man & woman
Where
love reigns, there is no will to power; and where the will to power is
paramount, love is lacking. The one is but the shadow of the other.
"On
the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1912) In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical
Psychology. P. 78
Unfortunately,
it is almost a collective ideal for men and women to be as unconscious
as possible in the ticklish affairs of love. But behind the mask of respectability
and faithfulness the full fury of neglected love falls upon the children.
You cannot blame the ordinary individual, as you cannot expect people to
know the attitude they ought to adopt and how they are to solve their love
problems within the framework of present-day ideals and conventions. Mostly
they know only the negative measures of negligence, procrastination, suppression,
and repression.
"Analytical
Psychology and Education" (1926). In CW 17: The Development of the Personality.
P.218
It
is hard to believe that this teeming world is too poor to provide an object
for human love - it offers boundless opportunities to everyone. It is rather
the inability to love which robs a person of these opportunities. The world
is empty only to him who does not know how to direct his libido towards
things and people, and to render them alive and beautiful. What compels
us to create a substitute from within ourselves is not an external lack,
but our own inability to include anything outside ourselves in our love.
Certainly the difficulties and adversities of the struggle for existence
may oppress us, yet even the worst conditions need not hinder love; on
the contrary, they often spur us on to greater efforts.
Symbols
of Transformation (1952). CW 5: P.253
In
spite of all indignant protestations to the contrary, the fact remains
that love (using the word in the wider sense which belongs to it by right
and embraces more than sexuality), its problems and its conflicts, is of
fundamental importance in human life and, as careful inquiry consistently
shows, is of far greater significance than the individual suspects.
"On
the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1912) In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical
Psychology. P. 14
The
love problem is part of mankind's heavy toll of suffering, and nobody should
be ashamed of having to pay his tribute.
"Analytical
Psychology and Education" (1926). In CW 17: The Development of the Personality.
P.218
Normal
sex life, as a shared experience with apparently similar aims, further
strengthens the feeling of unity and identity. This state is described
as one of complete harmony, and is extolled as a great happiness ("one
heart and one soul")-not without good reason, since the return to that
original condition of unconscious oneness is like a return to childhood.
Hence the childish gestures of all lovers. Even more is it a return to
the mother's womb, into the teeming depths of an as yet unconscious creativity.
It is, in truth, a genuine and incontestable experience of the Divine,
whose transcendent force obliterates and consumes everything individual;
a real communion with life and the impersonal power of fate.
"Marriage
as a Psychological Relationship" (1925). In CW 17: The Development of Personality.
P.330
So
far as we know, consciousness is always ego-consciousness. In order to
be conscious of myself, I must be able to distinguish myself from others.
Relationship can only take place where this distinction exists.
"Marriage
as a Psychological Relationship" (1925). In CW 17: The Development of Personality.
P.336
It
is difficult to gauge the spirit of one's own time; but, if we observe
the trend of art, of style, and of public taste, and see what people read
and write, what sort of societies they found, what "questions" are the
order of the day, what the Philistines fight against, we shall find that
in the long catalogue of our present social questions by no means the last
is the so-called "sexual question." This is discussed by men and women
who challenge the existing sexual morality and who seek to throw off the
burden of moral guilt which past centuries have heaped upon Eros. One cannot
simply deny the existence of these endeavours nor condemn then as indefensible;
they exist, and probably have adequate grounds for their existence. It
is more interesting and more useful to examine carefully the underlying
causes of these contemporary movements than to join in the lamentations
of the professional mourners of morality who prophesy the moral downfall
of humanity.
"New
Paths in Psychology" (1912). CW 7: Two Essays in Analytical Psychology.
P. 427
While
we are all agreed that murder, stealing, and ruthlessness of any kind are
obviously inadmissible, there is nevertheless what we call a "sexual question."
We hear nothing of a murder question or a rage question; social reform
is never invoked against those who wreak their bad tempers on their fellow
men. Yet these things are all examples of instinctual behaviour, and the
necessity for their suppression seems to us self-evident. Only in regard
to sex do we feel the need of a question mark. This points to a doubt -
the doubt whether our existing moral concepts and the legal institutions
founded on them are really adequate or suited to their purpose. No intelligent
person will deny that in this field opinion is sharply divided. Indeed,
there would be no problem at all if public opinion were united about it.
