The Greek Perfection of Tragedy

"But it is important to recognize the crucial twist Jung's psychology gave to the eminence of the gods. They have been interiorized into pathology. Their myths live in our behaviors, irrepressibly demanding recognition and observances. They bear new names borrowed from the text books of psychiatry and abnormal psychology. Their refuge, no longer the alter and temple fanum, the side of oracle and mystery cult, instead they inhabit the interiority of the psyche, where they make themselves very present indeed, as the powers in the background of the soul's infirmities. Since the repressed returns in the strangely inventive form of symptoms. After all, symptoms are extraordinary inventions. The gods are indeed present, whether invoked or not, right on the corner of 42nd street."
James Hillman

do despojamento

"Man is the only creature who can see his own death coming; and, when he does, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. He prepares for death by freeing himself from mundane goals and attachments, and turns instead to the cultivation of his own interior garden. Both Jung and Freud exemplify this change. They each survived into their eighties, and both almost abandoned interest in psychotherapy in favour of ideas and theories about human nature. In old age, there is a tendency to turn from empathy toward abstraction; to be less involved in life's dramas, more concerned with life's patterns."
Anthony Storr, in Solitude — A Return to the Self

da dissidência

Freud   /   Jung

Jung: As I may say so, dear professor, you make the mistake of treating your friends like patients. This enables you to reduce them to the level of children, so that their only choice is to become obsequious non-entities or bullying enforces of party line, while you sit on the mountain top. The infalible father-figure. And nobody dares to pluck you by the beard and say: think about your behavior and then decide which one of us is neurotic. I speak as a friend.

Freud: Your letter cannot be answered. Your claim that I treat my friends like patients is self-evidently untrue. First of whichever of us is the neurotic, I thought we analysts were agreed a little neurosis was nothing whatever to be ashamed of. But a man like you who behaves quite abnormally and then stands there shouting at the top of his voice how normal he is, does give considerable cause for concern. For a long time now our relationship has been hanging by a thread and a thread moreover mostly consisting of past disappointments. We have nothing to lose by cutting it.

Jung: You will be the best judge of what this moment means to you. The rest is silence.

to believe or not to believe

Sabina Spielrein

Sigmund Freud

Sabina Spielrein: Are you completely opposed to any kind of religious dimension in our field?

Freud: In general I don't care if a man believes in Rama, Marx or Afrodite. As long as he keeps it out of the consulting room.

Sabina Spielrein: Is that what's at the bottom of your dispute with Dr. Jung?

Freud: I have no dispute with Dr. Jung. I was simply mistaken about him. I thought he was going to be able to carry our work forward after I was gone. I didn't bargain for all that second rate mysticism and self-aggrandizing shamanism. Nor did I realize this could be so brutal and sanctimonious.

Sabina Spielrein: But he's trying to find some way forward so that we don't just have to tell our patients, this is why the way you are. He wants to be able to say, we can show you what it is you might want to become!

Freud: Playing God, in other words? We have no right to do that. The world is as it is. Understanding and accepting. That is the way to psychic health. What good can we do if our aim is simply to replace one delusion with another?

Sabina Spielrein: Well, I agree with you.

do amor

Wednesday Evenings

The Red Book

The great adventure that is ahead

The word "believe" is a difficult thing for me. I don't believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. If I know a thing, and when I know it, I don't need to believe it. I don't allow myself, for instance, to believe a thing just for the sake of believing it. I can't believe it. But when there are sufficient reasons for a certain hypothesis, I shall accept it, naturally.

Life behaves as if it were going on. So I think it is better for old people to live on, to look forward to the next day as if he had to spend centuries. Then he lives properly.

If you think a certain way, you may feel considerably better. And if you think along the lines of Nature, then you think properly.
Carl Jung