Showing posts with label Sex. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sex. Show all posts

Saturday, September 2, 2017

Carl Jung: She had over fifty lovers, but only out of curiosity, she was always frigid.




LECTURE III 5 February 1930

[In answer to a question by Mrs. Sawyer concerning the interpretation of the figure of the mechanic in the dream of the exploded magneto, and in the last dream of the grinding machine, such an animated discussion followed during the first part of the seminar and the notes taken were so confused that only the following fragment could be reported properly.

The subject was taken up again and clarified in the beginning of the next seminar.

In connection with the statement that the repair of the motor was delegated to an unconscious figure, this example was given as an illustration of the independent nature of an autonomous complex.]

Dr. Jung: We find it exceedingly difficult to realize that there are autonomous factors within us which actually do things.

One can see that objectively in cases of somnambulism, where people, quite unconscious, get up in the night and accomplish certain things, discovering in the morning that it has all been done as if by brownies.

I had an uncle to whom it happened.

He was a rather well known expert court-accountant, and he had to clear up a tremendous case of fraudulent manipulation.

He was unable to clarify a most important item, until once, at about three in the morning, his wife saw him get up and go into his study without dressing.

He sat working at his desk for about half an hour and she noticed when he came back that he had a staring look, his eyes wide open and glassy, and realized that he was in a somnambulistic condition.

In the morning he felt low and heavy and complained that he could not find that damned mistake and would have to look for it again.

Of course he was amazed to find that he had written in his sleep a long statement clearing up the whole case.

There were even some quite astonishing details, such as a hole in the paper, which showed the figures underneath.

His conscious did not see it but the unconscious corrected it; it was the automatic function which decided the case.

That would here be the mechanic.

It is a daily occurrence in analysis, that I say to my patients, "I don't know what the answer is, but we shall see what the unconscious has to say about it," and then the next dream brings a most amazing solution, as if I had submitted the whole thing to a higher supreme authority.

Dr. Deady: How far is that interpretation of the mechanic dependent on the man's conscious attitude? When you first spoke of the magneto dream I think you gave it a characterological interpretation.

Dr. Jung: Naturally it is a requirement that one knows the character of the dreamer.

Dreams have no general meaning, one cannot translate them as one can a text.

They are compensatory to a particular conscious and unconscious situation in a particular individual.

Mrs. Sawyer's difficulty is really a great theoretical stumbling block.

You see, originally Freud said that when you dream of your father, it is your father, or when you dream of Mrs. So-and-So, it is Mrs. So-and-So.

I remember very well discussing this with him, when I said that one had better call it an image of the father.

One cannot assume when one dreams of a person that it really is that person; that image may be entirely symbolical.

For instance, when a patient dreams of me as the Pope or Jesus Christ or the waiter in his restaurant, I know I am not all that.

That simple fact forced me to use the term "image." Freud has now adopted that idea.

It is obvious that the people one dreams about refer more or less to real people, so when one dreams of somebody with whom one is in close relationship, one is fairly safe in assuming that it means that particular object.

But there are restrictions.

For instance, if a wife dreams of her husband photographically as he is, I would assume that she had really dreamt of her husband.

But suppose she dreams in a roundabout way, a close analogy, yet he is not quite her husband, what is one to do in this case, which is fairly common?

The unconscious has a tendency to say, "Not exactly."

Certain traits appear which do not belong to the husband, peculiarities which belong to the wife perhaps, and then the image of the husband is ornamented with these projections.

Or it might be that these qualities undeniably belong to him, but she has brought them out by her behaviour and is quite unconscious of the fact.

It is important to learn to make these distinctions.

In this case of the mechanic the patient dreams of a figure who is not even symbolically connected with him, nor is he an odd chauffeur or garage man whom he might have encountered.

And he is utterly unlike myself.

The only analogy is that he is an expert at motors and I am an expert at psychic motors; that is the only bridge, so the dreamer grabs at that, he thinks it must be Dr. Jung because he is repairing the motor.

But it is all-important that this man learns how to repair it himself, and it would defeat one's ends to teach him that it is I who figure in this dream.

The greatest wisdom an analyst can have is to disappear and let the patient think he is doing nothing at all.

Dr. Baynes: There was one point in the dream which I think is liable to lead to confusion, and that was the different meaning which could be attributed to expressions in English.

