Within the depth-psychology corpus, ‘resignation’ names a genuinely contested concept whose valence shifts dramatically according to disciplinary context and analytical purpose. Karen Horney supplies the most sustained theoretical treatment, distinguishing neurotic resignation — a defensive withdrawal from active wishing, striving, and engagement in order to manage inner conflict — from its constructive analogues in spiritual renunciation and the mellowing wisdom of later life. For Horney, resigned individuals often pass for ‘normal’ precisely because their detachment mimics equanimity, yet beneath that surface lies a static self-concept, emotional inertia, and a marked aversion to change. William James approaches resignation from the phenomenology of religious experience, reading Stoic and Epicurean variants as historically significant but ultimately insufficient philosophies of despair — dignified way-stations on the road toward fuller spiritual surrender. Edward Edinger reads resignation as the terminal destination of a purely personalistic, reductive psychology: where the numinous is dissolved into biography, disillusionment and resignation are all that remain. Jung’s own letters deploy the term almost exclusively in its administrative register — tendering or finalizing his resignation from institutional offices — though this biographical material carries a secondary psychological weight, marking the moments at which he disengages from collective structures to pursue individuation. James’s Puritan account of giving a dying wife ‘up unto the Lord’ presents resignation as a supreme act of devotional will. Together these voices identify a field in which resignation marks the boundary between pathological withdrawal, courageous acceptance, and transformative renunciation.