[This essay was originally intended for my "Jungian audience." Harding was a Jungian author. I include it here because I believe it to be quite relevant to our current political situation. I trust my readers to make up their own minds.]
Harding wrote Psychic
Energy: Its Source and Its Transformation, first published in 1948, with
its Foreword written by Jung in 1947.
I have excerpted quotes from the text (pp. 3-9) that, in my estimation, can be
clearly related to our current political, social, and cultural situation in
America. A crossroads seems to have been reached with choices to be made. My
hope is that we may approach what confronts us as consciously and responsibly
as possible. The following material is
directly from Harding. My own attendant thoughts are designated in brackets.
Beneath
the decent façade of consciousness with its disciplined moral order and its
good intentions lurk the crude instinctive forces of life, like monsters of the
deep—devouring, begetting, warring endlessly. They are for the most part
unseen, yet on their urge and energy life itself depends … But were they left
to function unchecked, life would lose its meaning … In creating civilization
man sought, however unconsciously, to curb these natural forces and to channel
some part at least of their energy into forms that would serve a different
purpose. For with the coming of consciousness, cultural and psychological
values began to compete with the purely biological aims of unconscious
functioning.
Throughout history two factors have
been at work in the struggle to bring about the control and discipline of these
non-personal, instinctive forces of the psyche. Social controls and the demands
of material necessity have exerted a powerful discipline from without, while an
influence of perhaps even great potency has been applied from within the
individual himself, in the form of symbols and experiences of a numinous
character … So powerful indeed were these experiences that they became the core
of religious dogmas and rituals that in turn have influenced the large mass of
the people. That these religious forms have had power to curb the violence and
ruthlessness of the primitive instincts to such an extent and for so long a
time is a matter for the greatest wonder … It must mean that the symbols of a
particular religion were peculiarly adapted to satisfy the urge of the
conflicting inner forces, even lacking the aid of conscious understanding, and
in many cases without the individual’s having himself participated in the
numinous experience on which the ritual was originally based.
So long as the religious and social
forms are able to contain and in some measure to satisfy the inner and outer
life needs of the individuals who make up a community, the instinctive forces
lie dormant … Yet at times they awaken … and then the noise and tumult of their
elemental struggle break in upon our ordered lives and rouse us rudely from our
dreams of peace and contentment. Nevertheless we try to blind ourselves to the
evidence of their untamed power, and delude ourselves into believing that man’s
rational mind has conquered not only the world of nature around him but also
the world of natural, instinctive life within.
These childish beliefs have
received not a few shocks of late. The increase in power that science has made
available to man has not been equaled by a corresponding increase in the
development and wisdom of human beings; and the upsurge of instinctive energies
that has occurred in the last twenty-five years in the political field has not
as yet been adequately controlled, let alone tamed or converted to useful ends.
Yet for the most part we continue to hope that we will be able to reassert the
ascendancy of reasonable, conscious control without any very radical
concomitant change in man himself. It is of course obviously easier to assume
that the problem lies outside of one’s own psyche than to undertake
responsibility for that which lurks within oneself … Can we be so sure that the
instinctive forces that caused the dynamic upheavals in Europe, and obliterated
in a decade the work of centuries of civilization, are really limited by
geographical or racial boundaries to the people of other nations? May they not, like the monsters of the deep, have
access to all oceans? … Is “our sea”—the unconscious as we participate in
it—exempt from such upheavals?
The force that lay behind the
revolutionary movements in Europe was not something consciously planned for or
voluntarily built up; it arose spontaneously from the hidden sources of the
Germanic psyche, being evoked perhaps but not consciously made by will power
[and it is here that the comparison to our American circumstances may come to
mind]. It erupted from unfathomable depths and overthrew the surface culture
that had been in control for so many years. This dynamic force seemingly had as
its aim the destruction of everything that the work of many centuries had
laboriously built up and made apparently secure, to the end that the aggressors
might enrich themselves in the resulting chaos, at the expense of all other
peoples, meanwhile ensuring that none would be left with sufficient strength to
endanger the despoilers for centuries to come.
