Tag: Jung

Is 50/50 Division Human Nature

February 28th, 2025

I just started this YouTube video , it starts with Chapter 4 and I quickly realized I’ve heard it before. (Warning: this is more of a Twitter post than a blog post…)

Carl mentions the iron curtain that divides humanity in two.

I’ve been actively not keeping up with the news. It’s inflammatory. It’s designed to be. My suspicion is, which I am not the first to express, it is stolen from some many people I imagine – my suspicion is the news is designed to raise blood pressure a) for engagement but also b) the poor Republicans hate the poor Democrats and vice versa. Who is left unhated on? And what news stories go unnoticed bc people are occupied by these strong gut feelings and beliefs around certain topics, that may not be unimportant, but they might be arguably less important than the news stories that don’t make the front page? While the insults are hurled by the powerless to the powerless, and thrown right back but with more force, like a Hatfield McCoy feud – while this feud rages, who sits on the the hill and watches the action while ordering rounds of lemonade (or maybe martinis and X-years-aged whiskey)

There is no more iron curtain. But people seem to be angry as ever, or more so, while no soldiers die, and less people live in abject poverty, we still divide ourselves 50/50.

Didn’t tribes divide into relatively equal numbers, a presumably ideal group number being about 120 or so if I recall? Did cities, provinces, towns develop into relatively equal numbers throughout history?

Say you are given a choice between joining a group of 40 or a group of 60? If it’s the Eve of a battle, perhaps you choose differently, but if you choose the group of 40 over the larger group, are your chances better that there will be a larger dinner portion assuming resources are somewhat equal? You have a better chance of being more relatively important in the smaller group right?

Like the Eve-of-Battle scenario, I could come up with many scenarios where the larger group is the way to go. Just a thought… hopefully the bot that reads the blog I haven’t posted in in x months enjoys it. Cross your fingers for me, hopefully I have more time for reading and writing in the not-so-distant future.

When he says “sheltered by our humanitarianism and sense of justice” – I think this could be misinterpreted, more or less taken out of context and used to justify negative feelings towards the other side, regardless of which side said justified sits on and which crap news station is the only one watched “in this household”

Both sides, all people in… the world – every single person KNOWS that they stand with the just, the people who see things as they are – and not with the dangerous imbeciles who deserve the harshest of penalties.

Carl had WW2 and the Cold War. But sometimes I wonder… on the surface things look very different but…how different, modern, “advanced” are we really? Are we still not dividing in two? To focus on only one thing of very many examples. Do the myths and symbols still not repeat themselves, very nearly unchanged, like a new coat of paint or a bi-monthly haircut?

***

I went to save that Carl video to watch later, I rarely click on these “short” videos (maybe it’s because of the Washington monument, perhaps the largest and most distinguished Freud/Carl coined ______ symbol in the world) – anyway… I watched it. Synchronicity seeming to actually be a thing, it is strangely applicable to this post.
The Thunderstorm in the Valley

November 28th, 2023

Carl Jung in the Introduction to The Secret of the Golden Flower

I have often seen individuals simply outgrow a problem which had destroyed others. This ‘outgrowing’, as I formerly called it, on further experience was seen to consist in a new level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest arose on the person’s horizon, and through this widening of his view the insoluble problem lost its urgency. It was not solved logically in its own terms, but faded out when confronted with a new and stronger life-tendency. It was repressed and made unconscious, but merely appeared in a different light, and so did indeed become different. What, on a lower level, had led to the wildest conflicts and to panicky outbursts of emotion, viewed from the higher level of the personality, now seemed like a storm in the valley seen from a high mountain-top. This does not mean that the thunderstorm is robbed of its reality, but instead of being in it, one is now above it.
– Carl Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower

I’m a bit ashamed to say that I have experienced “panicky outbursts of emotion”, quite recently as well.

I’m also proud of myself that I feel like I’ve made it out of the valley, albeit for only 48 (or maybe 47… or 46! weeks out of the year) Some of my family are still in the valley.

When I read Jung, I find things that help me transform my anger into pity. It wasn’t easy to get out of that valley. I remember a moment in time when I decided: “No! There is nothing wrong with me! I do not deserve to be treated this way by my father!” despite his repeatedly and consistently over many years telling me that there was something wrong with me every time I was angry with him.

