The Unconscious

Man started from an unconscious state and has ever striven for greater consciousness. The development of consciousness is the burden, the suffering, and the blessing of mankind.

"Men, Women, and God" (1955), C. G. Jung Speaking, p. 248.

[T]he attainment of consciousness was the most precious fruit of the tree of knowledge, the magical weapon which gave man victory over the earth, and which we hope will give him a still greater victory over himself.

"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933/1934), CW 10, § 289.

"All that is outside, also is inside," we could say with Goethe. But this "inside," which modern rationalism is so eager to derive from "outside," has an a priori structure of its own that antedates all conscious experience. It is quite impossible to conceive how "experience" in the widest sense, or, for that matter, anything psychic, could originate exclusively in the outside world. The psyche is part of the inmost mystery of life, and it has its own peculiar structure and form like every other organism. Whether this psychic structure and its elements, the archetypes, ever "originated" at all is a metaphysical question and therefore unanswerable. The structure is something given, the precondition that is found to be present in every case. And this is the mother, the matrix — the form into which all experience is poured.

"Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype" (1938/1954), CW 9i, § 187.

The psyche is the starting point of all human experience, and all the knowledge we have gained eventually leads back to it. The psyche is the beginning and end of all cognition. It is not only the object of its science, but the subject also. This gives psychology a unique place among all the other sciences; on the one hand there is a constant doubt as to the possibility of its being a science at all, while on the other hand psychology acquires the right to state a theoretical problem the solution of which will be one of the most difficult tasks for a future philosophy.

"Psychological Factors Determining Human Behaviour" (1937), CW 8, § 261.

What most people overlook or seem unable to understand is the fact that I regard the psyche as real.

Answer to Job (1952), CW 11, § 751.

Man knows only a small part of his psyche, just as he has only a very limited knowledge of the physiology of his body. The causal factors determining his psychic existence reside largely in unconscious processes outside consciousness, and in the same way there are final factors at work in him which likewise originate in the unconscious.

Aion (1951), CW 9ii, § 253.

The fact that individual consciousness means separation and opposition is something that man has experienced countless times in his long history.

"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933/1934), CW 10, § 290.

The world itself becomes a reflection of the psyche.

The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga:Notes of the Seminar Given in 1932 (26 October, 1932), p. 50.

I am of the opinion that the psyche is the most tremendous fact of human life. Indeed, it is the mother of all human facts; of civilization and of its destroyer, war.

"Concerning Rebirth" (1940/1950), CW 9i, § 206.

[T]he psyche consists essentially of images. It is a series of images in the truest sense, not an accidental juxtaposition or sequence, but a structure that is throughout full of meaning and purpose; it is a "picturing" of vital activities. And just as the material of the body that is ready for life has need of the psyche in order to be capable of life, so the psyche presupposes the living body in order that its images may live.

"Spirit and Life" (1926), CW 8, § 618.

[A]ll psychic processes whose energies are not under conscious control are instinctive.

Psychological Types (1921), CW 6, § 765.

It does not seem to have occurred to people that when we say "psyche" we are alluding to the densest darkness it is possible to imagine.

"Transformation Symbolism in the Mass" (1942/1954), CW 11, § 448.

Psychic energy is a very fastidious thing which insists on fulfilment of its own conditions. However much energy may be present, we cannot make it serviceable until we have succeeded in finding the right gradient.

On the Psychology of the Unconscious (1917/1926), CW 7, § 76.

"[A]t bottom" the psyche is simply "world."

"The Psychology of the Child Archetype" (1940), CW 9i, § 291.

We also speak of the "objective world," by which we do not mean that this objective world is the one we are conscious of. There is no object of which we are totally conscious. So, too, the collective unconscious becomes conscious in part and to that extent it is then a conscious object. But over and above that it is still present unconsciously, though it can be discovered. It behaves exactly like the world of things, which is partly known, partly unknown, the unknown being just as objectively real as that which is known to me. I chose the term "objective psyche" in contradistinction to "subjective psyche" because the subjective psyche coincides with consciousness, whereas the objective psyche does not always do so by any means.

Letter to Jolande Jacobi, 15 April 1948, Letters, Vol. I, p. 497.

No one who has undergone the process of assimilating the unconscious will deny that it gripped his very vitals and changed him.

The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious (1916/1928), CW 7, § 361.

There is no morality without freedom.

Psychological Types (1921), CW 6, § 357.

The psyche does not merely react, it gives its own specific answer to the influences at work upon it.

"Some Crucial Points in Psychoanalysis" (1914), CW 4, § 665.

I have been compelled, in my investigations into the structure of the unconscious, to make a conceptual distinction between soul and psyche. By psyche I understand the totality of all psychic processes, conscious and unconscious. By soul, on the other hand, I understand a clearly demarcated functional complex that can best be described as a "personality."

Psychological Types (1921), CW 6, § 797.

I have never asserted, nor do I think I know, what the unconscious is in itself. It is the unconscious region of the psyche. When I speak of psyche, I do not...