Rev Left Radio - Carl Jung: Psychoanalysis, Analytical Psychology, and Philosophy of Mind

Episode Date: February 24, 2021

In this episode, Breht is joined by Spencer from Thoughts on Thinking to discuss the main ideas of the famous psychologist Carl Jung.  Subscribe to Thoughts on Thinking: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmsFftOL2yNub8Z3CB0QKgA?view_as=subscriber Check out the ToT video on the media mentioned in the episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlwW_jKPGNw&ab_channel=ThoughtsonThinking Outro Music: "I've Got It All (Most)" by Modest Mouse ----- Support Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio or make a one time donation: PayPal.me/revleft LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: www.revolutionaryleftradio.com

Hello everybody and welcome back to Revolutionary Left Radio. So on today's episode, I have a special guest. It is Spencer, who is behind the YouTube channel Thoughts on Thinking. This is a channel I recently came across, actually, as I was struggling with my own depression and anxiety, looking into, as I often do, into psychology and psychological thinkers and philosophy of mind, to just sort of help myself deal with what I'm going through and try to find some resources

that I can implement in my struggle with these things. And I came across thoughts on thinking and just love the content, particularly because I was getting into Carl Jung, but also because of the creative ways in which Spencer takes those concepts and so much more in philosophy and applies them, explains them, etc. It's just really, really helpful. And I found it really creative and interesting, and I jumped on Twitter, found his account, reached out to him, and immediately he said he'd be interested in coming on and maybe doing a collab around the work of Carl Jung. Now, as I've said, the reason I've gotten into Carl Jung, many of you know, we've already done episodes on psychoanalysis, we've done episodes on Freud, we've done episodes

on Nietzsche, and, you know, I've always had an interest in that line of intellectual thought, philosophy, and psychology, and Jung is a natural fit. And more than that, is a natural fit and dovetails perfectly with my ongoing and deep-seated interest in mysticism and the religious impulse and religious experience. And so much of the people I admire on the Eastern philosophy front, on the mysticism front, on the Hindu and Buddhist fronts, will often bring up Carl Jung as a foundational thinker and somebody that compliments those traditions, incredibly well, was influenced by them and turns around and influences them. And so obviously I got into Jung through that, bought a bunch of his books, was already

familiar with Freudian psychoanalysis, and I've gotten really into him lately to great benefit towards myself. Certainly had some psychological breakthroughs and Jung framed some things about the human psyche that helped me process what I'm going through, et cetera. And, you know, this is true, and most Rev-Lev listeners understand that this show covers things beyond just political philosophy. And I think that's part of the reason why people like this show. They come in, perhaps, with their political philosophy, and maybe even develop some trust with me as a host. And then we explore other topics because human life exceeds the bounds of pure politics, and there's many other things that I'm interested in, and I know that you're interested in.

And so this show is always going to be a sort of reflection. of things that I find fascinating in an authentic way and hopefully that connects with listeners and this is a caveat that I probably don't have to make but I will anyway, which is I don't like the overapplication of political philosophical frameworks towards things that

definitely intertwine with politics because everything does but in and of themselves would benefit from maybe setting that lens aside for a second to engage with some other thinker or trend on its own terms and I think that certainly applies with psychoanalysis more broadly

I mean Jung and Freud there is by nature of what they study a deep individualism to what they promote which you know can can maybe strike the Marxist or the leftist ear sometimes a little brassly you know

a little crudely and certainly Freud and Jung had things to say about communism that are less than flattering. In fact, a late episode, the recent episode of Y Theory, you know, I've had on Todd McGowan a couple times, and his podcast, Why Theory,

covered Freud's civilization and his discontents and got into Freud's ostensible and explicit sort of denunciation of communism, but complicated the picture with taking some other Freudian ideas and saying, there is some interesting communist tendencies here. So definitely, if you're at all interested in any of these conversations

or if you're interested particularly in Freud's perception of communism, go check out the latest episode of Y Theory. It was incredibly fascinating. But yeah, so don't always come to a thinker and try to shoehorn in an already existing framework you have. Take them on their own terms,

pull out what you find useful, and discard things that you don't necessarily find useful. There's nothing wrong with that. I think it behooves any thinking person to constantly keep learning, constantly keep an open mind and constantly be integrating new information into their worldview. And I have long been an advocate of the dialectical relationship between the material political outward life and the internal spiritual development of the self aspect of human existence.

And to not separate those two things as two separate chambers of thought, but to interweave them and play with them and show how they interact with one another. and that's something that we've done here on RevLeft and we'll continue to do and this stands firmly in that tradition. We talk about a lot of different things I'm not going to get ahead of my skis here and talk too much about what we discussed in the show.

One thing I didn't mention in the show that I did want to mention a little bit is the idea of persona in the Jungian thought and the persona is basically the social mask that we wear, the social roles that we play and there's a problem inherently in mistaking that mask for your true self. and there's a whole bunch of neuroses that sort of falls out of an over-identification

with your persona, with your mask, with your social role. And I thought it was interesting to tie that into the workplace because I've experienced this, and I'm sure many of you have experienced. In Marxist terms, we would call it alienation or alienation from oneself. But this putting on of a fake personality while you're at work, particularly those engaged in customer service, you have this fake tone, this fake cadence, this fake way of speaking. You wear clothes you otherwise wouldn't have worn, you supervise yourself in your own head around your boss, around your co-workers, around customers, in ways that when you're free of those bounds, you don't do.

