106 THE BASIC WRITINGS OF C. G. JUNG The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious 107 ethnological parallels to these seemingly universal psychic events. attitude of our conscious mind. Such an attitude is natu­ In the above-mentioned essay, "La Structure de l'inconscient," I not very skilled at psychological observation, because it is attempted for the first time to give a comprehensive account of the highest degree unscientific. We .must not ~ttempt to tell the whole process. It was a mere attempt, of whose inadequacy what to do, if we want to observe her operations undis• I was painfully aware. The difficulties presented by the material were so great that I could not hope to do them anything like It is twenty-eight years of psychological and psychiatric ex­ justice in a single essay. I therefore let it rest at the stage of an .... ,,.,.,,,,...,. that I am trying to sum up here, so perhaps my little "interim report," with the firm intention of returning to this may lay some claim to serious consideration. Naturally I theme at a later opportunity. Twelve years of further experience not say everything in this single exposition. The reader enabled me, in 1928, to undertake a thorough revision of my find a continuation of the last chapter in The Secret of the formulations of 1916, and the result of these labors was the Flower,2 the book I brought out in collaboration with little book Die Beziehungen zwischen dem Ich und dem Un­ .my friend Richard Wilhelm. I did not wish to omit reference to bewussten.l This time I tried to describe chiefly the relation of publication, because Oriental philosophy has been con­ ~he e~o- to the unconscious process. Following this with these interior psychic processes for many hundreds mtentron, I concerned myself more particularly with those phe­ years and is therefore, in view of the great need for compara­ nomena which are to be regarded as the reactive symptoms of material, of inestimable value in psychological research. the conscious personality to the influences of the unconscious. C.G.JUNG In this way I tried to effect an indirect approach to the uncon­ scious process itself. These investigations have not yet come to a satisfactory .conclusion, for the answer to the crucial problem of the nature and essence. of the unconscious process has still PART ONE t~ be found. I. would not have ventured upon this exceedingly The Effects of the difficult task Without the fullest possible experience. Its solution Unconscious upon Consciousness is reserved for the future. I trust the reader of this book will bear with me if I beg him I The Personal and the to regard it-should he persevere-as an earnest attempt on my part to form an intellectual conception of a new and .hitherto In Freud's view, as most people know, the contents of the un­ unexplored field of experience. It is not concerned with a clever conscious are limited to infantile tendencies which are repressed system of , but with the formulation of psychic because of their incompatible character. Repression is a process experiences which have never yet been the subject of scientific that begins in early childhood under the moral influence of the study. Since the is an irrational datum and cannot, in environment and lasts throughout life. Through analysis the re­ accordance with the old picture, be equated with a more or less are removed and the repressed wishes made conscious. divine Reason, it should not surprise us if in the course of . According to this theory, the unconscious contains only those psychological experience we come across, with extreme fre­ · parts of the personality which could just as well be conscious quency, processes and happenings which run counter to our and are in fact suppressed only through upbringing. Although rational expectations and are therefore rejected by the ration- from one point of view the infantile tendencies of the uncon­ scious are the most conspicuous, it would nonetheless be incorrect 1 Trans. by H. G. and C. F. Baynes as The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious in Two Essays on 2 Trans. by Cary F. Baynes (London and New York, 1931), repub­ (London and New York, 1928). • lished in Psyche and Symbol (New York, 1958). 110 THE BASIC WRITINGS OF C. G. JUNG ROM The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious 111 testines; or the vagus (and consequently the heart) is stimulated; only exceedingly distasteful to the patient, but, positively or fantasies and memories, uninteresting enough in themselves, g. In such a situation "sound comm?~ sens~ gen~rally become overvalued and prey on the conscious mind (mountains out with a whole repertory of admomtwns: you simply out of molehills). In this state a new motive is needed to put " "you really ought,'.' "you just cannot," etc. So fa~ as an end to the morbid suspension. Nature herself paves the way common sense is, happily, not too rare and not .entirely for this, unconsciously and indirectly, through the phenomenon effect (pessimists, I know, exist), a rational motive can, of the (Freud). In the course of treatment the exuberant feeling of health you get from transfer~nce, patient transfers the father imago to the doctor, thus making so much enthusiasm that a painful sacrifice can be nsked him, in a sense, the father, and in the sense that he is not the a mighty effort of will. If successful-and these thin.gs father, also making him a substitute for the man she cannot ;,.,,,....,,.h,.,,P~ are-the sacrifice bears blessed fruit, .and the erstwhile reach. The doctor therefore becomes both a father and a kind leaps at one bound into the state of being. practically of lover-in other words, the object of conflict. In him the The doctor is generally so delighted that he fa~ls to tackle opposites are united, and for this