More Jung

These last few days my inbox has been crowded with desperate messages from frenzied readers begging me to educate them on the understanding of Jung’s psychology and myth, so as to enlarge their trifling intellects and give them the chance of adding something of real worth to our rapidly decaying society. (I’m kidding actually, so far I’ve only had 150 people reading this blog, the lion’s share of that probably consisting of friends and family, but anyway). Being the paragon of sagacity, I am of course above such plebeian concerns as actually indulging in requests (though they are fictional!), but I will relent here and actually present you with the first instalment of a sumptuous exposé on Jung and myth!

Son to a Swiss Reformed pastor, Jung was the founder of analytical psychology and an influential thinker who made extensive enquiries into the nature of myth and religion and mankind’s relation thereto. For Jung myths were not only indispensable tools in trying to understand the psychic life of individuals and societies, but also the purest expression of ideas coming from what he called the collective unconscious. Myth was so important to Jung that it became a guiding line for his own life and he kept researching it and its myriad components until his death at the age of 85.

In Jung’s thought myth and religion are interdependent terms. Religion’s most important function is the experience of God, or the unconscious, that it provides and myth is the means by which this experience is best conveyed. Religion and myth thus work in a dual fashion, both ensuring the means of each other’s continued efficacy. As a German speaking Swiss, Jung shows himself to be an inheritor of the leading figures of German philosophy in his theorizing about the nature of religion and myth, in particular of Kant. Like the idiosyncratic philosopher, Jung held to the principle that inquiring into the nature of God (although it is probably better to speak of the unconscious here, Jung started to treat the two terms as synonymous towards the end of his life, because he believed that they both referred to something ultimately unknowable) was impossible for the human mind. According to Kant, we can never know the noumenal reality of a thing (the Ding an sich), but only the phenomenal reality of it, which is constricted by the fact that our mind cannot think outside of the boundaries of space and time (this is why a concept like infinity can never be properly expressed by us humans).  Kant’s distinction between the noumenal and the phenomenal is reflected in Jung’s distinction between the unconscious and the conscious and the archetypes and their symbols.

Jung mentions  that he was put on the path of mythology through Georg Friedrich Creuzer’s Symbolik und Mythologie der Alten Völker, besonders der Griechen (1810-1812, “Symbolism and Mythology of the Ancient Peoples, particularly the Greeks”). In this book Creuzer argued that the true religion of the Greeks could be found in mystery cults like that of Eleusis, and that it had its origins in the clerical Brahmanism of ancient India. Creuzer himself was heir to the German Romantic school of thought that considered mythology to be a unique fusion of poetry and religion that expressed the spirit of an entire nation. Many of the Romantics therefore called for a new German mythology that would unify the (in their opinion) fragmented society. 

Jung was furthermore influenced by the Swiss anthropologist Johann Jakob Bachofen (1815-1887). Although he was mostly known for his hypothesis that in its earliest form human society had been matriarchal, Bachofen also postulated that myths were constructed by a “guiding thought” that was not bound by “specific localities or persons”, clearly prefiguring Jung’s ideas of the collective unconscious and its archetypes. (Bachofen, Myth, Religion and Mother Right, p. 199) It was at Jung’s suggestion that certain sections of Bachofen’s writings were translated into English and subsequently published by the Bollingen series of Princeton University Press (named after the place where Jung built his famous tower).

The collective unconscious is a substratum of pre-existent forms that underlies the whole of humanity. This collective unconscious (different from the personal unconscious which consist of an individual’s memories) is the heritage of an age-old collection of human reaction patterns and a sort of container for the “constantly repeated experiences of humanity.” (Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, p. 69)  Archetypes are the specific reaction-patterns that the collective unconscious urges on to us. In short, an archetype is an unrepresentable element of the psyche’s instinctual structure (the collective unconscious), and it arises as a kind of physiological urge or instinct that tries to tell you what to do in a certain situation. According to Jung there are just as many archetypes as there are normal human situations. Because archetypes can only be experienced and not consciously understood, the entire process of constructing them into archetypal images happens unconsciously. When the conscious mind becomes aware of the archetypal images communicated to it by the archetypes, it makes sense of them by constructing them into a narrative form, namely myths. So, while the archetypes are the transcultural structures of human experience, the archetypal images are time and culture-bound representations of them, which accounts for the radical differences of the religious traditions of the world, but also explains the coinciding of many of their basic themes.

