If the unconscious is to speak,
the conscious must be silent.
C.A. Meier
Jungian Analysis
Unveiling the Unconscious
Jungian analysis, which takes place in a dialectical relationship between analyst and analysand, has for its goal the analysand’s movement toward psychological wholeness. This transformation of the personality requires coming to terms with the unconscious, its specific structures and their dynamic relations to consciousness as these become available during the course of analysis.
Transformation also depends upon the significant modification of the unconscious structures that shape and control ego-consciousness at the beginning of analysis, a change that takes place through the constellation of archetypal structures and dynamics in the interactive field between analyst and analysand.
M. Stein
The Evolution of Consciousness
Jung believed that every mortal has an individual role to play in the evolution. For just as our collective human capacity for consciousness evolved out of the unconscious psyche, so it does in each individual. Each of us must, in an individual lifetime, recapitulate the evolution of the human race, and each of us must be an individual container in which the evolution of consciousness is carried forward.
Each of us is a microcosm in which the universal process actualizes itself. Therefore we are all caught up in the movement of the contents of the unconscious toward the level of the conscious mind. Each of us is involved in the countermovement of the ego-mind back toward the unconscious, reconnecting with its root in the parent matrix that gave it its birth.
Within the unconscious of each person is the primal pattern, the "blueprint," if you will, according to which the conscious mind and the total functional personality are formed—from birth through all the slow years of psychological growth toward genuine inner maturity. This pattern, this invisible latticework of energy, contains all the traits, all the strengths, the faults, the basic structure and parts that will make up a total psychological being. In most of us, only a small portion of this storehouse of raw energy has been assimilated into the conscious personality. Only a small part of the original blueprint has been actualized at the conscious level.
The inner, unconscious model of the individual is like the plan for a cathedral: At first, as the plan is translated into physical reality, only the general contours can be seen. After a time, a small part of the actual structure is finished enough to give an intimation of what the final work of art will be. As years pass the edifice rises, stone by stone, until finally the last blocks are in place and the finishing touches are complete. Only then is the magnificent vision of the architect revealed.
In the same way, the true depth and grandeur of an individual human being is never totally manifested until the main elements of the personality are moved from the level of potential in the unconscious and actualized at the level of conscious functioning.
Each of us is building a life, building an edifice. Within each person the plan and the basic structure are established in a deep place in the unconscious. But we need to consult the unconscious and cooperate with it in order to realize the full potential that is built into us. And we have to face the challenges and painful changes that the process of inner growth always brings.
R.A. Johnson
The Practical Application of Jung's Theory
Jungian psychotherapy is not an analytical procedure in the usual sense of the term, although it adheres strictly to the relevant findings of science and medicine. It is a Heilsweg, in the twofold sense of the German word: a way of healing and a way of salvation. It has the power to cure man's psychic and psychogenic sufferings. It has all the instruments needed to relieve the trifling psychic disturbances that may be the starting point of a neurosis, or to deal successfully with the gravest and most complicated developments of psychic disease. But in addition it knows the way and has the means to lead the individual to his 'salvation', to the knowledge and fulfilment of his own personality, which have always been the aim of spiritual striving. By its very nature, this path defies abstract exposition. Jung's system of thought can be explained theoretically only up to a certain point; to understand it fully one must have experienced or, better still, 'suffered' its living action in oneself. And like every process that transforms man, this experience cannot be described but only adumbrated. Like all psychic experience, it is very personal; its subjectivity is its most effective truth. Often as it may be repeated, this experience of the psyche is unique and only within its subjective limits is it open to rational understanding.
Apart from its medical aspect, Jungian psychotherapy is thus a system of education and spiritual guidance, an aid in the forming of the personality. Only a few are willing and able to travel a path of salvation. 'And these few tread the path only from inner necessity, not to say suffering, for it is sharp as the edge of a razor.'
Jung has devised no general prescription for the infinite variety of sufferers who entrust themselves to his therapy. The method and the intensity with which it is applied vary with the requirements of the individual case, with the patient's psychic make-up. Jung recognizes the importance of sexuality and the striving for power. There are many cases in which the disorder can be traced to one of these factors and must therefore be approached from a Freudian or Adlerian point of view. But while for Freud sexuality, and for Adler the will to power, is the main explanatory principle, Jung believes other psychic motivations to be equally essential and rejects the notion that any one factor is at the source of all psychic disorders. Apart from these two assuredly important factors, he finds other crucial motivations, the first and foremost one which pertains to man alone—the spiritual and religious need that is innate in the psyche. This view is the essential part of his theory that distinguishes it from all others and determines its prospective-synthetic direction. For 'the spiritual appears in the psyche also as an instinct, indeed as a real passion. . . . It is not derived from any other instinct . . . but is a principle sui generis, a specific and necessary form of instinctual power.'
J. Jacobi