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Possible Pitfalls in Jungian Thinking Candidates in training to become Jungian analysts
confront Jung’s anti -semitism. INTRODUCTION This article is based on a workshop ,offered to candidates training to be analytical
(Jungian) psychologists in Israel, in
which material concerning Jung’s
attitude to Jews ,Hitler and National Socialism was presented for discussion.
The information and quotations from
Jung’s writings, particularly the
unpublished material, were drawn largely from the books ,“Lingering Shadows “
edited by Aryeh Maidenbaum and
Stephen A. Martin and “ The Political Psyche “ by Andrew Samuels.
“Lingering Shadows “ is based on a conference held in New York in spring 1989 that was cosponsored by the New School for Social Research ,the
Union of American Hebrew Congregations , the Post Graduate Center for Mental
Health and the C.G. Jung Foundation for Analytical Psychology of New York. .The book consists of articles offering a historical overview
of the subject and the papers
presented at the conference by
serious academicians as well as Jungian and non Jungian analysts
.Presentations made at a workshop held subsequently at the International
Association for Analytical Psychology in Paris in August 1989 are also included. “ The Political Psyche “ ,
a thought provoking and perhaps
controversial examination of what
“depth psychology and politics offer each other” (cover ) by Andrew
Samuels devotes two chapters to the
issue of Jung and antisemitism. As far as possible ,participants in the workshop
were presented with the historical facts and verbatim quotations from Jung’s
writings rather than with some of the theories and analyses offered in the
conferences in order to enable them to arrive at their own conclusions. The idea
of this workshop was born out of a sense of astonishment
that so little work has been published on work with Shoa survivors that
uses Jungian thinking, although concepts such as that of
the collective unconscious and archetypes are so particularly and
clearly relevant, particularly in
understanding the dreams of
survivors and those of their children and children’s children ,which are
often numinous in character, abstract and
bear no personal associations
at all. I assumed that there
might be a connection between this and the difficulty many Jewish Jungians
have had in confronting some of Jung’s pronouncements about Jews and Jewish
psychology and the way he related to
events in Germany in the1930s. The
aim of the workshop was not so much
to establish whether or not
some of Jung’s pronouncements were anti-semitic - since there is little doubt
to-day that particularly within the context of their times they cannot be seen otherwise -but what this
means to a Jewish psychotherapist today and
to examine further whether there is something in Jung’s thinking that
may lead to anti-semitic or Nazi
thinking. The participants in the workshop were all experienced psychotherapists in
their first year of training as Jungian analysts , some born in Israel
and others here by choice. They
were nearly all children of Shoa
survivors, strong in their Jewish as well as
their Israeli identity. Jung ,himself, always dismissed accusations of
anti -semitism. Many of his associates were Jews and Jewesses. He helped many Jews in analysis with him to reconnect with their own
religious and cultural roots. Erich Neumann, a Jew, one of Jung’s most
important successors sought in him a
spiritual father , such as he had not found among the Jews, who would lead
him “into the depth of the Jewish
problem”. According to his son, Micha
Neumann ,in his article on ‘The
Relationship Between Erich Neumann and C.G. Jung and the Question of Anti -
Semitism in “Lingering Shadows” , he
addressed him as “ one of the righteous of the nations”,(
an appellation given subsequently
to non Jews who risked their lives to save Jews
).According to his son, Erich Neumann “ ignored or
perhaps even denied the accusations
that Jung was anti -semitic”. When confronted with evidence of Jung’s anti
semitism Jewish Jungians of previous
generations have tended to react with a distinct desire to avoid the subject
and to white wash him. Some tended to react by immediately offering evidence
of his friendship and sympathy to Jews ; some solved the issue for themselves by maintaining
they are Neumannians and not Jungians; some offer the explanation that “ the
bigger the man , the bigger the shadow”, or that as an ordinary Swiss burger
he no more than expressed the Zeitgeist of his times . There are those who
are still deeply pained at what they have discovered about Jung. I had
assumed that before Jewish psychotherapists would be able to use Jungian concepts in their work with Shoa
survivors they would need to
confront the aspects of Jung’s
pronouncements they found unacceptable and abhorrent ,give up
and mourn Jung, the man, admitting he was not the spiritual father they had
wanted. However , unlike Jungians
of previous generations , participants in this workshop did not seek
a spiritual father in Jung. As one of them pointed out , they are of a post
modern generation , they do not seek Gurus.. They found no difficulty
in disassociating themselves from
Jung , the man . They related to him
as analysts do to a patient, attempting to understand his specific pathology in Jungian terms. They found this an
opportunity to reevaluate Jung’s approach , struggling to decide which of Jung ideas and theories they want to accept and
follow and what can be learned from
his mistakes about dangers that lie in Jungian thinking . ASSOCIATION WITH FREUD Assuming that Jung was speaking the truth when he
dismissed the notion of his own anti-
semitism , participants concluded
that he must have been in total denial concerning the implications of what he
was saying. Perhaps he was not aware of the magnitude of
the impact on him of his
association with Freud and the deep
narcissistic wound he suffered at their subsequent break. Freud, it
appears , was the first Jew Jung encountered. Having in 1907 sent Freud his
Diagnostic Association Studies, which in effect served to substantiate
Freud’s claim to the existence of the
subconscious, they met for the first time in 1908 and established a very
close friendship , even discussing each others dreams. The son of a Swiss
country pastor, Jung saw in the urban
sophisticated Viennese what he came to consider as the prototype of the Jew.
