Carl Jung Psychoanalyzes Hitler: “He is the Unconscious of 78 Million Germans.” “With out the German Folks He’d Be Nothing” (1938)


Had been you to google “Carl Jung and Nazism”—and I’m not sug­gest­ing that you simply do—you’d discover your­self hip-deep within the prices that Jung was an anti-Semi­te and a Nazi sym­pa­thiz­er. Many websites con­demn or exon­er­ate him; many oth­ers cel­e­brate him as a blood and soil Aryan hero. It may be nau­se­at­ing­ly dif­fi­cult at occasions to inform these accounts aside. What to make of this con­tro­ver­sy? What’s the evi­dence introduced in opposition to the famed Swiss psy­chi­a­trist and one­time shut pal, stu­dent, and col­league of Sig­mund Freud?

Fact be instructed, it doesn’t look good for Jung. In contrast to Niet­zsche, whose work was delib­er­ate­ly bas­tardized by Nazis, start­ning together with his personal sis­ter, Jung needn’t be tak­en out of con­textual content to be learn as anti-Semit­ic. There is no such thing as a irony at work in his 1934 paper The State of Psy­chother­a­py In the present day, during which he mar­vels at Nation­al Social­ism as a “for­mi­da­ble phe­nom­e­non,” and writes, “the ‘Aryan’ uncon­scious has a excessive­er poten­tial than the Jew­ish.” That is solely one of many least objec­tion­in a position of such state­ments, as his­to­ri­an Andrew Samuels demon­strates.

One Jun­gian defend­er admits in an essay col­lec­tion referred to as Lin­ger­ing Shad­ows that Jung had been “uncon­scious­ly infect­ed by Nazi concepts.” In response, psy­chol­o­gist John Con­ger asks, “Why not then say that he was uncon­scious­ly infect­ed by anti-Semit­ic concepts as effectively?”—effectively earlier than the Nazis got here to pow­er. He had expressed such ideas way back to 1918. Just like the philoso­pher Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger, Jung was accused of trad­ing on his professional­fes­sion­al asso­ci­a­tions dur­ing the 30s to fundamental­tain his sta­tus, and switch­ing on his Jew­ish col­leagues whereas they had been purged.

But his biog­ra­ph­er Deirdre Bair claims Jung’s identify was used to endorse per­se­cu­tion with­out his con­despatched. Jung was incensed, “not least,” Mark Ver­non writes at The Guardian, “as a result of he was actu­al­ly battle­ing to maintain Ger­man psy­chother­a­py open to Jew­ish indi­vid­u­als.” Bair additionally reveals that Jung was “concerned in two plots to oust Hitler, essen­tial­ly by hav­ing a lead­ing physi­cian declare the Führer mad. Each got here to noth­ing.” And in contrast to Hei­deg­ger, Jung sturdy­ly denounced anti-Semit­ic views dur­ing the battle. He “professional­tect­ed Jew­ish ana­lysts,” writes Con­ger, “and helped refugees.” He additionally labored for the OSS, pre­cur­sor to the CIA, dur­ing the battle.

His recruiter Allen Dulles wrote of Jung’s “deep antipa­thy to what Nazism and Fas­cism stood for.” Dulles additionally cryp­ti­cal­ly remarked, “No one will prob­a­bly ever understand how a lot Prof. Jung con­tributed to the allied trigger dur­ing the battle.” These con­tra­dic­tions in Jung’s phrases, char­ac­ter, and actions are puz­zling, to say the least. I’d not pre­sume to attract any laborious and quick con­clu­sions from them. They do, how­ev­er, function the nec­es­sary con­textual content for Jung’s obser­va­tions of Adolf Hitler. Nazis of as we speak who reward Jung most frequently accomplish that for his sup­posed char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Hitler as “Wotan,” or Odin, a com­par­i­son that thrills neo-pagans who, just like the Ger­mans did, use historic Euro­pean perception sys­tems as garments cling­ers for mod­ern racist nation­al­ism.

In his 1936 essay, “Wotan,” Jung describes the previous god as a drive all its personal, a “per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of psy­stylish forces” that moved by the Ger­man peo­ple “in direction of the tip of the Weimar Republic”—by the “thou­sands of unem­ployed,” who by 1933 “marched of their hun­dreds of thou­sands.” Wotan, Jung writes, “is the god of storm and fren­zy, the unleash­er of pas­sions and the lust of bat­tle; extra­over he’s a superla­tive magi­cian and artist in illu­sion who’s versed in all secrets and techniques of an occult nature.” In per­son­i­fy­ing the “Ger­man psy­che” as a furi­ous god, Jung goes as far as to jot down, “We who stand out­facet decide the Ger­mans far an excessive amount of as in the event that they had been respon­si­ble brokers, however per­haps it might be close to­er the reality to treat them additionally as vic­tims.”

