Showing posts with label Sonu Shamdasani. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sonu Shamdasani. Show all posts

Monday, April 16, 2018

Carl Jung: Fore thinking also comes before thought.




[Note: Dr. Jung was lecturing on The Red Book as early as 1925. Evidence that The Red Book was not the "Secret" and "Hidden" book that is often erroneously asserted]

In layer two of Liber Novus, Jung interpreted the figures of Elijah and Salome respectively in terms of fore thinking and pleasure:

“The powers of my depths are predetermination and pleasure. Predetermination or fore thinking is Prometheus, who, without determined thoughts, brings the chaotic to form and definition, who digs the channels and holds the object before pleasure.

Fore thinking also comes before thought.

But pleasure is the force that desires and destroys forms without form and definition.

It loves the form in itself that it takes hold of, and destroys the forms that it does not take.

The fore-thinker is a seer, but pleasure is blind. It does not foresee, but desires what it touches. Forethinking is not powerful in itself and therefore does not move.

But pleasure is power, and therefore it moves” (p. 247).

In later commentaries written probably sometime in the 1920s, Jung commented on this episode and noted: “This configuration is an image that forever recurs in the human spirit.

The old man represents a spiritual principle that could be designated as Logos, and the maiden represents an unspiritual principle of feeling that could be called Eros” (p. 362). Footnote 8, 1925 Seminar, Page 97


Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Carl Jung: I wrote to Flournoy, that I wanted to translate it into German.



In the aftermath of the first world war, a special issue of Médecine et Hygiène appeared with special notices ‘A La France Médicale’. Swiss medical and paramedical societies greeted the resumption of scientific relations with France.

As the president of the Swiss Society for Practical Psychology, Jung wrote:

“The psychopathology of the neuroses owes certain of its decisive results to the researches of French scholars.

I will mention in the first place the celebrated works of Charcot and of Pierre Janet, in particular the theory of the latter on ‘the lowering of the mental level’, which has proved itself and has furnished an extremely fecund point of view for the study of these troubles.

Swiss psychiatry equally owes a considerable enrichment to the researches of the hypnotisers Liébault and Bernheim, which were continued here [chez nous] by Forel.

The investigations of Pierre Janet were particularly useful for the comprehension of functional troubles in the domain of the neuroses and above all of hysteria, where his researches have a fundamental bearing.” (Jung 1945, p.8)

(This letter was not included in Jung’s Collected Works, nor does it feature in the General Bibliography of his writings.

It is reproduced here in English for the first time.) Sonu Shamdasani, From Geneva to Zurich, Page 117

Two years later Jung gave an interview to Pierre Courthion which was published in La Tribune de Genève under the title ‘Spiritual values of the Swiss’.

To the question, ‘How did you begin?’ Jung replied: “I was first a clinical doctor, then a privatdozent at the University of Zürich.

I wrote on associations experiments, dementia praecox, occult phenomena, etc …

I was the student of Pierre Janet and above all of Théodore Flournoy whose observations on somnambulism are absolutely remarkable.

It was only in 1906 that I made the acquaintance of Freud.” (Courthion 1947) Sonu Shamdasani, From Geneva to Zurich, Page 117

The extent of the impact that Flournoy’s work initially made on Jung is indicated by the following statement in Jung’s tribute to him, which appeared in the German and French editions of Memories, Dreams, Reflections, though not in the English (on how this came to be misconceived as Jung’s autobiography, see Shamdasani 1995):

“As I was still a doctor at the Burghölzli when I read his book, From India to the Planet Mars, it made a great impression on me.

I wrote to Flournoy, that I wanted to translate it into German.

It was after half a year that I received his reply, in which he apologized for having let my question lie unanswered for so long.

To my regret, he had already appointed another translator.” (Jung 1963/1994) Sonu Shamdasani, From Geneva to Zurich, Page 117

Had this been the case, Jung’s first publication would conceivably have been the German translation of Flournoy’s From India to the Planet Mars.

In that work, Flournoy singled out four theories that he particularly drew from:

without perhaps always citing them explicitly, I have constantly borrowed their forms of expression, their views, and their metaphors which, by the way, have now entered more or less into the public domain to the point where it would be difficult to manage practically without them.

I particularly want to mention mental disaggregation of M.P.Janet, the double-ego of M. Dessoir, the hypnoid states of MM. Breuer and Freud, and above all the subliminal consciousness of M. Myers.” (Flournoy 1899/1994, p.(6–7) Sonu Shamdasani, From Geneva to Zurich, Page 117

Monday, February 26, 2018

Richard Noll’s 1992-1994 Letters to Sonu Shamdasani






Richard Noll’s 1992-1994 Letters to Sonu Shamdasani
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 28, 2015 BY ADMIN

ABSTRACT: Richard Noll is a historian of psychiatry who wrote two controversial volumes on C.G. Jung in the 1990s: The Jung Cult (1994) and The Aryan Christ (1997). A third volume, Mysteria, was also set for publication by Princeton University Press (1994/1995), but was suppressed at the behest of the Jung family. Sonu Shamdasani is a historian of psychiatry in the employ of the Jung family, responsible for editing, among other things, Jung’s ‘The Red Book.’ As detailed here, the two are mostly known as rivals, but as documents posited by Noll in the Cummings Center for the History of Psychology in Akron, Ohio make clear, the two were not always enemies. Noll’s letters to Shamdasani, from the cache in said archives, are reproduced below. Shamdasani’s answers cannot be reproduced here for copyright reasons, but to the Jung scholar familiar with the Noll/Shamdasani feud, they are nonetheless most interesting as well. – OJJT.

