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Holding the tension of the opposites is a deliberate practice of keeping a true inner conflict steadily in awareness until Psyche offers a new form that includes what each side demands. Jung names the inner mechanism that enables this shift the transcendent function, which arises from the union of conscious and unconscious contents. This definition sets a clear frame: consciousness brings its viewpoint, the unconscious contributes what consciousness misses, and their meeting yields movement. The practice concerns real, affect-laden standpoints rather than abstract word games. The personality carries the conflict long enough for something fresh to take shape from the pressure itself. That something arrives as a symbol and not as a compromise, which matters for growth.
Energy Lives In Tension
Psychic energy accumulates where opposing forces come into conflict. The living Psyche organizes itself around charged polarities and extracts power from their difference. A clean, stable one-sidedness brings short relief and low vitality, while held tension concentrates libido for transformation. The individual who sustains this charge gains access to material that everyday willpower cannot produce. That material does not repeat the old stance; it carries a surplus that moves life forward. The method serves creativity, decision-making, and long-term development.
Stage A Fair Inner Hearing
Treat the opposing positions as if a dialogue were taking place between two human beings with equal rights and dignity. Give each side space to express through writing, drawing, movement, or spoken reflection. Let arguments and feelings cycle through in full color and concrete detail. A fair hearing invites the unconscious to bring forward images and phrases that had no place inside your habitual stance. The key attitude is disciplined curiosity toward what arrives. This procedure creates conditions for the next step: symbol formation.
From Deadlock To Symbol
When consciousness tends the conflict and resists collapsing into habit, Psyche begins to shuttle to and fro among images, affects, and ideas; this oscillation is the operational face of the transcendent function. Then Psyche constellates a symbol that is a living, third thing—a living birth that leads to a new level of being. This symbol does not erase either side; it grants each a rightful place inside an emergent pattern. The moment of arrival often feels vivid, memorable, and surprisingly obvious in hindsight. Energy that felt blocked becomes available for action. Decisions taken from this symbolic ground carry more authority and fewer downstream distortions.
A New Organ of Meaning
Symbols are the engine of change. A true symbol carries unknown meaning and points toward future development; it functions like new psychic tissue. It situates the ego within a broader framework that encompasses previously excluded attitudes and feelings. The symbol’s concreteness matters: a phrase, image, scene, melody, or gesture that stands on its own feet anchors the change. Such content is fresh raw material for building a new attitude. Symbols serve action and insight.
Time, Endurance, and Leadership of Consciousness
The work proceeds over time. It can feel like a long conflict demanding sacrifices from both sides, which already hints at growth in strength and character. Consciousness insists on clarity, record-keeping, and honest description of affects. The unconscious participates through dreams, fantasies, slips of speech, and creative insights that emerge during the process. Each round of engagement alters the field. The steady rhythm of attention, rather than intensity alone, creates the conditions for symbol formation.
Active Imagination As a Method
Begin with a dream image, a mood, or a conflict-laden thought; allow it to unfold in images or a written exchange. Respond in the first person, insisting on specificity, and follow the image rather than steering it into cliché. This practice operationalizes audiatur et altera pars and keeps ego and the counter-position present until meaning surfaces. The work benefits from a regular window of time, a consistent physical setting, and immediate documentation afterward. Over weeks, the material reveals motifs and a direction of movement.
Containment, Witness, and Craft
Analysis helps the patient tolerate the field until symbol formation becomes possible. The setting stabilizes the work, clarifies sequences, and protects the emergent image from premature interpretation. Analyst and patient closely attend to repetitions in dreams and to shifts in language that mark Psyche’s direction. Clear questions invite the counter-position to speak: What does this image want? What stands behind this emotion? Eventually, a coherent symbol arrives and can be translated into psychological adaptation. The result is a change in attitude that reaches into work, love, and creative projects.
A New Attitude and Renewed Flow
The transcendent function facilitates a transition from one attitude to another. The change reveals itself through clarified options, fresh language, and a shift in dream motifs. Energy becomes available for work and love. Perception widens; reactions soften; initiative grows. The person acts from a center that can host differences rather than fragment under pressure. This capacity can become a durable skill..
HERE’S THE DREAM WE ANALYZE:
The setting is a seemingly never-ending pool filled with clear, blue water; white tiles make up the floor of the pool. A tile border in the shape of a semi-circle creates a small divide in this huge pool. I, my naked human form, was floating in this water, in front of this tiled divider, and I was simply looking around. I remember feeling so alone, but had a sense of peace with this. As quickly as the dream had begun, life forms began to rise from the bottom of the pool, appearing to just come into existence. While these forms were not those of living things in our world, I knew they were living; this was creation. I was simply taking in this phenomenon when I was struck with the realisation that these things—forms—must be being created behind this tile divider, but, as I went to look over it, a force stopped me. Unfortunately, I didn’t take that as an indication that I was not to look; I thought it was simply a barrier that I couldn’t see, so I waded around the barrier, and, as I looked down, all I saw was darkness before I awoke. I awoke with a great sense that this dream was vital to pick apart; however, I have no clue what to take away from it.
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