Carl Jung: It is the psychic correlate of the differentiation of the human brain.

In this second edition the text of the book remains, for technical reasons, unaltered.

The reappearance of this book after twelve years, without alterations, does not mean that I did not consider certain emendations and improvements desirable.

But such improvements would have affected details only, and not anything essential.

The views and opinions I expressed in the book I would still maintain, in substance and in principle, today.

I must ask the reader to bear patiently with a number of minor inaccuracies and uncertainties of detail. This book has given rise to a good deal of misunderstanding.

It has even been suggested that it represents my method of treatment.

Apart from the fact that such a method would be a practical impossibility, the book is far more concerned with working out the fantasy material of an unknown young American woman, pseudonymously known as Frank Miller.

This material was originally published by my respected and fatherly friend, the late Theodore Flournoy, in the Archives de psychologie (Geneva).

I had the great satisfaction of hearing from his own lips that I had hit off the young woman’s mentality very well.

Valuable confirmation of this reached me in 1918, through an American colleague who was treating Miss Miller for the schizophrenic disturbance which had broken out after her sojourn in Europe.

He wrote to say that my exposition of the case was so exhaustive that even personal acquaintance with the patient had not taught him ’one iota more" about her mentality.

This confirmation led me to conclude that my reconstruction of the semi-conscious and unconscious fantasy processes had evidently hit the mark in all essential respects.

There is, however, one very common misunderstanding which I feel I ought to point out to the reader.

The copious use of comparative mythological and etymological material necessitated by the peculiar nature of the Miller fantasies may evoke the impression, among certain readers, that the purpose of this book is to propound mythological or etymological hypotheses.

This is far from my intention, for if it had been, I would have undertaken to analyse a particular myth or whole corpus of myths, for instance an American Indian myth-cycle.

For that purpose I would certainly not have chosen Longfellow’s Hiawatha, any more than I would have used Wagner’s Siegfried had I wished to analyse the cycle of the younger Edda.

I use the material quoted in the book because it belongs, directly or indirectly, to the basic assumptions of the Miller fantasies, as I have explained more fully in the text.

If, in this work, various mythologems are shown in a light which makes their psychological meaning more intel- ligible, I have mentioned this insight simply as a welcome by-product, without claiming to propound any general theory of myths.

The real purpose of this book is confined to working out the implications of all those historical and spiritual factors which come together in the involuntary products of individual fantasy.

Besides the obvious personal sources, creative fantasy also draws upon the forgotten and long buried primitive mind with its host of images, which are to be found in the mythologies of all ages and all peoples.

The sum of these images constitutes the collective unconscious, a heritage which is potentially present in every individual.

It is the psychic correlate of the differentiation of the human brain.

This is the reason why mythological images are able to arise spontaneously over and over again, and to agree with one another not only in all the corners of the wide earth, but at all times.

As they are present always and everywhere, it is an entirely natural proceeding to relate mythologems, which may be very far apart both temporally and ethnically, to an individual fantasy system.

The creative substratum is everywhere this same human psyche and this same human brain, which, with relatively minor variations, functions everywhere in the same way. Kusnacht /Zurich, November, 1924 C. G. Jung Carl Jung, CW 5, Symbols of Transformation, Pages xviii - xvix

Carl Jung: "Death has laid its hand upon our friend."

MEMORIAL TO J. S. [Jerome Schloss, of New York]

Death has laid its hand upon our friend.

The darkness out of which his soul had risen has come again and has undone the life of his earthly body, and has left us alone in pain and sorrow.


To many death seems to be a brutal and meaningless end to a short and meaningless existence.

So it looks, if seen from the surface and from the darkness.

But when we penetrate the depths of the soul and when we try to understand its mysterious life, we shall discern that death is not a meaningless end, the mere vanishing into nothingness—it is an accomplishment, a ripe fruit on the tree of life.

Nor is death an abrupt extinction, but a goal that has been unconsciously lived and worked for during half a lifetime.

In the youthful expansion of our life we think of it as an ever-increasing river, and this conviction accompanies us often far beyond the noonday of our existence.

But if we listen to the quieter voices of our deeper nature we become aware of the fact that soon after the middle of our life the soil begins its secret work, getting ready for the departure.

Out of the turmoil and terror of our life the one precious flower of the spirit begins to unfold, the four-petaled flower of the immortal light, and even if our mortal consciousness should not be aware of its secret operation, it nevertheless does its secret work of purification.

When I met J. S. for the first time I found in him a man of rare clarity and purity of character and personality.

I was deeply impressed with the honesty and sincerity of his purpose.

And when I worked with him, helping him to understand the intricacies of the human psyche, I could not but admire the kindness of his feeling and the absolute truthfulness of his mind.

But though it was a privilege to teach a man of such rare human qualities, it was not the thing that touched me most.

Yes, I did teach him, but he taught me too.

He spoke to me in the eternal language of symbols, which I did not grasp until the awe-inspiring conclusion, the culmination

in death, became manifest.

I shall never forget how he liberated his mind from the turmoil of modern business life, and how, gradually working back, he freed himself from the bonds that held him fast to his earthly parents and to his youth; and how the eternal image of the soul appeared to him, first dimly, then slowly taking shape in the vision of his dreams, and how finally, three weeks before his death, he beheld the vision of his own sarcophagus from which his living soul arose.

Who am I that I should dare say one word beyond this vision?

Is there a human word that could stand against the revelation given to the chosen one?

There is none.

Let us return, therefore, to the external language and let us hear the words of the sacred text. And as the ancient words which give truth to us, we will give life to them. (I Corinthians 13; l 5 : 37-55-) ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Pages 757-758

Carl Jung: Human Nature Doe Not Yield Easily To Idealistic Advice

There is little to criticize in Mr. Roberts' article since its author is obviously a man of good will and optimistic enthusiasm.

Moreover, he points in the right direction, and he gives proper value to man's mental and moral attitude.

He hopes and believes, it seems to me, that saying the right and good thing will be enough to produce the desired effect.

Unfortunately, human nature is a bit more complicated and does not yield to a well-meaning hint or to idealistic advice.

It always has been and still is the great question how to get the ordinary human to the point where he can make up his mind to draw the right conclusion and to do the right thing, or how to make him listen at all.

His moral and mental inertia and his notorious prejudices are the most serious obstacle to any moral or spiritual renaissance.

