Freud, Jung, and Buddha
Freud, Jung, and Buddha
Scientist, Spiritualist, Teacher
Until very recently, I had never studied the writings of the Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung. Whatever his contribution to understanding the human condition was, it never caught my attention. That was until I began to write a screenplay.
Many of the teachers of screenwriting on the internet recommend building character arcs in a story following the character archetypes identified by Carl Jung. A similar model of character archetypes that consolidated Jung’s definitions, was created by the writer and teacher of literature, Joseph Cambell, in his book, The Power of Myth. Cambell developed his concept through studying commonalities in literature and stories across hundreds of cultures and languages. His insights informed George Lukas in creating the Star Wars character arcs, most notably the Luke Skywalker “hero’s journey” character arc.
Jung, however, derived his concept of archetypes from his personal study of his unconscious mind. He believed that the individual experiences a continuous conflict between the conscious Ego, and an unconscious Soul which occupies a metaphorical place in the mind known at the “Depths”. This follows the same dichotomy as Freud, but through his personal journey into his own depths, Jung discovered that the images and thoughts in the unconscious predate the creation of the individual’s mind. This is the “collective unconscious” that is the source of his archetypes.
Both Freud and Jung were participants in, and contributors to, a revolution in science, arts, and spirituality that influenced world culture after the collective shock of World War I. Freud remained firmly grounded in a scientific, reductionist analysis of the human mind that identified the conscious and unconscious schism. This objectivity was in part the reason Jung rejected his teacher, Freud, and explored his own unconscious depths using a wholly subjective, unscientific methodology which he termed active imagination.
Jung continued to write scholarly and scientific papers after his journey of self-discovery, but the details of his subjective methodology remained concealed from scrutiny in two unpublished books. The first, known as the Black Books, was a personal journal that chronicled his self-discovery and internal dialogue with metaphorical characters over several months at the end of 1913. His visions included what he believed was a dream experience that presaged the death and carnage of WWI before it began. Jung felt the books would undermine his credibility in the mainstream psychiatric community and brand him as a spiritualist.
The second book, known as the Red Book (Liber Novus), was written by Jung as a work of art based on his Black Books journals. It included his paintings of religious figures described in the text, drawn from Christian and alchemy references. The text was painstakingly transcribed into a unique calligraphic script on parchment, giving it a medieval character and weight. It was bound in red leather from which it derived its name. The format of the text is a first-person imagined dialogue recounting Jung’s dream-like visions followed by a self-commentary, called the Second Layer, which provides Jung’s interpretation of the meaning and significance of this spiritual experience.
My intent with this post is not to delve into the poetic and allegorical language and references in the Red Book which was only made available to the public by Jung’s heirs since 2000. Rather, I wanted to convey my own impression of his tome in the context of my own scholarship and contemplative experience with secular Buddhism, particularly Vipassana meditation as taught by S.N. Goeka.
Jung divides the experience of the self into two regions of awareness, the spirit of the times, and the spirit of the depths. This corresponds roughly the world of the conscious Ego and the world of the unconscious Soul. Jung’s break with Freud was his perception that Freud’s scientific analysis of the unconscious was a method of judgement and reductionism that deferred to the societal rules and were an expression of the spirit of the times.
Jung believed that integration of the Ego and the Soul into a healthy balance was only possible by acknowledging and exploring the spiritual depths of the unconscious. It was at this level that he discovered the struggle between the two components of the Soul, emotions, particularly passion (Eros), and the goal-oriented intellect which he termed Foresight (Logos). In the healthy Soul, the intellect acts as the director while the passion acts as the drive behind the intellect’s goals. When the individual gains this insight and fully perceives the relationship of his unconscious Soul to his Ego, he experiences what Jung terms individuation.
As I parsed his text in all its elaborate literary affect, I was continually struck by how it parallels Eastern spiritual traditions, particularly Buddhist philosophy. The Vipassana tradition is the oldest teaching in the Buddhist canon and is closest to the original teachings of Sidhartha Goetma, or Buddha. The discourses approved by the First Council in 453 B.C. were transmitted orally by monks for centuries before they were committed to text. As such, they were formatted in a poetic, verse form with repetition and list structures that aided repeated memorization. This was not literary affect, but error correction applied to an oral medium.
The practice of Vipassana meditation was repurposed by later Brahminic clerics into an esoteric and mystical religion through the inclusion of metaphysical constructs like rebirth, nirvanic epiphany, and enlightened bliss states common among the larger Hindu culture. The earliest teachings laid out a practical method to observe the feelings within the body that are conditioned by the outside world (Jung’s spirit of the times) and form unconscious mental patterns of behavior (Jung’s Soul) that lead to craving and aversion (Jung’s imbalance of foresight and emotion). Progress is incremental over a lifetime as one’s ability to recognize conditioning when it arises and dim its influence matures through meditation. When the unconscious default state is equanimity, suffering ends. This is what Jung called individuation.
Jung did identify one aspect of the Self that was not contained in the Buddhist discourses. This is the idea of a collective unconsciousness that stores archetypes (mental patterns) independent of, and uncaused by, the learned patterns of the individual mind. The universality of these archetypes across language, culture, and time is strong evidence for their reality. Jung appeals to this collective unconscious as the basis for behaving compassionately, and unselfishly towards others, as if they were one’s own self. The golden rule in other words.
Vipassana teaching includes a separate meditative practice, Metta Vhana, or loving-kindness, that expands the scope of one’s compassion to others through projection of one’s own equanimity.
Like Goetma, Jung recognized the difference between talking the talk and walking the walk. Reading about Jung’s journey to individuation in the Red Book or being inspired by Jung’s brilliance as a psychiatrist, does nothing if a person does not do the active imagination work for themselves. The only truth that is true for you is that of your subjective experience.
Freud was a scientist that denied the value of subjective truth. Jung was willing to look deeper and document his spiritual journey in an exquisite literary art form that drew on the images and metaphorical figures of his Christian childhood. Individuation is the acceptance of the spirit of Christ, for example. This is the “Supreme Meaning” of his revelations, the transformation of the Self into the image of “the Divine Child”. His work is moving and beautiful, but as a practical way to change human behavior, it is esoteric, and ultimately ineffective.
Jung is quite clear that he is not a teacher. He rejects spiritualist pretenders that lead minds into conformity and judgement. His intent was to journal his unique path and inspire others to discover their own. Much effort has been expended by scholars writing books on the deeper meaning of Jung’s journey, but few have embarked on one of their own.
The Buddha was first and foremost the Tathagata, a teacher. His objective was to teach ordinary householders a practical technique for living in the world liberated from suffering. Second, he was a physician of the unconscious, identifying its disease (craving and aversion), identifying a cure (cessation of craving and aversion), and prescribing a treatment (observing the habitual reaction of one’s unconscious mind to craving and aversion). It’s very simple, but very difficult.