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The Pleromatics Project

Cult and Controversy: Richard Noll versus Carl G. Jung

Donivan Bessinger

Copyright by the author 1997. All rights reserved

A Special Article in response to:

Richard Noll: The Jung Cult: Origins of a Charismatic Movement (1994),
with a new preface. Free Press Paperbacks/Simon & Schuster, 1997 [cited TJC]

Richard Noll: The Aryan Christ: The Secret Life of Carl Jung. Random House, 1997 [cited TAC]

Richard Noll interview: jungindex.net, September 1997 [cited INT]

Other citations used are CW for the Collected Works of Carl G. Jung; and MDR for Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections. TCU is an abbreviation for Jung's theory of the collective unconscious.

Any theory which stretches the frame of reference of the prevailing worldview will draw substantial controversy. It was so with the theory of evolution in the last century, and so it has been in this one with theories of a nonlocal reality, whether within quantum physics or (especially) psychology. It is good and right that such should be so, for it is through fair and honest scholarly discussion that the collective consciousness "computes" its advances in its understanding of the cosmos of human experience.

Richard Noll's 1994 book TJC established its author as a major spokesman in opposition to Jung's theory. Quite naturally, he been very controversial within Jungian circles. With the publication of yet another attack [TAC] on the person of Jung and the basis of his psychological "school", and Noll's online seminar in January 1997 [TAC 282] and internet interview on the Jung Index [INT], the controversy has significantly intensified. The real debate seems only barely to have begun. Unfortunately, the question of whether the discussion has been, and is to be, fair and honest remains open.

The main burden of answering Noll's challenge to Jungian psychotherapy falls on those who are trained in the method, and who practice it professionally. Yet there are others of us, not psychotherapists, who rely (as I do in the Pleromatics Project) on Jung's scholarship of the content and dynamics of human experience, as we search for a meaningful worldview consistent with current knowledge. We, too, must squarely face the implications of Noll's claims, for in his attitude of "mechanistic materialism" in opposition to ideas of a nonlocal reality of psyche, Noll represents a broad segment of the modern intellectual establishment. Unfortunately, many of its members (in curious accord with the proliferating "bible prophecy" websites) will also welcome Noll's charges of a bizarre Jungian cultism.

The following essay is not offered as either comprehensive or definitive. It is only one personal reply in what must be a collective response. It is organized as follows:

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1. Noll's theses

Richard Noll's two books on Jung [TJC, TAC] are both developed from the same general body of research, and there is considerable overlap in the theses and arguments of the two works. The former [TJC] is the more "scholarly," to the extent that it outlines the intellectual milieu of Germany and Switzerland at the fin de siecle. He thus reminds us (whether intentionally or not) of strong similarities in the collective psyche at the ends of the nineteenth century and the twentieth. The latter book [TAC] is the more speculative, as though the author has used the left-overs of a somewhat substantial lunch to serve up whatever he might for supper.

I would summarize the main theses of the two books, taken together, as follows:

(1) The observations which Jung attributes to a collective unconscious are to be entirely explained by the theory of cryptomnesia (source amnesia). That is, obscure symbols from dream and hallucination emerge only from the previously conscious, but forgotten, content of the personal unconscious. There is no collective unconscious.

(2) Jung fraudently represented the data from the patient whom he most often cited as an example of his theory of the collective unconscious (TCU).

(3) Jung created the TCU entirely from his own personal unconscious content, which was embued with occult spiritualism and German voelkisch mythical symbolism (both enjoying a renewal at the fin de siecle); and voelkisch tradition in particular had infected him with uncongenial right wing political views (and for a time Nazi sympathies) and antisemitism.

(4) Jung intentionally developed his "psychology" as a religious cult, centered on voelkisch traditions and Mithraic sun worship, with himself as the saviour ("Aryan Christ") at its center; and the Jungian movement remains today only a cult of personality.

(5) Jung "believed that Christianity was a Jewish cancer, a 'foreign growth' imposed on the Germans (such as himself), which cut them off from their biological and spiritual roots and made them ill." [TJC xii]

(6) Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections [MDR] is not an autobiography (though the first three, and last, chapters were written by Jung) but was compiled from various materials by his assistant Aniela Jaffe and others, expressly as a spiritual text to serve cultic purposes; it "has become one of the primary spiritual documents of the twentieth century." [TAC xiii]

(7) Jung's family and others are actively conspiring to prevent the "truth" about Jung from becoming known, by selectively withholding certain consequential documents.

