Critique of idealistic phenomenologism

Post-Jungian psychologists James Hillman, Wolfgang Giegerich, and Robert Romanyshyn have embraced idealistic phenomenology in their work. This analysis focuses on Romanyshyn’s phenomenological worldview as expressed in an interview about his book “Technology as Symptom and Dream.” While Romanyshyn argues that modern science and technology have created a psychological rift in the human psyche, both his diagnosis of the underlying problem and his proposed path to healing are flawed.

Romanyshyn’s call to restore the concept of “spirit” or “mind” within matter reflects a fundamental misunderstanding. He mistakes matter for the unconscious, effectively projecting the collective unconscious onto the material world. Jung identified this tendency as characteristic of medieval alchemy, suggesting that Romanyshyn’s approach represents a regression to an archaic mindset. His portrayal of modern humanity’s alienation from material nature misses the mark as a diagnosis of our contemporary condition.

Contemporary humanity remains deeply entrenched in materialism and material values — a consequence of the decline in spiritual consciousness, or what might be termed “the demise of the gods.” The core problem isn’t our disconnection from external nature, but rather our estrangement from the collective unconscious. Despite Jung’s extensive writings on the collective unconscious, this crucial insight seems to have gone largely unrecognized.

The path to healing modern humanity’s psychological divide lies in bringing archetypal awareness into public consciousness. As we’ve lost our connection to the world of gods and spirits, we must now understand the psychological realities that underlay these ancient concepts — the archetypes themselves. During medieval times, when unconscious factors were still conceived as metaphysical entities, people maintained a connection to the collective unconscious and weren’t as thoroughly dominated by materialism as they are today.

While the rise of science and technology coincided with the decline of divine concepts, leading to a disruption in our relationship with the collective unconscious, Jung has offered a solution through his theory of archetypes — a vital truth that shouldn’t be withheld from public understanding. Attempting to revive pagan concepts of an ensouled matter is futile; such outdated conceptual frameworks cannot adequately address contemporary psychological challenges.

Romanyshyn misrepresents both Jung and the scientific community when he attributes to them a Cartesian dualist position — the view that mind is a distinct entity existing independently alongside the body, mysteriously directing brain and bodily functions. This characterization is outdated; contemporary scientific thought has largely moved beyond such strict dualism.

While alternatives to physicalism exist, physicalism serves as a useful framework for this discussion due to its current relevance. Within this metaphysical framework, one can still defend the concept of a substantially autonomous psyche by understanding the mental realm as a holistic system categorically distinct from the physical body. The psyche operates at a different natural level than the body, rather than existing as an independent soul — a misconception arising from confusion between these levels of analysis. 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, Psychology and Religion, CW 11, para. 198).

Since the early 1970s, holistic theory has evolved significantly, lending support to Jung’s concept of the psyche’s objective reality as an independent system of processes. While Jung himself may have favored a different monistic framework, his metaphysical views are compatible with holistic understanding.

In holistic theory, the psyche is understood as an emergent system — a coherent structure manifesting at a collective level, distinct from and irreducible to its component parts, such as individual neurons. Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine’s extensive research on self-organizing systems has advanced our mathematical understanding of such emergent phenomena. Though his work focuses on simpler systems, it provides a theoretical foundation for understanding more complex emergent properties like consciousness.

Nobel laureate Roger W. Sperry conceptualizes mental phenomena as holistic configurational properties that both transcend and differ from their constituent neural events. According to Sperry, these higher-order entities operate according to their own principles and laws, which cannot be reduced to lower-level neurological processes. His framework, detailed in “Consciousness and the Brain” (1976), aligns remarkably well with Jung’s understanding of psychic autonomy.

The concept of ‘downward causation’ has enhanced our understanding of mind-brain interaction, explaining how mental processes can influence neurological activity. This principle is illustrated by social insect colonies, where individual termites perform simple operations without comprehending the overall design, yet collectively create sophisticated structures with complex features like helical air-conditioning and water drainage systems. These emergent properties exist at the colony level, making the colony itself a kind of organism with advanced capabilities.

Similarly, the brain can be understood as a colony of neurons providing the hardware infrastructure for the psyche’s holistic software level, where archetypal entities reside and operate. This modern hardware-software analogy offers a compelling framework for understanding Jung’s archetypal theory, challenging those post-Jungians who dismiss it as implausible. While this interpretation remains grounded in physicalism — which may be seen as a limitation — it demonstrates the theoretical viability of Jung’s archetypal concept within contemporary scientific understanding.

The persistence of level-confusion among modern theorists is perplexing. It’s misguided to locate the soul in external nature, as Romanyshyn does, or in the pineal gland, as Descartes proposed. The concept of ‘soul’ may not require physical location at all. Romanyshyn’s claim that “the interiorization of the soul still haunts Jung’s psychology” reveals his own confusion, treating soul as a physical entity existing on the same conceptual plane as the body.

