6

The Development of the Personality

The mother-child relationship is certainly the deepest and most poignant one we know; in fact, for some time the child is, so to speak, a part of the mother’s body. Later it is part of the psychic atmosphere of the mother for several years, and in this way everything original in the child is indissolubly blended with the mother-image. This is true not only for the individual, but still more in a historical sense.

“Analytical Psychology and Weltanschauung” (1928/1931), CW 8, § 723.

The carrier of the archetype is in the first place the personal mother, because the child lives at first in complete participation with her, in a state of unconscious identity. She is the psychic as well as the physical precondition of the child. With the awakening of ego-consciousness the participation gradually weakens, and consciousness begins to enter into opposition to the unconscious, its own precondition. This leads to differentiation of the ego from the mother, whose personal peculiarities gradually become more distinct. All the fabulous and mysterious qualities attaching to her image begin to fall away and are transferred to the person closest to her, for instance the grandmother. As the mother of the mother, she is “greater” than the latter; she is in truth the “grand” or “Great Mother.” Not infrequently she assumes the attributes of wisdom as well as those of a witch. For the further the archetype recedes from consciousness and the clearer the latter becomes, the more distinctly does the archetype assume mythological features. The transition from mother to grandmother means that the archetype is elevated to a higher rank.

“Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype” (1938/1954), CW 9i, § 188.

The negative relationship to the mother is always an affront to nature, unnatural. Hence distance from the earth, identification with the father, heaven, light, wind, spirit, Logos. Rejection of the earth, of what is below, dark, feminine. Negative relationship to material things, also to children. Flight from personal feelings.

Letter to Count Hermann Keyserling, 25 August 1928, Letters, Vol. I, p. 52.

For the parental imago is possessed of a quite extraordinary power; it influences the psychic life of the child so enormously that we must ask ourselves whether we may attribute such magical power to an ordinary human being at all. Obviously he possesses it, but we are bound to ask whether it is really his property. Man “possesses” many things which he has never acquired but has inherited from his ancestors. He is not born as a tabula rasa [blank slate], he is merely born unconscious. But he brings with him systems that are organized and ready to function in a specifically human way, and these he owes to millions of years of human development. Just as the migratory and nest-building instincts of birds were never learnt or acquired individually, man brings with him at birth the ground-plan of his nature, and not only of his individual nature but of his collective nature. These inherited systems correspond to the human situations that have existed since primeval times: youth and old age, birth and death, sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, mating, and so on. Only the individual consciousness experiences these things for the first time, but not the bodily system and the unconscious. For them they are only the habitual functioning of instincts that were preformed long ago.

“The Significance of the Father in the Destiny of the Individual” (1909/1949), CW 4, § 728.

No man can begin with the present; he must slowly grow into it, for there would be no present but for the past. A young person has not yet acquired a past, therefore he has no present either. He does not create culture, he merely exists. It is the privilege and the task of maturer people, who have passed the meridian of life, to create culture.

“Woman in Europe” (1927), CW 10, § 272.

But no matter how much the parents and grandparents may have sinned against the child, the man who is really adult will accept these sins as his own condition which has to be reckoned with.

Only a fool is interested in other people’s guilt, since he cannot alter it. The wise man learns only from his own guilt. He will ask himself: Who am I that all this should happen to me? To find the answer to this fateful question he will look into his own heart.

Psychology and Alchemy (1944), CW 12, § 152.

Psychologically, the central point of a human personality is the place where the ancestors are reincarnated.

Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928–1930 (9 October 1929), p. 304.

[F]or as the son of his father, he must, as if often the case with children, re-enact under unconscious compulsion the unlived lives of his parents.

Psychological Types (1921), CW 6, § 307.

A childish consciousness is always tied to father and mother, and is never by itself. Return to childhood is always the return to father and mother, to the whole burden of the psychic non-ego as represented by the parents, with its long and momentous history. Regression spells disintegration into historical and hereditary determinants, and it is only with the greatest effort that we can free ourselves from their embrace. Our psychic prehistory is in truth the spirit of gravity, which needs steps and ladders because, unlike the disembodied airy intellect, it cannot fly at will. Disintegration into the jumble of historical determinants is like losing one’s way, where even what is right seems an alarming mistake.

Psychology and Alchemy (1944), CW 12, § 79.

That complete surrender to the present necessities means of course a fulfilment, a redemption of the past generations, and of the unfulfilled lives that are waiting to be fulfilled. If we live completely, we surrender to their lives and redeem them. Also, we prepare for a future generation, because we have lived out our own lives; we have fulfilled them, and we leave no curse for the following generations—the curse of economized life.

Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939, Vol. I (6 June 1934), p. 89.

So long as the child is in that state of unconscious identity with the mother, he is still one with the animal psyche and is just as unconscious as it. The development of consciousness inevitably leads not only to separation from the mother, but to separation from the parents and the whole family circle and thus to a relative degree of detachment from the unconscious and the world of instinct. Yet the longing for this lost world continues and, when difficult adaptations are demanded, is forever tempting one to make evasions and retreats, to regress to the infantile, which then starts throwing up the incestuous symbolism.

