Modern Man in Search of a Soul

by C.G. Jung

It is clear that, at this period of life, the patient had reached the highest point of his career—that the effort of the long ascent from his lowly origin had exhausted his strength. He should have contented himself with his achievements, but instead he is driven by his ambition to attempt to scale heights of success for which he is not fitted.

The dream gives a true picture of the subjective state, while the conscious mind denies that this state exists, or recognizes it only grudgingly.

I do not, of course, deny that many neuroses have a traumatic origin; I simply contest the notion that all neuroses are of this nature and arise without exception from some crucial experience of childhood.

For the purposes of therapy, moreover, it is highly important for the analyst to admit his lack of understanding from time to time, for nothing is more unbearable for the patient than to be always understood. The latter in any case relies too much upon the mysterious insight of the doctor, and, by appealing to his professional vanity, lays a dangerous trap for him. By taking refuge in the doctor's self-confidence and "profound" understanding, the patient loses all sense of reality, falls into a stubborn transference, and retards the cure.

When the doctor's interpretation is based merely upon a one-sided theory or a preconceived opinion, his chances of convincing the patient or of achieving any therapeutic results depend chiefly upon suggestion. And let no one deceive himself as to the effects of suggestion.

It is certain that consciousness consists not only of wishes and fears, but of vastly more than these, and it is highly probable that the unconscious psyche contains a wealth of contents and living forms equal to or even greater than does consciousness, which is characterized by concentration, limitation and exclusion.

I cannot prove in every case that dreams are meaningful, for there are dreams that neither doctor nor patient understands. But I must regard them as hypothetically meaningful in order to find courage to deal with them at all.

When Freud speaks of the "dream-façade", he is really speaking, not of the dream itself, but of its obscurity, and in so doing is projecting upon the dream his own lack of understanding. We say that the dream has a false front only because we fail to see into it. We would do better to say that we are dealing with something like a text that is unintelligible, not because it has a facade, but simply because we cannot read it.

Dreams give information about the secrets of the inner life and reveal to the dreamer hidden factors of his personality. As long as these are undiscovered, they disturb his waking life and betray themselves only in the form of symptoms. This means that we cannot effectively treat the patient from the side of consciousness alone, but must bring about a change in and through the unconscious.

There appears to be a conscience in mankind which severely punishes the man who does not somehow and at some time, at whatever cost to his pride, cease to defend and assert himself, and instead confess himself fallible and human.

Painful though it may be, this is in itself a gain—for what is inferior or even worthless belongs to me as my shadow and gives me substance and mass. How can I be substantial if I fail to cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also if I am to be whole; and inasmuch as I become conscious of my shadow I also remember that I am a human being like any other.

Our mistake would lie in supposing that what is radiant no longer exists because it has been explained from the shadow-side. This is a regrettable error into which Freud himself has fallen. Yet the shadow belongs to the light as the evil belongs to the good, and vice versa.

Nothing influences our conduct less than do intellectual ideas. But when an idea is the expression of psychic experience which bears fruit in regions as far separated and as free from historical relation as East and West, then we must look into the matter closely. For such ideas represent forces that are beyond logical justification and moral sanction; they are always stronger than man and his brain. Man believes indeed that he moulds these ideas, but in reality they mould him and make him their unwitting mouthpiece.

It is true that we can get further with explanation than with uninterpreted confession alone, for it at least trains the mind, and therefore may awaken sleeping powers which can intervene in a helpful way. But the fact remains that the most thorough explanation leaves the patient in many cases an intelligent but still incapable child. The trouble is that Freudian explanations in terms of pleasure and its satisfaction are one-sided and therefore insufficient, especially when applied to the later stages of development.

Adler has shown convincingly that many cases of neurosis can be more satisfactorily explained on the ground of an urge to power than by the pleasure principle.

Adler obviously has his eye on repressed and socially unsuccessful people whose one passion is for self-assertion. These people are neurotic because they always imagine themselves oppressed and tilt at the windmills of their own fancies, thus putting the goal they most desire quite out of reach.

Adler's approach has found favour chiefly with clergymen and teachers, while Freud's school has its advocates among physicians and intellectuals, who one and all are bad nurses and educators.

As a consequence there are many people who become neurotic because they are only normal, as there are people who are neurotic because they cannot become normal. For the former the very thought that you want to educate them to normality is a nightmare; their deepest need is really to be able to lead "abnormal" lives.

Again, we so commonly undervalue the deeper aspects of the human psyche that we hold self-examination or preoccupation with ourselves to be almost morbid. We evidently suspect ourselves of harbouring rather unwholesome things all too reminiscent of a sick-room. The physician must overcome these resistances in himself, for who can educate others while himself uneducated? Who can enlighten his fellows while still in the dark about himself, and who can purify if he is himself unclean?

We Occidentals had learned to tame and subject the psyche, but we knew nothing about its methodical development and its functions. Our civilization is still young, and we therefore required all the devices of the animal-tamer to make the defiant barbarian and the savage in us in some measure tractable. But when we reach a higher cultural level, we must forgo compulsion and turn to self-development. For this we must have knowledge of a way or a method—and so far we have known of none.

As to this question of psychic constitution, it is well known that I postulate two different basic attitudes in accordance with the typical differences already suspected by many students of human nature—the extraverted and the introverted attitudes.

