Carl Jung and Psychedelics
Carl Jung’s work has been linked to psychedelia for quite a while, his popularity in the 1960’s was likely due to the supposedly “psychedelic” character of his studies and personal experiences.
“When it comes to the practical and more or less general application of mescalin, I have certain doubts and hesitations.
The analytical method of psychotherapy (e.g., “active imagination”) yields very similar results, viz. full realization of complexes and numinous dreams and visions.
These phenomena occur at their proper time and place in the course of the treatment.
Mescalin, however, uncovers such psychic facts at any time and place when and where it is by no Means certain that the individual is mature enough to integrate them.
Mescalin is a drug similar to hashish and opium in so far as it is a poison, paralysing the normal function of apperception and thus giving free rein to the psychic factors underlying sense perception.
These aesthetic factors account for colours, sounds, forms, associations, and emotions attributed by the unconscious psyche to the mere stimulus provided by the objects.”
“Could we uncover the unconscious layer next to consciousness during the process of apperception, we would be confronted with an infinitely moving world riotous with colours, sounds, forms, emotions, meanings, etc.
But out of all this emerges a relatively drab and banal picture devoid of emotion and poor in meaning.
…
Mescalin brusquely removes the veil of the selective process and reveals the underlying layer of perceptional variants, apparently a world of infinite wealth.
Thus the individual gains an insight and a full view of psychic possibilities which he otherwise (f.i. through “active imagination”) would reach only by assiduous work and a relatively long and difficult training.
But if he reaches and experiences [them in this way], he has not only acquired them by legitimate endeavour but he has also arrived at the same time in a mental position where he can integrate the meaning of his experience.
Mescalin is a short cut and therefore yields as a result only a perhaps awe-inspiring aesthetic impression, which remains an isolated, unintegrated experience contributing very little to the development of human personality.”
“Such an experiment may be in practice good for people having a desire to convince themselves of the real existence of an unconscious psyche.
It could give them a fair idea of its reality.”
-Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 222-224.
This sentiment is shared by Alejandro Jodorowsky, he gives his view in a very funny scene from the Holy Mountain.
While this is a reduction of much of Terrence McKenna’s philosophy, the likeness is still clear. I have very strong suspicions about anyone who claim drugs are the source of religious experience, it is precisely as Jung says, the desire to reduce everything to material causes, something profoundly nihilistic.
“I never could accept mescalin as a means to convince people of the possibility of spiritual experience over against their materialism.
It is on the contrary an excellent demonstration of Marxist materialism: mescalin is the drug by which you can manipulate the brain so that it produces even so-called “spiritual” experiences.
That is the ideal case for Bolshevik philosophy and its “brave new world.”
If that is all the Occident has to offer in the way of “transcendental” experience, we would but confirm the Marxist aspirations to prove that the “spiritual” experience can be just as well produced by chemical means.”
I see this same trend in popular Occultism, an assumption that there are short cuts to intensive work necessary for legitimate spiritual experiences. A trend that has left the occult world sterile and “far out” rather than on the straight and narrow path of True Will. It’s obvious and pervasive in modern Christian discourse as well, the material reality of Biblical events is the only way a modern man can “believe” this is the opposite of faith.
good points, glad to find a proper elucidation of your thoughts. couple reflections if you’re interested
- you’ve said elsewhere you like stimulants — perhaps when you deride “drugs”, a more appropriate term would be “narcotics”, seeing as stimulants are a drug (including nicotine alcohol and caffeine). i’d agree it’s important to point out narcotics are a plight (and an ancient one id add)
- you seem to hold the view cannabis and it’s ilk is culturally degenerate, and you may be right, however within the broader context of mass incarceration and prison fodder incentives i think it’s worth recognising the importance of challenging stigma there.
- psychedelics are not the answer, completely agree. however in comparison to alcohol they result in minuscule harm individually and collectively. they are absolutely being used culturally as a distraction from actually dealing with the content of the unconscious directly, though, more aligned with traditions of behavioralism and cognitivism than psychoanalytic traditions — i.e short term fixes producing immediate results, rather than long term fixes producing solid, lasting solutions.
- I dunno how familiar you are with Terence Mckenna, and I’m certainly not on board with much of what he produced, but something worthwhile in him I think is he emphasised personal, direct experience, sexuality, and dealing with the actual *content* of the psyche, which is as maligned a position when it comes from him as it is when it comes from Jung.
- Full agreement that vast majority of people aren’t engaging with psychedelics in healthy productive ways, however being pragmatic they’re increasingly going to be part of the psychoanalyst’s toolkit, so let’s deal with that with as much caution as it demands