I honestly am still confused about why no one has tried to find parallels between Jung and Marx, (no English author, at least). This is not that surprising, I suppose, as there are a number of factors discouraging it. I guess what's surprising is how many parallels I can see between the two.

My experience is that spiritual values led me to reject capitalism, and thus into Occupy and Marxism, and so therefore I believe it could do the same for others. It seems to me the biggest problem facing Marxism today is communication. Marxism has pretty good ideas about how to build towards a better world--the problem is to convince other groups that those ideas are in fact good. My hypothesis is that Jung's terminology can bridge the communication gap between Marxism and religious communities. I realize that I have no evidence for this beyond my own individual experience, which contains my sujbective biases, but I still feel compelled to pursue the topic.

While most people see Marx's and Jung's views about religion as irreconciliable, I do not believe this is at all the case. For Jung religion meant religious experience, which is separate from orthodox doctrine and rituals. When Marx says “The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness,” he is talking about what Jung would call religious doctrine and ritual. I totally agree that religion as it exists today would wither away as society transitions into socialism. Jung had fundamental issues with orthodox Christian doctrines of both Catholicism and Protestantism, (and is nearly as shut out from the academic theological circles as he is from Marxist writings). For Jung the problem is that society has become overly-rational--we don't put enough energy into the symbolic truths of religion. As a result of society's over-rationality, there is a tendency to interpret religion in historical rather than symbolic terms and to believe that given enough time science or the state will solve all problems. As Jung writes in his autobiography, "The more the critical reason dominates, the more impoverished life becomes; but the more of the unconscious, and the more of myth we are capable of making conscious, the more of life we integrate. Overvalued reason has this in common with political absolutism; under its dominion the individual is pauperized."

Jung's mistake, I believe, is that he didn't recognize that capitalism's competitive markets are the chief reproducers of today's overly-rational mode of existence. 'Rational' means "in accordance with laws", which in a market-dominant society are primarily the laws of the compeitive market, as the necessity of competing leaves people with little time to engage in other systems. There are a few obvious reasons why Jung did not see the political consequences of his idea. First, he was legitimately scared of Stalin's state-mandated atheism, which he saw as a big step backward for civilization. Second, Freud was an outspoken critic of Marxism, saying "But I am able to recognize that the psychological premises on which [communism] is based are an untenable illusion... Aggressiveness was not created by property. It reigned almost without limit in primitive times, when property was still very scanty, and it already shows itself in the nursery." While Jung had long since broken with Freud's school of thought, he still was involved in the same social circles and so I suspect was influenced by his mentor's attitude towards Marxism.

From a Jungian perspective, the most important benefit of Communism's elimination of the competitive mode of existence would be that it would free people to explore their fate, defined by Jung as "a daemonic will, not necessarily coincident with [one's] own." Recall that Socrates speaks of such a Daemon, which compelled him to actions that he otherwise would not have taken. Jung believes that such influences come through our connection to the collective unconscious part of our psyche. The unconscious is a layer of potential mental content underneath consciousness. The unconscious consists of many layers, the first of which is the individual unconscious, which contains the mental content repressed by the ego. The collective unconscious comes next and itself consists of multiple layers, the deepest being the archetype of the Self, which for Jung is equivalent to “God-image.” Marxism would allow people to pursue the "inward journey"--the integration of ego and the archetype of the Self, which for Jung is Holy Grail of religious experience. As Erich Fromm writes, "[Marxism] is the realization of the deepest religious impulses common to the great humanistic relgiions of the past... provided we understand that Marx, like Hegel and like many others, expresses his concern for man's soul, not in theistic, but in philosophical language."

Jung's theory and Marxist theory contain a few parallels that have been largely ignored. For example, in A Marxist Philosophy of Language Jean-Jacques Lecercle follows Valentin Voloshinov in convicting Freud of methodological individualism--the idea that social interactions necessarily start with intentional mental states of individuals. Jung, however, is not guilty of this, as his theory proposes collective layers of the unconscious out of which mental contents can arise, as opposed to Freud for whom the unconscious was completely individual.To be sure there are many complications to work out--Lecercle dismisses the idea of the unconscious as abstraction: “what Freudians call ‘unconscious’ is nothing but the internalisation of public dialogue,” and this charge also applies to Jung. Jung claims the unconscious is more than just abstraction in that it is compensatory to conscious interactions, and that this compensatory nature of the unconscious is empirically verified through a long-term analysis of his patients lives, and more immediately through analysis of their dreams.