Though the arguments presented in support of the theses are largely circumstantial, each deserves a careful evaluation and reply. Yet the arguments are complex, and each party brings to the debate very different ways of looking at the world, and specifically, at Jung.

Arguments about what is "fact" merely define what tiles ("pieces") are to be placed on the table. The more basic disagreement is which image is to be represented in the construction of the mosaic, or in the solving of the puzzle. The first task is to set the general context of the debate.

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2. On bias and prejudice

Fair and honest discussion of controversial points, and especially of controversial people, requires consideration of the biases ("for") and prejudices ("against") which the respective parties bring to the table. As I have said, I am not a psychotherapist. Nor have I been a patient ("analysand") of a Jungian or other psychotherapist. My interest in Jung is twofold: It is psychological, for I have found his model of the psyche to be helpful in understanding my own personality dynamics. And it is philosophical, in that his thought has important implications for constructing a worldview which takes into account nonlocal reality.

I am also aware of a certain personal affinity with Jung, for we share several characteristics: physicians who are the sons of Protestant ministers, who inevitably face and live with the challenge of reconciling the claims of both science and spirituality personally experienced. Further, we are quite close in personality type (my Meyers-Briggs type is INTJ), so I often feel as though I have an intuitive understanding of what Jung is saying.

But these affinities I share also with Albert Schweitzer. I recognize both men as important twentieth century thinkers who have had significant personal influence, and I admire both as physicians especially skilled and accomplished in a broader than usual range of intellectual interests. Yet I have no sense of special adulation of either. I am fully cognizant that both men were very human, and neither was a paragon of "political correctness" by late-century standards. The idea that either could command the center of a "cult of personality" is offensive to me both on personal and religious grounds.

The ikon at the center of my dreaming is the cosmic ChristLogos transfigured in consciousness with the historical Jesus. I am a member of an Episcopal parish. I feel uncomfortable with much of what passes for "Christianity" today, and many (I daresay most) fellow parishoners would be uncomfortable with my ideas of a radically inclusive interpretation of Christian spirituality, which are still unfolding. I have participated in various conferences with a Jungian orientation, and am the volunteer webmaster for one such conference organization.

Richard Noll gives us only limited direct information by which to evaluate himself. He holds a Ph.D. (1992) from the New School for Social Research. He practiced as a clinical psychologist before becoming a lecturer in the history of science at Harvard. He is the author of clinical papers, and is a writer of fiction [TAC 283] who finds that "This is not an easy story to tell." [TAC xiv] He says he is not a Freudian, nor Jewish nor "a fundamentalist Christian (nor a Christian of any sort)" [TJC ix] nor Moslem [TAC xv].

He does give us an interesting revelation of the impact Jung has had on him personally, beginning at an impressionable age. He expands on that somewhat in the cited interview. [INT] He writes that Jung's MDR "is a powerful book, and I recall my bewildered reaction to it at age seventeen after the first of what was to become many readings." [TAC xiii] That "powerful" experience with its "bewildered reaction" suggests that Noll is responding to a tugging at consciousness of something important from his unconscious. Further textual analysis (Section 6 below) will support that argument.

Noll places himself at the pole opposite to the "vitalistic" philosophy with which "... Jung was always to remain -- even when new discoveries in genetics and other areas seemed to legitimize the predominant scientific worldview in the twentieth century that includes a biology based only on mechanistic materialism." [TJC 143]

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3. The respective frames of reference

The controversy between Jungians and Noll is not so much an argument over what is or is not "fact". Rather it is a fundamental variance in perspective between two frames of reference, one contained within the other. From within the smaller frame of the local reality of "mechanistic materialism", one does not perceive the nonlocal reality inherent in any theory of a collective unconscious. Any data emanating from beyond the smaller frame necessarily must be seen as false, and arbitrary and inventive theories must be devised to account for them, if one is to avoid a "stress fracture" of one's own frame.

Such is the dilemma apparently faced by Noll, and "mechanistic materialism" in general. Twentieth century science has now shown (in the Aspect and subsequent experiments confirming Bell's Theorem) that there is a nonlocal reality undergirding the local "mechanisms" of ordinary physical experience. The underlying reality of cosmos transcends the familiar limits of the speed of light, of direct causation, and of diminishment of force over distance.

