Sue Mehrtens is the author of this and all the other blog essays on this site. The opinions expressed in these essays are her own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of other Jungian Center faculty or Board members. Honesty, as well as professional courtesy, require that you give proper attribution to the author if you post this essay elsewhere.
Jung on Politics
“From time to time there passes as it were a wave of frenzy through the ranks of men too long constrained…”
Jung (1943)[1]
“… politics are but the forerunners of a far deeper religious convulsion.”
Jung (1943)[2]
“… mankind always stands on the brink of actions it performs itself but does not control. The whole world wants peace and the whole world prepares for war… Mankind is powerless against mankind,… if we step through the door of the shadow we discover with terror that we are the objects of unseen factors. To know this is decidedly unpleasant, for nothing is more disillusioning than the discovery of our own inadequacy….”
Jung (1954)[3]
“In a politically poisoned and overheated atmosphere the sane and dispassionate… discussion of… important problems has become well-night impossible….”
Jung (1936)[4]
“There is no reason and no diplomacy that will effectively deal with Russia because there is an elementary drive in her (as was the case with Hitler!).
Jung (1949)[5]
“The Christian Middle Ages withstood the first Asiatic wave and the second (the Turks). Now the world is confronted with the third. The great danger is that we are not up to our own spiritual problem like old Rome. Technology and ‘social welfare’ provide nothing to overcome our spiritual stagnation, and they give us no answer to our spiritual dissatisfaction and restlessness, on account of which we are threatened from within as from without.”
Jung (1949)[6]
“… the real dangers that threaten our lives… are the present politico-social delusional systems….”
Jung (1954)[7]
“… ‘monkey tricks’… are naturally to be found in politics.”
Jung (1954)[8]
“… I am convinced that 99 per cent of politics are mere symptoms and anything but a cure for social evils. About 50 per cent of politics is definitely obnoxious inasmuch as it poisons the utterly incompetent mind of the masses….”
Jung (1936)[9]
As the above quotes indicate, Jung was not much into politics, nor did he have high regard for politicians. But, thanks to his keen intuition, he did have an amazingly prescient view of the world and its problems, such that many of his analyses of his time seem like they could have been written yesterday. In this essay, we will examine Jung’s diagnosis of our modern reality and then consider his opinions of politics and politicians. We will conclude with a section relating his words to our 21st century phenomena and his suggestions for how to handle them.
Jung’s Diagnosis of the Modern World
In Jung’s own day,[10] he witnessed two world wars resulting in horrendous bloodshed, and the rise of totalitarian systems like Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union and Mao’s China. Millions of people were displaced in these upheavals, and the “hot” wars had not even ended when the “Cold War” developed, with its bipolar split between the Western and Communist alignments. Jung could justifiably speak of a global “schizophrenia,”[11] “totalitarian ethics,”[12] and “uprooted individuals kept under by sheer force and terror and blindfolded by appropriate lies.”[13]
He also decried the “mass State [which] has no intention of promoting mutual understanding and the relationship of man to man; it strives, rather, for atomization, for the psychic isolation of the individual.”[14] Features of this state include “police spying and terror,”[15] “politically poisoned and overheated atmospheres [in which] the sane and dispassionate scientific discussion of … delicate, yet most important problems has become well-nigh impossible.”[16] and “a destructive tendency to extend suppression over the whole world through attaining mere superiority of power;…”.[17]
The global superpowers defined “power” in terms of military might. Jung felt this was a “misappropriation of power,”[18] that relied on “the development of science and technology, which has destroyed man’s metaphysical foundation.”[19] By “metaphysical foundation” Jung meant that we, as a global collective, had lost our spiritual moorings.[20] We as individuals had become spiritually stagnant, dissatisfied and restless, feeling “more or less meaningless and… the victim of uncontrollable forces.”[21]