While there are obvious barriers, the more I've read, the more optimistic I am, actually, about the potential of combining Jungian and Marxist thought.

My perception is that Jung and Marx had quite different personalities. Jung is more concerned with reflection, while Marx is more concerned with action. For instance, for Marx, "humans as social beings" refers to one's relationships--the people you do things with. Jung, on the other hand, focuses on the meaning of experience. The more fully you understand your inner, subjective biases, the more capably you will navigate the public, social world. Experience happens--the important thing for Jung is the meaning attributed to experience, and that people become aware of all the potentials the experience contains.

Just as action and reflection are both essential in life, my hope is that Jung and Marx can be joined in a complementary way that enhances the theories of each.

You've left out Jung's "romance" with fascism, and its "deeply symbolic" and irrational appeals, and, of course the approval the Nazis expressed of Jungian psychology as opposed to the "Jewish" psychology of Freud.

The difference between Marx and Jung is not one of "reflection" vs. "action" but one of class struggle vs. accommodation to oppression.

jazzstock12, I, too, came to Marxism through a "spiritual" door, although I would express my journey as a search for community. My very earliest "Marxist" was Erich Fromm, whose synthesis of Marx and Freud grabbed me intellectually and emotionally. I also read some Jung, and thought of becoming an "ecological psychotherapist," whatever the hell that might have come to mean. So we have some similar roots, and I would insist that any communist society of the future would be suffused with the "spirituality" of human community with ourselves and the rest of life. This "human spirituality" would arise from the material, communal relations of communism.

That said, I gotta agree with S.Artesian that the difference between Marx and Jung is "one of class struggle versus accommodation to oppression." Traditional psychologies and psychotherapies attempt to accommodate humans to the inhuman relations of capitalism.

The huge problem with persons such as Jung and Heidegger is that their "spirituality" is idealist, entirely lacking in material roots. Thus Heideggerian "spirit" could wander about unattached until it spied its most perfect people which, wonder of wonders, turned out to be Heidegger and his Aryans. Here is Heidegger, quoted in Joel Kovel's History and Spirit: "I expected from National Socialism a spiritual rejuvenation of all life, a reconciliation of social antagonisms [!], and the rescue of Western existence from the dangers of communism ..." This from the twentieth century's most renowned philosopher of spirit!

As for Jung's many grave faults, which include homophobia (he was molested at age 11 or 12), how's this for florid racism? "Racial infection is a most serious mental and moral problem where the primitive outnumbers the white man. America has this problem only in a relative degree, because the whites far outnumber the coloured. Apparently he [sic] can assimilate the primitive influence with little risk to himself. What would happen if there were a considerable increase in the coloured population is another matter." This is from Kovel, too.

I am not opposing a Marxist "spirituality" with the preceding remarks, but saying it must emerge from the material relations of community. How is OWS doing in establishing various forms of anti-capitalist community and awareness? My impression is that OWS has failed to identify capitalism as the root problem.

My red-green best.

I think it's false to accuse Freud of seeing the unconscious as a purely individual attribute. He always insisted on the collective contents of the unconscious, even to the point of hypothesising about an inherited memory (cf his theory of the original patricide). He called this the 'archaic heritage'. In any case his notion of the instincts already implies that part of the psyche is founded on universal unconscious drives. Jung's claim to have 'discovered' the collective unconscious is highly dubious, even though during the period of his collaboration with Freud there was some level of mutual influence in their theories.

Thanks Alf. I was just going on what I had read.

This post might be rather long, and probably looks a bit crazy. Here are some more thoughts about Marx and Jung:

One accusation against Jung is that he is an idealist--that he is, as Alex Callinicos writes about Hegel, "tied down with the Enlightenment's conception of history as 'the progress of the human mind.' " [The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx, p. 65]

Jung actually responds to this claim himself, and actually calls Hegel out on it himself, writing, "Hegel hypostatizes [or reifies] the idea completely and attributes to it alone real being. It is the concept, the reality of the concept and the union of both." I'll get to Jung's viewpoint on ideas in a minute, but first a quick overview on Jung's view on the evolution of the mind.

