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Psychic Objectivity

Psychic Objectivity

“Psychic objectivity” is Jung’s term, emerging from his work on [[jung-red-book|Liber Novus]], for the realization that the figures encountered in active fantasy have a psychological reality in their own right, and are not merely subjective figments. The editorial introduction to The Red Book records this as the central lesson Jung attributed to his dialogue with Elijah: “The notion that these figures had a psychological reality in their own right, and were not merely subjective figments, was the main lesson that he attributed to the fantasy figure of Elijah: psychic objectivity” (Jung 2009, Red Book, editor’s introduction).

The term is narrower than objective-psyche. The objective psyche names the layer; psychic objectivity names the experiential fact by which the layer is recognized. A content of the psyche is “objective” in this specific sense when it cannot be reduced to the ego’s invention — when it persists, argues back, surprises the ego with information the ego did not possess.

The practical consequence is that the proper response to a dream or an active imagination figure is engagement, not interpretation-as-translation. Jung’s 1916 account of the method: one “must necessarily stand upon firm feet in his I-function” in order to differentiate oneself from the collective contents, because without that firmness the contents will overwhelm consciousness rather than speak to it (Jung 2009, Red Book, editor’s introduction).

Psychic objectivity is the epistemological warrant of depth psychology as a discipline. If the figures of the psyche have no objectivity, depth psychology is a branch of rhetoric. If they do, it is the scholarship of a real encounter.

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