“One hopes,” writes Per Brask, “evi­dent­ly in opposition to hope, that Jung didn’t intend” his state­ments “as an argu­ment of redemp­tion for the Ger­mans.” What­ev­er his inten­tions, his mys­ti­cal racial­iza­tion of the uncon­scious in “Wotan” accord­ed per­fect­ly effectively with the the­o­ries of Alfred Rosen­berg, “Hitler’s chief ide­ol­o­gist.” Like each­factor about Jung, the sit­u­a­tion is com­pli­cat­ed. In a 1938 inter­view, pub­lished by Omni­e book Magazine­a­zine in 1942, Jung repeat­ed many of those dis­turb­ing concepts, com­par­ing the Ger­man wor­ship of Hitler to the Jew­ish want for a Mes­si­ah, a “char­ac­ter­is­tic of peo­ple with an infe­ri­or­i­ty com­plex.” He describes Hitler’s pow­er as a type of “magazine­ic.” However that pow­er solely exists, he says, as a result of “Hitler lis­tens and obeys….”

His Voice is noth­ing oth­er than his personal uncon­scious, into which the Ger­man peo­ple have professional­ject­ed their very own selves; that’s, the uncon­scious of sev­en­ty-eight mil­lion Ger­mans. That’s what makes him pow­er­ful. With­out the Ger­man peo­ple he can be noth­ing.

Jung’s obser­va­tions are bom­bas­tic, however they don’t seem to be flat­ter­ing. The peo­ple could also be pos­sessed, however it’s their will, he says, that the Nazi chief enacts, not his personal. “The true chief,” says Jung, “is all the time led.” He goes on to color an excellent darkish­er pic­ture, hav­ing shut­ly noticed Hitler and Mus­soli­ni togeth­er in Berlin:

In com­par­i­son with Mus­soli­ni, Hitler made upon me the impres­sion of a kind of scaf­fold­ing of wooden cov­ered with material, an automa­ton with a masks, like a robotic or a masks of a robotic. Dur­ing the entire per­for­mance he nev­er laughed; it was as if he had been in a nasty humor, sulk­ing. He confirmed no human signal.

His expres­sion was that of an inhu­man­ly sin­gle-mind­ed pur­po­sive­ness, with no humorousness. He appeared as if he is likely to be a dou­ble of an actual per­son, and that Hitler the person would possibly per­haps be hid­ing inside like an appen­dix, and delib­er­ate­ly so hid­ing so as to not dis­turb the mech­a­nism.

With Hitler you don’t really feel that you’re with a person. You’re with a med­i­cine man, a type of spir­i­tu­al ves­sel, a demi-deity, and even guess­ter, a fable. With Hitler you might be scared. You realize you’d nev­er have the ability to discuss to that man; as a result of there’s no person there. He’s not a person, however a col­lec­tive. He’s not an indi­vid­ual, however a complete nation. I take it to be lit­er­al­ly true that he has no per­son­al pal. How will you discuss inti­mate­ly with a nation?

Learn the full inter­view right here. Jung goes on to fur­ther dis­cuss the Ger­man resur­gence of the cult of Wotan, the “par­al­lel between the Bib­li­cal tri­advert… and the Third Reich,” and oth­er pecu­liar­ly Jun­gian for­mu­la­tions. Of Jung’s analy­sis, inter­view­er H.R. Knicker­bock­er con­cludes, “this psy­chi­atric expla­na­tion of the Nazi names and sym­bols might sound to a lay­man fan­tas­tic, however can any­factor be as fan­tas­tic because the naked info concerning the Nazi Par­ty and its Fuehrer? Ensure there’s way more to be defined in them than may be defined by mere­ly name­ing them gang­sters.”

Word: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this put up appeared on our website in 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Orwell Opinions Mein Kampf: “He Envis­ages a Hor­ri­ble Mind­much less Empire” (1940)

Carl Jung Provides an Intro­duc­tion to His Psy­cho­log­i­cal Thought in a 3‑Hour Inter­view (1957)

How Carl Jung Impressed the Cre­ation of Alco­holics Anony­mous

Carl Jung on the Pow­er of Tarot Playing cards: They Professional­vide Door­methods to the Uncon­scious & Per­haps a Approach to Pre­dict the Future

Josh Jones is a author and musi­cian based mostly in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness



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