1. I gave a mock presentation on my masters dissertation ideas last Wednesday. This was really more of a survey of my public speaking abilities than any critical assessment of my thesis proposal. I have a love/hate relationship with public speaking. When I'm not into the subject, and moreover when I'm not prepared for the discussion, I loathe it and suck horribly. But when I'm enthused about what I'm talking about, I can do pretty well, especially if I've prepared. I did practice what I was going to say a few times before the demonstration, and I made a powerpoint, something I usually don't bother to do. This was all part of research fora, a weekly meeting that's meant to just prepare us for writing and presenting our dissertations. It was something I volunteered to do, along with a few other classmates.
A woman from the career centre here spoke first about what makes a good presentation. She also talked about specifically what makes a good powerpoint. I started getting nervous because it seemed like what I prepared to do went against a lot of what she was saying. I also felt I had way too much to say for just a ten-minute talk. So I made some changes on the fly and went for it. Overall, the woman thought I did well. A good speaking voice and I connected with my audience. She thought I spoke too fast, and thus had to pause to take a breath one too many times. She also thought my body language became less receptive at certain points. Fine. It was actually pretty helpful for me, not just for her feedback, but also because I got to see my ideas come to life and be fully articulated. I always know if I've done a good job with this sort of thing if a number of people come to me afterward and tell me they thought it was an interesting presentation. That happened. So I made some sort of connection.
2. My thesis is currently titled "Jung & Spinoza: Archetypes Relocated." Jung's psychology revolves around the idea that there is a collective unconscious that we all share and unknowingly draw from, in the form of primmordial images or ideas. These are called archetypes. This is basically the foundation of Jungian psychology. It also sounds ridiculous and silly to 90% of people. What exactly is an archetype? How can one believe that there's really a part of the brain that taps into reservoir we all share ideas from? When it gets right down to it this is what makes Jung either a hero to people or a complete charlatan. I get the sense it's a shame that still hangs over the Jungian 'community', and so when dealing with the problem of archetypes they try to handle it in one of three ways:
a. Stay loyal to how archetypes are described in Jung's various writings. Jung usually distinguishes between the archetypal image, or how the archetype appears to the person experiencing it (an image, a situation, or an idea), and the archetype itself (whatever that image/idea represents), which Jung argues is inherently unknowable.
So essentially, anyone who goes with choice a) use one of the various definitions of archetypes from Jung's Collected Works for an application, whether in research or in clinical work.
b. Minimize or get rid of archetypes altogether. Some Jungians no longer talk very much about archetypes, probably because of how out-of-place they seem in today's world.
c. Update them for modern discourse. This usually entails trying to find some sort of biological or psychological connection for their existence. For instance, some have tried to argue archetypes could be derived from genetic material, or perhaps a structure in the brain. Anyone who knows genetics even poorly would agree that it's unlikely genes carry images and patterns of thought. The idea that there is a specific area in the brain for archetypal material also seems a bit dicey: where? What part of the brain could hold a collective psyche?
Another way out of this is to say archetypes are something that are merely learned early in development (through the mother). The problem with this is it strips away the whole point of archetypes- that they're universally acquired, and in some way different from typical learning. If this developmental theory is true, we might as well consider archetypes no different from complexes or normal thoughts. The whole thing loses meaning.
Curiously, over the years Jung went from saying archetypes were merely instincts, to something beyond instincts, to saying that they manifest simultaneously in body and mind. His work with the physicist Wolfgang Pauli (as well as some conversations with Einstein) convinced him that there existed a layer of the collective unconscious so 'low', what he called the psychoid unconscious, that archetypes would connected with both mind and matter. This is how Jung came up with theory of synchronicity, which describes meaningful coincidences. For instance, I dream of a house on fire while at that same moment that house is on fire in reality. There is a connection here that cannot be explained linearly (because it seems to violate space and time!). Of course, it could just be a meaningless coincidence. But Jung argues for meaning here, as if an archetype could be emerging both in psyche and the physical world itself at the same time. In short, Jung was extended the idea of archetypes to describe not just the order of the mind, but maybe the universe.
This is an aspect that is often overlooked by Jungians, save a few researchers. I think that's because it's clearly the most 'out-there' of Jung's many 'out-there' ideas. But when I first read Jung, I was struck by how similar this idea is to the theories of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza. Spinoza was a 17th-century dude who is most well known for his theory of God. In short, he basically equates God with all matter in the universe, and that we are all modes of this substance called God. He also believed this God 'substance' had an infinite amount of attributes (or ways of describing it), of which we mere mortals could perceive only two: thought and matter. According to Spinoza thought and matter do not affect one another, even though they may overlap in terms of function or behavior (for instance, I feel pain the same moment I get cut). This left somewhat of a problem in the theory: if there is one substance encompassing everything, how could it be perceived in fragments?
