JH: So our task is nothing to do with getting better, and the path of individuation and so on and so forth. The task is living with the dead.

But why is it that to an old man his past life appears so short? For this reason: his memory is short; and so he fancies that his life has been short too. He no longer remembers the insignificant parts of it, and much that was unpleasant is now forgotten; how little, then, there is left! For, in general, a man's memory is as imperfect as his intell

Our souls as well as our bodies are composed of individual elements which were already present in the ranks of our ancestors. . . . Body and soul therefore have an intensely historical character. . . .We have plunged down a cataract of progress which sweeps us on into the future with ever wider violence the farther it takes us from our roots . . .

For some people this feeling is not a dramatic crisis. It’s just a creeping malaise, a gradual loss of enthusiasm in what they are doing. The Jungian analyst James Hollis had a patient who explained it this way: “I always sought to win whatever the game was, and only now do I realize how much I have been played by the game.”