Compensation

## 1. Etymology

**Compensation** (Latin *compensare*, to weigh one thing against another) names Jung’s **self-regulatory balancing** in the psyche: the unconscious supplements or counters one-sided consciousness. Not ordinary “making up for a lack” in the everyday sense alone—though that shade appears—but a homeostatic psychic process. Related: self-regulation; counter-position; the [symbol](/index/symbol/) as bridge.

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## 2. Plain summary

**Compensation** is the psyche’s way of keeping balance. Consciousness chooses a direction and leaves other contents out; those excluded contents sink into the unconscious and form a counterweight. As the conscious attitude grows more one-sided, the counter-position strengthens until it breaks through as dreams, spontaneous images, or symptoms.

Usually the unconscious does not simply oppose consciousness—it balances and supplements it. The bridge between the two worlds is often a living [symbol](/index/symbol/); without conscious assimilation the bridge fails. Compensation feeds [individuation](/index/individuation/) when the [ego](/index/ego/) can take the correction; it feeds neurosis when the breakthrough is only suffered as symptom.

**Examples (exhaustive house list for this Index lemma — common compensation-related figures and motifs named across Jung’s essays and standard Jungian lexica; not a claim that Jung’s CW contains only these):**

natural process establishing/maintaining psychic balance; self-regulation / homeostatic analogy; balancing, adjusting, supplementing; conscious selection and one-sidedness; excluded contents as unconscious counterweight; counter-position strengthening with conscious emphasis; breakthrough as dreams / spontaneous images / symptoms; unconscious compensation as balancing not merely opposing; bridge between two psychological worlds; [symbol](/index/symbol/) as compensatory bridge; need for conscious assimilation of the symbol; relation to [transcendent function](/index/transcendent-function/) (union after tension); dream as compensatory statement; persona brightness compensated by [shadow](/index/shadow/); type one-sidedness compensated by inferior function; [inflation](/index/inflation/) as failed compensation / possession; [complex](/index/complex/) constellation as compensatory surge; [projection](/index/projection/) of compensatory contents; [active imagination](/index/active-imagination/) as deliberate engagement with compensatory images.

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## 3. Academic elucidation

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## 4. Lexicon

> Compensation. A natural process aimed at establishing or maintaining balance within the psyche. … The activity of consciousness is selective. … The contents that are excluded and inhibited by the chosen direction sink into the unconscious, where they form a counterweight to the conscious orientation. … the repressed unconscious contents break through in the form of dreams and spontaneous images. … As a rule, the unconscious compensation does not run counter to consciousness, but is rather a balancing or supplementing of the conscious orientation.

(Sharp, 1991, p. [provisional — unverified])

**Samuels, Shorter & Plaut (1986)**

> Compensation … an empirically demonstrable compensatory function operative in psychological processes… balancing, adjusting, supplementing. … the compensatory activity of the unconscious as balancing any tendency towards one-sidedness on the part of consciousness. … repressed unconscious contents gather a sufficient energy charge to break through in the form of dreams, spontaneous images or symptoms. The objective of the compensatory process seems to be to link, as with a bridge, two psychological worlds. That bridge is the symbol…

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## 5. CW concordance — sample, not exhaustive

> COMPENSATION means balancing, adjusting, supplementing.

> Whereas Adler restricts his concept of compensation to the balancing of inferiority feelings, I conceive it as functional adjustment in general, an inherent self-regulation of the psychic apparatus. … I regard the activity of the unconscious as a balancing of the one-sidedness of the general attitude produced by the function of consciousness. … As a rule, the unconscious compensation does not run counter to consciousness, but is rather a balancing or supplementing of the conscious orientation.

(Jung, 1921/1971, CW 6, pp. 583–584, ¶694)

> Normally, compensation is an unconscious process, i.e., an unconscious regulation of conscious activity. In neurosis the unconscious appears in such stark contrast to the conscious state that compensation is disturbed. The aim of analytical therapy, therefore, is a realization of unconscious contents in order that compensation may be re-established.

(Jung, 1921/1971, CW 6, p. 584, ¶695)

> I should like to distinguish between the prospective function of dreams and their compensatory function. The latter means that the unconscious, considered as relative to consciousness, adds to the conscious situation all those elements from the previous day which remained subliminal because of repression or because they were simply too feeble to reach consciousness. This compensation, in the sense of being a self-regulation of the psychic organism, must be called purposive.

(Jung, 1916/1969, CW 8, p. 331, ¶492)

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**See also:** [symbol](/index/symbol/); [transcendent function](/index/transcendent-function/); [individuation](/index/individuation/); [ego](/index/ego/); [shadow](/index/shadow/); [persona](/index/persona/); [complex](/index/complex/); [projection](/index/projection/); [inflation](/index/inflation/); [active imagination](/index/active-imagination/); [self](/index/self/); [archetype](/index/archetype/). *(Queued — not yet linked: self-regulation, neurosis, opposites.)*

## References

Jung, C. G. (1969). General aspects of dream psychology. In H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, & W. McGuire (Eds.), *The collected works of C. G. Jung* (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.) (2nd ed., Vol. 8, p. 331, ¶492). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1916)

Jung, C. G. (1971). Definitions: Compensation. In H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, & W. McGuire (Eds.), *The collected works of C. G. Jung* (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.) (Vol. 6, pp. 582–584, ¶¶693, 694, 695). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1921)

Samuels, A., Shorter, B., & Plaut, F. (1986). *A critical dictionary of Jungian analysis*. Routledge.

Sharp, D. (1991). *Jung lexicon: A primer of terms & concepts*. Inner City Books.

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