Anima and Animus – Eternal Partners from the Unconscious

In Carl Jung’s model of the psyche, we have both the outer world and the inner world. The persona (which represents the social mask that we put on) lies between the ego and society, representing our conscious life and outer world.

The inner world or the unconscious is where the real adventure begins. Here we encounter the shadow, the anima, the animus and the Self, all of which have both a light and dark aspect, as Jung emphasises. The shadow can be inferred from the contents of the personal unconscious (that is, contents that are acquired during one’s lifetime). To become conscious of it, one must recognise the dark aspects of the personality as present and real, if not, one unconsciously projects them onto others, changing the world into the replica of one’s own unknown face. Shadow work is essential for any kind of self-knowledge, but meets with considerable resistance.

While the shadow is always of the same sex as the subject, when we talk of the opposite sex, the source of projections takes the form of a contrasexual figure. Here we meet the anima of man and animus of woman, which often turn up behind the shadow, bringing up new and difficult problems. If you are unconscious of your anima, it will marry your shadow.

The anima is the personification of all female psychological tendencies in man, while the animus is the personification of all male psychological tendencies in woman. These will always express what you lack, as they have a complementary nature. They form part of the collective unconscious, as archetypes or collectively inherited patterns of behaviour, which are autonomous, making them particularly difficult to integrate into one’s personality.

Just as the persona should be a sort of bridge to the world, the function of anima and animus is to make a connection with the depths of the psyche.

We have explored the ideas of the persona, the shadow and the collective unconscious (which differs from the personal unconscious) in previous videos. Now we will be doing the same here with the anima and animus.

Introduction: Anima and Animus

Way to Eternity – Vinko Hlebš

“If the encounter with the shadow is the ‘apprentice-piece’… then that with the anima is the ‘master-piece.’ ”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol 9. Part I. Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious

The integration of the shadow, or the realisation of the personal unconscious, marks the first stage in Jungian psychology. Without it, a recognition of anima and animus is impossible.

“Though the shadow is a motif as well known to mythology as anima and animus, it represents first and foremost the personal unconscious, and its content can therefore be made conscious without too much difficulty. In this it differs from anima and animus, for whereas the shadow can be seen through and recognised fairly easily, the anima and animus are much further away from consciousness and in normal circumstances are seldom if ever realised.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol 9. Part II: Aion. The Shadow

The first step one must take is acknowledgement of the anima and animus, which form the bridge to the most fundamental figure to emerge, the archetype of the Self, the totality of one’s personality.

Man tends to overvalue the masculine aspect with his persona, playing the strong man, while the feminine aspect remains unconscious. This naturally leads to negative anima projection, as he is completely unaware of it. Man is highly focused on ego, he is highly rational and centres around the outer world, in detriment to the unconscious. His curse is the imprisonment of the outer world without access to the inner world.

Woman, on the other hand, is more in tune with the inner life. There is a considerable psychological difference between man and woman, it is common for men to have irrational moods and women irrational opinions.

The anima corresponds to the maternal Eros, and the animus corresponds to the paternal Logos. Jung writes:

“Just as the anima becomes, through integration, the Eros of consciousness, so the animus becomes a Logos; and in the same way that the anima gives relationship and relatedness to a man’s consciousness, so the animus gives to a woman’s consciousness a capacity for reflection, deliberation and self-knowledge.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol 9. Part II: Aion. The Syzygy: Anima and Animus

These archetypes are also conditioned by the experience each person has had in the course of his or her life with the opposite sex.

Every man carries within him the eternal image of woman; not the image of this or that particular woman, but a definitive feminine image. Likewise, woman carries with her the eternal image of the masculine. Jung points to the archetypal nature of anima and animus, and he is talking about the projection of these inner figures onto real women and men.

The Anima: The Woman Within

Untitled (Four Eyed Anima) – Peter Birkhäuser

Starting with the anima “the woman within” or personification of all female psychological tendencies in man, is as a rule shaped by one’s mother. If a man feels that his mother had a negative influence on him, his anima will often express itself in irritable, depressed moods, uncertainty, insecurity, and touchiness.

“Within the soul of such a man the negative mother-anima figure will endlessly repeat this theme: “I am nothing. Nothing makes any sense. With others it’s different, but for me… I enjoy nothing.” These “anima moods” cause a sort of dullness, a fear of disease, of impotence, or of accidents. The whole of life takes on a sad and oppressive aspect. Such dark moods can even lure a man to suicide, in which case the anima becomes a death demon.”

Man and His Symbols. Part III: The Process of Individuation – M.L. von Franz

The anima is the archetype of life and when it is negative, the impulse is to dream about life and to make wishful fantasies about life, instead of living life. It is as if a vampire is sucking one’s blood, the blood being our life activity. Such people sink into passivity, feel constantly tired and do not want to do anything, one wakes up depressed and nothing means anything.

The image of Woman is the solace for all bitterness of life. And, at the same time, she is the great illusionist, the seductress, who draws man into life with her Maya. Hope and despair counterbalance one another.

A still more subtle manifestation of a negative anima involves partaking in a destructive intellectual game, characteristic of pseudo-intellectual dialogues that inhibit a man from getting into direct touch with life and its real decisions. He reflects about life so much that he cannot live it.  

“Young men who are overpowered by their mothers [often] escape into the realm of the intellect, to escape the mother’s power and the animus pressure, by getting into the realm of books and philosophical discussion – which they think mother does not understand. He saves his mental masculinity but sacrifices his phallus: his earthly masculinity and creativity. This vitality of action, that masculinity which moulds the clay, which seizes and moulds reality, he leaves behind, for that is too difficult; he escapes into the realm of philosophy. There is no real question behind such philosophy. Such people have no genuine questions. For them it is a kind of play with words and concepts and is entirely lacking in any convincing quality.”

– M.L. von Franz, The Problem of the Puer Aeternus

Just as a negative experience with one’s mother can negatively affect one’s anima, so too can an overattachment to one’s mother. The man becomes effeminate and is preyed upon by women, he is thus unable to cope with the hardships of life. A mother complex creates a split anima.

On the one hand he worships the feminine image too much. A man lives regressively, fleeing from the cold cruel world and seeking his childhood under the nourishing and protecting circle of the mother. This is known as puer aeternus or eternal youth (also known as the Peter Pan Syndrome). It is the archetype of the child-god whose negative aspect includes the unconscious temptation to return to the mother’s womb. This is seen today in adults who are socially immature, the so-called “man-child” who has never “grown up.”

On the other hand he despises woman and sees her simply as an object to fulfil his erotic fantasies. The most frequent manifestation of the anima takes the form of erotic fantasy, which becomes compulsive only when a man does not sufficiently cultivate his feeling relationships, and has remained infantile.

These aspects of the anima can be projected so that they appear to the man to be the qualities of some particular woman. It is the presence of the anima that causes a man to fall suddenly in love when he sees a woman for the first time and knows that this is “she.” In this situation, the man feels as if he has known this woman intimately for all time; he falls for her so helplessly that it looks to outsiders like complete madness.

In the German myth of the Lorelei, beautiful water spirits or sirens sing to seduce and lure men to their death. The anima symbolises an unreal dream of love, happiness, and maternal warmth (her nest) – a dream or wishful fantasy that lures men away from reality.

Men also project the anima onto things as well as women. Such as the captain of a ship being symbolically “her” husband, which may be why he must (according to tradition) go down with the ship if “she” sinks.

However, the anima is not just about lust. The universal anima is symbolised by the goddesses who possess feminine energy: Cybele (the Goddess of Nature) and Aphrodite (the Goddess of Love).

The anima has just as many important positive aspects. It plays a vital role in putting a man’s mind in tune with the right inner values and thereby opening the way into more profound inner depths. This is the role of Beatrice in Dante’s Divine Comedy, who after descending into hell and the purgatory, guides him through heaven.

There are four stages in the development of the anima:

“The first stage is best symbolised by the figure of Eve, which represents purely instinctual and biological relations. The second can be seen in Faust’s Helen: She personifies a romantic and aesthetic level that is, however, still characterised by sexual elements. The third is represented, for instance, by the Virgin Mary – a figure who raises love (eros) to the heights of spiritual devotion. The fourth type is symbolised by Sapientia, wisdom transcending even the most holy and the most pure… In the psychic development of modern man this stage is rarely reached. The Mona Lisa comes nearest to such a wisdom anima.”

Man and His Symbols. Part III. The Anima: The Woman Within – M.L. von Franz

In practical terms, the positive role of the anima as guide to the inner world occurs when a man takes seriously the feelings, moods, expectations, and fantasies sent by his anima and when he fixes them in some form – such as writing, painting, sculpture or musical composition.

After a fantasy has been fixed in some specific form, it is essential to regard it as being absolutely real and not “only a fantasy”. If this is practised with devotion over a long period of time, the process of individuation takes place and unfolds in its true form, as one brings the unconscious contents into reality.

The unconscious as we know can never be “done with” once and for all. The purpose of Jung’s analytical psychology is to achieve wholeness of personality, bringing the unconscious contents into consciousness, through the lifelong process of individuation and alignment towards the Self.

“Only the painful (but essentially simple) decision to take one’s fantasies and feelings seriously can at this stage prevent a complete stagnation of the inner process of individuation, because only in this way can a man discover what this figure means as an inner reality. Thus the anima becomes what she originally was – the “woman within”, who conveys the vital messages of the Self.”

Man and His Symbols. Part III. The Anima: The Woman Within – M.L. von Franz

One such example can be seen with Scottish writer William Sharp, who wrote under Fiona Macleod, a pseudonym kept almost secret during his lifetime. He wrote on Celtic lore and nature. He wrote out of his heart, out of his soul, through the voice of the archetype of life. When a man is full of life he is “animated”. This he could never have brought into expression with his outer self. He knew that what he wrote could not have been done by himself alone.

In fact, he even wrote letters to Fiona, and she would answer. They were two separate persons. A rare degree of reality, corresponding to anima integration. The great poet William Butler Yeats praised Fiona’s writings, but did not like those of William Sharpe.

The Animus: The Man Within

Bluebeard – Gustave Doré

The animus “the man within” is the personification of all male psychological tendencies in woman, it too exhibits both good and bad aspects. However, it does not so often appear in the form of an erotic fantasy or mood, but rather takes the form of a hidden “sacred” conviction about one’s assumptions.

“One of the favourite themes that the animus repeats endlessly in the ruminations of this kind of woman goes like this: ‘The only thing in the world that I want is love – and he doesn’t love me’; or ‘In this situation there are only two possibilities – and both are equally bad.’ ”

Man and His Symbols. Part III. The Animus: The Man Within – M.L. von Franz

Just as the character of a man’s anima is shaped by his mother, so the animus is influenced by a woman’s father. The father endows his daughter’s animus with incontestably and unarguable “true” convictions – convictions that never include the personal reality of the woman herself as she actually is. The negative aspects of the animus lures women away from all human relationships and personifies a cocoon of dreamy thoughts, filled with desire and judgments about how things “ought to be”, which cuts a woman off from the reality of life.

In the folk tale of Bluebeard, we can see a representation of a negative animus, who secretly kills all his wives in a hidden chamber. When he marries another woman, he asks her not to open a certain secret door, where all the corpses are found. The woman, however, is overcome by curiosity and opens it.

In this form the animus personifies all the cold and destructive reflections that invade a woman which get her into a state where she even wishes death to others.

“By nursing secret destructive attitudes, a wife can drive her husband, and a mother her children, into illness, accident, or even death. Or she may decide to keep the children from marrying – a deeply hidden form of evil that rarely comes to the surface of the mother’s conscious mind. (A naïve old woman once said to me, while showing me a picture of her son, who was drowned when he was 27: ‘I prefer it this way; it’s better than giving him away to another woman.’)”

Man and His Symbols. Part III. The Animus: The Man Within – M.L. von Franz

An unconscious animus opinion may lead to a strange passivity and paralysis of all feelings, or a deep insecurity. In the depths of the woman’s being, the animus whispers: “You are hopeless. What’s the use of trying? There is no point in doing anything. Life will never change for the better.” Just as the anima, the animus also takes on a vampiric aspect.

“It is one of the activities of the animus life of a woman to steal, to suck life from other people. Such a woman becomes a vampire because she has no life in herself. But she needs life and so must take it where she finds it. The negative devil-animus kills every feminine aspect in life.”

M.L. von Franz, Animus and Anima in Fairy Tales

Unfortunately, whenever one is possessed by the anima or animus, it seems as if we ourselves are having such thoughts and feelings. The ego identifies with them to the point where it is unable to detach itself and see them for what they are. One really becomes possessed by the unconscious and only after the possession has fallen away does one realise with horror that one has said and done things diametrically opposed to one’s real thoughts and feelings.

Like the anima, the animus does not merely consist of negative qualities such as brutality, recklessness, empty talk, and silent, obstinate, evil ideas. He too has a very positive and valuable side; he too can build a bridge to the Self through his creative activity. If a woman realises who and what her animus is, her animus can turn into an invaluable inner companion who endows her with the masculine qualities of initiative, courage, objectivity, and spiritual wisdom.

“The animus, just like the anima, exhibits four stages of development. He first appears as a personification of mere physical power, for instance, as an athletic champion or “muscle man.” In the next stage he possesses initiative and the capacity for planned action. In the third phase, the animus becomes the “word”, often appearing as a professor or clergyman. Finally, in his fourth manifestation, the animus is the incarnation of meaning. On this highest level he becomes (like the anima) a mediator of the religious experience whereby life acquires new meaning.”

Man and His Symbols. Part III. The Animus: The Man Within – M.L. von Franz

Anima and Animus: Path towards Individuation

Angel of the Revelation – William Blake

The dance between anima and animus is indispensable for individuation. Just as Jung describes the anima as the archetype of life, he calls the animus the archetype of meaning. Jung makes reference to the idea of the syzygy, the divine couple united by a sacred marriage, as a motif as universal as the existence of men and women – such as the unions celebrated by Shiva and Shakti, or Zeus and Hera.

The anima gives birth to the images of the psyche, it brings them to life from the unconscious, while the animus gives them meaning in consciousness, in the outer world.

The confrontation with the unconscious can be seen as an active act of meditation, which has its Latin roots in meditatio, to reflect upon, which has a healing effect. The dictionary of alchemy written in the 17th century describes it as:

“An Internal Talk of one person with another who is invisible, as in the invocation of a Deity, communion with one’s self, or with one’s good angel.”

Martin Rulandus the Elder, A Lexicon of Alchemy

By understanding, writing, and drawing dreams, we incorporate the images of the unconscious. The most important dreams are the so called “archetypal dreams” which come from the collective unconscious.

There are two important practices for Jung in relation to dreams: amplification and active imagination.

Amplification is the use of mythological, historical and cultural parallels in order to amplify or “turn up the volume” on the dream material, Jung calls this the “psychological tissue” in which the image is embedded. He wanted to avoid the process to be “entirely subjective”. During his life, Jung interpreted around 80.000 dreams and discovered that they seem to follow a clear pattern, demonstrating the validity of his concept of the collective unconscious.

With active imagination, one visualises and contemplates on any one fragment of fantasy that seems significant and elaborates on it by adding further unconscious material in a natural manner. The goal is to bring the unconscious material into the already existing conscious material of the written dream. It is common for intense and frequent dreams to become weaker and less frequent the more they are made conscious. In other words, dreams contain fantasies which “want” to become conscious.

When confronting the figures of the unconscious, one shouldn’t ask questions about the ego or outer world, but of one’s inner reality. The dreamworld of symbols does not mean that it is mere “fantasy”. In fact, imagination seeks to “magnify”, that is, to expand consciousness. In other words, active imagination is actively expanding consciousness.

The goal of individuation is to become more and more who we really are, distinct from others and yet in relationship to others. This process is a series of confrontational dialogues between us and the world, the human beings to whom we are related and bound and the inner world of the archetypes. An essential part of this process is that a man becomes conscious of his anima, and a woman of her animus, in order to differentiate him or herself from it, and not be dominated by it.

The inner living figures expect complete neglect from us. And they aren’t happy about that, because they are real.

“We find that thoughts, feelings, and affects are alive in us which we would never have believed possible. Naturally, possibilities of this sort seem utterly fantastic to anyone who has not experienced them himself, for a normal person “knows what he thinks.” Such a childish attitude on the part of the “normal person” is simply the rule, so that no one without experience in this field can be expected to understand the real nature of anima and animus. With these reflections one gets into an entirely new world of psychological experience, provided of course that one succeeds in realising it in practice. Those who do succeed can hardly fail to be impressed by all that the ego does not know and never has known. This increase in self-knowledge is still very rare nowadays and is usually paid for in advance with a neurosis, if not with something worse.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol 9. Part II: Aion. The Syzygy: Anima and Animus

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Anima and Animus – Eternal Partners from the Unconscious

The anima and animus are two contrasexual archetypes crucial for individuation and to progress towards the Self in Carl Jung’s analytical psychology.

