Really great. I love the breakdown of the value of Jung and the nonsense--I’ve never studied him explicitly, and I feel like I’m constantly seeing references to his theories, either lauding them or ridiculing them, and so I have this very mixed view of Jung in my head. This helps a lot. Looking forward to more of this series, it’s a great idea.
This was neatly laid out! I really liked how snappy and sharp this was: "Anyone who’s spent time with a toddler knows they can transform from angel to psychopath and back again in a matter of minutes. Normal psychological development cuts away the antisocial behaviors, so our psychopathic toddler can become a functioning adult."
"We always find indirect ways to express our unconscious traits—hopefully healthy ones. You might think of yourself as peaceful and non-violent, yet love war movies and BDSM. For Jung, this isn’t a contradiction; it’s a healthy engagement with the Shadow."
Oh wow. This is not how I read Jung AT ALL. My understanding is that Jung wants you to engage with your Shadow to figure out what the underlying *need* is, not what it *wants* on the surface. That way, you can connect to the actual repressed need (connection is sufficient if you cannot fulfill the need), and by that transform/satisfy the Shadow and become "whole" (healed), without engaging in e.g. violence, be it in play or in real.
By merely acting out your Shadow, you are not addressing the actual need, and it will grow, i.e. want more and more violence. As such, based on Jungs theories, watching war movies or engaging in BSDM is *NOT* healthy behavior at all?
This is an interesting take. I’m curious if either of us can back up our perspective with evidence from Jung or a prominent Jungian. A few quick searches indicate there’s support for both sides. I’ll look around some more.
One thing I will insist on though: the shadow/ego split is never fully and permanently healed. The wholeness can emerge in dreams and meditation, but I’m not sure you could (or should) return to daily life and stay in that state. Moore insists on this as well.
Interesting, and... fundamental? Let's see what we can find. I strongly suspect: support for both interpretations. It may well be that I picked that up from elsewhere and not directly from Jung, likely from the Esalen bunch (Watts, Perls, Grof, Rebillot, etc.).
"He whose desire turns away from outer things, reaches the place of the soul. If he does not find the soul, the horror of emptiness will overcome him, and fear will drive him with a whip lashing time and again in a desperate endeavor and a blind desire for the hollow things of the world. He becomes a fool through his endless desire, and forgets the way of his soul, never to find her again. He will run after all things, and will seize hold of them, but he will not find his soul, since he would find her only in himself. Truly his soul lies in things and men, but the blind one seizes things and men, yet not his soul in things and men. He has no knowledge of his soul. How could he tell her apart from things and men? He could find his soul in desire itself, but not in the objects of desire. If he possessed his desire, and his desire did not possess him, he would lay a hand on his soul, since his desire is the image and expression of his soul. If we possess the image of a thing, we possess half the thing. The image of the world is half the world. He who possesses the world but not its image possesses only half the world, since his soul is poor and has nothing. The wealth of the soul exists in images. He who possesses the image of the world, possesses half the world, even if his humanity is poor and owns nothing. But hunger makes the soul into a beast that devours the unbearable and is poisoned by it. My friends, it is wise to nourish the soul, otherwise you will breed dragons and devils in your heart." (Red Book, Refinding the Soul)
First email I read and very nice. I like how you showed the main concepts and also main criticisms. Your own opinions might come on too strong at times though if the idea is just to educate and not influence the reader. Hope the other emails are also like this.
I got my dips, chips, and cocktail wienies ready for Superb Owl Sunday. You got something ready for us today? What time is kick off? Anybody else pregaming?
Thank you for the post! I really enjoy the blog, both the topics and the approach to them, and this essay is yet another example of why. Like Dawson, I also have been running into (interpretations of) Jungian ideas fairly often, but never really dove any deeper into them, so this is a pleasant surprise.
Also:
<< Despite all this, I think there’s some merit in the idea of a collective unconscious, which I hope to explore in a future Minus the Nonsense article. >>
I would love to read that article! After reflecting on the post, I realized I have myself been thinking about the sensibility of similar ideas.
