Excess occupies a charged and multivalent position across the depth-psychology corpus, functioning simultaneously as pathological symptom, structural principle, and transformative potential. The term resists reduction to simple surplus: it marks the point where quantity tips into qualitative disturbance. Luria and Sacks frame excess neurologically — as the obverse of deficit, the hyperkinetic and hyperdynamic states released by L-Dopa illuminating a whole phenomenology that classical neurology’s static vocabulary could not accommodate. The Stoic tradition, mediated through Inwood and Sorabji, treats excess as the defining characteristic of passion itself — an attraction to the (mistakenly) judged good that overshoots what nature sanctions, rendering impulse irrational and unnatural. López-Pedraza imports the concept into a Jungian-archetypal register, naming excess a Titanic component of human nature whose contemporary prevalence remains dangerously unreflective. Taoist sources — Liu I-ming and Cleary — approach excess as cosmological imbalance, the failure to modulate yin and yang, with the hexagram ‘Excess of the Great’ providing a structural map of when strength overdone becomes destruction. Jung himself, via Albertus Magnus and Avicenna, links excess of passion to magical causation — the soul ‘swept into great excess’ altering external reality. Across these registers, a common tension persists: excess is both the sign of vital energy and the harbinger of collapse, making its precise threshold the central diagnostic problem.
The Mind of a Mnemonist about excess. I find the latter by far the more interesting and original of the two, for it is, in effect, an exploration of imagination and memory
Sacks establishes excess as neurology’s neglected pole — the dynamic, kinetic counterpart to loss — and argues that only an economics of impulse, will, and energy can adequately describe it.
, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, 1985thesis
the reaction to something which is erroneously judged to be good (not something which is thought to be more good than it really is) is an attraction to it in excess of what is natural.
Inwood articulates the Chrysippean definition of passion as an impulse whose ‘excess’ is not a matter of degree of evaluation but of an attraction that transgresses natural measure — the core Stoic account of pathological emotion.
, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, 1985thesis
excess as a titanic component in human nature. We are living in times of ever increasing excess, which is unreflective.
López-Pedraza proposes excess as an archetypal, Titanic force embedded in human nature, whose contemporary proliferation — unreflected and uncontained — constitutes a civilizational danger complementary to Jung’s demographic warnings.
, Hermes and His Children, 1977thesis
excess reaches the peak of destruction. One calls misfortune upon oneself — it is no fault of others. This is excess of the great in the sense of being weak and entertaining illusions.
Liu I-ming reads the I Ching hexagram ‘Excess of the Great’ as a systematic map of how both strength persisted and weakness indulged tip into destruction, with the corrective lying in the balanced combination of yin and yang.
, The Taoist I Ching, 1986thesis
when she is swept into a great excess of love or hate or the like … it can be proved by experiment that it [the excess] binds things [magically] and alters them in the way it wants
Jung, citing Avicenna via Albertus Magnus, frames excess of passion as the soul’s capacity to exceed subjective boundaries and exert a causally real, quasi-magical effect on the external world — the psychological ground of synchronistic phenomena.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960thesis
Though great, you can avoid excess, so that it is beneficial to go somewhere — consummating essence and perfecting life, you develop without hindrance.
Cleary’s Taoist reading presents the avoidance of excess not as mere restraint but as the dynamic condition enabling fullest development — firmness and flexibility held in reciprocal balance.
, The Taoist I Ching, 1986supporting
Religion, with all the fervor and passion it is capable of generating, occasionally falls prey to excess. In some instances, the excess is merely rhetorical … In other cases, the excess has more serious repercussions.
Pargament documents how religious intensity, when uncontained, generates excess that ranges from rhetorical inflation to violent atrocity, illustrating the pathological potential latent in unreflected passion.
, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
excess, greed, and dependence (The Devil). The relationship to The Devil is easy to comprehend. One of the latter’s meanings is excess
Banzhaf’s tarot hermeneutic positions excess as the archetypal signature of The Devil — the principle of compulsive over-reaching that Temperance must mediate between Death and demonic captivity.
, Tarot and the Journey of the Hero, 2000supporting
this situation results from the specific sin of drinking wine to excess … God knows that any excessive use of a substance is a heart attitude of selfishness and self-worship.
Shaw interprets substance excess through a theological-psychological lens as a symptom of disordered desire — self-worship that temporarily covers pain while producing further suffering.
, The Heart of Addiction: A Biblical Perspective, 2008supporting
the loss of treasure and the deep memory of famine may cause us to rationalize that excesses are desirable.
Estés frames excess as the predictable response to psychic famine — a woman starved of authentic soul-life will seize any available substitute without discrimination, making excess the shadow of deprivation.
, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017supporting
excessive use of them can serve as a trigger for a fullblown ‘grip’ experience.
Quenk notes that even consciously developed inferior functions, when used to excess, can precipitate the characteristic grip state — suggesting excess as a trigger condition in typological psychology.
, Was That Really Me? How Everyday Stress Brings Out Our Hidden Personality, 2002aside
spending money can represent an equivalent for a longed-for but neurotically inhibited release of libido.
Abraham’s psychoanalytic reading treats financial extravagance as a libidinal excess — spending functioning as substitute discharge for inhibited drive energy — linking excess to anal-character dynamics.
, Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis, 1927aside