“Psychic reality” is a controversial concept, like “psyche” or “mind.”

By the latter terms some understand consciousness and its contents, others allow the existence of “dark” or “subconscious” representations.

Some include instincts in the psychic realm, others exclude them. The vast majority consider the psyche to be a result of biochemical processes in the brain cells.

A few conjecture that it is the psyche that makes the cortical cells function.

Some identify “life” with psyche. But only an insignificant minority regards the psychic phenomenon as a category of existence per se and draws the necessary conclusions.

It is indeed paradoxical that the category of existence, the indispensable sine qua non of all existence, namely the psyche, should be treated as if it were only semi-existent.


Only psychic existence is immediately verifiable.

To the extent that the world does not assume the form of a psychic image, it is virtually non-existent.

This is a fact which, with few exceptions as for instance in Schopenhauer’s philosophy-the West has not yet fully realized. But Schopenhauer was influenced by Buddhism and by the Upanishads. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion, Pages 480-481.
