“My work is not connected in any way with university institutes. Consequently we have no polyclinical material at our disposal. Also, you cannot possibly learn analytical psychology by studying its object, since it consists exclusively of what you don’t know about yourself. You can see in another person only what you yourself know. But what you yourself already know you don’t need to learn. Also it is quite impossible for two of you to conduct a real analysis of a third person. In that way you would never get at the other person at all. When I suggested that you work on your own material, I did so not because I was of the opinion that this is a treatment but because it is the sine qua non for learning analysis. You yourself must be able to fulfil everything you expect of your patient. If you expect him to hand out his intimate experiences, you must first of all be in a position to do it at least three times better. No analysis of another person will ever provide this unique experience which the analysis of your own material can give you. Only in this way do you learn to recognize the living psychic process which is not identical with consciousness. No one who has not experienced analysis in his own person has a right to practice it. This is my firm conviction and I shan’t budge from it under any circumstances. If you agree with this, then we can consider further possibilities.”
“And because we want and yet cannot think out what it is we really want, the . . .conflict is largely unconscious, and thence comes neurosis. Neurosis, therefore, is intimately bound up with the problem of our time and really represents an unsuccessful attempt on the part of the individual to solve the general problem in his own person. Neurosis is self-division.”
“We should not try to ‘get rid’ of a neurosis, but rather to experience what it means, what it has to teach, what its purpose is. We should even learn to be thankful for it, otherwise we pass it by and miss the opportunity of getting to know ourselves as we really are. A neurosis is truly removed only when it has removed the false attitude of the ego. We do not cure it – it cures us. A person is ill, but the illness is nature’s attempt to heal the person. From the illness itself we can learn so much for our recovery, and what the neurotic flings away as absolutely worthless contains the true gold we should never have found elsewhere.”
“The sight of evil kindles evil in the soul…. The victim is not the only sufferer; everybody in the vicinity of the crime, including the murderer, suffers with him. Something of the abysmal darkness of the world has broken in on us, poisoning the very air we breathe and befouling the water with the stale, nauseating taste of blood.”
“Madness is a special form of the spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life, since life itself is full of craziness and at bottom utterly illogical. Man strives toward reason only so that he can make rules for himself. Life itself has no rules. That is its mystery and its unknown law. What you call knowledge is an attempt to impose something comprehensible on life.”
Vlado Šolc
