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The Great Problems Of Life — Sexuality, Of Course, Among Others — Are Always Related To The Primordial Images Of The Collective Unconscious. These Images Are Really Balancing Or Compensating Factors Which Correspond With The Problems Life Presents In Actuality. This Is Not To Be Marveled At, Since These Images Are Deposits Representing The Accumulated Experience Of Thousands Of Years Of Struggle For Adaptation And Existence.

-Carl Jung

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The Great Problems Of

Carl Jung

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The Great Problems Of Life — Sexuality, Of Course, Among Others — Are Always Related To The Primordial Images Of The Collective Unconscious. These Images Are Really Balancing Or Compensating Factors Which Correspond With The Problems Life Presents In Actuality. This Is Not To Be Marveled At, Since These Images Are Deposits Representing The Accumulated Experience Of Thousands Of Years Of Struggle For Adaptation And Existence.

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Collective Unconscious

More From Carl Jung

Synchronicity Reveals The Meaningful Connections Between The Subjective And Objective World.

Vocatus Atque Non Vocatus Deus Aderit.

Whenever We Touch Nature We Get Clean. People Who Have Got Dirty Through Too Much Civilization Take A Walk In The Woods, Or A Bath In The Sea. Entering The Unconscious, Entering Yourself Through Dreams, Is Touching Nature From The Inside And This Is The Same Thing, Things Are Put Right Again.

The Starry Vault Of Heaven Is In Truth The Open Book Of Cosmic Projection, In Which Are Reflected The Mythologems, I.e., The Archetypes. In This Vision Astrology And Alchemy, The Two Classical Functionaries Of The Psychology Of The Collective Unconscious, Join Hands.

Collective Unconscious

The Mandala Is An Archetypal Image Whose Occurrence Is Attested Throughout The Ages. It Signifies The Wholeness Of The Self. This Circular Image Represents The Wholeness Of The Psychic Ground Or, To Put It In Mythic Terms, The Divinity Incarnate In Man.

Called Or Not, God Is Always There.

The Brighter The Light, The Darker The Shadow.

A Residual Sea Of Symbols Which Is Shared By All Mankind, Usually Accessed Through Dreams Or Altered States, And From Which Cultures Draw Images On Which To Found Their Religions.

What We Lack Is Intensity Of Life.

The Divine Process Of Change Manifests Itself To Our Human Understanding . . . As Punishment, Torment, Death, And Transfiguration.

Process Of Change

It Is In The Nature Of Political Bodies Always To See The Evil In The Opposite Group, Just As The Individual Has An Ineradicable Tendency To Get Rid Of Everything He Does Not Know And Does Not Want To Know About Himself By Foisting It Off On Somebody Else. Nothing Has A More Diverse And Alienating Effect Upon Society Than This Moral Complacency And Lack Of Responsibility, And Nothing Promotes Understanding And Rapprochement More Than The Mutual Withdrawal Of Projections.

Only A Few Individuals Succeed In Throwing Off Mythology In A Time Of A Certain Intellectual Supremacy--the Mass Never Frees Itself.

Nature Does Not Deceive Or Conceal, But Reveals.

You Can Exert No Influence If You Are Not Susceptible To Influence.

There Is No Light Without Shadow, And No Psychic Wholeness Without Imperfection.

It Is Often Tragic To See How Blatantly A Man Bungles His Own Life And The Lives Of Others Yet Remains Totally Incapable Of Seeing How Much The Whole Tragedy Originates In Himself, And How He Continually Feeds It And Keeps It Going. Not Consciously, Of Course—for Consciously He Is Engaged In Bewailing And Cursing A Faithless World That Recedes Further And Further Into The Distance. Rather, It Is An Unconscious Factor Which Spins The Illusions That Veil His World. And What Is Being Spun Is A Cocoon, Which In The End Will Completely Envelop Him.

All The Works Of Man Have Their Origin In Creative Fantasy. What Right Have We Then To Depreciate Imagination.

In Such Doubtful Matters, Where You Have To Work As A Pioneer, You Must Be Able To Put Some Trust In Your Intuition And Follow Your Feeling Even At The Risk Of Going Wrong.

The Most Terrifying Thing Is To Accept Oneself Completely.

I Cannot Define For You What God Is. I Can Only Say That My Work Has Proved Empirically That The Pattern Of God Exists In Every Man And That This Pattern Has At Its Disposal The Greatest Of All His Energies For Transformation And Transfiguration Of His Natural Being. Not Only The Meaning Of His Life But His Renewal And His Institutions Depend On His Conscious Relationship With This Pattern Of His Collective Unconscious.

Collective Unconscious

Part Of The Human Self Or Soul Is Not Subject To Laws Of Space And Time.

