The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Jung: Accepting the Darkness of Self and Others

An interesting clip, especially the last minute or two.

youtube.com/watch?v=jG5fshTs … ture=share

Hi Allan - he’s so almost right IMHO and I’d love to say he is totally right - but this is Allan Watts speaking I see. Sadly I know there was a lot more to Jung and to Allan Watts than this broadcast would suggest. Both had a capacity for begin wise fools - but they were both a couple of absolute abject fools and complete gits and plonkers too in ways not hinted at here; and not only in superficial ways but also in very serious ways. I could go into one - but I won’t.

However, yes I think some of Jung’s basic ideas of about coming to terms with our shadow side so that we don’t project it onto others are very fruitful and fully compatible with Jesus teachings about not judging, about whited sepulchres, and about grace filled rascals inheriting the kingdom. In a sense the Pharisees were people who would not/could not own up to their shadow sides and so needed Jesus as a scapegoat Btu unlike other scapegoats who are usually powerless and dumb - Jesus exposed their shadow hiding mechanisms and all of our shadow hiding mechanisms.

If you want to read a novel, which is also a brilliant portrayal of the way a Jungian psychotherapist works - try The Manticore, by Robertson Davies. It’s in paperback. Davies was quite the student of Jung and something of a big deal in novelists.

I think that Jung and Freud had great insight into Fallen man’s nature; but in attempting to reduce human nature too narrowly, for purposes of therapy, they did not understand ‘Fallen’ biblically and so were ‘at the end of the day’ incomplete in their analysis.

OK mate - haven’t read it. You stumped me :laughing:

Mission accomplished; my work is done here; I now will quit this Forum and move onto greener pastures.

Not :laughing:

That’s interesting Dave - didn’t see the second bit of your post.

I guess Freud is more Augustinian - the unconscious is a swilling sewer. Jung is more in line with the Greek Fathers - its murky inside but there are also creative jewels to be found and built upon.

But neither posit a God of Love and Redemption. For Jung the God concept is merle an archetype of integration in the self.

Is that how you see it?

Pretty much. There are some interesting disciples of Jung - James Hillman and Thomas Moore come to mind - that have broadened his insights by insisting on personal myths that are reflecting universal myths, and that what we call ‘mental problems’ are really mal-adjustments to the mythical figures that stand 'round our consciousness and provide boundaries for the soul - which is the title another absolutely fascinating non-fiction work by June Singer. Boundaries of the Soul.
We have to come to terms with these ‘gods/goddesses’, by means of understanding our personal myth, in order to grow as persons; at least, that’s how the Jungians would approach it.
Lots more on this if we decide to go on with it. Maybe someone here is a trained Jungian? That would interesting.

One of Singer’s passages about Jung : "When faced with the unknowable, he was never willing to simply say “This is out of my province, I will not allow myself to be concerned with it or sidetracked by it”. Rather his attitude was “I will try to understand it, but if I cannot, I will keep it always near me, and hope that one day, the meaning that is concealed in the mystery may in some measure be revealed’”

I like that attitude.

I’ve not come across Allan Watts. Wiki gives me an idea. (“Physician, heal yourself” springs to mind.)

I liked this idea: Don’t condemn your brother and write him off as a hopeless case. That would be a damnable misjudgment of the actual situation. But this means we must not condemn ourselves either, for exactly the same reason. If we are commanded to love our enemy and pray for him, that must include loving yourself, even when we become our own enemy.

Of course, this begs the question of what this love will do, and what it will pray for.

Yes that’s most true Allan – When I was very young and between my two bouts of fundamentalism I read a lot of Allan Watts writings. The niggling thing about him for me is not so much that he was a wounded healer – most healers are. I don’t fuel with rage because his personal relationships with the women in his life were pretty terrible or that he had a bad drink problem What bothers me is that he wobbled in the direction of stupidity and callousness with his rascally sage shtick

A couple of examples -

He was basically a Buddhist by the time he was nineteen – although he had been brought up in the Anglican Church as a boy and was a chorister at Canterbury Cathedral so he could talk the talk with Christians when he needed to. To escape the Second World War and conscription he fetched up in America and became an Episcopalian priest by dint of his English gentleman demeanour and his learning. He was crap at pastoral duties but used his stipend to write books on mystical theology. His main work – during the second world war – was a book about The Secret of Happiness – a sort of positive thinking primer with platitudes about the shadows and the light both going to make up a good painting.

