Gnosticism and Psychology

In this paper, I have attempted a historical analysis of what Jung might have been thinking when he wrote the 'Seven sermons'. To this end, I tried to ascertain which Gnostic texts Jung may have consulted before writing it. These documents were then compared with the 'Seven sermons', and numerous affinities noted between it and the Gnostic texts. Jung's contemporaneous academic works were then compared with this treatise, and parallels were established between the 'Seven sermons' and Jung's emerging psychology of the unconscious. In the process, an attempt was made to show how Jung made use of Gnostic themes in his emerging psychology. While there is no way of knowing precisely what Jung was thinking when he wrote the 'Seven sermons', it is clear that he was well acquainted not only with the work of Basilides, but also with the work of other Gnostic thinkers. It is not enough to assume that because Jung chose the pseudonym of Basilides, he was necessarily Jung's primary Gnostic influence. At the same time, it is also evident that Jung was developing his own psychology during the writing of the 'Seven sermons'. We recall Jung's observations regarding the 'Seven sermons', which we quoted on page 17: These conversations with the dead formed a kind of prelude to what I had to communicate to the world about the unconscious . . . All my works, all my creative activity, has come from those initial fantasies and dreams which began in 1912, almost fifty years ago. Everything that I accomplished in later life was already contained in them, although at first only in the form of emotions and images (Jung 21, p. 192). On the basis of what has been published, there are enough affinities between his academic work and this treatise to posit that the 'Seven sermons' played an important role in the emergence of Jung's psychology. Given these numerous parallels, I suspect that Jung's unpublished writings, including the Red Book, would only strengthen the arguments put forth in this paper.     

Jungian analysis: An elder's perspective

Dr. Joseph L. Henderson has the richest and longest history of any analyst who trained with Jung. He is in his 97th year, in excellent health and spirit, and continues to practice daily. He was in Zürich in the 1930s when Jung was developing many of his theories in the seminars Henderson attended. Henderson trained and analyzed with Jung, although he worked with other analysts as well. He received his medical training in London. Jung asked Henderson to write a chapter in Man and His Symbols, and he has been writing ever since. He is the author of Thresholds of Initiation and other books related to Jungian psychology. After World War II, along with the late Joseph Wheelwright, Elizabeth Whitney, Jane Wheelwright, and other analysts, he co-founded the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, one of two Jungian centers in the U.S. at that time. He continues to work with candidates in training to become analysts, and to help research organizations such as the Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism (ARAS)     

Sonu Shamdasani interviewed by Ann Casement

Abstract :  Sonu Shamdasani interviewed by Ann Casement about Jung's  The Red Book: Liber Novus  in the course of which they range over issues to do with what drew Shamdasani to Jung; how he came to be involved in editing, translating and publishing  Liber Novus ; why he is so passionate about it; where it stands in relation to Jung's other work; some of the central figures that appear in the book such as  Philemon  and  Izdubar ; what  Liber Novus  might offer training candidates and succeeding generations of Jungians; how it has changed Shamdasani's own impression of Jung and what he hopes this enormous project will achieve; why Jung did not publish it in his own lifetime and whether he was mistaken in not doing so; and what impact the publication of  Liber Novus  will have on Jung's reputation worldwide as well as within the Jungian community.     

On defining words, some scenarios and vectors in the 'autobiography' of C. G. Jung

Having first considered recent research into the circumstances surrounding the production and publication of the 'autobiography' of Jung, the author concludes that in spite of its being the work of several authors, it nevertheless constitutes a whole. Taken from whichever angle, they all point to Jung's particular inquiry into the unconscious, as it emerges through Jung's own words. The author goes on to suggest both a lateral and a structural reading of MDR (Memories, Dreams, Reflections) which in turn reveals, on the basis of the several dreams reported, the central 'fantasy' which inspired Jung's research and his oeuvre. Finally, he discusses the idea of the collective or impersonal unconscious and highlights the emphasis Jung places on processes which unfold according to rhythms which are associated with distinct scales, depending on whether they are those of the individual, the clan or the culture.     

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.     

