Quotes from Marie-Louise von Franz

As physics is a mental reconstruction of material processes, perhaps a physical reconstruction of psychic processes is possible in nature itself.

We could all be mediums, and all have absolute knowledge, if the bright light of our ego consciousness would not dim it.

Number is therefore the most primitive instrument of bringing an unconscious awareness of order into consciousness.

Dreams are like letters from God. Isn't it time you answered your mail?

If we can stay with the tension of opposites long enough —sustain it, be true to it—we can sometimes become vessels within which the divine opposites come together and give birth to a new reality.

There are people who cannot risk loneliness with the experience. They always have to be in a flock and have human contact.

Synchronistic events constitute moments in which a 'cosmic' or 'greater' meaning becomes gradually conscious in an individual; generally it is a shaking experience.

The fourth function is always life's great problem:

A nÅ' jobban benn él az élet folyásában, olyannak veszi az életet, amilyen.

Accettare di non essere come gli altri, e così continuare la propria strada come si sente che sia giusto, esige in realtà una grande rettitudine e molto coraggio.

What people really seek, even if they project it sometimes onto outer objects, is the feeling of being alive.

Unfortunately, possession brings the conviction that one is right. Just as the Russians are convinced that the Western world is the destructive element, in the same way if the animus catches us, we can be sure that things are like that. The most important thing is to know this. Like most of my brothers and sisters, when I let myself be possessed by the animus, I do not realize; I am convinced that is my opinion and not my animus.

A person caught in a neurotic state, in some respects may well be compared to a man bewitched. Forced to a very low level of behavior, people suffering from a neurosis is capable of acting jarring and so destructive to themselves and to others, with basic or instinctive motivations.

Everybody," he said, "who goes to church gets ill. You must listen to the plants and stones because God is in them, and all the rest is junk.

People who have a creative side and do not live it out are most disagreeable clients. They make a mountain out of a molehill, fuss about unnecessary things, are too passionately in love with somebody who is not worth so much attention, and so on. There is a kind of floating charge of energy in them which is not attached to its right object and therefore tends to apply exaggerated dynamism to the wrong situation.

If we can stay with the tension of opposites long enough —sustain it, be true to it—we can sometimes become vessels within which the divine opposites come together and give birth to a new reality.

My God, these Feeling types! ... Sensitive people are just tyrannical people - everybody else has to adapt to them.

There are people who cannot risk loneliness with the experience. They always have to be in a flock and have human contact.

The healing hero, therefore, is the one who finds some creative way out, a way not already known, and does not follow a pattern. Ordinary sick people follow ordinary patterns, but the shaman cannot be cured by the usual methods of healing. He has to find the unique way, the only way that applies to him. The creative personality who can do that then becomes a healer and is recognized as such by his colleagues.

When people try to evade problems you first have to ask if it is not just laziness. Jung once said, "Laziness is the greatest passion of mankind, even greater than power or sex or anything." (p. 77)

One has to consider what effect it would have on one to have to accept the fact that God was not the friendly guardian of kindergarten!

When not used as an instrument, the intellect becomes autonomous and dynamic and one can be sure that a man with such attitude is driven by his anima, otherwise he would discuss in a quiet, detached way.

The little open door of each individual's inferior function is what contributes to the sum of collective evil in the world.

If you think the anima as being "nothing but" what you know about her, you have not the receptiveness of a listening attitude, and so she becomes "nothing but" a load of brutal emotions; you have never given her a chance of expressing herself, and therefore she has become inhuman and brutal.