There's a few interpretations about this that have been hatched throughout the centuries. Some say the attributes are totally subjective and up to the person to create. Other's say that this single substance does somehow hold all these separate attributes that do not affect one another. In recent times, an old professor of mine from Rutgers proposed a compromise: that there is only one substance, but it is our chain of reason that allows us to see these different qualities (thought or matter) of this single substance. Hence, thought and extension are two sides of the same coin.
To me this third, relativistic take on Spinoza is strikingly similar to Jung's notion of archetypes manifesting in both mind and matter. In my mind, it follows that:
Idea - - -Substance(God)- - - Matter
Where the separate branches are an archetype emerging in both mind and matter. To experience an archetype then, is to basically this emerging pattern. Jung and Spinoza are talking about the same thing.
Not only does this bolster the relativistic solution to Spinoza's problem of attributes. It also clarifies the muddled thinking of Jungians concerning archetypes. We should not be thinking of archetypes as things that are inherented biologically or learned simply from early development. Rather archetypes are the organizing patterns of all thinking, of all relationships, of all of society, of all of nature, of the entire world, and the universe itself. To experience archetypes then is to gain information about the world. Of course it's collective and universal: it's the reservoir of information that we're all swimming in! There is no collective unconscious deep in the brain itself, but rather there are ideas about anything in the universe that are out there for all of us to interpret or see. That is the 'thought' side of God, as described by Spinoza (or God's mind). To see these patterns in nature (laws of the universe even), would be matter itself. We're talking about very fundamental stuff here.
The problem is, I think, too many people see archetypes as the method of perception rather than the thing we are perceiving. Archetypes only affect our perception in the sense that we are still part of this substance they emanate from (God). But to describe them as simply schema that allow us to see things a certain way is, to me, woefully incomplete and misleading. Archetypes are the modes of God. It goes much, much deeper, and is far outside, the brain alone.
What determines how we perceive the archetypes, how we take in information, is our consciousness. And the style of consciousness is our personality type. How we perceive and judge the information of the world. This makes the personality type- a part of Jung's literature disregarded by many Jungians, probably for being too 'mainstream'- not a sweeping description of how each person thinks as much as it is a description of how they make contact with the world. It includes cognition, yes, but we're also talking about the way the person's body interacts. This is similar to how the surface of a cell, not the genes within the cell, are responsible for how that cell survives in its environment. This opens the door for explaining how personality is connected with physical characteristics. That, as well as how different types make contact, is something I will save for the PhD. But for instance, Jung and Spinoza say remarkably similar things, despite using vastly different approaches and languages. This is partially due to their heritage, to be sure, but surely it's also partially because of their different personalities. You could go through different theories, different arts, and different philosophies, and begin to see how someone makes contact, and how their style of personality affects these attempts.
3. Woo. Okay. So did Jung know he was drawing upon Spinoza so much? He actually rarely cites Spinoza in his stuff. He offhandedly describes him as an example of an intuitive type in his book Psychological Types, and he disregards him as being too rationalistic in an essay on folklore. Did Jung somehow overlook these similarities in their theories? Or were other people Jung drew upon inspired by Spinoza, and thus Jung was only indirectly influenced by him?
While my main goal for the MA is to simply show what the theoretical connections offer to a revised view of Jung's psychology (as well as what Jung's own metaphysics can help clarify in parts of Spinoza's theory), I also am interested in a genealogical linkage between the two. Jung was influenced heavily by the German romantic tradition, particularly Nietzsche, Schelling, Schopenhauer, and Goethe. Spinoza was the revered hero of so many in the Germanic tradition and the German romantic period. I have only recently learned that the German writer Goethe loved Spinoza. This is huge for me, because Jung saw himself as the illegitimate grandson of Goethe, and admired him greatly (he cites Faust endlessly in his Collected Works).
