One-half of the world had been made by an engineer and the other half by a foolish poet.
Visions : Notes of the seminar given in 1930-1934 (2 Volume Set) (Bollingen)
Dr. Adler: There is a custom in Germany of putting children in the rain in spring so that they may grow quicker.
Dr. Jung: Exactly. You see rain in popular superstition is used as a charm, it is magic, and that is not to be rationalized; it is an entirely psychological effect.
You can say that is only a poetic idea, but it is a fact, it is poetic mana.
It seems as if one-half of the world had been made by an engineer and the other half by a foolish poet.
So the giant is strengthening his hair by receiving that mana; it is like watering his flower beds, he is making it grow.
And what about the hair in itself?
Mrs. Deady: In the story of Samson, his hair was his strength.
Dr. Jung: Yes, when his hair was cut he lost his power.
Hair is supposed to be a sign of strength.
Therefore a person with very thick strong hair is assumed to be temperamentally strong, particularly passionate, or brutal, or a sexual hero.
Then the hair has much to do with the head, and therefore people, especially women, have always been very keen about hairdressing.
Primitive women sometimes arrange their hair in a very elaborate way, and not only women, but men also.
One sees in Africa astounding fantasies upon the heads of those people, built up with the aid of clay and wax and all sorts of things. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 313
Carl Jung: Real poets create out of an inner vision
letters Vol. II
To Attila Faj
Dear Doctor Faj: September 1957
M y best thanks for your kindness in sending me your article on the Madach question in Osservatore letterario and the German abstract “Word and Truth” in the Monatsschrift fur Religion und Kultur.
I do not know Madach’s work “The Tragedy of Man,” and your statements regarding its contents have enabled me to understand what these visions mean to the Hungarian people.
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.
It is interesting that such an urgently warning voice was raised just when, in the middle of the last century, the “age of technology” really began.
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.
Perhaps someday there will appear a poet courageous enough to give expression to the voices of the “mothers.”
So far only one has come within my sight-to be sure, not to whom one can ascribe world-dimension-namely the Austrian emigrant Hermann Broch.
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 386-387
Society demands this as a kind of surety; each must stand at his post, here a cobbler, there a poet.
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Facebook Group
Two Essays on Analytical Psychology
Persona:
The persona is a complicated system of relations between the individual consciousness and society, fittingly enough a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and, on the other, to conceal the true nature of the individual.
That the latter function is superfluous could be maintained only by one who is so identified with his persona that he no longer knows himself; and that the former is unnecessary could only occur to one who is quite unconscious of the true nature of his fellows.
Society expects, and indeed must expect, every individual to play the part assigned to him as perfectly as possible, so that a man who is a parson must not only carry out his official functions objectively, but must at all times and in all circumstances play the role of parson in a flawless manner.
Society demands this as a kind of surety; each must stand at his post, here a cobbler, there a poet.
No man is expected to be both. Nor is it advisable to be both, for that would be “odd.”
Such a man would be “different” from other people, not quite reliable. In the academic world he would be a dilettante, in politics an “unpredictable” quantity, in religion a free-thinker—in short, he would always be suspected of unreliability and incompetence, because society is persuaded that only the cobbler who is not a poet can supply workmanlike shoes.
To present an unequivocal face to the world is a matter of practical importance: the average man—the only kind society knows anything about — must keep his nose to one thing in order to achieve anything worth while, two would be too much.
Our society is undoubtedly set on such an ideal. It is therefore not surprising that everyone who wants to get on must take these expectations into account.
Obviously no one could completely submerge his individuality in these expectations; hence the construction of an artificial personality becomes an unavoidable necessity.
The demands of propriety and good manners are an added inducement to assume a becoming mask.
What goes on behind the mask is then called “private life.”
This painfully familiar division of consciousness into two figures, often preposterously different, is an incisive psychological operation that is bound to have repercussions on the unconscious. Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 305
