The sacred flame

Sacred Heart (Mexico)

[Image from StardustPrintShop (Etsy)]

At this point it becomes easier to understand why Jung always required of analysts that they should ultimately work the most on continuing to make progress in their own individuation. In doing so, they take their analysands along with them on their journey, without trying to influence them directly (which would be an abuse of power). In an early letter, Jung even goes so far as to say that the therapist should only analyze the pathological aspect of the patient’s psyche. This is because intellectual understanding is destructive. Understanding (Latin comprehendere), after all, means “taking hold of,” “grasping,” and this corresponds to an exercise of power. When the patients being and destiny are at stake, one should relate to his unique mystery with wordless respect. As Jung said, “we must understand the divine in us, but not in another in so far as he is capable of getting on and understanding on his own.” Our dreamer, as we will recall, was apprehensive about his encounter with patients. His dream points him back to working on himself

~ Marie-Louise von Franz, Psychotherapy

I thought about the secrets I had stored up inside my body. How many times I’ve crawled out my bedroom window to get in a car. The unstoppable fire between my legs. A fire not his. I thought about vodka. Nearly drowning. By the time he sat me on the couch to tell me I was his, I was miles away from daughter. A black suitcase making shape and story in my dreams. I felt like there was a muscle between us. The muscle was my sexuality. Not his.

~ Lidia Yuknavitch, The Chronology of Water


Welcome the madnesses, the stalemates, the gordian knots. Even though it's hard and painful, welcome these burdens. What you see as the Great Enemy who is trying to ruin all of your carefully laid plans is really your severe and demanding Guardian Angel, providing obstacles that will train your spiritual body into something strong and beautiful. Our madnesses are the Self trying to incarnate in us, God trying to come into the world.

The shaman is always a wounded healer. Those who can go into their own madness and come out of it whole are the only ones who are able to carry the weight of the Self into life. This is the important thing; your weakness is your strength. What is weak in outer, subjective reality is the yoke that links you with the Self. It is your way to bring the Self, or as much of it as you are able, into the world.

To understand boorishly and without care is to do violence to the soul. That desire in us - to know, to control, to make safe - diminishes that which is sacred into a “nothing but.” It turns what is glorious and beautiful and terrible into bland meaninglessness. Hindu’s greet each other with palm to palm, bowing as the God in them acknowledges the God in you. When we, or someone else, is experiencing madness, we put our hands together wordlessly, reverently, bow to this holy presence that is trying to come into the world. It’s not the places where we’re strong that matter, but where we are embarrassing, unpleasant, and inconvenient.

What is needed is a reverent attitude toward life, toward ourselves as well as others, toward all of existence. An open-hearted and open-minded attitude, an attitude of sympathy and compassion when we're in the thick of the struggle. Not everything needs to be known, or judged.... measured, or fit into “it's place.” Reverence stops us from harming ourselves and each other with our drive to put everything into safe little boxes. The thing in us which is bigger than the universe cannot be fit into a small, neat little box. By freeing our hearts and our minds we remember the Sacred that lives in and through us all.

The thing in us which is ours is ours. The thing in others which is theirs is theirs. We can - and should - clash and disagree, fight and struggle. But, at the same time, we must most of all always recognize and honor the Sacred that is laboring to birth itself into the world.

Our "underdeveloped countries"

Our conscious realm is like a room with four doors, and it will be the fourth door by which the shadow, the animus, and the anima and the personification of the Self will come in. They will not enter as often through the other doors, which in a way is self-evident, because the inferior function is so close to the unconscious and remains so barbaric and inferior and undeveloped that it is naturally the weak spot in consciousness through which the figures of the unconscious can break in. In consciousness it is experienced as a weak spot, as that disagreeable thing which will never leave you in peace but always causes trouble, for every time you feel you have acquired a certain balance or inner standpoint, something happens from within or without to throw you off again, and it is always through that fourth door, which you cannot shut. You can keep the three doors of your inner room closed, but on the fourth door the lock does not work, and there, when you do not expect it, the unexpected will come in again. Thank God, you can say, for otherwise the whole life process would petrify and stagnate in a wrong kind of consciousness. It is the ever-bleeding wound of the conscious personality, but through it the unconscious can always come in and so enlarge consciousness and bring forth new experience.

As long as you have not developed your other functions, your auxiliary functions, they too will be open doors, so in a person who has only developed one superior function, the two auxiliary functions will operate in the same way and will appear in personifications of the shadow, animus, and anima. It is only when you have succeeded in developed three functions, in locking three of your inner doors, that the problem of the fourth door still remains, for that is the one which is apparently not meant to be locked. There one has to succumb, one has to suffer defeat, in order to develop further. So if you attend to your own dreams, you will see that these inner figures, if they appear personified as real persons, tend to choose such personifications. Another kind of personification, which naturally has to do with the shadow, is that the fourth function is contaminated with personifications from the lower levels of the social strata of the population or by the underdeveloped countries. That is a beautiful expression – the “underdeveloped” countries. It is just marvelous how we Westerners in our superior arrogance look down on the underdeveloped countries and project our inferior functions upon them! The underdeveloped countries are within ourselves, and therefore, naturally, because this is such an obvious symbolism, the inferior function for a white person often appears as a wild Negro or a wild Indian. Frequently also the inferior function is expressed by exotic people of some kind: Chinese, Russian, or whoever may give that quality. The unconscious tries in this way to convey the quality of something unknown to the conscious realm, as if it would say: it is as unknown to you as the Chinese are unknown in your culture. The shadow, animus, and anima appear very often projected onto Asian or African or “primitive” people.

- Marie Louise von Franz, “Psychotherapy”

This is why it's so important to come to terms with the people (and creatures) that live within our unconscious; the "primitive" is within us... the criminal, the underdeveloped, all of it is us. Until more of us start to realize that our prejudices are actually the fear and hatred we have of our own shadow, we will continue marching down the road of violence.

The golden shadow

I've been thinking about the shadow, thinking of all the ways that we fail. How most people refuse to face the truth of what they've done/are doing. That is the shadow, the thing that most people are so terrified of that they can't admit that it exists (even though everyone around us is quite aware of our failings.)

