“Ye know only the sparks of the spirit: but ye do not see the anvil which it is, and the cruelty of its hammer” (Lecture VI, 9 June 1937). As mentioned in Part 1, Nietzsche’s intuitive genesis presents a new picture of geist (spirit): the “sparks” produced when a hammer strikes an anvil representing the new (spirit) of his age (the Zeitgeist). Nietzsche’s image reflects upon his keen observation that by the end of the nineteenth century, the educated European possessed or was possessed (1) by the tremendous ideas that shook the foundations of society. What appeared on the outside was that the leaders in scientific and philosophical research had adopted a “mechanistic” (e.g. scientific / materialistic) approach and conception to life. Though the philosophical approach of the previous Protestant religious tradition still predominated among the masses and in the more conservative halls of academia, Nietzsche saw more clearly than others that a new standpoint, an entirely new Weltanschauung (or “world view” / attitude) irrevocably and eventually predominate among the knowledge leaders. This new Weltanschauung in which intellect was the new “spirit” or, said differently, intellect replaced the old religious conception of spirit. For the centuries since Luther, an underlying psychological attitude guided collective and personal life giving an unconscious foundation to its morals and ethics. Now this era had ended. Jung comments on this saying: “[This was] the mistake of the 19th century, or the magic if you like to say so. We thought we were mighty magicians and could fetter the spirit in the form of intellect and make it serviceable to our needs … “ (Lecture VI, 9 June 1937). The Nazi movement When intellect replaces spirit, it undergoes a “deification” which I use not in the metaphysical or theological sense, but psychologically as meaning a personification of a dynamism in the unconscious. And when such an activation of the unconscious is not subjected to individual human reflection it expresses itself autonomously in institutions acting with compulsivity, a power-psychology, and not having an ethos of tolerance of other standpoints. Jung eventually understood that when such an attitude replaces the traditional religious conception of spirit that eventually a conscious hubris results. The ego has left its place amidst humanity and inflates to grandiose size. And this too affected Nietzsche so that he didn’t consider or, more accurately put, was psychologically blinded to the destructive aspects of some of the ideas expressed in “Thus Spake Zarathustra”. These ideas possessed an enormous stickiness (2) indicative of the presence of an activated unconscious idea (archetypal) that the later Nazi movement adopted and which it would inculcate itself with and spread to others. Notes 1. By “possessed” I mean that from the psychological standpoint, the scientific collective of this era were for the most part gripped by an unconscious drive of fascination (in German, Ergriffenheit, meaning “a state of being seized or possessed”). This drive, which served well to aid the new discoveries which would take place, created the psychic tension necessary to dethrone the old scientific models, for instance the theories of ether in physics or phlogiston in chemistry. When the underlying psychological basis for a model in any field of science or psychology no longer lays silent in the unconscious, individuals can then see new things about the world, and in the case of the scientific mind, the end of the nineteenth century generated a dramatic influx on new ideas about the material world. Consciously, the intellect leaders of the era would have said that the old models now longer fit the facts of life as they are now observed. 2. Malcolm Gladwell in his book “The Tipping Point” writes this: "Stickiness means that a message makes an impact. You can’t get it out of your head. It sticks in your memory” (p. 25).