In essence, the function of archetypal images is to mediate between the conscious mind and the unconscious archetypes. For Jung the mental health of an individual came down primarily to a question of balance. It was the most important duty of one’s life to attain a mental equilibrium between the forces of the unconscious and the predispositions of the conscious mind. This harmonizing act, symbolized by the uniting of opposites and constellated by the archetype of the self, was in Jung’s mind one of the most poignant vocations of myth and religion, and it also led him to make detailed excursions into alchemy and Gnosticism. Quintessential archetypal images that Jung liked to refer to were the shadow (the negative and socially unacceptable inclinations of one’s personality) and the anima (the female aspect of the male psyche) and the animus (the male aspect of the female psyche).

I can already hear the cheap, inferior cogs and wheels within your ailing brains grinding to a halt while processing this marvellous summary. I imagine that the extraordinary clarity is blinding your mind’s eye. Best to lie down for a bit and rest your fragile and decrepit senses.

Next part coming soon....

Inaugural Speech

"Perseus with the head of Medusa" by Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571), Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence

When you got up this morning I bet you didn’t know that today we would be tackling one of the most significant questions in the history of humankind, which has kept many a genius frantically searching for answers and gasping for breath like a freshwater trout spasming in the iron grip of the noble kingfisher’s beak. But why so soon, you might ask. Will my stunningly enlightening blog jump the shark before it has really taken off? Have I shot my proverbial chimp to the moon without properly checking the cabin pressure? “Away from me, Satan!” I say unto you, for it is written to read and worship this blog and this blog only, and to bow your head in servile thanks to the great benefactor who has provided it to you in a selfless act of supreme benevolence.

As the arduous task of illuminating the sweaty masses has befallen me both by divine providence and simple chance, I will define myth for you in this exalted instalment of what is fast becoming the most relevant piece of writing in the information age. Lest you can converse with the numerous higher realities on the required level of harmonic oscillation, feast your eyes hither for a handful of minutes and experience the sudden tremor and awesome turmoil of the unveiling of ultimate truth, as your intellect is being catapulted into the multiplicity of angelic realities, drenched in bright, effulgent psychedelic colour symphonies and accompanied by the soft, peaceful hum of refrigerator trucks overrunning flocks of goslings in the distance. Behold the magnificent whirling wheels  of the glorious cherubim bouncing to and fro and sparkling with radiant topaz as their innumerable eyes gaze at the perfection of creation and their solemn wings reach upward to sustain the throne of God. And all this still for free! Gratis! Costless! No charge! For nothing! On the house!

So let’s get to it then, if your eagerness has not already caused you to short-circuit your computer by way of the copious amounts of drool pouring forth from your hungry mouth now that the floodgates of cerebral reception have been set wide open.

The word “myth” derives from the Greek, mythos, which can mean either “story”, “speech” or “word”. The ancient Greeks liked to distinguish the words of mythos from the logos, which also meant “word” (so mythologia/mythology literally comes to mean “words about words”), but in a slightly different way. Myth, or mythos, dealt primarily with existential issues and figurative language, while the logos represented the rational discourse. In ancient times, myth was therefore used in cases where logical, rational language failed to provide satisfactorily answers.  In time, however, logos came to take on the meaning of a statement whose truth could be readily demonstrated, while mythos was reduced to a narrative, fictional function. With even more time, the Greek philosophers began to favor the scientific language of the logos over mythos, and where first the two terms existed in harmony, now they became readily opposed to each other.  Not subject to enough abuse already, myth also came to be contrasted with history, the chronicling of events. We can see this downswing of myth in the translation of the term into Latin, fabula, which eventually led to our word “fable”: a story without any substance of truth, as we now understand it.

So this is the sense in which the common paupers and uncouth barbarians (you are not one of them, I hope!?) use the word myth nowadays: to denote a falsehood or a wrong assumption. Vile, ungainly lies! Myths are not falsifications or deliberate misrepresentations. On the contrary,  they derive truth and importance from the very simple fact that they exist. A myth is not concerned with proving a certain statement, but with providing an appreciation of the world that is meaningful and constructive in itself. Myths are the cornerstones of our societies and the cultural building blocks on which these are built, and they embody, expose and explore a people’s self image. The act of telling a myth and passing it down to other generations assures that it keeps its sacred quality and preserves a society’s view of itself and the world around it. Myths are also therefore never static: they exist in a state of constant change as they often evolve to meet the standards and demands of different times.

We are reaching the ninth heaven now! Myths are usually sacred narratives that involve gods or superhuman beings and deal with explanations of customs, natural events and the origins of the world, and they take place in a different time and world from when they are told. But myth can also be used more loosely to describe a certain conviction or ideology that carries a great deal of importance within a society, like the belief in infinite progress trough science that we get all mushy eyed by.

Cue: apotheosis.

Now go and wash your hands.