Best 49 quotes in «jung quotes» category

I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among those in the second half of life - that is to say, over 35 - there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given their followers, and none of them has really been healed who did not regain his religious outlook.

If you cannot understand why someone did something, look at the consequences—and infer the motivation.

Náboženské symboly jsou fenomény života, prostě skutečnostmi, nikoli názory. Když církev po takovou a takovou dobu lpí na tom, že Slunce obíhá kolem Země, ale v 19. století toto hledisko opouští, pak se může v tomto ohledu odvolat na psychologickou pravdu, že pro miliony lidí vskutku Slunce obíhalo kolem Země a teprve v 19. století dosáhlo větší množství lidí takové jistoty intelektuální funkce, že mohli uznat důkazy o planetární povaze Země. Bohužel neexistuje žádná pravda bez lidí, kteří ji chápou.

...in microphysics the observer interferes with the experiment in a way that can't be measured and that therefore can't be eliminated. No natural laws can be formulated, saying "such-and-such will happen in every case." All the microphysicist can say is "such-and-such is, according to statistical probability, likely to happen." This naturally represents a tremendous problem for our classical physical thinking. It requires a consideration, in a scientific experiment, of the mental outlook of the participant-observer: It could this be said that scientists can no longer hope to describe any aspects or qualities of outer objects in a completely independent, "objective" manner.

In the end a person must lose that which is most precious, that to which one's whole life has been devoted. The treasure is consciousness; it is the ego's final sacrifice to the Self. This sacrifice must be offered before the ultimate moment when the individual merges with the unconscious and stands before God.

In the last analysis, most of our difficulties come from losing contact with our instincts, with the age-old forgotten wisdom stored up in us.

It is a common illusion to believe that what we know today is all we ever can know. Nothing is more vulnerable than scientific theory, which is an ephemeral attempt to explain facts and not an everlasting truth in itself.

It is a fact that if an impulse from one or the other sphere comes up and is not lived out, then it goes back down and tends to develop anti-human qualities. What should have been a human impulse becomes a tiger-like impulse. For instance, a man has a feeling impulse to say something positive to someone and he blocks it off through some inhibition. He might then dream that he had a spontaneous feeling impulse on the level of a child and his conscious purpose had smashed it. The human is still there, but as a hurt child. Should he do that habitually for five years, he would no longer dream of a child who had been hurt but of a zoo full of raging wild animals in a cage. An impulse which is driven back loads up with energy and becomes inhuman. This fact, according to Dr. Jung, demonstrates the independent existence of unconscious.

It was a grief and a fear too ancient for me, it was a sorrow bred into the essence of the race. I saluted it, and passed on, for like the early all-pervading nausea, this was part of my living, kneaded into my fibres, a necessity like breathing and associated with it: this cold, this weight, this pulling and dragging and compelling. It was too old a lodestone for any individual to fight away from, or even to accurately know or place. It was there. [...] There it lay, just out of sight, deadly and punishing, for its pulse was that of a cold heaviness, it had to be a counterweight to joy.

Muselo to tak být, protože alchymisté vůbec nevěděli, o čem vlastně píší. Zda to víme dnes my, nezdá se mi zcela jisté. Buď jak buď, už nevěříme, že tajemství spočívá v chemické látce, ale spíše v jistém temném pozadí psýché, o němž ovšem nevíme, z čeho se vlastně skládá. Bude asi muset opět uběhnout několik staletí, než novou temnotu odkryjeme; vychází z ní to, co nechápeme, a přece to pociťujeme s nejkrajnější jistotou jako něco působivého.

Načež hlas v mém nitru pronesl: Je to umění. Překvapilo mě to. Nikdy mě nenapadlo, že to, co píši, má něco společného s uměním. Pak mě ale napadlo: Mé nevědomí možná utváří osobnost, která není já, která však naléhavě usiluje o vyjádření. Zcela bezpečně jsem věděl, že ten hlas vyšel z ženy. Poznal jsem hlas jedné pacientky, nadané psychopatky se silným přenosem na mne. V mé mysli se stala živou postavou.

No one has any obligations to a concept; that is what is so agreeable about conceptuality—it promises protection from experience.