A mechanical thing is something which repeats itself, as for instance, a gramophone, whereas the principle of a machine has the connotation of continuity of energy.

Yet in the dream this machine has very much the character of a new kind of invention, or new kind of idea, so that some sort of transferring process seems to be implied.

Dr. Jung: Another bewildering detail-that it might give the impression of a new invention used to transfer energy.

That is true and not true. If we keep strictly to what the dream says, then it is not a new invention, but a kind of grinding contrivance.

Moreover, this dream is associated with the two former dreams of machines, and there is nothing new about them either, so we really have to start with the assumption that the unconscious is choosing a· motif more or less well known.

But, on the other side, this machine serves a purpose which is very mysterious.

The purpose of the steamroller was obviously the making of a road.

The purpose of the automobile was to transfer him somewhere, to get him into a different situation. Now, this machine has no such purpose.

Why should he be grinding something?

He says it is grinding something and it should function properly, but he is vague.

So its significance is mysterious; one is left guessing.

In the first dream, the steamroller, we have the indication that it was associated with the function of sex, energy in a sexual form.

In the second dream it had to do with the heart, energy in the form of feeling, and we had sufficient reason to assume that it ref erred to the absolutely organized part of the sexual function.

In French we say the partie superieure and the partie inferieure des fonctions.

The partie inferieure is the well organized part of an action.

For instance, when one is learning to ride a bicycle, at first one learns to balance consciously and then it becomes automatic, but if one thinks about it, one falls off.

That is the partie inferieure which functions perfectly by itself so long as it is not interfered with.

Like swallowing-if one tries consciously to swallow, one can't, and that is typical of the inferior part of any function.

The well-organized automatic part goes perfectly if one doesn't disturb it with untimely attentions.

But Janet1 is perfectly right in saying that disturbances in the parties superieures are always psychogenic in origin.

Take the function of eating.

Anybody can eat, animals can eat, there is no difficulty whatever about it, it is a complete mechanism.

But to eat under certain circumstances, to react properly at a diplomatic dinner, let us say, where one must listen to the speeches and the ladies on either side while one eats the wing of a pheasant, to do that is not easy at all.

Now, we cannot assume that there is something organically wrong with this patient, organically he is all right.

But it is possible to get organically wrong from psychogenetic disturbances; an apparatus may get rusty.

One might choose not to drink water perhaps, and then one would get organically wrong; an organic disturbance would be caused by the psychic connection, there would be a disturbance in the parties superieures.

There are many functional diseases like that which result in real physical illness.

For instance, if anybody remains in a certain resistant mood too long, it is quite possible that the effect will be so bad that the person may have an angina, or his stomach may not function properly, he may acquire God knows what.

If he is apprehensive all the time, if on account of certain assumptions he does not breathe properly, he may destroy his own machine, he may have tuberculosis.

With the decrease of immunity the antitoxic factors disappear and he becomes perfectly defenceless.

So in this case one could easily imagine that our patient gets out of order somehow from psychological reasons.

People who get wrong psychologically are often health fanatics.

They are always seeking the right food and the right drinks, they don't smoke and they don't drink wine, they need a lot of salts and are drug-store fiends.

Always some new scheme and never very healthy.

It is a fact that the sinner generally feels better than the righteous one, for the weeds always thrive better than the wheat.

All virtuous people complain about that.

Those people who take such care of themselves have always a tendency to become morbid.

That amazing energy for drinking a certain water, for instance, comes from a continuous fear which is in them, and that is the fear of death.

It is because something in them says, "For God's sake don't let me die because I have not lived."

This man has a bit of that health mania, and the fact is a symptom of something not being right.

He also is afraid of death because he hasn't lived, or it is as if he said: I must die if you don't allow me to live.

He doesn't look unhealthy, but it is easy to imagine that something might go wrong-if not with him, perhaps his wife or children will suffer.

It is often the case that the health mania is extended to the children, the poor worms are sometimes made extremely ill through the fears of their parents.

The idea that something is going wrong in his body is rather confirmed by this dream, because the mechanism refers to the physiological mechanism: his sexuality, which does not function, and, naturally, that can cause a certain disturbance.

This is especially true of a man, in whom sex is far more impulsive and stronger than in a woman, it must force its way through or there is trouble.

For a woman sex may remain quiescent for a long time, she may even go through all sorts of sexual experiences and not have the faintest idea of it.

