Polarity stands as one of the axial concepts in depth psychology, designating the structural fact that psychic life is organized through the tension of opposites rather than through any single, undivided principle. The corpus reveals several distinct registers in which this concept operates. Jung establishes its ontological primacy: consciousness and the unconscious are, as Hillman paraphrases him, ‘created into a polarity at the same moment out of original twilight states,’ meaning that differentiation itself is polar in nature. Peterson, drawing on Edinger, extends this into existential territory — polarity is not merely a feature of mental life but of being itself, with the alcoholic’s predicament serving as a paradigmatic symbol of the universal psychospiritual tension that underwrites all consciousness. Samuels subjects the Jungian typological deployment of polarity to critical scrutiny, questioning whether the superior/inferior function polarity survives empirical testing and whether it honors Jung’s own intuition that true opposites share a common base. Hillman radicalizes the discussion archetypal-therapeutically, framing senex and puer not merely as a convenient pair but as a ‘split archetype’ whose pathological dissociation from each other names a specifically modern cultural wound. Beyond the strictly Jungian orbit, Arroyo imports the concept into somatic and astrological frameworks via Randolph Stone’s Polarity Therapy, while Sardello grounds polarity in terrestrial electromagnetism as a cosmological principle. The concept thus spans ontology, typology, clinical practice, cosmology, and cultural diagnosis — its tensions productive, never merely dualistic.
Consciousness and the unconscious are created into a polarity at the same moment out of original twilight states; and they are continually being created at the same moment.
Hillman argues that polarity is not a secondary division but the very act of psychic creation, with consciousness and the unconscious arising simultaneously and reciprocally from an original undifferentiated condition.
, Senex & Puer, 2015thesis
alcoholism thus becomes a telling symbol of the polarity that courses through the human psyche, so fundamental in fact that it is part and parcel of being.
Peterson, via Edinger, positions polarity as the constitutive structure of consciousness itself, using the alcoholic’s irresolvable psychic tension as an emblem of the universal condition.
, The Shadow of a Figure of Light, 2024thesis
There has been a failure to consider the polarity stressed by Jung in a critical way. They add that more research is needed but, especially for creative people, the polarity can be seen as no more than an assumption.
Samuels reports Loomis and Singer’s empirical challenge to the superior/inferior function polarity in Jungian typology, questioning whether its theoretical prominence survives scrutiny.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985thesis
I think these responses are natural when we come into the presence of one end of an archetypal polarity. Not every client is so strongly polarized. But when they are, the opposite end is stirred up within us.
Greene demonstrates how archetypal polarity operates clinically in the astrological-psychological consultation, where extreme identification with one pole constellates its opposite in the practitioner.
, The Development of Personality: Seminars in Psychological Astrology, Volume 1, 1987supporting
Dr. Randolph Stone, whose healing system called ‘Polarity Therapy’ uses nothing more than the two hands and the two people’s energies
Arroyo introduces Stone’s Polarity Therapy as an applied somatic-energetic system based on the positive-negative polarity inherent in the human body, connecting depth-psychological concepts to hands-on healing.
, Astrology, Psychology, and the Four Elements: An Energy Approach to Astrology and Its Use in the Counseling Arts, 1975supporting
This polarity keeps the earth in balance. All electrical phenomena of technology require positive-negative polarity. Harnessing this polarity must involve a disturbance of the balance.
Sardello extends the concept of polarity to geomagnetic and technological registers, arguing that the earth’s natural polar balance is disturbed by the harnessing of electrical polarity in modern technology.
, Facing the World with Soul: The Reimagination of Modern Life, 1992supporting
Jung had introduced ‘the problem of the opposites’ in Psychological Types — which Jaime read while studying the myth of the Ajumawi.
Peterson traces polarity’s systematic introduction into depth psychology to Jung’s Psychological Types, situating its conceptual origins within the broader problem of the opposites.
, The Shadow of a Figure of Light, 2024supporting
The deformity points to their each being only half of a whole reality. As Jung says, ‘they are separated by deformity.’
Hillman reads the mythic deformities of senex and puer figures as symbolic evidence of the split nature of archetypal polarity, each pole embodying only half of an originally unified psychic reality.
, Senex & Puer, 2015supporting
the splits in which we are caught as manifestations of an archetypal split within our individual souls.
Hillman frames contemporary cultural and historical divisions as symptomatic expressions of a primordial archetypal polarity operating within the individual soul.
, Senex & Puer, 2015supporting
the yogi seeks to induce this concentration or accumulation of libido by systematically withdrawing attention (libido) both from external objects and from interior psychic states, in a word, from the opposites.
Jung notes that yogic practice aims at the suspension of the tension of opposites through withdrawal of libido, implicitly acknowledging polarity as the default condition of ordinary consciousness.
, Psychological Types, 1921aside