The shadow isn't evil, it's just weak and stupid and selfish, helpless and incompetent. It's just human; it is, in fact the most human part of us. The heroic side of us isn't our brightness, it's our clumsy, awkward shadow. To accept our shadow - to admit that it is a part of us - is to feel our full humanity, to embrace it. To embrace our own humanity is to embrace the humanity of others. Whatever your weakness is, to embrace it is to embrace the childishness of our full humanity... the child of all humanity, the Golden Child. The Golden Child - the new God we've been waiting for - isn't a perfect hero, he's a fragile child, the weakest and least able of us. He doesn't save us by rescuing us, he saves us though our compassion. And we can only have compassion for others if we first have compassion, and acceptance, for our own weakness and frailty.

To open to, to embrace and fully accept, our shadow side is to relax into our totality. Every part of us, not just the commendable part. To seek glory and perfection is to fall into ego; it's precisely the thing we don't need. Being judgmental and perfectionistic are poison. To accept our imperfections, and those of others, is the only way out... but only by facing, accepting, and lovingly embracing our own imperfections can we do the same for others. The hero is the devil, and the devil is the savior. When we accept the devil, we finally see his true face; the Child. This is why the Child has snakes in his basket.

Our shadow is the sacred Child who lives inside each of us. The path to God - that is, wholeness - is accepting this Child.


Links:

Glossary: Inferior Function
Symbolism: Child

"Baba Yaga and the Challenge of Darkness. Or, I Love the Smell of Manflesh in the Morning"

A little late for Halloween, but here's something interesting:

She is more than a witch. She is a great nature goddess, possessing the power of both life and death like nature herself. She is an image of the Divine Feminine, that which is capable of ruthless destruction and loving nurturing. She is the folklore equivalent of other bivalent goddesses such as Kali. In this sense, it isn’t correct to categorize Baba Yaga as evil, any more than it would be to describe nature itself with this word. Nature is amoral, sometimes fantastically destructive and cruel, and other times just as life-giving and nurturing. Jung explores this theme in his famous essay “Answer to Job.” In it, he makes the case that Yahweh is unconscious, and therefore amoral. “This is I, the creator of all the ungovernable, ruthless forces of Nature, which are not subject to any ethical laws. I, too, am an amoral force of Nature, a purely phenomenal personality that cannot see its own back.” Evil can only exist where there is consciousness.

Baba Yaga’s grotesqueness and power are illustrative of the problem of dealing with these dark, primordial psychic contents. All of us contain this kernel of darkness. We manage to hide it away from ourselves for the most part, remaining naïve to our own capacity for evil and destruction. What happens when we do confront it? Sometimes, it can destroy us, overwhelming us and turning us into the very monster we sought to overcome. This is a story of the ego’s hubris, the imperial belief that it can colonize and rule over the contents of the unconscious. When consciousness does not approach the archetypal energies within the collective unconscious with sufficient humility, it will be vulnerable to being devoured or corrupted by the darkness therein.

- "Baba Yaga and the Challenge of Darkness. Or, I Love the Smell of Manflesh in the Morning", Lisa Marchiano (The Jung Soul")


Links:
Vasilisa the Beautiful


See also:
Crone
Death

To love the least among the lowly

There was a sort of twinkle in Jung’s eye that gave me the impression that he knew himself to be just as much a villain as everybody else. There is a nice German word, hintergedanken, which means a thought in the very far far back of your mind. Jung had a hintergedanken in the back of his mind that showed in the twinkle in his eye. It showed that he knew and recognized what I’ve sometimes called the element of irreducible rascality in himself. And he knew it so strongly and so clearly, and in a way so lovingly, that he would not condemn the same thing in others, and would therefore not be lured into those thoughts, feelings, and acts of violence towards others which are always characteristic of the people who project the devil in themselves upon the outside; upon somebody else, upon the scapegoat.

Now this made Jung a very integrated character… In other words, he was man who was thoroughly “with himself.” Having seen and accepted his own nature profoundly he had a kind of a unity and absence of conflict in his own nature which had to exhibit additional complications that I find so fascinating. He was the sort of man who could feel anxious and afraid and guilty without being ashamed of feeling this way. In other words, he understood that an integrated person is not a person who’s simply eliminated the sense of guilt or the sense of anxiety from his life; who is fearless and wooden and a kind of sage of stone. He is a person who feels all these things but has no recriminations against himself for feeling them. And this is to my mind a profound kind of humor. You know in humor there is always a certain element of malice. There was a talk given on the Pacifica stations just a little while ago which was an interview with Al Capp. And Al Capp made the point that he felt that all humor was fundamentally malicious.

Now there’s a very high kind of humor which is humor at oneself. Real humor is not jokes at the expense of others, it’s always jokes at the expense of oneself. Of course it has an element of malice in it. It has malice towards oneself; the recognition of the fact that behind the social role that you assume - behind all your pretentions to being either a good citizen or a fine scholar or a great scientist or a leading politician or a physician or whatever you happen to be - that behind this façade there is a certain element of the unreconstructed bum. Not as something to be condemned and wailed over but as something to be recognized as contributive to one’s greatness and to one’s positive aspect in the same way that manure is contributive to the perfume of the rose.

Jung saw this and Jung accepted this and I want to read a passage from one of this lectures, which I think is one of the greatest things he ever wrote and which has been a very marvelous thing for me. It was in a lecture delivered to a group of clergy in Switzerland a considerable number of years ago and he writes as follows:

"People forget that even doctors have moral scruples and that certain patient’s confessions are hard even for a doctor to swallow. Yet the patient does not feel himself accepted unless the very worst of him is accepted too. No one can bring this about by mere words. It comes only through reflection and through the doctor’s attitude towards himself and his own dark side. If the doctor wants to guide another, or even accompany him a step of the way, he must feel with that person’s psyche. He never feels it when he passes judgment; whether he puts his judgments into words or keeps them to himself makes not the slightest difference. To take the opposite position and to agree with the patient offhand is also of no use. Feeling comes only through unprejudiced objectivity.

"This sounds almost like a scientific precept. And it could be confused with a purely intellectual abstract attitude of mind. But what I mean is something quite different. It is a human quality: A kind of deep respect for the facts – for the man who suffers from them and for the riddle of such a man’s life. The truly religious person has such an attitude. He knows that God has brought all sort of strange and unconceivable things to pass and seeks in the most curious ways to enter a man’s heart. He therefore senses in everything the unseen presence of the Divine Will. This is what I mean by unprejudiced objectivity. It is a moral achievement on the part of the doctor who ought not to let himself be repelled by sickness and corruption. We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate. It oppresses. And I am the oppressor of the person I condemn – not his friend and fellow sufferer.

