Carl Jung: Intuition does not say what things mean but sniffs...

Intuition does not say what things mean but sniffs out their possibilities. Meaning is given by thinking. - Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 21

James Kirsch: "'The Red One”: A Psychological Interpretations of a Story by Jack London”

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I consider it a happy coincidence that we are meeting in Carmel today, and that I have the great privilege to speak here on one of California's great sons.

Jack London loved Carmel.

It was during the summer of 1913 that he spent happy weeks in Carmel visiting his lifelong friend George Sterling, "swimming in the surf and sunbathing on the sand, hunting for abalones and eating abalone steaks cooked over a wood fire on the beach" (Irving Stone ).

It was a happy and creative time, but a time in which the great conflicts of his life had reached a climax.

He was writing stories such as "Valley of the Moon," was active in the Socialist movement of his day and was building his magnificent Wolf House, into which he poured his seemingly inexhaustible creative powers - and all his money; a house to which everyone referred as a castle, resembling "a palace of Justinian or Caesar."

Fate had, however, determined that he should never live in it.

On August 19th of the same year, the Wolf House went up in flames. "Something in his soul burnt out that night," says Irving Stone.

The Jack London of "Call of the Wild" and many other great stories died in that inferno.

A new one was born, but Jack London's vitality was spent, and thus the new personality never had a chance to develop.

It died in the bud.

Was this conflagration which destroyed Jack London's dream house a symbol or an event synchronistic with that conflagration which only one year later should engulf more than half of the world?

There have always been human beings who, seized by an archetype, experience in their individual life that which happens to the collective or even to the whole of mankind.

Jack London was certainly such a man.

I cannot give you here a biography of this extraordinary man who, in spite of the fact that his books were widely read all over the world, has not yet been understood and accepted in his full significance.

His life and personal history have been adequately, candidly, and with loving sympathy, described by Irving Stone in his book, Sailor on Horseback.

He was born on January 12th, 1876, in San Francisco, California.

His real father, Professor W. M. Chaney, a full-blooded Irishman, by profession an itinerant astrologer, always denied his fatherhood.

So Jack London grew up in the family of John London. He suffered extreme poverty throughout his childhood.

At a very early age he had to work, and his wages, at many times during his youth, represented an important part of the family income.

At one time, for instance, he worked in a cellar shoveling coal for $30 a month, with one day off a month.

He never received a formal education.

There was nothing in his surroundings which, at any time, could have stimulated him to develop his mind, but the flame of the spirit was burning in him.

With iron energy he taught himself.

For a time he went to school, and even took classes at Berkeley.

It is one of the sagas of modem American life how this poverty-stricken youth, with no formal education, acquired a profound, comprehensive and thorough grounding in many fields.

He was a voracious reader in the fields of history, social science, literature, philosophy and psychology.

Very early he made up his mind to write a thousand words a day.

He was always sure that he was a great writer.

Success was bound to come his way- and it did in great measure.

He was deeply and wildly in love with life.

He lived it to the full, always risking himself and giving himself fully to life as he found it on the outside.

And with the same devotion, he gave himself to writing almost every day of his life.

The conflict which necessarily arose in himself due to this powerful extraversion, as well as this introversion, reflected in many of his books as well as in the stories themselves.

But it becomes clear that after the fire of his dream house, which symbolized to him his conquest of the world, Jack London was finally captured by the inner world.

A profound and complete introversion began just when he was thirty-seven years of age, which was only occasionally interrupted by heavy drinking bouts and a few trips.

Another pair of opposites was clearly evident in the fact that on one side he embraced Nietzsche's ideas of the Superman.

He identified the ego with the Self.

He said, for instance,

I have always inclined toward Haeckel's position, In fact, 'incline' is too weak a word. I am a hopeless individualist. I see a soul as nothing else than the sum of the activities of the organism plus personal habits, memories, experiences, of the organism. I believe that when I am dead, I am dead. I believe that with my death I am just as much obliterated as the last mosquito you or I smashed. I have no patience with fly-by-night philosophers such as Bergson. I have no patience with the metaphysical philosophers. With them, always, the wish is parent to the thought, and their wish is parent to their profoundest philosophical conclusions. I join with Haeckel in being ..."a positive scientific thinker. "

On the other hand, he wrote the most imaginative and lively stories we have known in American literature.

He writes, for instance, in "The White Silence":

Nature has many tricks wherewith she convinces man of his finity -the ceaseless flow of the tides, the fury of the storm, the shock of the earthquake, the long roll of heaven's artillery- but the most tremendous, the most stupefying of all is the passive phase of the White Silence.

All movement ceases, the sky clears, the heavens are as brass; the slightest whisper seems sacrilege, and man becomes timid, affrighted at the
sound of his own voice.

Sole speck oflife journeying across the ghostly wastes of a dead world, he trembles at his audacity, realizes that his is a maggot's life, nothing more.

Strange thoughts arise unsummoned, and the mystery of all things strives for utterance.

And fear of death, of God, of the universe, comes over him - the hope of the Resurrection and the Life, the yearning for immortality, the vain striving of the imprisoned essence - it is there, if ever, man walks alone with God.

How great the conflict is we can see from these two quotations.

On one side he was a staunch materialist of Haeckel's persuasion, so characteristic of the end of the 19th century; on the other hand, he was a poet, living with incorruptible sincerity and unquestioned devotion in the service of his inner voice.

As this quotation from "The White Silence" shows, the numinous experience of the Unconscious reached and seized him.

This pair of opposites, the scientific materialist and the poet, open to thoughts of God and yearning for immortality, is difficult to carry for any human being.

As one of his obituaries said,

"The inner struggle of London is the key to his work. His biography is a record of privation in its first phase, and a diary of individual daring in its second and last phase. He died at the age of forty – left his playground of the world at large as he had lived his short life - left at full speed - took ill in the morning and crossed the tall hill as the sun went down on his mountain ranch."

We could of course deduce from the outer events of his life, his marriages, for intance, his friendships, his monetary problems, his relationship to his publishers or to the Socialist movement of his day, what his fundamental problem was, but we are enabled to see the development and denouement of his fate from the rich material of the Unconscious which he left us in his writings.

Unfortunately, we know only two dreams of Jack London, but practically every story which Jack London ever wrote is "active imagination" and therefore a vivid self-representation of the Psyche.

They allow us an amazing insight into his psychological problems, and also into the problems of his time.

Let us tum first to these two dreams.

The first is a childhood dream, which throws significant light on Jack London's outstanding character traits.

It is told by George Wharton James.

He says that Jack London told him:

My other childish victory was over a peculiar nightmare. I have lived in the country and was one day brought to town and stood on a railway platform as a railway engine came in.

Its ponderous size, its easy and resistless onward movement, its panting, its fire and smoke, its great noises, all impressed me so powerfully that that night I dreamt of it, and when the dream turned to a nightmare I was filled with the dread and horror at what seemed to be the fact that this locomotive was pursuing me and that I could not get out of its way.

For weeks thereafter I was haunted by this dreadful fear, and night after night I was run down.

But, strange to say, I always rose up again after suffering the pangs of horrible death, to go over it all again.

The tortures those nightmares gave me none can understand except those who have gone through a similar experience.

Then one night came release. In the distance, as the mighty modem juggernaut came towards me, I saw a man with a stepladder.

I was unable to cry out, but I waved my hand to him. He hailed me and bid me come.

That broke the spell. I ran to him, climbed to the top of the stepladder, and thereafter lost all terror at the sight of a locomotive.

But the victory gained in climbing the ladder was as real as any I ever had in my waking life.

This dream, as a frequently recurring dream, is very important. It indicates young Jack London's fear of the Unconscious.

The locomotive symbolizes the tremendous energy which is contained in the Unconscious.

It comes as a terrific threat against him.

For a certain time the conflict continues and no solution seems possible, but at last he succeeds in climbing on top of it.

In other words, his solution is getting on top of it, a mastering of the Unconscious - and thereby achieving a complete identification with it.

The fruit of it is an increase of libido and power of imagination.

It was this tremendous energy which moved him throughout the first phase of his life.

The energy which radiated from him through his work, in his actions, in his many, many ideas, in his working out of new plans and strivings in many fields was characteristic for him throughout his life.

It was only through the burning of the Wolf House that this enormous vitality received a shock, and that his libido definitely turned inward.

The other dream we know is reported by Charmian Kittredge, his second wife, in The Book of Jack London.

She says there:

In Jack's dreams, at widely separated intervals, appeared the Man who would contest Jack's self-mastership, to whom he would eventually bend a vanquished intelligence.

He never saw such a one in the flesh, yet that entity stalked through more than the hallucinations of sleep.

It was long ago he first told me of this ominous figure in his consciousness.

The last manifestation was within a very few years of his death.