Neurosis Is An Inner Cleavage-the State Of Being At War With Oneself.

I Feel Very Strongly That I Am Under The Influence Of Things Or Questions Which Were Left Incomplete And Unanswered By My Parents And Grandparents And More Distant Ancestors. It Often Seems As If There Were An Impersonal Karma Within A Family Which Is Passed On From Parents To Children. It Has Always Seemed To Me That I Had To Answer Questions Which Fate Had Posed To My Forefathers, And Which Had Not Yet Been Answered, Or As If I Had To Complete, Or Perhaps Continue, Things Which Previous Ages Had Left Unfinished.

The Decisive Question For Man Is: Is He Related To Something Infinite Or Not? That Is The Telling Question Of His Life. Only If We Know That The Thing Which Truly Matters Is The Infinite Can We Avoid Fixing Our Interest Upon Futilities, And Upon All Kinds Of Goals Which Are Not Of Real Importance.

Anthropologists Have Often Described What Happens To A Primitive Society When Its Spiritual Values Are Exposed To The Impact Of Modern Civilisation. Its People Lose The Meaning Of Their Lives, Their Social Organisation Disintegrates, And They Themselves Morally Decay. We Are Now In The Same Condition. But We Have Never Really Understood What We Have Lost, For Our Spiritual Leaders Unfortunately Were More Interested In Protecting Their Institutions Than In Understanding The Mystery That Symbols Present.

I Believe That History Is Capable Of Anything. There Exists No Folly That Men Have Not Tried Out.

The Healthy Man Does Not Torture Others - Generally It Is The Tortured Who Turn Into Torturers.

We Are Living In What The Greeks Called The Kairos - The Right Moment - For A 'metamorphosis Of The Gods', Of The Fundamental Principles And Symbols. This Peculiarity Of Our Time, Which Is Certainly Not Of Our Conscious Choosing, Is The Expression Of The Unconscious Man Within Us Who Is Changing.

Loneliness Does Not Come From Having No People About One, But From Being Unable To Communicate The Things That Seem Important To Oneself, Or From Holding Certain Views Which Others Find Inadmissible.

Nothing Worse Could Happen To One Than To Be Completely Understood.

I Have Always Tried To Make Room For Anything That Wanted To Come To Me From Within.

The Psychopathology Of The Masses Is Rooted In The Psychology Of The Individual

Primitive Superstition Lies Just Below The Surface Of Even The Most Tough-minded Individuals, And It Is Precisely Those Who Most Fight Against It Who Are The First To Succumb To Its Suggestive Effects.

The Creative Mind Plays With The Object It Loves.

We Deem Those Happy Who From The Experience Of Life Have Learnt To Bear Its Ills Without Being Overcome By Them.

I Studiously Avoided All So-called "holy Men." I Did So Because I Had To Make Do With My Own Truth, Not Accept From Others What I Could Not Attain On My Own. I Would Have Felt It As A Theft Had I Attempted To Learn From The Holy Men And To Accept Their Truth For Myself. Neither In Europe Can I Make Any Borrowings From The East, But Must Shape My Life Out Of Myself-out Of What My Inner Being Tells Me, Or What Nature Brings To Me.

Nature Is Not Matter Only. She Is Also A Spirit

Summoned Or Not, The God Will Come.

I Am Looking Forward Enormously To Getting Back To The Sea Again, Where The Overstimulated Psyche Can Recover In The Presence Of That Infinite Peace And Spaciousness.

Looking Forward

Moreover, My Ancestors' Souls Are Sustained By The Atmosphere Of The House, Since I Answer For Them The Questions That Their Lives Once Left Behind. I Carve Out Rough Answers As Best I Can. I Have Even Drawn Them On The Walls. It Is As If A Silent, Greater Family, Stretching Down The Centuries, Were Peopling The House.

Even A Happy Life Cannot Be Without A Measure Of Awareness Of Darkness... As The Contrast Between What We Have And How It Could Be Worse Is Vital To Appreciate Anything, Including Our Life, And So Be Happy And Grateful

What Usually Has The Strongest Psychic Effect On The Child Is The Life Which The Parents Have Not Lived

Through Pride We Are Ever Deceiving Ourselves. But Deep Down Below The Surface Of The Average Conscience A Still, Small Voice Says To Us, Something Is Out Of Tune.

One Cannot Live Without Inconsistency.

Our Intellect Has Achieved The Most Tremendous Things, But In The Meantime Our Spiritual Dwelling Has Fallen Into Disrepair.

Life Really Does Begin At Forty. Up Until Then, You Are Just Doing Research.

The Wrong We Have Done, Thought, Or Intended Will Wreak Its Vengeance On Our Souls.

Most Of Our Difficulties Come From Losing Contact With Our Instincts, With The Age-old Forgotten Wisdom Stored Up In Us.

