JUNG LEXICON
A Primer of Terms & Concepts
DARYL SHARP
Copyright ©1991 Daryl Sharp
All rights reserved.
Preface
C. G. Jung died in 1961, without ever having presented a systematic summary
of his psychology. For the past thirty years his ideas have been explained,
explored and amplified by thousands of others, with varying results.
Jung Lexicon takes the reader to the source. It was designed for
those seeking an understanding of relevant terms and concepts as they
were used by Jung himself. There are choice extracts from Jung's Collected
Works, but no references to other writers.
Jung Lexicon is not a critique or a defence of Jung's thoughts,
but a guide to its richness and an illustration of the broad scope and
interrelationship of his interests.
Informed by a close reading of Jung's major writings, Jung Lexicon
contains a comprehensive overview of the basic principles of Jungian psychology.
The implications and practical application of Jung's ideas are well covered
by other volumes in this series.
Notes on Usage
A word that appears in bold type under a main heading directs
the reader to another entry. Activate the FIND function on your browser
to search for particular terms, themes, topics, etc. For example, with
the FIND dialogue box open, type in "dream" or "midlife" or "relationship"
and see what comes up. Or you can scroll through the Lexicon from top
to bottom and find unexpected gems.
The designation CW in the citations refers to the twenty volumes of Jung's
Collected Works. The title of the individual volumes are given
in the Bibliography.
Abaissement du niveau mental. A lowering of the
level of consciousness, a mental and emotional condition experienced as
"loss of soul." (See also depression.)
It is a slackening of the tensity of consciousness, which might
be compared to a low barometric reading, presaging bad weather. The tonus
has given way, and this is felt subjectively as listlessness, moroseness,
and depression. One no longer has any wish or courage to face the tasks
of the day. One feels like lead, because no part of one's body seems willing
to move, and this is due to the fact that one no longer has any disposable
energy. . . . The listlessness and paralysis of will can go so far that
the whole personality falls apart, so to speak, and consciousness loses
its unity . . . .
Abaissement du niveau mental can be the result of physical and
mental fatigue, bodily illness, violent emotions, and shock, of which
the last has a particularly deleterious effect on one's self-assurance.
The abaissement always has a restrictive influence on the personality
as a whole. It reduces one's self-confidence and the spirit of enterprise,
and, as a result of increasing egocentricity, narrows the mental horizon
["Concerning Rebirth," CW 9i, pars. 213f.]
Abreaction. A method of becoming conscious of repressed emotional
reactions through the retelling and reliving of a traumatic experience.
(See also cathartic method.)
After some initial interest in "trauma theory," Jung abandoned abreaction
(together with suggestion) as an effective tool in the therapy of neurosis.
I soon discovered that, though traumata of clearly aetiological
significance were occasionally present, the majority of them appeared
very improbable. Many traumata were so unimportant, even so normal, that
they could be regarded at most as a pretext for the neurosis. But what
especially aroused my criticism was the fact that not a few traumata were
simply inventions of fantasy and had never happened at all. . . . I could
no longer imagine that repeated experiences of a fantastically exaggerated
or entirely fictitious trauma had a different therapeutic value from a
suggestion procedure.[ "Some Crucial Points in Psychoanalysis,"
CW 4, par. 582.]
The belief, the self-confidence, perhaps also the devotion with which
the analyst does his work, are far more important to the patient (imponderabilia
though they may be), than the rehearsing of old traumata.[Ibid.,
par. 584.]
Abstraction. A form of mental activity by which a conscious content
is freed from its association with irrelevant elements, similar to the process
of differentiation. (Compare empathy.)
Abstraction is an activity pertaining to the psychological functions
in general. There is an abstract thinking, just as there is abstract feeling,
sensation, and intuition. Abstract thinking singles out the rational,
logical qualities of a given content from its intellectually irrelevant
components. Abstract feeling does the same with a content characterized
by its feeling-values . . . . Abstract sensation would be aesthetic as
opposed to sensuous sensation, and abstract intuition would be symbolic
as opposed to fantastic intuition.["Definitions," CW 6,
par. 678.]
Jung related abstraction to introversion (analogous to empathy and extraversion).
I visualize the process of abstraction as a withdrawal of libido
from the object, as a backflow of value from the object into a subjective,
abstract content. For me, therefore, abstraction amounts to an energic
devaluation of the object. In other words, abstraction is an introverting
movement of libido.[Ibid., par. 679.]
To the extent that its purpose is to break the object's hold on the subject,
abstraction is an attempt to rise above the primitive state of participation
mystique.
Active imagination. A method of assimilating unconscious contents
(dreams, fantasies, etc.) through some form of self-expression. (See also
transcendent function.)
The object of active imagination is to give a voice to sides of the personality
(particularly the anima/animus and the shadow) that are normally not heard,
thereby establishing a line of communication between consciousness and
the unconscious. Even when the end products-drawing, painting, writing,
sculpture, dance, music, etc.-are not interpreted, something goes on between
creator and creation that contributes to a transformation of consciousness.
The first stage of active imagination is like dreaming with open eyes.
It can take place spontaneously or be artificially induced.
In the latter case you choose a dream, or some other fantasy-image,
and concentrate on it by simply catching hold of it and looking at it.
You can also use a bad mood as a starting-point, and then try to find
out what sort of fantasy-image it will produce, or what image expresses
this mood. You then fix this image in the mind by concentrating your attention.
Usually it will alter, as the mere fact of contemplating it animates it.
The alterations must be carefully noted down all the time, for they reflect
the psychic processes in the unconscious background, which appear in the
form of images consisting of conscious memory material. In this way conscious
and unconscious are united, just as a waterfall connects above and below.[The
Conjunction," CW 14, par. 706.]
The second stage, beyond simply observing the images, involves a conscious
participation in them, the honest evaluation of what they mean about oneself,
and a morally and intellectually binding commitment to act on the insights.
This is a transition from a merely perceptive or aesthetic attitude to one
of judgment.
Although, to a certain extent, he looks on from outside, impartially,
he is also an acting and suffering figure in the drama of the psyche.
This recognition is absolutely necessary and marks an important advance.
So long as he simply looks at the pictures he is like the foolish Parsifal,
who forgot to ask the vital question because he was not aware of his own
participation in the action.[An allusion to the medieval Grail legend.
The question Parsifal failed to ask was, "Whom does the Grail serve?"
]. . . But if you recognize your own involvement you yourself must
enter into the process with your personal reactions, just as if you were
one of the fantasy figures, or rather, as if the drama being enacted before
your eyes were real.["The Conjunction," CW 14, par. 753.]
The judging attitude implies a voluntary involvement in those fantasy-processes
which compensate the individual and-in particular-the collective situation
of consciousness. The avowed purpose of this involvement is to integrate
the statements of the unconscious, to assimilate their compensatory
content, and thereby produce a whole meaning which alone makes life
worth living and, for not a few people, possible at all. [
Ibid., par. 756.]
Adaptation. The process of coming to terms with the external world,
on the one hand, and with one's own unique psychological characteristics
on the other. (See also neurosis.)
Before [individuation] can be taken as a goal, the educational
aim of adaptation to the necessary minimum of collective norms must first
be attained. If a plant is to unfold its specific nature to the full,
it must first be able to grow in the soil in which it is planted.["Definitions,"
CW 6, par. 761.]
The constant flow of life again and again demands fresh adaptation.
Adaptation is never achieved once and for all.["The Transcendent
Function," CW 8, par. 143.]
Man is not a machine in the sense that he can consistently maintain
the same output of work. He can meet the demands of outer necessity
in an ideal way only if he is also adapted to his own inner world, that
is, if he is in harmony with himself. Conversely, he can only adapt
to his inner world and achieve harmony with himself when he is adapted
to the environmental conditions.["On Psychic Energy,"
ibid., par. 75.]
The transition from child to adult initially entails an increasing adaptation
to the outer world. When the libido meets an obstacle to progression, there
is an accumulation of energy that normally gives rise to increased efforts
to overcome the obstacle. But if the obstacle proves insurmountable, the
stored-up energy regresses to an earlier mode of adaptation. This in turn
activates infantile fantasies and wishes, and necessitates the need to adapt
to the inner world.
The best examples of such regressions are found in hysterical
cases where a disappointment in love or marriage has precipitated a neurosis.
There we find those well-known digestive disorders, loss of appetite,
dyspeptic symptoms of all sorts, etc. . . . [typically accompanied by]
a regressive revival of reminiscences from the distant past. We then find
a reactivation of the parental imagos, of the Oedipus complex. Here the
events of early infancy-never before important-suddenly become so. They
have been regressively reactivated. Remove the obstacle from the path
of life and this whole system of infantile fantasies at once breaks down
and becomes as inactive and ineffective as before.["Psychoanalysis
and Neurosis," CW4, par. 569.]
In his model of typology, Jung described two substantially different modes
of adaptation, introversion and extraversion. He also link-ed failures in
adaptation to the outbreak of neurosis.
The psychological trouble in neurosis, and the neurosis itself,
can be formulated as an act of adaptation that has failed.[
Ibid., par. 574 (italics in original).]
Affect. Emotional reactions marked by physical symptoms and disturbances
in thinking. (See also complex and feeling.)
Affect is invariably a sign that a complex has been activated.
Affects occur usually where adaptation is weakest, and at the
same time they reveal the reason for its weakness, namely a certain degree
of inferiority and the existence of a lower level of personality. On this
lower level with its uncontrolled or scarcely controlled emotions one
. . . [is] singularly incapable of moral judgment.[The Shadow,"
Aion, CW 9ii, par. 15.]
Ambivalence. A state of mind where every attitude or anticipated
course of action is counterbalanced by its opposite. (See also conflict
and opposites.)
Ambivalence is associated in general with the influence of unconscious
complexes, and in particular with the psychological functions when they
have not been differentiated.
Amplification. A method of association based on the comparative
study of mythology, religion and fairy tales, used in the interpretation
of images in dreams and drawings.
Analysis, Jungian. A form of therapy specializing in neurosis,
aimed at bringing unconscious contents to consciousness; also called analytic
therapy, based on the school of thought developed by C.G. Jung called
analytical (or complex) psychology.
