Thread: Carl Gustav Jung - Videos, Books, Ruminations

And here's a page showing all of his Carl Jung videos in case anybody wants to explore further:

Academy of Ideas: Carl Jung
Highly recommended for anybody who's interested in dreams, mythology, psychology, or just becoming generally a healthier person.

Most interesting, thank you
I'll be watching that

Thanks for posting these! I have learned a bit about Jung from Jordan Peterson, and have almost finished reading The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, which has been rewarding although I don't understand half of what hes saying haha. I've considered how different manifestations of archetypes appear in my dreams and how I can best interact with them to understand their messages. I'll give these a watch and hopefully it will help me understand him better.

Originally Posted by BlairBros

I have learned a bit about Jung from Jordan Peterson,

I was into Jung years ago, but it was Jordan Peterson who got me started on him again recently.

Originally Posted by BlairBros

and have almost finished reading The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, which has been rewarding although I don't understand half of what hes saying haha.

Same. He's pretty incomprehensible at times, isn't he? Ive found reading books by some of his 2nd or 3rd generation students actually helps quite a bit, especially Edward Edinger and Marie-Lousie Von Franz. In fact Edinger wrote several books designed to help people better understand some of Jung's more opaque writings. Though I don't think he did one about Archetypes & the Collective Unconscious. It's possible - I haven't seen all of Edinger's books.

I've heard good things about Marie-Louise von Franz (I think) so I will definitely check her out!

I probably shouldn't have mentioned Von Franz alongside Edinger. She's excellent in her own right and is great to read after you have a pretty solid grasp on Jung, but she doesn't really explain his theories the way Edinger does. It seems to have been his main mission. Von Franz was more about explaining how fairy tales, Alchemy and the Arthurian legends etc tie in with Jungian theory. She's really excellent at it and a pleasure to read, but to understand Jung you want Edinger. My bad - I sort of confused the issue above by mentioning her without explaining that.

Edinger has books that clearly lay out the Individuation process, some that demonstrate the structure of the psyche, and several that deal with a specific book by Jung to fill in the blanks he inevitably left. He's also written amazing books showing how figures in early literature, Greek and Roman mythology, and religious works were influenced by the psyche - by Archetypes such as the Self, the Anima or Animus, the Shadow etc. Then Von Franz demonstrates the same things about characters in fairy tales and mythology.

Of all the books I've read by both of them, the only one I really didn't like so far has been Von Franz's Aurora Consurgens. It's really a research work, where she was laboriously trying to figure out how Alchemy was an externalized projection of the Psyche (which is something Jung originally discovered but didn't have time or energy to delve deeper into in his advancing years).

The premise of the book is fascinating - it's a detailed analysis of an alchemical manuscript written by an anonymous author, which apparently was Thomas Aquinas (a devout Christian scholar who had spent a lot of time studying Alchemy in order to denounce it as heresy). It's known that in late life he struck his head badly while riding a donkey under a tree and spent his final weeks (or months? Don't remember) in a delerious state during which he continued to give sermons, but the sermons changed their character drastically. Most accounts; those written by church officials unsurprisingly, say he had lost his mind or had his wits addled by the accident, but her conclusion was that he had a profound religious experience (an encounter with the Self) in which he suddenly understood that the writings of the alchemists were disguised accounts of how to achieve spiritual or religious transcendence. Because they were considered heretics by the church they had to keep a low profile and write in code, so their elements and metals and processes are actually code words for spiritual purification and transformation. AKA they seemed to write about transforming lead into gold through a difficult series of transmutations, but they were actually talking about purifying and uplifting the human soul into communion with the divine. Which of course means to encounter the Self. Thus the ancient injunction that in order to create the material gold an alchemist must 'polish the mirror' - the mirror being his own inner nature. Love the idea, but reading the actual book was a real plod and I don't recommend it. As fascinating as the proposition is, my little blurb tells you all you need to know in a much shorter space and without all the dull and confusing gibberish.

But later, with all that research under her belt, she was able to write an amazing book called Alchemy: an introduction to the symbolism and the psychology which is one of my favorites of all the Jungian books I've read. Later I might list a few of my favorite Edinger books too. Not up to it right now.

