Part II: Fears of Knowing, Growing and Becoming Conscious
“But modern man’s consciousness has strayed rather too far from the fact of the unconscious. We have even forgotten that the psyche is by no means of our design, but is for the most part autonomous and unconscious. Consequently the approach of the unconscious induces a panic fear in civilized people, not least on account of the menacing analogy with insanity.”
Jung (1953)[1]
“We know that it is far more convenient for the patient to be ill, because recovery brings with it a great disadvantage: she would lose her analyst. The illness reserves him, as it were, for her needs. With her interesting illness, she has obviously offered the analyst a great deal, and has received from him a good deal of interest and patience and return. She certainly does not want to give up this stimulating relationship, and for this reason she is afraid of remaining well and secretly hopes that something weird and wonderful will befall her so as to rekindle the analyst’s interest. Naturally she would do anything rather than admit that she really had such wishes. But we must accustom ourselves to the thought that in psychology there are things which the patient simultaneously knows and does not know.”
Jung (1961)[2]
“What may be forgotten is that alongside, and in opposition to, the forces stimulating psychological growth, there exists a fear of it. Jung attributed this fear to an instinctive regressive force inherent in the psyche, a force whose mythological image is the devouring aspect of the Great Mother.”
Steinberg (1990)[3]
“The shirker experiences nothing but his own morbid fear, and it yields him no meaning.”
Jung (1966)[4]
As we noted in Part I of this essay on fear, analysts have seen a variety of what I regarded as “strange” fears: Why would someone fear joy? success? achievement? Why would an analysand fear getting well, or resist making therapeutic progress? In this Part II, we address these questions and consider some reasons why people fear knowing the truth, fear growing into health or wholeness, or resist becoming conscious.
Fear of Joy
In the blog essay “Jung and the Numinosum,” archived on this web site, I noted how both Jung and the author of “Hebrews” understood that fear is often experienced when we contact the Self. It can be a “fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God,”[5] and analysis is sometimes the context where this happens, as we wrestle with the characters in our “inner city”[6] in the depths of the unconscious. As much as we might feel “awe, wonder and joy”[7] in a numinous moment, the ego can at the same time feel terror, disorientation, fear and defeat.
This is true for any analysand, but is especially likely for those patients who are highly neurotic, like some of the patients of the late Jungian analyst Nathan Schwartz-Salant.[8] He often worked with people suffering from a narcissistic personality disorder–a neurosis with origins beginning early in life.
Schwartz-Salant believed that “every newborn is a child of God,”[9] full of joy, but, for some babies, as early as two months of age, their “connection to joy… is met with nonrecognition, nonrelatedness,…”[10] and Schwartz-Salant hypothesized that, for the baby, this felt like “a massive attack on its Self-hood.”[11] Repeated experiences of this parental neglect or abuse leads the child to withdraw and develop “a more compliant and masochistic attitude.”[12] As the child clings “to a morbid masochistic reality,”[13] he/she comes to expect attack from the caregiver when he/she feels joy. The inner child develops two faces–“the depressed, masochistic child and the deeper child linked to the Self, who feels joy, then fears attack.”[14] Perhaps being the object of his/her parent’s envy, feeling an inner pressure to perform, the wounded child grows up “anxious over abandonment fears,”[15] feeling an imminent “danger of emotional flooding”[16] and fearful of the chaos associated with “the Dionysian spirit.”[17]
In Narcissism and Character Transformation, Schwartz-Salant describes how he went about treating patients with this disorder. The healing process is slow, as “It is necessary for the person to ‘drink the complex dry’–to stay in it and imaginally feel it, in life as well as in the transference. This must go on as long as necessary.”[18] Like Jung, Schwartz-Salant recognized the reality of kairos time–the timetable of natural unfoldment, which cannot be rushed.[19]
So, while “recognizing the function of the masochistic territory”[20] for the child–it warded off parental attacks–the analyst is also aware that “the child living there is that part of the personality which is stuck in the depressive position.”[21] Attentive to the patient’s dreams, listening to the patient’s words, encouraging involvement in creative activities,[22] the analyst holds the space, anticipating the decisive moment when the patient “can feel the anger of his or her unattended child, and be concerned about that anger rather than withdrawing into depression.”[23]
Over time, as trust grew between the patient and analyst, the patient would begin to describe the anger his/her inner depressed child was feeling, while often becoming aware of his/her hatred of the joyful child.[24] Why hatred? Schwartz-Salant would ask his patients about this, and they would reply that that inner character got them in trouble with the parents[25]–exposed them “too much to painful attacks of envy.”[26] At this stage in the healing process, dreams often presented images of these attacks–the Self’s effort to help the patient face and work through the fear and anger of the inner child.