14 May 1992

Dear Sonu Shamdasani,

I’m so sorry it has taken me so long to get back to you, but I wanted to make sure I had a clearer idea of what will be happening with the Jung Center of Philadelphia before I invited you to speak. As it stands, I would love to schedule and promote a lecture for you as soon a you can give me a firm date. Our programs are over in May, but we can do a special promotion for your talk if we have enough time. I am not sure as yet what we can offer as an honorarium, as we are a very small organization, but I think we can come up with something that will be agreeable to you.

Please let me know a tentative date or dates so that we can begin to prepare. I have been leading a seminar on the early career of Jung and made your wonderful article “A Woman Called Frank” required reading, so you will have at least a dozen or so persons in the audience who are familiar with your work.

I will send the revised version of my Mithraism paper under separate cover. Since I have not heard back from the JAP in more than six months after submitting it, and considering the necessary endnotes, it will probably be published in the next issue of Spring. James Hillman tells me you have a paper that will be published in that issue, too, and I can assure you that I (and my students) are anxious to see what you’ve come up with next!

I really do look forward to meeting you soon.

Best,

Richard Noll, Ph. D.

20 June 1992

Dear Sonu Shamdasani:

We are excited about finally meeting you on 2 July. Enclosed is the flyer for your talk. Our agreement is for a fee of $400 plus a hotel room for one evening.

We have made reservations in your name (prepaid by us) for a room for two persons at the Latham Hotel, which is at the corner of Walnut and 17th street in the heart of Center City Philadelphia. It is a very short cab ride from the train station at 30th street and Market. The telephone number of the Latham is (215) 563-7474. You will be just three city blocks from the place where you are speaking, which is just a half-a-block south (down 20th Street) from the corner of 20th and Walnut. My office is at this corner, and so perhaps we can meet there informally before your talk as I would enjoy the opportunity to get to know you better.

If you need to reach me when you get to New York, my daytime number from 9 to 4 on 29 and 30 June and 1 July will be [blanked – OJJT], as I am doing some consulting that week at Temple University. My office machine at the number you have been calling me is good at all times.

Due to all of the problems and wasted time in trying to deal with Rosemary Gordon, my Mithraism paper has still not been revised to my satisfaction, although Spring will publish it in the next issue. I will attempt to leave a copy for you at the hotel, which you can pick up when you check in and then read at your leisure.

Again, I’m looking forward to meeting you on the 2nd!

Best,

Richard Noll, Ph. D.

15 March 1993

Dear Sonu,

I have been meaning to write to you for a very long time now but life keeps getting in the way (note my new capitalist pig address and phone number) and I wanted to finish polishing off a piece I have submitted to Spring. I really go out on a limb on this one as I take a major shot at the Jungian analytical establishment. I hope Hillman and Boer publish it. It has some decent historical scholarship in it, so I think it may get through, but it is clearly an indictment of the “Jung cult” (as I call it) as it has developed along Weberian lines since the beginning. As soon as it is close to being fine-tuned I will send you a copy too (I am embarrassed to show you my mistakes ….).

Can you send me a copy of your piece in Harvest? And also of Swales’s? He doesn’t have his copy with him here. Also, anything that you feel you may be willing to show me on the “mediumistic psychology” angle. I would greatly appreciate it.

Work on the ancient mysteries book is slow, but productive. I am convinced now that, as you have also noticed, Jung was deliberately setting up a religious cult based on the model of the ancient Greco-Roman mysteries (at least this is what I am arguing at present). He promised rebirth and an experience of the “godlikeness” within each of us – big stuff!!! – through contact with the impersonal or collective psyche. This is precisely what the ancient mysteries were about.

For the last two months I have been immersed in reading Nietzsche. Have you read much of Nietzsche? I am new to him, even though Jung mentions his influence over and over again. I didn’t realize, though, to what extent Jung’s psychology was so Nietzschean! Nietzsche was a much bigger influence than Freud, Flournoy, or anyone else as far as I can tell at the moment. What do you think?

As you know, the Spring piece on Mithraism is out. John Beebe called me to tell me how much he liked it, especially the issues I raise in the footnotes. I told him how critical I was of the analytic establishment and that my future work would concern this angle, and he was very encouraging – which was a surprise. We found that we have a common interest in the work of Max Weber, and he told me to “go ahead and Weberize the Jungian analytic community.”

How about that! Maybe he is more “open” to what we are up to than you had feared the last time I talked to you.

Let me know how you’re doing and how your work is progressing. I will probably call you in the near future (if not before you get this letter) so I know I will be talking to you soon.

