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The Jung Cult: Origins Of A Charismatic Movement

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Frankly, this was a disappointment. I went back from it with far more sympathy for Jung - and far less for Noll - than I had believed possible; and that in spite of the fact that - after a juvenile pash for Jung more than twenty years ago - I have long since given up on psychoanalysis (and in particular on the doctrine of Archetypes) as a system of knowledge and explanation; and that I was and am not impressed with Jung's private life and his abuse of patient/doctor relationships. The basic problem with this book is the juvenile, unmeditated, unintelligent pseudo-rationalism at its heart. Noll is apparently under the impression that there is something called "the historical Christ" which contradicts the teachings of historical Christianity; and therefore he approves of Freud, in spite of the howlingly obvious elements of pseudo-science, self-justification and superstition, because Freud takes religion to be a disease in need of curing rather than a legitimate way to view the world. Conversely, he opposes Jung because Jung, however distant his view from any orthodox religion, justifies religion as a state of mind. This, of course, is the reason why Jung's success continues in spite of his more than dubious scientific standing; because, however you look at them, in terms of the most basic issues of human thought Freud is a jailer, chaining us to the lowest processes of our bodies and offering us nothing more liberating than sex, and Jung is the man who turns the key and sets us free. I regard neither of them as in any way scientific, reliable or intellectually sound, but I also regard the influence of Jung as infinitely less pestiferous than that of Freud - and I owe this view to Noll's book, because it placed starkly in my face the sheer ugliness of the motives of those who attack Jung and defend Freud.

Reading this book made me research the life and times of Richard Noll. Having done so casts a new light on Noll's book. Richard Noll is a 'shape shifter'.

I started from the Internet piece Noll posted in the Fall of 1998 called `A Christ called Carl Jung'. In this piece, Noll first confronts the reader with and early attempt to shift shapes. He tried to gain admission to an unnamed Jung Institute under false pretenses. Not all reputable historians-of-science do this, but Noll did. Having broken the moral ice, Noll offers a brief history of an on/off love affair with C.G. Jung. The problem is, Noll offers totally wrong dates! He passes off a doctored autobiography instead of his real one. Check this out: `For most of the 1980's, I lost touch with Jung and Jungians, but I again checked into the Jungian scene in the late eighties to see if the analysts were behaving any differently. They weren't. I was older now, and a seasoned clinician. I now knew the scientific literature on human memory and could cite evidence to back up my suspicions that something was terribly wrong when Jung - and Jungian analysts- promised their patients...a mystical transformation. I now knew there was no independent scientific evidence to back up Jung's idea of a collective unconscious. He clearly made a terrible logical error in 1916 and then refused to consider the matter to the day he died in 1961.'

Now the facts are: Noll was a 'card-carrying Jungian neopagan, sun worshipper' at least until 1992. Noll's academic paper trail bears it out. For, during the period for which Noll claims abstinence from Jungian neopaganism, Noll actually wrote several articles and books which speak very highly of Jung and/or were dedicated to C.G. Jung. For example, in an article in 1985 in 'Current Anthropologist' Vol. 26, No. 4, on 'The Role of Visions in Shamanism' Noll states that he too holds that 'imaginal experience is vital to spiritual exploration', and that he, Noll, has been influenced in this regard '...in particular by C.G.Jung'. Therefore, Noll did not give up C.G. Jung during the Eighties! Because this is so, it is also not surprising then to discover that Noll in August 1990 still had his fateful attraction to C.G. Jung. Noll writes in the `Acknowledgements' of his book `The Encyclopaedia of Schizophrenia and the Psychotic Disorders', published in 1992: `No book is created ex nihilo, and I have stood on the shoulders of three giants who have given me the insights and strength to wrestle with such a powerful demon as the disease we call schizophrenia.' Eugen Bleuler is mentioned as the first giant on whose shoulders Noll matured and found succour. The second giant Noll thanks is the neopagan, sun worshipping C.G. Jung: I thank C.G. Jung, he writes `for his insights into the personal symbolic meaning of the signs and symptoms of psychosis, for his phenomenological approach to the psyche, and for the tremendous impact his life and work have had on my life, both personally and professionally.'

It's obvious: Noll's Internet biography of 1997 and the sources I have cited, especially the articles Noll published during the Eighties, the laudatio of August 1990 and much more, which I will mention below, contradict Noll's account of 1997. In that account Noll had conveniently forgotten that as late as 1991, he had dedicated another book, this one on `Vampires, Werewolves, and Demons' to no other than C.G. Jung.

