[Buddha-l] Jung and Dignaga

[Dan Lusthaus]

Vincent,

> Besides the Jung cooperation with the USA army against the nazi
> officials, there are cites of a defence of Jung performed by important
> Jewish names of his time like Adler. The supposed Jung sympathy for
> the nazi regime cited by Dan Lusthaus is not right.

My best recommendation is to keep reading and broaden the scope of your
readings. This area is highly polemicized, and clearly Jung has had many
supporters and sympathizers, who have not only tried to sanitize his
biography, but demonize Freud in the process. I would suggest starting with
the introduction to the aforementioned 2 vol. Zarathustra Lectures, by a
British Jungian therapist, who is also Jewish, who recognizes the problem.

Jung was an enthusiastic supporter of the Nazi regime through the 1930s,
and, as I mentioned, wrote position papers for the Nazis, including
deploying his concept of Collective Unconscious as a racial category to
argue for the superiority of Germanic Aryans and the genetic inferiority of
Jews (and others). He was well positioned and had what he considered close
friends in the Nazi party, but got passed over for elevation in status and
power by the party, with his supposed friends not only siding against him,
but becoming antagonistic. Once ostracized, he fumed, and had a change of
heart of sorts, the exact causes and nature of which is one of the things
the polemicists debate. It is true that he assisted the Allies, as also did
many Nazis (the US built its space program, for instance, with former Nazi
scientists); Nazis were impeccable bureaucrats, and were enlisted by the
Allies to regulate things in Europe once the war was over. Jung apparently
gave some minor assistance to Allied Intelligence near the war's end.

Let's be clear, just as the French have never come to terms with their Nazi
collaborationists, and the Austrians have denied any responsibility for
their behavior (blaming it all on the Germans, whom they enthusiastically
greeted during the Anschluss), there was a major re-invention of Germanic
thinkers after the war. The French, for instance, completely rehabilitated
Heidegger's reputation by less than scrupulous means -- and it is the French
Heidegger that took root in the States and elsewhere. Tom Rockmore's book
documents this in great detail. Similarly, the Belgian Paul De Man's racist,
pro-Nazi writings during the 30s and 40s were swept under the rug, allowing
him to become a major figure among the Yale critics -- until exposed in the
late 80s (Derrida devoted a book to trying to defend De Man).

In short, rehabilitating reputations of Europeans tainted by their
associations with the Nazis has been a major industry since the war, one
infused with dishonesty and angry passions. For instance,

> About Freud and Jung, the intellectual honesty and the religious matter,
> I have found that Freud was a darker figure than Jung.

This shows which side of the polemic you have been reading. That "effect" is
precisely what the polemicists intend. Demonize the innocent to distract
from the guilty. Magicians call that misdirection. It is a very effective
rhetorical strategy.

As to who was "darker" (a nebulous term), answer the following:

1. He slept with several of his patients.
(a) Freud
(b) Jung

2. He repeatedly reprimanded the other for sleeping with his patients
(a) Freud
(b) Jung

3. The first entry in his diary on meeting the other devotes a lot of
attention to the problem of antisemitism
(a) Freud
(b) Jung

4. He repeatedly reprimanded and tried to "cure" the other of antisemitism,
with increasing dispair, to no avail, as he repeatedly notes in his diary
(though not by *public* disparagement).
(a) Freud
(b) Jung

Once you've read the intro to the Zarathustra lectures, I would next
recommend reading the entries in Freud's own diaries, which mark their first
meeting and trace the trajectory of their relationship through the years.

>It is
> interesting when one can read frequent Freudian and Jungian positions
> in third authors to comment the religious experience.

Freud's two short works, _Civilization and Its Discontents_ and _Future of
an Illusion_, are more insightful about the nature of religion and society
than almost anything else, and by themselves outweigh all of Jung's works
combined, in my opinion.

> To complete this nebulous side of the Freud profile, there is a
> probable plagiarism of his unconscious theory from the Schopenhauer
> works. Freud denied any previous knowledge of this philosopher while
> his historical library records shows a different thing:
> http://http-server.carleton.ca/~abrook/SCHOPENY.htm

This is the sort of innuendo hatchet job (also apparently rhetorically
effective) that no self-respecting scholar would engage in.

First, Freud was generally honest about, but hesitant to further discuss,
his sources and influences. For instance, he was repeatedly asked to comment
on Nietzsche (from whom he would have inherited whatever Schopenhaurian
ideas one might wish to identify in him). His answer was always the same:
Everyone can see how much I'm influenced by Nietzsche, but I have nothing
more illuminating to say on the subject. He said the same when repeatedly
pressed to comment on Spinoza (from whom, by the way, Schopenhauer got many
of his own ideas!). His own students would often comment to him that this or
that psychoanalytic idea had a precedent or antecedent in the Talmud or
Kabbalah, to which he typically responded with bemusement, though denying he
was aware of it. That one can account for all the supposed Schopenhaurian
elements simply by reference to Spinoza and Nietzsche -- whom Freud
acknowledged as influences, though he resisted further comment on them -- 
makes this silly accusation evaporate.

Dan Lusthaus