Wrestling With the Dark Angel

Carl Jung's Words of Advice for the Depressed

The following piece is an old blog post that I originally published back in 2014. Since that time it has consistently been the most viewed post on my website. Almost all of the traffic to this article has been organic, that is, from people doing a Google search using phrases like “Jung on depression.”

I’m not sure what conclusions to draw from that beyond that this is a topic of great interest, and perhaps of great need, for many people. Given that, I thought I would re-post the article here. I have revised and updated it from the original post.

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The Poetic Jung

Carl Jung was a prolific writer of letters. There is so much in his psychological writings that can be very difficult reading, particularly when he digs deep into complex subjects like alchemy. But his letters are often poetic and accessible, and they reveal his humanity and his passionate engagement with the struggles of living an authentic and meaningful life.

The following letter is just such an example of the poetic Jung. It is written to an American woman who remains unidentified, though it seems that Jung knows her personally in some capacity — an acquaintance or a patient. In his letter, he offers advice for the encounter with depression that goes beyond a simple medicalizing of the difficulty. For Jung, depression can also be understood as a messenger, an angel to be wrestled with until it reveals its secret blessing.

Being Forced Downwards

Dear N.,
I am sorry you are so miserable. ‘Depression’ means literally ‘being forced downwards.’ This can happen even when you don’t consciously have any feeling at all of being ‘on top.’ So I wouldn’t dismiss this hypothesis out of hand. ¹

There is no question that depression can be a difficult and disturbing experience. What is most often not recognized, though, is that it is an experience that can have meaning. We have grown accustomed these days to thinking of depression as a thing — a painful condition that needs to be removed. And, of course, that is true as far as it goes. However, we tend not to inquire any further than that.

From Jung’s point of view there is a hidden intention in depression. It “forces us downwards,” he writes. What he is suggesting here is that “downwards” may be a direction we need to go, that in one way or another we have tried to get “on top” of life, so to speak. This is not, as it might sound, a question of being punished for arrogance. Rather, it is a consequence of having become cut off from something essential within ourselves, some aspect of our vital and vitalizing wholeness. Depression, we could say, is an expression of this missing vitality.

Albrecht Dürer: Melencolia I

On a collective level, Jung felt that there had been a general atrophy of our instinctual life. He was wary, for instance, of the technological advances of the twentieth century. He feared that our technologies were distancing us from the wisdom of nature, including our inner nature. In his own life, Jung would frequently retreat to his “tower” on the shore of Lake Zurich. It was a dwelling without electricity or running water. While staying at his tower he would chop wood and carry water. 

“These simple acts make man simple,” wrote Jung, “and how difficult it is to be simple!”²

It could be said that what Jung was doing in his tower was “lowering himself,” in part perhaps, so that he himself would not have to be “forced downward.”

Being Useful

In his letter Jung offers two alternative approaches to his correspondent. The first could be called the move outward and it involves activities such as work and the cultivation of beauty: 

If I had to live in a foreign country, I would seek out one or two people who seemed amiable and would make myself useful to them, so that libido came to me from outside, even though in a somewhat primitive form, say of a dog wagging its tail.

When Jung talks about libido, he is talking about energy, specifically psychological energy. The goal is to get emotional and motivational energy moving again. This requires action. And, in fact, there is a lot of evidence that supports Jung’s advice and indicates that making oneself useful can be a valuable safeguard against depression. 

He then goes on to suggest surrounding oneself with beauty. Here again, Jung’s counsel has parallels with mental health techniques and interventions that are increasingly in use today. What he says here could be understood, for example, as an instance of “improving the moment,” a concept used in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT):

I would raise animals and plants and find joy in their thriving. I would surround myself with beauty — no matter how primitive and artless — objects, colors, sounds. I would eat and drink well. 

The Move Inward

The second alternative to depression that Jung suggests could be called the move inward. This is the more difficult path of wrestling with the angel. It is the path of learning from one’s depression, not getting rid of it, a path that reflects the Jungian perspective that the experience of meaning, even when it comes through the channel of depression, is a healing experience and an opportunity for growth.

