Analogy occupies a peculiarly central position in the depth-psychology corpus, functioning simultaneously as cognitive instrument, epistemological claim, and quasi-ontological principle. Jung’s sustained reliance on analogical reasoning—most visible in his concept of libido as borrowed from natural science—prompted sustained reflection among his interpreters, most notably Hubback, whose 1973 paper ‘Uses and Abuses of Analogy’ Samuels treats as a key secondary text. For Jung, analogy does more than illustrate: it discloses the unity of the world, gesturing toward the unus mundus in which all phenomena secretly connect. This gives analogy a metaphysical weight absent in purely rhetorical or logical treatments. The tension Hubback identifies—between analogy as productive imaginative act and analogy as potential distortion of psychic reality—echoes debates traceable through Aristotle’s privileging of proportional metaphor (analogy as metaphor par excellence in the Rhetoric), Plato’s recognition that analogy permeates language and cosmos without fully accounting for itself, and the Stoic medical analogy examined by Nussbaum and Claus, in which soul-body parallels both illuminate and mislead. Jung’s own practice of finding mythological and scientific analogies for unconscious processes is shown, especially in his Freud essays, to be the principal mechanism by which consciousness assimilates unfamiliar psychic contents. Across the corpus, analogy remains irreducibly double: revelatory bridge and potential mystification.
the making of analogies is a fundamental, imaginative, mental activity; more than simply a tool for understanding… for Jung, the purpose of analogising is both to make use of and demonstrate the idea that the world may be unitary
Samuels, synthesising Hubback, argues that for Jung analogy is not merely rhetorical but an ontological practice oriented toward demonstrating the unus mundus and reaching deeper layers of psychic experience.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985thesis
The unconscious, like the conscious, mobilizes itself round the biological tasks and seeks solutions on the analogy of what has gone before, just as consciousness does. Whenever we wish to assimilate something unknown, we do so by means of analogy.
Jung identifies analogical reasoning as the universal cognitive mechanism by which both conscious and unconscious psyche assimilate the unknown, making analogy structurally inseparable from psychic adaptation.
, Collected Works Volume 4: Freud and Psychoanalysis, 1961thesis
Analogy is metaphor par excellence. Aristotle emphasizes this point often in the Rhetoric. ‘Liveliness is got by using metaphor by analogy and by being graphic’
Derrida, via close reading of Aristotle, establishes that analogy (proportional metaphor) holds a privileged position in the classical theory of figuration, being the most vivid and epistemically productive form of metaphor.
, Margins of Philosophy, 1982thesis
He not only brings the medical analogy forward also takes it apart— arguing that in some ways it is a good analogy ethical purposes, but in other ways potentially misleading.
Nussbaum shows that Aristotle subjects the philosophy-as-medicine analogy to internal critique, distinguishing its productive from its distorting applications — a move that prefigures depth psychology’s own ambivalence about analogical method.
, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, 1994supporting
the Stoic use of the medical analogy, which is more pervasive and more highly developed in Stoic texts than it is in those of any other Hellenistic school—so pervasive, in fact, that Cicero declares tired of their ‘excessive attention’ to such analogies
Nussbaum documents how the Stoics elevated the medical analogy into a governing framework for philosophy’s therapeutic mission, revealing both its power and the danger of over-reliance on a single analogical schema.
, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, 1994supporting
there are innumerable ways in which, like number, analogy permeates, not only language, but the whole world, both visible and intellectual
The Cratylus passage treats analogy as a pervasive cosmic principle structuring language and world alike, anticipating Jung’s claim that analogical correspondence reflects genuine ontological unity.
, Cratylus, -388supporting
Understanding a thing is to arrive at a metaphor for that thing by substituting something more familiar to us. And the feeling of familiarity is the feeling of understanding.
Jaynes argues that all understanding is fundamentally analogical — the reduction of the unfamiliar to familiar metaphorical substitutes — directly supporting Jung’s account of how the psyche assimilates unknown contents.
, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 1976supporting
the doctrine of soul subscribed to by Gorgias himself in the Helen… stressed a productive, therapeutic analogy between soul and body such that psyche… could be treated by an external skill or craft analogous to medicine
Claus traces the pre-Platonic soul-body therapeutic analogy, showing how Plato’s moralisation subsequently transformed a practical psychosomatic analogy into a purely abstract philosophical schema.
, Toward the Soul: An Inquiry into the Meaning of Psyche before Plato, 1981supporting
Radestock (187…) duces the chapter in which he deals with it by a number drawing an analogy between dreams and madness. Kant writes [1764]: ‘The madman is a waking dreamer.’
Freud traces the historical use of analogy between dreaming and madness as a pre-scientific heuristic, illustrating how analogy functions in the proto-history of depth-psychological theorising.
, The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900supporting
logical argument that psyche developed by analogy with thumos in shared death contexts from an original meaning ‘shade’ to the meaning ‘life’, and then finally to shared psychological uses
Claus examines whether the Greek concept of psyche itself developed through analogical extension from related terms, interrogating the limits and explanatory power of analogical etymology for the history of soul-concepts.
, Toward the Soul: An Inquiry into the Meaning of Psyche before Plato, 1981supporting
Socrates’ quest for virtue is an eminently serious matter, but it bogs down in the quicksands because it aims at a goal which can be reached only with the help of doubtful analogies.
Snell identifies the epistemological danger of analogical reasoning in Socrates, showing how borrowed analogies from different philosophical domains can generate confusion rather than insight.
, The discovery of the mind; the Greek origins of European, 1953supporting
Scientific thinking and writing are often illuminated by similes and metaphors—indeed, these devices are the basis of analogical thinking
James affirms that analogical thinking, via simile and metaphor, is foundational to scientific cognition, providing comparative-psychological grounding for Jung’s use of analogy in psyche-science.
, The Principles of Psychology, 1890supporting
With these comparisons Empedocles walks in the footsteps of Homer who also bequeathed to him the literary form in which to expound his doctrine.
Snell traces the transition from poetic simile to philosophical analogy in pre-Socratic thought, contextualising analogy’s role in the earliest Greek attempts to explain invisible natural processes.
, The discovery of the mind; the Greek origins of European, 1953aside
the truth which Heraclitus has set himself to unveil cannot be expressed in any other way except through an image. Heraclitus shows us the meaning of the ‘necessary’ metaphor.
Snell’s analysis of Heraclitean ‘necessary’ metaphor illuminates the philosophical tradition from which depth psychology’s use of indispensable analogical imagery ultimately descends.
, The discovery of the mind; the Greek origins of European, 1953aside