My word-of-the-day: “enantiodromia.” It’s likely you will never use this word enantiodromia in conversation unless your speaking with Carl Jung who coined it. And he’s dead. I for one, haven’t even attempted to pronounce it out loud but I will share Wikipedia’s definition of it:
Enantiodromia (Greek: enantios, opposite + dromos, running course) is a principle introduced by psychiatrist Carl Jung that the superabundance of any force inevitably produces its opposite. It is equivalent to the principle of equilibrium in the natural world, in that any extreme is opposed by the system in order to restore balance.
“I use the term enantiodromia for the emergence of the unconscious opposite in the course of time,” Jung wrote in 1949. Among its super-powers, enantiodromia can presage a renaissance in one’s personality (unless one is otherwise overtaken with evil, which apparently can also happen).
In terms of managing one’s psychic development, I’m inclined to embrace the possibility of a personality renaissance. My present inner duality (and that of most people I presume) is more akin to the masks of Thalia and Melpomene, better known as the tragedy-comedy masks. But if we’re talking inner-quadralities, I definitely lean toward the Six Million Dollar Man’s nemesis Maskatron, what with his three human faces and, of course, the cyborg circuit-board “face” and all. He is a nice stand-in for two-faced Roman god Janus, with his vintage, forward-looking retro-future styling, looking both to the past and future and looking for the face it had before the world was made.
