Of texts and contexts: reflections upon the publication of The Jung-White Letters

In addition to his many other personae, Jung was a writer and an author, which means a creator, whose written works underlie and authorize a field of thought and clinical work, i.e., analytical psychology. Not widely recognized is that many of his authored texts were stimulated by important and intense personal relationships. Freud and Victor White loom large, the first standing behind major early analytical texts like Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido and Psychological Types, the second behind later texts on culture, religion, and Christian theology. The publication of The Jung-White Letters reveals the significance of his relationship with Victor White for the authoring of Answer to Job.     

The hermeneutic background of C. G. Jung

Hermeneutics has been central to the practice of Jung's psychology from the beginning, although he never fully and consistently developed a hermeneutic method of inquiry and the literature addressing this aspect of his psychology is not extensive. In this paper(1) we undertake a critical re-examination of Jung's relationship to hermeneutic thought, based on his explicit references to hermeneutics in the Collected Works and his theoretical development of the notion of archetypes. Although Jung did not consistently formulate a hermeneutic approach to inquiry, his theoretical development of archetypes is rich in hermeneutic implications. In particular, his notion of the archetype as such can be understood hermeneutically as a form of non-conceptual background understanding. Some implications of this construal of archetypes for Jungian hermeneutics as a form of inquiry are considered.     

From Geneva to Zürich: Jung and French Switzerland

An account is given of the constitution of several components of the Freudocentric reading of Jung and the genesis of analytical psychology, which, it is argued, has led to their mislocation in the intellectual history of the twentieth century.     

Professional relationships in dangerous times: C. G. Jung and the Society for Psychotherapy

Relying in part on previously unpublished documents of the 1930s, this paper(1) describes the origins and mission of the General Medical Society for Psychotherapy, both as it existed before Hitler's rise to power and as it was transformed afterward. Jung accepted the Society's presidency in 1933-34, on condition that it be restructured as an international, politically neutral organization, free from the laws of Gleichschaltung (Nazi conformity). The paper also contains a close study of Jung's collaboration with one interesting German colleague, Walter Cimbal. Cimbal, a neurologist, was briefly a member of the Nazi Party and, judging from his early letters to Jung, a Hitler enthusiast. Yet he also seems to have tried, together with Jung, to alleviate the difficulties of German Jewish colleagues whose lives were disrupted by the Hitler revolution. The paper includes translated passages from Cimbal's previously unpublished letters from 1933-36 and the post-war years. It also includes a first-person account by Wladimir Rosenbaum, the Zurich lawyer who assisted Jung in 1934, when Jung tried to mitigate the impact of anti-Jewish laws on his German Jewish colleagues. In the primary materials of this period one discovers more evidence of moral shadow-and also less-than is sometimes assumed.     

Tina Keller's analyses with C. G. Jung and Toni Wolff, 1915-1928

This historical essay documents the clinical practices of C. G. Jung and Toni Wolff with their analysand Tina Keller, a Swiss physician and psychotherapist, during the formative years of analytical psychology (1915-1928). The topic is investigated through an examination of primary documents, largely unpublished, in English and German, based on Keller's autobiographical writings. It presents biographical information on Keller's life and details of her analyses with Jung and Wolff, emphasizing the technique of active imagination and describing the clinical practices of Jung and Wolff in Keller's analyses.     

Learning from the patient: The East,synchronicity and transference in the history of an unknown case of C.G. Jung

This article presents the history of one until now unknown case of C.G. Jung: Maggy Reichstein. Born in Indonesia in 1894 in a very aristocratic family, she brought her sister to Zurich to be treated by Jung in 1919, and later she herself was in analysis with him. Jung used her case as example in his lecture in 1937 on the realities of practical psychotherapy, relating it to the process of transference and countertransference. Jung deepened his studies in Eastern psychology after a series of dreams she had, which culminated in the Yoga Kundalini Seminars. She was also the case presented in his article of 1951 on the concept of synchronicity. Jung wrote that her case, concerning synchronicity, remained unique in his experience. Jung also published some of her mandalas. He considered her able to understand his ideas in depth. Reichstein was for Jung an important case, which challenged and triggered his interests in different subjects.     

