Nights through dreams tell the myths forgotten by the day.
— Memories, Dreams, Reflections
Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist who founded analytical psychology, and is widely counted among the most influential psychologists of all time. He wrote over twenty books and is best known for his idea of archetypes.
Early in his career he worked closely with Sigmund Freud, who saw him as his heir, until their views drifted apart and they broke with each other. Jung then built his own system. Many familiar ideas come from him, including the collective unconscious, synchronicity, and introversion and extraversion. At its centre is individuation, the lifelong process of forming a self out of conscious and unconscious elements, which he saw as the main task of human development.
Early in his career he worked closely with Sigmund Freud, who saw him as his heir, until their views drifted apart and they broke with each other. Jung then built his own system. Many familiar ideas come from him, including the collective unconscious, synchronicity, and introversion and extraversion. At its centre is individuation, the lifelong process of forming a self out of conscious and unconscious elements, which he saw as the main task of human development.
Most quoted works
- The Essential Jung: Selected Writings 8
- Dreams 4
- Memories, Dreams, Reflections 3
- The Undiscovered Self 3
- Cornwall Seminar, Pages 1-5. 2
- Man and His Symbols 2
The girl dreams she is dangerously ill. Suddenly birds come out of her skin and cover her completely ... Swarms of gnats obscure the sun, the moon, and all the stars except one. That one start falls upon the dreamer.
— Man and His Symbols
We are still living in a wonderful new world where man thinks himself astonishingly new and "modern." This is unmistakable proof of the youthfulness of human consciousness, which has not yet grown aware of its historical antecedents.
— The Essential Jung: Selected Writings
If only a world-wide consciousness could arise that all division and fission are due to the splitting of opposites in the psyche, then we should know where to begin.
— The Essential Jung: Selected Writings
The State in particular is turned into a quasi-animate personality from whom everything is expected. In reality it is only a camouflage for those individuals who know how to manipulate it.
— The Essential Jung: Selected Writings
As a child I felt myself to be alone, and I am still, because I know things and must hint at things which others apparently know nothing of, and for the most part do not want to know.
— Memories, Dreams, Reflections
The psychopathology of the masses is rooted in the psychology of the individual
— Essays on Contemporary Events, 1936-46
To be quite accurate, human nature is simply what it is; it has its dark and its light sides. The sum of all colours is grey - light on a dark background or dark on light.
— Psychological Types
As understanding deepens, the further removed it becomes from knowledge.
— The Essential Jung: Selected Writings
There is a desert on the moon where the dreamer sinks so deeply into the ground that she reaches hell.
— Man and His Symbols
Where your fear is, there is your task.
I never think that I am the one who must see to it that cherries grow on stalks
But the shadow is merely somewhat inferior, primitive, unadapted, and awkward; not wholly bad. It even contains childish or primitive qualities which would in a way vitalize and embellish human existence, but convention forbids!
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.
The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.