Carl Jung on The Rosarium and "The Naked Truth"

THE NAKED TRUTH

The text to this picture (fig. 3) is, with a few alterations, a quotation from the Tractatus aureus.

It runs: "He who would be initiated into this art and secret wisdom must put away the vice of arrogance, must be devout, righteous, deep witted, humane towards his fellows, of a cheerful countenance and a happy disposition, and respectful withal. Likewise he must be an observer of the eternal secrets that are revealed to him. My son, above all I admonish thee to fear God who seeth thine actions [in quo dispositionis tuae visus est\ and in whom is help for the solitary, whosoever he may be [adiuvatio cuiuslibet sequestrate.]

2 And the Rosarium adds from Pseudo-Aristotle:

"Could God but find a man of faithful understanding, He would open His secret to him.”

This appeal to obviously moral qualities makes one thing quite clear: the opus demands not only intellectual and technical ability as in the study and practice of modern chemistry; it is a moral as well as a psychological undertaking.

The texts are full of such admonitions, and they indicate the kind of attitude that is required in the execution of a religious work.

The alchemists undoubtedly understood the opus in this sense, though it is difficult to square our picture with such an exordium. The chaste disguises have fallen away.

Man and woman confront one another in unabashed naturalness.

Sol says, "O Luna, let 4a me be thy husband," and Luna, "O Sol, I must submit to thee."

The dove bears the inscription: "Spiritus est qui unificat."

This remark hardly fits the unvarnished eroticism of the picture, for if what Sol and Luna say-who, be it noted, are brother and sister means anything at all, it must surely mean earthly love.

But since the spirit descending from above is stated to be the mediator, the situation acquires another aspect: it is supposed to be a union in the spirit.

This is borne out admirably by one important detail in the picture: the contact of left hands has ceased.

Instead, Luna's left hand and Sol's right hand now hold the branches (from which spring the fiores Mercurii, corresponding to the three pipes of the fountain), while Luna's right and Sol's left hand are touching the flowers.

The left-handed relationship is no more: the two hands of both are now connected with the "uniting symbol."

This too has been changed: there are only three flowers
instead of five, it is no longer an ogdoad but a hexad,T a sixrayed
figure.

The double quaternity has thus been replaced by a double triad.

This simplification is evidently the result of the fact that two elements have each paired off, presumably with their opposites, for according to alchemical theory each element contains its opposite "within" it.

Affinity, in the form of a "loving" approach, has already achieved a partial union of the elements, so that now only one pair of opposites remains: masculine-feminine or agens-patiens, as indicated by the inscription.

In accordance with the axiom of Maria, the elementary quaternity has become the active triad, and this will lead to the coniunctio of the two.

Psychologically we can say that the situation has thrown off the conventional husk and developed into a stark encounter with reality, with no false veils or adornments of any kind.

Man stands forth as he really is and shows what was hidden under the mask of conventional adaptation: the shadow.

This is now raised to consciousness and integrated with the ego, which means a move in the direction of wholeness.

Wholeness is not so much perfection as completeness.

Assimilation of the shadow gives a man body, so to speak; the animal sphere of instinct, as well as the primitive or archaic psyche, emerge into the zone of consciousness and can no longer be repressed by
fictions and illusions.

In this way man becomes for himself the difficult problem he really is.

He must always remain conscious of the fact that he is such a problem if he wants to develop at all.

Repression leads to a one-sided development if not to stagnation, and eventually to neurotic dissociation.

Today it is no longer a question of "How can I get rid of my shadow?" for we have seen enough of the curse of one-sidedness.

Rather we must ask ourselves:

"How can man live with his shadow without its precipitating a succession of disasters?"

Recognition of the shadow is a reason for humility, for genuine fear of the abysmal depths in man.

This caution is most expedient, since the man without a shadow thinks himself harmless precisely because he is ignorant of his shadow.

The man who recognizes his shadow knows very well that he is not harmless, for it brings the archaic psyche, the whole world of the archetypes, into direct contact with the conscious mind and saturates it with archaic influences.

This naturally adds to the dangers of "affinity," with its deceptive projections and its urge to assimilate the object in terms of the projection, to draw it into the family circle in order to actualize the hidden incest situation, which seems all the more attractive and fascinating the less it is understood.

The advantage of the situation, despite all its dangers, is that once the naked truth has been revealed the discussion can get down to essentials; ego and shadow are no longer divided but are brought together in an admittedly precarious unity.

This is a great step forward, but at the same time it shows up the "differentness" of one's partner all the more clearly, and the unconscious usually tries to close the gap by increasing the attraction, so as to bring about the desired union somehow or other.

All this is borne out by the alchemical idea that the fire which maintains the process must be temperate to begin with and must then gradually be raised to the highest intensity. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Pages 235-239

Carl Jung on "The King and Queen"

KING AND QUEEN

The arcanum artis, or coniunctio Soils et Lunae as supreme union of hostile opposites, was not shown in our first picture; but now it is illustrated in considerable detail, as its importance deserves, in a series of pictures.

King and Queen, bridegroom and bride, approach one another for the purpose of betrothal or marriage.

The incest element appears in the brother-sister relationship of Apollo and Diana.

The pair of them stand respectively on sun and moon, thus indicating their solar and lunar nature in accordance with the astrological assumption of the importance of the sun's position for man and
the moon's for woman.

The meeting is somewhat distant at first, as the court clothes suggest.

The two give each other their left hands, and this can hardly be unintentional since it is contrary to custom.

The gesture points to a closely guarded secret, to the "left-hand path," as the Indian Tantrists call their Shiva and Shakti worship.

The left-hand (sinister) side is the dark, the unconscious side.

The left is inauspicious and awkward; also it is the side of the heart, from which comes not only love but all the evil thoughts connected with it, the moral contradictions in human nature that are expressed most clearly in our affective life.

The contact of left hands could therefore be taken as an indication of the affective nature of the relationship, of its dubious character, since this is a mixture of "heavenly and earthly" love further complicated by an incestuous sous-entendu.

In this delicate yet altogether human situation the gesture of the right hands strikes us as compensatory.

They are holding a device composed of five (4 + 1) flowers.

There are two flowers on each branch; these four again refer to the four elements of which two fire and air are active and two water and earthp assive, the former being ascribed to
the man and the latter to the woman.

The fifth flower comes from above and presumably represents the quinta essentia; it is brought by the dove of the Holy Ghost, an analogy of Noah's dove that carried the olive branch of reconciliation in its beak.

The bird descends from the quintessential star (cf. fig. 1).

But the real secret lies in the union of right hands, for, as the picture shows, this is mediated by the donum Spiritus Sancti, the royal art.

The "sinister" left-handed contact here becomes associated with the union, effected from above, of the two quaternities (the masculine and feminine manifestations of the four elements), in the form of an ogdoad consisting of five flowers and three branches.

These masculine numbers point to action, decision, purpose, and movement.

The 5 is shown as superior to the 4 in that it is brought by the dove.

The three branches correspond to the upwelling of Mercurius triplex nomine or to the three pipes of the fountain.

So once again we have an abbreviated recapitulation of the opus, i.e., of its deeper meaning as shown in the first picture.

The text to figure 2 begins significantly with the words: "Mark well, in the art of our magisterium nothing is concealed by the philosophers except the secret of the art which may not be revealed to all and sundry.

For were that to happen, that man would be accursed; he would incur the wrath of God and perish of the apoplexy.

Wherefore all error in the art arises because men do not begin with the proper substance, and for this reason you should employ the venerable Nature, because from her and through her and in her is our art born and in naught else: and so our magisterium is the work of Nature and not of the worker."

If we take the fear of divine punishment for betrayal at its face value, the reason for this must lie in something that is thought to endanger the soul's salvation, i.e., a typical "peril of the soul."

The causal "wherefore" with which the next sentence begins can only refer to the secret that must not be revealed; but because the prima materia remains unknown in consequence, all those who do not know the secret fall into error, and this happens because, as said, they choose something arbitrary and artificial instead of pure Nature.

The emphasis laid on the venerabilis natura gives us some idea of that passion for investigation which ultimately gave birth to natural science, but which so often proved inimical to faith.

Worship of nature, a legacy from the past, stood in more or less secret opposition to the views of the Church and led the mind and heart in the direction of a 'left-hand path.

What a sensation Petrarch's ascent of Mont Ventoux caused!

St. Augustine had warned in his Confessions (16, X, viii): "And men go forth to admire the high mountains and the great waves of the sea and the broad torrent of the rivers and the vast expanse of the ocean and the orbits of the stars, and to turn away from themselves. . . ."

The exclusive emphasis on nature as the one and only basis of the art is in flagrant contrast to the ever-recurring protestation that the art is a donum Spiritus Sancti, an Arcanum of the sapientia Dei, and so forth, from which we would have to conclude that the alchemists were unshakably orthodox in their beliefs.

I do not think that this can be doubted as a rule.

On the contrary, their belief in illumination through the Holy Ghost seems to have been a psychological necessity in view of the ominous darkness of nature's secrets.

Now if a text which insists so much on pure nature is explained or illustrated by a picture like figure 2, we must assume that the relationship between

king and queen was taken to be something perfectly natural.

Meditation and speculation about the mystery of the coniunctio were inevitable, and this would certainly not leave the erotic fantasy untouched, if only because these symbolical pictures spring from the corresponding unconscious contents half spiritual, half sexual and are also intended to remind us of that twilit region, for only from indistinguishable night can the light be born.

This is what nature and natural experience teach, but the spirit believes in the lumen de luminethe light born of light.

bound to experience the mysterious happening with shudders of fear, as a tremendum.

Even that scoffer and blasphemer Agrippa von Nettesheim displays a remarkable reticence when criticizing the "Alkumistica."

After saying a great deal about this dubious art, he adds:

"Permulta adhuc de hoc arte (mihi tamen non ad modum inimica) dicere possem, nisi iuratum esset (quod facere solent, qui mysteriis initiantur) de silentio"

(I could say much more about this art (which I do not find so disagreeable) were it not for the oath of silence usually taken by initiates into mysteries).

Such a mitigation of his criticism, most unexpected in Agrippa, makes one think that he is on the defensive: somehow he was impressed by the royal art.

It is not necessary to think of the secret of the art as anything very lurid.

Nature knows nothing of moral squalor, indeed her truth is alarming enough.

We need only bear in mind one fact: that the desired coniunctio was not a legitimate union but was alwaysone could almost say, on principle incestuous.

The fear that surrounds this complex- the "fear of incest"- is quite typical and has already been stressed by Freud.

It is further exacerbated by fear of the compulsive force which emanates from most unconscious contents.

The left-handed contact and crosswise union of the right hands sub rosa is a startlingly concrete and yet very subtle hint of the delicate situation in which 'Venerable nature" has placed the adept.

Although the Rosicrucian movement cannot be traced further back than the Fama and Confessio fraternitatis unique and blessed substance, besides which there is no other although you may find it everywhere, as to that most sacred stone of the philosophers almost I had broken my oath and made myself a desecrator of temples by blurting out its name I shall nevertheless speak in circumlocutions and dark hints, so that none but the sons of the art and the initiates of this mystery shall understand.

The thing is one which hath neither too fiery nor too earthen a substance. . . . More I am not permitted to say, and yet there be greater things than these.

However, I consider this art with which I have a certain familiarity as being the most worthy of that honour which Thucydides pays to an upright woman, when he says that the best is she of whom least is said either in praise or blame. Concerning the oath of secrecy, see also Senior, 164, p. 92:

"Hoc est secretum, super quo iuraverunt, quod non indicarent in aliquo libro"

(This is the secret which they promised on oath not to divulge in any book).

of Andreae at the beginning of the seventeenth century, we are nevertheless confronted with a "rosie cross" in this curious bouquet of three flowering branches, which evidently originated sometime before 1550 but, equally obviously, makes no claim to be a true rosicrux.

As we have already said, its threefold structure is reminiscent of the Mercurial Fountain, while at the same time it points to the important fact that the "rose" is the product of three living things: the king, the queen, and between them the dove of the Holy Ghost. Mercurius triplex nomine is thus converted into three figures, and he can no longer be thought of as a metal or mineral, but only as "spirit."

In this form also he is triple-natured masculine, feminine, and divine.

His coincidence with the Holy Ghost as the third person in the Trinity certainly has no foundation in dogma, but "venerable nature" evidently enabled the alchemist to provide the Holy Ghost with a most unorthodox and distinctly earth-bound partner, or rather to complement Him with that divine spirit which had been imprisoned in all creatures since the day of Creation.

This "lower" spirit is the Primordial Man, hermaphroditic by nature and of Iranian origin, who was imprisoned in physis.

He is the spherical, i.e., perfect, man who appears at the beginning and end of time and is man's own beginning and end.

He is man's totality, which is beyond the division of the sexes and can only be reached when male and female come together in one.

The revelation of this higher meaning solves the problems created by the "sinister" contact and produces from the chaotic darkness the lumen quod superat omnia lumina.

If I did not know from ample experience that such developments also occur in modern man, who cannot possibly be suspected of having any knowledge of the Gnostic doctrine of the Anthropos, I should be inclined to think that the alchemists were keeping up a secret tradition, although the evidence for this (the hints contained in the writings of Zosimos of Panopolis) is so scanty that Waite, who knows medieval alchemy do not help us in this respect.

As regards the psychology of this picture, we must stress above all else that it depicts a human encounter where love plays the decisive part.

The conventional dress of the pair suggests an equally conventional attitude in both of them.

Convention still separates them and hides their natural reality, but the crucial contact of left hands points to something "sinister," illegitimate, morganatic, emotionally instinctive, i.e., the fatal touch of incest and its "perverse" fascination.

At the same time the intervention of the Holy Ghost reveals the hidden meaning of the incest, whether of brother and sister or of mother and son, as a repulsive symbol for the unio mystica.

Although the union of close blood-relatives is everywhere taboo, it is yet the prerogative of kings (witness the incestuous marriages of the Pharaohs, etc.).

Incest symbolizes union with one's own being, it means individuation or becoming a self, and, because this is so vitally important, it exerts an unholy fascination not, perhaps, as a crude reality, but certainly as a psychic process controlled by the unconscious, a fact well known to anybody who is familiar with psychopathology.

It is for this reason, and not because of occasional cases of human incest, that the first gods were believed to propagate their kind incestuously.