On the one hand, maybe the idea of collective unconscious is not totally *out there*, but it definitely isn't *here*. On the other, online you can find many cases of people reporting something at least reminiscent of it. There's many stories of people being in an altered state (dream, NDE, meditation, psychedelics) and encountering something that later turned out to be (or can easily be interpreted as) a symbol others encountered as well. Most importantly, often the symbol is something they were not aware of, for example because it came from a culture unfamiliar to them. (This might not be the most convincing example, but this near death experience -- https://www.nderf.org/Experiences/1wilson_fde.html -- describes something somewhat wheel-of-Samsara-like). I personally have also had a couple of experiences of this sort, so I know those stories are not always made up.
So, if we give these stories credence and try to look at them through the lens of our current understanding of the mind, what would be a good interpretation? Are there some (near-)universal archetypes/biases to see certain patterns in the world that are interpreted through cultural symbols and present as them to our conscious self? Is it a subtle case of sociocultural contagion? Just apophenia and the result of fitting experiences that are hard to remember into boxes that really don't fit them? I would love to hear your thoughts and I hope to read the essay in the future!
I've actually seen that report before, years ago--fascinating stuff.
I never know how much weight to put into the body of anecdotal evidence out there. Every *individual* report is suspect, but it's hard to write off the patterns that emerge across reports. And there's not really any evidence we could hope to glean that *isn't* anecdotal.
I'm looking forward to writing the Collective Unconscious piece, but it'll probably take some time for me to collect my thoughts on that one...Stay tuned!
Really enjoyed this post. I love your nonsense approach. The graphics are beautiful, well done.
I agree with most of the things you said, but there is one thing I would like to point out. I wouldn't say that Jung was rejecting science. He was operating at the absolute limits of rationality.
Jung wasn't rejecting science outright, but rather critiquing the narrowness of a purely positivistic or materialistic science that refused to take the reality of the psyche seriously. Jung's argument was that the scientific method of the natural sciences was simply an inadequate tool for exploring the full depth of human subjectivity and meaning.
I point this out because I think your quote of Jung is out of context. Looking closer we would finde the following:
"The statistical method shows the facts in the light of the ideal average but does not give us a picture of their empirical reality... The distinctive thing about real facts, however, is their individuality. Not to put too fine a point on it, one could say that the real picture consists of nothing but exceptions to the rule, and that, in consequence, absolute reality has predominantly the character of irregularity."
It is a refusal to see what is there, in favour of a preconceived theory. What is more unscientific than that?
Surely he was a pioneer exploring direction that can't be explained by science, but in my opinion he was not unscientfic.
I've not read Jung but have read endless takes both positive and negative on his work.
Who psychoanalyses the psychoanalysts- if they are mentally/emotionally/psychically capped at a certain level it may be that their patient is yet more conscious, in which case the psychoanalyst is downright dangerous.
Guénon made a point (in 'Misdeeds of Psychoanalysis') about the dangers of deep diving down to the subconscious without acknowledgment of the *super*conscious, because all it will do is dredge up muck without a bright and sterilising light to burn it off, thus locking the hapless patient in quagmire of his own darkness. (Paraphrasing.) Along these same lines he saw it as a way to drag Mans spirit down to total dissolution.
No phoenix without the ashes though, innit.
Regarding the comment; "This disdain for science allowed him to explore wild, grandiose claims about the nature of psyche, humanity, and reality. Had Jung been primarily a philosopher or a mystic, these sins might have been forgiven. But these ideas are dangerous for an academic psychologist, let alone a practicing clinician."
I wasn't aware he made such claims but at least it proved he was capable of thinking beyond the mundane brand of reductionist pharmacopeia-psychology.
Lots of incorrect, unfair, or biased assumptions/interpretations here. Lots of half truths. I have to say I was onboard with this blog until this post. Now I am wondering to what extent you are portraying yourself as knowledgeable about subjects that you are clearly unfamiliar with, elsewhere.