It is obviously a reaction against a too rigorous morality. It is not simply
an outbreak of primitive instinctuality; such outbreaks, as we know, have
never yet bothered themselves with moral laws and moral problems. There
are, rather, serious misgivings as to whether our existing moral views
have dealt fairly with the nature of sex. From this doubt there naturally
arises a legitimate interest in any attempt to understand the nature of
sex more truly and deeply.
"On
Psychic Energy" (1928). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of Psyche.
P.105
Nowadays
we have no real sexual morality, only a legalistic attitude to sexuality;
just as the Middle Ages had no real morality of money-making but only prejudices
and a legalistic point of view. We are not yet far enough advanced to distinguish
between moral and immoral behaviour in the realm of free sexual activity.
This is clearly expressed in the customary treatment, or rather ill-treatment,
of unmarried mothers. All the repulsive hypocrisy, the high tide of prostitution
and of venereal diseases, we owe to the barbarous, wholesale legal condemnation
of certain kinds of sexual behaviour, and to our inability to develop a
finer moral sense for the enormous psychological differences that exist
in the domain of free sexual activity.
In
CW 4: Freud and Psychoanalysis. P.666
It
is undoubtedly true that instinctuality conflicts with our moral views
most frequently and most conspicuously in the realm of sex. The conflict
between infantile instinctuality and ethics can never be avoided. It is,
it seems to me, the sine qua non of psychic energy.
"On
Psychic Energy" (1928). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of Psyche.
P.105
The
conflict between ethics and sex today is not just a collision between instinctuality
and morality, but a struggle to give an instinct its rightful place in
our lives, and to recognize in this instinct a power which seeks expression
and evidently may not be trifled with, and therefore cannot be made to
fit in with our well-meaning moral laws. Sexuality is not mere instinctuality;
it is an indisputably creative power that is not only the basic cause of
our individual lives, but a very serious factor in our psychic life as
well. Today we know only too well the grave consequences that sexual disturbances
can bring in their train.
"On
Psychic Energy" (1928). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of Psyche.
P.107
Eros
is a questionable fellow and will always remain so, whatever the legislation
of the future may have to say about it. He belongs on one side to man's
primordial animal nature which will endure as long as man has an animal
body. On the other side he is related to the highest forms of the spirit.
But he only thrives when spirit and instinct are in right harmony. If one
or the other aspect is lacking to him, the result is injury or at least
a lopsidedness that may easily veer towards the pathological. Too much
of the animal distorts the civilized man, too much civilization makes sick
animals.
"On
the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1912) In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical
Psychology. P. 32
Although
man and woman unite they nevertheless represent irreconcilable opposites
which, when activated, degenerate into deadly hostility. This primordial
pair of opposites symbolizes every conceivable pair of opposites that may
occur; hot and cold, light and dark, north and south, dry and damp, good
and bad, conscious and unconscious.
Psychology
and Alchemy (1944). CW 12: P. 192
For
two personalities to meet is like mixing two chemical substances: if there
is any combination at all, both are transformed.
"Problems
of Modern Psychotherapy" (1929). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy.
P. 163
[All
that pertains to the opposite sex] has a mysterious charm tinged with fear,
perhaps even with disgust. For this reason its charm is particularly attractive
and fascinating, even when it comes to us not directly from outside, in
the guise of a woman, but from within, as a psychic influence-for instance
in the form of a temptation to abandon oneself to a mood or an affect.
"Woman
in Europe" (1927). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.244
The
young person of marriageable age does, of course, possess an ego-consciousness
(girls more than men, as a rule), but, since he has only recently emerged
from the mists of original unconsciousness, he is certain to have wide
areas which still lie in the shadow and which preclude to that extent the
formation of psychological relationship. This means, in practice, that
the young man (or woman) can have only an incomplete understanding of himself
and others, and is therefore imperfectly informed as to his, and their,
motives. As a rule the motives he acts from are largely unconscious. Subjectively,
of course, he thinks himself very conscious and knowing, for we constantly
overestimate the existing content of consciousness, and it is a great and
surprising discovery when we find that what we had supposed to be the final
peak is nothing but the first step in a very long climb.
"Marriage
as a Psychological Relationship" (1925). In CW 17: The Development of Personality.