The man, imperial, inexorable with destiny, yet strangely human, descended, alone, a vast cascade of stairways, and Jack at the foot looked up and
waited as imperially for the meeting that was to be his unknown fate.

But the Nemesis never, in that form at least, overtook him.

Charmian spoke very true words in saying this.

This figure, as we understand it today, was certainly the archetype of the Self, and Jack London was a man who, through his constant active imaginations and the writing of his many books, was confronted with the Self - had called up the Self. It is sad to think, but it was tragically unavoidable, that Jack could not find any positive aspect in this figure.

We don't know how much he realized that the archetype of the Self had established itself in him.

We know that in the story "The Red One" he certainly describes in large details his meeting with the Self.

We don't know, however, how much he realized that in writing the story he was writing all about himself and that he had met the objective Psyche.

He died at the age of forty under circumstances which never made it quite clear whether he had committed suicide or died from natural causes.

There is, however, no doubt that toward the end of his life he was a very sick man.

On one of his trips to Hawaii in May of 1916, six months before his death, he wrote "The Red One," a story which I want to present to you here today.

It was preceded by stories like "The Hussy," in which a man finds the Tower of Jewels, the gold of the Incas, on a high mountain, and is followed by a story called "Argus of the Ancient Times," in which an old man is in quest of the Great Treasure and finds it.

He writes there, It was in the dusk of Death's fluttery wings that Tarwater thus crouched, and, like his remote forebear, the child-man, went to myth-maldng, and sun-heroizing, himself hero-maker and the hero in quest of the immemorable treasure difficult of attainment.

Either he must attain the treasure - for so ran the inexorable logic of the shadow-land of the unconscious - or else sink into the all-devouring sea, the blackness eater of the light that swallowed to extinction the sun each night. .. the sun that arose ever in rebirth next morning in the east, and that had become to man man's first symbol of immortality through rebirth.

I will now give you a brief outline of his story, "The Red One." It is interesting to know that the first title he gave it was "The Message."

It was written on the 22nd of May, 1916, exactly six months before his untimely death, and exactly thirty-eight years ago to the day.

Bassett, the hero of the story, is a young English scientist and botanist who is in search of the mythical jungle butterfly – one which is more than one foot from wing-tip to wing-tip and lives in the roof of the jungle. In quest of this mysterious butterfly, he hears one day from the island of Ringmanu a marvelous sound, which he likens to the trump of an archangel.

He determines at once to discover the mysterious instrument which creates this sound.

Throughout the story Jack London gives abundant and beautiful descriptions of this sound: "sonorous as thunder, mellow as a golden bell, thin and sweet as a thrummed taut cord of silver."

"Walls of cities might well fall down before so vast and compelling a summons."

"It is like the mighty cry of some Titan of the Elder World vexed with misery or wrath."

In almost every word of this magnificent story one feels the extreme fascination which the mysterious Red One exerts on Bassett - pardon me, on Jack London.

The Self truly inspired this story - there is not a superfluous word in it.

Fascinated by the magic of the tone, Bassett enters the jungle, accompanied by the boy, Sagawa, who carries the shotgun and all the naturalist's gear of his master.

Immediately upon moving into the jungle, Sagawa is decapitated - and Bassett, in his fight with the primitive natives, has a terrible struggle to survive.

He loses two fingers of his hand. He spends several nights in the jungle and is eaten up by the insects, becomes very sick, shaken with fever; but at last succeeds in getting out of the jungle into a wonderful grassland.

He then enters a village and finds there a roasted pig - there he meets the Anima for the first time.

He resolves to shoot her, but can never remember whether he had or not - any more than he could remember how he chanced to be in that village, or how he succeeded in getting away from it.

At last, however, he fights his way into another village. This one happens to be the principal village in a federation of twelve.

Their god is the Red One whom all worship, and to whom they bring bloody sacrifices.

He, the Red One, has subdued the gods of all the other tribes on the island of Guadalcanal. Vngngn is the weak chief, Ngum is the medicine-man whose main occupation is the curing of heads over a fire.

The headhunters bring to him the heads of their victims, and through curing these N gum receives the wisdom contained in these heads.

Bassett is increasingly possessed by the magic peal of the Red One and now bends every effort to find out its secret and then bring it back to civilization.

He is very sick, and the natives know that he will never be able to leave them.

Therefore, they give him permission to roam in three quadrants of the compass; but the fourth quadrant, in which the Red One is located, is declared taboo to him.

In order to satisfy his consuming curiosity imposed upon him by the numinous sound of the Red One, and to find a way to set his eyes upon it, he decides to make love to Balatta, the girl who has saved him and has herself fallen in love with the whiteness of his skin.

She is just as frightened of breaking the taboo as he is attracted to it by the numinosity of its sound.

He succeeds, however, in persuading her to lead the way to the mysterious Red One.

He discovers that the Red One is a perfect sphere, fully 200 feet in diameter, with the color quality of lacquer, brighter than bright cherry red.

On closer investigation it appears that it is no lacquer, nor does the Red One have a smooth surface.

The substance is metal, but of no metal or combination of metals he had ever known.

On the slightest touch it quivered [with] a sound "so elusive thin that it was shimmeringly sibilant; ... piping like an elfin horn, ... like a peal from some
bell of the gods reaching earthward from across space."

Amongst its many names were The Loud Shouter, The God-Voiced, The BirdThroated, the Sun Singer, and the Star-Born.

The Star-Born was certainly the most fitting one. "It was a creation of artifice and mind, ... [A] child of intelligences. "

... "Bassett laughed aloud ... at the thought of this wonderful messenger, winged with intelligence across space, to fall into a bushman stronghold .... It was as if God's World had fallen into the muck mire of the abyss underlying the bottom of hell; ... as if the Sermon on the Mount had been preached in a roaring bedlam of lunatics. "

So Jack London describes this wonderful discovery.

"Who were they?" he asks.

"What were they, those far distant and superior ones who had bridged the sky with their gigantic, red-iridescent, heaven-singing message? ... [This] sounding sphere ... contained the speech and wisdom of the stars .... [It could] contain vast histories, profounds of research .... It was time's greatest gift to blindfold, insatiable, and sky-aspiring man. And to him, Bassett, had been vouchsaved the lordly fortune to be the first to receive this message from man's interstellar kin!"

After his return to the village, Bassett renews his plans for going back to civilization. Soon, however, he realizes that his fevers continue to weaken him,
and that death is inevitable.

He continues to make love to Balatta, but with utter

reluctance and loathing. He escapes from her as much as possible into the hut of Ngurn, the medicine-man who spends his time with curing heads and
incantations.

He assures Bassett that it will not be very long before he will also cure his head, because Bassett will certainly die from his illness.

On a day when his mind is unclouded by his fevers, Bassett therefore proposes a contract to Ngurn.

He wants to see and hear the Red One once more and die with this wonderful peal in his ears.

He will accept to be ritually killed by Ngurn while seeing and hearing the Red One. This is done.

At the last moment, Bassett consideres that he still could kill Ngurn with his shotgun, but he rejects this idea.

But why cheat him? ... Head-hunting cannibal, beast of a human ... , nevertheless Old Ngurn had ... played squarer than square .... [I]t would
be a ghastly pity and an act of dishonour to cheat the old fellow at the last. His head was Ngurn's, and Ngurn's head to cure it would be .. . . And Bassett ... bending forward his head as agreed, ... forgot Balatta who was merely a woman ... and undesired .... And for that instant, ere the end, there fell upon Bassett the shadow of the Unknown .... [I]t seemed that he gazed upon the serene face of the Medusa, Truth -And ... he saw the vision of his head turning slowly, always turning, in the devil-devil house beside the breadfruit tree.

These almost literal quotations will convey to you the full poetry and inspired quality of this story.

But behind this poetry the story of Jack London's tragedy appears in stark relief.

Let us remember that as a child he climbed on the locomotive, and carried by the magic power of the Unconscious, he developed a fascinating personality; he wrote an incredible amount of great and also mediocre stories, was always driven to overdemand himself, strove to achieve the impossible in many fields, always living life to the fullest and fearlessly, sometimes wantonly, risking more than even his powerful organism could stand.

So illness overtook him, catastrophe broke upon him in the fire of his beloved Wolf House.

His daughters from his first marriage refused to live with him.

In the midst of thousands of friends, men and women, he was lonely.

He did not and could not realize that by his daring adventures into the life of the spirit, he had come into the neighbourhood of the Self, nor could he
realize that the might of his genius did not originate in his ego, but came from the Self. For a long time, he could afford to identify with the Self and feel himself as a superman. Sooner or later, the "Auseinandersetzung" between himself and the Self had to begin.

And that is what the second dream tries to tell him. The "Man," the ominous figure, the Anthropos who descended, was destiny and became his
nemesis.