Jung's theory actually fits nicely within the field of Evolutionary Psychology. Jung, writing in 1921, hypothesizes an evolutionary understanding of the brain. In addition to the five exterior sensory organs, Jung hypothesizes four interior functions of the mind. Jung claims that each function lays claim to separate parts of our existence. Thinking claims exclusive validity within one sphere of life, and likewise, feeling, sensation and intuition each to their own spheres. Jung believe that these functions evolved evolutionarily, as a process of adaptation.

That is probably why there are different psychic functions; for, biologically, the psychic system can be understood only as a system of adaptation, just as eyes exist presumably because there is light. Thinking can claim only a third or a fourth part of the total significance, although in its own sphere it possesses exclusive validity--just as sight is the exclusively valid function for the perception of light waves, and hearing for that of sound waves. [Psychological Types, par. 158]

For Jung, ideas are not Ultimate Reality as for Hegel. In Jung's theory, archetypes originate from "primordial images", which arise when functions overlap and contents from one function get mixed up with contents from another. Jung uses the term “concrete” to describe these mixed-together mental contents. It would be like if you could see sound waves or hear light waves. It would probably be most distracting and difficult to cleanly decipher. Jung is claiming that is how our mental functions have evolved, though. Thinking gets mixed up with Sensation, Feeling, and Intuition. Sensation, the oldest and most refined of the functions, still sometimes gets mixed up with Thoughts, Feelings, and Intuitions, and so on. These overlapping contents--and NOT ideas--are precursors to Jung’s archetypes.

Other than the one small paragraph above, Jung rarely mentions the evoluationary aspect of his theory of mental functions, despite using the functions frequently in his analysis. I suspect he did not want to alienate religious readers, and therefore chose not to emphasize the evolutionary aspect of his theory. For this reason, many readers miss the fact that archetypes are derived from a materialist, evolutionary hypothesis. This is a common mistake made when reading Jung, as the following quote attests:

Again and again I encounter the mistaken notion that an archetype is determined in regard to its content, in other words that it is a kind of unconscious idea (if such an expression be admissible). It is necessary to point out once more that archetypes are not determined as regards their content, but only as regards their form and then only to a very limited degree." (C.G. Jung, CW 9, par.155 "Ps. Aspects of the Mother Archetype").

For more on Jung and Evolutionary Psychology, see Genes on the Couch: Explorations in Evolutionary Psychotherapy By Paul Gilbert, Kent G. Bailey.

Okay, so why do I think that Jung's theory agrees with Marx? After all, Jung dismisses communism multiple times in his writings, and Marx was a self-proclaimed atheist whereas Jung considered religion to be of utmost importance.

Two responses:
First, Jung married into a Swiss ruling-class family, was aware of his one-time mentor, Sigmeund Freud's, disapproval of communism, and also was understandably horrified at Stalin's religious persecution in the nominally-Marxist Soviet Union. Jung seems to have spent all his effort in writing trying to connect with religious-minded people and remain strictly scientific in his work, and largely ignored Marxism publicly, assuming he even seriously read Marx at all.

Second, here are two passages that I believe get at the heart of each writers' philosophies.

Here's Marx's closing paragraph to his essay "The Power of Money":

Imagine man as man and his relation to the world a human one. Then love can only be exchanged for love, trust for trust, etc. If you wish to enjoy art you must be an artistically cultivated person, if you wish to influence other people you must be a person who really has a stimulating and encouraging effect upon others.

