The Jung Cult: Origins of a Charismatic Movement - Softcover

Noll, Richard

3.61

77 ratings by Goodreads

9780006863656: The Jung Cult: Origins of a Charismatic Movement

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006863655 ISBN 13: 9780006863656

Publisher: Fontana Press, 1996

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This is an examination of the fake psychology of one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century, Carl Gustav Jung. The book unravels many of the key theories on which Jungian analysis is based in an attempt to show how threadbare the evidence is.

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From the Back Cover:

WINNER OF THE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN PUBLISHERS AWARD FOR THE BEST PSYCHOLOGY BOOK.

In this provocative and controversial reassessment of C.G. Jung’s thought, Richard Noll boldly argues that ideas such as the ‘collective unconscious’ and the theory of archetypes come as much from late nineteenth-century occultism, neopaganism and social Darwinism as they do from the natural sciences. Noll carefully reconstructs the febrile intellectual milieu of 'fin-de-si�cle' Germany, and traces its influence on Jung. He shows that, in conjunction with his medical training, Jung was equally drawn to other, more mystical, ideas of his time: vitalism, Haeckel’s fusion of evolutionary biology and monistic religion, speculations on Aryan racial characteristics, Nietzschean theories of a ‘new nobility’, neopagan sun worshipping and the conjectures of philologists and archaeologists on prehistoric cultures and their matriarchal religions. Noll deftly separates these various strands in Jungian thought to show, often to devastating effect, how Jungian analysis contains little to explain the workings of the human mind but a great deal to aggrandise its founder.

“Disturbing an often illuminating...Noll comes to the quest for the historical Jung – his phrase – with a broad background in Jungianism, psychiatry and shamanism and his training stands him in good stead...Anyone in search of the historical Jung must now pass, however critically, through 'The Jung Cult'...it deserves comparison with Frank Sulloway’s 'Freud: Biologist of the Mind'. Sulloway retrieved an important, but almost entirely neglected dimension of Freud’s thought: Noll has done the same thing for Jung.”
JOHN KERR, 'London Review of Books'

“Provocative and original...Noll is excellent at tracing the influence if what he calls ‘v�lkisch utopianism’ on Jung’s thought and in doing so sheds new light on the controversial subject of the Master’s support for the Nazis in the 1930s...Noll’s touch as a sociologist is just as sure as when he is writing as an historian of ideas. His analysis of the present-day Jung cult is acute and in some respects devastating.”
FRANK MCLYNN, 'Guardian'

“This is by far the best book written on Jung to date, and the comparison with Frank Sulloway’s 'Freud: Biologist of the Mind' is well justified. Noll’s presentation of the 'v�lkisch' ideology is excellent and deserves to be read even by those who have little or no interest in Jung’s thinking. Because of the enormous influence of this literature at the time, no historian of German culture (literature, music 'and science!') around the turn of the century can afford to ignore this part of Noll’s book.”
MARTIN KUSCH, ' British Journal for the History of Science'

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