"One of the most wicked destructive forces, psychologically speaking, is unused creative power ... If someone has a creative gift and out of laziness, or for some other reason, doesn't use it, the psychic energy turns to sheer poison. That's why we often diagnose neuroses and psychotic diseases as not-lived higher possibilities."
"We could all be mediums, and all have absolute knowledge, if the bright light of our ego consciousness would not dim it."
Source: On Divination and Synchronicity. Book by Marie-Louise von Franz, pp. 39-40, 1992.
About the author
Marie-Louise von Franz
Psychologist, Author
Marie-Louise von Franz was a Swiss psychologist and Jungian analyst known for her work on dreams and the feminine psyche.
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More quotes by Marie-Louise von Franz
"People who have a creative side and do not live it out are most disagreeable clients. They make a mountain out of a molehill, fuss about unnecessary things, are too passionately in love with somebody who is not worth so much attention, and so on. There is a kind of floating charge of energy in them which is not attached to its right object and therefore tends to apply exaggerated dynamism to the wrong situation."
"If a man devotes himself to the instructions of his own unconscious, it can bestow this gift [of renewal], so that suddenly life, which has been stale and dull, turns into a rich unending inner adventure, full of creative possibilities"
"Dreams are like letters from God. Isn't it time you answered your mail?"
"If we can stay with the tension of opposites long enough —sustain it, be true to it—we can sometimes become vessels within which the divine opposites come together and give birth to a new reality."
"If you notice an unconscious fantasy coming up within you, you would be wise not to interpret it at once. Do not say that you know what it is and force it into consciousness. Just let it live with you, leaving it in the half-dark, carry it with you and watch where it is going or what it is driving at."