King Midas turned everything he touched to gold. The modern collective spirit has produced its opposite: a
mindset that renders every authentic subject synthetic and hollow. While people's hunger for spiritual
nourishment remains immense, those responsible for providing it tragically fail to satisfy this need, offering only
substitutes. Maria Bergom Larsson (1995) recounts an ominous dream:
In my dream, nuclear war had begun. The world was ablaze and buildings crumbled around me. Yet amid this catastrophe, people stood in line before celebrity clergyman Lennart Koskinen to receive Communion. However, the sacramental bread he distributed resembled a GB Sandwich [an ice cream sandwich] and was made of plastic. (Bergom Larsson, 1995, my transl.)
The tragic dimension of this dream is evident. There exists a parallel phenomenon that I wish to examine. In America particularly, a breed of “plastic” psychologists has emerged, dispensing surrogate bread entirely devoid of nourishment. Although practiced under the banner of Jungian psychology, this approach betrays the legacy of the pioneers and has nearly succeeded in inverting their principles. I refer to psychologists such as Hillman, Romanyshyn, and Vannoy Adams, whose theories operate under labels like “phenomenological” or “archetypal.” Surprisingly, this branch continues expanding its influence without attracting significant criticism from dissenting theorists. However, it is high time to properly challenge this “plasticizing” psychology.
The fundamental tenet of these psychologists is to “stick to the image.” Such an approach inevitably results in superficiality and delusion, following naturally from their insistence on remaining at the surface of phenomena. While traditional Jungian psychology emphasizes moral commitment, this school elevates fantasy and grants it an unwarranted prominence. Marilyn Nagy expresses concern about this development:
The role of imagination and the function of the archetype also stand in a hierarchical relation of subservience to moral ends in Jung’s clinical theory. Through imaginative attention to inner affective states of mind we become conscious of desire and conflict and have to make decisions for what we perceive as the good. This point has been too little noticed in some Jungian circles in recent years, with the result that fantasy has sometimes come to be valued as an end in itself. But it then becomes empty of all significance for human life — a truly narcissistic occupation which would be entirely antithetic to Jung’s own goals. (Nagy, 1991, pp. 159-60)
The phenomenological psychologists maintain the epistemologically obscure position that “nothing is more primary than the image” and that the psyche constitutes an “imagining activity” (Hillman, 1997, p. 14). Consequently, everything else necessarily recedes into the background, most notably any underlying emotions. As Nagy observes, this ideal of fantasy activity must inevitably develop into a narcissistic preoccupation. In “The Soul's Code” (1996), James Hillman consistently defends the narcissistic attitude of the ‘puer aeternus’ (also called the Peter Pan type), presenting this figure as an exemplary model (cf. Winther, 1999). In contrast to such one-sided imagining activity, Jung advocates for wholehearted commitment to the unconscious:
[The] mere execution of the pictures is not enough. Over and above that, an intellectual and emotional understanding is needed; they require to be not only rationally integrated with the conscious mind, but morally assimilated. They still have to be subjected to a work of synthetic interpretation. Although I have travelled this path with individual patients many times, I have never yet succeeded in making all the details of the process clear enough for publication […] The truth is, we are here moving in absolutely new territory, and a ripening of experience is the first requisite […] We are dealing with a process of psychic life outside consciousness, and our observation of it is indirect. As yet we do not know to what depths our vision will plumb. (Jung, 1993, p. 51)
Accordingly, Jolande Jacobi explains that the content of the psyche transcends the image and surpasses consciousness:
The symbol is not an allegory and not a sign, but an image of content that largely transcends consciousness. Yet symbols can ‘degenerate’ into signs and become ‘dead symbols’ when the meaning hidden within them is fully revealed, when it loses its richness of implication because its whole content has been made accessible to reason. For an authentic symbol can never be fully explained. We can open up the rational part of it to our consciousness, but the irrational part can only be ‘brought home to our feeling’ (Jacobi, 1973, p. 97).
We realize, then, that the “plastic preachers” (along with many notorious counterparts in “plastic” American Christendom) have inverted the message. Contrary to their understanding, the unconscious is “always greater” and transcends the products of conscious mind. By focusing on spiritual and numinous feeling, images are allowed to emerge. However, these images cannot exhaust the meaning of the numinous feeling. Since archetypal psychologists argue that “[phantasy images are] both the raw materials and finished products of the psyche” (Hillman, 1992, xi), this engenders a hubristic standpoint familiar from the romantic era of philosophy. Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762 – 1814) argued that the ego is world-creating, based on the premise that everything is image and illusion (Encyc., here).
Since Hillman’s followers assert that the image is the most fundamental entity, the subject acquires world-creating capability, becoming both exponent and creator of images. This explains why they advance hubristic notions suggesting that images become autonomous and godlike:
The autochtonous quality of images as independent of the subjective imagination which does the perceiving takes Casey’s idea one step further […] but then comes the awareness that images are independent of subjectivity and even of imagination itself as a mental activity. (Hillman, 1997, p. 15)
This leads to a call to “return to Greek polytheism” (Hillman, 1992, p. 27). Thus, the “plastic preachers” have departed significantly from Jung’s position. This stems from treating the archetypes as if they were mere images. Against this, Marian L. Pauson argues:
One may acknowledge the realm of the gods, but as long as one is in the land of the living one is not permitted to dwell too exclusively in the divine sphere. Life is essentially dynamic. The gods live through human beings; without human life the gods become empty symbols. To live a too symbolic life, a life apart from the full engagement of the body in all of its dimensions in process, is to aspire to the realm of the gods and to commit the sin of hubris, for which in all mythologies a human being is repeatedly punished. Herculean ego effort, however, is not the only alternative. Somewhere between the two extremes lies the path. Jung warned against a too symbolic life in which emotional powers or “numinosities” of the archetypes are brushed aside or repressed. In referring to those who admit of the existence of the archetypes, but then treat them as if they were mere images and forget that they are living entities that make up a great part of the human psyche, he says,
‘As soon as the interpreter strips them of their numinosity, they lose their life and become mere words. It is then easy enough to link them together with other mythological representations, and so the process of limitless substitution begins; one glides from archetype to archetype, everything means everything, and one has reduced the whole process to absurdity. All the corpses in the world are chemically identical, but living individuals are not. It is true that the forms of archetypes are to a considerable extent interchangeable, but the numinosity is and remains a fact. It represents the value of an archetypal event. This emotional value must be kept in mind and allowed for throughout the whole intellectual process of interpretation. The risk of losing is great, because thinking… abolishes feeling values and vice versa.’ (Pauson, 1988, pp. 65-66)
As Jung advocates wholehearted commitment to life, Pauson underscores the disparity between Jungian and archetypal psychology:
I suggest, following these words from “Memories, Dreams, Reflections,” an important difference between Jung’s ideal and that presented in archetypal psychology, in James Hillman, “The Dream and the Underworld,” and Roberts Avens, “Imagination is Reality.” (Pauson, 1988, p. 69)
As the archetypal school grants free rein to any imaginative activity, even theoretical concepts become malleable in their hands. These concepts can be redefined and distorted beyond recognition. Although people explicitly seek more nourishing material (substantive spiritual bread), nothing substantial is available — only plastic theoretical notions that cannot withstand scrutiny. In the future, I hope that Jungian psychology will initiate a serious internal debate, rather than naively accepting all peculiar notions that emerge among secondary theorists. In other scientific disciplines, all contributions are examined with rigorous critical scrutiny. Although disturbing, harsh arguments are necessary if Jungian psychology is not to degenerate into a virtual dumping ground. Marie-Louise von Franz, unable alone to stem the tide of inferior work, saw no alternative but to withdraw and establish a new psychological institute.
© Mats Winther, 2002.
References
Bergom Larsson, M. (1995). Efter 2000 år. Verbum.
‘Fichte, Johann Gottlieb (1762–1814)’. Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Encyclopedia.com. (here)
Hillman, J. (1992). Re-Visioning Psychology. Harper Collins.
-------- (1996). The Soul’s Code. Random House.
-------- (1997). Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account. Spring
Publications.
Jacobi, J. (1973). The Psychology of C. G. Jung. Yale University Press.
Jung, C. G. (1993). The Practice of Psychotherapy. Princeton/Bollingen. (CW 16)
Nagy, M. (1991). Philosophical Issues in the Psychology of C. G. Jung. State University of
New York.
Pauson, M. L. (1988). Jung the Philosopher. Peter Lang Publishing, New York.
Winther, M. (1999). ‘Critique of Archetypal Psychology’. (here)
See also:
Winther, M. (2001). ‘The Limits of Science’. (here)
---------- (2001). ‘The Morphic Deception’. (here)
