Modern Man in Search of a Soul 

by C.G. Jung

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Last annotated on February 9, 2016

Modern Man in Search of a Soul

Chapter 1:  Dream-Analysis in Its Practical Application

since, according to our hypothesis, the unconscious plays a causal part in the neurosis, and since dreams are the direct expression of unconscious psychic activity, the attempt to analyse and interpret dreams is entirely justified from a scientific standpoint.  Read more at location 68

I have found that dreams not infrequently bring to light in an unmistakable way the unconscious contents that are causal factors in a neurosis. Most often it is the initial dreams that do this—I mean, those dreams that a patient reports at the very outset of a treatment.  Read more at location 79

****  The dream gives a true picture of the subjective state, while the conscious mind denies that this state exists, or recognizes it only grudgingly.  Read more at location 110

I have therefore made it a rule to put dreams on a plane with physiological fact. If sugar appears in the urine, then the urine contains sugar, and not albumen or urobilin or something else that I may have been led to expect. This is to say that I take dreams as facts that are invaluable for diagnosis. It is the way of dreams to give us more than we ask,  Read more at location 118

I do not, of course, deny that many neuroses have a traumatic origin; I simply contest the notion that all neuroses are of this nature and arise without exception from some crucial experience of childhood. This view of the question results in a causalistic approach. The doctor must give his whole attention to the patient's past; he must always ask: "Why?" and neglect the equally pertinent question: "What for?" This is frequently very harmful to the patient, for he is forced to search in his memory—perhaps over a course of years—for a hypothetical event in his childhood, while things of immediate importance are grossly neglected.  Read more at location 130

Initial dreams are often amazingly transparent and clear-cut. But as the work of analysis progresses, the dreams in a little while cease to be clear.  Read more at location 158

A practising analyst may be supposed to believe in the significance and value of the widening of consciousness—I mean by this the procedure of bringing to light the parts of the personality which were previously unconscious and subjecting them to conscious discrimination and criticism. It is an undertaking which requires the patient to face his problems, and taxes his powers of conscious judgement and decision. It is nothing less than a challenge to the ethical sense, a call to arms that must be answered by the whole personality. Therefore, with respect to personal development, the analytical approach is of a higher order than methods of treatment based upon suggestion.  Read more at location 186

The analyst who wishes to rule out conscious suggestion must consider any dream interpretation invalid that does not win the assent of the patient, and he must search until he finds a formulation that does. This is a rule which, I believe, must always be observed, especially in dealing with those dreams whose obscurity is evidence of lack of understanding on the part of the doctor as well as of the patient.  Read more at location 194

The view that dreams are merely imaginary fulfillments of suppressed wishes has long ago been superseded. It is  Read more at location 200

Dreams may give expression to ineluctable truths, to philosophical pronouncements, illusions, wild fantasies, memories, plans, anticipations, irrational experiences, even telepathic visions, and heaven knows what besides. One thing we ought never to forget: almost the half of our lives is passed in a more or less unconscious state. The dream is specifically the utterance of the unconscious.  Read more at location 202

it is highly probable that the unconscious psyche contains a wealth of contents and living forms equal to or even greater than does consciousness, which is characterized by concentration, limitation and exclusion. This being the state of affairs, it is imperative that we should not pare down the meaning of a dream to fit some narrow doctrine.  Read more at location 206

every hypothesis about the nature of the dream, its function and structure, is merely a rule of thumb and must be subject to constant modifications. We must never forget in dream-analysis, even for a moment, that we move on treacherous ground where nothing is certain but uncertainty.  Read more at location 217

When we take up an obscure dream, our first task is not to understand and interpret it, but to establish the context with minute care.  Read more at location 220

Perhaps we may call the dream a façade, but we must remember that the fronts of most houses by no means trick or deceive us, but, on the contrary, follow the plan of the building and often betray its inner arrangement. The "manifest" dream-picture is the dream itself, and contains the "latent" meaning.  Read more at location 227

We say that the dream has a false front only because we fail to see into it. We would do better to say that we are dealing with something like a text that is unintelligible, not because it has a facade, but simply because we cannot read it.  Read more at location 231

No amount of skepticism and critical reserve has ever enabled me to regard dreams as negligible occurrences. Often enough they appear senseless, but it is obviously we who lack the sense and the ingenuity to read the enigmatical message from the nocturnal realm of the psyche. When we see that at least a half of man's life is passed in this realm, that consciousness has its roots there, and that the unconscious operates in and out of waking existence, it would seem incumbent upon medical psychology to sharpen its perceptions by a systematic study of dreams.  Read more at location 268

Dreams give information about the secrets of the inner life and reveal to the dreamer hidden factors of his personality. As long as these are undiscovered, they disturb his waking life and betray themselves only in the form of symptoms. This means that we cannot effectively treat the patient from the side of consciousness alone, but must bring about a change in and through the unconscious.  Read more at location 274

the Freudian school presents the unconscious in a thoroughly depreciatory light, just as also it looks on primitive man as little better than a wild beast.  Read more at location 280

The unconscious is not a demonic monster, but a thing of nature that is perfectly neutral as far as moral sense, æsthetic taste and intellectual judgement go. It is dangerous only when our conscious attitude towards it becomes hopelessly false. And this danger grows in the measure that we practise repressions.  Read more at location 289

The psyche is a self-regulating system that maintains itself in equilibrium as the body does.  Read more at location 297

It is always helpful, when we set out to interpret a dream, to ask: What conscious attitude does it compensate? Although compensation may take the form of imaginary wish-fulfillment, it generally presents itself as an actuality which becomes the more strikingly actual the more we try to repress it. We know that we do not conquer thirst by repressing it. The dream-content is to be taken in all seriousness as something that has actually happened to us; it should be treated as a contributory factor in framing our conscious outlook.  Read more at location 301

If anyone should set out to replace his conscious outlook by the dictates of the unconscious—and this is the prospect which my critics find so alarming—he would only succeed in repressing the former, and it would reappear as an unconscious compensation. The unconscious would thus have changed its face and completely reversed its position.  Read more at location 307

This is why every dream is a source of information and a means of self-regulation, and why dreams are our most effective aids in the task of building up the personality.  Read more at location 311

Just as the interpretation of dreams requires exact knowledge of the conscious status quo, so the treatment of dream symbolism demands that we take into account the dreamer's philosophical, religious and moral convictions.  Read more at location 352

Freud's concept of sexuality is thoroughly elastic, and so vague that it can be made to include almost anything. The word itself is familiar, but what it denotes amounts to an indeterminable or variable x that stands for the physiological activity of the glands at one extreme and the highest reaches of the spirit at the other. Instead of taking a dogmatic stand that rests upon the illusion that we know something because we have a familiar word for it, I prefer to regard the symbol as the announcement of something unknown, hard to recognize and not to be fully determined. Take,  Read more at location 363

one to the other, for they both do the same thing: they commit suicide. The mother symbol is archetypal and refers to a place of origin, to nature, that which passively creates, hence to substance and matter, to material nature, the lower body (womb) and the vegetative functions. It connotes also the unconscious, natural and instinctive life, the physiological realm, the body in which we dwell or are contained, for the "mother" is also a vessel, the hollow form (uterus) that carries and nourishes, and it thus stands for the foundations of consciousness. Being within something or contained in something suggests darkness, the nocturnal—a state of anxiety. With these allusions I am presenting the idea of the mother in many of its mythological and etymological transformations; I am also giving an important part of the yin concept of Chinese philosophy.  Read more at location 398

The familiar word "mother" refers apparently to the best known of mothers in particular—to "my mother." But the mother symbol points to a darker meaning which eludes conceptual formulation and can only be vaguely apprehended as the hidden, nature-bound life of the body. Yet even this expression is too narrow, and excludes too many pertinent side-meanings. The psychic reality which underlies this symbol is so inconceivably complex that we can only discern it from afar off, and then but very dimly. It is such realities that call for symbolic expression.  Read more at location 406

Chapter 2:  Problems of Modern Psychotherapy 

the idea of psychoanalysis includes certain theoretical assumptions, among them the Freudian theory of sexuality. The founder of psychoanalysis himself explicitly insists upon this circumscription. But, Freud notwithstanding, the layman applies the concept of psychoanalysis to every kind of modern endeavour to probe the mind by scientific methods. Thus Adler's school must submit to being labeled "psychoanalytic" despite the fact that Adler's view-point and method are apparently in irreconcilable opposition to those of Freud. Because of this contrast, Adler himself does not call his teaching "psychoanalysis", but "individual psychology"; while I prefer to call my own approach "analytical psychology." I wish the term to stand for a general conception embracing both "psychoanalysis" and "individual psychology", as well as other efforts in this field.  Read more at location 451

(Note: Western psychology grounded in materialism)  All that is embraced today in the layman's idea of "psychoanalysis" originated in medical practice; and consequently most of it is medical psychology. It bears the unmistakable imprint of the physician's consulting-room—a fact which is evident not only in its terminology, but also in its framework of theory. We constantly come upon postulates which the physician has taken over from natural science and in particular from biology. This fact has largely contributed to the hostility between modern psychology and the academic fields of philosophy, history and classical learning.  Read more at location 476

As soon as man was capable of conceiving the idea of sin, he had recourse to psychic concealment—or, to put it in analytical language, repressions arose.  Read more at location 492

Even the Christian sacraments were looked upon as mysteries in the early Church, and, as in the case of baptism, were celebrated in private apartments and only referred to under a veil of allegory. However beneficial a secret shared with several persons may be, a merely private secret has a destructive effect. It resembles a burden of guilt which cuts off the unfortunate possessor from communion with his fellow-beings.  Read more at location 497

the unconscious has contents peculiar to itself which, slowly growing upward from the depths, at last come into consciousness. We should therefore in no wise picture the unconscious psyche to ourselves as a mere receptacle for contents discarded by the conscious mind. All psychic contents which either approach the threshold of consciousness from below, or have sunk only slightly beneath it, have an effect upon our conscious activities.  Read more at location 508

****  There appears to be a conscience in mankind which severely punishes the man who does not somehow and at some time, at whatever cost to his pride, cease to defend and assert himself, and instead confess himself fallible and human.  Read more at location 545

Here we find a key to the great significance of true, unstereotyped confession—a significance known in all the initiation and mystery cults of the ancient world, as is shown by a saying from the Greek mysteries: "Give up what thou hast, and then thou wilt receive."  Read more at location 547

The goal of treatment by catharsis is full confession—no merely intellectual acknowledgement of the facts, but their confirmation by the heart and the actual release of the suppressed emotions.  Read more at location 561

The end-product of the Freudian method of explanation is a detailed elaboration of man's shadow-side such as had never been carried out before. It is the most effective antidote imaginable to all idealistic illusions about the nature of man; and it is therefore no wonder that there arose on all sides the most violent opposition to Freud and his school.  Read more at location 633

Freud's method of interpretation rests upon "reductive" explanations which unfailingly lead backward and downward, and it has a destructive effect if it is used in an exaggerated and one-sided way. Nevertheless psychology has profited greatly from Freud's pioneer work; it has learned that human nature has also a black side, and that not man alone possesses this side, but his works, his institutions, and his convictions as well. Even our purest and holiest beliefs can be traced to the crudest origins.  Read more at location 638

****  The horror which we feel for Freudian interpretations is entirely due to our own barbaric or childish naïveté, which believes that there can be heights without corresponding depths, and which blinds us to the really "final" truth that, when carried to extremes, opposites meet. Our mistake would lie in supposing that what is radiant no longer exists because it has been explained from the shadow-side. This is a regrettable error into which Freud himself has fallen. Yet the shadow belongs to the light as the evil belongs to the good, and vice versa.  Read more at location 646

