Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 18

The Symbolic Life: Miscellaneous Writings

C. G. Jung, Gerhard Adler, R. F.C. Hull

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781400851010
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Psychoanalyse

The authoritative edition of Jung's miscellaneous collected writings The Symbolic Life gathers some 160 of Jung's writings that span sixty years and reflect his inquiring mind, numerous interests, and wide circle of professional and personal acquaintance. These writings include three longer works, "The Symbolic Life, " "Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams, " and "The Tavistock Lectures"; a number of previously overlooked reviews, reports, and articles from the early years of Jung's career; several finished or virtually finished manuscripts that weren't published in his lifetime, including a 1901 report on Freud's On Dreams; and works Jung wrote after retiring from active medical practice. The other pieces collected here include forewords to books by colleagues and pupils, replies to journalists' questions, encyclopedia articles, and letters on technical subjects.

IV

ON OCCULTISM

(related to Volume I of the Collected Works)

ON SPIRITUALISTIC PHENOMENA1

[697] It is impossible, within the short space of a lecture, to say anything fundamental about such a complicated historical and psychological problem as spiritualism1a appears to be. One must content oneself with shedding a little light on one or the other aspect of this intricate question. This kind of approach will at least give the hearer an approximate idea of the many facets of spiritualism. Spiritualism, as well as being a theory (its advocates call it “scientific”), is a religious belief which, like every religious belief, forms the spiritual core of a religious movement. This sect believes in the actual and tangible intervention of a spiritual world in our world, and consequently makes a religious practice of communicating with the spirits. The dual nature of spiritualism gives it an advantage over other religious movements: not only does it believe in certain articles of faith that are not susceptible of proof, but it bases its belief on a body of allegedly scientific, physical phenomena which are supposed to be of such a nature that they cannot be explained except by the activity of spirits. Because of its dual nature—on the one side a religious sect, on the other a scientific hypothesis—spiritualism touches upon widely differing areas of life that would seem to have nothing in common.

[698] Spiritualism as a sect originated in America in the year 1848. The story of its origin is a strange one.2 Two girls of the Methodist family Fox, in Hydesville, near Rochester (New York), were frightened every night by sounds of knocking. At first a great scandal arose, because the neighbours suspected that the devil was up to his usual tricks. Gradually, however, communication was established with the knocking sounds when it was discovered that questions were answered with a definite number of knocks. With the help of a knocking alphabet, it was learned that a man had been murdered in the Foxes’ house, and his body buried in the cellar. Investigations were said to have confirmed this.

[699] Thus far the report. The public performances given by the Foxes with the poltergeists were quickly followed by the founding of other sects. Tableturning, much practised earlier, was taken up again. Numerous mediums were sought and found, that is, persons in whose presence such phenomena as knocking noises occurred. The movement spread rapidly to England and the continent. In Europe, spiritualism took the form chiefly of an epidemic of tableturning. There was hardly an evening party or dance where the guests did not steal away at a late hour to question the table. This particular symptom of spiritualism was rampant everywhere. The religious sects made less headway, but they continued to grow steadily. In every big city today there is a fairly large community of practising spiritualists.

[700] In America, which swarms with local religious movements, the rise of spiritualism is understandable enough. With us, its favourable reception can be explained only by the fact that the ground had been historically prepared. The beginning of the nineteenth century had brought us the Romantic Movement in literature, a symptom of a widespread, deep-seated longing for anything extraordinary and abnormal. People adored wallowing in Ossianic emotions, they went crazy over novels set in old castles and ruined cloisters. Everywhere prominence was given to the mystical, the hysterical; lectures about life after death, about sleepwalkers and visionaries, about animal magnetism and mesmerism, were the order of the day. Schopenhauer devoted a long chapter to all these things in his Parerga und Paralipomena, and he also spoke of them at various places in his chef d’œuvre.3 Even his important concept of “sanctity” is a far-fetched, mystico-aesthetic ideal. Similar movements made themselves felt in the Catholic church, clustering round the strange figure of Johan Joseph von Görres 1776–1848. Especially significant in this respect is his four-volume work Die christliche Mystik, Regensburg, 1836–42,. The same trends appear in his earlier book. Emanuel Swedenborg, seine Visionen und sein Verhältnis zur Kirche, Speyer 1827,. The Protestant public raved about the soulful poetry of Justinus Kerner and his clairvoyante, Frau Friederike Hauffe, while certain theologians gave vent to their catholicizing tendencies by excommunicating spirits. From this period, too, come a large number of remarkable psychological descriptions of abnormal people—ecstatics, somnambulists, sensitives. They were much in demand and were cultivated assiduously. A good example was Frau Hauffe herself, the clairvoyante of Prevorst, and the circle of admirers who gathered round her. Her Catholic counterpart was Katharina Emmerich, the ecstatic nun of Dulmen. Reports of similar personalities were collected together in a weighty tome by an anonymous savant, entitled “The Ecstatic Virgins of the Tyrol. Guiding Stars in the Dark Firmament of Mysticism.”4

[701] When these strange personages were investigated, the following suprasensible processes were observed:

1. “Magnetic” phenomena.

