Being Jungian in Today's World
Jung's Popularity Outside Mainstream Psychology
When a local editor recently asked to write something about Jungian psychology, she opined that Jungian thought had become popular in various segments of our community, but notably not among psychologists. I had to agree with her. Best-selling books Care of the Soul and Women Who Run with the Wolves are both based on Jung's work, and Jungian analysts Robert Moore and James Hillman have been key figures in the men's movement. I encounter Jungian terms in popular songs, movies, literature, and comic strips all the time. Even Madison Avenue has incorporated Jung. In one commercial, a beer-drinker joked that appreciation of Budweiser s finer qualities is stored in the collective unconscious. Nevertheless, I continue to hear the same story from university students: Jung is barely mentioned in most psychology departments.
A colleague of mine has done an informal experiment asking college psychology students to associate to the stimulus word Jung. He found their most common responses to be Freud and something along the lines of anti-Semitic, Nazi's, Germany, and Hitler. These were followed in frequency by the responses archetypes and mysticism, the latter meant in the pejorative sense. These college professors and psychologists of the future had no knowledge of Jung's contributions to psychology, but rather stereotyped, mostly negative connections to the man. Given this kind of apathy, ignorance, and outright rejection of Jung's work in traditional psychological circles, I was surprised to read an affirming and factual half-page article in the July 1994 issue of the APA Monitor, Jung's theories keep pace and remain popular. This small article in our professional newspaper was published two years after a six-page article in US News and World Report entitled Spiritual Questing: Embarked on a search for meaning, more and more Americans are turning to the mythic psychology of the late Carl Jung. This seems consistent with Dr. Atkinson's and my impression that there is greater interest in Jung outside mainstream professional psychology.
A Jungian View of Psychological Treatment
Central to Jungian psychology is the concept of individuation, referring to the psychological evolution of an individual over time. Jung used the term to describe a lifelong expansion of consciousness, as well as the development of an increasingly differentiated personality. Individuation involves the growth of a whole and unique human being and a concomitant deepening and widening of awareness. Jung felt that this was accomplished through the integration of unconscious contents and the reconciliation of opposites within the psyche.
Individuation is considered to be a process that occurs naturally over the course of life, though it can be enormously facilitated through analytic work. Such analytically-assisted individuation is not simply a luxury for individuals wishing to grow, however. From a Jungian perspective, psychological maladies often result from inhibited individuation. To the extent that we are unconscious and undeveloped, we are limited in our ability to respond productively, creatively, and adaptively to life. In fact, it was Jung's feeling that the greater the split between the conscious and unconscious mind, the greater the likelihood of a neurotic, or in some cases, psychotic disorder. For Jung, then, psychological symptoms frequently signal the fact that our psyche is fragmented, unbalanced, and ill-adapted to reality. Jungian treatment requires us waking up to the unconscious dynamics creating our suffering.
A unique aspect of Jungian analysis is the provocative notion that direction for what we need to deal with and who we must become to function fully comes from within ourselves. Jungian psychology proposes that there is a source of symbolic wisdom within each person s psyche--a regulating center that Jung calls the Self--that contains knowledge beyond what we know consciously. Jung felt that the unconscious Self is constantly communicating information to consciousness, but due to its symbolic nature, we usually fail to understand its meaning. Jung and his followers developed approaches to dream interpretation, creative expression, and the use of imagination to assist in the integration of unconscious contents, and thereby to restore harmony and wholeness to the psyche. From a Jungian perspective, symptom relief is most meaningful when it is part of this larger process of transformation, wherein we discover who we really are, as opposed to what we seem to be or others expect us to be.
With those general reflections as background, I would like to turn again to the issue of Jung's popularity. I will share my thoughts on this by listing three reasons I feel it is difficult to be Jungian today and three reasons I feel it is easy.
Why it is Difficult to be Jungian in Today's World
As far as I know, it was never that fashionable to be interested in something as esoteric as Jungian psychology. As a clinical psychology doctoral student at the University of Arizona, I told my graduate advisor about being interested in taking some classes in religious studies. Aghast, my behaviorist advisor cautioned me that I was already studying the softest, least scientific area of psychology and that I needed to balance it with more positivistic, down-to-earth courses. And he was referring to mainstream clinical psychology--like most universities, nothing remotely Jungian was offered in my program (I was trained as a Jungian analyst through postdoctoral studies at a Jungian institute).