As Ngurn says in "The Red One," paraphrasing the Old Testament, "No white man could see him and live." (Exodus 33:20: "No man shall see me,
and live.")

And yet Jack London, in the person of Bassett, looked upon him and lived. He was even able to touch it and to awaken its marvellous voice and then
return to the village.

This he was able to accomplish because he went down to see him accompanied by the primitive Anima, that Anima so despised by Bassett.

He had actually acquired his fatal illness practically at the instant at which he entered the jungle.

And yet he did not die from his illness.

His illness rather gave him the chance to experience the miraculous sphere again, to expose himself once more to the greatest risk and grace which can be bestowed upon man.

That is, to meet the Self in its fullness, whose other name is Truth.

He was driven to it in the hopelessness of his psychic condition, but paradoxically enough he also volunteered. It was a contract he made with the Self.

At the last moment he was indeed tempted to cheat God but rejected it, because he acknowledged that the Self had played squarer than square with him.

This was different from Faust, the story of another man who was granted a meeting and association with the Self, and upon whom the Self bestowed its richest gift - and whom he cheated at the last. Jack London's hero, in contrast, was true to himself to the end.

He recognized that the Self had given him both spiritual and material riches, had played squarer than square with him and he, Jack London, must needs play fair as well with the Self to the end.

In the case of Faust, Faust's "immortal" soul is carried to Heaven, and his redemption takes place in the beyond. His last achievement is the discovery of
the moment in its fullness.

But Jack London's fulfilment is the vision of Truth, the Zen experience at the moment of his death, and the slow turning of the head in the devil-devil house, in the post-mortal state.

While the Self is the all-pervading motif of the story, we actually discover all the classical archetypes of the collective unconscious in this story, and even in their classical sequence: Shadow, Anima, Old Wise Man and Self.

By its very beauty of language, it is obvious that it is not thought out, but truly inspired.

The patterns of the Unconscious themselves have dictated the story.

In Bassett we find the Ego, or to be more correct, the representative of Jack London's Ego.

It is in Bassett that we see the scientist, the rationalist who however carries in himself the longing for the non-rational which is symbolized in his quest for the mythical butterfly, a fitting symbol for the psyche.

In his quest he encounters something that transcends by far the value and meaning of this butterfly. It is the magic sound of the mysterious Red One.

Just as a comparison, I want to show you this amusing picture from the "New Yorker" of October 3, 1953. Jack London did not take to his heels - as
the entomologist does in this picture when confronted with the mysterium of the Soul, who holds on to his "scientific" conceptions, which cannot catch or hold the Psyche. Jack London, in contradistinction, is immediately captured by the sound of the Red One, and is poisoned by the dank and noisy jungle of the Unconscious.

Like so many classical journeys, this one also begins as an adventure of a hero and his companion.

But in contrast, for instance, to Dante's journey with Virgil or Moses' with Dulquarnein, this second figure - the servant - is described with a remarkable degree of contempt: "He has a queer little monkeyish face, eloquent with fear."

Yet he is faithful and- as it turned out- he foresees that the adventure must have a tragic end.

Though a companion on this quest, he is not invested with the qualities of a superior guide like Virgil in the Divine Comedy.

He has much more the characteristics of Jack London's inferior personality of his shadow.

His advice is not listened to, his common sense is not appreciated, and actually this shadow figure has no chance to interact with the Ego.

The Ego at this point has already fallen under the spell of the Red One, and there is nothing, not even a trace of common sense, which would give the Ego fair warning of the dangers awaiting it on this quest, thus permitting it to equip itself for the hazards of the journey.

Thus, poorly prepared Bassett enters the Unconscious like a curious adolescent, without much realization of the dangers of such a journey, and Sagawa is immediately killed - that is, he is decapitated, and the hero is assailed by primitives with poisoned arrows and falls victim to the insects of the jungle, thus acquiring his fatal illness.

He has irrevocably been captured by the process of individuation.

The fascination issuing from the archetypes, and quite especially from the Self, has caught him; but the loss of the shadow, i.e. the lack of insight into his human limitations, has the effect that the Unconscious invades him as poison and infection.

Thus the Ego is forced to fight a courageous battle, but without the possibility of an ultimate victory or accomplishment of the task.

Translated into actual reality, this psychological condition in Jack London meant, for instance, that he built the "Snark" and made the famous journey to the South Sea islands.

In this way he overestimated by far his stamina and powers, his physical and financial resources, and actually contracted the disease which fatally sapped his strength.

In this way, one could consider Jack London as a tragic victim of the process of individuation. He certainly is, but still not a failure - because he lived his life fully and without reservation, because like a man he courageously accepted the challenge of the Self, and as a human being he was granted the vision of God in his voluntary sacrifice.

The second of the classical figures, the Anima, actually saves his life; but nevertheless she is treated by him with an amazing hostility and loathing.

In remembering his first encounter with her he cannot even make sure whether he killed her or not. In her second and more permanent form, he heaps contempt on her, calls her quite frankly the inferior sex, expresses the same sentiments as Nietzsche.

Quite obviously this Anima is to a large extent contaminated with the shadow.

Not only is she described as primitive in the sense of primeval or original, but more in the sense of being barbaric, dirty, ugly and smelly.

Furthermore, she is predominantly Nature to him, in the sense of sex without any positive feeling tone attached to her. In order to make contact, he has to teach her how to bathe, even to the point of giving her frequent scrubbings.

When he meets her for the first time, he tells that "her sex was advertised by the one article of finery with which she was adorned, namely a pig's tail, thrust through a hole in her left ear lobe."

His relationship to her is simply that of making use of her and of exerting power over her. He needs her because there is a taboo which forbids a stranger to see the Red One, and because the Red One is hidden in a gorge within the Fourth Quadrant.

He can find this place only with the help of a native - and Balatta, because of her love for him, would break the taboo.

For this reason only, he is forced to make up to her. He uses the charm of his white skin and his masculinity as assets in the deal to achieve his overriding ambition of gaining access to the mysterious Red One.

At no point in the story is she treated as an equal, to say nothing of consideration or love.

Therefore, we find in Jack London's hero qualities like fascination by the Red One to an unlimited degree: acknowledgment of its power, superiority,
and transcendental quality.

We find submission to it and ecstasy in completely surrendering to it - but never love.

And this is probably one important reason why in the same way as the Anima was contaminated with the shadow, the Self appears contaminated with an important aspect of the Anima, i.e. why it has the transmundane color - this unearthly red.

As was to be expected, the third classical figure is that of the Old Wise Man.

Bassett is genuinely attracted to Ngurn, the primitive medicine-man of the tribe, but he also spends as much time as possible with him in order to escape from the loathsome Anima.

Again we find that this figure has a great many negative qualities.

Though he is certainly very wise and conveys his wisdom to Bassett, he is after Bassett's head nevertheless; not in order to re-establish his health and
return him to life, but to gain his head and cure it.

This whole story occurs in the country of headhunting primitives.

The atmosphere of headhunting and the curing of heads pervades it.

All the long talks between Bassett and Ngum take place in Ngum's hut whilst he is curing heads.

He is one of the best curers of heads, having inherited his art from his medicine-man ancestors, an art long lost in other tribes.

He promises Bassett to take good care of his head after his death and to make his head his masterpiece.

A curious motive! True, Jack London, in his South Sea journey, came across some examples of hunting and curing heads, but that it turned up just in this story is most significant.

I have met this motif of the wise head in dreams of my patients.

I have met it in dreams, for instance, as the head which continually spoke perfect wisdom – in this way symbolizing the Logos principle of the Unconscious. I have encountered it in dreams also as the vessel which had to be prepared and worked upon in order to become the perfect vessel.

I have most frequently found it as the Round One, in this way being a symbol of the Self, a most suitable symbol, since as head it represented the essential and concentrated substance of the human being.

In Psychology and Alchemy (pp. 431-2 of the English edition) Jung refers to the "sixth parable" of the Splendor Solis, where a vision of a dismembered body is mentioned, whose head was of fine gold, but separated from the body.

Jung also mentions that the Greek Alchemists styled themselves: "Children of the Golden Head."

In his newest book, "About the Roots of Consciousness" (p. 269), Jung speaks in detail about primitive beliefs and rituals in which animal and human sacrifices were made in order to gain a head and to make it white; he mentions other rather gruesome rituals, the purpose of which was to gain a specially prepared head giving forth great wisdom.

According to Jung, the head can be interpreted as the so-called "round element," since the Liber Quartorum establishes a connection between the vessel and the head. Furthermore, Zosimos mentions several times "the extremely white stone which is in the head."

In addition, he mentions the rumor that Gerbert of Rheims [may] have possessed a golden skull which revealed oracles to him.

