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"I’ve learned an awful lot from Jung. I feel I have an immense debt of gratitude to him, in that way, in that, if you read Jung, you’re really getting a little education in itself. What Jung is trying to do is to reinvest that notion of redemption with meaning. Not in a way that abandons its theological term, but to make it meaningful: an existential redemption in a world where God is dead."
Jungian Analyst Jakob Lusensky engages in dialogues and research at the intersection of psychology and religion, for the purpose of individual and cultural transformation. Forthcoming book C.G Jung: Face to Face with Christianity.
“I’ve learned an awful lot from Jung. I feel I have an immense debt of gratitude to him, in that way, in that, if you read Jung, you’re really getting a little education in itself. What Jung is trying to do is to reinvest that notion of redemption with meaning. Not in a way that abandons its theological term, but to make it meaningful: an existential redemption in a world where God is dead.”
(0:30) Jakob Lusensky: Welcome to Psychology and the Cross. In this episode, I talk to the British scholar Paul Bishop. Paul holds the William Jacks Chair in Modern Languages at the University of Glasgow. He has spent the last twenty-five years researching and writing on the foundation of the relationship between C. G. Jung and Friedrich Nietzsche, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Hans Trüb, and much more. His scholarly work helps us understand how Jung’s legacy is not to be understood only as the depth-psychological theory and therapeutic method that he left behind, but [as an occasion] to see analytical psychology also as a cultural product in itself.
Paul’s scholarly work reaches such a width and depth that it really deserves its own separate podcast. At least we will need many more episodes just to scratch the surface of his massive contribution.
For this, our first conversation, we decided to stay focused on Goethe and the Faust legend, the text that struck a chord in Jung; and the foundation of this story, when trying to understand Jung’s own inner motivations, struggles, creative contributions, and wrestling with the religious question.
In this episode, we discuss Jung’s absence in academia; Imitatio Fausti in contrast to Imitatio Christi; the question of psychological transformation; and how seeking redemption in the secularized world is portrayed in the story of Faust, and transmitted through Jung’s psychology.
But let’s start from the beginning. How did he first of all get in contact with Carl Gustav Jung? How did it all begin?
(2:12) Paul Bishop: Of course, I first came across him in the context of thinking about German culture—thinking about him, too, as someone who was a post-Nietzschean thinker. And in many respects, this whole question of how one can see Jung in relation to Nietzsche has been one of the questions that’s fascinated me, and still fascinates me. So I guess it comes back to looking at Jung in relation to Nietzsche, whom I first read in a little Penguin translation called The Nietzsche Reader, edited by R.J. Hollingdale, which I picked up in the Waterstones branch of Southend-on-Sea.
Then I went and studied French and German. I wanted to keep going with Jung and learnt a lot about him, I think through a couple of lecturers. But it was very much clear to me that Jung was someone who was seen as fringe . . . And unfortunately, I think he still is. I’ve tried to kind of push him back into the center, but maybe the center itself has become fringe now.
And I think it was because Jung was a slightly kind of odd, not always accepted kind of thinker; the more I’ve become fascinated by him.
(3:30) Jacob Lusensky: If I understand your biography, you write back in 1995—you wrote your doctoral dissertation on Jung and Nietzsche. And it was later published as The Dionysian Self: C. G. Jung’s Reception of Friedrich Nietzche. Can you tell us something about that work and writing the dissertation?
(3:52) Paul Bishop: Yeah. Well, one of the few people who did lectures on Jung at Oxford was—in fact, somebody who wasn’t in the German department at all—was a fellow in politics at Wadham College: Robert Curry, who did some lectures on Jung. And when I thought about doing a PhD—and in those days, you got grants, you got financial support to do it—so it was very different from the kind of climate that we operate in today.
I went and saw him, and he said to me, “What are you interested in?” and I said, “Well, the question of Jung and Nietzsche.” And he said, “Well, you’ve got the complete works of Jung in twenty volumes. Go and read them.” And I think probably it’s the best piece of advice that I’ve ever had.
And then I discovered something very interesting about the way that Jung is presented in the library. And, because, if you wanted the Collected Works in English, then you had to go to the Radcliffe Science Library. You had to cycle all the way out and—oh, not that far out—and you had to get on your bike and go and find the Radcliffe Science Library. If you wanted Jung in German, then you’d have to go—but not to the Taylorian Institution, which was where most of the modern language books were kept—but you’d have to go to the Bodleian, and you’d have to order them up volume by volume. And there was something with—it seemed to me to exemplify the way that Jung was repeatedly pushed to the side and kept out of the way.
But I was very encouraged through my doctoral process by having a great doktorvater, as the Germans say, in Richard Sheppard, who was very encouraging, and supported work on an area, which, as I say, even then wasn’t the mainstream development of his interest. He was an expert in Expressionism, but he was able to help me formulate an approach to Jung, which came out in the form of the thesis. And then, I’m pleased to say, in the form of a—Walter [de Gruyter] did quite a—book, even though it’s unfortunately very expensive, and it does tend to put people off. So I’m very sorry about that. But I’ve never made a penny out of it.
(6:10) Jakob Lusensky: (chuckles) But how was it around that time, then, to write about Jung and Nietzsche? And were there also comments or feedback from colleagues?—Or [how] was it—to choose that as your theme?
(6:12) Paul Bishop: Well, I think it was probably seen as a strange topic to choose. I think a lot of that has to do with the way that psychoanalysis was seen and is seen in Britain. One notices, when you go to Germany or Switzerland, that psychoanalysis is much more a part of the culture. There are many more books on psychoanalysis in the bookshops, and then many more analysts, themselves, as you can tell by the little gold plate, saying—they’ve got the name and you can go for therapy there. And that’s not the place psychoanalysis has in general, I think, in the UK. And certainly not with Jung, as far as the academic field is concerned. And it’s always puzzled me, although I think I’m becoming a little bit clearer as to why it is the case that in the arts and humanities, Freud is fine (less so now, but he basically was, and he stood in there). Lacan is very, very fine, indeed; he’s absolutely okay. But not Jung.
