[Buddha-l] Jung and Dignaga

[jkirk]

Dear Vicente,

I don't have time to write a long essay, but wish to say thanks
for bringing up the prevailing widely-shared social darwinism,
racism, & eugenics ideologies of the pre-war and wartime periods
in Europe and the USA--these were powerful influences at the
time. As you say, some of it continued right up until rather
recently, in the US at least, and the machinery of the
globalization empire is deeply at work in Africa, as you noted
(also in India, South America and SE Asia), causing the deaths of
millions for the sake of company profits. 

Psychoanalysis, and the later varieties of human psychology that
emerged in the past sixty years, have all been influenced one way
or the other by the prevailing weltanschaung, whatever it was and
is today.  Insisting on imposing guilt, for whatever
sins--personal or political--in such cases is submerging oneself
in vindictiveness, a mental affliction in the Buddhist roster.  

Jung's alleged collaboration with the national socialist regime
isn't settled even today it seems. Far as I can tell from the pdf
Vicente posted, his collaboration appeared to be mainly to
promote his institutional ascendance within the new profession.
If he included anti-semitic remarks in any of his writings, he
was no different than hundreds of other distinguished writers
outside Germany or Switzerland, including across the channel in
UK and in the USA.

Jung's views about weltanschaung, about cultural influences in
psychology, survived right into the mid-20th c. in anthropology,
in the specialisation referred to as "personality and culture",
and during WW2, led to the production of such (later strongly
criticised) books as Ruth Benedict's _Chrysanthemum and the
Sword_ about the Japanese, plus several others, all commissioned
by the US OSS (early CIA) during the war to shed light on the
psychology of our "enemies". There was one on the Germans, one on
the Russians, and a few others whose titles now escape me. If
these were published today, they would be labeled both
scientificially shabby and also racist, and tend to be so-labeled
today in  retrospect.

Joanna