The excuse the offered for their
disregard of international law and the rights of others was their own
fundamental needs had been denied. They justified their actions on the ground
of instinctual compulsion, the survival urge that requires living space,
defensible frontiers, and access to raw materials—demands in the national
sphere corresponding to the imperatives of the instinct of self-preservation in
the individual.
The aggressors claimed that the
gratification of an instinct on the lowest biological level is an inalienable
right, regardless of what means are employed for its satisfaction: “My
necessity is of paramount importance; it has divine sanction… Your necessity,
by comparison, is of no importance at all.” This attitude is either cynically
egotistic or incredibly naïve. The Germans are a Western people and have been
under Christian influence for centuries; they might therefore be expected to be
psychologically and culturally mature. Were this the case, would not the whole
nation have to be judged to be antisocial and criminal? It was not only the
Nazi overlords, with their ruthless ideology, who disregarded the rights of
others so foully; the whole nation manifested a naïve egocentricity akin to
that of a young child … and this, rather than a conscious and deliberate
criminality, may perhaps account for their gullibility and their acquiescence
in the Nazi regime. Deep within the German unconscious, forces that were not
contained or held in check by the archetypal symbols of the Christian religion,
but had flowed back into pagan forms, notably Wotanism [regressive because
focused on the individual in contradistinction to the collective focus of
Christianity], were galvanized into life by the Nazi call. For that which is
the ideal or the virtue of an outworn culture is the antisocial crime of its
more evolved and civilized successor.
The energy that could change the
despondent and disorganized Germany of 1930 into the highly organized and
optimistic, almost daemonically powerful nation of a decade later, must have
arisen from deeply buried sources … These dramatic changes swept over the
country like an incoming tide or a flood brought about by the release of
dynamic forces that had formerly lain quiescent in the unconscious. The Nazi
leaders seized upon the opportunity brought within their reach by this “tide in
affairs of men.” They were able to do this because they were themselves the
first victims of the revolutionary dynamism surging up from the depths, and
they recognized that a similar force was stirring in the mass of the people;
they had but to call it forth and release it from the civilized restraints that
still ruled the ordinary, decent folk. If these forces has not been already
active in the unconscious of the German people as a whole, the Nazi agitators
would have preached their new doctrine in vain; they would have appeared to the
people as criminals or lunatics, and by no means would have been able to arouse
popular enthusiasm or to dominate the nation for twelve long years.
The spirit of this dynamism is
directly opposed to the spirit of civilization. The first seeks life in
movement, change, exploitation; the second has sought throughout the ages to
create a form wherein life may expand, may build, may make secure. And indeed
Christian civilization, despite all its faults and shortcomings [which are
legion], represents the best that man in his inadequacy has as yet succeeded in
evolving. … Crimes against … humanity are constantly being perpetrated not only
in overt acts but also … through ignorance and … ego-oriented attitudes.
Consequently the needs of the weak have been largely disregarded, and the
strong have had things their own way.
But those who are materially and
psychologically less well endowed have as large as share of instinctive desire
and as strong a will to live as the more privileged. These natural longings, so
persistently repressed, cannot remain quiescent indefinitely. It is not so much
that the individual rebels—the masses of the people being proverbially
patient—but nature rebels in him: the forces of the unconscious boil over when
the time is ripe. The danger of such an eruption is not, however, limited to
the less fortunate in society, for the instinctive desires of many of the more
fortunate likewise have been suppressed, not by a greedy upper class but by the
too rigid domination of the moral code and conventional law. This group also
shows signs of rebellion and may break forth in uncontrollable violence, as has
so recently happened in Germany. If this should happen elsewhere, the energies
unleashed would pour further destruction over the world. But there remains
another possibility, namely, that these hidden forces stirring in countless
individuals the world over may be channeled again, as they were at the
beginning of the Christian era, by the emergence of a powerful archetype or
symbol, and so many create for themselves a different form, paving the way for
a new stage of civilization.
[At this point Harding approaches
Communism.] For this new dynamic or daemonic spirit that sprung into being is
endowed with an almost incredible energy … Can it conceivably create a new
world order? … It does not look as if it could be repressed once more into the
unconscious. It has come to stay. And the spirit that conserves and builds up,
if it survives at all, cannot remain unaffected by the impact of so vital a
force.