And I think that’s one of the things that I keep on running up against in colleagues in German: that Jung is somehow seen as a thinker who’s not important. By contrast, I would say that he’s very much, I think, before our times. You don’t have to be a card-carrying Jungian in order to see that the guy’s got something really important to say to us. And, as I say, my own experience is that I’ve learned an awful lot from Jung. I feel I have an immense debt of gratitude to him in that way, in that if you read Jung, you’re really getting a little education in itself. He’s a fascinating figure for taking you to all kinds of areas in European thought, world thought. He really is a global thinker in that way.
(8:09) Jakob Lusensky: And without going, maybe, today, in depth into Nietzsche and Jung—it’s such an interesting link. And I have of course spent a little bit of time on reading the seminars and such. But is there something you can share about what you find fascinating, and what you have found when you research the two—maybe parallels and links and relatedness?
(8:32) Paul Bishop: Yeah, sure. Well, of course, Jung himself draws attention to the importance of Nietzsche for him. It’s an important topic in Memories, Dreams, Reflections. And of course Jung gives this huge great seminar in 1934 to ’39, on Nietzche’s Zarathustra. So it’s pretty clear to me that Nietzsche was a central figure for him. I was very lucky, when doing the thesis, that it was just about the time that I was working on it that those seminars on Zarathustra got published. So that was a nice little bit of synchronicity, for which, again, I’ve been very grateful.
So Jung himself draws attention to Nietzsche, that there is this strange remark that’s made in Memories, Dreams, Reflections about (he felt) that he might have been a bit too much like Nietzsche. And I think that brings us into a theme which is dear to your heart, and dear to the heart of this podcast, which is to do with the religious question. And I suppose I’d see, in headline terms, the importance of the relationship between Nietzsche and Jung lying in this idea of, what do we do if God is dead? That’s clearly such an important thought for Nietzsche, and expressed in the form not of a simple atheistic declaration, “There is no God,” but rather, “God is dead.” And it seems to me that Jung had been trying to respond to that, think through the consequences of that.
And one of the ways in which that was done was through the little text Septem Sermones ad Mortuos. And now we can see with the publication of The Red Book what a big topic this is for Jung. And one of the lines that one finds in the Sermons and in The Red Book is that God is not dead, er ist lebendiger denn je: he is more alive than ever. And that’s clearly a repost to Nietzsche.
(10:45) Jakob Lusensky: The biography Carl Jung that you wrote in the Critical Lives series, the first chapter is called A Child of Goethe. Could you speak, or maybe start with, that sort of legend around Jung in Goethe’s biographical relationship, and maybe from there, we can move into this part of the theme?
(11:08) Paul Bishop: Yeah, sure. I mean, the fact that I wrote the critical guide is another good example of how these things, you know, come about, not through your own doing but through the invitation of others. And Reaktion [Books] very kindly invited me to do an introductory biography on Jung.
I was hoping that I could, if I did that, also persuade them to allow me to do an introductory biography on Ludvig Klages, who’s another thinker very close to my heart, but wasn’t able to persuade them of the market value of that, unfortunately; and maybe they were right.
But this whole question of Jung and his relation to Goethe: I think is wonderfully symbolized by this story that Jung keeps talking about and saying that he doesn’t want to talk about, but he does keep on talking about it, which is this legend of being an, as it were, literally, a bastard child of Goethe—that he is an illegitimate son of Goethe, who is the great-great-grandfather, in some way. And it’s clear that there is something of symbolic importance to it. And for me, it’s a way of Jung acknowledging his indebtedness to Goethe, that he takes an awful lot from Goethe, as it were. His intellectual framework is provided by Goethe. But he’s also not simply reproducing it. But he’s wanting to use it for his own purposes. And that’s why he is this kind of illegitimate Greek god figure whose great-grandfather figure, godfather figure, is there in the past for him. So I think it’s a very nice way to express this relationship on the one hand, which is very, very close, but on the other hand, not one of simple identity as well. And I think it goes back to this question that we find in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, of this first reading that he has of Faust, when he is a child. We’re told that it’s Jung’s mother who recommends that he read him. “Why don’t you go read Faust one of these days?” she says to him, and Jung does. And he’s struck by it. And I think in many respects, throughout the rest of his life, he is trying to understand what on earth it is that Goethe is doing in this remarkable, remarkable book. A very strange work. And I think it’s one of the things that’s often missed when people present Faust as kind of, you know, the iconic work of German literature. What an icon to have. I think one of the few critics who’s really put their finger on this is Harold Bloom in his book on the Western canon. But he starts off by saying how strange, how weird, Faust is. So it’s not, I don’t think, a dry, canonical, irrelevant, out of date text at all. It is weird. And it’s weird in a way which makes it interesting.
And Jung, I think, identifies two things in particular that he wonders about when reading Faust. And the first of those is this figure of Mephisto. The relation between Faust and Mephisto. And this very difficult question of, well, how are we to interpret the end of Faust, Faust II, when Mephisto is in effect tricked out of having Faust as his prey through having—has he or hasn’t he?—won the wager. And so there’s this whole question of the relation between Faust and Mephisto. And what happens at the end when Mephisto is tricked out of getting Faust’s soul. And then, as a related point—because after all, it’s Mephisto who tells Faust about them—the related point is to think of the mothers. And the question of what does this mothers’ scene represent in Faust II? How are we to understand it? And I think we can see both of these things. The question of Faust and the relation to and relationship with Mephisto. The whole question of the mothers and the mothers’ scenes is running away through, all its way through Jung’s earliest work, Psychology of the Unconscious: Transformations and Symbols (Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido), where you have numerous and very substantial references to and quotations from Faust. So I think it’s a mega important question for Jung. And to the extent that Transformations in Symbols sets up the agenda for what Jung wants to do, contra Freud—not just Freud, but also pro what he himself wants to see himself doing—then we can see that Goethe has helped Jung provide that—discover that—intellectual framework for him.
