Tuesday, May 18, 2021

 


C. G.  Jung, Insofar as I Understand Him


He and Freud joint discoverers of the Unconscious.  But Jung did not think that It was just the source of repressed memories, and of repressed sexual urges that were the font of adult neurosis.  He thought that the Unconscious was collective, even across cultures, and that it was the seat of the soul.

Was Jung right?  Well, surely Freud was wrong.

The pendulum is always in swing.  Psychology was "pseudoscience," and real science would triumph over it, as it has over religion and the paranormal.

But now we are entering a new age in which "scientism" is in retreat, at least as a way to engage with the world in a meaningful way.

My own bias is always that "nothing is hidden," as another son of Vienna (Jung was not one) put it.  But I do believe in the existence of the synchronicities of Jung whether they spring from the Collective Unconscious or not, and, more and more, in "things that go bump in the night."  So in this sense I think that Jung wins the battle of ideas, and also that his vision is infinitely broader than Freud's.



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