Showing posts with label Psychological Types. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Psychological Types. Show all posts

Friday, June 1, 2018

Carl Jung: The extraordinary impoverishment of introverted thinking is compensated by a wealth of un- conscious facts.




Similarly, the representation of the irrepresentable has an immediate, subjective power of conviction because it demonstrates its own existence.

The one says "Est, ergo est"; the other says "Cogito, ergo cogito."

Intro verted thinking carried to extremes arrives at the evidence of its own subjective existence, and extraverted thinking at the evidence of its complete identity with the objective fact.

Just as the latter abnegates itself by evaporating into the object, the former empties itself of each and every content and has to be satisfied with merely existing.

In both cases the further development of life is crowded out of the thinking function into the domain of the other psychic functions, which till then had existed in a state of relative unconsciousness.

The extraordinary impoverishment of introverted thinking is compensated by a wealth of unconscious facts.

The more consciousness is impelled by the thinking function to confine itself within the smallest and emptiest circle—which seems, however, to contain all the riches of the gods—the more the unconscious fantasies will be enriched by a multitude of archaic contents, a veritable "pandaemonium" of irrational and magical figures, whose physiognomy will accord with the nature of the function that will supersede the thinking function as the vehicle of life.

If it should be the intuitive function, then the "other side" will be viewed through the eyes of a Kubin or a Meyrink.

If it is the feeling function, then quite unheard-of and fantastic feeling relationships will be formed, coupled with contradictory and unintelligible value judgments.

If it is the sensation function, the senses will nose up something new, and never experienced before, in and outside the body.

Closer examination of these permutations will easily demonstrate a recrudescence of primitive psychology with all its characteristic features.

Naturally, such experiences are not merely primitive, they are also symbolic; in fact, the more primordial and aboriginal they are, the more they represent a future truth.

For everything old in the unconscious hints at something coming. Carl Jung, Psychological Types, Para 630.

Saturday, January 27, 2018

Carl Jung: "But this concept is older than the philosophy of Lao-tzu."




The idea of a middle way between the opposites is to be found also in China, in the form of tao.

The concept of tao is usually associated with the name of the philosopher Lao-tzu, born 604 B.C.

But this concept is older than the philosophy of Lao-tzu.

It is bound up with the ancient folk religion of Taoism, the "way of Heaven," a concept corresponding to the Vedic rta.

The meanings of tao are as follows: way, method, principle, natural force or life force, the regulated processes of nature, the idea of the world, the prime cause of all phenomena, the right, the good, the moral order.

Some translators even translate it as God, not without some justification, it seems to me, since tao, like rta, has a tinge of substantiality.

I will first give a number of passages from the Tao Te Ching, Lao-tzu's classic:

Was Tao the child of something else? We cannot tell.
But as a substanceless image it existed before the Ancestor.
There was something formless yet complete,
That existed before heaven and earth;
Without sound, without substance,
Dependent on nothing, unchanging,
All pervading, unfailing,
One may think of it as the mother of all things under heaven.
Its true name we do not know;
"Way" is the name that we give it.

36 In order to characterize its essential quality, Lao-tzu likens it to water:

The highest good is like that of water. The goodness of water
is that it benefits the ten thousand creatures; yet itself does not
scramble, but is content with the [low] places that all men disdain.
It is this that makes water so near to the Way.

The idea of a "potential" could not be better expressed.

He that is without desire sees its essence,
He that clings to desire sees only its outward form.

The affinity with the fundamental Brahmanic ideas is unmistakable, though this does not necessarily imply direct contact.

Lao-tzu was an entirely original thinker, and the primordial image underlying rta-brahman-atman and tao is as universal as man, appearing in every age and among all peoples as a primitive
conception of energy, or "soul force," or however else it may be called.

He who knows the Always-so has room in him for everything;
He who has room in him for everything is without prejudice.
To be without prejudice is to be kingly;
To be kingly is to be of heaven;
To be of heaven is to be in Tao.
Tao is forever, and he that possesses it,
Though his body ceases, is not destroyed.

Knowledge of tao therefore has the same redeeming and uplifting effect as the knowledge of brahman.

Man becomes one with tao, with the unending duree creatrice (if we may compare this concept of Bergson's with its older congener), for tao is also the stream of time.

It is irrational, inconceivable:

Tao is a thing impalpable, incommensurable.
For though all creatures under heaven are the products
of [Tao as] Being,
Being itself is the product of [Tao as] Not-Being.
Tao is hidden and nameless.
It is obviously an irrational union of opposites, a symbol of
what is and is not.
The Valley Spirit never dies;
It is named the mysterious Female.
And the door of the mysterious Female
Is the base from which heaven and earth sprang.
363 Tao is the creative process, begetting as the father and
bringing forth as the mother. It is the beginning and end of all
creatures.

He whose actions are in harmony with Tao becomes one with Tao.

Therefore the perfected sage liberates himself from the opposites, having seen through their connection with one another and their alternation.

Therefore it is said:

When your work is done, then withdraw.
Such is heaven's way.
He [the perfected sage] cannot either be drawn into
friendship or repelled,
Cannot be benefited, cannot be harmed,
Cannot be either raised or humbled.

Being one with tao resembles the state of infancy:

Can you keep the unquiet physical soul from straying, hold fast
to the Unity, and never quit it?
Can you, when concentrating your breath, make it soft like that
of a little child?
He who knows the male, yet cleaves to what is female,
Becomes like a ravine, receiving all things under heaven;
And being such a ravine,
He knows all the time a power that he never calls upon in vain.
This is returning to the state of infancy.
The impunity of that which is fraught with this power
May be likened to that of an infant.

This psychological attitude is, as we know, an essential condition for obtaining the kingdom of heaven, and this in its turn—all rational interpretations notwithstanding—is the central,
irrational symbol whence the redeeming effect comes.

The Christian symbol merely has a more social character than the related conceptions of the East.

These are directly connected with age-old dynamistic ideas of a magical power emanating from people and things or—at a higher level of development

from gods or a divine principle.

According to the central concepts of Taoism, tao is divided into a fundamental pair of opposites, yang and yin.

Yang signifies warmth, light, maleness; yin is cold, darkness, femaleness.

Yang is also heaven, yin earth. From the yang force

arises shen, the celestial portion of the human soul, and from the yin force comes kwei, the earthly part.

As a microcosm, man is a reconciler of the opposites.

Heaven, man, and earth form the three chief elements of the world, the san-tsai.

The picture thus presented is an altogether primitive idea which we find in similar forms elsewhere, as for instance in the West African myth where Obatala and Odudua, the first parents
(heaven and earth), lie together in a calabash until a son, man, arises between them.

Hence man as a microcosm uniting the world opposites is the equivalent of an irrational symbol that unites the psychological opposites.

This primordial image of man is in keeping with Schiller's definition of the symbol as "living form."

The division of the psyche into a shen (or hwan) soul and a kwei (or p'o) soul is a great psychological truth.

This Chinese conception is echoed in the well-known passage from Faust:

Two souls, alas, are housed within my breast,
And each will wrestle for the mastery there.
The one has passion's craving crude for love,
And hugs a world where sweet the senses rage;
The other longs for pastures fair above,
Leaving the murk for lofty heritage.

The existence of two mutually antagonistic tendencies, both striving to drag man into extreme attitudes and entangle him in the world, whether on the material or spiritual level, sets him at variance with himself and accordingly demands the existence of a counterweight. This is the "irrational third," tao.

Hence the sage's anxious endeavour to live in harmony with tao, lest he fall into the conflict of opposites.

Since tao is irrational, it is not something that can be got by the will, as Lao-tzu repeatedly emphasizes.

This lends particular significance to another specifically Chinese concept, wu-wei. Wuwei means "not-doing" (which is not to be confused with "doing nothing"). Our rationalistic "doing," which is the greatness as well as the evil of our time, does not lead to tao.

The aim of Taoist ethics, then, is to find deliverance from the cosmic tension of opposites by a return to tao.

In this connection we must also remember the "sage of Omi," Nakae

Toju, an outstanding Japanese philosopher of the seventeenth century.

Basing himself on the teaching of the Chu-hi school, which had migrated from China, he established two principles, ri and ki. Ri is the world soul, ki is the world stuff.

Ri and ki are, however, the same because they are both attributes of God and therefore exist only in him and through him.

God is their union.

Equally, the soul embraces both ri and ki.

Toju says of God:

"As the essence of the world, God embraces the world, but at the same time he is in our midst and even in our bodies."

For him God is a universal self, while the individual self is the "heaven" within us, something supra-sensible and divine called ryochi. Ryochi is "God within us" and dwells in every individual.

It is the true self.

Toju distinguishes a true from a false self. The false self is an acquired personality compounded of perverted beliefs.

We might define this false self as the persona, that general idea of ourselves which we have built up from experiencing our effect upon the world around us and its effect upon us.

The persona is, in Schopenhauer's words, how one appears to oneself and the world, but not what one is.