[Analysis] is only a means for removing the stones from the
path of development, and not a method . . . of putting things into the
patient that were not there before. It is better to renounce any attempt
to give direction, and simply try to throw into relief everything that
the analysis brings to light, so that the patient can see it clearly and
be able to draw suitable conclusions. Anything he has not acquired himself
he will not believe in the long run, and what he takes over from authority
merely keeps him infantile. He should rather be put in a position to take
his own life in hand. The art of analysis lies in following the patient
on all his erring ways and so gathering his strayed sheep together.[Some
Crucial Points in Psychoanalysis," CW 4, par. 643.]
There is a widespread prejudice that analysis is something like a "cure,"
to which one submits for a time and is then discharged healed. That
is a layman's error left over from the early days of psychoanalysis.
Analytical treatment could be described as a readjustment of psychological
attitude achieved with the help of the doctor. . . . [But] there is
no change that is unconditionally valid over a long period of time.[The
Transcendent Function," CW 8, par. 142.]
Jung initially made a distinction between analysis of the unconscious [
Jung deliberately used this expression instead of "psychoanalysis": "I wish
to leave that term entirely to the Freudians. What they understand by psychoanalysis
is no mere technique, but a method which is dogmatically bound up with and
based upon Freud's sexual theory. When Freud publicly declared that psychoanalysis
and his sexual theory were indissolubly wedded, I was obliged to strike
out on a different path." ("Analytical Psychology and Education,"
CW 17, par. 180)] and anamnestic analysis. The latter is concerned
primarily with contents of consciousness already available or easily brought
to mind, and with supporting or strengthening the ego. The unconscious is
a factor only indirectly.
It consists in a careful anamnesis or reconstruction of the
historical development of the neurosis. The material elicited in this
way is a more or less coherent sequence of facts told to the doctor by
the patient, so far as he can remember them. He naturally omits many details
which either seem unimportant to him or which he has forgotten. The experienced
analyst who knows the usual course of neurotic development will put questions
which help the patient to fill in some of the gaps. Very often this procedure
by itself is of great therapeutic value, as it enables the patient to
understand the chief factors of his neurosis and may eventually bring
him to a decisive change of attitude.["Analytical Psychology
and Education," ibid., par. 177.]
In addition to the favourable effect produced by the realization of
previously unconscious connections, it is usual for the doctor to give
some good advice, or encouragement, or even a reproof.[
Ibid., par. 178.]
Analysis of the unconscious begins when conscious material has been exhausted
and there is still no satisfactory resolution of the neurosis; it requires
an ego strong enough to deal directly with unconscious material, particularly
dreams. Jung believed that analysis in this sense was particularly suited
to psychological problems in the second half of life, but even then he expressed
caution.
Consistent support of the conscious attitude has in itself a
high therapeutic value and not infrequently serves to bring about satisfactory
results. It would be a dangerous prejudice to imagine that analysis of
the unconscious is the one and only panacea which should therefore be
employed in every case. It is rather like a surgical operation and we
should only resort to the knife when other methods have failed. So long
as it does not obtrude itself the unconscious is best left alone.[The
Psychology of the Transference," CW 16, par. 381.]
In his analytic work, Jung shunned diagnosis and prognosis. He used no systematic
technique or method. His aim was to approach each case with a minimum of
prior assumptions, although he acknowledged that the personality and psychological
disposition of the analyst made complete objectivity impossible.
The ideal would naturally be to have no assumptions at all.
But this is impossible even if one exercises the most rigorous self-criticism,
for one is oneself the biggest of all one's assumptions, and the one with
the gravest consequences. Try as we may to have no assumptions and to
use no ready-made methods, the assumption that I myself am will determine
my method: as I am, so will I proceed. ["Appendix," ibid.,
par.543.]
Jung also insisted that those training to be analysts must have a thorough
personal analysis.
We have learned to place in the foreground the personality of
the doctor himself as a curative or harmful factor; . . . what is now
demanded is his own transformation-the self-education of the educator.
. . . The doctor can no longer evade his own difficulty by treating the
difficulties of others: the man who suffers from a running abscess is
not fit to perform a surgical operation.["Problems of Modern
Psychotherapy," ibid., par. 172.]
Anima. The inner feminine side of a man. (See also animus,
Eros, Logos and soul-image.)
The anima is both a personal complex and an archetypal image of woman in
the male psyche. It is an unconscious factor incarnated anew in every male
child, and is responsible for the mechanism of projection. Initially identified
with the personal mother, the anima is later experienced not only in other
women but as a pervasive influence in a man's life.
The anima is the archetype of life itself.["Archetypes
of the Collective Unconscious," CW 9i, par. 66.]
There is [in man] an imago not only of the mother but of the daughter,
the sister, the beloved, the heavenly goddess, and the chthonic Baubo.
Every mother and every beloved is forced to become the carrier and embodiment
of this omnipresent and ageless image, which corresponds to the deepest
reality in a man. It belongs to him, this perilous image of Woman; she
stands for the loyalty which in the interests of life he must sometimes
forego; she is the much needed compensation for the risks, struggles,
sacrifices that all end in disappointment; she is the solace for all
the bitterness of life. And, at the same time, she is the great illusionist,
the seductress, who draws him into life with her Maya-and not only into
life's reasonable and useful aspects, but into its frightful paradoxes
and ambivalences where good and evil, success and ruin, hope and despair,
counterbalance one another. Because she is his greatest danger she demands
from a man his greatest, and if he has it in him she will receive it.[The
Syzygy: Anima and Animus," CW 9ii, par. 24]
The anima is personified in dreams by images of women ranging from seductress
to spiritual guide. It is associated with the eros principle, hence a man's
anima development is reflected in how he relates to women. Within his own
psyche, the anima functions as his soul, influencing his ideas, attitudes
and emotions.
The anima is not the soul in the dogmatic sense, not an anima
rationalis, which is a philosophical conception, but a natural archetype
that satisfactorily sums up all the statements of the unconscious, of
the primitive mind, of the history of language and religion. . . . It
is always the a priori element in [a man's] moods, reactions, impulses,
and whatever else is spontaneous in psychic life.["Archetypes
of the Collective Unconscious," CW 9i, par. 57.]
The anima . . . . intensifies, exaggerates, falsifies, and mythologizes
all emotional relations with his work and with other people of both
sexes. The resultant fantasies and entanglements are all her doing.
When the anima is strongly constellated, she softens the man's character
and makes him touchy, irritable, moody, jealous, vain, and unadjusted.["Concerning
the Archetypes and the Anima Concept,"[ ibid., par. 144.]
As an inner personality, the anima is complementary to the persona and stands
in a compensatory relationship to it.
The persona, the ideal picture of a man as he should be, is
inwardly compensated by feminine weakness, and as the individual outwardly
plays the strong man, so he becomes inwardly a woman, i.e., the anima,
for it is the anima that reacts to the persona. But because the inner
world is dark and invisible . . . and because a man is all the less capable
of conceiving his weaknesses the more he is identified with the persona,
the persona's counterpart, the anima, remains completely in the dark and
is at once projected, so that our hero comes under the heel of his wife's
slipper.["Anima and Animus," CW 7, par. 309.]
Hence the character of the anima can generally be deduced from that of the
persona; all those qualities absent from the outer attitude will be found
in the inner.
The tyrant tormented by bad dreams, gloomy forebodings, and
inner fears is a typical figure. Outwardly ruthless, harsh, and unapproachable,
he jumps inwardly at every shadow, is at the mercy of every mood, as though
he were the feeblest and most impressionable of men. Thus his anima contains
all those fallible human qualities his persona lacks. If the persona is
intellectual, the anima will certainly be sentimental.["Definitions,"
CW 6, par. 804.]
Similarly, where a man identifies with the persona, he is in effect possessed
by the anima, with attendant symptoms.
Identity with the persona automatically leads to an unconscious
identity with the anima because, when the ego is not differentiated from
the persona, it can have no conscious relation to the unconscious processes.
Consequently it is these processes, it is identical with them. Anyone
who is himself his outward role will infallibly succumb to the inner processes;
he will either frustrate his outward role by absolute inner necessity
or else reduce it to absurdity, by a process of enantiodromia. He can
no longer keep to his individual way, and his life runs into one deadlock
after another. Moreover, the anima is inevitably projected upon a real
object, with which he gets into a relation of almost total dependence.[Ibid.,
par. 807.]
Jung distinguished four broad stages of the anima, analogous to levels of
the Eros cult described in the late classical period. He personified them
as Eve, Helen, Mary and Sophia.["The Psychology of the Transference,"
CW 16, par. 361. ]
In the first stage, Eve, the anima is indistinguishable from the personal
mother. The man cannot function well without a close tie to a woman. In
the second stage, personified in the historical figure of Helen of Troy,
the anima is a collective and ideal sexual image ("All is dross that is
not Helen"-Marlowe). The third stage, Mary, manifests in religious feelings
and a capacity for lasting relationships. In the fourth stage, as Sophia
(called Wisdom in the Bible), a man's anima functions as a guide to the
inner life, mediating to consciousness the contents of the unconscious.
She cooperates in the search for meaning and is the creative muse in an
artist's life.
Ideally, a man's anima proceeds naturally through these stages as he
grows older. In fact, as an archetypal life force, the anima manifests
in whatever shape or form is necessary to compensate the dominant conscious
attitude.
So long as the anima is unconscious, everything she stands for is projected.
Most commonly, because of the initially close tie between the anima and
the protective mother-imago, this projection falls on the partner, with
predictable results.
[A man's] ideal of marriage is so arranged that his wife has
to take over the magical role of the mother. Under the cloak of the ideally
exclusive marriage he is really seeking his mother's protection, and thus
he plays into the hands of his wife's possessive instincts. His fear of
the dark incalculable power of the unconscious gives his wife an illegitimate
authority over him, and forges such a dangerously close union that the
marriage is permanently on the brink of explosion from internal tension.["Anima
and Animus," CW 7, par. 316.]
No matter where a man is in terms of psychological development, he is always
prone to see aspects of his anima, his soul, in an actual woman. The same
is true of the animus. Their personal aspects may be integrated and their
significance understood, but their essential nature cannot be exhausted.
