Pauli and Jung

[Laura]

From: TheInnermostKernel
Depth Psychology and Quantum Physics.
Wolfgang Pauli’s Dialogue with C.G. Jung

by Suzanne Gieser

To sum up, I should like to say that it seems that there
must be very deep connections between soul and matter
and, hence, between the physics and the psychology of
the future, which are not yet conceptually expressed in
modern science. [–––] Such deep connectionsmust surely
exist, because otherwise the human mind would not be
able to discover concepts which fit nature at all.
Pauli to Ralph König, 10Mar. 1946.

{...}

Late in 1930,Wolfgang Pauli’s world was falling apart. Only two years earlier the brilliant young genius had been appointed to the chair in theoretical physics at ETH, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, in Zürich. At that time he must have been one of the youngest professors in the world, only 28 years old. The year 1929 had been one of momentous change: he had taken the decision to leave the Catholic Church and in December the same year he had married the cabaret performer Käthe Deppner in Berlin. However any serenity on the surface was deceptive. As early as February 1930 he intimates to his Swedish friend and colleague Oskar Klein that all is not well with the marriage. He describes the matrimonial ties as very loose and gives him to understand that nobody would be less surprised than he himself if his wife were to leave the home.2 In November the separation duly happened. She left him for a chemist whom she had already met before she married Pauli. Characteristically Pauli responded with sarcasm: ‘If it had been a bullfighter I could have understood. But a common chemist. . . ’3 But despite the bantering tone, Pauli was devastated. The divorce marked the start of a profound crisis in his life. History records that it was in fact his father who recommended him to consult the man for whomZürich was world-famous: the psychologist Carl Gustav Jung.

It is this encounter of the quantum physicist Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958) and the depth psychologist C.G. Jung (1875–1961) that is the subject of this book. However it will deal with much more than merely the personal relationship between the help-seeking Pauli and the ‘healer’ Jung. For I wish to show that Pauli’s interest in Jung’s psychology cannot be seen as solely the consequence of his personal crisis.After 1934,when Pauli stopped undergoing analysis, he gradually developed a deepening philosophical interest in Jung’s psychology as a method of contemplating the world and mankind. I also wish to show how in Jung’s Weltanschauung he found perspectives which related to and developed the philosophical questions which had occupied him from the beginning of his intellectual life and in particular the problems which he had encountered in connection with the development of modern physics. The main question that I shall attempt to answer is:Why was Pauli interested in Jung’s psychology and in what respect?What most people find remarkable is that a theoretical physicist, and one with a reputation for being extremely critical, could become interested in the ideas of the ‘mystic’ Jung. A description of Pauli’s personality therefore becomes essential – an account that is both biographical and also focuses on his role in the evolution of quantum physics.

Pauli’s early philosophical schooling, his critical epistemology and his close contact with his mentor Niels Bohr are all relevant to an understanding of Pauli’s later interest in Jung’s psychology and view of the world. At the same time this meeting of a representative of matter and a representative of the soul has also to be seen against the background of the development that had taken place in both physics and psychology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. It is moreover necessary to consider the meeting in the context of the peculiar intellectual atmosphere of Europe at the turn of the century and between the wars. Pauli’s meeting and dialogue with C.G. Jung also represents a confrontation between two different intellectual temperaments – a confrontation that played a big part in the development and intensification of the philosophical outlooks of the two men.

A fascinating, thoughtful, and well-read book. I'll be posting some excerpts now and again as I read through.

 

[Laura]

Evidence of efforts to censor. One wonders how well we really know any public figure when, after they die, someone has some idea of "image management." Of course, many scientists keep their real ideas and opinions to themselves for fear of censure by the scientific community thought police. That's a tragic - and dangerous - state of affairs for humanity.

The publication of Pauli’s scientific correspondence is a project that has been in progress since the 1970s. Pauli’s widow Franca Pauli was very anxious to preserve the image ofWolfgang Pauli as that of the brilliant physicist, and nothing else. For this reason she did everything in her power to consign the ‘Jungian’ part of Pauli’s thinking to oblivion.5 She opposed any publication of letters dealing with such matters.

Franca Pauli died in 1987 but the Pauli Committee still wanted to respect her wishes. But back in the early 1980s a Finnish professor of theoretical physics, K.V. Laurikainen, had studied the correspondence between Wolfgang Pauli and his colleagueMarkus Fierz that is deposited at CERN (The Pauli Archive). This correspondence ranges over many philosophical and psychological issues. In 1985 he published a book in Finnish based on the letters and in 1988 came Beyond the Atom - The Philosophical Thought of Wolfgang Pauli, published at Springer Verlag.6

The fact that Laurikainen had not respected the conditions for having been allowed to read these letters and had published large excerpts fromthe letters without the permission of the Pauli Committee created some concern. This incident also put the question of the ‘psychological’ letters on the agenda. Censoring this part of Pauli’s thinking would create immense problems: many letters would have to be cut apart so that they would no longer make any sense. According to Karl von Meyenn he had to struggle with the other members of the Pauli Committee for the inclusion of the psychological letters in the scientific edition of Pauli’s correspondence.

The Committee and other experts finally yielded to the argument that ‘it is of no importance what we think of Jung and his psychology. The important thing is that Pauli was a convinced adherent of Jung’s teachings. One cannot therefore leave out this part of his writing and his estate.’7 From Volume IV/1 covering the years 1950–1952 the psychological letters are included in the Pauli Letter Edition. Letters concerning psychological issues prior to that will appear in a supplementary volume.

My contribution to this may perhaps be said to lie in the fact that in 1988 I learned that the C.G. Jung estate contained preserved letters from Pauli, and later I discovered more letters exchanged by Pauli and members of the Jung circle. As far as I know I must have been one of the first researchers to be given special permission by the C.G. Jung estate to study the Jung-Pauli letters.8 These have now been published by C.A. Meier, a colleague of Jung and a good friend of Pauli’s, and translated into English.9 I must also be one of the first ‘outsiders’ to have read the correspondence between Pauli and Jung’s secretary Aniela Jaffé and Pauli’s correspondence with Marie-Louise von Franz.

For a while, Pauli seems to have been very close to Marie-Louise von Franz. They got to know each other in 1947 while Pauli was working on his essay on Johannes Kepler. Von Franz was one of the few in the circle surrounding Jung who knew Latin well enough to be able to help Jung and others with the translation of Latin texts. She also helped Pauli with the translation of Kepler and Fludd. Unfortunately only Pauli’s letters to von Franz have been preserved (except for one), von Franz’ letters to Pauli were burned by Pauli’s widow when she discovered them in a box in his room at ETH, the institute of technology in Zürich. It has been implied that they had a sexual relationship, but this is firmly denied by von Franz.21

There ismuch to indicate that Pauli drew a relatively sharp line between what he discussed with the Jung circle and what he discussed with his fellow-physicists. Yet at the same time we know that he was always looking for discussion partners outside Jung’s circle with whomhe could discuss ‘Jungian’ perspectives. On the other hand there were colleagues from whom he wished to keep his interest in Jung entirely secret. It appears however that even on that front he became increasingly open as he got older. But it must not be forgotten that many people had no idea that Pauli was anything more than an unusually critical and intelligent physicist.