We Have Forgotten The Age-old Fact That God Speaks Chiefly Through Dreams And Visions.

Envy Does Not Allow Humanity To Sleep.

The Ability To Ask Questions Is The Greatest Resource In Learning The Truth.

We Don't Really Heal Anything; We Simply Let It Go.

I Know Only That I Was Born And Exist, And It Seems To Me That I Have Been Carried Along. I Exist On The Foundation Of Something I Do Not Know. In Spite Of All Uncertainties, I Feel A Solidity Underlying All Existence And A Continuity In My Mode Of Being.

Consciousness Succumbs All Too Easily To Unconscious Influences, And These Are Often Truer And Wiser Than Our Conscious Thinking.

In Studying The History Of The Human Mind One Is Impressed Again And Again By The Fact That Its Growth Keeps Pace With A Widening Range Of Consciousness, And That Each Step Forward Is An Extremely Painful And Laborious Achievement. One Could Almost Say That Nothing Is More Hateful To Man Than To Give Up The Smallest Particle Of Unconsciousness. He Has A Profound Fear Of The Unknown. Ask Anybody Who Has Ever Tried To Introduce New Ideas!

Man Is The Mirror God Holds Up To Himself, The Sense Organ With Which He Apprehends His Being.

Astrology Is Assured Of Recognition From Psychology, Without Further Restrictions, Because Astrology Represents The Summation Of All The Psychological Knowledge Of Antiquity.

But The Meaning Of Life Is Not . . . Explained By One's Business Life, Nor Is The Deep Desire Of The Human Heart Answered By A Bank Account.

Meaning Of Life

Where Wisdom Reigns, There Is No Conflict Between Thinking And Feeling.

Because The European Does Not Know His Own Unconscious, He Does Not Understand The East And Projects It Into Everything He Fears And Despises In Himself.

The World Of Gods And Spirits Is Truly 'nothing But' The Collective Unconscious Inside Me.

Collective Unconscious

We Want To Have Certainties And No Doubts- Results And No Experiments- Without Even Seeing That Certainties Can Arise Only Through Doubt And Results Only Thorough Experiment.

When You Come To Think About It, Nothing Has Any Meaning, For When There Was Nobody To Think, There Was Nobody To Interpret What Happened.

If There Is Anything That We Wish To Change In The Child, We Should First Examine It And See Whether It Is Not Something That Could Better Be Changed In Ourselves.

Art Is A Kind Of Innate Drive That Seizes A Human Being And Makes Him Its Instrument.

When Goals Go, Meaning Goes. When Meaning Goes, Purpose Goes. When Purpose Goes, Life Goes Dead On Our Hands.

Thinking Is Difficult, That’s Why Most People Judge.

About A Third Of My Cases Are Suffering From No Clinically Definable Neurosis, But From The Senselessness And Emptiness Of Their Lives.

The Biographies Of Great Artists Make It Abundantly Clear That The Creative Urge Is Often So Imperious That It Battens On Their Humanity And Yokes Everything To The Service Of The Work, Even At The Cost Of Health And Ordinary Human Happiness. The Unborn Work In The Psyche Of The Artist Is A Force Of Nature That Achieves Its End Either With Tyrannical Might Or With The Subtle Cunning Of Nature Herself, Quite Regardless Of The Personal Fate Of The Man Who Is Its Vehicle.

The Greatest Tragedy Of The Family Is The Unlived Lives Of The Parents.

Everyone Is In Love With His Own Ideas

The Unconscious Is Not A Demoniacal Monster, But A Natural Entity Which, As Far As Moral Sense, Aesthetic Taste, And Intellectual Judgment Go, Is Completely Neutral.it Only Becomes Dangerous When Our Conscious Attitude To It Is Hopelessly Wrong. To The Degree That We Repress It, Its Danger Increases.

Healing Proceeds From The Depths To The Heights.

The Man Who Promises Everything Is Sure To Fulfil Nothing, And Everyone Who Promises Too Much Is In Danger Of Using Evil Means In Order To Carry Out His Promises, And Is Already On The Road To Perdition.

Thank God I'm Not A Jungian.

The Platonic World Of Ideas Corresponds To Thinking And Sensation On The Mystical Level.

Wo Die Liebe Herrscht, Da Gibt Es Keinen Machtwillen, Und Wo Die Macht Den Vorrang Hat, Da Fehlt Die Liebe. Das Eine Ist Der Schatten Des Andern. Translation: Where Love Rules, There Is No Will To Power; And Where Power Predominates, There Love Is Lacking. The One Is The Shadow Of The Other.

