I read Answer to Job a long time ago and remember being quite impressed by it. — T H E

Jung, likes to take accepted ideas and twist them. It's a nice touch bringing us an idea of God who also has an evil dimension. This certainly explains The Book of Job's devious Yahweh in a way no orthodox theologian ever could. The fourth face of God is not so much 'evil' as Mafia Boss, but I get Jung's point. But fun as this is, it always struck me that Jung was doing a bit of fan fiction with the Old Testament rather than uncovering something. It strikes me as embroidery rather than analysis.

You do make me wonder how I'd experience it now. It's been about 20 years since my Jung phase. On the other hand, I had a second Freud phase a few months ago. He did age quite well for me. I'd recommend the case study of the rat man. The details! Because he protected their identity, he could expose the secret, complicated lives of neurotic and often brilliant strangers.

But he did credit Nietzsche with exceptional self-knowledge ('more penetrating knowledge of himself than any man who ever lived or was likely to live'). — T H E

I think Freud saw himself in this tradition and along with the influence of Schopenhauer and Goethe probably fancied himself as a poet and literary critic as much as a scientist. My understanding of Freud's works (which I have only perused in English) are they are written in an exceptionally beautiful literary prose style.

As I understand it from the Peter Gay bio, he embraced that role more as he aged. As a student he was somewhat anti-philosophical or anti-metaphysical. He did read and appreciate Feuerbach (one of my favorites). IMO, his prose style (at least in translation) is great. As you may know, he loved the English language but never quite mastered it. I'm sure that helped him pick a good translator. He comes off as a good man in the bio (hard-working family man and earnest scientist.) He really had to push and endure to get his ideas taken seriously. His peers could only think in terms of brain abnormality when it came to mental illness (atheistic scientistic Sigmund was too flaky for them. Fun.)

[Freud] did credit Nietzsche with exceptional self-knowledge — T H E

Figures. Have you read about hermeneutics of suspicion? They're both given as examples of it. I disagree with Freud about everything other than his specific discoveries.

Figures. Have you read about hermeneutics of suspicion? They're both given as examples of it — Wayfarer

I can't see why Jung wouldn't be included in this too. I guess his are the hermeneutics of faith.

the spirit and the mind are the subject of scientific investigation in exactly the same way as any non-human entities. Psycho-analysis has a peculiar right to speak on behalf of the scientific Weltanschauung in this connection, because it cannot be accused of neglecting the part occupied by the mind in the universe. The contribution of psychoanalysis to science consists precisely in having extended research to the region of the mind. Certainly without such a psychology science would be very incomplete. — Freud

This is so redolent with irony that it's hard to know where to start. But a good start might be the fact that Freud's 'scientific' theories came to be almost universally rejected within a couple of generations of his passing. Secondly, the 'role of the mind in the universe' was hardly discovered by psychoanalysis, so much as by the alarming implications of quantum mechanics, which gave a pivotal role to the observing scientist. 'A physicist', said Bohr, 'is just an atom's way of looking at itself'.

Freud remarked that ‘the self-love of mankind has been three times wounded by science’, referring to the Copernican revolution, Darwin’s discovery of evolution, and Nietszche’s declaration of the Death of God. In an indirect way, the Copenhagen Interpretation gave back to humanity what the European Enlightenment had taken away, by placing consciousness in a pivotal role in the observation of the most fundamental constituents of reality. While this is fiercely contested by what Werner Heisenberg termed ‘dogmatic realism’, for better or for worse it has become an established idea in modern cultural discourse.

I can't see why Jung wouldn't be included in this too. — Tom Storm

Because he was not reductionist in the sense Freud was. Jung broke with Freud because he felt Freud's outlook was too constrained by emphasis on the single factor of libido. You surely remember that account of their fateful last conversation, the final break between the two?

There was no mistaking the fact that Freud was emotionally involved in his sexual theory to an extraordinary degree.

When he spoke of it, his tone became urgent, almost anxious, and all signs of his normally critical and skeptical manner vanished.

A strange, deeply moved expression came over his face, the cause of which I was at a loss to understand.

I had a strong intuition that for him sexuality was a sort of numinosum.

This was confirmed by a conversation which took place some three years later (in 1910), again in Vienna.

I can still recall vividly how Freud said to me, “My dear Jung, promise me never to abandon the sexual theory. That is the most essential thing of all. You see, we must make a dogma of it, an unshakable bulwark.”

He said that to me with great emotion, in the tone of a father saying, “And promise me this one thing, my dear son: that you will go to church every Sunday.”

In some astonishment I asked him, “A bulwark against what?”

To which he replied, “Against the black tide of mud” and here he hesitated for a moment, then added “of occultism.” — Memories, Dreams and Reflections

The image of the 'black tide of mud' associated, not only with occultism but indeed with 'the spiritual', speaks volumes in my reading.

