Digesting Jung: Food for the Journey - Inner City Books

On Becoming Conscious 85
especially true when we don’t reckon with the uncivilized, tenmillion-year-old
animal in us.
That being said, unexamined instinctual behavior is a hallmark of
unconsciousness and a notable characteristic of the undeveloped
personality. Through analysis one can become conscious of the instincts
and the many ways in which we are slaves to them. But this
is not done with a view to giving them boundless freedom. The aim
is rather to incorporate them into a purposeful whole.
Jung defined consciousness as “the function or activity which
maintains the relation of psychic contents to the ego.” 75 In that way
he distinguished it conceptually from the psyche itself, which is
comprised of both consciousness and the unconscious. Also, although
we speak of ego-consciousness, in Jung’s model the ego is
not the same thing as consciousness, but simply the dominant complex
of the conscious mind. Of course, in practice we can only become
aware of psychic contents by means of the ego. In other
words, the more we know about what’s going on in our unconscious,
the more conscious we become.
Becoming conscious preeminently involves discriminating between
opposites. Since the basic opposites are consciousness and
the unconscious, the first hurdle is to acknowledge that there are
some things about ourselves we’re not aware of. Those who cannot
do this are doomed forever to skim the surface of life. For those
who can admit to another side of themselves, there is then the
daunting task of discriminating between a whole range of other opposites—thinking
and feeling, masculine and feminine, good and
evil, and so on. And then there is the crucial difference between
inner and outer, oneself and others.
Jung describes two distinct ways in which consciousness is enlarged.
One is during a moment of high emotional tension involving
a situation in the outer world. We feel uneasy for no obvious reason,
or strangely attracted to someone, and suddenly we understand
what’s going on. The other way is what happens in a state of quiet
75 “Definitions,” Psychological Types, CW 6, par. 700.