WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.000 This is KZSU Stanford. 00:00:02.000 --> 00:00:18.080 In one of the very first episodes of entitled opinions, back in 2005, I talked about the 00:00:18.080 --> 00:00:24.000 difference between knowledge and self-knowledge, between an objective understanding of nature 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:27.440 and a subjective understanding of the human psyche. 00:00:29.600 --> 00:00:34.720 It dismates me as much today as it did back then that governments and corporations 00:00:34.720 --> 00:00:39.840 invest billions upon billions of dollars in scientific research every year, 00:00:39.840 --> 00:00:47.200 yet commit only a tiny and diminishing fraction of that to advance the cause of self-knowledge. 00:00:47.200 --> 00:00:53.200 In today's show, we're going to discuss the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. 00:00:53.200 --> 00:00:57.920 So let's hear what he had to say on this topic back in the 40s and 50s. 00:00:59.280 --> 00:01:04.800 I quote Jung, "Everything possible had been done for the outside world. 00:01:04.800 --> 00:01:09.200 Science has been refined to an almost unimaginable extent. 00:01:09.200 --> 00:01:15.440 Technical achievement has reached an almost uncanny degree of perfection." 00:01:15.440 --> 00:01:23.520 But what of man who is expected to administer all these blessings in a reasonable way? 00:01:25.120 --> 00:01:31.360 No one has stopped to consider that neither morally nor psychologically is he in any way 00:01:31.360 --> 00:01:32.960 adapted to such changes. 00:01:32.960 --> 00:01:37.840 Man has come to be man's worst enemy. 00:01:37.840 --> 00:01:45.040 It is a clash between man and God in which man's luciferian genius 00:01:45.040 --> 00:01:51.360 has produced the power to destroy more effectively than any ancient God could. 00:01:52.960 --> 00:01:57.440 We must begin to learn more about man until every Jekyll can see his hide. 00:01:57.440 --> 00:02:08.960 Another quote, "Nowadays the world hangs by a thin thread and that thin thread is the psyche of man. 00:02:08.960 --> 00:02:17.680 We are the great danger. The psyche is the great danger. But we know nothing about the psyche. 00:02:18.480 --> 00:02:22.320 Nothing. Man himself is the greatest threat to man. 00:02:22.320 --> 00:02:28.480 For the simple reason that there is no adequate protection against psychic epidemics, 00:02:28.480 --> 00:02:33.760 which are infinitely more devastating than the worst natural catastrophes." 00:02:33.760 --> 00:02:42.400 What has become ever more clear since Jung wrote that is that our failure to know ourselves 00:02:42.400 --> 00:02:47.040 impacts our knowledge of as well as our relation to the natural world. 00:02:48.800 --> 00:02:52.720 The more we unlock its secrets, the more we detach ourselves from nature, 00:02:52.720 --> 00:03:00.480 and the more we detach ourselves from nature, the more ominous becomes the threat of human self-destruction. 00:03:00.480 --> 00:03:10.160 Our runaway scientific and technological progress has eradicated what Jung called our bush soul. 00:03:11.680 --> 00:03:15.840 That is a soul in us that once connected us to the creaturely world 00:03:15.840 --> 00:03:21.040 and that once spoke to stones, springs, plants, and animals alike. 00:03:21.040 --> 00:03:28.960 According Jung again, our immediate communication with nature is gone forever 00:03:28.960 --> 00:03:34.880 and the emotional energy it generated has sunk into the unconscious. 00:03:34.880 --> 00:03:40.480 This enormous loss is compensated by the symbols of our dreams. 00:03:42.400 --> 00:03:50.880 Jung believed that only by delving into the depths of our unconscious and interpreting the symbols 00:03:50.880 --> 00:03:58.480 that have sedimented there can become to know and hence come to terms with the psychic forces 00:03:58.480 --> 00:04:05.600 that haunt us, that agitate deep within us, and that when excessively repressed can provoke 00:04:05.600 --> 00:04:13.520 the world destroying psychic epidemics behind the two world wars, the holocaust, the adamant hydrogen 00:04:13.520 --> 00:04:17.600 bombs, and any number of collective catastrophes to come. 00:04:17.600 --> 00:04:26.480 On today's show, my colleague Laura Whitman is going to help us think about how and why Carl Jung 00:04:26.480 --> 00:04:33.200 felt that it was necessary to undertake a catabassus that is to say a descent into the 00:04:33.200 --> 00:04:41.120 underworld of the unconscious in order to confront the buried, darker, and even pre-historical 00:04:41.120 --> 00:04:45.680 psychic forces that have accumulated there over long durations. 00:04:45.680 --> 00:04:52.320 What is the unconscious? What are its primary symbols and archetypes? 00:04:52.320 --> 00:04:57.520 Are dreams the main portals into the self's underworld? 00:04:59.120 --> 00:05:03.680 These are questions I will be putting to Laura Whitman, who is a professor of literature in the 00:05:03.680 --> 00:05:10.320 Department of French and Italian here at Stanford. Laura is a widely published author whose recent 00:05:10.320 --> 00:05:15.200 work has led her into the fields of psychology, mysticism, and the medical humanities. 00:05:15.200 --> 00:05:21.280 She has not only been a frequent guest on this show, she is the one who joined me in the very first 00:05:21.280 --> 00:05:27.600 episode of entitled opinions back in September 2005. It's a pleasure to welcome her back. 00:05:27.600 --> 00:05:31.680 Laura, thanks for joining us again here in the catacombs of KZSU. 00:05:31.680 --> 00:05:34.320 Well, thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here again. 00:05:34.320 --> 00:05:41.360 I mentioned that Jung really believed in the need for a catabassus or descent. 00:05:41.360 --> 00:05:50.160 However, that kind of descent into the unconscious can only be undertaken by the single individual. 00:05:50.160 --> 00:05:56.960 I think he believed with the guidance perhaps of the psychotherapist. 