Academy of Ideas > Quotes

“These individuals, according to Jung, are not ill because they lack the ability to live like everyone else, they are ill “because [they have] not yet found a new form for [their] finest aspirations.” (Carl Jung) Instead of following the well-worn path of conformity such people:

“…are born and destined rather to be bearers of new cultural ideals. They are neurotic as long as they bow down before authority and refuse the freedom to which they are destined.”

Carl Jung, Some Crucial Points in Psychoanalysis”
― Academy of Ideas

“Marie-Louis von Franz, a Swiss psychologist, noticed a disturbing trend in the mid-20th century – many men and women who were well into their adult years remained psychologically stunted in their maturation. They occupied the bodies of adults, but their mental development failed to keep pace. on Franz saw this as such a pressing issue that in 1959 she gave a series of lectures on the psychology of the Puer Aeternus, which is Latin for “eternal child”. While originally this term was used in mythology to refer to a child god who remains forever young, her teacher Carl Jung had adopted the term for psychological purposes to describe the individual who, like Peter Pan, fails to grow up.”
― Academy of Ideas

“An example can clarify this point. Suppose in our childhood we had role models who demeaned or ridiculed us rather than teaching us how to live and how to flourish. Such an experience will undoubtedly influence the development of our character. Self-inhibiting thought patterns and negative emotions such as hate, anger, and anxiety are likely to shape who we become. But these negative thought patterns and maladaptive emotions are not hermetically sealed off in the mind. Our thoughts lead to action, or abstention of action, and action is a bodily phenomenon. Emotions are felt in the mind but they also have a somatic form of expression and this expression influences the structure of our body. The baggage of our youth will not just weigh us down psychologically, but it can also weigh us down physically and inhibit the functioning of our body, or as Lowen explains:

“If a person has a strong and secure sense of himself, he will naturally stand erect. If he is frightened, he will tend to cower. If he is sad or depressed, his body will droop. If he is trying to deny or compensate for inner feelings of insecurity, he will stand like a martinet, and his posture will be unnaturally rigid.

Alexander Lowen, The Spirituality of the Body”
― Academy of Ideas

“If our conscience commands us to stop obeying unjust laws and if each time we do obey we experience feelings of loathing and guilt, then we face a difficult choice: we either obey our conscience and become a dissident or we continue to obey the commands of tyrants and we become a traitor to our self. The men and women whose inner voice speaks loudest in the face of a rising tyranny are those most likely to step forward as dissidents and it is when a common vibration of conscience rings out through a society that civil disobedience becomes possible. First the call of conscience is answered by a relative few, but these few serve as the example for others. Whether enough people will follow to create a movement of civil disobedience is contingent on how much a populace still desires freedom compared to what degree the populace has been psychologically subdued by the fear, hate and confusion that is sown by the propaganda of tyrants. If, however, tyranny comes knocking in the society in which we live and if our conscience then issues the command that we stop being complicit in the crime of obedience we should keep in mind the following comment by Henry David Thoreau:

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”

Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience”
― Academy of Ideas

“Knowledge, like fine wine, improves with age and eventually turns into wisdom; and wisdom is what moves us towards the ideal state of the Philosophical Sage. Questing for knowledge also confers practical and economic benefits as it can open new career and vocational opportunities. One historical example of many is George Washington Carver. Born into slavery, Carver died a renowned agricultural scientist and inventor. His insatiable desire for knowledge helped him overcome immense obstacles and rise above the indignities he was cruelly subjected to by virtue of his birth.”
― Academy of Ideas

“The road to recovery, according to Jung, does not require reliving childhood memories or working through old family conflicts. For unless we were the victim of some sort of trauma, of which we have yet to process, our childhood memories will not free us from our present suffering. What is needed is a new attitude – one which entails a “wholehearted dedication to life” (Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation) and which makes “the powerful urge to develop [our] own personality. . .an imperative duty” (Carl Jung, Freud and Psychoanalysis) We must step off the sidelines of life and establish a uniform direction to our existence, in which we, and not others, are the final authority.”
― Academy of Ideas

“The ability to act even when we are not feeling up to it is one of the most distinguishing characteristics of self-actualizers. For as Thomas Huxley wrote: “Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not.” (Thomas Huxley) Furthermore, as Maslow wrote in Toward a Psychology of Being:

“Self-actualizing does not mean a transcendence of all human problems. Conflict, anxiety, frustration, sadness, hurt, and guilt can all be found in healthy human beings.” (Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being)”
― Academy of Ideas

