Quotes from, The Portable Jung

Jung, C. G. (1976). The Portable Jung. (R. F. C. Hull, Trans., J. Campbell, Ed.). New York: Penguin Books.

Chapter 2: The structure of the Psyche

My point of view is naturally a psychological one, and moreover that of a practicing psychologist whose task it is to find the quickest road through the chaotic muddle of complicated psychic states. p 24

My subject lies wholly within the bounds of experience. p 24

Consciousness seems to stream into us from outside in the form of sense-perceptions. We see, hear, taste, and smell the world, and so are conscious of the world. Sense perception tell us that something is. But they do not tell us what it is. This is told us not by the process of perception but by the process of apperception, and this has a highly complex nature. Not that sense-perception is anything simple; only, its nature is not so much psychic as physiological. The complexity of apperception, on the other hand, is psychic. p 25

The process of recognition can be conceived in essence as comparison and differentiation with the help of memory. When I see a fire, for instance, the light-stimulus conveys to the idea of “fire.”… In ordinary speech this process in called thinking. p 25

The process of evaluation is different. The firs I see arouses emotional reactions of a pleasant or unpleasant nature, and the memory-images thus stimulated bring with them concomitant emotion phenomena which are known as feeling-tones. p 25

According to their respective temperaments, the one speaks of his intuition as a distinct seeing, that is, he makes a sense-perception of it. The other designates it as thinking “One has only to reflect, then it is quite clear what the consequences will be.” The third, under the stress of emotion, calls his intuition a process of feeling. p26

But intuition, as i conceive it, is one of the basic functions of the psyche, namely, perception of the possibility inherent in a situation. p26

As further contents of consciousness, we can also distinguish volitional processes and instinctual processes. The former are defined as directed impulses based on a apperception, which are the disposal of so-called free will.  The latter or impulses originating in the unconscious or directly in the body and are characterized by lack of freedom and by compulsiveness. p26

We are therefore fully justified and speaking of an unconscious psychic. It is not directly accessible to observation–otherwise it would not be unconscious–but can only be inferred. Are inferences can never go beyond; ‘it is as if.’ p 28

Just of some kind of analytical technique is needed to understand a dream, so a knowledge of mythology is needed in order to grasp the meaning of a content deriving from the deeper levels of the psyche. p33

This proves it seems to me a great importance, since it would show that the rationally explicable unconscious, which consists of material that is been made unconscious artificially, as it were, is only a top layer and that the underneath is an absolute unconscious which has nothing to do with our personal experience. This absolute unconscious would then be a psychic activity which goes on independently of the conscious mind and is not dependent even on the upper layers of the unconscious, untouched–and perhaps untouchable–by personal experience. Will be the kind of supra-individual psychic activity a collective unconscious as I have called it, as distinct from a superficial, relative, or personal unconscious. p34

It seems as if this hypothetical deeper layer of the unconscious–the collective unconscious, as I shall now call it–has translated the patients experience with women into the snakebite dream and thus turn them into a regular mythological motif. The reason–or rather, the purpose–of this is at first somewhat obscure. But if we remember the fundamental principle that the symptomology of an illness is at the same time and natural attempt at healing–the heartaches, for example, being an attempt to produce an emotional outburst–then we must regard the heel symptoms as an attempt that feeling too. p34

We are concerned here, then, with the psychological phenomenon that lies at the root of magic by analogy. We should not think that this is an ancient superstition which we have long sense outgrown. p35

If this supre-individual psyche exists, everything that is translated into its picture language would be depersonalized, and if this became conscious would appear to us sub specie aeternitatis. Notice my sorrow, but as the sorrow of the world; not the personal isolating pain, but a pain without bitterness that unites all humanity. The healing effects of this needs no proof. p36

Summing up, I would like to emphasize that we must distinguish three psychic levels: (1) consciousness, (2) the personal unconscious, and (3) the collective unconscious. p38

The collective unconscious–so far as we can say anything about it all–appears to consist of mythological motifs a primordial images, for which reason the midst of all nations are it’s real exponents. p39

We can therefore study the collective unconscious and two weights, either mythology where the analysis of the individual. p39

From the living foundation of instinct flows everything that is creative; hence the unconscious is not merely conditioned by history, but is the very source of the creative impulse. It is like nature herself–prodigiously conservative, and yet transcending her own historical conditions and her acts of creation. p.44

Existence of an individual consciousness makes man aware of the duality is his inner as well as his outer life. Just as the world about him takes on a friendly or hostile aspect to the eyes of primitive man, so the influences of his unconscious seem to him like an opposing power, with which he has to come to terms just as with the visible world. His countless magical practices serve this and. I’m higher levels of civilization, religion and philosophy for still the same purpose. p45

All the most powerful ideas in history go back to archetypes. 45

Chapter 3: Instinct and the Unconscious

Best instinctive action is characterized by unconsciousness but the psychological motive behind it, and contrast to the strictly conscious processes which are distinguished by the continuous continuity of their motives. Instinctive action appears to be a more or less abrupt second occurrence a sort of interruption of the continually of consciousness. p48

Accordingly, instinctive activity would have to be included among the specifically unconscious processes, which are accessible to consciousness only through their results. p49

In the former case the fear of snakes is a purpose process of general occurrence; the latter, when habitual, is a phobia and not an instinct, since it occurs only in isolation and is not a general peculiarity. There are many other unconscious compulsions of this kind–for instants obsessive thoughts, musical obsessions, sudden ideas and moods, and pulls it affects, depression, anxiety states, etc. p49

Only those unconscious processes which are inherited, and a Kurt uniformly and regularly, can be called instinctive. p50

Intuition is an unconscious process in that it’s result is the irruption into consciousness of an unconscious content, a sudden idea or “hunch.” It resembles a process of perception, but unlike the conscious activity of the sense and introspection the perception is unconscious. p51

It is a process analogous to instinct, with the difference that whereas instinct is a purposive  impulse to carry out some highly complicated action, intuition is the unconscious, purposive apprehension of a highly complicated situation. p51

We always tend to project onto things are own difficulties of understanding and to call them complicated, when in reality they are very simple and know nothing of our intellectual problems. p.51

Find the unconscious as the totality of all psychic phenomena that lack the quality of consciousness. p52

From this it follows that the unconscious is the receptacle of all lost memories and all contents that are still too weak to become conscious. These contents are products of an unconscious associative activity which also give rise to dreams. Besides these we must include all more or less intentional depressions a painful thoughts and feelings. I called the son of all these contents the “personal unconscious”. p52

The instincts and the archetypes together form the “collective unconscious.” I call it “collective” because, unlike the personal unconscious, it is not made up of individual and more or less unique contents but of those which are universal and of regular occurrence. p52/53

Just as conscious apprehension gives her actions form and direction, so unconscious apprehension through the archetype determines the form and direction of instinct. p56

Just as everybody possesses instance, he also possesses a stock of archetypal images. 57