Two Strategies

In 1957, an aged Carl Jung was interviewed extensively for an educational film made by a Texas scholar. Probably the most quoted lines from those interviews are these:

“Nowadays particularly, the world hangs on a thin thread. Assume that certain fellow in Moscow lose their nerve or their common sense for a bit; then the whole world is in violent flames.” After pointing out that there is no such thing in nature as an H-bomb, he continues: “…that is all man’s doing. We are the great danger. The psyche is the great danger. What if something goes wrong with the psyche?”

But Jung didn’t mean just about the psyche of leaders (talking to a U.S. interviewer, he was gracious enough not to mention certain fellows in Washington as well as Moscow.) He meant everyone.

“And so it is demonstrated to us in our days what the power of psyche is, how important it is to know something about it. But we know nothing about it. Nobody would give credit to the idea that the psychical processes of the ordinary man have any importance whatever.”

This is just as true today. We know relatively nothing about the human psyche, and we talk on the level of politics, policy, government, business, society as if the human psyche doesn’t exist or is of no importance—as if the field of politics is governed by its own rules only, and is entirely rational and conscious.

But when something like the prospect of nuclear war or the Climate Crisis awakens fears and anxieties in us that are hard to consciously control, or when we plunge into depression because Karl Rove is getting away with it, the psyche asserts itself in a way that we can see.

But even the simplest conceptual tools developed by Jung and others would be immensely useful in both analyzing our situation and in dealing with our own responses. Simply admitting that a phenomenon called the unconscious exists, and learning how powerful it is, how its manifestations mask themselves as rational products of consciousness, would be a tremendous start.

The concept of denial has entered the lexicon. But of at least equal importance is the concept of projection, of seeing in others the qualities and behavior you fear in yourself.

We know nothing about it, was Jung’s cry of pain at the end of a long career. Basic psychological concepts are essential tools of peace, globally and personally. Some of the understanding that eludes us when we don’t use them is possible when we do.

We can learn something about the psyche as a strategy—about our own and perhaps the psychological concepts that applied to the public discourse could help to change things for the better.