The Undiscovered Self Quotes

“The bigger the crowd, the more negligible the individual becomes.”
― Carl Gustav Jung, The Undiscovered Self

“Naturally, society has an indisputable right to protect itself against arrant subjectivisms, but, in so far as society is itself composed of de-individualized human beings, 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. A million zeros joined together do not, unfortunately, add up to one. Ultimately everything depends on the quality of the individual, but our fatally short-sighted age thinks only in terms of large numbers and mass organizations, though one would think that the world had seen more than enough of what a well-disciplined mob can do in the hand of a single madman.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self

“Instead of the concrete individual, you have the names of organizations and, at the highest point, the abstract idea of the State as the principle of political reality. The moral responsibility of the individual is then inevitably replaced by the policy of the State (raison d’etat). 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 the 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 individual is increasingly deprived of the moral decision as to how he should live his own life, and instead is ruled, fed, clothed, and educated as a social unit, accommodated in the appropriate housing unit, and amused in accordance with the standards that give pleasure and satisfaction to the masses. The rulers, in their turn, are just as much social units as the ruled, and are distinguished only by the fact they are specialized mouthpieces of State doctrine. They do not need to be personalities capable of judgment, but thoroughgoing specialists who are unusable outside their line of business. State policy decides what shall be taught and studied.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self

“The statistical method shows the facts in the light of the ideal average but does not give us a picture of their empirical reality. While reflecting an indisputable aspect of reality, it can falsify the actual truth in a most misleading way. This is particularly true of theories which are based on statistics. The distinctive thing about real facts, however, is their individuality. Not to put too fine a point on it, once 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.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self

“Happiness and contentment, equability of mind and meaningfulness of life – these can be experienced only by the individual and not by a State, which, on the one hand, is nothing but a convention agreed to by independent individuals, and on the other, continually threatens to paralyse and suppress the individual.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self

“Ultimately everything depends on the quality of the individual, but our fatally short-sighted age thinks only in terms of large numbers and mass organizations...”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self

“The mass State has no intention of promoting mutual understanding and the relationship of man to man; it strives, rather, for atomization, for the psychic isolation of the individual.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self

“The dictator State has one great advantage over bourgeois reason: along with the individual it swallows up his religious forces. The State takes the place of God; that is why, seen from this angle, the socialist dictatorships are religions and State slavery is a form of worship. But the religious function cannot be dislocated and falsified in this way without giving rise to secret doubts, which are immediately repressed so as to avoid conflict with the prevail trend towards mass-mindedness. […] The policy of the State is exalted to a creed, the leader or party boss becomes a demigod beyond good and evil, and his votaries are honoured as heroes, martyrs, apostles, missionaries. There is only one truth and beside it no other. It is sacrosanct and above criticism. Anyone who thinks differently is a heretic, who, as we know from history, is threatened with all manner of unpleasant things. Only the party boss, who holds the political power in his hands, can interpret the State doctrine authentically, and he does so just as suits him.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self

“Most people confuse “self-knowledge” with knowledge of their conscious ego personalities. Anyone”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self

“Funnily enough, “self-criticism” is an idea much in vogue in Marxist countries, but there it is subordinated to ideological considerations and must serve the State, and not truth and justice in men’s dealing with one another. The mass State has no intention of promoting mutual understanding and the relationship of man to man; it strives, rather, for atomization, for the psychic isolation of the individual. The more unrelated individuals are, the more consolidated the State becomes, and vice versa.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self

“Bass bands, flags, banners, parades, and monster demonstrations are no different in principle from ecclesiastical processions, cannonades, and fireworks to scare off demons. Only, the suggestive parade of State power engenders a collective feeling of security which, unlike religious demonstrations, give the individual no protection against his inner demonism. Hence he will cling all the more to the power of the State, i.e., to the mass, thus delivering himself up to it psychically as well as morally and putting the finishing touch to his social depotentiation. The State, like the Church, demands enthusiasm, self-sacrifice, and love, and if religion requires or presupposes the “fear of God,” then the dictator State takes good care to provide the necessary terror.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self

“If I want to understand an individual human being, I must lay aside all scientific knowledge of the average man and discard all theories in order to adopt a completely new and unprejudiced attitude.”
― Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self

“Apart from the agglomeration of huge masses in which the individual disappears anyway, one of the chief factors responsible for psychological mass-mindedness is scientific rationalism, which robs the individual of his foundations and his dignity. As a social unit he has lost his individuality and become a mere abstract number in the bureau of statistics. He can only play the role of an interchangeable unit of infinitesimal importance. Looked at rationally and from outside, that is exactly what he is, and from this point of view it seems positively absurd to go on talking about the value or meaning of the individual.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self

