as my knowledge goes we are aware in dreams of our other life that consists in the first place of all the things we have not yet lived or experienced in the flesh. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 341
All the things which are not yet realized in our daylight experience are in a peculiar state, namely in the condition of living and autonomous figures, sometimes as if spirits of the dead, sometimes as if former incarnations. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 341
We cannot speak of “God” but only of a God-image which appears to us or which we make. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 342.
If, for instance, we were to create a myth, we would say that “God” has two aspects, spiritual and chthonic, or rather: material. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 342.
He [God] appears to us as the world-moving spirit (= wind) and as the material of the world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 342.
We can only project a conception of him that corresponds to our own constitution: a body perceived by the senses and a spirit (= psyche) directly conscious of itself. After this model we build our God-image. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 342.
Coming now to cosmogony, we can assert nothing except that the body of the world and its psyche are a reflection of the God we imagine. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 342.
Rather, we have every reason to suppose that there is only one world, where matter and psyche are the same thing, which we discriminate for the purpose of cognition. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 342.
As regards the Incarnation, the idea of God’s descent into human nature is a true mythologem. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 342.
What we can experience empirically as underlying this image is the individuation process, which gives us clear intimations of a greater “Man” than our ego. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 342.
The unconscious itself characterizes this “Man” with the same symbols it applies to God, from which we can conclude that this figure corresponds to the Anthropos, in other words God’s son, or God represented in the form of a man. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 342.
The self becomes only a determining factor, and it is not bounded by its apparent entry into consciousness; in spite of this it remains an ideal, i.e., purely imagined, entity dwelling essentially in the background, just as we also imagine God existing in his original boundless totality in spite of the Creation and Incarnation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 342.
So far as the integration of personality components are concerned, it must be borne in mind that the ego-personality as such does not include the archetypes but is only influenced by them; for the archetypes are universal and belong to the collective psyche over which the ego has no control. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 342.
Thus animus and anima are images representing archetypal figures which mediate between consciousness and the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 342.
At the same time the psyche, or rather consciousness, introduces the prerequisites for cognition into the picture-the discrimination of particulars or qualities which are not necessarily separated in the self-subsistent world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 343.
We distinguish an organic and an inorganic world, for example. The one is alive, the other is dead; the one has psyche, the other not. But who can guarantee that the same vital principle which is at work in the organic body is not active in the crystal? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 343.
The experience you had with the I Ching, calling you to order when trying to tempt it a second time also happened to me in 1920 when I first experimented with it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 344.
This aspect is certainly most important from the psychological angle, but I must say that I am equally interested, at times even more so, in the metaphysical aspect of the phenomena, and in the question: how does it come that even inanimate objects are capable of behaving as if they were acquainted with my thoughts? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 344.
By these deeper levels I mean the determining archetypes which are supraordinate to, or underlie, individual development and presumably are responsible for the supreme meaning of individual life. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 345.
The archetypes have a life of their own which extends through the centuries and gives the aeons their peculiar stamp. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 345.
Perhaps I may draw your attention to my historical contribution in Aion, where I have attempted to outline the evolutionary history of the Anthropos, which begins with the earliest Egyptian records. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 345.
Dali’s genius translates the spiritual background of the concrete symbol of transmutation into visibility. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 338
My typology is based exclusively on psychological premises which can hardly coincide with physiological or somatic qualities. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 346-347
Somatic characteristics are permanent and virtually unalterable facts, whereas psychological ones are subject to various alterations in the course of personality development and also to neurotic disturbances. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 347
Even though assignment to a particular type may in certain cases have lifelong validity, in other very frequent cases it is so dependent on so many external and internal factors that the diagnosis is valid only for certain periods of time. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 347.
In observing a neurotic, one does not know at first whether one is observing the conscious or the unconscious character. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 347.
His [Freud’s] irresponsible manner of observation is demonstrated by the fact, for instance, that not one of his cases of “traumatic” hysteria was verified. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 347.
When I analysed Freud a bit further in 1909 on account of a neurotic symptom, I discovered traces which led me to infer a marked injury to his feeling life. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 347.
Freud, when one got to know him better, was distinguished by a markedly differentiated feeling function. His “sense of values” showed itself in his love of precious stones, jade, malachite, etc. He also had considerable intuition. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 348.
People always assume anyway that my critical set-to with Freud was the result of a merely personal animosity on my part. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 349.
It should also be noted that my characterization of Adler and Freud as, respectively, introverted and extraverted does not refer to them personally but only to their outward demeanour. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 350.
Adler’s character, on the contrary, was introverted in so far as he gave paramount importance to the power of the ego. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 350.
What does in fact exist seems to be an objective psychic background, the unconscious, which predates consciousness and exists independently alongside it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 350.
Your ideas go back, in modern form, to the familiar world of Plato’s Timaeus, which was a sacrosanct authority for medieval science-and rightly so! ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 352.
From the fact that matter has a mainly quantitative aspect and at the same time a qualitative one, even though this appears to be secondary, you draw the weighty conclusion, which I heartily applaud, that, besides its obviously qualitative nature, the psyche has an as yet hidden quantitative aspect. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 352.
Matter and psyche are thus the terminal points of a polarity. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 352.
I have got stuck on the one hand, in the acausality (or “synchronicity”) of certain phenomena of unconscious provenance and, on the other hand, in the qualitative statements of numbers, for here I set foot on territories where I cannot advance without the help and understanding of the other disciplines. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 352.
Noise protects us from painful reflection, it scatters our anxious dreams, it assures us that we are all in the same boat and creating such a racket that nobody will dare to attack us. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 389.
Noise is so insistent, so overwhelmingly real, that everything else becomes a pale phantom. It relieves us of the effort to say or do anything, for the very air reverberates with the invincible power of our modernity. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 389.
Most people are afraid of silence; hence, whenever the everlasting chit-chat at a party suddenly stops, they are impelled to say something, do something, and start fidgeting, whistling, humming, coughing, whispering. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 390.
As experience shows, the figure one sees is not necessarily identical with the person one identifies with it, just as the picture by an artist is not identical with the original; but it is obvious that the vision of Christ was a most important religious experience to St. Paul. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 380.
Concentration is necessary whenever there is the possibility or threat of psychic chaos, i.e., when there is no central control by a strong ego or dominant idea. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 387.
There are beautiful examples of this in the Arabian art which went hand in hand with the psychic reorientation of a primitive society under the influence of Islam. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 387.
In Buddhist art, as in the Celtic illuminated manuscripts and sculptures, the complicated designs and intricate rhythms of the border pattern serve to coax the frightening, pullulating chaos of a disorganized psyche into harmonious forms. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 387.
Equally, the complicated ornamentation of ritual mandalas in Buddhism could be regarded as a sort of psychic “tranquillizer,” though this way of looking at it is admittedly one-sided. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 388.
We may think of the Irish monk as a man who still has one foot in the animistic world of nature-demons with its intense passions, and the other in the new Christian order symbolized by the Cross, which condenses the primordial chaos into the unity of the personality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 388.
It cannot be done by extinguishing the ego, and anyone who reflects at all constantly finds himself in the difficult position of having to safeguard his ego and at the same time lend an ear to the non-ego. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 392.
I am glad you have taken up The Secret of the Golden Flower again. The East often knows the answer to questions which appear insoluble to us Christians. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 392.
Just as some alchemists had to admit that they never succeeded in producing the gold or the Stone, I cannot confess to have solved the riddle of the coniunctio mystery. On the contrary I am darkly aware of things lurking in the background of the problem-things too big for our horizons. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 393.
The younger an individual is, the nearer he is to the primordial unconscious with its collective contents. This becomes particularly impressive when one studies those dreams of earliest childhood that are still remembered in adult age. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 394.
To deal with the coniunctio in human words is a disconcerting task, since you are forced to express and formulate a process taking place “in Mercurio” and not on the level of human thought and human language, i.e., not within the sphere of discriminating consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 394.
On this side of the epistemological barrier we have to separate the opposites in order to produce comprehensible speech. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 394.
Yet in the archetypal unimaginable event that forms the basis of conscious apperception, a is b, stench is perfume, sex is amor Dei, as inevitably as the conclusion that God is the complexio oppositorum. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 394.
Instead of creating light, we conceal in darkness, instead of lifting up, we expose the treasure to ridicule and contempt. Instead of opening a way, we barricade it by an inextricable snarl of paradoxes. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 395.
“In Mercurio” spirit and matter are one. This is a mystery nobody is ever going to solve. It is real, but we are unable to express its reality. It is neti-neti in other words beyond our grasp, although it is a definite experience. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 395.
It is said of the Stone: habet mille nomina [has a thousand names] which means that there is not one name expressing the Mystery. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 395.
There is not God alone but also His creation, i.e., the will of God in Christian terminology. Homo sapiens has to envisage both. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 396.
The works I completed this year [1957] have cost me energy and time enough, and I hope I may now be granted a longish spell of leisure without any new questions forcing me to new answers. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 396.
Improbable as this may sound, it is only the individual who is qualified to fight against the threat today of international mass-mindedness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 396.
This, too, [UFO’s] is an expression of something that has always claimed my deepest interest and my greatest attention: the manifestation of archetypes, or archetypal forms, in all the phenomena of life: in biology, physics, history, folklore, and art, in theology and mythology, in parapsychology, as well as in the symptoms of insane patients and neurotics, and finally in the dreams and life of every individual man and woman. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 397.
The intimation of forms hovering in a background not in itself knowable gives life the depth which, it seems to me, makes it worth living. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 397.
However, Einstein’s relativity theory shows that they are not necessarily Identical with our idea of them, f.i. that space may be curved, and that time necessarily depends upon the stand-point and the speed of the observer. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 398.
We conclude therefore that we have to expect a factor in the psyche that is not subject to the laws of time and space, as it is on the contrary capable of suppressing them to a certain extent. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 398.
It is a structural element of the psyche we find everywhere and at all times; and it is that in which all individual psyches are identical with each other, and where they function as if they were the one undivided psyche the ancients called anima mundi or the psyche tou kosmou. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 399
Our intellectual means reach only as far as archetypal experiences, but within that sphere we are not the motors, we are the moved objects. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 399.
I think you are correct in assuming that synchronicity, though in practice a relatively rare phenomenon, is an all-pervading factor or principle in the universe, i.e., in the Unus Mundus, where there is no incommensurability between so-called matter and so-called psyche. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 400.
I do not believe and do not disbelieve in the existence of UFOS. I simply do not know what to think about their alleged physical existence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 403
As it is questionable in how far UFOS are physical facts, it is indubitable that they are psychological facts. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 403.
It has taken me too long to discover the greatest thing, i.e., Man and what he means and why. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 404.
To discover Man is a great adventure. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 404.
To the former [Mathematician], number is a means of counting; to the latter [Psychology], it is a discovered entity capable of making individual statements if it is given a chance. In other words, in the former case number is a servant, in the latter case an autonomous being. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 405.
In my later years (I am now in my 83rd) I became doubtful, since I have received so much love and consideration that I have no reason to grumble. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 405.
I am now in my 83rd year and my creative work has come to an end. I am watching the setting sun. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 405.
There are far more people than one supposes who are not disturbed by noise, for they have nothing in them that could be disturbed; on the contrary, noise gives them something to live for. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 390.
I soon understood that parapsychological facts are interwoven with psychic conditions and cannot be really understood without psychology. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 375.
The very existence of alchemistic philosophy proves that the spiritualization process within Christian psychology did not yield satisfactory results. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 401.
While I am writing this I observe a little demon trying to abscond my words and even my thoughts and turning them over into the rapidly flowing river of images, surging from the mists of the past, portraits of a little boy, bewildered and wondering at an incomprehensibly beautiful and hideously profane and deceitful world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 408.
Thus on New Year’s Eve I had a great dream about my wife, which I will tell you sometime. It seems that individuation is a ruthlessly important task to which everything else should take second place. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 408.
Hoyle’s book has arrived, and I’ve finished it already. It is extraordinarily interesting to see how an astronomer collides with the unconscious and especially with the UFO problem. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 408.
Hoyle has the rotundum, the doctrine of the Anthropos, the cosmic wisdom of matter, which he naturally confuses with consciousness, and so fails to do justice to the problem of suffering. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 408.
The anima is a representative of the unconscious and hence a mediatrix, just as the Beata Virgo is called “mediatrix” in the dogma of the Assumption. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 423.
On the one hand the anima is an allurement to an intensification of life, but on the other she opens our eyes to its religious aspect. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 423.
The primordial experience is not concerned with the historical bases of Christianity but consists in an immediate experience of God (as was had by Moses, Job, Hosea, Ezekiel among others) which “convinces” because it is “overpowering.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 424.
One can only say that somehow one has to reach the rim of the world or get to the end of one’s tether in order to partake of the terror or grace of such an experience at all. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 424.
I think I understand ecclesiastical Christianity, but the theologians do not understand me. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 424.
Wherever our need for knowledge may turn we stumble upon opposites, which ultimately determine the structure of existence. The centre is the indivisible monad of the self, the unity and wholeness of the experiencing subject. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 424.
Our Christian theology is obviously not based “on the total religious experience.” It does not even consider the ambivalent experience of the Old Testament God. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 422.
On the other hand it is just the Trinity dogma, as it stands, that is the classical example of an artificial structure and an intellectual product, so much so that no theologian has yet recognized or admitted its origin in Egyptian theology. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 423.
Everything that can be repeated experimentally is necessarily causal, for the whole concept of causality is based on this statistical result. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 420.
The experimental activation of an archetypal situation has to be explained causally, since there is no possibility of explaining it otherwise and no reason to do so. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 420.
How it comes about that space and time are reduced by these meaningful chance occurrences cannot be understood in terms of causality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 420.
With regard to the horoscope I have serious doubts whether it can be understood as a purely synchronistic phenomenon, for there are unquestionable causal connections between the planetary aspects and the powerful effects of proton radiation, though we are still very much in the dark as to what its physiological effects might be. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 421.
Even the earlier name “Helvetii” did not sit with them naturally. No other people could live here as they would then have the wrong ancestral spirits, who dwell in the earth and are authentic Swiss. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 419.
Sitting in the central mussel-shell, we are the “sons of the mother.” Hence the old astrological tradition says that our zodiacal sign is Virgo. However, there is no unanimity on this score, since the other version says that our sign is Taurus. It is a virile, creative sign, but earthly like Virgo. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 419.
This ancient psychological insight expresses the fact that what is enclosed in the mother is a germinating seed that will one day burst through, as you have shown with other words and convincing examples. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 419.
As psychologists we are not concerned with the question of truth, with whether something is historically correct, but with living forces, living opinions which determine human behaviour. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 417
If you give the “synchronistic arrangement” the smallest possible play, the play of chance is obviously restricted, and the synchronistic “effect” thereby hindered. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 415.
Chance is an event, too, and if it didn’t exist causality would be axiomatic. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 416.
Leibniz as well as Schopenhauer had inklings of it [meaningful coincidences], but they gave a false answer because they started with an axiomatic causality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 416.
For me every book is a kind of fate, and for this reason I cannot say with any certainty where the boundary line will set itself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 414.
At my age, unfortunately, everything goes rather slowly, and I always have to wait for a favourable moment amid the flux of my intensive work in order to collect the thoughts that come to me after my reading. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 411.
The Trinitarian archetype seems to characterize all man’s conscious constructs, in strange contrast to the fact that this archetype is really a quaternity which historically is very often represented as 3+1, three equal elements being conjoined with an unequal Fourth. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 412.
I have often found that synchronistic experiences were interpreted by schizophrenics as delusions. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 409.
The schizophrenic’s interpretation [of Synchronicity] is morbidly narrow because it is mostly restricted to the intentions of other people and to his own ego-importance. The normal interpretation, so far as this is possible at all, is based on the philosophic premise of the sympathy of all things, or something of that kind. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 409.
Your patient is obviously someone who would need either to pay his tribute to Nature or to make some correspondingly meaningful sacrifice. What this might be is provisionally indicated by the dreams. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 409.
Thus the erotic relationship, no matter how unconventional it may be, would have to be understood as an opus divinum, and the perhaps necessary sacrifice of this relationship as a thysia, a “ritual slaughter.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 410.
We are not sure how far the relativity can go, so we do not know whether there is a level or a world on or in which space and time are absolutely abolished; but we remain within the limits of human experience when we accept the fact that it is the psyche which is able to relativize the apparent objectivity of time and space. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 399.
In reply to your letter of March 18th I can only tell you that though Prof. Pauli has informed me of his collaboration with Heisenberg he did not-for understandable reasons-give me the details of this collaboration. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 425.
I deduce the fact that acausal phenomena must exist from the purely statistical nature of causality, since statistics are only possible anyway if there are also exceptions. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 426.
The underlying scheme, the quaternio, i.e., the psychological equation of primordial dynamis (prima causa) with gods and their mythology, time and space, is a psychological problem of the first order. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 427.
You set your watch by the clock, and this amounts to a causal dependence, just as in Leibniz’s monadology all the monadic watches were originally wound up by the same creator. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 428.
Although we cannot conceive of a causal law and hence necessary connection between an event and its determination in time (horoscope), it nevertheless looks as though such a connection did exist; for on it is based the traditional interpretation of the horoscope, which presupposes and establishes a certain regularity of events. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 429.
The fact, however, is that our whole astrological determination of time does not correspond to any actual constellation in the heavens because the vernal equinox has long since moved out of Aries into Pisces and from the time of Hipparchus has been artificially set at 0° Aries. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 429.
From such discussions we see what awaits me once I have become posthumous. Then everything that was once fire and wind will be bottled in spirit and reduced to dead nostrums. Thus are the gods interred in gold and marble and ordinary mortals like me in paper. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 469.
There are, for instance, spring births and autumn births, which play an especially important role in the animal world. Then, besides the seasonal influences there are also the fluctuations of proton radiation, which have been proved to exert a considerable influence on human life. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 487.
We shall probably have to resort to a mixed explanation, for nature does not give a fig for the sanitary neatness of the intellectual categories of thought. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 430.
Just as a person refuses to recognize his own shadow side, so, but all the more strongly, he hates recognizing the shadow side of the nation behind which he is so fond of concealing himself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 430.
As a Swiss, my situation is such that by nature my heart is divided into four and because of the smallness of our country I can count on coming into contact at least with the four surrounding nations or cultural complexes. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 430.
The Indians, if influenced by Buddhism, habitually depotentiate their emotions by reciting a mantra. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 431.
I feel rather like old Moses, who was permitted to cast but a fleeting glance into the land of ethno-psychological problems. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 433.
There is no psychology worthy of this name in East Asia, but instead a philosophy consisting entirely of what we would call psychology. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 438.
Therefore-and this explains the tremendous upheaval going on in the East-he has a profound need for mastery over the concrete, with the result that America’s gadget-mania works on him like a devastating bacillus. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 438.
It has happened to me more than once that educated East Asians rediscovered the meaning of their philosophy or religion only through reading my books. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 438
Perhaps the profoundest insights into the peculiarities of the East Asian mind come from Zen, which tries to solve the Eastern problem on the level of our Scholasticism. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 439.
Although I have never been to Lourdes I cast no doubts on them. So far as they are medically verifiable I do not consider them “projections” in any sense. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 443.
I appreciate it all the more that for once one of my pupils has broken a lance for me, and moreover in such a venomous affair. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 443.
Whatever else we can produce as spirit voices are those of mediums, and there the great trouble is to establish whether the communicated contents derive from ghosts or from unconscious fantasies of the medium or of any other member of the circle. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 444.
Consequently the correlations with the planetary houses are purely fictitious, and this rules out the possibility of a causal connection with the actual positions of the stars, so that the astrological determination of time is purely symbolic. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 429.
This whole question of so-called “occult phenomena” is nothing one could be naive about. It is an awful challenge for the human mind. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 444.
If I don’t know it, it looks to me like an usurpation to say, “I believe it,” or the contrary. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 445
The only scientific approach to the question of survival is the recognition of the fact that the psyche is capable of extrasensory perceptions, namely of telepathy and of precognition, particularly the latter. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 445
But for those people not possessing the gift of belief it may be helpful to remember that science itself points to the possibility of survival. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 445
I can also say, therefore, that in itself the archetype is an irrepresentable configuration whose existence can be established empirically in a multitude of forms. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 446.
At the same time the archetype is always of an objective nature since it is an a priori ideational pattern which is everywhere identical with itself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 446.
The archetype, then, is a modality that represents visual forms, and synchronicity is another modality representing events. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 446.
The empiricist only speaks of data that can be determined with sufficient certainty, and from these data he tries to crystallize out characteristics of the as yet unknown. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 447.
With regard to the dynamic processes of the unconscious, he can also determine that the further characteristic of synchronicity exists; in other words, that archetypes have something to do with synchronicity. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 447.
In so far as both modalities, archetype and synchronicity, belong primarily to the realm of the psychic, we are justified in concluding that they are psychic phenomena. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 447.
This can be expressed in other words by saying that there is a relativity of the psychic and physical categories-a relativity of being and of the seemingly axiomatic existence of time and space. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 447.
So your question concerning the “freedom” of the unconscious is easily answered: the freedom appears in the non-predictability of synchronistic phenomena. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 447.
It is unthinkable that a world could have existed before time and space, for whatever world we can imagine is always bound to time and space and hence to causality. The most we can imagine is that there are statistical exceptions to such a world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 448.
Synchronicity is not a name that characterizes an “organizing principle,” but, like the word “archetype,” it characterizes a modality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 448.
It [Synchronicity] is not meant as anything substantive, for what the psyche is, or what matter is, eludes our understanding. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 448.
I therefore stop speculating when I have no more possibilities of ideas and wait on events, no matter of what kind, for instance dreams in which possibilities of ideas are presented to me but do not come this time from my biased peculation but rather from the unfathomable law of nature herself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 448.
Concerning archetypes, migration and verbal transmission are self-evident, except in those cases where individuals reproduce archetypal forms outside of all possible external influences (good examples in childhood dreams!). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 450.
Since archetypes are instinctual forms, they follow a universal pattern, as do the functions of the body. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 450.
Why should the psyche be the only living thing that is outside laws of determination? We follow archetypal patterns as the weaver-bird does. This assumption is far more probable than the mystical idea of absolute freedom. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 450.
The assumption, therefore, that the (psychoid) archetypes are inherited is for many reasons far more probable than that they are handed down by tradition. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 451.
The childish prejudice against inherited archetypes is mostly due to the fact that one thinks archetypes are representations; but in reality they are preferences or “penchants,” likes and dislikes. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 451
How do you explain f.i. the fact of a little child dreaming that God is partitioned into four? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 451.
As for my meeting with William James, you must remember that I saw him only twice and talked with him for a little over an hour, but there was no correspondence between us. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 452.
Aside from Theodore Flournoy he [William James] was the only outstanding mind with whom I could conduct an uncomplicated conversation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 452.
I know there are people who live in their own biography during their lifetime and act as though they were already in a book. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 452.
For me life was something that had to be lived and not talked about. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 452.
Also, my interest was always riveted only by a few but important things which I couldn’t speak of anyway or had to carry around with me for a long time until they were ripe for the speaking. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 453.
In addition I have been so consistently misunderstood that I have lost all desire to recall “significant conversations.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 453.
In Europe, as far as I can make out, Meister Eckhart is about the first where the self begins to play a noticeable role. After him some of the great German alchemists took up the idea and handed it down to Jacob Boehme and Angelus Silesius and kindred spirits. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 453.
Goethe’s Faust almost reached the goal of classical alchemy, but unfortunately the ultimate coniunctio did not come off, so that Faust and Mephistopheles could not attain their oneness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 453.
The second attempt, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, remained a meteor that never reached the earth, as the coniunctio oppositorum had not and could not have taken place. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 453.
For about 1900 years we have been admonished and taught to project the self into Christ, and in this very simple way it was removed from empirical man, much to the relief of the latter, since he was thus spared the experience of the self, namely the unio oppositorum. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 454.
Everything that is necessary can be lived if only you will stand by yourself and endure things as they are without grumbling. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 456.
As a rule I am all for walking in two worlds at once since we are gifted with two legs, remembering that spirit is pneuma which means “moving air.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 459.
It is good therefore, as a rule, to keep at least one foot upon terra firma. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 460.
We are still in the body and thus under the rule of heavy matter. Also it is equally true that matter not moved by the spirit is dead and empty. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 460.
The spirit is no merit in itself and it has a peculiarly irrealizing effect if not counter-balanced by its material opposite. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 460.
As you know I have stipulated that my correspondence with Freud ought not to be published before 30 years have elapsed after my death, but lately I have been asked from different sides to permit inasmuch as I am competent-an earlier publication of the whole correspondence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 458.
My letters [To Freud] were never written with any thought that they might become broadcast. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 459.
For him [Freud] conscience is a human acquisition. I, on the contrary, maintain that even animals have a conscience-dogs, for instance-and empirically there is much to be said for this, since instinctual conflicts are not altogether unknown on the animal level. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 457.
The inheritance of instincts is a known fact, whereas the inheritance of acquired characteristics is controversial. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 457.
Freud’s view that conscious experiences are inherited flies in the face of common knowledge and also contradicts his own hypothesis that Conscience is made up of ancestral experiences. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 458.
What is healing medicine for the one is poison for the other. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 455.
Astrology differs very much from alchemy, as its historical literature consists merely of different methods of casting a horoscope and of interpretation, and not of philosophical texts as is the case in alchemy. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 464.
Therefore Elihu in spite of his fundamental truth belongs to those foolish Jungians, who, as you suggest, avoid the shadow and make for the archetypes, i.e., the “divine equivalents,” which by the way are nothing but escape camouflage according to the personalistic theory. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 545.
It is not for you or for anybody else to judge, it is only the individual in question that decides whether something is good for him or bad. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 461.
A transference in the clinical sense does not always need a personal relationship as a bridge, but can take place via a book, a piece of hearsay, or a legend. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 504
Yet I think of myself as a Christian, since I am entirely based upon Christian concepts. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 524.
Meaningfulness always appears to be unconscious at first and can therefore only be discovered post hoc; hence there is always the danger that meaning will be read into things where actually there is nothing of the sort. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 495.
Since a creation without the reflecting consciousness of man has no discernible meaning, the hypothesis of a latent meaning endows man with a cosmogonic significance, a true raison d’ etre. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 495.
After thinking all this over I have come to the conclusion that being “made in the likeness” applies not only to man but also to the Creator: he resembles man or is his likeness, which is to say that he is just as unconscious as man or even more unconscious, since according to the myth of the incarnatio he actually felt obliged to become man and offer himself to man as a sacrifice. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 496.
This is the average man, and he is right in his anxiousness, because it is a matter of the fathers and mothers of all the terrors he is bringing to this world in the form of Communism and H-bombs, and last but not least by his fertility and the inevitable overpopulation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 496.
He still thinks in terms of mass-hygiene and has nightmares about mass killing. Why should he learn about the unconscious, the mother of the future?! Man still hopes, in a primitive way, that not knowing, not naming, not seeing a danger would remove it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 496.
I would guess that a high percentage of so-called miracle cures are due to psychic associations which have nothing miraculous about them for us. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 498.
I have seen several cases where some psychic event, or psychological treatment, caused not only proliferating metastases to vanish but the primary tumour as well. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 498.
In some cases of psychotherapeutic treatment, contact with the sphere of the archetypes can produce the kind of constellation that underlies synchronicity. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 499.
Others, again, have reversed their homesickness and labour under the delusion that things will be much better in the future than they are in the present. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 503.
But all of them share the same illusion that the goal is somewhere to be found in outward things and conditions, without realizing that psychologically they already carry it within them and always have. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 504.
I have often asked myself where my books go and how they are received. The only thing I know definitely is that they have a tolerable sale, if compared to others treating similarly difficult subjects. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 497.
I cannot complain, though, about academic honours bestowed upon me in Europe, America and even in remote India, but I am more than doubtful about the effect my books had upon those who were responsible for the bestowal of such honours. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 497.
I suppose that my books expect a human understanding of which the intellectual world or the world of intellect is afraid, although I can easily understand why that is so. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 497.
Without the reflecting consciousness of man the world is a gigantic meaningless machine, for in our experience man is the only creature who is capable of ascertaining any meaning at all. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 494.
But we do know that warm-bloodedness and a differentiated brain were necessary for the inception of consciousness, and thus also for the revelation of meaning. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 494.
It staggers the mind even to begin to imagine the accidents and hazards that, over millions of years, transformed a lemurlike tree-dweller into a man. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 494.
In this chaos of chance, synchronistic phenomena were probably at work, operating both with and against the known laws of nature to produce, in archetypal moments, syntheses which appear to us miraculous. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 495.
Since the laws of probability give no ground for assuming that higher syntheses such as the psyche could arise by chance alone, there is nothing for it but to postulate a latent meaning in order to explain not only the synchronistic phenomena but also the higher syntheses. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 495.
The soul is father and mother of all the apparently unanswerable difficulties that are building themselves up into the heavens before our eyes. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 498.
There is no psychological exposition of astrology yet, on account of the fact that the empirical foundation in the sense of a science has not yet been laid. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 464.
Undoubtedly astrology today is flourishing as never before in the past, but it is still most unsatisfactorily explored despite very frequent use. It is an apt tool only when used intelligently. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 464.
The reason why the unconscious appears to us in such a disagreeable form is because we are afraid of it, and we revile it because we hope that by this method we can free ourselves from its attractions. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 465.
I own the first English edition of Bohme’s 40 Questions Concerning the Soul, 1647. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 465.
A good many will admit that self-knowledge and reflection are needed, but very few indeed will consider such necessities binding upon themselves. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 465.
This used to be the preserve of the Germans, but today Germany regards herself as an American colony and there is little hope in this respect. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 466.
In my old age the three-dimensional world is slipping away from me, and I perceive only from afar what in the year 1958 is being said and done in this one of the possible worlds. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 466.
It is the tradition that a satori experience is imageless, and they therefore say it was imageless. That it cannot possibly have been imageless is proved by the fact that they remember something definite. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 466.
I fully agree with it, only I would ask you to state explicitly that in my psychology the ” mythological” aspect means “religious attitude.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 468
You will surely have noticed in reading my writings that I do not mince my words and clearly and expressly point out that the regard for mythological parallels is conducive to a religious attitude. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 468
It was the Enlightenment which destroyed this bulwark by reducing the unitary view to nothing but mythology. In its modern usage mythology simply means “it is nothing,” since myths are unrealistic. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 468
My whole endeavour has been to show that myth is something very real because it connects us with the instinctive bases of our existence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 468
One has to be extremely careful in using the word “mythology” as it brings you into head-on collision with the all-pervading infantile arguments of the Enlightenment. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 468
The real situation cannot, however, be clarified by mere concepts but only by the inner experience that corresponds to them. With concepts you invariably miss the mark because they are not philosophical ideas but merely names for experiences. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 469.
It is equally obvious that every insight into what I have called the “shadow” is a step along the road of individuation without one’s being obliged to call this an individuation process. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 483.
To the psychologist it is a most noteworthy fact that the religious emphasis has shifted from the triune pater panton [Father of Everything] to the Son and Soter [Savior] and historical man, who was originally one third of the Godhead and is now the central and almost unique feature of the Protestant’s religion. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 472
Owing to His human nature, Christ is the accessible part of the Godhead, and His empirical essence expresses the aforesaid experience. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 472.
Good as a rule is not followed by better but by worse. There is no chance to get out of sin. Where is the world after 2000 years of Christianity?” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 473.
It even looks as if there were a secret liaison between sin and grace and as if each sin had also the aspect of a felix culpa. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 473.
Yahweh gives life and death. Christ gives life, even eternal life and no death. He is a definite improvement on Yahweh. He owes this to the fact that He is suffering man as well as God. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 473.
Christ appears as a guarantee of God’s benevolence. He is our advocate in Heaven, Job’s “God against God.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 473.
And this is the problem that is raised in our days: where do we land if we believe in the almightiness of our will and in the absolute freedom of our choice? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 473.
These divine gifts are apt to get us too far away from our earthly bondage and from our inexorable reality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 473.