Best,

11 March 1994

TO: Sonu Shamdasani (and whoever else will find themselves a recipient of this chain letter)
FROM: Richard Noll
RE: JUNG/KATZ DOCUMENT

I received John Kerr’s letter to you of 10 March 1994 and, against my better wishes, feel that I too must enter into this snowballing misunderstanding. I personally feel revulsion that I have been drawn into the nasty, back-biting tragedy of misunderstandings that seem to follow anyone connected with psychoanalytic scholarship (or psychoanalysis itself for that matter, lest we forget the Fliess-Freud-Swoboda-Weiniger mess). So many of you seem to be attracted to this high drama and, as I now understand it, knives have been flashing in the night between you and Kerr and others for quite sometime now. I have blissfully been kept in the dark about most of this and do not want to know all of the gory details even now. I do know that (a) I was offended by the insistent, accusational tone of your out-of-the-blue phone call from England the other day and (b) I know it is not the first time you have accused others of “stealing” your “intellectual property” as you put it. You accused Kerr of such theft in your call and, when I did not immediately acquiesce to your demands for a copy of my manuscript you seemed to hold me responsible as a co-conspirator.

As you know, I got in touch with you and Kerr for the first time in the spring of 1992 after John Beebe told me it would be a valuable thing to do after he read my Leontocephalus paper in an editorial capacity (it was originally submitted to the JAP). I did not even know the two of you had existed before then and had not read any works by either of you. I hunted down your publications and invited you and Kerr and others to speak in Philadelphia where I was leading seminars that traced the intellectual roots and historical background of analytical psychology. At that time I gave you my Leontocephalus paper which, as you know, focuses on Jung’s deification experience and is filled with many references to the mystery-cult nature of the Jungian enterprise. I began working on a book (mentioned in the notes to the manuscript and the published article) on Jung and the ancient mysteries and had begun investigating the possibillity that Jung had deliberately set up a 20th century version of a Hellenistic mystery cult after his break with Freud. My Spring article contains numerous indications that this was my intention. It was the refusal to take these cult metaphors out that probably made Rosemary Gordon reject it at the last minute and Spring accept it in early June of that year. Spring the final copy by September 1 and it was published in December of that year. During this period I felt I was the only one who was exploring the cult-dynamics angle on Jung and the Jungians, and neither you nor Kerr spoke of this in my meetings with the two of you in Philadelphia in July (you) and October (Kerr) 1992.

After meeting you for the first time in Philadelphia in July I spoke to you on the phone after your return to England to ask your advice on what to look for at the Countway as I was planning to go up and do research in the Jung Oral Archives. It was you, Sonu, who directed my attention to the Katz papers as “worth checking out” and you mentioned her notebooks. When I spoke to Kerr at about the same time about what I should look into, he (significantly) did not mention the Katz papers at all but gave me detailed advice on which interview transcripts I might want to focus on. I have you to thank, Sonu, for my independent discovery of the 1916 talk by Jung that was mislabeled there (a fact you obviously did not mention to me.) I made photocopies and took notes on the material at the Countway during my August 1992 visit there (Eugene Taylor met me at the Countway and thus he can verify my presence there) – including a full transcription of the document in question – and packed it all away for possible inclusion in my book on the mysteries.

In a letter to me in the fall of 1992 (I can’t read the date on my copy due to food stain damage – I’m working on developing the Marlon Brando/Orson Welles look – is it October 1992?) you commented on the reprints of my published work and said I was more right that I realized by focusing on the cult aspect and that you also viewed Jung as forming a cult. I viewed this statement by you as a careful acknowledgement of the fact you had reached a similar conclusion independently of my work on the mystery cult angle as presented in the manuscript I gave you in early July 1992. I could easily accuse you of stealing my ideas! However, it would be bad manners to do so.

In early 1993 (February-March) I began intensive research on the Mysteria book and although I had an offer from another publisher, I contacted Princeton University Press about the possibility of a Mythos book of selections of Jung on the mysteries with a detailed scholarly introduction. My earliest telephone contacts with Princeton date from February of 1992. I also spoke to you, Sonu, at about this time and mentioned the mysteries book with Princeton and my work on Nietzsche and certain Nazi-occult leads I was following (you mentioned the James Webb books to me at that time). My work on the introduction quickly led me to the Völkisch cult hypothesis as a greater cultural context for the Hellenistic mystery cult hypothesis and I talked to Kerr about this at about this time – mentioning the book I was working on Princeton – and this seems to be the call in question mentioned in his letter. Hence, my work on one book (Mysteria) was quickly transformed into work on two books. I did begin the writing of my second book until late June or July of 1993 and finished it by early September. The document in question has mystery cult/völkische elements in it and therefore will be included in both books. The Jung estate has recently given permission for me to use it.

Now comes the disputed issue: have you been stolen from? By me, absolutely not: I was on record (the Leontocephalus article) for promoting the mystery cult interpretation of Jung’s movement prior to any discussion by you or Kerr on the issue. Furthermore, it was you who told me to look in the Katz papers in the first place! If you did not want to risk someone else finding it (and I’m not the only other half-intelligent person who is capable of putting two and two together) then why did you direct me to that source? Why did you take that risk? Were you so sure that you alone possessed the intelligence to put the story together? The document was obviously a talk by Jung given at the founding of the Psychology Club (you can call it the founding of the “cult” if you want – I argue that the first formation of the cult was in 1912). It doesn’t take a genius to see this. Where I am apparently not a genius is in the importance of the document: I still do not find it as important as you and Kerr think it is. It still sounds to me like the two of you have some other piece of evidence I haven’t uncovered yet. Yes, Jung sounds David Koresh at times in it but, hey, so what else is new? The Jung Oral Archives is filled with this sort of stuff. Kerr makes it sound like you both have something else that you see in it, and you are both welcome to write a book with your own interpretation of it. It will not, of course, be the book the two of you apparently planned to write years ago when you discovered the document. It is your bad judgment not to have jumped on it and published at that time. The fact that I am doing so now – after having discovered the document independently of either you or Kerr and recognized, on my own, it was Jung at the founding of the Psychological Club – does not mean that I (or anyone else) should be accused in any way of “stealing” property that rightly belongs to the Jung estate and not your “intellect.”