It Is The Individual's Task To Differentiate Himself From All The Others And Stand On His Own Feet. All Collective Identities . . . Interfere With The Fulfillment Of This Task. Such Collective Identities Are Crutches For The Lame, Shields For The Timid, Beds For The Lazy, Nurseries For The Irresponsible. . . .

Until You Make The Unconscious Conscious, It Will Direct Your Life And You Will Call It Fate.

People Cannot Stand Too Much Reality.

A Dream That Is Not Understood Remains A Mere Occurrence; Understood It Becomes A Living Experience.

If You Are Unhappy, You Are Too High Up In Your Mind.

Whenever Justice Is Uncertain And Police Spying And Terror Are At Work, Human Beings Fall Into Isolation, Which, Of Course, Is The Aim And Purpose Of The Dictator State, Since It Is Based On The Greatest Possible Accumulation Of Depotentiated Social Units.

Instinct Is Like Nature Herself - Prodigiously Conservative, And Yet Transcending Her Own Historical Conditions In Her Acts Of Creation.

It Is My Mind, With Its Store Of Images, That Gives The World Color And Sound; And That Supremely Real And Rational Certainty Which I Can "experience" Is, In Its Most Simple Form, An Exceedingly Complicated Structure Of Mental Images. Thus There Is, In A Certain Sense, Nothing That Is Directly Experienced Except The Mind Itself. Everything Is Mediated Through The Mind, Translated, Filtered, Allegorized, Twisted, Even Falsified By It. We Are . . . Enveloped In A Cloud Of Changing And Endlessly Shifting Images.

A Man Who Has Not Passed Through The Inferno Of His Passions Has Never Overcome Them.

Contemporary Man Is Blind To The Fact That, With All His Rationality And Efficiency, He Is Possessed By "powers" That Are Beyond His Control. His Gods And Demons Have Not Disappeared At All; They Have Merely Got New Names. They Keep Him On The Run With Restlessness, Vague Apprehensions, Psychological Complications, An Insatiable Need For Pills, Alcohol, Tobacco, Food - And, Above All, A Large Array Of Neuroses

The Foundation Of All Mental Illness Is The Unwillingness To Experience Legitimate Suffering.

For A Woman, The Typical Danger Emanating From The Unconscious Comes From Above, From The "spiritual" Sphere Personified By The Animus, Whereas For A Man It Comes From The Chthonic Realm Of The "world And Woman," I.e., The Anima Projected On To The World.

By A Symbol I Do Not Mean An Allegory Or A Sign, But An Image That Describes In The Best Possible Way The Dimly Discerned Nature Of The Spirit. A Symbol Does Not Define Or Explain; It Points Beyond Itself To A Meaning That Is Darkly Divined Yet Still Beyond Our Grasp, And Cannot Be Adequately Expressed In The Familiar Words Of Our Language.

Intuition Does Not Denote Something Contrary To Reason, But Something Outside Of The Province Of Reason.

One Of The Main Functions Of Formalized Religion Is To Protect People Against A Direct Experience Of God.

An Inflated Consciousness Is Always Egocentric And Conscious Of Nothing But Its Own Existence. It Is Incapable Of Learning From The Past, Incapable Of Understanding Contemporary Events, And Incapable Of Drawing Right Conclusions About The Future. It Is Hypnotized By Itself And Therefore Cannot Be Argued With. It Inevitably Dooms Itself To Calamities That Must Strike It Dead.

To Ask The Right Question Is Already Half The Solution Of A Problem.

Dawn Is Born At Midnight.

The Difference Between A Good Life And A Bad Life Is How Well You Walk Through The Fire

The Angels Are A Strange Genus: They Are Precisely What They Are And Cannot Be Anything Else. They Are In Themselves Soulless Beings Who Represent Nothing But The Thoughts And Intuitions Of Their Lord.

Only By Discovering Alchemy Have I Clearly Understood That The Unconscious Is A Process And That Ego's Rapport With The Unconscious And Its Contents Initiate An Evolution, More Precisely, A Real Metamorphosis Of The Psyche.

I Saw That Everything, All Paths I Had Been Following, All Steps I Had Taken, Were Leading Back To A Single Point - Namely, To The Mid-point. It Became Increasingly Plain To Me That The Mandala Is The Center. It Is The Exponent Of All Paths. It Is The Path To The Center, To Individuation. I Knew That In Finding The Mandala As An Expression Of The Self I Had Attained What Was For Me The Ultimate.

The Upheaval Of Our World And The Upheaval In Consciousness Is One And The Same. Everything Becomes Relative And Therefore Doubtful. And While Man, Hesitant And Questioning, Contemplates... His Spirit Yearns For An Answer That Will Allay The Turmoil Of Doubt And Uncertainty.

Individuation Is To Divest The Self Of False Wrappings.