00:05:58.000 --> 00:06:02.640 I think it's crucial to keep in mind that although Jung is famous for his idea of the collective 00:06:02.640 --> 00:06:09.280 unconscious, he was firmly committed to the centrality of the individual in psychotherapy. 00:06:09.280 --> 00:06:14.480 There is no such thing as collective therapy for him. Again, if I get him right, 00:06:14.480 --> 00:06:20.400 Jung also felt that he could not help his patients get in touch with their own unconscious selves unless 00:06:20.400 --> 00:06:28.880 he himself first went to the deepest levels of his own psyche, which he in fact did between the years 00:06:28.880 --> 00:06:37.120 1914 and 1930. He really did go all the way down, recording the extended journey and what came to be 00:06:37.120 --> 00:06:44.080 known as his the Red Book. The Red Book only got published half a century after his death in 2009. 00:06:44.080 --> 00:06:49.120 You and I both think that it occupies a central place in Jung's development. So why don't we 00:06:49.920 --> 00:06:55.360 start by putting it in some sort of context? What was going on in Jung's life and career 00:06:55.360 --> 00:07:03.360 before 1914 that led him to resolve upon this voluntary descent into what some people view as a 00:07:03.360 --> 00:07:08.800 form of madness in fact? Yeah, that's a great question and I think it's important to realize 00:07:08.800 --> 00:07:15.040 Jung had been working as a psychotherapist for quite some time and he was working with 00:07:15.680 --> 00:07:22.160 mainly schizophrenic patients and he had come to collaborate with a number of people, Jeane and of course 00:07:22.160 --> 00:07:29.600 most famously Freud, but in this moment around 1912 or 13, he really became convinced that his 00:07:29.600 --> 00:07:36.560 patients ran as it were, contained this powerful symbolic message and that there was a whole 00:07:36.560 --> 00:07:42.560 world that was being revealed in what they were saying and that's really what led him to start 00:07:42.560 --> 00:07:48.160 thinking about the collective unconscious and how he himself might experience it more directly and I 00:07:48.160 --> 00:07:54.160 want to say I think very important is to go back and realize that this was a very transgressive 00:07:54.160 --> 00:08:01.600 idea to try to derive meaning from what these patients were saying and at the time what we know 00:08:01.600 --> 00:08:09.120 as psychoanalysis and psychotherapy was still very much in the air and it was very dangerous for 00:08:09.120 --> 00:08:19.040 Jung to undertake this exploration of what indeed could be considered psychotic material so yeah. 00:08:19.040 --> 00:08:25.840 So in other words the assumption that it was all nonsensical gibberish and not in any way 00:08:25.840 --> 00:08:32.320 revelatory of some deeper pattern underneath or even the assumption you know I think Freud was 00:08:32.320 --> 00:08:38.320 working his way or discussing the whole idea of certain very clear patterns that might be revealed 00:08:38.320 --> 00:08:44.240 patterns of repression and repressed material returning and I think Jung felt that this was both 00:08:44.240 --> 00:08:53.120 two systematic that everyone would have the same patterns be revealed and to authoritative for 00:08:53.120 --> 00:09:00.160 materials that for Jung came from much deeper than where Freud was looking so he was thinking about 00:09:00.160 --> 00:09:08.240 prehistoric genetic anthropological elements and so he looked at world religions to 00:09:08.240 --> 00:09:14.000 find connections to what his patients were saying so much broader sort of reservoir. 00:09:14.000 --> 00:09:20.160 Yeah well we can discuss later I don't want to get into the polemics of my kind of views on whether 00:09:20.160 --> 00:09:26.480 this assumption of his that there was something that lent itself to a hermeneusus in this 00:09:26.480 --> 00:09:35.280 psychotic discourse of his patients actually bore fruit in terms of legibility of neurosis. 00:09:36.320 --> 00:09:41.280 Now as I understand it around this time his relationship to Freud he started getting slowly 00:09:41.280 --> 00:09:46.480 disenchanted I don't know if it was a sudden thing or a gradual thing but Freud was also developing 00:09:46.480 --> 00:09:58.640 his theory of the unconscious very reductive in some ways to the nuclear family you know mommy and 00:09:58.640 --> 00:10:07.120 daddy sexual edible complexes and so forth and I I gather that Jung felt that that was limiting 00:10:07.120 --> 00:10:13.520 the very concept of the unconscious and was putting it a little bit of a straight jacket, right? 00:10:13.520 --> 00:10:20.800 Absolutely and I think he felt that the it hit we was almost becoming a requirement to fit 00:10:20.800 --> 00:10:28.240 dream material for instance into this kind of scenario the sort of early family scenario and 00:10:29.360 --> 00:10:36.400 Jung was much more curious about what was going on both with his patients and very quickly in his own 00:10:36.400 --> 00:10:43.120 self right this idea that your first approach to the unconscious should really be one of extreme 00:10:43.120 --> 00:10:49.200 curiosity as well as caution but an awareness that you truly don't know right that we we have 00:10:49.200 --> 00:10:55.120 as you said in your intro gotten in a sense so far away from the instinctive and the irrational 00:10:55.120 --> 00:11:01.280 that we have very few tools to approach it except perhaps for this kind of radical openness 00:11:01.280 --> 00:11:07.280 you know and then we should talk about how he started to invent techniques for getting more in touch 00:11:07.280 --> 00:11:16.800 yes we should talk about that let's go to you know 1912-1914 does he break with Freud before he 00:11:16.800 --> 00:11:23.760 decides that he must confront the unconscious I think he has a chapter in memories dreams reflections 00:11:23.760 --> 00:11:28.960 and it is about what he did for for those years in which he was taking all these notes for 00:11:28.960 --> 00:11:34.800 the red book yeah it's um I would say that that's a hard question to answer because it's all 00:11:34.800 --> 00:11:40.720 happening at the same time and you know traditionally people talk