Tricksters, Shamans, and Charlatans and the Jungian TribeAs a very strong and revisionary critic of Jung and all schools of Jungianism myself, I feel I understand this. It is something I have tried to analyze painstakingly in my own rhetoric. I constantly ask questions of my own drive to critique and revise Jungian thought. I ask what the nature of my relationship and desired relationship is toward Jung and toward Jungianism. I have had a number of pivotal dreams that portray my deep concern and identity entanglement with Jungianism and the very issues I see emerging from Giegerich's rhetoric.
I am critical of Giegerich because I feel his rhetoric and ideas do not show adequate signs of the kinds of self-examinations I have attempted to undertake (and have found essential to maintaining a psychological perspective on the motivations and rhetoric of strong, "revolutionary" criticism). I don't pretend to have this kind of self-analysis perfectly figured out, and I am not prepared to offer an ideal model for how it should be done. But I have learned a few of the "tricks" and themes. And, as any psychologist (or student of psychology) should be, I am fascinated with the psychology of the critical, reformative, constructive (healing?), and destructive motivations involved in the acts of dissent, critique, transformation and reform. In fact, I find these motifs (perhaps archetypes?) of transition and transformation crucial to the understanding of the individuation process. And I see the critic/visionary/re-visionary/reformer as an "archetypal" personality state (in regard to a dynamic process) within the context of tribe and identity (see some of my accumulating essays on tribe and identity
here).
These tribal personality states are connected with other more familiar Jungian archetypes, namely, the hero (especially what I call the valuating hero, or shaman archetype) and the trickster. The shaman and the trickster are two points on the same archetypal continuum. In some ways they are extremely similar, but in other ways, they are (or can seem) polar opposites.
As much as I criticize Wolfgang Giegerich for what I feel are partly personally motivated (and perhaps unexamined) orientations toward Jung and Jungianism, I do not mean to fault him for getting mixed up with the energizing and pattern conforming archetype/s of the shaman/trickster. I suspect that any revisionary or reformer or strong critic (of one's own tribe) must have some variation of a distinct and powerfully compelling relationship to these archetypal structures and dynamics. It is not merely that one is "possessed by the archetype" . . . and therefore that one should strive to disentangle oneself form it in the name of psychic health and "egoic autonomy". As above, I disagree with Jung on precisely how the relationship between the ego and the autonomous psyche works . . . and best works.
That Giegerich is infused with the pattern and drive of the tribal trickster is not, in my mind, either a problem or a defect of his personal psychology or his psychological theories. It's an inevitable expression of the relationship between an individual and his or her tribe in a certain typical state. That is, it is the property or state of a dynamic system. It is not a moral issue, not "bad" or "good", "right" or "wrong", healthy or unhealthy, "conscious" or "unconscious", "individuated" or "un-individuated". It is neither neurotic nor psychotic. It is merely a property of a particular situation.
It is how, precisely, we relate to the dynamics and inevitable structures of this situation that contributes to issues of mental health and self-awareness. For instance, it would come as no surprise to the average Jungian that a total lack of awareness of the structure and dynamics of the trickster pattern when one finds oneself forced into relationship with that pattern is more likely to lead to a "problematic" relationship with the trickster. Such a lack of awareness is more likely to lead to destructive "acting out" of trickster pattern characteristics.
Yet it would be wrong to assume that the relationship with the trickster can or should be avoided in all situations . . . and it would be even worse to believe and insist that one who finds him or herself in relationship to the trickster pattern should be able to act as though that relationship didn't involve the compulsive force of certain affects, attitudes, or acts, or that the suppression of these compulsions was a "good" or constituted some sign of "egoic health". That no more demonstrates egoic health than one who is "in love" (another dynamic pattern) would demonstrate health by acting cold, disinterested and cruel toward one's lover.
With Giegerich, the presence of the trickster pattern is not inherently bad or pathological. In fact, I think it is a tremendous asset. It may even be an expression of Giegerich's acute "sensitivity" to the psychodynamics of the Jungian tribe and identity. In other words, one who is "sensitive" or well-attuned to the "soul" (of the tribe) is likely to feel and be inclined to channel some aspect of a "soul dynamic". The trickster has a very poor reputation among Jungians. It's almost a dirty word (and I wonder if this is due to a prejudice/ignorance of Western civilization in which Jungians partake, where trickster figures play no essential roles as they do in tribal cultures . . . for example, in traditional African and Native American tribal cultures).
I feel the trickster should be understood as an expression of the Self (as opposed to, say, of the "shadow"). The trickster is a representation of the dynamic dissolving aspect of the Self system. Where a system (like the psyche) is fed with a constant and abundant stream of information that must be sorted, filtered, and organized, static arrangements of information will accumulate and eventually become obstacles to the dynamic principle of organization on which the whole system operates. Those static or ossified arrays will have to be dissolved in order for the system to function optimally.
This ossification of informational arrays is par for the course of egoic operation and development. The ego depends on keeping its essential organizational information in efficient scripts that can be quickly called up and implemented. The collection of the most frequently used scripts constitutes a significant portion of our selfhood. But due to the nature of the formulation and use of these scripts, over time and in changing situations, the subroutines that rely on these scripts can end up using them dysfunctionally or non-adaptively . . . picking the wrong (or at least less ideal) tool, by force of habit, for a particular job of processing information. The systemic principle of organization (i.e., the Self) has to therefore have a mechanism for breaking down old, inefficient, or obsolete scripts. That mechanism need not be sophisticated. For most things, good old pressure build up will do the trick.
