Carl Jung and Psychology

Carl G. Jung was a pioneer and remained fully aware that an enormous number of further questions remained unanswered and call for further investigation. This is why his concepts and hypotheses are conceived on as wide a basis as possible (without making them too vague and all-embracing) and why his views form a so-called “open system” that does not close the door against possible new discoveries.

To Jung, his concepts were mere tools or heuristic hypotheses that might help us to explore the vast new area of reality opened up by the discovery of the unconscious - a discovery that has not merely widened our whole view of the world but has in fact doubled it. We must always as now whether a mental phenomenon is conscious or unconscious and, also, whether a “real” outer phenomenon is perceived by conscious or unconscious means.

The powerful forces of the unconscious most certainly appear not only in clinical material but also in the mythological, religious, artistic, and all the other cultural activities by which man expresses himself. Obviously, if all men have common inherited patterns of emotional and mental  behavior (which Jung called the archetypes), it is only to be expected that we shall find their products (symbolic fantasies, thoughts, and actions) in practically every field of human activity.

Important modern investigations of many of these fields have been deeply influenced by Jung's work. For instance, this influence can be seen in the study of literature, in such books as J.B. Priestley's Literature and Western Man, Gottfried Diener's Faust's Weg zu Helena, or James Kirsch's Shakespeare's Hamlet. Similarly, Jungian psychology has contributed to the study of art, as in the writings of Herbert Read or of Aniela Jaffé, Erich Neumann's examination of Henry Moore, or Michael Tippett's studies in music. Arnold Toynbee's work on history and Paul Radin's on anthropology have benefited from Jung's teachings, as have the contributions to sinology made by Richard Wilhelm, Enwin Rousselle, and Manfried Porkert. 

Of course, this does not mean that the special features of art and literature (including their interpretation) can be understood only from their archetypal foundation.  These fields all have their own laws of activity; like all really creative achievements, they cannot ultimately be rationally explained. But within their areas of action one can recognize the archetypal patterns as a dynamic background activity. And one can often decipher in them (as in dreams) the message of some seemingly purposive, evolutionary tendency of the unconscious.

The fruitfulness of Jung's ideas is more immediately understandable within the area of the cultural activities of man: Obviously, if the archetypes determine our mental behavior, they must appear in all these fields. But, unexpectedly, Jung's concepts have also opened up new ways of looking at things in the realm of the natural sciences as well – for instance, in biology.

The physicist Wolfgang Pauli has pointed out that, due to new discoveries, our idea of the evolution of life requires a revision that might take into account an area of interrelation between the unconscious psyche and biological processes. Until recently it was assumed that the mutation of species happened at random and that a selection took place by means of which the “meaningful”, well-adapted varieties survived, and the others disappeared. But modern evolutionists have pointed out that the selections of such mutations by pure chance would have taken much longer than the know age of our planet allows.

Creative ideas show their value in that, like keys, they help to unlock hitherto unintelligible connections of facts and thus enable man to penetrate deeper into the mystery of life. Illustration by Elena.