d a r k m a t t e r s
debra goldman, 2021
g e t t i n g s t a r t e d
"To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings."
- Wendell Berry
on this endless
quest for meaning,
we borrow
the piercing eyes
of apollo,
dissecting the cosmos
into quarks and bosons.
we shine his light
to illuminate
every last
stronghold of mystery.
but the math
does not add up.
we become aware of
a darkness darker than dark,
a blackness blacker than
black.
yet there are those
who still remember
that the space
between the stars
is not space at all
but a living
substance.
there are who
still remember
to place offerings
at the alters of forgotten
chthonic gods.
hubris cometh before
the humility that weds
us to the earth.
apollo himself
melts the wings, initiates
the descent
into a darkness
illumined by
the lumen naturae.
the piercing eyes of apollo: “Apollo, the god of light, of reason, of proportion, harmony, number - Apollo blinds those who press too close in worship. Don't look straight at the sun. Go into a dark bar for a bit and have a beer with Dionysis, every now and then.” - Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
the math does not add up: Astrophysicists believe that between 85 - 96 percent of the universe may be comprised of dark matter.
"[Bacteria are the] dark matter of the biological world [with 4 million mostly unknown species in a ton of soil]." - E. O. Wilson
yet there are those...: "Western thinkers viewed space as lifeless and empty between stars. Our own stories represented those dark areas as living country, based on observed effects of attraction from those places on celestial bodies. Theories of dead matter and empty space meant that Western science came late to discoveries of what they now called dark matter." Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking can Save the World
humility: from humilis "lowly, humble," literally "on the ground," from humus "earth"
lumen naturae: "The lumen naturae is an image of light at the core of ancient alchemical ideas. One of the aims of alchemy was to beget this light hidden in nature, a light very different from the Western association of light as separate from darkness."(S. Marlan, Black Sun, p. 97). Jung referred to the lumen naturae as "the light of darkness itself, which illuminates its own darkness."(C.G. Jung, Alchemical Studies, p. 160)
I came to depth psychology from the world of organic farming – from the soil to the soul, so to speak. The hidden affinity between the two fields lies precisely in depth, for it is the teeming, complex depths of the soil from which everything that grows above the surface ultimately derives nourishment. Organic farmers are fond of saying that their real job is to cultivate healthy soil: the growing of healthy plants then proceeds as a matter of course.
The 20th century, with the advent of chemical fertilizers and pesticides and ever larger mechanized means of production, amplified the mechanistic and reductionist strains of thought within the modern psyche and applied them to our most primary point of contact with the other-than-human world: the procurement of food. Early in my farming life, it became painfully clear that addressing the unravelling of living systems brought about industrial agriculture was not a matter of getting more farmers to adjust their systems and techniques. Rather, industrial agriculture is but one manifestation of a paradigm that privileges the rational over the irrational, the straight over the crooked, the visible over the unseen, the mind over matter, and in depth psychological terms, logos over eros. Gradually but inexorably, I began to see that the root issue I was trying to understand and address in my own small way is not primarily technological, educational, or political, it is inescapably psychological.
For me, depth psychology is, like farming, a continual process of tending and paying attention to that which lies beneath the surface, approaching with curiosity, respect, and creativity the dark, fecund spaces around us and within us.
c u r e o f s o u l s
o n e
Image: Kind of Blue recording session
Music: Miles Davis, Bitches Brew
"The task of the shaman is to embody and transmit this message;
to bring healing and meaning into life;
and to create a glowing sense of accord
with the informing root of all being.
The modern shamanic path consists in a creative
and affirmative relationship to life."
- Stephen Larsen
bird man,
when you return
from your flight
to the stars with
strange nectar
the people do not
know they thirst for,
you will find no branch
to alight upon;
no chorus awaits to take
up the new melody
revealed.
your cave of mystery
replaced by a padded cell.
long in drought,
the heart
crusts and cracks,
becomes incapable of
receiving rain or seed.
gifts, yours among them,
sluice off,
join to form
rivulets,
rills,
rivers of fertility,
returned to the
devouring sea.
the work
at present
is to make ready;
to enchant the earth
with word and song.
the soul, to be cured,
must be at home
in the world.
perhaps that
is the cure itself.
bird man: “Some people in Asia, America and Europe compare the shamans with migratory birds, because they recognise both as vigorous, responsible, sensible and guiding clan-leaders. They help the tribe to find its way in space and time. The powers of mind bend wings to the shamans. Therefore they can turn into mixed creatures, which fly in the sky as a bird and walk about on ground as a human being.” - Michael Rappenglueck, Paleolithic Shamanistic Cosmograph
your cave of mystery: “Nioradzè relates how the young man who has received the calling withdraws from society; he spends his nights on the naked ground or even in the snow, observes long periods of fasting, suffers great hardships, and converses with the spirits; he presents the picture of a severely psychotic individual. However, contrasting with an ordinary mental illness, the patient undergoes professional initiation at the hands of other shamans; the illness ends the very moment the training is completed and the patient himself is proclaimed shaman.” Henri Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious, p. 39
long in drought: "Now, we have no symbolic life, and we are badly in need of the symbolic life. Only the symbolic life can express the need of the soul--the daily need of the soul, mind you! And because people have no such thing, they can never step out of this mill - this awful, grinding, banal life in which they are "nothing but." In the ritual they are near the Godhead; they are even divine." C.G. Jung, The Symbolic Life, p. 274
to enchant the earth: "Breathing life back into the humble but essential things of the world - resurrecting the presence of spirit in matter - [Antoni] Tàpies functions like a shaman, re-directing attention to the elemental dimensions of existence, to the animistic integration of self and world." Michael Tucker, Dreaming with Eyes Open, p. 23.
the soul, to be cured:
Was somebody asking to see the soul?
See your own shape and countenance, persons,
substances, beasts, the trees, the running rivers,
the rocks and sands.
Walt Whitman
Q: Is it fair for modern psychotherapists to compare their practices with shamanism? Why or why not?
A: As my old farming mentor was fond of saying, “It depends.”
As Henri Ellenberger demonstrates, the position of the shaman within traditional communities defies straightforward comparison with any modern profession or role, in part because the shaman’s place within the web of the collective was often so essential, complex, and multifaceted (Ellenberger, 1970, p. 38). Perhaps more importantly, the traditional shaman operated within a cultural and social context in which the majority of people had faith in his healing abilities and believed in the soul-related maladies addressed by the shaman and the methods he employed (1970, p. 12). The shaman, like the modern psychotherapist, is but one part of a very complex equation. Here the psychotherapist is at a distinct disadvantage; she goes about her work of psycho-therapy (etymologically the "treatment or cure of soul"), within a cultural context that questions or denies the very notion of soul. Many psychotherapeutic approaches have precious little to do with shamanism because they are firmly rooted in a positivist worldview that occludes the inner, mythopoetic realm to which the shaman had attained special access and through which he derived his healing power. Even C.G. Jung, perhaps the most “shamanic” pioneering psychologist whose own “confrontation with the unconscious” could be compared to the shamanic initiatory illness, was often limited in his ability to treat his patients if they proved to be inflexibly rationalistic (Jung, 1952/1960).
Michael Tucker, a scholar of both shamanism and contemporary art, concurs with Stephen Larsen’s assertion that although there is no precise analog to the shaman in contemporary society, the “shamanic spirit” is not infrequently exhibited by therapists, artists, clergy, writers, poets, musicians and filmmakers (Tucker, 1992, p. 21). In this sense, the essential role of the shaman and the artist, the poet and the psychologist, is to serve as a liaison between inner and outer realms, as exemplified beautifully by the jazz saxophonist John Coltrane:
"From the point of view of shamanism, the political and psychological aspects of Coltrane’s music merge into the transmutative idea that, like a shaman of old, Coltrane was inexorably drawn to the archetypal intuition that the world’s ills cannot be healed in the profane realm, so to speak. For the world – the sacred cosmos which dominated Coltrane’s imagination in the last years of his life – must periodically be recharged with the primal energy from the ur-domain of mythopoesis (Tucker, 1992, p. 231)."
Ellenberger, H. (1970). The discovery of the unconscious: the history and evolution of dynamic psychiatry. New York, NY: BasicBooks.
Jung, C.G. (1960). Synchronicity: an acausal connecting principle. (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In H. Read et al. (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung: Vol. 8. Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1952)
Tucker, M. (1992). Dreaming with eyes open: the shamanic spirit in twentieth century art and culture. San Francisco, CA: Aquarian/HarperSanFrancisco.
a d l e r ' s i n t e r c o n n e c t i v i t y
t w o
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"The next Buddha will be a Sangha."
- Thich Nhat Hanh
Q: It is easily argued that Adler contributed just as much to modern therapeutic methods as did Freud. Why do you think our collective memory favors one so much more than the other?
