Carl Jung is one of the most misunderstood thinkers of the twentieth century. This is partly his own fault. While Jung’s teacher, Sigmund Freud, dismissed religious ideas as the expression of an infantile “oceanic feeling,” Jung chose to make the mercurial and undefined world of religious symbolism and mystical thought the central focus of his psychological investigations, particularly in later life. This focus on the psychological role of religion has often led Jung to be classified with mystics and priests rather than with other psychologists. Due to the difficult and often paradoxical nature of religious symbols, Jung has come to be seen as a difficult and paradoxical figure – the man has mirrored his material.
Yet Jung is neither a theologian, nor a mystic. His viewpoint is consistently skeptical and scientific. Jung does not seek to convince his reader that mystical and religious claims are true. On the contrary, he describes the vast treatises written by Medieval and Renaissance religious alchemists as “projections.”
When alchemists write of gold and dwarves in flasks, argues Jung, they are employing a culturally contingent set of symbols to articulate their own unconscious intuitions. Alchemy and astrology, for Jung, are both projections of the human mind onto external matter. He also describes Christian ideas, such as the sacrificial lamb and the son of God, as mental projections. Mystical ideas do not exist in the outside world in Jungian psychology, but emerge from the human psyche. The difference between Jung and modern day psychology is that Jung did not believe that these symbols were arbitrary or random. He believed that the psyche generated these symbols because they correspond to and guide the development of the individual self out of the chaos of unconscious processes.
In Psychology and Alchemy, Jung argues that the philosopher’s stone is not an external object, but a latent reality existing within the self and that it was this dialogue within the self—a conversation between the constituent parts of the human psyche—that the alchemists were seeking to convey, using the arcane symbols and language of their time.
Jungian archetypes are often misunderstood as permanent, fixed symbols pointing to mystical realities. In fact, Jung argues that archetypes are always presented in specific historical garb, as the culturally agreed upon symbols of their time, employed to make sense of psychological phenomena emerging from the unconscious in the form of dreams and autonomous thoughts. The symbol of the lamb in Christianity, for example, does not refer to a divine lamb outside of space and time. It refers to a psychological process represented by Christian symbols, and embodied by sacrificial figures, such as Horus or Attis, in more ancient religious traditions. The Christian context is not the terminal point of the symbol: it instead leads back to the unconscious, which produced the lamb as a symbolic representation of psychological processes.
For Jung, the human being is perpetually stuck in an inner dialogue between the thoughts, intuitions and images which arise seemingly randomly beyond our control, and the conscious mind, which attempts to sort these spontaneous psychological events and make rational sense of them.
The phenomenon of inner voice or self-talk is another way to describe this dialogue in the human psyche. Jordan Peterson has recommended that his patients seek to become aware of those moments at which autonomous self-talk occurs in their minds, and to engage, argue and dialogue with it, as Socrates did with his daemon, the creature which he claimed sat on his shoulder and spoke to him, and provided the source of his wisdom.
Jung provides an objective groundwork against which to discuss such bizarre psychological phenomenon as Socrates’ daemon, and to contextualize similar reports of otherworldly beings within a modern, scientific world. Jung’s work suggests that Socrates’ daemon, the Holy Ghost, and the visions of mystics and monks are culturally mediated ways of discussing the autonomous voices and uncontrollable dream-images of the human psyche. He believed that human behavior could be more deeply understood if we could make sense of what our religious ancestors were referring to in their obscure philosophies and impenetrable manuscripts. For Jung, though we now use different words and symbols to describe the processes of the psyche, the same processes continue to occur and still defy our understanding.
We still live in the same world as our ancestors: we have simply changed our relationship to the aspects of our psyche that we do not understand. Instead of being attacked by demons, we suffer from depression. Instead of hearing the voices of spiritual beings, we engage in self-talk. Despite the best efforts of rationalism, humans are still largely at the mercy of autonomous psychological events, which we cannot control. Now, if you dream about your mother drowning at sea, on awakening you are forced to engage in a dialogue with yourself about this unwanted dream. If you walk past a schoolyard and suddenly think of a beast with seven horns, you have to reconcile yourself to the bizarre imaginative depths that produce such dissonant and random thoughts. If you see an old man and the thought his life is over is voiced in your head before you can stop it, you are at the mercy of the autonomous psyche. We modern people still possess mysterious psyches, which we cannot control, just like our ancestors, who interpreted such psychological events as the work of gods and spirits.
When we do not identify with sudden, uncontrolled thoughts in waking life or with the bizarre and grotesque images of our dreams, we enter deep, indeterminate waters. We will be forced to engage in dialogue with these psychological events and integrate them into our rational minds, as long as they continue to harass us. Jung’s great discovery was that what human beings have historically referred to as the spiritual world actually describes phenomena buried in the human psyche. For anyone who is perpetually wrestling with their own thoughts and unable to make sense of the spontaneous images which captivate and bully the mind, Carl Jung is worth reading. You will be in good company.
10 comments
I find it difficult to believe that any so called scholar of Jung could state, with a straight face, that Jung was not a mystic. Please do your homework. Read: The Aryan Christ: The Secret Life of Carl Jung by Richard Noll. This is an excellent work, well researched and fair in its treatment of Jung’s rather distasteful yearning to be a savior.