Yet, there is still worse biographical doctoring. Not only had Noll not given up on the neopagan, sun worshipping C.G. Jung by the late Eighties. In 1991 and 1992 Noll was actually an active neopagan Jungian-oriented `facilitator' in Philadelphia and making money at it. For two years in a row Noll actively taught mithraic, neopagan insights on the Philadelphia mystery circuit! This is can be learned when we read the footnote of an article Noll published in 1992 in the Jungian journal `Spring', called `Jung the Leontocephalus' (Noll recycled this article later in his book `Aryan Christ'. In footnote 2 of this article, Richard Noll writes: 'I wish to thank the following members of the informal 'mystery cult' that has formed through their repeated attendance at a series of seminars on these and related topics which I led in the Summer and Fall of 1991 and the Spring and Summer of 1992 for the Aion Society and the C.G. Jung Centre of Philadelphia (2008 Chancellor Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103)...'. Noll then thanks some 25 persons including one whom he calls his 'resident soror mystica'. No, in the late Eighties Richard Noll had not yet learned to be a proper, materialistic and positivistic scientist, as he would have his readers believe in 1997.

Noll, that much is clear, jumped onto the shoulders of C.G. Jung and it defined Noll's own personal quest until about the time he was 33 (Noll was born in 1959). The rest of Noll's biographical sketch of 1997 must be relegated to the yarns which psychiatrists label 'pseudologia fantastica', or false life-history syndrome.

So what about Noll's book The Jung Cult: The Origins of a Charismatic Movement? I will wait till Noll once again remembers what he wrote in 1985, namely a quote by L. George, that 'imaginal experience is vital to spiritual exploration'.It seems to me that C.G. Jung's twenty volumes of the Collected Works attest to this simple but well-phrased observation.

I am a practicing attorney, and recently have developed a certain interest in Jung.

I read Noll's book before I had read any of Jung's own works. Without knowing a thing about Jung, it was obvious to me that Noll was not engaged in legitimate scholarship. He was not seeking to find out anything about Jung that he did not already believe. Rather, he had set himself up as Jung's prosecutor, and then set about gathering whatever evidence -- however tangential -- was consistent with his indictment. I stress "consistent," because Noll primarily cites events which, although roughly contemporaneous with Jung's work, cannot be shown to have any CAUSAL connection to what Jung wrote. Noll's book is based almost entirely upon insinuation, rather than demonstrable proof.

When I later began reading Jung's original works, I was fairly shocked. Jung bore no resemblance to the megalomaniac Noll made him out to be. Given Noll's allegations, I expected to be cringing, far more often than marvelling, at Jung's ideas. Quite the opposite was true.

This book is a frame-up. Jung deserves a new trial.

If you have any interest in Jung, competent scholarship, or how to prove a case, I heartily recommend "Cult Fictions." It is short, understated, and sharp as a razor.

Vicious, hysterical, attack on Jung. Clearly shows Richard Noll has a personal problem with the Jungian Movement (an expelled therapist, as the magazine Gnosis has proved). The book just put some scratches on Jung figure, as any close biography about anyone would. It paints a two-dimensional view of Jung, picking anything that fits negatively, while ignoring I would say 99% of what Jung wrote. The main point Noll misses is that Jung successfully defended the importance of religion against the materialism of Freud.To Freud religion is illness, but to Jung lack of religion is THE illness. The all important point is the linkage Jung made between the discovery of the Unconscious and the workings of ones spiritual life. Comb Nolls work and you wouldnt know it. Athough attacking Jung as the supposed creator of a wacko creed ( where are the temples?), Nolls ignores ( he doesnt actually; he wants you to ) the great dialogue between so many protestants and catholic priests with Jung at the time and now with the jungian movement. In fact Jung would frequently advise his catholic patients to seek their priest. In fact many catholic priests and protestant ministers are jungian analysts. Again not something u would find in Noll, but that works against the picture he is trying hard to sell. What is most troubling about Nolls book, is that he is clearly hoping his readers are not clever enough, or not informed enough to notice his dagger work....

According to the author's Acknowledgements, this is his first work in the library-bound field of the History of Science after leaving a career as a clinical psychologist and "many years of frustration" with Jung. So it's strange that the one subject that's absent from the book is psychology! What constitutes psychology? How does the field advance over time? What were Jung's contemporaries in the field doing? How do you test a good psychology in a scientific way? Noll doesn't approach these questions. Instead, the essence of Noll's argument is: Jung read Neitszche, the Nazis read Neitzsche, therefore Jung was a Nazi. As are all Pagans, Unitarians and all Germans. (In fact, the book more than verges on anti-German racism.) I guess Noll's virulence is a left-handed compliment to Jung and his work; Jung must have discovered something powerful. But the book does nothing for science. In spite of all the footnotes, this book is not much more than sensationalism and spite.