If that Self principle could be assigned a representational persona and narrative pattern of action, it could be the trickster. That is, the trickster is one of the primary emergent patterns of such dissolution . . . specifically where cultural mores and habits that become ossified are concerned. Where culture is fairly functional and/or pliable and well-related to the Self principle, the dissolving agent could be a devouring animal or monster, some kind of sacrificer or ritually wounding initiator . . . or equally, a guide, psychopomp, mentor, or an animi figure or lover/partner. But the trickster is more likely to be a chaotic or instinctual/appetitive force that radically defies a tribe's mores, maybe even destroying the calm stasis of society in either crude or very creative ways (whereas with an animi figure, old affiliations and ego constructions might be dissolved by "falling in love").
My observation (supported by intuition mostly, and still requiring many more data to rise to the level of "theory") is that trickster patterns appear in tribal (group) psychology and the individual psychology of one related powerfully to a tribe who feels the tribe requires serious reform or has taken a wrong turning or has habitually ignored something extremely important. For such an individual, the shaman archetype or pattern is usually more consciously activated than its shadow twin, the trickster. Although both archetypal identifications (especially among Jungians for whom archetypal identification is considered taboo) typically have a number of aspects and dynamics operating beneath the level of conscious awareness, and shaman identifications may be consciously resisted (again, especially among Jungians trying to uphold the cultural taboo), these identifications still tend to present themselves more to consciousness than trickster identifications. But I have yet to see or experience a situation in which one pattern occurs without the other.
From the "collective" psychology of a tribe that is presented with an individual influenced by the shaman/trickster pattern, that individual will much more likely be seen as a heretic, betrayer, scapegoat, or crank . . . if the individual has enough status and impact on the tribe. Where the individual has lower status within the tribe, s/he is more likely to be rendered "invisible" (like Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man). Essentially, tribal identity constructions render such individuals as "outside" of and strange to accepted conventions. When invisible individuals do something to "break through" the habit (or perhaps taboo) that has rendered them invisible, the tribal consciousness will experience it as an assault, and probably attribute hostile or insane intentions to the still-largely-invisible individual (we see this theme also in Ellison's novel).
The First Jungian Movement of the Shaman/Trickster Archetype: Michael FordhamIn Jungian culture, the invisibles fall too far below the radar to track most of the time, but there are three major instances of individuals with high enough status in the tribe "channeling" certain aspects of the shaman/trickster pattern of reform/criticism. The first was Michael Fordham, who was the most distinct personality behind the founding of the "London school" of Jungianism, called the "developmental" school by Andrew Samuels in his pivotal
Jung and the Post Jungians (1985). Although in some ways this led to the most radical split in the Jungian tribe, I confess that I know only very little about it from a psychological perspective. Very little has been written, so those who could provide the psychological contexts are those with personal knowledge of the relevant experiences and people. What we can (and what I do) know is that the developmental school is still the dominant Jungian school in Britain and has had enormous influence on all forms of Jungianism, largely through the Society for Analytical Psychology (SAP) and its journal, The Journal of Analytical Psychology (JAP). These institutions and their members have been extremely prolific, especially since the 1980s.
Jungian developmentalism is strongly influenced by and devoted to making connections with post-Freudian psychoanalysis. Fordham placed a great deal of emphasis on Melanie Kline's work and the developmental psychology of children. Developmentalism has always been critical of Jung on a few specific issues, but rather than truly attempting to "reform" these alleged defects, Fordham and developmentalism instead chose to supplement them with post-Freudian theories. Fordham's claims placed less emphasis on Jung (and classical Jungianism) being "wrong" or flawed than it did on Jung being "incomplete" or subject to certain lacunae. It is, at least superficially or by its own self-representation, an "eclectic" Jungianism, and from its beginning (as best as I can deduce from the literature out there), it has really sought to splinter off from classical Jungianism ideologically rather than focus on altering classical Jungianism.
This splintering is perhaps facilitated by geography. Jungianism in London has almost from its very beginning been the product of Fordhamian interpretations and additions/substitutions to classical Jungianism. But the splintering of developmentalism is also facilitated by its (to my mind) strange relationship to psychoanalysis. Developmental Jungianism has sought to essentially return to the Family Freud, even though it has had to do so relegated to the role of redheaded stepchild (at best). I find this approach irrational and suspect that it is riddled with complexed motivations . . . some of which may be rooted in a sense of Jungian shame of Jung-as-father. Fordham never really had an important relationship (or even really correspondence) with Jung, and I really don't know if he himself felt any such shame or perhaps bitterness toward Jung, or if he did, why.
With later "post-Jungians" of the developmental school, this shame and bitterness is much more clear. And it is characterized (understandably) by the developmentalist relationship with or courtship of psychoanalysis. That is, the psychoanalysts (starting with Freud himself) have always been Jung's most virile and influential critics (even to call them "critics" is a euphemism; defamers is, especially in the first half of the 20th century, technically more accurate, because many of these criticisms included falsehoods and/or extreme exaggerations of the flaws, not only in Jung's theories, but primarily in his personal character). It is arguable, but I think that psychoanalysts (and those influenced directly by psychoanalysts) have done even more harm to Jungianism than Jung and Jungians themselves have done. Although, I regret to say, it is a very close contest.
