What is it that we refuse to see within ourselves and our lives? Which laws do we decline to follow, and why is the legal system in such a crisis today? Why has the sense of injustice nested so deeply within us? Can we truly live in harmony with justice if we continue to deceive ourselves and refuse to acknowledge the universal principles of order and equity – principles not authored by man? Yet, some of us rebel fiercely against them, for they hinder our desire to do as we please – to be ‘free’ while simultaneously playing the martyr, as if worthy of sainthood.
The psychic world reflects the same reality. Within our psyche operate autonomous forces that do not cease to exist simply because we are unaware of them – on the contrary, they activate with even greater intensity when we resist acknowledging them. The psyche follows specific laws; should we refuse to examine them, the collapse of its structure often follows. In such cases, the ‘human court’ of the ego can no longer withstand the unconscious contents within, and chaos takes the place of order.
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Who Creates the Law and the Order?
The Latin maxim Ignorantia juris non excusat, which states that ‘Ignorance of the law excuses no one’, appears to hold a far deeper meaning if we step beyond the one-sided framework of positive law – which typically examines the letter, but not the spirit, of the law. Upon careful reading, we discover that it refers to an ignorance of Natural Law: an expression of those rational and cosmic principles that create order and structure within all living things in space. When we consciously choose to ignore them and remain ignorant, positive law begins to lose its center, its meaning, its inner measure, and its purpose to balance – that is, to be just. The form remains, but the life-giving principle withers.
When a person becomes self-absorbed, mesmerized by spinning around their own axis, they begin to draft and enforce laws (lex) that gradually detach from the principle of justice (ius) – which, in essence, means balance. Then, norms cease to serve order and humanity, serving instead personal desires, passions, and fears. It is as if we were to imagine that man created the Sun, and that it has begun to revolve around him, while he himself dictates exactly how and when it should rise and set, solely to serve human procedures.
Scientists discovered long ago that the Sun does not revolve around man, but man around the Sun. No matter how many laws we draft, we cannot alter this fact. Therefore, natural laws are heliocentric, not geocentric. In other words, all forms of law – natural, physical, biological, legal, and so forth – are subordinate to the Sun and its rhythm. However, when we fall out of sync with this universal rhythm, the global equilibrium appears undisturbed; the Sun continues to rise, regardless of whether we find the world’s occurrences to be just or not. In the same way, natural laws ‘rise’ every day before the written ones – and after the darkness.
The Principle of Ma’at and the Scales of Justice
Today, the Latin maxim Ius est ars boni et aequi (Law is the art of the good and the equitable) sounds like an archaic notion for the naive. In the distorted form of modern law, there is no trace of art. Unlike mere imitation, living art always contains the imago Dei. This is the difference between an imitation and an original work of art: the latter touches, transforms, spiritualizes, and humbles you. An imitation, no matter how skillful, never achieves this; it may entertain for a moment, but it leaves you just as hungry and thirsty as before. Our daily language reveals the same truth: art vs. artificial. When art is absent, only the artificial remains. Without the ‘art’ within the norms, we are left with a simulation. That is why drafting laws is, in its essence, an act of (normative) creation.
Roman law distinguishes between ius and lex. Lex is the written norm, while Ius is the principle of justice that gives it meaning. When lex detaches from ius, the law ceases to be ‘the art of the good and the equitable’ and transforms into a mere automated mechanism. Similarly, within the psyche, there is also a ius – an inner structure and a lex: our social roles, rules, and external expectations.
Law did not originate with the Greco-Roman civilization. If we look further back into history, we arrive in Ancient Egypt, where symbols held primary significance – symbols the Egyptians knew and employed consciously. It is there that we discover the Principle of Ma’at and exactly what she measures on her scales. This is the bridge between Law and Psyche: Mind and Heart – Spirit and Soul – Thought and Emotion. The scales do not measure whether you lived modestly or morally, nor do they weigh who possessed more wealth or power; they measure with absolute precision whether you lived in falsehood or in Truth – in Wholeness and Equilibrium, or not. The widely known myth of Ma’at is a universal symbol, which means the scales are within us, here and now.
When the Inner Law is substituted, a person begins to live by ‘laws’ that are not their own, and the scales tip in favor of a heavy heart. Everyone feels, perceives, and experiences this tilting of the scales – especially when the discrepancy between the pans is vast. It is a fascinating fact that the word magistrate originates precisely from Ma’at.
