PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES by C. G. Jung

That's French for "the ancient system," as in the ancient system of feudal privileges and the exercise of autocratic power over the peasants. The ancien regime never goes away, like vampires and dinosaur bones they are always hidden in the earth, exercising a mysterious influence. It is not paranoia to believe that the elites scheme against the common man. Inform yourself about their schemes here.

Re: PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES by C. G. Jung

Postby admin » Tue Oct 06, 2015 9:34 pm

CHAPTER 4: THE TYPE-PROBLEM IN THE DISCERNMENT OF HUMAN CHARACTER

1. General Remarks upon Jordan's Types


IN my chronological survey of previous contributions to this interesting problem of psychological types, I now come to a small and rather odd work (my acquaintance with which I owe to my esteemed colleague Dr Constance Long, of London): Character as seen in Body and Parentage by Furneaux Jordan, F.R.C.S. (3rd edn., London 1896).

In his little book of one hundred and twenty-six pages, Jordan's main description refers to two types or characters, whose definition interests us in more than one respect. Although -- to anticipate slightly -- the author is really concerned with only one half of our types, the point of view of the other half, namely the intuitive and sensation types, is none the less included and confused with the types he describes.

I will first let the author speak for himself, presenting his introductory definition. On p. 5 he says:

"There are two generic fundamental biases in character ... two conspicuous types of character (with a third, an intermediate one) ... one in which the tendency to action is extreme and the tendency to reflection slight, and another in which the proneness to reflection greatly predominates and the impulse for action is feebler. Between the two extremes are innumerable gradations; it is sufficient to point only to a third type ... in which the powers of reflection and action tend to meet in more or less equal degree ... In an intermediate class may also be placed the characters which tend to eccentricity, or in which other possibly abnormal tendencies predominate over the emotional and non- emotional."


It can be clearly seen from this definition that Jordan contrasts reflection, or thinking, with activity. It is thoroughly understandable that an observer of men, not probing too deeply, would first be struck by the contrast between the reflective and the active natures, and would therefore be inclined to define the observed antithesis from this angle. The simple reflection, however, that the active nature does not necessarily proceed from impulse, but can also originate in thought, would make it seem necessary to carry the definition somewhat deeper. Jordan himself reaches this conclusion, for on p. 6 he introduces a further element into his survey, which has for us a particular value, namely the element of feeling. He states here that the active type is less passionate, while the reflective temperament is distinguished by its passionate feelings. Hence Jordan calls his types "the less impassioned" and "the more impassioned". Thus the element which he overlooked in his introductory definition he subsequently raises to the constant factor. But what mainly distinguishes his conception from ours is the fact that he also makes the "less impassioned" type "active" and the other "inactive".

This combination seems to me unfortunate, since highly passionate and profound natures exist which are .also energetic and active, and, conversely, there are less impassioned and superficial natures which are in no way distinguished by activity, not even by the low form of activity that consists in being busy. In my view, his otherwise valuable conception would have gained much in clarity if he had left the factors of activity and inactivity altogether out of account, as belonging to a quite different point-of-view, although in themselves important characterological determinants.

It will be seen from the arguments which follow that with the "less impassioned and more active" type Jordan is describing the extravert, and that his "more impassioned and less active" type corresponds with the introvert. Either can be active or inactive without thereby changing its type; for this reason the factor of activity should, in my opinion, be ruled out as an index character. As a determinant of secondary importance, however, it still plays a role, since the whole nature of the extravert appears more mobile, more full of life and activity than that of the introvert. But this quality depends upon the phase which the individual temporarily occupies vis-a-vis the outer world. An introvert in an extraverted phase appears active, while an extravert in an introverted phase appears passive. Activity itself, as a fundamental trait of character, can sometimes be introverted; it is then wholly directed within, developing a lively activity of thought or feeling behind an outer mask of profound repose; or at times it can be extraverted, showing itself in vigorous and lively action whilst behind the scenes there stands a firm dispassionate thought or untroubled feeling.

Before we make a more narrow examination of Jordan's train of ideas, I must, for greater clarity, stress yet another point which, if not borne in mind, might give rise to confusion. I remarked at the beginning that in earlier publications I had identified the introvert with the thinking and the extravert with the feeling type. As I said before, it became clear to me only later that introversion and extraversion are to be distinguished from the function-types as general basic attitudes. These two attitudes may be recognized with the greatest ease while a sound discrimination of the function types requires a very wide experience. At times it is uncommonly difficult to discover which function holds the premier place. The fact that the introvert naturally has a reflective and contemplative air, as a result of his abstracting attitude, has a misleading effect. This leads us to assume in him a priority of thinking. The extravert, on the contrary, naturally displays many immediate reactions, which easily allow us to conclude a predominance of the feeling-element. But these suppositions are deceptive, since the extravert may well be a thinking, and the introvert a feeling, type. Jordan merely describes the introvert and the extravert in general. But, where he goes into individual qualities, his description becomes misleading, because traits of different function-types are confused together, which a more adequate examination of the material would have kept apart. In general outlines, however, the picture of the introverted and extraverted attitude is unmistakable, so that the nature of the two basic attitudes can be plainly discerned.

The characterization of the types from the standpoint of affectivity appears to me as the really important aspect of Jordan's work. We have already seen that the "reflective" and contemplative nature of the introvert finds compensation in an unconscious, archaic life with regard to instinct and sensation. We might even say that that is why he is introverted, since he has to rise above an archaic, impulsive, passionate nature to the safer heights of abstraction, in order to dominate' his insubordinate and turbulent affects. This statement of the case is in many instances not at all beside the mark. Conversely, we might say of the extravert that his less deeply rooted emotional life is more readily adapted to differentiation and domestication than his unconscious, archaic thought and feeling, and it is this deep phantasy activity which may have such a dangerous influence upon his personality. Hence he is always the one who seeks life and experience as busily and abundantly as possible, that he may never come to himself and confront his evil thoughts and feelings. From observations such as these, which are very easily verified, we may explain an other wise paradoxical passage in Jordan, where he says (p. 6), that in the "less impassioned" (extraverted) temperament the intellect predominates with an unusually large share in the shaping of life, whereas the affects claim the greater importance with the "reflective" or introverted temperament.

At first glance, this interpretation would seem to contradict my assertion that the "less impassioned" corresponds with my extraverted type. But a nearer scrutiny proves that this is not the case, since the reflective character, though certainly trying to deal with his unruly affects, is in reality more influenced by passion than the man who takes for the conscious guidance of his life those desires which are orientated to objects. The latter, namely the extravert, attempts to make this principle all inclusive, but he has none the less to experience the fact that it is his subjective thoughts and feelings which everywhere harass him on his way. He is influenced by his inner psychic world to a far greater extent than he is aware of. He cannot see it himself, but an observant entourage always discerns the personal purposiveness of his striving. Hence his golden rule should always be to ask himself: "What is my actual wish and secret purpose?"

The other, the introvert, with his conscious, thought-out aims, always tends to overlook what his circle perceives only too clearly, namely that his aims are really in the service of powerful impulses, to whose influence, though lacking both purpose and object, they are very largely subject. The observer and critic of the extravert is liable to take the parade of feeling and thought as a thin covering, that only partially conceals a cold and calculated personal aim. Whereas the man who tries to understand the introvert might readily conclude that vehement passion is only with difficulty held in check by apparent sophistries.

Either judgment is both true and false. The conclusion is false when the conscious standpoint, i.e. consciousness in general, is strong enough to offer resistance to the unconscious; but it is true when a weaker conscious standpoint encounters a strong unconscious, to which it eventually has to give way. In this latter case the motive that was kept in the background now breaks forth; the egotistical aim in the one case, and the unsubdued passion; the elemental affect, that throws aside every consideration in the other.

These observations allow us to see how Jordan observes: he is evidently preoccupied with the affectivity of the observed type, hence his nomenclature: "less emotional" and "more impassioned". If, therefore, from the emotional aspect he conceives the introvert as the passionate, and from the same standpoint he sees the extravert as the less impassioned and even as the intellectual, type, he thereby reveals a peculiar kind of discernment which one must describe as intuitive. This is why I previously drew attention to the fact that Jordan confuses the rational with the perceptional point of view. When he characterizes the introvert as the passionate and the extravert as the intellectual, he is clearly seeing the two types from the side of the unconscious, i.e. he perceives them through the medium of his unconscious. He observes and recognizes intuitively: this must always be more or less the case with the practical observer of men. However true and profound such an apprehension may sometimes be, it is subject to a most essential limitation: it overlooks the living reality of the observed man, since it always judges him from his unconscious reflexion instead of his actual presence. This error of judgment is inseparable from intuition, and reason has always been at loggerheads with it on this account, only grudgingly acknowledging its right to existence, in spite of the fact that it must often be convinced of the objective accuracy of the intuitive finding. On the whole, then, Jordan's formulations accord with reality, though not with reality as it is understood by the rational types, but with the reality which is for them unconscious. Naturally, this is a circumstance than which nothing is more calculated to confuse all judgment upon the observed persons, and to enhance the difficulty of interpretation of the facts observed. In these questions, therefore, one ought never to quarrel over nomenclature, but should hold exclusively to the actual facts of observable, contrasting differences. Although my own manner of expression is altogether different from that of Jordan, we are nevertheless at one, with certain divergences, upon the classification of the observed phenomena.

Before going on to comment upon the way Jordan reduces his observed material into types, I should like briefly to return to his postulated third or "intermediate" type. Jordan, as we saw, ranged under this heading the wholly balanced on one side, and the unbalanced on the other. It will not be superfluous at this point to call to mind the classification of the Valentinian school [1], in which the Hylic man is subordinated to the psychic and pneumatic. The hylic man, according to his definition, corresponds with the sensation type, i.e. with the man whose prevailing determinants are supplied in and through the senses. The sensation type has neither a differentiated thinking nor a differentiated feeling, but his sensuousness is well developed. This, as we know, is also the case with the primitive. But the instinctive sensuality of the primitive has a counterweight in the spontaneity of the psychic processes. His mental product, his thoughts, practically confront him. He does not make or devise them -- he is not capable of that: they make themselves, they happen to him, even confronting him like hallucinations. Such a mentality must be termed intuitive, since intuition is the instinctive perception of an emerging psychic content. Although the principal psychological function of the primitive is as a rule sensation, the less prominent compensating function is intuition. Upon the higher levels of civilization, where one man has thinking more or less differentiated and another feeling, there are also quite a number of individuals who have developed intuition to a high level and employ it as the essentially determining function. From these we get the intuitive type. It is my belief, therefore, that Jordan's middle group may be resolved into the sensation and intuitive types.

2. Special Description and Criticism of the Jordan Types

With regard to the general appearance of the two types Jordan emphasizes the fact (p. 17) that the less emotional yields far more prominent and striking personalities than the emotional type. This notion springs from the fact that Jordan identifies the active type of man with the less emotional, which in my opinion is inadmissible. Leaving this mistake on one side, it is certainly true that the behaviour of the "less emotional", or let us say the extravert, makes him more conspicuous than the emotional or introvert.

(a) The Introverted Woman (The more-impassioned woman)

The first character that Jordan discusses is that of the introverted woman. Let me summarize the chief points of his description (pp. 17 ff.):

"She has quiet manners, and a character not easy to read: she is occasionally critical; even sarcastic ... but though bad temper is sometimes noticeable, she is neither fitful nor restless, nor captious, nor censorious, nor is she a "nagging" woman. She diffuses an atmosphere of repose, and unconsciously she comforts and heals, but under the surface emotions and passions lie dormant. Her emotional nature matures slowly. As she grows older the charm of her character increases. She is "sympathetic", i.e. she brings insight and experience to bear on the problems of others. The very worst characters are found among the more impassioned women. They are the cruellest stepmothers. They make the most affectionate wives and mothers, but their passions and emotions are so strong that these frequently hold reason in subjection or carry it away with them. They love too much, but they also hate too much. Jealousy can make wild beasts of them. Stepchildren, if hated by them, may even be done to death.

"If evil is not in the ascendant, morality itself is associated with deep feeling, and may take a profoundly reasoned and independent course which will not always fit itself to conventional standards. It will not be an imitation or a submission: not a bid for a reward here or hereafter. It is only in intimate relations that the excellences and drawbacks of the impassioned woman are seen. Here she unfolds herself; here are her joys and sorrows ... here her faults and weaknesses are seen, perhaps slowness to forgive, implacability, sullenness, anger, jealousy, or even ... uncontrolled passions ... She is charmed with the moment ... and less apt to think of the comfort and welfare of the absent ... she is disposed to forget others and forget time. If she is affected, her affectation is less an imitation than a pronounced change of manners and speech with changing shades of thought and especially of feeling ... In social life she tends to be the same in all circles ... In both domestic and social life she is as a rule not difficult to please, she spontaneously appreciates, congratulates, and praises. She can soothe the mentally bruised and encourage the unsuccessful. In her there is compassion for all weak things, two-footed or four. She rises to the high and stoops to the low, she is the sister and playmate of all nature. Her judgment is mild and lenient. When she reads she tries to grasp the inmost thought and deepest feeling of the book; she reads and re-reads the book, marks it freely, and turns down its corners."


From this description it is not difficult to recognize the introverted character. But the description is, in a certain sense, one-sided, because the chief stress is laid upon the side of feeling, without emphasizing the one characteristic to which I give special value, viz. the conscious inner life. He mentions, it is true, that the introverted woman is "contemplative," but he does not pursue the matter further. His description, however, seems to me a confirmation of my comments upon the manner of his observation; in the main it is the outward demeanour constellated my feeling, and the manifestations of passions which strike him; he does not probe into the nature of the conscious life of this type. Hence he never mentions that the inner life plays an altogether decisive role in the introvert's conscious psychology. Why, for example, does the introverted woman read so attentively? Because above everything she loves to understand and comprehend ideas. Why is she restful and soothing? Because she usually keeps her feelings to herself, living them inwardly, instead of unloading them upon others. Her unconventional morality is based upon deep reflection and convincing inner feelings. The charm of her calm and intelligent character depends not merely upon a peaceful attitude, but derives from the fact that one can talk with her reasonably and coherently, and because she is able to estimate the value of her companion's argument. She does not interrupt him with impulsive demonstrations, but accompanies his meaning with her thoughts and feelings, which none the less remain steadfast, never yielding to opposing arguments.

This compact and well-developed ordering of conscious psychic contents is a stout defence against a chaotic and passionate emotional life, of which the introvert is very often aware, at least in its personal aspect: she fears it because it is present to her. She meditates about herself: she is therefore outwardly equable and can recognize and appreciate another, without loading him with either blame or approbation. But because her emotional life would devastate these good qualities, she as far as possible rejects her instincts and affects, but without thereby mastering them. In contrast, therefore, to her logical and consolidated consciousness, her affect is proportionally elemental, confused and ungovernable. It lacks the true human note; it is disproportionate and irrational; it is a phenomenon of Nature, which breaks through the human order. It lacks any tangible arriere pensee or purpose: at times, therefore, it is quite destructive -- a wild torrent, that neither contemplates destruction nor avoids it, profoundly indifferent and necessary, obedient only to its own laws, a process that accomplishes itself. Her good qualities depend upon her thinking, which by a tolerant or benevolent comprehension has succeeded in influencing or restraining one element of her instinctive life, though lacking the power to embrace and transform the whole. Her affectivity is far less clearly conscious to the introverted woman in its whole range than are her rational thoughts and feelings. She is incapable of comprehending her whole affectivity, although her way of looking at life is well adapted. Her affectivity is much less mobile than her intellectual contents: it is, as it were, tough and curiously inert, therefore hard to change; it is perseverant, hence also her self-will .and her occasional unreasonable inflexibility in things that touch her emotions.

These considerations may explain why a judgment of the introverted woman, taken exclusively from the angle of affectivity, is incomplete and unfair in whatever sense it is taken. If Jordan finds the vilest feminine characters among the introverts, this, in my opinion, is due to the fact that he lays too great a stress upon affectivity, as if passion alone were the mother of all evil. We can torture children to death in other ways than the merely physical. And, from the other point-of-view, that wondrous wealth of love of the introverted woman is not always by any means her own possession: she is more often possessed by it and cannot choose but love, until one day a favourable opportunity occurs, when suddenly, to the amazement of her partner, she displays an inexplicable coldness. The emotional life of the introvert is generally his weak side; it is not absolutely trustworthy. He deceives himself about it; others also are deceived and disappointed in him, when they rely too exclusively upon his affectivity. His mind is more reliable, because more adapted. His affect is too close to sheer untamed nature.

(b) The Extraverted Woman (The less-impassioned woman)

Let us now turn to Jordan's delineation of the "less impassioned woman". Here too I must reject everything which the author has confused by the introduction of activity, since this admixture is only calculated to render the typical character less recognizable. Thus, when we speak of a certain quickness of the extravert, this does not mean the element of energy and activity, but merely the mobility of active processes.

Of the extraverted woman Jordan says: [2]

"She is marked by a certain quickness and opportuneness rather than by persistence or consistency ... Her life is almost wholly occupied with little things. She goes even further than Lord Beaconsfield in the belief that unimportant things are not very unimportant, and important things not very important. She likes to dwell on the way her grandmother did things, and how her grandchildren will do them, and on the universal degeneracy of human beings and affairs. Her daily wonder is how things would go on if she were not there to look after them. She is frequently invaluable in social movements. She expends her energies in household cleanliness, which is the end and aim of existence to not a few women. Frequently she is 'idea-less, emotionless, restless and spotless'. Her emotional development is usually precocious. and at eighteen she is little less wise than at twenty-eight or forty-eight. Her mental outlook usually lacks range and depth, but it is clear from the first. When intelligent. she is capable of taking a leading position. In society she is kindly, generous and hospitable. She judges her neighbours and friends, forgetful that she is herself being judged, but she is active in helping them in misfortune. Deep passion is absent in her, love is simply preference, hatred merely dislike and jealousy only injured pride. Her enthusiasm is not sustained, and she is more alive to the beauty of poetry than she is to its passion and pathos ... Her beliefs and disbeliefs are complete rather than strong. She has no convictions, but she has no misgivings. She does not believe, she adopts, she does not disbelieve, she ignores. She never enquires and never doubts. In large affairs she defers to authority; in small affairs she jumps to conclusions. In the detail of her own little world. whatever is. is wrong; in the larger world outside ... whatever is, is right ... She instinctively rebels against carrying the conclusions of reason into practice.

"At home she shows quite a different character from the one seen in society. With her, marriage is much influenced by ambition, love of change or obedience to well- ecognized custom, and a desire to be 'settled in life', or from a sincere wish to enter a greater sphere of usefulness. If her husband belongs to the impassioned type, he will love children more than she does.

"In the domestic circle her least pleasing characteristics are evident. Here she indulges in disconnected, disapproving comment, and none can foresee when there will be a gleam of sunshine through the cloud. The unemotional woman has little or no self- analysis. If she is plainly accused of habitual disapproval she is surprised and offended, and intimates ... that she only desires the general good 'but some people do not know what is good for them'. She has one way of doing good to her family. and quite another way where society is concerned. The household must always be ... ready for social inspection. Society must be encouraged and propitiated ... Its upper section must be impressed and its lower section kept in order ... Home is her winter, society her summer. If the door but opens and a visitor is announced, the transformation is instant.

"The less emotional woman is by no means given to asceticism; respectability ... does not demand it of her. She is fond of movement, recreation, change ... Her busy day may open with a religious service, and close with a comic opera ... She delights ... to entertain her friends and to be entertained by them. In society she finds not only her work and her happiness, but her rewards and her consolations ... She believes in society. and society believes in her. Her feelings are little influenced by prejudice, and as a rule she is 'reasonable'. She is very imitative and usually selects good models, but is only dimly conscious of her imitations. The books she reads must deal with life and action."


This familiar type of woman, which Jordan terms the "less impassioned", is extraverted beyond a doubt. The whole demeanour sets forth that character which from its very nature must be called extraverted. The continual criticizing, that is never founded upon real reflection, is an extraversion of a fleeting impression, which has nothing to do with true thinking. I remember a witty aphorism I once read somewhere or other: "Thinking is so difficult -- therefore most of us prefer to pass judgments". [3] Reflection demands time above everything: therefore the man who reflects has no opportunity for continual criticism. Incoherent and inconsequent criticism, with its dependence upon tradition and authority, reveals the absence of any independent reflection; similarly the lack of self-criticism and the dearth of independent ideas betrays a defect of the function of judgment. The absence of inner mental life in this type is expressed much more distinctly than is its presence in the introverted type depicted above. From this sketch one might readily conclude that there is here just as great or even a greater defect of affectivity, for it is obviously superficial, shallow, almost spurious; because the aim always involved in it or discernible behind it, makes the emotional effort practically worthless. I am, however, inclined to assume that the author is here undervaluing just as much as he overvalued in the former case. Notwithstanding an occasional recognition of good qualities, the type, on the whole, comes out of it very indifferently. I must assume in this case a certain bias on the part of the author. It is usually enough to have tasted a bitter experience, either with one or more representatives of a certain type, for one's taste to be spoiled for every similar case. One must not forget that, just as the good sense of the introverted woman depends upon a scrupulous accommodation of her mental contents to the general thought, the affectivity of the extraverted woman possesses a certain mobility and lack of depth, on account of her adaptation to the general life of human society. In this case, it is a question of a socially differentiated affectivity of incontestable general validity, which compares more than favourably with the heavy, sticky, passionate affect of the introvert. The differentiated affectivity has cut away the chaotic affect, and has become a disposable function of adaptation, though at the expense of the inner mental life, which is remarkable by its absence. It none the less exists in the unconscious, and moreover in a form which corresponds with the passion of the introvert, i.e. in an undeveloped state. The character of this state is infantile and archaic. The undeveloped mind, working from the unconscious, provides the affective struggle with contents and hidden motives, which can not fail to make a bad impression upon the critical observer, although unperceived by the uncritical eye. The disagreeable impression that the constant perception of thinly veiled egoistic motives has upon the beholder makes one only too prone to forget the actual reality and adapted usefulness of the efforts thus displayed. All that is easy, unforced, moderate, unconcerned and superficial in life would disappear, if there were no differentiated affects. One would either be stifled in continuously manifested pathos, or be engulfed in the yawning void of repressed passion. If the social function of the introvert mainly perceives individuals, the extravert certainly promotes the life of the community, which also has a claim to existence. That is why he needs extraversion because first and foremost it is the bridge to one's neighbour.

As we all know, the expression of emotion works suggestively, while the mind can only unfold its effectiveness indirectly, by arduous translation. The affects required by the social function must not be at all deep, or they beget passion in others. And passion disturbs the life and prosperity of society. Similarly the adapted, differentiated mind of the introvert has extensity rather than depth; hence it is not disturbing and provocative but reasonable and sedative. But, just as the introvert is troublesome through the violence of his passion, the extravert is irritating through an incoherent and abrupt application of his half unconscious thoughts and feelings in the form of tactless and unsparing judgments upon his fellow-men. If we were to make a collection of such judgments and were to try synthetically to construct a psychology out of them, we should arrive at an utterly brutal conception, which in cheerless savagery, crudity, and stupidity, would be a fitting rival to the murderous affect-nature of the introvert. Hence I cannot subscribe to Jordan's view that the worst characters are to be found among the passionate introverted natures. Among the extraverts there is just as much and just as basic wickedness. Whereas introverted passionateness reveals itself in coarse actions, the vulgarity of the extravert's unconscious thinking and feeling commits infamous deeds upon the soul of the victim. I know not which is worse. The drawback in the former case is that the deed is visible, while the latter's vulgarity of mind is concealed behind the veil of an acceptable demeanour. I would like to' lay stress upon the social thoughtfulness of this type, his active concern for the general welfare, as well as a most definite tendency to provide pleasure for others. The introvert as a rule has these qualities only in phantasy.

Differentiated affects have the further advantage of charm and beautiful form. They diffuse an aesthetic, beneficent atmosphere. There are a surprising number of extraverts who practise an art (chiefly music) not so much because they are specially qualified in that direction as from a desire to be generally serviceable in social life. Extraverted fault-finding, moreover, is not always unpleasant or wholly worthless in character. It very often confines itself to an adapted, educational tendency, which does a great deal of good. Similarly, his dependence of judgment is not necessarily evil under all circumstances, for it often conduces to the suppression of extravagant and pernicious out-growths, which in no way further the life and welfare of society. It would be altogether unjustifiable to try to maintain that one type is in any respect more valuable than the other. The types are mutually complementary, and from their distinctiveness there proceeds just that measure of tension which both the individual and society need for the maintenance of life.

(c) The Extraverted Man

Of the extraverted man Jordan says (pp. 26 ff.):

"He is fitful and uncertain in temper and behaviour, given ... to petulance, fuss, discontent and censoriousness. He makes depreciatory judgments on all and sundry, but is ever well satisfied with himself. His judgment is often at fault and his projects often fail, but he never ceases to place unbounded confidence in both. Sidney Smith, speaking of a conspicuous statesman of his time, said he was ready at any moment to command the Channel Fleet or amputate a limb ... He has an incisive formula for everything that is put before him: ... either the thing is not true-or everybody knows it already ... In his sky there is not room for two suns ... If other suns insist on shining, he has a curious sense of martyrdom ...

"He matures early: he is fond of administration, ... and is often an admirable public servant ... At the committee of his charity he is as much interested in the selection of its washerwoman as in the selection of its chairman. In company he is usually alert, to the point, witty, and apt at retort. He resolutely, confidently, and constantly shows himself. Experience helps him and he insists on getting experience. He would rather be the known chairman of a committee of three than the unknown benefactor of a nation. When he is less gifted he is probably no less self-important. Is he busy? He believes himself to be energetic. Is he loquacious? He believes himself to be eloquent.

"He rarely puts forth new ideas, or opens new paths .... but he is quick to follow, to seize, to apply, to carry out ... His natural tendency is 'to ancient, or at least accepted forms of belief and policy. Special circumstances may sometimes lead him to contemplate with admiration the audacity of his own heresy ... Not rarely the less emotional intellect is so lofty and commanding, that no disturbing influence can hinder the formation of broad and just views in all the provinces of life. His life is usually characterized by morality, truthfulness, and high principle; but sometimes his desire for immediate effect leads him into difficulties.

"If, in public assembly, adverse fates have given him nothing to do, nothing to propose, or second, or support, or amend, or oppose, he will rise and ask for some window to be closed to keep out a draught, or, which is more likely, that one be opened to let in more air; for physiologically, he commonly needs much air as well as much notice ... He is especially prone to do what he is not asked to do ... He constantly believes that the public sees him as he wishes it to see him ... a sleepless seeker of the public good ... He puts others in his debt, and he cannot go unrewarded. He may, by well-chosen language, move his audience although he is not moved himself. He is probably quick to understand his time or at least his party ... he warns it of impending evil, organizes its forces, deals smartly with its opponents. He is full of projects and bustling activity. Society must be pleased if possible, if it will not be pleased it must be astonished; if it will neither be pleased nor astonished it must be pestered and shocked. He is a saviour by profession and as an acknowledged saviour is not ill pleased with himself. We can of ourselves do nothing right-but we can believe in him, dream of him, thank God for him, and ask him to address us.

"He is unhappy in repose, and rests nowhere long. After a busy day he must have a pungent evening. He is found in the theatre, or concert, or church, or the bazaar, at the dinner, or conversazione or club, or all these, turn and turn about .... If he misses a meeting, a telegram announces a more ostentatious call."


From this description the type is easily recognized. But, even more perhaps than in the description of the 'extraverted woman, there emerges notwithstanding individual evidences of appreciation, an element of caricaturing depreciation. This is partly due to the fact that this method of description cannot be just to the extraverted nature in general, because with the intellectual medium it is well-nigh impossible to set the specific value of the extravert in a fair light: while with the introvert this is much more possible, since his conscious motivation and good sense permit of expression through the intellectual medium as readily as do the facts of his passion and its inevitable consequences. With the extravert, on the other hand, the chief value lies in his relation to the object. To me it seems that only life itself can concede the extravert that justice which intellectual criticism fails to give him. Life alone reveals and appreciates his values. We can, of course, state the fact that the extravert is socially useful, that he deserves great merit for the progress of human society, and so on. But an analysis of his means and motivations will always give a negative result, since the chief value of the extravert lies not in himself but in the reciprocal relation to the object. The relation to the object belongs to those imponderabilia, which the intellectual formulation can never seize.

Intellectual criticism cannot abstain from proceeding analytically: it must constantly seek evidence concerning motivation and aims, in order to bring the observed type to complete definition. But from this process a picture emerges which is no better than a caricature for the psychology of the extravert, and the man who is fain to believe he has found the extravert's real attitude upon the basis of such a description will be astonished to find the actual personality turning his description to ridicule. Such a one-sided conception entirely prevents any adaptation to the extravert. In order to do him justice, thinking about him must be altogether excluded; similarly the extravert can adjust himself correctly to the introvert only when he is prepared to accept his mental contents in themselves quite apart from their possible practical application. Intellectual analysis cannot help charging the extravert with every possible design, subtle aim, mental reservation, and so forth, which have no actual existence, but at the most are only shadowy effects leaking in from the unconscious background.

It is certainly true that the extravert, if he has nothing else to say, may find it necessary for a window to be opened or shut. But who has remarked it? Who is essentially struck by it? Only the man who is trying to give an account of the possible grounds and intentions of such an action, one therefore who reflects, dissects, and reconstructs, while for everyone else this little stir is altogether dissolved in the general bustle of life, without offering an invitation to any ulterior deduction. But it is just in this way that the psychology of the extravert reveals itself: it belongs to the occurrences of daily human life, and it signifies nothing more, either above or below. But the man who reflects, sees further and -- as far as the actual life is concerned -- sees crooked, although his vision is sound enough as regards the unconscious background. He does not see the positive man, but only his shadow. And the shadow admits the justice of the criticism, to the prejudice of the conscious, positive human being. For the sake of understanding, it is, I think, a good thing to detach the man from his shadow, the unconscious; otherwise the discussion is threatened with an .unparalleled confusion of ideas. One sees much in another man which does not belong to his conscious psychology, but which gleams out from his unconscious, and one is rather tempted to regard the observed quality a; belonging to the conscious ego. Life and fate may do this, but the psychologist, to whom the knowledge of the structure of the psyche and the dawning possibility of a better understanding of man is of the deepest concern, must not. A clean discrimination of the conscious man from his unconscious is imperative, since only by the assimilation of conscious standpoints will clarity and understanding be gained, and never through a process of reduction to the unconscious backgrounds, side-lights, and quarter-tones.

(d) The Introverted Man

Of the character of the introverted man (the more impassioned and reflective man), Jordan says (p. 35):

"His pleasures do not change from hour to hour, his love of pleasure is of a more genuine nature, and he does not seek it from mere restlessness. If he takes part in public work he is probably invited to do so from some special fitness; or it may be that he has at heart some movement ... which he wishes to promote. When his work is done he willingly retires. He is able to see what others can do better than he; and he would rather that his cause should prosper in other hands than fail in his own. He has a hearty word of praise for his fellow-workers. Probably he errs in estimating too generously the merits of those around him ... He is never, and indeed cannot be, an habitual scold. Such men develop slowly, are liable to hesitate, never become the leaders of religious movements, are never so supremely confident as to what is error that they burn their neighbours for it; never so confident that they possess infallible truth that, although not wanting in courage, they are prepared to be burnt in its behalf. If they are especially endowed, they will be thrust into the front rank by their environment, while men of the other type place themselves there."


To me it seems significant that the author in his chapter on the introverted man, with whom we are now concerned, actually says no more than I have substantially given above. A description of the passion on which account he is termed the "impassioned" type is for the most part omitted. One must, of course, be cautious in making diagnostic conjectures -- but this case seems to invite the supposition that the section on the introverted man has received such niggardly treatment from subjective causes. One might have expected, after the searching and unfair delineation of the extraverted type, a similar thoroughness of description for the introvert. Why is it not forthcoming?

Let us suppose that Jordan himself is upon the side of the introverts. It would then be intelligible that a description like the one he gives to his opposite type with such pitiless severity, would scarcely be acceptable. r would not say because of a lack of objectivity, but rather for lack of discernment of his own shadow. How he appears to his counter-type, the introvert cannot possibly know or imagine, unless he allows the extravert a privileged recital of it, at the risk of being obliged to challenge him to a duel. Just as little as the extravert is disposed to accept the above characteristics without more ado, as a benevolent and striking picture of his character, is the introvert willing to receive his characteristics from an extraverted observer and critic. For it would be just as depreciatory. As the introvert, who tries to get hold of the nature of the extravert, invariably goes wide of the mark, so the extravert who tries to understand the other's inner mental life from the standpoint of externality is equally at sea. The introvert makes the mistake of always wanting to relate action to the subjective psychology of the extravert, while the extravert can only conceive the inner mental life as a product of external circumstances. For the extravert an abstract train of thought must be a phantasy, a sort of chimera, when an objective relation is not in evidence. And as a matter of fact introverted .brain-weavings are often nothing more. At all events a I lot could be said of the introverted man, and one could draw a shadow portrait of him neither less complete nor unfavourable than that which Jordan in his earlier section drew of the extravert.

Jordan's observation that the pleasure of the introvert is of a "more genuine nature" seems to me important This appears to be a peculiarity of the introverted feeling in general: it is genuine; it is because it just is; it is rooted in tile man's deeper nature; it wells up out of itself as it were, having itself as its own aim; it will serve no other ends, lending itself to none, and is content to accomplish itself. This coincides with the spontaneity of the archaic and natural phenomenon, which has never yet bowed the head to the ends and aims of civilization. Whether rightly or wrongly, or at least without consideration of right or wrong. of suitability or unsuitability, the affective state manifests itself, forcing itself upon the subject even against his will and expectation. It contains nothing from which one might conclude a thought-out motivation.

I do not wish to enlarge upon the further sections of Jordan's book. He cites historical personalities as examples, whereby numerous distorted points of view appear which derive from the fallacy already referred to: i.e. the author introduces the criterion of active and passive, and mixes it up with other criteria. From this medley the conclusion is frequently drawn that an active personality must also be counted as a passion-less type, and, vice versa, a passionate nature must likewise always be passive. My standpoint seeks to avoid this error by altogether excluding the factor of activity as a point-of-view. To Jordan, however, the credit belongs of being the first, so far as I know, to give a relatively appropriate character-sketch of the emotional types.

_______________

Notes:

1. The name given to the adherents of Valentinus, an Egyptian theologian who flourished circa A.D. 150 and founded a Gnostic sect. The Hylici suffered themselves to be so captivated by the inferior world as to live only a hylic or material life. (New English Dictionary).

2. p. 9 ff.

3."Denken ist so schwer -- darum urteilen die Meisten."
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Re: PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES by C. G. Jung

Postby admin » Tue Oct 06, 2015 9:39 pm

Part 1 of 6

CHAPTER 5: THE PROBLEM OF TYPES IN POETRY

CARL SPITTELER'S PROMETHEUS AND EPIMETHEUS

1. Introductory Remarks on Spitteler's Characterization of Types


IF, among the themes offered to the poet by the intricacies of emotional life, the problem of types did not play a significant role, it would practically prove that such a problem did not exist. But we have already seen how in Schiller this problem stirred the poet in him as deeply as the thinker. In this chapter we shall turn our attention to a poetic work which is almost exclusively based upon the motif of the type-problem. I refer to Carl Spitteler's Prometheus and Epimetheus, which first appeared in 1881.

I have no wish to explain at the outset that Prometheus, the forethinker, stands for the introvert, while Epimetheus, the man of action and after-thinker, signifies the extravert. In the conflict of these two figures the principal issue is the battle of the introverted with the extraverted line of development in' one and the same individual, though the poetic presentation has embodied the conflict in two independent figures with their typical destinies.

It is self-evident that Prometheus exhibits introverted character traits. He presents the picture of a man faithfully introverted to his inner world, true to his soul. His reply to the angel is a telling expression of his nature [1]; "Yet it is not mine to judge my soul's appearance, for behold, my mistress she is, my god in joy and sorrow, and whatsoever I am, I have from her alone. And so, with her, will I share my glory, and if need be boldly will I renounce it."

In this act Prometheus surrenders himself unconditionally to his own soul, i.e. to the function of relation to the inner world. Hence the soul has also a mysterious metaphysical character, precisely on account of its relation to the unconscious. Prometheus concedes it absolute significance, as mistress and guide, in the same unconditional manner in which Epimetheus yields himself to the world. He sacrifices his individual ego to the soul, to the relation with the unconscious, as the mother-womb of eternal images and meanings; he thereby surrenders the Self, since he loses the counterweight of the persona [2], i.e. the relation to the external object. With this surrender to his soul Prometheus drops away from every connection with the surrounding world, thus escaping the indispensable correction gained through external reality. But this loss is irreconcilable with the nature of this world. Therefore an angel appears to Prometheus, clearly a representative of world-government: expressed psychologically, he is the projected image of a tendency directed towards reality-adaptation. The angel accordingly says to Prometheus:

"It shall come to pass, if thou dost not prevail and free thyself from thy soul's unrighteous way, that the great reward of many years and thy heart's content and all the fruits of thy subtle mind shall be lost unto thee."


And in another place:

"Rejected shalt thou be on the day of glory for the sake of thy soul, who knoweth no God and heedeth no law, for to her arrogance nothing is holy, neither in heaven nor upon earth."


Because Prometheus has a one-sided orientation to his soul; every impulse towards adaptation to the outer world tends to be repressed and to sink into the unconscious. Consequently, if perceived at all, they appear as separate from the individuality, hence as projections. In this connection it would seem that there is a certain contradiction in the fact that the soul, whose cause Prometheus has espoused and which he as it were accepted in full consciousness, appears as a projection. Since the soul, like the persona, is a function of relationship, it must consist in a certain sense of two parts, one part belonging to the individuality and the other adhering to the object of relationship, in this case the unconscious. One is indeed generally inclined -- unless one is a frank adherent of the Hartmann philosophy -- to grant the unconscious only the relative existence of a psychological factor. On the grounds of the theory of cognition, we are as yet quite unable to make any valid statement with regard to an objective reality of the phenomenal psychological complex which we term the unconscious, just as we are equally powerless to determine anything valid about the nature of real things which lie beyond our psychological capacity. On the ground of experience, I must, however, point out that in relation to our conscious activity the contents of the unconscious make the same claim to reality by virtue of their obstinacy and persistence, as do the real things of the outer world, even when this challenge appears very improbable to a mentality with a preferential bias towards external reality. It must not be forgotten that there have always been many for whom the contents of the unconscious possessed a greater reality than the things of the outer world. The history of human thought bears witness to both realities. A more searching investigation of the human psyche shows unquestionably that there is, on the whole, an equally strong influence from both sides upon conscious activity; so that, psychologically, we have a right on purely empirical grounds to treat the contents of the unconscious as just as real as the things of the outer world, albeit these two realities may be mutually contradictory and appear entirely different in their natures. But to superordinate one reality over the other would be an altogether unjustifiable presumption. Theosophy and spiritualism are no better than materialism in their outrageous encroachments upon reality. We have, in fact, to resign ourselves to the sphere of our psychological possibilities.

The peculiar reality of unconscious contents, therefore, gives us the same right to describe these as objects as the things of the outer world. Whereas the persona, considered as a relation, is always conditioned by the outer object, and hence is as firmly anchored in the outer object as it is in the subject; the soul, as the relation to the inner object, is similarly represented by the inner object; in a sense, therefore, it is always distinct from the subject, and is actually perceptible as something distinct. Hence it appears to Prometheus as something quite separate from his individual ego. In the same way as a man who yields himself entirely to the outer world still has the world as an object distinct from himself, so the unconscious world of images remains as an object distinct from the subject, even when a man is wholly surrendered to it.

Just as the unconscious world of mythological images speaks indirectly, through the experience of external things, to the man who abandons himself to the outer world, so the real world and its claims find their way indirectly to the man who has surrendered himself to the soul; for no man can escape both realities. If a man is fixed upon the outer reality, he must live his myth; if he is turned towards the inner reality, then must he dream his outer, his so-called real life. Thus the soul says to Prometheus:

"A God of crime am I who leadeth thee astray upon untrodden paths. But thou would'st not hearken unto me, and now hath it come to pass according to my words; for my sake have they robbed thee of the glory of thy name and stolen from thee thy life's content." [3]


Prometheus refuses the kingdom the angel offers him; which means that he refuses adaptation to things as they are because his soul is demanded from him in exchange.