These two world spirits, which
Greek philosophy called “the growing” and “the burning,” stand in mortal combat
… Will the revolutionary spirit triumph and become the dominant spirit of the
next world age? Will war follow war … ? Or dare we hope that out of the present
struggle and suffering a new world spirit may be born, to create for itself a
new body of civilization?
[Now Harding turns to the
psychologist-as-healer.] For the psychologist can observe the unfolding of this
same conflict in miniature in individual persons. The problems and struggles
disturbing the peace of the world must in the last analysis [this has to be a
pun!] be fought out in the hearts of individuals before they can be truly
resolved in the relationships of nations. On this plane they must of necessity
be worked out within the span of a single life.
In the individual, no less than in
the nation, the basic instincts make a compulsive demand for satisfaction; and
here to civilization has imposed a rule of conduct aimed to repress or modify
the demand. Every child undergoes an education that imposes restraint on his
natural response to his own impulses and desires, substituting a collective or
conventional mode of behavior. In many cases the result is that the conscious
personality is too much separated from its instinctive roots; … until in the
course of time the repressed instincts rebel and generate a revolution in the
individual similar to that which has been threatening the peace of the world.
… But not real solution of such a
fundamental problem can be found except through a conscious enduring of the
conflict that arises when the instincts revolt against the too repressive rule
of the conscious ego. If the ego regains control, the status quo ante will be re-established and the impoverishment of
life will continue … If, on the other hand, the repressed instincts obtain the
mastery, unseating the ego, the individual will be in danger of disintegrating
either morally or psychologically. That is, he will either lose all moral
values … or he will lose himself in a welter of collective or nonpersonal,
instinctive drives … .
But if the individual who is caught
in such a problem has sufficient courage and stability to face the issue
squarely, not allowing either contending element to fall back into the
unconscious, regardless of how much pain and suffering may be involved, a
solution of the conflict may develop spontaneously in the depths of the
unconscious. Such a solution will not appear in the form of an intellectual
conclusion or thought-out plan, but will arise in dream or phantasy in the form
of an image or symbol, so unexpected and yet so apt that it appearance will
seem like a miracle. Such a symbol has the effect of breaking the deadlock. It
has power to bring the opposing demands of the psyche together in a newly
created form through which the life energies can flow in a new creative effort.
Jung has called this the reconciling symbol [and sounds much like Hegel’s
“synthesis”]. Its potency avails … to effect a transformation or modification
of the instinctive drives within the individual … .
This is something entirely
different from a change in conscious attitude, such as might be brought about
by education or precept. It is not a compromise, nor is the solution achieved
through an increased effort to control the asocial tendencies, the outbursts of
anger or the like. … It is only after all … efforts towards a solution have
failed that the reconciling symbol appears. It arises from the depths of the
unconscious psyche [or, as I see it, soul or embodied spirit] and produces its
creative effect on a level of the psychic life beyond the reach of the rational
consciousness, where it has power to produce a change in the very character of
the instinctive urge itself, with the result that the nature of the “I want” is
actually altered.
It seems that Harding,
in her understanding of Jung, is suggesting a mass radical evolution of
consciousness, an enlightenment for all, a Hegelian synthesis of understanding
and action, a Christian “act of God,” even a miracle, an Anthroposophical
recognition and understanding of the positive aspects of our “lower (instinctive)
nature” as presented in the luciferic (ego-centered,
individualistic) and ahrimanic (materialistic,
nature-based, instinctive) “impulses” (as put forth in The Influences of Lucifer and Ahriman: Human Responsibility for the
Earth by Rudolf Steiner), and a Jungian exposition of Self, including all
of its shadow aspects, as an individuation
of humanity. I share Harding with you that we may all find the Greater Context
in which we “live and move and have our being.” And thus be more enabled to
make wise and good choices.
Please note that I do not necessarily agree with all
that Harding or Jung say here, but that I do believe that what Harding says is
quite relevant and important here and now for us all.
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