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When we last left Carl Gustav Jung, he proved himself able to perform at the zenith of academia, earning an M.D. and a doctorate in Psychiatry from the University of Zurich and beginning work under Eugen Bleuler at the Burgholzli Clinic in Switzerland. Bleuler was nearly 20 years Carl’s senior, however they had much in common. Eugen, too, was from a small town near Zurich, and also a University of Zurich trained Psychiatrist. Blueler’s intellectual influences clearly left their imprint on Jung. He encouraged Jung’s research into unconscious mental phenomenon using the Word Association Test. In the process, Jung with the help of his psychiatric colleague Franz Riklin unearthed the empirical scientific evidence for the action of unconscious complexes and the verified some of the ideas put forward by Freud’s repression theory. It was also during this time that Jung married Emma Rauschenbach, with whom he would have five children over the next 11 years. In 1906, the 31 year-old Jung sent Freud a copy of his book, “Studies in Word Association”. The two met a year later at Freud’s home in Vienna. The landmark spring 1907 meeting lasting 13 hours remains one of the most important moments in psychological intellectual history. After their meeting, Jung and Freud regularly corresponded and their relationship deepened. Jung experienced significant professional successes in the years that followed. Jung became editor of the Yearbook for Psychoanalytical and Psychopathological Research in 1908. Colleagues in America invited him to lecture there and in 1909, Clark University in Massachusetts honored Jung and Freud with honorary doctorates which they received at a lecture series and ceremony that greatly increased the acceptance of Psychoanalysis in the United States. In 1910, the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) elected Jung to become its permanent “Chairman.” Together, Freud and Jung ushered in a new phase for the field of Psychoanalysis in which it became a global community that included Europe, Latin America, and North America. During the time he worked upon his famous book published in 1912, the “Psychology of the Unconscious,” Jung’s disenchantment with Freud’s insistence upon an exclusively sexual causation for unconscious psychological phenomena grew. By 1913, the relationship fractured beyond the point of repair. Afterwards, Jung found himself grappling to find his own non-Freudian psychological standpoint. He continued his busy psychoanalytical practice, served in the Swiss army as the commander of internment camp for British soldiers, and wrote the beginning articles that led to the publication of his important book, “Psychological Types.” Carl Gustav Jung was a human-enigma, even to himself. During the last 6 years of his life he described himself as “complicated phenomenon.” A razor-sharp intellectual, innovative theorist, and high-profile psychoanalyst whose work bi-directionally resonates through the corridors of time, history, and myth. Simultaneously, with a feature article entitled "Medicine: The Old Wise Man" and his picture being on the cover of Time Magazine (February 14, 1955 Vol. LXV No. 7), some people condemned him as womanizer, recluse, and even anti-Semite; he is a figure that has been a focal point of controversy both during his life and long-after. Jung was born on July 26, 1875 in Kesswil, Switzerland, a town of mostly fisherman and farmers. Jung was the only surviving child of Paul Jung, a Protestant minister, and Emilie Preiswerk. The Preiswerks were Swiss citizens related to the vom Tieg, an ancient royal family from Basel, while the Jung’s were Germans exiles whose ancestry included a later conversion from Roman Catholic to Protestant in the 1700's. At the tender age of four years old the Jung family moved to Basel; soon after, Paul began teaching his son Latin. Carl’s gift for language would prove lasting; he would eventually master a variety, including English, French, ancient Greek, and Sanksrit. Jung was an introverted child possessed of great intelligence. In other words, Carl was a walking bull’s-eye for any playground bully. Indeed, while attending a boarding school in Basel, his classmates tormented the timid Jung who typically played alone. In Deirdre Bair's book "Jung: A Biography," she writes the “... parents of the village children deliberately kept them away from the odd little boy, whose parents were so peculiar” (p. 22). After matriculating from the Humanistisches Gymnasium, the bullying Jung endured culminated in a traumatic incident when, at age 12, a classmate shoved him so hard he was knocked unconscious. Carl began to faint frequently for years afterward and later described the experience as a childhood neurosis. Jung’s grandfather had been a professor of surgery at the University of Basel. Despite C. G. Jung’s first inclination toward a career in archeology, the very realistic young man realized that such a profession would never provide him the job and financial security he needed. Jung eventually picked medicine at the University of Basel which included both an M.D. degree and a doctorate allowing him to be accepted as an academic with the title of Privat-docent in Psychiatry at the University of Zurich (Dissertation, “On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena”. Jung’s most significant mentorship came after he graduated, taking he took a staff position at the Burghölzli Mental Hospital in Zurich under the tutelage of Eugen Bleuler. There he also achieved world acclaim as research scientist in Psychiatry performing pioneering studies on the Word Association Test. |
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June 2014
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