Underlying this there may have been deeply rooted and possibly
forgotten prejudices. If, as quoted
in” Memories, Dreams and Reflections” , Jung
as a child thought a black robed Jesuit priest to be the devil ,one
can only imagine the demonic tales he may have absorbed in his childhood about Jews. In a letter
to Abraham, Freud reveals his awareness of this: “....he ,as a pastor’s son
finds his way to me only against inner resistances”.( as quoted by Michael Vannoy Adams and Jay Sherry
in Appendix A “Significant Words and Events in “ Lingering Shadows”) .
Jung who was deeply disappointed in his own father, developed a strong attachment to Freud. .He wrote him, “... my veneration of you has something of
the character of a religious crush. “ ( Ibid) , to which Freud responded
with, “ I shall do my utmost to show
you that I am unfit to be an object of worship.” (Ibid ) Subsequently Jung wrote, “ Let me enjoy your friendship not as one
between equals but as that of father
and son.” Freud was
fully aware of the advantage to be gained from the association with
the Protestant Swiss . In a letter to Abraham he wrote, “I nearly said that it was only by his
appearance on the scene that
psychoanalysis escaped the danger
of becoming a Jewish national
affair.” Neither did he conceal from Jung that he wished to bestow the mantle
of psychoanalysis on him : “ With your strong and independent character ,
with your Germanic blood which enables you to command the sympathies of the
public more readily than I , you seem better fitted than anyone else I know to carry out this mission.” We can only
guess how Jung felt at this use to be
made of him , but we know of the deep depression he was plunged into when
this “father “ could see his own mission only and could not tolerate the new developments in Jung’s thought.
In Jung’s expansion of the concept
of the unconscious from the personal
to the collective , his broadening of the concept of libido
beyond its sexual component
and his refusal to accept the
exclusiveness of the oedipus myth , Freud saw only defection. Instead of
delighting in his “son’s” independent thought and encouraging his innovative
thrust ,as a good father may well have done ,he decided to break his relations with him- first professional
and then also personal- on the
publication of Symbols of Transformation in 1912. DEFINITIONS OF JEWISH PSYCHOLOGY It cannot be coincidental that it is in 1913
that Jung began to concern himself
with definitions of Jewish psychology and that in 1914 he distinguished
between Germanic and Jewish psychology in the “ Role of the Unconscious.” It
is not easy to try to make some kind
of sense of Jung’s pronouncements about Jews. He was not a rigorous thinker.
His thinking was associative and frequently self contradictory .( He could,
for instance, start talking about the feminine principle and end up talking
about woman.)There is confusion between his attempted understanding of Jews
and the Jewish people ,what he perceived as Jewish psychological characteristics and the psychological theories of Freud
and Adler ,both of whom were Jews. He seems preoccupied with constant
ruminations about Jewish psychology. In the “The Role of the Unconscious “(C.W 10;18)
Jung writes, that the Jew “ is badly at a loss for that quality in man which roots him to the earth and draws
strength from below. This quality is to be found in dangerous concentration
in the German peoples... the Jew has too little of this quality- where has he
his own earth underfoot?” .In keeping
with his tendency to see things in
terms of opposites , striving towards a whole ,he seems to have envisioned
Jewish and Germanic psychologies as
complementing each other .Whereas ,
he said ,the Germanic is irrational , energetic and earthy ,( a description
of himself?),the Jew is rational,
urban, conscious and lacking in spirituality and mysticism ,( no doubt his
perception of Freud and his psychoanalytically minded Jewish associates.) Participants in the workshop thought it was
hard not to perceive a
personal competitive motive in his
concern to prove that Freud’s claim that his psychology was universal
was mistaken. (Making a claim to this in a letter to Ferenczi , Freud writes
in 1913 , “Certainly there are great differences between the Jewish and Aryan
spirit. We can observe that every
day. Hence there would assuredly be here and there differences in outlook on
life and art .But there should not be such a thing as Aryan or Jewish science
.Results in science must be identical , though the presentation of them may
vary.” Ibid). In a letter to
A. Pupato, March 2 1934 Jung writes, “It is true that I fight
Freud’s psychology because of its
dogmatic claim to sole validity. “ Even in 1955 he wrote in a letter to Dr.
