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The Soul of Carl Jung

Modern Man in Search of a Soul

Understanding the Psyche through the Shadow Self

By Carl Jung

In Modern Man in Search of a Soul, C.G. Jung elucidates how understanding the shadow self leads to psychic health:

Not infrequently the soul is identified with the shadow, for which reason it is a deadly insult to tread upon a person’s shadow. For the same reason, noon-day, the ghost-hour of southern latitudes, is considered threatening; the shadow then grows small, and this means that life is endangered. This conception of the shadow contains an idea which was indicated by the Greeks in the word synopados, “he who follows behind.” They expressed in this way the feeling of an intangible, living presence—the same feeling which led to the belief that the souls of the departed were shadows.

These indications may serve to show how primitive man experienced the psyche. To him the psyche appears as the source of life, the prime mover, a ghost-like presence which has objective reality. Therefore the primitive knows how to converse with his soul; it becomes vocal within him because it is not he himself and his consciousness. To primitive man the psyche is not, as it is to us, the epitome of all that is subjective and subject to the will; on the contrary, it is something objective, contained in itself, and living its own life.

This way of looking at the matter is empirically justified, for not only on the primitive level, but with civilized man as well, psychic happenings have an objective side. In large measure they are withdrawn from our conscious control. We are unable, for example, to suppress many of our emotions; we cannot change a bad mood into a good one, and we cannot command our dreams to come or go. The most intelligent man may at times be obsessed with thoughts which he cannot drive away with the greatest effort of will. The mad tricks that memory plays sometimes leave us in helpless amazement, and at any time unexpected fantasies may run through our minds. We only believe that we are masters in our own house because we like to flatter ourselves. Actually, however, we are dependent to a startling degree upon the proper functioning of the unconscious psyche, and must trust that it does not fail us.

Excerpt from the Carl 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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