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Artwork used in the video

The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun – William Blake
Sir Galahad – Arthur Hughes
The Angels Hovering Over the Body of Christ in the Sepulchre – William Blake
The Broken Bridge and the Dream – Salvador Dalí
Ship in The Stormy Sea – Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky
Man and Woman at a Spinning Wheel – Pieter Pietersz
Oedipus and the Sphinx – Gustave Moreau
Paradiso, Canto III. Dante and Beatrice speak to Piccarda and Constance of Sicily – Philipp Veit
Pluto and Persephone enthroned, with Cereberus at their feet – Les echecs amoureux
Sandro Botticelli – The Map of Hell
The Love that we Give – James R. Eads
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Poster
Apollo Vanquishing the Serpent Python – Gustave Moreau
The Conscience – François Chifflart 
Oedipus and the Sphinx – François Émile Ehrmann
The Birth of Venus – Sandro Botticelli
Leilah – Gaston Bussière
Angel of the Revelation – William Blake
Chess Players – Honoré Daumier
Carl Jung´s Red Book
Caspar David Friedrich – Moonrise Over the Sea
Jupiter and Juno – Frans Christoph
Lucerne Dance of Death – Jakob von Wyl
Earth Goddess – Thomas Lunzer
Elohim Creating Adam – William Blake
Nighthawks – Edward Hopper
Meditation – T.S. Manhotra
Mona Lisa – Leonardo da Vinci
Mother and Son – Alice Schille
Father and Daughter – Charles Moreau
The Art of Painting – Johannes Vermeer
The Dance of Maya – Eva Campbell
The Divine Couple – Manju Chaudhuri
The Donne Triptych – Hans Memling
The Homecoming – Arnold Böcklin
The Island of Life – Arnold Böcklin
The Sorceress – Jan van de Velde II
The Strong Man – Honoré Daumier
The Sirens and Ulysses – William Etty
Theseus and the Minotaur in the Labyrinth – Edward Burne-Jones
The Celtic Princess – Gaston Bussiere
The Reunion of Cupid and Psyche – John Jean Pierre Saint-Ours
Untitled (Four Eyed Anima) – Peter Birkhäuser
Vampire – Edvard Munch
The Grand Hermetic Androgyne – Alchemical Manuscrips
Way to Eternity – Vinko Hlebš
Carl Jung´s Red Book
The Ancient Of Days – William Blake
Bluebeard – Gustave Dore
Intermission at the Comédie Française – Honoré Daumier
Albion Rose – William Blake

The Nightmare of Total Equality – A Warning to The World

“The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.”

Kurt Vonnegut, Harrison Bergeron

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. wrote a short dystopic story entitled Harrison Bergeron, the main theme being the nightmare of total equality. People are not allowed to be smarter, better-looking or stronger than anyone else. Equality laws are enforced and citizens who display special attributes must be handicapped. Those who are good looking are forced to wear disfiguring masks, those who are intelligent must wear ear radios that emit loud noises disrupting their thinking, and those who are strong are forced to wear heavy weights. People begin to dumb themselves down or hide their special attributes for fear of punishment.  Equality is finally achieved, but at the cost of freedom and individuality. One’s utopia is another’s dystopia.

Chesterton writes:

“When all are sexless there will be equality. There will be no women and no men. There will be but a fraternity, free and equal. The only consoling thought is that it will endure but for one generation.”

Chesterton, G.K.’s Weekly: The Equality of Sexlessness

Disorientation and nihilism

This seems increasingly less farfetched in today’s world. But what could explain the increasing promotion of equality to the point of it being absurd? If one scratches beneath the surface, one factor may be what Viktor Frankl calls the “unheard cry for meaning” that plagues modern society. The modern age is characterised by a sense of disorientation of not knowing what to do with one’s life.

Nietzsche foresaw the rise of this and wrote extensively about nihilism, which he considered as the lack of higher values brought about by the death of God, the answer is lacking to our “why?”. He writes:

“What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? … God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement? What sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”

Nietzsche, The Gay Science, §125

Nietzsche’s proverbial and tragic proclamation of the death of God is prophetic in the sense that modernity has replaced God with public opinion and the entertainment culture. Scientific rationality has advanced the human species, but at the cost of showing our smallness in the cosmos, that we are but the product of evolution, of an accidental birth in the flux of becoming and perishing, and that we should remain sceptical about the idea of an afterlife and God.

We all go about our daily routine until something makes us stop and contemplate. Albert Camus puts it perfectly:

“Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, according to the same rhythm – this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the ‘why‘ arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.”

Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

Living a Meaningful Life

Bishop Robert Barron tells us that to have a meaningful life is to be in a purposive relationship to a value: the Good, the True and the Beautiful. Religious value, on the other hand, is a life lived in purposive relationship to the summum bonum (the supreme value or highest good), the source of goodness, truth and beauty – which is God. A value nests in a higher value, and so on indefinitely. But there must be a summum bonum that is motivating us. That is religious meaning.

The Problem of Relativism

Contrary to former times, modern man is not told by traditions and universal values what he should do, he thus risks falling into relativism with the absence of objective truth, where there is no absolute right or wrong, but solely the truths by what the individual or culture happens to believe, we fall into the ego-drama that we are the centre of everything, causing a clash of independent and subjective wills against one another, the most powerful will establishing itself as authoritarian.

This creates the perfect storm for totalitarianism (doing what others tell you to do) and conformism (doing what others do).

Totalitarianism and Conformism

One of the best examples of how human nature and social systems work to build a totalitarian regime can be seen in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Orwell depicts a story where animals are treated harshly by humans. The animals gather together to rebel against them, and eventually they overthrow their masters. The animals sing in victory and look forward to a society where all animals are equal, happy, free and have enough to eat.

Following the rebellion, the pigs who are well-read and educated slowly take the role of leaders of the animal farm. The pigs who are in power preach equality for all and speak of a great utopian society. As time progresses, however, the pigs become more and more corrupt and abuse their power for personal gain, controlling the other animals to remain in power, establishing a dictatorship.

The original message “all animals are equal” turn into “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” In other words, the promotion of total equality paradoxically leads to inequality. This book is an allegory on human nature whose main message rings true even today.

However, any appeal to the objectivity of truth and value is a threat to tyrants, whenever you appeal to an authority outside the will of the most powerful, you are limiting that totalitarian instinct. Chesterton writes:

“It is only by believing in God that we can ever criticise the Government. Once abolish the God, and the Government becomes the God.”

G. K. Chesterton, in Christendom in Dublin

Conformism is another result of disorientation which may promote totalitarianism. People simply back an idea to look good in the eyes of others and do not truly believe in the cause they publicly support, and those who do not preach what they do are punished and frowned upon. Stephen Fry states:

“It’s a strange paradox, that the liberals are illiberal in their demand for liberality. They are exclusive in their demand for inclusivity. They are homogenous in their demand for heterogeneity. They are somehow un-diverse in their call for diversity — you can be diverse, but not diverse in your opinions and in your language and in your behaviour. And that’s a terrible pity.”

Stephen Fry, Munk Debates: Political Correctness: A Force for Good?

Preachers of Equality

Nietzsche calls these the “preachers of equality”, who exercise revenge and insult all whose equals they are not. However, those who call themselves “the good and the just” and wish to punish and impose their views on others are not to be trusted.

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche writes about the preachers of equality in his famous parable “On the Tarantulas”, who wish to spread the poison of revenge:

“Look here, this is the hole of the tarantula! Do you want to see the tarantula itself? Its web hangs here; touch it, make it tremble. Here it comes, willingly – welcome, tarantula! On your back your triangle and mark sits in black; and I know too what sits in your soul. Revenge sits in your soul: wherever you bite, there black scabs grow; your poison makes the soul whirl with revenge! So I speak to you in parables, you who cause the souls to whirl, you preachers of equality! Tarantulas you are to me and hidden avengers! But I want to expose your hiding places to the light; therefore I laugh into your face my laughter of the heights. Therefore I tear at your web, so that your rage might lure you from your lie-hole lair, and your revenge might spring forth from behind your word “justice.” For that mankind be redeemed from revenge: that to me is the bridge to the highest hope and a rainbow after long thunderstorms.”

Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part II “On the Tarantulas”

To the preachers, equality is life and justice. To Zarathustra, equality is vengeance and death, and its preachers “the tarantulas” are to be torn from their webs. They preach revenge against all those who are not their equals, wishing to impose a new virtue, a “will to equality”, everything that has power will thus be despised. However, this is opposed to our instincts. Just as a tree will naturally seek to grow its roots and gain resources, so will a person seek to develop his health, wealth, strength and status – which are all expressions of his will to power.

“You preachers of equality, the tyrant’s madness of impotence cries thus out of you for “equality”: your secret tyrant’s cravings mask themselves thus in your words of virtue!”

Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part II “On the Tarantulas”

It is the madness of impotence and vanity that makes them cry out for equality, erupting like a flame from the madness of revenge.

“Mistrust in all whom the drive to punish is strong! … Mistrust all who speak much of their justice!”

Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part II “On the Tarantulas”

Zarathustra, however, does not want to succumb to their revenge.

“Alas! Then the tarantula bit me, my old enemy! … “Punishment and justice must be” – thus it thinks. “Not for nothing shall he sing his songs in honour of hostility here!” Yes, it has avenged itself! And alas! Now it will also make my soul whirl with revenge! But so that I do not whirl, my friends, bind me fast to this pillar here! I would rather be a stylite than a whirlwind of revenge!”

Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part II “On the Tarantulas”

Zarathustra does not want to be mixed and confused with others. Some preach the doctrine of life but are at the same time creatures of equality and tarantulas. Zarathustra preaches the doctrine of life, but not of equality.

“For justice speaks to me: “humans are not equal”. And they shouldn’t become so either! What would my love for the overman be if I spoke otherwise?”

Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part II “On the Tarantulas”

Pathos of Distance: The Overman and The Last Man

Nietzsche’s overman is the ultimate form of man and the meaning of the earth. He is in constant becoming and self-overcoming, and unlike the preachers of equality, who seek power over others, the overman seeks power over himself. It is clear, however, that not everyone can become extraordinary, that would seem a utopia for Nietzsche, he calls the chasm between the ordinary and the extraordinary a “pathos of distance”. But that should not be a reason for the ordinary people to eliminate all traces of the extraordinary, the strong, the aristocratic and noble, out of sheer spite. This is Nietzsche’s main critique of the preachers of equality.

The dystopian scenario for Nietzsche is the mediocrity and conformity of the Last Man, who not only does not want to be different, but is perfectly happy to be virtually the same as everyone else. This is “levelling” par excellence, that is, putting everyone at the same level and missing all the subtle complexities of human identity.

Orwell’s Warning: 1984

And it is these who are most prone to fall prey to totalitarianism, which Orwell masterfully portrayed in his book 1984, with the perfect totalitarian society. Psychological manipulation, mass surveillance, control of mind and body, control of information and history, control of language and eradication of individuality.

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”

George Orwell, 1984

Freedom and individuality is key, and we mustn’t get carried away by the siren songs.

“If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

George Orwell, The Freedom of the Press, Literary Supplement

The Nightmare of Total Equality – A Warning to The World

In Harrison Bergeron, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. describes the nightmare of total equality, a society in which equality is finally achieved, but at the cost of freedom and individuality. One’s utopia is another’s dystopia.

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Artwork used in the video

Untitled – Zdzisław Beksiński
Nietzsche – John Ambrose
Intermission at the Comédie Française – Honoré Daumier
Victorian Pig – Michael Thomas
An illustration for Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron – Chad Lewis [Behance]
Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog – Caspar David Friedrich
Evening on Karl Johan Street – Edvard Munch
Golgotha – Edvard Munch
Faces in the Crowd – Larry Martin
The Silhouette of The Artist – Léon Spilliaert
The Gods – Анастасия Кузнецова
Sunset Mont Blanc – Wenzel Hablik
The Protest – James Hayes
John Lewis Krimmel – The Village Politicians
Cry of the Masses – Josef Váchal
Nihilism and Technology – Nolen Gertz
Zodiakas Šaulys – M.K. Ciurlionis
Saint Augustine – Philippe de Champaigne
Meeting of Thirty Five Heads of Expression – Honoré Daumier
Wellness Farm – Luca Palazzi
Big Brother – Arthur Robins
1984 – Srdjan Markovic

The Philosophy of Existential Despair

Many people criticise philosophy as being disconnected from our daily existence, however, this critique is not new, it is in fact as old as philosophy itself.

In the ancient Greek fable, “The Astrologer who Fell into a Well”, Thales of Miletus, considered as the first philosopher, is said to have been so lost in thought that while gazing at the stars, he fell into a well. How should one have knowledge of the heavenly things above, if one knows not what is beneath one’s feet?

The Astrologer that fell into a well – Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard

In recent history, however, there have been several philosophical movements (such as transcendentalism, pragmatism and existentialism) that turn away from abstract ideas to examine the world around us, towards an interest in our daily life and occupations, with hopes to gain insights into the complexities of the human condition.

Philosophy of Despair

We will be exploring the works of a little known but unique thinker, the Russian–Jewish existentialist philosopher Lev Shestov, known for his “philosophy of despair” or “philosophy of tragedy”. Shestov’s lack of recognition is, however, hardly surprising, whatever insights he had acquired could not be transmitted by intellectual processes to others, but only by going through the same kind of intensive and personal struggle in one’s life.

Lev Shestov

Shortly after his death, his friend Nikolai Berdyaev, himself a religious existentialist, wrote that:

“Lev Shestov was a philosopher who philosophised with his whole being, for whom philosophy was not an academic specialty but a matter of life and death.”

Nikolai Berdyaev, The Fundamental Idea of the Philosophy of Lev Shestov

For Shestov, the sources of philosophy were the human tragedy, the horrors and sufferings of human life and the sense of hopelessness. An inner development almost always requires going through suffering. One must, therefore, include one’s existential experience in one’s philosophy, and this cannot be done by reason alone. Shestov agrees with Nietzsche that every great philosophy is a confession and unconscious   autobiography of the deepest kind.

Shestov underwent what he calls a “pilgrimage through the souls” of the great minds. He encountered the writings of the great Danish thinker Kierkegaard, in whom he found a kindred spirit. He also held Nietzsche as his hero, as well as Dostoevsky. Shestov was the first person to link these existentialists together, seeing the greatness of them in their deep probing into the question of the meaning of life and the problems of human suffering, evil and death, united by the essential tragedy of human life. Nevertheless, Shestov is a thinker in his own right.

In his first original work, All Things are Possible (or as in the original title, The Apotheosis of Groundlessness), Shestov explores something that we all experience at one moment in our lives, it is what he calls “groundlessness”, the uncertainty of our experience of the world. It speaks to those who lived through a tragedy, and felt at a certain point in their life that everything was falling apart, that the ground gave way under their feet.

Shestov believes that if rational thought were to be used in every sphere of life, reason would corrode man’s ability to connect to a more spiritual realm. His keen analysis of the malaise of modern man is more important than ever in our de-personalised society struggling for meaning and purpose in life.

Conflict between Faith and Reason

Shestov undertook a vast critique of the history of Western philosophy beginning with the ancient Greeks, which he saw as a battle between reason and faith. Like Nietzsche, Shestov’s philosophy offers no systematic unity, for no theory can solve the mysteries of life. The culmination of his lifetime intellectual inquiry is his final work, Athens and Jerusalem: An Attempt at a Religious Philosophy, exploring the philosophy of religion from an existential perspective.

He observed that the tragedy of human existence does not conform to materialistic systems of thinking. Athens stands for reason, while Jerusalem stands for faith, and the two are mutually exclusive. He abhorred the rationalisation of religion of Western philosophy, arguing that God is beyond rational comprehension and morality. He criticises both Kant who believed that religion is within the limits of reason alone, and Hegel, with his famous proclamation that “what is rational is real and what is real is rational”, in both, abstractions predominate and ignore the fundamental questions of life.

Shestov’s philosophy is a form of anti-rationalism, but he is not opposed to scientific knowledge or reason in everyday life. This was not his problem. He was opposed to the pretensions of scientism and rationalism, the evil twins in modern society, who consider themselves as the omniscient God who limits man’s possibilities and liberation from the tragic horrors of human fate, life simply becomes a mathematical formula to be solved, as Dostoevsky writes:

“Human nature is not taken into account, it is excluded, it is not supposed to exist! They believe that a social system that has come out of some mathematical brain is going to organise all humanity at once and make it just and sinless in an instant, quicker than any living process!”

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

Faith on the other hand, is concerned with finding the truth in God, Shestov shares Kierkegaard’s view that faith is the only way to free oneself from the despair born out of one’s groundlessness. Thus, spiritual development is bound to progress through a state of sickness.

For Shestov, philosophy is not pure thinking, but some kind of inner doing, inner regeneration, or second birth. Tragedies take place in the depth of the human soul, where no eye can reach out to see. Consequently, He saw the beginning of philosophy starting not with knowledge, not with wonder, but with despair.

Despair is what he considers a “penultimate knowledge”, that is, a preliminary step that we must acknowledge, in order to progress towards something higher.

Penultimate Knowledge: Despair

“Man is a creature without an internal compass. His needs and dreams force him to wander… Perhaps that is why there is so much sorrow on earth that man must wake up? Did the Ghost that appeared to Hamlet not come to wake him up? When we happen to have a nightmare while asleep, we wish to wake up in order to understand what caused it. When in our waking life we encounter a deep unhappiness, rather than try to understand the meaning and value of it, we crave to fall asleep.”