Osamělost nevzniká tím, že by člověk kolem sebe neměl lidi, nýbrž spíše tím, že jim nemůže sdělit věci, které se mu jeví jako důležité, nebo že považuje za platné myšlenky, které jiní považují za nepravděpodobné.

shadow side: (n.) self you encounter when you do not look in the mirror.

Sometimes you no longer recognize yourself. You want to overcome it, but it overcomes you. You want to set limits, but it compels you to keep going. You want to elude it, but it comes with you. You want to employ it, but you are its tool; you want to think about it, but your thoughts obey it. Finally the fear of the inescapable seizes you, for it comes after you slowly and invincibly. There is no escape. So it is that you come to know what a real God is. Now you'll think up clever truisms, preventive measures, secret escape routes, excuses, potions capable of inducing forgetfulness, but it's all useless. The fire burns right through you. That which guides forces you onto the way. But the way is my own self, my own life founded upon myself. The God wants my life. He wants to go with me, sit at the table with me, work with me. Above all he wants to be ever present. But I'm ashamed of my God. I don't want to be divine but reasonable. The divine appears to me as irrational craziness. I hate it as an absurd disturbance of my meaningful human activity. It seems an unbecoming sickness which has stolen into the the regular course of my life. Yes, I even find the divine superfluous.

Stín odpovídá negativní jáské osobnosti, zahrnuje tedy všechny ty vlastnosti, jejichž existence je trýznivá a politováníhodná. V tomto případě jsou stín a anima, protože jsou oba nevědomí, spolu kontaminovány, což sen znázorňuje jako "manželství". Jestliže je existence animy (nebo stínu) uznána a nahlédnuta, dojde k oddělení obou postav, jako se to stalo v našem případě. Přitom stín je rozpoznán jako příslušný k já, anima ale jako nikoli příslušná k já.

Sexual differentiation begins approximately six weeks after conception, when in male children the gonads are formed and begin to manufacture male hormone, which has a profound effect on the future development of the embryo. In the female, on the other hand, the ovaries are not formed until the sixth month, by which time the greater size, weight, and muscular strength of the male is already established. This is the biological basis of the sexual dimorphism apparent in the great majority of societies known to anthropology, where child-rearing is almost invariably the responsibility of women, and hunting and warfare the responsibility of men. These differences have less to do with cultural `stereotypes' than some fashionable contemporary notions would have us believe. While it is true that at all ages males and females have far more in common than they have differences between them, there can be no doubt that some differences exist which have their roots in the biology of our species. Jung was quite clear about this. Again and again, he refers to the masculine and the feminine as two great archetypal principles, coexisting as equal and complementary parts of a balanced cosmic system, as expressed in the interplay of yin and yang in Taoist philosophy. These archetypal principles provide the foundations on which masculine and feminine stereotypes begin to do their work, providing an awareness of gender. Gender is the psychic recognition and social expression of the sex to which nature has assigned us, and a child's awareness of its gender is established by as early as eighteen months of age.

Sometimes you no longer recognize yourself. You want to overcome it, but it overcomes you. You want to set limits, but it compels you to keep going. You want to elude it, but it comes with you. You want to employ it, but you are its tool; you want to think about it, but your thoughts obey it. Finally the fear of the inescapable seizes you, for it comes after you slowly and invincibly. There is no escape. So it is that you come to know what a real God is. Now you'll think up clever truisms, preventive measures, secret escape routes, excuses, potions capable of inducing forgetfulness, but it's all useless. The fire burns right through you. That which guides forces you onto the way. But the way is my own self, my own life founded upon myself. The God wants my life. He wants to go with me, sit at the table with me, work with me. Above all he wants to be ever present. But I'm ashamed of my God. I don't want to be divine but reasonable. The divine appears to me as irrational craziness. I hate it as an absurd disturbance of my meaningful human activity. It seems an unbecoming sickness which has stolen into the the regular course of my life. Yes, I even find the divine superfluous. ~ Red Book, pg. 291

[T]he chief goal of Jungian psychology: how to be responsibly alive to all aspects of one's self without restriction.