About a third of my cases are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives. It seems to me, however, that this can well be described as the general neurosis of our time.

Introversion or extraversion, as a typical attitude, means an essential bias which conditions the whole psychic process, establishes the habitual reactions, and thus determines not only the style of behaviour, but also the nature of subjective experience.

Other people conspicuously neglect thinking in favour of emotional factors, that is, feeling. They inveterately follow a "policy" dictated by feeling, and it takes an extraordinary situation to make them reflect.

We know that a man can never be everything at once, never complete; he always develops certain qualities at the expense of others, and wholeness is never attained. But what happens to those functions which are not developed by exercise and are not consciously brought into daily use? They remain in a more or less primitive and infantile state, often only half-conscious, or even quite unconscious. These relatively undeveloped functions constitute a specific inferiority which is characteristic of each type and is an integral part of the total character.

This necessity is a psychic fact of such importance that it constitutes one of the essential symbolic teachings of the Christian religion. It is the sacrifice of the merely natural man—of the unconscious, ingenuous being whose tragic career began with the eating of the apple in Paradise. The biblical fall of man presents the dawn of consciousness as a curse. And as a matter of fact it is in this light that we first look upon every problem that forces us to greater consciousness and separates us even further from the paradise of unconscious childhood.

Statistical tables show a rise in the frequency of cases of mental depression in men about forty. In women the neurotic difficulties generally begin somewhat earlier. We see that in this phase of life—between thirty-five and forty—a significant change in the human psyche is in preparation. At first it is not a conscious and striking change; it is rather a matter of indirect signs of a change which seems to take its rise from the unconscious. Often it is something like a slow change in a person's character; in another case certain traits may come to light which had disappeared in childhood; or again, inclinations and interests begin to weaken and others arise to take their places.

In Ernst Barlach's tragic novel of family life, Der Tote Tag, the mother-dæmon says at the end: "The strange thing is that man will not learn that God is his father." That is what Freud would never learn, and what all those who share his outlook forbid themselves to learn. At least, they never find the key to this knowledge. Theology does not help those who are looking for the key, because theology demands faith, and faith cannot be made: it is in the truest sense a gift of grace. We moderns are faced with the necessity of rediscovering the life of the spirit; we must experience it anew for ourselves. It is the only way in which we can break the spell that binds us to the cycle of biological events.

My position on this question is the third point of difference between Freud's views and my own. Because of it I am accused of mysticism. I do not, however, hold myself responsible for the fact that man has, everywhere and always, spontaneously developed religious forms of expression, and that the human psyche from time immemorial has been shot through with religious feelings and ideas. Whoever cannot see this aspect of the human psyche is blind, and whoever chooses to explain it away, or to "enlighten" it away, has no sense of reality.

The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is man in a higher sense—he is "collective man"—one who carries and shapes the unconscious, psychic life of mankind. To perform this difficult office it is sometimes necessary for him to sacrifice happiness and everything that makes life worth living for the ordinary human being.

The artist's life cannot be otherwise than full of conflicts, for two forces are at war within him—on the one hand the common human longing for happiness, satisfaction and security in life, and on the other a ruthless passion for creation which may go so far as to override every personal desire. The lives of artists are as a rule so highly unsatisfactory—not to say tragic—because of their inferiority on the human and personal side, and not because of a sinister dispensation. There are hardly any exceptions to the rule that a person must pay dearly for the divine gift of the creative fire.

Just as formerly the assumption was unquestionable that everything that exists takes its rise from the creative will of a God who is spirit, so the nineteenth century discovered the equally unquestionable truth that everything arises from material causes.

Mind must be thought to be an epiphenomenon of matter. The same conclusion is reached even if we say not "mind" but "psyche", and in place of matter speak of brain, hormones, instincts or drives. To grant the substantiality of the soul or psyche is repugnant to the spirit of the age, for to do so would be heresy.

Whatever values in the visible world are destroyed by modern relativism, the psyche will produce their equivalents. At first we cannot see beyond the path that leads downward to dark and hateful things—but no light or beauty will ever come from the man who cannot bear this sight. Light is always born of darkness, and the sun never yet stood still in heaven to satisfy man's longing or to still his fears.

Among my patients from many countries, all of them educated persons, there is a considerable number who came to see me, not because they were suffering from a neurosis, but because they could find no meaning in life or were torturing themselves with questions which neither present-day philosophy nor religion could answer.

We therefore do not hesitate, but lightheartedly choose the complicated course of remaining in ignorance about ourselves while busying ourselves with other people and their troubles and sins. This activity lends us an air of virtue, and we thus deceive ourselves and those around us. In this way, thank God, we can escape from ourselves. There are countless people who can do this with impunity, but not everyone can, and these few break down on the road to Damascus and succumb to a neurosis.

The World War was such an irruption which showed, as nothing else could, how thin are the walls which separate a well-ordered world from lurking chaos. But it is the same with every single human being and his reasonably ordered world. His reason has done violence to natural forces which seek their revenge and only await the moment when the partition falls to overwhelm the conscious life with destruction.

Science can only establish the existence of these psychic factors and attempt a rational explanation by offering an hypothesis as to their sources. This, however, only thrusts the problem a stage back and in no way answers the riddle. We thus come to those ultimate questions: Whence does consciousness come? What is the psyche? And at this point all science ends.