Carl Jung Quotations 6

The right time comes when one is ready. ~Carl Jung

We find the crucial importance of self-knowledge for the sake of the transformation process expressed most clearly by the alchemist Dorn…The transformation is brought about by the conjunctio, which forms the essence of the work. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii. Para 256.

[One of my patients] dreams that she was commanded to descend into “a pit filled with hot stuff.” This she did, till only one shoulder was sticking out of the pit. Then Jung came along, pushed her right down into the hot stuff, exclaiming “not out but through.” ~Carl Jung, from The Life and Work of C.G. Jung by Aniela Jaffe.

We know only a small part of our psyches. The causal factors determining [one's] psychic existence reside largely in the unconscious processes outside consciousness , and in the same way there are final factors at work in [one] that likewise originate in the unconscious. . . . Causes and ends thus transcend consciousness to a degree that ought not to be underestimated, and this implies that their nature and action are unalterable and irreversible [to the degree that] they have not become objects of consciousness. They can only be corrected through conscious insight and moral determination, which is why self-knowledge, being so necessary, is feared so much ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 253.

The arcane substance is one and the same, whether it is found within man or outside him. ~Carl Jung [citing Gerhard Dorn] CW 9i, Para 249.

Whenever contents of the collective unconscious become activated, they have a disturbing effect on the conscious mind, and contusion ensues. If the activation is due to the collapse of the individual’s hopes and expectations, there is a danger that the collective unconscious may take the place of reality. This state would be pathological. If, on the other hand, the activation is the result of psychological processes in the unconscious of the people, the individual may feel threatened or at any rate disoriented, but the resultant state is not pathological, at least so far as the individual is concerned. Nevertheless, the mental state of the people as a whole might well be compared to a psychosis. ~Carl Jung; CW 8, Page 595

The union of opposites on a higher level of consciousness is not a rational thing, nor is it a matter of will; it is a process of psychic development that expresses itself in symbols. Carl Jung, CW 13, Page 16.

The whole nature of man presupposes woman, both physically and spiritually. His system is tuned into woman from the start, just as it is prepared for a quite definite world where there is water, light, air, salt, carbohydrates etc… ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Page 188

There are analysts who believe that they can get along without self-analysis. This is Munchausen psychology, and they will certainly remain stuck. They forget that one of the most important therapeutically effective factors is subjecting you to the objective judgment of another. As regards ourselves we remain blind, despite everything and everybody. Carl Jung, CW 4, Page 449.

As a doctor it is my task to help the patient to cope with life. I cannot presume to pass judgment on his final decisions, because I know from experience that all coercion-be it suggestion, insinuation, or any other method of persuasion-ultimately proves to be nothing but an obstacle to the highest and most decisive experience of all, which is to be alone with his own self, or whatever else one chooses to call the objectivity of the psyche. The patient must be alone if he is to find out what it is that supports him when he can no longer support himself. Only this experience can give him an indestructible foundation. ~Carl Jung, CW 12: Page 32.

The patient is there to be treated and not to verify a theory. For that matter, there is no single theory in the whole field of practical psychology that cannot on occasion be proved to be basically wrong. In particular, the view that the patient's resistances are in no circumstances) justified is completely fallacious. The resistance might very well prove that the treatment rests on false assumptions. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 237.

Alchemy has performed for me the great and invaluable service of providing material in which my experience could find sufficient room, and has thereby made it possible for me to describe the individuation process at least in its essential aspects. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 792.

Naturally, every age thinks that all ages before it were prejudiced, and today we think this more than ever and are just as wrong as all previous ages that thought so. How often have we not seen the truth condemned! It is sad but unfortunately true that man learns nothing from history. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 33.

Why is psychology the youngest of the empirical sciences? Why have we not long since discovered the unconscious and raised up its treasure-house of eternal images? Simply because we had a religious formula for everything psychic — and one that is far more beautiful and comprehensive than immediate experience. Though the Christian view of the world has paled for many people, the symbolic treasure-rooms of the East are still full of marvels that can nourish for a long time to come the passion for show and new clothes. What is more, these images — are they Christian or Buddhist or what you will — are lovely, mysterious, and richly intuitive. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Pages 7-8.

