Beneath the Surface, Carl
Jung’s Ideas Are
Contrary to Ethics, Philosophy
and Theosophy
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
Sigmund Freud (left), Erich Fromm (center), and Carl Jung, who had Nazi
sympathies (right)
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An
Editorial Note:
Among the false impressions still
accepted in some esoteric and
even theosophical circles is
the apparently brilliant idea that the
works of Carl G. Jung are
compatible with the divine wisdom, or
with Ethics, or with esoteric
philosophy and theosophy. In fact, Jung
was against Ethics. He had
sympathies for Nazism. He promoted the
Ningma book “The Tibetan Book
of the Dead”, which purports to teach
how to avoid the law of Karma
in post-mortem states. There are traces of
anti-Semitism in his books. Jung
says - with Hitler - that, if a falsehood is
believed, then such falsehood
is true. This is of course false, as Fromm
shows in the following text.
It is also obviously anti-theosophical. In his
personal correspondence (“Briefe”
in German language), Jung wrote that
he saw no value in Metaphysics
(letter to Mr. S. Iyer, dated 09 January
1939) or in Theosophy (letter
to Mr. Oscar Schmitz, dated 26 May 1923).
The following text by Erich
Fromm clarifies some of the aspects of Jung’s
ideas. It shows Jung’s lack of true affinity with divine
wisdom or universal
ethics. It is reproduced from
the book “Psychoanalysis and Religion”,
by
Erich Fromm, New Haven - Yale University
Press, copyright 1950, third
printing, 1961, 120 pp., Chapter
II, pp. 10-20, entitled “Freud and Jung”.
As to Freud’s position
regarding conventional religions, the student of theosophy
should take into consideration
the Letter 10 of “The Mahatma Letters”
(T.U.P.
edition, Pasadena, California),
in order to understand that, in spite of
their obvious
limitations, Freud’s views
have, after all, various important points in common with
the esoteric philosophy, and Ethics
and respect for truth are not the least among them.
(Carlos Cardoso Aveline)
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Freud
dealt with the problem of religion and psychoanalysis in one of his most
profound and brilliant books, “The Future of an Illusion”. Jung, who was the
first psychoanalyst to understand that myth and religious ideas are expressions
of profound insights, has dealt with the same topic in the Terry Lectures of
1937, published under the title “Psychology and Religion”.
If I now attempt to give a brief summary of the position of both
psychoanalysts it is with a threefold purpose:
1. To indicate where the discussion of the problem stands now and locate
the point from which I want to proceed.
2. To lay the groundwork for the following chapters by discussing some
of the fundamental concepts used by Freud and Jung.
3. A correction of the widely held view that Freud is “against” and Jung
“for” religion will permit us to see the fallacy of such oversimplifying
statements in this complex field and to discuss the ambiguities in the meanings
of “religion” and “psychoanalysis”.
What is Freud’s position in regard to religion as expressed in “The
Future of an Illusion”?
For Freud, religion has its origin in man’s helplessness in confronting
the forces of nature outside and the instinctive forces within himself.
Religion arises at an early stage of human development when man cannot yet use
his reason to deal with these outer and inner forces and must repress them or
manage them with the help of other affective forces. So instead of coping with
these forces by means of reason he copes with them by “counter-affects”, by
other emotional forces, the functions of which are to suppress and control that
which he is powerless to cope with rationally.
In this process man develops what Freud calls an “illusion”, the
material of which is taken from his own individual experience as a child. being
confronted with dangerous, uncontrollable, and un-understandable forces within
and outside of himself, he remembers, as it were, and regresses to an
experience he had as a child, when he felt protected by a father whom he
thought to be of superior wisdom and strength, and whose love and protection he
could win by obeying his commands and avoiding transgression of his
prohibitions.
Thus, religion, according to Freud, is a repetition of the experience of
the child. Man copes with threatening forces in the same manner in which, as a
child, he learned to cope with his own insecurity by relying on and admiring
and fearing his father. Freud compares religion with the obsessional neuroses
we find in children. And, according to him, religion is a collective neurosis,
caused by conditions similar to those producing childhood neurosis.
