Spirit

1. Etymology

Spirit (Latin spiritus, breath) names both an archetype and a functional complex—often personified as an enlivening, breathlike presence. Related: wise old man; mana-personality; god-image; numinous.

2. Plain summary

Spirit in Jung is something you meet psychically—not a lab object and not only a church word. It shows up when insight, counsel, or resolve are needed and ego cannot muster them: as a man, hobgoblin, animal, or invisible “presence” that fills the gap.

He separates spirit as a psychological concept from spirit as the Christian summum bonum (and from a merely evil spirit). Modern spirit is often morally neutral. As an autonomous complex it can feel like a higher intention over against the ego. Related to wise old man as masculine spirit-figure and to opposites of spirit and matter.

Examples (exhaustive house list for this Index lemma — common spirit-related figures and motifs named across Jung’s essays and standard Jungian lexica; not a claim that Jung’s CW contains only these):
archetype and functional complex; breathlike invisible presence; object of psychic experience (like God) not externally provable; compensation for spiritual deficiency; man / hobgoblin / animal forms; autonomous complex / intention superior to ego; “higher” consciousness rather than only unconscious; distinct from Christian summum bonum and from necessary evil-spirit; morally indifferent/neutral modern idea; wise old man as spirit personification; spirit–matter opposites; numinous charge; inflation when ego claims spirit; dreams / fairytales phenomenology; active imagination; god-image / meaning.

3. Academic elucidation

4. Lexicon

Sharp (1991)

Spirit. An archetype and a functional complex, often personified and experienced as enlivening, analogous to what the archaic mind felt to be an invisible, breathlike “presence.” … Spirit, like God, denotes an object of psychic experience which cannot be proved to exist in the external world… The archetype of spirit… always appears in a situation where insight, understanding, good advice… are needed but cannot be mustered on one’s own resources…

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

spirit … psychological foundations of belief in spirits… necessity for man’s conscious relationship to spirit… Dreams and visions as evidence… Jung does not address whether spirit exists in and of itself — that would be metaphysical…

5. CW concordance — sample, not exhaustive

Spirit, like God, denotes an object of psychic experience which cannot be proved to exist in the external world and cannot be understood rationally. This is its meaning if we use the word “spirit” in its best sense.

Spirits are complexes of the collective unconscious which appear when the individual loses his adaptation to reality, or which seek to replace the inadequate attitude of a whole people by a new one.

The hallmarks of spirit are, firstly, the principle of spontaneous movement and activity; secondly, the spontaneous capacity to produce images independently of sense perception; and thirdly, the autonomous and sovereign manipulation of these images.

See also: wise old man; mana-personality; archetype; complex; god-image; numinous; opposites; ego; dreams; wholeness; father-complex.

References

Jung, C. G. (1969). Spirit and life. 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. 425, ¶626). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1926)

Jung, C. G. (1969). The psychological foundations of belief in spirits. 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. 408, ¶597). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1920)

Jung, C. G. (1968). The phenomenology of the spirit in fairytales. 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. 9, pt. 1, p. 212, ¶393). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1948)

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.