A LIFETIME OF PROMISE
A Jungian Guide to Discovering the Transformative Power in Complexes
C.T.B. Harris, Ph.D., Jungian Analyst

“The fear of complexes is a rooted prejudice, for the superstitions fear of anything unfavorable has remained untouched by our vaunted enlightenment.  This fear provokes violent resistance whenever complexes are examined, and considerable determination is needed to overcome it.”
C. G. Jung, C.W. vol 8, par. 211

“The fundamental task of the complex is to serve as a vehicle and vessel of transformation, whereby the archetypal essence is brought into living reality.  The complex brings archetypal core and personal experience to bear on each other, uniting them in the flow of psychic life.”
E. Shalit, The Complex, p. 68

“In Jung’s view, suffering in human life is never an illness as such; rather, it presents the opposite pole to happiness, and the one is unthinkable without the other. A complex becomes pathogenic only when it is repressed, suppressed, or denied in that we think we don’t have it.  A complex turns into a negative and disruptive element in the psyche only due to the ego-complex’s   insufficient capacity to face it.”
Hans Dieckmann, Complexes, p. 3

“As events in wartime have clearly shown, our mentality is distinguished by the shameless naïveté  with which we judge our enemy, and in the judgment we pronounce upon him we unwittingly   reveal our own defects:  we simply accuse our enemy of our own unadmitted faults.”
C. G. Jung, C.W. vol 8, par. 516

Hence in my judgment, all the other complexes can be derived from these two fundamental complexes, the mother complex and the father complex… We know from all analyses the extent to which the parental complexes play into the rivalries among siblings.  In her classic book, Analysis of Children (1930), Wickes elaborated for the first time the extent to which children live, suffer, and express the unconscious problems and complexes of their parents.”

Hans Dieckmann, Complexes, p. 3