“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 individual, however, as an irrational datum, is the true and authentic carrier of reality, the concrete man as opposed to the unreal ideal or “normal” man to whom the scientific statements refer.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self

“The man who looks only outside and quails before the big battalions has no resource with which to combat the evidence of his senses and his reason.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self

“و مع ذلك نظن أن الأخطاء النفسية و آثارها يمكن التخلص منها بمجرد الكلمات , ذلك أن "النفسي" يعني أقل من الهواء لدي معظم الناس ”
― كارل يونج, التنقيب في أغوار النفس

“Words like “Society” and “State” are so concretized that they are almost personified. In the opinion of the man in the street, the “State,” far more than any king in history, is the inexhaustible giver of all good; the “State” is invoked, made responsible, grumbled at, and so on and so forth. Society is elevated to the rank of a supreme ethical principle; indeed, it is even credited with positively creative capacities.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self

“Belief is no adequate substitute for inner experience, and where this is absent even a strong faith which came miraculously as a gift of grace may depart equally miraculously. People call faith the true religious experience, but they do not stop to consider that actually it is a secondary phenomenon arising form the fact that something happened to us in the first place which instilled pistis into us — that is, trust and loyalty.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self

“In contrast to the subjectivism of the conscious mind the unconscious is objective, manifesting itself mainly in the form of contrary feelings, fantasies, emotions, impulses and dreams, none of which one makes oneself but which come upon one objectively. Even”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self

“This formulation will not please the mass man or the collective believer. For the former the policy of the State is the supreme principle of thought and action. Indeed, this was the purpose for which he was enlightened, and accordingly the mass man grants the individual a right to exist only in so far as he is a function of the State. The believer, on the other hand, while admitting that the State has a moral and factual claim on him, confesses to the belief that not only man but the State that rules him is subject to the overlordship of “God,” and that, in case of doubt, the supreme decision will be made by God and not by the State.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self

“The State has taken the place of God; that is why, seen from this angle, the socialist dictatorships are religions and State slavery is a form of worship. But the religious function cannot be dislocated and falsified in this way without giving rise to secret doubts, which are immediately repressed so as to avoid conflict with the prevailing trend towards mass-mindedness. The result, as always in such cases, is overcompensation in the form of fanaticism, which in its turn is used as a weapon for stamping out the least flicker of opposition. Free opinion is stifled and moral decision ruthlessly suppressed, on the plea that the end justifies the means, even the vilest. The policy of the State is exalted to a creed, the leader or party boss becomes a demigod beyond good and evil, and his votaries are honored as heroes, martyrs, apostles, missionaries. There is only one truth and beside it no other. It is sacrosanct and above criticism. Anyone who thinks differently is a heretic, who, as we know from history, is threatened with all manner of unpleasant things. Only the party boss, who holds the political power in his hands, can interpret the State doctrine authentically, and he does so just as suits him.”
― Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self

“Belief is no adequate substitute for inner experience, and where this is absent even a strong faith which came miraculously as a gift of grace may depart equally miraculously. People”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self

“أن تكون تابعاً لعقيدة معينة ليس دائما أمراً دينياً، بل على الأغلب اجتماعي، وهو بهذه الصفة، لا يفعل شيئا لمنح الفرد أساسا يقف عليه. إنما يتعين عليه، لكي يحصل على مستند يقف عليه، أن يعتمد على علاقته بسلطة ليست من هذا العالم. المعيار هنا ليس القيام بخدمة شفوية للعقيدة، بل هو الحقيقة السيكولوجية التي تفيد أن حياة الفرد لا تُعيّنها الأنا/ الأنية/ إيغو أو أراؤها أو العوامل الاجتماعية وحسب، وإنما بنفس المقدار إن لم يكن أكثر، تُعيِّنها (السلطة المفارقة)، فليست المباديء الأخلاقية مهما بلغ من سموها، ولا العقائد مهما بلغ من استقامتها، ليست هي التي تُرسي أسس حرية الفرد واستقلاله، وإنما هو الإدراك التجريبي والخبرة التي لا تُدحض لعلاقةٍ محض شخصية، يتبادلها إنسانٌ مع سلطةٍ غير دنيوية، تكون بمثابة معدّل لثقل هذا العالم وموجِبه. وهذه الصيغة لا يُسرّ بها رجل القبيلة ولا المؤمن الجمعي. ”
― كارل غوستاف يونغ, The Undiscovered Self

