Psychotherapy & Culture

How is cultic development connected to narcissistic systems? What is a narcissistic system? The topic of narcissism within the psychotherapy world is loaded with theoretical and interpretive pathways and byways. I intend to wade through these pathways in a future post, but for this post I want to focus on how a narcissistic individual is typically part of a narcissistic family and part of a narcissistic cultural environment – a narcissistic system, and how this system can act as a source of a developing cult. Adam Richardson (2025) has been researching the dynamics of narcissistic families and possible connections to an American cultural narcissism. His research led me to consider how cults are surrogate families and how the development of cults may be , in part, a response to the influences of a culture of narcissism.

Keeping in mind a few of the essential features of all cults – that the cult acts as a surrogate family for cult followers, and that the relationship between the cultic leader(s) and his/her disciples is one of dependency and manipulation and control, the groundwork is set for probing the dynamics of a narcissistic system.

Alan Rappoport in his article,”Co-Narcissism: How We Accommodate to Narcissistic Parents”( 2005) introduces the concept of co-narcissism. For the purposes of this post I will use his clear definition of narcissism: “the underlying dynamic of narcissism is a deep, usually unconscious, sense of oneself as dangerously inadequate and vulnerable to blame and rejection. The common use of the term refers to some of the ways people defend themselves against the narcissistic dynamic: a concern with one’s own physical and social image, a preoccupation with one’s own thoughts and feelings, and a sense of grandiosity. There are, however, many other behaviors that can stem from narcissistic concerns, such as immersion in one’s own affairs to the exclusion of others, an inability to empathize with other’s experience, interpersonal rigidity, an insistence that one’s opinions and values are ‘right’, and a tendency to be easily offended and take things personally.”(p.1)

Rappoport suggests that within a narcissistic family children will accommodate or react to narcissistic parents in three typical ways: identification, compliance or rebellion. Rappoport thinks of co-narcissism as similar to co-alcoholism or co-dependency, wherein the dependent unconsciously collaborates with the alcoholic or dependent person. He says, “people who behave co-narcissistically share a number of the following traits: they tend to have low self-esteem, work hard to please others, defer to others’ opinions, focus on others’s world views and are unaware of their own orientations, are often depressed or anxious, find it hard to know how they think and feel about a subject, doubt the validity of their own views and opinions, and take the blame for interpersonal problems.”(p.2)

“Identification” as a response to parents who are narcissistic is to imitate them, thus the child becomes both narcissistic and co-narcissistic. “in regard to narcissistic parents, the child must exhibit the same qualities, values, feelings, and behavior which the parent employs to defend his or her self-esteem. For example, a parent who is a bully may not only bully his child but may require that the child become a bully as well.” (p.3)

“Compliance” is when “the child becomes the counterpart the parent needs from moment to moment to help the parent manage threats to his or her self-esteem.” The child is the ever-present approving audience.

“Rebellion” is a reaction in opposition to the demands of the narcissistic parent or parents. An example would be where a child, who maybe fully capable, fails a school course on purpose because of the expectations and high demands from parents. This seems to me to be a perilous course of action, since narcissistic parents can be extremely abusive and punishing.

Most cults are narcissistic families. Cult leaders and cult followers are dynamic collaborators in an ongoing relationship which is buoyed by the dependency needs of both parties. Saul Newton groomed his wives and other followers to become co-narcissistic participants in the Sullivanian cult. Most members responded to Newton’s grooming by identifying or complying. Several of the other leaders employed some of the same bullying and abusive behavior as Newton. Other followers complied with the manipulative behavior of the cultic leaders even when they were being seriously abused. Some rebelled, though they were quickly manipulated back into compliance or they were able to leave the cult. Most followers became psychologically, socially and financially trapped even though they may have wanted to rebel and leave the cult. This could be said of the followers of other cults – rebellion was extremely risky, so imitation and compliance became the likely paths available in order to stay within the narcissistic confines of the cultic family.

The primary threat that a narcissistic parent or cult leader employs to coerce family or cult members to conform is the threat of expulsion or excommunication. There is a range of manipulative and abuse behaviors employed by Narcissistic parents and cult leaders to maintain control over children and cult followers. Placing people into a double bind is one such tactic. I have explained the double bind theory in an earlier post. The concept is attributed to Gregory Bateson and the Palo Alto group of researchers who were investigating the family dynamics around dealing with schizophrenia. One of the classic examples of creating a double bind for a child is the mother who demands that her child comes and gives her a hug and when the child does so the mother says “you smell” and pushes the child away. The child is doomed whether he or she resists the mother’s demand to hug her or if the child does as she is demanded then gets punished for it. While Bateson and his colleagues applied the double bind to a possible contributing cause of schizophrenia, Bateson himself, had been thinking of a broader application of the phenomena – cultural double binds. A narcissistic parent or a cult leader will typically employ a double bind to maintain control over a child or follower. Grooming a child or a follower includes a phase of complementing and idealizing, followed by a phase of inclusion and shared identity, creating an illusion of a stable relationship, followed by a phase of devaluing and incremental criticizing then discarding or exclusion, particularly for minor transgressions, followed by the threat of rejection and excommunication from the family or cult. It could be argued that double binding is a hallmark of a narcissistic culture. Throughout our various institutions a capitalistic ethos follows a pattern of valuing with compliments and inclusion when customers or followers can be of some monetary or other value to those in control and then abandoning them once they no longer offer perceived value.

Christopher Lasch wrote “The Culture of Narcissism” in 1979 and it was widely read and discussed at the time. It has since become a kind of benchmark for periodically reflecting on our national potential for cultural narcissism. Lasch argues that our culture has become increasingly self absorbed and obsessed with instant gratification, leading to a lack of meaningful connections and a decline in social and political engagement. He also argues that the decline in the family unit, the rise of consumer culture, and the influence of mass media have collectively led to the emergence of a narcissistic culture. Lasch sees our modern capitalistic society as the breeding ground for narcissistic behavior:

“Modern capitalistic society not only elevates narcissists to prominence, it elicits and reinforces narcissistic traits in everyone. It does this in many ways: by displaying narcissism so prominently and in such attractive forms; by undermining parental authority and thus making it hard for children to grow up; but above all by creating so many varieties of bureaucratic dependence.” (P.274)

And this was in 1979. What would he make of our collective narcissism in 2025? In a 2018 edition of the book, E.J. Dionne, in his Introduction, wrote: “passages in Lasch’s 1979 book inspire unflattering jolts of recognition about Trump himself – the lover of praise, the seeker of friendly audiences, the creator of a world in which he is always at the center.”. Lasch says in chapter one, “notwithstanding his occasional illusions of omnipotence, the narcissist depends on others to validate his self-esteem. He cannot be without an admiring audience.”.

We should clearly see that our current U.S. president is a narcissist on steroids. He is currently the leader of a hardcore cult of followers referred to as the MAGA cult. Trump and his MAGA followers are examples of all the characteristics I have identified with a narcissistic leader and his co-narcissistic followers who have over identified with the cult leader, and have, in many instances, separated themselves from their own families in favor of the MAGA surrogate family, and are in fear of being rejected if their loyalty wanes. Most MAGA followers, as co-narcissists, are either compliant or indentifying or both. A rebellion option is apparently too risky since it has not yet presented itself.

Because MAGA followers have over-identified with their cult leader, who has promised them a new millennium by dismantling the status quo- essentially destroying the world to save it- they cannot find fault with their messiah no matter how egregious his behavior. During Trump’s first term as president most MAGA followers were somewhat guarded and embarrassed to associate with his bizarre, dysfunctional, rude and aberrant behavior. They were reluctant to tell anyone they voted for him and usually wouldn’t display MAGA flags or caps. After being re-elected, Trump followers have become emboldened to display their allegiance to their MAGA surrogate family.

