ABSTRACT

The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche first appeared in the Collected Works in 1960. In this new edition bibliographical citations and entries have been revised in the light of subsequent publications in the Collected Works, and essential corrections have been made.

The book traces an important line of development in Jung's thought from 1912 onwards. The earliest of the papers elaborates Freud's concept of sexual libido into that of psychic energy. In those that follow we see how, Jung, discarding one by one the traditional 'philosophical' hypotheses, gradually arrived at a concept which is even more controversial than psychic energy was in its day ^DDL namely, psychic reality. The book contains the first mention of the archetype in Jung's writings as well as his later views on its nature. There is also a valuable account of the therapeutic uses of 'active imagination' first described in an essay written in 1916.

chapter |1 pages

This page intentionally left blank

chapter |8 pages

ON PSYCHIC ENERGY

chapter |18 pages

itself. In

chapter |1 pages

passed into common speech both in German and in English. Everyone knows nowadays that people "have complexes." What is not so well known, though far more important theoretically, is that complexes can have us. The existence of complexes throws serious doubt on the naive assumption of the unity of consciousness, which is equated with "psyche," and on the supremacy of the will. Every constellation of a complex postu-lates a disturbed state of consciousness. The unity of conscious-ness is disrupted and the intentions of the will are impeded or made impossible. Even memory is often noticeably affected, as we have seen. The complex must therefore be a psychic factor which, in terms of energy, possesses a value that sometimes exceeds that of our conscious intentions, otherwise such dis-ruptions of the conscious order would not be possible at all. And in fact, an active complex puts us momentarily under a state of duress, of compulsive thinking and acting, for which under certain conditions the only appropriate term would be the judicial concept of diminished responsibility. 201 What then, scientifically speaking, is a "feeling-toned com-plex"? It is the image of a certain psychic situation which is strongly accentuated emotionally and is, moreover, incompat-ible with the habitual attitude of consciousness. This image has a powerful inner coherence, it has its own wholeness and, in addition, a relatively high degree of autonomy, so that it is subject to the control of the conscious mind to only a limited extent, and therefore behaves like an animated foreign body in the sphere of consciousness. The complex can usually be sup-pressed with an effort of will, but not argued out of existence, and at the first suitable opportunity it reappears in all its origi-nal strength. Certain experimental investigations seem to indi-cate that its intensity or activity curve has a wavelike character, with a "wave-length" of hours, days, or weeks. This very complicated question remains as yet unclarified. 202 We have to thank the French psychopathologists, Pierre Janet in particular, for our knowledge today of the extreme dissociability of consciousness. Janet and Morton Prince both succeeded in producing four to five splittings of the personality, and it turned out that each fragment of personality had its own peculiar character and its own separate memory. These frag-ments subsist relatively independently of one another and can 96

chapter |33 pages

This page intentionally left blank

chapter |59 pages

THE STRUCTURE OF THE PSYCHE *

chapter |1 pages

όρων

chapter |24 pages

(¢νθρωpiος) was a single

chapter |9 pages

in order to become

chapter |61 pages

This page intentionally left blank

chapter |1 pages

THE STAGES OF LIFE THE SOUL AND DEATH

chapter |31 pages

This page intentionally left blank

chapter |26 pages

This page intentionally left blank

chapter |2 pages

TABLEI

chapter |38 pages

TABLE

chapter |1 pages

BIBLIOGRAPHY

chapter |18 pages

BIBLIOGRAPHY

chapter |1 pages

INDEX

chapter |34 pages

INDEX

chapter |8 pages

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF