Sociological theory and Jungian psychology

Introduction

My intention in this article is to consider the psychology of Carl Jung in relation to sociological theory.

It is surprising that there is no tradition of doing this. It is generally known that Freud and Jung created closely equivalent systems of thought. And sociology has a long-standing commitment to Freud. But Jung (and indeed Adler) seems to have been left unexamined. At the same time, tradition has related Freud either to Durkheimian or to Marxist traditions, but has been far less inclined to relate him to Weber (Bocock, 1976; cf. Gabriel, 1983). Several possibilities emerge from this (and there are other traditions in sociological theory). But to relate Jung to Weber seems the obvious project, and it is this that this article attempts. ¹

Possibly sociological theory has been reluctant to engage with Jung simply because it cannot see where he fits. The location of Freudian theory has long been established, in relation to both Durkheimian and Marxist sociology. The way that Jung and Weber fit together is completely different, however. I will discuss these differences at the end of the article. But it should be made clear at the outset that I am sceptical of formal syntheses or over-arching theory, and am not making proposals of this kind. My purpose is simply to ‘place’ Jung on the sociological map: to show that his psychology is sociologically coherent, in the light of (one of) sociology’s major theoretical traditions. We ought to know about him. ²

A word on the structure of this article. Jung’s thought has two aspects: a ‘timeless’ theory of the psyche, and a cultural history of the psyche. Weber’s sociology likewise has two aspects: social action theory, and comparative historical sociology. Assuming that most sociologists will not be familiar with Jung, I present an outline of the former aspect first. I next seek to relate it to Weber’s social action theory. I then attempt an integrated consideration of Jung’s and Weber’s cultural history.

Here, however, an important proviso must be made. Weber, in contrast to Marx and Durkheim, offers a general rather than a universal sociology: he avoids systematic consideration of the ‘primitive’. In view of the transformations of anthropology taking place in his time, this was wise: much wiser than Jung or Freud (cf. Shamdasani, 2003: 276–8). So far as possible, I follow it here: this article is an interrogation of Jung from a Weberian sociological perspective. The questions of Jung and anthropology are for another article (and another author).

Analytical psychology

Jung considers the psyche in terms of consciousness and the unconscious. ³ Consciousness is what we know. The unconscious is the unknown, inferred only from the entry of its contents into consciousness, in which process they change. Jung is very aware of the epistemological problems of psychology. ⁴

The unconscious he divides into two elements: the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious is the oldest and most primitive level of the psyche. Its contents are inherited rather than acquired. These contents comprise instinctive actions and their attendant emotions, and also the archetypes. Archetypes are propensities for the formation of a specific range of strongly emotionally coloured concepts – images, themes, places, situations, etc. – relating to humankind’s evolutionary biological and cultural experience. They are linked to instinctive impulses: their spiritual or ideational, as opposed to somatic, pole. One should note the similarity of conception in the ethology of Lorenz and Tinbergen (Evans, 1975: 57–9; Shamdasani, 2003: 256–8; cf., for example, Jung, 1993: 90). An archetype can be actualized only through contact with specific culture: this creates an archetypal image.

Consciousness forms out of the collective unconscious; it centres on the ego. It develops and becomes increasingly differentiated over time: a process visible both in cultural history and in childhood. Differentiation of a function means that it separates out from other functions, and also that its elements separate out, in a process of continuous unfolding. Especially its positive and negative aspects become separate. Hence as differentiation proceeds, consciousness is increasingly caught between conflicting opposites, e.g. true and false, knowledge and belief, good and evil. These cannot be reconciled through reason, but only through archetypal symbols. Jung identifies two types of thinking: a conscious, logical, coolly focused type, and an unconscious, symbolic, emotionally coloured type (typified in dreams). The dialogue and balance between these is Jung’s most fundamental concern.

With consciousness there also emerges the personal unconscious. This is unique to the individual: its contents are not inherited but acquired. They comprise things known or sensed but not currently attended to, and things once known but now forgotten – including repressed material from the conscious mind. The personal unconscious arises from consciousness, then, rather than from the collective unconscious – its contents could as well be conscious. Where the collective unconscious has archetypes, the personal unconscious has complexes (Jung, 1993: 359; Jung, 1964b: 79). But personal unconscious contents often flesh out archetypal images, and complexes can have an archetypal core. Indeed the personal unconscious itself can acquire an archetypal aspect.

Jungian psychology is not centred either on psychopathology or on childhood. It is centred on adult normal psychology. Aetiology is located in cultural history, though childhood tends to mirror it. Even so, Jung was much struck by the clinical phenomena of dissociation, the extreme form of which is multiple personality. Jung sees our propensity to form autonomous personalities beside our egos as normal. His notions of complex and of archetypal image reflect this.