All the more curious, then, that the developmentalists have (often rather pathetically) courted psychoanalysis and petitioned it for inclusion. Beyond the acts of psychoanalysts destructive to Jungianism, Jungianism itself was in numerous ways designed intentionally to be a kind of "anti-psychoanalysis". Jung's analytical psychology was largely founded on reactions to and criticism of Freud's ideas about the psyche. Some of the reasoning behind Jung's deviations from psychoanalysis are ignored or forgotten in developmental Jungianism, where, beginning with Fordham, some of these deviations are "corrected" to return to something resembling the very Freudian ideas Jung sought to oppose and differentiate analytical psychology from. The idea that developmentalism was merely filling in lacunae in Jung is a sublimating rationalization.
In any case, due to the unusual splintering/regressing (i.e., "back" to Freudianism) and lack of available information, I cannot detect or trace any shaman/trickster pattern in Fordham or other founding thinkers behind developmentalism. Still, it is clear from the way Fordham is (often reverentially) referenced by developmental Jungians even today that he functioned as a kind of shaman and culture hero for this Jungian splinter tribe. Complimenting that is evidence of conventions and taboos that prevent developmental Jungians from writing too critically about Fordham's (often somewhat vague and jargon-laden) ideas. Such defiant and more extreme kinds of critiques in developmentalist literature are left entirely for Father Jung alone . . . where they still are not usually reformative, but more typically reinforce the Fordhamian splintering that defines the tribal identity of the developmentalists. Most developmentalist criticisms of Jung either deconstruct his character or seek to reject and extricate those ides of Jung's not compatible with developmentalist ideology (usually things that smack of "nativism").
The Second Jungian Movement of the Shaman/Trickster Archetype: James HillmanThe first Jungian who seemed to be truly infused with the shaman/trickster dynamic was James Hillman. Although Hillman is associated with a "school" of Jungianism (i.e., "archetypal psychology"), Hillman's approach to classical Jungianism was more reformative (or, to adopt his term, revisionary) than Fordham's splintering/regressive approach. Archetypal psychology became differentiated from classical Jungianism mostly because many classical Jungians did not want to embrace Hillman's revisions. But Hillman did offer his (at least earlier) writings as critiques and revisions or extensions of classical Jungian thought. There is also with Hillman less of an indication that his reformative conflict was with Father Jung than seemed to be the case with Fordham and the developmentalists. Rather, Hillman's primary gripe (coming on the Jungian scene about two decades after Fordham) was with the tendency of classical Jungianism to ossify and become dogmatic, lacking creativity and an ability to grow or branch out.
Hillman was the first prolific and highly influential Jungian who sought to really rekindle the project that Jung had begun. That is, a creative, exploratory project of understanding the psyche. Hillman reacted against the habit of many Jungians who devoted themselves entirely to interpreting, praising, and reiterating the words of the master. In this sense, his quarrel was with the obedient and unimaginative/unoriginal sons and daughters of Jung, who had lost the innovative flame of their father . . . the innovative spirit analytical psychology initially defined itself by (and which was continuously over-praised by Jungians, but very rarely practiced). Hillman was the first real anti-fundamentalist of the Jungian tribe.
And this is a surefire recipe for activating the shaman/trickster archetype. I think this archetype was especially clearly expressed in Hillman's attempts to valuate the puer in Jungian culture and thought. He was (and I assume remains) a champion of the puer and a critic of its opposite pole, the senex. Classically (even to this day), Jungianism has been hellbent on identifying with the senex pole, especially its positive aspects: wisdom through experience, serenity in the face of chaos and transformation, hesitance to jump at every shooting star (knowing the predictability of their paths), focus on long term cyclic repetition rather than on the mercurial rise and fall of more "affective" (but also creative/artistic) movements. The Jungian idea of the good senex is one that exudes a kind of faith-based confidence and intuitive certainty that the observation of historical and personal cycles from the perspective of old age might provide. It is religious (or "spiritual"), never doubting God or the Self or unconscious, believing in the profound value and meaning of synchronicities, accepting that divination may provide answers and not caring if the means of those answers are mysterious or unexplainable rationally. The Jungian senex has no need for science due to its great and comfortable "wisdom". Science is a "flash in the pan" compared to mysticism and religion. Its alleged obsessive rationalism is the product of foolish and youthful egoism and lack of experience and overemphasis on materialism and superficiality. The Jungian senex sees deeply through layers of meaning and time . . . to the core of things.
That is the unwritten PR that forms the senex-based tribal identity of the Jungian (especially the classical Jungian) tribe. It is, to put it gently, a ridiculous load of utter horse shit. It is an inflated, self-comforting delusion that enables Jungians to pompously and flakily avoid the inconveniences of change, growth, unknowing, error, and at times even shame. It is a recipe for stasis and evidence of a complex. If everything just runs in cycles anyway, why, there is no reasons for change or growth or progress. That is also not a very good representation of Jung's approach to the psyche. Yes, he was interested in mysticism and a bit prone to senexy-identifications, conservatism, and spiritualistic aggrandizement. But he was not a lazy, fraudulent, uncreative, fundamentalist and follower. Jung was a prodigal and a pioneer (if more by personality trait than as a theorist), a true creative dynamo who cranked out a huge, complex, and truly unique opus of collected works.
