This is our space for reflections on quotes from Jung.  We invite you to share a favorite quote along with your thoughts by e-mailing us at jung@cgjungcenter.org

What psychoanalysis asks of the patient is the exact opposite of what the patient has always done.  He is like a man who unintentionally fallen into the water and sunk, whereas psychoanalysis wants him to act like a diver.  It was no mere chance which led him to fall in just at that spot.  There lies the sunken treasure, but only a diver can bring it to the surface. . . .  [His fantasies] are sunken treasures which can only be recovered by a diver; in other words the patient, contrary to his wont, must now deliberately turn his attention to his inner life. . . .  The patient, assisted by the analyst, immerses himself in his fantasies, not in order to lose himself in them, but to salvage them, piece by piece, and bring them into the light of day. (CW 4, para. 417-418)

Often when clients begin analysis, or when they come in for an initial interview to be seen at the June Singer Clinic, they will express their utter disappointment in themselves; their sense of failure at having fallen into this hole where they are stuck, or overwhelmed.  If I detect this attitude, I may try to convey what Jung has written here.  Instead of believing they have done the absolute wrong thing by having fallen into the water, it is this very place where they have begun to sink where the treasure lies.  It is now their task to change their attitude about their fall and see it instead as the necessary excavation into what lies around them and to bring these unknown or discarded parts of themselves into the healing light of consciousness.