Instinct

1. Etymology

Instinct names an involuntary drive toward certain activities. Related: archetypal-image; psychization; physiological–mental poles.

2. Plain summary

All psychic processes whose energies are not under conscious control are instinctive. Instincts in original strength can make social adaptation nearly impossible. Instinct is never isolated—it trails archetypal contents of a spiritual nature that both found and limit it; it stimulates thought, and if free thinking fails, compulsive thinking follows.

Conscious processes can become instinctive when charged with unconscious energy (fatigue, intoxication, depression). Conversely, instincts can be civilized by psychization—too much invites revenge as an autonomous complex, a chief cause of neurosis. Too much animal distorts the civilized person; too much civilization makes sick animals.

Jung named five prominent instinctive groups: creativity, reflection, activity, sexuality, hunger—with creativity in a class by itself.

Examples (exhaustive house list for this Index lemma — common instinct motifs named across Jung’s essays and standard Jungian lexica; not a claim that Jung’s CW contains only these):
involuntary drive; energies not under conscious control; social adaptation risk; coupled with archetypal “philosophy”; compulsive thinking; psychization; too much → complex; animal vs civilization; five groups (hunger, sexuality, activity, reflection, creativity); Samuels → archetype / death / life instinct.

3. Academic elucidation

In analytical psychology instinct is involuntary drive coupled with archetypal spirit—Definitions and human-behaviour essays. Descent Press keeps Sharp and Samuels (redirect cluster) in §4. Prefer CW 6 ¶765; CW 8 ¶¶161, 255; CW 16 ¶185.

4. Lexicon

Sharp (1991)

Instinct. An involuntary drive toward certain activities. (See also archetype and archetypal image.) All psychic processes whose energies are not under conscious control are instinctive. … Instinct is always and inevitably coupled with something like a philosophy of life… An instinct which has undergone too much psychization can take its revenge in the form of an autonomous complex…

(Sharp, 1991) — cites CW 6 ¶765; CW 8 ¶¶161, 255; CW 16 ¶185; CW 7 ¶32 in Sharp’s lemma.

Samuels, Shorter & Plaut (1986) — instinct redirect p. 83 (house vessel neighborhood.

instinct See ARCHETYPE; DEATH INSTINCT; LIFE INSTINCT; TRANSFORMATION.

(Samuels, Shorter, & Plaut, 1986, p. 83)

5. CW concordance — sample, not exhaustive

See also: archetypal-image; libido; complex; adaptation; depression; eros; unconscious.

References

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.