"I do not in the least mean to say that we must never pass judgment when we desire to help and improve. But, if the doctor wishes to help a human being, he must be able to accept him as he is. And he can do this in reality only when he has already seen and accepted himself as he is. Perhaps this sounds very simple, but simple things are always the most difficult. In actual life, it requires the greatest art to be simple. And so, acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem, and the acid test of one’s whole outlook on life. That I feed the beggar – that I forgive an insult – that I love my enemy in the name of Christ – all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What I do unto the least of my brethren that I do unto Christ. But what if I should discover that the least amongst them all – the poorest of all beggars – the most impudent of all offenders – yea the very fiend himself – that these are within me? And that I myself stand in need of the arms of my own kindness. That I myself am the enemy that must be loved. What then?

"Then, as a rule, the whole truth of Christianity is reversed. There is then no more talk of love and long suffering. We say to the brother within us: Rocca, and condemn and rage against ourselves. We hide him from the world. We deny ever having met this least among the lowly in ourselves. And had it been God himself who drew near to us in this despicable form, we should have denied him a thousand times before a single cock had crowed."

- Alan Watts on Carl Jung (starting at 7:50)

The brutality of morality

We must be kind and think of others well being. Or must we? Must we think of others first, and never ourselves first? What is it like to think of ourselves first, and not think of others?

What part of me is freed by not always thinking and doing the "right" thing all the time? What can I let go of?

Can I let go of the anger and judgment of others, when they don't live up to my standards? What do other people not allow themselves, that traps them in it's cage, and makes them judge, and cut themselves off from, others?

What is my jail? What makes my jail any better, objectively speaking, than that person who judges people based on their wealth, or that other person over there who judges people based on popularity? Or that person, who judges people based on power? How am I any different? You think your standards are more moral, and therefore you are more moral, because you respect your own values and look down on those others, but your jail is still a jail. A jail is a jail, whether it's made of shit or of gold. You're still unfree.

What is it like to simply live, without shoulds? Without preconceptions, and judgments? What is it like to accept the facts of life, and people, and their ideas, without immediately judging them? What would it be like to live completely open to this life?

The sickness of our time is tied to our excessive valuing of "right" and rejection of "wrong." The differentiation of good and evil that Christianity brought with it was a positive step forward in the development of human consciousness but it's gone on for too long, and to too great a degree. We're seeing the consequences of our excessive one-sidedness now.

To completely reject all that is weak, stupid, selfish, and ridiculous in us - in other words, to reject our own personal, little evil - is to brutalize ourselves and each other. It is inhuman, and, when taken to its logical conclusion, leads to and only can lead to the most horrific and brutal atrocities. The witch trials of Europe; the extermination of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and leftists during the Holocaust; and the violence against immigrants and progressives in America today are all the result of this sick one-sidedness. An unconscious shadow is the weak spot where collective evil - true evil - can catch us, and no shadow is darker and more unconscious than that of the moralist. To avoid having such a dark and vulnerable shadow we must become conscious of it. Becoming conscious of ones shadow makes it less dark, but this requires of the conscious self that it give up some of it's brightness, because the darkness has to go somewhere.

Integrating the Four Functions

“That which we do not bring to consciousness appears in our lives as fate.”
- C.G. Jung


In Jungian psychology knowing what your "type" is isn't enough, you have to move through the functions, integrating them one by one. This is one of the main reasons why it isn't accurate to call these "types"; if one is actually individuating one's personality will change over the course of one's life as we integrate each function. This is, in fact, a large part of the individuation process itself.

Those who have only one function developed will be at the mercy of the unconscious as it comes in the three other "doors" (as Marie Louise von Franz puts it); the unconscious can catch us as it barges in, taking over our consciousness and making us do things that in retrospect may appall us. As we work to develop and differentiate each of the first three functions, we slowly shut the doors as we bring these functions under the control of the conscious ego. This continues on up to the third function. The fourth and final function, the inferior function, can never be brought under the control of the ego, allowing the unconscious a place to enter into our lives.

Below is a re-post of a an article from my previous blog:

The four functions aren't actually "types," unless people get stuck in a particular function. And then the Self will send neuroses in order to poke and prod at us until we get moving and growing. But in order to do so, we have to take a meandering path that snakes from our primary function to our auxiliary function, to the tertiary function, and finally to our inferior function. This whole process takes a very long time (we can finish it by the time we die, if we’re lucky) and it doesn't have to be particularly clear cut or even sequential, either. This is how we move around the circle, integrating the first three functions. When you integrate a function, you live that function, and all its strengths and weaknesses are yours.

The assimilation of functions is such a serious business that people generally spend a very long time in assimilating their auxiliary functions and sometimes, say for at least eight to ten years, become a type which was not their original type. I once, for example, knew a woman who was an introverted feeling type; that is, in the past she had been a feeling type, but in the stage at which we met, she had already switched the process to developing intuition and at that stage had as much trouble with her sensation as if she had been a genuine intuitive... [S]he went through all the crises of having to switch from intuition to sensation which you see with a primarily intuitive type; for example, she became completely inaccurate about facts and had trouble relating to them, exactly as an intuitive does. She then stated with great emphasis that it had always been an error to call her a feeling type, for she was an intuitive, but she was wrong! She was right and wrong for at the stage at which she was, she was exactly like an intuitive, but that was because she was at the stage of living in her second function and was just in the crisis of getting over to the third.

(von Franz, Psychotherapy, p. 131)

What seems to happen is your dominant function gets worn out from overuse; you get tired of using it and life gets sterile, lifeless; it feels meaningless. In my case I had a combination of fascination for things of the intuitive sphere and actual messages from dreams and the Tarot that pretty clearly told me it was time to move on . When we integrate another function we become that function - all of its strengths and weaknesses become ours. A feeling type that starts integrating sensation will have problems with flashes of sinister, and completely unfounded, suspicion. Or, as in my case, a thinking type moves to integrate intuition and can't balance her checkbook or keep her apartment clean if her life depended on it.

- Integrating the Four Functions (from Queen of the Night)


We're usually born with one function that is clearly our best function, along with a secondary function that's also pretty dependable. As we try to succeed in the world, we naturally lean on our strongest function(s), which develops them to a high level. At some point, though, this first function starts becoming fatigued; overuse makes it boring and sterile. Imagine playing the same game over and over, or watching the same movie over and over. It may be a lot of fun the first few times but eventually it's going to get boring and lifeless. In order to keep the juice flowing in our lives we need to start working on a new function. This often takes place during our middle years, when we have (hopefully) accomplished a large part of what had we set out to accomplish.


