Carl Jung: The Four Functions of Consciousness as a Compass

By -



In this way we can orient ourselves with respect to the immediate world as completely as when we locate a place geographically by latitude and longitude. The four functions are somewhat like the four points of the compass; they are just as arbitrary and just as indispensable.

Nothing prevents our shifting the cardinal points as many degrees as we like in one direction or the other, or giving them different names.

It is merely a question of convention and intelligibility.

But one thing I must confess: I would not for anything dispense with this compass on my psychological voyages of discovery.

[“A Psychological Theory of Types,” CW 6, pars.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Carl Jung: The fish was the symbol of the unconscious life, like the Christ.

By -
Image
Bollingen, 25th July 1949 It was here, on this day, that I first met Victor White. He was bathing in the lake when I arrived and I also had a bathe, so we met in the water. After tea we sat at a table in the front garden with C.G. and Mrs. Jung, a grand-daughter of theirs, and Father Victor White. C.G. and I had a talk for over two hours sitting by the edge of the lake. White had seen a snake in the water and as we talked we saw the snake twice; it swam along rather beautifully, about a yard long. I spoke to C.G. of a dream a patient had told me: he had a basin filled with golden-coloured water and in it were some golden fish; he had to drink some of the water. A fish fell out and he replaced it. C.G. said it meant that some of the unconscious was within reach and that he could take from it. The fish was the symbol of the unconscious life, like the Christ. 27th July 1949 I arrived at Bollingen at three o’clock and had a bathe. The Jung’s were there with Fathe...
Read more

Carl Jung Anthologies

By -
Image
The following is meant for personal study only. It is a work in progress and will be updated periodically: Absolute Knowledge, Active Imagination, Alone, Afternoon of Life, Ancestral, Angels, Animals, Alchemy, Ancestral, Anima/Animus, Animus, Archetypes, Artist, Assumption, Atheism, Aquarius, Being, Belief, Bible, Bollingen, Books, Bottom, Brain, Bridges, Buber, Buddha, Cancer, Catholic, Chaos, Character, Child, Christ in Liber Novus, Church, Collective Unconscious, Common Sense, Complexes, Creative Life, Daimon, Death, Depression, Doubt, Dragons, Dreams, Egg, Ego, Einstein, Emma Jung, Emotion, Empiricist, Emptiness, Endurance, Enlightenment, Eros, Europe, Evil, Eyes, Fate, Faust, Feeling, Fish, Freedom, Free Will, Freud-Jung, Ghosts, Gnostic, God, God in Liber Novus, Gods, Green, Guru, Hallucinations, Hegel, Hidden, History, Human Being, Human Body, I-Ching, Illusion, Individual and Society, Individuation, Inner World, Inorganic Life, Insoluble, Instincts, Intellect Introvert, ...
Read more

Carl Jung: Thus the encounter of Christ with the devil is a classic example of the transcendent function.

By -
Image
To A. Zarine Dear M. Zarine, 3 May 1939 Excuse the long delay in my response; I do not always have time to answer long letters such as yours. And your questions are rather complicated. In reading your letter I did not get the impression at all that your reasoning was morbid or unsound. The reasoning itself seems to me normal, but the way that you apply it is not very fortunate, since I question whether you have fully understood what the "transcendent function" means. In the normal man the transcendent function operates entirely in the unconscious, which tends to continually reestablish the equilibrium. The arguments that you bring up in your letter concern the transcendent function, to be sure, but I do not think you have grasped the true nature of the process. Of course, that is quite natural, since you cannot have had the experience of a psychologist and Consequently cannot picture how these things rea...
Read more