reason he stands for a quasi­ theoretical difficulties connected with this little miracle. ideal solution of the conflict. Without in the least wishing it, he If the leap does not succeed-and it did not succeed ':ith my draws upon himself an overvaluation that is almost incredible is then faced with the problem of sevenng the to the outsider, for to the patient he seems like a savior or a Here "psychoanalytic" theory shrouds itself in a god. This way of speaking is not altogether so laughable as it darkness. Apparently we are to fall back on some nebu- sounds. It is indeed a bit much to be a father and lover at once. trust in fate: somehow or other. the matter will settle itself. Nobody could possibly stand up to it in the long run, precisely transference stops automatically when the patient runs out because it is too much of a good thing. One would have to be a money," as a slightly cynical colleague o~c~ rema~ked to me. demigod at least .to sustain such a role without a break, for all the~jneluctable demands of life make 1t impossible for the the time one would have to be the giver. To the patient in the to linger on in the transference-demands which compel state of transference, this provisional solution naturally seems involuntary sacrifice, sometimes with a more or less complete ideal, but only at first; in the end she comes to a standstill that as a result. (One may look in vain for accounts of such is just as bad as the neurotic conflict was. Fundamentally, noth­ .in the books that sing the praises of !) ing has yet happened that might lead to a real solution. The con­ To be sure there are hopeless cases where nothing helps; but flict has merely been transferred. Nevertheless a successful are cases that do not get stuck and do not inevitably transference can-at least temporarily-cause the whole neurosis als~ to disappear, and for this reason it has been very rightly recog­ the transference situation with bitter hearts and sore heads. nized by Freud as a healing factor of first-rate importance, but, told myself, at this juncture with my patient, that there ~ust at the same time, as a provisional state only, for although it a clear and respectable way out of the impasse. My patient holds out the possibility of a cure, it is far from being the cure long since run out of money-if indeed she ·ever possessed itself. anv--Oilt 1 was curious to know what means nature would devise This somewhat lengthy discussion seemed to me essential if a satisfactory way out of the transference deadlock. Since I my example was to be understood, for my patient had arrived imagined that I was blessed with that "sound· common at the state of transference and had already reached the upper which always knows exactly what to do in every tangled limit where the standstill begins to make itself disagreeable. The and since my patient knew as little as I, I suggested question now arose: what next? I had of course become the her that we could at least keep an eye open for any move­ complete savior, and the thought of having to give me up was coming from a sphere of the psyche uncontaminated by 112 THE, BASIC WRITINGS OF C. G. JUNG The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious H3 our superior wisdom and our conscious plannings. That meant fantastic character of her transference, or whether per­ first and foremost her dreams. the unconscious could never be rea-ched by understanding Dreams contain images and thought associations which we do , but must blindly and idiotically pursue some nonsensical not create with conscious intent. They arise spontaneously with­ Freud's idea that the unconscious can "do nothing but out our assistance and are representatives of a psychic activity Schopenhauer's blind and aimless Will, the gnostic demi~ withdrawn from our arbitrary will. Therefore the dream is, prop­ who in his vanity deems himself perfect and then in the erly speaking, a highly objective, natural product of the psyche, '""'"""'""o of his limitation creates something lamentably imper­ from which we might expect indications, or at least hints, about these pessimistic suspicions of an essentially negative certain basic trends in the psychic process. Now, since the psychic to the world and the soul came threateningly near. process, like any ot}1er life process, is not just a causal sequence, indeed there would be nothing. to set against .this except a but is also a procj!SS with a teleological orientation, we might "you ought," reinforced >by a stroke of the ilK expect dreams to give us certain indicia about the objective would cut down the whole phantasmagoria for goed and causality as well as about the objective tendencies, because they are nothing less than self-portraits of the psychic life process. But as I turned the dreams over and over in my mind, there On the basis of these reflections, then, we subjected the dreams on me another possibility. I said to myself: it cannot to a careful examination. It would lead too far to quote word for denied that the dreams continue to speak in the same old word all the dreams that now followed. Let it suffice to sketch ~jetaphj~rs with which our conversations have made both doct@Jl' their main character: the majority referred to the person of the patient sickeningly familiar. But the patient has an uadoubted doctor, that is to say, the actors were unmistakably the dreamer of her transference fantasy.. She knows that I herself and her doctor. The latter, however, seldom appeared to her as a semidivine father-lover, and she can, at least in his natural shape, but was generally distorted in a remarkable a 111,_,,...... u.,.