According to rabbinical tradition, the "teraphim," the oracle mentioned in the Old Testament, was supposed to have been a cut-off head or skull. Jung also quotes M. I. Bin Gorion: Die Sagen der Juden, in which it is said that these teraphim were made in the following way:

the head of somebody who had to be a native was cut off, then the hair was plucked out.

Then the head was sprinkled with salt and anointed with oil.

After that a small tablet made of copper or gold was inscribed with the name of the god

and put under the tongue of the cut-off head.

The head was then placed in a room, candles were lit before it, and one bowed before it, and it happened that when one prostrated oneself before it, the head began to talk and to answer all the questions which one addressed to it.

These examples are a striking parallel to Jack London's story and show that an archetypal pattern imposed itself on Jack London when he wrote at some length about the curing of the head - and that he recognized its true purpose, which was to gain wisdom.

It follows an archetypal pattern when, in the end, he sees his own head slowly turning as the serene face of Truth.

It is the "veritas efficaciae" which, according to Dom (Psychology and Alchemy, 256), is "the highest power and an impregnable fortress wherein the philosopher's stone lies safeguarded."

Ngum says to Bassett: "I will tell you many secrets for I am an old man and very wise, and I shall be adding wisdom to wisdom as I turn your head in the
smoke. "

And yet, there is a great difference between the motif of the teraphim or the old alchemists and the curing of the head as described in "The Red One."

The Alchemists or the Hebrew priests gaining the head did not identify with it.

They gained possession of the head and found means to communicate with it.

In Jack London's story, it is Bassett's head which will be cured, and wisdom will accrue to it and issue from it only after his death.

In other words, it will occur only in the post-mortal state.

That is: the wisdom will never serve life or Bassett's individual life, but will represent a terminal condition.

The head itself as the Round One certainly symbolizes the Self, as Jung has demonstrated in Psychology and Alchemy.

In his new book, About the Roots of Consciousness, Jung quotes the Liber Quartorum: "Vas ... oportet esse rotunda figurae: ut sit artifex huius (aperis) mutator firmanenti et testae capitis, ut cum sit res qua indigemus, res simplex." (The vessel must be of round shape, just as the artist of this work is a transformer of the firmament and of the skull, and like the thing which we need is "a simple thing.")

As a vessel, however, it also has feminine characteristics and therefore has a certain Anima aspect.

One can therefore conclude that it was more the instinctual and emotional aspect of the Anima which was so unacceptable to Jack London, whilst her more spiritual aspect, relating him to the Self, could be assimilated to Consciousness.

This head as a vessel of wisdom needing a great deal of work represents the alchemical or psychological process - the opus.

Yet it has a rather lugubrious aspect in Jack London's story and casts its dark and fatal shadow on Jack London's experience.

This is certainly essentially different in the great symbol of the Self which has given its name to the whole story, and of which we hear again and again
on account of its all-encompassing numinosity.

The sphere as a symbol of the Self is one of the most familiar representations of the Self, as Jung has shown in Psychology and Alchemy.

The cosmogony of Empedocles, for example, calls this spherical being eudaimonestatos Theos ("the most serene God"), just as Jack London calls the Red Sphere the serene face of Truth.

The curious thing about it in this story is that it is described as a metal, "though unlike any metal or combination of metals he had ever known."

He observes that it shows "signs of heat and fusing."

It is "a child of intelligences, remote and unguessable, working corporally in metals.

It is a far-journeyer which was lacquered by its fiery bath in two atmospheres."

In the Roots of Consciousness Jung discusses the question why the inner man and his spiritual being happen to be represented by metals.

He anwers that Nature seems to be concerned to drive consciousness to greater clarity, and therefore uses man's constant desire for metals, especially the precious ones, to search for them and to examine its possibilities.

In this occupation, it might dawn upon him that a dangerous demon or a dove of the Holy Ghost might be contained in lead.

It has exactly this effect upon the hero of our story.

Entranced by the wonder of the unthinkable and unguessable thing, it makes him reflect and meditate on it.

Psychologically speaking, it means that he has become aware of a world of active intelligences beyond the narrow field of human consciousness, that the awe engendered by the archetypes has struck him, and that he who for so long identified with the archetype of the Self, at last recognizes the activity of the archetypes and asks himself: "Who are they?" and significantly, "What are they?" - those far superior ones who had bridged the sky with their gigantic, red-iridescent, heaven-singing message.

It reminds us of Dorn, who says:

"Nemo vero potest cognoscere se, nisi sciat quid, et non quis ipse sit, a quo dependat, vel cuius sit ... et in quern .finem factus sit." ("No one can truly know himself, unless he knows what he is, and not who he is, on what he depends, or to what or whom he belongs, and for what purpose he was created. ") Cf. CW 9.(ii), iJ252, p. 164

Jung comments that "this differentiation between 'quid' and 'quis' is extremely significant.

Whilst 'quis' has an indubitably personalistic aspect and therefore refers to the Ego, the 'quid' is a neuter, and therefore presupposes nothing but an object of which it is not even sure that it has personality. "

In this way, Jack London experiences the psyche as an objective reality, as a "quid" and not a "quis."

It is even possible to gain its extraordinary wisdom. He realizes that it might contain "engines and

elements and mastered forces, ... lore and mysteries and destiny-controls."

What insight! What vision! In this way, Jack London recognized that the archetypes are the factors which arrange and control our fate, and that by contacting them, we establish a relationship to our destiny and no longer remain mere objects of Fate.

In this way, he recognized his destiny, but also his inability to change his destiny at such a late hour.

He, Jack London, was the one who was "vouchsaved the lordly fortune to be the first to receive this message from man's interstellar kin."

On account of his unstinted devotion to life as he found it, and to the spirit as he experienced it, he was granted the great vision, and this was his fulfilment.

His strength was spent, and he could not go beyond this intuition.

All his life he was a seeker for the "immemorable treasure difficult of attainment."

Through most of his life he had been seeking the progress and salvation of mankind in Socialism.

Irving Stone said his mind completely surrendered to Karl Marx.

But this is not the whole truth inasmuch as he, at the same time, was one of the great mythmakers of mankind.

So much for Jack London. We, the heirs of his message, must ask ourselves how much of all this is still our problem today.

What Jack London observed in discovering the mysterious sphere, the Red One, was an event in the Collective Unconscious.

The story, "The Red One," does not describe Jack London's personal psychology, but is an accurate picture of American psychology and of Western man as a whole.

The Self has embedded itself not only on the mythical island of Guadalcanal, but everywhere in mankind.

Jack London was not the first one, as he believed, to whom this lordly fortune was vouchsafed.

Nietzsche was probably its first tragic victim in modem times.

It is worth noting that Jung's great development and discovery of the Collective Unconscious took place just in these same years.

In a commentary on Zimmer's book, Art Form and Yoga, he mentions the fact that it was at about this time that he discovered the mandala and
essential facts about the archetype of the Self.

The world as a whole has been in constant unrest since. In the years that followed the writing of "The Red One," two world wars, revolutions of social,
political and religious nature have been fought, and the discovery of the Hydrogen Bomb has been made.

All this is due to the all-determining fact that, as Jack London describes it, the Self has embedded itself in our soil.

But the soil in which it has been implanted is a "bushman stronghold."

We are "man-eating and headhunting savages."

It is "as if God's World had fallen into the muck mire of the abyss underlying the bottom of hell,. . . as if the Sermon on the Mount had been
preached in a roaring bedlam of lunatics."

Bassett's problem is our problem.

We are in the same psychological boat. It is a general human attitude to forget the Shadow.

We need a good and adequate knowledge of the Shadow to release his positive values.

We cannot afford to maintain an attitude of contempt, hostility or loathing against the Anima, i.e. against the non-rational quality of the Unconscious.

We would do better to accept it as it is, a world of images and of mysterious life.

Such an approach will give us new strength and understanding to receive the Self in our midst and thus to release its unlimited resources of wisdom.

The changes necessary for the reception of the Self in our life cannot occur by means of political agreements or economic planning, they cannot take place in institutions or nations, but only through the work and experience of the individual human being to whom they occur in the stillness and storms of his soul.

Only that civilization will survive which allows the individual to meet his Self in full freedom.

Only thus, as Jack London says, can "man's life on earth, individual and collective, spring up from its present mire to inconceivable heights of purity and power." ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Pages 288-305

"Then He will open the ears of men" James Kirsch, Tel Aviv, spring 1934

"Then He will open the ears of men" James Kirsch, Tel Aviv, spring 1934

It is widely understood in medicine at this time that neuroses are functional in nature, meaning that certain pathological symptoms cannot be traced back to anatomically identifiable organs or organ systems.

There are no localized seats of disease in neuroses; instead there is "a certain something" which is ill or suffering and cannot be readily named.