Cults can be relatively small and isolated, such as with David Koresch and the Branch Davidians or , arguably, entire nations, such as North Korea and Nazi Germany. As I mentioned in the previous post, cults will typically arise during economic and social uncertainty and they may become more destructive and dangerous depending on how paranoid cult leaders get and how desperately followers cling to these leaders. According to Anthony Storr, in his book about gurus, “Feet of Clay”( 1996), most gurus are narcissistically flawed and they will eventually display their weaknesses. I note that one way cults will dissolve is when cult leaders or messiahs are imprisoned, as in the case of Shoko Asahara, or self destruct , as with Jim Jones, David Koresch, Hitler, or once they die naturally, as with Saul Newton. Once he died the Sullivanians did not have an obvious narcissistic leader to perpetuate the cult and many followers had already been wavering in their allegiance to Saul and the group. We have seen this phenomenon with followers of various cult leaders in the past. Kwame Nkrumah was supposedly revered in Ghana for his panafricanism, yet when he was overthrown, people tore down his statues in Accra. Germany moved past Hitler, China moved past Mao, Syria is moving past Assad.

Another way cults can change is with a sustained deprogramming movement. Since most cult followers become alienated from their own families and switch allegiance to the cult family, families can work to recruit their family member back into their natal family. This is a one-by-one approach, but it has worked with smaller cults, whether religious or otherwise, so it could still work in recruiting adherents to the Trump MAGA cult back to their own families, friends, communities.

I have come to think that the development of cults is a systemic process and that types of cults are to be considered as along a spectrum. This spectrum might find the Sullivanians at one end, because their ideological beliefs do not include an obvious apocalyptic scenario and there is no attachment to reconstructing a past “glorious” existence and because the cult leader(s) did not cause the deaths of their followers. At the other end of the spectrum might be the People’s Temple, with Jim Jones as the millenarian, apocalyptic cult leader, and the Aum Shinryokyu, with Shoko Ashihara as the apocalyptic cult leader with a jumble of ideological platforms promising an ideal post apocalyptic future. There would be plenty examples somewhere along this spectrum, such as Auroville, in Southern India, led by Mother (Blanche Alfassa); The Melanesian cargo cults; NXIVM in New York, led by Keith Raniere; possibly Scientology and Ron L. Hubbard as a cult leader; and, of course, our most current glaring example, the MAGAS, with Donald Trump as their cult leader.

The particular characteristics of each group would indicate where along this spectrum they may fall. My thinking is that the more ideologically influenced and the more millenarian and apocalyptic the cult leader and the group, the more extreme at one end of the spectrum we would find them. All cults do include a messiah or cult leader, who demonstrates narcissistic qualities and who is able to manipulate followers with some degree of charisma, some promise of enlightened transformation along with some ritual practices, typically promising a new millennium which harkens to an imagined glorious past. Also, typically, cult members will perceive themselves to be oppressed and the new millennium is expected to bring about a reversal of status : the have- nots will become the haves. This aspect of most cults will include what I have referred to as “The Time Must Be Ripe”. By this I mean that social, political, economic conditions are such that an actual or perceived oppressed group of people have reached a period of pent up frustration and anger at being oppressed and that they are ripe for conversion to a belief system and a series of practices offering a revolution. Lanternari in his ” Religions of the Oppressed” (1965) identifies such cults from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Melanesia and Polynesia. Marvin Harris, in his “Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches” (1989) compares the Melanesian cargo cults to the Jesus cult at the time of Christ. The Melanesians under colonial rule and the Jews during the time of Christ were both oppressed people ripe for a messianic leader to lead them out of oppression. Harris’s argument is that Jesus was expected to be a military leader who would defeat the Romans and that the Jews have always expected a warrior messiah. He argues that the notion of the “Prince of Peace” was promoted well after Jesus’s death by Paul in his proselytizing in communities away from Jerusalem. During the time of Christ there were many would-be messiahs , John the Baptist being the most feared by the Romans because of the numbers of his followers. Christ was not initially a serious threat. Likewise among the various Melanesian cult leaders, some of whom were perceived as more threatening because of the size of their followers group and because the leader’s tactics morphed from symbolic cargo capture to actually stealing cargo.

Zoe Heller, in her New Yorker article, “Beyond Belief: What Makes a Cult a Cult” (July 12&19, 2021), said , “Some scholars theorize the levels of religiosity and cultic affiliation tend to rise in proportion to the perceived uncertainty of an environment. The less control we feel we have over our circumstances, the more likely we are to entrust our fates to a higher power.” (p.89)

In addition to the economic, political, social time being ripe, the psychological readiness of potential followers is a precondition for cultic leaders to manipulate them. Writing about Paul Mackenzie’s Pentecostal church, Good News International Ministries in Kenya, Alexis Okeowo in the New Yorker, August 26, 2024 says, “People in vulnerable emotional and material circumstances can more easily end up in cults.’ Maybe they had a loved one who died. Maybe they had an illness. Maybe they had some trauma earlier in their life, Steve Hassan, an American psychiatrist who works with cult survivors told me. ‘ Nobody thinks they’re joining a cult. They get deceived. It’s a systematic step-by-step seduction’ Those who do join do so in search of possibility, stability, and some meaning.”(p.57). I believe this is true of all cults along the spectrum, including the Sullivanians at one end and Jim Jones’s People’s Temple at the other.

A characteristic shared by all cults to one degree or another is having followers or disciples sever all ties with natal family members and friends and donating as many resources as possible to the cult group, which will then act as a surrogate family. This can take the form of “totalizing” or creating an environment where the cultic family is one’s only contact with the world, as in the case when Jim Jones took his followers to Guyana, or the situation with the Sullivanians where followers were able to interact with people outside the cult, but where contact with family members was almost forbidden. The Sullivanians taught that one’s parents were a harmful influence and that cult members were to replace one’s own parents and other family members. Typically, the male cult leader will position himself as the surrogate father of the cultic family and his wife (wives) would act as the mother. This has the effect of tightly controlling cult members, even when they might have doubts about their commitment to the cult leaders and the group. By burning all bridges behind them, cult followers are vulnerable to various form of control and abuse.

Along with the male cult leader assuming a role of father to the community, a number of these cult leaders used their influence to gain sexual access to women in the cult. Zoe Heller, in her New Yorker article (July 12 & 19, 2001) says, “male cult leaders sometimes use various manipulative techniques, including violence, to sexually control the female cult followers” She gives the example of Keith Raniere,

“Keith Raniere, the leader of the New York based self-help cult NXIVM, told female disciples in his inner circle that they had been high ranking Nazis in their former lives, and that having yogic sex with him was a way to shift the residual bad energy lurking in their system. Raniere was especially alert to the manipulative uses of guilt and shame,” (p.87). Saul Newton, the leader of the Sullivanians, had access to as many female followers as he wanted, even while being married and divorced five times. Since the Sullivanians were essentially a sex cult, both men and women were encouraged to have sex with various members, but only Saul was freely able to marry and sexually control younger female members.