If psyche is, as mechanistic biology holds, entirely an epiphenomenon of the physical brain, such psyche, like its physical basis, "lives" within a nonlocal realm. Already there is suggestive evidence that the microtubules of nucleated cells, especially well organized in neurons, may "read" quantum level effects, and play a key role in consciousness. [Hameroff and Penrose] I have suggested that the concept of a nuocontinuum could be helpful in discussing physical and psychological aspects of nonlocal reality.

Experimental physical data have already stretched the "old frame" beyond its limits. The mechanistic faith on which Noll's method is based is already crumbling.

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4. Noll's contribution to Jungian studies

Even so, Noll has made a contribution to Jungian studies, for his historical research broadens the understanding of the context of Jung's, Freud's, and Europe's lives in this century of both science and strife.

Noll's citations will provide a useful source list for continuing scholarship on Jung, and he offers some helpful, if minor, new information. For example, he presents evidence that Jung in 1908 "... saw some relevance of mythology to the understanding of the unconscious mind ... more than a year earlier than has previously been thought." [TAC 82]

Noll's idea [TAC 70] that the "quaternity" of Gross, Spielrein, and Wolff with Jung was more influential on Jung's work than Freud himself is extremely problematic. Nevertheless, the opening up of this line of inquiry and discussion is interesting at least, and might prove productive. On the other hand, this also makes a point about Noll's penchant for concrete and fixed interpretations of dynamic ideas. In Jung's usage, a quaternity is a highly dynamic and interactive, homeostatic organic idea. Yet Noll's "quaternity" is merely a list of four names. Gross, Spielrein, and Wolff seem to have had minimal if any contact with each other.

Noll argues [INT] that the Jungian community needs to be more active in true clinical research. This point is well taken, for I believe we do indeed need more information on the efficacy and outcomes of Jungian therapy, in individual and group settings. We need to know more about its place in concert with pharmacological treatment for certain severe anxiety and mood disorders. To what extent is it helpful in the support of patients with life-threatening (physical) diseases? What is the most effective setting for that? And we need continuing scholarship on the collective ground of myth. We need further definition of the relationships between the nonlocal (collective) and the local (cultural or "diffusionary") components of psyche, and of the nature of consciousness itself.

And with all of this, we need to face the problem of categorical distinctions between the clinical, spiritual, philosophical, and theological implications of psyche. Jung's thought and method do indeed have a transcategorical significance. Interdisciplinary approaches, devoid of "turf-defense" strategies, will be essential to clarifying these various issues through future research.

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5. Scientific empiricism

The content of human experience, of psyche, is not susceptible to direct laboratory experiment. Of course, one may invite a person, and many persons, to reveal the contents of psyche. The mere fact that a person says or writes such and such is the final proof that the person had such and such content in psyche during that time. But one can also infer psychic content from physical evidence. The painting of a symbol on canvas proves that the symbol exists in psyche during the painter's work. And behavior originates in psychic content, conscious or unconscious. Whatever has effect, has reality, and that reality is, at least in part, a psychic reality.

In evaluating whether Noll has been fair and honest with his texts, one must keep in mind the whole substance of Jung's work and his empirical method -- material not subject to physical ("mechanistic") experiment. Before evaluating Noll's theses, we need to be reminded of Jung's attitude toward his own work. His references to empiricism are many. These provide a short example:

"The `reality of the psyche' is my working hypothesis, and my principal activity consists in collecting factual material to describe and explain it. I have set up neither a system nor a general theory, but have merely formulated auxiliary concepts to serve me as tools, as is customary in every branch of science. ... I am essentially a physician, whose business is with the sickness of man and his times, and with remedies that are as real as the suffering." (1952) [CW 18:1507, 1511]

"For, in what follows, I shall speak of the venerable objects of religious belief. Whoever talks of such matters inevitably runs the risk of being torn to pieces by the two parties who are in mortal conflict about those very things. This conflict is due to the strange supposition that a thing is true only if it presents itself as a physical fact. ... "Physical" is not the only criterion of truth: there are also psychic truths which can neither be explained nor proved nor contested in any physical way. If, for instance, a general belief existed that the river Rhine had at one time flowed backwards from its mouth to its source, then this belief would in itself be a fact even though such an assertion, physically understood, would be deemed utterly incredible." [ CW 11:553, emphasis in original]

Though Jung works within an expanded (nonlocal) frame of reference, he is not at all in conflict with ordinary physical science. Evaluating Jung (and Noll) calls for the practice of science (which includes scientific analysis) at the level appropriate to the subject at hand.