(Note: Perennial philosophy)  It forces us to accept a present-day philosophical relativism such as has been formulated by Einstein for mathematical physics, and which is fundamentally a truth of the far East whose ultimate effects upon us we cannot foresee. Nothing influences our conduct less than do intellectual ideas. But when an idea is the expression of psychic experience which bears fruit in regions as far separated and as free from historical relation as East and West, then we must look into the matter closely. For such ideas represent forces that are beyond logical justification and moral sanction; they are always stronger than man and his brain.  Read more at location 652

Adler has shown convincingly that many cases of neurosis can be more satisfactorily explained on the ground of an urge to power than by the pleasure principle.  Read more at location 686

We must never forget that the crooked paths of a neurosis lead to as many obstinate habits, and that, despite any amount of understanding, these do not disappear until they are replaced by other habits. But habits are only won by exercise, and appropriate education is the sole means to this end.  Read more at location 707

there are many people who become neurotic because they are only normal, as there are people who are neurotic because they cannot become normal. For the former the very thought that you want to educate them to normality is a nightmare; their deepest need is really to be able to lead "abnormal" lives.  Read more at location 747

(Note: Basic Buddhist account of equating suffering with desire)  man can hope for satisfaction and fulfillment only in what he does not yet possess; he cannot find pleasure in something of which he has already had too much.  Read more at location 749

The needs and necessities of individuals vary. What sets one free is for another a prison—as for instance normality and adaptation.  Read more at location 753

Two primary factors come together in the treatment—that is, two persons, neither of whom is a fixed and determinable magnitude. Their fields of consciousness may be quite clearly defined, but they bring with them besides an indefinitely extended sphere of unconsciousness. For this reason the personalities of the doctor and patient have often more to do with the outcome of the treatment than what the doctor says or thinks—although  Read more at location 762

****  (Note:   perhaps true of all interaction. I and thou)  The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed. We should expect the doctor to have an influence on the patient in every effective psychic treatment; but this influence can only take place when he too is affected by the patient. You can exert no influence if you are not susceptible to influence.  Read more at location 765

In the relation between doctor and patient we meet with imponderable factors which bring about a mutual transformation. In this exchange, the more stable and the stronger personality will decide the final issue.  Read more at location 775

It means nothing less than that the doctor "is just as much in analysis" as the patient. He is as much a part of the psychic process of the treatment as is the patient, and is equally exposed to the transforming influences.  Read more at location 781

This challenge to the doctor to transform himself in order to effect a change in the patient meets with scant popular approval, for three reasons. First of all it seems unpractical; secondly, there is a prejudice against being occupied with ourselves; and thirdly, it is sometimes very painful to make ourselves live up to everything that we expect of the patient.  Read more at location 804

(Note: Deep tie to observation and uncertainty principle)  the latest advance of analytical psychology makes an unavoidable problem of the doctor's ethical attitude. The self criticism and self-examination demanded of him radically alter our view of the human psyche. This cannot be grasped from the standpoint of natural science it is not only the sufferer but the physician as well; not only the object but also the subject; not only a function of the brain, but the sine qua non of consciousness itself.  Read more at location 824

Chapter 3:  The Aims of Psychotherapy 

It would be an unpardonable error to overlook the element of truth in both the Freudian and Adlerian viewpoints, but it would be no less unpardonable to take either of them as the sole truth. Both truths correspond to psychic realities.  Read more at location 866

It is in applied psychology, if anywhere, that today we should be modest and grant validity to a number of apparently contradictory opinions; for we are still far from having anything like a thorough knowledge of the human psyche, that most challenging field of scientific enquiry.  Read more at location 872

****  It seems to me that the elements of the psyche undergo in the course of life a very marked change—so much so, that we may distinguish between a psychology of the morning of life and a psychology of its afternoon. As a rule, the life of a young person is characterized by a general unfolding and a striving toward concrete ends; his neurosis, if he develops one, can be traced to his hesitation or his shrinking back from this necessity. But the life of an older person is marked by a contraction of forces, by the affirmation of what has been achieved, and the curtailment of further growth. His neurosis comes mainly from his clinging to a youthful attitude which is now out of season. Just as the youthful neurotic is afraid of life, so the older one shrinks back from death.  Read more at location 890

I am inclined at the start to take deep-seated resistances seriously, strange as this may sound. For I am convinced that the doctor is not necessarily in a better position to know what is wanted than is the patient's own psychic constitution, which may be quite unconscious to the patient himself.  Read more at location 904

****  (Note:   i.e. concrete versus abstract?)  I must not fail to point out that there are some people whose attitude is essentially spiritual and others whose attitude is essentially materialistic. It must not be assumed that such an attitude is accidentally acquired or springs from some misunderstanding. These attitudes show themselves as ingrained passions which no criticism or persuasion can stamp out;  Read more at location 913

My contribution to psychotherapy is confined to those cases in which rational treatment yields no satisfactory results.  Read more at location 934

About a third of my cases are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives. It seems to me, however, that this can well be described as the general neurosis of our time. Fully two-thirds of my patients have passed middle age.  Read more at location 936

"getting stuck" is a typical event which, in the course of time, has evoked typical reactions and compensations. We may therefore expect with a certain degree of probability that something similar will appear in the reactions of the unconscious, as, for example, in dreams.  Read more at location 947

I share all my readers' prejudices against dream interpretation as being the quintessence of uncertainty and arbitrariness. But, on the other hand, I know that if we meditate on a dream sufficiently long and thoroughly—if we take it about with us and turn it over and over—something almost always comes of it. This something is of course not of such a kind that we can boast of its scientific nature or rationalize it, but it is a practical and important hint which shows the patient in what direction the unconscious is leading him.  Read more at location 954

does a thing or a fact ever mean anything in and of itself? We can only be sure that it is always the human being who interprets, that is, gives meaning to a fact.  Read more at location 983

It is of especial importance for me to know as much as possible about primitive psychology, mythology, archæology and comparative religion, for the reason that these fields afford me priceless analogies with which I can enrich the associations of my patients. Working together, we are then able to find the apparently irrelevant full of meaning and vastly increase the effectiveness of the dream.  Read more at location 996

****  when something quite universal happens to a man and he supposes it to be an experience peculiar to himself, then his attitude is obviously wrong, that is, too personal, and it tends to exclude him from human society. We require not only a present-day, personal consciousness, but also a supra-personal consciousness which is open to the sense of historical continuity. However far-fetched it may sound, experience shows that many neuroses are caused by the fact that people blind themselves to their own religious promptings because of a childish passion for rational enlightenment.  Read more at location 1017

the dreams treat of photographs, of paintings, drawings or illuminated manuscripts, or perhaps of the films. I have turned these hints to practical account, and I now urge my patients at such times actually to paint what they have seen in dream or fantasy. As a rule, I am met with the objection: "I am not a painter." To this I usually reply that neither are modern painters—for which very reason modern painting is absolutely free—and that it is anyhow not a question of the beautiful, but merely of the trouble one takes with the picture.  Read more at location 1033

********   To paint what we see before us is a different matter from painting what we see within.  Read more at location 1039

The importance of individual life may always be denied by the "educator" whose pride it is to breed mass-men. But any other person will sooner or later be driven to find this meaning for himself.  Read more at location 1044

that which is active within is himself, but not in the sense of his previous error when he mistook his personal ego for the self; it is himself in a new sense, for his ego now appears as an object actuated by the life-forces within.  Read more at location 1066

I cannot possibly picture to you the extent to which these discoveries change a patient's standpoint and values, and how they shift the centre of gravity of the personality. It is as though the ego were the earth, and it suddenly discovered that the sun (or the self) was the centre of the planetary orbits and of the earth's orbit as well.  Read more at location 1069

****  (Note:   enlightenment in middle age)  Most of my patients knew the deeper truth, but did not live it. And why did they not live it? Because of that bias which makes us all put the ego in the centre of our lives—and this bias comes from the over-valuation of consciousness. It is highly important for a young person who is still unadapted and has as yet achieved nothing, to shape the conscious ego as effectively as possible—that is, to educate the will. Unless he is positively a genius he even may not believe in anything active within himself that is not identical with his will. He must feel himself a man of will, and he may safely depreciate everything else within himself or suppose it subject to his will—for without this illusion he can scarcely bring about a social adaptation. It is otherwise with the patient in the second half of life who no longer needs to educate his conscious will, but who, to understand the meaning of his individual life, must learn to experience his own inner being. Social usefulness is no longer an aim for him, although he does not question its desirability.  Read more at location 1074

A feature common to all these pictures is a primitive symbolism which is conspicuous both in the drawing and in the colouring. The colours are usually quite barbaric in their intensity; often, too, an archaic quality is present. These peculiarities point to the nature of the creative forces which have produced the pictures. They are non-rational, symbolistic currents in the evolution of man, and are so archaic that it is easy to draw parallels between them and similar manifestations in the fields of archæology and comparative religion. We may therefore readily assume that these pictures originate chiefly in that realm of psychic life which I have called the collective unconscious. By this term I designate an unconscious psychic activity present in all human beings which not only gives rise to symbolical pictures today, but was the source of all similar products of the past.  Read more at location 1087

To the psychologist there is nothing more stupid than the standpoint of the missionary who pronounces the gods of the "poor heathen" to be illusions. But unfortunately we keep blundering along in the same dogmatic way, as if what we call the real were not equally full of illusion. In psychic life, as everywhere in our experience, all things that act are actual, regardless of the names man chooses to bestow on them.  Read more at location 1113

Chapter 4:  A Psychological Theory of Types 

****  The distinction between mind and body is an artificial dichotomy, a discrimination which is unquestionably based far more on the peculiarity of intellectual understanding than on the nature of things. In fact, so intimate is the intermingling of bodily and psychic traits that not only can we draw far-reaching inferences as to the constitution of the psyche from the constitution of the body, but we can also infer from psychic peculiarities the corresponding bodily characteristics.  Read more at location 1127

Despite all the psychology we think we possess today, the psyche is still infinitely more obscure to us than the visible surface of the body. The psyche is still a foreign, almost unexplored country of which we have only indirect knowledge; it is mediated by conscious functions that are subject to almost endless possibilities of deception. This being so, it appears safer for us to proceed from the outer world inward, from the known to the unknown, from the body to the mind. Therefore all attempts at characterology have started from the outside world;  Read more at location 1133

Because we ourselves are psyches, it is almost impossible for us to give free rein to psychic happenings without being practically dissolved in them and thus robbed of our ability to recognize distinctions and to make comparisons.  Read more at location 1171

The active contents of the unconscious do behave in a way I cannot describe better than by the word "autonomous." The term is used to indicate the fact that the complexes offer resistance to the conscious intentions, and come and go as they please. According to our best knowledge about them, complexes are psychic contents which are outside the control of the conscious mind.  Read more at location 1192

there is a whole class of men who at the moment of reaction to a given situation at first draw back a little as if with an unvoiced "No", and only after that are able to react; and there is another class who, in the same situation, come forward with an immediate reaction, apparently confident that their behaviour is obviously right. The former class would therefore be characterized by a certain negative relation to the object, and the latter by a positive one. As we know, the former class corresponds to the introverted and the second to the extraverted attitude.  Read more at location 1289

What struck me now was the undeniable fact that while people may be classed as introverts or extraverts, these distinctions do not cover all the dissimilarities between the individuals in either class.  Read more at location 1315

We must realize that an introvert does not simply draw back and hesitate before the object, but that he does so in a very definite way. Moreover he does not behave in all respects like every other introvert, but in a particular manner. Just as the lion strikes down his enemy or his prey with his fore-paw, in which his strength resides, and not with his tail like the crocodile, so our habitual reactions are normally characterized by the application of our most trustworthy and efficient function; it is an expression of our strength.  Read more at location 1329

When, for instance, I speak of "thinking", it is only the philosopher who does not know what I mean; no layman will find it incomprehensible. He uses this word every day, and always in the same general sense, though it is true enough that he is not a little embarrassed if he is called upon suddenly to give an unequivocal definition of thinking. The same is true of "memory" or "feeling." However difficult it is to define such notions scientifically and thus make of them psychological concepts, they are easily intelligible in current speech. Speech is a storehouse of images founded on experience, and therefore concepts which are too abstract do not easily take root in it, or quickly die out again for lack of contact with reality. But thinking and feeling are so obtrusively real that every language above the primitive level has absolutely unmistakable expressions for them. We can therefore be sure that these expressions coincide with perfectly definite psychic facts,  Read more at location 1347

