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C. G. Jung’s Rehabilitation of the Feeling Function in Our Civilization

C.G. Jung’s Rehabilitation of the Feeling Function in Our Civilization

LECTURE, KÜSNACHT, NOVEMBER 25, 1986 by Marie-Louise von Franz

When he was a twenty-one to twenty-three-year-old student, Jung gave four lectures to his co-students in the fraternity Zofingia in Basel. In one of them, he quoted Kant who wrote:

Morality is paramount. It is the holy and inviolable thing that we must protect, and it is also the reason and purpose of all our speculation and inquiries. All metaphysical spec­ulation is directed to this end. God and the other world are the sole goal of all our phil­osophical investigations, and if the concepts of God and the other world had nothing to do with morality they would be worthless. (1897/1983, ¶68)

After a strongly polemical attack on materialism in general, Jung then continues by asserting that we should start a “revolution” on the part of our leading minds “by forcing morality on science and its exponents . . . In institutions which offer training in physiology, the moral judgment of students is deliberately impaired by their involve­ment in disgraceful, barbarous experiments, by a cruel torture of animals which is a mockery of all human decency. Above all, in such institutions as these, I say, we must teach that no truth obtained by such means has the moral right to exist” (1897/1983, ¶138. Italics added).

Then Jung resumes Kant’s idea that only the belief in realities beyond the coarse material world can guarantee the assumption of such a moral attitude. Eighty-four years have elapsed since then and where are we now in those respects? The cruel torture of ani­mals has multiplied a thousand times, even into agricultural activities, and has extended to the torture of man in concentration camps all over the world! Military experts think

in ways that accustom them to saying: “In an atomic war we will lose, say, 60 million people; that means that we can still survive with 85 million—so we could risk it!” They must do that; it’s their job; but they do not even seem shocked or depressed by it. But, these terrifying facts are known, and I want therefore to turn to more immediate man­ifestations of the problem.

First in our own field, psychology, the statistical methods of the natural sciences have conquered the field at the universities. But Jung pointed out that the results of statistics represent a thinking or mental abstraction and not reality as it is. In a heap of stones the average stone may weigh one kilo, but we might not find in actuality one sin­gle stone which weighs exactly one kilo!

Thus we construct by our thinking function a model of reality and then mix it up illegitimately with reality itself. All mathematical procedures in science do this. Because he refused to join in with such erroneous views, Jung was accused of being “unscientific,” while, in fact, it is just the other way around. He was more realistic.

Jung broke up the white-coat-distance, in which the doctor treats his patient as if he were an impersonal object. He met every patient with his own personal feeling reac­tions, positive and negative, making the analytic hours a “personal encounter” and not a “treatment.” The fashion in some Jungian circles of developing technical means of approaching a patient, such as having to discuss the transference and countertransfer-ence, is nothing but a regression into pre-Jungian modes of thought. Jung writes clearly in a letter to Mrs. Froebe-Kapteyn:

The so-called dissolution of the transference often consists in ceasing to describe the nature of one’s relationship as “transference.” This designation degrades the relationship as a mere projection, which it is not. “Transference” consists in the illusion of its uniqueness, when seen Pom the collective and conventional standpoint. “Uniqueness” lies simply and solely in the relationship between individuated persons who have no other relationships at all except individual, i.e., unique ones. (16 August 1947. 1973a, 475. Italics added)

Therefore we might conclude that the word “transference” should only be used in an intentional way to address some illusory projections on the side of the patient or the doctor. It should never be used for the feeling relationship, which builds up in the course of the encounter in therapy.

Naturally the false kindness and all-bearing friendliness, which certain analysts show to their patients, following the model of the general practitioner’s persona style, is just as wrong. It is an escape that serves to avoid finding out and adequately express­ing one’s true feelings, which are not always kind and all-bearing, and an escape from ongoing frictions and collisions of feeling. This persona-kindness is actually just a deri­vation of Christian sentimentality, a problem to which I will return later.

