THE DIAGRAM DISCUSSED last time has prompted so many questions that I have decided to illustrate how it works with further examples.
Let as have a look at the average curve of the “normal” person. You would be ashamed to be a normal person! Schopenhauer maintains that his egotism is so great that he would even strike dead his own brother in order to grease his boots with the latter’s fat. 359 Thus, the normal person is firstly very selfish and obstinate, and secondly primitive. It is a fact that the ancient cave men are still among us; you will meet them on the tram! Likewise, Neolithic men and pile dwellers. Today, we might call them imbeciles, and so on. It takes very little, and out comes the barbarian in us again. At least 70, if not 80 percent of the population still belong to the Middle Ages, so that in fact very few people are truly adjusted to the year 1934. And of these few, most have forgotten what lies behind them: that is, they have forgotten their shadow, which they carry through life behind their well-adjusted personae or roles. So the highest point of the curve lies in I. Normal man lives there with his body, which is an animal.
We can also assume that Right II, that is, subjectivism, assumes a high position, for the average person is extremely subjective.
In Right III, personalism, we find submission or obedience to an authority, perhaps to the Führer. 360 Here the curve falls off somewhat, but in recent times an intensifying seems to have occurred.
In Right IV, the realm of objective ideas, the curve falls off, and consciousness has almost completely vanished; it is difficult indeed to be objective. Ideas presuppose an independence of mind and self-discipline, something that only very few people possess.
Right V is indeed very weak.
On the left side, in Section I, we find a dim idea of the dark things, but not much, then the curve sinks, consciousness extends no further, and nothing at all happens any longer.
This curve simply shows the profile of the average person, but it tells us nothing about the type. The field of the extravert lies more to the right, and that of the introvert more to the left. The latter is more conscious of his shadow, and accordingly feels somewhat inferior. He cannot meet reality directly, but has to meditate over it first. By this mechanism he avoids many pitfalls, but he also misses a great many opportunities. The extravert, on the contrary, blunders from sheer ignorance of his shadow, and is sorely handicapped when he is driven to discover his inner world.
The curve of the normal person, however, changes with the times, as collective consciousness may move to the right. With the rise of certain religious movements, when general consciousness soars, the curve can reach Right V. To cite an historical example, I refer to the wave of ecstasy that swept over the ancient world with the rise of Islam. The fanatical crying of “il Allah” is an ecstatic clamoring, which pulls man out of his instinctual, animal-like condition. In times that are more introverted, consciousness shifts more to the left, as illustrated, for example, by an interest in psychology. Such an interest shows that people have begun to become troubled in this direction (Left III), and therefore they wish to know more about this.
Now to the curve of a medieval man, Nicholas of Flüe or Brother Klaus. 361 His curve starts very high in Right V. In contrast to modern man, the life of this mystic revolved around religion, which to him was a powerful reality. He was governed by a central experience, by a spiritual power. For him, this is a conscious motif, not an illusion, but quite simply a fact. When I treat such a person, I must accept him as he is, and not as I believe he ought to be. If he were egotistical, then he would certainly suppress his egotism. If I tried to explain to him that he belonged in sphere I, he would believe that I am a representative of the devil. Apart from that, Brother Klaus would of course never have consulted me for treatment in any case!
The curve falls off slightly at Right IV. Ideas played no great role in his case; he was not an educated man.
In Right III the curve sinks altogether, indicating a remarkable drive toward independence. He even left his family, and also did not shy away from pulling the highly commendable representatives of the confederate cantons by their ears at the Diet of Stans. 362
Right I and II are practically obliterated, as was his intention and purpose.
