Jung and Intuition

On the Centrality and Variety of Forms of Intuition in Jung and Post-Jungians

Nathalie Pilard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429915321
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Jung and Intuition examines for the first time the twelve categories of intuition described in both the works of C. G. Jung and the post-Jungians. Nowhere, other than in Jung's own work, has intuition been more fully treated. Each form of intuition is critically explained in the historical context of its appearance and located in one of the four spheres of Jung's psychology: the unconscious, the subconscious (Unterbewusste, consciousness, and Jungian and post-Jungian practice. This work brings Jung's entire psychology in all its depth from 1896 to its contemporary use into greater clarity for both professionals and lay readers. The author persuasively shows that intuition is at the heart of Jung's psychology. It is central to his concept of the archetypes as well as to his understanding of the subconscious and the active imagination. It also involves both clinical and philosophical approaches, as powerfully demonstrated by his pioneering work at the Burgholzli Klinik in Zurich.

PART I

JUNG’S NOTION OF INTUITION AND ITS CONTEXTS IN HIS PSYCHOLOGY

CHAPTER ONE

Plurality of meaning in Jung’s notion of intuition

The circumscribed value of the indices of the Collected Works

The plural of the entry “Intuition(s)” in the General Index of the Collected Works of C. G. Jung (the last and twentieth volume) bears witness to the problematic nature of the study of intuition. In Jung’s published work, there is neither a single term for intuition nor a single intuition. Jung’s work offers challenges to the micro-lexicologist, whose labour is threatened by three primary factors: translations, editions, and auto-revisions.

Routledge and Kegan Paul in London and the Bollingen Foundation in Princeton, New Jersey first published Jung’s Collected Works in the 1950s (before the German publisher, Rascher) (McGuire, 1982, pp. 123–127).²⁰ In his investigation of the correspondence between Jung and Rascher, Paul Bishop discovered that Jung “did not want to rush the preparation of the ‘Gesamtausgabe’ [collected edition] … [arguing] that it would in fact be better to leave the bulk of the work up to the editors of the English edition” (Bishop, 1998b, p. 374). Tensions ensued between Jung and the two publishers. In 1953, for instance, Jung expressed to the British–American editorial committee “in the strongest possible terms”, reports William McGuire, the American Bollingen house editor, “his dissatisfaction with the progress in the publication of the Collected Works, accusing his publishers of the virtual suppression of his work” (McGuire, 1982, p. 127). In the long term, thinks Bishop, the intellectual disadvantages of this financial strategy of spreading the Jungian message in English-reading countries with no adequate professional care outweighed its practical benefits (Bishop, 1998b, p. 375).

In agreement with Bishop, Shamdasani²¹ (2007, p. 117) writes of the “insufficient coordination between the two editions”. (See also the detailed chapter, “The incomplete works of Jung”, in Shamdasani (2005).) Characteristically, and as the first hindrance to our attempt at defining intuition in the work of Jung, the English General Index was edited in 1979, whereas the German Gesamtregister was published only in 1994. The Foreword of the latter, while noting the reliance on the indices of each of the eighteen other German volumes, made no mention of the English General Index. These unco-ordinated efforts gave free rein to editorial preferences and to entwined linguistic and cultural penchants. Knowing whether “intuition” means something different in German and in English is not the purpose of this section. Here, intuition is outlined within the precise context of Jung’s writing, something made possible by the comparison of German and English general indices, that is, Volume 20 and Band 20 of Jung’s Collected Works and Gesammelte Werke, respectively.