And it becomes, especially for sensitive people, very restrictive, the alienation ratchets up. And I know when I worked in retail, for example, I had to suppress my authentic self for eight hours a day. And it took a fucking toll on my mental health. Now, this is just one example, the idea of persona. can extend much beyond this one example, but it is something where I think a union analysis dovetails nicely with the Marxist conception of alienation and helps make more a sense of both concepts in the meantime. And, you know, I would leave work. I would be in bad moods that I couldn't explain. I would have bouts of depression, deep sense of meaninglessness, et cetera. And there was,

in retrospect, I can make sense of this split self and how there is a suppression of, my authentic self in favor and in service to the business I worked at and ultimately their bottom line, their profit margins, and that was a radically alienating experience, and I'm not the only one that has experienced that. So that's just one example of the ways in which Jungian thought and psychoanalysis more broadly can be brought in, married to a more robust Marxist or political philosophical analysis, and both things come out the better for it. So with all of that in mind, let's get into this episode, and if you're interested in this conversation, I'm going to do more work on my Patreon on this topic, talking a little bit about the connections with Jung and the rise of Nazism and some of the critiques aimed at him in that direction.

Talk more about the contributions Jung has made to psychology and just to popular culture, etc. So if you're at all interested, join us on Patreon, which will link in the show notes, and get more of this sort of. discussion, things that I couldn't cover in this episode. So without further ado, here's this wonderful conversation with Spencer. After you listen to this, go subscribe to thoughts on thinking, show him Rev Left Love in the comment section, and let him know that our listenership appreciates him coming on and helping us learn about Carl Jung. Here's the episode.

Thank you so much for coming on the show, Spencer. It's a real honor. Let's just dive into the questions here. And let's just start off with a general overview. What is the value of studying Carl Jung and his work, in your opinion? So, yeah, the fundamental value that anyone can take away from Jung's work is a better understanding of one's own psyche from an outside perspective, something that brings him above many philosophers, I think, and intellectuals is that his ideas are not just theoretical but were developed out from the subjective empirical work he did with his clients for many many years and it has been an absolute joy studying his work and applying it into my own thought for my own personal studies and work and seeing how much personal developmental benefit people get from the ideas he developed and then you know putting them from my own videos and work on the likes of the internet and YouTube. Today, among myself and a fair few other channels, there has kind of been what you could call

a modern union resurgence within the modern generation where people, obviously has a niche, but where the people applying this work to many different fields and disciplines for the sake of modern societal psychological analysis, which shows another value that is work, brings by the mere fact that is very broad and applicable to many aspects of life because it is fundamentally the study of the psyche. In today's world, with things like the introduction of the digital and all the forms of it, there is an increasing amount of new reformed material that can be analysed through the psychological lens to truly understand the purpose of many peculiar existences, for example memes.

and a guy called Chris Gabriel is doing, he runs meme analysis, is doing a fantastic job at that at the moment. So what Jung also tried to do was make comparative study between religion and the psyche, which is one of the many reasons why his work has become so influential in many different fields, whether it be influencing the work of historians, anthropologists, writers, to quantum physicists, because he identified an archetypal psychological link between the two throughout the cultures and is one reason why he has become increasingly popular within the mainstream and not just said within the psychoanalytic realm. Yeah, I absolutely agree with that with that analysis,

and I think that is so much of the central thrust of not only why he's valuable for people that are interested in self-knowledge and for intellectuals, but why there is a sort of cultural resurgence at this time surrounding Jungian thought. And the aspect about religion is interesting as well. You know, we often think of Jung and Freud as deeply connected. Some I think even somewhat mistakenly will think of Jung as a disciple of Freud. And in some ways, that's true. But Jung had his own sort of career and interest in psychology before meeting Freud.

And while Freud was an influence, I don't think it's proper to say that it was a, direct descendant line. But Freud did have this sort of knee-jerk dismissal of religion and religious experiences, which is what I'm more interested in formal organizational religion. I'm more interested in the religious experience or what we would call the mystical experience. And Jung does not do away with that. Jung brings that on board and does much more justice to the religious impulse in the human psyche than I think Freud was capable of. And that's one of the reasons why I enjoy Jung is because of that element that is a big part of my life.

And then just the general truth of using psychoanalysis and using Jungian thought to help clarify in your own self, to gain deeper levels of self-knowledge, to work through neurosis, and to come to more profound and more integrated conception and experience of yourself, I think can only be beneficial. But speaking of Freud, it leads perfectly into this next question, which is, in what ways does Jung overlap with and differ from Freud?