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6. Stylistic considerations

Since Noll tells us that his work is an "apocryphon" which documents the "secrets" of the theology of a new "religious community," [TAC xiv] surely he will not object to my submitting his exegesis to some textual criticism.

Is Noll honest in his use of his sources? In discussing paganism within German utopianism, Noll writes, "We have seen how Goethe exemplified this trend ... by suggesting replacing the fairy tale of Christ-worship with sun worship." [TJC 260] In the quotation referred to, [TJC 81] Goethe does make a symbolic connection between Christ and the sun (as does the Book of Revelation! [1:16]). But Goethe ends that quoted section by saying the sun "is a revelation of the most high" and "... I worship it in the light and creative power of God, whereby alone we live and move and have our being, [quoting Saint Paul in Athens quoting a Greek poet (Epimenides?), Acts 17:28] and all plants and animals together with us."

Is Noll fair in evaluating Jung as a clinician? Despite the differences in standard of care and the difficulties of reviewing cases treated ninety years ago, Noll faults Jung's clinical judgment (about the pace of withdrawing a patient from opium, morphine, and cocaine addiction), [TAC 80] and he states the case was "botched." [TAC 299]

Is Noll honest in his use of sensationalist headlines as section headings, and in his use of technical quotes? Consider the section heading: "We must ... infiltrate into people from many centers". [TAC 64] (The ellipsis is part of the headline.) The implication of the headline is that Jung had a sinister strategy for creating a religious mass movement. However, Noll has changed the subject-verb relationship in the quoted sentence, and the entire meaning of the quotation.

This passage is indeed easy to sensationalize. It is a particularly difficult one for people, especially Christians, who have not read Jung extensively and who do not have a feel for Jung's technical use of symbolic language, and who have not studied his extensive analyses of Christian symbolism, for example in Transformation Symbolism in the Mass. [CW 11] That too is a critical problem calling for honesty, especially when a professional writes a book intended for a popular audience.

As I read this passage, Jung, writing as one psychiatrist to another, uses cult in its special technical mythological and analytical sense, entirely differently from the sense of personality cult which Noll is trying to advance. Jung speaks specifically to the problem of "modern man in search of a soul," as one of his later book titles expresses the problem.

The actual quote, from an ebullient 1910 letter from Jung (age 35) to Freud referring to psychoanalysis [with my interpretative comments in bracketed italics], is,

"I think we must give it time to infiltrate into people from many centers, to revivify among intellectuals a feeling for symbol and myth, ever so gently to transform [the psychological symbol] Christ back into the [symbolic] soothsaying god of the vine, which he was [in analytical and archetypal terms, the symbol of ecstatic spirituality, expressed, for example, in the transformation of water into wine at a marriage feast], and in this way absorb those ecstatic instinctual forces of Christianity for the one purpose of making the cult and the sacred myth what they once were -- a drunken feast of joy where man regained the ethos and holiness of an animal [i.e., of the instinctual self]. That was the beauty and purpose of classical religion." [TJC 188, TAC 65]

I believe the meaning here hinges on the key words revivify and joy. The emphasis is on the psychodynamics of relating to the unconscious, specifically to that "center" which Jung was later to label the Self. In no sense does it advocate a literal acting out of "drunken feasts" as Noll elsewhere would have us believe. Clearly Noll and I have very different readings of this passage in particular, and of Jung's life in general.

These two books also reveal a glaring tendency to use conditional and speculative language in a way which is especially curious for a putatively "scientific" communication. Words like "maybe" and "perhaps" abound as he sets forth his opinions. Here is a very small sampling from the middle of one of the books:

"The first fact, and one deliberately hidden, it appears, by Jung himself ..." [TJC 181
"Jung then seems to reveal to Freud ..." [TJC 188]
"Jung also seems to have derived ..." [TJC 203]
"Jones probably could not keep from chuckling ..." [TJC 206]
"[Jung] also seems to be talking about himself ..." [TJC 208]
"Although it may well be argued in retrospect ..." [TJC 216]
"First, Jung is no doubt reporting ... " [TJC 223]
"... it is possible that Jung had Asconan patients in mind ... [TJC 229]
"Jung ... would have been attracted to ... " [TJC 244]
"... it seems arguable that ... " [TJC 245]
"Indeed, it may very well be argued that ... " [TJC 250]

There are many more such instances. But Noll exhibits other quirks in the use of language. He very frequently uses the terms "bourgeois" and "Aryan", and often as though they were epithets. Though he cautions that these terms have different layers of meaning following Hitler (and he might have added Marxism-Leninism), these are nonetheless uncommon terms in current scientific discourse. Further, in his notes Noll betrays an unusually narrow use of the term "race," when he refers to a distinction made by Ferenczi between patients in Hungarian and Zurich hospitals as "racialist," [TAC 300] instead of as some more conventional category such as cultural, ethnic, or national, etc.

