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The Soul of Carl Jung

Modern Man in Search of a Soul

Confronting the Spiritual Problem of Modern Man

By Carl Jung

In Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Carl Jung examines the spiritual crux of modern man:  how to achieve spiritual happiness in a world that embraces consciousness while largely ignoring the unconscious mind:

To me, the crux of the spiritual problem of today is to be found in the fascination which psychic life exerts upon modern man. If we are pessimists, we shall call it a sign of decadence; if we are optimistically inclined, we shall see in it the promise of a far-reaching spiritual change in the Western world. At all events, it is a significant manifestation. It is the more noteworthy because it shows itself in broad sections of every people; and it is the more important because it is a matter of those imponderable psychic forces which transform human life in ways that are unforeseen and—as history shows—unforeseeable.

These are the forces, still invisible to many persons today, which are at the bottom of the present “psychological” interest. When the attractive power of psychic life is so strong that man is neither repelled nor dismayed by what he is sure to find, then it has nothing of sickliness or perversion about it.

Along the great highroads of the world everything seems desolate and outworn. Instinctively the modern man leaves the trodden ways to explore the by-paths and lanes, just as the man of the Græco-Roman world cast off his defunct Olympian gods and turned to the mystery-cults of Asia. The force within us that impels us to the search, turning outward, annexes Eastern Theosophy and magic; but it also turns inward and leads us to give our thoughtful attention to the unconscious psyche.

Excerpt from the C.G. Jung ebook, Modern Man in Search of a Soul

Filed Under: Carl Jung

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JUNGIAN TERMINOLOGY

Active imagination: A method of assimilating unconscious contents through some form of self-expression.

Anima: The inner feminine side of a man.

Animus: The inner masculine side of a woman.

Archetype: Primordial, structural elements of the human psyche.

Assimilation: The process of integrating outer objects and unconscious contents into consciousness.

Collective Unconscious: A structural layer of the human psyche containing inherited elements, distinct from the personal unconscious.

Consciousness: The function or activity which maintains the relation of psychic contents to the ego.

Ego: The central complex in the field of consciousness.

Enantiodromia: The emergence of the unconscious opposite in the course of time.

Individuation: A process of psychological differentiation, having for its goal the development of the individual personality.

Inflation: A state of mind characterized by an exaggerated sense of self-importance, often compensated by feelings of inferiority.

Jungian Analysis: A form of therapy aimed at bringing unconscious contents to consciousness.

Myth: An involuntary collective statement based on an unconscious psychic experience.

Neurosis: A psychological crisis due to a state of disunity with oneself.

Projection: An automatic process whereby contents of one’s own unconscious are perceived to be in others.

Psyche: The totality of all psychological processes, both conscious and unconscious.

Psychosis. An extreme dissociation of the personality due to the activity of unconscious complexes that are completely disconnected from consciousness.

Self: The archetype of wholeness and the regulating center of the psyche.

Shadow: Hidden or unconscious aspects of oneself which the ego has either repressed or never recognized.

Spirit: An archetype and a functional complex, often personified and experienced as enlivening.

Symbol: The best possible expression for something unknown.

Synchronicity: A phenomenon where an event in the outside world coincides meaningfully with a psychological state of mind.

Transcendent function: A psychic function that arises from the tension between consciousness and the unconscious and supports their union.

Unconscious: The totality of all psychic phenomena that lack the quality of consciousness.

Wholeness. A state in which consciousness and the unconscious work together in harmony.

From Daryl Sharp’s Jung Lexicon

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