On the distinction between the concept of God and conceptions of God

The starting-point is the distinction between concept and conception. Our conceptions of gold, for instance, are the different understandings we get when we hear the word ‘gold’ whereas the concept of gold consists in the scientific determination of what gold is. It depends on the context whether it is more reasonable to claim a concept or to look for fitting conceptions. By arguing against metaphysical realism and for non-metaphysical realism, I will elaborate on some philosophical reasons for dealing with conceptions instead of concepts of God, and secondly, I will discuss how such conceptions should be critically assessed. This article is an amended and enlarged version of a paper delivered at the conference on The Concept of God, arranged by the British Society for the Philosophy of Religion in Oxford, Great Britain, September 11–13, 2007.     

A serious misunderstanding: synchronicity and the generation of meaning

Abstract: This paper points to the problem caused by the fact that numerous academic ‘Jung studies’ are conducted on the basis of the English translation of Jung's works without any knowledge of his original texts and illustrates it with the misconstrual that Jung's concept of synchronicity suffered in the studies of many recent authors, as exemplified by two articles in the September 2011 issue of the JAP. The translation of ‘sinngemäße Koinzidenz’ as ‘meaningful coincidence’ seduced those writers to take synchronistic ‘meaning’ as meaning the meaningfulness of life or even as ‘transcendent meaning’, which is incompatible with Jung's synchronicity concept, and to replace Jung's strictly intellectual project of establishing an explanatory principle for synchronistic events (in addition to the principle of causality for all other events) by the fundamentally different project of focusing on the impact that such events may have for the experiencing subjective mind, on ‘human meaning‐making’, and, with a decidedly anti‐intellectual bias, of hoping for ‘shifts into non‐rational states of mind’.     

Beyond synchronicity: the worldview of Carl Gustav Jung and Wolfgang Pauli

While exploring the phenomena of synchronicity, Carl Gustav Jung became acquainted with the quantum physicist Wolfgang Pauli and eventually began a collaboration with him. During that collaboration Jung's study of synchronistic phenomena underwent a considerable change; prior to the collaboration, Jung had stressed mainly the phenomenological and empirical features of synchronistic phenomena, while in association with Pauli, he focused his attention upon their ontological, archetypal character. Pauli, on the other hand, became increasingly sensitive to the philosophical aspects concerning the unconscious. Jung and Pauli's common reflections went far beyond psychology and physics, entering into the realm where the two areas meet in the philosophy of nature. In fact, as a consequence of their collaboration, synchronicity was transformed from an empirical concept into a fundamental explanatory-interpretative principle, which together with causality could possibly lead to a more complete worldview. Exploring the problematic character of the synchronicity concept has a heuristic value because it leads to the reconsideration of the philosophical issues that drove Jung and Pauli to clear up the conceptual background of their thoughts. Within the philosophical worldview arising from Jung and Pauli's discussions about synchronicity, there are many symbolic aspects that go against mainstream science and that represent a sort of criticism to some of the commonly held views of present day science.     

Secular and religious: the intrinsic doubleness of analytical psychology and the hegemony of naturalism in the social sciences

In recent years a number of prominent social theorists, including Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor, have voiced concern about the hegemony of naturalistic, secular assumptions in the social sciences, and in their different ways have sought to address this by establishing greater parity between secular and religious perspectives. This paper suggests that C.G. Jung's analytical psychology, which hitherto has been largely ignored by social theory, may have something to contribute on this issue as it can be understood coherently both empirically, without reference to transcendent reality, and metaphysically, with reference to transcendent reality. It is argued that, despite his denials of any metaphysical intent, Jung does in fact engage in metaphysics and that together the empirical and metaphysical vectors of his thought result in a rich and distinctive double perspective. This dual secular and religious perspective can be seen as part of Jung's own critique of the hegemony of naturalism and secularism, which for Jung has profound social as well as clinical relevance. The concern and approach that Habermas and Taylor share with Jung on this issue may provide some grounds for increased dialogue between analytical psychology and the social sciences.     

