Frank H. W. Edler
Metropolitan Community College (Omaha, NE)

(This talk was given on January 31, 2003, as part of the Friday Conferences sponsored by the Center for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis.)

I wanted to clarity Jung’s notion of archetype because I’m interested in looking at the madness of 1933 as a historical process. Jung saw the madness of Germany in 1933 as the unleashing of a specifically German archetype to which in 1936 he gave the name Wotan. One way to look at this madness as a historical process is to see it as a process of archetypal translation. [I am going to pursue how Jung and Heidegger understood this madness in Part III of this series.]

In Jungian terms, an archetype becomes historical when the archetype per se with all its possibilities apart from time and space enters into time and space as a primordial image, that is, as a particularized, concrete archetype. Thus, history can be understood, at least to some degree, as a process of translation: how archetypes per se get translated into time and space as concrete archetypes or primordial images which have the power of seizing and possessing a whole people like the archetype Wotan.

Let me repeat the quotation from Jung’s seminar on Nietzsche’s Zarathustra:

You see, it is as if the self were trying to manifest

In space and time, but since it consists of so many

elements that have neither space nor time qualities,

it cannot bring them altogether into space and time.

And those efforts of the self to manifest in the empirical

world result in man: he is the result of the attempt. So

much of the self remains outside, it doesn’t enter this

three dimensional empirical world (Zarathustra, 240).

History, however, is not simply the periodic invasion of archetypes, but also how the ego does or does not struggle with the blind overwhelming flood of urges manifesting themselves in time and space. In fact, Jung says in his seminar on Zarathustra that "as long as you don’t know what you are suffering from, you are not having an archetypal experience. If you are on a ship that is sinking and go on playing poker in the smoking room without noticing that your feet are getting wet and that the whole thing is going down, you will never experience the catastrophe – you are dead before you notice anything. It is absolutely necessary that you make the experience conscious, that you know that you are up against an elementary situation" (Zarathustra, 239-239). (It is important to note here that Lecture V of Jung’s seminar on Nietzsche’s Zarathustra took place on June 3, 1936, a couple of months or so after the publication of his "Wotan" essay which came out in March of 1936.)

What does it mean then for the ego to make conscious the archetypal flooding that has occurred in time and space? Jung presents two tasks for the ego: 1) it must recognize that it is up against an archetype, an elemental situation, and 2) it must hold its own, that is, fight for its own existence in the flood: "You have to swim, to use every means possible to defend your own against the flood – you must wrestle with those archtypes – and only when you are really up against it to the last breath, only then, the revelation may take place" (Zarathustra, 239). The importance of the struggle is that in functional terms the archetype "contains the picture of the conflict, the danger, the risk – and also the solution of it" (Zarathustra, 239). Solutions do not come easily. It requires immense struggle with the archetypal situation.

The revelation Jung mentioned above is what he calls a reconciling symbol "which unites the vital need of man with the archetypal conditions" (Zarathustra, 238). These solutions, however, occur only when resistance to the archetype has utterly spent itself, when all the old solutions have been tried and found wanting: "when the conditon of man is such that we have no more force to resist or oppose with our ideals – the old ideals are the worst enemies of the new – and if our resistance is utterly gone then the manifestation of the new symbol can take place" (Zarathustra, 238). [ The resemblance of this struggle to Zen Buddhism is interesting. I am thinking of Eugene Herrigel’s Zen and the Art of Archery. There, too, the resistance of the ego must be utterly spent before insight can occur.]

An interesting parallel here to Jung’s historical notion of an archetypal invasion of a whole peolple and the struggle with that flooding or possession, is Thomas Kuhn’s notion of paradigm changes or revolutions in the history of science. If a people do struggle with their own sense of being possessed and can find such a reconciling symbol, then something like a new paradigm emerges: as Jung says, "Well now, if it is a question of the whole of mankind, then once in the course of centuries people fall into great confusion. They are flooded, and a reconciling symbol is revealed which now becomes the truth, the new basis of consciousness; the German word Weltanschauung [worldview] expresses it. It becomes a new pistis, a new faith, and it will be fortified by walls. It will be defended. And it will work as long as the walls stand. Then suddenly the walls break and a flood comes and we have a new condition in which a new symbol should be revealed, or where the revelation of a symbol may be hoped for" (Zarathustra, 238). Jung’s new worldview as a solution that arises in the struggle with an archetypal flooding is similar to Kuhn’s notion of a revolution or paradigm shift in the history of science. As the laws and principles of the old paradigm are no longer capable of explaining an ever increasing number of anomalies, a crisis occurs in relation to the old paradigm. It begins to break down. Einstein described it in the following way: "’ It was as if the ground had been pulled out from underneath one, with no firm foundation to be seen anywhere, upon which one could have built ‘" (Kuhn, 83).

When a new paradigm emerges like Jung’s reconciling symbol, the whole field is reconstructed "from the new fundamentals, a reconstruction that changes some of the field’s most elementary theoretical generalizations as well as many of its paradigm methods and applications" (Kuhn, 85). In other words, the same data are seen as before but now from the perspective of a new paradigm which involves something like a gestalt switch, that is, a figure-background reversal" (Kuhn, 85).

The parallel, however, breaks down in the sense that the contexts in which the struggle and transformation take place are not quite the same. The struggle to find a reconciling symbol for Jung takes place in the soul or the self, and if we are talking about a whole people, it will take place among the people struggling with their own possession and confusion. The context of Kuhn’s revolutions or paradigm shifts is what he calls normal science. Worldviews [of cultures] and normal science as contexts are not the same. But then again this could be debated. [I am not saying they are incompatible; it seems to me that the context of normal science as a worldview would have to be modified, perhaps significantly, in order to extend it to the notion of worldview in the cultural and philosophical sense.]

Nevertheless, there is an interesting similarity in the role of creativity in the struggle to find a reconciling symbol and in the struggle to find a new paradigm in science when the old paradigm is in crisis. [I will return to this in Part III in reference to Heidegger’s notion of a revolution in science in 1933.] As Kuhn admits, however, the source of creativity is murky and at times "the new paradigm…emerges all at once, sometimes in the middle of the night, in the mind of a man [or woman] deeply immersed in crisis. What the nature of that final stage is – how an individual invents (or finds he has invented) a new way of giving order to data now all assembled – must here remain inscrutable and may be permanently so" (Kuhn, 90).

But there is also another aspect to Jung’s notion of the struggle of resistance to archetypal flooding which I have left out so that I can focus on it more carefully.

In his essay "Mind and Earth," originally written as part of a larger piece in 1927 and then rewritten as a separate shorter essay in 1931 (Collected Works, 10, 29), Jung certainly affirmed the Phylogenetic Law set forth by Ernst Haekel that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, that "the development of an individual of the species recapitulates the evolution of the species as a whole" (Kerr, 237). But how does Jung interpret the Phylogenetic Law in relation to archetypes?

In "Mind and Earth," Jung states that the archetypes form the "chthonic portion of the psyche" and "they are inherited with the brain structure" (Collected Works, v.10, 31).He goes on to use the analogy of a building to describe the psyche: upper floor built in the nineteenth century, ground floor in the sixteenth century "reconstructed from a tower built in the eleventh century. In the cellar we come upon Roman foundations, and under the cellar a choked-up cave with Neolithic tools in the upper level and remnants of fauna from the same period in the lower layers" (Collected Works, v. 10, 31). Consciousness – where we live – is the upper floor which is continually influenced by "the living and active foundations" (Collected Works, 32), that is, by the unconscious archetypes.

After presenting this image of the psyche, Jung then introduces the following claim associated with phylogenetic law: "The consciousness of primitive man, like that of a child, is very limited. Indeed, in accordance with phylogenetic law, we still recapitulate in childhood reminiscences of the history of the race and of mankind generally [my italics]. Phylogeneticall as well as ontogenetically, we have grown up out of the dark confines of the earth; hence the factors that affected us most closely became archetypes, and it is these primordial images which influence us most directly, and therefore seem the most powerful" (Collected Works, 32).

When Jung speaks of recapitulation in terms of the history of the race and of mankind in general, it seems to me he opens the door not just to archetypes shared by all mankind, but also to archetypes that are racially conditioned. At least two possibilities present themselves here: 1) there are archetypal variations (phylogenetic variations) that belong specifically to any particular racial type from the beginning as part of the brain structure of that race or 2) human beings begin roughly with the same archetypal inheritance or phylogenetic structure in terms of the brain and this becomes modified in the early history of the race. In other words, the early experiences of the race produce phylogenetic variations among the archetypes which become part of the brain structure in such a way that each race could claim to have its own unique archetypal variations.

This second possibility would make Jung a Lamarckian in that sense that experience modifies brain structure and thus results in archetypal variations specific to a race. According to Frank Sulloway, Freud was no stranger to Lamarck either. Freud not only used the Lamarckian hypothesis to buttress his argument in Totem and Taboo (1912-13) that repeated events of killing the father were organically printed on the mind, but he also remained a convinced Lamarckian to the year of this death (Sulloway, 373). Given the choice, I would opt for the second alternative in terms of how Jung interpreted the phylogenetic law, not just because Freud was a Lamarckian, but because Jung mentions "the history of the race" and because the image he used of the psyche as a building is in a process of living interaction.

Other references to race in the above essay ("Mind and Earth") include the following: "The greatest achievement in the transplantation of a race in modern times was the colonization of the North American continent by a predominantly Germanic population" and "As the climactic conditions vary very greatly, we would expect all sorts of variations of the original racial type [italics mine]" (Colloected Works, v. 10, 45).