Though the effects of anima and animus can be made conscious,
they themselves are factors transcending consciousness and beyond the
reach of perception and volition. Hence they remain autonomous despite
the integration of their contents, and for this reason they should be
borne constantly in mind.[The Syzygy: Anima and Animus,"
CW 9ii, par. 40.]
The psychological priority in the first half of life is for a man to free
himself from the anima fascination of the mother. In later life, the lack
of a conscious relationship with the anima is attended by symptoms characteristic
of "loss of soul."
Younger people . . . can bear even the total loss of the anima
without injury. The important thing at this stage is for a man to be a
man. . . . After the middle of life, however, permanent loss of the anima
means a diminution of vitality, of flexibility, and of human kindness.
The result, as a rule, is premature rigidity, crustiness, stereotypy,
fanatical one-sidedness, obstinacy, pedantry, or else resignation, weariness,
sloppiness, irresponsibility, and finally a childish ramollissement
[petulance] with a tendency to alcohol.["Concerning the
Archetypes and the Anima Concept," CW 9i, par. 146f.]
One way for a man to become familiar with the nature of his anima is through
the method of active imagination. This is done by personifying her as an
autonomous personality, asking her questions and attending to the response.
I mean this as an actual technique. . . . The art of it consists
only in allowing our invisible partner to make herself heard, in putting
the mechanism of expression momentarily at her disposal, without being
overcome by the distaste one naturally feels at playing such an apparently
ludicrous game with oneself, or by doubts as to the genuineness of the
voice of one's interlocutor.["Anima and Animus," CW 7, pars.
323f.]
Jung suggested that if the encounter with the shadow is the "apprentice-piece"
in a man's development, then coming to terms with the anima is the "master-piece."["Archetypes
of the Collective Unconscious," CW 9i, par. 61.] The goal is her
transformation from a troublesome adversary into a function of relationship
between consciousness and the unconscious. Jung called this "the conquest
of the anima as an autonomous complex."
With the attainment of this goal it becomes possible to disengage
the ego from all its entanglements with collectivity and the collective
unconscious. Through this process the anima forfeits the daemonic power
of an autonomous complex; she can no longer exercise the power of possession,
since she is depotentiated. She is no longer the guardian of treasures
unknown; no longer Kundry, daemonic Messenger of the Grail, half divine
and half animal; no longer is the soul to be called "Mistress," but a
psychological function of an intuitive nature, akin to what the primitives
mean when they say, "He has gone into the forest to talk with the spirits"
or "My snake spoke with me" or, in the mythological language of infancy,
"A little bird told me."[The Mana-Personality," CW 7, par.
374.]
Animus. The inner masculine side of a woman. (See also anima,
Eros, Logos and soul-image.)
Like the anima in a man, the animus is both a personal complex and an archetypal
image.
Woman is compensated by a masculine element and therefore her
unconscious has, so to speak, a masculine imprint. This results in a considerable
psychological difference between men and women, and accordingly I have
called the projection-making factor in women the animus, which means mind
or spirit. The animus corresponds to the paternal Logos just as the anima
corresponds to the maternal Eros.[The Syzygy: Anima and
Animus," CW 9ii, pars. 28f.]
The animus is the deposit, as it were, of all woman's ancestral experiences
of man-and not only that, he is also a creative and procreative being,
not in the sense of masculine creativity, but in the sense that he brings
forth something we might call . . . the spermatic word.["Anima
and Animus," CW 7, par. 336.]
Whereas the anima in a man functions as his soul, a woman's animus is more
like an unconscious mind.[At times Jung also referred to the animus as
a woman's soul. See soul and soul-image.] It manifests
negatively in fixed ideas, collective opinions and unconscious, a priori
assumptions that lay claim to absolute truth. In a woman who is identified
with the animus (called animus-possession), Eros generally takes second
place to Logos.
A woman possessed by the animus is always in danger of losing
her femininity.[Anima and Animus," CW 7, par. 337.]
No matter how friendly and obliging a woman's Eros may be, no logic
on earth can shake her if she is ridden by the animus. . . . [A man]
is unaware that this highly dramatic situation would instantly come
to a banal and unexciting end if he were to quit the field and let a
second woman carry on the battle (his wife, for instance, if she herself
is not the fiery war horse). This sound idea seldom or never occurs
to him, because no man can converse with an animus for five minutes
without becoming the victim of his own anima.[The Syzygy:
Anima and Animus," CW 9ii, par. 29.]
The animus becomes a helpful psychological factor when a woman can tell
the difference between the ideas generated by this autonomous complex and
what she herself really thinks.
Like the anima, the animus too has a positive aspect. Through
the figure of the father he expresses not only conventional opinion but-equally-what
we call "spirit," philosophical or religious ideas in particular, or rather
the attitude resulting from them. Thus the animus is a psychopomp, a mediator
between the conscious and the unconscious and a personification of the
latter.[Ibid., par. 33.]
Jung described four stages of animus development in a woman. He first appears
in dreams and fantasy as the embodiment of physical power, an athlete, muscle
man or thug. In the second stage, the animus provides her with initiative
and the capacity for planned action. He is behind a woman's desire for independence
and a career of her own. In the next stage, the animus is the "word," often
personified in dreams as a professor or clergyman. In the fourth stage,
the animus is the incarnation of spiritual meaning. On this highest level,
like the anima as Sophia, the animus mediates between a woman's conscious
mind and the unconscious. In mythology this aspect of the animus appears
as Hermes, messenger of the gods; in dreams he is a helpful guide.
Any of these aspects of the animus can be projected onto a man. As with
the projected anima, this can lead to unrealistic expectations and acrimony
in relationships.
Like the anima, the animus is a jealous lover. He is adept at
putting, in place of the real man, an opinion about him, the exceedingly
disputable grounds for which are never submitted to criticism. Animus
opinions are invariably collective, and they override individuals and
individual judgments in exactly the same way as the anima thrusts her
emotional anticipations and projections between man and wife.["Anima
and Animus," CW 7, par. 334.]
The existence of the contrasexual complexes means that in any relationship
between a man and a woman there are at least four personalities involved.
The possible lines of communication are shown by the arrows in the diagram.[Adapted
from "The Psychology of the Transference," CW 16, par. 422.]
While a man's task in assimilating the effects of the anima involves
discovering his true feelings, a woman becomes familiar with the nature
of the animus by constantly questioning her ideas and opinions.
The technique of coming to terms with the animus is the same
in principle as in the case of the anima; only here the woman must learn
to criticize and hold her opinions at a distance; not in order to repress
them, but, by investigating their origins, to penetrate more deeply into
the background, where she will then discover the primordial images, just
as the man does in his dealings with the anima.[Anima and
Animus," CW 7, par. 336.]
Anthropos. Original or primordial man, an archetypal image of wholeness
in alchemy, religion and Gnostic philosophy.
There is in the unconscious an already existing wholeness, the
"homo totus" of the Western and the Chên-yên (true man) of
Chinese alchemy, the round primordial being who represents the greater
man within, the Anthropos, who is akin to God.[The Personification
of the Opposites," CW 14, par. 152.]
Apotropaic. Descriptive of "magical thinking," based on the desire
to depotentiate the influence of an object or person. Apotropaic actions
are characteristic of introversion as a mode of psychological orientation.
I have seen an introverted child who made his first attempts
to walk only after he had learned the names of all the objects in the
room he might touch.[Psychological Types," CW 6, par. 897.]
Apperception. A psychic process by which a new conscious content
is articulated with similar, already existing contents in such a way that
it is understood. (Compare assimilation.)
Sense-perceptions tell us that something is. But they do not
tell us what it is. This is told us not by the process of perception but
by the process of apperception, and this has a highly complex structure.
Not that sense-perception is anything simple; only, its complex nature
is not so much psychic as physiological. The complexity of apperception,
on the other hand, is psychic. [The Structure of the Psyche,"
CW 8, par. 288.]
Jung distinguishes active from passive apperception. In active
apperception, the ego grabs hold of something new and comes to grips with
it. In passive apperception, the new content forces itself upon consciousness,
either from outside (through the senses) or from within (the unconscious).
Apperception may also be either directed or undirected.
In the former case we speak of "attention," in the latter case
of "fantasy" or "dreaming." The directed processes are rational, the undirected
irrational. [Ibid., par. 294.]
Archaic. Primal or original. (See also participation mystique.)
Every civilized human being, however high his conscious development,
is still an archaic man at the deeper levels of his psyche.[Archaic
Man," CW 10, par. 105]
In anthropology, the term archaic is generally descriptive of primitive
psychology. Jung used it when referring to thoughts, fantasies and feelings
that are not consciously differentiated.
Archaism attaches primarily to the fantasies of the unconscious,
i.e., to the products of unconscious fantasy activity which reach consciousness.
An image has an archaic quality when it possesses unmistakable mythological
parallels. Archaic, too, are the associations-by-analogy of unconscious
fantasy, and so is their symbolism. The relation of identity with an object,
or participation mystique, is likewise archaic. Concretism of thought
and feeling is archaic; also compulsion and inability to control oneself
(ecstatic or trance state, possession, etc.). Fusion of the psychological
functions, of thinking with feeling, feeling with sensation, feeling with
intuition, and so on, is archaic, as is also the fusion of part of a function
with its counterpart.[Definitions," CW 6, par. 684.]
Archetype. Primordial, structural elements of the human psyche. (See
also archetypal image and instinct.)
Archetypes are systems of readiness for action, and at the same
time images and emotions. They are inherited with the brain structure-indeed
they are its psychic aspect. They represent, on the one hand, a very strong
instinctive conservatism, while on the other hand they are the most effective
means conceivable of instinctive adaptation. They are thus, essentially,
the chthonic portion of the psyche . . . that portion through which the
psyche is attached to nature.["Mind and Earth," CW 10, par.
53.]
It is not . . . a question of inherited ideas but of inherited possibilities
of ideas. Nor are they individual acquisitions but, in the main, common
to all, as can be seen from [their] universal occurrence.["Concerning
the Archetypes and the Anima Concept," CW 9i, par. 136.]
Archetypes are irrepresentable in themselves but their effects are discernible
in archetypal images and motifs.