If he had been inclined to resist the overwhelming impact of his emotional entanglements, passions, and desires, and to put a stop to the haste and rush of his daily activities, and to try at least to get out of his lamentable yet cherished unconsciousness about himself, the world and its sad history of intrigue, violence,
and cruelty would have reached a state of peace and humanity long before Christ-—in the time of Buddha or Socrates.

But to get him there, that's just the trouble.

It is perhaps a good idea to liberate man from all inhibitions and prejudices that hamper, torment, and disfigure him.

But the question is less to liberate from something, than rather, as Nietzsche asked, to which end?

In certain cases it looks as if in getting rid of one's inhibitions and burdens, one had "thrown away one's best."

Liberation can be a good or a very bad solution.

It largely depends upon the choice of one's further goal whether the liberation has been a boon or a fatal mistake.

I don't want to go further into the complexities of this problem, and moreover it would be unfair to criticize the author for something he obviously is not aware of, viz., the fact that this formulation of the problem dates from about forty years ago.

Since that time, a voluminous literature thoroughly dealing with the point in question has come into existence.

I don't know which circumstances have prevented the author from informing himself about the more modern developments in the discussion between religion and psychology.

In view of Freud's notorious inability to understand religion, the reader would have welcomed, if not expected, a summary at least of the main work done along this line during the past four decades. \\Goodwill and enthusiasm are not to be underrated, but ignorance is regrettable.
~Carl Jung, CW 18, Pages 634-635

Foreword to Froboese-Thiele: "Dreams—a Source of Religious Experience?"

This book has the merit of being the first to investigate how the unconscious of Protestants behaves when it has to compensate an intensely religious attitude.

The author examines this question with the help of case material she has collected in her practical work.

She has evidently had the good fortune to come upon some very instructive cases who, moreover, did not object to the publication of their material.

Since we owe our knowledge of unconscious processes primarily to dreams, the author is mainly concerned with the dreams of her patients.

Even for one familiar with this material, the dreams and symbols reported here are remarkable.

As a therapist, she handles the dreams in a very felicitous manner, from the practical side chiefly, so that a reciprocal understanding of the meaning of the dream is gradually built up between her and the patient.

This puts the reader in the advantageous position of listening in on a dialogue, so to speak.

The method is as instructive as it is satisfying, since it is possible to present in this way several fairly long sequences of dreams.

A detailed scientific commentary would take up a disproportionate amount of space without making the dream interpretation any more impressive.

If the interpretation is at times uncertain, or disregards various details, this in no way affects the therapeutic intention to bring the meaning of the dream nearer to consciousness.

In actual practice one can often do full justice to a dream if one simply puts its general tendency, its emotional atmosphere, and its approximate meaning in the right light,
'having first, of course, assured oneself of the spontaneous approval of the dreamer.

With intelligent persons, this thoughtful feeling of one's way into the meaning of the dream can soon be left to the patient himself.

The author has been entirely successful in bringing out the religious meaning of the dreams and so demonstrating her thesis.

A religious attitude does in fact offer a direct challenge to the unconscious, and the more inimical the conscious attitude is to life, the more forceful and drastic will be this unconscious reaction.

It serves the purpose, firstly, of compensating the extremism of the conscious attitude and, secondly, of individuation, since it re-establishes the approximate wholeness of the personality.

The material which Dr. Froboese-Thiele has made available in her book is of considerable importance for doctors and theologians alike, since both of them have here an opportunity to assure themselves that the unconscious possesses a religious aspect against which no cogent arguments can be mustered.

One is left with a feeling of shame that so little of the empirical case material which would give the layman an adequate idea of these religious processes has been published.

The author deserves our special thanks for having taken the trouble to write up these exacting cases in extenso.

I hope her book will come into the hands of many thoughtful persons whose minds are not stopped up with needless prejudices, and who would be in a position to find a satisfactory answer to religious questions, or at least to come by those experiences which ought to underlie any authentic religious convictions. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Pages 700-701

Carl Jung: Foreword to Abeg: “Ostasien Ddenkt Anders”

The author of this book, the entire text of which unfortunately I have not seen, has talked to me about her project and about her ideas with regard to the difference between Eastern and Western psychology.

Thus I was able to note many points of agreement between us, and also a competence on her part to make judgments which is possible only to one who is a European and at the same time possesses the invaluable advantage of having spent more than half a lifetime in the Far East, in close contact with the mind of Asia.

Without such first-hand experience it would be a hopeless task to approach the problem of Eastern psychology.

One must be deeply and directly jrnoj/e^^ almost say by the incomprehensibility, of the Eastern psyche.

Decisive experiences of this kind cannot be transmitted through books; they come only from living in immediate, daily relationship with the people.

Having had unusual advantages in this respect, the author is in a position to discuss what is perhaps the basic, and is in any case an extremely important, question of the difference between Eastern and Western psychology.

I have often found myself in situations where I had to take account of this difference, as in the study of Chinese and East Indian literary texts and in the psychological treatment of Asiatics.

Among my patients, I am sorry to say, I have never had a Chinese or a Japanese, nor have I had the privilege of visiting either China or Japan.

But at least I have had the opportunity to experience with painful clarity the insufficiency of my knowledge.

In this field we still have everything to learn, and whatever we learn will be to our immense advantage.

Knowledge of Eastern psychology provides the indispensable basis for a critique of Western psychology, as indeed for any objective understanding of it.

And in view of the truly lamentable psychic situation of the West, the importance of a deeper understanding of our Occidental prejudices can hardly be overestimated.

Long experience with the products of the unconscious has taught me that there is a very remarkable parallelism between the specific character of the Western unconscious psyche and the "manifest" psyche of the East.

Since our experience shows that the biological role which the unconscious plays in the psychic economy is compensatory to consciousness, one can venture the hypothesis that the mind of the Far East is related to our Western consciousness as the unconscious is, that is, as the left hand to the right.

Our unconscious has, fundamentally, a tendency toward wholeness, as I believe I have been able to prove.

One would be quite justified in saying the same thing about the Eastern psyche, but with this difference : that in the East it is consciousness that is characterized by an apperception of totality, while the West has developed a differentiated and therefore necessarily one-sided attention or awareness.

