Thanks for this article. As a lifelong student of Jung I have often been disconcerted by his ignorance regarding non-European cultures and civilizations. To me he is a typical European intellectual of the late 19th and early 20 centuries with the perception that European civilization was the pinnacle of Human progress. As Edward Said has pointed out even Marx fell into these same fallacies. I guess the lesson here is that even people who have had the most profound insights and important contributions to human knowledge, can also at the same time have extremely prosaic and silly ideas. A good counter to Jung’s ideas about non-European cultures would by the great Anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss who stated that humans have always thought equally well despite differences in time and place.
Agree Malcolm. Of course with Marx, the best part of a century earlier, we can at least say that in his later years he changed his views. But the point remains: we must use our critical thinking and sift the wheat from the chaff as best we can
Freud warped the Kabbalah and was a coke addict, yet he remains the foundation of modern psychology—to some extent.
Was he racist, too? Probably.
And the mental health system we have today is built on these paradigms.
The only saving grace with Jung —or maybe now his ultimate blind spot, depending on which angle you take— is that he was thinking about the human soul rather than treating the brain as a machine.
But let’s not forget that Western psychology owes a huge debt to Muslim scholars—who are often excluded from the narrative—who owed it to the Greeks, who owed it to the ancient Egyptians, who owed it to the Nubian Kushites (African indigenous)…and so on and so forth!
The Islamic civilization line of thought is rarely acknowledged, or side-acknowledged, yet it forms the very foundation of what modern psychology claims as its own.
These are things I’ve been exploring in my writing, and I’m especially interested in critiquing Jung’s engagement with Islam and the Quran—acknowledging the nuances of his ideas while addressing the serious problems they contain.
Thank you for this article—it’s inspired me to write about this sooner than I thought!!
Glad to hear it ThāL. I've been wanting to write something about the Islamic roots of Western modernity myself. I'm hoping to get around to it this year. An important part of history to talk about and a fascinating one
Good piece and fair treatment. Woke topples all heroes from their pedestals. Your closing conclusion is spot on.
Depth psychology might provide space for many Jungs: as many Jungs as spoke over the span of the man's many decades of work, as many Jungs as exist in the minds of those of us speaking and learning about him. And you've certainly proved that some of those Jungs were racist, just like Dr. Seuss.
I hope cancel culture is coming to a close, so we can hopefully look upon these figures with good faith at the many gifts they shared with us, along with the rough parts and black spots that certainly aren't forgivable if that's what we're focused on.
This is click-bait nonsense or the result of extremely poor research (likely ChatGPT laziness).
I’ve read over 25 Jungian psychology books and spent the last 5 years studying it – Jung was not racist
The opening quotes is taken out of context, he’s discussing racisms and its psychological roots, not being racist (a difference that requires critical thinking abilities to spot).
If his terminology seems offensive, understand he was born in 1875. Any attempt to hold this era to our day's language is idiotic.
His theory of the collective unconscious transcends race, connecting us ALL to our primordial common ancestors.
“As the human body shows a common anatomy over and above all racial differences, so, too, the psyche possesses a common substratum transcending all differences in culture”
– C.G. Jung, ‘Secrets of the Gold Flower,’ P. 109
Respectfully share this quote with anyone who needs to hear it.
This is your warning to stay away from this newsletter, whoever runs it doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
There is another possible explanation of Jung’s views as not racist (in the biological sense), but strictly a cultural-psychological criticism. We can infer that the biological normative distinctions are regarded as the result of cultural deficiencies, not their cause, and can go either way.
The reason I favour this interpretation is that Jung did not claim that superior races are corrupted by inferior races by means of inter-breading (which was the explicitly racist position that Aryan Nazis assumed) but by mere cohabitation, which suggests that the alleged effect is strictly cultural, bringing out some unconscious (therefore primitive) instincts or psychological traits to the fore at the expense of the culturally cultivated, reflective, non-tribal, rational consciousness. Moreover, it is evident from the quotes that Jung did not regard race as having any protective effect on the primitive ‘infection’, therefore race must be understood as secondary to the psychology of culture.
Finally, one could argue that Jung’s cultural critique was actually anti-racist, insofar as it attaches to tribal cultures and the psychology of tribalism is inherently racist: a moral bias based on blood relations. Since this tribal instinct was evidently not wholly extinguished by rational cultivation among the Germanic people, it could be reinvigorated by cohabitation with tribal cultures. Was Jung a misunderstood champion of anti-racism?
Huh. Your point about the infection is spot on Michael. I hadn't thought of it that way before but yes it seems the fact that infection is possible in the way that Jung thought does make it more open to the cultural interpretation again.
However I do disagree with your other point re Jung as anti-racist. You seem to be conflating tribalism and tribal peoples. You also seem to be forgetting that tribal cultural level is not synonymous with Jung's "primitive". One need only look to the Arabic North Africans or the African Americans to see that he is not talking about tribal peoples but is grouping non-Europeans into the same category.
