Review
While much of this book’s content was informed by the Zeitgeist and historical context of the 20th century, to read it in the past month was uncannily relevant and a bit unsettling, given the recent impeachment and acquittal of our president, Donald Trump. The New York Times Book Review described it as a “passionate plea for individual integrity,” which rings true to me throughout reading.
Jung expertly describes the situation of the psyche of the modern man and the dangers that, despite all our scientific and technological advances, still lurk within our individual and collective psyches. Of course, the “collective psyche” being more abstract than the individual psyche, and composed of individuals, is not where the energy for change is to be found. Though much drama plays out on an external stage, it is in the dark shadows of the individual psyche that man must first locate his efforts. These are not new ideas— but Jung’s iteration was powerful to me.
Says Jung in the last line of the book: “I am neither spurred on by excessive optimism nor in love with high ideals, but am merely concerned with the fate of the individual human being— that infinitesimal unit on whom the world depends, and in whom, if we read the meaning of the Christian message aright, even God seeks his goal.”
Reading through the pages, I couldn’t help but think of Mitt Romney’s Socratic speech and his integrity in placing his commitment to God above his standing with his party’s apparently supreme “authority.”
That kind of bravery, at an individual level, is what this book made me think about most— and it’s to Jung’s credit that his clarity of thought and keen understanding of human nature at both the micro and macro levels of analysis has as much application to the what is happening now in 2020 as it did in the 1950’s.
Would Recommend 9/10
Page Count: 112
Table of Contents:
The Plight of the Individual in Modern Day Society
Religion as the Counter-Balace to Mass Mindedness
The Position of the West on the Question of Religion
The Individual’s Understanding of Himself
The Philosophical and Psychological Approach to Life
Self-Knowledge
The Meaning of Self-Knowledge
Favorite Excerpts:
“Most people confuse ‘self-knowledge’ with knowledge of their conscious ego personalities…people measure their self-knowledge by what the average person in their social environment knows of himself, but not by the real psychic facts which are for the most part hidden from them.“ (6)
“The more a theory lays claim to universal validity, the less capable it is of doing justice to the individual facts... not to put too fine a point on it, one could say that the real picture consists of nothing but exceptions to the rule, and that in consequence, absolute reality has the character of irregularity.” (7-8)
“If I want to understand an individual human being, I must lay aside scientific knowledge of the average man and discard all theories in order to adopt a completely new and unprejudiced attitude. I can only approach the task of understanding with a free and open mind, whereas knowledge of a man, or insight into human character, presupposes all sorts of knowledge about mankind in general…this conflict cannot be solved by an either-or but only by a kind of two-way thinking: doing one thing while not losing sight of the other. “ (9-10)
“In order to turn the individual into a function of the State, his dependence on anything besides the state must be taken from him. But religion means dependence on and submission to the irrational facts of experience. These do not refer directly to social and physical conditions, they concern far more the individual’s psychic attitude.” (19)
“The religions teach another authority opposed to that of ‘the world.’ The doctrine of an individual’s dependence on God makes just as high a claim on him as the world does. It may even happen that the absoluteness of this claim estranges himself from the world in the same way he is estranged from himself when he succumbs to the collective mentality. […] For support, he has to depend exclusively on his relation to an authority which is not of this world. The criterion here is not lip service to a creed, but the psychological fact that the life of an individual is not determined solely by the ego and its opinions or by social factors, but quite as much, if not more, by a transcendent authority.” (21-22)
“The result [of the State taking the place of God], as always in such cases, is overcompensation in the form of fanaticism, which in its turn is used as a weapon for stamping out the least flicker of opposition. Free opinion is stifled and moral decision ruthlessly suppressed, on the plea that the end justifies the means, even the vilest.”
