Quotes from C.G. Jung

What nature leaves imperfect, the art perfects

Some of one's thoughts lose their emotional energy and become subliminal (that is to say, they no longer receive so much of our conscious attention) because they have come to seem uninteresting or irrelevant, or because there is some reason why we wish to push them out of sight.

Everything we do not differentiate falls into the Pleroma and is cancelled out along with its opposite. Therefore if we do not discern God, then the effective fullness is cancelled out for us.

This choice of symbol, too, is not arbitrary, but is documented by alchemical literature from the first to the eighteenth century. The lapis is produced, as we have already seen, from the splitting and putting together of the four elements, from the rotundum. The rotundum is a highly abstract, transcendent idea, which by reason of its roundness76 and wholeness refers to the Original Man, the Anthropos.

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.

See," Ochwiay Biano said, "how cruel the whites look. Their lips are thin, their noses sharp, their faces furrowed and distorted by folds. Their eyes have a staring expression; they are always seeking something. What are they seeking? The whites always want something; they are always uneasy and restless. We do not know what they want. We do not understand them. We think that they are mad." I

El que algo sea una realidad 'física' no es el único criterio de verdad. También existen verdades 'anímicas', las cuales no pueden ni probarse ni explicarse, pero tampoco negarse físicamente. [...] Los milagros son únicamente una apelación al entendimiento de aquellos hombres que no son capaces de entender el 'sentido'; los milagros son en realidad un simple sustituto de la realidad no comprendida del 'espíritu'.»

Indolence is the beginning of all vice, because in a condition of slothful dreaming the libido has abundant opportunity for sinking into itself...

the affectivity of the extraverted woman possesses a certain lability and shallowness because it is adapted to the ordinary life of human society.

It is perhaps a humiliating sign of spiritual immaturity that [modern] man needs, and wants, a large measure of authority.

The training consists: first of all in systematic exercises for eliminating critical attention, thus producing a vacuum in consciousness.

Interpretation in any given case depends as always on individual circumstances and must be modified accordingly.

From the psychological point of view, primitive man's belief that the arbitrary power of chance answers to the intentions of spirits and of sorcerers is perfectly natural, because it is an unavoidable inference from the facts as he sees them. And let us not delude ourselves in this connection. If we explain our scientific views to an intelligent native he will credit us with a ludicrous superstitiousness and a disgraceful want of logic.

can only say that I have very often noticed in such cases a singularly narrow consciousness, an apprehensive stiffness of attitude, and a spiritual and emotional horizon bounded by childish naïveté or pedantic prejudice.

Medicine has until recently gone on the supposition that illness should be treated and cured by itself; yet voices are now heard which declare this view to be wrong, and demand the treatment of the sick person and not of the sickness. The same demand is forced upon us in the treatment of psychic suffering.

For him the religious significance of the immediate experience of the object was so great that his imagination was spellbound by the concretism of the material presence of the sacred body.

Myths are first and foremost psychic phenomena that reveal the nature of the soul.

From time immemorial, men have had ideas about a Supreme Being (one or several) and about the Land of the Hereafter. Only modern man thinks he can do without them.

To judge from the little we know of Miss Miller, it seems to be more a case of emotional naïveté: she underestimated the possibilities in her and leapt too lightly into dangerously deep waters where some knowledge of the shadow would have been in place. Such people should be given as much psychological knowledge as possible. Even if it doesn't protect them from the outbreak of psychosis

Loss of roots and lack of tradition neuroticize the masses and prepare them for collective hysteria. Collective hysteria calls for collective therapy, which consists in abolition of liberty and terrorization. Where rational istic materialism holds sway, states tend to develop less into prisons than into lunatic asylums.

Thoughts are natural events that you do not possess, and whose meaning you only imperfectly recognize.

Mind is not born as a tabula rasa. Like the body, it has its pre-established individual definiteness; namely, forms of behavior. They become manifest in the ever-recurring patterns of psychic functioning.

In coming to a close after so many bold assertions, I would like to return to the promise made at the outset to be mindful of the need for moderation and caution. Indeed, I do not forget that my voice is but one voice, my experience a mere drop in the sea, my knowledge no greater than the visual field in a microscope, my mind's eye a mirror that reflects a small corner of the world, and my ideas—a subjective confession.

Practically everywhere the central point of these festivals lay in exuberant sexual licence, which swamped all family life and its venerable traditions; the most savage bestialities of nature were unleashed, including that atrocious amalgam of lust and cruelty which has always seemed to me the true witch's broth.12