But, Jung was (perhaps his entire life, but definitely for at least the first half of it) a true puer, a flying, innovative, explorer and adventurer of the psyche who flirted seriously with a predominantly aesthetic and artistic writing style and approach to psychological thought. Jung the would-be conservative and senex made some efforts to undermine and deny (as Peter denied Christ) his own artistic/aesthetic streak. Jungians following him chose to follow what Jung said rather than what Jung actually did . . . and like followers rather than free thinkers, they made these contradictory simplifications into laws to be obediently followed rather than analyzed and understood (and deconstructed).
Jung sought to hide and deny his own puer qualities (which he was no doubt ashamed of in various ways and which had frequently gotten him into trouble both in his relationships and as a thinker) . . . or he masked them with faux-senex wisdom proclamations and the "corrective" privileging of the "second half of life". The Jungian puer/senex complex begins with his own personal complex.
But it went entirely unrecognized and unexamined until James Hillman came along and, probably more or less compulsively, tried to explode it. And such explosion of an ossified complex requires the dissolving dynamic of the Self . . . as represented by the shaman/trickster archetype. Hillman's "sensitivity" or "intuition" availed him of this archetypal energy, and it defines his creative work and role within the greater Jungian tribe (especially during the heyday of archetypal psychology).
Regrettably (for both Hillman and for Jungianism), Hillman's tweaked awareness and appreciation of this archetypal energy was and has remain inadequate to the task of generating effective reform in Jungian culture and thought. As much as Hillman valuated and embraced the puer, he did not (I feel) understand the archetypal dynamic adequately, either as a theorist or an individual battling with the archetypal dimensions of his personal complexes. Hillman always wrote and acted more like a man "possessed" by an archetype than one consciously channeling its energy.
Also, some of his personal behavior (perhaps driven by the archetypal "possession") enabled many classical Jungians to make him over into a scapegoat and more or less excommunicate him. This (both the initial "sin", and the excommunication) drove a long-raging war of identity for Hillman that, from what I can see, was never functionally resolved. I.e., his Jungianness and its role in his individual (and potentially individuated) identity was never adequately understood or functionally "healed". As his personal quest to understand his identity went on (usually through public creative expression in his books), his Jungianness and role in the Jungian tribe became increasingly muddled, and the engine of archetypal energy that originally drove him began to undermine and spin him around more than it enabled him to channel something useful into Jungian culture.
Hillman suffers the fate of most habitual puers: he functions somewhat as a critic and opponent of the tradition he is driven to reform, but he does not know how to harness and distill his creative energy into a construction or reconstruction that serves to truly heal or remedy those aspects of the tradition that were sick or broken or stuck. He can make the tradition dizzy with curious gusting and swirling about, but he can't figure out how to make it well again. He is only as effective as he is able to maintain a kind of theater of energy and motion, a sense that change is possible and exciting and real. But then the play ends, the curtain goes down, the lights go up. The audience leaves the theater entertained, perhaps moved, maybe even inspired . . . but without really being changed or being enlightened enough to make essential changes.
Hillman is ultimate only an entertainer and performance artist of theatrical Jungian fantasies. In other words, I don't feel he has grasped the shamanic aspect of the shaman/trickster archetype well enough. He has not realized that the "point" of the archetypal energy is to heal through transformation . . . to heal, and not merely to dazzle, entertain, or mercurially (but only superficially) inspire.
Jungianism has learned nothing of use from Hillman . . . and continues to be just as stuck in its original complexes as it would have been if Hillman had never existed. In other words, the archetypal energy behind Hillman has not broken through into Jungian consciousness. There is no functional Jungian language to make sense of what James Hillman means to the Jungian tribe. Hillman himself was never able to weave this language together in any coherent form (or understand it himself) . . . and none of his followers and fans has managed to see him psychologically and objectively enough to understand his important role in the Jungian tribe. At least as much, no Jungians have been able to understand what the Jungian tribe really is objectively or even that there is a Jungian tribe. Lacking this objectivity, the complexes, archetypal energies, and pivotal tribe members that help construct and maintain Jungian tribal identity are not understood in this all-important context.
The Third Jungian Movement of the Shaman/Trickster Archetype: Wolfgang GiegerichThe third member of the Jungian tribe who lives and works within or in relationship to this shaman/trickster archetypal energy is Wolfgang Giegerich. And he is in various ways the strangest Jungian emergence of all (so far). His personal psychological orientation to Jungianism combines some of the defining elements of both Hillman and Fordham. He is a revisionary of archetypal psychology, expressing some of the same values and ideas Hillman originally introduced (in somewhat different forms). He has all of the puer spirit of Hillman, tending to attract acolytes to his very unique and specific style of languaging (which is the kind that must be either believed or disbelieved, or that, like poetry or poststructuralist philosophy, asks the audience to suspend disbelief in order to participate in the narrative and voice of the performance). But like Fordham (or at least like developmental Jungianism), Giegerich wages a kind of war against Father Jung on a very personal level.
It is a different war than Fordham waged. It is not anchored in anything like a "regression" to psychoanalysis, nor does it seek to court any stronger or larger intellectual tribe. Rather (and as above), it is more like a Freudian war of the Son with the Father for the throne and right of succession. Giegerich (like Hillman) approaches Jungianism like a reformer. But (like Fordham) he really implies a splintering from classical Jungianism. Or, more accurately, a replacement of current Jungianism(s) with Giegerichism. Developmental Jungianism, after all, is really Jungianism in name only . . . but practically speaking, it is Fordhamism. But Giegerichism differs from the style of Fordhamism in that it is not at all eclectic. It is a very unique product of Wolfgang Giegerich's personal philosophy, inspired by a reaction to Jungian psychology.