Archetypes . . . present themselves as ideas and images, like
everything else that becomes a content of consciousness.[On
the Nature of the Psyche," CW 8, par. 435.]
Archetypes are, by definition, factors and motifs that arrange the
psychic elements into certain images, characterized as archetypal, but
in such a way that they can be recognized only from the effects they
produce.["A Psychological Approach to the Trinity," CW
11, par. 222, note 2.]
Jung also described archetypes as "instinctual images," the forms which
the instincts assume. He illustrated this using the simile of the spectrum.
The dynamism of instinct is lodged as it were in the infra-red
part of the spectrum, whereas the instinctual image lies in the ultra-violet
part. . . . The realization and assimilation of instinct never take place
at the red end, i.e., by absorption into the instinctual sphere, but only
through integration of the image which signifies and at the same time
evokes the instinct, although in a form quite different from the one we
meet on the biological level.["On the Nature of the Psyche,"
CW 8, par. 414.]
Psychologically . . . the archetype as an image of instinct
is a spiritual goal toward which the whole nature of man strives; it is
the sea to which all rivers wend their way, the prize which the hero wrests
from the fight with the dragon.[Ibid., par. 415.]
Archetypes manifest both on a personal level, through complexes, and collectively,
as characteristics of whole cultures. Jung believed it was the task of each
age to understand anew their content and their effects.
We can never legitimately cut loose from our archetypal foundations
unless we are prepared to pay the price of a neurosis, any more than we
can rid ourselves of our body and its organs without committing suicide.
If we cannot deny the archetypes or otherwise neutralize them, we are
confronted, at every new stage in the differentiation of consciousness
to which civilization attains, with the task of finding a new interpretation
appropriate to this stage, in order to connect the life of the past that
still exists in us with the life of the present, which threatens to slip
away from it.["The Psychology of the Child Archetype," CW
9i, par. 267.]
Archetypal image. The form or representation of an archetype
in consciousness. (See also collective unconscious.)
[The archetype is] a dynamism which makes itself felt in the
numinosity and fascinating power of the archetypal image.["On
the Nature of the Psyche," CW 8, par. 414.]
Archetypal images, as universal patterns or motifs which come from the collective
unconscious, are the basic content of religions, mythologies, legends and
fairy tales.
An archetypal content expresses itself, first and foremost,
in metaphors. If such a content should speak of the sun and identify with
it the lion, the king, the hoard of gold guarded by the dragon, or the
power that makes for the life and health of man, it is neither the one
thing nor the other, but the unknown third thing that finds more or less
adequate expression in all these similes, yet-to the perpetual vexation
of the intellect-remains unknown and not to be fitted into a formula.["The
Psychology of the Child Archetype," CW 9i, par. 267]
On a personal level, archetypal motifs are patterns of thought or behavior
that are common to humanity at all times and in all places.
For years I have been observing and investigating the products
of the unconscious in the widest sense of the word, namely dreams, fantasies,
visions, and delusions of the insane. I have not been able to avoid recognizing
certain regularities, that is, types. There are types of situations
and types of figures that repeat themselves frequently and have
a corresponding meaning. I therefore employ the term "motif" to designate
these repetitions. Thus there are not only typical dreams but typical
motifs in dreams. . . . [These] can be arranged under a series of archetypes,
the chief of them being . . . the shadow, the wise old man,
the child (including the child hero), the mother ("Primordial Mother"
and "Earth Mother") as a supraordinate personality ("daemonic" because
supraordinate), and her counterpart the maiden, and lastly the
anima in man and the animus in woman.["The
Psychological Aspects of the Kore," ibid., par. 309.]
Assimilation. The process of integrating outer objects (persons,
things, ideas, values) and unconscious contents into consciousness.
Assimilation is the approximation of a new content of consciousness
to already constellated subjective material . . . . Fundament-ally, [it]
is a process of apperception, but is distinguished from apperception by
this element of approximation to the subjective material. . . . I use
the term assimilation . . . as the approximation of object to subject
in general, and with it I contrast dissimilation, as the approximation
of subject to object, and a consequent alienation of the subject from
himself in favour of the object, whether it be an external object or a
"psychological" object, for instance an idea.["Definitions,"
CW 6, pars. 685f.]
Association. A spontaneous flow of interconnected thoughts and images
around a specific idea, often determined by unconscious connections. (See
also Word Association Experiment.)
Personal associations to images in dreams, together with amplification,
are an important initial step in their interpretation.
Attitude. The readiness of the psyche to act or react in a certain
way, based on an underlying psychological orientation. (See also
adaptation, type and typology.)
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,
sen-sation, and intuitive types, may be divided into two classes . . .
the rational and the irrational. . . . A further division into two classes
is permitted by the predominant trend of the movement of libido, namely
introversion and extraversion.[Ibid., par. 835.]
The whole psychology of an individual even in its most fundamental
features is oriented in accordance with his habitual attitude. . . .
[which is] a resultant of all the factors that exert a decisive influence
on the psyche, such as innate disposition, environmental influences,
experience of life, insights and convictions gained through differentiation,
collective views, etc. . . .At bottom, attitude is an individual phenomenon
that eludes scientific investigation. In actual experience, however,
certain typical attitudes can be distinguished . . . . When a function
habitually predominates, a typical attitude is produced. . . . There
is thus a typical thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuitive attitude.[Ibid.,
pars. 690f.]
Adaptation to one's environment requires an appropriate attitude. But due
to changing circumstances, no one attitude is permanently suitable. When
a particular attitude is no longer appropriate, whether to internal or external
reality, the stage is set for psychological difficulties (e.g., an outbreak
of neurosis).
For example, a feeling-attitude that seeks to fulfil the demands
of reality by means of empathy may easily encounter a situation that can
only be solved through thinking. In this case the feeling-attitude breaks
down and the progression of libido also ceases. The vital feeling that
was present before disappears, and in its place the psychic value of certain
conscious contents increases in an unpleasant way; subjective contents
and reactions press to the fore and the situation becomes full of affect
and ripe for explosions.["On Psychic Energy," CW 8, par.
61.]
The tension leads to conflict, the conflict leads to attempts at mutual
repression, and if one of the opposing forces is successfully repressed
a dissociation ensues, a splitting of the personality, or disunion with
oneself.[Ibid.]
Autonomous. Independent of the conscious will, associated in general
with the nature of the unconscious and in particular with activated complexes.
Auxiliary function. A helpful second or third function, according
to Jung's model of typology, that has a co-determining influence
on consciousness.
Absolute sovereignty always belongs, empirically, to one function
alone, and can belong only to one function, because the equally independent
intervention of another function would necessarily produce a different
orientation which, partially at least, would contradict the first. But
since it is a vital condition for the conscious process of adaptation
always to have clear and unambiguous aims, the presence of a second function
of equal power is naturally ruled out. This other function, therefore,
can have only a secondary importance. . . . Its secondary importance is
due to the fact that it is not, like the primary function . . . an absolutely
reliable and decisive factor, but comes into play more as an auxiliary
or complementary function.["General Description of the Types,"
CW 6, par. 667.]
The auxiliary function is always one whose nature differs from, but is not
antagonistic to, the superior or primary function: either of the irrational
functions (intuition and sensation) can be auxiliary to one of the rational
functions (thinking and feeling), and vice versa.
Thus thinking and intuition can readily pair, as can thinking and sensation,
since the nature of intuition and sensation is not fundamentally opposed
to the thinking function. Similarly, sensation can be bolstered by an
auxiliary function of thinking or feeling, feeling is aided by sensation
or intuition, and intuition goes well with feeling or thinking.
The resulting combinations [see figure below] present
the familiar picture of, for instance, practical thinking allied with
sensation, speculative thinking forging ahead with intuition, artistic
intuition selecting and presenting its images with the help of feeling-values,
philosophical intuition systematizing its vision into comprehensive thought
by means of a powerful intellect, and so on.[Ibid., par.
669.]
Type Combinations
Axiom of Maria. A precept in alchemy: "One becomes two, two becomes
three, and out of the third comes the one as the fourth."
Jung used the axiom of Maria as a metaphor for the whole process of individuation.
One is the original state of unconscious wholeness; two
signifies the conflict between opposites; three points to a potential
resolution; the third is the transcendent function; and the
one as the fourth is a transformed state of consciousness, relatively
whole and at peace.
Cathartic method. A confessional approach to treating neurosis,
involving the abreaction of emotions associated with a trauma.
Through confession I throw myself into the arms of humanity
again, freed at last from the burden of moral exile. The goal of the cathartic
method is full confession-not merely the intellectual recognition of the
facts with the head, but their confirmation by the heart and the actual
release of suppressed emotion.["Problems of Modern Psychotherapy,"
CW 16, par. 134.]
Jung acknowledged the therapeutic value of catharsis, but early in his career
he recognized its limitations in the process of analysis.
The new psychology would have remained at the stage of confession
had catharsis proved itself a panacea. First and foremost, however, it
is not always possible to bring the patients close enough to the unconscious
for them to perceive the shadows. . . . They have quite enough to confess
already, they say; they do not have to turn to the unconscious for that.[Ibid.,
par. 137.]
Causal. An approach to the interpretation of psychic phenomena based
on cause and effect. (See also final and reductive.)
Child. Psychologically, an image of both the irrecoverable past
and an anticipation of future development. (See also incest.)
The "child" is . . . . both beginning and end, an initial and
a terminal creature. . . . 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.["The Psychology of the Child Archetype," CW
9i, par. 299.]
Feelings of alienation or abandonment can constellate the child archetype.
The effects are two-fold: the "poor-me" syndrome characteristic of the regressive
longing for dependence, and, paradoxically, a desperate desire to be free
of the past-the positive side of the divine child archetype.
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.
In the psychology of the individual there is always, at such moments,
an agonizing situation of conflict from which there seems to be no way
out-at least for the conscious mind, since as far as this is concerned,
tertium non datur.[Ibid., par. 285.]
"Child" means something evolving towards independence. This it cannot
do without detaching itself from its origins: abandonment is therefore
a necessary condition [of consciousness], not just a concomitant symptom.[Ibid.,
par. 287.]
Circumambulation. A term used to describe the interpretation of an
image by reflecting on it from different points of view. Circumambulation
differs from free association in that it is circular, not linear. Where
free association leads away from the original image, circumambulation stays
close to it.
