The Enduring Controversy Around Carl Jung
His legacy is bound to always be a wellspring of annoyance
I received an interesting email from a reader following my last newsletter on Active Imagination. The reader thanked me for sharing my journey but said, "this should be noted and faced." He linked to an article about Sabina Spielrein, one of Carl Jung's famous patients with whom he had a controversial and unethical relationship. The Nazis later killed Spielrein, and the linked article claims that Jung and Sigmund Freud stole her groundbreaking ideas on psychoanalysis while she was his student. It's a wild story that was made into a feature film in 2011, starring Kiera Knightly as Spielrein (trailer below).
I don't doubt the veracity of these claims of theft. I am sure that Jung and Freud stole ideas frequently throughout their careers. The practice of Active Imagination, as one example, wasn't invented by Jung. He borrowed the technique from several ancient traditions. Isn't there a great quote that goes, "good writers copy and great writers steal"?
By no means does this absolve Jung or Freud from stealing someone's work, but the objection that I should highlight this footnote in a series about my personal journey into depth psychology got me thinking. As I briefly noted in the first piece of this series, I have always had a strange relationship with Jung, which was born out of my strained connection with Christian theology and the controversy of Jung's antisemitism.
Was Carl Jung an antisemite?
Aryeh Maidenbaum, a Jewish Jungian analyst and director of the New York Center for Jungian Studies, wrote an excellent piece for Jewish Currents on the topic of Jung’s antisemitism. He notes that Freud embraced Jung's gentile roots because he thought it would expand the nascent field of psychoanalysis beyond the cloistered milieu of Jews in Freud’s circle. The claims against Jung of antisemitism began to bubble after Jung and Freud famously split. When the Nazis rose to power, Jung accepted the presidency of the German General Medical Society for Psychotherapy.
Maidenbaum writes that "the decision by Jung to accept the presidency of the Society gave wings to rumors and accusations that Jung was anti-Semitic, even a Nazi sympathizer — yet throughout his life, Jung steadfastly insisted that by taking this honorary post, he had thought of his ability to be of help to many of his German Jewish colleagues. Indeed, Jung was responsible for having the Society renamed the International General Medical Society for Psychotherapy and permitting Jews barred from the German national section to join as individual members. This seemingly small change to how the Society functioned was actually quite important, since up until that time one could be a member only through a local society — which meant, under Nazi rule (Herman Göring's cousin Matthias was the head of the German Society), the banning of German Jewish members."
Here the plot thickens, Maidenbaum continues. In the December 1933 issue of the Society's journal, the Zentralblatt, "an editorial was published praising Nazi ideology and using Jung's theories of archetypal cultural patterns to justify the superiority of the Aryan race. Both Jung and C.A. Meier, Jung's assistant and chief editor of the journal, insisted that this editorial was inserted by Matthias Göring without Jung or Meier’s permission. During the course of [Maidenbaum’s] research, [he] interviewed Dr. Meier and was informed that Jung was not involved in any of the details of the journal's publication but had delegated those tasks to Meier."
However, what troubled so many Jewish Jungians was the absence of a clear public statement by Jung dealing with his actions and pronouncements during the 1930s. While Jung eventually distanced himself from Nazism and, as Maidenbaum points out, began writing scathing and incisive articles interpreting the mass hysteria that took hold in Germany, he never unequivocally expressed his naive attitudes about Jews. Maidenbaum concludes, "Whatever the cause, Jung did himself and the Jungian community — including Jewish Jungians — a huge disservice by not speaking or writing about the cloud surrounding his alleged anti-Semitism. Private statements, even to Jewish leaders, that he "slipped up" were not enough, and criticism of him in this context is deserved.”
For some people, like the writer of this letter to the New York Times, Jung was an antisemite through and through. Regardless of the details of the situation, Jung will be forever marked with the scarlet letter of antisemitism. I think Maidenbaum captures the nuance and anger shared by many over Jung's inability to confront his position on Jews and Judaism and set the record straight.
A deeper tension
Jung's views on Jews weren't the only reason he made me uncomfortable. As the child of a Jewish mother and Catholic father, my associations with Christianity have long been a source of shame (I even changed my surname when I turned 18). There was never any Christian influence in my early life. However, when my parents divorced, I went to church with my parental grandfather while I was visiting my dad.
The memory of those experiences still fill me with a sense of dread. The stone walls and empty cavernous spaces of the church kindled feelings of loneliness and isolation, mostly because I considered myself Jewish. The environment felt alien and unwelcoming. It challenged my own sense of identification as a Jew. That’s a lot for a seven-year-old boy to handle after his parents' divorce.
My reaction was to embrace all things Jewish. This was a way of separating myself from the loneliness of the church and creating an emotional division with my father. I went to Israel for a term in high school when I was 16. Then I did my undergraduate degree in Jewish Studies, followed by more time in Israel learning Hebrew. Finally, I moved to Israel and pursued two master's degrees in Jewish history. The intellectual pursuits enriched my life, but I never fully found myself in Judaism either but that’s a story for another day.
As I was diving deeper into Jewish history, Jung loomed large. Reading about Freud or any of his Viennese contemporaries like David Vogel (A side note: one of my favorite pieces I have ever written is this review of Vogel's Viennese Romance), Jung was always right around the corner, but I shut him off because he represented to me a Christian form of thinking infused with antisemitism. I am beginning to understand that Jung and his work have come to represent some aspect of my shadow. Only in the last year have I found enough courage to explore it.
Jung's thought is now opening me up to exploring all aspects of my psyche, including the Christian side that has been repressed for so long. This is an internal and private exercise I believe to be critical to my process of individuation. The goal is to become a whole individual, so I can better control all aspects of my psyche and not thrust these issues onto my partner and my child (that's next week's topic, stay tuned!).
And so when a reader sent me a message saying, love your work, but you should be addressing Jung’s personal actions, I was triggered. In this delicate dance to unearth repressed parts of my psyche and self-identification, I just can't seem to find a straight path.
As for the question of Jung's antisemitism, he made mishaps and never confronted his own thinking about Jews with rigor, but I don't think that he was driven by some unhinged antisemitism that warrants disclaimers about his work. Where does this rabbit hole end? Find me a thinker or writer that is completely free of racism, sexism, antisemitism, or any ism?
This is the penultimate piece in a series about Carl Jung and how his ideas are influencing my journey of individuation. The series will culminate with an essay for The New Fatherhood about parenting, psychedelics, and Jung (out at the end of the month). The comment section is open, and I would love to hear from you. A special shout-out to the reader who forced me to look deeper into these issues.