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It comes from a letter that Sigmund Freud sent to Carl Gustav Jung on September 19, 1907.

Love also needs, as suggested by the alchemical symbol of the rose-colored blood, a compensatory logos that gives it form and direction. Here, logos represents understanding, discernment, and consciousness, which guide the force of eros. It represents an understanding of our emotional life, our passions, and our affections. If we truly consider this, we can see how necessary it is, both individually for our own development and collectively for the progress of society.

This, in turn, has the potential to elevate the quality of our relationships because the freer we become from projecting onto others, the healthier and deeper the relationships we create will be. Yet unconsciousness can deceive us and lead to disappointment in our relationships, especially when it comes to what we idealize and expect from other people.

Let us remember that when a person is unconscious of themselves, they remain unaware of important parts of their own personality and begin to see those parts as though they belonged to others. This is how we fall in love, and it is also how we become disappointed. As a result, we stop relating to the real person and begin relating to an image projected by our own unconscious, contaminating our relationships with the contents of our inner world. Nothing good comes from this, and it is ultimately unnecessary because what we long for in others already exists within ourselves.

I wrote a complete article on this topic, including the rest of Carl Jung's most important quotations. You can read it in full here:

https://jungianalchemist.substack.com/p/carl-jung-the-servator-cosmi-and

This passage appears in Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939 (Volume 1, Session VII, Autumn Term 1935). It is not a criticism of Christianity, but rather an exhortation to face the reality of our warlike nature and our tendency to be driven by competition.

Earlier in the seminar, Jung had said:

>It would be impossible to eliminate competition or to establish perpetual peace, because things would simply come to a standstill, and through sheer degeneration people would eventually begin a war.

This may sound deeply disappointing to those of us who are pacifists. Yet I believe the danger lies not in knowing these things, but in ignoring them. At the very least, they leave us with a question that may prove more fruitful than merely advocating for peace while doing little about war:

What should we do with our warlike nature, if it is indeed unavoidable?

It is urgent that we seek ways to channel that part of human nature which delights in the sight of bloodshed.

Note: I have set myself the personal task of studying Carl Jung's complete works and sharing the most valuable insights I discover along the way. If you would like to join me on this journey, you can support my work by following my Substack:

https://jungianalchemist.substack.com/

The full quote is as follows:

>"You are a slave of what you need in your soul. The most masculine man needs women, and he is consequently their slave. Become a woman yourself, and you will be saved from slavery to woman. You are abandoned without mercy to woman so long as you cannot fend off mockery with all your masculinity. It is good for you once to put on women's clothes: people will laugh at you, but through becoming a woman you attain freedom from women and their tyranny. The acceptance of femininity leads to completion. The same is valid for the woman who accepts her masculinity."

Explanation:

This is my personal interpretation, so feel free to question it.

Before you start putting on a dress or a pair of oversized men's jeans, I believe the key word behind "becoming a woman" here is embodiment.

When, during festivals with religious origins such as Carnival, a man dresses as a woman or as a demon, he is essentially participating in a ritual that allows an archetype to express itself by temporarily incarnating through him. The same principle applies to the performing arts.

The problem is that our consciousness has become so one-sided that it gives life only to the upper layers of our personality, leaving archetypes such as the Shadow, the Anima, and the Animus with no opportunity to express themselves. When they are denied expression, they tend to emerge in a possessive and overwhelming way.

However, when we consciously embody these archetypes, we not only allow them to express themselves—we also listen to their message, consider their perspective, and take it seriously. When this is done without becoming possessed by them, through practices such as deep meditation, art therapy, or active imagination, we begin to discover that these "figures" carry within them qualities we lack, psychic energy, and ultimately aspects of the deepest roots of the humanity to which we belong.

Some time ago, I wrote a detailed article on this subject. I highly recommend reading it if you'd like to explore these ideas further (and don't forget to follow my blog).

I read the following quote from Jung in the seminar about Thus Spoke Zarathustra:

>"If he is too virtuous a man, he may be confronted with the fact that, when he meets a woman, it will be his anima who will have all the vices that counterbalance his virtues. She contains everything he fights against and finds—a wonderful trick of fate—all the fascinating bad qualities in her."

The truth is, it impacted me because I identified with it (a friend told me she had the same issue with her animus). So, since then, I've worked on managing my projections more effectively.

I believe that true work with the animus/anima begins with having the humility to see how much we project onto the opposite sex. This is very difficult, but if we undertake it, we'll see that it's actually interesting work because of everything we can discover.

By the way, I extracted other quotes from Carl Jung from that seminar on the anima and added them to the following article, in case anyone wants to delve deeper into this rather interesting topic.

If You Want to Rise, You Must Also Sink Your Roots into Hell

Carl Jung commented on this Nietzsche quote in his Seminar on Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Session IV, Spring Term, 1935). Jung remarked:

>"This is exactly what we have been talking about: when the movement goes too much upward, there is a compensating movement downward, toward the earth. It would be the animal type of life that ascends, whereas the vegetable type of life would be characterized by going down into the dark, even into evil. (...)"

>"What I would like to point out, however, is that just as the tree compensates for Zarathustra's ecstasy, its roots must sink much deeper in order to compensate for that height. (...)"

>"The tree appears in order to convey the message to Zarathustra that the more it grows, the deeper its roots become. If he were like a tree, he would not rise into the air because at the very same time he would be thinking of sending his roots deeper down. If he were to rise into heaven, his roots would touch hell."

Note: I came across this Nietzsche quote by coincidence (or perhaps synchronicity?) while searching for Jung's references to the symbol of the tree, as I am currently working on an article about Carl Jung's collection of patient drawings depicting the tree symbol. It is fascinating to see how Jung's patients worked with this symbol as part of their healing process. I highly recommend reading about it.

We often overlook the potential behind something as undervalued as imagination. Yet every good or bad act is preceded by it. At times, imagination intertwines with fantasy, creating a kind of daydream that can dissociate the individual. However, according to Carl Jung, it also holds enormous creative and transformative potential.

Jung worked with fantasy through drawing, and it was remarkable how this process connected patients with fundamental symbols and archetypes. One example is the series of drawings he published in his essay The Philosophical Tree. I shared some of these drawings in a Substack article.

Another example of working with fantasy can be found in the collection of mandalas published in his commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower. They may appear to be simple drawings and products of imagination, but for the patients they represented a connection with fundamental dimensions of the Self. Without a doubt, the activity must have been healing and transformative for them.

I mean being able to accept living with whatever is present in your reality right now: your flaws, imperfections, and inferiorities, along with your emotions and thoughts. I am not talking about resignation or complacency, but about being able to remain grounded in the present moment with everything that feels unacceptable to you—and still move forward.

I have set myself the task of studying the complete works of Carl Jung and sharing the most valuable insights from that journey. You can support and join this ambitious project by reading my latest article:

https://jungianalchemist.substack.com/p/carl-jung-the-profound-meaning-of