Oh, and what the heck is up with Peterson's Biblical series? He promised he'd try to rent out the hall and give another lecture every month or so, but it's been like 3 months and so far nothing!! I need my next fix!! Haven't even heard him mention it since. Guess patience is a virtue and all but damn. Guess I'll go clean my room.

It suddenly occurred to me - I don't need to write anything up about Edinger - I'll just copy over a couple of my blog posts here. Glad I wrote about this stuff - I do it because of my faulty memory - now the info is all preserved from when it was still fresh in my mind lol. The first blog post follows:


Jung books 06 20 17-1 by Darkmatters, on Flickr
(Click on the pic to see it bigger on Flickr)

The ones on the floor are new
Here are the latest physical additions to my library - centered around Carl Gustav Jung's Red Book. Discovering that has been foundational - how on earth did I never hear about it before? Undoubtedly because I last bought Jung books in probably the 90's, and it wasn't published until much more recently. 2009 or so, which is when I was beginning my explorations into science by reading all of Carl Sagan's books (those are offscreen to the left a ways and up on the second shelf). That was actually the beginning of a new renaissance of sorts for me, but I was occasionally bugged by the nagging idea that while science is incredibly useful and necessary (if we're to understand reality objectively and to develop technology), the dimension of humanity - of soul - was missing or at least largely overlooked. I firmly believe we need science - we need the scientific method and its removal of values in order to facilitate unbiased searching. But we need it only for the acquisition of knowledge. For the rest of life - the more important stuff - we need values and judgement. In the moral realm for instance. If you try to be valueless there then you're helpless and have no way to make important decisions. So while in some ways science displaced religion, it utterly fails to replace the most important things religion did for our ancestors. And today's rational materialism gives us nothing to help with that.

I refer you to Dr. Jordan Peterson, whose videos I've been devouring lately and who led me to The Red Book as well as back to Jung, Nietzsche, and many other great writers. His focus is on exactly what I just said - the need for values and judgement - and how to develop your skills for them in this value-starved world.

Here are my latest Kindle purchases:


Screen Shot 2017-06-20 at 12.05.35 PM by Darkmatters, on Flickr

My most recent revelations - aside from the astonishing Red Book - are Edward Edinger and Murray Stein, who explain some of Jung's ideas clearly and make them accessible. I had waded through all the Jung books on my shelf years ago (well, most anyway, just got a start on Aion) and while sections of them blazed brilliantly in my mindscape, large parts of them remained opaque and frustratingly mystifying. Oh, I discovered these guys largely thanks to another excellent video channel; The Carl Jung Depth Psychology Reading Group.

I realized very recently that I must have had some very early familiarity with Jung's ideas - and I mean in grade school. Because for whatever reason I've always connected with his kind of thinking. I think it's very likely that my mom called me in to watch a documentary about him when I was young or something similar - it's the kind of thing she was into and she would always call me if there was something on she found fascinating. Anyway, whether it was directly from the Maestro himself or more indirectly, I definitely had access to his ideas from an early age and it has formed my development and beliefs ever since. But due to the problems in fully understanding his theories that I've already mentioned, I was unable until now to get a clear understanding of his entire ouvre. Well that;s changing rapidly now, and it seems to be galvanizing me. So much is clicking into place now, and my understanding of the relation between the psyche and objective reality is undergoing a significant sea change. My dreams are getting very interesting lately - filled with powerful and deeply interconnected imagery and symbolism, and I believe I'm undergoing the re-centering process that Jung dubbed Individuation - also known as Self-Realization.

I'll do this post by post - more on the way.

New books 06 30 17-1 by Darkmatters, on Flickr

All this reading I'm doing is an antidote to the reductive and mechanistic nature of rational materialism that has overtaken Western civilization.

