Philosophy Now Forum

he seems an interesting character, any views on him and his writings ?

http://youtu.be/biu4ds63lqc

I love his ideas but I don't trust his status as a scientist.

his red book is interesting !

IMO Jung is actually a representative of the line of gnostic and esoteric wisdom in the modern world. When I was at Uni, I found that nobody in psychology wanted to know about him, but he was mentioned in Comparitive Religion (along with James Hillman who is definitely worth reading up on).

Anyway my take on Jung is that he is a neglected genius and one of the great minds of the modern age. I haven't read him in great depth but I think any educated person ought to at least understand his basic ideas such as the archetypes, individuation, voluntary suffering, the shadow, the anima, and so on.

He is one man I can identify with. IMHO the man is brilliant. I started reading him when I was too young. Had to start all over again later on. I recommend you read all his works.

I can't understand why no one wanted to read his books, what was their preference over him? There are avid scholars of his works.

I think he still has a big following but he was too interested in the mystical aspects of psychology for a lot of people. (There's a current movie around called A Dangerous Method about the relationship between Freud and Jung which I am meaning to watch.) Freud hated anything religious, whereas Jung was spiritually inclined (although certainly not an orthodox 'believer'). That is why, in the University system, you are more inclined to encounter Jung in religious studies or anthropology, than in psychology departments, in my experience. But, I agree, he is brilliant, and someone any educated person needs to know something about.

Likeable man and likeable views. Something erratic in him that has never allowed me to finish much of what he wrote. He somehow reserved a lot for his private life which kept from his public works too much emotional charge, but that may have been a saving grace given the nature of his private turmoils. Still, I like to see blood and tears in one who deals so much with personal life.

A Dangerous Method doesnt do the man justice, but, his wife was long suffering. LOL

reasonvemotion wrote:A Dangerous Method doesnt do the man justice, but, his wife was long suffering. LOL

agreed. I thought the movie rather lacking in depth. It somewhat felt like a typical 1900th century romantic-drama. Yes, you get a bit of penis-talky there with Jung indicating that maybe people don't think and associate so much about penises as Freud obviously thinks, however, they could've made a much better story out of it than they did, and given more character to it. There was too little exploration of character there, despite some surprising scenes with Jung beating a girl while she gets horny from it, I still didn't think they got sufficiently to the core of the people there and brought out the genius in the two men.

I must admit that after watching the trailer I didn't want to see the film. I think I will give it a miss. IMO, one must-read book is his autobiography, Memories Dreams and Reflections. It has been a long while since I read it, but I remember finding it fascinating at the time.

Man and his Symbols is a good introductory book to Jung.

Carl Jung's theory of archetypes was a big influence on my theory of personality types. I think I've found a new way to apply his work.

http://kimanishorter.tripod.com/id1.html
http://kimanishorter.tripod.com/id2.html
http://kimanishorter.tripod.com/id3.html
http://kimanishorter.tripod.com/id4.html

Love Jung. Have a lot of his books on my book shelf. Would really like to read the Red Book, but it's like one hundred and something bucks on amazon.

Jung was one of those fascinating thinkers who was both a scientist and a truly original spiritual thinker and able philosopher. He really was a rarity.

His problem though was that he didn't quite fit into any camp in particular and so has been ignored. I think he must appeal to that philosopher who has learnt to be sceptical about the basic categories of thought: Time, space, causality, the self. He took philosophers like Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche very, very seriously and learnt to identify the metaphysical components of these thinkers (eg Will, noumenon) with Freud's notion of the unconscious.

I think he is most interesting when (like Nietzsche) he assumes mind and body to be a false distinction. With this attitude he opened up the possibility that what we think of as the psychic world (dreams/ideas) and the material world of perceptions and objects can be interfused. Symbols that we might associate with dreams can therefore appear in reality with the same symbolic meaning. Archetypal figures like the wise old man might actually be met with in reality and further our self understanding.

I think ultimately you will accept Jung or disregard him on the issue of individuation. Jung thought that all people possessed a drive towards wholeness, in other words, are directed towards finding or being God. All our passions, our anxieties, our understandings are a way of furthering this vertical ascent to individuation. Naturally, at some point he believes that we will transcend even ourselves and that the subject/object split will be seen as an illusion that occurs within a collective consciousness. As we transcend the Kantian categories of time, space and self our experience will no longer follow usual conventions of causality - what we call the natural laws of science. We are therefore able to meet to meet people who speak to us in a different more meaningful way than is usually the case when two egos meet. We are also able to see deep meaning in occurences and coincidences that seem to defy conventional causality. In this way his worldview is that of the mystic and the saint.

But as I said, it is on his spiritual beliefs that he often baffles people, who then ignore him. As has been noted, this is certainly the case in the field of clinical psychology in the UK.

Nikolai