“We should not forget that every neurosis entails a corresponding amount of demoralization. If a man is neurotic, he has lost confidence in himself. A neurosis is a humiliating defeat and is felt as such by people who are not entirely unconscious of their own psychology.”
Carl Jung, Collected Works Volume 17
In the modern day, many people are plagued by a fear of life. Instead of facing up to life’s challenges, they shrink from them and allow anxiety to limit their experience and cowardice to limit their potential. Carl Jung believed that those who evade life’s challenges and who suffer from anxiety, depression, guilt, and shame as a result, are neurotic, and he saw the neurotic illness as extremely prevalent in the West. Jung also recognized that many neurotics justify their errant ways by blaming events of their past and this is often encouraged by therapists who believe that talking about the past, and in particular one’s childhood, can promote healing. In this video we explore why Jung believed that turning backwards and examining the past is a wrong turn, and how overcoming a neurotic illness is best accomplished by focusing on the present and looking to the future.
“. . .there is scarcely a neurotic who does not love to dwell upon the evils of the past and to wallow in self-commiserating memories. Very often his neurosis consists precisely in his hanging back and constantly excusing himself on account of the past.”
Carl Jung, Collected Works Volume 16
If asked to account for the origins of their distress, most neurotics will point to their childhood, and for good reason. Being raised in a dysfunctional household, having poor role models, parents who do not provide adequate support, or who are neurotic themselves, greatly increases the chance of developing a neurosis. Jung went as far as to suggest that if a child is neurotic, blame can usually be placed solely on the parents, or as he wrote:
“. . .neuroses in children are more symptoms of the mental condition of the parents than a genuine illness of the child. Only a very little of the child’s psychic life is its own; for the most part it is still dependent on that of the parents. . . Parents should always be conscious of the fact that they themselves are the principal cause of neurosis in their children.”
Carl Jung, Collected Works Volume 17
But while parents are often to blame for the neurosis of a child, as a neurotic child develops into a neurotic adult, responsibility shifts away from the parents and toward the individual suffering from the neurosis, or as Jung writes:
“. . .the real therapy only begins when the patient sees that it is no longer father and mother who are standing in his way, but himself. . .”
Carl Jung, Collected Works Volume 7
A middle-aged man, for example, is not neurotic solely because he had neurotic parents. He is neurotic because he has failed to take responsibility for his life, and failed to cultivate the courage to deal with the problems in the present that are keeping him neurotic. Or as Jung explains:
“The causes of a neurosis lie in the present as much as in the past, and only a cause actually existing in the present can keep a neurosis active.”
Carl Jung, Collected Works Volume 11