(16:06) Jakob Lusensky: And how would you describe, what would you say, that he wants to do? I mean, how would you, in simple words, try to describe what he wants to do with this project that’s starting here?
(16:17) Paul Bishop: I suppose it comes down to this question of, what does one understand by libido? How does one define it? You’ve got Freud’s view of libido is essentially sexual. You’ve got Adler talking about libido—Adler’s another figure who I think is pretty much left out of the figure, out of the picture, unfortunately—but you’ve got Adler, who Jung not entirely incorrectly aligns with Nietzsche and the will to power. You’ve got the idea that libido is essentially a drive to power. And against that, Jung is trying to offer a much more intricate and sophisticated idea of libido, because it can also turn against itself. Because you have this, you enter this whole dynamic of growth and death and rebirth. And so you might say you’ve got a definition of libido which is essentially processual. And what we’ve got, in the form of Goethe’s Faust, we’ve got a wonderful working out of process across Part I. And then, on an even larger scale, in Part II, you have a whole set of processes. And for me, it’s that dynamic of having it being dying away and being reborn—that dynamic. That narrative, if you like, that structural dynamic, which is in Faust: that is the most important thing for Jung. It’s not so much that we can go searching for alchemical symbols, although they are undoubtedly there. And you’re in talks about Faust as being an alchemical text. But I think that’s not simply an invitation to hunt the symbol, but it’s to look at the deeper underlying structures. And in the case of alchemy, you have the structure of transformation. In the case of Faust, very evidently, you have this structure of transformation. And it’s also there—it’s at the heart of—well, it’s in the very title of the book: the Wandlungen, Transformations and Symbols of the Libido, which is part of Jung’s project.
(18:24) Jakob Lusenky: But also you mention the mothers and you mention Mephistopheles, yeah? (Bishop agrees) And is there something to say shortly about those two huge themes?
(18:36) Paul Bishop: Well, if we go back, and we look at Faust II, the mother scene is not directly represented. It is something that is—the descent of the mothers, of course, in a way, can’t be represented, because they’re outside space and time, and that does make it difficult to represent. But Mephisto tells Faust about, “Hang in, let’s go down to the mothers.” Why’d he want to do that? Because he wants to get Helen of Troy and Paris back in order that he can present them to the emperor, for entertainment. So you’ve got a very complex narrative framework as part of Faust II. But Jung hones in on this—as others have done: Rudolf Steiner, for example—on this particular episode, as being one which is of symbolic importance, and it is of great importance. At the same time, one author would say, when reading Faust II, that as a literary text, it is full of symbolism. I think it’s also full of irony and humor, as well. And that’s an aspect of Goethe which it seems one often overlooks. Maybe Jung himself overlooks it from time to time. But Mephisto is telling Faust about how he’s to descend down into the depths in order to bring up Helen of Troy, that is to say, in order to bring up again the emblem of ancient beauty. So we’ve got her back, we’ve got behind this story of getting these figures up for the entertainment of the emperor, in Faust II and I. We’ve got the idea of, how do we recover the past? How do we recover ancient beauty? And how do we bring it to life? It’s not simply recovering it as something which is dead and gone, but how do we bring it up and enter into a living relationship with it? And, of course, that resurrection, if you like, that recovery, that revival, that bringing to life of ancient beauty is actually done through the form of Helena, in the third act of Faust II, where Helen actually speaks. Goethe writes these beautiful Greek meters, in order to show how the past can be revived, not just as an experiment in, as it were, antiquarian interest, but it’s something which is alive and beautiful for us today. And it seems to me that, again, Jung understands that, in a very intuitive way, he latches on to this idea of, how do we enter into a living relationship with the past? Or, as he puts it, when he’s talking about this in The Red Book, he says, how do we come to terms? How do we pay our respects to the dead? And so it’s the dead: not just as the dead and gone, but the dead who have an influence on us now, who are, in a way, more alive than we can be in our modern or postmodern way. And so, Mephisto telling Faust how to get to the mothers, how to go to the mothers, and bring up this figure of Helena is about, how do we dig down into that part of ourselves, which he calls the collective unconscious? How do we recover part of what is our own inheritance, which is something psychological, but I think also cultural as well. That’s why, for me, analytical psychology is—sure, it’s a therapeutic method, but it’s a great cultural project as well. And how do we make it alive and beautiful for us as well?
(22:28) Jakob Lusenksy: What—you do write somewhere—and I think it’s actually related to Symbols of Transformation: you say that, “marked by a clearly Faustian motive as casting aside the constraints of Christianity,” and also used to wondering, as you speak now, of rebirth and transformation and the Wandlungen der Libido, and what we notice in Faust, how Mephistopheles—the devil, if I can simplify—leads to this renewal of, and at the same time, I’m thinking, as we know, that Jung’s struggle or, like a context, like being in the sort of Christian context, and there is this casting aside the constraints of Christianity. I’m not sure if it’s too early, or if there’s something to say about that, that stroke, and also with that tradition—is that sort of left out? Or is that very fully integrated, do you feel, in the work of Faust or also in the work Symbols of Transformation?
