“Every psychological truth is only a half-truth, and this too is only a half-truth.”
C. G. Jung
In a previous article, I shared how, as a child, I used to daydream that I would become a doctor who healed people by pulling white worms out of their heads. I remembered this fantasy many years later, after I had already begun working as a psychotherapist. At that point, this “nonsense” (as I had previously regarded it) suddenly made sense: I was healing people by identifying the thoughts that distort their perceptions and harm them. The “white worms” were those very thoughts.
Over time, I began to recognize different kinds of “white worms” gnawing away at a person’s psychological well-being, and they are precisely the subject of this article. Here, I would like to speak about one particular representative, which I call “I know what the truth is.” Once this attitude takes root in the mind, it inhibits our ability to question the validity of our own perspective and blinds us to the fact that it is subjective, bounded, and thus only half true.
As Marie-Louise von Franz writes:
“We do not even know in how many ways we are hampered in our fullness of life by unconscious assumptions or feelings. It is quite a shock to realize that one has always thought something about which one might think differently.”
Marie-Louise von Franz, “Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology”
I do not know whether it is a shock, but it is undoubtedly a deeply liberating experience to realize that, at their core, our thoughts are hypotheses, attempts to explain the world and to assign causes to what happens, rather than ultimate truth about reality. I recall a moment when a client of mine called to tell me, with quiet pride, that the day before she had managed to emerge from a crisis on her own, one that had brought her to the very edge of what she could endure. She did so by asking herself a simple question: “What if what I am thinking is not true? What if the opposite is true?” That single question-thought propelled her directly into the realm of resolution.
Such is the power of thought: it can make us ill, and it can also heal us. And, in this instance, it is not even about which thoughts are healing, and which are not. It is rather about our capacity to doubt everything that crosses the mind and to subject it to examination, to investigation, to questioning. It is the awareness that there is no such thing as ultimate, absolute truth, and that this awareness is crucial in moments when we are suffering.
This, of course, is itself only a half-truth. For doubt is invaluable, yet when carried to an extreme it leads to a paralyzing inability to act or to make decisions, to a loss of trust and a state of mental chaos. For this reason, faith, too, has its place. The essential challenge lies in knowing what to doubt and what to believe. It becomes clear that this is a personal choice rather than a universal rule, and that with life experience and psychological maturity, this discernment becomes increasingly accessible.
I am reminded of the well-known prayer in which one asks God for the strength to accept the things that cannot be changed, the courage to change the things that can, and, above all, the wisdom to distinguish between the two. In the same way, we too need wisdom to find a healthy balance between doubt and faith.
*“If you have a conscious attitude which is ready to accept the opposite, to accept the conflict and the contradiction, then you can connect with the unconscious. That is what we try to achieve. We try to bring about a conscious attitude with which the person can keep the door to the unconscious open, which means that one must never be too sure of oneself, never be sure that what one says is the only possibility, never be too sure about a decision.
One should always have an eye and an ear open towards the opposite, the other thing. That does not mean to be spineless, it doesn’t mean just to sit there. It means to act according to one’s conscious conviction, but still always having the humility to keep the door open and be proved wrong. That would be an attitude of consciousness in living connection with the other, dark side. The unjust sun is that attitude of consciousness which knows exactly what is what, a rigid attitude that blocks contact with the unconscious.”*
Marie-Louise von Franz, “Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology”
This quote represents Marie-Louise von Franz’s symbolic interpretation of an alchemical text that speaks of two suns – one that radiates justice and the other without justice. The sun without justice directs only one ray, while the sun with justice is two-rayed. Von Franz explains that the sun without justice corresponds to a one-sided attitude of the mind: a state in which we perceive only one side of the coin and yet mistake it for the whole.
By contrast, the two-rayed sun, the one with justice, is able of illuminating the other, the opposite side of the totality. And this opposite side, she notes, does not so much concern the contents of consciousness as it does the contents of the unconscious, which eludes the grasp of the rational mind. The reason for this lies in the fundamental law governing the relationship between consciousness and the unconscious: they exist in a compensatory relationship. In other words, every one-sided stance adopted by consciousness is counterbalanced in the unconscious by an opposing tendency.
I find this view compelling, as it corresponds to my own experience and observation. Most of us have encountered people who are utterly convinced of their own rightness. With such individuals, genuine understanding is nearly impossible; at best, one expends energy in vain and feels drained. When someone has, so to speak, “sealed the top of their head,” no amount of argument or appeal to alternative perspectives will be heard. This is the sun without justice at work: the ray of a consciousness radiating in only one direction, leaving its opposite in darkness. It is a mode of thinking that refuses to acknowledge the plurality of perspectives and the complexity of truth.
Here belong those who are radically intolerant of difference, figures such as Hitler and Stalin, as well as fanatical religious leaders. Here, too, stands the church when it persecutes dissenters and unbelievers. It is sobering to observe how a foundational spiritual value such as faith, when it has not passed through the purifying fire of doubt, can assume such distorted forms, crystallizing into fanaticism.
The words of Jesus in the Gospels are well known: “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move.” Equally familiar are the assertions found in countless books proclaiming that “we will see it when we believe it.”
Yet the crucial question remains: how could we cultivate faith without allowing it to degenerate into its destructive expressions? The answer lies in allowing ourselves to accept the radiance of the sun with justice – the two-rayed sun that shines in both directions. Thus, whatever we may think, we remain open to the fact that even when a thought is true, it never represents the whole truth. We also know that, in the next moment, the truth may already be different.
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