In the age of health care reform, managed care, and brief solution-focused treatment, it has become increasingly difficult to practice in a Jungian fashion. The Jungian approach is not always lengthy or costly, but it can be. Therefore it has never appealed to people looking for a quick-fix or easy prescription for their problems. Jungian analysis involves the difficult, usually painful process of knowing ourselves and taking personal responsibility for the way we are. It is no wonder many people prefer the pain of their symptoms to the suffering inherent in living consciously. Living an authentic life is much harder than it sounds--even if in the end it will make our lives fulfilled and meaningful. Therefore, the health care establishment reflects most people s preference for brief techniques aimed at symptom relief, often at the expense of uncovering and grappling with the deeper issues of life.
In a society that values practicality, rationality, and scientific proof, Jungian psychology is understandably questioned. Jung prided himself on being an empirical scientist. However, many of his theories and concepts are not provable in the way science can prove the laws of physics. While Jungian concepts are often experienced as intuitively correct, most of them have not been able to be scientifically tested and confirmed. Consequently, the efficacy of Jung s ideas must still be weighed, checked and verified through individual experience. With the APA endeavoring to identify proven methods of treatment (referred to as EVT s--empirically validated treatment protocols), Jungian methods are not likely to attain this status any time soon.
Finally, as exemplified by my colleague s survey of psychology students, Jung is known more for his problematic relationship with Freud, his questionable connection to Nazi propaganda, and his interests in the occult. These, as well as his publicized sexual indiscretions, cast a dark shadow over Jung s integrity, and by association, over those who practice in the manner he pioneered.
To summarize, three reasons I find it difficult to be Jungian are (1.) there is currently widespread desire for brief therapy aimed at symptom relief, (2.) most of Jung s approach has not been verified experimentally, and (3.) Jungian psychology is still tainted by Jung s shadowy reputation.
Why it is Easy to be Jungian in Today's World
These days, a great number of Americans seem to be searching for deeper meaning in their lives. It appears from the widespread popularity of Jungian concepts and books that the unique blend of psychology and spirituality in Jungian thought feeds this hunger in many of them. Not wholly content with empirical psychology nor with the answers of religion, individuals seem to find hope and solace in Jung s work. People from all walks of life are looking for more out of existence than simply adapting to society and living functionally. They want more inner fulfillment via authentically contributing to the world. It seems to me, the past few decades have given birth to an increased quest for both personal and spiritual well-being, and there is more interest than ever in the kinds of things Jungian psychology has to offer.
In addition, I find people are especially drawn to Jung's notion that the seeds of who we are and the potential solutions to our problems are latent in the unconscious. It is inviting and exciting to embark on a journey in which we look into the deeper realms of our inner self for wisdom and guidance. Many of my clients are relieved to discover that their psyche is self-regulating, and that they needn't buy into others models of who they should be. Even if they do not like all that they see in themselves, clients in Jungian treatment seem to derive an overall benefit from self-knowledge, self-acceptance, self-responsibility, and freedom from externally imposed models of wellness.
Finally, Jungian psychology offers people an appealing blend of practical wisdom and far-reaching vision. Combining pragmatic techniques, loose-knit theory, and a deep respect for the unknown, Jungian psychology offers an earthy appreciation for the destructive power of unconscious complexes wed to a circumspect belief in the psyche's innate power to transform and renew itself.
To summarize, I find it easy to be Jungian because (1.) the Jungian approach provides spiritual and psychological nourishment in the process of treating symptoms and problems, (2.) rather than impose an external model of wellness, I can ally myself with my clients search for their own truth, and (3.) Jungian psychology offers assistance through practical methods that value the inherent possibilities of human growth and transformation.
About Dr. Gary S. Toub...
Gary S. Toub, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist and diplomate Jungian analyst in private practice in Denver, Colorado. Dr. Toub specializes in identity issues, men's issues, mid-life issues, relationship issues and more.