People could well feel like victims because the social systems were “delusional.”[22] and they deluded people into believing that “Earthly happiness can only be attained through somebody else’s misfortune, as wealth grows at the expense of poverty.”[23] Jung saw that “’Social welfare’ has become the lure, the bait and the slogan for the uprooted masses, which can only think in terms of personal needs and resentments.”[24] Jung warned his readers:
“We all think in terms of social welfare. That is a big mistake, because the more you economize on the vulgar forms of misery, the more you are ensnared by new, unexpected, complicated, intricate, incomprehensible variants of unhappiness such as you have never dreamt of before. …”[25]
How did this delusional situation come about? As a physician, Jung had some diagnoses. A major item on his list of causes is projection: “… today most people cannot see the beam in their own eye but are all too well aware of the mote in their brother’s. Political propaganda exploits this primitivity…”[26] (e.g. political leaders describing other countries as the “axis of evil.”).[27] Closely related to projection is the phenomenon of “moral complacency and lack of responsibility,”[28] which Jung recognized “has a … divisive and alienating effect upon society.”[29]
Another element in the etiology of our political, social and cultural pathology is inflation.[30] Leaders like Hitler and Stalin identified with the archetype of the “Superman,” which Friedrich Nietzsche had described in the 19th century.[31] This led to all sorts of negative consequences (e.g. Holocausts, gulags, mass murders and purges of dissidents), as well as the misuse of power, and “fatal misunderstandings and practical mistakes in international deals as well as in internal social frictions.”[32] The result? “a politically poisoned and overheated atmosphere” in which cool, dispassionate discussion became impossible.[33]
Spiritual malaise is another of Jung’s diagnoses for our delusional situation. We live in a time of “unparalleled impoverishment of symbolism,”[34] a time when “God is dead”[35] (as Nietzsche said) and the gods turn up as “psychic factors, that is, as archetypes of the unconscious.”[36]
Which brings us to what Jung regarded as the most serious cause of our current problematique: unconsciousness. Jung was blunt: “… the operative factor… is not man’s intellect but an authority above and beyond consciousness.”[37] “We have not understood yet that the discovery of the unconscious means an enormous spiritual task, which must be accomplished if we wish to preserve our civilization.”[38] This diagnosis is as true in 2015 as it was in 1949. Jung wants us to remember that
“We are still as much possessed by autonomous psychic contents as if they were Olympians. Today they are called phobias, obsessions, and so forth; in a word, neurotic symptoms. The gods have become diseases; Zeus no longer rules Olympus but rather the solar plexus, and produces curious specimens for the doctor’s consulting room, or disorders the brains of politicians and journalists who unwittingly let loose psychic epidemics on the world.”[39]
Jung on Politicians and Politics
Letting loose “psychic epidemics on the world” is just one baleful influence politicians have, according to Jung. In other of his writings, Jung referred to the politician as “a very pitiable little creature,”[40] seeking prestige, with a strong “will to power,”[41] in a line of work that makes “the construction of an artificial persona… an unavoidable necessity. The demands of propriety and good manners are an added inducement to assume a becoming mask. What goes on behind the mask is then called ‘private life.’…” and this leads to a “painfully familiar division of consciousness.”[42] This division the politician is not inclined to examine because he/she is usually a strong Extravert,[43] oriented much more to outer life, rather than given to introspection or self-criticism.
Focused on his public image—his/her persona—the politician “has to pay for”[44] this too-goodness with all sorts of personal problems, e.g. “bad moods, phobias, obsessive ideas, backslidings, vices etc…his discipline in public… goes miserably to pieces in private….”[45] Jung understood that no human being could live up to the ideal, and the inflation or lack of authenticity involved in trying to do so only sets the politician up for problems.