P.327
Women
are increasingly aware that love alone can give them full stature, just
as men are beginning to divine that only the spirit can give life its highest
meaning. Both seek a psychic relationship, because love needs the spirit,
and the spirit love, for its completion.
"Woman
in Europe" (1927). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.269
The
love of woman is not sentiment, as is a man's, but a will that is at times
terrifyingly unsentimental and can even force her to self-sacrifice. A
man who is loved in this way cannot escape his inferior side, for he can
only respond to the reality of her love with his own reality.
"Woman
in Europe" (1927). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.261
When
animus and anima meet, the animus draws his sword of power and the anima
ejects her poison of illusion and seduction. The outcome need not always
be negative, since the two are equally likely to fall in love (a special
instance of love at first sight).
Aion
(1951) CW 9, Part II. P.30
No
man is so entirely masculine that he has nothing feminine in him. The fact
is, rather, that very masculine men have-carefully guarded and hidden-a
very soft emotional life, often incorrectly described as "feminine." A
man counts it a virtue to repress his feminine traits as much as possible,
just as a woman, at least until recently, considered it unbecoming to be
"mannish." The repression of feminine traits and inclinations naturally
causes these contrasexual demands to accumulate in the unconscious. No
less naturally, the imago of woman (the soul-image) becomes a receptacle
for these demands, which is why a man, in his love-choice, is strongly
tempted to win the woman who best corresponds to his own unconscious femininity-a
woman, in short, who can unhesitatingly receive the projection of his soul.
Although such a choice is often regarded and felt as altogether ideal,
it may turn out that the man has manifestly married his own worst weakness.
"The
Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious" (1928). In CW 7: Two Essays
on Analytical Psychology. P.297
If
you take a typical intellectual who is terribly afraid of falling in love,
you will think his fear very foolish. But he is most probably right, because
he will very likely make foolish nonsense when he falls in love. He will
be caught most certainly, because his feeling only reacts to an archaic
or to a dangerous type of woman. This is why many intellectuals are inclined
to marry beneath them. They are caught by the landlady perhaps, or by the
cook, because they are unaware of their archaic feeling through which they
get caught. But they are right to be afraid, because their undoing will
be in their feeling. Nobody can attack them in their intellect. There they
are strong and can stand alone, but in their feelings they can be influenced,
they can be caught, they can be cheated, and they know it. Therefore, never
force a man into his feeling when he is an intellectual. He controls it
with an iron hand because it is very dangerous.
Analytical
Psychology: Its Theory and Practice: The Tavistock Lectures (1935). In
CW 18: (retitled) "The Tavistock Lectures" P.20
Perfection
is a masculine desideratum, while woman inclines by nature to completeness...
a man can stand a relative state of perfection much better and for a longer
period than a woman, while as a rule it does not agree with women and may
even be dangerous for them. If a woman strives for perfection she forgets
the complementary role of completeness, which, though imperfect by itself,
forms the necessary counterpart to perfection.
"Answer
to Job" (1952). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.620
Woman's
consciousness has a lunar rather than a solar character. Its light is the
"mild" light of the moon, which merges things together rather than separates
them. It does not show up objects in all their pitiless discreteness and
separateness, like the harsh, glaring light of day, but blends in a deceptive
shimmer the near and the far, magically transforming little things into
big things, high into low, softening all colour into a bluish haze, and
blending the nocturnal landscape into an unsuspected unity.
Mysterium
Coniunctionis (1955). CW 14: P.233
It
needs a very moon-like consciousness indeed to hold a large family together
regardless of all the differences, and to talk and act in such a way that
the harmonious relation of the parts to the whole is not only not disturbed
but is actually enhanced. And where the ditch is too deep, a ray of moonlight
smoothes it over.
Mysterium
Coniunctionis (1955). CW 14: P.227
The
moon-nature is its own best camouflage, as at once becomes apparent when
a woman's unconscious masculinity breaks through into her consciousness
and thrusts her Eros aside. Then it is all up with her charm and the mitigating
half-darkness; she takes a stand on some point or other and captiously
defends it, although each barbed remark tears her own flesh, and with brutal
short-sightedness she jeopardizes everything that is the dearest goal of
womanhood.