Solution-Focused Brief Therapy and the Kingdom of God: A Cosmological Integration

The core cosmological dimension of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) and Christianity emphasizes a similar truth—the future is now. As humans live in their preferred realities, they experience the future, problem free solution for their lives from a SFBT perspective. The Christian tradition emphasizes the in-breaking Kingdom of God beginning with the Christ event. The end has entered the now. However, the final consummation of the end-times is still as yet in the future which means that sin and death are part of the world. This Christian understanding of sin and fallenness provides humility to SFBT’s inherently positive view of the world (Bidwell, D. R. Am J of Pastor Couns, 3:3–21, 1999), while SFBT encourages Christians to see the kingdom of God in the now instead of the future.     

Life, death, and the hiddenness of God

Many philosophers have contended that (traditional) theism or supernaturalism suffers from what can properly be called the Problem of Divine Hiddenness (the PDH). [See Howard-Snyder and Moser 2002]. Moreover, it is the contention of many proponents of the PDH that this “problem,” if, indeed, not just a component of the “problem of evil,” bears a striking similarity to the latter. Specifically, at the heart of this ostensible difficulty for theism is that Divine “Hiddenness,” like pain and suffering—or at least pain and suffering in the amount that the world contains—is precisely the opposite of what one would expect if there existed a (maximally great) supernatural Person. Accordingly, it is maintained by proponents of the PDH that supernaturalism is disconfirmed by the relevant “problem.” The aim of this essay is to establish that there is more than ample metaphysical warrant (of a sort overlooked thus far) for maintaining that the “hiddenness” of God is exactly what should be expected if theism is true. Thus, the conclusion we hope to secure is that the PDH has considerably less to recommend it than its proponents have thought, and, accordingly, that it fails to constitute an effective threat to supernaturalism.     

Hegel: Death of God and Recognition of the Self

Abstract

This paper covers the theme of the death of God considered from a Hegelian standpoint. For Aristotle, the image of God as ‘thought thinking itself’ was an image of the knowledge aspired to in philosophy. With the notion of God becoming man and his insistence on the icon of the Cross, Hegel challenged the Aristotelian goal of philosophy as immutable knowledge of an ‘ultimate’ reality. Hegel viewed the crisis of normativity (the death of the Cartesian divine guarantor) as strictly linked to the conception of the self. It is Nietzsche who is best known for alluding to the full significance of this image for modern life, but Hegel’s thought on the complex relations of philosophy and religion in the modern world can be regarded as an attempt to think through this same historical phenomenon. In this paper, I focus on the philosophical relevance of Hegel’s notion of the death of God. I argue that unpacking the significance of the ‘truths’ presented symbolically in modern Christianity is crucial in understanding the requirements that an idealistic philosophy must meet.     

Oppy,infinity, and the neoclassical concept of God

In this article I concentrate on three issues. First, Graham Oppy’s treatment of the relationship between the concept of infinity and Zeno’s paradoxes lay bare several porblems that must be dealt with if the concept of infinity is to do any intellectual work in philosophy of religion. Here I will expand on some insightful remarks by Oppy in an effort ot adequately respond to these problems. Second, I will do the same regarding Oppy’s treatment of Kant’s first antinomy in the first critique, which deals in part with the question of whether the world had a beginning in time or if time extends infinitely into the past. And third, my examination of these two issues will inform what I have to say regarding a key topic in philosophy of religion: the question regarding the proper relationship between the infinite and the finite in the concept of God.     

Jung's shadow: negation and narcissism of the Self

The cave walls of prehistoric man record two contrasting hand impressions: the one positive - a direct imprint; the other negative - a blank defined by a halo of colour. Jung's disturbed, displaced contact with his mother led to a struggle in establishing an integrated sense of 'I'; instead to create a sense of Self he brilliantly contrived to illuminate the darkness around that blank impress. The resulting lifework, enhanced by Jung's multifarious capacities as artist and philosopher as well as physician, is deeply impressive; yet Winnicott (1964) in his review of Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963) nevertheless alludes to Jung's 'own need to search for a self with which to know' (p. 450). Passages from the autobiography are considered that appear to corroborate Winnicott's contention that Jung had a 'blank', potentially psychotic, core. Yet it is also argued that the psychoanalytic mainstream has undervalued the subtlety and creativity of Jung's own intuitive response to his shadow and that a sympathetic appreciation of this can still valuably inform our contemporary approaches to narcissistic disorders, especially dissociation.     