Shadows of the Sacred - Frances Vaughan
Cosmos and Psyche - Richard Tarnas
The Eternal Drama - Edward Edinger (Reading Greek Mythology as an expression of the human psyche)
The Discovery of Being - Rollo May (Existential psychotherapy)
States of Grace - Charlene Spretnak
Ego and Archetype - Edinger
The Psyche in Antiquity book 2; Gnosticism and Early Christianity - Edinger
The Bible and the Psyche; Individuation Symbolism in the Old Testament - Edinger

Note - on my blog the list of books has links directly to the Amazon items: Latest haul of books

I should also add here for the Dreamviews readers - I really didn't care much for Shadows of the Sacred, Cosmos and Psyche, or States of Grace, but all the Jungian-related books are amazing! And I also really dug Rollo May's Discovery of Being as a sort of complement to the Jungian Depth Psychology. It doesn't relate directly to Jung in any way really, but goes with it like peanut butter with jelly, ok?

I'm really loving the Edinger books right now - he's a great explicator of Carl Gustav Jung's ideas.

Jung's great discovery (one of them) was that in pre-Enlightenment times, when mankind's psyche was still rather primitive, he tended to project it out into the void to create myth and religion, as well as early philosophy and alchemy. By studying these ancient sources we can witness the inner workings of the psyche itself. Each of Edinger's books delves into a different era, but they all demonstrate that the psyche is the real source of the numinous and the miraculous.

Kindle purchases:

Screen Shot 2017-07-01 at 7.20.05 PM by Darkmatters, on Flickr

Quick note before I get to the blog post:
Jung says it's vitally important for modern people to develop "the religious attitude". Some form of spiritual belief would work as well, but he does believe it's important to learn about the major religions or at least one of them. And not only learn about them, but you need to find a way to believe in something beyond the harsh reductionism of rational materialism, which is the source of modern man's existential crises and psychological problems. This is why this update includes so many religious books. For me, I was never able to believe in religion or spirituality when I thought it meant believing in the supernatural or magic. But now that Jung has revealed that all along, the spiritual and religious were really psychological functions that early people projected out into the world as magic because they had no understanding of the unconscious - the real source of it all - well crap - I can get behind that totally!! And in no way does it reduce the importance or the reality of the transcendent religious or spiritual experience - that is still just as overpowering and as transformative as it ever was. It's just that people misunderstood the source of it in ancient times. Ok - on to the good stuff!


07 24 17 Ultimate Bookstack by Darkmatters, on Flickr

I've been on an insane book-buying spree. All set up with long-term reading material. If you click to enlarge the picture you should be able to see all the titles - if not you can download it and blow it up on your computer. Or I'll just grit my teeth and type up the entire list here:

Ego and Archetype - Edward Edinger
The Courage to Create - Rollo May
Carl Jung - (Critical Lives) - Paul Bishop
The Reader's Digest Bible, Large-Type Edition *(see note below)
A History of Religious Ideas vol 1 & 2 - Mircea Eliade
The Eternal Drama: The Inner Meaning of Greek Mythology - Edinger
Reading Goethe @ Midlife - Bishop
Encounter With the Self: Blake's Illustrations of the Book of Job - Edinger
Melville's Moby-Dick: An American Nekyia - Edinger
The Bible and the Psyche - Edinger
Jungian Dream Interpretation - James A Hall
Border Crossings: Carlos Castaneda's Path of Knowledge - Donald Lee Williams
Transformation of the God-Image - Edinger
The Secret Raven: Conflict and Transformation - Daryl Sharp
The Scapegoat Complex: Shadow and Guilt - Sylvia Brinton Perera
The Mysterium Lectures - Edinger
Jung and Tarot - Sallie Nichols
Meeting the Shadow - Connie Zweig (editor)
Answer to Job - CG Jung
Becoming: An Introduction to Jung's Concept of Individuation - Deldon Anne McNeely
Existential Psychotherapy - Irvin D Yalom
The Ultimate Guide to Tarot - Liz Dean

All Booked Up!! (blog post containing the direct Amazon links for the books)

*Still waiting on the first volume of the Bible to come in - they sent me another copy of vol 2 by mistake.

Note to DV readers - I've at least started to read all of the Jungian books in this massive stack and I like all of them (except one - see next sentence). But for Border Crossings you would want to be familiar already with Carlos Castaneda's series of books, and Secret Raven is a psychological analysis of Franz Kafka - the only one I didn't care much for. Oh, and for Melville's Moby Dick you'd also want to know the story. And there's probably no real need for wither The Ultimate Guide To Tarot or Existential Psychotherapy since they're just sort of adjuncts to books I've already covered, and really you don't need to know about using Tarot cards for fortune-telling or divination - they're used differently in the Jungian context.