The danger of abusing the discovery of the truth value of imagination for retrogressive tendencies is exemplified by the work of Carl Jung. More empathically than Freud, he has insisted on the cognitive force of imagination. According to Jung, phantasy is ‘undistinguishably’ united with all other mental functions, it appears ‘now as primeval, now as the ultimate and most audacious synthesis of all capabilities.’ Phantasy is above all the ‘creative activity out of which flow the answers to all answerable questions’; it is ‘the mother of all possibilities, in which all mental opposites as well as the conflict between internal and external world are united.’ Phantasy has always built the bridge between the irreconcilable demands of object and subject, extroversion and introversion. The simultaneously retrospective and expectant character of imagination is thus clearly stated: it looks not only back to an aboriginal golden past, but also forward to still unrealized but realizable possibilities.

V listopadu se stalo Jungovo osamocení ještě tíživější. Bylo by v rozporu s jeho povahou požádat o profesionální pomoc někoho jiného. A navíc nebylo jasné, zda je po ruce někdo, kdo by mu mohl pomoci. A tak se rozhodl zachovat se, jako se už zachoval v minulosti, a oddal se snění: Věděl jsem, že mám-li se vypořádat s fantaziemi, které mnou v hloubi zmítaly, musím se tak říkajíc do nich propadnout. K tomu jsem nejen pociťoval prudký odpor, ale přímo jsem se toho bál. Obával jsem se, že ztratím vládu nad sebou a stanu se obětí fantazií - a jako psychiatr jsem až příliš dobře věděl, co to znamená. Po delším váhání jsem však pochopil, že jiné cesty není.

The probability of a certain set of circumstances coming together in a meaningful (or tragic) way is so low that it simply cannot be considered mere coincidence.

This is a story of eternal love, which is born among the ices but which is soon mixed with dreams of death and of a new dawn. The first heroes were those who surrendered themselves to the holocaust of love. As they died, they caught a last glimpse of the City of Dawn and felt for the last time the milky lightning of the moon.

Velikost historických osobností nikdy nespočívala v jejich absolutním podrobení konvenci, ale tkvěla naopak v jejich osvobození od konvence a ve spásné svobodě. Vyčnívaly jako vrcholky hor z masy, která setrvávala v zajetí kolektivních úzkostí, přesvědčení, zákonů a kolektivních metod, a volily si vlastní cestu. A obyčejnému člověku vždycky připadalo podivné, že někdo před vyšlapanou cestou a známými cíli dává přednost strmé a úzké stezce vedoucí do neznáma. Proto se také vždycky mělo za to, že pokud takový člověk není šílený, jistě v něm sídlí démon nebo bůh; neboť ten zázrak, že by to někdo mohl dělat jinak, než jak to lidstvo odedávna dělalo, se dal vysvětlit jen nadáním démonickou silou nebo božským duchem.

The fact that a man who goes his own way ends in ruin means nothing ... He must obey his own law, as if it were a daemon whispering to him of new and wonderful paths ... There are not a few who are called awake by the summons of the voice, whereupon they are at once set apart from the others, feeling themselves confronted with a problem about which the others know nothing. In most cases it is impossible to explain to the others what has happened, for any understanding is walled off by impenetrable prejudices. "You are no different from anybody else," they will chorus or, "there's no such thing," and even if there is such a thing, it is immediately branded as "morbid"...He is at once set apart and isolated, as he has resolved to obey the law that commands him from within. "His own law!" everybody will cry. But he knows better: it is the law...The only meaningful life is a life that strives for the individual realization — absolute and unconditional— of its own particular law ... To the extent that a man is untrue to the law of his being ... he has failed to realize his own life's meaning.

The librarian was explaining the benefits of the Dewey decimal system to her junior--benefits that extended to every area of life. It was orderly, like the universe. It had logic. It was dependable. Using it allowed a kind of moral uplift, as one's own chaos was also brought under control. 'Whenever I am troubled,' said the librarian, 'I think about the Dewey decimal system.' 'Then what happens?' asked the junior, rather overawed. 'Then I understand that trouble is just something that has been filed in the wrong place. That is what Jung was explaining of course--as the chaos of our unconscious contents strive to find their rightful place in the index of consciousness.

[...] the really complex and unfamiliar part of the human mind, from which symbols are produced, is still virtually unexplored. It seems almost incredible that though we receive signals from it every night, deciphering these communications seems too tedious for any but a very few people to be bothered with. Man's greatest instrument, his psyche, is little thought of, and it is often directly mistrusted and despised. "It's only psychological" too often means: It is nothing.