Psychology of Law
We are accustomed to seeking causes externally – within institutions, legislators, and ‘the system’ – even though we are an essential part of that very system. Law is a social instrument designed to regulate human relations, yet upon closer examination, something more fundamental emerges: every legal system reflects a specific internal state of consciousness. Before it becomes a code, the law exists as a principle. Before justice is imposed from without, it is either experienced or violated from within.
The Psychology of Law, and Analytical Psychology in particular, explores the same dynamics: the autonomous forces (archetypal structures) at work within our psyche that bring either internal order, balance, and measure, or their opposite – destructive chaos. When we deny or repress them, a crisis ensues – first internally, and subsequently, externally. This is why an increasing number of scholars, lawyers, psychologists, and philosophers are beginning to examine the link between law as an external order and the psyche as an internal structure. The contemporary crisis in law is not merely a legal problem; it is a symptom of a crisis within the human psyche and consciousness, directing us toward the field of the unconscious.
For years, I have been communicating with legal colleagues and observing that the percentage of those suffering from anxiety, depression, and addiction is increasing exponentially. The fuller the pockets, the more impoverished the soul seems to become. At that point, neither social prestige, nor money, nor private jets, nor the comfort of a government position can compensate for the sense of emptiness and the loss of connection with oneself.
It is no surprise that over the last decade, an increasing number of legal professionals have been pivoting toward other vocations or alternative ways of working where they can rediscover meaning and feel purposeful. As law progressively loses touch with its soul, and the statutes with their spirit, society becomes increasingly cynical regarding the role of magistrates and lawyers. This creates a negative feedback loop: the deteriorating public perception of the legal profession deepens a sense of isolation that weighs heavily on the lives of many within the field.
The crisis of meaning within the legal profession demands a fundamental shift in how we perceive both the law and ourselves as practitioners, in whatever capacity we serve. While financial rewards and prestige remain powerful motivators for many, they rarely provide the deeper sense of purpose and fulfillment required to sustain a person in the long term. To confront the dissatisfaction and cognitive dissonance that have permeated the profession, we must look beyond superficial solutions and engage with the deeper, often unconscious forces that shape our experience as human beings and as legal experts.
This means not only cultivating our personal well-being but also examining the broader systems and structures within which we function. Until we dare to look at the unconscious motives, fears, compromises, and dependencies that drive us, we will continue to spin in the same vicious circle of personal and professional exhaustion – for the two are inextricably linked. The integration of psychology into law is not merely a necessity; it is an expression of the principle of indivisible wholeness. Jung’s depth psychology is a profound beginning.
(I recommend the article The Soulful Lawyer: Jungian Practices for Legal Professionals)
Archetypes in Law
Carl Jung viewed the legal system as a collective, archetypal structure designed to bring order to chaos; however, it often functions as a Persona that conceals a Shadow of dishonesty and injustice. Rigid and dogmatic adherence to laws increasingly serves as a cover for immoral actions, allowing individuals to bypass their personal conscience. From the perspective of analytical psychology, the key aspects are as follows:
The Archetype of Justice
The legal system is driven by the fundamental need for order and justice, often playing out the archetypal dynamics between good and evil. Brilliant examples can be found in films such as The Devil’s Advocate and The Silence of the Lambs. The archetypes of the Judge, the Accuser and the Accused, the Defender, and the Witness inhabit every psyche – on both a personal and collective level. If we look honestly within, we find them all present, though in some individuals, certain figures are more pronounced and active. They interact incessantly, yet the archetype of Justice is most closely linked to that of the Judge; for it is the Judge who upholds the framework of the law and weighs the scales after admitting and examining every perspective.
Shadow work (in Law)
The Shadow in law is the lust for power disguised as service in the name of justice, and it wears many faces. Among professionals, this manifests as an identification with the role: ‘I am the Law.’ When a position begins to feed the ego, victory becomes more important than truth, and procedure more vital than the human being. Rationality is misused to suppress the conscience, while the inner truth and measure are silenced in the interest of the client, even when such a defense contradicts internal principles. Today, this is conveniently labeled as ‘professionalism’ and ‘justice’.
In clients, the Shadow often manifests as a projection; thus, they frequently seek not justice, but justification, as they typically wish for someone else to bear the moral burden. They are often driven by a desire for the law to legitimize their pain, anger, or thirst for revenge, paying a defender to assume the weight of the conflict in their stead.
