Suspension occupies a remarkably plural conceptual space within the depth-psychology corpus, appearing in at least four distinct but partially overlapping registers. In von Franz, suspension names the archetypal condition of the god hung on the tree—Wotan, Christ, the Dionysian offering—wherein the philanthropic aspect of divinity enters the tragedy of irresolvable opposition, a total stoppage of life’s flow between equally weighted yes and no. This mythological reading shades directly into a clinical-psychological one: suspension as the most intolerable form of psychic suffering, the paralysis born of genuine inner conflict. A second and closely related register derives from Hellenistic philosophy: in Pyrrhonism and the New Academy, suspension of judgement (epochē) is the deliberate withholding of assent upon recognizing the equal force of opposing arguments, and is held to produce ataraxia—undisturbedness—as its reward. Nussbaum, Long, and Sedley mine this tradition extensively. A third register appears in Hillman and Romanyshyn, where epochē becomes a methodological virtue: the researcher’s willing suspension of interpretive categories and disbelief in order to receive the image or the stranger’s voice on its own terms. Damasio’s neurobiological usage—cathartic suspension of sustained affect—constitutes a fourth, somatic-scientific variant. What unites these traditions is the recognition that suspension is both wound and threshold: the halt before the new.
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.
Von Franz defines psychological suspension as the total arrest of life’s flow caused by an irresolvable conflict of equal opposites, constituting the most intolerable form of suffering.
, Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales, 1974thesis
The symbolism of the suspended god on the tree, the gallows, and the cross is very profound. Such a fate normally overtakes that part of the Divinity most interested in man; the philanthropic part of the Godhead falls into the tragedy of suspension.
Von Franz grounds psychological suspension in the archetypal myth of the divine figure hung on the tree, linking the mortal arrest of development to a civilizing, consciousness-raising crisis.
, Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales, 1974thesis
again and again, through the entire range of her beliefs she will be led into suspension— until there is no thesis she can to defend, no belief (as Sextus says) whose answer means more to her
Nussbaum describes the Pyrrhonist therapeutic method as systematically inducing suspension of judgement through the equipoise of counterarguments until all commitments dissolve.
, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, 1994thesis
Broadly speaking, this [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, as transmitted by Long and Sedley, specifies the logical mechanism by which suspension of judgement is generated through systematic oppositional pairing of appearances and ideas.
, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987thesis
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 the phenomenological epoché as a methodological suspension of therapeutic and theoretical presuppositions in order to attend to the dream image in its own essentialist terms.
, Animal Presences, 2008thesis
Nor was suspension of judgement about everything disturbed by those who toiled away and wrote lengthy arguments against it… impulse refused to become assent, and did not accept sensation as tipping the balance, but was seen to lead to action on its own initiative without needing assent.
Plutarch’s defense of the New Academy argues that suspension of judgement does not disable action, since impulse can operate without requiring assent.
, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987supporting
a willing suspension of disbelief, which is not simply a willingness to believe, but is the more challenging willingness not to disbelieve.
Romanyshyn recasts the willing suspension of disbelief as the demanding ethical posture of holding one’s prejudices at bay, prerequisite to genuine witnessing in imaginal research.
, The Wounded Researcher: Research with Soul in Mind, 2007supporting
the subtlety of his argument consists in the fact that it allows the Stoics to retain their doctrines on the connexion between happiness, prudence and right action, while denying that all three of these depend upon knowledge.
Arcesilaus demonstrates that the wise man’s suspension of judgement is compatible with right action, redefining correctness in terms of reasonable justification rather than epistemic certainty.
, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987supporting
Arcesilaus was so far from loving any reputation for novelty or arrogating to himself anything belonging to the ancients, that the sophists of his time accused him of rubbing off his doctrines about suspension of judgement and non-cognition on Socrates, Plato, Parmenides and Heraclitus.
Long and Sedley trace the historical lineage of suspension of judgement through Arcesilaus back to Socrates and the Presocratic tradition, establishing its deep philosophical roots.
, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987supporting
The purifying (cathartic) effect that all good tragedies should have, according to Aristotle, is based on the sudden suspension of a steadily induced state of fear and pity.
Damasio locates catharsis in the sudden suspension of sustained affective states, framing it as a somatic-emotional event with neurobiological implications for the understanding of consciousness.
, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, 1999supporting
Equal force, isostheneia, is the apparently equal persuasiveness plausibility of the opposing
Nussbaum identifies isostheneia—the equal force of opposing arguments—as the epistemic condition that precipitates and sustains suspension in the Pyrrhonist system.
, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, 1994supporting
to react by merely suspending judgement about whether there are such signs may seem altogether inadequate to safeguard your neutrality. It is safer to come down firmly against the possibility of learning the nature of things.
Long and Sedley note the tension in Aenesidemus between genuine suspension of judgement and the more aggressive Pyrrhonist move of outright denial, revealing the internal instability of pure epochē.
, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987supporting
For 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 probes the self-referential paradox of the Skeptic’s practice: suspension applied to its own end of ataraxia threatens to undermine the motivational coherence of the entire regimen.
, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, 1994aside
the Pyrrhonist insulates himself from assent in a way which results in supreme tranquillity, to all outward appearances he leads a quite conventional life.
Long and Sedley describe how the Pyrrhonist’s inner suspension of assent is paradoxically compatible with entirely conventional outward comportment, raising the question of suspension’s practical scope.
, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987aside