Psychology, like every empirical science, cannot get along without auxiliary concepts, hypotheses, and models. But the theologian as well as the philosopher is apt to make the mistake of taking them for metaphysical postulates. The atom of which the physicist speaks is not an hypostasis, it is a model. Similarly my concept of archetype or of psychic energy is only an auxiliary idea which can be exchanged at any time for a better formula. (Jung 1952c: par. 460)
CW 11 forword to God and the Unconscious