I wonder if Jungs distain for science was a reaction against reductivism and its struggle to model and explain complex and emergent systems - which the human mind is. If we switch out the mind for the complex global weather system - what would be the best approach - to go deep and spend one’s time in a single location conducting narrow experiments to try and explain the weather based on the state of the local environment or to go broad and range around recording and comprehending weather systems as a whole. There’s obviously value in both, but I guess in that age and environment - the latter - which I feel he was probably promoting in that passage was under rated and worth emphasizing?
There are definitely aspects of this. I also think Jung was trying to study the motor while driving the car, so to speak. He went through a long psychotic period, and I think that caused him to both gain and lose perspective.
Overall I’m glad he went the route he did. He was far more valuable as a mystic and philosopher than he would have been as a pure psychologist.
'Switching out the mind for the complex weather systems' is an interesting take. Physicists knew there was a direct connection between physics and eastern mysticism back in Niels Bohr's day (totally suppressed of course), and now as plasma physics develops and more complex experiments are completed, guys like Gerald Pollack and Don Scott have done enough to prove it's the same physics happening on our micro (meditative/electric body) scale and the planetary scale. (ie. The weather is an extension of the electrical and 'etheric' electro-magnetic balances.)
I found your summary intriguing, balanced, mostly accurate, and fair — minus the nonsense part. I’m working on my PhD in Jungian and archetypal studies after being a psychology enthusiast for about 20 years. If I may offer some thoughts. Your description of Jung’s belief about science, archetypes, dreams and experimental psychology is mostly a strong mischaracterization, and is immediately apparent to anyone with a Jungian academic background. You would need to know Jung across his body of work to understand his position in context. You seem to be taking a literalistic position similar to his contemporary critics that did not read him sufficiently, which Jung commented on quite a bit. If you’re going to publicly critique an eminent historical figure, and maintain your credibility as a commentator then you might consider supporting sources or take a more journalistic non biased approach. I hope you continue your studies because you are a relatable writer ppl can benefit from. I loved your quote from the film “… Spotless Mind” to illustrate anima! Have you read: The Discovery of the Unconscious by Ellenberger, and The Wisdom of the Psyche: Depth Psychology after Neuroscience by Paris? If not, you may find them illuminating.
I appreciate your post and your motive to separate the wheat from the chaff. And everything up to the nonsense post makes sense to me.
I was once a secular materialist. Everything in science was true. And anything outside of it was bullshit. And today I’m not religious, but have refined and evolved past a pure materialist perspective. I still despise snake oil salesmen and charlatans posing as gurus and bs crystal sellers - that hasn’t changed. But, something to ask yourself. Is there a realm outside of science that is knowable or at least useful and perhaps not bullshit? Have you studied the bleeding edge of physics, biology, and mathematics? Quantum mechanics or Nima Arkhani saying space - time is not fundamental or Donald Hoffman’s FTB or ITP theories? There’s a saying “those who keep asking questions end up studying mathematics. And those who still persist end up in church”. I consider Jung to have touched on the interface that is outside of the scope and limits of science that is limited to the material.
There a few comments here taking issue with your take on Jung, and it seems that many are invested in their interpretations of his work, which isn't too surprising. For me it's a bit different. I found Jung fascinating in my twenties but the attraction faded as I grew older and more skeptical of non-rationalist perspectives (woo). I really like how you've tried to identify the areas where his theorizing went a bit off the rails. It makes me recall what I loved about his ideas and makes me want to reconsider my eventual slow rejection - throwing the baby out with the bathwater so to speak.
I appreciate your earnest overview of jungian concepts, but this article reminds me of a lot of other reviews of Jung’s work that I take issue with, that tend to write off what does not fit within academic consensus.
I went through a bit of your blog after seeing this and subscribed - I like your content, and don’t have an issue with you personally. But I think your take is emblematic of the vast majority of the criticism I see on jung, and for that reason I want to respond to it in defense of Jung and post that on my blog.
Open invite to dm me to read it before I post it, since it will be a direct response to your work.
Really great. I love the breakdown of the value of Jung and the nonsense--I’ve never studied him explicitly, and I feel like I’m constantly seeing references to his theories, either lauding them or ridiculing them, and so I have this very mixed view of Jung in my head. This helps a lot. Looking forward to more of this series, it’s a great idea.