Hans Illing that Freud claimed that
his “psychological judgements are valid for everyone . This corresponds
exactly to the Jewish idea of God.”(Ibid) . He himself maintained that
although all forms of therapy include elements of Freudian and Adlerian psychology , ‘transformation’ can only
take place through the use of the
Jungian transcendental function. Jung also referred to Jewish psychology as a”
leveling psychology “ , undermining the idea of national differences. Andrew
Samuels in the book “ Political Psyche points out that for Jung the idea of nation was of great importance
and that for him “Earth plus culture
equals nation. “ He believed there existed different national psychological characteristics and appeared to regard psychoanalysis, the”
Jewish psychology,” as form of psychological denationalization or cosmopolitanism. Here he comes
dangerously close to Hitler’s
accusations against the Jews as international agents, whether capitalist or
communist, who undermine the existence of German nationhood. During this period, in the early 1930 s ,Jung was
repeatedly warned concerning the dangers of
National Socialism and begged by Neumann to speak out against them
,Participants in the workshop felt that the best that could be said was that
Jung was so caught up in his own world and his account with Freud that he ignored , denied the implications of some of his remarks
about Jews ,which even if they at times bore some truth in them, were particularly damaging within the context
of the times, when Jews were already being persecuted in Germany and Freud’s
books burnt . Could he not , for
instance, see a similarity
between his statement that” Jews are nomads, have no cultural forms of their
own. They often carry the culture in
which they live”, and Hitler’s claim
that Jews were parasites ; or the remark that Jews are weak , like
women.... “and that he was providing him with weapons against the Jews? Jung justified his preoccupation with
definitions of Jewish psychology as
a scientific imperative. On taking on the editorship of the Zentralblatt, he wrote in 1934 , as
quoted by Richard Stein in his article ‘Jung’s Mana Personality and the Nazi Era ‘ in” Lingering Shadows”:
“The factually existing differences between the Germanic and
Jewish psychologies should no longer
remain blurred -to present them clearly is an aim from which science can but
derive benefit. “ He repeatedly protested the absurdity of the accusations of
anti- semitism .In a letter to James Kirsch
on May 26 1934 he writes, “
You ought to know me sufficiently well to realize that an unindividual
stupidity like anti- semitism cannot be laid at my door ”. In the same letter he says, “ The Jew
directly solicits anti -semitism with his readiness to scent out anti
-semitism every where” . on March 26 1934
Jung writes to B. Cohen ( Ibid), “ I am absolutely not an opponent of
Jews even though I am an opponent of Freud’s.”
. LEADERSHIP IN THE POLITICS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY When attacked in
The Neue Zuricher Zeitung by
Swiss psychiatrist Dr. Bally, concerning his collaboration with the Germans,
Jung replied that he was doing it in
the name of science and that he had to make a “pact with the existing powers
in Germany to save the profession of psychotherapy . “ Closely woven in with
his personal rivalry with Freud seems to have been his unacknowledged desire
for the leadership of his psychology
along with the recognition of psychotherapy as a legitimate discipline
within medicine. Andrew Samuels points out in the “Political Psyche “ that
although Jung always denied a desire for leadership- and
the possession of a power driver as in his much quoted saying
“thank God I am Jung and not a Jungian”, seemingly wanting to appear in the
persona of the unworldly thinker ,his behavior belies this claim. He was
very active in the politics of psychotherapy in Europe in the1920s and when
in 1933 he was asked to become president of the General Medical Society for
Psychotherapy, he was already serving as its vice president. At the last
Congress in 1938 in Oxford , he talked about points in common to all the
psychotherapies and that his aim was to give psychotherapy a “well merited
place among other branches of medical science”. One of the greatest criticisms directed against Jung concerned his
activities in the
General Medical Society for Psychotherapy
in the 1930s. This Society was
based in Germany. In 1933 when
Hitler came to power all the Jewish members were forced out and Ernst
Kretchmer who was president ( and not a Jew) resigned in protest .