Symbols of Transformation (1912/1952), CW 5, § 351.

One of the essential features of the child motif is its futurity. The child is potential future. Hence the occurrence of the child motif in the psychology of the individual signifies as a rule an anticipation of future developments, even though at first sight it may seem like a retrospective configuration. Life is a flux, a flowing into the future, and not a stoppage or a backwash. It is therefore not surprising that so many of the mythological saviours are child gods. This agrees exactly with our experience of the psychology of the individual, which shows that the “child” paves the way for a future change of personality. In the individuation process, it anticipates the figure that comes from the synthesis of conscious and unconscious elements in the personality. It is therefore a symbol which unites the opposites; a mediator, bringer of healing, that is, one who makes whole. Because it has this meaning, the child motif is capable of the numerous transformations mentioned above: it can be expressed by roundness, the circle or sphere, or else by the quaternity as another form of wholeness. I have called this wholeness that transcends consciousness the “self.” The goal of the individuation process is the synthesis of the self.

“The Psychology of the Child Archetype” (1940), CW 9i, § 278.

“Child” means something evolving towards independence. This it cannot do without detaching itself from its origins: abandonment is therefore a necessary condition, not just a concomitant symptom.

“The Psychology of the Child Archetype” (1940), CW 9i, § 287.

The “child” is born out of the womb of the unconscious, begotten out of the depths of human nature, or rather out of living Nature herself. It is a personification of vital forces quite outside the limited range of our conscious mind; of ways and possibilities of which our one-sided conscious mind knows nothing; a wholeness which embraces the very depths of Nature. It represents the strongest, the most ineluctable urge in every being, namely the urge to realize itself. It is, as it were, an incarnation of the inability to do otherwise, equipped with all the powers of nature and instinct, whereas the conscious mind is always getting caught up in its supposed ability to do otherwise. The urge and compulsion to self-realization is a law of nature and thus of invincible power, even though its effect, at the start, is insignificant and improbable.

“The Psychology of the Child Archetype” (1940), CW 9i, § 289.

The “child” is therefore renatus in novam infantiam [reborn into a new infancy]. It is thus both beginning and end, an initial and a terminal creature. The initial creature existed before man was not, and the terminal creature will be when man is not. Psychologically speaking, this means that the “child” symbolizes the pre-conscious and the post-conscious essence of man. His pre-conscious essence is the unconscious state of earliest childhood; his post-conscious essence is an anticipation by analogy of life after death. In this idea the all-embracing nature of psychic wholeness is expressed. Wholeness is never comprised within the compass of the conscious mind—it includes the indefinite and indefinable extent of the unconscious as well. Wholeness, empirically speaking, is therefore of immeasurable extent, older and younger than consciousness and enfolding it in time and space. This is no speculation, but an immediate psychic experience. Not only is the conscious process continually accompanied, it is often guided, helped, or interrupted, by unconscious happenings. The child had a psychic life before it had consciousness.

“The Psychology of the Child Archetype” (1940), CW 9i, § 299.

The “child” is all that is abandoned and exposed and at the same time divinely powerful; the insignificant, dubious beginning, and the triumphal end. The “eternal” child in man is an indescribable experience, an incongruity, a handicap, and a divine prerogative; an imponderable that determines the ultimate worth or worthlessness of a personality.

“The Psychology of the Child Archetype” (1940), CW 9i, § 300.

Abandonment, exposure, danger, etc. are all elaborations of the “child’s” insignificant beginnings and of its mysterious and miraculous birth. This statement describes a certain psychic experience of a creative nature, whose object is the emergence of a new and as yet unknown content.

“The Psychology of the Child Archetype” (1940), CW 9i, § 285.

No man can change himself into anything from sheer reason; he can only change into what he potentially is. When such a change becomes necessary, the previous mode of adaptation, already in a state of decay, is unconsciously compensated by the archetype of another mode. If the conscious mind now succeeds in interpreting the constellated archetype in a meaningful and appropriate manner, then a viable transformation can take place. Thus the most important relationship of childhood, the relation to the mother, will be compensated by the mother archetype as soon as detachment from the childhood state is indicated. One such successful inter pretation has been, for instance, Mother Church, but once this form begins to show signs of age and decay a new interpretation becomes inevitable.

Symbols of Transformation (1912/1952), CW 5, § 351.

[A] child always means a beginning, a new attempt at life.

Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. I (6 May 1931), p. 342.