 

[Laura]

Pauli's influence on science:

In more recent literature there is agreement that Pauli’s contribution as a colleague and a ‘sounding board’ was absolutely vital to the scientific discoveries that have been attributed to Heisenberg and Bohr.10 Victor Weisskopf believes that there was not a single advance in the development of the quantum theory in which Pauli did not participate, despite the fact that he never asserted his authorship.11 He has even been called the architect behind wave particle complementarity.12 Pauli is portrayed as a brilliant genius, indeed even as the greatest physicist of his time. His colleague Max Born compares him with Einstein and says that in certain respects he has to be considered even greater than Einstein.13 Yet Pauli did not become so well known as many of his colleagues. This is to a large extent because he shunned the glare of publicity and preferred to exert influence through his letters. Compared with, for example, Bohr, Heisenberg or Schrödinger, he did not publish very much of either a scientific or a more popular character.More often he expressed his opinions in direct communication person-to-person.Where Pauli’s scientific achievements are concerned, therefore, the publication of his collected correspondence is particularly important. He and his letters were regarded as an institution in themselves; the letters were pinned on the notice board or passed from hand to hand until they had been all round the department.14 Pauli’s excessively critical attitude led him to be extremely cautious in publishing, and his publications contain only a fraction of the work he actually did. It would therefore be entirely misleading to assess Pauli purely on the strength of his published works.When Paul Ehrenfest proposed Pauli as a candidate for the Lorentz Medal in 1931, he stressed in particular the importance of Pauli as a partner in discussion and as a letter-writer.15 -

 

[Laura]

Pauli’s Swedish colleague, the physicist Oskar Klein, has summarized Pauli’s personal development as a journey from Mephistopheles to Buddha.40 The young Pauli earned the epithet Mephistopheles for his keen critical and analytical ability. This ability had two sides: on the one hand it expressed itself in an amazing facility for quickly finding the flaw in complicated mathematical and logical reasoning; onthe other hand it could be expressed inhis not always equally appreciated sharp tongue and sarcastic humour. His basic attitude was sceptical. He was therefore a natural choice for the role of Mephistopheles, ‘the spirit that denies’, when a physicists’ pastiche of Goethe’s Faust was produced at the Bohr Institute.41 But as Pauli could not be present on that occasion Léon Rosenfeld played his part. Pauli remainedinclinedtosarcasmall his life, but graduallyhispersonality became more rounded and Buddha-like. Pauli acquired his Buddha epithet not only for his expanded wisdom but also for his growing physical bulk.

{…}

During one Solvay Congress, Pauli, Heisenberg and Dirac were sitting in the foyer of the hotel discussing religion. The discussion was largely between Heisenberg and Dirac, whereas Pauli was silent. Heisenberg believed that religion has to be understood as man’s need for something transcendental and mystical, whereas Dirac argued that religion is the opium of the people. When Heisenberg asked Pauli for his views on the matter Pauli had only one comment: ‘Now I understand. There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.’49

 

[Laura]

When Germany annexed Austria, Pauli was not a Swiss citizen but still an Austrian. He applied for Swiss citizenship at the time of the annexation but was turned down. Pauli was therefore obliged to accept German citizenship. Without closer examination he was classified as half-Aryan and thus escaped having to have a J-marked passport. But he knew that under German law he would really be regarded as 75 % Jewish and he did not feel secure in Switzerland.

Before the outbreak of the war he had transferred a little money to the USA and so he was glad to accept the offer of a visiting professorship at The Institute for Advanced Studyat Princeton for the period 1940–42.However it was not an altogether simple matter for Pauli to obtain an entry visa to the USA, as he was officially a German citizen. Moreover his German passport was only valid until 29 November 1940. Eventually, however, he obtained his visa. There still remained the problem of actually getting to America. The usual routes were blocked and aircraft were overfull. Finally Pauli and his wife managed to get from Geneva by land through Spain to Lisbon, where they were able to take a ship. They arrived in the USA on 24 August 1940.58

During the period 1940–46 Pauli was employed at The Institute for Advanced Study, where he worked in close proximity to Einstein. It was in many ways a difficult period for Pauli. The renewal of his appointment after 1942 was problematic, there was no money and his future at the Institute was uncertain. He actually considered returning to Switzerland and applied for travel documents, but received none. He felt doubly rejected by Switzerland, which had denied him citizenship in 1940 and now denied him travel documents. With no valid passport he was in effect stateless until 1946 and found himself a refugee.

Pauli,who had always taken a very dim view of nationalism, was now confirmed in his dislike of it by his statelessness and his feeling of homelessness.

There is no home for me – only the profound conviction (which I had even in 1918) that the national form of civilization with its symbols and institutions has become a nonsensical impossibility. Yet somewhere I still wanted to find a conservative solution (and I depended for this on Switzerland), but it is not possible. And in fact I believe that it is against my very ‘instincts’.59

Pauli was one of the few who did not take part in the Manhattan Project, i. e. the development of the atomic bomb.

The fact that all the great physicists except Pauli took part in this project has given rise to some speculation. After the war Pauli was very glad that he had not been involved, but while the war was actually going on he was somewhat uncertain about how to act. This is clear from correspondence between him and Robert Oppenheimer.

Oppenheimer’s explanation for Pauli’s non-participation in this project was that somebody had to carry on pure scientific research and that nobody met this need better than Pauli himself. All the same, it is evident that Oppenheimer did not want Pauli to take part in the project.

You are just about the only physicist in the country who can help to keep those principles of science alive which do not seem immediately relevant to the war, and that is eminently worth doing.60

Oppenheimer went on to suggest that Pauli should publish scientific articles under other names, so that the enemy would imagine that scientists were working as usual and were not involved in military research. How this felt to Pauli is evident in a letter he wrote to Niels Bohr:

‘I am very well here and belong to the very few people in the world, which are continuing their pure scientific work during the war. Of course, I am a bit lonesome. . . ’61

However other explanations for the fact that Pauli’s participation might not have been welcome on the project have been suggested. One might be his known aversion to applied physics. He was very sceptical of ‘scientific’ ambitions that focus uncritically only on practical results and ‘filthy lucre’.

To him true science was still linked with a contemplation of the structure of existence, closely associated with man’s religious function. The ambition of science must be to discover connections and to place man in a context that is greater than man himself.

On the other hand the same can be said of Einstein’s attitude, a fact that did not deter him from participation in the Manhattan Project.

An explanation of a more controversial nature is the so-called ‘Pauli Effect’.

The Pauli Effect was a phenomenon said to be linked with Pauli’s personality, so inexplicable as to be regarded by most people as a joke. But, as is so often the case, there are real events behind the anecdotes. The Pauli Effect was the explanation given for the fact that things tended to get broken in the immediate neighbourhood of Pauli.

