Housing Complexes: Redesigning the house of psyche in light of a curious mistranslation of C. G. Jung appropriated by Gaston Bachelard

Abstract

Jung's metaphor of house as psyche is often regarded as little more than an arbitrary and reductive ‘diagram’ that imposes structure onto his conception of psyche with its various parts and underpinning libidinal processes. And yet, as this paper argues, the impact and relevance of the architectural metaphor extends beyond a conceptual consideration of psyche into a lived experience of it. It is thus also Jung's phenomenological description of the way human beings dwell and experience their placement or non-placement within the world in which they find themselves.

This paper elucidates these different interpretations. First, through Jung's accounts of his ‘dream-house’ in connection with the likely architectural influences of those houses in which he had lived or had designs to live; and second, through an examination of a curious mistranslation of one of Jung's overlooked descriptions of the architectural metaphor found in the celebrated work, La poetique de l'espace (1957)/The poetics of space (1958) by the renowned French philosopher Gaston Bachelard. The metaphorical description under scrutiny is the relationship between cellar and attic rooms, which Jung uses in his essay ‘Allgemeines zur komplextheorie’ (1934)/‘A review of the complex theory’ (1948a) to expound his understanding of the effects of the complex on ego-consciousness. Bachelard's misreading inadvertently reverts the placement of the two rooms, thereby proffering something akin to a ‘topsy-turvy’ house of psyche. The implications of Bachelard's misreading for an understanding of Jungian complex theory is explored, and the wider conceptual and phenomenological implications for the possible redesign or renovation of Jung's metaphor of house as psyche are ascertained.

Keywords:

• Architecture
• Gaston Bachelard
• Roland Cahen
• complex
• house as psyche
• phenomenology
• metaphor
• translation

Notes

1. Activities that involve the building, such as its construction, reconstruction, dereliction and demolition, and its occupancy and vacancy, can likewise be construed as metaphors for libidinal processes of psyche.

2. Vaughan Hart (1994) offers an interesting discussion on the alchemical motif of the tower and its possible influence on the design features of Jung's 1909 dream-house. Of particular interest is the image of the primitive dwelling of the cave (as a repository for the secrets of nature), which is often depicted in alchemical manuscripts as a foundation to a tower (or knowledge). Hart illustrates his discussion with the examples of an alchemical tower and cave from Nicola d’ Antonio degli Agli's Nozze (1490), and The Mountain of the Adepts, a tower within a cave, from Steffan Michelspacher's Cabula (1654), as illustrated by Jung himself in Psychology and alchemy (1944b) (see Hart, 1994, p.42)

3. Designed by Jung in collaboration with his cousin, the architect Ernst Fiechter.

4. For a thorough account of the house and its development, see A. Jung (2009)

5. Bachelard coins this term to parallel psychoanalysis, but with a distinctive focus on the analysis of our memories of those houses and rooms – both literal and imaginary or oneiric – to which we find ourselves attracted. For by doing so ‘we learn to “abide” [demeurer] within ourselves’ (1957, p. 19; 1958, p. xxxvi–xxxvii).

6. Interestingly, Jung does not allude to the attic room (Dachboden) in his original text (1934) or subsequent revision of it (1948b). He alludes instead to the upper floor (obern stock). The translation of obern stock as ‘attic room’ is carried through into Bachelard's reading, and, as we shall see later, into Roland Cahen-Saballe's translation into French (1943). Although Jung made minor revisions to his essay in 1948, this passage remains unchanged (see Jung, 1948b, p. 133).

7. R.F.C. Hull's English translation of Jung's passage omits the adjective ‘vorsichtige’ (circumspect or cautious) to describe the homeowner. The adjective reappears in Maria Jolas’ English translation (1958) of Bachelard's passage as ‘prudent’.

8. This translation is of Jung's revised essay of 1948 (Jung, 1948b).

9. Roland Cahen-Salabelle, also known as Roland Cahen, was the official translator of Jung's works into French, and contributed greatly to the dissemination of Jung's thought in France. He supervised the translation of more than 20 books, including Jung's pseudo-autobiography (see Kirsch, 2000, pp. 157–158).

10. And the English translator of Bachelard's La poétique de l'espace/The poetics of space, Maria Jolas, is not the only one to confuse these two works and conflate them into one (see, for example, Gordon, 1983, p. 271–272).

11. Although Bachelard does not provide a detailed bibliography for his source, and does not therefore refer explicitly to Cahen as the translator of it, we can safely assume Cahen's anthology is his source. Thus Bachelard cites his source as a translated edition of identical title to Cahen's anthology: ‘L'homme à la découverte de son âme, trad. p. 203’ (Bachelard, 1957, p. 36). Furthermore, Bachelard cites the same page number for the Jungian passage as it appears within those editions of Cahen's anthology that were available to Bachelard at the time he was writing La poétique de l'espace in 1957.

12. Similarly, Jung describes Cahen's anthology in a letter to his publisher, Rascher, as ‘sehr überzeugend’ [‘very convincing’] (cited in Bishop, 1998, p. 271). However, by contrast, Kirsch notes that Cahen's translations have been criticised for taking liberties and for not staying close enough to Jung's texts (Kirsch, 2000, p. 158).

13. And the linguistic error of mistranslation may be indicative of unconscious motivation of the translator (see Venuti, 2002). Thus, the substitution of conscious attic for unconscious cellar may shine a speculative light on Cahen's own psychological disposition when translating this passage.

14. And yet there is a notion in which he does recognise this, as the unconsciousness to which he alludes is the personal unconscious, which harbours the ‘products’ of ego-thinking: of that which the ego represses.

15. Jung says that the ‘autonomy of the complex’ is made ‘unreal’ not ‘with an open avowal of apotropaic euphemism, but with an equally unconscious tendency… by giving it a different name’ (Jung, 1948a, para 206).

16. Jacobi summarises the point with architectural allusion: ‘The complex is so heavily charged as to draw the conscious ego into its sphere, overpower and engulf it […] the complex has to a greater or lesser degree become ruler in the house of the conscious ego’ (1925, p. 15).

17. It is perhaps for this reason that Jung, in his essay ‘Mind and earth’, describes the house analogy ‘like all analogies’ as ‘lame’, as ‘just a dead relic’ (1927/1931, para 55). That is to say, Jung here criticises analogies generally for failing to capture the ‘living’ essence or experience of inhabiting psyche. Yet, as this paper attempts to show, there is more to the analogy of house as psyche than its abstract diagrammatic presentation; it at least attempts to embrace, if not capture, our existential concerns and living experiences of psyche.

18. See Huskinson (2010) for a detailed account of the significance of the ego's strength and disposition and the role it plays in determining the consequences for the overall personality that is being or has been attacked by a complex. This account can be read as an extended commentary on the contrasting qualitative experiences of the two homeowners of the respective houses of Bachelard and Jung, as they respond to the disturbance within.

19. Indeed, elsewhere I argue that the architectural motif of a house is integral to the creative processes within Jung's own thinking and being to the extent that it facilitates for Jung new ideas that directly shape his theoretical work, and inform the development of his personality (Huskinson, 2008). See also Jones (2007), who analyses Jung's 1909 dream-house to demonstrate ‘how it is first and foremost an autobiographical memory – not a narration of a dream once dreamed, but an active, dynamic, narrative reconstruction influenced by its cumulative significance for him’ (p. 208).