Time and Timelessness

Temporality in the theory of Carl Jung

Angeliki Yiassemides

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781135093747
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Movements in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Time and Timelessness examines the development of Jung's understanding of time throughout his opus, and the ways in which this concept has affected key elements of his work. In this book Yiassemides suggests that temporality plays an important role in many of Jung's central ideas, and is closely interlinked with his overall approach to the psyche and the cosmos at large.

Jung proposed a profound truth: that time is relative at large. To appreciate the whole of our experience we must reach beyond causality and temporal linearity, to develop an approach that allows for multidimensional and synchronistic experiences. Jung's understanding surpassed Freud's dichotomous approach which restricted timelessness to the unconscious; his time theory allows us to reach beyond the everyday time-bound world into a greater realm, rich with meaning and connection.

Included in the book:

-Jung's time theory

-the death of time

-time and spatial metaphors

-the role of time in precognition, telepathy and synchronicity

-Unus mundus and time

-a comparison of Freud's and Jung's time theories: temporal directionality, dimensionality, and the role of timelessness.

This book is the first to explore time and timelessness in a systematic manner from a Jungian perspective, and the first to investigate how the concept of time affected the overall development of Jung's theory. It will be key reading for psychoanalytic scholars and clinicians, as well as those working in the field of phenomenological philosophy.

Chapter 1
Jung and time, the beginning

Asserting the largest order¹

He took the golden Compass, prepar’d
In God’s eternal store, to circumscribe
This Universe and all created things

John Milton, Paradise Lost²

Jung’s core understanding of time’s role in the psyche was present since the onset of his theory. However, it appears that his ‘time theory’ was shaped in 1916 by the writing of Septem Sermones Ad Mortuos (The Seven Sermons to the Dead). I therefore divide his writings into two phases: those completed before and those completed after Septem Sermones. In what can be characterized as the initial phase (his work completed before the writing of the poem), time was mentioned primarily at a symbolic level. As a contrast, in the work following Septem Sermones Jung offered important deliberations on the topic. However, even though the latter phase is characterized by significant theoretical elaborations, it contains themes and ideas that Jung had touched upon during the first period. At the early stage of his career he limited his writing to rudimentary statements on the soul’s temporality, on which he did not elaborate. As his theory matured, he returned on several occasions to his initial remarks regarding the role of time in the psyche in order to offer significant insights. There is an enlargement of what was always there, rather than a transformation of his original position.

Like Freud, for Jung the timelessness of the unconscious was a concept of importance. A case in point is one of his first explicit mentions of time. In Zofingia lectures Jung suggested that the principle of life extends beyond the control of consciousness; there exists something transcendental, to which he ‘boldly assign[ed] … the name of “soul”’ (Jung 1897: par. 96). Since space and time are categories used for our conscious understanding and sense perception there is no use for them beyond the material realm: ‘Only forces in material form move within the boundaries of space and time’ (ibid.). It follows that, since the soul is not restricted by material forms, ‘[it] is an intelligence independent of space and time’ (ibid.: par. 98) Thus, according to Jung’s hypotheses, the soul is immortal.

Jung argued for a ‘vitalist’ position against a ‘mechanistic’ one, where he postulated the existence of a ‘nonphysiological “intellectual being” or “life force” … This life-principle, i.e. the soul … “extends far beyond consciousness”’ (Von Franz 1983: xviii). According to von Franz, this is Jung’s first indirect mention of an unconscious psyche. I would indicate that this first reference to the unconscious is intimately connected with temporality.

Time before Septem Sermones Ad Mortuos: symbolic elaborations

During his initial formulations Jung was referring to the way time is consciously conceived: as the flow of life and its opposing forces that cause change, and ultimately death. Time was explored as a symbol of the earthly, of the mortal human conflictual energies that oppose the eternal God(s) and the unchanging essence of being. He was in accord with ancient cosmological accounts: time is an awesome force capable of claiming the role of the creator.