Even the most sober experimental physicist considered that a strange influence emanated from Pauli and that his mere presence in a laboratory seemed to cause all kinds of experimental mishaps. It was as if he aroused the capricious nature of the objects. Here I shall quote the views of two physicists on this phenomenon. One is Oskar Klein, Pauli’s colleague and close friend, and the other is Markus Fierz, also a friend, colleague and assistant. Oskar Klein writes:

How careful one has to be with regard to rules which have been arrived at by an innumerable number of coincidences is perhaps best shown by the fact that it is so easy to produce rules which apparently hold good in a number of instances but which are nonetheless obviously incorrect. I will mention a curious example of such an ‘artificial’ superstition. An acquaintance of mine has acquired the reputation of being some sort of bird of ill omen in that something always breaks in premises which he enters. There is no end to the true–perhaps sometimes a little embroidered – stories which circulate around this ‘effect’ of his, which has long been his own pride and joy. Here it was all just a joke, but had the story happened to arise in a circle of people with an interest in the occult, who were inclined to believe that certain demonic individuals can influence their surroundings by exerting mysterious forces, they would have had as well-demonstrated a ‘supernatural’ effect here as ever there was.62

Markus Fierz says:

It appears that most physicists were not aware that Pauli was much more than a very brilliant and in some ways singular theoretician. But they sensed it. For even quite sober experimental physicists were of the opinion that strange effects emanated from Pauli. They thought, for example, that his very presence in a laboratory produced all kinds of experimental misfortune, almost as if he aroused the malice of the object. This was the ‘Pauli Effect’. His friend Otto Stern, for example, the celebrated virtuoso of the molecular beam, would never allow him into his department for this reason. This is no legend, I knew both Pauli and Stern very well! Pauli himself definitely believed in his effect. He told me that the presentiment of disaster would come to him as an unpleasant tension, and if the anticipated misfortune then actually occurred – to someone else! – he felt strangely released and relieved.63

Without entering into a deeper discussion of the Pauli Effect, I believe that it ought to be considered a possible reason for the failure to allow Pauli to work on the Manhattan Project. According to Markus Fierz it was a fact that the molecular physicist Otto Stern refused to let Pauli into his laboratory. It is in my opinion credible that Oppenheimer, too, preferred to be on the safe side and not to let Pauli in on such a sensitive and vital task as the atomic bomb project.

Superstition or not, most physicists who do sensitive experiments know that there are many incalculable and unknown factors that can influence the experimental situation.

The Pauli Effect is also of interest from a different point of view, namely in relation to Pauli’s collaboration with Jung on the synchronicity principle. It is probable that Pauli took a particular interest in Jung’s concept of synchronicity just because it concerns random coincidences of the type represented by the Pauli Effect, coincidences which do actually exist, but which Western science considers have to be regarded as ‘obviously incorrect’, to quote Oskar Klein.

{…}

After the end of the Second World War and his receipt of the Nobel Prize there were several possibilities open to Pauli. Although he had been offered a very good position at Princeton and been granted American citizenship, he decided in 1946 to return to Zürich and his professorship at ETH.72 He felt that he had no particular nationality, but that he was nevertheless European.

I wonder how the spiritual side of life will develop in Europe. Are people there very nationalist? For me, of course, it is not possible to consider myself as belonging to a single country (that would contradict the whole course of my life). I feel, however, that I am European. This concept, again, is not recognized in Europe, which makes the situation rather complicated for me.73

There was another reason for Pauli’s reluctance to stay in the USA. He suspected that research policy in America would not remain free but would come increasingly to be controlled by the government and the military. He speaks of this in a letter to Einstein:

In addition there was the consideration that it is perhaps in any case a good thing if quite a few physicists remain in Europe. So at last my decision was reached, although in the short term working conditions for scientific physics in America may be very favourable.

In the more distant future (say in about 5 years), however, I do see the big danger of an intervention of the military in physics (with or without the subterfuge of the plain-clothes commission of non-physicists). Certain indications appear unfavourable. The extensive suspension of purely scientific publishing and the ‘under cover’ work in the university laboratory at Berkeley.

By ‘intervention’ I do not only mean censorship, but also an influencing of the direction of investigation in experimental work. Even without legal force it is impossible to imagine a united front of physicists against such tendencies; it is too easy to entice young people with good positions and career prospects. . . 74

In 1954 he was glad that he had taken this decision in view of what happened to his colleague Oppenheimer, who was persecuted for his political opinions.75

Although Pauli was not directly involved in the manufacture of the atomic bomb he felt that he was responsible for mass murder – responsible because he felt that he moved in criminal circles. Both the USA as a country and physics as a career had become criminal.

The decision to move back from the USA to Switzerland was undoubtedly influenced by this feeling. Once back in Switzerland he felt a good deal better, but his profession was still burdened with guilt. In 1951 Pauli wondered whether he ought also to ‘emigrate’ from the narrow physics to a more spiritual domain.76

Pauli also had his own particular view of the physicist’s relationship with politics. In the 1950s many physicists felt called upon to warn the politicians against armament, nuclear weapons and other dangers. Petitions were organized, signed by all the great scientists, especially Nobel prizewinners. Pauli did not sign any of these lists. His main reason was that it is impossible to work against the politicians’ striving for power by becoming involved in it oneself, particularly if this is not one’s main task. The only result will be that one becomes a victim of what one is trying to oppose, i. e. the lust for power. Pauli is here taking, as on so many other occasions, an attitude borrowed from Chinese philosophy: the right tool in the hands of the wrong person makes the right tool wrong. Quite simply, he did not think that the appeal of physicists to politicians would have any effect at all. It is better to leave politics to the politicians and to remain on the periphery of this uncomfortable and dangerous machinery.77

To Niels Bohr he wrote:

But it seems to me that your effort to intervene directly in the course of historical events is a textbook example of the wrong path, and is doomed to failure from the outset (glad as I am that your earlier efforts in 1944 have now become known to the public). Your suggestions presuppose that the mistrust of the ‘starry ones’∗78 has already been replaced by a trust, but are not designed to lead to this trust in those unintelligent people who now have to decide on such steps and in current ‘public’ (= collective) opinion. Whoever wants to oppose the ‘will for power’ with something else, something spiritual, must not himself show such a will for power that he credits himself with a greater influence on world history than he can have. (There are situations where a small majority may be decisive, but today’s is not such a one.) A Chinese proverb says: ‘If the right tool is in the hands of the wrong man, the right tool has the wrong effect.’ Therefore one does not put any tool in the hands of the ‘wrong’ man; it will not lead to success.

This position of mine is not synonymous with hopelessness: on the contrary, in a historical crisis such as today’s we are not in a position to make prophecies at all.79

Pauli recommended what he called an indirect influence, i. e. the influence that proceeds from one’s own personality – how one lives and the ideas which one conveys to those to whom one is closest. This idea, too, was obtained from Chinese philosophy: the best ruler is the one whom nobody notices.80 He considered that every individual had to shoulder his own responsibility, rather than hide in large groups or behind certain social ‘programmes’.