What one is, is one's individual self, Toju's "true self" or ryochi. Ryochi is also called "being alone" or "knowing alone," clearly because it is a condition related to the essence of the self, beyond all personal judgments conditioned by external experience.

Toju conceives ryochi as the summum bonum, as "bliss" (brahman is bliss, ananda).

It is the light which pervades the world—a further parallel with brahman, according to Inouye.

It is love for mankind, immortal, all-knowing, good.

Evil comes from the will (shades of Schopenhauer!).

Ryochi is the self-regulating function, the mediator and uniter of the opposites, ri and ki; it is in fullest accord with the Indian idea of the "wise old man who dwells in the heart."

Or as Wang Yang-ming, the Chinese father of Japanese philosophy, says: "In every heart there dwells a sejin (sage).

Only, we do not believe it firmly enough, and therefore the whole has remained buried." ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 214-218

Just as conscious as well as unconscious phenomena are to be met with in practice, the self as psychic totality also has a conscious as well as an unconscious aspect.

Empirically, the self appears in dreams, myths, and fairytales in the figure of the "supraordinate personality" (v. ego), such as a king, hero, prophet, saviour, etc., or in the form of a totality symbol, such as the circle, square, quadratura circuli, cross, etc.

When it represents a complexio oppositorum, a union of opposites, it can also appear as a united duality, in the form, for instance, of tao as the interplay of yang and yin, or of the hostile brothers, or of the hero and his adversary (arch-enemy, dragon), Faust and Mephistopheles, etc.

Empirically, therefore, the self appears as a play of light and shadow, although conceived as a totality and unity in which the opposites are united.

Since such a concept is irrepresentable

tertium non datnr—it is transcendental on this account also. It would, logically considered, be a vain speculation were it not for the fact that it designates symbols of unity that are found to occur empirically. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 790

The brahman concept also contains the co~ncept of rta, right order, the orderly course of t ered, be a vain speculation were it not for the fact that it designates symbols of unity that are found to occur empirically.he world.

In brahman, the creative universal essence and universal Ground, all things come upon the right way, for in it they are eternally dissolved and recreated; all development in an orderly way proceeds from brahman.

The concept of rta is a stepping-stone to the concept of tao in Lao-tzu.

Tao is the right way, the reign of law, the middle road between the opposites, freed from them and yet uniting them in itself.

The purpose of life is to travel this middle road and never to deviate towards the opposites.

The ecstatic element is entirely absent in Lao-tzu; its place is taken by sublime philosophic lucidity, an intellectual and intuitive wisdom obscured by no mystical haze—a wisdom that represents what is probably the highest attainable degree of spiritual superiority, as far removed from chaos as the stars from the disorder of the actual world.

It tames all that is wild, without denaturing it and turning it into something higher. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 192

Saturday, January 20, 2018

Carl Jung: The concept of rta is a stepping-stone to the concept of tao in Lao-tzu.




The brahman concept also contains the concept of rta, right order, the orderly course of the world.

In brahman, the creative universal essence and universal Ground, all things come upon the right way, for in it they are eternally dissolved and recreated; all development in an orderly way proceeds from brahman.

The concept of rta is a stepping-stone to the concept of tao in Lao-tzu.

Tao is the right way, the reign of law, the middle road between the opposites, freed from them and yet uniting them in itself.

The purpose of life is to travel this middle road and never to deviate towards the opposites.

The ecstatic element is entirely absent in Lao-tzu; its place is taken by sublime philosophic lucidity, an intellectual and intuitive wisdom obscured by no mystical haze—a wisdom that represents what is probably the highest attainable degree of spiritual superiority, as far removed from chaos as the stars from the disorder of the actual world.

It tames all that is wild, without denaturing it and turning it into something higher. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 192

Saturday, October 14, 2017

Carl Jung: CW 6 "Psychological Types" - Quotations




The more "eternal" a truth, the more lifeless it is and worthless; it says nothing more to us because it is self-evident. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 87

Before [individuation] can be taken as a goal, the educational aim of adaptation to the necessary minimum of collective norms must first be attained. If a plant is to unfold its specific nature to the full, it must first be able to grow in the soil in which it is planted. ~Carl Jung; CW 6, par. 761.

As a rule, whenever such a falsification of type takes place . . . the individual becomes neurotic later, and can be cured only by developing the attitude consonant with his nature. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 560.

. . . poets . . . create from the very depths of the collective unconscious, voicing aloud what others only dream. ~Carl Jung; CW 6, Page 323.

The will is a psychological phenomenon that owes its existence to culture and moral education, but is largely lacking in the primitive mentality. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, para 844.

We find in Gnosticism what was lacking in the centuries that followed: a belief in the efficacy of individual revelation and individual knowledge. This belief was rooted in the proud feeling of man's affinity with the gods. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Page 242.

Like any archetype, the essential nature of the self is unknowable, but its manifestations are the content of myth and legend. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 790.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect, creative mind plays with the object it loves. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 197.

Before [individuation] can be taken as a goal, the educational aim of adaptation to the necessary minimum of collective norms must first be attained. ~Carl Jung, "Definitions," CW 6, par. 761.

Everyone whose attitude is introverted thinks, feels, and acts in a way that clearly demonstrates that the subject is the prime motivating factor and that the object is of secondary importance. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Par 769.

By psyche I understand the totality of all psychic processes, conscious as well as unconscious. By soul, on the other hand, I understand a clearly demarcated functional complex that can best be described as a "personality." ~Carl Jung; CW 6, par. 797

Intuition is not mere perception, or vision, but an active, creative process that puts into the object just as much as it takes out. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, para 610.

The psyche creates reality every day, the only expression I can use for this activity is fantasy. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 78.

Passive fantasy […] is always in need of conscious criticism […] whereas active fantasy [,,,] does not require criticism so much as understanding. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Par. 714.

If he is intent only on the outer reality, he must live his myth; if he is turned only towards the inner reality, he must dream his outer, so-called real life. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 280

The psychology of an individual can never be exhaustively explained from himself alone: a clear recognition is needed of the way it is also conditioned by historical and environmental circumstances. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 717

Again, no psychological fact can ever be exhaustively explained in terms of causality alone; as a living phenomenon, it is always indissolubly bound up with the continuity of the vital process, so that it is not only something evolved but also continually evolving and creative. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 717

Complexes are focal or nodal points of psychic life which we would not wish to do without; indeed, they should not be missing, for otherwise psychic activity would come to a fatal standstill. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 925

This function of mediation between the opposites I have termed the transcendent function, by which I mean nothing mysterious, but merely a combined function of conscious and unconscious elements, or, as in mathematics, a common function of real and imaginary qualities. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 184

Symbol-formation, therefore, must obviously be an extremely important biological function. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 402

The symbol is the middle way along which the opposites flow together in a new movement, like a watercourse bringing fertility after a long drought. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 443.

Childlikeness or lack of prior assumptions is of the very essence of the symbol and its function. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 442

If the old were not ripe for death, nothing new would appear; and if the old were not injuriously blocking the way for the new; it could not and need not be rooted out. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 446.

The creation of a symbol is not a rational process, for a rational process could never produce an image that represents a content which is at bottom incomprehensible. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 425

The Symbol always says; in some such form as this a new manifestation of life will become possible, a release from bondage and world-weariness. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 425.

The redeeming symbol is a highway, a way upon which life can move forward without torment and compulsion. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 445.

The vision of the symbol is a pointer to the onward course of life, beckoning with the libido towards a still distant goal—but a goal that henceforth will burn unquenchably within him, so that his life, kindled as by a flame, moves steadily towards the far-off beacon. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 202

For as the son of his father, he must, as if often the case with children, re-enact under unconscious compulsion the unlived lives of his parents. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 307

It is not the purpose of a psychological typology to classify human beings into categories—this in itself would be pretty pointless. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 986

Hence a man’s greater liability to total despair, while a woman can always find comfort and hope; accordingly a man is more likely to put an end to himself than a woman. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 805

As the individual is not just a single, separate being, but by his very existence presupposes a collective relationship, it follows that the process of individuation must lead to more intense and broader collective relationships and not to isolation. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 758

Christianity, like every closed system of religion, has an undoubted tendency to suppress the unconscious in the individual as much as possible, thus paralyzing his fantasy activity. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 80

Wherever we can observe a religion being born, we see how the doctrinal figures flow into the founder himself as revelations, in other words, as concretizations of his unconscious fantasy. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 80

The renewed God signifies a regenerated attitude, a renewed possibility of life, a recovery of vitality, because, psychologically speaking, God always denotes the highest value, the maximum sum of libido, the fullest intensity of life, the optimum of psychological vitality. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 301

We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only a half-truth, and must, if it be honest, also admit its inadequacy. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 856

Doubtless there are exceptional people who are able to sacrifice their entire life to a particular formula; but for most of us such exclusiveness is impossible in the long run. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 587

If the old were not ripe for death, nothing new would appear; and if the old were not blocking the way for the new, it could not and need not be rooted out. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 446

Everything old in our unconscious hints at something coming. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 630

The psyche creates reality every day. The only expression I can use for this activity is fantasy. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 78

Nothing is so apt to challenge our self-awareness and alertness as being at war with oneself. ~Carl Jung; CW 6; P. 964.

