Title: The Jung cult : origins of a charismatic movement /
Authors: Noll, Richard, 1959-
Publisher: Princeton University Press,
Year: 1994
Subjects: Jung, C. G.; Jung, C. G. Religion.; Religion; Jungian Theory; Personality; Psychoanalysis; Psychoanalysis and religion History.
Abstract: In this provocative reassessment of C.G. Jung's thought, Richard Noll boldly argues that such ideas as the "collective unconscious" and the theory of the archetypes come as much from late nineteenth-century occultism, neopaganism, and social Darwinian teachings as they do from natural science. Noll sees the break with Sigmund Freud in 1912 not as a split within the psychoanalytic movement but as Jung's turning away from science and his founding of a new religion, which offered a rebirth ("individuation"), surprisingly like that celebrated in ancient mystery cult teachings. Jung, in fact, consciously inaugurated a cult of personality centered on himself and passed down to the present by a body of priest-analysts extending this charismatic movement, or "personal religion," to late twentieth-century individuals.
Contents: pt. 1. The Historical Context of C.G. Jung. Ch. 1. The Problem of the Historical Jung. Ch. 2. The Fin de Siecle. Ch. 3. Freud, Haeckel, and Jung: Naturphilosophie, Evolutionary Biology, and Secular Regeneration. Ch. 4. Fin-de-Siecle Occultism and Promises of Rebirth. Ch. 5. Volkisch Utopianism and Sun Worship. Ch. 6. Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido: Solar Mysticism as Science -- pt. 2. Prelude to a Cult: Chronology and Biography. Ch. 7. Spirits, Memory Images, and the Longing for Mystery: 1895-1907. Ch. 8. Otto Gross, Nietzscheanism, and Matriarchal Neopaganism: 1908. Ch. 9. "The Mothers! The Mothers! It Sounds So Strangely Weird!": J.J. Bachofen, Otto Gross, Stefan George, and Jung. Ch. 10. Visionary Excavations of the Collective Unconscious: 1909-1915. Ch. 11. The Collective Unconscious, the God Within, and Wotan's Runes: 1916 -- pt. 3. The Jung Cult. Ch. 12. "The Silent Experiment in Group Psychology": 1916. Ch. 13. "The Secret Church": The Transmission of Charismatic Authority.