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.

It is hard to believe that this teeming world is too poor to provide an object for human love - it offers boundless opportunities to everyone. It is rather the inability to love which robs a person of these opportunities. The world is empty only to him who does not know how to direct his libido towards things and people, and to render them alive and beautiful. What compels us to create a substitute from within ourselves is not an external lack, but our own inability to include anything outside ourselves in our love. Certainly the difficulties and adversities of the struggle for existence may oppress us, yet even the worst conditions need not hinder love; on the contrary, they often spur us on to greater efforts. Carl Jung, CW 5, 253.

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.

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 66.

As soon as people get together in masses and submerge the individual, the shadow is mobilized, and, as history shows, may even be personified and incarnated. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 478.

Nature is often obscure or impenetrable, but she is not, like man, deceitful. We must therefore take it that the dream is just what it pretends to be, neither more nor less. If it shows something in a negative light, there is no reason for assuming that it is meant positively. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Page Page 162.

A political situation is the manifestation of a parallel psychological problem in millions of individuals. This problem is largely unconscious (which makes it a particularly dangerous one!) ~Carl Gustav Jung, Letters, Vol 1, Page 535.

Love . . . is of fundamental importance in human life and . . . of far greater significance than the individual suspects. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Page 218.

The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 126.

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

Of course, thinks every time, all previous times had been biased, and now we think it more than ever, and has therefore just as wrong as all the previous times, thought so. How often have you experienced it, that the truth has been condemned? It's sad but unfortunately true, that man learns nothing from history. This fact will cause us the most trouble, because when we are about in such dark somehow enlightened one thing to collect empirical data, we will find it quite sure where all the authorities have assured us that nothing could be found. ~Carl Jung; Synchronicity acausality and occultism, dtv Verlag, Munich, 1990.

The dream shows the inner truth and reality of the patient as it really is: not as I conjecture it to be, and not as he would like it to be, but as it is. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 304.

The dream is specifically the utterance of the unconscious. Just as the psyche has a diurnal side which we call consciousness, so also it has a nocturnal side: the unconscious psychic activity which we apprehend as dreamlike fantasy. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 317.

The immunity of the nation depends entirely upon the existence of a leading minority immune to the evil and capable of combating the powerful suggestive effect. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 1400

The great events of world history are, at bottom, profoundly unimportant. In the last analysis, the essential thing is the life of the individual. This alone makes history, here alone do the great transformations first take place, and the whole future, the whole history of the world, ultimately spring as a gigantic summation from these hidden sources in individuals .In our most private and most subjective lives, we are not only the passive witnesses of our age, and its sufferers, but also its makers. We make our own epoch. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 1400.

Nothing exerts a stronger psychic effect upon the human environment, and especially upon children, than the life which the parents have not lived. ~Carl Jung, CW 15, Para 4

All religions are therapies for the sorrows and disorders of the soul. ~Carl Jung, Commentary to the Secret of the Golden Flower, 1929

More especially the threat to one’s inmost self from dragons and serpents points to the danger of the newly acquired consciousness being swallowed up again by the instinctive psyche, the unconscious. ~Carl Jung; CW 9i; para. 282.

All the greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally insoluble. They must be so, for they express the necessary polarity inherent in every self-regulating system. They can never be solved, but only outgrown. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 18

There is no morality, no moral decision, without freedom. There is only morality when you can choose, and you cannot choose if you are forced. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 262

To translate meaning into life...is to realize the Tao. ~Carl Jung, Secret of the Golden Flower, 1929.

. Our fearsome gods have only changed their names: they now rhyme with ism. ~Carl Jung, ~~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 326

Since society as a whole needs the magically effective figure, it uses the needful will to power in the individual and the will to submit in the mass, as a vehicle, and thus brings about the creation of personal prestige. ~Carl Jung, Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious,” 1928

By understanding the unconscious we free ourselves from its domination. ~Carl Jung, Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious, 1928

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.