Young children have a consciousness which is remarkable. I find the psychology of little children exceedingly difficult; their dreams, for instance, are amazingly difficult. One would assume that they would be quite simple but they are far from that. Of course some are obvious, but they have an unusual number of great dreams, and great visions too, and to deal with them requires an hypothesis which makes one quite dizzy. One has to assume that they have a consciousness of the collective unconscious, an amazing thing. It makes little children seem quite old, like people who have lived a full life and who have a very profound idea of what consciousness really is. Hence the saying: fools and children speak the truth. It is because they know it. Children have the vision still hanging over them of things which they have never seen, and could not possibly have seen, and which are in accordance with the theory of reincarnation. It is just as if reminiscences of a former life were carried over into this life, or from the ancestral life perhaps, we don’t know. I could tell you children’s dreams which are simply uncanny, and if you want to interpret them at all, you have to use uncanny means. They cannot be explained even by the psychology of the parents. They must come from the psychology of the collective unconscious; one could say they were remnants of things they had seen before they were born, and that is really vision. I know a case where a vision affected a whole life. Individuals can be stunted all through their lives by a vision in childhood. Such children are not quite born—their birth takes place much later, when they can detach. But many people are never quite born; they live in the flesh but a part of them is still in what Lamaistic philosophy would call the Bardo, in the life between death and birth, and that prenatal state is filled with extraordinary visions.

Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. I (24 June 1931), p. 424.

Childhood dreams still remembered by adults are not just any dreams, but have been preserved by memory because they completely contain human life in either longer or shorter periods. When we have a cursory glance at such a dream, at first we do not understand why it has been remembered. If we are able to trace it back, however, we can in most cases find clues as to why it has gained such importance. If things have made a deep impression on us in childhood, we may assume that something highly important lies within what impressed us as such, or that a very important event happened in the neighbourhood of what we kept in our memory, something which is meaningful for the whole later course

of life.

Children’s Dreams: Notes from the Seminar Given in 1936–1940, p. 136.

Our life is like the course of the sun. In the morning it gains continually in strength until it reaches the zenith-heat of high noon. Then comes the enantiodromia [running counter to]: the steady forward movement no longer denotes an increase, but a decrease, in strength. Thus our task in handling a young person is different from the task of handling an older person. In the former case, it is enough to clear away all the obstacles that hinder expansion and ascent; in the latter, we must nurture everything that assists the descent.

On the Psychology of the Unconscious (1917/1926), CW 7, § 114.

One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curricu lum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.

“The Gifted Child” (1943), CW 17, § 249.

Childhood is important not only because various warpings of instinct have their origin there, but because this is the time when, terrifying or encouraging, those far-seeing dreams and images appear before the soul of the child, shaping his whole destiny, as well as those retrospective intuitions which reach back far beyond the range of childhood experience into the life of our ancestors. Thus in the child-psyche the natural condition is already opposed by a “spiritual” one.

“On Psychic Energy” (1928), CW 8, § 98.

It is of course impossible to free oneself from one’s childhood without devoting a great deal of work to it, as Freud’s researches have long since shown. Nor can it be achieved through intellectual knowledge only; what is alone effective is a remembering that is also a re-experiencing. The swift passage of the years and the overwhelming inrush of the newly discovered world leave a mass of material behind that is never dealt with. We do not shake this off; we merely remove ourselves from it. So that when, in later years, we return to the memories of childhood we find bits of our personality still alive, which cling round us and suffuse us with the feeling of earlier times. Being still in their childhood state, these fragments are very powerful in their effect. They can lose their infantile aspect and be corrected only when they are reunited with adult consciousness.

Psychology and Alchemy (1944), CW 12, § 81.

Nothing exerts a stronger psychic effect upon the human environment, and especially upon children, than the life which the parents have not lived.

“Paracelsus” (1929), CW 15, § 4.

An individual is infantile because he has freed himself insufficiently, or not at all, from his childish environment and his adaptation to his parents, with the result that he has a false reaction to the world: on the one hand he reacts as a child towards his parents, always demanding love and immediate emotional rewards, while on the other hand he is so identified with his parents through his close ties with them that he behaves like his father or his mother. He is incapable of living his own life and finding the character that belongs to him.

Symbols of Transformation (1912/1952), CW 5, § 431.

All the life which the parents could have lived, but of which they thwarted themselves for artificial motives, is passed on to the children in substitute form. That is to say, the children are driven unconsciously in a direction that is intended to compensate for everything that was left unfulfilled in the lives of their parents. Hence it is that excessively moral-minded parents have what are called “unmoral” children, or an irresponsible wastrel of a father has a son with a positively morbid amount of ambition, and so on.

“Marriage as a Psychological Relationship” (1925), CW 17, § 328.

To remain a child too long is childish, but it is just as childish to move away and then assume that childhood no longer exists because we do not see it. But if we return to the “children’s land” we succumb to the fear of becoming childish, because we do not understand that everything of psychic origin has a double face. One face looks forward, the other back. It is ambivalent and therefore symbolic, like all living reality.

Psychology and Alchemy (1944), CW 12, § 74.