God is light and darkness, the auctor rerum is love and wrath. We still pray: “Lead us not into temptation.” (The French Catholic version of the Vulgate has: “Let us not fall into temptation.”!) ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 473.
Since self-knowledge is one of the more difficult arts, it is scarcely to be hoped that many men will take the trouble to search their conscience and consider how much their decision depends on their subjective relations with women. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 475.
The bird signifies the aerial, volatile spirit (in the chemical sense “spirit” is volatile, but it also designates the Spiritus Sanctus), whose physical and spiritual meanings are united in the alchemical spiritus Mercurialis. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 476.
I myself recently dreamed that a UFO came speeding towards me which turned out to be the lens of a magic lantern whose projected image was myself; this suggested to me that I was the figure, himself deep in meditation, who is produced by a meditating yogi. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 477.
These [UFO] symbolisms, which are cropping up everywhere nowadays, paint a picture of the end of time with its eschatological conceptions: destruction of the world, coming of the Kingdom of Heaven or of the world redeemer. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 477.
At all times there have been wise and shrewd women to whom even clever men have gone for advice. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 478.
There are countless women who succeed in public life without losing their femininity. On the contrary, they succeeded precisely because of it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 478.
The unpleasant power-complex of the female animus is encountered only when a woman does not allow her feeling to express itself naturally or handles it in an inferior way. But this, as said, can happen in all situations of life and has nothing whatever to do with the right to vote. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 478.
It [Individuation] does indeed, as you say, make considerable demands on our constitution. It goes to the very limit, but no further. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 479.
Most people cannot reach their destinies anyway without a streak of craziness, and so long as they haven’t it is better not to exorcize their demons. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 479.
I myself am deeply convinced of the basic analogy between physical and psychological discoveries. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 470.
I have often discussed this problem with the late Prof. Pauli, who was also fascinated by what he called the mirror-reflection, causing the existence of two worlds which are really united in the speculum, the mirror, that is lying in the middle. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 470
Without his emphasis on the dark side of man and the chaos of his chthonic desires, I could not have found access to the “Mysterium Coniunctionis.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 470.
Above all you cannot hope to “collaborate” in some way, for where in our time and our society would you find a person who knew how to express what your uniqueness alone can express? This is the jewel that must not get lost. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 480.
Recognizing the shadow is what I call the apprentice piece but making out with the anima is the masterpiece which not many can bring off. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 481
The difference between the two kinds of thinking struck me a long time ago, and for my domestic use I have described the first kind as two-dimensional and the second kind as three-dimensional. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 481.
Paradoxically, as you rightly point out, this centre has to be created although it has always been there. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 481.
Thank you for telling me about Ringbom’s book. [Graltempel und paradies, 1951] For several years now it has been in my wife’s library; she was engaged in a study of the Grail up to her death in 1955. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 481.
I must call your attention to the fact that I cannot possibly tell you what a man who has enjoyed complete self-realization looks like, and what becomes of him. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 474.
Before we strive after perfection, we ought to be able to live the ordinary man without self-mutilation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 474.
If anybody should find himself after his humble completion still left with a sufficient amount of energy, then he may begin his career as a saint. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 475.
I distinguish between “religion” and “creed”; the one is generic, the other specific. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 482.
The distance between God and man is so great that Yahweh sees himself obliged to set up an embassy among men-the ambassador is his own son-and to deliver a missive to them (the gospel). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 483.
The Jewish conception of the religious relationship with God as a legal contract (covenant!) gives way in the Christian conception to a love relationship, which is equally an aspect of the marriage with God. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 483.
As a contrast to this Judaeo-Christian conception we have the totally alien views current in pagan antiquity: the gods are exalted men and embodiments of ever-present powers whose will and whose moods must be complied with. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 483.
By “religion,” then, I mean a kind of attitude which takes careful and conscientious account of certain numinous feelings, ideas, and events and reflects upon them; and by “belief” or “creed” I mean an organized community which collectively professes a specific belief or a specific ethos and mode of behaviour. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 484.
But if the believer without religion now thinks that he has got rid of mythology he is deceiving himself: he cannot get by without “myth.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 484.
Materia is in the end simply a chthonic mother goddess, and the late Pope seems to have had an inkling of this. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 485.
Clearly the anti-mythological trend is due to the difficulties we have in clinging on to our previous mythological tenets of belief. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 485.
“Reason” is, notoriously, not necessarily ethical any more than intelligence is. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 485.
It [Myth] gives the ultimately unimaginable religious experience an image, a form in which to express itself, and thus makes community life possible, whereas a merely subjective religious experience lacking the traditional mythic imagery remains inarticulate and asocial, and, if it does anything at all, it fosters a spiritually anchoritic life. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 486.
If his individual experience is a living thing, it will share the quality of all life, which does not stagnate but, being in continual flux, brings ever new aspects to light. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 486.
His [Hegel’s] impossible language, which he shares with his blood-brother Heidegger, denotes that his philosophy is a highly rationalized and lavishly decorated confession of his unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 501.
The fact that I use the term “dialectical procedure” or something of this sort exposes me to the misunderstanding that I envisage an intellectual procedure, which is not the case, but in truth a practical method of dealing with the very concrete propositions the unconscious presents us with. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 501.
Moreover the science of all moving as well as living bodies is based upon the concept of energy. Energy itself is a tension between opposites. Our psychology is no exception to the principle that embraces about the whole of natural science. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 501.
In the intellectual world in which I grew up, Hegelian thought played no role at all; on the contrary, it was Kant and his epistemology on the one hand, and on the other straight materialism, which I never shared, knowing too much about its ridiculous mythology. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 501
The old myth, which always holds within it something yet older and more aboriginal, remains the same, this being an essential quality of all forms of religion; it only undergoes a new interpretation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 486.
Thus the Reformation was no more a repristination of the early Church than the Renaissance was a mere revival of antiquity, but a new exposition which could not throw off its own historical evolution. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 486.
Nowadays one very often hears people asserting that something or other is “only” psychic, as though there were anything that is not psychic. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 487.
Outside psychology only modern physics has had to acknowledge that no science can be carried on without the psyche. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 487.
For more than a hundred years the world has been confronted with the concept of an unconscious, and for more than fifty years with the empirical investigation of it, but only a very few people have drawn the necessary conclusions. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 487.
Nobody seems to have noticed that without a reflecting psyche the world might as well not exist, and that, in consequence, consciousness is a second world-creator, and also that the cosmogonic myths do not describe the absolute beginning of the world but rather the dawning of consciousness as the second Creation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 487.
Now whether these archetypes, as I have called these pre-existent and pre-forming psychic factors, are regarded as “mere” instincts or as daemons and gods makes no difference at all to their dynamic effect. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 488.
But it often makes a mighty difference whether they [Archetypes] are undervalued as “mere” instincts or overvalued as gods. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 488.
At the age of 84 I am somewhat tired, but I am concerned about our culture, which would be in danger of losing its roots if the continuity of tradition were broken. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 488.
The philosophical influence that has prevailed in my education dates from Plato, Kant, Schopenhauer, Ed. v. Hartmann and Nietzsche. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 500.
Aristotle’s point of view had never particularly appealed to me; nor Hegel, who in my very incompetent opinion is not even a proper philosopher but a misfired psychologist. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 501.
Another common misunderstanding is that I derive my idea of “archetypes” from Philo or Dionysius Areopagita, or St. Augustine. It is based solely upon empirical data, viz. upon the astonishing fact that products of the unconscious in modern individuals can almost literally coincide with symbols occurring in all peoples and all times, beyond the possibility of tradition or migration, for which I have given numerous proofs. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 501.
That is what the child reacts to-to the quiddity of the father, without knowing that this quiddity once exemplified itself in an act. Nothing is in us that was not there before, and nothing that has once been can vanish. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 502
Words have become much too cheap. Being is more difficult and is therefore fondly replaced by verbalizing. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 503.
Who or what is hindering man from living peacefully on this earth? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 506
In dealing with a definitely historical text it is absolutely essential to know the language and the whole available tradition of the milieu in question and not to adduce amplifications from a later cultural milieu. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 507.
The other dream points to the coming shock, a complete shattering of your view of the world, as a result of which you and your anima fall into the depths-the catacombs. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 508.
Intuition is a dangerous gift, tempting us over and over again into groundless speculation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 508.
An intuition needs an uncommonly large dose of sobering criticism, otherwise it exposes us only too easily to the kind of catastrophic experience that has befallen you. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 508.
Everything could be said much more simply, but this simplicity is just what we ourselves and others lack, with the result that it is more trouble for us to speak really simply than to speak in a rather complicated and roundabout way. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 509.
The simplest is the most difficult of all, because, in the process of reaching consciousness, it breaks up into many individual aspects in which the mind gets entangled and cannot find a suitably simple expression. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 509.
Only numinous experiences retain their original simplicity or oneness which still gives us intimations of the Unus Mundus. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 509.
According to my view, one should rather say that the term “God” should only be applied in case of numinous inconceivability. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 512.
Her masculine aspect is expressed very clearly in the anima figure in the Song of Songs: “terrible as an army with banners.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 509.
These opposites are in reality united in the irrepresentable because transcendent self, which in the process of becoming conscious divides into opposites again through progressive dichotomy. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 509.
In dealing with space man has produced-since time immemorial -the circle and the square, which are connected with the idea of shelter and protection, place of the hearth, concentration of the family and small animals, and on a higher level the symbol of the quadratura circuli, as the dwelling place of the “inner man,” the abode of the gods, etc. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 508-509.
The androgyny of the anima may appear in the anima herself at a certain stage, but it derives at a higher level from unity of the self. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 509.
Any development that leads further away from the round and the square becomes increasingly neurotic and unsatisfactory, particularly so when the elements of the building, i.e., the rooms, lose their approximation to the round or the square. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 509.
A certain interplay of round and square seems to be indispensable. This is about all I can tell you about “architectural archetypes.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 510.
It is rather conspicuous that the creators of modern art are unconscious about the meaning of their creations. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 511.
Your general conclusion that contemporary Western artists unconsciously depict God’s image is questionable, as it is by no means certain that any inconceivability could be called “God,” unless one calls everything “God,” as everything ends in inconceivability. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 511.
I have chosen the title Aion because the contents of the German edition are chiefly connected with the psychological changes characteristic of the transition from one historical Aeon, i.e., era, or segment of historical time, to another. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 510.
It is evident, of course, that history takes on a new aspect when considered not only from the standpoint of our conscious reason, but also from that of the phenomena due to unconscious processes which never fail to accompany the peripeteia of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 510.
As we are profoundly influenced in our practical life by our historical Christian education, we are also exposed to secular changes in the basic Christian dominants, e.g., the schism of the Christian Church and the development of anti-Christian traits. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 511.
I do not need to tell you how much I would appreciate that a balanced mind should write a review about this book [Aion], which has chiefly aroused subjective emotions but hardly any objective evaluation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 511.
I don’t believe that man, as he is today, is capable of evading the vicious circle in which he moves, as long as he is as immature as he actually is. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 512.
The only thing I can do is to try at least to be as reasonable as possible in my own life and to help a few others to be also reasonable. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 512.
Even if the great disaster should overtake us, there may survive a few who have learned to be reasonable and who were helped by the serious attempt to get a bit more conscious than their somnambulistic entourage. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 513.
I think it is even better to make ready for the great catastrophe than to hope that it will not take place and that we are allowed to continue the dream-state of our immaturity. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 513.
The lack of dreams has different reasons: the ordinary reason is that one is not interested in the mental life within and one does not pay attention to anything of this kind. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 514
Another reason [for lack of dreams] is that one has not dealt enough with one’s conscious problem and waits for dreams so that the unconscious would do something about it; and the third reason is that the dreams have-as it were-emigrated into a person in our surroundings, who then is dreaming in an inordinate way. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 514
A light sleep is certainly a favourable condition for the remembrance of dreams. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 514
If you don’t feel self-sufficient, give yourself the chance to take yourself as self-sufficient even if you don’t believe it, but make an effort to allow such kindness to yourself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 515.
You cannot apply kindness and understanding to others if you have not applied it to yourself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 515
Whatever I have acquired serves a purpose I have not foreseen. Everything has to be shed, and nothing remains my own. I quite agree with you: it is not easy to reach utmost poverty and simplicity. But it meets you, unbidden, on the way to the end of this existence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 516.
We are, unfortunately, always only parts of a whole, although glimmerings of it are possible. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 517.
You can easily find out from my books what I think about religion (e.g., “Psychology and Religion”). I profess no “belief.” I know that there are experiences one must pay “religious” attention to. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 517.
If God is only good, everything is good. There is not a shadow anywhere. Evil just would not exist, even man would be good and could not produce anything evil. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 516
However, there is one thing I do not underestimate, and that is the-to me-amazing and unexpected intuition of the American public, of which I was given an impressive sample on the occasion of my lectures at Yale University. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 520
I am very old and there are too many people who want to see me. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 516
I call them archetypes, i.e., instinctual forms of mental functioning. They are not inherited ideas, but mentally expressed instincts, forms and not contents. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 521.
Thus when we try to form an image of the fact one calls “God” we depend largely upon innate, pre-existent ways of perceiving, all the more so as it is a perception from within, unaided by the observation of physical facts which might lend their visible forms to our God-image (though there are plenty cases of the sort). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 522.
“God” therefore is in the first place a mental image equipped with instinctual “numinosity,” i.e., an emotional value bestowing the characteristic autonomy of the affect on the image. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 522.
The mind is neither the world in itself nor does it reproduce its accurate image. The fact that we have an image of the world does not mean that there is only an image and no world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 522.
The God-image is the expression of an underlying experience of something which I cannot attain to by intellectual means, i.e., by scientific cognition, unless I commit an unwarrantable transgression. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 522.
When I say that I don’t need to believe in God because I “know,” I mean I know of the existence of God-images in general and in particular. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 522.
But why should you call this something “God”? I would ask: “Why not?” It has always been called “God.” An excellent and very suitable name indeed. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 523.
I thank you for the unasked-for kindness of your letter. There is so much evil and bitterness in this world that one cannot be too grateful for the one good thing which happens from time to time. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 516
Also, I have never discovered, either in the literature or in conversation with an Oriental, any cognition that could be said to be a cognition of the whole. It is merely said to be so, just as we Christians say that we are redeemed of our sins by Christ. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 524.
The Christian idea proves its vitality by a continuous evolution, just like Buddhism. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 524.
Mind you, I didn’t say “there is a God.” I said: “I don’t need to believe in God, I know.” Which does not mean I do know a certain God (Zeus, Yahweh, Allah, the Trinitarian God, etc.) but rather: I do know that I am obviously confronted with a factor unknown in itself, which I call “God” in consensu omnium (quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditur). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 525.
Who could say in earnest that his fate and life have been the result of his conscious planning alone? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 523.
Individuals who believe they are masters of their fate are as a rule the slaves of destiny. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 523.
Yet I should consider it an intellectual immorality to indulge in the belief that my view of a God is the universal, metaphysical Being of the confessions or “philosophies.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 526.
I commit the impertinence neither of a hypostasis nor of an arrogant qualification such as: “God can only be good.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 526.
Only my experience can be good or evil, but I know that the superior will is based upon a foundation which transcends human imagination. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 526.
Man always uses that knowledge he finds in himself to characterize his metaphysical figures. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 526.
Thus God’s omniscience means really a perfect presence of mind, and then only it becomes a blatant contradiction that He does not consult it or seems to be unaware of it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 526.
This is the point which is regularly misunderstood: people assume that I am talking about God himself. In reality I am talking about human representations. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 527.
The past decade dealt me heavy blows-the death of dear friends and the even more painful loss of my wife, the end of my scientific activity and the burdens of old age, but also all sorts of honours and above all your friendship, which I value the more highly because it appears that men cannot stand me in the long run. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 529.
“I find that all my thoughts circle round God like the planets round the sun and are as irresistibly attracted by him. I would feel it the most heinous sin were I to offer any resistance to this compelling force. I feel it is God’s will that I should exercise the gift of thinking that has been vouchsafed me. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 235-238.
Being well-known not to say “famous” means little when one realizes that those who mouth my name have fundamentally no idea of what it’s all about. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 530.
The gratification of knowing that one is essentially posthumous is short-lived. That is why your friendship is all the dearer to me in my grey old age, since it gives me living proof that I have not dropped out of the human setting into the shadowy realm of historical curiosities. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 530.
In the turmoil of Kusnacht I can seldom or never turn my thoughts upon myself, much less express them in writing. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 530.
The archetypality of Communism is on the one hand the common ownership of goods, as in primitive societies, and on the other hand the unlimited power of the tribal chieftain. Ostensibly all goods belong to all. Everybody has his share. But since all are represented by one man, the chieftain, only one man has control of everything. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 513
As you know, I have reopened the discussion about alchemical philosophy, i.e., I have at least shown a way which allows a new interpretation of its essential thoughts. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 535.
Nobody except the very few have paid attention yet to the problems raised by my Mysterium Coniunctionis. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 535.
As far as my knowledge goes, some advanced physicists, like the late Professor Pauli and through him Professor Heisenberg, have become acquainted with the parallel developments in the psychic field. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 535.
The physical side of the problem is a well-known matter, whereas the psychological and Hermetic side of this problem is accessible only to a very few, on account of the fact that the subject of unconscious phenomena is studied only by a very few and the study of alchemy is-if possible-still more unknown. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 535.
On the side of physics it was Pauli alone who appreciated alchemical thought very highly. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 535.
My shadow is indeed so huge that I could not possibly overlook it in the plan of my life; in fact I had to see it as an essential part of my personality and accept the consequences of this realization and take responsibility for them. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 277.
I don’t believe in the tiger who was finally converted to vegetarianism and ate only apples. My solace was always Paul, who did not deem it beneath his dignity to admit he bore a thorn in the flesh. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 277.
If God had foreseen his world, it would be a mere senseless machine and Man’s existence a useless freak. My intellect can envisage the latter possibility, but the whole of my being says ‘No’ to it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 172.
It is most unfortunate that Pauli died so early, as he was a physicist who had the ear of his time, more so than a psychologist like myself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 535.
Very early on, at the time of my association experiments, I became interested in tuberculosis as a possible psychic disease having observed that reactions due to complexes frequently cause a long-lasting reduction in the volume of breathing. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 533.
I also observed that a large number of my neurotic patients who were tubercular were “freed” from their complexes under psychotherapeutic treatment, learnt to breathe properly again and in the end were cured. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 533.
I am therefore entirely of your opinion that a salutary dose of psychology should be administered not only to tubercular patients but to many others as well, and also to so-called normal people. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 533.
By and large the universities are against it and they don’t encourage young people to acquire any psychological knowledge since the professors have none themselves. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 533.
Holding lectures, giving instruction, pumping in knowledge, all these current university procedures are no use at all here. The only thing that really helps is self-knowledge and the change of mental and moral attitude it brings about. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 534.
What people would like best is the pursuit of science without man, completely oblivious of the fact that the individual psyche is the source of all science. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 534.
Let us hope that by the Grace of God and the aid of a human physician the ordeal of his passing away will be mitigated. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 536.
As there are so few men capable of understanding the deeper Implications of our psychology, I had nursed the apparently vain hope that Father Victor would carry on the opus magnum. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 536.
But it is the curious fact that most of the intelligent men I became acquainted with and who began to develop an uncommon understanding have come to an unexpected, early end. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 536.
It looks as if only those who are relatively close to death are serious or mature enough to grasp some of the essentials in our psychology, as a man who wants to get over an obstacle grasps a handy ladder. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 536.
My grandfather’s fervid relationship with her [Sophie Ziegler] is a complete contra-indication of schizophrenia. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 528.
It may be a prejudice to think that the world of human ideas is conditioned by archetypes, but it is also a means of grasping something of the psychology of another organism. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 504.
“Teachings” are tools not truths; points of view that are laid aside once they have served their purpose. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 504.
Thus the environment delivers us from the power of the archetypes, and the archetypes deliver us from the crushing influence of the environment. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 504-505.
For me the archetype means: an image of a probable sequence of events, an habitual current of psychic energy. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 505.
If you isolate any way of looking at things, even one that has proved in practice to be the best, and then extend it to infinity you will end up with nonsense. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 505.
Withdrawal of projections is obviously a truth whose validity is only of limited application. It is pretty certain that they can be withdrawn only to the extent that one is conscious. How far a man can become conscious nobody knows. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 505
We have as a matter of fact been able to correct a number of projections. Whether this amounts to much or little, and whether it is a real advance or only an apparent one, is known only to the angels. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 505.
As to what absolute consciousness might be, this is something we cannot imagine even in our wildest dreams. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 505.
We don’t attain any “ultimate truths” at all, but on the way to them we discover a whole lot of astonishing partial truths. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 506.
One cannot avoid the shadow unless one remains neurotic, and as long as one is neurotic one has omitted the shadow. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 545.
The shadow is the block which separates us most effectively from the divine voice. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 545.
Therefore Elihu in spite of his fundamental truth belongs to those foolish Jungians, who, as you suggest, avoid the shadow and make for the archetypes, i.e., the “divine equivalents,” which by the way are nothing but escape camouflage according to the personalistic theory. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 545
When Johannes Hus bound to the stake saw a little old woman adding her last bundle of sticks to the pile, he said: 0 sancta simplicitas! ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 546.
My concepts are merely meant to serve as a means of communication through colloquial language. As principles however I should say that they are in themselves immensely Complicated structures which can hardly fulfil the role of scientific principles. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 552.
According to the experience and knowledge of medical science the verdict seems to be absolute, yet, in order to do justice to your faith, I must say that I know (and have seen myself) of certain similar cases where an apparently miraculous recovery took place. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 547.
I would share your standpoint of undaunted faith if I were not disturbed by the thought that this earthly life is not supreme, but subject to the decrees of a superior economy. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 547.
I try to accept life and death. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 547.
Where I find myself unwilling to accept the one or the other [Life or Death] I should question myself as to my personal motives. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 547.
Is it the divine will? Or is it the wish of the human heart which shrinks from the Void of death? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 547.
We should not only have a more or less complete understanding of ourselves but also of the way in which we are related to our fellow beings and of their nature. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 551.
In ultimate situations of life and death complete understanding and insight are of paramount importance, as it is indispensable for our decision to go or to stay and let go or to let stay. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 547.
As with every author, one does not live from air and bread alone but now and then needs a bit of moral encouragement. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 547.
I have never read Shelley’s “Prometheus Unbound” in the original but shall hasten to make good this omission at your behest. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 548.
What I have heard from the theological side has readied me for a special compartment in hell. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 548.
As Prof. Fierz in his speech at Pauli’s funeral has mentioned: Speculation comes from speculum. Thus “speculation,” a very typical form of consciousness, becomes the real centre of the world, the basis of the Unus Mundus. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 470.
The joyous Christian tells us how things ought to be, but he is careful not to touch things as they are. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 556.
Our moral freedom reaches as far as our consciousness, and thus our liberation from compulsion and captivity. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 547.
Your aggressive critique has got me in the rear. That’s all. Don’t worry! I think of you [Victor White] in everlasting friendship. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 546.
The main difficulty here is that the eternal ideas have been dragged down from their “supracelestial place” into the biological sphere, and this is somewhat confusing for the trained philosopher and may even come to him as a shock. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 559.
The Platonic “Idea” is in this case no longer intellectual but a psychic, instinctual pattern. Instinctual patterns can be found in human beings too. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 537.
But at least he [Socrates] has shown us the one precious thing: “To hell with the Ego-world! Listen to the voice of your daimonion. It has a say now, not you.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 532.
The living mystery of life is always hidden between Two, and it is the true mystery which cannot be betrayed by words and depleted by arguments. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 581
I am sick of talking to people who do not even know the psychological ABC. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 574.
What Buber misunderstands as Gnosticism is psychiatric observation, of which he obviously knows nothing. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 570.
My ambitions are not soaring to theological heights. I am merely concerned with the practical and theoretical problem of how-do-complexes-behave? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 571.
Mental possessions are just as good as ghosts, demons, and gods. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 571.
I am afraid it is sheer prejudice against science which hinders theologians from understanding my empirical standpoint. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 572.
I am concerned with phenomenal religion, with its observable facts, to which I try to add a few psychological observations about basic events in the collective unconscious, the existence of which I can prove. Beyond this I know nothing, and I have never made any assertions about it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 572.
I have spent a lifetime of work on psychological and psychopathological investigations. Buber criticizes me in a field in which he is incompetent and which he does not even understand. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 573.
It was actually through my therapeutic work that I began to understand the essence of the Christian faith. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 575.
I assure you it was precisely through my analytic work that I arrived at an understanding not only of the Christian religion but, I may say, of all religions. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 575.
The Freudian idea that religion is nothing more than a system of prohibitions is very limited and out of touch with what is known about different religions. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 575.
To be exact, I must say that, although I profess myself a Christian, I am at the same time convinced that the chaotic contemporary situation shows that present-day Christianity is not the final truth. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 575.
They [ESP] were puzzling to me inasmuch as archetypal constellations are usually more or less momentary and don’t extend over longer periods. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 576.
I should not wonder at all if synchronistic phenomena would manifest in the form of physiological effects. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 576.
A man’s lifework is like a ship he has built and equipped himself, launched down the ramp and entrusted to the sea, steered towards a distant goal and then left like a passenger, in order to sit on the shore and gaze after it till it is out of sight. ~C.G. Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 577.
Like all three-dimensional things it [A man’s lifework] gradually sinks below the horizon. C.G. Jung ~Letters Vol. II, Page 577
I have not been there [Oxford] again although I always dreamt and hoped to delve more deeply into the treasures of alchemistic manuscripts at the Bodleian. Fate has decreed otherwise. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 580.
I had to follow the ineradicable foolishness which furnishes the steps to true wisdom. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 581.
Since man’s nature is temperamentally set against wisdom, it is incumbent upon us to pay its price by what seems foolish to us. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 580.
It is indeed a major effort-the magnum opus in fact-to escape in time from the narrowness of its embrace and to liberate our mind to the vision of the immensity of the world, of which we form an infinitesimal part. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 580.
In spite of the enormity of our scientific cognition we are yet hardly at the bottom of the ladder, but we are at least so far that we are able to recognize the smallness of our knowledge. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 580.
The older I grow the more impressed I am by the frailty and uncertainty of our understanding, and all the more I take recourse to the simplicity of immediate experience so as not to lose contact with the essentials, namely the dominants which rule human existence throughout the millenniums. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 580.
As you have found out for yourself, the I Ching consists of readable archetypes, and it very often presents not only a picture of the actual situation but also of the future, exactly like dreams. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 584.
One could even define the I Ching oracle as an experimental dream, just as one can define a dream as an experiment of a four-dimensional nature. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 584.
It had to remain hidden because it could not have survived the brutalities of the outside world. But now I am grown so old that I can let go my grip on the world, and its raucous cries fade in the distance. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 585
By the way: I must call your attention to the fact that I have no theory that God is a Quaternity. The whole question of quaternity is not a theory at all. It is a phenomenon. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 584.
Although you may not know it, I find it very difficult, both as a psychologist and a human being, to establish any relationship with modern abstract art. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 586.
Since one’s feelings seem to be a highly unsuitable organ for judging this kind of art [Modern], one is forced to appeal to the intellect or to intuition in order to gain any access to it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 586.
When I say “Psyche” I mean something unknown, to which I give the name “Psyche.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 583.
If I could not stand criticism I would have been dead long ago, since I have had nothing but criticism for 6o years. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 583.
As nobody can become aware of his individuality unless he is closely and responsibly related to his fellow beings, he is not withdrawing to an egoistic desert when he tries to find himself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 592.
He is a top animal exiled on a tiny speck of planet in the Milky Way. That is the reason why he does not know himself; he is cosmically isolated. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 592.
The science fiction about travelling to the moon or to Venus and Mars and the lore about Flying Saucers are effects of our dimly felt but none the less intense need to reach a new physical as well as spiritual basis beyond our actual conscious world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 593.
Our consciousness only imagines that it has lost its gods; in reality they are still there, and it only needs a certain general condition in order to bring them back in full force. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 594.
We are sorely in need of a Truth or a self-understanding similar to that of Ancient Egypt, which I have found still living with the Taos Pueblos. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 596.
It [Old Age] is at all events the gradual breaking down of the bodily machine, with which foolishness identifies ourselves. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 580.
I asked myself time and again why there are no men in our epoch who could see at least what I was wrestling with. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 586.
I have given a good deal of attention to two great initiators: Joyce and Picasso. Both are masters of the fragmentation of aesthetic contents and accumulators of ingenious shards. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 589.
In Ulysses a world comes down in an almost endless, breathless stream of debris, a “catholic” world, i.e., a universe with moanings and outcries unheard and tears unshed, because suffering had extinguished itself, and an immense field of shards began to reveal its aesthetic “values.'” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 589.
We have no dominants any more, they are in the future. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 590.
Our values are shifting, everything loses its certainty, even sanctissima causalitas has descended from the throne of the axioma and has become a mere field of probability. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 590.
The negative aspects of modern art show the intensity of our prejudice against the future, which we obstinately want to be as we expect it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 591.
Our present state of civilization becomes more and more unable to understand what a religion means. Europe has already lost half of its population to a mental state worse than ancient paganism. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 597.
Religions are like plants which belong to a particular soil and a particular climate. Outside of their vital conditions their existence can be maintained only artificially. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 598.
Despite their powers of imagination, children often observe things much more accurately than grown-ups. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 598-599
They [Children] are naturally and instinctively adapted to reality; their next task is to find their way about in it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 599.
Grown-ups, on the other hand, especially those approaching middle life, get around to feeling that there is still a psychic reality about which our culture knows much too little and cares less. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 599.
People would rather hang on to the old dogmas than let experience speak. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 599.
I won’t go into details but would only point out that a collective vision is a phenomenon of the time, depicting the great problem of our day in individual form. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 599.
Rationality is only one aspect of the world and does not cover the whole field of experience. Psychic events are not caused merely from without and mental contents are not mere derivatives of sense-perceptions. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 600.
But just as Buddhism in its many differentiations overlaid the original spiritual adventure, so Christian rationalism has overlaid medieval alchemistic philosophy, which has been forgotten for about 200 years. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 600.
Even a genuine and original inner life has a tendency to succumb again and again to the sensualism and rationalism of consciousness, i.e., to literal-mindedness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 601.
in our Western ignorance do not see, or have forgotten, that man has or is visited by subjective inner experiences of an irrational nature which cannot be successfully dealt with by rational argument, scientific evidence, and depreciative diagnosis. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 602.
At the end of this cosmic age Vishnu will change into a white horse and create a new world. This refers to Pegasus, who ushers in the Aquarian Age. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 607.
The jungle is in us, in our unconscious, and we have succeeded in projecting it into the outside world, where now the saurians are lustily playing about again in the form of cars, airplanes, and rockets. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 609.
My experience has impressed the tenacity and toughness of the female nature, which nothing has changed for thousands of years, far too deeply upon me for me to suppose that the right to vote could bring such a wonder to pass. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 478.
I quite agree with you: without relatedness individuation is hardly possible. Relatedness begins with conversation mostly. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 609
It is always important to have something to bring into a relationship, and solitude is often the means by which you acquire it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 610.
You call up again Tertullian’s Christian anima of the first Roman centuries, which claimed to be the light that shineth in the darkness. What about the anima of our benighted days? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 610
The fact, too, that the subject of these visions is very old and in confinio mortis suggests that a glance has been cast beyond the border, or that something from the other side has seeped through into our three-dimensional world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 612.
Writing is a difficult question, since it is not only a blessing but also a bad temptation because it tickles the devil of self-importance. If you want to write something, you have to be quite sure that the whole of your being wants this kind of expression. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 612.
Milk, as lac virginis, virgin’s milk, is a synonym for the aqua doctrinae one of the aspects of Mercurius, who had already bedeviled the Bollingen stones in the form of the trickster. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 615.
Your equation of certain archetypal ideas with fundamental physiological processes has my undivided applause. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 619.