For instance, I saw a Russian girl-a coquette - in a Paris hotel and I made a record of her experiences.

She had over fifty lovers, but only out of curiosity, she was always frigid.

But once a man came along who produced a sexual feeling in her.

She was astonished and said, "Oh, is that it!"

She then married him and became a respectable little bourgeoise.

She had talked sex and she had read it, the vilest stuff one could imagine, she lived a life that was completely foul and did not know what she did.

It was like oil and water.

There are many women who continue in that unconsciousness, which shows that in woman sex has not the piercing quality that it has in man.

If this man had not felt that something was getting organically wrong in his body, he wouldn't be disturbed, and there would be no motive for bothering about his life.

He could be a wonderful theosophist, for instance, if it were not for that boring little instinctive devil that keeps on nagging-that inexorable thing.

One might say to him, "Thank heaven that you had that great vision, but here is the immediate truth and it is necessary for you to face that problem; for how can that light be luminous if you don't function
right?" He must force his nose to the grindstone.

Whereas formerly in his dreams, in his psychological development, the magneto mechanic had to do it, now he himself must take an active and responsible part in the shaping of his destiny.

This really was the first dream in which I got a glimmer of hope that this man would tackle his own problem, that he would develop perhaps such a love of fate that he would pull his courage together and take the wheel into his own hands, because it means just that.

Hitherto he has thought, as every man and woman think: well, I married and my wife is here to take care of it, I can't bother.

The man expects it of the woman and the woman expects it of the man.

If it doesn't go, they complain that something wrong has been done and blame somebody else, the wife's mother or some other member of the family; nobody thinks of the necessity of having to take the wheel into one's own hands.

Such an efficient man knows how to steer in his professional life, but in his personal life he collapses completely; just as a woman can steer the part of her life that has to do with etiquette and social matters, but when it comes to an important situation in the world, she collapses and delegates it to her husband or to somebody else.

Now the great necessity of this man's life becomes evident to him, and he tackles the job, which means that in a more or less remote future he will choose that path of life which will settle his sexual
problem. He can follow no principles.

He must follow his individual choice, his individual fate, and that cannot be foreseen.

If he asked me, "How do you think I can ever get out of this dilemma?"

I could only say, "If you put yourself right, you can be sure that everything will go right; that is my conviction."

Thus far the problem is, what shall he do with his sex?

Very simple and very complete.

But we have seen in former dreams that the steamroller produced the design of the mandala and that when we make a drawing of the working of this machine, we arrive at practically the same result.
This gives an entirely new situation.

The mandala is a circular symbol which no one would associate with sex.

Some of the new members have asked that the mandala should be discussed further, so I will repeat here that it is a universal symbol in the East, where they are considered to be exceedingly important.

In the West it is found only when "heretics" make use of it. (Mandala is properly a neuter noun, mandalam meaning "image.")

It is used for the transformation of energy, as in certain rituals the yantra is used, also for the transformation of energy.

Yantra simply means a figure, an image of the god, or of something belonging to the god, like an icon.

Hindus in the Shiva or Vishnu cult form images of the god every day-little clay images.

And they make a dish of fibre or of palm leaves to use for the ritual morning meal of the god, and then throw it away because the god has used it. It is to remind you that in your innermost self you are that god, he is within.

That you are alone is only an illusion.

When you produce that image, you are through contemplation transformed for a moment into a god, and so purified, and your health power increased.

You are in the great river.

Certain temples have the form of typical mandalas, like the famous temple of Borobudur in Java, which is a circle in a square. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Pages 456-462

Monday, May 8, 2017

Carl Jung on “Sex” “Sexuality – Anthology




Man shall differentiate himself both from spirituality and sexuality. He shall call spirituality mother, and set her between Heaven and earth. He shall call sexuality Phallos, and set him between himself and earth. For the mother and the Phallos are superhuman daimons that reveal the world of the Gods. They affect us more than the Gods since they are closely akin to our essence. ~Carl Jung; The Red Book; Scrutinies; Page 352.

The sexuality of man is more earthly, that of woman is more spiritual. ~Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 352.

The world of the Gods is made manifest in spirituality and in sexuality. The celestial ones appear in spirituality, the earthly in sexuality. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 352.

