Interviewer: I know that you say death is psychologically just as important as birth and like it is an integral part of life, but surely, it can't be like birth if it is an end. Can it?
Jung: Yes. If it is an end and there we are not quite certain about this end because we know that there are these peculiar faculties of the psyche- that it isn't entirely confined to space and time. You can have dreams or visions of the future. You can see around corners and such things. Only igonrants deny these facts. Its quite evident that they do exist and have existed always. Now these facts show that the psyche- in part, at least- is not dependent on these confinements. And then what? When the psyche is not under that obligation to....live in time and space alone- and obviously, it doesn't. Then, in .. to that extent, they psyche is not submitted to those laws and that means a..a practical continuation of life of a sort of psychical existence beyond time and space.
Interviewer: Do you- yourself believe that death is probably the end or do you believe....
Jung: Well, I can't say - wissen Sie ? (german translated wold be: you see ?)- the word "believe" is a difficult thing for me. I don't "believe"; I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. Either I know a thing; and when I KNOW it, I don't need to believe it. If I- I don't allow myself, for instance, to believe a thing just for sake of believing it. I can't believe it! But when there are sufficient reasons for a certain hypothesis, I shall accept these reasons naturally. And to say "We have to reckon with the possibility of [so and so]." You know?
Interviewer: Well...now you told us that we should regard death as being a goal and to stray away from it is to evade life and life's purpose. What advice would you give to people in their later life to enable them to do this when most of them must, in fact, believe that death is the end of everything?
Jung: Well...you see I have treated many old people and its quite interesting to watch what their conscious doing with the fact that it is apparantly threatened with the complete end. It disregards it. Life behaves as if it were going on and so I think it is better for old people to live on...to look forward to the next day; as if he had to spend centuries and then he lives happily, but when he is afraid and he doesn't looks forward; he looks back. He petrifies. He gets stiff and he dies before his time, but when hes living on, looking forward to the great adventture that is ahead, then he lives. And that is about what your concious is intending to do. Of course it is quite obvious that we're all going to die and this is the sad finale of everything, but never-the-less, there is something in us that doesn't believe it, apparently, but this is merely a fact, a psychological fact. Doesn't mean to me that it proves something. It is simply so. For instance, I may not know why we need salt, but we prefer to eat salt too because we feel better. And so when you think in a certain way, you may feel considerably better. And I think if you think along the lines of nature, then you think properly".
Carl Gustav Jung (German pronunciation: [ˈkaːɐ̯l ˈɡʊstaf ˈjʊŋ]; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist, an influential thinker and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is often considered the first modern psychologist to state that the human psyche is "by nature religious" and to explore it in depth.[1] Though not the first to analyze dreams, he has become perhaps one of the most well known pioneers in the field of dream analysis. Unlike Freud et al. he was a self-described natural scientist, not a theoretical psychologist. For Jung this salient distinction revolved around his initial process of deep observation followed by categorizations rather than the reverse process of imagining what categories exist and then proceeding to seek for proof of and then discover that one was correct, always correct. While he was a fully involved and practicing clinician, much of his life's work was spent exploring tangential areas, including Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy, astrology, and sociology, as well as literature and the arts; all of which were extremely productive in regard to the symbols and processes of the human psyche, found in dreams and other entries to the unconscious.
He considered the process of individuation necessary for a person to become whole. This is a psychological process of integrating the opposites including the conscious with the unconscious while still maintaining their relative autonomy.[2] Individuation was the central concept of analytical psychology.
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