Whenever anything is taken to it’s extreme, it will flip over into its opposite. This is enantiodromia. “Cold things warm, warm things cool, wet things dry and parched things get wet.” (Heraclitus) “Everything arises in this way, opposites from their opposites.” (Plato) It’s typically associated with neurosis. The only way to avoid enantiodromia is by refraining from excessive one-sidedness; at the same time, an enantiodromia can also lead to a rebirth of the personality.
This characteristic phenomenon practically always occurs when an extreme, one-sided tendency dominates conscious life; in time an equally powerful counterposition is built up, which first inhibits the conscious performance and subsequently breaks through the conscious control.
- Definitions, ibid., par. 709
The grand plan on which the unconscious life of the psyche is constructed is so inaccessible to our understanding that we can never know what evil may not be necessary in order to produce good by enantiodromia, and what good may very possibly lead to evil.
- The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales, CW 9i, par. 397
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