Let us turn to the general situation in the West. Our modern scientific and tech­nological world and its mode of life are mostly influenced by scientists whose main

function is extraverted or introverted thinking, coupled with extraverted or intro­verted sensation. In physics, for instance, the introverts like Einstein, Pauli, Heisen­berg, and Bohr, preferred theoretical physics; the extraverts, like Wernher von Braun chose experimental physics and technological innovations. The function of intuition is not completely ignored in physics because we need speculative intuitions for devel­oping new models of thought. But feeling is expressed only in the most generic, well-meaning “should” sentences. (The famous Schroedinger-cat joke is an example of such very bad taste.) And with the exception of Bohr, all of these physicists collaborated or wanted to collaborate with the making of the atom bomb! In the circle of American physicists, we now have a definite influence of Hinduism, which, while not materialis­tic, nullifies the life of the individual human being.

The inhumanity of modern physical medicine needs no more comment. The newspapers are full of it, but very little is done about it. One cannot praise enough the lonely, pioneering enterprise of Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who has made a step in the right direction.

The feeling function is also badly lacking in our so-called help for underdeveloped countries. Benno Glauser has shown this in an excellent article in the Swiss periodical of the Red Cross (1981); he demonstrates how we “help” people of other cultures by wanting simultaneously to impose upon them our religious or “scientific” views, thus destroying their own spiritual foundations of life.

Our doctors, missionaries, planning people, agricultural advisers all start from the idea that we “know” what is right for the others, and they react with anger or disappointment when these “underdeveloped” people decline our help with apathy, resistance, and so-called ungratefulness. Let me quote what a Paraguayan Paï Indian said concerning our medical help:

For us, the Paï, health is a state which we call tekoresai. In order to have it different facts must be given, which all belong to that state: the plants, trees (used) as single medicines, but also all of them together as medicine, the water, true and balanced words, good food, not talking over other people’s heads, the forest, the animals in the bush, the fishes, harmony, the village-community, talking with one another and having conversa­tions, keeping “our way of life,” one’s own culture and individual being, the feeling of vigor which is given to us by all the above-mentioned things, the holding together of our community, quietly and securely living in our land, the family, the Village, our festivals.

But then you white people come and make us dependent on money and on other mate­rial things. This destroys our state of healthiness. You talk badly of others and take our land. No land means nothing to eat, nothing to eat means illness. And in the end you pull out of your pocket a little white pill and want to make us believe that if we eat that pill this means healthiness, that this pill is health. (Glauser 1981, 17–18)

All this destructiveness of ours results, as Glauser points out, from a basic lack of respect for the other human being and his different system of values—in plain words, a lack of true differentiated feeling. In fact we know of the catastrophic results and of function is extraverted or introverted thinking, coupled with extraverted or intro­verted sensation. In physics, for instance, the introverts like Einstein, Pauli, Heisen­berg, and Bohr, preferred theoretical physics; the extraverts, like Wernher von Braun chose experimental physics and technological innovations.

The function of intuition is not completely ignored in physics because we need speculative intuitions for devel­oping new models of thought. But feeling is expressed only in the most generic, well-meaning “should” sentences. (The famous Schroedinger-cat joke is an example of such very bad taste.) And with the exception of Bohr, all of these physicists collaborated or wanted to collaborate with the making of the atom bomb! In the circle of American physicists, we now have a definite influence of Hinduism, which, while not materialis­tic, nullifies the life of the individual human being.

The inhumanity of modern physical medicine needs no more comment. The newspapers are full of it, but very little is done about it. One cannot praise enough the lonely, pioneering enterprise of Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who has made a step in the right direction.

The feeling function is also badly lacking in our so-called help for underdeveloped countries. Benno Glauser has shown this in an excellent article in the Swiss periodical of the Red Cross (1981); he demonstrates how we “help” people of other cultures by wanting simultaneously to impose upon them our religious or “scientific” views, thus destroying their own spiritual foundations of life. Our doctors, missionaries, planning people, agricultural advisers all start from the idea that we “know” what is right for the others, and they react with anger or disappointment when these “underdeveloped” people decline our help with apathy, resistance, and so-called ungratefulness. Let me quote what a Paraguayan Paï Indian said concerning our medical help:

For us, the Paï, health is a state which we call tekoresai. In order to have it different facts must be given, which all belong to that state: the plants, trees (used) as single medicines, but also all of them together as medicine, the water, true and balanced words, good food, not talking over other people’s heads, the forest, the animals in the bush, the fishes, harmony, the village-community, talking with one another and having conversa­tions, keeping “our way of life,” one’s own culture and individual being, the feeling of vigor which is given to us by all the above-mentioned things, the holding together of our community, quietly and securely living in our land, the family, the Village, our festivals.