The soul gives birth to images that from the rational standpoint of consciousness are assumed to be worthless. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 426

To be effective, a symbol must be by its very nature unassailable. ~Carl Jung CW 6, Para 401

The primordial image is thus a condensation of the living process. ~Carl Jung, CW6, Para 748

A man's hatred is always concentrated on the thing that makes him conscious of his bad qualities. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 453

A fact never exists only as it is in itself, but also as we see it. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 510

Not the artist alone, but every creative individual whatsoever owes all that is greatest in his life to fantasy. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 93

It must not be forgotten that it is just in the imagination that a man’s highest value may lie. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 93

Purposively interpreted, it seems like a symbol, seeking to characterize a definite goal with the help of the material at hand, or trace out a line of future psychological development. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 758

The idea wants changelessness and eternity. Whoever lives under the supremacy of the idea strives for permanence; hence everything that pushes towards change must be opposed to the idea. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 153

The demand that he should see only objectively is quite out of the question, for it is impossible. We must be satisfied if he does not see too subjectively. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 9

It should not be forgotten that science is not the summa of life, that it is actually only one of the psychological attitudes, only one of the forms of human thought. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 60

In any age the vast majority of men are called upon to preserve and praise the status quo, thus helping to bring about the disastrous consequences which the prescience of the creative spirit had sought to avert. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 434

The symbol is the middle way along which the opposites flow together in a new movement, like a watercourse bringing fertility after a long drought. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 443

To be adapted is certainly an ideal, but adaptation is not always possible. There are situations in which the only adaptation is patient endurance. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 427

It is, pre-eminently, the creative activity from which the answers to all answerable questions come; it is the mother of all possibilities, where, like all psychological opposites, the inner and outer worlds are joined together in living union. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 78

It should be someone already has a much clouded vision or view of a very hazy distance, the human society, if he thinks that by uniform regulation of life an equal distribution of happiness could be achieved. ~Carl Jung; CW 6.

The concept of the unconscious is for me an exclusively psychological concept, and not a philosophical concept of a metaphysical nature. In my view the unconscious is a psychological borderline concept, which covers all psychic contents or processes that are not conscious, i.e., not related to the ego in any perceptible way. My justification for speaking of the existence of unconscious processes at all is derived simply and solely from experience. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, para 837.

It should not be forgotten that science is not the summa of life, that it is actually only one of the psychological attitudes, only one of the forms of human thought. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 60

Science must prove her value for life; it is not enough that she be the mistress, she must also be the maid. By so serving she in no way dishonors herself. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 84

But what great thing ever came into existence that was not first fantasy? ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 86

Actually it is the parents' lives that educate the child—what they add by word and gesture at best serves only to confuse him. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 665.

The consequence of increasing Mariolatry was the witch hunt, that indelible blot on the later Middle Ages. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 399

And just as the eye bears witness to the peculiar and spontaneous creative activity of living matter, the primordial image expresses the intrinsic and unconditioned creative power of the psyche. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 748

The more "eternal" a truth, the more lifeless it is and worthless; it says nothing more to us because it is self-evident. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 87

It is just the beam in one's own eye that enables one to detect the mote in one's brother's eye. The beam in one's own eye does not prove that one's brother has no mote in his. But the impairment of one's own vision might easily give rise to a general theory that all motes are beams. The recognition and taking to heart of the subjective determination of knowledge in general, and of psychological knowledge in particular, are basic conditions for the scientific and impartial evaluation of a psyche different from that of the observing subject. These conditions are fulfilled only when the observer is sufficiently informed about the nature and scope of his own personality. He can, however, be sufficiently informed only when he has in large measure freed himself from the levelling influence of collective opinions and thereby arrived at a clear conception of his own individuality. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 10

Reason can give a man equilibrium only if his reason is already an equilibrating organ. But for how many individuals and at what periods in history has it been that? As a rule, a man needs the opposite of his actual situation to force him to find his place in the middle. For the sake of mere reason he can never forgo life's riches and the sensuous appeal of the immediate situation. Against the power and delight of the temporal he must set the joy of the eternal, and against the passion of the sensual the ecstasy of the spiritual. The undeniable reality of the one must be matched by the compelling power of the other. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 386

SOUL. [psyche, personality, persona, anima,] I have been compelled, in my investigations into the structure of the unconscious, to make a conceptual distinction between soul and psyche. By psyche I understand the totality of all psychic processes, conscious as well as unconscious. By soul, on the other hand, I understand a clearly demarcated functional complex that can best be described as a “personality.” In order to make clear what I mean by this, I must introduce some further points of view. It is, in particular, the phenomena of somnambulism, double consciousness, split personality, etc., whose investigation we owe primarily to the French school, that have enabled us to accept the possibility of a plurality of personalities in one and the same individual. ~Carl Jung, CW 6. Para 797
The symbol is always a product of an extremely complex nature, since data from every psychic function have gone into its making. It is, therefore, neither rational nor irrational (qq.v.). It certainly has a side that accords with reason but it has another side that does not; for it is composed not ‘only of rational but also of irrational data supplied by pure inner and outer perception. The profundity and pregnant significance of the symbol appeal just as strongly to thinking as to feeling (qq.v.), while its peculiar plastic imagery, when shaped into sensuous form, stimulates sensation as much as intuition (qq.v.). The living symbol cannot come to birth in a dull or poorly developed mind, for such a mind will be content with the already existing symbols offered by established tradition. Only the passionate yearning of a highly developed mind, for which the traditional symbol is no longer the unified expression of the rational and the irrational, of the highest and the lowest, can create a new symbol. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 825

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. From this discredited and rejected region comes the new afflux of energy, the renewal of life. But what is this discredited and rejected source of vitality? It consists of all those psychic contents that were repressed because of their incompatibility with conscious values—everything hateful, immoral, wrong, unsuitable, useless, etc., which means everything that at one time or another appeared so to the individual concerned. The danger is that when these things reappear in a new and wonderful guise, they may make such an impact on him that he will forget or repudiate all his former values. What he once despised now becomes the supreme principle, and what was once truth now becomes error. This reversal of values amounts to the destruction of the old ones and is similar to the devastation of a country by floods. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 449

The ways and customs of childhood, once so sublimely good, can hardly be laid aside even when their harmful-ness has long since been proved. The same, only on a gigantic scale, is true of historical changes of attitude. A collective attitude is equivalent to a religion, and changes of religion constitute one of the most painful chapters in the world's history. In this respect our age is afflicted with a blindness that has no parallel. We think we have only to declare an accepted article of faith incorrect and invalid, and we shall be psychologically rid of all the traditional effects of Christianity or Judaism. We believe in enlightenment, as if an intellectual change somehow had a profounder influence on the emotional processes or even on the unconscious. We entirely forget that the religion of the last two thousand years is a psychological attitude, a definite form and manner of adaptation to the world without and within, that lays down a definite cultural pattern and creates an atmosphere which remains wholly uninfluenced by any intellectual denials. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 313

Between the religion of a people and its actual mode of life there is always a compensatory relation, otherwise religion would have no practical significance at all. Beginning with the highly moral religion of the Persians and the notorious dubiousness—even in antiquity—of Persian habits of life, right down to our "Christian" epoch, when the religion of love assisted at the greatest blood-bath in the world's history—wherever we turn this rule holds true. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 229

In the same measure as the conscious attitude may pride itself on a certain godlikeness by reason of its lofty and absolute standpoint, an unconscious attitude develops with a godlikeness oriented downwards to an archaic god whose nature is sensual and brutal. The enantiodromia of Heraclitus ensures that the time will come when this deus ahsconditus shall rise to the surface and press the God of our ideals to the wall. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 150


Reason must always seek the solution in some rational, consistent, logical way, which is certainly justifiable enough in all normal situations but is entirely inadequate when it comes to the really great and decisive questions. It is incapable of creating the symbol because the symbol is irrational. When the rational way proves to be a cul de sac—as it always does after a time—the solution comes from the side it was least expected. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 438

Faced with the bewildering profusion of animated objects, we create an abstraction, an abstract universal image which conjures the welter of impressions into a fixed form. This image has the magical significance of a defence against the chaotic flux of experience. The abstracting type becomes so lost and submerged in this image that finally its abstract truth is set above the reality of life; and because life might disturb the enjoyment of abstract beauty, it gets completely suppressed. He turns himself into an abstraction, he identifies with the eternal validity of the image and petrifies in it, because for him it has become a redeeming formula. He divests himself of his real self and puts his whole life into his abstraction, in which he is, so to speak, crystallized. The empathetic type suffers a similar fate. Since his activity, his life is empathized into the object, he himself gets into the object because the empathized content is an essential part of himself. He becomes the object, he identifies with it and in this way gets outside himself. By turning himself into an object he desubjectifies himself. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 499