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Does the World stand on the verge of Spiritual Rebirth? ~Carl Jung
This is what theologians for several centuries have been crying for; what many of them have professed to see through the fog of doubts, disillusion and despair, like a star glowing in the high heavens. I am not a theologian; I am a doctor, a psychologist. But as a doctor, I have had experience with thousands of persons from all parts of the world—those who came to tell me the stories of their lives, their hopes, their fears, their achievements, their failures. I have studied carefully their psychology, which is, and which must be, my guide. Out of my experience with those thousands of patients, I have become convinced that the psychological problem of today is a spiritual problem, a religious problem, Man today hungers and thirsts for a safe relationship to the psychic forces within himself. His consciousness, recoiling from the difficulties of the modern world, lacks a relationship to safe spiritual conditions. This makes him neurotic, ill, frightened. Science has told him that there is no God, and that matter is all there is. This has deprived humanity of its blossom, its feeling of well-being and of safety in a safe world. As modern man is driven back upon himself by doubt and fear, he looks inward to his own psychic life to give him something of which his outer life has deprived him. In view of 'the present widespread interest in all sorts of psychic phenomena—an interest such as the world has not experienced since the last half of the seventeenth century—it does not seem beyond the range of possibility to believe that we stand on the threshold of a new spiritual epoch; and that from the depths of man's own psychic life new spiritual forms will be born. Look at the world about us, and what do we see? The disintegration of many religions. It is generally admitted that the churches are not holding the people as they did,particularly educated people, who do not feel any longer that they are redeemed by a system of theology. The same thing is seen in the old established religions of the East— Confucianism and Buddhism. Half the temples in Peking are empty. In our Western world millions of people do not go to church. Protestantism alone is broken up into four hundred denominations. Contrast this state of life and thought with that of the Middle Ages. In those centuries almost everyone went to Mass every morning. The whole life was lived within the church, which became a tremendous outlet of psychic energy. Instead, we have today an intricate and complicated life full of mechanical devices for living. A life crowded with motor cars and radios and motion pictures. But none of these things is a substitute for what we have lost. Religion gives us a rich application for our feelings. It gives meaning to life. Man in the Middle Ages lived in a meaningful world. He knew that God had made the world for a definite purpose; had made him for a definite purpose—to get to heaven, or to get to hell. It made sense. Today the world in which all of us live is a madhouse. This is what many people are feeling, Some of those people come to me to tell me so. All that energy which was the origin of the rich blossom of man's emotional life during the Middle Ages, and which found expression in the painting of great religious pictures, the carving of great religious statues, the building of the great cathedrals, has gone flat,)It is not lost, because it is a law that energy cannot be lost. Then what has become of it? Where has it gone? The answer is that it is in man's unconscious. It may be said to have fallen down into a lower storey. Take the example of a business man—successful, rich, not yet old. He is perhaps forty-five. He says, "I have made my fortune; I have sons who are old enough to carry on the business which I founded. I will retire. I will build a fine house in the country and live there without any cares and worries." So he retires. He builds his house and goes to live in it. He says to himself, "Now my life will begin." But nothing happens. One morning he is in his bath. He is conscious of a pain in his side. All day he worries about it; wonders what it can be. When he goes to the table he does not eat. In a few days his digestion is out of order. In a fortnight he is very ill. The doctors he has called in do not know what is the matter with him. Finally one of them says to him: "Your life lacks interest. Go back to your business. Take it up again." The man is intelligent, and this advice seems to him sound. He decides to follow it. He goes back to his office and sits down at his old desk and declares that now he will help his sons in the management. But when the first business letter is brought to him, he cannot concentrate on it. He cannot make the decisions it calls for. Now he is terribly frightened about his condition. You see what happened. He couldn't go back. It was already too late. But his energy is still there, and it must be used. This man comes to me with his problem. I say to him: "You were quite right to retire from business. But not into nothingness. You must have something you can stand on. In all the years in which you devoted your energy to building up your business you never built up any interests outside of it. You had nothing to retire on." This is a picture of the condition of man today. This is why we feel that there is something wrong with the world. All the material interests, the automobiles and radios and skyscrapers we have, don't fill the hungry soul. We try to retire from the world, but to what? Some try to go back to the churches. A few are able to do this. But many are not finding this entirely satisfactory. They are like the business man who tried to go back to his