I have therefore defined sensation as perception through conscious sensory processes, and intuition as perception by way of unconscious contents and connections.  Read more at location 1376

in a person with a differentiated thinking function, the feeling function is always less developed, more primitive, and therefore contaminated with other functions—these being precisely the functions which are not rational, not logical, and not evaluating, namely, sensation and intuition. These two last are by their very nature opposed to the rational functions.  Read more at location 1386

Lack of rationality is a vice where thinking and feeling are called for—rationality is a vice where sensation and intuition should be trusted. Now there are many persons whose habitual reactions are non-rational, because they are based chiefly upon sensation or intuition. They cannot be based upon both at once, because sensation is just as antagonistic to intuition as thinking is to feeling.  Read more at location 1392

The one-sided emphasis on thinking is always accompanied by an inferiority in feeling, and differentiated sensation and intuition are mutually injurious.  Read more at location 1404

The total result of my work in this field up to the present is the presentation of two general types covering the attitudes which I call extraversion and introversion. Besides these, I have worked out a fourfold classification corresponding to the functions of thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition. Each of these functions varies according to the general attitude, and thus eight variants are produced.  Read more at location 1411

Sensation establishes what is actually given, thinking enables us to recognize its meaning, feeling tells us its value, and finally intuition points to the possibilities of the whence and whither that lie within the immediate facts.  Read more at location 1415

Chapter 5:  The Stages of Life 

It is the growth of consciousness which we must thank for the existence of problems; they are the dubious gift of civilization. It is just man's turning away from instinct—his opposing himself to instinct—that creates consciousness. Instinct is nature and seeks to perpetuate nature; while consciousness can only seek culture or its denial.  Read more at location 1435

****  (Note:   not dissimilar to my own view)  Every problem, therefore, brings the possibility of a widening of consciousness—but also the necessity of saying good-bye to childlike unconsciousness and trust in nature. This necessity is a psychic fact of such importance that it constitutes one of the essential symbolic teachings of the Christian religion. It is the sacrifice of the merely natural man—of the unconscious, ingenuous being whose tragic career began with the eating of the apple in Paradise. The biblical fall of man presents the dawn of consciousness as a curse.  Read more at location 1445

When we must deal with problems, we instinctively refuse to try the way that leads through darkness and obscurity. We wish to hear only of unequivocal results, and completely forget that these results can only be brought about when we have ventured into and emerged again from the darkness.  Read more at location 1455

****  The ego—quite like the initial content-series—is an object in consciousness, and for this reason the child speaks of itself at first objectively, in the third person. Only later, when the ego-contents have been charged with energy of their own (very likely as a result of exercise), does the feeling of subjectivity or "I-ness" arise.  Read more at location 1480

Even when external limitations oppose the subjective impulses, these restraints do not put the individual at variance with himself. He submits to them or circumvents them, remaining quite at one with himself. He does not yet know the state of inner tension which a problem brings about. This state only arises when what was an external limitation becomes an inner obstacle; when one impulse opposes itself to another.  Read more at location 1490

the first stage of consciousness which consists of recognizing or "knowing" is an anarchic or chaotic state. The second—that of the developed ego-complex—is a monarchic or monistic phase. The third is another step forward in consciousness, and consists in the awareness of one's divided state; it is a dualistic phase. And here we take up our actual theme, namely the question of the stages of life.  Read more at location 1497

the period of youth. It extends roughly from the years just after puberty to middle life, which itself begins between the thirty-fifth and fortieth year.  Read more at location 1501

of individual problems found in the period of youth, we meet in nearly all cases with a particular feature: a more or less patent clinging to the childhood level of consciousness—a rebellion against the fateful forces in and around us which tend to involve us in the world. Something in us wishes to remain a child; to be unconscious, or, at most, conscious only of the ego; to reject everything foreign, or at least subject it to our will; to do nothing, or in any case indulge our own craving for pleasure or power.  Read more at location 1521

Psychology teaches us that, in a certain sense, there is nothing in the psyche that is old; nothing that can really, definitively die away. Even Paul was left with a sting in his flesh. Whoever protects himself against what is new and strange and thereby regresses to the past, falls into the same neurotic condition as the man who identifies himself with the new and runs away from the past. The only difference is that the one has estranged himself from the past, and the other from the future. In principle both are doing the same thing; they are salvaging a narrow state of consciousness. The alternative is to shatter it with the tension inherent in the play of opposites—in the dualistic stage—and thereby to build up a state of wider and higher consciousness.  Read more at location 1534

We see that in this phase of life—between thirty-five and forty—a significant change in the human psyche is in preparation. At first it is not a conscious and striking change; it is rather a matter of indirect signs of a change which seems to take its rise from the unconscious. Often it is something like a slow change in a person's character; in another case certain traits may come to light which had disappeared in childhood; or again, inclinations and interests begin to weaken and others arise to take their places. It also frequently happens that the convictions and principles which have hitherto been accepted—especially the moral principles—commence to harden and to grow increasingly rigid until, somewhere towards the age of fifty, a period of intolerance and fanaticism is reached. It is then as if the existence of these principles were endangered, and it were therefore necessary to emphasize them all the more.  Read more at location 1570

The neurotic is rather a person who can never have things as he would like them in the present, and who can therefore never enjoy the past.  Read more at location 1590

*********   we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the programme of life's morning—for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie.  Read more at location 1634

For a young person it is almost a sin—and certainly a danger—to be too much occupied with himself; but for the ageing person it is a duty and a necessity to give serious attention to himself. After having lavished its light upon the world, the sun withdraws its rays in order to illumine itself.  Read more at location 1638

I said just now that we have no schools for forty-year-olds. That is not quite true. Our religions were always such schools in the past,  Read more at location 1643

A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species to which he belongs. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life's morning. The significance of the morning undoubtedly lies in the development of the individual, our entrenchment in the outer world, the propagation of our kind and the care of our children. This is the obvious purpose of nature.  Read more at location 1646

For the most part our old people try to compete with the young. In the United States it is almost an ideal for the father to be the brother of his sons, and for the mother if possible to be the younger sister of her daughter. I do not know how much of this confusion comes as a reaction to an earlier exaggeration of the dignity of age, and how much is to be charged to false ideals.  Read more at location 1656

Expansion of life, usefulness, efficiency, the cutting of a figure in social life, the shrewd steering of offspring into suitable marriages and good positions—are not these purposes enough? Unfortunately this is not enough meaning or purpose for many persons who see in the approach of old age a mere diminution of life, and who look upon their earlier ideals only as something faded and worn out. Of course, if these persons had filled up the beaker of life earlier and emptied it to the lees, they would feel quite differently about everything now; had they kept nothing back, all that wanted to catch fire would have been consumed, and the quiet of old age would be very welcome to them.  Read more at location 1661

*********  (Note:  notion of eternal life as relates to mortality) for many people all too much unlived life remains over—sometimes potentialities which they could never have lived with the best of wills; and so they approach the threshold of old age with unsatisfied claims which inevitably turn their glances backward. It is particularly fatal for such people to look backward. For them a prospect and a goal in the future are indispensable. This is why all great religions hold the promise of a life beyond; it makes it possible for mortal man to live the second half of life with as much perseverance and aim as the first.  Read more at location 1667

I have observed that a directed life is in general better, richer and healthier than an aimless one, and that it is better to go forwards with the stream of time than backwards against it. To the psychotherapist an old man who cannot bid farewell to life appears as feeble and sickly as a young man who is unable to embrace it. And as a matter of fact, in many cases it is a question of the self-same childish covetousness, of the same fear, the same obstinacy and willfulness, in the one as in the other.  Read more at location 1684

I am convinced that it is hygienic—if I may use the word—to discover in death a goal towards which one can strive; and that shrinking away from it is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose. I therefore consider the religious teaching of a life hereafter consonant with the standpoint of psychic hygiene.  Read more at location 1687

In spite of the fact that by far the larger part of mankind does not know why the body needs salt, everyone demands it none the less because of an instinctive need. It is the same in the things of the psyche. A large majority of people have from time immemorial felt the need of believing in a continuance of life.  Read more at location 1693

****  (Note:   notion that unconscious archetypes are axiomatic to human thinking)  Do we ever understand what we think? We only understand that thinking which is a mere equation, and from which nothing comes out but what we have put in. That is the working of the intellect. But beyond that there is a thinking in primordial images—in symbols which are older than historical man; which have been ingrained in him from earliest times, and, eternally living, outlasting all generations, still make up the groundwork of the human psyche. It is only possible to live the fullest life when we are in harmony with these symbols; wisdom is a return to them. It is neither a question of belief nor of knowledge, but of the agreement of our thinking with the primordial images of the unconscious. They are the source of all our conscious thoughts, and one of these primordial thoughts is the idea of life after death.  Read more at location 1697

For me these images are something like psychic organs, and I treat them with the very greatest care. It happens sometimes that I must say to an older patient: "Your picture of God or your idea of immortality is atrophied; consequently your psychic metabolism is out of gear." The ancient athanasias pharmakon, the medicament of immortality, is more profound and meaningful than we supposed.  Read more at location 1706

The one hundred and eighty degrees of the arc of life are divisible into four parts. The first quarter, lying to the east, is childhood—that state in which we are a problem for others, but are not yet conscious of any problems of our own. Conscious problems fill out the second and third quarters; while in the last—in extreme old age—we descend again into that condition where, unworried by our state of consciousness, we again become something of a problem for others. Childhood and extreme old age, to be sure, are utterly different, and yet they have one thing in common: submersion in unconscious psychic happenings.  Read more at location 1710

Chapter 6:  Freud and Jung—Contrasts 

(Note: Deeply Platonic sounding)  It is true that widely accepted ideas are never the personal property of their so-called author; on the contrary, he is the bond-servant of his ideas. Impressive ideas which are hailed as truths have something peculiar to themselves. Although they come into being at a definite time, they are and have always been timeless; they arise from that realm of procreative, psychic life out of which the ephemeral mind of the single human being grows like a plant that blossoms, bears fruit and seed, and then withers and dies.  Read more at location 1722

It is precisely the most subjective ideas which, being closest to nature and to the living being, deserve to be called the truest. But what is truth? For the purposes of psychology, I think it best to abandon the notion that we are today in anything like a position to make statements about the nature of the psyche that are "true" or "correct." The best that we can achieve is true expression. By true expression I mean an open avowal and a detailed presentation of everything that is subjectively noted.  Read more at location 1731

****  Our way of looking at things is conditioned by what we are. And since other people are differently constituted, they see things differently and express themselves differently.  Read more at location 1748

For my part, I prefer to look at man in the light of what in him is healthy and sound, and to free the sick man from that point of view which colours every page Freud has written. Freud's teaching is definitely one-sided in that it generalizes from facts that are relevant only to neurotic states of mind; its validity is really confined to those states. Within these limits Freud's teaching is true and valid even when it is in error, for error also belongs to the picture, and carries the truth of a true avowal. In any case, Freud's is not a psychology of the healthy mind. The morbid symptom in Freud's psychology is this: it is based upon a view of the world that is uncriticized, or even unconscious, and this is apt to narrow the field of human experience and understanding to a considerable extent. It was a great mistake on Freud's part to turn his back on philosophy. Not once does he criticize his premises or even the assumptions that underlie his personal outlook.  Read more at location 1755

All too easily does self-criticism poison one's naïveté, that priceless possession, or rather gift, which no creative man can be without. At any rate, philosophical criticism has helped me to see that every psychology—my own included—has the character of a subjective confession.  Read more at location 1765