Just as the unconscious world of mythological images speaks indirectly, through the experience of external things, to the man who surrenders himself wholly to the outer world, so the real world and its demands find their way indirectly to the man who has surrendered himself wholly to the soul; for no man can escape both realities. If he is intent only on the outer reality, he must live his myth; if he is turned only towards the inner reality, he must dream his outer, so-called real life. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 280


The tasks of every age differ, and it is only in retrospect that we can discern with certainty what had to be and what should not have been. In the momentary present the conflict of opinions will always rage, for "war is the father of all." History alone decides the issue. Truth is not eternal —it is a programme to be fulfilled. The more "eternal" a truth, the more lifeless it is and worthless; it says nothing more to us because it is self-evident. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 87

The world exists not merely in itself but also as it appears to me. Indeed, at bottom, we have absolutely no criterion that could help us to form a judgment of a world which was unassimilable by the subject. If we were to ignore the subjective factor, it would be a complete denial of the great doubt as to the possibility of absolute cognition. And this would mean a relapse into the stale and hollow positivism that marred the turn of the century—an attitude of intellectual arrogance accompanied by crudeness of feeling, a violation of life as stupid as it is presumptuous. By overvaluing our capacity for objective cognition we repress the importance of the subjective factor, which simply means a denial of the subject. But what is the subject. The subject is manhimself—we are the subject. Only a sick mind could forget that cognition must have a subject, and that there is no knowledge whatever and no world at all unless "I know" has been said, though with this statement one has already expressed the subjective limitation of all knowledge. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 621

Man is not a machine that can be remodeled for quite other purposes as occasion demands, in the hope that it will go on functioning as regularly as before but in a quite different way. He carries his whole history with him; in his very structure is written the history of mankind. The historical element in man represents a vital need to which a wise psychic economy must respond. Somehow the past must come alive and participate in the present. Total assimilation to the object will always arouse the protest of the suppressed minority of those elements that belong to the past and have existed from the very beginning. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 570

Certainly strife and misunderstanding will always be among the props of the tragi-comedy of human existence, but it is none the less undeniable that the advance of civilization has led from the law of the jungle to the establishment of courts of justice and standards of right and wrong which are above the contending parties. It is my conviction that a basis for the settlement of conflicting views would be found in the recognition of different types of attitude — a recognition not only of the existence of such types, but also of the fact that every man is so imprisoned in his type that he is simply incapable of fully understanding another standpoint. Failing a recognition of this exacting demand, a violation of the other standpoint is practically inevitable. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 847

Because we are still such barbarians, any trust in the laws of human nature seems to us a dangerous and unethical naturalism. Why is this? Because under the barbarian's thin veneer of culture the wild beast lurks in readiness, amply justifying his fear. But the beast is not tamed by locking it up in a cage. There is no morality without freedom. When the barbarian lets loose the beast within him, that is not freedom but bondage. Barbarism must first be vanquished before freedom can be won. This happens, in principle, when the basic root and driving force of morality are felt by the individual as constituents of his own nature and not as external restrictions. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 357

Science as an end in itself is assuredly a high ideal, yet its consistent fulfilment brings about as many "ends in themselves" as there are sciences and arts. Naturally this leads to a high differentiation and specialization of the particular functions concerned, but also to their detachment from the world and from life, as well as to a multiplication of specialized fields which gradually lose all connection with one another. The result is an impoverishment and desiccation not merely in the specialized fields but also in the psyche of every man who has differentiated himself up or sunk down to the specialist level. Science must prove her value for life; it is not enough that she be the mistress, she must also be the maid. By so serving she in no way dishonors herself. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 84

If psychology remains for us only a science, we do not penetrate into life—we merely serve the absolute aim of science. It leads us, certainly, to a knowledge of the objective situation, but it always opposes every other aim but its own. The intellect remains imprisoned in itself just so long as it does not willingly sacrifice its supremacy by acknowledging the value of other aims. It shrinks from the step which takes it out of itself and which denies its universal validity, since from the standpoint of the intellect everything else is nothing but fantasy. But what great thing ever came into existence that was not first fantasy? ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 86

We know that every good idea and all creative work are the offspring of the imagination, and have their source in what one is pleased to call infantile fantasy. Not the artist alone but every creative individual whatsoever owes all that is greatest in his life to fantasy. The dynamic principle of fantasy is play, a characteristic also of the child, and as such it appears inconsistent with the principle of serious work. But without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable. It is therefore shortsighted to treat fantasy, on account of its daring or objectionable nature, as a thing of little worth. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 93


A child certainly allows himself to be impressed by the grand talk of his parents, but do they really imagine he is educated by it? Actually it is the parents' lives that educate the child—what they add by word and gesture at best serves only to confuse him. The same holds good for the teacher. But we have such a belief in method that, if only the method be good, the practice of it seems to sanctify the teacher. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 665

An inferior man is never a good teacher. But he can conceal his pernicious inferiority, which secretly poisons the pupil, behind an excellent method or an equally brilliant gift of gab. Naturally the pupil of riper years desires nothing better than the knowledge of useful methods, because he is already defeated by the general attitude, which believes in the all-conquering method. He has learnt that the emptiest head, correctly echoing a method, is the best pupil. His whole environment is an optical demonstration that all success and all happiness are outside, and that only the right method is needed to attain the haven of one's desires. Or does, perchance, the life of his religious instructor demonstrate the happiness which radiates from the treasure of the inner vision? ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 665

Aestheticism is not fitted to solve the exceedingly serious and difficult task of educating man, for it always presupposes the very thing it should create—the capacity to love beauty. It actually hinders a deeper investigation of the problem, because it always averts its face from anything evil, ugly, and difficult, and aims at pleasure, even though it be of an edifying kind. Aestheticism therefore lacks all moral force, because au fond it is still only a refined hedonism. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 194

Both these necessities exist in ourselves nature and culture. We cannot only be ourselves, we must also be related to others. Hence a way must be found that is not a mere rational compromise; it must be a state or process that is wholly consonant with the living being, "a highway and a holy way," as the prophet says, "a straight way, so that fools shall not err therein" (Isaiah 35:8). ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 135

Conscious capacity for one-sidedness is a sign of the highest culture, but involuntary one-sidedness, i.e., inability to be anything but one-sided, is a sign of barbarism. Hence the most one-sided differentiations are found among semi-barbarians—for instance, certain aspects of Christian asceticism that are an affront to good taste, and parallel phenomena among the yogis and Tibetan Buddhists. For the barbarian, this tendency to fall a victim to one-sidedness in one way or another, thus losing sight of his total personality, is a great and constant danger. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 346

No culture is ever really complete, for it always swings more towards one side or the other. Sometimes the cultural idea is extraverted, and then the chief value lies with the object and man's relation to it; sometimes it is introverted, and then the chief value lies with the subject and his relation to the idea. In the former case, culture takes on a collective character, in the latter an individual one. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 110

We obviously need both civilization and culture. . . . We cannot create one without the other, and we must admit, unfortunately, that modern humanity lacks both. Where there is too much of the one there is too little of the other, if we want to put it more cautiously. The continual harping on progress has by now become rather suspect. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 477

Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 429

The ideal and aim of science do not consist in giving the most exact possible description of the facts—science cannot compete as a recording instrument with the camera and the gramophone—but in establishing certain laws, which are merely abbreviated expressions for many diverse processes that are yet conceived to be somehow correlated. This aim goes beyond the purely empirical realm by means of the concept, which, though it may have general and proved validity, will always be a product of the subjective psychological constellation of the investigator. In the making of scientific theories and concepts many personal and accidental factors are involved. There is also a personal equation that is psychological and not merely psychophysical. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 9

Since [in the Middle Ages] the psychic relation to woman was expressed in the collective worship of Mary, the image of woman lost a value to which human beings had a natural right. This value could find its natural expression only through individual choice, and it sank into the unconscious when the individual form of expression was replaced by a collective one. In the unconscious the image of woman received an energy charge that activated the archaic and infantile dominants. And since all unconscious contents, when activated by dissociated libido, are projected upon the external object, the devaluation of the real woman was compensated by daemonic features. She no longer appeared as an object of love, but as a persecutor or witch. The consequence of increasing Mariolatry was the witch hunt, that indelible blot on the later Middle Ages. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 399

Whereas logic and objectivity are usually the predominant features of a man's outer attitude, or are at least regarded as ideals, in the case of a woman it is feeling. But in the soul it is the other way round inwardly it is the man who feels, and the woman who reflects. Hence a man's greater liability to total despair, while a woman can always find comfort and hope; accordingly a man is more likely to put an end to himself than a woman. However much a victim of social circumstances a woman may be, as a prostitute for instance, a man is no less a victim of impulses from the unconscious, taking the form of alcoholism and other vices. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 805