Jung continues:

However, since we are both valley and mountain with respect to the psych, it might seem a vain illusion to feel oneself beyond what is human. One certainly does feel the affect and is shaken and tormented by it, yet at the same time one is aware of a higher consciousness, which prevents one from becoming identical with the affect, a consciousness which takes the affect objectively, and say, ‘I know that I suffer.’ What our text says of indolence: ‘Indolence of which a man is conscious and indolence of which he is unconscious are a thousand miles apart’, holds true in the highest degree of affect also.
– Carl Jung

I’m sometimes ashamed that I turn 43 in just days and I still find myself “in the valley” and swept away in a tidal wave of emotion. But I’m largely out of the valley and I’m also proud of myself for climbing out because I can easily imagine how some people never make it out.
The Shadow Projected

November 21st, 2023

The shadow is often project on to others. Examination of those attributes which a man most condemns in other people (greed, intolerance, disregard for others, etc.) usually shows that, unacknowledged, he himself possesses them.
– C.G. Jung

Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself to or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. If an inferiority is conscious, one always has a chance to correct it. …. But if it is repressed and isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected, and is liable to burst forth suddenly in a moment of unawareness.
– C.G. Jung

Side anecdote: I was bringing this book into the sauna and this dude said “Hey… you read Jung! I went to a liberal arts school.” I told him I had read “Memories, Dreams, Reflections” recently. He told me he had the book.

At this point I started to get the feeling that he might have a lot of books but read very few (alas, like the quote above, I am guilty of the same and so find it unbecoming.)

Then he told me that I shouldn’t bring the book into the sauna because it could ruin the binding. I said that I was just going in for a couple minutes and that it should be fine. Then he added: “You know… I’m saying this as a lover of books…” As if I am not one!

I wasn’t quick enough, and I wouldn’t have said anything anyway, but it would make a good story if I had retorted: “Oh, well then, you should try reading one.”
First Impressions: Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche

July 19th, 2023

A couple quotes from the prologue

I picked this up at Powell’s City of Books in Portland because it’s been referenced in so many things that I’ve read, most recently Memories Dreams Reflections by C.G. Jung.

What good is my virtue! As yet it hath not made me passionate.
Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche

This quote stood out to me because I had a conversation recently with a friend where we came to the conclusion that the most important thing in life is to be passionate (about anything). The context was that I was criticizing a friend for his lack of passion for his work, the only passion being money and security; a desire to keep everything the same, to stop life from changing, which is impossible, and a rejection of what it means to live. Life is change. And I’m reminded of Jung: “Anyone who takes the sure road is as good as dead.”

At some age it becomes impossible for someone to question their big decisions and beliefs. It becomes too painful to accept a serious mistake in judgement that has had a profound effect on one’s life. If one is confronted with this situation it could mean the collapse of the ego and a total mental breakdown. The ego and the mind protect itself. And so the big things are not questioned in our later years, and so I think it is important to constantly question yourself and your beliefs and have your life be a semi-continuous stream of improvement and modification of beliefs. Or else be crushed by the consequences of not doing so.

“A child has Zarathustra become; an awakened one is Zarathustra: what will thou do in the land of the sleepers?”
Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche

This line makes me wonder about how much exposure Nietzsche had to Eastern religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism. ” “Awakened” is an adjective that I associate with “enlightenment” and these Eastern religions. And the idea that the highest achievement is to retain a “child’s mind” I associate with Buddhism and the acceptance and belief that our reality is pattern and change and nothing is eternal. This is related to the first quote / idea I mentioned above, that it is best to continually evolve over the course of one’s life.

“Believe not those who speak unto you of superearthly hopes! Poisoners are they, whether they know it or not.. Despisers of life are they.”
Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche

I would like to leave this quote as a comment on one of my “born again” Facebook friend’s posts. But I won’t. It would be too much. Which brings me back to that idea that at some point… it’s better not to question the big decisions but rather to just “ride it out” to the grave.

I’m reminded of Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari where he writes a bit about how the father who sends his son off to war and then to have him be killed, the father only becomes more patriotic, can only support the nation and the war more. It is too much to accept that the decision and initial judgement was foolish. Also, not wearing masks during Covid, anyone who took this position and then had a relative die of Covid… the only thing that makes sense is to hate Fauci and the CDC more, it’s too much to accept that a different decision could have prevented the death of a loved one…

This post got a little dark… My first impressions are that Zarathustra was a good buy and I expect I’ll find hundreds of quotes that could warrant a blog post each. Even after the first couple pages, I just picked out a couple of the quotes I underlined.
Anyone who takes the sure road is as good as dead

March 14th, 2023

“Memories Dreams Reflections” by Carl Jung, “Visions” chapter

“Anyone who takes the sure road is as good as dead” is the most poignant and pithy one liner in the short chapter titled Visions dedicated solely to the visions that Jung had after his heart attack in 1944. The chapter starts with a description of an out-of-body experience where Jung floats above the earth and towards a granite temple.