Careful not to adopt the parental role, working in league with the Self,[27] the analyst would watch his own dreams, which often gave him insight into what was going on and guidance on how to support the patient.[28] The tasks facing the patient were challenging: to come to see the reality of his/her mother,[29] and then to integrate her sadistic energies;[30] to slowly become able to tolerate the wild chaos of Dionysian energies–the creative juices that helped the patient connect with his/her inner joyful child;[31] forming a positive union with the split-off joyful child;[32] recognizing his/her anxiety in making this integration and developing the ability to hold it;[33] and finally owning the joy that, so early in life was given away unconsciously “to heal a crazy spot in a parent.”[34] Schwartz-Salant describes the result: “The ego thus becomes enlivened and joyful in its relationship with people, and at the same time aware of the domain of the Goddess so lost to our culture. Life gains a double reality: On the one hand it begins to reflect the importance of social life and relationships, while on the other it is grounded in the ‘unseen’ world into which initiation has been granted…. Life and psyche become one.”[35]
Fear of Success
As with fear of joy, the development of a fear of success often begins in childhood, as a person interacts with his/her parents. In Circle of Care, Jungian analyst Warren Steinberg wrote about this fear, how it forms and how he goes about helping his patients address this “pathological fear.”[36]
Typical of the Jungian approach,[37] Steinberg drew on mythology to provide context and insights. In dealing with this fear, the Kronos myth is relevant[38]–a tale of multiple generations of father-son fear, competition and castration. Driven by jealousy, Uranus thrust his sons deep beneath the earth, whereupon his wife Gaia provided the remaining son, Kronos, with a sickle to castrate Uranus. Living out the adage about the “sins of the fathers”[39] being passed down to later generations, Kronos then proved equally destructive, swallowing his children, until his wife Rhea substituted a rock for her youngest son, Zeus, who grew up to overthrow Kronos.[40]
Illustrating an archetypal reality, the myth lives on in our modern world where we see family relationships sometimes marred by competition, rivalry and fear. This is especially so with fathers and sons, since “a significant characteristic of the male gender role is to be successful in the outer world.”[41] Boys growing up are encouraged to get into sports and other forms of competition, in order to learn “the controlled utilization of assertion and aggression, qualities also associated with the masculine role.”[42]
Playing out the Uranus-Kronos-Zeus story, some fathers foster “early rivalries”[43] between themselves and their children, or between the siblings. The fear of success develops over time, as Steinberg explains:
“Some fathers humiliate their sons when they compete. Others arouse guilt or threaten withdrawal. Where there is severe intimidation, the equation between aggression and violence is reinforced. The child begins to withhold aggression out of fear of violent retaliation.”[44]
If the child develops “the misconception that aggression must be violent,”[45] he may come to associate violence with “assertion of all kinds.”[46] and the result can be frustration: The young man has ambitions, but his aggression is inhibited,[47] so he “lacks the capacity to take effective action.”[48] He grows up associating competition with “the original rivalries of childhood,”[49] and he unconsciously transfers his attitudes toward his father–fear of “the potential risk of retaliation by the parental competitor”[50]–on to other men. This makes the “open recognition of interest in success”[51] a fraught situation: even as the man longs for success, he fears it and may “sabotage all potential successes including friendships, romances and explicit or implicit contests involving skill, talent, attractiveness or popularity.”[52]
Like Jung, Steinberg adapted his analytic approach to the specific patient and his needs.[53] For those patients with a “pathological fear of success,”[54] Steinberg found “a strict reductive-causal method that analyzes the relationship between their infantile fears and their avoidance of success”[55] worked well initially. Those patients who suffered severe narcissistic pathology required a very different method, as they would find the reductive interpretation as “a humiliating criticism;”[56] they needed a “reductive interpretation … embedded in a purposive matrix.”[57] With other patients “the archetypal, synthetic approach”[58] worked well, and for yet others, “transference interventions that focus on the ‘here and now'”[59] were appropriate.
Fear of Knowing
On the face of it, knowledge is a good thing and we go to lengths to have it, e.g. spending years in school, expending money and effort to learn the sex of a child on the way, to know the best fuel-saving route to a destination, or how to win at poker. But our enthusiasm fades when we enter the realm of Jungiana, when knowing relates to the unconscious, posing much less popular questions like “What is going on in my unconscious?” “What is the true nature of the psyche?” “What is the nature of evil and how best to deal with it?” “What awaits us in Hades?” “What sets off a complex?” “What are the effects of my mother complex?” How might I best handle isolation?” “What are my true motives?”
Even as we might pose such questions, telling ourselves we want to know, another part of us hesitates, fearful of the answers and, perhaps even more, afraid of the process of getting the answers. Jung and other analysts considered these eight questions which are just a few of many subjects that might spark fear of knowing.