But then you white people come and make us dependent on money and on other mate­rial things. This destroys our state of healthiness. You talk badly of others and take our land. No land means nothing to eat, nothing to eat means illness. And in the end you pull out of your pocket a little white pill and want to make us believe that if we eat that pill this means healthiness, that this pill is health. (Glauser 1981, 17–18)

All this destructiveness of ours results, as Glauser points out, from a basic lack of respect for the other human being and his different system of values—in plain words, a lack of true differentiated feeling. In fact we know of the catastrophic results and of

schoolteacher who volunteered to enter the gas chambers in order to comfort his Jew­ish schoolchildren? What does the suffering of the dissidents and courageous Chris­tians in Russia achieve? Nothing! We read about it in the papers and lay it aside with a resigned shrug of the shoulders!

Liliane Frey published a dream of one of her dying patients, whose life had been a chain of constant failures. During his terminal illness he dreamt that a voice said to him: “Your work and your suffering, which you suffered consciously, have redeemed a hundred generations that came before you and will illuminate a hundred generations after you” (1980, 34). Again—you see—it is the existence of “another world” that is the important thing. In a world seen materialistically there would be just nothing— nothing at all—to comfort that man. But what has all this to do with feeling?

Is not the recognition of the reality of the psyche important for the functioning of all four con­scious functions [thinking, feeling, intuition, sensation]? Obviously, ethical values are the product of differentiated feeling (letter to Gerda Hipert,  March 1937. 1973a, 230–231), but they also require a certain intelligence, a point to which I will return later.

Ethics cannot exist without differentiated feeling, for without feeling it becomes a schematic rigid code of rules of behavior, a mere collective apparatus. We can experi­ence this on a small scale when a simple police-rule is applied indiscriminately, or on a large scale as the monstrous state apparatus in Russia.

But someone could object: Where are the feeling types, which after all must exist

in great numbers amongst all populations? Why do they not counterbalance this deplorable state of affairs? Here we must make a distinction between the existence of feeling types in a population and the collective style or outlook of a culture. Of course, we have many among us who have differentiated feeling, but the fashion, the mode of collective behavior, and our collective evaluations do not appreciate feeling.

This leads to a weakened influence of feeling, even in a feeling type. The inferior function of a feeling type, as we know, is thinking. This thinking will often follow the rather lower collective trends of the time: cheap materialism or intellectualism. For example, we find in many Latin countries a predilection for communist ideology in its most insipid form, while individuals are less unfeeling and unrelated than in some non-Latin coun­tries. (I am thinking here of Italy, Spain, and South America.)

The contemporary Zeitgeist belittles feeling. We read that the opponents of atomic plants “are using only feeling arguments and no sensible, reasonable arguments,” with the implication that a feeling [values informed by empathy] argument is just nonsense.

Well-meaning officials make the same error with the youth who are rioting: they try to argue sensibly with the young people and get nowhere because those young people are moved by vague, mostly negative emotions which cannot be translated into a thinking-sensation language. Our governments [in the Swiss cantons] have proposed a generous program of helping those young, unemployed people by offering them possibilities for

further education. This is certainly very good and necessary, but will a young, unem­ployed rebel desist from rioting if he learns a bit of electronics? I don’t think that we can achieve much if we remain on the level of “reasonable” materialistic thinking—it is not altogether wrong; it is wrong only if we infer “that is it.”

Jung says in a letter that we have become too lopsidedly intellectual and rational and have forgotten that there are factors that cannot be influenced by a one-track intel­lect. We then see emotionality flaring up as a compensation (letter to Albert Oppen-heimer, 10 October 1933. 1973a, 128–129).