Many sources in publications at the time of WWII (do a quick Google search) would yield troves of quotes from Dr. Jung that show where his sympathies lie. He was not a scientist in the remotest sense. Any claim to the contrary is fatuous at best
Evil doesn’t exist as some kind of inherent spooky essence. But it is naive to discount the idea of that some people have become habituated to evil intentions and deeds. Evidence: the history of the 20th century.
Indeed! A close friend of mine recently completed a thesis on evil as described by Hannah Arendt, focussing of course on the Holocaust. It earned him a PHD in Philosophy: he already had a PHD in Psychology, so we now call him “Doctor Doctor”! It also changed his previous opinion that evil is only a corruption of good (the “Privative” view) to the older view of evil as an original and substantial force in its own right.
Jung documented his lifelong experience and methods of gaining consciousness of his own soul. No one knows what he achieved unless they are able to have the experience themselves. Richard Knoll’s experience of Jung is secondary and does not add to or take away from the experience of Jung.
Philosophy is complicated. Lets keep it simple, stupid.
A. When exporting production overseas, you must explain to a plebeian, why he should tighten his belt and live on welfare or become a waiter (some politicians offer coding – this is about the same).
B. Also it is nice to have at hand a cheaper servant – immigrant is always cheaper.
In fact, the slaves of the modern patricians are immigrants or hidden abroad, we are just ashamed to admit it.
It remains to solve one small problem – we need to calm our own restless herds. Don’t worry, that’s very simple – useful academics and MSM are always on hand. They are ready to explain that everything should be that way because rednecks are all racists, fascists, misogynists, shut them up!
And finally, if something still bothers you, we have the complete set of philosophers with suitable narratives on demand.
I have to admit, it’s fun to see modern progressives and SJWs so openly serve the elites. Although, if you recall the career of Rousseau, there is nothing new under the sun.
Yes–Jung had Nazi sympathies and anti-Semitic leanings–and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves and kept a Black slave mistress, telegraph inventor Samuel F.B. Morse was a raging anti-Catholic, telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell supported eugenics, Edgar Degas was an anti-Semite, mathematical logician Gottlob Frege (a major influence on Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein) was a bitterly anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic German ultra-nationalist and indeed even more of a proto-Nazi than Jung–so, should we all trash the Declaration of Independence, stop using telephones and telegraphs, burn our prints of Degas’ ballerina paintings, and boycott mathematical logic? As a University of Virginia friend of mine used to put it, many great geniuses–great writers, great artists, great scientists, major philosophers–were less than “perfect gentlemen” in their private lives or social and political views, which jowever shouldn’t make us dismiss or reject their genuine contributions! Yes, as my friend would have put it, Jung was not quite exactly a “perfect gentleman.”
I proposed no such dismissal or rejection. Indeed I’ve found some of Jung’s ideas and insights useful myself. And I’ve never boycotted Volkswagens or called for NASA to fire its ex-Nazi scientists. Nonetheless Jung freely chose the Nazis at a time when he, a Swiss, was under no pressure to do so, and never publicly accounted for his actions and inactions thereafter. That was no mere imperfection.
And Blum’s dualistic thesis is simply wrong. Jung WAS both a mystic and a theologian, and I mean neither as a criticism. Theology and mysticism are do not excluse science and skepticism.
I believe in eugenics – the Nazis were terrible at it because they did not approach it scientifically and did not have the benefit of modern science – if they had given everyone in Germany a DNA test the results could have been very uncomfortable – especially given the one drop rule – what if Hitler had turned out to have some Jewish ancestry? The Jews had been in Austria for hundreds of years by then. And we all know that being Jewish or black or brown is NOT a disease or handicap!
I used to work for the NHS in an antenatal scanning department and we always tested for Down’s Syndrome at three months and foetal anomalies at five months – most couples chose to abort their Down’s foetus and any foetus that was clearly going to be mentally or physically handicapped – everybody wants a perfect baby – it was always the minority who chose to have Down’s babies.
So the NHS and I suspect every western medical system has been practising eugenics ever since ultrasound scanning became available.
As a child in the 1950s I remember far more handicapped people and especially children than there are today – thanks to modern medical science – those babies have all been aborted.
Is this a bad thing? Maybe in the case of Down’s people towards whom attitudes are changing – but for severely handicapped foetuses – I think it is a mercy killing.
So, Jung was an atheist? But the real problem was his Nazism, an unholy mishmash of science and mysticism.
This is a dangerous pathological form of thinking. Psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls it one of the 3 great untruths, “The World is a Battle Between Good People and Evil People.” Three misguided principles (“Great Untruths”) that form the foundation of the new moral culture we are seeing on the Left today:
1. The Untruth of Fragility: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.
2. The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always trust your feelings.
3. The Untruth of Us Versus Them: Life is a battle between good people and evil people.
https://quillette.com/2018/10/14/moral-pollution-in-place-of-reasoned-critique/
To beat it, we can’t reject identity politics outright. It’s too deeply ingrained. Instead, we need to do what Haidt recommends and replace “common enemy” identity politics with “common humanity” politics they way Martin Luther King Jr and Ghandi did.