I do not doubt that the natural instincts or drives are forces of propulsion in human life, whether we call them sexuality or the will to power; but I also do not doubt that these instincts come into collision with the spirit, for they are continually colliding with something, and why should not this something be called spirit? I am far from knowing what spirit is in itself, and equally far from knowing what instincts are. The one is as mysterious to me as the other, yet I am unable to dismiss the one by explaining it in terms of the other.  Read more at location 1776

I attribute a positive value to all religions. In their symbolism I recognize those figures which I have met with in the dreams and fantasies of my patients. In their moral teachings I see efforts that are the same as or similar to those made by my patients, when, guided by their own insight or inspiration, they seek the right way of dealing with the forces of the inner life. Ceremonial, ritual, initiation rites and ascetic practices, in all their forms and variations, interest me profoundly as so many techniques for bringing about a proper relation to these forces. I likewise attribute a positive value to biology, and to the empiricism of natural science in general, in which I see a Herculean attempt to understand the human psyche by approaching it from the outer world. I regard the Gnostic religions as an equally prodigious undertaking in the opposite direction: as an attempt to draw knowledge of the cosmos from within. In my picture of the world there is a vast outer realm and an equally vast inner realm; between these two stands man, facing now one and now the other, and, according to his mood or disposition, taking the one for the absolute truth by denying or sacrificing the other.  Read more at location 1783

I see in all happening the play of opposites, and derive from this conception my idea of psychic energy. I hold that psychic energy involves the play of opposites in much the same way as physical energy involves a difference of potential, which is to say, the existence of such opposites as warm and cold, high and low.  Read more at location 1795

It is not the children of the flesh, but the "children of God" who know freedom. In Ernst Barlach's tragic novel of family life, Der Tote Tag, the mother-dæmon says at the end: "The strange thing is that man will not learn that God is his father." That is what Freud would never learn, and what all those who share his outlook forbid themselves to learn. At least, they never find the key to this knowledge. Theology does not help those who are looking for the key, because theology demands faith, and faith cannot be made: it is in the truest sense a gift of grace. We moderns are faced with the necessity of rediscovering the life of the spirit; we must experience it anew for ourselves. It is the only way in which we can break the spell that binds us to the cycle of biological events.  Read more at location 1818

I am accused of mysticism. I do not, however, hold myself responsible for the fact that man has, everywhere and always, spontaneously developed religious forms of expression, and that the human psyche from time immemorial has been shot through with religious feelings and ideas. Whoever cannot see this aspect of the human psyche is blind, and whoever chooses to explain it away, or to "enlighten" it away, has no sense of reality.  Read more at location 1825

This father-complex, fanatically defended with such stubbornness and over-sensitivity, is a cloak for religiosity misunderstood; it is a mysticism expressed in terms of biology and the family relation. As for Freud's idea of the "super-ego", it is a furtive attempt to smuggle in his time-honoured image of Jehovah in the dress of psychological theory. When one does things like that, it is better to say so openly. For my part, I prefer to call things by the names under which they have always been known. The wheel of history must not be turned back, and man's advance toward a spiritual life, which began with the primitive rites of initiation, must not be denied.  Read more at location 1829

****  For thousands of years, rites of initiation have been teaching spiritual rebirth; yet, strangely enough, man forgets again and again the meaning of divine procreation. This is surely no evidence of a strong life of the spirit; and yet the penalty of misunderstanding is heavy, for it is nothing less than neurotic decay, embitterment, atrophy and sterility. It is easy enough to drive the spirit out of the door, but when we have done so the salt of life grows flat—it loses its savour. Fortunately, we have proof that the spirit always renews its strength in the fact that the central teaching of the ancient initiations is handed on from generation to generation. Ever and again human beings arise who understand what is meant by the fact that God is our father.  Read more at location 1843

The contrast between Freud and myself goes back to essential differences in our basic assumptions. Assumptions are unavoidable, and this being so, it is wrong to pretend that we have made no assumptions.  Read more at location 1849

Chapter 7:  Archaic Man 

primitive man is no more logical or illogical than we are. His presuppositions are not the same as ours, and that is what distinguishes him from us. His thinking and his conduct are based on assumptions other than our own. To all that is in any way out of the ordinary and that therefore disturbs, frightens or astonishes him, he ascribes what we should call a supernatural origin. For him, of course, these things are not supernatural; on the contrary, they belong to his world of experience.  Read more at location 1891

His mental activity does not differ in any fundamental way from ours. It is, as I have said, his assumptions alone that set him apart from ourselves.  Read more at location 1899

When questioned as to the distinction between good and bad a negro chieftain declared: "When I steal my enemy's wives, it is good, but when he steals mine, it is bad."  Read more at location 1902

****  There are true and loyal head-hunters, and there are men who piously and conscientiously practise cruel rites, or commit murder from righteous conviction. Primitive man is no less prompt than we are to value an ethical attitude. His good is just as good as ours, and his evil is just as bad as ours. Only the forms under which good and evil appear are different; the process of ethical judgement is the same.  Read more at location 1906

If we try to give our attention to uninteresting matters, we soon notice how feeble our powers of concentration are. We ourselves, like them, are dependent upon emotional undercurrents.  Read more at location 1926

****  It is a rational presupposition of ours that everything has a natural and perceptible cause. We are convinced of this. Causality, so understood, is one of our most sacred dogmas.  Read more at location 1933

We are now surrounded by a world that is obedient to rational laws. It is true that we do not know the causes of everything, but they will in time be discovered, and these discoveries will accord with our reasoned expectations. That is our hope, and we take it as much for granted as primitive man does his own assumptions. There are also chance occurrences, to be sure, but these are merely accidental, and we have granted them a causality of their own. Chance occurrences are repellent to the mind that loves order.  Read more at location 1938

The Arab shows them greater respect than we. He writes on every letter Insha-allah, "If it please God", for only then will the letter arrive.  Read more at location 1945

If we consider the matter, we might as well say that the causal connection of events according to general laws is a theory which is borne out about half the time, while for the rest the demon of chance has his way.  Read more at location 1949

It is our assumption, amounting to a positive conviction, that everything has causes which we call natural and which we at least suppose to be perceptible. Primitive man, on the other hand, assumes that everything is brought about by invisible, arbitrary powers—in other words, that everything is chance. Only he does not call it chance, but intention.  Read more at location 1956

Primitive man expects more of an explanation. What we call chance is to him arbitrary power. It was therefore the intention of the crocodile—as everyone could observe—to seize the woman who stood between the other two. If it had not had this intention it would have taken one of the others. But why did the crocodile have this intention? These animals do not ordinarily eat human beings. This assertion is correct—quite as correct as the statement that there is no rainfall in the Sahara. Crocodiles are really timid animals, and are easily frightened. Considering their numbers, they kill astonishingly few people, and it is an unexpected and unnatural event when they devour a man. Such an event calls for explanation. Of his own accord the crocodile would not take a human life. By whom, then, was he ordered to do so? It is on the facts of the world around him that primitive man bases his verdicts. When the unexpected occurs he is justifiably astonished and wishes to know the specific causes. To this extent he behaves exactly as we do. But he goes further than we. He has one or more theories about the arbitrary power of chance. We say: Nothing but chance. He says: Calculating intention.  Read more at location 1965

A calf is born with two heads and five legs. In the next village a cock has laid an egg. An old woman has had a dream, a comet appears in the sky, there is a great fire in the nearest town, and the following year a war breaks out. In this way history was always written from remote antiquity on down to the eighteenth century. This juxtaposition of facts, so meaningless to us, is significant and convincing to primitive man. And, contrary to all expectation, he is right to find it so. His powers of observation can be trusted. From age-old experience he knows that such connections actually exist. What seems to us a wholly senseless heaping-up of single, haphazard occurrences—because we pay attention only to single events and their particular causes—is for primitive man a completely logical sequence of omens and of happenings indicated by them. It is a fatal outbreak of demonic power showing itself in a thoroughly consistent way. The calf with two heads and the war are one and the same, for the calf was only an anticipation of the war. Primitive man finds this connection so unquestionable and convincing because the caprice of chance seems to him a far more important factor in the happenings of the world than regularity and conformity to laws. Thanks to his close attention to the unusual he has preceded us in discovering that chance events arrange themselves in groups or series.  Read more at location 2001

What happens regularly is easily observed because we are prepared for it. Knowledge and skill are only needed in situations where the course of events is arbitrarily disrupted in a way hard to fathom. Generally it is one of the cleverest and shrewdest men of the tribe who is entrusted with the observation of events.  Read more at location 2018

Chance events occur most often in larger or smaller series or groups. An old and well-tried rule for foretelling the weather is this, that when it has rained for several days it will also rain tomorrow. A proverb says: "Misfortunes never come singly." Another has it that "It never rains but it pours." Such proverbial wisdom is primitive science.  Read more at location 2026

Primitive man's belief in arbitrary power does not arise out of thin air, as was always supposed, but is grounded in experience. What we have always called his superstition is justified by the grouping of chance occurrences. There is a real measure of probability that unusual events will coincide in time and place. We must not forget that our experience is not fully to be trusted in this regard. Our observation is inadequate because our point of view leads us to overlook these matters.  Read more at location 2037

Thanks to our one-sided emphasis upon so-called natural causation, we have learned to distinguish what is subjective and psychic from what is objective and "natural." For primitive man, on the contrary, the psychic and the objective coalesce in the external world. In the face of something extraordinary it is not he who is astonished, but rather the thing which is astonishing. It is mana—endowed with magic power. What we would call the powers of imagination and suggestion seem to him invisible forces which act upon him from without. His country is neither a geographical nor a political entity. It is that territory which contains his mythology, his religion, all his thinking and feeling in so far as he is unconscious of these functions.  Read more at location 2085

A white man shoots a crocodile. At once a crowd of people come running from the nearest village and excitedly demand compensation. They explain that the crocodile was a certain old woman in their village who had died at the moment when the shot was fired. The crocodile was obviously her bush-soul. Another man shot a leopard that was lying in wait for his cattle. Just then a woman died in a neighbouring village. She and the leopard were one and the same. Lévy-Brühl has coined the expression participation mystique for these curious relationships. It seems to me that the word "mystical" is not well chosen. Primitive man does not see anything mystical in these matters, but considers them perfectly natural.  Read more at location 2103

Psychic projection is one of the commonest facts of psychology. It is the same as that participation mystique which Lévy-Brühl remarked as a peculiar trait of primitive man. We merely give it another name, and as a rule deny that we are guilty of it. Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we discover in our neighbour, and we treat him accordingly. We no longer subject him to the test of drinking poison; we do not burn him or put the screws on him; but we injure him by means of moral verdicts pronounced with the deepest conviction. What we combat in him is usually our own inferior side.  Read more at location 2117

We find the bush-soul hard to understand because we are baffled by such a concrete way of looking at things. We cannot conceive of a "soul" as an entity that emigrates and takes up its abode in a wild animal. When we describe someone as an ass, we do not mean that he is in every respect the quadruped called an ass. We mean that he resembles an ass in some particular respect. As far as the person in question is concerned, we isolate a part of his personality or psyche and concretize this part of him in the image of an ass. So, for primitive man, the leopard-woman is a human being, and only her bush-soul is a leopard. Since all unconscious psychic life is concrete and objective for archaic man, he supposes that a person describable as a leopard has the soul of a leopard. If the concretizing goes further, he assumes that such a soul lives in the bush in the form of a real leopard.  Read more at location 2132

Summing up, we may say that the outstanding trait of archaic man is his attitude towards the capriciousness of chance which he considers a far more important factor in cosmic happening than natural causes. Chance occurrences have two aspects; on the one hand it is a fact that they tend to take place in series, and on the other that they are endowed with an apparent purposefulness through the projection of unconscious psychic contents—in other words by "participation mystique."  Read more at location 2147

In the primitive world everything has psychic qualities. Everything is endowed with the elements of man's psyche—or let us say, of the human psyche, of the collective unconscious, for there is as yet no individual psychic life.  Read more at location 2157