The nearer we approach to the middle of life, and the better we have succeeded in entrenching ourselves in our personal attitudes and social positions, the more it appears as if we had discovered the right course and the right ideals and principles of behaviour. For this reason we suppose them to be eternally valid, and make a vir tue of unchangeably clinging to them. We overlook the essential fact that the social goal is attained only at the cost of a diminution of personality. Many—far too many—aspects of life which should also have been experienced lie in the lumber-room among dusty memories; but sometimes, too, they are glowing coals under grey ashes.

“The Stages of Life” (1930–31), CW 8, § 772.

The middle period of life is a time of enormous psychological importance. The child begins its psychological life within very narrow limits, inside the magic circle of the mother and the family. With progressive maturation it widens its horizon and its own sphere of influence; its hopes and intentions are directed to extending the scope of personal power and possessions; desire reaches out to the world in ever-widening range; the will of the individual becomes more and more identical with the natural goals pursued by unconscious motivations. Thus man breathes his own life into things, until finally they begin to live of themselves and to multiply; and imperceptibly he is overgrown by them. Mothers are overtaken by their children, men by their own creations, and what was originally brought into being only with labour and the greatest effort can no longer be held in check. First it was passion, then it became duty, and finally an intolerable burden, a vampire that battens on the life of its creator.

“Marriage as a Psychological Relationship” (1925), CW 17, § 331a.

The wine of youth does not always clear with advancing years; sometimes it grows turbid.

“The Stages of Life” (1930–31), CW 8, § 774.

Wholly unprepared, we embark upon the second half of life. Or are there perhaps colleges for forty-year-olds which prepare them for their coming life and its demands as the ordinary colleges introduce our young people to a knowledge of the world? No, thoroughly unprepared we take the step into the afternoon of life; worse still, we take this step with the false assumption that our truths and ideals will serve us as hitherto. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning; for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie.

“The Stages of Life” (1930–31), CW 8, § 784.

Our personality develops in the course of life from germs that are hard or impossible to discern, and it is only our deeds that reveal who we are. We are like the sun, which nourishes the life of the earth and brings forth every kind of strange, wonderful, and evil thing; we are like the mothers who bear in their wombs untold happiness and suffering. At first we do not know what deeds or misdeeds, what destiny, what good and evil we have in us, and only the autumn can show what the spring has engendered, only in the evening will it be seen what the morning began.

“The Development of Personality” (1934), CW 17, § 290.

There are experiences which one must go through and for which reason is no substitute. Such experiences are often of inestimable value to the patient.

The Theory of Psychoanalysis (1913), CW 4, § 446.

To become a personality is not the absolute prerogative of the genius, for a man may be a genius without being a personality. In so far as every individual has the law of his life inborn in him, it is theoretically possible for any man to follow this law and so become a personality, that is, to achieve wholeness. But since life only exists in the form of living units, i.e., individuals, the law of life always tends towards a life individually lived.

“The Development of Personality” (1934), CW 17, § 307.

Behind a man’s actions there stands neither public opinion nor the moral code, but the personality of which he is still unconscious. Just as a man still is what he always was, so he already is what he will become. The conscious mind does not embrace the totality of a man, for this totality consists only partly of his conscious contents, and for the other and far greater part, of his unconscious, which is of indefinite extent with no assignable limits. In this totality the conscious mind is contained like a smaller circle within a larger one.

“Transformation Symbolism in the Mass” (1942/1954), CW 11, § 390.

The ego-conscious personality is only a part of the whole man, and its life does not yet represent his total life. The more he is merely “I,” the more he splits himself off from the collective man, of whom he is also a part, and may even find himself in opposition to him. But since everything living strives for wholeness, the inevitable one-sidedness of our conscious life is continually being corrected and compensated by the universal human being in us, whose goal is the ultimate integration of conscious and unconscious, or better, the assimilation of the ego to a wider personality.

“On the Nature of Dreams” (1945/1948), CW 8, § 557.

We know that the first impressions of childhood accompany us inalienably throughout life, and that, just as indestructibly, certain educational influences can keep people all their lives within those limits. In these circumstances it is not surprising that conflicts break out between the personality moulded by educational and other influences of the infantile milieu and one’s own individual style of life. It is a conflict which all those must face who are called upon to live a life that is independent and creative.

The Theory of Psychoanalysis (1913), CW 4, § 310.

[T]he development of personality from the germ-state to full consciousness is at once a charisma and a curse, because its first fruit is the conscious and unavoidable segregation of the single individual from the undifferentiated and unconscious herd. This means isolation, and there is no more comforting word for it. Neither family nor society nor position can save him from this fate, nor yet the most successful adaptation to his environment, however smoothly he fits in. The development of personality is a favour that must be paid for dearly.

“The Development of Personality” (1934), CW 17, § 294.