about the book symbols and 00:11:40.720 --> 00:11:47.760 transformations of the libido that came out in 1913 as this place where he breaks with Freud by 00:11:47.760 --> 00:11:53.440 bringing up the importance of religious imagination but in fact a lot of that was added in a later 00:11:53.440 --> 00:12:00.560 addition and so it's I think it's gradual and I think it involves Jung not planning to break with 00:12:00.560 --> 00:12:07.520 Freud but truly feeling that Freudian theory was not enough and he describes feelings suspended 00:12:07.520 --> 00:12:12.960 which I think is this feeling of there's all of this unconscious material he's confronted with 00:12:12.960 --> 00:12:18.000 and he doesn't know what to do with it right and so it's it's sort of and Freud isn't 00:12:18.000 --> 00:12:22.480 is no longer providing me with the answer of what to do and now I have to figure it out on my own 00:12:22.480 --> 00:12:28.560 so it's a moment of personal crisis for himself and I think that's what leads to what we know as 00:12:28.560 --> 00:12:33.360 the red book yeah and speaking of religion you mentioned it you know Freud had a very 00:12:33.360 --> 00:12:39.120 psychoanalytic interpretation of religion in the future of an illusion it was just kind of 00:12:39.120 --> 00:12:48.000 reducing it to kind of glorified father figure in God and Jung I think believed that religions 00:12:48.000 --> 00:12:56.160 contained a lot of clues to what you call the unknown or perhaps even unknowable contents of the 00:12:56.160 --> 00:13:04.400 unconscious absolutely and he ended up after he had his own experiences sort of searching world 00:13:04.400 --> 00:13:12.160 religions and mystical traditions in order to find parallels with his own discoveries so some 00:13:12.160 --> 00:13:20.000 of his key encounters that he experienced directly in these visionary states he had he then found 00:13:20.000 --> 00:13:28.880 confirmation or corroboration parallelisms in world religions and I think the most basic 00:13:28.880 --> 00:13:35.840 one would be that in so many traditions we have a descent into the darkness or into the night 00:13:35.840 --> 00:13:40.800 a shamanic journey you could call it but it's very common right that there's this descent 00:13:40.800 --> 00:13:47.360 often through death that you have to pass through so it is a for him it was in a recurrent 00:13:47.360 --> 00:13:53.520 view of how you go into the darkness of the unconscious and you truly risk your sanity your rational 00:13:53.520 --> 00:13:59.920 self your consciousness and hopefully you come out on the other side and that other side I'm 00:13:59.920 --> 00:14:05.360 curious whether the other side was a restoration of what we ordinarily understand a sanity 00:14:06.160 --> 00:14:15.680 namely that we overcome what could be the the more deleterious potential of the contents of the 00:14:15.680 --> 00:14:21.040 deep unconscious and the irrationality and that is coming out on the other side restoration of 00:14:21.040 --> 00:14:27.920 rationality in any way or is it some sort of truce between the rational and the irrational 00:14:27.920 --> 00:14:34.400 forces of the self I think of it more as a dance than a truce but I don't think it was a 00:14:34.400 --> 00:14:42.240 re-establishment of what you had before I think the goal was to find a way to work with the fact that 00:14:42.240 --> 00:14:49.840 you are also a very irrational being and that many of your decisions desires life choices ways 00:14:49.840 --> 00:14:56.880 to resolve crises have these very deep what we would consider irrational impulses behind them and if 00:14:56.880 --> 00:15:02.400 you can learn to work with that instead of against it then I think he felt that you you have a 00:15:02.400 --> 00:15:08.480 better you know yourself better to go back to the sense of self knowledge but this self knowledge 00:15:08.480 --> 00:15:17.200 can also help you in your dealings with others. So in the red book we have really extraordinary 00:15:17.200 --> 00:15:26.240 document I as soon as it came out in 2019 I bought you know the big huge totality because it was 00:15:26.240 --> 00:15:30.880 actually being sold at an extreme discount on Amazon for some reason you could get it there for 00:15:30.880 --> 00:15:36.240 $80 so I still have this big thing that's heavy enough that I can't even bring it on and off campus 00:15:36.240 --> 00:15:46.560 and it's not just textual it's also a lot of artwork full of symbols and recounting of dreams 00:15:46.560 --> 00:15:58.320 and I take it that he was actually putting into this ledger his visions his dreams and it's hard 00:15:58.320 --> 00:16:04.160 for me to believe that anyone dreams in these kind of traditional or traditional say archaic religious 00:16:04.160 --> 00:16:12.080 symbols and I mean I've never dreamt about Dionysus or you know some sort of um you'll hire 00:16:12.080 --> 00:16:21.600 Joe yes but he seemed to be a very highly literate erudite dreamer let's put it that way yes no I mean 00:16:21.600 --> 00:16:25.920 I think first I want to back up just a little bit and say that before he started having these 00:16:25.920 --> 00:16:31.520 visions that we know as the red book which is this beautiful object his first reaction to being in 00:16:31.520 --> 00:16:38.160 crisis was to start building something like rock and sandcastles so sort of a thing that he had 00:16:38.160 --> 00:16:43.760 done as a child and I think it's important because the the building is very physical and it's very 00:16:43.760 --> 00:16:48.880 close to it's finding a reconnection with the earth that you brought up at the beginning 00:16:48.880 --> 00:16:55.120 and he described the red book itself as a cathedral so we're progressing in building but it's 00:16:55.120 --> 00:17:02.000 still sort of the same image and so the book itself records this long period of time when he would 00:17:02.000 --> 00:17:08.080 you know see patients and have regular family life during the day and then descend into this 00:17:08.080 --> 00:17:13.920 visionary state at night and he would record the visionary state