Quotes from Carl Jung

labyrinths. The protection is so complete as to turn back all that is devilish and undesirable.

Naturally every investigator must document his findings as fully as possible, but he should also venture an occasional hypothesis even at the risk of making a mistake. 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.

Any theory based on experience is necessarily statistical; that is to say, it formulates an ideal average which abolishes all exceptions at either end of the scale and replaces them by an abstract mean.

What has the individual personality to do with the plight of the many?

Follow that will and that way which experience confirms to be your own.

Aquilo que você resiste, persiste.

From the unconscious there emanate determining influences…which, independently of tradition, guarantee in every single individual a similarity and even a sameness of experience, and also of the way it is represented imaginatively.

All one's neighbours are in the grip of some uncontrolled and uncontrollable fear. . . In lunatic asylums it is a well-known fact that patients are far more dangerous when suffering from fear than when moved by rage or hatred.

What most people overlook or seem unable to understand is the fact that I regard the psyche as real.

Uno mira hacia atrás con agradecimiento a los maestros brillantes, pero con gratitud a aquellos que tocaron nuestros sentimientos humanos. El plan de estudios es tanto la materia prima necesaria, pero el calor es el elemento vital de la planta en crecimiento y para el alma del niño

One should never think that man can reach perfection, he can only aim at completion – not to be perfect but to be complete. That would be the necessity and the indispensable condition if there were any question of perfection at all. For how can you perfect a thing if it is not complete?

To provide an example of the types of symbols which are manifested by the archetypes we will look at the archetype Jung called the Self. The Self is the central archetype and its role is in unifying the other archetypal structures of the psyche. According to Jung, the importance of the Self archetype coincides with the fact that it is the source of many of the symbols found in religions and myths.

The phenomenon we have witnessed in Germany was nothing less than [an] outbreak of epidemic insanity. . . No one knew what was happening to him, least of all of the Germans, who allowed themselves to be driven to the slaughterhouse by their leading psychopaths like hypnotized sheep.

Make it complete first and see what it is then. But to make it complete is already a mountain of a task, and by the time you arrive at absolute completion, you find that you are already dead, so you never reach that preliminary condition for perfecting yourself.

If a man imagined that I was his arch-enemy and killed me, I should be dead on account of mere imagination. Imaginary conditions do exist and they may be just as real and just as harmful or dangerous as physical conditions. I even believe that psychic disturbances are far more dangerous than epidemics [of physical disease] or earthquakes.

This is certainly not to say that what we call the unconscious is identical with God or is set up in his place. It is simply the medium from which religious experience seems to flow. As to what the further cause of such experience may be, the answer to this lies beyond the range of human knowledge. Knowledge of God is a transcendental problem.

The secret is that only that which can destroy itself is truly alive. Life that just happens in and for itself is not real life; it is real only when it is known.

For all my respect for history, it seems to me that no insight into the past and no re-experiencing of pathogenic reminiscences – however powerful it may be – is as effective in freeing man from the grip of the past as the construction of something new…no matter what the original circumstances from which they arose, [the neurosis] is conditioned and maintained by a wrong attitude which is present all the time and which, once it is recognized, must be corrected now.

Man's task is…to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious. Neither should he persist in his unconsciousness nor remain identical with the unconscious elements of his being, thus evading his destiny, which is to create more and more consciousness. As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

La soledad es peligrosa. Es adictiva. Una vez que te das cuenta de cuanta paz hay en ella, no quieres lidiar con la gente.

Intuition is perception via the unconscious that brings forth ideas, images, new possibilities, and ways out of blocked situations.

Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.

Primitive superstition lies just below the surface of even the most tough-minded individuals, and it is precisely those who most fight against it are the first to succumb to its suggestive effects.

No science will ever replace myth, and a myth cannot be made out of any science. For it is not that "God" is a myth, but that myth is the revelation of a divine life in man. It is not we who invent myth, rather it speaks to us as a Word of God. The Word of God comes to us, and we have no way of distinguishing whether and to what extent it is different from God.