Well, one of the most profound differences they had was surrounding religion. Freud saw religion as something of neurotic form, that it was an extension of the desire for an Ultimate Father figure, basically. And because of this, he believed that its true functioning was that of an infantile unconscious illusion, similar to a form of wish fulfillment, you could say. And he made links saying, well, look, why is God referred to as the Almighty Father in Christianity? Thus, it must be of a similar dynamic to the Edibus Complex, but in a reverse fashion. Instead, it is towards an almighty father figure that can lead the way of civilization

or keep people in line with a morality, an extension of the super ego. But Jung didn't like this. He didn't see religion as an extension of the super ego for an infantile necessity, but as an internal, universal expression of archetypes from and within the collective unconscious. Jung, for example, saw the idea of Atman,

meaning soul, within Hinduism, as an archetype for the self. Any kind of religious, spiritual structure that forwarded itself towards enlightenment or self-realization would constitute this idea of archetypal form. And you also have it in Hinduism as well with meditation, or to overcome Maya or illusion. When asked to reject the object for the subject, for example, to realize the self, individuation or realization of the self through an undifferentiation, of consciousness as the absolute reality. So this is a very modest idea, but also very concentrated around this idea around the self.

And again, you have it in Nosticism, achieving gnosis or knowledge, knowledge through experience to attain the regenerative, how do you say, regenerative wisdom of Sophia that is beyond the god of imprisoning matter, which was referred to as the Demiage, in Nosticism. So with this small kind of comparative look at different religions,

Jung identified that, no, there is an archetypal behaviour within these religions that are intended for a purpose that is far beyond what Freud saw within them. And this is one way the collective unconscious within Jungian psychology came about through these comparative archetypal observations. So another thing they disagreed on was the unconscious itself. Freud saw it as kind of a subjective reservoir for personal traumas to be repressed into.

These would be in forms of personal experiences, memories or events which were traumatic in the past, or even desires that are not of social acceptance, and that one way these repressions would present themselves would be through dream, and decoding them would reveal their truth through dream analysis. but Jung on the other hand split the unconscious basically into two parts, with there being a personal and collective unconscious. The personal unconscious is very similar to Freud's understanding of the unconscious with regards to repression and personal complexes developed over time,

but the collective unconscious is the idea that there are archetypal patterns or modes of behaviour that are of innate or inherited nature, feelings, thoughts, memories that are of a kind of objective truth in all humans universally, and through this idea Jung developed his own model of the structure of the psyche, which would work around the dynamics and the interaction between the inner and outer world, where the archetypes of the collective unconscious, such as the shadow, the animal, animus, would be of the inner world, and the outer world consists of the persona, which is basically the character or role we play, or expect of ourselves in the external world. And of course, the self or what you could call the God image is more or less the center point, for it is the totality of the person consciously and unconsciously, which again is, like I said before, goes back to the ideas of individuation and enlightenment. So in totality, when we come to understand these ideas, they are very different from Freud's

psychodynamics of the id ego and super ego, which is primarily focused on trauma and childhood, while Jung adds on much more mystic, religious and spiritual depth with his ideas saying, basically, look, we have dispositions to act, perceive and think through archetypal. modes of being, and these archetypes have and can be projected unconsciously into myths, singles and religions, and then interjected back into our psyche through the likes of observation, which I think he kind of pointed out through the idea of projection and participation mystique, which is a whole other conversation in itself, but yeah, those are two important differences which then lead onto other differences with regards to analyzing

dreams, for example. Yeah, I think that's incredibly well said. And the one point you made about the differences with regards to sort of childhood and Freud versus even the present and future of adult development in relation also with mysticism and religious experiences in Jung, I think is really crucial to understand. I mean, when you think about, I mean, this sort of popular understanding of psychoanalysis is sort of you sitting on a chair and the psychoanalyst guide you through childhood trauma and you know the Freudian idea inherent in that is by you know working through that childhood trauma and coming to terms with it it can be a big part of the puzzle in solving present neuroses and there's a shift in yung i think that it's fair to say

where i think yung is skeptical of this idea that going back to your childhood to resolve neuroses is as productive as Freud might think. And in some cases, Jung says that it's almost a red herring to go back into childhood to search for the core sources of your present trauma. It leads away from the present conditions, which are oftentimes more prescient and more important and more constructive of a present-day neuroses. So, you know, I've dabbled in psychoanalysis a little bit, and I do think that coming to terms with childhood traumas is very sort of important, especially if you haven't done work on that front before you can move on. But I think Jung allows us to then move on in ways that maybe Freud doesn't, in part because of Freud's, you know, scientific materialism, his sort of dismissal of.

of the religious impulse and of mystical insights, etc. And so I think that's interesting. And there's an element of collectiveness that is introduced by Jung via the notion of archetypes and the collective unconscious. Like there's something, although both Jung and Freud are centered on individualism, sort of by the nature of what they're studying, there is this element of Jung that could connect people across, you know, individual experiences

in the form of the collective unconscious and that's not to say that it's totally not there in Freud. Civilization and its discontents, for example, by Freud. There's certainly an example of Freud broadening out his analytical scope to try to make sense of broader

social trends, and so it's not totally fair to say that that's not present in Freud, but it's at least interesting. I want to read really quick before we move on to the next question. There's just a little segment from the introduction to The Essential Jung selected writings introduced by Anthony Storr. It's a great sort of piecemeal book of really important Jungian writings

throughout his chunks of his different writings that really show his intellectual progression as well as highlight some core ideas, which I think we'll get to in a bit. But in the introduction, there's an interesting juxtaposition between Jung and Freud, and I think it gets at what we've been discussing. So I'll just read that. it's only two paragraphs. It says, Jung's major contribution to psychology

lies in the field of adult development. Freud and his followers were primarily interested in the earliest development of the young child, since they considered that the majority of neurosis originated in the first five years of life. Freudian analysis had as its aim the reconstruction and recall of the patient's earliest years.