The part of the unconscious which is designated as the subtle body becomes more and more identical with the functioning of the body, and therefore it grows darker and darker and ends in the utter darkness of matter. . . . Somewhere our unconscious becomes material, because the body is the living unit, and our conscious and our unconscious are embedded in it: they contact the body. Somewhere there is a place where the two ends meet and become interlocked. And that is the [subtle body] where one cannot say whether it is matter, or what one calls "psyche." ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 441.

The "supraordinate personality" is the total man, i.e., man as he really is, not as he appears to himself. . . . I usually describe the supraordinate personality as the "self," thus making a sharp distinction between the ego, which, as is well known, extends only as far as the conscious mind, and the whole of the personality, which includes the unconscious as well as the conscious component. The ego is thus related to the self as part to whole. To that extent the self is supraordinate. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, pars. 314f.

Free will is doing gladly and freely that which one must do. ~Carl Jung, J.E.T. by Ferne Jensen.

It seems to be very hard for people to live with riddles or to let them live, although one would think that life is so full of riddles as it is that a few more things we cannot answer would make no difference. But perhaps it is just this that is so unendurable, that there are irrational things in our own psyche which upset the conscious mind in its illusory certainties by confronting it with the riddle of its existence. ~Carl Jung;, CW 13, Page 307.

I call every interpretation which equates the dream images with real objects an interpretation on the objective level… Interpretation on the objective level is analytic, because it breaks down the dream content into memory-complexes that refer to external situations. ~Carl Jung; CW 7, para. 131.

In contrast to this is the interpretation which refers every part of the dream and all the actors in it back to the dreamer himself. This I call interpretation on the subjective level…. Interpretation on the subjective level is synthetic, because it detaches the underlying memory-complexes from their external causes, regards them as tendencies or components of the subject, and reunites them with that subject. ~Carl Jung; CW 7, para. 131.

Our dreams are continually saying things beyond our conscious comprehension. We have intimations and intuitions from unknown sources. Fears, moods, plans, and hopes come to us with no visible causation. These concrete experiences are at the bottom of our feeling that we know ourselves very little; at the bottom, too, of the painful conjecture that we might have surprises in store for ourselves. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i para. 299.

Emptiness is a great feminine secret. It is something absolutely alien to man; the chasm, the unplumbed depths, the yin. The pitifulness of this vacuous nonentity goes to his heart (I speak here as a man), and one is tempted to say that this constitutes the whole "mystery" of woman. Such a female is fate itself. A man may say what he likes about it; be for it or against it, or both at once; in the end he falls, absurdly happy, into this pit, or, if he does not, he has missed and bungled his only chance of making a man of himself. In the first case one cannot disprove his foolish good luck to him, and in the second one cannot make his misfortune seem plausible. "The Mothers, the Mothers, how eerily it sounds!" ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 183

We must constantly bear in mind that what we mean by "archetype" is in itself irrepresentable, but has effects which make visualizations of it possible, namely, the archetypal images and ideas. We meet with a similar situation in physics: there the smallest particles are themselves irrepresentable but have effects from the nature of which we can build up a model. The archetypal image, the motif or mythologem, is a construction of this kind. ~Carl Jung; CW 8, Page 417.

The archetype or primordial image might suitably be described as the instinct's perception of itself, or as the self portrait of the instinct, in exactly the same way as consciousness is an inward perception of the objective life-process. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 277.

Yahweh is both just and unjust, kindly and cruel, truthful and deceitful. ~Carl Jung, A Psychological View of Conscience, 1958

Conscience itself [asserts] that it is a voice of God. ~Carl Jung, CW 10

But since everything living strives for wholeness, the inevitable one-sidedness of our conscious life is continually being corrected and compensated by the universal human being in us, whose goal is the ultimate integration of conscious and unconscious, or better, the assimilation of the ego to a wider personality. Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 557

But within each of us is the self-regulating Self. ~Carl Jung, E Harding, Conversations with Jung, Page 9

We . . . can become dissociated and lose our identity. We can be possessed . . . by moods, or become unreasonable, so that people ask: "What the devil has got into you?" We talk about . . . "control", but self-control is a rare and remarkable virtue. ~Carl Jung; Man and His symbols; Page 8.

