THE RELIGION OF NO RELIGION: JUNG’S PSYCHOLOGY IN THE HISTORY OF ZEN BUDDHISM IN THE 20TH CENTURY

In the 1930s, Zen Buddhism was hardly known outside Japan. By the 1960s, it had become by far the most popular form of Buddhism in Europe and the United States. Its popularity was born from the general belief that Zen responded to the psychological and religious needs of the individual without incurring the criticisms customarily levelled against religion. Zen was imagined as a practical spirituality that accepted all religions and religious symbols as expressions of a universal psychological truth. Zen was not itself a religion, but a ‘super-religion’ that had understood the inner mechanics of the psyche’s natural religion-making function. Three authors in particular, namely D. T. Suzuki, Friedrich Spiegelberg and Alan Watts, were pivotal in the formation of this narrative. Using Jung’s psychological model as their conceptual basis, they promoted a vision of Zen Buddhism that laid the foundations for the ‘Zen Boom’ of the 1950s and 60s. This article will examine the pivotal role played by Jung’s psychology in the formation of this narrative. KEYWORDS Zen Buddhism, D. T. Suzuki, Alan Watts, Friedrich Spiegelberg, The Religion of no Religion.

ʻIT IS ALL SO STRANGELY INTERTWINEDʼ: A DISCUSSION BETWEEN HANS BENDER AND CARL GUSTAV JUNG ABOUT SYNCHRONICITY (1960)

Hans Bender, German parapsychologist and professor at the Freiburg University, met with C. G. Jung on December 8, 1960. The discussion was recorded, and the transcribed version is available here for the first time in English. A key aspect of our article is a description of the phenomenon of synchronicity based on Hans Bender’s concrete experiences during a drive through Switzerland to an Eranos Conference in Ascona and further on to the Côte d’Azur for a workshop of the Parapsychology Foundation in August 1960. At the same time, his mother suffered a stroke, which caused her death shortly afterward. Bender was returning to Freiburg at the time when she died. He was familiar with the stages of his return trip from earlier trips. He had intensely emotional experiences at certain places, which he, in retrospect, interpreted as synchronistic in connection with his mother’s death. KEYWORDS C.G. Jung, Hans Bender, Synchronicity, Psi experiences.

C.G. JUNG, J.J. HONEGGER, AND THE CASE OF EMIL SCHWYZER (THE ‘SOLAR PHALLUS’ MAN)

The case of Emil Schwyzer, a.k.a. the ‘Solar-Phallus Man’, was foundational in giving shape to Jung’s early reflections on the concept of the collective unconscious. In 1906 Schwyzer identified a tail of light coming off the sun as a phallus, which Jung interpreted as a particularly important example of ‘the fantasies or delusions of…patients…[being] paralleled in mythological material of which they knew nothing’ (Bennet 1985:69). This was because it represented not only a single mythological symbol or idea that Schwyzer could not have known but an entire passage from an ancient document known as the Mithras Liturgy. According to Jung, Schwyzer’s ‘vision’ also paralleled a rare theme in Medieval art. Jung’s student J.J. Honegger gave a paper on the Schwyzer case at the March 1910 Second Psychoanalytic Congress in Nuremberg. In it he again discussed Schwyzer’s description of the light tail on the sun but especially his concept of a Ptolemaic flat earth. Relying largely on archival material not previously discussed, the present article provides a history of the Schwyzer case along with a thoroughgoing evaluation of what Jung and Honegger made of it. KEYWORDS J.J. Honegger, Emil Schwyzer, ‘Solar-Phallus Man’, Mithras Liturgy, Collective unconscious, Inherited ideas, Hortus Conclusus.

DESCENSUS AD INFERNOS: JUNG’S ‘SEASON IN HELL’

This article explores the linked themes of the descent into hell and divine madness, as articulated in Jung’s self-explorations between 1913 and 1930 and as portrayed in his Liber Novus: The Red Book, situating these with the history of these notions. This in turn open the question of the relation between Jung’s visionary experiences and his subsequent conceptual elaborations in his exoteric scholarly works. KEY WORDS Liber Novus, The Red Book, hell, divine madness, visionary experiences, esotericism, Jung, Blake, Dante, Swedenborg.

À propos du Libro dei sogni de Federico Fellini. Crash et deuil sur la page. Un curieux problème de datation

Tout au long de sa vie, Fellini s’est plu à dessiner à tout propos et en tous lieux. En 1970, son analyste, le Dr Bernhard, l’a invité à dessiner et à écrire ses rêves. Ce qu’il a fait bien au-delà de la fin de cette analyse, en 1975.Après de longues disputes entre ses héritiers, ces dessins et écrits, qu’il avait réunis sous le titre Il Libro dei sogni, ont été publiés par la Fondazione Fellini, de Rimini, qui a organisé un congrès à ce propos en 2007. L’essai qu’on va lire s’arrête à deux dessins du Maestro, qui ne se trouvent pas dans ce Libro, et qui ne sont pas datés. D’où une enquête qui s’appuie sur une série d’indices et de repères pour tenter de dater ces deux dessins, aujourd’hui conservés à la Fondation Fellini pour le cinéma, à Sion, en Suisse. Cette enquête conduit à une réflexion qui porte sur la thématique et la dynamique internes de l’œuvre et de la vie de l’artiste, et plus généralement sur celles de la création. KEY WORDS Fellini, Libro dei sogni, Dr Bernhard, Jung, Livre Rouge.