Freud’s analysis of the psychological roots of religion attempts to show
why people formulated the idea of a
god. But it claims to do more than to get at these psychological roots. It
claims that the unreality of the theistic concept is demonstrated by exposing it as an illusion based on man’s wishes.[1]
Freud goes beyond attempting to prove that religion is an illusion. He
says religion is a danger because it
tends to sanctify bad human institutions with which it has allied itself
throughout its history; further, by teaching people to believe in an illusion
and by prohibiting critical thinking religion is responsible for the
impoverishment of intelligence.[2]
This charge like the first one was leveled against the church by the
thinkers of the Enlightenment. But in Freud’s frame of reference this second
charge is even more potent than it was in the eighteenth century. Freud could
show in his analytic work that the prohibition of critical thinking at one
point leads to an impoverishment of a person’s critical ability in other
spheres of thought and thereby impedes the power of reason. Freud’s third
objection to religion is that it puts morality on very shaky grounds. If the
validity of ethical norms rests upon their being God’s commands, the future of
ethics stands or falls with the belief in God. Since Freud assumes that
religious belief is on the wane he is forced to assume that the continued
connection of religion and ethics will lead to the destruction of our moral
values.
The dangers which Freud sees in religion make it apparent that his own
ideals and values are the very things he considers to be threatened by
religion: reason, reduction of human suffering, and morality. But we do not
have to rely on inferences from Freud’s criticism of religion; he has expressed
very explicitly what are the norms and ideals he believes in: brotherly love (Menschenliebe), truth, and freedom. Reason
and freedom are interdependent according to Freud. If man gives up his illusion
of a fatherly God, if he faces his aloneness and insignificance in the
universe, he will be like a child that has left his father’s house. But it is
the very aim of human development to overcome this infantile fixation. Man must
educate himself to face reality. If he knows that he has nothing to rely on
except his own powers, he will learn to use them properly. Only the free man
who has emancipated himself from authority - authority that threatens and
protects - can make use of his power of reason and grasp the world and his role
in it objectively, without illusion but also with the ability to develop and to
make use of the capacities inherent in him. Only if we grow up and cease to be
children dependent on and afraid of authority can we dare to think for
ourselves; but the reverse is also true. Only if we dare to think can we
emancipate ourselves from domination by authority. It is significant in this
context to note that Freud states that the feeling of powerlessness is the
opposite of religious feeling. In view of the fact that many theologians – and,
as we shall see later, Jung too to a certain extent - consider the feeling of
dependence and powerlessness the core of religious experience, Freud’s
statement is very important. It is expressive, even though only by implication,
of his own concept of religious experience, namely, that of independence and
the awareness of one’s powers. I shall attempt to show later on that this
difference constitutes one of the critical problems in the psychology of
religion.
Turning now to Jung we find at almost every point the opposite of
Freud’s views on religion.
Jung begins with a discussion of the general principles of his approach.
While Freud, though not a professional philosopher, approaches the problem from
a psychological and philosophical
angle as William James, Dewey, and Macmurray have done, Jung states in the
beginning of his book:
“I restrict myself to the observation of phenomena and I refrain from
any application of metaphysical or philosophical considerations.”[3]
He then goes on to explain how, as a psychologist, he can analyze
religion without application of philosophical considerations. He calls his
standpoint “phenomenological, that is, it is concerned with occurrences,
events, experiences, in a word, with facts. Its truth is a fact and not a judgement.
Speaking for instance of the motive of the virgin birth, psychology is only
concerned with the fact that there is such an idea, but it is not concerned
with the question whether such an idea is true or false in any other sense. It is psychologically true in as much as it
exists. Psychological existence is subjective in so far as an idea occurs
in only one individual. But it is objective in so far as it is established by a
society - by a consensus gentium.”[4]
Before I present Jung’s analysis of religion a critical examination of
these methodological premises seems warranted. Jung’s use of the concept of
truth is not tenable. He states that “truth is a fact and not a judgement,”
that “an elephant is true because it exists.”[5] But he forgets that truth always and necessarily refers to a
judgement and not to a description of a phenomenon which we perceive with our
senses and which we denote with a word symbol. Jung then states that an idea is
“psychologically true in as much as it exists.” But an idea “exists” regardless
of whether it is a delusion or whether it corresponds to fact. The existence of
an idea does not make it “true” in any sense. Even the practicing psychiatrist
could not work were he not concerned with the truth of an idea, that is, with
its relation to the phenomena it tends to portray. Otherwise he could not speak
of a delusion or a paranoid system.
