Source: https://www.aboutpsyche.com/collected_works/cw8
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 11:55:16+00:00

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(1) Consciousness possesses a (Energy) threshold intensity which its contents must have attained, so that all elements that are too weak remain in the unconscious.
§140 - 141 Briefly discussing the idea of analysis and the importance of understanding the unconscious content in analysis. A hang up from times past had analysis providing a 'cure'….in reality, it is always ongoing and the unconscious continues - mutatis mutandis to intrude, compensate and complement the conscious directedness. This all includes - of course - the vicissitudes of life and the problems that arise from having to live ones own life as well as be part of the collective community.
§142 “ … Life has always to be tackled anew. There are, of course, extremely durable collective attitudes which permit the solution of typical conflicts. A collective attitude enable the individual to fit into society without friction, … But the patient's difficulty consists precisely in the fact that his individual problem cannot be fitted without friction into a collective norm; it requires the solution of an individual conflict if the whole of his personality is to remain viable. No rational solution can do justice to this task, and there is absolutely no collective norm that could replace an individual solution without loss .” (Emphasis mine) I think this is interesting. Where the collective attitude or solution may be something like religion, what Jung is saying here is that always, the approach must be personal if we are to remain whole, or if we are to emerge into consciousness - there is the argument I guess that we may be happy to live as one of the collective, a participation mystique in some ways where we do not have our own 'viable personality' but rather we are one of the collective.
§146 “… the suitably trained analyst mediates the transcendent function for the patient, i.e., helps him to bring conscious and unconscious together and so arrive at a new attitude. In this function of the analyst lies one of the many important meanings of the transference. … The understanding of the transference is to be sought not in its historical antecedents (In things like infantile eros, sexuality or in a concretistic- reductive sense.) but in its purpose. … ” Important to read on further here…understanding of the transference in a Constructive sense.
§210 “The universal belief in spirits is a direct expression of the complex structure of the unconscious. Complexes are in truth the living units of the unconscious psyche, and it is only through them that we are able to deduce its existence and its constitution….
§215 “For, with the discovery of incompatible tendencies, only one sector of the unconscious has come under review, and only one source of fear has been revealed.” I'm not quote sure what this 'one' is …is it the 'complex psychology', this one aspect of psychology?
§344 Speaking of the historical precedent in how things were viewed; “Naturally it never occurred to the representatives of the old view that their doctrines were nothing but psychic phenomena, for it was naïvely assumed that with the help of intelligence or reason man could, as it were, climb out of his psychic condition and remove himself to one that was suprapsychic and rational.” I put this quote down as it is important I think to appreciate the view here that Jung is driving home in this para and the previous one; that the experience to then of what man understood about soul and psyche was psychic, it was not objective, but all subjective! Whats more, how can it be any different.
Para's 343 to 347 are on the historical setting and evolution of psychology as science. From para 348 onwards now it seems to turn towards the topic of the unconscious.
§348-349 Wundt really doesn't think much of the unconscious content.
§352 “Here I must anticipate a point with which I shall be dealing at some length later on, namely the fact that something very like “representedness” or consciousness does attach to unconscious contents, so that the possibility of an unconscious subject becomes a serious question. Such a subject, however, is not identical with the ego. …” Emphasis mine - 'unconscious subject' - xRef para 369 & 439.
§354-355 Jung acknowledging Fechner and Theodor Lipps' insight into the concept of the unconscious.
Footnote 23, and xRef footnote 47; Jung mentions William James' comments on the 'discovery' of the unconscious in 1886 by Frederic W. H. Myers.
Jung using the word soul here in relation to the unconscious. xRef with his definition of soul and soul images in CW6.
Note Jung's example with numbers. I like it when he uses numbers to illustrate or show an analogy of the concept.
RE soul, it seems the reason Jung uses the concept of soul here is in keeping with the previous discussions of philosophy and the hitherto attitude of 'knowing' all that there is to know about the soul. Only now, as a concept if we acknowledge the psychological implications of an unconscious…then we can no longer believe we know everything there is to know, i.e., what is conscious.
§359 “Epistemological criticism was on the one hand an expression of the modesty of medieval man, and on the other a renunciation of, or abdication from, the spirit of God, and consequently a modern extension and reinforcement of human consciousness within the limits of reason. Wherever the spirit of God is extruded from our human calculations, an unconscious substitute takes its place. …” Worth reading the rest of the para.
I really like this next comment as I think it sums up so much of what the 'human spirit' - in a colloquial sense - is; we cannot help ourselves. Whatever is 'reasoned' out or put forward, no matter how noble or well intended, no matter how embracing, encompassing we hope it will be, it is at the end of the day all we can do just to keep it 'human' and hopefully not to subjective. Although, ultimately, what ever we attempt to know beyond the subjective is always going to be tainted - anthropomorphised…it can't be anything else. Hence the greatest journey is subjective, and then we can only hope to try share it…but it will always by subjective first.
Jung then goes on the lambaste Hegel.