(23:39) Paul Bishop: Yeah, no, that’s a very good question. I just happen to have at hand the page on Memories, Dreams, Reflections where Jung talks about Faust. It’s a great passage, and it’s a passage to which Peter Kingsley, in his book Catafalque, also draws our attention as well, because I think he recognizes the importance of Goethe for Jung, and Faust and Jung—or whoever wrote—Jaffé—whoever wrote Memories, Dreams, Reflections—says, “Faust struck a chord in me.” And again there’s a sense of identification: “Pierced me through in a way I could not but regard as personal.” And I think that’s what I like about Jung: it’s that he sees Faust as not just a great text, but it’s a great text for him. So I think he makes that point that, when reading literature, at the end of the day, it’s not just academic. It’s really got to be personal as well. He says, “It awakened me, the problem of opposites, of good and evil, mind and matter, light and darkness.” Big questions, the big ideas, but not as abstract—and in that sense, unimportant—but as matters which are of vital importance to being as human being. The Faustian philosopher encounters the dark side of his being, the sinister shadow, Mephistopheles, who, in spite of his negating disposition, represents the true spirit of life, as against the arid scholar, who hobbles on the brink of suicide. Now of course, anyone who’s academic is getting a little bit of a slap in the face with that, isn’t it? Because it’s saying salvation doesn’t come through the academic activity. But it comes through this understanding of what the true spirit of life is. And of course, that is, I think, part of the presentation of Mephisto in Goethe’s Faust. When Faust is given the line, “Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint und stets das Gute schafft.” So that denial, very dialectical, this saying “no” actually brings “yes”—something important—into existence. Jung says, “My own inner contradictions appeared here in a traumatized form.” [Jung says,] “[Goethe had written] virtually a basic outline and pattern of my own conflicts and solutions.” So it seems to me that he sees Goethe’s Faust as creating this arena, this space, for him to explore himself as well.
And then he goes on to say, later, “I consciously link my work to what Faust had passed over.” And for me, these are the three great topics of analytical psychology: Respect for the eternal rights of man, so it’s human rights. So there is an ethical dimension to analytical psychology. Second, recognition of the ancient, what I was talking about earlier: how do we deal with the archaic? And [thirdly,] the continuity of culture and intellectual history. And that is what I’d see as Jung’s great contribution to the arts and humanities, even if the arts and humanities doesn’t seem able to see it. And how does this all link to this question of religion, and God?
Well, of course, that is the key part of the overarching narrative framework in Faust. The story of Faust begins in the prologue in heaven, by staging a meeting between God and the devil. So we have this theological background, which, of course, is taken straight out of the bible. What we’re dealing with here is the story of the Book of Job. And, of course, in 1952, constantly Job is coming down the track, as well, as part of this great continuity in Jung’s works. And, as you know, in the story of Job is this question, is dealing with this question of good and evil, and how are we to respond to the fact that there is evil, there is sickness, there is death and destruction that’s in the world. And it seems really interesting that a text which is essentially secular, Goethe’s Faust, nevertheless, importantly recognizes the religious dimension in cultural terms, in various ways, but chiefly these two: through the form of the prologue in heaven, where God and Mephisto talk, and just as in the Hebrew scriptures, Job is identified, as it were, the figure on whom Satan is going to be able to work his evil magic. So, equally, the Lord, der Herr, in the prologue in Faust says to Mephisto, “Look, here is my Knecht, here is my servant, you know: he’ll find his right way through even if you go and tempt him.” And this sets up the whole dynamic of the story of Job, which is essentially the same as the story of Faust. That’s one of the religious dimensions which I think is in there, an important Judeo-Christian framework to the entire story of Faust. Then, if we ever make it to the end of Faust II itself, we have the great Schlussszene, the final scene, which is a parody, a pastiche—difficult to find the right kind of word for it—a reworking of Dante’s Divine Comedy, and the climactic scene of the Paradiso. And you have all these angels and all these doctor figures, and you have the ascension of Faust going up. And of course, at the end of it all, you’ve got the Magna Mater herself. So, as a text which is essentially a part of the secular canon, it’s suffused, it’s absolutely saturated, with these religious ideas and images, which are not merely incidental, but are absolutely integral to the story. They’re there, right at the beginning in the prologue, in the Judeo-Christian background of the story of Job, and they’re there right at the conclusion, with this Dantesque apotheosis with which the entire work ends.
(29:48) Jakob Lusenky: Is it, what we’re seeing here, with Jung’s fascination and this chord that’s been struck in him, reading Faust, is it—you’ve been talking about an Imitatio Christi before, Jung’s rendering of that, but it sounds like an Imitatio Fausti. Or, I’m wondering, is Faust the figure that shows the pattern, for Jung, for how to redeem?
(30:13) Paul Bishop: Well, I think that’s a very good way of putting it, except, of course, that—interestingly, and that seems to be something that Jung draws attention to when he’s talking about Faust—in many ways, Faust is a failure to integrate the shadow, is a failure to successfully resolve these problems. And that’s why Faust is such a morally compromised figure. Jung talks about Faust as being this arid scholar, and of course, there is then the whole question of the involvement of Faust, his responsibility for what happens to Philemon and Baucis towards the end of Act II, and of course that’s slightly problematic, because I can see that Jung is absolutely right to insist on the ethical, the moral dimension to this question of transformation. But at the same time, at the end of the day, Faust is a literary text. And so it’s a little bit difficult. I think there is a kind of category problem here with trying to read Faust in moral terms. But looking at the question of an Imitatio Fausti: in a way, that’s not what you want to do, because you end up being an arid scholar, and you end up having blood on your hands, as far as Philemon and Baucis are concerned. So it’s having Faust as a kind of—Faust the figure, this literary character, is not the example. But Imitatio Faust in the sense of imitating the work of Faust—Faust as a text, Faust as a cultural artifact—yes, I’d say you’re absolutely right. Because that text embodies this transformational dynamic which Jung is so interested in.
