True enough, my experiences are not common places
lying on the surface of life.
For the reader familiar with analytical psychology, there is no need of any introductory remarks to the subject of the following study.
But for the reader whose interest is not pro fessional and who comes to this book unprepared, some kind of preface will probably be necessary.
The concepts of alchemy and the individuation process are matters that seem to lie very far apart, so that the imagination finds it impossible at first to con ceive of any bridge between them.
To this reader I owe an explanation, more particularly as I have had one or two expe riences since the publication of my recent lectures which lead me to infer a certain bewilderment in my critics.
I What I now have to put forward as regards the nature of the human psyche is based first and foremost on my observations of people.
It has been objected that these observations deal with experiences that are either unknown or barely accessible.
It is a remarkable fact, which we come across again and again, that absolutely everybody, even the most unqualified layman, thinks he knows all about psychology as though the psyche were some thing that enjoyed the most universal understanding.
But any one who really knows the human psyche will agree with me when I say that it is one of the darkest and most mysterious regions of our experience.
There is no end to what can be learned in this field.
Hardly a day passes in my practice but I come across something new and unexpected.
True enough, my experiences are not common places lying on the surface of life.
They are, however, within easy reach of every psychotherapist working in this particular field.
It is therefore rather absurd, to say the least, that ignorance of the experiences I have to offer should be twisted into an accusation against me.
I do not hold myself responsible for the shortcomings in the lay public’s knowledge
of psychology.
3 There is in the analytical process, that is to say in the dialectical discussion between the conscious mind and the uncon scious, a development or an advance towards some goal or end, the perplexing nature of which has engaged my attention for many years.
Psychological treatment may come to an end at any stage in the development without one’s always or necessarily having the feeling that a goal has also been reached.
Typical and temporary terminations may occur
(1) after receiving a piece of good advice; (2) after making a fairly complete but nevertheless adequate confession;
(3) after having recognized some hitherto unconscious but essential psychic content
whose realization gives a new impetus to one’s life and activity;
(4) after a hard-won separation from the childhood psyche;
(5) after having worked out a new and rational mode of adaptation to perhaps
difficult or unusual circumstances and surroundings;
(6) after the disappearance of painful symptoms;
(7) after some positive turn of fortune such as an examination, engagement, marriage, divorce, change of profession, ete.;
(8) after having found one’s way back to the church or creed to which one previously belonged, or after a conversion; and finally,
(9) after having begun to build up a practical philosophy of life (a “philosophy” in the classical sense of the word).
4 Although the list could admit of many more modifications and additions, it ought to define by and large the main situations in which the analytical or psychotherapeutic process reaches a temporary or sometimes even a definitive end.
Experience shows, however, that there is a relatively large number of patients for whom the outward termination of work with the doctor is far from denoting the end of the analytical process.
It is rather the case that the dialectical discussion with the unconscious still continues, and follows much the same course as it does with those who have not
given up their work with the doctor.
Occasionally one meets such patients again after several years and hears the often highly remarkable account of their subsequent development.
It was experiences of this kind which first con firmed me in my belief that there is in the psyche a process that seeks its own goal independently of external factors, and which freed me from the worrying feeling that I myself moght be the sole cause of an unreal-and perhaps unnatural-process in the psyche of the patient.
This apprehension was not alto gether misplaced inasmuch as no amount of argument based on any of the nine categories mentioned above-not even a religious conversion or the most startling removal of neurotic symp toms-can persuade certain patients to give up their analytical work.
It was these cases that finally convinced me that the treatment of neurosis opens up a problem which goes far beyond purely medical considerations and to which medical knowledge alone cannot hope to do justice.
5 Although the early days of analysis now lie nearly half a century behind us, with their pseudo-biological interpretations and their depreciation of the whole process of psychic development, memories die hard and people are still very fond of describing a lengthy analysis as “running away from life,” “unresolved transference,” “autoeroticism”- and by other equally unpleas ant epithets.
But since there are two sides to everything, it is le gitimate to condemn this so-called “hanging on” as negative to life only if it can be shown that it really does contain nothing positive.
The very understandable impatience felt by the doctor does not prove anything in itself. Only through infinitely patient research has the new science succeeded in building up a profounder knowledge of the nature of the psyche, and if there have been certain unexpected therapeutic results, these are due to the selfsacrificing perseverance of the doctor. Unjustifiably negative judgments are easily come by and at times harmful; moreover they arouse the suspicion of being a mere cloak for ignorance if not an attempt to evade the responsibility of a thorough-going analysis.
For since the analytical work must in evitably lead sooner or later to a fundamental discussion be tween “I” and “You” and “You” and “I” on a plane stripped of all human pretences, it is very likely, indeed it is almost cer tain, that not only the patient but the doctor as well will find the situation “getting under his skin.”
Nobody can meddle with fire or poison without being affected in some vulnerable spot; for the true physician does not stand outside his work but is always in the thick of it.
This “hanging on,” as it is called, may be something unde sired by both parties, something incomprehensible and even un endurable, without necessarily being negative to life.
On the contrary, it can easily be a positive “hanging on,” which, al though it constitutes an apparently insurmountable obstacle, represents just for that reason a
unique situation that demands the maximum effort and therefore enlists the energies of the whole man.
In fact, one could say that while the patient is un consciously and unswervingly seeking the solution to some ultimately insoluble problem, the art and technique of the doctor are doing their best to help him towards it, “Ars totum requirit hominem!” exclaims an old alchemist, It is just this homo totus whom we seek.
The labours of the doctor as well as the quest of the patient are directed towards that hidden and as yet unmani fest “whole” man, who is at once the greater and the future man.
But the right way to wholeness is made up, unfortunately, of fateful detours and wrong turnings.