Jung who had been vice president
agreed to accept the presidency. He maintained subsequently that he did this in order to help Jews remain members by changing the constitution so that the
organization became supra national
and people could become members as individuals and not through their national
organizations. However, the fact remains
that Mathias Goering, (a cousin of Hermann Goering ) was president of
the German section, and under Jung’s editorship he published a
manifesto in the organization’s publication, the “Zentralblatt”, calling to colleagues to accept Hitler’ s political
and ideological principles .During the course of the years The
Zentralblatt published many
virulently anti- semitic and pro Nazi articles, whilst ,admittedly it also
continued publishing reviews of books
written by Jews. FASCINATION WITH WOTAN However ,
his attitude to Jews is only
one strand in Jung’s thinking which causes perturbation. What exactly is he saying in his lecture at the Tavistock Clinic in
London in 1935, when he says: “Would you have believed (in1900 ) that a whole nation of highly intelligent and cultivated people could be
seized by the fascinating power of an
archetype?” .... “even my personal friends are under that fascination and when I am in Germany I believe it
myself ,I understand it all , it has to be as it is....” “One cannot resist it. It gets you below
the belt and not in your mind....it is a power that fascinates people from
within , it is the collective unconscious that is activated ,it is an
archetype which is common to them all that has come to life...... an
incomprehensible fate has seized them
,and you cannot say it is right or it is wrong. It has nothing to with
rational judgment, it is just history.” Is it possible that Jung is under the
impression that he is making detached scientific observations? Is he unaware
of his own excited enthusiasm? Does
the man who extolled consciousness above all as the tool for the control of
forces arising from the unconscious
realize what he is saying in
the words, “ One cannot resist it . It gets you below the belt and not in
your mind....”. One of the participants in the seminar remarked that one can
understand what it was about Hitler’s thinking that caught the imagination of
so many in Europe and elsewhere . The same lack of clarity appears in “ Wotan”, his
essay on the Germanic god published in the Neue Schweitzer Rundschau
in Zurich in 1936.He writes how already before 1914 a restlessness was
afoot in Germany. “armed with rucksack and lute, blond youths and sometimes
girls as well were to be seen as
restless wanderers”. The spirit of Wotan was rising from the German
subconscious . People are possessed ( begriffen ) by it , He writes, “He is the god of storm and frenzy , the
unleasher of possessions and the lust for battle . Moreover ,he a superlative magician and illusion artist
who is versed in all secrets of an occult nature.” Jung’s excitement is
palpable. On the one hand he says,
“Wotan is not only a god of
rage and frenzy who embodies the
instinctual and emotional aspects of the unconscious .Its intuitive and
inspiring side also manifests itself
in him. , for he understands the runes and can interpret fate.” On the other
hand he indicates that all is out of
control., “ The impressive thing
about the German phenomenon is that one man who is obviously possessed has
infected a whole nation to such an extent that everything is set in motion
and has started rolling on its course towards perdition” .There is not even a
breath of condemnation. There is optimism, “Wotan must in time reveal not only the restless, violent , stormy
side of his character ,but also his ecstatic mantic qualities- a very
different aspect of his nature. If this conclusion is correct national
socialism would not be the last word.
