Notion

Within the depth-psychology corpus, ‘Notion’ (capital N) functions as a technical term of considerable philosophical weight, drawn principally from Hegelian logic and deployed with greatest systematic rigour by Wolfgang Giegerich. For Giegerich, a Notion is emphatically not an abstract concept produced by discursive reasoning or ideological commitment; it is a ‘living Concept,’ a self-subsisting logical subjectivity that behaves as a kind of independent reality and has its ground only within itself. The Notion of soul, on this account, is what authenticates Jung’s psychology: Jung possessed it intuitively but never conceptually articulated it, leaving it implicit. Giegerich’s central critical project is to distinguish genuinely Notional psychology — rooted in the soul’s own logical life — from ‘Notionless’ approaches (eclecticism, imaginal psychology, clinical empiricism) that circulate opinions without penetrating to the animating center. James Hillman independently treats ‘notion’ in a softer register, examining how the notion of anima conditions experience reciprocally with experience itself, and how archetypal psychology grasps image as ‘implicit Notion.’ The tension between these positions — Giegerich’s demand for explicit logical rigour versus Hillman’s fidelity to the imaginal — constitutes the field’s central methodological dispute. For Simondon and Merleau-Ponty, ‘notion’ carries its standard phenomenological sense, though Simondon’s title foregrounds notions of form and information as foundational ontogenetic categories. The term thus ranges from a quasi-Hegelian absolute to a phenomenological analytical tool.

In the library 28 passages

JUNG had a real Notion or Concept of ‘soul.’ … They do not refer to the abstract concept. … ‘Real’ here does not mean the same thing as true. It points to the independence, as it were, of the Notion, to the fact that it behaves as a kind of subjectivity of its own.

Giegerich establishes the foundational distinction between a ‘real Notion’ — a living, self-subsisting logical subjectivity — and the abstract concept of ordinary parlance or Formal Logic, arguing that Jung possessed the former regarding soul.

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In the last analysis, soul is Notion, is logical life. This corresponds to the gold or philosopher’s stone of the alchemists.

Giegerich identifies soul with Notion as logical life, positioning this equation as the alchemical telos of psychological inquiry and the ultimate object of depth psychology’s rigour.

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The soul (which is psychology’s actual foundation) is nothing positively real, it is ‘just’ a Notion that psychology has, as weak as water, not the notion of something real. It is the Notion as a reality of its own—the ‘existing Concept,’ which has an existence only if it is relentlessly and truly thought.

Giegerich argues that the Notion of soul has no positive empirical foundation but subsists only through rigorous unceasing thought, making its existence depend entirely on the quality of psychological thinking.

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Psychology has to turn… via itself, via its own center, its own internal Notion. In order to see life out there psychologically, it must resi[de within the Notion].

Giegerich contends that authentic psychology must mediate all external observations through its own internal Notion rather than turning directly to empirical or clinical facts.

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It is the myth of the Notion and as such of the notion of Truth—and of the notion of true psychology… ‘interpreting’ a story means ‘giving the notion of the story,’ interpretation of this myth amounts to giving the notion of the hunt, and by the same token the notion of the Notion.

Giegerich reads the Actaeon myth as the mythological presentation of the Notion itself, equating genuine psychological interpretation with the activity of extracting and articulating the Notion animating any phenomenon.

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The Notion is the unity of the final result and the whole movement to this result. It is the simultaneity of all the moments within the internal logical movement of the soul.

Giegerich articulates a Hegelian understanding of the Notion as the dialectical unity of process and result, encompassing the entire internal logical movement of the soul rather than any single terminal point.

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Only the soul (as the organ of our approaching) can get into the soul of a work, that is, into the Notion that inspires it.

Giegerich argues that soulful engagement is the epistemological prerequisite for accessing the animating Notion of any body of thought, and that extraneous reflection produces only ‘soulless abstractions.’

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C. G. Jung’s psychology was based on an authentic notion of soul, but this notion was only intuitive, implicit, not conceptually worked out.

The book’s orienting claim: Jung’s greatness lay in possessing an authentic Notion of soul, but its remaining implicit and unworked-out is the problem that Giegerich’s project sets out to rectify.

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The work of art… could be likened to the way the symbol has been defined… It is the portrayal of a truly infinite and, as such, ‘living’ Notion. Because the Notion is living and generative, it could never be fully realized as a determinate positive concept could.

Giegerich distinguishes the living, generative Notion from the finite determinate concept by analogy to Goethe’s and Jung’s understanding of the symbol, illustrating how a Notional whole animates every part of a living work.

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Image, I said earlier, is ‘in itself’ Notion or ‘implicit’ Notion, while conversely Notion is sublated image.

Giegerich articulates the dialectical relationship between image and Notion: image is the implicit, sensuous form of what Notion renders explicit, and Notion is image sublated into logical transparency.

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As notion, it is the property of the mind. A psychology based on the Notion of soul is not transgressing the borders of its field.