Instead of taking part in such big projects with all the great scientists Pauli preferred membership of small groups of ordinary people, who adhere to their values whether they have found success in life or not. During his period of residence in the USA Pauli had joined such a group, which called itself ‘the Society for Social Responsibility’. He writes to Bohr:

But this attitude of lone wanderer forces me into a largely passive spectator attitude to the public: my influence should consist in what I live, what I believe in and what ideas I more or less directly spread to a small circle of students and acquaintances – not in addressing the general public. Therefore I should also like to avoid signing any kind of ‘public letter’. (I do not exactly want to make an ‘absolute principle’ out of it, but I have a strong aversion to appearing in public.)

I know, I suppose, that my position is extremely individualistic, extremely ‘passive’ and certainly not the only one possible.81

According to Jung’s colleague Marie-Louise von Franz, Pauli suffered a further period of depression towards the end of his life, together with a blockage of his scientific creativity. She says that he then began drinking again, which led to his premature death in 1958.82

Others believe that it was Pauli’s inability to stand up in public for C.G. Jung’s psychology, or fear of having to do so and thus risking his position as the highest critical authority in physics, that led to his depression.

Yet another view is that Pauli tried to turn Jung’s psychology into a rational philosophy instead of committing himself one hundred percent on the personal level. The theory here is that Pauli’s depression was caused by the fact that he never completed what he had begun, that he was unable to pursue his work on the unconscious to the end.83

Most of these suggested explanations appear both speculative and simplistic. However there seems to be agreement that Pauli was not really himself in the months before his death. Many consider that the unsuccessful collaboration with Heisenberg in 1957–58 on the unified field theory may have affected his frame of mind, although nothing in Pauli’s letters from this period indicates that he was in a state of serious depression.

Pauli was taken ill suddenly on 8 December 1958 and died of cancer of the pancreas after a short period in hospital on 15 December 1958.84

 

[Laura]

It's interesting to compare Gieser's (and Pauli's) description of the intellectual climate of Vienna with that of psychologist Lobaczewski in "Political Ponerology".

The cycle of happy, peaceful times favors a narrowing of the world view and an increase in egotism; societies become subject to progressive hysteria and to that final stage, descriptively known to historians, which finally produces times of despondency and confusion, that have lasted for millennia and continue to do so. The recession of mind and personality which is a feature of ostensibly happy times varies from one nation to another; thus some countries manage to survive the results of such crises with minor losses, whereas others lose nations and empires. Geopolitical factors have also played a decisive role.

The psychological features of such crises doubtless bear the stamp of the time and of the civilization in question, but one common denominator must have been an exacerbation of society’s hysterical condition. This deviation or, better yet, formative deficiency of character, is a perennial sickness of societies, especially the privileged elites. The existence of exaggerated individual cases, especially such characterized as clinical, is an offshoot of the level of social hysteria, quite frequently correlated with some additional causes such as carriers of minor lesions of brain tissue. Quantitatively and qualitatively, these individuals may serve to reveal and evaluate such times, as indicated in history’s Book of San Michele. From the perspective of historical time, it would be harder to examine the regression of the ability and correctness of reasoning or the intensity of “Austrian talk”, although these approximate the crux of the matter better and more directly.

In spite of above-mentioned qualitative differences, the duration of these time-cycles tends to be similar. If we assume that the extreme of European hysteria occurred around 1900 and returns not quite every two centuries, we find similar conditions. Such cyclical isochronicity may embrace a civilization and cross into neighboring countries, but it would not swim oceans or penetrate into faraway and far different civilizations.

When the First World War broke out, young officers danced and sang on the streets of Vienna: “Krieg, Krieg, Krieg! Es wird ein schoener Krieg ...”. While visiting Upper Austria in 1978, I decided to drop in on the local parson, who was in his seventies by then. When I told him about myself, I suddenly realized he thought I was lying and inventing pretty stories. He subjected my statements to psychological analysis, based on this unassailable assumption and attempted to convince me that his morals were lofty. When I complained to a friend of mine about this, he was amused: “As a psychologist, you were extremely lucky to catch the survival of authentic Austrian talk (die oesterreichische Rede). We young ones have been incapable of demonstrating it to you even if we wanted to simulate it.”

In the European languages, “Austrian talk” has become the common descriptive term for paralogistic discourse. Many people using this term nowadays are unaware of its origin. Within the context of maximum hysterical intensity in Europe at the time, the authentic article represented a typical product of conversive thinking: subconscious selection and substitution of data leading to chronic avoidance of the crux of the matter. In the same manner, the reflex assumption that every speaker is lying is an indication of the hysterical anti-culture of mendacity, within which telling the truth becomes “immoral”.

That era of hysterical regression gave birth to the great war and the great revolution which extended into Fascism, Hitlerism, and the tragedy of the Second World War. It also produced the macrosocial phenomenon whose deviant character became superimposed upon this cycle, screening and destroying its nature. Contemporary Europe is heading for the opposite extreme of this historical sine curve. We could thus assume that the beginning of the next century will produce an era of optimal capability and correctness of reason, thus leading to many new values in all realms of human discovery and creativity. We can also foresee that realistic psychological understanding and spiritual enrichment will be features of this era.

At the same time, America, especially the U.S.A., has reached a nadir for the first time in its short history. Grey-haired Europeans living in the U.S. today are struck by the similarity between these phenomena and the ones dominating Europe at the times of their youth. The emotionalism dominating individual, collective and political life, as well as the subconscious selection and substitution of data in reasoning, are impoverishing the development of a psychological world view and leading to individual and national egotism. The mania for taking offense at the drop of a hat provokes constant retaliation, taking advantage of hyper-irritability and hypo-criticality on the part of others. This can be considered analogous to the European dueling mania of those times. People fortunate enough to achieve a position higher than someone else are contemptuous of their supposed inferiors in a way highly reminiscent of czarist Russian customs. Turn-of-the-century Freudian psychology finds fertile soil in this country because of the similarity in social and psychological conditions.

America’s psychological recession drags in its wake an impaired socio-professional adaptation of this country’s people, leading to a waste of human talent and an involution of societal structure. If we were to calculate this country’s adaptation correlation index, as suggested in the prior chapter, it would probably be lower than the great majority of the free and civilized nations of this world, and possibly lower than some countries which have lost their freedom.

A highly talented individual in the USA finds it ever more difficult to fight his way through to self-realization and a socially creative position. Universities, politics, and businesses ever more frequently demonstrate a united front of relatively untalented persons and even incompetent persons. The word “overeducated” is heard more and more often. Such “overqualified” individuals finally hide out in some foundation laboratory where they are allowed to earn the Nobel prize as long as they don’t do anything really useful. In the meantime, the country as whole suffers due to a deficit in the inspirational role of highly gifted individuals.

