whirlpools, of order in the midst of chaos. Even the swing of a pendulum damped by the air in which it moves is beyond analysis. The wonderful use of computers has shown this. Only in the most controlled experiments do you truly find cause and effect, as understood by the classical physicists. In psychology on the other hand, these two assumptions must be unsound, and untrue from start to finish; even before I knew about the science of Chaos, I was of the view that it was a piece of gross intellectual carelessness to assume that two assumptions which appeared only of limited truth for the physical sciences were wholly true for the study of the mind, consciousness, and personality of man. I repeat that I think it much nearer the truth to say that all true relationships between human beings preclude analysis; and in this sphere both assumptions are untrue, and the tendency to make the assumptions wholly misleading.
In reading Jung, you frequently come across the words “individual” and “individuality”. But stones are individual; test-tubes are individual; each one is different from its neighbour, however small the variation. The fact that one person's qualities are never in total the exact replica of another's, is not at all what one means when one says that personality is priceless, or that one human being does not replace another. These two statements virtually represent different languages, because their meanings are such poles apart. The first represents a mere statement of fact from the world of the community, the world of analysis and measurement, the world of efficiency, or expediency, and of expendability. The second represents a soaring flight into the world of the affections, and of absolute values. In picture language, the first is a statement from the world of Peter Breugel, the second from the world of Michelangelo. Both worlds are real, let there be no doubt about that. Each in a way is the complement of the other.
Where I think psychologists sometimes go astray is that they fail to…