2. Clairvoyance and prophecy.

3. Visions.

[702] 1. Animal magnetism, as understood at the beginning of the nineteenth century, covered a vaguely defined area of physiological and psychological phenomena which, it was thought, could all be explained as “magnetic.” “Animal magnetism” had been in the air ever since the brilliant experiments of Franz Anton Mesmer. It was Mesmer who discovered the art of putting people to sleep by light passes of the hand. In some people this sleep was like the natural one, in others it was a “waking sleep”; that is, they were like sleepwalkers, only part of them was asleep, while some senses remained awake. This half-sleep was also called “magnetic sleep” or somnambulism. People in these states were wholly under the will of the magnetist, they were “magnetized” by him. Today, as we know, there is nothing wonderful about these states; they are known as hypnosis and we use the mesmeric passes as a valuable adjunct to other methods of suggestion. The significance attributed to the passes quickly led to their being grossly overestimated. People thought that some vitalistic force had been discovered; they spoke of a “magnetic fluid” that streamed from the magnetist into the patient and destroyed the diseased tissue. They also used it to explain the movements of the table in tableturning, imagining that the table was vitalized by the laying on of hands and could therefore move about like a living thing. The phenomena of the divining rod and the automatically swinging pendulum were explained in the same way. Even completely crazy phenomena of this sort were widely reported and believed. Thus the Neue Preussische Zeitung reported from Barmen, in Pomerania that a party of seven persons sat themselves round a table in a boat, and magnetized it. “In the first 20 minutes the boat drifted 50 feet downstream. Then it began to turn, with steadily increasing speed, until the rotary movement had carried it through an arc of 180 degrees in 3 minutes. Eventually, by skilful manipulation of the rudder, the boat moved forwards, and the party travelled half a mile upstream in 40 minutes, but on the return journey covered the same distance in 26 minutes. A crowd of spectators, watching the experiment from the banks of the river, received the ‘table travellers’ with jubilation.” In very truth, a mystical motorboat! According to the report, the experiment had been suggested by a Professor Nägeli, of Freiburg im Breisgau.

[703] Experiments in divination are known from the grey dawn of history. Thus Ammianus Marcellinus reports from A.D. 371 that a certain Patricius and Hilarius, living in the reign 364–78 of the Emperor Valens, had discovered by the “abominable arts of soothsaying” who would succeed to the throne. For this purpose they used a metal bowl, with the alphabet engraved round the rim. Over it amid fearful oaths, they suspended a ring on a thread. This began to swing, and spelt out the name Theodorus. When their magic was divulged, they were arrested and put to death.

[704] Ordinarily, experiments with the automatic movements of the table, the divining rod and the pendulum are not as bizarre as the first example or as dangerous as the second. The various phenomena that may occur in tableturning have been described in a treatise by Justinus Kerner bearing the significant title: “The Somnambulant Tables. A History and Explanation of these Phenomena”5, 1853,. They have also been described by the late Professor Thury of Geneva, in Les Tables parlantes au point de vue de la physique générale, 1855,.

[705] Clairvoyance and prophecy are further characteristics of somnambulists. Clairvoyance in time and space plays a large role in the biographies and descriptions of these cases. The literature abounds in more or less credible reports, most of which have been collected by Gurney, Myers, and Podmore in their book Phantasms of the Living, 1886,.

[706] An excellent example of clairvoyance is preserved for us in philosophical literature and is especially interesting because it was personally commented on by Kant. In an undated letter to Charlotte von Knobloch, he wrote as follows about the spirit-seer Swedenborg:6

[707] The following occurrence appears to me to have the greatest weight of proof, and to place the assertion respecting Swedenborg’s extraordinary gift beyond all possibility of doubt.