Fear of knowing about the unconscious. Jung was explicit in recognizing that most people have a “fear or even horror”[60] of the unconscious, an “aversion to everything that borders on the unconscious.” [61]Jung knew that “There are far more people who are afraid of the unconscious than one would expect.”[62] We fear discovering our shadow side, of making the acquaintance of our inner partner (i.e. our contrasexual side), and of confronting “the dark side of the Self,”[63] partly because we denigrate as “childish”[64] fairytales, legends and various “instrumental symbols”[65] that would help “canalyze”[66] unconscious contents into consciousness, where they could be interpreted and integrated. Lacking familarity with these symbols, we may see the energies in the unconscious flow off in pathological directions,[67] and we “then get apparently groundless phobias and obsessions–crazes, idiosyncrasies, hypochondriac ideas and intellectual perversions suitably camouflaged in social, religious, or political garb.”[68] To prevent such crazes, Jung urged parents to pass on our heritage of myths, legends and fairytales to their children, and clerics to inculcate religious ideas into their parishioners.[69] While Jung knew that “there is reason enough for man to be afraid of the impersonal forces lurking in his unconscious,”[70] and that “the overcoming of this fear is… a moral achievement of unusual magnitude,”[71] he also was aware that the unconscious will take to you the attitude you take to it.[72] We can dread discovering unknown “perils of the soul”[73] in our depths, even as we find wellsprings of creative energy there also.
Fear of knowing the true nature of the psyche. Jung knew that “the psyche is real”[74] and that in our society it is generally undervalued, if not ignored completely, even by psychologists whose very profession would supposedly focus on it![75] In part, these dismissive attitudes are due to the dominance of science and technology, and the materialism these systems support. Another reason, however, for our fear around the nature of the psyche lies in the fact that “the psyche is by no means of our design, but is for the most part autonomous….”[76] and, as a result, requires that we “let the unconscious go its own way and to experience it [the psyche] as a reality that is something”[77] requiring courage, wisdom and introspection to handle. Jung knew that we in the West like to feel in control and the fact that the psyche is autonomous (i.e. beyond our ability to control it) can induce fear, even panic, in some people.
Fear of knowing the nature of evil and how to deal with it. One of Jung’s persistent irritations was how Christianity regarded evil simply as a privatio boni–merely the absence of good.[78] As “one of the main prejudices of the Christian tradition, and… a great stumbling block”[79] to our grappling with the tension of opposites (i.e. good and evil), Jung felt this fear held major dangerous consequences. These include the tendency we have to project evil, and this “projection carries the fear which we involuntarily and secretly feel for our own evil over to the other side,…”.[80] That is, because we denigrate evil as simply the absence of good, we are more likely to project it and see others (e.g. Muslims, Islam, Blacks, etc.) as evil. Another consequence is that this sense of evil as something one can ward off fosters in us a “lack of insight [which] deprives us of the capacity to deal with the evil…. We should, so we are told, eschew evil and, if possible, neither touch nor mention it.”[81] Jung regarded “this apotropaic attitude towards evil, and the apparent circumventing of it,”[82] a serious danger, because it flatters “the primitive tendency in us to shut our eyes to evil and drive it over some frontier or other, like the Old Testament scapegoat, which was supposed to carry the evil into the wilderness.”[83] Rather than maintain this dangerous orthodoxy, Jung would have us recognize that evil is real, a part of our nature as human beings, which needs to be held consciously in tension with what is good,[84] so we don’t lose our ability to deal with it, e.g. by projecting it and then seeing others as threatening.
Fear of knowing about the journey to Hades. Jung interpreted this fear as “the dread and resistance which every human being experiences when it comes to delving too deeply into himself, [it] is, at bottom, the fear of the journey to Hades.”[85] Jung knew that the resistance “would not be so bad,”[86] if that were the only danger involved here. But it is not: there is a legitimate fear due to the fact that the “dark realm of the unknown exerts a fascinating attraction that threatens to become the more overpowering the further he penetrates into it. The psychological danger that arises here is the disintegration of personality into its functional factors, etc. … this being equivalent to a form of mortificatio.[87] Jung is using the alchemical term for the archetype of transformation that works a metaphorical death which holds the potential for a rebirth.[88] That Dante described a journey to the absolute bottom of Hell–only to find God’s love there[89]–should not be a recommendation for us to try this, as the medieval mentality was quite different from our own, and our fear of going all the way to Hell is a legitimate fear which we must recognize and honor.