****  (Note:   I don't agree, but interesting thought)  the idea of baptism lifts a man out of his archaic identification with the world and changes him into a being who stands above it. The fact that mankind has risen to the level of this idea is baptism in the deepest sense, for it means the birth of spiritual man who transcends nature.  Read more at location 2161

father. You can see him. From him comes all light, all life—there is nothing that he has not made." He became greatly excited, struggled for words, and finally exclaimed: "Even a man in the mountains who goes alone cannot make his fire without him." The archaic standpoint can hardly be more beautifully expressed than by these words. The power that rules us comes from the external world, and through it alone are we permitted to live. With us, religious thought still keeps alive the archaic state of mind, even though our time is bereft of gods. Untold millions of people still think in this way.  Read more at location 2179

The mana conception has it that there exists something like a widely distributed force in the external world that produces all those effects which are out of the common. Everything that exists, acts, for otherwise it would not be actual. It is only actual thanks to its inherent energy. Being is a field of force. The primitive mana conception, as we can see, is of the nature of a crude theory of energy.  Read more at location 2191

The materialistic views of our day have a tendency which we can discern in archaic thought. Both lead to the conclusion that the individual is a mere resultant; in the first case, he is the resultant of natural causes, and in the second, of chance occurrences. According to both accounts, human individuality is nothing in its own right, but rather the accidental product of forces contained in the objective environment. This is through and through the archaic conception of the world according to which the single human being is never considered unique, but always interchangeable with any other and easily dispensable. By way of a narrow view of causality, modern materialism has returned to the standpoint of archaic man. But the materialist is more radical, because he is more systematic, than primitive man.  Read more at location 2212

We have universities where the idea of divine intervention is considered beneath dispute—but where theology is a part of the curriculum. A research worker in natural science may hold it obscene to attribute the smallest variation of an animal species to an act of God, but may have another drawer in his mind in which he keeps a full-blown Christian faith which he likes to parade on Sundays. Why should we excite ourselves about primitive inconsistency? It is not possible to derive any philosophical system from the elementary thoughts of primitive man. They furnish us only with antinomies.  Read more at location 2226

I can tell of an observation which I made among the mountain tribe of the Elgonyi. I searched and enquired far and wide for traces of religious ideas and ceremonies, and for weeks on end I discovered nothing. The natives let me see everything and were free with their information. I could talk with them without the hindrance of an interpreter, for many of the old men spoke Swahili. At first they were reluctant enough, but when the ice was broken, I was cordially received. They knew nothing of religious customs. But I never gave up, and finally, at the close of one of many fruitless palavers an old man exclaimed: "In the morning, when the sun comes up, we leave our huts, spit in our hands, and hold them up to the sun." 

...What is the meaning of the Elgonyi ceremony just cited? Clearly it is an offering to the sun which for these natives is mungu—that is, mana, or divine—only at the moment of rising. If they have spittle on their hands, this is the substance which, according to primitive belief, contains the personal mana, the force that cures, conjures and sustains life. If they breathe upon their hands, breath is wind and spirit—it is roho, in Arabic ruch, in Hebrew ruach, and in Greek pneuma. The action means: I offer my living spirit to God. It is a wordless, acted prayer, which could equally well be spoken: "Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit."  Read more at location 2251

Chapter 8:  Psychology and Literature 

The present state of development of psychology does not allow us to establish those rigorous causal connections which we expect of a science. It is only in the realm of the psychophysiological instincts and reflexes that we can confidently operate with the idea of causality.  Read more at location 2272

Any reaction to stimulus may be causally explained; but the creative act, which is the absolute antithesis of mere reaction, will for ever elude the human understanding. It can only be described in its manifestations; it can be obscurely sensed, but never wholly grasped. Psychology and the study of art will always have to turn to one another for help, and the one will not invalidate the other.  Read more at location 2281

I THE WORK OF ART 

There is a fundamental difference of approach between the psychologist's examination of a literary work, and that of the literary critic. What is of decisive importance and value for the latter may be quite irrelevant for the former.  Read more at location 2288

Melville's Moby Dick, which I consider the greatest American novel, also comes within this class of writings. An exciting narrative that is apparently quite devoid of psychological exposition is just what interests the psychologist most of all.  Read more at location 2297

In order to emphasize the distinction, I will call the one mode of artistic creation psychological, and the other visionary. The psychological mode deals with materials drawn from the realm of human consciousness—for instance, with the lessons of life, with emotional shocks, the experience of passion and the crises of human destiny in general—all of which go to make up the conscious life of man, and his feeling life in particular. 

...The latter reverses all the conditions of the former. The experience that furnishes the material for artistic expression is no longer familiar. It is a strange something that derives its existence from the hinterland of man's mind—that suggests the abyss of time separating us from pre-human ages, or evokes a super-human world of contrasting light and darkness. It is a primordial experience which surpasses man's understanding, and to which he is therefore in danger of succumbing. The value and the force of the experience are given by its enormity. It arises from timeless depths; it is foreign and cold, many-sided, demonic and grotesque.  Read more at location 2328

In dealing with the psychological mode of artistic creation, we never need ask ourselves what the material consists of or what it means. But this question forces itself upon us as soon as we come to the visionary mode of creation. We are astonished, taken aback, confused, put on our guard or even disgusted—and we demand commentaries and explanations.  Read more at location 2346

it is essential that we give serious consideration to the basic experience that underlies it—namely, to the vision. We must take it at least as seriously as we do the experiences that underlie the psychological mode of artistic creation, and no one doubts that they are both real and serious. It looks, indeed, as if the visionary experience were something quite apart from the ordinary lot of man, and for this reason we have difficulty in believing that it is real. It has about it an unfortunate suggestion of obscure metaphysics and of occultism, so that we feel called upon to intervene in the name of a well-intentioned reasonableness. Our conclusion is that it would be better not to take such things too seriously, lest the world revert again to a benighted superstition.  Read more at location 2388

Hermas, Dante and Goethe can be taken as three steps in a sequence covering nearly two thousand years of human development, and in each of them we find the personal love-episode not only connected with the weightier visionary experience, but frankly subordinated to it. On the strength of this evidence which is furnished by the work of art itself and which throws out of court the question of the poet's particular psychic disposition, we must admit that the vision represents a deeper and more impressive experience than human passion. In works of art of this nature—and we must never confuse them with the artist as a person—we cannot doubt that the vision is a genuine, primordial experience, regardless of what reason-mongers may say. The vision is not something derived or secondary, and it is not a symptom of something else. It is true symbolic expression—that is, the expression of something existent in its own right, but imperfectly known.  Read more at location 2403

In itself it has psychic reality, and this is no less real than physical reality. Human passion falls within the sphere of conscious experience, while the subject of the vision lies beyond it.  Read more at location 2410

They are hidden from the scrutiny of man, and he also hides himself from them out of deisidaemonia. He protects himself with the shield of science and the armour of reason. His enlightenment is born of fear; in the day-time he believes in an ordered cosmos, and he tries to maintain this faith against the fear of chaos that besets him by night.  Read more at location 2414

It is not alone the creator of this kind of art who is in touch with the night-side of life, but the seers, prophets, leaders and enlighteners also. However dark this nocturnal world may be, it is not wholly unfamiliar. Man has known of it from time immemorial—here, there, and everywhere; for primitive man today it is an unquestionable part of his picture of the cosmos. It is only we who have repudiated it because of our fear of superstition and metaphysics, and because we strive to construct a conscious world that is safe and manageable in that natural law holds in it the place of statute law in a commonwealth. Yet, even in our midst, the poet now and then catches sight of the figures that people the night-world—the spirits, demons and gods. He knows that a purposiveness out-reaching human ends is the life-giving secret for man; he has a presentiment of incomprehensible happenings in the pleroma. In short, he sees something of that psychic world that strikes terror into the savage and the barbarian.  Read more at location 2423

Even in the Rhodesian cliff-drawings of the Old Stone Age there appears, side by side with the most amazingly life-like representations of animals, an abstract pattern—a double cross contained in a circle. This design has turned up in every cultural region, more or less, and we find it today not only in Christian churches, but in Tibetan monasteries as well. It is the so-called sun-wheel, and as it dates from a time when no one had thought of wheels as a mechanical device, it cannot have had its source in any experience of the external world. It is rather a symbol that stands for a psychic happening; it covers an experience of the inner world, and is no doubt as lifelike a representation as the famous rhinoceros with the tick-birds on its back. There has never been a primitive culture that did not possess a system of secret teaching, and in many cultures this system is highly developed.  Read more at location 2431

*******  (Note:  mystic and religious expression)  It is therefore to be expected of the poet that he will resort to mythology in order to give his experience its most fitting expression. It would be a serious mistake to suppose that he works with materials received at second-hand. The primordial experience is the source of his creativeness; it cannot be fathomed, and therefore requires mythological imagery to give it form. In itself it offers no words or images, for it is a vision seen "as in a glass, darkly." It is merely a deep presentiment that strives to find expression. It is like a whirlwind that seizes everything within reach and, by carrying it aloft, assumes a visible shape. Since the particular expression can never exhaust the possibilities of the vision, but falls far short of it in richness of content, the poet must have at his disposal a huge store of materials if he is to communicate even a few of his intimations. What is more, he must resort to an imagery that is difficult to handle and full of contradictions in order to express the weird paradoxicality of his vision.  Read more at location 2440

It is a fact that in eclipses of consciousness—in dreams, narcotic states and cases of insanity—there come to the surface psychic products or contents that show all the traits of primitive levels of psychic development. The images themselves are sometimes of such a primitive character that we might suppose them derived from ancient, esoteric teaching. Mythological themes clothed in modern dress also frequently appear. What is of particular importance for the study of literature in these manifestations of the collective unconscious is that they are compensatory to the conscious attitude. This is to say that they can bring a one-sided, abnormal, or dangerous state of consciousness into equilibrium in an apparently purposive way. In dreams we can see this process very clearly in its positive aspect. In cases of insanity the compensatory process is often perfectly obvious, but takes a negative form.  Read more at location 2455

****  A work of art is produced that contains what may truthfully be called a message to generations of men.  Read more at location 2467

II THE POET 

Creativeness, like the freedom of the will, contains a secret. The psychologist can describe both these manifestations as processes, but he can find no solution of the philosophical problems they offer. Creative man is a riddle that we may try to answer in various ways, but always in vain, a truth that has not prevented modern psychology from turning now and again to the question of the artist and his art.  Read more at location 2481

It was Freud's great discovery that neuroses have a causal origin in the psychic realm—that they take their rise from emotional states and from real or imagined childhood experiences. 

