Charybdis enters the depth-psychological corpus primarily as a figure of the devouring abyss — a mythic image pressed into service as a structural metaphor for the dangers that flank individuation, therapeutic work, and the navigation of opposing psychic forces. The Homeric source material, preserved in multiple translations, establishes Charybdis as the whirlpool counterpart to Scylla: together they embody the impossible passage between two forms of destruction, a topology that Jungian authors found irresistible as a model for the inescapable double-bind of psychological development. Jung himself employs the paired monsters directly in the context of the moral conflict precipitated by uniting opposites: the ego caught between inflation and dissolution becomes ‘a rudderless ship buffeted between Scylla and Charybdis.’ His collaborators and successors — von Franz, Jacoby — replicate precisely this formulation when addressing the dual dangers of the individuation process and the transference relationship. In Michael Maier’s alchemical lament, cited by Jung in Alchemical Studies, Charybdis and Scylla together represent the terror that keeps the timid from plunging into the transformative waters to rescue the submerged king. A solitary citation in the addiction literature (Wallace, 1977) demonstrates the metaphor’s reach into clinical psychology beyond the analytic tradition. The figure thus operates in the corpus less as a mythological entity in her own right than as one pole of a structural dyad — the swallowing depth paired with the rending height — that articulates the perils of the psychic middle passage.
not in the least a Hercules at the parting of the ways, but rather a rudderless ship buffeted between Scylla and Charybdis. For without knowing it, he is caught up in perhaps the greatest and most ancient of human conflicts
Jung deploys Charybdis as one pole of the archetypal double-danger facing the ego overwhelmed by the collision of moral opposites, figuring it as helpless passage between destruction rather than heroic choice.
, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 1953thesis
Only a few believe his lament, and think rather that they hear the crashing and roaring of Scylla and Charybdis. Therefore they remain sitting indolently at home, and give no thought to the kingly treasure, nor to their own salvation.
Citing Michael Maier, Jung presents Charybdis as the fearsome noise that dissuades the psyche from undertaking the salvific descent into the waters where the submerged filius regius awaits rescue.
, Alchemical Studies, 1967thesis
This double aspect has two corresponding dangers… Between this Scylla and that Charybdis there is a narrow passage
Jung frames the dual dangers of the individuation process — spiritual evasion on one side, atavistic regression on the other — as a Scylla-and-Charybdis through which the therapeutic relationship must navigate.
, The Practice of Psychotherapy: Essays on the Psychology of the Transference and Other Subjects, 1954thesis
Between this Scylla and that Charybdis there is a narrow passage…. the bond established by the transference however hard to bear and however incomprehensible it may seem is vitally important
Jacoby appropriates Jung’s paired-monster metaphor to articulate the narrow therapeutic corridor between pseudo-spirituality and atavistic regression that the transference bond must traverse.
, The Analytic Encounter: Transference and Human Relationship, 1984supporting
Between this Scylla and that Charybdis there is a narrow passage, and both medieval Christian mysticism and alchemy have contributed much to its discovery.
Von Franz cites Jung’s Scylla-Charybdis formulation to underline that both mystical and alchemical traditions map the perilous middle passage between the two dangers of individuation.
, C.G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time, 1975supporting
I worried that the South Wind might compel me to backtrack, to the terrible Charybdis. All night I was swept backwards and at sunrise I came back to the dreadful rocks of Scylla and of Charybdis, gulping salty water
The Homeric source narrative establishes Charybdis as the inescapable gravitational pull of the abyss — a force that draws the shipwrecked hero back even after apparent escape, grounding the psychological metaphor in mythic structure.
, The Odyssey, 2017supporting
There is a great fig tree grows there, dense with foliage, and under this shining Charybdis sucks down the black water.
Lattimore’s translation supplies the canonical iconographic detail — Charybdis beneath the fig tree sucking down black water — that underpins the depth-psychological image of the swallowing abyss.
, Odyssey of Homer, 2009supporting
Wallace, J. (1977b). Between Scylla and Charybdis: Issues in alcoholism therapy. Alcohol, Health & Research World (Summer), 15-22.
A bibliographic citation evidences the metaphor’s migration into clinical addiction psychology, where the Scylla-Charybdis dyad frames competing dangers in alcoholism treatment.
, Group Psychotherapy with Addicted Populations An, 1997supporting
Charybdis, 37, 38, 247
Kerényi’s index entry places Charybdis in close proximity to Scylla and Circe within his systematic mythological catalogue, confirming its standard co-location with the sea-monsters of the Odyssean tradition.
, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951aside
Seamen told—and the tale has been preserved in the Odyssey, where the goddess, who was, I suppose, originally threefold, was further doubled—that there are two cliffs
Kerényi contextualizes the Scylla-Charybdis episode within the original threefold goddess tradition, suggesting that the doubled danger is a mythological splitting of a single primordial figure.
, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951aside