The Neurosis of Psychology

Primary Papers Towards a Critical Psychology, Volume 1

Wolfgang Giegerich

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367485344
• eBook ISBN: 9781000176414
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Teaching Arts & Humanities

This first volume of The Collected English Papers of Wolfgang Giegerich takes its title from Giegerich's ground-breaking paper, On the Neurosis of Psychology, or The Third of the Two, originally published in Spring Journal in 1977. The third referred to in the title is psychology itself as the theory in which the two, patient and analyst, are contained as they engage with one another in the analytic process. By applying to psychology itself the ideas that analytical psychology draws upon when thinking about the patient, Giegerich establishes the basis for a psychology that defines itself as the discipline of interiority. Topics include Neumann's history of consciousness, Jung's thought of the self, the question of a Jungian identity, projection, the origin of psychology, and more.

CHAPTER ONE
Ontogeny = Phylogeny?

A Fundamental Critique of Erich Neumann’s Analytical Psychology

Among analytical psychologists and even among representatives of other fields, Erich Neumann’s work enjoys the highest recognition. This is not only attested to by phrases referring to him, such as “the one truly creative spirit among the second generation of Jung’s pupils, the only one who seemed destined to build on Jung’s work and to continue it,”¹ but even much more so by the fact that for many Jungians his terminology and orientation seem to have become second nature. Neumann indeed presented us with a grand and captivating scheme of psychic development, both of mankind and of the individual, a scheme that promised to give Analytical Psychology a firm footing and a systematic structure, and at the same time to serve as a tool by means of which one could hope to make comprehensible the entire range of psychic phenomena in the group as well as in the individual, in past and present, in the healthy and the ill. But as about 25 years have passed since his main work first appeared and we can regard it from some distance, the question of whether Neumann really based his Analytical Psychology on Jung’s work, and above all of whether his entire outlook withstands a critical examination, forces itself upon us.

We start with our astonishment at the fact that in The Origins and History of Consciousness, a work clearly conceived as a historical study, Neumann hardly ever refers to dated or dateable events. Of course, in a history of first beginnings we cannot expect datings precise to the very year, but without some organization of the material presented in terms of time, even if very approximate, a “history” is inconceivable, even a depth-psychological one. Jung, e.g., in Answer to Job, based his ‘Entwicklungsgeschichte’ on clearly historical events (the composition of certain biblical passages, the declaration of dogmas, etc.). Neumann, by contrast, bases his history exclusively on mythical motifs and shows himself to be completely oblivious to the historical when, instead of asking when and where certain myths appeared for the first time, and by which other myths they were preceded and followed, he compiles examples for a mytheme from various ages and illustrates, e.g., the idea of ‘upper’ castration with the Oedipus myth as well as with a modern drama (Ernst Barlach)—not by way of amplification in order to elucidate the meaning of a motif, which would be legitimate, but in order to establish stages in the development of consciousness. We cannot help but ascertain a fundamental contradiction between Neumann’s declared historiographic intention and what he actually offers; whatever Neumann’s work may be, it is not a history.

But perhaps Neumann was mistaken about his own intention and therefore also inadvertently misled his readers in his title and introductory comments. Perhaps he was not concerned with history but, in actuality, had an entirely different aim, which he succeeded in carrying out. When Neumann speaks of mythological (not cultural-historical) stages of development and stresses that “stage” here does not refer to “any historical epoch,”² we might suppose that his actual intention was the representation of “stages” within myth itself (as opposed to cultural history), of a sequence of mythical images in the sense of a background process to be located somehow ‘above’ history. Then it would have to be shown that one motif presupposes another and is itself the basis for still others, that is to say, that there is a genetic law inherent in myth.

But here, too, we are deserted. Neumann does not show that the creation myth precedes the hero myth or that the latter is followed by the transformation myth. Just as, historically speaking, any mytheme may occur at any time, so myth itself does not contain any evidence for a genetic sequence of the individual myths. Every myth, by its very nature, has its origin and meaning in itself and is therefore a completely independent tale.

