Quotes from C.G. Jung

The mercy which happened to me gave me belief, hope, and sufficient daring, not to resist further the spirit of the depths, but to utter his word. But before I could pull myself together to really do it, I needed a visible sign that would show me that the spirit of the depths in me was at the same time the ruler of the depths of world affairs.

Is there any one among you who believes he can be spared the way? Can he swindle his way past the pain of Christ? I say: "Such a one deceives himself to his own detriment. He beds down on thorns and fire. No one can be spared the way of Christ, since this way leads to what is to come.

Before the beginning of this century, Freud and Josef Breuer had recognized that neurotic symptoms—hysteria, certain types of pain, and abnormal behavior—are in fact symbolically meaningful. They are one way in which the unconscious mind expresses itself, just as it may in dreams; and they are equally symbolic.

The sign is always less than the concept it represents, while a symbol always stands for something more than its obvious and immediate meaning. Symbols, moreover, are natural and spontaneous products. No genius has ever sat down with a pen or a brush in his hand and said: "Now I am going to invent a symbol.

He who shall deliver me from the waters and bring me back to dry land, him will I bless with riches everlasting.

It is true that there are dreams and single symbols (I should prefer to call them "motifs") that are typical and often occur. Among such motifs are falling, flying, being persecuted by dangerous animals or hostile men, being insufficiently or absurdly clothed in public places, being in a hurry or lost in a milling crowd, fighting with useless weapons or being wholly defenseless, running hard yet getting nowhere.

Reason becomes unreason when separated from the heart, and a psychic life void of universal ideas sickens from undernourishment. ~Carl Jung, The Symbolic Life, Page 311.

Not so very long ago there were medical authorities who did not "believe" in bacteria and consequently allowed twenty thousand young women to die of easily avoidable puerperal fever in Germany alone. The psychic catastrophes caused by the mental inertia of "experts" do not appear in any statistics, and from this it is concluded that they are non-existent.

Strong natures – or should one rather call them weak? - do not like to be reminded of this [their unconscious nature], but prefer to think of themselves as heroes.

and doctrinairism are the disease of our time; they pretend to have all the answers."44 Where primitives identify themselves with the world itself, moderns identify themselves with the part of them that controls the world: the ego.

This fact, as I shall later explain, has a direct and important bearing upon the interpretation of dreams. It is obvious that if you assume the dream to be symbolic, you will interpret it differently from a person who believes that the essential energizing thought or emotion is known already and is merely "disguised" by the dream. In the latter case, dream interpretation makes little sense, for you find only what you already know.

Any of us can see, of course, that there is a conflict in our lives between adventure and discipline, or evil and virtue, or freedom and security. But these are only phrases we use to describe an ambivalence that troubles us, and to which we never seem able to find an answer.

Acolo unde predomin? materialismul raÅ£ionalist statele se transform? mai puÅ£in în niÅŸte închisori, cât în niÅŸte ospicii.

There is an answer. There is a meeting point between containment and liberation, and we can find it in the rites of initiation that I have been discussing. They can make it possible for individuals, or whole groups of people, to unite the opposing forces within themselves and achieve an equilibrium in their lives.

Indeed, we must never forget that for us outer reality exists only in so far as we perceive it consciously, and that we cannot prove that it exists "in and by itself.

Although our civilized consciousness has separated itself from the instincts, the instincts have not disappeared; they have merely lost their contact with consciousness.

We had forgotten that God is terrible...Christ taught; God is love. But you should know that love is also terrible.

The predominantly rationalistic European finds much that is human alien to him, and he prides himself on this without realizing that his rationality is won at the expense of his vitality, and that the primitive part of his personality is consequently condemned to a more or less underground existence.

Tibetan Book of the Dead

It is, in fact, normal and necessary for us to "forget" in this fashion, in order to make room in our conscious minds for new impressions and ideas. If this did not happen, everything we experienced would remain above the threshold of consciousness and our minds would become impossibly cluttered.

If the unconscious can be recognized as a co-determining factor along with consciousness, and if we can live in such a way that conscious and unconscious demands are taken into account as far as possible, then the centre of gravity of the total personality shifts its position. It is then no longer in the ego, which is merely the centre of consciousness, but in the hypothetical point between conscious and unconscious. This new centre might be called the self.

Bildiklerim konusunda kendime güvenirim. Bunlar d???ndaki her ÅŸey hipotezdir ve bunlar?n çoÄŸunu bilinmeyene b?rakabilirim. Bunlar beni rahats?z etmez. Fakat onlar hakk?nda bir ÅŸeyler bilmem gerektiÄŸini hissedersem, eminim o zaman can?m? s?kmaya baÅŸlarlard?.

The psychic is a phenomenal world in itself, which can be reduced neither to the brain nor to metaphysics.

This is an aspect of the modern "cultural" mind that is well worth looking into. It shows an alarming degree of dissociation and psychological confusion.