Quite a number of cults were designed as religious communes. Some were relatively benign, yet others became self destructive, such as the People’s Temple. An example of one which was relatively benign until the cult leader died was Auroville in southern India, founded in 1968 by Blanche Alfassa, a French woman, known to her followers as the Mother. As described by Zoe Heller (2021), Mother “claimed to have learned ‘integral yoga’ from her guru, Sri Aurobindo. Auroville was to be the home of integral yoga and cradle a future race of immortal supra mental men and women. Mother claimed that the practice of integral yoga would bring about cellular transformation and ultimately grant immortality to practitioners.” “after Mother died. to preserve the Mother’s vision a militant group of believers, known as ‘the collective’ shut down schools, burned books in the town library, shaved their heads and tried to drive off those members of the community whom they considered insufficiently devout.” (p.89) The community eventually survived this militant assault, but we know there are other examples of militant extremist movements within existing religions, which have the markings of cults. Auroville may be a rare example of a religious cult which has survived for more than 50 years. There are still more than three thousand members.

Perhaps the prime example of a contemporary violent apocalyptic cult is Aum Shinrikyo which I referred to in my previous post. In comparing Asahara and Aum to Jim Jones and the People’s Temple, Lifton (2000) says, ” Like Asahara (and many others who show paranoid tendencies, he (Jones) became more grandiose the greater his anxiety and inner conflict. He also resembled Asahara in his increasing tendency toward megalomania and in episodes that were close to or actually psychotic. As with gurus in general, a pattern of decompensation and breakdown was greatly accentuated by faltering control over his disciples. Jones and Asahara, to fend off threats to their guruhood, escalated their demands on their disciples, ultimately insisting that they be ready to die for their guru, in Jones’s case, through acceptance of revolutionary suicide as an ultimate expression of loyalty.” (p.284-285)

Regardless of where a particular cult may fall on a spectrum – from relatively benign to militantly apocalyptic- there are several ingredients all cults will share in various measures: the time must be ripe; a perceived or actual oppressed group; a charismatic and narcissistic leader posing as a messiah offering a new beginning; followers vulnerable to manipulation by their dependency needs; followers’ relative alienation from their own families and friends and their attachment to a cultic surrogate family.

I will connect the systemic interpretation of the development of cults to narcissistic systems and the double bind theory in my next post.

I have written about cults earlier in this Blog. Soon after Reverend Jim Jones , the pastor of the People’s Temple in San Francisco took at least 1,000 of his followers to Guyana in 1975 and then enjoined them to commit suicide when his paranoia grew out of control, I designed a college course on cults and cultism. Among various sources I have employed in my studies are two key sources for a deep understanding of cultism: “Religions of the Oppressed” (1965) by Vittorio Lanternari and “Destroying the World to Save It” (2000) by Robert Jay Lifton. The patterns of behavior identified in these books are the patterns Stille (2023) notes in the cult of psychoanalysts known as the Sullivanians.

Harry Stack Sullivan, who I have referred to in several previous posts about schizophrenia, is particularly noted to have established the Washington School of Psychiatry in Washington D.C. and for developing Interpersonal Psychoanalysis as a distinct approach which focuses on interpersonal relationships in addition to intra-psychic therapy. Most of Sullivan’s career was devoted to helping psychotic patients in hospital settings. Interpersonal Psychoanalysis interpreted the relationships between parents and their children to be potentially vulnerable to manipulation, particularly in the absence of other non-familial personal relationships. While at Chestnut Lodge and other institutions, Sullivan and other psychiatrists created an atmosphere of regularized relationships among patients and patients and staff. Rather than treating patients as stigmatized by diagnostic labels, such as schizophrenia, patients were told they had problems with living and part of their treatment was to enter into healthy relationships with others at Chestnut Lodge- psychiatrists and patients alike.

The Sullivanians or Fourth Wall (the group name from their drama group) selectively borrowed some of Harry Stack Sullivan’s ideas and essentially bastardized them to fit a preconceived quasi-Marxist psychoanalytic focus on sex and alternative family arrangements. One of the founders, Jane Pearce, studied with Sullivan and was a Ph.D. trained psychoanalyst. Her husband, Saul Newton had no specific psychoanalytic training and no academic qualifications, yet he became the primary leader of the group. The Sullivanians constituted a cult and generally followed most principal patterns of other cults, yet were distinct in a few ways. Saul Newton, Jane Pearce, and Saul’s subsequent four wives, plus a few other disciples formed the cult leadership. They were all psychotherapists and generally followed the ideology and practice of steering patients away from any attachment to their natal families and forming committed attachments to members of the Sullivanian cult family. The Sullivanian leadership basically recruited new members from among their therapy patients and training supervisees. Patients were directed to separate themselves from their own parents and siblings and to begin living with, having sex with, and forming close friendships with others in the same series of upper West side apartments the group had managed to purchase and rent.

The Sullivanian leadership and particularly Saul Newton regularly dictated who among their followers could (or even, should) have sex with whom. Forming strict monogamous commitments was discouraged and usually forbidden, except for Newton. Saul Newton would threaten ex-communication if followers broke expected norms. Most followers could not afford to be rejected from the cult because they had very few or no family or friends outside the group. This is quite typical of all cults, though the Sullivanians differ in that a number of the members did have employment outside the cult. Several were doctors and some had other professional positions in New York.

Stille (2023) claims that the Sullivanians definitely functioned as a cult and he cites Lorna Goldberg, who describes the profile of many new Sullivanian recruits. Stille states:

“People join cuts almost always in the period between their adolescence and early adulthood, in their late teens or or twenties.’Their identities are still unformed – they haven’t found a partner yet, they might have finished college or moved to a new city for the first time, Lorna Goldberg explained. ‘They’re in an unfamiliar place, and they’re uncertain about their future. They might have suffered the loss of a friendship or a love relationship. They might have suffered a divorce in their family or the death of someone they love. They are moving away from their families, they are very receptive to a new way of life, and they’re very idealistic. And they’re naive and a little grandiose- ‘We are going to change the world’. They encounter these therapists with these new ideas- it seems exciting and honest and good- they had no idea that what they saw at the beginning was going to unfold into something quite different for them.”

Lanternari (1965) summarizes many characteristics shared by most cults over the last few hundred years. The Sullivanian group varies from most of these in a few ways yet the relationship between the cult leader(s) and followers (or the messiah and disciples) is quite the same.

“One finds in every cult such phenomena as a prophet or guide who founds his movement on traditional myths which coincide with the substance of the revelations he had received. Revelations may come from a Supreme Being, as in Africa; from the Great Spirit, as in North America; from the Spirit of the Dead , as in Melanesia, and also, to some extent, in Africa and America; or from national heroes who inspired such cults as Koreri in Melanesia, Apapocuva in Brazil, the Dream Dance and the Peyote Cult in North America. Messianic cults all involve a belief in society’s return to its source, usually expressed in terms of the expectation of the millennium and the cataclysms and catastrophes that are to precede it, and also embody a belief in the rising of the dead, in the reversal of the existing social order, in the ejection of the white man, in the end of the world, and in its regeneration in an age of abundance and happiness.”(p.240)

While most of the cults mentioned by Lanternari are religious, usually following synchretic belief ideologies, the relationship between a messiah (cult leader) and his or her disciples can be social/psychological (perhaps the Sullivanians?) or political, as with the current Trump Maga movement, or even an entire country, such as North Korea.

Robert Jay Lifton investigated the Aum Shinrikyo cult led by Shoko Ashihara. This was an apocalyptic cult which followed the syncretic idealogical preachings of Ashihara and carried out a deadly attack. Lifton states, “On March 20, 1995, Aum Shinrikyo, a fanatical Japanese religious cult, released sarin, a deadly nerve gas, on five subway stations during Tokyo’s early morning rush hour. Eleven were killed and up to five thousand injured.”(p.3) “Aum was part of a loosely connected, still-developing global sub-culture of apocalyptic violence – of violence conceived in sweeping terms as a purification and renewal of humankind through through the total or near-total destruction of the planet”(p.4)

Lifton further states: “One can find certain psychological parallels to Aum Shinrikyo in, for instance, the Jewish fundamentalists who encouraged the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, in Palestinian Hamas suicide bombers, and in Hindu and Muslim fundamentalists who act violently on behalf of claims to ancient sacred places on the Indian subcontinent.” (p.4) Lifton then compares the Aum acts to those of the Charles Manson Family, Heaven’s Gate, the Peoples Temple, the Oklahoma City bombers, Aryan supremacists, and para-military survivalists on the radical right in America.

