The masculinity of the woman and the femininity of the man are inferior, and it is regrettable that the full value of their personalities should be contaminated by something that is less valuable. On the other hand, the Shadow belongs to the wholeness of the personality: the strong man must somewhere be weak, somewhere the clever man must be stupid, otherwise he is too good to be true and falls back on pose and bluff. Is it not an old truth that woman loves the weaknesses of the strong man more than his strength, and the stupidity of the clever man more than his cleverness? CW l0: Civilization in Transition: 258

If a man is endowed with an ethical sense and is convinced of the sanctity of ethical values, he is on the surest road to a conflict of duty. And although this looks desperately like a moral catastrophe, it alone makes possible a higher differentiation of ethics and a broadening of consciousness. A conflict of duty forces us to examine our conscience and thereby to discover the Shadow.

To confront a person with his Shadow is to show him his own light. Once one has experienced a few times what it is like to stand judgingly between the opposites, one begins to understand what is meant by the self. Anyone who perceives his Shadow and his light simultaneously sees himself from two sides and thus gets in the middle. CW l0: Civilization in Transition: 872

The situation is now gradually illuminated as is a dark night by the rising moon. The illumination comes to a certain extent from the unconscious, since it is mainly dreams that put us on the track of enlightenment. This dawning light corresponds to the albedo, the moonlight which in the opinion of some alchemists heralds the rising sun. The growing redness (rubedo) which now follows denotes an increase of warmth and light coming from the sun, consciousness. This corresponds to the increasing participation of consciousness, which now begins to react emotionally to the contents produced by the unconscious. At first the process of integration is a “fiery” conflict, but gradually it leads over to the “melting” or synthesis of the opposites. The alchemists termed this the rubedo, in which the marriage of the red man and the white woman, Sol and Luna, is consummated. Although the opposites flee from one another they strive for balance, since a state of conflict is too inimical to life to be endured indefinetly. They do this by wearing each other out: the one eats the other, like the two dragons or the other ravenous beasts of alchemical symbolism.

Astrologically, as we have said, this process corresponds to an ascent through the planets from the dark, cold, distant Saturn to the Sun. To the alchemists the connection between individual temperament and the positions of the planets was self-evident, for these elementary astrological considerations were the common property of any educated person in the Middle Ages as well as in antiquity. The ascent through the planetary spheres therefore meant something like a shedding of the characterological qualities indicated by the horoscope, a retrogressive liberation from the character imprinted by the archons. The conscious or unconscious model for such an ascent was the Gnostic redemer, who either deceives the archons by guile or breaks their power by force. A similar motif is the release from the “bill of debt to fate.” The men of antiquity in particular felt their psychic situation to be fatally dependent on the compulsion of the stars, Heimarmene, a feeling which may be compared with that inspired by the modern theory of heredity, or rather by the pessimistic use of it. A similar demoralization sets in in many neuroses when the patient takes the psychic factors producing the symptoms as though they were unalterable facts which it is useless to resist. The journey through the planetary houses, like the crossing of the great halls in the Egyptian underworld therefore, signifies the overcoming of a psychic obstacle, or of an autonomous complex, suitably represented by a planetary god or demon. Anyone who has passed through all the planetary spheres is free from compulsion; he has won the crown of victory and becomes like a god.

In our psychological language today we express ourselves more modestly: the journey through the planetary houses boils down to becoming conscious of the good and the bad qualities in our character, and the apothesis means no more than maximum consciousness, which amounts to maximal freedom of the will. This goal cannot be better represented than the alchemical symbol of the (position of the Sun at noon) in Zosimos.

The second endopsychic function is a more difficult problem. We are now getting into deep waters because here we are coming into darkness. I will give you the name first: the subjective components of conscious functions. . . . Every application of a conscious function, whatever the object might be, is always accompanied by subjective reactions which are more or less inadmissible or unjust or inaccurate. You are painfully aware that these things happen in you, but nobody likes to admit that he is subject to such phenomena. He prefers to leave them in the shadow, because that helps him to assume that he is perfectly innocent and very nice and honest and straightforward and 'only too willing', etc.--you know these phrases. As a matter of fact, one is not. One has any amount of subjective reactions, but it is not quite becoming to admit these things. These reactions I call the subjective components. They are a very important part of our relations to our own inner side. There things get definitely painful. That is why we dislike entering this shadow-world of ego. We do not like to look at the shadow-side of ourselves; therefore there are many people in our civilized society who have lost their shadow altogether, they have got rid of it. They are only two-dimensional; they have lost the third dimension, and with it they have usually lost the body. Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice, p. 22, 23

Other Memorable Quotes by Dr. Carl Jung

Philemon and other figures of my fantasies brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life. MDR, pg 183

The factors which come together in the coniunctio are conceived as oppposites, either confronting one another in enmity or attracting one another in love.1 To begin with they form a dualism; for instance the opposites are humidum (moist) / sicum (dry), frigidum (cold) / calidum (warm), superiora (upper, higher) / inferiora (lower), spiritus-anima (spirit-soul) / corpus (body), coelum (heaven) / terra (earth), ignis (fire) / aqua (water), bright / dark, agens (active) / patiens (passive), volatile (volatile, gaseous) / fixum (solid), pretiosum (precious, costly; also carum, dear) / vile (cheap, common), bonum (good) / malum (evil), manifestum (open) / occultum (occult; also celatum, hidden), oriens (East) / occidens (West), vivum (living) / mortuum (dead, inert), masculus (masculine) / foemina (feminine)., Sol / Luna. Often the polarity is arranged as a quaternio (quaternity), with the two opposites crossing one another, as for instance the four elements or the four qualities (moist, dry, cold, warm), or the four directions and seasons,2 thus producting the cross as an emblem of the four elements and symbol of the sublunary physical world. 3 This fourfold Physis, the cross, also appears in the signs for earth, Venus, Mercury, Saturn and Jupiter. Mysterium Coniunctionis, p1, pg 3.

