9

The Problem of the Opposites

[T]he principal pair of opposites is the conscious world and the unconscious world, and when the two come together, it is as if man and woman were coming together, the union of the male and the female, of the light and the darkness. Then a birth will take place.

Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. I (10 February 1932), p. 574.

I see in all that happens the play of opposites, and derive from this conception my idea of psychic energy. I hold that psychic energy involves the play of opposites in much the same way as physical energy involves a difference of potential, that is to say the existence of opposites such as warm and cold, high and low, etc.

“Freud and Jung: Contrasts” (1929), CW 4, § 779.

[T]here is no energy unless there is a tension of opposites; hence it is necessary to discover the opposite to the attitude of the conscious mind.

On the Psychology of the Unconscious (1917/1926/1943), CW 7, § 78.

Experience of the opposites has nothing whatever to do with intellectual insight or with empathy. It is more what we would call fate.

Psychology and Alchemy (1944), CW 12, § 23.

The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves.

Aion (1951), CW 9ii, § 126.

It may well be said that the contemporary cultural consciousness has not yet absorbed into its general philosophy the idea of the unconscious and all that it means, despite the fact that modern man has been confronted with this idea for more than half a century. The assimilation of the fundamental insight that psychic life has two poles still remains a task for the future.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962), p. 169.

Every psychological extreme secretly contains its own opposite or stands in some sort of intimate and essential relation to it. Indeed, it is from this tension that it derives its peculiar dynamism. There is no hallowed custom that cannot on occasion turn into its opposite, and the more extreme a position is, the more easily may we expect an enantiodromia, a conversion of something into its opposite. The best is the most threatened with some devilish perversion just because it has done the most to suppress evil.

Symbols of Transformation (1912/1952), CW 5, § 581.

[I]n all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order, in all caprice a fixed law, for everything that works is grounded on its opposite.

“Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious” (1934/1954), CW 9i, § 66.

The fact that individual consciousness means separation and opposition is something that man has experienced countless times in his long history.

“The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man” (1933/1934), CW 10, § 290.

The conscious mind is on top, the shadow underneath, and just as high always longs for low and hot for cold, so all consciousness, perhaps without being aware of it, seeks its unconscious opposite, lacking which it is doomed to stagnation, congestion, and ossification. Life is born only of the spark of opposites.

On the Psychology of the Unconscious (1917/1926/1943), CW 7, § 78.

There is no consciousness without discrimination of opposites. This is the paternal principle, the Logos, which eternally struggles to extricate itself from the primal warmth and primal darkness of the maternal womb; in a word, from unconsciousness. Divine curiosity yearns to be born and does not shrink from conflict, suffering, or sin. Unconsciousness is the primal sin, evil itself, for the Logos. Therefore its first creative act of liberation is matricide, and the spirit that dared all heights and all depths must, as Synesius says, suffer the divine punishment, enchainment on the rocks of the Caucasus. Nothing can exist without its opposite; the two were one in the beginning and will be one again in the end. Consciousness can only exist through continual recognition of the unconscious, just as everything that lives must pass through many deaths.

“Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype” (1938/1954), CW 9i, § 178.

When I see so much refinement and sentiment as I see in America, I look always for an equal amount of brutality. The pair of opposites—you find them everywhere.

“America Facing Its Most Tragic Moment” (1912), C. G. Jung Speaking, p. 13.

Without the experience of the opposites there is no experience of wholeness and hence no inner approach to the sacred figures.

Psychology and Alchemy (1944), CW 12, § 24.

It is, moreover, a very useful thing to experience a conflict of opposites. Nobody can solve this conflict for you, and it is a conflict in your own nature. A man must be able to stand this struggle. This act of courage is essential for the doctor. Anyone who has solved the conflict for you would have got the better of you, for he would rob you of a reward on which all self-respect and manliness are ultimately grounded. You can find in my books all the necessary indications that might make the solution possible on a human and intellectual level. If you need human help, there are enough simple folk who from the simplicity of their hearts could give you the support you need.

Letter to G. Meyer, 20 May 1933, Letters, Vol. I, p. 121.

The outer opposition is an image of my inner opposition. Once I realize this, I remain silent and think of the chasm of antagonism in my soul. Outer oppositions are easy to overcome. They indeed exist, but nevertheless you can be united with yourself. They will indeed burn and freeze your soles, but only your soles. It hurts, but you continue and look toward distant goals.

The Red Book (1915/2009), p. 279.

[W]hen pairs of opposites appear together it is like fire and water; it either means an immediate crash, a tremendous catastrophe, or that they merely counteract one another.

Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. I (16 March 1932), p. 647.

[E]verything that exists will turn into its opposite. What lives will become dead, what is dead will live, what is young will become old, the old young, what is awake will sleep, and what sleeps will awake. The flow of creation and destruction never ends.

Children’s Dreams: Notes from the Seminar Given in 1936–1940, p. 328.

