I just finished a book about Jung that complained that Jung was not doing science, but founding a religious cult. And so, in The Jung Cult by Richard Noll, we get chapter and verse on how, clearly, Jung was veering away from the much more scientific approach of Freud, and consciously building a religious cult that would teach its cult members how to have transcendental experiences and become a cut above the ordinary mortals.
Good. So now I picked up a book on essays on Freud, by Bruno Bettelheim, in which he earnestly argues that Freud was not that interested in science. In the 1930s the Freudians in the US wanted to -- and succeeded in -- making psychoanalysis a monopoly for physicians, as a medical specialty. Not what Freud wanted, but there was not much he could do about it because Hitler had demolished the Freudian community in Germany.
Freud wanted psychoanalysis to be done by "lay analysts." So, referring to a couple of his books, according to Bettelheim -- The Question of Lay Analysis and The Future of an Illusion, Freud wrote:
And one thing the creative class knows above all else is that they must lose their "repressions." Good point. The creative life is a voyage of self-discovery and you have got to get beyond the cramped life pettiness, of anxiety that prevents you from risking things, and hatreds that make your life small and mean.
So yeah. Of course the Jungians were trying to start a new religion. And so was Freud, only he didn't want his new religion to become ensnared in the coils of priests and experts. At least, not priests and experts of the old school.
I can relate to all that. I would like us to break free of the priests of the lefty education system and the experts of the lefty administrative state.
And this is the way to understand almost all the stuff coming out of our educated ruling class. Their politics, their cultural hegemony is not really about making a better society for us, the proles and the deplorables. It is about making the educated ruling class learn about themselves and feel good about themselves.
The interesting thing about Jung and Freud is that they both clearly are trying to find the source of meaning in the old myths. Jung's archetypes and his personal and collective unconscious are clearly trying to find some clue from the unconscious residue of the human past. Freud's recasting of the Oedipus myth -- turning it upside down, as I would say -- is doing the same thing, only differently.
And, if you think of it, my line that the left amounts to a Great Reaction is mining similar territory. Our lefty friends are trying to find meaning in a lost idea of community in socialism, in providing social benefits and collective security with the welfare state as we used to do when the lord of the manor felt some sort of responsibility for the serfs on his domain, and in reviving the spirit of belonging with identity politics.
Only, I like to say, our lefty friends are blind to the benefits of the new world order that is aborning, and that is creating a new community of service and trust with the market economy. Their socialism has only ever resulted in slavery; their welfare state a clumsy return to feudalism, and their identity politics to a crude and divisive tribalism.
And we have to sit here while they slowly learn the facts of life -- on our dime.
There oughta be a law against a dull and foolish ruling class using us as their playground. In the old days, according to the myths rediscovered by Jung and Freud, your hero went on a personal journey into his unconscious -- into the underworld or the wilderness -- and only came back when, in the words of Joseph Campbell, he had become sadder and wiser so that he really could bring a boon to his fellow humans.
I think that the ancients may have stumbled on a piece of real wisdom there. Go and learn your stuff in the underworld and the wilderness, you foolish liberals, and let us get on with the vital business of wiving and thriving.
Good. So now I picked up a book on essays on Freud, by Bruno Bettelheim, in which he earnestly argues that Freud was not that interested in science. In the 1930s the Freudians in the US wanted to -- and succeeded in -- making psychoanalysis a monopoly for physicians, as a medical specialty. Not what Freud wanted, but there was not much he could do about it because Hitler had demolished the Freudian community in Germany.
Freud wanted psychoanalysis to be done by "lay analysts." So, referring to a couple of his books, according to Bettelheim -- The Question of Lay Analysis and The Future of an Illusion, Freud wrote:
I do not know whether you have guessed the hidden link between 'Lay-Analysis' and 'Illusion.' In the former I want to protect analysis from physicians, and in the latter from priests.Further, says Bettelheim, Freud recommended psychoanalysis
not as therapy but rather because of what it reveals to us about what concerns man most closely; and because of the connections it uncovers between the widest variety of his actions.He wanted his ideas to influence child raising, because it could free the largest number of people from
unnecessary repressions, unrealistic anxieties, and destructive hatreds... could help us, in short, become more human.OK, I get it. We are talking about religion, just like Jung. Just like Christianity. Just like the social activists. Just like everyone of the People of the Creative Self who are trying to find meaning in life beyond the the white picket fence of the bourgeois middle class.
And one thing the creative class knows above all else is that they must lose their "repressions." Good point. The creative life is a voyage of self-discovery and you have got to get beyond the cramped life pettiness, of anxiety that prevents you from risking things, and hatreds that make your life small and mean.
So yeah. Of course the Jungians were trying to start a new religion. And so was Freud, only he didn't want his new religion to become ensnared in the coils of priests and experts. At least, not priests and experts of the old school.
I can relate to all that. I would like us to break free of the priests of the lefty education system and the experts of the lefty administrative state.
And this is the way to understand almost all the stuff coming out of our educated ruling class. Their politics, their cultural hegemony is not really about making a better society for us, the proles and the deplorables. It is about making the educated ruling class learn about themselves and feel good about themselves.
The interesting thing about Jung and Freud is that they both clearly are trying to find the source of meaning in the old myths. Jung's archetypes and his personal and collective unconscious are clearly trying to find some clue from the unconscious residue of the human past. Freud's recasting of the Oedipus myth -- turning it upside down, as I would say -- is doing the same thing, only differently.
And, if you think of it, my line that the left amounts to a Great Reaction is mining similar territory. Our lefty friends are trying to find meaning in a lost idea of community in socialism, in providing social benefits and collective security with the welfare state as we used to do when the lord of the manor felt some sort of responsibility for the serfs on his domain, and in reviving the spirit of belonging with identity politics.
Only, I like to say, our lefty friends are blind to the benefits of the new world order that is aborning, and that is creating a new community of service and trust with the market economy. Their socialism has only ever resulted in slavery; their welfare state a clumsy return to feudalism, and their identity politics to a crude and divisive tribalism.
And we have to sit here while they slowly learn the facts of life -- on our dime.
There oughta be a law against a dull and foolish ruling class using us as their playground. In the old days, according to the myths rediscovered by Jung and Freud, your hero went on a personal journey into his unconscious -- into the underworld or the wilderness -- and only came back when, in the words of Joseph Campbell, he had become sadder and wiser so that he really could bring a boon to his fellow humans.
I think that the ancients may have stumbled on a piece of real wisdom there. Go and learn your stuff in the underworld and the wilderness, you foolish liberals, and let us get on with the vital business of wiving and thriving.
Where do you stand on the Good Samaritan?
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