What are some of these problems? Identification with one’s office or title,[46] requiring a “formidable concession to the external world, a genuine self-sacrifice which drives the ego straight into identification with the persona,”[47] inflation and “soullessness.”[48] An even worse problem that the politician might experience is a “regressive dissolution in the collective psyche,”[49] i.e. a “disorder”[50] of the brain. Jung also felt the politician could fall into bluffing, which he defined as “… an illegitimate way of overpowering and suppressing others…” that “leads to no good.”[51] Jung would remind us that politicians “… are men just like ourselves, who think and feel as we do, except that they are past masters in the art of ‘passing the buck’.”[52]
As much as Jung was critical of politicians, he also recognized the complicity of the general public. We can’t put all the blame on politicians because
“… the building up of prestige is always the product of collective compromise: not only must there be one who wants prestige, there must also be a public seeking somebody on whom to confer prestige. That being so, it would be incorrect to say that a man creates prestige for himself out of his individual will to power; it is on the contrary an entirely collective affair. Since society as a whole needs the magically effective figure, it uses this need of the will to power in the individual, and the will to submit in the mass,…”[53]
Submission to those on whom we confer prestige is not the public’s only form of participation. Complacent in our unconsciousness, many of us fail to vote,[54] fail to express our concerns to our elected officials, and fail to take up our civic responsibility, imagining
“… that the task can safely be left to ‘others,’ or, ultimately, to the anonymous State. … Exactly who is the State?—The agglomeration of all the nonentities composing it…. Could it be personified, the result would be an individual, or rather a monster, intellectually and ethically far below the level of most of the individuals in it, since it represents mass psychology raised to the nth power….”[55]
Not only is the State a “monster,” its governance system is full of “monkey tricks,”[56] according to Jung. He told the American press, on his 1936 trip to America that he was not interested in politics even in his own country of Switzerland, and he explained why:
“…I am convinced that 99 per cent of politics are mere symptoms and anything but a cure for social evils. About 50 per cent of politics is definitely obnoxious inasmuch as it poisons the utterly incompetent mind of the masses. We are on guard against contagious diseases of the body, but we are exasperatingly careless when it comes to the even more dangerous collective diseases of the mind.”[57]
Jung went so far as to claim that “the real dangers that threaten our lives…. are the present politico-social delusional systems….”[58] Delusional, in part, because “It is in the nature of political bodies always to see the evil in the opposite group,…”[59] So “The mass State has no intention of promoting mutual understanding and the relationship of man to man; it strives, rather, for atomization, for the psychic isolation of the individual. The more unrelated individuals are, the more consolidated the State becomes, and vice versa.”[60] Political systems promote projection, encouraging their citizens to see the problems “out there,” in other countries, to criticize the evils in other regimes, as a way to deflect the public’s awareness of problems at home. At the same time, Jung recognized that, while politicians might talk about community and the value of civic involvement, governments function more to isolate individuals than to promote interpersonal rapport and belonging.
Jung felt that, in the political arena, “nothing intelligent happens except by mistake at the last moment,…”[61] Why is this? because politics is immersed in the collective unconscious, and, as noted above, “it represents mass psychology raised to the nth power.” Like philosophy, history, medicine and theology, politics stands “in need of psychological understanding and yet [politicians] allow themselves to be prejudiced against it and remain ignorant of it.”[62] Jung came to conclude that he “… could easily construct a political theory of neurosis, in so far as the man of today is chiefly excited by political passions…”[63] and he went on with a statement that seems an all-too-accurate harbinger of what we are witnessing in the 21st century: “It may turn out that politics are but the forerunners of a far deeper religious convulsion.”[64]
Jung’s Prescience
Which brings us to consider how prescient Jung was. Let’s review what he said about politics, with specifics.
- “uprooted individuals kept under by sheer force:” calls to mind the current crisis in the Middle East and Africa with so many uprooted refugees fleeing dictators, civil wars and “failed” states[65]
- “police spying and terror:” thanks to Wikileaks, Bradley/Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden, we are aware now of just how actively we are spied on by various government agencies, all in the name of keeping us safe from terrorists; far more than in Jung’s day, terrorism has become a global phenomenon
- “politically poisoned and overheated atmospheres” lacking “dispassionate scientific discussion… of important problems” becoming “well-nigh impossible:” what an accurate description of the dysfunction of the American national government! The polarization of the two-party system, and the inability of certain elements of the public to hear and take in scientific information (e.g. on global climate change) certainly seems to bear out the truth of Jung’s words
- “misappropriation of power,” with nations defining “power” as military might: the United States certainly regards power in this way, leading other countries, like China, to begin building up its military etc.[66]
- “the development of science and technology” destroying our metaphysical foundation: Fifty years after Jung this trend has only become more pronounced, as fewer people identify a religious affiliation, while technologies (like the cell phone) become sources of addiction, alienation and atomization[67]
- “wealth grows at the expense of poverty:” Jung could see the trend toward income inequality, a trend that more and more social critics recognize as a threat to national and global stability[68]
- “masses… can only think in terms of personal needs and resentments:” these words call to mind the phrase we hear frequently “What’s in it for me?” and we certainly see resentments show up in public discourse by would-be politicians (like Donald Trump) who complain about immigrants’ “invasion” of our borders
- political propaganda exploiting our human tendency to project the shadow: George W. Bush was a prime example of this, in his depiction of Iran and North Korea as “axis of evil”
- “moral complacency and lack of responsibility:” when nearly half of eligible voters fail to vote, and movies extol greed as good,[69] surely our culture illustrates Jung’s words
- inflation of political figures: does Donald Trump come to mind here?