Oops - looking back I see I had already shown 3 of these books in the last book-related post. My bad! With this many coming in it's hard to keep track. I should have checked the blog before snapping the pic.

I've now made most of the listings into links. I didn't just buy them full-price but found decent used copies. In the case of Existential Psychotherapy I found it cheaper on eBay than on Amazon. I didn't post a link to the Reader's Digest Bible because there isn't a listing on Amazon or elsewhere I could find that really explains what it is. I learned about it from Jordan Peterson - it's essentially had the repetitions edited out and things explained in a way that's understandable to a modern readership. Also it reads like a story - straight through rather than being broken up into numbered chapter and verse. I think it will be much easier to understand - hopefully anyway. The other versions can be pretty incomprehensible.


07 15 17 Tarot-1 by Darkmatters, on Flickr

I also got myself a nice centennial Smith-Waite Tarot Deck, arrayed here on top of the Jung and Tarot book. In the case of the Tarot cards and the Bible, it's important to note that they are not to be taken literally. For Jungian purposes the Tarot is not for telling the future - rather it's a complex and extremely useful set of symbols that can be used to explore and come to an understanding of the contents of the human psyche, in the same way dream symbolism can. Same for the Bible. In fact Jung stated that before science switched our understanding of the world to one based on reductive materialism and practicality, there came the great age of Religions and Mythology. This was a time when humankind was very unconscious and had a strong tendency to project the contents of their psyche out onto the stars (as constellations to be divined through Astrology), into the Heavens (Religion), and into the Mysteries of Matter (Alchemy, soon to transmute into Chemistry).

There had already been thorough studies into comparative religion and comparative mythology (finding similarities between various ones all around the world), but Jung discovered WHY all the similarities. In his own words (well - loosely - don't feel like looking up exact wording), in the 15th century God fell out of the sky and into the human psyche. For modern people, it's vitally important to understand religion and mythology, otherwise you can fall prey to nihilistic despair.

For example, dreams that seem terrifying can suddenly reveal themselves to be profoundly healing and transformative if you have some knowledge of creation myths. Bloody, violent dismemberments - especially of giants or figures that refuse to die - often represent the killing of the old god who needs to be destroyed and whose body gives birth to the new world, in which the new god can grow and prosper. This is actually a very positive and reassuring dream, and it's only through an understanding of mythological symbols that it can be understood properly. So I'll be filling my head with as much as I can stuff in there.

And my most recent Kindle purchases:

Screen Shot 2017-07-24 at 6-1.20.50 PM by Darkmatters, on Flickr

08 28 17 Books-3 by Darkmatters, on Flickr

These are all new except for Becoming- not sure how that one got in there!

Jung Lexicon: A Primer of Terms & Concepts - Daryl Sharp
The Mystical Qabalah - Dion Fortune
The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defenses of the Personal Spirit - Donald Kalsched
The Aion Lectures - Edwin F Edinger
The Creation of Consciousness - Edwin F Edinger
Pathways To Bliss - Joseph Campbell
Aurora Consurgens - Marie-Louise Von Franz
The Fear of the Feminine - Erich Neumann
The Interpretation of Fairy Tales - Marie-Louise Von Franz
The Religious Function of the Psyche - Lionel Corbett

The (Jungian) Books Keep Rolling In - to the links on my blog - you know the drill by now.

I've also got the entire Bible now - including the 4th volume, which is an index.

The Qabala is the source for both the Tarot and Astrology apparently, or so I keep seeing (ok, not the source - it came later but does combine them excellently into its matrix). But there are all kinds of claims made about it by various groups - many of which seem weird and cultish. For me it's another source of symbolism to enrich the inner artistic world.

