The
philosophy of idealistic phenomenology has, very regrettably, been adopted by post-Jungian
psychologists James Hillman, Wolfgang Giegerich, Robert Romanyshyn, et al. This article concentrates on Romanyshyn’s
phenomenological Weltanschauung conveyed in an interview around his book “On Technology as Symptom & Dream” (here). R. argues that the spirit of modern times, its science and
technology, has created a psychological breach in the human soul. However,
the underlying problem and the way to healing are both incorrectly rendered
by R.
Firstly, Romanyshyn’s proposal of restituting the
notion of “spirit” or “mind” as resident in matter, is to
mistake the unconscious as “matter” — the collective unconscious
is projected onto matter. According to Carl Jung, such a frame of mind is characteristic of medieval alchemy. Thus, what R. proposes represents a regression to an outdated frame of mind. It is a misconception to portray the problem of modern
man as our being split off from material nature.
In fact, humanity is very captivated by matter and material values. This
occurred as a consequence of the declination of the spiritual conception, when
libido sank into physis (the demise of the gods). The correct description of man’s onerous
condition is that the collective unconscious has become split off, not
that outside “nature” has become split off. It seems that Jung’s persistent
harping on the notion of the collective unconscious has still not
penetrated. In order to heal the psychic split in modern man the archetypal notion
needs to be elevated into public consciousness. In exchange for the world of
gods and spirits man has to become aware of the facts underlying these
notions, namely the archetypes. This would serve to heal the current rift in
man’s psyche. When, during medieval times, the unconscious factors were
still hypostatized as metaphysical entities, people retained a form of relation to the collective unconscious and were not engulfed
by materialism as is the case today. The ascent of science and technology
meant the declination of the gods, which caused a disruption in the
relation to the collective unconscious. However, Jung has presented a remedy in
the archetypes of the collective unconscious — a truth must not be hidden
from people. It is, however, unavailing to revive the pagan notion of a
soul-substance in matter. It’s an inefficacious conceptual tool that
cannot possibly come to grips with the problems of modern man.
Furthermore, Romanyshyn has got it wrong when he claims that Jung and the
scientific community subscribe to Cartesian dualism, i.e. that the mind is a
‘thing’ and that the mind (or soul) exists independently alongside the body as a
kind of observer which mysteriously steers the brain and the body. This
standpoint is today not very popular with the scientific community. Although
there may be better alternatives than physicalism I will in the following refer
to this branch of metaphysics, due to its topicality. A notion of a highly autonomous
psyche may be defensible also in this branch of metaphysics, because the mental world may be
understood as a holistic system belonging to a different category than the body.
In other words, the psyche belongs to another level of nature than the body whereas the
concept of the independent soul is a misconception due to level-confusion. Jung
says:
The life of the body or of a man is posited as something different from the man himself. This led to the ‘ka’ or immortal soul, able to detach itself from the body and not dependent on it for its existence […] The juxtaposition of a person and his “life” has its psychological basis in the fact that a mind which is not very well differentiated cannot think abstractly and is incapable of putting things into categories. It can only take the qualities it perceives and place them side by side: man and his life, or his sickness (visualized as a sort of demon), or his health or prestige (mana, etc.). This is obviously the case with the Egyptian ‘ka’. (C.G. Jung, “Ps. and Religion”, CW 11, para.198).
From the early seventies onwards the holistic conception has been under
strong development and so has come to affirm Jung’s notion of the objective
reality of the psyche, i.e., the notion of a holistic level comprising
independent processes. Keep in mind that, although holism combines with physicalism,
Jung himself may have subscribed to another monistic alternative. Yet, his
metaphysic may also go along with holistic notions. In holism, the psyche is
conceived as an ‘emergent system’, that is, an orderly system that emerges at a
collective level of structure. It means that it is meaningless at the component level,
e.g., neuron level. Nobel prize winner Ilya Prigogine has carried
out extensive researches of such systems and is aiming at providing a
mathematical description of the emergence of simple self-organizing systems.
Nobel prize winner Roger W. Sperry describes mental events as
holistic configurational properties both different from and “over and above” the neural
events of which they are composed of. These higher-level entities possess laws
and principles in their own right that cannot be reduced to lower-level laws.
All this is in good accordance with Jung (vid. Sperry et al., “Consciousness
and the Brain”, Plenum 1976).
What’s more, the notion of
‘downward causation’ has improved the understanding of how the feedback to the
underlying level occurs, i.e., how the mind influences the brain. Earlier we had
a hard time understanding termite colonies and how they manage to build advanced
structures comprising an air-condition system in helical form, water drainage,
et cetera. Today the social insects are regarded as performing a simple set of
operations, having no mental conception of the overall design. However, at the
level of the colony as a whole a holistic pattern appears, comprising so called
emergent qualities. The colony as a whole is, in a sense, an organism
entertaining a helical air-conditioner, et cetera. In like manner, the brain is
a colony of brain cells providing the hardware for the holistic software level
of the psyche, which carries the objective archetypal entities. The modern
software-hardware conception should be carefully studied by all those “post-Jungians”
who challenge Jung’s archetypal notion and call it implausible. The drawback is,
of course, that it’s a physicalist interpretation — but it’s not implausible.
