ACTIVE IMAGINATION A technique for conscious dialogue between the ego and the unconscious whereby unconscious contents are integrated. See C. G. Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis, pars. 752ff.
ANIMA Latin, fem., “soul.” The unconscious, feminine side of a man’s personality. She is personified in dreams by images of women ranging in nature from harlot and seductress to divine Wisdom and spiritual guide. Identification with the anima causes a man to become effeminate, sulky, and resentful. Projection of the anima accounts for a man’s falling in love.
ANIMUS Latin, masc., “soul.” The unconscious masculine side of a woman’s personality. He is the logos spirit principle in women. When identified with the animus, a woman becomes argumentative and rigidly opinionated. Projection of the animus leads to a woman’s falling in love.
ARCHETYPE, ARCHETYPAL IMAGE A universal and recurring image, pattern, or motif representing a typical human experience. Archetypal images come from the collective unconscious and are the basic contents of religions, mythologies, legends, and fairy tales. They also emerge from the collective unconscious in individuals through dreams and visions. Encounter with an archetypal image evokes a strong emotional reaction, conveying a sense of divine or transpersonal power that transcends the ego.
ASSOCIATION The spontaneous flow of interconnected thoughts and images following from a specific idea. Associations are determined by unconscious, meaningful connections and are never fortuitous.
COAGULATIO An alchemical term related to the personal realization of an archetypal image. This implies that a piece of the collective unconscious has become connected with the ego consciousness of an individual person and is expressed in his or her concrete earthly life.
COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS The deepest layer of the unconscious, which is ordinarily inaccessible to awareness. Its nature is suprapersonal, universal, and nonindividual. Its manifestations are experienced as alien to the ego, numinous, or divine. The contents of the collective unconscious are the archetypes and their specific symbolic representations, archetypal images.
COMPLEX An emotionally charged unconscious entity composed of a number of associated ideas grouped around a central core that is an archetypal image. One recognizes that a complex has been activated when emotion upsets psychic balance and disturbs the customary function of the ego.
CONIUNCTIO A term from alchemy referring to the archetypal image of the sacred marriage or union of opposites. It signifies the goal of individuation, the conscious realization of the Self.
EGO The center of consciousness and the seat of the individual’s experience of subjective identity.
EXTRAVERSION A mode of psychic functioning in which interest, value, and meaning are attached primarily to external objects. Inner subjective matters are given little worth. Opposite of introversion.
FEELING One of the four psychic functions according to Jung. It is the rational (i.e., judgmental) function that determines value and promotes personal relationship.
FUNCTION, INFERIOR That psychological function least developed in a particular individual. It expresses itself in primitive, archaic, and affect-laden ways. The inferior function is the gateway to the collective unconscious.
FUNCTION, SUPERIOR The most highly developed and differentiated of the psychological functions in a particular individual.
FUNCTIONS, PSYCHOLOGICAL There are four modes of psychic adaptation according to Jung: thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition (q.v.).
IDENTIFICATION Believing oneself to be the same as another person or as an archetypal entity. The process occurs unconsciously, thus differing from imitation, and hinders the awareness of one’s true individuality. When the identification is with an archetypal image, inflation (q.v.) results.
INDIVIDUATION The conscious realization and fulfillment of one’s unique being. It is associated with typical archetypal imagery and leads to the experiencing of the Self as the center of personality transcending the ego. It begins with one or more decisive experiences challenging egocentricity and producing the awareness that the ego is subordinate to a more comprehensive psychic entity.
INFLATION A psychic state characterized by an exaggerated and unreal sense of one’s own importance. It is caused by an identification of the ego with an archetypal image.
INTROVERSION A mode of psychic functioning in which interest, value, and meaning are found predominantly in the inner life of the individual. Values are determined largely by the subject’s internal reactions. Opposite of extraversion.
INTUITION One of the four psychic functions according to Jung. It is perception via the unconscious, i.e., perception of contents or conclusions whose origin is obscure.
LIBIDO The psychic energy that motivates the psyche. Interest, attention, and drive are all expressions of libido. The libido invested in a given item is indicated by the quantity of its “value-charge,” either positive or negative.
MANDALA Sanskrit, “magic circle.” In analytical psychology, an archetypal image representing the Self. The basic mandala is a circle with a square or other fourfold structure superimposed. Mandalas are found in the culture-products of all races. They seem to represent a central integrating principle that lies at the root of the psyche.
NEKYIA A term borrowed from Homer’s Odyssey signifying a descent to the Underworld; in psychological terms, an encounter with the collective unconscious.
NUMINOSUM, NUMINOUS First used by Rudolf Otto to describe the experience of the divine as awesome, terrifying, and “wholly other.” In analytical psychology, it is used to describe the ego’s experience of an archetype, especially the Self.
OBJECTIVE PSYCHE See collective unconscious.
PRIMA MATERIA An alchemical term meaning “original matter.” It is the psychological stuff that one starts with, the inflated immaturities of one’s own psyche, which contain the basic material for the realization of individuality.
PROJECTION The process whereby an unconscious quality or content of one’s own is perceived and reacted to in an outer object.
QUATERNITY The archetype of fourfoldness symbolizing wholeness. It is closely associated with representations of the Self.
SELF The central and comprehensive archetype expressing the totality of the psyche as organized around a dynamic center. It is commonly symbolized by a mandala or a paradoxical union of opposites. The Self is experienced as the objective, transpersonal center of identity that transcends the ego. Empirically it cannot be distinguished from the image of God.
SENSATION One of the four psychic functions according to Jung. It is that function that perceives and adapts to external reality via the senses.
SHADOW An unconscious part of the personality usually containing inferior characteristics and weaknesses that the individual’s self-esteem will not permit him to recognize as his own. It is the first layer of the unconscious to be encountered in psychological analysis and is personified in dreams by dark and dubious figures of the same sex as the dreamer.
SHADOW, ARCHETYPAL Refers to the experience of impersonal general weakness, inferiority, or evil that is common to humankind. It has been expressed in the figure of the devil and in the concept of humans as miserable sinners.
SYNCHRONICITY A term coined by Jung for a postulated acausal connecting principle to explain the occurrence of meaningful coincidence, i.e., whenever an inner psychic happening (dream, vision, premonition) is accompanied by a corresponding outer physical event that could not have been causally connected with the former. Most cases of extrasensory perception are considered to be examples of synchronicity.
THINKING One of the four psychic functions according to Jung. It is the rational capacity to structure and synthesize discrete data by means of categories and conceptual generalizations.
THYRSUS The fennel stalk, wound with ivy, used as a staff in the rites of Dionysus.
UNCONSCIOUS, THE That portion of the psyche which is outside conscious awareness. The unconscious expresses itself in dreams, phantasies, obsessive preoccupations, slips of the tongue, and accidents of all kinds. Jung distinguishes two layers of the unconscious: the personal unconscious derived from the personal experience of the individual, and the collective unconscious containing the universal patterns and images called archetypes which are shared by all humans.
UROBOROS The original psychic state of wholeness, seen in earliest infancy, prior to the birth of ego consciousness. It is symbolized by the circular image of the tail-eating serpent.
WHOLENESS A condition in which the differing—and often opposing—parts of the personality, including consciousness and the unconscious, are brought into a vital unity. Jung emphasizes a distinction between wholeness and perfection.