The Lev Shestov Archive, Manuscripts

Shestov draws to Dostoevsky’s close encounter with death when he was put up for the firing squad and at the very last minute was released, a twisted form of psychological torture. Dostoevsky was then sent to a prison labour camp in Siberia, almost a death sentence in itself, but managed to survive that too. The encounter with the Angel of Death gave him “new eyes” for life and produced a radical shift in his writings, publishing The House of the Dead, in which he described his own experience as well as the lives of the variety of prisoners he’d encountered in Siberia, shortly after, he wrote what Shestov considers as his greatest work, Notes from Underground, praising The Underground Man for his descent into the realm of groundlessness.

In The Idiot, Dostoevsky shows the feeling and thoughts of a person before execution, mirroring his own experience. He wrote:

“It seemed my friend that he had only five more minutes to live, he told me that those five minutes were like an eternity, he calculated the exact time he needed to take leave of his comrades, and decided that he could do that in two minutes, then he spend another two minutes in thinking of himself for the last time, and finally one minute for a last look around. There was a church not far off, its gilt roof shining in the bright sunshine, he remembered staring with awful intensity at that roof and the sunbeams flashing from it, he couldn’t tear his eyes of those rays of lights, those rays seemed to him to be his new nature and he felt that he’d somehow merged with them, the uncertainty and the feeling of disgust with that new thing which was bound to come in a minute was dreadful, but he said that the thing that was most horrible to him was the constant thought, what if I had not to die? What if I could return? Oh, what an eternity, and all that could be mine, I should turn every minute into an age, I should lose nothing, I should count every minute separately and waste none. He said that this reflection finally filled him with such bitterness that he prayed to be shot as quickly as possible.”

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

Shestov experienced his own awakening, a nervous breakdown which he described as a “rupture of time”. He delved into the monsters lurking in his psyche, venturing to the brink of the abyss, echoing Nietzsche’s famous words:

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, §146

Shestov advances his idea of a near death experience as awakening from “life as sleep”, which combines horror and awe at the same time. We are all sleep-walkers in life until some inexplicable or life-threatening experience, which can activate our thinking about death, awakens us from our deep slumber. He writes:

“The ancients, to awake from life, turned to death. The moderns flee from death in order not to awake, and take pains not even to think of it. Which are the more ‘practical’? Those who compare earthly life to sleep and wait for the miracle of the awakening, or those who see in death a sleep without dream-faces, the perfect sleep, and while away their time with ‘reasonable’ and ‘natural’ explanations? That is the basic question of philosophy, and he who evades it evades philosophy itself.”

Lev Shestov, In Job’s Balances

The motif of awakening encapsulates one of the main ideas of his philosophy: the fight for the individual’s right to freedom and to creative transformation, and, in the face of despair and death, reaffirm human life.

Ultimate Knowledge: Freedom

The penultimate knowledge is knowledge that without God, life is meaningless, however, it is a necessary step, Shestov writes:

“The fool said in his heart: ‘There is no God.’ Sometimes this is a sign of the end and of death. Sometimes of the beginning and of life. As soon as man feels that God is not, he suddenly comprehends the frightful horror and the wild folly of human temporal existence, and when he has comprehended this he awakes, perhaps not to the ultimate knowledge but to the penultimate.”

Lev Shestov, In Job’s Balances

In his fearless and persistent struggle for the unattainable possibility to uncover the meaning in the paradox of human existence, Shestov attempted to expand his thoughts into another dimension. Over against the domain of necessity, the domain of reason, stands God, who symbolises “ultimate knowledge”, unlimited possibilities and freedom without boundaries. For with God all things are possible. Shestov’s philosophy is ultimately life-affirming.

In his last years, Shestov kept returning to what he called “the nightmare of godlessness and unbelief which has taken hold of humanity.” He was convinced that only through the utmost spiritual effort could men free themselves from this nightmare. He aimed to establish a new free way of thinking, which manifests itself as a struggle against the delusion that we have a rational grasp of the necessary truths on matters that are of the greatest importance to us.

Reason tells us nothing in which we can explore the problems of the human condition, it is as if we are thrown into a dark cave without light. Faith, on the other hand, gives us light in order to find our way out of the darkness.

The Philosophy of Despair

The Russian existentialist philosopher Lev Shestov is known for his “philosophy of despair” or “philosophy of tragedy”. For Shestov, the sources of philosophy were the human tragedy, the horrors and sufferings of human life and the sense of hopelessness.

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Artwork used in the video

Stańczyk – Jan Matejko
The Scream – Edvard Munch
Despair – Edvard Munch
Untitled – Daniela Riegler
Alter Ego – Catali
The Light in the Soul – Chirila Corina
The Garden of Death – Hugo Simberg
Free Man No.2 – Cynthia Christine
Knight at the Crossroads – Victor Vasnetsov
Leap of Faith – Jon Marro
Looking Into Abyss – Mikhail Savchenko
Love’s Passing, Angel of Death – Evelyn de Morgan
Blind man in Belsen – Alan Moore
Two Men at Sea – Caspar David Friedrich
The Astrologer that fell into a well – Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard
Mock Execution Petrashevsky Circle Members – B. Pokrovsky
In the Valley of Death – Miro Gabriel
No One Can Control Time – Poojitha Jagini
Old Sofia Russian Church – Mila Vasileva
Olga Zavgorodnya – Light at the End of the Tunnel
The Attributes of Science – Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin
Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette – Vincent van Gogh
The Third of May – Francisco Goya
The Dead Abel – Thomas Cole
Over the Abyss of Spiritual Darkness – Elizabeth Wang
Saint Paul delivering the Areopagus Sermon in Athens – Raphael

The Persona – The Mask That Conceals Your True Self

“Whoever looks into the mirror of the water will see first of all his own face. Whoever goes to himself risks a confrontation with himself. The mirror does not flatter, it faithfully shows whatever looks into it; namely, the face we never show to the world because we cover it with the persona, the mask of the actor. But the mirror lies behind the mask and shows the true face.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol 9. Part I: Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious

The word “persona” originally refers to a theatrical mask worn by actors to depict the roles played by them. In Carl Jung’s model of the psyche, the persona lies between our ego and society.

The ego refers to our centre of consciousness which is responsible for our continuing sense of identity throughout our life and the persona is the social mask that we put on. We all embody different masks in different settings, as it is our way to adapt to the demands of society, playing an important part in shaping our social role and in how we deal with other people. But, it also has its dangers.

“The persona is a complicated system of relations between individual consciousness and society, fittingly enough a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and, on the other, to conceal the true nature of the individual.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology

Stages of the Persona

Multiple Personalities – Paulo Zerbato

Jung outlines two stages of the persona. The first stage is that of identification. The performance of the persona is quite alright as long as one knows that one is not identical with the way one appears, it only becomes dangerous if one is unconscious of it or overidentifies with it. In this case, one must proceed to the second stage, that of disintegration, where one’s persona is intentionally or unintentionally shattered, creating a state of chaos and disorientation.

In very rare cases, one can have two or more personalities who have their own opinions, and may contradict each other, this is known as dissociative identity disorder, a mental health condition which is usually a result of trauma.

In the disintegration process, one can choose three different approaches: negative restoration (where one pretends that he is as he was before the crucial experience, in order to adapt to the status quo), absence (where one lives without a persona and cannot possibly interact with the world) and restoration (where one develops a persona that one is conscious of and which does not hide one’s true self).

If one is either unconscious or overidentifies with his persona, the optimal choice is restoration. Negative restoration hides one’s true self and absence of a persona may not only be impossible, but also undesirable, as one must adapt himself with the external world, as much as his inner world.

The topic we will be discussing are the dangers of concealing our true self. We may use the persona to help us conceal our vulnerabilities and other parts that we do not want to reveal about ourselves, or we may excessively identify with the persona.

Being Unconscious of The Persona

Hypnosis – Sascha Schneider

When we do not want to reveal the truth about ourselves, we act as someone who we are not.

“There is always some element of pretence about the persona, for it is a kind of shop window in which we like to display our best wares.”

Anthony Stevens, Jung: A Very Short Introduction

The persona begins to form early in childhood out of a need to conform to the wishes and expectations of parents, peers and teachers. Children quickly learn that certain attitudes and behaviours are acceptable and may be rewarded with approval while others are unacceptable and may result in punishment.

The tendency is to build acceptable traits into the persona and to keep unacceptable traits hidden or repressed. Perhaps being assertive is seen as rude and socially unacceptable and one becomes passive, affecting one’s relationships and career, or one can be too agreeable because one doesn’t like conflicts, but is taken advantage of. These undesirable aspects eventually take their toll on us as we mature, forming our shadow, the dark side of our personality, whom we may be possessed by at any moment, in sudden emotional outbursts.

For Jung, the negotiation with one’s shadow is a lifelong process as part of our self-education, which  allows us to rescue the good qualities that lie dormant in our psyche and be honest about who we are, as well as knowing how much good we can do, and what crimes we are capable of. The shadow, which is usually perceived as negative, also has its positive side. It becomes hostile only when it is ignored or misunderstood.

Excessive Identification with The Persona

Army – Tommy Ingberg

The other danger of the persona is an excessive identification with it. This indicates that our individuality is nothing but pure fiction. In rare cases, if the ego is completely identical with the persona, individuality is wholly repressed, representing maximum adaptation to society and minimum adaptation to one’s individuality, inhibiting psychological development. Jung writes:

“Every calling or profession has its own characteristic persona… A certain kind of behaviour is forced on them by the world, and professional people endeavour to come up to these expectations. Only, the danger is that they become identical with their personas – the professor with his text-book, the tenor with his voice. Then the damage is done; henceforth he lives exclusively against the background of his own biography… One could say, with a little exaggeration, that the persona is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others think one is.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol 9. Part I: Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious

The Persona and The Self (Individuation)

The Love that we Give – James R. Eads

The persona prevents us from what Jung considered the most important task in our lives, the process of individuation, bringing one closer to the Self, through having one’s unconscious contents brought into consciousness. The contents of the unconscious can be explored through dreams, reflection and active imagination. It is not possible to achieve individuation by conscious intention alone.

The Self is the totality of one’s personality which transcends the ego. The goal of the Self is wholeness, and individuation is its raison d’être. The persona hinders this process.

“One cannot individuate as long as one is playing a role to oneself; the convictions one has about oneself are the most subtle form of persona and the most subtle obstacle against any true individuation. One can admit practically anything, yet somewhere one retains the idea that one is nevertheless so-and-so, and this is always a sort of final argument which counts apparently as a plus; yet it functions as an influence against true individuation.”

Carl Jung, Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930-1934

The Persona and Bad Faith

Nighthawks – Edward Hopper

By way of example, we can contrast French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre’s concept of bad faith to that of the persona. He writes:

“Let us consider this waiter in the café. His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He bends forward a little too eagerly; his voice, his eyes express an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the customer. Finally there he returns, trying to imitate in his walk the inflexible stiffness of some kind of automaton while carrying his tray with the recklessness of a tightrope walker by putting it in a perpetually unstable, perpetually broken equilibrium which he perpetually re-establishes by a light movement of the arm and hand. All his behaviour seems to us a game… He is playing, he is amusing himself. But what is he playing? We need not watch long before we can explain it: he is playing at being a waiter in a café. There is nothing there to surprise us.”

Jean Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness

Sartre tells us that the waiter is deceiving himself about his human reality. The persona or social role has become equivalent to his human existence, his individuality becomes objectified being equivalent to his job. If one day he happens to lose interest in his job or is fired from it, his persona shatters (the stage of disintegration) and he stares into the abyss, meeting face to face with the emptiness of his true self which he has not yet developed, and this may lead to an existential crisis.

Jung believes, on the other hand, that one falls into the power of primordial images, and without an anchor in reality, one can lose one’s wits. He writes:

“The aim of individuation is nothing less than to divest the self of the false wrappings of the persona on the one hand, and of the suggestive power of primordial images on the other.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology

The Persona and The Collective Unconscious

Circle of Power – Claire Elek

Primordial images or archetypes are collectively-inherited forms. To understand this better, one must be familiar with Jung’s model of the psyche. The Self is divided into consciousness and the unconscious, and further, the unconscious is divided into the personal unconscious (contents that are individually acquired but have been forgotten or repressed) and the collective unconscious (contents that are inherited, that is, archetypes).

Apart from the persona that we have been discussing, the mediator between ego and society, which pertains to consciousness, the persona also forms part of the collective unconscious and is sometimes referred to as a social archetype or conformity archetype.

“It is only because the persona represents a more or less arbitrary and fortuitous segment of the collective psyche that we can make the mistake of regarding it in toto as something individual. It is, as its name implies, only a mask of the collective psyche, a mask that feigns individuality, making others and oneself believe that one is individual, whereas one is simply acting a role through which the collective psyche speaks.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology

When we analyse the persona we strip off the mask, and discover that what seemed to be individual is at bottom collective; in other words, that the persona is only a mask for the collective unconscious.

We all have a name, seek to earn a title, exercise a function and be this or that. This is all real, yet in relation to the essential individuality of the person concerned it is only a secondary reality. Fundamentally the persona is nothing but a compromise between individual and society as what a man should appear to be, which is not to be devalued. However, the development of individuality can never take place through personal relationships alone, since it requires a psychic relationship to the collective unconscious.

The real individuality keeps on coming to the fore and interferes with the conscious mind, as the unconscious guides us towards individuation. And with the exploration of the unconscious, we can assimilate the archetypes that influence our conscious life as autonomous personalities within the collective unconscious. These are brought to life by the particular expressions of individuals and their cultures around the world. People don’t have ideas; ideas have people.

In essence, the human psyche is both individual and collective, therefore, a balance and co-operation between two apparently contradictory sides is precisely what gives us psychic equilibrium.

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The Persona – The Mask That Conceals Your True Self

The persona is one of Carl Jung’s most well-known concepts, representing the social mask that we put on. We all embody different masks in different settings, as it is our way to adapt to the demands of society, playing an important part in shaping our social role and in how we deal with other people. But, it also has its dangers.

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Artwork used in the video

Ego – Aleksandr Kolesnichenko
Quietness – Jay Massey
The Love that we Give – James R. Eads
Theater Masks – Scott Murphy
The Birth of Sora – Sora Neva
Waiter 4 – Els Driesen
William Blake – The Ancient Of Days
Fox Maiden – Susan Seddon Boulet
Vinko Hlebš – Way to Eternity
Carl Jung’s Red Book
Sandro_Botticelli – The Map of Hell
Philosopher in Meditation – Rembrandt
Paradox – Jay Massey
Suspended II – Filip D. Jensen
Untitled – Zdzisław Beksiński
Circle of Power – Claire Elek
Nebuchadnezzar – William Blake
Abyss – Zhaoxin Mo
Baby at Play – Thomas Eakins
Archetypes – Christ Miles
Army – Tommy Ingberg
Evening on Karl Johan Street – Edvard Munch
Collective Unconscious – Michelle Spiziri
Day Room – Jay Massey
Disintegration – Patrick Lee
Hypnosis – Sascha Schneider
Nighthawks – Edward Hopper
Carl Jung’s Red Book
Miniature from an alchemical manuscript
Multiple Personalities – Paulo Zerbato
Narcissus – John William Waterhouse
Light at the End of the Tunnel – Olga Zavgorodnya

Mass Society – A Warning to The World

We can trace back statements about “the masses” in the works of classical Greek philosophers like Plato, who states that an ignorant mob ought not to make decisions, as it would lead to chaos and anarchy, and that the best approach is to pursue justice so that everyone gets what they need and deserve. Plato believed that only the philosopher-king could have a capacity to rule, one who has a love of wisdom, willingness to live a simple life and discover the essence which is present in all things and all human beings.

However, it isn’t until the 19th century when the status of “the masses” became a philosophical and moral issue in a manner hitherto unseen. It came to be defined as the permanent possibility in all individuals of losing concern for their personal status and worth, and assigning themselves to something outside themselves in an abstract “other”.

We’ll be exploring the various existential critiques and interpretations of this phenomenon peculiar to modern society from four major 19th century thinkers who have integrated the event of the masses into the very structure of their philosophies: Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger and José Ortega y Gasset.

Kierkegaard: The Crowd is Untruth

Danish theologian, philosopher and father of existentialism Søren Kierkegaard writes:

“I wish that on my grave might be put “the individual.”

Journals of Kierkegaard, May 14, 1847

His wish, however, was not granted. Kierkegaard vehemently opposed the philosophical and social trend of granting to the state a legitimacy and authority over the individual. He was the first thinker to perceive the immense significance of the genesis of the masses in 19th century Europe. He writes:

“There is a view of life which holds that where the crowd is, the truth is also, that it is a need in truth itself, that it must have the crowd on its side. There is another view of life; which holds that wherever the crowd is, there is untruth, so that, for a moment to carry the matter out to its farthest conclusion, even if every individual possessed the truth in private, yet if they came together into a crowd (so that “the crowd” received any decisive, voting, noisy, audible importance), untruth would at once be let in.”