Through Jung [Pauli] became very interested in various kinds of mysticism, including Jewish mysticism. This led Pauli to develop a friendship with Gershom Scholem, the world's greatest authority in that field and in the Cabala, .... On one occasion Scholem asked me to tell him about unsolved problems in modern physics. .... When I mentioned this number --137-- to Scholem, .... He told me that in Hebrew .... The number corresponding to the word 'cabala' happens to be 137.

V nevědomí ženy lze tedy očekávat podstatně jiné aspekty, než jaké nacházíme u muže. Mám-li nyní říci jedním slovem, kde jev tomto ohledu rozdíl mezi mužem a ženou, čím je animus charakteristický oproti anime, mohu říci jen: jako anima vyvolává nálady, tak animus vyvolává mínění, a tak jako nálady u muže vystupují z temného pozadí, tak mínění u ženy spočívá na stejně nevědomých, apriorních předpokladech.

We are so captivated by and entangled in our subjective consciousness that we have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions.

Where the parents are not 'good enough' the rest of the programme for life may be distorted and later stages in the archetypal sequence may fail to be realized. Thus, the boy whose father was inadequate or absent may fail to actualize his masculine potential sufficiently to establish the social or vocational role his talents equip him for, or he may be unable to sustain a relationship with a member of the opposite sex long enough for him to become an adequate husband or father himself.

…when a voice is heard in a dream it is a most meaningful occurrence. Dr. Jung identified the appearance of a voice identified the appearance of a voice in dreams with an intervention of the Self. It stands for knowledge that has its roots in the collective knowledge of the psyche. What the voice says cannot be disputed.

When, for instance, a highly esteemed professor in his seventies abandons his family and runs off with a young red-headed actress, we know that the gods have claimed another victim.

Carl Jung called this his shadow work. He said we never see others. Instead we see only aspects of ourselves that fall over them. Shadows. Projections. Our associations.

Back in the 1930s, Carl Jung, the eminent thinker and psychologist, put it this way: Criticism has 'the power to do good when there is something that must be destroyed, dissolved or reduced, but [it is] capable only of harm when there is something to be built.

Jung viewed Freud as a mentor, but he never wanted to be anybody's disciple.

Jung Min’s palms are always sweating and he wears strange socks!

Each life is formed by its unique image, an image that is the essence of that life and calls it to a destiny. As the force of fate, this image acts as a personal daimon, an accompanying guide who remembers your calling. The daimon motivates. It protects. It invents and persists with stubborn fidelity. It resists compromising reasonableness and often forces deviance and oddity upon its keeper, especially when neglected or opposed. It offers comfort and can pull you into its shell, but it cannot abide innocence. It can make the body ill. It is out of step with time, finding all sorts of faults, gaps, and knots in the flow of life - and it prefers them. It has affinities with myth, since it is itself a mythical being and thinks in mythical patterns. It has much to do with feelings of uniqueness, of grandeur and with the restlessness of the heart, its impatience, its dissatisfaction, its yearning. It needs its share of beauty. It wants to be seen, witnessed, accorded recognition, particularly by the person who is its caretaker. Metaphoric images are its first unlearned language, which provides the poetic basis of mind, making possible communication between all people and all things by means of metaphors

According to Jung, synchronicity is an unpredictable moment of meaningful coincidence

As soon as we notice that certain types of event "like" to cluster together at certain times, we begin to understand the attitude of the Chinese, whose theories of medicine, philosophy, and even building are based on a "science" of meaningful coincidences. The classical Chinese texts did not ask what causes what, but rather what "likes" to occur with what.

Character forms a life regardless of how obscurely that life is lived and how little light falls on it from the stars.

There's novel reading, and then there's the other kind of reading. Take somebody like Carl Jung, the psychiatrist - now there's somebody worth getting into. With novels, I'm kind of fly by night. It isn't something I can be really consistent with.

A square space with complicated ceremonies going on in it, the purpose of which is to transform animals into men. Two snakes, moving in opposite directions, have to be got rid of at once. Some animals are there, e.g. foxes and dogs. The people walk around the square and must let themselves be bitten by these animals in each of the four corners . If they run away all is lost. Now the higher animals come on to the scene-bulls and ibexes. Four snakes glide into the four corners. Then the congregation flies out. Two sacrificial priests carry in a huge reptile and with this they touch the forehead of a shapeless animal lump or life-mass. Out of it there instantly rises a human head, transfigured. A voice proclaims: "These are attempts at being.