This was neatly laid out! I really liked how snappy and sharp this was: "Anyone who’s spent time with a toddler knows they can transform from angel to psychopath and back again in a matter of minutes. Normal psychological development cuts away the antisocial behaviors, so our psychopathic toddler can become a functioning adult."
Thanks for writing and sharing it!
"We always find indirect ways to express our unconscious traits—hopefully healthy ones. You might think of yourself as peaceful and non-violent, yet love war movies and BDSM. For Jung, this isn’t a contradiction; it’s a healthy engagement with the Shadow."
Oh wow. This is not how I read Jung AT ALL. My understanding is that Jung wants you to engage with your Shadow to figure out what the underlying *need* is, not what it *wants* on the surface. That way, you can connect to the actual repressed need (connection is sufficient if you cannot fulfill the need), and by that transform/satisfy the Shadow and become "whole" (healed), without engaging in e.g. violence, be it in play or in real.
By merely acting out your Shadow, you are not addressing the actual need, and it will grow, i.e. want more and more violence. As such, based on Jungs theories, watching war movies or engaging in BSDM is *NOT* healthy behavior at all?
This is an interesting take. I’m curious if either of us can back up our perspective with evidence from Jung or a prominent Jungian. A few quick searches indicate there’s support for both sides. I’ll look around some more.
One thing I will insist on though: the shadow/ego split is never fully and permanently healed. The wholeness can emerge in dreams and meditation, but I’m not sure you could (or should) return to daily life and stay in that state. Moore insists on this as well.
Interesting, and... fundamental? Let's see what we can find. I strongly suspect: support for both interpretations. It may well be that I picked that up from elsewhere and not directly from Jung, likely from the Esalen bunch (Watts, Perls, Grof, Rebillot, etc.).
"He whose desire turns away from outer things, reaches the place of the soul. If he does not find the soul, the horror of emptiness will overcome him, and fear will drive him with a whip lashing time and again in a desperate endeavor and a blind desire for the hollow things of the world. He becomes a fool through his endless desire, and forgets the way of his soul, never to find her again. He will run after all things, and will seize hold of them, but he will not find his soul, since he would find her only in himself. Truly his soul lies in things and men, but the blind one seizes things and men, yet not his soul in things and men. He has no knowledge of his soul. How could he tell her apart from things and men? He could find his soul in desire itself, but not in the objects of desire. If he possessed his desire, and his desire did not possess him, he would lay a hand on his soul, since his desire is the image and expression of his soul. If we possess the image of a thing, we possess half the thing. The image of the world is half the world. He who possesses the world but not its image possesses only half the world, since his soul is poor and has nothing. The wealth of the soul exists in images. He who possesses the image of the world, possesses half the world, even if his humanity is poor and owns nothing. But hunger makes the soul into a beast that devours the unbearable and is poisoned by it. My friends, it is wise to nourish the soul, otherwise you will breed dragons and devils in your heart." (Red Book, Refinding the Soul)
First email I read and very nice. I like how you showed the main concepts and also main criticisms. Your own opinions might come on too strong at times though if the idea is just to educate and not influence the reader. Hope the other emails are also like this.
I got my dips, chips, and cocktail wienies ready for Superb Owl Sunday. You got something ready for us today? What time is kick off? Anybody else pregaming?
Thank you for the post! I really enjoy the blog, both the topics and the approach to them, and this essay is yet another example of why. Like Dawson, I also have been running into (interpretations of) Jungian ideas fairly often, but never really dove any deeper into them, so this is a pleasant surprise.
Also:
<< Despite all this, I think there’s some merit in the idea of a collective unconscious, which I hope to explore in a future Minus the Nonsense article. >>
I would love to read that article! After reflecting on the post, I realized I have myself been thinking about the sensibility of similar ideas.
