Carl Jung’s Cure for the Psychic Poison of Secrets

Jung considered secrets a ‘psychic poison’ damaging to psychological health.

He viewed analytical treatment and the religious confessional as growing from a common psychic root.

Just as religious confession is a necessary precursor to atonement and reconciliation, so the discovery and acknowledgement of repressions or concealments in analysis are essential steps in curing neuroses.

Both imply some secret or concealment, whose psychological implications will be the theme of this article.

The ideas and quotes are taken from Chapter 2 of Modern Man in Search of a Soul.

Secrets are a psychic poison

‘Secret’ here constitutes anything concealed or repressed at the level of the psyche.

In Jung’s words, ‘the maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates their possessor from the community’.

Secrets, or repressions, resemble a burden of guilt that creates a wedge between us and others.

However, when we know what we’re repressing, the psychological damage done is less significant than when we don’t know, or are unaware that we’re repressing anything at all.

The latter cases constitute concealments not just from others, but from ourselves. Jung describes the consequences of such conditions for the psychic content concealed:

‘It then splits off from consciousness as an independent complex, to lead a separate existence in the unconscious, where it can be neither corrected nor interfered with by the conscious mind. The complex is thus an autonomous portion of the psyche which, as experience has shown, develops a peculiar fantasy-life of its own. What we call fantasy is simply spontaneous psychic activity; and it wells up whenever the repressive action of the conscious mind relaxes or ceases altogether, as in sleep. In sleep this activity shows itself in the form of dreams.'

This is significant, and worth repeating:

• Things repressed or concealed from our conscious mind develop as an independent complex, where they exist autonomously in the unconscious

• We can’t correct or interfere with complexes from the conscious mind

• When the conscious mind relaxes or ceases, as in sleep, this activity shows itself in dreams

Even in waking life, these dreams take place below the threshold of consciousness, the repressive ego keeping them at bay from our conscious awareness.

The contents that make up the unconscious aren’t just conscious contents that have been repressed. The unconscious is vast, far greater than the conscious, as Jung explains:

‘...the unconscious has contents peculiar to itself which, slowly growing upward from the depths, at last come into consciousness. We should therefore in no wise picture the unconscious psyche to ourselves as a mere receptacle for contents discarded by the conscious mind.’

Psychic contents below the threshold of conscious awareness impact our psychic activities, though indirectly, through lapses in the tongue or memory.

Withheld emotions are as damaging as secrets

For Jung, withholding emotions is another form of concealment or repression, which we’ve already seen is a ‘psychic poison’.

Restraining oneself emotionally ‘may be as harmful as the personal secret’, and is the cause of ugly moods and irritability.

Withheld emotions alienate and disturb us as much as personal secrets, and equally burden us with guilt.

Jung describes how 'in the long run nothing is more unbearable than a tepid harmony in personal relations brought about by withholding emotion'.

“Give up what thou hast, and then thou wilt receive”

Jung’s ultimate prognosis is bleak: keeping secrets and restraining emotions will make you sick.

But there’s a way out, a liberating mechanism built into human nature captured in Ginsberg’s prophetic call to ‘tell your secrets’.

The passage below from Jung is too good to summarise, so I’ll finish with the whole thing:

‘There appears to be a conscience in mankind which severely punishes the man who does not somehow and at some time, at whatever cost to his pride, cease to defend and assert himself, and instead confess himself fallible and human. Until he can do this, an impenetrable wall shuts him out from the living experience of feeling himself a man among men. Here we find a key to the great significance of true, unstereotyped confession—a significance known in all the initiation and mystery cults of the ancient world, as is shown by a saying from the Greek mysteries: “Give up what thou hast, and then thou wilt receive.”’