(32:10) Jakob Lusensky: Mm, yep. When I read Memories, Dreams, Reflections, you know, there is this quote that you have probably often heard, but I will share it for those who haven’t heard it. But Jung sort of confesses, saying that, “The older I have become, the less I have understood or had insights into or known about myself. . . I am astonished, disappointed, pleased with myself. I am distressed, depressed, rapturous. I am capable of all these things at once, and cannot add up the sum. I am incapable of determining ultimate worth or worthlessness; I have no judgment about myself and my life. There is nothing I am quite sure about. I have no definite convictions–not about anything, really. I know only that I was born and exist, and it seems to me that I have been carried along. I exist on the foundations of something I do not know . . . When Lao-Tzu says, ‘All are clear. I alone am clouded,’ he is expressing now what I feel in advanced old age.”
(33:12) Paul Bishop: Wow. Isn’t it a beautiful passage? And it’s the lucidity of the self-insight that’s there. Which I think is striking, as well as the fact that it’s a kind of reworking of the topos, the old Socratic topos of “I know that I know nothing.” And that, if you know that you know nothing, that’s not simply something negative. But in a way, it’s also the great breakthrough.
(33:40) Jakob Lusensky: And it’s also the beginning of Faust I.
(33:42) Paul Bishop: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(33:45) Jakob Lusensky: It’s also the beginning.
(33:46) Paul Bishop: Yes, yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I think that, and I think that that is obviously as when one sees Faust presented as a kind of scholarly figure, one does somewhat sympathize with him, you know, he’s learned all these things. And he says, “It hasn’t actually got me anywhere.” What he wants to know, he says, “Daß ich erkenne, was die Welt / Im Innersten zusammenhält.” I think there you go, you get that sense of, this is not simply bookish understanding. Faust’s done that. And in a way, Jung does it as well, because he sets himself up as a lecturer. He sets himself up as an analyst. But he doesn’t just want this book learning. He wants that experiential dimension as well, “Daß ich erkenne, was die Welt / Im Innersten zusammenhält,” so actually understanding how the world functions, and by talking about it as eine Welt, is to see the world as a cosmos rather than a happenstance of things. It’s to see the world as a place where one can look for meaning. And I think that’s a great Goetheian project: to see life as something which is essentially meaningful. There’s a great quote where Jung says in one of his letters, he says, “The point of life is life.” And on the one hand, that’s a tautology. On the other hand, it isn’t. It’s—the whole point is to be alive. It’s a kind of vitalist conception of identity. And it’s also to see that “was die Welt zusammenhält”—it’s to understand the dynamics. It’s to understand the processes and the transformations that go on within it.
(35:45) Jakob Lusenky: Well, that’s interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, yesterday before we met today, I sort of reread the conclusion that you make in your biography on Carl Jung. And in the last paragraph, you pointed to that, you say: “And this after all, is precisely the message of Faust: that one replaces the violent striving, indexed to the masculine or patriarchal, to attain something essentially unknowable, to perceive the innermost force that bonds the very universe by an acceptance of a juncture, an almost imperceptible dynamic of being pulled along the eternal feminine crossed as on high. In other words, ultimately, Jung subscribed to the position, one might well quote, “Goetheian vitalist.” He believed that “The point of life is life.”
(36:33) Paul Bishop: Well, that—I couldn’t put it better myself.
(36:36) Jakob Lusensky: (Laughing) You put it well yourself.
(36:39) Paul Bishop: I’m glad that you find that there’s some meaning in that, because it’s—but one does, sometimes, when dealing with these texts, which are so very difficult, you know, “Have I really got the hang of the whole thing, the whole thing at all?” But the more I look at it, and the more that I have conversations with people like yourself and others, the more it seems to me that, you know, this is a helpful and a fruitful approach towards these texts, and to Jung. It’s not about forcing them into some sort of preconceived, predetermined pattern. It’s not about, you know, getting them to align with each other in a way which is not true to them. But it is, in a way, to take seriously Jung’s sense that culture is essentially a question of continuity. And I think that’s maybe something that we’ve lost in the arts and humanities, where we very much like deconstructing, we like disrupting, and we like problematizing. And that’s all fine. But if you only leave people with that, and of course, there is this crisis in the arts and humanities at the moment, at least in the universities, because we’re getting fewer and fewer students. And it is maybe one of the problems that if you offer something which is essentially negative and disruptive, that doesn’t answer the need that people have, which is to say, “Well, I want to understand how these texts interrelate. I want to understand what are the connections between them. I want to understand, actually, what are the connections between myself and the world.” And I think, you know, the big topic that Jung addresses, which is, “What is the relation between the self and the world?” That is really what a renewed and revived arts and humanities might think about offering to people. Because if those connections are there, they’re there whether we recognize them or not. And I think that Jung is a great thinker for trying to say, “Well, let’s try and make these ideas productive.” That doesn’t mean we have to be signing up to being card-carrying Jungians or anything like that. But can these ideas be made to work? Do they help enrich our understanding of these texts, like Goethe’s Faust, and Nietzsche’s Zarathustra? And if so, that’s surely a good thing. And it’s not committing oneself a priori to a particular ideological position. It’s simply to understand what these thinkers, these writers, these artists were doing. It’s about having an attitude of humility towards them, and saying, “We’ve got in Faust an incredibly complex text. How am I, with my limited intellectual capacities, going to be able to enter into this vast world?” Similarly, with Jung, this immense demonstration of learning, of erudition, that we find in these works, I think ought to encourage us to say, “Well, let’s go, let’s go with this flow. And let’s try and get into the continuities which Jung draws his attentions to.”
(39:44) Jakob Lusensky: I’m also thinking about Jung’s need to sort of bring ideas into life, also materially, so like, yes, his writing, his thinking, but also to actually sculpt things, yeah? So at his tower, there, Bollingen, he built, he carved the famous inscription on the wall: “Philemonis Sacrum—Fausti Poenitentia,” “The shrine of Philemon, the repentance of Faust,” he carved in there, yeah? (Bishop agrees) Into the wall. I’m just wondering, how do you understand this?
