Carl Jung, on the Healing Function of Art In this way the work of the poet comes to meet the spiritual need of the society in which he lives, and for this reason his work means more to him than his personal fate, whether he is aware of this or not. Being essentially the instrument…
Carl Jung, on Art and the Collective Unconscious The rapid and worldwide growth of a psychological interest over the last two decades shows unmistakably that modern man is turning his attention from outward material things to his own inner processes. Expressionism in art prophetically anticipated this subjective development, for all art intuitively apprehends coming changes…
We are still certain we know what other people think or what their true character is. We are convinced that certain people have all the bad qualities we do not know in ourselves. If you imagine someone who is brave enough to withdraw all his projections, then you get an individual who is…
Carl Jung speaks about the projection of evil We are always, thanks to our human nature, potential criminals. In reality we merely lacked a suitable opportunity to be drawn into the infernal melee. None of us stands outside humanity’s black collective shadow. Whether the crime lies many generations back or happens today, it remains…
Ivan Iavazovsky: The Creation of the World Filling the conscious mind with ideal conceptions is a characteristic of Western theosophy, but not the confrontation with the shadow and the world of darkness. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The later procedure, however,…
Marriage, Pain and Consciousness . Seldom or never does a marriage develop into an individual relationship smoothly and without crises. There is no birth of consciousness without pain. The ways that lead to conscious realization are many, but they follow definite laws. In general, the change begins with the onset of the second half…
“The stirring up of conflict is a Luciferian virtue in the true sense of the word. Conflict engenders fire, the fire of affects and emotions, and like every other fire it has two aspects, that of combustion and that of creating light. On the one hand, emotion is the alchemical fire whose warmth brings…
Carl Jung, on finding the images behind the emotions: To the extent that I managed to translate the emotions into images– that is to say, to find the images which were concealed in the emotions– I was inwardly calmed and reassured. Had I left those images hidden in the emotions, I might have been torn…
A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them. They then dwell in the house next door, and at any moment a flame may dart out and set fire to his own house. Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always…