and then later in transcribing it 00:17:13.920 --> 00:17:18.880 added all of these it looks like an illuminated manuscript for people who haven't seen it's very 00:17:18.880 --> 00:17:25.120 beautiful it has all of these illustrations but I think a fundamental thing here is that 00:17:25.120 --> 00:17:32.160 the visionary state that he entered it wasn't dreaming in the sense that dreaming is relatively 00:17:32.160 --> 00:17:40.960 involuntary but it was active imagination so he would seek it out these states and he talks at 00:17:40.960 --> 00:17:47.040 various points not as much as I think therapists wishes he did but he does talk about how to achieve 00:17:47.040 --> 00:17:53.360 this state and how various religious traditions have techniques for getting there so in particular 00:17:53.360 --> 00:18:01.120 there's the visual technique of if you see something that comes sort of unbidden into your mind 00:18:01.120 --> 00:18:08.800 instead of sort of ignoring it or pushing it away you try to examine it and focus on it 00:18:08.800 --> 00:18:15.600 in this very open-minded kind of way you know what more do you have to tell me and gradually 00:18:16.400 --> 00:18:23.440 enter the world of that image right and then the image can expand and talk to you now that said 00:18:23.440 --> 00:18:28.720 many therapists have pointed out that there are actually very few people who can who are good at 00:18:28.720 --> 00:18:35.120 getting into this particular state yeah it's a kind of lucid dreaming state now a little bit yes 00:18:35.120 --> 00:18:41.200 and Jung talks about in a I think an essay that deserves to be read more the transcendent function 00:18:41.200 --> 00:18:48.000 so an old essay written I believe as early as 1916 but then reworked in the 50s he talks about how 00:18:48.000 --> 00:18:54.400 there are other techniques and he includes things like automatic writing but also making sculptures 00:18:54.400 --> 00:19:01.680 or even dancing or physical movement and all these things have since then become tools for various 00:19:01.680 --> 00:19:09.600 types of psychotherapy work with the unconscious so he was clearly a very visual you know richly 00:19:09.600 --> 00:19:16.240 visual person and then also he was extraordinarily iridite on I think when he read the texts of 00:19:16.240 --> 00:19:23.520 religious traditions he was clearly pulled into them in an extraordinary way but what about 00:19:23.520 --> 00:19:31.280 patients of his who did not have his erudition and were relatively ignorant about these traditions 00:19:32.080 --> 00:19:40.720 symbolic religious and shamanic and so how would you help a patient who dreams in a completely 00:19:40.720 --> 00:19:48.560 different manner than the one that seems to promise an entry into the mysteries or the 00:19:48.560 --> 00:19:56.080 mysterious of the unconscious well I think that's where there is some system atization to Jung's 00:19:56.080 --> 00:20:02.960 thinking so let's just take an example that is more present day where often people go to psychotherapy 00:20:02.960 --> 00:20:08.240 when they have a crisis and they have a decision that is very cannot be made rationally right this is 00:20:08.240 --> 00:20:14.080 often how it's described so divorce isn't often the example but also things like having a child 00:20:14.080 --> 00:20:19.520 where you know you're going to become a different person how can you make a decision in a rational way 00:20:20.240 --> 00:20:27.120 and I think Jung in therapy tends to work with whatever medium can work for the patient so it might 00:20:27.120 --> 00:20:33.600 be images that appear in dreams it might be try to work on automatic writing which I think works 00:20:33.600 --> 00:20:41.280 better for some people than the visualization but the material doesn't have to be biblical you know 00:20:41.280 --> 00:20:47.520 it doesn't have to be salome that you encounter but I think Jung uses the categories that he derived 00:20:47.520 --> 00:20:58.320 both from his own experience and the tradition so categories like Anima, Shadow and in that sense he 00:20:58.320 --> 00:21:04.720 does use those archetype categories to connect to the material that comes from patients 00:21:04.720 --> 00:21:11.920 into those yeah and as I mentioned in the intro it's all based on the individual psyche 00:21:12.880 --> 00:21:23.760 how can we think the primacy of the individual in Jung's not only a theory of the psyche but also 00:21:23.760 --> 00:21:29.920 his social critique that he engages in quite a bit later in life especially in you know the late 00:21:29.920 --> 00:21:37.520 40s early 50s very critical and disdainful of mass society and of forms of government that 00:21:37.520 --> 00:21:43.440 treat individuals just as part of what today we would call big data and larger patterns and so 00:21:43.440 --> 00:21:49.760 forth so very focused on the centrality the individual and yet his most famous concept I think is 00:21:49.760 --> 00:21:55.520 out of the collective unconscious so does the individual psyche merely participate in the 00:21:55.520 --> 00:22:02.880 collective unconscious is why is it impossible to do a kind of collective therapy and try to get 00:22:02.880 --> 00:22:09.920 the society as a whole to understand its own pathologies at the institutional and political levels 00:22:09.920 --> 00:22:15.360 and so forth yeah I mean I think we would love the answer to that one but I think Jung's view is that 00:22:15.360 --> 00:22:25.440 the unconscious can be collective precisely because it is unconscious and what comes into consciousness 00:22:25.440 --> 00:22:33.920 is the realm of the individual right so we as individuals are that fulcrum where the unconscious material 00:22:33.920 --> 00:22:40.160 comes into contact with consciousness and I almost think of it as a contact point between 00:22:40.160 --> 00:22:46.240 consciousness and the unconscious material and each of us is a different contact point so we will 00:22:46.240 --> 00:22:52.720 have different a different experience of what that looks like so in Troy do you have the 00:22:52.720 --> 