Medicine: Jungian Togetherness

By the strict letter of their own creed, some of the least likely people in the world to hold a convention are the followers of famed Analytical Psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (TIME, Feb. 14, 1955). Mostly professed introverts, they look disapprovingly on the modern world’s passion for extraversion, “togetherness” and “other-directedness.” But last week, 45 years after Founder Jung broke with Sigmund Freud, the Jungian school held its first international congress. The locale, inevitably, was Zurich, Jung’s lifetime headquarters. There, 120 of the faithful gathered in the university’s auditoriums for technical sessions on such topics as “The Problem of Dictatorship as Represented in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick,” and “Practical Problems of Transference and Counter-Transference.”

In fact, far more practical problems than these—extending to monolithic leadership, if not dictatorship—beset the Jungians. To the true believers among them, it has never mattered that Dr. Jung and his work failed to attract a worldwide following as numerous as Freud’s. (They regard the Freudians as proselyters, and proselyting as a reflection of unconscious insecurity.) But they have been so unquestioning in their acknowledgment of Jung’s leadership that no one of them is emerging as a possible head man to succeed him. That a successor may soon be needed was clear last week. Carl Gustav Jung, now 83, secluded himself from all but small groups of his followers, who made pilgrimages to his retreat at Kusnacht. Jung made only token appearances at the congress’ opening and closing sessions.

The Mechanical Freud. When delegates got down to trade talk, it was clear that Jungian psychology today has two factions: 1) an orthodox group in favor of strict adherence to Jung’s doctrines and pursuing work only along the lines he has indicated, with emphasis on archetypes, the human race’s collective unconscious, and myths; 2) a progressive element in favor of a widened approach to man’s problems, including new emphasis on the importance of childhood experiences in molding the adult (an area that Jungians formerly had largely ignored because they felt it was a field in which the Freudians had gone too far). Though Archiater Jung refused to commit himself publicly, best evidence was that he favored the more progressive wing, feared that his movement would die if it became too introverted and parochial. Quipped one delegate: “We made real progress—we didn’t stick to Jungian terms and talk only about archetypes. I believe someone even mentioned the word penis.”

Whatever their factional differences, the Jungians (many M.D. psychiatrists, but with a liberal sprinkling of intensively trained lay analysts) were united in their opposition to many major trends in the modern world of materialism, scientism, technology. Said New York’s Heinz Westman: “The Freudian approach to analysis is mechanistic. Jungians not only believe in but have proof of the creative faculties of the soul, which can cure its own ills.”

The delegates unanimously echoed another of Jung’s main arguments: To Freudians, they contended, the goal of analytical psychiatry is complete rationality for the patient, so that if fully cured, he will understand all his drives and have no repressions. To Jungians this is a false goal, and as bad as’a false god. Said Zurich’s Dr. Adolf Guggen-biihl: “Man is basically nonrational; he has too many basic, instinctual drives ever to become wholly rational or logical, and medicine must help him to accept this fact.” To Jung & Co., the latter-day worship of rationality has its roots in the scientism that gave birth to both the world of technology and the cultural need to venerate rationalism.

Analyze the Healthy. Is there room in such a world for Jungian contemplation, introversion and mysticism? The progressives at Zurich last week were confident that the answer is yes. Their reasoning: the very trends in modern society of which they disapprove increase society’s need for analytical help. They foresee a day when mental hospital beds will be reserved for only the most serious, immobilized cases, but the numbers of people undergoing analytic treatment will multiply tremendously. As Practitioner Westman put it: “In the future we shall be analyzing the supposedly healthy people who are walking around today, as well as the obviously disturbed ones. We hope to reach the point where we shall use psychology before a breakdown has occurred.” But he did not see the analyst as a god. Said he: “Analysts are human, wear pants and go to the toilet like everybody else. Naturally, they will have to be analyzed more and more to understand their own problems.”