Collective. Psychic contents that belong not to one individual
but to a society, a people or the human race in general. (See also collective
unconscious, individuation and persona.)
The conscious personality is a more or less arbitrary segment
of the collective psyche. It consists in a sum of psychic factors that
are felt to be personal ["The Persona as a Segment of the
Collective Psyche," CW 7, par. 244.]
Identification with the collective and voluntary segregation from it
are alike synonymous with disease.[The Structure of the
Unconscious," ibid., par. 485]
A collective quality adheres not only to particular psychic elements or
contents but to whole psychological functions.
Thus the thinking function as a whole can have a collective
quality, when it possesses general validity and accords with the laws
of logic. Similarly, the feeling function as a whole can be collective,
when it is identical with the general feeling and accords with general
expectations, the general moral consciousness, etc. In the same way, sensation
and intuition are collective when they are at the same time characteristic
of a large group.["Definitions," CW 6, par. 692.]
Collective unconscious. A structural layer of the human psyche containing
inherited elements, distinct from the personal unconscious. (See
also archetype and archetypal image.)
The collective unconscious contains the whole spiritual heritage
of mankind's evolution, born anew in the brain structure of every individual.[The
Structure of the Psyche," CW 8, par. 342.]
Jung derived his theory of the collective unconscious from the ubiquity
of psychological phenomena that could not be explained on the basis of personal
experience. Unconscious fantasy activity, for instance, falls into two categories.
First, fantasies (including dreams) of a personal character,
which go back unquestionably to personal experiences, things forgotten
or repressed, and can thus be completely explained by individual anamnesis.
Second, fantasies (including dreams) of an impersonal character, which
cannot be reduced to experiences in the individual's past, and thus cannot
be explained as something individually acquired. These fantasy-images
undoubtedly have their closest analogues in mythological types. . . .
These cases are so numerous that we are obliged to assume the existence
of a collective psychic substratum. I have called this the collective
unconscious.[The Psychology of the Child Archetype,"
CW 9i, par. 262.]
The collective unconscious-so far as we can say anything about it at
all-appears to consist of mythological motifs or primordial images,
for which reason the myths of all nations are its real exponents. In
fact, the whole of mythology could be taken as a sort of projection
of the collective unconscious. . . . We can therefore study the collective
unconscious in two ways, either in mythology or in the analysis of the
individual.["The Structure of the Psyche," CW 8, par.
325.]
The more one becomes aware of the contents of the personal unconscious,
the more is revealed of the rich layer of images and motifs that comprise
the collective unconscious. This has the effect of enlarging the personality.
In this way there arises a consciousness which is no longer
imprisoned in the petty, oversensitive, personal world of the ego, but
participates freely in the wider world of objective interests. This widened
consciousness is no longer that touchy, egotistical bundle of personal
wishes, fears, hopes, and ambitions which always has to be compensated
or corrected by unconscious counter-tendencies; instead, it is a function
of relationship to the world of objects, bringing the individual into
absolute, binding, and indissoluble communion with the world at large.[The
Function of the Unconscious," CW 7, par. 275.]
Compensation. A natural process aimed at establishing or maintaining
balance within the psyche. (See also active imagination, dreams, neurosis
and self-regulation of the psyche.)
The activity of consciousness is selective. Selection demands
direction. But direction requires the exclusion of everything irrelevant.
This is bound to make the conscious orientation one-sided. The contents
that are excluded and inhibited by the chosen direction sink into the
unconscious, where they form a counterweight to the conscious orientation.
The strengthening of this counterposition keeps pace with the increase
of conscious one-sidedness until finally . . . . the repressed unconscious
contents break through in the form of dreams and spontaneous images. .
. . As a rule, the unconscious compensation does not run counter to consciousness,
but is rather a balancing or supplementing of the conscious orientation.
In dreams, for instance, the unconscious supplies all those contents that
are constellated by the conscious situation but are inhibited by conscious
selection, although a knowledge of them would be indispensable for complete
adaptation["Definitions," CW 6, par. 694.]
In neurosis, where consciousness is one-sided to an extreme, the aim of
analytic therapy is the realization and assimilation of unconscious contents
so that compensation may be reestablished. This can often be accomplished
by paying close attention to dreams, emotions and behavior patterns, and
through active imagination.
Complex. An emotionally charged group of ideas or images. (See
also Word Association Experiment.)
[A complex] is the image of a certain psychic situation
which is strongly accentuated emotionally and is, moreover, incompatible
with the habitual attitude of consciousness.["A Review of
the Complex Theory," CW 8, par. 201.]
The via regia to the unconscious . . . is not the dream, as
[Freud] thought, but the complex, which is the architect of dreams and
of symptoms. Nor is this via so very "royal," either, since the
way pointed out by the complex is more like a rough and uncommonly devious
footpath.[ Ibid., par. 210.]
Formally, complexes are "feeling-toned ideas" that over the years accumulate
around certain archetypes, for instance "mother" and "father." When complexes
are constellated, they are invariably accompanied by affect. They are always
relatively autonomous.
Complexes interfere with the intentions of the will and disturb
the conscious performance; they produce disturbances of memory and blockages
in the flow of associations; they appear and disappear according to their
own laws; they can temporarily obsess consciousness, or influence speech
and action in an unconscious way. In a word, complexes behave like independent
beings.[Psychological Factors in Human Behaviour," ibid.,
par. 253.]
Complexes are in fact "splinter psyches." The aetiology of their origin
is frequently a so-called trauma, an emotional shock or some such thing,
that splits off a bit of the psyche. Certainly one of the commonest
causes is a moral conflict, which ultimately derives from the apparent
impossibility of affirming the whole of one's nature.["A
Review of the Complex Theory," ibid., par. 204.]
Everyone knows nowadays that people "have complexes." What is not so
well known, though far more important theoretically, is that complexes
can have us.[Ibid., par. 200.]
Jung stressed that complexes in themselves are not negative; only their
effects often are. In the same way that atoms and molecules are the invisible
components of physical objects, complexes are the building blocks of the
psyche and the source of all human emotions.
Complexes are focal or nodal points of psychic life which we
would not wish to do without; indeed, they should not be missing, for
otherwise psychic activity would come to a fatal standstill.["A
Psychological Theory of Types," CW 6, par. 925.]
Complexes obviously represent a kind of inferiority in the broadest
sense . . . [but] to have complexes does not necessarily indicate inferiority.
It only means that something discordant, unassimilated, and antagonistic
exists, perhaps as an obstacle, but also as an incentive to greater
effort, and so, perhaps, to new possibilities of achievement.[Ibid.,
par. 925.]
Some degree of one-sidedness is unavoidable, and, in the same measure,
complexes are unavoidable too.["Psychological Factors
in Human Behaviour," CW 8, par. 255.]
The negative effect of a complex is commonly experienced as a distortion
in one or other of the psychological functions (feeling, thinking, intuition
and sensation). In place of sound judgment and an appropriate feeling response,
for instance, one reacts according to what the complex dictates. As long
as one is unconscious of the complexes, one is liable to be driven by them.
The possession of complexes does not in itself signify neurosis
. . . and the fact that they are painful is no proof of pathological disturbance.
Suffering is not an illness; it is the normal counterpole to happiness.
A complex becomes pathological only when we think we have not got it.[Psychotherapy
and a Philosophy of Life," CW 16, par. 179.]
Identification with a complex, particularly the anima/animus and the shadow,
is a frequent source of neurosis. The aim of analysis in such cases is not
to get rid of the complexes-as if that were possible-but to minimize their
negative effects by understanding the part they play in behavior patterns
and emotional reactions.
A complex can be really overcome only if it is lived out to
the full. In other words, if we are to develop further we have to draw
to us and drink down to the very dregs what, because of our complexes,
we have held at a distance.["Psychological Aspects of the
Mother Archetype," CW 9i, par. 184.]
Concretism. A way of thinking or feeling that is archaic and
undifferentiated, based entirely on perception through sensation. (Compare
abstraction.)
Concretism as a way of mental functioning is closely related to the more
general concept of participation mystique. Concrete thinking and
feeling are attuned to and bound by physiological stimuli and material
facts. Such an orientation is valuable in the recognition of outer reality,
but deficient in how it is interpreted.
Concretism results in a projection of . . . inner factors into
the objective data and produces an almost superstitious veneration of
mere facts.["Definitions," CW 6, par. 699.]
[Concrete thinking] has no detached independence but clings to material
phenomena. It rises at most to the level of analogy. Primitive
feeling is equally bound to material phenomena. Both of them depend
on sensation and are only slight differentiated from it. Concret-ism,
therefore, is an archaism. The magical influence of the fetish is not
experienced as a subjective state of feeling, but sensed as a magical
effect. That is concretistic feeling. The primitive does not experience
the idea of the divinity as a subjective content; for him the sacred
tree is the abode of the god, or even the god himself. That is concretistic
thinking. In civilized man, concretistic thinking consists in the inability
to conceive of anything except immediately obvious facts transmitted
by the senses, or in the inability to discriminate between subjective
feeling and the sensed object.[Ibid., par. 697.]
Conflict. A state of indecision, accompanied by inner tension. (See
also opposites and transcendent function.)
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.[C.G. Jung
Letters, vol. 1, p. 375.]
The self is made manifest in the opposites and in the conflict between
them; it is a coincidentia oppositorum [coincidence of opposites].
Hence the way to the self begins with conflict.["Individual
Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy," CW 12, par. 259.]
Conflict is a hallmark of neurosis, but conflict is not invariably neurotic.
Some degree of conflict is even desirable since without some tension between
opposites the developmental process is inhibited. Conflict only becomes
neurotic when it interferes with the normal functioning of consciousness.
The stirring up of conflict is a Luciferian virtue in the true
sense of the word. Conflict engenders fire, the fire of affects and emotions,
and like every other fire it has two aspects, that of combustion and that
of creating light.["Psychological Aspects of the Mother
Archetype," CW 9i, par. 179.]
When a conflict is unconscious, tension manifests as physical symptoms,
particularly in the stomach, the back and the neck. Conscious conflict is
experienced as moral or ethical tension. Serious conflicts, especially those
involving love or duty, generally involve a disparity between the functions
of thinking and feeling. If one or the other is not a conscious participant
in the conflict, it needs to be introduced.