[708] In the year 1759, towards the end of September, on Saturday at four o’clock p.m., Swedenborg arrived at Gottenburg from England, when Mr. William Castel invited him to his house, together with a party of fifteen persons. About six o’clock Swedenborg went out, and returned to the company quite pale and alarmed. He said that a dangerous fire had just broken out in Stockholm, at the Södermalm (Gottenburg is about fifty German miles from Stockholm), and that it was spreading very fast. He was restless, and went out often. He said that the house of one of his friends, whom he named, was already in ashes, and that his own was in danger. At eight o’clock, after he had been out again, he joyfully exclaimed, ‘Thank God! the fire is extinguished; the third door from my house.’ This news occasioned great commotion throughout the whole city, but particularly amongst the company in which he was. It was announced to the Governor the same evening. On Sunday morning Swedenborg was summoned to the Governor who questioned him concerning the disaster. Swedenborg described the fire precisely, how it had begun and in what manner it had ceased, and how long it had continued. On the same day the news spread through the city, and as the Governor thought it worthy of attention, the consternation was considerably increased; because many were in trouble on account of their friends and property, which might have been involved in the disaster. On Monday evening a messenger arrived at Gottenburg, who was despatched by the Board of Trade during the time of the fire. In the letters brought by him, the fire was described precisely in the manner stated by Swedenborg. On Tuesday morning the Royal Courier arrived at the Governor’s with the melancholy intelligence of the fire, of the loss which it had occasioned, and of the houses it had damaged and ruined, not in the least differing from that which Swedenborg had given at the very time when it happened; for the fire was extinguished at eight o’clock.

[709] What can be brought forward against the authenticity of this occurrence (the conflagration in Stockholm)? My friend who wrote this to me has examined all, not only in Stockholm, but also, about two months ago, in Gottenburg, where he is well acquainted with the most respectable houses, and where he could obtain the most authentic and complete information, for as only a very short time had elapsed since 1759 most of the inhabitants are still alive who were eyewitnesses of this occurrence.

[710] Prophecy is a phenomenon so well known from the teachings of religion that there is no need to give any examples.

[711] 3. Visions have always figured largely in miraculous tales, whether in the form of a ghostly apparition or an ecstatic vision. Science regards visions as delusions of the senses, or hallucinations. Hallucinations are very common among the insane. Let me cite an example from the literature of psychiatry:

[712] A twenty-four-year-old servant girl, with an alcoholic father and a neurotic mother, suddenly begins falling into peculiar states. From time to time she falls into a state of consciousness in which she sees everything that comes into her mind vividly before her, as though it were there in reality. All the time the images keep changing with breathtaking speed and lifelikeness. The patient, who in actual life is nothing but a simple country girl, then resembles an inspired seer. Her features become transfigured, her movements flow with grace. Famous figures pass before her mind’s eye. Schiller appears to her in person and plays with her. He recites his poems to her. Then she herself begins to recite, improvising in verse the things she has read, experienced, and thought. Finally she comes back to consciousness tired and exhausted, with a headache and a feeling of oppression, and with only an indistinct memory of what has happened. At other times her second consciousness has a sombre character. She sees ghostly figures prophesying disaster, processions of spirits, caravans of strange and terrifying beastlike forms, her own body being buried, etc.7

[713] Visionary ecstasies are usually of this type. Numerous visionaries are known to us from history, among them many of the Old Testament prophets. There is the report of St. Paul’s vision on the road to Damascus, followed by a blindness ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Editorial Note
• Contents
• I The Tavistock Lectures (1935)
• II Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams (1961)
• III The Symbolic Life (1939)
• IV On Occultism (C.W., vol. 1)*
• V The Psychogenesis of Mental Disease (C.W., vol. 3)
• VI Freud and Psychoanalysis (C.W., vol. 4)
• VII On Symbolism (C.W., vol. 5)
• VIII Two Essays on Analytical Psychology (C.W., vol. 7)
• IX The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche (C.W., vol. 8)
• X The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (C.W., vol. 9)
• XI Civilization in Transition (C.W., vol. 10)
• XII Psychology and Religion C.W., vol. 11
• XIII Alchemical Studies (C.W., vols. 12, 13, 14)
• XIV The Spirit IX Max, Art, and Literature C.W., vol. 15)
• XV The Practice of Psychotherapy (C.W., vol. 16)
• XVI The Development of Personality (C.W., vol. 17)
• Addenda
• Foreword to Psychologische Abhandlungen, Volume I (1914)
• Address at the Presentation of the Jung Codex [longer version] (1953)
• Bibliography
• Index of Titles
• Index
• Footnotes