The Sullivanians were not apocalyptic, yet as Saul Newton and a few other leaders became more paranoid, they acted in progressively erratic, aggressive and dictatorial ways toward their followers. The group believed themselves to be exceptional in their psychological theories and sexual behavior and thus somewhat cut off from the world outside their various apartment complexes – even in the midst of the upper Westside of Manhattan. They did not believe they needed to destroy the world to save it – they thought they were transforming it by transforming themselves.

While reviewing the “Sullivanians” and revisiting my previous research on cults, I have begun to develop a theory of cultism, which combines the notion of the time must be ripe for cults to develop and narcissistic systems with the double bind theory. This follows in my next posts.

Joseph Bernstein, New York Times, March 26, 2023

This article is an attempt to suggest that Freudian psychoanalysis may be making a comeback in the U.S. I am not wholly persuaded. Bernstein has written a fine journalistic summary of the current state of various psychotherapeutic approaches. It is mostly focused on New York based psychoanalysis, though the article sets the proposed recent growth of psychoanalytic patients within the broader context of a waning interest in particular psychiatric drugs and a move away from cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) as the dominant treatment approach for all mental health issues.

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I agree with Bernstein’s comment that “Freud never totally disappeared. Some of his concepts,like denial and libido, are so deeply imbedded in popular culture that we no longer think of them as Freudian.” I would add just a few of his other concepts, such as ego, id, superego, free association, Oedipal complex, oral and anal phases, which are part of our cultural discourse. I believe psychotherapy in general has become progressively more imbedded in our U.S. culture over the last several decades, though this may not necessarily indicate a growth in people seeking psychoanalytic treatment. Classical Freudian psychoanalytic practice has evolved into a variety of approaches, with varying theoretical distinctions from Freud’s central propositions and varying practice parameters, such as fewer sessions per week and more empathetic engagement with patients. Any type of psychoanalytic treatment is still very expensive and usually longer term than many other types of psychotherapy. So called “efficacy” evaluations are misplaced when comparing something like cognitive behavioral therapy and psychoanalysis. CBT is often very short term and focused on treating phobias and anxiety issues. Psychoanalysis is generally longer term and deals with a fundamental transformation of one’s essential self and life meanings. It is not typically symptom treatment focused.

Bernstein mentions several film and television representations of psychotherapy/psychoanalysis, such as a forthcoming film, “Freud’s Last Session” with Anthony Hopkins, and “Couples Therapy” a Showtime series, featuring psychoanalyst Orna Guralnik, as well as the 2011 film, “A Dangerous Method”, about Freud, Jung and Sabina Speilrein. I have written about various media representations of psychotherapy/psychoanalysis in previous posts and one trend I have noted is that depictions of therapy in various media have become progressively more realistic and authentic. From Hitchkock’s “Spellbound”, through Tony Soprano and Dr Malfi, and “Dead Poet’s Society” to “In Treatment”, with Gabriel Berne as the therapist, film and TV representations have hewn closer to the “real thing”. But the first documentary representation to become widely available and impactful is “Couples Therapy”. I have used “In Treatment” in seminars to discuss the process of psychotherapy and the types of problems which arise and ways in which the therapist and his supervisor choose to deal with their patients/clients. This series was fictional and while it raised some important issues, such as the necessary ethical boundaries of the therapist, the audience knew it was not a documentary.

In a time when TV audiences have become entertained by a variety of “reality” shows, perhaps we have become trained to find interpersonal conflicts entertaining? Or are we identifying with characters and situations to the point of having these representations of therapy be somewhat therapeutic for ourselves. “Couples Therapy” offers us a psychoanalytic psychotherapy approach to resolving relationship conflicts, while teaching us about the kinds of conflicts many couples deal with and the possible ways a therapeutic guidance or intervention may help restore what likely was once a loving and healthy relationship. I would like to have data which would indicate how many couples may be seeking therapy as a result of watching “Couples Therapy”.

Bernstein includes the obligatory journalist’s mention of one of Freud’s critics, Frederick Crews, who I have referred to in my post about “Freud Bashing”. Crews’s criticisms notwithstanding, his impact is virtually nil, while Freud’s influence continues. Also mentioned is a quote from Orna Guralnik which underscores what I had written earlier in my posts on various biographies of Freud. She said, “I originally read Freud as a teenager and thought This is amazing. Then I came into all sorts of deep feminist critiques and started thinking This is a whole bunch of patriarchical garbage. But having read a lot more and having come to realize that you have to see Freud in the context of his time, I came out on the other side. There are all kinds of Freuds. And you kind of pick and choose what Freud you want to have.” I titled one of my posts, ” Who’s Freud, or Whose Freud?” I do think we need to think with and beyond Freud, however, when evaluating the current impact of psychoanalysis in the U.S. If we broaden our lens to consider what may be happening with a general increased involvement with all approaches in psychotherapy, a possible uptick in psychoanalytic sessions may be just part of a larger trend. After a few years of the Covid 19 sequestering, there is likely a pent up need for help with individual emotional problems and interpersonal conflicts, and while many therapists were forced to offer remote therapy sessions, people now have even more need for in-person visits to a therapist’s office. And most therapists are overbooked, which makes wait times longer. Psychoanalysis will likely remain a boutique therapy, appealing to people who can afford the time and cost and who are desirous of some kind of essential transformation of self.

The Collective Unconscious

My previous post considered the influence of Jung’s concepts of psychological types, animus and anima, and archetypes. Underpinning each of these concepts, particularly archetypes, is his concept of the collective unconscious. This is how Jung explains the distinction between the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious in “Four Archetypes” (1973):

“A more or less superficial layer of the unconscious is undoubtedly personal. I call it the ‘personal unconscious’. But this personal unconscious rests upon a deeper layer, which does not derive from personal experience and is not a personal acquisition but is inborn. This deeper layer I call the ‘collective unconscious’. I have chosen the term ‘collective’ because this part of the conscious is not individual but universal; in contrast to the personal psyche, it has contents and modes of behavior that are more or less the same everywhere and in all individuals.” (pg.3) “The contents of the personal unconscious are chiefly the feeling-toned complexes, as they are called; they constitute the personal and private side of psychic life. The contents of the collective unconscious, on the other hand, are known as archetypes.”(p.4)

Jolande Jacobi, in “The Way of Individuation” (1967) explains Jung’s notions of personal and collective unconscious: “He distinguishes the ‘personal unconscious’, whose contents are ontogenetically acquired, and the ‘collective unconscious’, whose contents are derived from phylogenesis. These latter are specifically human, typical modes of action and reaction, irrepresentable propensities which he terms ‘archetypes’. They become perceptible to consciousness under definite constellations in the form of archetypal images, symbols, or processes. On the one hand they are ‘reflections’ of the instincts, on the other they express ideations. Hence Jung distinguishes between the non-perceptible archetype per se and the perceptible archetypal image. The ego is conditioned not only by the unconscious psyche but also very largely by the ‘collective consciousness’. By this term Jung means the sum total of traditions, conventions, customs, prejudices, rules, and norms of the environment in which the individual lives, and the spirit of the age by which he is influenced.” (p.150)

My own take on Jung’s and Jacobi’s descriptions is that we are aware of the existence and contents of our personal unconscious but if there is such a thing as a “collective unconscious”, it is an “irrepresentable propensity” – an “archetype”, and it is “non-perceptible”. What we may experience of the collective unconscious or archetypes are tracings or symbolic representations (ideas, images). We then extrapolate or interpret these tracings as signs indicating that they do indeed come from a universal source. This notion links Jung’s research into alchemy to his ideas about transformation and individuation. While Toni Wolff warned Jung not to move deeply into alchemy, he obviously ignored her warning. She believed he was leaving science and becoming more occultist. This was, of course, what Freud had warned of. I suspect that some of the attraction to Jung’s ideas has to do with the “spiritual” flavor of his investigation into alchemy and the collective unconscious, though Jung himself did not claim a particular creation designer. Jung was an indefatigable investigator of the unknown. He was willing to risk his reputation as a scientist to dive deeply into the occult.