The objection [may be] advanced that many conflicts are intrinsically
insoluble. People sometimes take this view because they think only of
external solutions-which at bottom are not solutions at all. . . . A real
solution comes only from within, and then only because the patient has
been brought to a different attitude.["Some Crucial Points
in Psychoanalysis," CW 4, par. 606.]
Jung's major contribution to the psychology of conflict was his belief that
it had a purpose in terms of the self-regulation of the psyche. If the tension
between the opposites can be held in consciousness, then something will
happen internally to resolve the conflict. The solution, essentially irrational
and unforeseeable, generally appears as a new attitude toward oneself and
the outer situation, together with a sense of peace; energy previously locked
up in indecision is released and the progression of libido becomes possible.
Jung called this the tertium non datur or transcendent function,
because what happens transcends the opposites.
Holding the tension between opposites requires patience and a strong
ego, otherwise a decision will be made out of desperation. Then the opposite
will be constellated even more strongly and the conflict will continue
with renewed force.
Jung's basic hypothesis in working with neurotic conflict was that separate
personalities in oneself-complexes-were involved. As long as these are
not made conscious they are acted out externally, through projection.
Conflicts with other people are thus essentially externalizations of an
unconscious conflict within oneself.
Coniunctio. Literally, "conjunction," used in alchemy to refer
to chemical combinations; psychologically, it points to the union of opposites
and the birth of new possibilities.
The coniunctio is an a priori image that occupies
a prominent place in the history of man's mental development. If we trace
this idea back we find it has two sources in alchemy, one Christian, the
other pagan. The Christian source is unmistakably the doctrine of Christ
and the Church, sponsus and sponsa, where Christ takes the
role of Sol and the Church that of Luna. The pagan source is on the one
hand the hieros-gamos, on the other the marital union of the mystic with
God.[The Psychology of the Transference," CW 16, par. 355.]
Other alchemical terms used by Jung with a near-equivalent psychological
meaning include unio mystica (mystic or sacred marriage), coincidentia
oppositorum (coincidence of opposites), complexio oppositorum
(the opposites embodied in a single image) unus mundus (one world)
and Philosophers' Stone.
Consciousness. The function or activity which maintains the relation
of psychic contents to the ego; distinguished conceptually from the psyche,
which encompasses both consciousness and the unconscious. (See also opposites.)
There is no consciousness without discrimination of opposites.["Psychological
Aspects of the Mother Archetype," CW 9i, par. 178.]
There are two distinct ways in which consciousness arises. The one
is a moment of high emotional tension, comparable to the scene in Parsifal
where the hero, at the very moment of greatest temptation, suddenly
realizes the meaning of Amfortas' wound. The other is a state of contemplation,
in which ideas pass before the mind like dream-images. Suddenly there
is a flash of association between two apparently disconnected and widely
separated ideas, and this has the effect of releasing a latent tension.
Such a moment often works like a revelation. In every case it seems
to be the discharge of energy-tension, whether external or internal,
which produces consciousness.["Analytical Psychology and
Education," CW 17, par. 207.]
In Jung's view of the psyche, individual consciousness is a superstructure
based on, and arising out of, the unconscious.
Consciousness does not create itself-it wells up from unknown
depths. In childhood it awakens gradually, and all through life it wakes
each morning out of the depths of sleep from an unconscious condition.
It is like a child that is born daily out of the primordial womb of the
unconscious. . . . It is not only influenced by the unconscious but continually
emerges out of it in the form of numberless spontaneous ideas and sudden
flashes of thought.["The Psychology of Eastern Meditation,"
CW 11, par. 935.]
Constellate. To activate, usually used with reference to a complex
and an accompanying pattern of emotional reactions.
This term simply expresses the fact that the outward situation
releases a psychic process in which certain contents gather together and
prepare for action. When we say that a person is "constellated" we mean
that he has taken up a position from which he can be expected to react
in a quite definite way. . . . The constellated contents are definite
complexes possessing their own specific energy.["A Review
of the Complex Theory," CW 8, par. 198.]
Constructive. An approach to the interpretation of psychic activity
based on its goal or purpose rather than its cause or source. (See also
final; compare reductive.)
I use constructive and synthetic to designate a method that
is the antithesis of reductive. The constructive method is concerned with
the elaboration of the products of the unconscious (dreams, fantasies,
etc.). It takes the unconscious product as a symbolic expression which
anticipates a coming phase of psychological development["Definitions,"
CW 6, par. 701.]
The constructive or synthetic method of treatment presupposes insights
which are at least potentially present in the patient and can therefore
be made conscious.["The Transcendent Function," CW 8,
par. 145.]
The constructive method involves both the amplification of symbols and their
interpretation on the subjective level. Its use in dream interpretation
aims at understanding how the conscious orientation may be modified in light
of the dream's symbolic message. This is in line with Jung's belief that
the psyche is a self-regulating system.
In the treatment of neurosis, Jung saw the constructive method as complementary,
not in opposition, to the reductive approach of classical psychoanalysis.
We apply a largely reductive point of view in all cases where
it is a question of illusions, fictions, and exaggerated attitudes. On
the other hand, a constructive point of view must be considered for all
cases where the conscious attitude is more or less normal, but capable
of greater development and refinement, or where unconscious tendencies,
also capable of development, are being misunderstood and kept under by
the conscious mind.["Analytical Psychology and Education,"
CW 17, par. 195.]
Countertransference. A particular case of projection, used
to describe the unconscious emotional response of the analyst to the analysand
in a therapeutic relationship. (See also transference.)
A transference is answered by a counter-transference from the
analyst when it projects a content of which he is unconscious but which
nevertheless exists in him. The counter-transference is then just as useful
and meaningful, or as much of a hindrance, as the transference of the
patient, according to whether or not it seeks to establish that better
rapport which is essential for the realization of certain unconscious
contents. Like the transference, the counter-transference is compulsive,
a forcible tie, because it creates a "mystical" or unconscious identity
with the object[General Aspects of Dream Psychology," CW
8, par. 519.]
A workable analytic relationship is predicated on the assumption that the
analyst is not as neurotic as the analysand. Although a lengthy personal
analysis is the major requirement in the training of analysts, this is no
guarantee against projection.
Even if the analyst has no neurosis, but only a rather more
extensive area of unconsciousness than usual, this is sufficient to produce
a sphere of mutual unconsciousness, i.e., a counter-transference. This
phenomenon is one of the chief occupational hazards of psychotherapy.
It causes psychic infections in both analyst and patient and brings the
therapeutic process to a standstill. This state of unconscious identity
is also the reason why an analyst can help his patient just so far as
he himself has gone and not a step further.[Appendix," CW
16, par. 545.]
Crucifixion. An archetypal motif associated with conflict
and the problem of the opposites.
Nobody who finds himself on the road to wholeness can escape
that characteristic suspension which is the meaning of crucifixion. For
he will infallibly run into things that thwart and "cross" him: first,
the thing he has no wish to be (the shadow); second, the thing he is not
(the "other," the individual reality of the "You"); and third, his psychic
non-ego (the collective unconscious).[The Psychology of
the Transference," ibid., par. 470.]
Depotentiate. The process of removing energy from an unconscious
content by assimilating its meaning.
Depression. A psychological state characterized by lack of energy.
(See also abaissement du niveau mental, final, libido, night
sea journey and regression.) Energy not available to consciousness
does not simply vanish. It regresses and stirs up unconscious contents
(fantasies, memories, wishes, etc.) that for the sake of psychological
health need to be brought to light and examined.
Depression should therefore be regarded as an unconscious compensation
whose content must be made conscious if it is to be fully effective. This
can only be done by consciously regressing along with the depressive tendency
and integrating the memories so activated into the conscious mind-which
was what the depression was aiming at in the first place.["The
Sacrifice," CW 5, par. 625.]
Depression is not necessarily pathological. It often foreshadows a renewal
of the personality or a burst of creative activity.
There are moments in human life when a new page is turned. New
interests and tendencies appear which have hitherto received no attention,
or there is a sudden change of personality (a so-called mutation of character).
During the incubation period of such a change we can often observe a loss
of conscious energy: the new development has drawn off the energy it needs
from consciousness. This lowering of energy can be seen most clearly before
the onset of certain psychoses and also in the empty stillness which precedes
creative work.["The Psychology of the Transference," CW
16, par. 373.]
Differentiation. The separation of parts from a whole, necessary
for conscious access to the psychological functions.
So long as a function is still so fused with one or more other
functions-thinking with feeling, feeling with sensation, etc.-that it
is unable to operate on its own, it is in an archaic condition,
i.e., not differentiated, not separated from the whole as a special part
and existing by itself. Undifferentiated thinking is incapable of thinking
apart from other functions; it is continually mixed up with sensations,
feelings, intuitions, just as undifferentiated feeling is mixed up with
sensations and fantasies.["Definitions," CW 6, par. 705.]
An undifferentiated function is characterized by ambivalence (every position
entails its own negative), which leads to characteristic inhibitions in
its use.
Differentiation consists in the separation of the function from
other functions, and in the separation of its individual parts from each
other. Without differentiation direction is impossible, since the direction
of a function towards a goal depends on the elimination of anything irrelevant.
Fusion with the irrelevant precludes direction; only a differentiated
function is capable of being directed.[ Ibid., par.
705.]
Dissociation. The splitting of a personality into its component
parts or complexes, characteristic of neurosis.
A dissociation is not healed by being split off, but by more
complete disintegration. All the powers that strive for unity, all healthy
desire for selfhood, will resist the disintegration, and in this way he
will become conscious of the possibility of an inner integration, which
before he had always sought outside himself. He will then find his reward
in an undivided self.["Marriage as a Psychological Relationship,"
CW 17, pars. 334f.]
In the analysis of neurotic breakdowns, the aim is to make the conscious
ego aware of autonomous complexes. This can be done both through reductive
analysis and by objectifying them in the process of active imagination.
