Glossary: Logos

The psychological function of logic, reason, and discrimination; associated with the masculine, whether in men or in the animus of women. Logos is Yang: the sun, light, fire, air, spirit, practicality, reason, the mind, hard, straight, dividing, and Heaven. The meaningful word, logical decision or judgment, human intellect; divine reason, world reason, God's Word as the force which created the world; revelation. Logos is impersonal and not influenced by feeling; it’s concerned with the search for universal, impersonal truth as opposed to individual, personal relations. As everyone contains contrasexual traits anyone, male or female, can be characterized by logos. The psychological function associated with logos is the thinking function. It's opposite is eros.

Woman’s psychology is founded on the principle of Eros, the great binder and loosener, whereas from ancient times the ruling principle ascribed to man is Logos. The concept of Eros could be expressed in modern terms as psychic relatedness, and that of Logos as objective interest.

- Carl Jung, Aspects of the Feminine, Princeton University Press, 1982, p. 65

There is no consciousness without discrimination of opposites. This is the paternal principle, the Logos, which eternally struggles to extricate itself from the primal warmth and primal darkness of the maternal womb; in a word, from unconsciousness.

- "Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype," CW 9i, par. 178

After middle life, however, permanent loss of the anima means a diminution of vitality, of flexibility, and of human kindness. The result, as a rule, is premature rigidity, crustiness, stereotypy, fanatical one-sidedness, obstinancy, pedantry, or else resignation, weariness, sloppiness, irresponsibility, and finally a childish ramollissement with a tendency to alcohol. After middle life, therefore, the connection with the archetypal sphere of experience should if possible be re-established.

- C.G. Jung, "Aspects of the Masculine," p. 136

By Logos I meant discrimination, judgment, insight, and by Eros I meant the capacity to relate. I regarded both concepts as intuitive ideas which cannot be defined accurately or exhaustively. From the scientific point of view this is regrettable, but from a practical one it has its value, since the two concepts mark out a field of experience which it is equally difficult to define.

As we can hardly ever make a psychological proposition without immediately having to reverse it, instances to the contrary leap to the eye at once: men who care nothing for discrimination, judgment, and insight, and women who display an almost excessively masculine proficiency in this respect. . . . Wherever this exists, we find a forcible intrusion of the unconscious, a corresponding exclusion of the consciousness specific to either sex, predominance of the shadow and of contrasexuality.

- “The Personification of the Opposites," CW 14, pars. 224f