As a result, America is stifling progress in all areas of life, from culture to technology and economics, not excluding political incompetence. When linked to other deficiencies, an egotist’s incapability of understanding other people and nations leads to political error and the scapegoating of outsiders. Slamming the brakes on the evolution of political structures and social institutions increases both administrative inertia and discontent on the part of its victims.

We should realize that the most dramatic social difficulties and tensions occur at least ten years after the first observable indications of having emerged from a psychological crisis. Being a sequel, they also constitute a delayed reaction to the cause or are stimulated by the same psychological activation process. The time span for effective countermeasures is thus rather limited.

] Pauli was born in 1900 and grew up in one of the great metropolises of the Europe of the day: Vienna.

In turn-of-the-century Vienna the values and truths of the old world were being questioned. Among the subjects debated were power relationships, the function of art, the link between language and message and between perspective and reality and the limits of man’s ability to acquire objective knowledge. A recurrent theme was the relationship between surface and depth, form and content, subject and object. Vienna, especially, was at this time a melting pot where the old battled with the new, a place where a new view of humanity, society, science and a new revolutionary art were emerging.

The work of Søren Kierkegaard, Arthur Schopenhauer and Ernst Mach inspired the young people of Vienna. During his life Wolfgang Pauli came under the influence of all three of them, especially Schopenhauer and Mach. Many have chosen to characterize this fin de siècle spirit as one of subjectivity, ‘irrationalism’ and ‘anti-intellectualism’.85 The period has also been labelled the time of ‘the revolt against positivism’, because there is a lot of criticism of the belief that science can solve every problem and give us certain knowledge and a verifiable world. Many of the thinkers of the era frankly declare their abhorrence of positivism.

But we cannot today use the label ‘the revolt against positivism’ when speaking of this period unless we expressly exclude the new positivism which was propounded in turn-of the-century Vienna by Ernst Mach and the Vienna Circle. In Ernst Mach’s philosophy we find a typical representative of the new current of ideas that reflects the spirit of the period. Many commentators try to depict an antithesis between positivism and the anti-intellectual, existential outlook on life that flourishes at this time. However it becomes difficult to hold this dividing line if one bears in mind that the new positivism shows some important points of contact with existential philosophy in its claim of returning to ‘direct experience’ and ‘the immediately given’.86

Pauli’s contribution to quantum mechanics had, as we shall see, a typical ‘Viennese’ stance. Let us start with Pauli’s own description of his philosophical background. ‘My own philosophical background is a mixture of Schopenhauer (minus the determinism of his times), Lao-Tse and Niels Bohr’, Pauli writes to his colleague Victor Weisskopf in 1954.87 The historian of science Max Jammer believes that physicists traditionally refrain from acknowledging adherence to a specific school of philosophy even if they are aware that they belong to one. In general they deny the influence of a particular philosophical climate on their scientific work although it may have been of crucial significance.88 This does not apply in Pauli’s case. There are several places in his correspondence where Pauli refers to the thinkers who have most influenced him as a person and a scientist. The fullest example of this is to be found in a letter to the philosopher H.L. Goldschmidt:

What has really made an impression on me philosophically I can indicate only quite briefly in a letter: the Mach (empiricism) – Plato (the idea of ‘the heavenly place’) antithesis; Kant (the preconditions of the science of his time are dogmatically established and mistakenly passed off as the preconditions of human reason per se; the a priori is attributed to rationally formulated ideas) – modern psychology of the ‘unconscious’ (Freud, C.G. Jung) (the a priori ‘archetype’ as a path for the presentation of preexisting images as in Plato, Proclus, Kepler).

Then: Enlightenment (Voltaire, Mach) – on the other side Vedanta doctrine, Schopenhauer (‘will’ as his God). (NB. Bernard Shaw’s observation that the unmasking of a celestial Hauptmann von Köpenick in no way proves that no true Hauptmann existed, I made a note of this.)

The East as a whole has made a strong impression on me, China even more than India, both the ideas of I-Ching (Yin-Yang polarity) and also Lao Tse. Schopenhauer’s attempt to bring Kant and Buddhism under one umbrella I found very interesting, but, owing to Kant’s recalcitrance and Buddha’s passivity in the face of the world, not successful.

Generally the seventeenth century (together with many of the ancients) means a lot to me, the nineteenth century little. German intellectuality has always seemed to me inclined to dogmatism and to non-instinctual one-sidedness. How different were the ways of the Chinese! And everything collective on a big scale is quite simply very alien to me. It seems to me moreover that feeling goes as deep as thought and that an ‘amo, ergo sum’ might be just as justified (or unjustified) as the ‘cogito, ergo sum’ of Avicenna-Descartes. (N.B. Pathological exaggeration of the thinking function in Hegel.)

I have been in this atmosphere, which seeks an equilibrium between opposing pairs, since my earliest youth. That’s why much of what you commend as great modern achievement seems to me fairly self-evident. So your remarks on p. 30 f, about a truth and the truth, which are followed on p. 42 by the concern with the concept of plenty, take me back to those days in 1923 when I was working in the laboratory of Niels Bohr. For he used often to quote Schiller’s ‘Sayings of Confucius’: ‘The full mind alone is the clear, and truth dwells in the deeps’,89 to which he attached lengthy philosophical expositions. These culminated in a proposition which he later called ‘the complementarity between clarity and truth’: if an assertion is too clear, then there is something wrong with its accuracy, and if an assertion is true, then its clarity is limited. For every truth also contains in part something unknown, only glimpsed and therefore also a hidden opposite to its conscious meaning. (I now believe that is just what psychologists call ‘symbol’, which does not seem to me to be so very different from what mathematicians call ‘symbol’. See below.)

In those days I often passed with more respect than affection the monument to Søren Kierkegaard (in front of the Danish parliament building), whom you often mention in your book. In his early youth my tutor, Bohr, had taken a passionate interest in this compatriot of his (he also gave me 2 volumes of this writer in Danish in 1930 – but I did not get very far with this reading); but that was earlier, in the past and far removed from me. I can recommend Bohr’s book ‘Atom theorie und Naturbeschreibung’ (Verlag Springer, 1932, it is a collection of lectures) to philosophers with an interest in modern physics. (I could not find it in your list of literature.)90

Here we are given a compact summary of the philosophical influences on Pauli. How they are to be ranged chronologically is more difficult to decide. We know that Ernst Mach was among the very earliest to make an impression on him and there is no doubt that he read Arthur Schopenhauer while still very young. Enlightenment thinkers and the ‘socialist’ writer George Bernard Shaw were other early influences, possibly largely from his mother’s side, as she was a socialist.

