PART THREE: THE JUNG CULT
CHAPTER TWELVE: "The Silent Experiment in Group Psychology"
1916
WE HAVE SEEN how the Society for Psychoanalytic Endeavors, which was created in Zurich in February 1912, formed the first foundation of a charismatic cult centered on the Lebensphilosophie of psychoanalysis and on the person of Jung. We have also seen how Jung grew into his role as a leader or prophet of a cultural revitalization movement that was anti-Christian in focus and that therefore sought to fireplace religion with religion." Jung lost many disciples in Zurich after his 1913 break with Freud, but those that remained continued to seek psychoanalytic treatment from Jung and his associates, recommended this form of treatment to others, and attended his lectures and seminars during the years of the Great War.
Insulated from the storm that raged all around Switzerland, the small group of current and former patients of the analysts of the Zurich School formed interwoven social networks that extended far beyond the borders of Zurich. The sanctuary that Switzerland provided from the war probably served to intensify the feeling of social cohesion among the Jungians and no doubt convinced them that their program for a spiritual revitalization of a mad society was exactly what the world needed. When the war ended, they would provide the leadership for a new spiritual awakening, with a physician and noted man of science as their prophet and pater pneumatikos ("spiritual father"). The social upheaval that always follows such conflagrations would even perhaps provide an opening for the Jungians to step in and grab the world's attention, indeed to enact what the ancestors told them was "the Law of what is to come." As Jung was to say first in 1916 and then over and over again throughout his life, "only a few are capable of individuating," and it was those disciples in Jung's innermost circle who were therefore the vanguard of this new nobility or spiritual elite. [1]
The formal governing organ of this new spiritual elite was to be the group of current and former patients and their analysts who blurred the boundaries of their relationships by participating in the Psychological Club after its formation in 1916. Fortunately, we have what appears to be a summary transcript of a talk Jung gave in 1916 at the meeting at which the Psychological Club was founded. It has been found among the papers of Fanny Bowditch Katz, an American patient of Jung's and Jung's Dutch associate, Maria Moltzer, who underwent analysis with the two of them in 1912 and 1913. Moltzer, however, remained her primary analyst, and as is apparent from their mutual correspondence, they remained in touch long after Katz's return to America. The document concerning the Psychological Club is probably an original English transcript typed by Moltzer in Zurich and, it is assumed, mailed to Katz in America. In the upper right-hand corner of the document "Frl. Moltzer" is written in an unknown hand.
What follows, then, is the heretofore unpublished talk, thought to be by Jung. It will be obvious immediately to the reader that it is spiritual redemption that is the focus of interest among this group of people and that this is not -- nor was it ever -- a professional psychiatric or medical association of any sort. In 1959 -- with obvious reference to alchemy and the relationship of the medieval or renaissance alchemist or "adept" to his female assistant, the soror mystica ("mystical sister") -- Jung would mention in his introduction to a posthumously published collections of the writings of Toni Wolff that "she also helped me to carry out, over a period of forty years, a 'silent experiment' in group psychology, an experiment which constitutes the life of the Psychological Club in Zurich." [2] Indeed, it may very well be argued that this document acknowledges that the "silent experiment" was the Jung cult of redemption and rebirth that was formalized on the day that Jung made the following remarks:
In the symbol of Christ lies an identification of the personality with the progressive tendency of the collective soul. I purposely say the progressive tendency of the collective soul in order to indicate that the collective soul has various aspects. One is a tendency which is represented by the Terrible Mother, but there is another which contains the symbols of redemption for suffering humanity. This side of the collective soul is symbolized by Christ.
In Christ the human and the divine in man are one -- for which reason Christ is also the God-man.
Through the death of Christ, His personality and His Imago living in mankind became separated. Christ died, and His Imago arose among men -- and the collective soul of mankind was accepted in the symbol of Christ. Thus a new ideal arose, an ideal so strong that its power still holds mankind today.