While the subject, i.e. Prometheus, is essentially human, the soul is of quite a different character. It is daemonic, because the inner object, namely the supra-personal collective unconscious to which it is attached as the function of relation, gleams through it. The unconscious, regarded as the historical background of the psyche, contains in a concentrated form the entire succession of engrams (imprints), which from time immemorial have determined the psychic structure as it now exists. These engrams may be regarded as function-traces which typify, on the average, the most frequently and intensely used functions of the human soul. These function-engrams present themselves in the form of mythological themes and images, appearing often in identical form and always with striking similarity among all races; they can also be easily verified in the unconscious material of modern man. It is intelligible, therefore, that avowedly animal traits or elements should also appear among the unconscious contents by the side of those sublime figures which from. oldest times have accompanied man on the road of life. The unconscious disposes of a whole world of images, whose boundless range yields in. nothing to the claims of the world of "real" things. To the one who personally surrenders himself wholly to the outer world the unconscious comes in the form of some intimate and beloved being, in whom, should his destiny lie in extreme devotion to the personal object, he will experience the duality of the world and his own nature; in like manner there comes to the other a daemonic personification of the unconscious embodying the totality, the extreme oppositeness and duality of the world of images. These are border-line phenomena which overstep the normal; hence the normal mind knows nothing of these cruel enigmas. They do not exist for him. It is always only the few who reach the rim of the world, where its mirage begins. For the man who stands always upon the normal path the soul has a human, and not a dubious, daemonic character; neither do his fellow-men appear to him in the least problematical. Only complete abandonment either to one world or to the other evokes their duality. Spitteler's intuition caught that picture of the soul which in a less profound nature would at most have found utterance in dreams.

Accordingly we read (ibid., p. 25):

"And, while he thus demeaned himself in the fury of his passion, there played a strange quiver about her mouth and face, and ever and again her eyelids flickered, shutting and opening, hastily, and behind the soft, delicate fringe of her lashes there lurked something which threatened and crept about like the fire which glideth stealthily through the house, or like the tiger stealing among the bushes while from the dark foliage, in broken flashes, gleameth ever and anon his yellow mottled flanks."


The line of life which Prometheus chooses is thus unmistakably introverted. He sacrifices all connection with the present, in order to create in anticipation the distant future.

It is very different with Epimetheus; he realizes that his aim is the world, and what the world values.

Hence he says to the angel: "Yet now I long for truth, and my soul lieth in thy hand; an it please thee, therefore, give me a conscience that will teach me '-tion ' and '-ness' and every just precept."

Epimethells cannot resist the temptation to fulfil his own destiny and submit himself to the "soulless" point of view. This junction with the world is immediately rewarded.

"And it came to pass, as Epimetheus rose up, that he felt his stature was increased and his courage more steadfast; he was at one with all his being, and his whole feeling was sound and mightily at ease. And thus he strode with bold steps through the valley, on a straight course, as one who feareth no man; and with a bold glance like a man inspired by the contemplation of his own riches."


He has, as Prometheus says, bartered his free soul for "-tion" and "-ness". The soul is lost to him in favour of his brother. He has followed his extraversion, and because this orientates him towards the external object, he is caught up in the desires and expectations of the world seemingly at first to his great advantage. He has become an extravert, after having lived many solitary years under the influence of his brother as an extravert falsified through imitation of the introvert.

Such involuntary "simulation dans le caractere" (Paulhan) occurs not infrequently. His conversion to true extraversion is, therefore, a step towards 'truth', and deservedly brings him a partial reward.

Whilst Prometheus, through the tyrannical claims of his soul, is hampered in every relation to the external object and has to make the cruellest sacrifices in the service of the soul, Epimetheus receives an immediately effective shield against the danger that most threatens the extravert, viz. a complete surrender to the external object. This protection consists in the conscience which is based upon traditional "right ideas"; and which, therefore; possesses that not-to-be-despised treasure of inherited worldly wisdom which is employed by public opinion in much the same fashion as the judge uses the penal code. This provides Epimetheus with a circumscribed code which restrains him from abandoning himself to objects in the same degree as Prometheus does to his soul. This is forbidden him by the conscience, which stands in the place of his soul. When Prometheus turns his back upon the world of men and its codified conscience, he falls into the hands of his cruel soul-mistress with her arbitrary power, and only through endless suffering does he make expiation for his neglect of the world.

The prudent restraint of a blameless conscience sets such 'a bandage over Epimetheus' eyes that he must blindly live his myth, but ever with the sense of doing right, since he dwells in constant harmony with general expectation, with success ever at his side since he fulfils the wishes of all. Thus men desire to see the King, and thus Epimetheus plays his part to the inglorious end, never forsaken by the strong backing of public approval. His self-assurance and self-righteousness, his unshakable confidence in his general worth, his unquestionable right-doing and good conscience, present an easily recognizable portrait of that extraverted character which Jordan depicted. Compare p. 102 and the following pages, describing the visit of Epimetheus to the sick Prometheus, where King Epimetheus is anxious to heal his suffering brother:

"And when all was duly accomplished the king stepped forth, and, supported by a friend on the left hand and on the right, he lifted up his voice in greeting and spake these well-intentioned words: 'My heart grieveth me on thy account, Prometheus, my beloved brother. But now take heart, for behold I have here a salve of virtue for every ill. Wondrous is its healing power both in heat and in frost, and thou mayest use it alike to comfort or chastize thyself.'

"And speaking thus he took his staff, and bound the salve fast and proffered it him all warily with weighty mien. But hardly had Prometheus perceived the odour and aspect of the ointment than he turned his head away with disgust. Whereupon the King changed the tones of his voice, and began to cry aloud and to prophesy with great heat: 'Of a truth it seemeth thou hast need of greater punishment, since thy present fate doth not suffice to teach thee.' And, speaking thus, he drew a mirror from his cloak, and declared unto him all things from the beginning, and became very eloquent and knew all his faults."


The words of Jordan are speakingly illustrated in this scene: "Society must be pleased if possible; if it will not be pleased, it must be astonished; if it will neither be pleased nor astonished, it must be pestered and shocked."

In the above scene we find almost the same climax. In the Orient a rich man makes known his rank by never showing himself in public unless supported by two slaves. Epimetheus affects this pose in order to make an impression. Well-doing must at the same time be combined with admonition and moral discourse. And, as that does not produce an effect, the other must at least be horrified by the picture of his own baseness. Thus everything is aimed towards making an impression.

There is an American saying which runs: "In America, two sorts of men make good -- the man who can do something, and the man who can bluff well." Which means that pretence is sometimes just as successful as actual performance. An extravert of this kind preferably makes his effect by appearance. The introvert tries to force the situation and to this end may even abuse his work.

If we fuse Prometheus and Epimetheus into one personality, we should have a man outwardly Epimethean and inwardly Promethean -- an individual constantly torn by both tendencies, each seeking to enlist the ego finally on its side.

2. A Comparison of Spitteler's with Goethe's Prometheus

Considerable interest is to be found in comparing this Prometheus conception with that presented by Goethe. I believe I am justified in the conjecture that Goethe belongs more to the extraverted than the introverted type, while Spitteler would seem to belong to the latter. Only an exhaustive examination and analysis of Goethe's biography could succeed in establishing the justice of this assumption. My conjecture is based upon divers impressions, which I will refrain from discussing owing to my inability to furnish sufficient explanations.

The introverted attitude need not necessarily coincide with the Prometheus figure, by which I mean that the traditional Prometheus figure can also be interpreted quite differently. This other version is found, for instance, in Plato's Protagoras, where the distributer of vital powers to the creature fashioned by the gods in equal measure out of earth and fire is Epimetheus and not Prometheus. Prometheus (conforming with classical taste both in this situation and throughout the myth) is principally the cunning and inventive genius.

With Goethe two conceptions are presented. In the Prometheus Fragment of 1773 Prometheus is the defiant, self-sufficing, godlike, god-disdaining creator and artist. His soul is Minerva, daughter of Zeus. Prometheus' relation with Minerva has a clear similarity with the relation of Spitteler's Prometheus with his soul. Thus Prometheus says to Minerva:

"From the beginning thy words have been celestial light to me,
Ever as tho' my soul spake unto herself,
She revealed herself;
And in her of then: own accord sister harmonies rang out,
And when I deemed it was myself,
A deity gave utterance;
And did I dream a god was speaking,
Lo! 'twas mine own voice.
And thus with thee and me,
So one, so closely-knit are we,
My love is thine eternally!"


and further:

"As the twilight glory of the departed sun
Hovereth over the gloomy Caucasus,
And encompasseth my soul with holy peace;
Parting, yet ever present with me,
So have my powers waxed strong,
With every breath drawn from thy celestial air."


Thus Goethe's Prometheus is also dependent upon his soul. There is a strong resemblance to the relationship of Spitteler's Prometheus with his soul. Thus the latter says to his soul:

"And though I be stripped of all, yet am I rich beyond all measure so long as thou alone remainest with me. while 'my friend' falleth from thy sweet lips, and the light of thy proud and gracious countenance. goeth not from me."


In spite of the similarity of the two figures and their relations with the soul, there remains, however, an essential difference. Goethe's Prometheus is a creator and artist; Minerva inspires his clay-images with life. Spitteler's Prometheus is suffering rather than creative; only his soul creates and her creating is secret and mysterious. She says to him in farewell:

"And now I depart from thee, for lo! a great work awaiteth me; 'tis a mighty deed, and I must hasten to accomplish it."


It would seem that, with Spitteler, the Promethean creativeness is allotted to the soul, while Prometheus himself merely suffers the pangs of a creative soul. But Goethe's Prometheus is self-active; he is essentially and exclusively creative, defying the gods out of the strength of his own creative power:

"Who helped me
Against the insolence of the Titans?
Who rescued me from death?
From slavery?
Didst thou not thyself accomplish all
O sacred, glowing heart?" (p. 28)


Epimetheus in this fragment is only sparingly sketched; he is throughout inferior to Prometheus; an advocate of collective feeling, who can only understand the service of the soul as obstinacy. Thus he' says to Prometheus:

"Thou standest alone! Thy obstinacy knoweth not that bliss, when the gods and thou and all thou hast, thy world, thy. heaven, are enfolded in one embracing unity."


Such indications as are to be found in the Prometheus fragment are too sparse to enable us to discern the character of Epimetheus. But the delineation of Goethe's Prometheus reveals a typical distinction from the Prometheus of Spitteler.

Goethe's Prometheus creates and works outwardly in the world; he peoples space with the figures he has. fashioned and his soul has animated; he fills the earth with the offspring of his creation; he is both master and educator of man. But with the Prometheus of Spitteler everything goes to the world within and vanishes in the darkness of the soul's depths; just as he himself disappears. from the world of men, even wandering from the narrow confines of his home, that he may become the more invisible. In accordance with the principle of compensation (a basic principle in our analytical psychology) the soul, i.e. the personification of the unconscious, must be especially active in such a case, preparing a work which, however, is as yet invisible.

Besides the passages already quoted, Spitteler gives us a complete description of this anticipated compensation-process. This we find in the Pandora interlude.

Pandora, that enigmatical figure in the Prometheus myth, is in Spitteler's creation the divine maid who lacks every relation with Prometheus but the very deepest. This conception is founded upon the version of the myth in which the woman who figures in the Prometheus relation is either Pandora or Athene.

The Prometheus of mythology has his soul-relation with Pandora or Athene, as in Goethe. But, in Spitteler, a noteworthy departure is introduced which, however, is already indicated in the historical myth, where the Prometheus-Pandora relation is contaminated with the Hephaestus-Athene analogy. With Goethe, the version Prometheus-Athene is preferred. But, in Spitteler, Prometheus is removed from the divine sphere and is given a soul of his own. But his divinity and his original relation with Pandora in the myth are preserved as a cosmic counterplot, enacted independently in the celestial sphere. The happenings of the other world are the things that take place on the further side of our consciousness, that is in the unconscious. The Pandora interlude, therefore, is a presentation of what goes on in the unconscious during the suffering of Prometheus. When Prometheus vanishes from the world, destroying every link that binds him to mankind, he sinks into the depths of himself, into his walled-in isolation -- his only object himself. And 'godlike' withal, for God, according to his definition, is the Being who is universally self-contained, who by virtue of his omnipresence has Himself as universal object. Naturally Prometheus does not feel in the least godlike -- he is supremely wretched. After Epimetheus has come to spit upon his misery, the interlude in the other world begins, in that moment, naturally, when all Prometheus' relations to the world are suppressed to the extreme limit.

Experience shows that it is such moments that yield the unconscious contents the likeliest possibility of gaining independence and vitality, even to the point of overpowering consciousness [4].

Prometheus' condition in the unconscious is reflected in the following scene:

"And on the clouded morning of the same day, in a still and solitary meadow above all the worlds, wandered God, the creator of all life, pursuing the accursed round in obedience to the strange nature of his mysterious and sore sickness. For by reason of this sickness he could never make an end of his revolving task, might never find rest for his feet upon the weary path; but ever. with measured stride day after day, and year after year, with heavy gait, and bowed head, with furrowed brow and distorted countenance, must he make the round of the still meadow; whilst ever towards the mid- point of the circle sped his darkling eye. And as to-day he performed the daily inevitable round, while the more sorrowfully he sunk his head, and the more he dragged his heavy steps for weariness, as though the grievous vigils of the night had spent the very fountain of his life, there came to him through. the night and the dim dawn, Pandora, his youngest daughter, who approached with uncertain steps, honouring the hallowed ground, and stood there humbly at his side, greeting him with modest glance, and questioned him with lips that held a reverential silence."


It is at once evident that God has the malady of Prometheus. Just as Prometheus allows all his passion, 'his whole libido to flow inwards to the soul, to his innermost depths, in complete dedication to his soul's service, his God also pursues his course round and round the pivot of the world, thus spending himself like Prometheus, whose whole being comes near to extinction. Which means that his libido has entirely passed over into the unconscious, where an equivalent must be prepared; for libido is energy which cannot disappear without a trace -- it must always create an equivalent. The equivalent is Pandora and the gift she brings the father, for she brings him a precious jewel which she intends for the easing of men's woes.

If we translate this process into Prometheus' human sphere, it would mean that while Prometheus is suffering his 'godlike' state, his soul is preparing a work destined to alleviate the sufferings of mankind. His soul wants to get to men. Yet the work which his soul actually plans and carries out is not identical with the work of Pandora. Pandora's jewel is an unconsciously mirrored image which symbolically represents the actual work of Prometheus' soul. The text shows unmistakably what the jewel is. It is a God-deliverer, a renewal of the sun [5]. This longing expresses itself in the sickness of the God: he longs for rebirth, and to this end his whole life-force flows back into the centre of the self, i.e. into the depths of the unconscious, out of which life is born anew. This may explain why the appearance of the jewel in the world is depicted in such curious assonance with the scene of the birth of Buddha in the Lalitavistara [6].

Pandora lays the jewel beneath a walnut tree (just as Maya bears her child under a fig-tree): --

"In the midnight shades beneath the tree it glows and sparkles and flames, and, like the morning star in the dark heavens, its diamond lightning flashes afar. Then sped on eager wing the bees and butterflies, which danced above the flower garden to play and sport around the wonder child ... and out of the heavens came larks in steep descent, eager to pay homage to the new and lovelier sun-countenance, and as they drew near and beheld the bright radiance, their hearts swooned ... And, enthroned over all, fatherly and benign, the chosen tree with his giant crown and heavy mantle of green, held his kingly hands protectingly over the faces of his children. And all his ample branches bowed themselves lovingly down and leaned towards the earth as though they wished to screen and ward off curious eyes, jealous that they alone might enjoy the gift's unmerited favour; while all the myriads of gently-moving leaves fluttered and trembled with rapture, murmuring in joyous exultation a soft, clear-toned chorus in whispered accord: 'Who could know what lies hidden beneath this lowly roof, or guess the treasure reposing in our midst.'"


So with Maya, who, when her hour was come, bore her child beneath the Plaksa fig-tree, which drooped its sheltering crown to earth.

From the incarnate Bodhisattva unimaginable radiance extended over the world; Gods and Nature alike took. part in the birth. As Bodhisattva treads the earth there grows at his feet an immense lotus, and standing in the lotus he views the world. Hence the Thibetan prayer: "Om mani padme hum" ("Oh! behold the jewel in the lotus").

The moment of re-birth finds Bodhisattva beneath the chosen bodhi-tree, where he becomes Buddha (the Enlightened One). This re-birth, or renewing, is accompanied by the same dazzling light, the same prodigies and apparitions of gods, as at the birth.

But in the kingdom of Epimetheus, where in place of the soul conscience reigns, the inestimable treasure gets lost. The angel raging over the stupidity of Epimetheus, reviles him: -- "And hadst thou no soul, that like the wild and unreasoning beasts thou should'st hide thyself from the wondrous Godhead?" [7]

We see that Pandora's jewel is a renewal of the god, a new god; but this takes place in the heavenly sphere, i.e. in the unconscious. Such intimations of the process as penetrate consciousness are not understood by the Epimethean element, which dominates the relation to the world. This is elaborately presented by Spitteler in the following passages [l.c., pp. 132 ff.], in which we see how the world, i.e. the conscious, with its rational attitude and objective orientation, is unfitted to make a true estimate of the value and significance of the jewel. For which reason the jewel is irretrievably lost.

The renewed god signifies a renewed attitude, i.e. a renewed possibility of intense life, a recovery of life; because, psychologically, God always signifies the greatest value, hence the greatest sum of libido, the greatest intensity of life, the optimum of psychological activity. Accordingly with Spitteler the Promethean, just as much as the Epimethean, adaptation proves to be inadequate.

The two tendencies are dissociated: the Epimethean attitude harmonizes with the actual conditions of the world; the Promethean, on the contrary, does not, which means that the latter must work out a renewal of life. This tendency creates also a new attitude to the world (the world to which the jewel is given), but of course without the consent of Epimetheus. Nevertheless, in the Pandora gift, as represented by Spitteler, it is not difficult to recognize a symbolic attempt to solve that same problem we discussed in the chapter on the Schiller Letters, viz. the problem of the reconciliation of the differentiated and undifferentiated functions.

Before we proceed further with this problem, however, we must turn back to Goethe's Prometheus. As we have already seen, there are unmistakable differences between the creative Prometheus of Goethe and the suffering figure of Spitteler. A further and more important distinction lies in the relation with Pandora. With Spitteler, Pandora is a being of the other world, a duplicate of the soul of Prometheus belonging to the divine sphere; but, with Goethe, she is altogether the creature and daughter of the Titan, and therefore in absolute dependence upon him. The relation of Goethe's Prometheus with Minerva puts him in the place of Vulcan, and the fact that Pandora is wholly his creature, and does not figure as a being of divine origin, makes him a creative deity, thus removing him altogether from the human sphere. Hence Prometheus says:

"And when I deemed it was myself,
A deity gave utterance.
And did I dream a god was speaking,
Lo! 'twas mine own voice!"


With Spitteler, on the other hand, Prometheus is stripped of all divinity, even his soul is only an unofficial daemon; his divinity becomes a law unto itself, quite severed from the human. Goethe's conception is classical to this extent: it emphasizes the divinity of the Titan. Accordingly Epimetheus, by contrast, must also be very inferior, whilst with Spitteler, he appears as a much more positive character. In Goethe's Pandora, we are fortunate in possessing a work which conveys a far more complete portrait of Epimetheus than the fragment so far discussed. There, Epimetheus introduces himself as follows:--

"For me day and night are as one,
And ever I bear with me the old evil of my name,
For my progenitors named me Epimetheus.
Thinking on the past, hasty-actioned;
Backward-turning, with troubled phantasies,
To the melancholy opportunities of past days;
Such bitter toil was laid upon my youth,
That turning impatiently towards life,
I seized the present heedlessly,
But only won tormenting burdens of fresh care."


With these words Epimetheus reveals his nature; he broods over the past, and can never free, himself from Pandora, whom (according to the classical myth) he has taken to wife, i.e. he cannot rid himself of her imaged memory, although she herself has long since deserted him, leaving him her daughter Epimeleia (Anxiety), but taking with her Elpore (Hope).

Epimetheus is here so clearly figured that we are at once able to recognize which psychological function he represents. While Prometheus is still the same creator and modeller, who daily rises early from his couch with the same unconquerable urgency to create and to influence the world, Epimetheus is entirely given up to phantasies, dreams, and memories, full of anxious misgivings and troubled deliberations. Pandora appears as the creature of Hephaestus, rejected by Prometheus but chosen by Epimetheus for a wife. He says of her: "Even the pains which such a treasure brings are pleasure."

Pandora is to him a precious treasure, in fact the supreme value:

"And forever is she mine, the glorious one!
Supreme delight hath she revealed to me!
I possessed Beauty, and Beauty hath enfolded me.
In the wake of spring splendidly she came.
I knew her, I caught her, and there was it done.
Clouding thoughts vanished like a mist,
She lifted me from earth to Heaven.
Seek'st thou for words worthily to praise her?
Would'st thou extol her, she is already beyond thee.
Set thy best beside her, 'tis at once worthless.
Her words bewilder thee, but lo! she is right.
Thou mayest oppose her, the fight she doth win.
Thou faltereth in serving her, but yet art her thrall.
Goodness and love would she ever repay.
High esteem helpeth not, she bringeth it low.
She setteth her goal, and taketh her flight.
If she barreth thy way, at once she doth hold thee.
Would'st thou make her an offer, she'll raise thee thy bid.
Till thou givest riches and wisdom and all in the bargain.
She descendeth to earth in myriad forms,
She hovereth o'er waters, she strideth the plains,
In divine proportions she shineth, proclaimeth,
With form ennobling the inner meaning.
When giving, she lendeth him power supreme.
Radiant with youth she came, in womanly form."


For Epimetheus, as these verses clearly show, Pandora has the significance of a soul-image -- she represents his soul; hence her divine power, her unshakable superiority. Wherever such attributes are conferred upon certain personalities we may with certainty conclude that such personalities are symbol-bearers; in other words imagines of projected unconscious contents. For it is the contents of the unconscious which operate with the supreme power above described, and especially in the way incomparably seized by Goethe in the line:

"Would'st thou make her an offer, she'll raise thee thy bid."


In this line the characteristic affective reinforcement of certain conscious contents through association with analogous unconscious contents is beautifully pictured.

This reinforcement has in it something daemonic and compelling, and thus has a 'divine' or 'devilish' effect.

We have already described Goethe's Prometheus figure as extraverted. It is still the same in his Pandora, although here, the relation of Prometheus with the soul, the unconscious feminine principle is lacking. Instead, however, Epimetheus appears as the introvert, directed towards his inner world. He broods, he recalls memories out of the grave of the past, he "reflects". He differs absolutely from Spitteler's Epimetheus. We might say, therefore, that here (in Goethe's Pandora) the position indicated earlier -- where Prometheus becomes the extraverted man of affairs, and Epimetheus the brooding introvert -- has actually transpired. This Prometheus has 'Somewhat the same quality in extraverted form as Spitteler's in the form of the introvert. In the 'Pandora', on the contrary, Prometheus is definitely creative for collective ends; he has set up a regular manufactory in his mountain, where necessary articles for the whole world are produced. Hence, he is cut off from his inner world, which relation now devolves upon Epimetheus, namely that secondary and purely reactive thinking and feeling of the extravert which possess all the characteristics of the relatively undifferentiated function. Thus it comes about that Epimetheus is unconditionally pledged to Pandora, because in every respect she is superior to him. Psychologically, this means that the conscious Epimethean function of the extravert, namely that phantastic, brooding, ruminating fancy, becomes intensified by the intervention of the soul. If the soul is coupled with the relatively undifferentiated function, we must draw the conclusion that the superior, i.e. the differentiated, function is too collective. It is in the service of the collective conscience [8], and not in the service of freedom. Wherever such a case occurs (and it happens very frequently), the less differentiated function, i.e. the "other side", is reinforced by a pathological egocentricity. The extravert fills up his spare time with melancholic or hypochondriacal musing; he may even have hysterical phantasies and other symptoms [9]; while the introvert wraps himself about with compulsive feelings of inferiority, which take him unawares and put him into a no less dismal plight [10].

The resemblance between the Prometheus of the "Pandora" and the Prometheus of Spitteler goes no further. He is merely the collective 'itch for action', which in its onesidedness signifies a repression of the erotic. His son Phileros ("he whom Eros loves") is simply erotic passion; for, as the son of his father, he must, as is often the case with children, retrieve under unconscious compulsion the unlived lives of his parents.

The daughter of Epimetheus, the unreflecting, the type that acts heedlessly after first deliberating, is significantly Epimeleia (Anxiety). Phileros loves Epimeleia, Pandora's daughter, and thus the guilt of Prometheus, who has rejected Pandora, is expiated. Prometheus and Epimetheus become simultaneously reconciled, whereby the Promethean industry turns out to be unrecognized erotism, while Epimetheus' persistent reference to the past is shown to be rational misgivings, which might well check the equally persistent productiveness of Prometheus and restrain it within reasonable bounds.

This effort of Goethe to find a solution, which appears to be evolved from an extraverted psychology, brings us back to Spitteler's attempt, which we left for the time being in order to discuss Goethe's Prometheus figure.

Spitteler's Prometheus, like his God, turns away from the world, the periphery, and gazes inwards to the middle point, that "narrow passage" of re-birth. This concentration, or introversion, brings the libido gradually into the unconscious, whereby the activity of the unconscious contents is increased -- the soul begins to "work," and creates a product which tends to emerge from the unconscious into consciousness. The conscious, however, has two attitudes -- the Promethean, which withdraws the libido from the world, introverting without giving out, and the Epimethean, which is constantly responding in a soulless fashion, held by the claims of external objects. When Pandora makes her gift to the world it means, psychologically, that an unconscious product of great value is on the point of reaching extraverted consciousness, i.e. it is seeking a relation to the real world. Although the Promethean side, i.e. the artist intuitively apprehends the great value of the work, his personal relations to the world are so subordinated to the tyranny of tradition that the work is merely appreciated as a work of art and not at its real significance, viz. as a symbol that promises a renewal of life. In order to convert it from a purely aesthetic interest into a living reality, it must also reach life, and be accepted and lived in the sphere of reality. But if the attitude is mainly introverted and given to abstraction, the extraverted function is inferior, and is therefore under the spell of collective restrictiveness. This restrictiveness prevents the soul-created symbol from living. Thus the jewel gets lost; but one cannot really live if "God", i.e. the highest symbolic expression of living value, cannot also become a living fact. Hence the loss of the jewel also signifies the beginning of Epimetheus' downfall.

And now the enantiodromia begins. Instead of taking for granted, as every rationalist and optimist is inclined to do, that a good state will be followed by a better, since everything tends towards "upward development", the man of blameless conscience and universally acknowledged moral principles makes a compact with Behemoth and his evil host, and even the divine children entrusted to his care are bartered to the devil.

Psychologically, this means that the collective, undifferentiated attitude to the world stifles man's highest values; it thus becomes a destructive power, whose influence multiplies until a point is reached when the Promethean side, namely the ideal and abstract attitude, places itself at the service of the soul, and, like a true Prometheus, kindles for the world a new fire. Spitteler's Prometheus has to come out of his solitude and tell men, even at the risk of his life, that they are in error, and where they err. He must acknowledge the relentlessness of truth, just as Goethe's Prometheus, in Phileros, has to experience the relentlessness of love.

That the destructive element in the Epimethean attitude is actually this traditional and collective restrictiveness is clearly shown in Epimetheus' raging fury against the "lamb", an obvious caricature of traditional Christianity. In this affect something gleams through which is already familiar to us in the approximately contemporary Asses' Feast of Zarathustra. It is the expression of a contemporary tendency.

Mankind is constantly inclined to forget that what was once good does not remain good eternally. He goes along the old ways that once were good, long after they have become injurious to him; only through the greatest sacrifices and with untold suffering can he rid himself of this delusion, and discern that what was good once is now perhaps grown old and is good no longer. This is so in the little things as in the big. The ways and customs of his childhood, once so sublimely good, he can barely lay aside even when their harmfulness has long since been proved. The same, only on a gigantic scale, is the case with historical changes of attitude. A general attitude corresponds with a religion, and changes of religion belong to the most painful moments in the world's history. In this respect our age has a blindness without parallel. We think we have only to declare an acknowledged form of faith to be incorrect or invalid, to become psychologically free of all the traditional effects of the Christian or Judaic religion. We believe in enlightenment, as if an intellectual change of opinion had somehow a deeper influence on emotional processes, or indeed upon the unconscious! We entirely forget that the religion of the last two thousand years is a psychological attitude, a definite form and manner of adaptation to inner and outer experience, which moulds a definite form of civilization; it has, thereby, created an atmosphere which remains wholly uninfluenced by any intellectual disavowal. The intellectual change is, of course, symptomatically important as a hint of coming possibilities, but the deeper levels of the psyche continue for a long time to operate in the former attitude, in accordance with psychic inertia. In this way the unconscious has preserved paganism alive. The ease with which the classic spirit springs again into life can be observed in the Renaissance. The. readiness with which the vastly older primitive spirit reappears can be seen in our own time, even better perhaps than in any other historically known epoch.

The more deeply rooted the attitude, the more effective must be the means that shall set it free. "Ecrasez l'infame", the cry of the age of enlightenment, heralded the religious upheaval within the French revolution, which, viewed psychologically, meant nothing but an essential readjustment of attitude, which, however, was lacking in universality. The problem of a general change of attitude has never slept since that time; it leaped to the surface again in many prominent minds of the nineteenth century. We have seen how Schiller sought to master the problem. In Goethe's treatment of the Prometheus and Epimetheus problem we again recognize the attempt to make some sort of reconciliation between the more highly differentiated function, corresponding with the Christian ideal of favouring the good, and the relatively undifferentiated function whose repression and non-recognition corresponds with the Christian ideal of rejecting the evil [11]. In the symbols of Prometheus and Epimetheus, the difficulty which Schiller endeavoured to master philosophically and aesthetically, is shrouded in the garment of the classical myth. Therewith something happens which, as I pointed out earlier, is altogether typical and regular; namely, when a man meets a difficult task which he cannot master with the means at his command, a retrograde movement of the libido automatically begins, i.e. a regression occurs. The libido draws away from the problem of the moment, becomes introverted, and activates a more or less primitive analogy of the conscious situation in the unconscious together with an earlier mode of adaptation. This law determines Goethe's choice of a symbol: Prometheus was the saviour who brought life and fire to mankind languishing in darkness. Goethe's deep scholarship could easily have found another saviour; the actual form of the determinant, therefore, is not sufficiently explained. The explanation must lie rather in the classical spirit, which was felt to contain an absolutely compensatory value for that particular time (the turning point of the eighteenth century); it was expressed in every possible way, in aesthetics, philosophy, morals, even politics (philhellenism). It was the Paganism of antiquity, glorified as "freedom", "naivete", "beauty", and so on, which responded to the yearnings of that time. This yearning, as Schiller so clearly shows, arose from a feeling of incompleteness, of spiritual barbarism, of moral servitude, of ugliness. These feelings proceeded collectively and individually from a one-sided valuation, whose inevitable consequences enabled the psychological dissociation between the more highly and the less differentiated functions to become manifest. The Christian dismemberment of mankind into a valuable and worthless portion was unbearable to that age, which, compared with earlier times, was much more highly sensitized. Sinfulness had stumbled upon the idea of an everlasting, natural beauty, a conception which was already possible for that age; it reached backwards, therefore, to an older time when the idea of sinfulness had not yet disrupted the unity of mankind, when both the higher and lower in human nature could still live together in complete naivete without offending moral or aesthetic susceptibilities.

But the effort towards a regressive renaissance shared the fate of the Prometheus Fragment and the Pandora; it was still-born. The classical solution would no longer do, for the intervening centuries of Christianity, with their profound tides of spiritual experience, could not be denied. Hence the penchant for the antique had to content itself with a gradual attenuation into the medieval form. This process becomes manifest in Goethe's Faust, where the problem is seized by the horns. The divine wager between good and evil is accepted. Faust, the medieval Prometheus, enters the lists with Mephistopheles, the medieval Epimetheus, and makes a pact with him. And here the problem is already so well focused that we can see that Faust and Mephisto are one and the same individual. The Epimethean element which refers all things to the retrospective angle, and leads them back into the original chaos of "fluid shapes of possibilities," is sharpened into the form of the devil whose evil power opposes every living thing with "the cold devil's fist" and who would force the light back into the maternal darkness from which it was born. The devil has throughout a true Epimethean thinking, the "nothing but" intellectual attitude, which reduces everything living to original nothingness. The naive passion of Epimetheus for the Pandora of Prometheus becomes Mephistopheles' devil's plot for the soul of Faust. And the cunning foresight of Prometheus in declining the divine Pandora is expiated in the tragedy of the Gretchen episode and the yearning for Helen, with its belated fulfilment, and in the endless ascent to the heavenly Mothers ("The eternal feminine draws us upwards").

We have the Promethean defiance of the accepted gods in the figure of the medieval magician. The magician has preserved a trace of primitive paganism [12]; in himself there is an element still untouched by the Christian cleavage, i.e. he has access to the unconscious that is still pagan, where the opposites still lie together in their primeval naivete, beyond the reach of "sinfulness," but liable, when accepted into conscious life, to beget evil as well as good with the same primeval and therefore daemonic force. (" A part of that power which ever willeth evil while ever creating the good'') [13].

He is, therefore, a destroyer as well as a deliverer. Hence this figure is pre-eminently fitted to become the bearer of the reconciling symbol. Moreover, the medieval magician has laid aside the antique naivete which is no longer possible, and through stern experience has thoroughly absorbed the Christian atmosphere. His pagan element immediately urges him to a complete Christian denial and mortification of self; his craving for deliverance is so imperative that every possible means must be seized. But in the end the Christian attempt at solution also fails, and then it is seen that it is precisely the longing for deliverance, the obstinacy and self-confidence of the heathen element, which offers the real possibility for deliverance, because the anti-christian symbol affords a possibility for the acceptance of evil. Goethe's intuition, therefore, has apprehended the problem with enviable clarity. It is certainly characteristic that the other more superficial attempts at solution -- the Prometheus Fragment, the Pandora, and the Rosicrucian compromise [14] with its attempt at a syncretism of Dionysian joyousness with Christian self-sacrifice -- remained uncompleted.

Faust's redemption begins with his death. His life sustains the Promethean divine character which only falls from him in death, i.e. with his re-birth. Psychologically, this means that the Faust attitude must cease before the unity of the individual can be accomplished. The figure which first appeared as Gretchen, and then on a higher level as Helen, and finally became exalted into the Mater Gloriosa, is a symbol that I cannot now exhaust of its manifold meanings. I will merely point out that it deals with the same archaic image with which the Gnosis was so profoundly concerned, viz. the idea of the divine harlot, Eve, Helen, Mary, and Sophia-Achamoth.
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Re: PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES by C. G. Jung

Postby admin » Tue Oct 06, 2015 9:41 pm

Part 2 of 6

3. The Significance of the Reconciling Symbol

If from the standpoint now gained we glance once more at the unconscious elaboration of the problem by Spitteler, we appreciate at once that the compact with evil originates, not in the aim of Prometheus, but in the thoughtlessness of Epimetheus, who only possesses a collective conscience and no power of discrimination for the things of the inner world. As invariably happens with the collective standpoint that is orientated to the object, he allows himself to be determined exclusively by collective values, and consequently overlooks what is new and original.

Current collective values are certainly mensurable by the objective standard, but only a free and unfettered valuation -- a matter of living feeling -- can yield a true estimate of the thing that is newly created. But such an appreciation belongs to the man possessing a soul, and not merely relations to external objects.

The downfall of Epimetheus begins with the loss of the new-born, divine image. His incontestably moral thinking, feeling, and acting in no way hinder the evil, hollow, and destructive from creeping in. This invasion of evil signifies a conversion of something previously good into something definitely harmful. In this fashion Spitteler expresses the idea that the moral principle hitherto prevailing, although excellent to begin with, loses with the lapse of time its essential connection with life, since it no longer embraces the abundance and variety of life. The rationally correct is too meagre a concept upon which to found a hope for an adequate and permanent expression of life in its totality. But the irrational occurrence of the divine birth stands beyond the frontiers of the rational kingdom. Psychologically, the divine birth heralds the fact that a new symbol, a new expression of supreme vital intensity, is being created. Every Epimethean element in man and every Epimethean man is incapable of comprehending this event. Yet from this moment the supreme intensity of life is to be found only upon the new line. Every other direction falls gradually away, dissolving into oblivion.

The new symbol, the bestower of life, springs from Prometheus' love for his soul, a figure pregnant with daemonic characters. One may be sure, therefore, that, interwoven in the new symbol with its living beauty, there is also the element of evil, for, if not, it would lack the glow of life as well as beauty since life and beauty are naturally indifferent to morality. For this reason, Epimethean collectivity finds no value in it. For it is quite blinded by its one-sided moral standpoint, which is identical with the "lamb", i.e. the traditional Christian standpoint. The raging of Epimetheus against the "lamb" is therefore merely "Ecrasez l'infame" in a new form, a revolt against the established Christianity which was unable to comprehend the new symbol wherewith to guide life upon a new way.

Such a reaction, however, might remain entirely unproductive were there no poets who could fathom and read the collective unconscious. They are the first in their time to divine the darkly moving mysterious currents, and to express them according to the limits of their capacity in more or less speaking symbols.

They make known, like true prophets, the deep motions of the collective unconscious, "the will of God" in the language of the Old Testament, which, in the course of time, must inevitably come to the surface as a general phenomenon. The redemptive significance of the deed of Prometheus, the downfall of Epimetheus, his reconciliation with his soul-serving brother, and the vengeance Epimetheus wreaks upon the "lamb" -- recalling in its note of cruelty the scene (Dante, Inferno xxxii.) between Ugolino and the Archbishop Ruggieri -- prepares a solution of the conflict that involves a deadly revolt against traditional collective morality.

We may assume in a poet of modest limits that the summit of his work does not overtop the height of his personal joys, sorrows, and aspirations. But with Spitteler his work quite transcends personal destiny. For this reason his solution of the problem does not stand alone. From here to Zarathustra, the breaker of the tables, is only a step. Stirner also joined the company after Schopenhauer had first conceived the idea of denial. He spoke of the denial of the world. Psychologically, 'the world' means how I see the world, my attitude to the world; thus the world can be regarded as 'my will' and 'my presentation.' In itself the world is indifferent. It is my Yes and No that create the differences.

The idea of negation, therefore, is concerned with an attitude to the world, and particularly Schopenhauer's attitude to it, which on the one hand is purely intellectual and rational, while on the other it is a mystical identity with the world in his most individual feeling. This attitude is introverted; it suffers therefore from its typological antithesis. But Schopenhauer's work in many ways transcends his personality. It voices what was obscurely thought and felt by many thousands. Similarly with Nietzsche: preeminently his Zarathustra brings to light the contents of the collective unconscious of our time; in him, therefore, we also find the same distinguishing features: iconoclastic revolt against the conventional moral atmosphere, and the acceptance of the "ugliest man", which in Nietzsche leads to that shattering unconscious tragedy presented in Zarathustra. But what creative minds bring up out of the collective unconscious also actually exists, and sooner or later must make its appearance in collective psychology. Anarchy, regicide, the constant increase and splitting off of an anarchistic element upon the extreme socialist left, with an avowed programme that is absolutely hostile to culture -- these are phenomena of mass-psychology, which were long adumbrated by poets and creative thinkers.

We cannot, therefore, afford to be indifferent to the poets, since in their principal works and deepest inspirations they create from the very depths of the collective unconscious, voicing aloud what others only dream. But what the poets proclaim is only the symbol in which they sense aesthetic pleasure, without any consciousness of its true meaning.

That poets and thinkers have an educational influence upon their own and succeeding epochs I would be the last to dispute; but it seems to me that their influence essentially consists in the fact that they voice rather more clearly and resoundingly what all know, and, only in so far as they express this universal unconscious "knowledge", have they any considerable effect, whether educational or seductive. The greatest and most immediately suggestive effect is gained by the poet who knows how to express the most superficial levels of the unconscious in a successful form. Should the vision of the creative mind search more deeply, it becomes all the more strange to mankind in the mass, and provokes an even greater resistance in all those who occupy conspicuous positions in the eyes of the mass. The mass does not understand it although unconsciously living what it expresses; not because the poet proclaims it, but because its life issues from the collective unconscious into which he has peered. The more thoughtful of the nation certainly comprehend something of his message, but, because his utterance corresponds with events already developing among the mass and also because he anticipates their own aspirations, they hate the creator of such thoughts, not at all viciously, but merely from the instinct of self-protection. When apprehension of the collective unconscious reaches a depth where conscious expression can no longer grasp its content, it cannot be decided at once whether it is a morbid product we have to deal with, or whether something quite incomprehensible because of its extraordinary depth. An imperfectly understood yet deeply significant content has usually a somewhat morbid character. And morbid products are as a rule significant. But in both cases the approach is difficult. If it ever arrives at all, the fame of these creators is posthumous, and often delayed for several centuries. Ostwald's opinion that, at the most, a highly: gifted mind of to-day would obtain recognition within a decade or so was not, I hope, intended to reach beyond the realm of technical discoveries; for, if so, such an assertion would be extremely ludicrous.

