And didn't Jung also speak to the hazards of trying to adopt a foreign system of symbols that isn't supported by one's culture? And isn't mysticism more strongly supported in Eastern religious systems?
Those who peg Jung as a mystic might not be considering the extent to which one can only measure themselves in a mirror well-fashioned and available. It is easy to seem like a mystic in an un-mystical or anti-mystical culture.
Hi Sealchan,
The whole "Was Jung a Mystic?" issue is an old one. Freudians began accusing Jung of being a mystic as soon as Freud and Jung had their falling out. Academic culture has been significantly influenced by Freud (but not much by Jung), and perhaps this has encouraged the reputation of Jung-as-mystic to spread. As frustrating and problematic as that may be, at least as great a problem (especially because this one Jungians can actually do something about) is that Jungians and quasi-Jungians have often
embraced Jung as a mystic (even as Jung constantly demurred . . . at least publicly). In essence, many (classical and New Age) Jungians have been in unwitting collusion with Freudians on this issue. Many who are drawn to Jung want "religion" from him or some kind of religious revitalization. Jung then becomes a kind of prophet.
The much more complicated reality (as I have argued for it) is that Jung was not a mystic . . . not because he had no mystical or religious/prophetic inclinations (he certainly did), but because he did not follow the traditional path of the mystic that requires extensive dissolution of the ego and surrender to the Other/unconscious/God/etc. Very, very clearly, in all of Jung's relevant writings (including and especially the Red Book, a supposed mystical text), Jung opposed this mystical tradition in favor of "ego strengthening" and a kind of compromised "stand-off" between ego and autonomous psyche/Other. At the same time he consistently criticized egoic inflation and false identifications of the ego with the hero who could "conquer" the unconscious.
That is, his position was extremely subtle and complex (and in my opinion very poorly understood by Jungians and critics of Jungianism alike). He did not shun the autonomous Other of the psyche (i.e., the unconscious). He wanted passionately to know it and to understand and draw out its value and meaning. But he feared that anything resembling "surrender" to this Other would result in a loss of selfhood and become a possession and a psychotic breakdown. The "transcendence" and growth of the individuating ego (in Jung's conception) was a factor of its ability to stand in oppositional dialog with the psychic Other. But despite this dialog, that Other (epitomized by the anima for Jung, which stood as representative of the unconscious) was to be
emotionally resisted and understood as seductive, hungry, even greedy for ego possession.
His stance toward the Other can be thought of as something like the stance of a person with strong prejudices against a particular ethnic minority that he still lives in close proximity with. He values cooperation with and tolerance of this other, even sees value in some of that others beliefs and attitudes. But this tolerance (although an ethical stance in general) only extends so far. He doesn't want his daughter to run off and marry that other. As long as there is no "interbreeding", noble tolerance is maintained and prized. But the threat of an intimacy with the other that might more deeply change the self/ego is too much and will be staunchly resisted.
If one studies Jung's characterizations of all kinds of others (from the anima/unconscious to Jews to women to blacks to children to primitives . . . and even to Eastern mystics) one finds that this particular stance of noble tolerance of the other but resistance to transformative intimacy with it is entirely consistent throughout all of Jung's works and relationships. And this is saying something very notable, because Jung was hardly ever consistent on anything. Discovering consistencies in Jung should, I feel, be taken as facilitations of leaps forward in Jungian thought (whether we decide to extend or contradict these consistencies).
A true mystic, by contrast, "marries" the Other in some way and is "possessed" and transformed by this Otherness. Jungian psychology simply doesn't go there . . . not experientially, at least. It has nothing useful to say about these transformations, because it devoutly resists them. In fact, Jung was only willing to see such mysticisms as expressions of mental illness . . . which is why when he was confronted with what I call "initiation hunger or initiation disease", he became terribly afraid of "going mad" as well as being seen as such. Although that response is quite common during initiation disease, and it's true that many people are unable to process these feelings and changes and do "lose" and fail to recover themselves . . . Jung was a rare breed because he managed to develop a systematic response that preserved sanity without radically compartmentalizing or splintering his psyche.