The identification with the progressive tendency of the collective soul is characterized by the intuitive type. This type cannot live in the existing functions, and is forced to maintain his intuition until he has found his adaptation to life. For this reason he follows mainly the progressive tendency of the libido. This identification of the personality with the collective unconscious manifests itself always in the phenomenon of self-deification -- be it an identification with the function of intuition, with the function of extraversion, or with the function of introversion. It is a self-deification according to the function, but the phenomenon always remains the same. It is therefore a question of the overcoming of self-deification, which might also be compared with the Death of Christ, a death of the greatest agony.
Perhaps the freeing of the personality from the progressive tendency of the unconscious belongs to one of the most painful tasks to be accomplished on the road to development to full individuality. Through the freeing of the personality from the progressive tendency arises a chaos, a darkness and a doubt of all that exists, and of all that may be. The opposite tendency of the progressive is activated, and the whole Hell of the overcome past opens, and hurls itself upon the newly gained present demanding its rights, and threatens to overpower it.
This moment brings a feeling of great danger. One is quite conscious of standing before death. The directing line, so long given one by the identification with the progressive tendency, is suddenly wiped out -- and not until one has found the continuity of the new functions created in the unconscious, can one get a feeling of the possibility to live.
The separating of the personality from the collective soul seems to disturb phylogenetically certain pictures or formations in the unconscious -- a process which we still understand very little, but which needs the greatest care in treatment. The struggle with the Dead is terrible, and I understand the instinct of mankind which protests against this great effort as long as it is possible to do so.
But we human beings have not only instinct, we have also intuition -- an insight into the inexorable which life demands of us, and so the struggle goes on between instinct and intuition, until both have been harmoniously united.
Here too the parallel with Christ continues. The struggle with the Dead and the descent into Hell are unavoidable. The Dead need much patience and the greatest care. Some must be brought to eternal rest, others have a message to bring us, for which we must prepare ourselves. These Dead need time for their highest fulfillment, only after full duty has been done to the Dead can man return slowly to his newly created personality. This new individuality thus contains all vital elements in a new constellation.
In studying Christ's Descent into Hell I was surprised to find how closely the tradition coincides with human experience. This problem is therefore not new, it is a problem of general mankind, and for this reason probably too, symbolized through Christ.
I will not mention these parallels further here, as it would carry me too far from my subject, and I hope to elucidate this problem more fully in a work on the Transcendental Function. It was a problem of the past, and is a problem of our time. The night, the chaos and the despair which appear before the Menschwerdung, has been defined by artists of not long ago. So, Goethe's Faust is enveloped in night -- he becomes blind, and dies -- only then the transfiguration. [It is] the Transcendental Function which reveals the completed human being of our time.
In Wagner's Parsifal we find the same phenomenon, only nearer to life. On Good Friday Parsifal comes back to the Gralsburg. He is entirely in black, the symbol of death, and his visor is closed. The belief in being able to fulfill the work for which he has struggled for so long has deserted him, and it is Gurnemanz and Kundry, both very much changed, who free him from his madness and show him the way to the Gralsburg.
Only after one has freed oneself from the collective soul, only after one has passed through death and the soul has been realized, can the collective problem be really solved. The further conclusion is that this problem must in principle be our problem also -- the essential element in the Collective being that it pertains to all. The Collective soul may be brought to constellation in a different way in every individual, but in principle all these manifestations are the same. When the Holy Ghost revealed Himself to the Apostles on Whitsun tide, the Apostles spoke in tongues, which means that each spoke in his own way, each had his own way of praising his own God, and yet all praised the same God.
Only after the overcoming of self-deification, only after the human being has been revealed to himself, and man recognizes the human being in mankind, can we speak of a real analytical collectivity -- a collectivity which reaches out (extends) beyond type and sex.
But we have not yet come so far, we are on the way to the Menschwerdung. The recognition that each has to fulfill his especial task, and to go his own especial way, leads to the respect for the individual and his especial path. Only those who have been forced through their own individual laws to go their own ways, and thereby have come in conflict with the prevailing traditions, come to Analysis.
