01/10/2017
I recently had a text conversation with a friend of mine who inquired regarding the full quote of Jung’s I posted here recently. Here’s my attempt to clarify the quotation.
If a person has disowned an aspect of themselves, say some kind of lecherous beast, and thinks of himself only as ‘pure as the driven snow’, then he is ‘undivided’ in his mind. For Jung, this is a perilous stance to take since ‘the brighter the light, the darker the shadow’. For Jung, psychological health comes from acknowledging ‘opposites’, or poles of a spectrum, as these are continuously operating within us and in others. To ignore duality, and the inherent paradoxes of life, e.g., ‘some good people do bad things’ and ‘some bad people do good things’, skews the individual toward ego-inflation (which is an unrealistic and ineffective way to navigate through life, especially when one’s bubble is burst).
So, back to the guy above who does not own his lecherous beast within, he will project this shadow aspect of himself and see it ‘out there’ and see it in others; “they're the problem, all those sinners...and they make me so mad!~”
So in this case, ‘it happens outside’ means the fellow is skewed toward noticing all the lecherous beasts out there...projecting his shadow about...which causes a lot of problems, but is useful for wartime propaganda! (see the ‘yellow peril’ as an example of collective projections stirred by advertising)
Taking it to the next level, yes; Jung means that avoiding ‘stuff’ inside us will cause us to notice it ‘outside’...not having the ‘a-ha’ moment in therapy, which might feel like getting ‘floored’ may result in him, literally, getting hit by the proverbial ‘bus’ out there in the real world.
Jung says it’s better to make the impact and shock of self-discovery intentional (e.g. psychotherapy/analysis), by integrating unconscious aspects of self into awareness, but it doesn’t really matter, since ‘it will be processed’ out there as ‘fate’, if we don’t tend to the inner. I suppose his argument for intentionality is to reduce overall suffering.