Regarding Kerr’s account in his letter: there are some fundamental differences of memory and of interpretations of what I “assured” him which I will take up with him privately. I believe John Kerr to be an absolutely honest individual with a great sensitivity and sense of integrity. But he is as human as the rest of us. He feels that he has made some bad judgments in this affair, and I agree: if the two of you wanted to keep the document secret he should not have confirmed my interpretation of it as Jung and it cultic significance. Also, after reading my manuscript last fall he should have called you immediately as he said he would. I offered to call you so that you would not be surprised when you heard of my book but Kerr told me to hold off until he could call you first. Obviously he never did. It took six or seven months after I suggested this before the two of you did speak (the other day) and with obvious negative results. I do not believe this is wilful malice on his part but instead an unwillingness to face a potentially emotionally explosive situation.

Knowing what I now know (your accusations that material “stolen” from you appears in his recent book, your insistence that you unnecessarily include persons such as Roy Porter into your dispute with Kerr, etc.) he probably avoided contact with you for fear you would see this as a further betrayal of you – which is exactly how you perceive it. His solution to the problem – not mentioned in his letter – is that I agree to just quote from the document and identify it as a “cult member” but not Jung, primarily so that you and he could still write the book and have a “payday.” Knowing his precarious financial situation, and knowing that the document was not of crucial import to my book, I told him I would strongly consider it but that I always identified it as Jung. He told me at several points that it was my decision to do what I want but that he would prefer that I did not use the document as I did not need it for my book (indeed, it is only one of many bits of evidence of Jung’s cult-building that I have uncovered). The document is in no way the centerpiece of the book and the book is not built exclusively around it.

Due to unexpected production schedule pressures I had less time to make up my mind definitively on the sticky ethics of the issue and gave the go-ahead to Princeton to consider using the full document and get proper permission for doing so with the (verbal) understanding as author I was responsible for changing the material at a later time if I saw fit as long as the book was not past the final copy editing stage. Kerr will no doubt feel betrayed because I did not inform him immediately of the solidity of my decision to go with the publication and identification of the whole document. That is a blot on my personal relationship with him that I hope we can overcome. I knew he would be disappointed and concerned about your reaction and therefore I too, in cowardice, avoided an emotionally charged incident that would threaten my friendship with him. Obviously it inevitably has, I hope the two of you do go ahead and write your book on the document. It still sounds to me as if the two of you have something else up that I haven’t uncovered, and if so, great. I am still one of your biggest fans, as I admire your intellect and scholarly sitzfleisch. However, I must say that my part in this document controversy is – and always has been – secondary to its part in your relationship with Kerr and I do not want to be included in your private dispute in the future.

Since this letter will probably be a hot item on the international psychoanalytic fax machine circuit (hello to you, Peter Swales!) I will say, then, in the politest terms possible, that you owe me a major apology before we can have further contact.

Sincerely,

Richard Noll



Carl Jung across the web:

Blog: http: http://carljungdepthpsychology.blogspot.com/

Google+: https://plus.google.com/102529939687199578205/posts

Facebook: Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/56536297291/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/grp/home?gid=4861719&sort=recent&trk=my_groups-tile-flipgrp

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/Carl-Jung-326016020781946/

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/purrington104/

Red Book: https://www.facebook.com/groups/792124710867966/

Scoop.It: http://www.scoop.it/u/maxwell-purrington

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MaxwellPurringt

WordPress: https://carljungdepthpsychology.wordpress.com/

Great Sites to visit:

1. Jenna Lilla's Path of the Soul http://jennalilla.org/

2. Steve Jung-Hearted Parker's Jung Currents http://jungcurrents.com/

3. Frith Luton's Jungian Dream Analysis and Psychotherapy: http://frithluton.com/articles/

4. Lance S. Owens The Gnosis Archives http://gnosis.org/welcome.html

Saturday, November 25, 2017

The Red Book Publication Deliberations




Publication Deliberations

From 1922 onward, in addition to discussions with Emma Jung and Toni Wolff, Jung had extensive discussions with Cary Baynes and Wolfgang Stockmayer concerning what to do with Liber Novus, and around its potential publication.

Because these discussions took place when he was still working on it, they are critically important.

Cary Fink was born in 1883.

She studied at Vassar College, where she was taught by Kristine Mann, who became one of Jung's earliest followers in the United States.

In 1910, she married Jaime de Angulo, and completed her medical training at Johns Hopkins in 19II. In 1921, she left him, and went to Zurich with Kristine Mann.

She entered analysis with Jung.

She never practiced analysis, and Jung highly respected her critical intelligence. In 1927, she married Peter Baynes.

They were subsequently divorced in 1931.

Jung asked her to make a fresh transcription of Liber Novus, because he had added a lot of material since the previous transcription.

She undertook this in 1924 and 1925, when Jung was in Africa.

Her typewriter was heavy, so she first copied it by hand and then typed it out.

These notes recount her discussions with Jung and are written in the form of letters to him, but were not sent.