“It was as if I now carried along with me everything I had ever experienced or done, everything that had happened around me.”

“There was no longer any regret that something had dropped away or been taken away. On the contrary: I had everything that I was, and that was everything.”

“My life as I lived it had often seemed to me like a story that has no beginning and no end. I had the feeling that I was a historical fragment, an excerpt for which the preceding and succeeding text was missing. My life seemed to have been snipped out of a long chain of events, and many questions had remained unanswered. Why had it taken this course?”

For it seemed to me as if behind the horizon of the cosmos
a three-dimensional world had been artificially built up, in which
each person sat by himself in a little box. And now I should have to convince myself all over again that this was important! Life and the
whole world struck me as a prison, and it bothered me beyond
measure that I should again be finding all that quite in order.

It is impossible to convey the beauty and intensity of emotion during
those visions. They were the most tremendous things I have ever experienced. And what a contrast the day was: I was tormented and
on edge; everything irritated me; everything was too material, too
crude and clumsy, terribly limited both spatially and spiritually. It was
all an imprisonment, for reasons impossible to divine, and yet it had
a kind of hypnotic power, a cogency, as if it were reality itself, for all
that I had clearly perceived its emptiness.

The insight I had had, or the vision of the end of all things, gave me the courage to undertake new formulations. I no longer attempted to put across my own opinion, but surrendered myself to the current of my thoughts.

Something else, too, came to me from my illness. I might formulate
it as an affirmation of things as they are: an unconditional “yes” to
that which is, without subjective protests acceptance of the
conditions of existence as I see them and understand them,
acceptance of my own nature, as I happen to be.

It was only after the illness that I understood how important it is to
affirm one’s own destiny. In this way we forge an ego that does not break down when incomprehensible things happen; an ego that endures, that endures the truth, and that is capable of coping with the world and with fate. Then, to experience defeat is also to experience victory. Nothing is disturbed neither inwardly nor outwardly, for one’s own continuity has withstood the current of life and of time. But that can come to pass only when one does not meddle inquisitively with the workings of fate.

I have also realized that one must accept the thoughts that go on within oneself of their own accord as part of one’s reality.

The strangest part of that chapter may be that Jung predicted the death of his doctor and his prediction was (unfortunately for the doctor) accurate. Part of his vision he writes:

It was my doctor, Dr. H. or, rather, his likeness framed by a golden chain or a golden laurel wreath. I knew at once: “Aha, this is my doctor, of course, the one who has been treating me. But now he is coming in his primal form, as a basileus of Kos.”

Then later:

I was worried about him. “His life is in danger, for heaven’s sake! He has appeared to me in his primal form! When anybody attains this form it means he is going to die, for already he belongs to the ‘greater company’!” Suddenly the terrifying thought came to me that Dr. H. would have to die in my stead. I tried my best to talk to him about it, but he did not understand me. Then I became angry with him. “Why does he always pretend he doesn’t know he is a basileus of Kos? And that he has already assumed his primal form? He wants to make me believe that he doesn’t know!” That irritated me. My wife reproved me for being so unfriendly to him. She was right; but at the time I was angry with him for stubbornly refusing to speak of all that had passed between us in my vision. “Damn it all, he ought to watch his step. He has no right to be so reckless! I want to tell him to take care of himself.” I was firmly convinced that his life was in jeopardy.

In actual fact I was his last patient. On April 4, 1944 I still remember the exact date I was allowed to sit up on the edge of my bed for the first time since the beginning of my illness, and on this same day Dr. H. took to his bed and did not leave it again. I heard that he was having intermittent attacks of fever. Soon afterward he died of septicemia. He was a good doctor; there was something of the genius about him. Otherwise he would not have appeared to me as a prince of Kos.

Throughout the book Jung laments the fact that as technology rapidly develops, we put all faith in science, and the spiritual and mystical is more and more thought to be ridiculous and laughable. His doctor did not believe him. Coincidence? Maybe. At one point Jung describes his argument with Freud about events occurring that seem to be unexplainable by pure chance or coincidence. (In this video he talks about this belief.)

What is easier for the modern academic to accept is more of a Malcolm Gladwell “Blink” style explanation: perhaps Jung knew that the doctor was going to die because he observed characteristics in the doctor that he had previously observed in other’s close to death, but his conscious mind was not able to articulate those observations. And so his unconscious mind articulated these observations in the form of an image, the doctor as a “basileus of Kos.”

