Was Carl Jung Racist, Anti-Semitic and a Nazi Sympathiser? — the Case for the Defence
This is an accusation that one frequently reads. When I first came across it some time ago, I was surprised because, having read a significant portion of his Collected Works, I had found no evidence of it. On the contrary I had found frequent references to madness, a collective psychosis that had taken over the German nation. Jung seemed to be a genuine humanitarian, who devoted his life to psychotherapy, to helping others. He had a deep appreciation of foreign cultures, for example Hinduism and Taoism, and spent time with indigenous tribes, and was impressed by their worldviews. In fact, it has been said that Jung found his ideas more in tune with Masai tribesmen and Pueblo Indian elders than with the sophisticated culture of early twentieth-century Europe. This would be surprising if he were a racist.
The accusation persists, however. On Medium I correspond frequently with Wes Hansen, a passionate Buddhist who is highly critical of Jung and his ideas. In this response he writes: “ it is well-known that Carl Jung was overtly racist… and anti-Semitic”. He provides four links which he claims prove his point.
I recently gave a Zoom talk entitled ‘Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion, and His Relationship to Other Traditions’. One attendee then emailed me, asking me for my opinion on a paper, which included this quote: “It is a well-known fact, recorded in History, that Jung had sympathies for Hitler’s Nazism”.
I haven’t yet responded to Wes Hansen, but this second instance has prompted me into action. What follows are some opinions from the other side of the fence.
In 1991 a book was published which explored the issue in some depth, Lingering Shadows by Aryeh Maidenbaum. The good-reads review says: “For many years there have been accusations that the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung was personally and professionally anti-Semitic. Lingering Shadows is a definitive sourcebook on this thorny subject… What is revealed in this wide-ranging survey is how complex this relationship is, and how too many have passed judgment, either defensively or offensively, without sufficient information”.
Richard Noll is a clinical psychologist who wrote The Jung Cult, Origins of a Charismatic Movement. (I own a copy but haven’t yet read it.) According to the jacket notes, Noll argues that Jung “consciously inaugurated a cult of personality centred on himself and passed down to the present by a body of priest-analysts extending this charismatic movement, or ‘personal religion’, to late twentieth-century individuals”. I think this assessment is inaccurate and prejudiced, but at least it makes it clear that Noll is not a fan of Jung. It’s therefore interesting that the jacket notes also say that many of Jung’s (and Nietzsche’s) themes “were used by the National Socialists and have become so identified with Hitler and the Nazis that it is difficult to disentangle the sources from this later use”. However, Noll “firmly separates Jung and his teachings from the later National Socialist movement”.
In conclusion, this was my reply to my correspondent mentioned above: “The statement ‘It is a well-known fact, recorded in History, that Jung had sympathies for Hitler’s Nazism’ is controversial, certainly debatable, and I would say one-sided. The author may have heard the case for the prosecution, but has he heard the case for the defence?
“I am aware of the issue, but haven’t studied it in detail. There are two accusations, Jung’s sympathy for Nazism, and anti-Semitism in general. On the latter, let’s not forget that Jung had a close association with the Jew Sigmund Freud, and considered him a father-figure. Would that be possible if he were truly anti-Semitic?
“Marie-Louise von Franz was Jung’s greatest disciple and a close associate, so one could argue that she was biased. However, her opinion and insight are still worth something. The following material can be found on p63–64 of her book C. G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time.
She says that Aniela Jaffé in her book From the Life and Work of C. G. Jung (pp 78ff) ‘gives a true and faithful account of all the facts, as well as of all the actions which could be chalked up as Jung’s mistakes and which he later looked upon as such’. Jung must therefore have written things at one stage which gave the impression that he was sympathetic to Hitler. (That book would obviously be worth a read if you’re interested in this issue, but I don’t have a copy.)
“However, ‘I knew Jung personally from 1933 until his death and I never perceived the slightest conscious or unconscious trace of any such attitude. On the contrary he frequently inveighed against Hitler and Nazism in quite unambiguous terms. He had numerous Jewish refugees among his analysands (some of whom he treated gratis)’.
She agrees with Jaffé that the problem was that Jung was too optimistic: “Wherever what was dark and destructive broke through, whether in the individual or in the collective, he always tried, with the passionate intensity of the born physician, to save whatever there was to save…” She quotes him: “How could I treat people if I did not go on hoping?” “And he confesses in a letter (dated 20 April 1946) that he had had illusions about people when it came to Nazism. He could never have imagined that such abysmal evil could come to the surface and break out. It was not a hidden shadow element but rather the ‘therapeutic’ optimism of his temperament which misled Jung into his ‘mistake’ ”.
If we accept this line of thinking, then the worst accusation that one could come up with would be that Jung was naïve and lacking in foresight, rather than anti-Semitic or sympathetic to Nazism. He changed his mind about and regretted anything he had previously written.
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