This is so redolent with irony that it's hard to know where to start. But a good start might be the fact that Freud's 'scientific' theories came to be almost universally rejected within a couple of generations of his passing. — Wayfarer

No question and I'm not sure many take Freud's theories seriously except Freudian psychoanalysts. My hermeneutics of suspicion say there is a great deal of money in witchdoctory. I used this incorrect appellation in the same sense that E Fuller Torrey did in his book Witchdoctors and Psychiatrists.

Because he was not reductionist in the sense Freud was. — Wayfarer

I guess Jung is an expansionist.

The demise of Freudianism can be summed up in a single word: lithium. In 1949 an Australian psychiatrist, John Cade, gave five days of lithium therapy - for entirely the wrong reasons - to a 51-year-old mental patient who was so manic-depressive, so hyperactive, unintelligible and uncontrollable, he had been kept locked up in asylums for 20 years. By the sixth day, thanks to the lithium build-up in his blood, he was a normal human being. Three months later he was released and lived happily ever after in his own home. This was a man who had been locked up and subjected to two decades of Freudian logorrhoea to no avail whatsoever. Over the next 20 years antidepressant and tranquillising drugs completely replaced Freudian talk- talk as treatment for serious mental disturbances. By the mid-1980s, neuroscientists looked upon Freudian psychiatry as a quaint relic based largely upon superstition (such as dream analysis - dream analysis!), like phrenology or mesmerism. In fact, among neuroscientists, phrenology now has a higher reputation than Freudian psychiatry, since phrenology was in a certain crude way a precursor of electroencephalography. Freudian psychiatrists are now regarded as old crocks with sham medical degrees, as ears with wire hairs sprouting out of them that people with more money than sense can hire to talk into. — Tom Wolfe

Sorry, but your Soul just Died.

You surely remember that account of their fateful last conversation, the final break between the two? — Wayfarer

Someone who worked with Jung for 25 years was very close to my family and I heard this story in much greater detail from someone who heard if directly from Jung.

Does it stack up against the version given in the autobiography?

Broad brushstrokes. It was a far more emotional incident and I don't feel comfortable saying much more than that.

Well there's a lot at stake. They don't call it a culture war for nothing.

I thought he was a wizard, like Freud. — Tom Storm

No, Freud was also a psychoanalyst

It is interesting to read that you went to a Catholic school and that you weren't taught philosophy. It was not on the school curriculum but I had some fairly interesting teachers, including an English teacher who was interested in mythology and a physics teacher who was training to an acupuncturist. My sixth form tutor was not a Catholic and used to have long discussions with me about the 'Book of Revelation' in the Bible. I also found many interesting and fairly subversive books in the school library, and the school librarian told me that many of the books which I was reading were in a box which had been ordered by error.

I notice that you remarked about the obscurity of some of Jung's writing and I do think that does put some people off reading him. It reflects his wide reading life, and in many ways his writings fall within the scope of philosophy rather than psychology. However, that is also true of Freud in many ways. Some people describe Jung as a mystic, but I prefer to see hm as more of an esoteric thinker, because he was not trying to think about areas which many just gloss over. I think that what is significant about Jung was how he delved into ideas, such as those of Jacob Boehme, alchemy, Gnostic ideas and Eastern metaphysics. Many writers in the late twentieth century and in this one speak of such ideas but I think that he was radical for his time in touching upon all these traditions.

In other words, he was not actually claiming that God exists. He was aware of a force which he felt able to call God but he was unable to say whether this force represented the reality of God beyond his own consciousness. — Jack Cummins

I guess that boils down to Carl Jung being, like some of us, unsure whether god is real or a figment of his/our imagination. This inability to distinguish reality from make-belief is open to a dual interpretation. A theist-turned-atheist would consider it as faer first steps towards freedom, liberation from a falsehood that has huge swathes of people in its grips. On the other hand, an atheist-turned-theist will regard it (also) as faer first steps towards freedom, liberation from a falsehood that has huge swathes of people in its grips. You get the idea.

In a way, I think that you are right to say that Jung was not really sure whether he believed in God, but he said a lot more than that. He went into such depth in exploring religious experience, but just did not seem sure how far that should be interpreted. I wonder if his views shifted from time to time. My own perspective alters, but it may be that I have read too much Jung.

The question as to whether believing or not believing being a greater step towards freedom, is slightly different. I am not sure which position I prefer, but it is probably more important to think which is the most accurate. However, I do wonder if our own psychology does affect belief. The arguments for or against believing in God being so complec may mea that we can swing it one way or other according to some kind of subconscious preference.

