A schematic representation of the personality system.
‘Biological bases’ (such as genes) and ‘external influences’ (such as cultural norms) are inputs to the system. Personality traits are found in the category of ‘basic tendencies’, which are influenced by biological bases, but not external influences. Causal paths are indicated by arrows, and show that, over time, traits interact with the environment to produce ‘characteristic adaptations’ (such as attitudes), and these in turn interact with the situation to produce the output of the system, the ‘objective biography’. The ‘self-concept’ is a subset of characteristic adaptations of particular importance to self theorists. Adapted from McCrae and Costa (1996)
Dialectics: Being-Nothing-Becoming
When we think Being it immediately is Nothing, and Nothing is immediately Being. The very thinking of them is their vanishing, and thinking is what a thought truly is. It is no logical nonsense to say the truth we have experienced: Being is Being vanishing to Nothing, and vice versa.
Carl Jung, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche (Collected Works, Volume 8)
When the boundaries between the inner and the outer dissipate, the ego returns home, back into its original unity. In imagination—phantasy—the thin line between the inner and the outer begins to fade: the I of the abyss is the silent dialogue the soul has with itself. The same is true for the dreaming soul, asleep within its original lost unity, recovered, reconstituted—even if only for a moment—a confluence between the inner and outer is subsumed within the underworld. In imagination—the artist of the dream—there is a contraction of the ego back into its interior, bringing the wealth of its experiences to bear upon the soul.
Jon Mills, The Unconscious Abyss: Hegel’s Anticipation of Psychoanalysis
The real root of alchemy is to be sought less in philosophical doctrines than in the projections of individual investigators. I mean by this that while working on his chemical experiments the operator had certain psychic experiences which appeared to him as the particular behavior of the chemical process. Since it was a question of projection, he was naturally unconscious of the fact that the experience had nothing to do with matter itself . . . He experienced his projection as a property of matter; but what he was in reality experiencing was his own unconscious. In this way he recapitulated the whole history of man’s knowledge of nature. As we all know, science began with the stars, and mankind discovered in them the dominants of the unconscious, the “gods,” as well as the curious psychological qualities of the zodiac: a complete projected theory of human character. Astrology is a primordial experience similar to alchemy. Such projections repeat themselves whenever man tries to explore an empty darkness and involuntarily fills it with living form.
Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy
A stone marker at a holy site dedicated to the dual lunar cult of Tanit and Astarte; Phoenician night goddesses worshipped from the Bronze Age through classical antiquity, alongside their horned consort Ba'al Hammon, “Lord of Braziers”, classically associated with Saturn.
Jack R. Strange, "A Search for the Sources of the Stream of Consciousness", The Stream of Consciousness: Scientific Investigations into the Flow of Human Experience