Let me return now to Jung’s essay "The State of Psychotherapy Today" published in 1934. Some background is in order here: Jung had joined the General Society for Psychotherapy in 1928 and was elected vice-president in 1930 (Emil Kretschmer was president). When the Nazis came to power, Kretschmer refused to align (Gleichschaltung) the society and its journal Zentralblatt fuer Psychotherapie with Nazi beliefs, so he resigned. Jung took over as president of the society on June 21, 1933. Part of the president’s position included the editing of the journal. Apparently, Jung reached an agreement with Mattias Goering where Jung would take over the presidency of the General Medical Society for Psychotherapy as an international organization and Goering would represent the head of the German delegation. In this way, Jung tried to keep Nazi politics in Germany and out of the international organization. Nevertheless, in his first editorial statement in the journal, Jung stated that "The differences which actually do exist between Germanic and Jewish psychology and which have long been known to every intelligent person are no longer being glossed over, and this can only be beneficial to science" (Collected Works, v.10, 533).

To return to the 1934 essay entitled "The State of Psychotherapy Today" and the question of racially conditioned archetypes, I wish to focus on a section roughly half way through the essay:

The Jews have this peculiarity in common with women; being

     physically weaker, they have to aim at the chinks in the armor of

           their adversary, and thanks to this technique which has been forced

       on them through the centuries, the Jews themselves are best pro-

        tected where others are most vulnerable. Because, again, of their

           civilization, more than twice as ancient as ours, they are vastly more

                  conscious than we of human weaknesses, of the shadow-side of things,

and hence in this respect much less vulnerable than we are

(Collected Works, v.10, 165).

Who is the "we" here to whom Jung is referring? Apparently, Jung is including himself among the "we" of Germanic peoples.

Jung continues: "Moreover, we have been entrusted by fate with the task of creating a civilization" (Collected Works, v.10, 165). Here Jung is identifying himself with those (including the Nazis) who saw the goal of the revolution in the creation of a "new man" and a "new society." More to the point, however, Jung says that

        As a member of a race with a three-thousand-year-old civilization,

the Jew, like the cultured Chinese, has a much wider area of

             psychological consciousness than we. Consequently it is in general

                 less dangerous for the Jew to put a negative value on his unconscious.

                The "Aryan" unconscious, on the other hand, contains explosive forces

               and seeds of the future yet to be born, and these may not be devalued

                         as nursery romanticism without psychic danger (Collected Works, v.10, 165)

Jung here is beginning a comparison of the unconsciousness of races. This is still not racism: to say that one race has archetypal variations that another does not possess is not racism. However, when differences in the unconsciousness of races are valued as superior over another and then published for an audience that includes Nazi Germany, then it seems to me it is racism.

Jung continues in his essay that "The still youthful Germanic peoples are fully capable of creating new cultural forms that lie dormant in the darkness of the unconscious of every individual – seeds bursting with energy and capable of mighty expansion" (Collected Works, v. 10, 165). Again, it seems to me that when Jung is referring to cultural forms that are lying dormant in the darkness of the unconscious of every individual, he is talking about the unconscious of every individual of the Germanic race. And he includes himself in that "we." I cannot read this any other way. Of course, I’m relying on the English translation and I would want to read it in the German.

It begins to get ugly as Jung goes on: "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" (Collected Works, v. 10, 165-166). One of the mainstays of Nazi ideology was the superiority of the Aryan race over inferior ones like the Jewish race. This inferiority was couched in parasitic terms; that is, the Jewish race was incapable of creativity and thus had to exist as a parasite off of other races and cultures.

Oddly enough, Jung contradicts himself in this passage. He has characterized the Jews as "vastly more conscious" and as "a race with a three-thousand-year-old civilization." According to Jung’s own theory of archetypal struggle, consciousness expands when a reconciliation is achieved between the invading archetype and the ego. Indeed, this is the most creative aspect of analytical psychology: new world views, religions, works of art are created through archetypal struggle. For Jung to say that Jews are members of a race with a three- thousand-year-old civilization with expanded consciousness and in the same breath to say that they have not created a cultural form of their own flies in the face of his own theory.

I could go on with other quotations from the same essay such as "The ‘Aryan’ unconscious has a higher potential than the Jewish" (Collected Works, v.10, 166), but I think the point has been made. These are racist comments that come dangerously close to Nazi propaganda. Why Jung indulged in these comments is beyond me. I am sure the failed friendship with Freud played a significant role, not to mention the competition between Jung and Freud in terms of whose psychology would survive and win.

I am not as familiar as I would like to be of the vast literature on the Jung-Freud relationship, but detailing the filigree of that relationship would help [in terms of how race and racism played a role in their relationship]. It was a two-way street. For example, I was curious to see that Freud too was using terms in his letters such as "Aryan patronage" and "Aryan spirit" in 1913 (Kerr, ). Of course, this in no way excuses Jung’s racist comments. I’m merely indicating that the terms "Jewish" and "Aryan" were in use during their relationship and became more prominent when the friendship ended. This needs to be explicated more carefully as the pain and disillusionment of the failed friendship may have fueled racist comments later.

Frank Edler