As Soon As The Dialogue Between Two People Touches On Something Fundamental, Essential, Numinous, And A Certain Rapport Is Felt, It Gives Rise To A Phenomenon Which Lévy-bruhl Fittingly Called Participation Mystique. It Is An Unconscious Identity In Which Two Individual Psychic Spheres Interpenetrate To Such A Degree That It Is Impossible To Say What Belongs To Whom.

The True Leader Is Always Led.

Even The Enlightened Person Remains What He Is, And Is Never More Than His Own Limited Ego Before The One Who Dwells Within Him, Whose Form Has No Knowable Boundaries, Who Encompasses Him On All Sides, Fathomless As The Abysms Of The Earth And Vast As The Sky

In The Second Half Of Life The Necessity Is Imposed Of Recognizing No Longer The Validity Of Our Former Ideals But Of Their Contraries. Of Perceiving The Error In What Was Previously Our Conviction, Of Sensing The Untruth In What Was Our Truth, And Of Weighing The Degree Of Opposition, And Even Of Hostility, In What We Took To Be Love.

Synchronistic Events Provide An Immediate Religious Experience As A Direct Encounter With The Compensatory Patterning Of Events In Nature As A Whole, Both Inwardly And Outwardly.

Where Do We Live Symbolically? Nowhere Except Where We Participate In The Ritual Of Life.

The Self Is Defined Psychologically As The Psychic Totality Of The Individual. Anything That A [person] Postulates As Being A Greater Totality Than [oneself] Can Become A Symbol Of The Self. For This Reason The Symbol Of The Self Is Not Always As Total As The Definition Would Require.

We Are A Psychic Process Which We Do Not Control, Or Only Partly Direct. Consequently, We Cannot Have Any Final Judgment About Ourselves Or Our Lives.

No Psychic Value Can Disappear Without Being Replaced By Another Of Equivalent Intensity.

How Can Anyone See Straight When He Does Not See Himself And The Darkness He Unconsciously Carries With Him Into All His Dealings?

Mistakes Are, After All, The Foundations Of Truth, And If A Man Does Not Know What A Thing Is, It Is At Least An Increase In Knowledge If He Knows What It Is Not.

It Isn't Possible To Kill Part Of Your “self” Unless You Kill Yourself First. If You Ruin Your Conscious Personality, The So-called Ego-personality, You Deprive The Self Of Its Real Goal, Namely To Become Real Itself. The Goal Of Life Is The Realization Of The Self. If You Kill Yourself You Abolish That Will Of The Self To Become Real, But It May Arrest Your Personal Development Inasmuch It Is Not Explained. You Ought To Realise That Suicide Is Murder, Since After Suicide There Remains A Corpse Exactly As With Any Ordinary Murder. Only It Is Yourself That Has Been Killed.

He Who Looks Without, Dreams; He Who Looks Within, Awakes.

The Symbol In The Dream Has More The Value Of A Parable: It Does Not Conceal, It Teaches.

In Each Of Us There Is Another Whom We Do Not Know.

Memories Dreams Reflections

You Are A Slave Of What You Need In Your Soul.

Show Me A Sane Man And I Will Cure Him For You.

Children Are Educated By What The Grown-up Is And Not By His Talk.

But, If You Have Nothing At All To Create, Then Perhaps You Create Yourself.

One Does Not Become Enlightened By Imagining Figures Of Light, But By Making The Darkness Conscious.

Therein Lies The Social Significance Of Art: It Is Constantly At Work Educating The Spirit Of The Age, Conjuring Up The Forms In Which The Age Is More Lacking. The Unsatisfied Yearning Of The Artist Reaches Back To The Primordial Image In The Unconscious, Which Is Best Fitted To Compensate The Inadequacy And One-sidedness Of The Present. The Artist Seizes On This Image And, In Raising It From Deepest Unconsciousness, He Brings It Into Relation With Conscious Values, Thereby Transforming It Until It Can Be Accepted By The Minds Of His Contemporaries According To Their Powers.

Our Intellect Has Created A New World That Dominates Nature, And Has Populated It With Monstrous Machines.

The Only Thing We Have To Fear On This Planet Is Man.

Whereas I Formerly Believed It To Be My Bounden Duty To Call Other Persons To Order, I Now Admit That I Need Calling To Order Myself.

The World Hangs On A Thin Thread, And That Is The Psyche Of Man.

Do Not Compare, Do Not Measure. No Other Way Is Like Yours. All Other Ways Deceive And Tempt You. You Must Fulfill The Way That Is In You.

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.

No Concept Is A Carrier Of Life.

Words Are Animals, Alive With A Will Of Their Own

Sometimes You Have To Do Something Unforgivable Just To Be Able To Go On Living.