Incest is simply the union of like with like, which is the next stage in the development of the primitive idea of self-fertilization.

This psychological situation sums up what we can all see for ourselves if we analyse a transference carefully.

The conventional meeting is followed by an unconscious "familiarization” of one's partner, brought about by the projection of archaic, infantile fantasies which were originally vested in members
of the patient's own family and which, because of their positive or negative fascination, attach him to parents, brothers, and sisters.

The transference of these fantasies to the doctor draws him into the atmosphere of family intimacy, and although this is the last thing he wants, it nevertheless provides a workable prima materia.

Once the transference has appeared, the doctor must accept it as part of the treatment and try to understand it, otherwise it will be just another piece of neurotic stupidity.

The transference itself is a perfectly natural phenomenon which does not by any means happen only in the consulting-room it can be seen everywhere and may lead to all sorts of nonsense, like all unrecognized projections.

Medical treatment of the transference gives the patient a priceless opportunity to withdraw his projections, to make good his losses, and to integrate his personality.

The impulses underlying it certainly show their dark side to begin with, however much one may try to whitewash them; for an integral part of the work is the umbra soils or sol niger of the alchemists, the black shadow which everybody carries with him, the inferior and therefore hidden aspect of the personality, the weakness that goes with every strength, the night that follows every day, the evil in the good.

The realization of this fact is naturally coupled with the danger of falling victim to the shadow, but the danger also brings with it the possibility of consciously deciding not to become its victim.

A visible enemy is always better than an invisible one. In this case I can see no advantage whatever in behaving like an ostrich.

It is certainly no ideal for people always to remain childish, to live in a perpetual state of delusion about themselves, foisting everything they dislike on to their neighbours and plaguing them with their prejudices and projections.

How many marriages are wrecked for years, and sometimes forever, because he sees his mother in his wife and she her father in her husband, and neither ever recognizes the other's reality!

Life has difficulties enough without that; we might at least spare ourselves the stupidest of them.

But, without a fundamental discussion of the situation, it is often simply impossible to break these infantile projections.

As this is the legitimate aim and real meaning of the transference, it inevitably leads, whatever method of rapprochement be used, to discussion and understanding and hence to a heightened consciousness, which is a measure of the personality's integration.

During this discussion the conventional disguises are dropped and the true man comes to light.

He is in very truth reborn from this psychological relationship, and his field of consciousness is rounded into a circle.

It would be quite natural to suppose that the king and queen represent a transference relationship in which the king stands for the masculine partner and the queen for the feminine partner.

But this is by no means the case, because the figures represent contents which have been projected from the unconscious of the adept (and his soror mystica).

Now the adept is conscious of himself as a man, consequently his masculinity cannot be projected, since this only happens to unconscious contents.

As it is primarily a question of man and woman here, the projected fragment of personality can only be the feminine component of the man, I.e., his anima.

Similarly, in the woman's case, only the masculine component can be projected.

There is thus a curious crossing of the sexes: the man (in this case the adept) is represented by the queen, and the woman (the soror mystica) by the king.

It seems to me that the flowers forming the "symbol" suggest this crossing.

The reader should therefore bear in mind that the picture shows two archetypal figures meeting, and that Luna is secretly in league with the adept, and Sol with his woman helper.

The fact that the figures are royal expresses, like real royalty, their archetypal character; they are collective figures common to large numbers of people.

If the main ingredient of this mystery were the enthronement of a king or the deification of a mortal, then the figure of the king might possibly be a projection and would in that case correspond to the adept.

But the further development of the drama has quite another meaning, so we can discount this possibility.

The fact that, for reasons which can be proved empirically, king and queen play cross roles and represent the unconscious contra-sexual side of the adept and his soror leads to a painful complication which by no means simplifies the problem of transference.

Scientific integrity, however, forbids all simplification of situations that are not simple, as is obviously the case here.

The pattern of relationship is simple enough, but, when it comes to detailed description in any given case, it is extremely difficult to see from which angle it is being described and what aspect we are describing.

The pattern is as follows:

The direction of the arrows indicates the pull from masculine to feminine and vice versa, and from the unconscious of one person to the conscious of the other, thus denoting a positive transference relationship.

The following relationships have therefore to be distinguished, although in certain cases they can all merge into each other, and this naturally leads to the greatest possible confusion:

(a) An uncomplicated personal relationship.

(b) A relationship of the man to his anima and of the woman
to her animus.

(b) A relationship of anima to animus and vice versa.

(c) A relationship of the feminine animus to the man

(which happens when the woman is identical with her animus), and of the masculine anima to the woman (which happens when the man is identical with his anima).

In describing the transference problem with the help of this series of illustrations, I have not always kept these different possibilities apart; for in real life they are invariably mixed up and it would have put an intolerable strain on the explanation had I attempted a rigidly schematic exposition.

Thus the king and queen each display every conceivable shade of meaning from the superhuman to the subhuman, sometimes appearing as a transcendental figure, sometimes hiding in the figure of the adept.

The reader should bear this in mind if he comes across any real or supposed contradictions in the remarks which follow.

These intercrossing transference relationships are foreshadowed in folklore: the archetype of the crossed marriage, which I call the "marriage quaternity,"

Finna was a girl with mysterious powers. One day, when her father was setting out for the Althing, she begged him to refuse any suitor who might ask for her hand.

There were many suitors present, but the father refused them all.

On the way home he met a strange man, Geir by name, who forced the father at point of sword to promise his daughter to him.

So they were married, and Finna took Sigurd her brother with her to her new home.

About Christmas-time, when Finna was busy with the festive preparations, Geir disappeared. Finna and her brother went out to look for him and found him on an island with a beautiful woman.

After Christinas, Geir suddenly appeared in Finna's bedroom.

In the bed lay a child. Geir asked her whose child it was, and Finna answered that it was her child.

And so it happened for three years in succession, and each time Finna accepted the child.

But at the third time, Geir was released from the spell. The beautiful woman on the island was Ingeborg, his sister.

Geir had disobeyed his stepmother, a witch, and she had laid a curse on him: he was to have three children by his sister, and unless he found a wife who knew everything and held her peace, he would be changed into a snake and his sister into a filly.

Geir was saved by the conduct of his wife; and he married his sister Ingeborg to Sigurd.

Another example is the Russian fairytale "Prince Danila Govorila":

There is a young prince who is given a lucky ring by a witch. But its magic will work only on one condition: he must marry none but the girl whose finger the ring fits.

When he grows up he goes in search of a bride, but all in vain, because the ring fits none of them.

So he laments his fate to his sister, who asks to try on the ring. It fits perfectly.

Thereupon her brother wants to marry her, but she thinks it would be a sin and sits at the door of the house weeping.

Some old beggars who are passing comfort her and give her the following advice:

"Make four dolls and put them in the four corners of the room.

If your brother summons you to the wedding, go, but if he summons you to the bedchamber, do not hurry! Trust in God and follow our advice."

After the wedding her brother summons her to bed.

Then the four dolls begin to sing;

Cuckoo, Prince Danila,
Cuckoo, Govorila,
Cuckoo, he takes his sister,
Cuckoo, for a wife,
Cuckoo, earth open wide,
Cuckoo, sister fall inside.

The earth opens and swallows her up.

Her brother calls her three times, but by the third time she has already vanished.

She goes along under the earth until she comes to the hut of Baba Yaga, 20 whose daughter kindly shelters her and hides her from the witch.

But before long the witch discovers her and heats up the oven.

The two girls then seize the old woman and put her in the oven instead, thus escaping the witch's persecution.

They reach the prince's castle, where the sister is recognized by her brother's servant.

But her brother cannot tell the two girls apart, they are so alike.

So the servant advises him to make a test: the prince is to fill a skin with blood and put it under his arm.

The servant will then stab him in the side with a knife and the prince is to fall down as if dead.

The sister will then surely betray herself. And so it happens: the sister throws herself upon him with a great cry, whereupon the prince springs up and embraces her.

But the magic ring also fits the finger of the witch's daughter, so the prince marries her and gives his sister to a suitable husband.

In this tale the incest is on the point of being committed, but is prevented by the peculiar ritual with the four dolls.

The four dolls in the four corners of the room form the marriage quaternity, the aim being to prevent the incest by putting four in place of two.

The four dolls form a magic simulacrum which stops the incest by removing the sister to the underworld, where she discovers her alter ego.

Thus we can say that the witch who gave the young prince the fatal ring is his mother-in-law-to-be, for, as a witch, she must certainly have known that the ring would fit not only his sister but her own daughter.

In both tales the incest is an evil fate that cannot easily be avoided. Incest, as an endogamous relationship, is an expression of the libido which serves to hold the family together.

One could therefore define it as "kinship libido," a kind of instinct which, like a sheep-dog, keeps the family group intact.

This form of libido is the diametrical opposite of the exogamous form.

The two forms together hold each other in check: the endogamous form tends towards the sister and the exogamous form towards some stranger.

The best compromise is therefore a first cousin.

There is no hint of this in our fairy stories, but the marriage quaternity is clear enough.

In the Icelandic story we have the pattern:

The two patterns agree in a remarkable way.

In both cases the hero wins a bride who has something to do with magic or the world beyond.

Assuming that the archetype of the marriage quaternio described above is at the bottom of these quaternities which are authenticated by folklore, the stories are obviously based on the following pattern:

Marriage with the anima is the psychological equivalent of absolute identity between conscious and unconscious.

But since such a condition is only possible in the complete absence of psychological self-knowledge, it must be more or less primitive, i.e., the man's relationship to the woman is essentially an anima projection.

The only sign that the whole thing is "unconscious" is the remarkable fact that the carrier of the anima image is distinguished by magical characteristics.

These characteristics are missing from the soror-animus relationship in the stories; that is, the unconscious does not make itself felt at all as a separate experience.

From this we must conclude that the symbolism of the stories rests on a much more primitive frame of mind than the alchemical quaternio and its psychological equivalent.

Therefore we must expect that on a still more primitive level the anima too will lose her magical attributes, the result being an uncomplicated, purely matter-of-fact marriage quaternity.

And we do find a parallel to the two crossed pairs in the so-called "cross-cousin marriage."

In order to explain this primitive form of marriage I must go into some detail.

The marriage of a man's sister to his wife's brother is a relic of the "sister-exchange marriage," characteristic of the structure of many primitive tribes.

But at the same time this double marriage is the primitive parallel to the problem which concerns us here: the conscious and unconscious dual relationship between adept and soror on the one hand and king and queen (or animus and anima) on the other.

John Layard's important study, "The Incest Taboo and the Virgin Archetype" (106), put me in mind of the sociological aspects of our psychologem.

The primitive tribe falls into two halves, of which Howitt says:

"It is upon the division of the whole community into two exogamous intermarrying classes, that the whole social structure is built up."


These "moieties" show themselves in the lay-out of settlements as well as in many strange customs.

At ceremonies, for instance, the two moieties are strictly segregated and neither may trespass on the other's territory.

Even when going out on a hunt, they at once divide into two halves as soon as they set up camp, and the two camps are so arranged that there is a natural obstacle between them, e.g., the bed of a stream.

On the other hand the two halves are connected by what Hocart calls "the ritual interdependence of the two sides" or "mutual ministration."

In New Guinea one side breeds and fattens pigs and dogs, not for themselves but for the other side, and vice versa.

Or when there is a death in the village and the funeral feast is prepared, this is eaten by the other side, and so on.

The division also shows itself in the widespread institution of "dual kingship."

.The names given to the two sides are particularly enlightening, such as to mention only a few east and west, high and low, day and night, male and female, water and land, left and right.

It is not difficult to see from these names that the two halves are felt to be antithetical and thus the expression of an endopsychic antithesis.

The antithesis can be formulated as the masculine ego versus the feminine "other," i.e., conscious versus unconscious personified as anima.

The primary splitting of the psyche into conscious and unconscious seems to be the cause of the division within the tribe and the settlement.

It is a division founded on fact but not consciously recognized as such.

The social split is by origin a matrilineal division into two, but in reality it represents a division of the tribe and settlement into four.

The quartering comes about through the crossing of the matrilineal by a patrilineal line of division.

The practical purpose of this quartering is the separation and differentiation of marriage classes. (Marriage on this level amounts to "group marriage)

The entire population is divided into moieties, and a man can take a wife only from the opposite moiety.

The basic pattern is a square or circle divided by a cross; it forms the ground-plan of the primitive settlement and the archaic city, also of monasteries, convents, etc., as can be seen in Europe, Asia, and prehistoric America.

The Egyptian hieroglyph for "city" is a St. Andrews's cross in a circle.

In specifying the marriage classes, it should be mentioned that every man belongs to his father's patrilineal moiety and can only take a wife from his mother's matrilineal moiety.

In order to avoid the possibility of incest, he marries his mother's brother's daughter and gives his sister to his wife's brother (sister-exchange marriage).

This results in the cross-cousin marriage.

This form of union, consisting of two brother-and-sister marriages crossing each other, seems to be the original pattern of the peculiar psychologem which we find in alchemy:

When I say "pattern" I do not mean that the system of marriage classes was the cause and our psychologem the effect.

I merely wish to point out that this system predated the alchemical quaternity.

Nor can we assume that the primitive marriage quaternio is the absolute origin of this archetype, for the latter is not a human invention at all but a fact that existed long before consciousness, as is true of all ritual symbols among primitives as well as among civilized peoples today.

We do certain things simply without thinking, because they have always been done like that.

The difference between the primitive and the cultural marriage quaternio consists in the fact that the former is a sociological and the latter a mystical phenomenon.

While marriage classes have all but disappeared among civilized peoples, they nevertheless re-emerge on a higher cultural level as spiritual ideas.

In the interests of the welfare and development of the tribe, the exogamous social order thrust the endogamous tendency into the background so as to prevent the dangerous formation of small and ever smaller groups.

It insisted on the introduction of "new blood" both physically and spiritually, and it thus proved to be a powerful instrument in the development of culture.

In the words of Spencer and Gillen:

"This system of what has been called group marriage, serving as it does to bind more or less closely together groups of individuals who are mutually interested in one another's welfare, has been one of the most powerful agents in the early stages of the upward development of the human race."

Layard has amplified this idea in his above-mentioned study.

