Carl Jung on The Practice of Psychotherapy

[Carl Jung on The Practice of Psychotherapy]

The patient is there to be treated and not to verify a theory. For that matter, there is no single theory in the whole field of practical psychology that cannot on occasion be proved to be basically wrong.

In particular, the view that the patient's resistances are in no circumstances) justified is completely fallacious. The resistance might very well prove that the treatment rests on false assumptions. ~"Fundamental Questions of Psychotherapy" (1951). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.237

No analysis is capable of banishing all unconsciousness forever. The analyst must go on learning endlessly, and never forget that each new case brings new problems to light and thus gives rise to unconscious assumptions that have never before been constellated.

We could say, without too much exaggeration, that a good half of every treatment that probes at all deeply consists in the doctor's examining himself, for only what he can put right in himself can he hope to put right in the patient.

It is no loss, either, if he feels that the patient is hitting him, or even scoring off him: it is his own hurt that gives the measure of his power to heal. This, and nothing else, is the meaning of the Greek myth of the wounded physician. ["Fundamental Questions of Psychotherapy," ibid. para. 239.]

Carl Jung advises that mandalas found in monasteries and temples are of no particular significance...

[Carl Jung advises that mandalas found in monasteries and temples are of no particular significance; many mandalas are not free and individual formations.]

In 1938, I had the opportunity, in the monastery of Bhutia Busty, near Darjeeling, of talking with a Lamaic rimposhe, Lingdam Gomchen by name, about the khilkor or mandala.

He explained it as a dmigs-pa (pronounced “migpa”), a mental image which can be built up only by a fully instructed lama through the power of imagination.

He said that no mandala is like any other, they are a individually different.

Also, he said , the mandalas to be found in monasteries and temps were of no particular significance because they were external representations only.

The true mandala is always an inner image, which is gradually built up through (active) imagination, at such times when psychic equilibrium is disturbed or when a though cannot be found and must be sought for, because it is not contained in holy doctrine.

The aptness of this explanation will become apparent in the course of my exposition.

The alleged free and individual formation of the mandala, however, should be taken with a considerable grain of salt, since in all Lamaic mandalas there predominates not only a certain unmistakable style but also a traditional structure.

For instance they are all based on a Quaternary system, a quadratura circuli, and their contents are invariably derived from Lamaic dogma.

There are texts, such as the Shri-Chakra-Sambhara Tentra, which contain direcctions for the construction of these “mental images.” ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Paragraph 123