- “spiritual malaise:” ours is a sick culture, as seen in the numerous shooting incidents, rise in the number of suicides, and the widespread epidemic of drug use—all forms of the “neurotic symptoms”[70] Jung saw; as a society we no longer collectively recognize any “authority above and beyond consciousness”[71]
- politicians “seeking prestige:” many of the current slate of Presidential candidates certainly are doing this; what we need to remember is our role in this bizarre scene: Donald Trump and the other political hopefuls would have no traction at all if the media and public were not attentive to their hoopla
- the politician “… goes miserably to pieces in private:” when I read these words I immediately thought of Bill Clinton and the scandal with Monica Lewinsky
- the politician falling into bluffing: again the figure of Donald Trump comes to mind, since so many of his claims of what he could accomplish as president seem so unrealistic
- politicians as “past masters in the art of passing the buck:” recent Congresses certainly did this with the whole sequestration scheme; rather than biting the bullet and making hard choices, the Congress chose to allow the sequester to take effect[72]
- “there must be a public seeking somebody on whom to confer prestige:” we must admit our own complicity in the current sorry state of our politics; we say we despise Congress, but at the same time, we say we like the Representative of our own district
- thinking “that the task can be safely left to others:” with 46% of Americans failing to vote in the last national election[73] (and the percentage even lower for off-year elections), Jung certainly was right on this score
- politics as full of “monkey tricks:” given my age, I’ve witnessed decades of government tricks—the Gulf of Tonkin lies, Watergate, Irangate, Contragate, the false justifications for the Iraq War—the list could go on and on
- people “allow themselves to be prejudiced against” psychology: Fifty years ago Jung knew that any politician who admitted to having therapy or any suggestion of mental health problems would be the kiss of death; this stigma is still very strong[74]
- “It may turn out that politics are but the forerunners of a far deeper religious convulsion:” this brought to mind what we are witnessing in the Middle East, with the rise of Islamic jihadists and their barbaric, medieval mind-set—a “convulsion” indeed, with very serious political implications for the whole world.
Jung’s Suggestions for How to Respond to Our Political Challenges
In a 1949 letter to the American columnist Dorothy Thompson,[75] Jung set out a list of specific suggestions for how we might best respond to the reality we were facing. This was in the context of the Cold War, and our dealings with Soviet aggressions. But, given how little we have achieved psychologically in the last 50 years, Jung’s words are equally applicable to our 21st century situation. In the order given in his letter, these suggestions are to:
Confront our shadow, as individuals and as a society.[76] Projection of the shadow precludes understanding our fellow man, and “the free society needs a bond of an affective nature, a principle of a kind like caritas, the Christian love of your neighbor.”[77] Jung applied this to the Cold War relationship between the United States and Russia: “If we understand what Russia is in ourselves, we know how to deal with her politically.”[78] We might substitute “ISIS” for “Russia” in that sentence without doing Jung’s idea an injustice. In fact, ISIS, with its barbarism, medieval attitudes and incomprehensible cruel terrorism, is probably more of deep shadow for us than the Soviet Union ever was.