I am not in the least surprised when you say that the alchemical pairs of opposites can be correlated with the endophylactictrophotropic and the ergotrop-dynamic systems. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 619
Abstract thinking can lead us no further than to intellectual sophistries, which are invariably used as shields and subterfuges and are calculated to prevent the realization of the whole. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 620
I would like to emphasize that it very often does not depend upon the use one makes of an image, but rather upon the use the archetypes make of ourselves, which decides the question whether it will be artistic creation or a change of religious attitude. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 626.
I see that many of my pupils indulge in a superstitious belief in our so-called ” free will” and pay little attention to the fact that the archetypes are, as a rule, autonomous entities, and not only material subject to our choice. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 626.
In reply to your question about levitation I myself have never observed the levitation of a living body. But apparently such things do happen. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 627.
Although I have been studying the UFO phenomenon for about 12 years now and have read practically all the relevant literature, I a m still unable to form a satisfactory picture of it or to assert that anything adequate is known about the nature of UFOs. I cannot even say whether they exist or not. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 628.
The theologian, the only person besides the psychotherapist to declare himself responsible for the cura animarum, is afraid of having to think psychologically about the objects of his belief. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 629.
His craving for alcohol was the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in medieval language: the union with God. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 624.
You see, alcohol in Latin is spiritus and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as for the most depraving poison. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 625.
All in all Nietzsche was to me the only man of that time who gave some adequate answers to certain urgent questions which then were more felt than thought. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 622.
This gives me great satisfaction, because what alone has always mattered to me was to find out whether my way of looking at things is in accord with life or not. ~Carl Jung, Collected Letters Vol. II, Page 543
If there’s one thing that terrified me, it was dead conceptualism. ~Carl Jung, Collected Letters Vol. II, Page 543
In dealing with darkness you have got to cling to the Good, otherwise the devil devours you. You need every bit of your goodness in dealing with Evil and just there. To keep the light alive in the darkness, that’s the point, and only there your candle makes sense. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 135.
In a very generalizing way we can therefore define them [Archetypes] as attributes of the creator. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 606.
The essential thing about these [Synchronistic] phenomena is that an objective event coincides meaningfully with a psychic process; that is to say, a physical event and an endopsychic one have a common meaning. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 27.
If you have committed a mistake at all, it consisted in your having striven too hard to understand your wife completely and not reckoning with the fact that in the end people don’t want to know what secrets are slumbering in their souls. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 27.
If nevertheless you are still tormented by guilt feelings, then consider for once what sins you have not committed which you would have liked to commit. This might perhaps cure you of your guilt feelings toward your wife. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 27.
There can be no doubt that the unconscious comes to the surface in modern art and with its dynamism destroys the orderliness that is characteristic of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 81
All the riches I seem to possess are also my poverty, my lonesomeness in the world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 516.
The more I seem to possess, the more I stand to lose, when I get ready to approach the dark gate. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 516.
I did not seek my life with its failures and accomplishments. It came on me with a power not my own. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 516.
I don’t believe [in a personal God], but I do know of a power of a very personal nature and an irresistible influence. I call it “God.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 274
From the psychological standpoint religion is a psychic phenomenon which irrationally exists, like the fact of our physiology or anatomy. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 271
If this [Religious] function is lacking, man as an individual lacks balance, because religious experience is an expression of the existence and function of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol II, Page 271
This psychological definition of God has nothing to do with Christian dogma, but it does describe the experience of the Other, often a very uncanny opponent, which coincides in the most impressive way with the historical “experiences of God.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 272.
The only right and legitimate way to such an experience is that it happens to you in reality, and it can only happen to you when you walk on a path which leads you to higher understanding. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 624.
I am strongly convinced that the evil principle prevailing in this world leads the unrecognized spiritual need into perdition, if it is not counteracted either by a real religious insight or by the protective wall of human community. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 624.
An ordinary man, not protected by an action from above, and isolated in society, cannot resist the power of evil, which is called very aptly the Devil. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 624.
One can only say that somehow one has to reach the rim of the world or get to the end of one’s tether in order to partake of the terror or grace of such an [Primordial] experience at all. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 424.
Its nature is such that it is really understandable why the Church is actually a place of refuge or protection for those who cannot endure the fire of the divine presence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 424.
I profess no “belief.” I know that there are experiences one must pay “religious” attention to. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 517
The word religio comes from religere, according to the ancient view, and not from the patristic religare. The former means “to consider or observe carefully.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 517
This derivation gives religio the right empirical basis, namely, the religious conduct of life, as distinct from mere credulity and imitation, which are either religion at second hand or substitutes for religion. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 517
Deviation from the numen seems to be universally understood as being the worst and the most original sin. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol II, Page 370.
My shadow is indeed so huge that I could not possibly overlook it in the plan of my life, in fact I had to see it as an essential part of my personality, accept the consequences of this realization, and take responsibility for them. Many bitter experiences have forced me to see that though the sin one has committed or is can be regretted, it is not cancelled out. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 277
Since neurosis is an attitudinal problem, and the attitude depends on, or is grounded in, certain “dominants,” i.e., the ultimate and highest ideas and principles, the problem of attitude can fairly be characterized as a religious one. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 56.
They [Archetypes] are primordial psychic experiences which very often give patients access again to blocked religious truths. I have also had this experience myself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 57.
Religious ideas and convictions from the beginning of history have the aspect of the mental pharmakon [pharmacy]. They represent the world of wholeness in which fragments can be gathered and put together again. Such a cure cannot be effected by pills and injections. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 625.
Therefore I speak of the beatipossidentes [those blessed with being able to believe] of belief, and this is what I reproach them with: that they exalt themselves above our human stature and our human limitation and won’t admit to pluming themselves on a possession which distinguishes them from the ordinary mortal. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 376.
I confess with the confession of not knowing and not being able to know; believers start with the assertion of knowing and being able to know. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 376.
Although the divine incarnation is a cosmic and absolute event, it only manifests empirically in those relatively few individuals capable of enough consciousness to make ethical decisions, that is, to decide for the Good. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 314.
His [God’s] moral quality depends upon individuals. That is why He incarnates. Individuation and individual existence are indispensable for the transformation of God the Creator. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 314.
Instead of the propitiating praise to an unpredictable king or the child’s prayer to a loving father, the responsible living and fulfilling of the divine will in us will be our form of worship and commerce with God. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 316.
Man has already received so much knowledge that he can destroy his own planet. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 316.
Let us hope that God’s good spirit will guide him in his decisions, because it will depend upon man’s decision whether God’s creation will continue. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 316.
But nobody has ever heard that the devil departed this life afterwards; on the contrary, the authentic New Testament view is that after the thousand-year reign of Christ he shall be loosed again on earth in all his youthful freshness, in the form of Antichrist. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 253.
Hence the optimistic assumption of psychotherapy that conscious realization accentuates the good more than the overshadowing evil. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 254.
Becoming conscious reconciles the opposites and thus creates a higher third. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 254.
The goal of life is the realization of the self. If you kill yourself you abolish that will of the self that guides you through life to that eventual goal. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 25.
I observe myself in the stillness of Bollingen and with all my experience of nearly eight decades must admit that I have found no rounded answer to myself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 163.
Have your congregation understood that they must close their ears to the traditional teachings and go through the darknesses of their own souls and set aside everything in order to become that which every individual bears in himself as his individual task, and that no one can take this burden from him? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 76.
We grow up, we blossom, and we wilt, and death is ultimate quietude—or so it seems. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 596.
Man is the mirror which God holds up to himself, or the sense organ with which he apprehends his being. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 112
It is therefore better not to “understand” people who might be heroes, because the same fate might befall oneself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 31.
The core of the individual is a mystery of life, which is snuffed out when it is “grasped.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 31.
We must understand the divinity within us, but not the other, so far as he is able to go by himself and understand himself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 32.
Since man’s nature is temperamentally set against wisdom, it is incumbent upon us to pay its price by what seems foolish to us. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 580.
This plant is an inner, spiritual growth, the development of a tree of life and knowledge which played a great role in alchemy. In general it is advisable to watch these inner developments and not let them slip back into the unconscious, lest they get stuck in the physiological sphere, or rather in the realm of the [psychoid] unconscious which merges with the body, where they give rise to pathological formations which a wise man carefully avoids. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 608
Or in other words: there is no outside to the collective psyche. In our ordinary mind we are in the worlds of time and space and within the separate individual psyche. In the state of the archetype we are in the collective psyche, in a world-system whose space-time categories are relatively or absolutely abolished. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 398-400
A scientific education does not by any means go hand in hand with higher intelligence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 409-410.
But in reality we seem rather to be the dream of somebody or something independent of our conscious ego, at least in all fateful moments. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 426-427
May I give you some advice? Don’t get caught by words, only by facts. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 475
An historical example of this kind is the reputed coincidence of Christ’s birth with the triple royal conjunction in Pisces in the year 7 B.C. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 428-430.
I would not go so far as to deny the possibility that a medium can transmit a ghostly communication, but I don’t know in which way one can prove it, as such a proof is outside of our human possibility. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 444.
On the other hand, it is obvious to me that synchronicity is the indispensable counterpart to causality and to that extent could be considered compensatory. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 425-426
This means that the two elements of time and space, indispensable for change, are relatively without importance for the psyche. In other words: the psyche is up to a certain point not subject to corruptibility. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 445
I have always vowed I would never write an autobiography and in this case have only wetted my feet a little; it is rather Frau Jaffe who is writing a biography to which I have made a few contributions. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 531 ****
Although the assertion of immortality is in itself a fact, it is no more proof of immortality than are any other mythological statements. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 457-458
It is legitimate to ask yourself what it is that carries the qualities of the archetypal and synchronistic, and to pose the question, for instance, of the intrinsic nature of the psyche or of matter. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 445-449
In spite of the fact that good and evil are relative and therefore not generally valid, the contrast exists, and they are a pair of opposites basic to the structure of our mind. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 461-462
The opposition good – evil is universal in our experience, but one must always ask to whom? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 461-462
You also cannot educate a nation. You only can teach or change the heart of an individual. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 461-462
Mature youth begins, as one says, at seventy and it is in certain respects not so nice and in others more beautiful than childhood. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 462-463
If power symptoms creep into the work that is done round you, then diminish your own power and let others have more responsibility. It will teach you a very sound lesson. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 463.
One should not assert one’s power as long as the situation is not so dangerous that it needs violence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 463.
Power that is constantly asserted works against itself, and it is asserted when one is afraid of losing it. One should not be afraid of losing it. One gains more peace through losing power. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 463.
Astrology is a naively projected psychology in which the different attitudes and temperaments of man are represented as gods and identified with planets and zodiacal constellations. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 463-464
The experiment [Astrology] is most suggestive to a versatile mind, unreliable in the hands of the unimaginative, and dangerous in the hands of a fool, as those intuitive methods always are. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 463-464
Astrological “truths” as statistical results are questionable or even unlikely. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 463-464
The [astrological] superstitious use (prediction of the future or statement of facts beyond psychological possibilities) is false. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 463-464
Some psychological truths can be established by scientific methods, others not. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 457-458
Everything that will or must be comes without your doing, and you have only to hold your own in order to come through the darknesses of human existence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 456.
Too strong a dependence on the outside and too dynamic a view of the inside stem essentially from your desire, intention, and will, which you should push into the background a little for the sake of what really concerns you: holding your own in the chaos of this world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 456.
Man is a very paradoxical structure with two main trends, namely the biological and animal instincts of propagation and the cultural instinct of psychic development. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 454-456
The experience of wholeness is, quite to the contrary, an extremely simple matter of feeling yourself in harmony with the world within and without. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 456.
I am glad to hear of your activity on the radio. Nowadays this is the way to get at the public. I personally am opposed to it, but then I belong increasingly to the past and can no longer adapt to the restlessness and superficiality of modern life. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 520
Being well-known not to say “famous” means little when one realizes that those who mouth my name have fundamentally no idea of what it’s all about. The gratification of knowing that one is essentially posthumous is short-lived. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 516.
In so far, however, as synchronistic events include not only psychic but also physical forms of manifestation, the conclusion is justified that both modalities transcend the realm of the psychic and somehow also belong to the physical realm. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 445-449
There are women who are not meant to bear physical children, but they are those that give rebirth to a man in a spiritual sense, which is a highly important function. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 454-456
Healthy and complete life is not to be attained by general principles and regulations, because it is always the individual who carries it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 454-456
When you say that an experience of wholeness is the same as a “dynamic irruption of the collective unconscious,” this is an indubitable error. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 456.
Myth is pre-eminently a social phenomenon: it is told by the many and heard by the many. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 482-488
When one has looked and laboured for a long time, one knows oneself and has grown old. – The “secret of life” is my life, which is enacted round about me, my life and my death; for when the vine has grown old it is torn up by the roots. All the tendrils that would not bear grapes are pruned away. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 514-515
This is the burden everybody has to carry: to live the life we have got to live. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 515-516
I am very grateful for the spiritual help you extend to me. I am in need of it with this gigantic misunderstanding which surrounds me. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 516
When one considers that for over 50 years there has been a definite conception of the unconscious which is supported by empirically demonstrable facts, it is little short of amazing that philosophers still haven’t found the time to do anything but pooh-pooh it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 559-560
I was often sorry to be a petra scandali. It is my fate however, not my choice, and I had to fulfill this unbecoming role. Things had to be moved in the great crisis of our time. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 554-555
Under these circumstances I do make the claim of being “scientific” because I do exactly what you describe as the “scientific method.” I observe, I classify, I establish relations and sequences between the observed data, and I even show the possibility of prediction. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 567
If I speak of the collective unconscious I don’t assume it as a principle,
I only give a name to the totality of observable facts, i.e., archetypes. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 567
But in these days we live by our brains alone and ignore the very definite laws of our body and the instinctive world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 567
I don’t see where you get the impression that I might be discouraged in this respect, since I was the first to emphasize the enormous role religion plays particularly in the individuation process, as I was the first to raise the question of the relation between psychotherapy and religion in its practical aspects. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 566
The question ought to be formulated: what is physical, biological, psychological, legal, and philosophical evidence? By which principle could one show that physical evidence is superior to any other evidence? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 565-566
Moreover there are not a few introverts who are so painfully aware of the shortcomings of their attitude that they have learned to imitate the extraverts and behave accordingly, and vice versa there are extraverts who like to give themselves the air of the introvert because they think they are then more interesting. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 564-565
Although I have never made a statistique of this kind I have always been impressed by the fact that pipe-smokers are usually introverted. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 564-565
The typical extravert is too much of a busybody to bother and fuss with the pipe which demands infinitely more nursing than a cigarette that can be lighted or thrown away in a second. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages, 564-565
That does not prevent me from having found heavy cigarette-smokers among my introverts and not a few pipe-smokers among the extraverts, but normally with empty pipes. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 564-565
I cannot omit to remark that the diagnosis is not rarely hampered by the fact that it is chiefly extraverts who resent being called extraverts, as if it were a derogatory designation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 564-565
Your question as to who invented the legends of the stars naturally cannot be answered. All sources are lacking. But from time immemorial, that is to say from the time of the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians, the stars and constellations have had their names. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 563.
From what we know of genuine primitives today, the stars play an astonishingly small role in their lives, a fact which may justify the assumption that the projection of the constellations and their interpretation coincided with the beginnings of a reflecting consciousness, i.e., with the first steps in civilization. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 563.
We must bear in mind that we do not make projections, rather they happen to us. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 563.
Somehow, as the Gnostics surmised, we have “collected” ourselves from out of the cosmos. That is why the idea of “gathering the seeds of light played such an important role in their systems and in Manichaeism. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 563.
With the feeling, however, that it would not be granted me to pierce through to his [Victor White] understanding. It was then that I sinned against my better insight, but at least it served as a pretext for my asking his forgiveness and offering him a touch of human feeling in the hope that this would afford him some small relief. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 563
As I have so earnestly shared in his [Victor White] life and inner development, his death has become another tragic experience for me. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 563
It was always my fear that he would have to spend his last days in the professional chill of a hospital or in the atmosphere of a monastery cell. Thank God that was spared him. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 563
Helas-he [Socrates] lived at a time when the wobbly polis still needed the homosexual glue. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 531-533
Socrates’ “naivete” is his greatness, still greater than ours. His humbleness is the ideal we have not reached yet. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 531-533
With existentialism our words come to an end in complete meaninglessness and our art in total inexpressivity, and our world has acquired the means to blast us into cosmic dust. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 531-533
We still consider his [Socrates] daimonion as an individual peculiarity if not worse. Such people, says Buddha, “after their death reach the wrong way, the bad track, down to the depth, into an infernal world.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 531-533
Just like the animal, man too is caught up in the conflict between archetypal drives and environmental conditions. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 504-506
Your attempts to formulate it are not vain or futile; on the contrary, our labours are witnesses to the living Mystery, honest attempts to find words for the Ineffable. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 392-396
The “way” is not an upward-going straight line, f.i. from earth to heaven or from matter to spirit, but rather a circumabulatio of and an approximation to the Centrum. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 392-396
We are not liberated by leaving something behind but only by fulfilling our task as mixta composita i.e., human beings between the opposites. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 392-396
My memory [at age 82] has the most astonishing holes in it, so that I often catch myself forgetting not only what I have done but more especially what I have not done. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 351.
Freud, when one got to know him better, was distinguished by a markedly differentiated feeling function. His “sense of values” showed itself in his love of precious stones, jade, malachite, etc. He also had considerable intuition. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 346-348
So long as we are conscious of ourselves, we are supported by the psyche and its structures and at the same time imprisoned in them with no possibility of getting outside ourselves. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 257-264.
We would not feel and be aware of ourselves at all were we not always confronted with the unknown power. Without this we would not be conscious of our separateness, just as there is no consciousness without an object. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 257-264.
Despite the blatant misjudgment I have suffered at Freud’s hands, I cannot fail to recognize, even in the teeth of my resentment, his significance as a cultural critic and psychological pioneer. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 358-359.
All the grapes of the same site produce about the same wine. This is the truth stated by astrology and experience since time immemorial. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 353-355.
Compensatory contents rise up from the unconscious precisely because they possess healing power and are necessary to consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 355.
There is no reason why whole numbers possess certain meanings or qualities, and no reason why elephants or men should exist. These arrangements are simply there as given facts, like the crystalline systems or the discontinuities of physics, even as the whole of creation is a “just-so story.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 355.
I cannot regret that a false rumour has led you to write your long and painstaking letter, for it has brought back many old memories of that seminal time and also of our enjoyable collaboration. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 355-357.
It would indeed be desirable if my ideas could be expressed in a simple form everyone could understand. In conversation with certain individuals I can do this easily enough, but then it depends on the individual. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 357-358.
Since my language is a reflection of my thinking and feeling, I cannot, when faced with a wider public, express myself otherwise than as I am, and I am anything but uncomplicated. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 357-358.
I could never have published what I have discovered without a highly differentiated language, which I had to polish endlessly for this purpose, so much so that finally, when I try to express my ideas, I can no longer speak in any other way-unless, as I have said, it be to a particular individual with whom I can enter into an empathetic relationship. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 357-358.
The Mediterranean man, to whom the Jews also belong, is not exclusively characterized and moulded by Christianity and the Kabbalah, but still carries within him a living heritage of paganism which could not be stamped out by the Christian Reformation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 358-359.
Altogether, you are practising on me an extremely beneficial Psychotherapy of a special kind, giving me the valuable experience of what I can only call “meaningful collaboration,” a working together in spirit and in deed. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 360.
Whenever and wherever you turn to some extent towards the unconscious it seldom or never answers as one would expect; it is rather as if nature itself were answering. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 360-361.
Its [the Unconscious] answer does not necessarily refer to that piece of reality you have in mind, it is reacting to the whole man and brings into sight what the whole man should know, in other words, it compensates for an insight lacking in consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 360-361.
Apparently you are not yet in such a state of simplicity that you could accept the helpful intentions of those knowing less than you. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 361
One has no authority when one cannot risk it, and you will be quite astonished how very helpful people we might consider inferior can be. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 361
If you are all alone then it is because you isolate yourself; if you are humble enough you are never alone. Nothing isolates us more than power and prestige. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 361
Not being able to get the necessary help from above, I need to fetch it from below, and what I was able to do you might do also. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 361
As at least 90% of our sins are those of omission, I am no exception! ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 362-363.
Our Christianity with its Summum Bonum conception has entirely forgotten that one of the main aspects of real religion is fear. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 362-363.
No charity in all the world can take away the divine terror. It could not even do away with the H-Bomb! ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 362-363.
Naturally I should be glad to see you one afternoon for about 2 hours, preferably in Kusnacht, my door to the world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 364
Perhaps you also will one day understand that it is only the man who is really capable of being alone, and without bitterness, who attracts other people. Then he doesn’t need to seek them anymore, they come all by themselves, among them the very ones whom he himself needs. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 366-367
A lexicon of dream symbols is a nightmare to me, as I see this task from the standpoint of responsible science, and I know its enormous difficulties. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 123.
One can say of all metaphysical statements that their factuality Consists in the fact of their being asserted, but none of them can be proved to be true or untrue. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 367-368
It does not come within the scope of a science like psychology to ascertain the truth or untruth of metaphysical assertions. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 367-368
Since no human need is without a reason, we may also expect that the need for metaphysical assertions is based on a corresponding reason, even if we are not conscious of this reason. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 367-368
Nothing is thereby asserted, nothing denied, and this is just what Buber doesn’t understand; for he is a theologian who naively thinks that what he believes must necessarily be so. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 367-368
Everyone insists on his standpoint and imagines he possesses the sole truth; therefore I counsel modesty, or rather the willingness to suppose that God can express himself in different languages. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 367-368
The relation with transcendence is certainly a necessity for us but gives us no power over it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 367-368
After I had accomplished the task of writing the paper that was expected from me, I indulged in the vain hope that having fed the world of men by my paper, my own unconscious would spare me as it has done for about three years, spare me, namely, new ideas. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 362-363.
I am dependent on God’s verdict, not he on mine. God presents me with facts I have to get along with. If he doesn’t reject them, I cannot. I can only modify them the tiniest bit. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 379-380
If somebody has a vision it doesn’t mean that he is necessarily insane. Perfectly normal people can have visions in certain moments. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 380.
St. Paul was definitely not insane nor was his vision extraordinary. I know quite a number of cases of visions of Christ or auditions of a voice from within. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 380.
Since the archetypes are the instinctual forms of mental behaviour it is quite certain that, inasmuch as animals possess a “mind,” their mind also follows archetypal patterns, and presumably the same that are operative in the human mind. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 372-373
As we do not know the actual status of an archetype in the unconscious and only know it in that form in which it becomes conscious, it is impossible to describe the human archetype and to compare it to an animal archetype. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 372-373
If I say that we do not know “the ultimate derivation of the archetype,” I mean that we are unable to observe and describe the archetype in its unconscious condition. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 372-373
No matter how lonely you are and how lonely you feel, if you do your work truly and conscientiously, unknown friends will come and seek you. ~Carl Jung, citing an Alchemist, Letters Vol. II, Page 595.
If there is anything like the spirit seizing one by the scruff of the neck, it was the way this book [Answer to Job] came into being. It came upon me suddenly and unexpectedly during a feverish illness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 20.
The question is, of course, what do you feel to be your task? Where the fear, there is your task! ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Letters, I, 306.
It is of course, as you say, an absurdity to isolate the human mind from nature in general. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 372-373
I dislike as a rule interpreting dreams of people whom I don’t know personally; one can easily be led astray. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 187-188.
There is no difference in principle between the animal and the human psyche. The kinship of the two is too obvious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 372-373
I am a psychologist and empiricist, and for me the meaning of life does not lie in annulling it for the sake of an alleged “possibility of transcendental existence” which nobody knows how to envisage. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 381.
We are men and not gods. The meaning of human development is to be found in the fulfilment of this life is rich enough in marvels and not in detachment from this world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 381.
How can I fulfil the meaning of my life if the goal I set myself is the disappearance of individual consciousness”? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 381.
What am I without this individual consciousness of mine? Even what I have called the “self” functions only by virtue of an ego which hears the voice of that greater being. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 381.
Your argument and the beautiful quotations make it very clear that Rilke drew from the same deep springs as I did-the collective unconscious. He as a poet or visionary, I as a psychologist and empiricist. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 381-382.
I cannot escape the feeling that for all his high poetic gifts and intuition Rilke was never quite a contemporary. Of course poets are timeless phenomena, and the lack of modernity in Rilke is a badge of genuine poetry-craft. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 381-382.
Often he [Rilke] reminds me of a medieval man: half troubadour, half monk. His language and the form he gave his images have something transparent about them, like the windows of Gothic cathedrals. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 381-382.
But he [Rilke] doesn’t have what it takes to make a man complete: body, weight, shadow. His high ethos, his capacity for abnegation, and perhaps also his physical frailty naturally led him towards a goal of completeness, but not of perfection. Perfection, it seems to me, would have broken him. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 381-382.
You are naturally reaching back to Yoga in the proper understanding that it has once been the right way which should still be the right way for our time. But the world has become wrong and nobody listens to the old ways any more, in spite of the fact that the underlying truth is still true. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 385-386.
The same is the case in the West, where one makes futile attempts to give life to our Christian tenets; but they have gone to sleep. Yet in Buddhism as well as in Christianity there is at the basis of both a valid truth, but its modern application has not been understood yet. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 385-386.
“Tathagata” literally translated means the “thus going-one.” This passage describes the effect we shall undergo in order to be liberated from our illusions. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 385-386.
The trouble with parapsychology is that the very framework of our understanding and explanation, namely time, space, and causality, becomes questionable. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 373-375
The principle of synchronicity represents the essential particularity of a non-statistical world, where facts are not measured by numbers but by their psychological significance. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 373-375
It has been my endeavour to complement the obvious insufficiency of statistical truth through a description of improbable facts and their nature, within the confines of psychology at least. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 373-375
As far as I can see, there are only two ways of approach to parapsychology: the one is the experimental way without psychology, and the other the psychological approach without hope of a statistical method. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 373-375
The fact is that real poets create out of an inner vision which, being timeless, also unveils the future, if not in actualities at least symbolically. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 386-387
As in Goethe’s Faust, here too it is the feminine element (Eve) that knows about the secret which can work against the total destruction of mankind, or man’s despair in the face of such a development. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 386-387
Perhaps someday there will appear a poet courageous enough to give expression to the voices of the “mothers.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 386-387
I personally detest noise and flee it whenever and wherever possible, because it not only disturbs the concentration needed for my work but forces me to make the additional psychic effort of shutting it out. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 387-392.
Noise is certainly only one of the evils of our time, though perhaps the most obtrusive. The others are the gramophone, the radio, and now the blight of television. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 387-392.
The alarming pollution of our water supplies, the steady increase of radioactivity, and the sombre threat of overpopulation with its genocidal tendencies have already led to a widespread though not generally conscious fear which loves noise because it stops the fear from being heard. Noise is welcome because it drowns the inner instinctive warning. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 387-392.
I have had a number of TB patients in my time and some really excellent results with psychotherapy, but it is true that the average somatic case generally has a resistance to a psychological approach, particularly the TB patients, since TB is, in a way a “pneumatic” disease, that is, affecting the life-giving breath. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 100-101
Eastern philosophy fills a psychic lacuna in us but without answering the problem posed by Christianity. Since I am neither an Indian nor a Chinese, I shall probably have to rest content with my European presuppositions, otherwise I would be in danger of losing my roots for a second time. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 238.
I tried to find the best truth and the clearest light I could attain to, and since I have reached my highest point I can’t transcend any more, I am guarding my light and my treasure, convinced that nobody would gain and I myself would be badly, even hopelessly injured, if I should lose it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 597.
The past decade dealt me heavy blows – the death of dear friends and the even more painful loss of my wife, the end of my scientific activity and the burdens of old age, but also all sorts of honors and above all your friendship, which I value the more highly because it appears that men cannot stand me in the long run. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 516.
Your understanding and your interest have done much to restore my self-confidence, severely shaken by my incessant struggle with difficult contemporaries. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 516.
No Christian is meant to sleep in a safe pew. I have discovered in my private life that a true Christian is not bedded upon roses and he is not meant for peace and tranquility of mind but for war. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 242.
People speak of belief when they have lost knowledge. Belief and disbelief in God are mere surrogates. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 4.
The naïve primitive doesn’t believe in God, he knows, because the inner experience rightly means as much to him as the outer. He still has no theology and hasn’t yet let himself be befuddled by booby trap concepts. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 4.
We imitate Christ and hope he will deliver us from our own fate. Like little Iambs we follow the shepherd, naturally to good pastures. No talk at all of uniting our Above and Below! ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 76-77.
To put oneself under somebody else’s cross, which has already been carried by him, is certainly easier than to carry your own cross amid the mockery and contempt of the world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 76-77.
Whoever imitates Christ and has the cheek to want to take Christ’s cross on himself when he can’t even carry his own has in my view not yet learnt the ABC of the Christian message. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 76-77.
We continually pray that “this cup may pass from us” and not harm us. Even Christ did so, but without success. We might discover, among other things, that in every feature Christ’s life is a prototype of individuation and hence cannot be imitated: one can only live one’s own life totally in the same way with all the consequences this entails. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 76-77.
We are still looking back to the Pentecostal events in a dazed way instead of looking forward to the goal the spirit is leading us to. Therefore mankind is wholly unprepared for the things to come. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 436.
His [Christ’s] religious leaders and teachers are still hypnotized by the beginning of a then-new Aeon of consciousness instead of understanding them and their implications. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 436.
What was once called the “Holy Ghost” is an impelling force, creating wider consciousness and responsibility and thus enriched cognition. The real history of the world seems to be the progressive incarnation of the deity. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 436.
In our ordinary mind we are in the worlds of time and space and within the separate individual psyche. In the state of the archetype we are in the collective psyche, in a world-system whose spacetime categories are relatively or absolutely abolished. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, P. 399.
God is a mystery, and everything we say about Him is said and believed by human beings… when I speak of God I always mean the image man has made of him… ~Carl Jung, Letters II, 384
God is an immediate experience of a very primordial nature, one of the most natural products of our mental life,…” ~Carl Jung, Letters II, 253.
God is a universal experience which is obfuscated only by silly rationalism and an equally silly theology. ~Carl Jung, Jung, Letters, II, 525.
I do know of a power of a very personal nature and an irresistible influence. I call it ‘God’. ~Carl Jung, Letters II, 274.
My God-image corresponds to an autonomous archetypal pattern. Therefore I can experience God as if he were an object, but I need not assume that it is the only image. ~Carl Jung, Letters II, 154.
… it would be an arbitrary limitation of the concept of God to assume that He is only good and so deprive evil of real being. If God is only good, everything is good…. ~Carl Jung, Letters II, 519
No matter how isolated you are and how lonely you feel, if you do your work truly and conscientiously, unknown friends will come and seek you. ~Carl Jung citing an Alchemist, Letters Vol II, Page 595.
It was the tragedy of my youth to see my father cracking up before my eyes on the problem of his faith and dying and early death. ~Carl Jung to Pastor Walter Bernet, Letters Vol. II, Page 275
The ego participates in God’s suffering. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, 314ff.
