Depth Psychology Quotes

“The capacity for growth depends on one’s ability to internalize and to take personal responsibility. If we forever see our life as a problem caused by others, a problem to be "solved," then no change will occur.”
― James Hollis, The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife

“When one has let go of that great hidden agenda that drives humanity and its varied histories, then one can begin to encounter the immensity of one's own soul. If we are courageous enough to say, "Not this person, nor any other, can ultimately give me what I want; only I can," then we are free to celebrate a relationship for what it can give.”
― James Hollis, The Eden Project: In Search of the Magical Other

“The paradox of individuation is that we best serve intimate relationship by becoming sufficiently developed in ourselves that we do not need to feed off others.”
― James Hollis, The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife

“The act of consciousness is central; otherwise we are overrun by the complexes. The hero in each of us is required to answer the call of individuation. We must turn away from the cacaphony of the outerworld to hear the inner voice. When we can dare to live its promptings, then we achieve personhood. We may become strangers to those who thought they knew us, but at least we are no longer strangers to ourselves.”
― James Hollis, The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife

“Our destiny is aligned with our heart's innermost longing, a longing embedded within our soul before birth. This longing is a unique pattern or configuration reminiscent of the constellations in the night sky. When we express (press out) our unique configuration, it shines through us with an otherworldly luminosity, manifesting abundance in our lives and the lives of others. Our sole task is to yoke our inner destiny, thread it through our lives and weave it into the world. All else is just shadows and dust.”
― Thea Euryphaessa, Running Into Myself

“Fear of our own depths is the enemy.”
― James Hollis, The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife

“The goal of individuation is wholeness, as much as we can accomplish, not the triumph of the ego.”
― James Hollis, The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife

“No one should deny the danger of the descent, but it can be risked. No one need risk it, but it is certain that someone will. And let those who go down the sunset way do so with open eyes, for it is a sacrifice which daunts even the gods. Yet every descent is followed by an ascent; the vanishing shapes are shaped anew, and a truth is valid in the end only if it suffers change and bears new witness in new images, in new tongues, like a new wine that is put into new bottles.”
― Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation

“Jung writes that women with a negative mother complex often miss the first half of life; they walk past it in a dream. Life to them is a constant source of annoyance and irritation. But if they can overcome this negative mother complex, they have a good chance in the second half of rediscovering life with the youthful spontaneity missed in the first half. For though, as Jung says in the last paragraph, a part of life has been lost, its meaning has been saved. That is the tragedy of such women, but they can get to the turning point, and in the second half of life have their hands healed and can stretch them out for what they want — not from the animus or from the ego, but, according to nature, simply stretch out their hands toward something they love. Though it is infinitely simple, it is extremely difficult, for it is the one thing the woman with a negative mother complex cannot do; it needs God's help. Even the analyst cannot help her — it must one day just happen, and this is generally when there has been sufficient suffering. One cannot escape one's fate; the whole pain of it must be accepted, and one day the infinitely simple solution comes.”
― Marie-Louise von Franz, The Feminine in Fairy Tales

“Physical death is only one form of dying. There are other forms of dying:

We die whenever fear governs our choices.
We die when we sacrifice growth for security.
We die whenever we choose a convenient certainty over an inconvenient mystery.”
― James Hollis, A Life of Meaning: Exploring Our Deepest Questions and Motivations

“Os sentidos do homem limitam a percepção que este tem do mundo à sua volta.”
― C.G. Jung, Man and His Symbols

“There is a Great Story that binds us all together and it's not the one any of us grew up with. - from "Cosmology," The School of Soft-Attention”
― Hawk of the Pines (Frank LaRue Owen)

“There is a Great Story that binds us all together and it's not the one any of us grew up with.”
― Frank LaRue Owen, The School of Soft Attention

“We create Hollywood and Disneyland to carry our projections of greatness. But as a society we are putting ourselves at risk in this process, for a celebrity may not be a true hero. As the great mythologist Joseph Campbell once pointed out, the celebrity lives only for his or her own ego, while the hero acts to redeem society. We have many celebrities but few true heroes these days. Modern Westerners have evolved psychologically to the point where we are placing our gold on living beings rather than dead bones, as was done in medieval times, but it remains to be seen whether we can learn to carry our own gold and find heaven within instead of without.”
― Robert A. Johnson, Balancing Heaven and Earth: A Memoir of Visions, Dreams, and Realizations

“The secret cause of all suffering, is mortality itself, which is the prime condition of life. It cannot be denied if life is to be affirmed.”
― Joseph Campbell

“The hidden treasure that suffering humanity is forever seeking is to be found in the depths. A place of great danger, it is the place of primordial unconsciousness. And yet it is the place of healing and redemption, for it contains the precious jewel of our wholeness, where all the split-off parts of ourselves are united.”
― Paul Levy, Wetiko: Healing the Mind-Virus That Plagues Our World

“Dr. Eve Maram's The Schizophrenia Complex is not a book about schizophrenia per se but about the atmosphere surrounding that psychiatric diagnosis.”
― Eve Maram, The Schizophrenia Complex

“Perhaps I can best explain by presenting these three somewhat arcane principles of depth psychology and then go on to unpack them and give you examples.