But his solution was to strike a posture that hardly anyone can emulate: this very subtle tolerance/resistance to the autonomous psyche. The so-called holding of the tension of the Opposites. I believe he managed this only by identifying with the "Great Man" fantasy . . . or what he himself called the mana-personality (epitomized by Philemon). Throughout his life, he moved through a succession of identifications with Great Man figures. Previously, it was Siegfried and Faust. What came after Philemon was less clear . . . but there is no indication in his late writing that he shook off the identification completely (even as he put some chinks in its armor).
But we don't live on that still surging wave of high modernism. We postmoderns have a hard time identifying as Great Men (or Great Women . . . something Jung's very patriarchal fantasy doesn't even bother to consider). We are more concerned with deconstructing fantasies of greatness. So even the barely attainable fantasy of Jung as a kind of Samson with a hand on each pillar of the Opposites (stuck there because of the wily seduction of a woman, of course) is unavailable to us. Even if it were, it is still an illusion and not an ideal stance toward the autonomous psyche. It is still founded in prejudices against the Other and not really fit for the postmodern, increasingly diverse world. It is not cooperative and sympathetic enough.
What remains of this Great Man complex is a lingering inflation in the Jungian mindset that is not well recognized or understood. But what is especially interesting when reevaluating Jung's stance toward the autonomous psyche as I have been trying to do is that although neither a real mystic nor a complete fraud and impostor nor a terrible bigot, Jung's experiments with the unconscious do resemble a stance that remains viable today. Namely, that of the scientist, who studies data experimentally without necessarily meaning to profit from it directly (i.e., commodify it) or to condemn it. The scientist seeks neutrality and detachment from the object of study. This attitude has its flaws, but scientifically it remains as sound or sounder than any other approach. Jung's consistent claims to being a scientist do have merit when looked at in this way.
He was more scientist than he was either mystic or bigot. Yet it is this scientific approach to Jungianism that has no Jungian tradition to continue it. Classical Jungianism has always been more concerned with following Jung-the-prophet on a religious journey of faith-seeking . . . which involves a dogmatic preservation of Jungian thought as "wisdom teachings" and Jung as spiritual culture hero. Other schools of Jungianism react against that in various ways, but fail to comprehend just exactly why it is deeply inappropriate. That is, they fail to comprehend that Jung was doing a kind of experimental science. From the progress of our contemporary perspective, we might call Jung's efforts "proto-scientific". But that is looking at Jung's experiments from a historical perspective (as one might look back at alchemy).
I've recently read a few books on alchemy and chemistry from historians (and non-Jungians) who argue (convincingly and abundantly) that there was no actual divide between alchemy and chemistry (William R. Newman, Lawrence Principe, and Bruce Moran). This supposed "scientific revolution" that clearly separated the two was a fantasy written back into history by proponents of scientific rationalism in the 19th and 20th centuries and then taken as dogma by subsequent scholars of the history of chemistry. In other words, much of the experimental foundations of modern chemistry derives very clearly from alchemical experimentation done in the attempt to make alchemical gold or simply to make gold alloys through various ancient (and still used) forms of metallurgy.
Likewise, Jung's "proto-science" of analytical psychology only appears "proto-scientific" because no one has continued the scientific or experimental tradition of Jung over the last 60 years. But Jung cannot be blamed for this (not entirely, at least). Jung's efforts where scientifically viable and reasonable. Some of his hypotheses are now easily understood as wrong, but science is filled with erroneous hypotheses. What makes science science is not a flawless history of guessing, but the dedicated attempts to keep assessing and retesting these guesses, refining them and redefining them as necessary. That hasn't been done in Jungian thought. But this is not a failure of Jung . . . and that Jung was wrong about such and such matters little . . . unless of course one judges Jung on the validity of his "prophecies".
Taken as a scientist, though, Jung's errors only help inform future experiments . . . all the more so because even though erroneous, they were reasonable and logical attempts to explain actual data. Only in a religious context must theories be either believed or disbelieved because either true or false. Science tests and learns. So I find this abandonment of a scientific/experimental tradition in Jungianism extremely regrettably. It more than anything else is responsible for a lack of growth and perhaps even the relative ostracization from mainstream academic thought that currently plagues Jungianism.
But so long as we get stuck in the trap of debating whether Jung was a "true mystic" or "false mystic", we fail. Both answers are wrong and perpetuate a great loss and lack in Jungian thought.