An analytical collectivity can therefore only be founded on a respect for the individual and the individual path. The difficulties which arise along the individual path in relation to collectivity can only be solved analytically, and it must follow that for those who wish to build up an analytical collectivity, it must be an inevitable duty to solve such conflicts according to the principles of Analysis.
That which those who subject themselves to Analysis have in common is their striving to solve individual problems. This mutual interest suffices for a Club. A Club can be based on anyone collective element, for which reason I approve of the Club. In a Club those persons can join together who have a common road to go, and wherein they thus feel themselves strengthened in their efforts. So, small Clubs will grow up in the main Club, the so-called original groups, which again will have their own development to pass through, will be dissolved, or in time be changed into other groups. For this reason there must be an analytical Club that has perfect freedom to build an endless number of small groups, and each must respect the other. Thus the individual principle will be carried over to the collective principle, for a Club, or a small group, is, as long as it forms a unit in itself, identical with an individuality.
From which follows that I should like to have the following principles introduced into the statutes of an analytical Club:
1. Purpose of the Club: analytical collectivity.
2. Respect for the Club as a whole.
3. Respect for the small group, as such.
4. Respect for the individual and his individual purpose.
5. Where difficulties arise in the Club, in the small groups or among individuals, they must be solved according to analytical principles.
6. Where insolvable difficulties arise they must be brought before an analytical tribunal.
Nothing is new under the sun. That which I see ahead of us as an ideal analytical collectivity Goethe saw and speaks of in his "Geheimnisse." If it were not so long, I should be glad to read it to you now -- it may not be familiar to you all.
The poem was written in 1816 and no doubt was far ahead of its time. It describes a collectivity founded on the principle of the religious acceptance of the individual path, and the Menschwerdung. As a symbol this Cloister has a Cross wound with roses, symbol of the resurrected life -- the Tannhauser motif of the budding staff, the Chider, or the Tree of Life.
The ancients say of the Tree of Life, "A Noble Tree planted with rare skill grows in a garden. Its roots reach down to the bottom of Hell -- its crown touches the Throne of God, its wide spreading branches surround the Earth. The Tree stands in fullest beauty and is glorious in its foliage."
This Tree is the expression of a collective function, created by Analysis and life.
THE JUNG CULT AND REDEMPTION
As is immediately evident to any reader of this remarkable document, it is the manifesto of a religious movement whose goal is not only the salvation of the individual, but also of the world, and it is founded on a vague utopian ideal of an "analytical collectivity." Let us examine the meaning of this text in light of the discussion that has been presented thus far.
Jung here is still incorporating themes from Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido. In doing so, he outlines a sequence of psychological experiences, a phenomenology of personal transformation, which we now know he himself underwent and then presented to his disciples as a universal pattern to be emulated by them.
Jung's phenomenological exposition goes like this: within the unconscious there is a progressive flow of libido, which if the individual personality (the ego) "identifies" with it, he or she undergoes the experience of self-deification and becomes (symbolically) Christ. As we have shown, Jung himself underwent such a deification experience in which he merged with Aion and Christ. If the individual (ego) identifies with the regressive flow of the libido, he or she suffers the pain of dismemberment and annihilation in the "realm of the Mothers" and becomes (symbolically) a victim of the Terrible Mother. If one does not heroically resurface from these depths, one then becomes permanently damaged and will then probably develop dementia praecox.
As a symbol of a successful self-deification process, Christ is exemplary for he is both divine and human. After the death of the historical Jesus, his memory image nonetheless continued to live in the collective soul and, over many generations, actually came to symbolize the collective soul of humankind. Jung differs from his old theological nemesis Ritschl in this regard, for Jung's memory image of Christ is lodged in a transcendental sphere of human nature and is not merely transmitted by cultural traditions and institutions, as Ritschl argued. [3] Jung's invocation of Christ as a symbol of the collective soul also resonates with the volkisch thought originating in the late nineteenth century with figures such as Julius Langbehn (among many others) that Mosse identifies as "another tendency in Volkish thought -- namely, to substitute the image of the Volk for the person and function of Christ." [4]
When the modern individual (ego) undergoes a transformation and begins to identify with the collective unconscious, he or she therefore becomes Christ (self-deification). Whether one is an extraverted, introverted, or intuitive type (Jung later changed this prototheory of psychological types markedly), one always becomes, in a sense, Christ. The issue then becomes how to overcome, in a Nietzschean sense, one's experience as a god.