The first investigations by Charcot and Bernheim showed very clearly that it was possible to plant symptoms by means of hypnosis - i.e. through mental
influence - just as one could make them disappear again.

Thus the facts seemed to indicate that certain mental phenomena - thoughts, words, feelings, affects, or experiences - evoke neurotic symptoms, i.e. changes, which also have an impact on physical well-being.

As important as these discoveries undoubtedly were, therapeutically they were totally unsatisfactory. For it was soon recognized that the individual symptom did indeed disappear, but another took its place.

It is to Freud's indisputable credit that he found an alternative way.

With his wonderful intuition, as if by chance, he discovered that when one causes a patient to speak in detail about himself, the symptoms also disappear; especially if a patient relates pertinent experiences with appropriate affect, the experiences will be, as it is called in medical terms,
abreacted.

On such occasions, patients often also related dreams. Here again, the imp "Chance" led a highly gifted individual to a crucial discovery.

Freud soon recognized that dreams elicited vitally important material from the deeper layers of the psyche.

Long-forgotten experiences which may have adversely affected a person's health came up from the depth of the unconscious.

With the discovery of dreams, Freud found a new instrument for treatment which in contrast to the coarse and violent method of hypnosis -
originated in the patient's own psyche.

The first dream analyses deeply impressed Freud and moved him to call the dream the via regia to the unconscious.

On the basis of these surprising new impressions, Freud very quickly felt the need to establish a theory about dreams - the famous wish theory - and with it began Freud's unending tragedy.

Unexpectedly, by way of dreams, Freud had encountered the creative depth of the human psyche.

In the final analysis, every psychological theory originates out of the experience of whoever creates it.

It always depends on the subject and is capable, at best, of explaining the psychology of its creator or human beings similar to him.

It is either a fine- or a wide-meshed net, which indeed can pull much from the deep seas of the soul and bring it to light.

One cannot claim, however, that all organisms living in the seas of the soul have been caught with this net.

It is far more likely that huge numbers of living things of great diversity exist in regions where the net will never reach.

The distressing but inevitable fact is that the creator of a psychological theory catches himself in his own net and loses sight of the vastness of the soul.

An excellent example of the way Freud deals with the unconscious is his analysis of a dream which he published in his work Miirchenstoffe in Triiumen:
She [Freud's patient] is in an entirely brown room.

A small door opens to a steep staircase where a strange, little man ascends and enters the room. He is small, has white hair, a bald spot, and a red nose.

He dances in front of her around the room and acts comically.

Then he withdraws and descends the stairs.

He is dressed in a gray, tight-fitting garment. (Correction: He wears a long, black coat and gray pants.)

Here I cannot enter into all the details of Freud's proposed interpretation and his odd use of associations but would like to emphasize one point which has methodological importance.

He writes: "The personal description of the little man fits her father-in-law without alteration."

However, his annotation already indicates that the description of the person does not entirely fit the father-in-law.

Also, it is not clear why the dream did not mention the father-in-law if it referred to him.

The patient doubtless brings up the father-in-law as an idea that suddenly occurs to her.

The question is whether the little man explains the father-in-law or, conversely, the sudden idea of the "father-in-law" explains the little man.

What should be considered as real? To whom does the dream actually refer?

The simple question, how the associative material is to be used, shows clearly that the interpreter can bring his own attitude into a dream. In general, Freud tends to relate and reduce all dream figures to real persons.

Also, in this case, Freud says:

This is the father-in-law; then, without further justification, the father; finally also the penis.

The second association is to the German fairy tale "Rumpelstiltskin." Freud comments, "'Rumpelstiltskin' also facilitates the access to deeper, infantile layers of dream-thoughts.

The droll little fellow (Rumpelstiltskin, father-in-law, or penis?) whose name is unknown, whose secret one would like to discover, who performs such extraordinary feats (in the fairy tale he turns straw into gold) the rage one feels toward him, etc. - these are elements whose relationship to the
fundamentals of the neurosis can only be touched upon here."

I ask for the reader's indulgence for my dwelling on these details.

However, it is really necessary to ascertain, for once, on precisely what facts Freud bases his theories and to what extent he does violence to the dream with his "interpretation."

Actually, he does not interpret the dream but only provides a number of "symbol" translations, so that nobody has truly understood the dream, but only receives, at best, some references to Freud's well-known theories about infantile sexuality, the castration-complex, etc.

Rumpelstiltskin also does not merit further consideration after being recognized
as the "penis."

Is that what he really is?

Or is there again a confusion between the Phallus and the penis, the creative principle and the visible expression on the human body? Inasmuch as this physical part is also comprised in the Phallus, Freud's theories may be accurate.

However, they cover only one aspect, and Freud does not recognize the larger and more essential one, which- with his oft-repeated phrase, "this is nothing but" is at first unconsciously and later, in Future of an Illusion, fiercely rejected.

Anyone who appreciates the fairy tale atmosphere of "Rumpelstiltskin" may prefer to perceive the little fellow who lives in the woods and spins gold from straw at night as the soul, or perhaps the nightly creative activity of the soul, manifested in dreams.

Is it not the soul which confers value on everything we are, think, feel, and believe, and which transforms an event into an experience, turning straw into gold?

Since I do not know the lady who had the dream and have no additional associations from her, I can only presume this interpretation, basing it on my knowledge of the fairy tale.

But isn't it at least just as possible as Freud's view, based on the associations he mentions, as his conception of the little man as father-in-law, father, penis?

Would my conception provide a new understanding of the dream?

For example, the soul as the creative principle comes to her (by means of analysis) at night, in a dream, dressed in gray theory, and leaves her again when it is not understood.

As I said before, I cannot give an exact proof of this interpretation, but the allusion to Rumpelstiltskin, who after all is able to tum straw into gold, is certainly more than the male sexual organ.

Thus the tragedy of the Galut Jew has been realized once again in Freud's psyche.

Fate led him into the creative depth of life, but at that moment he closed it off with a theory conditioned by his uprooting and his childhood experiences of the Galut.

"He roused the unconscious so that it gushed forth powerfully, but not in order to honor it as his superhuman, eternal part, but instead to obtain information and to give his children contemptuous names."

Therefore, it is no surprise that strong oppositions arose against Freud and his theory.

Freud overlooked the fact that this resistance emanated not only from individuals who did not want to become conscious of their infantile shadow side, and so, for instance, did not wish to admit their perverse sexual fantasies.

There were also people who espoused an entirely different psychology and who lived, as it were, on a different island in the ocean of the soul.

The great Zurich psychologist C. G. Jung- upon whom, in his personal relations, Freud had made a great impression - grasped this great aspect of the unconscious and with it the huge importance that exploration of the unconscious could have for human intellectual development

On the basis of his experiences he could not concede that the psychology of all people could be explained with a view from only one comer.

He therefore avoided establishing one theory that should be viewed as the one and only solution.

When he casts his net into the sea of the soul, he remains cognizant of the fact that there is an infinite diversity of additional life in that ocean.

Consequently he avoids theories as such, preferring to leave the images of the unconscious in their natural state, pregnant with possibility.

For this reason, he has to live with reproaches of being "mystical," unclear, and difficult to understand, which really bears witness to the fact that he recognizes the difficulty, complexity, and liveliness of psychic material.

These things can easily be destroyed with words, concepts, and intellectual haste.

With this attitude, Jung left behind the atmosphere of the sick-room.

He is no longer treating the neurosis but instead the suffering human being.

A neurosis is not a localized illness but rather a sickness affecting the whole human being - often without symptoms.

The person, the entire person, is suffering, perhaps because he has not found meaning in life, or the meaning of his life.

Everyone has dreams, and the unconscious has much to say to everyone.

The dream itself is never a neurotic symptom, but it has something to add to the consciousness of the patient, something he does not know, or something he is not sufficiently aware of.

Thus, Jung perceives the unconscious not only as the center of repressions, a rubbish heap of perverse fantasies, but instead as the creative life within us.

The unconscious is not neurotic. Our attitude to the unconscious determines whether we are neurotic or not.

Therefore, Jung strives to lead human beings to the experience of the unconscious; whether or not they succeed is a question of fate.

Jung often experienced that a patient's contact with the unconscious affected the individual in a way which can only be characterized as "transformation."

The unconscious is a part of nature, and like all of nature it is true; it is not hypocritical, it does not lie. Consequently, the dream does not have a facade.

It represents the text of the unconscious, and it is a text which wants to be read, and read according to what the writer wished to convey.

It can be compared to a letter somebody writes to us, which we should understand as much as possible as the writer intended it.

Perhaps the most distinctive characteristic of the dream and of all messages from the unconscious is its strangeness from the point of view of
consciousness.

