Supplemental Essay: The Daemonic

 

Jung notes the compensating function of the unconscious. He says, "The activity of consciousness is selective. Selection demands direction. But direction requires the exclusion of everything irrelevant. This is bound to make the conscious orientation one-sided. The contents that are exluded and inhibited by the chosen direction sink into the unconscious, where they form a counter-weight to the conscious orientation." He describes how the unconscious contents gain energy and "break through in the form of dreams and spontaneous images..."[1]

 

Jung says that, ultimately, over-identification with the directed function results in degeneration of the individual due to imbalance of libido (mental energy). "For the more he identifies with one function, the more he invests it with libido, and the more he withdraws libido from the other functions. They can tolerate being deprived of libido for even quite long periods, but in the end they will react. Being drained of libido, they gradually sink below the threshold of consciousness, lose their associative connection with it, and finally lapse into the unconscious. This is a regressive development, a reversion to the infantile and finally to the archaic level. [...] This state brings about a dissociation of the personality, since the archaic modes of functioning have no direct connection with the consciousness and no negotiable bridges exist between it and the unconscious. Consequently, the further the process of self-alienation goes, the further the unconscious functions sink down to the archaic level."[2]

​

Jung says that "the archaic modes of functioning are still extraordinarily vigorous and easily reactivated." Man has spent only a few thousand years in a cultivated state, as opposed to several hundred thousand years in a state of savagery. "Hence, when certain functions disintegrate by being deprived of libido, their archaic foundations in the unconscious become operative again. [...] The influence of the unconscious increases proportionately. It begins to provoke symptomatic disturbances of the directed function, thus producing that vicious circle characteristic of so many neuroses: The patient tries to compensate the disturbing influences by special feats on the part of the directed function, and the competition between them is often carried to the point of nervous collapse."[3]

 

"Identification with one particular function at once produces a tension of opposites. The more compulsive the one-sidedness, and the more untamed the libido which streams off to one side, the more daemonic it becomes. When a man is carried away by his uncontrolled, undomesticated libido, he speaks of daemonic possession or of magical influences."[4]

 

​Link: Return to Intuition (N)

​

~Posted January 12, 2024