He writes that he is "not a fundamentalist Christian (nor a Christian of any sort)." [TJC ix] That curious phrasing and his "bewildered reaction" to MDR [TAC xiii] hint of an activated complex engaged in active projection. But a particularly telling point is Noll's Freudian slip of judgment when he includes a hearsay comment about the genitals of the elderly Jung while bathing. [TAC 97] The comment is entirely irrelevant to any of Noll's arguments in either work, but it speaks loudly of an emasculating intention of the author toward his subject.

These examples are sufficient to justify the question whether Noll has a personal agenda which extends well beyond that of "objective" scientific "historical" research he claims in his introductions. But, alas, if we are to remain true to Jung's method, only Noll may analyze Noll. Ultimately, it is Noll who must look into his own soul.

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7. Reply to the theses

Noll has scattered a number of claims or charges throughout both works. For purposes of discussion, I have tried to distill them here into a short list of "theses." The general material above will help in evaluating each of Noll's specific claims. Here there is room for only a few direct comments about each one. Note that these "theses" are my own summaries of Noll's recurring ideas, and are not direct quotes except where specifically noted.

(1) The observations which Jung attributes to a collective unconscious are to be entirely explained by the theory of cryptomnesia (source amnesia). That is, obscure symbols from dream and hallucination emerge only from the previously conscious, but forgotten, content of the personal unconscious. There is no collective unconscious.

Noll accepts Jung's work on the theory of complexes, and some aspects of his work on psychological types. He rejects Jung's concepts of (a) the collective unconscious, (b) archetypes, and (c) individuation, which developed progressively as Jung's thought evolved. I will discuss these three concepts together, since I see them as interdependent, even though some Jungian analysts reject one or another of them.

(a) The collective unconscious. To deny a "phylogenetic" or collective aspect to the human unconscious is to deny an instinctual basis for psyche. It would require explaining why and how humans are exempt from a species-wide instinctual behavioral component which is present in all less complicated species. The question really is, to what extent is the collective aspect also nonlocal.

There is, of course, a "diffusionary" or cultural contribution to the content of myth, dream image, and hallucination, but prime questions remain. What is the ultimate source of the symbols which diffuse? Why is it that these symbols, even though culturally determined and diffused among cultures, are processed in a highly consistent way across cultures and across centuries, as Jung's scholarship and that of others clearly shows?

Theory must also account for nonlocal effects in human experience. Even though rare, clairvoyant dreams and waking intuitions, and shared "synchronistic" moments (in which some level of information is "transmitted" across sometimes great distance between two people not otherwise in contact) are elements of human experience which can only be explained by a nonlocal theory. So the problem is not choosing between diffusionary and collective theories, but determining how both contribute to the patterns of psychological experience and development.

(b) Archetypes. To deny the existence of the effect which Jung attributes to archetypes is to deny a key element of his theory of complexes. The difficulty with "archetypes" is that they are often construed as though they were relatively fixed ("concrete") entities, which are somehow tied to genetics (as Jung seems first to have imagined). We do ordinarily think that instinctual behavior has a genetic basis. It is possible that the "junk DNA" (that excess which presently seems uninvolved in purely physical development) could hold a catalog of instinctual information.

But we may also imagine archetypes as nonlocal abstract entities, which organize the processing of symbols much like the strange attractors of nonlinear dynamics (chaos theory in mathematics). These tend to hold a constantly varying output to a consistent pattern. In psyche, the functions will be expressed as images taken from personal experience in the culture. Archetypes, like mathematical functions in physics, need not have physical existence per se, to be integral to process ("output").

(c) Individuation. Individuation is a lifelong developmental process, which cannot be equated with fixed events or end products such as "redemption" [TJC 15, 265] or "rebirth" [TJC 57]. To deny individuation is to deny for psyche the dynamic homeostatically-balanced growth and development inherent in all other aspects of life. If psyche is merely the product of "mechanistic materialism," it is especially difficult to make such an exception, if the physical body to which it is related is directed toward growth and development.