On the one hand, maybe the idea of collective unconscious is not totally *out there*, but it definitely isn't *here*. On the other, online you can find many cases of people reporting something at least reminiscent of it. There's many stories of people being in an altered state (dream, NDE, meditation, psychedelics) and encountering something that later turned out to be (or can easily be interpreted as) a symbol others encountered as well. Most importantly, often the symbol is something they were not aware of, for example because it came from a culture unfamiliar to them. (This might not be the most convincing example, but this near death experience -- https://www.nderf.org/Experiences/1wilson_fde.html -- describes something somewhat wheel-of-Samsara-like). I personally have also had a couple of experiences of this sort, so I know those stories are not always made up.
So, if we give these stories credence and try to look at them through the lens of our current understanding of the mind, what would be a good interpretation? Are there some (near-)universal archetypes/biases to see certain patterns in the world that are interpreted through cultural symbols and present as them to our conscious self? Is it a subtle case of sociocultural contagion? Just apophenia and the result of fitting experiences that are hard to remember into boxes that really don't fit them? I would love to hear your thoughts and I hope to read the essay in the future!
I've actually seen that report before, years ago--fascinating stuff.
I never know how much weight to put into the body of anecdotal evidence out there. Every *individual* report is suspect, but it's hard to write off the patterns that emerge across reports. And there's not really any evidence we could hope to glean that *isn't* anecdotal.
I'm looking forward to writing the Collective Unconscious piece, but it'll probably take some time for me to collect my thoughts on that one...Stay tuned!
Really enjoyed this post. I love your nonsense approach. The graphics are beautiful, well done.
I agree with most of the things you said, but there is one thing I would like to point out. I wouldn't say that Jung was rejecting science. He was operating at the absolute limits of rationality.
Jung wasn't rejecting science outright, but rather critiquing the narrowness of a purely positivistic or materialistic science that refused to take the reality of the psyche seriously. Jung's argument was that the scientific method of the natural sciences was simply an inadequate tool for exploring the full depth of human subjectivity and meaning.
I point this out because I think your quote of Jung is out of context. Looking closer we would finde the following:
"The statistical method shows the facts in the light of the ideal average but does not give us a picture of their empirical reality... The distinctive thing about real facts, however, is their individuality. Not to put too fine a point on it, one could say that the real picture consists of nothing but exceptions to the rule, and that, in consequence, absolute reality has predominantly the character of irregularity."
It is a refusal to see what is there, in favour of a preconceived theory. What is more unscientific than that?
Surely he was a pioneer exploring direction that can't be explained by science, but in my opinion he was not unscientfic.
That was awesome but i only read the nonsense parts;)
"take it not-literary" is better than not seriously :)
First time reader here..
I've not read Jung but have read endless takes both positive and negative on his work.
Who psychoanalyses the psychoanalysts- if they are mentally/emotionally/psychically capped at a certain level it may be that their patient is yet more conscious, in which case the psychoanalyst is downright dangerous.
Guénon made a point (in 'Misdeeds of Psychoanalysis') about the dangers of deep diving down to the subconscious without acknowledgment of the *super*conscious, because all it will do is dredge up muck without a bright and sterilising light to burn it off, thus locking the hapless patient in quagmire of his own darkness. (Paraphrasing.) Along these same lines he saw it as a way to drag Mans spirit down to total dissolution.
No phoenix without the ashes though, innit.
Regarding the comment; "This disdain for science allowed him to explore wild, grandiose claims about the nature of psyche, humanity, and reality. Had Jung been primarily a philosopher or a mystic, these sins might have been forgiven. But these ideas are dangerous for an academic psychologist, let alone a practicing clinician."
I wasn't aware he made such claims but at least it proved he was capable of thinking beyond the mundane brand of reductionist pharmacopeia-psychology.
Lots of incorrect, unfair, or biased assumptions/interpretations here. Lots of half truths. I have to say I was onboard with this blog until this post. Now I am wondering to what extent you are portraying yourself as knowledgeable about subjects that you are clearly unfamiliar with, elsewhere.
Would love to hear any specific criticisms. I tried to make it clear in the disclaimer that this is a very personal interpretation of Jungian thought.
