Freud
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Though on the face of
it Barfield's ideas would appear to have much in common with those of the
Swiss founder of archetypal psychology and one-time follower of Sigmund
Freud, Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961). They share, after all, a common
interest in the nature of consciousness and the primacy of the imagination
as a "forgative" power (the term is Barfield's) and a common commitment
to shattering the idols of modernity. Barfield was nevertheless careful
to distinguish between their very different conceptions of the evolution
of mind.
In Saving the
Appearances, for example, he recalls that "We have watched with interest
Jung developing his concept of a 'collective unconscious' of humanity as
a whole, a concept which is inherently repugnant to the foundation of idolatry
on which he had to build it." But Jung, too, succumbs finally to R.U.P.
because of that
very idolatry, the traditional myths and the archetypes
which [Jung] tells us are the representations of the collective
unconscious, are assumed by him to be, and always to have been, neatly
insulated from the world of nature with which, according to their account,
they were mingled or united. (SA 134)
"As far as I can make
out," Barfield has Burgeon conclude in Worlds Apart, "when all's
said and done, Jung's idea of the myths and the archetypes they employ,
is based on some kind of 'projection' by the unconscious mind of its imagery
on to a detached and pre-existing outer world of nature. If so, it is our
old friend 'animism' all over again" (WA
114).
See in particular
Worlds
Apart, passim. |
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