Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology

by C. G. Jung

These remarks are intended to prepare for what has to be said about the treatment of the aforesaid problem. The fundamental error of both the afore-mentioned ways is simply that the subject is collectively identified with the one or the other part of his psychology. His psychology is individual as well as collective, but not in such a manner as to merge the individual with what is collective, or the collective with what is individual. The persona must be strictly separated from the concept of the individual, in so far as the persona can be absolutely merged with the collective. But what is individual is just that which can never be absorbed in the collective, and is, too, never identical with the collective. Therefore, an identification with the collective or an arbitrary cutting-off from the collective is equivalent to illness; it is pathological.

As has already been indicated, what is individual appears at first as the particular selection of those elements of the collective psyche that contribute to the composition of the persona. As I said before, the components are not individual but collective. It is only their combination, or the selection as a model of particular groups that had already been combined, which is individual. That would be the individual nucleus which is concealed by the personal mask. By the particular differentiation of the persona, the resistance is shown of the individuality to the collective psyche. By analysing the persona, we transfer a greater value to the individuality, increasing thereby its conflict with collectivity. This conflict obviously is a psychological conflict in the individual. The dissolution of the compromise between the two halves of a pair of opposites increases the effectiveness of the contrast. This conflict does not exist within the sphere of purely unconscious natural life, although the purely physiological life of the individual also has to comply with collective demands.

The natural unconscious attitude is harmonious; the body, with its capacities and needs, providing immediately indications and limitations, that prevent intemperance and lack of proportion. A differentiated psychological function, however, always inclines towards disproportion, on account of the one-sidedness which is cultivated by the conscious rationality of intention. What is called mental individuality, is, also, an expression of the individual corporeity, being, so to speak, identical with it. This sentence might obviously also be reversed, a fact that does not materially alter the real psychological data concerning the intimate relation of the individuality to the body. At the same time, the body is also that which makes the subject resemble all others to a great extent, although it is the individual body that is differentiated from all others.

Similarly the mental or moral individuality differs from all others, although in every respect it is so constituted as to place one person on an equality with all others. Every living creature that is able freely to develop itself individually without any coercion at all, will, through the perfecting of its individuality, soonest realize the ideal type of its species, and therefore, figuratively speaking, will have collective validity.

The persona is always identical with a typical attitude, in which one pyschological function dominates, e.g. feeling, or thought, or intuition. This one-sidedness always causes the relative repression of the other functions. In consequence of this circumstance, the persona is hindering to the development of the individual. The dissolution of the persona is, therefore, an indispensable condition of individuation. It is, therefore, to some extent impossible to achieve individuation by means of conscious intention; for conscious intention leads to a conscious attitude, which excludes everything that "does not suit." But the assimilation of the unconscious contents leads, on the contrary, to a condition in which conscious intention is excluded, being replaced by a process of development that appears to us irrational. This process alone signifies individuation, its product being individuality as defined above, viz. as something individual that is at the same time universal. So long as the persona exists individuality is repressed, betraying itself at most by the particular selection of personal requisites, of what might be called the actor's costumes. Only when the unconscious is assimilated does the individuality become more prominent, and with it also that uniting psychological phenomenon between the ego and non-ego, expressed by the word attitude, is now no longer a typical attitude but an individual one.

What is paradoxical in these formulations arises from the same cause from which the conflict about the "universalia" formerly arose. The phrase "animal nullumque animal genus est" makes the fundamental paradox clearly comprehensible. What exists "really" is individual: that which is universal is existing psychologically, but being caused by the real-existing similarities of individual things. The individual is, therefore, the individual thing that has, to a greater or less extent, those attributes upon which the collective conception of "collectivity" rests; and the more individual he is, the more he develops those attributes that are the basis of a collective concept of human nature.

If a grotesque figure, suggested by the initial situation of our problem be permitted, it is Buridan's ass between the two bundles of hay. His questioning is obviously wrong: the question is not whether the hay-bundle on the right or the left be the better one, or whether he should begin to eat on the right or the left hand, but what he himself would like to do, what he is eager for—that is the point. He is thinking of the hay and not of himself, and therefore he does not know what he really wants.

The question is: what at this moment is the natural direction of the growth of this individual?

This question cannot be settled by any philosophy, religion or good advice, but solely by an unprejudiced review of the psychological germs of life which have resulted from the natural co-operation of the conscious and unconscious on the one hand, and of the individual and the collective on the other. One person looks for them in the conscious, and another in the unconscious. But the conscious is only one side, and the unconscious is only the other. For it should never be forgotten that dreams are compensatory or complementary to consciousness. Were this not the case, we should be obliged to regard dreams as a source of knowledge superior to the conscious. This view would undoubtedly carry us back to the mentality of the augur, and we should have to accept all the consequences of such a superstitious attitude, unless, indeed, we look upon dreams as valueless, as does the vulgar mind.