What we need is the development of the inner spiritual man, the unique individual whose treasure is hidden on the one hand in the symbols of our mythological tradition, and on the other hand in man’s unconscious psyche. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 207
People hate the human soul; it is nothing but “psychological.” They don’t understand that it has needs, and they throw its treasures into the street without understanding them. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 209
In trying to reveal that which no mortal being is able to conceive, we distort and say the wrong things. Instead of creating light, we conceal in darkness, instead of lifting up, we expose the treasure to ridicule and contempt. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 395
It is only of minimal importance what the individual does with archetypes. Infinitely more important is what the history of mankind has to tell us about them. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 283
The myth of the necessary incarnation of God – the essence of the Christian message – can then be understood as man’s creative confrontation with the opposites and their synthesis in the self, the wholeness of his personality … In the experience of the self it is no longer the opposites ‘God’ and ‘man’ that are reconciled, as it was before, but rather the opposites within the God-image itself. That is the meaning of divine service, of the service which man can render to God, that light may emerge from the darkness, that the Creator may become conscious of His creation, and man conscious of himself. That is the goal, or one goal, which fits man meaningfully into the scheme of creation, and at the same time confers meaning upon it. It is an explanatory myth which has slowly taken shape within me in the course of the decades. It is a goal I can acknowledge and esteem, and which therefore satisfies me. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 338
Man’s relation to God probably has to undergo a certain important change: Instead of the propitiating praise to an unpredictable king or the child’s prayer to a loving father, the responsible living and fulfilling of the divine will in us will be our form of worship and commerce with God….His goodness means grace and light and His dark side, the terrible temptation of power….Man has already received so much knowledge that he can destroy his own planet….Let us hope that God’s good spirit will guide him in his decisions because it will depend upon man’s decision whether God’s creation will continue….Nothing shows more drastically than this possibility how much of divine power has come within the reach of man. C. G. Jung, Letters, Vol. II, Page 316.
God always speaks mythologically. Carl Jung, Letters II, Page 9.
[If the unconscious is] properly dealt with in one place only, it is influenced as a whole, i.e., simultaneously and everywhere. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II Page 595
The great problem of our time is that we do not understand what is happening to the world. We are confronted with the darkness of our soul, the unconscious. Carl Jung; Letters II; Page 590.
As a rule it so happens that what passes for the profoundest knowledge and the ultimate truth on the first level is understood and derided as ridiculous ignorance on the next, and it is thought that now at last we have arrived at the right insights. With science you really do get somewhere, even if you don’t attain the ultimate philosophical insights. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 506.
The dream of X. means chiefly that it would be advisable to you to give yourself that kind of loving attention as well as whatever X. means for you in yourself. In other words: worry about yourself more than about others; see and understand what you do more than what you assume other people do. Otherwise you will be accused of a meddling power drive. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 515.
Herbert Silberer has the merit of being the first to discover the secret threads that lead from alchemy to the psychology of the unconscious” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 792.
The collective unconscious is simply Nature — and since Nature contains everything it also contains the unknown. So far as we can see, the collective unconscious is identical with Nature to the extent that Nature herself, including matter, is unknown to us. I have nothing against the assumption that the psyche is a quality of matter or matter the concrete aspect of the psyche, provided that ‘psyche’ is defined as the collective unconscious. ~Carl Jung; Letters II, Page 450
The book will interest me very much, also what you told me about the Buddhist Society came quite a propos, since I have been studying Buddha’s sermons in the Middle Collection of the Pali-Canon for several months. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 548.
I am trying to get nearer to the remarkable psychology of the Buddha himself, or at least of that which his contemporaries assumed him to be. It is chiefly the question of karma and rebirth which has renewed my interest in Buddha. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 548.
It (Answer to Job) is a book that moved me deeply. I find it the most beautiful and profound of your books, whereby I mean to say that it is actually not a ‘book’ any more. In a certain sense, it is an argument with God, an entreaty similar to Abraham’s when he remonstrated with God because of the fall of Sodom. It is, for me personally, an entreaty against a god who let six million people be slaughtered, for Job is precisely Israel. I don’t mean that in the ‘narrow’ sense; I know full well that we are only the paradigm for all of mankind, in whose name you speak, protest and comfort. And exactly the deliberate one-sidedness, yes, the frequent incorrectness of what you say, is for me an inner proof of the necessity and righteousness of your attack – which actually is no attack at all, as I well know. Erich Neumann, Letters Vol. II, Page 243.
If we describe God as evolving, we must bear in mind at the same time that He is perhaps so vast that the process of cognition only moves along His contours, as it were, so that the attribute ‘evolving’ applies more to it than to Him. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 252
Ethical decision is concerned with very much more complicated things, namely conflicts of duty, the most diabolical things ever invented and at the same time the loneliest ever dreamt of by the loneliest of all, the Creator of the world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 519
The voice of God can still be perceived, if one is only humble enough. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 630
Daniel Brody, [proprietor of Rhein Verlag, Zurich, publisher of the Eranos Jahrbilcher. “I feel the need to recommend the collected papers of Toni Wolff to your attention. They are distinguished not only by their intellectual content but by the fact that the author had personally experienced the development of analytical psychology from the fateful year of 1912 right up to the recent past and was thus in a position to record her reactions and sympathetic interest from the first. Her papers also have a documentary value. Even those who did not know the author personally will glean from them an impression of the versatility and depth of her spiritual personality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 424-425
The end [ of Ulysses] is a string of veritable psychological peaches. I suppose the devil’s grandmother knows so much about the real psychology of woman, I didn’t. ~Carl Jung, James Joyce Letters Vol. II, Page 583
Whatever happens in a given moment has inevitably the quality peculiar to that moment. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 592
It is regrettable that you did not read my introductory remarks. You might have discovered there my empirical standpoint without which—I grant you—my little book makes no sense at all. Envisaged from a philosophical point of view without consideration of its psychological premise, it is sheer idiocy, from a theological angle nothing but downright blasphemy and from the standpoint of rationalistic commonsense a heap of illogical and feeble-minded phantasmata. But psychology has its own proposition and its own working hypotheses based upon the observation of facts, i.e., (in our case) of spontaneous reproduction of archetypal structures appearing in dreams as well as in psychoses. If one doesn’t know of these facts, it will be difficult to understand what is meant by ‘psychic reality’ and ‘psychic autonomy’. I agree with you that my statements (in Antwort auf Hiob) are shocking, but no more, rather less so, than the manifestations of Yahweh’s demonic nature in the OT. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol II, Page 151-154
As animals have no need to be taught their instinctive activities, so man also possesses primordial psychic patterns, and repeats them spontaneously, independently of any teaching. Inasmuch as man is conscious and capable of introspection, it is quite possible that he can perceive his instinctual patterns in the form of archetypal representations. As a matter of fact, these possess the expected degrees of universality (cf., the remarkable identity of shamanistic structures). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 152
Carl Jung: Freud/Jung Letters
Freud-Jung Letters: Correspondence Between Sigmund Freud and C.G. Jung
Bleuler would rather fall out with us than with those pipsqueaks. Shame on him! ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters. Vol 1, Pages 465
It seemed to me that my spookerys struck you as altogether too stupid and perhaps unpleasant because of the Fliess analogy. (Insanity!) ~Carl Jung to Freud, Letters Vol. 1, Page 9.
Occultism is another field we shall have to conquer – with the aid of the libido theory, it seems to me. At the moment I am looking into astrology, which seems indispensable for a proper understanding of mythology. There are strange and wondrous things in these lands of darkness. Please don’t worry about my wanderings in these infinitudes. I shall return laden with rich booty for our knowledge of the human psyche. For a while longer I must intoxicate myself on magic perfumes in order to fathom the secrets that lie hidden in the abysses of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Page 254J
I am reading with pleasure Inman’s book on symbols. I am obsessed by the thought of one day writing a comprehensive account of this whole field, after years of fact-finding and preparation, of course. The net should be cast wide. Archaeology or rather mythology has got me in its grip, it’s a mine of marvelous material. ~Carl Jung, Freud-Jung Letters, 251-252.
Occultism is another field we shall have to conquer there are strange and wondrous things in these lands of darkness. I must intoxicate myself on magic perfumes in order to fathom the secrets that lie hidden in the abysses of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Page 421.
If there is a “psych-analysis” there must also be a “psychosynthesis” which creates future events according to the same laws. ~Carl Jung to Freud, Letters Vol. 1, Page 10.
That last evening with you has, most happily, freed me inwardly from the oppressive sense of your paternal authority. ~Carl Jung to Freud, Letters Vol. 1, Page 10.
Because of our shortsightedness we fail to recognize the biological services rendered by homosexual seducers. Actually they should be credited with something of the sanctity of monks. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung letters Vol. 1, Page 298
It’s a crying shame that already with Herodotus prudery puts forth its quaint blossoms; on his own admission he covers up a lot of things “for reasons of decency.” Where did the Greeks learn that from so early? ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 265-268
American culture really is a bottomless abyss; the men have become a flock of sheep and the women play the ravening wolves-within the family circle, of course. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 265-268
I have to fight like mad with my students until I have dinned it into them that psychoanalysis is a scientific method and not just guesswork. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 265-268
Sigmund Freud never said, “Psychoanalysis is in essence a cure through love.” ~Sigmund Freud – letter to Carl Jung (1906)
One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful. ~Sigmund Freud Letter to Carl Jung, September 19, 1907.
Then I am plagued by all those poor devils who have “pissed out” excruciating dissertations on me (to speak in the basic language”). ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Pages 424-425
Occultism is another field we shall have to conquer’ with the aid of the libido theory, it seems to me. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Pages 424-425
For a while longer I must intoxicate myself on magic perfumes in order to fathom the secrets that lie hidden in the abysses of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Pages 424-425
Finally and in confidence: Pfister is now in analysis with Riklin. He has obviously had enough of being roasted over a slow fire by his complexes. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Pages 424-425
Your last letter upset me. I have read a lot between the lines. I don’t doubt that if only I could talk with you we could come to a basic understanding. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 138-139
I think very many cases of Dementia praecox are due exclusively to purely psychological conflicts. But besides these there are undoubtedly not a few cases where a physical weakness of some kind precipitates the psychosis. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 138-139
Everywhere we are haunted by psyche = substantia, playing on the brain ala piano. The monistic standpoint-psyche = inwardly perceived function-might help to slay this ghost. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 138-139
You are quite right: on the whole I was unfair to Stekel’s book. But only to you. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 169-170
Heartiest thanks for your two excellent articles. “The Dynamics of Transference” is of extraordinary value for the analyst. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Page 486
I should like to spend the miserably short holiday I have in lazy solitude; God knows I need it. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 163-164
Together with my wife I have tried to unriddle your words, and we have reached surmises which, for the time being at any rate, I would rather keep to myself. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 438-441
I can only hope that your embargo on discussion will be lifted during your stay here. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 438-441
One Danish doctor flew into a rage with me; I didn’t deign to answer him and that made him more furious than ever, for the rabble likes to be answered in kind. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 438-441
I, too, have the feeling that this is a time full of marvels, and, if the ‘auguries do not deceive us, it may very well be that, thanks to your discoveries, we are on the threshold of something really sensational, which I scarcely know how to describe except with the Gnostic ‘concept of (Sophia) an Alexandrian term particularly suited to the reincarnation of ancient wisdom in the shape of psychoanalysis. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 438-441
The adventure with “Schottlander” is marvellous; of course the slimy bastard was lying. I hope you roasted, flayed, and impaled the fellow with such genial ferocity that he got a lasting taste for once of the effectiveness of psychoanalysis. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 325-326
My mythology swirls about inside me, and now and then various significant bits and pieces are thrown up. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 325-326
That it is not of great therapeutic importance to get patients to produce their latent fantasies seems to me a very dubious proposition. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 430-431
We have been the victims of “blackmail”! by the newspapers and were publicly reviled although no names were named. I have even consulted a good lawyer with a possible view to bringing a libel action.” ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 482-483
This letter is quite vacuous. At the moment I am not giving out any libido, it’s all going into my work. ” ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 482-483
The time is most inopportune, as I am overwhelmed with work and grappling with the endless proliferation of mythological fantasies. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 482-483
Please forgive me for the delay in answering. The break with Bleuler has not left me unscathed. Once again I underestimated my father complex. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 328-331
I am working like a horse and am at present immersed in Iranian archaeology. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol., Pages 355- 356
I think my conjecture that the Miller fantasies” really add up to a redemption mystery can be proved to the hilt. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol., Pages 355- 356
Only the other day a so-called Dem. praec. patient, whom I have almost set on her” feet again, came out with a really grand, hitherto anxiously guarded, moon-fantasy which is a redemption mystery composed entirely of liturgical imagery. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol., Pages 355- 356
I myself am out of the running, for I have no intention of giving up my scientific work for the sake of a professorship. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 501-502
Professorships here mean the end of one scientific development. You cannot be an official in a madhouse and a scientist at the same time. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 501-502
Nothing can be done directly, since one cannot start a fight with American newspapers. All they are interested in is sensationalism, bribery, and corruption. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 501-502
Our ultimate opponents will be the ones who commit the vilest atrocities with Psychoanalysis, as they are even now doing with all the means at their disposal. It’s a poor lookout for Psychoanalysis in the hands of these crooks and fools! ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 501-502
When everything goes smoothly, petrifaction sets in. “I seek salvation not in rigid forms.”! ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 539-540
So if I offer you the unvarnished truth it is meant for your good, even though it may hurt. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 539-540
Although you have evidently taken my first secret letter very much to heart or very much amiss, I cannot refrain, while avoiding that topic, from offering you my friendly wishes for the New Year. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 539-540
If there is a “psychanalysis” there must also be a “psychosynthesis” which creates future events according to the same laws. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1., Pages 215-217
Bleuler would rather fall out with us than with those pipsqueaks. Shame on him! ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters. Vol 1, Pages 465
The homosexual resistances in men are simply astounding and open up mind-boggling possibilities. Removal of the moral stigma from homosexuality as a method of contraception is a cause to be promoted with the utmost energy. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. I, Page 298.
I have the feeling that this is a time full of marvels, and, if the auguries do not deceive us, it may very well be that we are on the threshold of something really sensational, which I scarcely know how to describe except with the Gnostic concept of [Sophia], an Alexandrian term particularly suited to the reincarnation of ancient wisdom in the shape of ΨA. ~Carl Jung, The Freud/Jung Letters, Page 439
Since your visit I have been tormented by the idea that your relation with my husband is not altogether as it should be, and since it definitely ought not to be like this I want to try to do whatever is in my power. ~Emma Jung to S. Freud, Freud/Jung Letters Pages 452-3.
You were really annoyed by my letter, weren’t you? I was too, and now I am cured of my megalomania and am wondering why the devil the unconscious had to make you, of all people, the victim of this madness. ~Emma Jung to S. Freud, Freud/Jung Letters Pages 455-7.
Incidentally, America no longer has the same attraction for him [Carl] as before, and this has taken a stone from my heart. ~Emma Jung to S. Freud, Freud/Jung Letters, Page 303.
I would prefer to think that one should not dream at all, one should live. ~Emma Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Page 456
“No one provokes me with impunity.” The ancients knew how inexorable a god Eros is. ~Cited by Carl Jung in Freud/Jung Letters, Page 19.
This time it was not I who was duped by the devil but my wife, who lent an ear to the evil spirit and staged a number of jealous scenes, groundlessly. At first my objectivity got out of joint (rule 1 of psychoanalysis: principles of Freudian psychology apply to everyone except the analyser) but afterwards snapped back again, whereupon my wife also straightened herself out brilliantly. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Page 289
Gross and Spielrein are bitter experiences. To none of my patients have I extended so much friendship and from none have I reaped so much sorrow. ~Jung to Freud, Freud/Jung Letters pp. 228-229.
The reason for evil in the world is that people are not able to tell their stories. ~Citation needed to prove Dr. Jung said this.
You will be accused of mysticism, but the reputation you won with the Dementia will hold up for quite some time against that. ~Sigmund Freud to Carl Jung Letter May 1911.
Adler’s letter is stupid chatter and can safely be ignored. We aren’t children here. If Adler ever says anything sensible or worth listening to I shall take note of it, even though I don’t think much of him as a person. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Page 532.
This time the feminine element will have conspicuous representatives from Zurich: Sister Meltzer, Hinkle Eastwick (an American charmer), Frl. Dr. Spielrein (!), then a new discovery of mine, Frl. Antonia Wolff, a remarkable intellect with an excellent feeling for religion and philosophy, and last but not least my wife. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, pp. 438-41.
I should never have joined you in the first place had not heresy run in my blood. ~Carl Jung Letter to Sigmund Freud (March 1912)
It is a risky business for an egg to be cleverer than the hen. Still, what is in the egg must find the courage to creep out. ~Carl Jung, Letter to Sigmund Freud (1911)
One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil. ~Carl Jung, Letter to Sigmund Freud (quoting Zarathustra) (1912)
An ethical fraternity, with its mythical Nothing, not infused by any archaic-infantile driving force, is a pure vacuum and can never evoke in man the slightest trace of that age-old animal power which drives the migrating bird across the sea. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Page 294.
In my case Pilgrim’s Progress consisted in my having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand to the little clod of earth that I am. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Volume 1, Page xix.
Freud is essentially concretistic, like Newton, and I’m chiefly impressed by the relativity of psychological phenomena. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 301-302
*Carl Jung – Adolf Keller Correspondence:
On Theology and Psychology: The Correspondence of C. G. Jung and Adolf Keller
You describe the process of self-awareness and self-absorption that leads to the renewal of one’s disposition and, in turn, to the brotherhood of man. I concur thoroughly with this logical insight. Why are people such fools that they do not simply do this? ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 118
The task of this age is therefore the sermon of stage 1: introducing man to himself. Thus, as an extravert, Freud is more practically effective than I am because he restricts himself entirely to stage 1. I have an impact only on those who have outgrown Freud. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 118
Stage 1 is the exclusive task of the present. Apparently it contradicts the Christian principle of love and has much more in common with the inclinations of the early Christian Anchorites, apart from the mortification of the flesh. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 118
We introverts see too far! In consequence we obstruct life and simply teach people how and where one can steal fruit, but not how one acquires it for oneself. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 118
Regarding the text of your address I’d like to suggest I. Cor. 15:44–47 in accordance with my wife. The idea expressed there along with the “Secret of the Golden Flower” was the last thing to engross my mother-in-law. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 119
“It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, the first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven.” I. Cor. 15:44–47, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 119
There was another reason why I did no more approach you. I felt, also in what I heard from T., that I cannot claim to interest you in a personal problem which I evidently must bear alone without being pitied unduly. The messages which the “ghost” sends me are such that I see we are at an end. I wish I had known this some 25 years ago. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 120
that one should set a limit to what is destructive. You know well what my view is regarding the unconscious. There is no purpose in surrendering oneself to its ultimate consequences.… The unconscious can only realize itself with the help of the conscious and under its constant control ~Carl Jung to Tina Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 183 fn 32.
An acquaintance of mine, Mr. Dulles from the American Embassy in Bern, would be glad to meet you. I explained the Fröbe matter to him and naturally also spoke about you. He was receptive and was gladly enlightened about the shadow cast at Eranos whose shade perhaps fell a little over you. Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 121
I have already met Mr. Dulles once. I already know him from New York and it would please me very much if he would visit me. We could then take the opportunity to scotch all these stupid rumors. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 121
Dr. Temple, the current archbishop of Canterbury, confessed to me once that in his view the church had committed a sin of omission by not accepting the further elaboration of the doctrine of the paraclete, banning it in the church. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 121
I am sitting at Rilke’s desk in his 12th-century tower, writing to you in your tower where even now you are perhaps thinking or writing or cooking yourself a nice soup. ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 122
For us, you have been one of these forces of destiny, and I call you friend even if we only rarely see each other, and in our contact we seldom enter that splendid and fearful chamber, for the soul not only speaks to another soul, but simply is. ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 123
It is in the nature of things that in my explorations much emerges in favor of justifying various forms of belief, for there would be no such thing as belief if there were no sufficient psychic foundation for this psychic fact. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 124
On the other hand I believe I must inform you of something I recently heard in strict confidence which claims that the American occupying authority is not permitting books by you into Germany. ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 125
The American occupation is quite out of touch in cultural matters having to do with international understanding and the psychology of international relations. ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 125
This hounding of me organized by the Freudians leaves me cold. I consider it not unlikely that my books are not permitted into Germany by the American occupying authority. No Swiss publications at all are being allowed in which says a lot for the unbelievable shortsightedness of the authority. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 126
It does me good to hear that you accept my humanity, and I only hope that this is not too difficult for you. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 132
I have had some friends but they have died. To speak with others, i.e., to speak in such a way that one gets something from it, is therefore very difficult, because they have no relation to my spiritual world and thus feel over-extended. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 132
In contrast, an inconsequential conversation seems to me to be too wearisome and makes me as tired as if I had undertaken the most laborious work. People make it too difficult for me, for I cannot and will not torture myself with futility. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 132
However, I have sent Keyserling packing. The few times I have seen him were really not pleasant. He talked me to death for 3–4 hours at a time, and I had to be quite rude when I wanted to interject a brief sentence. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 132
Therefore since I am not a beggar in the Club, I feel at home there and simply like the people who do this as people, powerfully attached to you and with humor. ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 135
I have never yet encountered a theory that could exhaustively sum up the individual man. That I could even attempt to do justice to an individual in a theory so contradicts all my convictions that I can only experience such an opinion as a grievous reproach. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 136
I have no experience of “redemption” as I have never yet encountered any “redeemed. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 136
But how one subjectively experiences a dream is not relevant in every circumstance. During the Hitler years there were not a few people (and among them quite a few Jews) who to their horror dreamed of him as a confidante or even a lover, and there are very many dreams where precisely what is wholesome works to arouse fear. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 136
The actual reason for this letter was triggered by your remark regarding my “daimon” vulgo possession. Since you did not mean this in any way as a joke, I must therefore assume that you are of the opinion that I am “possessed by demons.” ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 136
I have tried forever and a day—evidently in unsatisfactory ways—to keep the evil spirits from my body. However, I do not wish to be rid of them in such a way as to simply project them onto others. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 136
I have in fact never understood properly why Jesus forced the poor innocent pigs to suicide rather than taking the evil spirits on his own account. I would have found the latter not only more congenial, but also more comprehensible and dignified. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 136
Perhaps one can incorporate demons in order to protect others from them. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 136
Now that the Catholic Church has taken the momentous step of the Assumption, Protestantism has been all the more nailed down to the patriarchal line of the Old Testament and has fallen behind as regards dogmatic development. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 143
I don’t want to go back to the unconscious fog of Catholic concretism, therefore I also battle against Protestant concretism in historicity and the abstractness of the Protestant message, which today can only be understood as a historical remnant. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 143
If Christ means anything to me, it is only as a symbol. As a historical figure he might just as well be called Pythagoras, Lao-tze, Zarathustra, etc. I find the historical Jesus completely unedifying, simply interesting because controversial. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 143
However, to locate God’s revelation only in the mythological seems to me to limit God’s freedom. In large part, contemporary theological discussion takes place in the arena where one asks whether the kingdom God intervenes in history, or whether God is also at work historically as well as mythologically. ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 144
The question about where Christianity and depth psychology might encounter and enrich each other, both intellectually and culturally, has been occupying me for some time. Freud must of course be excluded, due to his illusion theory. ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 145
The only comment I’d like to make now is that I’ve not become more “Christian,” but rather that only now do I feel more or less able to proffer something on the psychology of Christianity. Dreams can be many things, but we have only one theoretical requirement for their explanation. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 146
I hope you have now recovered once again and that you are taking proper care of yourself. If we, at our age, are to learn to die in due course, now that so many others have had to leave us, it is vital that what we still have to say really gets said, and you still have much to say. ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 146
I experienced your archetypal impact on the Châtelaine here in Rilke’s tower, a naïve and shrewd woman in middle age upon whom, unbeknownst to her, you had the effect of a wise old man, providing in counterbalance an open catholicity. ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 147
I marvel at you and wonder how, in Küsnacht and Bollingen, you actually manage, first of all, to track down the obscure texts you cite, and then how you are able to make sense of them at all. I have never yet seen you sitting in the Central Library, and yet I am unwilling to assume that the Holy Spirit is imparting direct verbal inspiration to you. ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 150
I had thorough- going conversations with Aldous Huxley and Thomas Mann about your stance in relation to today’s problematic world situation and its psychological aspects. Huxley has a disease of the eyes and therefore must see with spiritual eyes. ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 151
Next week I am to introduce Buber here at a big banquet. He attacks your position but remains objective and gracious, whereas the Freudians are going full pelt and waging an all-out war. ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 151
Coleridge said: “I belong to that holy and infallible church of which I am the only member!” ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 152
This, all the more so since the Club asked me after Toni’s memorial service to pay tribute to her in a short obituary where there would also be room for Linda Fierz’s words. ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 153-154
But fundamentally, the kingdom of the soul is also the kingdom of God. And souls have limits, notably that ultimate boundary before which you and I stand, hoping confidently to cross it when the time comes. ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 153
I recently learned that the Carmelites in France are in a certain sense reigniting the ancient controversy, already rejected by the pope in 1698, namely the argument with the Jesuits over the Carmelite claim that the prophet Elias was the founder of their order. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 154
My friend Upton Sinclair sends me an excerpt of a letter containing your view of his new book “What did Didymus do? ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 169
You have now reached that Churchillian age when you no longer need worry about other people because they have learned to define you by standards other than those of a grandmother or school- teacher. ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 156
You are now hidden in that realm where you no longer need to worry about hordes and prattle, but there are many who are thinking your thoughts onwards even when the Christian theologians cannot yet take their doctorate in Gnosticism. ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 156
I had some correspondence with Upton Sinclair; he seems, like most Americans, to live very much in the public eye. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 156
I have never deluded myself that psychology is the only answer to all human questions; but even if one is in no position to proclaim the eternal truth, one might still be allowed to make some small contributions to the general culture. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 156
I have found in your deliberate and often fiercely protected or defensive solitude and remoteness from people that authentic and profound human intimacy that defines not only civilized culture but also one’s destiny and fellowship with God. ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 156
The photographer [Time Magazine], who bored me intensely with his interminable shoot, must have caught me at a moment of absent-mindedness when I’d sunk into my thoughts. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 158
Now we’re approaching Aquarius, about which the Sibylline Books declare: Luciferi vires accendit Aquarius acres! [Aquarius inflames the wild powers of Lucifer]. And even now we stand only at the very beginning of this apocalyptic development! ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 158
I’m now a great-great-grandfather and can see those distant generations coming on, who long after us will inexorably live in that darkness. I’d accuse myself of the pessimism of old age if I didn’t know that the H-bomb stands ready, a fact that is sadly now indisputable. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 158
I have constant contact mainly with Catholic theologians, particularly Père Bruno de Jésus-Marie, the publisher of Études Carmélitaines. They are about to publish a book by a Belgian Jesuit about my psychology. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 158
I’ve already read the draft of this book; the author makes the fundamental mistake of treating me as a philosopher and thinks that my concepts are concerned with philosophy, which of course is completely wrong. They are concepts that describe facts that, unlike philosophical terms, do not exhaust themselves. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 158
I’m also currently corresponding with a Benedictine father from Ettal Abbey, Upper Bavaria, who is recounting his mystical experiences to me, all in the style of the 13th century. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 172
He [White] hopes to be able to link Thomist psychology to mine. Of course, once again the incommensurability of concepts is a great hindrance here. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 159
The significance of the Aquarius saying is this: “Lucifer inflames the evil powers of Aquarius.” Aquarius is not necessarily benign towards man. As a double sign it has another aspect, like Pisces. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 160
Now even White calls [Jung’s] interpretation “impossible,” and “a cruel caricature,” but despite this White fears your Marian enlightenment: timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 160
If you want to speak about my views, then I must ask you not to rely on newspaper articles, but to take account of what I have written about it. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 162
I don’t want to ascribe to you a conscious attitude of this kind, but the effect of your inadequate orientation unavoidably bears a certain resemblance to such mindlessness. For the sympathy of your feeling I am genuinely grateful, but as for the rest, we had better draw a veil over it. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 162
For this reason I will stop here, in spite of your patronizing misinterpretation and distortions, and insist on expressing my heartfelt thanks on the occasion of your 80th birthday, in enduring spiritual debate and with all the gains for my personal development and my theological and cultural work on a completely general problem. ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 163
In such painful misunderstandings I can only think of the 12th house of my horoscope, also known to your daughter, which is generously riddled with reactions that depend perhaps in part on my relationship with other people, but also in many ways on a complex attitude to myself. ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 163
For my part, I shall gladly sweep under the veil what I take to be your misunderstanding. As ever, I offer you on your birthday all that belongs to an extremely positive human relationship, along with all the mutual criticism that has its place within that too. ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 210
I wrote to you and your children on the death of Emma whose loss I continue to mourn. I never heard whether you or your children received my letter. I didn’t expect you to enter into a correspondence, but I do not know whether Tina—who also wrote—at least received a formal expression of thanks. I take it for granted that I am not identified with her relationship to you ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 212
My last letter to you in no way was meant as a farewell; I was simply airing my vexation that you had overlooked just how much I have engaged with the psychology of the Christ-concept. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 214
The same thing could befall us that has happened in China, where a philosopher like Hu-Schih, for example, is ashamed of knowing anything about the I Ching [,] and where the depth of the Tao concept has disappeared and instead they worship locomotives and airplanes. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 214
Many reach prematurely for the I Ching, which Wilhelm once cast for me, or for the Tao or yoga, without grasping how our connection to these is more intimate than is cheerful and pragmatic America’s, a land that has so much “fun” but today—as Lippmann says—lives in “a quiet desperation.” ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 216
You can’t complain, despite the Freudian baiting from Marcuse. People come to you all the more when they sense from you not only scorn or irony or polemic as in Job but also understanding wisdom, respect for every mystery of becoming (including its detours), and love for mankind. ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 216
Incidentally, Tina also considered herself a “Jungian” once she had worked through some resentment towards you, even if she did not wish to get into all the secrets of Gnostic theology etc. ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 222
Above all I want to say that I do not wish to be identified with Tina and hold firmly to my own position, determined by the view of the whole, the persona and the shadow and the conjunctio. ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 228
In relation to this gentleman, I’ve wondered why he or his friends keep sending so many letters of recommendation in advance of his arrival. They are not doing this good man any service, but merely arousing mistrust. “Good wine needs no bush” and you can spare thinking of me as a bad judge of character. I’m already feeling a certain pity for the good Mr. Hornaday. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 228
So in the meantime the comet Hornaday has risen on our horizon and, after a brief guest appearance, has departed from us once again just as meteorically. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 231
I can’t avoid thinking of the words of the poet, however: “Between the lips and the rim of the chalice hovers the hand of the dark powers.” ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 231
If people show no libido, then even the Kaiser has no say in the matter, i.e., no such need exists that could justify an effort. One can happily let such people stew in the juices of their own neurosis. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 238
An extravert approaches your sermon from behind and claims that he has long since accomplished everything, this because he always steals what is desirable, therefore he always has resistances to the so-called good in himself, for the very reason that he has stolen it. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 118
That is, this process must be lived, after which the following occurs:
I Stage of introversion: separation of the individual from society. Because of inordinately strong social cohesion this does not take place without misunderstanding, enmity, and hatred = war. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 118
II Stage of libido in the mother: reawakening of the archaic = psychosis. Unleashing of the highest and the deepest. An almost anarchic state, in any case a disintegration of society to a high degree. (Dismemberment motif.) ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 118
III Stage of emergence: a mystical development and unification about which I cannot yet say much, which I am better able to sense intuitively than think. For as yet we have hardly lived this out. The disintegration of tradition is not yet complete. The isolation will be insupportable. A start on this is to be found in the national experience of isolation. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 119
People have every right to feel surprised to see a medical student abandon his craft during his clinical training to speak about theological issues. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 11
