Rapport

A feeling of agreement between oneself and others.

It frequently happens that despite an absolute difference of standpoint a rapport nevertheless comes about, and in the following way: one party, by unspoken projection, assumes that the other is, in all essentials, of the same opinion as himself, while the other divines or senses an objective community of interest, of which, however, the former has no conscious inkling and whose existence he would at once dispute, just as it would never occur to the other that his relationship should be based on a common point of view. A rapport of this kind is by far the most frequent; it rests on mutual projection, which later becomes the source of many misunderstandings. ["General Description of the Types," CW 6, par. 618.]

Rational

Descriptive of thoughts, feelings and actions that accord with reason, an attitude based on objective values established by practical experience. (Compare irrational.)

The rational attitude which permits us to declare objective values as valid at all is not the work of the individual subject, but the product of human history.
Most objective values-and reason itself-are firmly established complexes of ideas handed down through the ages. Countless generations have laboured at their organization with the same necessity with which the living organism reacts to the average, constantly recurring environmental conditions, confronting them with corresponding functional complexes, as the eye, for instance, perfectly corresponds to the nature of light. . . . Thus the laws of reason are the laws that designate and govern the average, "correct," adapted attitude. Everything is "rational" that accords with these laws, everything that contravenes them is "irrational."["Definitions," ibid., par. 785f.]

Jung described the psychological functions of thinking and feeling as rational because they are decisively influenced by reflection.

Rebirth

A process experienced as a renewal or transformation of the personality. (See also individuation.)

Rebirth is not a process that we can in any way observe. We can neither measure nor weigh nor photograph it. It is entirely beyond sense perception. . . . One speaks of rebirth; one professes rebirth; one is filled with rebirth. . . . We have to be content with its psychic reality.["Concerning Rebirth," CW 9i, par. 206.]

Jung distinguished between five different forms of rebirth: metempsychosis (transmigration of souls), reincarnation (in a human body), resurrection, psychological rebirth (individuation) and indirect change that comes about through participation in the process of transformation.

Psychological rebirth was Jung’s particular focus. Induced by ritual or stimulated by immediate personal experience, it results in an enlargement of the personality. He acknowledged that one might feel transformed during certain group experiences, but he cautioned against confusing this with genuine rebirth.

If any considerable group of persons are united and identified with one another by a particular frame of mind, the resultant transformation experience bears only a very remote resemblance to the experience of individual transformation. A group experience takes place on a lower level of consciousness than the experience of an individual. This is due to the fact that, when many people gather together to share one common emotion, the total psyche emerging from the group is below the level of the individual psyche. If it is a very large group, the collective psyche will be more like the psyche of an animal . . . .
. . . The group experience goes no deeper than the level of one’s own mind in that state. It does work a change in you, but the change does not last.[Ibid., pars. 225f.]

Reductive

Literally, "leading back," descriptive of interpretations of dreams and neurosis in terms of events in outer life, particularly those in childhood. (Compare constructive and final.)

The reductive method is oriented backwards, in contrast to the constructive method . . . . The interpretive methods of both Freud and Adler are reductive, since in both cases there is a reduction to the elementary processes of wishing or striving, which in the last resort are of an infantile or physiological nature. . . . Reduction has a disintegrative effect on the real significance of the unconscious product, since this is either traced back to its historical antecedents [e.g., childhood] and thereby annihilated, or integrated once again with the same elementary process from which it arose.["Definitions," CW 6, par. 788.]

In dream interpretation, the reductive (also called mechanistic) method seeks to explain images of persons and situations in terms of concrete reality. The constructive or final approach focuses on the dream’s symbolic content.

Although Jung himself concentrated on the constructive approach, he regarded reductive analysis as an important first step in the treatment of psychological problems, particularly in the first half of life.

The neuroses of the young generally come from a collision between the forces of reality and an inadequate, infantile attitude, which from the causal point of view is characterized by an abnormal dependence on the real or imaginary parents, and from the teleological point of view by unrealizable fictions, plans, and aspirations. Here the reductive methods of Freud and Adler are entirely in place.["The Problem of the Attitude-Type," CW 7, par. 88.]