Just as Darwin's was not the last word on evolution, so too is it appropriate to think that Jung is not the last word on the "collective unconscious." Noll, and all of us, will do well to keep open the books on the nonlocal reality of psyche, which at the present time is only very dimly perceived.

(2) Jung fraudently represented the data from the patient whom he most often cited as an example of his theory of the collective unconscious (TCU).

Jung frequently cited a patient's image of a phallic sun as the index event which prompted him to think that there is a collective ("nonlocal") aspect to psychic imagery. (Of course, Jung does not refer to it as "nonlocal." That term became current in physics after Jung's death.) Noll points to discrepancies between Jung's later statements about the event, and more recent research as to the dates and the contributions of Jung's assistant, Honegger. Noll calls this a "conscious falsification," [TJC x] and states bluntly, "Jung ... deliberately lied about it." [TAC 271]

Though Noll relies on the concept of source amnesia ("forgotten" memories) in Jung's patients, as he rebuts the theory of a collective unconscious, he does not allow that Jung might have forgotten or confused dates. Noll insists "Jung lied," even though he acknowledges elsewhere that there is a range of possible explanations. [TJC 184] Curious.

Even if that index patient's imagery is differently explained, it does not invalidate the concept of a collective unconscious, any more than the theory of evolution would be invalidated were Noll to discover that Darwin's finches had been stowaways on the Beagle. There are just too many other reasons to think that the theory points toward truth. Such large scale theories as evolution and the nonlocal aspects of psyche rely on the integration of much data from many sources, and not on "one test" alone.

(3) Jung created the TCU entirely from his own personal unconscious content, which was embued with occult spiritualism and German voelkisch mythical symbolism (both enjoying a renewal at the fin de siecle); and voelkisch tradition in particular had infected him with uncongenial right wing political views (and for a time Nazi sympathies) and antisemitism.

As acknowledged, Noll's history of turn-of-the-century ideas is a helpful contribution to understanding the context of Jung's life and work. However, the whole record on Jung must be evaluated. He struck different people differently, and the public record of Jung's personal thoughts and intentions remains mixed and incomplete. Further, one must allow for the maturation of a person's thought over time. Whatever Jung's personal failings and political sympathies, fair people will insist that Jung's theories and professional contributions be evaluated on their own intellectual merits.

(4) Jung intentionally developed his "psychology" [Noll's quotation marks: TJC xi, TAC xv] as a religious cult, centered on voelkisch traditions and Mithraic sun worship, with himself as the saviour ("Aryan Christ") at its center; and the Jungian movement remains today only a cult of personality.

The more preposterous a statement, the more difficult it is to refute. Why is Noll plucking at only that one voelkisch-Mithraic thread in the tapestry of Jung's experience? Why not, for example, try to make the case that Jung was a closet Hindu? After all, he had a lot of Hindus around him at one time, and wrote a lot about Hinduism. Or a Chinese alchemist? After all, he wrote about that, too. Or the reincarnation of a Native American, since he felt a close connection with Mountain Lake, his friend in Taos? Or the founder of an African cult for shamanistic "Aryans." Wasn't Jung very deeply impressed by the Elgoni laibon's morning prayer to the sun? (Could the laibon too have been a Mithrian?)

Or more plausibly, why not try to make the case that Jung was a Boehmenist who sought to understand the implications of Jakob Boehme's vision of the rosy dawn, at the transition from one historical epoch to another? Or better still, that he was personally compelled by his father's theological depression to explore as deeply as possible for himself the psychological, transdoctrinal foundations of all spiritual experience, not merely "Aryan"?

Yes, Jungian psychology does provide a nondoctrinal bridge to a renewed sense of meaning in life for many modern people who can no longer believe what traditional church requires them to believe. And many of those people, from many traditions, do enjoy getting together to share and explore spiritual experience for themselves. Jungian psychology explores personal depths in a way that is transdoctrinal and transcategorical, and yes, even transcendental. If Jungian psychology fosters a "cult" at all, it is the cultus of the individual fulfilled in consciousness of the collective. It points exactly in the direction opposite from the worship of some other personality presently or recently alive. There is a vast difference between a cult and a community.