I wonder if Jungs distain for science was a reaction against reductivism and its struggle to model and explain complex and emergent systems - which the human mind is. If we switch out the mind for the complex global weather system - what would be the best approach - to go deep and spend one’s time in a single location conducting narrow experiments to try and explain the weather based on the state of the local environment or to go broad and range around recording and comprehending weather systems as a whole. There’s obviously value in both, but I guess in that age and environment - the latter - which I feel he was probably promoting in that passage was under rated and worth emphasizing?
There are definitely aspects of this. I also think Jung was trying to study the motor while driving the car, so to speak. He went through a long psychotic period, and I think that caused him to both gain and lose perspective.
Overall I’m glad he went the route he did. He was far more valuable as a mystic and philosopher than he would have been as a pure psychologist.
'Switching out the mind for the complex weather systems' is an interesting take. Physicists knew there was a direct connection between physics and eastern mysticism back in Niels Bohr's day (totally suppressed of course), and now as plasma physics develops and more complex experiments are completed, guys like Gerald Pollack and Don Scott have done enough to prove it's the same physics happening on our micro (meditative/electric body) scale and the planetary scale. (ie. The weather is an extension of the electrical and 'etheric' electro-magnetic balances.)
Hi Max,
I found your summary intriguing, balanced, mostly accurate, and fair — minus the nonsense part. I’m working on my PhD in Jungian and archetypal studies after being a psychology enthusiast for about 20 years. If I may offer some thoughts. Your description of Jung’s belief about science, archetypes, dreams and experimental psychology is mostly a strong mischaracterization, and is immediately apparent to anyone with a Jungian academic background. You would need to know Jung across his body of work to understand his position in context. You seem to be taking a literalistic position similar to his contemporary critics that did not read him sufficiently, which Jung commented on quite a bit. If you’re going to publicly critique an eminent historical figure, and maintain your credibility as a commentator then you might consider supporting sources or take a more journalistic non biased approach. I hope you continue your studies because you are a relatable writer ppl can benefit from. I loved your quote from the film “… Spotless Mind” to illustrate anima! Have you read: The Discovery of the Unconscious by Ellenberger, and The Wisdom of the Psyche: Depth Psychology after Neuroscience by Paris? If not, you may find them illuminating.
My best,
J.
I appreciate your post and your motive to separate the wheat from the chaff. And everything up to the nonsense post makes sense to me.
I was once a secular materialist. Everything in science was true. And anything outside of it was bullshit. And today I’m not religious, but have refined and evolved past a pure materialist perspective. I still despise snake oil salesmen and charlatans posing as gurus and bs crystal sellers - that hasn’t changed. But, something to ask yourself. Is there a realm outside of science that is knowable or at least useful and perhaps not bullshit? Have you studied the bleeding edge of physics, biology, and mathematics? Quantum mechanics or Nima Arkhani saying space - time is not fundamental or Donald Hoffman’s FTB or ITP theories? There’s a saying “those who keep asking questions end up studying mathematics. And those who still persist end up in church”. I consider Jung to have touched on the interface that is outside of the scope and limits of science that is limited to the material.
Yes, that’s basically the whole point of my blog :) “minus the nonsense” articles are my attempts at building bridges back to the rationalists
There a few comments here taking issue with your take on Jung, and it seems that many are invested in their interpretations of his work, which isn't too surprising. For me it's a bit different. I found Jung fascinating in my twenties but the attraction faded as I grew older and more skeptical of non-rationalist perspectives (woo). I really like how you've tried to identify the areas where his theorizing went a bit off the rails. It makes me recall what I loved about his ideas and makes me want to reconsider my eventual slow rejection - throwing the baby out with the bathwater so to speak.
I look forward to other essays in this series!
I appreciate your earnest overview of jungian concepts, but this article reminds me of a lot of other reviews of Jung’s work that I take issue with, that tend to write off what does not fit within academic consensus.
I went through a bit of your blog after seeing this and subscribed - I like your content, and don’t have an issue with you personally. But I think your take is emblematic of the vast majority of the criticism I see on jung, and for that reason I want to respond to it in defense of Jung and post that on my blog.
Open invite to dm me to read it before I post it, since it will be a direct response to your work.