The connection between Carl Jung and Baruch Spinoza is undeniable for me, yet Jung hardly mentions Spinoza in his writings, and when he does it's usually just to dismiss him as too 'rationalistic'. Yet they both come to similar conclusions through an inductive approach that leads them to claim the discovery of 'absolute knowledge'. Jung of course may not have realized the people he drew from were inspired so heavily by Spinoza. But unless Jung did not read Spinoza at all- which is possible, though Jung was extremely well-read so I have trouble imagining this- I have to conclude there was another reason he did not seriously cite Spinoza: Spinoza was a Jew. And Jung was anti-Semitic.
Jung was anti-Semitic. He was arguably a closet Nazi for a time. He thought psychologies of different people were distinct depending on the nation (uh oh), and he also thought the Jews became too empirical and reductionist because of their lack of a homeland, which in turn prevented them from tapping into the collective psyche (oh boy). A lot of Jungians dismiss Jung's remarks at the time, saying he was just "a man of the time." Or they point out that he saved a lot of Jewish friends from Nazi persecution. Well maybe he did. He also said:
"The 'Aryan' unconscious has a higher potential than the Jewish."
"The Jew who is something of a nomad has never yet created a cultural form of his own and as far as we can see never will, since all his instincts and talents require a more or less civilized nation to act as host for their development."
"The Jews have this peculiarity with women; being physically weaker, they have to aim at the chinks in the armour of their adversary."
--CG Jung
Jung was more than a man of his time. He was a racist and his quotes helped fuel Nazi goals. He spoke ideally of Nazi Germany early on; Hitler was an inspiring leader who drew upon a lot of nationalism and arcane material for the iconography of his regime, and Jung got infatuated with that. He saw Hitler as someone who was identifying with the collective, and drawing all of Germany along for the ride. I think he was hoping that Nazi Germany was going to prove his theories to be true: that a single leader, in touch with the archetypal stuff, could revolutionize humankind. Instead, of course, there was only catastrophe. So Jung backtracked a lot during and after the war. His commentaries become noticeably more cynical after World War II. He is less inclined to believe that knowledge of the archetypes necessarily leads to a 'better' outcome. Though he always holds onto his belief that different 'races' have different psychologies.
It's obvious that his fallout with Freud comes into play with his anti-semitism. It didn't start it, but it probably helped fuel it. He didn't want to believe a Jew like Freud, and perhaps thus a Jew like Spinoza, could come up with something as profound as what he was doing; otherwise he'd have to let go of his belief in different psychologies for different races. So he just dismissed Spinoza as too rationalistic (as he did with Freud and others) and overlooked how Spinoza was so far from being a reductionist, or how Spinoza induced a model of the universe so similar to his own. I don't know if this is the case, but I highly suspect it is (Jung has a similar, though very different complex, for not fully acknowledging the similarities between him and Nietzsche- he didn't want to admit he could have suffered from the same psychoses Nietzsche did).
Jung famously uses a lot of mythology and influences from his folk culture to get at archetypes. I happen to think these are his own personal touches to his theory that are often confused with what archetypal material actually is, and is thus incredibly misleading. A lot of Jungians like to believe there is something special about mythology, that archetypes resonate through mythology exclusively, like magic. They don't want to think of mythology as simply a tool that works well for certain people in comprehending the situation in their life that they might be in, a situation is of in itself archetypal. There's no magic or mysticism there, so it almost seems to turn the most reverent Jungians off. Yet Jung himself describes mythology as serving this function! In his 1913 book, Symbols of Transformation (this is also the book that sealed his divorce with Freud), Jung describes mythology and symbols within mythology as merely a tool to be used for a person to get through a situation that they might not otherwise comprehend! Myths are not innate, they're just stories we create to interpret the archetypes! Just like the laws of physics interpret the way the universe works...
But mythology would become Jung's main source for trying to prove the existence of archetypes, rather than just a tool to get at them. I think Jung might have come to dislike this distinction over time, and maybe he feared it would undermine his whole theory. So maybe this is why he was adamant that certain races were more in touch with the collective psyche than others. A Swiss such as himself, with a long cultural tradition, would be more in touch with the collective unconscious than a nomad (or a Jew!). So therefore, Jung was allowed to clumsily use mythology to prove the existence of archetypes, even if this mythology was arbitrarily chosen because it was from Jung's own personal interests or his heritage, because who could be closer to the objective psyche than Carl Jung?
But if by chance he's wrong, and we all have equal access to archetypes (which we should if it's just information about the universe, rather than fanciful pictures in mythology books that only certain people of certain cultures will know about), then Jung's entire methodology is full of shit.
Of course, Jung's racism probably goes a lot deeper than just the need to cover his own ass. But what I'm trying to say here is that it unfortunately pervades his theory, and his entire methodology.
