The Seba library treats Abbaissement Du Niveau Mental in 8 passages, across 3 authors (including Jung, Carl Gustav, Hillman, James, Neumann, Erich).
occasionally something similar can happen to civilized man, only he does not describe it as ‘loss of soul’ but as an ‘abaissement du niveau mental,’ Janet’s apt term for this phenomenon. It is a slackening of the tensity of consciousness
Jung directly equates the primitive ‘loss of soul’ with Janet’s abaissement du niveau mental, defining it as a slackening of conscious tensity and establishing its clinical and anthropological scope.
, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1959thesis
the obsessive moods and compulsive thoughts that may intrude during any abaissment du niveau mental (Janet). Whereas most psychologies attempt to ban these personalities as disintegrative, archetypal psychology favors bringing non-ego figures to further awareness
Hillman cites the abaissement as the condition under which autonomous non-ego figures intrude, and reframes this not as pathology to be suppressed but as the generative opening that archetypal psychology cultivates.
, Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account, 1983thesis
the obsessive moods and compulsive thoughts that may intrude during any abaissment du niveau mental (Janet). Whereas most psychologies attempt to ban these personalities as disintegrative, archetypal psychology favors bringing non-ego figures to further awareness
Parallel statement in Hillman’s Archetypal Psychology affirming the abaissement as the occasion for soul-making through engagement with non-ego personalities.
, Archetypal Psychology, 1983thesis
abaissement du niveau mental, 112n
The index entry in The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature confirms the term’s technical standing within Jung’s published corpus and points to its use in the context of the psychology of artistic creation.
, The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature, 1966supporting
abaissement du niveau mental, 213
The index of Two Essays on Analytical Psychology records the term’s occurrence at a specific locus, attesting to its systematic role within Jung’s analytic theorizing.
, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 1953supporting
abaissement du niveau mental, 385
Neumann’s index to The Origins and History of Consciousness places the abaissement within a systematic developmental account of consciousness, situating ego-level lowering in the broader evolutionary narrative.
, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019supporting
Depression and suffering would belong to consciousness, be part of its composition, not afflictions coming to it unconsciously, making it unconscious, dragging it away and down, lowering its level.
Hillman’s discussion of depression as a lowering of the level of consciousness resonates with the abaissement concept, proposing that such descent belongs constitutively to a Dionysian model of consciousness rather than representing mere pathological diminution.
, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972supporting
The soul builds its endurance, its stamina as Rafael Lopez calls it, through hopelessness and depression.
Hillman’s valorization of depression and weakness as soul-building resources implicitly recasts the lowered mental level associated with the abaissement as a condition of psychic deepening rather than simple deterioration.
, A Blue Fire: The Essential James Hillman, 1989aside