I'm not suggesting that there is no other historical context to Giegerichism (Hegel, of course, and postmodernism, each rather refracted, come to mind). What I am suggesting is that historical intellectual contexts have much less to do with Giegerichism than psychological and Jungian tribal identity contexts do.
This is a massive oversimplification, but it is still a helpful signpost to say that Fordham was driven by a psychic movement (in the Jungian tribal psyche) organized around shame and repentance toward the primary accuser (and "Original Father", Freud), Hillman was driven by a psychic movement to dissolve and reform fundamentalist Jungian ossification around a faux-senex complex, and Giegerich is driven by a psychic movement that is like a desperate regurgitation of all the Jungian "baggage", all the complexes, all of the swallowed poison that Jungianism had hoped to stomach in the name of shadow-repression . . . or in the name of what I would call the Demon introject.
That is, I rank these movements by degree of desperation on one hand and by degree of "utter Jungianess" on the other. Fordham's split was not really the result of much desperation in the Jungian tribal psyche . . . and it expressed a shame element in the Jungian psyche that was not predominant in Jungians overall, but which came to speak for a growing group of (especially British) Jungians that could only embrace Jungianism if it was at least superficially made compatible with psychoanalysis. Perhaps it served as a refuge for "lapsed Freudians" who could not follow Freud dogmatically and absolutely because they had a mysterious temptation to understand and incorporate the compelling, mystical otherness of Jung. Post-Freudianism in the latter half of the 20th century especially (when numerous fissures in the psychoanalytic tribe had not only developed but differentiated themselves) made it possible for strange chimeras like a Freudian-Jungian hybrid to exist. As developmental Jungians have always been fond of pointing out, some of the post-Freudian psychoanalytic renegades like Bion and Winnicott developed theories that (despite giving no credit to Jung) more closely resembled Jungian ideas. The door was opened . . . and it seemed to serve a powerful (if not very well analyzed) need. But that chimeric need also required some kind of reparation (or at least repression) of the deep enmity and conflict and trauma that had characterized early Jungian/Freudian relationships.
Hillman's desperation was much more characteristic of the universal Jungian "soul" than Fordham's relatively "niche" compulsion. It had nothing to do with psychoanalysis or any other outside tribe. It was an organic eruption . . . even if never fully actualized.
Giegerich's desperation (i.e., the Jungian desperation expressed through Giegerich) is no longer merely a reaction (like Hillman's) to the ossified Jungian fundamentalism that was so strong, perhaps especially in its reactive polarization against the rise of Fordhamism in the late 50s and 60s. It has swallowed the whole history and character of Jungianism, including its tribal splintering in the aftermath of Fordham and Hillman, including its repeated (and renewed with the writings of Richard Noll and others in the 90s) traumatic defamation at the hands of Freudians and the academic social science and humanities that has developed with a great deal of Freudian DNA in its heritage. Giegerich's channeled desperation includes the many years of growing shame Jungians have felt at their Father and founder. It includes the now obvious and probably no longer alterable history of ignorance and exclusion of Jung in academia. It includes the history of Jungian failures to really achieve or understand the mysticism of individuation they inherited and the component time and energy seemingly wasted on introversion, the inner life, the individual journey.
Giegerich's writing is like a river that flows along a bed cut out by all these Jungian traumas, failures, and disappointments. Those things carve out an undercurrent that becomes the subtext of Giegerich's convoluted, jargony interpretive dance of quasi-postmodernist Jungianism. What I am saying is that Giegerich, even more than Fordham or Hillman, seems to me like an emergence of the Jungian "unconscious" in this particular "post-Jungian era", where the survival of Jungianism has now clearly shown itself to be serious challenged (partly because of its own shortcomings and partly because all psychotherapies and depth psychologies are on the cusp of falling back into the the past of the 20th century from which they were born).
Despite my obvious misgivings concerning Wolfgang Giegerich's ideas, I feel he is the most complex and perhaps "pure" expression of the Jungian "soul" yet to surface in the Jungian tribe. But this is not the romantic "good" kind of soul Jungians (and Giegerich in his own unique way) so often blather on about. This is more like the half black/half white soul as Jung himself rather archaically and theologically depicted it. The soul that could just as well seduce and lead the "ego" (identity) to its doom as prove to be its inspiration and even salvation.
And so I think, in classic Jungian fashion, there is some validity to looking at Wolfgang Giegerich as both a potential savior and a potential destroyer. And, again as Jung himself suggested, the coming of the soul/unconscious tends to be destructive when it is received (by "consciousness") unconsciously or without adequately sophisticated awareness of the potential danger it represents. That is, if we cannot recognize Giegerich as a kind of autonomous movement of the Jungian tribal psyche, increasingly embracing and exalting him will, I believe, contribute to the demise of Jungianism (or could at least stand as a symbolic representative act in its play . . . The Rise and Fall of The Jungian Tribe).
As I have made clear, though, I disagree with Jung's tendency to paint the unconscious/soul/anima as half positive and half negative, as potentially destructive unless "conquered", assimilated, or integrated. Giegerich is an excellent example. He will not be conquered, assimilated, or integrated. Which is to say that what he represents to the Jungian tribe is genuine, is really the so-called "unconscious" welling up in its old compensatory (and artfully obscene) form to counterbalance an exaggerated attitude in Jungian consciousness or identity.