With it goes the Western concept of causality, a principle of cognition irreconcilably opposed to the principle of synchronicity which forms the basis and the source of Eastern "incomprehensibility," and explains as well the "strangeness" of the unconscious with which we in the West are confronted.

The understanding of synchronicity is the key which unlocks the door to the Eastern apperception of totality that-we find so mysterious.

The author seems to have devoted particular attention to just this point.

I do not hesitate to say that I look forward to the publication of her book with the greatest interest. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Pages 654-655

Carl Jung: On the Discourses of the Buddha

It was neither the history of religion nor the study of philosophy that first drew me to the world of Buddhist thought, but my professional interests as a doctor.

My task was the treatment of psychic suffering, and it was this that impelled me to become acquainted with the views and methods of that great teacher of humanity whose principal theme was the "chain of suffering, old age, sickness, and death."

For although the healing of the sick naturally lies closest to the doctor's heart, he is bound to recognize that there are many diseases and states of suffering which, not being susceptible of a direct cure, demand from both patient and doctor some kind of attitude to their irremediable nature.

Even though it may not amount to actual incurability, in all such cases there are inevitably phases of stagnation and hopelessness which seem unendurable and require treatment just as much as a direct symptom of illness.

They call for a kind of moral attitude such as is provided by religious faith or a philosophical belief.

In this respect the study of Buddhist literature was of great help to me, since it trains one to observe suffering objectively and to take a universal view of its causes.

According to tradition, it was by objectively observing the chain of causes that_the Buddha was^aElHjxi-ejctricjteJhis consciousness from the snares pi _the^_len_ thousand things, -and -to rescue his feelings from the entanglements of emotion and illusion.

So also in our sphere ' oFcuTEure the suffering and the sick can derive considerable benefit from this prototype of the Buddhist mentality, however strange it may appear.

The discourses of the Buddha, here presented in K. E. Neumann's new translation, have an importance that should not be underestimated.

Quite apart from their profound meaning, their solemn, almost ritual form emits a penetrating radiance which has an exhilarating and exalting effect and cannot fail to work directly upon one's feelings.

Against this use of the spiritual treasures of the East it might be—and indeed, often has been—objected from the Christian point of view that the faith of the West offers consolations that are at least as significant, and that there is no need to invoke the spirit of Buddhism with its markedly rational attitude.

Aside from the fact that in most cases the Christian faith of which people speak simply isn't there, and no one can tell how it might be obtained (except by the special providence of God) , it is a truism that anything known becomes so familiar and hackneyed by frequent use that it gradually loses its meaning and hence its effect;
whereas anything strange and unknown, and so completely different in its nature, can open doors hitherto locked and new possibilities of understanding.

If a Christian insists so much on his faith when it does not even help him to ward off a neurosis, then his faith is vain, and it is better to accept humbly what he needs no matter where he finds it, if only it helps.

There is no need for him to deny his religion convictions if he acknowledges his debt to Buddhism, for he is only following the Pauline injunction: "Prove all things;, hold fast that which is good" ( I Thess. 5:21).

To this good which should be held fast one must reckon the discourses of the Buddha, which have much to offer even to those who cannot boast of any Christian convictions.

They offer Western man ways and means of disciplining his inner psychic life, thus remedying an often regrettable defect in the various brands of Christianity.

The teachings of the Buddha can give him a helpful training when either the Christian ritual has lost its meaning or the authority of religious ideas has collapsed, as all too frequently happens in psychogenic disorders.

People have often accused me of regarding religion as "mental hygiene."

Perhaps one may pardon a doctor his professional humility in not undertaking to prove the truth of metaphysical assertions and in shunning confessions of faith.

I am content to emphasize the importance of having a Weltanschauung and the therapeutic necessity of adopting some kind of attitude to the problem of psychic
! suffering. Suffering that is not understood is hard to bear, while on the other hand it is often astounding to see how much a person can endure when he understands the why and the wherefore.

A philosophical or religious view of the world enables him to do this, and such views prove to be, at the very least, psychic methods of healing if not of salvation.

Even Christ and his disciples did not scorn to heal the sick, thereby demonstrating the therapeutic power of their mission.

The doctor has to cope with actual suffering for better or worse, and ultimately has nothing to rely on except the mystery of divine Providence.

It is no wonder, then, that he values religious ideas and attitudes, so far as they prove helpful, as therapeutic systems, and singles out the Buddha in particular, the essence of whose teaching is deliverance from suffering through the maximum development of consciousness, as one of the supreme helpers on the road to salvation.

From ancient times physicians have sought a panacea, a medicina catholica, and their persistent efforts have unconsciously brought them nearer to the central ideas of the religion and philosophy of the East.

Anyone who is familiar with methods of suggestion under hypnosis knows that plausible suggestions work better than those which run counter to the patient's own nature.

Consequently, whether he liked it or not, the doctor was obliged to develop conceptions which corresponded as closely as possible with the actual psychological conditions.

Thus, there grew up a realm of theory which not only drew upon traditional thought but took account of the unconscious products that compensated its inevitable one-sidedness—that is to say, all those psychic factors which Christian philosophy left unsatisfied.

Among these were not a few aspects which, unknown to the West, had been developed in Eastern philosophy from very early times.

So if, as a doctor, I acknowledge the immense help and stimulation I have received from the Buddhist teachings, I am following a line which can be traced back some two thousand years in the history of human thought. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Pages 697-699

Carl Jung: Answers to “Mishmar” on Adolf Hitler

Carl Jung: Answers to “Mishmar” on Adolf Hitler

[Eugen Kolb, Geneva correspondent of Mishmar (The Daily Guardian) of Tel Aviv, wrote to Jung on 4 September 1945 for his answers to the following questions. Jung replied on 14 September.]

How do you, as a psychiatrist, judge Hitler as a "patient"?

Hitler was in my view primarily an hysteric. (Already in the first World War he had been officially diagnosed as such.)

More particularly he was characterized by a subform of hysteria : pseudologia phantastica.

In other words he was a "pathological liar."

If these people do not start out directly as deceivers, they are the sort of idealists who are always in love with their own ideas and who anticipate their aims by presenting their wish-fantasies partly as easily attainable and partly as having been attained, and who believe these obvious lies themselves.

(Quisling, as his trial showed, was a similar case.)

In order to realize their wish-fantasies no means is too bad for them, just because they believe they can thereby attain their beloved aim.

