Both Are Transformed: What Carl Jung Understood About Meeting Someone
Carl Jung once wrote that “the meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” He was writing about therapy, about the strange truth that a doctor can’t heal anyone while staying untouched.
Both Are Transformed: What Carl Jung Understood About Meeting Someone
Sara Kuburic
Oct 20, 2026
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Carl Jung once wrote that
“the meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”
He was writing about therapy, about the strange truth that a doctor can’t heal anyone while staying untouched. But I think he was describing something larger. I think he was describing what it means to really meet, to encounter, someone.
Most meetings aren’t meetings at all. We pass each other like ships with their lights off. We trade weather and small talk and leave exactly as we came. Nothing reacts. Nothing changes. Jung knew this, which is why his sentence hinges on one quiet word:
if
.
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