PSYCHOLOGY AND THE OCCULT by Carl Gustav Jung

Author:Carl Gustav Jung [Jung, Carl Gustav]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Tags: archivio inglese, cover, english
Published: 2012-02-07T10:58:25+00:00

9 8 P S Y C H O L O G Y A N D T H E O C C U L T

hidden from the person concerned. To this extent cryptomnesia

is an everyday occurrence and is intimately bound up with nor-

mal psychic processes. But how often it misleads the scientist,

author, or composer into believing that his ideas are original,

and then along comes the critic and points out the source! Gen-

erally the individual formulation of the idea protects the author

from the charge of plagiarism and proves his good faith, though

there are cases where the reproduction occurs unconsciously,

almost word for word. Should the passage contain a remarkable

idea, then the suspicion of more or less conscious plagiarism

is justified. After all, an important idea is linked by numerous

associations to the ego-complex; it has been thought about at

different times and in different situations and therefore has

innumerable connecting threads leading in all directions. Con-

sequently it can never disappear so entirely from consciousness

that its continuity is lost to the sphere of conscious memory. We

have, however, a criterion by which we can always recognize

intrapsychic cryptomnesia objectively: the cryptomnesic idea is

linked to the ego-complex by the minimum of associations. The

reason for this lies in the relation of the individual to the object

concerned, in the want of proportion between interest and

object. Two possibilities are conceivable: (a) The object is worthy

of interest, but the interest is slight owing to distractibility or

lack of understanding, (b) The object is not worthy of interest,

consequently the interest is slight. In both cases there is an

extremely labile connection with consciousness, the result being

that the object is quickly forgotten. This flimsy bridge soon

breaks down and the idea sinks into the unconscious, where it

is no longer accessible to the conscious mind. Should it now

re-enter consciousness by way of cryptomnesia, the feeling of

strangeness, of its being an original creation, will cling to it,

because the path by which it entered the subconscious can

no longer be discovered. Strangeness and original creation are,

moreover, closely allied to one another, if we remember the

O N T H E P S Y C H O L O G Y O F S O - C A L L E D O C C U L T P H E N O M E N A

numerous witnesses in belles-lettres to the "possessed" nature of

genius.

1 2 0

Apart from a number of striking instances of this kind,

where it is doubtful whether it is cryptomnesia or an original

creation, there are others where a passage of no essential value

has been reproduced cryptomnesically, and in almost the same

words, as in the following example:

Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra'

1

'

Now about the time that Zarathustra

sojourned on the Happy Isles, it

happened that a ship anchored at the

isle on which the smoking mountain

stands, and the crew went ashore to

shoot rabbits. About the noon-tide

hour, however, when the captain and

his men were together again, they

suddenly saw a man coming towards

them through the air, and a voice

Kerner, Blatter aus Prevorst'

12

The four captains and a merchant,

Mr. Bell, went ashore on the island

of Mount Stromboli to shoot

rabbits. At three o'clock they

mustered

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