r/QuotesPorn

Quote:

>"Observance of customs and laws can very easily be a cloak for a lie so subtle that our fellow human beings are unable to detect it. It may help us to escape all criticism; we may even be able to deceive ourselves in the belief of our obvious righteousness. But deep down, below the surface of the average man's conscience, he hears a voice whispering, 'There is something not right,' no matter how much his rightness is supported by public opinion or by the moral code."

Source: C.G. Jung, The Development of Personality (1934), Collected Works Vol. 17, par. 242

The passage appears in that essay - (the Introduction to Wickes, sometimes cited online, only spans pars. 80–97, so par. 242 belongs to this essay.

Reflection:

What strikes me is how this passage frames the persona/shadow dialectic in ethical terms: perfect adaptation to the collective norm (customs, laws, public opinion) can produce a persona so convincing that it deceives even its bearer. The "lie" is not a conscious one - it is the shadow living unlived beneath a lawful façade. The whispering voice "below the surface" sounds like the Self insisting on individual ethical responsibility: in the same essay Jung argues that the development of personality requires obeying one's own inner law even when it collides with the collective norm. Conformity becomes a "cloak" exactly when it replaces an individual ethical decision with collective comfort.

Questions for discussion:

Do you read this whispering voice as the Self, or as a natural conscience distinct from collective morality? And is Jung's point that conformity is only pathological when it is used as an alibi to avoid one's own ethical decision - i.e., when the persona stops being an instrument of adaptation and becomes a mask of self‑deception?

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The persona as "a cloak for a lie": Jung on conscience vs. collective morality (CW 17, par. 242)

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