We need to be more than just reasonable and level-headed, an attitude which only infuriates the young people. We must offer them a creative spiritual, non-materialistic view of reality as a whole—namely a real connection with the unconscious as a supramaterial, extrasensory reality to which we must relate, not only with our minds but also with feeling and emotion.

What about the many forms of Eastern mysticism, which have now become so much in vogue? For those in the West, they become too “mental,” appealing to our thought and intuition. They are, as Jung pointed out, “theologies” which ignore the individual and his connection with the Divine. “Too much Oriental knowledge takes the place of immediate experience and thus blocks the way to psychology” (letter to Olga Fröebe-Kapteyn, 29 January 1934. 1973a, 139).

Jung wrote to Miguel Serrano:

You have chosen two good representatives of East and West. Krishnamurti is all irrational, leaving solutions to quietude, i.e., to themselves as a part of Mother Nature. Toynbee on the other hand believes in making and moulding opinions. Neither believes in the blossoming and unfolding of the individual as the experimental, doubtful and bewildering work of the living God, to whom we have to lend our eyes and ears and our discriminating mind, . . .

We are sorely in need of a Truth or a self-understanding similar to that of Ancient Egypt, which I found still living with the Taos Pueblos. Their chief of ceremonies, old Ochwiäh Biano (Mountain Lake) said to me: “We are the people who live on the roof of the world, we are the sons of the Sun, who is our father. We help him daily to rise and to cross over the sky. We do this not only for ourselves, but for the Americans also. Therefore they should not interfere with our religion. But if they continue to do so [by missionaries] and hinder us, then they will see that in ten years the Sun will rise no more.” (14 September 1960. 1973b, 596)

He correctly assumed that their day, their light, their consciousness, and their mean­ing will die when destroyed by the narrow-mindedness of American rationalism and the same will happen to the whole world when subjected to such treatment. In another let­ter Jung shows that when we take over Eastern mystical methods we contact only their opinionated life but not reality itself (letter to Melvin J. Lasky, 19 October 1960. 1973b, 600–603); reality can only be our own spontaneous subjective life in itself. Also many Eastern methods suppress the unconscious instead of contacting it (letter to Ronald W. Weddell, 6 December 1960. 1973b, 613–614).

In Jung’s view there can be no true ethics without a personal relationship to a liv­ing god-experience (as distinct from adherence to religious, theological, or other doc­trines). And experience can only be lived by the single individual. What I do not expe­rience is not real for me; it can exist in my mind as an idea or an opinion, but that is not what one calls experience. It makes a hell of a difference if I only believe from books that there are elephants, or if I know that they exist, having actually seen, smelled, and stroked one. Only then is it a real experience which I can perceive with all four func­tions, including feeling.

What about the Christian love of one’s neighbor? Is that not what we are really looking for? Should we not just return to it? It is true that in the earliest times, Chris­tianity was predominantly a feeling experience, a great feeling movement which com­pensated for the cold, cruel, asocial Roman state.

The early Christians were mostly slaves and uneducated people of inferior social rank, and the brotherly or sisterly love amongst them created a very fertile, constructive new bond. They often even prided themselves on being unintellectual. But soon theological doctrinairism sprang up and led to dogmatic quarrels and persecution of dissident groups. The all-embracing love was more and more narrowed in, and the power principle, the arch-enemy of all forms of love, became dominant.

The Marxist slogan of international solidarity is in many ways a return to the earli­est Christian ideal of love, but restricted to the material side of the world, without any transcendent foundation. In our time nations have become technically, economically, and spiritually closer to each other, and a general sense of community is most urgently needed ( Jung 1957). Jung stresses:

The collective systems, styled “party” or “State,” have a destructive effect on human relation­ships. And they can easily be destroyed, too, because individuals are still in a condition of consciousness which cannot cope with the tremendous growth and fusion of the masses. . . .

[T]he main endeavor of all totalitarian States is to undermine personal relationships through fear and mistrust, the result being an atomized mass in which the human psyche is completely stifled. Even the relation between parents and children, the closest and most natural of all, is torn asunder by the State. All big organizations that pursue exclu­sively materialistic aims are the pacemakers of mass-mindedness. The sole possibility of stopping this is the development of consciousness in the single individual  This alone keeps his soul alive, for its life depends on the human relationship. The accent must fall on conscious personalization and not on State organization. (letter to Heinz Westmann, 12 July 1947, italics added. 1973a, 472.)

