Digesting Jung: Food for the Journey - Inner City Books

The Value of Conflict 39
ing and feeling. If feeling is not a conscious factor in the conflict, it
needs to be introduced; the same may be said for thinking.
If the ego position coincides with, or can accept, the feeling attitude,
all well and good. But if these are not compatible and the ego
refuses to give way, then the situation remains at an impasse. That
is the clinical picture of neurotic conflict, the resolution of which
requires a dialogue with one’s other sides. We can learn a good deal
about ourselves through relationships with others, but the unconscious
is a more objective mirror of who we really are.
Jung believed that the potential resolution of a conflict is activated
by holding the tension between the opposites. When every
motive has an equally strong countermotive—that is, when the conflict
between the ego and the unconscious is at its peak—there is a
damming up of vital energy. But life cannot tolerate a standstill. If
the ego can hold the tension, something quite unexpected emerges,
an irrational “third” that effectively resolves the situation.
This irrational “third” is what Jung called the transcendent function,
which typically manifests as a symbol. Here is how he described
the process:
[A conflict] requires a real solution and necessitates a third thing in
which the opposites can unite. Here the logic of the intellect usually
fails, for in a logical antithesis there is no third. The “solvent” can
only be of an irrational nature. In nature the resolution of opposites
is always an energic process: she acts symbolically in the truest
sense of the word, doing something that expresses both sides, just as
a waterfall visibly mediates between above and below. 21
Outer circumstances may remain the same, but a change takes
place in the individual. This generally appears as a new attitude
toward oneself and others; energy previously locked up in a state of
indecision is released and once again it becomes possible to move
forward.
At that point, it is as if you were to stand on a mountain top
watching a raging storm below—the storm may go on, but you are
21 “The Conjunction,” Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14, par. 705.