Digesting Jung: Food for the Journey - Inner City Books

Relationship Problems in a Nutshell 53
son; by quietly leaving the battlefield and tearing your hair out; by
asking yourself—not your partner—what complex in you was activated,
and to what end. The proper question is not, “Why is she doing
that to me?” or “Who does he think he is?” but rather, “Why am
I reacting in this way?—Who do I think he or she is?” And more:
“What does this say about my psychology? What can I do about
it?” Instead of accusing the other person of driving you crazy, you
say to yourself, “I feel I’m being driven crazy—where, or who, in
me is that coming from?”
That is how you establish a container, a personal temenos, a private
place where you launder your complexes.
It is true that a strong emotion sometimes needs to be expressed,
because it comes not from a complex but from genuine feeling.
There is a fine line between the two, and it is extremely difficult to
tell one from the other without a container. But when you can tell
the difference you can speak from the heart.
Working on a relationship involves keeping your mood to yourself
and examining it. You neither bottle up the emotion nor allow
it to poison the air. The merit in this approach is that it throws us
back entirely on our experience of ourselves. It is foolish to imagine
we can change the person who seems to be the cause of our heartache.
But with the proper container we can change ourselves and
our reactions.
There are those who think that “letting it all hang out” is therapeutic.
But that is merely allowing a complex to take over. The
trick is to get some distance from the complex, objectify it, take a
stand toward it. You can’t do this if you identify with it, if you
can’t tell the difference between yourself and the emotion that grabs
you by the throat when a complex is active. And you can’t do it
without a container.
Those who think that talking about a relationship will help it get
better put the cart before the horse. Work on yourself and a good
relationship will follow. You can either accept who you are and
find a relationship that fits, or twist yourself out of shape and get