QuoteProject
The darkness which clings to every personality is the door into the unconscious and the gateway of dreams, from which those two twilight figures, the shadow and the anima, step into our nightly visions or, remaining invisible, take possession of our ego-consciousness.
Carl Jung
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote suggests that our darker aspects are essential for accessing deeper aspects of our psyche and dreams.

Carl Jung highlights the significance of the unconscious mind in shaping our experiences and consciousness. He implies that the 'darkness'—or our suppressed feelings and traits—serves as a conduit to the unconscious and the realm of dreams, where fundamental aspects of ourselves, represented by the shadow and anima, may influence our waking thoughts and behaviors, often without our awareness.

Themes

DarknessUnconsciousDreamsShadowAnima

In practice

Example use cases

In a psychology lecture discussing the importance of understanding our subconscious, this quote by Jung can emphasize the integration of our shadow self.

More from Carl Jung

Grounded in the natural philosophy of the Middle Ages, alchemy formed a bridge: on the one hand into the past, to Gnosticism, and on the other into the future, to the modern psychology of the unconscious.
Carl JungRead
The majority of my patients consisted not of believers but of those who had lost their faith.
Carl JungRead
Complexes are psychic contents which are outside the control of the conscious mind. They have been split off from consciousness and lead a separate existence in the unconscious, being at all times ready to hinder or to reinforce the conscious intentions.
Carl JungRead
We are in a far better position to observe instincts in animals or in primitives than in ourselves. This is due to the fact that we have grown accustomed to scrutinizing our own actions and to seeking rational explanations for them.
Carl JungRead
From the viewpoint of analytic psychology, the theatre, aside from any aesthetic value, may be considered as an institution for the treatment of the mass complex.
Carl JungRead
I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among those in the second half of life - that is to say, over 35 - there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life.
Carl JungRead

Similar quotes

Southerners love a good tale. They are born reciters, great memory retainers, diary keepers, letter exchangers . . . great talkers.
Eudora WeltyRead
The influence of geographic factors diminishes as technology grows. The character and contour of a terrain may offer opportunities for agriculture, mining, or trade, but only the imagination and initiative of leaders, and the hardy industry of followers, can transform the possibilities into fact...Man, not the earth, makes civilization.
Ariel DurantRead
There can be no compromise with war; it cannot be reformed or controlled; cannot be disciplined into decency or codified into common sense.
Jeannette RankinRead
I think there is a sense of being forced at this time to look at America's really large shadow and that's not all that bad.
Alice WalkerRead
Why don't you think of [God] as the one who is coming, who has been approaching from all eternity... the ultimate fruit of a tree whose leaves we are.
Rainer Maria RilkeRead
Destiny is a name often given in retrospect to choices that had dramatic consequences.
J. K. RowlingRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.