Solitude Is For Me A Fount Of Healing Which Makes My Life Worth Living.

There Are As Many Archetypes As There Are Typical Situations In Life. Endless Repetition Has Engraved These Experiences Into Our Psychic Constitution, Not In The Forms Of Images Filled With Content, But At First Only As Forms Without Content, Representing Merely The Possibility Of A Certain Type Of Perception And Action.

Situations In Life

Archetypes Resemble The Beds Of Rivers: Dried Up Because The Water Has Deserted Them, Though It May Return At Any Time. An Archetype Is Something Like An Old Watercourse Along Which The Water Of Life Flowed For A Time, Digging A Deep Channel For Itself. The Longer It Flowed The Deeper The Channel, And The More Likely It Is That Sooner Or Later The Water Will Return.

Wherever An Inferiority Complex Exists, There Is A Good Reason For It.

Inferiority Complex

This Whole Creation Is Essentially Subjective, And The Dream Is The Theater Where The Dreamer Is At Once: Scene, Actor, Prompter, Stage Manager, Author, Audience, And Critic.

The Girl Dreams She Is Dangerously Ill. Suddenly Birds Come Out Of Her Skin And Cover Her Completely ... Swarms Of Gnats Obscure The Sun, The Moon, And All The Stars Except One. That One Start Falls Upon The Dreamer.

Art Is A Kind Of Innate Drive That Seizes A Human Being And Makes Him Its Instrument. The Artist Is Not A Person Endowed With Free Will Who Seeks His Own Ends, But One Who Allows Art To Realize Its Purpose Through Him. As A Human Being He May Have Moods And A Will And Personal Aims, But As An Artist He Is "man" In A Higher Sense— He Is "collective Man"— One Who Carries And Shapes The Unconscious, Psychic Forms Of Mankind.

Collective Unconscious

If Our Religion Is Based On Salvation, Our Chief Emotions Will Be Fear And Trembling. If Our Religion Is Based On Wonder, Our Chief Emotion Will Be Gratitude.

Continuous Creation Is To Be Thought Of Not Only As A Series Of Successive Acts Of Creation, But Also As The Eternal Presence Of The One Creative Act.

The Mass State Has No Intention Of Promoting Mutual Understanding And The Relationship Of Man To Man; It Strives, Rather, For Atomization, For The Psychic Isolation Of The Individual. The More Unrelated Individuals Are, The More Consolidated The State Becomes, And Vice Versa.

Even A Happy Life Cannot Be Without A Measure Of Darkness, And The Word Happy Would Lose Its Meaning If It Were Not Balanced By Sadness. It Is Far Better Take Things As They Come Along With Patience And Equanimity.

Just As Man As A Social Being, Cannot In The Long Run Exist Without A Tie To The Community, So The Individual Will Never Find The Real Justification For His Existence, And His Own Spiritual And Moral Autonomy, Anywhere Except In An Extramundane Principle Capable Of Relativizing The Overpowering Influence Of External Factors.

A [wo]man Who Is Unconscious Of [her/]himself Acts In A Blind, Instinctive Way And Is In Addition Fooled By All The Illusions That Arise When He Sees Everything That He Is Not Conscious Of In Himself Coming To Meet Him From Outside As Projections Upon His Neighbour.

All My Writings May Be Considered Tasks Imposed From Within, Their Source Was A Fateful Compulsion. What I Wrote Were Things That Assailed Me From Within Myself. I Permitted The Spirit That Moved Me To Speak Out.

The Artist's Life Cannot Be Otherwise Than Full Of Conflicts, For Two Forces Are At War Within Him [or Her]-on The One Hand, The Common Human Longing For Happiness, Satisfaction And Security In Life, And On The Other A Ruthless Passion For Creation Which May Go So Far As To Override Every Personal Desire ... There Are Hardly Any Exceptions To The Rule That A Person Must Pay Dearly For The Divine Gift Of Creative Fire.

...anyone Who Attempts To Do Both, To Adjust To His Group And At The Same Time Pursue His Individual Goal, Becomes Neurotic.

We Are Born At A Given Moment, In A Given Place And, Like Vintage Years Of Wine, We Have The Qualities Of The Year And Of The Season Of Which We Are Born. Astrology Does Not Lay Claim To Anything More.

Every Form Of Addiction Is Bad, No Matter Whether The Narcotic Be Alcohol Or Morphine Or Idealism.

Overcoming Addiction

Magic Is The Science Of The Jungle.

The Cinema, Like The Detective Story, Makes It Possible To Experience Without Danger All The Excitement, Passion And Desirousness Which Must Be Repressed In A Humanitarian Ordering Of Life.

Hitler's Movement Is Near To Mohammedanism.

The Maintenance Of Secrets Acts Like A Psychic Poison Which Alienates The Possessor From The Community.