•J, distinguish this from my factual reality. Theref~re way. Sometimes his figure was of supernatural size, sometimes dreams are obviously reiterating the conscious standpomt he seemed to be extremely aged, then again he resembled her the conscious criticism, which they completely ignore. father, but was at the same time curiously woven into nature, as . reiterate the conscious contents, not in toto, but insist on in the following dream: Her father (who in reality was of small fantastic standpoint as oppose d to " sound common sense. " stature) was standing with her on a hill that was covered with I naturally asked myself what was the source of this obstin~cy wheat fields. She was quite tiny beside him, and he seemed to her what was its purpose?· That it must have some purpos1ve !'ike a giant. He lifted her up from the ground and held her in · I was convinced, for there is no truly living thing that 'i""' .. ""'!!S his arms like a little child. The wind swept over the wheat fields, not have a final meaning, that can in other words be ex- and as the wheat swayed in the. wind, he rocked her in his arms. as a mere leftover from antecedent facts. But the energy From this dream and from others like it I could discern various the transference is so strong that it gives one the impression things. Above all I got the impression that her unconscious was a vital instinct. That being so, what is the p,urpose of such holding unshakably to the idea of my being the father-lover, so A careful examination and analysis of the dreams, that the fatal tie we were trying to undo appeared to be doubly of the one just quoted, revealed a very marked tend­ strengthened. Moreover one could hardly avoid seeing that the contrast to conscious criticism, which .always seeks to unconscious placed a special emphasis on the supernatural, almost things to human proportionr-to endew the pe~son .of "divine" nature of the father-lover, thus accentuating ~till further doctor with superhuman attributes. He had to be gtgantlc, the overvaluation occasioned by the transference. I therefore 1nnnoz·Cilliiti, huger than the fathCr, li.Ke the wind tha·t sweeps over asked myself whether the patient had still not understood the earth-was he t.lilm so be made illio a ge~d? Or. :1. said to 114 THE BASIC WRITINGS OF C. G. JUNG The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious 115 myself, was it rather the case that the unconscious was trying to namely a kind of subterranean undermining of create a god out of the person of the doctor, as it were to free a transference. Her relations with a certain friend deepened vision of God from the veils of the personal, so that the trans­ notwithstanding the fact that consciously she still ference to the person of the doctor was no more than a mis­ to the transference. So that when the Hille came for leav­ understanding on the part of the conscious mind, a stupid trick me, it was no catastrophe, but a perfectly reasonable parting. played by "sound common sense"? Was the urge of the uncon­ had the privilege of being the only witness cfuring the process scious perhaps only apparently reaching out towards the person, severance. I saw how the transpersonal control point de­ but in a deeper sense towards a god? Could the longing for a nn•~d--t cannot call it anything else-a guiding function and god be a passion welling up from our darkest, instinctual nature, by step gathered to itself all the former personal overvalua­ a passion unswayed by any outside influences, deeper and . how with this afflux of energy, it gained influence over stronger perhaps than the love for a human person? Or was it ;esisti~g conscious mind without the patient's consciously perhaps the highest and truest meaning of that inappropriate what was happening. From this I realized that the love we call transference, a little bit of real Gottesminne, that uit:i:ll.u" were not just fantasies, but self-representations of uncon­ has been lost to consciousness ever since the fifteenth century? developments which allowed the psyche of the patient No one will doubt the reality of a passionate longing for a nw"'"·"v to grow out of the pointless personal tie. human person; but that a fragment of religious psychology, an This change took place, as I showed, through the unconscio~s historical anachronism, indeed something of a medieval curiosity de·velopmtmt of a transpersonal control point; a virtual goal, as It -we are reminded of Mechtild of Magdeburg-should come to that expressed itself symbolically in a form which can only light as an immediate living reality in the middle of the consult­ described as a vision of God. The dreams swelled the human ing room, and be expressed in the prosaic figure of the doctor, of the doctor to superhuman proportions, making him seems almost too fantastic to be taken seriously. gigantic primordial father who is at the same ti_me the_ wind, A genuinely scientific attitude must be unprejudiced. The sole in whose protecting arms the dreamer rests like an mfant. criterion for the validity of an hypothesis is whether or not it try to make the patient's conscious, and traditionally possesses an heuristic-i.e., explanatory-value. The question idea of God responsible for the divine image . in the now is, can we regard the possibilities set forth above as a valid we would still have to lay stress on· the distortion. In hypothesis? There is no a priori reason why it should not be just ·~.:;11);\l\JU'., matters the patient had a critical and agnostic attitude, as possible that the unconscious tendencies have a goal beyond her idea of a possible deity had long since passed into the the human person, as that the unconscious can "do nothing but of the inconceivable, i.e., had dwindled into a complete wish." Experience alone can decide which is the mQre suitable . In contrast to this, the god-image of the .dreams hypothesis. to the archaic conception of a nature demon, This new hypothesis was not entirely plausible to my very 'I!IVJLu