Showing posts with label Character. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Character. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Carl Jung on “Character” – Anthology




In order to give our judgment.. on the character of wholeness, we must supplement our time-conditioned thinking by the principle of correspondence [between outer and inner events], or as I have called it, synchronicity." C.G. Jung, Aion, para 409

The feminine side of Christ is much emphasized in Christian iconology, he is usually represented as a very feminine man. The same characteristic was apparently attributed to his cousin, Mithras. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 8th Dec 1939

Psychic heredity does exist —that is to say, there is inheritance of psychic characteristics such as predisposition to disease, traits of character, special gifts, and so forth. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 845

For me the unconscious is a collective psychic disposition, creative in character. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 875

Indeed, it is quite impossible to define the extent and the ultimate character of psychic existence. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 140

When the intellect or any superior function is pushed that far, it becomes bloodless and takes on an airy, gas-like character. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 66

The inheritance of instincts is a known fact, whereas the inheritance of acquired characteristics is controversial. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 457-458

Synchronicity is not a name that characterizes an "organizing principle," but, like the word "archetype," it characterizes a modality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 445-449

Adler's character, on the contrary, was introverted in so far as he gave paramount importance to the power of the ego. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 349-350

In observing a neurotic, one does not know at first whether one is observing the conscious or the unconscious character. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 346-348

Somatic characteristics are permanent and virtually unalterable facts, whereas psychological ones are subject to various alterations in the course of personality development and also to neurotic disturbances. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 346-348

What I mean by this is that every epoch of our biological life has a numinous character: birth, puberty, marriage, illness, death, etc. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 208-210.

It looks as if the collective character of the archetypes would manifest itself also in meaningful coincidences, i.e., as if the archetype (or the collective unconscious) were not only inside the individual, but also outside, viz. in one's environment, as if sender and percipient were in the same psychic space, or in the same time (in precognition cases). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 43-47.

I see with regret from your letter that you are suffering very much from your noises in the ear. The unconscious often uses symptoms of this kind in order to make psychic contents audible, i.e., the symptoms are intensified by a psychogenic afflux and only then do they acquire the proper tormenting character that forces your attention inwards, where of course it gets caught in the disturbing noises. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 20-21.

The coincidence of the Fibonacci numbers (or sectio aurea) with plant growth is a sort of analogy with synchronicity inasmuch as the latter consists in the coincidence of a psychic process with an external physical event of the same character or meaning. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 287-289.

Inasmuch as karma means either a personal or at least an individual inherited determinant of character and fate, it represents the individually differentiated manifestation of the instinctual behaviour pattern, i.e., the general archetypal disposition. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 287-289.

As I told you yesterday, the psyche is by no means tabula rasa here, but a definite mixture and combination of genes, which are there from the very first moment of our life; and they give a definite character, even to the little child. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 22.

The child is born as a high complexity, with existing determinants that never waver through the whole life, and that give the child his character. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 13.

The character of the image is not determined by numbers. Pure spiritual substance is eternal. An image as such needs neither time nor space. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 60.

The archetypes are complementary and equivalents of the "outside" world and therefore possess "cosmic" character. Thins explains their numinosity and godlikeness. ~Carl Jung, CW 9, Page 196.

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.

The individual experience is woven in to this tissue, so it is of vital importance, where we come from, who our parents are, and what our early surroundings were. We say that a person has such and such a character, but one is born with a form which can only be changed with the greatest difficulty. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XII, 1Feb1935, Page 179.

I have seen such cases where a second personality brings about an absolute change in character. It is this phenomenon which is made conscious here through active imagination. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Pages 106.

The character ming really signifies a royal command then, destiny, fate, the fate allotted to a man, so too, the duration of life, the measure of vitality at one's disposal, and thus it comes about that ming (life) is closely related to Eros. ~The Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 11.

Human nature [hsing] and consciousness [hui] are expressed in light symbolism, and are therefore intensity, while life [ming] would coincide with extensity. The first have the character of the yang principle, the latter of the yin. ~Carl Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 101.

If the unconscious can be localized anywhere it is in the basal ganglia, and it has the same uncanny character. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XI, Page 97.

Such a thing is possible only when there is a detachment of the soul from the body. When that takes place and the patient lives on, one can almost with certainty expect a certain deterioration of the character inasmuch as the superior and most essential part of the soul has already left. Such an experience denotes a partial death. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 435-437.

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.

The anima also has affinities with animals, which symbolize her characteristics. Thus she can appear as a snake or a tiger or a bird. ~ Carl Jung, CW 9i, para. 358

Filling the conscious mind with ideal conceptions is a characteristic of Western theosophy, but not the confrontation with the shadow and the world of darkness. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. ~Carl Jung; The Philosophical Tree; CW 13: Alchemical Studies. P.335

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

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

The little world of childhood with its familiar surroundings is a model of the greater world. The more intensively the family has stamped its character upon the child, the more it will tend to feel and see its earlier miniature world again in the bigger world of adult life. Naturally this is not a conscious, intellectual process. ~Carl Jung; The Theory of Psychoanalysis (1913).

First, fantasies (including dreams) of a personal character, which go back unquestionably to personal experiences, things forgotten or repressed, and can thus be completely explained by individual anamnesis. Second, fantasies (including dreams) of an impersonal character, which cannot be reduced to experiences in the individual’s past, and thus cannot be explained as something individually acquired. ~Carl Jung; CW 9i

I most certainly was characterized by thinking … and I had a great deal of Intuition, too. And I had a definite difficulty with Feeling. And my relation to reality was not particularly brilliant. … I was often at variance with the reality of things. Now that gives you all the necessary data for diagnosis. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung, Speaking, Pages 435-6.

The God appears in multiple guises; for when he emerges, he has assumed some of the character of the night and the nightly waters in which he slumbered, and in which he struggled for renewal in the last hour of the night. Consequently his appearance is twofold and ambiguous; indeed, it even tears at the heart and the mind. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 311.

The serpent is the earthly essence of man of which he is not conscious. Its character changes according to peoples and lands, since it is the mystery that flows to him from the nourishing earth-mother. The earthly (numen loci) separates forethinking and pleasure in man, but not in itself. The serpent has the weight of the earth in itself but also its changeability and germination from which everything that becomes emerges. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 247.