Daily Inspiration Quote by Carl Jung

"The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and calm that is not easily disturbed. It is just these intense conflicts and their conflagration which are needed to produce valuable and lasting results"

Carl Jung, Psychologist

About this Quote

Jung is pitching conflict as a kind of psychological forge: the heat is the point, not an unfortunate byproduct. The line has the cadence of a clinical reassurance, but its subtext is bracingly anti-comfort. He’s not talking about petty friction or “healthy disagreement.” He’s describing the inner civil wars people spend their lives trying to sedate - shame versus desire, persona versus impulse, fear versus autonomy - and insisting that only a real burn-through creates the calm we actually trust.

The rhetorical trick is the way he pairs “conflagration” with “security.” Calm, in this framing, isn’t the absence of disturbance; it’s the residue of having survived disturbance without splitting. That’s classic Jung: stability arrives not from purity or self-control, but from integration, from admitting the shadow its seat at the table. The promise is almost paradoxical: the psyche becomes less fragile precisely by enduring what once felt unbearable.

Context matters. Jung is writing from early 20th-century Europe, steeped in upheaval and disillusionment with tidy rationalism, building a psychology that treats myth, religion, and symbolism as serious technologies of meaning. Against the era’s growing faith in quick fixes and surface normalcy, he’s arguing for depth-work: symptoms aren’t just glitches to erase but signals that something unlived is demanding recognition. It’s a worldview that flatters no one, but offers a hard bargain: face the fire, earn the peace that can’t be easily disturbed.

Quote Details

Topic	Overcoming Obstacles
Source	Verified source: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche (Collected Works... (Carl Jung, 1960) Text match: 95.00% Provider: Cross-Reference Evidence: Daily psychological experience affords proof of this statement. The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and calm which is not easily disturbed, or else a brokenness that can hardly be healed. Conversely, it is just these intense conflicts and their conflagration which are needed in order to produce valuable and lasting results. (Page 26 (paragraph [50])). This wording matches the quote you supplied, with one notable difference: Jung’s original sentence includes an extra clause (“or else a brokenness that can hardly be healed”) and uses “which” (not “that”) in “calm which is not easily disturbed.” The passage appears in Jung’s essay “On Psychic Energy” within Collected Works Vol. 8. Many secondary quote sites omit the “brokenness” clause. About “FIRST published”: Collected Works Vol. 8 is a later English compilation/translation, so it is not necessarily the first publication of Jung’s words in any language. However, it is a primary source within Jung’s own work (as translated) and is the earliest verifiable primary text I could confirm directly online with the exact wording and a page reference. Determining the very first publication (original German edition / first appearance of the essay) would require checking bibliographic notes in an authoritative edition (e.g., Princeton/Bollingen Collected Works front matter) or the original German collected writings; I did not verify that earlier-language first-publication date from a primary scan in this search session. Other candidates (1) Community Vision and Leadership in Practice (Chris Maser, Holly V. Campbell, 2023) compilation99.9% ... The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and calm that is not easily disturbed. ...
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