In institutions, the Shadow is the fear of the destructive chaos lurking at every turn. Consequently, the system prefers an illusion of order over the truth of the dependencies that created this ‘order’ in the first place. While predictability is vital for legal certainty, it simultaneously hardens against any attempt to confront moral complexity, personal responsibility, or movement away from stagnation. Thus, the law becomes rigid – a self-preserving mechanism. Most significantly, the individual is entirely disregarded.
The deepest shadow, however, lies in the split between the inner and the outer law. Internally, a person knows one truth, yet externally, they act out another. The longer one lives within this contradiction, the more they petrify, becoming increasingly cynical. Thus, the crisis is not merely institutional or professional. It is psychic and profoundly human.
The Persona: Unmasking the Legal Self
The Persona, or social mask, represents a combination of how we wish to present ourselves to the world and how we want the world to perceive us. It serves the purpose of adaptation, yet adaptation is not always advisable when it concerns the Inner Law. The Persona defines our social identity and is formed in relation to the roles we occupy – lawyer, psychologist, attorney, judge, parent, and so forth. It is the face we wear to step into society and be accepted by it. The Persona fulfills a vital function as a bridge between ourselves and the world – it is the first impression. Thus, it is necessary, for it is through the Persona that we take our place in the world.
However, when the Persona hardens into an identity and we cling to it, it replaces the living human being. Law is a field where the Persona is exceptionally powerful. The attorney, the judge, the prosecutor – they all wear a face that must appear competent, rational, impartial, and ‘objective.’ This face commands trust. Tension arises when the role consumes our true self and our perception of who we are beyond it. For instance, when a judge continues to act as one outside the courtroom, within their family and friendships. Or the lawyer, accustomed to defending (saving) clients during a trial, who persists in doing so with everyone in their life. Or when you feel the need to be right at any cost, as if it were a battle of life and death. Who would you be if you didn’t have to fight, prove, protect, or suppress the truth all the time?
For legal professionals, the Persona is often tethered to proving oneself, over-responsibility, and hyper-control. Yet, when we strip away this mask, we frequently discover someone yearning for lightness, softness, and a connection with their own feelings, for it is exhausting to remain perpetually on standby for the battlefield. Someone who understands that their worth does not always need to be proven or explained – certainly not at any cost. However, the sense of worth does not stem from a social role.
When the ‘letter of the law’ becomes more important than the spirit of justice, and the protection of personal interest displaces the search for truth, the Persona of the law begins to conceal its Shadow. The Shadow in law is not merely ‘corruption’ or a ‘broken system.’ It is more subtle: the drive to prove one’s significance, to win at any cost, to rationalize a moral compromise because ‘that’s how the system works.’ It is the refusal to see one’s own participation in the substitution of reality. It is precisely here that the internal rift is born, for the human psyche does not seek professional efficiency alone – it seeks Wholeness and Inner Order.
Influence on the legal professionals
Most legal professionals experience a crisis of meaning due to an over-identification with the professional Persona they are forced to maintain within modern legal reality, alongside the simulation of legality. This necessitates Shadow work to restore internal balance. In its quest to be ‘objective,’ contemporary law excludes emotion, conscience, and intuition, and with them, any genuine interaction with real human beings. In their place remain rules, roles, and institutions that function mechanically, yet are devoid of living substance and meaning.
Legal education has largely excluded symbolic thinking, emphasizing the purely rational, while simultaneously discarding the moral law that underpins the principle of justice and the inner measure. Thus, students initially enthusiastic, quickly realize that justice is no longer the central pillar of legal practice. By the time they graduate, a large percentage of them choose not to practice law at all.
Regrettably, future legal professionals soon realize that ‘successful’ adaptation to a system – one demanding loyalty to collectively imposed rules, interests, and increasingly questionable ‘values’, requires them, like the rest, to don a blindfold to remain ‘impartial.’ Consequently, positive law becomes an expression of the collective shadow within an environment where individuals gradually lose their clear vision and the will to discover their own Inner Law.
Recently, a lawyer I know spontaneously shared that he is exhausted from bearing responsibility for others. From personal experience, I know this exhaustion stems not from the battle itself, but from a pervasive sense of meaninglessness – the substitution of the living law with artificial procedures and rules created primarily to serve political and economic interests. Increasingly, legal practitioners fear taking a clear stand, terrified of losing their positions or missing out on the next big client. Yet, this deprives both the individual and the professional of their dignity. When we add the fact that the modern lawyer is often forced to double as a therapist, the picture becomes even more complex.
