The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung is considered the founder of analytical psychology, whose interest did not stop at theoretical psychology and clinical practice, but extended to alchemy, mysticism, Eastern and Western philosophy, astrology, and many other areas that could provide answers to questions about the meaning of human existence.
Because of this, the life of this original and very influential thinker of the 20th century was extremely dynamic and elusive to strictly defined scientific frameworks.
In his autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections, he wrote: “My life has always been like a plant growing from a bulb. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the bulb. The part that appears above the ground only lasts for one summer. Then it disappears – only as a fleeting illusion. But I have never lost the feeling that something lives and endures beneath the eternal flow. What we see is the flower, which is ephemeral. The bulb is what remains.”
Carl Gustav Jung died in 1961 at the age of 86.
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The most important works from his exceptionally extensive body of work are: Transformations and Symbols of the Libido, Psychological Types, The Relationship Between the Ego and the Unconscious, Psychology and Religion, Psychology and Alchemy, Mysterium Coniunctionis, Man and His Symbols, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, etc.
By loosely relying on two lines by Goethe, it is often quoted:
The greatest bliss on earth will be
the joy that personality will give us.
and by doing so, it expresses the opinion that the ultimate goal and greatest desire of everything lies in the development of the wholeness of a person’s being, which we denote as personality.
“Personality development” has now become an educational ideal opposed to the standardized collective or normal human being, enforced by the general mass, in the correct understanding of the historical fact that great emancipatory works in world history have emerged from leading personalities, never from the always secondary, sluggish masses, who even for the smallest movement always need a demagogue.
…Our era is ecstatic. There is a celebration going on as the “era of children” is being praised. This immense expansion of the kindergarten is happening simultaneously with a complete disregard for the educational issues that Schiller brilliantly foresaw. No one denies the importance of childhood or underestimates it, as the severe and often lasting damage caused by foolish upbringing at home and later in school is too evident, and the necessity of reasonable pedagogical methods cannot be ignored. However, if one truly wants to eradicate this evil at its roots, there is a serious question that needs to be asked: how did this happen and why is it still the case today that foolish and limited educational methods are being used?
… Whoever wants to educate others must be educated themselves. Today, rote learning is still being employed, and mechanical application of methods is not education, neither for the child nor for the educator themselves. It is constantly emphasized that a child must be educated as an individual. Of course, I admire this lofty educational ideal. But who educates these future individuals? That responsibility primarily lies with the most important educators, I live among ordinary, incompetent parents who often, themselves, remain childlike for their entire lives. Who would expect these ordinary parents to become “personalities,” and who has ever thought about creating methods for instilling “personality” in parents? Therefore, of course, more is expected from educators, from educated professionals who have a thorough understanding of psychology – namely, the perspectives of these or those, often diametrically opposite opinions, on what probable characteristics a child may have and how they should be treated. For young people who have chosen education as their vocation, it is assumed that they, themselves, have been raised. It is unlikely that anyone will argue that all of them are personalities at the same time. … More cannot be expected from an average caregiver than from average parents. If they are good professionals, one must be satisfied with them just as one would be with parents who raise their children in the best possible way.
It is better to have a high ideal of raising a personality. not applicable to children. Because what is usually understood as “personality”, namely a certain psychological integrity that possesses resilience and strength, is the ideal of an adult that is being imposed on a child at an age when an individual is not aware of the problems of adult life or – even worse – consciously avoids them.
… It is not a child, but an adult who can achieve personality as the mature fruit of this goal-directed work. The attainment of personality lies in nothing less than the best possible development of the whole of a specific person. It is impossible to comprehend how many infinite conditions need to be met in order to achieve this. It requires a whole human life with all its biological, social, and psychological aspects. Personality is the highest realization of the innate characteristic of a unique human being. Personality is the result of the utmost courage in life, an absolute affirmation of individual existence, and the most successful adaptation to universal givenness, with the greatest possible freedom of decision-making. Not It seems to me that raising someone for that is not a small thing. This is certainly the greatest task that the modern spiritual world has set.
… Personality develops throughout life from a difficult or completely unclear embryo, and it is only through our actions that it becomes evident who we are. We are like the Sun that nourishes the life of the Earth and creates all kinds of beauty, rarity, and evil: we are like mothers who carry unknown happiness and suffering in their laps. Above all, we do not know what deeds or misdeeds are within us, what destiny, what good and what evil: and only in the evening does it become clear what started in the morning.
… Personality can never develop without a person consciously and with conscious moral decision choosing their own path. Not only causal motivation, necessity, but also conscious moral decision must lend its strength to the process of personality development. If the first is lacking, namely necessity, the so-called development is only practicing will; if the second is lacking, namely conscious decision, development is halted in unconscious automatism. However, a person can consciously decide Go your own way only when you consider it the best. If you consider any other way better, then you will live and develop that other personality instead of your own. Other paths are of moral, social, political, philosophical, and religious nature. The fact that conventions always flourish in some way proves that a huge number of people choose not their own path but convention and therefore do not develop themselves but the method and way of life at the expense of their own entirety.
