Intuition (is) perception via the unconscious - Jung

[Seeker]

Today I came across these quotes by Carl Gustav Jung (1875 - 1961) a Swiss psychiatrist, student of Freud & founder analytic psychology, just wanted to share them here real quick:

Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens

Intuition (is) perception via the unconscious.

Jung is considered by some to have been a mystic. The quotes above seem similar to what mystics (and some non-mystics) say..

Personally, I find looking inside hard, it requires meditation, patience and silence. For a long time I was addicted to my constant striving towards something, never slowing down enough physically or mentally to look inside.

What do these quotes mean to you?

[Outsider]

Well, it's reasonable to say that Jung flirted with mysticism. He believed in synchronicity and formulated the idea of the collective unconscious, published a work titled Psychology and Alchemy, described Hitler as a "medicine man," and recommended spiritual experiences as a cure for alcoholism.

But it would probably be going too far to simply call Jung a mystic. Much of mysticism depends upon having a mystical way of considering the mundane. For instance, the "collective unconscious" can easily be shown to be real, or at least plausible, if we are to think of it as a way of describing the set of instinctive tendencies inherited through our ancestors. Likewise, I am a believer in reincarnation, through the uncontroversial and thoroughly materialistic process of genetic recombination. Jung's mysticism was much more of this kind, which views normal processes through a spiritual lens, than of your own brand of mysticism which embraces the existence of paranormal phenomena specifically as paranormal.

It should still be noted that Jung was not much of a scientist. Most of his contributions to psychology consisted of untested and somewhat clumsy insights - although of course it is on the basis of such insights that scientific hypotheses are formulated. His type theory of the structure of human personality, as popularized by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, remained the most effective description of personality until the 1980's when the Five Factor model arrived on the scene, and the spiritual and religious methodology of Alcoholics Anonymous has remained one of the only effective treatments for alcoholism. My opinion of Jung is that he was a more insightful and less psychopathic Sigmund Freud.

[Seeker]

Very well-said.

I have to admit, I know more about his counterparts, Freud and Adler than Jung.

Thanks!