Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) was a Swiss psychologist. He was the founder of analytical psychology and established many significant methods of psychiatric therapy.
Born in Kesswil, Switzerland, Jung studied medicine at the universities of Basle and Zürich. He made his name as a psychiatrist with his physiological and psychological studies of schizophrenia. He initially collaborated with Sigmund Freud on psychoanalytic theories of personality but split-up later because of Freud’s obsession with sexuality as the determinant of personality.
Jung’s foremost interest was the unconscious backdrop of conscious life; he assigned much meaning to dreams. He originated the concept of an introvert and extrovert personality and the four psychological functions—sensation, intuition, thinking, and feeling.
Jung is not regarded as a systematic philosopher, but his religious and spiritual vision—in particular, his interest in oriental religion—have had their influence. In his most important work, The Psychology of the Unconscious (1912,) he described his belief of a collective unconscious, which he synthesized with a theory of archetypes for studying the history and psychology of religion.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Carl Gustav Jung
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances; if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
—Carl Gustav Jung
Topics: Meeting, Romance, Personality, Help, Cooperation
We can keep from a child all knowledge of earlier myths, but we cannot take from him the need for mythology
—Carl Gustav Jung
The psychotherapist learns little or nothing from his successes. They mainly confirm him in his mistakes, while his failures, on the other hand, are priceless experiences in that they not only open up the way to a deeper truth, but force him to change his views and methods.
—Carl Gustav Jung
Topics: Mistakes, Failures
Far from being a material world, this is a psychic world, which allows us to make only indirect and hypothetical inferences about the real nature of matter. The psychic, alone has immediate reality, and this includes all forms of the psychic, even
—Carl Gustav Jung
Topics: Reality
There is no coming to consciousness without pain.
—Carl Gustav Jung
Topics: Pain, Difficulties, Adversity
Unfortunately, there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and darker it is. If an inferiority is conscious, one always has a chance to correct it
—Carl Gustav Jung
Topics: Personality
The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.
—Carl Gustav Jung
Topics: Acceptance
The great decisions of human life usually have far more to do with the instincts and other mysterious unconscious factors than with conscious will and well-meaning reasonableness. The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no universal recipe for living. Each of us carries his own life-form within him—an irrational form which no other can outbid.
—Carl Gustav Jung
Topics: Individuality, How to Live, Decisions
The wine of youth does not always clear with advancing years; sometimes it grows turbid.
—Carl Gustav Jung
Topics: Youth
Only that which changes remains true.
—Carl Gustav Jung
Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune.
—Carl Gustav Jung
The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.
—Carl Gustav Jung
Topics: To Be Born Everyday, Creativity, Accomplishment
It is the individual’s task to differentiate himself from all the others and stand on his own feet. All collective identities… interfere with the fulfillment of this task. Such collective identities are crutches for the lame, shields for the timid, beds for the lazy, nurseries for the irresponsible….
—Carl Gustav Jung
Man is never helped in his suffering by what he thinks for himself, but only by revelation of a wisdom greater than his own. It is this which lifts him out of his distress.
—Carl Gustav Jung
This whole creation is essentially subjective, and the dream is the theater where the dreamer is at once: scene, actor, prompter, stage manager, author, audience, and critic.
—Carl Gustav Jung
Topics: Audiences
An understanding heart is everything in a teacher, and cannot be esteemed highly enough. One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feeling. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.
—Carl Gustav Jung
Topics: Teaching, Teachers, Education
The primary cause of unhappiness in the world today is… lack of faith.
—Carl Gustav Jung
Topics: Faith, Belief, Unhappiness, Happiness
We think of our efficient teachers with a sense of recognition, but those who touched our humanity we remember with gratitude. Learning is the essential mineral, but warmth is the life-element for the child’s soul, no less than for the growing plant.
—Carl Gustav Jung
Topics: Teaching
The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens to that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach.
—Carl Gustav Jung
The pendulum of the mind alternates between
sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.
—Carl Gustav Jung
It all depends on how we look at things, and not on how things are in themselves. The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.
—Carl Gustav Jung
Topics: Miscellaneous, Meaning, Perspective
The wise man who is not heeded is counted a fool, and the fool who proclaims the general folly first and loudest passes for a prophet and Fuhrer, and sometimes it is luckily the other way round as well, or else mankind would long since have perished of stupidity.
—Carl Gustav Jung
Topics: Leaders, Leadership
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.
—Carl Gustav Jung
Topics: Light
Great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily snapped off.
—Carl Gustav Jung
Topics: Talent
Becoming conscious is of course a sacrilege against nature; it is as though you had robbed the unconscious of something.
—Carl Gustav Jung
Topics: Self-Discovery
The collective unconscious contains the whole spiritual heritage of mankind’s evolution born anew in the brain structure of every individual.
—Carl Gustav Jung
Topics: Evolution
The psychological context of dream-contents consists in the web of associations in which the dream is naturally embedded. Theoretically we can never know anything in advance about this web, but in practice it is sometimes possible, granted long enough experience. Even so, careful analysis will never rely too much on technical rules; the danger of deception and suggestion is too great. In the analysis of isolated dreams above all, this kind of knowing in advance and making assumptions on the grounds of practical expectation or general probability is positively wrong. It should therefore be an absolute rule to assume that every dream, and every part of a dream, is unknown at the outset, and to attempt an interpretation only after carefully taking up the context. We can then apply the meaning we have thus discovered to the text of the dream itself and see whether this yields a fluent reading, or rather whether a satisfying meaning emerges.
—Carl Gustav Jung
Topics: Assumptions
I want to be freed neither from human beings, nor from myself, nor from nature; for all these appear to me the greatest of miracles.
—Carl Gustav Jung
Topics: Nature
Find out what a person fears most and that is where he will develop next.
—Carl Gustav Jung
Topics: Growth
Solitude is for me a fount of healing which makes my life worth living.
—Carl Gustav Jung
Topics: Solitude
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