You have made me reconsider however the nature of this category for Jung and I appreciate this. I suspect we can fold in Franz Boas's point about skulls of immigrants reshaping to the indigenous of the land (that Jung cites in The Complications of American psychology and which we looked at in the last article - Jung on Americans). In that case, it seems that it's not merely cultural as we understand it nor is it biological in a way that we understand it. There is something even more peculiar in Jung's views than I have yet articulated
These are reasonable objections. Some clarification:
For the most part, tribalism is indeed inseparable from tribal people, insofar as it is attached to tribal identity, which among the indigenous peoples regulates behaviour, social relations, and virtually every aspect of life. It is a force that in the traditional context is virtually inescapable, probably mostly unconscious/invisible (like water to fish), and yet inherently discriminatory against other tribes. This instinct was indeed subsumed in the formation of ancient nation-states, empires, civilisations, but it was arguably not extinguished but only transposed on those larger group identities, centred on common religion, father-king-deity or ethnicity, and later on race. The same tribal instinct was thus still present beneath the surface, and once the organising structure of the empire was removed or collapsed, it was bound to regress back to clan-based tribalism as the natural fall back position. The irony for the context of Jung is that this instinct was not wholly extinguished among the Europeans either and was easily weaponised by the Aryan Nazis under the guise of an Aryan indigenous ‘rights’ movement taken to extreme conclusions. Ethnic wars in the former Yugoslavia, and now in Ukraine and Israel, are more proof of this unconscious force still being immensely powerful in most humans and a serious, global problem. Jung almost certainly did not theorise along these lines. As a talented psychoanalyst, Jung was no doubt observing how different groups behave, communicate and think and drew conclusions from that, although it is evident that he has generalised those conclusions too much, plausibly with some bias for his own ‘tribe’.
Carl Jung may have been racist, but that doesn't change his contributions. We should be careful not to conflate through binary thought. Every human has good and bad. Every decision has good an bad outcomes. Life is more about net negative or positive contributions. In other words, balance. The problem is: how do we quantify contributions?
After thinking about this note, I realized that perhaps it isn't about net-negatives or -positives when it comes to contributions. Contributions are useful no matter what!
I don't think you all understand Jung at all. He's saying we're all human and suffer in the same way at the core. And this is true because every culture and people has a shadow. I came to find philosophy and I found clickbait. I imagine this is what passes for philosohpy these days.
Thanks for this article. As a lifelong student of Jung I have often been disconcerted by his ignorance regarding non-European cultures and civilizations. To me he is a typical European intellectual of the late 19th and early 20 centuries with the perception that European civilization was the pinnacle of Human progress. As Edward Said has pointed out even Marx fell into these same fallacies. I guess the lesson here is that even people who have had the most profound insights and important contributions to human knowledge, can also at the same time have extremely prosaic and silly ideas. A good counter to Jung’s ideas about non-European cultures would by the great Anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss who stated that humans have always thought equally well despite differences in time and place.
Agree Malcolm. Of course with Marx, the best part of a century earlier, we can at least say that in his later years he changed his views. But the point remains: we must use our critical thinking and sift the wheat from the chaff as best we can
Me too I feel you
Well, it’s time to call a spade a spade.
Freud warped the Kabbalah and was a coke addict, yet he remains the foundation of modern psychology—to some extent.
Was he racist, too? Probably.
And the mental health system we have today is built on these paradigms.
The only saving grace with Jung —or maybe now his ultimate blind spot, depending on which angle you take— is that he was thinking about the human soul rather than treating the brain as a machine.
But let’s not forget that Western psychology owes a huge debt to Muslim scholars—who are often excluded from the narrative—who owed it to the Greeks, who owed it to the ancient Egyptians, who owed it to the Nubian Kushites (African indigenous)…and so on and so forth!
The Islamic civilization line of thought is rarely acknowledged, or side-acknowledged, yet it forms the very foundation of what modern psychology claims as its own.
These are things I’ve been exploring in my writing, and I’m especially interested in critiquing Jung’s engagement with Islam and the Quran—acknowledging the nuances of his ideas while addressing the serious problems they contain.
Thank you for this article—it’s inspired me to write about this sooner than I thought!!
Glad to hear it ThāL. I've been wanting to write something about the Islamic roots of Western modernity myself. I'm hoping to get around to it this year. An important part of history to talk about and a fascinating one
Good piece and fair treatment. Woke topples all heroes from their pedestals. Your closing conclusion is spot on.
Depth psychology might provide space for many Jungs: as many Jungs as spoke over the span of the man's many decades of work, as many Jungs as exist in the minds of those of us speaking and learning about him. And you've certainly proved that some of those Jungs were racist, just like Dr. Seuss.
I hope cancel culture is coming to a close, so we can hopefully look upon these figures with good faith at the many gifts they shared with us, along with the rough parts and black spots that certainly aren't forgivable if that's what we're focused on.
This is click-bait nonsense or the result of extremely poor research (likely ChatGPT laziness).
I’ve read over 25 Jungian psychology books and spent the last 5 years studying it – Jung was not racist
The opening quotes is taken out of context, he’s discussing racisms and its psychological roots, not being racist (a difference that requires critical thinking abilities to spot).
