Carl Jung
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jungwas a Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology. His work has been influential not only in psychiatry but also in philosophy, anthropology, archaeology, literature, and religious studies. He was a prolific writer, though many of his works were not published until after his death...
NationalitySwiss
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth26 July 1875
CityKesswil, Switzerland
CountrySwitzerland
...consciousness can keep only a few images in full clarity at one time, and even this clarity fluctuates.
And what shall we know of this life on earth after death? The dissolution of our timebound form in eternity brings no loss of meaning. Rather, does the little finger know itself a member of the hand.
Myth is more individual and expresses life more precisely than does science.
Obviously astrology has much to offer psychology, but what the latter can offer its elder sister is less evident. So far as I judge, it would seem to me advantageous for astrology to take the existence of psychology into account, above all the psychology of the personality and of the unconscious.
Astrology is knocking at the gates of our universities: A Tübingen professor has switched over to astrology and a course on astrology was given at Cardiff University last year. Astrology is not mere superstition but contains some psychological facts (like theosophy) which are of considerable importance. Astrology has actually nothing to do with the stars but is the 5000-year-old psychology of antiquity and the Middle Ages.
Anthropologists have often described what happens to a primitive society when its spiritual values are exposed to the impact of modern civilisation. Its people lose the meaning of their lives, their social organisation disintegrates, and they themselves morally decay. We are now in the same condition. But we have never really understood what we have lost, for our spiritual leaders unfortunately were more interested in protecting their institutions than in understanding the mystery that symbols present.
There is no light without shadow, and no psychic wholeness without imperfection.
Insight that dawns slowly seems to me to have more lasting effects than a fitful idealism, which is unlikely to hold out for long.
I have always said to my pupils: "Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it when you are analyzing a dream."
We do not feel as if we were producing the dreams, it is rather as if the dreams came to us. They are not subject to our control but obey their own laws.
Nobody doubts the importance of conscious experience; why then should we doubt the significance of unconscious happenings? They also are part of our life, and sometimes more truly a part of it for weal or woe than any happenings of the day.
In each of us there is another whom we do not know. He speaks to us in dreams and tells us how differently he sees us from the way we see ourselves. When, therefore, we find ourselves in a difficult situation to which there is no solution, he can sometimes kindle a light that radically alters our attitude - the very attitude that led us into the difficult situation.
The symbol in the dream has more the value of a parable: it does not conceal, it teaches.
No dream symbol can be separated from the individual who dreams it, and there is no definite or straightforward interpretation of any dream.