Central to this psychology is the notion of two realities: an inner reality, the reality of the psyche, and an outer reality, the social, cultural and material world. Both these realities present their demands to the individual, who must adapt to them and balance between them. The individual typically has a preferential orientation to the one or the other. These orientations Jung terms ‘introversion’ and ‘extraversion’.

Jung’s conception of libido accords with this. Libido flows between opposite poles but alternates in direction – a tide rather than a current. Thus it progresses to satisfy the needs of consciousness and adapt to the outer world, regresses to satisfy the needs of the unconscious and adapt to the inner world. Sleep and dreams exemplify the latter: regression is a normal not a pathological function. Libido for Jung means psychic energy. It has two main instinctual channels, sex and aggression (biologically, these relate to the survival of the species and the survival of the individual respectively). Jung associates sexuality with extraversion and aggression with introversion. Freud and Adler had each sought to build the theory of the psyche in terms of his own personality: the extravert Freud in terms of sexuality, the introvert Adler in terms of aggression.

Introversion and extraversion provide a first typology of personality. Jung follows this by identifying four psychic functions: thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition. Thinking and feeling are rational functions (feeling means valuing, e.g. moral judgement); sensation and intuition are irrational. Jung often presents these as two cross-cutting axes. Each function tends to shut out its opposite, so that an individual strongly developed in, say, thinking, will be correspondingly weakly developed in feeling. One of the other pair (the auxiliary function) will be quite strongly developed. Any of these functions may be inwardly or outwardly turned. The typology this creates then is quite complex. It has bearing both for cultural history and for gender.

Gender Jung sees basically as a psychological reflection of biological complementarity. But Jung sees epistemological problems here: the male psychologist who sets out to discuss female psychology often finds himself discussing the image of woman in the male psyche instead. ‘Woman always stands just where the man’s shadow falls, so that he is only too liable to confuse the two’ (Jung, 1964a: 113). There is no bias between the sexes as to introversion and extraversion, but there is at the level of the four psychic functions: in men, the thinking function tends to be strongly developed and the feeling function weakly developed; while with women it is the other way round. But deeper than this, each sex holds an unconscious archetypal image of the opposite sex: the anima in men, the animus in women. These hold the undeveloped function; thus men are subject to irrational moods, women to irrational opinions. Further, the anima/animus mediates our dealings not only with the opposite sex, but also with our own unconscious. The relationship between conscious and unconscious is then played out in the relationship between the sexes. Jung expresses much of male and female psychology through the concepts Logos and Eros. He says that these are partly intuitive concepts that he is reluctant to define (Jung, 1959: 14–16; cf. Jung, 1963: 178–83). But they seem through the anima/animus to draw together the thinking or feeling function on the one side, and consciousness and the unconscious on the other. Logos then is focused, rational thought; Eros is relatedness or connectedness. Logos is the key to male, Eros to female, psychology.

There are some possible misunderstandings to avoid here. Thinking and feeling are both rational functions; and Logos in men and Eros in women are conscious not unconscious. Women’s psychology is different from men’s; it is not inferior or defective. More, all this is an analysis of ‘traditional’ women. Jung thought it superficial and pointless for modern women simply to develop their thinking function instead of their feeling function. But he welcomed modern women’s desire for material and personal independence, and to develop their Logos. This would force men to develop their Eros, and explore their unconscious. The mutual assimilation would be enormously beneficial. Men might learn to avoid political violence, and women might find a cure for the symbolic desert that besets the modern age (Jung, 1964a: 113 ff.). ⁵

Although Jungian psychology is not primarily a psychopathology, it is nonetheless informed by Jung’s clinical experience. This lay more with psychosis than with neurosis (which he might prefer to treat through a Freudian or an Adlerian approach); but he provides an integrated conception of the two. Central to Jung’s thinking on these matters is dissociation. Jung very early noted how in word association tests, a number of words could be found which were linked for the given person by a common feeling tone. To this he gave the name ‘complex’ (apparently the origin of the term in psychology). These complexes could apparently carry on a life of their own within the psyche, almost as independent personalities. In the extreme form of dissociative neurosis, actual realized alternative personalities would appear, taking over the person in turn. Jung tended to see all neurosis in terms of dissociation (it is the equivalent of the Freudian ‘repression’). Psychosis could also be understood in these terms, as the personality fragmenting into a number of such elements; but here the sense of identity is lost: the ego becomes only one fragment among many.

Neurosis he associated with failure to adjust to the outer world; typically this would call up material from the personal unconscious. Psychosis he associated with failure to adjust to the inner world; typically this would call up material from the collective unconscious. Neurosis he saw in terms of frustrated libido expressing itself by re-activating significant repressed childhood memories (indeed, adult memories of childhood are basically projections rather than recollections – Jung was wary as to ‘child psychology’). But the cause of the neurosis is the present frustration; the past only provides a vocabulary of symptoms. More than this, the neurosis acts as the psychic equivalent of pain, to warn us of an inadequacy in our adjustment, a frustration of libido that must be dealt with. The psyche thus is self-regulating; a distinctive conception, and, in Storr’s view at least, one of Jung’s most valuable contributions (Storr, 1973: 66 ff.).

