Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

The saying distills a central Jungian aim: bringing unconscious contents—repressed emotions, complexes, shadow traits, and inherited patterns—into awareness so they can be integrated rather than acted out. Jung held that what is not consciously recognized tends to appear “outside” us as compulsions, repeated relationship patterns, projections onto others, or seemingly random misfortunes. Calling these outcomes “fate” is, in this view, a way of misattributing inner causation to external destiny. The line underscores the ethical and psychological stakes of self-knowledge: increased consciousness expands choice, reduces automaticity, and allows a person to participate more deliberately in shaping a life narrative.