The C.G. Jung Page: "analysis"

Psychoanalysis, session by session, works toward what the alchemists called "a warring peace." The practice of analysis cultivates an aliveness to real conflict and strives to hold what C.G. Jung called “the tension of opposites”–consciousness and unconsciousness, the ideal self and the shadow self, individuation and the need for companions, love and power. The analytic relationship evokes distressing memories, frightening thoughts and emotions, and the therapeutic relationship is, at its best, comforting and frustrating--"a warring peace, a sweet wound." When emotions become acutely intense, we tend to act on them but the analytic challenge requires that both partners think, talk, observe, reflect and not act. Both participants in the analytic relationship are constrained and challenged by the pact they make to talk rather than act.