Reflection

Mental activity that concentrates on a particular content of consciousness, an instinct encompassing religion and the search for meaning.

Ordinarily we do not think of "reflection" as ever having been instinctive, but associate it with a conscious state of mind. Reflexio means "bending back" and, used psychologically, would denote the fact that the reflex which carries the stimulus over into its instinctive discharge is interfered with by psychization. . . . Thus in place of the compulsive act there appears a certain degree of freedom, and in place of predictability a relative unpredictability as to the effect of the impulse.["Psychological Factors in Human Behaviour," CW 8, par. 241.]

In Jung’s view, the richness of the human psyche and its essential character are determined by the reflective instinct.

Reflection is the cultural instinct par excellence, and its strength is shown in the power of culture to maintain itself in the face of untamed nature.[Ibid., par. 243.]

Regression

The backward movement of libido to an earlier mode of adaptation, often accompanied by infantile fantasies and wishes. (See also depression; compare progression.)

Regression . . . as an adaptation to the conditions of the inner world, springs from the vital need to satisfy the demands of individuation.["On Psychic Energy," ibid., par. 75.]

What robs Nature of its glamour, and life of its joy, is the habit of looking back for something that used to be outside, instead of looking inside, into the depths of the depressive state. This looking back leads to regression and is the first step along that path. Regression is also an involuntary introversion in so far as the past is an object of memory and therefore a psychic content, an endopsychic factor. It is a relapse into the past caused by a depression in the present.["The Sacrifice," CW 5, par. 625.]

Jung believed that the blockage of the forward movement of energy is due to the inability of the dominant conscious attitude to adapt to changing circumstances. However, the unconscious contents thereby activated contain the seeds of a new progression. For instance, the opposite or inferior function is waiting in the wings, potentially capable of modifying the inadequate conscious attitude.

If thinking fails as the adapted function, because it is dealing with a situation to which one can adapt only by feeling, then the unconscious material activated by regression will contain the missing feeling function, although still in embryonic form, archaic and undeveloped. Similarly, in the opposite type, regression would activate a thinking function that would effectively compensate the inadequate feeling. ["On Psychic Energy," CW 8, par. 65.]

The regression of energy confronts us with the problem of our own psychology. From the final point of view, therefore, regression is as necessary in the developmental process as is progression.

Regarded causally, regression is determined, say, by a "mother fixation." But from the final standpoint the libido regresses to the imago of the mother in order to find there the memory associations by means of which further development can take place, for instance from a sexual system into an intellectual or spiritual system.
The first explanation exhausts itself in stressing the importance of the cause and completely overlooks the final significance of the regressive process. From this angle the whole edifice of civilization becomes a mere substitute for the impossibility of incest. But the second explanation allows us to foresee what will follow from the regression, and at the same time it helps us to understand the significance of the memory-images that have been reactivated.[Ibid., pars. 43f. ]

Jung believed that behind the mundane symptoms of regression lay its symbolic meaning: the need for psychological renewal, reflected in mythology as the journey of the hero.

It is precisely the strongest and best among men, the heroes, who give way to their regressive longing and purposely expose themselves to the danger of being devoured by the monster of the maternal abyss. But if a man is a hero, he is a hero because, in the final reckoning, he did not let the monster devour him, but subdued it, not once but many times. Victory over the collective psyche alone yields the true value-the capture of the hoard, the invincible weapon, the magic talisman, or whatever it be that the myth deems most desirable.["The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious" CW 7, par. 261.]

Regressive restoration of the persona

A term used to describe what can happen when there has been a major collapse in the conscious attitude.