I guess that boils down to Carl Jung being, like some of us, unsure whether god is real or a figment of his/our imagination. This inability to distinguish reality from make-belief is open to a dual interpretation. A theist-turned-atheist would consider it as faer first steps towards freedom, liberation from a falsehood that has huge swathes of people in its grips. On the other hand, an atheist-turned-theist will regard it (also) as faer first steps towards freedom, liberation from a falsehood that has huge swathes of people in its grips. You get the idea. — TheMadFool

They're the same thing, god (theism) and no god (atheism). " :chin:

It is questionable to what extent Jung can be seen as an 'explainer of everything'. I can see problems in some of the ways he tries to piece together the various models. It sometimes feels like he is forcing bits of a jigsaw puzzle into parts where they probably do not fit. The problem I am left with is wondering who can explain it all?. Can any one individual even attempt to do so? I would like to find such a person. However, I do think that Jung raises some very interesting areas for debate and reflection, but I do believe that the philosophers do tend to steer clear of him, and, perhaps, he is seen as creating tangents.

Yes, I am inclined to agree. Perhaps theism and atheism are like the two sides of the same coin. It just depends which side a person views it from. I think that we may be talking about the biggest paradox in philosophy.

biggest paradox — Jack Cummins

We seek truth but hope gets in the way [theism]. We hope but truth gets in the way [atheism].

That is our Easter revelation idea for anyone to contemplate if they log into this thread. The startling conclusion may remain lost and buried in this tomb, like an esoteric truth, or rise up for further critical evaluation, or condemnation. Happy Easter!

Figures. Have you read about hermeneutics of suspicion? They're both given as examples of it. I disagree with Freud about everything other than his specific discoveries. — Wayfarer

Yes, and I've read quite a few suspicious minds.

↪180 Proof
It is interesting to read that you went to a Catholic school and that you weren't taught philosophy. — Jack Cummins

I didn't mean to give that impression. I took Philosophy my senior year since I was able to opt out of the mandatory fourth year of Religious Studies having earned an A grade in each of the previous three years. I'd started reading philosophy on my own a couple of years before high school because I had a full encyclopedia at home and stumbled upon the ancient Greeks when reading articles about Greek mythology (& others) inspired by references or characters in 70s era Marvel comics. I read philosophy informally on my own straight through high school until I took the senior survey course which was taught by a Jesuit who spent far too much time on the damn Scholastics and not enough time, for my tastes, on the Hellenic or Renaissance or Modern philosophers.

... the biggest paradox in philosophy. — Jack Cummins

How it is we can talk about, or intend, nonexistent things (e.g. Meinong, Husserl)?

They're the same thing, god (theism) and no god (atheism). " — TheMadFool

Like being blonde and being bald? Do explain.

This is so redolent with irony that it's hard to know where to start. — Wayfarer

I think 'part' is not intended in the sense of role. It's more like the human mind is part of the universe, of the territory which science can and should conquer.

But a good start might be the fact that Freud's 'scientific' theories came to be almost universally rejected within a couple of generations of his passing. — Wayfarer

I'm not so sure about this. It's politically expedient to bash Freud, but having really studied him lately, I think he functions as a cartoon in people's minds.

Because he was not reductionist in the sense Freud was. Jung broke with Freud because he felt Freud's outlook was too constrained by emphasis on the single factor of libido. You surely remember that account of their fateful last conversation, the final break between the two? — Wayfarer

You do touch on an important difference between them, but Jung was the crown prince, the younger brilliant man with whom the aging Freud hoped to trust his legacy. He didn't want to lose it to some kind of new-age occultism, which, as he accurately saw, is always a threat in this realm. I think you are playing both sides here. As you celebrate Jung, you want to drag Freud down as pseudo-science ignoring the fact anyone who finds the old atheist Freud too flaky is likely to consider Jung an outright crypto-fascist fraud. You mention lithium, and that's just the same stuff Freud was up against from the very beginning, the idea that the psyche was something like an epiphenomenon of the brain. The idea that phrenology is more respectable...that seems counter to your general attitude. Compared to his hyper-materialistic peers, Freud was counter-reductionist.

[A]nyone who finds the old atheist Freud too flaky is likely to consider Jung an outright crypto-fascist fraud. — T H E

:100: :up:

So, do you think that the idea of the paradox of
theism and atheism is a bit way out? One problem which I have thought of is that it could end up pointing to 'paradox' as ultimate reality, and almost enthroning and inflating it to God-like status. You are not a religious believer, so may just see the idea as a bit absurd, but readers who are religious might be horrified with Madfool and I for such a suggestion.

So, do you think that the idea of the paradox of theism and atheism is a bit way out? — Jack Cummins

Sorry I don't see a "paradox". I once had a big afro and now I'm bald. No paradox. With g/G. Without g/G. What paradox? (I think 'agnosticism' is paradoxical, even patently incoherent, btw.)