The Inside and the Outside: Discovering the Reality of the Psyche

The Inner World

One of the fundamental ideas that C.G. Jung introduced into psychology is the notion of the reality of the psyche. The inner world, taught Jung, is not just a reflection of our experiences in the outer world, but a dimension of experience with at least as much claim on us as concrete, material existence.

The nature of psychic existence is such that we only become aware of the external world through the images that appear in the “inner world.” 

When we look closely at the way we experience the world, it is hard to say where the dividing line between “inner” and “outer” actually lies. As Jung states:

“‘All that is outside, also is inside,’ we could say with Goethe.”

In his work, Jung was challenging the notion that our consciousness was simply a mirror that merely reflected a secondary image of a “more real” material reality. Human beings, he believed, were not born as “blank slates” that were filled in by experience. 

Just as a human body comes into existence with a particular form, so does the psyche possess its own unique structure. It is this psychic structure that makes it possible for human beings to have an experience of the world in the first place.

“But this ‘inside,’ which modern rationalism is so eager to derive from ‘outside,’ has an a priori structure of its own that antedates all conscious experience.”

Events Into Experiences

How is that we know things at all? 

Just as there must be an eye to receive light and thus make sight possible, so must there be a consciousness that receives and interprets the data of lived experience and thus translates “things that happen” into “things that are known” or, to put it another way, that turns events into experiences.

“It is quite impossible to conceive how ‘experience’ in the widest sense, or, for that matter, anything psychic, could originate exclusively in the outside world.”

One way to illustrate this would be with the example of a rear view mirror. The objects viewed in a rear view mirror are perceived by the mind as being behind us as we drive. However, the mirror and the image in the mirror are, in actual fact, in front of us. Although we are face to face with the image, we interpret it without reflection as approaching from behind.

In other words, there is an event — viewing the image in the mirror in front of us — and then there is the experience — in this case, perceiving the image as if it were behind us. External event and inner experience interact in such a way as to create the reality of the moment.

The Reality of the Psyche

The reality of the psyche means that our inner life is as unknown to us as is the world into which we are thrown. We tend to believe that we know ourselves best of all, but the truth is that we are much more than we know or may ever know. 

Jung insisted that the human psyche was a great mystery of which we know far too little.  

“The psyche is part of the inmost mystery of life, and it has its own peculiar structure and form like every other organism.”

Somehow we come into the world with the capacity to translate the chaos of life in the world into organized patterns. And this capacity is with us from the very beginning. 

For instance, infants have an incredible ability to recognize faces, even when there is little else that they are able to process visually. There is even evidence that babies have an amazing ability to discern emotions in others.

By asserting the mystery of the psyche, Jung is at the same time denying that it is something derived from “the outside world.” The origin of psyche is something that we can never discover. We only know that it exists.

“Whether this psychic structure and its elements, the archetypes, ever ‘originated’ at all is a metaphysical question and therefore unanswerable. The structure is something given, the precondition that is found to be present in every case. And this is the mother, the matrix – the form into which all experience is poured.”

The Other Within and the Other Without

One of the reasons that all this is important to understand is that it can make us more compassionate with ourselves. The reality of the psyche is, at the same time, the reality of the “other” that lives within us.

I work with many individuals who will often say things like, “I shouldn’t feel this way” or “I shouldn’t have thoughts like this.” They tend to get angry with themselves and to judge themselves negatively when they are beset by thoughts or feelings they don’t like.  They do not understand why they can’t just simply change them.

But our thoughts and feelings, like our dreams and fantasies, are not always things that are created by us or willed by us. Rather, they happen to us. 

Does this mean that we have no control over our inner lives and are only the victims of our own minds? 

No.

What it means is that we are not the dictators of our own souls. We need to come into relationship with “the other within” as much as we would with anyone in our outer lives. We need to learn to respond to ourselves with patience and not demand perfection of ourselves.

By learning to treat this “other within” with kindness and compassion, we will at the same time be learning to strengthen our ability to respond to “the other without” in the same way. 

And that, of course, is much needed in this world of ours. Being human is not an easy thing. We are all thrown into this mystery together. Anything that can increase our understanding of ourselves and of each other is essential. For as the poet William Stafford once observed, “The darkness around us (and within us, I would add) is deep.”

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