Spirituality conceives and embraces. It is womanlike and therefore we call it MATER COELESTIS, the celestial mother. Sexuality engenders and creates. It is manlike, and therefore we call it PHALLOS, the earthly father. The sexuality of man is more earthly, that of woman is more spiritual. The spirituality of man is more heavenly, it moves toward the greater. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 353.

The sexuality of man goes toward the earthly, the sexuality of woman goes toward the spiritual. Man and woman become devils to each other if they do not distinguish their sexuality. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 353.

Man shall differentiate himself both from spirituality and sexuality. He shall call spirituality mother, and set her between Heaven and earth. He shall call sexuality Phallos, and set him between himself and earth. For the mother and the Phallos are superhuman daimons that reveal the world of the Gods. They affect us more than the Gods since they are closely akin to our essence. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 353.

If you do not differentiate yourselves from sexuality and from spirituality, and do not regard them as an essence both above and beyond you, you are delivered over to them as qualities of the Pleroma. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 353.

Spirituality and sexuality are not your qualities, not things you possess and encompass. Rather, they possess and encompass you, since they are powerful daimons, Manifestations of the Gods, and hence reach beyond you, existing in themselves. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 353.

No man has a spirituality unto himself or a sexuality unto himself Instead, he stands under the law of spirituality and of sexuality. Therefore no one escapes these daimons. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 353.

The daimon of sexuality approaches our soul as a serpent. She is half human soul and is called thought-desire. The daimon of spirituality descends into our soul as the white bird. He is half human soul and is called desire-thought. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 354.

But humankind is masculine and feminine, not just man or woman. You can hardly say of your soul what sex it is. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 263.

We can only become real by accepting our sexuality and not denying it through saintliness. ~Carl Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung, Page 25.

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.

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

It even seems as if young people who have had a hard struggle for existence are spared inner problems, while those who for some reason or other have no difficulty with adaptation run into problems of sex or conflicts arising from a sense of inferiority. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 762

The great problems of life — sexuality, of course, among others — are always related to the primordial images of the collective unconscious. These images are really balancing or compensating factors which correspond with the problems life presents in actuality. This is not to be marveled at, since these images are deposits representing the accumulated experience of thousands of years of struggle for adaptation and existence. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Page 271

The ethical problem of sexual freedom really is enormous and worth the sweat of all noble souls. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 17-19.

Look at the rebellion of modern youth in America, the sexual rebellion, and all that. These rebellions occur because the real, natural man is just in open rebellion against the utterly inhuman form of American life. Americans are absolutely divorced from nature in a way, and that accounts for that drug abuse. ~Carl Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung, Page 35.

It is a primeval fact that the psyche consists of both sexes. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 114.
Yet we know that every embryo is formed of masculine and feminine genes, the sex is determined by the majority. Where then is the minority? Carl Jung, ETH, Page 115.

Just as in the early Middle Ages finance was held in contempt because there was as yet no differentiated financial morality to suit each case, but only a mass morality, so today there is only a mass sexual morality. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, On Eros Theory, Page 27.

The task in these cases is to look for the meaning, for there is a meaning in both love and sex, and in every instinctive urge. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture IV 24 May 1935, Pages 213.

The daimon of sexuality approaches our soul as a serpent. She is half human soul and is called thought-desire. The daimon of spirituality descends into our soul as the white bird. He is half human soul and is called desire-thought. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 354.

People - event theologians- are embarrassed to talk about God. It is more polite to talk about sex. Carl Jung, J.E.T., Page 7.

There are women who believe that man will deflect them from their goals and men who often believe that women want to keep them from their work; yet the real causes are either fear of the other sex or of one's own unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 51.

Now in order not to presume or to prejudice things, I speak simply of energy, and energy is a quantity of energy that can manifest itself via sexuality or via any other instinct. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 26.

It called the figure Atmavictu-the 'breath of life.' It is a further development of that quasi-sexual object of my childhood, which turned out to be the 'breath of life,' the creative impulse. Basically, the manikin is a kabir" ~Carl Jung, MDR, pp. 38-39.