In my research about the human journey process, I identified representations of individual journeys through mythology, literature, films, memoirs, spiritual quests, travel journals, anthropological ethnographies, and these representations followed a definite pattern – one which elaborated the basic departure-initiation-return pattern identified in Joseph Campbell’s “Hero with a Thousand Faces”. This pattern could be a “non-perceptible archetype”. Only the tracings or representations are perceptible. The relationship Jung saw between the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious, I saw in the individual journey pattern and the “universal” journey pattern. The individual is the synchronic and the universal is the diachronic. The individual “hero’s journey” plays out the universal pattern , but with individual and particular style.

Individuation

I believe Jung’s ideas about the individuation process may be among his most significant contributions. A complete explanation of what Jung intended with his conception of the individuation process would likely include some explanation of many of his other concepts, such as archetypes, the personal and collective unconscious, anima and animus, the function of the shadow. Jolande Jacobi (1967) explains the core of what Jung intended with his development of the individuation process:

“When Jung speaks of an individuation process that characterizes a possibility of development immanent in everyone and that culminates in rounding out the individual into a psychic whole, his conception, though following the same line as other philosophical definitions, is both broader and deeper, since it takes account not only of the conscious but also the unconscious components of the psyche in their delicately balanced and creative interaction with the conscious mind.”(p.13.) In her chapter on “The Two Kinds of Individuation”, Jacobi says: “Fundamentally, individuation is a natural process immanent in every living organism. The individuation process can either take place unconsciously, or it can be made conscious in various ways and brought to a high degree of differentiation. It goes without saying that there are any number of intermediate stages. Two main forms may be distinguished:

1. The natural process, occurring more or less autonomously and without the participation of consciousness, and
2. The ‘artificial’ process, aided for instance by analysis, developed by definite methods, and consciously experienced.

In both forms the same power is at work, striving for maturation and self-realization from the seed to the fruit, to the invisible goal immanent within them. But the two forms are as different as, say, a wild fruit and a highly cultivated one. In the first case everything is left to the natural process; in the second, this is assisted, intensified, and consciously realized by the application of a special technique”. (p.15)

Two main phases of the individuation process:

Both the “natural” and the “artificial” variants are divided into two main phases, essentially the first half and second half of each person’s life. While this is to some extent arbitrary, Jacobi (1967) states, “their duration, the kind of task that has to be solved in them, and the depth and intensity of the experience vary with each individual.”(p.21) While most developmental psychology theories focus on the first half of life, Jung was particularly interested in the transition from the first phase to the second and how one can shape the second half of their lives.

Possible stages in the individuation process:

While there are a number of sources which refer to “stages” in the individuation process, it is not clear to me that Jung mapped specific stages and even though Jacobi titles a chapter, “Stages” in her book (1967), I was hard pressed to notice any clearly delineated stages. Jacobi refers to “four functions of consciousness” These are the ones I mentioned in my post on psychological types: thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition. She refers to the two attitudes , also mentioned in my previous post: introversion and extroversion. She argues that the development of the relationship between the attitudes and the functions is part of a natural process and acts as criteria for “the successful course of the individuation process.”(P.37) A possible first stage would then be the shaping of “persona”. “By ‘persona’ Jung means that segment of the ego which is connected with relations to the surrounding world.” (p.37) Jacobi says, “An elastic persona that ‘fits well’ belongs to the psychic wardrobe of the adult man, and its lack or its rigidity is an indication of psychic maldevelopment.” (p.37) She warns about a danger in over identifying with one’s persona, such as a professor with his textbooks or a general with his rank. In relating the functions, attitudes and persona, Jacobi says, “The development and differentiation of the predominant ‘attitude’ and main ‘function’ as well as the persona generally go hand in hand with experiences and conflicts which are indispensable for the maturation of the psyche.”(p.37)

A possible second “stage” could be the “shadow”. Jacobi says, “The shadow is the sum of all the qualities conforming to our sex that were neglected or rejected while the ego was being built up. The growth of the shadow, like that of the persona, keeps pace with that of the ego; it is, as it were, the ego’s mirror-image, and is compounded partly or repressed, partly of unlived psychic features which, for moral, social, educational, or other reasons, were from the outset excluded from consciousness and from active participation in life and were therefore repressed or split off. Accordingly the shadow can be marked by both positive and negative qualities.”(p.38) According to Jung there is a personal shadow and a collective shadow. Working through shadow content in mythology and dreams is part of the individuating process. Jacobi says: “Conscious realization of the shadow, the disclosure of its qualities, and the integration of its contents always have a therapeutic effect because this is a step on the way towards man’s wholeness.” (p.40)

Along with working with shadow material a possible third “stage” in the individuation process may be encountering and working with one’s anima or animus. Jacobi says: “one of the main tasks of the second phase of the individuation process is a confrontation with the unconscious feminine features of the man, which Jung calls the ‘anima’, or with the unconscious features of the woman, the ‘animus’. Both are archetypal powers and besides personal elements also contain collective ones. Being so constituted they form the natural bridge to the deepest layers of the psyche.” (p.44) The figures of anima and animus are projected on persons, such as mothers and fathers, and also in dreams and fantasies. Jacobi says: “In the first half of life it is natural and logical that these intrapsychic figures should appear in projection and that we are thus attracted to the men and women who are their carriers, and fall in love with them. It is the task of the second half of life to withdraw the projections. It belongs to the second phase of the individuation process, when a man must learn to stand by himself, to discover the contrasexual element in himself and to fecundate it, thus rounding out his personality without impairing for relationship as such..”(p.45)

If there is a fourth “stage”, it is likely when the ego has been strengthened sufficiently through the previous “stages” to be able to confront the “Self”. The term “self” or “Self” is, of course, loaded with every psychologist’s, philosopher’s, and religious theorist’s interpretation. I may delve deeply into this in a future post, but for now, Jung’s notion of “Self” is seen as the objective of the individuation journey. Jacobi says, “The confrontation with the shadow and its integration must always be achieved first in the individuation process in order to strengthen the ego for further laps in the journey and for the crucial encounter with the Self.” (p.47) Further, “The aim of the individuation process is a synthesis of all partial aspects of the conscious and unconscious psyche. It seems to point to an ultimately unknowable, transcendent ‘centre’ of the personality, which – paradoxically – is at the same time its periphery – and is of the’ highest intensity’, possessing an extraordinary power of irradiation. The centre and periphery Jung calls the ‘Self’, and he terms it the origin and fulfillment of the ego.” (p.49) “The Self is always there, it is the central, archetypal, structural element of the psyche, operating in us from the beginning as the organizer and director of the psychic processes. It’s ‘a priori’ teleological character, it’s striving to realize an aim, exist even without the participation of consciousness.”(p.50)

