For a trickster, no stop on images

One key to Jung’s intellectual functioning can be read in his attitude towards beginnings. First, in the start of writing the Black Books, and then when he embarked on his great project, the Red Book. Jung begins, and then begins again. His method is ruled by process; becoming; work that is continually reviewed and reformulated. If his creative approach is observed and submitted to amplification, it becomes clear that he does not build rigid concepts. His thinking always leaves some slack. He rejects systems, preferring dynamics. Jung, who loved to leave possibilities open, was a mercurial mind, an intellectual quicksilver. The tools he used can be identified: circular thinking (circumambulation); deliberate acceptance of a certain amount of ambiguity; balancing opposites (or reversing them with enantodromia); and a preference for sinuosity rather than lines that are too straight. Finally, he found it somewhat impossible to close with a “final point.” He had a taste for the incomplete, left open, in suspense. This penchant certainly corresponded to the nature of his subject of study – the unconscious. But it can also be seen as an invitation for his successors to be “re-beginners” rather than disciples.