sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836 – 1912), Unconscious Rivals, 1893. Photo Credit: Bequest of Jessie and Robert bromhead, 1935

Quotes from:

Effects of the unconscious upon consciousness

1. Repression is a process that begins in early childhood under the moral influence of the environment and continues throughout life. p127
2. The unconscious has still another side to it: it includes not only repressed contents, but all psychic material that lies below the threshold of consciousness. p127
3. Equally we have reason to suppose that the unconscious is never quiescent in the sense of being inactive, but is ceaselessly engaged and grouping and regrouping its contents. p128
4. But any weakness of instinct (which may have so many causes) is enough to hinder a smooth unconscious transition. Then all progress is delayed by conflict, and the resulting stasis of life is equivalent to a neurosis. p129
5. Dreams contain images and thought – associations which we do not create with conscious intent. They arise spontaneously without our assistance and our representatives of a psychic activity withdrawn from our arbitrary well. Therefore the dream is, properly speaking, I highly objective, natural product of the psyche, from which we might expect indications, or at least hints, about certain basic trends and the psychic process. p131
6. Naturally asked myself what was the source of this obstinacy and what was its purpose? That it must have some purposeful meaning I was convinced, for there is no truly living thing that does not have a final meaning, that can in other words be explained as mere left–over from antecedent facts. p133
7. Primordial ideas, of which I have given a great many examples in my Symbols of Transformation, oblige one to make, in regard to unconscious material, a distinction of quite a different character from that between “preconscious” and “unconscious” or “subconscious” and “unconscious.” p135
8. The sense of moral inferiority always indicates that the missing element is something which, to judge by this feeling about it, really ought not to be missing, or which could be made conscious only one took sufficient trouble.
9. Whenever a sense of moral inferiority appears, it indicates not only a need to assimilate and unconscious component, but also the possibility of such assimilation. In the last resort it is a man’s moral qualities which force him, either through direct recognition of the need or indirectly through a painful neurosis, to assimilate his unconscious self and to keep himself fully conscious. Whoever progresses along this road of self – realization must inevitably bring into consciousness the contents of the personal unconscious, that’s enlarging the scope of his personality. p136
10. We are dealing with a reactivated archetype, as I have elsewhere call these primordial images. These ancient images are restored to live by the primitive, analogical mode of thinking particular to dreams. It is not a question of inherited ideas, but I’ve inherited thought-patterns. p138

Phenomena Resulting from the Assimilation of the Unconscious

1. If we analyze these two modes of reaction more deeply, we find that the optimistic self–confidence of the first conceals a profound sense of impotence, for which there conscious optimism acts as an unsuccessful compensation; what the pessimistic resignation of the others marks and defined will to power, far surpassing in cocksureness the conscious optimism of the first type. 139
2. One extends the sphere of his action, the other the sphere of his suffering.
3. Not everyone will feel himself a Superman, holding in his hands the scales of good and evil. It may also seem as though he were a helpless object caught between hammer and anvil; not in the least of Hercules at the parting of the ways, but rather a rudderless ship buffeted between Scylla and Charybdis. 141
4. One man’s optimism makes him overweening, well another’s pessimism makes him over–anxious and despondent. Such are the forms which the great conflict takes when reduced to a smaller scale. p142
5. The one is excessively expanded, the other excessively contracted. Their individual boundaries are in someway obliterated. p142
6. It is no longer he that thinks and speaks, but it thinks and speaks within him: he hears voices. p144
7. In so doing he raised it out of its subterranean beginnings into the clear light of collective consciousness. p144
8. The golden apples drop from the same tree, whether they be gathered up by an imbecile locksmith’s apprentice or by a Schopenhauer. p145
9. These transpersonal contents are not just a inert or dead matter that can be annexed at will. Rather they are living entities which exert an attractive force upon the conscious mind. p145
10. Just as one man may disappear in his social role, so another may be involved in an inner vision and be lost his surroundings. p146
11. We shall probably get a nearest to the truth if we think of the conscious and personal psyche is resting upon the broad basis of an inherited and universal psychic disposition which is as such unconscious, and that our personal psyche bears the same relation to the collective psyche as the individual to society. p147
12. Universal similarity of human brains leads to the universal possibility of a uniform mental functioning. This functioning is the collective psyche. p147