Fear of knowing what complexes we have. Jung defined “complex” as “a collection of various ideas, held together by an emotional tone common to all.”[90] The concept developed from his Word Association experiments, in which he identified individuals’ complexes from their reactions to certain “stimulus-words”[91] which often sparked a momentary disturbance in the person’s response time. Some of the most common complexes are those around mother, father, power and money (when Jung was tested, he manifested all four of these).[92] I liken a complex to having a black-and-blue mark on the skin which, if it gets hit, elicits a yelp of pain. Similarly, when something in outer life–a word, a gesture, an encounter–“constellates”[93] (sets off) a complex, we react all out of proportion to the initiating act. A key component of becoming conscious is our wising up to the complexes we have. Why so? For multiple reasons, e.g. because they are “ubiquitous,…normal phenomena of life,”[94] and “very much a part of the psychic constitution, which is the most absolutely prejudiced thing in every individual. His constitution will therefore inexorably decide what psychological view a given observer will have.”[95] Complexes, in other words, are features of many facets of life and they color our interpretation of reality. For example, a woman with a negative father complex may find her assessment of men differs markedly from a friend who has a positive father complex. Besides their potential for distorting our objectivity, it is important for us to wise up to our complexes because they have autonomy: When a complex gets “hit” it takes us over: our ego’s rationality and sociability disappears, often with embarrassing or dangerous results.[96] We fear knowing about our complexes in part because the ego does not like to think it could ever lose control, in part because of the “rooted prejudice”[97] we have due to our “superstitious fear of anything … untouched by our vaunted enlightenment,”[98] (i.e. that complexes show us our irrationality), and, in part because we don’t welcome facing how our early life wounded us, and how this wounding might still hamper our functioning. Jung encountered “violent resistance”[99] whenever he examined complexes, and knew that “considerable determination is needed to overcome”[100] this resistance.
Fear of knowing the presence of a mother/father complex. Two of the most powerful (impactful) complexes form around one or both of our parents, and because we tend to gravitate unconsciously to potential “significant others” who have “hooks”[101] on which we can hang our projections of mother or father, the parental complexes can mess up romantic and marital relationships. Jungian analyst James Hollis is explicit about how this can show up in a man with a mother complex:
“Until a man becomes conscious of the effects of his mother complex, he will suffer troubled relationships. His anguish and anger will be internalized at his own expense, or projected at the expense of others. Until he becomes conscious of the lattice-work of history he carries within, he has not grown up. All the neediness of the inner child remains active in the present, as well as his fear of the mother’s power to overwhelm or abandon him. This is why so many men seek to control their partner, for they feel that the Other, as before, is all-powerful still. And yet their deep, infantile need has not been satisfied either, so they seek to make their partner into mother.”[102]
In a similar way, a woman with a father complex will carry over the patterns of interaction she had with her father, be these positive or negative, with the result that her perception of the man gets filtered through a lens distorted by the history of her experiences with her father. For both men and women to begin to address this fear, they must “first risk being honest with themselves, allowing the feelings they think they can’t afford.”[103] Because our culture permits women to be more emotional and intuitive, this can be an easier task for women–easier, but not easy, because, for both sexes, addressing this fear requires admission of discontent, of ignorance who they are and about what they must do to heal. And all of this requires overcoming the fear that blocks thinking about these issues, and the additional fear that habits will have to change, life will be different, without a sure conviction that the new reality will be better.[104]
Fear of knowing the reality of isolation. One of the lessons of the covid-19 pandemic was how much most Americans disliked, even feared the isolation that was required during the lock-down phase. We learned this in 2020, but Aldo Carotenuto, an Italian Jungian analyst, knew this forty years before the pandemic, noting how “We fear isolation,”[105] thanks to our “modern society [in which] our sense of security is so undermined that we often feel we cannot live without belonging to some kind of organization.”[106] Carotenuto recognized how “the collective… usurps the place of our personal mental models and presents itself as the only point of reference.”[107] By doing this, our society encourages us “to remain infantile, not to think independently.”[108] Jung also decried the tendency to identify with a social role: He felt it was “a very fruitful source of neuroses.”[109] Why so? Because we cannot get rid of ourselves–our true identity–“in favor of an artificial personality without punishment.”[110] The long months of the pandemic lock-down were a major opportunity for people (especially Extaverts) to become acquainted with their inner characters, to discover the “mental models”[111] unique to their nature, and to foster their individuation.
Fear of knowing what our true motives are. For most people why we do what we do is a mystery.[112] We like to regard ourselves as altruistic, generous, motivated by the desire to help others and make a positive contribution to the wider good. The reality is often quite different, given our vulnerability to “unconscious reactions in the form of bad moods, affects, phobias, obsessive ideas, backslidings, vices etc.”[113] In so many ways, our noble intentions can get skewed to serve our vanity, vices and various other human frailities. This fear addresses our shadow side, and it requires considerable courage and a commitment to honesty if we are to confront it.
The Fear of Growing
Many years ago, when I studied with Arthur Young,[114] he noted how human beings have inherited three “powers” from Nature, and how we have a responsibility to develop a fourth. The three we share with natural systems are structure (the “power” developed in crystals), growth (the “power” developed in plants, which built on the power of structure pioneered by crystals), and movement or animation (the “power” developed in animated beings, i.e. animals, which built on structure and growth). Humans have all three of these powers, in our structure (skeletal system), our growth (from tiny infant to tall adults), and our mobility. The fourth “power” which Arthur Young and Carl Jung identify as unique to humans is “consciousness.”[115] As human beings, we have the power to become more conscious, that is, to grow in self-aware individuation into the unique persons the Self wants us to become. Growth–physical and psychological–is natural. Why then do we fear it? There are many reasons.