Mysterium
Coniunctionis (1955). CW 14: P.228
The
Sol who personifies the feminine unconscious is not the sun of the day
but corresponds rather to the Sol niger.... It is as void of light and
charm as the gentling moonlight is all heavenly peace and magic. It protests
too much that it is a light, because it is no light, and a great truth,
because it invariably misses the mark, and a high authority, which nevertheless
is always wrong, or is only as right as the blind tom-cat who tried to
catch imaginary bats in broad daylight, but one day caught a real one by
mistake and thereafter became completely unreachable.
Mysterium
Coniunctionis (1955). CW 14: P.229
Emptiness
is a great feminine secret. It is something absolutely alien to man; the
chasm, the unplumbed depths, the yin. The pitifulness of this vacuous nonentity
goes to his heart (I speak here as a man), and one is tempted to say that
this constitutes the whole "mystery" of woman. Such a female is fate itself.
A man may say what he likes about it; be for it or against it, or both
at once; in the end he falls, absurdly happy, into this pit, or, if he
doesn't, he has missed and bungled his only chance of making a man of himself.
In the first case one cannot disprove his foolish good luck to him, and
in the second one cannot make his misfortune seem plausible. "The Mothers,
the Mothers, how eerily it sounds!"
"Psychological
Aspects of the Mother Archetype" (1939). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics
of the Psyche. P.183
Human
relationship leads into the world of the psyche, into that intermediate
realm between sense and spirit, which contains something of both and yet
forfeits nothing of its own unique character. Into this territory a man
must venture if he wishes to meet woman half way. Circumstances have forced
her to acquire a number of masculine traits, so that she shall not remain
caught in an antiquated, purely instinctual femininity, lost and alone
in the world of men. So, too, man will be forced to develop his feminine
side, to open his eyes to the psyche and to Eros. It is a task he cannot
avoid, unless he prefers to go trailing after woman in a hopelessly boyish
fashion, worshiping from afar but always in danger of being stowed away
in her pocket.
"Woman
in Europe" (1927). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.258
The
question of relationship borders on a region that for a man is dark and
painful. He can face this question only when the woman carries the burden
of suffering, that is, when he is the "contained"-in other words, when
she can imagine herself having a relationship with another man, and as
a consequence suffering disunion within herself. Then it is she who has
the painful problem, and he is not obliged to see his own, which is a great
relief to him. In this situation he is not unlike a thief who, quite undeservedly,
finds himself in the enviable position of having been forestalled by another
thief who has been caught by the police. Suddenly he becomes an honourable,
impartial onlooker. In any other situation a man always finds the discussion
of personal relations painful and boring, just as his wife would find it
boring if he examined her on the Critique of Pure Reason. For him, Eros
is a shadowland which entangles him in his feminine unconscious, in something
"psychic," while for woman Logos is a deadly boring kind of sophistry if
she is not actually repelled and frightened by it.
"Woman
in Europe" (1927). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.256
In
the eyes of the ordinary man, love in its true sense coincides with the
institution of marriage, and outside marriage there is only adultery or
"platonic" friendship. For woman, marriage is not an institution at all
but a human love-relationship.
"Woman
in Europe" (1927). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.255
Relationship
is possible only if there is a psychic distance between people, in the
same way that morality presupposes freedom. For this reason the unconscious
tendency of woman aims at loosening the marriage structure, but not at
the destruction of marriage and the family.
"Woman
in Europe" (1927). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.273
[In
America] the men and women are giving their vital energy to everything
except the relation between themselves. In that relation all is confusion.
The women are the mothers of their husbands as well as of their children,
yet at the same time there is in them the old primitive desire to be possessed,
to yield, to surrender. And there is nothing in the man for her to surrender
to except his kindness, his courtesy, his generosity, his chivalry. His
competitor, his rival in business must yield, but she need not.
"American
Facing its most Tragic Moment" September 29, 1912. New York Times. Section
V. P.2
We
deceive ourselves greatly if we think that many married women are neurotic
merely because they are unsatisfied sexually or because they have not found
the right man or because they have an infantile sexual fixation. The real
reason in many cases is that they cannot recognize the cultural task that
is waiting for them. We all have far too much the standpoint of the "nothing
but" psychology, that is, we think that the new future which is pressing
in at the door can be squeezed into the framework of what is already known.
