Jungian Achetypes Quotes

Padre Blazon was almost shouting by this time, and I had to hush him. People in the restaurant were staring, and one or two of the ladies of devout appearance were heaving their bosoms indignantly. He swept the room with the wild eyes of a conspirator in a melodrama and dropped his voice to a hiss. Fragments of food, ejected from his mouth by this jet, flew about the table. [p.201] ~ Robertson Davies

Assimilation of the feminine side is indeed a decisive problem in a man's individuation, but it remains his "private affair" since our patriarchal culture not only does not demand individuation but tends actually to reject it in the male. Assimilation of the archetypally masculine animus side of woman's nature, however, is a different matter. In modern times patriarchal culture, which no longer oppresses her and hinders her cultural participation, motivates woman to develop the opposite side of her psyche from childhood onwards. This means that women are forced into a certain degree of Self-estrangement for the sake of conscious development. Initially more is demanded of them than of men. From woman both femininity and masculinity are required, while from him only masculinity. We are speaking here of one of the complications but also one of the opportunities inherent in woman's situation for our culture that has led to there being such a high percentage of women involved in the development of modern psychology, actively through their collaboration and passively through their conflicts. ~ Erich Neumann

It may seem that my discussion of synchronicity has led me away from my main theme, but I feel it is necessary to make at least a brief introductory reference to it because it is a Jungian hypothesis that seems to be pregnant with future possibilities of investigation and application. Synchronistic events, moreover, almost invariably accompany the crucial phases of the process of individuation. But too often they pass unnoticed, because the individual has not learned to watch for such coincidences and to make them meaningful in relation to the symbolism o f his dreams. ~ C. G. Jung

Like Gnostics, contemporaries feel alienated from their roots and are seeking to overcome the alienation. They are seeking new outlets for their unconscious. Where Gnostics feel cut off from the outer world, contemporaries feel cut off from the inner one. Contemporaries do not, like Gnostics, project their alienation onto the cosmos; through Jungian psychology they seek to discover their true selves within rather than outside themselves. They alone, then, have the chance fully to overcome their alienation. ~ C. G. Jung

There is no destiny for all of mankind, only for some. To recover their divinity, but not as the "unconscious Gods," but with full consciousness, as a Total-Man, in the sense of the Jungian "individuation," a God conscious of Himself which is only possible to achieve on this earth. To achieve this is the meaning of Esoteric Hitlerism. When one arrives at such a state, one becomes the UFO, or the Vimana itself, without need of an external new science or a new technology, because one has achieved a parallel world, or a new place-situation, where we shall meet the Fuhrer and the warriors of the Last Battalion. This will be the real space colonization as the ultimate expression of the Faustian soul. ~ Miguel Serrano

Fear of our own depths is the enemy. ~ James Hollis

There is no religion and no philosophy that can give us a comprehensive answer to the whole of our problems, and the abandonment and isolation of the individual who is given no answer, or only inadequate answers, to his question lead to a situation in which more and more cheap, obvious solutions and answers are sought and provided. As, everywhere and in all departments of life, there are contradictory schools and parties, and an equal number of contradictory answers, one of the most frequent reactions is that modern man ceases to ask questions and takes refuge in a conception that considers only the most obvious, superficial aspects, and becomes skeptical, nihilistic, and egocentric. Or, alternatively, he tries to solve all his problems by plunging headlong into a collective situation and a collective conviction, and seeks to redeem himself in this way. ~ Erich Neumann

On the lowest level, this loss of soul turns the man into the hen-pecked husband who lives with his wife as though she were his mother upon whom he is solely dependent in all things having to do with emotions and the inner life. But even the relatively positive case where the woman is the mistress of the inner domain and mother of the home who simultaneously has the responsibility for dealing with all the man's questions and problems having to do with emotions and the inner life, even this leads to a lack of emotional vitality and sterile one-sidedness in the man. He discharges only the "outer" and "rational" affairs of life, profession, politics, etc. Owing to his loss of soul, the world he has shaped becomes a patriarchal world that, in its soullessness, presents an unprecedented danger for humanity. In this context we cannot delve further into the significance of a full development of the archetypal feminine potential for a new, future society. ~ Erich Neumann

But the final price of freedom is the willingness to face that most frightening of all beings, one's own self. Starlight vision, the "other way of knowing," is the mode of perception of the unconscious, rather than the conscious mind. The depths of our own beings are not all sunlit; to see clearly, we must be willing to dive into the dark, inner abyss and acknowledge the creatures we may find there. For, as Jungian analyst M. Esther Harding explains in Woman's Mysteries, "These subjective factors ... are potent psychical entities, they belong to the totality of our being, they cannot be destroyed. So long as they are unrecognized outcasts from our conscious life, they will come between us and all the objects we view, and our whole world will be either distorted or illuminated. ~ Starhawk

However, the natural symbol, without our being sufficiently conscious of the fact, is identical with the reality of the world that appears to us, for every object in the natural world is at the same time a symbolic reality to us. The psyche certainly does not use an "object" of nature as a "symbol," but rather the experience of an "object" itself is always already symbolic experience. The star or tree in us is no less real and no less symbolic than it is in outward experience. For each possibility of experience either presupposes a spiritually forming, that is to say a symbolic activity, or is identical with this. That is, everything spiritual appears to us first not just in nature but as nature; or we could formulate this just as well the other way around: everything natural, whether outward or inward, appears to us as an image, that is to say as formed spirit. We are surrounded by images, inwardly and outwardly, but at the same time formed and determined in all our experiences by the natural symbol as though by a unitary natural-spiritual reality, for our psychic system only grasps that which appears to us as the real world through the world of natural symbolism. ~ Erich Neumann

I grow old, I grow old, the center will not fold. In youth I had hardening of the categories and looked for the father and the mother in every lover. Then I cracked. Then I fragmented. Then the old man in my soul found the god in herself, not in some Jungian fairy tale but in the flesh that fell from the bones and the words that came into my mouth when the look went out of their eyes. ~ Jennifer Stone

It seems essential to try to find some meaning to life and I guess Jungian philosophy is the one that's helped me understand myself and the world more than anything else. ~ Noah Taylor

when it comes to the postmodern applications and contemporary relevance of depth psychology, the Jungian perspective is where the action is. ~ Christopher Hauke

I should write a serious book on China. If I did that and put in a lot of subtext about love and maybe compared it to the Great Wall or communism or something I could show the parallels between how we are forced to act in society due to cultural mores, versus how we really are, like, behind our own personal Jungian Great Walls. Then people would take my writing seriously like they do with Marni and Tess and that guy who wrote the Great Gatsby. ~ Jesse James Freeman

Symbolism in our waking Jungian dream was a two-way mirror. We were symbols for our American neighbors, but out neighbors- with their polished cars, grand homes, backyard swing sets- they symbolized something for us, too. They glittered as goals, mirages toward which we endlessly stumbled. ~ Phuc Tran

After years of research, depth psychologists and others argue that each sex carries both the psychological and physical traits of the other. No man is purely masculine, just as there is no purely feminine woman. Jungian psychologists call the feminine characteristics of the male psyche the Anima; the female psyche's masculine characteristics they the Animus.
Both the Animus and Anima develop in complex fashion as the personality grows to maturity. Neither men nor women can reach psychological maturity without integrating their respective contrasexual other. A man's female elements enhance his manhood, just as a woman's male aspects enhance her womanhood. ~ Douglas Gillette

The writer Lee Smith, who once had a New York copy editor query in the margin of her manuscript "Double-wide what?" tells a perfectly marvelous, spot-on story about Eudora Welty when she came to Hollins College, where Smith was a student. Welty read a short story in which one female character presents another with a marble cake. In the back of the audience Smith noted a group of leather-elbowed, goatee-sporting PhD candidates, all of whom were getting pretty excited. One started waving his hand as soon as she stopped reading and said, "Miz Welty, how did you come up with that powerful symbol of the marble cake, with the feminine and masculine, the yin and the yang, the Freudian and the Jungian all mixed together like that?" Smith reported that Welty looked at him from the lectern without saying anything for a while. Finally she replied mildly, "Well, you see, it's a recipe that's been in my family for some time. ~ Sally Mann

How many of those who are insecure seek power over others as a compensation for inadequacy and wind up bringing consequences down upon their heads and those around them? How many hide out in their lives, resist the summons to show up, or live fugitive lives, jealous, projecting onto others, and then wonder why nothing ever really feels quite right. How many proffer compliance with the other, buying peace at the price of soul, and wind up with neither? ~ James Hollis

Woman's fear of the female Self, of the experience of the numinous archetypal Feminine, becomes comprehensible when we get a glimpse - or even only a hint – of the profound otherness of female selfhood as contrasted to male selfhood. Precisely that element which, in his fear of the Feminine, the male experiences as the hole, abyss, void, and nothingness turns into something positive for the woman without, however, losing these same characteristics. Here the archetypal Feminine is experienced not as illusion and as maya but rather as unfathomable reality and as life in which above and below, spiritual and physical, are not pitted against each other; reality as eternity is creative and, at the same time, is grounded in primeval nothingness. Hence as daughter the woman experiences herself as belonging to the female spiritual figure Sophia, the highest wisdom, while at the same time she is actualizing her connection with the musty, sultry, bloody depths of swamp-mother Earth. However, in this sort of Self-discovery woman necessarily comes to see herself as different from what presents itself to men -as, for example, spirit and father, but often also as the patriarchal godhead and his ethics. The basic phenomenon - that the human being is born of woman and reared by her during the crucial developmental phases - is expressed in woman as a sense of connectedness with all living things, a sense not yet sufficiently realized, and one that men, and especially the patriarchal male, abso ~ Erich Neumann

Although I have suggested that American culture tends to favor the side of independence over the side of inclusion (and I would extend that to Western culture in general), it is not a generalization that seems to apply uniformly to men and women in our culture. Indeed, although I have no idea why it may be, it seems to me that men tend to have more difficulty acknowledging their need for inclusion, tend to me more oriented toward differentiation, and that women tend to have more difficulty acknowledging their need for distinctness, tend to be more oriented toward inclusion. Whether this is a function of social experience throughout the lifespan, the effects of parenting anatomical (even genital) density, or some combination, I do not know. Whatever the source of this distinction between men and women, I believe it is also the case that this very distinction is to be found within any one person as well. Whatever the source of this distinction between men and women, I believe it is also the case that this very distinction is to be found within any one person as well. In this respect constructive-developmental theory revives the Jungian notion that there is a man in every woman and a woman in every man; saying so is both a consequence of considering that all of life is animated by a fundamental evolutionary ambivalence, and that 'maleness'/'femaleness' is but one of its expressions. Similarly, I believe that while Western and Eastern cultures reflect one side or the other of thi ~ Robert Kegan

Central to Jungian psychology is the concept of "individuation," the process whereby a person discovers and evolves his Self, as opposed to his ego. The ego is a persona, a mask created and demanded by everyday social interaction, and, as such, it constitutes the center of our conscious life, our understanding of ourselves through the eyes of others. The Self, on the other hand, is our true center, our awareness of ourselves without outside interference, and it is developed by bringing the conscious and unconscious parts of our minds into harmony. ~ Morris Berman

I'm attracted to the things that people throw away - the shadow goods, in Jungian terms. ~ Jim Drain

As the Great Creatrix, the feminine is no vessel and passage for an alien, masculine Other that condescends towards her, enters into her, and favors her with the seed of living. Life originates in her and issues from her, and the light that appears projected on the night sky, which she is herself, is rooted in her depths. For she is not only the protomantis, the first and great Prophetess, but also she who gives birth to the Spirit-Light, which, like consciousness and the illumination that arises in transformation, is rooted in her creative efficacy. She is the creative Earth, which not only brings forth and swallows life, but as that which transforms also lets the dead thing be resurrected and leads the lower to the higher. All developments and transformations that lead from the simple and insignificant through all gradations of life to the complicated and intricately differentiated fall under her sovereignty. This matriarchal world is geocentric; the stars and signs of the zodiac are the heavenly girdle of the Earth Goddess and are arranged around her as the true center around which everything revolves. ~ Erich Neumann