It was assumed that when the repressed infantile material had been made conscious, the patient would become free of the, malign effects of his childhood and lose the neurotic symptoms, which were its consequence. Freudian analysis, therefore, was, and is, primarily oriented towards the patient's past. Jung, of course, was well aware of the importance of early childhood in determining personality development. Indeed, in cases in which it was clear that the patient's primary problem was emancipating himself from the influence of home and parents, Jung advocated proceeding along Freudian

or Adlerian lines. But Jung was inclined to leave such analyses to others. The patients who interested him were those who had already freed themselves from the past sufficiently to become established in their own right, who were often successful in worldly terms, but who, in the mid-period of their lives, found that the world had become stale and unprofitable. Such people were seeking a meaning to their lives, and Jung's aim was to guide them along the path of individuation. Jungian analysis, therefore, was and is primarily oriented towards the patient's future. And I think that sums up at least one of those core differences about the direction in which the analysis is aimed that I find very, very interesting. And that also highlights the point that they can be done together, right?

The focus on one is not to the exclusion of the other, but when you add them both together, you can kind of come full circle, deal with the childhood trauma, deal with past traumas in the Freudian sense, but then also work toward, you know, what might be called self-actualization, or in Jungian terms, individualization, or in mystical terms, enlightenment, at least in some sense. And so I think that that's really interesting. Moving on from that, I want to discuss some of Jung's primary influences. I know that Nietzsche, you know, sort of was a big influence as well as Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer, of course, was a influence on Nietzsche. So there's this line, this progress. line of thought that extends at least back to those thinkers and influences in some ways further developments intersects in some interesting ways with existentialism, etc. But it always helps to fully understand a thinker if you can grasp to some extent their intellectual influences and forebears. So who were some of Jung's primary intellectual influences? Well, Jung was influenced by many different sources of antiquity, especially when it came to, when it came down to different esoteric disciplines like alchemy, Gnosticism, the I Ching,

and religion, because it was more of his desire, I think, to interpret these traditions through a psychological lens. But Jung was very Kantian, and this is fairly evident when you look at his work around synchronicity. Synchronicity for people who don't know, who are listening to this show, is essentially a principle. for trying to understand a causal yet meaningful occurrences or coincidences. Immanuel can't, I think,

believed that the realm of or the workings of causality do not function in the same way in relation to the numinon as it does through the phenomenon or through phenomena. Because the phenomenon is experienced through our understanding

of the world, which is through our sense perception and causality, while things in themselves or the numinon exist independent of our knowable senses. Therefore, if phenomenon is known through causality, the numinon must function through free will or free cause. So causality plays in a different way between the two, which I think allowed Kant to accept things in themselves as being under the influence of free will, which then caused Jung to claim synchronicities as being outside the causal realm of phenomena, and being instead meaningful coincidences, because fundamentally synchronicities are very peculiar occurrences that kind of exist in this numinon world, or numina-related world, which we don't apprehend or expect because their nature, let's say, doesn't lie within the phenomenal world.

Synchronicities go beyond causality because they are meaningful acausal occurrences. If it was purely chance, then chance would not allow itself to be extremely meaningful. So there must be some sort of glitch in the matrix, if you will. But the platonic influence can definitely be seen when Jung classes archetype as being of psychoid nature, which is basically saying that they are transcendent and that the representation of archetype through phenomena is never its full complete display. And this is obviously comparative to Plato's realm of forms or Kant's numinal, because you in a way can interpret archetypes as being the shadows on the wall within Plato's allegory of the cave.

They are true to an extent, but not the full presentation of what is true. And this is why Jung associates the psychoid archetype as being within the ultraviolet section as an example of the electromagnetic spectrum for illustrative purposes to say, well, look, all we can know of now is the emanationary patterns of archetype, not exactly its full form. But of course, you know, people like Schopenhauer saw more importance in relation. religions like Buddhism, then other philosophers. He had massive respect for Vedic philosophy, and this respect or probably influenced Jung's ideas as well, because I think Schopenhauer was one

of the first philosophers he ever read. So Vedic tradition itself was a massively, was massively influential in general for quantum theory, especially when it came to developing the concepts of, if you know them, quantum non-locality, unified field theory and wave functions, or even Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. And funnily enough, this came back on to Jung when he was approached by Wolfgang Pauli, where they discussed the nature of archetype and where poorly related quantum non-locality as being the physical equivalent to the collective unconscious. to support the premise that everything comes from a monadic hole, which then splits into a dualism of the psycho and physical,

of the psycho and the physical, and that archetypes being from that monadic hole becoming mirrored within the psycho and physical environment. And of course, Nietzsche, as he, through his philosophy, tackled the problem of the death of God. Nietzsche also did, at the same time, offer up many what you could call psychological principles for self-development with relation to self-overcoming, the will to power, Dionysian affirmation, and how Jung reworked these ideas through his psychology with confronting the shadow, integration, and confronting inferiority complexes.

