Carl Gustav Jung, Avant-garde Conservative by Jay Sherry submitted to the Doctoral Committee of the Department of Educational Science and Psychology at the Freie Universität Berlin March 19, 2008 Date of Disputation: March 19, 2008 Referees: 1. Prof. Dr. Christoph Wulf 2. Prof. Dr. Gunter Gebauer Chapters Page 1. Introduction 3 2. Basel Upbringing 5 3. Freud and the War Years 30 4. Jung’s Post-Freudian Network 57 5. His Presidency 86 6. Nazi Germany and Abroad 121 7. World War II Years 151 8. The Cold War Years 168 9. Jung’s Educational Philosophy 194 Declaration of independent work 210 Jay Sherry Resumé 211 Introduction Carl Gustav Jung has always been a popular but never a fashionable thinker. His ground- breaking theories about dream interpretation and psychological types have often been overshadowed by allegations that he was anti-Semitic and a Nazi sympathizer. Most accounts have unfortunately been marred with factual errors and quotes taken out of context; this has been due to the often partisan sympathies of those who have written about him. Some biographies of Jung have taken a “Stations-of-the-Cross” approach to his life that adds little new information. Richard Noll’s The Jung Cult and The Aryan Christ were more specialized studies but created a sensationalistic portrait of Jung based on highly selective and flawed assessment of the historical record. Though not written in reaction to Noll (the research and writing were begun long before his books appeared), this dissertation is intended to offer a comprehensive account of the controversial aspects of Jung’s life and work. One source of inspiration for my own study was Peter Homans’ Jung in Context which invited scholars to engage deeply with important themes in Jung’s work. As I began to broaden my research beyond what he said and did in the 1930’s my focus shifted from the narrower and specific question of his anti-Semitism and Nazi sympathies to the broader question of his cultural and political views. Among its original contributions will be a careful analysis of what Jung wrote about culture (including art and education), politics, and race. The views he first expressed in fraternity lectures in the 1890’s were developed throughout a career that lasted well into the 1950’s. I have visited major archives in The United States, Germany, and Switzerland (including a visit to Jung’s personal library) and assembled a wealth of texts many of which have not previously been made public. My textual point of departure was Jung’s Collected Works. I discovered, however, that this edition contains numerous errors both accidental and seemingly deliberate. Among the liberties taken by the translator R.F.C. Hull are deletions, rephrasings, and substitutions. I will, therefore, provide the first full and accurate account of Jung’s evolving ideas. Besides a close reading of Jung’s texts it is necessary to consider the historical context of his life and work. He was a Swiss intellectual who experienced the profound upheavals of 20th century European history. Most accounts of Jung’s life give the impression that after his break with the psychoanalytic movement in 1913 Jung became a solitary man of genius. This dissertation makes clear that this was not the case; after the break Jung connected with a network of professional organizations and publications that provided him with new forums for presenting his ideas. After years of sifting through my research material an organizing thesis began to emerge, namely that Jung can best be understood as an exemplar of an “avant-garde conservative” intellectual. His cultural sensibilities were decisively shaped by the neo-romantic movement dominant during his university years. It rejected naturalism and was drawn to symbolism and irrationalism. In politics it questioned democracy and rejected socialism preferring a Nietzschean elitism. Jung’s fraternity lectures and autobiography indicate the important role that Eduard von Hartmann played in his intellectual development. Von Hartmann is now best remembered for his book Philosophy of the Unconscious but he was also a critic of trends in Germany’s social and theological development and Jung adopted many of his views. One key element of his critique of modernity was a concern about the “Judaization” of modern society. Jews were blamed for the secularization of modern life. For Jung, Freud became the representative of such a rationalistic, “disenchanted” view of the world. In the 1920’s Jung became more active in Germany attending conferences at the School of Wisdom founded by Count Hermann Keyserling. There he met Prince Karl Anton Rohan and became active in his Kulturbund and Europaische Revue, one of the leading neo- conservative journals of the day. The full extent of Jung’s conservative connections became more clear after I learned about Armin Mohler’s The Conservative Revolution in Germany 1918-1932. During this time Jung joined the General Medical Society for