In this essay we will explore whether the work of Carl Gustav Jung has been built upon. Alternatively the psychology that Jung built may have been close to entirely his own with little contribution from others. Or perhaps a great deal of additional work will have been contributed from others. These are the questions that this essay will delve into. Jungian psychology is a field of knowledge in its own right. Hence only a thick book could hope to explore all of the different thinkers and debates that have resulted from the psychology that the Swiss psychologist established. Nevertheless, we can note the key attempts at contributing to Jung's psychology. For example from within the first generation of Jungians, Marie Louise Von Franz was Jung's main collaborator. But was she too close to add anything? Also in the first generation was the Nobel Prize winning physicist, Wolfgang Pauli. Pauli agreed with much of Jung's insights but denied being anyone's poodle. So did Pauli contribute anything? Von Franz and Pauli will be part 1's subject matter. In part 2 we will explore confusion or conflict over the key archetype hypothesis. This will give the reader some perspective over whether Jung's work can be regarded as valid or not. In order to ensure that the reader can stay with Jung's work without dismissing it all as simply invalid we will remind the reader of the rational/irrational poles of Jungian psychology. The psyche isn't always clear, rational, logical. Jung's work at least has validity as descriptive of the psychologically irrational. Part 3 will then bring us into the third generation.
[...] Part 1 In this part of the essay we will focus on the views of Jung collaborators, Marie Louise Von Franz and Wolfgang Pauli. At the end of Man and his Symbols Von Franz writes glowingly of Jung's opening up of a whole new field that for Von Franz enables other present and future thinkers to explore and discover. She writes Jung, his [own] concepts were mere tools or heuristic hypotheses that might help us to explore the vast new area of reality opened up by the discovery of the unconscious a discovery that has not merely widened our whole view of the world but has in fact doubled it. [...]
[...] K p274 Sharp, D Samuels, in Casement, A p18 Samuels, in Casement, A p19 & 20 Samuels, in Casement, A p21 Tacey, 19th August 2008 10: ibid 11: ibid 12: ibid 13: ibid 14: ibid 15: Dourley, 1st December 2008 16: Edinger, in Jaffe, L Bibliography Casement, (1998) Post-Jungians Today: Key Papers in Contemporary Analytical Psychology (Routledge) Descartes, (2006) A Discourse on Method (ReadHowYouWant.com) Donati, (2004) The Journal of Analytical Psychology: 49: 707-728: Beyond Synchronicity: The worldview of Carl Gustav Jung and Wolfgang Pauli (Blackwell Publishing) Dourley, (1st [...]
[...] [Moreover Jung said] To Schopenhauer I owe the dynamic view of the psyche; the ‘will' is the libido that is back of everything.”18 Shamdasani then writes that this passage (and others by Jung) “suggest[s] that [Jung's] initial concept of psychic energy was derived from Schopenhauer's concept of the will.”19 The blindness of theSchopenhaurian will is clear in the following quote by the philosopher quoted in Shamdasani: works of animal instinct, the spiders web, the honeycomb of bees, the structure of termites, and so on, are all of them constituted as if they had originated in consequence of an intentional conception, far-reaching and rational deliberation, whereas they are obviously the work of a blind impulse, that is, of a will which is not guided by knowledge.”20 However, Shamdasani says that Jung “followed Hartmann [ ] adopting von Hartmann's reformulations of Schopenhauer's philosophy [such as that] found in his lecture “Thoughts on the nature and value of speculative inquiry” [where Jung endorses Hartmann's view and adds] the absolutely essential element of purposeful intention”21 to the will/psychic energy. [...]
[...] But having worked through Jung, and having as a result of that, worked through Hillman, it results in an indebtedness to Wolfgang Giegerich who for me is the first thinking' post-Jungian to truly work through and hence see through Jung's work. Notes: Part 1 Von Franz, M. in Jung, C p378 Von Franz, M. L p384 & 385 Von Franz p1 Pauli, in Gieser, S p161 wrote to C.G. Jung's estate and its then administrator, Dr Lorenz Jung, and in due course received the reply that [ the] correspondence [between Jung and Pauli] had been preserved and that it was filed in the archives of ETH (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) in Zurich. [...]
[...] Claire Douglas in The Cambridge Companion to Jung rightly touches upon a multitude of influences on Jung. She starts off by saying that Jung himself referred to two aspects of his psyche, one that is empirical, rational, practical and so on, and another that is romantic and home with the unconscious, the mysterious, and the hidden whether in hermetic science and religion, in the occult, or in fantasies and dreams.”1 Already a key Jungian belief about the psyche is implied here. [...]
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