The persona as a segment of the collective psyche

1. The attribute “personal” means: pertaining exclusively to this particular person. p157
2. Far too much of our common humanity has to be sacrificed and interests of an ideal image into which one tries to mold oneself. p157
3. This arbitrary segment of the collective psyche – often fashion with considerable pains – I have called the persona. The term persona is really a very appropriate expression for this, the original it meant the mask once worn by ancestors to indicate the role they played. p157
4. The purely personal attitude of the conscious mind evokes reactions on the part of the unconscious, and these, together with personnel repressions, contain the seeds of individual development in the guise of collective fantasies. Throughout the analysis of the personal unconscious, the conscious mind becomes suffused with collective material which brings with it the elements of individuality. p.158
5. That the consciousness of her individuality should coincide exactly what the reactivation archaic god–image is not just an isolated coincidence, but a very frequent occurrence which, in my view, corresponds to an unconscious law. p160
6. An infallible sign of collective images seems to be the appearance of the “cosmic” element, i.e., the images in the dream or fantasy are connected with cosmic qualities, such as temporel and spatial infinity, enormous speed an extension of movement, “astrological” associations, telluric, lunar, and solar analogies, changes in the proportions of the body, etc. The obvious occurrence of mythological religious motives in the dream also points to the activity of the collective unconscious. p160
7. One result of the disillusion of the persona is a release of involuntary fantasy, which is apparently nothing else than a specific activity of the collective psyche. p160
8. The plunge into this process becomes unavoidable whenever the necessity arises of overcoming and apparently insuperable difficulty. p161

Negative attempts to free the individuality from the collective psyche

1.  a. Regressive restoration of the persona p .163
2. Only what is really oneself  has the power to heal. 168
3.  b. Identification with the collective psyche
4. This attitude is not necessary megalomania in direct form, but in the milder and more familiar form a prophetic inspiration and desire for martyrdom.
5. Victory over the collective psyche alone yields the true value – the capture of the hoard, the invincible weapon, the magic talisman, or whatever it be that the myth the deems most desirable. Anyone who identifies with the collective psyche – or, in mythological turms, lets himself be devoured by the monster – and vanishes in it, attains the treasure that the dragon guards, but he does so in spite of himself into his own greatest time.
6. But since I no means all individualities have the strength to be independent, the disciple-fantasy is perhaps the best they can accomplish.

 The function of the unconscious

1.   Individuation means becoming an “in–dividual,” and, in so far as “individuality” embraces our innermost, last, and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies becoming one’s own self. We could therefore translate individuation as “coming into selfhood” or “self-realization.” p.173
2. The idiosyncrasy of an individual is not to be understood as any strangeness in his substance or in his components, but rather a unique combination, or gradual differentiation, of functions and faculties switch in themselves are universal. p174
3. The aim of individuation is nothing less than to divest the self of the false wrappings of the persona on the one hand, and of the suggestive power of primordial images on the other. p174
4. We do know, however, that the unconscious never rests. It seems to be always at work, or even when we sleep we dream. p177
5. So far is our present experience goes, we can lay it down that the unconscious processes stand in a compensatory relation to the conscious mind. p177
6. At this stage it is fundamentally the question of collective problems, which have activated the collective unconscious because they require collective rather than personal compensation. p178
7. How is a man to know whether his dream is a “big” or a “little” one?
8. Even with us the collective dream has a feeling of importance about it that impels communication. 178
9. There is what one might call a legitimate and illegitimate interest in impersonal problems. Excursions of this kind are legitimate only when they arise from the deepest and truest in need of individual; illegitimate when they are either more intellectual curiosity or a flight from unpleasant reality. 182
10. It’s mentality is an instinctive one; it has no differentiated functions, and it does not “think” as we understand “thinking.” Simply creates an image that answers to the conscious situation. This image contains as much thought as feeling, and is anything rather then a product of rationalistic reflection. Such an image would be better described as an artist’s vision. p184
11. Thanks to the neurosis contrived by the unconscious, they are shaking out of there apathy, and this in spite of their own laziness and often desperate resistance. p184
12. The driving force, so far as it is possible for us to grasp, seems to be in essence only an urge toward self – realization. p184
13. Presumably everyone is capable of wider consciousness, and we may assume accordingly that the unconscious processes are constantly supplying us with contents which, if consciously recognized, would extend the range of consciousness. p184
14. Looked at in this way the unconscious appears as a field experience of a limited extent.

15. Every creative man knows that spontaneity is the very essence of creative thought. Because the unconscious is not just a reactive mirror–reflection, but independent, productive activity, it’s realm of experience is a self-contained world… 185

16. “Magical” is simply another word for “psychic.” 185
17. “Spirit” is a psychic fact. 185
18. The more limited amounts field of consciousness is, the more numinous the psychic contents (imagos) which meet him as quasi–external apparitions, either in the form of spirits, or as magical potencies projected upon living people (magicians, which is, etc.).187