00:23:02.640 the ego is the individual and ego for you no I think the ego is part of the individual he talks about 00:23:02.640 --> 00:23:09.280 the self as being much broader much broader has to be much broader than an ego no right the ego is 00:23:09.280 --> 00:23:15.120 in a sense the the rational controlling self if you like I think he would just simply say the self 00:23:15.120 --> 00:23:21.760 that believes that all it is is the conscious mind right and but you are much more than your 00:23:21.760 --> 00:23:29.280 conscious mind and so yourself is broader and a lot of that self is created when unconscious materials 00:23:29.280 --> 00:23:38.000 connect with you and you in a sense have this decision point of what you do with those materials 00:23:38.000 --> 00:23:45.040 do you reject them or do you learn to work with them and I think the rejection it often comes from 00:23:45.040 --> 00:23:54.320 fear yes right and I just wanted to maybe read one of the passages where Jung talks about how this 00:23:54.320 --> 00:24:00.880 felt to him when when he first encountered it yeah so at the early in the red book he talks about 00:24:00.880 --> 00:24:06.720 meeting the spirit of the depths and this is how he describes it the spirit of the depths have 00:24:06.720 --> 00:24:12.640 subjugated all pride and arrogance to the power of judgment he took away my belief in science he robbed 00:24:12.640 --> 00:24:18.480 me of the joy of explaining and ordering things and he let devotion to the ideas of this time 00:24:18.480 --> 00:24:25.120 die out in me he forced me down to the last and simplest things the spirit of the depths 00:24:25.120 --> 00:24:30.000 took my understanding and all my knowledge and placed them at the service of the inexplicable 00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:35.680 and paradoxical melting together sense and nonsense which produces the supreme meaning 00:24:35.680 --> 00:24:42.400 but the supreme meaning is the path the way and the bridge of what is to come so you can feel 00:24:42.400 --> 00:24:50.400 Jung truly not wanting to let go of his rational self and discovering that he needs to make this 00:24:50.400 --> 00:24:58.480 bridge between what we might call the ego and the broader self yeah so a few months back we did a 00:24:58.480 --> 00:25:04.960 show on Peter Kingsley and the dark places of wisdom and that was more about for many days but 00:25:04.960 --> 00:25:12.480 for many days is an archetype of someone who undertakes his journey into the night to meet forces 00:25:12.480 --> 00:25:20.640 that are much deeper than that of rationality or logos and Peter Kingsley has a book called the 00:25:20.640 --> 00:25:28.960 Catafel which is some people think is like his real masterpiece in which he claims that the red 00:25:28.960 --> 00:25:34.560 book of Carl Jung is like one of the most important books of the 20th century because it was a true 00:25:34.560 --> 00:25:40.400 descent into irrationality and into madness without any banisters if you want to use that metaphor 00:25:40.400 --> 00:25:49.920 and that he has this notion of the insanity of reason and that the only way to do a proper 00:25:49.920 --> 00:25:57.200 sort of therapy for the insanity of reason is to go deep into the irrationality of these elements 00:25:57.200 --> 00:26:08.320 deep down that is a rather hard sell for me and so far as I think yes on the one hand 00:26:08.320 --> 00:26:16.480 rationality does have this tendency to translate itself into completely irrational behaviors 00:26:16.480 --> 00:26:22.320 and decisions I mean I'm thinking the World War I as a kind of collective suicide of Europe that 00:26:22.320 --> 00:26:29.040 was on the one hand perfectly rational but on the other hand I think it's not by chance that in 1914 00:26:29.040 --> 00:26:37.920 he really begins this descent because that's the kind of madness pathological symptoms in political 00:26:37.920 --> 00:26:44.320 social reality that an unmastered relationship to the unconscious can bring about 00:26:44.320 --> 00:26:49.520 and that wasn't enough and when we got World War II we have all sorts of other things and we're 00:26:49.520 --> 00:26:56.160 living in the moment of where you know we have all sorts of forces from the id that are 00:26:56.160 --> 00:27:02.880 uninhibitedly taking charge of what was what's supposed to be the controlling rational forces of 00:27:02.880 --> 00:27:08.080 the let's say the institutional ego which keeps these forces kind of in containment so 00:27:08.080 --> 00:27:14.000 how do you understand that relationship between the rational and the irrational again I'm going 00:27:14.000 --> 00:27:19.520 back to the question I asked earlier you called it a dance yeah I said it's a true so yeah I think it's 00:27:19.520 --> 00:27:25.760 crucial it is a threshold as you see yeah it's it's really fundamental and I think one part of the 00:27:25.760 --> 00:27:34.000 answer is that for you own our situation back at the time of World War I and probably even more 00:27:34.000 --> 00:27:40.560 today if you were around to see it is one where we have suppressed the irrational so much that 00:27:41.760 --> 00:27:48.960 to get it back we have to take extreme measures right and otherwise its danger has become magnified so 00:27:48.960 --> 00:27:54.480 you know this is you know maybe a bit of an aside but to some extent he felt that Christianity 00:27:54.480 --> 00:28:03.840 was responsible for developing a religion that was so fixated on only the good and in a sense 00:28:03.840 --> 00:28:10.640 eclipsing evil as a category and we can think about how by the 20th century even the existence 00:28:10.640 --> 00:28:16.240 of hell even Christians don't believe in hell right this is the sort of thing that Jung would vastly 00:28:16.240 --> 00:28:22.080 object to and sort of say we've pretended that evil is a non-existent force and this is how it 00:28:22.080 --> 00:28:28.000 becomes empowered is precisely through this pretense so we've kind of backed ourselves into a 00:28:28.000 --> 00:28:36.160 corner where the sort of dissent that we see