Enantiodromia ( – "opposite" and δρόμος, dromos – "running course") is a principle introduced in the West by psychiatrist Carl Jung. In Psychological Types, Jung defines enantiodromia as "the emergence of the unconscious opposite in the course of time." It is similar to the principle of equilibrium in the natural world, in that any extreme is opposed by the system in order to restore balance. When things get to their extreme, they turn into their opposite. Jung adds that "this characteristic phenomenon practically always occurs when an extreme, one-sided tendency dominates conscious life; in time an equally powerful counterposition is built up which first inhibits the conscious performance and subsequently breaks through the conscious control." However, in Jungian terms, a thing psychically transmogrifies into its shadow opposite, in the repression of psychic forces that are thereby cathected into something powerful and threatening. This principle was explicitly understood and discussed in the principles of traditional Chinese religion, as in Taoism and yin-yang. A central premise of the I Ching is that yang lines become yin when they have reached their extreme, and vice versa. Overview Jung was heavily influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche, and Nietzsche discusses this idea in several areas of his works: Human, All Too Human Aphorism 1, 2 and 3; Beyond Good and Evil Aphorism 2. The word "enantiodromia" was apparently coined by Stobaeus but the concept is implied also in Heraclitus's writings. In DK fragment 126 for example, Heraclitus says "cold things warm, warm things cool, wet things dry and parched things get wet." It also seems implicit in other of his sayings, like "war is father of all, king of all" (fr. 53), "they do not know that the differing/opposed thing agrees with itself; harmony is reflexive (παλίντροπος palintropos, used of a compound bow, or "in reflexive tension"), like the bow and the lyre" (fr. 51). In these passages and others the idea of the coincidence of opposites is clearly articulated in Heraclitus' characteristic riddling style, as well as the dynamic motion back and forth between the two, generated especially by opposition and conflict. Jung himself wrote: "Old Heraclitus, who was indeed a very great sage, discovered the most marvellous of all psychological laws: the regulative function of opposites. He called it enantiodromia, a running contrariwise, by which he meant that sooner or later everything runs into its opposite." Roughly a generation later, Plato in the Phaedo