Yet in the archetypal unimaginable event that forms the basis of conscious apperception, a is b, stench is perfume, sex is amor Dei, as inevitably as the conclusion that God is the complexio oppositorum. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 392-396

Helas-he [Socrates] lived at a time when the wobbly polis still needed the homosexual glue. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 531-533

There is no man who could not exist without a woman—that is, he carries the necessary balance within himself if he be obliged to live his life that way, and the same thing applies to a woman with respect to a man, but if either sex is to have a complete life, it requires the other as a compensatory side. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 114

Sexuality and spirituality are pairs of opposites that need each other. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 30

The hero embodies the transition we are seeking to trace, for it is as though in the sexual stage man feels too much under the power of nature, a power which he is in no way able to manage. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 30

Women are much tougher than men underneath. To call women the weaker sex is sheer nonsense. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking, Pages 244-251

Sexuality dished out as sexuality is brutish; but sexuality as an expression of love is hallowed. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 234

Men are rarely split off from sexuality, because it is too evident for them, but what they lack is Eros, the relational function. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams, Page 313.

I must even regard it as a misfortune that nowadays the sexual question is spoken of as something distinct from love. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Page 112

The two questions should not be separated, for when there is a sexual problem it can be solved only by love. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Page 112

I have an idea that the Dionysian frenzy was a backwash of sexuality, a backwash whose historical significance has been insufficiently appreciated, essential elements of which overflowed into Christianity but in another compromise formation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 14-16

It is generally overlooked that the psyche cannot of necessity be based only on the instinct of sexuality, but rests on the totality of the instincts, and that this basis is only a biological foundation and not the whole edifice. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 563-564

This bi-sexuality of Christ is called androgynous, from aner (man) and gyne (woman). This is not only a Christian idea, the gods in most religions have an androgynous nature ascribed to them in some form orother. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 8th Dec 1939

Sex is a playground for lonely scientists. ~Carl Jung; C.G. Jung Speaks; Pages 85-87.

The symbolic form of love (animus-anima) shrinks from nothing, least of all from sexual union. Carl Jung, Letters Volume 1, Pages 213-214.

Further researches, expressly referred to by Maeder, have shown that the sexual language of dreams is not always to be interpreted in a concretistic way—that it is, in fact, an archaic language which naturally uses all the analogies readiest to hand without their necessarily coinciding with a real sexual content. It is therefore unjustifiable to take the sexual language of dreams literally under all circumstances, while other contents are explained as symbolical. But as soon as you take the sexual metaphors as symbols for some thing unknown, your conception of the nature of dreams at once deepens. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 506

In spite of all indignant protestations to the contrary, the fact remains that love (using the word in the wider sense which belongs to it by right and embraces more than sexuality), its problems and its conflicts, is of fundamental importance in human life and, as careful inquiry consistently shows, is of far greater significance than the individual suspects. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 14

It is difficult to gauge the spirit of one's own time; but, if we observe the trend of art, of style, and of public taste, and see what people read and write, what sort of societies they found, what "questions" are the order of the day, what the Philistines fight against, we shall find that in the long catalogue of our present social questions by no means the last is the so-called "sexual question." This is discussed by men and women who challenge the existing sexual morality and who seek to throw off the burden of moral guilt which past centuries have heaped upon Eros. One cannot simply deny the existence of these endeavours nor condemn then as indefensible; they exist, and probably have adequate grounds for their existence. It is more interesting and more useful to examine carefully the underlying causes of these contemporary movements than to join in the lamentations of the professional mourners of morality who prophesy the moral downfall of humanity. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 427

While we are all agreed that murder, stealing, and ruthlessness of any kind are obviously inadmissible, there is nevertheless what we call a "sexual question." We hear nothing of a murder question or a rage question; social reform is never invoked against those who wreak their bad tempers on their fellow men. Yet these things are all examples of instinctual behaviour, and the necessity for their suppression seems to us self-evident. Only in regard to sex do we feel the need of a question mark. This points to a doubt —the doubt whether our existing moral concepts and the legal institutions founded on them are really adequate and suited to their purpose. No intelligent person will deny that in this field opinion is sharply divided. Indeed, there would be no problem at all if public opinion were united about it. It is obviously a reaction against a too rigorous morality. It is not simply an outbreak of primitive instinctually; such outbreaks, as we know, have never yet bothered themselves with moral laws and moral problems. There are, rather, serious misgivings as to whether our existing moral views have dealt fairly with the nature of sex. From this doubt there naturally arises a legitimate interest in any attempt to understand the nature of sex more truly and deeply. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 105

