“… when you get into a disagreeable situation where you see no opening, no direct path, you assume that you are quite alone with yourself. … you may find yourself in a really tight place where you can’t get out, where you are helpless. Then you recognize that you are not alone, because such an absolute impasse is an archetypal situation, and an archetypal figure becomes constellated, a fact in your psychology, a potential, and so you are up to the situation.
… it is the totality of the psyche that functions in that way; the psyche produces a double, it brings up another figure; that is a psychological fact. The psychopompos is this second figure; you can call it the daimon, or the shadow, or a god, or an ancestor spirit; it does not matter what name you give it, it is simply a helpful figure; it might even be an animal. … in such a predicament … we lose the power of the ego, we lose our self-confidence.
Until that moment, we were willful or arbitrary, we had made our own choice … Then suddenly we are in an impasse, we lose faith in ourselves, and it is just as if all of our energy became regressive. And then our psyche reacts by constellating that double, which has the effect of leading us out of the situation.”
C.G. Jung (1931) Visions Seminar, p. 385
One Seeker's Story 