He regards the endogamous (incest) tendency as a genuine instinct which, if denied realization in the flesh, must realize itself in the spirit.

Just as the exogamous order made culture possible in the first place, so also it contains a latent spiritual purpose.

Layard says:

"Its latent or spiritual purpose is to enlarge the spiritual horizon by developing the idea that there is after all a sphere in which the primary desire may be satisfied, namely the divine sphere of the gods together with that of their semi-divine counterparts, the culture heroes."

The idea of the incestuous hieros gamos does in fact appear in the civilized religions and blossoms forth in the supreme spirituality of Christian imagery (Christ and the Church, sponsus and sponsa., the mysticism of the Song of Solomon, etc.).

"Thus the incest taboo/' says Layard, "leads in full circle out of the biological sphere into the spiritual."

On the primitive level the feminine image, the anima, is still completely unconscious and therefore in a state of latent projection.

Through the differentiation of the"four-class marriage system" into the eight-class, the degree of kinship between marriage partners is considerably diluted, and in the twelve-class system it becomes almost negligible.

These "dichotomies" obviously serve to enlarge the framework of the marriage classes and thus to draw more and more groups of people into the kinship system.

Naturally such an enlargement was possible only where a sizeable population was expanding.

The eight-class and particularly the twelve-class systems mean a great advance for the exogamous order, but an equally severe repression of the endogamous tendency, which is thereby stimulated
to a new advance in its turn.

Whenever an instinctive force i.e., a certain sum of psychic energy is driven into the background through a one-sided (in this case, exogamous) attitude on the part of the conscious mind, it leads to a dissociation of personality.

The conscious personality with its single (exogamous) line of thought comes up against an invisible (endogamous) opponent, and because this is unconscious it is felt to be a stranger and therefore manifests itself in projected form.

At first it makes its appearance in human figures who have the power to do what others may not do kings and princes, for example.

This is probably the reason for the royal incest prerogative, as in ancient Egypt.

To the extent that the magical power of royalty was derived increasingly from the gods, the incest prerogative shifted to the latter and so gave rise to the incestuous hieros gamos.

But when the numinous aura surrounding the person of the king Is taken over by the gods, it has been transferred to a spiritual authority, which results in the projection of an autonomous psychic complex in other words, psychic life becomes a reality.

Thus Layard logically derives the anima from the numen of the goddess.

The anima is manifestly projected in the shape of the goddess, but in her proper (psychological) shape she is introfected; she is, as Layard says, the "anima within."

She is the natural sponsa, man's mother or sister or daughter or wife from the beginning, the companion whom the endogamous tendency vainly seeks to win in the form of mother and sister.

She represents that longing which has always had to be sacrificed since the grey dawn of history.

Layard therefore speaks very rightly of "internalization through sacrifice.”

The endogamous tendency finds an outlet in the exalted sphere of the gods and in the higher world of the spirit.

Here it shows itself to be an instinctive force of a spiritual nature; and, regarded in this light, the life of the spirit on the highest level is a return to the beginnings, so that man's development becomes
a recapitulation of the stages that lead ultimately to the perfection of life in the spirit.

The specifically alchemical projection looks at first sight like a regression: god and goddess are reduced to king and queen, and these in turn look like mere allegories of chemical substances which are about to combine.

But the regression is only apparent.

In reality it is a highly remarkable development: the conscious mind of the medieval investigator was still under the influence of metaphysical ideas, but because he couldnot derive them from nature he projected them into nature.

He tried to find them in matter, because he supposed that they were most likely to be found there.

It was really a question of a transference of numen similar to that from the king to the god.
The numen seemed to have migrated in some mysterious way from the world of the spirit to the realm of matter.

But the descent of the projection into matter had led some of the old alchemists, for example Morienus Romanus, to the distinct realization that this matter was not just the human body (or something in it) but the human personality itself.

These prescient masters had already got beyond the inevitable stage of obtuse materialism which had yet to be born from the womb of time.

But it was not until the discoveries of modern psychology that this human "matter" of the alchemists could be recognized as the psyche.

On the psychological level, the tangle of relationships in the cross-cousin marriage reappears in the transference problem.

The dilemma here consists in the fact that anima and animus are projected upon their human counterparts and thus create by suggestion a primitive relationship which evidently goes back to the time of group marriages.

But in so far as anima and animus undoubtedly represent the contrasexual components of the personality, their kinship character does not point backwards to group marriage but ''forwards" to the integration of personality, i.e., to individuation.

Our present-day civilization with its cult of consciousness if this can be called civilization has a Christian stamp, which means that neither anima nor animus is integrated but is still in the state of projection, i.e., expressed by dogma.

On this level both these figures are unconscious as components of personality, though their effectiveness is still apparent in the numinous aura surrounding the dogmatic ideas of bridegroom and bride.

Our "civilization," however, has turned out to be a very doubtful proposition, a distinct falling away from the lofty ideal of Christianity; and, in consequence, the projections have largely fallen away from the divine figures and have necessarily settled in the human sphere.

This is understandable enough, since the "enlightened" intellect cannot imagine anything greater than man except those tin gods with totalitarian presumptions who call themselves State or Fuehrer.

This regression has made itself as plain as could be wished in Germany and other countries.

And even where it is not so apparent, the lapsed projections have a disturbing effect on human relationships and wreck at least a quarter of the marriages.

If we decline to measure the vicissitudes of the world's history by the standards of right and wrong, true and false, good and evil, but prefer to see the retrograde step in every advance, the evil in every good, the error in every truth, we might compare the present regression with the apparent retreat which led from scholasticism to the mystical trend of natural philosophy and thence to materialism.

Just as materialism led to empirical science and thus to a new understanding of the soul, so the totalitarian psychosis with its frightful consequences and the intolerable disturbance of human relationships is forcing us to pay attention to the psyche and our abysmal unconsciousness of it.

Never before has mankind as a whole experienced the numen of the psychological factor on so vast a scale.

In one sense this is a catastrophe and a retrogression without parallel, but it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that such an experience also has its positive aspects and might become the seed of a nobler culture in a regenerated age.

It is possible that ultimately the endogamous tendency is not aiming at projection at all; it may be trying to unite the different components of the personality on the pattern of the cross-cousin marriage, but on a higher plane where "spiritual marriage" becomes an inner experience that is not projected.

Such an experience has long been depicted in dreams as a mandala divided into four, and it seems to represent the goal of the individuation process, i.e., the self.

Following the growth of population and the increasing dichotomy of the marriage classes, which led to a further extension of the exogamous order, all barriers gradually broke down and nothing remained but the incest-taboo.

The original social order made way for other organizing factors culminating in the modern idea of the State.

Now, everything that is past sinks in time into the unconscious, and this is true also of the original social order.

As an archetype, it combined exogamy and endogamy in the most fortunate way, for while it prevented marriage between brother and sister it provided a substitute in the cross-cousin marriage.

This relationship is still close enough to satisfy the endogamous tendency more or less, but distant enough to include other groups and to extend the orderly cohesion of the tribe.

But with the gradual abolition of exogamous restrictions through increasing dichotomy, the endogamous tendency was bound to gain strength in order to give due weight to consanguineous relationships and so hold them together.

This reaction was chiefly felt in the religious and then in the political field, with the growth on the one hand of religious societies and sects we have only to think of the brotherhoods and the Christian ideal of "brotherly love" and of nations on the other.

Increasing internationalism and the weakening of religion have largely abolished or bridged over these last remaining barriers and will do so still more in the future, only to create an amorphous mass whose preliminary symptoms can already be seen in the modern phenomenon of the mass psyche.

Consequently the original exogamous order is rapidly approaching a condition of chaos painfully held in check.

For this there is but one remedy: the inner consolidation of the individual, who is otherwise threatened with inevitable stultification and dissolution in the mass psyche.

The recent past has given us the clearest possible demonstration of what this would mean.

No religion has afforded any protection, and our organizing factor, the State, has proved to be the most efficient machine for turning out mass-men.

In these circumstances the immunizing of the individual against the toxin of the mass psyche is the only thing that can help.

As I have already said, it is just conceivable that the endogamous tendency will intervene compensatorily and restore the consanguineous marriage, or the union of the divided components of the personality, on the psychic level that is to say, within the individual.

This would form a counterbalance to the progressive dichotomy, the psychic dissociation of collective man.

It is of supreme importance that this process should take place consciously, otherwise the psychic consequences of massmindedness will harden and become permanent.

For, if the inner consolidation of the individual is not conscious, it will occur spontaneously and will then take the well-known form ofthat incredible hard-heartedness which collective man displays
towards his fellow men.

He becomes a soulless herd animal governed only by panic and lust: his soul, which can live only in and from human relationships, is irretrievably lost.

But the conscious achievement of inner unity clings desperately to human relationships as to an indispensable condition, for without the conscious acknowledgment and acceptance of our kinship with those around us there can be no synthesis of personality.

That mysterious something in which the inner union takes place is nothing personal, has nothing to do with the ego, is in fact superior to the ego because, as the self, it is the synthesis of the ego and the supra-personal unconscious.

The inner consolidation of the individual is not just the hardness of collective man on a higher plane, in the form of spiritual aloofness and inaccessibility: it emphatically includes our fellow man.

The extent that the transference is projection and nothing more, it divides quite as much as it connects.

But experience teaches that there is one connection in the transference which does not break off with the severance of the projection.

That is because there is an extremely important instinctive factor behind it: the kinship libido.

This has been pushed so far into the background by the unlimited expansion of the exogamous tendency that it can find an outlet, and a modest one at that, only within the immediate family circle, and sometimes not even there, because of the quite justifiable resistance to incest.

While exogamy was limited by endogamy, it resulted in a natural organization of society which has entirely disappeared today. Everyone is now a stranger among strangers.

Kinship libido which could still engender a satisfying feeling of belonging together, as for instance in the early Christian communities has long been deprived of its object.

But, being an instinct, it is not to be satisfied by any mere substitute such as a creed, party, nation, or state.

It wants the human connection.

That is the core of the whole transference phenomenon, and it is impossible to argue it away, because relationship to the self is at once relationship to our fellow man, and no one can be related to the latter until he is related to himself.

If the transference remains at the level of projection, the connection it establishes shows a tendency to regressive concretization, i.e., it reverts to the primitive order of society.

This tendency has no possible foothold in our modern world, so that every step in this direction only leads to a deeper conflict, and ultimately to a real transference neurosis.

Analysis of the transference is therefore an absolute necessity, because the projected contents must be reintegrated if the patient is to gain the broader view he needs for free decision.

If, however, the projection is broken, the connection whether it be negative (hate) or positive (love) may collapse for the time being so that nothing seems to be left but the politeness of a professional tete-a-tete.

One cannot begrudge either doctor or patient a sigh of relief when this happens, although one knows full well that the problem has only been postponed for both of them.

Sooner or later, here or in some other place, it will present itself again, for behind it there stands the restless urge towards individuation.

Individuation has two principal aspects: in the first place it is an internal and subjective process of integration, and in the second it is an equally indispensable process of objective relationship.

Neither can exist without the other, although sometimes the one and sometimes the other predominates.

This double aspect has two corresponding dangers.

The first is the danger of the patient's using the opportunities for spiritual development arising out of the analysis of the unconscious as a pretext for evading the deeper human responsibilities, and for affecting a certain "spirituality" which cannot stand up to moral criticism; the second is the danger that atavistic tendencies may gain the ascendency and drag the relationship down to a primitive level.

Between this Scylla and that Charybdis there is a narrow passage, and both medieval Christian mysticism and alchemy have contributed much to its discovery.

Looked at in this light, the bond established by the transference however hard to bear and however unintelligible it may seem is vitally important not only for the individual but also for society, and indeed for the moral and spiritual progress of mankind.

So, when the psychotherapist has to struggle with difficult transference problems, he can at least take comfort in these reflections.

He is not just working for this particular patient, who may be quite insignificant, but for himself as well and his own soul, and in so doing he is perhaps laying an infinitesimal grain in the scales of humanity's soul.

Small and invisible as this contribution may be, it is yet an opus magnum, for it is accomplished in a sphere but lately visited by the numen, where the whole weight of mankind's problems has settled.

The ultimate questions of psychotherapy are not a private matter they represent a supreme responsibility. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Pages 210-234

Carl Jung on "The Mercurial Fountain"

THE MERCURIAL FOUNTAIN

We are the metals* first nature and only source/
The highest tincture of the Art is made through us.
No fountain and no water has my like/
I make both rich and poor men whole or sick.
For deadly can I be and poisonous.

[Figure 1]

This picture goes straight to the heart of alchemical symbolism, for it is an attempt to depict the mysterious basis of the opus.

It is a quadratic quaternity, characterized by the four stars in the four corners.

These are the four elements. Above, in the centre, there is a fifth star which represents the fifth entity, the "One" derived from the four, the quinta essentia.

The basin below is the vas Hermeticum,, where the transformation takes place. It contains the mare nostrum, the aqua permanens or the "divine water."

This is the mare tenebrosum, the chaos.

The vessel is also called the uterus in
which the foetus spagyricus (the homunculus) is gestated.

This basin, in contrast to the surrounding square, is circular, because it is the matrix of the perfect form into which the square, as an imperfect form, must be changed.

In the square the elements are still separate and hostile to one another and must therefore be united in the circle.

The inscription on the rim of the basin bears out this intention.

It runs (filling in the abbreviations):

"Unus est Mercurius mineralis, Mercurius vegetabilis, Mercurius animalis." (Vegetabilis should be translated as "living" and animalis as "animate" or even "psychic" in the sense of having a soul.)

On the outside of the basin there are six stars which together with Mercurius represent the seven planets or metals.

They are all as it were contained in Mercurius,
since he is the pater metallorum.

When personified, he is the unity of the seven planets, an Anthropos whose body is the world, like Gayomart, from whose body the seven metals flow into the earth.

Owing to his feminine nature, Mercurius is also the mother of the seven, and not only of the six, for he is his own father and mother.

4s Out of the "sea," then, there rises this Mercurial Fountain, triplex nomine, as is said with reference to the three manifestations of Mercurius.

He is shown flowing out of three pipes in the form of lac uirginls, acetum fontis^ and aqua vitae.

These are three of his innumerable synonyms.

The aforementioned unity of Mercurius is here represented as a triad.

