Persolichkeit und Übertragung

Carl Gustav Jung

(My note: This passage of the book is translated by me from the original Czech version – “Výbor z díla III” so there might be some mistakes. Unfortunately this volume by Jung is perhaps not translated even to english. Some link to this text could be possible found in english version called – The Collected Works of C.G. Jung Complete Digital Edition, Volumes 1-19 by Gerhard Adler, R. F. C).

4. Mana-personality, (page 87 czech version, Výbor z díla III)

“My starting material for the following discussion is the cases in which what was set out in the previous chapter as another goal took place, namely, overcoming the anima as an autonomous complex and transforming it into a function of the relationship of consciousness to the unconscious.By achieving this goal, I manage to free Self from all its intertwining with collectivity and collective unconscious. By this process, anima loses the demonic power of the autonomous complex, that is, it can no longer exercise any obsession because it is deprived of his potency. Anima is no longer the guardian of unknown treasures, she is no longer the Kundry, the demonic messenger of the Grail with divine-animal nature, she is no longer a “ruler-soul”, but a psychological function of an intuitive nature, which we could say together with primitives: „He is leaving to forest to speak with spirits of the forest“ or „My snake spoke to me“ or expressed in mythological infantile speech: „My little finger told me.”

“My readers, who know, how Rider Haggard describes „She-who-must-be-obeyed“, will surely recall the magical power of this personality. „She“ is mana-personality, it means a being full of occultic, magical traits (mana) and equipped with magical knowledge and skills. All these attributes naturally come from a naive projection of unconscious self-knowledge, which, expressed in a few poetic words, would sound something like this.: „I admit that there is a psychological factor in me that can slip away from my conscious will in an incredible way. It is able to put extraordinary ideas in my head, cause me unwanted and unwelcome moods and affections, lead me to wonderful actions for which I cannot be held responsible, disrupt my relationships with other people, etc. I feel helpless against this fact, and worst of all: I’m in love with her, so I still have to admire her.“ (Poets often call it artistic temperament, unethical people apologize in other ways.)