Nobody knows how much or how little he or she is worth.
Inflation, then, is having an unrealistic opinion of oneself But is it possible not to be inflated? Can people accurately estimate their own self-worth?
Well, the difficulty is that nobody has by nature a very good estimation of his own value.
Nobody knows how much or how little he or she is worth.
I mean, ask anybody, “Now, honestly, are you a great person or are you a small person? How small or how great are you compared to others?”
Anybody would have to admit that he has no idea. It is a subjective feeling.
Either one has an inferiority feeling and feels oneself the least worm on earth, or one has a superiority complex and feels oneself elected far above the average.
Most people switch back and forth between these two.
In neurotics it’s extreme, and in normal people it’s less extreme, but everybody has days when one feels below the weather and a nobody, and days when one feels on top of the world.
That is the natural swing back and forth, and one could call a personality normal when the estimation of oneself approximates who one is, what one has achieved, how the surroundings appear, and so on.
But it’s a very indefinite thing, really.
Any lack of balance in this respect, either too far below or too far above the mark, has an irritating effect upon the surroundings.
To know if one has an inflation, a person has only to see if he or she gets on other people’s nerves.
If so, one is probably a bit overestimating oneself, or underestimating oneself, for with an inflation a person may have·feelings of either superiority or inferiority.
Feelings of inferiority are just a veiled inflation.
If one feels inferior, that’s really ambition; a person wants to be more than one is.
One wants to be a great person and knows one isn’t.
Inferiority is also inflation and therefore gets on people’s nerves.
Sometimes people come in and say, “Oh well, you know, I can’t do it. How do you think I can do this? You know, I’m not capable, I’m so stupid, I can’t think,” and so on. Then I say, “Now stop that nonsense. Get on with your job.”
They are really making a conceited dance out of calling themselves inferior and incapable. ― Marie-Louise von Franz, The Way of the Dream, Page 31-32
Carl Jung: Since we do not know everything
Psychology and Religion: West and East (The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 11)
Since we do not know everything, practically every experience, fact, or object contains something unknown.
Hence, if we speak of the totality of an experience, the word “totality” can refer only to the conscious part of it.
As we cannot assume that our experience covers the totality of the object, it is clear that its absolute totality must necessarily contain the part that has not been experienced.
The same holds true, as I have mentioned, of every experience and also of the psyche, whose absolute totality covers a greater area than consciousness.
In other words, the psyche is no exception to the general rule that the universe can be established only so far as our psychic organism permits. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 68
I know of course that your language.
To Traugott Egloff
Dear Herr Egloff, 23 April 1957
Many thanks for your kind letters, which I greatly enjoyed.
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.
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.
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.
I can do this only up to a point with the general public, and then I always relapse into my generalizing and very differentiated conceptual terminology, which is the medium through which and into which I can translate my thoughts.
Anyone who wanted to do what you propose would himself have to be on the same level and in the same medium as the general public.
You yourself are in an excellent position to do this, for from the letters you have written me I have never got the impression that language causes you any difficulties.
I know of course that your language would not have come out as it did if it had not caused you the greatest trouble beforehand.
But as Horace says in his Ars Poetica, the best poem is the one that does not make you aware of the difficulties of its composition, and this is also true of such writings of yours as I have seen, namely your letters.
You express yourself very clearly and simply, and I believe you when you say that you are able to reach the ear and understanding of your fellow.
I know very well that I could never do so myself, and that the man needed for this can only be found among people like you.
Why then, I ask you, don’t you take up your pen and try to bring to the many what I can communicate in complicated language only to the few?
For me and people like me my language is simple and intelligible, but they are all people who have the same necessarily complicated assumptions.
With such readers I can afford the luxury of describing things with bare hints and allusions which for other readers are bound to remain obscure for the simple reason that they have never heard of them.
I see this even with my medical colleagues, for whom philosophical, historical, religious, etc. allusions are so much Chinese.
It needs in fact people like you, who are inwardly gripped by the idea and have experienced its value, to find the form of expression which everyone can understand.
I would therefore suggest in all seriousness that you make at least a tentative attempt to describe the essential features of my psychology.
I am convinced that it would lie well within your powers.
With best regards,
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 357-358.