The Fact That Astrology Nevertheless Yields Valid Results Proves That It Is Not The Apparent Positions Of The Stars Which Work, But Rather The Times Which Are Measured Or Determined By Arbitrarily Named Stellar Positions. Time Thus Proves To Be A Stream Of Energy Filled With Qualities And Not, As Our Philosophy Would Have It, An Abstract Concept Or Precondition Of Knowledge.

But India Did Not Pass Me By Without A Trace: It Left Tracks Which Lead Me From One Infinity To Another Infinity.

Ultimate Truth, If There Be Such A Thing, Demands The Concert Of Many Voices.

We Are So Accustomed To The Apparently Rational Nature Of Our World That We Can Scarcely Imagine Anything Happening That Cannot Be Explained By Common Sense. The Primitive Man Confronted By A Shock Of This Kind Would Not Doubt His Sanity; He Would Think Of Fetishes, Spirits Or Gods

I Have Treated Many Hundreds Of Patients. Among Those In The Second Half Of Life - That Is To Say, Over 35 - There Has Not Been One Whose Problem In The Last Resort Was Not That Of Finding A Religious Outlook On Life.

Finding The One

Outlook On Life

The Serious Problems In Life...are Never Fully Solved. If Ever They Should Appear To Be So It Is A Sure Sign That Something Has Been Lost. The Meaning And Purpose Of A Problem Seem To Lie Not In Its Solution But In Our Working At It Incessantly.

Every Victory Contains The Germ Of Future Defeat.

There Is No Birth Of Consciousness Without Pain.

Collective Unconscious

I Have Never Since Entirely Freed Myself Of The Impression That This Life Is A Segment Of Existence Which Is Enacted In A Three-dimensional Boxlike Universe Especially Set Up For It.

The More One Sees Of Human Fate And The More One Examines Its Secret Springs Of Action, The More One Is Impressed By The Strength Of Unconscious Motives And By The Limitations Of Free Choice

Self-reflection, Or - What Comes To The Same Thing - The Urge To Individuation, Gathers Together What Is Scattered And Multifarious And Exalts It To The Original Of The One, The Primordial Man. In This Way Our Existence As Separate Beings, Our Former Ego Nature, Is Abolished, The Circle Of Consciousness Is Widened, And Because The Paradoxes Have Been Made Conscious, The Sources Of Conflict Are Dried Up.

People Are Never Helped In Their Suffering By What They Think For Themselves, But Only By Revelation Of A Wisdom Greater Than Their Own. It Is This Which Lifts Them Out Of Their Distress.

When Facts Are Few, Speculations Are Most Likely To Represent Individual Psychology.

I Had Always Been Impressed By The Fact That There Are Surprisingly Many Individuals Who Never Use Their Minds If They Can Avoid It, And Yet Are Not Stupid, And An Equal Number Who Obviously Do Use Their Minds But In An Amazingly Stupid Way.

It Is A Fact That Cannot Be Denied: The Wickedness Of Others Becomes Our Own Wickedness Because It Kindles Something Evil In Our Own Hearts.

Hurry Is Not Of The Devil; Hurry Is The Devil.

I Have Always Said To My Pupils: "learn As Much As You Can About Symbolism; Then Forget It When You Are Analyzing A Dream."

The Most Dangerous Things In The World Are Immense Accumulations Of Human Beings Who Are Manipulated By Only A Few Heads.

I Came To Freud For Facts. I Read 'the Interpretation Of Dreams' And I Thought- 'oh, Here Is A Man Who Is Not Just Theorizing Away, Here Is A Man Who Has Got Facts.

In All Earnestness I Asked Myself What Kind Of World I Had Stumbled Into.

If A Union Is To Take Place Between Opposites Like Spirit And Matter, Conscious And Unconscious, Bright And Dark, And So On, It Will Happen In A Third Thing, Which Represents Not A Compromise But Something New.

The Most Important Question Anyone Can Ask Is: What Myth Am I Living?

In The End, The Only Events Of My Life Worth Telling Are Those When The Imperishable World Erupted Into This Transitory One All Other Memories Of Travels, People And My Surroundings Have Paled Beside These Interior Happenings But My Encounters With The 'other' Reality, My Bouts With The Unconscious, Are Indelibly Engraved On My Memory. In That Realm There Has Always Been Wealth In Abundance, And Everything Else Has Lost Importance By Comparison.

The More Uncertain I Have Felt About Myself, The More There Has Grown Up In Me A Feeling Of Kinship With All Things.

What Is Not Brought To Consciousness, Comes To Us As Fate.

Be Grateful For Your Difficulties And Challenges, For They Hold Blessings. In Fact... Man Needs Difficulties; They Are Necessary For Health Personal Growth, Individuation And Self-actualisation.