Again, no psychological fact can ever be exhaustively explained in terms of causality alone; as a living phenomenon, it is always indissolubly bound up with the continuity of the vital process, so that it is not only something evolved but also continually evolving and creative. Anything psychic is Janus-faced it looks both backwards and forwards. Because it is evolving, it is also preparing the future. Were this not so, intentions, aims, plans, calculations, predictions, and premonitions would be psychological impossibilities. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 718

The psychological investigator is always finding himself obliged to make extensive use of an indirect method of description in order to present the reality he has observed. Only in so far as elementary facts are communicated which are amenable to quantitative measurement can there be any question of a direct presentation. But how much of the actual psychology of man can be experienced and observed as quantitatively measurable facts? ~Carl Jung, CW 6; Para 672

Reverence for the great mysteries of nature, which the language of religion seeks to express in symbols hallowed by their antiquity, profound significance, and beauty, will not suffer from the extension of psychology to this domain, to which science has hitherto found no access. We only shift the symbols back a little, shedding a little light on their darker reaches, but without succumbing to the erroneous notion that we have created more than merely a new symbol for the same enigma that perplexed all ages before us. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 428

A symbol loses its magical or, if you prefer, its redeeming power as soon as its liability to dissolve is recognized. To be effective, a symbol must be by its very nature unassailable. It must be the best possible expression of the prevailing worldview, an unsurpassed container of meaning; it must also be sufficiently remote from comprehension to resist all attempts of the critical intellect to break it down; and finally, its aesthetic form must appeal so convincingly to our feelings that no arguments can be raised against it on that score. ~Carl Jung CW 6, Para 401

Do we ever understand what we think? We only understand that kind of thinking which is a mere equation, from which nothing comes out but what we have put in. That is the working of the intellect. But besides that there is a thinking in primordial images, in symbols which are older than the historical man, which are inborn in him from the earliest times, and, eternally living, outlasting all generations, still make up the groundwork of the human psyche. As we can see from the example of Faust, the vision of the symbol is a pointer to the onward course of life, beckoning the libido towards a still distant goal—but a goal that henceforth will burn unquenchably within him, so that his life, kindled as by a flame, moves steadily towards the far off beacon. This is the specific life-promoting significance of the symbol, and such, too, is the meaning and value of religious symbols. I am speaking, of course, not of symbols that are dead and stiffened by dogma, but of living symbols that rise up from the creative unconscious of the living man. The immense significance of such symbols can be denied only by those for whom the history of the world begins with the present day. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 202

There is a deep gulf between what a man is and what he represents, between what he is as an individual and what he is as a collective being. His function is developed at the expense of the individuality. Should he excel, he is merely identical with his collective function; but should he not, then, though he may be highly esteemed as a function in society, his individuality is wholly on the level of his inferior, undeveloped functions, and he is simply a barbarian, while in the former case he has happily deceived himself as to his actual barbarism. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 111

No social legislation will ever be able to overcome the psychological differences between men, this most necessary factor for generating the vital energy of a human society. It may serve a useful purpose, therefore, to speak of the heterogeneity of men. These differences involve such different requirements for happiness that no legislation, however perfect, could afford them even approximate satisfaction. No outward form of life could be devised, however equitable and just it might appear, that would not involve injustice for one or the other human type. That, in spite of this, every kind of enthusiast—political, social, philosophical, and religious—is busily endeavouring to find those uniform external conditions which would bring with them greater opportunities for the happiness of all seems to me connected with a general attitude to life too exclusively. Although it is certainly a fine thing that every man should stand equal before the law, that every man should have his political vote, and that no man, through hereditary social position and privilege, should have unjust advantage over his brother, it is distinctly less fine when the idea of equality is extended to other walks of life. A man must have a very clouded vision, or view human society from a very misty distance, to cherish the notion that the uniform regulation of life would automatically ensure a uniform distribution of happiness. He must be pretty far gone in delusion if he imagines that equality of income, or equal opportunities for all, would have approximately the same value for everyone. But, if he were a legislator, what would he do about all those people whose greatest opportunities lie not without, but within? If he were just, he would have to give at least twice as much money to the one as to the other, since to the one it means much, to the other little. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, CW 845

When a problem that is at bottom personal, and therefore apparently subjective, coincides with external events that contain the same psychological elements as the personal conflict, it is suddenly transformed into a general question embracing the whole of society. In this way the personal problem acquires a dignity it lacked hitherto, since a state of inner discord always has something humiliating and degrading about it, so that one sinks into an ignominious condition both without and within, like a state dishonoured by civil war. It is this that makes one shrink from displaying before the public a purely personal conflict, provided of course that one does not suffer from an overdose of self-esteem. But if the connection between the personal problem and the larger contemporary events is discerned and understood, it brings release from the loneliness of the purely personal, and the subjective problem is magnified into a general question of our society. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 119

To establish a really mature attitude, he has to see the subjective value of all these images which seem to create trouble for him. He has to assimilate them into his own psychology; he has to find out in what way they are part of himself; how he attributes for instance a positive value to an object, when as a matter of fact it is he who could and should develop this value. And in the same way, when he projects negative qualities and therefore hates and loathes the object, he has to discover that he is projecting his own inferior side, his shadow, as it were, because he prefers to have an optimistic and one-sided image of himself. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 813.

Abstraction is an activity pertaining to the psychological functions in general. There is an abstract thinking, just as there is abstract feeling, sensation, and intuition. Abstract thinking singles out the rational, logical qualities of a given content from its intellectually irrelevant components. Abstract feeling does the same with a content characterized by its feeling-values . . . . Abstract sensation would be aesthetic as opposed to sensuous sensation, and abstract intuition would be symbolic as opposed to fantastic intuition. ~Carl Jung; CW 6, par. 678.

Opposites can be united only in the form of compromise, or irrationally, some new thing arising between them which, though different from both, yet has the power totake up their energies in equal measure as an expression of both and of neither. Such an expression cannot be contrived by reason, it can only be created through living. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 169

Out of a playful movement of elements whose interrelations are not immediately apparent, patterns arise which an observant and critical intellect can only evaluate afterwards. The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 197

The accumulated libido activates images lying dormant in the collective unconscious, among them the God-image, that engram or imprint which from the beginning of time has been the collective expression of the most overwhelmingly powerful influences exerted on the conscious mind by unconscious concentrations of libido. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 412

As we can see from the example of Faust, the vision of the symbol is a pointer to the onward course of life, beckoning the libido towards a still distant goal—but a goal that henceforth will burn unquenchably within him, so that his life, kindled as by a flame, moves steadily towards the far off beacon. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 202

Reverence for the great mysteries of nature, which the language of religion seeks to express in symbols hallowed by their antiquity, profound significance, and beauty, will not suffer from the extension of psychology to this domain, to which science has hitherto found no access. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 428

Again, no psychological fact can ever be exhaustively explained in terms of causality alone; as a living phenomenon, it is always indissolubly bound up with the continuity of the vital process, so that it is not only something evolved but also continually evolving and creative. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 718

The dammed-up instinctual forces in civilized man are immensely destructive and far more dangerous than the instincts of the primitive, who in a modest degree is constantly living out his negative instincts. Consequently no war of the historical past can rival in grandiose horror the wars of civilized nations. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 230

Man is constantly inclined to forget that what was once good does not remain good eternally. He follows the old ways that once were good long after they have become bad and only with the greatest sacrifices and untold suffering can he rid himself of this delusion and see that what was once good is now perhaps grown old and is good no longer. This is so in great things as in small. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 313

Just as the unconscious world of mythological images speaks indirectly, through the experience of external things, to the man who surrenders himself wholly to the outer world, so the real world and its demands find their way indirectly to the man who has surrendered himself wholly to the soul; for no man can escape both realities. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 280

Apotropaic: Descriptive of "magical thinking," based on the desire to depotentiate the influence of an object or person. Apotropaic actions are characteristic of introversion as a mode of psychological orientation. I have seen an introverted child who made his first attempts to walk only after he had learned the names of all the objects in the room he might touch. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, par. 897.

Sensation must be strictly differentiated from feeling, since the latter is an entirely different process, although it may associate itself with sensation as "feeling-tone." Sensation is related not only to external stimuli but to inner ones, i.e., to changes in the internal organic processes. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 792.

The dynamic principle of fantasy is play, a characteristic also of the child, and as such it appears inconsistent with the principle of serious work. But without this playing with fantasy any creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable. It is therefore short-sighted to treat fantasy, on account of its risky or unacceptable nature, as a thing of little worth. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Page 82.

I have been compelled, in my investigations into the structure of the unconscious, to make a conceptual distinction between soul and psyche. By psyche I understand the totality of all psychic processes, conscious as well as unconscious. By soul, on the other hand, I understand a clearly demarcated functional complex that can best be described as a "personality." ~Carl Jung, CW 6, para 797.

