Within the depth-psychology corpus and its adjacent philosophical territories, ‘suspension of judgment’ operates across several overlapping registers that scholars must hold in tension. Its most ancient formulation is Pyrrhonian: the deliberate withholding of assent — epoché — produced through the systematic opposition of appearances to appearances and ideas to ideas, culminating in a condition of equipoise that Sextus Empiricus presents as the gateway to ataraxia. Nussbaum traces how this therapeutic itinerary reduces all beliefs to apparent equivalence, exposing a latent paradox: the Skeptic’s very cultivation of ataraxia implies a commitment that undermines strict neutrality. Husserl translates the Greek term into phenomenological method, redeploying epoché as the ‘bracketing’ or ‘neutralization’ of the natural positing attitude — a trainable, first-person skill that Thompson reads, via Depraz, as embodied attention-redirection rather than mere cognitive abstinence. In Jungian and post-Jungian practice, the concept migrates further: Hillman invokes epoché as the methodological precondition for encountering the dream image on its own terms, while Romanyshyn frames the mood of reverie as a functional analog — a non-directed, non-critical openness that lets the researcher be ‘thought.’ Von Franz, by contrast, treats psychological suspension not as method but as symptom: the paralytic stasis of equally-weighted opposites, a stoppage in the flow of life. The tension between suspension as liberation and suspension as paralysis runs through the entire corpus.
suspension of judgement about everything comes about because of the setting of things in opposition. We oppose either appearances to appearances, or ideas to ideas, or appearances to ideas.
Sextus Empiricus provides the canonical Pyrrhonian account of how suspension of judgment is systematically generated through the confrontation of equally weighted opposing impressions and arguments.
, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987thesis
the epoché can be described as the flexible and trainable mental skill of being able both to suspend one’s inattentive immersion in experience and to turn one’s attention to the manner in which something appears or is given to experience.
Thompson, drawing on Husserl and Depraz, reframes phenomenological epoché as a practical, embodied, first-person skill of attentional redirection rather than a purely theoretical act of withholding assent.
, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, 2007thesis
again and again, through the entire range of her beliefs she will be led into suspension — until there is no thesis she can defend, no belief whose answer means more to her than the answer to the question whether the number of the stars is odd or even.
Nussbaum shows how the Skeptic teacher deploys successive paired counterarguments to bring the student into a total suspension of all belief, achieving a condition of radical indifference toward every proposition.
, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, 1994thesis
The suspension (epoché) of dreamer, of therapy and of theory enabled us to regard the dream animal without benefit of therapeutic intentions or psycho-dynamic concepts more like a complex image.
Hillman applies phenomenological epoché directly to dreamwork methodology, arguing that suspending both the dreamer’s perspective and theoretical frameworks is the precondition for encountering the dream image as autonomous poetic reality.
, Animal Presences, 2008thesis
When an inner psychological conflict gets too bad, life gets suspended; the two opposites are equal, the yes and the no are equally strong, and life cannot go on. You wish to move with the right leg and the left refuses, and vice versa, and you have the situation of suspension.
Von Franz reframes suspension of judgment as a pathological rather than liberatory state — a psychic paralysis arising from equally weighted inner opposites that halts the flow of life entirely.
, Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales, 1974thesis
why does the Skeptic have a Skeptical attitude to ataraxia? According to him, because he must have this attitude, if he is to avoid disturbance and attain ataraxia.
Nussbaum exposes the internal tension within Skeptical practice: the very pursuit of ataraxia through suspension of judgment covertly reintroduces the committed orientation that suspension was meant to eliminate.
, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, 1994supporting
Playing with the possibilities in the work requires, as Jung notes, the suspension of all criticism. As strange as it may seem, therefore, if research is to keep soul in mind, then it must acknowledge that the researcher’s mood and body belong to the body of his or her work.
Romanyshyn, invoking Jung, argues that depth-psychological research requires the suspension of critical judgment as a precondition for entering the reverie state in which unconscious material can address the researcher.
, The Wounded Researcher: Research with Soul in Mind, 2007supporting
‘In order,’ he says, ‘that our listeners may be guided by reason rather than authority.’
The Academic Skeptic defends the practice of withholding revealed doctrine as a pedagogical strategy: suspension of judgment protects the student’s rational autonomy from the distorting force of authoritative assertion.
, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987supporting
Other women with greater inner integrity realize that they cannot hold the issue in suspension indefinitely without suffering from a psychic split which necessarily brings neurosis.
Harding applies the logic of suspension to moral-psychological conflict in women, arguing that prolonged indecision — holding a conflict in suspension — is itself pathogenic, producing the neurotic split it was meant to avoid.
, the way of all women, 1970supporting
in the mood of reverie, the complex researcher stops thinking and gives himself or herself over to being thought. He or she follows the track of thinking into paths that he or she has not made.
Romanyshyn describes the reverie-state as a functional analog to suspension of judgment, in which directed cognitive control is relinquished so that the psyche’s own movement can proceed unimpeded.
, The Wounded Researcher: Research with Soul in Mind, 2007aside
‘Tis the sharpness of our mind that gives the edge to our pains and pleasures,’ Montaigne maintains.
Sharpe and Ure situate Montaigne’s moral psychology within the tradition of judgment’s power over experience, providing a contrast case in which active judgment — rather than its suspension — is the therapeutic instrument.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021aside