OCTOBER 2,1922

In another book of Meyrink's the "White Dominican," you said he made use of exactly the same symbolism that had come to you in the first vision that revealed to your unconscious. Furthermore you said, he had spoken of a "Red Book" which contained certain mysteries and the book that you are writing about the unconscious, you have called the "Red Book". Then you said you were in doubt as to what to do about that book. Meyrink you said could throw his into novel form and it was all right, but you could only command the scientific and philosophical method and that stuff you couldn't cast into that mold. I said you could use the Zarathustra form and you said that was true, but you were sick of that. I am too. Then you said you had thought of making an autobiography out of it. That would seem to me by far the best, because then you would tend to write as you spoke which was in a very colorful way. But apart from any difficulty with the form, you said you dreaded making it public because it was like selling your house. But I jumped upon you with both feet there and said it wasn't a bit like that because you and the book stood for a constellation of the Universe, and that to take the book as being purely personal was to identify yourself with it which was something you would not think of permitting to your patients ... Then we laughed over my having caught you red-handed as it were. Goethe had been caught in the same difficulty in the 2nd part of Faust in which he had gotten into the unconscious and found it so difficult to get the right form that he had finally died leaving the Mss. as such in his drawer. So much of what you had experienced you said, would be counted as sheer lunacy that if it were published you would lose out altogether not only as a scientist, but as a human being, but not I said if you went at it from the Dichtung und Wahrheit [Poetry and Truth] angle, then people could make their own selection as to which was which. You objected to presenting any of it as Dichtung when it was all Wahrheit, but it does not seem to me falseness to make use of that much of a mask in order to protect yourself from Philistia-and after all, as I said Philistia has its rights, confronted with the choice of you as a lunatic, and themselves as inexperienced fools they have to choose the former alternative, but if they can place you as a poet, their faces are saved. Much of your material you said has come to you as runes & the explanation of those runes sounds like the veriest nonsense, but that does not matter if the end product is sense. In your case I said, apparently you have become conscious of more of the steps of creation than ever anyone before. In most cases the mind evidently drops out of the irrelevant stuff automatically and delivers the end product, whereas you bring along the whole business, matrix process and product. Naturally it is frightfully more difficult to handle. Then my hour was up.

JANUARY 1923

What you told me some time ago set me thinking, and suddenly the other day while I was reading the "Vorspiel auf dem Theater" [prelude in the theater]'182 it came to me that you too ought to make use of that principle which Goethe has handled so beautifully all through Faust, namely; the placing in opposition of the creative and eternal with the negative and transient. You may not see right away what
this has to do with the Red Book but I will explain. As I understand it in this book you are going to challenge men to a new way of looking at their souls, at any rate there is going to be in it a good deal that will be out of the grasp of the ordinary man, just as at one period of your own life you would scarcely have understood it. In a way it is a "jewel" you are giving to the world is it not? My idea is that it needs a sort of protection in order not to be thrown into the gutter and finally made away with by a strangely clad Jew. The best protection you could devise, it seems to me, would be to put in incorporate the book itself an exposition of the forces that will attempt to destroy it. It is one of your great gifts strength of seeing the black as well as the white of every given situation, so you will know better
than most of the people who attack the book what it is that they want to destroy Could you not take the wind out of their sails by writing their criticism for them? Perhaps that is the very thing you have done in the introduction. Perhaps you would rather assume towards the public the attitude of "Talce or leave it, and be blessed or be damned whichever you prefer." That would be all right, whatever
there is of truth in it is going to survive in any case. But I would like to see you do the other thing if it did not call for too much effort.

JANUARY 26,1924

You had the night before had a dream in which I appeared in a disguise and was to do work on the Red Book and you had been thinking about it all that day and during Dr. Wharton's hour preceding mine especially (pleasant for her I must say) ... As you had said you had made up your mind to turn over to me all of your unconscious material represented by the Red Book etc. to see what I as a stranger and impartial observer would say about it. You thought I had a good critique and an impartial one. Toni you said was deeply interwoven with it and besides did not take any interest in the thing in itself nor in getting it into usable form. She is lost in "bird fluttering" you said. For yourself you said you had always known what to do with your ideas, but here you were baffled. When you approached them you became enmeshed as it were and could no longer be sure of anything. You were certain some of them had great importance, but you could not find the appropriate form-as they were now you
said they might come out of a madhouse. So then you said I was to copy down the contents of the Red Book-once before you had had it copied, but you had since then added a great deal of material, so you wanted it done again and you would explain things to me as I went along, for you understood nearly everything in it you said. In this way we could come to discuss many things which never came up
in my analysis and I could understand your ideas from the foundation. You told me then something more of your own attitude toward the "Red Book" You said some of it hurt your sense of the fitness of things terribly; and that you had shrunk from putting it down as it came to you, but that you had started on the principle of "voluntariness" that is of making no corrections and so you had stuck to that. Some of the pictures were absolutely infantile, but were intended so to be. There were various figures speaking, Elias, Father Philemon, etc. but all appeared to be phases of what you thought ought to be called "the master." You were sure that this latter was the same who inspired Buddha, Mani, Christ, Mahomet-all those who may be said to have communed with God.183 But the others had identified with him. You absolutely refused to. It could not be for you, you said, you had to remain the psychologist-the person who understood the process. I said then that the thing to be done was to enable the
world to understand the process also without their getting the notion that they had the Master caged as it were at their beck & call. They had to think of him as a pillar of fire perpetually moving on and forever out of human grasp. Yes, you said it was something like that. Perhaps it cannot yet be done. As you talked I grew more and more aware of the immeasurability of the ideas which are filling you. You said they had the shadow of eternity upon them and I could feel the truth of it.