“It is in the nature of political bodies always to see the evil in the opposite group, just as the individual has an ineradicable tendency to get rid of everything he does not know and does not want to know about himself by foisting it off on somebody else.”
― Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self

“In order to compensate for its chaotic formlessness, a mass always produces a “Leader,” who almost infallibly becomes the victim of his own inflated ego-consciousness, as numerous examples in history show.”
― Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self

“As understanding deepens, the further removed it becomes from knowledge. 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. Sooner or later the relationship reaches a point where one partner feels he is being forced to sacrifice his own individuality so that it may be assimilated by that of the other. This inevitable consequence breaks the understanding, for understanding presupposes the integral preservation of the individuality of both partners”
― Carl Gustav Jung, The Undiscovered Self

“Just as man, as a social being, cannot in the long run exist without a tie to the community, so the individual will never find the real justification for his existence, and his own spiritual and moral autonomy, anywhere except in an extramundane principle capable of relativizing the overpowering influence of external factors. The individual who is not anchored in God can offer no resistance on his own resources to the physical and moral blandishments of the world. For this he needs the evidence of inner, transcendent experience which alone can protect him from the otherwise inevitable submersion in the mass.”
― Carl Gustav Jung, The Undiscovered Self

“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. I can therefore see it only as a delusion when the Churches try – as they apparently do – to rope the individual into some social organization and reduce him to a condition of diminished responsibility, instead of raising him out of the torpid, mindless mass and making clear to him that he is the one important factor and that the salvation of the world consists in the salvation of the individual soul.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self

“It is not the universal and the regular that characterize the individual, but rather the unique. He is not to be understood as a recurrent unit but as something unique and singular which in the last analysis can be neither known nor compared with anything else.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self

“لاشيء أبرز وأظهر من الفجوة التي فُتحت بين الإيمان والمعرفة، لقد بلغ التباين بين هاتين المقولتين مبلغاً يجعلنا نتكلم عن عدم إمكان قياس المسافة بينهما وبين طريقتيهما في النظر إلى الحياة. ومع ذلك فهما معنيّتان بنفس العالم التجريبي الذي نعيش فيه. حتى اللاهوت يُنبئنا بأن الإيمان تؤيده "وقائع" أصبحت مفهومة تاريخيا في هذا العالم الذي نعرفه، وأن المسيح ولد كما يولد كائن بشري حقيقي، اجترح معجزات كثيرة، وتألم الألم المُقدّر عليه، ومات زمن حكم بيلاطس البنطي، ثم قام بالجسد بعد موته. لكن يرفض اللاهوت كل ميل إلى أخذ هذه الإبانات التي اشتملت عليها أقدم سجلاته على أنها (أساطير مكتوبة)، وأن يفهمها فهما رمزيا تبعاً لذلك، والحق أن اللاهوتيين أنفسهم هم الذين قاموا مؤخراً بمحاولة- لا شك أنها تنازل منهم للمعرفة- محاولة ترمي إلى نزع صفة (الأسطورة) عن موضوع إيمانهم. لكنهم عند النقاط الحاسمة يرسمون خطوطاً تحكمية. وإنه لأمر أوضح من أن نبيّنه للعقل الناقد إذا قلنا أن الأسطورة جزءٌ لا يتجزأ من كل دين، وأنه لا يمكن استبعادها من توكيدات الإيمان بدون الإضرار بها. إن القطيعة بين الإيمان والمعرفة عَرَض من أعراض انشطار الواعية عن (الخافية/ اللا واعية) والتي هي من خصائص الاضطراب العقلي في يومنا هذا. يبدو الأمر كما لو أن شخصين مختلفين يُدليان بتصريحات حول موضوعٍ واحد، كلٌ من وجهة نظر نفسه. أو كما لو أن شخصاً واحداً له إطاران مختلفان لعقله بقوم بوضع خطوط عريضة لصورة خبرته. فلو استبدلنا كلمة "شخص" بكلمتي "المجتمع الحديث"، لاتضح لنا أن الأخير يعاني من تفكك أو انفصام عقلي، أي اضطراب عصابي. بالنظر إلى هذا، لا يُجدينا نفعاً أن ينجذب أحد الطرفين عنيداً إلى اليمين والآخر إلى اليسار. إن هذا ما يحدث في كل نفس معصوبة، فيالشدة آلامها! وليس كمثل هذه الآلام ما يمكن أن يأتي بالمريض إلى الطبيب. ”
― كارل غوستاف يونغ, The Undiscovered Self