They "believe" they are doing it for the benefit of humanity, or at least of the nation or their party, and cannot under any circumstances see that their aim is invariably
egoistic.

Since this is a common failing, it is difficult for the layman to recognize such cases as psychopathic.

Because only a convinced person is immediately convincing (by psychic contagion), he exercises as a rule a devastating influence on his contemporaries.

Almost everybody is taken in by him.

How could this "psychopath" influence whole nations to such an extent?

If his maniacal wish-system is a socio-political one, and if it corresponds to the pet ideas of a majority, it produces a psychic epidemic that swells like an avalanche.

The majority of the German

people were discontented and hugged feelings of revenge and resentment born of their national inferiority complex and identified themselves with the underdogs.

(Hence their special hatred and envy of the Jews, who had anticipated them in their idea of a "chosen people"!)

Do you consider his contemporaries, who executed his plans, equally "psychopathic"?

Suggestion works only when there is a secret wish to fulfil it.

Thus Hitler was able to work on all those who compensated their inferiority complex with social aspirations and secret dreams of power.

As a result he collected an army of social misfits, psychopaths, and criminals around him, to which he also belonged.

But at the same time he gripped the unconscious of normal people, who are always naive and fancy themselves utterly innocent and right.

The majority of normal people (quite apart from the 10 per cent or so who are inferior) are ridiculously unconscious and naive and are open to any passing suggestion.

So far as lack of adaptation is a disease, one can call a whole nation diseased.

But this is normal mass psychology; it is a herd phenomenon, like panic.

The more people live together in heaps, the stupider and more suggestible the individual becomes.

If that is so, how can they be cured?

Education for fuller consciousness!

Prevention of social herd formations, of proletarianization and mass-mindedness!

No one party system! No dictatorship! Communal autonomy ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Pages 604-605

Carl Jung: The Effect of Technology on the Human Psyche

The question you ask me, concerning the effect of technology on the human psyche, is not at all easy to answer, as you may well imagine.

The problem is a very complicated one.

Since technology consists of certain procedures invented by man, it is not something that somehow lies outside the human sphere.

One may therefore conjecture that certain modes of human adaptation also exist which would meet the requirements of technology.

Technological activities mostly consist in the identical repetition of rhythmical procedures.

This corresponds to the basic pattern of primitive labour, which is never performed without rhythm and an accompanying chant.

The primitive, that is, the man who is relatively instinctive, can put up with an extraordinary amount of monotony.

There is even something fascinating about it for him.

When the work is accompanied by drumming, he is able to heat himself up into an ecstasy, or else the monotony of the action makes him fall into a semi-unconscious condition, which is not so unpleasant either.

The question naturally is: What is the effect of these primitive techniques on modern man, who no longer has the capacity to transport himself into semi-unconscious or ecstatic states for any length of time?

In general it can be said that for modern man technology is an imbalance that begets dissatisfaction with work or with life.

It estranges man from his natural versatility of action and thus allows many of his instincts to lie fallow.

The result is an increased resistance to work in general.

The remedy would presumably be to move industry out of the towns, a four-hour day, and the rest of the time spent in agricultural work on one's own property—if such a thing could be realized.

In Switzerland it might be, given time.

Naturally it is different with the slum mentality of huge worker populations, but that is a problem in itself.

Considered on its own merits, as a legitimate human activity, technology is neither good nor bad, neither harmful nor harmless.

Whether it be used for good or ill depends entirely on man's own attitude, which in turn depends on technology.

The technologist has something of the same problem as the factory worker.

Since he has to do mainly with mechanical factors, there is a danger of his other mental capacities atrophying.

Just as an unbalanced diet is injurious to the body, any psychic imbalances have injurious effects in the long run and need compensating.

In my practice I have observed how engineers, in particular, very often developed philosophical interests, and this is an uncommonly sound reaction and mode of compensation.

For this reason I have always recommended the institution of Humanistic Faculties at the Federal Polytechnic, to remind students that at least such things exist, so that they can come back to them if ever they should feel a need for them in later life.

Technology harbours no more dangers than any other trend in the development of human consciousness.

The danger lies not in technology but in the possibilities awaiting discovery.

Undoubtedly a new discovery will never be used only for the good, but will certainly be used for ill as well.

Man, therefore, always runs the risk of discovering something that will destroy him if evilly used.

We have come very close to this with the atom bomb.

Faced with such menacing developments, one must ask oneself whether man is sufficiently equipped with reason to be able to resist the temptation to use them for destructive purposes, or whether his constitution will allow him to be swept into catastrophe.

This is a question which experience alone can answer. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Pages 614-615

Foreword to Perry: “The Self in Psychotic Process”

Foreword to Perry: “The Self in Psychotic Process”

As I studied Dr. Perry's manuscript, I could not help recalling the time when I was a young alienist searching vainly for a point of view which would enable me to understand the workings of the diseased mind.

Merely clinical observations—and the subsequent post mortem when one used to stare at a brain which ought to have been out of order yet showed no sign of abnormality—were not particularly enlightening. "Mental diseases are diseases of the brain" was the axiom, and told one just nothing at all.

Within my first months at the Clinic, I realized that the thing I lacked was a real psychopathology, a science which showed what was happening in the mind during a psychosis.

I could never be satisfied with the idea that all that the patients produced, especially the schizophrenics, was nonsense and chaotic gibberish.

On the contrary, I soon convinced myself that their productions meant something which could be understood, if only one were able to find out what it was.

In 1901, I started my association experiments with normal test persons in order to create a normal basis for comparison.

I found then that the experiments were almost regularly disturbed by psychic factors beyond the control of consciousness.

I called them complexes.

No sooner had I established this fact than I applied my discovery to cases of hysteria and schizophrenia.

In both I found an inordinate amount of disturbance, which meant that the unconscious in these conditions is not only opposed to consciousness
but also has an extraordinary energic charge.

While with neurotics the complexes consist of split-off contents, which are systematically arranged, and for this reason are easily understandable,
with schizophrenics the unconscious proves to be not only unmanageable and autonomous, but highly unsystematic, disordered, and even chaotic.

Moreover, it has a peculiar dreamlike quality, with associations and bizarre ideas such as are found in dreams.

In my attempts to understand the contents of schizophrenic psychoses, I was considerably helped by Freud's book on dream interpretation, which had just appeared (1900).