The Car Model (Personality Hacker)

Personality Hacker uses the image of a car with the driver and three passengers as a way to illustrate the way the four functions operate. The primary function (the "Driver") is the main cognitive function, the one we most strongly identify with, and the one with which we can get into what they call a "flow" state. It's the function in which we have competency that operates unconsciously; we're so good at it that we don't even have to think about it.

The auxiliary function (the "Co-Pilot") is the other function that we have or can develop competency at. We can get good at it but never as good as the Driver function; there will always be an element of conscious attention required when using this function

The tertiary function (the "10 Year Old") is one of our two weak functions. However, we do have a measure of control over it - we can eventually close the door here - therefore we'd say that it's the inferior function that we are conscious of. With conscious attention, we can, with some effort, bring it under the control of the ego.

The last function, the inferior function (the "3 Year Old"), is not and cannot ever be brought under the control of the ego. As with the Driver function, the 3 Year Old is also unconscious, but it's the function in which we have unconscious incompetence. As with a toddler, we can never bring it under our control.

(From Personality Hacker)

When we're still undeveloped our natural tendency is to go to the 10 Year Old, or the tertiary, function as our defense. This will be the function that we run to when we're scared, including when we're trying to avoid our growth function, the Co-Pilot. To develop, we need to move into the Co-Pilot function. Doing this balances out weaknesses in our primary function, while also keeping us from using the tertiary function defensively.

The people at Personality Hacker don't go too much into integrating the third function but, based on what I know of Jungian psychology, the third, or 10 Year Old, function will also eventually need to be integrated in a healthy, non-defensive way. From what I've seen, this seems to involve using the 3rd function as a kind of meditation. For example, an ESFP friend of mine goes to his thinking as a way bring his mind to a calm state. I've found the same thing; when I do physical work, like cooking or cleaning, with attention (my third function; introverted sensation) I find myself going into a meditative state.

The fourth and final function - the 3 Year Old in the Car Model - can never be integrated into consciousness. It will always act up, usually at the worst possible time. It's also the source of life and spontaneity, just like a 3 year old. The fourth function needs time and attention, and love. It will never easy to deal with, but with time, attention, and love, it will bring some of the greatest rewards into our lives.


Integrating the inferior function is, at root, shadow work. One's shadow is represented by the psyche as a person of the same sex as you but with the worst qualities of your inferior function, at least at first. This demonic figure often catches us from behind; when we're sick, tired, or in other states in which the control of our ego is weakened. It causes us to behave in ways we would normally find reprehensible, in the very opposite ways in which we like to view ourselves. Others around us are easily able to see our hypocrisies but they will remain hidden to us because we don't want to see them.

Integrating one's inferior function is about accepting one's own helplessness, weakness, stupidity, selfishness, and all the other human weaknesses that we all have. This is the moral work that that we have to carry out... and this is one of the main reasons why so few people undertake individuation. As you work on integrating the shadow/inferior function, however, this figure often expresses her/his better qualities, and you come to see that the dark adversary is actually an angel of light.

A man who is unconscious of himself acts in a blind, instinctive way and is in addition fooled by all the illusions that arise when he sees everything that he is not conscious of in himself coming to meet him from outside as projections upon his neighbour.

- “The Philosophical Tree” (1945). In CW 13: Alchemical Studies. P.335

The change of character brought about by the uprush of collective forces is amazing. A gentle and reasonable being can be transformed into a maniac or a savage beast. One is always inclined to lay the blame on external circumstances, but nothing could explode in us if it had not been there. As a matter of fact, we are constantly living on the edge of a volcano, and there is, so far as we know, no way of protecting ourselves from a possible outburst that will destroy everybody within reach. It is certainly a good thing to preach reason and common sense, but what if you have a lunatic asylum for an audience or a crowd in a collective frenzy? There is not much difference between them because the madman and the mob are both moved by impersonal, overwhelming forces.

- Psychology and Religion” (1938). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.25

To confront a person with his shadow is to show him his own light. Once one has experienced a few times what it is like to stand judgingly between the opposites, one begins to understand what is meant by the self. Anyone who perceives his shadow and his light simultaneously sees himself from two sides and thus gets in the middle.

- “Good and Evil in Analytical Psychology” (1959). In CW 10. Civilization in Transition. P.872



Further reading:
The Car Model (Personality Hacker)
When You ALMOST Know Your Personality Type (Personality Hacker)
Integrating the Inferior Function (Personality Junkie)


See also:
Primary function
Auxiliary function
Tertiary function
Inferior function
The shadow

The narrow door of shadow

The unconscious is commonly regarded as a sort of incapsulated fragment of our most personal and intimate life – something like what the bible calls the “heart” and considers the source of all evil thoughts. In the chambers of the heart dwell the wicked blood spirits, swift anger and sensual weakness. This is how the unconscious looks when seen from the conscious side. But consciousness appears to be essentially an affair of the cerebrum, which sees everything separately and in isolation, and therefore sees the unconscious in this way too, regarding it outright as my unconscious. Hence it is generally believed that anyone who descends into the unconscious gets into a suffocating atmosphere of egocentric subjectivity, and in this blind alley is exposed to the attack of all ferocious beasts which the caverns of the psychic underworld are supposed to harbour.

True, whoever looks into the mirror of the water will see first of all his own face. Whoever goes to himself risks a confrontation with himself. The mirror does not flatter, it faithfully shows whatever looks into it; namely, the face we never show to the world because we cover it with the persona, the mask of the actor. But the mirror lies behind the mask and shows the true face.

This confrontation is the first test of courage on the inner way, a test sufficient to frighten off most people for the meeting with ourselves belongs to the more unpleasant things that can be avoided so long as we can project everything negative into the environment. But if we are able to see our own shadow and can bear knowing about it, then a small part of the problem has already been solved: we have at least brought up the personal unconscious. The shadow is a living part of the personality and therefore wants to live with it in some form. It cannot be argued out of existence or rationalized into harmlessness. This problem is exceedingly difficult, because it not only challenges the whole man, but reminds him at the same time of his helplessness and ineffectuality. Strong natures – or should one rather call them weak? – do not like to be reminded of this, but prefer to think of themselves as heroes who are beyond good and evil, and to cut the Gordian knot instead of untying it. Nevertheless, the account has to be settled sooner or later. In the end one has to admit that there are problems which one simply cannot solve on one’s own resources. Such an admission has the advantage of being honest, truthful, and in accord with reality, and this prepares the ground for a compensatory reaction from the collective unconscious: you are now more inclined to give heed to a helpful idea or intuition, or to notice thoughts which had not been allowed to voice themselves before. Perhaps you will pay attention to the dreams that visit you at such moments, or will reflect on certain inner and outer occurrences that take place just at this time. If you have an attitude of this kind, then the helpful powers slumbering in the deeper strata of man’s nature can come awake and intervene, for helplessness and weakness are the eternal experience and the eternal problem of mankind. To this problem there is also an eternal answer, otherwise it would have been all up with humanity long ago. When you have done everything that could possibly be done, the only thing that remains is what you could still do if only you knew it. But how much do we know ourselves? Precious little, to judge by experience. Hence there is still a great deal of room left for the unconscious. Prayer, as we know, calls for a very similar attitude and therefore has much the same effect.

The necessary and needful reaction from the collective unconscious expresses itself in archetypally formed ideas. The meeting with oneself is, at first, the meeting with one’s own shadow. The shadow is a tight passage, a narrow door, whose painful constriction no one is spared who goes down to the deep well. But one must learn to know oneself in order to know who one is. For what comes after the door is, surprisingly enough, a boundless expanse full of unprecedented uncertainty, with apparently no inside and no outside, no above and no below, no here and no there, no mine and no thine, no good and no bad. It is a world of water, where all life floats in suspension; where the realm of the sympathetic system, the soul of everything living, begins; where I am indivisibly this and that; where I experience the other in myself and the other-than-myself experiences me.

- Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, paras. 42 - 45

Glossary: Inferior Function

The inferior function is practically identical with the dark side of the human personality.
- Jung, “Concerning Rebirth,” CW 9i, par. 222


A person’s weakest function. The inferior function is always the opposite of the primary function (intuition if your primary function is sensation, thinking if it’s feeling, or vice versa). Not only is it the opposite function, it will also have the opposite attitude (introverted/extroverted). For example, if your primary function is extroverted intuition your inferior function will be introverted sensation. In other words, you will be good at sniffing out the “next big thing” but have a hard time dealing with practical concerns such as responsibility or one’s physical well-being.

As the primary function is the one that is the most conscious, the inferior function is the one that’s the most unconscious. The very state of differentiation of one function automatically pushes it’s opposite down into the unconscious. Imagine the four functions as a plate resting on the surface of the ocean; if you lift up one side, the other side automatically goes down into the water. Developing one function lifts it up into consciousness; this automatically pushes the opposite function down into the unconscious. For this reason, the inferior function is always the function that causes the most problems in one’s life. It expresses itself in the most primitive, archaic, and affect laden ways. And the more energy you pour into your superior function, the more starved for energy your inferior function becomes and the more unconscious it will become. This one-sidedness leads to ever more infantile and primitive expressions of the inferior function until you end up in neurosis.

The inferior function will always be an area of pain and shame in a person’s life, but we can learn to adapt to social expectations enough to muddle through our lives. For example, the extroverted intuitive can learn to get their act together and keep their bills paid and their home (relatively) clean… but it will never be as effortless as it is for other types. We can learn what Marie Louise von Franz calls “pseudo adaptations” – feeling types can memorize knowledge from books (but it will generally be the most conventional kind of thinking), and thinking types can learn what to do in different social situations (again, purely conventional manners) – but dealing with the fourth function will always be a challenge.

Pseudo-adaptations allow us to get through life but no matter how hard we try the inferior function always finds ways to trip us up, usually when we least expect it. It has an autonomous quality to it, as if we were stuck with a child, a wild animal, or a stupid and malicious prankster. It’s the part of us which is the closest to the unconscious and the least under ego’s control. As such, it's the “doorway” through which unconscious contents, including the Self, can come into our lives. The superior function may be our best way to survive in the world, but the inferior function is the doorway to meaning.

The inferior function is always of the same nature, rational or irrational, as the primary function: when thinking is most developed, the other rational function, feeling, is inferior; if sensation is dominant, then intuition, the other irrational function, is the fourth function, and so on. This accords with general experience: the thinker is tripped up by feeling values; the practical sensation type gets into a rut, blind to the possibilities seen by intuition; the feeling type is deaf to logical thinking; and the intuitive, at home in the inner world, runs afoul of concrete reality.

One may be aware of the perceptions or judgments associated with the inferior function, but these are generally over-ridden by the superior function. Thinking types, for example, do not give their feelings much weight. Sensation types have intuitions, but they are not motivated by them. Similarly, feeling types brush away disturbing thoughts and intuitives ignore what is right in front of them.

- Daryl Sharp, “Jung Lexicon”

To the extent that a person functions too one-sidedly, the inferior function becomes correspondingly primitive and troublesome. The overly dominant primary function takes energy away from the inferior function, which falls into the unconscious. There it is prone to be activated in an unnatural way, giving rise to infantile desires and other symptoms of imbalance. This is the situation in neurosis.

- Daryl Sharp, “Jung Lexicon”

Positive as well as negative occurrences can constellate the inferior counter-function. When this happens, sensitiveness appears. Sensitiveness is a sure sign of the presence of inferiority. This provides the psychological basis for discord and misunderstanding, not only as between two people, but also in ourselves. The essence of the inferior function is autonomy: it is independent, it attacks, it fascinates and so spins us about that we are no longer masters of ourselves and can no longer rightly distinguish between ourselves and others

- Jung, “The Problem of the Attitude-Type,” CW 7, par. 85

In order to extricate the inferior function from the unconscious by analysis, the unconscious fantasy formations that have now been activated must be brought to the surface. The conscious realization of these fantasies brings the inferior function to consciousness and makes further development possible.

- Jung, “The Problem of the Attitude-Type,” CW 7,  par. 764

Our conscious realm is like a room with four doors, and it will be the fourth door by which the shadow, the animus, and the anima and the personification of the Self will come in. They will not enter as often through the other doors, which in a way is self-evident, because the inferior function is so close to the unconscious and remains so barbaric and inferior and undeveloped that it is naturally the weak spot in consciousness through which the figures of the unconscious can break in. In consciousness it is experienced as a weak spot, as that disagreeable thing which will never leave you in peace but always causes trouble, for every time you feel you have acquired a certain inner balance or inner standpoint, something happens from within or without to throw you off again, and it is always through that fourth door, which you cannot shut. You can keep the three doors of your inner room closed, but on the fourth door the lock does not work, and there, when you do not expect it, the unexpected will come in again. Thank God, you can say, for otherwise the whole life process would petrify and stagnate in a wrong kind of consciousness. It is the ever-bleeding wound of the conscious personality, but through it the unconscious can always come in and so enlarge the consciousness and bring forth new experience.