It is true that the question of:

[S]olidarity and communal life of mankind [goes] to the roots of existence. Butthe question is complicated by the fact that the individual should also be able to maintain his indepen­dence, and this is possible only if society is accorded a relative value  Otherwise it swamps and eventually destroys the individual, and then there is no longer any society either. In other words: a genuine society must be composed of independent individuals, who can be social beings only up to a certain point. They alone can fulfill the divine will implanted in each of us. (letter to Roswitha N., 17 August 1957. 1973b, 384; see also letter to Dorothy Thompson, 23 September 1949. 1973a, 534–537)

Many young people experiment by living in communes, thus trying meritoriously to set up a new form of human relatedness. But from what I have seen, these com­munes always break up on account of internal quarrels. The enthusiastic feeling of an all-loving acceptance of one’s neighbor does not hold up when tested in actual life, sim­ply because it is too sentimental and too undifferentiated. On this account it ends up in explosive affects which disrupt the community.

Affect and emotion are, as Jung has pointed out, the hallmarks of undifferenti­ated feeling. Many young people nowadays really make a cult out of affects and emo­tions, positively by musical happenings, or more negatively by riotous happenings. They think that they express feeling, but that is really not quite true, for Jung stresses that feeling is contaminated with emotions only in its primitive state; when it is differentiated it is not emotional at all (letter to Aloys von Orelli, 7 February 1950. 1973a, 544).

I have analyzed quite a few young people who have lived in communes, and the work was always just as with other people, helping them to become more conscious in their feeling relationships. That usually led to their leaving the commune and building up a circle of personal friends instead. Consciously indulging in emotional explosions is, on the contrary, morbid and leads finally to self-destruction.

What then is wrong with love of one’s neighbor, in its Christian or in its materi­alistic socialist and communist versions?2 Its positive side is a general human empa­thy which unites us with all human beings, but its negative side is emotionality and sentimentality, the latter being a counterpart of brutality.3 While the old ladies in our Christian world knitted woolen garments for the poor little African children, the slave traders of that very same Christian civilization were destroying the lives of uncountable black people! That is an example which speaks clearly of what is meant by sentimental­ity being the counterpart of brutality.

We cannot return to the early Christians’ ideal of love. We must return to it, to a general human empathy, but on a much more differentiated level.4 What would that look like? Jung calls this new form of love a whole-making effect of a certain kind of Eros [relatedness], which is an emanation of the individuated personality (1954/1957,

¶¶389–390). It is symbolized in alchemy by the strange image of a rosy-colored blood which the Philosopher’s Stone (or homo putissimus) emanates and which heals all peo­ple. Homo putissimus means “most pure” or “true man,” literally, unalloyed man. He is “no other than just what he is . . . he must be entirely man who knows and possesses everything human and is not adulterated by any influence or admixture from with-out.”

This unalloyed man, according to the alchemists, will bring about the deliverance from evil by his blood, which is “a certain Eros which unifies the individual as well as the multitude in the sign of the rose and makes them whole” ( Jung 1973a, 465).

This rosy-colored blood obviously symbolizes a form of love coupled with insight, while blind love is always driven and leads to destructive consequences. One can even explain the cruelties of the Inquisition as being motivated by a zealous love for man­kind, as an attempt to prevent people from falling into mortal errors. Love, Jung says, is a dynamism which needs form and direction; it also needs to join with a compen­satory Logos, as a light which shines in its darkness.