Aurora Consurgens, which means Rising Dawn, is a medieval text about Alchemy attributed fascinatingly to Thomas Aquinas, and supposedly written in a feverish state in his final days after suffering a blow on the head and experiencing some kind of profound enlightenment. Von Franz believed he was undergoing individuation and had realized that in fact that is the mysterious process the Alchemists were really engaged in. If she's right, they believed they were transforming base matter but were actually transforming their own personalities by coming into a more open and honest relation to the unconscious Self and projecting that process onto the matter that they were so busily mixing and melting. The physical transformation of metals became a stand-in for the inner psychological transformation. My God I love this stuff!! That said though, I don't recommend Aurora Consurgens - instead I recommend the green Alchemy book listed below, for reasons I'll explain in a moment.



08 28 17 Books-4 by Darkmatters, on Flickr

These are the ones I've finished - and the one on the front of the bundle is new since last time:
Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology - Marie-Louise Von Franz

Alchemy with the striking green cover is my favorite of the bunch so far. Von Franz wrote it after wading laboriously through Aurora Consurgens (in the top picture). That one was a hard slog through dense territory - written essentially to analyze the very difficult material. Only after doing that was she able to condense the symbolism and pen this much more readable and in fact amazing little book. Though I don't think I would have understood parts of it without having read a few of the other books on these stacks to get a grounding in the Jungian concepts.

Note - you do NOT NEED to read anywhere near this many books to grasp Jung!! I'm going deep DEEP! With probably 3 or 4 of these you can understand the majority of it. I would recommend a few by Edinger and maybe Murray Stein for that purpose. Though if you're into it, you really should also read Jung in his own words, with some assistance by Edinger and maybe Stein.

I also highly highly recommend the books I've listed by Erich Neumann, though they can also be fairly dense and hard to understand at times. Now we just need somebody to come along and write books explaining his books!

Jeepers creepers thats a lot of books and info! Thanks for that long post, I'd gathered a bit about the spiritual side of alchemy from tAatCU but that was a very nice summary. I think JBP was doing another one or two biblical lectures really soon, or maybe he has already done them but they haven't been released on youtube yet; there should be some new ones soon anyhow. Eric Neumann is another writer I wand to read, I have a long list haha but summer is coming up so I will have lots of time to read. Have you read any Dostoevsky by any chance? I read Notes from Underground, C&P and the Brothers Karamazov last year and they are abosultely fantastic works of fiction, they have a ton of insight into the way we humans work.

Originally Posted by BlairBros

Jeepers creepers thats a lot of books and info!

Yeah, I think I got carried away. I mean with the books and with the huge posts. When I'm really into something I tend to do that, but then that's why I manage to go so deep into the subjects I really like.

Originally Posted by BlairBros

I'd gathered a bit about the spiritual side of alchemy from tAatCU

Huh? Wha? What was that string of letters? Ok wait - the (Alchemist? Alchemy?) and the... shoot - ok, I got nothin'!

Originally Posted by BlairBros

Have you read any Dostoevsky by any chance? I read Notes from Underground, C&P and the Brothers Karamazov last year and they are abosultely fantastic works of fiction, they have a ton of insight into the way we humans work.

I haven't read any yet but I want to. May be a while till I can get around to reading anything new, what with the pile of books I have to work through...

I meant the Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
EDIT: Holy moley I just realised that the picture in your signature was (I think) shown in a Jordan Peterson lecture as a phenomenological representation of the world, similar to the Enûma Eliš portrayal of the world. I haven't seen it colourised though, very interesting.

Originally Posted by BlairBros

I meant the Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious

D'oh!

Originally Posted by BlairBros

EDIT: Holy moley I just realised that the picture in your signature was (I think) shown in a Jordan Peterson lecture as a phenomenological representation of the world, similar to the Enûma Eliš portrayal of the world. I haven't seen it colourised though, very interesting.

It's an illustration from some old alchemical book. The weird thing is, I started using it long before I got back into Jung or knew all this stuff about alchemy. I was just searching for something to use in my sig and this one really jumped out at me. I recently discovered what it represents is an alchemist who found a gap in the shell of the sky where the stars are supposed to be painted or whatever, and he escaped out into the outer world where he could gain all sorts of arcane knowledge or something like that. Then it was in one of the Jungian books I was reading recently, though I don't remember which one. That was a mind blower. When I first found it I liked it because it shows the sun and stars at the same time, which to me means a good balance between conscious and unconscious, as in lucid dreaming. And also just the idea of escaping beyond this normal world into something more mysterious. Dark in my name refers to mystery, not evil.

Man, DV is really slow today.

I think I read that the image (I'm pretty sure it is the same one, maybe its just very similar) represents how the world appears to be to a human; an island of land surrounded by sea, with a dome above with water on top. If you lived say a few thousand years ago, that would make perfect sense, as there is water around us with the oceans, water below us underground, and water above us from where it rains. I think there might also be some connection to the bit in Genesis where God separates the waters from the waters, that might be my own leap though. Your explanation of it is very interesting as well, I'd never noticed the alchemist sticking his head out, and the colours really make it pop out compared to the black and white I've seen before.

Hmm - I don't think there's supposed to be water outside the crystalline dome of the stars. There are clouds and what look like planets out there. Since there's a hole where the alchemist is coming through, it seems like water would just flood continuously into the world inside the dome. If it does show water though, then your inclusion of the biblical statement from Genesis definitely fits. I believe the idea of water above the firmament explained how the flood happened - where enough water could come from to cover the whole world.

As I recall from the description I found online about the picture, he has found his way into an outer world - one where he can walk and live (so not underwater). I don't remember where I read that though and I can't find it on my hard drive anywhere (I usually keep interesting items like that as PDF files). It's possible you're mixing it up with another image? Or maybe Peterson was wrong about it - he does that sometimes. He might not have been aware of the purpose of the illustration and done a little conjecture.

Or maybe we're both right - maybe its the alchemist Kevin Costner who found his way into the outer Waterworld . I'm not familiar with the story it illustrates at all - possibly it's some kind of magical hole that doesn't let water through. And as for the color, I think somebody colored it in Photoshop. I usually see it in black and white too.

EDIT: Also, it's depicting a scene from alchemy or mysticism (of which alchemy is an important part) - not from the Bible. That's a specifically Alchemical depiction of the sun, then there's the moon (it's offscreen here, the top part of the image is cut off) and outside the dome of stars there's the wheel in the sky (yes - as in the Journey song if you go back that far). That's cut off too in the upper left corner. These are all powerful alchemical symbols.

Wow, this is amazing!!! Just today Skip Conover of the Carl Jung Depth Psychology Reading Group has started reading Aion accompanied by Edinger's Aion Lectures! Talk about synchronicity! Plus, it brings this thread back to being about videos on Jung rather than my book collection



It will probably help to switch on the closed captions (CC) at the bottom of the player. It auto-generates subtitles. But be warned - whenever Skip says Aion it gets confused and substitutes And, Ann, An, Ant or other similar words. Actually gets pretty funny after a while. I can't believe how fortuitous this is - right after I've been talking up Edinger, here he goes. This first video is strictly from Edinger's Aion Lectures, explaining Jung's book. I believe in the next one he'll begin reading also from Aion. Having just started reading both books recently, I think I'll just let Skip do the reading now and I'll listen.

He just finished reading Answer to Job (< Link to the playlist featuring all the Answer to Job videos). Anyone interested can go back and watch those videos and hear the entire book without having to buy it.

Here is the Aion playlist.

Thanks for the viewing material, I'll sort through it all when I have time. I've seen quite a few of Academy of Ideas videos, including many of his on Jung. I've definitely gotten into Jung, Freud, and Lacan's theories lately, Jung especially.

Hey snoop! I think Freud did some amazing work and of course he pioneered the unconscious, but he got a lot of things wrong and ultimately his theories were very limited and needed correcting. It was primarily Jung who did the correcting and proceeded to go way farther than Freud ever dreamed of (pun intended). Freud created a sort of cult and a dogma, and since Jung wasn't willing to remain confined by that dogma he was cast out, and unfortunately modern psychology has mostly chosen the path of Freud and a few others and has largely ignored Jung, and in fact subjected him to a lot of ridicule. More recently even Freud is being ridiculed in favor of a completely reductivist scientism built entirely on neurology.

I see Jung as one of the great visionary discoverers who have laid bare reality in huge chunks for us - the latest in the lineage that includes Socrates and Plato, Galileo, Descartes, Newton and Einstein. Well ok, I suppose he was a contemporary of Einstein, so not technically the latest, but you get my drift.