The ego keeps its integrity only if it does not identify with one of the opposites, and if it understands how to hold the balance between them. This is possible only if it remains conscious of both at once. However, the necessary insight is made exceedingly difficult not by one’s social and political leaders alone, but also by one’s religious mentors. They all want decision in favour of one thing, and therefore the utter identification of the individual with the necessarily one-sided “truth.” Even if it were still a question of some great truth, identification with it would still be a catastrophe, as it arrests all further spiritual development.

“On the Nature of the Psyche” (1947/1954), CW 8, § 425.

All opposites are of God, therefore man must bend to this burden; and in so doing he finds that God in his “oppositeness” has taken possession of him, incarnated himself in him. He becomes a vessel filled with divine conflict.

Answer to Job (1952), CW 11, § 659.

The apparently unendurable conflict is proof of the rightness of your life. A life without inner contradiction is either only half a life or else a life in the Beyond, which is destined only for angels. But God loves human beings more than the angels.

Letter to Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, Bollingen, 20 August, 1945, Letters, Vol. I, p. 375.

It is quite right, therefore, that fear of God should be considered the beginning of all wisdom. On the other hand, the much-vaunted goodness, love, and justice of God should not be regarded as mere propitiation, but should be recognized as genuine experience, for God is a coincidentia oppositorum [unity of the opposites]. Both are justified, the fear of God as well as the love of God.

Answer to Job (1952), CW 11, § 664.

Just as all energy proceeds from opposition, so the psyche too possesses its inner polarity, this being the indispensable prerequisite for its aliveness, as Heraclitus realized long ago. Both theoretically and practically, polarity is inherent in all living things. Set against this overpowering force is the fragile unity of the ego, which has come into being in the course of millennia only with the aid of countless protective measures. That an ego was possible at all appears to spring from the fact that all opposites seek to achieve a state of balance. This happens in the exchange of energy which results from the collision of hot and cold, high and low, and so on. The energy underlying conscious psychic life is pre-existent to it and therefore at first unconscious.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962), p. 346.

The greater the tension, the greater the potential. Great energy springs from a correspondingly great tension of opposites.

“Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon” (1942), CW 13, § 154.

Out of the collision of opposites the unconscious psyche always creates a third thing of an irrational nature, which the conscious mind neither expects nor understands. It presents itself in a form that is neither a straight “yes” nor a straight “no.”

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

In the center is the individual where the opposites are united, the one peaceful spot in man, the space where nothing moves embedded in a world of chaos. The task is now to bring about order, the alchemistic process must begin, namely, the production of the valuable substance, the transformation into the light. You see this mandala does not represent a normal condition of the collective unconscious; this is a turmoil caused by the appearance of the disturbing element in the center. For we may assume that the collective unconscious is in absolute peace until the individual appears. Therefore individuation is a sin; it is an assertion of one particle against the gods, and when that happens even the world of the gods is upset, then there is turmoil. But in that abstraction, or that union—the coming together of the pair of opposites—there is absolute peace. Otherwise there is only the peace of God in a world in which there is no individual, in other words, no consciousness. Yes, perhaps it exists to metaphysical consciousness, but not to any mortal consciousness because there is none. You see, this chaos is due to the appearance of that center, but that is a center of peace because the pairs of opposites are united.

Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. I (3 March 1931), p. 263.

[O]pposites can be united only in the form of a compromise, or irrationally, some new thing arising between them which, although different from both, yet has the power to take up their energies in equal measure as an expression of both and of neither. Such an expression cannot be contrived by reason, it can only be created through living.

Psychological Types (1921), CW 6, § 169.

The transcendent function is not something one does oneself; it comes rather from experiencing the conflict of opposites.

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

The sad truth is that man’s real life consists of a complex of inexorable opposites—day and night, birth and death, happiness and misery, good and evil. We are not even sure that one will prevail over the other, that good will overcome evil, or joy defeat pain. Life is a battleground. It always has been, and always will be; and if it were not so, existence would come to an end.

“Approaching the Unconscious” (1964), Man and His Symbols, p. 85.

When we strive after the good or the beautiful, we thereby forget our own nature, which is distinctiveness, and we are delivered over to the qualities of the pleroma, which are pairs of opposites. We labor to attain to the good and the beautiful, yet at the same time we also lay hold of the evil and the ugly, since in the pleroma these are one with the good and the beautiful. When, however, we remain true to our own nature, which is distinctiveness, we distinguish ourselves from the good and the beautiful, and, therefore, at the same time, from the evil and the ugly. And thus we fall not into the pleroma, namely, into nothingness and dissolution.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962), p. 381.

The tremendous role which the opposites and their union play in alchemy helps us to understand why the alchemists were so fond of paradoxes. In order to attain this union, they tried not only to visualize the opposites together but to express them in the same breath.

Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955–56), CW 14, § 36.