It is as if we had nothing to do with the creation of the dream, but it was sent to us. So in German we often say, "Es traumte mir. "

In ancient times, the dream's strangeness in relation to consciousness was clearly perceived, and so it was said that a god or goddess had sent the dream.

This coincides with one of Jung's fundamental conceptions.

He recognizes a higher force, greatly surpassing the human ego, an all-knowing force beyond time and space.

Within the unconscious he distinguishes two layers:

(1) a personal layer containing memories, experiences, feelings, affects, etc. which originate in the personal life of the individual; and

(2) the layer of the collective unconscious storing all experiences, images, possibilities, instincts, etc. acquired and developed by human beings in the course of millions of years.

They are embedded in a layer of guessed-at possibilities in the depths, ready to well up in an individual whenever his life encounters a dead end, or when his suffering cannot be alleviated by the limited means and experiences of the human mind.

For that reason, primitive people made a clear distinction between "small" and "big" dreams.

The small dream is of importance only to an individual, while the big dream is significant for the tribe or the general public.

On the basis of such big dreams, the fate of entire peoples has been decided.

For Europeans who are reasonably well informed about the life of primitive peoples, it is astonishingly impressive to experience how far-reaching the influence of a dream, a vision, an inner voice, and all manifestations of the unconscious can be on the lives of primitives.

However, we do not even have to go that far.

We merely have to tum our attention to our own early history, as it is recorded in the Bible, in order to be aware of the decisive importance of the dream, and the unconscious in general, for the life of our people.

For instance, I would like to cite a passage in The First Book ofMoses9 20:3-6:

"At night, God appeared in a dream to Abimelech and said to him ... " It is self-evident that God comes to human beings in their dreams.

The voice which speaks in a dream is not the voice of the ego.

It has information to convey which is not known to the ego and which the ego cannot know on its own.

Naively, and without the slightest doubt, Abimelech is guided exactly by what the dream proclaims.

This brief example shows that the ancient people, unlike us moderns - "Triiume sind Schi:iume " is the ridiculous opinion of enlightened people - attributed great significance to their dreams and regarded them as the source of God's revelations. (Similarly in The First Book of Moses 31 :24.)

The same is true in Jacob's dream in The First Book of Moses 28: 10-22.

A big dream, without doubt! It shows in a splendid way how Jacob's soul initiates a relationship to the Highest and how an intimate exchange with the Eternal takes place. "God's messengers ascend and descend."

The experience touches Jacob in the depth of his soul.

He experiences the sublimity of the place and is deeply frightened:

"He was afraid and said: how awesome is this place! It is none other than the house of God and the gate of heaven."

In this dream, we find three characteristic elements: (1) the imagery of the dream; (2) the direct language; and (3) the emotional affect of the dream
experience.

It is generally known that dreams occur in images.

How these images are to be interpreted, however, is a problem that has been on people's minds since prehistoric times.

Freud was not the first who thought these images speak a language.

The question is, of course, what language they speak.

Such a classic dream shows clearly the absurdity of a merely sexual interpretation.

In Jacob's dream, an interpretation is initiated within the dream itself, through the prophecy of a blessing.

As a consequence, Jacob is quite certain that he did not invent the dream but that it originated in exalted spheres, where one also has to search
for its meaning.

As he awakes, he is overcome by an overwhelming emotional impression that the Absolute, the Irrational, has spoken to him.

He knows that he has had a big dream, and he vows that the place where he had the dream is a holy place.

We sense the effect of the dream on Jacob and how he has been transformed by it.

For the future, this dream will have the greatest significance for the entire people of Israel and its history.

Joseph's dreams have a different character.

Of course, they are also immediately recognized for their importance, and it is interesting to note that they were understood the same way by his brothers (The First Book of Moses 31 :5-8).

Here again, God's messenger is speaking, and so the dreams confer importance and distinction to Joseph.

He feels like a special person, and his legitimacy is confirmed by these dreams.

The voice of the unconscious was not always heard.

An excellent example is the passage in Samuel:

"And God's word was precious in those days" (I Samuel 3:1). It is wonderful to note the reverential attitude with which Eli and Samuel accept this voice.

More often than dreams, we find "visions" in the Bible, a vision in connection with a voice, and also apparitions where it is not at all clear whether
they originated in a dream or a vision.

As varied as their content is, it is all the more essential to be clear about their structure and psychological construction.

In the vast majority of cases, not only the vision is communicated, but also the
individual's reaction to it.

A human being responds to the inner apparition, and often there is a continuing conversation between the ego and the absolute "Other," e.g. The First Book of Moses 15:1 and Isaiah 6.

The vision oflsaiah's call contains the primal experience.

It is recounted with
the lively power of the great visionary.

It begins with a simple description of
the magnificent experience (Isaiah 6:1-2):

"I saw God sitting on a huge, raised
throne, and his robes filled the temple. Seraphim stood above him, and each had six wings. With two wings the Seraphim covered his face, with two wings they covered his feet, and with two they flew."

In the third verse, a voice is heard:

"Holy, holy, holy," and with that the interpretation and comprehension of the marvelous happening has begun.

The enormous psychic upheaval of seeing God himself, even veiled by the wings of the Seraphim, is indicated by the shaking of the foundations of the threshold.

But he remains differentiated from what is happening within him. He says, "Woe is me, I am undone! I am a man of unclean lips" (Isaiah 6:5a).

The fact that he is not devoured by this vision shows the strength of his conscious personality.

In the subsequent verses the contact with the vision is fully resumed. The Seraph touches him with the burning coal.

He is cleansed. With this he is called, but also transformed.

When we submit such dreams and visions to a psychological analysis, there is no mention of the divine content itself.

Such an approach to things we are familiar with does not offend religious feelings.

On the contrary, it gives us as human beings a new understanding of the Immensity and its effects on the soul.

Certainly, Freud saw in the "unconscious" only repression and rejected contents of all sorts; but the consensus omnium, and also that of our Bible, knows it as the Highest speaking to human beings through the soul.

The Bible has various views of the expressions of the unconscious.

Originally dreams were considered to have originated self-evidently from God; this is especially clear in The Fourth Book of Moses17 12:6:

"And he said, Hear my words, when a prophet of God appears to you, I will make myself known by visions, I will speak to him through dreams."

In contrast to this, Moses was deemed worthy of direct and sustained revelation:

"I speak to him from mouth to mouth and show my face, and he will not see the image of God through riddles."

He appears to other prophets mostly in dreams.

And as we know, dreams speak a language which is difficult to understand; they pose riddles.

How to understand these riddles, and who is a ''poter, "have been questions throughout time. How could a prophet prove his identity?

Certainly, not every dream was sent by God.

Two personal prerequisites were necessary: spiritual purity and the absence of self-interest.

"Otherwise you will have night without vision, darkness without prophecy" (Micah 3:6-8): "Indeed, it will be night for you; you will no longer have visions. It will be dark, and you will be unable to do divination. The sun sets for the prophets, the day is dark for them. "

The third prerequisite consists of an entirely irrational moment, a choice which occurred before the human being comes into existence. Jeremiah 1:5:

"Before I formed you in the body, I chose you, and before you emerged from your mother's womb, I ordained you and appointed you as the prophet for all peoples."

But also, the content of the prophecy is the Shibboleth, to show whether they were sent by God, whether they are authentic or not.

This is the sign, whether or not what they prophesy is a vision of their hearts.

Inauthentic prophecies have an entirely personal character and reflect the human ego with its desires and impulses.

The experience is missing that something objective, something other than "I," has spoken.

This experience of the non-ego, the certainty that "It" is happening within me, and that the ego assumes a relationship with "It," this is the
characteristic of a true prophet.

If anyone has an authentic primal experience, like Jeremiah, that individual has a :fine power of discernment between the genuine and the false.
Referring to the fact that a dream has spoken is not sufficient.

There is something special about genuine inspiration, unlike the claims of other prophets.

Jeremiah 23:25: "I hear the words of the prophets who prophesy lies in my name. I have dreamed, I have dreamed!"

Only images can convey this unspeakable truth. Jeremiah 23:29: "My word is fire, says the Lord, a hammer which blasts boulders."

This power of discernment for true dreams, in comparison to lying dreams (chalomot sheker) was lost soon after the appearance of the great prophets.

Since it was no longer possible to tell who had the real inspiration, dreams and prophets were rejected.

Amos, the most powerful of the early prophets, had said (Amos 3 :8): "The lion has roared; who should not be afraid?

God has spoken; who should not prophesy?"

But Zechariah judges the prophets with contempt, resulting in a tremendous social decline, from adviser to the king and leader of the people ( even
if not always welcome as such), down to the lowest level of society.

