It is unusual, at least apparently, that a rationalist-oriented Western man today, in the era of the dominance of information culture, seeks a cure and help for his neuroticism in the esoteric works of the "dark" Carl Gustav Jung. However, when we get to know his work better, we will realize that it contains answers to numerous dilemmas and problems that plague the modern frightened, anomic and destabilized modern man.
It is in those "anachronistic", "esoteric" books about alchemy, religion, myths, dreams and archetypal symbols that the modern reader finds what he lacks for a better understanding of the world, as well as himself, his inner universe. What is unfathomable to the waking mind is fathomable to the sleeping mind, which weaves dreams.
Jung was also visited by people who were not clinically neurotic, but rather suffered from feelings of meaninglessness. To one such patient, Jung said: "Dear sir, I know nothing more than you about the meaning of the world or your life." Turn to the experienced and wise thousand-year-old Elder, who is within us, ready to speak to us in our dreams. Ask him, and when you have a dream, come for an analysis".
Jung's speeches and answers in the age of world social and political crisis
In addition to the pathology of the individual, Jung was insightfully and devotedly engaged in unraveling the nature of social pathology and in stormy times he tried to provide an answer to the nationalistic collective madness that threatened to overwhelm and destroy the personality - the highest human achievement. Jung left a precious mark on this in many of his essays and books, and especially in the book created from transcripts of his lectures, conversations, as well as contemporaries' records of meetings with him - K is speaking. G. Jung: interviews and meetings (ed. W. McGuire and RFK Hull) (Phaedon, 2022).
In the thirties of the 20th century, Jung's contemporaries - just like us today - were shaken by the events in Europe (Russia, Spain, Germany, Italy), confused, disappointed and scared, asking "is it worth living like this when all the values in which believed collapsed... They wonder if it is still possible to talk about the progress of civilization". To this Jung, among other things, answers: "As for the current troubles, we must not forget that humanity has gone through similar situations more than once, proving that in the depths of the unconscious it possesses an extraordinary adaptive system." When an individual is in crisis, he turns to that very ancient system in the depths of the psyche. "The patient and I are speaking together to that two-million-year-old man who lives in each of us. After all, most of our difficulties come from losing touch with our instincts, with that ancient but never-forgotten wisdom we keep within us" (Jung, "The Two Million Year Old Man," in K is speaking. G. Jung)
Decades of clinical practice revealed to the creator of analytical psychology that psychological disorders such as feelings of emptiness, hopelessness, and neurosis, which do not have their roots in thwarting the sexual drive, rather than in unsatisfied religious or artistic needs, prevail more often in middle-aged people. Through therapeutic work with thousands of patients, says Jung, "I became convinced that the psychological problem of today is a spiritual, religious problem. Today's man is hungry and thirsty for a safe relationship with the psychic forces within himself. His consciousness, which shrinks in fear from the difficulties of the modern world, lacks soothing spiritual demands. As a result, he is neurotic, sick, and afraid. Science tells him that there is no God and that matter is all that exists. It has deprived the human race of what helps it to flourish, to feel well-being and to find security in a safe world". Medieval man had a harmonious and beautiful relationship with God. He lived in a world that he perceived as meaningful, just and safe. "God watched over every creature on earth; he rewarded the good and punished the bad. /…/ Someone heard his prayers. He was spiritually taken care of". Unlike the medieval man, modern man, whom reason teaches that there is no God who cares for him, is devoid of hope, filled with fear and anxiety, insecure and lonely. Instead of God, his divinity is material - money, gold (Jung, K is speaking. G. Jung.
Modern man, deprived of imagination and mythical creations, is cut off from his deepest, archetypal nature. Jung often pointed out how disastrous it is to stifle people's imagination and thus, through the excessive development of a conscious and rational attitude, create an imbalance in the psyche. Any attempt to eradicate myths is not only illusory but also a very dangerous undertaking, as evidenced by the rise of totalitarian ideologies in Europe in the 20th century, as well as the Second World War.