In the initial phase of his temporal formulations, Jung explored several symbolizations. He elaborated on various mythological and religious images that are either connected with time within a particular context, or that Jung himself linked to time. An example of the former category is Aion, a god inexorably linked to time – ‘In the Mithraic religion we meet with a strange god, Aion, also called Chronos’ (Jung 1911–12/1952: par. 321). He also related time with various symbols of the libido, the term he used for psychic energy.³ Time and the libido are intimately connected: ‘[Aion] is a time-symbol, and is composed entirely of libido-images’ (ibid.: par. 425). Above and beyond various symbolizations, he amalgamated all time symbols with the libido.⁴ The factor responsible for the proposed overlap is their opposition: both time symbols and libido symbols contain forces that oppose each other.

Time is thus defined by the rising and setting sun, by the death and renewal of libido, the dawning and extinction of consciousness … So time, this empty and purely formal concept, is expressed in the mysteries through transformations of the creative force, libido, just as time in physics is identical with the flow of the energic (sic) process.

(ibid.: par. 425)

The above quote is key for understanding the nature of the libido-time connection (and will be revisited in Chapter 5). It is not simply that opposition is inherent in both and they could thus be conceptualized as comparable, or even equivalent energies or concepts. In that case opposition would have been the force for which Jung attempted to find a symbolic expression via time and the libido. Rather, this quotation indicates that time is represented by the libido. In an attempt to grasp the elusive nature of time Jung employed various images that contain oppositional qualities; since libido is the quintessential oppositional force it was deemed to be the most appropriate symbolization for time.

Since in his earliest accounts time was treated primarily from a symbolic point of view Jung did not discuss its impact on the reality of the psyche. However, the seeds of its vital role had been planted. In the years that followed Jung, with the assistance of a Gnostic text, was to move beyond the strictly symbolic and into a theoretically elaborate understanding of temporality in the psyche.

Septem Sermones Ad Mortuos and time

When Jung separated from Freud, and during a period of his life filled with visions and fantasies, a poem came to him that he considered to have been authored by Basilides, a second-century Gnostic from Alexandria.

In 1916 I felt the urge to give shape to something. I was compelled from within, as it were, to formulate and express what might have been said by Philemon. This was how the Septem Sermones ad Mortuos with its peculiar language came into being.⁵

(Jung 1961: 189–90)

Septem Sermones was the only piece of The Red Book published during Jung’s lifetime.⁶ With the publication of The Red Book (Jung 2009) it was revealed that the poem (with minor variations from the originally published version) was found in its closing pages. When Septem Sermones was published privately in 1916 and in 1925, under the title ‘The Seven Sermons to the Dead written by Basilides in Alexandria, the City where the East toucheth the West’ Jung did not appear as the author. Evidently, there was controversy regarding his view of the publication of the poem, which stems not from its contents but rather from the style of writing (Papadopoulos 1980).⁷ The poem was not incorporated in Jung’s Collected Works and was not on public sale. In 1961, during his lifetime, it was included in the appendix of his autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections.

It is indicative that Jung’s relation with this piece was quite contradictory. His initial reference to the poem was in a letter to his friend Alphonse Maeder, to whom he sent the poem as a ‘token of joy’ (Jung 1973: 33–4). Jung was excited about its composition and considered it to have ‘far reaching associations’ (ibid.). According to this account, he chose the name of Basilides of Alexandria since he felt he did not deserve credit for it. He was, nonetheless, pleased with the coming of these words into his life: ‘It fell quite unexpectedly into my lap like a ripe fruit at a time of great stress and has kindled a light of home and comfort for me in my bad hours’ (ibid.).

Years later, Jung appeared to be defensive when it came to the poem, mostly to fend off accusations of being a Gnostic. In his reply to Martin Buber’s charges, Jung referred to Septem Sermones as:

[A] sin of my youth, committed nearly forty years ago, which consists in my once having perpetrated a poem. In this poem I express a number of psychological aperçus in ‘Gnostic’ style, because I was then studying the Gnostics with enthusiasm. My enthusiasm arose from the discovery that they were apparently the first thinkers to concern themselves (after their fashion) with the contents of the collective unconscious. I had the poem printed under the pseudonym and gave a few copies to friends, little dreaming that it would one day bear witness against me as a heretic.