On January 30, she noted that Jung said of a dream which she had told him:

That it was a preparation for the Red Book because the Red Book told of the battle between the world of reality and the world of the spirit. You said in that battle you had been very nearly torn asunder but that you had managed to keep your feet on the earth & make an effect on reality That you said for you was the test of any idea, and that you had no respect for any ideas however winged that had to exist off in space and were unable to make an impression on reality

There is an undated fragment of a letter draft to an unidentified person in which Cary Baynes expresses her view of the significance of Liber Novus, and the necessity of its publication:

I am absolutely thunderstruck for example, as I read the Red Book, and see all that is told there for the Right Way for us of today; to find how Toni has kept it out of her system. She wouldn't have an unconscious spot in her psyche had she digested even as much of the Red Book as I have read & that I should think was not a third or a fourth. And another difficult thing to understand is why she has no interest in seeing him publish it. There are people in my country who would read it from cover to cover without stopping to breathe scarcely; so does it re-envisage and clarify the things that are today; staggering everyone who is trying to find the clue to life ... he has put into it all the vigor and color of his speech, all the directness and simplicity that come when as at Cornwall the fire burns in him.186
Of course it may be that as he says, if he published it as it is, he would forever be hors du combat in the world of rational science, but then there must be some way around that, some way of protecting himself against stupidity; in order that the people who would want the book need not go without for the time it will take the majority to get ready for it. I always knew he must be able to write the
fire that he can speak-and here it is. His published books are doctored up for the world at large, or rather they are written out of his head & this out of his heart.

These discussions vividly portray the depth of Jung's deliberations concerning the publication of Liber Novus, his sense of its centrality in comprehending the genesis of .his work and his fear that the work would be misunderstood.

The impression that the style of the work would mal(e on an unsuspecting public strongly concerned Jung.

He . later recalled to Aniela Jaffe that the work still needed a suitable form in which it could be brought into the world because it sounded like prophecy, which was not to his taste.

There appears to have been some discussion concerning these issues in Jung's circle.

On May 29, 1924, Cary Baynes noted a discussion with Peter Baynes in which he argued that Liber Novus could be understood only by someone who had known Jung.

By contrast, she thought that the book:

was the record of the passage of the universe through the soul of a man, and just as a person stands by the sea and listens to that very strange and awful music and cannot explain why his heart aches, or why a cry of exaltation wants to leap from his throat, so I thought it would be with the Red Book, and that a man would be perforce lifted out of himself by the majesty of it, and swung to heights he had never been before.

There are further signs that Jung circulated copies of Liber Novus to confidantes, and that the material was discussed together with the possibilities of its publication.

One· such colleague was Wolfgang Stockmayer.

Jung met Stockmayer in 1907- In his unpublished obituary; Jung nominated him as the first German to be interested in his work.

He recalled that Stockmayer was a true friend. They traveled together in Italy and Switzerland, and there was seldom a year in which they did not meet.

Jung commented:

He distinguished himself through his great interest and equally great understanding for pathological psychic processes. I also found with him a sympathetic reception for my broader viewpoint, which became of importance for my later comparative psychological works.


Stockmayer accompanied Jung in "the valuable penetration of our psychology" into classical Chinese philosophy; the mystical speculations of India and Tantric yoga.

On December 22,1924, Stockmayer wrote to Jung:

I often long for the Red Book, and I would like to have a transcript of what is available; I failed to do so when I had it, as things go. I recently fantasized about a kind of journal of "Documents" in a loose form for materials from the "forge of the unconscious," with words and colors.

It appears· that Jung sent some material to him.

On April 30, 1925, Stockmayer wrote to Jung:

In the meantime we have gone through "Scrutinies," and it is the same impression as with the great wandering. A selected collective milieu for such from the Red Book is certainly worth trying out, although your commentary would be quite desired. Since a certain adjacent center of yours lies here, ample access to sources is of great significance, consciously and unconsciously. And I obviously fantasize about "facsimiles," which you will understand: you need not fear extraversion magic from me. Painting also has great appeal.

Jung's tTIanuscript "Commentaries" (see Appendix B) was possibly connected with these discussions.

Thus figures in Jung's circle held differing views concerning the significance of Liber Novus and whether it should be published, which may have had bearings on Jung's eventual decisions.

Cary Baynes did not complete the transcription, getting as far as the first twenty-seven pages of Scrutinies.

For the next few years, her time was taken up with the translation of Jung's essays into English, followed by the translation of the I Ching.

At some stage, which I estimate to be in the mid-twenties, Jung went back to the Draft and edited it again, deleting and adding material on approximately 250 pages.

His revisions served to modernize the language and terminology.

He also revised some of the material that he had already transcribed into the calligraphic volume of Liber Novus, as well as some material that was left out.

It is hard to see why he undertook this unless he was seriously considering publishing it.

In 1925, Jung presented his seminars on analytical psychology to the Psychological Club.

Here, he discussed some of the important fantasies in Liber Novus.