If his terminology seems offensive, understand he was born in 1875. Any attempt to hold this era to our day's language is idiotic.
His theory of the collective unconscious transcends race, connecting us ALL to our primordial common ancestors.
“As the human body shows a common anatomy over and above all racial differences, so, too, the psyche possesses a common substratum transcending all differences in culture”
– C.G. Jung, ‘Secrets of the Gold Flower,’ P. 109
Respectfully share this quote with anyone who needs to hear it.
This is your warning to stay away from this newsletter, whoever runs it doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
This response doesn't not engage with the author's arguments at all.
A retort without counter-evidence addressing the author’s strongest points isn’t an argument
There is another possible explanation of Jung’s views as not racist (in the biological sense), but strictly a cultural-psychological criticism. We can infer that the biological normative distinctions are regarded as the result of cultural deficiencies, not their cause, and can go either way.
The reason I favour this interpretation is that Jung did not claim that superior races are corrupted by inferior races by means of inter-breading (which was the explicitly racist position that Aryan Nazis assumed) but by mere cohabitation, which suggests that the alleged effect is strictly cultural, bringing out some unconscious (therefore primitive) instincts or psychological traits to the fore at the expense of the culturally cultivated, reflective, non-tribal, rational consciousness. Moreover, it is evident from the quotes that Jung did not regard race as having any protective effect on the primitive ‘infection’, therefore race must be understood as secondary to the psychology of culture.
Finally, one could argue that Jung’s cultural critique was actually anti-racist, insofar as it attaches to tribal cultures and the psychology of tribalism is inherently racist: a moral bias based on blood relations. Since this tribal instinct was evidently not wholly extinguished by rational cultivation among the Germanic people, it could be reinvigorated by cohabitation with tribal cultures. Was Jung a misunderstood champion of anti-racism?
Huh. Your point about the infection is spot on Michael. I hadn't thought of it that way before but yes it seems the fact that infection is possible in the way that Jung thought does make it more open to the cultural interpretation again.
However I do disagree with your other point re Jung as anti-racist. You seem to be conflating tribalism and tribal peoples. You also seem to be forgetting that tribal cultural level is not synonymous with Jung's "primitive". One need only look to the Arabic North Africans or the African Americans to see that he is not talking about tribal peoples but is grouping non-Europeans into the same category.
You have made me reconsider however the nature of this category for Jung and I appreciate this. I suspect we can fold in Franz Boas's point about skulls of immigrants reshaping to the indigenous of the land (that Jung cites in The Complications of American psychology and which we looked at in the last article - Jung on Americans). In that case, it seems that it's not merely cultural as we understand it nor is it biological in a way that we understand it. There is something even more peculiar in Jung's views than I have yet articulated
These are reasonable objections. Some clarification:
For the most part, tribalism is indeed inseparable from tribal people, insofar as it is attached to tribal identity, which among the indigenous peoples regulates behaviour, social relations, and virtually every aspect of life. It is a force that in the traditional context is virtually inescapable, probably mostly unconscious/invisible (like water to fish), and yet inherently discriminatory against other tribes. This instinct was indeed subsumed in the formation of ancient nation-states, empires, civilisations, but it was arguably not extinguished but only transposed on those larger group identities, centred on common religion, father-king-deity or ethnicity, and later on race. The same tribal instinct was thus still present beneath the surface, and once the organising structure of the empire was removed or collapsed, it was bound to regress back to clan-based tribalism as the natural fall back position. The irony for the context of Jung is that this instinct was not wholly extinguished among the Europeans either and was easily weaponised by the Aryan Nazis under the guise of an Aryan indigenous ‘rights’ movement taken to extreme conclusions. Ethnic wars in the former Yugoslavia, and now in Ukraine and Israel, are more proof of this unconscious force still being immensely powerful in most humans and a serious, global problem. Jung almost certainly did not theorise along these lines. As a talented psychoanalyst, Jung was no doubt observing how different groups behave, communicate and think and drew conclusions from that, although it is evident that he has generalised those conclusions too much, plausibly with some bias for his own ‘tribe’.
He was racist but he wasn’t wrong
Everyone is racist against some group or another. This is tiresome and pathetic.
Carl Jung may have been racist, but that doesn't change his contributions. We should be careful not to conflate through binary thought. Every human has good and bad. Every decision has good an bad outcomes. Life is more about net negative or positive contributions. In other words, balance. The problem is: how do we quantify contributions?
After thinking about this note, I realized that perhaps it isn't about net-negatives or -positives when it comes to contributions. Contributions are useful no matter what!
Please, you don't have to sell Carl Jung to me anymore than everyone else already has
I don't think you all understand Jung at all. He's saying we're all human and suffer in the same way at the core. And this is true because every culture and people has a shadow. I came to find philosophy and I found clickbait. I imagine this is what passes for philosohpy these days.
Even if he was, many people were.
The Jung and the Racist
Sexist, too.
Yeah, I was done with Jung after Memories, Dreams, Reflections, super eye-opening. (He doesn’t seem to see culture in anything but white culture.)
I just don't care.
nice write up