In addition to Jacobi’s explanations and interpretations of what Jung intended by the individuation process, I found Elie Humbert’s explanations in his “C.G.Jung” (1984) to be the clearest of all I surveyed. He says, “Individuation can then be seen as an unconscious process that underlies the flow of life and is transformed when it becomes conscious, that is , in Jung’s view, when the ego experiences the collective unconscious. The ego experiences the collective unconscious when it encounters the shadow or when the anima and the animus are differentiated from the external images upon which they were originally projected. Individuation always takes the form of a conflict by which the subject is transformed. Individuation presupposes that the ego has recognized and come to terms with the unconscious center of the personality. Jung was referring to that center when he used the phrase ‘being whole’. Wholeness results from the coordination of the ego with the Self, whatever may be the subject’s wounds and lacks.”(p.117). Humbert continues, “The individuating psyche is indivisible -that is, integrated – because it holds opposites together. the psyche becomes more itself by becoming more centered, but it does so without isolating itself from others. The differentiation of the individual from the collective, in the sense that the differentiation was defined by Jung, connects human beings to their environment rather than severing them from it. Individuation is the opposite of individualism.” (p.118)

There are obvious parallels between explanations of the individuation process and the journey process, as depicted in my own research. Jacobi says, “not for nothing is the individuation process said to be an analogy of the ‘quest of the hero’, or the dangers which he must overcome before he can gain the king’s throne.” (p.47) The hero journeyer in mythology sets out to discover new territory or accomplish some challenging objective, such as defeating an enemy or finding a cosmic egg. A successful journey will likely result in a personal transformation, and include a boon or reward which can be shared with his community upon his return. The boon, be it a cosmic egg or holy grail, is analogous to wisdom or knowledge.

According to Jung, Jacobi, and Humbert, a successful individuation process will include a “departure” from one’s ordinary existence by beginning to grapple with one’s persona, anima or animus, shadow material, and whatever one’s unconscious offers up. This long struggle phase might be considered the “initiation”. Once the ego has “recognized and come to terms with the unconscious center of the personality” the “subject is transformed”, and becomes whole, and the “return” phase is accomplished. The individuation process can occur “naturally” (and unconsciously) or “artificially” (via analysis and consciously). The questing journey can also occur unconsciously and unintentionally or with obvious conscious intention. Jung himself has characterized his own individuation process as something like a hero’s journey, which included his diving deeply into his own unconscious and dream material and involving an emotional breakdown as part of his “initiation” and his arrival-return as the maturing of his ego and Self encounter.

“Americans are Jung and Easily Freudened” – James Joyce

“Americans Are Afreud and Want to be Jung Again” – Robert McAndrews

Carl Jung’s ideas have been considerably more influential than those of any other followers of Freud. Alfred Adler was the first follower to split with Freud and his influence has continued to some extent, both directly with Adlerian psychology and psychotherapy, but also indirectly through some of family therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy. I will cover this later when I post about Adler. Other significant early followers include Sandor Ferenczi, Karl Abraham, Hans Sachs, Ernest Jones, Otto Rank, none of whom have left much of a lasting influence. Anna Freud, who would also be considered a follower of her father’s theories and practices, was likely the most influential after Jung. Jung’s early research with psychological types and his interests in parapsychology, mythology and alchemy stimulated his thinking beyond his commitment to Freud’s sexual libido theory.

Psychological Types

While Jung sought ways to organize his understandings of symbols he encountered in dreams of patients and his own dreams, and his research into myths and religions of the world, he also was aware of the ways any of his category constructions could be misunderstood and /or taken as easy and simple ways to characterize and identify people and their behavior patterns. He made specific cautionary comments in some of his late writings, particularly in the Introductory chapter in “Man and His Symbols” (1972 ) which includes essays by several other key followers of Jung, and he edited, and which was intended for a general audience.

Nevertheless, Jung’s terms ‘introvert’ and ‘extrovert’, as well as ‘anima’ and ‘animus’, and ‘archetypes’ have become widely incorporated into almost everyday language around the world, much as Freud’s terms ‘ego’, ‘id’, ‘superego’ have become our universal reference to self dynamics. Jung wrote his book, “Psychological Types” in 1921. His typology developed over some years through exchanges with his friend Hans Schmid and Sabina Spielrein, with whom he also had an intimate relationship. Bair (2004) says: “Jung saved his own typology for the last chapter, which comprised the final 150 pages or so of his text. To the ‘attitudes’ of introvert and extravert, he added four further differentiations called functions. To ‘feeling’ and ‘thinking’ he now adopted Schmid’s and Toni Wolff’s suggestions and gave equal status to ‘intuition’ and ‘sensation’. Feeling and thinking he grouped under the rubric ‘rational’ while sensation and feeling became ‘non rational’. Two attitudes and four functions thus permitted a grand total of eight possible psychological types. In the years following the 1921 publication,Jung was asked repeatedly why had proposed a system composed of two types, four functions, and eight possible types. ‘That there are exactly four is a matter of empirical fact’ was his consistent response.” (pgs. 287-288)

This response of Jung suggests that he has assumed some scientific credibility of the categories he has developed, yet my own critique of our tendency to classify people into types, which I will mention below, is actually echoed by Jung in this statement by Bair(2004 ): “Few persons, it seemed, read the book as Jung intended. By the time it had gone through multiple printings in many languages, he felt compelled to address the ‘regrettable misunderstanding’ that had turned the book into ‘nothing but a childish parlour game’. He complained that even within the medical profession his typology was used to slot patients into his system and give them corresponding ‘advice’. He insisted that his ‘typology is not in any sense to stick labels on people on first sight: it is not physiognomy and not an anthropological system, but a critical psychology dealing with the organization and delimitation of psychic processes that can be shown to be typical'”. (p.288) “Nothing but a childish parlour game”. This has, indeed, been part of the legacy of Jung’s typology terms. We casually refer to others as extroverts and introverts as if there was some credibility in these characterizations. My own concern about any kind of psychological typing, to include the diagnostic labels in the DSM, is that the process reinforces our inclination to fix others with particular characteristics and identify them only with these characteristics. Jung characterized himself as an introvert and he characterized Freud as an extravert, yet they were likely both in some combination – as are many people. Jung added thinking, feeling, intuition, sensation as “functions” possibly to give more flexibility and breadth to introversion and extraversion, but these function terms simply multiply the tendency to fix people in more categories. An example of the kind of influence Jung’s typology has had would be the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator, which was constructed as an adaptation of his typology and has been employed in various organizations as a tool for enhancing psychological insights. My position is that all humans express all of these characteristics( thinking, feeling, intuition and sensation) and we express them to varying degrees and rates at various times under various contextual situations. A typology of any kind does not capture context, duration, or variations in circumstances. I suspect that Jung might agree with me on this.

Anima and Animus

I can be accused of using anima and animus rather loosely to refer to female and male energy or female and male principles or elements. According to Jung we each have both anima and animus elements. As he wrote in “Man and His Symbols” (1972): “In the Middle Ages, long before the physiologists demonstrated that by reason of our glandular structure there are both male and female elements in all of us, it was said that ‘every man carries a woman within himself’. It is this female element in every male that I have called the ‘anima’ (p.16). And likewise, Jung refers to the male element in every female as the ‘animus’. Marie Louise von Franz devotes chapter three in “Man and his Symbols”, about the individuation process, to analyzing the dynamics of anima and animus through the unconscious processes via dreams and mythology. She states: “The male personification of the unconscious in woman – the animus- exhibits both good and bad aspects, as does the anima in man” (p.198). von Franz borrows images and stories primarily from Western mythologies to identify what I consider rather stereotypical characteristics of female and male personalities and behaviors, according to standard cultural constructs. None of these characteristics are necessarily based in biology. The various symbols of anima and animus as interpreted in dreams by an analytic psychotherapist may assist in a depth therapy process, but otherwise the utility of these abstract types is limited.