Jung even did a series of seminars on Nietzsche's book, Thusberg Zadvistra, so he really did find him very fascinating at the time. Yeah, that's incredibly interesting. And just for those that don't know, when we talk about monism, right, it's philosophical monism is just generally, you know, without getting too into the weeds here, it's this, it's this idea that, you know, in philosophy there's philosophical idealism, that ideas are, you know, whether they're in God's head or something else, or the core fundamental truth of reality and material reality comes after that or as a consequence of that, and then it's flipped

on its head, and this is the popular view within science today and even within many philosophy departments of materialism, which says that, you know, atoms, that material reality is the foundation of nature upon which consciousness and ideas emerge from. Monism is this idea that actually both ideas or consciousness and material reality are the outgrowths of a more fundamental unity that underlies both of those realities and gives rise to both of those realities. And if you accept that, there's a bunch of trajectories you can take it off into, one of which is perhaps consciousness is not just or merely the product of complex neurochemical brain activity, but perhaps there is something like a field of consciousness in which brains tap

into, right? You can take it into a million different directions, but that's just an interesting idea. And for those that, you know, might not have philosophical training, you might not know what is being referenced there. So, so that's a quick, quick and dirty explanation. And then I also really appreciated your point about the platonic ideals and their relationships to archetypes. And this idea that, you know, the relationship between, you know, in the Jungian sense, archetypes or in the platonic sense, you know, these platonic realms, these platonic ideals, and their relationship to the particular instantiation of a thing. So, you know, in like philosophy 101 class, you know, you'll maybe discuss like, what is a chair, right? What is the platonic ideal of a chair? Well,

here's a bunch of examples of chairs. How do we relate that to the platonic ideal? And there's an interesting analogy with archetypes in that, you know, archetypes in and of themselves, like you can't it's almost as if you cannot experience an archetype directly in and of itself right but an archetype must be instantiated in a particular for it to be engaged with meaningfully and this happens in movies in art and literature when you sit in a movie and there's a protagonist that you identify or the wise old man right gandolph or dumbledore like these archetypes reappear in art And there's one archetype, the wise old man, right? This is just one example.

And then there's a million different instantiations of it that you interact with and make sense of it through those particular instantiations. There's also the idea of sort of unleashing or manifesting the potential for certain archetypes within the self, which also could be part of the individuation process. But yeah, those are wonderful breakdowns of really a sort of complex philosophically. philosophical lineage that Jung is coming out of and in turn, you know, turns around and influences subsequent thinkers. Okay, so we've touched on many core ideas of Jungian thought, but perhaps there's some that we still need to mention or some that we could go deeper into. So with that in mind, what core ideas did Jung introduce into psychology? And can you briefly explain them for our listeners. So yeah, his most accepted contribution to psychology is probably his work

with typology and psychological types, such as introversion and extroversion, is definitely his biggest academic achievement that has been accepted worldwide, because you always hear now and again the terms thrown about in popular culture and in, you know, psychology itself. But the idea of introversion and extroversion is based on the relationship that there is, of object and subject from an individual's perception of the world with relation to their personality. So in introductory terms, the individual that leans towards extroversion is usually more likely to behave in a way where they internalize the object, which is seen from the external world, while the more introverted person is to project their subjective internal world

onto the external object. This basic, so what you can see is that this basic behaviour pattern can explain the rough understanding of why certain people are more pleased in societal settings or vice versa, but through further analysis it can also explain emotional differences. But people who are more introverted could be more prone to disagreeableness or higher levels of neuroticism, because the general activity of projecting the internal world,

of imaginative desire, let's say, onto the object, and it being denied due to a reality of some kind can lead to social disharmony or emotional unbalance, where introverted people are more likely to be depressive due to the external object or world, being less inviting to the world which is preferred within their mind. So even through creativity of the individual, can we see that through typology, that same understanding through typology,

because the introvert is more likely to express themselves at possibly higher capacity through more enclosed personal mental activities like music, art or writing, while the more extroverted type will be at a high optimum level of capacity through active collective group work. But of course, this will get much more specific and subjective when you start applying the four psychological functions that you developed of thinking, feeling, intuition and sensing to the categories of introversion and extroversion, because we all fundamentally differentiate even further when it comes to the four psychological functions and the way in which we behave through them. So it doesn't mean that certain types of people won't do certain things like an extrovert when being a musician, obviously that's not true, but people will do certain things in a particular way that suits their psychological functions, fundamentally. So you can maybe, even apply maybe, apply this, to use something like authoritarianism, because the general extrovert, who generally internalizes the object is probably going to be more acceptable. to the general consensus of government or propagandic agenda if that was the case that is being