Psychoanalysis has existed as a recognized discipline (one hesitates to call it a science) for little more than a century. In this time, it has exerted great intellectual and social influence, far beyond what one might expect of a narrow medical specialty. Terms like "ego," "id," and "collective unconscious" have entered the popular vocabulary, and the analyst's consulting room and couch provide the setting for innumerable cartoons. Given the cultural significance of psychoanalysis, it is odd how little curiosity historians and social critics have shown about its origins. Most regard it simply as an invention of the late nineteenth century, like the light bulb or the automobile.

In "The Jung Cult," Richard Noll has brilliantly placed Jungian analysis in its historical context. He has also, in the process, shed much light on Freud and a number of his other disciples. Psychoanalysis was to a large extent the product of German philosophical and literary thought, and had much to do with the collapse of orthodox religious belief amongst the educated classes. German romanticism, the radical nihilism of Nietzsche, Haeckel's efforts to construct a modern "scientific" structure of ethical thought along religious lines, a "völkisch" hearkening back to Nordic paganism (as in Wagner's operas), and late nineteenth-century occultism as exemplified by H.P. Blavatsky, were all ingredients of the bouillabaisse out of which analysis emerged. These elements were (and remain) obscured by the trappings of science and medicine, which serve principally to give psychoanalysis an intellectual respectability it would otherwise lack.

While Freud, who described himself as a "godless Jew," believed that religion was the problem, and its elimination the solution, Jung concluded that the moral stringency of orthodox Christianity had to be replaced by another type of religious belief, ecstatic and archaic in character. In the Jungian view, the dominant philosophical background is mystical and magical, as Noll documents. He argues persuasively that Jung viewed himself as a religious figure, and that he was in some sense the founder of a kind of religion.

Noll's book has been portrayed by some Jungians as a hatchet job. While it is not written from a sympathetic point of view, it is far from that. It is thoroughly documented and copiously annotated. I found it a fascinating exercise in intellectual history. Jung stands between Joseph Smith and L. Ron Hubbard in the dubious pantheon of the founders of modern religions. For what it is worth, he accomplished what he did with far more eclat and subtlety than either of these "neighbors."

This book is filled with simple assertions that are quite simply false. Sonu Shamdasani addresses many of these in Cult Fictions. Some things Shamdasani doesn't address have to do with the assertion that Jung was a "Gnostic Sun-worshiper" which, in and of itself, is a contradiction of terms much like saying he was a Dionysian ascetic. Other idiocies and falsehoods abound. Anyone with a passing familiarity with Jung's work will find this book hilarious.

A note to say that Jung's typology has been proven completely right by neuroscience - there are 4 corresponding areas of the brain, and when some of them get damaged, a corresponding function (e.g. thinking, sensation) stops working properly. Also, as Jung said one of each person's functions works immensely better than all the others, one each person's areas (and it's always different, as Jung says) has about 100 times as much energy working in it as the others. Also, evolutionary biology (as well as philosophical structuralism and even poststructrualism) shows how his archetype theory of the collective unconscious is the only logical explanation for a lot of scientific evidence (see also Sheldrake's 'Presence of the Past' which shows, in a very Jungian way, how archetypal information becomes stored in many species, most of all human beings).

The reason why I'm mentioning this is because, no matter what this book says, Jung's theories are basically CORRECT, except in some minor details. Now, whether you believe these speculations about his alleged racism (and I don't - they're quite clearly rubbish, as many commentators on this book, except those who didn't understand Jung in the first place and don't want to look stupid, have pointed out) or not, you can hardly argue with this. Also, the Jungian psychologists have been far less dogmatic than many other ones, like Freudians, and so to claim he instituted a "cult" (especially when he was very reclusive and successful in dealing with his patients), is absurd. The fact that one of the other reviewers claims this book stopped him from going under Jungian analysis is a tragedy, because if he needed analysis I can hardly recommend any better technique. Loads of new techniques are emerging in other areas, but strangely enough almost all of their insights are anticipated by Jung's concept of individuation - but he doesn't get much credit for them. I hope the other reviewer ended up with one of the better ones. Don't let it happen to you.

Some people will do anything for a little propaganda. A book like this could just as easily have been written about Socrates, Rabelais, Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Joyce, or a lot of other people. Whenever a revolutionary new thinker comes along, the irrelevant, talentless pseudoiconoclasts (e.g. Richard Noll) come along to take them to pieces. Spare me yet another hyped-up 'j'accuse!'. Yes, I did read it and take note of it, and the facts are selectively chosen and selectively interpreted. A waste of money, and deceptive & vindictive too. Burn this.

I read the book and find it to be intellectually dishonest. After a bit of research I found that I wasn't alone.