By 1905, I had acquired so much reliable knowledge about the psychology of schizophrenia (then called "dementia praecox") that I was able to write two papers3 about it.

The Psychology of Dementia Praecox (1906) had practically no influence at all, since nobody was interested in pathological psychology except Freud, with whom I had the honour of collaborating for the next seven years.

Dr. Perry, in this book, gives an excellent picture of the psychic contents with which I found myself confronted.

At the beginning, I felt completely at a loss in understanding the association of ideas which I could observe daily with my patients.

I did not know then that all the time I had the key to the mystery in my pocket, inasmuch as I could not help seeing the often striking parallelism between
the patients' delusions and mythological motifs.

But for a long time I did not dare to assume any relationship between mythological formations and individual morbid delusions.

Moreover, my knowledge of folklore, mythology, and primitive psychology was regrettably deficient, so that I was slow in discovering how common
these parallels were.

Our clinical approach to the human mind was only medical, which was about as helpful as the approach of the mineralogist to Chartres Cathedral.

Our training as alienists was much concerned with the anatomy of the brain but not at all with the human psyche.

One could not expect very much more in those days, when even neuroses, with their overflow of psychological material, were a psychological terra incognita.

The main art the students of psychiatry had to learn in those days was how not to listen to their patients.

Well, I had begun to listen, and so had Freud.

He was impressed with certain facts of neurotic psychology, which he even named after a famous mythological model, but I was overwhelmed with "historical" material while studying the psychotic mind.

From 1906 until 1912 I acquired as much knowledge of mythology, primitive psychology, and comparative religion as possible.

This study gave me the key to an understanding of the deeper layers of the psyche and I was thus enabled to write my book with the English title Psychology of the Unconscious.

This title is slightly misleading, for the book represents the analysis of a prodromal schizophrenic condition.

It appeared forty years ago, and last year I published a fourth, revised edition under the title Symbols of Transformation.

One could not say that it had any noticeable influence on psychiatry.

The alienist's lack of psychological interest is by no means peculiar to him.

He shares it with a number of other schools of thought, such as theology, philosophy, political economy, history, and medicine, which all stand in need of psychological understanding and yet allow themselves to be prejudiced against it and remain ignorant of it.

It is only within the last years, for instance, that medicine has recognized "psychosomatics."

Psychiatry has entirely neglected the study of the psychotic mind, in spite of the fact that an investigation of this kind is important not only from a scientific and theoretical standpoint but also from that of practical therapy.

Therefore I welcome Dr. Perry's book as a messenger of a time when the psyche of the mental patient will receive the interest it deserves.

The author gives a fair representation of an average case of schizophrenia, with its peculiar mental structure, and, at the same time, he shows the reader what he should know about general human psychology if he wishes to understand the apparently chaotic distortions and the grotesque "bizarrerie" of the diseased mind.

An adequate understanding often has a remarkable therapeutic effect in milder cases which, of course, do not appear in mental hospitals, but all the more in the consultation hours of the private specialist.

One should not underrate the disastrous shock which patients undergo when they find themselves assailed by the intrusion of strange contents which they are unable to integrate.

The mere fact that they have such ideas isolates them from their fellow men and exposes them to an irresistible panic, which often marks the outbreak of the manifest psychosis.

If, on the other hand, they meet with adequate understanding from their physician, they do not fall into a panic, because they are still understood by a human being and thus preserved from the disastrous shock of complete isolation.

The strange contents which invade consciousness are rarely met with in neurotic cases, least not directly, which is the reason why so many psychotherapists are unfamiliar with the deeper strata of the human psyche.

The alienist, on the other hand, rarely has the time or the necessary scientific equipment to deal with, or even to bother with, his patients' psychology.

In this respect, the author's book fills a yawning gap.

The reader should not be misled by the current prejudice that I produce nothing but theories.

My so-called theories are not figments but facts that can be verified, if one only takes the trouble, as the author has done with so much success, to listen to the patient, to give him the credit—that is humanly so important—of meaning something by what he says, and to encourage him to express himself as much as he possibly can.

As the author has shown, drawing, painting and other methods are sometimes of inestimable value, inasmuch as they complement and amplify verbal expression.

It is of paramount importance that the investigator should be sufficiently acquainted with the history and phenomenology of the mind.

Without such knowledge, he could not understand the symbolic language of the unconscious and so would be unable to help his patient assimilate the irrational ideas that bewilder and confuse his consciousness.

It is not a "peculiar historical interest," a sort of hobby of mine to collect historical curiosities, as has been suggested, but an earnest endeavour to help
the understanding of the diseased mind.

The psyche, like the body, is an extremely historical structure.

I hope that Dr. Perry's book will arouse the psychiatrist's interest in the psychological aspect of his cases.

Psychology belongs as much to his training as anatomy and physiology to that of the surgeon. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Pages 353-356

Carl Jung: CW 5 "Symbols of Transformation"

The same is true of the religious attitude: it must be fully conscious of itself and of its foundations if it is to signify anything more than unconscious imitation. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 106

When the libido leaves the bright upper world, whether from choice, or from inertia, or from fate, it sinks back into its own depths, into the source from which it originally flowed, and returns to the point of cleavage, the navel, where it first entered the body. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 449

As most people know, one of the basic principles of analytical psychology is that dream-images are to be understood symbolically; that is to say, one must not take them literally, but must surmise a hidden meaning in them. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 4.

We must begin by overcoming our virtuousness, with the justifiable fear of falling into vice on the other side. This danger certainly exists, for the greatest virtuousness is always compensated inwardly by a strong tendency to vice, and how many vicious characters treasure inside themselves sugary virtues and a moral megalomania. Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 221

The psychic health of the adult individual, who in childhood was a mere particle revolving in a rotary system, demands that he should himself become the centre of a new system. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 644

But anyone who refuses to experience life must stifle his desire to live—in other words, he must commit partial suicide. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 165

That the highest summit of life can be expressed through the symbolism of death is a well-known fact, for any growing beyond oneself means death. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 432

I do not take kindly to the argument that because certain working hypotheses may not possess eternal validity or may possibly be erroneous, they must be withheld from the public. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 685

I do not regard the pursuit of science as a bickering about who is right, but as an endeavour to augment and deepen human knowledge. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 685

The world comes into being when man discovers it. But he only discovers it when he sacrifices his containment in the primal mother, the original state of unconsciousness. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 652

Fear of our erotic fate is quite understandable, for there is something unpredictable about it. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 101

Symbols are not allegories and not signs; they are images of contents which for the most part transcend consciousness. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 114

The dream, we would say, originates in an unknown part of the psyche and prepares the dreamer for the events of the following day. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 5

One such successful interpretation has been, for instance, Mother Church, but once this form begins to show signs of age and decay a new interpretation becomes inevitable. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 351

The religious interest, which ought normally to be the greatest and most decisive factor, turned away from the inner world, and great figures of dogma dwindled to strange and incomprehensible vestiges, a prey to every sort of criticism. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 113.