Avšak jako tvůrčí člověk je jedinec vystaven tomu, že není svobodný, nýbrž jej poutá a pudí démon.

But one must remember that they were all men with systems. Freud, monumentally hipped on sex (for which he personally had little use) and almost ignorant of Nature: Adler, reducing almost everything to the will to power: and Jung, certainly the most humane and gentlest of them, and possibly the greatest, but nevertheless the descendant of parsons and professors, and himself a super-parson and a super-professor. all men of extraordinary character, and they devised systems that are forever stamped with that character.… Davey, did you ever think that these three men who were so splendid at understanding others had first to understand themselves? It was from their self-knowledge they spoke. They did not go trustingly to some doctor and follow his lead because they were too lazy or too scared to make the inward journey alone. They dared heroically. And it should never be forgotten that they made the inward journey while they were working like galley-slaves at their daily tasks, considering other people's troubles, raising families, living full lives. They were heroes, in a sense that no space-explorer can be a hero, because they went into the unknown absolutely alone. Was their heroism simply meant to raise a whole new crop of invalids? Why don't you go home and shoulder your yoke, and be a hero too?

Člověk se přirozeně nemůže od dětství osvobodit, aniž by se jím podrobně nezabýval, jak již dlouho víme z Freudových výzkumů. Čistě intelektuálním věděním přitom nelze ničeho dosáhnout. Účinné je pouze rozpomenutí se, které je zároveň znovuprožitím. Mnohé zůstane nevyřešené díky rychlému plynutí let a přemáhajícímu proudu věmů z právě odhalovaného světa. Od toho se člověk neosvobodil, nýbrž jenom vzdálil. Vrátí-li se tedy z pozdějších let zpátky k dětským vzpomínkám, nalezne tam ještě živé části vlastní osobnosti, které se ho pevně chytí, připojí se k němu a prosytí jej znovu pocitem dřívějších let. Tyto části jsou ale dosud ve stavu dětství, a proto silné a bezprostřední. Pouze jsou-li opět spojeny s dospělým vědomím, mohou pozbýt svůj infantilní apekt a mohou být upraveny. Vždy musí být nejprve prozkoumáno toto "osobní nevědomí", to znamená musí dojít k jeho uvědomění, jinak nelze otevřít vstup ke kolektivnímu nevědomí.

Co se od našich vzorů můžeme naučit, je především ta skutečnost, že duše skrývá obsahy nebo je vystavena vlivům, jejichž asimilace se pojí s největšími nebezpečími. Když tedy staří alchymisté své tajemství připisovali hmotě a Faust ani Zarathuštra nás nikterak nepovzbuzují k tomu, abychom je k sobě přičlenili, nezbývá asi nic jiného, než ten arogantní nárok vědomí, aby bylo samo duší, odmítnout a přiznat duši skutečnost, již našimi současnými rozumovými prostředky nejsme schopni pochopit. Nepovažuji za tmáře toho, kdo přizná svou nevědomost, nýbrž toho, jehož vědomí není ještě ani tak vyvinuto, že o své nevědomosti nic neví. Jsem toho názoru, že alchymistické očekávání, že z hmoty lze zhotovit filosofické zlato nebo všelék nebo zázračný Kámen, je sice na jedné straně iluzí (jejíž příčinou je projekce), ale na straně druhé odpovídá psychickým skutečnostem, jimž v psychologii nevědomí připadá velký význam. Alchymista totiž, jak dokazují texty a jejich symbolika, projikoval proces individuace do chemických procesů proměny.

First, create your ego. Then destroy it. This is all of life.

Had Jung been a Nazi sympathizer, would this provide grounds for rejecting analytical psychology in toto? Some insist that it would, apparently in the belief that a man's views should conform to contemporary notions of political correctness before serious attention can be granted to his work. Their contention could be justified were it proved that analytical psychology, so closely derived from the psychology of its founder, is imbued with a Fascist spirit. Fortunately, its emphasis on the primary importance of the individual psyche and the personal quest for wholeness, combined with its resistance to dogmatism, collectivism, and social conformity, places analytical psychology in an intellectual position as far removed from Fascism as it is possible to be.