Fear of taking risks. Daily life is full of risks, from falling down the stairs to contracting some new variant of a pandemic virus. Still, we get out of bed each morning and face these mundane realities. Psychological risks seem different, perhaps because of our stress on materialism and rationality. Jung understood that, for most Westerners, the psyche is not “real,” intangibles don’t matter, and inner exploration, which might stir up who-knows-what, is to be avoided.[116] With such biased thinking, things like dream work, psychotherapy and psychological growth risk discoveries which most people avidly avoid. Jung knew it takes a hero to pursue psychological growth, since this fear “is a challenge and a task, because only boldness can deliver from fear.”[117] One might then ask “Why bother?” and Jung replied: “And if the risk is not taken, the meaning of life is somehow violated, and the whole future is condemned to hopeless staleness, to a drab gray lit only by will-o’-the-wisps.”[118] We cannot grow into the fullness of our being without taking risks.
Fear of loss of psychological support. Jung knew this fear well from his work with patients who had recovered but resisted facing this positive outcome of their work together. Why? Jung describes a situation that can occasion this fear:
“… it is far more convenient for the patient to be ill, because recovery brings with it a great disadvantage: she would lose her analyst. The illness reserves him, as it were, for her needs. With her interesting illness, she has obviously offered the analyst a great deal, and has received from him a good deal of interest and patience in return. She certainly does not want to give up this stimulating relationship, and for this reason she is afraid of remaining well and secretly hopes that something weird and wonderful will befall her so as to rekindle the analyst’s interest.”[119]
Jung’s whole orientation as an analyst was two-fold: to help his patients heal and to equip them with the knowledge, tools and techniques which would enable them to stay well after their analysis ended.[120] He sought to empower those he worked with, rather than to keep them dependent on him. Dependency was not something Jung encouraged, as it tends to hinder our efforts to grow and individuate.
Fear of separation. This fear is often linked to the previous one: the analytic relationship offers the analysand stimulating interactions, patient understanding, and focused attention from a figure on to whom he/she likely projected all sorts of inner contents–all held and witnessed with both interest and psychological wisdom. Where else would a person be likely to find such a relationship, especially if, during the process, one’s deepest fears and hopes were revealed in a non-judgmental space? Separation anxiety is not limited to analysands, however: children who had insecure attachments to their parents or caregivers often carry this fear over into adulthood, and it can stunt their psychological growth.[121] If they venture into psychotherapy, it can show up as resistant to their making progress.[122]
Fear of envy. Jungian analyst Warren Steinberg has seen this fear hold back patients’ growth, due to a personal history of being envied by a parent or significant other. Steinberg defines “envy” as “the felt conviction that anything I need will be withheld from me, so I will spoil or otherwise destroy the withholding object.”[123] He regards this trait as “one of the most difficult emotions to experience and integrate,”[124] and he notes how, while much has been written about the role of envy in personality, “less has been written about the fear of other people’s envy and its effect on personal development.”[125] This fear of being envied by others commonly develops in childhood when the child has to deal with a narcissistic parent who is incapable of positive mirroring. This leads the parent to attack the child’s value, which results in the child growing up with “conflicted feelings over development,”[126] even to the point of the adult feeling “afraid of his positive attributes,”[127] from years of hearing his parent’s “aggressive criticism.”[128] Since it is very common for an analysand to project his/her parent(s) on to the analyst, the therapeutic relationship can become fraught, with the analyst having to tread carefully, mindful of this projection and the possibility of becoming identified with it.[129] Only with time, patience and skill on the part of the analyst, and commitment and forbearance on the part of the patient can the fear of growing–of integrating self-esteem and relishing personal success–be overcome.
Fear of change. Jung’s favorite ancient philosopher was Heraclitus[130] whose law of change–“all things change”[131]–Jung quoted frequently. Just as frequently, Jung met patients in his analytic practice who feared change. Some were neurotic, maladjusted,[132] and thus in need of “a change of attitude”[133] which would bridge “the dissociations between man as he is and man as he ought to be.”[134] Other people Jung encountered were neither psychotic nor neurotic but they feared change because they sought to “perpetuate indefinitely”[135] their “ideals, convictions, guiding ideas and attitudes,”[136] and this rigidity led them into difficulties when the mid-life transition hit. Jung knew this archetypal interval (35 to 40 years of age, roughly) marks when “an important change in the human psyche is in preparation,”[137] but those resisting change would shrink “back from the second half of life.”[138] In my experience working with dozens of students, I have found those who type strongly as Judgers often will have more trouble with change than people who are highly Perceptive. Because growing–whether physical or psychological–implies change, fear of this inevitable feature of life can retard or thwart our development.