I think Jung also advance Nietzche's ideas as well as Freud's, in his more spiritual writing. He seemed to be trying to both explain the purposes and meaning of religion to a world that is no longer believing in them. I'll probably need to read more of his more esoteric stuff to get more confirmation on this but its something I've gleaned from what I've read so far.

Absolutely!! Yeah, Neitzsche was basically a psychologist/sociologist as much as a philosopher, before such things officially existed. He had profound insight into human nature, and Jung recognized this in him, studied what he had done, and expanded on it.

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

Freud created a sort of cult and a dogma, and since Jung wasn't willing to remain confined by that dogma he was cast out, and unfortunately modern psychology has mostly chosen the path of Freud and a few others and has largely ignored Jung, and in fact subjected him to a lot of ridicule. More recently even Freud is being ridiculed in favor of a completely reductivist scientism built entirely on neurology.

That he did. Rather unfortunately I'm both guilty of having been a proponent of the reductivist scientism perspective, and I think Jung is terribly misunderstood as a result of how initially out there Freud's ideas can seem to someone just being introduced to the material. I myself mistook his meaning and failed to properly understand the idea he was proposing with the collective unconscious and how exactly archetypes come to exist and be pretty much the universal among humanity. The new age woo-woo sound of some of it (despite being thought up in the 20th century, but you get my meaning I hope) when first hearing it and the fact brushing aside most of Freud's theory is not only just socially acceptable but common practice, it's all too easy to dismiss as the ideas of crackpot from a less enlightened time.

Out of curiosity, how much of Lacan's work have you read up on, DarkMatters? I think there's a lot that's iffy, but overall I feel like he, Freud, and Jung all provide separate pieces to a large puzzle, with Jung's theories making up more of it than the other two. It definitely introduced me to a perspective that made understanding my behavior and thoughts (along with other people's) easier, imo.

Originally Posted by snoop

unfortunately I'm guilty of having been a proponent of the reductivist scientism perspective,

I'm guilty as well. I'm not proud of my time in here a few years ago arguing against Creationists when I myself had an equally reductive and extreme argument. I definitely got caught up in the New Atheist movement for a while. On the plus side though, Jung (and Jordan Peterson - often while quoting him) says that you do need to go through a strong period of complete separation from any form of belief. He uses the latin term Separatio, which means (obviously) separation. It's a dividing of the opposites, where you learn critical thinking and learn to apply it to everything in your worldview. At first people have a tendency to go heavy-handed with it. But this is like a symbolic death of your old childish worldview which clears the way for a new more mature one to take its place. Then you can transcend the opposites and learn that really they're all just false dichotomies. Night and day are opposite sides of the same coin, as are cold and hot, up and down etc. All opposites are like this - there's no need to choose one side and rail against the other (once you're through your Separatio period). In fact that keeps people immature and prevents them from reaching full development. Instead learn to embrace the opposites and see them as balancing factors like Yin and Yang, both being necessary but you must find the proper balance (which is dynamic - it shifts from time to time and you must shift with it).

Originally Posted by snoop

I myself mistook his meaning and failed to properly understand the idea he was proposing with the collective unconscious and how exactly archetypes come to exist and be pretty much the universal among humanity. The new age woo-woo sound of some of it (despite being thought up in the 20th century, but you get my meaning I hope) when first hearing it and the fact brushing aside most of Freud's theory is not only just socially acceptable but common practice, it's all too easy to dismiss as the ideas of crackpot from a less enlightened time.

Same here. Fortunately I was curious and fascinated enough to keep researching until I discovered what it was really about. And so glad I did!

Originally Posted by snoop

Out of curiosity, how much of Lacan's work have you read up on, DarkMatters?

Not much, honestly. I know the name, and I know Peterson has talked about him, but I don't remember what it was about.

Originally Posted by snoop

I think there's a lot that's iffy, but overall I feel like he, Freud, and Jung all provide separate pieces to a large puzzle, with Jung's theories making up more of it than the other two. It definitely introduced me to a perspective that made understanding my behavior and thoughts (along with other people's) easier, imo.

I'll look into Lacan - thanks for the suggestion!