THE INNER WORLD OF CHOICE

The Inner World of Choice

 “A nine-year-old boy had a violent temper…The world was his potential enemy. Anyone who thwarted him- his mother, his teacher, his playmates- instantly became the adversary to be overcome by violence. At these times he was the hate that took possession of him. He had also another hate, “that old beast Hitler”, whom his father, an army office, was fighting…

Who was it, then, who took control over him and made him try to bully other children and terrorize his mother? It sounded like Hitler; it acted like Hitler.

He refused to discuss the inner Hitler… One day, after talking of how Hitler enjoyed being swept into storms of anger and working himself up into a frenzy of excitement, he was silent for some time, and then announced, “I am not going to have that old Hitler running me anymore.”That day his battle with Hitler became an inner conflict, and his struggle was no longer primarily with his mother or his teacher or his playmates but with Hitler, the shadow personality within his own psyche. He began to talk to the inner Hitler. In this way, he succeeded in one of the greatest tasks of our present-day –that is, to introvert war. “For Hitler was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities…He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, to an overwhelming degree, and this is another reason why they fell for him.”

Inertia is one of the greatest enemies of conscious choice.

 He who hates his own life will find an image of hate confronting him in an outer object. He who fears commitment and would shirk responsibility will encounter a tyrant ready to enter into his life and take it over.

 Perhaps the greatest defense against projection is a reference for life and a respect for the values and the dignity of the human personality.

 Man’s perfect nature is spoiled by a corrupt society. Rousseau-1712- 1778: life in an orphanage, hateful, angry, quarreled a lot with his father and everyone else.

 The transformative power of the divine word can be seen in Paulus, once Saulus. He had been the enemy of the Catholic Church-hatred, anger (be-set),

Rational – at the gate of Damascus, -blind for three days, a vision appeared, inner seeing, inner light, -he was one of the major disciples of Jesus. He wrote in Corinthians, 1, 13- the greatest and perhaps most moving treatise on love in the history of mankind- the power of the divine word.

“If a man remains at the mercy of moods of hope or fear aroused by the outer world, he loses his inner consistency of character…Humiliations often come from an unforeseen quarter. Such experiences are not merely effects produced by

the external world but logical consequences evoked by his own nature.”

Book excerpt from The Inner World of Choice, a very extraordinary book by Frances Wickes, Jungian Psychologist, she was in the 60s when she wrote it.