However, if one becomes Christ, he or she must then reenact the story of Christ. After experiencing the agony of psychological death (as Christ did on the cross) and then, after fully experiencing both humanity and divinity through being a dying and suffering god, one must also reenact Christ's katabasis or descent to Hell (the "realm of the Mothers," or the collective unconscious). After the initial deification experience, and after successfully overcoming it (through analysis, as implied here by Jung), the "whole Hell of the overcome past opens" and one begins a confrontation with the collective unconscious.
Here Jung is still holding on to his phylogenetic hypothesis (if tenuously), for "the separating of the personality from the collective soul seems to disturb phylogenetically certain pictures or formations in the unconscious." Yet this is about as scientific as Jung allows himself to get, for the process he describes is more akin to the mediumistic techniques of spiritualism than anything else. Jung equates disturbing these images with disturbing the dead. While in the collective unconscious -- which then is equivalent to a transcendent land of the dead -- one has a "terrible struggle" with the dead.
It is clear that Jung views the role of the individual as a redeemer of the dead as well as of oneself and of society. Like Hermes the psychopomp, the individual has the responsibility to lead some of the dead to eternal rest. Other members of the dead have an important message of salvation to bring to humankind. Thus, the individual who undergoes Jung's brand of analysis must also become a spiritualist medium who can receive messages from the deceased for the benefit of humankind. Indeed, one must have contact with the dead before one can achieve individuality, a process that Jung here calls the Menschwerdung (the process of "becoming a human being").
After comparing the process of individuation to the death, descent, and rebirth of Christ the god-man, Jung then makes a reference to Wagner's Parsifal and its paganized Christian theme of redemption. This reference, and the cluster of references at the end of his talk to Goethe and his poem of a secret (Geheimnis) religious cloister like the Templars, to Wagner again and his Tannhiiuser, and to the Tree that is a symbol of Wotan and Wotanism, all point to Jung's merger of the image of Christ with dominant symbols of the volkisch movement. The deliberate reference to these Germanic symbols, which would resonate especially with his Germanic disciples, is very telling. One may very well argue, therefore, that -- based on the convergence of evidence we have from 1916 -- the Jung cult began as a volkisch movement devoted specifically to the spiritual revitalization of the Germanic Volk.
PSEUDOLIBERATIONAL NIETZSCHEANISM
Jung is telling us with this document that his movement is one based on the metaphors of Nietzscheanism. Jung wants those who have already had the experience of being "forced through their own individual laws to go their own ways, and thereby have come in conflict with the prevailing traditions." These prevailing traditions are, of course, the organized Judeo-Christian faiths. There is no place with him, therefore, for those who still adhere to such ideals. Jung instead welcomes these spiritually disaffected persons in particular to analysis, through which they then can form their own personal religion and thereby, echoing Nietzsche's own words, obey only their own law.
Yet we see here the contradictions that Tonnies noticed in the Nietzsche cult of the 1890s. Jung offers the promise of truly becoming an individual after becoming a god, or rather, after learning to directly experience the god within. This is a process of self-sacrifice and struggle during which one must give up one's former image of god, indeed most effectively smashing the Judeo-Christian idol with the "hammer" of questions that is analysis. Jung's analysis helps to destroy the hold that the Judeo-Christian god has over the individual. The promise here, then, is Jung's promise of liberation, of freedom, of becoming a continually self-re-creating individual in a state of constant becoming, a perpetual revolution of the soul.