A: Henri Ellenberger offered several clues as to why Alfred Adler is the least well known of the three most prominent depth psychological pioneers, among them the unevenness of his written work, the scant paper trail he left with regards to case histories, and (perhaps most significantly) the fact that Adler himself seemed to possess a more modest, genial nature than either Freud or Jung (Ellenberger, 1970). James Hillman largely concurred with Ellenberger’s assessment, noting that much of Adler’s amiability and intelligence was “spent in telling jokes, in café conversations, or concealed in a style of writing that both oversimplified a thought and garbled it in the same sentence (1983/2019, p. 107).”
Although I only have a glancing familiarity with Adler’s work, I will venture to speculate on two other factors that may have contributed to Adler being relegated to relative obscurity. First, Adler’s focus on the dynamics between individuals, an emphasis that strikes me as a distinctly ecological understanding of the psyche, seems well ahead of its time (1970). Despite naming his approach individual psychology, Adler “never considers the individual in an isolated, static situation (1970, p. 610)”, which sheds light upon his interest in groups, social movements, and educational methodology. Each individual reflects and responds to others in a complex Indra’s net of psyche. Second, Adler’s focus on “concrete, practical knowledge of man” eschewed the mythic dimension in which Freud and Jung swam so naturally and from which their work no doubt derived much of its potency and durability (1970, p. 571). As the other prompts for this module suggest, Freud continues to command our attention even though much of his work has been challenged, dismissed, or largely forgotten. Perhaps Freud endures not because of his ideas, but because of how he related to and communicated those ideas. As Christine Downing noted, Freud (and Jung) recognized “that to speak adequately of the psyche requires recourse to mythological and metaphorical language (2000, p. 69)”, a recourse that Adler was less inclined to employ.
Dowing, C. (2000). Sigmund Freud’s mythology of soul: the body as dwelling place of soul, in Dennis Slattery and Lionel Corbett, eds., Depth psychology: meditations in the field, Eisiedeln: Daimon Verlag.
Hillman, J. (1983/2019). Healing fiction. Thompson, CT: Spring Publications.
Ellenberger, H. (1970). The discovery of the unconscious: the history and evolution of dynamic psychiatry. New York, NY: Basic Books.
p r i m a c y o f t h e p r i m a l
t h r e e
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Q. What does Jung really mean by the term "primitive?" Is it excessively problematic or disrespectful?
As with so many things in Jung, it is difficult to pin down with exactitude what he meant when using the term “primitive” because his exploration of this theme was wide-ranging and cyclical (or perhaps spiralic). But it is also true that Jung began his essay with a brief sentence that couldn’t be more to the point: “The word “archaic” [which Jung used as a synonym for primitive] means primal, original (1931, p. 50).” I think Jung was trying to communicate right out of the gates that he did not intend to ascribe a value judgment to the words archaic and primitive.
Certainly Jung had his share of biases and blind spots, and my intent is not to take up the standard of a Jung apologist (his sweeping generalizations about “primitive man” certainly betray an arrogance deserving of critique). But I also think that the controversy surrounding Jung’s writings on this subject has as much if not more to do with unexamined contemporary presuppositions than with Jung’s own attitudes at the time of writing (indeed, bringing to light some of these presuppositions, which Jung clearly also carried within him, seems to be one of the main tasks Jung set for himself in writing Archaic Man). For example, Jung asserts that “primitives are simpler and more childlike than we are (1931, p. 54)”, a statement that is certainly problematic if one is operating from the assumption that simplicity and childlikeness are inferior qualities. Yet Jung found, much to initial surprise and discomfort, a deep healing in childlike play along the shores of Lake Zurich, and at Bollingen he strove for a life pared down to its essentials. Overall, I find that Jung’s attitude towards what he termed “primitive man” and to the primitive (i.e. original) nature that lay, so often neglected and underappreciated within “civilized man”, was one of an unusually high degree of respect, particularly for his time.
d o u b l e s l i t
f i v e
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Q. Science itself has shown that ultimate objectivity is impossible. Should we discard it entirely, or is it still worthwhile to strive for objectivity regarding facts?
In 1947, the physicist Niels Bohr adopted a coat of arms featuring the taijitu (yin-yang symbol) with the words contraria sunt complementa ("opposites are complimentary"). The taijitu, with its implication that opposites are not only complimentary but are somehow mysteriously embedded within one another, seems an apt image to represent the relationship between objectivity and subjectivity in Jung's psychology. Jung recognized that an irreducible element of subjectivity was woven into every attempt to objectively observe any phenomena, just as he hypothesized that the collective unconscious (which he later termed "the objective psyche") undergirded even the most apparently subjective experiences.
Jung differentiated himself from his contemporaries in part through the emphasis he placed on the importance of a dynamic balance between polarities within the psyche. The conscious mind that was unaware of the limits of its objectivity was bound to become dangerously out of balance, vulnerable to its own unconscious subjectivity. But Jung just as steadfastly defended the importance of objectivity and his own perception of empirical rigor. I suspect that he would vigorously resist the notion that depth psychology should be situated solely within the humanities -- this, too, would be limiting. "If we want to understand the psyche, we must understand the whole world" (CW 8: par. 357). An impossible task, but perhaps a symbolic nod to the importance of contraria sunt complementa.
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a s i f / n o t h i n g b u t
s i x
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Q. Despite Freud and Jung's intentions, many of their followers regard them as prophets. What might this mean about the human religious impulse?
If, as Jung contended, the gods have retreated from the heavens into the unconscious psyche, then I think it is fair to say that much of the work of both Freud and Jung, as pioneers of the unconscious, carries a prophetic quality.
Freud envisioned a world in which science and the god of reason had triumphed over the illusion of religion, creating an objectively solid foundation upon which civilization could evolve and human beings could stand a better chance at reaching psychological maturation (Freud, 1927/1989). Jung, by contrast, contended that the “illusions” of religion ultimately derived from certain individuals’ numinous experiences, experiences that were absolutely psychically real and not at all illusory. Religion, for Jung, was not a childlike enactment of the father complex writ large, but humanity’s organic attempt to contain and mediate the collective’s relationship with the powerful, life-giving, and yet incredibly dangerous archetypal forces of the psyche.
One factor that may have contributed to the two men’s vastly divergent prophetic visions stands out: Freud’s hypothesis of the unconscious was strictly limited to the personal, whereas Jung postulated a collective strata of the unconscious. Freud believed “scientific work is the only road which can lead us to a knowledge of reality outside ourselves (1927/1989, p. 705),” and he viewed the unconscious psyche as purely subjective and untrustworthy, the irrational “nature” within us that must be overcome through the rational intellect. Jung, in “discovering” the collective unconscious, (which he viewed as universal and therefore, in a sense, objective) freed himself from the strict positivism which so dominated the spirit of the times. Being universal and dynamic, the archetypal forces of the psyche must be acknowledged and engaged with in every age lest they become unconscious and potentially dangerous. Being irrational, they cannot be overcome or even fully comprehended by rationality. Thus, we can see how Freud and Jung’s conception of the psyche influenced (or reinforced?) their attitudes toward religion; the former viewing religion as an unnecessary impediment to psychological development, the latter seeing it as an essential and unavoidable impulse that, when it is effectively serving its purpose, both nourishes and protects the human psyche.
Freud, S. (1989). The Freud reader (P. Gay, Ed.). Norton.
b l a c k t i d e , b l a c k s u n .
s e v e n
Image: Miguel Serrano
Music: Damon Albarn. Hostiles
Image: J.B. Rhine, telepathy experiment
Music: Bird by Snow. Devouring
"There is nothing more mysterious than blood.
Paracelsus considered it a condensation of light.
I believe that the Aryan, Hyperborean blood is that -
but not the light of a Golden Sun, not of a galactic sun,
but of a Black Sun, of the Green Ray"
- Miguel Serrano
Hence there is also a Sol niger, a black sun, which coincides with the nigredo and putrefactio, the state of death. Like Mercurius, Sol in alchemy is ambivalent.
- C.G. Jung
herr professor,
what do you know
of this man
seated across from you
in the lobby of the
hotel esplanade
on a late winter's afternoon?
yes, he speaks
knowledgeably
of chakras and archetypes;
the pendulum swings
of civilizations.
but what else
do you know?
surely, you must know?
surely?
the black tide
has drowned this man,
pulled him into
the death of the
cold, black sun.
here sits
exhibit A
of the severance
between the rational
and the primal ground,
the chasm to which
you have urgently drawn
our reluctant eyes.
i am not typically
one for bulwarks;
they speak to fear,
to reinforced separation.
but the guardrails
of the senex
may be prisons
or they may
prevent one from
careening off the cliff.
.
to open the floodgates
is precisely
to invite a flood.
your inner nile
has been inundated,
richly so.
but other rivers,
moving swiftly, narrowly,
slash away at their own banks,
carrying soil and soul
into the oblivion of a dark sea.
what do you know of this man: “In 1947, the Chilean diplomat and writer Miguel Serrano first read a book of Jung's, which he had taken along a trip to the antarctic... on February 28, 1959, Jung invited Serrano to visit him at the Hotel Esplanade, in Locarno." - William McGuire & R.F.C. Hull, C.G. Jung Speaking, p.392.