As long as you have not developed your other functions, your auxiliary functions, they too will be open doors, so in a person who has only developed one superior function, the two auxiliary functions will operate in the same way and will appear in personifications of the shadow, animus, and anima. It is only when you have succeeded in developing three functions, in locking three of your inner doors, that the problem of the fourth door still remains, for that is the one which is apparently not meant to be locked. There one has to succumb, one has to suffer defeat, in order to develop further.

- Marie Louise von Franz, Psychotherapy


See also:
Symbolism: The Snake Pt. 2 (The Child)
Symbolism: The Trickster
Glossary: The Shadow
The Narrow Door of Shadow
The golden shadow
The plumb line of personality


Link:
Jungian’s Podcast: Type 2 (Episode 12), John Betts

The perversion of love

This is kind of off topic but unfortunately very much on topic in light of current events. Trump's (still) in the White House and Republicans are doing their damndest to pass a health care bill that will basically lead to the deaths of many poorer people in this country, a kind of social Darwinism not seen since the era of the robber barons... Or maybe it does have something to do with the topic of the four functions. Why don't you decide?



White people (or men, or people of any other dominant group) simply don't get group dynamics unless it's brought up by a person of a dominated group.  It may be perfectly clear to everyone else, including people who don't belong to either group. When you're in a dominating group there's some sort defense mechanism that tries to prevent you from seeing reality. The same doesn't happen to a dominated group; they have no reason to distort reality, they haven't done anything wrong, i.e. anything in violation of the laws of basic human dignity. So, members of the dominating group refuse to even see it... unless it's an attempt to balance the inequities that inevitably result from such relations. In that case, they take the “best defense is an offense” tactic and try to use sleight of hand to turn the accusation on their victims. This is because people's identity is actually very deeply tied with their group identity (this is the similarity between American and Japanese cultures that leads both to attack the loners).

There is a difference between white and black peoples because in this culture white people are on top... and they want to stay there. The masculine way is to look at the law itself, completely without any reference to the relationship. The reality is that to truly understand the situation, we must admit to the truth of the unequal relationship which is baked into the system, upon which the system is dependent to maintain itself. This is because the true motivator is the drive for power; because love is not there, because there is no consciousness in the feeling side, it comes up in its unconscious form, the desire for power.

The desire for power is love perverted. It's an attempt to get the good feelings of love without sacrificing anything of yourself. We want love but the only way to get it is to allow a part of yourself to die. This is why I've had to live a life of failure. Any part of life can be can be a time we got it right, but especially when your Self is pushing you away from the things of this world. This is why spiritual people down the ages have spoken about giving up this world in order to gain the other one, the eternal one, the real one. But the truth is, both worlds are real; the real is something beyond them, that unites them but also transcends them. Each must be accorded its respect and treated with all the dignity due them. Only then does one achieve the goal.


- "Object Anyway?", More Perfect

Listen to this podcast; it's awesome. Actually, you should listen to the entire series. It was created by the gifted and passionate folks over at RadioLab (and if you haven't listened to them, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR????)

Human dogs, cats, and cows

This dream simile for the inferior function is also particularly fitting in that this function tends to have, in a negative way, a barbaric character and to cause possession. If, for example, introverts fall into extraversion, they do so in a possessed and barbaric way. I mean barbaric in the sense of being unable to exert conscious control, being swept way, being unable to put a brake on, unable to stop. This kind of exaggerated, driven extraversion is rarely found in extraverts, but in introverts it is like a car without brakes that goes on without the slightest control of consciousness. That is a rather well-known fact, because the inferior extraversion of introverts has to manifest outside, socially. An introvert may become disagreeable and arrogant, pushing and shouting so loudly that the whole room has to listen and everybody must notice. Such inferior extraversion may suddenly pop out in this way when an introvert is drunk. The introversion of the extravert is just as barbaric and possessed but not socially visible because an extravert disappears right out of life if possessed by barbaric introversion. He goes completely mad his own room, but it is not visible to other people. Extraverts who fall into their primitive introversion walk about looking very important. In dark allusions they assure everybody that they are having very deep mystical experiences about which they cannot talk, they are so important and so deep. In an important kind of way they indicate that they are deeply steeped in active imagination and the process of individuation, and you know that you must leave at once, because they have to work on that. And then they sit in a possessed way for hours, unable to relax and unable to pull out of it. If you ring them up, they say they are deep in their process of individuation and cannot go to a tea party just now, and this is thrown at you with a kind of defensive attitude. You have a strange feeling of a barbaric kind of possession. If this happens to them in the form of yoga, or Anthroposophy, then there will be that same display of something mystical of great importance going on and of an unfathomable depth into which they have now dived. There is a mixture in it, for actually they are constantly threatened with switching back to their extraversion, which explains their overemphasis on lack of time and wanting no contact with anybody. They would love to switch over to their extraversion and go to every tea party and every dinner party, so in a kind of defensive way, they say, “No, this is absolutely forbidden; now I am in the depth of the psyche.” Very often in this phase people are sure that they are the type that they now have to live. For instance, extraverts who are in the phase where they should assimilate introversion will always swear that they are and always have been introverts and that it has always been an error to call them extraverts. In this way they try to help themselves to get into this other side, which for them is so difficult to acquire. If they try to express their introverted inner experiences, they generally do so with overexcitement. They become terribly emotional and want to take the floor and have everybody listen. That is because to them it is so tremendously unique and important.

This barbaric quality of the inferior function which is mixed up with the other attitudinal type is one of the great practical problems and constitutes the great split of the human personality, for not only has one to switch from one function to another, but with the fourth function one definitely has to switch to the other attitudinal type, and then one risks (or even cannot avoid) being temporarily possessed by the opposite attitude and thereby become barbaric and unadapted. One can thank God if one’s opposite function is only personified by primitive people in dreams, for it is very often represented by Stone Age people or even by animals, so that the inferior function has not even reached a primitive human level; it is still completely on an animal level. The inferior function in that stage dwells, so to speak, in the body and can only manifest in physical symptoms and not yet on a human conscious level, not even a primitive one. When you see, for example, how sometimes an introverted intuitive stretches in the sunshine with such enjoyment of his inferior function, you have absolutely the feeling that he is like a dog sitting in the sunshine enjoying the sun or food; his sensation is still on the level of a dog or a cat or some other domestic animal.