With the vital, scintillatingly intelligent, and sensitive Jung as their living model, it is no wonder that Jung's disciples could believe -- with Jung's own promises -- that they, too, could one day be as charismatic as he. This is the first contradiction that becomes apparent in Jung's Nietzschean cult doctrine, for what Jung offers to his disciples (and through them, to the world) as a process of individuation is simply his own pattern of experience. Analysis becomes, then, a ritualized reenactment of Jung's own experience as a suffering and dying god, just as Roman Catholic communion is a ritualized reenactment of the Last Supper. Paradoxically, Jung offers his own unique path as the one for his disciples to mimic. He has found the way and is imparting this vision to his tribe. Despite his urgings and promises to the contrary, Jung is offering himself as the imago of individuation. [5] And given his personal charisma, in the eyes of these earliest disciples (and of those in the Jungian movement today who are enamored by the manufactured pseudocharisma of the deceased Jung), the way to be a unique individual is to imitate Jung.
A second contradiction in Jung's pseudoliberational Nietzschean doctrine is his paradoxical argument that a small group of individuals is "identical with an individuality" and is therefore not contrary to one's own individuality. Here is the appeal to spiritual elitism and the justification for forming a Nietzschean new nobility of the individuated. With this appeal, and the blueprint for a blossoming number of groups to spread all over the world from Zurich, Jung is in essence directly challenging the organs of Christianity and is setting up his own hierarchical religious cult with its own "analytical tribunal." Jung thus becomes the heresiarch who, through the arbitrary powers of his charismatic authority (as with all charismatic leaders, as Weber has demonstrated), can personally determine the new ethical standards and social policies of his new heresy. It is ironic that by doing so Jung simply repeats those aspects of organized religion that he and his fellow iconoclasts found so repugnant in the first place.
In 1928 Jung would again emphasize the need for an enlightened elite of the few individuated persons who are chosen to lead the rest of humanity by vocation, literally a call to follow an "inner necessity." After a discussion of the self, which Jung says "might equally well be called the 'God within us,'" [6] and then of the importance of things we may consider evil and therefore purposely ignore to our own detriment, Jung says the following:
Here I am alluding to a problem that is far more significant than these few simple words would seem to suggest: mankind is, in essentials, psychologically still in a state of childhood -- a stage that cannot be skipped. The vast majority needs authority, guidance, law. This fact cannot be overlooked. The Pauline overcoming of the law falls only to the man who knows how to put his soul in the place of conscience. Very few are capable of this ("Many are called, few are chosen."). And these few tread this path only from inner necessity, not to say suffering, for it is sharp as the edge of a razor. [7]
Thus, to be among the few individuated members of the Jung cult means one is no longer infantile and that one has a higher purpose or calling to lead those unfortunate multitudes who cannot or will not see the light. This is Jung once again appealing to the spiritual elitism that so many have found seductive.
THE ANALYTICAL COLLECTIVITY AS VOLKISCH UTOPIANISM
Jung deliberately fused the symbol of Christ with potent Germanic cultural symbols because it spoke to the volkisch mystical elements within his circle and indicated his intention to redeem those of Aryan heredity. We know from his own statements that, during at least his first sixty years, Jung felt European individuals should follow European paths of spiritual development that their distant ancestors followed and not alien ones such as Buddhism, Hinduism, or, it may be argued, the "alien" faith of Christianity -- with its Semitic origins -- that was imposed as a "foreign growth" on the pagan Germanic peoples. [8] Jung toned down his rhetoric considerably after 1936 or so when he began to realize the impending disaster for humanity that Hitler and the Nazis could bring about through their racial policies. However, based on his essentially volkisch view of human nature in 1916, it is clear that Jung's proposed path of spiritual redemption could only work for those of Indo-European ancestry, or for those few extraordinary secular Jews who had lived on European soil and who therefore had souls that were imbued with the combined pagan and Christian influences that literally arose from the blood soaked into the land itself. Aryans could experience the sacrament of rebirth. Semites did not have this "image" and therefore were excluded from redemption.