It is repeatedly emphasized that he is a trinity, triunus or trinus, the chthonic, lower, or even infernal counterpart of the Heavenly Trinity, just as Dante's devil is three-headed.

For the same reason Mercurius is often shown as a three-headed serpent.

Above the three pipes we find the sun and moon, who are the indispensable acolytes and parents of the mystic transformation, and, a little higher, the quintessential star, symbol of the unity of the four hostile elements.

At the top of the picture is the serpens bifidus, the divided (or two-headed) serpent, the fatal binarius which Dorn defines as the devil.

This serpent is the serpens mercurialis? representing the duplex natura of Mercurius.

The heads are spitting forth fire, from which Maria the Copt or Jewess derived her "duo fumi."

These are the two vapours whose condensation initiates the process xl which leads to a multiple sublimation or distillation for the purpose of purifying away the mali odores, the foetor sepulcrorum,
And the clinging darkness of the beginning.

This structure reveals the tetrameria (fourfold nature) of the transforming process, already known to the Greeks.

It begins with the four separate elements, the state of chaos, and ascends by degrees to the three manifestations of Mercurius In the inorganic, organic, and spiritual worlds; and, after attaining the form of Sol and Luna (i.e., the precious metals gold and silver, but also the radiance of the gods who can overcome the strife of the elements by love), it culminates in the one and indivisible (incorruptible, ethereal, eternal) nature of the anima, the quinta essentia, aqua permanent, tincture, or lapis philosophorum.

This progression from the number 4 to 3 to 2 to 1 is the "axiom of Maria," and it runs in various forms through the whole of alchemy like a leitmotiv.

If we set aside the numerous "chemical'' explanations we come to the following symbolical ground-plan: the initial state of wholeness is marked by four mutually antagonistic tendencies-4 being the
minimum number by which a circle can be naturally and clearly defined.

The reduction of this number aims at final unity.

The first to appear in this progression is the number 3, a masculine number, and out of it comes the feminine number 2.

Male and female inevitably constellate the idea of sexual union as the means to producing the i, which is then consistently called the "filius regius" or "films philosophorum."

At bottom, therefore, our symbolical picture is an illustration of the methods and philosophy of alchemy.

These are not warranted by the nature of matter as known to the old masters; they can only derive from the unconscious psyche.

No doubt there was also a certain amount of conscious speculation among the alchemists, but this is no hindrance whatever to unconscious projection, for wherever the mind of the investigator
departs from exact observation of the facts before it and goes its own way, the unconscious spiritus rector will take over the reins and lead the mind back to the unchangeable, underlying archetypes, which are then forced into projection by this regression.

The quaternity is one of the most widespread archetypes and has also proved to be one of the most useful diagrams for representing the arrangement of the functions by which the conscious mind takes its bearings.

It is like the crossed threads
in the telescope of our understanding.

The cross formed by the points of the quaternity is no less universal and has in addition the highest possible moral and religious significance for Western man.

Similarly the circle, as the symbol of completeness and perfect being, is a widespread expression for heaven, sun, and God; it also expresses the primordial image of man and the soul.

The minimum plural number, 4, represents the plural state of the man who has not yet attained inner unity, hence the state of bondage and disunion, of disintegration, and of being torn in different directions an agonizing, unredeemed state which longs for union, reconciliation, redemption, healing, and wholeness.

The triad appears as "masculine," i.e., as the active resolve or agent whose alchemical equivalent is the "upwelling."

In relation to it the dyad is "feminine," the receptive, absorbent patiens, or the material that still has to be formed and impregnated (informatio> impraegnatio).

The psychological equivalent of the triad is want, desire, instinct, aggression and determination, whereas the dyad corresponds to the reaction of the psychic system as a whole to the impact or the decisions of the conscious mind.

The latter is absolutely impotent by itself, unless it can succeed in overcoming the inertia of the whole human being and in achieving its object despite his laziness and constant resistance.

But by dint of compulsion or persuasion the conscious mind can carry through its purpose, and only in the resultant action is a man a living whole and a unity ("in the beginning was the deed")

-~provided, of course, that the action is the mature product of a process embracing the complete psyche and not just a spasm or impulse designed to repress it.

We are moving here in familiar waters.

These things are described in the most magnificent images in the last and greatest work of alchemy Goethe's Faust.

He gives a vivid account of the experience of the alchemist who discovers that what he has projected into the retort is his own darkness, his unredeemed state, his passion, his struggles to reach the goal, i.e., to become what he really is, to fulfil the purpose for which his mother bore him, and, after the peregrinations of a long life full of confusion and error, to become the filius regius, son of the supreme mother.

Or we can go even further back to the important forerunner of Faust) the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz (1616), which was assuredly known to Goethe.

Fundamentally it is the same theme, the same "Axioma Mariae," telling how Rosencreutz is transformed out of his former unenlightened condition and comes to realize that he is related to "royalty."

But in keeping with its period (beginning of the seventeenth century), the whole process is far more projected and the withdrawal of the projection into the hero which in Faust's case turns him into a superman is only fleetingly hinted at.

Yet the psychological process is essentially the same: the becoming aware of those powerful contents which alchemy sensed in the secrets of matter.

The text that follows the picture of the Mercurial Fountain is mainly concerned with the "water" of the art, i.e., mercury.

In order to avoid repetition, I would refer the reader to my lecture on "The Spirit Mercurius" (89).

Here I will only say that this fluid substance, with all its paradoxical qualities, really signifies the unconscious which has been projected into it.

The "sea" is its static condition, the "fountain" its activation, and the "process" its transformation.

The integration of unconscious contents is expressed in the idea of the elixir, the medicina catholica or universalisy the aurum potabile^ the cibus sempiternus (everlasting food), the health-giving fruits of the philosophical tree, the vinum ardens, and all the other innumerable synonyms.

Some of them are decidedly ominous but no less characteristic, such as succus lunariae or lunatic (juice of the moon-plant), aqua Saturni (note that Saturn is a baleful deity!), poison, scorpion, dragon, son of the fire, boys' or dogs urine, brimstone, devil, etc.

Although not expressly stated in the text, the gushing up and flowing back of the Mercurial Fountain within its basin completes a circle, and this is an essential characteristic of Mercurius because he is also the serpent that fertilizes, kills, and devours itself and brings itself to birth again.

We may mention in this connection that the circular sea with no outlet, which perpetually replenishes itself by means of a spring bubbling up in its centre, is to be found in Nicholas of Cusa as an allegory
of God. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Pages 203-209

Carl Jung: All definitions of good and evil become suspect or actually invalid.

If, as many are fain to believe, the unconscious were only nefarious, only evil, then the situation would be simple and the path clear: to do good and to eschew evil.

But what is “good” and what is “evil”? The unconscious is not just evil by nature, it is also the source of the highest good: not only dark but also light, not only bestial, semi-human, and demonic but superhuman, spiritual, and, in the classical sense of the word, “divine.”

The Mercurius who personifies the unconscious is essentially “duplex,” paradoxically dualistic by nature, fiend, monster, beast, and at the same time panacea, “the Philosophers' son,” sapientia Dei, and donum Spiritus Sancti.

Since this is so, all hope of a simple solution is abolished.

All definitions of good and evil become suspect or actually invalid.

As moral forces, good and evil remain unshaken, andas the simple verities for which the penal code, the ten commandments, and conventional Christian morality take them undoubted.

But conflicting loyalties are much more subtle and dangerous things, and a conscience sharpened by worldly wisdom can no longer rest content with precepts, ideas, and fine words. When it has to deal with that remnant of primeval psyche, pregnant with the future and yearning for development, it grows uneasy and looks round for some guiding principle or fixed point.

Indeed, once this stage has been reached in our dealings with the unconscious, these desiderata become a pressing necessity.

Since the only salutary powers visible in the world today are the great psychotherapeutic systems which we call the religions, and from which we expect the soul's salvation, it is quite natural that many people should make the justifiable and often successful attempt to find a niche for themselves in one of the existing creeds and to acquire a deeper insight into the meaning of the traditional saving verities.

This solution is normal and satisfying in that the dogmatically formulated truths of the Christian Church express, almost perfectly, the nature of psychic experience.

They are the repositories of the secrets of the soul, and this matchless knowledge is set forth in grand symbolical images.

The unconscious thus possesses a natural affinity with the spiritual values of the Church, particularly in their dogmatic form, which owes its special character to centuries of theological controversy absurd as this seemed in the eyes of later generations and to the passionate efforts of many great men ~Carl Jung, CW 16 Para 391

Carl Jung: CW 16 "The Practice of Psychotherapy" - Quotations

An exclusively sexual interpretation of dreams and fantasies is a shocking violation of the patient's psychological material: infantile-sexual fantasy is by no means the whole story, since the material also contains a creative element, the purpose of which is to shape a way out of the neurosis. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 277.

Medical treatment of the transference gives the patient a priceless opportunity to withdraw his projections, to make good his losses, and to integrate his personality. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 420.

These images are naturally only anticipations of a wholeness which is, in principle, always just beyond our reach. Also, they do not invariably indicate a subliminal readiness on the part of the patient to realize that wholeness consciously, at a later stage; often they mean no more than a temporary compensation of chaotic confusion. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, para 536.

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.

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.

What we call civilized consciousness has steadily separated itself from the basic instincts. But these instincts have not disappeared. They have merely lost their contact with our consciousness and are thus forced to assert themselves in an indirect fashion. This may be . . . physical symptoms . . . neurosis . . . various incidents . . . moods . . . unexpected forgetfulness . . . or mistakes of speech. ~Carl Jung, CW 16,Page 72

What we call civilized consciousness has steadily separated itself from the basic instincts. But these instincts have not disappeared. They have merely lost their contact with our consciousness and are thus forced to assert themselves in an indirect fashion. This may be . . . physical symptoms . . . neurosis . . . various incidents . . . moods . . . unexpected forgetfulness . . . or mistakes of speech. ~Carl Jung; CW 16, Page 327.

The unconscious is not a demoniacal monster, but a natural entity which, as far as moral sense, aesthetic taste, and intellectual judgment go, is completely neutral. It only becomes dangerous when our conscious attitude to it is hopelessly wrong. To the degree that we repress it, its danger increases. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 329.

The unconscious is not just evil by nature, it is also the source of the highest good: not only dark but also light, not only bestial, semihuman, and demonic but superhuman, spiritual, and, in the classical sense of the word, "divine." ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 364.

To be "normal" is the ideal aim for the unsuccessful, for all those who are still below the general level of adaptation. But for people of more than average ability, people who never found it difficult to gain successes and to accomplish their share of the world's work-for them the moral compulsion to be nothing but normal signifies the bed of Procrustes-deadly and insupportable boredom, a hell of sterility and hopelessness. ~Carl Jung; CW 16, Page 161.

Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.” ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 181.

Nobody who finds himself on the road to wholeness can escape that characteristic suspension which is the meaning of crucifixion. For he will infallibly run into things that thwart and "cross" him: first, the thing he has no wish to be (the shadow); second, the thing he is not (the "other," the individual reality of the "You"); and third, his psychic non-ego (the collective unconscious). ~Carl Jung, CW 16, par. 470.

Depression is not necessarily pathological. It often foreshadows a renewal of the personality or a burst of creative activity. There are moments in human life when a new page is turned. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, par. 373.

In this way things repressed and forgotten come back again. This is a gain in itself, though often a painful one, for the inferior and even the worthless belongs to me as my shadow and gives me substance and mass. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 59.

How can I be substantial without casting a shadow? I must have a dark side too if I am to be whole; and by becoming conscious of my shadow I remember once more that I am a human being like any other. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 59.

First and foremost, however, it is not always possible to bring the patients close enough to the unconscious for them to perceive the shadows. On the contrary, many of them and for the most part complicated, highly conscious persons are so firmly anchored in consciousness that nothing can pry them loose. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 60.

After all, the essential thing is not the shadow but the body which casts it. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 64.

Shadow pertains to light as evil to good, and vice versa. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 64.

The “Soul” which accrues to ego-consciousness during the Opus has a feminine character in the man and a masculine character in a woman. His anima wants to reconcile and unite; her animus tries to discern and discriminate. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Par. 522.

For I do not know what to say to the patient when he asks me, "What do you advise? What shall I do?" I don't know either. I only know one thing: when my conscious mind no longer sees any possible road ahead and consequently gets stuck, my unconscious psyche will react to the unbearable standstill. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Par 84.

The first beginnings of all analytical treatment of the soul are to be found in its prototype, the confessional. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Par 123.

Relationship to the Self is at once relationship to our fellow man, and no one can be related to the latter until he is related to himself. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 445.

The Transference Phenomenon is an inevitable feature of every thorough analysis… ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Par. 283.

Thus, from the psychological (not the clinical) point of view, we can divide the psychoneuroses into two main groups: the one comprising collective people with underdeveloped individuality, the other individualists with atrophied collective adaptation. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 5.

What Freud calls 'the dream façade' is the dream's obscurity, and this is really only a projection of our own lack of understanding. We say that the dream has a false front only because we fail to see into it. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Par. 319.

For when the soul vanished at death, it was not lost; in that other world it formed the living counterpole to the state of death in this world. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 493

But the fact is that the approach to the numinous is the real therapy and in as much as you attain to the numinous experiences you are released from the curse of pathology. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 377

Although I was the first to demand that the analyst should himself be analysed, we are largely indebted to Freud for the invaluable discovery that analysts too have their complexes and consequently one or two blind spots which act as so many prejudices. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 8

The doctor knows that always, wherever he turns, man is dogged by his fate. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 463

Freud rightly recognized that this bond is of greatest therapeutic importance in that it gives rise to a mixtum compositum [composite mixture] of the doctor’s own mental health and the patient’s maladjustment. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 358.

The transference is far from being a simple phenomenon with only one meaning, and we can never make out beforehand what it is all about. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 362.

No analysis is capable of banishing all unconsciousness forever. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 239.

The therapist must be guided by the patient’s own irrationalities. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 82.

Here we must follow nature as a guide, and what the doctor then does is less a question of treatment than of developing the creative possibilities latent in the patient himself. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 82.

A therapist with a neurosis is a contradiction in terms. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 179

One cannot help any patient to advance further than one has advanced oneself. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 179

The great healing factor in psychotherapy is the doctor’s personality. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 198.

