The Undiscovered Self (Great Minds)

by C.G. Jung

“The conflagration that broke out in Germany was the outcome of psychic conditions that are universal.

Rational argument can be conducted with some prospect of success only so long as the emotionality of a given situation does not exceed a certain critical degree. If the affective temperature rises above this level, the possibility of reason’s having any effect ceases and its place is taken by slogans and chimerical

wish-fantasies. That is to say, a sort of collective possession results which

rapidly develops into a psych...

For every manifest case of insanity there are, in my estimation, at least ten latent cases who seldom get to the point of breaking out openly but whose views and behavior, for all their appearance of normality, are influenced by unconsciously morbid and perverse factors.

In a state of “collective possession” they are the adapted ones and consequently they feel quite at home in

Their chimerical ideas, upborne by fanatical resentment, appeal to the collective irrationality and find fruitful soil there, for they express all those motives and resentments which lurk in more normal people under the cloak of reason and insight.

They are, therefore, despite their small number in comparison with the population as a whole, dangerous as sources of infection precisely because the so-called normal person possesses only a limited degree of self-knowledge. Most people confuse “self-knowledge” with knowledge of their conscious ego personalities. Anyone

But the ego knows only its own contents, not the unconsciou...

In this broad belt of unconsciousness, which is immune to conscious criticism and control, we stand defenseless, open to all kinds of influences and psychic infections.

As with all dangers, we can guard against the risk of psychic infection only when we know what is attacking us, and how, where and when the attack will come.

Any theory based on experience is necessarily statistical; that is to say, it formulates an ideal average which abolishes all exceptions at either end of the scale and replaces them by an abstract mean.

The distinctive thing about real facts, however, is their individuality. Not to put too fine a point on it, one could say that the real picture consists of nothing but exceptions to the rule, and that, in consequence, absolute reality has predominantly the character of irregularity.

There is and can be no self-knowledge based on theoretical assumptions, for the object of self-knowledge is an individual – a relative exception and an irregular phenomenon.

On the one hand, he is equipped with the statistical truths of his scientific training, and on the other, he is faced with the task of treating a sick person who, especially in the case of psychic suffering, requires individual understanding.

The more schematic the treatment is, the more resistances it – quite rightly – calls up in the patient, and the more the cure is jeopardized.

Scientific education is based in the main on statistical truths and abstract knowledge and therefore imparts an unrealistic, rational picture of the world, in which the individual, as a merely marginal phenomenon, plays no role.

The moral responsibility of the individual is then inevitably replaced by the policy of the State (raison d’état). Instead of moral and mental differentiation of the individual, you have public welfare and the raising of the living standard.

The goal and meaning of individual life (which is the only real life) no longer lie in individual development but in the policy of the State, which is thrust upon the individual from outside and consists in the execution of an abstract idea which ultimately tends to attract all life to itself.

The bigger the crowd the more negligible the individual becomes.

But if the individual, overwhelmed by the sense of his own puniness and impotence, should feel that his life has lost its meaning – which, after all, is not identical with public welfare and higher standards of living – then he is already on the road to State slavery and, without knowing or wanting it, has becomes its proselyte.

Under these circumstances it is small wonder that individual judgment grows increasingly uncertain of itself and that responsibility is collectivized as much as possible,

actual fact, society is nothing more than an abstract idea like the State. Both

cut the ground from under the religions.

For, in order to turn the individual into a function of the State, his dependence on anything beside the State must be taken from him.

Free opinion is stifled and moral decision ruthlessly suppressed, on the plea that the end justifies the means, even the vilest.

The performance of a “magical” action gives the person concerned a feeling of security which is absolutely essential for carrying out a decision, because a decision is inevitably somewhat one-sided and is therefore rightly felt to be a

risk. Even a dictator thinks it necessary not only to accompany his acts of State with threats but to stage them with all manner of solemnities.

The absolute State has an army of fanatical missionaries to do its bidding in matters of foreign policy, and these in their turn can count on a fifth column who are guaranteed asylum under the laws and constitution of the Western States.