desk. And these people come to me, asking me to help them to find a meaning in their lives. What shall I tell them? Among them comes a man who is only slightly neurotic. He says to me: "I am not really very sick. Perhaps I should not be here at all taking up your time. But I know you are busy with the human mind. I thought, therefore, that you might be able to tell me on what terms I may live. I have the feeling of being forlorn and lonely in a world that makes no sense." I say to him: "My dear man, I don't know any more than you do the meaning of the world or the meaning of your life. But you—all men—were born with a brain ready made. It took millions of years to build the brain and the body we now have. Your brain embodies all the experience of life. The psyche, which may be called the life of the brain, existed before consciousness existed in the little child. "Now, suppose that I am in need of advice about living, and I know of a man who is already thousands of years old. I go to him and say, 'You have seen many changes; you have observed and experienced life under many aspects. My life is short—perhaps seventy years, perhaps less—and you have lived for thousands of years. Tell me the meaning of life for me.' " When I say this to my patient, he cocks his ears and looks at me. "No," I say, "I am not that man. But that man speaks to you every night. How? In your dreams." I go on: "You are in trouble. You feel that your life has no orientation. I cannot tell you what to do. But let us ask the Great Old Man. He will tell you. Go away for a few days, and you will have a dream. Come back and tell me about it." He goes away; he comes back and brings me a dream. It is difficult to work out. But we do work it out together, and it tells us something about him. Certain people lose connection with life because they have made mistakes, or because they are living the wrong way, in a life that is intellectual only. The dreams they bring to a psychologist will take up these things first. All dreams reveal spiritual experiences, provided one does not apply one’s own point of view to the interpretation of them. Freud says that all man's longings expressed in his dreams relate to sexuality. It is true that man is a being with sex. But he is also a being with a stomach and a liver. As well say that because he has a liver all his troubles come from that one organ. Primitive man has little difficulty with sex. The fulfillment of his sexual desires is too easy to constitute a problem. What concerns primitive man—and I have lived among primitives, and Freud has not—is his food: where he is to get it, and enough of it. Civilized man in his dreams reveals his spiritual need. When modern science disinfected heaven it did not find God. Some scientists say that the resurrection of Jesus, the virgin birth, the miracles—all those things which fed Christian thought through ages, are pretty stories, but none the less untrue. But what I say is, Do not overlook the fact that these ideas which millions of men carried with them through generations are great eternal psychological truths. Let us look at this truth as the psychologist sees it. Here is the mind of man, without prejudice, spotless, untainted, symbolized by a virgin. And that virgin mind of man can give birth to God himself. "The kingdom of heaven is within you." This is a great psychological truth. Christianity is a beautiful system of psychotherapy. It heals the suffering of the soul. This is the truth which man has clung to through the ages. Even after his consciousness has listened too long at the door of modern materialistic science, he clings to it in his unconscious. The old symbols are good today. They fit our minds as well as they fitted the minds that conceived them. Deep in the unconscious of each one of us are all the attempts of that Great Old Man to express his spiritual experiences. Suppose I ask you to stay in my house. I tell you that it is well built, comfortable; that our life is pleasant; that you will have good food. You can swim in the lake and walk in the garden. With these beliefs in your mind you decide to come, and you enjoy your stay. But suppose, when I ask you, I say to you: "This house is unsafe. The foundations are not secure. We have many earthquakes in this region. Besides all that, we have had illness here. Someone recently died of tuberculosis in this room." Under those conditions and with these ideas in your mind, do you enjoy your stay in that house? That medieval man we have talked of had a beautiful relationship with God. He lived in a safe world, or one that he believed to be safe. God looked out for everyone in it; he rewarded the good and punished the bad. There was the church where the man could always get forgiveness and grace. He had only to walk there to receive it. His prayerswere heard. He was spiritually taken care of. But what is modern man told? Science has told him that there is no one taking care of him. And so he is full of fear. For a time, after we gave up that medieval God, we had gold for a deity. But now that, too, has been declared incompetent. We trusted in armies, but the threat of poison gas defeated them. Already people talk about the next war. In Berlin they have built dugouts under the streets for retreat from poison gas attacks. If they go on talking in this way, thinking this way, the next war will explode of itself. Naturally enough, in a world of this sort, everybody gets neurotic. Even if the house you live in is really safe, if you have the idea that it is not, you will suffer. Your reaction depends entirely on what you think. In making this point to my students, I say: "How do you measure a thing? By its effects. And usually by its terrible effects. An avalanche occurs which wipes away a dozen farms, kills