Nothing is so apt to challenge our self-awareness and alertness as being at war with oneself. One can hardly think of any other or more effective means of waking humanity out of the irresponsible and innocent half-sleep of the primitive mentality and bringing it to a state of conscious responsibility. ~Carl Jung; CW 6; Page 964.

Wednesday, August 9, 2017

Carl Jung: This is not to say—once again I would like to emphasize this point very clearly—that all psychotherapeutic methods are, by and large, useless.



This is not to say—once again I would like to emphasize this point very clearly—that all psychotherapeutic methods are, by and large, useless. I merely want to stress the fact that there are not a few cases where the doctor has to make up his mind to deal fundamentally with the unconscious, to come to a real settlement with it.

This is of course something very different from interpretation.

In the latter case it is taken for granted that the doctor knows beforehand, so as to be able to interpret.

But in the case of a real settlement it is not a question of interpretation: it is a question of releasing unconscious processes and letting them come into the conscious mind in the form of fantasies. We can try our hand at interpreting these fantasies if we like.

In many cases it may be quite important for the patient to have some idea of the meaning of the fantasies produced.

But it is of vital importance that he should experience them to the full and, in so far as intellectual understanding belongs to the
totality of experience, also understand them. Yet I would not give priority to understanding.

Naturally the doctor must be able to assist the patient in his understanding, but, since he will not and indeed cannot understand everything, the doctor should assiduously guard against clever feats of interpretation.

The transcendent function does not proceed without aim and purpose, but leads to the revelation of the es- sential man.

It is in the first place a purely natural process, which may in some cases pursue its course without the knowl- edge or assistance of the individual, and can sometimes forcibly accomplish itself in the face of opposition.

The meaning and purpose of the process is the realization, in all its aspects, of the personality originally hid- den away in the embryonic germplasm; the production and unfolding of the original, potential wholeness.

The symbols used by the unconscious to this end are the same as those which mankind has always used to express wholeness, completeness, and perfection: symbols, as a rule, of the quaternity and the circle.

For these reasons I have termed this the individuation process.

This natural process of individuation served me both as a model and guiding principle for my method of treat- ment. Carl Jung, CW 7, Paras 186-187

Individuation means becoming an “individual,” and, in so far as “individuality” embraces our innermost, last, and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies becoming one’s own self.

We could therefore translate individuation as “coming to selfhood” or “self-realization.” Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 266

The aim of individuation is nothing less than to divest the self of the false wrappings of the persona on the one hand, and of the suggestive power of primordial images on the other. Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 269

Human beings have one faculty which, though it is of the greatest utility for collective purposes, is most perni- cious for individuation, and that is the faculty of imitation.

Collective psychology cannot dispense with imitation, for without it all mass organizations, the State and the social order, are impossible.

Society is organized, indeed, less by law than by the propensity to imitation, implying equally suggestibility, suggestion, and mental contagion.

But we see every day how people use, or rather abuse, the mechanism of imitation for the purpose of personal differentiation: they are content to ape some eminent personality, some striking characteristic or mode of behaviour, thereby achieving an outward distinction from the circle in which they move.

We could almost say that as a punishment for this the uniformity of their minds with those of their neighbours, already real enough, is intensified into an unconscious, compulsive bondage to the environment.

As a rule these specious attempts at individual differentiation stiffen into a pose, and the imitator remains at the same level as he always was, only several degrees more sterile than before.

To find out what is truly individual in ourselves, profound reflection is needed; and suddenly we realize how uncommonly difficult the discovery of individuality is. Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 342.

In the individuation process, it anticipates the figure that comes from the synthesis of conscious and unconscious elements in the personality.

It is therefore a symbol which unites the opposites; a mediator, bringer of healing, that is, one who makes whole.

Because it has this meaning, the child motif is capable of the numerous transformations mentioned above: it can be expressed by roundness, the circle or sphere, or else by the quaternity as another form of wholeness.

I have called this wholeness that transcends consciousness the “self.”

The goal of the individuation process is the synthesis of the self. Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 278

For the alchemists the process of individuation represented by the opus was an analogy of the creation of the world, and the opus itself an analogy of God’s work of creation. Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 550

This, roughly, is what I mean by the individuation process.

As the name shows, it is a process or course of development arising out of the conflict between the two fundamental psychic facts. Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 522-523

Animals generally signify the instinctive forces of the unconscious, which are brought into unity within the mandala.

This integration of the instincts is a prerequisite for individuation. Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 660

If the individuation process is made conscious, consciousness must confront the unconscious and a balance between the opposites must be found.

As this is not possible through logic, one is dependent on symbols which make the irrational union of opposites possible.

They are produced spontaneously by the unconscious and are amplified by the conscious mind.

The central symbols of this process describe the self, which is man’s totality, consisting on the one hand of that which is conscious to him, and on the other hand of the contents of the unconscious. Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 755

Individuation appears, on the one hand, as the synthesis of a new unity which previously consisted of scattered particles, and on the other hand, as the revelation of something which existed before the ego and is in fact its father or creator and also its totality. Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 400

Individuation is an expression of that biological process—simple or complicated as the case may be —by which every living thing becomes what it was destined to become from the beginning.

This process naturally expresses itself in man as much psychically as somatically. Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 460 The goal of psychological, as of biological, development is self-realization, or individuation.

But since man knows himself only as an ego, and the self, as a totality, is indescribable and indistinguishable from a God image, self-realization—to put it in religious or metaphysical terms —amounts to God’s incarnation.

That is already expressed in the fact that Christ is the son of God. Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 233

The metaphysical process is known to the psychology of the unconscious as the individuation process.

In so far as this process, as a rule, runs its course unconsciously as it has from time immemorial, it means no more than the acorn becomes an oak, the calf a cow, and the child an adult.

But if the individuation process is made conscious, consciousness must confront the unconscious and a balance between the opposites must be found.

As this is not possible through logic, one is dependent on symbols which make the irrational union of opposites possible.

They are produced spontaneously by the unconscious and are amplified by the conscious mind.Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 755

The difference between the “natural” individuation process, which runs its course unconsciously, and the one which is consciously realized, is tremendous.

In the first case consciousness nowhere intervenes; the end remains as dark as the beginning.

In the second case so much darkness comes to light that the personality is permeated with light, and consciousness necessarily gains in scope and insight.

The encounter between conscious and unconscious has to ensure that the light which shines in the darkness is not only comprehended by the darkness, but comprehends it. Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 756

Sunday, July 2, 2017

Carl Jung: THE SYZYGY: ANIMA AND ANIMUS




The Zyzygies

What, then, is this projection-making factor? The East calls it the “Spinning Woman” Maya, who creates illusion by her dancing. Had we not long since known it from the symbolism of dreams, this hint from the Orient would put us on the right track: the enveloping, embracing, and devouring element points unmistakably to the mother, that is, to the son’s relation to the real mother, to her imago, and to the woman who is to become a mother for him. His Eros is passive like a child’s; he hopes to be caught, sucked in, enveloped, and devoured. He seeks, as it were, the protecting, nourishing, charmed circle of the mother, the condition of the infant released from every care, in which the outside world bends over him and even forces happiness upon him. No wonder the real world vanishes from sight!

If this situation is dramatized, as the unconscious usually dramatizes it, then there appears before you on the psychological stage a man living regressively, seeking his childhood and his mother, fleeing from a cold cruel world which denies him understanding. Often a mother appears beside him who apparently shows not the slightest concern that her little son should become a man, but who, with tireless and self-immolating effort, neglects nothing that might hinder him from growing up and marrying. You behold the secret conspiracy between mother and son, and how each helps the other to betray life.

Where does the guilt lie? With the mother, or with the son? Probably with both. The unsatisfied longing of the son for life and the world ought to be taken seriously. There is in him a desire to touch reality, to embrace the earth and fructify the field of the world. But he makes no more than a series of fitful starts, for his initiative as well as his staying power are crippled by the secret memory that the world and happiness may be had as a giftfrom the mother. The fragment of world which he, like every man, must encounter again and again is never quite the right one, since it does not fall into his lap, does not meet him half way, but remains resistant, has to be conquered, and submits only to force. It makes demands on the masculinity of a man, on his ardour, above all on his courage and resolution when it comes to throwing his whole being into the scales. For this he would need a faithless Eros, one capable of forgetting his mother and undergoing the pain of relinquishing the first love of his life. The mother, foreseeing this danger, has carefully inculcated into him the virtues of faithfulness, devotion, loyalty, so as to protect him from the moral disruption which is the risk of every life adventure. He has learnt these lessons only too well, and remains true to his mother. This naturally causes her the deepest anxiety (when, to her greater glory, he turns out to be a homosexual, for example) and at the same time affords her an unconscious satisfaction that is positively mythological. For, in the relationship now reigning between them, there is consummated the immemorial and most sacred archetype of the marriage of mother and son. What, after all, has commonplace reality to offer, with its registry offices, pay envelopes, and monthly rent, that could outweigh the mystic awe of the hieros games? Or the star-crowned woman whom the dragon pursues, or the pious obscurities veiling the marriage of the Lamb?