There is another point of particular importance to which I feel I ought to refer. The solution of the problem in Faust, in the Parsifal of Wagner, in Schopenhauer, even in Nietzsche's Zarathustra, is religious. That Spitteler is also drawn towards a religious setting is therefore not to be wondered at. When a problem is accepted as religious, it gains a psychological significance of immense importance; a value is involved which relates to the whole of man, hence also the unconscious (the realm of the gods, the other world, etc.). With Spitteler the religious form possesses such an exuberant wealth that its specially religious quality loses in depth, although it certainly gains in mythological richness, in archaic as well as prospective symbolism. The luxuriating mythological web makes the work difficult of approach, as it also tends to shroud the problem from comprehension and a possible solution. The abstruse, grotesque, and uncouth quality that always clings to mythological exuberance hinders the flow of sympathy, alienates one's sensibility from the work, and gives the whole work a rather disagreeable suggestion of a certain type of originality which can only successfully escape the charge of psychic abnormality by a painstaking and scrupulous adaptation in other directions. However fatiguing and unpalatable such mythological exuberance may be, it has the advantage of allowing the symbol to expand and develop in a relatively unconscious unfolding, whereby the conscious wits of the poet are quite at a loss as to how to assist in the expression of the meaning. Thus he labours with single mind in the husbandry of the mythological yield and its plastic development. Spitteler's poem differs, in this respect, both from Faust and from Zarathustra, for in these works there is a greater conscious participation on the part of the poet in the meaning of the symbol; accordingly the mythological luxuriance in Faust and the intellectual exuberance in Zarathustra are pruned down to the advantage of the desired solution. Both Faust and Zarathustra are, for this reason, far more beautiful than Spitteler's Prometheus. But the latter, as a more or less faithful image of the actual processes of the collective unconscious, has deeper truth.

Faust and Zarathustra are of the very greatest assistance in the individual mastery of the problem in question; but Spitteler's Prometheus and Epimetheus, thanks to its abundant harvest of mythological material, provides not only a more general appreciation of the problem, but also its manner of appearance in collective life. The principal revelation of the unconscious religious contents in Spitteler's work, is the symbol of the God-renewal, which is subsequently more fully expanded in the Olympian Spring. This symbol appears in the most intimate connection with the type and function antithesis, and manifestly bears the significance of an effort to find the solution in a renewal of the general attitude, which in the language of the unconscious is expressed as a renewal of God. The God-renewal is a familiar archetypal image, that is quite universal; I need only mention the whole complex of the dying and rejuvenating God with all its mythological precursors, down to the re-charging of fetishes and churingas with magical force. The image affirms a transformation of attitude by which a new potential of energy, a new manifestation of life, a new fruitfulness have come into being. This latter analogy explains the connection -- for which there is abundant proof -- between the God-renewal and seasonal and vegetational phenomena.

There is a natural inclination to confine astral or lunar myths to these seasonal and vegetational analogies. In so doing, however, we entirely lose sight of the fact that a myth, like everything psychic, cannot be solely conditioned by outer events. The psychic product brings with it its own inner conditions, so that one might assert with equal right that the myth is purely psychological and merely uses the facts of meteorological or astronomical processes as material for expression. The arbitrariness and absurdity of so many of the primitive mythical assertions make the latter version appear more frequently applicable than any other.

The psychological point of departure for the god-renewal corresponds with an increasing divergence in the manner of application of psychic energy or libido. One half of the libido moves towards a Promethean, while the other towards an Epimethean, manner of application. Such an opposition is, of course, a very great hindrance not only in society but also in the individual. Hence the optimum of life recedes more and more from the opposing extremes, and seeks out a middle way, which must necessarily be irrational and unconscious, just because the opposites are rational and conscious.

Since the middle position, as a function of mediation between the opposites, possesses an irrational character, it appears projected in the form of a reconciling God, a Messiah or Mediator. To our Western forms of religion, which are still too primitive in matters of discernment or understanding, the new possibility of life appears in the figure of a God or Saviour, who, in his fatherly care and love and from his own inner resolve, puts an end to the division, in his own time and season, for reasons we are not fitted to understand. The childishness of this conception is self-evident. The East has for thousands of years been familiar with this process, and has founded thereon a psychological doctrine of salvation which brings the way of deliverance within the compass of human intention. Thus both the Indian and the Chinese religions, as also Buddhism which combines the spheres of both, possess the idea of a redeeming middle path of magical efficacy which is attainable through a conscious attitude. The Vedic conception is a conscious attempt to find release from the pairs of opposites in order to gain the path of redemption.

(a) The Brahmanic Conception of the Problem of the Opposites

The Sanskrit term for the pair of opposites in the psychological sense is Dvandva. Besides the meaning of pair (particularly man and woman), it denotes strife, quarrel, combat, doubt, etc. The pairs of opposites were ordained by the Creator of the world:

"Moreover, in order to distinguish actions, he separated merit from demerit, and he caused the creature to be affected by the pairs of opposites, such as pain and pleasure." [15]


As further pairs of opposites, the commentator Kulluka names desire and anger, love and hate, hunger and thirst, care and folly, honour and disgrace. "Beneath the pairs of opposites must this world suffer without ceasing." [16]

Not to allow oneself to be influenced by the pairs of opposites (nirdvandva -- free, untouched by the opposites), but to raise oneself above them, is then an essentially ethical task, since freedom from the opposites leads to redemption. In the following passages I give a series of examples:

1. From the book of Manu: [17] "He who becometh indifferent towards all objects by the disposition of his feelings attaineth eternal blessedness, as much in this world as after death. Whosoever in this wise hath gradually surrendered all bonds and freed himself from all the opposites, reposeth in Brahman." [18]

2. The famous exhortation of Krishna [19]: "The Vedas speak of the three Gunas [20]: nevertheless, O Arjuna be thou indifferent concerning the three Gunas, indifferent towards the opposites (nirdvandva), ever steadfast in courage".

3. In the Yogasutra of Patanjali we find [21]: "Then (ill deepest contemplation, samadhi) cometh that state which is untroubled by the opposites." [22]

4. Concerning the wise one: [23] "Both good and evil deeds doth he shake off in that place; they who are known unto him and are his friends take upon them his good deeds, but they who are not his friends, his evil works: and like one who faring fast in a chariot looketh down upon the chariot wheels, so upon day and night, upon good and evil deeds and upon all opposites, doth he look down; but he, freed from good and evil deeds, as knower of Brahman, entereth into Brahman."

5. (To the one who is called to meditation). "Whosoever overcometh desire and anger, the cleaving to the world and the lust of the senses; whoso maketh himself free from the opposites, and relinquisheth the feeling of self (above all self-seeking), that one is released from expectation." [24]

6. Pandu, who desires to be a hermit, says: "Clothed with dust, housed under the open sky, I will take my lodging at the root of a tree, surrendering all things loved as well as unloved, tasting neither grief nor pleasure, forfeiting blame and praise alike, neither cherishing hope, nor offering respect, free from the opposites (nirdvandva), with neither fortune nor belongings." [25]

7. "Whosoever remaineth the same in living as in dying, in fortune as in misfortune, whether gaining or losing, in love and in hatred, will be redeemed. Whoso nothing pursueth and regardeth nothing of small account, whoso is free from the opposites (nirdvandva), whose soul knoweth no passion -- he is wholly delivered. Whosoever doeth neither right nor wrong, renouncing the treasure of (good and evil) deeds heaped up in former lives, whose soul is tranquil when the bodily elements vanish away, whoso holdeth himself free from the opposites, that one is redeemed." [26]

8. "Full thousand years have I enjoyed the things of sense, while still the craving for them springeth up unceasingly. These, therefore, will I renounce and direct my mind upon Brahma; indifferent towards the opposites (nirdvandva) and, freed from the feeling of self-will, I will roam with the wild (creatures)." [27]

9. "Through forbearance to all creatures, through the ascetic life, through self-discipline and freedom from desire, through the vow and the blameless life, through equanimity and endurance of the opposites, will man share the bliss in Brahma, who is without qualities." [28]

10. "Whosoever is free from overweening vanity and delusion and hath overcome the frailty of dependence, whoso remaineth faithful to the highest Atman, whose desires are extinguished, who remaineth untouched by the opposites of pleasure and pain -- that one released from delusion shall attain that imperishable state." [29]


It follows from these quotations [30] that it is external opposites, such as heat and cold, which must first be denied psychic participation in order that extreme affective fluctuations like love and hatred, etc., may also be avoided.

Affective fluctuations are the natural and constant accompaniments of every psychic antithesis -- hence of every antagonism of ideas, whether moral or otherwise. Such affects, as we know by experience, are proportionately greater, the more the exciting factor affects the totality of the individual. The meaning of the Indian aim is therefore clear: its purpose is to redeem human nature altogether from the opposites, to attain a new life in Brahman, to win a state of deliverance, and at the same time God. Brahman, therefore, must signify the irrational union of the opposites -- hence their final overcoming.

Although Brahman, as the cause and creator of the world, has created the opposites, they must again be resolved in Him, if He is to signify the state of redemption. In the following passages I give a group of examples:

1. "Brahman is sat and asat, the existing and non-existing, satyam and asatyam, reality and unreality." [31]

2. "In truth, there are two forms of Brahman; the formed and the formless, the mortal and the immortal, the solid and the fluid, the definite and the indefinite." [32]

3. "God, the creator of all things, the great Self, who dwelleth eternally in the hearts of men, is discernible by the heart, by the soul, by the mind; who knoweth that, gaineth immortality. When the light hath dawned, then is there neither day nor night, neither being nor not-being." [33]

4. "Two things are eternal, in the infinite supreme Brahman contained, knowing and not-knowing. Perishable is not-knowing, eternal knowing, yet He who as lord controlleth them is the Other." [34]

5. "In the heart of this creature is concealed the Self, smaller than the small, greater than the great. By the grace of the Creator a man freed from desires and released from affliction beholdeth the majesty of the Self. Though sitting still, he wandereth far; he extendeth over all, yet lieth in one place. Who is there, beside myself, able to know this God, who rejoiceth yet rejoiceth not? " [35]

6. "One there is -- without stirring and yet swift as thought --
Speeding hence, not even o'ertaken by the gods --
Standing still, it surpasseth all the runners -- the wind-god
Wove among the strands of its being the primordial water.
Resting, it is yet ever restless:
It is distant and yet so near.
It is indwelling in all things,
Yet is it outside everything." [36]

7. "Like as a falcon or an eagle tiring after wide circuits in the windy spaces of heaven foldeth his wings and droppeth to quiet cover, so urgeth the spirit toward that state whose repose no desire troubleth nor delusion entereth.

"That is its true being, from yearnings, from evil, and from fear delivered. Like unto a man in the embrace of a beloved wife, unaware of things without or things within, is the spirit that is embraced by the all-discerning self." (Brahman). [37]

"This one second is an ocean, free from duality: this, O King! is the world of Brahman. Thus Yajnavalkya taught him. This is his highest goal, this his dearest success, this his greatest world and this his supreme rapture." [38]

8. "What is agile, flying and yet standing still.
What breatheth yet draweth no breath, what closeth the eyes,
What beareth the whole manifold Earth,
And bringeth all together in unity." [39]


These quotations show, that Brahman is the reconciliation and dissolution of the opposites -- hence standing beyond them as an irrational factor. [40] It is a divine essence as well as the Self (in a lesser degree, of course, than the analogous Atman-concept); it is also a definite psychological state, characterized by detachment from emotional fluctuations. Since suffering is an affect, the release from affects means deliverance. Release from the fluctuations of affects, which means from the tension of opposites, is synonymous with the way of redemption that gradually leads to the state of Brahman. In a certain sense, therefore, Brahman is not only a state, but also a process, a "duree creatrice". It is, therefore, not surprising that the symbolical expression of this Brahman concept in the Upanishads makes use of all those symbols which I have termed libido symbols [41]. The following are a few appropriate examples:

(b) Concerning the Brahmanic Conception of the Reconciling Symbol

1. "When it is said: Brahman first in the East was born, it meaneth, each new day like yonder sun Brahman is reborn in the East." [42]

2. "Yonder man in the sun is Parameshtin, Brahman, Atman." [43]

3. "Yonder man, whom they point out in the sun, that is Indra, Prajapati, Brahman." [44]

4. "Brahman is a light like unto the sun." [45]

5. "What is this Brahman but that which gloweth yonder as the sun's disc." [46]

6. "Brahman first in the East was born:
From the horizon the Gracious One appeareth in splendour;
The forms of this world, the deepest, the highest,
He lighteth; the cradle He is, of what is and is not.
Father of the shining ones, Creator of the treasure,
Many-formed he appeareth in the spaces of the air:
They glorify Him in hymns of praise; The Eternal Youth
Which Brahman is increaseth ever through Brahman's (decree)
Brahman brought forth the deities, Brahman created the world." [47]


I have emphasized certain specially characteristic passages with italics; from these it 'Y0uld appear that Brahman is not only the producing one but also that .which is produced, the ever-becoming. The epithet "Gracious One" (Vena), here bestowed upon the sun, is in other places given to the seer who is endowed with the divine light, for, like the Brahman-sun, the mind of the seer also traverses" earth and heaven contemplating Brahman". [48] This intimate relation, identity even, of the divine being with .the Self (Atman) of mankind, is generally recognised. I mention the following example from the Atharvaveda:

"The disciple of Brahman advanceth, reanimating both worlds.
In him all the gods are unanimous.
He containeth and upholdeth the earth and the heavens,
He even feedeth the master with his tapas. [49]
To the Brahman disciple there come, to visit him,
Fathers and Gods, singly and in multitudes:
And he nourisheth all the Gods by tapas."


The Brahman disciple is himself an incarnation of Brahman, from which the identity of the Brahman-essence with a definite psychological state is clearly established.

7. "Prompted by the Gods, the sun burneth there in splendour unsurpassed;
From him proceedeth Brahman-force, supreme Brahman.
Yea, even all the Gods; and what he maketh dieth not.
The Brahman disciple upholdeth Brahman resplendent,
Interwoven in him are the hosts of the Gods." [50]


Brahman is also Prana -- breath of life and the cosmic life-principle; Brahman is also Vayu -- Wind, which is referred to in the Brihadaranyaka-Upanishad (3, 7) as the cosmic and psychic life-principle. [51]

8. "He who is this (Brahman) in man, and the One who is that (Brahman) in the sun, are both one." [52]

9. (Prayer of one dying): "The countenance of truth (of Brahman) is covered by a golden disc. Open this, O Pushan (Savitir, sun), that we may behold the nature of truth. Unfold and assemble thy holy rays, O Pushan, thou only seer, Yama, Surya (sun), son of Prajapati. I behold the light, thy loveliest semblance. What he is, I am (i.e. the man in the sun). [53]

10. "And this light, which spreadeth above this heaven higher than all, higher even than those in the highest world, above and beyond which there are no more worlds, this is the same light that burneth in the inner world of man. Whereof we have this visible token; only to feel warmth and perceive bodies." [54]

11. "As a grain of rice, or barley, or millet, yea like even unto the kernel of a millet-seed is this spirit in the inner Self, golden, like a flame without smoke; and greater is it than the heavens, vaster than space, greater than this earth, surpassing all beings.

It is the soul of life, it is my own soul: departing hence, into this soul shall I enter." [55]

13. In the Atharvaveda, 10, 2, Brahman is conceived as the vitalistic principle, the life- force, which fashions all the organs and their respective instincts.

"Who planted the seed within him, that he might ever spin the thread of generation, who assembled within him the powers of mind, gave him voice and play of features?"


Even the power of man originates in Brahman. From these examples, whose number could be multiplied indefinitely, it clearly follows that, by virtue of all its attributes and symbols, the Brahman concept is in full harmony with that idea of a dynamic or creative element, which I have named 'libido'. The word Brahman means: 1, prayer; 2, incantation; 3, sacred speech; 4, sacred knowledge (Veda); 5, holy life; 6, the absolute; 7, the sacred caste (the Brahmans). Deussen stresses the prayer-significance as being especially characteristic [56]. Brahman is derived from barh, farcire, 'swelling' [57], i.e. 'prayer' conceived of as "the upward-urging will of man striving towards the holy. the divine".

A certain psychological state is indicated in this derivation, namely a specific concentration of libido which through overflowing innervations produces a general state of tension, and hence is associated with the feeling of swelling. Thus in colloquial references to such a state, images of overflowing, e.g. 'one cannot restrain oneself', 'bursting', etc. are frequently used. ("What filleth the heart, goeth out by the mouth").

Indian practice seeks to accomplish this state of damming or heaping-up of libido by systematically withdrawing the attention (libido) alike from objects, and from psychic states, in a word from the 'opposites'. This elimination of sense-perception and blotting-out of conscious contents leads inevitably to a lowering of consciousness in general (just as in hypnosis), whereby the unconscious contents, i.e. the primordial images, which possess a cosmic and superhuman character on account of their universality and immense antiquity, become activated.

Those age-old allegories of sun, fire, flame, wind, breath, etc., which from earliest time have symbolized the begetting, world-moving, creative power, have all come about in this way. Since I have made a special study of these libido-images in another work [58] I will not further expand this theme here. The idea of a creative world principle is a projected perception of the living essence in man himself.

In order to preclude all vitalistic misunderstandings, one is well advised to make an abstract conception of this essence as energy. But, on the other hand, that hypostasizing of the energy-concept in the fashion of modern energetics must, of course, be firmly rejected.

Since an energic current necessarily presupposes the existence of an opposition, i.e. of two states of differing potential, without which no current can take place, the concept of opposition is also associated with the energy-concept. Every energic phenomenon (and there are no phenomena that are not energic) manifests both beginning and end, upper and lower, hot and cold, earlier and later, cause and effect, etc., i.e. pairs of opposites. This inseparability of the energy-concept from the concept of opposition also involves the libido-concept. Hence libido-symbols of a mythological or philosophic-speculative character, are either represented by a direct antithesis or become immediately broken up into opposites. In a former work I have already referred to this inner splitting of the libido, thereby provoking a certain opposition, though not justifiably, so it seems to me, since the immediate association of a libido-symbol with the concept of opposition is sufficient justification. We also find this association in the Brahman concept or symbol. The character of Brahman as prayer, and at the same time as primordial creative force, the latter being resolved into the opposition of sexes, is very remarkably presented in a hymn of Rigveda: [59]

"And ever unfolding, this prayer of the singer
Became a cow, which was before the world existed;
Dwelling together in this womb of God,
Fledgelings of the same brood are the Gods.
What hath been the wood, and what was the tree,
Out of which Earth and Heaven were hewn,
The twain, changeless and eternally helpful,
When days vanished and the dawn's first flush came not.
Greater than He nothing existeth;
He is the bull, upholding earth and heaven
The cloud sieve he girdleth like a fleece;
When He, the Lord, driveth like Surya His cream horses.
As an arrow of the sun He irradiateth the wide earth,
As the wind seattereth the mist, He stormeth through creatures,
When he cometh as Mitra, as Varuna chasing around.
As Agni in the forest, he distributeth glowing light.
When driven to him, the cow brought forth,
Moved, freely-pasturing, the unmoved thing she created.
She bore the son, the one who was older than the parents --" [60]


That the idea of opposition is closely bound up with the world creator is presented in another form in Catapatha-Brahmanam, 2, 2, 4:

"In the beginning was Prajapati alone; he meditated: How can I propagate myself? So he travailed and practised tapas: [61] then he begat Agni (fire) out of his mouth; because he begat him out of his mouth, [62] therefore is Agni food-devourer. Prajapati reflected: As food-devourer have I created this Agni out of myself; but there existeth here nothing else beside myself that he may devour, for at that time the earth was quite barren; neither herbs nor trees were there: and this thought was heavy upon him. Then turned upon him Agni with gaping maw. Thus spake unto him his own greatness: Sacrifice! Then knew Prajapati: This, my own greatness hath spoken unto me; and he sacrificed. Thereupon he ascended, he burneth yonder (the sun) ; thereupon he rose up, he that purifietli here (the wind). Because Prajapati sacrificed in this wise, he propagated himself, and, because death in the form of Agni would have devoured him, he also saved himself from death."


The sacrifice is always the renunciation of the valuable part; the sacrificer thus avoids being eaten up; this does not mean a transformation into the opposite, but a unification and adjustment, from which there arises a new libido-direction or attitude to life; sun and wind are generated. It is stated in another place in the Catapatha-Brahmanam, that one half of Prajapati is mortal, the other immortal [63].

Similar to the way Prajapati divides himself into bull and cow is his division into the two principles Manas (mind) and Vac (speech). "This world was Prajapati alone, Vac was his Self, and Vac his second Self (his alter ego); thus he meditated: This Vac will I send forth, and she shall go hence and pervade all things. Then he sent forth Vac, and she went and filled this universe." [64] This passage is of especial interest, inasmuch as speech is here conceived as a creative, extraverted libido-movement, as a diastole in Goethe's sense. There is a further parallel in the following passage: "In truth Prajapati was this world, with him was Vac his second Self: with her did he beget life: she conceived: whereupon she went forth out of him, and made these creatures, and once again entered into Prajapati." [65] In the Catapatha-Br., 8, 1, 2, 9, the share attributed to Vac is a prodigious one: "Truly Vac is the wise Vicvakarman, for through Vac was this whole world made." However, in Catap. Br., 1, 4, 5, 8, the question of precedence between Manas and Vac is decided differently:

"Upon a time it came to pass that Mind and Speech strove for priority one with the other. Mind said: 'I am better than thou, for thou speakest nothing that I have not first discerned.' Then said Speech: 'I am better than thou, since I announce what thou hast discerned and make it known.' To Prajapati they went, for the question to be judged. Prajapati decreed for Mind saying: 'Truly is Mind better than thou; for thou dost copy what Mind doeth and runnest in his tracks: moreover, it is the inferior who is wont to imitate his betters.'" [66]


These passages show that the World-creator can also divide himself into Manas and Vac, who are themselves mutually opposed. As Deussen points out, both principles are first contained within Prajapati, the world-creator. This appears in the following text: "Prajapati yearned: 'I wish to be many, I will multiply myself.' Then silently he meditated in his manas, what was in his manas fashioned Crihat [67]; then he pondered 'This lieth in me as the fruit of my body, through vac will I bring it to birth.' Thereupon made he vac" etc. [68]

This passage shows the two principles in their character of psychological functions; namely, manas as introversion of the libido with the creation of an inner product; vac as the divesting function or extraversion. With this explanation we can now understand a further text [69] relating to Brahman:

"Brahman made two worlds. When he had come into this other world, he pondered: 'How can I reach again into the world?' Twofold did he extend himself into this world, through Form and through Name. These twain are the two great monsters of Brahman; whosoever knoweth these two great monsters of Brahman becometh like unto them; these twain are the two mighty aspects of Brahman."


A little later "form" is explained as manas ("manas is form, for man knoweth through manas what this form is "), and "name" is shown to be vac ("for through vac man seizeth the name"). Thus the two" monsters" of Brahman emerge as manas and vac, hence as two psychic functions, with which Brahman can' extend himself' into two worlds, clearly signifying the function of 'relation.' The form of things is 'conceived' or 'taken in' by introverting. through manas; names are given to things by extraverting through vac. Both are bound up with the relations and adaptations or assimilations of things. The two monsters are also evidently regarded as personifications; an indication of this lies in their other title "aspects" = yaksha, since yaksha is an equivalent of daemon, or superhuman being. Psychologically, personification always signifies a relative independence (autonomy) of the personified contents, i.e. a relative splitting-off from the psychic hierarchy. A content of this kind is not obedient to voluntary reproduction, but either reproduces itself spontaneously or in some similar way becomes insulated from consciousness. [70] For instance, when an incompatibility exists between the ego and a certain complex, such a cleavage is produced. As is well known, one frequently observes this dissociation between the ego and the sexual complex. But other complexes may also become split-off, the power-complex, for instance, corresponding with the sum of all those aspirations and ideas which aim at the acquisition of personal power.

There is, however, another sort of cleavage, namely the splitting-off of the conscious ego, together with a selected function from the remaining components of the personality. This cleavage may be defined as an identification of the ego with a certain function or group of functions. A dissociation of this kind is very often seen in men who are too deeply immersed in one of their psychic functions, thereby differentiating it as their only conscious function of adaptation.

A good literary example of such a man is provided by Faust at the beginning of the tragedy. The remaining elements of the personality approach in the form of the poodle, and later as Mephistopheles. According to my view, we should not be justified in interpreting Mephistopheles as a split-off complex, as repressed sexuality for instance, in spite of the fact, which is undoubtedly borne out by many associations, that Mephistopheles also represents the sexual complex.

This explanation is too limited, for Mephistopheles is more than mere sexuality -- he is also power; with the exception of thinking and research he is practically the whole life of Faust. The result of the pact with the devil shows this most distinctly. What undreamed-of possibilities do not unfold themselves to the rejuvenated Faust! The correct view, therefore, would seem to be that Faust identifies himself with the one function and therewith becomes split off from the personality as a whole. Sub sequently, the thinker in the form of Wagner also becomes split off from Faust.

Conscious capacity for one-sidedness is a sign of the highest culture. But involuntary one-sidedness, i.e. inability to be anything but one-sided, is a sign of barbarism. Hence we find among half-savage peoples the most onesided differentiations, as, for instance, certain aspects of Christian asceticism which are an affront to good taste, and parallel phenomena among the Yogis and Tibetan Buddhists.

For the barbarian, this tendency to fall a victim to one-sidedness in one way or another, thereby losing sight of his whole personality, is a great and constant danger. The Gilgamesh epic, for example, begins with this conflict. In the barbarian the one-sided libido movement breaks out with daemoniacal compulsion; it possesses the character of Berserker rage and "running amok". The barbaric one-sidedness presupposes a certain stunting of instinct; this is lacking in the primitive, because in general he is still free from the one-sidedness of the semi-civilized barbarian.

Identification with one definite function at once produces a tension between the opposites. The more compulsive the one-sidedness, i.e. the more untamed the libido which urges to one side, the more daemoniacal is its quality. When a man is carried away by his uncontrolled, undomesticated libido, he speaks of daemoniac possession or of magical effect. In this way manas and vac are indeed potent daemons, since they can work mightily upon men. All things that exercise powerful effects were regarded either as gods or daemons. Thus, in the Gnosis, manas became personified as the serpentlike nous, vac as Logos. Vac bears the same relation to Prajapati as Logos to God. The sort of daemons that introversion and extraversion may become is for us an everyday experience. With what irresistible persuasion and force the libido streams within or without, with what unshakable tenacity an introverted or extraverted attitude can take root, we see in our patients and can feel in ourselves. The description of manas and vac as monsters of Brahman is in complete harmony with the psychological fact that at the instant of its appearance the libido divides into two streams, which as a rule alternate periodically but at times may also appear simultaneously in the form of a conflict, namely an outward stream opposing an inward stream. The daemonic quality of the two movements lies in their ungovernable nature and superior power. These qualities are, of course, in evidence only when the instinct of the primitive is already so curtailed that a natural and appropriate counter-movement against his one-sidedness is prevented; and where that culture which might assist him so far to tame his libido as to be able voluntarily and deliberately to participate in its introverting and extraverting tides is not yet sufficiently advanced.
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Re: PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES by C. G. Jung

Postby admin » Tue Oct 06, 2015 9:49 pm

Part 3 of 6

(c) The Reconciling Symbol as the Principle of Dynamic Regulation

In the foregoing passages from Indian sources we have followed the development of the redeeming principle from the pairs of opposites, and have traced the origin of the pairs of opposites to the same creative principle, thereby gaining an insight into a law-determined psychological occurrence which is found to be easily reconcilable with the concepts of our modern psychology.

This impression of a law-determined event is also conveyed to us from Indian sources, since they identify Brahman with Rita. What then is Rita? Rita signifies: established order, regulation, direction, determination, sacred custom, statute, divine law, right, truth. According to etymological evidence its root-meaning is: ordinance, (right) way, direction, course (to be followed). That which is ordained by Rita fills the whole world, but the particular manifestations of Rita are in those Nature-processes which always remain constant, and inevitably arouse the idea of regulated recurrence: "By Rita's ordinance the heavenborn dawn was lighted." "In obedience to Rita" the Ancient Ones who order the world" made the sun to mount the heavens", who himself "is the burning countenance of Rita". Around the heavens circles the year, that twelve-spoked wheel of Rita which never ages. Agni is called the offspring of Rita. In the doings of man, Rita operates as the moral law, which enjoins truth and the straight way. "Whosoever followeth Rita, findeth a thornlesspath and fair to walk in."

In so far as they represent a magical repetition or reproduction of cosmic events, Rita also appears in religious rites. As the streams flow in obedience to Rita and the crimson dawn is set ablaze, so "under the harness [71] of Rita" is the sacrifice kindled; upon the path of Rita, Agni brings the sacrifice to the gods. "Pure of magic, I invoke the gods; with Rita I do my work, and shape my thought", are the words of the sacrificer. Although the Rita concept does not appear personified in the Veda, yet, according to Bergaigne a certain tinge of concrete being undoubtedly clings to it. Since Rita expresses an ordering of events, we find" paths of Rita", "charioteers [72] and "ships of Rita"; on occasion the gods appear as parallels. The same attribute, for instance, is given to Rita as to Varuna. Mitra also, the ancient sun-god, is brought into relation with Rita (as above). Concerning Agni we read: "Thou shalt become Varuna, if thou strivest after Rita" [73]. The gods are the guardians of Rita [74]. I have selected a group of essential references:

1. "Rita is Mitra, for Mitra is Brahman and Rita is Brahman." [75]

2. "Giving the cow to the Brahmans man gaineth all the worlds, for in her is Brahman contained in Rita, and Tapas also." [76]

3. "Prajapati is called the first-born of Rita." [77]

4. "The gods followed the laws of Rita." [78]

5. "He who saw the hidden one (Agni), and drew nigh to the streams of Rita." [79]

6. "O wise one of Rita, know Rita! Bore and release Rita's many streams." [80]


The boring refers to the worship of Agni, to whom this hymn is dedicated. (Agni is here called the "red bull of Rita"). In the worship of Agni, fire obtained by boring is used as a magic symbol of the regeneration of life. Here clearly the "boring" of the streams of Rita bears the same significance, namely the streams of life rise again to the surface, libido is freed from its bonds [81]. The effect produced by the ritual fire-boring, or through the recital of hymns, is naturally regarded by the believers as the magical effect of the object; in reality, however, it is an 'enchantment' of the subject, namely an intensification of vital feeling, a release and propagation of lifeforce, a restoration of psychic potential.

7. Thus we find: "Though he (Agni) creepeth away, yet unto him straightway goeth the prayer. They (the prayers) have led forth the flowing streams of Rita." [82]


The revival of living feeling, of this sense of streaming energy, is very generally likened to a spring gushing from its source, to the melting of the iron-bound ice of winter in springtime, or to the breaking of long drought by rain [83].

8. The following passage is in harmony with this theme: "With full udders the lowing milch cows of Rita were overflowing. The streams which implored the favour (of the gods) from afar, have broken through the mountain rocks with their floods." [84]


This imagery clearly suggests a tension of energy, a damming up of libido, and its release. Rita here appears as the possessor of blessing, of "lowing milch cows" and as the ultimate source of the released energy.

9. Corresponding with the image of rain as a symbol of the release of libido, we find the following passage: "The mists fly, the clouds thunder. When he who is swollen with the milk of Rita, is led upon the straightest path of Rita; then Aryaman, Mitra and Varuna, (He who transformeth the earth) fill the leathern sack (the clouds) in the womb of the lower (atmosphere)." [85]


It is Agni who, swollen with the milk of Rita, is likened here to the force of lightning, that bursts. forth from massed clouds heavy with rain. Here Rita appears again as the actual source of energy, whence Agni also is born; this is explicitly mentioned in the Vedic Hymns, p. 161, 7. Rita is also path, i.e. regulated process.

10. "With acclamations have they greeted the stream of Rita, which lay hidden by the birth-place of God, nigh unto His throne. There did He drink, when, still divided, He dwelt in the womb of the waters." [86]


This passage confirms what was just said about Rita as the source of libido, in which God dwells and whence He is brought forth in the sacred ceremonies. Agni is the positive appearance of hitherto latent libido; He is the accomplisher or fulfiller of Rita, its "charioteer" (see above); He harnesses the two long-maned red mares of Rita. [87] He even holds Rita like a horse, by the bridle. (Vedic Hymns, p. 382). He brings the gods to mankind, i.e. He brings their force and their blessing; they represent definite psychological states, in which the feeling and' energy of life flow with greater freedom and joy, where the pent ice is broken. Nietzsche catches this state in that wonderful verse:

"Thou who with spear of flame
Dissolveth the ice of my soul!
Storming now she hasteneth
Toward the sea of her highest hopes."

11. The following invocations are in harmony with this
theme: "Let the divine gates, the multipliers of Rita, be flung
wide. Open the much desired gates, that the gods may come
forth. Let night and morning -- the young mothers of Rita, be
seated together upon the ritual grass, etc." [88]


The analogy with the rising sun is unmistakable. Rita appears as the sun, since out of night and twilight is the new sun born.

12. "Open ye for our succour, O divine doors easy of access. Ever more and more fill the sacrifice with blessedness: (with prayers) we draw nigh unto night and morning -- the multipliers of living power, the two young mothers of Rita."


There is no need, I think, for further examples to show that the concept of Rita, like sun and wind etc., is a libido-symbol. Only the Rita concept is less concretistic, and contains the abstract element of established direction and lawfulness, i.e. the determined and ordered path or process.

Already, therefore, it is a philosophical libido-symbol which can be directly compared with the Stoic concept Image . With the Stoics Image had, of course, the significance of a creative primordial heat, and at the same time a determined, regulated process (hence also its meaning-" compulsion by the stars "). It is self-evident that libido as a psychological energy concept corresponds with these attributes; since a process always proceeds from a higher potential to a lower, the energy-concept includes the idea of a determined, directed process eo ipso. It is the same with the libido-concept, which merely signifies the energy of the process of life. Its laws are the laws of vital energy. Libido as an energy concept is a quantitative formula for the phenomena of life, which are naturally of varying intensity.

Like physical energy, libido passes through every conceivable transformation; we find ample evidence of this in the phantasies of the unconscious and in the myths. These phantasies are primarily self-representations of the energic transformation processes, which follow their natural and established laws, their determined "way" of evolution. This way signifies both the line or curve of the optimum of energic discharge as well as the corresponding result in work. Hence this "way" is simply the expression of flowing and self-manifesting energy. The way is Rita, the "right way", the flow of vital energy or libido, the determined course upon which the ever-renewing process is possible. This way is also destiny, in so far as destiny is dependent upon our psychology. It is the way of our vocation and our law.

It would be quite wrong to assert that such an aim is merely naturalism, by which one means a complete surrender to one's instincts. An assumption is herewith involved that the instincts have a constant "downward" tendency, and that naturalism is a non-ethical rechute upon an inclined plane. I have nothing against such an interpretation of naturalism, but I am bound to observe that the man who is left to his own devices, and has therefore every opportunity for backsliding, as for instance the primitive, not only has a morality and a legislation but one which in the severity of its demands is often considerably more exacting than our civilized morality Whether, for the primitive good and evil have a value which differs from ours, has nothing to do with the case; his naturalism leads to legislation -- that is the chief point. Morality is no misconception, conceived by an ambitious Moses upon Sinai, but something inherent in the laws of life and fashioned like a house or a ship or any other cultural instrument in the normal process of life. The natural flow of libido, this very middle path, involves a complete obedience to the fundamental laws of human nature, and there can positively be no higher moral principle than that harmony with natural laws whose accord gives the libido the direction in which life's optimum lies. The optimum of life is not to be found upon the line of crude egoism, since man, whose fundamental make-up discerns an absolutely indispensable meaning in the happiness he brings to his neighbour, can never win his life's optimum upon the line of egoism. An unbridled craving for individual pre-eminence is equally unfitted to achieve this optimum, since the collective element is so strongly rooted in man that his yearning for fellowship destroys all pleasure in naked egoism. The optimum of life can be gained only by obedience to the tidal laws of the libido, by which systole alternates with diastole, laws which provide happiness and the necessary limitations, even setting the life-tasks of the individual nature, without whose accomplishment life's optimum can never be achieved. If the attainment of this way consisted in a mere surrender to instinct, which is what is really meant by the bewailer of "naturalism", the profoundest philosophical speculation and the whole history of the human mind would have no sort of raison d'etre. Yet, as we study the Upanishad philosophy, the impression grows on us that the attainment of the path is not just the simplest of tasks. Our western air of superiority in the presence of Indian understanding is a part of our essential barbarism, for which any true perception of the quite extraordinary depth of those ideas and their amazing psychological accuracy is still but a remote possibility. In fact, we are still so uneducated that we actually need laws from without, and a task-master or Father above, to show us what is good and the right thing to do. It is because we are still so barbarous that faith in the laws of human nature and the human path appears as a dangerous and non-ethical naturalism. Why is this? Because under the barbarian's thin skin of culture the wild-beast lurks in readiness, amply justifying his fear. But the beast that is caged is not thereby conquered. There is no morality without freedom. When a barbarian loosens the animal within him, he is not free, but bound. Barbarism must first be vanquished, before freedom can be won. Theoretically this takes place when an individual perceives and feels the basic root and motive power of his own morality as an inherent element of his own nature, and not as external prohibitions. But how else is man to attain this realization and insight but through the conflict of the opposites?

(d) The Reconciling Symbol in Chinese Philosophy

The idea of a middle path that lies between the opposites is also to be found in China, in the form of Tao. The idea of Tao is usually associated with the name of the philosopher Lao-Tsze, born B.C. 604. But this concept is older than the philosophy of Lao-Tsze, since it is bound up with certain ideas belonging to the ancient national religion of the Tao, the celestial "way". This concept corresponds with the Vedic Rita. The meanings of Tao are as follows: (1) way, (2) method, (3) principle, (4) Nature-force or life-force, (5) the regulated processes of Nature, (6) the idea of the world, (7) the primal cause of all phenomena, (8) the right, (9) the good, (10) the eternal moral law. Some translators even translate Tao as God, not without a certain right, since Tao, like Rita, has a certain admixture of concrete substantiality.

I will first give a few "illustrations from the Tao-te-king, the classical book of Lao-tsze:

1. "I do not know whose son it (Tao) is; it seems to have existed before God." (ch. iv)

2. "A being there is, indefinable, perfected, that existed before heaven and earth. How still it was how formless, alone, unchanging, embracing all and inexhaustible! It would seem to be the mother of all things. I know not its name, but I call it Tao." (ch. xxv)

3. In order to characterize its essential quality, Lao-tsze likens it to water: "The blessing of water is shown in this, it doeth good to all and seeketh at once the lowliest place, which all men shun. It hath in it something of Tao."

The idea of the energic process could not surely be better expressed.

4. "Dwelling without desire, one perceiveth its essence; clinging to desire, one seeth only its outer form." (ch. i)


The kinship with the basic Brahmanic ideas is unmistakable -- which does not necessarily imply direct contact. Lao-tsze is an entirely original thinker, and the primordial image underlying both the Rita-Brahman-Atman and Tao conceptions is as universal as man, appearing in every age and among all peoples, whether as a primitive energy concept, as "soul force" or however else it may be designated.

5. "He who knoweth the eternal is comprehensive; comprehensive, therefore just; just, therefore a king; a king, therefore celestial; celestial, therefore in Tao; in Tao, therefore enduring; without hurt he suffereth the loss of the body." (ch. xvi)


The knowledge of Tao has therefore the same redeeming and uplifting effect as the "knowing" of Brahman. Man becomes one with Tao, with the unending "duree creatrice"; thus to range this latest philosophical concept appropriately by the side of its older kindred, since Tao is also the stream of time.

6. "Tao is an irrational, hence a wholly inconceivable fact: Tao is essence, but unseizable, incomprehensible." (ch. xxi)

7. Tao also is non-existing: "From it the existing, all things under Heaven have their source, but the being of this existing one arose in its turn from it as the non-existing." (ch. xl). "Tao is hidden, nameless." (ch. xli)


Clearly Tao is an irrational union of the opposites, therefore a symbol which is and is not.

8. "The spirit of the valley is immortal, it is called the deep-feminine. The gate-way of the deep feminine is called root of heaven and earth."


Tao is the creative essence, as father begetting and as mother bringing forth. It is the beginning and end of all creatures.

9. "He whose actions are in harmony with Tao becometh one with Tao."


Therefore the complete one is freed from the opposites whose intimate connection and alternating appearance he is aware of. Thus in Chapter ix he says: "to withdraw oneself is the celestial way".

10. "Therefore is he (the complete one) inaccessible to intimacy, inaccessible to estrangement, inaccessible to profit, inaccessible to injury, inaccessible to honour, inaccessible to disgrace." (ch. lvi)

11. "Being one with Tao resembles the spiritual condition of a child." (ch. x, xxviii, Iv)


This is, admittedly, the psychological attitude which is an essential condition of the inheritance of the Christian Kingdom of Heaven, and this -- in spite of all rational interpretations -- is the central, irrational essence, the basic image and symbol whence proceeds the redeeming effect. The Christian symbol merely has a more social (civil) character than the allied Eastern conceptions. These latter are more directly rooted in eternally existing dynamistic conceptions, such as the image of magical power, issuing from things and men, and on a higher level from gods, or a principle.

12. According to the ideas of the Taoistic religion, Tao is divided into a principle pair of opposites, Yang and Yin. Yang is warmth, light, masculinity. Yin is cold, darkness, femininity. Yang is also heaven, Yin earth. From the Yang force arises Schen, the celestial portion of the human soul; and from the Yin force arises Kwei, the earthly part. As a microcosm, man is also in some degree a reconciler of the pairs of opposites. Heaven, man, and earth, form the three chief elements of the world, the San-tsai.