Now here is Jung:

The psychological individual... exists consciously only so far as a consciousness of his peculiar nature is present, i.e., so far as there exists a conscious distinction from other individuals... Individuation is need to bring the individuality to consciousness. [Psychological Types, par. 755]

For Jung, individuation means exploring one's uniqueness, bringing previously repressed contents to consciousness. Jung believes this is accomplished through developing each of the four functions relatively equally. In fact, as Janice Hocking Rushing and Thomas S. Frentz, this is one of the layers of meaning Jung sees within the Christ myth [this excerpt is from a chapter on James Cameron’s film The Terminator]:

It is... typical... to interpret the Christ story exoterically--that is, in a way that reinforces the ego by keeping the unacceptable parts of the psyche (the shadow) separated and disowned. In this version, Satan carries the sins of the world, and Christ substitutes for us in deaing with Satan. In the Old Testament prophecy and in Paradise Lost, the messiah vanquishes Satan in glorious military combat, much as Sarah defeats the Terminator in the present and John is prophesied to do in the future. In the New Testament story, of course, Christ dies for our sins, much as Kyle Reese does in this film, so that we will not have to. In both exoteric versions, all that is required for redemption is belief, because the savior of humankind banishes that shadow for us.
The Christ story can [also] be taken esoterically--that is, the way in which specially initiated persons would understand it... In this interpretation... as an infant, Christ is the “divine child,” a personification of the Self archetype, the potential for wholeness in all of us that is constantly threatened by hostile forces and must be carefully guarded and nurtured. To move toward wholeness, a person follows Christ’s example as an adult and sacrifices one’s self, or, in psychological terms, the ego, on the “cross,” symbolizing the opposites of consciousness and the unconscious. Although Christianity does not deal explicitly with the problem of technology, it does, when understood esoterically, address the problem of the shadow, that rejected part of us all which is projected onto an Other, a devil figure that carries the sins of humanity. In contemporary times one form of this shadow is technology. Taken as an example, Christ’s crucifixion models what each person must do him- or herself--namely, let ego “die” as the sovereign center of the psyche so that the Self can take its place. Light cannot be brought into the world--the shadow cannot be raised to consciousness, the divided self united--without this willingness to suffer and let the old ways die. [Projecting the Shadow, p. 180]

To summarize the esoteric interpretation, Jung draws the following symbolic correspondences:
God -> unconscious
Christ -> Self (or God-image)
Incarnation -> integration of the unconscious
Satan -> shadow
Salvation or Redemption -> individuation
Crucifixion or sacrifice on the Cross -> realization of the four functions or of wholeness
- [Jung, Collected Works, XVIII, p. 736]

The result of seeking wholeness within each of the four functions is to give up on the idea of maintaining a social persona with one, extra-developed function:

"A direct attack against the predominance of the one differentiated and socially valuable function, since it is the primary cause of the repression and absorption of the inferior functions,... would signify a slave-rebellion against the heroic ideal [[reinforced by the exoteric interpretation]] which compels us, for the sake of one [differentiated, socially valuable function], to sacrifice the remaining all... The direct outcome of this renunciation is individualism, i.e.the necessity for a realization of individuality, a realization of man as he is." [Psychological Types, par. 167, 168]

The realization of the four functions can also be described, as Frentz and Rushing put it, as letting "ego 'die' as the sovereign center of the psyche so that the Self can take its place." In other words, an imbalanced development of one function at the expense of the others throws off the connection between ego and Self.


It seems to me that Marx and Jung are talking about the same thing here! Marx claims the removal of money will allow individuals to truly develop their unique potentials, to explore what elements of one's uniqueness has a "stimulating and encouraging effect". Similarly, Jung claims uniqueness is discovered when we are freed from the competitive market-demand that we develop one, specialized function to maximize the price of our labor, and thus are able to pursue the religious experience of Christ--the "crucifying of the ego", which contains one's most developed function-- and the development of the other functions that have been repressed into the inner, unconscious world.

I've often thought that the similarities between marx and jung need further elaboration.

The 'idea' of God shows this similarity well I think. Both Marx and Jung saw this idea as having an immense amount of power and significance in understanding humanity and both saw it as more or less an internal experience rather than a being outside of humanity looking down on the universe.

They both see god as an image of 'perfected' or 'fully-realised' humanity. Marx saw god as the projected image of how man wishes to be but he also saw it in some ways as an image of something that humanity was moving towards, i.e. fully developed, consciousness and unity of man and nature. This is almost exactly the same as Jungs view of the Self and of individuation.

