Modern Man in Search of a Soul (Routledge Classics)

by C.G. Jung

The first beginnings of all analytical treatment are to be found in its prototype, the confessional.

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. Until he can do this, an impenetrable wall shuts him out from the living experience of feeling himself a man among men.

Almost anybody, from the primitive medicine-man and the prayer-healer up, can gain successes in psychotherapy. But the psychotherapist learns little or nothing from his successes. They mainly confirm him in his mistakes, while his failures, on the other hand, are priceless experiences in that they not only open up the way to a deeper truth, but force him to change his views and methods.

man is completely human only when he is playing.

I have turned these hints to practical account, and I now urge my patients at such times actually to paint what they have seen in dream or fantasy. As a rule, I am met with the objection: “I am not a painter.” To this I usually reply that neither are modern painters

Speech is a storehouse of images founded on experience, and therefore concepts which are too abstract do not easily take root in it, or quickly die out again for lack of contact with reality. But thinking and feeling are so obtrusively real that every language above the primitive level has absolutely unmistakable expressions for them. We can therefore be sure that these expressions coincide with perfectly definite psychic facts, no matter what the scientific definitions of these complex facts may be. Everyone knows, for example, what consciousness is, and nobody doubts that the concept covers a definite psychic condition, however far science may be from defining it satisfactorily.

I have therefore defined sensation as perception through conscious sensory processes, and intuition as perception by way of unconscious contents and connections.

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. The one-sided emphasis on thinking is always accompanied by an inferiority in feeling, and differentiated sensation and intuition are mutually injurious. Whether a function is differentiated or not may easily be recognized from its strength, stability, constancy, trustworthiness and service in adaptedness. But inferiority in a function is often not so easily described or recognized. An essential criterion is its lack of self-sufficiency, and our resulting dependence on people and circumstances; furthermore, its disposing us to moods and undue sensitivity, its untrustworthiness and vagueness, and its tendency to make us suggestible. We are always at a disadvantage in using the inferior function because we cannot direct it, being in fact even its victims.

If psychic life consisted only of overt happenings—which on a primitive level is still the case—we could content ourselves with a sturdy empiricism. The psychic life of civilized man, however, is full of problems; we cannot even think of it except in terms of problems. Our psychic processes are made up to a large extent of reflections, doubts and experiments, all of which are almost completely foreign to the unconscious, instinctive mind of primitive man. It is the growth of consciousness which we must thank for the existence of problems; they are the dubious gift of civilization. It is just man’s turning away from instinct—his opposing himself to instinct—that creates consciousness. Instinct is nature and seeks to perpetuate nature; while consciousness can only seek culture or its denial. Even when we turn back to nature, inspired by a Rousseauesque longing, we “cultivate” nature. As long as we are still submerged in nature we are unconscious, and we live in the security of instinct that knows no problems. Everything in us that still belongs to nature shrinks away from a problem; for its name is doubt, and wherever doubt holds sway, there is uncertainty and the possibility of divergent ways. And where several ways seem possible, there we have turned away from the certain guidance of instinct and are handed over to fear. For consciousness is now called upon to do that which nature has always done for her children—namely, to give a certain, unquestionable and unequivocal de...

Problems thus draw us into an orphaned and isolated state where we are abandoned by nature and are driven to consciousness. There is no other way open to us; we are forced to resort to decisions and solutions where we formerly trusted ourselves to natural happenings. Every problem, therefore, brings the possibility of a widening of consciousness—but also the necessity of saying good-bye to childlike unconsciousness and trust in nature. 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. Every one of us gladly turns away from his problems; if possible, they must not be mentioned, or, better still, their existence is denied. We wish to make our lives simple, certain and smooth—and for that reason problems are tabu. We choose to have certainties and no doubts—results and no experiments—without even seeing that certainties can arise only through doubt, and results through experiment. The artful denial of a problem will not produce conviction; on the contrary, a wider and higher con...

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.

In my picture of the world there is a vast outer realm and an equally vast inner realm; between these two stands man, facing now one and now the other, and, according to his mood or disposition, taking the one for the absolute truth by denying or sacrificing the other.

It is not the children of the flesh, but the “children of God” who know freedom.

When in the course of our own development we grow out of many-sided contradictions and achieve a unified personality, we experience something like a complicated growing-together of the psyche. Since the human body is built up by inheritance out of a number of Mendelian units, it does not seem altogether out of the question that the human psyche is similarly put together.

There are hardly any exceptions to the rule that a person must pay dearly for the divine gift of the creative fire. It is as though each of us were endowed at birth with a certain capital of energy. The strongest force in our make-up will seize and all but monopolize this energy, leaving so little over that nothing of value can come of it. In this way the creative force can drain the human impulses to such a degree that the personal ego must develop all sorts of bad qualities—ruthlessness, selfishness and vanity (so-called “auto-erotism”)—and even every kind of vice, in order to maintain the spark of life and to keep itself from being wholly bereft.

The causes of a neurosis lie in the present as well as in the past; and only a still existing cause can keep a neurosis active. A man is not tubercular because he was infected twenty years ago with bacilli, but because foci of infection are still active today. The questions when and how the infection took place are even quite irrelevant to his present condition. Even the most accurate knowledge of the previous history of the case cannot cure tuberculosis. And the same holds true of the neuroses.

We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses. I am the oppressor of the person I condemn, not his friend and fellow-sufferer.