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The Symbolic Life

[E]very psychological expression is a symbol if we assume that it states or signifies something more and other than itself which eludes our present knowledge.

Psychological Types (1921), CW 6, § 817.

The functional importance of the symbol is clearly shown in the history of civilization. For thousands of years the religious symbol proved a most efficacious device in the moral education of mankind. Only a prejudiced mind could deny such an obvious fact. Concrete values cannot take the place of the symbol; only new and more effective symbols can be substituted for those that are antiquated and outworn and have lost their efficacy through the progress of intellectual analysis and understanding. The further development of the individual can be brought about only by means of symbols which represent something far in advance of himself and whose intellectual meanings cannot yet be grasped entirely. The individual unconscious produces such symbols, and they are of the greatest possible value in the moral development of the personality.

“Preface to Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology” (1916), CW 4, § 680.

[S]ymbols may be found among the relics of prehistoric man as well as among the most primitive human types living today. Symbol-formation, therefore, must obviously be an extremely important biological function.

Psychological Types (1921), CW 6, § 402.

There are not too many truths, there are only a few. Their meaning is too deep to grasp other than in symbols.

The Red Book (1915/2009), p. 291.

The symbol has a very complex meaning because it defies reason; it always presupposes a lot of meanings that can’t be comprehended in a single logical concept. The symbol has a future. The past does not suffice to interpret it, because germs of the future are included in every actual situation.

“A Wartime Interview” (1942), C. G. Jung Speaking, p. 143.

Our civilization has long since forgotten how to think symbolically.

Symbols of Transformation (1912/1952), CW 5, § 683.

You see, man is in need of a symbolic life—badly in need. We only live banal, ordinary, rational, or irrational things—which are naturally also within the scope of rationalism, otherwise you could not call them irrational. But we have no symbolic life. Where do we live symbolically? Nowhere, except where we participate in the ritual of life. But who, among the many, are really participating in the ritual of life? Very few.

“The Symbolic Life” (1939), CW 18, § 625.

What to the causal view is fact to the final view is symbol, and vice versa.

“On Psychic Energy” (1928), CW 8, § 45.

If the word is a sign, it means nothing. But if the word is a symbol, it means everything.

The Red Book (1915/2009), p. 310.

The symbol is the middle way along which the opposites flow together in a new movement, like a watercourse bringing fertility after a long drought.

Psychological Types (1921), CW 6, § 443.

The symbol is not a sign that disguises something generally known. Its meaning resides in the fact that it is an attempt to elucidate, by a more or less apt analogy, something that is still entirely unknown or still in the process of formation. If we reduce this by analysis to something that is generally known, we destroy the true value of the symbol; but to attribute hermeneutic significance to it is consistent with its value and meaning.

“The Structure of the Unconscious” (1916), CW 7, § 492.

One might say that every symbol seeks to be concretized.

Introduction to Jungian Psychology: Notes of the Seminar on Analytical Psychology Given in 1925, p. 13.

[O]ne creates inner freedom only through the symbol.

The Red Book (1915/2009), p. 311.

Concepts are coined and negotiable values; images are life.

Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955–56), CW 14, § 226.

I am of the opinion that the union of rational and irrational truth is to be found not so much in art as in the symbol per se; for it is the essence of the symbol to contain both the rational and the irrational. It always expresses the one through the other; it comprises both without being either.

“The Role of the Unconscious” (1918), CW 10, § 24.

How the harmonizing of conscious and unconscious data is to be undertaken cannot be indicated in the form of a recipe. It is an irrational life-process which expresses itself in definite symbols. It may be the task of the analyst to stand by this process with all the help he can give. In this case, the knowledge of the symbols is indispensable, for it is in them that the union of conscious and unconscious contents is consummated. Out of this union emerge new situations and new conscious attitudes.

“Conscious, Unconscious, and Individuation” (1939), CW 9i, § 524.

The symbol is the word that goes out of the mouth, that one that does not simply speak, but that rises out of the depths of the self as a word of power and great need and places itself unexpectedly on the tongue. It is an astonishing and perhaps seemingly irrational word, but one recognizes it as a symbol since it is alien to the conscious mind. If one accepts the symbol, it is as if a door opens leading into a new room whose existence one previously did not know. But if one does not accept the symbol, it is as if one carelessly went past this door; and since this was the only door leading to the inner chambers, one must pass outside into the streets again, exposed to everything external. But the soul suffers great need, since outer freedom is of no use to it. Salvation is a long road that leads through many gates. These gates are symbols. Each new gate is at first invisible; indeed it seems at first that it must be created, for it exists only if one has dug up the spring’s root, the symbol.

