Within the depth-psychology corpus, ‘interest’ functions on at least three distinct registers that frequently intersect and occasionally collide. The most theoretically consequential register is psychoanalytic: Jung, following a remark by Claparède, entertained the possibility that ‘libido’ and ‘interest’ are functionally synonymous, and Freud himself was compelled to ask whether the libidinal interest withdrawn in schizophrenia coincides with objective interest in general. This question — whether the loss of reality is traceable solely to the recession of erotic interest or whether erotic and objective interest are coextensive — marks one of the genuine fault lines between Freudian and Jungian metapsychology. A second register is sociopolitical: Fromm distinguishes sharply between interests that advance the cause of truth and those that obstruct it, insisting that the critical question is not whether an interest is operative but which kind. Von Franz extends this axis into depth psychology proper, arguing that the sociological opposition of ‘we-interest’ and ‘I-interest’ fails to account for the unconscious dimension of either. A third register is economic-philosophical: Plato frames justice itself as a form of interest, while Aristotle’s account of tokos — monetary interest — as homogeneous self-reproduction haunts discussions of money’s psychological and ontological novelty from Seaford onward. Jung’s late cultural writings add a fourth valence: the widespread popular ‘interest’ in psychic phenomena, Gnosticism, and astrology is itself symptomatically diagnostic of the modern soul’s condition.
Freud asks himself whether what the psychoanalytic school calls libido and conceives as ‘interest from erotic sources’ coincides with interest in general.
This passage establishes the foundational metapsychological question of whether libido — erotic interest — is coextensive with objective interest, a tension that divides Freudian from Jungian theory of psychic reality.
, Collected Works Volume 1: Psychiatric Studies, 1902thesis
one could just as well use the word ‘interest.’ The customary use of the term has developed, quite naturally and spontaneously, into a usage which makes it possible to explain Schreber’s end of the world simply as a withdrawal of libido.
Jung reports Claparède’s suggestion that ‘libido’ and ‘interest’ are interchangeable in practice, and uses this equivalence to reframe the withdrawal of libido as a withdrawal of interest in reality itself.
, Collected Works Volume 4: Freud and Psychoanalysis, 1961thesis
the paranoiac’s altered relation to the world is to be explained entirely or in the main by the loss of his libidinal interest… It can hardly be supposed that the normal ‘fonction du réel,’ to use Janet’s term, is maintained only through affluxes of libido or erotic interest.
Jung contests Freud’s reduction of reality-loss to the withdrawal of erotic interest, arguing that the ‘fonction du réel’ requires a broader, non-exclusively erotic concept of interest.
, Symbols of Transformation, 1952thesis
The problem, therefore, is not that there is an interest at stake, but which kind of interest is at stake.
Fromm argues that interest is not inherently inimical to truth; the decisive distinction lies between interests served by revealing truth and those served by concealing it.
, Escape from Freedom, 1941thesis
‘We-interest’ is simply a content of collective consciousness, not of the group unconscious, and ‘I-interest’ is only a very small part of what goes to make an individual; these labels fail to take into account the individual’s unconscious.
Von Franz exposes the psychological inadequacy of the sociological we-interest/I-interest binary, insisting that both poles neglect the unconscious dimensions of collective and individual life.
, C.G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time, 1975thesis
the widespread and ever-growing interest in all sorts of psychic phenomena, including spiritualism, astrology, Theosophy, parapsychology, and so forth. The world has seen nothing like it since the end of the seventeenth century.
Jung treats the mass cultural interest in occult and psychic phenomena as a symptomatic indicator of the soul’s unmet needs, comparing the contemporary moment to the flowering of Gnostic thought.
, Civilization in Transition, 1964supporting
we are both agreed that justice is interest of some sort, but you go on to say ‘of the stronger’; about this addition I am not so sure.
Plato’s Socrates establishes that the entire debate about justice turns on the concept of interest, exposing ‘interest’ as the contested core of political and ethical reasoning.
, Republic, -380supporting
currency came into being for exchange, but interest (tokos) makes it increase. Hence its name, for the offspring resembles the parent.
Seaford, citing Aristotle, shows that monetary interest (tokos) embodies a logic of homogeneous self-reproduction alien to gift-exchange, providing an economic-ontological ground for the psychological distinctiveness of money.
, Money and the Early Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy, 2004supporting
the interest of any art is the perfection of it — this and nothing else… has art in itself, I say, any similar liability to fault or defect, and does every art require another supplementary art to provide for its interests?
Plato examines whether arts serve their own interests or require supplementary correction, using interest as the measure of a practice’s internal telos and self-sufficiency.
, Republic, -380supporting
I am naturally formed to look after my own interest. If it is my interest to have an estate in land, it is my interest also to take it from my neighbor.
Epictetus demonstrates how the unreflective pursuit of self-interest, when not grounded in a broader understanding of the good, becomes the psychological origin of social conflict and injustice.
, Discourses, 108supporting
I have maintained an interest in AA as a spiritual avenue of recovery and have been inspired by the 12-Step program’s spiritual foundation.
The researcher’s sustained personal interest in AA and archetypal astrology is offered as the subjective motivation grounding the study’s depth-psychological methodology.
, Individuation in Addiction Recovery: An Archetypal Astrological Perspective, 2025aside