Giegerich argues that grounding psychology in the Notion of soul — rather than in metaphysics or biology — keeps it within its proper domain of competence.

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He, too, was probably not in the service of a Notion that had touched him, quite apart from the Notion ‘soul.’ This comes out in the dilemma of Daseinsanalyse.

Giegerich uses Boss’s Daseinsanalyse as a counter-example, arguing that psychology not rooted in its own animating Notion is condemned to borrow intellectual foundations from elsewhere.

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The Notion is existing notion. It is ‘pre-existing’ or nonexisting logical life having found a real existence in this life, in us, as us.

Giegerich specifies the paradoxical ontological status of the Notion as a pre-existent logical life that achieves real existence only by incarnating in actual psychic life, producing a constitutive self-contradiction.

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The allegation that one has to choose between soulfulness or truth (and logic) is a false alternative… it remains tied to and informed by the (e. g., Kantian) abstract concept or notion (in the sense of Formal Logic), even if as its enemy.

Giegerich criticises imaginal psychology for operating with an unreflected, Kantian-style abstract notion of truth even while ostensibly rejecting it, thereby failing to develop a genuinely soulful Notion of logical truth.

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We can surmise that this was due to his not having the notion of truth as logical negativity (absolute negativity) available to him.

Giegerich diagnoses Hillman’s refusal to admit truth into psychology as resulting from his access only to a positive, literal notion of truth rather than to truth understood as logical-absolute negativity.

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The stance represented in the image of Actaion, the hunter, is not either that of ‘closing in on the Other’ or of ‘exposing oneself to it’… it is the contradictory unity of closing in on the other and being surrounded by it on all sides.

Giegerich reads Actaeon’s hunting posture as the embodied image of the Notion’s structure: a contradictory unity of active targeting and total receptive exposure that mirrors the dialectical constitution of Truth.

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The event of Truth, or the Notion, is the union of these opposites.

Giegerich identifies the Notion directly with the event of Truth, understood as the dialectical union of violence and receptivity, active penetration and untouched openness, in Actaeon’s encounter with Artemis.

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it is the dissolution of the image and notion of a being, the notion of…

Giegerich argues that Dionysian dismemberment enacts the dissolution not merely of an imaginal figure but of ‘the notion of a being’ as such, marking the transition from imaginal to logical psychology.

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inasmuch as Actaion is the primordial image, or better: the notion, of the hunter, he ventured into the forest as the dismembered one from the outset.

Giegerich corrects himself from ‘primordial image’ to ‘notion,’ insisting that the hunter Actaeon is the Notion of hunting itself, whose dismemberment is therefore logically prior to, not subsequent to, the hunt.

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This illusion is made possible through a neurotic, split-off notion of knowing. And it in turn inaugurates or confirms this castrated notion, one, which in itself denies what it ostensibly claims to be.

Giegerich diagnoses the theory/practice split as rooted in a ‘castrated’ and neurotic notion of knowing that severs cognition from commitment, producing what he calls mere ‘information’ rather than genuine knowledge.

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Experience and notion affect each other reciprocally. Not only do we derive our notions out of our experiences in accordance with the fantasy of empiricism, but also our notions condition the nature of our experiences.

Hillman articulates a reciprocal epistemology in which the notion of anima is not merely derived from experience but actively structures what anima experience can be, exposing sentimentalism embedded in the notion itself.

Hillman, James, Anima: An Anatomy of a Personified Notion, 1985thesis

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what indeed is a shortcoming is not only negative… the great thoughts together with the higher logical status that they came with could be transported essentially unharmed.

Giegerich argues that Jung’s failure to render his Notion explicitly in writing paradoxically preserved it from distortion by his own conventional conscious thinking, keeping the Notional substance available for later articulation.

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as creativity fits more and more the archetypal notion, shaping into stable perfection, it passes into the sterility of the senex… Thus does the primordial father-image shape a notion of the creative instinct.

Hillman demonstrates how an archetypal image (the paternal senex) generates a specific notion of creativity as ordering and unifying perfection, illustrating the image-to-notion movement within archetypal psychology.

Hillman, James, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972supporting

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to really understand a text or a body of thought one has to perceive it from within and on its own terms… one has to have penetrated to its heart or center.

Giegerich grounds his hermeneutical method in the requirement of entering the Notion at the heart of a body of thought, distinguishing Notional understanding from peripheral observation of isolated opinions.

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The notion of form is borrowed from the perceived world… this notion is irreducibly phenomenal. Hence naturalism cannot explain matter, life, and mind, as long as explanation means purging nature of subjectivity.

Thompson, following Merleau-Ponty, argues that the notion of form is irreducibly phenomenal, meaning naturalism must borrow from perception what it cannot generate from its own explanatory resources.

Thompson, Evan, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, 2007aside

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Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information

Simondon’s title frames ‘notion’ as an operative philosophical lens through which individuation is analysed, treating notions of form and information as foundational ontogenetic categories rather than psychological terms.

Simondon, Gilbert, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020aside

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Related terms