Opposites on the Level of Individual Psychology
Source: Edward Edinger – Individuation: A Myth for Modern Man
“The view that good and evil are spiritual forces outside us, and that man is caught in the conflict between them, is more bearable by far than the insight that the opposites are the ineradicable and indispensable preconditions of all psychic life.”
Carl Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis
Let me talk a bit about opposites on the level of individual psychology. I’ve been talking about the historical factors up to now. Now let’s talk about how these matters impinge upon the individual.
Certainly the most crucial and terrifying pair of opposites is the opposites good and evil. The very survival of the Ego depends on how it relates to this matter. In order to survive the Ego must experience itself as more good than bad. This explains the creation of what we call the “shadow” in childhood in the early phase of psychological development. The young Ego can tolerate very little experience of its own badness without succumbing to demoralization. This accounts for the universal phenomenon we see all around us, the phenomenon that obliges us to locate evil. Whenever something evil happens, its cause or blame or responsibility for it, if at all possible, must be located. Somebody must carry the burden of that evil. With maturation of the Ego in the process of individuation this changes somewhat. The individual becomes able – a little bit anyway, I don’t want to be over-optimistic in this regard – to take on himself the task of being the carrier of evil rather then having to locate it outside himself for his own survival. Another way of putting it he becomes capable of carrying the opposites. To the extent he is capable of carrying the opposites, he is thereby promoting the coniunctio, promoting it so far as the collective psyche is concerned.
In an early phase of this capacity, of the recognition of the opposites, we have what might be called the “pendulum phase”. During this phase the individual is cast back and forth between different moods, between moods of guilty inferiority and unworthiness on one hand and on the other hand of optimistic well-being and sense of confidence and personal worth. It’s as though he encounters darkness and lightness one after the other. Jung makes a quite remarkable statement about this phase, I’ll read it to you. This comes from paragraph 206 of Mysterium Coniunctionis and I quote:
This comes from paragraph 206 of Mysterium Coniunctionis and I quote:
“[206] The one-after-another is a bearable prelude to the deeper knowledge of the side-by-side, for this is an incomparably more difficult problem. Again, the view that good and evil are spiritual forces outside us, and that man is caught in the conflict between them, is more bearable by far than the insight that the opposites are the ineradicable and indispensable preconditions of all psychic life, so much so that life itself is guilt.”
That may help you understand why Mysterium Coniunctionis is not a very popular book. But perhaps the quotation will give you some idea of what a grave matter it is to really consider seriously the problem of the opposites. I think it can be fairly stated that an understanding of the opposites is the key to the psyche. Once you become familiar with the phenomenon of the opposites, you’ll see it everywhere. The operation of the opposites in the collective psyche is exposed to you everywhere. Every war, every contest between groups, every dispute between political factions, even every game is an expression of the opposites striving towards a coniunctio. Whenever an individual falls into an identification with one side of a pair of warring groups or factions he loses the possibility of being a carrier of the opposites and at such times then he locates the enemy, the contrary, the opposite, the evil, he locates on the outside and in the course of that exteriorization of one half of himself he becomes a mass-man. Jung puts it in this way, this is from paragraph 425 of Volume 8 of the Collected Works:
“[425] If the subjective consciousness prefers the ideas and opinions of collective consciousness and identifies with them, then the contents of the collective unconscious are repressed.”
“[425] And the more highly charged the collective consciousness, the more the ego forfeits its practical importance. It is, as it were, absorbed by the opinions and tendencies of collective consciousness, and the result of that is the mass man, the ever-ready victim of some wretched “ism.” The ego keeps its integrity only if it does not identify with one of the opposites, and if it understands how to hold the balance between them. This is possible only if it remains conscious of both at once.”
How can we become conscious of the opposites?
Well, let’s carry it a step further! How can we become conscious of the opposites? Assuming that you weren’t, to start with. Where were the opposites to be found? Well, I can make a very explicit suggestion: you will find the opposites by examining carefully whatever you love or hate. Socrates long ago said: “the unexamined life is not worth living” and that’s a very apt motto for the process of individuation. You’ll find the opposites be examining carefully whatever you love or hate. This is an exceedingly difficult procedure because the inclination to examine does not usually accompany the passions of love and hate. But it is in our loves and our hates that the opposites reside. The very first sentence of Mysterium Coniunctionis reads this way and this is really the essence of the whole book, it says:
“[1] The factors which come together in the coniunctio are conceived as opposites, either confronting one another in enmity or attracting one another in love.”
So the coniunctio as an archetype is operating every bit as much in fights as it is in loves. Those are the two ways that unconscious coniunctio energies express themselves, by hatreds or by attractions. Whenever we take too concretely an urge to love or hate the coniunctio is exteriorized and thereby the possibility of a conscious experience of the coniunctio is destroyed. If we are gripped by a strong attraction or repulsion to a person or a thing we should reflect on it. Jung says, quote:
“Unless we prefer to be made fools of by our allusions we shall by carefully analyzing every fascination extract from it a portion of our own personality like a quintessence and slowly come to recognize that we meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life. And similarly with our passioned antipathies they must be subjected to full analytic scrutiny. We must ask ourselves: what persons do I hate? What groups or factions do I fight against? Because where ever they are, they are a part of me. I am bound to that which I hate as surely as I am bound to that which I love. Psychologically the important thing is where ones libido is lodged and not whether he is for or against a given thing.”
If you pursue such reflections diligently you’ll gradually collect your scattered psyche from the outer world, like the dismembered body of Osiris and it’s this kind of work which is the work of individuation which creates the coniunctio and in the process promotes a net increase of consciousness in the world.
Conclusion
To conclude: The world is torn asunder by the strife between the opposites. The state of affairs it’s grown progressively worse in the past 500 years, the strife between the opposites what Jung calls the “wretched -isms”, Emerson says:
“all men plume themselves on the improvement of society and no man improves”.
As Jung puts it:
“If the individual is not truly regenerated in the spirit, society cannot be either, for society is the sum total of individuals in need of redemption”.
In another place he makes this suggestion:
“If only a world wide consciousness could arise that all division and all fission are due to the splitting of opposites in the psyche then we should know where to begin. What does lie in our reach is the change in individuals who have or create for themselves an opportunity to influence others of like mind. I do not mean by persuading or preaching, I’m thinking rather of the well-known fact that anyone who has insight into his own actions and has thus found access to the Unconscious involuntarily exercises an influence on his environment.”
That comes from paragraph 583 of volume 10 (of the Collected Works).
See, these individuals with insight into their own actions are the ones who to a greater or a lesser extent have experienced the coniunctio. They are the ones who are aware of the fact that the opposites go to make up the psyche itself and therefore go to make up ones own psyche and therefore they become carriers of the opposites rather then exteriorizers of the opposites. If society is to be redeemed it will done so, according to the standpoint of Jungian psychology anyway, through the cumulative effect of such individuals. The idea is that when enough individuals can carry the consciousness of wholeness the world itself will become whole.