“I was turning exactly into the person I was…. I’m a man of many parts.”[1]
Willie Nelson
“Man can suffer only a certain amount of culture without injury.”[2]
Carl Jung
“The ‘integrity of the personality’ must be preserved at all costs.”[3]
Carl Jung
“That is our only hope – to get back to a condition where we are right with nature. We must fulfill our destiny according to nature’s laws…”[4]
Carl Jung
“… the process of individuation has always been appreciated as the most valuable and important thing in life. It is the only thing that brings any lasting satisfaction to a man. Power, glory, wealth, mean nothing in comparison. These things are external and therefore futile. The really important things are within. It is more important to me that I am happy than that I have the external reason for happiness. Rich people should be happy, but often they are not, they are bored to death; therefore it is ever so much better for a man to work to produce an inner condition that gives him an inner happiness.”[5]
Carl Jung
“He establishes a consciousness which is aware of the main value of the constituents of his personality. Merely a change in consciousness. It looks like nothing, but it is the most important thing….Now he will know that each constituent has such and such an importance and give it due consideration. What is disturbing him will now come in under its own name. That is a guarantee of a relative smoothness of functioning. He will function much better in the future.”[6]
Carl Jung
Occasionally, an article catches my attention that illustrates Carl Jung’s wisdom, and so it was in my reading of a piece on Willie Nelson and his unique personal style.[7] In this essay, I will begin with a capsule summary of Willie’s life and the key changes he made in it, then discuss Jung’s ideas of individuation and authenticity, and conclude with how Jung might have reacted to Willie’s life and transformation.
A Brief Synopsis of Willie Nelson’s Life
Willie Nelson was born in 1933 in Abbott, Texas, and raised by his grandparents, as his mother left soon after he was born and his father remarried and moved away.[8] His grandparents taught singing and Willie sang gospel songs at the local church. His grandfather bought him his first guitar when he was six and taught him a few chords. Willie wrote his first song at age 7, and when he was nine he played the guitar for the local band Bohemian Polka.
The family was not rich, and earned money picking cotton, but Willie did not like picking cotton, so he earned money from the age of 13 by singing in dance halls, taverns and honky-tonks, working as a relief telephone operator, a tree-trimmer for the local electric company, and pawn shop employee. In his late teens and early 20’s, Willie earned money as a bouncer at a nightclub, a saddle maker, a tree-trimmer, and an auto-parts salesman. He got into martial arts, and kept at it throughout his life. In 1955 he got a job as a disc jockey at a radio station, where he made the first recordings of his music, using the station’s equipment.
Music clearly was Willie’s calling, what had purchase on his soul. But music is one of the “glamour professions,” suited only to those hardy, adaptable and determined people willing to live in what Nassim Taleb calls “Extremistan.”[9] Unlike “Mediocristan,” with its 9-to-5 schedule, regular paychecks, 401K retirement plans and predictable conditions, Extremistan means erratic job opportunities, years of poverty, periods of prosperity followed by droughts testing one’s resourcefulness and commitment to one’s creative purpose. The years from 1956 to 1972 were Willie’s years in Extremistan, when he hung around the Nashville music scene, teaching music and writing songs, while seeking a label which would sign him.[10]
It seemed like things were turning around when the song he wrote, Crazy, sung by Patsy Cline, became a big jukebox hit.[11] In August of 1961, Liberty Records signed him up, and he made several successful singles in the next two years, netting him enough income to buy a ranch outside Nashville in 1963.[12] In the Fall of 1964 he moved to RCA Victor, signing a contract for $10,000 a year, and six months later he recorded his first album. In that same year (1965), he joined the Grand Ole Opry. In 1967 he formed his backing band and they recorded singles over the next four years that consistently reached the top 25. He invested the royalties from these creations into tours, but by 1970, these were not producing significant profits.
