Depotentiation Of Consciousness

With increasing approximation to the centre there is a corresponding depotentiation of the ego in favour of the influence of the ‘empty’ centre, which is certainly not identical with the archetype but is the thing the archetype points to.

Jung’s letter, as read by Edinger, frames depotentiation of the ego as the teleological outcome of individuation’s circumambulation of the Self’s unknowable centre.

Edinger, Edward F., The New God-Image: A Study of Jung’s Key Letters Concerning the Evolution of the Western God-Image, 1996thesis

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its ultimate aim is their depotentiation and the strengthening of the feeling-ego.

Hillman critiques the Gestalt empathic method precisely because its ultimate goal is the depotentiation of autonomous imaginal figures in service of ego-reinforcement, a move he regards as antithetical to genuine soul-work.

Hillman, James, Re-Visioning Psychology, 1975thesis

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Just as little should the depotentiation of the formal instinct be the effect of spiritual incapacity and a feebleness of thought and will that would degrade humanity.

Via Schiller, Jung establishes that the legitimate depotentiation of one instinct must arise from the triumphant abundance of its counterpart, not from weakness—grounding the concept in a theory of instinctual reciprocity.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychological Types, 1921thesis

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There is then a certain depotentiation of the symbol, it loses its original value. Formerly, in China, only holy men and priests could write, and so all scraps of paper were collected because writing was sacred.

Jung extends the concept to the life-history of symbols, arguing that habituation and democratization drain a sign of its original numinous charge—a cultural form of depotentiation distinct from its intrapsychic variant.

Jung, C.G., Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928-1930, 1984thesis

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energic value(s): of conscious contents, 112–13; depotentiation of, 123; of relations to object, 119

The index entry in Psychological Types codifies ‘depotentiation of energic values’ as a discrete technical concept within Jung’s libido economics, locating its primary discussion at paragraph 123.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychological Types, 1921supporting

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It has pulled the image’s teeth, cut the claws with which the image would violently snatch from us our literal belief in it. The image is already domesticated.

Giegerich, in a parallel argument to Hillman’s, describes how archetypal-imaginal psychology pre-emptively defuses images—a procedural depotentiation that prevents the image from asserting absolute ontological claim.

Giegerich, Wolfgang, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020supporting

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his accounts of meditation generally emphasise the loss of rational, conscious awareness and the withdrawal from the external world, from the body and the senses.

Clarke documents Jung’s characterisation of yogic and meditative practices as intentional withdrawals that reduce rational ego-consciousness, situating Eastern contemplative methods as culturally sanctioned forms of depotentiation.

Clarke, J. J., Jung and Eastern Thought: A Dialogue with the Orient, 1994supporting

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This repression of the emotional-dynamic components is unavoidable, because conscious development demands that the ego be freed from the grip of emotion and instinct.

Neumann’s account of the developmental fragmentation of archetypes implicitly inverts the depotentiation problematic: here ego-strengthening requires suppressing, rather than yielding to, the unconscious energetic field.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019aside

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