“It is often said that to understand the present we must understand the past. For history is our greatest teacher and one thing it teaches us is that mankind is a fallible species. Our past is as much defined by the truths we have discovered as by the errors we have lived by. But while it can be easy to recognize the mistakes of generations past, it is much more difficult to see the errors in our own ways and for this reason we must be willing to continually question the known.”
― Academy of Ideas

“The pull of these regressive forces places us in a dangerous position, for if we allow ourselves to succumb to them, then over time we will pay a steep price. Anxiety, guilt, shame, and self-hate will manifest and torture us internally. But the presence of these symptoms does not necessarily mean that all is lost. Rather, as Maslow suggests, if we can learn to view these symptoms not as a sign that we are ill and in need of medication, but rather as a cry from the growth forces within, warning us that a change in our life is needed, we will have taken the first step toward becoming a self-actualizer, and thus one of those rare individuals who succeed in being human.”
― Academy of Ideas

“Yet if one finds a way to accept their rejected personality, one gains access to an inner strength which will be of assistance as one descends into the deeper, and sometimes threatening, layers of the unconscious.”
― Academy of Ideas

“Along with a newfound devotion to our work we should also adopt a new attitude to the social world and view people in a manner more analogous to the way we view the inanimate objects of the physical world. We should look at people, in other words, as facts. This approach will strengthen our resolve and diminish the ability of bad influences to pull us back down to our old way of being.”
― Academy of Ideas

“There is a story that Alexander the Great heard about Diogenes and paid him a visit in Corinth where he was resting in the sunlight. Alexander, proud as can be, walked up to him and boasted: “Diogenes, ask of me whatever you want!”. Diogenes looked up at Alexander, annoyed that someone was interrupting his rest and said “Stand out of my sun.”
― Academy of Ideas

“That a human body is an expression of its character is intuitively known by each of us, as it forms the basis of our ability to read people by their body language.”
― Academy of Ideas

“But remaining neurotic, is also a risk – but a risk that offers no reward. We will waste our life, waste our potential, and be destined to live out our days plagued by anxiety, depression, self-hate, and guilt. And for those afflicted by the neurosis of too much conformity we should keep in mind that some of us are just not fit to be normal by modern day standards, we need an abnormal existence in order to be healthy.”
― Academy of Ideas

“In effect government control of an economy replaces a mechanism that makes use of the knowledge of millions or billions of people, depending on the extent of the market, with control by a relatively small group of politicians and bureaucrats whose knowledge is severely limited. With nothing effective to replace the price system with, socialist countries – as evidenced by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the despair that exists in countries such as North Korea – can never be as prosperous as countries which have freer markets. Ironically, while many who support socialism are also champions of economic equality, history has shown that when countries try to stamp out the spontaneous wealth generating process associated with free markets they create the worst type of inequality possible; a society where the masses starve while the central planners live like royalty.”
― Academy of Ideas

“Interestingly, Nietzsche thought that optimism too could be a sign of an underlying weakness, as the optimist is one who out of fear refuses to acknowledge or recognize the very real dark and terrifying aspects of existence. This realization led Nietzsche to call optimism “morally speaking, a sort of cowardice”.”
― Academy of Ideas

“In following this advice – in relentlessly striving towards goals while continually modifying them to facilitate the continued development of our character – we will place ourselves on a potentially meaningful life path. Choosing this path requires that we abandon our obsession with happiness and pleasure, but ironically in stepping off of the hedonic treadmill and exposing ourselves to the struggles and strife required to cultivate character, we will likely attain the transient state of happiness far more frequently than those who aim squarely for it. For as Hunter Thompson wrote:

“…who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on the shore and merely existed?”

Hunter Thompson, Security”
― Academy of Ideas

“Instead of being a manifestation of God, Schopenhauer thought the world is a manifestation of will, which is a blind impulse or force which is not divine or benevolent, but ‘demonic’. As manifestations of will, all life blindly strives towards nourishment and propagation. However, since organisms must feed on other organisms to nourish themselves, and all organisms are manifestations of will, Schopenhauer concluded that “the will must live on itself, for there exists nothing beside it, and it is a hungry will.” (Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation)”
― Academy of Ideas

“His critical physical condition, his lack of recognition and the horrible loneliness which plagued him, formed the great pain that compelled Nietzsche to descend into his ultimate depths, in search of what he referred to in a letter as “the philosopher’s stone”. The philosopher’s stone is a mythical alchemical substance that has the power to turn base metals into gold, yet it is also an age-old symbol which points to a power hidden in the depths of the unconscious which Carl Jung called the “treasure hard to attain”.”
― Academy of Ideas