One might expect, perhaps, that a man of genius would luxuriate in the greatness of his own thoughts and renounce the cheap approbation of the rabble he despises; yet he succumbs to the more powerful impulse of the herd instinct. His seeking and his finding, his heart's cry, are meant for the herd and must be heeded by them. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 14

We quite forget that we can be as deplorably overcome by a virtue as by a vice. There is a sort of frenzied, orgiastic virtuousness which is just as infamous as a vice and leads to just as much injustice and violence. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 222

The wounding and painful shafts do not come from outside, through gossip which only pricks us only on the surface, but from the ambush of our own unconscious. It is our own repressed desires that stick like arrows in our flesh. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 438

Just as our bodies still retain vestiges of obsolete functions and conditions in many of their organs, so our minds, which have apparently outgrown those archaic impulses, still bear the marks of the evolutionary stages we have traversed, and re-echo the dim bygone in dreams and fantasies. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 36

Therefore the sun is perfectly suited to represent the visible God of this world, i.e., the creative power of our own soul, which we call libido, and whose nature it is to bring forth the useful and to bring forth the useful and the harmful, the good and the bad. ~Carl Jung; CW 5, Para 176.

It would be a ridiculous and unwarranted assumption on our part if we imagined that we were more energetic or more intelligent than the men of the past. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 23

We have become rich in knowledge, but poor in wisdom. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 23

One cannot please everybody, therefore it is better to be at peace with oneself. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 911

The psychic health of the adult individual, who in childhood was a mere particle revolving in a rotary system, demands that he should himself become the centre of a new system. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 644

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

The world comes into being when man discovers it. But he only discovers it when he sacrifices his containment in the primal mother, the original state of unconsciousness. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 652

We shall all be as good as dead one day, but in the interests of life we should postpone this moment as long as possible, and this we can only do by never allowing our picture of the world to become rigid. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 700

The world changes its face —tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis—for we can grasp the world only as a psychic image in ourselves, and it is not always easy to decide, when the image changes, whether the world or ourselves have changed, or both. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 700

It is hard to believe that this teeming world is too poor to provide an object for human love - it offers boundless opportunities to everyone. It is rather the inability to love which robs a person of these opportunities. The world is empty only to him who does not know how to direct his libido towards things and people, and to render them alive and beautiful. What compels us to create a substitute from within ourselves is not an external lack, but our own inability to include anything outside ourselves in our love. Certainly the difficulties and adversities of the struggle for existence may oppress us, yet even the worst conditions need not hinder love; on the contrary, they often spur us on to greater efforts. Carl Jung, CW 5, 253.

We have, therefore, two kinds of thinking: directed thinking, and dreaming or fantasy-thinking. The former operates with speech elements for the purpose of communication, and is difficult and exhausting; the latter is effortless, working as it were spontaneously, with the contents ready to hand, and guided by unconscious motives. The one produces innovations and adaptation, copies reality, and tries to act upon it; the other turns away from reality, sets free subjective tendencies, and, as regards adaptation, is unproductive ~Carl Jung, CW 5, para. 20.

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.

The sun is not only beneficial, but also destructive; hence the zodiacal sign for August heat is the ravaging lion which Samson slew in order to rid the parched earth of its torment. Yet it is in the nature of the sun to scorch, and its scorching power seems natural to man. It shines equally on the just and the unjust, and allows useful creatures to flourish as well as the harmful. ~Carl Jung; CW 5, para 176.

Numerous mythological and philosophical attempts have been made to formulate and visualize the creative force which man knows only by subjective experience. To give but a few examples, I would remind the reader of the cosmogonic significance of Eros in Hesiod, and also of the Orphic figure of Phanes, the ‘Shining One,’ the first-born, the ‘Father of Eros.’ In Orphic terms, Phanes also denotes Priapos, a god of love, androgynous, and equal to the Theban Dionysus Lysios. The Orphic meaning of Phanes is the same as that of the Indian Kama, the God of love, which is also a cosmogonic principle. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, para. 198.

It is hard to believe that this teeming world is too poor to provide an object for human love—it offers boundless opportunities to everyone. It is rather the inability to love which robs a person of these opportunities. The world is empty only to him who does not know how to direct his libido towards things and people, and to render them alive and beautiful. What compels us to create a substitute from within ourselves is not an external lack, but our own inability to include anything outside ourselves in our love. Certainly the difficulties and adversities of the struggle for existence may oppress us, yet even the worst conditions need not hinder love; on the contrary, they often spur us on to greater efforts. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 253

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

An individual is infantile because he has freed himself insufficiently, or not at all, from his childish environment and his adaptation to his parents, with the result that he has a false reaction to the world on the one hand he reacts as a child towards his parents, always demanding love and immediate emotional rewards, while on the other hand he is so identified with his parents through his close ties with them that he behaves like his father or his mother. He is incapable of living his own life and finding the character that belongs to him. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 431

It is not possible to live too long amid infantile surroundings, or in the bosom of the family, without endangering one's psychic health. Life calls us forth to independence, and anyone who does not heed this call because of childish laziness or timidity is threatened with neurosis. And once this has broken out, it becomes an increasingly valid reason for running away from life and remaining forever in the morally poisonous atmosphere of infancy. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 461

If we wish to stay on the heights we have reached, we must struggle all the time to consolidate our consciousness and its attitude. But we soon discover that this praiseworthy and apparently unavoidable battle with the years leads to stagnation and desiccation of soul. Our convictions become platitudes ground out on a barrel-organ, our ideals become starchy habits, enthusiasm stiffens into automatic gestures. The source of the water of life seeps away. We ourselves may not notice it, but everybody else does, and that is even more painful. If we should risk a little introspection, coupled perhaps with an energetic attempt to be honest for once with ourselves, we may get a dim idea of all the wants, longings, and fears that have accumulated down there—a repulsive and sinister sight. The mind shies away, but life wants to flow down into the depths. Fate itself seems to preserve us from this, for each of us has a tendency to become an immovable pillar of the past. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 553

