Written by Andrey Miroshnikov
When examining the emergence of National Socialism in Germany, it is only too natural to approach the subject by way of political, social and economic theory. While neither of these theories are void of reason, they all tend to lack novelty and excitement. The charge of staleness cannot, however, be mounted against the works of Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung. Although more than eight decades have elapsed since Jung’s thoughts on National Socialism first saw the light of day, they have yet to reach a wide audience. The relative obscurity to which Jung’s deliberations have been confined can, perhaps, be explained by the complexity and vastness of analytical psychology. By and large, Jung’s thesis on the rise of National Socialism in Germany could be summarised as follows: Secularisation of German society prior to the First World War had created a spiritual void that became filled with political ideology. A concurrent process of urbanisation resulted in the individual being diluted in the collective where the instinct of self-preservation was dulled and the expression of immorality with impunity was more likely. The camel that broke the straw’s back came in the form of German defeat and humiliation in World War I. The outcome of these was mass psychosis. It provided a receptive soil for the surfacing of a primordial archetype of violence and destruction in the collective unconscious of the German people. Possessed by this force, the Germans went on to externalise their internal chaos. A succinct summary of this sort is, by necessity, intolerant of nuance. Let us therefore expand on the essential element of Jung’s conceptual framework by addressing the meaning of the archetype.
Jungian archetypes are ‘the firmly established primordial types or images which are innate in the unconscious of many races and exercise a direct influence upon them.’ (Jung 1936/1970) However, these archetypes are not immutable and may not always be manifest. The former point is made explicit by Jung when discussing the ascent of Fascism in Italy and the raging civil war in Spain. Both reflect a departure from the ‘Mediterranean father-archetype of the just, order-loving, [and] benevolent ruler.’ (Jung 1936/1970) On the other hand, the manifestation of primordial archetypes depends upon the existence and the degree of embeddedness of superstructural archetypes in the collective unconscious. Religion is identified by Jung to be one of the main sources of these superstructural archetypes. It is important to note that Jung uses the term ‘religion’ to refer primarily to the individual’s inner temple or spirituality rather than organised religion. Although Jung seems to be a long way from embracing organised religion, he laments the consequences of its disappearance. In his view, the process of secularisation is tantamount to the destruction of superstructural archetypes that had hitherto regulated the expression of behaviours and traits of primordial archetypes. In other words, the ‘death of God’ lets other deities loose. One of these deities was the supreme god in Germanic mythology. Wotan is considered by Jung to be the ‘truest expression and unsurpassed personification of a fundamental quality that is particularly characteristic of the Germans.’ (Jung 1936/1970) Wotan is a god of storm who ushers passions and the lust for battle into the world. Now, it is necessary to clarify that Jung views gods not as ubiquitous beings who dwell in Asgard or other such realms, but as ‘personifications of psychic forces.’ (Carter & Farah 2022) The possession by Wotan shall, thus, be interpreted as being under the sway of the long-repressed emotions and behaviours he represents.
At this point, it might be reasonable to assume that the instinct of self-preservation would have provided the last floodgate to prevent the avalanche of hideous urges from taking over the individual and society. Unfortunately, it simply was not there. Urbanisation is seen by Jung to have dulled the instinct of self-preservation by creating a situation where ‘[E]very man hangs on the next while all hang in the air and hardly anybody is aware of their insecurity.’ (Jung 1946/1970a) Apart from lulling the individual into a false sense of security, the mass is said to unfetter the dynamisms of the collective man.
Carl Gustav Jung (1946/1970b)
‘Man in the mass sinks unconsciously to an inferior moral and intellectual level, to that level which is always there, below the threshold of consciousness, ready to break forth as soon as it is activated by the formation of a mass.’
Although urbanisation and secularisation are seen by Jung to have stripped German society of the guardrails that might have otherwise prevented the nation’s descent into a frenzied orgy, the final push seems to have come from a humiliating World War I settlement. Over the decades prior to the First World War, Germans had become accustomed to military victories and dread from other great powers. (Jung 1946/1970a) The settlement, however, brought about a new reality. Without the desire to accept it or the strength to alter it, the Germans sought to reject it. This rejection of reality led to mass psychosis, a condition where contact with reality is lost. (National Institute of Mental Health 2023) Combined with secularisation and urbanisation, this collective mental disorder facilitated the surfacing of the destructive primordial archetype. National Socialism conformed to this archetype perfectly and was, thereby, found appealing by the German nation. Here, we may observe to have come full circle in exploring Jung’s explanation of the emergence of National Socialism in Germany.
Before bidding farewell to the reader, it would be fitting to make a few closing remarks. The works of Carl G. Jung are inestimably more sophisticated than the author’s understanding thereof and the confines of this article would allow. Indeed, the complexity of Jung’s concepts exposes them to both unintentional and deliberate misconstruction. It is not difficult to imagine, for example, how some of his thoughts concerning race can be seized upon in pursuit of malicious ends, regardless of his distaste for the idea of the Aryan race and those of the same ilk. (Jung 1946/1970a) But how important is Jung’s apparent refusal to grant inherent superiority or inferiority to a race for those seeking to do just that? So obvious an answer needs no stating. Another contentious trope of Jung’s psychoanalytic approach is the inference of the nation’s psychopathology from the psychology of the individual. The link between the two is, however, a natural expression of Jung’s conviction that ‘[s]ociety and the [s]tate derive their quality from the individual’s mental condition, for they are made up of individuals and the way they are organized.’ (Jung 1946/1970c) In conclusion, the author hopes to have introduced the reader to a fascinating perspective on the development of National Socialism in Germany.
Bibliography:
- Carter, M., and Stephen Anthony Farah. 2022. “Jung’s Others Society, Nationalism and Crowds.” In The Spectre of the Other in Jungian Psychoanalysis, 124–138. Taylor & Francis.
- Jung, C.G. 1936/1970. “Wotan.” In The Collected Works of C. G. Jung: Vol. 10. Civilization in Transition, edited by H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, and W. McGuire, 179–93. Translated by R. F. C. Hull. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- Jung, C.G. 1946/1970a. “After the Catastrophe.” In The Collected Works of C. G. Jung: Vol. 10. Civilization in Transition, edited by H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, and W. McGuire, 194–217. Translated by R. F. C. Hull. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- Jung, C.G. 1946/1970b. “Epilogue to ‘Essays on Contemporary Events’.” In The Collected Works of C. G. Jung: Vol. 10. Civilization in Transition, edited by H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, and W. McGuire, 227–43. Translated by R. F. C. Hull. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- Jung, C.G. 1946/1970c. “The Fight with the Shadow.” In The Collected Works of C. G. Jung: Vol. 10. Civilization in Transition, edited by H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, and W. McGuire, 218–26. Translated by R. F. C. Hull. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- National Institute of Mental Health. 2023. “Understanding Psychosis.” National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/understanding-psychosis#:~:text=Psychosis%20refers%20to%20a%20collection.
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