psychologies, particularly of outstanding persons and “great men”; …But there exist also other personalities besides such “men of action” – “psychic” people, people marked by their inner experience” (37). In this second part of the seminar he explores psychical mythical experiences, with a particular attention to the lives of two women – Friederike Hauffe and Catherine-Elise Müller (known as Hélène Smith) whose spiritual phenomena have been documented in the work of Justinus Kerner and Theodore Flournoy, respectively.
In this way of describing the history of modern psychology, Jung not only provides an answer to the dominant Freudo-centred picture of the historiography of psychoanalysis, locating his theory at the heart of modern philosophical thinking. He also sets the stage for a different account of the concept of history, that goes beyond the “objective” record of his-story. He gradually leads his audience into the realm of mythical experience, requesting that they “exercise patience with such phenomena”(67) and carefully listen to the knowledge that arises at the “back-world” of the psyche. As he explains, “our consciousness perceives the outer world; it is an organ of perception. But behind our consciousness there stands a perceiving subject, and this is not tabula rasa” (45). Dialectally shifting between a phenomenological approach and a scientific ethos, Jung presents a series of diagrams to illustrate the knowledge revealed from these psychic phenomena and elaborates on the different spheres of human consciousness.
As I was reading the book, I was preoccupied with the politics of Jung’s relation to history.1 ((I will not go into the ongoing debate about Jung’s politics during these years nor will I explore Jung’s ideas about race, nationality and difference but merely highlight a particular aspect of his relation to “history”. )) The book begins with two chronological chart columns illustrating the events that were happening in the world during these years between 1933-1941, alongside the events in Jung’s career. It is apparent that during those years, while the world was falling into catastrophe and death, Jung was creatively absorbed in rebirth, developing some of his most impressive work about the inner world. Emphasising the transiency of external reality, he was highlighting the mythical realm of a predetermined collective unconscious. I was wondering in my reading – and I guess even more so as a Jewish woman – about the ethical bearings of