(40:21) Paul Bishop: That’s a very good question. And again, I was interested to see that in the Catafalque, Peter Kingsley pays a lot of attention to this inscription, as well as to the significance of the tower at Bollingen as well. Have you ever visited the Bollingen tower, by the way?
(40:43) Jakob Lusensky: Yes, I’ve been there once, yes.
(40:46) Paul Bishop: Because it is a building, which in many ways I think should be, you know, it’s part of national, international patrimony in some in ways. It’s a good example of how Jung works with images, he works with texts, and he’s working with architecture as well. And this whole question of, what does that inscription mean? Well, I think it comes down to this question of, which Philemon are we talking about? Because we have the Philemon that’s there in the Philemon and Baucis in Act II in Faust, then in turn, it refers back to the story of Ovid in the Metamorphoses, scenes which Goethe in a conflict . . . says it’s kind of part of the background of what he was doing. And then we have Jung’s Philemon as well, this figure with the sort of Kingfisher wings, this guru-like figure who appears. And I wish I could give an entirely coherent explanation of what it means to talk about the shrine of Philemon and the repentance of Faust. But to me, it seems, it’s Jung’s way of acknowledging his personal debt to this Gershon dilemma of, shall we say, the necessity of evil and the inevitability of violence. And that’s something which is too easy to say. And too easy to pass over. And Jung I don’t think means it in an easy way. And nobody should, after the twentieth century, mean it in an easy way. It seems to me a way of linking the kind of ethical and moral and psychological questions that Jung is dealing with with political issues. And the bit of Memories, Dreams, Reflections that I was reading from, where he talks about Faust: up above, he talks about how the archetypes were knocking on the door in Wagner. He talks about the First World War—there is, of course, the relationship he makes between what happens to Philemon and Baucis in the Second World War. So the political dimension of the of the real-world devastation, that Jung is part of, as well, as a historical figure. To me, it’s problematic, because we have real, historical, moral issues about guilt and responsibility. And then on the other hand, we have a literary text, we have a cultural artifact. And to me there’s a difficult relationship between the two of those things. And I’m not sure that it is always the right thing to talk about historical guilt and responsibility in inventory terms. Because they’re simply different. They’re two different categories. But it seems to me—my provisional understanding of what is happening in that instruction is to say that Jung is understanding the sources of what goes wrong in the twentieth century.
(44:16) Jakob Lusensky: The year, do we know the year that he actually made this inscription?
(44:19) Paul Bishop: That’s a pretty good question. I think it is there in the first iteration of the town, but then he moves around, I think. I think he then puts it as the [location]. He shifts it over to another place. But my question would be, when he talks about it as the shrine of Philemon—we’ve got these three Philemon figures, the Jungian, the Ovidian, and the Goetheian—so, which shrine is it? And if it’s a shrine to all three of them, then how does that relate to this penitential question of Faust? Because, of course, Faust is, in Goethe’s text, not penitential. That’s the whole problem. That’s the whole problem, in moral terms, within this theological framework, of understanding what happens at the end of Faust II. Within the terms of that framework, what happens at the end of Faust II is a scandal—because, Faust, first of all, the man who’s entered on a pact with the devil, led Gretchen into her ruin, has got the blood of Philemon and Baucis on his hands, ends up being saved. And of course, that is what is—that’s the great moral, if you like, theological affront to Judeo-Christianity that Goethe is making in his text: it’s that Faust, who in every other Faust story is damned, is in this one, precisely because of what he’s done, saved.
And the one thing we don’t see Faust being is penitent. There is this moment at the end where he says, “Well, I recognize that I’ve spent all my time running through this world.” And he always repeats, or does repeat, depending on your point of view, voice the terms of the wager. But we don’t have a full repentant Faust at the end. In fact, curiously enough, the only figure who’s being referred to as being penitent in the final scene is that of Gretchen. Gretchen, who is referred to as “a penitent woman, otherwise known as Gretchen.” But if you look at Faust, the last thing that Gretchen should be, bearing in mind what Faust and Mephisto have done to her, is penitent.
(46:36) Jakob Lusensky: Yeah, there is this footnote in Act Five, “He who strives on and lives to strive can earn redemption still.”
(46:43) Paul Bishop: Yeah, exactly. So, so we’ve got this question of, what does it mean to be redeemed? What does Erlösung mean? What does redemption mean? It’s a question which is, I think, feeding into Jung’s work on alchemical texts, and in particular, the works in Volume XII, Psychology and Alchemy, when he talks about conceptions of redemption in alchemy, and, of course, that’s an interesting question: can we, do we, does Erlösung, does redemption still have any meaning for us today? And, you see, what Jung is trying to do, his theological contribution, if you like, is to reinvest that notion of redemption with meaning, not in a way that abandons its theological term. But to make that meaningful, as—if you like—an existential redemption in a world where God is dead.
(47:52) Jakob Lusensky: This makes me think about the background to these struggles, so the theology or the Christian heritage that both Goethe and Jung lived within themselves. And I’m also thinking about der Erlöser, who would in a more traditional way be Jesus Christ, the redeemer. (Bishop agrees) I’m wondering about that, if you could say something, what you found in your research, and how you understand, maybe, first Goethe’s relationship to Christ and Christianity and something about Jung on that matter?