Some of these rascally sages whose company Allan Watts later loved and who so influenced his thinking were Rinazai sect Zen Masters who fetched up in America after the war. These guys have been exposed recently by fellow Buddhists as unrepentant Japanese Fascists.

Finally Alan Watts – with his great learning and English charm and fruity voice in the end went native with the Californian hippies. During this stage he endorsed and befriended two very rascally sages – Buba Free John Da, and Werner Erhard – both of these guys sat easy with their own faults. Both were sociopaths who actually became very abusive and unscrupulous cult leaders.

I felt blessed when I later discovered Erasmus – he seemed to have many of the same things to say as Watts and indeed Jung had – but it was all kept in a proper balance by this Incarnational (and proto universalist) faith.
Does that make remote sense?

Dick

It makes perfect sense. Thanks. :slight_smile:

I think it right to acknowledge the shadow self, to accept folly as an inevitable (necessary?) part of human life, yet strive to deny it mastery.

We’re born of water (chaos) and the Spirit, and the Spirit will have the last word.

That’s it in one Allan - I know Jung was criticised by Martin Buber and Father Victor White (both basically sympathetic to him) for suggesting that evil needed to somehow be incorporated into our view of the Godhead if we are to stop projecting evil onto others. This is why Jung was taken with the figure of the Gnostic deity Abraxus as an archetype in which good and evil are reconciled. Jung’s two detractors argues that those energies that we have put into the shadow bag need to be transformed to serve the good and not simply accepted in their untransformed sate (which is different to accepting our human limitation folly and our ability to mess things up and rest merry with this in the light of grace while always striving for better things)

There are a couple of sayings attributed to Jung that bear on this: (paraphrased)

“Be careful when casting out your demons; your angels might get cast out also”
and
“Repression cuts a wide swath”

He was all about honoring the symptoms, sticking with them, seeing what they had to teach (the point also in Legacy of the Heart referenced above), and not just summarily rejecting them. That way, they can be reconciled, reformed; the insight they yield will cause them to alchemically transform.
It is the presence of the ‘demons’ that makes possible the ‘angels’ in some mysterious way; of course, destructive demons are another story.

Yes Dave I think he was almost there - but the emphasis sometimes wobbled a bit. I remember reading a Book named he Politics of Myth that persuaded me of this. It went into his take on the rise of Nazism. Jung was not a Nazi nor was he an anti-semite but he was kind of suspect in some of his enthusiasm for seeing Nazism as a powerful manifestation of the collective unconscious - which in a way it was - without being strong enough on the ethical critique. Just with a few things borne I mind -especially regarding how Jung can be misappropriated - I think Jung’s thinking about the human psyche and about integration are very useful and can complement Christina faith :slight_smile: .

In thermodynamics, useful work can only be done if energy can flow from hot to cold, light to dark, high potential to low potential etc. In Genesis, God establishes a vast potential difference between heaven (divine light) and earth (the Deep.) As light flows from heaven to earth, creative work takes place.

Perhaps this is why we lug about our person-shaped shadow, our inner demon. It provides the shape and form into which the Light will flow.

Dick - you said some similar things about Alan Watts, of whom I knew nothing, but who I did benefit from for a short time in the 80’s; his books “The Wisdom of Insecurity” and “Nature, Man, and Woman” were both helpful, but finally not satisfying. He was drawing a picture out of an imagination not fully informed by the Christian faith.
Same with Jung - I’ve read a couple of books by him, and a number about him, but did not know about the ‘wavering’ side.
In a way I am thankful that I did not know the ‘warts and all’ before reading the books, or I might have either skipped them entirely or read with a jaundiced view. :slight_smile:

But now I’m happy enough to get more of the picture. Thanks.

Thanks Dave :slight_smile: - if we can’t laugh discerningly at the occasional or not so occasional foolishness of non-Christians who have said some wise things, what hope is there for non-Christians who would have to keep poker faced when listening to the flawed wisdom of Christian fools. :laughing: And what could be more foolish than this? :laughing: And what could be even more foolish than to be blind to the fact that I too ma a fool - but in trying to be true to that I know of truth in my own foolishness I hope to serve Truth in my own little way :slight_smile: