Quotes from C.G. Jung

All this passes off smoothly and without difficulty provided that his consciousness contains certain ideas of a symbolic nature—"for those who have the symbol the passage is easy," say the alchemists. If, on the other hand, there is already a tendency to dissociation, perhaps dating back to youth, then every advance of the unconscious only increases the gap between it and consciousness.

In earlier ages, as instinctive concepts welled up in the mind of man, his conscious mind could no doubt integrate them into a coherent psychic pattern. But the "civilized" man is no longer able to do this. His "advanced" consciousness has deprived itself of the means by which the auxiliary contributions of the instincts and the unconscious can be assimilated. These organs of assimilation and integration were numinous symbols, held holy by common consent.

Even the most carefully defined philosophical or mathematical concept, which we are sure does not contain more than we put into it, is nevertheless more than we assume. It is a psychic event and as such partly unknowable. The very numbers you use in counting are more than you take them to be. They are at the same time mythological elements (for the Pythagoreans, they were even divine); but you are certainly unaware of this when you use numbers for practical purpose.

it would be a serious misunderstanding to confuse the existence of problems with neurosis. There is a marked difference between the two in that the neurotic is ill because he is unconscious of his problems. . .

The important thing is what he talks about, not whether he agrees with it or not.

If the shadow figure contains valuable, vital forces, they ought to be assimilated into actual experience and not repressed. It is up to the ego to give up its pride and priggishness and to live out something that seems to be dark, but actually may not be. This can require a sacrifice just as heroic as the conquest of passion, but in an opposite sense.

Forgetting, for instance, is a normal process, in which certain conscious ideas lose their specific energy because one's attention has been deflected. When interest turns elsewhere, it leaves in shadow the things with which one was previously concerned, just as a searchlight lights upon a new area by leaving another in darkness. This is unavoidable, for consciousness can keep only a few images in full clarity at one time, and even this clarity fluctuates.

But in the second case the subject is and remains the centre of every interest.

by repressing disagreeable thoughts she created something like a psychic vacuum which, as usually happens, gradually became filled with anxiety. Had she troubled herself consciously with her thoughts she would have known what was lacking, and she would then have needed no anxiety states as a substitute for the absence of conscious suffering.

Speech is generated by the intellect and in turn generates intellect.

The whole of the libido is needed for the battle of life.

In the last resort it is highly improbable that there could ever be a therapy that got rid of all difficulties. Man needs difficulty; they are necessary for health. What concerns us here is only an excessive amount of them.

I early arrived at the insight that when no answer comes from within to the problems and complexities of life, they ultimately mean very little.

The meaning of my existence is that life has addressed a question to me. Or, conversely, I myself am a question...

Without the help of these "représentations collectives," which have psychotherapeutic value even for primitives, it is not possible to understand the archetypal associations of the products of the unconscious.

The unconscious is pure nature, and, like nature, pours out its gifts in profusion. But left to itself and without the human response from consciousness, it can (again like nature) destroy its own gifts and sooner or later sweep them into annihilation.

Language must be taken in a wider sense than speech, for speech is only the outward flow of thoughts formulated for communication

It is our own repressed desires that stick like arrows in our flesh.

It is in no sense sufficient to try to do so with nothing but a personalistically oriented psychology. Anyone who wants to treat serious dissociations must know something of the anatomy and evolutionary history of the mind he is setting out to cure.

Though it is a misfortune for a child to have no parents, it is equally dangerous for him to be too closely bound to his family. An excessively strong attachment to the parents is a severe handicap in his later adaptation to the world, for a growing human being is not destined to remain forever the child of his parents.

We might perhaps say that the thinking of the introvert is rational, while that of the extravert is programmatic.

the psychic disorders of children are more often than not causally connected with the psychology of the parents, and in most cases one would do well to pay more attention to the faulty attitude of parents and educators than to the child's psyche, which in itself would function correctly if it were not disturbed by the harmful influence of the parents.

Not only Christianity with its symbols of salvation, but all religions, including the primitive with their magical rituals are forms of psychotherapy which treat and heal the suffering of the soul, and the suffering of the body caused by the soul.

statistical reality is the only one, then that is the sole authority. There is then only one condition, and since no contrary condition exists, judgment and decision are not only superfluous but impossible.