scores of cows, and you say, 'An elephant of an avalanche!' Now, tell me, what is the most destructive thing you know of ?" In turn we consider fire, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, diseases. Then I say, "Can you think of nothing more terrible than any of these things? What about the World War?" Ah, yes! High explosives. "But," I say, "do high explosives make themselves? Do they declare war. It is the psyche of man that makes wars. Not his consciousness. His consciousness is afraid, but his unconscious, which contains the inherited savagery as we l as the spiritual strivings of the race,) says to. him, "Now it is time to make war. Now is the time to kill and destroy." And he does it. The most tremendous danger that man has to face is the power of his ideas. No cosmic power on earth ever destroyed ten million men in four years. But man's psyche did it. And It can do it, vain. I am afraid of one thing only—the thoughts of people. I have means of defense against things. I live here in my house happily with my family. But suppose they get the illusion that I am a devil. Can I be happy with them then? Can I be safe? All of us are subject to mass infections. I Mass infections) are greater than man. And man is their victim. He shouts and parades and pretends that he is the leader, but really he is their victim. They are the up rush of earthly and spiritual forces from the depth of the psyche. Turn the eye of consciousness within to see what is there. Let us see what we can do in small ways. If I have planted a cabbage right, then I have served the world in that place. I do not know what more I can do. Examine the spirits that speak in you. Become critical. The modern man must be fully conscious of the terrific dangers that lie in mass movements. Listen to what the unconscious says. Hearken to the voice of that Great Old Man within you who has lived so long, who has seen and experienced so much. Try to understand the will of God: The remarkably potent force of the psyche. I say: Go slow. Go slow. With every good there comes a corresponding evil, and with every evil a corresponding good. Don't run too fast into one unless you are prepared to encounter the other. I am not concerned about the world. I am concerned about the people with whom I live. The other world is all in the newspapers. My family and my neighbors are my life—the only life that I can experience. What lies beyond is newspaper mythology. It is not of vast importance that I make a career or achieve great things for myself. What is important and meaningful to my life is that I shall live as fully as possible to fulfill the divine will within me. This task gives me so much to do that I have no time or any other. Let me point out that if we were all to live in that way we would need no armies, no police, no diplomacy, no politics, no banks. We would have a meaningful life and not what we have now—madness. What nature asks of the apple-tree is that it shall bring forth apples, and of the pear-tree that it shall bring forth pears. Nature wants me to be simply man. But a man conscious of what I am, and of what I am doing. God seeks consciousness in man. This is the truth of the birth and the resurrection of Christ within. As more and more thinking men come to it, this is the spiritual rebirth of the world. Christ, the Logos—that is to say, the mind, the understanding, shining into the darkness. Christ was a new truth about man. Mankind has no existence. I exist, you exist. But mankind is only a word. Be what God means you to be; don't worry about mankind which doesn't exist, you are avoiding looking at what does exist—the self You are like a man who leans over his neighbor's fence and says to him: "Look, there is a weed. And over there is an-I- other one. And why don't you hoe the rows deeper? And I why don't you tie up your vines?" And all the while, his own garden, behind him, is full of weeds. ~Carl Jung [1934]; C.G. Jung Speaks; Pages 67-75
True enough, but Jung also complained that he wouldn't ever want to be a "Jungian!" How then do we excite the masses with this message? Is it even our job? Being an extrovert, I am inclined to be dissatisfied with my own thousand patients among whom some small percentage understand the poverty of their soul. Thus, I write in hope that my Jungian ideas will help the larger world who, like the article I quoted, only associate negative attributes with Jung. While it may be true that negative news travels fastest, that doesn't mean people get past the headlines - that, I believe, is our job.
Thom,
Excellent and timely essay. If I might offer one thought to your question:
As a non professional, the first idea that comes to me is that Jung's ideas need to be a key part of a larger interdisciplinary effort to address the problems of the individual, culture, and the environment. Others are attempting this - the work of Ken Wilber and Integral Theory come first to mind, but the Integral movement has yet to achieve critical mass mostly because it's still an incomplete meta-theory and is lacking in practical application. The weak links in the Integral framework are in the areas of shadow work, typology, and real world "apps."
Also the work of Michael Conforti in archetypal pattern analysis looks promising as it is interdisciplinary - combining Jungian thought with the new sciences.
But my basic point is that the Jungians, Integral Theorists, Archetypal Pattern Analysts, mathematicians, social scientists, psychotherapists, and engineers all need to start talking to each other more instead of being quite so insular, proprietary or turf protecting. So, providing a forum for this kind of interdisciplinary and academically rigorous discussion and cross-pollination would be a first important step in my opinion.
Joe