The difference being that Marx saw that the attainment of this state could only really be successful in a communist society whereas Jung saw it as a matter of individuals attaining this state through their own indevours and he didn't really grasp how capitalism holds people back from this; even if he had some insights into how 'modern' society fosters a spiritually dead view of life/existence, Jung could never see the importance of the fundamental changes in society necessary.

a little bit rambling but there you go

This thread brought me to the forum via google, so thanks for posting it, I think RD Laing has some Jungian and Marxist ideas regarding psychotherapy, sociology, and human behavior in general.

Related, the book is also available online as pdf.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Oedipus

"When they insist that a social field may be invested by desire directly, they oppose Freud's concept of sublimation, which posits an inherent dualism between desiring-machines and social production. This dualism, they argue, limited and trapped the revolutionary potential of the theories of Laing and Reich. Anti-Oedipus develops a critique of Freud and Lacan's psychoanalysis, anti-psychiatry, and Freudo-Marxism (with its insistence on a necessary mediation between the two realms of desire and the social)."

Thanks for chiming in Hemplover and Jaycee. Also, I recently found out Adorno was actually encouraging Walter Benjamin to write an essay on Jung comparing Benjamin's dialectical image with Jung's primordial image (the physical source of Jung's archetypes), and which Benjamin started researching, but of course died before writing.

Here's my own lastest contribution to the "field", haha:

It has become clear to my thinking that the Messianic aspect of Marxism shares a deep affinity with the integral heart of Christianity, which I believe can be found in a Gnostic-Jungian interpretation of Christian symbols. At the heart of both is Messianism, that is the birth of a new consciousness, which brings about a new social paradigm. The Messianic aspect of Marxism has been neglected by many self-identifying-Marxists, largely because of the vast gulf between true Messianism and the conservative purposes to which Orthodox interpretations of religious systems are widely employed, but is written about extensively by such notable authors as Erich Fromm and Walter Benjamin. The Messianic aspect of Christianity comes in two, quite separate, flavors. The first, the widely-known Orthodox interpretation, sees Salvation as bestowed upon humans by an externalized God, who is quite separate from the small, mortal soul. The Messianic aspect of a Gnostic-Jungian interpretation of Christianity--which is the only interpretation of Christianity relevant in a scientific society--similar to Messianic Marxism, is neglected by most self-identifying Christians, who take on faith the validity of Orthodoxy.

Marxism is the only consistently compassionate response to the acknowledgment of the imbalance of power within our society's public / private spheres.

It's not just that society is divided up into favored and unfavored classes. The existence of economic classes requires that we split life into what for many become completely separate public and private spheres, because it is uncomfortable for a privileged person to interact with a poor person on a private, more intimate level. By setting up a public, working life--in supermarkets, workplaces, etc.--society sidesteps this difficulty of interaction by creating spaces specifically designed so that the poor and the rich can perform economic interactions in an impersonal, "comfortable" way.

This is where I believe Marxism and religion come together. Religion seeks to heal the unnatural public / private split in individuals, one person at a time. Marxism seeks to solve the problem on a social level, by exorcising the economic injustice that is the very source of the split.

Theoretical point: where did this public / private split come from? Carl Jung's writings present a fascinating possibility. He sees the Orthodox doctrine that Jesus is "fully God" as a one-sided attitude such that its followers become used to only seeing the good side of themselves.

The sad truth is that the Christians at many of the Protestant mega-churches do not even admit that economic injustice exists. They perceive the people holding working class positions as less deserving than themselves, due to the natural order established by the market's invisible hand. If, however, the imbalance of power is admitted, then working class people become humans on an equal level.

Jung, himself, ignores the economic injustice on a political level. However, he is quite aware that a imbalanced public / private split exists, and it is my belief that Jung's work provides a strong theoretical groundwork for a Protestant version of Liberation Theology (a Catholic Marxist movement).

Karl Marx was undeniably critical of religious. For those interested, a good overview on Marx's position on religion was put together here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR1bnsjC4G0

But some, such as Walter Benjamin, would argue that Marx's claims apply to the particular expression of religion that existed (and still exists) in his day, and that they do not necessarily apply to religion in general. Benjamin further claims that a Messianic theology is the hidden core of Marx's conception of history (Historical Materialism). If Benjamin is right, then proletarian revolution and religion may in fact be different dimensions of the same underlying message.