[R]ebirth symbolism always means a new uniting of opposites in the process of transformation. But to bring pairs of opposites together in a static condition is a sort of compromise. One says sadly: “Alas, yes, black is white and white is black,” and that causes a sort of indifferent mixture, an apathetic standstill. The union is only correct when the opposites grow together in a living progress.

Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. I (16 March 1932), p. 649.

The self is a union of opposites par excellence.

Psychology and Alchemy (1944), CW 12, § 22.

For the conscious mind knows nothing beyond the opposites and, as a result, has no knowledge of the thing that unites them.

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

The splitting of the Original Man into husband and wife expresses an act of nascent consciousness; it gives birth to the pair of opposites, thereby making consciousness possible.

Aion (1951), CW 9ii, § 320.

[I]dentity of opposites is a characteristic feature of every psychic event in the unconscious state.

Psychology and Alchemy (1944), CW 12, § 398.

Insofar as analytical treatment makes the “shadow” conscious, it causes a cleavage and a tension of the opposites which in their turn seek compensation in unity. The adjustment is achieved through symbols. The conflict between the opposites can strain our psyche to the breaking point, if we take them seriously, or if they take us seriously. The tertium non datur [the third that is not given] of logic proves its worth: no solution can be seen. If all goes well, the solution, seemingly of its own accord, appears out of nature. Then and then only is it convincing. It is felt as “grace.” Since the solution proceeds out of the confrontation and clash of opposites, it is usually an unfathomable mixture of conscious and unconscious factors, and therefore a symbol, a coin split into two halves which fit together precisely. It represents the result of the joint labors of consciousness and the unconsciousness, and attains the likeness of the God-image in the form of the mandala, which is probably the simplest model of a concept of wholeness, and one which spontaneously arises in the mind as a representation of the struggle and reconciliation of opposites. The clash, which is at first of a purely personal nature, is soon followed by the insight that the subjective conflict is only a single instance of the universal conflict of opposites. Our psyche is set up in accord with the structure of the universe, and what happens in the macrocosm likewise happens in the infinitesimal and most subjective reaches of the psyche. For that reason the God-image is always a projection of the inner experience of a powerful vis-à-vis. This is symbolized by objects from which the inner experience has taken its initial impulse, and which from then on preserve numinous significance, or else it is characterized by its numinosity and the overwhelming force of that numinosity. In this way the imagination liberates itself from the concretism of the object and attempts to sketch the image of the invisible as something which stands behind the phenomenon. I am thinking here of the simplest basic form of the mandala, the circle, and the simplest (mental) division of the circle, the quadrant or, as the case may be, the cross.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962), pp. 335–36.

Once I had a very wealthy patient who on coming to me said, “I don’t know what you are going to do to me, but I hope you are going to give me something that isn’t grey.” And that is exactly what life would be if there were no opposites in it; therefore the pairs of opposites are not to be understood as mistakes but as the origin of life. For the same thing holds in nature. If there is no difference in high and low, no water can come down. Modern physics expresses the condition that would ensue were the opposites removed from nature by the term entropy: that is, death in an equitable tepidity. If you have all your wishes fulfilled, you have what could be called psychological entropy. I found, then, that what I had thought to be a pathological phenomenon is in fact a rule of nature.

Introduction to Jungian Psychology: Notes of the Seminar on Analytical Psychology Given in 1925, p. 85.

The division into two was necessary in order to bring the “one” world out of the state of potentiality into reality. Reality consists of a multiplicity of things. But one is not a number; the first number is two, and with it multiplicity and reality begin.

Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955–56), CW 14, § 659.

Since the psychological condition of any unconscious content is one of potential reality, characterized by the polar opposites of “being” and “non-being,” it follows that the union of opposites must play a decisive role in the alchemical process. The result is something in the nature of a “uniting symbol,” and this usually has a numinous character.

Psychology and Alchemy (1944), CW 12, § 557.

[T]ill Eulenspiegel laughed like mad when he went uphill, and wept when he went downhill. People could not understand it, for wisdom is never understood by ordinary people, but to him it was perfectly clear. In going up he thinks of the descent and that makes him laugh. He rejoices in the idea that soon he will be able to go downhill. But when he goes downhill he foresees that he will soon have to climb again and he weeps therefor. And that is the nature of Zarathustra. So it is the man Nietzsche who discovers that he is at the noon of life. He was born in 1844 so he was just thirty-nine when he started to write Zarathustra, and that is the noontide, the beginning of the afternoon. In his case, it was of course particularly important to see that, because he had only six years left before the atrophy of his brain began in 1889.

Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939, Vol. I (7 November 1934), pp. 226–27.

[T]he united personality will never quite lose the painful sense of innate discord. Complete redemption from the sufferings of this world is and must remain an illusion. Christ’s earthly life likewise ended, not in complacent bliss, but on the cross.

The Psychology of the Transference (1946), CW 16, § 400.

It is the age-old drama of opposites, no matter what they are called, which is fought out in every human life.

Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955–56), CW 14, § 199.