If left to himself, [man] can naturally bring about his own salvations. Who has produced Christ? Who as produced Buddha? ~Carl Jung, J.E.T. by Ferne Jensen.

Man . . . never perceives anything fully or comprehends anything completely. He can see, hear, touch, and taste; but how far he sees, how well he hears, what his touch tells him, and what he tastes depend upon the number and quality of his senses. These limit his perception of the world around him. ~Carl Jung; Man and His symbols; Page 4.

The spirit…is two-faced and paradoxical: a great help and an equally great danger. ~Carl Jung, On the Nature of the Psyche, 1947

A decent oligarchy-call it aristocracy if you like-is the most ideal form of government. It depends on the quality of a nation whether they evolve a decent oligarchy or not…Without the aristocratic ideal there is not stability. You in England owe it to the “gentlemen” that you possess the world. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking Interviews and Encounters.

Wherever justice is uncertain and police spying and terror are at work, human beings, fall into isolation, which, of course, is the aim and purpose of the dictator State, since it is based on the greatest possible accumulation of depotentiated social units. ~Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self, 1957

Intuition [is] perception via the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i

Everything that the modern mind cannot define it regards as insane. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy

Individuation does not shut one out from the world, but gathers the world to oneself. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 432

Christian civilization has proved hollow to a terrifying degree: it is all veneer, but the inner man has remained untouched and therefore unchanged. His soul is out of key with his external beliefs; in his soul the Christian has not kept pace with external developments. Yes, everything is to be found outside—in image and in word, in Church and Bible—but never inside. Inside reign the archaic gods, supreme as of old. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 12

I could not say I believe. I know! I have had the experience of being gripped by something stronger than myself, something that people call God. ~Carl Jung; "The Old Wise Man" published in Time, 1955.

An understanding heart is everything in a teacher. One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child. ~Carl Jung. “The Gifted Child.”

Out of opposition, a new birth. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of the Transference.

Real increase of personality means consciousness of an enlargement that flows from inner sources. Without psychic depth we can never be adequately related to the magnitude of our object. It has therefore been said quite truly that a man grows with the greatness of his task. But he must have within himself the capacity to grow; otherwise even the most difficult task is of no benefit to him. More likely he will be shattered by it. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 215

Good does not become better by being exaggerated, but worse, and a small evil becomes a big one through being disregarded and repressed. The Shadow is very much a part of human nature, and it is only at night that no shadows exist. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 286.

Water is the commonest symbol for the unconscious. The lake in the valley is the unconscious, which lies, as it were, underneath consciousness, so that it is often referred to as the ‘subconscious,’ usually with the pejorative connotation of an inferior consciousness. Water is the ‘valley spirit,’ the water dragon of Tao, whose nature resembles water- a yang in the yin, therefore, water means spirit that has become unconscious.” ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 40

There is no position without its negation. In or just because of their extreme opposition, neither can exist without the other. It is exactly as formulated in classical Chinese philosophy: yang (the light, warm, dry, masculine principle) contains within it the seed of yin (the dark, cold, moist, feminine principle), and vice versa. Matter therefore would contain the seed of spirit and spirit the seed of matter…. Nevertheless, the symbol has the great advantage of being able to unite heterogeneous or even incommensurable factors in a single image. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i; para. 197.

We know that Tom Thumbs, dactyls, and Cabiri… are personifications of creative forces… Thus the creative dwarfs toil away in secret; the phallus also working in darkness, begets a living being” ~Carl Jung, CW5, para. 180

We have, therefore, two kinds of thinking: directed thinking, and dreaming or fantasy-thinking. The former operates with speech elements for the purpose of communication, and is difficult and exhausting; the latter is effortless, working as it were spontaneously, with the contents ready to hand, and guided by unconscious motives. The one produces innovations and adaptation, copies reality, and tries to act upon it; the other turns away from reality, sets free subjective tendencies, and, as regards adaptation, is unproductive ~Carl Jung, CW 5, para. 20.

Life is teleology par excellence; it is the intrinsic striving towards a goal, and the living organism is a system of directed aims which seek to fulfill themselves. ~Carl Jung; CW 8; para 798.