Archetypes

Story: A number of years ago I was giving a talk to a Jung Society group in Colorado about the Hero Monomyth and male journeys. I discussed the hero’s journey as an archetype and went on to say that archetypes were abstract concepts. Quite a number of people in the audience were extremely upset with my characterization and argued that archetypes were actual “things”, as if Jung had “discovered” them and not “invented” them. It was not clear to me at the time why they believed this and I was not familiar enough with what Jung actually had written about archetypes. I have since come to realize that some followers of Jung’s writings have treated them as biblical and they have interpreted certain terms and concepts in a doctrinaire fashion. This is what Jung says in “Man and His Symbols”(1972):

“My views about the ‘archaic remnants’, which I call ‘archetypes’ or ‘primordial images’, have been constantly criticized by people who lack a sufficient knowledge of the psychology of dreams and mythology. The term ‘archetype’ is often misunderstood as meaning certain definite mythological images or motifs. But these are nothing more than conscious representations; it would be absurd to assume that such variable representations could be inherited. The archetype is a tendency to form such representations of a motif – representations that can vary a great deal in detail without losing their basic pattern. My critics have incorrectly assumed that I am dealing with ‘inherited representations’, and on that ground they have dismissed the idea of the archetype as mere superstition.” (pgs. 57-58) Further on he says: “Here I must clarify the relation between instincts and archetypes: what we properly call instincts are physiological urges, and are perceived by the senses. but at the same time, they also manifest themselves in fantasies and often reveal their presence only by symbolic images. These manifestations are what I call archetypes. they are without known origin; and they reproduce themselves in any time or in any part of the world – even where transmission by direct descent or ‘cross-fertilization’ through migration must be ruled out.” (p.58)

Jung has written other descriptions/ definitions of archetypes elsewhere, but since this quote is from the essay chapter he wrote in the last year of his life, I believe it best represents his thinking. I believe he is stating that archetypes are symbolic representations of universal human motifs or themes and can be manifested through dreams, mythologies, fairytales, and so on. Themes such as the child or wise old man or wise old woman or the hero’s journey are found universally, because all cultures have certain essential experiences. Fathers and mothers and the roles of fathers and mothers, as well as children and other human relationships are at base universal and the representations and metaphorical images can be found throughout history and across all cultures. These representations can be understood as archetypes. Perhaps some confusion arises when Jung states that archetypes are “at the same time both images and emotions” and he further explains in “Man and His Symbols” (1972), “But since so many people have chosen to treat archetypes as if they were part of a mechanical system that can be learned by rote, it is essential to insist that they are not mere names, or even philosophical concepts. They are pieces of life itself – images that are integrally connected to the living individual by the bridge of the emotions. That is why it is impossible to give an arbitrary (or universal) interpretation of any archetype. It must be explained in the manner indicated bu the whole-life situation of the particular individual to whom it relates.”(p.89). Jung seems to be saying that archetypes are not simply symbolic representations or images – that these images are directly connected to essential human experiences and that they are expressed individually, though within a “collective” context. I have thought of this as a synchronic event within a diachronic frame. In my own analyses of the hero’s journey (as an archetype), I identified a journey pattern which seems universal in form, yet individualized in expression or manifestation.

Jung wrote “Four Archetypes: Mother/Rebirth/Spirit/Trickster “(1973), (taken from his 1934 paper, “Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious”), in which he summarizes his thinking about archetypes and the collective unconscious. Since his notions about archetypes are directly connected to his ideas about the personal and collective unconscious, I will take this up in my next post.

I have wanted to begin some posts on the life and theories and practice of Carl G. Jung for some time, and decided to begin with what may be considered the most thorough and balanced biography by Deidre Bair. While she is not a psychotherapist or analyst, she has won awards for her biographies of Samuel Beckett, Anais Nin, and Simone de Beauvoir. I will refer to some other biographies and Jung’s inimitable autobiography, “Memories, Dreams and Reflections” , as I consider the life and theoretical ideas of Jung as represented by Bair.

Bair addresses fairly the most controversial aspects of Jung’s career and life, particularly his break from Freud, his role in possible support for the Nazis and anti-semitism, and his relationship with Toni Wolff, while not allowing these topics to dominate her treatment of Jung’s ideas and contributions.

Some other biographies and books about Jung’s ideas which I may refer to briefly are: Jolande Jacobi’s ” The Way of Individuation”(1967); Colin Wilson’s “Jung: Lord of the Underworld” (1988); June Singer’s “Boundaries of the Soul: The Practice of Jung’s Psychology” (1973); Richard Noll’s “The Jung Cult”(1997); Don McGowan’s “What is Wrong with Jung” (1994; and “Lingering Shadows: Jungians, Freudians, and Anti-Semitism”( 1991), edited by Aryeh Maidenbaum and Stephen A. Martin.

I do not intend to survey a series of biographies of Jung as I did with biographies of Freud, but I have noticed that a similar phenomenon which I referred to as “who’s or whose Freud?” is also evident regarding biographies of Jung. A few biographies tilt toward hagiography, while a few , such as Noll’s and McGowan’s tilt toward “Jung bashing”. Bair’s treatment is basically a favorable one and her explanations of Jung’s more controversial ideas or behavior can at times seem too protective of Jung’s reputation.

I am not particularly interested in Jung’s and Emma’s relationship with Toni Wolff other than the fact that their arrangement of an informal polygyny was particularly unusual during their era and relied on Emma’s incredible forbearance. Toni Wolff may be worthy of her own biography, as she was also a successful analyst. And I posted a brief review of Catrine Clay’s biography of Emma Jung, who was also a successful analyst as well as wife to Carl and mother of his children.

I am also only moderately interested in Jung’s supposed anti-semitism and involvement with the Nazi party. Much has been written about this already and there is not a clear cut case to be made. I will comment about this later. I am most interested in what distinguishes Jung’s analytic psychotherapy from Freud’s psychoanalytic theory and approach and how Jung’s ideas have influenced others and evolved over time. Some of Jung’s ideas which seem to have continued to influence other analytical psychology advocates and which set him apart from other theorists are: the collective unconscious, psychological types, the influence of archetypes, synchronicity, anima and animus, individuation, and active imagination. I have commented elsewhere that I have observed a few different groups of Jungian “followers”. There have been a number of mostly women who were part of the Jungian inner circle (the Psychological Club): Toni Wolff, Jolande Jacobi, Marie-Louise von Franz, M.Esther Harding, Barbara Hannah, Aneila Jaffe, and Emma Jung. There were also those who formed the Jung Institute for education and training in Zurich, as well as the many Jungian analysts throughout the world, many of whom were trained at the Jung Institute. There are also a considerable number of Jung Society groups around the world. These are not typically analysts, but people who are interested in Jung’s ideas. Many of these groups meet and discuss ideas from Jung’s Collected Works. Some of this is the topic of Noll’s “The Jung Cult”.

I am also interested in Jung’s ideas about narcissism and how his ideas may be similar in some respects to those of Heinz Kohut’s. For this I will be referring to Mario Jacoby’s excellent “Individuation and Narcissism: The Psychology of Self in Jung and Kohut”(1991). This will likely act as a segue to a review of Charles B. Strozier’s biography of Kohut, “Heinz Kohut: The Making of a Psychoanalyst”(2001).

