Jungian Psychology and Personal Correlations: Part 5

Recording Location
Lone Pine, Calif.
Recording Date
? October 1977
Recording Information

Franklin Merrell-Wolff continues this series by considering the Jungian doctrine of wholeness and the subject of fourfoldness. He begins by raising questions about Robert Johnson’s conception that threefoldness is inadequate and incomplete; Wolff asserts that, on the contrary, it is preeminently stable and complete. He proceeds to a discussion of the principle of wholeness as developed by both Jung and Johnson, and notes that he accepts the conception of wholeness if it implies that each member of a pair of opposites has equal factuality, but that he rejects the conception if it entails an equal orientation to and acceptance of each member of a pair of opposites. Wolff goes on to contrast the orientation to wholeness as a therapeutic ideal with the orientation to virtue as a moral ideal, and he recounts his experience as a draftee in World War I as an example of the moral problem presented in trying to attain wholeness. He concedes that although we may all share in the collective guilt of humanity, one must not cultivate this negative side and, indeed, should only accept it if doing so is for the purpose of transformation. Wolff then refers to a psychiatrist who said that if given the chance he would have submitted Sir Isaac Newton to electric shock treatment, and he again addresses the question of wholeness by acknowledging that while psychological difficulties may arise when functioning on the mundane “crow” consciousness of well-rounded mediocrity, that is no reason to devalue the supermundane soaring “eagle” Consciousness. He continues to clarify the distinction between the psychological type characteristic of the intuitive psychologist and the thinking mathematician, and he suggests that a critique of the intuitive function would be helpful.

Transcript
Recording Duration
77 min
Sort Order
270.00