perpetuated, then the introvert, but things like this are hard to justify because no one is either one or the other. So an interesting thing Jung said was something like, something like this, the introvert always has to prove that everything he does rests on his own decisions and convictions, and never because he is influenced by anyone or desires to please or conciliate some person or opinion, while on the other hand the extrovert can typically walk into situations with blind expectation, which I think can possibly relate to the increased ability for extroverted manipulation due to simply how open some people can be to the rest of the world. So typology was one of the most significant things he developed in psychology, but of course

another was the archetypes of the collective unconscious. So as introductory as it can get, the animus, for example, is the unconscious masculine within a woman, and the anima is the unconscious feminine within a man. The shadow contains the aspects of ourselves we don't accept, or told not to accept, which we end up repressing into the unconscious, and thus a typical shadow projection would be something like seeing all the faults of their own or our own in someone else unconsciously without their own conscious knowledge of doing so. So it can be seen as a kind of energetic possession from the psyche. It is not, if it's not integrated properly, basically. And of course you have this same possession through the animus

where either a male or a female gets possessed by either the feminine or the masculine in its most toxic negative form. One way I analysed the existence of possibly the animus possession in modern culture was by looking into the modern meme of the Karen and why that is a modern example of memetic animus possession which has been picked up through mean culture and the internet and it's interesting to see how mythologically

the behaviour of the sphinx in the Oedipus myth of the Greeks is very similar to the functioning of how animus possession would occur in the real world within a woman or through something like the Karen especially when the secret riddle within the Oedipus myth in relation to the sphinx causes this thing to kill herself because the answer to her riddle is actually man itself

which is really interesting so you have the persona as well being in relation to the outer world is of course the mask we wear which acts as a form of protection and safety so with its over-identification we muddy our true selves and the ability to identify what actually is real

if we grip onto the persona too much. But the persona, I think, does have an interesting relationship with the shadow. Even though they are the complete opposite, shadow projection can occur unconsciously, I think, through the use of the persona in a nullifying manner, without the individual actually being consciously aware of it happening, which is an interesting thought to play around with. Absolutely, interesting indeed. And I really do, you know, with the whole,

using Jungian analysis to come up with an explanation of the Karen meme, I think, speaks to your general creativity and why I appreciate your channel so much. There's a lot of things to say here. One thing might be, just to make this point, because this is something I wanted to bring up in some capacity throughout this conversation, is the relationship that Jung draws really from the collective unconscious and such things as archetypes to our common shared evolutionary and biological history as homo sapiens. The very idea of a collective unconscious and the sort of outgrowth of archetypes

and the human mind across cultures speaks to this deep unity among all the human beings. And that can be something that can be grabbed onto and sort of ran with for those of us who want to advance an egalitarian politic. So that's very interesting and that tie in with, obviously I'm fascinated, and listeners know I'm fascinated with evolutionary biology, that tie in to science and the psychological outgrowth of our shared

human ancestry, I think is an interesting aspect of Jungian thought that, you know, can be applied to a more collectivist and egalitarian and even emancipatory political project in interesting ways. And I also wanted to touch a little bit on the introversion and extroversion dichotomy, and going back to the introduction again of the essential Jung, a quote says, since everyone has, and this is not from Jung, this is from the person who put it together in the introduction, since everyone has both an extroverted and introverted potential and also needs all four functions, thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition, if he is to live life fully, it follows that one task of analysis is to help the patient become aware of neglected

aspects of his personality. Such aspects appear in dreams, and the study of dreams became even more important in Jungian analysis than in its Freudian counterpart. And the element there that I want to just drag out a little bit is the idea of becoming more aware of your neglected aspects of your personality, and even, you know, developing that side of you that might not come naturally. So, for example, I am naturally a more introverted person, and clearly this leads to to sometimes a more depressive attitude and it can even lead although i am competent socially and

even fun socially i get exhausted by social social interaction and it can lead me to to recoil quite strongly into my solitude and my alone time always been a fan of camping by myself you know going out in the middle of winter and camping alone or you know spending hours out in the woods walking around completely alone. It's almost as if I need that recoil into myself in order to function properly. But one thing that I've noticed about quarantine and isolation during the pandemic is that it over-exaggerates that element of me to a point where I actually begin to suffer. So initially, I'm like, I have to stay at home and I can't go out and see anybody and I'm just surrounded by, you know, my books and I can meditate any time of the day,

etc like that's not so bad in fact i really enjoyed it for the first several several weeks and of course i was lucky enough to have a job where i didn't have to go out and be a frontline worker so that's a huge caveat to this um and salute to everybody on the front lines um you know you deserve way more than this society gives you but regardless of that um it was almost enjoyable for for a while and then as as it churned on and on and got so prolonged it became very clear that it was part of what was leading and exacerbating certain periods of depression and anxiety of which I'm still sort of trudging through. And then reading that aspect about developing these other qualities of you, I really do see it, particularly when quarantine is over, as a conscious goal of mine to not

succumb to my introverted inclinations and to force myself to be more social, not in like this crude way, but just to develop the extroverted side of my personality. If we all have both, we just lean towards one or the other. It stands to reason that if you do lean toward interversion, consciously working on expanding your extroverted side can lead toward individuation or unity and wholeness that union analysis aims toward overall. And the same for the extroverted type, taking time alone, trying to do introspection, learn more about yourself, develop a capacity for solitude. Those could be things that are very helpful in developing a sense of wholeness in yourself if you're an extrovert and you're naturally inclined in that direction.