Pauli describes himself as a ‘cold and cynical devil’, a ‘fanatical atheist’ and an intellectual ‘enlightener’ in his younger years.91 What might be added here, although not mentioned by Pauli in his letter to Goldschmidt, is that the mathematician Henri Poincaré was among the favourite authors of his youth.92 Below we will take a closer look at Poincaré’s philosophy, as it shows some similarities with the thinking and ideas of Jung. In addition Pauli borrowed concepts from Poincaré to illustrate the psychological processes that Jung described. How early Pauli came into contact with oriental ideas is difficult to say. Many of his generation became aware of Indian and Chinese philosophy via Schopenhauer. We also know that Niels Bohr spoke admiringly of Lao Tse. Notwithstanding this, I suspect that Pauli’s deeper reading of Chinese wisdom, in particular, did not begin until after he had come into contact with the ideas of Jung. It is interesting, however, that one of the central themes in the exchange of ideas between Pauli and Jung, namely the principle of synchronicity and its crossing of psychophysical boundaries, has its precursor in Schopenhauer and his essay Über die ausreichende Absichtlichkeit im Schicksale des Einzelnen – a text to which Pauli often referred in this context.93

Pauli turns out to be not only a shrewd mathematician and theoretical physicist but also a humanist with a bent for philosophy and even something of a poet.94

{...}

The psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud is an excellent example of the Zeitgeist of fin de siècle Vienna. Many were looking for something real and authentic behind inhibiting and rigid structures. Society, sexuality, gender roles and even the rational functions of man, logical and abstract thinking, were seen as suffocating structures.96 Man was looked on as the constructor of reality. Beyond these structures, it was felt, was to be found the flow of life itself, an irrational force identical with true nature. Knowledge and science were seen as human activities, as a need to structure and control existence, not as a discovery of what is really there. In contrast to the unbounded belief of the Age of Enlightenment in man’s ability to ascend to ever-greater heights with the help of reason, the talk towards the end of the century was of man’s limitations. All the faculties that had been uncontroversially regarded as man’s instruments for controlling and understanding the world were now questioned: consciousness, reason, language. With the ‘discovery’ of the unconscious and, with it, the irrational in man, the view of the human psyche became problematic. There was something more behind man’s well-polished, civilized and rational facade. It was realized that man had cocooned himself in a myth about himself and about his ability to comprehend the world in rational categories.

Too bad they didn't realize that Freud was a fraud - a narcissist at best, a schizoidal psychopath at worst.

{...}

The old structures appeared devoid of content and they were falling apart. This created pessimism and dread (Weltschmerz) in some, optimism and Schadenfreude in others, who did their best to expedite the decay of the eroding conventions. In Friedrich Nietzsche, the turn-of-the-century philosopher par excellence, we find nearly all the characteristic features of the fin de siècle spirit. He criticized all the touchstones of the Age of Enlightenment: reason, progress and science. We find in him the seeking for the true and the living beyond the facades of the rational, the criticism of the idealism/materialism dichotomy of academic philosophy, the attack on the view of history, the linguistic criticism, the emphasis on man’s instinctive and irrational nature and the importance of action, life and practice. Modern man is regarded by Nietzsche as disoriented and disillusioned, evicted from the safe harbours of religion, science and metaphysics – facing the unknown, open and dangerous sea.97 Man stood at once alone, forced to rely entirely on himself, on his own experience. He had as it were to begin again from the beginning and he could only do this by returning to the directly given, going back to the most fundamental and original.

If only they had been able to see the real man behind the curtain of their problems: the psychopath.

Around the turn of the century there was a movement to throw off the shackles of philosophy and concentrate on what experience reveals. Many wished to stake out a field of activity and create new disciplines by drawing a line towards philosophy and its deductive procedures. It was emphasized that one had to start from what was directly given and study ‘the phenomena’ i.e. use the inductive method. The concept of experience, however, acquired different connotations in different fields. Experience in the sense of ‘feeling’, ‘life-force’ and ‘intuition’ was the mark of the vitalists. Experience in the sense of ‘sensory impression’ was characteristic of empiricism, Mach’s phenomenalism and of impressionism as an art form. Whereas intuition is seen as a means of getting in touch with the directly given, for the vitalists the creative flow of life, the sensory impressions are regarded as the directly given itself. In both cases the directly given is described as an irrational flow which links subject and object in a uniform reality. In liberal theology and psychology of religion it is emphasized that man has to look to himself and that he cannot rely on the church as an institution or dogma. He must himself decide on and rely on his own experience of God or the divine.98 William James stated that the psychologist of religion should first study the religious phenomena and not try to reduce them to a particular explanatory model. He believed that the core of religion is the religious feeling, with emphasis on the individual mystical body of experience. This experience has to be regarded as a phenomenon in its own right and must not be derived from any other causes. James also said that religion is largely a need that finds expression in religious customs. Religion is a practice, a way of life. Therein lies the value and truth content of religion. A religious phenomenon is true if it fulfils this vital function.99

In philosophical phenomenology the concept of ‘experience’ is equated with ‘grasping of essences’. Experience is the genuinely immediate experience of the directly given, ‘pure phenomena’ which we perceive in the cognitive act as objects of consciousness. Edmund Husserl compared his phenomenological philosophy with that of the positivists: ‘If positivism means absolute unconditional justification of all sciences by means of the ’positive’, that is to say the originally experienceable, then we are the true positivists.’100 But the observer must not be seen as a passive spectator. Scientific activity is a creative process, since it contains a large portion of intentionality. Existentialism in the Kierkegaard version stresses that man constructs his own reality by making a free choice. The perception of reality is fully tied to the circumstances of the observer. The biologist Jacob von Uexküll believed that every species of animal has its own specific spatial perception that varies with the animal’s unique physiology. Sociologists and ethnologists studied the organization of space in different cultures. The sociologist ´Emile Durkheim, for example, believed that all fundamental categories of perception, even logic, have a social origin. In art, man the designer is emphasized in the new abstract movements such as cubism, Bauhaus and constructivism. Philosophers such as Nietzsche and Ortega y Gasset developed a philosophical perspectivism that assumes that there are as many spaces as there are viewpoints.101 The position of man as a social being is also seen as problematic. Marcel Proust peaks of the difference between how man ‘appears to be’, his behaviour, and how he really is, which makes real contact between individuals impossible.102 A growing interest in the relationship between the individual and society caused the relatively new science of sociology to grow and expand.103 Around the turn of the century we see a search of meaning and value in imagery, symbols and myths. Pictorial art (painting and sculpture), verbal art (poetry) and tonal art (music) were claimed to embody all that was of real value. In Vienna at the turn of the century aesthetics was equated with ethics, only art could still convey a truly genuine and valuable message. The well-defined logical language, that is, the word, was discredited in favour of the inexhaustible and living figurative and poetic language. Art replaced religion as the only thing that could transcend the concrete, superficial structures.104 Sorel, Durkheim, James, Nietzsche and Jung emphasized the significance of symbolic images and myth as a driving force of society and of history.

During the inter-war period this ‘problematization of man’ was given added force by the long drawn out campaigns of attrition of the Great War, in which the combination of old and new warfare ground asunder the last shred of belief in the constant progress of human reason, science and technology.105 This period is characterized by loss of visualization, i.e. the growing tendency towards abstraction, formalization and mathematicization that occurs in various disciplines after the First World War. The celebration of the figurative seems then to decline. Graphic images are broken up and replaced by increasingly abstract, absurd and ambiguous ones, as in, for example, Dadaism and Surrealism.