The dark left side does not exist for him. He went his own way, unburdened by psychological problems and without pondering their background. In Left V, however, he had a powerful experience of an inner and unorthodox nature: a vision of the Holy Trinity. This left a lifelong mark on him. In the vision, a powerful face full of wrath appeared to him in a powerful apparition of light. The vision profoundly frightened Brother Klaus, and this fright impressed itself so distinctly on his face that people began to avoid him, growing frightened of him in turn. He then sought to come to terms with these experiences in a small book, and the result of his endeavors can be seen at Stans church: a painting of the vision of the Holy Trinity. He called it a vision of the Trinity, because he tried to regard it as a vision of God, so that he could bring it in line with his orthodox faith in Right V. But the terrifying, grimacing face that had appeared to him was in reality that of a deus absconditus. 363
We will fly high this time and speak of Goethe. In his case, we are at a loss. With Faust, we want to exclaim, “How can I grasp you, boundless Nature?” 364 Here one actually does not know where to set the highest point. His light has shone on the whole orbis terrarum. In Right V, for him the face of God is revealed in nature. 365 In Left V, he fades away into an utterly unorthodox and highly original vision at the end of Faust. Those who think that Goethe was merely fabulating are completely off the track. He crossed the threshold in the “Dedication”: “Again you come, you hovering figures.” 366 Here we are in the shadow land. Seldom has anyone fathomed nature so well, and seldom has anyone seen so much of the dark world as he did. On the other hand, he could feel as happy as a pig in mud and yet suffer like a dog at the same time! 367 Thus, we can safely assume that he was also at ease in sphere I. Nothing human was strange to him: Nihil humanum [ei] alienum erat. 368
So we might have to draw a straight line in his case. Whether this holds really true for His Excellency, Privy Councilor Goethe, I do not know, but he was doubtless an unusually universal man. And should you take the trouble to venture into your copy of Faust on a Sunday you will discover Goethe’s polar tension: “One impulse art thou conscious of, at best”—this is Right V—and: “O, never seek to know the other!”—Left V. 369
Before I discuss the final curve, Nietzsche’s, I should perhaps mention that such curves do not always remain valid for a person’s whole life. Consciousness wanders either to the right or to the left side. Thus, it would be impossible to see Nietzsche’s case as static; he is one the move. We can distinguish three phases: First, he was a man of intense spirituality and powerful ideas, so his curve reaches a highpoint in Right IV and V.
Second, a neurotic disposition begins to emerge, with its highpoint in I. This is shown by the fact that his subject and his subjectivity, though only slight at the beginning, become ever more pronounced. This is observable already at Right III and Right II through the strong emergence of the I. His subject emerges ever more prominently: subjectivism. Left II is also very pronounced. His neurosis tended to elevate the curve further and further, even in a peculiar tendency toward a psychology of complexes. Nietzsche was thus a precursor of analytical psychology, since he was very much preoccupied with complexes. We find nothing at all in Left III.
It is not until Left IV that again a sudden increase occurs. A highpoint is reached at Left IV und V. Coming from the side of medieval man, he reached, passing through an incredible phase of conflict, the side of modern man, in which process a tremendous Dionysian experience occurred in V: “I, the last disciple and initiate of the God Dionysos.” 370 Had he been static, this would have led to somnambulism, to an eclipse of consciousness. Instead he had his Dionysian experience, an unorthodox, authochthonous experience, which then also became efficacious in the figure of Zarathustra. “Then one turned to two, and Zarathustra passed me by.” 371 Nietzsche is not playing some literary trick here. Someone did confront him, and he did experience him.
What we have here is a tremendous tension between the two poles. To say it with a simile: looking from the right side we see a house from the outside, and looking from the left side we see the same house from within. The same holds true for persons; there is an incredible discrepancy between how they look from the outside and from the inside, and it is a veritable art to guess from the outside how it looks from within. Many highly interesting stories could be told about this, but unfortunately a lack of time prevents me from doing so now.
Let us return once again to the original diagram on which the last eight charts were based. That scale is best imagined spatially, as a plain on which circles are drawn for the sections. Now put yourself into the center of these circles, thus defining back, front, right, and left. Imagine that the air is very thick, foggy, so that you cannot see very far. Visibility ends at a certain point, and you must now advance to see what lies there.
Throughout, the center remains the fixed or starting point, that is, the primitive consciousness of one’s own body, and of one’s instinctiveness. Thereafter comes the second sphere on the right side, in which we are still under the spell of our own subjectivity. In III, we encounter people who are different from us, and who might make a deep impression on us, and to whom we might feel inferior or superior. Then comes a region, IV, where people become what they represent and become somehow elevated to a more or less superhuman level by their functions. Somebody is then no longer Mr. Jones, for example, but has become General Jones.
We find the same situation on the left side. We encounter the great difficulty, however, that our contemporary consciousness is oriented one-sidedly, that is, to the right side. Too few people are conscious of the left side, because for most this is unchartered territory. It is as if we believed that only Europe existed. Now imagine a visitor from the United States, who tells us about the country and its customs, about New York and its skyscrapers: we would either believe that he had been dreaming or was simply telling an amusing story—or even that he was mad.
It is extremely rare that someone is willing to abandon the present position of his consciousness. Once consciousness has claimed a certain resting point, it can barely be removed from its place. It creates convictions, and people get so stuck in them that anything different is just seen as bad. Therefore there is always mass murder when a new idea comes into the world.
