In this essay, Jung seeks to extricate the individual from the grip of society. In doing so, he challenges the preeminent position of the State, the reliance on scientific rationality, and the very nature of modernity. Jung states that the individual “as an irrational datum, is the true and authentic carrier of reality, the concrete man as opposed to the unreal ideal or “normal” man to whom the scientific statements refer.” He claims that the onus of morality has been abrogated by the individual into the hands of the State. “The moral responsibility of the individual is then inevitably replaced by the policy of the State…. The goal and meaning of individual life (which is the only real life) no longer lie in individual development but in the policy of the State, which is thrust upon the individual from outside and consists in the execution of an abstract idea.” Jung posits that man is not so removed from his past that he can ever do away with religion. “The religious impulse rests on an instinctive basis and is therefore a specifically human function. You can take away a man’s gods, but only to give him others in return.” The State has replaced the Church as the altar to which rational man worships.
Jung needs to keep reminding us that the human life is so much more than just his rational ego and the outside world. “The life of the individual is not determined solely by the ego and its opinions or by social factors, but quite as much, if not more, by a transcendent authority.” Consciousness and the unconscious are two sides of the coin that make up the entirety of the Self. “Without consciousness there would, practically speaking, be no world, for the world exists for us only so far as it is consciously reflected by a psyche. Consciousness is a precondition of being…. The carrier of this consciousness is the individual, who does not produce the psyche of his own volition but is, on the contrary, performed by it.” The individual is a subjective beast, alone in the world. “Subjectivation (in technical terms, transference and countertransference) creates isolation from the environment…. As understanding deepens, the further removed it becomes from knowledge…. The individual in his dissociated state needs a directing and ordering principle. Ego-consciousness would like to let its own will play this role, but overlooks the existence of powerful unconscious factors which thwart its intentions.” Modern man began to equate himself solely with his conscious ego, that is to say, his own conception of himself. “The result is that modern man knows himself only in so far as he can become conscious of himself…. His consciousness therefore orients itself chiefly by observing and investigating the world around him, and it is to the latter’s peculiarities that he must adapt his psychic and technical resources…. He forgets himself in the process, losing sight of his instinctual nature and putting his own conception of himself in place of his real being…. Separation from his instinctual nature inevitably plunges civilized man into the conflict between conscious and unconscious, spirit and nature, knowledge and faith, a split that becomes pathological the moment his consciousness is no longer able to neglect or suppress his instinctual side…. Western man is in danger of losing his shadow altogether, of identifying himself with his fictive personality and the world with the abstract picture painted by scientific rationalism…. The more power man had over nature, the more his knowledge and skill went to his head, and the deeper became his contempt for the merely natural and accidental, for all the irrational data—including the objective psyche, which is everything that consciousness is not.” Jung suggests that modern man would do well to reach within himself, instead of relying on the outside world for his salvation. “Happiness and contentment, equability of mind and meaningfulness of life—these can be experienced only by the individual and not by the State…. The social and political circumstances of the time are certainly of considerable significance, but their importance for the weal or woe of the individual has been boundlessly overestimated.”
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