The anthropologist and structuralist Claude Levi-Strauss peeled away the content of the mythic images and stated that they are made up of abstract structures, which are controlled by a set of laws whose components are interchangeable.106

The author James Joyce did not use the written word to convey visible, well defined courses of events, but dissolved all solid structures by letting the words form a flow of ambiguities which erase the boundaries between subject and object. In his work we do not meet a subject that relates to an ambiguous world. It is rather the multi-dimensional perspective that is the ‘subject’ of the story. The relativization of all recognizable forms was both cause and expression of a feeling of alienation and dread. It was no longer possible to explain alienation as a result of life-stifling, rational structures that we had ourselves created. Instead it was stated that alienation forms the very essence of human destiny.

Admittedly the existentialists believed that man is free, but this freedom consists in fact only of the freedom to construct one’s own reality. By doing this one defies meaninglessness, although it is actually absurd to do so. Man’s position in the universe was more problematic than ever. Heidegger said, ‘No time has been so dubious to man as ours.’107

During the inter-war period much attention was paid to questions concerning the nature of man.108 A plethora of lectures and literature had revealing titles such as What is Man? The Nature and Destiny of Man, The Human Condition, The Stature of Man, Modern Man in Search of His Soul, and so on.109

The spirit of the inter-war period might be characterized as ‘epistemological desperation’.110

The key question concerned the boundaries of human knowledge, in particular the boundaries of different types of knowledge in different areas. In sharp contrast to the Enlightenment belief in the unlimited possibility of progress to perfection offered by reason and rationality, interest at the turn of the century, and more so during the inter-war period, was focused on the limited areas of application of various methods. This tendency may be said to have been towards ‘specialization’, a specialization intended to secure those methods of gaining sound knowledge, which remained after the collapse of the epistemological ideals of the Enlightenment at the turn of the century.

The question that was asked was: ‘What is meaningful?’ The answers varied according to the attitude to rational and scientific knowledge. The existentialists, for example, were opposed to the increased specialization of scientific knowledge and its higher level of abstraction and, with it, its inability to give people a comprehensible view of the world. To them scientific knowledge was meaningless. They rejected both materialism and idealism and believed that true philosophy must devote itself to the search for man’s ‘authentic existence’. By identifying natural science with the old positivist ideal of science, i e. with materialism and determinism in general, and with the impersonal in particular, they failed to notice that the representatives of natural science had begun to reason in a similar fashion.

Unlike those who quite simply rejected natural science, its representatives or defenders, like the Vienna Circle, tried to determine the area and the precise limits within which rational/logical/mathematical methods could give positive or meaningful knowledge. They shared many assumptions with those who dismissed science; materialism and idealism were rejected and they sought the meaningful or genuine, that which can be positively established – a sound platform in a world that was hard to comprehend. Instead of taking up a position outside the rational there was an effort to define the area of application of the rational system and its limits from within the system itself.

 

[Lauranimal]

Brilliant! Thank you for sharing this Laura. Looking forward to further excerpts, as it will be some time before I can get to reading the actual book. (Wow! So much to read, so little time! ... and yet the journey, the actual act of reading keeps the 'fence' from descending upon me)

During one Solvay Congress, Pauli, Heisenberg and Dirac were sitting in the foyer of the hotel discussing religion. The discussion was largely between Heisenberg and Dirac, whereas Pauli was silent. Heisenberg believed that religion has to be understood as man’s need for something transcendental and mystical, whereas Dirac argued that religion is the opium of the people. When Heisenberg asked Pauli for his views on the matter Pauli had only one comment: ‘Now I understand. There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.’49

I don't know if this was meant to be humorous, but it made me laugh outright.


My first exposure to Pauli was in 'The Holographic Universe', by Michael Talbot. The statement below, while very likely true, tweaked my mind a bit.

Others believe that it was Pauli’s inability to stand up in public for C.G. Jung’s psychology, or fear of having to do so and thus risking his position as the highest critical authority in physics, that led to his depression.

In the Holographic Universe, on page 79 it says:

[...] ...Jung became convinced that such synchronicities were not chance occurrences, but were in fact related to the psychological processes of the individuals who experienced them. Since he could not conceive how an occurrence deep in the psyche could cause an event or series of events in the physical world, at least in the classical sense, he proposed that some new principle must be involved, an acausal connecting principle hitherto unknown to science.

When Jung first advanced this idea, most physicists did not take it seriously (although one eminent physicist of the time, Wolfgang Pauli, felt it was important enough to coauthor a book with Jung on the subject entitled The Interpretation and Nature of the Psyche). But now that the existence of nonlocal connections has been established, some physicists are giving Jung;s idea another look.... [...]

This coauthoring of a book sounds like publicly speaking up, in a way. I would venture to say that Pauli was not completely unable to stand up, though I think Talbot's tiny notations (there are 3: the above, the 'Pauli Effect' & how Pauli was the first to propose in 1930, the existence of a massless particle called a neutrino.) of Pauli are much less exhaustive than 'The Innermost Kernel'.

I continue to follow this thread with great interest!
~Lar

 

[gotogo]

FWIW, Atom and Archetype: The Pauli/Jung Letters, 1932-1958 is now available from 'sellers' (published by Princeton University Press on June 1, 2001).

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Pauli:

At the end of 1930, shortly after his postulation of the neutrino and immediately following his divorce in November, Pauli had a severe breakdown. He consulted psychiatrist and psychotherapist Carl Jung who, like Pauli, lived near Zürich. Jung immediately began interpreting Pauli's deeply archetypal dreams,[2] and Pauli became one of the depth psychologist’s best students. Soon, he began to criticize the epistemology of Jung’s theory scientifically, and this contributed to a certain clarification of the latter’s thoughts, especially about the concept of synchronicity. A great deal of these discussions is documented in the Pauli/Jung letters, today published as Atom and Archetype. Jung's elaborate analysis of more than 400 of Pauli's dreams is documented in Psychology and Alchemy.

Although Pauli was not directly involved in the manufacture of the atomic bomb he felt that he was responsible for mass murder – responsible because he felt that he moved in criminal circles. Both the USA as a country and physics as a career had become criminal.

It indicates Pauli's 'conscience' was at work in such a political situation.

Thank you for the material.

I continue to follow this thread with great interest!

Same here. :)

 

[Approaching Infinity]

Cool! I didn't know that it was Pauli's dreams that were the subject of the first part of Psychology and Alchemy. It's a really cool book. It has some lame parts, where Jung shows an unwillingness to "go there", but other than that a really insightful look at alchemical symbolism. Thanks for the excerpts!

 

[SeekinTruth]

Wow! This was a really interesting read. Thank you, Laura, for posting these excerpts.

It was really helpful to read the comparison of the description of the intellectual climate with that given by Lobaczewski in "Political Ponerology."