From the Instinctual to the Cosmic: Jung’s Exploration of the Colour in The Red Book, 1915-1929/30

Jung wrote extensively about colour symbolism in his patients’ dreams, paintings, and active imagination, beginning with his first mandala study in 1929, and continuing during the 1930s as he learned more about alchemy and Eastern esoteric texts. Students of Jung and Jungian analysts are already well acquainted with this material. The publication of The Red Book (2009), and Jung’s visual works in The Art of C.G. Jung (2019), present new opportunities to study how Jung explored colour between 1915 and 1929. This paper will trace Jung’s colour journey, concentrating on imagery that illustrates the instinctual and cosmic energies of the new god, the self and individuation. Jung’s evolving colour symbolism demonstrates The Red Book’s crucial role as an experimental medium, and confirms that Jung had developed a well-established colour hermeneutic by the 1920s. KEY WORDS colour, instinct, cosmos, new god, self, individuation, mandala, Goethe.

When the Great Mother Met the Harlequin: Jung and Neumann on Art, Archetypes and The Spirit Of The Times

Where Sigmund Freud famously failed to engage seriously and openly with Nietzsche’s Thus spoke Zarathustra (1980 [1883-85]), C.G. Jung developed his psychological theory on the basis of a thorough critical engagement with the text and even dedicated a five-year long seminar series to its interpretation (1934-39). But similar to Freud before him he often developed a blind eye to his own contemporary literature and art. As Jung’s writings on Joyce’s Ulysses (Jung 1932) or Picasso’s paintings make (Jung 1932a) evident he tended to reject the symbolic dimension of modernist art and literature and regarded it as a sheer product of the spirit of the times. Again, it was a psychologist of the next generation, Erich Neumann, whose adaptation of Jung’s theory made it possible to apply archetypal theory to modernist art. This article will follow the key differences between Jung’s and Neumann’s understanding of art and literature by looking at their interpretations of main examples of modernism. KEYWORDS Erich Neumann, Pablo Picasso, James Joyce, the Great Mother archetype.

What really happened in Ravenna? C.G. Jung and Toni Wolff’s Mosaic Vision

On at least five different occasions, C.G. Jung told the story of how he and Toni Wolff saw and discussed four mosaics in an ancient Baptistery in Ravenna, Italy, that turned out not to exist, but rather had apparently represented some sort of shared visionary experience. It was, Jung said, ‘among the most curious events in my life’ (MDR:285). This article begins by establishing the correct date and location of this incident. Then it seeks to show, with the aid of the author’s on-site investigation of the relevant sites in Ravenna, that what Jung and Wolff saw in the Baptistery actually did exist but was partly misremembered and partly misinterpreted. Pictures are included that illustrate relevant details. KEYWORDS Jung Chronology, Toni Wolff, Ravenna, Baptistery of the Orthodox, Arian Baptistery, San Giovanni Evangelista.

From the Instinctual to the Cosmic: Jung’s Exploration of the Colour in The Red Book, 1915-1929/30

Jung wrote extensively about colour symbolism in his patients’ dreams, paintings, and active imagination, beginning with his first mandala study in 1929, and continuing during the 1930s as he learned more about alchemy and Eastern esoteric texts. Students of Jung and Jungian analysts are already well acquainted with this material. The publication of The Red Book (2009), and Jung’s visual works in The Art of C.G. Jung (2019), present new opportunities to study how Jung explored colour between 1915 and 1929. This paper will trace Jung’s colour journey, concentrating on imagery that illustrates the instinctual and cosmic energies of the new god, the self and individuation. Jung’s evolving colour symbolism demonstrates The Red Book’s crucial role as an experimental medium, and confirms that Jung had developed a well-established colour hermeneutic by the 1920s. KEY WORDS colour, instinct, cosmos, new god, self, individuation, mandala, Goethe.

Jung's Alleged Madness: From Mythopoeia to Mythologisation

This article recounts a little-known episode in C. G. Jung’s life and in the history of analytical psychology: Jung’s visit to Paris in the spring of 1934 at the invitation of the Paris Analytical Psychology Club (named ‘Le Gros Caillou’), a stay marked by a lecture on the ‘hypothesis of the collective unconscious’ held in a private setting and preceded by an evening spent in Daniel Halévy’s literary salon with some readers and critics.