Although they come from different intellectual traditions, both C. G. Jung and Byung‑Chul Han place negativity at the centre of human experience. For Han, negativity refers to the forms of resistance, opacity, delay, and alterity that interrupt the smooth flow of contemporary life. Negativity is what prevents everything from becoming transparent, frictionless, and immediately available. It is the structure that creates distance, tension, and inner space. Without negativity, the self collapses into positivity: a state of constant exposure, instant reaction, and shallow self‑identical performance. Han’s critique of contemporary culture is therefore a critique of the disappearance of negativity, and with it the disappearance of freedom, depth, and genuine encounter.

Jungian psychology, though formulated decades earlier, is built on precisely this same structure. Jung’s entire model of the psyche depends on the presence of what resists the ego, what remains opaque to consciousness, what interrupts the fantasy of self‑transparency. The shadow is the most obvious expression of this negativity. It is the part of the psyche that cannot be assimilated into the ego’s preferred image of itself. The shadow is not simply a collection of undesirable traits; it is the structural limit that gives the ego its shape. Jung insists that psychological development requires confronting this negativity, not bypassing it. The shadow introduces friction, tension, and delay — the very qualities Han identifies as essential for freedom.

The same dynamic appears in Jung’s understanding of the anima and animus, the inner figures of otherness that disrupt the ego’s autonomy. These figures are not projections to be eliminated but forms of alterity that must be engaged. They introduce ambiguity, irrationality, and emotional depth. Jung’s psychology therefore preserves negativity as the condition for genuine encounter, just as Han argues that the disappearance of alterity destroys intimacy in contemporary culture.

Even Jung’s central concept of individuation is a process defined by negativity. Individuation is not the smooth unfolding of potential but the slow, often painful negotiation with the unconscious, which resists the ego’s plans and demands recognition on its own terms.

Jung warns repeatedly against premature harmonization, which is the psychological equivalent of Han’s positivity: the collapse of difference, the loss of inner distance, the disappearance of resistance.

Jung’s theory of symbols further reinforces this connection. A symbol, for Jung, is powerful precisely because it resists full interpretation. It is not a sign with a fixed meaning but an image that remains partially opaque, partially unknown. Its negativity — its refusal to be exhausted by rational explanation — is what allows it to mediate between conscious and unconscious life. Symbols slow perception, interrupt habitual thought, and open a space for reflection. They are the aesthetic negativity of the psyche, analogous to the sublime or the uncanny in Han’s account of beauty. When symbols are reduced to simple meanings, they lose their transformative force.

Finally, Jung’s understanding of the Self depends on negativity in the deepest sense. The Self is not a state of harmony but a dynamic equilibrium sustained by tension. It is the point at which opposites coexist without collapsing into sameness. The Self is therefore not the elimination of negativity but its integration as a structural principle. Without conflict, without limits, without the opacity of the unconscious, the Self would be impossible. Negativity is what gives the psyche its architecture in conjunction to positivity – the ability to identify with the constructive aspect of our archetypes .

Seen through Han’s conceptual lens, Jungian psychology emerges as a profound defence of negativity. Jung shows that without resistance, without the unknown, without the other, the psyche becomes shallow, reactive, and one‑dimensional — precisely the condition Han diagnoses in contemporary culture. Both thinkers insist that freedom, depth, and genuine selfhood depend on the presence of what does not immediately align with us. Jung’s psychology is therefore not a romantic system of inner harmony but a rigorous account of how the psyche requires negativity to become whole. Han provides the philosophical vocabulary of freedom that makes this structure explicit; Jung provides the psychological model that shows how it operates within the individual. Together, they reveal that negativity is not an obstacle to be overcome but the very condition of human depth.