Such middling success did not impress the Nashville corporate bean-counters, with their conservative tastes and expectations. Willie was discontent[13]–with his handlers and also with his second wife, Shirley Collie; they separated, and then his ranch burned down.[14]
Willie took the loss of the ranch as a sign–time for a change! He moved to Austin, Texas, married Connie Koepke in 1971, signed with Atlantic Records in 1973, and proceeded to reinvent himself, i.e. he refused to adhere to the corporate ethos and determined to live true to his own tastes.[15] The result was his move into “outlaw country”[16] music, and the switch brought major hits, e.g. Shotgun Willie and Phases and Stages, two albums that announced to the world that Willie was now marching to his own drummer. (He used the term “it cleared his throat.”[17]) The 1975 critically acclaimed hit Redheaded Stranger confirmed that outlaw country music was what resonated with the public.[18]
His new style led Willie to link up with other “outlaw” singers, e.g. Waylon Jennings, as well as with Johnny Cash and Toby Keith.[19] He also got into charitable activities, raising funds via benefit concerts for Public Broadcasting Stations in the South, setting up and donating concert proceeds to Farm Aid, tsunami relief (2005), the Japanese earthquake victims (2011), those who suffered financial loss from the pandemic lockdown (2020) and support for the Last Prisoner Project, a restorative justice program for persons convicted of cannabis-related crimes.[20]
Befitting his “outlaw” identity, defying conventions in behavior and appearance, Willie established his own brand of marijuana (Willy’s reserve) and made plans to open chain stores in the states where weed was legalized.[21] He got behind in his taxes and fell into trouble repeatedly with the IRS.[22] He was arrested multiple times in the South for marijuana possession, and he publicly advocated for the LGBT movement.[23] He appeared multiple times at the White House in his signature outfit of bandana, jeans and long braided hair.[24] He began to refer to himself as the “cosmic cowboy,”[25] with his unique country music blending jazz, pop, blues, rock and folk, challenging musical conventions with its behind-the-beat style and off-center phrasing.[26] Audiences came to love him.
Willie Nelson is an American icon, with a street named after him in Austin,[27] induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame, and the National Agricultural Hall of Fame. In 1998 he received honors at the Kennedy Center; in 2015 he won the Gershwin Prize of the Library of Congress; in 2018, the Texas Institute of Letters inducted him for his songwriting, and Rolling Stone included him in its lists of 100 greatest singers and guitarists. He has appeared in eleven films, twelve television shows, has published eight books, and has 46 top-10 albums on the country charts, and the Grand Master of the Korean martial arts presented him with a fifth-degree black belt in 2014.[28] When Willie described himself as “a man of many parts,”[29] that surely was an understatement!
Jung on Individuation and Authenticity
Jung defined “individuation” as “a process of differentiation, having for its goal the development of the individual personality. Individuation is a natural necessity inasmuch as” it prevents “a leveling down to collective standards [which] is injurious to the vital activity of the individual…. Any serious check to individuality, therefore, is an artificial stunting.”[30]
Jung was clear that this “differentiation” requires courage and daring–
“… a daring which never leaves the firm ground of the real and the possible, and which shrinks from no suffering…”.[31] Jung understood that it takes courage to stand against the crowd, to refuse to “dissolve in the featureless flow of unconscious community life”[32]–a life which poses “deadly peril to [one’s] soul.”[33] And not everyone manages to summon the independence of mind and gut courage to defy conventions, and ignore all the voices full of “shoulds” and “oughts” in order to do one’s own thing.
In his set of definitions in his study of psychological types, Jung went on to note that
Individuation is always to some extent opposed to collective norms, since it means separation and differentiation from the general and a building up of the particular–…a particular that… is already ingrained in the psychic constitution. The opposition to the collective norm, however, is only apparent, since closer examination shows that the individual standpoint is not antagonistic to it, but only differently oriented.[34]
“Differently oriented” does not mean the person is into individualism. Jung took pains to stress the vast difference between individuation and individualism. He considered individualism (“Looking out for #1,” with all the selfish disregard for the needs and concerns of others that implies) as “pathological and inimical to life. It has, accordingly, nothing to do with individuation,…”[35] The brave person committed to soul growth and loyalty to his/her personal truth will take up the challenge of individuating, and, in the process enrich his/her conscious life.,[36] while simultaneously achieving “a collective value.”[37]
As valuable, in Jung’s estimation, as individuation is authenticity, or genuineness. Jung knew how often through life we have to compromise, adapt, even, in extreme cases, betray our true nature by developing a mask, aka the “persona,” i.e. dressing in ways uncomfortable for us or acting in a way contrary to our true nature. The process of individuation requires getting wise to this mask–that is, we have to face the fact that for years (if not decades) we have been living a lie.[38] And then we have to give up this lie, put down the mask and begin to change our life so as to live more aligned with our authentic being. Such change almost inevitably elicits remarks (maybe even ostracism), which is another reason why individuation and authenticity require courage and independence of mind.