What we call fantasy is simply spontaneous psychic activity, and it wells up wherever the inhibitive action of the conscious mind abates or, as in sleep, ceases altogether. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 125

In sleep, fantasy takes the form of dreams. But in waking life, too, we continue to dream beneath the threshold of consciousness, especially when under the influence of repressed or other unconscious complexes. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 125

The great decisions in human life usually have far more to do with the instincts and other mysterious unconscious factors than with conscious will and well-meaning reasonableness. The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no universal recipe for living. Each of us carries his own life-form within him—an irrational form which no other can outbid. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 81

The goal is important only as an idea; the essential thing is the opus which leads to the goal: that is the goal of a lifetime. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 400

Relationship paves the way for individuation and makes it possible, but is itself no proof of wholeness. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 244, Footnote 15

The projection upon the feminine partner contains the anima and sometimes the self. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 244, Footnote 15.

Each of us carries his own life-form within him—an irrational form which no other can outbid. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 81

The coming of consciousness was probably the most tremendous experience of primeval times, for with it a world came into being whose existence no one had suspected before. "And God said, 'Let there be light' " is the projection of that immemorial experience of the separation of consciousness from the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 284

Eternal truth needs a human language that alters with the spirit of the times. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 396

Never before has "eternal" truth been faced with such a hybris of will and power. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 396

What we call fantasy is simply spontaneous psychic activity, and it wells up wherever the inhibitive action of the conscious mind abates or, as in sleep, ceases altogether. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 125

If we have a disagreeable view of a situation or thing, our pleasure in it is spoiled, and then it does in fact usually disagree with us. And, conversely, how many things become bearable and even acceptable if we can give up certain prejudices and change our point of view. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 218

When something happens to a man and he supposes it to be personal only to himself, whereas in reality it is a quite universal experience, then his attitude is obviously wrong, that is, too personal, and it tends to exclude him from human society. By the same token we need to have not only a personal, contemporary consciousness, but also a suprapersonal consciousness with a sense of historical continuity. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 99

The least of things with a meaning is always worth more in life than the greatest of things without it. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 96

The goal is important only as an idea; the essential thing is the opus which leads to the goal : that is the goal of a lifetime. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 400

The final appeal to reason would be very fine if man were by nature a rational animal, but he is not; on the contrary, he is quite as much irrational. Hence reason is often not sufficient to modify the instinct and make it conform to the rational order. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 178

There are of course forced answers and solutions, but in principle and in the long run they are neither desirable nor satisfying. No Gordian knot can be permanently cut; it has the awkward property of always tying itself again. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 178

Be the man through whom you wish to influence others. Mere talk has always been counted hollow, and there is no trick, however artful, by which this simple truth can be evaded in the long run. The fact of being convinced and not the thing we are convinced of—that is what has always, and at all times, worked. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 167

For two personalities to meet is like mixing two chemical substances if there is any combination at all, both are transformed. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 163

Science comes to a stop at the frontiers of logic, but nature does not—she thrives on ground as yet untrodden by theory. Venerabilis natura does not halt at the opposites; she uses them to create, out of opposition, a new birth. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 524

Science qua science has no boundaries, and there is no specialty whatever that can boast of complete self-sufficiency. Any specialty is bound to spill over its borders and to encroach on adjoining territory if it is to lay serious claim to the status of a science. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 212

Seen purely theoretically, a dream image can mean anything or nothing. For that matter, does a thing or a fact ever mean anything in itself? The only certainty is that it is always man who interprets, who assigns meaning. And that is the gist of the matter for psychology. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 93

The little word "ought" always proves the helplessness of the therapist; it is an admission that he has come to the end of his resources. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 178

We can wax indignant over man's notorious lack of spirituality, but when one is a doctor one does not invariably think that the disease is malevolent or the patientmorally inferior; instead, one supposes that the negative results may possibly be due to the remedy applied. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 393

The childhood experience of a neurotic is not, in itself, negative; far from it. It becomes negative only when it finds no suitable place in the life and outlook of the adult. The real task of analysis, it seems to me, is to bring about a synthesis between the two. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 564

The relation between conscious and unconscious is compensatory. This is one of the best-proven rules of dream interpretation. When we set out to interpret a dream, it is always helpful to ask: What conscious attitude does it compensate? ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 330

The real difficulty begins when the dreams do not point to anything tangible, and this they do often enough, especially when they hold anticipations of the future. I do not mean that such dreams are necessarily prophetic, merely that they feel the way, they "reconnoitre." These dreams contain inklings of possibilities and for that reason can never be made plausible to an outsider. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 89

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, Para 317

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, Para 304

Dreams are often anticipatory and would lose their specific meaning on a purely causalistic view. They afford unmistakable information about the analytical situation, the correct understanding of which is of the greatest therapeutic importance. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 312

Dream-analysis stands or falls with the hypothesis of the unconscious. Without it, the dream is a mere freak of nature, a meaningless conglomeration of fragments left over from the day. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 294

Dreams are as simple or as complicated as the dreamer is himself, only they are always a little bit ahead of the dreamer's consciousness, I do not understand my own dreams any better than any of you, for they are always somewhat beyond my grasp and I have the same trouble with them as anyone who knows nothing about dream interpretation. Knowledge is no advantage when it is a matter of one's own dreams. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 122

The unconscious is not a demoniacal monster, but a natural entity which, as far as moral sense, aesthetic taste, and intellectual judgment go, is completely neutral. It only becomes dangerous when our conscious attitude to it is hopelessly wrong. To the degree that we repress it, its danger increases. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 329

Anyone who proposed to bring all growing things to the highest pitch of luxuriance would soon find the weeds—those hardiest of perennials—waving above his head. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 229.

So doing, our efforts will follow nature’s own striving to bring life to the fullest possible fruition in each individual, for only in the individual can life fulfil its meaning—not in the bird that sits in a gilded cage. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 229.

It was Freud’s momentous discovery that the neurosis is not a mere agglomeration of symptoms, but a wrong functioning which affects the whole psyche. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 190

The important thing is not the neurosis, but the man who has the neurosis. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 190

If man cannot exist without society, neither can he exist without oxygen, water, albumen, fat, and so forth. Like these, society is one of the necessary conditions of his existence. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 224.

The united personality will never quite lose the painful sense of innate discord. Complete redemption from the sufferings of this world is and must remain an illusion. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 400

Consciousness, no matter how extensive it may be, must always remain the smaller circle within the greater circle of the unconscious, an island surrounded by the sea; and, like the sea itself, the unconscious yields an endless and self-replenishing abundance of living creatures, a wealth beyond our fathoming. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 366.

Assimilation of the shadow gives a man body, so to speak; the animal sphere of instinct, as well as the primitive or archaic psyche, emerge into the zone of consciousness and can no longer be repressed by fictions and illusions. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 452

[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, Para 304

When I find sugar in the urine, it is sugar and not just a façade for albumen. What Freud calls the “dream-façade” is the dream’s obscurity, and this is really only a projection of our own lack of understanding. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 319.

We say that the dream has a false front only because we fail to see into it. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 319.

I leave theory aside as much as possible when analysing dreams —not entirely, of course, for we always need some theory to make things intelligible. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 318.

The patient must learn to go his own way. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 26.

The psyche is a self-regulating system that maintains its equilibrium just as the body does. Every process that goes too far immediately and inevitably calls forth compensations, and without these there would be neither a normal metabolism nor a normal psyche. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Par. 330.

In alchemy there lies concealed a Western system of yoga meditation, but it was kept a carefully guarded secret from fear of heresy and its painful consequences. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 219.

Science comes to a stop at the frontiers of logic, but nature does not: she thrives on ground as yet untrodden by theory. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 524.

For the practising psychologist, however, alchemy has one inestimable advantage over Indian yoga its ideas are expressed almost entirely in an extraordinarily rich symbolism, the very symbolism we still find in our patients today. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 219.

The help which alchemy affords us in understanding the symbols of the individuation process is, in my opinion, of the utmost importance. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 219.

For, if the unconscious is held to be nothing more than a receptacle for all the evil shadow-things in human nature, including deposits of primeval slime, we really do not see why we should linger longer than necessary on the edge of this swamp into which we once fell. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 67.

To be "normal" is the ideal aim for the unsuccessful, for all those who are still below the general level of adaptation. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 69.

Our civilization is still young, and young civilizations need all the arts of the animal-tamer to make the defiant barbarian and the savage in us more or less tractable. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 75.

In sleep, fantasy takes the form of dreams. But in waking life, too, we continue to dream beneath the threshold of consciousness, especially when under the influence of repressed or other unconscious complexes. ~Carl Jung; CW 16, Page 125.

What we are pleased to call illusion may be for the psyche an extremely important life-factor, something as indispensable as oxygen for the body—a psychic actuality of overwhelming significance. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 111

Nothing is more probable than that what we call illusion is very real for the psyche—for which reason we cannot take psychic reality to be commensurable with conscious reality. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 111

Our will is a function regulated by reflection; hence it is dependent on the quality of that reflection. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 462

Moreover, is it not essential to the true art of living, sometimes, in defiance of all reason and fitness, to include the unreasonable and the unfitting within the ambiance of the possible? ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 462

If only we could understand all this impersonally—could understand that we are not the personal creators of our truths, but only their exponents, mere mouthpieces of the day's psychic needs, then much venom and bitterness might be spared and we should be able to perceive the profound and supra-personal continuity of the human mind. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 157

The test of a firm conviction is its elasticity and flexibility; like every other exalted truth it thrives best on the admission of its errors. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 180

Venerabilis natura does not halt at the opposites; she uses them to create, out of opposition, a new birth. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 524

As Schiller says, man is completely human only when he is at play. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 98

For the ultimate cause of a neurosis is something positive which needs to be safeguarded for the patient; otherwise he suffers a psychic loss, and the result of the treatment is at best a defective cure. Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 564

Nobody doubts the importance of conscious experience; why then should we doubt the significance of unconscious happenings? They also are part of our life, and sometimes more truly a part of it for weal or woe than any happenings of the day. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 325

The patient, that is to say, does not need to have a truth inculcated into him—if we do that, we only reach his head; he needs far more to grow up to this truth, and in that way we reach his heart, and the appeal goes deeper and works more powerfully. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 314

For an equilibrium does in fact exist between the psychic ego and non-ego, and that equilibrium is a religio, a "careful consideration" of ever-present unconscious forces which we neglect at our peril. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 394

To cherish secrets and hold back emotion is a psychic misdemeanour for which nature finally visits us with sickness—that is, when we do these things in private. But when they are done in communion with others they satisfy nature and may even count as useful virtues. It is only restraint practised for oneself alone that is unwholesome. It is as if man had an inalienable right to behold all that is dark, imperfect, stupid, and guilty in his fellow men—for such, of course, are the things we keep secret in order to protect ourselves. It seems to be a sin in the eyes of nature to hide our inferiority—just as much as to live entirely on our inferior side. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 132

A dream that is not understood remains a mere occurrence; understood, it becomes a living experience. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 252

He [Since dreams provide information about the hidden inner life and reveal to the patient those components of his personality which, in his daily behaviour, appear merely as neurotic symptoms, it follows that we cannot effectively treat him from the side of consciousness alone, but must bring about a change in and through the unconscious. In the light of our present knowledge this can be achieved only by the thorough and conscious assimilation of unconscious contents. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 326

“What I have to say begins where the treatment leaves off and this development sets in. Thus my contribution to psychotherapy confines itself to those cases where rational treatment does not yield satisfactory results. The clinical material at my disposal is of a peculiar composition: new cases are decidedly in the minority. Most of them already have some form of psychotherapeutic treatment behind them, with partial or negative results. About a third of my cases are not suffering from any clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and aimlessness of their lives. I should not object if this were called the general neurosis of our age. Fully two thirds of my patients are in the second half of life. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 83

It is otherwise with a person in the second half of life who no longer needs to educate his conscious will, but who, to understand the meaning of his individual life, needs to experience his own inner being. Social usefulness is no longer an aim for him, although he does not deny its desirability. Fully aware as he is of the social unimportance of his creative activity, he feels it more as a way of working at himself to his own benefit. Increasingly, too, this activity frees him from morbid dependence, and he thus acquires an inner stability and a new trust in himself. These last achievements now redound to the good of the patient’s social existence; for an inwardly stable and self-confident person will prove more adequate to his social tasks than one who is on a bad footing with his unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 110

I would make myself guilty of a sin of omission if I were to foster the impression that specialized therapy needed nothing but a wide knowledge. Quite as important is the moral differentiation of the doctor’s personality. Surgery and obstetrics have long been aware that it is not enough simply to wash the patient-the doctor himself must have clean hands. A neurotic psychotherapist will invariably treat his own neurosis in the patient. A therapy independent of the doctor’s personality is just conceivable in the sphere of rational techniques, but it is quite inconceivable in a dialectical procedure where the doctor must emerge from his anonymity and give an account of himself, just as he expects his patient to do. I do not know which is the more difficult: to accumulate a wide knowledge or to renounce one’s professional authority and anonymity. At events the latter necessity involves a moral strain that makes the profession of psychotherapist not exactly an enviable one. Among laymen one frequently meets with the prejudice that psychotherapy is the easiest thing in the world and consists in the art of putting something over on people or wheedling money out of them. But actually it is a tricky and not undangerous calling. Just as all doctors are exposed to infections and other occupational hazards, so the psychotherapist runs the risk of psychic infections which are no less menacing. One the one hand he is often in danger of getting entangled in the neuroses of his patients; on the other hand if he tries too hard to guard against their influence, he robs himself of their therapeutic efficacy. Between this Scylla and Charybdis lies the peril, but also the healing power. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 23

From all this it should now be clear why I make it an heuristic rule, in interpreting a dream, to ask myself: What conscious attitude does it compensate? By so doing, I relate the dream as closely as possible to the conscious situation; indeed, I would even assert that without knowledge of the conscious situation the dream can never be interpreted with any degree of certainty. Only in the light of this knowledge is it possible to make out whether the unconscious content carries a plus or a minus sign. The dream is not an isolated event completely cut off from daily life and lacking its character. If it seems so to us, that is only the result of our lack of understanding, a subjective illusion. In reality the relation between the conscious mind and the dream is strictly causal, and they interact in the subtlest of ways. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 334

