Monday 17 August 2009

Carl Jung and the Nazis


The relevant text here is Ueber das Unbewusste-The Role of the Unconscious-published in 1918. The message it contained had limited significance at the time, but by 1930 it had acquired a new reading in the light of events. Germany, according to Jung, was the 'blonde beast' and Christianity was responsible for splitting "the Germanic barbarian into an upper and a lower half." The Jews lack what he calls 'chthonic quality', because they had no homeland of their own. This meant that people like Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler had created "specifically Jewish doctrines...thoroughly unsatisfying to the German mentality." No, it is not Nazism in any direct sense; but these are words upon which new, and dangerous, layers of meaning could be placed

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