To Elisabeth Metzger

Dear Frau Metzger, 7 February 1942



It can only be experienced as an image.

Hence the archetype can never enter consciousness in its entirety but remains a borderline phenomenon, in the sense that external stimuli impinge upon the inner archetypal datum in a zone of friction, which is precisely what we might describe consciousness as being.

This view would do greater justice to the essentially conflicting nature of consciousness.

From the rest of your remarks I see that you have already formed trenchant views of the nature of the psyche.

Yours sincerely,

C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 313.