Just as the interpretation of dreams requires exact knowledge of the conscious status quo, so the treatment of dream symbolism demands that we take into account the dreamer’s philosophical, religious, and moral convictions. It is far wiser in practice not to regard dream-symbols semiotically, i.e., as signs or symptoms of a fixed character, but as true symbols, i.e asexpressions of a content not yet consciously recognized or conceptually formulated. In addition, they must be considered in relation to the dreamer’s immediate state of consciousness, I say that this procedure is advisable in practice because in theory relatively fixed symbols do exist whose meaning must on no account be referred to anything known and formulable as I concept. If there were no such relatively fixed symbols it would be impossible to determine the structure of the unconscious, for there would be nothing that could in any way be laid hold of or described. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 339
Infinitely varied are the contents of the initial dreams, that is, the dreams that come at the outset of the treatment. In many cases they point directly to the past and recall things lost and forgotten. For very often the standstill and disorientation arise when life has become one-sided, and this may, in psychological terms, cause a sudden loss of libido. All our previous activities become uninteresting, even senseless, and our aims suddenly no longer worth striving for. What in one person is merely a passing mood may in another become a chronic condition. In these cases it often happens that other possibilities for developing the personality lie buried somewhere or other in the past, unknown to anybody, not even to the patient. But the dream may reveal the clue. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 87
The use of dream-analysis in psychotherapy is still a much debated question. Many practitioners find it indispensable in the treatment of neuroses, and consider that the dream is a function whose psychic importance is equal to that of the conscious mind itself. Others, on the contrary, dispute the value of dream-analysis and regard dreams as a negligible by-product of the psyche. Obviously, if a person holds the view that the unconscious plays a decisive part in the aetiology of neuroses, he will attribute a high practical importance to dreams as direct expressions of the unconscious. Equally obviously, if he denies the unconscious or at least thinks it aetiologically insignificant, he will minimize the importance of dream-analysis. It might be considered regrettable that in this year of grace 1931, more than half a century after Carus formulated the concept of the unconscious, more than a century after Kant spoke of the “illimitable field of obscure ideas,” and nearly two hundred years after Leibniz postulated an unconscious psychic activity, not to mention the achievements of Janet, Flournoy, Freud, and many more- that after all this, the actuality of the unconscious should still be a matter for controversy. But, since it is my intention to deal exclusively with practical questions, I will not advance in this place an apology for the unconscious, although our special problem of dream-analysis stands or falls with such an hypothesis. Without it, the dream is a mere freak of nature, a meaningless conglomeration of fragments left over from the day.Were that really so, there would be no excuse for the present discussion. Wecannot treat our theme at all unless we recognize the unconscious, for the avowed aim of dream-analysis is not only to exercise our wits, but to uncover and realize those hitherto unconscious contents which arc considered to be of importance in the elucidation or treatment of a neurosis. Anyone who finds this hypothesis unacceptable must simply rule out the question of the applicability of dream-analysis. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 294

“The fundamental mistake regarding the nature of the unconscious is probably this: it is commonly supposed that its contents have only one meaning and are marked with an unalterable plus or minus sign. In my humble opinion, this view is too naieve. The psyche is a self-regulating system that maintains its equilibrium just as the body does. Every process that goes too far immediately and inevitably calls forth compensations, and without these there would be neither a normal metabolism nor a normal psyche. In this sense we can take the theory of compensation as a basic law of psychic behaviour. Too little on one side results in too much on the other. Similarly, the relation between conscious and unconscious is compensatory. This is one of the best-proven rules of dream interpretation. When we set out to interpret a dream, it is always helpful to ask: What conscious attitude does it compensate?” ~Carl Jung, CW 16 Para 330

“But since, according to our hypothesis, the unconscious possesses an aetiological significance, and since dreams are the direct expression of unconscious psychic activity, the attempt to analyse and interpret dreams is theoretically justified from a scientific standpoint. If successful, we may expect this attempt to give us scientific insight into the structure of psychic causality, quite apart from any therapeutic results that may be gained. The practitioner, however, tends to consider scientific discoveries as, at most, a gratifying by-product of his therapeutic work, so he is hardly likely to take the bare possibility of theoretical insight into the aetiological background as a sufficient reason for, much less an indication of, the practical use of dream-analysis. He may believe, of course, that the explanatory insight so gained is of therapeutic value, in which case he will elevate dream-analysis to a professional duty. It is well known that the Freudian school is of the firm opinion that very valuable therapeutic results are achieved by throwing light upon the unconscious causal factors- that is, by explaining them to the patient and thus making him fully conscious of the sources of his trouble. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 295

Here we come upon something of the utmost importance for the applicability of dream-analysis: the dream describes the inner situation of the dreamer, but the conscious mind denies its truth and reality, or admits it only grudgingly. Consciously the dreamer could not see the slightest reason why he should not go steadily forward; on the contrary, he continued his ambitious climbing and refused to admit his own inability which subsequent events made all too plain. So long as we move in the conscious sphere, we are always unsure in such cases. The anamnesis can be interpreted in various ways. After all, the common soldier carries the marshal’s baton in his knapsack, and many a son of poor parents has achieved the highest success. Why should it not be the case here? Since my judgment is fallible, why should my conjecture be better than his? At this point the dream comes in as the expression of an involuntary, unconscious psychic process beyond the control of the conscious mind. It 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. I have therefore made it a rule to regard dreams as I regard physiological facts: if sugar appears in the urine, then the urine contains sugar, and not albumen or urobilin or something else that might fit in better with my, expectations. That is to say, I take dreams as diagnostically valuable facts. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 304

“Initial dreams are often amazingly lucid and clear-cut. But as the work of analysis progresses, the dreams tend to lose their clarity. If by way of exception, they keep it we can be sure that analysis has not yet touched on some important layer of the personality. As a rule, dreams get more and more opaque and blurred soon after the beginning of the treatment, and this makes the interpretation increasingly difficult. A further difficulty is that a point may soon be reached where, if the truth be told, the doctor no longer understands the situation as a whole. That he does not understand is proved by the fact that the dreams become increasingly obscure, for we all know that “obscurity” is a purely subjective opinion of the doctor. To the understanding nothing is obscure; it is only when we do not understand that things appear unintelligible and muddled. In themselves dreams are naturally clear; that is, they are what they must be under the circumstances. If, from a later stage of treatment or from a distance of some years, we look back at these unintelligible dreams, we are often astounded at our own blindness. Thus when, as the analysis proceeds, we come upon dreams that are strikingly obscure in comparison with the illuminating initial dreams, the doctor should not be too ready to accuse the dreams of confusion or the patient of deliberate resistance; he would do better to take these findings as a sign of his growing inability to understand – just as the psychiatrist who calls his patient “confused” should recognize that this is a projection and should rather call himself confused, because in reality it is he whose wits are confused by the patient’s peculiar behaviour. Moreover it is therapeutically very important for the doctor to admit his lack of understanding in time, for nothing is more unbearable to the patient than to be always understood. He relies far too much anyway on the mysterious powers of the doctor and, by appealing to his professional vanity, lays a dangerous trap for him. By taking refuge in the doctor’s self-confidence and “profound” understanding, the patient loses all sense of reality, falls into a stubborn transference, and retards the cure. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 313

The analyst who wishes to rule out conscious suggestion must therefore consider every dream interpretation invalid until such time as a formula is found which wins the assent of the patient.” ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 316

This being so, it is imperative that we should not pare down the meaning of the dream to fit some narrow doctrine. We must remember that there are not a few patients who imitate the technical or theoretical jargon of the doctor, and do this even in their dreams, in accordance with the old tag, Canis panem somniat, piscator pisces. This is not to say that the fishes of which the fisherman dreams are fishes and nothing more. There is no language that cannot be misused. As may easily be imagined, the misuse often turns the tables on us; it even seems as if the unconscious had a way of strangling the doctor in the coils of his own theory. Therefore I leave theory aside as much as possible when analysing dreams-not entirely, of course, for we always need some theory to make things intelligible. It is on the basis of theory, for instance, that I expect dreams to have a meaning. I cannot prove in every case that this is so, for there are dreams which the doctor and the patient simply do not understand. But I have to make such an hypothesis in order to find courage to deal with dreams at all. To say that dreams add something important to our conscious knowledge, and that a dream which fails to do so has not been properly interpreted -that, too, is a theory. But I must make this hypothesis as well in order to explain to myself why I analyse dreams in the first place. All other hypotheses, however, about the function and the structure of dreams are merely rules of thumb and must be subjected to constant modification. In dream-analysis we must never forget, even for a moment, that we move on treacherous ground where nothing is certain but uncertainty. If it were not so paradoxical. one would almost like to call out to the dream interpreter: “Do anything you like, only don’t try to understand!” ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 318
Every interpretation is an hypothesis, an attempt to read an unknown text. An obscure dream, taken in isolation, can hardly ever be interpreted with any certainty. For this reason I attach little importance to the interpretation of single dreams. A relative degree of certainty is reached only in the interpretation of a series of dreams, where the later dreams correct the mistakes we have made in handling those that went before. Also, the basic ideas and themes can be recognized much better in a dream-series, and I therefore urge my patients to keep a careful record of their dreams and of the interpretations given. I also show them how to work out their dreams in the manner described, so that they can bring the dream and its context with them in writing to the consultation. At a later stage I get them to work out the interpretation as well. In this way the patient learns how to deal correctly with his unconscious without the doctor’s help. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 322

No amount of scepticism and criticism has yet enabled me to regard dreams as negligible occurrences. Often enough they appear senseless, but it is obviously we who lack the sense and ingenuity to read the enigmatic message from the nocturnal realm of the psyche. Seeing that at least half our psychic existence is passed in that realm, and that consciousness acts upon our nightly life just as much as the unconscious overshadows our daily life, it would seem all the more incumbent on medical psychology to sharpen its senses by a systematic study of dreams. Nobody doubts the importance of conscious experience; why then should we doubt the significance of unconscious happenings? They also are part of our life, and sometimes more truly a part of it for weal or woe than any happenings of the day. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 325

Since dreams provide information about the hidden inner life and reveal to the patient those components of his personality which, in his daily behaviour, appear merely as neurotic symptoms, it follows that we cannot effectively treat him from the side of consciousness alone, but must bring about a change in and through the unconscious. In the light of our present knowledge this can be achieved only by the thorough and conscious assimilation of unconscious contents. “Assimilation” in this sense means mutual penetration of conscious and unconscious, and not-as is commonly thought and practised-a one-sided evaluation, interpretation, and deformation of unconscious contents by the conscious mind. As to the value and significance of unconscious contents in general, very mistaken views are current. It is well known that the Freudian school presents the unconscious in a thoroughly negative light, much as it regards primitive man as little better than a monster. Its nursery-tales about the terrible old man of the tribe and its teachings about the “infantile-perverse-criminal” unconscious have led people to make a dangerous ogre out of something perfectly natural. As if all that is good, reasonable, worth while, and beautiful had taken up its abode in the conscious mind! Have the horrors of the ‘World War done nothing to open our eyes, so that we still cannot see that the conscious mind is even more devilish and perverse than the naturalness of the unconscious? ~Carl Jung CW 16, Paras 326-327

If I have made the attempt to illustrate the principles of the psychoanalytic method by means of dream-analysis it is because the dream is one of the clearest examples of psychic contents whose composition eludes direct understanding. Neuroses are still-very unjustly-counted as mild illnesses, mainly because their nature is not tangible and of the body. People do not “die” of a neurosis-as if every bodily illness had a fatal outcome! But it is entirely forgotten that, unlike bodily illnesses, neuroses may be extremely deleterious in their psychic and social consequences, often worse than psychoses, which generally lead to the social isolation of the sufferer and thus render him innocuous. An anchylosed knee, an amputated foot, a long-drawn-out phthisis, are in every respect preferable to a severe neurosis. When the neurosis is regarded not merely from the clinical but from the psychological and social standpoint, one comes to the conclusion that it really is a severe illness, particularly in view of its effects on the patient’s environment and way of life. The clinical standpoint by itself is not and cannot be fair to the nature of a neurosis, because a neurosis is more a psychosocial phenomenon than an illness in the strict sense. It forces us to extend the term “illness” beyond the idea of an individual body whose functions are disturbed, and to look upon the neurotic person as a sick system of social relationships. When one has corrected one’s views in this way, one will no longer find it astonishing that a proper therapy of neuroses is an elaborate and complicated matter. Unfortunately, the medical faculties have bothered far too little with the fact that the number or neuroses (and above the frequency of psychic complications in organic diseases) is very great and thus concerns the general practitioner in unusually high degree, even though he may not realize it. Nevertheless his studies give him no preparation whatever in this most important respect; indeed, very often he never has a chance to find out anything about this subject, so vital in practice. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 37the psychotherapist] is not just working for this particular patient, who may be quite insignificant, but for himself as well and his own soul, and in so doing he is perhaps laying an infinitesimal grain in the scales of humanity’s soul. Small and invisible as this contribution may be, it is yet an opus magnum. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, par. 449.

