Digesting Jung: Food for the Journey - Inner City Books

The Upside of Neurosis 83
fantasies and occurrences to which the neurotic is attached, we shall
be obliged to agree that there is nothing in them that is specifically
neurotic. Normal individuals have pretty much the same inner and
outer experiences, and may be attached to them to an astonishing degree
without developing a neurosis. 70
What then determines why one person becomes neurotic while
another, in similar circumstances, does not? Jung’s answer is that
the individual psyche knows both its limits and its potential. If the
former are being exceeded, or the latter not realized, a breakdown
occurs. The psyche itself acts to correct the situation.
There are vast masses of the population who, despite their notorious
unconsciousness, never get anywhere near a neurosis. The few who
are smitten by such a fate are really persons of the “higher” type
who, for one reason or another, have remained too long on a primitive
level. Their nature does not in the long run tolerate persistence
in what is for them an unnatural torpor. As a result of their narrow
conscious outlook and their cramped existence they save energy; bit
by bit it accumulates in the unconscious and finally explodes in the
form of a more or less acute neurosis. 71
Jung’s view of neurosis differs radically from the classical psychoanalytic
reductive approach, but it does not substantially change
what happens in analysis. Activated fantasies still have to be
brought to light, because the energy needed for life is attached to
them. The object, however, is not to reveal a supposed root cause of
the neurosis—its origin in infancy or early life—but to establish a
connection between consciousness and the unconscious that will
result in the renewed progression of energy.
The operative question in such situations is just this: “Where
does my energy want to go?” The answer—not so easy to come by,
and even more difficult to act upon—points the way to psychological
health.
70 “Psychoanalysis and Neurosis,” Freud and Psychoanalysis, CW 4, par. 564.
71 “The Function of the Unconscious,” Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, CW
7, par. 291.