(Jung 1952b: par. 1501)

Arguably, Jung used Basilides’ voice in order to employ the Gnostic vocabulary which allowed him to talk about subject matters that were of grave importance to him – the unconscious, collective and personal, and its contents – but for which he had not yet formed a clear theory or language.⁸ At the time of Septem Sermones’ writing Jung had yet to compose his theory regarding the nature of the psyche. It is perhaps for this reason that, besides using a pseudonym, Jung wrote a poem. The poetic form allowed him to explore without restraints his novel observations and insights concerning the psyche.⁹ Jung himself characterized Septem Sermones as ‘a poetic paraphrase of the psychology of the unconscious’ (Jung 1976: 571). It has even been suggested that this poem ‘was the only work of Jung’s that was written “entirely” by his unconscious’ (Papadopoulos 1980: 303).

To understand such an esoteric piece of literature produced by a man who was later accused of psychologizing religious teachings we should approach it as an example of his psychological understanding. Jung greatly admired the Gnostics for being able to identify the workings of the psyche and project them into their cosmology.

The self [as opposed to the ego] was of course always at the centre [of the psyche], and always acted as the hidden director. Gnosticism long ago projected this state of affairs into the heavens, in the form of a metaphysical drama: ego-consciousness appearing as the vain demiurge, who fancies himself the sole creator of the world, and the self as the highest, unknowable God, whose emanation the demiurge is.

(Jung 1949: par. 1419)

Septem Sermones must be treated not as a metaphysical poem, but rather as a significant component of Jung’s initial attempts to explore his newly formulated ideas.

Unquestionably, this was a very important period in his life, since from these experiences stemmed the creative work of the subsequent years. Jung acknowledged that all of his later accomplishments were contained in the fantasies and dreams experienced during that time (Jung 1961). Even though its terminology was hardly used afterwards, numerous emerging theories of his later psychology can be detected in this manuscript. This also seems to be one of the earliest mentions of the process of individuation, found as Principium Individuationis in the poem.¹⁰ Moreover, Septem Sermones was the initial ground for the development of Jung’s time theory.

In view of what has been outlined above, as well as what is to follow, I would suggest that by writing this piece using a poetic language Jung had the freedom to timelessly relate to the concept of time. Poetry allowed him to elaborate imagistically, rather than theoretically, his observations regarding the nature of time. To clarify: I am not implying that Septem Sermones is a poem about time. Rather, it deals with concepts that are within time and are defined by it, as well as by its absence. In the spheres of the universe described by Basilides, Jung formulated an initial approach to his assumptions regarding time in the psyche. Septem Sermones is a key text in his development. It is the first instance that time as well as timelessness are interwoven in a wider context. In this manuscript the temporal parameters of both the cosmic and the individual levels are interrelated.

In Septem Sermones the timeless unconscious, as previously defined by Freud, is taken to a new level. Timelessness is not a quality belonging solely to the personal unconscious, but rather it extends beyond the boundaries of the individual, to a cosmological context. In the poem time is conceptualized in terms of the entire universe. In it we encounter collective as well as individual structures that are within and beyond time. With these parameters in mind, let us examine temporality in Septem Sermones.

In Septem Sermones Ad Mortuos the souls of the dead Christians who came back from Jerusalem are asking the poet for what they did not find. The Gnostic Basilides lets them in and starts preaching the reality of the universe. In the first and most elaborate sermon, Jung as Basilides¹¹ sets the scene for the universe he is about to reveal to the seekers by making an important distinction between the realms of Pleroma and Creatura. Upon these two realms rest the subsequent sermons.

Pleroma as well as Creatura are central words in Gnostic cosmology. Pleroma¹² describes the totality of the divine; it is a heavenly state that encompasses what cannot be grasped spiritually by humans. The Gnostics believed that our world is occupied by spiritual beings that self-emanated from the Pleroma.¹³ According to Basilides, Pleroma has no qualities, it is everything and nothing, and yet it encompasses all qualities. He talked about the Pleroma in order to get rid of ‘the delusion that somewhere...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Jung and time, the beginning: Asserting the largest order
• 2 The unfolding of Jung's time theory: Dreaming the myth onwards
• 3 Long-range effects in time
• 4 A unified reality
• 5 The death of time: Mythical consciousness and the descent to the archaic
• 6 Time and spatial metaphors
• Concluding remarks
• Appendix: Freud on memory, the primal scene and the concept of Nachträglichkeit
• Bibliography
• Index