Every form of communication with the split-off part of the psyche
is therapeutically effective. This effect is also brought about by the
real or merely supposed discovery of the causes. Even when the discovery
is no more than an assumption or a fantasy, it has a healing effect at
least by suggestion if the analyst himself believes in it and makes a
serious attempt to understand.[The Philosophical Tree,"
CW 13, par. 465.]
Dreams. Independent, spontaneous manifestations of the unconscious;
fragments of involuntary psychic activity just conscious enough to be reproducible
in the waking state.
Dreams are neither deliberate nor arbitrary fabrications; they
are natural phenomena which are nothing other than what they pretend to
be. They do not deceive, they do not lie, they do not distort or disguise.
. . . They are invariably seeking to express something that the ego does
not know and does not understand.["Analytical Psychology
and Education," CW 17, par. 189.]
In symbolic form, dreams picture the current situation in the psyche from
the point of view of the unconscious.
Since the meaning of most dreams is not in accord with
the tendencies of the conscious mind but shows peculiar deviations, we
must assume that the unconscious, the matrix of dreams, has an independent
function. This is what I call the autonomy of the unconscious. The dream
not only fails to obey our will but very often stands in flagrant opposition
to our conscious intentions["On the Nature of Dreams," CW
8, par. 545.]
Jung acknowledged that in some cases dreams have a wish-fulfilling and sleep-preserving
function (Freud) or reveal an infantile striving for power (Adler), but
he focused on their symbolic content and their compensatory role in the
self-regulation of the psyche: they reveal aspects of oneself that are not
normally conscious, they disclose unconscious motivations operating in relationships
and present new points of view in conflict situations.
In this regard there are three possibilities. If the conscious
attitude to the life situation is in large degree one-sided, then the
dream takes the opposite side. If the conscious has a position fairly
near the "middle," the dream is satisfied with variations. If the conscious
attitude is "correct" (adequate), then the dream coincides with and emphasizes
this tendency, though without forfeiting its peculiar autonomy.[
Ibid., par. 546.]
In Jung's view, a dream is an interior drama.
The whole dream-work is essentially subjective, and a dream
is a theatre in which the dreamer is himself the scene, the player, the
prompter, the producer, the author, the public, and the critic.["General
Aspects of Dream Psychology," ibid., par. 509.]
This conception gives rise to the interpretation of dreams on the subjective
level, where the images in them are seen as symbolic representations of
elements in the dreamer's own personality. Interpretation on the objective
level refers the images to people and situations in the outside world.
Many dreams have a classic dramatic structure. There is an exposition
(place, time and characters), which shows the initial situation of the
dreamer. In the second phase there is a development in the plot
(action takes place). The third phase brings the culmination or climax
(a decisive event occurs). The final phase is the lysis, the result
or solution (if any) of the action in the dream.
Ego. The central complex in the field of consciousness. (See also
self.)
The ego, the subject of consciousness, comes into existence
as a complex quantity which is constituted partly by the inherited disposition
(character constituents) and partly by unconsciously acquired impressions
and their attendant phenomena ["Analytical Psychology and
Education," CW 17, par. 169.]
Jung pointed out that knowledge of the ego-personality is often confused
with self-understanding.
Anyone who has any ego-consciousness at all takes it for granted
that he knows himself. But the ego knows only its own contents, not the
unconscious and its contents. People measure their self-knowledge by what
the average person in their social environment knows of himself, but not
by the real psychic facts which are for the most part hidden from them.
In this respect the psyche behaves like the body, of whose physiological
and anatomical structure the average person knows very little too.
["The Undiscovered Self," CW 10, par. 491.]
In the process of individuation, one of the initial tasks is to differentiate
the ego from the complexes in the personal unconscious, particularly the
persona, the shadow and anima/animus. A strong ego can relate objectively
to these and other contents of the unconscious without identifying with
them.
Because the ego experiences itself as the center of the psyche, it is
especially difficult to resist identification with the self, to which
it owes its existence and to which, in the hierarchy of the psyche, it
is subordinate.
The ego stands to the self as the moved to the mover, or as
object to subject, because the determining factors which radiate out from
the self surround the ego on all sides and are therefore supraordinate
to it. The self, like the unconscious, is an a priori existent
out of which the ego evolves.["Transformation Symbolism
in the Mass," CW 11, par. 391.]
Identification with the self can manifest in two ways: the assimilation
of the ego by the self, in which case the ego falls under the control
of the unconscious; or the assimilation of the self to the ego, where
the ego becomes overaccentuated. In both cases the result is inflation,
with disturbances in adaptation.
In the first case, reality has to be protected against an archaic
. . . dream-state; in the second, room must be made for the dream at the
expense of the world of consciousness. In the first case, mobilization
of all the virtues is indicated; in the second, the presumption of the
ego can only be damped down by moral defeat.[The Self,"
CW 9ii, par. 47.]
Emotion. An involuntary reaction due to an active complex.
(See also affect.)
On the one hand, emotion is the alchemical fire whose warmth
brings everything into existence and whose heat burns all superfluities
to ashes (omnes superfluitates comburit). But on the other hand, emotion
is the moment when steel meets flint and a spark is struck forth, for
emotion is the chief source of consciousness. There is no change from
darkness to light or from inertia to movement without emotion. ["Psychological
Aspects of the Mother Archetype," CW 9i, par. 179.]
Empathy. An introjection of the object, based on the unconscious
projection of subjective contents. (Compare identification.)
Empathy presupposes a subjective attitude of confidence, or
trustfulness towards the object. It is a readiness to meet the object
halfway, a subjective assimilation that brings about a good understanding
between subject and object, or at least simulates it. ["The
Type Problem in Aesthetics," CW 6, par. 489.]
In contrast to abstraction, associated with introversion, empathy corresponds
to the attitude of extraversion.
The man with the empathetic attitude finds himself . . . in
a world that needs his subjective feeling to give it life and soul. He
animates it with himself. [ Ibid., par. 492.]
Enantiodromia. Literally, "running counter to," referring to the
emergence of the unconscious opposite in the course of time.
This characteristic phenomenon practically always occurs when
an extreme, one-sided tendency dominates conscious life; in time an equally
powerful counterposition is built up, which first inhibits the conscious
performance and subsequently breaks through the conscious control. [Definitions,"
ibid., par. 709.]
Enantiodromia is typically experienced in conjunction with symptoms associated
with acute neurosis, and often foreshadows a rebirth of the personality.
The grand plan on which the unconscious life of the psyche is
constructed is so inaccessible to our understanding that we can never
know what evil may not be necessary in order to produce good by enantiodromia,
and what good may very possibly lead to evil.[The Phenomenology
of the Spirit in Fairytales," CW 9i, par. 397.]
Energic. See final.
Eros. In Greek mythology, the personification of love, a cosmogonic
force of nature; psychologically, the function of relationship. (See also
anima, animus, Logos and mother complex.)
Woman's consciousness is characterized more by the connective
quality of Eros than by the discrimination and cognition associated with
Logos. In men, Eros . . . is usually less developed than Logos. In women,
on the other hand, Eros is an expression of their true nature, while their
Logos is often only a regrettable accident. [The Syzygy:
Anima and Animus," CW 9ii, par. 29.]
Eros is a questionable fellow and will always remain so . . . . He
belongs on one side to man's primordial animal nature which will endure
as long as man has an animal body. On the other side he is related to
the highest forms of the spirit. But he thrives only when spirit and
instinct are in right harmony.[The Eros Theory," CW 7,
par. 32.]
Where love reigns, there is no will to power; and where the will to
power is paramount, love is lacking. The one is but the shadow of the
other: the man who adopts the standpoint of Eros finds his compensatory
opposite in the will to power, and that of the man who puts the accent
on power is Eros.[The Problem of the Attitude-Type," ibid.,
par. 78.]
An unconscious Eros always expresses itself as will to power. ["Psychological
Aspects of the Mother Archetype," CW 9i, par. 167.]
Extraversion. A mode of psychological orientation where the
movement of energy is toward the outer world. (Compare introversion.)
Extraversion is characterized by interest in the external object,
responsiveness, and a ready acceptance of external happenings, a desire
to influence and be influenced by events, a need to join in and get "with
it," the capacity to endure bustle and noise of every kind, and actually
find them enjoyable, constant attention to the surrounding world, the
cultivation of friends and acquaintances, none too carefully selected,
and finally by the great importance attached to the figure one cuts.["Psychological
Typology," CW 6, par. 972.]
Jung believed that introversion and extraversion were present in everyone,
but that one attitude-type is invariably dominant. When external factors
are the prime motivating force for judgments, perceptions, affects and actions,
we have an extraverted attitude or type.
The extravert's philosophy of life and his ethics are as a rule
of a highly collective nature with a strong streak of altruism, and his
conscience is in large measure dependent on public opinion.[
Ibid.]
Jung believed that type differentiation begins very early in life, so that
it might be described as innate.
The earliest sign of extraversion in a child is his quick adaptation
to the environment, and the extraordinary attention he gives to objects
and especially to the effect he has on them. Fear of objects is minimal;
he lives and moves among them with confidence. . . and can therefore play
with them freely and learn through them. He likes to carry his enterprises
to the extreme and exposes himself to risks. Everything unknown is alluring.[Psychological
Types," ibid., par. 896.]
In general, the extravert trusts what is received from the outside world
and is not inclined to examine personal motivations.
He has no secrets he has not long since shared with others.
Should something unmentionable nevertheless befall him, he prefers to
forget it. Anything that might tarnish the parade of optimism and positivism
is avoided. Whatever he thinks, intends, and does is displayed with conviction
and warmth.["Psychological Typology," ibid., par. 973.]
Although everyone is affected by objective data, the extravert's thoughts,
decisions and behavior are determined by them. Personal views and the inner
life take second place to outer conditions.
He lives in and through others; all self-communings give him
the creeps. Dangers lurk there which are better drowned out by noise.
If he should ever have a "complex," he finds refuge in the social whirl
and allows himself to be assured several times a day that everything is
in order. [ Ibid., par. 974.]
The psychic life of the extreme extraverted type is enacted wholly in reaction
to the environment, which determines the personal standpoint. If the mores
change, he adjusts his views and behavior patterns to match. This is both
a strength and a limitation.
Adjustment is not adaptation; adaptation . . . requires observance
of laws more universal than the immediate conditions of time and place.