“Although my patients occasionally produce artistically beautiful things that might very well be shown in modern “art” exhibitions, I nevertheless treat them as completely worthless when judged by the canons of real art. As a matter of fact, it is essential that they should be considered worthless, otherwise my patients might imagine themselves to be artists, and the whole point of the exercise would be missed. It is not a question of art at all-or rather, it should not be a question of art – but of something more and other than mere art, namely the living effect upon the patient himself. The meaning of individual life, whose importance from the social standpoint is negligible, stands here at its highest, and for its sake the patient struggles to give form, however crude and childish, to the inexpressible.” ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 104)

The unconscious is not a demoniacal monster, but a natural entity which, as far as moral sense, aesthetic taste, and intellectual judgment go, is completely neutral. it only becomes dangerous when our conscious attitude to it is hopelessly wrong. To the degree that we repress it, its danger increases. But the moment the patient begins to assimilate contents that were previously unconscious, its danger diminishes. The dissociation of the personality, the anxious division of the day-time and night-time sides of the psyche, cease with progressive assimilation.” ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 329

“Freud’s original idea of the unconscious was that it was a sort of receptacle or storehouse for repressed material, infantile wishes, and the like. But the unconscious is far more than that: it is the basis and precondition of all consciousness. It represents the unconscious functioning of the psyche in general. It is psychic life before, during, and after consciousness. And inasmuch as the newborn child is presented with a ready-made, highly developed brain which owes its differentiation to the accretions of untold centuries of ancestral life, the unconscious psyche must consist of inherited instincts, functions, and forms that are peculiar to the ancestral psyche. This collective heritage is by no means made up of inherited ideas, but rather of the possibilities of such ideas-in other words, of a priori categories of possible functioning. Such an inheritance could be called instinct, using the word in its original sense. But it is not quite so simple. On the contrary, it is a most intricate web of what I have called archetypal conditions. This implies the probability that a man will behave much as his ancestors behaved, right back to Methuselah. Thus the unconscious is seen as the collective predisposition to extreme conservatism, a guarantee, almost, that nothing new wi1l ever happen. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 61

Since the only salutary powers visible in the world today are the great psychotherapeutic systems which we call the religions, and from which we expect the soul's salvation, it is quite natural that many people should make the justifiable and often successful attempt to find a niche for themselves in one of the existing creeds and to acquire a deeper insight into the meaning of the traditional saving verities. This solution is normal and satisfying in that the dogmatically formulated truths of the Christian Church express, almost perfectly, the nature of psychic experience. They are the repositories of the secrets of the soul, and this matchless knowledge is set forth in grand symbolical images. The unconscious thus possesses a natural affinity with the spiritual values of the Church, particularly in their dogmatic form, which owes its special character to centuries of theological controversy—absurd as this seemed in the eyes of later generations—and to the passionate efforts of many great men. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 390

The individual's decision not to belong to a Church does not necessarily denote an anti-Christian attitude; it may mean exactly the reverse: a reconsidering of the kingdom of God in the human heart where, in the words of St. Augustine, the mysterium paschale is accomplished "in its inward and higher meanings." The ancient and long obsolete idea of man as a microcosm contains a supreme psychological truth that has yet to be discovered. In former times this truth was projected upon the body, just as alchemy projected the unconscious psyche upon chemical substances. But it is altogether different when the microcosm is understood as the interior world whose inward nature is fleetingly glimpsed in the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 397

When, therefore, I am treating practising Catholics, and am faced with the transference problem, I can, by virtue of my office as a doctor, step aside and lead the problem over to the Church. But if I am treating a non-Catholic, that way out is debarred, and by virtue of my office as a doctor I cannot step aside, for there is as a rule nobody there, nothing towards which I could suitably lead the father-imago. I can, of course, get the patient to recognize with his reason that I am not the father. But by that very act I become the reasonable father and remain despite everything the father. Not only nature, but the patient too, abhors a vacuum. He has an instinctive horror of allowing the parental imagos and his childhood psyche to fall into nothingness, into a hopeless past that has no future. His instinct tells him that, for the sake of his own wholeness, these things must be kept alive in one form or another. He knows that a complete withdrawal of the projection will be followed by an apparently endless isolation within the ego, which is all the more burdensome because he has so little love for it. He found it unbearable enough before, and he is unlikely to bear it now simply out of sweet reasonableness. Therefore at this juncture the Catholic who has been freed from an excessively personal tie to his parents can return fairly easily to the mysteries of the Church, which he is now in a position to understand better and more deeply. There are also Protestants who can discover in one of the newer variants of Protestantism a meaning which appeals to them, and so regain a genuine religious attitude. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 218

We cannot rate reason highly enough, but there are times when we must ask ourselves: do we really know enough about the destinies of individuals to entitle us to give good advice under all circumstances? Certainly we must act according to our best convictions, but are we so sure that our convictions are for the best as regards the other person? Very often we do not know what is best for ourselves, and in later years we may occasionally thank God from the bottom of our hearts that his kindly hand has preserved us from the "reasonableness" of our former plans. It is easy for the critic to say after the event, "Ah, but then it wasn't the right sort of reason!" Who can know with unassailable certainty when he has the right sort? Moreover, is it not essential to the true art of living, sometimes, in defiance of all reason and fitness, to include the unreasonable and the unfitting within the ambiance of the possible? ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 462

All beginnings are small. Therefore we must not mind doing tedious but conscientious work on obscure individuals, even though the goal towards which we strive seems unattainably far off. But one goal we can attain, and that is to develop and bring to maturity individual personalities. And inasmuch as we are convinced that the individual is the carrier of life, we have served life's purpose if one tree at least succeeds in bearing fruit, though a thousand others remain barren. Anyone who proposed to bring all growing things to the highest pitch of luxuriance would soon find the weeds—those hardiest of perennials—waving above his head. I therefore consider it the prime task of psychotherapy today to pursue with singleness of purpose the goal of individual development. So doing, our efforts will follow nature's own striving to bring life to the fullest possible fruition in each individual, for only in the individual can life fulfil its meaning—not in the bird that sits in a gilded cage. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 229

Nothing is less effective than an intellectual idea. But when an idea is a psychic fact that crops up in two such totally different fields as psychology and physics, apparently without historical connection, then we must give it our closest attention. For ideas of this kind represent forces which are logically and morally unassailable; they are always stronger than man and his brain. He fancies that he makes these ideas, but in reality they make him—and make him their unwitting mouthpiece. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 147

Instinct is not an isolated thing, nor can it be isolated in practice. It always brings in its train archetypal contents of a spiritual nature, which are at once its foundation and its limitation. In other words, an instinct is always and inevitably coupled with something like a philosophy of life, however archaic, unclear, and hazy this may be. Instinct stimulates thought, and if a man does not think of his own free will, then you get compulsive thinking, for the two poles of the psyche, the physiological and the mental, are indissolubly connected. For this reason instinct cannot be freed without freeing the mind, just as mind divorced from instinct is condemned to futility. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 185

To live in perpetual flight from ourselves is a bitter thing, and to live with ourselves demands a number of Christian virtues which we then have to apply to our own case, such as patience, love, faith, hope, and humility. It is all very fine to make our neighbour happy by applying them to him, but the demon of self-admiration so easily claps us on the back and says, "Well done!" And because this is a great psychological truth, it must be stood on its head for an equal number of people so as to give the devil something to carp at. But—does it make us happy when we have to apply these virtues to ourselves? when I am the recipient of my own gifts, the least among my brothers whom I must take to my bosom? when I must admit that I need all my patience, my love, my faith, and even my humility, and that I myself am my own devil, the antagonist who always wants the opposite in everything? Can we ever really endure ourselves? "Do unto others . . ."—this is as true of evil as of good. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 522

In our delusion-ridden world a truth is so precious that nobody wants to let it slip merely for the sake of a few so-called exceptions which refuse to toe the line. And whoever doubts this truth is invariably looked on as a faithless reprobate, so that a note of fanaticism and intolerance everywhere creeps into the discussion. And yet each of us can carry the torch of knowledge but a part of the way, until another takes it from him. If only we could understand all this impersonally—could understand that we are not the personal creators of our truths, but only their exponents, mere mouthpieces of the day's psychic needs, then much venom and bitterness might be spared and we should be able to perceive the profound and supra-personal continuity of the human mind. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 156

Conviction easily turns into self-defense and is seduced into rigidity, and this is inimical to life. The test of a firm conviction is its elasticity and flexibility; like every other exalted truth it thrives best on the admission of its errors. ~Carl Jung, 16, Para 180

There would appear to be a sort of conscience in mankind which severely punishes everyone who does not somehow and at some time, at whatever cost to his virtuous pride, cease to defend and assert himself, and instead confess himself fallible and human. Until he can do this, an impenetrable wall shuts him off from the vital feeling that he is a man among other men. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 132

To be "normal" is the ideal aim for the unsuccessful, for all those who are still below the general level of adaptation. But for people of more than average ability, people who never found it difficult to gain successes and to accomplish their share of the world's work—for them the moral compulsion to be nothing but normal signifies the bed of Procrustes—deadly and insupportable boredom, a hell of sterility and hopelessness. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 161

Fantasy is the maternally creative side of the masculine mind. When all is said and done, we can never rise above fantasy. It is true that there are unprofitable, futile, morbid, and unsatisfying fantasies whose sterile nature is immediately recognized by every person endowed with common sense; but the faulty performance proves nothing against the normal performance. All the works of man have their origin in creative imagination. What right, then, have we to disparage fantasy? In the normal course of things, fantasy does not easily go astray; it is too deep for that and too closely bound up with the tap-root of human and animal instinct. It has a surprising way of always coming out right in the end. The creative activity of imagination frees man from his bondage to the "nothing but" and raises him to the status of one who plays. As Schiller says, man is completely human only when he is at play. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 98

It is of the greatest importance for the young person, who is still undated and has as yet achieved nothing, to shape his conscious ego as effectively as possible, that is, to educate his will. Unless he is a positive genius he cannot, indeed he should not, believe in anything active within him that is not identical with his will. He must feel himself a man of will, and may safely depreciate everything else in him and deem it subject to his will, for without this illusion he could not succeed in adapting himself socially. It is otherwise with a person in the second half of life who no longer needs to educate his conscious will, but who, to understand the meaning of his individual life, needs to experience his own inner being. Social usefulness is no longer an aim for him, although he does not deny its desirability. Fully aware as he is of the social unimportance of his creative activity, he feels it more as a way of working at himself to his own benefit. Increasingly, too, this activity frees him from morbid dependence, and he thus acquires an inner stability and a new trust in himself. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 109.

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, clichés 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. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 29

When, as a psychotherapist, I set myself up as a medical authority over my patient and on that account claim to know something about his individuality, or to be able to make valid statements about it, I am only demonstrating my lack of criticism, for I am in no position to judge the whole of the personality before me. I cannot say anything valid about him except in so far as he approximates to the "universal man." But since all life is to be found only in individual form, and I myself can assert of another individuality only what I find in my own, I am in constant danger either of doing violence to the other person or of succumbing to his influence. If I wish to treat another individual psychologically at all, I must for better or worse give up all pretensions to superior knowledge, all authority and desire to influence. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 2

A general and merely academic "insight into one's mistakes" is ineffectual, for then the mistakes are not really seen at all, only the idea of them. They show up acutely when a human relationship brings them to the fore and when they are noticed by the other person as well as by oneself. Then and then only can they really be felt and their true nature recognized. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 503

An analyst can help his patient just so far as he himself has gone and not a step further. In my practice I have had from the beginning to deal with patients who got "stuck" with their previous analysis, and this always happened at the point where the analyst could make no further progress with himself. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 545

No psychotherapist should lack that natural reserve which prevents people from riding roughshod over mysteries they do not understand and trampling them flat. This reserve will enable him to pull back in good time when he encounters the mystery of the patient's difference from himself, and to avoid the danger—unfortunately only too real—of committing psychic murder in the name of therapy. For the ultimate cause of a neurosis is something positive which needs to be safeguarded for the patient; otherwise he suffers a psychic loss, and the result of the treatment is at best a defective cure. Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 564

Natural science is not a science of words and ideas, but of facts. I am no terminological rigorist—call the existing symbols "wholeness," "self," "consciousness," "higher ego," or what you will—it makes little difference. I for my part only try not to give any false or misleading names. All these terms are simply names for the facts that alone carry weight. The names I give do not imply a philosophy, although I cannot prevent people from barking at these terminological phantoms as if they were metaphysical hypostases. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 537

The remarkable potency of unconscious contents always indicates a corresponding weakness in the conscious mind and its functions. It is as though the latter were threatened with impotence. For primitive man this danger is one of the most terrifying instances of "magic." So we can understand why this secret fear is also to be found among civilized people. In serious cases it is the secret fear of going mad; in less serious, the fear of the unconscious—a fear which even the normal person exhibits in his resistance to psychological views and explanations. This resistance borders on the grotesque when it comes to scouting all psychological explanations of art, philosophy, and religion, as though the human psyche had, or should have, absolutely nothing to do with these things. The doctor knows these well-defended zones from his consulting hours they are reminiscent of island fortresses from which the neurotic tries to ward off the octopus. ("Happy neurosis island," as one of my patients called his conscious state!) The doctor is well aware that the patient needs an island and would be lost without it. It serves as a refuge for his consciousness and as the last stronghold against the threatening embrace of the unconscious. The same is true of the normal person's taboo regions which psychology must not touch. But since no war was ever won on the defensive, one must, in order to terminate hostilities, open negotiations with the enemy and see what his terms really are. Such is the intention of the doctor who volunteers to act as a mediator. He is far from wishing to disturb the somewhat precarious island idyll or pull down the fortifications. On the contrary, he is thankful that somewhere a firm foothold exists that does not first have to be fished up out of the chaos, always a desperately difficult task. He knows that the island is a bit cramped and that life on it is pretty meagre and plagued with all sorts of imaginary wants because too much life has been left outside, and that as a result a terrifying monster is created, or rather is roused out of its slumbers. He also knows that this seemingly alarming animal stands in a secret compensatory relationship to the island and could supply everything that the island lacks. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 374

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, Para 137

Neither our modern medical training nor academic psychology and philosophy can equip the doctor with the necessary education, or with the means, to deal effectively and understandingly with the often very urgent demands of his psychotherapeutic practice. It therefore behoves us, unembarrassed by our shortcomings as amateurs of history, to go to school once more with the medical philosophers of a distant past, when body and soul had not yet been wrenched asunder into different faculties. Although we are specialists par excellence, our specialized field, oddly enough, drives us to universalism and to the complete overcoming of the specialist attitude, if the totality of body and soul is not to be just a matter of words. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 190

It is enough to drive one to despair that in practical psychology there are no universally valid recipes and rules. There are only individual cases with the most heterogeneous needs and demands—so heterogeneous that we can virtually never know in advance what course a given case will take, for which reason it is better for the doctor to abandon all preconceived opinions. This does not mean that he should throw them overboard, but that in any given case he should use them merely as hypotheses for a possible explanation. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 63

Experience has taught me to keep away from therapeutic "methods" as much as from diagnoses. The enormous variation among individuals and their neuroses has set before me the ideal of approaching each case with a minimum of prior assumptions. The ideal would naturally be to have no assumptions at all. But this is impossible even if one exercises the most rigorous self-criticism, for one is oneself the consequences. Try as we may to have no assumptions and to use no ready-made methods, the assumption that I myself will determine my method as I am, so will I proceed. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 543