He described how they unfolded and indicated how they formed the basis of the ideas in psychological Types and the key to understanding its genesis.

The seminar was transcribed and edited by Cary Baynes.

That same year, Peter Baynes prepared an English translation of the Septem Sermones ad Mortuos, which was privately published.

Jung gave copies to some of his English-speaking students.

In a letter that is presumably a reply to one from Henry Murray thanking him for a copy, Jung wrote:

I am deeply convinced, that those ideas that came to me, are really quite wonderful things. I can easily say that (without blushing), because I know, how resistant and how foolishly obstinate I was, when they first visited me and what a trouble it was, until I could read this symbolic language, so much superior to my dull conscious mind.

It is possible that Jung may have considered the publication of the Sermones as a trial for the publication of Liber Novus.

Barbara Hannah claims that he regretted publishing it and that "he felt strongly that it should only have been written in the Red Book"

At some point, Jung wrote a manuscript entitled "Commentaries," which provided a commentary on chapters 9, 10, and II of Liber Primus (see Appendix B).

He had discussed some of these fantasies in his 1925 seminar, and he goes into more detail here.

From the style and conceptions, I would estimate that this text was written in the mid-twenties.

He may have written-or intended to write-further "commentaries" for other chapters, but these have not come to light.

This manuscript indicates the amount of work he put into understanding each and every detail of his fantasies.

Jung gave a number of people copies of Liber Novus: Cary Baynes, Peter Baynes, Aniela Jaffe, Wolfgang Stockmayer, and Toni Wolff. Copies may also have been given to others.

In 1937, a fire destroyed Peter Baynes's house, and damaged his copy of Liber Novus.

A few years later, he wrote to Jung asking if by chance he had another copy, and offered to translate it.

Jung replied: "I will try whether I can procure another copy of the Red Book. Please don't worry about translations. I am sure there are 2 or 3 translations already. But I don't know of what and by whom."

This supposition was presumably based on the number of copies of the work in circulation.

Jung let the following individuals read and/or look at Liber Novus: Richard Hull, Tina Keller, James Kirsch, Ximena Roelli de Angulo (as a child), and Kurt Wolff Aniela Jaffe read the Black Books, and Tina Keller was also allowed to read sections of the Black Books.

Jung most likely showed the book to other close associates, such as Emil Medtner, Franz Riklin Sr., Erika Schlegel, Hans Trub, and Marie-Louise von Franz.

It appears that he allowed those people to read Liber Novus whom he fully trusted and whom he felt had a full grasp of his ideas.

Quite a number of his students did not fit into this category. ~The Red Book, Introduction, Pages 212-215

Thursday, September 28, 2017

Ronald Hayman’s lack of scholarship and erroneous assumptions and assertions uncovered




In 1999, Ronald Hayman, another professional biographer, published his biography of Jung,

A Life of Jung. Hayman was the first biographer who was aware of the status of Memories, Dreams, Reflections, and drew on the protocols of Aniela Jaffé’s interviews
with Jung.

Furthermore, he was the first biographer to draw on the Countway interviews, supplemented with some interviews of his own.

Of the biographers of Jung to date, Hayman devoted the most space, comparatively speaking, to giving summaries of Jung’s actual writings.

Also, he did not rely on existing translations of Jung’s works, and sometimes revised existing translations and supplied his own.

Like the previous biographers, Hayman did not consult the Jung archives in Zürich.

Like Stern, Brome and McLynn before him, Hayman presented his own retrospective analysis of Jung.

This is particularly marked in his account of Jung’s “confrontation with the unconscious”, which he regarded as a breakdown.

Hayman employed Ellenberger’s rubric of the “creative illness”, but went further in stressing what he considered to be the psychopathological nature of Jung’s experiences.

In his reading of Jung’s Siegfried dream, Hayman contended that Jung’s “need to keep silent” about Sabina Spielrein stopped him from “writing honestly about this dream”, as
Siegfried obviously signified Spielrein’s Siegfried fantasy—a connection which had been posited by Wehr.

The assumption
that one knows what this dream “really meant” led to the claim that
Jung did not write honestly about it.

Like Brome and McLynn, Hayman saw Freud as the critical figure in Jung’s “confrontation with the unconscious”. In his discussion of the figures of Salome and Elijah, he noted:

One factor in his disorientation was the loss of the people who mattered to him most—Freud and Sabina. Both Jewish, they could be both be associated with the Old Testament. Though he was to speculate at length about the meaning of Salome and Elijah—pointing out that in myth an old man is often accompanied by a young
girl who represents the erotic while he represents wisdom—he never made the obvious equations. . . . Like dissidents who have been eliminated in a Soviet purge and vanish from new prints of old photographs, they are mentioned in none of Jung’s accounts of his dreams and visions. It was as he had forbidden himself to think about them. . . . Perhaps he saw it but he did not dare to admit he was conflating Sabina with Lou Andreas-Salomé.

Nowhere is evidence provided for such claims.

Hayman’s interpretations are taken as facts, and he gives the impression of knowing the hidden content of Jung’s mind.

Regarding Jung’s own interpretations of his experience, Hayman argued that Jung “always tended to mythologise his experience, and now he was verging on psychosis, Gnosticism gave him a kind of licence”.

It is striking how many commentators have reinterpreted Jung’s fantasies in terms of people in his life, leaving to one side his own interpretations of them in terms of subjective tendencies or functions of his personality. Jung’s tendency to personification, such as in the figure of Philemon, Hayman read in terms of the tendencies
of schizophrenics.

