Carl Jung on the Fallacy of Setting (Specific) Intentions
(This article was first published on my website, www.kateoconnorpsychologist.com).
“How little we still commit ourselves to living. We should grow like a tree that likewise does not know its law. We tie ourselves up with intentions, not mindful of the fact that intention is the limitation, yes, the exclusion of life. We believe that we can illuminate the darkness with an intention, and in that way aim past the light. How can we presume to want to know in advance, from where the light will come to us?”
In this fragment from his seminal ‘Red Book’, Carl Jung offers us an alternative perspective on the currently in vogue notion of specific ‘intention setting’ as a method for effecting positive change in one’s life. Jung highlights that when we ‘set an intention’, as many manifestation gurus, morning show guests, yoga teachers, and other such folk seem to be perpetually recommending, we can only do so from within a limited and only ever partially conscious understanding of ourselves and the world around us. We can rarely articulate the true source of our desires or ‘intentions’. Therefore when we commit ourselves to them, we are essentially engaging in a competition with ourselves for a series of unconsciously chosen prizes, knowing little about their origin, or their actual potential function in our lives.
A friend of mine recently reflected on this beautifully in the context of a past relationship, and her previous longing for a partner. She recalled that only in ‘getting’ him could she notice what she really wanted — a sense of safety and of her own personal validity, goodness and value — none of which the new relationship had actually afforded her. In deconstructing our conviction that we can best navigate life by exacting this kind of organised, pre-emptive control over it, Jung asks, “how can we presume to want to know in advance, from where the light will come to us?” He suggests that the true light of the world, the fundamentally non-intentional force of life definitionally beyond our control, may be a more valid and wise a guide than any of the limited goals we can imagine for ourselves. Surrendering to this light may afford us experiences like those my friend longed for — a true sense of safety, validity and goodness — but also, by virtue of its mystery, even greater and richer experiences of this life than we can possibly imagine, far beyond that which we could even know to hope for.
Western culture, alternatively, encourages us into an unimaginative kind of heroic determination, into a busyness, the absence of which we come to find unsettling, and into the notion that one who is not powerfully forcing a certain storyline into play in their life is somehow weak, lacking or uninspired. Proponents of this kind of hustle claim it to be the path to success, productivity, intimacy and wellness. However, the cumulative consequences of this way of life are often sickness, loneliness, exhaustion and a jarred quality that perhaps we become so used to that we are left thinking that it is just what life feels like.
These metric-oriented values are woven implicitly into the fabric of our lives and can be found everywhere. Upon reopening post-COVID-19 lockdowns, my local gym introduced a new app, by which its patrons can book into classes which now have significantly reduced numbers. Upon logging into the app, the user is unable to continue without entering how much they weigh. It then informs said the user that they will be assigned points for the classes they attend, and that the number of calories they burned will be estimated and used to calculate a ranking of the activeness of their lifestyle. If no data is entered, the app defaults to the declaration of a “low active lifestyle”. The app markets itself with phrases like “Discover how your daily activities keep you fit and healthy by tracking everything you do, everywhere you go,” which I can only assume its creators believe is something people might find believable or appealing. If one is hoping to attend the gym, there is, I must reiterate, no way to opt out of this, whatever their personal reason for attending might be. It is a compulsory intention setter.
Whilst this technology may be shame-inducing, intrusive and potentially dangerous to a variety of vulnerable people, it is also only a product of its environment. These sorts of systems are born of our collective belief that issues surrounding wellness, intimacy, health and sense of self will be solved with mechanistic interventions that create a domination of our environment and ourselves and can be systematised, measured, widely disseminated and manipulated at will. These currently culturally celebrated solutions are deeply void of creativity, magic, personalisation or intuitive fluctuations. Jung criticised this tendency to turn everything into purpose or method, “a recipe to be applied mechanically”. He also noticed the risk that certain solutions, which do truly work for those who uncover them, may be blindly generalised and applied to others: “the case of the ‘right means in the hands of the wrong man’”.
Psychotherapy can be guilty of this same approach, starting with the implication that the patient must have a compelling, succinct reason for arriving to therapy, or a particular problem or symptom they want fixed. Having taken this order like a waiter, the therapist then uses a familiar recipe to prepare the intervention, which theoretically matches the patient’s need. In reality, the patient’s true reason for arriving in the therapy room may be vague or uncertain. Many patients arrive in the therapy room simply because they can no longer ignore the nagging, inexplicable feeling that they need some kind of help from another person. They may know something about the reason for their arrival, but also find that once the therapy begins, it is not really about what they thought it was about at all. Good therapy makes room for this reality. It does not follow a recipe pre-determined by the patient’s categorical presenting problem, but is a process reinvented anew between each therapist and patient.