Animals and the Image of God in the Bible and Beyond

Abstract :  This article examines theological thought pertaining to the imago Dei doctrine in light of its relation to non-human animals within the framework of biblical, intertestamental Jewish, and early Christian writings. Evaluating theological understandings of human nature as they relate to and interact with theological and philosophical understandings of animals and animal nature, the author finds that the understandings of the image of God and dominion as they are ideally conceived in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures are significantly more closely related to the ideas of human-animal continuity, compassion, and responsibility than to human rationality or the human immaterial immortal soul (and the entailed implication of animals' lack thereof).     

The "God Module" and the Complexifying Brain

Recent reports of the discovery of a "God module" in the human brain derive from the fact that epileptic seizures in the left temporal lobe are associated with ecstatic feelings sometimes described as an experience of the presence of God. The brain area involved has been described as either (a) the seat of an innate human faculty for experiencing the divine or (b) the seat of religious delusions.
In fact, religious experience is extremely various and involves many parts of the brain, including some that are prehuman in their evolutionary history and some that are characteristically human. In the continuing integration of such experiences, spiritual formation takes place. Thus the entire human brain might be described as a "God module."
Such a process is only possible because of the brain's complexity. The human brain is the most complex entity for its size that we know of. As used here, complexity is a specialized term denoting the presence of a web of interlinked and significant connections—the more intricate the web, the more complex the entity. Complex systems develop only in a milieu that provides both lawfulness and freedom, and they tend to be self-organizing, becoming more complex and more effective as a result of both inward and outward experience. The evidence suggests that both personal growth and spiritual growth are processes of complexification of character, and of the brain itself. This thesis is tested in light of the work of William James and James W. Fowler.     

Moral Evil,Freedom and the Goodness of God: Why Kant Abandoned Theodicy

Kant proclaimed that all theodicies must fail in ‘On the Miscarriage of All Philosophical Trials in Theodicy’, but it is mysterious why he did so since he had developed a theodicy of his own during the critical period. In this paper, I offer an explanation of why Kant thought theodicies necessarily fail. In his theodicy, as well as in some of his works in ethics, Kant explained moral evil as resulting from unavoidable limitations in human beings. God could not create finite beings without such limitations and so could not have created humans that were not prone to committing immoral acts. However, the work of Carl Christian Eberhard Schmid showed Kant that given his own beliefs about freedom and the nature of responsibility one could not account for moral evil in this way without tacitly denying that human beings were responsible for their actions. This result is significant not only because it explains an otherwise puzzling shift in Kant's philosophy of religion, but also because it shows that the theodicy essay provides powerful evidence that Kant's thinking about moral evil and freedom underwent fundamental shifts between early works such as the Groundwork and later works like the Religion within the Limits of Mere Reason.     

Theology of the Heart and Cognitio Dei Experimentalis (Experiential Knowledge of God)

The first meeting of the official Lutheran‐Pentecostal Dialogue took place in September 2016 and focused on introductions and our identity in Christ. This article sets out a narrative of a Russian Pentecostal with Lutheran roots, a specialization in Jewish studies, and an interest in cognitive studies. A basic challenge for the dialogue partners lies in understanding the crucial role of experience to our knowledge of the divine and the formulation of theology.     

Some reflections on the influence of Chinese thought on Jung and his psychological theory

Jung claimed that Richard Wilhelm, whose masterful translations of Chinese wisdom literature into a European language (German) and thence into Western consciousness have brought Chinese modes of thinking to so many, was one of the most important influences on his own life and work. The contacts between the two men, which took place from the early 1920's until Wilhelm's death in 1930, were few but intense and for Jung decisive in several ways. Wilhelm's translations of the I Ching and The Secret of the Golden Flower opened new avenues for Jung that had far-reaching consequences on his research and writing after 1930. The latter opened the door to the study of alchemy as a key to the archetypal process of individuation as rooted in the collective unconscious. 'Synchronicity' is a term that grew out of his contact with Chinese thought, in particular with the I Ching. From his contact with Chinese thought, additionally, he received confirmation of the view, independently arrived at, that adult psychological development is not linear but rather circular and spiral-like. The letters between Jung and Wilhelm illuminate the great importance Jung ascribed to Wilhelm's contribution toward bridging East and West and the potential value of Chinese philosophy for psychotherapy.