"During the Second World War, in which Chile remained neutral until 1943, Serrano campaigned in support of Nazi Germany and promoted anti-Semitic conspiracy theories through his own fortnightly publication, La Nueva Edad. In 1942, he joined an occult order founded by a German migrant which combined pro-Nazi sentiment with ceremonial magic and kundalini yoga. It presented the Nazi German leader Adolf Hitler as a spiritual adept who had incarnated to Earth as a savior of the Aryan race and who would lead humanity out of a dark age known as the Kali Yuga. Serrano became convinced that Hitler had not died in 1945 but had secretly survived and was living in Antarctica." Wikipedia
surely, you must know: “This book is an extraordinary piece of work. It is dreams within dreams… The poetic genius has transformed this primordial material into almost musical shapes, just as, conversely, Schopenhauer understood music as the movement of archetypal ideas." C.G. Jung, forward to The Visits of the Queen of Sheba by Miguel Serrano
the cold, black, antarctic sun: "[Himmler's assistant Karl Maria] Wiligut believed that the Germanic race descended from Hyperboreans, a mythic race of giant, godlike people mentioned by Pindar and Herodotus who lived "beyond the north wind." In the time of the Hyperboreans, it was believed, two suns that battled for dominion. Santur, the defeated sun, remained in the sky, darkened but still a vital reservoir of spiritual energy for the rebirth of the Aryan race under the Third Reich." Charles Morse, Black Sun: The Gravity of Power and Peril
i am not typically one for bulwarks: "I can still recall vividly how Freud said to me, "My dear Jung, promise me never to abandon the sexual theory. That is the most essential thing of all. You see, we must make a dogma of it, an unshakable bulwark" ... In some astonishment I asked him, "A bulwark-against what?" To which he replied, "Against the black tide of mud"-and here he hesitated for a moment, then added of occultism." C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
your nile has been inundated:
While Jung's "confrontation with the unconscious", a flooding of consciousness by unconscious contents preceding and during the First World War, arguably provided fertile imagery and experience for the remainder of his life. For others, the encounter with archetypal energies proves destructive, even fatal.
Q1. At this point in his career, Freud has nothing to gain and everything to lose by not only discussing occultism, but accepting telepathy. Why would Freud initially avoid "the black tide," only to wade back into it later?
Q3. Jung would likely want nothing to do with the modern New Age movement. Is it helpful or deleterious for us to have his name attached to it?
I find myself fascinated, disturbed, and disoriented by this module's readings. I am left wondering: did Jung err in not taking Freud's warning of "the black tide" seriously enough?
For if there is a cautionary tale with regards to Freud's black tide of occultism, surely it is Nazi and neo-Nazi esotericism, a melange of eastern, Christian, and pre-Christian thought embraced most notably by Heinrich Himmler. Miguel Serrano, with whom Jung corresponded and wrote an admiring forward to the Chilean author and diplomat's The Visits of the Queen of Sheba, was neck-deep in this particular black tide, convinced that Hitler was a spiritual adept sent to Earth as the savior of the Aryan race. Surely Jung could not have been completely ignorant of Serrano's views, and yet the impression one gets from the two men's conversation as related by Serrano and from Jung's forward, Jung was more interested in Serrano's esoteric writings and experiences in India. [It is interesting to note that Serrano's World War II-era, pro-fascist publication was entitled La Nueva Edad, "the new age".]
Freud's "unshakeable bulwark" comment (often pointed to as Exhibit A of his authoritarian inflexibility by Jungians) takes on a new light for me after reading Serrano's piece. Yes, Freud was zealously protective of what he saw as the essential pillars of psychoanalysis. But his remark also displays an awareness that without clear demarcation, his ideas were more likely to be misused and misappropriated. While I find Jùlia Gyimesi's comment that Jung was a self-styled prophet seeking to create a new religion around his ideas rather ridiculous [and revealing], I have to agree with her assertion that it was Jung's decidedly less dogmatic approach and openness to occult phenomena which represents his psychology's core vulnerability (2009, p. 459), even though I would posit that these characteristics are not only essential to Jung's work but, paradoxically, also part of its strength.