But Jung’s approach is not only untenable from a psychiatric standpoint;
he advocates a standpoint of relativism which, though on the surface more
friendly to religion than Freud’s, is in its spirit fundamentally opposed to
religions like Judaism, Christianity, and Buddhism. These consider the striving
for truth as one of man’s cardinal virtues and obligations and insist that
their doctrines whether arrived at by revelation or only by the power of reason
are subject to the criterion of truth.
Jung does not fail to see the difficulties of his own position, but the
way in which he tries to solve them is unfortunately equally untenable. He
tries to differentiate between “subjective” and “objective” existence, in spite
of the notoriously slippery quality of these terms. Jung seems to mean that
something objective is more valid and true than something that is merely
subjective. His criterion for the difference between subjective and objective
depends on whether an idea occurs only to one individual or is established by a
society. But have we not been witnesses ourselves of a “folie à millions,” of the madness of whole groups in our own age?
Have we not seen that millions of people, misguided by their irrational
passions, can believe in ideas which are not less delusional and irrational
than the products of a single individual? What meaning is there in saying that
they are “objective”? The spirit of this criterion for subjective and objective
is that of the same relativism which I commented on above. More specifically,
it is a sociological relativism which makes social acceptance of an idea the
criterion of its validity, truth, or “objectivity.” [6]
After discussing his methodological premises, Jung presents his views on
the central problem: What is religion? What is the nature of religious
experience? His definition is one which he shares with many theologians. It can
be summarized briefly in the statement that the essence of religious experience
is the submission to powers higher than ourselves. But we had better quote Jung
directly. He states that religion “is a careful and scrupulous observation of
what Rudolph Otto aptly termed the ‘numinosum,’ that is, a dynamic existence or
effect, not caused by an arbitrary act of will. On the contrary, it seizes and controls the human subject
which is always rather its victim than its creator.”[7]
Having defined religious experience as being seized by a power outside
of ourselves, Jung proceeds to interpret the concept of the unconscious as
being a religious one. According to him, the unconscious cannot be merely a
part of the individual mind but is a power beyond our control intruding upon
our minds. “The fact that you perceive the voice [of the unconscious] in your
dream proves nothing at all, for you can also hear the voices in the street,
which you would not explain as your own. There is only one condition under
which you might legitimately call the voice your own, namely, when you assume
your conscious personality to be a part of a whole or to be a smaller circle
contained in a bigger one. A little bank clerk, showing a friend around town,
who points out the bank building, saying, ‘And here is my bank,’ is using the same privilege.”[8]
It is a necessary consequence of his definition of religion and of the
unconscious that Jung arrives at the conclusion that, in view of the nature of
the unconscious mind, the influence of the unconscious upon us “is a basic
religious phenomenon.”[9] It follows
that religious dogma and the dream are both religious phenomena because they
both are expressions of our being seized by a power outside ourselves. Needless
to say, in the logic of Jung’s thinking insanity would have to be called an
eminently religious phenomenon.
Does our examination of Freud’s and Jung’s attitudes toward religion
bear out the popularly held opinion that Freud is a foe and Jung a friend of
religion? A brief comparison of their view shows that this assumption is a
misleading oversimplification.
Freud holds that the aim of human development is the achievement of
these ideals: knowledge (reason, truth, logos),
brotherly love, reduction of suffering, independence, and responsibility. These
constitute the ethical core of all great religions on which Eastern and Western
culture are based, the teachings of Confucius and Lao-tse, Buddha, the prophets
and Jesus. While there are certain differences of accent among these teachings,
e.g., Buddha emphasizing reduction of suffering, the Prophets stressing
knowledge and justice, and Jesus brotherly love, it is remarkable to what
extent these religious teachers are in fundamental agreement about the aim of
human development and the norms which ought to guide man.
Freud speaks in the name of the ethical core of religion and criticizes
the theistic-supernatural aspects of religion for preventing the full
realization of these ethical aims. He explains the theistic-supernatural
concepts as stages in human development which once were necessary and
furthering but which now are no longer necessary and are in fact a barrier to
further growth. The statement that Freud is “against” religion therefore is
misleading unless we define sharply what
religion or what aspects of religion he is critical of and what aspects of
religion he speaks for.