23 This myth, better than any other, illustrates the nature of the collective unconscious. At this level the mother is both old and young, Demeter and Persephone, and the son is spouse and sleeping suckling rolled into one. The imperfections of real life, with its laborious adaptations and manifold disappointments, naturally cannot compete with such a state of indescribable fulfilment.

In the case of the son, the projection-making factor is identical with the mother-imago, and this is consequently taken to be the real mother. The projection can only be dissolved when the son sees that in the realm of his psyche there is an image not only of the mother but of the daughter, the sister, the beloved, the heavenly goddess, and the chthonic Baubo. Every mother and every beloved is forced to become the carrier and embodiment of this omnipresent and ageless image, which corresponds to the deepest reality in a man. It belongs to him, this perilous image of Woman; she stands for the loyalty which in the interests of life he must sometimes forgo; she is the much needed compensation for the risks, struggles, sacrifices that all end in disappointment; she is the solace for all the bitterness of life. And, at the same time, she is the great illusionist, the seductress, who draws him into life with her Maya and not only into life’s reasonable and useful aspects, but into its frightful paradoxes and ambivalences where good and evil, success and ruin, hope and despair, counterbalance one another. Because she is his greatest danger she demands from a man his greatest, and if he has it in him she will receive it.

This image is “My Lady Soul,” as Spitteler called her. I have suggested instead the term “anima,” as indicating something specific, for which the expression “soul” is too general and too vague. The empirical reality summed up under the concept of the anima forms an extremely dramatic content of the unconscious. It is possible to describe this content in rational, scientific language, but in this way one entirely fails to express its living character. Therefore, in describing the living processes of the psyche, I deliberately and consciously give preference to a dramatic, mythological way of thinking and speaking, because this is not only more expressive but also more exact than an abstract scientific terminology, which is wont to toy with the notion that its theoretic formulations may one fine day be resolved into algebraic equations.

The projection-making factor is the anima, or rather the unconscious as represented by the anima. Whenever she appears, in dreams, visions, and fantasies, she takes on personified form, thus demonstrating that the factor she embodies possesses all the outstanding characteristics of a feminine being. She is not an invention of the conscious, but a spontaneous product of the unconscious. Nor is she a substitute figure for the mother. On the contrary, there is every likelihood that the numinous qualities which make the mother-imago so dangerously powerful derive from the collective archetype of the anima, which is incarnated anew in every male child.

Since the anima is an archetype that is found in men, it is reasonable to suppose that an equivalent archetype must be present in women; for just as the man is compensated by a feminine element, so woman is compensated by a masculine
one. I do not, however, wish this argument to give the impression that these compensatory relationships were arrived at by deduction. On the contrary, long and varied experience was needed in order to grasp the nature of anima and animus empirically. Whatever we have to say about these archetypes, therefore, is either directly verifiable or at least rendered probable by the facts. At the same time, I am fully aware that we are discussing pioneer work which by its very nature can only be provisional.

Just as the mother seems to be the first carrier of the projection-making factor for the son, so is the father for the daughter. Practical experience of these relationships is made up of many individual cases presenting all kinds of variations on the same basic theme. A concise description of them can, therefore, be no more than schematic.

Woman is compensated by a masculine element and therefore her unconscious has, so to speak, a masculine imprint. This results in a considerable psychological difference between men and women, and accordingly I have called the projection-making factor in women the animus, which means mind or spirit. The animus corresponds to the paternal Logos just as the anima corresponds to the maternal Eros. But I do not wish or intend to give these two intuitive concepts too specific a definition. I use Eros and Logos merely as conceptual aids to describe the fact that woman’s consciousness is characterized more by the connective quality of Eros than by the discrimination and cognition associated with Logos. In men, Eros, the function of relationship, is usually less developed than Logos. In women, on the other hand, Eros is an expression of their true nature, while their Logos is often only a regrettable accident. It gives rise to misunderstandings and annoying interpretations in the family circle and among friends. This is because it consists of opinions instead of reflections, and by opinions I mean a priori assumptions that lay claim to absolute truth. Such assumptions, as everyone knows, can be extremely irritating. As the animus is partial to argument, he can best be seen at work in disputes where both parties know they are tight. Men can argue in a very womanish way, too, when they are anima-possessed and have thus been transformed into the animus of their own anima. With them the question becomes one of personal vanity and touchiness (as if they were females); with women it is a question of power, whether of truth or justice or some other “ism” for the dressmaker and hairdresser have already taken care of their vanity. The “Father” (i.e., the sum of conventional opinions) always plays a great role in female argumentation. No matter how friendly and obliging a woman’s Eros may be, no logic on earth can shake her if she is ridden by the animus. Often the man has the feelingand he is not altogether wrong that only seduction or a beating or rape would have the necessary power of persuasion. He is unaware that this highly dramatic situation would instantly come to a banal and unexciting end if he were to quit the field and let a second woman carry on the battle (his wife, for instance, if she herself is not the fiery war horse). This sound idea seldom or never occurs to him, because no man can converse with an animus for five minutes without becoming the victim of his own anima. Anyone who still had enough sense of humour to listen objectively to the ensuing dialogue would be staggered by the vast number of commonplaces, misapplied truisms, cliches from newspapers and novels, shop-soiled platitudes of every description interspersed with vulgar abuse and brain-splitting lack of logic. It is a dialogue which, irrespective of its participants, is repeated millions and millions of times in all the languages of the world and always remains essentially the same. This singular fact is due to the following circumstance: when animus and anima meet, the animus draws his sword of power and the anima ejects her poison of illusion and seduction. The outcome need not always be negative, since the two are equally likely to fall in love (a special instance of love at first sight). The language of love is of astonishing uniformity, using the well-worn formulas with the utmost devotion and fidelity, so that once again the two partners find themselves in a banal collective situation. Yet they live in the illusion that they are related to one another in a most individual way.

In both its positive and its negative aspects the anirna /animus relationship is always full of “animosity/’ i.e., it is emotional, and hence collective. Affects lower the level of the relationship and bring it closer to the common instinctual basis, which no longer has anything individual about it. Very often the relationship runs its course heedless of its human performers, who afterwards do not know what happened to them.

Whereas the cloud of “animosity” surrounding the man is composed chiefly of sentimentality and resentment, in woman it expresses itself in the form of opinionated views, interpretations, insinuations, and misconstructions, which all have the purpose (sometimes attained) of severing the relation between two human beings. The woman, like the man, becomes wrapped in a veil of illusions by her demon-familiar, and, as the daughter who alone understands her father (that is, is eternally right in everything), she is translated to the land of sheep, where she is put to graze by the shepherd of her soul, the animus.

Like the anima, the animus too has a positive aspect. Through the figure of the father he expresses not only conventional opinion butequally what we call “spirit,” philosophical or religious ideas in particular, or rather the attitude resulting from them. Thus the animus is a psychopomp, a mediator between the conscious and the unconscious and a personification of the latter. Just as the anima becomes, through integration, the Eros of consciousness, so the animus becomes a Logos; and in the same way that the anima gives relationship and relatedness to a man’s consciousness, the animus gives to woman’s consciousness a capacity for reflection, deliberation, and selfknowledge.

The effect of anima and animus on the ego is in principle the same. This effect is extremely difficult to eliminate because, in the first place, it is uncommonly strong and immediately fills the ego-personality with an unshakable feeling o lightness and righteousness. In the second place, the cause of the effect is projected and appears to lie in objects and objective situations. Both these characteristics can, I believe, be traced back to the peculiarities of the archetype. For the archetype, of course, exists a priori. This may possibly explain the often totally irrational yet undisputed and indisputable existence of certain moods and opinions. Perhaps these are so notoriously difficult to influence because of the powerfully suggestive effect emanating from the archetype. Consciousness is fascinated by it, held captive, as if hypnotized. Very often the ego experiences a vague feeling of moral defeat and then behaves all the more defensively, defiantly, and self-righteously, thus setting up a vicious circle which only increases its feeling of inferiority. The bottom is then knocked out of the human relationship, for, like megalomania, a feeling of inferiority makes mutual recognition impossible, and without this there is no relationship.

As I said, it is easier to gain insight into the shadow than into the anima or animus. With the shadow, we have the advantage of being prepared in some sort by our education, which has always endeavoured to convince people that they are not one-hundred-per-cent pure gold. So everyone immediately understands what is meant by “shadow,” “inferior personality,” etc. And if he has forgotten, his memory can easily be refreshed by a Sunday sermon, his wife, or the tax collector. With the anima and animus, however, things are by no means so simple. Firstly, there is no moral education in this respect, and secondly, most people are content to be self-righteous and prefer mutual vilification (if nothing worse!) to the recognition of their projections. Indeed, it seems a very natural state of affairs for men to have irrational moods and women irrational opinions. Presumably this situation is grounded on instinct and must remain as it is to ensure that the Empedoclean game of the hate and love of the elements shall continue for all eternity. Nature is conservative and does not easily allow her courses to be altered; she defends in the most stubborn way the inviolability of the preserves where anima and animus roam. Hence it is much more difficult to become conscious of one’s anima/animus projections than to acknowledge one’s shadow side. One has, of course, to
overcome certain moral obstacles, such as vanity, ambition, conceit, resentment, etc., but in the case of projections all sorts of purely intellectual difficulties are added, quite apart from the contents of the projection, which one simply doesn’t know how to cope with. And on top of all this there arises a profound doubt as to whether one is not meddling too much with nature’s business by prodding into consciousness things which it would have been better to leave asleep.