(48:29) Paul Bishop: Yeah, sure. Well, there is this line, which we find in Dichtung und Wahrheit—what a great title, Poetry and Truth. So it’s not a simple autobiography, just as Memories, Dreams, Reflections is not a simple autobiography, where Goethe talks about wanting to have “a religion for my own private use.” And it seems to me that that comes very close to the way that Jung sees things as well. I think that there is a sense of disconnect that Goethe experiences, between himself and the church, or organized religion. But this doesn’t mean that he abandons those religious terms—as you can see in Faust, the theological aspect is really important. So he doesn’t simply turn his back on it. But he treats it differently, as it were; he treats it artistically, in fact. And similarly with Jung, we have a sense of a great disconnect with organized religion that’s there, in the accounts that we find in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, of his first communion, his experience, which is built up for him, and it’s a huge disappointment, as well as this sense that the religion hasn’t quite got a handle on what God really means. This peculiar God that defecates on Basel’s cathedral, this God that he talks about him being ecstasy and a bloody struggle as well. So a God that’s far more ambivalent and ambiguous than the very simple one which Jung sees being offered in the form of Protestant Christianity that he that comes across. And of course, then there’s the whole question is far more of Jung’s apparent loss of faith, that then God simply becomes dead. It doesn’t work anymore. But Jung is not—unlike Freud, who just sees religion as mere infantile narcissism—he doesn’t see it as simple as that. But he’s trying to work out a response, which recognizes the symbolic dimension to Christianity.
And I think that’s why Jung is so important for us, because he sees this symbolic dimension as on its last legs. The symbol has ceased to speak to us in the way that it did in the past. And so the whole question is, how do we recover the symbol, and in Transformations and Symbols of the Libido, Jung has this interesting passage where he says, what we have to do is to replace belief with understanding. And I think every time that Jung is dismissed as some great irrationalist, some great mystic—in the negative sense of the word—figure, this really doesn’t take an account about what the man himself writes. He says belief is actually replaced by understanding, that’s clearly going at understanding in the analytical-psychological sense of how it is that symbols have an effect. And I think that, again, Goethe’s Faust, as a work, rather than on the narrative level, exemplifies what Jung wants us to do, which is to preserve those theological symbols, those religious symbols, but to understand that that is how they are functioning—as symbols. That’s not to reduce their power. It’s, in fact, to open them up and make them available to us in a new way. And this is clearly a debate that’s going on within the church itself. I’m thinking about the recent Motu Proprio that’s been issued by the pope to, in effect, outlaw the Latin Mass or the Tridentine Mass. Now, Jung, when he’s writing about it in his “Transformation Symbolism in the Mass,” there we’ve got that word transformation there, again, is fascinated by this symbolic dark dimension. And Jung, I think, is someone who doesn’t want to go to church, but he’s interested in what this religious, this cultural construct, can say. And so, I think it’s interesting that one of the most vigorous responses and defenses of the Latin Mass, the Tridentine Mass, has come from an atheist thinker in France, Michel Onfray, who wrote a great piece, I think it’s in Le Figaro, where he says, “Look, I’m an atheist. But even I can see that the Tridentine Mass is important, because of its cultural, its symbolic, significance.” And I think in many ways Jung might be able to help the church think through some of these questions, particularly when one reads more and more about, in the Church of England, the culture of managerialism taking over within the liberal church, and that’s to do with this question of, what is the purpose of the church? What does it mean to offer redemption? Because, of course, that’s Jung’s question as well: what does it mean to be redeemed today?
(53:47) Jakob Lusenkey: I just the other day finished editing the last conversation I had with Bernard Satorious, which is a Jungian analyst in Zürich, but he’s also a scholar of Islamic studies. And one of the themes or leitmotifs that he came back to in that conversation was the question of surrender. And how, in various ways, having to do with redemption, of course, but various ways, how Jung struggles up until maybe the end of his life?
(54:17) Paul Bishop: Yeah, yeah. No, I think you’re right to draw attention to the significance of the Islamic culture as well. You’ve got the figure of [insert name], the green one, haven’t you, as very important in the Black Books, as well as in other parts of Jung’s writing as well. And I think that Jung as a thinker is—how shall I say?—he can help us understand the problems that we might have with particular spiritual or religious traditions. And that’s what makes him so useful, is that he is sympathetic to what religion wants to do, but actually he thinks the conventional way of it working doesn’t really make any sense. I’ve often thought Jung would be interested to see what’s happened in terms of the growth of fundamentalism, because the growth of fundamentalism seems to be something which demonstrates that even though the symbol doesn’t work, it can still be in an immense, political, and very dangerous political force as well. And there is this great quote by G.K. Chesterton, isn’t there, that whilst when men stop believing in God, which had been stopped believing in God, they don’t stop believing: they’ll believe anything.
(55:59) Jakob Lusenky: Well, another thing that we come back to in various conversations with scholars and analysts in this, in the beginning of this podcast series, has been the famous quote from Jung in the BBC interview, when he says, “I don’t need to believe. I know.” I’m not sure if you have any reflections on that statement from all these years that you’ve spent studying Jung, and how you sort of contextualize or understand the statement. I think you touched upon it before, but is there anything—reflections that you have on that statement? Or?
(56:38) Paul Bishop: Well, no, it’s a good question. And I think it’s a great moment. It’s a fantastic interview, and it’s a great moment in the interview, and just reminds us of what a good performer Jung was—give him credit—he’s excellent at doing this sort of publicity stuff. And it’s such an intriguing moment. When he is put, by John Freeman, the Gretchenfrage, as Germans call it, don’t they? You know, the Gretchen question, do you believe in God or not? You know, this is put to Jung. And it’s just wonderful to see how he really sort of ramps it up for full effect, by saying “all believe,” and then pauses so dramatically, and then says, “I know.” But of course, he doesn’t tell us what he knows, and it’s a wonderfully ambiguous statement, because in some ways, it’s a kind of Gnostic remark, isn’t it? You know, “I don’t believe, but I have this knowledge.” And I’ve often wondered whether he’s saying there, “Well, I know that there is a God, or I know that there isn’t a God.” It seems to me that it’s classic Jung. On the one hand, it’s very, very serious. Serious, it’s one of the most fundamental questions that one can ask. And at the same time, it’s playful. There’s something, I remember, a Jungian once described to me that Jung has been has been schalkhaft. Gosh, how would you translate that? Sort of roguish, and so on? And it seems to me there is something schalkhaft about this, just the same way that he is playful and humorous and at the same time very, very serious when he talks about being an illegitimate child of Goethe. And to me, it’s a great moment, because it shows Jung as being very human. A great communicator. It’s a wonderful way of dodging the question. And it’s—it’s got us all still puzzling and wondering, decades after that program was originally shot.