This essentially Aryans-only path to redemption that Jung envisioned in 1916 is supported by a "secret appendix" to the by-laws of the Analytical Psychology Club of Zurich. According to these secret rules, Jewish membership in the club was limited to ten percent and Jewish "guest membership" to twenty-five percent of the total. This fact -- which only came to light in 1989 -- is confirmation of Jung's long-standing covert anti-Semitism, as he removed the Jewish quota only in 1950. [9]
Jung's proposal of an analytical collectivity is essentially the utopian vision that he and his cult sought to bring about. This explicit utopianism in Jung -- like most visions of utopia -- is somewhat vague, but it is very much within a long tradition of Germanic utopianism that became especially prominent in Central Europe after 1870, throughout Jung's developmental years. In order to fully understand what Jung is proposing with his "analytical collectivity," these contemporary utopian ideas that permeated the fin de siecle and beyond must be explored.
German utopianism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries almost always meant a return to pre-Christian, pagan spirituality in some form. We have seen how Goethe exemplified this trend in the Romantic movement by suggesting replacing the fairy tale of Christ-worship with sun worship. The Romantic revival of the Greek gods in Germany also led to utopian visions of a Hellenic Germany based on the best, most rational, and most aesthetically superior Apollonian aspects of ancient Greek culture.
In the 1870s, Nietzsche and Wagner unleashed a stream of utopian fantasies that reversed these notions with their appeal to a return to an irrational, organic, Dionysian community of oneness of will and expression. Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy argued that Bismarckian Germany should be reborn, but not on its Apollonian or arid, rational (hence patriarchical) values, but on a return to the ideals of the earliest Greek communitarian society, a prerational, pre-Socratic world of instinct and harmony with the forces of nature and its inherent tragedy. With Wagnerian opera in mind, the unifying Dionysian element was to be music. Nietzsche implores, "Let no one try to blight our faith in a yet-impending rebirth of Hellenic antiquity; for this alone gives us hope for a renovation and purification of the German spirit through the fire magic of music." [10] Nietzsche's appeal to a return to a pre-Christian utopia in which the creative forces of nature would be unleashed was a seductive one:
Yes, my friends, believe with me in Dionysian life and the rebirth of tragedy. The age of the Socratic man is over; put on wreaths of ivy, put the thyrsus in your hand, and do not be surprised when tigers and panthers lie down, fawning, at your feet. Only dare to be tragic men; for you are to be redeemed. You shall accompany the Dionysian pageant from India to Greece. Prepare yourselves for hard strife, but believe in the miracles of your god. [11]
It was just such a communitarian, Dionysian unit that Tonnies had in mind with his concept of Gemeinschaft, which is roughly translated into English as "community." Tonnies' vision of Gemeinschaft was of just such a small, blood-related, and geographically localized self-sufficient communal lifestyle that was guided by its essential or organic will toward the common good. This "organic will" was not necessarily contrary to rational thought, but was not identical with it either. Tonnies' famous book of 1887, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, which marks the beginning of modern German sociology, fatalistically predicted a decline in bourgeois-Christian civilization or Gesellschaft ("society") and a return to communal living. [12] In this immense work of scholarship, there are many references to Nietzsche and, interestingly, Bachofen. Just such a fantasy was enacted around 1900 by the various Asconan groups in Switzerland. [13] Among those Germanic Europeans in search of their long-lost Teutonic spirituality and a return to a Golden Age of paganism, the "old dreams of a new Reich" were of a very similar Volksgemeinschaft (a mystical blood community of Volk) through a revolution led by an elite (spiritual and/ or political) or, perhaps, a fuhrer.
We have already seen how Jung was very much attracted to a philosophy of pagan regeneration based on Bachofen's ideal image of a prehistorical period of polygamous hetairism (and its psychoanalytic and Nietzschean interpretation by Gross). We may add to this Muller's vision of a prehistorical Aryan "mythopoetic age." By 1916, all of these elements were combined into Jung's own utopian fantasy of a natural analytical collectivity that too, could transcend even "type and sex."
However, the distinguishing features that make Jung's utopian fantasy a volkisch one are the concentrated references to core volkisch metaphors when proposing the idea of an analytical collectivity, especially its appeal as a secret, elite status. Goethe's poem "Die Geheimnisse" ("The Mysteries") not only conjures up images of the hierarchical ancient mystery cults of Greco-Roman antiquity (which were, partially, Goethe's models in this poem) but also the Grail-quest imagery of an elite corp of seekers (like the heretical Templars so beloved of George) who could merge their Christian cross with Wotan's Tree.
