Personal Development Ideas

Personal growth: Carl Jung and the “aimlessness” of life November 14, 2017

Carl Jung (1875-1961), the famed psychologist, psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst, once noted: “About a third of my cases [patients] are not suffering from any clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and aimlessness of their lives.” (1)

This statement leads us to wonder whether the troubled patients led lives that were: (a) actually aimless and senseless; (b) just perceived to be so by the patients; or (c) a combination of both.

Whatever the cause of the patients’ discomfort, it’s a troubling emotional space for anyone to be in.

Perhaps the patients of Dr. Jung’s most active consulting period would have been better able to cope with many of life’s circumstances if they had been able to access the wide variety of quality self-help materials available to us today through modern media and technology.

We have now come to appreciate that one of the key potential emotional and psychological benefits of involving ourselves in the study and practice of personal development is that we can, in most non-medical instances, develop an improved focus and enhanced sense of purpose and appreciation in our lives.

So, if you’re working on a personal program of improvement and do not feel that you are making enough progress, stop fretting.

You’re probably growing emotionally and intellectually faster than you realize, and are actually better able to cope with life’s inevitable ups and downs better every day.

(1) Neurosis as defined by dictionary.com:  “a relatively mild mental illness that is not caused by organic disease, involving symptoms of stress (depression, anxiety, obsessive behavior, hypochondria) but not a radical loss of touch with reality”

— Dennis Mellersh