CG Jung Institute Analyst Training Program of Pittsburgh

Jung and phenomenology

2013-2014
Presenter: Roger Brooke, Ph.D., ABPP

Jung called his approach to psychology phenomenological, and he expressly made this claim
in contrast to Freud, whose work he found reductionistic, materialistic, and deterministic. In my
view, Jung’s claim to being a phenomenologist should be taken seriously, as I argued in detail
some years ago in my book, Jung and phenomenology (Routledge 1991 and in press for 2014;
Trivium 2009).
As Jung and his commentators have often said, his insights would pour out of him and he left
it for others to put them in order. His writings are often an odd mix of metaphors, each with its
own epistemology: natural scientific or biologistic, Kantian, gnostic, classical, mystical, and--
yes--phenomenological. His use of the phenomenological approach and method for studying
psychological phenomena was inconsistent and not well informed, but it was a guiding
sensibility that ran through his work. This course will show how Jung’s work can be read
phenomenologically. My hope is that some of you will find that this reading pulls together his
thought as a whole.
Phenomenological psychology is an approach and method for studying the phenomena of
psychological life on their own terms, without the imposition of theories or scientific
assumptions imposed from without. There are many tricky issues embedded in such a claim,
including the extent to which such a commitment is even possible. I do not want us to get too
bogged down in epistemology and philosophy. But the course will involve reading a little
phenomenology--by an analyst, Erik Craig--and then reading Jung’s work phenomenologically.
By the end of the course, you can expect to understand the main themes of a
phenomenological reading of Jung’s work and how such a reading helps one think about Jung’s
central terms, such as the individuation process, the self, the archetypes and complexes, and
clinical phenomena such as dream interpretation, active imagination, and the transference/
countertransference relationship.
My book, Jung and phenomenology, is to be reprinted next year by Routledge. The current
printing by Trivium is so full of typological errors that it is not recommended. I shall send all
required readings to you as pdf files in good time.
I suggest reading the papers in the order presented. There may be a few other readings
mentioned and recommended from time to time, depending on your interests.

1. Introduction
Brooke, R (2013). Jung and phenomenology. Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. NY:
Springer. This entry outlines the central themes of the whole course.
Brooke, R. (1999). Jung’s recollection of the lifeworld. In Pathways into the Jungian World.
London and New York: Routledge. Originally published in Harvest, 1994. This essay discusses
Jung’s life and work in historical terms, addressing in particular his affection for pre-renaissance
language and his Numbers One and Two personalities. This historical approach and analysis of
Jung’s “Personalities” as ways of knowing the world parallels phenomenology’s understanding
of the historical context for the need for phenomenology--to recover a way of seeking about a
world of experience that tended to be covered over in the renaissance.

2. Psychological life as a world of experience

Brooke, R. (2009). The self, the psyche, and the world: a phenomenological interpretation.
Journal of Analytical Psychology, 54: 601-618. This essay carefully teases apart some terms that
are often, I think, confused and conflated in Jungian thought. It is also my attempt to follow the
great example set by Erik Craig in the following essay. I suggest that you read my paper first,
since it is an analysis of Jung’s own terms and will make the transition into Craig’s essay more
intelligible
Craig, E. (2008). The human and the hidden: existential wonderings about depth, soul, and
the unconscious. The Humanistic Psychologist, 36: 227-282. This essay is foundational in setting
out a phenomenological description of being-in-the-world.

3. Jung in Africa
A critical discussion of Jung’s experience in Africa: the place of psychological life. Ch. 4 in
Jung and phenomenology.
Ubuntu and the individuation process. These papers move in two directions: first, to recover
the link between consciousness and the world as irreducible; second, to help see through Jung’s
colonialist assumptions in his views of Africa and of the “dark,” “primitive layers,” of the
psyche. Jung’s colonialist transference towards Africa is perpetuated in his model of psyche. As
phenomenologists it is incumbent upon us to see through these unconscious assumptions of
Jung’s so that the depths of psychological life can show themselves without the lens of Jung’s
anxieties.

4. The self and individuation. Chapter 6 of Jung and phenomenology. In addition to this
chapter, have another look at the essay read for the second seminar. We shall discover that the
self and individuation are both situated existentially, in historical and socially constructed
contexts, so that Jung’s classical image of the acorn becoming an oak (the self individuating)
is a delightful image and metaphor, but can lead to psychological, political and ethical naivete.

5. Conscious and unconscious. Chapter 7 of Jung and phenomenology. This seminar explores
the ambiguity of these terms in Jung’s writings. We shall also note some significant
differences from Freud’s views, in particular, the self-regulating intelligence of the
unconscious, the developmental and ontological priority of the unconscious over
consciousness, and its contents as image rather than as desire. But some often missed
similarities between Freud and Jung will also be noted, including its primary process
phantasies and its destructive possibilities.

6. Complexes and archetypes.

Psychic complexity and human existence. J. Analytical Psychology, 1991, 36, 505-518.
 The archetypes. Ch. 8 in Jung and phenomenology. This seminar makes use of Merleau-
Ponty’s phenomenology of the body and perception to consider Jung’s word-association studies
and his theory of complexes and archetypes. This seminar will critically consider and interpret
recent attempts to link archetypes to neuroscientific evidence and theory.

7. Clinical implications
A clinical study. Ch 9 of Jung and phenomenology
Analytical psychology and existential phenomenology: an integration and a clinical study.
Psychoanalytic Review, 83(4), 525-545.
Boss: The intrinsic harmony of psychoanalytic psychotherapy and Daseinsanalysis. In
Psychoanalysis and Daseinsanalysis. NY: Basic Books, 1963 and da Capo Press, 1982.

8. Dreams and active imagination

Read some of Jung’s essays on dreams if you have not yet done so.
Romanyshyn: Dreams and the anthropological conditions of dreaming. In C. Scott (Ed.). On
dreaming. an encounter with Medard Boss. Soundings: an Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol LX, 3.
Boss: Dreaming and the dreamed in the Daseinsanalytical way of seeing. In C. Scott (Ed.). On
dreaming.

I hope that you enjoy the course. I look forward to spending this time with you.

Roger Brooke, Ph.D., ABPP