"Die Geheimnisse" was published in April 1816 during Goethe's Weimar period. As Jung correctly noted, the poem depicts the idea of a spiritual elite or fraternity (Bruderschaft) of men feeling cut off from any sense of meaning in their respective Christian faiths who then find new meaning by coming together to form a new Urreligion that encompasses all religions. The motive for such an all-encompassing religion would be the creation of a revitalized, renewed, spiritualized world. Goethe mixes Christian and pagan imagery in this poem, especially the imagery of Rosicrucianism whose literature Goethe knew well. [4] As early as 1784 Goethe had thoroughly discussed his plan to write a poem with such a utopian theme with Herder, and then later Frau von Stein. Not surprisingly, this poem was a favorite of many in volkisch circles and especially in the German Youth Movement and of course is echoed in the work of George.
In Germanic Europe these were indeed powerful symbols that could (and did) stir the souls of millions. Jung's deliberate use of them created the attractive (if vaguely outlined) fantasy of a true Volksgemeinschaft based on a deep spiritual connection between the analyzed and the primordial images of the god within, and of the ancestors of the inner world (the dead) as well as the forces of the natural world (the sun, astrological influences, the mystical influence of geography). Jung, as it must be emphasized again, wanted a spiritual reawakening in Europe through participation in his own mysteries. Other groups who also employed these potent volkisch symbols for their ability to mobilize the masses sought political ends, resulting in the tragic realization of the volkisch utopia of National Socialist Germany and its occult symbols and secret societies (like the SS) and racially based mystery-cult practices. [15]
Thus, the public Jung was, perhaps, an eccentric psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in the eyes of the academic and scientific community in 1916.The private Jung, however, within the supportive enclave of Kusnacht-Zurich and his circle of disciples, was very much the volkish prophet.
THE MASTER RACE OF INDIVIDUATED SUPERMEN
Jung's Nietzschean religion includes additional aspects that seem to vindicate the approach of his "twin brother," Otto Gross, in his obsession with using Nietzscheanism as the theory and psychoanalysis as the praxis to bring about individual and cultural rebirth. There are similarities between Nietzsche's purely theoretical idea of the ubermensch and Jung's concept of an individual or an individuated person who is brought into being through the practice of analysis.
Both the ubermensch and the individuated illustrate the epitome of a human being. Neither Jung nor Nietzsche left a fully developed description of just what, in practice, such a being would be like. Because of this lack of any clear-cut description of an individuated human being in the entire corpus of Jung's extensive written works, the idealized cult legend of Jung in Memories, Dreams, Reflections is used as the yardstick by Jungians today. Literally volumes of speculation exist on just what Nietzsche meant by an ubermensch. Perhaps Nietzsche scholar Kurt Rudolph Fischer's assessment is the best:
We undercut Nietzsche if we wish to determine what the "Ubermensch" is. Because I think it is part of the determination of the "Ubermensch" not to be determined -- that we shall have to experiment, that we shall have to create. Nietzsche puts emphasis on the creativity of man and therefore we should accentuate that the conception of the "Ubermensch" is necessarily not determined. We cannot ask whether an author has confused the issue, or has presented us with a dangerous alternative. [16]
According to Jung, one is reborn or renewed through access to the impersonal or collective unconscious that contains the accumulated wisdom and experiences of one's racial ancestors. Although Jung is paradoxical and vague on this issue, it is arguable that in 1916 -- and, certainly by the late 1920s when Wilhelm introduced him to Chinese alchemy -- contact with the collective unconscious meant one could theoretically access the wisdom and experiences of the whole human species. Becoming a true individual who follows one's own inner law and not that of the herd necessitates an initiation into this transcendent depository of the species. Jung's analysis enables the individual to transcend one's genetic heritage and draw upon the richness of all the races through the Platonic Realm of the Collective Unconscious. Throughout his life, whenever Jung referred to individuation, he resorted to just such Nietzschean metaphors.