in the red book is necessary now I don't quite agree 00:28:36.160 --> 00:28:43.440 with Kingsley that it's a complete abandoning yourself to irrational forces because Jung himself talks 00:28:43.440 --> 00:28:48.800 about how you know he had the diurnal life and the nocturnal life and he talked about how the 00:28:48.800 --> 00:28:55.280 diurnal life of seeing patients and having a family was his anchor so that he could undertake this 00:28:55.280 --> 00:29:01.920 journey and I think it's really important to remember that when we when we think about undergoing 00:29:01.920 --> 00:29:09.520 such journeys ourselves right what will our anchor be and I think this then it speaks to this question 00:29:09.520 --> 00:29:16.480 of how does this very solitary thing Jung is doing and and suggests that we should all do 00:29:16.480 --> 00:29:23.280 how does it connect us to other people I think it it is where we are more honest about our own 00:29:24.720 --> 00:29:32.000 nighttime journey and we undertake it with I dare call it something like sincerity truthfulness 00:29:32.000 --> 00:29:39.200 we come out and are able to relate to others without projecting so much of our need for rationality 00:29:39.200 --> 00:29:44.720 and goodness and control and all these other things on to other people so the two worlds balance 00:29:44.720 --> 00:29:52.960 each other out so Laura about the archetypes which is another major kind of milestone in Jungian 00:29:52.960 --> 00:30:03.280 psychology is there also the enjoinder to get in touch with the archetypes I mean do the archetypes 00:30:03.280 --> 00:30:12.560 in hair in our unconscious or are they merely the sort of condensation of many different figures 00:30:12.560 --> 00:30:21.440 in folklore legend mythology religion how do you understand Jung's concept of the archetype well I 00:30:21.440 --> 00:30:27.840 think they are this conglomeration in some case so first thing I think we can say that for Jung 00:30:27.840 --> 00:30:33.040 they could be potentially and we could always add more archetypes discover more so there's no 00:30:33.040 --> 00:30:39.120 limit to what you can find but I think some of them say the anima that we can talk about a little bit 00:30:39.120 --> 00:30:45.760 more the shadow the old white the wise old man the magician these are figures that indeed 00:30:45.760 --> 00:30:52.480 conglomerate across many traditions and times and places and psychies and so they acquire a kind of 00:30:52.480 --> 00:30:59.440 almost a kind of weight and visibility and usefulness in that they seem to be figures that we all 00:30:59.440 --> 00:31:07.600 have to encounter at some point right so the anima is often connected with the vulnerable the 00:31:07.600 --> 00:31:19.040 irrational the instinctive and the part of oneself that is in a sense shameful especially in a patriarchal 00:31:19.040 --> 00:31:25.680 culture where it's important to be strong and associated with the feminine is right right 00:31:25.680 --> 00:31:31.600 you know and I think the the magician is an interesting one I think for us to think about today 00:31:31.600 --> 00:31:36.960 the magician is sort of a passage that you go through you think that you have mastered the 00:31:36.960 --> 00:31:43.040 unconscious you have you've done your work and suddenly you find yourself feeling that you have 00:31:43.040 --> 00:31:49.120 more power and that's always a dangerous moment in shamanic journeys or mystical experiences 00:31:49.120 --> 00:31:54.080 when you think that you've you know now I now I've got it I'm under control so the magician is 00:31:54.080 --> 00:31:59.360 self-deceived well the magician you have to go through that phase of being the magician 00:31:59.360 --> 00:32:05.280 but yes to some extent the magician also has to realize that the unconscious still retains its 00:32:05.280 --> 00:32:11.600 autonomy its power you you don't control it you you can be in conversation with it but you can't just wave 00:32:11.600 --> 00:32:17.360 your hand and have it do what you want right what are some of the other major ones well I think the 00:32:17.360 --> 00:32:24.160 concept of shadow is a big one I'm not sure we could it's a very interesting archetype in the 00:32:24.160 --> 00:32:34.000 sense that the shadow is what our conscious mind is most loathe to recognize as part of ourselves 00:32:34.000 --> 00:32:41.440 so it can be lots of things depending on what aspects of yourself you find most disturbing 00:32:41.440 --> 00:32:49.120 so that's another one that's really important just union psychoanalysis involve a lot of 00:32:49.120 --> 00:32:57.040 invocation of archetypes I mean I'm curious you know in Italy for example which I know Italian 00:32:57.040 --> 00:33:03.680 Roman sighted a lot of people are into union psychoanalysis I have no idea what goes on 00:33:03.680 --> 00:33:10.720 in those sessions but I have a feeling that they're not probing you know these archetypes 00:33:10.720 --> 00:33:16.960 and connecting you know a particular patient with with his or her you know the archetypes in 00:33:16.960 --> 00:33:23.040 the unkind I think it's more a lot of self introspection and a lot of sort of discourse so I'm just 00:33:23.040 --> 00:33:30.720 curious what role it's supposed to play in therapy if any yeah I mean I think it's it's the role of 00:33:30.720 --> 00:33:38.400 catalyst so you might read the red book and find it inspiring or disturbing or find some of the 00:33:38.400 --> 00:33:44.480 figures intriguing and that could catalyze your own imagination but I think Jung was you know a firm 00:33:44.480 --> 00:33:54.640 believer in not providing specific figures that you should hope to encounter in your own therapy right so 00:33:54.640 --> 00:34:01.680 in a sense the idea is that all of us would develop our own personal mythology so you might encounter 00:34:01.680 --> 00:34:11.760 some figures that recur in the mythologies of various traditions but I think he felt that it was 00:34:11.760 --> 00:34:18.000 much more valuable if people could develop their own right so I think that's part of what goes on in 