Realize that we are not immune. Everything we complain about in others we can find in ourselves. This is why the confrontation with the shadow is so difficult, as Jung said “To know this [how depraved we can be] is decidedly unpleasant, for nothing is more disillusioning than the discovery of our own inadequacy….”[79] In terms of terrorism, Americans once upon a time lived in the delusion that we were immune, thanks to two very large oceans that insulated us from foreign problems. Pearl Harbor and 9/ll have disabused us of this delusion. We are as vulnerable to terrorist attacks as Paris, London, Madrid[80] and other places.
“The more unconscious they [the destructive powers within us] are, the more dangerous.”[81] Any true solution to our global problems requires our working to become conscious of the unconscious, and if left to fester, these inner energies become more powerful, more dangerous, on both the individual and the collective level. Jung warned us that “… ignorance is no guarantee of security, and in fact only makes our insecurity still worse, …”[82] so he concluded “… it is probably better despite our fear to know where the danger lies… [and]… the greatest danger threatening us comes from the unpredictability of the psyche’s reactions.”[83] Elsewhere Jung noted that “… nowadays particularly, the world hangs by a thin thread, and that thread is the psyche of man.”[84] We must get wise to the psyche.
This is because “We are threatened from within as well as from without.”[85] The “from within” refers to our unconsciousness, our lack of familiarity with the psyche, with our “inner city”[86] and, most of all, with our shadow. The “without” would be the “enemies” we see in outer reality. In Jung’s day, this was Russia (aka the Soviet Union), and he told Dorothy Thompson that “We cannot destroy the enemy by force; we should not even try to overcome Russia, because we would destroy ourselves, since Russia is—as it were—identical with our unconscious,…”[87] Jung described Russia as “a barbarous country, [in which] the unconscious … has replaced civilized consciousness.”[88] But he was equally blunt in recognizing that “… There is no reason and no diplomacy that will effectively deal with Russia, because there is an elementary drive in her (as was the case with Hitler!).”[89] I’m sure that, were we to substitute ISIS for Russia in that quote, we would not distort Jung’s meaning.
Rather than confront our outer enemies with force Jung recommended another approach: “The unconscious must be slowly integrated without violence and with due respect for our ethical values.”[90] Jung was not blithe in this recommendation: He understood that this tack would require “… many alterations in our religious and philosophical views.”[91] Then he added that, far from attacking Russia, we should proceed, with the knowledge that “Russia can only defeat herself.”[92] Might we say the same thing about ISIS? It seems to me there is a qualitative difference between Stalin’s Soviet Union and the jihadists of the Middle East. For all its barbarity, Russia had (and has) a certain capacity for rational thinking and diplomacy. The seventh-century morality, the fanatical dream of reconstituting the umma,[93] and the savagery of its politics makes ISIS seem very different to me, although both the Soviets and ISIS had an ideal at the root of their politics, and this Jung saw as a weakness: “… a fitful idealism, … is unlikely to hold out for long.”[94] Let us hope Jung was as prescient about this as he was in some many other ways.
Jung also warned Dorothy Thompson about the military: “… watch the military advisers! They will itch to pull the trigger.”[95] In this regard I am reminded of the old adage “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” If you ask a general for advice, of course he will reply with advice that involves military action. Eleven years later, Dwight Eisenhower expressed the same warning in his Farewell Address.[96]
Jung has some other suggestions for us: We must seek self-knowledge.[97] Becoming more conscious is certainly part of this, but self-knowledge also includes recognizing our prejudices and illusions, which can help us “doubt the absolute rightness of our assumptions and compare them carefully and conscientiously with the objective facts…”[98]
One way in which we need to doubt the rightness of our assumptions relates to our attitude toward power. As noted above, we currently define power in terms of military might, or the ability to force other people to do our will. Jung recognized that this is not true power. He said “Power that is constantly asserted works against itself, and it is asserted when one is afraid of losing it. One should not be afraid of losing it. One gains more peace through losing power.”[99] Jung saw the opposite of power not as weakness, but as love. “Where love stops, power begins, and violence, and terror.”[100] True power is empowerment—the giving away of power to others, because, like love, power grows by being given away.