Physiologists are struggling to explain life in terms of natural laws.… They try desperately to force life into the system of natural laws, when life contradicts every law of nature.…The vital principle extends far beyond our consciousness.… Or as Schopenhauer says: “Consciousness is the object of a transcendental idea.” … Let us boldly assign to this transcendental subject the name of soul. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 11
[Indeed,] deeds are needed to wake up religion, miracles are needed, and men endowed with miraculous powers. Prophets, men sent by God! Never has a religion sprung from a dry theoretician or a gushy idealist. Religions are created by men who have demonstrated with deeds the reality of mystery and of the “extrasensory realm. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 12
“It is strange that on the very same evening when I formally adopted you as eldest son and anointed you—in partibus infidelium—as my successor and crown prince, you should have divested me of my paternal dignity.… ~Sigmund Freud, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 20
From my practice, however, I was familiar with numerous cases of neurosis in which the question of sexuality played a subordinate part, other factors standing in the foreground—for example, the problem of social adaptation.… ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 20
The dream gives an answer via the symbol, which must be understood. One should not see in it nothing but a wish fulfillment, for then the analyst will merely go along with the neurotic’s fantasies. The purposes of the unconscious, which never seeks to dissemble, must be revealed. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 24-25
In contingent introversion, the external is dominant, for the ultimate goal is extravert in nature.… The normal waking state is extravert in nature, but it is perhaps a contingent introversion in order to devote oneself to reality. The sleep state is completely introverted. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 27
Intellect corrodes religion, and where intellect alone engages with a religious phenomenon, it is bound to destroy it; for it cannot bear the unconditional and absolute; religion, however, is rooted in these. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 27
Individuation was for the few. Those who were insufficiently creative should rather reestablish collective conformity with a society. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 33-34
[in the Old Testament] “there was the primitive form of salvation, and an identification with oneself is not yet achieved. This is still the case in the Catholic Church. In contrast, Protestantism has progressed beyond this.” ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 35
I have sat alongside some young prisoners in their cells and have listened to their tales of woe—a dark concatenation of evil forces, a mixture of greed, doubt, selfishness, and carnality. ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 38
One day the daughter of Rockefeller stood in the Lavater room and said: ‘I would like to see human beings.’ ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 41
It is really as if there is some prejudice against my profession; for example when I wished to defend Christianity, they acted as if Christianity is valueless. There must be room for the old in the new. Dr. Jung certainly seeks to find connections between them. ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 48
We perpetrate abuses with the will, natural growth is subjected to the will. [That] should be reversed.… The will is an intellectual function.… The war teaches us: to will is pointless—we have got to see how it all turns out. We are completely subjugated to the absolute power of becoming.” A good year later Jung posed the question in the Society: “Why is the whole world so set against Germany? ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 33
On 25 November 1922 C. G. and Emma Jung resigned from the Club, along with Toni Wolff. The standing orders were revised and stricter entry requirements were introduced. From now on, one would have to apply for membership and be introduced by two sponsors. ~ Marianne Jehle-Wildberger, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 49
In 1924 the Jungs and Toni Wolff rejoined the Club, and shortly after this Tina Keller was unanimously re-elected to membership ~Marianne Jehle-Wildberger, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 49
The relationship with Edith Rockefeller opened the door later for Keller to meet her brother, John D. Rockefeller Jr., from whom he received large sums of money for his theological education project for the support of poor East European churches. ~ Marianne Jehle-Wildberger, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 41
Early in 1916 a committee was formed, which included Jung and Emma Jung-Rauschenbach, Harold and Edith McCormick-Rockefeller, Toni Wolff, and two others, for the purpose of setting up a Psychological Club. ~ Marianne Jehle-Wildberger, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 46
Emma Jung, who was also working as an analyst, took on the role of president of the Club. Adolf Keller was considered for membership on the board. While he did not take up this position, he was named to the library committee along with C. G. Jung and one other member. ~Marianne Jehle-Wildberger. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 47
At the board meeting in late 1916, Edith McCormick had already stressed the necessity of being more careful in the selection of new Club members than had been their habit. Emma Jung agreed with her. ~Marianne Jehle-Wildberger. ~Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 48
Jung: Thoughts on the Interpretation of Christianity,
Here in particular I must say a word about my acquaintance with analytical psychology, which I first encountered in its Freudian form in Geneva. In Zurich, Carl Jung was the established leader and prophet of this new school of psychology. My friend Oskar Pfister and I were the only theologians who immediately recognized the significance of psychoanalysis for the psychology of religion, pastoral care, and pedagogy, and who collaborated in a small study group which originated at the Burghölzli with Bleuler, Jung, and other psychiatrists. The theologian was in fact a rather peculiar fellow in this circle, repeatedly having to voice his disagreement with any exclusive “psychologizing,” and he was often sharply criticized and even ridiculed by the prevailing medical psychological worldview. This led perhaps to the boundaries between theology and psychology initially not being drawn clearly enough or to a withdrawal into a defensive position from which one could easily make petulant sorties. ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 17
“I [Keller] strongly rejected the purely sexual biologism of Freud to my friend Reverend Pfister.…” ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 20
it was not a matter of a break in his relationship with Freud but rather a process of ongoing development. Freud had drawn attention to the causal explanation of neuroses. In the past, everything had been interpreted teleologically. However, neuroses had to be explained in part causally and in part teleologically. The introverted type must be thought of more teleologically, the hysteric more causally. Now, however, there was a trend towards the teleological explanation once again.… Regression goes back to a stage where incest was not yet relevant, the warmth of the feeding mother was much more important.… For clinical practice, the new understanding of libido is very significant. For one no longer asks what caused the neurosis but instead reads the neurotic symptom as a regression to the past, because a block stands in the way, of which a man is not conscious, or about which he wants to stay unconscious. So he takes the infantile path, to get all kinds of compliments and trick his way around the obstacle in a child’s winning way. Therefore, behind the neurosis stands the question: What obligation are you trying to duck? A duty you require of yourself.… That is why dreams must be read prospectively, as dream interpretation used to be undertaken [before Freud], in the direction of the task that is difficult for the neurotic who lacks the “standard of life.” ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 23
Becoming an individual: the allness is integrated, compressed into the singularity. Individuation is a process of the absolute condensation of the libido, which wants to become personal; through this arise tension, expectation, heat through the inward direction of the inclinations, which want to become personal. Out of this tension, the images are generated. Life proceeds through the images. One can see the value of the symbol only through the introverting process, as when we enter into the object, for then the object becomes alive and real and has no symbolic meaning. This we find only when we abstract. Then the libido brings the imaginal into me and I hold the world as imago within myself. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 30
Today collectivity and individuation are antithetical. There are two sides, one where the moral accent is on the collective, the other where it is on the individual basis.… The individual is also of the collective. Nothing must be split off.… Differentiation pushed too far is sickness (diminished adaptation) with respect to the conditions. Today we have no culture—the spiritual height of development contrasts with the actuality of the collective. Culture first of all draws upon and reworks collective residues.… The concept of sacrifice no longer applies. It comes from the time when one believed one could beat it [the real collective] to death or skin it alive. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 32-33
“Through consciousness one purifies oneself and is liberated from the constraints of the unconscious = the ascent of the mountain of salvation = union with his soul = the liberated individual can integrate his being (his soul).… When the union with the soul occurs man is also united with the cosmos reflected in the unconscious. In this way he becomes godlike, and not clearly defined. What is individual is felt, but man is undifferentiated from the world, in mystical participation with it.… For the first part of an analysis the psychology of the Christian worldview should be used. Later we come up against the problem of the one-sided definition of the concept of God.” ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 36
I would like to speak of life processes that are accessible both in history and in personal experience to the awareness of every individual. With this deliberate qualification, I am speaking of the gospel as an impulse towards new life which was mysteriously visited upon man in the unfolding of history. It is a new powerful surge of life that burst out of the depths of the soul and the spirit and went out among the nations and has continued without ceasing even to this day.… Essential to this phenomenon is a new psychic life force, a dynamism, an élan vital, a breakthrough of new life forces that gave a new direction to the thoughts and energy of humanity. Seen from the perspective of the human soul, the gospel is a powerful tremor, running through the hearts, minds, and spirit of men and damming up their entire energy, creating the most powerful tension. It is a new intuition of the invisible from which man gained a new position in relation to the moral world. It is a state of emotional turmoil and a sanctification of the mind, which cannot be achieved by any old borrowing or possessing another good. At the same time it is an impetus of moral strength creating for the first time the vision of a complete triumph over all demonic powers. ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 51-52
Even from his boyhood hints of the beginnings of his individuation are reported. The boy leaves home and family and finds himself in opposition to them. … He frees himself from the all-embracing collectivity of the people and his religion. He enters into solitude, the desert, he confronts the collective force of public opinion and of the law with his sovereign “But I say unto you.” He enters the temple with revolutionary rebellion.… He died alone. But this aloneness does not mean a submergence into the individuation process. In his experience of God, in the founding of a new spiritual community, he achieved a higher collectivity.… Thus in the experience of God in his baptism his ego achieved a consciousness of the highest magnitude. As the son of God he achieved the highest fellowship and a worldwide mission among men. ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 52
“I carry to this day the impress of a powerful experience. One felt that here stood a man who had a message.… I was very eager to accompany my husband on these occasions. Although I had no preparation I felt that something important was being discussed, so I listened with my whole being.… I believe the attraction was due to the idea of a pioneer in a passionate search, trying to look behind the visible into the dark of the psyche.” ~Tina Keller-Jenny, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 47
… “For an entire year she accompanied me on my visits to the small alleys in the Schipfe (a then-poor quarter in the parish of St. Peter’s) where I dragged her by the hand up putrid staircases and passageways so that she was forced to take out her smelling salts on reaching the top; thus she became acquainted with the lives ‘of other people’ and with the phenomenology of poverty.” ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 40-41
“It was as if Jung was conjugating the psychological unity in the Oedipus myth, hence the opposition between ‘fathers and sons’; … Jung was even then developing intimations of the polarity of all being … which only reveals itself in opposites with a compensatory function. In this, he was pressing on reverently and critically into the hidden darkness in order to taste of the tree of life and of knowledge.” ~Adolf Keller, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 20
“Among all my patients beyond mid-life …, there is not a single one whose ultimate problem was not that of the religious attitude.… Here, gentlemen, a tremendous area is unfolding for the pastor.… It is high time that the pastor and the doctor of the soul join forces to overcome this enormous task.” ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 32-33
After a lecture by Emma Jung some months later, Keller pointed out that inner reality had already been discovered not for the first time in analysis but “in the mythological symbolism in religion,” which C. G. Jung promptly mitigated with: “Analytical psychology was the first to reveal this consciously as a psychological reality—in mythology and in religion it was as if they were external to us.” ~ Marianne Jehle-Wildberger, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 35
The theologians, the administrators of religion, have been shouting themselves hoarse for years trying to fight the demon of disbelief.… But the sermons we are hearing give us no clue as to who really has something special to tell us, for among the products of this [the 19th] century is an execrable jargon of the pulpit, the ‘language of Canaan,’ which is used to cover up anything which could possibly offend anyone. If we listen to certain sermons without any preconceived ideas we will soon find ourselves all agog with notions about grace and plans of salvation.” ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 12
The regular discussions introduced us to the early drafts of Jung’s writings. We practically witnessed the emergence of the book Symbols of Transformation. The group had a revolutionary spirit that manifested itself in a clear protest against society, tradition, and even theology and the church.” ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 18
Jung placed his confidence in Keller, giving him the drafts of Symbols of Transformation to take on his honeymoon to Egypt at the beginning of 1912. ~ Marianne Jehle-WildbergerJung-Keller Correspondence, Page 18
He sent his patient Mrs. Edith Rockefeller McCormick to Keller. She was the daughter of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., and the wife of Harold McCormick, chief of the Harvester Company in Chicago. She lived in Zurich from 1913 until 1921. After the death of her son, she was taken ill with a neurosis and sought help from Jung and was analyzed by him for eight years. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 43
*The Jung-White Letters:
I have a huge correspondence, see innumerable people but have only two real friends with whom I can speak about my own difficulties; the one is Erich Neumann and he lives in Israel and the other is Father Victor White in England. ~Carl Jung, The Jung–White Letters, Page 334
Victor White was one of the very few, possibly the only person in the inner circle who really stood up to the old man [Jung], and slugged it out over a period of years until they were both exhausted with it (Arraj 2015).
I am by profession a theologian. But I am a theologian to whom, something happened. Suddenly, or perhaps not so suddenly, theology ceased to have any meaning to me at all … and so I was forced to turn to the psychologists … I did have a hunch that the method and approach of Jung might have something that spoke to my condition. ~Victor White, The Story of Jung’s ‘White Raven” Page 16
An elementary study of (for instance) St. Thomas’s sections in the Prima Pars On the Good, On the Goodness of God, On Evil, and On the Cause of Evil, should suffice to dispel Dr Jung’s misunderstandings and misgivings, and to supply a metaphysic which would account for the phenomena which concern him at least as satisfactorily as the quasi-Manichaean dualism which he propounds. These somewhat confused and confusing pages might be dismissed as just another infelicitous excursion of a great scientist outside his own orbit … It is regrettable indeed that, supported only by such naïve philosophizing, the most pregnant movement in contemporary psychology should be burdened with an irrelevant association with Gnostic dualism. ~Victor White, The Story of Jung’s ‘White Raven” Page 399
There are very understandable reasons which have made it difficult for theologians and philosophers to take Jung’s work seriously. The obstacles to understanding are considerable and should not be minimized … Regarding evil as having (apparently) some positive existence and reality of its own, Jung logically enough requires the admission of evil, not only into the “self”, the human totality, but also into the Godhead itself … which orthodox Christians must find quite inadmissible. ~Victor White, The Story of Jung’s ‘White Raven” Page 75
Jung has our keenest support and sympathy in deploring the minimizing of evil which leads to its repression, with its devastating results for the individual psyche and society; but we are unable to find evidence that the conception of the privatio boni has contributed to this ~Victor White, The Story of Jung’s ‘White Raven” Page n1.
… is he, after the manner of his own “Yahweh” duped by some satanic trickster into purposely torturing his friends and devotees? Or is he, more rationally, purposely putting them to test to discover how much they will stand rather than admit the fallibility of their master—or how many, more Job-like, will venture to observe that the Emperor has appeared in public without his clothes? ~Victor White, The Story of Jung’s ‘White Raven” Page 352
… Generally speaking it [Answer to Job] cannot be read. For Jung deliberately reads the Scriptures through a pair of highly distorted spectacles. Although he is not writing of God but of God-images, he is not writing directly even of Job’s images of God, but rather of his own images of Job’s images … Even an instructed Christian may expect an explosion when an adult, whose religious development had become fixated at the kindergarten level of bourgeois morality … becomes confronted with the realities of life, of the ways of God both in the Bible and in contemporary events. It is understandable that he feels a close kinship with the disillusioned, tortured Job … The violence of the abreaction is understandable … his grievance is hardly adult … the only reaction is that of the spoiled child. ~Victor White, Jung-White Letters, Page 353-354
I can confirm and prove the interrelation of the God-image with the other parts of the psyche, but I cannot go further without committing the error of metaphysical assertion, which is far beyond my scope. I am not a theologian and have nothing to say about the nature of God. ~Carl Jung, Jung-White Letters, Page 2007
I am frankly relieved that “Answer to Job” has not yet appeared in the USA! … Already of course I am getting perplexed and indignant letters from England asking “What the hell…” It cost quite some sleepless nights, trying to write an article to explain what I think … I hope you find the result (which I will send you if and when is published) not too distressing; and especially that you will take into consideration for whom it is written ~Victor White, Jung-White Letters, Page 254
I am grateful for the fact that you call me to order and that your judgment—be it correct or not—does not spare me, so I assume God will listen to a mortal voice, just as much he has given His ear to Job, when this little tortured worm complained about His paradoxical, amoral nature. Just as Job lifted his voice so that everybody could hear him, I have come to the conclusion, that I better risk my skin and do my worst or best, to shake the unconsciousness of my contemporaries. […] in our time everything is at stake, and one should not mind the little disturbance I am causing […]. I have hesitated and resisted long enough, until I have made up my mind to say what I think ~Carl Jung, Jung-White Letters, Page 261-262
Your criticism, of my motive concerning “Job” is certainly unjust and you know it. It is an expression of the mental torment you had to undergo in USA—and in Europe […]. Having chosen the life of a monk you have separated yourself from the world and exposed yourself to the eternal fires of the other. Somewhere you have to pay the toll either to Man or to God and in the end you will discover that both overcharge you. ~Carl Jung, Jung-White Letters, Page 263
Answer to Job is presumably to be read, not as an essay in theology, metaphysics or exegesis, but in practical psychology… What then is its practical psychological content and implication? First and foremost it seems to be this: God (not me) is unconscious, divided in himself, moody, capricious, purposeless—but notably evil as well as good. Evil is an ultimate and irreducible constituent of reality to be accepted—not a privation which can be supplied by good, or out of which good can be brought. My ‘evil’ is no more my concern. It is ‘all God’s fault’ and I can and should lay all the blame there … the personal shadow is transferred to the ‘divine’, ‘collective’ sphere and left there. If these are not the psychological implications of the book, they are the obvious ones which in fact are being drawn, and urgently need the author’s corrections. ~Victor White, Jung-White Letters, Page 268-272
For myself, it seems that our ways must, at least to some extent, part. I shall never forget, and please God I shall never lose, what I owe to your work & your friendship … ‘I hope you do not doubt my friendship, wrong-headed & heartless though it sometimes is. Poor Job at least had friends—however stupid. ~Victor White, Jung-White Letters, Page 273
‘Thank you a million for “Hiob” … I can hardly put it down. It is the most exciting and moving book I have read in years.’ Then, in the same letter he complained: ‘I do wish we could somehow resolve this deadlock about privatio boni,’ and towards the end he concluded in a most warm way: ‘I’ll be eternally grateful to you, whatever befall this difficulty with privatio boni.’ ~Victor White, Jung-White Letters, Page 181-182
As long as Evil is “non-being”, nobody will take his own shadow seriously. Hitler and Stalin go on representing a mere “accidental lack of perfection”. The future of mankind very much depends upon the recognition of the shadow. Evil is—psychologically speaking—terribly real’ ~Carl Jung, Jung-White Letters, Page 143
… their God simply isn’t my God any more: my very clerical clothes have become a lie … I am just indescribably lonely, and it’s some relief to me to tell you … I must confess there are times when I wish to heaven I had never heard of your psychology (and some of your disciples!); and yet I tremble to think what would have happened if I hadn’t! ~Victor White, Jung-White Letters, Page 216-217
I am somehow moved to send you the assurance of my love for you… I have been, & still am, sorely perplexed to understand when & where I am supposed to have done this… and, although [there are] matters on which I cannot see eye to eye with you, I would never question your sincerity (let alone publicly), as you have appear to question or deny mine… ~Carl Jung, Jung-White Letters, Page 283-284
I am more convinced than ever of the importance of your pioneer work for humanity, even for those who cannot agree with every word you say but have to take part in the “dialectic discussion” with you … I do not know if it is true that you have been a “Petrus scandali” to me (as you say you have), but to the extent that you may have been, I think that I can honestly say that I am grateful for it. ~Carl Jung, Jung-White Letters, Page 291-292
‘I have now seen quite a number of people die in the time of a great transition, reaching as it were the end of their pilgrimage in sight of the Gates where the way bifurcates to the land of Hereafter and to the future of mankind and its spiritual adventure.’ ~Carl Jung, Jung-White Letters, Page 306
Yesterday I had a marvellous dream: One bluish diamond-like star high in heaven, reflected in a round, quiet pool—heaven above, heaven below—. The imago Dei in the darkness of the Earth, this is myself. It seems to me as if I were ready to die, although—as it looks to me—some powerful thoughts are still flickering like lightnings in a summer night. Yet they are not mine, they belong to God, as everything else which bears mentioning. ~Carl Jung, The Jung–White Letters, Page 60.
Before my illness I had often asked myself if I were permitted to publish or even speak of my secret knowledge. I later set it all down in Aion. I realized it was my duty to communicate these thoughts, yet I doubted whether I was allowed to give expression to them. During my illness I received confirmation and I now knew that everything had meaning and that everything was perfect. ~Carl Jung, Jung–White Letters, Page 103.
I cannot tell you how glad I am that I know a man, a theologian, who is conscientious enough to weigh my opinions on the basis of a careful study of my writings! ~Carl Jung to Victor White, 5Oct1945
Thus, when I said that God is a complex, I meant to say whatever He is, he is at least a very tangible complex. You can say, He is an illusion, but He is at least a psychological fact. I surely never intended to say: He is nothing else but a complex. ~Carl Jung to Victor White, 5Oct1945
I never allow myself to make statements about the divine entity, since such would be a transgression beyond the limit of science. ~Carl Jung to Victor White, 5Oct1945
My personal view in this matter is that man’s vital energy or libido is the divine pneuma alright. ~Carl Jung to Victor White, 5Oct1945
*Jung-Kirsch Letters.
Intuition does not say what things mean but sniffs out their possibilities. Meaning is given by thinking. – Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 21
But in a certain sense, the failure to answer your letter is also right; for your dream about “passive homosexuality” and “mental weakness” says clearly enough that you absolutely have to stand on your own feet, or you’ll be blown over by every wind (wind = animus). – Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 23
Naturally you cannot release any woman from the animus, as long as you yourself are falling into the anima. – Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 23
One falls most easily into the anima when one is overrun by one’s feelings, because one fails to question them sufficiently. – Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 23
Anima-feelings, however, are symbols, or conditions, created by the anima when it commands psychic contents that it refuses to share with consciousness. – Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 23
A woman falls too much into the animus when the analyst is behaving in a too womanly manner towards himself and failing to keep his feelings objectively in hand. – Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 23
Since the Spirit is not made but fulfils its own laws of life as a living entity, superordinate to the human being, so the human being also cannot build it up or point the way for it. – Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 24
Schmid died of a streptococcal infection, which he got from a small cut caused by a car accident. It was the fourth bad accident in half a year. Sadly, he ignored this warning. – Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 27
I recognize the individual necessity which leads Frau S. towards Indian practices, and I myself have advised her to do so. In principle of course I’m not at all in favor of imitating Indian methods, and consider it as mistaken as the Europeanization of Eastern civilization. – Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 33
I wouldn’t like to see the subjective conditions of Frau S. outweighing the spirit of analysis and ultimately even falsifying it into a theosophy. – Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 33
What disturbs you most in your dream, the sinking of the anima, corresponds to Faust’s words, “Go down then, I could also say, rise up!” – Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 36
Correspondingly, fire rises from the ground. Tobacco in any form means a material for making fantasies (= clouds of smoke). The southern Slavs are part of a warmer, southern zone = realm of sensation – Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 36
Nothing has changed in our deeper relationship, but in the upper layers you must find your way to yourself as much as possible. – Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 39
The anima always takes possession of the ground one lives on. Therefore you are confronted with special tasks. Too much Europe isn’t good for you right now. – Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 39
It appears that amusing rumors are being spread about me. – Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 44
The only unquestionable fact which lies behind all this stupid gossip is that as the honorary chairman of the International Society for Psychotherapy, I could not desert the society at the moment when Kretschmer resigned. – Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 44
Neither have I addressed Hitler over the radio or in any other manner, nor have I expressed anything concerning politics. – Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 45
With regard to my view that, as far as one can see, the Jews will not create their own form of culture, this view is based on (1) historical facts, and (2) the additional fact that the specific cultural contribution of the Jew evolves most clearly within a host-culture, where the Jew frequently becomes the very carrier of this culture, or its promoter. – Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 45
The Jewish Christ-complex is a very remarkable business. – Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 46
The existence of this complex predisposes to a somewhat hystericized general mental attitude, which has become especially clear to me in the course of the present anti-Christian agitation against me. – Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 46
As you know, Freud previously accused me of anti-Semitism because I could not tolerate his soulless materialism. – Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 46
I cannot see why the Jew, like any so-called Christian, is incapable of accepting that he is being personally criticized when one has an opinion about him. – Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 46
Why must it always be assumed that one wants to condemn the Jewish people? Surely the individual is not the people? – Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 46
So, if you perceived my reserved attitude in Ascona as anti-Semitism, you missed the mark completely. – Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 46
Ingeneral, you really ought to know me well enough not to attribute to me uncritically a non-individual stupidity like anti-Semitism. – Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 47
No one who is a Jew can become a human being without knowing he is a Jew, since this is the basis from which he must reach out toward a higher humanity. – Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 47
Finally I want to inform you that my new book, “Wirklichkeit der Seele,” has appeared. I’ve included in it a Jewish author on Old Testament psychology in order to annoy the National Socialists and all those Jews who have decried me as an anti-Semite. – Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 47
One of these days a situation may very well arise when we Jews will have to ask for your [Jung’s]help for the sake of our soul! – James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 41
Later, when you are more deeply rooted not only in Palestine but also in your inner life, everything you need will fall into place of its own accord. – Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 39
I have to admit that, without believing some of the specific accusations, my image of you was somewhat darkened, especially after Fraulein Wolff told me that, if you had been a German, you would have voted for the Nazis. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 48
I did not go so far as believing you capable of a non-individual stupidity like anti-Semitism but thought it necessary to inform you of these rumors, and since they’ve produced such a reaction from you, in the form of your clear and unequivocal letter, a great burden has been lifted from my heart. ~James, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 48
I recalled your wonderful explanations during the Berlin Seminar, where you demonstrated how the idea of ritual murder was projected onto Christians and later onto Jews, and the underlying subjective process experienced by the person originating such projections. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 49
I think it’s possible to project anti-Semitism onto you because you have opinions about the Jew which may be correct, but only insofar as they reflect the Galut existence, as it is called in the Kabbalah, the banishment of the Shekhinah (the Jewish anima). ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 49
Jesus and his way of redemption were necessarily rejected, a process which you’ve described precisely in Types, in the chapter on Prometheus and Epimetheus. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 50
As far as I can judge the Chinese intellectual, the Chinese path led to a whole – “completion” not “perfection”. Jewish consciousness, on the other hand, has the characteristic that something essential is missing; something suppressed lives in the Jewish soul, which induces even in the educated Jew the most peculiar affects and hysterical reactions. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 50
This rejection of Christ has it seems to me (Jews will never admit this) determined the fate of the Jews. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 50
From a Jewish viewpoint, Christianity is its shadow (and also vice versa, by the way, but that’s the Christians’ concern). James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 50
It’s historically demonstrable that in every era when the Jewish people attempted to realize the idea of the Messiah, great disturbances also erupted in the Christian world. Sabbatai Zwi and the religious wars, Zionism National Socialism. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 51
You certainly know many people who have become restless through being cut off from the unconscious, who project the anima and seek salvation in every possible and impossible way, e.g. even in psychoanalysis, but never within themselves. The same is true for the Jews as a people. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 51
With the French Revolution a new historic era begins also for the Jewish people. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 52
Here [French Revolution] begins the purge of Jews, dissolving the Jewish ways of life which had existed heretofore, the disavowal of Jewishness, assimilation and cessation of the living Hebrew language, which from then on was used only literarily by the so-called “Maskilim” (representatives of the Enlightenment). ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 52
The fact that the Jews repressed their Jewishness during the era of assimilation explains – besides the Christ-complex – also the psychological break of personalities like Heine, as well as the soulless materialism of such inspiring but destructive individuals as Marx and Freud. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 52
I find your criticism of Freud essentially correct; it matches the image of the Jews during their period of assimilation in the previous century, and such Jews still exist today in droves. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 52
As two thousand years of suffering shows and especially the sorrowful events of the year 1933 – the Jew has injured himself gravely by his negative valuation of the unconscious. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 53
Since I’ve become very familiar with the Bible and have been living in Palestine, I understand now more than ever how enormously important for us is your vivid conception of the unconscious and the approach to the experience of the unconscious. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 53
For me, at least, it was only through you that it became possible to understand the experiences of the prophets, the Messianic idea, and to rediscover what was lost in the consciousness of the Jewish people since the time of the prophets. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 53
The great contribution of Jung (and this is clearly expressed in the essay in question) is that he has declared that the unconscious is also the creative foundation of the soul, and that he thus sees both aspects, the negative and the positive. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 55
Whoever ventures to follow the phenotype of the Jew into his darkest abyss, that person cannot be accused of escaping into a non-existing image of a Jew. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 55
When Jung expressed his views concerning the current situation of psychotherapy, he had to clarify to what extent Freud’s particular Jewish attitude to the unconscious influenced all of modern psychology and psychotherapy. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 55
Freud, however, unequivocally rejects the positive aspect of the unconscious (see The Future of an Illusion). ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 55
To overcome this attitude of godlessness and homelessness, we need Jung’s revelations about Freud and about the corresponding distortion of Jewish psychology, and Jung’s way – in contrast to Freud’s – in order to arrive at the positive aspect of the unconscious through accepting the shadow as fully as possible. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 56
For that reason the final sentence of my essay was as follows: “In Jung’s personality as well as in his psychology and psychotherapy, something is contained which speaks to the depth of the ailing Jewish soul and which may lead to its liberation.” ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 56
Since I spent my childhood in Guatemala, I am probably able to adapt more easily to this climate [Palestine]. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 61
Radiation is enormously high in Palestine. The worst of it isn’t the heat, but the unbelievable abundance of ultraviolet light, which is much higher than for instance in Davos. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 61
We have our Nazis, i.e. a party which wants to elevate the “Fuhrer” to be the King of Palestine and is organized like the military.
They wear brown! shirts, are responsible for acts of terror, and they murdered the most important labor leader. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 61
The world seems to be going through an immense shift. Aquarius is announcing himself powerfully. Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 60
The anti-religious attitude is a powerful reaction against the worn-out spirit of the past. Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 69
In psychology we have already reached the other side; the anti-religious are just starting to turn away from the past. Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 60
Hitler persistently shirks the religious conflict, which signifies much the same as the end of Protestantism in Germany. Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 60
What comes next is the conflict with the Catholic Church. In Austria they are now placing Protestant and Jewish children together in special schools. I wonder if it will lead again to religious warfare, as before? Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 60.
With regard to your article, I agree entirely with its intention and conclusion, and only object to the inference that in some way I identify the Jew with Freud. Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 62
Formerly I was considered a hater of Germans because I criticized their barbarism; now the Jews are accusing me of trying to curry favor with the Germans (and meanwhile Palestine’s foreign trade with Germany happily increased last year, despite the boycott!). Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 63
The feminine mind is earth which awaits the seed. This is the meaning of transference. Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 63
In the deepest sense, all of us do not dream out of ourselves but out of that which exists between myself and the other. Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 63
It’s atrocious how I neglect you, but the things I perceived via your wife were so wide-ranging and made everything about your future seem so uncertain to me that I instinctively shrank from them. Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 67
To your earlier letter, I have to note that schizophrenia is not an unequivocal matter. Certain cases are certainly organic in nature, i.e. more organic than psychic, while others are more psychic. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 67
Since time immemorial primitive peoples have commonly believed that it is impossible to conquer a foreign land, because those who occupy a foreign land will then be taken over by the gods of that land. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 15
Even though the whites in America did not absorb Indian blood to any extent worth mentioning, specific Indian traits are evident in the appearance, bearing, and physiognomy of present-day Americans. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 15
Thus, we would do better to say, not that the inhabitants of North America exhibit Indian traits, but that when the Europeans were transplanted to America, the change of habitat bestowed on them a different physiognomy. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 15
Only think of their rough training combats and boxing, the songs of a Walt Whitman, and more besides unimaginable for Europeans. The gods of that country have taken possession of them. Only one people proves to be an exception to this rule: the Jews. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 15
Through all lands they [Jews] took their god with them, the god they conceived in the desert. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, 15
Israel’s god is a god of the wind, not originating from the earth, and from the very beginning he was grasped in spiritual form, as the Everlasting: I will be who I will be! ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 15
For the Jewish people, God is the energetic principle before it divides into its polarities. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 16
The soul of the Jew was bound up with this single-singular principle; his soul was not permitted to open itself to the land where he traveled. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 16
The Jew’s bride, the Jew’s anima was Israel, the Jewish people, the Sabbath, the Torah. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 16.
The Jew’s homeland is the Torah, and the only content of his soul is God. And yet deep in every Jew is the yearning for oasis, for the earth. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 16
It is a human being’s eternally impossible attempt to direct the soul away from the earth, to adapt collective energy and its specific formation to his soul, and to tum the Eternally Becoming into the only content of this soul. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 16
We [Jews] made a vital mistake by rejecting Christ. Christ is the repressed complex of the Jew. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 43
During one of her last sessions, Hilde [Kirsch’s wife] also talked to you at some length about me and my problem. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 70
To begin with, I have to tell you that the reason for my departure was not the land of Palestine, but the Jews. The Jews do not accept the land and the primitiveness there and instead attempt, consciously and unconsciously, to perpetuate their exile. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 70
Probably you told her [Kirsch’s wife] something to the effect that I cannot reach my own depth, because I don’t realize my shadow sufficiently and am shirking the primitive within myself; my psychology seems as if I were floating, like a drop of oil, above my depth. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 70
As you know, I am still constantly in great financial difficulties. I’m only now able to send you a portion of the amount I owe you. May I ask if you agree that I may send you the balance in about 2-3 months? ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 74.