I'd like to detour into Jung's conception of objectivity for a minute. Central to Jung's theory is the existence of an objectivity other than the scientific-empirical version. Objectivity is most often connected with scientific measurement. Jung is careful to note the difference between outward perception and scientific measurement. Both involve physical objects, but with perception, the focus is on the subject's experience, whereas scientific measurement focuses on a specific property of the object.

Accordingly, Jung says,

Empirical science ... posits objects that are confined within rational bounds, because by deliberately excluding the accidental it does not consider the actual object as a whole, but only that part of it which has been singled out for rational observation. [ Psychological Types, http://outlawpsych.com/outlawpsych/?p=1458 ]

Thus, Jung defines the perception of physical objects as non-rational (not grounded on reason), but the scientific measurement of physical objects as rational, meaning "within rational bounds."

Jung's major insight, however, is the existence of another kind of objectivity, which, unlike scientific measurement, is dependent on the subject's perception. I am referring to Jung's notion of the collective unconscious, which in his later works, Jung refers to as the "objective psyche". So Jung's definitions of objectivity and subjectivity can be understood through the following chart:


We must direct our focus to the objective psyche, our capacity for inward perception, as opposed to the Orthodox Christian emphasis on sin and inward judgment.

Walter Benjamin in a 1929 essay writes of the need to organize pessimism, in order to "activate the emergency brake" on the course Western society was heading. I suggest Benjamin's phrase be altered to organize introversion. For when enough people see the undeveloped potentials currently locked within their collective unconscious, but waiting to be brought to life, that is the moment the need to end capitalism and heal the society's imbalanced public / private rift, will be recognized. Organize introversion, because when enough people are in tune with the perceptions of their objective psyche, a new consciousness will be born, and the messianic justice of a proletarian revolution becomes clear.

It's phenomenal that you can make such profound arguments without citing Marx once. Not once. The ideas are mostly conjecture when it comes from the "Marxist" perspective of your "Jungian Marxism."

Religion is, has been, and will continue to be anti-materialist in nature. I'm assuming that, since you're on a Marxist website, that you consider yourself a Marxist? This sounds like a load of idealist jizzum from a dick I don't particularly care to suck.

The state of the Church will not allow for the eventual disintegration of the notion of the state, itself. It's more dogmatic mind-breaking, class consciousness shattering, bullshit that we hear every day from the television.

Are you suggesting that since Fox News promotes charity, on occasion, and uses powerful symbols that we should all vote for Mitt Romney in the 2012 elections? Will that make everything honky-dorey?

The heart of Marxism is NOT messianism. You could pull that shit if you were talking Mao or Stalin, maybe, but not Marx.

Hotfortrot: I don't think anyone was defending religion as a social institution or body but simply saying that there are elements of truth and useful insights contined world view contained within the envelope of religion, Marx said something along the lines of ( don't have the time to find exact quote) " religion is the encyclopedia of mans knowledge of himself ". Therefore a study of religion and a thorough understanding of the history of and meaning of religious ideas is one of the keys to understanding humanity, it's history and it's consciousness.

Jung offers some interesting insights into these questions, particulaly in understanding the symbolism of religious ideas. The problem with a lot of Marxists view of religion is they fall into the trap of treating religious ideas like Dawkins does, as simply errors of logic and rationality. Actually religious ideas, like dreams and the visions which lay at the basis of many religious traditions, grow from a different mode of consciousness to the 'word' consciousness of the intellectual 'conscious' ego.

I think Marx would be very confused by your rejection of the entire messianic tradition, the tradition in religion which has probably more than any other time and time again been the expression of the hopes and dreams of the oppressed and poor. Messianism is rejected by Marx in that it relies on an outside force and consciousness directing history to a definite end, however the over-arching view of history remains very closely linked and I see no reason other than fear of religious ideas to deny this. In Marx's view History is the process by which 'Nature becomes man' and the process through which man'makes himself'. Communism in his view was the 'answer to the riddle of history' i.e. it was through communism that humanity could really become what it potentially is, this idea has a long history before Marx and comes ultimately from Judaism.

Anyway, Jazzstock, have you read the work of Mumford, I've just come across him now, apparently he tried to synthesise Marx and Jung although the few things I have read already make me a bit suspicious of his grasp of Marx.