...And a work of art is brought into questionable proximity with the neurosis when it is taken as something which can be analysed in terms of the poet's repressions. In a sense it finds itself in good company, for religion and philosophy are regarded in the same light by Freudian psychology.  Read more at location 2494

What is essential in a work of art is that it should rise far above the realm of personal life and speak from the spirit and heart of the poet as man to the spirit and heart of mankind. The personal aspect is a limitation—and even a sin—in the realm of art.  Read more at location 2499

Every creative person is a duality or a synthesis of contradictory aptitudes. On the one side he is a human being with a personal life, while on the other side he is an impersonal, creative process.  Read more at location 2506

There are hardly any exceptions to the rule that a person must pay dearly for the divine gift of the creative fire. It is as though each of us were endowed at birth with a certain capital of energy. The strongest force in our make-up will seize and all but monopolize this energy, leaving so little over that nothing of value can come of it. In this way the creative force can drain the human impulses to such a degree that the personal ego must develop all sorts of bad qualities—ruthlessness, selfishness and vanity (so-called "autoerotism")—and even every kind of vice, in order to maintain the spark of life and to keep itself from being wholly bereft.  Read more at location 2521

A special ability means a heavy expenditure of energy in a particular direction, with a consequent drain from some other side of life.  Read more at location 2530

The creative process has feminine quality, and the creative work arises from unconscious depths—we might say, from the realm of the mothers. Whenever the creative force predominates, human life is ruled and moulded by the unconscious as against the active will, and the conscious ego is swept along on a subterranean current, being nothing more than a helpless observer of events.  Read more at location 2533

The archetypal image of the wise man, the saviour or redeemer, lies buried and dormant in man's unconscious since the dawn of culture; it is awakened whenever the times are out of joint and a human society is committed to a serious error.  Read more at location 2541

In this way the work of the poet comes to meet the spiritual need of the society in which he lives, and for this reason his work means more to him than his personal fate, whether he is aware of this or not. Being essentially the instrument for his work, he is subordinate to it, and we have no reason for expecting him to interpret it for us.  Read more at location 2546

A dream never says: "You ought", or: "This is the truth." It presents an image in much the same way as nature allows a plant to grow, and we must draw our own conclusions. If a person has a nightmare, it means either that he is too much given to fear, or else that he is too exempt from it; and if he dreams of the old wise man it may mean that he is too pedagogical, as also that he stands in need of a teacher. In a subtle way both meanings come to the same thing, as we perceive when we are able to let the work of art act upon us as it acted upon the artist.  Read more at location 2550

The secret of artistic creation and of the effectiveness of art is to be found in a return to the state of participation mystique—to that level of experience at which it is man who lives, and not the individual, and at which the weal or woe of the single human being does not count, but only human existence. This is why every great work of art is objective and impersonal, but none the less profoundly moves us each and all. And this is also why the personal life of the poet cannot be held essential to his art—but at most a help or a hindrance to his creative task.  Read more at location 2558

Chapter 9:  The Basic Postulates of Analytical Psychology 

Greco-Roman world that the soul is a substance. Indeed, mankind as a whole has held this belief from its earliest beginnings, and it was left for the second half of the nineteenth century to develop a "psychology without the soul."  Read more at location 2565

When the spiritual catastrophe of the Reformation put an end to the Gothic Age with its impetuous yearning for the heights, its geographical confinement, and its restricted view of the world, the vertical outlook of the European mind was forthwith intersected by the horizontal outlook of modern times. Consciousness ceased to grow upward, and grew instead in breadth of view, as well as in knowledge of the terrestrial globe. This was the period of the great voyages, and of the widening of man's ideas of the world by empirical discoveries. Belief in the substantiality of the spirit yielded more and more to the obtrusive conviction that material things alone have substance, till at last, after nearly four hundred years, the leading European thinkers and investigators came to regard the mind as wholly dependent on matter and material causation.  Read more at location 2570

no chain of reasoning can prove or disprove the existence of either mind or matter. Both these concepts, as every intelligent man today may ascertain for himself, are mere symbols that stand for something unknown and unexplored, and this something is postulated or denied according to man's mood and disposition or as the spirit of the age dictates. There is nothing to prevent the speculative intellect from treating the psyche, on the one hand, as a complicated biochemical phenomenon, and at bottom a mere play of electrons, or, on the other, from regarding the unpredictable behaviour of electrons as the sign of mental life even in them.  Read more at location 2580

****  if we maintain that mental phenomena arise from the activity of glands, we are sure of the thanks and respect of our contemporaries, whereas if we explain the break-up of the atom in the sun as an emanation of the creative Weltgeist, we shall be looked down upon as intellectual freaks. And yet both views are equally logical, equally metaphysical, equally arbitrary and equally symbolic. From the standpoint of epistemology it is just as admissible to derive animals from the human species, as man from animal species.  Read more at location 2591

The spirit of the age cannot be compassed by the processes of human reason. It is an inclination, an emotional tendency that works upon weaker minds, through the unconscious, with an overwhelming force of suggestion that carries them along with it. To think otherwise than our contemporaries think is somehow illegitimate and disturbing; it is even indecent, morbid or blasphemous, and therefore socially dangerous for the individual. He is stupidly swimming against the social current. Just as formerly the assumption was unquestionable that everything that exists takes its rise from the creative will of a God who is spirit, so the nineteenth century discovered the equally unquestionable truth that everything arises from material causes. Today the psyche does not build itself a body, but on the contrary, matter, by chemical action, produces the psyche.  Read more at location 2598

What or who, indeed, is this all-powerful matter? It is once more man's picture of a creative god, stripped this time of his anthropomorphic traits and taking the form of a universal concept whose meaning everyone presumes to understand.  Read more at location 2615

****  If we were conscious of the spirit of the age, we should know why we are so inclined to account for everything on physical grounds; we should know that it is because, up till now, too much was accounted for in terms of the spirit. This realization would at once make us critical of our bias. We should say: most likely we are now making as serious an error on the other side. We delude ourselves with the thought that we know much more about matter than about a "metaphysical" mind, and so we overestimate physical causation and believe that it alone affords us a true explanation of life. But matter is just as inscrutable as mind. As to the ultimate we can know nothing, and only when we admit this do we return to a state of equilibrium.  Read more at location 2629

we must admit that as to cause, purpose and meaning, the human psyche—however we approach it—is first and foremost a close reflection of everything we call corporeal, empirical and mundane. And finally, in the face of all these admissions, we must ask ourselves if the psyche is not after all a secondary manifestation—an epiphenomenon—and completely dependent upon the body. In the light of reason and of our commitments as practical men to an actual world, we say yes. It is only our doubts as to the omnipotence of matter which could lead us to examine in a critical way this verdict of science upon the human psyche.  Read more at location 2638

philosophy and psychology are linked by indissoluble bonds which are kept in being by the inter-relation of their subject-matters. Psychology takes the psyche for its subject-matter, and philosophy—to put it briefly—takes the world.  Read more at location 2654

The inner resemblance of the two disciplines consists in this, that both are systems of opinion about subject-matter which cannot be fully experienced and therefore cannot be comprehended by a purely empirical approach.  Read more at location 2657

The modern preference for physical grounds of explanation leads, as already remarked, to a "psychology without the psyche"—I mean, to the view that the psyche is nothing but a product of biochemical processes. As for a modern, scientific psychology which starts from the mind as such, there simply is none.  Read more at location 2661

The ancient view held that spirit was essentially the life of the body, the life-breath, or a kind of life-force which assumed spatial and corporeal form at birth or after conception, and left the dying body again after the final breath. The spirit in itself was considered as a being without extension, and because it existed before taking corporeal form and afterwards as well, it was considered as timeless and hence immortal.  Read more at location 2679

The Latin words animus, spirit, and anima, soul, are the same as the Greek anemos, wind. The other Greek word for wind, pneuma, means also spirit. In Gothic we find the same word in us-anan, to breathe out, and in Latin an-helare, to pant. In Old High German, spiritus sanctus was rendered by atun, breath. In Arabic, wind is riih, and ruuh is soul, spirit. There is a quite similar connection with the Greek psyche, which is related to psycho, to breathe, psychos, cool, psychros, cold, and phusa, bellows. These affinities show clearly how in Latin, Greek and Arabic the names given to the soul are related to the notion of moving air, the "cold breath of the spirit." And this also is why the primitive point of view endows the soul with an invisible breath-body.  Read more at location 2689

we are dependent to a startling degree upon the proper functioning of the unconscious psyche, and must trust that it does not fail us. If we study the psychic processes of neurotic persons, it seems perfectly ludicrous that any psychologist could take the psyche as the equivalent of consciousness.  Read more at location 2712

we shall do well to admit that there is justification for the old view of the soul as an objective reality—as something independent, and therefore capricious and dangerous. The further assumption that this being, so mysterious and terrifying, is at the same time the source of life, is also understandable in the light of psychology. Experience shows us that the sense of the "I"—the ego-consciousness—grows out of unconscious life. The small child has psychic life without any demonstrable ego-consciousness, for which reason the earliest years leave hardly any traces in memory.  Read more at location 2716

We can easily understand why higher and even divine knowledge was formerly ascribed to the psyche if we remember that in ancient cultures, beginning with primitive times, man always resorted to dreams and visions as a source of information. It is a fact that the unconscious contains subliminal perceptions whose scope is nothing less than astounding. In recognition of this fact, primitive societies used dreams and visions as important sources of information. Great and enduring civilizations like those of the Hindus and Chinese built upon this foundation and developed from it a discipline of self-knowledge which they brought to a high pitch of refinement both in philosophy and in practice.  Read more at location 2741

While consciousness is intensive and concentrated, it is transient and is directed upon the immediate present and the immediate field of attention; moreover, it has access only to material that represents one individual's experience stretching over a few decades. A wider range of "memory" is artificially acquired and consists mostly of printed paper. But matters stand very differently with the unconscious. It is not concentrated and intensive, but shades off into obscurity; it is highly extensive and can juxtapose the most heterogeneous elements in the most paradoxical way.  Read more at location 2757

If it were permissible to personify the unconscious, we might call it a collective human being combining the characteristics of both sexes, transcending youth and age, birth and death, and, from having at his command a human experience of one or two million years, almost immortal. If such a being existed, he would be exalted above all temporal change; the present would mean neither more nor less to him than any year in the one hundredth century before Christ; he would be a dreamer of age-old dreams and, owing to his immeasurable experience, he would be an incomparable prognosticator. He would have lived countless times over the life of the individual, of the family, tribe and people, and he would possess the living sense of the rhythm of growth, flowering and decay. Unfortunately—or rather let us say, fortunately—this being dreams.  Read more at location 2762

The collective unconscious, moreover, seems not to be a person, but something like an unceasing stream or perhaps an ocean of images and figures which drift into consciousness in our dreams or in abnormal states of mind.  Read more at location 2770

Looked at from without, the psyche appears to us to be essentially a reflection of external happenings—to be not only occasioned by them, but to have its origin in them. And it also seems to us that the unconscious can be understood only from without and from the side of consciousness.  Read more at location 2776

****  Consciousness is a late-born descendant of the unconscious psyche. It would certainly show perversity if we tried to explain the lives of our ancestors in terms of their late descendants; and it is just as wrong, in my opinion, to regard the unconscious as a derivative of consciousness. We are nearer the truth if we put it the other way round. But this was the standpoint of past ages, which always held the individual soul to be dependent upon a world-system of the spirit.  Read more at location 2781

*********  they were aware of the untold treasure of experience lying hidden beneath the threshold of the transient consciousness of the individual. These ages not only formed an hypothesis about the world system of the spirit, but they assumed without question that this system was a being with a will and consciousness—was even a person—and they called this being God, the quintessence of reality. He was for them the most real of beings, the first cause, through whom alone the soul could be understood.  Read more at location 2785

We might be tempted at this juncture by modern philosophy to call energy or the élan vital God, and thus to blend into one spirit and nature. As long as this undertaking is restricted to the misty heights of speculative philosophy, no great harm is done. But if we should operate with this idea in the lower realm of practical psychology, where our way of explaining things bears fruit in daily conduct, we should find ourselves involved in the most hopeless difficulties.  Read more at location 2791

If I recognize only naturalistic values, and explain everything in physical terms, I shall depreciate, hinder or even destroy the spiritual development of my patients. And if I hold exclusively to a spiritual interpretation, then I shall misunderstand and do violence to the natural man in his right to existence as a physical being. More than a few suicides in the course of psycho-therapeutic treatment are to be laid at the door of such mistakes. Whether energy is God, or God is energy, concerns me very little, for how, in any case, can I know such things? But to give appropriate psychological explanations—this I must be able to do.  Read more at location 2800

The conflict of nature and mind is itself a reflection of the paradox contained in the psychic being of man. This reveals a material and a spiritual aspect which appear a contradiction as long as we fail to understand the nature of psychic life.  Read more at location 2813

All that I experience is psychic. Even physical pain is a psychic event that belongs to my experience. My sense impressions—for all that they force upon me a world of impenetrable objects occupying space—are psychic images, and these alone are my immediate experience, for they alone are the immediate objects of my consciousness.  Read more at location 2818

