Carl Jung: To be " normal" is a splendid ideal for the unsuccessful

Carl Jung: To be " normal" is a splendid ideal for the unsuccessful... (2015-12-29 14:52)

In order to make clear what this fourth stage has in view, and to throw some light on the curious term "transformation," we must first take account of those psychic needs of man which were not given a place in the other stages.

In other words, we must ascertain what could seem more desirable or lead further than the claim to be a normally adapted, social being.

Nothing is more useful or fitting than to be a normal human being; but the very notion of a "normal human being" suggests a restriction to the average-as does also the concept of adaptation.

It is only a man who as things stand, already finds it difficult to come to terms with the everyday world who can see in this restriction a desirable improvement: a man, let us say, whose neurosis unfits him for normal life.

To be " normal" is a splendid ideal for the unsuccessful, for all those who have not yet found an adaptation.

But for people who have far more ability than the average, for whom it was never hard to gain successes and to accomplish their share of the world’s work-for them restriction to the normal signifies the bed of Procrustes, unbearable boredom, infernal sterility and hopelessness.

As a consequence there are many people who become neurotic because they are only normal, as there are people who are neurotic because they cannot become normal.

For the former the very thought that you want to educate them to normality is a nightmare; their deepest need is really to be able to lead "abnormal” lives. Carl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Pages 47-48.

Carl Jung: The man we call modern, the man who is aware of the immediate present, is by no means the average man.

The man we call modern, the man who is aware of the immediate present, is by no means the average man.

He is rather the man who stands upon a peak, or at the very edge of the world, the abyss of the future before him, above him the heavens, and below him the whole of mankind with a history that disappears in primeval mists.

The modern man—or, let us say again, the man of the immediate present—is rarely met with, for he must be conscious to a superlative degree.

Since to be wholly of the present means to be fully conscious of one's existence as a man, it requires the most intensive and extensive consciousness, with a minimum of unconsciousness.

It must be clearly understood that the mere fact of living in the present does not make a man modern, for in that case everyone at present alive would be so.

We always find in the patient a conflict which at a certain point is connected with the great problems of society.

Hence, when the analysis is pushed to this point, the apparently individual conflict of the patient is revealed as a universal conflict of his environment and epoch.

The old religions with their sublime and ridiculous, their friendly and fiendish symbols did not drop from the blue, but were born of this human soul that dwells within us at this moment.

All those things, their primal forms, live on in us and may at any time burst in upon us with annihilating force, in the guise of mass-suggestions against which the individual is defenseless.

Our fearsome gods have only changed their names: they now rhyme with ism. Or has anyone the nerve to claim that the World War or Bolshevism was an ingenious invention?

Just as outwardly we live in a world where a whole continent may be submerged at any moment, or a pole be shifted, or a new pestilence break out, so inwardly we live in a world where at any moment something similar may occur, albeit in the form of an idea, but no less dangerous and untrustworthy for that. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Page 204.

Carl Jung: "Modern Man in Search of a Soul" - Quotations

Whenever the creative force predominates, human life is ruled and molded by the unconscious as against the active will, and the conscious ego is swept along on a subterranean current, being nothing more than a helpless observer of events." Carl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul; Pages 168-171.

I . . . regard the symbol as the announcement of something unknown, hard to recognize, and not to be fully determined. ~Carl Jung; Modern Man in Search of a Soul; Page 22.

The dream is specifically the utterance of the unconscious. . . . It is imperative that we do not pare down the meaning of a dream to fit some narrow doctrine ~Carl Jung; Modern Man in Search of a Soul; Page 11.

Dreams are the direct expression of unconscious psychic activity ~Carl Jung; Modern Man in Search of a Soul; Page 2.

The dream gives a true picture of the subjective state, while the conscious mind denies that this state exists, or recognizes it only grudgingly ~Carl Jung; Modern Man in Search of a Soul; Page 5.

The dream content is to be taken in all seriousness as something that has actually happened to us. . . . Every dream is a source of information and a means of self-regulation; . . . dreams are our most effective aids in building up the personality. ~Carl Jung; Modern Man in Search of a Soul; Page 18.

Dreams give information about the secrets of the inner life and reveal to the dreamer hidden factors of [the dreamer's] personality. . . . There must be a thorough-going, conscious assimilation of unconscious contents. By "assimilation" I mean a mutual interpenetration of conscious and unconscious contents. ~Carl Jung; Modern Man in Search of a Soul; Page 16.

Theoretically, there do exist relatively fixed symbols . . . . If there were no relatively fixed symbols, it would be impossible to determine the structure of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung; Modern Man in Search of a Soul; Page 21.

The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases. Each of us carries his own life-form—an indeterminable form which cannot be superseded by any other. ~Carl Jung; Modern Man in Search of a Soul; Pages 60-61.

Every civilized human being, whatever his conscious development, is still an archaic man at the deeper levels of his psyche. Just as the human body connects us with the mammals and displays numerous relics of earlier evolutionary stages going back to even the reptilian age, so the human psyche is likewise a product of evolution which, when followed up to its origins, show countless archaic traits. ~Carl Jung; Modern Man in Search of a Soul; Page 126

Aging people should know that their lives are not mounting and unfolding but that an inexorable inner process forces the contraction of life. For a young person it is almost a sin — and certainly a danger — to be too much occupied with him; but for the aging person it is a duty and a necessity to give serious attention to him. ~Carl Jung; Modern Man in Search of a Soul Page 125.

There are hardly any exceptions to the rule that a person must pay dearly for the divine gift of the creative fire. ~Carl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Page 169.

Sport represents an exceptional valuation of the human body, as does also modern dancing. ~Carl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Pages 218-220.

We shall also see that belief in the body cannot tolerate an outlook that denies the body in the name of the spirit. ~Carl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Pages 218-220.

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed. ~Carl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Page 49.

We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses. I am the oppressor of the person I condemn, not his friend and fellow-sufferer. ~Carl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Pages 234-235.

Ideas spring from a source that is not contained within one man’s personal life. We do not create them; they create us. ~Carl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Page 115.

But if we can reconcile ourselves with the mysterious truth that spirit is the living body seen from within, and the body the outer manifestation of the living spirit --the two being really one-then we can understand why it is that the attempt to transcend the present level of consciousness must give its due to the body. ~Carl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Page 220

Bringing to light the parts of the personality that were previously unconscious and subjecting them to conscious discrimination…is…a call to arms that must be answered by the whole personality. ~Carl Jung; Modern Man in Search of a Soul; Page 10.

I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among those in the second half of life - that is to say, over 35 - there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given their followers, and none of them has really been healed who did not regain his religious outlook. ~Carl Jung; Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Page 229

No psychic value can disappear without being replaced by another of equivalent intensity. ~Carl Jung; Modern Man in Search of a Soul; Page 209