Anima and Animus

1. Among all possible spirits the spirits of the parents are in practice the most important; hence the universal incidence of the ancestor cult. p188
2. Likewise parents, wife, children, birth, and death are inborn in him as virtual images, I psychic aptitudes… We must therefore think of these images as lacking in solid content, hence as unconscious. They only acquire solidity, influence, and eventually consciousness in the encounter with empirical facts, which touch the unconscious aptitude and quicken it to life. p190
3. An inherited collected image of women exists in man’s unconscious, with the help of which he apprehends the nature of woman. p190
4. A compensatory relationship exists between persona and anima 192
5. The persona is a complicated system of relations between the individual consciousness and society, fittingly enough a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and, on the other comment to conceal the true nature of the individual. 192
6. One cannot of course distinguish oneself from something unconscious. In the matter of the persona it is easy enough to make it clear to a man that he and his office are two different things. But it is very difficult for a man to distinguish himself from his anima, the more so because she is invisible. p195
7. At first the only thing that is at all clear is the incompatibility of the demands coming from without and from within, with the ego standing between them, as between hammer in anvil.196
8. So long as the anima is unconscious she is always projected, for everything unconscious is projected.197
9. The first step is what I would call the objectification of the anima, that is the strict refusal to regard the trend towards separation as a weakness of one’s own. 200
10. Because the things of the inner world influence us all the more powerfully for being unconscious, it is a central for anyone who intends to make progress in self-culture (and is not all culture began with the individual?) To objectivate the efforts of the anima and then try to understand what contents underlined those effects. In this way he adapts to, and is protected against, the invisible. 205
11. I can only say this: as the anima produces moods, so the animus produces opinions; and as the moods of a man issue from a shadow in the background, so the opinions of a woman rest on equally unconscious prior assumptions. p207
12. Animus does not appear as one person but as a plurality of persons. 207
13. The animus does not belong to the function of conscious relationship; his function is rather to facilitate relations with the unconscious. 208
14. Technique of coming to terms with the animus is the same principle as in the case of the anima; only here the woman must learn to criticize and hold her opinions at a distance; not in order to repress them, but, by investigating their origins, to penetrate more deeply into the background, where she will discover the primordial images, just as the man does in his dealings with the anima. 209
15. But already we can see how it is possible to break up the personifications, sense by making them conscious we convert them into bridges to the unconscious. It is because we are not using them purposefully as functions that they remain personified complexes.

The mana–personality

1. She” is a mana–personality, of being full of some a occult and bewitching quality (mana), endowed with magical knowledge and power. 227
2. Who is it that has integrated the anima? Obviously the conscious ego, and therefore the ego has taken over the mana. Thus the ego becomes the mana–personality. 227
3. By inflating the conscious mind it can destroy everything that was gained by coming to terms with the anima.
4. One has not in fact become important, but has nearly become adulterated with an archetype, another unconscious figure. Hence we must conclude that the ego never conquered the anima at all and therefore has not acquire the mana.229
5. This accommodation, however, was not a victory for the consciousness over the unconscious, but the establishment of a balance of power between the two worlds. 229
6. Hence the “magician” could take possession of the ego only because the ego dreamed of victory over the anima. The dream was an encroachment, and every encroachment of the ego is followed by an encroachment of the unconscious: changing shape from hour to hour I employ my savage power.230
7. This something is the desired “mid – point” of the personality, that ineffable something betwixt the opposite, or else that what unites them, or the result of conflict, or the product of energetic tension: the coming to birth of personality, a profoundly individual step forward, the next stage. 231
8. Historically, the mana–personality evolves into the hero and the godlike being, does earthly form is the priest.233
9. The unconscious reacts automatically like my stomach which, in a matter of speaking, wreaks it’s revenge upon me. When I presumed to have power over the unconscious, that is like a dietary solecism, and unseemly attitude which in the interest of one’s own well-being were better avoid it. 234
10. Historically the mono–personality is always in possession of the secret name, or of some esoteric knowledge, or has the prerogative of a special way of acting – in a word, it has an individual distinction. 235
11. Therefore we stand with her soul suspended between formidable influences from within it from without and somehow he must be fair to both. This we can do only after the measure of our individual capacities. Hence we must be think ourselves not so much what we “ought” to do as of what we can and must to do.
12. Thus the dissolution of the mana – personality through conscious assimilation of its contents leads us, buy a natural route, back to ourselves as an actual, living something, poised between two world–pictures and they’re darkly discerning potencies. This “something” is strange to us and yet so near, wholly ourselves and yet unknowable, a virtual center of so mysterious the constitution that it can claim anything – kinship with beasts and gods, with crystals and with stars – without moving us to wonder, without even exciting our disapprobation.237
13. I have called the center of self. Intellectually the self is no more than a psychological concepts, a construct that serves to express the unknowable essence which we cannot grasp as such, sense by definition it transcends our powers of comprehension. It might equally will be called the “God within us.”
14. It is a force as real as hunger and the fear of death. 239
15. The self could be characterized as a kind of compensation of the conflict between the inside and the outside. p239
16. So too the self is our life’s goal, for it is the completist expression of that fateful combination we call individuality, the full flowering not only of the single individual, but of the group, in which each ads his portion to the whole. p240