This image is an altogether primordial idea, which we find elsewhere in similar forms; as for instance in the West African myth where Obatala and Odudua, the first parents (heaven and earth) lie together in a calabash, until a son, man, arises between them. Hence as a microcosm, uniting in himself the world-opposites, man corresponds with the irrational symbol which reconciles psychological antitheses. This root-image of man clearly accords with Schiller, when he calls the symbol "living form".

The division of the human soul into a Schen or Hwun soul, and a Kwei or Poh soul, is a great psychological truth. This Chinese presentation also suggests the familiar passage in Faust:

"Two souls, alas! within my bosom dwell --
One would from the other sever:
The one in full delight of love
Clings with clutching organs to the world:
The other, mightily, from earthly dust
Would mount on high to the ancestral fields."


The existence of two mutually contending tendencies, both striving to drag man into extreme attitudes and entangle him in the world -- whether upon the spiritual or material side -- thereby setting him at variance with himself, demands the existence of a counter-weight, which is just this irrational fact, Tao. Hence the believer's anxious effort to live in harmony with Tao, lest he fall into the conflict of the opposites. Since Tao is an irrational fact, it cannot be deliberately achieved; a fact which Lao-Tsze frequently emphasizes. Wuwei, another specifically Chinese concept, owes its particular significance to this condition. It signifies "doing nothing", but, as Ular pertinently explains, it should be rendered: "not-doing, and not doing nothing". The rational "desire to bring it about", which is the greatness and the evil of our own epoch, does not lead to Tao.

Thus the aim of the Taoistic ethic sets out to find deliverance from that tension of the opposites which is an inherent property of the universe, by a return to Tao.

In this connection we must also remember the "Sage of Omi" Nakae Toju [89], that distinguished Japanese philosopher of the seventeenth century. Based upon the teaching of the Chu-Hi school which had migrated from China, he established two principles, Ri and Ki. Ri is the world-soul, Ki the world-matter. Ri and Ki are however one and the same, inasmuch as they are attributes of God, hence only existing in and through Him. God is their union. Similarly the soul embraces Ri and Ki. Concerning God, Toju says: "As the essence of the world, God enfoldeth the world, but at the same time He is also in our midst and even in our own bodies." For him God is a universal Self, while the individual Self is "heaven in us", an immaterial, divine essence that is called. Ryochi. Ryochi is "God in us", and dwells in each individual. It is the true Self. For Toju distinguishes a true from a false self. The false self is an acquired personality arising from perverted beliefs. We might freely describe this false self as persona, i.e. that general idea of our nature which we have built up from experiencing our effect upon the world around and its effect upon us.

The persona expresses the personality as it appears to oneself and one's world; but not what one is, to use the words of Schopenhauer. What one is, is one's individual Self, according to Toju, one's true Self or Ryochi. Ryochi is also called "alone being", or "alone knowing", clearly because it is a condition related to the essence of the Self, a state existing beyond all personal judgments that are determined by outer experience. Toju conceives Ryochi as the summum bonum, as 'bliss' (Brahman is Ananda -- bliss). Ryochi is the light which pervades the world; a further parallel with Brahman, according to Inouye. Ryochi is human love, immortal, all-knowing good. Evil comes from willing (Schopenhauer!). It is the self-regulating function, the mediator and reconciler of the pairs of opposites, Ri and Ki: it is in fullest harmony with the Indian idea of the" ancient Wise One who dwelleth in thy heart". Or as Wang-Yang-Ming, the Chinese father of the Japanese philosophy, says: "In every heart there dwelleth a Sejin (Sage). Only man will not steadfastly believe it -- therefore hath the whole remained buried."

From the point we have now reached, the primordial image which contributed to the solution of the problem in Wagner's Parsifal is no longer hard to understand; the suffering proceeds from the tension of the opposites represented by the Grail and the power of Klingsor, the latter consisting in the possession of the holy spear. Beneath the spell of Klingsor is Kundry, the instinctive, nature-cleaving life-force which Amfortas lacks. Parsifal delivers the libido from the state of restless compulsion, because in the first place he does not succumb to her power, but in the second because he himself is detached from the Grail. Amfortas is with the Grail; whereby he suffers, because he lacks the other. Parsifal possesses naught of either; he is 'nirdvandva', free from the opposites; hence he is also the deliverer, the bestower of healing and renewed life-force, the reconciler of the opposites, i.e. the light, celestial, feminine, of the Grail, and the dark, earthly, masculine, of the spear. The death of Kundry may be freely interpreted as the release of the libido from the nature-clinging, undomesticated form (the "form of the bull": compare above), which falls from her as a lifeless mould, while energy bursts forth as newly-streaming life in the glowing of the Grail.

Through his partly involuntary abstention from the opposites, Parsifal causes the damming up by which the new 'fall', i.e. the new manifestation of energy is made possible. One might easily be misled by the unmistakably sexual language into a one-sided interpretation, by which the union of the spear and the vessel of the Grail would merely signify a liberation of sexuality. That it is not merely a question of sexuality, the fate of Amfortas makes clear, since it was precisely his rechute to a nature-bound, brutish attitude, which was the cause of his suffering and brought about the loss of his power. His seduction by Kundry has the value of a symbolic act, which would signify that it is not sexuality that deals such wounds so much as an attitude of nature-clinging compulsion, an irresolute yielding to biological temptation. This attitude is equivalent to the supremacy of the animal part of our psyche.

The sacrificial wound that is destined for the beast strikes the man who is overcome by the beast (for the sake of man's further development). The fundamental problem, as I have already pointed out in my book Psychology of the Unconscious, is not sexuality per se, but the domestication of the libido, which concerns sexuality only in so far as it is one of the most important and most dangerous forms of libido expression.

If, in the case of Amfortas and the union of spear and Grail, only the sexual problem is discerned, we reach an insoluble contradiction, since the thing that harms is also the remedy that heals. But only when we see the opposites as reconciled upon a higher plane is such a paradox either true or permissible; a realization, namely, that it is not a question of sexuality, either in this form or that, but purely a question of the attitude by which every activity, including the sexual, is regulated.


Once again I must stress my view that the practical problem of analytical psychology lies deeper than sexuality and its repression. Such a view-point is doubtless valuable in explaining that infantile and therefore morbid part of the soul, but, as a principle of interpretation for the totality of the human soul, it is inadequate.

What stands behind sexuality or the instinct to power is the attitude to sexuality and power. In so far as attitude is not merely an intuitive phenomenon. (i.e. unconscious and spontaneous) but also a conscious function, it is, in the main, one's view of life. Our views in regard to all problematical things are enormously influenced, sometimes consciously but more often unconsciously, by certain collective ideas which mould our mental atmosphere. These collective ideas are intimately bound up with the view of life or world-philosophy of the past hundred or thousand years. Whether or no we are conscious of this dependence has nothing to do with the case, since we are influenced by these ideas through the very atmosphere we breathe. Such collective ideas have always a religious character, and a philosophical idea acquires a religious character only when it expresses a primordial image, i.e. a collective root-image. The religious character of these ideas proceeds from the fact that they express the realities of the collective unconscious; hence they also have the power of releasing the latent energies of the unconscious. The great problems of life -- sexuality, of course among others -- are always related to the primordial images of the collective unconscious. These images are really balancing or compensating factors which correspond with the problems life presents in actuality.

This is not to be marvelled at, since these images are, deposits, representing the accumulated experience of thousands of years of struggle for adaptation and existence, Every great experience in life, every profound conflict, evokes the treasured wealth of these images and brings them to inner perception; as such, they become accessible to consciousness only in the presence of that degree of self-awareness and power of understanding which enables a man also to think what he experiences instead of just living it blindly. In the latter case he actually lives the myth and the symbol without knowing it.
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Re: PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES by C. G. Jung

Postby admin » Tue Oct 06, 2015 9:53 pm

Part 4 of 6

4. The Relativity of the Symbol

(a) The Service of Woman and the Service of the Soul


The Service of God is the Christian principle which reconciles the opposites; with Buddhism it is service of the Self (self-development); while the principle of solution suggested by Goethe and Spitteler is service of the soul, symbolized in the service of woman.

Contained herein is the principle of modern individualism on the one hand, and on the other a primitive poly-daemonism which assigns, not merely to every race but to every tribe, every family, even to every individual, its own religious principle.

The medieval material in Faust possesses its quite extraordinary importance, because it is actually a medieval element which stands at the cradle of modern individualism. Individualism seems to have begun with the service of woman, thereby effecting a most important reinforcement of man's soul as a psychological factor; since service of woman means service of the soul. This is nowhere more beautifully and perfectly expressed than in Dante's Divina Commedia.

Dante is the spiritual knight of his lady; he undertakes the adventure of the upper and nether worlds for her sake. And in this heroic labour her image is exalted into that heavenly, mystical figure of the Mother of God -- a figure which in its complete detachment from the object has become a personification of a purely psychological entity, i.e. that unconscious content whose personification I have termed the anima or soul. Canto xxxiii of the Paradiso contains this crowning of Dante's spiritual development in the prayer of St Bernard:

"Oh Virgin Mother, daughter of thy Son,
More lovely, more sublime than any creature!
Of the Lord of the eternal throne the chosen goal,
Thou hast so ennobled the nature of man
That He who created the highest good
Hath chosen in thee to become creature."


Concerning Dante's development we have verses 22 ff.

"He who appeared from the deepest gorge
Of the Universe, who with ghostly art and being,
From realm to realm probing and inquiring, passed;
He entreateth with thee for thy strength,
That he may lift up his eyes
And consecrate his vision to the highest grace."


Verses 31 ff.

"May every cloud of his mortality
Be banished through thy prayer! Unfolded
Now for him the highest bliss and joy eternal."


Verses 37 ff.

"Let him withstand the earthly motions.
Behold, Beatrice I so many glorious ones
Intercede for me, with folded hands."


The fact that Dante here speaks through the mouth of St. Bernard points to the transformation and exaltation of his own being. The same successive transformation is also seen in Faust, who ascends from Margaret to Helen, from Helen to the Mother of God; his nature is altered through repeated figurative deaths until he finally attains the highest goal as Doctor Marianus. As such Faust utters his prayer to the Virgin Mother:

"Supreme and sovereign Mistress of the world!
In the azure outstretched dome of Heaven
Let me behold thy secret.
The strong and tender motions of man's breast
That with holy passion of love ascend to Thee
Graciously approve.
Unconquerable our courage burns,
Under Thy celestial guidance
Suddenly our passions cool
In Thine assuaging calm.
Oh Virgin, in highest sense most pure,
Oh Mother, worthy of all worship,
Our chosen Queen, equal with the Gods."


And:

"Gaze upon her saving glance,
All ye frail and penitent,
With grace accept your holy Fate,
For when ye thank, ye prosper.
Better seemeth every wish
To her service given.
Virgin Mother, Sovereign Queen,
Goddess, ever gracious!"


In this connection, the significant symbol-attributes of the Virgin in the Litany of Loretto must also be mentioned:

Mater amabilis Mater admirabilis Mater boni consilii Speculum justitiae Sedes sapientiae Causa nostrae laetitiae Vas spirituale Vas honorabile Vas insigne devotionis Rosa mystica Turris Davidica Turris eburnea Domus aurea Frederis arca janua coeli Stella matutina: Thou beloved Mother Thou wonderful Mother Thou Mother of good counsel Thou Mirror of justice Thou Seat of wisdom Thou Source of our joy Thou spiritual Vessel Thou venerable Vessel Thou surpassing Vessel of devotion Thou mystical Rose Thou Tower of David Thou Tower of ivory Thou House of gold Thou Ark of the Covenant Thou Gate of Heaven Thou Star of the morning (Missale Romanum).


These attributes show the functional importance of the image of the Virgin Mother; they demonstrate how the soul-image affects the conscious attitude, namely as vessel of devotion, as solid form, as source of wisdom and renewed life.

In a most concise and comprehensive form we find this characteristic transition from the service of woman to the service of the soul in an Early Christian writing: The Shepherd of Hermas, who wrote about A.D. 140. This book, written in Greek, consists of a number of visions and revelations, which symbolically represent the consolidation of the new faith. The book, long regarded as canonical, was nevertheless rejected by the Muratorian Canon. It begins as follows:

"The man who reared me, sold me to a certain Rhoda in Rome. After many years, I met with her again and began to love her like a sister, On a day a little while after, I saw her bathing in the Tiber, and gave her my hand and helped her out of the river. As I beheld her beauty, I had this thought in my heart: "Happy would I be, had I a wife of such beauty and such distinction." That was my sole wish and nothing more (Image Image )."

This experience was the starting-point for the visionary episode that followed. Hermas had apparently served Rhoda as slave; then, as often happened, he obtained his freedom, and subsequently encountered her again, when, probably as much from gratitude as from pleasure, a feeling of love was stirred in his heart; which, however, so far as he was aware, had merely the character of brotherly love. Hermas was a Christian, and moreover, as the text subsequently reveals, he was at that time already the father of a family; circumstances which render the repression of the erotic element easily understandable.

Yet the peculiar situation, doubtless provocative of many problems, was all the more favourable for bringing the erotic wish to consciousness. It is, in fact, quite clearly expressed in the thought that he would have liked Rhoda for a wife, although it is definitely confined to this unqualified appreciation as Hermas is at pains to emphasize, since naturally the implied and more direct issue at once incurred a moral prohibition. It' is abundantly clear from what follows that this repressed libido evoked a powerful transformation in his unconscious, for it imbued the soul image with life, thus bringing it to spontaneous efficacy.

Let us now follow the text further:

"After a certain time, as I journeyed unto Cumae, praising God's creation in its immensity, beauty, and power, in my going I grew heavy with sleep. And a spirit caught me up, and led me away through a pathless region where a man may not go. For it was a place full of crevices and torn by water-courses. I made my passage over the river and came upon even ground, where I threw myself upon my knees, and prayed to God, confessing my sins. While I thus prayed, the heavens opened and I beheld that lady for whom I yearned, who greeted me from heaven and said: 'Hail to thee, Hermas!' While my eyes dwelt upon her, I spake and said: 'Mistress, what doest thou there?' And she answered: 'I was taken up, in order to charge thee with thy sins before the Lord.' I said unto her: 'Dost thou now accuse me?' 'No', said she, 'yet hearken now unto the words which I shall speak unto thee. For God, who dwelleth in heaven, and hath created the existing out of the non-existing, and hath magnified it and brought it to increase for the sake of His Holy Church, is wroth with thee, because thou hast sinned against me.' I answered and spake unto her: 'How have I sinned against thee? When and where spake I ever an evil word unto thee? Have I not looked upon thee as a goddess? Have I not ever treated thee like a sister? Wherefore, O lady, dost thou falsely charge me with such evil and unclean things?' She smiled and said unto me: 'The desire of sin arose in thy heart. Or is it not indeed a sin in thine eyes for a just man to cherish a sinful desire in his heart? Verily is it a sin', said she, 'and a great one. For the just man striveth after what is just.'"


Solitary wanderings are, as we know, conducive to day-dreaming and reverie. Probably Hermas, on his way to Cumae was pondering. on his mistress; while thus engaged, the repressed erotic phantasy gradually withdrew his libido into the unconscious. Sleep overcame him, as a result of this lowering of the intensity of consciousness, and he fell into a somnambulent or ecstatic state, which is merely a phantasy of great intensity that altogether captivates the conscious. It is significant that what comes to him is no erotic phantasy, but he is transported as it were to another land, represented in phantasy as the crossing of a river and a journey through a pathless country. The unconscious appears to him as an opposite or over-world, in which events take place and men move about as in reality.

His mistress appears before him, not in an erotic phantasy, but in "divine" form, seeming to him like a goddess in the heavens. This fact indicates that the repressed erotic impression in the unconscious has activated the latent primordial image of the goddess, which is in fact the archetypal soul-image. The erotic impression has evidently become united in the collective unconscious with those archaic residues which from primordial time have held the imprints of vivid impressions of woman's nature; woman as mother, and woman as desirable maid. Such impressions have immense power, since they release forces, both in the child and the man, which, in their irresistible and absolutely compelling nature, merit the attribute divine. The recognition of these forces as daemonic powers can scarcely be due to moral repression, but rather to a self-regulation of the psychic organism which seeks by this orientation to protect itself from loss of equilibrium. For if, against the wholly overwhelming power of passion, which casts a man unconditionally in the path of another, the psyche succeeds in erecting a counterposition, whereby at the summit of passion it severs the idol from the utterly desired object and forces the man to his knees before the divine image, it has thereby delivered him from the curse of the object's spell. He is restored again to himself; he is even forced upon himself; thus coming once more into his own way between gods and men, and subject to his own laws. The awful dread which haunts the primitive, that dread of every impressive phenomenon which he at once senses as magic, as though things were charged with magical power, preserves him in a practical way against that most dreaded possibility, the loss of the soul, with its inevitable sequel of disease or death.

The loss of a soul corresponds with the tearing loose of an essential part of one's nature; it is the disappearance and emancipation of a complex, which therewith becomes a tyrannical usurper of consciousness, oppressing the whole man; it throws him out of his course, and constrains him to actions whose blind one-sidedness has self-destruction as its inevitable issue. The primitives are notoriously subject to such phenomena as running amok, Berserker rage, possessions, and the like. An intuitive knowledge of the daemonic character of this power supplies an effective guard, for such an insight at once deprives the object of its strongest spell, shifting its source to the world of daemons, i.e. to the unconscious, whence the force of passion actually springs. Exorcising rites, whose aim is to bring back the soul and release the enchantment also effects this backflow of libido into the unconscious.

This mechanism is clearly effective in the case of Hermas. The transformation of Rhoda into the divine mistress deprives the actual object of her provocative and destructive power, and brings Hermas under the law of his own soul and its collective determinants.

By virtue of his ability, he doubtless took an important share in the spiritual movements of his age. At that very time his brother Pius occupied the episcopal see at Rome. Hermas, therefore, was called to collaborate in the great tasks of his time, in a higher degree than he, as a former slave, may have consciously realized. No able mind of that time could for long have withstood the contemporary task of spreading Christianity, unless the limitations and conditions of race naturally assigned to him another function in the great process of spiritual transformation.

Just as external conditions of life constrain a man to social functions, the soul also contains collective determinants which constrain him to the socializing of opinions and convictions. Through the conversion of a possible social trespass and a probable passional self-injury to the service of the soul, Hermas is guided to the accomplishment of a social task of a spiritual nature, which for that time was, assuredly, of no small importance.

In order to fit him for this task, it is clearly necessary that his soul shall destroy the last possibility of an erotic bondage to the object. For this last possibility means dishonesty towards himself. That he may consciously forswear the erotic desire, Hermas merely demonstrates that it would be more agreeable to him if the erotic desire did not exist, but he gives no kind of evidence that he actually. has no erotic intentions and phantasies. Therefore his sovereign lady, the soul, mercilessly reveals to him the existence of his sin, thus releasing him from his secret bondage to the object. As a "vessel of devotion" she therewith receives that passion which was on the point of being fruitlessly lavished upon the object. The last vestige of this passion had to be eradicated in order that the contemporary task might be accomplished; this lay in the crying need of mankind for a severance from sensual bondage, i.e. the state of primitive "participation mystique". To the man of that age this subjection had become intolerable. Clearly a differentiation of the spiritual function had to take place, in order to re-establish psychic equilibrium. Every one of those philosophical attempts to restore psychic poise or equanimity, which largely emanated from the Stoic teaching, foundered upon their rationalism. Reason can provide this desired equilibrium only to the man whose reason is already an organ of balance. But for how many individuals and at what period of history has this actually been the case? As a general rule, a man must also acquire the opposite of his own condition before he finds himself, willy-nilly, in the middle way. For the sake of mere reason he can never forgo the appealing sensuousness of the immediate situation. Against the power and temptation of the temporal, therefore, he must set the joy of the eternal, and against the passion of the sensual, the ecstasy of the spiritual. As real as the one is for him, must the other be compellingly effective.

Through insight into the actual existence of his erotic desire it is possible for Hermas to reach a realization of this metaphysical reality; which means that the soul-image also acquires that sensual libido which has hitherto adhered to the concrete object. Henceforth this libido bestows upon the image, the idol, that reality which from all time the sense object has exclusively claimed as its own. Thus the soul is able to speak with effect, and successfully enforce her claims.

After the talk with Rhoda recorded above, her image vanishes, and the heavens close. In her stead there now appears an "old woman in shining garments", who informs Hermas that his erotic desire is a sinful and foolish undertaking against a venerable spirit, but that God is wroth with him, not so much on that account but because he, Hermas, tolerates the sins of his family. In this adroit way the libido is entirely withdrawn from the erotic wish and is directed in its next swing into the social task. An especial refinement lies in the fact that the soul has discarded the image of Rhoda and has taken on the aspect of an old woman, thus allowing the erotic element to recede as far as possible into the background.

It is later revealed to Hermas that this old woman is the Church, whereby the concrete and personal is dissolved into an abstraction and the ideal gains an actuality and a reality which it had never before possessed. Thereupon the old woman reads to him from a mysterious book directed in general against the heathen and apostates, but whose exact meaning he is unable to seize. Subsequently we learn that the book contains a mission. Thus the sovereign lady presents him with his task, which as her knight he needs must accomplish.

The trial of virtue is also not lacking. For, not long after, Hermas has a vision, in which the old lady appears, promising to return about the fifth hour, in order to explain the revelation. Whereupon Hermas betook himself into the country to the appointed place, where he found a couch of ivory, set with a pillow and a cover of fine linen.

"As I beheld these things lying there", writes Hermas, "I was sore amazed, and a quaking fell upon me and my hair stood on end, and a dreadful fear befell me, because I was alone in that place. But when I came once more to myself, I remembered the glory of God and took new courage; I knelt down and again confessed my sins unto God, as I had done before. Then she drew near with six young men, the which also I had seen before, and stood beside me and listened while I prayed and confessed my sins unto God. And she touched me and said: 'Hermas, have done with all thy prayers and the reciting of thy sins. Pray also for righteousness, whereby thou mayest bear some of it with thee to thy house.' And she raised me up by the hand and led me to the couch, and said unto the young men: 'Go and build!' And when the youths were gone and we were alone, she said unto me: 'Sit thee here!' I said unto her: 'Mistress, let the aged first be seated.' She said: 'Do as I said unto thee and be thou seated.' But, when I made as though to seat myself upon her right hand, she motioned me with a gesture of the hand to be seated upon her left.

"As I wondered thereat, and was troubled, that I might not sit upon the right side, she said unto me: 'Why art thou grieved, Hermas? The seat upon the right is for those who are already well-pleasing to God and have suffered for the Name. But to thee there lacketh much before thou canst sit with them. Yet remain as heretofore in thy simplicity, and thou shalt surely sit with them, and thus shall it be for all who shall have accomplished the work which those wrought, and endured what they suffered.'"


The erotic misunderstanding of the situation was indeed very possible for Hermas. The rendez-vous has at once the feeling of a trysting-place in "a beautiful and sequestered spot" (as he puts it). The rich couch waiting there is a fatal reminder of Eros, and makes the fear which overcomes Hermas at this spectacle seem very intelligible. Clearly he must vigorously combat the erotic association, lest he fall into a profane mood. He certainly does not appear to have recognized the temptation, unless perhaps this recognition is taken as self-evident in the description of his dread, an honesty which was far more possible to a man of that time than to a man of to-day. For in that age man was more nearly in touch with his whole nature than are we -- hence he was all the more likely to have a direct perception of his natural reactions and to appreciate them correctly. In this case his confession of sin may have aroused forthwith the perception of a profane feeling. In any case the question arising at this juncture, as to whether he shall sit on the ,right hand or the left, leads to a moral reprimand at the hands of his mistress.

In spite of the fact that signs coming from the left were regarded as favourable in the Roman auguries, the left side, both with the Greeks and the Romans was on the whole inauspicious; allusion to this is found in the double meaning of the word 'sinister'. But the question here raised of right and left, as an immediately ensuing passage shows, has nothing to do with popular superstitions; it is clearly of Biblical origin, referring to Math., xxv, 33: "He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left". Sheep by virtue of their' harmless and gentle nature, are an allegory for the good, while the unruly and salacious character of goats provides a suitable image of evil. His mistress, therefore, by assigning to him the seat on the left, figuratively reveals to him her understanding of his psychology.

When Hermas has taken his seat upon the left, rather sadly, as he records, his soul-mistress further reveals to him a visionary scene, which unrolls itself before his eyes; he beholds how the youths, assisted by ten thousand other men, build a mighty tower whose stones fit one into the . other without joints. This jointless tower (hence by its very nature of indestructible solidity) symbolizes the Church, so Hermas understands. The mistress is the Church, and so is the tower. In the attributes of the Lorettian Litany we have already seen how the Virgin is characterized as Turris Davidica and Turris eburnea (tower of ivory). It would seem as though an identical or similar association were concerned here. The tower undoubtedly has the meaning of something steadfast and secure suggesting the reference in the Psalms, lvi, 4:

"For Thou hast been a shelter for me
And a strong tower from the enemy".


A certain resemblance to the Tower of Babel can, I think, be excluded from our interpretation, on the strength of strong internal counter-evidence. None the less it may have chimed in, since Hermas, in company with every other thinking mind of that epoch, must have suffered much from the depressing spectacle of the ceaseless schisms and heretical strifes of the Early Church. Such an impression may also have provided the essential motive for the writing of this book; an inference to which we are all the more entitled by the fact that the revealed book is directed against heathens and apostates. That same confusion of tongues which frustrated the Tower of Babel almost completely dominated the Christian Church in the first century, demanding desperate exertions on the part of the faithful to overcome the confusion.

Since Christendom at that time was far from being one flock under one shepherd, it was only natural that Hermas longed to find the mighty "shepherd", the Poimen, as well as that firm and stable form which should unite in one inviolable whole the elements gathered from all the four winds, the mountains and the seas.

Chthonic craving, sensuality in all its manifold forms, with its eager hold upon the enticements of the world and its incessant dissipation of psychic energy in the world's prodigal variety, is a crowning hindrance to the development of a coherent and purposive attitude. Hence the elimination of this obstacle must have been the most important task of that time. It is therefore not surprising that in the Poimen of Hermas, it is the vanquishing of this very obstacle that is unfolded before our eyes. We have already seen how the original erotic stimulus and the energy thereby released became translated into the personification of the unconscious complex, i.e the figure of Ecclesia as the old woman, who in her visionary appearances demonstrates the spontaneity of the underlying complex. We learn, moreover, at this point that the old woman, the Church, becomes the Tower, as it were, since the Tower is also the Church. This transition is unexpected, for the connection between the Tower and the old woman is not immediately evident. The attributes of the Virgin in the Lorettian Litany, however, will help us upon the right track, because there we find, as already mentioned, the attribute "tower" associated with the Virgin Mother.

This attribute has its source in The Song of Songs, IV, 4:

"Sicut turris David collum tuum, quae aedificata est cum propugnaculis." ("Thy neck is like the tower of David, builded for an armoury").

VII. 4: "Collum tuum sicut turris eburnea." ("Thy neck is as a tower of ivory"). Similarly VIII, 10: "Ego murus, et ubera mea sicut turris." ("I am a wall, and my breasts like towers.")


The Song of Songs, as is well known, was originally a secular love-poem, perhaps a wedding-song which was actually denied canonical recognition by Jewish scholars till quite recently. Mystical interpretation, however, always loved to conceive the bride as Israel and the bridegroom as Jehovah, and, indeed, from a right instinct; since the aim of this conception is a translation of the erotic emotion into a national relationship with God. From the same motives Christianity also possessed itself of The Song of Songs, in order to conceive the bridegroom as Christ and the bride as the Church. To the psychology of the Middle Ages this analogy had an extraordinary appeal, and it inspired the perfectly frank Christian erotism of medieval mysticism, of which Mechtild von Magdeburg is one of the most shining examples. In this spirit was the Lorettian Litany conceived. It derives certain attributes of the Virgin directly from The Song of Songs. We have already shown this in connection with the tower symbol.

The rose is already employed by the Greek fathers as an attribute of Mary; so too is the lily; these are also related to The Song of Songs, 2, 1:

"Ego flos campi et lilium convallium.
Sicut lilium inter spinas, sic arnica mea inter filias."

"I am the rose of Sharon,
And the lily of the valleys.
As the lily among thorns,
So is my love among the daughters."


An image much used in the medieval hymns to Mary is the" enclosed garden" from The Song of Songs, 4. 12: "Hortus conclusus, soror mea sponsa" ("A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse") and the "sealed fountain". (Song of Songs, 4, 12: "fons signatus" "A spring shut up, a fountain sealed").

The unmistakably erotic nature of this simile in The Song of Songs is explicitly accepted as such by the Fathers. Thus, for example, St Ambrosius interprets the hortus conclusus as Virginity (De Instit. Virg., c. 10). In the same way St Ambrosius compares (Comm. in Apoc., c. 6) Mary with Moses' basket of rushes:

"per fiscellam scirpeam, beata virgo designata est. Mater ergo fiscellam scirpeam, in qua Moses ponebatur; praeparavit, quia sapientia dei, quae est filius dei, beatam Mariam Virginem elegit, in cuius utero hominem, cui per unitatem personae conjungeretur, formavit." ("Like a basket of rushes is the blessed Virgin designated. Therefore the mother prepared the basket in which Moses was laid; because the wisdom of God, which is the Son of God, chose the blessed Virgin Mary, in whose womb he fashioned himself man, and with whom by unity of person he became united.")


St Augustine employs the simile (frequently used later) of the thalamus (bridal chamber) for Mary, again with an express implication of the anatomical meaning: "elegit sibi thalamum castum, ubi conjungeretur sponsus sponsae" (Serm., 192) (" He chose for himself the chaste bridal chamber, where as spouse he could be joined to spouse"), and "process it de thalamo suo, id est, de utero virginali" (Serm., 124) (" He issued forth out of the bridal chamber, i.e. from the virginal womb").

The interpretation of vas as uterus may accordingly be taken as certain, when parallel with the just quoted passage from St Augustine, we have St Ambrosius saying: "non de terra, sed de coe1o vas sibi hoc, per quod descenderet, elegit, et sacravit templum pudoris" (De Instit. Virg., c. 5) ("Not of earth but of Heaven did He choose this vessel for Himself, through which He should descend and sanctify the temple of shame"). Similarly with the Greek Fathers the designation Image (vessel) is not infrequent. Here, too, the derivation from the erotic allegory of The Song of Songs is not improbable, for, although the designation vas does not appear in the Vulgate text, we come upon the image of the goblet and of drinking: "Umbilicus tuus crater tornatilis nunquam indigens poculis. Venter tuus sicut acervus tritici, vallatus liliis."

("Thy navel is like a round goblet,
Wherein no mingled wine is wanting:
Thy belly is like an heap of wheat
Set about with lilies," -- Song of Songs, VII, 2)


Parallel with the meaning of the first sentence, we find Mary compared with the cruse of oil of the widow of Sarepta in the Meisterlieder of the Colmar manuscript. (Bartsch, Stuttgart 1862).

"Sarepta in Sydonien lant dar Helyas wart gesant zuo einer witwen diu in solte neren, der glicht min lip wol wirdeclich, do den propheten sant in mich got und uns wolt die tiurunge verkeren," ("Sarepta in the Sidonian land, whither Elias was sent to a widow who should nourish him; my body is meetly compared with hers, for God sent the prophet unto me, to change for us our time of famine.")


Parallel with the second sentence St. Ambrosius says: In quo Virginis utero simul acervus tritici et lilii flores gratia germinabat: quoniam et granum tritici generabat et lilium, etc." ("In the womb of the Virgin grace increased like a heap of wheat and the flowers of the lily, just as it also generated the grain of wheat and the lily"). Very remote passages are enlisted by Catholic authorities (Salzer, Sinnbilder und Beinamen Mariens) in the quest of this vessel-symbolism, as for instance Song of Songs, I, I:

"Osculetur me oscula oris sui: quia meliora sunt ubera tua vino."
"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth:
For thy love is better than wine." (love: lit. breasts)


and even from the book of Exodus X VI, 33: "And Moses said unto Aaron: (Take a pot, and put an omer full of manna therein, and lay it up before the Lord, to be kept for your generations.'"

These artificial associations tell against, rather than for, the Biblical origin of the vessel-symbolism. In favour of the possibility of an extra-Biblical origin, we have the undeniable fact that the medieval hymn to Mary boldly borrows its similes from everywhere, and practically everything that is in any way precious is associated with the Virgin. The fact that the vessel-symbol is certainly very ancient [90] -- it springs from the period of the third and fourth centuries -- does not argue against its worldly origin, since even the Fathers inclined towards extra-Biblical, "heathenish" similes; as for instance Tertullian [91], St. Augustine [92], and others, who compared the Virgin with the earth still undefiled and the un ploughed field, certainly not without an obvious side glance towards Kore [93] of the mysteries. Such comparisons were moulded upon pagan models just as Cumont has shown in the early medieval ecclesiastical book-illustration in the case of Elijah's ascension into Heaven, which holds closely to an antique Mithraic prototype. In usages innumerable, of which not the least is the translation of Christ's birth to the 'natalis solis invicti' (birthday of the invincible sun). the Church followed the pagan model. Thus St. Hieronymus compares the Virgin with the sun as the mother of light.

These designations of an extra-Biblical nature can have had their source only in the pagan conceptions still current at that time. It is therefore only just, when considering the vessel-symbol, to call to mind the well-known and widely spread Gnostic vessel-symbolism of that time. A great number of contemporary gems have been preserved which bear the symbol of a vessel, or cruse, with remarkable winged bands, at once recalling the uterus with the ligamenta lata. This vessel, according to Matter, is termed the "Vase of Sin", in contrast with the hymn to Mary, in which the Virgin is extolled as 'vas virtutum '. King (The Gnostics and their Remains, p. 111) rejects such an idea as arbitrary, and agrees with Kohler's view that the cameo-image (principally Egyptian) refers to the pitcher of the Persian wheel, which pumps the Nile water over the fields, and that this also explains the peculiar bands which clearly served for fastening the pitcher to the wheel.

The fertilizing activity of the pitcher was, as King notes, expressed in antique phraseology as the "impregnation of Isis by the seed of Osiris". One frequently finds upon the vessel a winnowing-basket, probably with reference to the" mystica vannus Jacchi" (" the mystical winnowing basket of Iakchos"), or Image , the figurative birth-place of the grain of wheat and symbol of the god of fertility (Cf. Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious, p. 374). There used to be a Greek marriage-ceremony in which a winnowing-basket filled with fruit was laid upon the head of the bride, a manifest fertility charm.

This conception approaches the ancient Egyptian idea that everything originated from the primeval water, Nu or Nut, which is identified either with the Nile or the Ocean. Nu is written with three pots, three water marks, and the sign of heaven. In a hymn to Ptah-Tenen we find: "Maker of grain, which cometh forth from Him in His name Nu the Aged, who maketh the water appear on the mountains, to give life unto man and woman." [94] Sir Wallis Budge drew my attention to the fact that the uterus symbolism also exists to-day in the Southern Egyptian hinterland in the form of rain and fertility charms. Occasionally it still happens that the natives in the bush kill a woman and take out her uterus, in order to make use of this organ in magical rites. (Cf. P. Amaury Talbot, "In the Shadow of the Bush", pp. 67, 74 ff.)

When one bears in mind how powerfully the Fathers of the Church were influenced by Gnostic ideas, in spite of the strongest resistance to such heresies, it is not unthinkable that in this very symbolism of the vessel a pagan relic which proved adaptable to Christianity should have crept in; all the more easily, in fact, since the Virgin worship is itself a vestige of paganism, by which the Christian Church secured the entail of the Magna Mater, Isis, and others. The image of the Vas sapientiae also recalls a Gnostic prototype, viz. Sophia, an immensely significant symbol for the Gnosis.

I have lingered rather longer upon the vessel symbolism than my readers might have expected. I have done this, however, for a definite reason, because, to my mind, this legend of the Grail, so essentially characteristic of the early Middle Ages, contains considerable psychological enlightenment in its relation to the service of woman.

The central religious idea of this infinitely varied legendary material is the holy vessel, which, as everyone must see, is a thoroughly non-Christian image, whose origin is to be sought in other than canonical sources. On the strength of the foregoing arguments, I believe it to be a genuine piece of the Gnosis, which either survived the rooting out of heresies by means of secret tradition, or owed its resurrection to an unconscious reaction against the dominion of official Christianity. The survival, or unconscious revivification, of the vessel-symbol indicates a strengthening of the feminine principle in the masculine psychology of that time. This symbolization by means of a mysterious image must be interpreted as a spiritualizing of the erotic motive evoked by the service of woman. But spiritual transformation always means the holding back of a sum of libido, which would otherwise be immediately squandered in sexuality. Experience shows that, when a sum of libido is thus retained, one part of it flows into the spiritualized expression~ while the remainder sinks into the unconscious, where it effects a certain activation of corresponding images of which this vessel symbolism is the expression. The symbol lives through the holding back of certain libido forms, and then in its turn becomes an effective control of these libido tendencies.

The dissolution of the symbol is synonymous with a dispersal of libido along the immediate path, or at least with an almost irresistible urge towards direct application. But the living symbol exorcises this peril. A symbol loses its magical, or, if one prefers it, its redeeming power, as soon as its dissolubility is recognised. An effective symbol, therefore, must have a nature that is unimpeachable. It must be the best possible expression of the existing world-philosophy, a container of meaning which cannot be surpassed; its form must also be sufficiently remote from comprehension as to frustrate every attempt of the critical intellect to give any satisfactory account of it; and, finally, its aesthetic appearance must have such a convincing appeal to feeling that no sort of argument can be raised against it on that score.

For a certain period the Grail symbol clearly fulfilled these demands, and to this circumstance its living efficacy was due, which, as the example of Wagner shows, is even to-day not exhausted, although our age and our psychology are urgent for its solution.

Official Christianity, therefore, absorbed certain Gnostic elements which were manifesting themselves in the psychology of the service of woman, and found a place for them in an intensified worship of Mary. From an abundance of equally interesting material I have selected the Lorettian Litany as a familiar example of this assimilation process. This assimilation into the general Christian symbol dealt a death-blow to the service of woman, which was really a swelling bud in the process of soul-culture for man. His soul, which expressed itself in the image of the chosen mistress, lost its individual expression in this translation into the general symbol. Consequently the possibility of an individual differentiation was also lost; it was inevitably repressed by the collective expression. Such deprivations always tend to have bad results, and in this case they soon became apparent. For, in so far as the soul relation to woman was expressed in the collective Virgin worship, the image of woman lost a value to which human nature has a certain natural claim. This value, for which only individual choice can provide a natural expression, relapses into the unconscious when the individual is replaced by a collective expression. In the unconscious the image of woman now receives an energic value which in its turn activates certain infantile archaic dominants [95].

The relative depreciation of the real woman is thus compensated by daemonic impulses, since all unconscious contents, in so far as they are activated by split off sums of libido, appear projected upon the object. In a certain sense man loves woman less as a result of this relative depreciation -- hence she appears as a persecutor, i.e. a witch. Thus the delusion about witches, that ineradicable blot upon the Later Middle Ages, developed along with, and indeed as a result of, the intensified worship of the Virgin. But this was not the only consequence.

Through the splitting-off and repression of an important progressive tendency a certain general activation of the unconscious came about. This activation could find no satisfying outlet in the general Christian symbol, since adequate expression at once demands individual forms of expression. Thus the way was paved for heresies and schisms, against which a conscious Christian orientation must fanatically defend itself. The frenzy of the Inquisition was the product of over-compensated doubt which came crowding up from the unconscious, and its final result was one of the greatest schisms of the Church, viz. the Reformation.

From this rather lengthy discussion the following insight is gained. We set out from that vision of Hermas in which he was shown how a tower was to be built. The old woman, who had at first been interpreted as the Church, now explains that the tower is the symbol of the Church; whereby her significance is transferred to the tower, with which the further text of the Poimen is wholly taken up. Henceforth his principal concern is with the tower, no longer with the old woman, and least of all with the real Rhoda. The detachment of the libido from the real object, its translation into the symbol and conversion into a symbolic function, is thus completed. Henceforth the idea of a universal and undivided Church, expressed in the symbol of a jointless and immovable tower, becomes an unshakable reality in the mind of Hermas.

There is a displacement of libido away from the object into the subject, whereby the unconscious images are activated. These images are archaic forms of expression, which become symbols, and appear in their turn as equivalents for relatively depreciated objects.

This process is in any case as old as mankind; symbols appear among the relics of prehistoric man, just as they abound among the lowest living types of to-day. Clearly, therefore, a biological function of supreme importance must also be concerned in this symbol-forming process. Since the symbol can come to life only at the expense of a relative depreciation of the object, it follows that its purpose is also concerned with object depreciation. If the object had an unconditional value, it would also be absolutely determining for the subject, thereby entirely prohibiting all subjective freedom of action, since even a relative freedom could no longer exist in the presence of unconditional determination by the object. The condition of absolute relatedness to the object is synonymous with a complete externalization of the process of consciousness, i.e. with an identification of subject and object, whereby every possibility of cognition is destroyed. In attenuated form this condition still exists to-day among the primitives. The so-called projections that are familiar enough in our analytical practice are also mere residua of this original identity of subject and object.

The prohibition and exclusion of all cognition and conscious experience which results from such a state means a considerable sacrifice of the power of adaptation, and this weights the scales heavily against man, who is already handicapped by his natural defencelessness and by a progeny which for many years has a relative inferiority to that of other animals. But the cognitionless state also means a dangerous inferiority, from the standpoint of affectivity, because an identity of feeling with the object possesses the following disadvantages. Firstly, any object whatsoever can affect the subject to any degree, and, secondly, any sort of affect on the part of the subject also immediately compromises and violates the object. An episode from the life of a bushman may illustrate what I mean: A bushman had a little son, upon whom he lavished the characteristic doting fondness of the primitives. It is obvious that, psychologically, such a love is wholly autoerotic, i.e. the subject loves himself in the object. In a sense the object serves as an erotic mirror. One day the bushman came home in a rage: he had been fishing, and had caught nothing. As usual the little fellow ran eagerly to meet him. But the father seized him and wrung his neck upon the spot. Subsequently, of course, he mourned for the dead boy with the same abandon and lack of comprehension as had before made him strangle him.

This case is a good example of the identity of the object with the affect of the moment. Clearly such a mentality is a very serious hindrance to every protective organization of the tribe. From the standpoint of the propagation and extension of the species, it is an unfavourable factor; hence in a species with strong vitality it must be repressed and transformed. This is the purpose the symbol serves, and for this end it came into being, since it withdraws a certain sum of libido from the object, which is thereby relatively depreciated, bestowing the libido surplus upon the subject. But this surplus operates within the unconscious of the subject, who now finds himself between an inner and an outer determinant, whence arises the possibility of choice and a relative subjective freedom.

The symbol is always derived from archaic residues, or imprints engraven in the very stem of the race, about whose age and origin one can speculate much although nothing definite can be determined. It would certainly be quite wrong to look to personal sources for the source of the symbol, as for instance repressed sexuality. At best, such a repression could only furnish the libido-sum which activates the archaic imprint. The imprint (engram) corresponds with a functional inheritance whose existence is not contingent upon ordinary sexual repression but proceeds from instinct differentiation in general. Differentiation of instinct is an essential biological measure; it is not something peculiar to the human species, for it finds an even more drastic manifestation in the sexual deprivation of the working bee.

In the foregoing instances of the vessel-symbol, I have demonstrated the source of the symbol in archaic ideas. Since we find the primitive notion of the uterus at the root of this symbol, a similar origin might be surmised in connection with the tower symbol. The tower may well belong to that category of symbols, fundamentally phallic, in which the history of symbols is so rich. It is hardly to be wondered at that the moment which reveals to Hermas the alluring couch, thus demanding the repression of the erotic phantasy, should also evoke a phallic symbol, which presumably corresponds with erection. We saw that other symbolic attributes of the Virgin Church have also an undoubted erotic origin, already confirmed as such by their derivation from The Song of Songs, and moreover expressly so interpreted by the Fathers. The tower symbol of the Lorettian Litany springs from the same source and may, therefore, have a similar root-meaning. The attribute "ivory" given to the tower is doubtless of an erotic nature, since it. refers to the tint and texture of skin (Song of Songs, 5, 14: "His belly is as bright ivory"). But the tower itself is also found in an unmistakably erotic connection in The Song of Songs, 8, 10: "I am a wall, and my breasts like towers", which surely refers to the prominence of the breasts with their full and elastic consistency, as in the similar passage: "His legs are as pillars of marble" (5, I 5). In further unison we find: "Thy neck is as a tower of ivory", and "Thy nose is as the tower of Lebanon" (7, 5), an obvious allusion to something slender and projecting. These attributes originate in tactile and organic sensations, which are transferred into the object. just as a gloomy mood seems gray, and a joyous one bright and coloured, the sense of touch is likewise under the influence of subjective sexual sensations (in this case the sensation of erection), whose quality is transferred to the object. The erotic psychology of The Song of Songs effects an enhancement of value in the object by directing upon it the images awakened in the subject. Ecclesiastical psychology employs these same images in order to pilot the libido upon the figurative object, while the psychology of Hermas raised the unconsciously awakened image to an aim in itself wherein to embody ideas which held a supreme importance for the mentality of that time, namely the consolidation and organization of the newly won Christian attitude and view of life.
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Re: PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES by C. G. Jung

Postby admin » Tue Oct 06, 2015 9:56 pm

Part 5 of 6

(b) The Relativity of the Idea of God in Meister Eekehart

The process which Hermas passed through, represents on a small scale what took place in early medieval psychology, namely, a new revelation of woman and the flowering of the feminine Grail symbol. Hermas saw Rhoda in a new light, while the sum of libido thereby released became unconsciously transformed into the accomplishments of the social task of his time.

It is, I think, characteristic of our psychology that the present epoch was, as it were, ushered in by two minds who were destined to have immense influence upon the hearts and minds of the younger generation: Wagner, the advocate of love, who in his music sounds the whole scale of feeling from Tristan down to incestuous passion, and from Tristan up to the loftiest spirituality of the Grail, and Nietzsche, the advocate of power and of the victorious will of the individuality. In his last and loftiest utterance Wagner took hold of the Grail legend, as Goethe selected Dante, while Nietzsche chose the image of a lordly caste and a lordly morality, an image which had found its embodiment in many a fair-haired heroic and knightly figure of the Middle Ages. Wagner breaks the bonds that stifle love, while Nietzsche shatters the "tables of value" that cramp the individuality. They both strive after similar goals, while at the same time creating irremediable discord, for, where love is, individual power can never prevail, while the dominating power of the individual precludes the reign of love.

The fact that three of the greatest of German minds should fasten upon early medieval psychology in their most important works, is, in my view, proof enough that there is still an unanswered problem surviving from that age.

It may be well, therefore, to try and gain a nearer view of this question. For I have a strong impression that the mysterious something which sprang to life in certain knightly orders of that time (the Templars far instance), and which seems to have found its expression in the legend of the Grail, may possibly contain a shoot or bud of a new orientation to life, in other words a new symbol. The non-Christian or Gnostic character of the Grail symbol takes us back to those Early Christian heresies, those almost grandiose foundations, which conceal so great an abundance of daring and brilliant ideas. Now the Gnosis displays unconscious psychology in full flower, perhaps in almost perverse luxuriance; it reveals, therefore, that very element which mast stoutly resists the 'regula fidei', that Promethean and creative spirit which will submit only to the soul and to no collective ruling. Although in a crude form, we find in the Gnosis that belief in the power of individual revelation and of individual discernment which was absent in the later centuries. This belief had its source in that proud feeling of individual relationship with God which is subject to no human statute, and which may even constrain the gods by the sheer might of understanding. Within the Gnosis lay the beginning of that way which led to the intuitions of German mysticism (with their immense psychological significance) which was actually in its flower .at the time of which we are speaking.

The focusing of the question now before us immediately brings to our mind the greatest thinker of that time, Meister Eckehart. [96] Just as signs of a new orientation became perceptible in chivalry, so in Eckehart new thoughts confront us; thoughts belonging to that same psychic orientation which prompted Dante to follow the image of Beatrice into the underworld of the unconscious, and which inspired the singers who sang the rune of the Grail.

Nothing is known, unfortunately, of Eckehart's personal life which could shed light upon the way which led him to his knowledge of the soul. But it is with a sense of deep contemplation that he observes in his discourse upon repentance: "ouch noch erfraget man selten, daz die liute koment ze grozen dingen, sie sien zu dem ersten etwaz vertreten". ("And still to-day one findeth rarely, that people come to great things without they first go somewhat astray.") This permits us to conclude that he wrote from personal experience. Strangely appealing is Eckehart's feeling of the inner relation with God, when contrasted with the Christian feeling of sinfulness. We feel ourselves transported into the atmosphere of the Upanishads. A quite extraordinary enhancement of the soul's value must have taken place in Eckehart, i.e. a magnified sense of his own inner being, that enabled him to rise to a, so to speak, purely psychological, hence relative, conception of God and of His relation with man.

The discovery and circumstantial formulation of the relativity of God to man and his soul, is, in my view, one of the most important steps upon the way to a psychological understanding of the religious phenomenon; it is the dawning possibility of a liberation of the religious function from the stifling limitations of intellectual criticism, though this criticism has, of course, an equal right to existence.

We now come to the real task of this chapter, namely the discussion of the relativity of the symbol. To my mind the relativity of God denotes a point of view which ceases to regard God as an "absolute", i.e. removed from the human subject and existing outside all human conditions, but as, in a certain sense, dependent upon the human subject; it also involves the existence of a reciprocal and indispensable relation between man and God, whereby man is not merely regarded as a function of God, but God also becomes a psychological function of man.

To our analytical psychology, which from the human standpoint must be regarded as an empirical science, the image of God is the symbolic expression of a certain psychological state, or function, which has the character of absolute superiority to the conscious will of the subject; hence it can enforce or bring about a standard of accomplishment that would be unattainable to conscious effort. This overwhelming impulse -- in so far as the divine function is manifested in action -- or this inspiration that transcends all conscious understanding, proceeds from a heaping-up of energy in the unconscious. This libido accumulation animates images which the collective unconscious contains as latent possibilities. Here is the source of the God-imago, that imprint which from the beginning of time has been the collective expression of the most powerful and absolute operation of unconscious libido-concentration upon consciousness.

Hence, for our psychology, which as a science must confine itself to the empirical within the limits set by our cognition, God is not even relative, but a function of the unconscious, namely the manifestation of a split-off sum of libido, which has activated the God-imago. To the orthodox view God is, of course, absolute, i.e. existing in Himself. Such a conception implies a complete severance from the ui1conscious, which means, psychologically, a complete unawareness of the fact that the divine effect springs from one's own inner self. But the standpoint of the relativity of God signifies that a not inconsiderable part of the unconscious processes is discerned, at least by inference, as a psychological content. Such an insight, of course, can only take place when the soul is granted a more than ordinary attention, when in fact the unconscious contents are withdrawn from their projections into objects, and a certain awareness is granted them (the contents), so that they now appear as belonging to and conditioned by the subject. This was the case with the mystics. Not that this was the first appearance of the idea of the relativity of God in general, for there exists both naturally and fundamentally a relativity of God among the primitives. Almost universally on the lower human levels the idea of God has a purely dynamic character, i.e. God is a Divine force, related to health, to the soul, to medicine, to riches, to the chief -- a force which certain procedures can procure, and turn to the making of things essential to the life and health of man, as also upon occasion to the production of magical and malevolent effects. The primitive feels this force as much outside him as within, i.e. it is just as much his own life-force as it is the "medicine" in his amulet, or the influence emanating from his chief. This is the first demonstrable conception of a permeating and imbuing spiritual force. Psychologically, the power of the fetich, or the prestige of the medicine-man, is an unconscious subjective evaluation of these objects. Fundamentally, therefore, it is a question of the libido, which is present in the subject's unconscious and is perceived in the object, because whenever unconscious contents are activated they appear projected. The relativity of God of medieval mysticism is, therefore, a harking-back to a primitive condition. Whereas the kindred Eastern conceptions of the individual and supra-individual Atman are not so much a regression to the primitive as a constantly unfolding development away from the primitive, in harmony with the Eastern way, though still retaining principles already clearly present and effective among the primitives. This harking-back to the primitive is not at all surprising, in view of the fact that every vital form of religion, either in its ceremonials or its ethics, embodies one or more primitive tendency, whence indeed proceed those mysterious instinctive forces which promote the perfecting of human nature in the religious process. [97] This recourse to, or interrupted connection with, the primitive (as in the Indian) means a contact with mother-Earth, the original source of all power. Every point-of-view which is differentiated to rational or ethical standards must sense these instinctive forces as 'impure'. But life itself flows from clear and muddy springs. Hence every too great 'purity' also lacks vitality. Every renewal of life emerges through the muddy towards the clear. A constant effort towards clarity and differentiation involves a proportionate lack of vital intensity, because of the very exclusion of muddy elements. The process of development needs the muddy as well as the clear. This was clearly perceived by the great relativist Meister Eckehart when he says:

"Dar umbe lidet got gerne den schaden der sunden unde hat dicke gelitten und aller dickest verhenget uber die menschen, die er hat versehen, daz er sie ze grozen dingen ziehen welle. Nim war! Wer was unserm herren ie lieber unde heimlicher denne die aposteln waren? Der beleip nie keiner, er viele in totsunden, alle waren sie totsunder gewesen. Daz hat er in der alten unde niuwen e dicke bewiset von den, die ime verre die liebsten darnach males wurden, und ouch noch erfraget man selten, daz die liute koment ze grozen dingen, sie sien ze dem ersten etwaz vertreten." ("Therefore suffereth God willingly the mischief of sins and much hath He suffered; moreover, those hath he burdened most whom he chose to lead to great things. Behold! who were more near and dear to our Lord than the apostles? None there was who fell not into deadly sins; all were mortal sinners. This hath he shown in the old and new covenants (which he made) with those who afterwards he loved the most; and still to-day one rarely findeth people coming to great things who first go not somewhat astray.")

-- Pfeiffer, Deutsche Mystiker, vol. ii


Both on account of his psychological penetration and of his religious feeling and thought, Meister Eckehart is the most brilliant representative of that critical movement in the Church at the close of the thirteenth century. I would like therefore to cite a few of his sayings, which throw light upon his relativistic conception of God [98]:

(1) "For man is truly God, and God truly man"

(2) "Whereas who holdeth not God as such an inner possession, but with every means must fetch Him from without, either in this thing or in that, where he seeketh Him insufficiently, with every manner of deeds, people or places; verily such a man hath Him not, and easily something cometh to trouble him. And it is not only evil company which troubleth him, but also the good, not only the street, but also the church, not only evil words and deeds, but even the good. For the hinderance lieth within himself: in him God hath not yet become the world. Were He that to him, then would he feel at ease in all places, and secure with all people, always possessing God." [99]


This passage is of especial psychological interest, for it shows a trait of the primitive idea of God which we sketched above. "With every means fetching God from without" is synonymous with the primitive view that the tondi [100] is to be procured from without. With Eckehart, of course, it may be merely a figure of speech, through which the original meaning still glimmers. In' any case Eckehart clearly understands God as a psychological value. This is proved by the following sentence: "Who fetcheth God from without, troubled is he by objects." For, when God is without, He is necessarily projected into the object, whereby the object acquires an excessive valuation. But whenever this is the case, the object also gains a supreme influence over the subject, holding him in a certain slavish dependence. Eckehart is evidently referring to this fsmiliar subjection to the object, which makes the world 'appear in the role of God, i.e. as an absolutely determining factor. Hence for such a one "God has not yet become the world", says Eckehart, since for him the world has taken the place of God. Such a man has not succeeded in detaching and introverting the surplus value from the object, thus converting it into an inner possession. Were he to possess it in himself he would have God (this same value) continually as object or world, whereby God would become the world. In the same portion Eckehart says: "Whosoever is right in his feeling findeth things fitting in all places and with all people, whereas he that is wrong findeth nothing right wherever or with whom he may be. For a man of right feeling hath God with him." A man who has this value in himself is everywhere well-disposed; he is not dependent upon objects, i.e. he is not for ever needing and hoping from the object, what he himself lacks.

It should be sufficiently evident from these considerations that, for Eckehart, God is a psychological, or more accurately a psycho-dynamic, state.

(3) "Again must ye understand the soul as the Kingdom of God. For the soul is of like nature with Divinity. All that was here spoken of God's Kingdom, so far as God Himself is this Kingdom, may be truly said in like manner of the soul. All things came to pass through Him, saith St. John. This must be understood of the soul, since the soul is the All. Such it is, as an image of God. But as such is it also the Kingdom of God. So deeply, saith one master, is God in the soul, that His whole Divine nature resteth upon it. That God is in the soul is an higher estate than that the soul is in God: when the soul is in God, it is not blessed therein, but blessed indeed is the soul which God inhabits. Of this be ye certain: God is Himself blessed in the soul!"


The soul, that ambiguous and variously-interpreted concept, corresponds historically with a psychological content to which a certain independence must belong within the limits of consciousness. For, if this were not the case, man would never have arrived at the notion of ascribing an independent nature to the soul, as though it were an objectively discernible thing. Like every autonomous complex, it must be a content to which spontaneity, and hence a partial unconsciousness, necessarily belongs. The primitive, as we know, usually possesses several souls, i.e. several autonomous complexes with a considerable degree of independence, which gives them the appearance of having a separate existence (as in certain mental disorders.) Ascending to the higher human levels, we find the number of souls decreasing, until the highest level of culture shows us the soul quite dispersed in the consciousness of all psychic activities, and only granted a further existence as a term for the totality of psychic processes. This absorption of the soul into consciousness is just as much a characteristic of Eastern as it is of Western culture. In Buddhism everything is dissolved into consciousness; even the Samskaras, the unconscious constructive forces, must be possessed and transformed through religious self-development. To this quite universal historic development of the soul-concept the view of analytical psychology stands definitely opposed, since the analytical idea of the soul does not coincide with the totality of the psychic functions. On the one hand, we define the soul as the relation to the unconscious; while, on the other, it is a personification of unconscious contents. From the standpoint of culture, it may seem deplorable that personifications of unconscious contents still exist, just as an educated and differentiated consciousness might well lament the existence of contents that are still unconscious. Since, however, analytical psychology is concerned with man as he is, and not with the hypothetical man which certain views would like to make him, we have to admit that those same phenomena which persuade the primitive to speak of 'souls', are in fact constantly happening, just as there are still innumerable people among civilized European nations who believe in ghosts. In spite of our carefully wrought theory affirming the 'unity of the self', according to which autonomous complexes cannot exist, Nature does not appear in the least concerned about such intelligent notions.

If we regard the 'soul' as a personification of unconscious contents, so God, according to our previous definition, is also an unconscious content -- a personification, in so far as He is personally conceived, an image or expression, when regarded as purely or chiefly dynamic. God, therefore, is essentially the same as the soul, in so far as it is regarded as the personification of unconscious contents. Hence Meister Eckehart's conception is purely psychological. So long as the soul, as he says, is only in God, it is not blessed. If by 'blessedness' one understands an especially intense and harmonious vital condition, such a state, according to Eckehart, cannot exist, so long as the dynamis which is termed God, i.e. the libido, is concealed in objects. For, as long as the chief value or God (after Eckehart) does not reside in the soul, power is without, and therefore in objects. God, i.e. the chief value, must be withdrawn from objects and brought into the soul, which signifies a 'higher estate' and for God 'blessedness'. Psychologically, this means: that the libido appertaining to God, i.e. the projected, over-value, becomes recognized as projection; [101] through such recognition objects fade in significance, whereby the surplus value is accredited to the individuality, giving rise to an intensified vital feeling, i.e. a new potential. God, i.e. the highest intensity of life, then resides in the soul, in the unconscious. But this does not mean that God becomes completely unconscious, in the sense that the idea of Him also vanishes from consciousness. It is as though the chief value were shifted elsewhere, so that it is now found within and not without. Objects are no longer autonomous factors, but God has become an autonomous psychological complex. But an autonomous complex is always only partially conscious, since it is only conditionally associated with the ego, i.e. never to such an extent that the ego could wholly embrace it, in which case it would no longer be autonomous. From this moment the over-valued object is no longer the determining factor, but the unconscious. The determining influences now proceed from the unconscious, i.e. one feels and knows them as coming from the unconscious, a knowledge which produces a "unity of being" (Eckehart), i.e. a relation between conscious and unconscious, in which of course the unconscious predominates.

We should now ask ourselves, whence comes this "blessedness" or wonder of love [102]? (ananda, as the Indians call the state of Brahman). In this State the superior value lies in the unconscious, involving a fall of potential in the conscious, which means to say that the unconscious appears as the determining factor, while the self of the reality-consciousness practically disappears. This state is strongly reminiscent of the state of the child on the one hand, and of the primitive on the other, who likewise is immensely under the influence of the unconscious. One might conclusively say that the restoration of the earlier paradisiacal state is the cause of this blessedness. But we have still to understand why this original state is so peculiarly blissful. The feeling of bliss accompanies all those moments which have the character of flowing life, moments, therefore, or states, when what was dammed up can freely flow, when we have longer to satisfy this or that condition or seek around with conscious effort in order to find a way or effect a result. We have all known situations or moods 'when it goes of itself', when there is no longer any need to manufacture all sorts of wearisome conditions by which joy or pleasure might be stimulated.

The age of childhood is the unforgettable token of this joy, which, undismayed by things without, streams all-embracing from within. 'Childlikeness' is therefore a symbol for the unique inner condition which accompanies blessedness. To be 'like unto a child' means to possess a treasury of constantly accessible libido. The libido of the child flows into things; in this way he gains the world, then by degrees loses himself in the world (to use the language of religion) through a gradual overvaluation of things. Whence arises the dependence upon things, entailing the necessity of sacrifice, i.e. the drawing away of libido, the severance of ties. This is the way by which the intuitive doctrine of the religious system attempts to re-assemble the wasted energy; indeed, this harvesting-process is actually represented in its symbols. The overvaluation of the object, as contrasted with "the inferiority of the subject, results in a retrogressive current which would bring the libido quite naturally back to the subject, were it not for the obstructing power of consciousness.

Everywhere with the primitives we find religious practice harmonizing with Nature, since the primitive is able to follow his instinct without difficulty, first in one direction and then in another. The practice of religion enables him to recreate the needful magic force, or to recover the soul that was lost during the night.

The objective of the great religions is contained in the injunction 'not of this world', which suggests the inward subjective movement of the libido into the unconscious. The general withdrawing' and introversion of the libido creates an unconscious libido-concentration, which is symbolized as a 'treasure', as in the Parables of the "costly pearl" and the "treasure in the field". Eckehart also uses the latter allegory, which he interprets in the following way: "The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a treasure which is hid in a field, saith Christ. This field is the soul -- wherein the treasure of the Kingdom of God lieth hidden. In the soul, therefore, are God and all creatures blessed." [103] This interpretation agrees with our psychological principles. The soul is the personification of the unconscious, where lies the treasure, i.e. the libido which is submerged or absorbed in introversion. It is this sum of libido which is described as ' the Kingdom of God'. This signifies a constant unity or reconciliation with God, a living in His Kingdom, i.e. in that state in which a paramount libido accumulation lies in the unconscious, by which the conscious life is determined. The libido concentrated in the unconscious comes from. objects, from the world, whose former ascendancy it conditioned. God was then 'without', whereas now He works from 'within', as that hidden treasure which is conceived as 'God's Kingdom'. This clearly contains the idea that the libido assembled in the soul represents a relation to God (God's Kingdom). Now when Meister Eckehart reaches the conclusion that the soul is itself the Kingdom of God, he conceives it as a relation to God, and God as the power working within the soul and perceived by it. Eckehart even calls the soul the image of God. Ethnological and historical ways of regarding the soul make it abundantly evident that it represents a content which belongs partly to the subject, but partly also to the world of spirits, i.e. to the unconscious. Hence the soul has always an earthly as well as a rather ghostly quality. It is the same with the magic power, the divine force of the primitives, whereas the point of view of the higher cultural levels definitely severs God from man, finally exalting Him to the heights of pure ideality. But the soul never forgoes its middle station. Hence its claim to be regarded as a function between the conscious subject and these (to the subject) inaccessible depths of the unconscious. The determining force (God) which operates from these depths is reflected by the soul, i.e. it creates symbols and images, and is itself only an image. Through these images it transveys the forces of the unconscious into the conscious; so that it is both receiver and transmitter, a perceptive organ, in fact, for unconscious contents. What it perceives are symbols. But symbols are shaped energies, or forces, i.e. determining ideas whose spiritual value is just as great as their affective power. As Eckehart says, when the soul is in God, it is not yet blessed, i.e. when this function of perception is entirely flooded by the dynamis, it is by no means a happy state. But when God is in the soul, i.e. when the soul, as perception, comprehends the unconscious and takes on the imaged form or symbol of it, this is a truly happy state. We perceive and realize that the happy state is a creative state.

(4) Meister Eckehart utters these noble words:

"If one asketh me 'Wherefore do we pray, wherefore fast wherefore do we perform all manner of good works, wherefore are we baptized, wherefore did God become Man?', I would answer 'For that God might be born in the soul and the soul again in God. Therefore is the Holy Script written. Therefore hath God created the whole world, that God might be born in the soul and the soul again in God. The innermost nature of all corn meaneth wheat, and of all metal, gold, and of all birth, man!'"


Here Eckehart frankly affirms that God's existence is dependent upon the soul, and, in the same breath, that the soul is the birthplace of God. This latter sentence can readily be understood in the light of our previous reflections. The function of perception (the soul) apprehends the contents of the unconscious, and as a creative function brings the dynamis to birth in symbolic form [104]. In the psychological sense the soul brings to birth images which the general rational consciousness assumes to be worthless. Such images are certainly worthless, in the sense that they cannot immediately be turned to account in the objective world. The artistic is the foremost possibility for their application, in so far as such a means of expression lies in one's power [105]; a second possibility is philosophical speculation [106]; a third is the quasi-religious, which leads to heresies and the founding of sects; there remains the fourth possibility of employing the forces contained in the images in every form of licentiousness.

The two latter forms were manifested in an especially marked form in the Encratitic (abstinent, ascetic) and the Antitactic (anarchical) schools of the Gnostics. As regards reality-adaptation, there is, however, a certain indirect value in raising these images to consciousness, since the relation to the real world is thereby cleared of an admixture of phantasy. But the images possess their chief value in assuring subjective happiness and wellbeing, irrespective of the changing aspects of outer conditions. To be adapted is certainly an ideal. Yet adaptation is not always possible; there are situations in which the only correct adaptation is patient endurance. A passive adaptation of this kind is made possible and easy through a development of the phantasy-images. I used the word "development", because at first the phantasies are merely raw material of doubtful value. In order to reach that form which is likely to yield the maximum value, they must be submitted to treatment. This treatment is a matter of technique, which it is hardly appropriate to discuss here. For the sake of clearness I need only say that there are two possibilities of treatment: (1) the reductive, and (2) the synthetic, method. The former traces everything back to primitive instincts; the latter develops a process from the given material which aims at the differentiation of the personality.

The reductive and synthetic methods are mutually complementary, for reduction to instinct leads to reality, in fact to the overvaluation of reality, and hence to the necessity of sacrifice. The synthetic method develops the symbolic phantasies resulting from the libido which is introverted through sacrifice. Out of this development a new attitude towards the world arises, whose very difference guarantees a new potential. This transition to a new attitude I have termed transcendent function [107]. In the regenerated attitude, the libido that was formerly submerged in the unconscious emerges in the form of positive achievement. It corresponds with a newly-won and visible life, whose image is the symbol of the Divine birth. Conversely, when the libido is withdrawn from the outer object and sinks into the unconscious, the 'soul is born in God'. But because it is, essentially, a negative act as regards daily living, and a symbolic descent to the 'deus absconditus' (concealed God), who possesses very different qualities from the God that shines by day, this is not a happy state (as Eckehart rightly observes) [108].

Eckehart speaks of the Divine birth as of an oft-recurring process. Actually the thing we are dealing with here is a psychological process, which unconsciously repeats itself almost continually, but of which we are only relatively conscious in its most extensive fluctuations. Goethe's idea of systole and diastole certainly hit the mark intuitively. It may have to do with a vital rhythm, or with fluctuations of vital forces, which as a rule take place unconsciously. This may also explain why the existing terminology for this process is either prevailingly religious or mythological, since such expressions or formulae are primarily related to unconscious psychological facts and not -- as scientific myth interpretation often asserts -- to phases of the moon and other planetary events. And because it is pre-eminently a question of unconscious processes, we have, scientifically, the greatest possible difficulty so far to extricate ourselves from the language of metaphor, as at least to attain the level of the figurative speech of other sciences. Veneration for the great natural mysteries, which religious language endeavours to express in symbols consecrated by their antiquity, significance, and beauty, will suffer no injury from the extension of psychology upon this terrain, to which science has hitherto found no access. We only shift the symbols back a little, thus shedding light upon a portion of their realm, but without embracing the error that by so doing we have created anything more than a new symbol for that same enigma which confronted all the ages before us. Our science is also a language of metaphor, but from the practical standpoint it succeeds better than the old mythological hypothesis, which expresses itself by concrete presentations, instead of, as we do, by conceptions.

5. The soul "through its being a creature first made God, so that formerly, until the soul was made something, there was none (God). A little while since I declared 'that God is God, of whom I am a cause.' That God is, He hath from the soul: that He is Godhead, hath He from Himself." (Buttner, vol. i, p. 198)

6. "But God also becometh and passeth away." (Buttner, vol. i, p. 147)

7. "Because all creatures proclaim Him, God becometh. While I still abode in the ground and bottom of the Godhead, in its flood and source, no man questioned me, whither I went or what I did: none was there who could have questioned me. In the moment I flowed forth all creatures proclaimed God. -- And why speak they not of the Godhead? -- All that is in the Godhead, is One, and nothing can one say of it. Only God doeth something; the Godhead doeth nothing, it hath nothing to do, and never hath it looked about for aught to do. God and Godhead are different as doing and doing nothing." ... "When I again come home into God, I make nothing more in myself; so this my breaking-through is much more excellent than my first issue. For I -- the one -- verily raise all creatures out of their own, into my perception, so that in me they also become the One! When I then go back into the ground and bottom of the Godhead, into its flood and source, none asketh me whence do I come, or whither have I been: for none hath missed me ... Which meaneth God passeth away." (Buttner, vol. i, p. 148)


As we see from these citations, Eckehart distinguishes between God and the Godhead; the Godhead is the All; neither knowing nor possessing Itself, whereas God appears as a function of the soul, just as the soul appears as a function of the Godhead. The Godhead is clearly the all-pervading creative power; psychologically, it is the generating. producing instinct, that neither knows nor possesses itself, comparable with Schopenhauer's conception of the will. But God appears as issuing forth from the Godhead and the soul. The soul as creature "expresses" Him. He exists, in so far as the soul is distinguished from the unconscious, and in so far as it perceives the forces and contents of the unconscious; he passes away, as soon as the soul is immersed in the "flood and source" of unconscious energy. Thus Eckehart says in another place:

"As I came forth out of God, all things said 'There is a God!' That cannot now make me blessed, for therewith I conceive myself as creature. But in the breaking-through, when I will to stand free in the will of God, and also free of God's will, and all His works, even of God Himself -- then am I more than all creatures, then am I neither God nor creature: I am, what I was, and what I shall remain, now and evermore! Then do I receive a push which brings me up above all the angels. In this push I am become so rich that God cannot be enough for me, even in all which as God He is, and in all His Divine works: for in this breaking-through I receive what I and God have in common. Then I am what I was, then I neither increase nor diminish, for I am something unmoved which moveth all things. Here God findeth no more place in man, for here hath man conquered again through his poverty what eternally he hath been and ever will remain. Here is God taken into the spirit."

The "coming forth" signifies a becoming aware of the unconscious contents, and of unconscious energy in the form of an idea born of the soul. This is an act of conscious discrimination from the unconscious dynamis, a severance of the ego as subject, from God (i.e. the unconscious dynamis) as object. In this way God "becometh". When, through the "breaking-through", i.e. through a "cutting off" of the ego from the world, and through an identification of the ego with the motivating dynamis of the unconscious, this severance is once more resolved, God disappears as object and becomes the subject which is no longer distinguished from the ego, i.e. the ego as a relatively late product of differentiation, becomes once more united with the mystic, dynamic, universal participation ("participation mystique" of the primitives). This is the immersion in the "flood and source". The numerous analogies with the ideas of the East are at once evident. Writers more competent than myself have already fully elaborated them. But in the absence of direct influence this parallelism proves that Eckehart thinks from the depth of the collective psyche which is common to East and West. This common basis, for which no common historical background can be made answerable, is the primordial foundation of primitive mentality, with its primitive energic notion of God, in which the impelling dynamis has not yet crystallized into the abstract idea of God.

This harking-back to primeval nature, this religiously organized regression to psychic conditions of early times, is common to all religions which are in the deepest sense living; commencing with the identification backward of the totem ceremonies of the Australian negro [109], continuing down to the ecstasies of the Christian mystics of our own age and civilization. This retrogressive process reestablishes an original state or attitude, viz. the improbability of the identity. with God, and, by virtue of this improbability, which has nevertheless become a supremely important experience, a new potential is produced -- the world is created anew, because the individual's attitude to the object has been regenerated.

When speaking of the relativity of the symbol of God, it is a duty of the historical conscience also to mention that solitary poet who, as a tragic fate willed it, could find no relation to his own vision: Angelus Silesius [110]. What Meister Eckehart laboured to express with great effort of mind, and often in hardly intelligible language, Silesius sings in brief, touching, intimate verses, which reveal in their naive simplicity the same relativity of God that Meister Eckehart had already conceived. The few verses I quote will speak for themselves:

I know that without me
God can no moment live;
Were I to die, then He
No longer could survive.

God cannot without me
A single worm create;
Did I not share with Him
Destruction were its fate.

I am as great as God,
And He is small like me;
He cannot be above,
Nor I below Him be.

In me is God a fire
And I in Him its glow;
In common is our life,
Apart we cannot grow.

God loves me more than Self
My love doth give His weight,
Whate'er He gives to me
I must reciprocate.

He's God and man to me,
To Him I'm both indeed;
His thirst I satisfy,
He helps me in my need.

This God, who feels for us,
Is to us what we will;
And woe to us, if we
Our part do not fulfil.

God is whate'er He is,
I am what I must be;
If you know one, in sooth,
You know both Him and me.

I am not outside God,
Nor leave I Him afar;
I am His grace and light,
And He my guiding star.

I am the vine, which He
Doth plant and cherish most;
The fruit which grows from me
Is God, the Holy Ghost.

I am God's child, His son,
And He too is my child;
We are the two in one,
Both son and father mild.

To illuminate my God
The sunshine I must be;
My beams must radiate
His calm and boundless sea.


It would be ludicrous to assume that such thoughts as these, and those of Meister Eckehart, are nothing but the vain products of conscious speculation. Such thoughts are always significant historical phenomena, the yield of unconscious tides in the collective psyche. Thousands of other nameless ones are behind, standing with similar thoughts and feelings below the threshold of consciousness, ready to open the gates of a new age. In the boldness of these ideas speaks the imperturbable and immovable certainty of the unconscious mind, which will bring about with the finality of a natural law a spiritual transformation and renewal. With the Reformation the current reached the general surface of conscious life. The Reformation in a great measure did away with the Church as the intermediary and dispenser of salvation, and established once again the personal relation with God. This was the culminating point in the objectification of the idea of God, and from this point the concept of God again became increasingly subjective. The logical result of this subjectifying process is a splitting-up into sects, and its most extreme outcome is individualism, representing a new form of 'remoteness', whose immediate danger is submersion in the unconscious dynamis. The cult of the 'blonde beast' springs from this development, besides much else that distinguishes ours from other ages. But, whenever this rechute into instinct takes place, an ever growing resistance against the purely shapeless and chaotic character of sheer dynamis inevitably appears, the unquenchable need for form and law. The soul, which dives into the stream, must also create the symbol, which embraces, maintains, and expresses this energy. It is this process in the collective psyche which is either felt or intuitively sensed by those poets and artists whose chief creative source is the collective unconscious (i.e. perceptions of unconscious contents), and whose intellectual horizon is sufficiently wide to apprehend the main problems of the age, at least in their outer aspects.

Spitteler's Prometheus marks a psychological turning-point: he depicts the falling asunder of the pairs of opposites which were formerly together. Prometheus the artist, the soul-server, disappears from human ken; while human society in obedience to a soul-less moral routine is delivered over to Behemoth, the antagonistic, destructive outcome of an outlived ideal. At the right moment Pandora (the soul) creates the saving jewel in the unconscious, which, however, does not reach mankind because men fail to understand it. The change for the better takes place only through the intervention of the Promethean tendency, which by virtue of its insight and understanding brings first a few, and then many, individuals to their senses. It can hardly be doubted that this work of Spitteler has its roots in the intimate life of its creator. But, if it consisted only in a poetic elaboration of this purely personal experience, it would to a large extent lack general validity and permanence. Yet, because it is not merely personal but is largely concerned with the presentation of the collective problems of our time as personally experienced, it achieves universal validity. Its first appearance was none the less certain to encounter the apathy of contemporaries, for contemporaries are in the great majority only fitted to maintain and appraise the immediate present, thus helping to bring about that same fatal issue whose confusion the divining, creative mind had already sought to unravel.

5. The Nature of the Reconciling Symbol in Spitteler

There still remains an important question to discuss: namely the character of this jewel or symbol of renewed life, which the poet divines as the vessel of joy and deliverance. We have compared a number of excerpts, which substantiate the "Divine" nature of the jewel. We find it more or less clearly stated that the symbol contains possibilities for new energic deliveries, i.e. the release of libido unconsciously bound. The symbol always says: In some such form as this will a new manifestation of life, a deliverance from the bondage and weariness of life, be found. The libido which is freed from the unconscious by means of the symbol is symbolized as a young or rejuvenated God; in Christianity, for instance, Jehovah achieved a transformation into the loving Father, embracing an altogether higher and more spiritual morality. The motif of the God-renewal [111] is universal, and therefore presumably familiar. Referring to the redeeming power of the jewel, Pandora says: "But lo! I have heard of a race of men, full of sorrow and deserving of pity; therefore have I conceived a gift, with which, perchance, an thou grantest my petition, I may soothe and solace their many woes." [112] The leaves of the tree which shelter the birth sing: "For here abideth presence, blessedness and grace." [113]

Love and joy is the message of the "wonderchild", the new symbol; hence a sort of paradisiacal state. This is parallel with the message that heralded the birth of Christ, while the greeting by the Sun-goddess [114] and the miracle, wherein men at remote distances became 'good' and blessed at the moment of the birth, [115] are attributes of the birth of Buddha. Concerning the 'Divine blessing' I wish to emphasize only this one significant passage: "Those images return again to every man, whose rainbow tinted, dream-like fabric once painted his childhood's future" [116]. This is clearly a statement that childhood's phantasies tend to go to fulfilment, i.e. that these images are not lost, but come again in ripe manhood and should be fulfilled. Old Kule in Barlach's Der tote Tag [117] says:

"When I lay o' nights, and the pillows of darkness weigh me down, at times there presses about me a light that resounds, visible to mine eyes and audible to mine ears; and there about my bed stand the lovely forms of a better future. Stiff are they yet, but of radiant beauty, still sleeping -- but he who shall awaken them would make for the world a fairer face. A hero would he be who could do it." "What would those hearts be like which then might beat! Quite other hearts, thrilling so differently from those that beat to-day." -- (Of the images) "They stand not in the sun and nowhere are they lit by the sun. But they shall and must (come) once out of the night. That would be the masterwork, to bring them up into the Sun; there would they live."

Epimetheus also yearns for the image, the jewel; in his speech on the statue of Heracles (the hero!) he says: "This is the meaning of the image, and with the understanding of it our sole achievement shall be, that we seize and experience the opportunity so that a jewel shall ripen above our head, a jewel that we must win." [118] So too when the jewel, declined by Epimetheus, is brought to the priests, these sing in just the same strain as did Epimetheus in his former craving for the jewel: "Oh come, oh God with Thy grace", only to repudiate and revile in the very next instant the heavenly jewel that is offered them. The beginning of the hymn sung by the priests is not difficult to recognize as the Protestant hymn:

"Living Spirit once again
Come Thou true eternal God!
Nor Thy power descend in vain,
Make us ever Thine abode;
So shall spirit, joy and light
Dwell in us, where all was night.
Spirit Thou of strength and power
Thou new Spirit God hath given
Aid us in temptation's hour
Train and perfect us for heaven" etc.


This hymn is a perfect parallel with our foregoing argument. It wholly corresponds with the rationalistic nature of Epimethean creatures that the same priests that sing this hymn should reject the new spirit of life, the newly-created symbol. Reason must always seek the solution upon rational, sequential, logical ways, in which it is certainly justified in all normal situations and problems; but in the greatest and really decisive questions the reason proves inadequate. It is incapable of creating the image, the symbol; for the symbol is irrational. When the rational way has become a cul de sac -- which is its inevitable and constant tendency -- then, from the side where one least expects it, the solution comes. ("What good thing cometh out of Nazareth?") Such, for instance, is the psychological law underlying the Messianic prophecies. The prophecies themselves are projections of the unconscious, which always foreshadows the future event. Because the solution is irrational, the appearance of the Redeemer is associated with an impossible, i.e. irrational condition, the pregnancy of the Virgin (Isaiah, 7, 14). This prophecy, like many another, has impossible conditions attaching to it; as for instance:

"Macbeth shall never vanquished be until
Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill
Shall come against him." (Macbeth, IV, i)


The birth of the Saviour, i.e. the rise of the symbol, happens in that very place where one is least expecting it, whence indeed a solution is of all things the most improbable. Thus Isaiah says (53, I):

"Who hath believed our report?
And to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?
For he grew up before Him as a tender plant,
And as a root out of the dry ground:
He hath no form nor comeliness;
And when we shall see him,
There is no beauty that we should desire him.
He is despised and rejected of men;
A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief:
And we hid as it were our faces from him;
He was despised and we esteemed him not."


