Then when I finally start paying attention to this polarizing scholar I come to find out he is this tepid academic stumbling through life and struggling to make sense of it.
I think I totally agree with this description.
I think it has to do with his involvement and participation with the Nazi party and government, the same kind of dark cloud that hangs over Heidegger. Jung was pretty much the de jure Psychoanalyst of the Third Reich and this role had him saying some absolutely crazy and hilarious shit. Getting a copy of ‘
Jung Speaking’ makes for some great reading, it is a collection of his public addresses. There is an interview from 1939 in there that I just love:
Jung’s hostility to modernism and “Enlightenment era” thinking puts him in the company of Foucault, Derrida, and Lacan; they would be in total agreement with those criticisms. Calling Hitler a spiritual vessel on the other hand...
Well, there were many critics of Enlightenment and modernism. I think that hostility to Enlightenment generates fewer similarities than you think. I can think of at least one thinker other than Jung that hated Enlightenment with passion and his thinking couldn't be further from Derrida and consorts. What really all these guys have in common is that they read Nietzsche for a long time, and each misunderstood him in his own way.
I don't think this quote about Hitler is that controversial. It can be easily explained by the
l'esprit du temps. I don't think Heidegger is particularly suffering from being nice party member either. Side note: I find it detestable that saying positive things about Stalin is not treated the same way.
I think Psychology (along with Political Science) has functionally become the modern “General Studies” degree that people take when they are unsure what to study. The sheer volume of students in the major pretty much guarantees that the average student is woefully under equipped to tackle the subject manner.
I found Social Work students to uniformly be the most illiterate students I’ve ever seen in my life. There is such a demand for Social Workers that the bar for entry has pretty much bottomed out and as long as you have a pulse and make a symbolic gesture of the tiniest effort, you are on your way to a LSW.
TBH I think skepticism towards every therapy offered by the mental health industry is healthy for a field where the “publish or perish” atmosphere persists.
About psychotherapy: I don't think there is only one hammer for each nail. Different types of psychotherapy are effective for different types of problems. For example: CBT is particularly effective for panic disorders, while psychodynamic therapy deals well with social anxiety and depression.
Back to the topic of this thread: what was particularly interesting to me is that Jordan Peterson in his famous Insomnia Episode reported feeling "existential dread". I find it funny in a way, that this man spends his life drawing maps of meaning and finding simple rules for life, and once he faces existential dread he has to take pills, because it's just too much.
LOL
It just cracks me up. Think about it: all these books he read, all these philosophers before him. Many of them actually spoke about facing existential dread including Nietzsche and Jung. And this lousy fucker just refuses to face existential dread because it's just too... scary? WTF? Did he even read any book in his life or he just paged through and memorized few quotes to impress some pretentious girls? Did he really read any book? I mean really read, experienced through and through. Worked through?
It sounded to me when I saw him speaking about it, as if he led such a sheltered existence, existence of such massive repression and denial that he had to crumble at the mere inkling of what is hiding in the recess of his psyche. It's unbelievable really. I can't really work myself up to truly care about him, but how dare he speak about anything to anyone while he clearly understands nothing.
Or maybe now he somewhat understands, and maybe he is a bit ashamed that he spoke prematurely.