Fear of one’s individuality. Jung stressed individuation–every person striving to fulfill his/her destiny in the fullness of his/her uniqueness.[139] This implies stepping away from the collective goals and values of society and recognizing one’s nature and destiny. But analysts have encountered some patients whose childhoods were marked by the suppression of their uniqueness.[140] The tragedy depicted in the movie The Dead Poet’s Society comes to mind–the would-be poet/actor thwarted in his soul-nourishing goals by parents with other ambitions. In my teaching, I would often encounter students eager to become musicians, actors, or writers, deterred by their parents’ warnings that “there’s no money in it.” Warren Steinberg, the Jungian analyst quoted earlier, recognized that “to be truly an individual a person must be able to recognize and apply his or her energy toward fulfillment in the direction they are meant to develop.”[141] For those whose parents identified with collective goals–who bought into the prestige of “my son, the doctor,” or “my daughter, the beauty queen”–for whom the child was little more than an extension of the parent’s ego, the task of recognizing and then owning one’s uniqueness can pose a fearful challenge. In this, our very Extraverted American culture is not helpful.[142]
Fear of the irrational. Jung encountered with fear with “not a few of [his] patients [who] openly confessed their fear of any… autonomous development of their psychic contents.”[143] Tasked with studying images or creating mandalas, these patients came away with an “impression of irrationality that led to … regressive development.”[144] What was going on? These folks were afraid, worried that they “may easily be overcome by a panic fear that [they] were slipping helplessly into some kind of madness [they] can no longer understand.”[145] Jung’s response was to show these folks how the images, and their own dreams, were archetypal, part of the eternal heritage of humankind. He would get a book in his library, “bring down an old alchemist, and show my patient his terrifying fantasy in the form in which it appeared four hundred years ago.”[146] This would have “a calming effect, because the patient then sees that he is not alone in a strange would which nobody understands, but is part of the great stream of human history, which has experienced countless times the very things that he regards as a pathological proof of his craziness.”[147] Given our culture’s very one-sided emphasis on rationality, fear of the irrational is widespread, one reason why many people shy away from analysis who could benefit tremendously from it.
Fear of the intangible. American culture is deeply sunk in materialism, leading many to ignore, denigrate and even fear anything–like the psyche and its productions– that cannot be weighed, seen, touched or monetized. The idea that there might be value in intangibles like “a natura abscondita (hidden nature), a metaphysical entity ‘perceived not with the outward eyes, but solely by the mind.’…”[148] strikes many people as foolish mumbo-jumbo. While some who type as strong Intuitive types might be more open to metaphysical realities, most Americans are Sensates: what is real is what can be seen, touch, tasted, smelled, measured and (ideally) turned into monetary profit. Jung encountered this bias toward tangibles repeatedly in his research and his work with patients. He encouraged his patients to fantasize.[149] He drew on the insights of alchemists,[150] with whom he shared the knowledge that intangibles were valuable, as he, like them, operated in a world of immaterials. Jung took a humble attitude to his work:
“Sometimes the doctor’s art helps, sometimes it is useless. In the domain of psychology especially, where we still know so little, we often stumble upon the unforeseen, the inexplicable – something of which we can make neither head nor tail. Things cannot be forced, and wherever force seems to succeed it is generally regretted afterwards. Better always to be mindful of the limitations of one’s knowledge and ability. Above all one needs forbearance and patience, for often time can do more than art. Not everything can and must be cured.”[151]
This approach is a far cry from the arrogant, money-driven ethos of our modern health-care industry.
The Fear of Becoming Conscious
Over his eight decades of life, Carl Jung was realistic about his endeavor to create more consciousness:
“… people are afraid of becoming conscious of themselves. There might really be something behind the screen – one never knows – and so people prefer “to consider and observe carefully” the factors external to their consciousness. In most people there is a sort of primitive deisidaimonia with regard to the possible contents of the unconscious. Beneath all natural shyness, shame, and tact, there is a secret fear of the unknown “perils of the soul.” Of course one is reluctant to admit such a ridiculous fear. But one should realize that this fear is by no means unjustified; on the contrary, it is only too well founded. We can never be sure that a new idea will not seize either upon ourselves or upon our neighbors. We know from modern as well as from ancient history that such ideas are often so strange, indeed so bizarre, that they fly in the face of reason. The fascination which is almost invariably connected with ideas of this sort produces a fanatical obsession, with the result that all dissenters, no matter how well-meaning or reasonable they are, get burnt alive or have their heads cut off or are disposed of in masses by the more modern machine-gun. We cannot even console ourselves with the thought that such things belong to the remote past. Unfortunately they seem to belong not only to the present, but, quite particularly, to the future. “Homo homini lupus” is a sad yet eternal truism. There is indeed reason enough for man to be afraid of the impersonal forces lurking in his unconscious.”[152]
This is a sententious paragraph, well worth unpacking Jung’s insights, as well as his intuitive warnings about the future.
Most people do prefer “to consider and observe carefully”[153] what goes on in their outer lives, assiduously avoiding any internal goings-on like dreams. For all our vaunted sophistication, Jung knew how modern Westerners often manifest feelings about their inner lives which are akin to the superstitions common among primitive peoples. Some feel shame; some dissemble when the subject of the unconscious comes up in conversation. Many will quickly declare they don’t dream, in a tone redolent with relief.[154] Few people would admit they fear their inner reality. Even fewer would own up to an awareness of their soul or what its “perils”[155] might involve. But this ignorance and disdain hold dangers for us and Jung spelled this out with reference to the mass craze he witnessed as Hitler and the Nazis spread anti-Semitic and homophobic ideas, leading to millions of people being killed in the Holocaust.