When someone reaches his highpoint in Right III, that is, where humanity is still regarded as a gathering of more or less distinct individuals with whom I have dealings, then he will be inclined to assume that this is the way of the world, and that nothing else exists. Or if I stand close to the center, in I or II, I will be so convinced of my reality that no other argument can top my experience of, for instance, “This hurts!” and nothing else will reach me. The sun is shining outside, the birds are singing, and it is a wonderful world—but, alas, “I have a headache!” Or someone is so fascinated by his own ideas that everything that does not fit into this particular world is taken to be inferior, or has even been especially invented by the devil to torment the good; and everything else will be exterminated with fire and sword. Or if someone is complex-ridden, then he will perceive also others colored in this way.
Such viewpoints set in stone enormously exacerbate matters. Whoever stands at the far right and beholds the entire world on his left will think it a sorry mistake. A lieutenant colonel in the medical corps once said to me: “All psychoanalysts should have their skulls cracked!” If someone comes with a new idea, he must fear catastrophic consequences and the cracking of his skull. Hence all the difficulties at psychological congresses—precisely on account of such immovable viewpoints. It really requires a catastrophe or a severe neurosis to dislocate people.
When one studies such a person, however, it becomes apparent that viewed from his own standpoint he is in his right. He sits on his throne, and chooses not to step down from it until it collapses. Generally, this is experienced as a catastrophe. Every point of view has an inner logic, and is a reality. What we can do is to persuade the other, with more or less cunning, to descend from his throne and to view the world from that small hill over there for a change. We must be able to abandon our point of view, make a sacrificium intellectus, 372 and also a sacrifice of our morals, of our notion of right and wrong, since there is a consensus that the “other” exists, too. All those countries that we have not yet discovered exist, even though we have not discovered them!
An intuitive type, it is true, sees dozens of possibilities in other spheres, but he does not actually go there to experience them. For example, he sees a person living in Right IV as he appears to him from his vantage point in Left III. Consequently, the intuitive may see a great deal of which the man in Right IV is not aware, but what the intuitive says is unintelligible to the other man [in Right IV] because he does not know that Left III exists at all. As America existed before it was discovered, so it is with the dark areas of the human soul. They are forever present and at work; it is merely a question of whether we notice this. There are a great number of “protective” mechanisms that prevent us from noticing our dark side. But others may have noticed it. People sometimes move over to another point of view for a short time and then slip back to their former little hill. If you suggest, ”But you said you saw such and such,” they reply, “Did I say such a thing? . . . I have forgotten . . . how strange!” It is as if you had made a faux pas.
Continuous progression in this circle marks a development of the range of consciousness. It constitutes a shifting of viewpoint, which as such is closely associated with the maturing of the personality. We do not know why consciousness moves sometimes to the right or to the left. It does not do so in all cases. Mrs. Hauffe, for instance, had remained on the same side since she had been a child; it was her congenital temperament. There are dispositions that a priori localize consciousness, like a magnet. Sometimes it is a matter of blows of fate, such as great catastrophes or major disappointments, of which the legends of the saints provide some excellent examples.
One question, then, would be whether Mrs. Hauffe, whose relationship with the left pole was particularly close, had also contact with the right pole? Whether a mysterious connection exists between the two poles must be answered in the affirmative. It is as if we were looking at the house at the same time from within and from without. That a person might be able realize both poles, however, might be possible in theory, but I would doubt very much whether it is possible in practice. As we have seen in Nietzsche’s case, for instance, this is a painful transition from one side to the other. The poles exert an overwhelming pull, so that it is impossible to be situated at both poles simultaneously. You are either inside the house, or outside.
As to the practical use of the diagram to classify writers, and so forth, this is certainly possible, but only in those cases that have been subjected to a very thorough psychological study. Above all, we must know what these individuals are conscious of and what they are not. We must not mess around with this diagram!
Well, after having impressed you with this description of the powerful tension in the human soul, one could almost believe that I believe in a secret dualism, as if souls were stretched between two relentless poles that are never able to come together. This is the case, true, and yet it also is not; for where there is a separating force, a unifying one will arise. Now this diagram refers exclusively to the shifts of consciousness, to its localization. But this does not tell us anything about the quality of the personality that is the bearer of this consciousness.
The case of Hélène Smith would provide some clues, with the help of which I could have explained to you how consciousness can alter without changing its location as it were. It is as if amid the polar tension a new consciousness suddenly emerges at the center from this animalistic I, which, as it were, unfolds in cycles, and develops into a different kind of consciousness. We call this characteristic function, which occurs naturally in every polar tension and seeks to unite the opposites of our nature, the transcendent function. 373
359. Trying to find a “very emphatic hyperbole” for the magnitude of man’s egotism, Schopenhauer came up with the following: “Many a man would be quite capable of killing another, simply to rub his boots over with the victim’s fat” [mancher Mensch wäre im Stande, einen andern todtzuschlagen, bloß um mit dessen Fette sich die Stiefel zu schmieren]; not without adding, however: “I am only doubtful whether this, after all, is really a hyperbole” [Aber dabei blieb mir doch der Skrupel, ob es auch wirklich eine Hyperbel sei] (1840 [1903], p. 154; 1840 [1977], p. 238).
360. Jung is recorded as having spoken of the “Führer,” not a Führer (= leader). Hitler had been appointed chancellor the year before (30 January 1933).
361. Nicholas of Flüe, or Brother Klaus (1417–1487), Swiss hermit, ascetic, and visionary; canonized and declared patron saint of Switzerland by Pope Pius XII in 1947. Cf. Niklaus von Flüe, 1587. The year before, Jung had published a short treatise on him and his “so-called Trinity Vision, which was of the greatest significance for the hermit’s inner life” (1933, § 477).
362. In 1467, he left his wife and his ten children to lead the life of a hermit. He later returned, however, and took residence in a hermitage near his old house. At the Diet of Stans in 1481, a severe controversy arose between the five rural and the three urban cantons, which threatened to disrupt the confederation, whereupon Niklaus von Flüe, who was also a military man, was asked to mediate. On his advice, all eight cantons reached an understanding that they were to make no separate alliances of their own without the approval of a majority among the eight, which resulted in a crucial strengthening of the federal union.
363. Latin, hidden God, the God unknowable by the human mind, as opposed to deus revelatus, the revealed God; after Isaiah 45, 15: “Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour.” This is a concept that played an important role in the thinking of Nikolaus von Kues, John Calvin, and Martin Luther; Jung, too, repeatedly referred to it.
364. Wo fass’ ich dich, unendliche Natur? (Goethe, Faust I, line 455)
365. As in the Prologue in Heaven (ibid.).
366. Ihr naht euch wieder, schwankende Gestalten (ibid., the opening line of the play). In Goethe’s writings, schwankend (literally shaking, unsteady, wavering) describes a figure that has not yet assumed a definite form (editorial note in Goethe, 1996, p. 505).
367. MS: dass es einem so sauwohl und so sauwehe zugleich sein könne. Probably an allusion to Goethe’s entry in his Swiss diary of summer, 1775: Dass es der Erde so sauwohl und so weh ist zugleich! [That earth should feel so happy as a pig in mud and so wretched at one and the same moment!] Cf. also Faust: “We feel so bloody jolly, just like five hundred hogs!” [Uns ist ganz kannibalisch wohl, / Als wie fünfhundert Säuen!] (lines 2293–2294).
368. Latin, nothing that is human was alien (to him). A variation of Terence’s (195/185–159 BCE) dictum: Humani nihil a me alienum puto (in Heauton Timorumenos) (often also quoted as nihil humanum mihi alienum [esse] puto).
369. Faust’s disciple Wagner sings the praises of book learning, to which Faust replies: “One instinct are you conscious of, at best; Oh, never should you know the other! Two souls, alas, reside within my breast, And the one wants to separate from the other” [Du bist dir nur des einen Triebs bewusst; / O lerne nie den andern kennen! / Zwei Seelen wohnen ach in meiner Brust, / Die eine will sich von der andern trennen] (lines 1110–1117).
370. [I]ch, der letzte Jünger und Eingeweihte des Gottes Dionysos (Nietzsche, 1886, p. 238).
371. Nietzsche described the appearance of Zarathustra in a little poem, written in Sils-Maria in the Engadine: “I sat here, waiting, waiting, but for nothing; beyond good and evil, savoring now the light, and now the shade; it was all game, all lake, all midday, it was just time without a goal. Then suddenly, dear friend!, one turned to two, and Zarathustra passed me by” [Hier sass ich, wartend, wartend,—doch auf Nichts, / Jenseits von Gut und Böse, bald des Lichts / Geniessend, bald des Schattens, ganz nur Spiel, / Ganz See, ganz Mittag, ganz Zeit ohne Ziel. // Da, plötzlich, Freundin! wurde Eins zu Zwei—/ Und Zarathustra gieng an mir vorbei . . .] (in Nietzsche, 1882, appendix; KSA 3, p. 649). Cf. Jung, 1988 [1934–1839], p. 744; 2014 [1936–1941], pp. 174–175; and 1934b, §§ 77–78, where he also quotes the last lines and again stresses: “Zarathustra is more for Nietzsche than a poetic figure; he is an involuntary confession, a testament.”
372. Latin, sacrifice of the intellect; the third sacrifice demanded by the founder of the Jesuits, St. Ignatius Loyola.