In Jung’s efforts to understand the opposition underlying psychic conflict, his Psychological Types stands out. Just as philosophers over centuries addressed questions posed by preceding generations and elaborated them, his sixth volume was an answer to Freud and Adler, the two main lines of thought in the early development of psychology.
His comparative study brought into relief the sharp division between two general ways of relating to the world: extraverted and introverted. His concept postulated that both tendencies existed in each individual as complementary functions. But, the world we perceive is limited by subjective interpretations in constant conflict with their unconscious opposites. Just as consciousness tends to its own one-sided direction, so does the type.
He illustrated the differences historically through the polarities in ancient Greek and Chinese philosophy to theology to modern science. The two ways of perceiving are balancing factors. The conscious viewpoint is compensated by an unconscious opposite. The value placed on objects or things mediates perceptions of their subjective effects in the extravert, just as the contrary works in the introvert.
The nature of conscious and unconscious prescribes this opposition, and the mutual systems together comprise a whole. The real conflict lies in the unconscious counter-position. Each has only a partial view of him/herself in that sense.
When that perspective begins to shift at mid-life, whether one is introverted or extraverted, the opposing view begins to intrude into consciousness to accentuate what nature has determined as an imbalance from the standpoint of the new stage of awareness. What was once a natural drive outward proves to be too one-sided from the new perspective.
Even as we instinctively conform to social instruction in the first half of life, nature slowly push us toward individual consciousness. Jung showed that just as the personal attitude betrays contradictory unconscious effects, each is driven to them for the purpose of unifying the personality.
The contrary view appear to be external until we become aware that it reflects tendencies in our personalities. Though Jung’s portrayal of the types problem in poetry was an illustration of how introversion and extraversion work within the individual, because his thought was so integrated, it stands also as an analogy of the individuation process.
This example from Jung’s discussion of Carl Spitteler’s, Prometheus and Epimetheus, brings the problem of re-orientation at mid-life into special relief. It centers around a confrontation between the two brothers representing the opposites in Spitteler’s own personality. The symbol which intrudes into the poet’s imagination is referred to by Jung as the uniting symbol, a product of unconscious fantasy intended to reconcile opposing tendencies. Only a profound confrontation with them compels its creation.
The ancient Pandora bears the magic symbol: “… Pandora’s heavenly gift brings evil to the country and its inhabitants, just as in the classical myth diseases streamed forth to ravage the land when Pandora opened her box.” This is the perceived “disease” of individuation, the alien nature of an inner development pushing us outside the collective restrictions which had once contained it.
Jung explained: “To understand why this should be so we must examine the nature of the symbol. The first to find the jewel were the peasants, as the shepherds were the first to greet the Savior. They turned it about in their hands “until in the end they were utterly dumbfounded by its bizarre, immoral, illicit appearance.” When they brought it to Epimetheus to examine, his conscience (which he kept in a wardrobe) sprang to the floor and hid itself under the bed in great alarm, “with impossible suspicions.”
Spitteler described it: “Like a crab goggling wickedly and malevolently brandishing its crooked claws, Conscience peered out from under the bed, and the nearer Epimetheus pushed the image the further Conscience shrank back with gesticulations of disgust. And so it sulked there silently, uttering not a word or syllable, in spite of all the king’s entreaties and petitions and inducements.”
“Conscience”, Jung wrote, “evidently found the new symbol acutely distasteful. The king, therefore, bade the peasants bear the jewel to the priests.” He quoted Spitteler: “But hardly had Hiphil-Hophal [the high priest] glanced at the face of the image than he shuddered with disgust, and crossing his arms over his forehead as though to ward off a blow, he shouted: Away with this mockery! For it is opposed to God and carnal in its heart and insolence flashes from its eyes.”
Jung continnued: “The peasants then brought the jewel to the academy, but the professors found it lacked “feeling and soul, and moreover it wanted in gravity, and above all had no guiding thought.” In the end the goldsmith found the jewel to be spurious and of common stuff. On the marketplace, where the peasants tried to get rid of it, the police descended on the image and cried out:
“Is there no heart in your body and no conscience in your soul? How dare you expose before the eyes of all this stark, shameless, wanton piece of nakedness?… And now, away with you at once! And woe betide you if the sight of it has polluted our innocent children and lily-white wives!”
Jung’s interpretation was weighty: “The symbol is described by the poet as bizarre, immoral, illicit, outraging our moral feelings of the spiritual and divine; it appeals to sensuality, is wanton, and liable to endanger public morals by provoking sexual fantasies. These attributes define something that is blatantly opposed to moral values and aesthetic judgment because it lacks the higher feeling values, and the absence of a “guiding thought” suggests the irrationality of its intellectual content… Although it is nowhere stated, it is obvious that the “image” is of a naked human body — a “living form.” It expresses the complete freedom to be what one is, and also the duty to be what one is. It is a symbol of man as he might be, the perfection of moral and aesthetic beauty moulded by nature and not by some artificial ideal.”
This is a natural affliction of “civilized” man — opposed to our conscious conceptions of ourselves. It’s a raw, undeveloped individuality set against cultural directives. Jung wrote:
“To hold such an image before the eyes of present-day man can have no other effect than to release everything in him that lies captive and unlived. If only half of him is civilized and the other half barbarian, all his barbarism will be aroused, for a man’s hatred is always concentrated on the thing that makes him conscious of his bad qualities. Hence the fate of the jewel was sealed the moment it appeared to the world… The parallel with the Passion is unmistakable.”