A careful study of all the references concerned with the entry “Intuition”²² in the general index of Jung’s Collected Works and Gesammelte Werke reveals discrepancies between the index-linking in Ger man and the English index-linking.²³ I present in Appendix I four tables listing the similarities and differences between the German and the English indexing of the (English and German) term “intuition”, the terms of its family, and all their cross-references found under the entries “intuition”, “intuitive”, and “intuitive type”. Appendix I, therefore, brings together the German and English indexing of Jung’s Collected Works and Gesammelte Werke 1 to 18.²⁴

These tables first reveal that if the major references to intuition generally belong to both German and English indices (Appendix I, Table 1, the Swiss editors either are more interested in the notion or are more serious in their indexing, for they select more than twice the number of paragraphs in the eighteen volumes than the British–American editors did. Some of the paragraphs index-linked either only in German (that is, missed in English (Appendix I, Table 2 or only in English (that is, missed in German (Appendix I, Table 3) reveal clear editorial penchants.

If we temporarily ignore the numeral issue, the first striking dissimilarity is raised as early as the index-linking of what is termed the “definition” of intuition.

The German index refers the definition of intuition to the lecture of 1919, “Instinct and the unconscious”, which belongs to Jung’s Psychology of the Unconscious. The English index refers to the 1921 Psychological Types, which, historically, introduces Jung’s psychology of consciousness.²⁵ These two texts are the chief sources for Jung’s theoretical approach to intuition, but they have little in common in the way that they depict it. This discrepancy seems secondary to Jung, whose reference in a footnote in the first text to the mentioned paragraphs of the other gives priority to the coherence that he sees in the notion of intuition in the two texts, and we shall see why in the last section of this chapter.

“Instinct and the unconscious” comprises only ten pages out of the 600 of Volume 8 of Jung’s Collected Works. Like Psychological Types, it is the result of decades of research. Several reasons, of form and content, justify the German indexing of paragraph 269 as the place to find the “definition” of intuition. The third sentence, which starts “Intuition is”, is a formal presentation of the notion that runs to the end of the paragraph. There, intuition is depicted in the unconscious, by stressing the differences and similarities existing between the interlinked processes of intuition and instinct on the one hand and the central notion of Anschauung on the other.

Psychological Types is not, despite the table, a work on types, that is, on types only, but it also represents the sum of Jung’s psychology in 1921. The fact that it is the single work of Jung’s that contains a section (of nearly eighty pages) on “Definitions” shows the author’s contemporary desire to undertake a comprehensive setting of his psychology.²⁶ The entry “Intuition”, which runs to one and a half pages, offers all the facets of the notion of intuition (those of intuition in consciousness as much as those of intuition in the unconscious), yet only after careful analysis.²⁷ So far, therefore, whereas the Swiss index has a clear penchant towards Jung’s psychology of the unconscious regarding intuition, the English indexation seems to refer neutrally to the single place where one can find that which Jung, indeed, names the “definition” of intuition. Yet, “Definitions” belongs to Types, some chapters of which technically and precisely refer to Jung’s psychology of consciousness. These chapters have been unusually abundantly referred to in the English index. This is no longer impartial.

In my final table (Appendix II, Table 1), I compare the German and English indices on a smaller scale: Chapter Two of Psychological Types. The micro-format confirms the general one: the same two German and English editing preferences for Jung’s psychology of the unconscious and for Jung’s psychology of consciousness reappear respectively.

The hundred pages of “Schiller’s ideas on the type problem” in Psychological Types offer a study of Friedrich Schiller’s correspondence with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. There, Jung entwines a description of the naïve and sentimental poets with both his own typology of con sciousness and his theory of the unconscious.²⁸

The term “intuition” and related terms appear fifteen times in the chapter, but are indexed only eight times in German and seven times in English. While common in the English index, this oversight—seven German and eight English references out of fifteen missed—is noticeable with the Swiss editors and is explicable only by the fact that Psychological Types here treats Jung’s psychology of consciousness.

Among the few recorded paragraphs, only four of them are common to both the German and the English indices. The content of the remaining four German and three English references gives credence to my earlier association of German with the unconscious and of English with consciousness concerning intuition. All four paragraphs found only in German describe Jung’s psychology of the unconscious. Paragraph 184 refers to the archetype by describing “these intuitions [which] contain a living power”. Paragraph 171 portrays the relationship between intuition and symbol. Both paragraph 123 and paragraph 195 discuss “the religious problem of the primitive”. Archetype, symbol, and “primitive” thinking all belong to Jung’s psychology of the unconscious.