Take as an example a businessman who takes too great a risk and consequently goes bankrupt. If he does not allow himself to be discouraged by this depressing experience, but, undismayed, keeps his former daring, perhaps with a little salutary caution added, his wound will be healed without permanent injury. But if, on the other hand, he goes to pieces, abjures all further risks, and laboriously tries to patch up his social reputation within the confines of a much more limited personality, doing inferior work with the mentality of a scared child, in a post far below him, then, technically speaking, he will have restored his persona in a regressive way. . . . Formerly perhaps he wanted more than he could accomplish; now he does not even dare to attempt what he has it in him to do.[Ibid., par. 254.]

The regressive restoration of the persona is a possible course only for the man who owes the critical failure of his life to his own inflatedness. With diminished personality, he turns back to the measure he can fill. But in every other case resignation and self-belittlement are an evasion, which in the long run can be kept up only at the cost of neurotic sickliness.[Ibid., par. 259.]

Religious attitude

Psychologically, an attitude informed by the careful observation of, and respect for, invisible forces and personal experience.

We might say . . . that the term "religion" designates the attitude peculiar to a consciousness which has been changed by experience of the numinosum.["Psychology and Religion," CW 11, par. 9.]

Religion . . . is an instinctive attitude peculiar to man, and its manifestations can be followed all through human history. ["The Undiscovered Self," CW 10, par. 512.]

The religious attitude is quite different from faith associated with a specific creed. The latter, as a codified and dogmatized form of an original religious experience, simply gives expression to a particular collective belief. True religion involves a subjective relationship to certain metaphysical, extramundane factors.

A creed is a confession of faith intended chiefly for the world at large and is thus an intramundane affair, while the meaning and purpose of religion lie in the relationship of the individual to God (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) or to the path of salvation and liberation (Buddhism).[Ibid., par. 507.]

Jung believed that a neurosis in the second half of life is seldom cured without the development of a religious attitude, prompted by a spontaneous revelation of the spirit.

This spirit is an autonomous psychic happening, a hush that follows the storm, a reconciling light in the darkness of man’s mind, secretly bringing order into the chaos of his soul.["A Psychological Approach to the Trinity," CW 11, par. 260.]

Repression

The unconscious suppression of psychic contents that are incompatible with the attitude of consciousness.

Repression is a process that begins in early childhood under the moral influence of the environment and continues through life.["The Personal and the Collective Unconscious," CW 7, par. 202.]

Repression causes what is called a systematic amnesia, where only specific memories or groups of ideas are withdrawn from recollection. In such cases a certain attitude or tendency can be detected on the part of the conscious mind, a deliberate intention to avoid even the bare possibility of recollection, for the very good reason that it would be painful or disagreeable ["Analytical Psychology and Education," CW 17, par. 199a.]

Repression is not only a factor in the etiology of many neuroses, it also determines contents of the personal shadow, since the ego generally represses material that would disturb peace of mind.

In the course of development following puberty, consciousness is confronted with affective tendencies, impulses, and fantasies which for a variety of reasons it is not willing or not able to assimilate. It then reacts with repression in various forms, in the effort to get rid of the troublesome intruders. The general rule is that the more negative the conscious attitude is, and the more it resists, devalues, and is afraid, the more repulsive, aggressive, and frightening is the face which the dissociated content assumes.["The Philosophical Tree," CW 13, par. 464.]

Many repressed contents come to the surface naturally during the analytic process. Where there are strong resistances to uncovering repressed material, Jung believed these should always be respected lest the ego be overwhelmed.

The general rule should be that the weakness of the conscious attitude is proportional to the strength of the resistance. When, therefore, there are strong resistances, the conscious rapport with the patient must be carefully watched, and-in certain cases-his conscious attitude must be supported to such a degree that, in view of later developments, one would be bound to charge oneself with the grossest inconsistency. That is inevitable, because one can never be too sure that the weak state of the patient’s conscious mind will prove equal to the subsequent assault of the unconscious. In fact, one must go on supporting his conscious (or, as Freud thinks, "repres-sive") attitude until the patient can let the "repressed" contents rise up spontaneously.["The Psychology of the Unconscious," CW 16, par. 381.]

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