And it is this genuineness (as expression of the Jungian soul) that makes Jungians susceptible to Giegerich. I just don't see how Giegerich's writings could possibly have any appeal to someone who is not a member (of some form) of the Jungian tribe. If one is a Jungian, Giegerich can reach into your soul and touch the Jungian identity complexes that are a subtle but essential part of the whole Jungian package. What the fascination with (or affective response to) Giegerich tells us about ourselves is that we are Jungians. We might not like it (and if we find Giegerich compelling, we most likely don't), but we are Jungians nonetheless, and we cannot escape our Jungianness.
Those who read Giegerich and come away nonplussed are probably not Jungians, not really identified with their Jungianism (or are substantially detached from it). And by nonplussed, I don't merely mean that they dislike Giegerich or his ideas or his language or his criticism of Jung. I mean that they just don't have the slightest clue about what he is writing about . . . nor the slightest care.
Wolfgang Giegerich, at least the literary (and perhaps public) persona version, is a purely Jungian creation . . . or more accurately, "emission". We have conjured him to act as psychopomp and guide to the Jungian soul. And whether we follow him to an empty and sterile oblivion or finally wake up and start learning something about ourselves because of the way he makes us feel, think, and identify (or disidentify), i.e., because we remember our training (or at least reading) and begin to analyze our "countertransference" reactions and fantasies . . . well, that is up to us.
Now when I repeated that I disagreed with Jung's idea of an always dangerous (as well as potential helpful or useful) "unconscious", I meant to apply that disagreement to my assessment of the Giegerich phenomenon as follows. Wolfgang Giegerich (as phenomenon) is not inherently dangerous. He is not really a devil (even though I have theatrically referred to him as such in the past). He is really us (Jungians) . . . as viewed in a mirror we barely understand. He's a little bit intuitive genius, a little bit madman, at least a little bit inflated charlatan (a big part of the Jungian shadow). He is (or is built from) all those bits of Jungiania that we don't really understand, see clearly, or have much control over.
And this is why he compels and fascinates us. This is why he has devoted followers (his own brand of Bacchae?) and rabid detractors. He is our tribal personal shadow . . . but (as we know when it is convenient and also totally unchallenging to us) this personal shadow contains a number of untapped aptitudes and intelligences and not only things we don't want to be. But because Giegerich is very compelling to a growing number of Jungians, there is also a kind of seduction at work. He is piping a tune that we cannot help but obey. He is finding a way not only to expose the Jungian shadow (and even criticize it), but also a way to make us identify with it.
Psychologically, the situation is a bit twisted . . . and if it were all boiled down to a clear language with a revealed subtext, I don't think most of us (who currently do) would buy into it. We would probably recoil in repulsion (as we normally do when we see our shadow projected onto/reflected by someone else). But we are "in thrall" with Giegerich and his irresistible piping . . . so we willingly act out fantasies and embrace ideas that, out of the other sides of our mouths, we are habitually condemning.
Giegerich pulls off this magic trick by using a dummy for his ventriloquist act. And the dummy becomes the prop guilty of all the "Jungian sins" that Giegerich himself is (in a slightly different language) also advocating and usually enacting. But the dummy draws all our attention. We don't see the ventriloquist's mouth move. We believe the act . . . that it is the dummy who is saying and doing those things we agree are condemnable and misguided. That dummy, that prop, of course, is C.G. Jung.
Giegerich plays off this dummy version of Jung so as to seem his perfect critic, analyst, and moral and intellectual superior. Giegerich communicates all of these superiorities and exaltations at the dummy Jung's expense subtextually. He doesn't simply come out and say, "I am better than this dummy in every way." But if one is a very clever human intellectual and one's working partner is a wooden dummy, well, it's pretty obvious who's the genius and who's the prop. To be more specific, the literary device Giegerich uses to set up dummy Jung's inferiority and its indirect exaltation of Giegerich as ideal Jungian personality is tone.
There is a lot of linguistic dancing about. A lot of very vague philosophical sounding terms (and many unclear neologisms or new uses of older terms) are spun. Long, complex sentences, buzz words, prestidigitations. And mostly these just provide context and theatricality for the tone of the subtext, which is where Giegerich's voice and message really ring out. That is, these textual on-stage maneuvers don't really make much (if any) sense. The believers adamantly believe that they do, but I can't make any real sense of them . . . and I adamantly believe that one must have to be a believer to believe they make sense (and with that belief comes the belief that their sense is profound . . . as of course only nonsensical magic words can be to true believers).
But in my various conversations with Giegerich's supporters who try to translate his beliefs (free of incomprehensible jargon), I have never come away feeling that his ideas could be truly translated into simpler, clearer, and truly profound statements about the psyche. What usually happens to these would be translators is that they cannot translate Giegerich's ideas without resorting to his magical power words . . . which of course is no translation at all, merely a recited mantra still meaningless to nonbelievers.
What actually kind of shocked me (and made me sit down to work on these essays) was that the Casement article in the JAP, the bravest and most concise attempt yet to summarize and translate Giegerich, also ends up resorting to the recitation of meaningless mantras. Also interesting is that these slightly clearer translations of Giegerich's ideas (freed as they are from the theater and thrall of the Giegerich phenomenon and subtextual tone) come across as absolute rubbish and quackery. And Casement's translation (of the text sans subtext) is really pretty fair and well done . . . except for the outrageous and barely recognized (save a meagerly apologetic final paragraph . . . an appendix, really!) admission that she presented Giegerich with neither useful context nor any criticism at all. How does the spell of the Giegerich phenomenon manage to weave such magic!?