Feeling in a thinking type very often does not go beyond the dog level. It is more difficult to imagine that the feeling type thinks like an animal, but even that is true; these people have a habit of making banal statements which one feels any cow, cat, or dog could have made if only they could speak, for they move in a realm of complete generalities… I have often been struck by the fact that feeling types think in exactly the same way [as my dog], for when you try to explain something to them, they may draw a completely general conclusion, some sweeping assertion which does not fit the situation in any way, and they do the most stupid things. Primitive thinking started in their heads, and they drew some kind of amazingly unadapted conclusion, which led to entirely wrong results. Thus you can often say that the thinking level of the feeling type is about on the dog’s level; it is as general and helpless and stiff as you can observe it in the higher animals.

In general, in most normal societies, people cover up their inferior function with a persona. One of the main reasons why one develops a persona is so as not to expose inferiorities, especially the inferiorities of the fourth function, which is contaminated with one’s animal nature, one’s unadapted emotions and affects.

- Marie Louise von Franz, Psychotherapy

Strength in the Shadow

The shadow doesn’t just consist of all the things we reject and vilify… It also contains all the things we say we aren’t, but really are. Our shadow isn’t just the rejected parts of ourselves, it’s also partly the shadow of the very things we hold dear.

If you hotly espouse a moral code you deeply believe in… you will probably do the very thing you say you hate. Because no one can be perfect, because there will always be times that we can’t carry out our values without great pain and difficulty, we lie to ourselves and tell ourselves we don’t do it.

The more we insist on perfection… the less perfect we will be, and the less we will be capable of seeing our failures. The more we hate unkindness… the less kind we will be, and the less we will be able to face our hatefulness and selfishness. The more we hate immorality… the less moral we will be, and the less we will be able to face our human weakness.

Perfection is inflation, it’s only suitable for the Gods. Facing and integrating our shadow gives our personality weight and strength; we can’t be pushed off our center, it gives us resilience and compassion, and connects us with each other in our human fallibility.

The Integrated Animus

The “soul” which accrues to ego-consciousness during the opus has a feminine character in the man and a masculine character in a woman. His anima wants to reconcile and unite; her Animus tries to discern and discriminate.

- Jung (The Psychology of the Transference,” par. 522.)

Within her, the Animus possessed woman has two opposing forces, being the Animus and the negative Anima (her inferior shadow perception of herself). These two forces in her can balance each other out by pitching them against each other. Through this conflict between her shadow and her Animus, she can make the connections within herself and the world. This is the power of the integrated Animus – consciousness and a connection with herself, her passions and her values.


The individual breaks through the ready made boundaries of their personality and discovers the forces – archetypes and experiences – which helped form them. The ensuing wrestle with self leads to personal insight into ones own life, and into the collective life of humanity. One gains insight into the collective forces, ideas, dynamics, which direct human life. This is spiritual insight. It enables the individual in some degree to gradually find motivation from other than the urge toward sexual reproduction, social power, aggressive domination and self aggrandisement. It isn’t an easy process, but a new type of person emerges from the work.

…If one is to mature and grow as a person, the childlike dependencies and angers, the blaming and the idolisation must be met and transformed. In doing so one is led into, or uncovers, a wealth of experience within oneself that was previously unconscious. Out of this maturing and growing process the images of the anima as guide and initiator have arisen. All must meet themselves in one way or another in the process of maturing, just as we all dealt with emerging sexuality in one way or another in adolescence.


The positive animus shows as the man who solves problems, shows how things work, exhibits love despite trials, and is the deliverer from death. P. W. Martin says that more than anything else the animus figure has two characteristic marks: energy and ambivalence…

It shows the woman integrating her own ability to be independent and capable in outwardly active terms. This makes her more whole, balancing her ‘female’ qualities… It also brings a sense of connectedness between her conscious self and what she senses as the ‘commercial’ world.

If she realises who and what her animus is and what he does to her, and if she faces these realities instead of allowing herself to be possessed, her animus can turn into an invaluable inner companion who endows her with the masculine qualities of initiative, courage, objectivity, and spiritual wisdom.


The animus in his most developed form sometimes connects the woman’s mind with the spiritual evolution of her age, and can thereby make her even more receptive than a man to new creative ideas. It is for this reason that in earlier times women were used by many nations as diviners and seers. The creative boldness of their positive animus at times expresses thoughts and ideas that stimulate men to new enterprises


An integrated Animus allows the woman to be actively and creatively enterprising. This woman is able to take up new ideas and new movements and they often are at the forefront of the new zeitgeist.

1) Anja van Kralingen (Center of Applied Jungian Studies)
http://appliedjung.com/animus-possession/

2) Tony Crisp
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/archetype-of-the-anima-jungs-view-of-the-female-in-the-male/

Possession in politics

There were bomb explosions in New Jersey and Chelsea over the weekend but they caught the bomber (or so they're saying). Besides the fact that this whole situation is suspiciously convenient for the republicans, my mind immediately went to the increase in hate crimes against Muslims that will probably result from this. Putting aside all the political issues there's a very real danger of possession, and a very contagious one at that.

The same demon that possesses a terrorist - whips up his rage and in his mind robs his targets of humanity - this same demon also infects Americans who are open to such possession. It robs them in turn of their humanity. It steals their ability to think clearly and rationally but, more importantly, it destroys one's ability to connect; to empathize, to feel with, to understand another being with the heart.

The main broken latch that lets the demon in so he can create havoc is having an unconscious shadow. Marie Louise von Franz spoke to this vulnerability in an interview:

In practical life the personal and the collective shadows merge but the personal shadow is the personal shortcomings of things which every human being could be conscious of, which is not archetypal, and therefore not a mystery. For instance such things as greed for money, or jealousy, jealousy is one of the aspects of the shadow, or laziness, sloppiness, unrelatedness, sentimentality, and whatnot. Inferiorities which everybody has but prefers not to know about. We generally strive through education and environment to be a bit better than we actually are, or we have our own ideals (“I oughten to be jealous” “I oughten to have a power complex”). The inferior shadow is not really bad, it’s just human all too human, and something one could know about. If one is jealous, or one is suddenly possessed by wanting money, one could know about it if one was honest with oneself.

