““The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of the parents.” C. G. Jung
Below I share a quotation from Jung’s Autobiography, in which he comments on the same theme, namely that in the deeper layers of our psychic unconscious the connection with our ancestors is more alive than ever. It lives on in the questions that remained unresolved by them, as well as in the tasks that were left unfinished in their lives. This living connection with our ancestors is often experienced as a fate-governing need to complete the Unfinished and to answer the Unanswered.
“When I was working on the stone tablets, I became aware of the fateful links between me and my ancestors.
I feel very strongly that I am under the influence of things or questions which were left incomplete and unanswered by my parents and grandparents and more distant ancestors.
It often seems as if there were an impersonal karma within a family, which is passed on from parents to children.
I have always felt that I had to answer questions which were posed to my forebears and had not yet been answered, or that I had to complete, or at least continue, things which previous generations had left unfinished.
It is hard to say whether these questions are of a more personal or a more collective nature. It seems to me that the latter is the more probable.
A collective problem, if it is not recognized as such, always appears as a personal one, and then gives rise to the illusion that something is wrong in the personal psyche.
In reality the personal sphere is affected, but not primarily; it is affected secondarily as a result of some intolerable change in the social atmosphere.
In such cases the cause of the disturbance must be sought not in the personal environment but in the collective situation.
Up to now psychotherapy has taken little account of this circumstance.”
Source: p. 228, “C. G. Jung – Autobiography: Memories, Dreams, Reflections”
Translated from Bulgarian.