Kierkegaard, The Crowd is Untruth

Kierkegaard tells us that one doesn’t really feel responsible in a crowd, because one doesn’t act alone but shares responsibility with everyone, so there’s no one who can be blamed, they are just members of the unknown, faceless crowd. The individual does not count in the mass, only the number of people; hence quantity is worth more in mass societies than quality.

The mass is an abstraction in which one flees in cowardice from being a single individual. People are more likely to engage in nefarious behaviour in a herd mentality. One then becomes unrepentant, that is, one doesn’t think he is doing anything wrong when one is in fact doing something wrong.

It takes courage to be an individual, to be accountable and responsible for one’s own actions, without blaming others, however it is:

“too venturesome a thing to be oneself, far easier and safer to be like the others, to become an imitation, a number, a cipher in the crowd.”

Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death

In a crowd, one conceals one’s cowardice and feels courageous, promoting even more herd behaviour. When the crowd is treated as the court of the last resort, truth becomes untruth.

Kierkegaard’s notion of truth has to do primarily with the religious view of life. One must be held accountable by something higher, something transcendent. Everyone can extricate himself from the crowd to become a single individual.

He tells his readers to seek God for themselves rather than following the crowd. A person cannot live out the Christian faith simply by going to church every week, observing Christian holidays or praising whatever is trendy among the church community. Instead, one must encounter God personally, for “only one receives the prize”, and for that one should be cautious with “the others”. He writes:

“the eternal, the decisive, can only be worked for where there is one; and to become this by oneself, which all can do, is to will to allow God to help you – “the crowd” is untruth.”

Kierkegaard, The Crowd is Untruth

The very notion of religion entering the social scene is how it dies. The eternal truth pertains solely to the single individual, through God’s help. Only then can one love one’s neighbour as one loves himself, the absolute true expression of human equality.

Kierkegaard: Levelling and The Public

In The Present Age, Kierkegaard goes more in-depth on what he saw as the victory of abstraction over the individual. He posits an early form of nihilism, which he referred to as levelling, an anonymous social process in which the uniqueness of the individual becomes non-existent by assigning equal values to all aspects of human endeavours, thus missing all the subtle complexities of human identity. In other words, it tries to put everything at the same level. Overcoming this represents a step in the right direction towards becoming a true self, recovering the sense that our lives are meaningful.

Levelling is supported by “the public”, which he calls a “monstruous nothing”, consisting of unreal individuals who are never united in an actual situation and yet are held together as a whole. He writes:

“In order that everything should be reduced to the same level, it is first of all necessary to procure a phantom, its spirit, a monstrous abstraction, an all-embracing something which is nothing, a mirage – and that phantom is the public. It is only in an age which is without passion, yet reflective, that such a phantom can develop itself with the help of the Press which itself becomes an abstraction.”

Kierkegaard, The Present Age

The Press satisfies the desire of seeking trivial diversion, without making one responsible for anything.

Nietzsche: The Last Man and The Übermensch

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche observed that the essential fact of modernity was the problem of nihilism brought about by what he proclaims as the death of God, a fact from which the existence of the masses cannot be separated. The great enemy is the “Last Man”, characterised by nihilism insofar as he has detached himself from the higher values of life, expressing indifference to human excellence, creativity and beauty. The Last Man escapes into the world of entertainment to distract himself from life’s hardships which are crucial for his path towards self-realisation.

Nietzsche proposes a secular form of self-transcendence, through the figure of the Übermensch, who is declared as “the meaning of the earth”. The Übermensch strives for self-overcoming, manifesting itself in the encounter with obstacles, and embraces whatever life throws at him. He sacrifices momentary comfort in order to achieve greatness, and is not afraid to live dangerously. He is the highest life-affirmer who strives to become who he is, gaining power over himself, reaching a joy worthy of gods.

Heidegger: Das Man and Being-toward-Death

German philosopher Martin Heidegger tells us that we are always initially engaged with the world as being-in-the-world. He emphasises the positive role of the social and historical realm of human existence, however, it can also lead to an inauthentic existence, and take a negative, authoritarian side, demanding of the individual conformity and obedience, surrendering oneself to a formless entity, to what he calls “Das Man” or “the-they”, where one mindlessly goes about social expectations without considering one’s own possibilities at hand. 

This inauthentic life creates anxiety as we are not responsible of our whole human nature, of being thrown into the world as finite and mortal beings. It is too easy to get lost in the everyday until we face death. This is the idea of Being-toward-Death, as we face the end of our existence, we ironically live for ourselves for the first time, without thinking about the approval of other people on who we are.

When asked how we might recover authenticity, Heidegger replied that we should simply “spend more time in graveyards”, in order to recognise the inevitability of death in the context of our everyday existence, so as to live life to the fullest and live right into our death.

Ortega y Gasset: The Mass Man

“The mass crushes beneath it everything which is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified and select. Anybody who is not like everybody, who does not think like everybody, runs the risk of being eliminated.”

Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses

Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset wrote his best known work The Revolt of the Masses in 1930, in which he characterises society as dominated by the “mass-man”, a mass of indistinguishable individuals. Ortega expresses his fear of the collective mediocrity and tyranny of the majority who believe that to be different is to be indecent, threatening individuality and free thought. They are characterised by conformity (changing their behaviour to “fit in” with the people around them) and mediocrity (the quality of being average).

The mass-man does not, however, refer to a social class – he could be from any social background. He represents the current zeitgeist or spirit of the age.

Ortega writes:

“Society is always a dynamic unity of two component factors: minorities and masses. The minorities are individuals or groups of individuals who are especially qualified. The mass is an aggregate of persons not especially qualified. By masses, then, it is not to be understood, solely nor principally, “the working masses”. The mass is “the average man”. In this manner, what was mere quantity – the multitude – is converted into a qualitative determination: it becomes the common social quality, man as undifferentiated from other men, but as repeating in himself a generic type… To form a minority, whatever it may be, it is necessary beforehand that each member separate himself from the multitude for special, relatively individual reasons… This coming together of the minority precisely in order to separate themselves from the majority is always introduced into the formation of every minority.

Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses

Ortega’s main target is the average man or Mr. Satisfied who is content in his mediocrity and wants to be just like everyone else. The minority, on the other hand, separates himself from the common values of the masses by placing greater demands on himself and cultivating excellency. It is the intellectual minority who symbolise progress in contrast to the mass man’s stagnation.

Ortega’s Philosophy of Life

Ortega’s philosophy has been characterised as a “philosophy of life”, that is, philosophising as a way of life, endorsed by the German Lebensphilosophie movement. At the core of Ortega’s philosophy is the radical reality of each individual, that is to say, it is your reality that comes first, and the rest follows. The absolute truth would be obtained by the sum of all perspectives of all lives.

Just like Heidegger, Ortega unites both subject and the world, overcoming the limitations of both idealism (in which the world is a mental construction) and realism (in which the world exists independent of the subject). He coined the term “ratiovitalism” in which knowledge is based on the radical reality of life, whose essential component is what he calls “vital reason”, that is, reason with life as its foundation. This lead him to pronounce his most well-known maxim:

“I am I and my circumstance, and if I do not save it, I do not save myself.”

Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Quixote

Our circumstance is everything we were born into and everything we are surrounded by: the time period, country, family, culture, etc., and our sense of “I” helps us make sense of how we fit into all this. We are a dynamic project that has to be completed in view of the world, and to the extent that we deal with it, we make it ours. This can be done by taking responsibility for who we are at our core and by the circumstance in which we were born into, acknowledging our limitations and the freedom we have as individuals who are always projecting towards a goal.

Ortega’s work is strikingly similar to ideas which had been formulated by Heidegger in his magnum opus Being and Time. As he writes:

“To live is to find oneself in the world. Heidegger, in a very recent work of genius, has made us take notice of all the enormous significance of these words.”

Ortega y Gasset, What is Philosophy?

New Challenges: Posthuman Era

Religion provided the reality of the individual presented before God, where one’s individual personality would remain intact. However, the mass man now presents itself as the reality, having replaced God with public opinion as Kierkegaard had brilliantly prophesised.

While technology has made possible the advancement of our species, it has also exacerbated the problem of herd behaviour. Anthropologically speaking, technology is ontologically prior to theoretical science, we have been concerned with technology since the stone age which has moulded the very core of our mode of Being.

However, modern man is now slowly merging with technology, and it may only be a matter of time until we enter a posthuman era, posing new challenges to the human condition. But at the same time, without technology we wouldn’t have arrived at where we are today. What threatens us is what made us humans in the first place.

The later Heidegger was concerned that in our modern society we are so immersed in technology that we disconnect ourselves from being, from the world and nature.

We have been inextricably linked with technology to a point that we would have a hard time surviving without it. We have built a system which we cannot live without, and yet the individual within the system can be done away with. With virtual reality just around the corner, this may well become a bigger issue, where many will escape reality into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

We must cultivate authenticity, that is, the ability to extricate ourselves from unreflective mass consciousness, appropriating our own existential possibilities and developing projects that give meaning to our lives, making use of the resources of our culture and our heritage, with a view to future development.

“The biggest danger, that of losing oneself, can pass off in the world as quietly as if it were nothing: every other loss, an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. is bound to be noticed.”

Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death

Mass Society – A Warning to The World

In the 19th century the status of mass society became a philosophical and moral issue in a manner hitherto unseen. It came to be defined as the permanent possibility in all individuals of losing concern for their personal status and worth, and assigning themselves to something outside themselves in an abstract “other”.

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Artwork used in the video

Intermission at the Comédie Française – Honoré Daumier
The Smokers – Adriaen Brower
Indian Canoe – Albert Bierstadt
Army – Tommy Ingberg
Burial Hordes – Termination Thesis
The Audience – James Hoff
Flock of Sheep – Caroline Skinner
Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog – Caspar David Friedrich
Two Men at Sea – Caspar David Friedrich
The Light in the Soul – Chirila Corina
Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette – Auguste Renoir
Untitled – Daniela Riegler
Evening on Karl Johan Street – Edvard Munch
Golgotha – Edvard Munch
Faces in the Crowd – Larry Martin
God the Father – Cima da Conegliano
Information Age – Leon Zernitsky
Jesus is our Bridge to Heaven – Elizabeth Wang
Cry of the Masses – Josef Váchal
Man Reading Newspaper – Cliff Wilson
Marcus Aurelius Distributing Bread – Joseph Marie Vien
Trafalgar Crowd – Martin Packford
Meeting of Thirty Five Heads of Expression – Honoré Daumier
Painting of Sheep – Herman Johannes van der Weele
Painting on the Berlin Wall – Gynt
The Son of Man – René Magritte
The Tightrope Walker – Roberto Weigand
Robot Man – José Mendez
Technology and Healthcare – Leon Zernitsky
Technology – Leon Zernitsky
The Cemetery Entrance – Caspar David Friedrich

Carl Jung and The Collective Unconscious

“The one thing we refuse to admit is that we are dependent upon “powers” that are beyond our control.”

Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols, Part I. Approaching the Unconscious

One of Carl Jung’s most well-known (and controversial) concept is the collective unconscious, the aspect of the unconscious mind which manifests inherited, universal themes which run through all human life. As is described in his autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections Jung experienced exceedingly vivid dreams throughout his life, the first one starting at the age of three, where he encountered the so-called man-eater, a giant cyclops sitting on a golden throne with a single eye gazing upwards, symbolising a ritual phallus. Jung would think of this subterranean God “not to be named” as the underground counterpart and dark side of Lord Jesus, a frightful revelation which had been accorded to him without him seeking it. This haunted him for years and was his initiation into the realm of darkness.

“There is no light without shadow and no psychic wholeness without imperfection.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 12 “Psychology and Alchemy”

As is characteristic of Jung’s life, he stumbled upon the idea of the collective unconscious after a dream.

In the dream, Jung found himself in the upper floor of a house which he did not know but which seemed to be his house. The salon was surrounded by fine old furniture and paintings. He descended the stairs to the ground floor and everything was much older, with medieval furnishing. Here he came upon a heavy door and opened it, discovering a stone stairway that led down into a cellar. Descending, he entered a room from Roman times. There was a stone slab on the floor which lifted as he pulled a ring, he descended and entered a low cave with scattered bones and broken pottery, like remains of a primitive culture. He discovered two human skulls. Then he awoke.

Jung believes that this house was a kind of image of the psyche, the first floor representing consciousness and the lower he went, the deeper into the unconscious he descended, and the more alien and the darker the scene became, until he reached the deepest layer, the collective unconscious. These point to the foundations of cultural history, a history of successive layers of consciousness.

Jung’s investigation into the psyche spans over 60 years, most of which is gathered in his 20-volume set “The Collected Works.” Throughout his life, Jung studied gnosticism, alchemy, comparative religion and mythology to acquire a wider knowledge of the origins and significance of mankind’s collective unconscious.

During his work, he encountered similar patterns in the dreams of patients suffering from schizophrenia and from his travels around the world observing the lives of primitive people. The universality of certain myths which repeat themselves in strikingly similar detail in very different cultures and societies gave him the idea of a source springing universally within man. This was Jung’s first inkling of a collective unconscious, beneath the personal unconscious. Later, with increasing experience and on the basis of more reliable knowledge, Jung recognised them as forms of instinct, that is, as archetypes. But before explaining what archetypes are, we must distinguish the collective unconscious from the personal unconscious.

Personal Unconscious (Complexes)

The collective unconscious does not owe its existence to personal experience and consequently is not a personal acquisition, while the personal unconscious is made up essentially of contents which have at one time been conscious but which have disappeared from consciousness through having been forgotten or repressed. The contents of the collective unconscious have never been in consciousness, and therefore have never been individually acquired, but owe their existence exclusively to heredity. Just as we have evolved biologically, we have also undergone a psychic evolution.

The personal unconscious consists for the most part of complexes, a term coined by Jung which represents a knot of unconscious feelings and beliefs that can be detected through one’s behaviour and may prevent us from achieving psychic wholeness.

Jung found evidence for complexes while conducting word association tests in a psychiatric clinic. In the experiment, the patients must respond to a list of words as quickly as possible, saying the first thing that comes to mind in response to each word. After the test, Jung would note any unusual reactions such as hesitations, slips of the tongue or signs of emotion – which may hint at unconscious feelings or beliefs.

He soon found out that it was the matter of intimate personal affairs that people were thinking of. Nevertheless, an inhibition came from the unconscious and hindered the expression in speech.

Collective Unconscious (Archetypes)

On the other hand, the content of the collective unconscious is made up of archetypes, collectively-inherited forms or patterns of behaviour. A complex is associated with an archetype, such as a mother complex associated with the mother archetype.

These primordial images reflect basic patterns common to us all, and which have existed universally since the dawn of time. They include archetypal events such as birth, death, the union of opposites; archetypal figures such as the trickster, the hero, the wise old man; and archetypal motifs such as the creation of the world and the apocalypse.

Jung did not attempt to provide an exhaustive and systematic list of all the archetypes, as some have attempted to do. That would be a largely futile exercise – since archetypes can combine with each other or one archetype may also appear in various distinct forms. He rather tells us that there are as many archetypes as there are typical situations in life. Endless repetition has engraved these experiences in our psychic constitution. Jung writes, however, that his years of observation and investigation of the unconscious gave way to recurring archetypal figures, the chief of them being:

“the shadow, the wise old man, the child, the mother… and her counterpart the maiden, and lastly the anima in man and the animus in woman.”

Carl Jung, Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, C.W. Vol 9. Part I

The archetypes are actualised when they enter consciousness and express themselves as images or certain behaviour based on our interaction with the outside world. They are autonomous living personalities within us, that is, they are not within our control – but are rather given particular expression by individuals and their cultures. As Jung writes:

“My views about the ‘archaic remnants’, which I call ‘archetypes’ or ‘primordial images’, have been constantly criticised by people who lack sufficient knowledge of the psychology of dreams and of mythology. The term ‘archetype’ is often misunderstood as meaning certain definite mythological images or motifs, but these are nothing more than conscious representations. Such variable representations cannot be inherited. The archetype is a tendency to form such representations of a motif—representations that can vary a great deal in detail without losing their basic pattern.”

Man and His Symbols, Part I: Approaching the Unconscious – Carl Jung

Archetypes are forms without content, representing merely the possibility of a certain type of perception and action. This is a crucial point, which he reiterates:

“A primordial image is determined as to its content only when it has become conscious and is therefore filled out with the material of conscious experience.”

Carl Jung, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, C.W. Vol. 8

Archetypes guide us towards psychic wholeness through the individuation process, the path towards the Self, activating unconscious primordial images through exposure to unexplored potentials of the psyche, bringing them into consciousness.

“In the course of my investigations of the collective unconscious, I discovered the presence of an apparently universal symbol of a similar type, the mandala symbol. To make sure of my case, I spent more than a decade amassing additional data, before announcing any discovery for the first time. The mandala is an archetypal image whose occurrence is attested throughout the ages. It signifies the wholeness of the self. This circular image represents the wholeness of the psychic ground or, to put it in mythic terms, the divinity incarnate in man.”