In
CW 4: Freud and Psychoanalysis. P. 668
Most
men are erotically blinded-they commit the unpardonable mistake of confusing
Eros with sex. A man thinks he possesses a woman if he has her sexually.
He never possesses her less, for to a woman the Eros-relationship is the
real and decisive one. For her, marriage is a relationship with sex thrown
in as an accompaniment.
"Woman
in Europe" (1927). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.255
Traditionally,
man is regarded as the marriage breaker. This legend comes from times long
past, when men still had leisure to pursue all sorts of pastimes. But today
life makes so many demands on men that the noble hidalgo, Don Juan, is
to be seen nowhere save in the theatre. More than ever man loves his comfort,
for ours is an age of neurasthenia, impotence, and easy chairs. There is
no energy left for window-climbing and duels. If anything is to happen
in the way of adultery it must not be too difficult. In no respect must
it cost too much, hence the adventure can only be of a transitory kind.
The man of today is thoroughly scared of jeopardizing marriage as an institution.
"Woman
in Europe" (1927). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.248
Woman
nowadays feels that there is no real security in marriage, for what does
her husband's faithfulness mean when she knows that his feelings and thoughts
are running after others and that he is merely too calculating or too cowardly
to follow them? What does her own faithfulness mean when she knows that
she is simply using it to exploit her legal right of possession, and warping
her own soul? She has intimations of a higher fidelity to the spirit and
to a love beyond human weakness and imperfection.
"Woman
in Europe" (1927). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.270
Do
our legislators really know what "adultery" is? Is their definition of
it the final embodiment of the truth? From the psychological standpoint,
the only one that counts for a woman, it is a wretched piece of bungling,
like everything else contrived by men for the purpose of codifying love.
For a woman, love has nothing to do with "marital misconduct," "extramarital
intercourse," "deception of the husband," or any of the less savoury formulas
invented by the erotically blind masculine intellect and echoed by the
self-opinionated demon in woman. Nobody but the absolute believer in the
inviolability of traditional marriage could perpetrate such breaches of
good taste, just as only the believer in God ea really blaspheme. Whoever
doubts marriage in the first place cannot infringe against it; for him
the legal definition is invalid because, like St. Paul, he feels himself
beyond the law, on the higher plane of love. But because the believers
in the law so frequently trespass against their own laws, whether from
stupidity, temptation, or mere viciousness, the modern woman begins to
wonder whether she too may not belong to the same category.
"Woman
in Europe" (1927). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.265
Secretaries,
typists, shop-girls, all are agents of this process, and through a million
subterranean channels creeps the influence that is undermining marriage.
For the desire of all these women is not to have sexual adventures only
the stupid could believe that-but to get married. The possessors of that
bliss must be ousted, not as a rule by naked force, but by that silent,
obstinate desire which, as we know, has magical effects, like the fixed
stare of a snake. This was ever the way of women.
"Woman
in Europe" (1927). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.251
Seldom
or never does a marriage develop into an individual relationship smoothly
and without crises. There is no birth of consciousness without pain.
"Marriage
as a Psychological Relationship" (1925). In CW 17: The Development of Personality.
P.331
Both
these necessities exist in ourselves: nature and culture. We cannot only
be ourselves, we must also be related to others. Hence a way must be found
that is not a mere rational compromise; it must be a state or process that
is wholly consonant with the living being, "a highway and a holy way,"
as the prophet says, "a straight way, so that fools shall not err therein"
(Isaiah 35:8).
Psychological
Types (1921). CW 6: P.135
The
greater the tension, the greater is the potential. Great energy springs
from a correspondingly great tension between opposites.
"Paracelsus
as a Spiritual Phenomenon" (1942). In CW 13: Alchemical Studies.
Out
of a playful movement of elements whose interrelations are not immediately
apparent, patterns arise which an observant and critical intellect can
only evaluate afterwards. The creation of something new is not accomplished
by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity.
The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.
Psychological
Types (1921). CW 6: P.197
Opposites
can be united only in the form of compromise, or irrationally, some new
thing arising between them which, though different from both, yet has the
power to take up their energies in equal measure as an expression of both
'and of neither. Such an expression cannot be contrived by reason, it can
only be created through living.
Psychological
Types (1921). CW 6: P.166