Jung states in the Foreword to his famous essay on Dementia Praecox, "This work is the fruit of three years' experimental researches and clinical observations... The important thing is that I should be able to show the reader how, through psychological investigation, I have been led to certain views which I think will provoke new and fruitful questions concerning the individual psychological basis of dementia praecox."
Here are some representative quotations from the book:
"Fairness to Freud, however, does not imply, as many fear, unqualified submission to a dogma; one can very well maintain an independent judgment. If I, for instance, acknowledge the complex mechanisms of dreams and hysteria, this does not mean that I attribute to the infantile sexual trauma the exclusive importance that Freud apparently does." (Pg. 3-4)
"In men, sexuality, if not acted out directly, is frequently converted into a feverish professional activity or a passion for dangerous sports, etc., or into some learned hobby, such as a collecting mania." (PG. 49-50)
"Psychological analysis is far from being able to explain in a clear and illuminating fashion all cases of the disease with which we are here concerned. On the contrary, the majority remain exceedingly obscure and difficult to understand, not least because only a fraction of the patients recover." (Pg. 170-171)
"(A)bnormal people ... refuse to recognize the compensating influence which comes from the unconscious and even continue to emphasize their one-sidedness in accordance with the well-known psychological fact that ... the convert is the greatest fanatic; for I become a fanatic when I attack outwardly a thing which inwardly I am obliged to concede is right." (Pg. 207-208)
"(I)t is well-nigh impossible to prove, even approximately, that schizophrenia is an organic disease to begin with. It is equally impossible to make its exclusively psychological origin evident." (Pg. 245)
"It was this frequent reversion to archaic forms of association found in schizophrenia that first gave me the idea of an unconscious not consisting only of originally conscious contents that have got lost, but having a deeper layer of the same universal character as the mythological motifs which typify human fantasy in general... The term I chose for this, namely 'archetype,' therefore coincides with the biological concept of the 'pattern of behavior.'" (PG. 261)