From a holistic perspective, the soul and mental realm can be understood as an objectively existing holistic level of reality that transcends physical properties like location, weight, or extension. This concept is analogous to ‘nationality’ — an objectively real phenomenon that exists at a distinct conceptual level without physical location.

Romanyshyn misinterprets humanity’s apparent separation from nature, which actually results from the development of ego consciousness and the withdrawal of psychological projections. The solution to modern alienation isn’t to revert to attributing soul-substance to nature. The evolution of consciousness represents a crucial advancement that cannot and should not be reversed. Our relationship with our environment should be based on objective understanding rather than psychological projection.

As a phenomenologist, Romanyshyn rejects Cartesian dualism, but his solution — eliminating mind and reducing it to “flesh,” like materialist reductionists — ignores significant developments in holistic science that recognize the psyche as an objectively existing holistic dimension. He attempts to compensate for this reduction by reimagining the material world as inherently mindful, suggesting that mind resides within natural objects. This view, which claims that recognizing matter as animate would solve psychological issues (such as anorexia), reflects a simplistic understanding.

Romanyshyn overlooks crucial advances in holistic theory, which now complements rather than opposes reductionism — both approaches being necessary for comprehensive understanding of reality. The multi-level framework describing mind-body relationships has superseded both Cartesian dualism and deterministic materialism. Thus, his crusade against Cartesian dualism is unnecessary, while his proposed solution represents a regression to primitive animism or pantheism. Such regression would undermine valuable insights from holism, chaos theory, and emergence theory.

Romanyshyn misinterprets alchemical philosophy. The alchemical process doesn’t aim to reanimate matter or locate mind within nature; rather, it emphasizes the thorough extraction of spirit from matter — a categorical separation. Only after this separation does the process proceed to reunite spirit and matter through circular distillation (‘solve et coagula’).

Far from advocating a return to primitive animism, alchemy seeks to liberate the personality from unconscious dependencies, ultimately achieving a more sophisticated relationship with nature. In contemporary psychological terms, this represents the ego’s liberation from unconscious identifications through expanding consciousness. The freed ego no longer maintains a naive bond with nature and unconscious archetypes, but instead aligns itself with wholeness — the self.

This elevated form of adaptation, symbolized by the philosopher’s stone, represents a profound transformation comparable to Buddha’s enlightenment. The process manifests not as a regression to animistic thinking, but as advancement toward higher consciousness.

Romanyshyn’s proposed treatment for anorexia — recognizing matter as animate — misses the mark. The anorexic’s excessive self-loathing typically manifests as an obsessive fixation on body and food, deemed inherently inferior. This overemphasis on the physical realm reflects our era’s lack of genuine spirituality, largely resulting from Christianity’s decline and deterioration. The feminine spiritual principle, in particular, has become trapped in material manifestations — money, physical beauty, and bodily concerns.

The solution lies opposite to Romanyshyn’s suggestion: cultivating awareness of spirit independent of matter — the traditional spiritual or transcendental approach. A spiritual counselor might help an anorexic recognize non-physical values and an transcendent reality where higher truth and beauty reside. When materialistic individuals embrace spiritual and invisible values, their fixation on physical matter and body typically diminishes. However, contemporary scientific materialism has complicated this spiritual interpretation, hampering the effectiveness of traditional spiritual therapeutic approaches.

Jungian psychotherapy offers a solution by equating consciousness development with “liberating spirit from matter.” A patient’s physical fixations typically diminish when they become aware of the underlying psychological complex — a fundamental approach to treating neurosis. Jung rejected suggestive treatment methods like those advocated by Romanyshyn and New Age practitioners. Instead, he promoted expanding conscious awareness to embrace a new form of spirituality centered on ego emancipation.

Analytical psychology’s effective methodology can awaken spiritual passion. Sometimes, exposure to accessible works like “Modern Man in Search of a Soul” is sufficient to transform one’s worldview. An anorexic patient could benefit from engaging with such perspectives, as they reveal the spiritual crisis underlying neurotic conditions. This process “frees spirit from matter” — replacing bodily fixation with conscious judgment and decision-making, fostering a mindset equipped to address psychological challenges.

Romanyshyn’s attempted synthesis of phenomenology and analytical psychology proves untenable. By eliminating the concept of the ‘objective psyche’ — the cornerstone of analytical psychology — he undermines his own argument. His advocacy for a metaphorical consciousness that views reality as an endless succession of dreams and myths contradicts his simultaneous call for responsibility. True responsibility requires confronting objective reality rather than reframing it through perpetual metaphor. Romanyshyn’s proposed solution to modern alienation offers only temporary relief through suggestion rather than genuine psychological transformation.

OWL