He attributed “delusions of grandeur” to Jung.

Furthermore, central features of Jung’s work are attributed to such tendencies:

“His inclination to believe in what he called the independence of the unconscious is in line with his boyhood refusal to accept responsibility for such images as the giant penis and the divine turd.”

Psychobiography thus becomes a tool of criticism.

Jung becomes remade according to each biographer’s fixed ideas.

Critically, none of the biographies discussed in this chapter drew upon Jung’s extensive unpublished manuscripts and notes, nor on his voluminous correspondence at the ETH.

These are available for scholars to study upon application.

Nor did any of the biographers have access to the Jung family archives, which contains private materials, such as Jung’s correspondence with his wife, the Black Books, and the Red Book.

Thus, the most important unpublished materials remained unexamined.

Confronted by this situation, one could simply base oneself on what is known, and be careful not to overstep the bounds of the available documentation.

The works of Hannah and Wehr can generally be seen to fall into this category.

On the other hand, there is the danger of filling in the gaps of the available information with intreprefactions.

The works of Stern, McLynn, Brome, and Hayman at times fall into this category. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Jung Stripped Bare: By His Biographers Even, Pages 84-86

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Ronald Hayman’s lack of scholarship and erroneous assumptions and assertions uncovered




In 1999, Ronald Hayman, another professional biographer, published his biography of Jung,

A Life of Jung. Hayman was the first biographer who was aware of the status of Memories, Dreams, Reflections, and drew on the protocols of Aniela Jaffé’s interviews
with Jung.

Furthermore, he was the first biographer to draw on the Countway interviews, supplemented with some interviews of his own.

Of the biographers of Jung to date, Hayman devoted the most space, comparatively speaking, to giving summaries of Jung’s actual writings.

Also, he did not rely on existing translations of Jung’s works, and sometimes revised existing translations and supplied his own.

Like the previous biographers, Hayman did not consult the Jung archives in Zürich.

Like Stern, Brome and McLynn before him, Hayman presented his own retrospective analysis of Jung.

This is particularly marked in his account of Jung’s “confrontation with the unconscious”, which he regarded as a breakdown.

Hayman employed Ellenberger’s rubric of the “creative illness”, but went further in stressing what he considered to be the psychopathological nature of Jung’s experiences.

In his reading of Jung’s Siegfried dream, Hayman contended that Jung’s “need to keep silent” about Sabina Spielrein stopped him from “writing honestly about this dream”, as
Siegfried obviously signified Spielrein’s Siegfried fantasy—a connection which had been posited by Wehr.

The assumption
that one knows what this dream “really meant” led to the claim that
Jung did not write honestly about it.

Like Brome and McLynn, Hayman saw Freud as the critical figure in Jung’s “confrontation with the unconscious”. In his discussion of the figures of Salome and Elijah, he noted:

One factor in his disorientation was the loss of the people who mattered to him most—Freud and Sabina. Both Jewish, they could be both be associated with the Old Testament. Though he was to speculate at length about the meaning of Salome and Elijah—pointing out that in myth an old man is often accompanied by a young
girl who represents the erotic while he represents wisdom—he never made the obvious equations. . . . Like dissidents who have been eliminated in a Soviet purge and vanish from new prints of old photographs, they are mentioned in none of Jung’s accounts of his dreams and visions. It was as he had forbidden himself to think about them. . . . Perhaps he saw it but he did not dare to admit he was conflating Sabina with Lou Andreas-Salomé.

Nowhere is evidence provided for such claims.

Hayman’s interpretations are taken as facts, and he gives the impression of knowing the hidden content of Jung’s mind.

Regarding Jung’s own interpretations of his experience, Hayman argued that Jung “always tended to mythologise his experience, and now he was verging on psychosis, Gnosticism gave him a kind of licence”.

It is striking how many commentators have reinterpreted Jung’s fantasies in terms of people in his life, leaving to one side his own interpretations of them in terms of subjective tendencies or functions of his personality. Jung’s tendency to personification, such as in the figure of Philemon, Hayman read in terms of the tendencies
of schizophrenics.

He attributed “delusions of grandeur” to Jung.

Furthermore, central features of Jung’s work are attributed to such tendencies:

“His inclination to believe in what he called the independence of the unconscious is in line with his boyhood refusal to accept responsibility for such images as the giant penis and the divine turd.”

Psychobiography thus becomes a tool of criticism.

Jung becomes remade according to each biographer’s fixed ideas.

Critically, none of the biographies discussed in this chapter drew upon Jung’s extensive unpublished manuscripts and notes, nor on his voluminous correspondence at the ETH.

These are available for scholars to study upon application.

Nor did any of the biographers have access to the Jung family archives, which contains private materials, such as Jung’s correspondence with his wife, the Black Books, and the Red Book.

Thus, the most important unpublished materials remained unexamined.

Confronted by this situation, one could simply base oneself on what is known, and be careful not to overstep the bounds of the available documentation.

The works of Hannah and Wehr can generally be seen to fall into this category.

On the other hand, there is the danger of filling in the gaps of the available information with intreprefactions.

The works of Stern, McLynn, Brome, and Hayman at times fall into this category. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Jung Stripped Bare: By His Biographers Even, Pages 84-86