Not only does the redeeming power spring where nothing is expected, but it also reveals itself, as this passage shows, in a form which to the Epimethean judgment contains no special value. In Spitteler's description of the symbol's rejection there can hardly have been any conscious reference to the Biblical model, or one would certainly be able to trace it in his words. It is much more likely that he too created from those same depths, whence prophets and creative minds call up the redeeming symbol.

The appearance of the Saviour signifies a reconciliation of the opposites:

"The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb,
And the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
And the calf and the young lion and the fatling together,
And a little child shall lead them.
And the cow and the bear shall feed;
Their young ones shall lie down together:
And the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp,
And the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den."

-- Isaiah, II, 6 ff.


The nature of the redeeming symbol is that of a child (the "wonderchild" of Spitteler), i.e. child-likeness or an attitude which assumes nothing is of the very nature of the symbol and its function. This "childlike" attitude carries with it the condition eo ipso that, in place of self-will and rational purposiveness, another guiding principle shall have effect whose Divinity is synonymous with 'superior power'. The guiding principle is of an irrational nature, wherefore it appears in a miraculous guise. Isaiah gives this character very beautifully:

"For unto us a child is born, Unto us a son is given;
And the government shall be upon his shoulder:
And his name shall be called Wonderful,
Counsellor, The mighty God.
The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace."

-- Isaiah, 9, 5.


These conditions give the essential qualities of the redeeming symbol, which we have already established above. The criterion of the "Divine" effect is the irresistible force of the unconscious impulse. The hero is always the figure endowed with magical power, who makes the impossible possible. The symbol is the middle way, upon which the opposites unite towards a new movement, a water-course that pours forth fertility after long drought. The tension that precedes the release is likened to a pregnancy:

"Like as a woman with child,
That draweth near the time of her delivery,
Is in pain, and crieth out in her pangs;
So have we been in Thy sight, O Lord.
We have been with child, we have been in pain,
We have as it were brought forth wind;
We have not wrought any deliverance in the earth;
Neither have the inhabitants of the world fallen.
Thy dead shall live, my dead bodies shall arise."

-- Isaiah, 26, 17 ff.
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Re: PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES by C. G. Jung

Postby admin » Tue Oct 06, 2015 9:56 pm

Part 6 of 6

In the act of redemption, what was inanimate and dead comes to life, i.e. psychologically, those functions which have lain fallow and unfertile, psychic elements that were unused, repressed, despised, undervalued, etc., suddenly burst forth and begin to live. It is precisely the less-valued function, whose life was threatened with extinction by the differentiated function, that continues [119]. This motif recurs in the New Testament idea of the Image Image (restoration for all), or reintegration [120], which is a higher evolutionary form of that world-wide version of the hero-myth in which the hero, on his exit from the belly of the whale, brings with him not only his parents but the whole company of those previously swallowed by the monster -- what Frobenius calls the "universal hatching out"[121]. This association with the hero-myth is also confirmed by Isaiah in the two verses:

"In that day the Lord
With His sore and great and strong sword
Shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent,
Even leviathan that crooked serpent;
And He shall slay the dragon that is in the sea."

-- Isaiah, 27. 1.


With the birth of the symbol, the regression of the libido into the unconscious ceases. Regression is converted into progression, damming-up gives place to flowing; whereupon the absorbing power of the primeval is broken. Thus Kule says in Barlach's drama Der tote Tag:

"And there about my bed stand the lovely forms of a better future. Stiff are they yet. but of radiant beauty, still sleeping -- but he who shall awaken them would make for the world a fairer face. A hero would he be who could do it.

Mother: An heroic life in misery and dire need!
Kule: But perchance there might be one!
Mother: He first must bury his mother."


I have abundantly illustrated the motif of the "mother-dragon" in an earlier work [122], so I may spare myself a repetition of it here. The dawn of new life and fruitfulness in the direction where nothing could be expected is also sung by Isaiah:

"Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
And the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped,
Then shall the lame man leap as an hart,
And the tongue of the dumb sing:
For in the wilderness shall waters break out,
And streams in the desert.
And the parched ground shall become a pool,
And the thirsty land springs of water:
In the habitation of jackals, where each lay.
Shall be grass with reeds and rushes.
And an highway shall be there, and a way,
And it shall be called The way of holiness;
The unclean shall not pass over it;
But it shall be for those:
The wayfaring men, yea fools,
Shall not go astray therein."

-- Isaiah, 35, 5 ff.


The redeeming symbol is a highway, a way upon which life can move forward without torment and compulsion.

Holderlin says in Patmos:

"Near is God and hard to seize.
But wherever danger lurks
Groweth the thing that saves."


That sounds as though the nearness of God were a danger, i.e. as though the concentration of libido in the unconscious were a danger to the conscious life. And this is actually the case; for the more the libido is invested -- or, more accurately, invests itself -- in the unconscious, the greater becomes the influence, or effective potentiality, of the unconscious; which means that all the rejected, thrown aside, outlived function possibilities which for generations have been entirely lost, become reanimated and begin to exercise an increasing influence upon consciousness, notwithstanding often desperate resistance on the part of conscious insight. The saving factor is the symbol, which is able to reconcile the conscious with the unconscious and embrace them both.

While the consciously disposable libido becomes gradually used up in the differentiated function, and is only restored again with constantly increasing difficulty, and while the symptoms of inner discord multiply, there is an ever growing danger of a flooding and disintegration by unconscious contents; but all the time the symbol is developing which is fitted to resolve the conflict. But the symbol is so intimately bound up with the dangerous and threatening that it may either be confounded with it, or its appearance may actually call forth the evil and destructive. In every instance the appearance of the redeeming factor is closely linked up with ruin and devastation. If the old were not ripe for death, nothing new would appear; and, if the old were not injuriously blocking the way for the new, it could not and need not be rooted out. This natural psychological association of the opposites is also found in Isaiah where (7, 16 ff.; 7, 14) we find that a virgin is to bear a son, who shall be called Immanuel. Immanuel significantly means' God with us', i.e. union with the latent dynamis of the unconscious, which is assured in the redeeming symbol. In the verses which immediately follow, we see what this reconciliation portends.

"For before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good,

The land whose two kings thou abhorrest shall be forsaken."

8, I : "Moreover the Lord said unto me: 'Take thee a great roll, and write in it with a man's pen, Concerning Maher-shalal-hash-baz.' ('Rob soon. Hasten booty')."

8, 3: "And I went unto the prophetess; and she conceived, and bare a son. Then said the Lord to me: 'Call his name Maher-shalal-hash-baz. For before the child shall have knowledge to cry My father, and My mother, the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria shall be taken away before the king of Assyria.'"

8, 6: "Forasmuch as this people refuseth the waters of Shiloah that go softly -- Behold, the Lord bringeth up upon them the waters of the River, strong and many, even the king of Assyria and all his glory; and he shall come up over all his channels, and go over all his banks; and he shall pass through Judah; he shall overflow and go over, he shall reach even to the neck; and the stretching out of his wings shall fill the breadth of thy land, O Immanuel."


I have already pointed out in my book Psychology of the Unconscious that the birth of the God is threatened by the dragon, the danger of inundation, and child-murder. Psychologically, this means that the latent dynamis may burst forth and overwhelm consciousness. For Isaiah this peril is the enemy-king, who rules a hostile and powerful realm. The problem for Isaiah, of course, is not psychological, but concrete, on account of his complete projection.

With Spitteler, on the contrary, the problem is already very psychological, and, therefore, detached from the concrete object; it is nevertheless expressed in forms that closely resemble those in Isaiah, although it is hardly necessary to assume a conscious derivation.

The birth of the deliverer is equivalent to a great catastrophe, since a new and powerful life issues forth just where no life or force or new development was anticipated. It streams forth out of the unconscious, i.e. from that part of the psyche which, whether we desire it or not, is unknown and therefore treated as nothing by all rationalists. From this discredited and rejected region comes the new tributary of energy, the revivification of life. But what is this discredited and despised region? It is the sum of all those psychic contents which are repressed on account of their incompatibility with conscious values, hence the ugly, immoral, wrong, irrelevant, useless, etc.; which means everything that at one time appeared so to the individual in question. Now herein lies the danger that the very force with which these things reappear, as well as their new and wonderful brilliance, may so intrigue the individual that he either forgets or repudiates all former values. What he formerly despised is now a supreme principle, and what was formerly truth now becomes error. This reversal of values is tantamount to a destruction of previously accepted values; hence it resembles the devastation of a country by floods.

Thus, with Spitteler, Pandora's heavenly gift brings evil both to the country and to man. Just as, in the classical saga, diseases streamed from Pandora's box, to flood and ravage the land, a similar evil is caused by the jewel. To grasp this, we must first probe into the nature of this symbol. The first to find the symbol are the peasants, as the shepherds are the first to greet the Saviour. They turn it about in their hands, first this way then that, "until at length they are quite dumbfounded by its strange, immoral unlawful appearance". When they brought it to the king, and he, to prove it, showed it to the conscience, demanding its Yea or Nay about it, stricken with terror it sprang pell-mell from the wardrobe to the floor, where it ran and hid itself under the bed with "impossible suspicions". Like a fleeing crab "staring with venomous eyes and malevolently brandishing its twisted claws, the conscience peered from under the bed, and it came to pass that whenever Epimetheus nearer pushed the image, the further did the other recoil with gesticulations of disgust. And thus all silent it crouched, and never a word, nay not a syllable, did it utter, however much the king might beg and entreat and cajole with every manner of speech."

To the conscience evidently the new symbol was acutely unsympathetic. The king, therefore, bade the peasants bear the jewel to the priests.

"But hardly had Hiphil-Hophal (the high-priest) glanced at the face of the image than he began to shudder and sicken, and, raising his arms as though to guard his forehead from a blow, he cried and shouted: 'Away with this mockery, for in it is something opposed to God; moreover carnal is its heart and insolence flashes from its eyes.'"


Thereupon the peasants brought the jewel to the academy; but the professors of the university found that the image lacked "feeling and soul"; moreover, "it wanted in sincerity, and had in general no guiding thought".

Finally the goldsmith found the jewel to be spurious and of common metal. On the market-place, where the peasants wished to get rid of the image, the police descended upon it. At sight of the image the guardians of the law exclaimed:

"Dwells there no heart in your body and shelters no conscience in your soul, that ye dare thus openly before all eyes to expose this sheer, wanton, shameless nakedness? ... And now away with ye in haste! and woe upon you if by any chance the sight of it hath polluted our stainless children and unsullied wives."


The symbol is characterized as strange, immoral, unlawful, opposed to moral sense, antagonizing our feeling and idea of the spiritual, as well as our conception of the 'Divine'; it appeals to sensuality, is shameless and liable to become a serious danger to public morality by the stimulation of sexual phantasies. Such attributes define an essence which is in frank opposition to our moral values; but, it is also opposed to our aesthetic judgment, since it lacks the higher feeling-values; and finally the absence of a "guiding thought" suggests an irrationality of its intellectual content. The verdict "opposed to God" might also be rendered 'anti-Christian', since this history is localized neither in remote antiquity nor in China. This symbol, then, by reason of all its attributes, is a representative of the inferior function, hence of unrecognized psychic contents. It is obvious that the image represents -- though it is nowhere stated-a naked human figure, in fact, 'living form'. This form expresses complete freedom, which means to be just as one is -- as also the duty, to be just as one is: it accordingly stands for the highest possible attainment of aesthetic as well as moral beauty. It signifies man as he might be through Nature and not through some artificially-prepared, ideal form. Such an image, presented to the eyes of a man as he is at present, can have no other effect than to release in him all that has lain bound in slumber and has not shared in life. If by chance he be only partly civilized, and still more than half barbarian, all his barbarism will be aroused at such a vision. For a man's hatred is always concentrated upon that which makes him conscious of his bad qualities. Hence the jewel's fate was sealed at the moment of its appearance in the world. The dumb shepherd-lad who first found it is half cudgeled to death by the enraged peasants; then the peasants "hurl" the jewel upon the road. Thus the redeeming symbol ends its brief but typical course. The association with the Christian passion-theme is unmistakable. The redeeming nature. of the jewel is also revealed in the fact that it appears only once in a thousand years; it is a rare occurrence, this "flowering of the treasure", this appearance of a Saviour, a Saoshyant, or a Buddha.

The end of the jewel's career is mysterious: it falls into the hands of a wandering Jew. "No Jew of this world was it, and strange to us beyond measure seemed his raiment" [123]. This peculiar Jew can only be Ahasuerus, who did not accept the actual Redeemer, and here again steals, as it were, the redeeming-image. The Ahasuerus legend is a medieval Christian saga, in which form it cannot be dated back earlier than the beginning of the thirteenth century [124]. Psychologically, it springs from an element of the personality or a sum of libido which finds no application in the Christian attitude to life and the world, and is accordingly repressed. The Jews were always a symbol for this repressed portion, which accounts for the medieval delirium of persecution against the Jews. The ritual-murder notion contains the idea of the rejection of the Redeemer in an acute form, for one sees the mote in .one's own eye as a beam in the eye of one's brother. The ritual-murder idea also plays a part in the Spitteler story, since the Jew steals the wonder-child sent from Heaven. This idea is a mythological projection of the unconscious perception that the redeeming effect is constantly being frustrated by the presence of an unredeemed element in the unconscious. This unredeemed, undomesticated, untrained, or barbaric portion, which can only be held on a chain and not yet allowed to run free, is projected upon those who have never accepted Christianity. In reality, of course, it is an element in ourselves, which has always contrived to escape the Christian process of domestication.

An unconscious perception of this resistant element, whose existence one would like to disavow, is certainly present -- hence the projection. Restlessness is a concrete expression of this unredeemed state. The unredeemed element at once monopolizes the new light and the energy of the new symbol. This is another way of expressing the same thing that we have already indicated above when describing the effect of the symbol upon the collective psyche. The symbol intrigues all the repressed and unrecognised contents, as instanced by the 'guardians of the market-place'; similarly with Hiphil-Hophal, who, because of his unconscious resistance against his own religion, immediately brings out and emphasizes the ungodliness and sensuality of the new symbol. The affect displayed in the rejection corresponds with the amount of repressed libido. It is in the moral degradation of the pure gift of heaven in the sultry phantasy-loom of these minds that the ritual-murder is accomplished. The appearance of the symbol has, nevertheless, had its benign effect. Although not accepted in its pure form, it was greedily devoured by the archaic, undifferentiated forces, wherein conscious morality and aesthetic values continued to co-operate. Here the enantiodromia begins, the conversion of the hitherto valued into the worthless, the changing of the former good into the bad.

The realm of the good, whose king is Epimetheus, had lived in age-long enmity with the kingdom of Behemoth.

Behemoth and Leviathan [125] are the two familiar monsters of God from the book of Job; they are the symbolical expression of His force and power. As crude animal symbols they portray psychologically allied forces in human nature [126]. Thus Jehovah says: (Job, XL, 15 ff.)

"Behold now Behemoth, which I made with thee;
Lo now, his strength is in his loins,
And his force is in the muscles of his belly.
He moveth his tail like a cedar:
And the sinews of his stones are wrapped together. [127]
He is the beginning of the ways of God."


One must read these words attentively: this force is "the beginning of the ways of God", i.e. of Jehovah, the Jewish God, who in the New Testament lays aside this form. There He is no longer the Nature-God. This means, psychologically, that this crude instinctive side of the libido accumulated in the unconscious is permanently held under in the Christian attitude; thus the divine half of the libido is repressed, or written down to man's debit account, and in the last resort is assigned to the domain of the devil. Hence, when the unconscious force begins to well up, when "the ways of God" begin, God comes in the shape of Behemoth [128].

One might say with equal truth that God presents himself in the Devil's shape. But these moral valuations are optical delusions: the force of life is beyond the moral judgment. Meister Eckehart says:

"Said I therefore God is good: it is not true, I am good, God is not good! I go still further: I am better than God! For only what is good can be better, and only what can become better can become the best. God is not good -- therefore can He not be better; and, because not better, neither can He be best. Far away from God are these three conditions 'good', 'better', 'best'. He standeth above them all." -- Buttner, vol. i, p. 165.


The immediate effect of the redeeming symbol is the reconciliation of the pairs of opposites: thus the ideal realm of Epimetheus becomes reconciled with the kingdom of Behemoth, i.e. moral consciousness enters into a dangerous alliance with the unconscious contents, together with the libido belonging to, or identical with, these contents.

Now the children of God have been entrusted to the care of Epimetheus, namely those highest Goods of mankind, without which man is a mere animal. Through the reconciliation with his own unconscious opposite, the menace of disaster, flooding and devastation descend upon him, i.e. the values of the conscious are liable to become swamped in the energic values of the unconscious. If that image of natural beauty and morality had been really accepted and valued, instead of serving, merely by virtue of its innocent naturalness, as an incitement to all the filthiness hiding in the background of our "moral" civilization, then, notwithstanding the pact with Behemoth, the Divine children would never have been jeopardized, for Epimetheus would always have been able to discriminate between the valuable and the worthless. But, because the symbol appears inacceptable to our one-sided, rationalistic and therefore deformed, mentality, every standard of value fails. When, in spite of all, the reconciliation of the pairs of opposites transpires as a force majeure, the danger of inundation and disintegration necessarily follows, and in a peculiarly characteristic way, since the dangerous counter-tendencies get smuggled in under the cloak of 'correct ideas'. Even the evil and pernicious can be rationalized and made aesthetic. Thus, one after another, the Divine children are handed over to Behemoth, i.e. conscious values are exchanged for sheer impulsiveness and stupidity. Conscious values are greedily devoured by crude and barbarous tendencies which were hitherto unconscious; thus Behemoth and Leviathan erect an invisible whale (the unconscious) as symbolizing their principle, while the corresponding symbol of the Epimethean kingdom is the bird. The whale, as denizen of the sea, is the universal symbol of the devouring unconscious [129]. The bird, as a citizen of the luminous kingdom of the air, is a symbol of conscious thought; it also symbolizes the ideal (wings) and the Holy Spirit.

The final extinction of Good is prevented by the intervention of Prometheus. He rescues Messias, the last of the sons of God, out of the power of his enemy. Messias becomes the heir to the Divine kingdom, while Prometheus and Epimetheus, the personifications of the severed opposites, become united in the seclusion of their "native valley". Both are relieved of sovereignty -- Epimetheus, because he was forced to forgo it, and Prometheus, because he never strove for it. Which means, in psychological terms, that introversion and extraversion cease to dominate as one-sided lines of direction, and consequently the psychic dissociation also ceases. In their stead a new function appears, symbolically represented by a child named Messias, who had long lain asleep. Messias is the mediator, the symbol of the new attitude that shall reconcile the opposites. He is a child, a boy, the 'puer aeternus' of the immemorial prototype, heralding by his youth the resurrection and rebirth of what was lost (Apokatastasis). That which Pandora brought to earth as an image, and being rejected by men became the cause of their undoing, is fulfilled in Messias. This association of symbols corresponds with a frequent experience in the practice of analytical psychology: a symbol emerging in dreams is rejected for the very reasons detailed above, and even affects a counter-reaction, which corresponds with the invasion of Behemoth. The result of this conflict is a simplification of the personality, based upon individual characteristics which have been present since birth; this reintegration ensures the connection of the matured personality with the energy-sources of childhood. In this transition, as Spitteler shows, there is a great danger that, instead of the symbol, the archaic instincts thereby awakened shall become rationalistically accepted and sheltered among established views.

The English mystic William Blake says [130]: "There are two classes of men: the prolific [131] and the devouring [132]. Religion is an endeavour to reconcile the two."

With these words of Blake, which are a simple epitome of the fundamental ideas of Spitteler and my elaborations thereon, I would like to close this chapter. If I have unduly expanded it, this came about, as in the discussion of the Schiller letters, through a wish to do justice to the profusion of ideas Spitteler awakens in his Prometlteus and Epimetheus. I have, as far as possible, confined myself to the essentials; indeed, I have deliberately omitted a whole group of problems which would claim attention in a full elaboration of this material.

_______________

Notes:

1. Prometheus and Epimetheus. Diedrich's Edition, 1920, p. 9.

2. Cf. Jung: La structure de l'inconscient (Arch. de Psych., vol. xvi). and Analytical Psychology, ch. XV.

3. Prometheus and Epimetheus, pp. 24 ff.

4. Cf. Jung, The Content of the Psychoses (Collected Papers, ch. xii) ; Idem, Psychology of the Unconscious.

5. Respecting this theme of the treasure and rebirth, I must refer the reader to my book Psychology of the Unconscious.

6. Spitteler, l.c., p. 126.

7. Spitteler depicts the famous "conscience" of Epimetheus as a little animal. It corresponds to the opportunist instinct of animals.

8. Spitteler's "-heit " und "-keit" ("-tion " and "-ness").

9. In place of these, a compensatory outburst of sociability may appear and a more intense impulse to social claims; in the eager pursuit of which forgetfulness is sought.

10. As compensation, a morbid and feverish activity may appear, which also serves the purposes of repression.

11. Cf. Goethe's Geheimnisse. There the Rosicrucian solution is attempted, namely the reconciliation of the rose and the cross, Dionysos and Christ. The poem leaves us cold. One cannot pour new wine into old bottles.

12. We frequently find that it is the representatives of older nationalities who possess magical powers. In India it is the Nepaulese, in Europe the gipsies, and in Protestant regions the Capuchin friars.

13. Faust, Part I.

14. Die Geheimnisse.

15. Manava-Dharmacastra, i, 26 Sacred Books of the East, xxv (p. 13).

16. Ramayana, ii, 84, 20.

17. Manava-Dharmcastra, vi, 80 ff., pp. 212-3.

18. Brahman is the designation generally applied to the Supreme Soul (paramatman), or impersonal, all-embracing, divine essence, the original source and ultimate goal of all that exists. (Encyclo. Brit.)

19. Bhagavadgita, ii.

20. Qualities or factors or constituents of the world.

21. Deussen, Allgemeine Geschichte d. Philosophie, i, 3, pp. 511 ff.

22. Yoga is well-known as a system of training for the attainment of the higher states of redemption.

23. Kaushitaki-Upanishad, 1-4.

24. Tejovindu-Upanishad, 3.

25. Mahabharata, 1-119, 8 ff.

26. Mahabharata, xiv, 19-4 ff.

27. Bhagavata-Purana, ix, 19, 18 ff. "After he hath put off silence and non-silence, thus will he become a Brahmana." Brihadaranyaka-Upanishad, 3, 5.

28. Bhagavata-Purana, iv, 22, 24.

29. Garuda-Purana, 16, 110.

30. I am indebted to the kind help of Dr. Abegg of Zurich, the Sanskrit specialist, for these, to me somewhat inaccessible, citations (Nos. 193, 201-5)

31. Deussen, i, 2, p. 117, l.c.

32. Brihadaranyaka-Upanishad, 2, 3 (Sacred Books xv) (Definite -- "sat", lit. being or this, and indefinite -- "tya", lit. that or hereafter).

33. Svetasvatara-Upanishad, 4, 17 ff.

34. Svetasvatara-Upanishad, 5, 1.

35. Deussen here translates: "He sitteth, yet wandereth further. He lieth, yet everywhere hovereth. Concerning the swaying hither and thither of God, who understandeth it save myself?" Katha-Upanishad, 1, 2, 20 ff.

36. Ica-Upanishad, 4-5 (Deussen)

37. This describes the resolution of the subject-object antithesis.

38. Brihadaranyaka-Upanishad, 4, 3.

39. Atharvaveda, 10, 8, 11. (Deussen)

40. Hence Brahman is quite beyond knowledge and comprehension.

41. Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious.

42. Catap. Brahm., 14, I, 3, 3. (Deussen).

43. Taitt. Ar., 10, 63, 15. (Deussen).

44. Cankh. Br., 8, 3. (Deussen).

45. Vaj. Samh., 23, 48. (Deussen).

46. Catap. Br., 8, 5, 3, 7. (Deussen).

47. Taitt. Br., 2, 8, 8, 8. ff. (Deussen).

48. Atharvaveda, 2, I, 4, I, 11, 5.

49. The practice of self-brooding. Cf. Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious.

50. Atharvaveda, 11, 5, 23 ff. (Deussen).

51. Deussen, Allg. Gesch. d. Phil., 1, 2, pp. 93 ff.

52. Taitt.-Up., 2, 8, 5. (Max Muller).

53. Brihadar-Up., 5, 15, I ff. (Max Muller).

54. Khandogya-Up., 3, 13, 7 ff. (Max Muller).

55. Catap. Brahm., 10, 6, 3. (Deussen)

56. Allg. Gesch. d. Phil., I, I, pp. 240 ff.

57. This is confirmed by the reference to Brahman-prana.. Matricvan ("he who swelleth within the mother"). Atharvaveda, 11, 4, 15.

58. Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious.

59. Rigveda; 10, 31, 6. (Deussen).

60. Cosmic creative principle -- libido. Taitt. Samh., 5. 5, 2, 1: "When he had created them, he instilled love into all his creatures."

61. Solitary meditation, asceticism, introversion.

62. The begetting of fire from the mouth has a noteworthy relation to speech, Cf. Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious.

63. Cf. Dioscuri motive in Psychology of the Unconscious (Jung).

64. Deussen, Allg, Gesch, d, Phil., I, I, p, 206; Pancav. Br., 20, 14, 12.

65. Weber, Indische Studien, 9, 477.

66. Quoted from Deussen, Allg. Gesch. d. Phil., I, I, p. 206.

67. The name of a saman -- Song.

68. Deussen, l.c., I, I, 205. Pancav. Br., 7, 6.

69. Catap. Br., 11, 2, 3. (Deussen).

70. Cf. Jung, Dementia Praecox. (1907)

71. Suggesting the horse, which indicates the dynamic nature of the Rita concept.

72. Agni is called the charioteer of Rita. Vedic Hymns (Sacred Books, xlvi) p. 158; 7. p. 160; 3. p. 229; 8.

73. Cf. Oldenburg, Nachr. d. Gott. Ges. d. Wiss., 1915. p. 167 ff. Religion des Veda, p. 194. For this reference I am indebted to the kindness of Dr. Abegg of Zurich.

74. Deussen. Allg. Gesell. d. Phil., I. I. p. 92

75. Catapatha-Brahmanam, 4. I, 4. 10. (Eggeling).

76. Atharvaveda, 10, 10, 33. (Deussen).

77. Atharvaveda, 10, 12, 1, 61. (Bloomfield).

78. Vedic Hymns (Sacred Books, xlvi), p. 54.

79. Vedic Hymns, p. 61.

80. Vedic Hymns, p. 393.

81. Release of libido is obtained through ritual work. The release brings the libido to the disposal of consciousness. It becomes domesticated. From an instinctive, undomesticated state it is converted into a state of disposability. This is depicted in a verse which runs: "When the rulers, the bountiful lords, brought Him forth (Agni) by their power from the depths, they released Him from the form of the bull." Vedic Hymns, p. 147.

82. Vedic Hymns, p. 174.

83. Cf. the Tishtrya Lied. Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious.

84. Vedic Hymns, p. 88.

85. Vedic Hymns, p. 103.

86. Vedic Hymns, p. 160, 2.

87. Vedic Hymns, p. 244, 6, and p. 316, 3.

88. Vedic Hymns, p. 153 and p. 8.

89. Cf. Tetsujiro Inouye, Japanese Philosophy (In Kultur der Gegenwart 1913)

90. The magic cauldron of the Celtic mythology is further evidence of the vigorous pagan root that contributed to the vessel symbolism. Dagda, one of the benevolent gods of ancient Ireland, has such a cauldron, which fills everybody with food according to his needs or merits. The Celtic god Bran also possesses the cauldron of renovation. It has even been suggested that the name Brons, one of the figures of the Grail legend, is really a development of this Bran. Alfred Nutt considers that Bran, lord of the cauldron, and Brons, are steps in the transformation of the Celtic Peredur Saga into the quest of the Holy Grail. It would seem, therefore, that the Grail motives already existed in Celtic mythology. I am indebted to Dr Maurice Nicoll, of London, for the above allusions.

91. "IlIa terra virgo nondum pluviis rigata nec imbribus frecundata, &c." ("This virgin land has not been watered by rain nor fertilized by showers").

92. "Veritas de terra orta est, quia Christus de Virgine natus est." ("Truth is born of the earth, because Christ was born of the Virgin".)

93. Kore -- Virgin-goddess, identical with Sophia of the Gnosis. Cf. W. Bousset, Hauptprobleme der Gnosis. 1907.

94. Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, i, 511 (1904)

95. For further references to this process cf. Jung, Psychology of Unconscious Processes, ch. xiv (Collected Papers, 1917).

96. Johannes (or Heinrich) Eckehart, German Dominican monk, born about 1250 and died about 1328. [Translator].

97. There are numerous examples of this. I have mentioned a few in Psychology of the Unconscious.

98. Van den Hindernissen an wahrer Geistlichkeit. H. Buttner, Meister Eckehart's Schriften und Predigten, vol. ii, 185. (Diederichs, Jena 1909)

99. Geistliche Unterweisung, 4. (Buttner, vol. ii, p. 8)

100. The libido-concept of the Bataks. Warnecke, Die Religion der Batak (Leipzig 1909). Tondi is the name for the magic force around which everything turns, as it were.

101. The recognition of something as a projection must never be understood as a purely intellectual process. Intellectual cognition dissolves a projection only when it is already ripe for dissolution. To withdraw libido from a projection that is not matured is not possible by means of intellectual judgment and will.

102. William Blake, the English mystic, says: "Energy is eternal delight". Poetical Works, Vol. i, p. 240. (London 1906)

103. Buttner, l.c., vol. ii, p. 195.

104. According to Eckehart the soul is just as much the comprehender, as the comprehended. Buttner, l.c., vol. i, p. 186.

105. Literary examples of this are: E. T. A. Hoffman, Meyrink. Barlach (Der tote Tag): on the higher levels, Spitteler, Goethe (Faust), Wagner.

106. Nietzsche in Zarathustra.

107. Compare a previous handling of this theme in Psychology of Unconscious Processes (Jung).

108. Eckehart says: "Therefore do I turn back once more unto myself. there do I find the deepest places, deeper than hell itself; but again my wretchedness urgeth me hence: Lo, I cannot escape myself! Herein will I plant myself and here will I remain." Buttner, l.c., i, 180.

109. Spencer and Gillen, The Northern Tribes of Central Australia.

110. Johann Scheffler, mystic and doctor, 1624-77.

111. Cf. Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious.

112. Spitteler, Prometheus and Epimetheus, p. 108.

113. Ibid., p. 127.

114. Ibid., p. 132.

115. Ibid., p. 129.

116. Spitteler, l.c., p. 128.

117. Paul Cassirer, Berlin 1912, pp. 16 ff.

118. Spitteler, l.c., p. 138.

119. Compare my discussion on the Schiller letters.

120. Epistle to the Romans, 8, 19.

121. Frobenius, Das Zeitalter des Sonnengottes.

122. Psychology of the Unconscious. We find in Spitteler a parallel with the slaughter of Leviathan in the overpowering of Behemoth.

123. Spitteler, l.c., p. 163.

124. E. Konig, Ahasver (1907)

125. Spitteler, l.c., p. 179.

126. Cf. Psych. of the Unconscious, p. 70.

127. The Vulgate actually reads: nervi testiculorum ejus perplexi sunt. Spitteler makes Astarte the daughter of Behemoth -- significantly enough.

128. One may compare this with Flournoy: Une mystique moderne (Arch. de Psych., xv, 1915).

129. Abundant examples of this are to be found in Psychology of the Unconscious.

130. Poetical Works, i, p. 249.

131. The prolific = the fruitful, who brings forth out of himself.

132. The devouring = the man who swallows up and takes into himself.
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Re: PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES by C. G. Jung

Postby admin » Tue Oct 06, 2015 9:57 pm

CHAPTER 6: THE TYPE-PROBLEM IN PSYCHIATRY

WE now come to the work of a psychiatrist who from the bewildering multiplicity of so-called psychopathic states attempted to bring two definite types into relief. This very extensive group embraces all those psychopathic border-line states which can no longer be included under the heading of the psychoses proper -- hence all the neuroses and degenerative states, e.g. intellectual, moral, affective, and such like psychic inferiorities.

This attempt was made in 1902 by Otto Gross, who published a theoretical study entitled Die zerebrale Sekundarfunktion, and it was the basic hypothesis of this work that prompted him to the conception of two psychological types [1]. Although the empirical material treated by Gross is taken from the domain of psychic inferiority, this is no reason why the points of view thus obtained should not be transferred to the wider regions of normal psychology; since the unbalanced psychic state affords the investigator a very favourable opportunity of gaining an almost exaggeratedly distinct view of certain psychic phenomena, which are often only dimly perceptible within the boundaries of the normal. Occasionally the abnormal condition has the effect of a magnifying glass. As we shall soon see, Gross himself, in his final chapter, also extends his conclusions to the wider terrain.

By "secondary function" Gross understands a cerebral cell-process that comes into action after the "primary function" has already taken place. The primary function would correspond to the actual performance of the cells, viz. the production of a positive psychic process, let us say, a representation. This performance represents an energic process, presumably, the release of a chemical tension, i.e. a chemical decomposition. In the wake of this sudden discharge, termed by Gross the primary function, the secondary function begins. It represents, therefore, a restitution, a rebuilding by means of assimilation. This function will occupy a shorter or longer interval in proportion to the intensity of the preceding expenditure of energy. During such time the cell, as compared with its former condition, is in an altered state; viz. a state of stimulation, which cannot be without influence upon the further psychic process. Processes that are especially highly-toned and loaded with affect must entail an increased expenditure of energy, hence a definitely prolonged period of restitution or secondary function. The effect of the secondary function upon the psychic process is considered by Gross to be a specific and demonstrable influencing of the subsequent association sequence, with the particular effect of restricting the choice of associations to the 'thema' represented in the primary function, the so-called' leading idea'. Not long after, as a matter of fact, I was able to show in my own experimental work (as likewise several of my pupils in corresponding investigations) phenomena of perseveration [2] following ideas with a high feeling-tone. These phenomena are accessible to mathematical proof. My pupil Dr Eberschweiler, in an investigation of speech-phenomena, has demonstrated this same phenomenon in assonances and agglutinations [3]. Furthermore, we know from pathological experience how frequently perseverations occur in severe brain-lesions, e.g. apoplexies, tumours, atrophic and other degenerative conditions. These may well be ascribed to this impeded restitution-process. Thus Gross' hypothesis has a good share of probability. It is only natural, therefore, to raise the question whether there may not be individuals, or even types, in whom the restitution period, the secondary function, persists longer than in others, and, if so, whether certain peculiar psychologies may not eventually be traceable to this. A brief secondary function, clearly, influences fewer consecutive associations in a given length of time than a long one. Hence, in the former case, the primary function can occur much more frequently. The psychological picture, in such a case, would show a constant and rapidly renewed readiness for action and reaction, hence a kind of capacity for deviation, a tendency to a superficiality of associative connections, and a lack of the deeper, more integrated connections, a certain incoherence, therefore, in so far as significance is expected of the association. On the other hand many new themata crowd up in the unit of time, though not at all deeply engaged or clearly focused; so that heterogeneous ideas of varying values appear, as it were, on the same niveau, thus giving an impression of a "leveling of ideas" (Wernicke). This rapid succession of ideas in the primary function excludes any real experience of the affective value of the thema per se; hence the affectivity cannot be anything but superficial. But, at the same time, rapid adaptations and changes of attitude are thereby rendered possible. The real intellectual process -- or, better still, abstraction -- naturally suffers from the abbreviation of the secondary function, since the process of abstraction demands a sustained contemplation of several initial ideas plus their after-effects, and therefore a longer secondary function. Without this, no intensification and abstraction of an idea or of a group of ideas can take place.

The more rapid recovery of the primary function produces a higher 'reagibilite,' not of course in the intensive, but in the extensive, sense; hence it provides a prompt grasp of the immediate present, though only of its surface, not of its deeper meaning. From this circumstance we may easily gain the impression of an uncritical or open-minded disposition, as the case may be j we are struck by a certain compliancy and understanding, or we may find an unintelligible inconsiderateness, a crude tactlessness, or even brutality. That too facile gliding bver the deeper meanings gives the impression of a certain blindness for everything not immediately transparent or superficial. The quick 'reagibilite' also has the appearance of so-called presence of mind, of audacity even to the point of foolhardiness; thus, besides a lack of criticism, it also suggests an inability to realize danger. His rapidity of action looks like decisiveness; it is more often blind impulse. His encroachment upon another's province is almost a matter of course; this is facilitated by his ignorance of the emotional value of an idea or action, and its effect upon his fellow-men. As a result of the rapid restoration of the state of readiness, the elaboration of perceptions and experiences is disturbed; accordingly memory is seriously handicapped, since, as a rule, only those associations are accessible to immediate reproduction, with which abundant connections are engaged. Relatively isolated contents are quickly submerged; for which reason it is infinitely more difficult to retain a series of meaningless (incoherent) words than a poem. Quick inflammability, rapidly fading enthusiasms, are further characteristics of this type. There is also a certain want of taste, which arises from the too rapid succession of heterogeneous contents with a non-realization of their different emotional values. His thinking has a representative character; it tends more towards a quick presentation and orderly arrangement of contents than towards abstraction and synthesis.

In this outline of the type with the shorter secondary function I have substantially followed. Gross, with the addition of a few transcriptions into the normal. Gross calls this type: inferiority with shallow consciousness. But, if the too unmitigated traits are toned down to a normal level, we get a general picture, in which the reader will again easily recognize the less emotional type of Jordan, in other words, the extravert. Full acknowledgment is due to Gross, since he was the first to establish a uniform and simple hypothesis for the production of this type.

The type opposed to it is termed by Gross: inferiority with contracted consciousness. In this type the secondary function is particularly intensive and prolonged. By its prolongation, consecutive association is influenced to a greater extent than in the type mentioned above. Obviously, we may also assume an accentuated primary function in this case, and, therefore, a more extensive and complete cell performance than with the extravert. A prolonged and reinforced secondary function would be the natural consequence of this. The prolonged secondary function causes a longer duration of the effect stimulated by the initial idea. From this we get what Gross terms a "contractive effect," namely a specially directed choice (in the sense of the initial idea) of consecutive associations. An extensive realization, or 'approfondissement', of the 'thema', is thereby obtained. The idea has an enduring effect; the impression goes deep. One disadvantage of this is a certain limitation within a narrow range, whereby thinking suffers both in variety and abundance. Synthesis, notwithstanding, is essentially assisted, since the elements to be composed remain constellated long enough to render their abstraction possible. Moreover, this restriction to one thema undoubtedly effects an enrichment of the relevant associations and a firm inner cohesion and integration of the complex; at the same time, however, the complex is shut off from all extraneous material and thus attains an associative isolation, a phenomenon which Gross (in support of Wernicke's concept) terms "sejunction." A result of the sejunction of the complex is an accumulation of groups of ideas (or complexes), which have no mutual connection or only quite a loose one. Outwardly such a condition reveals itself as a disharmonious, or, as Gross [4] calls it, a "sejunctive" personality .

The isolated complexes exist side by side without any reciprocal influence: accordingly' they do not interpenetrate, mutually leveling and correcting each other. In themselves, they are strictly and logically integrated, but they are deprived of the correcting influence of differently orientated complexes. Hence it may easily come about that an especially strong, and therefore particularly shutoff and uninfluenced complex, becomes an "excessively valued idea," i.e. it becomes a dominant, defying every criticism and enjoying complete autonomy, until finally it comes to be an uncontrollable factor, in other words, 'spleen.' In pathological cases we find it as a compulsive or paranoic idea, i.e. it becomes an absolutely insurmountable factor, coercing the whole life of the individual into its service. As a result, the entire mentality becomes differently orientated, the standpoint becomes 'deranged.' From this conception of the genesis of a paranoic idea the fact might also be explained that, in certain incipient conditions, the paranoic idea can be corrected by means of an appropriate psychotherapeutic procedure; namely, when the latter succeeds in combining it with other broadening and therefore correcting complexes. [5] There is also an undoubted wariness, even anxiety, connected with the re-integration of severed complexes. The things must remain cleanly sundered, the bridges between the complexes must be, as far as possible, broken down by a strict and rigid formulation of the complex content. Gross calls this tendency "association fear" [6].