The ears are connected with feelings, and you are not hearing feelings perceptively enough. That could be a not insignificant problem in relation to this patient. Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 6
It is possible that he’s [Kirsch Patient] not reaching you properly on the feeling side. Masturbation is an expression of being isolated. Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 6
It goes without saying that the anima problem is always present, and the anima always comes forward with very absolute demands, so absolute that it always signifies a kind of self-sacrifice (in the Christian sense) not to consent to them. Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 9
The anima problem is always a problem of one’s own social inferiority; in other words, on the edge of a glacial crevasse it’s better not to make trial jumps, but rather to bring inner conditions into harmony with outer. Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 10
In treating the anima, nothing is more dangerous than unworldly naivete. Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 10
You can measure your anima’s social inferiority by your wife’s resistances. So be careful! Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 10
But I’m also afraid of all the brilliant people! Marianne Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 12
Your dream actually concerns the separation and differentiation of the anima. The Homunculus who takes care of this process is the Self. Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 80
It [Alchemical Procedure] is a kind of yoga, aiming for the creation of the Self through “Imagination.” Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 81
Enclosed is a check in the amount of francs. According to my records, I owe you francs for my wife’s sessions and my own, and 4 francs for the Sermones. Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 82
Odors are referred to occasionally in the alchemical writings. Psychologically they may be related to psychological exhalations, as you suspect. Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 82
You must avoid carelessness and not lure a person who is meant for the collective into the path of danger. Nonnulli perierunt in opere nostro! Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 85
I gladly take this opportunity, at least once a year, to express my deepest thanks to you for the inexpressible totality of what you’ve given me all these years. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 87
What you write to me, though, about the 1574 edition of the Corpus Hermeticum decidedly piques my appetite. If the thing isn’t too expensive, I’d like to make a grab for it. Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 88
During the past week I have read your Wotan essay and your commentary on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 90
Especially in connection with alchemy, it gave me an amazing amount and opened new aspects for me, which are so broad and deep that at times I’m quite stupefied. James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 90
I have gone along old Maya trails as much as possible. The Indios hold on to their primitive religion, but do not give their secrets away to the white man. James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 105
This calendar stone is valid for 52 years and includes Venus. It weighs many, many tons and has lain buried for several hundred years. Now it is in the Museum in Mexico. James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 105
You ‘re to be congratulated for getting out of the hell of London. In Los Angeles you will surely have every opportunity to make your own way. Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 96
Now I have an important announcement to make: My family and I have moved to Los Angeles. The war brought this about. James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 95
During the war any kind of activity became almost impossible for us foreigners. All my books are burnt, even my seminar notes are gone. James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 95
Now I am in California, in a climate which is quite similar to Guatemala’s, and have peace again and the possibility of regaining strength. James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 95
Jung Clubs are a thorny problem, however, as you know better than anyone, and the effect of analysis on Jungian analysts (myself included!) gave rise to all sorts of questions in me, for which I have no answer. James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 95
Please give my warmest greetings to your dear wife and to Fraulein Wolff and do pass on my new address to them. James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 95
In the meantime I reached my 70th birthday, for which I received in due time the congratulations of the Analytical Psychology Club of Los Angeles. Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 100
Beside my gratitude for your kind remembrance I was very interested in the fact that such a new club has sprung up in Los Angeles. Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 100
We passed through anxious times because we were twice immediately threatened by invasion and once it seemed to be inevitable, but miraculously enough we were spared. Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 100
You can hardly imagine the devilish atmosphere in which we lived in Europe. It was psychically the hardest time I ever went through. James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 101
I like it very much here in Los Angeles, but one of the things I do not like about Los Angeles is that we are here rather isolated from any news about you and the life in Zurich. James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 101
I hear it again and again that you are a Nazi. It is such a ridiculous thing. James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 102
In each case [Reports of Jung being a Nazi], I have been able to trace it to some Freudian, and it fits very well into the Freudian attempt to be considered the one and only form of depth-psychology. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 102
Recently, a vile article has been published in the official organ of the American Psychiatric Association, and maybe, this time we can kill this snake thoroughly. James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 102
Professor Scholem is certainly all wet when he thinks that the Jewish Gnosis contains nothing of the Christian mystery. It contains practically the whole of it, but in its unrevealed pleromatic state. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 141
It’s very difficult to express in words how many riches were bestowed on me in Zurich on this visit, and I would like to thank you and your wife once again for the wonderful hours I was privileged to spend at your house. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 189
Special thanks also for the “Sermones ad mortuos”. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 189
I hope very much that your wife [Emma Jung] will decide to publish the lectures about the Anima in book form. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 189
For, as I’ve observed, Christ is only now entering into the Jewish unconscious as a living symbol. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 190
“Physician heal thyself’ has become a necessity for me. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 191
I am very sorry that I am not mentioned as “joint translator” of your Job book, which I love so much; but I can also understand Mr. Read’s standpoint. ~James Kirsch to HRC Hull, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 192
Quite frankly, your [RFC Hull] letter means a great disappointment to me, since in your letter of November 2lst, 1953, you wrote that you “took the liberty of acknowledging my help by naming me as joint translator”. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 192
I regret that your [RFC Hull [ opinion on our work is now such, in contrast to your opinion expressed in your letter of November 2l. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 193
My attitude was certainly that of a translator who accepted full responsibility for his work. ~James Kirsch to RFC Hull, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 193
Frankly, I feel that Miss Hannah’s and Dr. von Franz’ share in the translation of Psychology and Alchemy have deserved much more acknowledgment than they actually received, but this is not my business. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 193
The gouty “irascibility” appears to manifest itself in a general emotional lack of control. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 194
With Dr. Jacobi you have “mis le pied dans le plat” in a most imprudent way. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 194
In your very own interest, you should pay more attention to your affects, otherwise you become too godlike. That’s why strict observance of the law was the guiding principle of your ancestors. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 194
Affects are actually volcanic: with the lava they bring nutritious minerals to the surface of the earth. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 195
The purpose of the Christian Reformation was to remove the bad moral consequences which are caused by the amoral divine model. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch, Page 195
One cannot simultaneously “strain at gnats and swallow camels” (Matt. 23 :24), or “serve two masters” (Matt. 6:24), etc. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 195
Without thorough knowledge of “good and evil,” of the ego and the shadow, there is no recognition of the Self, but at most an involuntary and therefore dangerous identification with it. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 195
As well as I, or perhaps even better, in the hostile pair of brothers – Christ-Satan – a Jew can recognize the Self, and with that the incarnation, or Yahweh’s assimilation to man. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 195
The Jew has the advantage of already having anticipated the development of human consciousness in his spiritual history. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 195
By that I mean the Lurianic level of the Kabbalah, the breaking of the vessel, and human help in its reconstitution. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 195
I have written you so many letters which were never mailed that, when it comes to sitting down at my desk and really writing down what I want to say other things come to the foreground. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 103
I have been feeling very close to you during these last two years in the U.S. Lately, I have been dreaming a great deal about you. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 103
My practice has been going well, Mrs. Kirsch sees some clients regularly, and we have been able to interest a number of people in Analytical Psychology. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 97
So we were able at last to found a Club which has shown a small, but steady growth. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 97
Unfortunately, I have not been able to read anything that you might have written or published during this time of war. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 99
The only thing I heard about in New York, but have not seen, was an article on the “Symbolism of the Holy Mass”. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 99
It is still too early to make any plans for the time after the war, but I would like to let you know that it is a great hope of mine to come to Zurich and to work with you. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 99
I see from your letters that you have heard that foolish rumour that I’m a Nazi. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 106
If the Germans had invaded Switzerland they certainly would have put me into a concentration camp or against a wall. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 106
My books were suppressed in Germany and destroyed in France. If I had been a Nazi they surely wouldn’t have behaved like that. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 106
I had a fracture of my right fibula with a big haematoma; on account of it a thrombosis developed in the right leg first and then it went over to the left leg, reaching as far as the vena cava. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 107
And then the worst came: two embolisms in the lungs and an embolism in the posterior part of the heart. That was the thing that almost knocked me out, but I recovered slowly. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 107
I’m now 71 years of age and I feel disinclined to do work with patients. I take on no new patients but of the old ones there are left enough to keep me busy. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 107
I really had no idea that astrology would make so much of my psychology. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 107
The more deeply and intensively I study the unconscious, the more enigmatic it becomes. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 107
During my afternoon with you, I was able to rid myself of my projection of the “mana” personality on you to such an extent that my inferiority-complexes are no longer obstructing my path, and I can tell you that I would be very pleased if you would come. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 125
Here in Zurich I feel I’m receiving many rich gifts, especially from you personally. Thus it seems presumptuous to ask you to see me one more time. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 126
Might I perhaps come by this Thursday and read the Morienus in a comer of your house? If the weather is good, in the garden? ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 126
But may I submit the enclosed letter to you and ask your help in my struggle to prevent Dr. Klopfer from being recognized as a training analyst by the San Francisco group of the M.S.A.P. (Medical Society of Analytical Psychologists)? ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 127
By human estimation, it’s certain that my wife will come to Zurich next summer and, if possible, will accept the invitation of your daughter (Frau Baumann) to my youngest son Thomas. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 130
This time I owe a special debt for my work with Fraulein [Toni] Wolff. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 130
By the way, your dream of September 810 gave you the correct answer. Maturation costs not only time but also suffering. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 139
Moreover, it was not I who invented the entire complication of the soul, nor did Freud succeed in removing it from the world. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 141
I keep reading your book Antwort auf Hiob over and over, which has powerfully opened up new vistas for me and for so many other people I know. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 154
Your gospel: “One can love God, and one must fear God” is very much alive in me and has brought me deeply moving and liberating experiences. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 154
Synchronicity means a factor inherent in Nature. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 180
It is a factor accounting for the existence of teleological arrangements, which does not mean that the whole of creation is premeditated, or in any way conscious. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 180
No sooner do you have a certain collectivity than people try, in the ratio of its increase, to emancipate themselves from the shadow. Look what happened to Christianity when it became a church. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 180
I can only tell you how glad I am, firstly that I have not started a religion, and secondly that I have not founded a church. People may cast out devils in my name all they like or even send themselves into the Gergesene swine! ~Carl Jung, Jung-Neumann Letters, 19 Feb 1935
During my move here from Palestine, the “Sermones ad Mortuos” were unfortunately lost. Might I ask you to send them to me again? ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 80
I wrote about this in detail to your wife – and I’m wondering very seriously how it is even possible for such a woman [Jolandi Jacobi] to go out into the world as your messenger (or even as the messenger). ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 182
She [Jolandi Jacobi [ is a true antimimos an imitative spirit. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 182
Please excuse me for asking you the question, why such a woman [Jolandi Jacobi] has to go into the world in your name – and to teach students (at the Institute). ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 182
Frau Jacobi’s appearance in L.A. has had far-reaching consequences, in the sense that minds are divided, and that many projections we had onto Zurich and the Institute are being withdrawn, and we will absolutely become more self-reliant. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 182
I saw her here with her [Jolandi Jacobi] old teacher, Dr. Charlotte Buhler from Vienna; and I became aware how much Frau Jacobi represents the Viennese Freudian school. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 182
It seems that here in America people tend over and over again to forget the shadow, feeling suddenly very satisfied with whatever’s been accomplished, patting themselves benevolently on the shoulder – while being cut off from everything real. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 177
But I cannot conceive of the creation as a game of dice after all, because a Dike or Moira would have to rule over it, i.e. something that would “arrange” the creation synchronistically, and not teleologically. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 178
The German word ‘Seele’, which by no means is the same as the English word ‘Soul’, is an old word, sanctioned by Tradition, used by the greatest German mystics like Eckhart and poets like Goethe to signify the Ultimate Reality, but experienced under a feminine aspect. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 179
At last I’m able to thank you personally for the kind letter you wrote me on the occasion of Toni Wolff’s death. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 172
On the day of her [Toni Wolff] death, even before I had received the news, I had a bad relapse of my tachycardia. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 172
- W. [Toni Wolff] died so suddenly and so entirely unexpectedly that one could scarcely realize her disappearance. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 172
I had seen her [Toni Wolff] two days earlier – both totally unsuspecting. As early as mid-February I had Hades dreams, which I related entirely to myself, because nothing pointed to Toni. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 172
None of the people who were close to her [Toni Wolff] had any warning dreams, while people in England and Germany did, and in Zurich only some who knew her merely superficially. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 173
At the beginning of my illness in Oct. I dreamt of a big black elephant who uprooted a tree. (Since then I have written a rather long essay about the “philosophical tree.”) ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 173
The primordial uprooting of trees can also mean death. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 173
If God’s consciousness is clearer than human consciousness, then creation makes no sense and humanity has no purpose for existence. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 173
Then indeed God does not play dice, as Einstein says, but has invented a machine, which is even worse. In fact, the creation story resembles an experiment with dice more than anything intentional. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 173
The “white stone” (calculus albus) occurs in the Apocalypse as a symbol of election. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 173
The model of the Self in Aion is based on Ezekiel’s vision! ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 173
Even though I fully recognize and know deep down that you are by no means the “owner” of Jungian psychology, I still need to express the fact that you have worked incredibly hard, with concentration and a secure instinct, on behalf of the secular movement of the spirit. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 162
Today the personal problems have receded, and I am seized and possessed by something hard to name, about which I can only pray that I’ll endure the tension and have the intelligence to comprehend and integrate it. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 162
Dr. von Franz’s visit was a great experience. She was far better in all respects than I have ever experienced her in Zurich. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 164
Your remark about my dream of the mouse circling in my belly stayed with me for a long time. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 165
In an organic sense, of course, I do not suffer from epilepsy, but since childhood I have repeatedly been exposed to invasions of the unconscious which led to attacks of all sorts. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 167
I very much hope and wish that God’s grace will sustain your health and creative power. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 172
Especially during the last sessions I had with her last year, I gratefully sensed the integrity of her creative intellect, which was inseparably linked to a warm humanity. In the night of her death I could not sleep – without knowing why. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 168
I had to think of you so much, who have so deeply experienced the sea of mercy as well as the fire of his wrath, while you always held fast to his oneness. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 168
You wrote me a detail about Toni’s [Wolff] death which nobody else had reported to me, and which completes the medical picture. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 166
What kind of physician one has is definitely part of one’s fate. I’m thinking of Toni [Wolff] a lot. It hurts me deeply to think of her lonesome death, as I experienced Toni as a very solitary person in the last years. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 166
I’m so deeply involved in the process of individuation myself, it’s difficult for me to imagine the psychic state that occurs when individuation is achieved, which is what the infinite “multiplicatio” actually represents. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 166
You also wrote about the experience of immortality which results from the ego’s contact with the Self I have not had this experience. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 166
It brightens the evening of my life and fills me with glad serenitas, that the grace was allotted to me to place my best in the service of a great cause. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 162
What you write in regard to the effect of Job upon analysts agrees with my own experiences: the number of individuals who are capable of reacting to it is relatively very small, and analysts are not exceptional people. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page159
Incidentally, a second edition of Job is just now being published, in which I’ve inserted the corrections you suggested. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 159
Today I finished a fairly long article about the “philosophical tree,” which has accompanied me during my illness. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 160
I entertained myself excellently with it as a compensation for the fact that so few of my contemporaries can understand what is meant by the psychology of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 160
You should have seen the reviews of Job in the press! How much naive stupidity showed up there, you can’t imagine. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 160
In the Cathedral of Strasbourg I saw a depiction of the conquered synagogue and the ecclesia triumphans, and above it – in the middle and upper spaces -the coronation of Mary by Christ – a depiction which touched me deeply. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 153
In Ascona, I asked Professor Scholem whether he was aware of corresponding themes in Judaism. “Absolutely not,” he said; “that does not exist in Judaism.” ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 153
I believe this problem of God’s becoming human has a special meaning for the Jew and his tragic history. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 153
By the way, do you by any chance know the history of the Rabbi Acher? He lived in the 2nd century. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 154
He maintained that the Jews had to take cognizance of the fact that according to Christian view, God had a son and thus was no longer one but two. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 154
When you read the Bible in the ordinary way, apparently all human beings derived from Adam, so quite certainly Jews who go right back to the primordial parents, but then you suddenly find that beside Adam and his children there must have been other human beings. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 151
I have no intention to suggest that the Jews are the only ones that have received the divine imprint, since besides the Jews many other peoples and nations descend from Adam’s children, but we have not heard that those human beings from whom Adam’s sons took wives have received the divine image. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 151
I had another attack of arrhythmia and tachycardia due to overwork. I am now slowly recovering and my pulse is normal again since almost a week, but I am still tired and have to go slowly. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 143
I am rather certain that the sefirot tree contains the whole symbolism of a Jewish development parallel to the Christian idea. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 143
The characteristic difference is that God’s incarnation is understood to be a historical fact in the Christian belief, while in the Jewish Gnosis it is an entirely pleromatic process symbolized by the concentration of the supreme Trias of Kether, Chochma and Bina in the figure of Tifereth. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 143
Being the equivalent of the Son and the Holy Ghost, he is the sponsus bringing about the great solution through his union with Malchuth. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 143
I am pretty certain that the extraordinary and venomous response of the orthodox rabbis against the Cabbala is based upon the undeniable fact of this most remarkable Judeo-Christian parallelism. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 145
This is hot stuff, and since the 17Th century, as far as my knowledge goes, nobody has dared to touch it, but we are interested in the soul of man and therefore we are not blindfolded by foolish confessional prejudices. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 145
I must say I got enough from the study of Knorr von Rosenroth’s “Cabbala Denudata”. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 145
I believe you saw Dr. Harms article: “Carl Gustav Jung-Defender of Freud and the Jews.” ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 108
I sent it [Dr. Harms article] to a committee which collected material in New York to refute the stupid accusation that you are a Nazi. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 108
To-day, I saw a letter by Heyer to one of his former Jewish patients who lives here in Los Angeles. He was evidently hit in his guilt-complex by your article in the “Schweizer Weltwoche.” ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 109
It is very sad to see that a psychologist is unable to face his shadow, his national shadow. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 109
To-day, I saw a letter by Heyer to one of his former Jewish patients who lives here in Los Angeles. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 109
He was evidently hit in his guilt-complex by your article in the “Schweizer Weltwoche.” ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 109
It is very sad to see that a psychologist is unable to face his shadow, his national shadow. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 109
On one side, there are Rabbis who instruct their pupils strictly and in great detail about sacrificial offerings, in anticipation of the “fuhrer’s” entrance into Jerusalem as king, which they expect in the foreseeable future, believing that he will raise the temple again; and in that event, enough people would be required who know the sacrificial ritual and can execute it. This in the year of grace 1934! ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 62
In an organic sense I’m certain that I’m not epileptic, but it is a fact that unconscious events often happen to me like attacks, that the invasions of the unconscious happen to me suddenly, and that I am preoccupied with the Self in a manner I can absolutely designate as possession, or morbus sacer. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 167
It would be my inclination to tell her [A patient] quite frankly that her time of life is limited, and that she should realize it so that she could take care of her three children in the best possible way and prepare properly for death. On the other hand, I just haven’t got the courage to tell her that. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 133
I assume that Evans is bristling with resistances against my psychological point of view because, as every true Easterner, he believes that he has produced an eternal truth, but, with the whole of the East, he has, of course, never heard of a theory of cognition and of Immanuel Kant, just as little as the Catholic Church. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 179
Apart from this insight, I can fully accept the postulate that Christ is “the only Begotten one,” if Christ is also an eternal mystery and one which was a unique historical event, and especially if the ego clearly distinguishes itself from the one who dwells within it. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 155
For instance, the lady who is translating Job with me and thus should really know it very well, had a great shock today when I explained to her what it means, on pages 125-126, where you say, “John’s unconscious personality is closely identified with Christ; that is, he is born in similar circumstances and for a similar destiny.” ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 162
I’m especially indebted to you for taking the great trouble to send me evidence of the American literature concerning double-bodied vessels. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 227.
My sincere thanks for the explanation of Adam’s rib! By this representation, what the woman apparently originated from was an illness in the male; yet she is destined to heal this illness. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 226
Also last week he visited the Indian Embassy in Berne where he was invited to a festivity. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Pages 224-225
And – last but not least – he wrote a preface to the new edition of Discourses of the Buddha for Artemis Press, Zurich. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Pages 224-225
I’m afraid it’s been a long time since I heard from you directly, but from my friends in Zurich and also from my wife I understand that you are doing quite well but that your wife hasn’t been so well and has had a stomach resection. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Pages 220-221
On pages 105 and 107 you’ll find a confirmation of the hypothesis that the Fourth Gospel is purely Jewish. In no way do I wish to deny that even the Essenes were influenced by the Greek spirit. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 222
What an evil guard dog it would be, who could successfully keep visitors away from you! ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 218
I’m surprised to hear you complain about the stupidity of humankind, you of all people, who have given your best to humankind again and again, literally risked your skin, doing so much pioneer work, and you continually ran into the resistance, inertia, and hostility of the masses. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 218
I also want to tell you that during the hours I observed the “flying saucer” my camera – loaded with film – was in the adjacent room, and the idea never occurred to me to photograph it! ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 218
it is obvious that Father White has suffered a lot. In personal relations he is very friendly, and I like him very much. But as a Catholic and a servant of the Church, it’s obvious that he can never go beyond a certain limit. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 219
But Father W. can never belong to himself, but finally only to Mother Church. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 219
The article about you in Time has made us “respectable” at a single stroke and has already had its consequences. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 219
The English Job has now been published, although with some printing errors, e.g. “childish” instead of “childlike.” ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 217
The printing of “Synchronicity” gives endless difficulties, which are principally due to the fact that the editors hardly understand what it’s about, e.g. they don’t grasp the astrological experiment. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 217
They think one would have to believe in astrology in order to make such an experiment!! ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 217
I was deeply impressed by his ability to experience music, and that he lived his shadow so consciously. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 211
What so much distinguishes him, besides his enormous scholarship, is his ability to let the ucs. speak and his respect for the numinosity of the ucs. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 211
The only trouble I’m having is that I no longer have any need to work with Meier and (or) Liliane Frey. I don’t have a negative attitude toward them, but simply feel a need to keep working by myself. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 212.
I am glad you’ve had the experience of the primitive ceremonies; I never saw the katchina, only the buffalo dances of the Pueblo Indians of Taos, where I made friends with the old Locotenente Gobemador, Ochwiii Biano. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 208
Of my two writings, Synchronicity and Job, I can say: “Habent sua fata libelli.” ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 208
In America no one except Knoll of Princeton has properly understood what I mean by it; especially the statistics have just driven people crazy. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 208
Therefore I decided to take all tables out of the book and have replaced them with a description in words, probably with the same result, that people cannot get away from their causalistic thinking habits. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 208
In contrast, Job will be printed in England in short order, though significantly not in America; the Bollingen Press prefers to keep its distance, because Job could be misunderstood as “unamerican activity”! ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 208
The other day I received a manuscript by Progoff, in which he discusses the question of synchronicity very skillfully, especially under the aspect of archetypes. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 209
It’s especially not understood what an excellent joke was made with the astrological statistic; people have even thought I wanted to prove something in favor of astrology. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 209
A whole squadron [of UFO’s] was seen near Lake Constance, as well as in Southern Germany. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 209
McCarthy is an exponent of American one-sidedness, which is what gives him the fanatical, paranoid character. It’s probably not a genuine paranoia; he gives me more the impression of being an instrument of the American collective. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 209
Both these dreams contain unconscious thinking – hence the oxygen bomb which contains compressed pneuma. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 206
The Gnosticism of which John the Evangelist is a descendent is certainly Jewish, but in its essence Hellenistic, in the style of Philo Judaeus, who also originated the Logos doctrine. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 207
If I may say it in somewhat simplified terms, what’s essential for L.A. is the attitude to the unconscious, while S.F. hopes to be accepted someday as the Jungian group in the AMA (American Medical Association) and in the APA (American Psychological Association). ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 201
But it was very important for me to see John as a product of Gnosticism (the Jewish school, even, and not the Greek, according to the latest discoveries in the Jordan Valley). ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 205
Considering my age, some days I feel worse and sometimes less bad. Nevertheless, I’ve just turned out a short commentary to Radin’s Trickster. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 207
Also, I wanted to tell you that I read the only book which exists in the Library of Congress under the name of Freud’s son, the lawyer. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 199
It doesn’t contain one word about his father. It’s nothing but the love adventures of an Austrian officer during the first World War! ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 200
The integration of the collective unconscious means about the same as taking note of and adapting to the world; but that doesn’t mean that one would have to become acquainted with the whole world, or that one must have lived in all climates and continents of the world. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 196
Your explanations with respect to the integration of the collective unconscious contributed a lot toward transforming some of the fog which had spread over us into therapeutic water. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 197
At once, the anima shows up and tries to make me believe what a “devil of a fellow” I am. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 197
I am very concerned about Dr. Frey’s state of health. Psychologically she has developed greatly in recent time. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 199
I would be very grateful to you if you could comment on this question of whether Satori, or any form of sudden widening of consciousness, could exist without some image, and also what this image-less state is to which Zen and also Indian Yoga so often refers. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 239
What shed the most light for me was your remark that Zen meditation could also represent a kind of dumbing-down yoga. This is indeed the case with anyone who has some intellectual development. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 237
One needs to be of an unusual mental simplicity in order to become a once-and-for-all Enlightened One as a result of a broken foot. Satori experiences occur for us as well. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 237
I remind you, e.g. of Jakob Bohme, who enters his workshop; on his table is a flat pewter plate in which a ray of sunlight is reflected; it hits Bohme in the eye, and with this he’s “enraptured into the innermost of Nature.” ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 237
At the same time my respect for Freud increased greatly and also an understanding of the enormous human tragedy which was summed up in the fact that he valued his authority higher than the truth. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 233
The concreteness of the image points to a certain identity of the subject with the God-image. Seen from the side of the coll. unc: a fall of the archetype into the three-dimensional world. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 230
The god must not enter too far into matter, or the human being perishes. A human being has to walk the narrow path: “erit via et semita sancta.” ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 230
I know only few theologians who take the difference between image and original seriously and understand it. Too little humilitas and too much hybris! And what about the psychologists? Vae scientibus! ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 230
I’ve never really succeeded in convincing an Indian that if no conscious ego is present, no conscious memory can be present, either. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 241
in a satori experience something is perceived; namely, that an illumination, or something like it, has taken place. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 242
It is utterly incomprehensible how an event can be registered, if no one is present who has had it. This someone who registers is always an ego. If no ego is present, absolutely nothing can be perceived. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 242
Recently I saw photographs that were taken in the area of the Bernina, showing a landed saucer. According to the opinion of all, including that of experts, these photographs seem to be genuine, as strange as it may sound. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 242
The Japanese unconscious burdened me to a much greater extent than I anticipated and perceived. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 249
From time to time I find it on the whole quite amazing that here in the American desert – such a group exists, where a number of people are seriously gripped by the unconscious and are seriously working through your books. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 249
By the way, Erich Fromm quotes a letter to Jones about you (January 22, 1911!), from Jones’s Life and Work of Sigmund Freud: “I am more than ever convinced that he is the man of the future. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 250
Inwardly, I find the transference problem and the Mysterium Coniunctionis the most difficult of all, and almost impossible to master. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 251
He is indeed a very solid person with an unqualified sense of responsibility. It is a pity that the universities are so far behind the times. He would deserve a professorship. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 252
I’m also glad to hear about your activity on the radio. Today that’s the way to reach the public. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 252
It’s beyond my comprehension how one can talk about “Job” on the radio without causing misunderstandings, since its argument is one of the most subtle I’ve encountered, especially if such a banal brain as a Fromm precedes you onstage as a premise, so to speak. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 252
But at the present time he’s sharply limited in any kind of reading: he is totally absorbed by his writing and not interested in anything else. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 267
I don’t know whether I wrote to you that he did not feel very well, but after a six-day stay at the hospital he returned home not only rested but reassured and with prescriptions for a helpful course of treatment. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 267
Perhaps such an opportunity is required, not only to feel but also to acknowledge what you and Hilde have accomplished as “pioneers.” Almost like clearing a primeval forest. And you persevered. Isn’t that worth everything? ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 267
Many years ago you already called my attention to my “godlikeness,” but I also remember that as early as 1929 you noticed my puffy and pale face, a symptom which my American doctor considers characteristic for a lack of thyroid hormones. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 263
For years I’ve been aware of the fact that I am internally confronted with the Anthropos. My fear and flight reactions have been quite terrible. But I’ve also become very bewildered, because I did not understand the nature of my dreams. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 263
You should have sent me the visions of the androgynous XP before anything else, because he holds the key to your situation. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 261
Not only this vision but also the fact that you gave a seminar about XP as a symbol of the Self shows that you are being confronted inwardly by the Anthropos. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 261
On the other hand, you are also the Anthropos. The XP of your dream teaches you that he is “the foundation of the world, the only reality,” thus what we commonly designate as “God.” ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 262
Hence, when you occupy yourself with explanations, such as the relationship to your wife or other people, whether you should go to New York or stay in Los Angeles, etc. you play with symptoms and are on the wrong track and the downward path, fleeing backward, and thus you drown in the great waters of inflation. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 262
The fact that something is not quite right with me has been evident to me for a long time, and I am also aware that a major change is necessary and close at hand, but without knowing in what direction it’s going. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 256
When I decided not to send you this dream, so as not to burden you, I had additional dreams about Christ, and others where deities made personal appearances. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 257
In retrospect, I realize that this was also the time when suddenly a lot of water collected in my body. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 257
The whole thing has a terribly close connection to my relationship with my wife, or the lack of relationship, that’s gone on for the last nine years, and very generally to the difficulties I experience in relating to others. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 257
My wife is also doing much better. She walks quite well with her crutches, sees her patients, cooks, etc. The X-rays show that the bones are healing well. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 258
In 1944 I also suffered a broken foot because I did not want to submit to a “higher” will. I had to change my “standpoint”; I was still too high up, i.e. not “humble” enough to accept my life in all its forms. I knew better and for that reason could not touch the real ground. I was – so to speak – thrown down the steps because I did not want to go down. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 254
Once I also gave up smoking for a quarter of a year without noticing much difference. Was it the cigarettes? I only smoke pipes & 1 cigar in the evening. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 255
The fact is, I don’t feel at all comfortable with this radio work, and I had to overcome the greatest inner difficulties before agreeing to do these radio lectures. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 253
[Erich] Fromm is doubtless a banal intellect, as you say. He’s a friend of mine from our student days at Heidelberg. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 253
He [Fromm] has learned a lot and stolen a lot from you, but he’d never admit it. His great difficulty is that he cannot comprehend that the objective psyche exists. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 253
When it suits him [Fromm], or when things get dangerous, he feels free to revise dreams. He truly believes that dreams are produced by the ego. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 254
He [Fromm] comes from an orthodox Jewish family, is enormously learned in Jewish subjects, but doesn’t believe in God. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 254
Carl Jung/Hans Schmid Correspondence:
It is more likely that in the unconscious of the introvert there is a love for the object that compensates his fear of it, while in the unconscious of the extravert there is a fear that compensates his love for the object. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Page 55.
The introvert needs the object for his thinking, because it is precisely via the object that he adapts to outer reality. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Page 57
The attitude he [the introvert] assumes toward the object is a certain rejection, therefore, which can even develop into a kind of fear of the object. His primary reaction toward the object is actually not love but rather fear. The ancients knew these two original powers well, the eros and phobos. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Page 55.