The use of dream-analysis in psychotherapy is still a much debated question. Many practitioners find it indispensable in the treatment of neuroses, and consider that the dream is a function whose psychic importance is equal to that of the conscious mind itself. Others, on the contrary, dispute the value of dream-analysis and regard dreams as a negligible by-product of the psyche. Obviously, if a person holds the view that the unconscious plays a decisive part in the aetiology of neuroses, he will attribute a high practical importance to dreams as direct expressions of the unconscious. Equally obviously, if he denies the unconscious or at least thinks it aetiologically insignificant, he will minimize the importance of dream-analysis. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 294

The evolutionary stratification of the psyche is more clearly discernible in the dream than in the conscious mind. In the dream, the psyche speaks in images, and gives expression to instincts, which derive from the most primitive levels of nature. Therefore, through the assimilation of unconscious contents, the momentary life of consciousness can once more be brought into harmony with the law of nature from which it all too easily departs, and the patient can be led back to the natural law of his own being. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 351

So long as I help the patient to discover the effective elements in his dreams, and so long as I try to get him to see the general meaning of his symbols, he is still, psychologically speaking, in a state of childhood. For the time being he is dependent on his dreams and is always asking himself whether the next dream will give him new light or not. Moreover, he is dependent on my having ideas about his dreams and on my ability to increase his insight through my knowledge. Thus he is still in an undesirably passive condition where everything is rather uncertain and questionable; neither he nor I know the journey's end. Often it is not much more than a groping about in Egyptian darkness. In this condition we must not expect any very startling results—the uncertainty is too great for that. Besides which there is always the risk that what we have woven by day the night will unravel. The danger is that nothing is achieved, that nothing remains fixed. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 101

I have no theory about dreams, I do not know how dreams arise. And I am not at all sure that my way of handling dreams even deserves the name of a "method." I share all your prejudices against dream-interpretation as the quintessence of uncertainty and arbitrariness. On the other hand, I know that if we meditate on a dream sufficiently long and thoroughly, if we carry it around with us and turn it over and over, something almost always comes of it. This something is not of course a scientific result to be boasted about or rationalized; but it is an important practical hint which shows the patient what the unconscious is aiming at. Indeed, it ought not to matter to me whether the result of my musings on the dream is scientifically verifiable or tenable, otherwise I am pursuing an ulterior—and therefore autoerotic—aim. I must content myself wholly with the fact that the result means something to the patient and sets his life in motion again. I may allow myself only one criterion for the result of my labours: does it work? As for my scientific hobby—my desire to know why it works—this I must reserve for my spare time. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 86

Every interpretation is an hypothesis, an attempt to read an unknown text. An obscure dream, taken in isolation, can hardly ever be interpreted with any certainty. For this reason I attach little importance to the interpretation of single dreams. A relative degree of certainty is reached only in the interpretation of a series of dreams, where the later dreams correct the mistakes we have made in handling those that went before. Also, the basic ideas and themes can be recognized much better in a dream-series. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 322

It makes very little difference whether the doctor understands or not, but it makes all the difference whether the patient understands. Understanding should therefore be understanding in the sense of an agreement which is the fruit of joint reflection. The danger of a one-sided understanding is that the doctor may judge the dream from the standpoint of a preconceived opinion. His judgment may be in line with orthodox theory, it may even be fundamentally correct, but it will not win the patient's assent, he will not come to an understanding with him, and that is in the practical sense incorrect—incorrect because it anticipates and thus cripples the patient's development. The patient, that is to say, does not need to have a truth inculcated into him—if we do that, we only reach his head; he needs far more to grow up to this truth, and in that way we reach his heart, and the appeal goes deeper and works more powerfully. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 314

I leave theory aside as much as possible when analyzing dreams—not entirely, of course, for we always need some theory to make things intelligible. It is on the basis of theory, for instance, that I expect dreams to have a meaning. I cannot prove in every case that this is so, for there are dreams which the doctor and the patient simply do not understand. But I have to make such an hypothesis in order to find courage to deal with dreams at all. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 318

Another dream-determinant that deserves mention is telepathy. The authenticity of this phenomenon can no longer be disputed today. It is, of course, very simple to deny its existence without examining the evidence, but that is an unscientific procedure which is unworthy of notice. I have found by experience that telepathy does in fact influence dreams, as has been asserted since ancient times. Certain people are particularly sensitive in this respect and often have telepathically influenced dreams. But in acknowledging the phenomenon of telepathy I am not giving unqualified assent to the popular theory of action at a distance. The phenomenon undoubtedly exists, but the theory of it does not seem to me so simple. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 503

No amount of scepticism and criticism has yet enabled me to regard dreams as negligible occurrences. Often enough they appear senseless, but it is obviously we who lack the sense and ingenuity to read the enigmatic message from the nocturnal realm of the psyche. Seeing that at least half our psychic existence is passed in that realm, and that consciousness acts upon our nightly life just as much as the unconscious overshadows our daily life, it would seem all the more incumbent on medical psychology to sharpen its senses by a systematic study of dreams. Nobody doubts the importance of conscious experience; why then should we doubt the significance of unconscious happenings? They also are part of our life, and sometimes more truly a part of it for weal or woe than any happenings of the day. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 325

What is "illusion"? By what criterion do we judge something to be an illusion? Does anything exist for the psyche that we are entitled to call illusion? What we are pleased to call illusion may be for the psyche an extremely important life-factor, something as indispensable as oxygen for the body—a psychic actuality of overwhelming significance. Presumably the psyche does not trouble itself about our categories of reality; for it, everything that world is real. The investigator of the psyche must not confuse it with his consciousness, else he veils from his sight the object of his investigation. On the contrary, to recognize it at all, he must learn to see how different it is from consciousness. Nothing is more probable than that what we call illusion is very real for the psyche—for which reason we cannot take psychic reality to be commensurable with conscious reality. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 111

When there is a marked change in the individual's state of consciousness, the unconscious contents which are thereby constellated will also change. And the further the conscious situation moves away from a certain point of equilibrium, the more forceful and accordingly the more dangerous become the unconscious contents that are struggling to restore the balance. This leads ultimately to a dissociation on the one hand, ego-consciousness makes convulsive efforts to shake off an invisible opponent (if it does not suspect its next-door neighbour of being the devil!), while on the other hand it increasingly falls victim to the tyrannical will of an internal "Government opposition" which displays all the characteristics of a daemonic subman and superman combined. When a few million people get into this state, it produces the sort of situation which has afforded us such an edifying object-lesson every day for the last ten years. These contemporary events betray their psychological background by their very singularity. The insensate destruction and devastation are a reaction against the deflection of consciousness from the point of equilibrium. For an equilibrium does in fact exist between the psychic ego and non-ego, and that equilibrium is a religio, a "careful consideration" of ever-present unconscious forces which we neglect at our peril. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 394

Eternal truth needs a human language that alters with the spirit of the times. The primordial images undergo ceaseless transformation and yet remain ever the same, but only in a new form can they be understood anew. Always they require a new interpretation if, as each formulation becomes obsolete, they are not to lose their spellbinding power over that jugax Mercurius and allow that useful though dangerous enemy to escape. What is that about "new wine in old bottles"? Where are the answers to the spiritual needs and troubles of a new epoch? And where the knowledge to deal with the psychological problems raised by the development of modern consciousness? Never before has "eternal" truth been faced with such a hybris of will and power. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 396

Life demands for its completion and fulfilment a balance between joy and sorrow. But because suffering is positively disagreeable, people naturally prefer not to ponder how much fear and sorrow fall to the lot of man. So they speak soothingly about progress and the greatest possible happiness, forgetting that happiness is itself poisoned if the measure of suffering has not been fulfilled. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 185

If, as many are fain to believe, the unconscious were only nefarious, only evil, then the situation would be simple and the path clear to do good and to eschew evil. But what is "good" and what is "evil"? The unconscious is not just evil by nature, it is also the source of the highest good not only dark but also light, not only bestial, semi-human and demonic but superhuman, spiritual, and, in the classical sense of the word, "divine." ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 389

The Church has the doctrine of the devil, of an evil principle, whom we like to imagine complete with cloven hoofs, horns, and tail, half man, half beast, a chthonic deity apparently escaped from the rout of Dionysus, the sole surviving champion of the sinful joys of paganism. An excellent picture, and one which exactly describes the grotesque and sinister side of the unconscious; for we have never really come to grips with it and consequently it has remained in its original savage state. Probably no one today would still be rash enough to assert that the European is a lamblike creature and not possessed by a devil. The frightful records of our age are plain for all to see, and they surpass in hideousness everything that any previous age, with its feeble instruments, could have hoped to accomplish. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 388

We are so accustomed to hear that everybody has his "difficulties and problems" that we simply accept it as a banal fact, without considering what these difficulties and problems really mean. Why is one never satisfied with oneself? Why is one unreasonable? Why is one not always good and why must one ever leave a cranny for evil? Why does one do foolish things which could easily be avoided with a little forethought? What is it that is always frustrating us and thwarting our best intentions? Why are there people who never notice these things or cannot even admit their existence? And finally, why do people in the mass beget the historical lunacy of the last thirty years? Why couldn't Pythagoras, twenty-four hundred years ago, have established the rule of wisdom once and for all, or Christianity have set up the kingdom of Heaven upon earth? ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 387

If man cannot exist without society, neither can he exist without oxygen, water, albumen, fat, and so forth. Like these, society is one of the necessary conditions of his existence. It would be ludicrous to maintain that man lives in order to breathe air. It is equally ludicrous to say that the individual exists for society. "Society" is nothing more than a term, a concept for the symbiosis of a group of human beings. A concept is not a carrier of life. The sole and natural carrier of life is the individual, and that is so throughout nature. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 224

Although biological instinctive processes contribute to the formation of personality, individuality is nevertheless essentially different from collective instincts; indeed, it stands in the most direct opposition to them, just as the individual as a personality is always distinct from the collective. His essence consists precisely in this distinction. Every ego-psychology must necessarily exclude and ignore just the collective element that is bound to a psychology of instinct, since it describes that very process by which the ego becomes differentiated from collective drives. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 88

The present attempts to achieve full individual consciousness and to mature the personality are, socially speaking, still so feeble that they carry no weight at all in relation to our historic needs. If our European social order is not to be shaken to its foundations, authority must be restored at all costs. This is probably one reason for the efforts now being made in Europe to replace the collectivity of the Church by the collectivity of the State. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 221

The ego lives in space and time and must adapt itself to their laws if it is to exist at all. If it is absorbed by the unconscious to such an extent that the latter alone has the power of decision, then the ego is stifled, and there is no longer any medium in which the unconscious could be integrated and in which the work of realization could take place. The separation of the empirical ego from the "eternal" and universal man is therefore of vital importance, particularly today, when mass-degeneration of the personality is making such threatening strides. Mass-degeneration does not come only from without: it also comes from within, from the collective unconscious. Against the outside, some protection was afforded by the droits de L'homme which at present are lost to the greater part of Europe, and even where they are not actually lost we see political parties, as naive as they are powerful, doing their best to abolish them in favour of the slave state, with the bait of social security. Against the demonism from within, the Church offers some protection so long as it wields authority. But protection and security are only valuable when not excessively cramping to our existence; and in the same way the superiority of consciousness is desirable only if it does not suppress and shut out too much life. As always, life is a voyage between Scylla and Charybdis. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 502

In the case of psychological suffering, which always isolates the individual from the herd of so-called normal people, it is of the greatest importance to understand that the conflict is not a personal failure only, but at the same time a suffering common to all and a problem with which the whole epoch is burdened.

A man can find satisfaction and fulfilment only in what he does not yet possess, just as he can never be satisfied with something of which he has already had too much. To be a social and adapted person has no charms for one to whom such an aspiration is child's play. Always to do the right thing becomes a bore for the man who knows how, whereas the eternal bungler cherishes a secret longing to be right for once in some distant future. The needs and necessities of mankind are manifold. What sets one man free is another man's prison. So also with normality and adaptation. Even if it be a biological axiom that man is a herd animal who only finds optimum health in living as a social being, the very next case may quite possibly invert this axiom and show us that he is completely healthy only when leading an abnormal and unsocial life. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 162

Hence, unless we prefer to be made fools of by our illusions, we shall, by carefully analyzing every fascination, extract from it a portion of our own personality, like a quintessence, and slowly come to recognize that we meet ourselves time an d again in a thousand disguises on the path of life. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 316.

As a rule, the life of a young person is characterized by a general expansion and a striving towards concrete ends; and his neurosis seems mainly to rest on his hesitation or shrinking back from this necessity. But the life of an older person is characterized by a contraction of forces, by the affirmation of what has been achieved, and by the curtailment of further growth. His neurosis comes mainly from his clinging to a youthful attitude which is now out of season…. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, ¶75.

Since we cannot imagine—unless we have lost our critical faculties altogether—that mankind today has attained the highest possible degree of consciousness, there must be some potential unconscious psyche left over whose development would result in a further extension and a higher differentiation of consciousness. No one can say how great or small this "remnant" might be, for we have no means of measuring the possible range of conscious development, let alone the extent of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 387

The hero's main feat is to overcome the monster of darkness it is the long-hoped-for and expected triumph of consciousness over the unconscious. The coming of consciousness was probably the most tremendous experience of primeval times, for with it a world came into being whose existence no one had suspected before. "And God said, 'Let there be light' " is the projection of that immemorial experience of the separation of consciousness from the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 284

The possession of complexes does not in itself signify neurosis, for complexes are the normal foci of psychic happenings, and the fact that they are painful is no proof of pathological disturbance. Suffering is not an illness; it is the normal counterpole to happiness. A complex becomes pathological only when we think we have not got it. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 179

The Christian doctrine of original sin on the one hand, and of the meaning and value of suffering on the other, is of profound therapeutic significance and is undoubtedly far better suited to Western man than Islamic fatalism. Similarly the belief in immortality gives life that untroubled flow into the future so necessary if stoppages and regressions are to be avoided. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 186

Behind a neurosis there is so often concealed all the natural and necessary suffering the patient has been unwilling to bear. We can see this most clearly from hysterical pains, which are relieved in the course of treatment by the corresponding psychic suffering which the patient sought to avoid. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 185.

It is to be conjectured that just as the chicken comes out of the egg in the same way all the world over, so there are psychic modes of functioning, certain ways of thinking, feeling, and imagining, which can be found everywhere and at all times, quite independent of tradition. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 206.