… The endeavor of personal development is actually an unpopular courage, an unsympathetic deviation from the wide path, an ascetic whimsical aspiration for duality, or whatever is thought of as lonely eccentrics. Therefore, it’s no wonder that only a small number of people have always embarked on this adventure. If they were all fools, we could erase them from the field of our interest as “idiots,” as spiritually “private individuals.” But unfortunately, these personalities are usually legendary heroes of humanity, worshipped, loved, celebrated, true sons of God, whose name “n “And in the centuries it does not set.” They are the true flowers and fruits, the fruitful seeds of the tree of humanity. A look at historical figures sufficiently explains why the development of personality is an ideal and why the reproach of individualism is an insult. The greatness of historical figures has never consisted of their unconditional submission to conventions, but on the contrary, of their liberation from conventions. Like a mountain cliff, they stand out from the mass, which tenaciously clings to collective fears, beliefs, laws, and methods – and choose their own path. It has always seemed strange to ordinary people that a narrow and winding path leading to the unknown should be preferred over well-trodden paths with familiar goals.
What finally prompts someone to choose their own path and thus rise from the unconscious identity with the crowd as if emerging from fog? It cannot be necessity, because many face misfortune and they all save themselves through convention. It cannot be a moral decision either, as people generally opt for conventions. So what is it that unrelentingly decides in favor of the unusual?
It’s what’s called inner choice; the irrational factor that fatefully pushes towards emancipation from the herd and its beaten paths. A true individual always has a choice and believes in it, has faith in it like in God, even though, as an ordinary person would say, it’s just an individual feeling of choice. However, this choice acts as a divine law from which there is no deviation.
… Those who possess choice, hear the inner voice, they are chosen. That’s why legends believe that they have a private demon, who advises them and whose tasks they must fulfill. The most famous example of this kind is Faust, and a historical case is Socrates’ daimon. Primitive shamans had their snake spirit, just like Asclepius, the patron of doctors, represented by the Epidaurian snake. Furthermore, Asclepius had his own demon Kabir Telesphorus, who apparently read or gave him prescriptions.
… Choice or the feeling of choice is not only a prerogative of great individuals, but also of small ones. The smaller the format, the more blurred and unconscious it becomes when reducing its size. It appears as if the voice of the inner daemon is moving further away and speaking less frequently and more unclearly. Namely, the smaller the personality, the more indeterminate and unconscious it becomes, eventually merging indistinguishably with the community, thus surrendering its integrity and dissolving into the group as a whole. In place of the inner voice, the voice of the social group and its conventions take over, as well as the choice of the collective need.
… If each individual has their innate law of life, then each one has the theoretical possibility to first follow this law and thus become a personality, that is, achieve wholeness. However, since living beings only exist in the form of living individuals, that is, individuals, the law of life is ultimately always directed towards individually experienced life. Therefore, even though objectively psychic, which fundamentally cannot be imagined otherwise than as a universal and identical given, it means the same psychic prerequisite for All people, however, as soon as they want to appear, must individualize themselves, since they have no other choice but to express themselves through the individual.
… Just as a great personality socially acts by solving, resolving, transforming and organizing, so the birth of one’s own personality has a healing effect on the individual. It is like when a stagnant swamp branch is poured back into the lost current, or when a stone blocking a seed is removed, allowing it to sprout and begin its natural growth.
The inner voice is a voice of fuller life, broader and more expansive consciousness. For this reason, in a mythological sense, the birth of a hero or symbolically rebirth coincides with the sunrise, as the becoming of a personality holds the same meaning as increasing consciousness. For the same reason, most heroes are associated with the attributes of the Sun, and the moment of birth of their great personality is called enlightenment.
The fear that most natural people feel toward the inner voice is not so childish, but rather an indication of the significant change and expansion that comes with the growth of consciousness. one might think. The contents encountered by limited consciousness, as shown by the classic example of Christ’s life or the equally characteristic experience of Mara from the legend of Buddha, are not at all innocent, but usually signify a danger specific to the individual in question. In general, what the inner voice whispers to us is not good, but actually evil. This must primarily be because a person is usually not so unaware of their virtues as they are of their flaws, and also because they suffer much less from what is good within them than from what is bad. As I mentioned earlier, the inner voice brings to consciousness what the entire community suffers from, whether it is the nation or the entire humanity. But this voice presents it in an individual form, so that a person might initially think that this evil is an individual characteristic of their character. The inner voice introduces evil so convincingly that it could lead a person to succumb to it. If they do not succumb, then none of this apparent evil penetrates our ego, and then renewal and healing cannot occur. (I call the inner voice “illusory,” which sounds too optimistic). If I completely succumb to the inner voice, then its contents act, as if instead of them there were just as many devils, in other words, disaster follows. If I only partially succumb and manage to save myself from complete destruction through self-confirmation, then I can assimilate the voice and it turns out that the evil was only an illusion of evil, while in reality it brings salvation and enlightenment.
… The issue of the inner voice is full of secret traps and pitfalls. It is the most dangerous, slippery area, just as dangerous and impassable as life itself when fences are abandoned. But whoever does not want to lose their life will not gain it.
… Is it therefore possible for a person to be angry at humanity and all those well-intentioned shepherds and concerned fathers when they raise protective walls, set up effective images, and recommend passable paths that bypass the abysses?
On the In the paradise of the regions, the hero, leader, and savior is the one who discovers a new path to higher security. Everything could be left as it is if this new path did not unconditionally require to be discovered and if humanity did not suffer under all the afflictions of Egypt until the new path is found. The undiscovered path within us is like something psychically alive, which classical Chinese philosophy calls “Tao” and compares to a water current that inexorably flows towards its goal. To be in the Tao means completeness, wholeness, fulfilled commitment, the beginning and end, and the complete realization of the meaning of existence that is inherent in things. Personality is the Tao.