As a result of the suppression of myth-making thinking and the weakening of the Christian myth, in Germany in the 30s of the 20th century, the myth of the Old Germanic deity Wotan emerged from the collective unconscious of Germans. According to Jung, Nazism is the result of the regression of the masses to the archetypes of the collective unconscious (Jung, Civilization in transition, 2006). After the disillusionment with Christianity, the archetype of the bloodthirsty Wotan emerged from the underground of the Germanic psyche and occupied the collective consciousness causing "the frenzy, the madness of the Germans". furor teutonicus. He is the ancient god of frenzy, the leader of "furious warriors", who attacks people and causes them unrest, demonic rage and destructiveness.
In Jung's mind, on the basis of clinical experience, as well as on the basis of the study of stormy and tragic social events in the third decade of the twentieth century, the thought about the importance of psychology as a science, which reveals to him that the greatest danger for a person is himself, matures more and more clearly!
"The most terrible danger that man has to face is the power of his ideas. No cosmic force crashing down on Earth has ever killed ten million people in four years: the human psyche has. And he can do it again", warns Jung. And he adds: "I am afraid of only one thing - human thoughts (...) We are all susceptible to mass infection." Those epidemics are stronger than the individual. And the individual is their victim. He yells, parades and pretends to be a leader, but is actually a victim. Mass frenzy is an outpouring of biological and spiritual forces from the depths of the psyche. Let's turn our awareness towards the interior of the psyche to discover what is hidden there (...) Modern man must be fully aware of the terrible dangers that are hidden in mass movements", says Jung in an interview in 1934.
In times of political upheaval and social crisis, Jung warned in 1933, people feel disturbed, confused, and then they need the help of psychology, which can bring them to their senses, help them establish a stable, complete view of the world, and restore the faith that possible to find the meaning of life. If they fail to do so, people become victims of the hypnotic effect of mass movements, whose ideology and irrational power will overpower them and make them their tools. Therefore, in order for man to resist collective madness, psychology emphasizes that, especially today, "the development and self-realization of the individual is more necessary than ever" (Jung, "Interview for Radio Berlin", in K is speaking. G. Jung.
At a time of great frustration and despair of the Germans, Hitler appeared as the archetype of the Savior, the archetype of the Leader who has a sacred mission to unite and save the German people.
According to Jung, there are two different types of dictators: the chief type and the sorcerer type. Adolf Hitler was a type of sorcerer, seer, shaman, mystic, prophet, who has numinous power, because the masses attributed to him supernatural powers and a divine nature. He is the spokesman of the gods, the medium through which God's will is revealed, which appears to him in the form of revelations in solitude or in dreams. Mussolini and Stalin are dictators of the tribal chief or emperor type, who rely on their physical strength or armed forces. "Hitler's power is not political; she is magical" (Jung speaks). He drew his charismatic, magical power from the strength of 80 million Germans who deified him, and whose aspirations, feelings, intentions and desires he, as a hypersensitive medium, intuitively felt, articulated and then realized. Without the German people, Hitler is nothing.
His hypnotic, mesmerizing power rests both on the fact that he is in league with his collective unconscious and that he lets it guide him. Hitler listens to the messages of his collective unconscious and obeys them, that is, turns them into action. He often refers to the Voice he follows, which is the voice of 78 million Germans, who adore him and make him powerful. The collective unconscious has devoured his entire personality, and that is why he has no personality, no individuality. He is - Germany.
Hitler never managed to establish a proper and healthy relationship with the Anima, the female representation in the unconscious, and that is precisely why she occupied him. Hence he is discordant, unstable, destructive and dangerous, not creative, harmonious and balanced ("Jung Diagnoses Dictators", interview, 1939).
Jung helps modern people to see the social, spiritual and psychological crises of their time and their culture from a broader, historical, prehistoric and all-time, as well as transcultural, archetypal perspective. He tells them that their modern problems and difficulties did not arise today and here, and that what they cannot solve using reason and acquired knowledge, they can solve if they rely on intuition, instinct and innate archetypal knowledge and feelings.