Well, I believe it is the specific Jungian psychological susceptibility (and identity complexes) I have described above. But this is complex magic. It is not merely that Jungians are hapless fools. Everyone has a kind of latent susceptibility to a "magic" that can totally undo them . . . like a secret password to the mechanisms of their identities. We often never learn that such things exist let alone what our unique one is (unless of course we are trauma victims, in which case we probably have experienced these re-traumatizing magic passwords that trigger us or shut down our "firewalls" on many occasions).
Jungians, not coincidentally,
are trauma victims . . . and ones that have been re-traumatized time and again for decades (almost a century now) . . . all the more so since the rise of post-Jungianism, which has finally decided to take a kind of panacea (of denial/dissociation) for this trauma that brings many side effects but no cure. But Jungians don't seem to recognize that they are traumatized. This is made easier by the post-Jungian willingness to make Jung a personal scapegoat, to cast Jung the man into the Jungian shadow. And with this scapegoating, the modern post-Jungian doesn't have to either identify as a trauma victim or bother to recognize his or her traumatization. Of course, it is felt as regrettable that Jung caused so much disgrace for Jungianism in so many different ways. It's a real bummer to be a Jungian some of the time because of that. But so long as we keep apologizing, keep distancing ourselves from Jung and keep trying to make overly generous appeals to the most virulent Jung bashers, the psychoanalysts and the (Freud-rooted) academic postmodernists . . . then we can live nearly shadow-free. Really, as soon as we figure out how to totally cure ourselves from our Jungianness, we will be right as rain.
And that (developmental Jungian) fantasy and complex is not irrational. If these post-Jungians manage to simply de-Jungianize themselves, they
will be free. Free of Jung, free of Jungian identity and the Jungian tribe. Free of the complexes and traumas of its histories. Trauma only disturbs those who are identified with it and with the traumatic history and memory. Obviously, I don't find this a very functional solution . . . certainly not on a psychotherapeutic level. No Jungian analyst would tell their patients who have suffered traumas that if they hurt, they should just become someone else entirely, someone who doesn't have those wounds and experiences. That would be considered a defense, a delusion, even a psychosis. But that is the path many Jungians today are walking along . . . unconsciously, not really understanding the direction or the destination. But the fear and the pain know . . . and many Jungians have already done everything they can to bury those troublesome impediments.
Wolfgang Giegerich is not walking this path. He's going the exact opposite direction . . . right into the Jungian heart of darkness. And his criticisms of Jung (and Jungianism) are like the edutainment performances of a seasoned tour guide. The effect is that his audience wants to turn around and escape the oppressive and dangerous ghetto of old Jungianism. And this means less competition for Giegerich, who not only doesn't want to escape the ghetto, he wants to reclaim it. It's more of a coup than a civic gentrification project. He is not trying to make Jungianism livable for Jungians who are besought with fantasies of flying away or shaking off their Jungian shackles.
The irony is that there will, I am willing to bet, never be a true Giegerichism, a school of psychology entirely founded in Giegerich's theories. Because even though he's the ventriloquist and Jung is his dummy, he simply has no act without that dummy. No scapegoat, no one to play off of. No context in which to have an identity. No tribe.
As a psychopomp for Jungians, Giegerich is not really a truth-teller. He is not really a mentor or teacher. He exists and has significance (like so many movements of the unconscious that manifest as personages) only while engaged in the act of guiding the ego (here, the aspects of tribal Jungian identity in all Jungians). In other words, he is a catalyst, a conduit, a way of moving a psychic organization of personality from one complex state into another. Not a prophet but a trickster dissolving the Jungian identity . . . seemingly for personal gain, power, glory, attainment . . . but really because that is the particular dynamic the soul calls for now. He is an unreliable narrator . . . which is the best kind of narrator one can have to get at the truth. So long as one recognizes that such a narrator reveals truth through the mechanism of obvious misdirection.
Giegerich is a player on the soul's stage. He has an exquisite role . . . a role only a particularly gifted . . . destined, really . . . actor could play. I really don't know if Wolfgang Giegerich personally desires the Jungian "resources" his rhetoric is directed at removing from Jung's vault and transferring into his. If such a motivation existed, it would almost definitely be unconscious and well-repressed. I see no indications that Giegerich is a self-conscious charlatan. I think he believes in his rhetoric. I think he is just as swept up in it as his biggest fans . . . even more so. Giegerich
does write like a prophet (while simultaneously condemning Jung for doing the same) . . . and prophets do what they do to be rewarded by their gods. Or because they are treated like prophets by their followers. And that is intoxicating. It is much easier to believe in the validity of one's prophecy when others believe in the legitimacy of your prophethood. And it is, in turn, much easier to believe in a prophet who believes in him or herself.
I don't think Giegerich has a personal goal. He probably just wants to keep writing, keep practicing psychotherapy, keep giving lectures, keep being Wolfgang Giegerich . . . especially the Wolfgang Giegerich that stirs the Jungian soul so powerfully. That is the real reward. The teleology I spoke of previously, that "desire" to overthrow Jung and take over Jung's resources and throne . . . that is the fantasy of the persona of the Giegerich phenomenon . . . the trickster archetype that wears the cloths of the Jungian soul. In the archetypal narrative, we can laugh at that trickster because we know the throne he seeks is already worthless and undesirable, that his is a fool's quest.