Group process in Jungian analytic training and institute life

Group process experience for analytic candidates is a neglected dimension of training, and receives little attention in the analytic literature. Jung observed group dynamics, but he never studied them closely, attending instead to the psychology of the individual. Unconscious currents in small groups have been studied by others, most notably by Wilfred Bion, and there are similarities between his theories of the group unconscious and Jung's theories of complexes. Experiential and didactic seminars in group process were added to the analytic curriculum at the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco in the early 1990s, leading to changes in the group dynamic of trainees and analysts alike. A discussion of the theories of Bion and Jung are followed by a report on our experiences of facilitating group process for analytic candidates. We give quotes from candidates and analyst members to illustrate the group process and its effects. The need for further study to develop a uniquely Jungian perspective on the unconscious structure and dynamics of the group is suggested.     

Response to John Beebe

This paper briefly describes the history of the professional interaction between psychoanalysts and analytical psychologists in the United States. There has been little public contact between the two groups since the personal feud between Freud and Jung has beer carried forth to the present generation of analysts. The relationship between Otto Rank and Freud and his circle demonstrated many of the same dynamics that were activated between Freud and Jung, who had broken off their relationship ten years earlier; this paper highlights the similarities between Jung's, then Rank's, exile from the psychoanalytic group, Jung's interest in spiritual matters, including his interest in the nature of religious experience, and his questionable dealing with the Nazis during the 1930s have been the stated reason for the taboo set against Jung's writings. Presently there seems to be a growing realization that there are large areas of mutual interest, and both the similarities and differences between the schools need further exploration.     

John Beebe in conversation with Beverley Zabriskie

John Beebe speaks with Beverley Zabriskie about the central motifs of his life and depth psychological experience, and how these informed his choice of vocation as psychiatrist, Jungian analyst, educator and author. Dr. Beebe narrates how he moved beyond the fate assigned the son of a needy mother and abandoning father. He illustrates how the role his family expected him to fill constellated archetypal motifs--the magical or divine curative child, the whiz kid--from which he had then to disidentify for the sake of becoming an individual with a personal voice and capacity to express his own true values. He tells of his differentiation and search for completion through the perspective of Jung's psychological types theory. He also reflects on the evolution of Jungian analytic theory and practice generally, his editorship of the JAP and the San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal, his confrontation with analytic homophobia, and the emerging quality of professional and personal relationships in relation to ethics and to love. He assesses Jung's courage and integrity as displayed through the release of Jung's Red Book, and his own quest for an organic and psychological moral stance expressed in his benchmark book, Integrity in Depth.     

The egg, the vessels and the words. From Izdubar to answer to job for an imaging thinking

This essay on The Red Book seeks to underscore a characteristic specific to Jung's approach to psychoanalysis. In this book, and more generally, in all of his writings, Jung's thinking is based on his personal experience of the unconscious, in which he leaves himself open to progressive encounters. Some of them, in the years 1913-14 and 1929-30, particularly his meeting with the giant Izdubar, were quite threatening. As a result, he forged an original way of thinking that is qualified here as 'imaging' and 'emergent'. The Red Book served as the first vessel for theories Jung would later express. His way of thinking, with its failures and semi-successes, all of which are always temporary, of course, is compared to the art of the potter. The author shows the kinship between the formation of the main Jungian concepts and the teachings of the French poet, professor, and art critic Yves Bonnefoy. He also considers certain recurrent formal themes in the work of contemporary German painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer. Lastly, this epistemological study, constantly aware of the demands of Jungian clinical practice, demonstrates the continuity in Jung's work, from The Red Book to Answer to Job, where Jung ultimately elaborated a conception of history that defines our ethical position today.     

Jung's evolving views of Nazi Germany: From 1936 to the end of World War II

This article first shows Jung's evolving views of Nazi Germany from 1936 to the beginning of World War II. In a lecture at the Tavistock Clinic, London, in October 1936, he made his strongest and most negative statements to that date about Nazi Germany. While in Berlin in September 1937 for lectures to the Jung Gesellschaft, his observations of Hitler at a military parade led him to conclude that should the catastrophe of war come it would be far more and bloodier than he had previously supposed. After the Sudetenland Crisis in Fall 1938, Jung in interviews made stronger comments on Hitler and Nazi Germany. The article shows how strongly anti‐Nazi Jung's views were in relation to events during World War II such as Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland, the fall of France, the bombings of Britain, the U.S. entry into the War, and Allied troops advancing into Germany. Schoenl and Peck, ‘An Answer to the Question: Was Jung, for a Time, a “Nazi Sympathizer” or Not?’ (2012) demonstrated how his views of Nazi Germany changed from 1933 to March 1936. The present article shows how his views evolved from 1936 to the War's end in 1945.     