We now can see what Neumann does: he does not present stages of myth itself, but rather his own organization of the available mythological material, a genetic schema not derived from myth but preconceived and projected upon it. Though logical and in itself satisfactory, this schema is nonetheless ‘fictitious’, a speculative construction without empirical foundation.

We have seen that the book in question is not an Ursprungsgeschichte of consciousness. But if it attempts to organize the multitude of mythological motifs, it follows that we must also doubt whether it is a history of consciousness. For mythological or archetypal images by definition belong to the so-called collective unconscious. Consequently, the emergence of the hero, as an archetypal motif, does not represent the rise of ego-consciousness out of the “collective unconscious,” or the origin of consciousness in general, but an event in the collective unconscious. As long as we separate the collective unconscious and consciousness as two systems in opposition to each other, a study of mythemes naturally cannot inform us about the origin and history of ego-consciousness. Indeed, we cannot derive consciousness at all out of unconsciousness, but must conceive of it as a principle in its own right. Mythology can inform us only about the various patterns of consciousness.

It follows that the student of the development of consciousness must turn to the realm of empirical history and not to that of myth and archetypes. Where the Ursprungsgeschichte of consciousness ceases to be a history, it also no longer treats of actual consciousness. Neumann seems to have felt this. Why else the emphasis on history? Although de facto he only moves in the realm of myths, he after all also aims for an understanding of cultural history in his work. Neumann’s systematization of mythological images could serve this purpose only if the speculative pattern of mythological stages could be shown to correspond to an actual (historical) cultural development in the sense of phylogeny.

Is there in cultural history a “regular sequence”³ of developmental stages of consciousness? Did history necessarily and unambiguously lead from matriarchy to patriarchy, from the uroboros via the separation of the primal parents and the struggle of the hero to the transformation? This question can be answered in the negative with some degree of certainty. For how then would it be possible to find, even among primitives (among whom according to Neumann “the earliest stages of man’s psychology”⁴ prevail), full-fledged hero-myths, that is to say, myths presupposing a considerably developed consciousness, according to the system in question? If early and primitive cultures were indeed to be understood primarily in terms of the so-called earliest stages, they could not at all have developed a mature myth of the sun-hero, fully integrated into their cultic life. There must be even greater doubts with respect to the myth of transformation, which is supposed to be an indication of the highest stage of development and yet belongs to the oldest accessible cultural store of mankind. Cannibalism, human and animal sacrifices, the cults of the dead, shamanism—to name only a few of the most marked phenomena—occur with modern primitives as well as with the early cultures of the past as far back as the Stone Age, where our cultural-historical knowledge ends (or begins, if you wish) and bear witness to the decisive presence of the transformation myth.⁵ Conversely, all late periods in the cultural development both of individual civilizations and of mankind naturally have their creation myths, which allegedly correspond to early ages.

So, too, matriarchal and patriarchal consciousness cannot be shown to ensue in history with the regularity of a law. The medieval world of Islam was, e.g., clearly characterized by a masculine consciousness, while in simultaneous and likewise decidedly medieval Catholicism the mother archetype exerted a strong influence in the shape of the Mater Ecclesia and her priests as well as in the Mother of God. As far as the masculine mentality is concerned, medieval Islam, on the other hand, corresponds, rather, to Protestantism, which is characteristic of modern times. Furthermore, medieval scholasticism, with its spiritual character (father archetype), was replaced, as it were, by the natural sciences of our time, which by virtue of their subject matter (Mother Nature) and their ‘materialistic’ mode of thinking (concretism, empiricism, quantification, search for elements) prove to be in the service of the Great Mother (and are not, as is commonly held, evidence of a “patriarchal” consciousness).