00:34:18.000 --> 00:34:24.720 analysis so in Freudian psychoanalysis there's a kind of end point there's there's this kind of 00:34:24.720 --> 00:34:31.920 promise that if you follows the right trajectory you will end up you know transferring a great 00:34:31.920 --> 00:34:38.400 deal onto this and that you will finally cure whatever sort of neurosis comes from the 00:34:38.400 --> 00:34:44.080 relation traumatic relations you had with your parents and early childhood or infancy what is the end 00:34:44.080 --> 00:34:50.480 point for you I mean he believed in an integrated psyche I think right and that integrated psyche also 00:34:50.480 --> 00:35:01.040 had I suppose maintain some kind of opposition you know the coincidence of opposites and so forth 00:35:01.040 --> 00:35:08.000 yeah yeah I think that the end point was the point where you yourself would be able to undertake 00:35:08.000 --> 00:35:13.200 on a regular basis this reconnection with the unconscious you could do it yourself 00:35:13.200 --> 00:35:18.720 I think that was really the end point and we can think about Jung himself after he stopped writing 00:35:18.720 --> 00:35:24.880 in the red book or in his black books and then the red book he a few years later started building 00:35:24.880 --> 00:35:32.000 what became his home the tower that was a stone initially one stone tower that he built you know with 00:35:32.000 --> 00:35:38.160 his own hands which is quite an undertaking and there were four different buildings and then a fifth 00:35:38.160 --> 00:35:45.280 one that was a second floor and he described this work as another version of creating the red book 00:35:45.280 --> 00:35:50.720 right a trace of his own going into the depths and I think that really speaks to what you were 00:35:50.720 --> 00:35:58.320 saying at the beginning about coming into this very visceral contact with the earth yes you know he 00:35:58.320 --> 00:36:05.840 he dug stones out of the ground and out of the lake nearby and this was very significant for 00:36:05.840 --> 00:36:11.440 his construction and for the way he wanted to live his day to day life yeah you see that aspect of 00:36:11.440 --> 00:36:18.480 his thought appeals to me a lot more because I can imagine the problem I have with the unconscious 00:36:18.480 --> 00:36:25.680 is that it's something within a human psyche and that it's not the earth it's not in the actual 00:36:25.680 --> 00:36:34.560 humus where the dead have been buried where our relation to animals and natural elements it can be 00:36:34.560 --> 00:36:40.560 fire water all these things which never become archetypes are in because his archetypes are I think 00:36:40.560 --> 00:36:51.680 mostly human personifications but this idea that you could actually rediscover your kinship with the 00:36:51.680 --> 00:37:00.480 the creatures of the natural world animate and inanimate that promises a kind of larger 00:37:01.840 --> 00:37:11.920 integration of the human and the natural that would maybe indicate a deeper understanding of what 00:37:11.920 --> 00:37:21.360 sanity actually consists in. Yeah I agree I mean I think your direction is a very Jungian one in 00:37:21.360 --> 00:37:30.080 the sense that he saw the connection we could make by accepting our unconscious selves as a deeper and 00:37:30.080 --> 00:37:39.680 deeper connection to the earth to who we are in an embedded in a world right and I think that he talks 00:37:39.680 --> 00:37:46.800 about the Anima that we described as you know that if you like your vulnerable self the young woman 00:37:46.800 --> 00:37:52.160 the image that we encounter often in Jungian text but he connects it to the Anima Mundi which is I 00:37:52.160 --> 00:37:58.400 know something you've thought about a lot and maybe I can read a quote from the very end of his 00:37:58.400 --> 00:38:03.120 memories dreams and reflections where I think it comes across the sort of expansiveness 00:38:03.120 --> 00:38:10.320 and ultimately optimism about how you know what we will find if we delve into the unconscious 00:38:10.320 --> 00:38:16.640 so this is what he writes whatever the learned interpretation may be of the sentence God is love 00:38:16.640 --> 00:38:22.400 the words affirm the complexio positorum of the Godhead so the opposition the 00:38:22.400 --> 00:38:28.320 Bunion of opposites of the Godhead in my medical experience as well as in my own life I have again and 00:38:28.320 --> 00:38:33.040 again been faced with the mystery of love and have never been able to explain what it is 00:38:33.040 --> 00:38:39.680 here is the greatest and the smallest the remotest and the nearest the highest and the lowest 00:38:39.680 --> 00:38:45.200 and we cannot discuss one side of it without also discussing the other for we are in the deepest 00:38:45.200 --> 00:38:51.680 sense the victims and the instruments of cosmogonic love being a part man cannot grasp the whole 00:38:51.680 --> 00:38:58.800 he is at its mercy man can try to name love showering upon it all the names at his command and he 00:38:58.800 --> 00:39:05.200 still will involve himself in endless self-deceptions if he possesses a grain of wisdom he will lay 00:39:05.200 --> 00:39:12.240 down his arms and name the unknown by the more unknown in yotum pet in yotus that is by the name 00:39:12.240 --> 00:39:18.400 of God that is a confession of his subjection his imperfection and his dependence but at the same 00:39:18.400 --> 00:39:25.920 time a testimony to his freedom to choose between truth and error okay he mentions their God sometimes 00:39:25.920 --> 00:39:35.600 it sounds like you was trying to resurrect a traditional notion of God at other times he seems to 00:39:35.600 --> 00:39:40.400 suggest that certainly the Judeo Christian notion of a God is not doing justice to all the 00:39:40.400 --> 00:39:47.440 different divinities which are kind of multiplied and diversified in and to kind of pantheon of 00:39:47.440 --> 00:39:55.920 you know different figures so was he a believer in the traditional religious sense I think he was 00:39:55.920 --> 00:40:05.200 a believer in not of in