Carl Jung vs Rainer Maria Rilke on Reflection
Carl Jung and Rainer Maria Rilke on reflection, side by side — 7 passages against 5, and what the disagreement is actually about.
Carl Jung and Rainer Maria Rilke both have a great deal to say about reflection — 7 passages and 5 respectively in thinkr's library — and they do not say the same thing. Setting them side by side is more useful than reading either alone, because the disagreement shows you what each position is actually giving up.
Carl Jung on reflection
Swiss psychiatrist, founder of analytical psychology. His ideas — archetype, shadow, individuation — describe the lifelong work of becoming whole.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
“Our blight is ideologies — they are the long-expected Antichrist!”
“We can never legitimately cut loose from our archetypal foundations unless we are prepared to pay the price of a neurosis, any more than we can rid ourselves of our body and its organs without committing suicide.”
“No psychic value can disappear without being replaced by another of equivalent intensity.”
“But we must not forget that only a very few people are artists in life; that the art of life is the most distinguished and rarest of all the arts.”
Rainer Maria Rilke on reflection
German-language poet of inwardness. The Duino Elegies and Letters to a Young Poet remain touchstones for anyone learning to listen to their own life.
“The only journey is the one within.”
“He was a poet and hated the approximate.”
“Not since Moses has anyone seen a mountain so greatly.”
“They more adeptly bend the willow's branches who have experience of the willow's roots.”
“A work of art is good if it has grown out of necessity.”
Where they part
Switzerland, 1875–1961 and Austria, 1875–1926 are not the same world, and the difference is not only historical. Carl Jung treats reflection as something to be until you make the unconscious conscious,… — a matter of practice. Rainer Maria Rilke approaches it from another side entirely. Neither is refuting the other; they are answering slightly different questions, and noticing which question you are actually asking is most of the work.