Bair treated each of the ideas Jung innovated within analytic psychotherapy in an adequate manner. Her attention to some events, such as the evolution of Jung’s “Memories, Dreams, Reflections”(1961) and the various interpersonal conflicts around it’s development and eventual publication seemed to me to be obsessive. For me the most important part of the story is Jung’s struggles in the process and the significant role played by Aniela Jaffe, who is listed in the publication as “secretary, collaborator, editor”.

Regarding Jung’s split from Freud, most sources, including Bair report the rationales given by Jung which he wrote about in “Memories, Dreams, Reflections”(1961), in the chapter, “Sigmund Freud”. Jung wrote much of this memoir during his 81st year, so his memory of the details and even his unconscious reshaping of his rationale may be questioned. Nevertheless, Jung justified his split based on his need to have his own independent theoretical freedom and because he had challenged for some time, and on several public occasions, Freud’s insistence on the sexual libido drive theory. Freud had earlier asked Jung not to “abandon” the libido drive theory and this caused some internal turmoil for Jung, because he was still somewhat in awe of Freud. The split with Freud definitely affected Jung strongly for years, and I detect in reading “Memories, Dreams, Reflections” that it continued to affect him all his life. In the “Sigmund Freud” section in his memoir, Jung frames his criticism of Freud in somewhat respectful terms, though he clearly points to where he believes Freud’s fixation on the sex drive was an incomplete idea and that Freud was unwilling to consider any alternative theories. Jung writes, “He (Freud) considered the cause of the repression to be sexual trauma. From my practice, however, I was familiar with numerous cases of neurosis in which the question of sexuality played a subordinate part, other factors standing in the foreground. Later I presented such cases to Freud, but he would not grant that factors other than sexuality could be the cause.”(p.147)

I suspect that Freud’s responses were more nuanced than Jung remembers them. Jung then suggests that Freud may have been fixated on sexuality for his own subjective issues: ” I could see that his sexual theory was enormously important to him, both personally and philosophically. This impressed me, but I could not decide to what extent this strong emphasis upon sexuality was connected with subjective prejudices of his, and to what extent it rested upon verifiable experiences.” (p.149). Jung’s unwillingness to carry forward unquestioningly the sexual drive theory was one of two key reasons Jung gives for his falling out with Freud. The other was Freud’s alleged criticism of “occultism”. Jung writes, “I can still recall vividly how Freud said to me ‘My dear Jung, promise me never to abandon sexual theory, That is the most important thing of all. You see we must make a dogma of it, an unshakable bulwark.’ In some astonishment I asked him ‘A bulwark against what?’ To which he replied ‘ Against the black tide of mud – of occultism.’ This was the thing that struck at the heart of our friendship. I knew that I would never be able to accept such an attitude. What Freud seemed to mean by ‘occultism’ was virtually everything that philosophy and religion, including the rising contemporary science of parapsychology, had learned about the psyche. To me the sexual theory was just as occult, that is to say, just as unproved an hypothesis, as many other speculative views.”(p.151) Jung knew that Freud was suspicious of Jung’s interest in parapsychology and various spiritual aspects of human behavior and had cautioned Jung about not becoming swayed by these “occultisms”. Jung continues to distance himself from Freud in his memoir by suggesting that Freud was blind to his own numinous unconscious influences:”Although I did not properly understand it then, I had observed in Freud the eruption of unconscious religious factors. Evidently he wanted my aid in erecting a barrier against these threatening unconscious contents.” “One thing was clear: Freud, who had always made much of his irreligiosity, had now constructed a dogma; or rather, in the place of a jealous God whom he had lost, he had substituted another compelling image, that of sexuality.” (p.151) I doubt that Freud would view his concerns about “occultisms” this way. I will consider Freud’s reflections on this soon.

Jung claims that Freud could not see the spiritual aspect of sexuality: “If Freud had given somewhat more consideration to the psychological truth that sexuality is numinous- both a god and a devil- he would not have remained bound within the confines of a biological concept. ” (p.154) I doubt this claim. I am reasonably certain that Freud considered sexuality as more than simply a biological concept, yet he was convinced of the sex drive as a biological imperative, and as an imperative, we are forced to negotiate it as it influences our behavior. Whether we agree with Freud’s essential theory or not, even Jung had to admit the critical importance of the sexual drive. He imputed his notions of spirituality as a way to incorporate his own extra-biological thinking. Freud continued to argue that psychoanalysis was a science and biology , to some extent, is destiny. He was suspicious of speculative theories which either ignored biology or assumed to be more important than biology. His very early concerns about Jung’s interest in parapsychology and other “occult” ideas, were materialized when Jung began distancing himself from the sexual drive theory and claiming he had enhanced Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis by including notions such as the collective unconscious, archetypes, synchronicity and alchemy.

Freud also recounted his interpretation of the reasons for the split with Jung in his 1914 paper, “On the History of the Psychoanalytic Movement”. Freud was greatly disappointed in Jung because he had hoped Jung and the Swiss psychologists who followed Jung would act as missionaries for psychoanalysis beyond the Vienna and Jewish group. At one level Freud considered Jung’s theoretical defection as a betrayal – perhaps of a son wanting to kill the father in an Oedipal conflict. Since Jung was 19 years younger, there was something of a father-son relationship between them. Others have commented on this and Freud himself referred to it a number of times. But Freud also saw the danger in how his particular theory in psychoanalysis was being distorted and misrepresented by Jung and others.

Freud compares how Adler and Jung tried to change the essential theory of psychoanalysis. Regarding Jung he says: “Jung’s modification disconnects the phenomena from their relation with impulse- life; and further, as its critics (Abraham, Ferenczi, Jones) have pointed out, it is so unintelligible, obscure and confused that it is difficult to take up a standpoint in regard to it.”(p.93) Karl Abraham, Sandor Ferenczi, and Ernest Jones, are, of course, at this time (1914) the most solid followers of Freud. Freud continued this line of critique and when referring to Jung, he also generalized to “the Swiss”: “I did not admit the innovations of the Swiss to be legitimate continuations and further developments of the psychoanalysis that originated with me. Outside critics had already before this perceived the state of things, and Abraham truly says that Jung is in full retreat from psychoanalysis.” (p.93) Freud then levels a point by point critique: “All the changes that Jung has wrought in psychoanalysis flow from the ambition to eliminate all that is disagreeable in the family complexes, so that it may not evidence itself again in ethics and religion. For sexual libido an abstract term has been substituted, of which one may safely say that it remains mystifying and incomprehensible to fools and wise alike. The Oedipus complex was intended merely as something ‘symbolic’; the mother in it means the unattainable, which one must renounce in the interests of civilization; the father who is killed in the Oedipus myth is the ‘inner’ father, from whom one must become free in order to be independent. Other ideas of the material of sexual ideas will undoubtedly undergo similar reinterpretation in the course of time.” “Thus a new religious-ethical system was created, which, just like the Adlerian system, must necessarily lead to new interpretations of the actual results of analysis, or else distort or ignore them.” (p.95)

My reading of Jung’s and Freud’s explanations of why they split would suggest that they each had their ambitions to create a movement, to which Freud would admit and Jung would claim he only wanted the “truth”. Jung, in his old age in the memoir, presents himself as a humble truth seeker, yet his split from Freud and his later exploits belie this presentation. Jung’s ego was a match for that of Freud. He was not the first or the only Freud follower to break with Freud, but he was likely the most influential.

I will continue to investigate Jung’s conceptual contributions in my next post.