“As easily can be seen, ‘community’ is an indispensable aid in the organization of masses and is therefore a two-edged weapon. Just as the addition of however many zeroes will never make a unit, so the value of community depends on the spiritual and moral stature of the individuals composing it.” (28)
“There are always upright and truth-loving people to whom lying and tyranny are hateful…” (30)
“By that time, the patient should have acquired enough certainty of judgment to enable him to act on his own insight and decision and not from the mere wish to copy convention— even if he happens to agree with collective opinion. Unless he stands firmly on his own feet, to so-called objective values profit him nothing, since they only serve as a substitute for character and so help to suppress his individuality.” (55)
“Ultimately, everything depends on the quality of the individual, but the fatally shortsighted habit of our age is to think only in terms of large numbers and mass organizations, though one would think the world had seen more than enough of what a well-disciplined mob can do in the hands of a single mad-man.” (55)
“It is, unfortunately, only too clear that if the the individual is not truly regenerated in the spirit, society cannot be either, for society is the sum total of individuals in need of redemption.” (56)
“As experience unfortunately shows, the inner man remains unchanged however much community he has. His environment cannot give him as a gift that which he can win for himself only with effort and suffering. On the contrary, a favorable environment merely strengthens the dangerous tendency to expect everything to originate from the outside— even that metamorphosis which external reality cannot provide, namely, a deep-seated change of the inner man…” (57)
“Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself.” (59)
“And just as the typical neurotic is unconscious of his shadow side, so the normal individual, like the neurotic, sees his shadow in his neighbor or in the man beyond the great divide. It has even become a political and social duty to apostrophize the capitalism of the one and the communism of the other as the very devil, so as to fascinate the outward eye and prevent it from looking at the individual life within.” (64
“I am, on the contrary, convinced it is not Christianity, but our conception and interpretation of it, that has become antiquated in face of the present world situation. [The Christian symbol] can go on developing; it depends only on us, whether we can make up our minds to meditate again, and more thoroughly, on the Christian premises.” (61)
“You can take away a man’s gods, but only to give him others in return.” (63)
“…the existence of a dictator allows us to point the finger away from ourselves and at the shadow. He is clearly on the other side of the political frontier, while we are on the side of the good and enjoy the possession of the right ideal. Did not a well-known statesman recently confess that he had “no imagination in evil”? In the name of the multitude he was here giving expression to the fact that Western man is in danger of losing his shadow altogether, of identifying himself with his fictive personality and identifying the world with the abstract picture painted by scientific rationalism. His spiritual and moral opponent, who is just as real as he, no longer dwells in his own breast… Thinking and feeling lose their inner polarity, and where religious orientation has grown ineffective, not even a god is at hand to check the sovereign sway of unleashed psychic functions.” (81)
“We still go on thinking and acting as before, as if we were simplex and not duplex…we imagine ourselves to be innocuous, reasonable, and humane. We do not think of distrusting our motives… But actually it is frivolous, superficial and unreasonable of us, as well as psychically unhygienic, to overlook the reaction and standpoint of the unconscious. One can regard one’s stomach or heart as unimportant and worthy of contempt, but that does not prevent overeating or overexertion from having consequences that affect the whole man.” (82)
“Virtually everything depends on the human soul and its functions. It should be worthy of all the attention we can give it, especially today, when everyone admits that the weal or woe of the future will be decided neither by the attacks of wild animals nor by natural catastrophes nor by the danger of worldwide epidemics but simply and solely by the psychic changes in man. It needs only an almost imperceptible disturbance of equilibrium in a few of our rulers’ heads to plunge the world into blood, fire and radioactivity…certain conscious deliberations, uncontrolled by any inner opponent, can be indulged in all to easily, as we have seen already from the example of one ‘Leader’.” (83)
“There is no sense in formulating the task that our age has forced upon us as a moral demand. We can, at best, merely make the psychological world situation so clear that it can be seen even by the myopic, and give utterance to words and ideas which even the hard of hearing can hear. We may hope for men of understanding and men of goodwill, and must therefore not grow weary of reiterating those thoughts and insights which are needed. Finally, even the truth can spread and not only the popular lie.” (94)
“It is in the nature of political bodies to see the evil in the opposite group, just as the individual has an ineradicable tendency to get rid of everything he does not know and does not want to know about by foisting it off on somebody else…Nothing has a more divisive and alienating effect upon society than this moral complacency and lack of responsibility, and nothing promotes understanding and rapprochement more than the mutual withdrawal of projections. This necessary corrective requires self-criticism, for one cannot just tell the other person to withdraw them. He does not recognize them for what they are, any more than does oneself. We can recognize our prejudices and illusions only when, from a broader psychological knowledge of ourselves and others, we are prepared to doubt the absolute rightness of our assumptions and compare them carefully and conscientiously with the objective facts.” (99)
“True, all sorts of attempts are being made to level out glaring social contrasts by appealing to people’s idealism, enthusiasm, and ethical conscience; but characteristically, one forgets to apply the necessary self-criticism, to answer the question: Who is making the idealistic demand? Is it, perchance, someone who jumps over his own shadow in order to hurl himself avidly on an idealistic program that promises him a welcome alibi? How much respectability and apparent morality is there, cloaking with deceptive colors a very different inner world of darkness. One would first like to be assured that the man who talks of ideals himself is ideal, so that his words and deeds are more than they seem. To be ideal is impossible, and therefore remains an unfulfilled postulate. Since we usually have keen noses in this respect, most of the idealisms that are preached and paraded before us sound rather hollow and become acceptable only when their opposite is openly admitted to. Without the counterweight the ideal goes beyond our human capacity, becomes incredible because of its humorlessness and degenerates into bluff, albeit a well-meant one. Bluff is an illegitimate way of overpowering and suppressing people and it leads to no good.
Recognition of the shadow, on the other hand, leads to the modesty we need in order to acknowledge imperfection. And it is just this conscious recognition and consideration that are needed wherever a human relationship is to be established.” ( 101)
“What does lie within our reach, however, is the change in individuals who have, or create, an opportunity to influence others of like mind in their circle of acquaintance. I do not mean by persuading or preaching— I am thinking rather, of the well-known fact that anyone who has insight into his own action, and has thought found access to the unconscious, involuntarily exercises an influence on his environment. The deepening and broadening of his consciousness produce the kind of effect which the primitives call “mana".” It is an unintentional influence on the unconscious of others, a sort of unconscious prestige, and its effect lasts only so long as it is not disturbed by conscious intention.” (108)