Jung the Antisemite

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Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Burton augments Jung’s life history with a persuasive recital of Jung’s likely sexual abuse by an older man during childhood (pp. 58–9).

2. http://e-jungian.com/events/the-myth-of-jungs-mental-breakdown-sap-talk-with-george-bright/

3. Lingering Shadows, Jungians, Freudians and Anti-Semitism (1991) Shambhala

4. Jung championed antisemitic views in his Zofinger lectures at the University of Basel (Burston, p. 39).

5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMGwcZPbLHw

6. As Burston points out (pp. 47–8) Freud came to the same conclusion; see Totem and Taboo (1913) and Moses and Monotheism (1939).

7. In addition to being rejected as a prophet Mohammed’s rage was also informed by his competition as a merchant with then dominant Jewish traders (Burston, p. 21).

8. Nietzsche, unlike Jung, was so repelled by the transformation of paganism into the Aryanism and antisemitism promoted by Wagner and his equally antisemitic wife Cosima, that he ended his previously close relationship with them (see: Prideaux, 2018).

9. It is noteworthy that Jews, unlike Christianity and Islam, have never claimed universality for their religion and indeed have always discouraged, rather than coerced, conversion to its beliefs.

10. See: (https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/op-ed/the-2020-sdg-index-and-the-muslim-world). Israel’s success in building a prosperous modern economy and functioning democracy in the same conditions that prevail elsewhere in the Middle East is no doubt a further source of feelings of envy and inferiority.