'A glimpse behind the veil': Jung's Parapsychological Experiences as the Veridical Basis for Development of his Transpersonal Psychology (original) (raw)
Related papers
S.W.' and C.G. Jung: mediumship, psychiatry and serial exemplarity
History of Psychiatry, 2015
On the basis of unpublished materials, this essay reconstructs Jung's seances with his cousin, Helene Preiswerk, which formed the basis of his 1902 medical dissertation, The Psychology and Pathology of so-called Occult Phenomena. It separates out Jung's contemporaneous approach to the mediumistic phenomena she exhibited from his subsequent sceptical psychological reworking of the case. It traces the reception of the work and its significance for his own self-experimentation from 1913 onwards. Finally, it reconstructs the manner in which Jung continually returned to his first model and reframed it as an exemplar of his developing theories.
This essay explores Carl Gustav Jung's approach to paranormal phenomena. It sets out by looking at two of Jung's personal experiences with ghostly phenomena and his explanations of them, followed by an overview of the most relevant aspects of Jung's life-long interest in the supernatural. Special attention is given to notions of sensitivity and pre-rational cognition in the context of Jung's struggle with the Cartesian worldview.
Misunderstanding Jung: the afterlife of legends
Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2000
F. X. Charet's article, 'Understanding Jung: recent biographies and scholarship', is full of errors and legends. In this article, I demonstrate the tendentiousness of his criticisms of the historical work of Eugene Taylor and myself concerning Jung's linkages with the subliminal psychology of Théodore Flournoy, William James, and F. W. H. Myers, and the fallaciousness of his criticism of my claim that Memories, Dreams, Reflections was not Jung's autobiography.
A reflection on the eleventh chapter of Memories, Dreams, Reflections, the Jung autobiography, titled Life After Death. The essay is based on my lecture for the IVAP, the Dutch Jung Society, on November 15th 2014. The essay is about Jung’s private life, his convictions as told in the memoirs and the fantasies, now made public. Apart from Jung's ideas I reflect on the Sacred Tree symbol, the Mysteries of Eleusis, the I Ching and on Frederic Myers. Jung seems to have believed in the continuation of life after death of the body and in some form of reincarnation. And so, if you ask me, I think he is still here, and he might be ‘just around the corner’.
Carl Jung's Transcendent Function: his Insight into Mystical Experiences (2024f)
2024
Carl Jung wrote the essay The Transcendent Function in 1916, but it was not published until 1958 when students at the C. G. Jung Institute of Zurich discovered it. The psychological phenomenon explained by Jung in his essay comes before the most important concepts of his psychology such as archetypes, shadow, anima/animus and Self. As a result, it is of the utmost importance to understand Jung's individuation process. Nevertheless, the transcendent function is probably the most misunderstood notion in the field of Analytical psychology. Jungians generally explain it as a mere product of the integration of unconscious contents in consciousness, but they miss the essence of its description by Jung as the autonomous compensation from the archetype of the Self and the voice of God. In this article, we show that the transcendent function is exactly what Jung implied in the title of his essay: the psychological process to produce a mystical or transcendent experience. To Jung, that phenomenon is an extremely numinous symbol of conjunction of opposites entering consciousness for a short moment. Jung's 1916 essay was his first attempt to explain psychologically his mystical experience of December 1913. The goal of this article is to give back its place to the transcendent function in the Jungian corpus.