I. It's not about what it's about.
II. What you see is a compensation for what you don't see.
III. All is metaphor.”
― James Hollis, Living Between Worlds: Finding Personal Resilience in Changing Times

“The aim of true psychology is the restoration of freedom.”
― Dr. Stefanie Bennett, Calling Back the Soul: A Guide to Transfiguration after Soul Fragmentation

“This, then, was Night School. And, other than [Idries] Shah and his work colleague, the only other person Louie knew by name at that time, since she had made a special point of him seeing her name neatly embroidered across the neckline of her clothes, and spelling it out in a dream, was Eugenie.

It was, perhaps, a play on the words “You Genie”. And for the first time, Louie did wonder whether or not this might be the lady behind his inner voice, whom he’d previously pencilled in as “X” for want of a better name.”
― H.M. Forester, Secret Friends: The Ramblings of a Madman in Search of a Soul

“Perhaps one of the greatest jokes of my life is that I first went to India to be spiritualized, and I came home humanized.”
― Robert A. Johnson, Balancing Heaven and Earth: A Memoir of Visions, Dreams, and Realizations

“The polarities of personality often present as victim and oppressor, the haves and the have nots, rights and wrongs, and other seemingly persistent divisions in our society. These polarities are not the source of this tension, but when we relate with the polarities through a reactionary state of operation, we can easily divide ourselves along those lines. Us and them. The familiar and the other.

When we don't own our own wholeness, when we identity too much with something other than our core worth, we collapse into one pole, as in being with or against others. This othering process is myopic, in that it doesn't take into account that our own wholeness is dependent on reclaiming the alternate pole, the person we think we are not, the "other" within us.

When we are able to relate with each pole from a place of responsiveness, where we stand in recognition of our own innate wholeness, the experience of polarity can be one of expansion, flow, contrast and generative transformation, rather than division.

Once we reckon with the paradox of how the perceived other is both distinct, and a direct reflection of us, then we see ourselves in that mirror. We see everyone and everything as reflecting an aspect of ourself that we get to reclaim.

Those we might have judged become guideposts for our own liberation. Our triggers become welcomed signs that we have rejected something inside us.

The idea that you are either with us or against us is a limiting lens that perpetuates humanity's suffering. The recognition that you are us, that everyone is us, allows our self-love to humanize others into belonging.”
― Gareth Gwyn, You Are Us: How to Build Bridges in a Polarized World

“[W]hereas most spiritual and religious traditions aim for perfection, depth psychology’s aim is for individuation and wholeness of being.”
― H.M. Forester, The Imaginal Veil

“The task of the mind, the human intellect, is not only to see through or see beyond what is apparent. It is to make the apparent transparent.”
― June Singer

“It is no secret we live in troubled times. People in most areas—and most geographic and spiritual locations—have also thought themselves living in troubled times, and for sure, most individuals come to troubles sooner or later in the course of their own lifetime.”
― James Hollis, Living Between Worlds: Finding Personal Resilience in Changing Times

“Perhaps I can best explain by presenting these three somewhat arcane principles of depth psychology and then go on to unpack them and give you examples.

I. It's not about what it's about.
II. What you see if a compensation for what you don't see.
III. All is metaphor.”
― James Hollis, Living Between Worlds: Finding Personal Resilience in Changing Times

“Our lives are tragic only to the degree that we remain unconscious of both the role of the autonomous complexes and the growing divergence between our nature and our choices.”
― James Hollis, The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife

“The disparity between the inner sense of self and the acquired personality becomes so great that the suffering can no longer be suppressed or compensated.”
― James Hollis, The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife

“One should not automatically applaud the fifty-year marriage without knowing what happened to the souls of those in the relationship.”
― James Hollis, The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife

“Since the culture most of us have inherited offers little mythic mediation for the placement of self in a larger context, it is all the more imperative that the individual enlarge his or her vision.”
― James Hollis, The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife