Restriction

restriction is the very being, the very character, of consciousness. And the reason for that distinctness, that particular capacity of acuteness of consciousness, is the body, which restricts you to a certain place in space and a certai

Jung argues that restriction is not incidental to consciousness but constitutive of it: the body’s localisation in space is what makes focused, discriminating awareness possible at all.

Jung, C.G., Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939, 1988thesis

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Sweet restriction. Good fortune. Going forward: esteem. The good fortune of sweet restriction. He abides in the central place. 6. Top Six Bitter restriction. Being steadfast: misfortune. Regret vanishes. Bitter restriction. Being steadfast: misfortune. Its way comes to an end.

The I Ching’s hexagram of restriction distinguishes between regulation freely accepted (sweet restriction, yielding good fortune) and rigidity pushed to its limit (bitter restriction, yielding misfortune), grounding the concept in principles of natural and social equilibrium.

Alfred Huang, The Complete I Ching: The Definitive Translation, 1998thesis

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self-restriction is not the end of the cost of neurotic adaptation. Because of guilt, the neurotic individual cannot escape scot-free even with the remnants of a life.

Yalom identifies neurotic self-restriction as a defence against death-anxiety that carries its own penalty — existential guilt arising from the unlived life forfeited in the bargain.

Yalom, Irvin D., Existential Psychotherapy, 1980thesis

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This restriction to the so-called material or concrete reality of objects perceived by the senses is a product of a particular way of thinking-the thinking that underlies “sound common sense” and our ordinary use of language.

Jung critiques the philosophical restriction of ‘reality’ to sense-data as an epistemological convention rather than a metaphysical necessity, arguing that psychic reality is equally real.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960supporting

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their behaviour as human data in a situation in which such behaviour was still free from restriction. This ancient freedom from restriction has for us today the scientific advantage that the figures and their behaviour can be observed as one observes a play in a theatre

Kerényi locates the mythological value of divine figures precisely in their pre-restriction freedom, treating the absence of normative constraint as the condition that makes archetypal behaviour legible to scholarly observation.

Kerényi, Karl, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951supporting

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The ancient kings of Ireland were subject to a number of exceedingly strange restrictions. If these were obeyed, every kind of blessing would descend upon the country, but if they were violated, disasters of every kind would visit it.

Freud documents how taboo restrictions placed upon sacred rulers function as a socially organised management of ambivalent power, connecting compliance with collective prosperity and violation with catastrophe.

Freud, Sigmund, Totem and Taboo, 1913supporting

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this man at that stage of analysis was inclined to make a restriction mentale, a curious kind of trick.

Jung uses the concept of restriction mentale — a deliberately narrowed or deceptive mental reservation — to describe an analytic patient’s unconscious strategy of qualified compliance that avoids genuine self-disclosure.

Jung, C.G., Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928-1930, 1984supporting

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The rules against killing or eating the totem are not the only taboos; sometimes they are forbidden to touch it, or even to look at it; in a number of cases the totem may not be spoken of by its proper name.

Freud catalogues the graduated system of totemic restrictions — interdictions on killing, eating, touching, looking at, and naming — as evidence of the multi-sensory scope through which ambivalent desire is regulated.

Freud, Sigmund, Totem and Taboo, 1913supporting

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even though his father’s house was elegant and refined, Gotama found it constricting, “crowded” and “dusty.” A miasma of petty tasks and pointless duties sullied everything.

Armstrong’s biographical account of the Buddha’s renunciation frames domestic restriction — the felt constriction of household life and obligation — as the experiential spur to a spiritual quest for unrestricted openness.

Armstrong, Karen, Buddha, 2000aside

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