Nowadays we have no real sexual morality, only a legalistic attitude to sexuality; just as the Middle Ages had no real morality of money-making but only prejudices and a legalistic point of view. We are not yet far enough advanced to distinguish between moral and immoral behaviour in the realm of free sexual activity. This is clearly expressed in the customary treatment, or rather ill-treatment, of unmarried mothers. All the repulsive hypocrisy, the high tide of prostitution and of venereal diseases, we owe to the barbarous, wholesale legal condemnation of certain kinds of sexual behaviour, and to our inability to develop a finer moral sense for the enormous psychological differences that exist in the domain of free sexual activity. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, CW 666

It is a favourite neurotic misunderstanding that the right attitude to the world is found by indulgence in sex. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 440

It is a favourite neurotic misunderstanding that the right attitude to the world is found by indulgence in sex. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 440

Our civilization enormously underestimates the importance of sexuality, but just because of the repressions imposed upon it, sexuality breaks through into every conceivable field where it does not belong, and uses such an indirect mode of expression that we may expect to meet it all of a sudden practically everywhere. Thus the very idea of an intimate understanding of the human psyche, which is actually a very pure and beautiful thing, becomes besmirched and perversely distorted by the intrusion of an indirect sexual meaning. A direct and spontaneous expression of sexuality is a natural occurrence and, as such, never ugly or repulsive. It is "moral" repression that makes sexuality on the one hand dirty and hypocritical, and on the other shameless and blatant. This secondary significance, or rather the misuse which the repressed and suborned sexuality makes of the highest psychic functions, gives certain of our opponents an opportunity to sniff out the prurient eroticism of the confessional in psychoanalysis. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 295

It is undoubtedly true that instinctuality conflicts with our moral views most frequently and most conspicuously in the realm of sex. The conflict between infantile instinctuality and ethics can never be avoided. It is, it seems to me, the sine qua non of psychic energy. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 105

The conflict between ethics and sex today is not just a collision between instinctuality and morality, but a struggle to give an instinct its rightful place in our lives, and to recognize in this instinct a power which seeks expression and evidently may not be trifled with, and therefore cannot be made to fit in with our well-meaning moral laws. Sexuality is not mere instinctuality; it is an indisputably creative power that is not only the basic cause of our individual lives, but a very serious factor in our psychic life as well. Today we know only too well the grave consequences that sexual disturbances can bring in their train. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 107

Normal sex life, as a shared experience with apparently similar aims, further strengthens the feeling of unity and identity. This state is described as one of complete harmony, and is extolled as a great happiness ("one heart and one soul")—not without good reason, since the return to that original condition of unconscious oneness is like a return to childhood. Hence the childish gestures of all lovers. Even more is it a return to the mother's womb, into the teeming depths of an as yet unconscious creativity. It is, in truth, a genuine and incontestable experience of the Divine, whose transcendent force obliterates and consumes everything individual; a real communion with life and the impersonal power of fate. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 330

[All that pertains to the opposite sex] has a mysterious charm tinged with fear, perhaps even with disgust. For this reason its charm is particularly attractive and fascinating, even when it comes to us not directly from outside, in the guise of a woman, but from within, as a psychic influence—for instance in the form of a temptation to abandon oneself to a mood or an affect. ~Carl CW 10, Para 244

Why is it that we are especially interested in psychology just now? The answer is that everyone is in desperate need of it. Humanity seems to have reached a point where the concepts of the past are no longer adequate, and we begin to realize that our nearest and dearest are actually strangers to us, whose language we no longer understand. It is beginning to dawn on us that the people living on the other side of the mountain are not made up exclusively of red-headed devils who are responsible for all the evil on this side of the mountain. A little of this uneasy suspicion has filtered through into the relations between the sexes; not everyone is utterly convinced that everything good is in "me" and everything evil in "you." Already we can find super-moderns who ask themselves in all seriousness whether there may not be something wrong with us, whether perhaps we are too unconscious, too antiquated, and whether this may not be the reason why when confronted with difficulties in sexual relationships we still continue to employ with disastrous results the methods of the Middle Ages if not those of the caveman. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para xi

What can a man say about woman, his own opposite? I mean of course something sensible, that is outside the sexual programme, free of resentment, illusion, and theory. Where is the man to be found capable of such superiority? Woman always stands just where the man's shadow falls, so that he is only too liable to confuse the two. Then, when he tries to repair this misunderstanding, he overvalues her and believes her the most desirable thing in the world, ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 236

Psychology guarantees real knowledge of the other sex instead of arbitrary opinions, which are the source of the uncurable misunderstandings now undermining in increasing numbers the marriages of our time. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, xiii

