C. G. Jung and Contemporary Spirituality

Richard Noll, The Jung Cult: Origins of a Charismatic Movement. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Reviewed by William J. Cork.

Much contemporary thought on spirituality bears the unmistakable imprint of C. J. Jung, either directly or through pop Jung derivatives such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Richard Noll is one of the first to analyze the analyst. He places Jung in historical context, traces the sources and development of his thought, and in doing so reveals many disturbing things that Jung hagiographers have ignored or suppressed. Noll's conclusion is that "Jung's work arose from the same Central European cauldron of neopagan, Nietzschean, mystical, hereditarian, völkisch utopianism out of which National Socialism arose."

The late nineteenth century was self-consciously a fin-de-siècle; old patterns of behavior and thought were being abandoned, civilization was in decay, scientific methods were discrediting religious and cultural presuppositions. It was a period of experimentation and exploration. Nietzsche's exaltation of the individual captured the imagination of many--including Jung--as did all sorts of movements which spun off from this egocentrism, such as eroticism, spiritualism, Wagnerism, Theosophy, and völkisch revivals of Hellenistic and Germanic paganism. These movements accepted science's conclusions about culture and religion, but were not willing to accept the scientific method, preferring instead a reliance upon a romantic sense of intuition which looked for the divine within, and liberated the human libido.

It is ironic that so many Christians follow blindly the conclusions of a man driven by a hatred of orthodox Christianity, whose views were formulated in direct opposition to those of the church, as Noll demonstrates. It is amazing that some Christian spiritual directors view as harmless Jungian methods which are derived from Mesmerism and spiritualism. Noll shows that Jung was not just trying to discover repressed and forgotten aspects of the person, but was trying to contact the ancestors whose consciousness remains within (he believed)--the seemingly benign practice of "active imagination" had its origins in the seance!

Noll links Jung's attitude toward orthodox Christianity with his anti-semitism, arguing that it was a methodological anti-semitism which led him to abandon the unique Judeo-Christian historicism in favor of a Hellenistic and Gnostic mythology. Noll argues that Jung's was an Aryan psychology in contrast to Freud's, of which Jung said, "But these specifically Jewish doctrines are thoroughly unsatisfying to the Germanic mentality; we still have a genuine barbarian in us who is not to be trifled with."  This German barbarian has been supressed by the imposition of foreign Christian and Jewish ideas, and it is this that constitutes the collective unconscious that must be recovered. (And this, Noll argues, is the real ground of the separation between Jung and Freud.)

Noll also calls into question Jung's methodology, especially as it relates to his identification of the collective unconscious, his claim that pagan mythological symbols are universally present as archetypes, as well as his understanding of mythology. Jung prefers the mysteries of Mithraism, in which Jung depends on the interpretations of Franz Cumont, whose assumptions are rejected by contemporary scholars. Noll argues that Jung's point was not psychological or historical but polemical--his juxtoposition of Mithraism vs. Christianity is his choice of an Aryan sun god over a Semitic god.

Jung argues that a matriarchal religion was universally dominant before the rise of patriarchy, a view shared by contemporary goddess worshippers. Noll argues that there is, in fact, no historical or uncontroversial prehistoric evidence for this conjecture. In fact, Jung's views here are indebted (but never attributed by Jung) to the writings of Johann Jakob Bachofen, whom Noll characterizes as "the Erik von Däniken of his age."

A final methodological criticism appears in Noll's discussion of Jung's claim that pagan archetypes are present in the dreams of men and women who could have had no prior knowledge of mythology. In fact, Noll demonstrates that the patents of the Burghölzli were not your typical psychiatric patients. In 1908, Jung observes that one of his patients was an archeologist who had written many books. In addition, the Germanic countries of the pre-WWI era were saturated with occult and neopagan movements. Many of the patients had been in neopagan cults. Moreover, many of Jung's claims were made on the basis of interviews with only one or two individuals. One of the most important cases for Jung's claims was that of the "Solar Phallus Man", a story which Noll effectively discredits. Jung withdrew from scientific circles, and never submitted his theories to peer review. He did not conduct research that could be examined objectively. His was an intuitive, non-scientific method, and is at the fringes of psychiatry and psychology today for that reason.

Noll has managed to break through the hagiography and the mystique surrounding Jung. The Jungian basis of much contemporary spirituality is simply a rehashing of old Gnosticism, which the earliest controversies of the Christian era had demonstrated to be incompatible with the historic nature of Biblical revelation. Rather than this being a great new discovery, as its proponents claim today, it is a rediscovery made in a particular time and place. Jung's theories grew out of the same milieux of resurgent paganism that also sprouted in National Socialism. They were both watered by an anti-semitism that wanted to overthrow the constraints of Judeo-Christian thought and morality to unleash the primal Aryan within. The red field representing pure Aryan blood, linked to a particular Fatherland; the white sun disk of Germanic paganism; the spinning swastika (representing constant regeneration, in völkisch thought); the runes marking Nazi uniforms; the enlightened elite leading the masses to a great Aryan future--all are themes present in the early Jung.

Because of the prevalence of Jungian ideas in Christian circles today, Jung needs to be studied--and studied critically. Noll's book (and his follow up, The Aryan Christ, will prove indispensable in this endeavor.