If knowledge lies within consciousness, then the only thing we should really worry about is our senses and how to expand their fov and epistemological investigation. But if we acknowledge there is more to our potential than what we can attain in consciousness, namely, unconscious content…then we must wonder. Moreover, he continues with the discussion of the threshold now between the conscious and the unconscious. See footnote 25 for a mention / definition of sentience in the context of this discussion, i.e., is the unconscious 'sentient'.
I feel like he's mixing arguments here a bit by including what seems to be now a full 'theory' of consciousness related to threshold. Previously, the threshold under discussion was that liminal space between our unconscious and ego-consciousness. Under the lens now is the postulation of an 'unconscious consciousness', a consciousness like our ego-consciousness but in the unconscious. Therefore, a completely different consciousness. So he's comparing two different aspects of the model incorrectly I think. Or in other words, it is another threshold somewhere?
I think (2) is considered in the next section.
§366 “The dissociability also enables us to set aside the difficulties that flow from the logically necessary assumption of a threshold of consciousness. …if unconscious acts of volition are to be possible, if follows that these must posses an energy which enables them to achieve consciousness, or at any rate to achieve a state of secondary consciousness which consists in the unconscious process being “represented” to a subliminal subject who chooses and decides.” Emphasis mine…in particular this idea of the secondary consciousness. An ex hypothesi factor. ”… why the unconscious process (Which at some point has the energy to cross the threshold) does not go right over the threshold and become perceptible to the ego. … we must now explain why this subject, which is ex hypothesi charged with sufficient energy to become conscious, does not in its turn push over the threshold and articulate with the primary ego-consciousness….
The point is that the contents that appear in consciousness are at first symptomatic. In so far as we know, or think we know, what they refer to or are based on, they are semiotic, … The symptomatic contents are in part truly symbolic, being the indirect representatives of unconscious states or processes whose nature can be only imperfectly inferred and realized from the contents that appear in consciousness. It is therefore possible that the unconscious harbours contents so powered with energy that under other conditions they would be bound to become perceptible to the ego.
The visible light spectrum with it's upper and lower bounds is shown below.
§369 Jung picks up here now where he left off at the end of para 362; the point of their being a 'sentient' or subjective element in the unconscious.
With all this hypothesising I feel it useful to highlight the title of this essay, 'On the nature of the psyche' …emphasis mine. It's almost like Jung's caveat for the term psychoid in that he uses is as an adjective. The nature of the psyche, of the unconscious is that it behaves as though it were sentient (adjective) in nature.
The instinctual base governs the partie inférieure of the function, while the partie supérieure corresponds to its predominantly “psychic” component. The partie inférieure proves to be relatively unalterable, automatic part of the function, and the partie supérieure the voluntary and alterable part.42” (Emphasis mine) Not that Jung is not strictly speaking aligning the instincts with the lower limits of the psyche. He is very careful to describe the lower limit as being 'governed' by the instinctual base. The instincts exist in an of themselves and seem quite unknowable, xRef end of para 374. It's easy to read this and place place the instincts at the lower boundary of the psyche. In actual fact, Jung is using the instincts to describe the lower boundary of the psyche, to describe the lower boundary. He is not defining the instincts.
The meaning or purpose of the instinct is not unambiguous, as the instinct may easily mask a sense of direction other than biological, which only becomes apparent in the course of development.” This last bit is confusing - how may the instinct be other than biological. This must mean instinct is not in and of itself biological? Otherwise, why would it attain to something 'other than biological'?
The tone in this paragraph is that the instincts are not in themselves, in their compulsion without conflict. The instinctual systems is not collaborative.
How does this relate to nature where life thrives and is very much instinctually based.
The matter of will over instinct.
“How, then, was he manifested to the world? A star shone in heaven beyond the stars, and its light was unspeakable, and its newness caused astonishment, and all the other stars, with the sun and moon, gathered in chorus round this star…”.
61The “formae scintillaeve Animae Mundi” (forms or sparks of the world soul) are also called by Khunrath (p. 189) “rationes seminariae Naturae specificae” (the seed-ideas of Nature, the origin of species), thus reproducing an ancient idea. In the same way he calls the scintilla ” Entelechia “(p.65).
Ω §429 “It is, in fact, the coming to consciousness of the psychic process, but it is not, in the deeper sense, an explanation of this process, for no explanation of the psychic can be anything other than the living process of the psyche itself. Psychology is doomed to cancel itself out as a science and therein precisely it reaches its scientific goal.” I like this quote for the particular bit about the fact that there can be no explanation 'other than the living process of the psyche itself' …this makes me think of the extreme sport examples where the sporting endeavour is itself the symbol - a depiction of the process.
This is very interesting as it speaks to the topic of mythological content appearing in dreams spontaneously, without the dreamer having any knowledge of the mythological content. Jung does talk about this elsewhere. The example of the phallus on the sun disk for example in his schizophrenic patient I think it was. This idea that such an archaic motif and symbol (image) may appear spontaneously from the unconscious without the dreamer having any prior knowledge of such content.
6Cf. Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, I. chs. V-VII.

References: §140

§142

§146

§210

§215

§344

§348

§352

§354

§359

§366

§369
 §429