Even though the West has considerable industrial power and a sizable defense potential at its command, we cannot rest content with this, for we know that even the biggest guns and the heaviest industry with its relatively high living standard are not enough to check the psychic infection spread by religious fanaticism.

That is to say, the standpoint of the creeds is archaic; they are full of impressive mythological symbolism which, if taken literally, comes into insufferable conflict with knowledge.

The danger that a mythology understood too literally, and as taught by the Church, will suddenly be repudiated lock, stock and barrel is today greater than ever. Is

An ideal understanding would ultimately result in each party’s unthinkingly going along with the other’s experience – a state of uncritical passivity coupled with the most complete subjectivity and lack of social responsibility. Understanding carried to such lengths is in any case impossible, for it would require the virtual identification of two different individuals.

Moreover, he knows very well that the preaching of even the worthiest precepts only provokes the patient into open hostility or a secret resistance and thus needlessly endangers the aim of the treatment.

Naturally, society has an indisputable right to protect itself against arrant subjectivisms, but, in so far as society itself is composed of de-individualized persons, it is completely at the mercy of ruthless individualists.

Let it band together into groups and organizations as much as it likes – it is just this banding together and the resultant extinction of the individual personality that makes it succumb so readily to a dictator.

People go on blithely organizing and believing in the sovereign remedy of mass action, without the least consciousness of the fact that the most powerful organizations can be maintained only by the greatest ruthlessness of their leaders and the cheapest of slogans.

It is, unfortunately, only too clear that if the individual is not truly regenerated in spirit, society cannot be either, for society is the sum total of individuals in need of redemption.

As experience unfortunately shows, the inner man remains unchanged however much community he has. His environment cannot give him as a gift that which he can win for himself only with effort and suffering.

On the contrary, a favorable environment merely strengthens the dangerous tendency to expect everything to originate from outside – even that metamorphosis which external reality cannot provide, namely, a deep-seated change of the inner man, which is all the more urgent in view of the mass phenomena of today and the still greater problems of the increase of population looming up in the future.

Since every tyranny is ipso facto immoral and ruthless, it has much more freedom in the choice of its methods than an institution which still takes account of the individual. Should such an institution come into conflict with the organized State, it is soon made aware of the very real disadvantage of its morality and therefore feels compelled to avail itself of the same methods as its opponent. In this way the evil spreads almost of necessity, even when direct infection might be avoided. The

In this way he falls into continual conflict with himself and only very rarely succeeds in giving his life an undivided goal – for which, as a rule, he must pay very dearly by repressing other sides of his nature.

One often has to ask oneself in such cases whether this kind of one-sidedness is worth forcing at all, seeing that the natural state of the human psyche consists in a certain jostling together of its components and in the contradictoriness of their behavior – that is, in a certain degree of dissociation. Buddhism calls it attachment to the “ten thousand things.” Such a condition cries out for order and synthesis.

When any natural human function gets lost, i.e., is denied conscious and intentional expression, a general disturbance results.

But that does not explain why the fantasies did not develop any pathological effects during the interim period. These effects develop only when the individual comes up against a situation which he cannot overcome by conscious means. The resultant standstill in the development of personality opens a sluice for infantile fantasies, which, of course, are latent in everybody but do not display any activity so long as the conscious personality can continue on its way unimpeded.

The psychologist has come to see that nothing is achieved by telling, persuading, admonishing, giving good advice.

Nothing estranges man more from the ground plan of his instincts than his learning capacity, which turns out to be a genuine drive towards progressive transformation of human modes of behavior.

It is also the source of numerous psychic disturbances and difficulties occasioned by man’s progressive alienation from his instinctual foundation, i.e., by his uprootedness and identification with his conscious knowledge of himself, by his concern with consciousness at the expense of the unconscious.

Separation from his instinctual nature inevitably plunges civilized man into the conflict between conscious and unconscious, spirit and nature, knowledge and faith, a split that becomes pathological the moment his consciousness is no longer able to neglect or suppress his instinctual side.

All this is unavoidable, because the root of the evil is untouched and merely the counterposition has come to light.