Carl Jung, Memories Dreams Reflections. Chapter XII: Late Thoughts

From a psychological point of view, Jung saw the God-image as a manifestation of the ground of the psyche, which takes the form of circular symbols of unity, representing a synthesis of opposites within the psyche. The Self is the archetype of orientation and meaning, and to have a balanced relation with it, one’s conscious and unconscious personalities must have learned to live at peace and to complement one another. For Jung, the only real adventure remaining for each individual is the exploration of his own unconscious.

The Psychological Meaning of The Collective Unconscious

Before Jung’s discovery, psychology insisted on the personal nature of the psyche. It was a psychology of the person, where the causes are regarded almost wholly as personal in nature. However, it is based on general biological factors, such as the sexual instinct or need for self-assertion, which are by no means merely personal peculiarities. They are a priori instincts common to man which pursue their inherent goals.

Therefore, human activity is influenced to a high degree by instincts, quite apart from the rational motivations of the conscious mind. Modern psychotherapy is faced with the task of helping the patient to become conscious of them.

Jung believes that the archetypes are the unconscious images of the instincts themselves. In other words, archetypes are patterns of instinctual behaviour. The hypothesis of the collective unconscious is, therefore, no more daring than to assume there are instincts. While many have called this mysticism, Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious is neither a speculative nor a philosophical matter, but an empirical one. The question is: are there or are there not unconscious, universal forms of this kind? If they exist, then there is a region of the psyche which one can call the collective unconscious.

If we consider the tremendous powers that lie hidden in the mythological and religious sphere in man, the aetiological significance of the archetype appears less fantastic. In numerous cases of neurosis the cause of the disturbance lies in the very fact that the psychic life of the patient lacks the co-operation of these forces.

A purely personalistic psychology, by reducing everything to personal causes, tries its best to deny the existence of archetypal motifs and even seeks to destroy them by personal analysis. Jung considers this a rather dangerous procedure which cannot be justified medically.

The fate of great nations is a summation of psychic changes in individuals. Neuroses are in most cases not just private concerns, but social phenomena, which are influenced by the archetypes.

Dreams and Active Imagination

But how can we prove the existence of a collective unconscious? Jung tells us that the main source is dreams, which have the advantage of being involuntary, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche and are therefore pure products of nature not falsified by any conscious purpose.

An individual can experience motifs appearing in his dreams that are known to him, but also motifs which could not possibly be known to the dreamer and yet behave functionally in his dream in such a manner as to coincide with the functioning of the archetype.

Jung’s visit to the primitive people of Africa informed him on the subject of dreams and the difference between what he calls Big Dreams and Little Dreams. This has to do whether the dream comes from the collective unconscious or whether it was from the personal unconscious.

Another way to experience the archetypes is through active imagination, a sequence of fantasies produced by deliberate concentration. Jung found that the existence of unrealised, unconscious fantasies increases the frequency and intensity of dreams, and that when these fantasies are made conscious the dreams change their character and become weaker and less frequent.

From this he has drawn the conclusion that dreams often contain fantasies which “want” to become conscious. The sources of dreams are often repressed instincts which have a natural tendency to influence the conscious mind.

In active imagination, the patient is simply given the task of contemplating any one fragment of fantasy that seems significant to him, or something he has become conscious of in a dream, elaborating the fantasy by observing the further fantasy material that adds itself to the fragment in a natural manner. The method, however, is not entirely without danger, because it may carry the patient too far away from reality.

Confrontation with the Unconscious

Jung’s confrontation with the unconscious brought about a period of inner uncertainty and disorientation. He felt that he needed a point of support in “this world”, which his family and work provided him – the unconscious contents would otherwise have made him lose his wits. At the same time, these years of pursuing his inner images were the most important in Jung’s life, providing him with invaluable insights for his life’s work.

“Philemon and other figures of my fantasies brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life. Philemon represented a force which was not myself. In my fantasies I held conversations with him, and he said things which I had not consciously thought. For I observed clearly that it was he who spoke, not I. He said I treated thoughts as if I generated them myself, but in his view thoughts were like animals in the forest, or people in a room, or birds in the air, and added, “If you should see people in a room, you would not think that you had made those people, or that you were responsible for them.” It was he who taught me psychic objectivity, the reality of the psyche. Through him the distinction was clarified between myself and the object of my thought. He confronted me in an objective manner, and I understood that there is something in me which can say things that I do not know and do not intend, things which may even be directed against me. Psychologically, Philemon represented superior insight. He was a mysterious figure to me. At times he seemed to me quite real, as if he were a living personality…”

Carl Jung, Memories Dreams Reflections. Chapter VI: Confrontation with the Unconscious

Carl Jung and The Collective Unconscious

Carl Jung’s collective unconscious is one of his most well-known (and controversial) concepts. The collective unconscious is the aspect of the unconscious mind which manifests inherited, universal themes which run through all human life. He encountered the idea in a dream.

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Artwork used in the video

Archetypes – Chris Miles
An Unconscious Mind – Mazarine Memon
Self Portrait with Fiddling Death – Arnold Bocklin
Carl Gustav Jung – Suzann Sines
Circle of Power – Claire Elek
Collective Unconscious – Michelle Spiziri
Cyclops – Maria Marachowska
David Matej Goljat – The Crowd no. 5
Goglotha – Edvard Munch
Self Portrait – Edvard Munch
Embodiment of Light – Shari Silvey
Enantiodromia – Matthew Fredricey
Apollo and Dionysus – Leonid Ilyukhin
Dark to Light – Lourry Legarde
Merlin – Susan Seddon Boulet
The Drinker – Paul Cézanne
Philosopher in Meditation – Rembrandt
Primitive Man – Odilon Redon
Salongsliv – Is Psychoanalysis still Relevant? – Lina Lindqvist
Self Portrait – Vincent van Gogh
Stone Stairs – Tamila Tarama
The Cyclops – Odilon Redon
The Desperate Man – Gustave Courbet
Theater Masks – Scott Murphy
The Birth of Sora – Sora Neva
Fox Maiden – Susan Seddon Boulet
Two Skulls – Emilian School
William Blake – Nebuchadnezzar
The Map of Hell – Sandro Botticelli
Book of the Dead (Ancient Egypt)
Flammarion Engraving 
Taken from Carl Jung’s Red Book
Taken from Carl Jung’s Red Book
Taken from Carl Jung’s Red Book
Taken from Carl Jung’s Red Book
Taken from Carl Jung’s Red Book
Taken from Carl Jung’s Red Book
Taken from Carl Jung’s Red Book
Taken from Carl Jung’s Red Book

The Underground Man – Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Warning to the World  

Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote Notes from Underground in 1864 which is considered to be one of the first existentialist works, emphasising the importance of freedom, responsibility and individuality. It is an extraordinary piece of literature, social critique and satire of the Russian nihilist movement as well as a novel with deep psychological insights on the nature of man, it is no wonder that Nietzsche wrote:

“Dostoevsky, the only psychologist from whom I’ve anything to learn… he ranks amongst the most beautiful strokes of fortune in my life.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

Dostoevsky’s most sustained and spirited attack on the Russian nihilist movement is voiced by one of the darkest, least sympathetic of all his characters – the nameless narrator and protagonist known as the Underground Man, revealing the hopeless dilemmas in which he lands as a result.

Notes from Underground: Historical Context and Themes

The Uprising – Honoré Daumier

Notes from Underground attempts to warn people of several ideas that were gaining ground in the 1860s including: moral and political nihilism, rational egoism, determinism, utilitarianism, utopianism, atheism and what would become communism.

As we’ll see, many of these themes are alluded to in the novel. But before delving into Notes from Underground, we must first observe the historical context in which it was written, in order to better understand Dostoevsky’s warning.

In 1862, Ivan Turgenev published one of the most acclaimed Russian novels of the century, Fathers and Sons, where the characters talk about a strange new philosophy called “nihilism” which became popular with the Russian youth. It had previously been synonymous with scepticism, which transformed into moral and political nihilism:

“A nihilist is a man who does not bow down before any authority, who does not take any principle on faith, whatever reverence that principle may be enshrined in.”

Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons, Chapter 5

The nihilist characters defined themselves as those who deny everything, representing the negation of all pre-existing ideals. Rational egoism emerged as the dominant social philosophy of the Russian nihilist movement, proposing that we are only rational if we maximise our own self-interest, sharing similarities with utilitarianism, which seeks to maximise utility, such as well-being or happiness for all individuals. Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, actually came up with a mathematical formula to calculate happiness called the hedonic calculus, to measure the amount of pleasure and pain any given action would result in, in order to predict human behaviour merely by rationality.

Dostoevsky saw the rise of rational egoism as a genuine danger, because by glorifying the self it could turn the minds of impressionable young people away from sound values and push them in the direction of a true, immoral, destructive egoism. The following line perfectly captures this mindset:

“I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.”

Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

After his trip around Europe, Dostoevsky wrote that what predominates in the Western culture is a:

“principle of individuality, a principle of isolation, intense self-preservation, of personal egoism, self-definition in terms of one’s own I, in placing this I in opposition to all nature and all other people, as an autonomous, independent principle completely equal and equally valuable to everything that exists outside it.”

Dostoevsky, Winter Notes on Summer Impressions

In contrast to this, Dostoevsky calls for a “return to the soil”, emphasising the value of family, religion, personal responsibility and brotherly love – in which each individual feels himself a part of all and is ready to sacrifice himself for the other. Dostoevsky champions this conscious self-sacrifice, which cannot spring from any calculations of self-interest.

The Underground Man is under the influence of egoistic individualism, considering himself as an “educated man, a modern intellectual” who has lost all capacity for selfless moral feeling. As he writes in the footnote appended to the title of his novel:

“Both the author of the Notes and the Notes themselves are, of course, fictious. Nevertheless, such persons as the author of such memoirs not only may, but must, exist in our society, if we take into consideration the circumstances which led to the formation of our society.”

Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

Notes from Underground was written as a response to the spokesman of Russian radicals Nikolay Chernyshevsky, who wrote a novel entitled “What Is to Be Done?” in 1863. In the novel, he shares Rousseau’s idea that despite man’s flaws, he is innately good and amenable to reason, but is somehow corrupted by society. So that, once enlightened as to his true interests, reason and science would ultimately enable him to construct a perfect society. That is, a society created out of sheer rational calculations of self-interest would lose the very possibility of doing evil. Thus, rational egoism is the basis for the development of a Utopian society.

Their dream is to build a well-ordered society for predictably acting human beings. This utopia is symbolised by the Crystal Palace which represents the quintessential achievement of humanity, where all problems will be solved. Chernyshevsky writes that if we all followed the radical socialist way, we could turn society into a Crystal Palace. He also proposed a belief in absolute determinism (or lack of free will) which Dostoevsky brilliantly criticises with his Underground Man.

In Chernyshevsky’s novel, while talking about the greatness of rational egoism, one of the characters asks rhetorically, “Do you hear that, in your underground hole?” One year later, Dostoevsky published Notes from Underground.

Dostoevsky believed that man was innately irrational, capricious and destructive and not reason but only faith in Christ could ever succeed in helping him to master the chaos of his impulses. Atheism was on the rise and Dostoevsky saw this as disastrous for society, emphasising the necessity of belief in Christ.

After his death, what he had warned us against had become a reality, foreseeing the rise of the totalitarian state, which he also discusses in his novel Demons, an allegory of the catastrophic consequences of political and moral nihilism that were becoming prevalent in his time.

The ideology of Marx gave way to communism, implemented by Lenin and Stalin, making people believe that it was possible to create a perfect society without God, a Golden Age, where everything is provided in abundance and equally for everyone, eliminating suffering once and for all. The totalitarian states ended up justifying murder in the name of their ideology, leading to the bloodshed of the 20th century.

Unfortunately, we have not learned from our mistakes. As Hegel wrote:

“We learn from history that we do not learn from history.”

Today we are plagued with a mass mania in the West, where crimes against humanity are hidden under the often attractive cloaks of “progress”, attempting again to create a utopia.

Notes from Underground: Introduction

Illustration for “Notes from Underground” – Alexandre Alexeieff

The Underground Man is the quintessential anti-hero, a bitter, lonely and self-hating 40 year old retired civil servant living underground. Or as in the original Russian text, in a sort of crawl space, not big enough for a human and where bugs and rodents roam. This explains why he calls himself a mouse. Here he has been staying for years listening to people through a crack under the floor, writing these notes from “underground”. However, the underground can best be seen as a metaphor representing his profound alienation from society. He lives locked away underground, and these are his confessions.

“I am a sick man… I am a spiteful man… I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased… No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. That you probably will not understand. My liver is bad, well – let it get worse!”

We are introduced to the strange behaviour and psychological distress of the Underground Man right from the start. He calls himself sick, then spiteful, then unattractive and finally says that he has a liver problem. He is constantly revising himself in order to please his imaginary audience but is unable to characterise himself properly. We can see, however, that he is not acting to promote his own best interests as dictated by rational egoism.

He writes:

“In reality I never could become spiteful. I was conscious every moment in myself of many, very many elements absolutely opposite to that… I knew that they had been swarming in me all my life and craving some outlet from me, but I would not let them… purposely would not let them come out. They tormented me till I was ashamed: they drove me to convulsions and – sickened me, at last, how they sickened me!”

The Underground Man seems to be nothing more than a chaos of conflicting emotional impulses; and his conflict may be defined as that of a search for his own character – his quest to find himself, as he does not know who he is. This plagues him, however, he knows that this is his normal condition, and that there’s no way to escape it. 

As such, he tries to detach himself from reality in the world of literature, spending most of his time reading and being utterly disappointed when facing the real world, as he says:

“I could not speak except as though I was reading from a book.”

At other times, he gives incredibly lucid insights into the human psyche:

“Every man has reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends. He has other matters in his mind which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But there are other things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind. The more decent he is, the greater the number of such things in his mind.”

Man of Action vs Man of Acute Consciousness

Chess Players – Honoré Daumier

Dostoevsky distinguishes between two types of men: the man of action and the man of acute consciousness. The Underground Man is extremely envious of the man of action, he who lives life without ruminating too much on his thoughts. He has a lower intellectual capacity that frees him from the questions and torments of one’s consciousness, while the Underground Man is paralysed by his thoughts.

Dostoevsky gives us an analogy with the Stone Wall, which represents scientific determinism. One has to accept these laws as the truth without questioning them. Two times two makes four and anyone who says otherwise is foolish. This represents a barrier to one’s free will.

When faced with revenge, the man of action dashes straight for his object like an infuriated bull with its horns down, for he seeks justice. But when he stumbles upon the stone wall, he is genuinely surprised and unable to speak – the wall is not an evasion, it is simply what renders his activity impossible.

The Underground Man, on the other hand, tries to come up with all sorts of tricks, and instead of admitting defeat and turning around, he smashes his head against the wall, while knowing the futility of his actions.

“Of course I cannot break through the wall by battering my head against it if I really have not the strength to knock it down, but I am not going to be reconciled to it simply because it is a stone wall and I have not the strength. As though such a wall really were a consolation…”

Every course of action seems insufficient and so he is paralysed, or as Dostoevsky puts it, he finds himself stuck in a state of inertia, only able to think but unable to act. He suffers the greatest ailment of all, consciousness. To think too much is a disease. This best describes the Underground Man’s state of mind, he is stuck in his own reflective hyperconsciousness, thus creating a greater accumulation of spite than in the man of action. The result is that the intellectual is unable to do anything and is thus characterless. He writes:

“I did not know how to become anything; neither spiteful nor kind, neither a rascal nor an honest man, neither a hero nor an insect. Now, I am living out my life in my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and useless consolation that an intelligent man cannot become anything seriously, and it is only the fool who becomes anything.”

He is aware of his flaws, while the man of action is content in his foolishness and believes that he is great. The Underground Man finds solace as he is smarter than all of the people he meets but socially they are all well above him. His vanity convinces him of his own intellectual superiority and he despises everybody; but when he realises that he cannot rest without their recognition of his superiority, he hates others for their indifference and falls into self-loathing at his own humiliating dependence.

The Underground Man considers the man of action as the real normal man, while he sees himself as a product born out of a test tube. He calls himself a mouse, though nobody tells him he is one, it is as if he has constructed a hell out of his own internal ruminations:

“The luckless mouse succeeds in creating around it so many other nastinesses in the form of doubts, emotions, and of the contempt spat upon it by the direct men of action… Of course the only thing left for it is to dismiss all that with a wave of its paw, and, with a smile of assumed contempt in which it does not even itself believe, creep ignominiously into its mousehole. There in its nasty, stinking, underground home our insulted, crushed and ridiculed mouse promptly becomes absorbed in cold, malignant and, above all, everlasting spite. For forty years together it will remember its injury down to the smallest, most ignominious details, and every time will add, of itself, details still more ignominious,  spitefully teasing and tormenting itself with its own imagination.”

The Underground Man essentially buries himself alive with spite, but there’s a twist. He goes on to say that in that state of despair, dissatisfaction and hopelessness, is precisely where he finds his enjoyment. Although he notes that people most likely won’t understand anything of it. He thinks that man is cursed with consciousness, but at the same time it is what allows free will and individuality. With consciousness, man must suffer, but without consciousness, man will never be free, a clear critique of determinism.