Jung and Pauli

In his early theories of the structure of the psyche, psychic energy and psychodynamics, Jung was influenced by William James's understanding of the complementary insights of depth psychology and the discoveries of subatomic physics, and his concept of field in physics and the study of the subconscious. In his relationship with Freud, Jung initially struggled with a sexually-based drive theory. But he gradually came to conceive libido as a quantitative concept, a psychic analogue of physical energy. In their own languages, both C. G. Jung and Nobel physicist Wolfgang Pauli explored the evolution of scientific thought from the naive insights about process in alchemy through Newtonian causality, space-time theories of relativity to quantum mechanics. Jung had access to thirteen hundred of Pauli's dreams. The first four hundred were basis for his research into alchemical symbolism in a modern psyche. In a later collaboration, Pauli supported Jung's synchronicity principle as scientific, and Jung fostered Pauli's understanding of the archetypal and collective factors in the psyche. They each explored the interconnections between the energies of psyche and matter, and the possibilities of acausal order and synchronicity. Pauli's ground-breaking discoveries gave scientific demonstration of alchemical intuitions. Through him, alchemical and archetypal insights entered the discourse of physics. Through Jung, the apprehensions of microphysics entered our psychological language and thought.     

Winnicott's dream: some reflections on D. W. Winnicott and C. G. Jung

The author discusses D. W. Winnicott's 1964 review of C. G. Jung's autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, emphasizing the psychological effect the reviewing process had on Winnicott himself. Writing the review constellated Winnicott's unconscious, and he reported having a healing dream 'for Jung and for some of my patients, as well as for myself'. Winnicott's 'countertransference' to Jung helped him personally, and the review was Winnicott's first written formulation of his theory on 'The use of an object'.     

Understanding Jung: recent biographies and scholarship

The tendency to associate Jung with Freud has undergone a change and both are increasingly perceived as founders of depth psychological schools whose exact relationship is unclear. The separation of the two was largely due to Jung's rejection by the psychoanalytic community because of his perceived spiritual inclinations. Recent scholarship has emphasized these spiritual inclinations in both a positive and negative way and brought to light Jung's non-Freudian sources, while other Jungian practitioners are seeking a closer association with psychoanalysis. This conflicting development is related to tendencies in Jung himself that are evident in his own life and in research conducted into the writing and publication of Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Though the status of the latter as Jung's autobiography has been called into question there remains the necessity to explain the myth of Jung's life enshrined there and the impact this has had on a public looking for meaning in a time of considerable change.     

Jung in the academy: devotions and resistances

Jung's position in the contemporary mainstream English-speaking university is problematical indeed. For various historical and ideological reasons, Jung is generally not included in the courses in academic psychology, and in the humanities and social sciences his reception is lukewarm to say the least. He has only a marginal place in religious studies. This notorious academic resistance to Jung is compensated, some would say overcompensated, by student interest and enthusiasm, which sometimes seeks to make a religious dogma out of Jung's psychology. In a sense, cynical resistance to Jung and fanatical devotion to Jung can be seen to generate each other in a sort of binary opposition. This situation is unfortunate because neither extreme presents a fair or balanced view of Jung's thought or of his contribution to intellectual history. These and other problems associated with the teaching of Jung in a university setting are briefly outlined in this paper.     

A visit paid to Jung by Alwine von Keller

In the winter of 1943-1944, Jung had suffered a coronary thrombosis which almost cost him his life. During his illness, Jung experienced a series of visions, described in his Memories, Dreams, Reflections, which were also to influence significantly the development of his theoretical thinking. On 27(th) September 1944, Alwine von Keller (1878-1965) paid a visit to Jung, while he was still convalescing, in Zurich and documented her meeting with him in a series of notes, recently discovered, which testify to the fact that, at the time of their meeting, Jung was engaged in writing the 'Salt' chapter of Mysterium coniunctionis and investigating the alchemistic symbolism of the 'sea'. This theme seems to testify to a continuity of interests on Jung's part with the seminar he held at Eranos the previous year on the cartographic art of Opicinus de Canistris (1296-c.1352). With its addition of many unpublished details, Alwine von Keller's notes supplement the report which Jung made of his visions experienced during his sickness in MDR. In particular, these attest to the fact that Jung had attributed the terrible experience which he had endured to the problem of the conjunctio, which was confronting him from the theoretical point of view in his writing of Mysterium coniunctionis.     

