The Collected Essays of Carl Jung, Volume I

The following papers have been gathered together from various sources. The subject of Psychoanalysis is much in evidence, and is likely to occupy still more attention in the near future, as the psychological content of the psychoses and neuroses is more generally appreciated and understood. It is of importance, therefore, that the fundamental writings of both the Viennese and Zurich Schools should be accessible for study. It will be a relief to many students of the Unconscious to see in it another aspect than that of "a wild beast crouched, waiting its hour to spring." Some readers have gathered that view of it from the writings of the Viennese School. This view is at most that dangerous thing "a half-truth." There is no doubt that some even scientific persons have a certain fear of where the study of the Unconscious may lead. These fearful persons should be reminded that they possess an Unconscious in spite of themselves, and that they share it in common with every human being. It is only an extension of the Individual. To study it is to deepen the self. All new discoveries have at one stage been called dangerous, and all new philosophies have been deemed heresies. It is as if we would once more consign radium to its dust-heaps, lest someday the new radiancy should overpower mankind. Indeed this very thing has proved at once most dangerous and most exquisitely precious. Man must learn to use this treasure, and in using it to submit to its own laws, which can only become known when it is handled. Those who read this book with the attention it requires, will find they gain an impression of many new truths. Out of this crucible, new forms will arise. The study of Psychoanalysis produces something of the effect of a war in the psyche; indeed we need to make conscious this war in the inner things if we would be delivered in the future from the war in the external world, either in the form of individual or international neurosis. In the pain and the upheaval, one recognizes the birth-pangs of newer, and let us hope, truer thought, and more natural adaptations. We need a new philosophy of life to take the place of that which has perished in the general cataclysm, and it is the analytical psychology which grows out of a scientific study of the Unconscious, the germs of a new construction.