The Red Book (1915/2009), p. 311.

[A] symbol is the sensuously perceptible expression of an inner experience. A religious experience strives for expression and can be expressed only “symbolically” because it transcends understanding. It must be expressed one way or another, for therein is revealed its immanent vital force. It wants to step over, as it were, into visible life, to take concrete shape.

Letter to Kurt Plachte, 10 January 1929, Letters, Vol. I, p. 59.

The soul gives birth to images that from the rational standpoint of consciousness are assumed to be worthless. And so they are, in the sense that they cannot immediately be turned to account in the objective world.

Psychological Types (1921), CW 6, § 426.

Psychic development cannot be accomplished by intention and will alone; it needs the attraction of the symbol, whose value quantum exceeds that of the cause. But the formation of a symbol cannot take place until the mind has dwelt long enough on the elementary facts, that is to say until the inner or outer necessities of the life-process have brought about a transformation of energy.

“On Psychic Energy” (1928), CW 8, § 47.

[G]ood and bad must always be united first if the symbol is to be created. The symbol can neither be thought up nor found; it becomes. Its becoming is like the becoming of human life in the womb. Pregnancy comes about through voluntary copulation. It goes on through willing attention. But if the depths have conceived, then the symbol grows out of itself and is born from the mind, as befits a God.

The Red Book (1915/2009), p. 311.

[A] symbol is a psychic image expressing something unknown. In a certain sense the symbol has a life of its own which guides the subject and eases his task; but it cannot be invented or fabricated because the experience of it does not depend on our will.

Letter to A. Zarine, 3 May, 1939, Letters, Vol. I, p. 269.

Analysis and reduction lead to causal truth; this by itself does not help us to live but only induces resignation and hopelessness. On the other hand, the recognition of the intrinsic value of a symbol leads to constructive truth and helps us to live; it inspires hopefulness and furthers the possibility of future development.

“Preface to Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology” (1916), CW 4, § 679.

[H]er life makes sense, and makes sense in all continuity, and for the whole of humanity. That gives peace, when people feel that they are living the symbolic life, that they are actors in the divine drama. That gives the only meaning to human life; everything else is banal and you can dismiss it. A career, producing of children, are all maya compared with that one thing, that your life is meaningful.

“The Symbolic Life” (1954), CW 18, § 630.

How are we to explain religious processes, for instance, whose nature is essentially symbolical? In abstract form, symbols are religious ideas; in the form of action, they are rites or ceremonies. They are the manifestation and expression of excess libido. At the same time they are stepping-stones to new activities, which must be called cultural in order to distinguish them from the instinctual functions that run their regular course according to natural law.

“On Psychic Energy” (1928), CW 8, § 91.

The symbol, you see, is a special term. The symbolic expression in a dream is a manifestation of the situation of the unconscious, looked at from the unconscious.

“The Houston Films (1957),” C. G. Jung Speaking, p. 319.

Luckily for us, symbols mean very much more than can be known at first glance. Their meaning resides in the fact that they compensate an unadapted attitude of consciousness, an attitude that does not fulfil its purpose, and that they would enable it to do this if they were understood. But it becomes impossible to interpret their meaning if they are reduced to something else. That is why some of the later alchemists, particularly in the sixteenth century, abhorred all vulgar substances and replaced them by “symbolic” ones which allowed the nature of the archetype to glimmer through. This does not mean that the adept ceased to work in the laboratory, only that he kept an eye on the symbolic aspect of his transmutations. This corresponds exactly to the situation in the modern psychology of the unconscious: while personal problems are not overlooked (the patient himself takes very good care of that!), the analyst keeps an eye on their symbolic aspects, for healing comes only from what leads the patient beyond himself and beyond his entanglement with the ego.

“The Philosophical Tree” (1945/1954), CW 13, § 397.

Since, as a rule, the unconscious can create only symbolic expressions, the constructive method seeks to elucidate the symbolically expressed meaning in such a way as to indicate how the conscious orientation may be corrected, and how the subject may act in harmony with the unconscious.