I lived with my godmother and mother in New Zealand until I was seven. They were both Jungian psychologists and had a homeless shelter for street gang members in New Zealand. ~ Tamaryn

The truth is, Jung has brought back one member of the old duality, unreason, with a new name; it is no synthesis at all, but only the latest maneuver in the war against rationality that has been conducted with rising hysteria by literary intellectuals and humanists against the laws of a culture they have reason to distrust and disobey. The Jungian theory proposes to every disaffected humanist his "personal myth," as a sanctuary against the modern world. Against the vulgar democracy of intelligence, Jungian theory proposes an aristocracy of feeling. From this proposal derives Jung's persistent influence on modern critical and aesthetic style. ~ Philip Rieff

In the end a person must lose that which is most precious, that to which one's whole life has been devoted. The treasure is consciousness; it is the ego's final sacrifice to the Self. This sacrifice must be offered before the ultimate moment when the individual merges with the unconscious and stands before God. ~ June Singer

The Jungian therapist taught me the difference between the ego and the shadow. I realized I'd been so busy being a good girl that I'd completely detached from my shadow. It's something we all have, and it's where all the creative juices are. ~ Sue Grafton

Go back to The October Palace, which came out in 1994, and there are poems with windows, doors, the rooms of the gorgeous and vanishing palace that is this ordinary world and ordinary life. Jungian archetype would say the house is a figure for the experienced, experiencing self. ~ Jane Hirshfield

Thus the interpretation of dreams, whether by the analyst or by the dreamer himself, is for the Jungian psychologist an entirely personal and individual business (and sometimes an experimental and very lengthy one as well) that can by no means be undertaken by rule of thumb.
The converse of this is that the communications of the unconscious are of the highest importance to the dreamer-naturally so, since the unconscious is at least half of his total being-and frequently offer him advice or guidance that could be obtained from no other source. ~ C. G. Jung

Only by sacrificing what we have can we know what we have. Real sacrifice is made with the same definiteness and lack of bargaining that is involved in throwing something away We can do this only if we are forced by a greater power in us - a power stronger than the ego - that gives us the necessary strength. We experience this power as an inner imperative that tells us that we "must." In Jungian psychology we understand that as a message from the Self, the regulating center of the pysche. The sacrificer and what is sacrificed are one and the same: it is always the Self. ~ Marie-Louise Von Franz

The Jungian analyst Marie-Louise von Franz once observed that a person cutting vegetables while preparing to cook food is full of daydreams and fantasies that nurture the life of the soul. Contemplation can be an absorption in work that is free of self-consciousness and yet rich with imagination. Serious ~ Thomas Moore

The paradox of individuation is that we best serve intimate relationship by becoming sufficiently developed in ourselves that we do not need to feed off others. ~ James Hollis

If we are enveloped in images, we are also enveloped in forms, in spirit, which is nature, and in nature, which is spirit. Daily and continually we associate with this unified world of nature and spirit without knowing it. But only the person to whom this association has become clear understands what is meant when we talk of Sophia as a heightened and spiritualized earth. But this formulation is already distorted as well. The earth has not changed at all, it is neither heightened and spiritualized: it remains what is always was. Only the person who experiences this Earth Spirit has transformed himself, he alone is changed by it and has, perhaps, been heightened and spiritualized. However, he too remains what he always was and has only become, along with the earth, more transparent to himself in his own total reality.
Here also we must differentiate between the reality of our total existence and the differentiating formulations of our consciousness. Certainly, our consciousness makes the attempt to separate a spiritual from a natural world and to set them in opposition, but this mythical division and opposition of heaven and earth proves more and more impracticable. If, in the process of integration, consciousness allies itself with the contents of the unconscious and the mutual interpenetration of both systems leads to a transformation of the personality, a return to the primordial symbolism of the myth ensues. Above and below, heaven and earth, spirit and nature, are ex ~ Erich Neumann

The Goddess is the macrocosmic and microcosmic anima, as put in place by Creator. Her existence became necessary in order to give form to Creator's thoughts and therefore ours as well. ~ Lawren Leo