Power and insight derive from individuation and authenticity. When we “have our act together,” and we “walk our talk,” we manifest a level of power that transcends the low level of power as our culture defines it: power as status, with lots of money, the corner office, the private jet, the ability to fire people. That power is external, hence it can be lost. True power is internal, deriving from spiritual growth, moral integrity, and personal authenticity.[39] It can never be lost, and Willie Nelson has true power.
Jung on Willie’s Story
Born in 1875, Carl Jung was 58 when Willie was born, and Willie was still in the hardscrabble years of Extremistan when Jung died in 1961.[40] In my 39 years of Jungian research, I have never come across a mention of Willie Nelson in Jung’s writings, but there are many ways in which Willie’s life parallels Jung’s or provides examples of Jung’s ideas.
Both Jung and Willie Nelson started out in life, as is the case with most young people, functioning under the supervision or toeing the line in relation to superiors, as they learned their trade. In Jung’s case, he fretted over having to deal with Eugen Bleuler and the demands of the Burghölzli Clinic,[41] while Willie found it frustrating to follow the dictates of the music executives who thought they knew how musicians were to act, dress and perform.[42] This subordinate position led both men to act in ways contrary to their own nature. It was only when Jung left the clinic and set up his own practice, and Willie left the Nashville scene in his move to Austin, that both were able to regain a sense of personal agency and freedom to set their own course, to be and act as they felt was conformable to their own nature.[43]
How did Jung and Willie do this? By following their instincts.[44] For both, intuitive guidance and a sure sense of what was right for them–as opposed to what the outer culture expected–was how they chose to live, even when this meant risk. In Jung’s case, given the enormous wealth of his wife, the risk was minimal, but he had few patients initially. Willie Nelson took a much bigger risk in defying the Nashville music establishment and leaving the area with no reliable income stream.
“Getting right with nature”[45] mattered to both Jung and Willie–“nature” in the dual sense of caring for the outer environment, and inwardly, in living in alignment with one’s personal tastes and preferences. Both men repeatedly spoke and acted in ways that reflected their concern for the environment and animals (dogs, for Jung,[46] horses and biofuels,[47] for Willie), while they also respected their own personal sense of self in their simple, casual dress and comportment. Neither tried to put on airs, or got hung up on persona issues. They both also shared the belief in the power of thinking, and how what we choose to think about or dwell on can impact our level of energy and well-being.[48]
One of the leitmotifs of Jung’s psychology and lifestyle was the task of “holding the tension of opposites,”[49] which would eventually result in transcending of the polarities. I doubt that Willie Nelson was aware of Heraclitus, the concept of the enantiodromia, or the transcendent function, but his “outlaw country movement”[50] did result in the transcendence of polarities, as the media noticed in 2015, when Willie was honored as the winner of the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, and both Kevin McCarthy and Nancy Pelosi attended the ceremony.[51] Reporters noted how “Mr. Nelson is the only person who can bring Democrats and Republicans together in the nation’s capital.”[52] Willie’s co-author, Turk Pipkin, noted his ability to “unite the hippies and the rednecks.”[53]
Both men had/have the courage of their convictions, Jung in breaking with Freud and thereby cutting his ties with many in the nascent discipline of psychiatry, Willie in striking out on his own with “radical acts” (like wearing his hair in braids).[54] Both also recognized how culture can be injurious,[55] Jung in both his dress and writings, Willie in his dress and comportment.
Willie lived what Jungian analyst Lionel Corbett called “the developmental imperative,”[56] when he took the destruction of his Tennessee ranch as a sign that change was needed. Willie’s change of location accompanied a metanoia, or change of attitude,[57] in his decision to ignore the dictates of the record executives and do what felt right. Jung would applaud his decision, interpreting it as Willie’s intuitive knowing that he had to fulfill his destiny.
