The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche Quotes

The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and calm which is not easily disturbed, or else a brokenness that can hardly be healed. Conversely, it is just these intense conflicts and their conflagration which are needed in order to produce valuable and lasting results.

Primitive superstition lies just below the surface of even the most toughminded individuals, and it is precisely those who most fight against it who are the first to succumb to its suggestive effects.

We are in a far better position to observe instincts in animals or in primitives than in ourselves. This is due to the fact that we have grown accustomed to scrutinizing our own actions and to seeking rational explanations for them.

The separation of psychology from the basic assumptions of biology is purely artificial, because the human psyche lives in indissoluble union with the body.

The collective unconscious consists of the sum of the instincts and their correlates, the archetypes. Just as everybody possesses instincts, so he also possesses a stock of archetypal images.

Shrinking away from it is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.

Often the hands know how to solve a riddle with which the intellect has wrestled in vain.

Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.

A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.