The Death of one’s Soul

 

The Death of one’s Soul

 

A few days ago a woman came to me for a consultation.

She had been a patient of mine fifteen years ago.

She was a difficult case because she would not see certain things, she would not play the game, she wanted to remain a child.

Certain people cannot take life seriously, as if they were born to be eternal children.

If a case comes to me with diabetes and the patient will not pay attention to his symptoms or take my advice, there is nothing I can do.

A few days ago I saw my old patient again. She looked awful and I was shocked.

She saw it and said, "Yes, it's very bad, but I have no problem any more."

She wanted me to tell her husband that she was no longer hysterical, and it was true she had no problems, no troubles; she had sucked them in, converted them into her body.

In such cases the heart races for psychological reasons, and the result is a neurosis comparable to a shell-shock.

One jumps at everything and has no control of action.

When problems are converted into body, outer problems go, but the body rots.

If the neurosis has gone deeply into the psychological processes a tremendous scourge is necessary, perhaps a risk of life itself. Generally a trapdoor shuts down for ever.

Heraclitus, the Dark One, the most intelligent of the old philosophers, said, "It is death to the soul to become water."

It is death to the soul to become unconscious.

People die before there is death of the body, because there is death in the soul.

They are mask-like leeches, walking about like spectres, dead but sucking.

It is a sort of death. I have seen a man who has converted his mind into a pulp.

You can succeed in going away from your problems, you need only to look away from them long enough.

You may escape, but it is the death of the soul.

If our dreamer does not pay attention to his feeling problem, he loses his soul.

Go into the lobby of a hotel-there you will see faces with masks.

These dead people are often travelling on the wing, to escape problems; they look hunted and wear a complete mask of fear.

Some time ago I met a woman who was on her third trip around the world.

When I asked her what she was doing it for, she seemed surprised at my question and answered, "Why, I am going to finish my trip. What else should I do?"

Another woman I saw in Africa in a Ford car.

She was fleeing from herself with flickering eyes full of fear.

She wanted to confess to me, to tell me how she had given up her life.

She had only the memory of herself as she used to be.

She was hunting what she had lost.

When you see that a certain spark of life has gone from the eye, the physical functioning of the body somewhere has gone wrong. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Page 90

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On the Jungian concept of "Individuation" or "Wholeness."

  On the Jungian concept of "Individuation" or "Wholeness." All of us have, to some degree or other, the impulse towards individuation. Individuation was the core of Jung’s work. Yet individuation has nothing to do with Jung specifically. What I mean is that we find the notion of individuation portrayed in multiple areas. For instance, if you read the Gospel of Thomas you will be reading about Individuation. If you watch the Wizard of Oz you will be going through Dorothy’s process of Individuation. “Somewhere over the rainbow” turns out to be in her own home, in her own home town, within the particular circumstances of her life. It is an inner realisation, not dependent upon outer circumstances. If you watch the series "Judge John Deed", you will see the portrayal of a person who is, for the most part, individuating. The Hero’s Journey, whether the hero be Luke Skywalker or the Knights of the Round Table, is an archetype of Individuation. The hero’s ...
Read more

The Women by the Desert Well – Trapped in the Present by her Past

  The Women by the Desert Well – Trapped in the Present by her Past- All that She Knows  There once was a man who had been travelling alone for many years.  At long last, he found himself in the very heart vast desert.  He came over the last hill and there in front of him was a tired-looking woman sitting by a small well attempting to lower her bucket into the well to draw water. Each time she pulled the bucket up, it was empty. The place was barren, not a tree for shade, no grass to sit down on. The desert was all around her.   She was utterly alone.  He said to her, “you appear to be an intelligent woman, don’t you know that is a dry well?”  She said, “No, it is not, I just have to try harder and eventually I will get water. It is my fault that I am not drawing water.  I am not doing something right. I even may deserve it. It may be some sort of punishment and I must atone for it”.  He asked the young woman, who by now looked much ...
Read more

To "Know Thyself"

  If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion." ~Aldous Huxley Aldous Leonard Huxley, (born July 26, 1894 in Godalming, Surrey (England); † November 22, 1963 in Los Angeles) was a British writer and philosopher. Philosophical Term For the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates, self-knowledge is the condition of morality. The motto Gnothi seauton (“Know Thyself”), handed down by Heraclitus and often attributed to Thales or the Seven Wise Men, adorned the entrance of the ancient Temple of Apollo at Delphi. The demand for self-knowledge is thus one of the oldest and still most important demands of philosophy on the individual. Epistemologically, the philosophical structure of self-knowledge is based on turning the knowledge process back to the person who knows it (see also hermeneutics). The incentive for this recognition is to overcome the "subject-object split". According to Karl Jaspers, self-re...
Read more