Edward Edinger cites a passage from Jung's autobiography to elaborate on the notion of the Psalm on Praise as an affirmation of life:
"Let me conclude with something more sane. This is Jung's affirmation of life in his autobiography. He talks about the illness he had in 1944 and then goes on to say:
"Let me conclude with something more sane. This is Jung's affirmation of life in his autobiography. He talks about the illness he had in 1944 and then goes on to say:
'After the illness a fruitful period of work began for me. A good many of my principal works were written only then. The insight I had had, or the vision of the end of all things, gave me the courage to undertake new formulations. I no longer attempted to put across my own opinion, but surrendered myself to the current of my thoughts. Thus one problem after the other revealed itself to me and took shape.
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Something else, too, came to me from my illness. I might formulate it as an affirmation of things as they are: an unconditional "yes" to that which is, without subjective protests - acceptance of the conditions of existence as I see them and understand them, acceptance of my own nature, as I happen to be. At the beginning of the illness I had the feeling that there was something wrong with my attitude, and that I was to some extent responsible for the mishap. But when one follows the path of individuation, when one lives one's own life, one must take mistakes into the bargain; life would not be complete without them. There is no guarantee - not for a single moment - that we will not fall into error or stumble into deadly peril. We may think there is a sure road. But that would be the road of death. Then nothing happens any longer - at any rate, not the right things. Anyone who takes the sure road is as good as dead.'
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That passage touches most of the themes that have come up during our discussions of the various Psalms. One might see it as a kind of subdued "Praise the Lord." I don't think it quite meets the criteria, however. Not quite. I think this final image of the Psalms - five times underlined - involves an attitude of total affirmation of existence, fully conscious of the opposites and yet to beyond them that the affirmation is unimpaired by that full realization. It involves a total affirmation of the ego and Self and all the tragedy of their interplay. Even though the full reality of evil in all its depth and breadth is completely perceived, the affirmation is of such an order as to be undamaged by that awareness." (2004, pp. 140-141).
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~ Excerpted from "The Sacred Psyche" by Edward F. Edinger, M.D.
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