Prophets and a spirit of uncleanness were now viewed as one and the same. Zechariah 13:2-6:

"I will also remove the prophets and the unclean spirits from the land. If anyone should still make prophecies, his father and his mother, his own parents will tell him: You shall not live, because you have told falsehoods in the name of God. And his own parents, his father and his mother, shall pierce him through as soon as he prophesies. On that day, the prophets will be ashamed of their prophetic vision whenever they prophesy. They will no longer put on a hairy mantle to tell lies. Each one will say: I am not a prophet, I am a farmer; or, from childhood I was raised to be a cattle-breeder."

The same as 2,000 years ago, we again stand at an important turning-point in our history.

The entire world finds itself in an era of enormous upheaval.

The old values and forms of religious and social ideology have little meaning for the psyche.

At best, religion is a "private matter."

It is stored in a more or less hidden corner of our life.

In any case, religion is not the whole of life.

Life yearns for a new experience, for an attitude which embraces the entire life.

At this critical stage, many sufferers turn to physicians who are supposed to heal such conditions. Were the physicians equal to that task?

Did the physicians understand the suffering of the soul, which was manifested in the strangest forms of neurosis?

Did they know that the problems of the time and the eternal human question expressed themselves in the individual as depression?

Our hygienic era could not have responded in any other way than to label these phenomena medically as neurosis, illness.

And yet, fundamentally, these are very old experiences and have eternal answers.

The writer of Job, for instance, knew very well that the human soul is the place where supernatural powers, God and Satan, do battle.

He was also aware of their effect on human beings.

Job 3: 11-13: "Why did I not die at birth? When I came out of my mother's womb, I should have died at once.

Why did the lap receive me, why did I suck from the breasts? Then I could lie still and rest, I would sleep and be at peace." Job 33:20-21: "All food disgusts him, even the most desirable delicacy." Is this not neurosis and depression?

How does Job find a way out of this depression?

"In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on people, in a light slumber on their bed, at that time he (God) opens the ear of the people and seals it with their teachings."

Also for us, who experience people's suffering and see how individuals express the radically shifting times as neurosis, the dream and all manifestations of the unconscious have proven - not by chance to be a fruitful path toward the patient's healing.

With this we also have rediscovered an old path that leads the individual to the
experience of the ancient fire, the "esh kedoshah. "

And thus we have come to what we know, glancing at the Tanakh, as the essential, to that which made Jacob into Israel, to the primal experience of religion.

For us, of course, in contrast to him, these experiences take entirely different forms and produce different effects; but what we experience is always the One, the Unchangeable, at all times and in all places.

With the return to our own land it is necessary to remember our own essence, the special character of our existence.

Everything will depend on whether our heart will harden, our ears go deaf and our eyes blind, or whether this time our eyes will see, our ears will hear, and our heart will understand (Isaiah 6: 10).

Whether we can give the true name to that which speaks to us through dreams and visions:

"This is a holy place." "Then he will heal us."

The way such things are happening to us now as Jewish people, and what response the unconscious is giving to the Jews' state of distress, may be illustrated by the following dream of a woman who heretofore was totally estranged from anything Jewish until awakened by events of the Hitler era:

Now I was crossing K. Street with Dr. S. and entered a store. There was a large exhibit of books and pictures. I descended further down a flight of stairs to the basement where especially rare and valuable books were stored. It was very dark there, and each book had additional lighting which was only visible as one stood directly in front of it. In the basement there was another room from which I heard voices, and I asked what was going on there. A small, bent-over man appeared, wearing a cap on his head and a heavy coat, with a large bunch of keys. He opened the door and pointed to a table, a large, round table, where ten men with long beards and caps were seated, holding prayer books. In the middle of the table was a silver box, lined with velvet, in which lay a diamond that sparkled so brightly, the table was lighted by it.

To comprehend the essential components of this dream, one only needs to extract what it contains.

The dream tells us that the lady goes into a store where all kinds of spiritual and artistic works are exhibited.

On the floor below especially rare and valuable things are stored, which require special illumination which is only visible when standing directly in front of them.

In addition, something extraordinary is happening, and a peculiar man is leading her to it.

This man we can consider to be the guardian of the threshold, the keeper of the keys, and in keeping with the entire atmosphere of the dream - a meliz, a religious figure who opens a spiritual room which is different from everything purely intellectual and artistic, as valuable as these may be. It is the religious community of Jews, and it is united and illuminated by the rays of a great gem.

So this dreamer, to whom until now Palestine and Judaism had consciously meant very little, found a very old truth.

She did not read or learn about it, but by experiencing the unconscious, she discovered the old Jewish idea that community can only be established with the help of the radiant force of a great symbol; the idea that the meaning and value of being a Jew and a human being are bestowed by this diamond, which is separate from all and yet unites all.

For this woman, and for psychotherapy, the same thing has happened through dreams as happened for Saul. He went out to search for female donkeys and instead found a kingdom.

She was looking for medication to treat a neurosis and instead found the royal diamond which heals the soul.

So I believe that dreams, visions, and other emanations of the unconscious can lead us Jews back to creativity, to humanness, and thus to Judaism and its lively further development.

We only have to learn, with the help of modem and exact science, to let the unconscious speak to us in its own language and to understand it. Intellect, art, and technology cannot save us, only the path that can revive the primal experience.

Then Israel - God's warrior - could once again raise its full voice in the chorus of the great religions of the East. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Pages 279-289

James Kirsch: Open Letter to the Palestinian Public

For the Palestinian Public 8 June 1934

When one presents to the Jewish public a topic fraught with as many sensitive aspects as the Jewish question in psychotherapy, one has to reckon with a multitude of complex reactions.

So it is no wonder that Jung - and I, too – have had the experience that our writing is not read correctly.

Thus I must attempt the following corrections.

L

I have never said a single word against Jung's assertion that the Jew has a particular tendency and ability to perceive the negative, the shadow.

On the contrary, in my essay I expressly cited and relied on Jung's words regarding the human shadow side:

"In many cases it is exceedingly salutary to confront human beings with their own most unpleasant truths"

! Indeed, in every case in a daily practice, it is urgently necessary to shine light on the shadow side, the negative side of the unconscious.

Obviously, this insight does not only apply to individual Jewish patients but to the entire Jewish situation of our time.

Recognizing and valuing the Jewish shadow in this way, I wrote that among the Jewish people a thorough and bitter analysis has recently broken out ( e.g. Mauschel96 by Theodor Herzl).

No matter how I try, I cannot detect any "sugar-coating" here.

The great contribution of Jung ( and this is clearly expressed in the essay in question) is that he has declared that the unconscious is also the creative foundation of the soul, and that he thus sees both aspects, the negative and the positive.

IL

The terms genotype and phenotype are borrowed from biology.

The genotype describes the hereditary possibility existing in the germ plasma, while the phenotype is the individual manifestation transformed by experience and thus taking visible form.

This clearly defines the contrast between essence and appearance.

Whoever ventures to follow the phenotype of the Jew into his darkest abyss, that person cannot be accused of escaping into a non-existing image of a
Jew.

More likely one could conclude that this person is intent on penetrating into the essence of the Jew by way of individual manifestations.

III.

When Jung expressed his views concerning the current situation of psychotherapy, he had to clarify to what extent Freud's particular Jewish attitude to the unconscious influenced all of modern psychology and psychotherapy.

He does not, however, need to raise the question whether we Jews can acknowledge Freud as the genotype of the Jews.

May we then - as it has already been hinted among Jews – regard Freud as a Jewish prophet?

The prophet is legitimized by God's calling, i.e. on the positive foundation of the unconscious. (See e.g. Isaiah chap. 6).

Freud, however, unequivocally rejects the positive aspect of the unconscious (see The Future of an Illusion).

We are therefore bound to continue working with and appreciating not only the negative but also the positive aspect, if we are to come out of our
current spiritual situation of godlessness and homelessness.

In this we are also justified to consider Freud, without detracting from his courageous discoveries, as a figure determined by the Galut1 (the Galut phenotype), rather than as a timeless manifestation of the Jewish essence.

IV.

It is surely correct that the Jew is better able than the Teuton to endure "living with his shadow side in a friendly spirit of tolerance."

Without doubting Jung's specific statement, I am (in contrast to Jung) of the opinion that it is particularly damaging and dangerous for us to destroy the connection with the unconscious as our creative original foundation.

I emphasize this connection with the original foundation because the timeless type of the Jew has always expressed even the negative on the basis of his connection with the Eternal.

Freud tried to strike a fatal blow against the religious life of the soul in The Future of an Illusion.

To overcome this attitude of godlessness and homelessness, we need Jung's revelations about Freud and about the corresponding distortion of Jewish psychology, and Jung's way - in contrast to Freud's - in order to arrive at the positive aspect of the unconscious through accepting the shadow as fully as possible.

