Marie-Louise von Franz Quotes

If a man devotes himself to the instructions of his own unconscious, it can bestow this gift [of renewal], so that suddenly life, which has been stale and dull, turns into a rich unending inner adventure, full of creative possibilities

People who have a creative side and do not live it out are most disagreeable clients. They make a mountain out of a molehill, fuss about unnecessary things, are too passionately in love with somebody who is not worth so much attention, and so on. There is a kind of floating charge of energy in them which is not attached to its right object and therefore tends to apply exaggerated dynamism to the wrong situation.

You see, in the image of Aquarius, it's a man who pours water into the fish. Now the fish is the unconscious. It is not enough just to have it. We have to actively turn towards it and support it so that it then helps us.

The child is an inner possibility, the possibility of renewal.

As soon as we notice that certain types of events 'like' to cluster together at certain times, we begin to understand the Chinese, whose theories of medicine, philosophy, and even building are based on a 'science' of meaningful coincidences.

Dreams are like letters from God. Isn't it time you answered your mail?

Especially in times of collective neurosis, the existence of . . . mature people is of crucial importance.

Synchronistic events constitute moments in which a 'cosmic' or 'greater' meaning becomes gradually conscious in an individual; generally it is a shaking experience.

One of the most wicked destructive forces, psychologically speaking, is unused creative power ... If someone has a creative gift and out of laziness, or for some other reason, doesn't use it, the psychic energy turns to sheer poison. That's why we often diagnose neuroses and psychotic diseases as not-lived higher possibilities.

A human being in a neurotic state might very well be compared to a bewitched person, for people caught in a neurosis are apt to behave in a manner uncongenial and destructive towards themselves as well as others.

Number is therefore the most primitive instrument of bringing an unconscious awareness of order into consciousness.

As physics is a mental reconstruction of material processes, perhaps a physical reconstruction of psychic processes is possible in nature itself.

My God, these Feeling types! ... Sensitive people are just tyrannical people - everybody else has to adapt to them.

Synchronicity...means a 'meaningful coincidence' of outer and inner events that are not themselves causally connected. The emphasis lies on the word 'meaningful'.

There are people who cannot risk loneliness with the experience. They always have to be in a flock and have human contact.

In one African myth the word for God is even identical with skill and capacity. The Godhead is defined as that thing which appears in man as the mystery of an unusual skill or capacity. It is something divine, a spark of the divinity in him, not his own possession or achievement, but a miracle.

We could all be mediums, and all have absolute knowledge, if the bright light of our ego consciousness would not dim it.