So, you know, just something definitely to think about and it's interesting to see the ways in which the pandemic and the subsequent quarantine and isolation can play into those, you know, personality inclinations. Now let's move on and talk a little bit more about the shadow. I know I mentioned it in the intro and you mentioned it to some extent and you're, last answer but it's certainly worth going into a little bit more particularly it's it's it's crucial in some sense to come to terms with and integrate elements of your shadow um to to you know work towards wholeness and unity in the personality um and you did a really interesting video where you broke down shadow and its projection through a set of examples related to social media um the internet

and even pornography that I thought was really interesting and sort of drew out how elements of the internet bring out the sort of shadow side and the projection that often comes along with it. So to go a little deeper, what is the shadow more specifically and what are some primary ways in which the media and the internet reinforce it? In most basic terms, really, the shadow is the psychological repository you could say for aspects of ourselves

we do not want to accept but are true so what we do with those aspects is we place them into the unconscious to avoid them so one example could be the modern epiphenomena if you will of the in-cell what is the in-cell is kind of a meme now

but the in-cell is a person who really wants to be in a relationship but is fundamentally afraid extremely afraid. This is why they call themselves involuntary celibates, but they don't want to be celibate. They want to be in a relationship but cannot

muster the courage, if you will, fundamentally to seek it out with conviction. So, what do they do? They don't blame themselves, they blame women. And this is a very good example, I think, of modern shadow

projection, especially within the digital realm, and how the digital supports that kind of shadow projection. The fact that the individual, in relation to this issue, doesn't have courage, is of a harsh truth, obviously, and it is a difficult pill to swallow for them, and therefore this part of their identity falls into their shadow, becoming an aspect of themselves they don't want to admit because they lack courage. So what they do is carry on being an in-cell, of course, but as a coping mechanism, you could say, they unconsciously project their personal shadow-related problem onto women.

This is why the in-cell community got known or got popular for being abusive to women through like Reddit groups, hating women and objectifying them as the problem itself, which is obviously not true because it is shadow projection, a form of scapegoating their own personal or internal problems. So that's one example of this shadow, and in return, an example of shadow projection. But as you are asking, the media and the internet, I think, also reinforce in a specific way, or at least pander to aspects of the collective shadow for the sake of entertainment. That as a blueprint, certain TV shows, I think, are made.

to incite shadow projection unconsciously within the viewer so that it acts as a form of self-fulfilling entertainment. And an example of this, I gave in one of my most popular videos which kind of went viral, was the Jerry Springer show in the US and the Jeremy Carl show in the UK, by the mere fact that the anatomy of the show itself were to bring people out who have mostly relationship issues, something we can all collectively relate to and have experienced, which makes it obviously

effective towards the collective shadow, and then use the people on that show for projection purposes as entertainment from the viewer, where the show hosts incites and condemns the people who come on, or the viewers express complete hatred and belittle them psychologically and emotionally. This even got so far, I think, that one of the individuals, who went on to the UK equivalent, the Jeremy Carl show, ended up killing themselves afterwards, and it caused the show to actually shut down completely. So in relation to this shadow,

you could say that this is a case of people with bad relationships themselves or ones that are not perfect, because they never can be, but using such said TV shows as a method of projection or even collective shadow projection because it acts as a form of catharsis, because most of the time the people who would come onto the show

are people who were societally deemed inferior or deemed people that you would not want to be by society for example working class unhealthy, poor, illiterate do not speak very well not very intelligent and thus the show through this kind of collective form

invites the people and consciously to project their own shadow. But overall, I think, the digital world is becoming very much a place for this shadow within the psyche of people, because the internet acts as a distraction from the real world itself, away from the real problems in the real life that you live. I mean, just look at Twitter. It is the most toxic environment.

It is the place where the shadow speaks, you could say. Literally think about that because making a tweet is not the same as making a speech. You know, therefore a tweet doesn't require or invite as much, as much as it should do, the need for contemplation of what you're about to mentally put out there into the world. It is very much a place where people find things that don't truly matter to them, but use them for the sake of cathartic projection of their own shadow, of their own problems, and consciously as a form of coping mechanism. So it's very fascinating when you consider the dynamics of the Jungian shadow with things like collective stigma perpetuated by tabloid news articles, the narcissistic environment, that things like Twitter perpetuates which can go hand in hand of scapegoating and the object-subject relationship with TV entertainment, until the shadow can be used unconsciously through the people and sometimes fundamentally.

