The privatio boni — the Augustinian-Origenist doctrine that evil is not a positive substance but merely an absence or diminution of good — occupies a pivotal and persistently contested position within the depth-psychological corpus. Jung's engagement with the term is neither casual nor merely historical: it emerges from clinical encounter, most famously from a patient whose moral evasions were rationalized through theological orthodoxy, and it deepens into a systematic philosophical and empirical challenge to Christian metaphysics. Jung's central contention is that the privatio boni, as applied within ecclesiastical tradition since Origen, renders evil ontologically insubstantial — a 'mere shadow' — thereby disabling the psyche's capacity for genuine moral reckoning and obstructing the integration of the shadow. By characterizing Christ as an image of the summum bonum from which the dark side is excluded, the doctrine produces, in Jung's account, a fatally asymmetrical God-image and a correspondingly one-sided anthropology. Von Franz extends this analysis to Descartes, arguing that adherence to the privatio boni inhibited his philosophical investigation of the unconscious. Gnostic thinkers — Valentinus especially — appear in the corpus as early dissenters who compensated for this asymmetry through their engagement with shadow and duality. The overarching tension is between metaphysical tradition and empirical psychology: Jung insists that psychology must treat evil as experientially real and substantial, whatever theology may declare of its ontological status.
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11 substantive passages
through the doctrine of the privatio boni first propounded by Origen, evil was characterized as a mere diminution of good and thus deprived of substance... evil is simply 'the accidental lack of perfection.'
Jung identifies the privatio boni as the doctrinal mechanism by which Christianity excluded the dark side from the Christ-symbol, producing a deficient image of wholeness and necessitating empirical psychology's reassertion of evil's substantiality.
Jung, Carl Gustav, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951thesis
I was called upon to treat a patient... a fervent adherent of the privatio boni, because it fitted in admirably with his scheme: evil in itself is nothing, a mere shadow, a trifling and fleeting diminution of good.
Jung traces his clinical motivation for engaging the privatio boni to a patient who exploited the doctrine as a sedative for conscience, establishing the term's direct relevance to psychological practice and moral evasion.
Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1958thesis
psychology must insist on the reality of evil and must reject any definition that regards it as insignificant or actually non-existent... the privatio boni, as must be apparent to everyone, is founded on a petitio principii.
Jung mounts his most explicit epistemological critique, charging that the privatio boni is logically circular and empirically untenable, while conceding its psychological significance as evidence of a primary human disposition to valorize the good.
Jung, Carl Gustav, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951thesis
The Christian answer is that evil is a privatio boni. This classic formula robs evil of absolute existence and makes it a shadow that has only a relative existence dependent on light.
Jung articulates the logical structure of the privatio boni formula and contests it on psychological grounds, arguing that moral judgment requires the equal reality of both poles — good and evil cannot be asymmetrically substantiated.
Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1958thesis
their ideas compensate the asymmetry of God postulated by the doctrine of the privatio boni, exactly like those well-known modern tendencies of the unconscious to produce symbols of totality.
Jung reads Gnostic speculation as an unconscious compensatory response to the God-image's asymmetry created by the privatio boni, linking historical heresy to the individuation drive toward wholeness.
Jung, Carl Gustav, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951supporting
Non est ergo malum nisi privatio boni. Ac per hoc nusquam est nisi in re aliqua bona... bona sine malis esse possunt... mala vero sine bonis esse non possunt.
Jung supplies the Augustinian Latin source text of the privatio boni formula, demonstrating its patristic pedigree and establishing the precise theological claim against which his psychological critique is directed.
Jung, Carl Gustav, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951supporting
The unconscious inhibition that hindered Descartes from investigating this complex of problems more deeply must, in the final analysis, have been his adherence to the Christian définition of evil as a mere privatio boni.
Von Franz extends Jung's critique beyond theology into intellectual history, arguing that Descartes' adherence to the privatio boni constituted an unconscious inhibition that blocked his philosophical engagement with the problem of evil and the unconscious.
von Franz, Marie-Louise, Dreams: A Study of the Dreams of Jung, Descartes, Socrates, and Other Historical Figures, 1998supporting
the conception of God as the summum bonum... stands in sharp contrast to the Old Testament view and which, for reasons of psychic balance, inevitably requires the existence of an infimum malum.
Jung situates the privatio boni within the broader theological construction of God as summum bonum, arguing that this one-sided elevation of the good unconsciously generates the compensating figure of the devil as infimum malum.
Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1958supporting
the Creator... cast off His dark qualities and became the summum bonum. This myth remained unassailably vital for a millennium.
Jung narrates the historical arc whereby the Christian God-image shed its dark aspects to become the summum bonum, situating the privatio boni within a broader myth of divine self-purification whose psychological consequences eventually became untenable.
Jung, Carl Gustav, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1963supporting
The intensive preoccupation of the Gnostics with the problem of evil stands out in startling contrast to the peremptory nullification of it by the Church fathers.
Jung contrasts Gnostic earnestness about the problem of evil with the patristic nullification effected by the privatio boni, presenting early Christian heterodoxy as psychologically more adequate to the reality of the shadow.
Jung, Carl Gustav, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951supporting
If the opposites were not contained in the image, it would not be an image of totality. But it is meant to be a picture of ineffable wholeness, in other words, its symbol.
Without naming the privatio boni explicitly, Jung argues that any image of totality must contain the opposites — a formulation that implicitly refutes the doctrine's exclusion of evil from the divine image.
Jung, C.G., Collected Works Volume 18: The Symbolic Life, 1976aside