What he is describing here is the libido, which is not only creative and procreative, but possesses an intuitive faculty, a strange power to “smell the right place,” almost as if it were a live creature with an independent life of its own (which is why it is so easily personified). It is purposive, like sexuality itself, a favorite object of comparison. ~Carl Jung; CW 5, Para. 182.

The sun is not only beneficial, but also destructive; hence the zodiacal sign for August heat is the ravaging lion which Samson slew in order to rid the parched earth of its torment. Yet it is in the nature of the sun to scorch, and its scorching power seems natural to man. It shines equally on the just and the unjust, and allows useful creatures to flourish as well as the harmful. ~Carl Jung; CW 5, para 176.

The psychic life-force, the libido, symbolizes itself… through phallic symbols. ~Carl Jung; Symbols of Transformation; para. 297.

More especially the threat to one’s inmost self from dragons and serpents points to the danger of the newly acquired consciousness being swallowed up again by the instinctive psyche, the unconscious. ~Carl Jung; CW 9i; para. 282.

Therefore the sun is perfectly suited to represent the visible God of this world, i.e., the creative power of our own soul, which we call libido, and whose nature it is to bring forth the useful and to bring forth the useful and the harmful, the good and the bad. ~Carl Jung; CW 5, Para 176.

…..instinct is purposive. It works properly only under certain conditions, and as soon as it gets out of tune with these conditions it threatens the destruction of the species. ~Carl Jung, Seminar Given in 1925,Page 86.

Because of its unconscious component the self is so far removed from the conscious mind that it can only be partially expressed by human figures; the other part of it has to be expressed by objective, abstract symbols. The human figures are father and son, mother and daughter, king and queen, god and goddess…. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, para. 314-315.

This libido is a force of nature, good and bad at once, or morally neutral. Uniting himself with it, Faust succeeds in accomplishing his real life’s work, at first with evil results and then for the benefit of mankind. ~Carl Jung; CW 5; Para 182.

Numerous mythological and philosophical attempts have been made to formulate and visualize the creative force which man knows only by subjective experience. To give but a few examples, I would remind the reader of the cosmogonic significance of Eros in Hesiod, and also of the Orphic figure of Phanes, the ‘Shining One,’ the first-born, the ‘Father of Eros.’ In Orphic terms, Phanes also denotes Priapos, a god of love, androgynous, and equal to the Theban Dionysus Lysios. The Orphic meaning of Phanes is the same as that of the Indian Kama, the God of love, which is also a cosmogonic principle. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, para. 198.

the Creator God [takes] on an astromythological, or rather an astrological, character. He has become the sun, and thus finds a natural expression that transcends his moral division into a Heavenly Father and his counterpart the devil. ~Carl Jung; CW 5, Para 176.

The conscious fantasy may be woven of mythological or any other material; it should not be taken literally, but must be interpreted according to its meaning. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 44.

[The dream voice] “utters an authoritative declaration or command, either of astonishing common sense or of profound philosophic import. It is nearly always a final statement, usually coming toward the end of a dream, and it is, as a rule, so clear and convincing that the dreamer finds no argument against it. It has, indeed, so much the character of indisputable truth that it can hardly be understood as anything except a final and trenchant summing up of a long process of unconscious deliberation and weighing of arguments.” ~Carl Jung; CW 11, Page 45.

…a symbol of the unity of personality, a symbol of the self, where the war of opposites finds peace. In this way the primordial being becomes the distant goal of man’s self-development. ~Carl Jung; CW 9i, para. 292-4.

Notwithstanding its monstrosity, the hermaphrodite has gradually turned into a subduer of conflicts and a bringer of healing, ….its power to unite opposites, mediates between the unconscious substratum and the conscious mind. It throws a bridge between present-day consciousness, always in danger of losing its roots, and the natural, unconscious, instinctive wholeness of primeval times. ~Carl Jung; CW 9i, para. 292-4

Under the influence of scientific materialism, everything that could not be seen with the eyes or touched with the hands was held in doubt; such things were even laughed at because of their supposed affinity with metaphysics. Nothing was considered “scientific” or admitted to be true unless it could be perceived by the senses or traced back to physical causes. ~Carl Jung; CW 8. para. 649.