I know almost nothing about Wolfgang Giegerich the man . . . but Wolfgang Giegerich the phenomenon is just so fascinating, I admit I am not that curious about the man. Giegerich the man, in the little he has exposed himself in his writing, doesn't intrigue me that much because he shows no sign of being aware of Giegerich the phenomenon. He is critical of Jung the phenomenon and charismatic personality in ways that better apply to himself (or his own phenomenon) . . . and in his more personal comments (from the extensive personal correspondence with Ann Casement for her JAP article . . . which she quotes from extensively), he seems to demonstrate a lack of real awareness of his own prophet-like status and persona by both bringing up the topic and flatly declaring the he is not any such thing ("I do not offer myself as a kind of guru [in clinical practice]", p.540) . . . that he is just a psychologist. He demurs.
Now, a Wolfgang Giegerich who actually had deep insights on and some critical distance from the Giegerich phenomenon, that individual would intrigue me. That is someone whose cleverness exceeds his compulsive identification with an archetypal movement of the psyche, whose devilishness is appealing (to a somewhat twisted fellow like me). That is a quality that I think Jung had (maybe not enough, but still quite noticeably). It gave him depth . . . and it gave him a tangible shadow. I always liked that about Jung . . . and it is why he never really became a prophet or guru for me (not that I could imagine anyone filling that role for such a crank as myself).
I didn't want to
believe in Jung while denying his shadow. Rather, I empathized with him, with his overt shadowiness. I felt a sense of kindred spirit with him. I didn't aspire to be "like him". I already was "like him" more than it was doing me any good. I aspired to learn from him . . . to figure out how to survive being myself from someone who was engaged creatively and intelligently in the same kind of struggle. I knew never to believe his magic acts . . . because I knew those tricks. What I needed to learn (as a very young man just beginning to immerse himself in Jung) was how to survive being a person who knew those tricks and was compelled to perform them.
I could be wrong, but I don't see that in Giegerich. Not only because of his demurring comments, but because he simply lacks (by a large margin) adequate sympathy and admitted empathy with Jung the trickster, prophet, dark magician, charlatan, sinner, and regular, self-conflicted human being. Giegerich's dummy Jung is a dupe . . . a mere prop. But Jung was not, as far as I can discern, any kind of dupe or dummy. Jung was a more complex man than Wolfgang Giegerich is, I strongly suspect.
But what dominates Giegerich's ventriloquist act is the perpetual and repetitive beatdown of Jung. Why does Wolfgang Giegerich need to perform with a dummy Jung? Why does he need Jung to be so flawed, so wrong, to hapless? Why doesn't he need Jung (or the image of Jung in the Jungian tribe today) to be healed, complexified . . . not "forgiven", but truly understood and placed back in the protagonist's role of the narrative that defines the Jungian identity? Not because he really was a swell guy, a true prophet, a genius, an intellectual revolutionary, but because he was an extremely complex and unique human being filled with many facets and fascinating experiences . . . all of which were profoundly psychological (in the sense of operating by the complex and logical laws of the dynamic psyche).
I have an innate distrust for anyone who is not ethically driven to heal what s/he is part of and realizes lies broken and diseased. Giegerich doesn't make a functional effort to repair Jungianism. He only seeks to wrench it away from Jung (and on largely false pretenses and through sleight of hand tactics). Of course, I am continuously surprised and appalled not merely by the ignorance in Jungians of the tribal soul and identity, or by the traumatic wound that still bleeds within it . . . but mostly by the almost complete disregard and disinterest in doing anything to treat it. When I encounter Jungianism (as I do every day in my writing, reading, and or reflections), I see
vividly,
unequivocally, a wounded being lying in the street, suffering . . . even calling out. And I immediately feel sympathy for this being . . . all the more so because I recognize it as part of something that was once so generous to me, so enriching. I don't know that being . . . but I
know it. It is familiar, it is an essential part of what made me who I am.
And so I go to it . . . sloppily, confusedly, sometimes running over with feelings . . . and sometimes no clear thoughts to go with them. And I kneel down by its side. I don't know what to do. I'm not an expert. I touch its arm hesitantly, I hold its hand. "Someone will come soon," I say. "Someone will come who can help you, who will know what to do."
But no one ever comes. Everyone just walks by, sometimes stepping over the fallen body like it was invisible . . . or was not "human" and alive, just a pothole in the road. I don't know what to do . . . so I start haranguing these people . . . or I start singing a song of pain and lamentation . . . a blues. Because I know how to do that. I learned that many years ago. But people usually just walk by street musicians, too. And if you are doing something a little unexpected and maybe not that pleasant (like lamenting), you probably won't even get any loose change in your hat. Or maybe you'll just get a little . . . because that's all you are worth to these people who have better places to be and not enough time to get there. That is all you and the suffering body you are sitting next to are worth.
That is how I feel, and that is why I keep doing this grating street musician routine. And that is why I don't think Wolfgang Giegerich has any interest in healing Jungianism or is even really sympathetic with the Jungian tribal soul. The "soul" of Giegerich's mantras is a quasi-delusional kind of personal subjectivity that reflects his own inflated sense of self-worth. It is the "whatever-he-wants-it-to-be" . . . some kind of stand in, another prop that works along with the dummy Jung to acquire personal profit for Giegerich. It is not a true Other to serve, raise consciousness of, treat, heal, or even praise.