Carl Jung: But drives, as we have shown, are specific forms of energy.
Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche
This way of looking at things has long been familiar.
Everyone speaks of the “storms of youth” which yield to the “tranquillity of age.”
We speak, too, of a “confirmed belief” after “battling with doubts,” of “relief from inner tension,” and so this is the involuntary energic standpoint shared by everyone.
For the scientific psychologist, of course, it remains valueless so long as he feels no need to estimate psychological values, while for physiological psychology this problem does not arise at all.
Psychiatry, as opposed to psychology, is purely descriptive, and until recently it has not concerned itself at all about psychological causality, has in fact even denied it.
Analytical psychology, however, was obliged to take the energic standpoint into account, since the causal-mechanistic standpoint of Freudian psychoanalysis was not sufficient to do justice to psychological values.
Value requires for its explanation a quantitative concept, and a qualitative concept like sexuality can never serve as a substitute.
A qualitative concept is always the description of a thing, a substance; whereas a quantitative concept deals with relations of intensity and never with a substance or a thing.
A qualitative concept that does not designate a substance, a thing, or a fact is a more or less arbitrary exception, and as such I must count a qualitative, hypostatized concept of energy.
A scientific causal explanation now and then needs assumptions of this kind, yet they must not be taken over merely for the purpose of making an energic standpoint superfluous.
The same is true of the theory of energy, which at times shows a tendency to deny substance in order to become purely teleological or finalistic.
To substitute a qualitative concept for energy is inadmissible, for that would be a specification of energy, which is in fact a force.
This would be in biology vitalism, in psychology sexualism (Freud), or some other “ism,” in so far as it could be shown that the investigators reduced the energy of the total psyche to one definite force or drive.
But drives, as we have shown, are specific forms of energy.
Energy includes these in a higher concept of relation, and it cannot express anything else than the relations between psychological values. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 51
Carl Jung on “Energy” Anthology
Energy is not to be observed in nature; it does not exist. What exists in nature is natural force, like a waterfall, or a light, or a fire, or a chemical process. ~Carl Jung, The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga, Page 7.
There we apply the term energy, but energy in itself does not exist, despite the fact that you can buy it at the electrical works. But that is merely a metaphorical energy. Energy proper is an abstraction of a physical force, a certain amount of intensity. ~Carl Jung, The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga, Page 7.
For in reality energy is not substantial: it is a conformity of things, say, or the intensity of various physical or material processes. ~Carl Jung, The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga, Page 8.
The substance of energy so to speak is a dissipation of energy, that is, one never observes energy save as having movement and in a direction. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 93
Coming back to the original point about the ambitendency, energy is not split in itself, it is the pairs of opposites and also undivided—in other words, it presents a paradox. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 93
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
Gravitation is purely transcendental. Its successful emancipation from space and time is achieved, above all, by virtue of the fact that it does not conform to the law of the conservation of energy as an elementary force; secondly, because by virtue of gravitation, corpus ibi agere non potest, ubi non est (a body does not exert effects in a place where the body itself is not); and thirdly, because it does not require time for its deployment, for it is absolutely constant. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 121
(As you know, by libido I mean very much what the ancients meant by the cosmogonic principle of Eros, or in modern language, “psychic energy.”) ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 661
This means, psychologically, that the libido, regarded as the force of desire and aspiration, as psychic energy in the widest sense, stands in part at the disposal of the ego, and in part confronts the ego autonomously, sometimes influencing it so powerfully that it is either put in a position of unwilling constraint, or else discovers in the libido itself a new and unexpected source of strength ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 98
The light and fire attributes depict the intensity of the feeling-tone and are therefore expressions for the psychic energy which manifests itself as libido ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 128
If one worships God, sun, or fire, one is worshipping intensity and power, in other words the phenomenon of psychic energy as such, the libido. Every force and every phenomenon is a special form of energy ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 128
Form is both an image and a mode of manifestation. It expresses two things: the energy which takes shape in it, and the medium in which that energy appears. On the one hand one can say that energy creates its own image, and on the other hand that the character of the medium forces it into a definite form ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 128
Since, psychologically speaking, the God-image is a complex of ideas of an archetypal nature, it must necessarily be regarded as representing a certain sum of energy (libido) which appears in projection ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 89
It is not man as such who has to be regenerated or born again as a renewed whole, but, according to the statements of mythology, it is the hero or god who rejuvenates himself. These figures are generally expressed or characterized by libido-symbols (light, fire, sun, etc.), so that it looks as if they represented psychic energy. They are, in fact, personifications of the libido ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 388
To anyone who understands libido merely as the psychic energy over which he has conscious control, the religious relationship, as we have defined it, is bound to appear as a ridiculous game of hide-and-seek with oneself. But it is rather a question of the energy which belongs to the archetype, to the unconscious, and which is therefore not his to dispose of. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 130
In either case the sun is the father-god from whom all living things draw life; he is the fructifier and creator, the source of energy for our world. ~Carl Jung, CW 5. Para 176
“The demands of the unconscious act at first like a paralysing poison on a man’s energy and resourcefulness, so that it may well be compared to the bite of a poisonous snake. Apparently it is a hostile demon who robs him of energy, but in actual fact it is his own unconscious whose alien tendencies are beginning to check the forward striving of the conscious mind.
The cause of this process is often extremely obscure, the more so as it is complicated by all kinds of external factors and subsidiary causes, such as difficulties in work, disappointments, failures, reduced efficiency due to age, depressing family problems, and so on and so forth. According to the myths it is the woman who secretly enslaves a man, so that he can no longer free himself from her and becomes a child again.
It is also significant that Isis, the sister-wife of the sun-god, creates the poisonous serpent from his spittle, which, like all bodily secretions, has a magical significance, being a libido equivalent. She creates the serpent from the libido of the god, and by this means weakens him and makes him dependent on her. Delilah acts in the same way with Samson: by cutting off his hair, the sun’s rays, she robs him of his strength.
This demon-woman of mythology is in truth the “sister-wife-mother,” the woman in the man, who unexpectedly turns up during the second half of life and tries to effect a forcible change of personality. I have dealt with certain aspects of this change in my essay on “The Stages of Life.”
It consists in a partial feminization of the man and a corresponding masculinization of the woman. Often it takes place under very dramatic circumstances: the man’s strongest quality, his Logos principle, turns against him and as it were betrays him. The same thing happens with the Eros of the woman.
The man becomes rigidly set in his previous attitude, while the woman remains caught in her emotional ties and fails to develop her reason and understanding, whose place is then taken by equally obstinate and inept “animus” opinions. The fossilization of the man shrouds itself in a smoke-screen of moods, ridiculous irritability, feelings of distrust and resentment, which are meant to justify his rigid attitude. A perfect example of this type of psychology is Schreber’s account of his own psychosis, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 458
A fantasm is an idee-force. Fantasy as imaginative activity is identical with the flow of psychic energy. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 722
But the complicated outer conditions under which we live, and the even more complicated conditions of our individual psychic make-up seldom permit a completely undisturbed flow of psychic energy. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Paras 6-7
The birth of a saviour is equivalent to a great catastrophe, because a new and powerful life springs up just where there had seemed to be no life and no power and no possibility of further development. It comes streaming out of the unconscious, from that unknown part of the psyche which is treated as nothing by all rationalists.