For all these things have taken on shape, and all shapes are worn thin by the working of time; they age, sicken, crumble to dust—unless they change. But change they can, for the invisible spark that generated them is potent enough for infinite generation. No one should deny the danger of the descent, but it can be risked. No one need risk it, but it is certain that some will. And let those who go down the sunset way do so with open eyes, for it is a sacrifice which daunts even the gods. Yet every descent is followed by an ascent; the vanishing shapes are shaped anew, and a truth is valid in the end only if it suffers change and bears witness in new images, in new tongues, like a new wine that is put into new bottles. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 553

Nature has the primary claim on mankind, and only long after that comes the luxury of reason. The medieval ideal of a life lived for death should gradually be replaced by a more natural attitude to life, in which the natural claims of man are fully acknowledged, so that the desires of the animal sphere need no longer drag down the higher values of the spiritual sphere in order to be able to function at all. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 295

What aroused a feeling of horror in the Greeks still remains true, but it is true for us only if we give up the vain illusion that we are different, i.e., morally better, than the ancients. We have merely succeeded in forgetting that an indissoluble link binds us to the men of antiquity. This truth opens the way to an understanding of the classical spirit such as has never existed before—the way of inner sympathy on the one hand and of intellectual comprehension on the other. By penetrating into the blocked subterranean passages of our own psyches we grasp the living meaning of classical civilization, and at the same time we establish a firm foothold outside our own culture from which alone it is possible to gain an objective understanding of its foundations. That at least is the hope we draw from the rediscovery of the immortality of the Oedipus problem. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para i

People who strive to be excessively ethical, who always think, feel, and act altruistically and idealistically, avenge themselves for their intolerable ideals by a subtly planned maliciousness, of which they are naturally not conscious as such, but which leads to misunderstandings and unhappy situations. All these difficulties appear to them as "especially unfortunate circumstances," or the fault and the malice of other people, or as tragic complications. Consciously they imagine they are rid of the conflict, but it is still there, unseen, to be stumbled over at every step. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 62

The essential thing is that we should be able to stand up to our judgment of ourselves. From outside this attitude looks like self-righteousness, but it is so only if we are incapable of criticizing ourselves. If we can exercise self-criticism, criticism from outside will affect us only on the outside and not pierce to the heart, for we feel that we have a sterner critic within us than any who could judge us from without. And anyway, there are as many opinions as there are heads to think them. We come to realize that our own judgment has as much value as the judgment of others. One cannot please everybody, therefore it is better to be at peace with oneself. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 911

All through our lives we possess, side by side with our newly acquired directed and adapted thinking, a fantasy thinking which corresponds to the antique state of mind. Just as our bodies still retain vestiges of obsolete functions and conditions in many of their organs, so our minds, which have apparently outgrown those archaic impulses, still bear the marks of the evolutionary stages we have traversed, and re-echo the dim bygone in dreams and fantasies. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 36

It would be a ridiculous and unwarranted assumption on our part if we imagined that we were more energetic or more intelligent than the men of the past. Our material knowledge has increased, but not our intelligence. This means that we are just as bigoted in regard to new ideas, and just as impervious to them, as people were in the darkest days of antiquity. We have become rich in knowledge, but poor in wisdom. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 23

The world changes its face —tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis—for we can grasp the world only as a psychic image in ourselves, and it is not always easy to decide, when the image changes, whether the world or ourselves have changed, or both. The picture of the world can change at any time, just as our conception of ourselves changes. Every new discovery, every new thought, can put a new face on the world. We must be prepared for this, else we suddenly find ourselves in an antiquated world, itself a relic of lower levels of consciousness. We shall all be as good as dead one day, but in the interests of life we should postpone this moment as long as possible, and this we can only do by never allowing our picture of the world to become rigid. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 700

If we do not fashion for ourselves a picture of the world, we do not see ourselves either, who are the faithful reflections of that world. Only when mirrored in our picture of the world can we see ourselves in the round. Only in our creative acts do we step forth into the light and see ourselves whole and complete. Never shall we put any face on the world other than our own, and we have to do this precisely in order to find ourselves. For higher than science or art as an end in itself stands man, the creator of his instruments. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 737

In the same way one can withhold the material content of primitive myths from a child but not take from him the need for mythology, and still less his ability to manufacture it for himself. One could almost say that if all the world's traditions were cut off at a single blow, the whole of mythology and the whole history of religion would start all over again with the next generation. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 30

The conscious mind must have reason, firstly to discover some order in the chaos of disorderly individual events occurring in the world, and secondly to create order, at least in human affairs. We are moved by the laudable and useful ambition to extirpate the chaos of the irrational both within and without to the best of our ability. Apparently the process has gone pretty far. As a mental patient once told me: "Doctor, last night I disinfected the whole heavens with bichloride of mercury, but I found no God." Something of the sort has happened to us as well. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 104A


The myth of the hero ... is first and foremost a self-representation of the longing of the unconscious, of its unquenched and unquenchable desire for the light of consciousness. But consciousness, continually in danger of being led astray by its own light and of becoming a rootless will o'the wisp, longs for the healing power of nature, for the deep wells of being and for unconscious communion with life in all its countless forms. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 299

People often behave as if they did not rightly understand what constitutes the destructive character of the creative force. A woman who gives herself up to passion, particularly under present-day civilized conditions, experiences this all too soon. We must think a little beyond the framework of purely bourgeois moral conditions to understand the feeling of boundless uncertainty which befalls the man who gives himself over unconditionally to fate. Even to be fruitful is to destroy oneself, for with the creation of a new generation the previous generation has passed beyond its climax. Our off spring thus become our most dangerous enemies, with whom we cannot get even, for they will survive us and so inevitably will take the power out of our weakening hands. Fear of our erotic fate is quite understandable, for there is something unpredictable about it. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 101

Fear of fate is a very understandable phenomenon, for it is incalculable, immeasurable, full of unknown dangers. The perpetual hesitation of the neurotic to launch out into life is readily explained by his desire to stand aside so as not to get involved in the dangerous struggle for existence. But anyone who refuses to experience life must stifle his desire to live—in other words, he must commit partial suicide. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 165