I won’t speculate further. But I understand this exchange a little better with the more Jung I read:

Many years ago, when one of his daughters interviewed him as part of a school project and asked what his religion was, Martin, a nonobservant Jew, answered, “Oh, honey, I’m a Jungian.”
Sara Corbett, “The Holy Grail of the Unconscious“
Excerpt from Memories Dreams Reflections by Carl Jung

March 9th, 2023

“From Tozeur I went on to the oasis of Nefta. I rode off with my
dragoman early in the morning, shortly after sunrise. Our mounts were large, swift-footed mules, on which we made rapid progress. As we approached the oasis, a single rider, wholly swathed in white, came toward us. With proud bearing he rode by without offering us any greeting, mounted on a black mule whose harness was banded and studded with silver. He made an impressive, elegant figure. Here was a man who certainly possessed no pocket watch, let alone a wrist watch; for he was obviously and unselfconsciously the person he had always been. He lacked that faint note of foolishness which clings to the European. The European is, to be sure, convinced that he is no longer what he was ages ago; but he does not know what he has since become. His watch tells him that since the “Middle Ages” time and its synonym, progress, have crept up on him and irrevocably taken something from him. With lightened baggage he continues his journey, with steadily-increasing velocity, toward nebulous goals. He compensates for the loss of gravity and the corresponding sentiment d’incompletitude by the illusion of his triumphs, such as steamships, railroads, airplanes, and rockets, that rob him of his duration and transport him into another reality of speeds and explosive accelerations.”

This excerpt is from the chapter titled “Travels”. I posted this paragraph because I enjoyed the poetic description of “progress.”

One can only imagine what Jung’s thoughts on the internet technologies would be.
Failed Attempt to Procure The Red Book by Carl Jung

February 21st, 2023

Yesterday I ordered a copy of The Red Book from Amazon for twenty something dollars, apparently at a large discount. Free overnight shipping. I thought that was a cheap price for any book with illustrations and… that’s because this book doesn’t have the illustrations. It’s “A Reader’s Edition” Well… at $20 I’m not going bother returning it. And maybe it will be necessary when I do manage to procure a copy of the actual Red Book, because it’s written in calligraphy, in German I believe. So to appreciate the artwork, I guess I need the German calligraphy. I don’t want some fake Jung calligraphy… So perhaps not wasted money in the long run.

But looking into it just a little further, first, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be cheap to find a copy. Amazon currently has it listed for $214, a 27% discount from $300. That’s not exactly a cheap book.

Second, I found myself on the Wikipedia page where I read:

Biographers and critics have disagreed whether these years in Jung’s life should be seen as “a creative illness”, a period of introspection, a psychotic break, or simply madness.

Yesterday I wrote that it sounds like Jung walked a razor’s edge between sanity and insanity. Still… I’m surprised that… I read his own descriptions of this time period and I didn’t understand the extent to which he was consumed by his thoughts and mission, his “confrontations with the unconscious”.

I’ve seen some footage of interviews he did towards the end of his life on YouTube. As an old man he seemed witty and full of life. And humor.

How does a man with so many insights into the human condition, who has helped so many people with his poignant observations, how does that same man truly descend into madness?

I think when I was reading the memoirs I took what he was saying more figuratively than as intended…

Back to the book: it wasn’t published until 2009 (at $195) It’s interesting that it was kept from the public for so long. To who’s benefit?

It’s currently at the Library of Congress, donated also in 2009. So I can save the $2-300 and just go check it out? How is it that the United States ended up with the original and not Switzerland? Maybe there is a story there worth digging into.
Carl Jung on the Importance of Knowing Your Unconscious

February 20th, 2023

Some thoughts inspired by the chapter “Confrontations with the Unconscious” from Carl Gustav Jung’s autobiography “Memories, Dreams, Reflections”

I mentioned that I was reading Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Jung to a coworker and he told me that was funny because there was some controversy this past week about a New York Times article by Kevin Roose where he asked the new ChatGPT powered Bing (search engine) about it’s shadow self. I’m only halfway through the article and it’s getting interesting! Perhaps it’s now important for even our technology to “know thyself”

One thought is that Jung’s theme concerning the importance of understanding the unconscious, integrating the shadow, or (summarily) to “know thyself,” seems to go hand in hand with walking a fine line between sanity and insanity, or normality and abnormality. Concerning his exploration of his unconscious he makes the observation:

“It is of course ironical that I, a psychiatrist, should at almost every step of my experiment have run into the same psychic material which is the stuff of psychosis and is found in the insane.”