In a similar way, one could produce examples of additional deviations from the postulated sequence from other ages of cultural history. Of course, Neumann offers an explanation for such discrepancies. “In individual development and perhaps also in that of the collective, these layers do not lie on top of one another in an orderly arrangement, but, as in the geological stratification of the earth, early layers may be pushed to the top and late layers to the bottom.”⁶

Here he overlooks the fundamental difference between geological stratification and development in stages. For in the case of geology, one is dealing with material, concrete layers in space, where transposition is possible, whereas cultural development is subject to the law of irreversible time. A transposition of temporal stages is a contradiction in itself; if the “stages” are irregularly and randomly arranged in historical time, this must refute the concept of stages. For we also do not say that the earlier geological layer can be displaced in time towards a later geological age, but only that it can be transposed upwards in space.

Such deliberations force us to the conclusion that the application of the idea of development to cultural history is unfruitful; it does not work. There are changes in history, but there is no evolution. This is a conclusion also arrived at by most historians of religion after the attempt of decades or more to force some evolutionary pattern onto history, such as the sequence of belief in souls, in spirits and in gods (Tylor) or of prereligion, polydemonism, polytheism, monotheism (R. Otto). Mensching remarks on this subject that “there can be no doubt that these forms of religion cannot be subordinated to a historical evolutionary schema.”⁷ According to Jensen also, such stages are mere speculation.⁸ Hillman made the same point for psychology with reference to a relevant monograph by Radin.⁹

In our context, the contributions of anthropology to the topic of cultural development are more momentous by far than the question of the evolution of forms of religion. When, e.g., we read in Eliade that “we do not know whether the matriarchate ever existed as an independent cycle of culture” and that “ethnologists are in agreement upon one specific point—that matriarchy cannot have been a primordial phenomenon,”¹⁰ then this strikes a mortal blow at The Origins and History of Consciousness, as does the statement that “there is no proof that secret societies, as a general phenomenon, were a consequence of the matriarchate.” Eliade, on the contrary, considers irresistible the conclusion that the men’s secret societies derive from the mysteries of tribal initiation (independently of a particular type of culture).¹¹

To speak at all of a phylogeny in the psychic realm is even more fundamentally denied to us. For if we should take the term phylogeny to refer to cultural history as far as it is known to us, this would be the same as if we wanted to base a representation of ontogeny solely on our knowledge of the mental development of adults of advanced age. Cultural development, as far as it is accessible to us, is not phylogeny any more. The latter precedes cultural history by hundreds of millennia. Just as the mental development of a philosopher or artist by no means follows fixed laws of sequence in the sense of ontogeny, but is, in every individual case, different and new, so also must the intellectual history of mankind not be confused with a phylogeny. If, however, we realize that the cultural history known to us is a late history, then any speculation as to the course of phylogeny becomes impossible in view of our total ignorance concerning the psychic situation of early mankind.

Neumann makes the following objection to Freud’s idea of the castration threat by the primal fathers in the primal horde: “Science has discove...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Sources and Abbreviations
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter One: Ontogeny vs. Phylogeny? A Fundamental Critique of E. Neumann’s Analytical Psychology
• Chapter Two: On the Neurosis of Psychology or the Third of the Two
• Chapter Three: The Leap After the Throw: On ‘Catching up With’ Projections and on the Origin of Psychology
• Chapter Four: No Alibi! Comments on ‘The Autonomous Psyche. A Communication to Goodheart from the Bi-Personal Field of Paul Kugler and James Hillman’
• Chapter Five: The Present as Dimension of the Soul: ‘Actual Conflict’ and Archetypal Psychology
• Chapter Six: The Provenance of C. G. Jung’s Psychological Findings
• Chapter Seven: Jungian Psychology: A Baseless Enterprise. Reflections on Our Identity as Jungians
• Chapter Eight: Jung’s Thought of the Self in the Light of Its Underlying Experiences
• Chapter Nine: The Question of Jung’s ‘Anti-Semitism’: Postscript to Cocks
• Chapter Ten: Hospitality Toward the Gods in an Ungodly Age: Philemon – Faust – Jung
• Chapter Eleven: Rupture, or: Psychology and Religion
• Chapter Twelve: Deliverance from the Stream of Events: Okeanos and the Circulation of the Blood
• Chapter Thirteen: The Lesson of the Mask
• Index