Matter of Heart: The Extraordinary Journey of C.G. Jung

[Tigersoap]

Here is a 1986 documentary about the life and work of C.G. Jung.

The life and thinking of the great Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Gustav Jung, is examined. Interviews are done with those who knew him, most of whom were analyzed by him and very often became analysts themselves. Jung's own words appear on screen, and archive footage of Jung himself is shown. We learn aspects of his private life, including his relationship with his wife, Emma, and his mistress, Toni Wolff. But mostly we learn of his philosophy, sometimes mystical in nature, regarding the collective unconscious, the ego-personality, anima and animus, and more.

It's around 1:45 min (I have to watch it yet in full but it looks interesting).



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kSUq6DAtvc&feature=player_embedded

 

[SeekinTruth]

That was a very interesting documentary. Thanks for sharing it, Tigersoap.

 

[Redrock12]

Yes, Tigersoap, very insightful into Jung's thinking.
Interesting that he sees the cause of mass violence as a group of people projecting their shadow onto another group. Example, the German people projecting their shadow on the Jews, Poles, gypsies, etc.
If he were alive today, I wonder how he would factor psychopathy into the collective unconscious' shadow. Would psychopaths be an outward manifestation of the shadow, or would he regard psychopathy as a part of the shadow that manifests itself when we don't acknowledge our individual or collective shadow?

 

[Aiming]

Interesting that he sees the cause of mass violence as a group of people projecting their shadow onto another group. Example, the German people projecting their shadow on the Jews, Poles, gypsies, etc.
If he were alive today, I wonder how he would factor psychopathy into the collective unconscious' shadow. Would psychopaths be an outward manifestation of the shadow, or would he regard psychopathy as a part of the shadow that manifests itself when we don't acknowledge our individual or collective shadow?

Exactly what I've been thinking about, too! Whether he'd be able to grasp the existence of true evil, of soul-less human-looking creatures, not to mention hyperdimensional manipulation. I remember he once talked about how the danger lies in the human psyche and how what will come to pass in an individual's life or in 'collective life' depends on whether one works on making unconscious dynamics conscious.. so, one could say that in this view, evil is something that is in each of us, and can be undone simply by doing inner work, the assumption being, that everybody has the potential to do this. Well, I find it such a pity that the most essential topics are the ones being most suppressed, but I'm preaching to the choir here.

Another thing that stood out for me was this:

When with people Jung would behave in such a way as to trigger people to let go of their surface personas and reveal their shadows, which his contemporaries described as a terrible experience. Not exactly externally considerate, but then, for those who were open to consider and take on board the purpose of what he was doing, it must've had a tremendous impact, I can imagine.

In any case, thanks for sharing the documentary, Tigersoap. I'm now even more looking forward to finally coming around to reading Jung's works. I've always felt drawn towards it, but there were always other books coming my way first.

 

[obyvatel]

If he were alive today, I wonder how he would factor psychopathy into the collective unconscious' shadow. Would psychopaths be an outward manifestation of the shadow, or would he regard psychopathy as a part of the shadow that manifests itself when we don't acknowledge our individual or collective shadow?

I have not come across any writings of Jung on the topic of psychopathy as we understand it. To reconcile the Jungian model with psychopathy, I think one would have to say that psychopaths are controlled completely by the predator archetype. For normal people, the predatory archetype is one of the many archetypes that act through them - and since the ego is usually not comfortable with it, mostly this is projected as a shadow onto others individually or collectively. Psychopaths however would be living incarnations of the predatory archetype. Other archetypes, if capable of acting through a psychopath, would have a much weaker representation than the predominant predatory one.

My thoughts on this fwiw

 

[anart]

I would posit that there is no other archetype present. I also think that Jung's ideas apply to human beings and psychopaths, by definition, are not actually human, so it might be difficult to apply his theories.