Although there are, in my experience, a fair number of people who can understand without special intellectual or moral difficulties what is meant by anima and animus, one finds very many more who have the greatest trouble in visualizing these empirical concepts as anything concrete. This shows that they fall a little outside the usual range of experience. They are unpopular precisely because they seem unfamiliar. The consequence is that they mobilize prejudice and become taboo like everything else that is unexpected.

So if we set it up as a kind of requirement that projections should be dissolved, because it is wholesomer that way and in every respect more advantageous, we are entering upon new ground. Up till now everybody has been convinced that the idea “my father,” “my mother,” etc., is nothing but a faithful reflection of the real parent, corresponding in every detail to the original, so that when someone says “my father” he means no more and no less than what his father is in reality. This is actually what he supposes he does mean, but a supposition of identity by no means brings that identity about. This is where the fallacy of the enkekalymmenos (‘the veiled one’) comes in.

If one includes in the psychological equation X’s picture of his father, which he takes for the real father, the equation will not work out, because the unknown quantity he has introduced does not tally with reality. X has overlooked the fact that his idea of a person consists, in the first place, of the possibly very incomplete
picture he has received of the real person and, in the second place, of the subjective modifications he has imposed upon this picture. X’s idea of his father is a complex quantity for which the real father is only in part responsible, an indefinitely large share falling to the son. So true is this that every time he criticizes or praises his father he is unconsciously hitting back at himself, thereby bringing about those psychic consequences that overtake people who habitually disparage or overpraise themselves. If, however, X carefully compares his reactions with reality, he stands a chance of noticing that he has miscalculated The fallacy, which stems from Eubulidcs the Megarian, runs: “Can you recognize your father?” Yes. “Can you recognize this veiled one?” No, “This veiled one is your father. Hence you can recognize your father and not recognize him,” somewhere by not realizing long ago from his father’s behaviour that the picture he has of him is a false one. But as a rule X is convinced that he is right, and if anybody is wrong it must be the other fellow. Should X have a poorly developed Eros, he will be either indifferent to the inadequate relationship he has with his father or else annoyed by the inconsistency and general Incomprehensibility of a father whose behaviour never really corresponds to the picture X has of him. Therefore X thinks he has every right to feel hurt, misunderstood, and even betrayed.

One can imagine how desirable it would be in such cases to dissolve the projection. And there are always optimists who believe that the golden age can be ushered in simply by telling people the right way to go. But just let them try to explain to these people that they are acting like a dog chasing its own tail. To make a person see the shortcomings of his attitude considerably more than mere “telling” is needed, for more is involved than ordinary common sense can allow. What one is up against here is the kind of fateful misunderstanding which, under ordinary conditions, remains forever inaccessible to insight. It is rather like expecting the average respectable citizen to recognize himself
as a criminal.

I mention all this just to illustrate the order of magnitude to which the anima/animus projections belong, and the moral and intellectual exertions that are needed to dissolve them. Not all the contents of the anima and animus are projected, however. Many of them appear spontaneously in dreams and so on, and many more can be made conscious through active imagination. In this way we find that thoughts, feelings, and affects are alive in us which we would never have believed possible. Naturally, possibilities of this sort seem utterly fantastic to anyone who has not experienced them himself, for a normal person “knows what he thinks.” Such a childish attitude on the part of the “normal person” is simply the rule, so that no one without experience in this field can be expected to understand the real nature of anima and animus. With these reflections one gets into an entirely new world of psychological experience, provided of course that one succeeds in realizing them in practice. Those who do succeed can hardly fail to be impressed by all that the ego does not know and never has known. This increase in self-knowledge is still very rare nowadays and is usually paid for in advance with a neurosis, if not with something worse.

The autonomy of the collective unconscious expresses itself in the figures of anima and animus. They personify those of its contents which, when withdrawn from projection, can be integrated into consciousness. To this extent, both figures represent -functions which filter the contents of the collective unconscious through to the conscious mind. They appear or behave as such, however, only so long as the tendencies of the conscious and unconscious do not diverge too greatly. Should any tension arise, these functions, harmless till then, confront the conscious mind in personified form and behave rather like systems split off from the personality, or like part souls. This comparison is
inadequate in so far as nothing previously belonging to the ego personality has split off from it; on the contrary, the two figures represent a disturbing accretion. The reason for their behaving in this way is that though the contents of anima and animus can be integrated they themselves cannot, since they are archetypes. As such they are the foundation stones of the psychic structure, which in its totality exceeds the limits of consciousness and therefore can never become the object of direct cognition. Though the effects of anima and animus can be made conscious, they themselves are factors transcending consciousness and beyond the reach of perception and volition. Hence they remain autonomous despite the integration of their contents, and for this reason they should be borne constantly in mind. This is extremely important from the therapeutic standpoint, because constant observation pays the unconscious a tribute that more or less guarantees its co-operation. The unconscious as we know can never be “done with” once and for all. It is, in fact, one of the most important tasks of psychic hygiene to pay continual
attention to the symptomatology of unconscious contents and processes, for the good reason that the conscious mind is always in danger of becoming one-sided, of keeping to well-worn paths and getting stuck in blind alleys. The complementary and compensating function of the unconscious ensures that these clangers, which are especially great in neurosis, can in some measure be avoided. It is only under ideal conditions, when life is still simple and unconscious enough to follow the serpentine path of instinct without hesitation or misgiving, that the compensation works with entire success. The more civilized, the more unconscious and complicated a man is, the less he is able to follow his instincts. His complicated living conditions and the influence of his environment are so strong that they drown the quiet voice of nature. Opinions, beliefs, theories, and collective tendencies appear in its stead and back up all the aberrations of the conscious mind. Deliberate attention should then be given to the unconscious so that the compensation can set to work. Hence it is especially important to picture the archetypes of the unconscious not as a rushing phantasmagoria of fugitive images but as constant, autonomous factors, which indeed they are.

Both these archetypes, as practical experience shows, possess a fatality that can on occasion produce tragic results. They are quite literally the father and mother of all the disastrous entanglements of fate and have long been recognized as such by the whole world. Together they form a divine pair, one of whom, in accordance with his Logos nature, is characterized by pneuma and nous, rather like Hermes with his ever-shifting hues, while the other, in accordance with her Eros nature, wears the features of Aphrodite, Helen (Selene), Persephone, and Hecate. Both of them are unconscious powers, “gods” in fact, as the ancient world quite rightly conceived them to be. To call them by this name is to give them that central position in the scale of psychological values which has always been theirs whether consciously acknowledged or not; for their power grows in proportion to the degree that they remain unconscious. Those who do not see them are in their hands, just as a typhus epidemic flourishes best when its source is undiscovered. Even in Christianity the divine syzygy has not become obsolete, but occupies the highest place as Christ and his bride the Church.6 Parallels like these prove extremely helpful in our attempts to find the right criterion for gauging the significance of these two archetypes. What we can discover about them from the conscious side is so slight as to be almost imperceptible. It is only when we throw light into the dark depths of the psyche and explore the strange and tortuous paths of human fate that it gradually becomes clear to us how immense is the influence wielded by these two factors that complement our conscious life.

Recapitulating, I should like to emphasize that the integration of the shadow, or the realization of the personal unconscious, marks the first stage in the analytic process, and that without it a recognition of anima and animus is impossible. The shadow can be realized only through a relation to a partner, and anima and animus only through a relation to the opposite sex, because only in such a relation do their projections become operative. The recognition of anima or animus gives rise, in a man, to a triad, one third of which is transcendent: the masculine subject, the opposing feminine subject, and the transcendent anima. With a woman the situation is reversed. The missing fourth element that would make the triad a quaternity is, in a man, the archetype of the Wise Old Man, which I have not discussed here, and in a woman the Chthonic Mother. These four constitute a half immanent and half transcendent quaternity, an archetype which I have called the ‘marriage quaternio. The marriage quaternio provides a schema not only for the self but also for the structure of primitive society with its cross-cousin marriage, marriage classes, and division of settlements into quarters. The self, on the other hand, is a God image, or at least cannot be distinguished from one. Of this the early Christian spirit was not ignorant, otherwise Clement of Alexandria could never have said that he who knows himself knows God. ~Carl Jung, Psychological Types, Chapter 10.