Thorny problems with the psychology of consciousness are developed in the two notes of paragraphs 143 and 148, which are selected only in the English index and expressly catalogued under the sub-entry “Intuitive type, extraverted feeling” for paragraph 143n, and “Intuitive type, introverted thinking” for paragraph 148n. Schiller, for Jung, belonged to the introverted type and intuited the differences between introversion and extraversion, the main topic of the psychology of consciousness, through his relationship with the extraverted Goethe. The two notes brilliantly illustrate the reverse tendencies, which might explain the English choice. Yet, one could argue that introversion and extraversion are only indirectly linked to intuition and that it is, therefore, far-fetched for them to be included in the index. The third paragraph, which is selected only in English, neutrally refers to Goethe’s “intuition” and again testifies to another German oversight or omission.

Even the four paragraphs selected both in German and in English leave room for distinct editorial penchants. Paragraphs 117 and 219 describe intuition in the unconscious as well as in consciousness. Para graphs 103 and 104 clearly indicate a German reference to the psychology of the unconscious and an English reference to the psychology of consciousness in the way that they are indexed. Paragraph 103 is catalogued under the English sub-entry “Intuition, in Schiller” and under the German entry “Intuition, bei Goethe”. Here, Jung uses Schiller to illustrate types and functions of consciousness but accounts for “[Goethe’s unconscious] overriding intuition”. Paragraph 104 refers, in the German index, to the entry “Intuitivismus”, or Schiller’s [unconscious] intuitiveness. The German index, therefore, pinpoints exceptions to the main concern of the chapter. Only the paragraphs covering the psychology of the unconscious have been saved.

Translation issues and cultural biases

In order to know what intuition means for Jung, one needs to stick to a precise terminology, even if it is long and incomplete. Jung’s desire to remain ambiguous in order for his psychology to remain open to the richest variety of interpretation compels us to try to clarify. Jung’s versatility in writing also needs to be appreciated through his extraordinary awareness of the significance of the precision of language. School and high school, for Jung, had meant Gymnasium, or “grammar school” in the international micro-city of Basel, where Latin and Greek were taught. Hence, Jung’s frequent recourse to etymology, for instance. As Marie-Louise von Franz described in her own terms, “The other voice [the unconscious] could be heard in Jung’s special way of reviving the original etymological meanings of words and allowing both feeling and imaginative elements to enter into his scientific exposition of each term” (von Franz, 1975, p. 4). Precision, imagination, intuition, and unconscious are never at odds. Intuition itself is not vague, but our capacity to understand it can be. As he was an extremely intuitive person, this was not the case with Jung.

Jung’s concern for precision in language is not restricted to his specific use of etymology in dead languages. Next to Jung’s wish to spread analytical psychology in the most effective and sometimes fastest way were his struggles to obtain precise translations.²⁹

One example belongs to the history of the Collected Works, reported by Shamdasani. Editing and translating involved choices that often divided people into camps. Translation...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• INTRODUCTION
• PART I JUNG’S NOTION OF INTUITION AND ITS CONTEXTS IN HIS PSYCHOLOGY
• PART II AFTER 1896: INTUITION IN THE UNDER-CONSCIOUS
• PART III AFTER 1912: INTUITION IN THE UNCONSCIOUS
• PART IV AFTER 1913: INTUITION IN JUNGIAN AND POST-JUNGIAN PRACTICE
• PART V AFTER 1921: INTUITION IN JUNGIAN AND POST-JUNGIAN CONSCIOUSNESS
• PART VI LATE JUNG, EMPATHY (3), AND THE NATURE OF INTUITION
• APPENDIX I Indexations of “-intuition”
• APPENDIX II CW and GW 6, indexing of “-intuition” in Chapter Two
• NOTES
• REFERENCES
• INDEX