(58:57) Jakob Lusensky: Did this episode evoke any thoughts or feelings or reflections? Please share your feedback on cross dots center slash feedback. You can there also record an audio message and we might include your comments or thoughts in the next episode.
Thank you for listening.
EXTRA SEGMENT
(0:01) Paul Bishop: This is for Jung, and one of the lines that one finds in the Sermons and in The Red Book, is that “God is not dead,” “Er ist lebendiger denn je.” He is more alive than ever. And that’s clearly a repost to Nietzsche.
(0:20) Jakob Lusensky: Hm. He’s more alive than ever.
(0:23) Paul Bishop: Well, that’s the statement that’s made, and it seems to me that The Red Book, which is a kind of anti-Zarathustra, is wanting to work that through. But it seems to me that—look at the way that Nietzsche presents the death of God. He does it in the form of this little passage in The Gay Science §125, this parable of the madman who’s going around, midday, with the lamp, looking for God. And he can’t—and he can’t find him. This is full of lots of echoes of the biblical story of Elijah, all this stuff about, is God on holiday, is he deaf, can’t he hear you? There’s that kind of play in there. The idea, as well, of, in pre-Socratic times, looking for humankind, can you find it as an abstract idea? Diogenes and his lamp. So it’s a very rich allegorical story, which is then taken up and assumed as the starting point for Zarathustra, of course a great poetic work in its own right. It’s a philosophical text, but it’s also a literary text.
Now, compare that with Jung’s Red Book, where we have this cry at the beginning, “Where are you, my soul?” Again, it all sounds very Nietzschean, there are lots of echoes from Nietzsche that are built into the The Red Book. And you actually have this encounter with—however one wants to describe—the deity in The Red Book, but it is imaginative. It is poetic. Of course, it’s also illustrative as well as artistic, because you have these pictures. But it seems to me significant that both Nietzsche and Jung are trying to prosecute their arguments with this aesthetic elaboration of them. They’re not writing very dry, academic treatises. They’re writing poetic and imaginative works, but which have a very, very important question, which is this question of, is God dead? And if he isn’t, what does it mean for him to be alive?
(2:49) Jakob Lusensky: And when you say, or describe, The Red Book as an anti-Zarathustra, could you say a little bit more?
(2:58) Paul Bishop: What is Jung up to in The Red Book is a very interesting question. We can now, thanks to the Black Books, begin to pursue that genesis more clearly in textual terms. But it seems to me an imaginative working through of a set of psychological predicaments. And that’s also what Zarathustra is as well, that’s the reading, perhaps—I’ve been a little bit over-influenced by Jung in this regard—that’s the kind of reading that Jung offers in his seminars, which is a very strange reading, in many ways, that meets all the bits where I sometimes think Jung goes slightly astray: like this whole question of the identity between Zarathustra as a figure and Nietzsche as a writer. I don’t find that part so helpful, but other parts are full of brilliant intuitions.
And I think the real key idea, and what’s a breakthrough, is to see Zarathustra as a kind of unfolding set of psychological experiences. And of course, that also applies to The Red Book as well. And I think that one could interestingly read some of the comments that Jung makes in his Nietzsche seminar, and apply them to his Red Book. And I guess I think that’s true of lots of things with The Red Book: that in retrospect, we think, “Aha!” Statements that are made in one’s published works take on a new hue when we compare them to The Red Book. I’m thinking about, for example, the couple of the essays on psychology and literature in Volume 15, when he talks about the visionary work, and you think, “Well, my goodness, actually, that’s kind of an explanation of what he’s up to in The Red Book as well.
(4:40) Jakob Lusensky: But I’m also wondering about Christ in this, because I also know Shamdasani and Hillman, when they discussed The Red Book in this Lament of the Dead, they’re quite clear on sort of concluding that the central sort of theme or the person that shows up that he’s trying to really work through, and work and understand, is Christ. I am just wondering, it’s like this absence of Christ, or this other pattern of redemption, another type of Erlöser in the form of Faust. Or Imitatio Christi versus Imitatio Faust. I was just wondering if there’s something that you’ve been thinking about around this?
(5:22) Paul Bishop: Yeah, no, well, I think some gentlemen are right to emphasize the Christ figure for The Red Book. But of course, it is a Christ figure where the iconography is given this distinctly Jungian twist, through having the serpent coming out through the mouth of the Christ figure, for having all this solar symbolism that goes around it. And it is, it’s more of a Gnostic figure of Christ, isn’t it, than of the Orthodox figure? I suppose I see that it’s—and you also have these references to Thomas Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, so that’s another dimension in which this question is addressed. At the same time, when you have the figure of Izdubar, when you have the figure of the gods that could be shrunk down into the egg, in order to be reborn and so on—that doesn’t sound much like Christianity to me. That sounds like more of a syncretic, and much more composite, kind of approach. And I suppose if one looks at the Black Books, the figure that emerges for me, most strikingly, in the seventh of the Black Books, is not Christ, but it’s Wotan. So it seems to me that whilst Christianity is part of Jung’s intellectual cultural outlook, it’s not the be all and the end all of it. And that’s one of the reasons why Jung is important, because if we want to thinker who is global, intercultural, intertextual, he ticks all those boxes.