Césure and Grace

Jung initially emphasized the complexity of mind without actually challenging its continuity of consciousness. The added degree of complexity came only after Jung’s break with Freud, which led him to seek out the healing possibilities of the transcendent function. Inaugurating “object relations”, Jung abandoned the scientist’s drive to know and control the unconscious in favor of a personal relationship to it. Such a shift to a psychological attitude is possible only for the person who has lost the battle with the shadow and in the most profound self-doubt accepts the grace of the anima. Self-doubt is as important for the patient with a weak ego as for the patient with a strong one: in both kinds of person an isolated rigidity needs to be transformed into a receptive, creatura-like vulnerability if the flow of libido between ego and Self is to do its work of deepening personhood.