The strict inner seclusiveness of such a complex hampers every attempt at external influence. Such an attempt has a prospect of success only when it succeeds in combining either the premises or the conclusion of the complex, just as strictly and logically with another complex as they are themselves mutually bound. The accumulation of insufficiently connected complexes naturally effects a rigid seclusion from the outer world, and, as we would say, a powerful heaping-up of libido within. Hence, we regularly find an extraordinary concentration upon the inner processes, directed, in accordance with the nature of the subject, either upon physical sensations in one preferentially orientated by sensation, or upon mental processes in the more intellectual subject. The personality seems arrested, absorbed, dispersed, 'sunk in thought', intellectually one-sided, or hypochondriacal. In every case there is only a meagre participation in external life, and a distinct inclination to an unsociable and solitary existence, which often finds compensation in a special love for plants or animals.

The inner processes enjoy a heightened activity, because from time to time complexes which hitherto had only a slight connection, or even none at all, suddenly collide; this again gives rise to an intensive primary function which, in its turn, releases a long secondary function that amalgamates the two complexes. One might imagine that all the complexes would at some time or other collide in this way, thus producing a general uniformity and integration of psychic contents. Naturally, this wholesome result could take place only if in the meantime one were to arrest all change in the external life. But, since this is impossible, fresh stimuli are continually arriving and making new secondary functions, which intersect and confuse the inner lines. Consequently this type has a decided tendency to hold external stimuli at a distance, to keep out of the path of change; to maintain life when possible, in its constant daily stream, until every interior amalgamation shall have been effected. In a diseased subject, this tendency is also clearly in evidence; he gets away from people as far as possible and endeavours to lead the life of a recluse. Only in slight cases, however, will the remedy be found in this way. In all the more severe cases there is nothing for it but to reduce the intensity of the primary function; which problem, however is a chapter in itself, and one which we have already attacked in the discussion of the Schiller letters.

It is now clear that this type is distinguished by quite definite affect-phenomena. We have already seen how the subject realizes the associations belonging to the initial presentation. He carries out a full and coherent association of the material relevant to the them a, in so far, that is, as there is no question of material already linked up with another complex. When a stimulus hits upon such material, i.e. upon a complex, the result is either a violent reaction and an affective explosion, or, when the isolation of the complex precludes all contact, entirely negative. But, when realization takes place, all the affective values are released; a powerful emotional reaction occurs, which leaves a long after-effect. Frequently this remains outwardly unobserved, but actually it bores in all the deeper. These reverberations of the affect engross the individual's attention, incapacitating him from receiving new stimuli until the affect has faded away. An accumulation of stimuli becomes unbearable, whence violent defence-reactions appear. Wherever a strong complex accumulation occurs, a chronic attitude of defence usually develops, which may proceed to general distrust, and in pathological cases to delusions of persecution.

Sudden affective explosions, alternating with taciturnity and defence, often give such a bizarre appearance to the personality that these persons become quite enigmatic to their entourage. Their impaired readiness, due to inner absorption, leaves them deficient whenever presence of mind or promptness of action is demanded. Accordingly, embarrassing situations frequently occur for which no remedy is at hand -- one reason the more for a further seclusion from company. Through the occasional explosions confusion is created in one's relations to others, and the very presence of this perplexity and embarrassment incapacitates one from restoring one's relations upon the right lines.

This faulty adaptation leads to a series of untoward experiences, which unfailingly beget a feeling of inferiority or bitterness, if not of actual animosity, that is readily directed against those who were actually or ostensibly the originators of one's misfortune. The affective inner life is very intense, and the manifold emotional reverberations develop an extremely fine gradation and perception of feeling tones; there is a peculiar emotional sensibility, revealing itself to the outer world in a peculiar timidity and uneasiness in the presence of emotional stimuli, or before every situation where such impressions might be possible. This touchiness, or irritation, is specifically directed against the emotional conditions of the environment. Hence, from brusque expressions of opinion, assertions charged with affect, attempts to influence feeling etc., there is an immediate and instinctive defence, proceeding, of course, from this very fear of the subject's own emotion, which might again release a reverberating impression whose force might overmaster him.

From such sensitiveness time may well develop a certain melancholy, due to a sense of being shut off from life. In another place [7] "melancholy" is mentioned by Gross as a special characteristic of this type. In the same passage he also points out that the realization of the affective value easily leads to excessive emotional valuation, or to 'taking things too seriously'.

The strong relief given in this picture to the inner processes and the emotional life at once reveals the introvert. The description given by Gross is much fuller than Jordan's outline of the" impassioned type", which must, however, in its main characters be identical with the type pictured by Gross.

In Chapter V of his work Gross observes that, within normal limits both the inferiority types he describes present physiological differences of individuality. The shallow extensive or the narrow intensive consciousness is, therefore, distinctive of the whole character [8]. According to Gross, the type of extensive consciousness is preferably practical, because of his quick adaptation to the environment. The inner life does not predominate, since it has no great part to play in the formation of great idea-complexes. "They are energetic propagandists for their own personality, and, on a higher level, they also work for the great ideas already handed down." [9] Gross asserts that the feeling life of this type is primitive; though in the higher representatives it becomes organized "through the taking over of ready-made ideals from without." His activity, therefore, with respect to the feeling life can (as Gross says) become heroic. "Yet it is always banal". "Heroic" and" banal" scarcely seem compatible attributes. But Gross shows us at once what he means: in this type there is not a sufficiently rich or developed connection between the erotic complex and the remaining conscious content, i.e. with the remaining complexes, asthetical, ethical, philosophical, and religious. At this point Freud would speak of the repression of the erotic element. The distinct presence of this connection is regarded by Gross as a "true sign of the superior nature" (p. 61). For the sound formation of this connection a prolonged secondary function is indispensable, since only through the "approfondissement" and prolonged consciousness of the necessary elements can such a synthesis be brought about. Sexuality can certainly be pressed into the paths of social utility, through the agency of accepted ideals, but it "never mounts above the limits of triviality". This somewhat harsh judgment relates to a circumstance rendered easily intelligible in the light of the extraverted character: the extravert is exclusively orientated by external data, and it is always his pre-occupation with these wherein the principal bias of his psychic activity lies. Hence he has nothing at his command for the ordering of his inner affairs. They have to be subordinated, as a matter of course, to determinants accepted from without. Under such circumstances, no true connection between the more highly and the less developed functions can take place, for this demands a great expense of time and trouble; it is a lengthy and difficult labour of self-education which cannot possibly be achieved without introversion. But for this, the extravert lacks both time and inclination; moreover, were he so inclined, he is hampered by that same avowed distrust with which he envisages his inner world, or the introvert the outer world.

One should not imagine, however, that the introvert, thanks to his greater synthetic capacity and his greater ability for the realization of affective values, is thereby immediately fitted to carry out the synthesis of his own individuality, i.e. to establish once and for all a harmonious association between the higher and lower functions. I prefer this formulation to Gross' conception, which holds that the sole question is one of sexuality; since, in my view, it is not purely a question of sexuality, but of other instincts as well. Sexuality is, of course, a very frequent form of expression for undomesticated, raw instincts; but the struggle for power in all its manifold aspects is an equally crude instinctive expression.

Gross has invented the expression "sejunctive personality" for the introvert, by which, he singles out the peculiar difficulty with which this type obtains any cohesion or connection between his severed complexes. The synthetic capacity of the introvert merely serves to build complexes, as far as possible, isolated from each other. Rut such complexes are a direct hindrance to the development of a higher unity. Thus, in the introvert also, the complex of sexuality, or the egotistical striving for power, or the search for enjoyment, remains as far as possible isolated and sharply divorced from other complexes. For example, I remember an introverted and highly intellectual neurotic, who wasted his time alternating between the loftiest flights of transcendental idealism and the most squalid suburban brothels, without any conscious. admission of the existence of a moral or aesthetic conflict. The two things were utterly distinct as though belonging to different spheres. The result, naturally, was an acute compulsion neurosis.

We must bear this criticism in mind when following Gross' elaboration of the type with intensive consciousness. Deepened consciousness is, as Gross says, "the basis for the deepening of individuality". As a consequence of the strong contractive effect, external stimuli are always regarded from the standpoint of an idea. In place of the instinct for practical life in so called reality, there is an impelling tendency to 'approfondissement'. "Things are not conceived as individual phenomena, but as partial ideas or constituents of the great idea-complex". This conception of Gross accurately coincides with our former reflection a propos the discussion of the nominalistic and realistic standpoints with their antecedent representatives in the Platonic, Megaric, and Cynic schools. In the light of Gross' conception one may easily discern wherein the difference between the two standpoints exists: the man with the short secondary function has in a unit of time many, and only loosely connected, primary functions; hence, he is especially held by the individual phenomenon and the individual case. For such a man the universalia are only nomina and are deprived of reality; whereas for the man with a long secondary function the inner facts, abstracta, ideas, or un1versalia, are always in the foreground; they are to him the real and actual, to which. he must relate all individual phenomena. He is, therefore, by nature a realist (in the scholastic sense). Since, for the introvert, manner of thinking always takes precedence over perception of externals, he is inclined to be a relativist (Gross, p. 63). Harmony in his surroundings gives him especial pleasure (p. 64): it corresponds with his inner pressure towards the harmonizing of his isolated complexes. He shuns every sort of "unrestrained demeanour", for it might easily lead to disturbing stimuli (cases of affect explosion must, of course, be excepted). Social consideration, as a result of his absorption by inner processes, is rather meagre. The strong predominance of his own ideas does not favour an acceptance of. the ideas or ideals of others. The intense inner elaboration of the complexes gives them a pronounced individual character. "The feeling-life is frequently unserviceable socially, but is always individual " (p. 65).

This statement of the author must be submitted to searching criticism, for it contains a problem which, in my experience, always gives occasion for the greatest misunderstandings between the types. The introverted ,intellectual, whom Gross clearly has here in mind, though outwardly showing as little feeling as possible, manifests logically correct views and actions, not least because in the first place he has a natural distaste for any parade of feeling, and secondly because he is fearful lest by incorrect behaviour he should excite disturbing stimuli, i.e. the affects of his fellow-men. He is fearful of disagreeable affects in others, because he credits others with his own sensitiveness; furthermore, he has always been distressed by the quickness and apparent fitfulness of the extravert. He represses his feeling; hence in his inner depths it occasionally swells to passion, when only too clearly he perceives it. His tormenting emotions are well known to him. He compares them with the feelings shown by others, principally, of course, with those of the extraverted feeling type, and he finds that his "feelings" are quite different from those of other men. Hence he embraces the idea that his "feelings" (or, more correctly, emotions) are unique, i.e. individual.

It is natural that they should differ from the feelings of the extraverted feeling type, since the latter are a differentiated instrument of adaptation, and are wanting, therefore in the "genuine passionateness" which characterizes the deeper feelings of the introverted thinking type. But passion, as an elemental, instinctive force, possesses little that is individual -- rather is it common to all men. Only what is differentiated can be individual. Hence, in the deepest affects, the distinctions of type are at once obliterated in favour of the universal "all too human". In my view, the extraverted feeling type has really the chief claim to individualized feeling, because his feelings are differentiated; but where his thinking is concerned, he falls into a similar delusion. He has thoughts which torment him. He compares them with the ideas expressed in the world about him, i.e. ideas largely derived in the first place from the introverted thinking type. He discovers his thoughts have little in common with these ideas; he may therefore regard them as individual and himself, perhaps, as an original thinker, or he may repress his thoughts altogether, since no-one else thinks the same. In reality, however, his thoughts are common to all the world, although but seldom uttered. In my view, therefore, Gross' statement mentioned above springs from a subjective deception, which, however, is also the general rule.

"The increased contractive power enables an absorption in things, to which an immediate vital interest is no longer attached". (Gross, p. 65). Here Gross lights upon an essential trait of the introverted mentality: the introvert delights in developing ideas for their own sake, quite apart from all external reality. Herein lies both a superiority and a danger. It is a great advantage to be able to develop an idea in an abstract sphere, where sense no longer intervenes. But there is a danger lest the train of thought should become removed from every practical application, and its value for life be proportionately diminished. Hence the introvert is always somewhat in danger of getting too remote from life, and of viewing things too much from their symbolical aspect. Gross also lays stress upon this character. The extravert, however, is in no better plight, only for him matters are rather different. He has the capacity so to curtail his secondary function that he experiences almost nothing but the positive primary function, i.e. he no longer remains anchored to anything, but flies above reality in a sort of frenzy; things are no longer seen and realized, but are merely used as stimulants. This capacity has a great advantage, for it enables one to manoeuvre oneself out of man difficult situations ("Lost art thou, when thou thinkest of danger", Nietzsche); but it is also a great disadvantage, and catastrophe is its almost inevitable outcome, so often does it lead one into inextricable chaos.

From the extraverted type Gross produces the so-called civilizing genius, and the so-called cultural genius from the introverted. The former corresponds with "practical achievement", the latter with "abstract invention". In conclusion Gross expresses his conviction "that our age stands in especial need of the contracted, intensified consciousness, in contrast to former ages where consciousness was shallower and more extensive" (pp. 68 ff.) "We delight in the ideal, the profound, the symbolical. Through simplicity to harmony, this is the art of the highest culture".

Gross wrote this, to be sure, in the year 1902. And how is it now? If we were to express any opinion at all; we must confess that we manifestly need both civilization and culture, a shortening of the secondary function for the one, and a prolongation for the other. For we cannot create the one without the other, and we are, unhappily, bound to admit that in humanity to-day there is a lack on either side. Or, let us. say, where one is in excess, the other is deficient; thus to express ourselves more guardedly; for the continual harping upon progress has become untrustworthy and is under suspicion.

In summing up, I would observe that the views of Gross coincide substantially with my own. Even my terms extraversion and introversion are justified from the standpoint of Gross' conception. It only remains for us to make a critical examination of Gross' basic hypothesis, the concept of the secondary function.

It is always a delicate matter, this framing of physiological or 'organic' hypotheses in connection with psychological processes. It will be familiar that, at the time of the great successes of brain research, a kind of mania prevailed for fabricating physiological hypotheses for psychological processes; among these, the hypothesis that the cell-processes withdrew during sleep is by no means the most absurd which received serious appreciation and "scientific" discussion. One was justified in speaking of a veritable brain-mythology; but I have no desire to treat Gross' hypothesis as a "brain myth", -- its working value is too important for that. It is an excellent working hypothesis, which has received repeated and well deserved acknowledgment from other quarters.

The idea of the secondary function is as simple as it is ingenious. This simple concept enables one to bring a very large number of complex psychic phenomena into a satisfying formula; it deals, moreover, with phenomena whose diverse nature would have successfully withstood a simple reduction and classification by any other single hypothesis. With such a fortunate hypothesis one is always tempted to overestimate its range and application. Such a possibility might well apply in this case, although in fact, this hypothesis has unfortunately but limited range. Let us entirely disregard the fact that in itself the hypothesis is only a postulate, since no one has ever seen the secondary function of the brain-cells, and no one could ever demonstrate why, theoretically, the secondary function should, qualitatively have the same contractive effect upon the next associations as the primary function, which, according to its definition, is essentially different from the secondary function. There is a further circumstance which in my opinion carries even greater weight: viz. in one and the same individual the habits of the psychological attitude can alter in a very short space of time. If the duration of the secondary function is of a physiological or organic character, it must surely be regarded as more or less permanent. It is not to be expected, then, that the duration of the secondary function should suddenly change; such changes are never found in a physiological or organic character, pathological changes, of course, excepted. But, as I have already emphasized more than once, introversion and extraversion are not characters at all, but mechanisms, which can, as it were, be inserted or disconnected at will. Only from their habitual predominance do the corresponding characters develop. There is an undoubted predilection depending upon a certain inborn disposition, which, however, is not always absolutely decisive for one or other mechanism. I have frequently found milieu influences to be almost equally important. On one occasion a case actually came within my own experience, in which a man who had presented a marked extraverted demeanour, while living in the closest proximity to an introvert, changed his attitude and became quite introverted when subsequently closely involved with a pronounced extraverted personality.

I have repeatedly observed in what a short space of time certain personal influences effect an essential alteration in the duration of the secondary function, even in a well-defined type, and how the former condition becomes re-established with the disappearance of the foreign influence. With such experiences in view, we should, I think, direct our interest more to the constitution of the primary function. Gross himself lays stress upon the special prolongation of the secondary function after strong affects [10], thus bringing the secondary function into a dependent relation upon the primary function.

There exists, in fact, no sort of plausible ground why the theory of types should be based upon the duration of the secondary function; it might conceivably be grounded equally well upon the intensity of the primary function, since the duration of the secondary function is obviously dependent upon the intensity of energy-consumption and cell-performance. We might naturally rejoin that the duration of the secondary function depends upon the rapidity of restoration, and that there may be individuals with a specially prompt cerebral assimilation, as opposed to others who are less favoured. If this were the case, the brain of the extravert must possess a higher restitution capacity than that of the introvert. To such a very improbable assumption every basis of proof is lacking. What is known to us of the actual causes of the prolonged secondary function is limited to the fact that, leaving pathological conditions on one side, the special intensity of the primary function effects, quite logically, a prolongation of the secondary function. Hence, in accordance with this fact, the real problem would lie with the primary function and might be resolved into the question, whence comes it that in one the primary function is as a rule intensive, while in another it is weak? If we must shift the problem upon the primary function, we have undertaken to explain the varying intensity, and the manifestly rapid alteration of intensity of the primary function. It is my belief that this is an energic phenomenon, dependent upon a general attitude.

The intensity of the primary function seems to be directly related to the degree of tension involved in the state of readiness. Where a large amount of psychic tension is present, the primary function will also have a special intensity, with corresponding results. When with increasing fatigue tension diminishes, a tendency to deviation and a superficiality of association appear, proceeding to 'flight of ideas'; a condition, in fact, which is characterized by a weak primary and short secondary function. The general psychic tension (apart from physiological causes, such as relaxation, etc.) is dependent upon extremely complex factors, such as mood, attention, expectation, etc., i.e. upon judgments of value, which in their turn are again resultants of all the antecedent psychic processes. By these, of course, I do not understand logical judgments only, but also feeling judgments. Technically, we should express the general tension in the energic sense as libido, while, in the psychological sense relating to consciousness, we should refer to it as value. The intensive process is 'charged with libido'; in other words, it is a manifestation of libido, a high-tension energic process. The intensive process is a psychological value, hence the associative combinations proceeding from it are termed valuable, as opposed to those which are the result of slight contractive effect -- these we describe as worthless or superficial.

The tense attitude is essentially characteristic only for the introvert, while the relaxed, easy attitude denotes the extravert [11], apart, of course, from exceptional conditions. Exceptions, however, are frequent even in one and the same individual. Give the introvert a thoroughly congenial, harmonious milieu, and he relaxes and expands to complete extraversion, until one begins to wonder whether one may not be dealing with an extravert. But transfer the extravert into a dark and silent chamber, where every repressed complex can gnaw at him, and he will be reduced to a state of tension, in which the faintest stimulus becomes a poignant realization. The changing situations of life can have a similar effect momentarily reversing the type; but the preferential attitude is not, as a rule, permanently altered, i.e. in spite of occasional extraversion the introvert remains what he was before, and the extravert likewise.

To sum up: the primary function is, in my view, more important than the secondary. The intensity of the primary function is the decisive factor. It depends upon the general psychic tension, i.e. upon the sum of accumulated and disposable libido. The factor that is conditioned by this accumulation is a complex matter, and is the resultant of all the antecedent psychic states. It may be characterized as mood, attention, emotional state, expectation, etc. Introversion is distinguished by general tension, intensive primary function and a correspondingly long secondary function. Extraversion is characterized by general relaxation, weak primary function, and a correspondingly short secondary function.

_______________

Notes:

1. Gross also gives a revised though essentially unaltered presentation of the types in his book Ueber psychopathologische Minderwertigkeiten, pp. 27 ff. (Braumuller, Vienna 1909)

2. Jung, Studies in Word-Association.

3. Eberschweiler, Untersuchungen ueber die sprachliche Komponente der Association (Inaug. Diss. Zurich) 1908 (Allg. Zeitschr. f. Psychiatrie, 1908)

4. In another place (Psychopath. Minderw., p. 41) Gross draws a distinction, rightly in my view, between the "overvalued idea" and the so-called "complex with commanding value". For the latter is characteristic not only of this type, as Gross thinks, but also of the other. The "conflict" complex has always considerable value by virtue of its accentuated feeling tone, no matter in which type it may appear.

5. Cf. P. Bjerre: Zur Radikalbehandlung der chronischen Paranoia. (Jahrbuch fur psychoanal. Forschungen, Bd. iii, pp. 795 ff.)

6. Psychopath. Minderw., p. 40.

7. Gross, Ueber psychopathologische Minderwertigkeiten.

8. l.c., p. 59.

9. Cf. the similar testimony of Jordan.

10. l.c., p. 12. Also in Gross' book: Ueber pathologisehe Minderwertigkeiten, p. 30, and p. 37.

11. This tension or relaxation can occasionally be demonstrated even in the tone of the musculature. Usually one can see it expressed in the face.
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Re: PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES by C. G. Jung

Postby admin » Tue Oct 06, 2015 9:57 pm

CHAPTER 7: THE PROBLEM OF TYPICAL ATTITUDES IN AESTHETICS

IT is, as it were, self-evident that every province of the human mind that is either directly or indirectly concerned with psychology should yield its contribution to the question we are here discussing. Now that we have listened to the philosopher, the poet, the physician, and the observer of men, let us hear what the representative of aesthetics has to say.

AEsthetics has to deal, not only with the aesthetic nature of things, but also -- and in perhaps even higher degree -- with the psychological question of the aesthetic attitude. Not for long could such a fundamental phenomenon as the opposition of introversion and extraversion escape the aesthetic standpoint, since the form and manner in which art and beauty are sensed and regarded by different individuals differ so widely that one could not but be struck by this opposition. Disregarding the many, more or less, sporadic and unique individual peculiarities of attitude, there exist two contrasting basic forms, which Worringer has described as 'feeling-into' ('empathy') [1] and 'abstraction' [2]. His definition of 'feeling-into' is derived principally from Lipps. For Lipps, feeling-into is "the objectification of my quality into an object distinct from myself, whether the quality objectified merits the term 'feeling' or not". "While I am in the act of apperceiving an object, I experience, as though in it or issuing from it, as something apperceived and present in it, an impetus towards a definite manner of inner behaviour. This appears as given through it, as though imparted to me by it. [3]" Jodl [4] interprets it as follows: "The sensuous appearance given by the artist is not merely an inducement which brings to our mind kindred experiences by the laws of association; but, since it is subordinated to the universal laws of externalization, [5] and appears as something outside of ourselves, we also project into it those inner processes which it reproduces in our minds. We thereby give it aesthetic animation -- an expression which may be preferred to the term 'feeling-into' -- because, in this introjection of one's own inner state into the picture, it is not feeling alone that is concerned, but every sort of inner process." By Wundt feeling-into is reckoned among the elementary assimilation processes. [6]

Feeling-into, therefore, is a kind of perception process, distinguished by the fact that it transveys, through the agency of feeling, an essential psychic content into the object; whereby the object is introjected. This content, by virtue of its intimate relation with the subject, assimilates the object to the subject, and so links it up with the subject that the latter senses himself, so to speak, in the object. The subject, however, does not feel himself into the object, but the object felt into appears rather as though it were animated and expressing itself of its own accord. This peculiarity depends upon the fact that the projection transfers an unconscious content into the object, whence also the feeling-into process is termed transference (Freud) in analytical psychology. Feeling-into, therefore, is an extraversion. Worringer defines the aesthetic experience in feeling-into as follows: "AEsthetic enjoyment is objectified pleasure in oneself" (l.c., p. 4). Consequently, only that form is beautiful into which one can feel oneself. Lipps says: "Only so far as this feeling-into extends are forms beautiful. Their beauty is simply: this my ideal freely living itself out in them" (AEsthetik, p. 247). The form into which one cannot feel oneself is, accordingly, ugly. Herein is also involved the limitation of the feeling-into theory, since there exist art-forms, as Worringer points out, whose products do not correspond with the attitude of feeling-into.

Specifically one might mention the oriental and exotic art-forms as being of this nature. But, with us in the west, long tradition has established 'natural beauty and truth to Nature' as the criterion of beauty in art, since it is also the criterion and essential character of Graeco-Roman and occidental art in general. (With the exception, however, of certain medieval forms.)

For ages past our general attitude to art has been one of feeling-into, and we can describe as beautiful only a thing into which we can feel ourselves. If the artistic form of the object is opposed to life, inorganic or abstract, we cannot feel our life into it; whereas this naturally always takes place when we have a feeling-into relationship with the object. ("What I feel myself into is life in general", Lipps). We can feel ourselves only into organic form-form that is true to Nature and has the will to live. And yet another art-principle certainly exists, a style that is opposed to life, that denies the will to live, that is distinct from life, and yet makes a claim to beauty. When artistic energy creates forms whose abstract inorganic quality is opposed to life, there can no longer be any question of a creative will arising from the feeling-into need; rather is it a need to which feeling-into is directly opposed -- in other words, a tendency to suppress life. "The impulse to abstraction would seem to be this counter-urge to the feeling-into need." (Worringer, l.c., p. 16).

Concerning the psychology of this impulse to abstraction, Worringer says: "What psychic suppositions are there for the impulse to abstraction? Among those peoples where it exists we must look for them in their feeling towards the world, in their psychic behaviour vis-a-vis the cosmos. Whereas the feeling-into impulse is conditioned by a happy, pantheistic, trustful relationship between man and the phenomena of the outer world, the impulse to abstraction is the result of a great inner uneasiness or fear of these phenomena, and in the religious connection corresponds with a strong transcendental colouring of every idea. Such a state might be called an immense spiritual agoraphobia. When Tibullus says 'primum in mundo fecit deus timorem' ('The first thing God made in the world was fear '), this very feeling of dread is admitted as the primal root of artistic energy."

This is literally true; feeling-into does presuppose a subjective attitude of readiness, or trustfulness vis-a-vis the object. It is a free movement of response, transveying a subjective content into the object; thus producing a subjective assimilation, which brings about a good understanding between subject and object, or at least simulates it. A passive object allows itself to be assimilated subjectively, but in doing so its real qualities are in no way altered; although through the transference they may become veiled or even, conceivably, violated. Through the feeling-into process similarities and apparently common qualities may be created which have no real existence in themselves. It is quite understandable, therefore, that the possibility of another kind of aesthetic relation to the object must also exist -- an attitude, namely, that neither responds nor advances to the object, but, on the contrary, seeks to withdraw from it, and to ensure itself against any influence on the part of the object by creating a subjective psychic activity whose function it is to paralyse the effect of the object.

To a certain extent the feeling-into attitude presupposes an emptiness of the object, which can thereupon be imbued with its own life. Abstraction, on the other hand, presupposes a certain living and operating force on the part of the object; hence it seeks to remove itself from the object'~ influence. Thus the abstracting attitude is centripetal, i.e. introverted. Worringer's concept of abstraction, therefore, corresponds with the introverted attitude. It is significant that Worringer describes the influence of the object in terms of fear or dread. Thus, the abstracting attitude would have a posture vis-a-vis the object, suggesting that the latter had a threatening quality, i.e. an injurious or dangerous influence, against which it must defend itself. Doubtless this apparently a priori quality of the object is also a projection or transference, but a transference of a negative kind. We must, therefore, assume that the act of abstraction is preceded by an unconscious act of projection, in which negatively stressed contents are transveyed to the object.

Since feeling-into, like abstraction, is a conscious act, and since the latter is preceded by an unconscious projection, we may reasonably ask whether feeling-into may not also be preceded by an unconscious act. Since the nature of feeling-into is a projection of subjective contents, the antecedent unconscious act must be the opposite -- viz. a neutralizing of the object, i.e. making it inoperative. For by this means the object is, as it were, emptied, robbed of spontaneity, and thereby made a suitable receptacle for the subjective contents of the feeling-into individual. The feeling-into subject seeks to feel his life into the object, to experience in and through the object; hence it is essential that the independence of the object and the difference between it and the subject be not too manifest. Through the unconscious act preceding the feeling-into process, the independent power of the object is thus depotentiated or over-compensated, because the subject forthwith unconsciously superordinates himself to the object. But this act of superordination can happen only unconsciously, through an intensification of the importance of the subject. This may happen through an unconscious phantasy, which either deprives the object forthwith of its value and force, or enhances the value of the subject placing him above the object. Only by such means can that difference of potential arise which the act of feeling-into demands for the subjective contents to be transveyed into the object.

The man with the abstracting attitude finds himself in a terribly animated world, which seeks to overpower and smother him; he therefore retires himself, so that in himself he may contrive that redeeming formula which can be relied upon to enhance his subjective value to a point where at least it shall be a match for the influence of the object. The man with the feeling-into attitude finds himself, on the contrary, in a world that needs his subjective feeling to give it life and soul. Confidingly he bestows his animation upon it, while the abstracting individual retreats mistrustingly before the daemons of objects, and builds up a protective counterworld with abstract creations.

If we recall our argument of the preceding chapter, we shall easily recognize the mechanism of extraversion in the feeling-into attitude, and that of introversion in the abstracting. "The great inner uneasiness occasioned by the phenomena of the outer world'" is nothing but the stimulus-fear of the introvert, who, as a result of his deeper sensibility and realization, has a real dread of too rapid or too powerful changes of stimuli. Through the agency of the general concept his abstractions also serve a most definite aim; viz. to confine the changing and irregular within law-abiding limits. It is self-evident that this, at bottom magical, procedure is to be found in fullest flower among the primitives, whose geometrical signs are less valuable from the standpoint of beauty than for their magical properties.

Of the orientals, Worringer rightly says: "Tormented by the confused combination and changing play of external phenomena, such people were overtaken by an immense need of repose. The possibility of happiness which they sought in art consisted not so much in immersing themselves in the things of the outer world and seeking pleasure therein as in the raising of the individual thing out of its arbitrary and seemingly accidental existence, with a view to immortalizing it within the sphere of abstract form: wherein to find a point of rest amid the ceaseless stream of phenomena" (l.c., p. 18).

"These abstract, law-determined forms, therefore, are not merely the highest, but indeed the only, forms wherein man may find repose in face of the monstrous confusion of the world spectacle" (l.c., p. 21).

As Worringer says, it is precisely the oriental religious and art-forms which exhibit this abstracting attitude to the world. To the oriental, therefore, the world in general must appear very different from what it does to the occidental, who animates his object with the feeling-into attitude. To the oriental, the object is imbued with life a priori and always tends to overwhelm him; thus he withdraws himself, in order to abstract his impressions from it. An illuminating insight into the oriental attitude is offered by Buddha in the Fire-sermon, where he says:

"All is in flames. The eye and all the senses stand in flames, kindled by the fire of love, by the fire of hate, by the fire of delusion; through birth, ageing and death, through pain and lamentations, through sorrow, suffering, and despair is the fire kindled. -- The whole world standeth in flames; the whole world is wrapt and shadowed in smoke; the whole world is devoured by fire; the whole world quaketh."

It is this fearful and sorrowful vision of the world that forces the Buddhist into his abstracting attitude, as, indeed, according to legend, Buddha also was brought to his life's quest through a similar impression of the world. The dynamic animation of the object as the fons et origo of abstraction is strikingly expressed in Buddha's symbolic language. This animation is not dependent upon feeling-into, but corresponds rather with an a priori unconscious projection -- a projection actually existing from the beginning. The term 'projection' hardly seems qualified to carry the real meaning of this phenomenon. Projection is really an act that transpires, and not a condition existing from the beginning, which is clearly what we are dealing with here. It seems to me that Levy-Bruhl's concept "participation mystique" is more descriptive of this condition, seeking, as it does, to formulate the primordial relationship of the primitive to his object. For the primitive, objects have a dynamic animation, charged, as it were, with soul-stuff or soul-force (not absolutely soul-endowed as is assumed by the animistic hypothesis), so that they have an immediate psychic effect upon the man, producing what is practically a dynamic identification with the object. Thus in certain primitive languages objects of personal use have a gender denoting 'alive' (the suffix of the 'thing living'). With the abstracting attitude it is much the same, for here also the object has an a priori animation and independence; far from needing any feeling-into on the part of the subject, the object commands so strong an influence that introversion is almost forced upon one. The powerful unconscious libido charge of the object is dependent upon its "participation mystique" with the unconscious of the introverting subject. This is clearly implied in the words of Buddha; the world-fire is identical with the subject's libido-fire, the expression of his burning passion, which, however, appears objective to him, because it is not yet differentiated into a subjectively disposable function.

Abstraction, then, seems to be a function which is at war with the original state of "participation mystique". Its effort is to part from the object, thus to put an end to the object's tyrannical hold. Its effect is either to lead to the creation of art forms, or to the cognition of the object. Similarly, the function of feeling-into is just as effective as an organ of artistic; creation as it is of cognition. But it can take place only upon a very different basis from that of abstraction. For, just as the latter is grounded upon the magical importance and power of the object, feeling-into is rooted in the magical importance of the subject, whereby the object is secured by means of mystical identification. It is similar with the primitive, who, on the one hand, is magically influenced by the power of the fetish and at the same time, is also the magician, the accumulator of magical power who dispenses potency to the fetish. (Cf. the churinga rites of the Australians) [7].

The unconscious depotentiation of the object, which results from the act of feeling into means also a permanent more moderate valuation of the object. For in this case the unconscious contents of the feeling into subject are . identical with the object, thus making it appear inanimate [8]. For this reason feeling-into is necessary for the cognition of the nature of the object. One might speak in this case, of a continually existing, unconscious abstraction which presents the object as inanimate. For abstraction has always this effect: it kills the independent activity of the object, in so' far as this is magically related to the psyche of the subject. The abstracting attitude performs this consciously, in order to protect itself from the magical influence of the object. From the a priori inanimateness of the object there likewise proceeds that relation of trust which the feeling-into subject has towards the world; there is nothing there that could inimically affect or oppress him, since he alone dispenses life and soul to the object, although to his conscious appreciation the converse would seem to be true. But, to the man with the abstracting attitude, the world is filled with powerfully operating and therefore dangerous objects; these inspire him with fear, and with a consciousness of his own impotence: he withdraws himself from a too close contact with the world, thus to create those ideas and formulae with which he hopes to gain the upper hand. His, therefore, is the psychology of the oppressed, whilst the feeling-into subject confronts the object with an a priori confidence -- its inanimateness has no dangers for him.

This characterization is naturally schematic, and makes no pretence to be a complete portrait of the extraverted or introverted attitude; it merely emphasizes certain nuances, which, nevertheless, have a not inconsiderable importance.

Just as the feeling-into subject is really taking unconscious delight in himself by way of the object, so the abstracting subject unwittingly sees himself while meditating upon the impression that reaches him from the object. For what the feeling-into subject transveys into the object is himself, i.e. his own unconscious content, and what the abstracting man thinks concerning his impression of the object is really thoughts about his own feelings, which appear to him as though belonging to the object. It follows, therefore, that both functions are involved in a real understanding of the object, as indeed they are also essential to a real creativeness in art. Both functions are also constantly present in the individual, although for the most part unequally differentiated.

In Worringer's view the common root of these two basic forms of aesthetic experience is the need for self-divestiture. In abstraction the effort of the subject "is to be wholly delivered from the fortuitous in human affairs, the apparently arbitrary power of general organic existence, in the contemplation of something immovable and necessary". In face of the bewildering and impressive profusion of animated objects, the individual creates an abstraction, i.e. an abstract and general image, which conjures impressions into a law-abiding form. This image has the magical importance of a defence against the chaotic change of experience. He becomes so lost and submerged in this image that finally its abstract truth is set above the reality of life; and therewith life, which might disturb the enjoyment of abstract beauty, is wholly suppressed. He raises himself to an abstraction; he identifies himself with the eternal validity of his image and therein congeals, since it practically amounts to a redeeming formula. In this way he divests himself of his real self and transfers his life into his abstraction, in which it is, so to speak, crystallized.

But since the feeling-into subject feels his activity, his life, into the object, he therewith also yields himself to the object, in so far as the felt-into content represents an essential part of the subject. He becomes the object; he identifies himself with it, and in this way gets rid of himself. Because he objectifies himself he, therefore, de-subjectifies himself. Worringer says:

"But since we feel this will to activity into another object, we are in the other object. We are released from our own individual being. just in so far as our urge for experience engrosses us in an outer object or an extrinsic form. In contrast to the limitless diversity of individual consciousness, we feel our individuality flowing. as it were, within fixed bounds. In this self-objectification there lies a self-divestiture. At the same time, this affirmation of our individual need for activity represents a restriction of its illimitable possibilities. a negation of its irreconcilable diversities. We needs must rest. with our inner urgings towards activity, within the limits of this objectification." (l.c. p. 27)

As in the case of the abstracting individual, the abstract image represents a comprehensive formula, a bulwark against the disintegrating effects of the unconsciously animated object [9], so for the feeling-into subject, the transference to the object is a defence against the disintegration caused by inner subjective factors, which consist in boundless phantasy possibilities and corresponding impulses to activity. Although, according to Adler, the introverted neurotic, is held fast to a "fictitious guiding line", the extraverted neurotic clings no less tenaciously to his transference to the object. The introvert has abstracted his" guiding line" from his good and evil experiences with objects, and he trusts himself to his formula as a means of defence against the unlimited possibilities of life.

Feeling-into and abstraction, extraversion and introversion, are mechanisms of adaptation and defence. In so far as they make adaptation possible, they protect man from external dangers. In so far as they are directed functions [10] they liberate him from fortuitous impulses; moreover, they actually protect him, since they render self-divestiture possible for him.

As our daily psychological experience testifies, there are numbers of men who are wholly identified with their directed function (the "valuable" function), and among them are those very types we are here discussing. Identification with' the directed function has the incontestable advantage that by so doing a man can best adapt himself to collective claims and expectations; moreover, it also enables him to avoid his inferior, undifferentiated, and undirected functions through self-divestiture. Besides, from the standpoint of social morality, unselfishness is always considered a particular virtue. But, upon the other side, we have to weigh the great disadvantage that inevitably accompanies this identification with the directed function, viz. the degeneration of the individual. Man, doubtless, is capable of a very extensive reduction to the mechanical level, although never to the point of complete surrender, without suffering gravest injury. For the more he is identified with the one function, the more does its over-charge of libido withdraw libido from the other functions. For a long period, maybe, they will endure even 'an extreme deprivation of libido, but in time they will inevitably react. The draining of libido involves their gradual relapse below the threshold of consciousness, their associative connection with consciousness gets loosened, until they sink by degrees into the unconscious. This is synonymous with a regressive development; namely, a recession of the relatively developed function to an infantile and eventually archaic level. But, since man has spent relatively only a few thousand years in a cultivated state, as opposed to many hundred thousand years in a state of savagery, the archaic function-ways are correspondingly extraordinarily vigorous and easily reanimated. Hence, when certain functions become disintegrated through deprivation of libido, their archaic foundations begin to operate in the unconscious.

This condition involves a dissociation of the personality; for, the archaic functions having no direct relation with consciousness, no practicable bridges exist between the conscious and the unconscious. It follows, therefore, that the further self-divestiture goes, the further do the atonic functions decline towards the archaic. Therewith the importance of the unconscious also increases. It begins to provoke symptomatic disturbances of the directed function, thus producing that characteristic circulus vitiosus, which we encounter in so many neuroses: the patient seeks to compensate the unconsciously disturbing influence by means of special performances of the directed function; and so the chase continues, even, on occasion, to the point of nervous collapse.

Conceivably, this possibility of self-divestiture through identification with the directed function depends not only upon a one-sided restriction to the one function, but also upon the fact that the nature of the directed function is a principle which actually demands self-divestiture. Thus every directed function demands the strict exclusion of everything not suited to its nature; thinking excludes every harassing feeling, just as feeling excludes each disturbing thought. Without the repression of everything that differs from itself, the directed function cannot operate at all. But, on the other hand, the self-regulation of the living organism makes such a strong, natural demand for the harmonizing of human nature that the consideration of the less favoured functions forces itself to the front as a necessity of life, and an unavoidable task in the education of the human race.

_______________

Notes:

1. There exists, unfortunately, no English equivalent for Einfuhlung. Notwithstanding a certain unavoidable clumsiness such a term involves, I have preferred the literal 'feeling-into' to a more manageable, though inadequate rendering such as' empathy'. [Translator]

2. Worringer, Abstraktion und Einfuhlung, 3rd ed., Munich 1911.

3. Lipps, Leitfaden der Psychologie, 2nd ed. 1906, p. 193.

4. Jodl, Lehrbuch der Psychologie (1908), vol. ii, p. 436.

5. By externalization Jodl understands the localizing of the sense perception in space. We neither hear tones in the ear nor do we see colours in the eye, but in the spatially localized object. (l.c., vol. ii, p. 247).