The only goal for the ideally oriented introvert is the production of impersonal, imperative values, and for the equally ideally oriented extravert the only goal is the love for the object. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Page 60
The extravert feels prospectively, the introvert retrospectively, so that the latter remains longer under the impression of the difficulty. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Page 65
Certainly, but true love presupposes self-awareness. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Page 75
So in my view an “ideally oriented type” is not an analyzed type at all, but an unanalyzed one, someone, for example, who only has a very good sailing boat, but without a built- in motor, thus a vehicle that does not move for hours when there is no wind. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Page 75
In short, the introvert thinks with the object, the extravert feels with it. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Page 77
With the spirit of international modernity, which is rooted in precisely those vestiges of archaic collectivity, we shall experience the building of a second tower of Babel, which as we know ends in a confusion of tongues. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Page 78
We must not forget that even Goethe is not the absolute authority but a human being who, as far as his unconscious is concerned, is just as small and impotent as any other insignificant person. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Page 79
The striving for the creation of impersonal values deprives the introvert of a considerable sum of energy in the development of his personality, so that he, just as much as the extravert, in a certain sense falls behind himself (though in the opposite way than does the extravert). ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Page 80
Surely Sisyphus was an idealist, wasn’t he? ~Carl Jung, Hans Schmid-Guisan Letters, Page 114
The abstract thinking of the introvert is a parallel to this. It is so much in accordance with outer reality that unconsciously it is completely saturated with, and contingent upon, the lusting for power in the world. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid, Page 118
When I violate the extravert with my abstract thinking, this is a fact, and this fact cannot be dismissed even if I insist that the other is merely thinking concretistically. ~Carl Jung, Hans Schmid Guisan Letters, Page 101
Understanding is a terribly binding power, possibly a veritable soul murder when it levels out vitally important differences. ~Carl Jung, Schmid-Guisan Letters, Page 140
For the ideal introvert, the purification of his thinking is, as already mentioned, precisely the indigestible morsel he is struggling with. ~Carl Jung, Schmid-Guisan Letters, Page 134
An introvert who does not outgrow his constant thinking is just as untenable as an extravert who cannot get out of his constant feeling. ~Carl Jung, Schmid-Guisan Letters, Page 133
In this process, the extravert notices that his feeling is pregnant with thoughts; the introvert, that his thinking is full of feelings. ~Carl Jung, Schmid-Guisan Letters, Page 133
You are again forgetting that life stands on two legs, doing and thinking. ~Carl Jung, Schmid-Guisan Letters, Page 132
For in order to achieve abstraction, we pour what is separate and manifold into a flask, heat it up, and melt it, and thus force the volatility of the matter into the template. In that we create a spiritus, which is an abstraction. ~Carl Jung, Hans Schmid Guisan Letters, Page 102
The dignity of man— an essential notion still to be learned by all missionaries! ~Carl Jung, Hans Schmid Guisan Letters, Page 104
I have always defended this principle, namely, that one should not proselytize the other but should give him the opportunity to grow from what is his very own. ~Carl Jung, Hans Schmid Guisan Letters, Page 105
An honest man, who also has a certain amount of courage, will never use self-knowledge as a surrogate for life. ~Carl Jung, Hans Schmid Guisan Letters, Page 110
Knowledge without usefulness adorns philosophical chessboards and produces fat volumes for venerable libraries. ~Carl Jung, Hans Schmid Guisan Letters, Page 114
Usefulness without meaning fills pockets and the churches of Christian Science. ~Carl Jung, Hans Schmid Guisan Letters, Page 114
Thinking is life just as much as doing is. ~Carl Jung, Hans Schmid Guisan Letters, Page 114
Thinking is not merely a “realization” of life; life can also be a “realization” of thinking. ~Carl Jung, Hans Schmid Guisan Letters, Page 114
You are again forgetting that life stands on two legs, doing and thinking. ~Carl Jung, Han Guisan Schmid, Page 132
This union, which should not come about, is the union of the pairs of opposites in ourselves. This is what the devil wants to prevent at any cost. ~Carl Jung, Han Guisan Schmid, Page 132
The extravert (the ideal type) must realize his feeling, the corresponding introvert his thinking. In this process, the extravert notices that his feeling is pregnant with thoughts; the introvert, that his thinking is full of feelings. ~Carl Jung, Hans Guisan Schmid, Page 133
But how can I come to live a Christian life, if not through the doctrine? Even Christ taught, and did not simply live. If he had only lived, nobody would have noticed anything, or, if they noticed, they would not have understood. ~Carl Jung, Hans Guisan Schmid, Page 59
I have to remark, by the way, that there is at least one thing the introvert can do better than the extravert, and that is thinking. ~Carl Jung, Hans Guisan Schmid, Page 133
An introvert who does not outgrow his constant thinking is just as untenable as an extravert who cannot get out of his constant feeling. ~Carl Jung, Hans Guisan Schmid, Page 133
The term “introversion” thus describes an inward turning of the psychic energy, which I called “libido,” because the introvert does not comprehend the object directly, but by means of abstraction, that is, by a thinking process that is inserted between himself and the object. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Guisan Correspondence, Page 160
In pathological cases, as you know, unconscious love also becomes a source of heightened fear of the object for the introvert, and, conversely, unconscious fear becomes a source of powerful attraction to the object for the extravert. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Page 160
The introvert does feel, too, and very intensely so, only in a different way than the extravert does. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Page 161
Whereas the extravert needs the object to bring his type to perfection and to cleanse his feeling, the introvert experiences this as a horrible violation and disrespect of his personality, because he absolutely refuses to be, so to speak, the chemical dry cleaner for the feelings of extraverts. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Page 57
The representation of the extravert refers completely to the object and is, therefore, in complete agreement with outer reality, while his thinking is in agreement with his own inner reality. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Page 58
This is not the case in the introvert. His representation of things is inadequate, precisely because of the lack of feeling- into [the object]. His thinking is in accordance with outer reality, but not with his own inner reality. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Page 58
This explains the often- observed fact that the introvert thinks and preaches all sorts of nice things but does not do them himself, in fact, does the contrary; whereas the extravert does all sorts of good and nice things but does not think them, in fact, often the contrary. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Page 58
The extravert knows, by feeling himself into others, by what human means people can be won over, whereas the introvert tries to create values in himself with which he tries to impress and force others toward him, or even bring them to his knees. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
Conversely, the introvert strains the pleasure- unpleasure mechanism in his unconscious by the conscious, idealistic desire to create the highest values proper to force others to come to him, thus degrading people to objects of his desire. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
The ideally oriented introverted person is faced with the fact that he scares away from himself precisely the human love and joy that he is really trying to find behind all his desire to impress and to be superior, and that he keeps and chains to himself only those inferior persons who know best how to cater to his desire. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
While the introvert’s conscious attitude is an impersonal and just attitude of power, his unconscious attitude aims at inferior lust and pleasure; and while the extravert’s conscious attitude is a personal love for human beings, his unconscious attitude aims at unjust, tyrannical power. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
Introversion: I have to realize that my object, apart from its reality, is also a symbol of my pleasure, which I unconsciously try to gratify with its help. Extraversion: I have to realize that my object, apart from its reality, is also a symbol of my power, the approval of which I try to obtain from it. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
I would say: the introvert also tries, through the hypothesis of abstraction, to reach the object, actually reality, which seems to him chaotic only because of the projection of his unused and therefore undeveloped feeling. He tries to conquer the object by thinking. But he wants to reach the object quite as much as the extravert. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
What the extravert calls human is just “all too human” for the introvert. What the introvert calls human is airy and gaseous for the other. ~Carl Jung, Hans Schmid Guisan Letters, Pages 100-114
Carl Jung and Sabina Spielrein
You will see that this investigation is the necessary preliminary work for the psychology of Dem. praec. Spielrein’s case is proof of that (it’s in the Jahrbuch). ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Page 23.
My dear Miss Spielrein, You have managed well and truly to grasp my unconscious with your sharp letter. Such a thing could only happen to me. ~Carl Jung, Letter June 20,1908
Your image has changed completely, and I want to tell you how very, very happy it makes me to be able to hope that there are people who are like me, people in whom living and thinking are one; good people who do not misuse the power of their mind to dream up fetters but rather to create freedoms. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, June 30, 1908.
How great would be my happiness to find that person in you, that ‘esprit fort’ who never descends into sentimentality, but whose essential and innermost prerequisite for life is her own freedom and independence. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, June 30, 1908.
I often think that the happiness that I want to give other people is begrudged me or is returned to me in the form of hidden hostility, which is what has so often happened to me! Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, July 22, 1908
At this meeting I really had an opportunity for the first time to see this great man [Freud] in my world, out of his own milieu, and thus to understand him much more deeply than before. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, September 28, 1908
He [Freud] is truly a great and good man who, by virtue of his wonderful knowledge of humankind and his experience of life, sees incomparably further than I do. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, September 28, 1908
If I have previously only admired this man [Freud] from a distance, now I have really come to love him. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, September 28, 1908
I fear for my work, for my life’s task, for all the lofty perspectives that are being revealed to me by this new Weltanschauung as it evolves. How shall I, with my sensitive soul, free myself from all these questions? ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, December 4, 1908
My mind is torn to its very depths. I, who had to be a tower of strength for many weak people, am the weakest of all. Will you forgive me for being as I am? For offending you by being like this, and forgetting my duties as a doctor towards you? Will you understand that I am one of the weakest and most unstable of human beings? And will you never take revenge on me for that, either in words, or in thoughts or feelings? ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, December 4, 1908
I am looking for someone who understands how to love, without punishing the other person, imprisoning him or sucking him dry; I am seeking this as yet unrealized person who will manage to separate love from social advantage and disadvantage, so that love may always be an end in itself, and not just a means to an end. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, December 4, 1908
It is my misfortune that I cannot live without the joy of love, of tempestuous, ever-changing love. This daemon stands as an unholy contradiction to my compassion and my sensitivity. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, December 4, 1908
When love for a woman awakens within me, the first thing I feel is regret, pity for the poor woman who dreams of eternal faithfulness and other impossibilities and is destined for a painful awakening out of all these dreams. Therefore if one is already married it is better to engage in this lie and do penance for it immediately than to repeat the experiment again and again, lying repeatedly, and repeatedly disappointing. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, Dec. 4, 1908
Sincere thanks on behalf of my wife for the flowers. That was very sweet of you. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, Sept. [?] 1910
Your thinking is bold, far-reaching, and philosophical. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, August 8, 1911.
I can hardly think that there is anything organically wrong with your foot, for the psychological situation is too powerfully and traumatically significant. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, Sept. 22 [?], 1911.
Only when you seek the happiness of the other, will your own happiness be granted. I allow myself to write to you so frankly and to admonish you because, after long and solitary reflection, I have eliminated from my heart all the bitterness against you which it still harboured. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, Sept. 22 [?], 1911.
But never forget that under no circumstances must you retreat from an immediate goal which your heart considers good and reasonable. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, Sept. 22 [?], 1911.
He [Freud] has spoken several times of your dissertation, the best indication that it has made an impression on him. You do not need my recommendation. Approach him as a great master and rabbi, then all will be well. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, Sept. 22 [?], 1911.
I am rather worried about how Freud will take the corrections I am introducing into the theory of sexuality. The more I write in my own style, the greater becomes the danger of misunderstandings, for inwardly I am quite alien to the spirit of the Viennese school, though not to the spirit of Freud. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, Nov. 24, 1911
Your study is extraordinarily intelligent and contains splendid ideas whose priority I am happy to acknowledge as yours. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, Dec. 23, 1912
He [Freud] wants togive me love, while I want understanding. I want to be a friend on an equal footing, while he wants to have me as a son. For that reason he ascribes to a complex everything I do which does not fit the framework of his teaching. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, Nov. 4, 1913.
At the meeting in Munich I saw clearly that Freud is lost to me. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, Nov. 4, 1913.
Respect for the human personality and its motives should not be undermined by psychoanalysis. Because I fight for that I suffer much. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, April 1915.
Mother told Sabina stories about angels and demons, clairvoyance and miracle cures, inspired by the Chasidic folklore. ~Henry Zvi Lothane, MD, The real story of Sabina Spielrein: or fantasies vs. facts of a life, Page 3
From age five to seven Sabina was educated in a Fröbel type kindergarten in Warsaw learning to speak German and French. ~Henry Zvi Lothane, MD, The real story of Sabina Spielrein: or fantasies vs. facts of a life, Page 3
Until the age of 6-7 I had no fear of any devil. I was an example of courage for my brother and made fun of him by jumping at him out of a dark hiding place or telling him horror stories. My parents warned me that one day I would feel anxiety and understand how her brother felt. ~Sabina Spielrein, MD, The real story of Sabina Spielrein: or fantasies vs. facts of a life, Page 3
“I nurtured grandiose fantasies: I was a goddess and ruled over a great empire, I possessed a great power with which I could know everything and achieve everything, even though I did not really believe in its reality, for there was a critic inside me who knew the difference between reality and fantasy.” ~Sabina Spielrein, The real story of Sabina Spielrein: or fantasies vs. facts of a life, Page 3
Sabina “conversed with a spirit. It was an angel sent to her by God, because she was an unusual person, a good spirit that helped her and guided her. At first the spirit spoke German, then Russian. ~Henry Zvi Lothane, MD, The real story of Sabina Spielrein: or fantasies vs. facts of a life, Page 3
Up to the age of 13 she was “extremely religious in spite of her father’s derisions.” In fifth grade, age 15, she “took a lively interest in the psychological aspects of religion and arranged to have lessons in Ancient Hebrew so as to read the Bible in the original.” ~Henry Zvi Lothane, MD, The real story of Sabina Spielrein: or fantasies vs. facts of a life, Page 3
She [Sabina] had a crush on the history teacher, a man of high intelligence and a sad expression in his black eyes, but with a habit of odd grimaces, who “has opened up to her previously unknown vistas by leaps and bounds. I wanted to make sacrifices for him, to suffer for him. I was looking for a friend to whom I could bare my soul.” Later the poor man fell in love with her mother and when she left for Paris he jumped out of a window. ~Henry Zvi Lothane, MD, The real story of Sabina Spielrein: or fantasies vs. facts of a life, Page 4
Sabina’s other crush was on her paternal uncle Adolf who was also in love with her mother. Asked mother: “Which of them do you really love, your uncle or your [History] teacher?” ~Henry Zvi Lothane, MD, The real story of Sabina Spielrein: or fantasies vs. facts of a life, Page 4
In 1901, “while in the 6th grade, after the death of my little sister” Emilia of typhoid “my illness began:” a prolonged grief complicated by social withdrawal and mounting difficulties in relating to her father and mother. ~Sabina Spielrein, The real story of Sabina Spielrein: or fantasies vs. facts of a life, Page 4
In 1904 she graduated with a gold medal from the all-girl Yekaterinskaia Gimnazia and like other rich daughters of Rostov, e.g., Vera Weizmann, the future first lady of Israel, Sabina wanted to study in Switzerland. ~Henry Zvi Lothane, MD, The real story of Sabina Spielrein: or fantasies vs. facts of a life, Page 4
As she increasingly lost control of her aggressive impulses (hitting her mother) and unbearable rage at her father, Sabina had to be committed to the Burghölzli Asylum on August 17, 1904, not yet 19 years old, to become director Bleuler’s and his deputy Jung’s patient. ~Henry Zvi Lothane, MD, The real story of Sabina Spielrein: or fantasies vs. facts of a life, Page 4
Nine months later Spielrein recovered and while still in the hospital started attending medical school, from which she would graduate in 1911 with an 80-page dissertation on the analytic treatment of a schizophrenic patient. ~Henry Zvi Lothane, MD, The real story of Sabina Spielrein: or fantasies vs. facts of a life, Page 4
From 1905 to 1911 Jung assumed a new function, as her [Sabina] medical school teacher and, with Bleuler, as her dissertation supervisor. ~Henry Zvi Lothane, MD, The real story of Sabina Spielrein: or fantasies vs. facts of a life, Page 4
Jung and his patient in the hospital, true to her mischievous nature, Sabina acted out all manner of pranks to test the nurses and Jung, never Bleuler. ~Henry Zvi Lothane, MD, The real story of Sabina Spielrein: or fantasies vs. facts of a life, Page 4
I have analyzed the clinical condition almost completely with the help of your method and, early on, with a favorable result. In the course of her treatment the patient had the misfortune to fall in love with me. She continues to rave blatantly to her mother about this love and her secret spiteful glee in scaring her mother is not the least of her motives. Therefore the mother would like, if needed, to send her to another doctor, with which I naturally concur. ~Carl Jung, The real story of Sabina Spielrein: or fantasies vs. facts of a life, Page 4
We must not forget the fundamental difference between man and woman, which is also, provisionally, the rule. Man wants to embrace; woman prefers to be embraced. The reverse can only take place provisionally because men are on average more differentiated. ~Sabina Spielrein, Unedited extracts from a diary, Page 3
Woman is more discriminating in her choice because it is more difficult to find a personality that fits the ideal; it is for these reasons that the woman is generally monogamous, when she truly loves; for opposite reasons, the man is less discriminating and is more or less polygamous. ~Sabina Spielrein, Unedited extracts from a diary, Page 4
We always see that a beautiful woman is the determining factor in a man’s choice – let us not get angry! What does that mean: a beautiful woman? It is well known that there is no absolute beauty; the ideal of beauty was simply developed from female forms most frequently encountered, that is, from characteristics that proved most pleasing. ~Sabina Spielrein, Unedited extracts from a diary, Page 4.
Thus one can love nature as a living being and confide one’s inner thoughts to it; for example find similarities between the storm in nature and the storm in one’s own heart, and this similarity is real because our world is a part of the universal world or, if you prefer, a reflection of it. ~Sabina Spielrein, Unedited extracts from a diary, Page 4
The paper that I have written for the clinic about the value of reaction (Spielrein 1909),4 makes me think that we see our own pain in the soul of the other, that is objectively – hence the relief. ~Sabina Spielrein, Unedited extracts from a diary, Page 4
Freud’s interpretation that laughter is born of the comparison of two different amounts of energy, the over-abundance of energy being eliminated by laughter, seems to me to be very plausible. ~Sabina Spielrein, Unedited extracts from a diary, Page 5
When the artist creates, it is not the manifestation of the need to communicate something to the world. It is rather that the complex itself simply wants to emerge! ~Sabina Spielrein, Unedited extracts from a diary, Page 5
The most elevated instincts always present themselves as murderous instincts. ~Sabina Spielrein, Unedited extracts from a diary, Page 6.
Everywhere you see the pleasure involved in destroying and dying. Young people have a strange need to sacrifice their lives for a great cause, a ‘nobler’ cause. ~Sabina Spielrein, Unedited extracts from a diary, Page 6
The death of a person constitutes the nature of only one complex – the sexual complex. Every individual must disappear as such. ~Sabina Spielrein, Unedited extracts from a diary, Page 6
Minds such as yours help advance science. You [definitely] must become a psychiatrist. – Jung to Spielrein, (Spielrein 13 June 1909, p. 101)
Sometimes it seems to me that the scholarly world which reads the article will see me as a know-it-all who wants to point out every folly to the entire world. – Sabina Spielrein 8 September 1910
The death tendency or death wish was clear to you before it was to me, understandably. ~Carl Jung, 25 March 1912, Journal of Analytical Psychology, 46, 1, 184–5).
He is honest and points this out in his writings long afterwards, recollecting that it is his pupil, Dr Spielrein, who had the idea, and stressing that Freud later borrowed it from her (Jung 1911–12, para. 504, note no. 38). Her idea, his idea … Jung does not fail to state explicitly Sabina’s intellectual independence. ~ Mireille Cifali, Sabina Spielrein, a woman psychoanalyst: another picture, Page 3
She is afraid however that he will publish first, that he will steal her ideas. Generously, Jung writes that these are secret penetrations of thoughts … ‘perhaps I borrowed from you too; certainly I have unwittingly absorbed a part of your soul as you doubtless have of mine. What matters is what each of us has made of it. And you have made something good of it’ – ~Carl Jung Letters to Sabina, 25 March 1912, Page 185
She succeeds in writing, and is consequently recognized for her fine intelligence, her exacting mind, and her bold ideas. Freud describes her work as ‘magnificent’ (Spielrein 7 January 1912, p. 41). ~ Mireille Cifali, Sabina Spielrein, a woman psychoanalyst: another picture, Page 4
In practice what matters is less the precise classification than one’s intuitive understanding of the patient, because practical psychotherapy is a healing art. You say that too, after all. We need scientific findings only [as points of reference] ~Spielrein to Jung, (Carotenuto 1982, pp. 66–7)
She [Anna Freud] has the advantage over me of having a father who is widely known. I … must rely on my own strength, for which reason I have a much more difficult time of it’ ~Sabina Spielrein, 19 October 1910.
You would be seriously mistaken to think that I identify my happiness with a high destiny. I have never thought that my son was destined for me; I know only too well that he will have his own life to live and that he belongs to me as little as I belong to my parents. It is then that I realize how alone I am. ~Sabina Spielrein, 1906/1907?.
Sabina Spielrein published her thesis in the Jahrbuch in 1911, then in 1912 an article on her childhood, and ‘Destruction as the cause of coming into being’ Mireille Cifali, Sabina Spielrein, a woman psychoanalyst: another picture, Page 2
She [Sabina] revels in her success. She ‘is now a member of the psychoanalytic society’ (ibid., p. 41), and her name is published alongside that of Freud and Jung. They encourage her to write. She signs her articles. This is remarkable, for though women are accepted as psychoanalysts, they are mainly known for being clinicians, not theoreticians. They are not known for their writing. ~Mireille Cifali, Sabina Spielrein, a woman psychoanalyst: another picture, Page 4
From ‘[poor] psychopath’ (Spielrein 19 October 1910, p. 29) or ‘degenerate’ as she sometimes referred to herself (Spielrein 1906/1907?), she soon becomes the person who discusses the components of theory with Jung and Freud almost on equal terms, the one who speaks at conferences – not only in dreams – in front of the Viennese analysts (Spielrein 1911). She dares to expose herself in words; she even risks publication. ~Mireille Cifali, Sabina Spielrein, a woman psychoanalyst: another picture, Page 2
She says that she owes the energy put into the ‘sublimated activity’ to her mystical tendency, but also to something Freud said to her. When she talked about the desired child (the ‘Siegfried dreams’), he said: ‘You could have the child you know, if you wanted it, but what a waste of your talents’ (Spielrein 6 January 1918) and reminded her at the same time that ‘nothing is stronger than controlled and sublimated passion’ (Freud 12 June 1914) ~Mireille Cifali, Sabina Spielrein, a woman psychoanalyst: another picture, Page 3.
Three years later, in 1895, Freud wrote, ‘Hysterics suffer mainly from reminiscences’. ~Coline Covington, Comments on the Burghölzli hospital records of Sabina Spielrein, Page 1
Jung reports in her notes, Pat[ient] laughs and cries in a strangely mixed, compulsive manner. Masses of tics, rotating head, sticks out her tongue, legs twitching. Complains of a terrible headache, saying that she was not mad, only upset, at the hotel, she could not stand people or noise. ~Coline Covington, Comments on the Burghölzli hospital records of Sabina Spielrein, Page 2
Today, Sabina might well be diagnosed as psychotic. Furthermore, she was referred to the Burghölzli because she could not be treated at the Heller Institute where she had been previously. ~Coline Covington, Comments on the Burghölzli hospital records of Sabina Spielrein, Page 2
We then see throughout the hospital notes, how difficult Sabina’s behaviour was and how much she tried to create havoc around her to get attention and especially to provoke the doctors and staff of the hospital to punish her. ~Coline Covington, Comments on the Burghölzli hospital records of Sabina Spielrein, Page 2
‘At the slightest sign of lack of respect or trust, she immediately retaliates with negativistic behaviour and with a succession of greater or lesser devilish tricks’. ~Carl Jung, Comments on the Burghölzli hospital records of Sabina Spielrein, Page 2
Yesterday the medical assistant forbade her to leave her bed. Whereupon patient made a point of getting up and declared energetically she would never obey, that she never wanted to get well, that she would behave badly. On being suitably coaxed by the writer she returned to bed perfectly calm. ~Carl Jung, Comments on the Burghölzli hospital records of Sabina Spielrein, Page 2
Absence of senior physician (since 27th August). Yesterday (28th August) headache, getting worse. Tried to demand medication, which was refused. At night in bed, pulse 180, for that reason finally given Morphine … then good night. ~Carl Jung, Comments on the Burghölzli hospital records of Sabina Spielrein, Page 3
Patient has great insight into her condition but not the slightest inclination to improve it. She asks Ref. never to betray the slightest embarrassment about her but only extreme energy and a firm belief in her recovery; that would be the only way for her to get better. Pat. has no attention span when she is reading by herself, but the doctor’s mere personal presence can often enable her to concentrate for hours. ~Carl Jung, Comments on the Burghölzli hospital records of Sabina Spielrein, Page 3
During this time patient was very unsettled. The following day she reports that she constantly and with great longing imagines Ref. squeezing her left hand tightly until it hurts. She desires this painful treatment with all her strength. The next day she has a high grade hyperaesthesia in her left hand. ‘I want this pain’, patient says calmly, ‘I want you to do something really bad to me, to force me to do something that I am opposed to with all my being’. ~Carl Jung, Comments on the Burghölzli hospital records of Sabina Spielrein, Page 3
In his interview with Sabina’s mother, Jung is informed of Sabina’s previous erotic transferences – some time before she had fallen in love with her uncle, a doctor, and subsequently with another doctor – both had disappointed her. ~Coline Covington, Comments on the Burghölzli hospital records of Sabina Spielrein, Page 3
The roots of Sabina’s erotic transference to Jung can be seen in her hateful relations with both her parents as described in the hospital records. ~Coline Covington, Comments on the Burghölzli hospital records of Sabina Spielrein, Page 4
Her sadomasochistic relationship with her father seemed to revolve around the shame she experienced with him, her misbehaviour, the excitement and relief she derived from his physical beating of her, and her anxiety about her father’s depression and periodic threats of suicide. ~Carl Jung, Comments on the Burghölzli hospital records of Sabina Spielrein, Page 4
She cannot turn to her father, he does not really understand her, he says hurtful things to her. Because of her strong narcissism she cannot give in to her father, and when her father is sad, she cannot talk to him and she is again deeply hurt. He has hit patient and she has had to kiss his hand in return. (At this point numerous tics, grimaces and gestures of abhorrence.) ~Carl Jung, Comments on the Burghölzli hospital records of Sabina Spielrein, Page 4
Sabina recounts, with a further display of tics, to Jung how her father had hit her on her bare buttocks up until she was aged 11, at times in front of her siblings. ~Coline Covington, Comments on the Burghölzli hospital records of Sabina Spielrein, Page 4
[Three] years ago it happened that patient said to her father that she could give up parents in favour of the company of other people. Big scene followed, father went wild and threatened suicide. There were often scenes like this, sometimes lasting for days. It also hurts pat. that father insults and tyrannizes other members of the household. It pains her that he is unhappy, always talking about dying, etc. When he is kind to her she regrets that she behaves badly. She is always afraid that one day he will kill himself. ~Carl Jung, Comments on the Burghölzli hospital records of Sabina Spielrein, Page 4
Even during this last year mother tried to beat her in front of her brothers and her brothers’ friends. Once when, at thirteen, her mother punished her, she ran away and hid in various places, doused herself with ice-cold water (winter!), and went into the cellar to catch her death of cold. This way she wanted to torment her parents and kill herself. In her 15th year, she tried to starve herself to death in Karlsbad because she had made her mother angry. ~Carl Jung, Comments on the Burghölzli hospital records of Sabina Spielrein, Page 5
Just as Sabina, like her father, retaliates against her mother by threatening to kill herself, she also punishes herself in this way. ~Coline Covington, Comments on the Burghölzli hospital records of Sabina Spielrein, Page 5
‘She sees herself as a thoroughly bad and corrupt person, and for that reason she simply assumes that she should not be allowed to be in the company of other people’. ~Carl Jung, Comments on the Burghölzli hospital records of Sabina Spielrein, Page 5
She is only able to establish relations with others through painful treatment and the manipulation of guilt. This is evident in her provocative behaviour towards the hospital staff, whom she constantly challenges to punish her and thereby confirm her in her narcissistic guilt. ~Coline Covington, Comments on the Burghölzli hospital records of Sabina Spielrein, Page 5
Sabina’s conviction that she is a ‘bad and corrupt person’ both explains and reinforces the abusive treatment she receives from her parents. ~Coline Covington, Comments on the Burghölzli hospital records of Sabina Spielrein, Page 5
In order to be loved, Sabina conforms to the expectations she imagines her parents have of her – punishment and humiliation, particularly at the hand of the father, then become associated with sexual excitement. ~Coline Covington, Comments on the Burghölzli hospital records of Sabina Spielrein, Page 5
Sabina’s own disgust ‘with ladies and shops’ indicates her own identification with her mother’s self-hatred and her homosexual solution in wanting to eschew what is feminine in order to obtain her mother’s love and to try to satisfy her where her father had clearly failed. ~Carl Jung, Comments on the Burghölzli hospital records of Sabina Spielrein, Page 5
The impression we have of Jung’s treatment of Sabina was that he, much like Bleuler, was patient, calm and supportive – he made Sabina feel wanted and accepted. ~Coline Covington, Comments on the Burghölzli hospital records of Sabina Spielrein, Page 6
Since the last abreaction marked improvement. Still strongly emotional and unusually powerful expressions of feeling. At every stimulation of the complex she still reacts with her back, hands, tongue, and mouth, though significantly less so. She is now aware of it and hides her expressions of disgust behind her hands. She recently tried associations with acquaintances and on this occasion it was shown that she could not say her complex trigger word ‘to beat’. So she omitted it during the experiment. ~Carl Jung, Comments on the Burghölzli hospital records of Sabina Spielrein, Page 7
… To me, life without science is completely senseless. What else is there for me if there is no science? Get married? But that thought fills me with dread: at times my heart aches for tenderness, love; but that is but a deceptive, passing, external display that hides the most pitiful prose. The price is subjugation of the personality…. No! I do not want such love: I want a good friend to whom I can bare my soul; I want the love of an older man so that he would love me the way parents love and understand their child (spiritual affinity). But my parents – they are not it – If only I were as wise a human being as my Junga! … And how stupid that I am not a man: men have it easier with everything. It is a shame that everything in life goes their way. I do not want to be a slave! ~Sabina Spielrein, Comments on the Burghölzli hospital records of Sabina Spielrein, Page 8
Freud describes her [Sabina] work as ‘magnificent’ (Spielrein 7 January 1912, p. 41). ~Mireille Cifali, Sabina Spielrein, a woman psychoanalyst, Page 4
*The Jung-White Letters:
I have a huge correspondence, see innumerable people but have only two real friends with whom I can speak about my own difficulties; the one is Erich Neumann and he lives in Israel and the other is Father Victor White in England. ~Carl Jung, The Jung–White Letters, Page 334
Victor White was one of the very few, possibly the only person in the inner circle who really stood up to the old man [Jung], and slugged it out over a period of years until they were both exhausted with it (Arraj 2015).
I am by profession a theologian. But I am a theologian to whom, something happened. Suddenly, or perhaps not so suddenly, theology ceased to have any meaning to me at all … and so I was forced to turn to the psychologists … I did have a hunch that the method and approach of Jung might have something that spoke to my condition. ~Victor White, The Story of Jung’s ‘White Raven” Page 16
An elementary study of (for instance) St. Thomas’s sections in the Prima Pars On the Good, On the Goodness of God, On Evil, and On the Cause of Evil, should suffice to dispel Dr Jung’s misunderstandings and misgivings, and to supply a metaphysic which would account for the phenomena which concern him at least as satisfactorily as the quasi-Manichaean dualism which he propounds. These somewhat confused and confusing pages might be dismissed as just another infelicitous excursion of a great scientist outside his own orbit … It is regrettable indeed that, supported only by such naïve philosophizing, the most pregnant movement in contemporary psychology should be burdened with an irrelevant association with Gnostic dualism. ~Victor White, The Story of Jung’s ‘White Raven” Page 399
There are very understandable reasons which have made it difficult for theologians and philosophers to take Jung’s work seriously. The obstacles to understanding are considerable and should not be minimized … Regarding evil as having (apparently) some positive existence and reality of its own, Jung logically enough requires the admission of evil, not only into the “self”, the human totality, but also into the Godhead itself … which orthodox Christians must find quite inadmissible. ~Victor White, The Story of Jung’s ‘White Raven” Page 75
Jung has our keenest support and sympathy in deploring the minimizing of evil which leads to its repression, with its devastating results for the individual psyche and society; but we are unable to find evidence that the conception of the privatio boni has contributed to this ~Victor White, The Story of Jung’s ‘White Raven” Page n1.