It is a longissima via) not straight but snakelike, a path that unites the opposites in the manner of the guiding caduceus, a path whose labyrinthine twists and turns are not lacking in terrors.
It is on this longissima via that we meet with those experiences which are said to be “inaccessible.”
Their inaccessibility really consists in the fact that they cost us an enormous amount of effort: they demand the very thing we most fear, namely the
“wholeness” which we talk about so glibly and which lends itself to endless theorizing, though in actual life we give it the widest possible berth.!
It is infinitely more popular to go in for “compartment psychology,” where the left-hand pigeon-hole does not know what is in the right.
I am afraid that we cannot hold the unconsciousness and It is worth noting that a Protestant theologian, writing on homiletics, had the courage to demand wholeness of the preacher from the ethical point of view.
He substantiates his argument by referring to my psychology. See Handler, Die Predigt.
The impotence of the individual entirely responsible for this state of affairs: it is due also to the general psychological education of the European.
Not only is this education the proper concern of the ruling religions, it belongs to their very nature-for re ligion excels all rationalistic systems in that it alone relates to the outer and inner man in equal degree.
We can accuse Chris tianity of arrested development if we are determined to excuse our own shortcomings; but I do not wish to make the mistake of blaming religion for something that is due mainly to human incompetence.
I am speaking therefore not of the deepest and best understanding of Christianity but of the superficialities and disastrous misunderstandings that are plain for all
to see.
The demand made by the imitatio Christi-that we should follow the ideal and seek to become like it-ought logically to have the result of developing and exalting the inner man.
In actual fact, however, the ideal has been turned by superficial and formalis ticallyminded believers into an external object of worship, and it is precisely this veneration for the object that prevents it from reaching down into the depths of the psyche and giving the lat ter a wholeness in keeping with the ideal.
Accordingly the di vine mediator stands outside as an image, while man remains fragmentary and untouched in the deepest part of him.
Christ can indeed be imitated even to the point of stigmatization with out the imitator coming anywhere near the ideal or its meaning.
For it is not a question of an imitation that leaves a man un changed and makes him into a mere artifact, but of realizing the ideal on one’s own account-Deo concedente-in one’s own individual life.
We must not forget, however, that even a mistaken imitation may sometimes involve a tremendous moral effort which has all the merits of a total surrender to some supreme value, even though the real goal may never be reached and the value is represented externally.
It is conceivable that by virtue of this total effort a man may even catch a fleeting glimpse of his wholeness, accompanied by the feeling of grace that always characterizes this experience.
8 The mistaken idea of a merely outward imitatio Christi is further exacerbated by a typically European prejudice which distinguishes the Western attitude from the Eastern.
Western man is held in thrall by the “ten thousand things”; he sees only particulars,
he is ego-bound and thing-bound, and unaware of the deep root of all being.
Eastern man, on the other hand, experiences the world of particulars, and even his own ego, like a dream; he is rooted essentially in the “Ground,” which attracts him so powerfully that his relations with the world are relativized to a degree that is often incomprehensible to us.
The Western attitude, with its emphasis on the object, tends to fix the ideal-Christ-in its outward aspect and thus to rob it of its mysterious relation to the inner man.
It is this prejudice, for instance, which impels the Protestant interpreters of the Bible to interpret E vTO~ vuw v (referring to the Kingdom of God) as “among you” instead of “within you.”
I do not mean to say anything about the validity of the Western attitude: we are sufficiently convinced of its rightness.
But if we try to come to a real understanding of Eastern man-as the psychologist mustwe find it hard to rid ourselves of certain misgivings.
Anyone who can square it with his conscience is free to decide this Question as he pleases, though he may be unconsciously setting himself up as an arbiter mundi.
I for my part prefer the precious gift of doubt, for the reason that it does not violate
the virginity of things beyond our ken.
Christ the ideal took upon himself the sins of the world.
But if the ideal is wholly outside then the sins of the individual are also outside, and
consequently he is more of a fragment than ever, since superficial misunderstanding conveniently enables him, quite literally, to “cast his sins upon Christ” and thus to evade his deepest responsibilities-which is contrary to the spirit of Christianity.
Such formalism and laxity were not only one of the prime causes of the Reformation, they are also present within the body of Protestantism.
If the supreme value (Christ) and the supreme negation (sin) are outside, then the soul is void: its highest and lowest are missing.
The Eastern attitude (more particularly the Indian) is the other way about: everything, highest and lowest, is in the (transcendental) Subject.
Accordingly the significance of the Atman, the Self, is heightened beyond all bounds.
But with Western man the value of the self sinks to zero.
Hence the universal depreciation of the soul in the West.
Whoever speaks of the reality of the soul or psyche2 is accused of “psychologism.”
Psychology is spoken of as if it were “only” psychology and nothing else.
The notion that there can be psychic factors which correspond to divine figures is regarded as a devaluation of the latter.
It smacks of blasphemy to think that a religious experience is a psychic process: for, so it is argued, a religious experience “is not only psychological.”
Any· thing psychic is only Nature and therefore, people think, nothing religious can come out of it.
At the same time such critics never hesitate to derive all religions-with the exception of their own-from the nature of the psyche.
It is a tell ing fact that two theological reviewers of my book Psychology and Religion-anI:’ of them Catholic, the other Protestant-assiduously overlooked my demonstration of the psychic origin of religious phenomena.
10 Faced with this situation, we must really ask: How do we know so much about the psyche that we can say “only” psychic?
For this is how Western man, whose soul is evidently “of little worth,” speaks and
thinks.
If much were in his soul he would speak of it with reverence.
But since he does not do so we can only conclude that there is nothing of value
in it.
Not that this is necessarily so always and everywhere, but only with people who put nothing into their souls and have “all God outside.” Carl Jung, The Basic Writings of C.G. Jung, Page 3-9
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