The personality is seldom, in the beginning, what it will be later on. For this reason the possibility of enlarging it exists, at least during the first half of life. The enlargement may be effected through an accretion from without, by new vital contents finding their way into the personality from outside and being assimilated. In this way a considerable increase of personality may be experienced. We therefore tend to assume that this increase comes only from without, thus justifying the prejudice that one becomes a personality by stuffing into oneself as much as possible from outside. But the more assiduously we follow this recipe, and the more stubbornly we believe that all increase has to come from without, the greater becomes our inner poverty. Therefore, if some great idea takes hold of us from outside, we must understand that it takes hold of us only because something in us responds to it and goes out to meet it. Richness of mind consists in mental receptivity, not in the accumulation of possessions. What comes to us from outside, and, for that matter, everything that rises up from within, can only be made our own if we are capable of an inner amplitude equal to that of the incoming content. Real increase of personality means consciousness of an enlargement that flows from inner sources. Without psychic depth we can never be adequately related to the magnitude of our object. It has therefore been said quite truly that a man grows with the greatness of his task. But he must have within himself the capacity to grow; otherwise, even the most difficult task is of no benefit to him. More likely he will be shattered by it.

“Concerning Rebirth” (1940/1950), CW 9i, § 215.

All beginnings are small. Therefore we must not mind doing tedious but conscientious work on obscure individuals, even though the goal towards which we strive seems unattainably far off. But one goal we can attain, and that is to develop and bring to maturity individual personalities. And inasmuch as we are convinced that the individual is the carrier of life, we have served life’s purpose if one tree at least succeeds in bearing fruit, though a thousand others remain barren. Anyone who proposed to bring all growing things to the highest pitch of luxuriance would soon find the weeds—those hardiest of perennials—waving above his head. I therefore consider it the prime task of psychotherapy today to pursue with singleness of purpose the goal of individual development. So doing, our efforts will follow nature’s own striving to bring life to the fullest possible fruition in each individual, for only in the individual can life fulfil its meaning—not in the bird that sits in a gilded cage.

“Fundamental Questions of Psychotherapy” (1951), CW 16, § 229.

Personality is a seed that can only develop by slow stages throughout life. There is no personality without definiteness, wholeness, and ripeness. These three qualities cannot and should not be expected of the child, as they would rob it of childhood.

Analytical Psychology and Education (1926/1946), CW 17, § 288.

In every adult there lurks a child—an eternal child, something that is always becoming, is never completed, and calls for unceasing care, attention, and education. That is the part of the human personality which wants to develop and become whole. But the man of today is far indeed from this wholeness.

“The Development of Personality” (1934), CW 17, § 286.

[C]hildren also contain a future personality within themselves, the being that they will be in the following years. The experiences of the coming years are, so to speak, there already, but only uncon sciously, as they have not yet been made. The children already live in a tomorrow, only they are not aware of it. This figure exists in potential, naturally in a projected form.

Children’s Dreams: Notes from the Seminar Given in 1936–1940, p. 50.

Only the man who can consciously assent to the power of the inner voice becomes a personality; but if he succumbs to it he will be swept away by the blind flux of psychic events and destroyed. That is the great and liberating thing about any genuine personality: he voluntarily sacrifices himself to his vocation, and consciously translates into his own individual reality what would only lead to ruin if it were lived unconsciously by the group.

“The Development of Personality” (1934), CW 17, § 308.

Everything good is costly, and the development of personality is one of the most costly of all things. It is a matter of saying yea to oneself, of taking oneself as the most serious of tasks, of being conscious of everything one does, and keeping it constantly before one’s eyes in all its dubious aspects—truly a task that taxes us to the utmost.

“Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower” (1929), CW 13, § 24.

Personality is the supreme realization of the innate idiosyncrasy of a living being. It is an act of high courage flung in the face of life, the absolute affirmation of all that constitutes the individual, the most successful adaptation to the universal conditions of existence coupled with the greatest possible freedom for self-determination.

“The Development of Personality” (1934), CW 17, § 289.

Personality consists of two things: first, consciousness and whatever this covers, and second, an indefinitely large hinterland of unconscious psyche. So far as the former is concerned, it can be more or less clearly defined and delimited; but as for the sum total of personality, one has to admit the impossibility of a complete de scription or definition. In other words, there is bound to be an illimitable and indefinable addition to every personality, because the latter consists of a conscious and observable part which does not contain certain factors whose existence, however, we are forced to assume in order to explain certain observable facts. The unknown factors form what we call the unconscious part of the personality.

Psychology and Religion (1938/1940), CW 11, § 66.

The wider the gap between conscious and unconscious, the nearer creeps the fatal splitting of the personality, which in neurotically disposed individuals leads to neurosis, and, in those with a psychotic constitution, to schizophrenia and fragmentation of personality.

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

If we follow the history of a neurosis with attention, we regularly find a critical moment when some problem emerged that was evaded. This evasion is just as natural and just as common a reaction as the laziness, slackness, cowardice, anxiety, ignorance, and unconsciousness which are at the back of it. Whenever things are unpleasant, difficult, and dangerous, we mostly hesitate and if possible give them a wide berth.

On the Psychology of the Unconscious (1917/1926), CW 7, § 23.