The very adjustment of the normal extraverted type is his limitation.
He owes his normality . . . to his ability to fit into existing conditions
with comparative ease. His requirements are limited to the objectively
possible, for instance to the career that holds out good prospects at
this particular moment; he does what is needed of him, or what is expected
of him, and refrains from all innovations that are not entirely self-evident
or that in any way exceed the expectations of those around him["General
Description of the Types," CW 6, par. 564.]
Extraversion is an asset in social situations and in relating to the external
environment. But a too-extraverted attitude may result in sacrificing oneself
in order to fulfil what one sees as objective demands-the needs of others,
for instance, or the requirements of an expanding business.
This is the extravert's danger: He gets sucked into objects
and completely loses himself in them. The resultant functional disorders,
nervous or physical, have a compensatory value, as they force him into
an involuntary self-restraint. Should the symptoms be functional, their
peculiar character may express his psychological situation in symbolic
form; for instance, a singer whose fame has risen to dangerous heights
that tempt him to expend too much energy suddenly finds he cannot sing
high notes . . . . Or a man of modest beginnings who rapidly reaches a
social position of great influence with wide prospects is suddenly afflicted
with all the symptoms of mountain sickness.[ Ibid., par.
565.]
The form of neurosis most likely to afflict the extravert is hysteria, which
typically manifests as a pronounced identification with persons in the immediate
environment.
The extravert's tendency to sacrifice inner reality to outer circumstances
is not a problem as long as the extraversion is not too extreme. But to
the extent that it becomes necessary to compensate the inclination to
one-sidedness, there will arise a markedly self-centered tendency in the
unconscious. All those needs or desires that are stifled or repressed
by the conscious attitude come in the back door, in the form of infantile
thoughts and emotions that center on oneself.
The more complete the conscious attitude of extraversion is,
the more infantile and archaic the unconscious attitude will be. The egoism
which characterizes the extravert's unconscious attitude goes far beyond
mere childish selfishness; it verges on the ruthless and brutal. [
Ibid., par. 572.]
The danger then is that the extravert, so habitually and apparently selflessly
attuned to the outside world and the needs of others, may suddenly become
quite indifferent.
Fantasy. A complex of ideas or imaginative activity expressing
the flow of psychic energy. (See also active imagination.)
A fantasy needs to be understood both causally and purposively.
Causally interpreted, it seems like a symptom of a physiological
state, the outcome of antecedent events. Purposively interpreted, it seems
like a symbol, seeking to characterize a definite goal with the help of
the material at hand, or trace out a line of future psychological development.
["Definitions," CW 6, par. 720.]
Jung distinguished between active and passive fantasies. The
for-mer, characteristic of the creative mentality, are evoked by an intuitive
attitude directed toward the perception of unconscious contents; passive
fantasies are spontaneous and autonomous manifestations of unconscious complexes.
Passive fantasy, therefore, is always in need of conscious criticism,
lest it merely reinforce the standpoint of the unconscious opposite. Whereas
active fantasy, as the product of a conscious attitude not opposed to
the unconscious, and of unconscious processes not opposed but merely compensatory
to consciousness, does not require criticism so much as understanding.[Ibid.,
par. 714.]
Jung developed the method of active imagination as a way of assimilating
the meaning of fantasies. The important thing is not to interpret but to
experience them.
Continual conscious realization of unconscious fantasies, together
with active participation in the fantastic events, has . . . the effect
firstly of extending the conscious horizon by the inclusion of numerous
unconscious contents; secondly of gradually diminishing the dominant influence
of the unconscious; and thirdly of bringing about a change of personality.
[The Technique of Differentiation," CW 7, par. 358.]
Father complex. A group of feeling-toned ideas associated with the
experience and image of father. (See also Logos.)
In men, a positive father-complex very often produces a certain
credulity with regard to authority and a distinct willingness to bow down
before all spiritual dogmas and values; while in women, it induces the
liveliest spiritual aspirations and interests. In dreams, it is always
the father-figure from whom the decisive convictions, prohibitions, and
wise counsels emanate. [The Phenomenology of the Spirit
in Fairytales," CW 9i, par. 396.]
Jung's comments on the father complex were rarely more than asides in writing
about something else. In general, the father complex in a man manifests
in the persona (through identification) and as aspects of his shadow; in
a woman, it manifests in the nature of the animus, colored by the projection
of her father's anima.
The father exerts his influence on the mind or spirit of his
daughter-on her "Logos." This he does by increasing her intellectuality,
often to a pathological degree which in my later writings I have described
as "animus possession."[The Origin of the Hero," CW 5, par.
272.]
The father is the first carrier of the animus-image. He endows this
virtual image with substance and form, for on account of his Logos he
is the source of "spirit" for the daughter. Unfortunately this source
is often sullied just where we would expect clean water. For the spirit
that benefits a woman is not mere intellect, it is far more: it is an
attitude, the spirit by which a man lives. Even a so-called "ideal"
spirit is not always the best if it does not understand how to deal
adequately with nature, that is, with animal man. . . . Hence every
father is given the opportunity to corrupt, in one way or another, his
daughter's nature, and the educator, husband, or psychiatrist then has
to face the music. For "what has been spoiled by the father"[ A reference
to Hexagram 18 in the I Ching (Richard Wilhelm edition, p. 80): "Work
ok on What Has Been Spoiled."] can only be made good by a father.[The
Personification of the Opposites," CW 14, par. 232.]
Feeling. The psychological function that evaluates or judges
what something or someone is worth. (Compare thinking.)
A feeling is as indisputable a reality as the existence of an
idea. [The Psychology of the Transference," CW 16, par.
531.]
The feeling function is the basis for "fight or flight" decisions. As a
subjective process, it may be quite independent of external stimuli. In
Jung's view it is a rational function, like thinking, in that it is decisively
influenced not by perception (as are the functions of sensation and intuition)
but by reflection. A person whose overall attitude is oriented by the feeling
function is called a feeling type.
In everyday usage, feeling is often confused with emotion. The latter,
more appropriately called affect, is the result of an activated complex.
Feeling not contaminated by affect can be quite cold.
Feeling is distinguished from affect by the fact that it produces
no perceptible physical innervations, i.e., neither more nor less than
an ordinary thinking process. [Definitions," CW 6, par.
725.]
Feminine. See anima, Eros and Logos.
Final. A point of view based on the potential result or purpose
of psychic activity, complementary to a causal approach. (See also constructive,
neurosis, reductive, and self-regulation of the psyche.)
Psychological data necessitate a twofold point of view, namely that of
causality and that of finality. I use the word finality
intentionally, in order to avoid confusion with the concept of teleology.
[Teleology implies the anticipation of a particular end or goal; finality
assumes purpose but an essentially unknown goal.] By finality I mean
merely the immanent psychological striving for a goal. Instead of "striving
for a goal" one could also say "sense of purpose." All psychological phenomena
have some such sense of purpose inherent in them, even merely reactive
phenomena like emotional reactions.[ "General Aspects of
Dream Psychology," CW 8, par. 456.]
Jung also called the final point of view energic, contrasting it with
mechanistic or reductive.
The mechanistic view is purely causal; it conceives an event
as the effect of a cause, in the sense that unchanging substances change
their relations to one another according to fixed laws. The energic point
of view on the other hand is in essence final; the event is traced back
from effect to cause on the assumption that some kind of energy underlies
the changes in phenomena, that it maintains itself as a constant throughout
these changes and finally leads to entropy, a condition of general equilibrium.
The flow of energy has a definite direction (goal) in that it follows
the gradient of potential in a way that cannot be reversed.[On
Psychic Energy," ibid., pars. 2f.]
Jung believed that laws governing the physical conservation of energy applied
equally to the psyche. Psychologically, this means that where there is an
overabundance of energy in one place, some other psychic function has been
deprived; conversely, when libido "disap-pears," as it seems to do in a
depression, it must appear in another form, for instance as a symptom.
Every time we come across a person who has a "bee in his bonnet,"
or a morbid conviction, or some extreme attitude, we know that there is
too much libido, and that the excess must have been taken from somewhere
else where, consequently, there is too little. . . . Thus the symptoms
of a neurosis must be regarded as exaggerated functions over-invested
with libido. . . .The question has to be reversed in the case of those
syndromes characterized mainly by lack of libido, for instance apathetic
states. Here we have to ask, where did the libido go? . . . The libido
is there, but it is not visible and is inaccessible to the patient himself.
. . . It is the task of psychoanalysis to search out that hidden place
where the libido dwells.[The Theory of Psychoanalysis,"
CW 4, pars. 254f]
The energic or final point of view, coupled with the concept of compensation,
led Jung to believe that an outbreak of neurosis is essentially an attempt
by the psyche to cure itself.
Fourth function. See inferior function.
Function. A form of psychic activity, or manifestation of libido,
that remains the same in principle under varying conditions. (See also
auxiliary function, differentiation, inferior function, primary function
and typology.)
Jung's model of typology distinguishes four psychological functions:
thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition.
Sensation establishes what is actually present, thinking enables
us to recognize its meaning, feeling tells us its value, and intuition
points to possibilities as to whence it came and whither it is going in
a given situation.["A Psychological Theory of Types," CW
6, par. 958.]
Though all the functions exist in every psyche, one function is invariably
more consciously developed than the others, giving rise to a one-sidedness
that often leads to neurosis.
The more [a man] identifies with one function, the more he invests
it with libido, and the more he withdraws libido from the other functions.
They can tolerate being deprived of libido for even quite long periods,
but in the end they will react. Being drained of libido, they gradually
sink below the threshold of consciousness, lose their associative connection
with it, and finally lapse into the unconscious. This is a regressive
development, a reversion to the infantile and finally to the archaic level.
. . . [which] brings about a dissociation of the personality.[The
Type Problem in Aesthetics," ibid., pars. 502f.]
Hero. An archetypal motif based on overcoming obstacles and achieving
certain goals.
The hero's main feat is to overcome the monster of darkness:
it is the long-hoped-for and expected triumph of consciousness over the
unconscious.[The Psychology of the Child Archetype," CW
9i, par. 284.]
The hero myth is an unconscious drama seen only in projection, like
the happenings in Plato's parable of the cave.[The Dual
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