The Wisdom of Not Knowing: Carl Jung and the Soul of Therapy

The first encounter

I discovered the work of Carl Jung during my mid-to-late teens, when I plucked this text from a shelf in a local bookshop. Having no idea at the time who this man was, or much about psychoanalysis, I imagine I was attracted by the title.

The passages I encountered then stayed with me, and years later, when I began training and working as a psychotherapist, they returned with a very different significance.

A timely passage in a culture of speed

I find the following passage especially fascinating now, in a culture where we are so often required to know quickly. Jung is describing a way of working that does not seek to impose the therapist's expertise upon the person in front of them, nor demand that they arrive knowing exactly what they want from therapy. Instead, something is allowed to emerge from the encounter.

One of the qualities of soul may be precisely this movement away from haste. Getting to what we want too quickly, or encouraging premature growth, can mean moving into unfamiliar territory before we have developed the capacity to inhabit it, with psyche sometimes bringing us back to where we were rather than allowing the process to be forced.

As far as possible, I let pure experience decide the therapeutic aims. This may perhaps seem strange, because it is usually assumed that the therapist should have an aim. But it seems to me that in psychotherapy especially it is advisable for the physician not to have too fixed a goal. He can scarcely know what is wanted better than nature and the will-to-live of the sick person.

The great decisions of life have far more to do with the instincts and other mysterious unconscious factors, than with conscious will and well-meaning reasonableness. The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.

None of these considerations, of course, prevents us doing everything possible to make the lives of patients normal and reasonable. If this brings about a satisfactory result, then we can let it go at that; but if it is insufficient, for better or for worse, then the therapist must be guided by the data presented through the patient's unconscious.

Here we must follow nature as a guide, and the course the physician then adopts is less a question of treatment than of developing the creative possibilities that lie in the patient himself.

Jung’s influence beyond the page

Jung's words, first read in passing, returned to me with increasing clarity as I found myself stepping into the work of psychotherapy years later. What initially struck me with its poetic depth began to reveal its philosophical and clinical weight.

These passages from Modern Man in Search of a Soul propose a radical idea: perhaps we do not always need to know in the way we have been conditioned to believe we should. More than that, a therapist, or indeed anyone accompanying another person through a period of change, need not always lead from the front.

I think there is something particularly valuable in this for psychotherapy because the temptation to be the person who knows can be very strong. Expertise matters, but it does not mean knowing in advance what another person's life requires.

The tyranny of certainty: Jung on 'not knowing' in therapy

In contemporary culture, certainty is highly prized. We are encouraged to have answers, strategies and plans, with relatively little tolerance for uncertainty or for the slow unfolding of experience. Therapy, however, and psychological change more broadly, often refuse to follow such linear expectations.

Jung invites us towards a different orientation, one that trusts the unconscious and the creative nature of psyche. This should not be confused with a lack of direction or care. Rather, it is a form of respect for the uniqueness of each individual, the timing of transformation and the fact that the next step cannot always be known beforehand.

No one-size-fits-all

When Jung writes that “the shoe that fits one person pinches another,” he underscores the essential singularity of human experience. There is no universal prescription for a life well lived, and no checklist that can simply be applied to everyone.

Standardised protocols, evidence-based approaches and goal-oriented interventions all have their place, but they can sometimes obscure the individual person's capacity to discover their own way forward and move at their own pace.

There is something deeply humane, and humbling, in the idea that the therapist should not impose a fixed aim. It asks the therapist to remain open, attentive and curious, resisting the impulse to fix or direct and instead accompanying the person while remaining receptive to what emerges.

It also places a profound trust in the individual's potential for growth and integration, even when that potential is hidden or not yet accessible.

A different kind of responsibility

For those not working in psychotherapy, this may initially sound like passivity, or even a lack of responsibility. Jung is pointing towards something quite different: a responsibility to remain close to the living moment and to allow what needs to be known to reveal itself rather than rushing to pre-empt it.

This process can be more like listening than leading, because the therapist's task is not simply to provide the right answer but to remain sufficiently present for something meaningful to emerge.

There is also, in these words, a respectful acknowledgement of suffering. Not all pain can be immediately resolved, and not every crisis requires a solution in the conventional sense. Sometimes psyche needs understanding and sustained attention before it becomes clear what a difficulty is asking of us.

Jung's reference to the “creative possibilities” within each person speaks to this hope: that even in distress there may be possibilities for growth, meaning and transformation that are not yet visible.

What happens when we slow down

In my work, I have seen how the urge to know too quickly, whether on the part of therapist or client, can short-circuit this process. It is often when we pause and refrain from making immediate meaning that something surprising begins to take shape: a new image, a feeling long buried, or a gesture towards something previously unspoken.

These moments cannot be summoned on demand. They emerge through a process that needs sufficient space and trust.

In this way, therapy can become less a process of repair and more a process of unfolding. The therapist, far from being an expert with all the answers, becomes a companion who holds a certain kind of space. Not empty space, but a space in which complexity is allowed, where uncertainty is not feared, and where the client is trusted to bring their own wisdom to the process.

A living system, not a problem to solve

Jung's approach, as reflected in these passages, also resonates with broader themes throughout his work. His lifelong interest in dreams, myth, archetypes and the collective unconscious speaks to a worldview in which psyche is not a machine to be fixed, but something living, dynamic, symbolic and mysterious.

This is one reason his approach connects so strongly with the wider depth psychology tradition. Psychological life is not simply a collection of problems waiting to be solved. It has its own imagery, rhythms and patterns of meaning.

There is something profoundly countercultural about this perspective. In a time when even our inner lives can be subjected to metrics, efficiency and productivity, Jung asks us to recognise that growth does not always follow a straight line and that transformation may look very different from what we expected.

The inner compass of the psyche

The line “he can scarcely know what is wanted better than nature and the will-to-live of the sick person” is especially moving to me. It suggests that within each of us there may be a movement towards greater wholeness, even when we feel lost or broken.

The role of the therapist, then, is not to impose a direction from outside but to support that movement towards integration, however it happens to appear in the particular person and circumstances.

This way of working can feel risky. It demands patience, humility and a willingness to sit with uncertainty. It may go against the expectations of someone seeking quick answers or immediate relief, but it can also protect something essential: the possibility that the work will develop from the person's own psychological life rather than being fitted to a predetermined outcome.

When we relinquish the need to rush towards a fixed destination, we make space for something more organic to emerge, something that belongs uniquely to the person in front of us.

Living the questions in everyday life

This attitude need not be confined to the therapy room. In everyday life, we might ask ourselves where we are rushing to know, where we might soften the need for immediate clarity, and what might emerge if we allowed an experience to unfold before deciding what it means.

The reflections of Jung on not knowing, read all those years ago on a whim, continue to shape how I think about therapy and about life. They remind me that we do not always need to strive, explain or control. Sometimes it is more valuable to listen closely to ourselves, to others and to the deeper movements of psyche before deciding what should happen next.

And in doing so, we may discover that we are not so lost after all.