Finally Jung suggested that, rather than focusing on material wealth and social success, we should seek a “supramundane goal” that can redeem us “from the compulsive force of [our] projections…”[101] By seeking a “supramundane goal” Jung was suggesting that we take up the task of caring for our “immortal soul that [we] might have a fulcrum from which to lift the world off its hinges, showing [us] that [our] goal lies not in the mastery of this world but in the attainment of the Kingdom of God, whose foundations are in [our] own heart.”[102] Rather than focus on social welfare, Jung would have us work on our “spiritual welfare.” Note that this is spiritual welfare, not religious. Jung recognized that the religions of the world were part of the Piscean Age that is dying, while a “new dispensation” was aborning.[103] As we see all too vividly with ISIS and the wars in the Middle Ages, organized religions foment “cosmic vanity,”[104] division, violence, and wars. Spirituality promotes humility, love and peace.
Bibliography
Abbott, Chris (2010), 21 Speeches That Shaped Our World. London: Rider.
Akerlof, George & Robert Shiller (2015, Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Davis, Charles (1973), Temptations of Religion. New York: Harper & Row.
Edinger, Edward (1992), Transformation of the God-Image. Toronto: Inner City Books.
Jaffe, Lawrence (1999), Celebrating Soul: Preparing for the New Religion. Toronto: Inner City Books.
Jung, C.G. (1966), “Two Essays on Analytical Psychology,” CW 7. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1959), ”The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious,” CW 9i. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1970), “Civilization in Transition,” CW 10. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1969), “Psychology and Religion: West and East,” CW 11. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1967), “Alchemical Studies,” CW 13. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1963), “Mysterium Coniunctionis,” CW 14. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1954), “The Practice of Psychotherapy,” CW 16, 2nd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1976), ”The Symbolic Life,” CW 18. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1975), Letters, ed. Gerhard Adler & Aniela Jaffé. 2 vols. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1977), C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters, ed. William McGuire & R.F.C. Hull. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kofman, Fred (2006), Conscious Business. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.
McTaggart, Lynne (2011), The Bond. New York: Free Press.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1954), The Portable Nietzsche, ed. & trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Penguin Books.
Perlez, Jane & Chris Buckley (2015), “China Retools Its Military With a First Overseas Post in Djibouti,” The New York Times, November 26, 2015.
Piketty, Thomas (2014), Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Turkle, Sherry (2015), Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. New York: Penguin Press.
[1] Collected Works 7, ¶17. Hereafter Collected Works will be abbreviated CW. This quote reminded me of the madness of ISIS and the jihadist terrorists they inspire.
[2] Ibid.
[3] CW 9i, ¶49
[4] CW 18, ¶1302.
[5] “Letter to Dorothy Thompson,” 23 September 1949, Letters I, 536. Italics in the original.
[6] Ibid., 537.
[7] CW 9i, ¶49.
[8] Ibid., ¶477.
[9] CW 18, ¶1302.
[10] He lived from 1875 to 1961.
[11] “Letter to Dorothy Thompson,” 23 September 1949; Letters, I, 535.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] CW 10, ¶577.
[15] Ibid., ¶580.
[16] CW 18, ¶1302.
[17] “Letter to Dorothy Thompson,” 23 September 1949; Letters, I, 536.
[18] CW 11, ¶472.
[19] “Letter to Dorothy Thompson,” 23 September 1949; Letters, I, 536.
[20] No longer were most people in the West “contained” in religion, a phenomenon that began in the 19th century in Europe, which remains more “unchurched” than the United States.
[21] CW 10, ¶576.
[22] CW 9i, ¶49.
[23] “Letter to Dorothy Thompson,” 23 September 1949; Letters, I, 536.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Ibid., 537.
[26] CW 14, ¶342.
[27] George W. Bush used this phrase, referring to Iran and North Korea.
[28] CW 10, ¶577.
[29] Ibid.
[30] CW 11, ¶472.
[31] “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” Prologue, ch. 3; Nietzsche (1954), 124.
[32] CW 18, ¶1302.
[33] Ibid.
[34] CW 9i, ¶50.
[35] “The Gay Science, Book V;” Nietzsche (1954), 447.