The discussion of the sexual problem is only a somewhat crude prelude to a far deeper question, and that is the question of the psychological relationships between the sexes. In comparison with this the other pales into insignificance, and with it we enter the real domain of woman. Woman's psychology is founded on the principle of Eros, the great binder and loosener, whereas from ancient times the ruling principle ascribed to man is Logos. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 254

We deceive ourselves greatly if we think that many married women are neurotic merely because they are unsatisfied sexually or because they have not found the right man or because they have an infantile sexual fixation. The real reason in many cases is that they cannot recognize the cultural task that is waiting for them. We all have far too much the standpoint of the "nothing but" psychology, that is, we still think that the new future which is pressing in at the door can be squeezed into the framework of what is already known. Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 668

Most men are erotically blinded—they commit the unpardonable mistake of confusing Eros with sex. A man thinks he possesses a woman if he has her sexually. He never possesses her less, for to a woman the Eros-relationship is the real and decisive one. For her, marriage is a relationship with sex thrown in as an accompaniment. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 255

It even seems as if young people who have had a hard struggle for existence are spared inner problems, while those who for some reason or other have no difficulty with adaptation run into problems of sex or conflicts arising from a sense of inferiority. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 762

The discovery of the value of human personality is reserved for a riper age. For young people the search for personality values is very often a pretext for evading their biological duty. Conversely, the exaggerated longing of an older person for the sexual values of youth is a short-sighted and often cowardly evasion of a duty which demands recognition of the value of personality and submission to the hierarchy of cultural values. The young neurotic shrinks back in terror from the expansion of life's duties, the old one from the dwindling of the treasures he has attained. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 664

If certain South American Indians really and truly call themselves red cockatoos and expressly repudiate a figurative interpretation of this fact, this has absolutely nothing to do with any sexual repression on "moral" grounds, but is due to the law of independence inherent in the thinking function and to its emancipation from the concretism of sensuous perceptions. We must assign a separate principle to the thinking function, a principle which coincides with the beginnings of sexuality only in the polyvalent germinal disposition of the very young child. To reduce the origins of thinking to mere sexuality is an undertaking that runs counter to the basic facts of human psychology. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 79

We could call sexuality the spokesman of the instincts, which is why from the spiritual standpoint sex is the chief antagonist, not because sexual indulgence is in itself more immoral than excessive eating and drinking, avarice, tyranny, and other extravagances, but because the spirit senses in sexuality a counterpart equal and indeed akin to itself. For just as the spirit would press sexuality, like every other instinct, into its service, so sexuality has an ancient claim upon the spirit, which it once—in procreation, pregnancy, birth, and childhood—contained within itself, and whose passion the spirit can never dispense with in its creations. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 107

The first phase embraces the first years of life; I call this period the presexual stage. It corresponds to the caterpillar stage of butterflies, and is characterized almost exclusively by the functions of nutrition and growth. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 263

The second phase embraces the later years of childhood up to puberty, and might be called the prepubertal stage. Germination of sexuality takes place at this period. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 264

The third phase is the adult period from puberty on, and may be called the period of maturity. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 265

It will not have escaped you that the greatest difficulty lies in assigning limits to the presexual stage. I am ready to confess my great uncertainty in regard to this problem. When I look back on my own psychoanalytic experiences with children-insufficiently numerous as yet, unfortunately-at the same time bearing in mind the observations made by Freud, it seems to me that the limits of this phase lie between the third and fifth year, subject, of course, to individual variation. This age is an important one in many respects. The child has already outgrown the helplessness of a baby, and a number of important psychological functions have acquired a reliable hold. From this period on, the profound darkness of the early infantile amnesia, or discontinuity of consciousness, begins to be illuminated by the sporadic continuity of memory. It seems as if, at this stage, an essential step forward is taken in the emancipation and centering of the new personality. So far as we know, the first signs of interests and activities which may fairly be called sexual also fall into this period, even though these indications still have the infantile characteristics of harmlessness and naiveté.” ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 266

Nowadays we have no real sexual morality, only a legalistic attitude to sexuality; just as the Middle Ages had no real morality of money-making but only prejudices and a legalistic point of view. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, CW 666

It is "moral" repression that makes sexuality on the one hand dirty and hypocritical, and on the other shameless and blatant. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 295