But, as Jung predicted in this passage, such madness would not be limited to his own time, as recent events in the United States illustrate, e.g.:
- new ideas might “seize” people, e.g. that a presidential election was stolen[156]
- some of these ideas might be so unreasonable as to be bizarre, e.g. that Hillary Clinton was running a pedophile scheme in the basement of a D.C. pizzeria[157]
- people become obsessed with these ideas, e.g. they go “viral” on social media and spread to a large percentage of the population[158]
- “dissenters” experience threats of physical violence, e.g. Dr. Anthony Fauci being threatened because of his expert advice during the pandemic[159]
Jung is certainly correct in his recognition that “man is a wolf to man” (although this might be an unfair slur on wolves: humans are so much more barbarous than wolves).[160]
Why? Why are we so inhumane, so prone to crazy, irrational and hateful actions? Jung nails the reason: We fail to look within, to recognize and work with “the impersonal forces lurking in [our] unconscious.”[161]
By “impersonal forces,” Jung is referring to the many archetypes like Midas, the mass murderer and the serial killer, as well as the shadow, the trickster and the devil,
to name just a few–all of them lying within all of us, slyly waiting beyond our conscious awareness for some word, situation or fear to call them forth. Given our strong bias in the typical American temperament toward Extraversion[162]–resisting any inducement to look within–our collective unconsciousness makes us especially prone to projection, and the result is that we see in our economic, social and political landscape scenes like:
- multi-billionaires making more millions every day in their Midas-like greed[163]
- multiple men armed with assault weapons murdering hundreds of innocent victims every month[164]
- serial killers targeting women, driven by misogynistic rage[165]
- a boorish, lying narcissist being elected to the highest office in the land[166]
- an entire political party being committed to obstructing and thwarting the democratic process[167]
It is no exaggeration to say that our collective fear of becoming conscious of the energies within us has become a threat to our public health, public safety, and the viability of our political system.
What to do? Jung knew the only thing we can change is ourselves,[168] so he would tell us to commit to facing the fears we have around becoming conscious. The previous pages listed 18 common fears that Jung and some Jungian analysts mention in their studies, and another 67 fears were listed in Part I–by no means a complete tally of all the fears to which humanity can be subject. Which ones resonate with you? As Aldo Carotenuto said, “a fear may be the beginning of a new life”[169] for you–as well as a way for you to help save our future.
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[1] Collected Works 12 ¶60. Hereafter Collected Works will be abbreviated CW.
[2] CW 4 ¶168.
[3] Steinberg (1990), 56.
[4] CW 7 ¶369.
[5] Hebrews 10:31.
[6] This is Jungian analyst Daryl Sharp’s term for the variety of inner characters that live within us; he named his Jung-related publishing house after this concept.
[7] Schwartz-Salant (1982), 13.
[8] He died in 2020; an hour-long YouTube video program about him is available on the internet.
[9] Schwartz-Salant (1982), 159.
[10] Ibid., 160.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid., 159.
[13] Ibid., 142.
[14] Ibid., 156.
[15] Ibid., 167.
[16] Ibid., 165.
[17] Ibid., 143-144.
[18] Ibid., 162.
[19] CW 10 ¶585.
[20] Schwartz-Salant (1982), 162.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Ibid., 166.
[23] Ibid., 162.
[24] Ibid., 162-163.
[25] Ibid., 163.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Ibid., 25.
[28] Ibid., 25-26.
[29] Ibid., 167.
[30] Ibid., 168.
[31] Ibid., 166.
[32] Ibid., 169.
[33] Ibid., 167.
[34] Ibid., 169.
[35] Ibid.
[36] Steinberg (1990), 24.
[37] CW 5 ¶466.
[38] Steinberg (1990), 109.
[39] Exodus 20:5 and 34:7.
[40] Steinberg (1990), 109.
[41] Ibid.
[42] Ibid.
[43] Ibid.
[44] Ibid.
[45] Ibid.
[46] Ibid.
[47] Ibid.
[48] Ibid.
[49] Ibid.
[50] Ibid.
[51] Ibid.
[52] Ibid., 57.
[53] Ibid., 24.
[54] Ibid.
[55] Ibid.
[56] Ibid.
[57] Ibid.
[58] Ibid.
[59] Ibid.
[60] CW 10 ¶244.
[61] CW 11 ¶28.
[62] CW 9ii ¶62
[63] Steinberg (1990), 69.
[64] CW 7 ¶179.
[65] CW 9ii ¶259.
[66] Ibid.
[67] Ibid.
[68] Ibid.
[69] Ibid.