6. Wundt, Grundzuge der physiologischen Psychologie, 5th ed., vol. iii. p. 191.

7. Spencer and Gillen, The Northern Tribes of Central Australia, (London, 1904)

8. Because the unconscious contents of the feeling-into subject are themselves relatively inanimate.

9. Fr. Th. Vischer, in his novel Auch Einer gives an excellent picture of "animated" objects.

10. Cf. directed thinking: Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious, ch. i. pp. 13 ff.
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Re: PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES by C. G. Jung

Postby admin » Tue Oct 06, 2015 9:58 pm

CHAPTER 8: THE PROBLEM OF TYPES IN MODERN PHILOSOPHY

1. William James' Types


THE existence of two types has also been revealed in modern pragmatic philosophy, particularly in the philosophy of William James [1]. He says:

"The history of philosophy is, to a great extent, that of a certain clash of human temperaments (characterological dispositions)" (p. 6.) "Of whatever temperament a professional philosopher is, he tries, when philosophizing, to sink the fact of his temperament.... Yet his temperament really gives him a stronger bias than any of his more strictly objective premises. It loads the evidence for him one way or the other, making for a more sentimental or a more hard-hearted view of the universe, just as this fact or that principle would. He trusts his temperament. Wanting a universe that suits it, he believes in any representation of the universe that does suit it. He feels men of opposite temper to be out of key with the world's character, and in his heart considers them incompetent and 'not in it,' in the philosophic business, even though they may far excel him in dialectical ability.

"Yet in the forum he can make no claim, on the bare ground of his temperament, to superior discernment or authority. There arises thus a certain insincerity in our philosophic discussions: the potentest of all our premises is never mentioned." [2]


Whereupon James proceeds to the characterization of the two temperaments. Just as in the province of manners and customs we find formalists and free-and-easy persons, in the political world authoritarians and anarchists) in literature purists or academicals and realists, in art classics and romantics, so in philosophy, according to James, there are also to be found two types, viz. the "rationalist" and the "empiricist". The rationalist is "your devotee to abstract and eternal principles". The empiricist is the "lover of facts in all their crude variety". [3] Although no man can dispense either with facts or with principles, yet entirely distinct points of view develop which correspond with the value given to either side.

James makes "rationalism" synonymous with "intellectualism" and "empiricism" with "sensationalism". Although, in my opinion, this comparison is not sound, we will continue with James' line of thought, reserving our criticism for the time being. According to his view, an idealistic and optimistic tendency is associated with intellectualism, whilst empiricism inclines to materialism and a purely conditional and precarious optimism. Rationalism (intellectualism) is always monistic. It begins with the "whole" and the universal and unites things; whereas empiricism begins with the part and converts the whole into a collection. The latter therefore, may be termed pluralistic. The rationalist is a man of feeling, while the empiricist is a hard-headed creature. The former is naturally disposed to a firm belief in free will, the latter to fatalism. The rationalist is readily dogmatic in his statements, while the empiricist is sceptical (pp. 10 ff.) James describes the rationalist as tender-minded, the empiricist as tough-minded. His aim, clearly, is to characterize the peculiar quality of the two mentalities. We must take a further opportunity of examining this characterization rather more closely. It is interesting to hear what James has to say concerning the prejudices which are mutually cherished by the two types. "They have a low opinion of each other. Their antagonism, whenever as individuals their temperaments have been intense, has formed in all ages a part of the philosophic atmosphere of the time. It forms a part of the philosophical atmosphere of to-day. The tough think of the tender as sentimentalists and soft-heads. The tender feel the tough to be unrefined, callous, or brutal ... Each type believes the other to be inferior to itself." (pp. 12 ff.)

James catalogues the qualities of both types in two contrasting columns thus:

Tender-minded:

Rationalistic (going by principles)
Intellectualistic
Idealistic
Optimistic
Religious
Free-willist
Monistic
Dogmatical

Tough-minded:

Empiricist (going by facts)
Sensationalistic
Materialistic
Pessimistic
Irreligious
Fatalistic
Pluralistic
Sceptical


This comparison touches upon various problems we have met with already in the chapter upon nominalism and realism. The tender-minded has certain traits in common with the realist, and the tough-minded with the nominalist. As I have already pointed out, realism corresponds with the principle of introversion, nominalism with extraversion. Without doubt the universalia controversy also belongs, in the first place, to that historical "clash of temperaments" in philosophy to which James alludes. These associations prompt us to regard the tender-minded as introverted, and the tough-minded as extraverted. It devolves upon us, however, to redouble our scrutiny before deciding whether or no this combination is valid.

From my naturally somewhat limited knowledge of James' writings, I have not succeeded in discovering any more detailed definitions or descriptions of the two types, although he frequently refers to these two kinds of thinking, and incidentally describes them as "thin" and "thick". Flournoy [3] interprets "thin" as "mince, tenu, maigre, chetif" and "thick" as "epais, solide, massif, cossu". James, on one occasion, also uses the expression "soft-headed" for the tender-minded. Both "soft" and "tender" suggest something delicate, mild, gentle, light; hence weak, subdued, and rather powerless, in contrast to "thick" and "tough", which are resistant qualities, solid and hard to change, recalling the nature of matter and substance. Flournoy accordingly elucidates the two kinds of thinking as follows: "It is the opposition between the abstractionist manner of thinking -- in other words, the purely logical and dialectical fashion so dear to philosophers, which fails, however, to inspire James with any confidence, appearing to him as fragile, hollow "chetive", because too withdrawn from the contact of individual things -- and the concrete manner of thinking, which is nourished on the facts of experience and never quits the earthy region of tortoise-shells or other positive facts." (p. 32).

We should not, of course, conclude from this commentary that James has a one-sided approval of concrete thinking. He appreciates both standpoints: "Facts are good, of course ... give us lots of facts. Principles are good ... give us plenty of principles." Admittedly, a fact never exists only as it is in itself, but also as we view it. If, therefore, James describes concrete thinking as "thick" or "tough", he thereby demonstrates that for him this kind of thinking has something substantial and resistant, while abstract thinking appears as something weak, thin, and pallid, perhaps even (if we interpret with Flournoy) rather sickly and decrepit. Naturally, such a view is possible only for one who has made an a priori, connection between substantiality and the concrete fact, and that, as we have already said, is just where the question of temperament comes in. If the "empirical" thinker attributes a resistant substantiality to his concrete thinking, from the abstract standpoint he is deceiving himself, because substantiality, or "hardness", belongs to the external fact and not to his "empirical" thinking. In fact, the latter turns out to be particularly weak and decrepit; for, so little does it know how to maintain itself in the presence of the external fact, that it must always be running after, even depending upon, sense-given facts, and, in consequence, can hardly be said to rise above the level of a mere classifying or presenting activity.

From the thinking standpoint, therefore, there is something very frail and dependent about concrete thinking, because, instead of having stability in itself, it depends upon outer objects, which are superordinated to thought as determining values. Hence this kind of thinking is characterized by a succession of sense-bound representations, which are set in motion, not so much by an inner thought-activity, as by the changing stream of sense perceptions. A succession of concrete representations conditioned by sensuous perceptions is not precisely what the abstract thinker would term thinking, but at best only a passive apperception.

The temperament that prefers concrete thinking, and grants it substantiality, is distinguished, therefore, by a preponderance of sense-conditioned representations, as against active apperception, which springs from a subjective act of will, whose aim it is to command the sense-determined representations in accordance with the tendencies of an idea. To put it more briefly: more weight is given to the object in such a temperament; the object is felt-into; it maintains a quasi-independent behaviour in the idea-world of the subject, and carries comprehension along in its train. This is therefore an extraverting temperament. The thinking of the extravert is concretistic. His soundness and stability do not lie in himself, but very largely outside himself in the felt-into facts of experience, whence also James' qualification "tough" is derived. To the man who is always ranged upon the side of concrete thinking, i.e. upon the side of representations of facts, abstraction appears as something feeble and decrepit, something he is well able to dispense with, in face of the solidity of concrete, sense-established facts. But, for the man who is on the side of abstraction, it is not the sense-conditioned representation, but the abstract idea, which is the decisive factor.

According to the current conception, an idea is nothing but an abstraction of a sum of experiences. With such a notion the human mind is readily conceived as a sort of tabula rasa, that gradually gets covered with the perceptions and experiences of life. From this standpoint, which in the widest sense is the standpoint of our empirical science, the idea can be nothing at all, but an epiphenomenal, a posteriori abstraction from experiences -- hence feebler and more colourless than these. But we know that the mind cannot be a tabula rasa, since we have only to criticize our principles of thought to perceive that certain categories of our thinking are given a priori, i.e. antecedent to all experience, and make a simultaneous appearance with the first act of thought, being, in fact, its preformed conditions. For what Kant proved for logical thinking holds good for the psyche over a still wider range. At the beginning, the psyche is no more a tabula rasa than is the mind (the province of thought). To be sure the concrete contents are lacking, but the contents-possibilities are given a priori through the inherited and preformed functional disposition. The psyche is simply the product of brain-functioning throughout our whole ancestral line, a precipitate of the adaptation-efforts and experiences of the phylogenetic succession. Hence the newly-born brain or function-system is an ancient instrument, prepared for quite definite ends; it is not merely a passive, apperceptive instrument, but is also in active command of experience outside itself, forcing certain conclusions or judgments. These adjustments are not merely accidental or arbitrary happenings, but adhere to strictly preformed conditions, which are not transmitted, as are perception-contents, through experience, but are a priori conditions of apprehension. They are ideas ante rem, form-determinants, basic lines engraven a priori, assigning a definite formation to the stuff of experience; so that we may regard them as images (as Plato also conceived them), as schemata as it were, or inherited function-possibilities, which, moreover, exclude other possibilities, or, at all events, restrict them to a great extent. This explains why even phantasy, the freest activity of the mind, can never roam in the infinite (albeit, so the poet senses it), but remains bound to the preformed possibilities, the primordial images or archetypes. In the similarity of their motives, the fairy-tales of the most remote peoples show this binding connection to certain root-images. The very images which underlie scientific theories reveal this inherent restrictiveness; for example, ether, energy, its transformations and its constancy, the atomic theory, affinity, and so forth.

Just as the sense-given representation prevails in, and gives direction to, the concretely thinking mind, so the content less, and therefore unrepresentable, archetype is paramount in the mind that thinks abstractly. It remains relatively inactive, so long as the object is felt-into and thus raised to the determining factor of thought. But, when the object is not felt-into, and thus deprived of its priority in the mental process, the energy thus denied to it returns again into the subject. The subject is un consciously felt-into; whereupon the preformed images are awakened from their slumber, emerging as effective factors in the mental process, although in unrepresentable form, rather like invisible stage managers behind the scenes. Being merely activated function possibilities, they are without contents, therefore unimaginable; accordingly, they strive towards realization. They draw the stuff of experience into their shape, presenting themselves in facts rather than presenting facts. They clothe themselves in facts, as it were. Hence they are not a known starting-point, like the empirical fact in concrete thinking, but only become experienceable through their unconscious shaping of the stuff of experience. Even the empiricist can arrange and shape the material of his experience; he, nevertheless, forms it, as far as possible, after a concrete idea which he has built up on the basis of past experience. The abstractionist, on the other hand, shapes after an unconscious model, only gaining an a posteriori experience of the idea, which was his model, by a consideration of the phenomenon he has formed. The empiricist, working from his own psychology, is always inclined to assume that the abstractionist shapes the material of experience in a quite arbitrary fashion from certain pale, feeble, and inadequate premises, measuring as he does the mental process of the abstractionist by his own modus procedendi. The actual premise, i.e. the idea or root-image, is, however, just as unknown to the abstractionist as, in the case of the empiricist, is that theory which, after such and such experiments, he will subsequently build up out of experience. As was explained in an earlier chapter, the one sees the individual object and interests himself in its individual behaviour, while the other has mainly in view the relations of similarity between objects, and disregards the individuality of the fact. Amidst the disintegration of multiplicity he finds more peace and comfort in what is uniform and coherent. To the former, however, the relation of similarity is frankly burdensome and harassing, something that may even hinder him from seizing the perception of the object's particularity. The further he is able to feel himself into the individual object, the more he discerns its peculiarity, and the more the reality of a relation of similarity with another object vanishes from his view. But, if he also knew how to feel himself into another object, he would be in a position to sense and understand the similarity of both objects to a far higher degree than the man who viewed them simply and solely from without.

It is because he first feels himself into one object and then into another that the concrete thinker comes only very slowly to the discernment of the connecting similarities, and for this reason his thinking appears torpid and sluggish. But his feeling-into flows readily. The abstract thinker quickly seizes the similarity, replaces the individual object by general, distinguishing marks, and shapes this material with his own inner thought activity, which, however, is just as powerfully influenced by the 'shadowy' archetype as is the concrete thinker by the object. The greater the influence the object has upon thinking, the more are its characters stamped upon the thought-image. But the less the object operates in the mind, with all the more power will the a priori idea set its impress upon experience.

Through the exaggerated importance of the empirical object there has arisen in science a certain sort of specialist theory, as, for instance, that familiar 'brain-mythology' which appeared in psychiatry, wherein an attempt was made to explain a very large domain of experience from principles, which, although pertinent for the elucidation of certain constellations of facts within narrow limits, are wholly inadequate for every other application. But, on the other hand, abstract thinking, which accepts one individual fact only because of its similarity with another, creates a universal hypothesis which, while bringing the idea to a more or less clear presentation, has just as much or as little to do with the nature of concrete facts as a myth.

Both thought-forms, therefore, in their extreme expressions, create a mythology, the one expressing it concretely with cells, atoms, vibrations, and so forth, the other with" eternal" ideas. Extreme empiricism has, at least, this advantage: it brings facts to the clearest possible presentation. But the advantage of extreme ideologism is that it reflects back the a priori forms, the ideas or archetypes, with the utmost purity. The theoretical results of the former .are exhausted with their material; the practical results of the latter are confined to the presentation of the psychological idea.

Because our present scientific mind adopts a one-sided, concrete, and purely empirical, attitude, it has no standard by which to value the man who presents the idea; since, in the estimation of the empiricist, facts rank higher than the knowledge of those primordial forms in which human intelligence conceives them. This tacking toward the side of concretism is, as we know, a relatively recent acquisition, a relict from the epoch of enlightenment. The results of this development are astonishing, but they have led to an accumulation of empirical material whose very immensity gradually produces more confusion than clarity. It inevitably leads to a scientific separatism, and therewith to a specialist mythology, which spells, death to universality. But the preponderance of empiricism not only means a smothering of active thinking, it also involves a danger to the laying down of sound theories within any branch of science. The absence of a general view-point favours mythical theory-building, just as much as does the absence of an empirical point of view.

In my view, therefore, James' "tender-minded" and "tough-minded" are manifestly but a one-sided terminology, and at bottom conceal a certain prejudice. But it should, at least, have become evident from this discussion that James' characterization deals with those same types which I have termed the introverted and the extraverted.

2. The Characteristic Pairs of Opposites in James' Types

(a) The first pair of opposites instanced by James as a distinguishing feature of the types is Rationalism versus Empiricism.


As the reader will have remarked, I have already dealt with this antithesis in a previous chapter, conceiving it as the opposition between ideologism and empiricism. I have avoided the expression "rationalism", because concrete, empirical thinking is just as "rational" as active, ideological thinking. The ratio governs both forms. There exists, moreover, not merely a logical rationalism but also a feeling rationalism; for rationalism is nothing but a general psychological attitude towards reasonableness of thought and feeling. With this understanding of the concept "rationalism", I find myself in definite and conscious opposition to the historical philosophical conception, which understands" rationalistic" in the sense of "ideological", thus conceiving rationalism as the supremacy of the idea. With the modern philosophers, however, the ratio has been stripped of its purely ideal character; it is even described as a capacity, instinct, intention, as a feeling even, or, again, a method. At all events-considered psychologically -- it is a certain, attitude governed, as Lipps says, by the "feeling of objectivity". Baldwin [4] regards it as the "constitutive, regulative principle of the mind". Herbart interprets it as "the capacity of reflection" [5]. Schopenhauer says of the reason, that it has only one function, namely" the shaping of the idea; and from this unique function all those above-mentioned manifestations, which distinguish the life of man from that of the animal, are very easily and completely explained, and in the application or non-application of that function, positively everything is meant which men in all places and of all times have called reasonable or unreasonable" [6]. The "abovementioned manifestations" refer to certain properties of reason, instanced by Schopenhauer by way of example, namely "the command of affects and passions, the capacity for drawing conclusions and constructing general principles, ... the concerted action of several individuals ... civilization, the state; also science and the preservation of previous experience, etc." If reason, as Schopenhauer asserts, has the function of forming ideas, it must also possess the character of that psychic attitude which is fitted to shape ideas through the activity of thought. It is entirely in this sense of an attitude that Jerusalem [7] also conceives the reason, namely as a disposition of the will which enables us, in our decisions, to make use of our reason and control our passions.

Reason, therefore, is the capacity to be reasonable, a definite attitude which enables thought, feeling, and action to correspond with objective values. From the standpoint of empiricism this "objective" value is the yield of experience, but from the ideological standpoint it is the result of a positive act of valuation on the part of the reason, which in the Kantian sense would be a "faculty of judgment and action in accordance with basic principles ". For, with Kant, the reason is the source of the idea, which is a "reasoning concept whose object can positively not be encountered in experience", and which "contains the primordial image of the use of the mind -- as a regulative principle for the purpose of gaining general coherence in our empirical mental practice" (Logik, pp. 140 ff.). This is a genuinely introverted view. In vivid contrast to this is the empiricistic view of Wundt, who declares that the reason belongs to a group of complex intellectual functions, knit together into one general expression, together with" their antecedent phases, which yield them an indispensable sensuous substratum ''. [8]

"It is self-evident that this concept' intellectual' is a survival of the faculty-psychology, and suffers, possibly even more than such old concepts as memory, mind, phantasy etc., from confusion with logical points of view which have nothing to do with psychology. What is more natural, therefore, than that it should become all the more indefinite, and at the same time more arbitrary, the more manifold the psychic contents it embraces?" "If, to the standpoint of scientific psychology, there exists no memory, no mind, and no phantasy, but merely certain elementary psychic processes and their relations, which, with rather arbitrary discrimination one includes under those names, still less, of course, can there exist an 'intelligence' or 'an intellectual function'. but merely a uniform, permanently restricted concept corresponding with matter of fact. Nevertheless certain cases remain where it is useful to avail oneself of these borrowed concepts from the old inventory of the faculty psychology, even though one uses them in a sense modified by their psychological acceptation. Such cases arise whenever we encounter complex phenomena of very variously mingled constituents, which, on account of the regularity of their combination, and above all on practical grounds, demand our consideration; or when individual consciousness affords us definite tendencies of design and formation, and when, once again, the regularity of the combination challenges an analysis of such complex mental capacities. But in all these cases it is naturally the task of psychological research not to remain rigidly adherent to the general concepts thus formed, but to reduce them, whenever possible, to their simple factors."


This view is thoroughly extraverted. I have italicized the specially characteristic passages. Whereas to the introverted point of view 'general concepts' such as reason, intellect, etc., are 'faculties', i.e. simple basic functions, which embrace in a uniform sense the multiplicity of the psychic processes governed by them, to the standpoint of the extraverted empiricist they are nothing but secondary, derived concepts, elaborations of those elementary processes upon which the holders of this view lay the chief value. According to this standpoint, it is better that we should have no dealings with such concepts, but should, on principle, "constantly reduce them to their simple factors". Obviously for the empiricist any other than reductive thinking in connection with general concepts is simply out of the question, since for him concepts are mere derivatives of experience. He can have no sort of knowledge of 'rational concepts', or a priori ideas, since his passive, apperceptive thinking is orientated by sense-conditioned experience. As a result of this attitude, the object is always accentuated: it is, as it were, active, necessitating perceptions and complicated reasonings; but these demand the existence of general concepts, which, however, serve only to comprise certain groups of phenomena under one collective designation. Thus the general concept is, naturally, a mere secondary factor, which, apart from language, has no real existence.

Science, therefore, can concede to reason, phantasy, etc., no right to independent existence, so long as it supports the view that only what is present as sense-accredited matter of fact ('elementary factors') has any real existence. But when thinking, as in the case of the introvert, is orientated by active apperception, reason, intellect, phantasy, etc., have the value of basic functions, or faculties, i.e. powers or activities operating. externally from within: this is because the accent of value for this standpoint is given to the concept, and not to the elementary processes covered and comprised by the concept. Such a thinking is fundamentally synthetic. It is regulated in accordance with. the schema of the concept, and employs the material of experience for the fulfilment of its ideas. The concept appears as the active principle just by reason of its own inner force, which seizes and shapes the material of experience.

The extravert assumes that the source of this force is mere arbitrary choice, or else an ill-considered generalization from limited experience. The introvert, who is unconscious of his own thought-psychology, and may even have adopted the empiricism in vogue as his guiding principle, finds himself defenceless against this reproach. But the reproach itself is merely a projection of extraverted psychology. For the active thinking type derives the energy of his thought-activity neither from arbitrary choice nor from experience, but from the idea, £.e. from the innate functional form which is activated through his introverted attitude. To him, this source is unconscious, since by reason of its a priori lack of content he can only become aware of the idea in an a posteriori formation, namely, in the form which the material of experience assumes through its elaboration by thought. But, to the extravert, the object and the elementary process are important and indispensable, because he has unconsciously projected the idea into the object; hence he is able to mount to the concept, and therewith to the idea, only through empirical accumulation and comparison. The two ways of thinking are mutually opposed in a remarkable way: the one shapes the material out of his own unconscious idea, and thus comes to experience; the other lets himself be guided by the material which contains his unconsciously projected ideas, and thus reaches the idea. There is something intrinsically irritating in this conflict of attitude, and at bottom, this is the cause of the most heated and futile scientific discussions.

I trust that this discussion sufficiently illustrates my view, that the ratio and its one-sided elevation to a principle, viz. rationalism, applies equally well both to empiricism and to ideologism. Instead of ideologism, we might have used the term 'idealism'. But to this application of the word, its antithesis' materialism' stands opposed, and it would have been impossible to use' ideological' as opposed to 'materialistic', since the materialist, as the history of philosophy testifies, may be, and often is, just as much an ideologist, e.g. when he is not an empiricist but thinks actively from the universal concept of matter.

(b) The second pair of opposites advanced by James is Intellectualism versus Sensationalism.

Sensationalism is the expression that characterizes the nature of extreme empiricism. It postulates sense-experience as the unique and exclusive source of cognition. The sensationalistic attitude is entirely orientated by the sense-given object; its orientation, therefore, is outward. James evidently means an intellectual rather than an aesthetic sensationalism, but "intellectualism" even then scarcely seems its appropriate antithesis. Psychologically, intellectualism is an attitude that is distinguished by the fact that it gives the principal determining value to the intellect, i.e. to cognition upon a conceptual level. But with such an attitude I can also be a sensationalist, viz. I may engage my thinking with concrete concepts wholly derived from sense experience. Hence the empiricist may also be intellectual. In philosophy, intellectualism and rationalism are employed almost promiscuously; hence ideologism must again be used as the antithesis to sensationalism, since, in its essence, sensationalism is only an extreme empiricism.

(c) James' third pair of opposites is Idealism versus Materialism.

One may already have begun to wonder whether by "sensationalism". James merely intended an intensified empiricism, i.e. an intellectual sensationalism, or whether, in using the expression "sensationalistic", he may conceivably have wished to bring out the quality pertaining to sensation as a function quite apart from the intellect, By 'pertaining to sensation' I mean true sensuousness (Sinnlichkeit), not of course as voluptas in the vulgar sense, but as a psychological attitude in which the orientating and determining factor is not so much the felt-into object as the mere fact of sense-stimulation and sense-perception. This might also be described as a reflexive attitude (i.e. an attitude based on reflex phenomena), since the whole mentality depends upon and culminates in sense-perception. The object is neither realized abstractly nor felt-into, but operates through its natural form and manner of existence, the subject being exclusively orientated by sense-impressions stimulated by contact with the object. This attitude would correspond with a primitive mentality. Its essential antithesis is the intuitive attitude, which is distinguished by an immediate sensing or apprehension that is neither intellectual nor feeling, but contains both in inseparable combination. Just as the sensuous object appears in perception, so the psychic content also appears in intuition, hence as quasi-illusionary or hallucinatory.

That James should describe the tough-minded as both "sensationalistic" and "materialistic" (and further still as "irreligious") encourages the doubt as to whether, in his description of types, he has really in view the same type antithesis as I have. Materialism, as commonly understood, is an attitude whose orientation corresponds with "material" values -- in other words, a kind of moral sensationalism. Hence James' characterization would yield a very unfavourable portrait, if we were to misconstrue these expressions in the sense of their common significance. But this must not be imputed to James, whose observations upon the types, quoted above, should prevent any such misunderstanding. We are almost justified, therefore, in assuming that James is principally concerned with the philosophical significance of the terms in question. Materialism, then, means an attitude naturally orientated by material values, not, however, by "sensuous" so much as fact values, wherein "fact" signifies something external and, in a sense, concrete. Its antithesis is "idealism", in the philosophical sense of a supreme valuation of the idea. It cannot be a moral idealism that is meant here, for in that case we should have to assume, contrary to James' intention, that his "materialism" means a moral sensationalism. But, if we assume that by materialism he means an attitude wherein the principal orientating value is given to actual reality, we are again in a position to trace an extraverted peculiarity in this attribute, whereat our original doubts vanish. We have already seen that philosophical idealism corresponds with introverted ideologism. A moral idealism would in no way be characteristic for the introvert, for the materialist can also be morally idealistic.

(d) The fourth pair of opposites is Optimism versus Pessimism.

I am extremely doubtful whether this familiar antithesis, by which, indeed, human temperaments can be differentiated, is really applicable to James' types. Is, for instance, the empiricism of Darwin also pessimistic? It is undoubtedly true of the man who, with an ideologistical view of the world, sees the other human types through the glasses of an unconscious feeling projection. But even the empiricist is by no means wont to conceive his view as pessimistic on that account. Or take the thinker Schopenhauer, for instance, whose world-philosophy is purely ideologistic (in all respects like the pure ideologism of the Upanishads); is he somewhat of an optimist according to the James classification? Kant himself, a very pure introverted type, stands as remote from either optimism or pessimism as do the great empiricists.

It seems to me, therefore, that this antithesis has nothing to do with James' types. Just as there are optimistic introverts, there are also optimistic extraverts and vice versa. It would, however, be quite possible for James to have fallen into this mistake as a result of the subjective projection previously referred to. A materialistic or purely empiricistic or positivistic world-philosophy seems utterly cheerless from the standpoint of the ideologist. He must, therefore, sense it as pessimistic. But, to the man who puts his faith in the god 'Matter', the materialistic view of the world seems optimistic. From the ideological standpoint the materialistic conception seems to sever the vital nerve, since its chief power, active apperception and the realization of the archetypes, is thereby paralysed. To the ideologist, therefore, such a view must appear completely pessimistic, for it robs him of all hope of ever again beholding the eternal idea embodied and realized upon the phenomenal plane. A world of real facts would mean banishment and perpetual homelessness. When, therefore, James draws a parallel between the materialistic and the pessimistic points of view, we are entitled to infer that he personally may belong to the ideologistical side -- an assumption that might easily be subtantiated by numerous other characteristics from the life of this philosopher. This circumstance might also explain why the tough-minded has been saddled with the three somewhat dubious epithets -- sensationalistic, materialistic, and irreligious. This inference is further corroborated by that passage in Pragmatism where James compares the mutual aversion between the types with a rencontre between Bostonian tourists and the inhabitants of Cripple Creek [9]. This comparison is hardly flattering to the other type, and allows one to infer an emotional aversion against which even a strong desire for justice does not wholly prevail. This little human document seems to me a most valuable witness to the existence of an irritating disparity between the two types. It may, perhaps, seem trivial that I should make rather a point of such incompatibilities of feeling. But numerous experiences have convinced me that it is just such feelings as these, lying unobserved in the background of consciousness, that occasionally deflect even the most impartial reasoning, colouring it with prejudice and wholly thwarting understanding. It is, indeed, conceivable that the Cripple Creek inhabitants might also eye the Boston tourists in their own particular way.

(e) The fifth pair of opposites is Religiousness versus Irreligiousness.

Naturally, the validity of this antithesis for James' type-psychology depends essentially upon the definition he gives to religiousness. If he conceives its nature wholly from the ideologistical standpoint, as an attitude in which the religious idea plays the dominant role (in contrast to feeling), he is certainly justified in describing the tough-minded as also irreligious. But James' thought is so wide and so essentially human that he can hardly have omitted to see that the religious attitude can also be determined by religious feeling. In fact, he himself says: "But our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout." [10]

The empiricist replaces a lack of respect for "eternal" ideas by an almost religious belief in the actual fact. If a man's attitude is orientated by the idea of God, it would be psychologically the same, were he orientated by the idea of matter, or were he to exalt real facts to the determining factor of his attitude. Only in so far as this orientation takes place unconditionally does it deserve the epithet "religious", But, considered from a high standpoint, the real fact has the value of an unconditional factor equally with the idea, the archetype, which is the age-long product of the reactions and repercussions of man and his inner determinants with the hard facts of external reality. At all events, from the psychological standpoint, absolute surrender to real facts can never be described as irreligious. The tough-minded has his empiricistic, just as the tender-minded has his ideologistic, religion. It is, however, also a fact of our present cultural epoch that science is governed by the object, religion by the subject, i.e. ideologism, for the primordial, self-operative idea must take refuge somewhere, when, as in science, it has been ousted from its place by the object. If religion is thus understood as the present day phenomenon of culture, James is so far justified in describing the empiricist as irreligious -- but only thus far. For philosophers are not an absolutely isolated class of men, and their types also will reach to common humanity, far beyond the province of philosophic men, perchance extending even to civilized humanity in general. On this general ground, therefore, it is surely not permitted to class as irreligious the half of civilized mankind. From the psychology of the primitive we know that the religious function belongs simply to the constitution of the psyche, and is constantly and everywhere present, however undifferentiated it may be.

If we are not to assume a limitation of James' concept of "religion" such as we have just alluded to, then again it must be a question of an affective derailment, which, as we have already seen, can happen only too easily.

(f) The sixth pair of opposites is Indeterminism versus Determinism.

This antithesis is, psychologically, of great interest. It is obvious that empiricism thinks causally, whereby the necessary connection between cause and effect is axiomatically assumed. The empiricistic attitude is orientated by the felt-into object; it is, as it were, 'impressed' by the external fact with a sense of the inevitability of effect following cause. It is quite natural that the impression of the unalterableness of the causal connection should, psychologically, obtrude itself upon such an attitude. The identification of the inner psychic processes with the course of external facts is already granted by the fact that a considerable sum of one's own activity and life is unconsciously bestowed upon the object in the act of feeling-into. The subject is thereby assimilated to the object, although the feeling-into subject believes that it is the object which is assimilated. But, whenever a strong accent of value is laid upon the object, it at once assumes an importance which, in its turn, also influences the subject, forcing him to a dissimilation from himself. Human psychology is, admittedly, chameleon-like. This is a fact of daily experience in the work of the practical psychologist. Where the object is constantly paramount, an assimilation to the nature of the object takes place in the subject. Thus, for example, identification with the loved object plays no small part in analytical therapy. Furthermore, the psychology of the primitive provides us with abundant examples of dissimilation in favour of the object, as, for instance, the frequent assimilation to the totem animal or ancestral spirits. The stigmatizing of Saints in medieval, and even in recent times, belongs also to this connection. In the Imitatio Christi dissimilation is actually exalted to a principle.

In view of this unquestionable aptitude of the human psyche for dissimilation, the translation of the objective causal connections into the subject can be easily understood. The psyche, accordingly, labours under an impression of the unique validity of the causal principle, and the whole armoury of the theory of cognition is required to ward off the overmastering power of this impression. This is further aggravated by the fact that the very nature of the empiricistic attitude prevents one from believing in the inner freedom; since every proof, indeed every possibility of proof, is lacking. Of what consequence is that frail, indefinite feeling of freedom in face of the overwhelming mass of objective proofs to the contrary?

The determinism of the empiricist, therefore, is almost inevitable, assuming that the empiricist carries his thinking to its logical conclusion, and does not prefer -- as not infrequently happens -- to possess two compartments, one for science and the other for the religion he has acquired from his parents and from society.

As we have already seen, the essence of ideologism consists in the unconscious activation of the idea. This activation can result from an aversion to feeling-into acquired later in life, or it can exist from birth as an a priori attitude, fashioned and favoured by Nature. (I have, in my practical experience, seen many such cases.) In this latter case the idea has an a priori activity, without, however, appearing in consciousness, which is accounted for by its emptiness and unrepresentability. As a paramount, inner, though unrepresentable, fact, it is superordinated to "objective" external facts, and yields, at least, a sense of its independence and freedom to the subject, who, as a result of this inner assimilation to the idea, feels himself independent and free vis-a-vis the object. When the idea is the principal orientating factor, it assimilates the subject to its own quality just as completely as the subject tries to assimilate the idea to himself through the shaping of the material of experience. Thus, as in the above-mentioned attitude to the object, there takes place a dissimilation of the subject from himself, in the reversed sense, however, viz. in favour of the idea.

The inherited archetype survives all ages; it is a factor superordinated to every change upon the phenomenal plane, preceding and superseding all individual experience. Hence the idea acquires a particular force. Its activation transveys a pronounced feeling of power into the subject, since it assimilates the subject to itself by means of inner unconscious identification. There dawns within the subject a feeling of power, independence, freedom, and eternity. (Cf. Kant's postulate of God, freedom, and immortality.) When the subject senses the free activity of his idea exalted above the reality of facts, the idea of freedom makes its natural claim upon him. If his ideologism is pure, he must certainly arrive at a conviction of free-will.

The antithesis here reviewed is highly characteristic for our types. The extravert is distinguished by his striving towards the object, his feeling into and identification with the object, and his willed dependence upon the object. He is influenced by the object in the same degree as he strives to assimilate it. The introvert, on the other hand, is distinguished by his apparent self-assertion in presence of the object. He struggles against every dependence upon the object; he repels every influence from the object; on occasion he even fears the object. All the more, however, is he dependent upon the idea which shields him from outer reality and yields him this feeling of inner freedom; albeit, in return, it also gives him a pronounced power psychology.

(g) James' seventh antithesis is Monism versus Pluralism.

It is at once intelligible from the foregoing argument that the attitude orientated by the idea must tend towards monism. The idea has always a hierarchical character, whether it be gained by abstraction from representations and concrete concepts, or whether it has an a priori existence as unconscious form. In the former case it is the highest point of the building which, in a sense, rounds off and comprises everything subordinated to it; in the latter, it is the unconscious law-giver, regulating the possibilities and necessities of thought. The idea in both instances has a ruling quality. Although a plurality of ideas may be present, yet for a longer or shorter period one idea gains the upper hand, constellating the majority of the psychic elements in a monarchical fashion.

Conversely, it is equally clear that the attitude orientated by the object must always incline to a majority of principles (pluralism), since the multiplicity of objective qualities entails also a plurality of concepts and principles without which a suitable interpretation of the nature of the object cannot be gained.

The monistic tendency belongs to the introverted attitude, the pluralistic to the extraverted.

(h) The eighth antithesis is Dogmatism versus Scepticism.

It is also easy to see in this case that dogmatism is the attitude par excellence that follows and clings to the idea, although an unconscious realization of the idea is not eo ipso dogmatic. It is none the less true that the way in which an unconscious idea is almost violently embodied inevitably persuades one to believe that the man in whom the idea is paramount starts out from a dogma in whose rigid folds the material of experience is impressed. It is self-evident that the attitude governed by the object must have an a priori scepticism in relation to all ideas, since its chief desire is that objective experience in general should be allowed its say, undisturbed by universal concepts. In this sense scepticism is an actually indispensable pre-condition of all empiricism.

This pair of opposites also confirms the essential similarity between James' types and my own.

3. General Criticism of James' Conception

In criticizing James' conception, I must first lay stress upon the fact that it is almost exclusively concerned with the thinking qualities of the types. In a philosophical work one could hardly expect otherwise. But such a necessarily onesided setting readily gives rise to confusion. For without difficulty one could demonstrate this or that quality, or even a number of them, in the opposite type. For example, there are empiricists who are dogmatic, religious, idealistic, intellectualistic, and rationalistic; there are also ideologists who are materialistic, pessimistic, deterministic, and irreligious. Even were one to show that such expressions designate very complex matters in which many diverse nuances are in question, the possibility of confusion would not be remedied.

Taken individually, James' expressions are too broad: only in their totality do they give an approximate picture of the typical contrast, without thereby bringing it to a simple formula. In general, James' types are a valuable supplement to the picture of the types we have gained from other sources. James was the first to indicate, with a certain distinctness, the extraordinary importance of temperament in the shaping of philosophical thinking, and for this great credit is due. For the aim of his pragmatic conception was to reconcile the antagonisms of philosophical views resulting from temperamental differences.

Pragmatism, as we know, is a wide-spread philosophical current, originating in the English philosophy (F. C. S. Schiller, of Oxford), which assigns a value to "truth" that is' restricted to its practical efficacy and usefulness, quite unconcerned about its contestability from this or that standpoint. It is characteristic that James should introduce his presentation of this philosophical view with just this very contrast of types, thus practically establishing the necessity of a pragmatic point of view. So the drama, which was already given us by the early medieval psychology, is repeated. At that time the opposition was worded: nominalism versus realism; and it was Abelard who attempted the reconciliation in his sermonism or conceptualism. But, since the understanding of that day was entirely wanting in a psychological point of view, his attempted solution turned out to be correspondingly one-sided in its purely logical and intellectual bias. James takes a deeper grasp; he conceives the opposition psychologically, and, accordingly, attempts a pragmatic solution. It would, however, be unwise to cherish any illusions concerning the value of this solution; pragmatism is but a makeshift, which may claim to be valid only so long as no further sources are discovered that could add fresh elements to the shaping of philosophical view-points, other than the possibilities of cognition which are shaped and coloured by temperament.

Bergson certainly has pointed to intuition and the possibility of an intuitive method. But it admittedly remains merely an indication. A proof of the method is lacking and will not be so easily forthcoming, although Bergson may point to his concepts of "elan vital" and "duree creatrice" as the results of intuition. Apart from this intuitively conceived basic view, which derives its psychological justification from the fact that, even in antiquity, particularly with neo-platonism, it was already a thoroughly familiar combination of ideas, the Bergson method is intellectual and not intuitive. Nietzsche made use of the intuitive source in an incomparably greater measure, and by so doing was able to free himself from the purely intellectual in the shaping of his philosophical ideas; but he did this in such a way, and to such a degree, that his intuitionism went far beyond the limits of a philosophical system, and led him to an artistic creation, i.e. to something which, for the most part, is inaccessible to philosophical criticism. I refer naturally to the Zarathustra, and not to the collection of philosophical aphorisms, which offer themselves in the first place to philosophical criticism by very reason of their prevailingly intellectualistic method. If, therefore, one may speak at all of an "intuitive method," Nietzsche's Zarathustra has, in my opinion, furnished the best example of it; moreover, it has strikingly demonstrated the possibility of a non-intellectualistic, though none the less philosophical comprehension of the problem. Schopenhauer and Hegel appear to be the forerunners of the Nietzschean intuitionism, the former on account of the feeling-intuition which lends such. a decisive colouring to his views, and the latter by virtue of the conceptual-intuition underlying his whole system. With these two fore-runners -- if one may use such an expression -- intuition ranked below the intellect, but with Nietzsche it ranked above it.

The opposition between the two 'truths' demands a pragmatic attitude, if one desires to do any sort of justice to the other standpoint. Yet, indispensable though the pragmatic method may be, it presupposes too great a resignation, thus becoming almost unavoidably bound up with a lack of creativeness. But the solution of the conflict of the opposites can proceed neither from a logico-intellectual compromise as in conceptualism, nor from a pragmatic estimation of the practical value of logically irreconcilable views, but simply and solely from the positive creation which receives the opposites into itself as necessary elements of co-ordination, just as a co-ordinated muscular movement always involves the innervation of antagonistic muscle groups.

Pragmatism, therefore, can only be a transitional attitude that shall prepare the way for creation by the elimination of prejudice. This new way, which pragmatism prepares, and Bergson indicates, German philosophy -- not, of course, the academic schools -- has, in my view, already trodden: it was Nietzsche, with a violence peculiarly his own, who burst open this closed door. His creation leads far beyond the unsatisfying formula of the pragmatic solution, and it has accomplished this just as fundamentally, as the pragmatic recognition of the living value of a truth transcends the arid one-sidedness of the unconscious conceptualism of the post-Abelardian philosophy -- and still there are heights to be scaled.

_______________

Notes:

1. W. James, Pragmatism: a new name for some old ways of thinking. (London; Longmans 1911)

2. pp. 7 ff.

3. Th. Flournoy, La philosophie de W. James, p. 32 (Saint Blaise, 1911)

4. Baldwin, Handbook of Psychology, i, p. 312.

5. Herbart, Psychologie als Wissenschaft, sect. 117.

6. Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, vol. i, par. 8.

7. Jerusalem, Lehrbuch der Psychologie, p. 195.

8. Wundt, Grundsuge der phys. Psychol. 5th edn., vol. iii, pp. 582 ff.

9. James, Pragmatism, p. 13. The Bostonians are notorious on account of their "spiritualized" aestheticism. Cripple Creek is a well-known mining district in Colorado. The contrast can be easily imagined. "Each type believes the other to be inferior to itself; but disdain in the one case is mingled with amusement, in the other it has a dash of fear."

10. James, l.c., p. 15.
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