We should not try to “get rid” of a neurosis, but rather to experience what it means, what it has to teach, what its purpose is. We should even learn to be thankful for it, otherwise we pass it by and miss the opportunity of getting to know ourselves as we really are. A neurosis is truly removed only when it has removed the false attitude of the ego. We do not cure it—it cures us. A man is ill, but the illness is nature’s attempt to heal him. From the illness itself we can learn so much for our recovery, and what the neurotic flings away as absolutely worthless contains the true gold we should never have found elsewhere.

“The State of Psychotherapy Today” (1934), CW 10, § 361.

Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.

Psychology and Religion (1938/1940), CW 11, § 129.

Once we have made up our minds to treat the soul, we can no longer close our eyes to the fact that neurosis is not a thing apart but the whole thing of the pathologically disturbed psyche. It was Freud’s momentous discovery that the neurosis is not a mere agglomeration of symptoms, but a wrong functioning which affects the whole psyche. The important thing is not the neurosis, but the man who has the neurosis. We have to set to work on the human being, and we must be able to do him justice as a human being.

“Psychotherapy and a Philosophy of Life” (1943), CW 16, § 190.

There are no magical cures for neurosis. The moment we begin to map out the lines of advance that are symbolically indicated, the patient himself must proceed along them. If he shirks this by his own deceit, he automatically precludes any cure. He must in very truth take the way of the individual lifeline he has recognized as his own, and continue along it until such time as an unmistakable reaction from the unconscious tells him that he is on the wrong track.

“The Structure of the Unconscious” (1916), CW 7, § 497.

Neurosis—let there be no doubt about this—may be any number of things, but never a “nothing but.” It is the agony of a human soul in all its vast complexity—so vast, indeed, that any and every theory of neurosis is little better than a worthless sketch, unless it be a gigantic picture of the psyche which not even a hundred Fausts could conceive.

“The State of Psychotherapy Today” (1934), CW 10, § 357.

A neurosis is by no means merely a negative thing, it is also something positive. Only a soulless rationalism reinforced by a narrow materialistic outlook could possibly have overlooked this fact. In reality the neurosis contains the patient’s psyche, or at least an es sential part of it; and if, as the rationalist pretends, the neurosis could be plucked from him like a bad tooth, he would have gained nothing but would have lost something very essential to him. That is to say, he would have lost as much as the thinker deprived of his doubt, or the moralist deprived of his temptation, or the brave man deprived of his fear. To lose a neurosis is to find oneself without an object; life loses its point and hence its meaning. This would not be a cure, it would be a regular amputation.

“The State of Psychotherapy Today” (1934), CW 10, § 355.

He who does not possess this moral function, this loyalty to himself, will never get rid of his neurosis. But he who has this capacity will certainly find the way to cure himself.

“The Structure of the Unconscious” (1916), CW 7, § 498.

[I]f we understand anything of the unconscious, we know that it cannot be swallowed. We also know that it is dangerous to suppress it, because the unconscious is life and this life turns against us if suppressed, as happens in neurosis.

“Conscious, Unconscious, and Individuation” (1939), CW 9i, § 521.

In the neurosis is hidden one’s worst enemy and best friend. One cannot rate him too highly, unless of course fate has made one hostile to life. There are always deserters, but they have nothing to say to us, nor we to them.

“The State of Psychotherapy Today” (1934), CW 10, § 359.

Among the so-called neurotics of our day there are a good many who in other ages would not have been neurotic—that is, divided against themselves. If they had lived in a period and in a milieu in which man was still linked by myth with the world of the ancestors, and thus with nature truly experienced and not merely seen from outside, they would have been spared this division within themselves.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962), pp. 143–44.

[I] quite generally take the view that a neurosis is not of traumatic origin, that is, that it can’t be traced back to a singular frightening experience; I try to understand it in the context of the present meaning. For what lives and takes effect today is also recreated today, again and again. I also relate frequently recurring dreams to what is currently going on, therefore, and to what is recreated over and over again, and not to something that lies many years back.

Children’s Dreams: Notes from the Seminar Given in 1936–1940, p. 276.

You know how long it takes to change the whole viewpoint of the patient, yet in nearly all neuroses it is almost indispensable that the whole outlook on life undergoes a complete change.

Letter to Elined Kotschnig, 18 February 1941, Letters, Vol. I, p. 295.

[H]idden in the neurosis is a bit of still undeveloped personality, a precious fragment of the psyche lacking which a man is condemned to resignation, bitterness, and everything else that is hostile to life. A psychology of neurosis that sees only the negative elements empties out the baby with the bath-water, since it neglects the positive meaning and value of these “infantile”—i.e., creative—fantasies.

The State of Psychotherapy Today (1934), CW 10, § 355.

It may be that in schizophrenia a normal consciousness is confronted with an unusually strong unconscious: it may also be that the patient’s consciousness is just weak and therefore unable to keep back the inrush of unconscious material. In practice I must allow for the existence of two groups of schizophrenia: one with a weak consciousness and the other with a strong unconscious. We have here a certain analogy with the neuroses, where we also find plenty of patients with a markedly weak consciousness and little willpower, and others who possess remarkable energy but are subjected to an almost overwhelmingly strong unconscious determination. This is particularly the case when creative impulses (artistic or otherwise) are coupled with unconscious incompatibilities.