Conclusion
Were Carl Jung alive today and aware of Willie Nelson, I think he would regard him as an exemplar of living true to one’s self. As a life goal Jung felt was imperative, he would likely resonate with the life choices and changes Willie made over the course of his long life. Like Jung, Willie Nelson’s authenticity meant he transcended the boundaries our society sets in terms of dress, behavior, creativity, and politics.[58] The “cosmic cowboy”[59] and the Swiss psychiatrist offer us examples of what it means to be authentic and engage with life with integrity and independence.
Bibliography
Bair, Deirdre (2003), Jung: A Biography. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.
Brome, Vincent (1978), Jung. New York: Atheneum.
Corbett, Lionel (1987), “Transformation of the God Image Leading to Self-Initiation into Old Age,” Betwixt and Between, ed. Louise Mahdi, Steven Foster & Meredith Little. LaSalle IL: Open Court
Hagberg, Janet (1984), Real Power. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
Hawkins, David (2002), Power vs. Force. Carlsbad CA: Hay House.
Jung, C.G. (1971), Psychological Types. Collected Works, 6. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1966), Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. Collected Works, 7. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1960), The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. Collected Works, 8. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1970), Civilization in Transition. Collected Works, 10. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (19 69), Psychology and Religion, West and East. Collected Works, 11. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1954), The Practice of Psychotherapy. Collected Works, 16. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1984), Seminar on Dream Analysis. Princeton: Princeton Univerity Press.
Kurutz, Steven (2023), “Willie Nelson’s Style Crosses Boundaries,” The New York Times (December 31, 2023), ST3.
Taleb, Nassim (2007), The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. New York: Random House.
[1] Quoted in Kurutz (2023), ST 3.
[2] Collected Works, 7 ¶41. Hereafter Collected Works will be abbreviated CW.
[3] Ibid., ¶50.
[4] Jung (1984), 37.
[5] Ibid., 289.
[6] Ibid., 455.
[7] This is Steven Kurutz’ article “Willie Nelson’s Style Crosses Boundaries,” which appeared in The New York Times on December 31st, 2023, in the Styles section, ST 3.
[8] This biographical information I drew from the Internet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Nelson
[9] Taleb (2007), 26, 215-228.
[10] Kurutz (2023), ST3.
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Nelson
[12] Ibid.
[13] Kurutz (2023), ST3.
[14] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Nelson, and Kurutz (2023), ST3.
[15] Kurutz (2023), ST3.
[16] Ibid.
[17] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Nelson
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Ibid.,
[22] For failure to file and pay taxes due; ibid.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Kurutz (2023), ST3.
[25] Ibid.
[26] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Nelson
[27] Ibid.
[28] Ibid.
[29] Quoted in Kurutz (2023), ST3.
[30] CW 6 ¶s757-758.
[31] CW 11 ¶550.
[32] CW 16 ¶124.
[33] Ibid.
[34] CW 6 ¶761.
[35] Ibid. ¶761.
[36] Ibid. ¶762.
[37] CW 7 ¶504.
[38] CW, 7, ¶310.
[39] Cf. Hageberg (1984) and Hawkins (2002).
[40] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Nelson, and Bair (2003), 623.
[41] Bair (2003), 106, 149-150.
[42] Kurutz (2023), ST3.
[43] Ibid. and Bair (2003), 150.
[44] Kurutz (2023), ST3, and CW 10 ¶679.
[45] Jung (1984), 37.
[46] Brome (1978), 63.
[47] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Nelson
[48] Cf. Willie’s latest book, Energy Follows Thought, (Kurutz (2023), ST3) and CW 6 ¶594.
[49] CW 8 ¶111.
[50] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Nelson
[51] Kurutz (2023), ST3.
[52] Quote from The Texas Tribune; ibid., ST3.
[53] Kurutz (2023), ST3.
[54] Ibid.
[55] CW 7 ¶41.
[56] Corbett (1987), 373.
[57] Jung (1984), 455.
[58] Kurutz (2023), ST3.
[59] Ibid.
