[I first published this essay in this blog in 2016. I reprint it here because I believe it to still be quite
relevantto our current political situation. Harding was a Jungian author. Here
she writes about thepsychic/psychological underpinnings of the influence of Hitler
upon the German people.]
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 quoted from Harding:
“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 they 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 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.” (3-9)
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 real 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.
