The function of the unconscious  (Page 2/4)

It is very interesting that Jung uses the word image to describe how the unconscious functions. That is like describing thought by saying it is a picture or a piece of art. This makes sense, consciously people can only think with words. Your conscious understanding of a situation is partially defined by your ability to describe it with words. You cannot describe an image with words as well, however. That is why the image is unconscious, because it has a lot of detail like any picture, but you cannot describe all the detail in the image. Thought is a beautiful tapestry and only a small amount of it can be understood by describing the conscious situation with words.

Can someone's entire understanding of a situation be described? Clearly not. In any social situation, or any situation that might occur in life, you cannot describe everything that is going on perfectly. You have an image in your mind of what the situation is, or a memory or emotion of that situation. You could have an emotion for an event or situation or anything in life, this emotion is how you remember the situation or event. When you think of the event, you remember the emotion you got from it. That is how your mind understands everything that occurred. You don't remember the event by describing with a lot of sentences what happened, you remember it by the image or emotion you have of it in your head. This emotion-image contains a lot more information, mostly emotional information, of what happened during that situation.

These were the next sentences in that paragraph by Jung:

• For a moral man the ethical problem is a passionate question which has its roots in the deepest instinctual processes as well as in its most idealistic aspirations. The problem for him is devastatingly real. It is not surprising, therefore, that the answer likewise springs from the depths of his nature. The fact that everyone thinks his psychology is the measure of all things, and, if he also happens to be a fool, will inevitably think that such a problem is beneath his notice, should not trouble the psychologist in the least, for he has to take things objectively, as he finds them, without twisting them to fit his subjective suppositions. The richer and more capacious natures may legitimately be gripped by an interpersonal problem, and to the extent that this is so, their unconscious can answer in the same style. And just as the conscious mind can put the question, "Why is there this frightful conflict between good and evil?," so the unconscious can reply, "Look closer! Each needs the other. The best, just because it is the best, holds the seed of evil, and there is nothing so bad but good can come of it."

Jung talks about a moral man with an ethical problem, for him the problem is "devastatingly real", he then mentions someone who thinks "his psychology is the measure of all things" (obviously thinking overly great things about himself arrogantly) and a fool and that this person would have to take things objectively without twisting them to fit his "subjective suppositions". He means by that that this foolish person would have to take things as they are, not interpret what happens in his or her own way. This is very important, he is saying that on one hand you have a moral man who takes an ethical problem to be very real, and on the other hand you have an arrogant fool who thinks "such a problem would be beneath his notice".