Faint voices from Greenwich Village: Jung's impact on the first American avant-garde

In 1913 Jung made a trip to New York which was to have an important impact on the creation of modern American culture. At the invitation of Beatrice Hinkle, the first Jungian analyst in the country, he spoke to the Liberal Club, a forum for discussing progressive topics. Jung was the leading spokesman for psychoanalysis and his ideas about creative fantasy resonated with popular interest in the ideas of William James and Henri Bergson. This paper will document that visit and the influence that Hinkle had on the young people who had gravitated to Greenwich Village. She promoted Jungian psychology through her analytical practice and her translation of Jung's Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido as Psychology of the Unconscious. Her influence is evident in four key neighbourhood institutions: The Masses, a socialist magazine, The Seven Arts, an avant-garde literary magazine, the Provincetown Players theatre ensemble, and the Heterodoxy Club, America's first feminist group. Her influence is also evident at The New School where several pioneering anthropologists employed the theory of psychological types as a tool for understanding social behaviour. This paper will demonstrate that a cultural moment usually seen through a Freudian lens had, in fact, a remarkably Jungian character.     

Hexagram 4 of the I Ching: Analytical Psychology and Jung's Developmental Process

Theories, as well as history itself, are subject to their archetypal underpinnings, as well as to synchronicity, cyclic and sequential change. Some of Jung's early life experiences, his theories, and their permutations in his followers are considered in relation to Hexagram 4 of the I-Ching.
Jung's infantile wounds, his lack of adequately mirroring and metabolizing parents gave rise to a Puer Aeternus complex. This complex is explored as it is brought out through the lines of Hexagram 4 in the I-Ching. The complex is considered as pertinent to some problematical parts of Jung's theory and its impact on analytic history and behavior. Jung's genius and adaptive healing use of the building blocks of this complex are also discussed.
It is proposed that the descendants of Freud and Jung internalize the problems of their forefathers in much the same way that patients internalize the problems of their parents. Particular theories suggest similar personal affinities (and even histories) in their followers. Jung's childhood problems are considered for the way they may reverberate in Jungian practice today.     

The Jung-White dialogue and why it couldn't work and won't go away

White's Thomism and its Aristotelian foundation were at the heart of his differences with Jung over the fifteen years of their dialogue. The paper examines the precedents and consequences of the imposition of Thomism on the Catholic Church in 1879 in order to clarify the presuppositions White carried into his dialogue with Jung. It then selects two of Jung's major letters to White to show how their dialogue influenced Jung's later substantial work, especially his Answer to Job. The dialogue with White contributed to foundational elements in the older Jung's development of his myth which simply outstripped White's theological imagination and continues to challenge the worlds of contemporary monotheistic orthodoxy in all their variants.     

Jung before Freud, not Freud before Jung: the reception of Jung's work in American psychoanalytic circles between 1904 and 1909

A review is first presented of the new Jung scholarship – that Jung is to be properly understood, not as a disciple of Freud, but as the twentieth century exponent of the symbolic hypothesis in the tradition of the late nineteenth century psychologies of transcendence. This is followed by an outline of the so-called French-Swiss-English and American psychotherapeutic alliance, of which Jung was a part, and the cross-cultural mediumistic psychology of the subconscious it promoted, chiefly through the works of William James, F. W. H. Myers, and Théodore Flournoy. Focusing on the experimental work of the Swiss-American pathologist Adolph Meyer and the American neurologist Frederick Peterson, evidence is then produced to show that Jung, before Freud, was more important in American psychotherapeutic circles. His experimental researches into the association method and the psychogalvanic reflex, his study of mediums and connection to Swiss psychiatry had numerous unique alliances with the American scene, particularly because of their similar historical relation between psychology and religion. Therefore, to understand Jung, one must consider the archetypal significance which America held for Jung's own individuation process, as well as the Americanization of Jungian ideas that followed.