(5) Noll writes that Jung "believed that Christianity was a Jewish cancer, a 'foreign growth' imposed on the Germans (such as himself), which cut them off from their biological and spiritual roots and made them ill." [TJC xii]

That is a quote from Noll, not Jung, but the reference to "foreign growth" is from a private letter of 1923 [TJC 134-5] in which Jung speaks matter of factly about the psychological problems incurred when a religion is forced upon a people unprepared for it. Jung was not a churchman, it is true, but in a lecture (1932) he identified himself with "the extreme left wing in the Parliament of Protestant opinion." [CW 11:537] In "Why I am not a Catholic" (1944) , Jung writes, "Firstly: Because I am a practical Christian to whom love and justice to his brother mean more than dogmatic speculations about whose ultimate truth or untruth no human being can ever have certain knowledge." [CW 18:1466]

Elsewhere, Jung writes of the loss of power of Christian symbolism. He continues, "This is not to say that Christianity is finished. I am, on the contrary, convinced that it is not Christianity, but our conception and interpretation of it, that has become antiquated in face of the present world situation. The Christian symbol is a living thing that carries in itself the seeds of further development. It can go on developing; it depends only on us, whether we can make up our minds to meditate again, and more thoroughly, on the Christian premises." (1956) [CW 10:542]

(6) Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections [MDR] is not an autobiography (though the first three, and last, chapters were written by Jung) but was compiled from various materials by his assistant Aniela Jaffe and others, expressly as a spiritual text to serve cultic purposes; it has become "one of the primary spiritual documents of the twentieth century." [TAC xiii]

The title page of MDR reads, "Memories, Dreams, Reflections by C. G. Jung, recorded and edited by Aniela Jaffe, translated from the German .... ," etc. That itself is a clear and sufficient indication to the reader not to expect a traditional historical biography directly from the hand of its subject. Jaffe's introduction adds that the book is compiled from material written by Jung for the purpose, from interviews with Jung, and from older material written by Jung but previously unpublished, and that Jung had read and approved the manuscript: "Occasionally he corrected passages or added new material. In turn, I have used the records of our conversations to supplement the chapters he wrote himself, have expanded his sometimes terse allusions, and have eliminated repetitions. The further the book progressed, the closer became the fusion between his work and mine." [MDR vii]

Given the completeness of that disclosure, it is hard to credit Noll's theory that MDR is misrepresented. But one may be glad that he sees that there may be a spiritual significance to one's memories, one's dreams, and one's reflections.

(7) Jung's family and others are actively conspiring to prevent the "truth" about Jung from becoming known, by selectively withholding certain consequential documents.

The stories told by Noll and others of access denied to source documents are indeed reason for concern on the part of all people interested in the life and work of Jung. Regardless of what might be contained those documents, Jung will be seen as a giant in the history of twentieth-century ideas. Jung's family and the peoples of the twenty-first century will all be better served by full and open disclosure, and fair and honest evaluation, of the man and his legacy.

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8. Summary conclusions

Jung's life spanned a quarter of the previous century, and almost two thirds of this one. It is a span of time which has seen an extraordinary expansion of knowledge of both psyche and physics. It has also been an extremely turbulent time. If we could chart the history of this century's psychic weather, we would see a relentless series of severe cyclonic storms and devastating tornadoes. Jung lived directly in the track of all that swirling flow of thought and feeling.

It is now thirty six years since Jung's death. The inevitable reappraisal of his person and his work has clearly begun. Richard Noll's sensationalistic work on Jung is being taken seriously by many within the secular intellectual and journalistic establishments, and is being welcomed by many sectarian groups as well, to whom also Jungian thought seems both challenge and threat.

I hope that those who have not studied Jung, and those who have, will find the current paper helpful in balancing the perspective on Jung's life. I respect Noll's point [INT] that the debate must be kept to the issues. I hope the reader will see that the personal standpoints of the debaters are very much among the issues, especially in a psychological debate. In raising that point, in no sense have I intended a personal attack on Noll himself, whom I have never met. Rather, I have meant only to have helped frame both the personal and collective aspects of the issues at hand.

Earlier, I mentioned a table covered with many tiles. I believe that when we arrange them, all of them, we will not find a deeply shadowed image of Jung, but a many-colored one. I believe, too, that it will not be, nor should it be, a "holy" ikon of a cultic figure, but the picture of a physician and scholar pointing to the future, inviting all of us to become involved in the continuation of the healing work of knowing ourselves. That is the "cult" to which we all are called.

 

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Copyright, Donivan Bessinger, 24 October 1997. All rights reserved.

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