When the darkness grows denser, I would penetrate to its very core and ground, and would not rest until amid the pain a light appeared to me, for ‘in excessu affectus’³ Nature reverses herself. 

What Jung is advocating here is a kind of leaning into the experience, following the energy to see where it leads. Jung’s words here about finding the light in the dark evoke those of the poet Theodore Roethke who wrote, “In a dark time, the eye begins to see.” This is a way of approaching and understanding the experience of depression that privileges the search for meaning over the pursuit of happiness.

Gustave Doré: Jacob Wrestling With the Angel

The next section of the letter gets yet more challenging even as it gets more poetic:

I would turn in rage against myself and with the heat of my rage I would melt my lead. I would renounce everything and engage in the lowest activities should my depression drive me to violence. I would wrestle with the dark angel until he dislocated my hip. For he is also the light and the blue sky which he withholds from me.

There are two kinds of imagery here. The first is alchemical — melting lead as the first step toward transmuting it into gold. The heaviness of lead made it the symbol of the kind of heavy, depressive states that Jung is addressing in this letter. The second image is biblical — Jacob wrestling with the angel. This wrestling brought Jacob both blessing and wounding. In a sense it is an image of victory through defeat.

Ultimately one wrestles with one’s own darkness. As Jung once famously said, “One does not become conscious by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”⁴ This is the sensibility reflected in this part of the letter. To wrestle means to struggle. It means not falling into a passive and defeated attitude. The images of rage and violence might seem startling, but again, the goal is the movement of libido, of psychic energy, and sometimes the heat of anger, directed in the right way, can get life moving again.

To become acquainted with our darkness — our failings, our stupidities, our all-too-human weaknesses — is paradoxically healing. It frees us from the impossible project of perfection and allows us to get on with the everyday business of living and loving as a whole and humble human being. “Only through our feebleness and incapacity,” wrote Jung, “are we linked up with the unconscious, with the lower world of the instincts, and with our fellow beings.”⁵ In other words, it is the way “downwards” that can lead us to the place where hidden treasure lies.

As I said, this is a difficult approach for dealing with depression and, as Jung acknowledges, it may not be for everybody. And so he closes his letter with one last piece of advice: however one chooses to confront the experience of depression, it cannot be done tentatively or half-heartedly. In particular, if one chooses the way of wrestling with the dark angel, a full commitment of oneself is needed. One must dedicate oneself fully to this difficult, but potentially enlivening and healing path of self-discovery. He concludes:

Anyway that is what I would do. What others would do is another question, which I cannot answer. But for you too there is an instinct either to back out of it or to go down to the depths. But no half-measures or half-heartedness.

With cordial wishes,
As ever,
C.G. Jung

Until next time.

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Upcoming Events

I have several online programs coming up later this month. I hope you’ll join me at one of the following events:

• The Finer Forge: Inner Work and the Alchemical Imagination

  • Jung Society of Washington, Friday, March 17th, 2023. For more details visit: www.jung.org

• The Fires of Transformation: Life as a Work of Art

  • Jung Society of Washington, Saturday, March 18th, 2023. For more details visit: www.jung.org

• Religious but Not Religious

  • Maine Jung Center, Friday, March 24th, 2023. For more details visit: Religious but Not Religious: Living a Symbolic Life.

• Deep Listening: Developing Symbolic Sensitivity

  • Maine Jung Center, Saturday, March 25th, 2023. For more details visit: Deep Listening: Developing Symbolic Sensitivity.

1. C.G. Jung Letters, vol. 2 (Letter from March 9th, 1959)

2. Memories, Dreams, Reflections by C.G. Jung

3. “in an excess of affect or passion”

4. ‘The Philosophical Tree’ from Collected Works, vol. 13 by C.G. Jung

5. 'The Tavistock Lectures,' from Collected Works, vol. 18 by C.G. Jung