The Development of Personality CW17 - Re-Visited 2009.11.12

While playing with my books, and rummaging through words bound, I

Revisited Jung's CW17. Specifically, I looked at my plethora of sticky-

notes to revisit some of the bits that caught my eye on first and second perusals. And the following is delightful one that, fushigi-like, ties in with the citation I transcribed from Zen and Japanese Culture November 10th.

[There is] the eternal doubt whether what appears to be the objective psyche is really objective, or whether it might not be imagination after all. But then the question at once arises: have I imagined such and such a thing on purpose, or has it been imagined by something in me? It is a similar problem to that of the neurotic who suffers from an imaginary carcinoma. He know, and has been told a hundred times before, that it is all imagination, and yet he asks me brokenly, 'But why do I imagine such a thing? I don't want to do it!' To which the answer is: the idea of the carcinoma has imagined itself in him without his knowledge and without his consent. The reason is that a psychic growth, a 'proliferation,' is taking place in his unconscious without his being abel to make it conscious. In the face of the inferior activity he feels afraid. But since he is entirely persuaded that there can be nothing in his own soul that he does not know about, he must relate his fear to a physical carcinoma which he knows does not exist. And if he should still be afraid of it, there are a hundred doctors to convince him that his fear is entirely groundless. The neurosis is thus a defence against the objective, inner activity of the psyche, or an attempt, somewhat dearly paid for, to escape from the inner voice and hence from the vocation. For this 'growth' is the objective activity of the psyche, which, independently of conscious volition, is trying to speak to the conscious mind through the inner voice and lead him towards wholeness. Behind the neurotic perversion is concealed his vocation, his destiny: the growth of the personality, the full realization of the life-will that is born with the individual. It is the man without amor fati who is neurotic; he, truly, as missed his vocation, and never will he be able to say with Cromwell, ""None climb so high as he who knoweth not whither his destiny leadeth him.'

To the extent that man is untrue to the law of his being and does not rise to personality, he has failed to realize his life's meaning. Fortunately, in her kindness and patience, Nature never puts the fatal question as to the meaning of their lives into the mouths of most people. And where no one asks, no one need answer (par 313-4).