Too bad they didn't realize that Freud was a fraud - a narcissist at best, a schizoidal psychopath at worst.

Laura, could you please elaborate a bit on this statement? It is definitely in line with my impressions of Freud, but I'm sure you can give some input that I'm missing. It seems that Freud was primarily responsible for muddying the waters in regard to covert aggression.

Also, this thread clearly demonstrated the inordinate pressures to conform to the dictates of the scientific thought police and the hijacking of doing good science to serve the destructive purposes of the military-intelligence-industrial complex.

 

[Laura]

Too bad they didn't realize that Freud was a fraud - a narcissist at best, a schizoidal psychopath at worst.

Laura, could you please elaborate a bit on this statement? It is definitely in line with my impressions of Freud, but I'm sure you can give some input that I'm missing. It seems that Freud was primarily responsible for muddying the waters in regard to covert aggression.

Read "The Psychoanalytic Movement" by Ernest Gellner. Talk about an eye-opener! Also: "Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science, And Psychoanalysis" by Richard Webster. There's another one I've got, but I'll have to go downstairs to get it. I'll post it later.

 

[Laura]

Okay, I fetched the book. Title is: "Induced Delusions - The Psychopathy of Freudism" by Coyne H. Campbell, M.D.

Campbell was the Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the School of Medicine, University of Oklahoma.

He wrote to the editor of his book, Maurice Natenberg, author of "Freudian Psycho=Antics":

I underwent a training analysis some sixteen years ago and like you, have made a fairly satisfactory recovery.

Natenberg writes in the editor's preface:

He was one of the best known psychiatrists in the Southewest. ... One dark shadow marred his full and useful life - the shadow which never ceased to haunt him and which left an indelible scar on his personality. It was his unfortunate experience with the Freudian cult whose advocates in high psychiatric circles misled the eager young doctor with promises of a new psychology that would solve the problems of the mentally ill at a time when the prospects of a cure for mental illness appeared bleak indeed. Though Doctor Campbell soon rebelled against the slavish subservience inherent in the Freudian doctrines, the renunciation of hundreds of hours of conditioning via the analytic couch was not without a deep internal and external struggle Erasing the traces of the weird Freudian delusions was intellectually possible but getting them out from under his skin was something else again.

This book is the expression of that process. Incidentally, it should be disclosed that it was Professor C. Judson Herrick who may have inspired Coyne Campbell's strong resistance to analysis by his curt warning that psychoanalysis would rob him of his intellectual freedom. ...

Doctor Campbells' withdrawal from the Freudian cult was far different from that of Adler, Jung, Stekel or Rank, who merely exchanged Freud's delusions for their own more alluring forms. Coyne Campbell, however, returned to the scientific principles which are the foundations of medicine and which have no meaning to the Freudians. He was also the first to classify psychoanalysis as a form of psychopathy and to subject Freud himself to a close scrutiny and expose his enormous vanity and unrivalled capacity for delusional thinking.

When Freud induced himself to believe that fantasies and dreams were more valid than realities, he lost touch with reality and also created the means for enabling his disciples to fit their thinking into the delusional pattern of psychoanalysis. ...

Coctor Campbells' book exposed the irresponsibility of such methods which induce belief in memories and impulses that were never consciously experienced. In other words, to believe in Freud's precepts, one must accept a form of thinking and interpretation based on the unknown or occult. It was in realizing how completely he had been misled by psychoanalysis and how crassly his personal life had been invaded that arounsed Doctor Campbell to compse this book. ...

...t must be remembered that psychoanalytic lore is based largely on verbal communications, not only between patient and analyst but also among analysts themselves. Rapport among them is built upon intimate conversation which are not always recorded or published in the professional literature. many of the Freudian practices and concepts are secret and cultlike and consist of oral material handed down by those high in authority. ...

The professional literature of psychoanalysis is far different from that purveyed to the public, though even in the sectarian publications all is not told. The literature may be characterized as the slavish obeisance of a sect of followers to the dominating delusions of one man, intent on attributing all of mankind's motivations to repressed desires for incest, perverted sexuality and murder. In analytic literature there is no room for genuine altruistic or idealistic motivations which are never recognized.

It could well be said that psychoanalysis has sown the seeds which our present society is now reaping...

Campbell write in the forward:

...psychoanalysis is an endeavor to explain the normal aspects of life from the standpoint of the abnormal. This is particularly repugnant when the normal relationships between parents and children are construed as governed by incestuous desires, death wishes, and castration frears.

This tendency to explain the normal through concepts of the abnormal is a systematized delusion being spread to physicians, to patients and to bystanders in many walks of life. It has been a detriment to progress in psychiatry.

If you read Campbell and Gellner - both of whom write with eminent sensibility - it opens a window on a really strange aspect of our society - how psychoanalysis permeates everything, everywhere.

 

[Approaching Infinity]

Just wanted to say that I've read about 2/3 of this book, and it is AMAZING. It's so interesting to see the kind of ideas Pauli had, and his criticisms of Jung are spot on. It's unfortunate that he never brought his ideas to a larger group, but then, he would have been "crucified" for it. When you add some of Sheldrake's insights into morphic fields, archetypes start to make sense, especially keeping in mind hyperdimensions/densities.

 

[SeekinTruth]

Ok, thanks a lot, Laura. It's really amazing how pathological views have been spread even from the fields of psychology and psychiatry.

 

[Laura]

Ok, thanks a lot, Laura. It's really amazing how pathological views have been spread even from the fields of psychology and psychiatry.

Yeah. Keep in mind that Campbell and Gellner both steer far away from anything metaphysical - they sorta toss the baby out with the bathwater. But it is still true that the bathwater needs to be tossed.

I just finished reading "Search For The Real Self: Unmasking The Personality Disorders Of Our Age" by James Masterson. Masterson is a Freudian psychoanalyst but he has done research and is aware of theories and methods of other schools. Nevertheless, his primary view is the Freudian one which pretty much says that all mental problems are due to parental mistreatment or failure to resolve infantile sexual urges which, as Campbell points out, is not supported by any research whatsoever.

Anyway, I finished reading this book - pretty much the work of Mahler with a Freudian spin - and by the time I got to the end of it, I was totally depressed at how wrong I had been about everything and how screwed up I must be, and all my children, and everybody I know about... geeze... the way the guy talks about it, the whole world needs psychotherapy in order to be able to "love and work."

Thankfully, after I read Masterson, I went back and re-read some of Campbell and got my feet back on the ground. It really is insidious when you read stuff that is presented as though it is accepted medical fact, by a medical doctor, and then you realize that they are only imputing and inferring inner states to observations of infants and children who are not able to tell what they are really thinking and feeling. It's all a made-up theory with no basis in science at all.

And that's not to say that what we experience as children does not profoundly affect our psyches and our lives; of course it must! I just don't think it's all about resolving oedipal issues of incestuous urges towards our parents nor is it necessarily that the mother is unable to allow the child to individuate because she says "no" to certain behaviors.