“The conclusion of this experiment, that creative individuals prefer ambiguity and chaos to order and symmetry, validates an age old idea. When things are too stable and rigid, there is no room for creativity.”
― Academy of Ideas

“Another famous figure who engaged in this practice was Diogenes the Cynic who lived in the 4th century BC. On an almost daily basis Diogenes took actions that evoked ridicule, rejection and disdain. As but one example, he would walk backward into theatres, against the flow of everyone who was exiting for the purpose of acclimating himself to acts of non-conformity.”
― Academy of Ideas

“But in the modern day, even individuals who were blessed with a nourishing childhood are not fully immune to addiction. For just like during the fall of Rome when the people, en masse, turned to pleasure-seeking to alleviate the anguish brought on by witnessing a dying culture, so too in our day many turn to addictions as a way of self-medicating the despair stimulated by a bleak view of the future of society. Add on the fact that to conform in the modern world is to adopt consumerism as a way of life and to compulsively use technology, social media, and entertainment as a means of escaping feelings of powerlessness and emptiness, and what you have is the perfect social storm that has created a crisis of addiction.”
― Academy of Ideas

“According to Jung, a neurotic illness is triggered by three conditions: Firstly, an individual is confronted with a challenge, task, or problem in an important domain of life. Secondly, because of cowardice, laziness, self-doubt, or just plain stupidity, the individual evades the challenge rather than facing up to it.”
― Academy of Ideas

“If we can find a way to negotiate with our shadow, and allow it to “live” in our conscious personality rather than repressing it, we will not only attain a more secure sense of selfhood, but also more knowledge about what it is we really want in life. We will be more capable of ignoring what others think we should be doing, more able to deviate from the masses, and thus more prepared to commence on a path to fulfill our own personal destiny. The shadow, as Jung mentioned, is the doorway to our Self. The many dare not descend into their depths, but this is exactly what we must do if we are to become who we really are.”
― Academy of Ideas

“The importance of setting goals for the sake of personal development is well-known. For just as the stone can be shaped into a sculpture only through the force of a hammer and chisel, so too our potential, or the development of our character, can only be actualized through discipline, struggle, and exertion. To merely float with the tide of life promotes a weak body and a soft mind. Hence, we need to learn to swim with the stream of life and strive and fight for worthy goals.”
― Academy of Ideas

“In his book The Concept of Anxiety, Kierkegaard suggests our ability to feel existential anxiety emerges with the birth of self-consciousness. In our childhood state, growth entails actualizing the latent potentials within with little to no conscious reflection or choice on our part. At a certain stage in development we awaken to self-consciousness, or to put it in symbolic terms represented in the myth of Adam and Eve, we eat the forbidden fruit of knowledge and become aware not only of good and evil, but of the possibility of freedom. We start to fathom the innumerable possibilities before us, and see how the pursuit of each one would open a door into a different unknown. This awareness of freedom in the midst of a near infinite number of possibilities generates anxiety. Or as Kierkegaard put it: anxiety is “the dizziness of freedom”.”
― Academy of Ideas

“While most are aware of the importance of goal-setting, many make the mistake of sacrificing themselves for their goals. They believe it is the attainment of goals which builds character and cultivates meaning, when in fact it is the continual struggle towards them which matters most. This theme of the importance of incessant striving is foundational in Goethe’s classic tale of Faust. For Goethe has Faust achieve self-realization only through his commitment to perpetual struggle and strife.”
― Academy of Ideas

“In the modern day most are oblivious to the benefits of solitude. Instead, many unknowingly adhere to what is called Object Relations Theory, which is based on two key assumptions: that the maturation of one’s personality can only be facilitated through interpersonal relationships, and that these relationships are the primary, if not sole, source of meaning in life.”
― Academy of Ideas

“If the current trends continue, humanity may soon be divided into two groups. There will be those who welcome their pleasurable servitude, and those who choose to resist it for the sake of retaining not just their liberty, but their humanity. For as the former slave Frederick Douglass noted in the mid-19th century, long before Huxley wrote Brave New World, when a slave becomes a happy slave, he has effectively relinquished all that which makes him human.”
― Academy of Ideas

“Jung proposed that the human mind, or psyche, is not exclusively the product of personal experience, but rather contains elements which are pre-personal, or transpersonal, and common to all. These elements he called the archetypes and he proposed that it is their influence on human thought and behaviour that gives rise to the similarities between the various myths and religions.”
― Academy of Ideas