Caution Regarding Inflation

“The risk is, that the artifex becomes identical with the goal of his opus. He becomes inflated and crazy: “multi perierunt in opere nostro!” There is a “demon” in the prima materia, that drives people crazy.” Unpublished Letter to Alice in Jung History

Not identifying with the collective unconscious is a crucial first step to establishing the ego/Self axis, whereby the energies which are present in the work are not usurped. Instead, they are served.   The risks on a path of individuation are real, for the energies that want to manifest and can show a disregard for the fragility of the ego through which it takes place.  (see definition of Inflation)



Belittled Feeling

I came across this quote from von Franz on Jung at Heart which is worth sharing as it relates to the lopsidedness in the current collective construct of consciousness.

“The contemporary Zeitgeist belittles feeling…I don’t think that we can achieve much if we remain on the level of “reasonable” materialistic thinking— it is not altogether wrong; it is wrong only if we infer “that is it…”

Jung says in a letter that we have become too lopsidedly intellectual and rational and have forgotten that there are factors that cannot be influenced by a one-track intellect. We then see emotionality flaring up as a compensation (letter to Albert Oppenheimer, 10 October 1933. 1973a, 128–129). We need to be more than just reasonable and level-headed, an attitude which only infuriates the young people. We must offer them a creative spiritual, non-materialistic view of reality as a whole—namely a real connection with the unconscious as a supramaterial, extrasensory reality to which we must relate, not only with our minds but also with feeling and emotion.”



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