“Whatever happened, happened in accordance with the normal and fundamental laws of intensified consciousness and by a sort of inertia which is a direct consequence of those laws, and… therefore you could not only not change yourself, but you simply couldn’t make any attempt to.”

Irrational Pleasure in Suffering

Lonely Hunter – Elena Vargas

The Underground Man finds an irrational pleasure in suffering, even in his painful toothache – which makes him moan maliciously in order to make other people around him suffer, giving him pleasure. Not only is he a sadist, but he also confesses his masochism:

“I felt a sort of secret, abnormal, contemptible delight when, on coming home on one of the foulest nights in Petersburg, I used to realise intensely that again I had been guilty of some dastardly action that day… and inwardly, secretly, I used to go on nagging myself, worrying myself, accusing myself, till at last the bitterness I felt turned into a sort of shameful, damnable sweetness, and finally, into real positive delight! Yes, into delight! … The feeling of delight was there just because I was so intensely aware of my own degradation.”

The essence of his activity is simply the result of being plagued with boredom. And with a heightened consciousness, he cannot stop thinking.

“I invented adventures for myself and made up a life, so as at least to live in some way. How many times it has happened to me – well, for instance, to take offence simply on purpose, for nothing; and one knows oneself, of course, that one is offended at nothing; that one is putting it on, but yet one brings oneself at last to the point of being really offended.”

Critique of Rational Egoism and Utopianism

The Audience – James Hoff

While the Underground Man is committed to the principles of rational egoism, he is simultaneously an opponent of it throughout the whole novel. His conflict arises from the clash between human nature and the laws of nature. While his reason assures him that there is nothing he can really do to change for the better, he refuses to abdicate his consciousness to determinism, he wants to preserve his individuality and go against the comfortable predictability of life.

“What is to be done with the millions of facts that bear witness that men, consciously, that is fully understanding their real interests, have left them in the background and have rushed headlong on another path, to meet peril and danger… And what if it so happens that a man’s advantage, sometimes, not only may, but even must, consist in his desiring in certain cases, what is harmful to himself and not advantageous.”

The Underground Man writes that man is by no means a rational animal, and that he will always rebel against the idea of a utopia, to act in a way that goes against his self-interest, simply to validate his existence and confirm his individuality.

Man is monstrously ungrateful. In fact, he writes that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped. But that is not his worst defect, his worst defect is his constant deviation from moral order. One should only take a quick glance at the history of mankind to observe this. He writes:

“One may say anything about the history of the world – anything that might enter the most disordered imagination. The only thing one can’t say is that it’s rational.”

The Underground Man says that man would sacrifice all his advantages just to be independent and choose for himself, and only the devil knows what he’ll choose. Man would even desire what is injurious to him, what is stupid, very stupid – simply in order to have the right to desire for himself. This caprice of ours, may in reality, be more advantageous for us than anything else on earth. He calls it our most advantageous advantage (which does not fit in any system), and for which one even sacrifices happiness, health, prosperity and security simply in order to preserve for us what is most precious and most important, that is, our personality, our individuality. He writes:

“Apropos of nothing, in the midst of general prosperity a gentleman with an ignoble, or rather with a reactionary and ironical countenance were to arise and, putting his arms akimbo, say to us all: ‘I say, gentleman, hadn’t we better kick over the whole show and scatter rationalism to the winds, simply to send these logarithms to the devil, and to enable us to live once more at our own sweet foolish will!”

The Underground Man does not criticise reason per se, but rather a completely one-sided rationalistic view of the world, which does not satisfy one’s impulses and desires, that form a realm much wider than reason and much closer to the human condition. A person always and in every way prefers to act in the way they feel like acting and not in the way that their reason and interest tell them.

“Shower upon man every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface, give him economic prosperity such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick… simply in order to prove to himself – as though that were so necessary – that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar.”

Dostoevsky attacks the idea that greater rationality leads to greater human progress and happiness. It is an attempt to see life as a mathematical formula to be followed, in order to align man with society’s best interests. Man is not a piano-key. He cannot simply discover the laws of nature so that he will have found all the answers to his problems, a world in which everything will be so clearly calculated and explained that choices would cease to exist. Life would become extraordinarily dull, and man will act against reason in order to prove his free will, so that two times two equals five. And if he does not find the means he will contrive destruction, chaos and sufferings of all sorts.

If one says that this, too, can be calculated and tabulated, so that the mere possibility of calculating it all beforehand would stop it all, and reason would reassert itself, then man would purposely go mad in order to be rid of reason and gain his point.

Dostoevsky observed this madness first-hand in his fellow prisoners when he was sent to a prison labour camp in Siberia, he describes a prisoner’s sudden violent outburst as:

“Simply the poignant hysterical craving for self-expression, the unconscious yearning for himself, the desire to assert himself, to assert his crushed person, a desire which suddenly takes possession of him and reaches the pitch of fury, of spite, of mental aberration, of fits and nervous convulsions.”

Dostoevsky, The House of the Dead

The rational egoists would have to admit that human action is radically unpredictable and that their program is doomed to failure.

“Man likes to make roads and to create, that is a fact beyond dispute. But why has he such a passionate love for destruction and chaos also? … May it not be that he loves chaos and destruction… because he is instinctively afraid of attaining his object and completing the edifice he is constructing? Who knows, perhaps he only loves that edifice from a distance, and is by no means in love with it at close quarters; perhaps he only loves building it and does not want to live in it… In fact, man is a comical creature; there seems to be a kind of jest in it all…”

This edifice refers to the Crystal Palace, to reach the literal end of history when all further striving, struggle and inner conflict will have ceased. He writes:

“I rejected the Crystal Palace myself for the sole reason that one would not be allowed to stick out one’s tongue at it.”

The Value of Suffering

Sorrowing Old Man (At Eternity’s Gate) – Vincent van Gogh

Dostoevsky says that man will never renounce to suffering, destruction and chaos, and that it is also sometimes very pleasant to smash things.

“Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately in love with suffering: that is a fact.”

We want happiness but we have a special talent for making ourselves miserable. Man is like a chess player who loves the process of the game, but not the end of it. Trying to abolish suffering and replace it with everlasting happiness only sinks us deeper into it. Man needs suffering as much as he needs happiness.

“Which is better: cheap happiness or sublime suffering? Well, come on, which is better?”

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The Underground Man – Dostoevsky’s Warning to The World
Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote Notes from Underground in 1864 which is considered to be one of the first existentialist works, emphasising the importance of freedom, responsibility and individuality. It is an extraordinary piece of literature, social critique and satire of the Russian nihilist movement as well as a novel with deep psychological insights on the nature of man.

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Artwork used in the video

Stańczyk – Jan Matejko
Intermission at the Comédie Française – Honoré Daumier
Crispin Scalin – Honoré Daumier
Actor Posing in Front of a Mirror – Honoré Daumier
Anxiety – Helena Wierzbicki
Chess Players – Honoré Daumier
The Man Made Mad with Fear – Gustave Courbet
Two Old Ones Eating Soup – Francisco Goya
Early Morning May 20 1986 – Donald Sultan
Echoes of Madness – Suzanne Roach
Elena Vargas – Lonely Hunter
Soldier and Death – Hans Larwin
Isolation – John Cunnane
James Hoff – The Audience
Meeting of Thirty Five Heads of Expression – Honoré Daumier
Martin Packford – Trafalgar Crowd
John Lewis Kimmel – The Village Politicians
Painting on the Berlin Wall – Gynt
Portrait of a Nihilist Sudent – Ilya Repin
Lenin on The Tribune – Alexander Gerasimov
The Protest – Jame Hayes
The Dance of Rats – Ferdinand van Kessel
The Family on The Barricade – Honoré Daumier
The Golden Age – Lucas Cranach the Elder
The Old Piano – Michael Pickett
Self-Portrait with Masks – Léon Spilliaert
Narcissus – John William Waterhouse
Russian government destroying Nihilist printing office – James Hunter (Young People’s History of the World)
The Rockets – Honoré Daumier
The Silhouette of the Artist – León Spilliaert
The Uprising – Honoré Daumier
Nebuchadnezzar – William Blake
Fyodor Dostoyevsky – Konstantin Vasiliev
Two Men Sitting with a Table – Honoré Daumier
Vincent van Gogh – Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette
Vincent van Gogh – Sorrowing Old Man (At Eternity’s Gate)
Two Drinkers – Honoré Daumer
The Self Sacrifice of a Father – Jacques Sablet
Farewell Europe – Aleksander Sochaczewski
Illustration for “Notes from Underground” – Alexandre Alexeieff

The Hero’s Journey: Experiencing Death and Rebirth

“Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.”

Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

Joseph Campbell was influenced by Carl Jung’s analytical psychology and his extensive work in comparative mythology and religion covers many aspects of the human experience. In his best-known work The Hero with a Thousand Faces published in 1949, Campbell describes the archetypal hero’s journey or monomyth shared by the world, the hero being one who serves and sacrifices. He writes:

“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces

The Hero’s Journey is not just a mythological story, but is deeply embedded within the human condition. It tells the story of a person encountering a difficult life problem and their journey in resolving it through personal transformation. Sometimes the change is intentional (new relationships, marriage, a new job, etc), and the Hero is motivated to attempt and endure the process of change. Other times, the change is unintentional (trauma, injury, relationships breaking apart, etc), leaving the Hero shocked.

The hero journey provides a template for all change, intentional and unintentional. Patients who were introduced to the Hero’s Journey as a means of reconceptualising their disorder as a hero quest, rather than an external stressful task, shifted their attitude from passive to active, supporting them to become the “author of their own lives”. This has been clinically tested in a diverse range of issues, such as: anxiety, depression, trauma, addiction, PTSD and psychosis.

The role of the therapist is to guide and support personal change, acting as a mentor. It allows clients to become client-heroes, assisting them to recognise where they are in their own process of change, how to navigate their own treatment journey, and author their own change story.

In many of the hero myths, the weakness of the hero is balanced by the appearance of strong “tutelary” figures. A central hero of Greek mythology is Achilles, the greatest of all the Greek warriors. As a boy, he was guided by the wise centaur Chiron, tutor of gods and heroes, who instructed him in the arts of medicine, music, riding and hunting.

“These godlike figures are in fact symbolic representatives of the whole psyche, the larger and more comprehensive identity that supplies the strength that the personal ego lacks. Their special role suggests that the essential function of the heroic myth is the development of the individual’s ego-consciousness – his awareness of his own strengths and weaknesses – in a manner that will equip him for the arduous tasks with which life confronts him.”

Man and His Symbols. Part II: Ancient Myths and Modern Man – Joseph L. Henderson

The significant life problem is a situation where the Hero’s existing knowledge and skills are no longer efficacious. In finding a solution, the Hero is required to leave his familiar, known world, and venture into the unknown.

Significant life problems forces us to change, however, many of us are reluctant to do so as we do not want to sacrifice our comfort. Ignoring these matters forms unconscious snags which give us a state of impoverishment in our personality and inhibit the growth of the good qualities that lie dormant in our psyche, making our shadow blacker and denser. We lose control of our life and become puppets of existence. As Stoic philosopher Seneca writes:

“Fate leads the willing, and drags along the reluctant.”

Seneca, Letters from a Stoic, CVII

It is as if one keeps living but is dragged by chains or swimming against the river currents. This is a characteristic attitude of the neurotic, an artificial barrier invented by oneself which causes one to suffer from internal conflict, in order to avoid facing difficult life choices.

Campbell tells us that Heroic myths provide the individual with “inspiration for aspiration”. Myths have the ability to link the everyday to the eternal, to give meaning to the mundane.

Introduction to the Phases of the Hero’s Journey

In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell identified that a Hero’s Journey occurs in three sequential phases: separation, initiation, and the return. These are further divided into 17 substages. However, we will be using the more popular and modern adaption by Christopher Vogler, detailed in his work “The Writer’s Journey”, which is inspired by Campbell. He proposes a Twelve Stage Hero’s Journey.

The very first stage of the Hero’s Journey is the Ordinary World, referring to one’s familiar life: daily routine, the stresses and joys of work, family and social connections. A common characteristic is a growing awareness that something is not quite right, life is somehow lacking. For instance, an employee may be aware that the enjoyment of his work has been diminishing for some time, but the demands of their day-to-day or concerns about finding an alternative job lead them to an increasingly stressful situation and so they cling to their Ordinary World.

First Phase of the Hero’s Journey: Separation

The separation phase of the Hero’s Journey begins with the second stage, the Call to Adventure, disrupting the comfort of the Hero’s Ordinary World and presenting him with a quest that must be undertaken.

Unintentional calls may include the discovery of an infidelity, the death of a loved one, the diagnosis of an illness, etc., while intentional calls include seeking a new career, moving cities, the arrival of a first child, etc. The Call to Adventure separates the person from the aspects of their previous life and causes anxiety. Many are overwhelmed and believe that their problem is beyond their capabilities leading to the third stage, Refusal. This is a very common and important stage that communicates the risks involved in the Journey ahead.

However, remaining in the Refusal stage will lead to a deterioration in one’s life and relationships. One finds himself with little or no motivation, highlighting the ineffectiveness of one’s coping strategies. This unfamiliar situation causes stress as one is unable to deal with the life problem. At this crucial turning point, the Hero desperately needs guidance, leading to the fourth stage: Meeting the Mentor.

The Mentor is the archetypal wise old man. It is his role to assist the Hero’s progress to the realisation that personal change is a necessity for the resolution of his problem, giving him practical training, wise advice or self-confidence in order to overcome the initial fears, allowing him to move from inaction to action.

These tutelary figures do not necessarily have to be physical ones, they can also be your favourite philosopher, public figure, family member or any other person you look up to as your ideal-self.

Second Phase of the Hero’s Journey: Initiation

When the Hero is committed to change, we enter the second phase of the Hero’s Journey: Initiation, and the fifth stage: Crossing the First Threshold.

The Hero now leaves the safe haven of the “Ordinary World” and enters the “Special World”, an unfamiliar place where one confronts his “dragon”, his worst fear, event, person, situation or memory long avoided. As trials become more difficult, the Hero hones his skills and gains experience. However, as the trials increase in complexity, the demands placed on the Hero lead to higher levels of anxiety, and his first confrontation with the dragon is likely to fail. Without help, he may consider giving up.

In the sixth stage: Tests, Allies, and Enemies, the Hero explores the Special World and encounters tests and enemies. Here he must seek Allies, friendly forces who support change attempts and decrease the Hero’s isolation. A common barrier here is the fear of asking for help, for being seen as less than capable or for possibly being rejected. Ironically, vulnerability becomes a key skill in resiliency, rather than a sign of weakness. Stage seven is the Approach to the Innermost Cave, where one must make his final preparations before descending into the unknown.

When the Hero is ready, he faces the eighth stage: The Supreme Ordeal. It is the greatest challenge yet, the moment when all looks lost for the Hero, many feel like they are “back at square one”. Fortunately, Allies have witnessed this major setback and are present to assist the Hero.

Over a period of time, the repeated confrontation with the dragon leads to the growing realisation that what was once believed to be impossible is now possible. After facing the unknown and defeating the dragon, the Hero experiences a psychological death and rebirth. The death of an old aspect of one’s self and the birth of a new and more capable self. The Hero gains insights receiving this as his Reward (the ninth stage). But the journey is not over yet.

Third Phase of the Hero’s Journey: The Return

Now begins the third phase: The Return. In the tenth stage: The Road Back, The Hero must hold his reward and make his way back to the Ordinary World, but on the way he will be confronted with more enemies and dragons. However, the Hero knows that there’s no way back and is motivated to keep going.

In the eleventh stage: The Resurrection, the weary Hero must experience a second psychological death, experiencing a resurrection with the attributes of his ordinary self in addition to the new insights from the journey and characters he has met along the road of life. He moves from dependence to responsibility, from silence to finding his voice. The Hero has increased resilience and has learned how to regulate fear, sadness and other emotions that arise when taking action.

He is now purified from the land of the dead and can return home, leading to the twelfth and final stage: Return with the Elixir. The elixir is the final Reward earned on the Hero’s Journey. It is something for the Hero to share with others, or something with the power to heal: wisdom, love or simply the experience of surviving the Special World. The Hero comes back to his Ordinary World with a new self, having faced terrible dangers and possibly death, but now looks forward to the start of a new life.

This is not just a one-time linear path, but in fact a lifelong cyclical process.

“Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure, you are called to new horizons. Each time, there is the same problem, do I dare? And then if you do dare, the dangers are there, and the help also, and the fulfilment or the fiasco.”

Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation

This awareness to see life as a Hero’s Journey allows the chaos and challenges of life to have both some sequence and purpose. It gives us a beautiful framework for dealing with life’s problems. An unwanted event can be viewed as a Call to Adventure, difficult life events as confronting one’s dragon. When one completes these, one receives a reward, transforming into a new self, with an elixir to share the experience of one’s Special World with others.

The Hero’s Journey is:

“The quest to find the inward thing that you basically are.”

Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

Follow Your Bliss

One of Campbell’s most frequently repeated phrase is to “Follow your bliss”:

“If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.”

Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

To follow one’s bliss is not simply doing what one likes to do and certainly not what one is simply told. It is to search deeply within oneself and identifying that pursuit or burning need which one is truly passionate about, giving oneself absolutely to it, and the rest will follow.

“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”

Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation

This feeling of rapture or bliss is associated to the Hero’s Journey that we face on a daily basis in this life, he writes:

“The experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life. Eternity isn’t some later time. Eternity isn’t even a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of the here and now that all thinking in temporal terms cuts off… the experience of eternity right here and now, in all things, whether thought of as good or as evil. Heaven is not the place to have the experience; here is the place to have the experience. When you realise that eternity is right here now, that it is within your possibility to experience the eternity of your own truth and being, then you grasp the following: That which you are was never born and will never die.”

Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation

The Hero’s Journey – Experiencing Death and Rebirth

In his best-known work The Hero with a Thousand Faces published in 1949, Joseph Campbell describes the archetypal Hero’s Journey or “monomyth” shared by the world.

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Artwork used in the video

Viking above the Clouds – Joseph Feely (ArtStation)
Shining Goddess – Joseph Feely (ArtStation)
Solace – Joseph Feely (ArtStation)
Sir Galahad – Arthur Hughes
The Return of the Crusader – Karl Friedrich Lessing
The Centaur Chiron Instructing Achilles – Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée
Soria Moria – Theodor Kittelsen
Knight at the Crossroads – Victor Vasnetsov
Sunset Mont Blanc – Wenzel Hablik
Sunrise Long Beach NJ – Sanford Robinson Gifford
Primitive Man – Odilon Redon
Rebirth – Katharine Squires
Portrait of a Gentleman in his Study – Lorenzo Lotto
Pensive Knight – Storn Cook
Light at the End of the Tunnel – Olga Zavgorodnya
Real vs Ideal Self – Manolis Stratakis
Flying Pheoenix as Symbols of Rebirth – Jozef Klopacka
The Conscience – François ChifflartJacques_de_l’Ange
Chained Prometheus – Jacques de l’Ange
Light Potion – Nathanael M (ArtStation)
Zodiakas Šaulys – M.K. Ciurlionis
Facing the Dragon – Depingo (DeviantArt)
Dark to Light – Lourry Legarde
Evening on Karl Johan Street – Edvard Munch
Facing Fears – Joseph Feely (ArtStation)
A King’s Return – Joseph Feely (ArtStation)
A Knight in Shining Armor – Tom Shropshire
An Open door to the Universe – Corina Chirila
Andrey Shishkin – Forest King
Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog – Caspar David Friedrich
Landscape with a Cave – Louis Philippe Crepin

Mental Illness as a Crisis of Meaning in Modern Society

Modern society is characterised by many things, but perhaps most notably by the remarkable scientific and technological advancement, as well as capitalism, individualism and hedonism. We are wealthier than our ancestors, we live in more safe and comfortable environments, we have more access to food and other basics needs, why then have we seen a massive spike in mental illness?

The bulk of evidence concludes that there seems to have been a significant rise in the incidence of lunacy in the 19th century, and that this increase consisted largely of patients with the illness we now call schizophrenia.

One of the most widely ramifying features of modernity is the intense focus on the value and power of the individual self. To turn away from the search of an objective external order and to instead turn inward and become aware of our own activity. This becomes a pervasive feature of human experience and self-knowledge in the 19th century.

Western culture is dominated by individualism, subjectivism and relativism, with the rise of a new character type that dominates our age, the “psychological man” who is intent upon the conquest of his inner life.

Mental illness must also be viewed in line with the modern social structure, with bureaucratisation, technologisation, secularisation and rationalisation of the modern world on the level of individual experience. The conditions of modern life with its rational forms of social organisation are more complex, conflicting and require potentially disorienting cognitive requirements.  

While there is an emphasis on individuality, one must also simultaneously adapt to society’s evolving needs. The problem arises when these two are in contradiction, leading to a sense of inner division.

The Myth of Mental Illness

In The Myth of Mental Illness, psychiatrist Thomas Szasz criticises the psychiatric establishment who uses mental illness as a metaphor to describe an offending or disturbing pattern of behaviour, under the wide-ranging term schizophrenia, as an “illness” or “disease”.

Szasz wrote:

“If you talk to God, you are praying; if God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; if you talk to the dead, you are a schizophrenic.”

Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin

While many behave and think in disturbing ways, this does not mean they actually have a disease. Unlike physical illness and disease, mental illness is judged from certain psychosocial, ethical or legal norms. Transgressing these is not a consequence of illness, but of the attempt to confront and tackle the problems in living.

Szasz does not suggest that mental illnesses do not exist, rather he is claiming that many such phenomena is a consequence of the attempt to confront and to tackle the problem of how to live, and that to identify such phenomena as a disease or an illness is to hide the very real problems in living that people face.

Modern Society: Freedom and Responsibility

With increasing understanding of himself and of the world, modern man feels that he is free to direct his own life and must take responsibility for it. We are, as Jean-Paul Sartre asserted, “condemned to be free”, condemned to shoulder the burden of our freedom and responsibility without being able to seek refuge in others.

We must be responsible for ourselves for we have no other way of experiencing ourselves or the world as being in any other mode than our own existence. We cannot have our existence depend on somebody else, for that would contradict the very core of our being. We can ask for other people’s opinions, but the choice ultimately lies in us.

Many cannot stand this dizzying freedom. Kierkegaard says that one can either get lost in the infinite (a state of analysis-paralysis where one thinks of the infinite possibilities but never acts) or get lost in the finite (becoming an imitation, a number, a cipher in the crowd). The latter is a finitude’s despair or what we’d now call depressive psychosis. One cannot imagine any alternate ways of life and release himself from the trivial obligations that give him no value. It is as if one has literally died to life but must remain physically in this world, one “lives dyingly.”

Eventually, one faces the “why” of existence, as Albert Camus writes:

“Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, according to the same rhythm – this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the ‘why‘ arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.”

Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

Camus’s absurd person is one who has seen through the ridiculous repetitions of daily life, he is conscious of his Sisyphean condemnation, we all have to push our own boulders and watch it roll back down. If what we do does not satisfy our “why” of existence, we must search for other alternatives or risk falling into an existential crisis, a nauseating sensation of trying to justify one’s existence, which can lead to suicide.

Modern Society: Death of God

One of Western civilisation’s most significant events is the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century, a period which undermined the values that society had hitherto relied on, namely, on the religious view. This engenders the most profound cultural, sociological and psychological repercussions, leaving many facing a crisis in discerning a meaning or purpose for their existence and struggling to tackle the problems in living that this gives rise to.

While we previously had ready answers to the problem of how life ought to be lived and what its overall meaning and purpose was (since faith in the existence of God gave us the reassurance that we are partaking in a divine project) we are now slowly experiencing the consequences of what Nietzsche proclaimed as the death of God, whose full consequences would elude many people as he made clear:

“This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men… This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars – and yet they have done it themselves.”

The Gay Science, §125

This realisation forces us to be faced with the terrifying question: “Has existence any meaning at all?” The modern age is characterised by a sense of disorientation of not knowing what to do with one’s life.

The Existential Vacuum

One notable figure who has attempted to respond to this existential crisis and the psychological manifestations of meaninglessness, is Viktor Frankl. We have been left in an existential vacuum, the meaning crisis and mass neurosis of modern times is the “unheard cry for meaning”. Frankl believes this is the cause of much of modernity’s increase in mental illness, it is the struggle to confront the existential vacuum, he writes:

“Such widespread phenomena as depression, aggression and addiction are not understandable unless we recognise the existential vacuum underlying them.”

Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

Frankl’s therapeutic response to those experiencing such phenomena is to reorient the person to the meaning, or the purpose of their existence. To confront the question of the meaning of their existence, to explore the question, and, ultimately, to provide a positive answer to it.

Finding meaning to one’s life is not to be understood as some idle or academic curiosity that one engages in when more fundamental needs have been met, the striving to search for and to possess a meaning or a purpose for one’s life is said to be the primary motivational force in man.

Without a meaning, all of life’s struggles, strivings and projects become, ultimately, futile. Frankl believes that this sense of futility is what characterises addiction, aggression and depression.

“There is nothing in the world… that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life.”

Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

Frankl concludes:

“In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”

Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

The Hero Journey

Modern man is in desperate need for the hero journey. In Man and His Symbols, Jungian psychologist Joseph Henderson describes the importance of the hero myth as a universal pattern throughout the world. The hero descends into darkness to slay a dragon, rescue a damsel in distress and gather the treasure.

The early weakness of the hero is balanced by the appearance of strong guardians who enable him to perform the tasks that he cannot accomplish unaided. Their role is the development of one’s strengths and weaknesses, in a manner that will equip one for the arduous tasks which life confronts him. This can be linked to being dependent on one’s parents. It is only when one becomes independent and confronts the world by himself that the individual has passed his initial test and can enter the mature phase of life.

What Actually Takes Place Inside the Mentally Ill?

In Memories, Dreams, Reflections; Carl Jung’s research brought him to the burning question: “What actually takes place inside the mentally ill?”. He writes:

“To my mind, therapy only really begins after the investigation of that wholly personal story. It is the patient’s secret, the rock against which he is shattered. If I know his secret story, I have a key to the treatment… In most cases exploration of the conscious material is insufficient… In therapy the problem is always the whole person, never the symptom alone. We must ask questions which challenge the whole personality.”

Carl Jung: Memories, Dreams Reflections. Chapter IV: Psychiatric Activities

Jung treated many schizophrenic patients, who were considered a lost cause. The paradox of schizophrenia is that there is both a dissolution of the self in the world, but also the dissolution of the world in the self; eternal punishment but divine omnipotence. The patient doubts that it is really him who is thinking his thoughts, “reality” might as well by a train of illusions produced in him by evil scientists. It is the most profound form of self-contradiction, to be both God and a worm.

Jung, however, found out that many people who were diagnosed with schizophrenia actually had ordinary depression as a result of traumas and difficult life experiences that had been repressed.

He tells the story of an 18 year old girl who had been abused at the age of 15. She retreated into isolation and concealed herself from people. She was taken to a mental hospital and remained in a catatonic state. Over the course of many weeks, Jung gradually persuaded her to speak. After overcoming many resistances, she told Jung that she had been living on the moon. She said that she did not like this world and that the moon was beautiful and life there was rich in meaning. He writes:

“As a result of the incest to which she had been subjected as a girl, she felt humiliated in the eyes of the world, but elevated in the realm of fantasy… The consequence was complete alienation from the world, a state of psychosis… She became “extra-mundane”, as it were, and lost contact with humanity. She plunged into cosmic distances, into outer space, where she met with the winged demon… By telling me her story she had in a sense betrayed the demon and attached herself to an earthly human being… Thereafter I regarded the sufferings of the mentally ill in a different light. For I had gained insight into the richness and importance of the inner experiences.”

Carl Jung: Memories, Dreams Reflections. Chapter IV: Psychiatric Activities

Modern Society: Lack of a Tribe

In his book “Tribe”, Sebastian Junger argues that throughout history, humans have had a strong instinct to belong to small groups or “tribes”. These tribes gave people a purpose and understanding of life. However, this tribal connection has been obliterated in modern society.

During the wars with the Indian tribes, many European settlers were taken as prisoners and held within the tribes. After they had a chance to escape and return to their modern society, many refused to do so, they preferred the primitive society over their modern one. On the contrary, not one tribesman wanted to flee to modern society.

We have evolved genetically to live in an interdependent group in order to survive. And this creates equality as everyone plays a necessary role in the tribe. They work 12 hours a week to survive in contrast to the average 40 hours a week that many Westernised societies require. The tribes collaborate for survival, each day they go to hunt and gather and in the evening they return to share the food.

People often believe that modern life with all its efficient technology has allowed for more leisure time. However, the exact opposite is true. Modern life is characterised by a desperate cycle of work, financial obligation and more work – sacrificing personal freedom.

One might argue, however, that modernity has allowed for a sense of independence which primitive man could never have achieved, leading to a sense of freedom – but can also, lead to a feeling of alienation and depression.

We have not yet been genetically adapted to our environment, the enormous changes of agriculture and the industrial revolution have hardly begun to affect our gene pool. In other words, even though we live in more complex societies, we are still hardwired to be hunter-gatherers.

Today, we can be surrounded by a group of people and yet feel completely alone. This is not something we have experienced until quite recently. We are wired to belong to a group where we feel valued by our contributions to it – and without a group, many fall into a sense of meaninglessness.

Sociologist Émile Durkheim first noticed the positive effects of war on mental health. The suicide rate, homicide, and admission to psych wards dropped down. Likewise, in natural disasters, people overwhelmingly devote their energy to the community rather than themselves. Adversity produces pro-social behaviours in which one is likely to abandon his self-interest and sacrifice himself for others, acting as a unified society – sending people back into a more ancient way of life.

Modernity has disrupted the social bonds that has always characterised the human experience. It breeds comfort, allowing people to act selfishly. This shows an increase of mental illness in modern society’s deep lack of a sense of community which the tribe had historically provided us. We have much to learn from our ancestors in this regard.

Modern Society: Psychic Dissociation

“The world hangs on a thin thread. And that is the psyche of man… We are the great danger… How important it is to know something about it, but we know nothing about it.”

Carl Jung, BBC “Face To Face” (1959)

Jung warns us that we are pitifully unaware of our unconscious, we have become too rational and have lost contact with our primitive instincts, leading to a dissociation in the psyche of modern civilisation. He writes:

“Things whose enormity nobody could have imagined in the idyllic harmlessness of the first decade of our country have happened and have turned our world upside down. Ever since, the world has remained in a state of schizophrenia… Modern man does not understand how much his “rationalism” (which has destroyed his capacity to respond to numinous symbols and ideas) has put him at the mercy of the psychic “underworld.” He has freed himself from “superstition” (or so he believes), but in the process he has lost his spiritual values to a positively dangerous degree. His moral and spiritual tradition has disintegrated, and he is now paying the price for this break-up in worldwide disorientation and dissociation.”

Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols. Part I: Approaching The Unconscious: The Role of Symbols

The surface of our world seems to be cleansed of all superstitious and irrational elements, however a realistic picture of the human mind reveals many primitive traits which are still playing their role just as if nothing had happened during the last centuries.

Man feels himself isolated in the cosmos, because he no longer has a deep relation with nature. When a primitive society’s spiritual values are exposed to the impact of modern civilisation, its people lose the meaning of their lives, their social organisation disintegrates, and they themselves morally decay. As Ernest Becker writes:

“Anthropologists have long known that when a tribe of people lose their feeling that their way of life is worthwhile they may stop reproducing, or in large numbers simply lie down and die beside streams full of fish: food is not the primary nourishment of man.”

Ernest Becker, The Birth and Death of Meaning

Unlike primitive man, modern man has lost contact with nature and his relationship with animals and trees through mystical participation. We may have advanced in the outer world, but our inner world is still delicate and fragmentary.

A famous fictional example of the modern dissociation is Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. In the story Jekyll’s split took the form of a physical change, rather than (as in reality) an inner, psychic state. Jung writes:

“We can be possessed and altered by moods, or become unreasonable and unable to recall important facts about ourselves or others… We talk about being able to “control ourselves”, but self-control is a rare and remarkable virtue… there is a world of difference between a conscious decision to split off and temporarily suppress a part of one’s psyche, and a condition in which this happens spontaneously, without one’s knowledge or consent and even against one’s intention. The former is a civilised achievement, the latter a primitive “loss of a soul”, or even a pathological cause of a neurosis.”

Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols, Part I: Approaching the Unconscious: The Importance of Dreams

In order to heal the split in the psyche, Jung tells us to explore our unconscious through self-reflection and dream journaling. We must understand that there are things within us that are beyond our control, which are autonomous personalities.

Here is where we find the vital insights for our lives, and where the primitive aspects that form part of the original mind are preserved as archetypes. Despite our differences, we all share a collective unconscious which adapts itself to the particularities of the individual’s life.

“We have been so busy with the question of what we think that we entirely forgot to ask what the unconscious psyche thinks about us.”

Man and His Symbols, Part I: Approaching the Unconscious: Healing the Split

Mental Illness as a Crisis of Meaning in Modern Society

Modern society has seen a massive spike in mental illness. Why could this be? We will be exploring the characteristics of modernity and associate it with the rise of mental illness.