Psychological Types (1921), CW 6, § 702.

[A]ll knowledge of the psyche is itself psychic; in spite of all this the soul is the only experient of life and existence. It is, in fact, the only immediate experience we can have and the sine qua non of the subjective reality of the world. The symbols it creates are always grounded in the unconscious archetype, but their manifest forms are moulded by the ideas acquired by the conscious mind. The archetypes are the numinous, structural elements of the psyche and possess a certain autonomy and specific energy which enables them to attract, out of the conscious mind, those contents which are best suited to themselves. The symbols act as transformers, their function being to convert libido from a “lower” into a “higher” form. This function is so important that feeling accords it the high est values. The symbol works by suggestion; that is to say, it carries conviction and at the same time expresses the content of that conviction. It is able to do this because of the numen, the specific energy stored up in the archetype. Experience of the archetype is not only impressive, it seizes and possesses the whole personality, and is naturally productive of faith.

Symbols of Transformation (1912/1952), CW 5, § 344.

The symbol becomes my lord and unfailing commander. It will fortify its reign and change itself into a fixed and riddling image, whose meaning turns completely inward, and whose pleasure radiates outward like blazing fire, a Buddha in the flames. Because I sink into my symbol to such an extent, the symbol changes me from my one into my other.

The Red Book (1915/2009), p. 250.

[T]he more the libido is invested—or, to be more accurate, invests itself—in the unconscious, the greater becomes its influence or potency: all the rejected, disused, outlived functional possibilities that have been lost for generations come to life again and begin to exert an ever-increasing influence on the conscious mind, despite its desperate struggles to gain insight into what is happening. The saving factor is the symbol, which embraces both conscious and unconscious and unites them. For while the consciously disposable libido gets gradually used in the differentiated function and is replenished more and more slowly and with increasing difficulty, the symptoms of inner disunity multiply and there is a growing danger of inundation and destruction by the unconscious contents, but all the time the symbol is developing that is destined to resolve the conflict. The symbol, however, is so intimately bound up with the dangerous and menacing aspect of the unconscious that it is easily mistaken for it, or its appearance may actually call forth evil and destructive tendencies. At all events the appearance of the redeeming symbol is closely connected with destruction and devastation. If the old were not ripe for death, nothing new would appear; and if the old were not injuriously blocking the way for the new; it could not and need not be rooted out.

Psychological Types (1921), CW 6, § 446.

[C]hildlikeness or lack of prior assumptions is of the very essence of the symbol and its function.

Psychological Types (1921), CW 6, § 442.

A symbol loses its magical or, if you prefer, its redeeming power as soon as its liability to dissolve is recognized. To be effective, a symbol must be by its very nature unassailable. It must be the best possible expression of the prevailing world-view, an unsurpassed container of meaning; it must also be sufficiently remote from comprehension to resist all attempts of the critical intellect to break it down; and finally, its aesthetic form must appeal so convincingly to our feelings that no argument can be raised against it on that score.

Psychological Types (1921), CW 6, § 401.

[T]he symbol presupposes a function that creates symbols, and in addition a function that understands them. This latter function takes no part in the creation of the symbol, it is a function in its own right, which one could call symbolic thinking or symbolic understanding. The essence of the symbol consists in the fact that it represents in itself something that is not wholly understandable, and that it hints only intuitively at its possible meaning. The creation of a symbol is not a rational process, for a rational process could never produce an image that represents a content which is at bottom incomprehensible. To understand a symbol we need a certain amount of intuition which apprehends, if only approximately, the meaning of the symbol that has been created, and then incorporates it into consciousness. Schiller calls the symbol-creating function a third instinct, the play instinct; it bears no resemblance to the two opposing functions, but stands between them and does justice to both their natures.

Psychological Types (1921), CW 6, § 171.

Symbols are not allegories and not signs; they are images of contents which for the most part transcend consciousness.

Symbols of Transformation (1912/1952), CW 5, § 114.

The symbol always says: in some such form as this a new manifestation of life will become possible, a release from bondage and world-weariness. The libido that is freed from the unconscious by means of the symbol appears as a rejuvenated god, or actually as a new god; in Christianity, for instance, Jehovah is transformed into a loving Father with a higher and more spiritual morality. The motif of the god’s renewal is universal and may be assumed to be familiar to most readers.