The collective shadow has to do with the dark side of the archetype of the Self. That means it’s the shadow of the God image. In the Christian tradition it would be the devil, and that has always been personified and felt as something which has not to do directly with the human being. If somebody is possessed by the devil he’s much worse than just… He’s not human. It’s demonic. On the other hand, generally that merges; first you have this area, a dim, dark side, and behind it lurks the other.

I’ve seen that when Germany went to the devil in Nazism, people fell into it through their personal shadow. For instance, they didn’t want to lose their job because they were clinging to money. That was a personal shadow. Then they joined in with the Nazi movement for that reason, and did much worse things than they would have done normally, under normal social conditions. So you can say the personal shadow is the bridge to the collective shadow, or the open door to the collective shadow.

The collective shadow comes up in those terrible mass psychoses. That’s why it’s so amazingly important, because then you don’t fall into the collective shadow. There’s not that open door. It’s like you have a room and there’s one door in it that the devil can come in. If you know your personal shadow you can shut all the doors. Then you don’t join into massacres and holocausts and such. You catch yourself and you realize… and you can keep out of it and keep reasonable, keep your head. While the average person who doesn’t know about her personal shadow will get swept away by the collective in you.

- “Remembering Jung series talk with Marie-Louise von Franz” (29:40)

The person whose shadow is a Dorian Grey-like horror is a person who has no knowledge of their shadow let alone a relationship with it. This creates a wide open back door into the personality; unconscious shadow contents are reflexively projected onto a convenient target and all the hate, rage, and disgust they feel at their own orphan parts is conveniently given over to a scapegoat to carry. Instead of doing the hard work of reclaiming your own lost parts you try to cheat, you lie to yourself and pretend like you're clean when you're really not.

The sewer runs in all of us. The question is; what do you do about it? Do you protect your ego at the expense of everything else, sacrifice every other part of yourself and even others to keep your narcissism intact and unwounded? Or do you face your own ugliness, stew in your own juices, and undergo the painful and humiliating process of transforming your own personal lead into gold.

The son of chaos

In a primeval forest. An elephant looms up menacingly. Then a large ape-man, bear, or cave-man threatens to attack the dreamer with a club. Suddenly the "man with the pointed beard" appears and stares at the aggressor so that he is spellbound. But the dreamer is terrified. The voice says, "Everything must be ruled by the light."


This is another post about the role of "satan" in the psyche. Earlier, I'd explored his role as the instigator; the problem that breaks the false peace and opens the door to further growth. Here he shows another face, that of the double natured intellect which can both possess us and cut us off from living, but can also be the most powerful weapon we have in facing and illuminating the chaotic contents of the unconscious.

In an earlier dream we meet the "man with a pointed beard," the demonic Mephistopheles who guided Faust in his journeys. As long as we identify the conscious intellect as the supreme, or even the only, aspect worth anything we are possessed. In the following dream (which occurred before the dream about the ape man), the Mercurian intellect is separated out as an independent identity, which allows us to begin to understand it.

The dreamer is in America looking for an employee with a pointed beard. They say that everybody has such an employee.

America is the land of practical, straightforward thinking, uncontaminated by our European sophistication. The intellect would there be kept, quite sensibly, as an employee. This naturally sounds like lese majeste and might therefore be a serious matter. So it is consoling to know that everyone (as is always the case in America) does the same. The "man with a pointed beard" is our time-honored Mephisto whom Faust "employed" and who was not permitted to triumph over him in the end, despite the fact that Faust had dared to descend into the dark chaos of the historical psyche and steep himself in the ever-changing, seamy side of life that rose up out of that bubbling cauldron.

From subsequent questions it was discovered that the dreamer himself had recognized the figure of Mephistopheles in the "man with the pointed beard." Versatility of mind as well as the inventive gift and scientific leanings are attributes of the astrological Mercurius. Hence the man with the pointed beard represents the intellect, which is introduced by the dream as a real familiaris, an obliging if somewhat dangerous spirit. The intellect is thus degraded from the supreme position it once occupied and is put in the second rank, and at the same time is branded as daemonic. Not that it had ever been anything but daemonic - only the dreamer had not noticed before how possessed he was by the intellect as the tacitly recognized supreme power. Now he has a chance to view this function, which till then had been the uncontested dominant of his psychic life, at somewhat closer quarters. Well might he exclaim with Faust: "So that's what was inside the poodle!" Mephistopheles is the diabolical aspect of every psychic function that has broken loose from the hierarchy of the total psyche and now enjoys independence and absolute power. But this aspect can be perceived only when the function becomes a separate entity and is objectivated or personified, as in this dream.

(p. 141)


As with all the different parts of the psyche, Mephisto/Mercurius/the intellect has a helpful side as well as a dangerous one. After we realize that he's just one of many parts of us, he can help us to understand the parts of us that are in the darkness.

At the last moment, friend "Pointed Beard" appears on the scene as an obliging deus ex machina and exorcises the annihilation threatened by the formidable ape-man. Who knows how much Faust owed his imperturable curiosity, as he gazed on the spooks and bogeys of the classical Walpurgisnacht, to the helpful presence of Mephisto and his matter-of-fact point of view! Would that more people could remember the scientific or philosophical reflections of the much-abused intellect at the right moment! Those who abuse it lay themselves open to the suspicion of never having experienced anything that might have taught them its value and shown them why mankind has forged this weapon with such unprecedented effort. One has to be singularly out of touch with life not to notice such things. The intellect may be the devil, but the devil is the "strange son of chaos" who can most readily be trusted to deal effectively with his mother...

The voice finally declares, "Everything must be ruled by the light," which presumably means the light of the discerning conscious mind, a genuine illuminatio honestly acquired. The dark depths of the unconscious are no longer to be denied by ignorance and sophistry - at best a poor disguise for common fear - nor are they to be explained away with pseudo-scientific rationalizations. On the contrary it must now be admitted that things exist in the psyche about which we know little or nothing at all, but which nevertheless affect our bodies in the most obstinate way, and that they possess at least as much reality as the things of the physical world which ultimately we do not understand either. No line of research which asserts that its subject was unreal or a "nothing but" has ever made any contribution to knowledge.

(p. 165)


The helpful Mephisto is thus necessary for an honest exploration of the depths - in fact, without his help, we would be overwhelmed. The differentiated conscious is a powerful tool in the individuation process - just as the Self needs the ego for the process, the unconscious needs consciousness. We may have gone too far as a society (and individually) in an unbalanced direction but a strong, healthy intellect is one of the best tools we have in our toolkit for furthering the process.

1. Jung, Carl G., Dreams.