Jung

Though I have not digested any of the above resources, and know very little about Jung in general, I thought it was worth adding these two resources which deal in an aspect of Jung which is less pleasant.

First, the 1988 paper by Farhad Dalal in the British Journal of Psychotherapy titled Jung: A Racist, or, alternatively in a copy I have, The Racism of Jung. Several months back I read approximately the first two fifths of this paper, and it is very cogent. I might yet finish it. I am unable to locate from where I first downloaded it but an equivalent free copy (though whether it is a violation of copyright I am not sure) seems at present to be available from here: https://jungstudies.net/wp-content/uploa...Racist.pdf

Thanks for posting that link. It's interesting, and I don't say there's no truth at all in it, but it strikes me as polemic rather objective scholarship. It seems obvious that many of what the author portrays as distinctions between races are essentially distinctions between cultures, particularly between "civilised" and "primitive" cultures. Even in what the author quotes there are several indications of this - the example of a modern Swiss man behaving in a primitive way by enacting Easter rituals, the description of Africans being "just about in the Homeric age," the concept of a white man "going black" when in Africa, "even though the best blood may run in his veins," and this passage:

"... somewhere you are the same as the negro or the Chinese or whoever you live with, you are all just human beings. In the collective unconscious you are the same as a man of another race, you have the same archetypes, just as you have, like him, eyes, a heart, a liver, and so on. It does not matter that his skin is black. It matters to a certain extent, sure enough -he probably has a whole historical layer less than you. The different strata of the mind correspond to the history of the races."

From which it seems clear enough that he is talking about the influence of history, not biology as the author claims on the previous page. There's a more objective and nuanced discussion of Jung's thinking about race and the psyche here, which reaches very different conclusions from Dalal's:
https://books.google.com/books?id=ObZeDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT86

[Laird]

it strikes me as polemic rather objective scholarship.

I'm surprised by this assessment. There is the odd (and, in context, understandable) bitter ironical comment in the piece, but other than that its scholarship seems solidly objective.

From which it seems clear enough that he is talking about the influence of history, not biology as the author claims on the previous page.

Though, according to quotes the author shares from Jung, the one leads to the other, so the premise that "inferior primitivity" is an outcome of biology is not just compatible with the premise that that inferior primitivity is an outcome of history, but implied by it. See this quote, emphasis mine:

The child is born with a definite brain, and the brain of an English child will not work like that of an Australian black fellow but in the way of a modern English person. The brain is born with a finished structure, it will work in the modern way, but this brain has its history. It has been built up in the course of millions of years and represents a history of which it is a result.

here's a more objective and nuanced discussion of Jung's thinking about race and the psyche here

Here's where my reaction to purportedly "objective" scholarship is that it is... not so objective. This piece strikes me instead as one of apologetics. It purports that Jung implied no value judgements against other races, yet look at what Jung wrote according to quotes supplied by Dalal (emphasis mine):

What is more contagious than to live side by side with a rather primitive people? Go to Africa and see what happens. When it is so obvious that you stumble over it, you call it going black. But when it is not so obvious it is explained as ’the sun’ ... It is much easier for us Europeans to be a trifle immoral, or at least a bit, because we do not have to maintain the moral standard against the heavy downward pull of primitive life. The inferior man has a tremendous pull because he fascinates the inferior layers of our psyche

And (emphasis again mine):

Even today, the European, however highly developed, cannot live with impunity among the Negroes of Africa; their psychology goes into him unnoticed and unconsciously he becomes a Negro. There is no fighting against it. In Africa there is a well-known technical expression for this: ’going black’. It is no mere snobbery that the English should consider anyone born in the colonies, even though the best blood may run in his veins, ’slightly inferior’. There are facts to support this view

In other words, "primitive" non-Europeans, especially black Africans, are "inferior" and "immoral"; they "pull" us, as "highly developed" people whose blood is "best", "downwards". It is not tenable to cast this in non-racist terms, yet that is exactly what this author attempts to do with Jung's views: to contend that they are not racist.

Laird

I'm very surprised by your opinion of the relative merits of those two discussions - and if anyone is inclined to take Dalal at face value I think they should read Lewin - but obviously we'll have to agree to differ.

Cat Ward has a new blog post entitled "Carl Jung and the Unexplained - Part 1." So far, it concentrates on his personal paranormal experiences as a young man, rather than his thinking about them:
https://www.catintheshadows.com/blog/car...ned-part-1