Instead Of Being At The Mercy Of Wild Beasts, Earthquakes, Landslides, And Inundations, Modern Man Is Battered By The Elemental Forces Of His Own Psyche. This Is The World Power That Vastly Exceeds All Other Powers On Earth. The Age Of Enlightenment, Which Stripped Nature And Human Institutions Of Gods, Overlooked The God Of Terror Who Dwells In The Human Soul.

Deeply Listening To Music Opens Up New Avenues Of Research I'd Never Even Dreamed Of. I Feel From Now On Music Should Be An Essential Part Of Every Analysis.

Intuition (is) Perception Via The Unconscious

I Shall Not Commit The Fashionable Stupidity Of Regarding Everything I Cannot Explain As A Fraud.

There Are Two Reasons Why Man Loses Contact With The Regulating Center Of His Soul. One Of Them Is That Some Single Instinctive Drive Or Emotional Image Can Carry Him Into A One-sidedness That Makes Him Lose His Balance...his One-sidedness And Consequent Loss Of Balance Are Much Dreaded By Primitives, Who Call It 'loss Of Soul.' Another Threat...circles Around Particular Complexes

Knowledge Rests Not Upon Truth Alone, But Upon Error Also.

Every Mother Contains Her Daughter In Herself And Every Daughter Her Mother And Every Mother Extends Backwards Into Her Mother And Forwards Into Her Daughter.

Science Is The Tool Of The Western Mind And With It More Doors Can Be Opened Than With Bare Hands.

The Shoe That Fits One Person Pinches Another; There Is No Recipe For Living That Suits All Cases.

The Christian Missionary May Preach The Gospel To The Poor Naked Heathen, But The Spiritual Heathen Who Populate Europe Have As Yet Heard Nothing Of Christianity.

The Main Interest Of My Work Is Not Concerned With The Treatment Of Neuroses But Rather With The Approach To The Numinous. But The Fact That The Approach To The Numinous Is The Real Therapy, And Inasmuch As You Attain To The Numinous Experience You Are Released From The Curse Of Pathology. Even The Very Disease Takes On A Numinous Character.

I Have Frequently Seen People Become Neurotic When They Content Themselves With Inadequate Or Wrong Answers To The Questions Of Life. They Seek Position, Marriage, Reputation, Outward Success Of Money, And Remain Unhappy And Neurotic Even When They Have Attained What They Were Seeking. Such People Are Usually Confined Within Too Narrow A Spiritual Horizon. Their Life Has Not Sufficient Content, Sufficient Meaning. If They Are Enabled To Develop Into More Spacious Personalities, The Neurosis Generally Disappears.

It Was Most Essential For Me To Have A Normal Life In The Real World As A Counterpoise To That Strange Inner World. My Family And My Profession Remained The Base To Which I Could Return.

A 'scream' Is Always Just That - A Noise And Not Music.

We Must Be Able To Let Things Happen In The Psyche. For Us, This Becomes A Real Art... Consciousness Is Forever Interfering, Helping, Correcting, And Negating, Never Leaving The Single Growth Of The Psychic Processes In Peace.

Great Talents Are The Most Lovely And Often The Most Dangerous Fruits On The Tree Of Humanity. They Hang Upon The Most Slender Twigs That Are Easily Snapped Off.

The Reason For Evil In The World Is That People Are Not Able To Tell Their Stories.

My Work As A Psychoanalyst Is To Help Patients Recover Their Lost Wholeness And To Strengthen The Psyche So It Can Resist Future Dismemberment.

The Woman Is Increasingly Aware That Love Alone Can Give Her Full Stature, Just As The Man Begins To Discern That Spirit Alone Can Endow His Life With Its Highest Meaning. Fundamentally, Therefore, Both Seek A Psychic Relation To The Other, Because Love Needs The Spirit, And The Spirit Love, For Their Fulfillment.

Observance Of Customs And Laws Can Very Easily Be A Cloak For A Lie So Subtle That Our Fellow Human Beings Are Unable To Detect It. It May Help Us To Escape All Criticism, We May Even Be Able To Deceive Ourselves In The Belief Of Our Obvious Righteousness. But Deep Down, Below The Surface Of The Average Man's Conscience, He Hears A Voice Whispering, 'there Is Something Not Right,' No Matter How Much His Rightness Is Supported By Public Opinion Or By The Moral Code.

Astrologers Are Influenced By Theosophy, So They Say, "that Is Very Simple, It Is Just Vibration!" ... But What Is Vibration? They Say It Is Light Energy, Perhaps Electricity, They Are Not Quite Informed. At All Events The Vibrations That Could Influence Us Have Never Been Seen, So It Remains Just A Word.

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