“On the Psychogenesis of Schizophrenia” (1939), CW 3, § 531.

What, then, is a latent psychosis exactly? It is obviously nothing but the possibility that an individual may become mentally deranged at some period of his life. The existence of strange unconscious material proves nothing. You find the same material in neurotics, modern artists, and poets, and also in fairly normal people who have submitted to a careful investigation of their dreams. Moreover, you find most suggestive parallels in the mythology and symbolism of all races and times. The possibility of a future psychosis has nothing to do with the peculiar contents of the unconscious. But it has everything to do with whether the individual can stand a certain panic, or the chronic strain of a psyche at war with itself. Very often it is simply a matter of a little bit too much, of the drop that falls into a vessel already full, or of the spark that accidentally lands on a heap of gunpowder.

“On the Psychogenesis of Schizophrenia” (1939), CW 3, § 520.

The chief danger is that of succumbing to the fascinating influence of the archetypes, and this is most likely to happen when the archetypal images are not made conscious. If there is already a predisposition to psychosis, it may even happen that the archetypal figures, which are endowed with a certain autonomy on account of their natural numinosity, will escape from conscious control altogether and become completely independent, thus producing the phenomena of possession.

“Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious” (1934/1954), CW 9i, § 82.

People may even be destroyed by an archetype, their own existence wiped out forever. In dementia praecox, for instance, it often happens that people are just blasted by an archetype, exploded. They cannot resist it. If they have an experience which the ordinary reli gious man would call an experience of God, instead of realizing it as such and thanking heaven for the grace, they think they are God or three times more than God. The archetype has sucked them in and swallowed them. The individual ego is far less resistant; it is futile in comparison. Therefore the appearance of an archetype in our psychology is always a moment of the greatest danger as well as the greatest hope.

Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. I (5 November 1930), p. 67.

I once had a case of schizophrenia, a girl who was so caught by that redemption mystery which was going on in her that she could no longer speak to people. She was locked up in a lunatic asylum for about sixteen months, and I had a chance somehow to get behind her screen and discover where she went. She went to the moon and became the savior of the moon people. She became the redeemer of the world, she built temples and did all sorts of wonderful things, it was a most amazing story. And the thing which was difficult for her to bear was that, in telling me that story, she cut the thread to the moon and could not go back; she had to be sane, she was caught to the earth because she had betrayed the mystery. She wanted to kill me because I had cured her, because her life in the moon was so much more beautiful. She had no idea that the moon was a symbol, so that one called people like herself lunatics; she went into the unconscious—into the moon—and there she did the only thing that was worth living for, redemption; she succeeded in saving the moon people. But she got stuck in the moon, she became the prisoner of the moon spirit. Then when I came in and she could tell me that story, she was caught in this world and could not go back. She hated me for a long time and said to me: “Oh, it was so much more beautiful. I hate to live on this earth.” Since then I am not so compassionate about insane people; it may not be so bad, it only looks so.

Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. I (8 December 1930), p. 146.

Through my work with the patients, I realized that paranoid ideas and hallucinations contain a germ of meaning, personality. A life history, a pattern of hopes and desires lie behind the psychosis. The fault is ours if we do not understand them. It dawned upon me then for the first time that a general psychology of the personality lies concealed within psychosis, and that even here we come upon the old human conflicts. Although patients may appear dull and apathetic, or totally imbecilic, there is more going on in their minds, and more that is meaningful, than there seems to be. At bottom we discover nothing new and unknown in the mentally ill; rather, we encounter the substratum of our own natures.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962), p. 127.

[I]t is madness to fall out of one’s conscious world into an unconscious condition. Insanity means just that, being overcome by an invasion of the unconscious. Consciousness is swept over by unconscious contents in which all orientation is lost. The ego then becomes a sort of fish swimming in a sea among other fishes, and of course fishes don’t know who they are, don’t even know the name of their own species.

Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939, Vol. II (19 May 1937), pp. 1088–89.

I have given a detailed description of a purely psychological typology in my book Psychological Types. My investigation was based on twenty years of work as a doctor, which brought me into contact with people of all classes from all the great nations. When one begins as a young doctor, one’s head is still full of clinical pictures and diagnoses. In the course of the years, impressions of quite another kind accumulate. One is struck by the enormous diversity of human individuals, by the chaotic profusion of individual cases, the special circumstances of whose lives and whose special characters produce clinical pictures that, even supposing one still felt any desire to do so, can be squeezed into the straitjacket of a diagnosis only by force. The fact that the disturbance can be given such and such a name appears completely irrelevant beside the overwhelming impression one has that all clinical pictures are so many mimetic or histrionic demonstrations of certain definite character traits. The pathological problem upon which everything turns has virtually nothing to do with the clinical picture, but is essentially an expression of character.