The synthesis of the elements is effected by means of the circular movement in time (circulatio, rota) of the Sun through the houses of the Zodiac. Mysterium Coniunctionis, p 5, pg 7.

If attention is directed to the unconscious, the unconscious will yield up its contents, and these in turn will fructify the conscious like a fountain of living water. For consciousness is just as arid as the unconscious if the two halves of our pscyhic life are separated. Mysterium Coniunctionis, p 193, pg 163

The psychotherapist, however, must understand not only the patient; it is equally important that he should understand himself. For that reason, the sine qua non is the analysis of the analyst, what is called the training analysis. The patients' treatment begins with the doctor, so to speak. Only if the doctor knows how to cope with himself and his own problems will he be able to teach the patient to do the same. Only then.

Anyone who overlooks the instincts will be ambuscaded by them. CW 9: The Archeypes and the Collective Unconscious: 620

Seldom or never does a marriage develop into an individual relationship smoothly and without crisis. There is no birth of consciousness without pain. CW17:The Development of the Personality: 331

It is no easy matter to live a life that is modeled on Christ’s, but it is unspeakably harder to live one’s own life as truly as Christ lived his. Anyone who did this would run counter to the conditions of his own history, and though he might thus be fulfilling them, he would nonetheless be misjudged, derided, tortured and crucified. CW II: Psychology and Religion: 522

To strive for perfection is a high ideal. But I say:“Fulfill something you are able to fulfil rather than run after what you will never achieve.” Nobody is perfect. Remember the saying: “None is good but God alone.” [Luke 18:19], and nobody can be. It is an illusion. We can modestly strive to fulfill ourselves and to be as complete human beings as possible, and that will give us trouble enough. Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice: The Tavistock Lectures: 149

In order to grasp the fantasies which were stirring in me “underground,” I knew that I had to let myself plummet down into them, as it were. I felt not only violent resistance to this, but a distinct fear. For I was afraid of losing command of myself and becoming a prey to the fantasies — and as a psychiatrist I realized only too well what that meant. After prolonged hesitation, however, I saw that there was no other way out. I had to take the chance, had to try to gain power over them; for I realized that if I did not do so, I ran the risk of their gaining power over me. A cogent motive for my making the attempt was the conviction that I could not expect of my patients something I did not dare to do myself. The excuse that a helper stood at their side would not pass muster, for I was well aware that the so-called helper — that is, myself — could not help them unless he knows their fantasy material from his own direct experience, and that at present all he possessed were a few theoretical prejudices of dubious value. This idea — that I was committing myself to a dangerous enterprise not for myself alone, but also for the sake of my patients — helped me over several critical phases.
MDR, pg 178

Only after I had familiarized myself with alchemy did I realize that the unconscious is a process, and that the psyche is transformed or developed by the relationship of the ego to the contents of the unconscious. In individual cases that transformation can be read from dreams and fantasies. In collective life it has left its deposit principally in the various religious sytems and their changing symbols. Through the study of these collective transformation processes and through understanding of alchemical symbolism I arrived at the central concept of my psychology: the process of individuation. MDR, pg 209

I don’t want to prescribe a way to other people, because I know that my way has been prescribed to me by a hand far above my reach… I am only trying to be a decent tool and don't feel grand at all. MDR, pg

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being. It may even be assumed that just as the unconscious affects us, so the increase in our consciousness affects the unconscious. MDR, pg 326

Aside from general human inadequacy, a good deal of the blame for this rests with education, which promulgates the old generalizations and says nothing about the secrets of private experience. Thus, every effort is made to teach idealistic beliefs or conduct which people know in their hearts they can never live up to and such ideals are preached by officials who know that they themselves have never lived up to these high standards and never will. What is more, nobody ever questions the value of this kind of teaching.
     Therefore the individual who wishes to have an answer to the problem of evil, as it is posed today, has need, first and foremost of self-knowledge, that is, the utmost possible knowledge of his own wholeness. He must know relentlessly how much good he can do, and what crimes he is capable of, and must beware of regarding the one as real and the other as illusion. Both are elements within his nature, and both are bound to come to light in him, should he wish — as he ought — to live without self deception or self-delusion. MDR, pg 330

The mandala is an archetypal image whose occurrence is attested thoughout the ages. It signifies the wholesness of the Self. This circular image represents the wholeness of the psychic ground or, to put it in mythic terms, the divinity incarnate in man. MDR, pg 334-335.

I knew that in finding the mandala as an expression of the Self I had attained what was for me the ultimate. Perhaps someone else knows more, but not I. MDR, pg 197

MDR = Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung’s Autobiography recorded and edited by Aniella Jaffe