its individual base, by turning it into a “collective unconscious.” No matter what the individual did to his psyche he was transcended as an individual by it. In these two ways the person could get his heroic justification from within his own psyche even by analyzing it, in fact, especially by analyzing it! In this way Jung’s system is an attempt to have the advantages of psychological analysis and to negate and transcend them at the same time; to have his cake and eat it too. As Rieff has so compellingly argued, dissatisfaction with and criticism of Jung must stem largely from the impossibility of achieving thepsychological redemption of psychological man—as we will conclude in Part III (Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud [N.Y.: Harper Torchbooks, 1966], Chap. 5).
‡ The emotional impoverishment of psychoanalysis must extend also to many analysts themselves and to psychiatrists who come under its ideology. This fact helps to explain the terrible deadness of emotion that one experiences in psychiatric settings, the heavy weight of the character armor erected against the world.
§ I think this helps explain the intensive evangelism of so many converts. Offhand we may wonder why they must continually buttonhole us in the street to tell us how to be as happy as they.If they are so happy, we muse, why are they bugging us? The reason, according to what we have said, must be that they need the conviction of numbers in order to strengthen and externalize something that otherwise remains very private and personal—and so risks seeming fantastic and unreal.To see others like oneself is to believe in oneself.
‖ There are many other names one could mention in the synthesis of psychoanalytic, existential, and theological thought. We have already noted Waldman’s work, which carries the synthesis all the way back to Adler, as Progoff also showed. Thus we are not talking about an accidental convergence or unusual similarity but about a solid cumulative achievement of several major strands of thought. Igor A. Caruso’s important book Existential Psychology: From Analysis to Synthesis (New York: Herder and Herder, 1964) is an excellent “Rankian” statement on neurosis. See also Wilfried Daim, “On Depth-Psychology and Salvation,” Journal of Psychotherapy as a Religious Process , 1955, 2: 24-37, for another part of the modern movement of the closure of psychoanalysis on Kierkegaard. One of the first modern attempts in this direction—perhaps the first—was that of Freud’s friend the Reverend Oskar Pfister, who wrote a massive work on anxiety, translated as Christianity and Fear (London: Allen and Unwin, 1948). It tookanxiety as a mainspring of conduct from John through Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Freud; his intent was toshow that anxiety is best overcome through the immortality ideology of Christian love. This is not the place to assess Pfister’s extensive study and argument, but it is important to note that the work isvitiated by a curious failure to understand that the anxiety of life and death is auniversal characteristic of man. He sides with those who believe that a healthy development of the childcan take place without guilt, and that a full expression of love can banish fear: “… nor is it true that this pre-disposition to fear must necessarily be called into play by existence in the world as such… . That existence in the world as such causes fear is true only of persons who have been disposed to fear by various ‘dammings’… .” (p. 49). He says that Kierkegaard had a fear neurosisbased on his difficult childhood—hence his morbidity. The curious thing is that Pfister failed toget behind the cultural immortality ideology that absorbs and transmutes fear, even while he recognized it: “Many persons, not only children and the aged, find it possible to face death. They may even welcome it as a friend and be ready to die for a great cause.” Ibid. This is true
‡ The emotional impoverishment of psychoanalysis must extend also to many analysts themselves and to psychiatrists who come under its ideology. This fact helps to explain the terrible deadness of emotion that one experiences in psychiatric settings, the heavy weight of the character armor erected against the world.
§ I think this helps explain the intensive evangelism of so many converts. Offhand we may wonder why they must continually buttonhole us in the street to tell us how to be as happy as they.If they are so happy, we muse, why are they bugging us? The reason, according to what we have said, must be that they need the conviction of numbers in order to strengthen and externalize something that otherwise remains very private and personal—and so risks seeming fantastic and unreal.To see others like oneself is to believe in oneself.
‖ There are many other names one could mention in the synthesis of psychoanalytic, existential, and theological thought. We have already noted Waldman’s work, which carries the synthesis all the way back to Adler, as Progoff also showed. Thus we are not talking about an accidental convergence or unusual similarity but about a solid cumulative achievement of several major strands of thought. Igor A. Caruso’s important book Existential Psychology: From Analysis to Synthesis (New York: Herder and Herder, 1964) is an excellent “Rankian” statement on neurosis. See also Wilfried Daim, “On Depth-Psychology and Salvation,” Journal of Psychotherapy as a Religious Process , 1955, 2: 24-37, for another part of the modern movement of the closure of psychoanalysis on Kierkegaard. One of the first modern attempts in this direction—perhaps the first—was that of Freud’s friend the Reverend Oskar Pfister, who wrote a massive work on anxiety, translated as Christianity and Fear (London: Allen and Unwin, 1948). It tookanxiety as a mainspring of conduct from John through Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Freud; his intent was toshow that anxiety is best overcome through the immortality ideology of Christian love. This is not the place to assess Pfister’s extensive study and argument, but it is important to note that the work isvitiated by a curious failure to understand that the anxiety of life and death is auniversal characteristic of man. He sides with those who believe that a healthy development of the childcan take place without guilt, and that a full expression of love can banish fear: “… nor is it true that this pre-disposition to fear must necessarily be called into play by existence in the world as such… . That existence in the world as such causes fear is true only of persons who have been disposed to fear by various ‘dammings’… .” (p. 49). He says that Kierkegaard had a fear neurosisbased on his difficult childhood—hence his morbidity. The curious thing is that Pfister failed toget behind the cultural immortality ideology that absorbs and transmutes fear, even while he recognized it: “Many persons, not only children and the aged, find it possible to face death. They may even welcome it as a friend and be ready to die for a great cause.” Ibid. This is true
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