against the people, to make particular shows popular or to create internal conflict for the sake of money-making. Because, as we can all know, from the work of Edward Bernays, demonstrates, who was a nephew of Freud, you can very easily create a consumer culture, or lots of money, if you sell the culture objects which offer as a psychological advantage, and through that means, avoids the actual need for self-work. actualization and personal growth, all thanks to convenience, which is never always the best option. Yeah, I think that's very, very insightful, and I will make sure to link not only to your entire channel in the show notes to this episode, but also to that specific video, because it is really

clarifying it, and to take these concepts and make them immediately applicable through examples that everyone understands, I think can really be a clarifying process. Another aspect of the shadow and projection that I like to emphasize is to think about its role in fascist psychology. Now, you know, as a caveat, of course, I think there's a tendency on the psychological and psychoanalytic side to reduce sometimes fascism to its psychological foundations and to, in the process, somewhat ignore the material, the political, the elements of imperialism and colonialism and white supremacy that form a sort of material. basis for the rise of fascism. But on the other side, on the on the political left side,

there can sometimes be a reductive tendency in the other direction where fascism is completely reduced to the machinations of material politics and reality to the exclusion sometimes of elements of psychology that are clearly at play in the fascist mindset. And I think it behooves all of us, no matter what side of that debate you tend to fall on, to try to use both of those pieces to come to a more holistic understanding of fascism, particularly for those of us interested in effectively combating and defeating it. And so, you know, one way, now just personally, it's really interesting to take this idea and apply it to yourself, this idea that, you know, stuff that irritates you about others,

for example, and annoys you, says something more about yourself than it does about them, and to use that as almost an alarm bell for introspection, you're particularly repulsed by an attribute of somebody, or in the other direction, highly attracted to an attribute in somebody. It's usually an alarm bell, maybe look inside yourself and see where that comes from. But specifically for the fascist psychology, you know, the hatred and fear of the other, it almost always represents some sort of projection of one's own unexamined, self-loathing, and maybe even existential terror at their own existence.

I mean, happy, adjusted, holistic, secure people don't rabidly hate and seek to dominate and destroy others, right? It always comes from a place of inner weakness and deep, repressed, trembling, and security. And that's why I so often, you know, say that cowardice is a fundamental aspect of many fascists and of fascism broadly. The same can be true also with hyper machismo, regardless of what. side of the political spectrum it's on but often it's associated with fascism we can see it in balsanaro we can see it with trump we can see it in musilini and on down the list these far right authoritarian fascist figures make a theatrical display of of their machismo and their toughness it's particularly ironic in the case of donald trump who lived a privileged comfy cushioned life he was he was a

millionaire's child i mean he's never worked a hard day's job in his life. He's probably never been in a fist fight in the streets, and yet he presents himself. I mean, he's overly concerned with gossip and his looks and cakes on makeup every day, and yet he presents himself as this hyper-patriot machismo, defender of truth and tough guy sort of persona, and it's so clearly a desperate projection of his own internalized and repressed insecurities that he can't face but just broadly machismo is is the it's like always an unconscious like sort of compensatory mechanism for one's own feelings of deep inadequacy and feelings of repressed emasculation um so whether we're talking about incels who hate women or fascists who hate people of different

backgrounds religious ethnic racial etc their hate always says infinitely more about themselves than anyone else and they can't see it because they don't know themselves and you know that I think that helps clarify to some extent some of what's behind a fascist movements generally but then also we can all apply it to ourselves I don't think any of us escape this this critique unscathed we all have elements that we repress in ourselves things that we ignore in ourselves overlooking ourselves things that we sort of repress because they're not socially acceptable and you know

know, a core feature of psychoanalysis is anything that you repress will come up in some way, often in much less healthy and constructive ways. And so it behooves all of us on an individual level to do that shadow work and to integrate those elements of ourselves that we can sometimes repress. And it also, I think, helps clarify broader social trends that can help us bring a better diagnosis to the problem and therefore come up with better cures. So anyway, this conversation has been utterly fascinating. I would love to have you back on to discuss more. I mean, your interest is in philosophy more broadly, so we could easily have you back on to talk about a bunch of different thinkers and philosophical and intellectual trends, etc. I really am a fan

of your channel, and I'm going to link to it in the show notes, encourage all my listeners to go check you out and support your show because I think it really is valuable, it's creative, and it's genuinely informative. And thank you so much for coming on this show and speaking with my listeners and me about these topics. Before I let you go, though, can you please let listeners know where they can find and support your work online?

Well, thanks for having me on, and I really appreciate the exposure and getting to talk about these ideas further afield. So to people who are interested in psychology, philosophy, esotericism, religious mysticism, and all of this, and doing deep dives into it all, You can find my videos on YouTube via Thoughts on Thinking. I have a website called Thoughts on Thinking.org,

where I publish articles and a newsletter you can sign up to. And I'm also on Instagram and Twitter at Thoughts on Thinking and all other social media platforms. So yeah, cheers and thanks for letting me come on. Oh, oh, oh, figure out. But always when I get there, always when I get there, all the pieces they just fall apart out. I can't hear you.

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Are you going so I'm just walking through my walls Hello Hey that miss the sweet now You know this is not a party this is a crowd But hey that miss is sweet now sweet mouth, well you see you've got these things. We've got my needs to sell keep her. You wanted what you please.

Hey there, Mr. Sweet Mom, please. Hey there, Mrs. Sweet Man, can you sell the way for with a delicious disease? I've got it almost. I've got it all, almost all figured out. Thank you.