The fact that theorists still today descend to level-confusion is curious. One cannot,
like Romanyshyn claim that the soul has its ‘location’ in the outer objects of
nature. Neither can we, like Descartes, claim that it is contained in the pineal
gland. ‘Soul’ may not necessarily have any location at all. Confusedly, R.
alleges that the “interiorization of the soul still haunts Jung’s
psychology.” Thus, R. still looks upon the soul as a ‘thing’ existing at the
same conceptual level as the body. However, on a holistic view, the soul and the mental world
may be envisaged as an objectively existing holistic level of existence which
has neither location nor weight or extension. Comparatively, a person’s
‘nationality’ has no location either. Yet it is an objectively existing item at
a separate conceptual level. Romanyshyn’s concern that the mind has tragically
been “split off from nature” is, in fact, due to the ascension of ego
consciousness and the withdrawal of projections. The problem of alienation
cannot be doctored by restoring some kind of ‘soul-substance’ to nature again.
The victory of consciousness is an immense success that cannot be undone. The
adaptation of the individual to the surrounding ought not first and foremost be
projective, but ought to build on an objective appreciation.
As R. is
a ‘phenomenologist’ he is not happy with the Cartesian dualism. He deems it
necessary to resolve this by removing the mind altogether and calling it “flesh,”,
just like the average materialist reductionist. It contests the findings of holistic
science which looks upon the psyche as an objectively existing holistic layer.
R., however, pursues to amend his reduction by painting the material world with
the previously removed ‘mind,’ claiming that mind must be regarded as having its
location within the natural objects. Thereby, he argues, we may realize that matter
is animate again, and the anorexic girl will become happy and start eating. However,
this must be regarded a naive conception. Also, R. must be criticized for having
overlooked the development of the holistic conception. Holism is today looked
upon as complementary to reductionism, neither of which we can do without when
probing reality. The multi-level description of mind and body has surpassed both
Cartesian dualism and deterministic materialism. So Romanyshyn’s belief, that
Cartesian dualism must be overcome, is like battering at an open door. His own
solution, however, represents a regression to archaic animism or pantheism. If
such a regression would come about it would undo the promising findings of
holism, chaos theory and the phenomenon of emergence.
Romanyshyn’s
perception of alchemy is erroneous. It’s not correct to say that an alchemical
scheme would be to reanimate matter and situate mind ‘within’ nature and cosmos.
As a matter of fact, the archaic language of alchemy really speaks about
thoroughly extracting the spirit ‘from’ matter, effecting a categorical
separation. Only at this stage the process goes on to ‘coagulate’ spirit and
matter again. This is the process of circular distillation (‘solve et
coagula’). One cannot claim that the alchemical perception means the
reversion to an archaic animistic mentality. On the contrary, the alchemists’
aim was to free the personality from its infantile dependence on the
unconscious, in the end arriving at a higher form of adaptation to nature. In
modern psychological language it implies freeing the ego system from its
unconscious identifications by development of consciousness. The emancipated ego
will no longer be naively chained to nature and the archetypes of the
unconscious, but will instead subordinate to the wholeness, i.e., the self. The
form of adaptation gradually accomplished, symbolized by the ‘philosopher’s
stone’ is a supreme mystery, pertaining to Gautama Buddha’s enlightenment.
Thus, Romanyshyn’s proposal of treatment of the anorexic, i.e. “realizing”
matter as animate, cannot be correct. Arguably, the anorexic, with his/her unbounded self-contempt,
suffers from fixation on a body (and on food) which is deemed inferior. The
overvaluation of the bodily is connected to the absence of a living spirituality
in our time, which is largely due to the declination and degeneration of Christianity.
Especially, the feminine spirit has been enclosed in matter, money, bodily
beauty, et cetera. The remedy, then, would be the opposite of Romanyshyn’s
proposal, namely becoming aware of a spirit unbound by matter, which is the
old-fashioned spiritual or transcendental remedy. The clergyperson would convey to the anorexic that
there exist invisible spiritual values other than the bodily and that there is
an “otherworldly reality where supreme truth and beauty abide.” The
point is that when the materialistic individual turns to invisible and spiritual
values, the fixation on matter and body is reduced. Today’s scientific worldview
has, however, impeded the spiritual interpretation, effectively hampered the
clergyman’s rehabilitating work.
Jungian psychotherapy comes to the rescue as it understands the act of
becoming conscious as the equivalent of “freeing the spirit from matter.”
The bodily fixation will be reduced when the patient, as an initial step,
becomes aware of the complex underlying it. This is the prime way of treatment
of neurosis. Jung repudiates the methods of treatment based upon suggestion,
effectively advocated by Romanyshyn and New Age therapists. Instead, the patient
should enhance his/her conscious horizon to involve a new kind of spirituality which
pertains to the emancipation of the ego. The efficacious tool of analytical
psychology can generate a spiritual passion. Sometimes it’s enough for a person
to read the easily digestible “Modern Man in Search of a Soul” to
acquire a new outlook on the world. The anorexic would benefit from digesting
such views since it reveals mankind’s spiritual problem underlying the neurosis.
In consequence, the “spirit is freed from matter,” i.e., the bodily
fixation is relieved and supplanted with conscious judgement and decision — an
attitude of mind ready to face the problems of the soul.
In
conclusion, Romanyshyn’s notion of a convergence of phenomenology and analytical
psychology does not hold water. R. removes the ‘objective psyche’ which is the
foundation of analytical psychology. His notion of a metaphorical consciousness
which looks upon reality as a dream or a myth, continually creating new dreams,
cannot be combined with responsibility, which R. claims. In fact, a
responsible attitude is to dare to face objective reality. Romanyshyn’s proposal for
redemption of an alienated world only begets a temporary relief due to
suggestion.
© Mats Winther, 2000