If I change my concept of reality in such a way as to admit that all psychic happenings are real—and no other use of the concept is valid—this puts an end to the conflict of matter and mind as contradictory explanatory principles. Each becomes a mere designation for the particular source of the psychic contents that crowd into my field of consciousness. If a fire burns me I do not question the reality of the fire, whereas if I am beset by the fear that a ghost will appear, I take refuge behind the thought that it is only an illusion. But just as the fire is the psychic image of a physical process whose nature is unknown so my fear of the ghost is a psychic image from a mental source; it is just as real as the fire, for my fear is as real as the pain caused by the fire.  Read more at location 2829

(Note: Nonduality)  When the primitive world disintegrated into spirit and nature, the West rescued nature for itself. It was prone to a belief in nature, and only became the more entangled in it with every painful effort to make itself spiritual. The East, on the contrary, took mind for its own, and by explaining away matter as mere illusion (maya), continued to dream in Asiatic filth and misery. But since there is only one earth and one mankind, East and West cannot rend humanity into two different halves. Psychic reality exists in its original oneness, and awaits man's advance to a level of consciousness where he no longer believes in the one part and denies the other, but recognizes both as constituent elements of one psyche.  Read more at location 2841

Truth that appeals to the testimony of the senses may satisfy reason, but it offers nothing that stirs our feelings and expresses them by giving a meaning to human life.  Read more at location 2851

The moral attitude is a real factor in life with which the psychologist must reckon if he is not to commit the gravest errors. The psychologist must also remember that certain religious convictions not founded on reason are a necessity of life for many persons. It is again a matter of psychic realities which can cause and cure diseases.  Read more at location 2875

Whether the person in question is rich or poor, has family and social position or not, alters nothing, for outer circumstances are far from giving his life a meaning. It is much more a question of his unreasoned need of what we call a spiritual life, and this he cannot obtain from universities, libraries, or even churches.  Read more at location 2878

The spiritual aspect of the psyche is at present known to us only in a fragmentary way. We have learned that there are spiritually conditioned processes of transformation in the psyche which underlie, for example, the well-known initiation rites of primitive peoples and the states induced by the practice of Hindu yoga. But we have not yet succeeded in determining their particular uniformities or laws. We only know that a large part of the neuroses arise from a disturbance in these processes.  Read more at location 2892

Chapter 10:  The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man  

****  the man who is aware of the immediate present, is by no means the average man. He is rather the man who stands upon a peak, or at the very edge of the world, the abyss of the future before him, above him the heavens, and below him the whole of mankind with a history that disappears in primeval mists. The modern man—or, let us say again, the man of the immediate present—is rarely met with. There are few who live up to the name, for they must be conscious to a superlative degree. Since to be wholly of the present means to be fully conscious of one's existence as a man, it requires the most intensive and extensive consciousness, with a minimum of unconsciousness.  Read more at location 2907

********  (Note: existential, values independence ala Sartre, Neitzsche, Kierkegaard. Assigns value to escaping collective unconscious)  He alone is modern who is fully conscious of the present. The man whom we can with justice call "modern" is solitary. He is so of necessity and at all times, for every step towards a fuller consciousness of the present removes him further from his original "participation mystique" with the mass of men—from submersion in a common unconsciousness. Every step forward means an act of tearing himself loose from that all-embracing, pristine unconsciousness which claims the bulk of mankind almost entirely.  Read more at location 2912

The values and strivings of those past worlds no longer interest him save from the historical standpoint. Thus he has become "unhistorical" in the deepest sense and has estranged himself from the mass of men who live entirely within the bounds of tradition.  Read more at location 2920

He and his kind, few in number as they are, are hidden from the undiscerning eyes of mass-men by those clouds of ghosts, the pseudo-moderns. It cannot be helped; the "modern" man is questionable and suspect, and has always been so, even in the past.  Read more at location 2928

(Note: Interesting value judgment)  unless he is proficient, the man who claims to be modern is nothing but an unscrupulous gambler. He must be proficient in the highest degree, for unless he can atone by creative ability for his break with tradition, he is merely disloyal to the past.  Read more at location 2937

Every good quality has its bad side, and nothing that is good can come into the world without directly producing a corresponding evil. This is a painful fact. Now there is the danger that consciousness of the present may lead to an elation based upon illusion: the illusion, namely, that we are the culmination of the history of mankind, the fulfillment and the end-product of countless centuries.  Read more at location 2945

Think of nearly two thousand years of Christian ideals followed, instead of by the return of the Messiah and the heavenly millennium, by the World War among Christian nations and its barbed-wire and poison-gas. What a catastrophe in heaven and on earth! In the face of such a picture we may well grow humble again. It is true that modern man is a culmination, but tomorrow he will be surpassed; he is indeed the end-product of an age-old development, but he is at the same time the worst conceivable disappointment of the hopes of humankind. The modern man is aware of this.  Read more at location 2949

the psyche is not always and everywhere to be found on the inner side. It is to be found on the outside in whole races or periods of history which take no account of psychic life as such.  Read more at location 2970

Whenever there is established an external form, be it ritual or spiritual, by which all the yearnings and hopes of the soul are adequately expressed—as for instance in some living religion—then we may say that the psyche is outside, and no spiritual problem, strictly speaking, exists.  Read more at location 2974

a spiritual need has produced in our time our "discovery" of psychology. There has never, of course, been a time when the psyche did not manifest itself, but formerly it attracted no attention—no one noticed it. People got along without heeding it. But today we can no longer get along unless we give our best attention to the ways of the psyche.  Read more at location 2981

****  (Note:  motive for search for meaning, midlife examination)  While man still lives as a herd-being he has no "things of the spirit" of his own; nor does he need any, save the usual belief in the immortality of the soul. But as soon as he has outgrown whatever local form of religion he was born to—as soon as this religion can no longer embrace his life in all its fullness—then the psyche becomes something in its own right which cannot be dealt with by the measures of the Church alone. It is for this reason that we of today have a psychology founded on experience, and not upon articles of faith or the postulates of any philosophical system. The very fact that we have such a psychology is to me symptomatic of a profound convulsion of spiritual life. Disruption in the spiritual life of an age shows the same pattern as radical change in an individual. As long as all goes well and psychic energy finds its application in adequate and well regulated ways, we are disturbed by nothing from within. No uncertainty or doubt besets us, and we cannot be divided against ourselves. But no sooner are one or two of the channels of psychic activity blocked, than we are reminded of a stream that is dammed up. The current flows backward to its source; the inner man wants something which the visible man does not want, and we are at war with ourselves. Only then, in this distress, do we discover the psyche; or, more precisely, we come upon something which thwarts our will, which is strange and even hostile to us, or which is incompatible with our conscious standpoint.  Read more at location 2986

The modern man has lost all the metaphysical certainties of his mediæval brother, and set up in their place the ideals of material security, general welfare and humaneness. But it takes more than an ordinary dose of optimism to make it appear that these ideals are still unshaken.  Read more at location 3020

****  Let man but accumulate his materials of destruction and the devil within him will soon be unable to resist putting them to their fated use.  Read more at location 3026

This "psychological" interest of the present time shows that man expects something from psychic life which he has not received from the outer world: something which our religions, doubtless, ought to contain, but no longer do contain—at least for the modern man. The various forms of religion no longer appear to the modern man to come from within—to be expressions of his own psychic life; for him they are to be classed with the things of the outer world.  Read more at location 3046

the widespread interest in all sorts of psychic phenomena as manifested in the growth of spiritualism, astrology, theosophy, and so forth. The world has seen nothing like it since the end of the seventeenth century. We can compare it only to the flowering of Gnostic thought in the first and second centuries after Christ. The spiritual currents of the present have, in fact, a deep affinity with Gnosticism.  Read more at location 3054

Theosophy, together with its continental sister, Anthroposophy; these are pure Gnosticism in a Hindu dress.  Read more at location 3059

such movements have a truly religious character, even when they pretend to be scientific. It changes nothing when Rudolf Steiner calls his Anthroposophy "spiritual science", or Mrs. Eddy discovers a "Christian Science." These attempts at concealment merely show that religion has grown suspect—almost as suspect as politics and world-reform.  Read more at location 3065

The modern man abhors dogmatic postulates taken on faith and the religions based upon them. He holds them valid only in so far as their knowledge-content seems to accord with his own experience of the deeps of psychic life. He wants to know—to experience for himself.  Read more at location 3072

There can be no doubt that from the beginning of the nineteenth century—from the memorable years of the French Revolution onwards—man has given a more and more prominent place to the psyche, 

...It is certainly more than an amusing coincidence that just at that time a Frenchman, Anquetil du Perron, was living in India, and, in the early eighteen-hundreds, brought back with him a translation of the Oupnek'hat—a collection of fifty Upanishads—which gave the Western world its first deep insight into the baffling mind of the East. To the historian this is mere chance without any factors of cause and effect. But in view of my medical experience I cannot take it as accident. It seems to me rather to satisfy a psychological law whose validity in personal life, at least, is complete. For every piece of conscious life that loses its importance and value—so runs the law—there arises a compensation in the unconscious. We may see in this an analogy to the conservation of energy in the physical world, for our psychic processes have a quantitative aspect also. No psychic value can disappear without being replaced by another of equivalent intensity. This is a rule which finds its pragmatic sanction in the daily practice of the psychotherapist; it is repeatedly verified and never fails.  Read more at location 3096

these forces worked also upon Anquetil du Perron, and provoked an answer which has come down in history. For he brought the Eastern mind to the West, and its influence upon us we cannot as yet measure. Let us beware of underestimating it! So far, indeed, there is little of it to be seen in Europe on the intellectual surface: some orientalists, one or two Buddhist enthusiasts, and a few sombre celebrities like Madame Blavatsky and Annie Besant. These manifestations make us think of tiny, scattered islands in the ocean of mankind; in reality they are like the peaks of submarine mountain-ranges of considerable size.  Read more at location 3110

********  Great innovations never come from above; they come invariably from below; just as trees never grow from the sky downward, but upward from the earth, however true it is that their seeds have fallen from above. The upheaval of our world and the upheaval in consciousness is one and the same. Everything becomes relative and therefore doubtful.  Read more at location 3121

****  I have a Red Indian friend who is the governor of a pueblo. When we were once speaking confidentially about the white man, he said to me: "We don't understand the whites; they are always wanting something—always restless—always looking for something. What is it? We don't know. We can't understand them. They have such sharp noses, such thin, cruel lips, such lines in their faces. We think they are all crazy." My friend had recognized, without being able to name it, the Aryan bird of prey with his insatiable lust to lord it in every land—even those that concern him not at all. And he had also noted that megalomania of ours which leads us to suppose, among other things, that Christianity is the only truth, and the white Christ the only Redeemer. After setting the whole East in turmoil with our science and technology, and exacting tribute from it, we send our missionaries even to China.  Read more at location 3159

Whether from the intellectual, the moral or the æsthetic viewpoint, the undercurrents of the psychic life of the West present an uninviting picture. We have built a monumental world round about us, and have slaved for it with unequalled energy. But it is so imposing only because we have spent upon the outside all that is imposing in our natures—and what we find when we look within must necessarily be as it is, shabby and insufficient.  Read more at location 3179

The psychic depths are nature, and nature is creative life. It is true that nature tears down what she has herself built up—yet she builds it once again. Whatever values in the visible world are destroyed by modern relativism, the psyche will produce their equivalents. At first we cannot see beyond the path that leads downward to dark and hateful things—but no light or beauty will ever come from the man who cannot bear this sight. Light is always born of darkness,  Read more at location 3190

It seems to be quite true that the East is at the bottom of the spiritual change we are passing through today. Only this East is not a Tibetan monastery full of Mahatmas, but in a sense lies within us. It is from the depths of our own psychic life that new spiritual forms will arise;  Read more at location 3221

To me, the crux of the spiritual problem of today is to be found in the fascination which psychic life exerts upon modern man. If we are pessimists, we shall call it a sign of decadence; if we are optimistically inclined, we shall see in it the promise of a far-reaching spiritual change in the Western world. At all events, it is a significant manifestation.  Read more at location 3229