Flight from life does not exempt us from the laws of old age and death. The neurotic who tries to wriggle out of the necessity of living wins nothing and only burdens himself with a constant foretaste of aging and dying, which must appear especially cruel on account of the total emptiness and meaninglessness of his life. If it is not possible for the libido to strive forwards, to lead a life that willingly accepts all dangers and ultimate decay, then it strikes back along the other road and sinks into its own depths, working down to the old intimation of the immortality of all that lives, to the old longing for rebirth. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 617

The sun, rising triumphant, tears himself from the enveloping womb of the sea, and leaving behind him the noonday zenith and all its glorious works, sinks down again into the maternal depths, into all-enfolding and all regenerating night. This image is undoubtedly a primordial one, and there was profound justification for its becoming a symbolical expression of human fate: in the morning of life the son tears himself loose from the mother, from the domestic hearth, to rise through battle to his destined heights. Always he imagines his worst enemy in front of him, yet he carries the enemy within himself—a deadly longing for the abyss, a longing to drown in his own source, to be sucked down to the realm of the Mothers. His life is a constant struggle against extinction, a violent yet fleeting deliverance from ever-lurking night. This death is no external enemy, it is his own inner longing for the stillness and profound peace of all-knowing non-existence, for all-seeing sleep in the ocean of coming-to-be and passing away. Even in his highest strivings for harmony and balance, for the profundities of philosophy and the raptures of the artist, he seeks death, immobility, satiety, rest. If, like Peirithous, he tarries too long in this abode of rest and peace, he is overcome by apathy, and the poison of the serpent paralyses him for all time. If he is to live, he must fight and sacrifice his longing for the past in order to rise to his own heights. And having reached the noonday heights, he must sacrifice his love for his own achievement, for he may not loiter. The sun, too, sacrifices its greatest strength in order to hasten onward to the fruits of autumn, which are the seeds of rebirth. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 553

When the libido leaves the bright upper world, whether from choice, or from inertia, or from fate, it sinks back into its own depths, into the source from which it originally flowed, and returns to the point of cleavage, the navel, where it first entered the body. This point of cleavage is called the mother, because from her the current of life reached us. Whenever some great work is to be accomplished, before which a man recoils, doubtful of his strength, his libido streams back to the fountainhead—and that is the dangerous moment when the issue hangs between annihilation and new life. For if the libido gets stuck in the wonderland of this inner world, then for the upper world man is nothing but a shadow, he is already moribund or at least seriously ill. But if the libido manages to tear itself loose and force its way up again, something like a miracle happens: the journey to the underworld was a plunge into the fountain of youth, and the libido, apparently dead, wakes to renewed fruitfulness. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 449

To the degree that the modern mind is passionately concerned with anything and everything rather than religion, religion and its prime object—original sin—have mostly vanished into the unconscious. That is why, today, nobody believes in either. People accuse psychology of dealing in squalid fantasies, and yet even a cursory glance at ancient religions and the history of morals should be sufficient to convince them of the demons hidden in the human soul. This disbelief in the devilishness of human nature goes hand in hand with a blank incomprehension of religion and its meaning. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 106

At a time when a large part of mankind is beginning to discard Christianity, it may be worth our while to try to understand why it was accepted in the first place. It was accepted as a means of escape from the brutality and unconsciousness of the ancient world. As soon as we discard it, the old brutality returns in force, as has been made overwhelmingly clear by contemporary events. . . . We have had bitter experience of what happens when a whole nation finds the moral mask too stupid to keep up. The beast breaks loose, and a frenzy of demoralization sweeps over the civilized world. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 341

The conflict between horse and snake or bull and snake represents a conflict within the libido itself, a striving forward and backwards at one and the same time.It is as if the libido were not only a ceaseless forward movement, an unending will for life, evolution, creation, such as Schopenhauer envisaged in his cosmic Will, where death is a mishap or fatality coming from outside; like the sun, the libido also wills its own descent, its own involution. During the first half of life it strives for growth; during the second half, softly at first and then ever more perceptibly, it points towards an altered goal. And just as in youth the urge for limitless expansion often lies hidden under veiling layers of resistance to life, so that “other urge” often hides behind an obstinate and purposeless cleaving to life in its old form. This apparent contradiction in the nature of the libido is illustrated by a statue of Priapus in the archaeological museum at Verona: Priapus, with a sidelong smile, points with his finger to a snake biting his phallus. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 680

“The demands of the unconscious act at first like a paralysing poison on a man’s energy and resourcefulness, so that it may well be compared to the bite of a poisonous snake. Apparently it is a hostile demon who robs him of: energy, but in actual fact it is his own unconscious whose alien tendencies are beginning to check the forward striving of the conscious mind. The cause of this process is often extremely obscure, the more so as it is complicated by all kinds of external factors and subsidiary causes, such as difficulties in work, disappointments, failures, reduced efficiency due to age, depressing family problems, and so on and so forth. According to the myths it is the woman who secretly enslaves a man, so that he can no longer free himself from her and becomes a child again.It is also significant that Isis, the sister-wife of the sun-god, creates the poisonous serpent from his spittle, which, like all bodily secretions, has a magical significance, being a libido equivalent. She creates the serpent from the libido of the god, and by this means weakens him and makes him dependent on her. Delilah acts in the same way with Samson: by cutting off his hair, the sun’s rays, she robs him of his strength. This demon-woman of mythology is in truth the “sister-wife-mother,” the woman in the man, who unexpectedly turns up during the second half of life and tries to effect a forcible change of personality. I have dealt with certain aspects of this change in my essay on “The Stages of Life.” It consists in a partial feminization of the man and a corresponding masculinization of the woman. Often it takes place under very dramatic circumstances: the man’s strongest quality, his Logos principle, turns against him and as it were betrays him. The same thing happens with the Eros of the woman. The man becomes rigidly set in his previous attitude, while the woman remains caught in her emotional ties and fails to develop her reason and understanding, whose place is then taken by equally obstinate and inept “animus” opinions. The fossilization of the man shrouds itself in a smoke-screen of moods, ridiculous irritability, feelings of distrust and resentment, which are meant to justify his rigid attitude. A perfect example of this type of psychology is Schreber’s account of his own psychosis, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 458