For Jung, religious experience is characterized by a specific kind of
emotional experience: surrender to a higher power, whether this higher power is
called God or the unconscious. Undoubtedly this is a true characterization of a
certain type of religious experience- in Christian religions, for instance, it
is the core of Luther’s or Calvin’s teachings - while it contrasts with another
type of religious experience, the one, for instance, which is represented by
Buddhism.
In its relativism concerning truth, however, Jung’s concept of religion
is in contrast to Buddhism, Judaism, and Christianity. In these, man’s
obligation to search for the truth is an integral postulate. Pilate’s ironical
question “What is truth?” stands as a symbol of an antireligious attitude from
the standpoint not only of Christianity but of all other great religions as
well.
Summing up the respective positions of Freud and Jung we may say that
Freud opposes religion in the name of ethics - an attitude which can be termed
“religious”. On the other hand, Jung reduces religion to a psychological
phenomenon and at the same time elevates the unconscious to a religious
phenomenon. [10]
NOTES BY ERICH FROMM:
[1] Freud himself
states that the fact that an idea satisfies a wish does not mean necessarily that the idea is false. Since
psychoanalysts have sometimes made this erroneous conclusion, I want to stress
this remark of Freud’s. Indeed, there are many true ideas as well as false ones
which man has arrived at because he wishes the idea to be true. Most great
discoveries are born out of interest in finding something to be true. While the
presence of such interest may make the observer suspicious, it can never
disprove the validity of a concept or statement. The criterion of validity does
not lie in the psychological analysis of motivation but in the examination of
evidence for or against a hypothesis within the logical framework of the
hypothesis.
[2] He points to the
contrast between the brilliant intelligence of a child and the impoverishment
of reason in the average adult (Denkschwäche).
He suggests that the “innermost nature” of man may not be as irrational as man
becomes under the influence of irrational teachings.
[3] “Psychology and
Religion”, p. 2.
[4] Ibid., p. 3. My italics.
[5] Ibid., p. 3.
[6] Cf. the discussion
of universal versus socially immanent ethics in E. Fromm, “Man for Himself”
(Rinehart and Company, 1947), pp. 237-244.
[7] Jung, “Psychology
and Religion”, p. 4. Italics mine.
[8] Ibid, p. 47.
[9] Ibid, p. 46.
[10] It is interesting
to note that Jung’s position in “Psychology and Religion” is in many ways
anticipated by William James, while Freud’s position is in essential points
similar to that taken by John Dewey. William James calls this religious
attitude “both a helpless and a sacrificial attitude…. which the individual
finds himself impelled to take up towards what he apprehends to be the divine.”
(“The Varieties of Religious Experience” [Modern Library], p. 51.) Like Jung he
compares the unconscious with the God concept of the theologian. He says: “At
the same time the theologian’s contention that the religious man is moved by an
external power is vindicated, for it is one of the peculiarities of invasions
from the subconscious region to take on objective appearances, and to suggest
to the Subject an external control.” (loc.
cit. p. 503.) In this connection between the unconscious (or, in James’
terminology, the subconscious) and God, James sees the link between religion
and the science of psychology.
John Dewey differentiates religion and religious experience. To him the
supernatural dogmas of religion have weakened and sapped man’s religious
attitude. “The opposition between religious values as I conceive them,” he
says, “and religions is not to be bridged. Just because the release of these
values is so important, their identification with the creeds and cults of
religions must be dissolved.” (“A Common Faith” [Yale University Press, 1934],
p. 28.) Like Freud he states: “Men have never fully used the powers they possess
to advance the good in life, because they have waited upon some power external
to themselves and to nature to do the work they are responsible for doing.” (loc. cit., p. 46.) Consult also John
Macmurray’s position in “The Structure of Religious Experience” (Yale
University Press, 1936.) He stresses the difference between rational and
irrational, sentimental and vicious religious emotions. In contrast to the
relativistic position Jung takes, he states: “No reflective activity can be
justified except in so far as it achieves truth and validity, and escapes error
and falsity.” (loc. cit., p. 54.)
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On the role of the esoteric movement in the
ethical awakening of mankind during the 21st century, see the book “The Fire and Light of Theosophical Literature”, by
Carlos Cardoso Aveline.
Published in
2013 by The Aquarian Theosophist,
the volume has 255 pages and can be obtained through Amazon Books.
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