Jung’s Energic Theory

“A changing consciousness begins to sense the gravity of its own historical foundations, causing a profound collision between the two perspectives. The conflict of opposites now moves into the foreground as ego intuits the deeper pull of functions which exceed choice and free will. In terms of Jung’s energic theory, this is one of the vital steps toward a conscious recognition of the inner gradient — the narrow gate referred to in the Bible. The reactions that follow reflect the fear of being taken over by the “alien will” of the unconscious and its steady aim toward wholeness. As it continues to seize hold, dreams flow along this gradient to establish bridges which would further connect an isolated modern perspective to the still-living history of the instinctual psyche.” A Mid-Life Perspective: Conversations With The Unconscious

The focus of this post is, Carl Jung’s On Psychic Energy, the first chapter in his eighth volume, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. In it, he examines the bases of the two general concepts by which the psyche interprets the world: the causal, mechanistic view and the energic, or final, viewpoint.

The causal view, Jung wrote, “… conceives an event as the effect of a cause, in the sense that unchanging substances change their relations to one another according to fixed laws.”

From the energic standpoint, “the event is traced back from effect to cause on the assumption that some kind of energy underlies the changes in phenomena… The flow of energy has a definite direction (goal) in that it follows the gradient of potential in a way that cannot be reversed… The concept, therefore, is founded not on the substances themselves but on their relations, whereas the moving substance itself is the basis of the mechanistic view.”

He explained the two concepts as the logical reversal of one another. One points backward in time to a cause, and the other points forward to a goal or purpose without positing a cause: the difference between our conscious perceptions of moving bodies in space and psychic images and intuitions of their relations and how they may serve unconscious purposes.

Though, conceptually, the viewpoints are mutually exclusive, a compromise has resulted in which an event is conceived “as partly causal, partly final – a compromise which gives rise to all sorts of theoretical hybrids but which yields, it cannot be denied, a relatively faithful picture of reality. We must always bear in mind that despite the most beautiful agreement between the facts and our ideas, explanatory principles are only points of view, that is, manifestations of the psychological attitude and of the a priori conditions under which all thinking takes place.”

This distinction was extrapolated by Jung from Freud’s reductive analysis which followed from philosophical concepts which assumed the causal sequence as the defining one. The idea of unconscious energy flowing toward a ‘gradient of potential’ had always indirectly inserted itself into the causal concept, but more so with the increasing sophistication of physical science and its acknowledgment of the subjective factor. Most philosophers aren’t scientists (and vice versa), and the hybrid of the two concepts Jung referred to was the result of a less precise psychology yet to elaborate a psychic equivalent of the physical processes.

The fusion of concrete perceptions with unconscious images accentuated the personal equation. The “beautiful agreement between facts and ideas” happens when we interpret a set of facts based on a subjective viewpoint which confuses contradictory ideas of cause and purpose without distinguishing intellectually where and how they may differ owing to unknown variables. It turned out that the dual nature of the psyche required both interpretations to arrive at a more objective description of our behavior. The final concept yields a different set of facts bound to an equally objective reality beneath the causal assumption: it follows the flow of psychic energy toward an undefinable purpose. In this way, Darwin arrived at his theory of evolution and the idea of natural development.

We understand that physical and mental processes may be mutually influential – who has not awakened from a dream with heart pounding, shaken and perspiring? Yet, current knowledge cannot explain how it occurs. The mysterious process by which neurological impulses or chemical reactions become psychic images to a perceiving consciousness is beyond our ken. That being said, it is impossible to assign primacy to one or the other. Psychologically, however, we can refine our observations based on the precision of the concepts we use to distinguish the movement of ‘objects’ and their relations.

So far as Nature is concerned this is a dynamic process only artificially dissected for purposes of inspection by a subjective observer. These classifications don’t exist in Nature but are projections of the qualities of consciousness: to dissect, discriminate, and organize thought. Since recent biology assures us that all life is purposive, the energic viewpoint has likewise emerged as a valuable explanatory principle.

Aside from the fact that the physical laws of energy do not account for the phenomena of life or how the living organism transforms energy, the body’s impulses must also contain a psychic aspect; otherwise it would be impossible for an image to be produced by them. To assign primacy to one or the other then becomes a value judgment – the projection of a subjective bias by the observer.

Yet most of natural science conceives physical processes to be primary – “unjustly, for it cannot be substantiated…” as Jung wrote. This fact is consistent with how opposites work and the uncertainty of evaluating intuitions as they apply to subjective emotions.

Read the preface to my account of how I followed Jung’s ideas and experienced the emotional changes they can produce.