any one specific religion but in the pursuit of as he puts it in the 00:40:05.200 --> 00:40:14.000 red book right the the birth of the new god and I think he considered the task of modern humanity 00:40:14.000 --> 00:40:24.240 to be to overcome the way institutionalized religions tend to objectify the divine reify it turn 00:40:24.240 --> 00:40:31.920 it into an object and he I think wanted the sort of religion that is about you know he uses the 00:40:31.920 --> 00:40:38.240 word the way I think I quoted it earlier right so it's about this constant re bridging of the gap 00:40:38.240 --> 00:40:44.880 with the Animamundi with the world with others with one's own unconscious with the collective unconscious 00:40:44.880 --> 00:40:52.080 so it's a process rather than an object and so the process is going to be different for each person 00:40:52.080 --> 00:41:01.200 I'm also very curious about his importance for the counterculture of the 60s and the and he 00:41:01.200 --> 00:41:10.800 really is the guru of the psychedelic age and people you know belonging to those traditions 00:41:10.800 --> 00:41:21.040 found in him their major spokesperson no what was this connect is it one that is substantial enough 00:41:21.040 --> 00:41:26.560 to say that it was like Herbert Marchecoose era of uncivilization he's had a Jungian 00:41:26.560 --> 00:41:31.600 Texan spirit and his relation to the psychedelic I mean there's nothing more psychedelic to me than 00:41:31.600 --> 00:41:36.240 the red book when you look at that and it's completely psychedelic yeah agreed agreed and I think 00:41:36.240 --> 00:41:40.000 even though the red book of course wasn't out and they didn't have access to it they read 00:41:40.000 --> 00:41:45.680 memories dreams and reflections which I think you know coming out in 57 was you know perfectly 00:41:45.680 --> 00:41:53.360 poised to be ready for the psychedelic movement and it contains a lot of things people have described 00:41:53.360 --> 00:41:59.040 the red book as a psychoactive substance right so you take you absorb it and it catalyzes a journey 00:41:59.040 --> 00:42:07.200 that is your own journey and I think people found Jung's willingness to use a symbolic language 00:42:07.200 --> 00:42:15.040 to describe what was happening to him that is borrowed his eclecticism right his mix of west and east 00:42:15.040 --> 00:42:23.200 was very resonant I think with the 60s thinking and so there are certain even images from his work 00:42:23.200 --> 00:42:28.800 that have remained fundamental like this dream where he he feels that he is being dreamed by a yogi 00:42:28.800 --> 00:42:34.320 who is asleep you know this is a very famous one that has stayed with the psychedelic movement 00:42:34.320 --> 00:42:40.320 and I think there are some deep truths in it in the sense that the psychedelic movement itself was 00:42:40.320 --> 00:42:47.280 doing something very Jungian in terms of questioning the excesses of rationality that we started off 00:42:47.280 --> 00:42:52.400 with right so they were right right this was an era when a lot of the environmental crisis that 00:42:52.400 --> 00:42:59.040 we have now for instance was already quite visible and on the radar and no one wanted to see it right 00:42:59.040 --> 00:43:05.840 and they were really trying to point the finger so I think that was very much in the spirit of Jung 00:43:05.840 --> 00:43:12.480 then of course like any anything that becomes very popular I think some Jungian concept have become 00:43:12.480 --> 00:43:18.080 very watered down like you know like the shadow I think is it's hard to say even what that means 00:43:18.080 --> 00:43:24.640 anymore at some point but but it's beautiful what they did with Jung I think in general okay so 00:43:24.640 --> 00:43:31.280 last question Laura so our show and you don't have to answer it but I am curious would you call 00:43:31.280 --> 00:43:38.160 yourself a Jungian if so why yes would I call myself a Jungian well you know he didn't want 00:43:38.160 --> 00:43:45.840 disciples but yes I think I would call myself a Jungian and I think I would because I believe we 00:43:46.720 --> 00:43:50.800 well because I grew up learning about world religions all of them and watching people 00:43:50.800 --> 00:43:57.120 invent their faith it's hard not to when you travel the world and you see how people actually 00:43:57.120 --> 00:44:02.960 live out different religions they stop being these systems on paper and they start being 00:44:02.960 --> 00:44:09.360 far more irrational but also very effective and I found that I found that absolutely fascinating 00:44:09.360 --> 00:44:14.720 and profoundly real I feel like it says something about my own life and how you know I'm always 00:44:14.720 --> 00:44:20.000 cobbling together reasons to believe whatever I believe in that are made up of my own 00:44:20.000 --> 00:44:25.760 you know my own background my what what I've experienced so I think in that sense I am very much 00:44:25.760 --> 00:44:32.800 a Jungian well that's very reassuring because if you're the outcome of a Jungian spirit then 00:44:32.800 --> 00:44:39.600 then it's all for the good well I'm honored thank you on a reminder our listeners we've been 00:44:39.600 --> 00:44:44.080 speaking with Professor Laura Whitman from my own department of French and Italian here at Stanford 00:44:44.640 --> 00:44:52.240 and the very first guest in the very first episode back in 2005 so always a pleasure Laura thanks 00:44:52.240 --> 00:44:59.280 for coming on thank you I'm Robert Harrison for entitled opinions thanks for listening 00:45:14.640 --> 00:45:41.760 take the highway to the end of the night you ain't got trying to go right midnight the night and of the night 00:45:43.440 --> 00:45:54.480 realms of lives some of them just we did 00:45:54.480 --> 00:46:08.960 some of them just we did like some of them to the end of the night 00:46:13.440 --> 00:46:23.440 one of them the one of them the one of them the one. 00:46:43.440 --> 00:46:53.440 [Music] 00:47:13.440 --> 00:47:23.440 [Music] 00:47:43.440 --> 00:47:46.480 [MUSIC PLAYING]