Psychological Types (1921), CW 6, § 970.

It is not the purpose of a psychological typology to classify human beings into categories—this in itself would be pretty pointless. Its purpose is rather to provide a critical psychology which will make a methodical investigation and presentation of the empirical material possible. First and foremost, it is a critical tool for the research worker, who needs definite points of view and guidelines if he is to reduce the chaotic profusion of individual experiences to any kind of order. In this respect we could compare typology to a trigonometric net or, better still, to a crystallographic axial system. Secondly, a typology is a great help in understanding the wide variations that occur among individuals, and it also furnishes a clue to the fundamental differences in the psychological theories now current. Last but not least, it is an essential means for determining the “personal equation” of the practising psychologist, who, armed with an exact knowledge of his differentiated and inferior functions, can avoid many serious blunders in dealing with his patients.

Psychological Types (1921), CW 6, § 986.

My scheme of typology is only a scheme of orientation. There is such a factor as introversion, there is such a factor as extraversion. The classification of individuals means nothing, nothing at all. It is only the instrumentarium for the practical psychologist to explain, for instance, the husband to a wife or vice versa. It is very often the case—I might say it is almost a rule, but I don’t want to make too many rules in order not to be schematic—that an introvert marries an extravert for compensation, or another type marries the countertype to complement himself. For instance, a man who has made a certain amount of money is a good business man, but he has no education. His dream is, of course, a grand piano at home, artists, painters, singers or God knows what, and intellectual people, and accordingly he marries a wife of that type in order to have that too. Of course he has nothing of it. She has it, and she marries him because he has a lot of money.

These compensations go on all the time. When you study marriages, you can see it easily. We alienists have to deal with a lot of marriages, particularly those that go wrong, because the types are too different sometimes and they don’t understand each other at all. You see, the main values of the extravert are anathema to the introvert, so he says, “To hell with the world, I think!” His wife interprets this as his megalomania. But it is just as if an extravert said to an introvert, “Now look here, fellow, these are the facts, this is reality!” And he’s right. And the other type says, “But I think!” and that sounds like nonsense to the extravert because he doesn’t realize that the other, without knowing it, is seeing an inner world, an inner reality. And he may be right, as he may be wrong, even if he based himself on God knows what solid facts. Take the interpretation of statistics, you can prove anything with statistics. What is more a fact than a statistic?

“The Houston Films” (1957), C. G. Jung Speaking, pp. 305–6.

Through the fact that I worried about my difficulty with Freud, I came to study Adler carefully in order to see what was his case against Freud. I was struck at once by the difference in type. Both were treating neurosis and hysteria, and yet to the one man it looked so, and to the other it was something quite different. I could find no solution. Then it dawned on me that possibly I was dealing with two different types, who were fated to approach the same set of facts from widely differing aspects. I began to see among my patients some who fit Adler’s theories, and others who fit Freud’s, and thus I came to formulate the theory of extraversion: and introversion.

Introduction to Jungian Psychology: Notes of the Seminar on Analytical Psychology Given in 1925, pp. 32–33.

[J]ust as the three conscious and differentiated parts of these functions are confronted by a fourth, undifferentiated function which acts as a painfully disturbing factor, so also the superior function seems to have its worst enemy in the unconscious. Nor should we omit to mention one final turn of the screw: like the devil who delights in disguising himself as an angel of light, the inferior function secretly and mischievously influences the superior function most of all, just as the latter represses the former most strongly.

“The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales” (1945/1948), CW 9i, § 431.

The book on types yielded the insight that every judgment made by an individual is conditioned by his personality type and that every point of view is necessarily relative.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962), p. 207.

A type is a specimen or example which reproduces in a characteristic way the character of a species or class. In the narrower sense used in this particular work, a type is a characteristic specimen of a general attitude occurring in many individual forms. From a great number of existing or possible attitudes I have singled out four; those, namely, that are primarily oriented by the four basic psychological functions: thinking, feeling, sensation, intuition. When any of these attitudes is habitual, thus setting a definite stamp on the character of an individual, I speak of a psychological type. These function-types, which one can call the thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuitive types, may be divided into two classes according to the quality of the basic function, i.e., into the rational and the irrational. The thinking and feeling types belong to the former class, the sensation and intuitive types to the latter. A further division into two classes is permitted by the predominant trend of the movement of libido, namely introversion and extraversion. All the basic types can belong equally well to one or the other of these classes, according to the predominance of the introverted or extraverted attitude.

Psychological Types (1921), CW 6, § 835.

[T]hese constituents of the personality—which one may call functions, or Mendelian units, or the primitives would call them remnants of ancestral souls—these constituents don’t always fit. They may be irregular, perhaps, on account of some inner friction. But through the development of life, in the course of years, these constituents ought to function in such a way that there will be in the end a complete synthesis, the integration of human personality.

Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928–1930 (29 January 1930), p. 453.