If we are still caught by the old idea of an antithesis between mind and matter, the present state of affairs means an unbearable contradiction; it may even divide us against ourselves. But if we can reconcile ourselves with the mysterious truth that spirit is the living body seen from within, and the body the outer manifestation of the living spirit—the two being really one—then we can understand why it is that the attempt to transcend the present level of consciousness must give its due to the body.  Read more at location 3265

Chapter 11:  Psychotherapists or the Clergy 

The unmistakable feature of the neuroses is the fact that their causes are psychic, and that their cure depends entirely upon psychic methods of treatment. The attempts to delimit and to explore this special field—both from the side of psychiatry and from that of neurology—have led to a discovery which is very unwelcome to the science of medicine: namely, the discovery that the psyche is an ætiological or causal factor in disease. In the course of the nineteenth century medicine shaped its methods and theory in such a way as to become one of the disciplines of natural science, and it also adopted that primary assumption of natural science: material causation. For medicine the psyche did not exist in its own right, and experimental psychology also did its best to constitute itself a psychology without the psyche.  Read more at location 3298

****  words are effective only in so far as they convey a meaning or have significance. It is their meaning which is effective. But "meaning" is something mental or spiritual. Call it a fiction if you like. None the less it enables us to influence the course of the disease in a far more effective way than with chemical preparations.  Read more at location 3327

It is no reproach to the Freudian and Adlerian theories that they are based upon the drives; the only trouble is that they are one-sided. The kind of psychology they represent leaves out the psyche, and is suited to people who believe that they have no spiritual needs or aspirations. In this matter both the doctor and the patient deceive themselves.  Read more at location 3334

A psycho-neurosis must be understood as the suffering of a human being who has not discovered what life means for him. But all creativeness in the realm of the spirit as well as every psychic advance of man arises from a state of mental suffering, and it is spiritual stagnation, psychic sterility, which causes this state.  Read more at location 3343

what will he do when he sees only too clearly why his patient is ill; when he sees that it arises from his having no love, but only sexuality; no faith, because he is afraid to grope in the dark; no hope, because he is disillusioned by the world and by life; and no understanding, because he has failed to read the meaning of his own existence?  Read more at location 3352

*******   Human thought cannot conceive any system or final truth that could give the patient what he needs in order to live: that is, faith, hope, love and insight.  Read more at location 3357

These four highest achievements of human effort are so many gifts of grace, which are neither to be taught nor learned, neither given nor taken, neither withheld nor earned, since they come through experience, which is something given, and therefore beyond the reach of human caprice.  Read more at location 3358

********  I have treated many hundreds of patients, the larger number being Protestants, a smaller number Jews, and not more than five or six believing Catholics. Among all my patients in the second half of life—that is to say, over thirty-five—there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given to their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook. This of course has nothing whatever to do with a particular creed or membership of a church.  Read more at location 3404

It is indeed high time for the clergyman and the psychotherapist to join forces to meet this great spiritual task.  Read more at location 3411

I sent out a questionnaire which was answered by Swiss, German, and French Protestants, as well as by a few Catholics. The results are very interesting, as the following general summary shows. Those who decided for the doctor represented 57 per cent of the Protestants and only 25 per cent of the Catholics, while those who decided for the divine formed 8 per cent of the Protestants and 58 per cent of the Catholics. These were the unequivocal decisions. There were some 35 per cent of the Protestants who could not make up their minds, while only 17 per cent of the Catholics were undecided. The reason given for not consulting the minister of the church was generally his lack of psychological knowledge and insight, and this covered 52 per cent of the answers. Some 28 per cent were to the effect that he was prejudiced in his views and showed a dogmatic and traditional bias. Curiously enough, there was even one clergyman who decided for the doctor, while another made the irritated retort: "Theology has nothing to do with the treatment of human beings." All the relatives of clergymen who answered my questionnaire pronounced themselves against the clergy. In so far as this enquiry was restricted to educated persons, it is only a straw in the wind. I am convinced that the uneducated classes would have reacted differently. But I am inclined to accept the results as a more or less valid indication of the views of educated people,  Read more at location 3418

of one thing I am sure, that everywhere the mental state of European man shows an alarming lack of balance. We are living undeniably in a period of the greatest restlessness, nervous tension, confusion and disorientation of outlook. Among my patients from many countries, all of them educated persons, there is a considerable number who came to see me, not because they were suffering from a neurosis, but because they could find no meaning in life or were torturing themselves with questions which neither present-day philosophy nor religion could answer.  Read more at location 3435

(Note: Against Freudian theory of repressed childhood issues at root of neurosis)  Disturbances in the sphere of the unconscious drives are not primary, but secondary phenomena. When conscious life has lost its meaning and promise, it is as though a panic had broken loose and we heard the exclamation: "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!" It is this mood, born of the meaninglessness of life, that causes the disturbance in the unconscious and provokes the painfully curbed impulses to break out anew. The causes of a neurosis lie in the present as well as in the past; and only a still existing cause can keep a neurosis active.  Read more at location 3466

(Note: Seeker)  It is a human quality—a kind of deep respect for facts and events and for the person who suffers from them—a respect for the secret of such a human life. The truly religious person has this attitude. He knows that God has brought all sorts of strange and inconceivable things to pass, and seeks in the most curious ways to enter a man's heart. He therefore senses in everything the unseen presence of the divine will. This is what I mean by "unprejudiced objectivity."  Read more at location 3489

Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses. I am the oppressor of the person I condemn, not his friend and fellow-sufferer. I do not in the least mean to say that we must never pass judgement in the cases of persons whom we desire to help and improve. But if the doctor wishes to help a human being he must be able to accept him as he is. And he can do this in reality only when he has already seen and accepted himself as he is. Perhaps this sounds very simple, but simple things are always the most difficult.  Read more at location 3493

******  (Note:  exactly, per Jesus. Against judgment)  That I feed the hungry, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ—all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What I do unto the least of my brethren, that I do unto Christ. But what if I should discover that the least amongst them all, the poorest of all the beggars, the most impudent of all the offenders, the very enemy himself—that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the aims of my own kindness—that I myself am the enemy who must be loved—what then? As a rule, the Christian's attitude is then reversed; there is no longer any question of love or long-suffering; we say to the brother within us "Raca", and condemn and rage against ourselves. We hide it from the world; we refuse to admit ever having met this least among the lowly in ourselves. Had it been God himself who drew near to us in this despicable form, we should have denied him a thousand times before a single cock had crowed.  Read more at location 3498

Only he who has fully accepted himself has "unprejudiced objectivity." But no one is justified in boasting that he has fully accepted himself. We can point to Christ, who offered his traditional bias as a sacrifice to the god in himself, and so lived his life as it was to the bitter end without regard for conventions or for the moral standards of the Pharisees. We Protestants must sooner or later face this question Are we to understand the "imitation of Christ" in the sense that we should copy his life and, if I may use the expression, ape his stigmata; or in the deeper sense that we are to live our own proper lives as truly as he lived his in all its implications? It is no easy matter to live a life that is modeled on Christ's, but it is unspeakably harder to live one's own life as truly as Christ lived his.  Read more at location 3512

Neurosis is an inner cleavage—the state of being at war with oneself. Everything that accentuates this cleavage makes the patient worse, and everything that mitigates it tends to heal the patient. What drives people to war with themselves is the intuition or the knowledge that they consist of two persons in opposition to one another. The conflict may be between the sensual and the spiritual man, or between the ego and the shadow. It is what Faust means when he says "Two souls, alas, dwell in my breast apart." A neurosis is a dissociation of personality. Healing may be called a religious problem. In the sphere of social or national relations, the state of suffering may be civil war, and this state is to be cured by the Christian virtue of forgiveness for those who hate us.  Read more at location 3522

This is why modern man has heard enough about guilt and sin. He is sorely enough beset by his own bad conscience, and wants rather to learn how he is to reconcile himself with his own nature—how he is to love the enemy in his own heart and call the wolf his brother.  Read more at location 3529

It is, moreover, only in the state of complete abandonment and loneliness that we experience the helpful powers of our own natures. When one has several times seen this development take place one can no longer deny that what was evil has turned to good, and that what seemed good has kept alive the forces of evil. The archdemon of egoism leads us along the royal road to that ingathering which religious experience demands. What we observe here is a fundamental law of life—enantiodromia—the reversal into the opposite; and this it is that makes possible the reunion of the warring halves of the personality and thereby brings the civil war to an end.  Read more at location 3542

All the old arguments against unreasonableness, self-deception and immorality, once so potent, have lost their effectiveness. We are now reaping the fruit of nineteenth-century education. Throughout that period the Church preached to young people the merit of blind faith, while the universities inculcated an intellectual rationalism, with the result that today we plead in vain whether for faith or reason. Tired of this warfare of opinions, the modern man wishes to find out for himself how things are. And though this desire opens bar and bolt to the most dangerous possibilities, we cannot help seeing it as a courageous enterprise and giving it some measure of sympathy. It is no reckless adventure, but an effort inspired by deep spiritual distress to bring meaning once more into life on the basis of fresh and unprejudiced experience.  Read more at location 3558

If something which seems to me an error shows itself to be more effective than a truth, then I must first follow up the error, for in it lie power and life which I lose if I hold to what seems to me true. Light has need of darkness—otherwise how could it appear as light?  Read more at location 3571

This is why the medicine-man is also the priest; he is the saviour of the body as well as of the soul, and religions are systems of healing for psychic illness. This is especially true of the two, greatest religions of man, Christianity and Buddhism. Man is never helped in his suffering by what he thinks for himself, but only by revelations of a wisdom greater than his own. It is this which lifts him out of his distress.  Read more at location 3583

When first I took this direction I did not know where it would lead. I did not know what lay hid in the depths of the psyche—that region which I have since called the "collective unconscious", and whose contents I designate as "archetypes." Since time immemorial, eruptions of the unconscious have taken place, and ever and again they have repeated themselves. Consciousness did not exist from the beginning, and in every child it has to be built up anew in the first years of life. Consciousness is very weak in this formative period, and history shows us that the same is true of mankind—the unconscious easily seizes power.  Read more at location 3592

It is as though, at the culmination of the illness, the destructive powers were converted into healing forces. This is brought about by the fact that the archetypes come to independent life and serve as spiritual guides for the personality, thus supplanting the inadequate ego with its futile willing and striving. As the religious-minded person would say: guidance has come from God.  Read more at location 3602

That which is so effective is often simply the deep impression made on the patient by the independent way in which his dreams treat of his difficulties. Or it may be that his fantasy points to something for which his conscious mind was quite unprepared. Most often it is contents of an archetypal nature, connected in a certain way, that exert a strong influence of their own whether or not they are understood by the conscious mind. This spontaneous activity of the psyche often becomes so intense that visionary pictures are seen or inner voices heard. These are manifestations of the spirit directly experienced today as they have been from time immemorial. Such experiences reward the sufferer for the pains of the labyrinthine way. From this point forward a light shines through his confusion; he can reconcile himself with the warfare within and so come to bridge the morbid split in his nature upon a higher level.  Read more at location 3612

****  My own position is on the extreme left wing of the congress of Protestant opinion, yet I would be the first to warn people against generalizing from their own experience in an injudicious way. As a Swiss, I am an inveterate democrat, yet I recognize that nature is aristocratic and, what is even more, esoteric. Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi is an unpleasant but an eternal truth. Who are forgiven their many sins? Those who have loved much. But as to those who love little, their few sins are held against them.  Read more at location 3628

*********  The living spirit grows and even outgrows its earlier forms of expression; it freely chooses the men in whom it lives and who proclaim it. This living spirit is eternally renewed and pursues its goal in manifold and inconceivable ways throughout the history of mankind. Measured against it, the names and forms which men have given it mean little enough; they are only the changing leaves and blossoms on the stem of the eternal tree.  Read more at location 3637