64 TRANSCULT PSYCHIATRY Jung, Spirits and Madness: Lessons for Cultural Psychiatry
An understanding of the nature and meaning of 'dissociative,' 'altered' or unusual states ultimately turns on the meaning and definition of consciousness. The view of consciousness from the discipline of psychiatry is largely based on a biomedically endorsed, culturally specific perspective of 'normal' consciousness as an integrated pattern of quotidian relationships with the 'observable' physical world. This perspective underlies the nosology for mental disorders, particularly psychoses, suggesting irreconcilable difference in cognition and affect of persons with these diagnostic labels. This article reviews some theories of Carl Gustav Jung regarding the structure and content of human consciousness and their relationship to aspects of 'dementia praecox' or 'schizophrenia.' It traces the origin and development of these ideas in part to Jung's early contact with, and intense interest in spiritualists and spirits, to later influences comprised of his own altered states (dreams and fantasies) and his involvement with patients diagnosed as schizophrenic. Data on current Spiritist beliefs and healing practices focused on 'madness' (i.e. most often diagnosed as schizophrenia in mental health settings), are described to explore parallels with Jung's ideas on the structure and dynamics of the psyche. These parallels are of special interest because the experience of spirits is ubiquitous, not well explained and often rejected as meaningful by psychiatrists and clinical psychologists. Jung, however, offers a cogent explanation of spirit phenomena as manifestations of the unconscious. A concluding section suggests contributions to cultural psychiatry by Jung.
Abstract: The manuscript forms a biography, interwoven with an autobiography. Since the confrontation with C.G. Jung's work forced me to overcome his mixture of neo-Platonic and hermetic theory and to turn to Hermeticism, it became inevitable to interweave my point of view with that of Jung. In this way, a work has come into being which, in my opinion, represents a continuation of the work of the great depth psychologist. With this manuscript, I fulfill Marie-Louise von Franz's demand: "I cannot go beyond C.G. Jung--but you must!" Here is the Preface and Chapter 1. April 6, 2023
The Search for Roots: C. G. Jung and the Tradition of Gnosis (Foreword by Lance S. Owens, 2013)
The Search for Roots C. G. Jung and the Tradition of Gnosis, Alfred Ribi, Foreword by Lance S. Owens (Gnosis Archive Books, 2013); ISBN-13: 978-0615850627
The publication in 2009 of C. G. Jung's The Red Book: Liber Novus has initiated a broad reassessment of Jung’s place in cultural history. Among many revelations, the visionary events recorded in the Red Book reveal the foundation of Jung’s complex association with the Western tradition of Gnosis. In The Search for Roots, Alfred Ribi closely examines Jung’s life-long association with Gnostic tradition. Dr. Ribi knows C. G. Jung and his tradition from the ground up. He began his analytical training with Marie-Louise von Franz in 1963, and continued working closely with Dr. von Franz for the next 30 years. For over four decades he has been an analyst, lecturer and examiner of the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich, where he also served as the Director of Studies. But even more importantly, early in his studies Dr. Ribi noted Jung’s underlying roots in Gnostic tradition, and he carefully followed those roots to their source. Alfred Ribi is unique in the Jungian analytical community for the careful scholarship and intellectual rigor he has brought to the study Gnosticism. In The Search for Roots, Ribi shows how a dialogue between Jungian and Gnostic studies can open new perspectives on the experiential nature of Gnosis, both ancient and modern. Creative engagement with Gnostic tradition broadens the imaginative scope of modern depth psychology and adds an essential context for understanding the voice of the soul emerging in our modern age. A Foreword by Lance Owens supplements this volume with a discussion of Jung's encounter with Gnostic tradition while composing his Red Book (Liber Novus). Dr. Owens delivers a fascinating and historically well-documented account of how Gnostic mythology entered into Jung's personal mythology in the Red Book. Gnostic mythology thereafter became for Jung a prototypical image of his individuation. Owens offers this conclusion: “In 1916 Jung had seemingly found the root of his myth and it was the myth of Gnosis. I see no evidence that this ever changed. Over the next forty years, he would proceed to construct an interpretive reading of the Gnostic tradition’s occult course across the Christian aeon: in Hermeticism, alchemy, Kabbalah, and Christian mysticism. In this vast hermeneutic enterprise, Jung was building a bridge across time, leading back to the foundation stone of classical Gnosticism. The bridge that led forward toward a new and coming aeon was footed on the stone rejected by the builders two thousand years ago.” Alfred Ribi's examination of Jung’s relationship with Gnostic tradition comes at an important time. Initially authored prior to the publication of Jung's Red Book, current release of this English edition offers a bridge between the past and the forthcoming understanding of Jung’s Gnostic roots.