Yet Jung's curiously uncritical attitude toward Serrano (and Charles Lindbergh, for that matter) highlights the danger of the relative lack of demarcation in his psychology (and a correlate lack of demarcation in with whom Jung was willing to associate). For Jung, it is impossible for humans to perceive an objective reality "out there" because everything is perceived through the psyche. One is left only with psychic reality, and Jung believed that the psychic reality of another cannot be refuted (as Marie Louise von Franz related memorably in an anecdote of a patient who was convinced she lived on the moon). For Freud, the sexual theory of libido was a ground anchor. In pulling up this anchor, Jung liberated himself, and yet without an analogously unambiguous tether for his own psychology, he facilitated the preconditions for individuals and movements to selectively lay claim to his ideas.
Gyimesi, J. (2009) American imago, Winter 2009, Vol. 66, No. 4, Sándor Ferenczi Returns Home: Papers from the Miskolc Conference
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c o n s u m p t i v e d i s c o n t e n t
e i g h t
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"We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched
by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with
its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive
breath ... a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is
more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace."
- Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Manifesto del Futurismo, 1909
“All haste comes from the devil, as an old saying goes, which
psychologically means that one’s devil is to be found in one’s indigestion,
in one’s having more events than are experienced. What we do
experience by putting events through an imaginative process is
taken off the streets of time and out of the ignorant sea of my
mental turbulence. We beat the devil simply by standing still.”
- James Hillman
a neglected stretch of interstate,
(great boulevard of haste and hate)
here on the shoulder lay merely nibbled,
(not upon one margin scribbled!)
still within its oil-stained wrapper,
a civilization's discontents.
nearby,
(already attracting ant and fly)
an aion discarded,
half-consumed and
scarce regarded.
we speed towards
a horizon always in retreat,
burning, churning
gazing forward,
spurning the past as obsolete
(and therefor doomed to repeat).
without teeth to penetrate,
to free the marrow
to masticate,
without the time to digest,
not a talent left
to reinvest.
we worship, but cannot appease
this voracious god of speed.
the past (which we must sacrifice)
Is not enough, cannot suffice.
and so, like saturn devouring
every bud, and every flowering
(having consumed each stem and root,
every leaf and every shoot)
the future is saddled by our debts
our faded hopes, our sharp regrets.
to slow
to slow
to slow.
to look right and left,
to look behind
above
below.
to pick up that piece of waste,
along that boulevard of haste
and regard with eyes afresh
a past not past
but living flesh.
Q. Both Freud and Jung are popularly viewed as outdated. Can their ideas be adequately presented in contemporary discourse, i.e. websites/ social media?
“Do you know who reads my books? Not the academic people… it’s ordinary people (Jung, 1977, p. 444)."
Both Freud and Jung share a peculiar fate: their works were regarded by many of their contemporary intellectuals as out of date even before the ink had dried upon the page, relics of a muddled, proto-scientific approach to psychology. “Popularly”, however, their work had and continues to have much greater appeal and influence, even as it remains strikingly absent from all but a few corridors of the academy.
But the very notion that Freud and Jung are out of date speaks less to their work and more to a still-entrenched positivism and the restless, rootless nature of our times in which the fetishization of the new accompanies the accelerating obsolescence the old (planned or otherwise). In stark contrast, the intellectualism of Freud and, even more strikingly, of Jung, sought insight from and engagement with thinkers of the past, even unfashionable ones. Freud did not find the Greeks or Shakespeare out of date, nor did Jung dismiss the gnostics and alchemists as obsolete.
As far as whether Freud and Jung’s ideas can be adequately presented in contemporary discourse, my sense (not having exhaustive examples to draw upon) is that the internet is a decidedly mixed bag in this respect. On the one hand, there are no shortage of deeply informative podcasts, lectures (such as This Jungian Life, Jungianthology, Jungarchademy, etc. etc.) . On the other hand, there are countless more people who are exposed to Freud and Jung’s ideas via a pithy quote in their Facebook feed. Furthermore, the internet has created a cottage industry of content creators who may selectively incorporate Freud or Jung into their work in a way that dilutes or distorts the essence of their ideas. (A friend of mine recently brought to my attention the fact that a large percentage of the content on the internet purporting to espouse Jung’s ideas is catered towards men, often glorifying the archetype of the hero and the warrior).
Ultimately, the continued relevance and impact of Freud and Jung’s work depends less upon how or where people are exposed to it and more upon an individual’s receptivity and capacity to give their work the time and attention it requires to come alive (not an insubstantial task, as we all are finding out!).
Jung, C. G. (1977). C. G. Jung Speaking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.