In the broader navigation of life, Eastern philosophies offer an antidote to our preoccupation with knowing everything in advance. They prefer an alternative to intention setting in the form of an allowing or yielding to the forces of life, an opening to make room for (both internal and external) events to happen of their own accord. For example, the I Ching, an ancient Chinese system of divination, reflects the position of the individual as one attempting to dance with the unfolding story of their fate, rather than shape it with an all-powerful control. Rather than asking linear questions about cause and effect (i.e. how do I make X happen?), Chinese philosophy asks: what types of things tend to happen together, in a meaningful way? Adopting this view, instead of aspiring to achieve a certain end through certain means, we might do what we can to get out of the way of ourselves. This might prevent our lives from becoming the impoverished result of forcing our ego, responding to our fears, and acting out whatever rules for living we might have picked up along the way. Instead we can follow the ‘mysterious light of the world’ towards living out an expression of myth, of a mystical, personal truth that is waiting to find expression within us, in a resonant hum with who we really are.
In a way, this philosophical position is woven into the theory of psychoanalysis, which aims to allow this kind of unfolding by way of its format. Each session operates only with the instruction that the patient speaks about whatever is on their mind, and any agreement on an agenda or preparation from the patient is actually discouraged. Although this is no easy feat for the average Westerner, this spaciousness hopes to afford an opportunity for the unconscious, unexpressed, unspoken aspects of the patient’s pain, hope and longing to surface, even (and perhaps especially) if this does not take the form of the patient’s conscious expectation.
The idea of cultivating a life characterised by this process of allowing might sound as though it has a quality of relaxation, however, it is a far greater challenge to the average person than the sturdiness and assurance of striving to fulfil an intention. Jung states, “Nobody can spare themselves the waiting and most will be unable to bear this torment, but will throw themselves with greed back at men, things and thoughts whose slaves they will become from then on.” Getting out of the way of what might want to express itself in our lives requires that we face a kind of stillness, an open-ended unknown, a waiting, that is uncomfortable at best and more likely, utterly terrifying at times.
If one wishes to continue down this path in the face of such discomfort, Jung offers further warning:
“There could be no greater mistake than for a Westerner to take up the direct practice of Chinese yoga, for it would be a matter of his will and his consciousness and would only strengthen the latter against the unconscious, bringing about the very effect to be avoided.”
In other words, we have to be careful that we don’t make allowing into another version of calorie counting. It might be all too easy to slip into busying ourselves with some performative practice of allowing, so as to seem impressive to others and ourselves, and to reinforce our ideas of who we are; in other words, to do more of the exact opposite of what we mean to. Even Gabor Maté, a world renowned psychotherapist and addiction expert, shares that he realised that surrender has to occur spontaneously in him as a function of events that unfold without his intention. He notices that any effort he makes to bring it about deliberately only ever ends up being an expression of an opposite, egoic force within him.
So what do we do?
I have no offering to make here in terms of what such a thing might look like to the individual, except that the process and quality of non-action as action, of allowing one’s life to well up and spill out into the world of its own accord, fuelled by longing and love and vitality, but without a specific, conscious recipe, must be felt into by each person in their own way. Perhaps this is another reason such a way of being is so unappealing in Western culture — something so personal, so unique to each individual, cannot be commodified or packaged into a product, an e-book or a program. Rather, in Jung’s words:
There is only one way and that is your way.
You seek the path? I warn you away from my own. It can also be the wrong one for you.
May each go his own way.
References
Brand, R. (Presenter). (2018, November 9). #053 Gabor Maté — Damaged leaders rule an addicted world. [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/russell-brand/under-the-skin/e/57163475.
Jung, C.G. (1970). Commentary by C.G. Jung. In R. Wilhelm, The Secret of the Golden Flower. New York: Mariner Books.
Jung, C.G. (2018). The Red Book: A Reader’s Edition. (Peck, J., Kybruz, M., trans.) New York: WW Norton & Co.
The I Ching (2015). (D. Hinton, trans.) New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc.
Von Franz, M. (1980). On Divination and Synchronicity: The Psychology of Meaningful Chance. Toronto: Inner City Books.
Von Franz, M. (2013). Psychotherapy. Boston: Shambhala Publications Inc.