[70] CW 11 ¶23.
[71] CW 9ii ¶62.
[72] CW 5 ¶681.
[73] CW 11 ¶23.
[74] CW 11 ¶751. For more on the reality of the psyche, cf. Edinger (2001), 12, and the blog essay, “The Psyche is Real,” archived on the Jungian Center web site: www.jungiancenter.org
[75] “Letter to Albert Jung,” 10 November 1948; Letters, I, 512,
[76] CW 12 ¶60.
[77] Ibid.
[78] CW 18 ¶1555, CW 10 ¶879, CW 9i ¶189, CW 9ii ¶191, and Jung (2007).
[79] CW 10 ¶572.
[80] Ibid.
[81] Ibid.
[82] Ibid.
[83] Ibid.
[84] CW 9ii ¶191, CW 11 ¶4, CW 18 ¶1537.
[85] CW 12 ¶439.
[86] Ibid.
[87] Ibid.
[88] CW 13, ¶106, note 66; cf. CW 14, ¶s 349-543; and CW 12, ¶491-493.
[89] “The Inferno,” canto XXXIV, line 143.
[90] CW 2 ¶1350.
[91] Ibid.
[92] Bair (2003), 109.
[93] CW 2 ¶733.
[94] CW 8 ¶211.
[95] Ibid. ¶213.
[96] Hall (1983), 27.
[97] CW 8 ¶211.
[98] Ibid.
[99] Ibid.
[100] Ibid.
[101] CW 16 ¶499.
[102] Hollis (1994), 59.
[103] Ibid., 101.
[104] Ibid.
[105] Carotenuto (1989), 130.
[106] Ibid.
[107] Ibid.
[108] Ibid.
[109] CW 7 ¶307.
[110] Ibid.
[111] Carotenuto (1989), 130.
[112] CW 8 ¶s251-254. For an in-depth investigation of why we do what we do, see the two-part essay with that title archived on the Jungian Center blog site; www.jungiancenter.org
[113] CW 7 ¶307.
[114] The inventor of the Bell helicopter, Arthur Young made millions with this device, and then devoted his life to applying science to metaphysics.
[115] More recent ethological observations indicate that higher primates can recognize themselves in mirrors, but, absent means of communication, we have no way to determine how extensive their awareness might be; self-awareness is not the same as Self-awareness.
[116] CW 12 ¶60.
[117] CW 5 ¶551.
[118] Ibid.
[119] CW 4 ¶168.
[120] Cf. CW 8 ¶140 & CW 10 ¶339.
[121] Steinberg (1990), 22.
[122] Ibid., 56.
[123] Ibid., 63.
[124] Ibid.
[125] Ibid.
[126] Ibid.
[127] Ibid.
[128] Ibid., 64.
[129] Ibid.
[130] Edinger (1999), 32.
[131] CW 14 ¶503.
[132] CW 13 ¶473.
[133] Ibid.
[134] Ibid.
[135] CW 8 ¶771.
[136] Ibid.
[137] Ibid. ¶773.
[138] Ibid. ¶777.
[139] Jung defined “individuation” in several places: cf. CW 6 ¶762, CW 7 ¶s266-267; and CW 9i¶490.
[140] Steinberg (1990), 70.
[141] Ibid.
[142] Seventy-five percent of Americans type as Extraverts; Keirsey & Bates (1984), 25.
[143] CW 13 ¶325.
[144] Ibid.
[145] Ibid.
[146] Ibid.
[147] Ibid.
[148] CW 14 ¶114.
[149] CW 7 ¶369; cf. CW 12 ¶38 & CW 16 ¶13.
[150] CW 13 ¶325.
[151] CW 16 ¶463.
[152] CW 11 ¶23. The Greeks deisidaimonia means “superstition/fear of God” and the Latin “homo homini lupus” means “man is a wolf to man.”
[153] Ibid.
[154] I heard this often in my college classes, less so among Jungian Center students, but even there some people have been reluctant to recall their dreams.
[155] CW 11 ¶23.
[156] Walter (2022), 117.
[157] Ibid., 152.
[158] Ibid., 117, 121.
[159] Associated Press (August 5, 2022).
[160] Cf. Safina (2015), 137-239, and McConaghy (2021), passim, for vivid illustrations of the benign nature of wolves and their role in preserving ecological balances.
[161] CW 11 ¶23.
[162] Seventy-five percent of Americans type as Extraverts; Keirsey & Bates (1984), 25.
[163] Oxfam (Jan. 12, 2022).
[164] Insider (July 5, 2022)
[165] Chris Zappa (Nov. 22, 2021).
[166] Falk (2022), 3.
[167] Levitsky & Ziblatt (2018) 206-212.
[168] CW 10, ¶ 457,459,536,537,561,582; CW, ¶599,1378,1380 and 1392; CW 7, ¶240; CW 9i, ¶97; cf. Jung’s Letters, vol. 2, ¶239.
[169] Carotenuto (1981/85), 7.
