Author: Vladisav Jovanović
Status: Preprint
Version: v1.0 (2026-03-10)
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18946400
Self-awareness can increase coherence while reducing contact. This paper distinguishes three realities—(1) the narrative reality of directed thinking (social legibility, explanation, justification), (2) the symbolic reality of undirected thinking (fantasy, dream, mythic compensation), and (3) presence as contact (constraint-bearing reality that binds revision). The failure mode is a coherence-dominant psyche that interprets insight, story, and symbolism as “truth” while remaining uncorrected by consequence. The paper reframes presence as an operational condition: what remains when narratives cannot buy exits. It treats individuation as the integration of these realities under constraint, so that insight becomes binding rather than ornamental.
Jung; directed thinking; undirected thinking; fantasy thinking; coherence; cheap coherence; contact; presence; persona; shadow; projection; individuation; truth-load; binding; constraint