That is unambiguous. And makes me wonder: if C.G. Jung, a man of profound intelligence and wit, and a man who makes the top 10 when it comes to investigating his own mind and the mind in general, if this man openly declares himself to border on insanity, what does that say about the rest of us? And what does that say about… me?

Earlier in Memories, Dreams, and Reflections he discusses a fellow psychiatrist whom he encouraged to undergo psychoanalysis with the assertion that in order to be able to help anyone else, he must first understand himself. This man was on the surface completely ordinary and identified as so. Normal job, family, hobbies, etc, etc, the whole 9 yards: a normal guy.

The man told Jung that he didn’t dream. Jung told him “You will soon” and noted that saying that to someone is enough to make any relatively normal person have and remember a dream that same night. (And sure enough, I had a dream that night and have continued to have and remember them since then and have started a dream journal, because if I don’t write them down right away, they are lost, I forget them. How many dreams have I forgotten in this way? That then gives me the impression that I don’t dream often?)

Anyway, Jung’s coworker patient continued to not dream for some weeks but then came in with a dream to share. The result: Jung ended the therapy. Told him: “You’re right, you are normal!” when he was anything but. That’s not an exact quote, let me find some:

“I have had some astonishing experiences with ‘normality.’”

“I realized that his normality was a compensation.”

“His emphatic normality reflected a personality which would not have been developed but simply shattered by a confrontation with the unconscious.”

He was too normal to be helped!

This makes me think of people and times when I’ve wondered to myself: should I say what I really think? Would that help them or is it too much?

When someone spends their life pursuing one course of action and one set of beliefs… sometimes it is past the point where you can do any good by introducing a new belief or poking holes in their dogma. And this explains why most old people are so set in their beliefs. Once you commit past a certain point… you’ve got to see it through.

Jung states that he’s in favor of psychotherapy by professionals but when it comes to the “layman” he holds the opinion that – yeah, check it out. A theme of this memoir indeed seems to be “know thyself.” Try to understand yourself. Question yourself. Because if you don’t… insanity awaits you!

But as far as practicing psychoanalysis on other’s, Jung has words of caution for the dinner table psychologist: “I am in favor of non-medical men studying psychotherapy and practicing it; but in dealing with latent psychoses there is a the risk of their making dangerous mistakes.”

I find this disturbingly relatable and to return to my thought: I think being honest is one of the most important ideals for a person to have, but again I wonder if at times I’ve said too much when I should have kept my mouth shut.

What is it that Marcus says? I didn’t find the quote I was looking for but this one will do: “It’s silly to try to escape other people’s faults. They are inescapable. Just try to escape your own.” The quote I was looking for was more specifically about not admonishing people if it’s not going to do them any good.

I wonder if I’ve made the mistake of violating that prescription… To act against both Jung and Marcus is surely a sin.

Taking a step back: so it’s true! The “normal people” are indeed the craziest of us! I’ve had this thought before (and the image of Christian Bale from “American Psycho” comes to mind) but it’s interesting to have some confirmation from perhaps the most respected psychologist.

“Unpopular, ambiguous, and dangerous, it is a voyage of discovery to the other pole of the world,” is how Jung describes the investigation of the unconscious. And he is critical of Nietzsche for losing himself in thought: “I was not a blank page whirling about in the winds of the spirit, like Nietzsche.” Jung shows great respect and admiration for Nietzsche at times but is straightforward about his opinion of the latter years: he lost it. Lost himself in thought. Delved so deep that he lost touch with reality. (What’s the story about the horse? I think he had a public breakdown when he witnessed a horse beaten and declared himself one with the horse while crying in the street. (Citation needed…))

So if this investigation is so dangerous then why do it? As I said earlier, Jung seems to be of the opinion that the dangers of not doing so are worse (until you reach that point of ‘normalcy’ where you the unconscious half of you is no longer reachable to yourself…).

A general theme of this memoir and maybe his work and philosophy in general seems to be: if you don’t investigate yourself / your unconscious / your shadow side, then you will never be a complete person, and the fracture between the two parts of yourself will cause you and those in your life a lot of pain and… you might end up going completely insane.

Well look at that… I’ve written an article and didn’t even stick to my original idea, or develop it. But now having further evidence of my skill of blabbering on… perhaps there is hope for this blog after all!

But having not stuck to the program, here is a more uplifting quote that I will end with:

“What a dreary world it would be if the rules were not violated sometimes!”

– C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, and Reflections, from the chapter titled “Confrontations with the Unconscious”

Tag: Jung

A couple quotes from the prologue

Some thoughts inspired by the chapter “Confrontations with the Unconscious” from Carl Gustav Jung’s autobiography “Memories, Dreams, Reflections”