What did Carl Jung mean when he said “the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing”?

The use of the phrase is an example of metaphorical reasoning. A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them broadly.

This metaphor for a business is generally a term of derision for an organization where different members are pursuing opposing or contradictory goals.

For Jung, a child’s consciousness at first consists as a number of islands of consciousness and only over time do these islands merge into a final continent of consciousness. The same occurs in daily life in a way that one knows something in one context, but not in another, therefore “the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing.”