For that reason the final sentence of my essay was as follows: "In Jung's personality as well as in his psychology and psychotherapy, something is contained which speaks to the depth of the ailing Jewish soul and which may lead to its liberation." ~James Kirsch-Jung-Kirsch Letters, Pages 54-56

James Kirsch: We [Jews] made a vital mistake by rejecting Christ. Christ is the repressed complex of the Jew.

Dr. med. James Kirsch
Hayarkon str. 10128
Tel-Aviv 7 May 1934

Dear Dr. Jung!

For many months I've avoided writing to you in detail.

As much as I enjoyed your letter, and as much as I know that on deeper levels there is no misunderstanding of any sort between us, I also know that on a superficial level I have to be completely detached from you.

All this makes your attitude toward me - especially as I experienced you in Ascona incomprehensible.

It would have been very good if we'd had a discussion at that time.

But perhaps it's even better that we can have it now, after I've had a chance to read several of your publications.

First of all, I have to tell you that in Ascona, as well as here in Palestine, I've heard reports about some of your remarks which did not present you as a friend of the Jews.

At this distance, of course, I was unable to verify what you actually said.

For instance, it appears that you said Jews are not honest in analysis.

Then Mr. Bally appeared in this country, visited with all our colleagues, and stated publicly that you had openly crossed over to Hitler, that you had been received by him, and thus that you are an anti-Semite.

His essay in the Zurcher Zeitung titled "Deutschstammige Psychotherapie" was read by a great many people.

The result was that your books, which had been displayed in many bookstores, disappeared from the shop windows, and your name was placed on the boycott list.

Your detailed reply was not read.

This general feeling against you was, of course, fabulously exploited by the Freudians in an effort to silence you totally, at least here.

Because of these events the entire field of psychotherapy is now in a difficult situation here.

It is a fact that Freud is also being rejected here.

Adler's students have generally not made any headway because of their shallowness.

If you are also silenced, what then?

For instance, Freud had personally proposed a student for the position of lecturer at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

During the meeting to discuss the appointment, an essay by the Freudian in question was read, wherein the Sabbath was traced back to sexuality in an obscene way and the lectureship was history.

One of these days a situation may very well arise when we Jews will have to ask for your help for the sake of our soul!

Well, dear Doctor, the rumors about your being anti-Semitic do not appear to be dying down.

In a letter I received from Germany last week someone wrote me that you had expressed on the radio, via German broadcasting stations, your gratitude for and recognition of Hitler's reforms at the German universities.

If that is a fact, I do not understand you as a Swiss.

Please don't interpret my letter as being aggressive; I am merely attempting to understand you in this respect and hope that you will grant me the privilege of reaching such an understanding.

On the other hand, I don't feel understood by you in this matter.

You know that I know and love German youth and can only subscribe, on the basis of profound experience, to what you are saying about the German people and also about the youthful Germanic spirit.

But, on the basis of many experiences, I know that the current leaders are abusing the young and misrepresenting their goals.

You would be correct in stating that I am biased, since I belonged to the defeated party.

I don't know if that is an objection.

Sometimes one sees more clearly from the outside.

What is unbearable and incomprehensible to me is why you should be taking sides in this matter.

And for an important reason: You've always rejected the "making" of things and "organizing."

Why should you say "yes" to this?

In China, an emperor is respected as a good leader when his rule goes unnoticed.

In Germany's Third Reich one senses the "totality" of the state everywhere.

About the Jews you write: "The Jew ... , as far as one can see, will never create his own form of culture, because all his instincts and talents presuppose a more or less civilized host-people for their development. "

I am dumbfounded to hear an anticipation from you.

But even the premises to this prejudice seem incorrect to me.

What you are writing certainly is true for the Galut Jew.

It seems to me that you received your image of the Jew essentially from Freud, who of course is an excellent example of this Galut psychology.

This Galut psychology was rejected by a few Jews at first, by many today, and in a not too distant future perhaps it will be rejected by all.

Here in Palestine (and Palestine is already the intellectual center) the Jews are living as a people, resident, earth-bound, and self-reliant, not in the middle of another culture.

I wish you could see some of these new types of Jews.

However, all of this ( return to the soil, to the homeland) is only the presupposition for something much more important.

Surely we are an ancient culture.

Certainly, we cannot create entirely new cultural values like the Teutonic people.

Our tensions are differently determined - and comprise equally rich creative possibilities.

In Faulhaber's words, since Christ, the Jews have been excluded from the revelation.

We made a vital mistake by rejecting Christ. Christ is the repressed complex of the Jew.

However, just as everything changes in the individual life of a person as soon as a repressed complex enters into consciousness and comes alive,

in the same way things can change collectively - and also creatively with our repressed Christ-complex.

I have a great number of proofs ( dreams and images) to support my view that this Christ-complex is central in the Jew.

On this basis one must understand the peculiar psychology and the peculiar fate of the Jew – and also anti-Semitism.

I believe you'll be able to confirm my interpretation.

We are dealing with a collective standstill, a repression with all its consequences.

Also we are not nomads, but rather a restless people that has lost its living God, despite all the warnings of the prophets.

We even pronounced the dreadful word about Christ: His blood be on our head and that of our children.

You are not the first, and will not be the last, whose warnings we cast aside.

But I believe that - especially at this moment - your way will lead us back to the Living One and may be of enormous significance for the rebirth of the Jews.

For this reason, it appears to me an irreparable harm if your voice should be silenced here.

I cannot imagine that what you write in your essay "Zur gegenwartigen Lage der Psychotherapie" is everything you have to say about the Jews.

Would it not be useful if you published a detailed essay about the Jews here, too?

I could arrange for a good Hebrew translation to appear in an excellent publication.

Please excuse this somewhat confused letter, but it was written from my heart.

Could you answer me in detail?

With most cordial greetings,

Ever faithfully yours, JAMES KIRSCH ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Pages 40-43

James Kirsch: Therein lies the paradox of Jewish psychology.

Dr. med. James Kirsch
Olivaer Platz 3
Berlin W.15
[Summer 1931]

The Jewish Image of the World Since time immemorial primitive peoples have commonly believed that it is impossible to conquer a foreign land, because those who occupy a foreign land will then be taken over by the gods of that land.

The settlement of America by white people provides ample evidence that the primitives' belief is true.

Even though the whites in America did not absorb Indian blood to any extent worth mentioning, specific Indian traits are evident in the appearance, bearing, and physiognomy of present-day Americans.

Just as one and the same plant has different characteristics, depending on its habitat, so with human beings.

Thus, we would do better to say, not that the inhabitants of North America exhibit Indian traits, but that when the Europeans were transplanted to America, the change of habitat bestowed on them a different physiognomy.

Just as with physique, the psychology of the white population of North America shows a specifically American-Indian character.

Their concept of excellence, their heroic ideal, is emphatically Indian.

Only think of their rough training combats and boxing, the songs of a Walt Whitman, and more besides unimaginable for Europeans.

The gods of that country have taken possession of them.

This has been the experience of every conquering people, every people which has had to live on foreign soil for extended periods.

Only one people proves to be an exception to this rule: the Jews.

Through all lands they took their god with them, the god they conceived in the desert.

The desert is a vast, desolate region, without plants, with very few animals.

In rare and isolated places, oases exist.

To experience the desert is to know its vastness, its distant horizon, with the fata morgana, the wind, the storm.

Israel's god is a god of the wind, not originating from the earth, and from the very beginning he was grasped in spiritual form, as the Everlasting: I will be who I will be!

As the Everlasting in Becoming, or as Becoming in the Everlasting, God, detached from all qualities, is the creative principle, in contrast to the gods of the earth, the material principle.

They had to be plural, if the divine showed itself as subject to quality of any kind.

For the Jewish people, God is the energetic principle before it divides into its polarities.

The soul of the Jew was bound up with this single-singular principle; his soul was not permitted to open itself to the land where he traveled.

The Jew's bride, the Jew's anima was Israel, the Jewish people, the Sabbath, the Torah.

His emotional character, his psychic disposition was defined by the Sabbath.

The Jew's homeland is the Torah, and the only content of his soul is God.

And yet deep in every Jew is the yearning for oasis, for the earth.

He longs to be like all other peoples, yet this cannot be.

Therein lies the paradox of Jewish psychology.

It is a human being's eternally impossible attempt to direct the soul away from the earth, to adapt collective energy and its specific formation to his soul, and to tum the Eternally Becoming into the only content of this soul.

Such attempts must almost always fail.

Then if money, socialism, or the belly take the place of God, the Jew turns away from his eternal task; he becomes inauthentic and his psychology a fraud.

It is then that the earth-born peoples perceive him as harboring hand-grenades in his unconscious.

This is the deepest ground for anti-Semitism.

On the other hand, if the Jew lives according to his proper dynamic psychology, he is the salt of the earth.

Theocracy is the basis of his endurance. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Pages 15-16