Spiritual Inflation, by David Warren

By David Warren, The Catholic Thing, Sept. 10, 2021

David Warren is a former editor of the Idler magazine and columnist in Canadian newspapers. He has extensive experience in the Near and Far East. His blog, Essays in Idleness, is now to be found at: davidwarrenonline.com.

The Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung, was very concerned about inflation. By this he was not referring to an economic or social, but to a personal phenomenon.

But the concept is similar to that of the economists, with their focused attention on our monetary crises. The inflationary person might be defined as full of air. Paradoxically he has an “inferiority complex” after expanding the definition of himself.

The world is full of balloons, and sharp objects. Inflation, the opposite of deflation, is in some respects the more immediately comfortable vice. A person, or an economy, that is in the act of deflating, experiences all kinds of unexpected pain – mysterious, or puzzling, only because he cannot make sense of it. …