[36] CW 9i, ¶50.
[37] CW 11, ¶222.
[38] “Letter to Dorothy Thompson,” 23 September 1949; Letters, I, 537.
[39] CW 13, ¶54.
[40] CW 7, ¶230.
[41] Ibid., ¶237.
[42] Ibid., ¶305.
[43] Jung (1977), 303.
[44] CW 7, ¶306.
[45] Ibid., ¶307.
[46] Ibid., ¶230.
[47] Ibid., ¶306.
[48] Ibid.
[49] Ibid., ¶238.
[50] CW 13, ¶54.
[51] CW 10, ¶578.
[52] CW 16, ¶223.
[53] CW 7, ¶237.
[54] I got the figure of 46% from this Web site: www.ehow.com.
[55] CW 16, ¶223.
[56] CW 9i, ¶477.
[57] CW 18, ¶1306.
[58] CW 9i, ¶49.
[59] CW 10, ¶576.
[60] Ibid., ¶577.
[61] CW 9i, ¶477.
[62] CW 18, ¶834.
[63] CW 7, ¶17.
[64] Ibid.
[65] Foreign Policy and The Fund for Peace compile an annual list of states they deem “failed” based on demographic pressures, refugees and displaced persons, human flight, uneven development, delegitimization of the state, public services, human rights, the security apparatus, factionalized elites and external intervention. Google “failed states” to bring up Foreign Policy’s Web site for the latest figures on which states they consider “failed.”
[66] Perlez & Buckley (2015).
[67] For the impact of new technologies, cell phones in particular, see Turkle (2015).
[68] Cf. Piketty (2014), 242-3,255-60,284-6; McTaggart (2011), 133-5; and Akerlof & Shiller (2015), 133,163.
[69] “Greed is good” was a phrase spoken by Gordon Geiko in the 1987 movie “Wall Street, starring Michael Douglas.
[70] CW 13, ¶54.
[71] CW 11, ¶222.
[72] For information on the sequester of 2013, go to www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/13/sequester-job-cuts_n…
[73] I got this figure from the Web site www.ehow.com.
[74] Go to the Web site of the Centers for Disease Control for information on the stigma of mental health issues: www.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/data_stats/mental-illness.htm
[75] Jung (1975), I, 533-7.
[76] Ibid., 535; cf. CW 9i, ¶49 and CW 14, ¶342.
[77] “Letter to Dorothy Thompson,” 23 September 1949; Letters, I, 535.
[78] Ibid., 537.
[79] CW 9i, ¶49.
[80] All these cities have experienced terrorist attacks.
[81] “Letter to Dorothy Thompson,” 23 September 1949; Letters, I, 535.
[82] CW 9i, ¶49.
[83] Ibid.
[84] Jung (1977), 304. Italics in the original.
[85] “Letter to Dorothy Thompson,” 23 September 1949; Letters, I, 535.
[86] This is the term Daryl Sharp uses to refer to the nature of our inner life. For more on this, see the essay “Our Inner City,” archived on this blog site.
[87] “Letter to Dorothy Thompson,” 23 September 1949; Letters, I, 535.
[88] Ibid.
[89] Ibid., 536. Italics in the original.
[90] Ibid.
[91] Ibid.
[92] Ibid.
[93] The umma is the Islamic notion of the global community of Muslims; recreating this now is one of the ideals of ISIS. The Soviet ideal was the Marxian concept of proletariat communitarianism.
[94] CW 10, ¶581.
[95] “Letter to Dorothy Thompson,” 23 September 1949; Letters, I, 537.
[96] Eisenhower’s Farewell Address was titled “The Military-Industrial Complex;” for the text, see Abbott (2010), 243-54.
[97] CW 9i, ¶49.
[98] CW 10, ¶577.
[99] “Letter to Mrs. C.,” 3 November 1958; Letters, II, 463.
[100] CW 10, ¶580.
[101] CW 16, ¶223.
[102] Ibid.
[103] For more on the new dispensation, cf. Edinger (1992) and Jaffe (1999).
[104] Cf. Davis (1973), 28-48, and Kofman (2006), 97-131.
