Final

1. Etymology

Final names a point of view based on the potential result or purpose of psychic activity, complementary to a causal approach. Related: constructive; energic; neurosis; self-regulation of the psyche; teleological point of view (distinct: teleology anticipates a particular end; finality assumes purpose with essentially unknown goal).

2. Plain summary

Psychological data need twofold reading—causality and finality. Finality means immanent psychological striving for a goal, a sense of purpose inherent even in reactive emotion. Jung also called this view energic, contrasting it with mechanistic/causal reduction: energy underlies change, holds constant, follows a gradient that cannot simply be reversed.

Conservation applies psychically: excess libido somewhere means deprivation elsewhere; when libido seems to vanish in depression, it appears as symptom or another form. Samuels’s teleological point of view marks orientation to ends rather than causes—especially for unconscious, neurosis, and individuation.

Examples (exhaustive house list for this Index lemma — common final motifs named across Jung’s essays and standard Jungian lexica; not a claim that Jung’s CW contains only these):
purpose / result vs cause; finality ≠ teleology (unknown goal); sense of purpose in all psychic phenomena; synonymy with energic; vs mechanistic; energy gradient / irreversible; conservation of libido; symptom as over-invested function; apathetic states → where did libido go?; kinship with constructive; Samuels teleological neighborhood.

3. Academic elucidation

In analytical psychology final is purposive interpretive stance—Dream Psychology / On Psychic Energy territory. Descent Press keeps Sharp and Samuels (teleological point of view) in §4. §5 holds sample CW stamps at CW 8 ¶456; CW 8 ¶¶2f. Prefer CW 8.

4. Lexicon

Sharp (1991)

Final. A point of view based on the potential result or purpose of psychic activity, complementary to a causal approach. … I use the word finality intentionally, in order to avoid confusion with the concept of teleology. … Jung also called the final point of view energic, contrasting it with mechanistic or reductive…

(Sharp, 1991) — cites CW 8 ¶456; CW 8 ¶¶2f in Sharp’s lemma.

Samuels, Shorter & Plaut (1986) — no dedicated final head; teleological point of view p. 148

teleological point of view An orientation to ends or purposes rather than causes; it characterises Jung’s observation about the UNCONSCIOUS, NEUROSIS and most especially INDIVIDUATION…

(Samuels, Shorter, & Plaut, 1986, p. 148)

5. CW concordance — sample, not exhaustive

It is a generally recognized truth that physical events can be looked at in two ways: from the mechanistic and from the energic standpoint. The mechanistic view is purely causal… The energic point of view on the other hand is in essence final; the event is traced back from effect to cause on the assumption that some kind of energy underlies the changes… The flow of energy has a definite direction (goal) in that it follows the gradient of potential in a way that cannot be reversed.
(Jung, 1928/1969, CW 8, pp. 17–18, ¶¶2–3)

When a psychological fact has to be explained, it must be remembered that psychological data necessitate a twofold point of view, namely that of causality and that of finality. I use the word finality intentionally, in order to avoid confusion with the concept of teleology. By finality I mean merely the immanent psychological striving for a goal… All psychological phenomena have some such sense of purpose inherent in them…
(Jung, 1916/1969, CW 8, p. 311, ¶456)

See also: causal; energic; constructive; libido; depression; dreams; individuation.

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. 311, ¶456). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1916)

Jung, C. G. (1969). On psychic energy. 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, pp. 17–18, ¶¶2–3). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1928)

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.