Living Jung vs Being Jungian
Artist: Jake Baddeley
I am anecdotally reminded of my ex-girlfriend’s “Jungian” psychotherapist. My ex and I were at the gym together. I was quietly slipping her sexy compliments. She snickered and replied, “My therapist says you are my shadow.” Outwardly, I grinned, but inwardly I twisted. I thought to myself, “That is not accurate. She can project her shadow onto me, but I can not be her shadow— that’s not Jung.” Her therapist may have unwittingly encouraged the very function that “Jungian” psychotherapy is supposed to help a client recollect. In her case, my ex sees her unintegrated shadow as me, rather than recognizing her projections as qualities she may have suppressed within herself. Therefore, I became the scapegoat.
Marie Louise von Franz discusses in a 1977 interview how “Jungians” of the day would lift Jung’s ideas and rename them simply because they wanted to upstage him— an inferiority complex swelling in the ranks. Many others, especially women, flocked to Jung like groupies to a rock star. An environment that may have reflected a type of participation mystique. This collective idealism may have been brought on by the sheer volume of fields and inquiry he synthesized “from an empirical point of view” (p. 261), which Jung then transformed into an antique philosophy, a term Jung coined to define his body of work.
Being a “Jungian” may be antithetical to Jung's living thesis, a psyche's clever way to scapegoat the risk individuation requires. Safer to explore the misgivings and sordid adventures of patients from the safety of a desk-shaped Bastille than to leap from the window into a psychological moat with alligators to liberate the soul. Our psyches can find just as many banal endeavors, pastimes and careers to hide behind as they can pathological. An armchair philosopher who pontificates in metaphor about laying a firm foundation, yet has not labored to pour concrete. A poet who writes of the summit yet has not crested the hilltop. A therapist who interprets clients' shadows yet has not dared to face her own.
I think Jung’s statement, “Thank God I am Carl Jung and not a Jungian,” could mean “Thank God I am me and not someone like me.” It also may be a warning against grandiose inflation: “I didn’t pretend to know anything” (p. 261), “I have no theory …” (p. 262), Jung extols. Jung lived boldly and dared greatly, balancing brilliance, magnanimity, and humility throughout his life in pursuit of living Jung. For me, I’ll use his map but take my own trail.
References
Jung, C. G. (1977). C. G. Jung speaking: Interviews and encounters (W. McGuire & R. F. C. Hull, Eds.). Princeton University Press. (Bollingen Series XCVII)
Wagner, S. (1977). A conversation with Marie-Louise von Franz [Video interview]. In C. G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles (Producer), Remembering Jung series. Los Angeles, CA: C. G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles.