En masse, laws are drafted by individuals devoid of inner measure, driven by a collective drive for power. Consequently, practicing this profession has become increasingly difficult, even for those who possess the necessary qualities. The true purpose of the law – to protect people from encroachment, to establish order, and to instill a sense of security and justice has become a chimera. The paradox is that many of the legal professionals I know, who possess the requisite qualities, no longer practice; meanwhile, others continue to exercise the profession despite lacking a legal psyche – as Prof. Zhivko Stalev aptly called it.
Even second-year students already know that today there is no real intersection between the law and justice. In most universities, this isn’t even discussed, as if the disintegration within the legal world – which is, of course, pervasive and interconnected, did not exist. When we reach a point where people begin to fear and doubt (not without reason) the drafting and application of the law, the Scales tip alarmingly. In such conditions, it is precisely self-knowledge that can help us restore internal equilibrium and steer us in the opposite direction – toward integration and wholeness.
Psychological types | Carl Jung
The theory ofpsychological types and innate psychological attitudes, explored in depth by Jung, finds significant application within the legal context. Professionals in the field can gain profound insights into themselves and their clients during conflict resolution, business negotiations, and litigation. Since most legal practitioners possess a dominant extraverted attitude with a leading thinking function and a clear orientation toward judgment and structure, working with psychological types reveals their less developed introverted side and, for example, their feeling function. It is precisely these aspects that often remain in the shadow – unrecognized and even undervalued. Therefore, working with psychological types is a way for an individual to expand their internal horizon beyond the confines of their professional role.
To activate the imagination and reduce over-identification with the rational mind, analytical work employs images, archetypal cards, numerical symbolism, dream analysis, and the tracing of recurring life patterns. These approaches awaken the creative potential of the unconscious, which in many legal professionals remains hidden behind a formidable professional Persona. Therefore, while Themis may wear a blindfold today, it does not mean that those practicing law must wear one as well.
Themis Unblindfolded
Some time ago, I found myself questioning why Themis wears a blindfold at all? While today it is claimed as a symbol of impartiality, it seems far more realistic to interpret it as a refusal to see clearly what is unfolding before our very eyes – especially given the blatant biases within the legal world. A historical review of the mythology reveals that Themis has been linked to Ma’at since antiquity and was originally depicted without a blindfold. She had no need for one, as she possessed the power to see into both the future and the past; nor did she require a sword, for as a goddess, she embodied Divine Order itself.
During the Roman era, she was named Justitia and began to be depicted with a sword and a blindfold. This raises the question: why today, in the practice of law, does almost no one speak of Divine Order and Justice, even though the entire history of law points precisely to that? Is it possible that the blindfold, added only a few centuries ago, symbolizes not impartiality, but a voluntary blindness? To this day, Themis/Justitia is not universally blindfolded – an example being the Illinois Supreme Court.When we move through trials and difficult times, it is preferable, however painful, to remain with eyes wide open to what is unfolding (both within and without). It is dangerous to be simultaneously unseeing and armed with a sword.
The birth of the Inner Law
Marie-Louise von Franz notes that, unlike legal systems, the psyche does not function through unambiguous and non-contradictory rules. On the contrary, it is rife with contradictions, paradoxes, and tensions that cannot be resolved by mechanically following the ‘collective law.’ In fairy tales, as in life, the individual – the hero is faced with situations where there is no ready-made formula or well-trodden path to take. There, the hero does not follow the collective; for had they done so, they would never have found their own path or the internal strength to reach the princess’s palace and defeat the dragon. The hero’s journey precludes blind obedience; instead, it develops the power of clear consciousness.
It is precisely these contradictions that demand individuals develop their own internal morality, freedom of thought, and the responsibility to make independent, conscious decisions. The only ‘rule’ that remains unchanged and resilient is the instinctive wisdom that knows more than the social mask – a trusted ally to the human being. Embarking on the path of individuation is not an escape from the written law or the collective, but a unification of the inner and outer worlds. The birth of the Inner Law does not abolish the form – it restores its spirit, thereby filling it with substance. When this occurs, one takes the risk of becoming whole, even if it places them in conflict with the collective and results in the loss of illusions. This is why both Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz emphasized unequivocally the same thing: not to become a ‘Jungian,’ but to discover your own personal myth.
To know oneself is to connect with the depths of one’s own soul. At that point, therapy and laws may serve as valuable landmarks, but they can never be the ultimate goal, nor can they give birth to the Inner Law. You are the only one who can do that – to discover your own path, which, though steep, leads to vast expanses and extraordinary adventures. And you will know, beyond a doubt, that they are yours.
And then, as you stand before Ma’at and her Scales, your soul will know the Truth.