Psychotherapy and become its president in 1933. Most of the controversy regarding his anti-Semitism and pro-Nazism stem from this time. Although he never subscribed to the biological racism of the Nazis he did believe there were fundamental psychological differences between Jews and Aryans. His estimate of Nazism must be seen in light of his theory of archetypes which he felt governed the life of nations as well as individuals. He interpreted the Nazi movement as a manifestation of the “Wotan” archetype that was being reactivated in Germany. Essentially he saw it as a religious phenomenon which had to be given a chance to express itself. By the end of the 1930’s he took a more critical view of Hitler and suggested to an American reporter that the only “cure” for Hitler was for him to invade the Soviet Union. During the war Jung became acquainted with Allen Dulles who was in Switzerland to coordinate espionage activities and would later become head of the CIA. Jung provided a psychological analysis of Nazi leaders and made suggestions regarding Allied propaganda. He later benefited from this relationship when he got articles published in two European journals that received secret CIA funding. Shortly after the war ended he published a major article in a conservative Swiss journal that became The Undiscovered Self, a critique of collective psychology that was one of his last major works. Jung’s ideas of education nicely capture the progressive/conservative dichotomy of his approach. Steeped in the cultural humanism of Basel he grounded his theories in a historical context and decried the specialization of modern education. These attitudes did not, however, result in a narrow adherence to moribund classical curriculum but were part of a commitment to what he called “individuation” a life-long process in which each person consciously developed all aspects of their personality. Chapter 1 Basel Upbringing In 1923 Jung began to build his famous tower at Bollingen on the shore of Lake Zurich. There he could retreat from the social and professional demands associated with his home down the lake in Küsnacht and satisfy his deep need for introversion. To avoid the distractions of everyday modern life he deliberately did without such things as plumbing and the telephone. He chopped wood for his stove, drew water from a well, and used an outhouse built a short distance from the tower. Attuning himself to these simple activities and to the natural rhythms of the seasons fostered the creativity that found expression in his stone carvings and in his voluminous writings. Jung begins Memories, Dreams, Reflections (hereafter, MDR) with the statement “My life is the story of the self-realization of the unconscious.”1 The tower was the realization of the first systemic fantasy that he had ever experienced and occurred when he was a boy in Basel. While walking along the Rhine on his way to school he imagined the city as situated on a huge lake from which arose a rocky hill. “On the rock stood a well-fortified castle with a tall keep, a watchtower. This was my house.”2 That it contained a library and an alchemical laboratory prefigured his activities at Bollingen where he was to carve his famous stone with alchemical inscriptions in Latin and Greek. “We are very far from having finished completely with the Middle Ages, classical antiquity, and primitivity, as our modern psyches pretend. Nevertheless, we have plunged down a cataract of progress which sweeps us on into the future with ever wilder violence the farther it takes us from our roots. it is precisely the loss of connection with the past, our uprootedness, which has given rise to the ‘discontents’ of civilization.”3 It is often remarked that an appreciation of Jung’s Swiss heritage is necessary for a true understanding of his ideas. Unfortunately, this has rarely gone beyond the level of such cliches as Switzerland’s neutral role in European affairs and its central location in continental geography. Mention is often made of Jung’s explicit incorporation of a historical perspective into his theory of the psyche but this is rarely supported with concrete examples or a thorough exposition. What follows aims to do just that. As the quote makes clear, Jung was deeply concerned about the negative consequences resulting from the break with cultural traditions that had accelerated during the nineteenth century. Modernity was born from the impact of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution upon European society and thought. Jung lived his life and dedicated his therapeutic praxis to connecting modern consciousness with humankind’s trove of myths and symbols. He was convinced that this would promote psychologically healthy individuals and, in due course, healthier societies. A tower symbolizes retreat, isolation, and security.4 To be satisfied with this image alone, however, would ignore Jung’s view that symbolic dynamics spring from the tension of opposites.