Things must be concealed in the background which we cannot imagine
at present.” The article ends with an
impassioned quotation from the Edda , “After the wolf do wild men follow” .In his
enthusiastic description of a monograph on Wotan by Martin Ninck Jung is possibly describing his own approach also . He writes, “Certainly
the right to scientific objectivity is fully
observed......but above all one feels..... that the chord of Wotan is
vibrating in him also.” Some participants in the seminar thought that perhaps Jung was not only also seized by the same archetype that seized all Germany ,
but was intoxicated, overjoyed ,
by the fact that he saw the concepts and theories he formulated being
carried out in vivo .Here is proof of
the existence of a collective national or racial unconscious. “ But what is more than curious, “ writes
Jung, “ - indeed piquant to a degree- is than an ancient god of storm and
frenzy ,the long quiescent Wotan,
should awake ,like an extinct volcano , to new activity in a civilized
country that had long been supposed to have outgrown the Middle Ages “ that
is to say that forces , that had existed in
Germany before the coming of Christianity caused their suppression and repression, were now,
with the weakening of the
power of Christianity once again emerging in their full glory.” FASCINATION WITH HITLER However, Jung was not possessed or “ seized “ by
Wotan only. His fascination included
Hitler. In a broadcast in 1939 he says of Hitler ,, “Few foreigners respond at all, yet apparently every German
in Germany does .It is because Hitler is the mirror of every German’s
unconscious .....he is the first man to tell every German what he has been
thinking and feeling all along in his unconscious about German fate ... If he
is not their true Messiah he is like one of the Old Testament prophets, . His
mission is to unite his people and lead it to the promised land. One of the
participants in the workshop thought
he sensed here a sense of particular
satisfaction at the arrival of an arien Messiah who would lead his people to a
promised land that is other than that belonging to Freud’s Jews. “ Jung refers to Hitler as a truly
individuated person , “ Only the self development of the individual , which I
consider to be the supreme goal of all psychological endeavor , can produce a consciously
responsible spokesman and leader of a collective movement. As Hitler said
recently , the leader must be able to be alone and must have the courage to go his own way. ( quoted by Richard Stein in ‘ Jung’s Mana Personality and the Nazi Era
in “ Lingering Shadows”) and in a
radio interview with HR Knickerbocker
he adds “ there is no question but that Hitler belongs to the category of
the truly mystic medicine man.” At one point he expresses an extraordinary identification, a
participation mystique, between himself
and Hitler. (Ibid.). When Knickerbocker asks him where, in his opinion , Hitler’s magic lies, Jung
replies , “... you would be surprised if I should tell you all that I have already learned unconsciously about you in this
short space of time.... Now the secret of Hitler’s power is two fold .First
that his unconscious has exceptional
access to his consciousness and
second that he allows himself to be moved by it ... Hitler listens and obeys
The true leader is always led. “ At this point in the workshop one of the
participants cried out , “How can I remain a Jungian?” AFTER THE WAR -RETRACTION ? The question
arises as to what Jung said or
did after the war when there was no longer any doubt about the nature of Hitler
and Nazi Germany. There is the famous story , quoted by a
number of sources, about Professor Sholem consulting Leo Baeck as to whether he should attend the Eranos
conference in 1946 to which he had been invited by Jung ,and
Leo Baeck telling him that Jung had particularly sought him out in his
hotel in Zurich in 1945 , after he
had been released from the Terezien Concentration Camp and he had refused to meet him, and that Jung had admitted in the course of their
conversation that he had “slipped up “. A rather inadequate expression of
contrition by all accounts.; yet Leo Baeck advised Sholem to go. In 1945 Jung published “After the Catastrophe”.
In this essay he analyses what had happened to German society from the position of a neutral Swiss. He
admits to having been “ churned up”. He writes, “ I had not realized how much
I was myself affected ... This inner feeling of participation mystique with
the events in Germany”. On the whole
,however, he writes as a detached observer
. He speaks of collective psychosis, collective guilt and the
projection of the shadow; that all are guilty and suffer: “The sight of evil
kindles evil in the soul-there is no way of getting away from this fact . The
victim is not the only sufferer ; everybody in the vicinity of the crime
,including the murderer suffers with him” .He places himself with the
innocent .There is little sense
of horror that he had been caught up in this psychosis; no pain at the suffering of the Jews or any other victims.