… is he, after the manner of his own “Yahweh” duped by some satanic trickster into purposely torturing his friends and devotees? Or is he, more rationally, purposely putting them to test to discover how much they will stand rather than admit the fallibility of their master—or how many, more Job-like, will venture to observe that the Emperor has appeared in public without his clothes? ~Victor White, The Story of Jung’s ‘White Raven” Page 352
… Generally speaking it [Answer to Job] cannot be read. For Jung deliberately reads the Scriptures through a pair of highly distorted spectacles. Although he is not writing of God but of God-images, he is not writing directly even of Job’s images of God, but rather of his own images of Job’s images … Even an instructed Christian may expect an explosion when an adult, whose religious development had become fixated at the kindergarten level of bourgeois morality … becomes confronted with the realities of life, of the ways of God both in the Bible and in contemporary events. It is understandable that he feels a close kinship with the disillusioned, tortured Job … The violence of the abreaction is understandable … his grievance is hardly adult … the only reaction is that of the spoiled child. ~Victor White, Jung-White Letters, Page 353-354
I can confirm and prove the interrelation of the God-image with the other parts of the psyche, but I cannot go further without committing the error of metaphysical assertion, which is far beyond my scope. I am not a theologian and have nothing to say about the nature of God. ~Carl Jung, Jung-White Letters, Page 2007
I am frankly relieved that “Answer to Job” has not yet appeared in the USA! … Already of course I am getting perplexed and indignant letters from England asking “What the hell…” It cost quite some sleepless nights, trying to write an article to explain what I think … I hope you find the result (which I will send you if and when is published) not too distressing; and especially that you will take into consideration for whom it is written ~Victor White, Jung-White Letters, Page 254
I am grateful for the fact that you call me to order and that your judgment—be it correct or not—does not spare me, so I assume God will listen to a mortal voice, just as much he has given His ear to Job, when this little tortured worm complained about His paradoxical, amoral nature. Just as Job lifted his voice so that everybody could hear him, I have come to the conclusion, that I better risk my skin and do my worst or best, to shake the unconsciousness of my contemporaries. […] in our time everything is at stake, and one should not mind the little disturbance I am causing […]. I have hesitated and resisted long enough, until I have made up my mind to say what I think ~Carl Jung, Jung-White Letters, Page 261-262
Your criticism, of my motive concerning “Job” is certainly unjust and you know it. It is an expression of the mental torment you had to undergo in USA—and in Europe […]. Having chosen the life of a monk you have separated yourself from the world and exposed yourself to the eternal fires of the other. Somewhere you have to pay the toll either to Man or to God and in the end you will discover that both overcharge you. ~Carl Jung, Jung-White Letters, Page 263
Answer to Job is presumably to be read, not as an essay in theology, metaphysics or exegesis, but in practical psychology… What then is its practical psychological content and implication? First and foremost it seems to be this: God (not me) is unconscious, divided in himself, moody, capricious, purposeless—but notably evil as well as good. Evil is an ultimate and irreducible constituent of reality to be accepted—not a privation which can be supplied by good, or out of which good can be brought. My ‘evil’ is no more my concern. It is ‘all God’s fault’ and I can and should lay all the blame there … the personal shadow is transferred to the ‘divine’, ‘collective’ sphere and left there. If these are not the psychological implications of the book, they are the obvious ones which in fact are being drawn, and urgently need the author’s corrections. ~Victor White, Jung-White Letters, Page 268-272
For myself, it seems that our ways must, at least to some extent, part. I shall never forget, and please God I shall never lose, what I owe to your work & your friendship … ‘I hope you do not doubt my friendship, wrong-headed & heartless though it sometimes is. Poor Job at least had friends—however stupid. ~Victor White, Jung-White Letters, Page 273
‘Thank you a million for “Hiob” … I can hardly put it down. It is the most exciting and moving book I have read in years.’ Then, in the same letter he complained: ‘I do wish we could somehow resolve this deadlock about privatio boni,’ and towards the end he concluded in a most warm way: ‘I’ll be eternally grateful to you, whatever befall this difficulty with privatio boni.’ ~Victor White, Jung-White Letters, Page 181-182
As long as Evil is “non-being”, nobody will take his own shadow seriously. Hitler and Stalin go on representing a mere “accidental lack of perfection”. The future of mankind very much depends upon the recognition of the shadow. Evil is—psychologically speaking—terribly real’ ~Carl Jung, Jung-White Letters, Page 143
… their God simply isn’t my God any more: my very clerical clothes have become a lie … I am just indescribably lonely, and it’s some relief to me to tell you … I must confess there are times when I wish to heaven I had never heard of your psychology (and some of your disciples!); and yet I tremble to think what would have happened if I hadn’t! ~Victor White, Jung-White Letters, Page 216-217
I am somehow moved to send you the assurance of my love for you… I have been, & still am, sorely perplexed to understand when & where I am supposed to have done this… and, although [there are] matters on which I cannot see eye to eye with you, I would never question your sincerity (let alone publicly), as you have appear to question or deny mine… ~Carl Jung, Jung-White Letters, Page 283-284
I am more convinced than ever of the importance of your pioneer work for humanity, even for those who cannot agree with every word you say but have to take part in the “dialectic discussion” with you … I do not know if it is true that you have been a “Petrus scandali” to me (as you say you have), but to the extent that you may have been, I think that I can honestly say that I am grateful for it. ~Carl Jung, Jung-White Letters, Page 291-292
‘I have now seen quite a number of people die in the time of a great transition, reaching as it were the end of their pilgrimage in sight of the Gates where the way bifurcates to the land of Hereafter and to the future of mankind and its spiritual adventure.’ ~Carl Jung, Jung-White Letters, Page 306
Yesterday I had a marvellous dream: One bluish diamond-like star high in heaven, reflected in a round, quiet pool—heaven above, heaven below—. The imago Dei in the darkness of the Earth, this is myself. It seems to me as if I were ready to die, although—as it looks to me—some powerful thoughts are still flickering like lightnings in a summer night. Yet they are not mine, they belong to God, as everything else which bears mentioning. ~Carl Jung, The Jung–White Letters, Page 60.
Before my illness I had often asked myself if I were permitted to publish or even speak of my secret knowledge. I later set it all down in Aion. I realized it was my duty to communicate these thoughts, yet I doubted whether I was allowed to give expression to them. During my illness I received confirmation and I now knew that everything had meaning and that everything was perfect. ~Carl Jung, Jung–White Letters, Page 103.
I cannot tell you how glad I am that I know a man, a theologian, who is conscientious enough to weigh my opinions on the basis of a careful study of my writings! ~Carl Jung to Victor White, 5Oct1945
Thus, when I said that God is a complex, I meant to say whatever He is, he is at least a very tangible complex. You can say, He is an illusion, but He is at least a psychological fact. I surely never intended to say: He is nothing else but a complex. ~Carl Jung to Victor White, 5Oct1945
I never allow myself to make statements about the divine entity, since such would be a transgression beyond the limit of science. ~Carl Jung to Victor White, 5Oct1945
My personal view in this matter is that man’s vital energy or libido is the divine pneuma alright. ~Carl Jung to Victor White, 5Oct1945
J.B. Rhine-C.G. Jung Letters.
For example, the following quotation is from a letter to Rhine that did not find its way into Jung’s to-volume set of letters:
I regretted very much not seeing you when you were in Europe. Soon after you left I recovered from my illness and I have been able to finish a paper that is largely based upon your ESP experiment which, by the way, is intensely discussed over here by psychologists as well as physicists. (C. G. Jung, personal communication to J. B. Rhine, September 3, 1951) ~Victor Mansfield, Rhine-Jung Letters, Page 3
Jung uses the term cause in the conventional sense of an efficient cause involving some force, energy, or information traveling from one well-defined object to another.
For example, in discussing synchronicity he writes,
We must give up at the outset all explanations in terms of energy, which amounts to saying that events of this kind cannot be considered from the point of view of causality, for causality presupposes the existence of space and time in so far as all observations are ultimately based upon bodies in motion. (Jung, 1978c, para. 836) ~Victor Mansfield, Rhine-Jung Letters, Page 3
Marie-Louise von Franz (1992), whose contribution to synchronicity is second only to Jung’s (see her book Psyche and Matter, 1992) clarifies this when she writes:
According to the Jungian view, the collective unconscious is not at all an expression of personal wishes and goals, but is a neutral entity, psychic in nature, that exists in an absolutely transpersonal way. Ascribing the arrangement of synchronistic events to the observer’s unconscious would thus be nothing other than a regression to primitive-magical thinking, in accordance with which it was earlier supposed that, for example, an eclipse could be “caused” by the malevolence of a sorcerer. Jung even explicitly warned against taking the archetypes (of the collective unconscious) or psi-powers to be the causal agency of synchronistic events. (p. 231) ~Victor Mansfield, Rhine-Jung Letters, Page 4
Like most of us, Rhine had difficulty accepting the idea of acausal connections. After nearly two decades of correspondence with Jung, and in response to a synchronicity paper by C. A. Meier (no English translation of Jung’s synchronicity essay was available then), Rhine wrote on July 17, 1954:
Professor Dr. C. G. Jung
Seestrasse 228
Kusnacht-Zurich
Germany
Dear Professor Jung:
I have just finished a letter, a very tardy one, to Professor Meier, attempting to answer his question concerning my reaction to his paper on synchronicity. I told him I was playing for time on that question and that psychologically he might have to classify me as a very cautious person. At any rate, I was disposed to try to cling to the causality hypothesis, patching up the psychophysical interaction by supposing the necessary energetics. I think it is possible that I simply do not understand all that synchronicity represents and involves in your concept of it. It is not that I have any great confidence in causality or that I understand very much of what it might mean in a psychophysical interaction in any case. It is more a matter with me of taking very cautious, timid steps, and I do this partly because I am determined to go as far as I can in fact-finding in this area of problems. There is a fair possibility that I may come upon the kind of evidence that can discriminate between causality and noncausality in the psychophysical realm. I shall not make up my mind with any feeling of confidence, or finality for a long time to come in any case. I think it would help enormously if I could read your latest book in English. I do not see why so important a book cannot be brought out in several languages at the same time. Certainly if you are right about synchronicity there will be a revolution in scientific thought and it could be a timely one. I am eager to hear more about any developments that have followed the publication of your book. Has anything come of any experiment such as Bender’s? I have read a number of fairly good reviews but I still want the original in English. Thank you for your good letter and best wishes for your continued good health. Sincerely yours, J. B. Rhine. ~Victor Mansfield, Rhine-Jung Letters, Page 4-5
Further on, we show how a more refined view of causality supports Rhine’s attempt to cling to it in understanding parapsychological phenomena. Jung promptly replied to Rhine’s letter on July 26, 1954:
Prof. J. B. Rhine
Parapsychological Laboratory
College Station
Durham, N. C.
Dear Professor Rhine,
Thank you for your kind letter! Synchronicity is indeed a difficult and involved problem. The translation of my book into English is finished and the printing must be on the way, so that you will have a chance to read it rather soon. I must warn you though that in spite of all sorts of alterations I have made, it is still a difficult book that appeals chiefly to the thinking function as it consists in its main substance of the description of a point of view rather unfamiliar to our epoch. Certain main points of my book have not been understood at all, but that is what I have always seen with my books: I just have to wait for about 10 or 20 years until certain readers appear understanding what my thought is. That sounds most arrogant, and everybody is free to think that I am writing a particularly unclear and obscure style. The writer himself has to suspend his own judgment. As far as I can see, my book has not had any noticeable effect yet, with the exception of Prof. Bender’s experiments. I have seen him recently, and he told me that he pursues his experiments with success. My best wishes to you; I always remember our rather noisy lunch at the Ambassador’s. ~Victor Mansfield, Rhine-Jung Letters, Page 4-5
When V. Mansfield (V. M.) got copies of the Rhine-Jung letters, he read the first half of them just before going to bed. He thought “these are interesting letters, but there is nothing earthshaking in them.” He then had the following short dream: “I am carrying the letters around in a knapsack and telling people how important they are.”
He had also just finished reading the fairy tale, “Brother Lustig” (Grimm & Grimm, 1972), in which Saint Peter is an initiatory trickster figure who rewards Lustig with a magic knapsack.
Anything Lustig wishes into the knapsack instantly appears there. At the end of the tale, Saint Peter denies Lustig entrance into heaven. Lustig then tricks Saint Peter into taking back the knapsack and then wishes himself inside the knapsack. Instantly he finds himself in the knapsack in heaven, where Saint Peter relents and allows him to stay. ~Victor Mansfield, Rhine-Jung Letters, Page 6
Where is our neurosis trying to lead us? What does it demand of us?
As Jung said:
By finality I mean merely the immanent psychological striving for a goal. Instead of striving for a goal one could also say sense of purpose. All psychological phenomena have some such sense of purpose inherent in them…. (1978a, para. 456) ~Victor Mansfield, Rhine-Jung Letters, Page 8
This timeless knowledge, implicit in the individuation process, gradually reveals itself to the ego through unconscious compensation and occasionally through synchronistic experiences. Jung (1978c) comments:
Whether we like it or not, we find ourselves in this embarrassing position as soon as we begin seriously to reflect on the teleological processes in biology or to investigate the compensatory function of the unconscious, not to speak of trying to explain the phenomenon of synchronicity.
Final causes, twist them how we will, postulate a foreknowledge of some kind. It is certainly not a knowledge that could be connected with the ego, and hence not a conscious knowledge as we know it, but rather a self-subsistent “unconscious” knowledge which I would prefer to call “absolute knowledge.” (para. 931) ~Victor Mansfield, Rhine-Jung Letters, Page 7
Von Franz (1992) stresses the meaning and unity that are both so central to synchronicity:
For Jung, individuation and realization of the meaning of life are identical—since individuation means to find one’s own meaning, which is nothing other than one’s own connection with Universal Meaning.
This is clearly something other than what is referred to today by terms such as information, superintelligence, cosmic or universal mind—because feeling, emotion, the Whole of the person, is included.
This sudden and illuminating connection that strikes us in the encounter with a synchronistic event represents, as Jung well described, a momentary unification of two psychic states: the normal state of our consciousness, which moves in a flow of discursive thought and in a process of continuous perception that creates our idea of the world called “material” and “external”; and of a profound level where the “meaning” of the Whole resides in the sphere of “absolute knowledge.” (p. 258) ~Victor Mansfield, Rhine-Jung Letters, Page 10
It is precisely this unification of our image of the material world with the deepest levels of our being that makes synchronicity such a revolutionary idea, with repercussions far beyond
psychology. Whatever the archetypal meaning in a synchronicity experience, the expression of unity is always paramount.
As von Franz (1975) says:
The most essential and certainly the most impressive thing about synchronicity occurrences … is the fact that in them the duality of soul and matter seems to be eliminated.
They are therefore an empirical indication of an ultimate unity of all existence, which Jung, using the terminology of medieval natural philosophy, called the Unus Mundus.” (p. 247) ~Victor Mansfield, Rhine-Jung Letters, Page 10
After one of Rhine’s many requests for him to write down his parapsychological experiences, Jung (1975) wrote on September 25, 1953:
I am not sure whether I can get together all my reminiscences concerning parapsychological events. There were plenty. That accumulation of such tales does not seem to be profitable. The collection by Gurney, Myers, and Podmore has produced very little effect. People who know that there are such things need no further confirmation, and people not wanting to know are free, as hitherto, to say that one tells them fairy tales. I have encountered so much discouraging resistance that I am amply convinced of the stupidity of the learned guild. (p. 126) ~Victor Mansfield, Rhine-Jung Letters, Page 11
- B. Rhine was a young psychology instructor at Duke University when he first wrote to Jung on
November 14, 1934:
Dear Doctor Jung:
After having seen your interesting contribution, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, I thought you might be remotely interested in my work published in a volume, Extra-Sensory Perception [Rhine, 1934], and I therefore asked the publishers to put your name on the list for complimentary copies. ~Victor Mansfield, Rhine-Jung Letters, Page 11
The correspondence between Rhine and Jung continued, sometimes sporadically, over the next two decades, even during the war years.
They exchanged their more recent books, usually inquired about the other’s health, and frequently expressed appreciation and admiration for the ideas or achievements of the other. On April 1, 1948, Jung (1973) wrote to Rhine about his book The Reach of the Mind (Rhine, 1947):
Dear Dr. Rhine,
I’ve read your book with greatest interest and I thank you very much for sending me more than one copy. People read it a lot over here and I have recommended it to several physicists interested in psychological and parapsychological matters. I think it is one of the greatest contributions to the knowledge of unconscious processes. Your experiments have established the fact of the relativity of time, space and matter with reference to the psyche beyond any doubt. (p. 495) ~Victor Mansfield, Rhine-Jung Letters, Page 12
The problematic role of volition raises a difficulty, because Jung (1978c) also writes in his synchronicity essay:
Among Rhine’s experiments we must also mention the experiments with dice. The subject has the task of throwing the dice (which is done by an apparatus), and at the same time he has to wish that one number (say 3) will turn up as many times as possible. The results of this so-called PK (psycho-kinetic) experiment were positive, the more so the more dice were used at one time. (p. 434) ~Victor Mansfield, Rhine-Jung Letters, Page 14
Jung also had doubts about classifying the parapsychological as a type of synchronicity because of the lack of archetypal meaning in laboratory parapsychology.
For example, he writes (1978c):
Meaningful coincidences—which are to be distinguished from meaningless chance groupings—therefore seem to rest on an archetypal foundation. As least all the cases in my experience—and there is a large number of them—show this characteristic … Although anyone with my experience in this field can easily recognize their archetypal character, he will find it difficult to link them up with the psychic conditions in Rhine’s experiments, because the latter contain no direct evidence of a constellation of the archetype. Nor is the emotional situation the same as in my examples. Nevertheless, it must be remembered that with Rhine the first series of experiments generally produced the best results, which then quickly fell off. But when it was possible to arouse a new interest in the essentially rather boring experiment, the results improved again. It follows from this that the emotional factor plays an important role. Affectivity, however, rests to a large extent on the instincts, whose formal aspect is the archetype. (para. 846) ~Victor Mansfield, Rhine-Jung Letters, Page 16
If we examine Jung’s more inclusive notion of general acausal orderedness, of which synchronicity is a part, we can harmonize our strict interpretation of synchronicity with Jung’s broader use of the term.
Jung (1978c) describes this more inclusive acausal ordering principle:
I incline in fact to the view that synchronicity in the narrow sense is only a particular instance of general acausal orderedness—that namely, of the equivalence of psychic and physical processes where the observer is in the fortunate position of being able to recognize the tertium comparationis. But as soon as he perceives the archetypal background he is tempted to trace the mutual assimilation of independent psychic and physical processes back to a (causal) effect of the archetype, and thus to overlook the fact that they are merely contingent. This danger is avoided if one regards synchronicity as a special instance of general acausal orderedness. (p. 516) ~Victor Mansfield, Rhine-Jung Letters, Page 17
Jung (1975) explained in a letter of September 18, 1945, how reluctant he was to act on Rhine’s repeated pleas to write about the paranormal (including synchronicity) without a systematic collection of data:
Dear Dr. Rhine,
Your letter has been a great joy to me. I have often thought of you in these last years and I also often mentioned your name and your experiments to many people. I wish I could fulfill your wish but having a scientific conscience I feel very hesitant about it since, being a doctor, my observations are all of a clinical kind, which means that they are unavoidably subjective to a certain extent and never systematic in as much as they are all isolated cases and facts which form a rather incoherent mass, which would look like a collection of anecdotes. I despise such a way of dealing with this matter and I would much prefer to be in a position to deal with a coherent material collected along certain scientific lines. Of course I have had quite a number of noteworthy experiences, but you know how it is: circumstances and persons involved, though indispensably important for the explanation of the facts, cannot be described in a way that would convince the outsider. It would all look hopelessly haphazard and pretty flimsy. As you assume, I have thought a great deal about parapsychological facts and I tried to establish certain connections, but I always refrain from talking publicly about such matters for the above mentioned reasons. (pp. 378-379) ~Victor Mansfield, Rhine-Jung Letters, Page 18
Sigmund Freud/Jakob Pfister Letters
Sigmund Freud Psychoanalysis and Faith
Your name has often been mentioned to me by our common friend C. G. Jung, and I am glad now to be able to associate a more definite idea with it; and I hope you will not keep your future work from me. ~Sigmund Freud, Freud/Pfister Letters, Page 15
It is certainly not the least of our friend Jung’s services that he has become the source of stimuli such as impelled you to your work. ~Sigmund Freud, Freud/Pfister Letters, Page 17
Jung left yesterday evening, but I obviously had no complaints about you to make to him, because all you have done is what he and I myself have done, that is to say, published material according to the state of your knowledge at the time and modified it later in accordance with the progress of your knowledge. ~Sigmund Freud, Freud/Pfister Letters, Page 22
But for your visit and your influence I should never have managed it; my own father complex, as Jung would call it, that is to say, the need to correct my father, would never have permitted it. ~Sigmund Freud, Freud/Pfister Letters, Page 24
You too must have been impressed by the great news that Jung is coming with me to Worcester.’ It changes my whole feeling about the trip and makes it important. I am very curious to see what will come of it all. ~Sigmund Freud, Freud/Pfister Letters, Page 25
In Jung’s opinion sister complexes play a part in the hostility of his pupil Erismann. ~Sigmund Freud, Freud/Pfister Letters, Page 26-27
The reason I write to you about family matters is that no visitor since Jung has so much impressed the children and done me so much good. ~Sigmund Freud, Freud/Pfister Letters, Page 27
Perhaps contact with Jung and Ferenczi (he too is one of the best) will stimulate something. Fortunately I am no longer so necessary and can gradually shrink into an ornament; perhaps there is a bit of providence in that. I send you my sincere greetings before the journey, and hope during it to hear a great deal about you from Jung. ~Sigmund Freud, Freud/Pfister Letters, Page 29
What I should like would be to win over more such people as yourself, Jung (one must not continue ‘and others of the same sort’), but there are not very many. ~Sigmund Freud, Freud/Pfister Letters, Page 29
I shall not tell you any more about America, as you have heard it all from Jung, or will. ~Sigmund Freud, Freud/Pfister Letters, Page 30
I still have not got over your not coming to Nuremberg. Bleuler is not coming either, and Jung is in America, so that I am trembling about his return. What will happen if my Zurichers desert me? ~Sigmund Freud, Freud/Pfister Letters, Page 35
1 hope you agree with the Nuremberg decisions and will stand loyally by our Jung. I want him to acquire an authority that will later qualify him for leadership of the whole movement. ~Sigmund Freud, Freud/Pfister Letters, Page 37
You know that Switzerland has turned into Holland for us this year. If I can really get to Switzerland next year, I hope I shall find the split in Zurich healed and Jung the victor over the difficulties that are now being prepared for him. ~Sigmund Freud, Freud/Pfister Letters, Page 40
So you will have to tell Jung that for the first time I am refusing him something. You will have the manuscript back in the next few days. In its present form I think it will be too difficult for the type-setter, there will be a great deal he will not be able to read. ~Sigmund Freud, Freud/Pfister Letters, Page 41
If Jung were at home, I should have to write to him daily. I know where he is from the picture postcards he sends me, but not when he is returning. ~Sigmund Freud, Freud/Pfister Letters, Page 45
In Vienna there has been a small crisis of which I have not yet told Jung. Adler^ and Stekel have resigned, and next Wednesday I am letting myself be elected president. ~Sigmund Freud, Freud/Pfister Letters, Page 47-48
If Jung were to obtain the professorship without the administrative duties, it would of course be a huge gain for us, but I think that he himself regards it as improbable. ~Sigmund Freud, Freud/Pfister Letters, Page 56
It is a pity that you did not meet or speak to Jung. You could have told him from me that he is at perfect liberty to develop views divergent from mine, and that I ask him to do so without a bad conscience. ~Sigmund Freud, Freud/Pfister Letters, Page 56-57
We have finished with Bergmann.- Jung settled that very well. In January we shall have our journal again in a new guise, and I hope we shall find it satisfactory. ~Sigmund Freud, Freud/Pfister Letters, Page 58
Naturally I am very pleased at your opposition to Jung’s innovations, but do not expect me to write anything against him. My disagreement is too obvious to make any impression. ~Sigmund Freud, Freud/Pfister Letters, Page 58
Jung’s behaviour in the case of our Frau H. was very ambiguous, but on principle I made no detail of the affair a casus belli. He would have spared himself the severe conflict of which you write if only he had not preferred to imagine himself in possession of the secret of curing her cito et jucunde. I am inclined to think that he had never had the opportunity of dealing with a case of such intensity and had no idea of the difficulties involved. Do not have too much confidence in a lasting personal agreement between me and Jung. He demands too much of me, and I am retreating from my overestimation of him. It will be sufficient if the unity of the association is maintained. ~Sigmund Freud, Freud/Pfister Letters, Page 59
My congratulations on having finished your book. I hope that in my judgment of it I shall once more see eye to eye with Jung. ~Sigmund Freud, Freud/Pfister Letters, Page 60
I am also of the opinion that the quality of the membership is more important than its quantity, and therefore appeal to you to put a tight rein on your kindliness, which makes you want to unite all conflicting elements; otherwise it will all end up again in a Jungian parody. ~Sigmund Freud, Freud/Pfister Letters, Page 67
He [Rank] is in the best possible state of defection from Jung, but he obviously read Jung and Jung only before reading me, with the result that he ascribes to him a great deal of which he is as guiltless as he is of spectral analysis, while with a very few exceptions he objects to everything that is really his. Also I should like to eliminate a few personal remarks, such as his comparison of Jung’s style with mine, and Jung’s private statement that he does not reject me, and graciously allows me my place, but merely corrects me and makes me ‘fit for polite society’. I should like to win over rather than put off the worthy but still obviously very inexperienced Muralt. ~Sigmund Freud, Freud/Pfister Letters, Page 73-74
I am taking the liberty of making just one short observation about the book I am sending you to-day. It represents an advance, in so far as I have finally overcome a great many confusions to which I had succumbed because of Jung and Adler. ~Sigmund Freud, Freud/Pfister Letters, Page 85
… As for the anagogics you think you can detect in my other potboiler, I am completely innocent of the charge. What matter to analysis are catagogics. I have completely finished with the Jungian manner. Those high-falutin interpretations which proclaim every kind of muck to be spiritual jam of a high order and try to smuggle a minor Apollo or Christ into every corked-up little mind simply will not do. It is Hegelianism transferred to psychology; everything that is must be reasonable. If only that theory were true! ~Sigmund Freud, Freud/Pfister Letters, Page 86-87
Your complete and ever more manifest defection from Jung and Adler has given me great satisfaction for a long time past. ~Sigmund Freud, Freud/Pfister Letters, Page 88
Permit me to express one surprising thing that struck me in retrospect in regard to the first edition of your Psycho-Analytic Method. This was that you put up so much better resistance to the confusion of Jung than you did to the absurdity of Adler. To you love is the salvation of the world and the core of religion, but nevertheless you hesitated for a time in the face of a theory which denies love and admits no motive but self-assertion. ~Sigmund Freud, Freud/Pfister Letters, Page 107
Jung/Pauli Letters Atom and Archetype
Atom and Archetype: The Pauli/Jung Letters, 1932-1958
He [the Devil] is the father of this depreciatory interpretation. ~Carl Jung, Atom and Archetype, Pages 97-101
In my view, the discussion of Matter must have a scientific basis. That is why I pressed for [Answer to Job] and [Synchronicity]to be published at the same time. ~Carl Jung, Atom and Archetype, Pages 97-101
The union of opposites is not just an intellectual matter. ~Carl Jung, Atom and Archetype, Pages 97-101
It is certainly an indisputable fact that the unconscious has a “periodic” character; there are waves and swells that often produce such symptoms as seasickness, cyclical recurrences of nervous attacks or dreams. Over a period of 3 years, from mid-December to mid-January, I have observed in myself similar dreams that have made a very deep impression on me. ~Carl Jung, Atom and Archetype, Pages 97-101
The smallest mass particle consists of corpuscle and wave. The archetype (as structure element of the unconscious) consists of static form on the one hand and dynamics on the other. ~Carl Jung, Atom and Archetype, Pages 97-101
In that “spiritualism” and “materialism” are statements on Being, they represent metaphysical judgments. ~Carl Jung, Atom and Archetype, Pages 97-101
Nowhere else but in the psyche of the individual can the union be completed, and the essential identity of Idea and Matter be experienced and perceived. ~Carl Jung, Atom and Archetype, Pages 97-101
metaphysical judgments lead to one-sidedness such as spiritualization or materialization, for they take a more or less large or significant part of the psyche and situate it either in Heaven or in earthly things, and then it can drag the whole person along with it, thus depriving him of his middle position. ~Carl Jung, Atom and Archetype, Pages 97-101
I am convinced that it (the psyche) is partly of a material nature. ~Carl Jung, Atom and Archetype, Pages 97-101
Theologians have the same resistance to psychologists as physicists, except that the former believe in Spirit and the latter in Matter. ~Carl Jung, Atom and Archetype, Pages 97-101
If one moves too far forward, it is often impossible to remember the thoughts one had before, and then the public finds one incomprehensible. ~Carl Jung, Atom and Archetype, Pages 97-101
Carried to its ultimate conclusion, Jordan’s approach would lead to the supposition of an absolute unconscious space in which an infinite number of observers are looking at the same object. The psychological version would be: In the unconscious there is just one observer, who looks at an infinite number of objects. ~Carl Jung, Atom and Archetype, Pages 7-8
Alongside this representation of the psychic structure, there is another one, actually the reverse; namely, the soul as a shell enveloping the spherically shaped cosmos, in the innermost part of which lies the earth as the heaviest and most dead part. ~Carl Jung, Atom and Archetype, Pages 12-14
The real life of knowledge and understanding is played out on the borderline between the ascertainable and the unascertainable. ~Carl Jung, Atom and Archetype, Pages 111-117
For the psyche is the medium” (i.e., the “Third”), in which ideas of corporeal or intellectual origin occur. ~Carl Jung, Atom and Archetype, Pages 111-117
…the psychological explanation must relate the statement of the Timaeus to a background process in which the demiurge represents the “consciousness maker” and the four characteristics to be mixed represent a distinctive quaternio necessary for the development of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Atom and Archetype, Pages 111-117
Psychological tendencies in the unconscious are found only where psychological insights are urgently necessary. ~Carl Jung, Atom and Archetype, Pages 111-117
Inasmuch as the number is an archetype, it can be safely assumed that it: (1) bas substance. (2) has an individual form, (3) has meaning. and (4) has relationship connections to other archetypes. ~Carl Jung, Atom and Archetype, Pages 111-117
In recent history, the spirit has been brought into the psyche and been identified with the function of the intellect. ~Carl Jung, Atom and Archetype, Pages 111-117
Is it not a fact that when one looks more closely at the drawing, the mandala circle is split into two leaves lying on top of each other, which, in accordance with a set pattern, overlap in the center (Self)? ~Wolfgang Pauli, Atom and Archetype, Pages, 34-35
When I enter the sphere of physical or mathematical thinking sensu strictiori, I lose all understanding of what the term synchronicity means; I feel as though I am groping my way through dense fog. ~Carl Jung, Atom and Archetype, Page 68.
What made the deepest impression upon me was the central role played in your [Jung’s] thinking by the concept of “incarnation” as a scientific working hypothesis. ~Wolfgang Pauli, Atom and Archetype, Pages 81-83
(The four chambers of the heart seem to have a link with the quaternity of the mandala.) ~Wolfgang Pauli, Atom and Archetype, Page 30.