Psychological Types (1921), CW 6, § 435.

The redeeming symbol is a highway, a way upon which life can move forward without torment and compulsion.

Psychological Types (1921), CW 6, § 445.

[T]he mediating position between the opposites can be reached only by the symbol. The reality presupposed by one instinct is different from the reality of the other. To the other it would be quite unreal or bogus, and vice versa. This dual character of real and unreal is inherent in the symbol. If it were only real, it would not be a symbol, for it would then be a real phenomenon and hence unsymbolic. Only that can be symbolic which embraces both. And if it were altogether unreal, it would be mere empty imagining, which, being related to nothing real, would not be a symbol either.

Psychological Types (1921), CW 6, § 178.

The core of the individual is a mystery of life, which dies when it is “grasped.” That is also why symbols want to keep their secrets; they are mysterious not only because we are unable to clearly see what is at their bottom. For the symbol wants to prevent Freudian interpretations, which are indeed so pseudo-correct that they never fail to have an effect. For ill people, “analytical” understandings is as healingly destructive as cauterization or thermocautery, but healthy tissue is banefully destroyed by it. After all, it is a technique we learned from the devil, always destructive, but useful where destruction is necessary. We can commit no greater error, however, than to apply the principles of this technique to an analyzed psychology.

But there’s still more to this! All understanding, as such, being an integration into general viewpoints, contains the devil’s element, and kills. It tears another life out from its own peculiar course, and forces it into something foreign in which it cannot live. That is why, in the later stages of analysis, we must help the other to come to those hidden and unopenable symbols, in which the second half of life lies securely hidden like the tender seed in the hard shell.

The Question of Psychological Types: The Correspondence of C. G. Jung and Hans Schmidt-Guisan, 1915–1916, pp. 140–41 (6 November 1915).

[T]he vision of the symbol is a pointer to the onward course of life, beckoning with the libido towards a still distant goal—but a goal that henceforth will burn unquenchably within him, so that his life, kindled as by a flame, moves steadily towards the far-off beacon. This is the specific life-promoting significance of the symbol, and such, too, is the meaning and value of religious symbols. I am speaking, of course, not of symbols that are dead and stiffened by dogma, but of living symbols that rise up from the creative unconscious of the living man.

Psychological Types (1921), CW 6, § 202.

A sign is always less than the thing it points to, and a symbol is always more than we can understand at first sight. Therefore we never stop at the sign but go on to the goal it indicates; but we remain with the symbol because it promises more than it reveals.

“Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams” (1961), CW 18, § 482.

[T]hat is the symbol. In it all paradoxes are abolished.

Letter to Kurt Plachte, 10 January 1929, Letters, Vol, I, p. 61.

If symbols mean anything at all, they are tendencies which pursue a definite but not yet recognizable goal and consequently can express themselves only in analogies. In this uncertain situation one must be content to leave things as they are, and give up trying to know anything beyond the symbol.

Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955–56), CW 14, § 667.

It is a fact that symbols, by their very nature, can so unite the opposites that these no longer diverge or clash, but mutually supplement one another and give meaningful shape to life.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962), p. 338.

The ancients lived their symbols, since the world had not yet become real for them. Thus they went into the solitude of the desert to teach us that the place of the soul is a lonely desert. There they found the abundance of visions, the fruits of the desert, the wondrous flowers of the soul. Think diligently about the images that the ancients have left behind. They show the way of what is to come. Look back at the collapse of empires, of growth and death, of the desert and monasteries, they are the images of what is to come. Everything has been foretold. But who knows how to interpret it?

The Red Book (1915/2009), p. 236.

[D]ream symbols are the essential message carriers from the instinctive to the rational parts of the human mind, and their interpretation enriches the poverty of consciousness so that it learns to understand again the forgotten language of the instincts.

“Approaching the Unconscious” (1964), Man and His Symbols, p. 52.

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.” No one can take a more or less rational thought, reached as a logical conclusion or by deliberate intent, and then give it “symbolic” form. No matter what fantastic trappings one may put upon an idea of this kind, it will still remain a sign, linked to the conscious thought behind it, not a symbol that hints at something not yet known. In dreams, symbols occur spontaneously, for dreams happen and are not invented; they are, therefore, the main source of all our knowledge about symbolism.

“Approaching the Unconscious” (1964), Man and His Symbols, p. 55.