He writes rather coolly : “The pseudo scientific theories with which it was dolled up did not make
the extermination of the Jews any more acceptable. “ He speaks of the
opportunity for transformation and spiritual renewal: “Where sin is great
‘grace doeth much more abound . ” In 1946 in a radio talk on the BBC he speaks
rather differently of Hitler than before: “ He symbolized something in every
individual .He was the most prodigious personification of all human
inferiorities ....He represented the shadow , the inferior part of
everybody’s personality ... but what
could they have done?” In the
Epilogue to his book ,“Essays on Contemporary Events ”, he says ,it seems ,by
way of explanation for some of his pronouncements during the thirties , “Every archetype contains the lowest and
the highest, evil and good .... Hence it is impossible to make out at the
start whether it will prove positive
or negative . My medical attitude to such things counseled me to wait....The
therapist’s aim is to bring the
positive, valuable and living quality of the archetype - which will sooner or
later be integrated into
consciousness in any case- into
reality and at the same time obstruct as far as possible its damaging and
pernicious tendencies. It is part of the doctor’s professional equipment to summon up a certain amount of
optimism even in the most unlikely
circumstances. .”....He adds that he thought that Germany as a “ most differentiated and highly civilized country
“ was conscious enough to be able to contain what was arising from the German
unconscious . PSYCHOLOGIST AS ‘DOCTOR OF SOCIETY’ In the workshop there was considerable discussion
concerning Jung’s stance here as the“doctor of society” . As Andrew Samuels
says in his foreword to” Essays on Contemporary Events” Jung claimed and believed “ that depth
psychologists have a duty and a competence to observe , describe and even
interpret what is happening around
them, beyond the confines of the consulting room .” He maintained firstly
that in “treating an individual an
analyst is also “ treating a whole culture” which in itself is not quite the
same as the need for an analyst to be aware of the cultural dimension in his
patient’s psychic world. However , Jung goes beyond this and believes it is
his function to treat society itself also. In doing so he introduces, in
Andrew Samuel’s words “a tendency to
see all outer events in terms of inner , usually archetypal dynamics.”,
which may lead to contempt for everything that is not psychology and
ignore the importance of economic, political social ,and historical factors . Samuels explains ,moreover, that in “Wotan “, for instance
Jung applies methods used in
individual analysis in order to treat his patient which is German society. “
Jung strives to get into a transference- countertransference relationship
with his patient (in” Wotan “ it is Germany ). Just as in individual analysis this means allowing himself to
be influenced by that which seeks to ‘treat’,(countertransference ). He tries
to understand the patient in terms of his antecedents (transference) “ and
bring the matter to his patient’s consciousness by way of interpretation. Participants in the seminar pointed out that one needs to differentiate between the concept that
Jung was introducing and his capacity to carry it out; that
there is room for discussing the place of
psychology and the psychologist in society ( which is one of the main
topic of Samuel’s “ The Political
Psyche “). It appears that by way
of his “ countertransfence “, however, within
the process Jung was trying to
negotiate , he himself , without being aware of it became “ergriffen” ,
“seized “ “possessed “ by the
material he was analyzing . In doing so he seems also to have become possessed by a sense of omnipotence ,succumbing to what he himself had
warned against when speaking of the feeling of the inflation of the mana personality already
in 1918.
IMPLICATIONS Participants in the workshop found it important to
draw conclusions from what had
happened to Jung . Jung had arrived at many of his important insights because
of his closeness to his own
unconscious , which at times even sent
him into psychosis . They pointed out that some Jungians have a
tendency to venerate the unconscious
and the irrational . Their preoccupation with the Self and the numinous tends to lead them to an
underestimation of the importance of the ego and connection with reality.
Jung himself warned of this danger. He wrote, for instance , “ As a psychiatrist ,accustomed to dealing with
patients who are in danger of being overwhelmed by unconscious contents , I
knew that it is of the utmost importance ,from the therapeutic point of view
, to strengthen as far as possible
their conscious position and
powers of understanding ,so that something is there to intercept and integrate the contents that are breaking
through into consciousness.” He
repeatedly wrote that the contents of the shadow need to be made
conscious so that they can be
integrated and come under the control of the ego. . Jung’s
clear lack of ethical judgement as well as human feeling caused considerable perturbation among the
participants. It strongly .brought to their awareness the danger of the tendency among some Jungians to place too
great a value on the function of
intuition In his work on typology
Jung himself pointed out that people
(like himself) in whom the intuitive function is more highly developed may be
lacking in the function of feeling , which in his terms includes also the
capacity for judgement. Even if it appears that Jung was not fully conscious of the implications of many of his pronouncements , that does not , in his own terms also, exonerate him from responsibility. He himself wrote ,, “ Before the bar of nature and fate ,unconsciousness is never accepted as an excuse”. Moreover, although in later years he acquired more knowledge about Judaism and expressed deep appreciation particularly of its cabbalistic wisdom he never fully confronted the horrendous mistake he had made; he never issued an unambiguous admission and expression of contrition .He never followed the recommendation he himself made in “After the Catastrophe”: “In order to escape the contaminating touch of evil we need a proper ‘rite de sortie’, a solemn admission of guilt by judge ,hangman and public , followed by an act of expiation” . This , as participants noted ,is something that was never done . The questions raised in this workshop concerning
some of Jung’s thinking remain open .
I would
like to thank the participants of the workshop who kindly read the article,
and having added their comments, consented to its publication .) Eva (Chava) Morris, Analytical Psychologist Moshav Aminadav Mobile Post , Judean Hills 90885 Tel: 02 6411765 Fax: 02 6429714 |
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