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Artwork used in the video

Potrait of Dr. Gachet – Vincent van Gogh
A Helping Hand – Carl Owen
An Unconscious Mind – Mazarine Memon
Buffalo Hunt – Amanda Stewart
Caspar David Friedrich – Two Men Contemplating the Moon
Caspar David Frierich – Two Men at Sea
Daniela Riegler – Untitled
Edvard Munch – The Scream
David Matej Goljat – The Crowd no.5
Edvard Munch – Evening on Karl Johan Street
Edvard Munch – Sick Mood at Sunset, Despair
Girl on the Moon – Annica Johnson
James Hoff – The Audience
Jan Matejko – Stańczyk
Just Around the Corner – Frank Kelly Freas
Léon Spilliaert – Self Portrait
Lenore Senior – Man in a Box
Léon Spilliaert – Self Portrait in Mirror
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Poster
Man Attempting to Comprehend his Place in the Universe – Darwin Leon
Mexico city – National Museum of Anthropology Huichol Art
Martin Packford – Trafalgar Crowd
Nighthawks – Edward Hopper
Paul Cézanne – The Drinker
Perseus Freeing Andromeda – Peter Paul Rebens
Praying in the Garden – Kip Decker
Reading of Voltaire’s Tragedy of the Orphan of China – Lemonnier
Society is a Burden, Individuality is a Freedom – Ram Patil
Sisyphus – Franz Stuck
Technology – Leon Zernitsky
The Fight – St George kills the Dragon – Edward Burne Jones
Vincent van Gogh – Ward in the Hospital in Arles
One Destination So Many Paths – Username465
Where Do We Come From What Are We Where Are We Going – Paul Gauguin
Over the Abyss of Spiritual Darkness – Elizabeth Wang

Nihilism – Friedrich Nietzsche’s Warning to The World

“What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism… For some time now, our whole European culture has been moving as toward a catastrophe, with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that wants to reach the end, that no longer reflects, that is afraid to reflect.”

 Nietzsche, The Will to Power, Preface, 2

Nietzsche provided the first detailed diagnosis of nihilism as a widespread phenomenon of Western culture. There are various forms of nihilism: epistemological (in which knowledge does not exist or is unattainable for man), cosmic (where the cosmos is distinctly hostile or indifferent to humanity), moral (that no morality or ethics exists whatsoever), etc.

Nietzsche was concerned primarily with existential nihilism – which encapsulates all forms of nihilism since it posits that life as a whole has no intrinsic meaning or value.

However, Nietzsche thinks that we are always in a process of valuing. It would be virtually unrecognisable as a human form of life for us to exist completely without valuing. His central concern on nihilism is what people take to be valuable. He thinks valuing something is better than not valuing anything. But it is not sufficient to escape nihilism that one values something in a committed way. It also matters what one values. Nihilism consists in an inability to find value and meaning in the higher aspects of this life and world. It empties the world and purpose of human existence. Nietzsche defines nihilism as:

“the radical repudiation of value, meaning, and desirability”

 Nietzsche, Will to Power, Book I: European Nihilism

The problem of nihilism becomes especially explicit in Nietzsche’s posthumously published work: The Will to Power, an anthology of selections from his notebooks. However, these notebooks should be considered with caution since they were not ideas that he himself published and must be viewed carefully with the work he published during his lifetime.

There are various manifestations of nihilism for Nietzsche throughout his works, which we can classify as: nihilism as despair, nihilism as disorientation and nihilism as lack of higher values.

Nihilism as Despair

Nietzsche associates nihilism as despair with Schopenhauer and Buddhism.

The Schopenhauerian nihilist maintains strong value commitments which say that suffering is extremely bad. The world contains a great predominance of suffering over pleasure, we are perpetually buffeted between the unpleasant states of pain and boredom. The little respite we receive is fleeting. Existence is bad, and it would be better for us never to have come into being.

Likewise, the Buddhist condemns existence and seeks to detach himself from it, they seek to liberate themselves from the cycle of aimless drifting in mundane existence, while Nietzsche believes that one should remain faithful to the earth.

Nihilism as Disorientation

Nihilism as disorientation is associated with Christianity. The Christian is not a despairing nihilist, for he is reassured by the possibility of a heavenly redemption. Christianity is an antidote to the despair of meaninglessness. Heaven is the most valuable place in the world, it is the salvation of man, the entry into the kingdom of God, a source of eternal bliss and peace.

The disorientation is best seen in Nietzsche’s famous parable of the madman:

“What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing?… God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement? What sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”

Nietzsche, The Gay Science, §125

Nietzsche acted as the seismograph that detected the great earthquake caused by the death of God. Nietzschean scholar Walter Kaufmann writes:

“[Nietzsche] felt the agony, the suffering, and the misery of a godless world so intensely, at a time when others were yet blind to its tremendous consequence, that he was able to experience in advance, as it were, the fate of a coming generation.”

Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, Part I: “The Death of God and the Revaluation”

The melancholic proclamation of the death of God is the result of religion having been the purpose and meaning of life of humanity for millennia, but being undermined by the Age of Enlightenment brought about by scientific rationality. Science shows us that we should remain sceptical about the idea of an afterlife, it shows our smallness in the cosmos, that we are the product of evolution, of an accidental birth in the flux of becoming and perishing.

He writes:

“For why has the advent of nihilism become necessary? Because the values we have had hitherto thus draw their final consequence; because nihilism represents the ultimate logical conclusion of our great values and ideals—because we must experience nihilism before we can find out what value these “values” really had.— We require, sometime, new values.”

Nietzsche, The Will to Power, Preface, 4

When we find out that the world does not possess the objective value or meaning that we want it to have or have long since believed it to have, we find ourselves in a crisis. For the Christian, there is no God to guide us, recompense us for suffering, grant us meaning.

Christianity had thus built a self-destructive tool. It is a lower form of nihilism, but nihilism, nonetheless. The end of Christianity lies at the hands of its own morality (which cannot be replaced), in the sense of truthfulness that is nauseated by the falseness of all Christian interpretations of the world and of history. We have outgrown Christianity not because we lived too far from it, rather because we lived too close. Christianity was an interpretation that posited itself as the interpretation, Nietzsche believes that this dissolution leads beyond scepticism to a distrust of all meaning.

It is based on the error of placing the highest values as the first ones, rather than the last ones:

“The last, the thinnest, the emptiest is posited as the first, as a cause in itself, as ens realissimum [the most real being]…”

Twilight of the Idols, Chapter 4: “Reason” in Philosophy

As such, the highest values are in fact the emptiest values. Nietzsche tells us to start from the bottom, focusing our attention on this life and building up from there.

The Christian is a nihilist in disorientation because he is failing to respond favourably to the most important values associated with this life and world. His energy instead remains invested in the collapsing Christian worldview. It is a matter of not being able to find this life and world valuable. He writes:

“The ‘apparent’ world is the only one: the ‘true world’ has only been lyingly added…”

Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols: Chapter 4: “Reason” in Philosophy

To escape nihilism—which seems involved both in asserting the existence of God and thus robbing this world of ultimate significance, and also in denying God and thus robbing everything of meaning and value—that is Nietzsche’s greatest and most persistent problem.

Ascetic Ideal as Nihilistic

Those who follow Schopenhauer, Buddhism and Christianity are all under the influence of the ascetic ideal, which Nietzsche describes in his Genealogy of Morals. The ascetic has historically renounced his earthly pleasures in favour of a self-denying and abstinent life, living in:

“poverty, humility and chastity.”

Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, Essay III: What is the Meaning of Ascetic Ideals? §8

This is a means for dealing with exhaustion and disgust with life, and gives meaning to one’s suffering, staving off nihilism.

However, Nietzsche argues that it brings a more venomous suffering into earthly existence, this world is to be transcended and is a mere bridge to another existence. In other words, Nietzsche does not devalue the ascetic ideal, for any meaning is better than no meaning. He observes, however, that it is still a form of nihilism insofar as it is a “will to nothingness”, a will opposed to life.

All of Nietzsche’s work has one important theme: life affirmation. This is his main focus. He wrote for a minority, hence the subtitle of Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “A Book for All and None.”

Nihilism as Lack of Higher Values

Finally we have nihilism as a lack of higher values, represented by the “last man”, one who is conformist, mediocre and perfectly happy to be virtually the same as everyone else, they simply do what others do. They are the mass men who seem very satisfied with their lowly comforts. Nietzsche describes him in Thus Spoke Zarathustra:

“Alas, the time is coming when man will no longer give birth to a star. Alas, the time of the most despicable man is coming, he that is no longer able to despise himself. Behold, I show you the last man. “What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?” Thus asks the last man, and he blinks. The earth has become small, and on it hops the last man, who makes everything small. His race is as ineradicable as the flea-beetle, the last man lives longest. “We have invented happiness”, say the last men, and they blink. They have left the regions where it was hard to live, for one needs warmth. One still loves one’s neighbour and rubs against him, for one needs warmth… One still works, for work is a form of entertainment. But one is careful lest the entertainment be too harrowing. One no longer becomes poor or rich: both require too much exertion… Who still wants to rule? Who obey? Both require too much exertion. “We have invented happiness”, say the last men, and they blink.”

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Zarathustra’s Prologue

The “last man” has adjusted his standards so far downward, that they are able to be met easily. He is under a woolly blanket, snuggled by the fireplace, drinking his instant cocoa with miniature marshmallows from his ‘Life is Good’TM mug, thinking this is as good as life can get.

The last man does focus on this life but on the lowest values, his culture is that of entertainment. Does this warm satisfaction mean that he is not nihilistic? By Nietzsche’s lights, absolutely not. Nietzsche wants us to think of such as person as the very worst form of the condition of nihilism.

Yet what is nihilistic about the “last man” is neither despair nor disorientation. It is rather, his failure to appreciate and attach himself to the most important values – he blinks in the face of the star, he finds nothing worthwhile where there is something profoundly worthwhile. He is content with the meagre “happiness” he has “invented” and he lacks worthy higher goals.

In summary, we have: nihilism as despair (Schopenhauer and Buddhism), nihilism as disorientation (Christianity) and nihilism as a lack of the higher values of life (the last man).

This account offers a historical trajectory of nihilism, and why things are getting worse in the descent toward the “last man”. Christianity valued lives in which one was devoted to more than just animal satisfaction, lives in which something that could give meaning to existence was sought. In their way, Schopenhauerianism and Buddhism played this role as well, in valuing (however perversely) a saintly form of life-negation as the highest condition of human life. These views are still nihilistic, but at least they contain acknowledgement of the need for higher values, however misguided they may be.

With the “last man” the highest values have no value at all, they make everything small and live mediocre lives, in contrast to Nietzsche’s idea of the higher man or the Übermensch, who affirms life in its entirety.

However all these nihilists have something in common. They are people who have become detached from what is most valuable. These higher values come from hard-won achievement and experiences of struggle and striving. Sometimes this causes people to want to escape human existence since it is so difficult, which can take the form of life-negation or even worse, indifference to all of the most important values, even to such things as human excellence, creativity and beauty.

According to Nietzsche, the world surrounding us matters more than any beyond, and is the locus of such higher values, yet for the most of the past two thousand years of human history, we haven’t been able to appreciate this.

In a beautiful Nietzschean turn of phrase in one of his letters, Austrian poet Rilke writes:

“Not until we can make the abyss our dwelling-place will the paradise we have sent on ahead of us turn around and will everything deeply and fervently of the here-and-now, which the Church embezzled for the Beyond, come back to us; then all the angels will decide, singing praises, in favour of the earth.”

Rilke, Letter to Ilse Jahr, 22 Feb 1923

This is the life-affirming perspective Nietzsche wants to shift us toward, or to remind us to cherish. Some will not be able to bear this, and life-negating nihilism will, ironically, be more conducive to their continued happiness and survival. But to those of us who can shift, or have shifted, this is our pagan salvation.

Active Nihilism and Passive Nihilism

Apart from the forms of nihilism discussed, Nietzsche distinguishes between two formal types of nihilism in The Will to Power:

“Nihilism. It is ambiguous: A. Nihilism as a sign of increased power of the spirit: as active nihilism. B. Nihilism as decline and recession of the power of the spirit: as passive nihilism.”

The Will To Power, Book I: European Nihilism, 22

Nietzsche associates passive nihilism with the ascetic ideal and the systems of thought that are built on it (Schopenhauerianism, Buddhism, Christianity).

Active nihilism, on the other hand, is associated to the construction of a new meaning after being faced with the destruction of all value and meaning, such as with the event of the Death of God. Nietzsche views this as a sign of strength, instead of succumbing and resigning like the passive nihilist, the active nihilist seeks to replace the old values and overcome the condition of nihilism, he is a strong individual who posits his own values as an independent creator. Nietzsche, however, did not call this person an active nihilist, Nietzsche calls this person the Übermensch, one who is not afraid to gaze into the abyss, one who after going through nihilism, overcomes it and affirms life.

Nihilism and Modern Man

We may encounter meaninglessness in our life when faced with the loss of what was most meaningful for us: this can be the death of a loved one, the loss a job, a natural disaster destroying our home, etc. The danger arises when one is so attached that one becomes passively stuck in this state of mind, the end result of which is that life is not worth living, and that it is better to end it. Nietzsche tells us that we must actively fight it and overcome it, which is by no means an easy task.

Nietzsche attacked the value problem that stares our generation in the face – the dilemma that haunts modern man and threatens our civilisation:

“The end of the moral interpretation of the world, which no longer has any sanction after it has tried to escape into some beyond, leads to nihilism. “Everything lacks meaning”… Since Copernicus man has been rolling from the centre toward “x” … What does nihilism mean? That the highest values devaluate themselves. The goal is lacking; the answer is lacking to our ‘Why?’”

The Will to Power, Book I: European Nihilism

Modern man finds that his values are worthless, that his ends do not give his life any purpose, and that his pleasures do not give him happiness. Nietzsche’s basic problem is whether we can find new values in this world; whether a new goal can be found that will give an aim to human life.

In the present age, nihilism has been diverted into more secular alternatives to give meaning to one’s life, such as, the participation in mass movements. People who do not know what to do with their lives can fall into passive nihilism which can lead to conformism (risking falling into the last man) or totalitarianism, a need for destruction, which was taken to the extreme in the 20th century and lead to two world wars, the consequences of which have forever scarred humanity.

Is Nietzsche a Nihilist?

Many mistake Nietzsche as a nihilist because of his destruction of the values mankind had preserved for millennia, he wanted to expose the false values through “philosophising with a hammer”, not to smash but rather gently tap the idols in order to receive that hollow sound which speaks of false and empty ideas of gods that we idolise. Nietzsche did this because he saw nihilism as an inevitability. He writes:

“what is falling, that one should also push!”

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, III, 12

Since the old values are already collapsing one should help to speed up the process and replace the old values with new ones as soon as possible. He is therefore not a nihilist, he rather wants to overcome it by means of a “revaluation of all values”. This new table of values contains life-affirmation, with concepts such as the Übermensch, the Will to Power, the Eternal Recurrence.

Overcoming Nihilism

The Übermensch is meant to be the solution to nihilism, by conquering it, he is the meaning we should give to our lives. He overflows with strength and well-being. He is the meaning of the earth. Nietzsche tells us to remain faithful to earth and focus on maximising our potential in this life, to prioritise our body above everything else. Only the Übermensch can accept the eternal recurrence, the idea that we’d have to experience the same life for eternity. This is the heaviest weight that closes the gap of nihilism which only the Übermensch could accept, as he is the highest life-affirmer, who loves his fate.

“My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity.”

Nietzsche, Ecce Homo: On the Genealogy of Morals

And finally the will to power is to be master of oneself, which requires the greatest increase of power over oneself. It is the lifelong journey of self-realisation, of becoming who one is. Happiness is the feeling associated to overcoming resistances and suffering, which gives way to an increase of power. Thus, the will to power and the eternal recurrence carve the path for the Übermensch, who is the happiest person and the meaning and justification of existence.

Nihilism – Friedrich Nietzsche’s Warning to The World

Friedrich Nietzsche provided the first detailed diagnosis of nihilism as a widespread phenomenon of Western culture and warns the world of its consequences.

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Artwork used in the video

Melancholy – Edvard Munch
Two Men Contemplating the Moon – Caspar David Friedrich
The Smokers – Adriaen Brower
Men Smoking and Drinking in a Tavern – David Teniers
Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog – Caspar David Friedrich
Moonrise Over the Sea – Caspar David Friedrich
Two Men at Sea – Caspar David Friedrich – Two Men at Sea
Alter Ego – Catali
Evening on Karl Johan Street – Edvard Munch
Golgotha – Edvard Munch
Lonely Hunter – Elena Vargas
Painter in his Studio – François Boucher
Friedrich Nietzsche – Edvard Munch
Saint Peter Penitent – Guercino
Hourglass – Mila Moroko
The Audience – James Hoff
Jesus is our Bridge to Heaven – Elizabeth Wang
Diogenes Searching for an Honest Man – Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein
Cry of the Masses – Josef Váchal
Self Potrait in Mirror – Léon Spilliaert
Dark to Light – Lourry Legarde
Nighthawks – Edward Hopper
Nietzsche – John Ambrose
Sunrise Long Beach NJ – Sanford Robinson Gifford
Road to Heaven – Wayne Pascall
Dreams of Earth and Sky – Robbert Dijkgraaf
Stars Archer – Roberto Weigand
The Tightrope Walker – Roberto Weigand
Stairway to Heaven – Myrna Robinson
Stairway to Heaven – Izzy Karriker
Sunlight on Brownstones – Edward Hopper
The Attributes of Science – Jean Baptise Simeon
The Penitent Saint Jerome – Titian
Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette – Vincent van Gogh
Blind Man in Belsen – Alan Moore
Victory of Christianity over Paganism – Johann Evangelist Holzer