Awareness Has a Price and You've Been Paying It | Carl Jung's Psychology of People Who Are Too Aware

"Each step to a greater consciousness is a kind of Promethean guilt." Carl Jung put that sentence in a footnote of Two Essays on Analytical Psychology (1928), twelve years after he chose a scene from Goethe's Faust to describe what knowing does to a person: the devil writing the serpent's words, "Eritis sicut Deus", into a student's album. Nearly every video about people who are too aware says the same thing: you notice too much, it is a gift and a curse, rest. Jung's claim is colder and more useful. Consciousness is not a free good. It was bought, by separation; it is paid for in one-sidedness; the bill is collected by compensation; and it tempts one specific illness, which he called inflation, or godlikeness. In this video: directed thinking, the kind Jung called "expensive"; Prometheus and the Fall as one story; Faust begging his contented assistant never to learn the second impulse; Schiller's fragment and the Amfortas wound; the American businessman whose one-sided success turned into hypochondria; the patient who "disinfected the whole heavens with sublimate"; enantiodromia; the "nothing but" habit; godlikeness in suffering, and why "sadder but wiser" did not replicate; the chapter that cost Jung his friendship with Freud; the mana-personality and the disciple; Spitteler's wretched Prometheus; why the simple life cannot be faked; the very intelligent young man who understood everything and was no better; Jung's own blind spot; the sacrifice he offered instead; and a line from Aeschylus almost nobody quotes: Prometheus's first gift was not fire. This is not about vigilance learned in a frightening house, which is real and deserves its own care. Quotations are from public-domain translations (Hinkle 1916; Collected Papers 1917; Psychological Types 1923; Two Essays and Contributions 1928; Goethe, Schiller, Aeschylus). Later works and the memoir are paraphrased. Art credits in the pinned comment - every plate is a public-domain museum work. Asleep instead? The sleep cut of this thinker is on our sister channel, PhiloPsych Sleep:    • The Psychology of People Who Are Too Aware...   CHAPTERS 0:00 The devil's line in a student's album 4:03 Jung's footnote: knowledge increases godlikeness 5:51 What every other video tells you 8:33 A footnote about fire 10:17 Promethean guilt 13:54 Jung's cold ledger 15:45 Not 'hyperconsciousness' 16:35 The book that began it, and its translator 18:50 Directed thinking is expensive 22:15 Built to see only differences 24:52 Fire and the apple 28:18 Eyes opened: the first self-awareness 29:36 A self, and the knowledge of death 31:24 The man who lifted his head from the waves 34:19 Faust and the man of one impulse 40:13 Positive illusions: do the naive pay less? 44:25 Consciousness is selection 47:39 'Differentiated' is the bill 48:55 Schiller's fragment and the Amfortas wound 51:08 The strawberry jam study 54:07 Culture and barbarism 55:15 The secret of success 56:16 The American businessman 1:00:27 The free thinker checks the calendar 1:01:58 Nebuchadnezzar's tree 1:04:49 Enantiodromia: a running contrary ways 1:06:25 The disinfected heavens 1:09:30 A war that would never come 1:11:28 Nietzsche: yea-saying, living the nay 1:14:42 'You are nothing but' 1:17:51 Seen through is not disposed of 1:22:05 The Abbe who worried about Judas 1:23:49 Godlikeness 1:26:00 'Completely aware of everything' 1:28:24 Inflation through knowledge 1:30:27 Godlikeness in suffering 1:32:26 Sadder but wiser? The finding that did not hold 1:34:25 The chapter that cost him Freud 1:37:11 Two men who saw through each other 1:38:46 The crisis at the summit 1:40:15 'It is art': the flattering exit refused 1:44:12 The mana-personality 1:47:49 The prophet and the disciple 1:50:36 Spitteler's wretched Prometheus 1:54:26 Schiller: the ladder that gave way 1:56:55 Raw turnips: the simple life cannot be faked 2:00:50 Taos, 1925: they think with their heads 2:02:07 The smaller life 2:05:06 Perfectly informed, and no better 2:08:05 The view from the balcony 2:10:55 A hundred mirrors 2:12:01 Rumination, reflection, and the research 2:14:59 Jung's own blind spot 2:17:14 The moth and the sun 2:18:33 'Nobody understands me' 2:20:55 The part cannot see the whole 2:24:10 The sacrifice 2:25:51 The fire that eats its maker 2:30:18 Bollingen: simplicity on purpose 2:31:34 Prometheus's first gift PhiloPsych Wake - philosophy and psychology, made cinematic. #CarlJung #Jung #Psychology #Philosophy #SelfAwareness