At a personal level, the integra­tion of Logos with Eros may prevent one from falling into illusory projections through driven love. With driven love, unconsciousness of feeling at first generates too much closeness, a huddling together indiscriminately, which then is blasted apart in an enan-tiodromia by some outburst of affects. Differentiated relationships, on the contrary, include a certain distance, which is different in every case. Jung wrote in a letter:

One of the most important and difficult tasks in the individuation process is to bridge the distance between people. There is always a danger that the distance will be broken down by one party only, and this invariably gives rise to a feeling of violation followed by resentment. Every relationship has its optimal distance, which of course has to be found by trial and error. (letter to Oskar A. H. Schmitz, 20 September 1928. 1973a, 53–54)

Jung notes that this is especially difficult when sexuality comes in. A differenti­ated feeling relationship would include a deep empathy and closeness to the other and a certain distance based on differentiation: an understanding and a not-understand-ing, the latter consisting of a silent respect of the mystery of the other’s individual­ity. To somebody who loves blindly, the creation of that distance is very painful, but it guarantees also his or her freedom, without which no individuation is possible. This is of paramount importance. Jung’s thought has very relevant consequences, I think, for our immediate future.

In discussing the dangers of an atomic world war, Jung pointed out that a “reli-gious world-embracing movement” may be the only counteracting force (letter to Pastor

Wegman, 12 December 1945. 1973a, 402). Since 1945, when Jung wrote this, we can see how attempts to create such a movement have sprung up in many places. We have witnessed a revival of Islamic sects (such as the Bahai and Sufism), the “Moonies” of Korea, the spread of Buddhism, and innumerable Hindu gurus, many of whom try to create a world-wide movement. Last but not least, the Catholic Church evokes “the spirit in a religious sense [that] still moves the brute masses”(letter to Pastor H. Wegmann, 12 December 1945. 1973a, 402). Such religious movements are not only a redeeming positive factor: they can also be dangerous and terrible, because if an arche­type moves the masses it generally leads to their thinking that they have the Truth. This can lead them to despise and perhaps persecute people who think or feel differently. Most religious leaders, like political leaders, wish that the individual would completely identify with the (his) “Truth”—which, however, has to be one-sided by its very nature. Even if one identifies with a “great Truth,” this is catastrophic because it cripples fur­ther spiritual development. Instead of insight one has only a “conviction,” which is more comfortable and thus more attractive.

To repeat Jung’s statement, a world-wide spiritual movement could save us from the psychological destruction caused by literalism and from a Third World War—but it would still have all the disadvantages of supporting a certain mass-mindedness. Only a personal, conscious recognition of one’s shadow and of the archetypes, i.e., of the spir­itual “powers,” can save us from being swallowed up by the psyche of the masses and its inclinations toward destruction. We must develop a differentiated feeling relation­ship including the postulate of distance to the powers within, an I-Thou relationship with the god or gods, or the numinosum, and not an uncritical religious conviction of any sort. Relatedness to other human beings outside and to the archetypal pow­ers within go together in a strange way, because, as Jung pointed out in his Memories,

Dreams, Reflections, our lives and our relationships count only if the infinite “is somehow included . . .” (1963, 325). What he calls here the “infinite” means the manifesta­tion of something suprapersonal and divine, or, in Jung’s terminology, the Self. What that means cannot be explained here in a few words; it is the essence of his work on the Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955–56/1970).

It seems to me that Jung’s ideas are slowly beginning to be better understood than they were during his lifetime. However, this essential point, his rehabilitation of Eros, or differentiated relatedness, is not yet understood. Many tend to see his ideas as a new philosophy or scientific theory, as a collective ideological “truth,” or a new branch of psychology, all of which it is not. The analytical process is a pure process of experience in which psychology annihilates or transcends itself as a mere science ( Jung 1916/1958/1960). Everything becomes a living encounter with outer and inner realities5 to which we have to relate.

Jung deliberately chose not to become a social leader. He stressed that “there always will be two standpoints, the standpoint of a social leader who, if he is an ideal­ist at all, seeks salvation in a more or less complete suppression of the individual, and the leader of minds who seeks improvement in the individual only” (letter to Samuel

Schmalhausen, 19 October 1934. 1973a, 174). These two, he went on to say in the same letter, “are necessary pairs of opposites which keep the world in balance.” We might say that Jung was not only a “leader of minds,” because he showed that individ­uation is not possible without the differentiation of Eros. Perhaps Jung will be remem­bered as a knight who restored to the community the feminine principle of Love, or Eros, as symbolized by the Holy Grail or by the homo putissimus of alchemy, who ema­nates a whole-making, healing Eros, through which even the opposites of the collective versus the individual may be reconciled.

endnotes

1. Editor’s Note: We are grateful to the heirs of the Marie-Louise von Franz literary estate, Emmanuel Kennedy, Phil., and Stiftung für Jung’sche Psychologie, for their permission to publish Marie-Louise von Franz’s final lecture. It appears here in English for the first time. It was pub­lished in German in J-F. Zavala, G. Rusca, R. Monz�� (eds.) Beiträge zur Jungschen Psychologie, Festschrifi zum 75. Geburtstag von Marie�louise von Franz [Contributions to Jungian Psychol� ogy. Festschrifi for the 75th Birthday of Marie�louise von Franz], Valencia, 1990.
2. See letter to G. Baynes, 22 January 1942. 1973a, 312–314.
3. See letter to Wilhelm Laiblin, 16 April 1973a, 213.
4. See letter to Hermann Keyserling, 10 May 1973a, 92–93.
5. Editor’s note: In the manuscript that we received, the word “beings” was crossed out and changed to “realities.”

Bibliography

Frey, Liliane. 1980. Im unkreis des Todes. Zürich: Daimon Verlag. Glauser, Benno. 1981. Schweizerisches Rotes Kreuz No. 5, July 1981, 13sq.

Jung, C. G. 1897/1983. “Some Thoughts on Psychology,” The Zofingia lectures, Supplementary Volume a of the Collected Works of C. G. Jung. Princeton, NJ: Bollingen Series XX.

———. 1912/1958/1960. “The Transcendent Function,” Collected Works, Vol. 8.

———. 1954/1970. “The Philosophical Tree,” Collected Works, Vol. 13.

———. 1955–56/1970. Mysterium Coniunctionis, Collected Works, Vol. 14.

———. 1957. “The Undiscovered Self (Present and Future),” Collected Works, Vol. 10.

———. 1963. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. New York: Vintage Books.

———. 1973a. C. G. Jung letters, Vol. I. Ed. Gerhard Adler. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univer­sity Press.

———. 1973b. C. G. Jung letters, Vol. II. Ed. Gerhard Adler. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni­versity Press.

Neumann, Erich. 1969. Depth Psychology and a new Ethic. London, UK: Hodder & Stoughton.

marie-louise von franz (1915–1998) received her doctorate in ancient languages from the University of Zürich and trained with C. G. Jung to become one of the foremost analysts, authors, scholars, and teachers of her time. Her brilliance, profound insight, and creativity were applied to creation myths, dreams, fairy tales, typology, the translation and interpretation of ancient and medieval alchemical texts, and the relationship of the psyche to the ideas of modern physics. She is felt by many to be the foremost of Jung’s collaborators, the most cogent interpreter of his work, and a highly original and insightful scholar in her own right.

abstract

This is the provocative, final lecture given in 1986 by Marie-Louise von Franz, a lifelong colleague of C. G. Jung and an accomplished scholar, teacher, analyst, and author. Her theme is Jung’s critique of twentieth century western culture for overvaluing the scientific method and rationalism at the expense of empathy and differentiated relatedness. She argues that the development of individual conscious relationships is the only thing that allows for the development of the human soul. Only this prevents cruelty, which, she notes, is often accompanied by sentimentality and emotionality as opposed to true empathy. She develops her theme by citing a student lecture by Jung, where he quotes Kant’s belief that an ethical stance requires a personal relationship to something beyond ordinary experience (god, the Self, the “spirit world”). In this wide-ranging lecture, von Franz expresses her own strong values through examples from contemporary and indigenous cultures and social movements, as well as the cultures of science and medicine.

She is critical of experimental physiology (which inflicts pain upon animals) and quantitative psychology (with its objectification of human experience and abstraction through statistics).

She also criticizes the objectification of analytic patients and the physician’s hiding behind persona in order to avoid a real human encounter.

She ends with the suggestion that Jung may be remembered not only as a “leader of minds” but also as someone who resurrected the feminine principle of Eros, or relatedness. ~Marie-Louise von Franz, Spring Journal 22 2008, Page 15-20

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