Sometimes then, I wonder why the hell I'm studying this guy. I also ask that question whenever I read those listed quotes.
My research is touching upon both what I find most beautiful about Jungian psychology (that it touches upon mind/matter, and the universe itself, just as Spinoza did), and the most revolting thing about Jungian psychology (how it's cultish founder was a bigot who still overshadows the entire field). But do I really need Carl Jung? He never really fully appreciates the metaphysics he creates- I can draw more on Spinoza for that; my version of archetypes is not apparently the Jungian one anyways. I don't really need him for personality types; Jung's writing on personality types is frankly nowhere as good as the people who came after him, Isabel Myers and David Keirsey. Besides, most Jungians resent typology for some reason, I guess because it's the most mainstream part of Jungian thought. I find his use of myth is seldom insightful, gimmicky most of the time, and occasionally downright manipulative. His writings on the structure of the psyche, such as the ego and unconscious, are exciting and good but at times bewildering in terms of picturing what goes where (e.g. the location of archetypes), and I noticed even a lot of Jungians end up drawing on Freudian concepts to help out. The concepts of anima, animus, wise old man (characters within ourselves we meet when confronting our shadow), are all very useful and enlightening, but I think ultimately they're the exact same thing as mythology: tools, not actual psychic objects. In this case, they help us grapple with whatever the 'shadow' or 'other' in an individual actually is.
Meanwhile, the Jungian therapists are by large extraordinarily petulant and egotistical, with sharp camps dividing the different groups by region and belief. One famous Jungian from America died last fall, and British Jungians criticized one of their peers for honoring him at a convention. They justify their childish wars through, yes, Jungian concepts. "Of course we hate this one person, he's our shadow." Wow. Just wow. Furthermore, like most psychoanalysts, they cater solely to rich WASPs.
Well... I'm not saying I'm abandoning Jung. I'm just trying to make my own system, which involves tweaking some things that originally came from him, directly or indirectly. In other disciplines this might be a bit more understandable. But Jungians have a huge obsession with their founder (it is, after all, usually called Jungian Psychology, rather than Analytical Psychology), which lasts to this day. The Freudians cannot say the same. Philosophers are not called Platoists. Yet we are all 'Jungians'. How then can anyone have the balls to rip into this stuff?
Why is abandoning Jung even a question? No one would accuse Einstein of abandoning Newton. No one accuses Klein or Bion of abandoning Freud (at least anymore). Why are Jungians still a cult?
Besides, for all the flaws in Jung's thought and, moreover, his ethics, the man still is at times profound.
"Only the wounded physician can heal."
"Neurosis is a way to avoid real pain."
"Neurosis is an attempt at a cure."
Jung still gets at the very essence of the human struggle, he is brilliant in his belief morality is innate (and evil does exist), and he turns psychotherapy on its head by suggesting neurosis and mental distress are opportunities for growth. Is he as important for psychotherapy as Freud? Perhaps not. Is he as humane and spiritual as Frankl? Not even close (sorry Jungians). But for all the man's foibles, Carl Jung still did more to make a general theory of psychology than anyone before or since. Just as Spinoza did for all of reality. Which is why I want to bring their ideas together and give us the chance to discuss how and why different people, through personality types, make contact with reality, the substance, God, whatever you want to call it, differently.
More than anything else, Jung was just making his own personal confession, painting his own picture. Instead of just adding to his, I'd rather paint my own.
4. Going back home on March 22nd. Will be home until mid-May. My course essays are due late April/Early May, and after that it's all time to write the dissertation. Between now and then I need to decide what I'm going to do for the PhD years; whether I want to do them here or long-distance. One of my potential PhD supervisors has said doing it long-distance would work fine with him, since he sometimes works at Columbia in NYC. This will all be contingent on whether I can get some sort of teaching job with my MA. If I can get an ad-junct professor job in psychology or biology somewhere in the area of southeastern PA or NJ, then I would like this idea a lot. It would allow me to make money and continue the PhD from home, and (depending on the time schedule) give me time to keep working on my own projects. If I can't find such a job though, then this may be a pipe dream. I hope to use April to figure this out.
5. Finally, on March 1st I made my first foray into continental Europe. I took a three-day jaunt through Rome. I have pictures to share and stories to tell, but I will save this for a separate update (soon! I promise). I think this entry is long enough. That said, let me say that Italy is beautiful, Rome is exciting, and I would love to go back with friends or family. More soon.
Ciao.
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