Psychosis has a less clear aetiology. It starts with a decline in the level of consciousness; a setback in life might be a precipitating factor in this. The dissociation process then takes the form of a dramatization of the archetypal structure of the psyche itself. Yet even here there could be an attempt at adaptation and recovery. Psychotic delusions can have a mythological quality, representing a drama of self-rescue through which the individual tries to reconstruct his or her world.

All this is normal as much as abnormal psychology – it is such autonomous sub-personalities that populate our dreams. It has implications for interpersonal as well as intra-psychic relations: one forms similarly autonomous internal images of other persons, and unconsciously projects them back onto them. It also has implications for culture: one encounters these figures equally in art, literature, mythology and religion.

At the heart of Jung’s psychotherapeutic and theoretical concerns is the individuation process. This is the process of becoming separate and distinct individual persons. It is implicit in the development of consciousness, and the growth from child to adult. But Jung means something more than this, focused in the contrast between the second and third quarters of life. Initially one grows towards society and the outer world, to work and material achievement and to forming sexual and parental relationships. But then one grows away from the outer and towards the inner world, and adopts a critical distance from society and its values. Individuation in this sense implies a degree of self-awareness and of inner and outer adjustment: centrally it is consciousness encountering and coming to terms with the unconscious. This is Jung’s deepest concern.

Jung then describes a set of archetypes which symbolize the structural elements of the psyche itself. These include: the shadow, the persona, the anima or animus, the old wise man or earth mother, the self, and also such symbols as mandala. Encounters with these in dreams or reverie form part of the individuation experience. What is in question is the ultimate location of identity: the ego is the centre of consciousness, but the self is the centre of the psyche, poised between consciousness and the unconscious, between the inner and outer worlds. This is a distinctive Jungian sense of ‘self’. The individuation process then is a transfer of identity from ego to self. Symbolically the self may appear as a child; mandalas symbolize the psyche itself. The process is importantly symbolized in the Christian and other religious myths.

The shadow is the personal unconscious, in its archetypal aspect. It is the shadow of the ego, everything about ourselves that we cannot accept. Often it appears as a devil figure. The persona is a social mask for non-intimate dealings, an identity from which most of us would expect to distance ourselves. The animus and anima are internal images that each sex carries of the opposite sex, generalized images which mediate all our significant dealings with the opposite sex, especially in terms of sex and love. But they also mediate our dealings with our unconscious: this in opposition and balance to the persona, which mediates our dealings with the outer world. Lastly, the old wise man or the earth mother represents an unconscious force of inner wisdom and compassion, an inner guide to the individuation process itself. Some of these archetypes appear in different form to men and women. The shadow and the wise old man/earth mother appear as male figures to men, as female figures to women. Conversely, the (female) anima appears – and teaches Eros – to men, while the (male) animus appears – and teaches Logos – to women.

There is a paradoxical relationship between the individuation process and psychosis. In psychosis there is a great up-welling from the unconscious, in which consciousness is swamped. All the above archetypes may be met with; but the ego itself is lost or astray. It was through experiencing this himself during his ‘breakdown’ that Jung discovered the individuation process. You could say that psychosis is failure to survive the individuation process – failure due to lack of intelligence or education; wrong time in life; lack of a supporting symbolism in culture or anyone who can interpret it, making the experience incomprehensible and terrifying. Religious visions and prophecies occupy a ground halfway between, as also do certain kinds of art, literature, etc. The ego has weathered the storm, but little rational interpretation has been attempted. Such interpretation, however, is found in religious mystics and intellectuals, such as the Gnostics and alchemists, or Buddhist or Taoist sages. Jung sees his own psychology as a more rational successor to these: a secular religion rather than a psychotherapeutic system (cf. Ulanov, 2008).

Jung then is much concerned with the relations between psyche and culture, especially religion. This is a complex and evolving relationship. We project the contents of the psyche onto the world around us: we create gods and demons, myths and religious symbols and rituals. We use these to think about ourselves: our own psychology. This in itself need not be a conscious process: it may simply play itself out like children’s play or a dream. Indeed organized religion generally serves to keep it so. But gradually we become aware of what we are doing, and we progressively subject these projections to rational scrutiny. In doing this we risk destroying them, removing their numinous quality. Often they renew themselves, through some new prophecy or vision. But if this fails, it may leave us with no way to think about ourselves: indeed we may forget altogether that we have an unconscious as well as conscious minds. This is the situation that has arisen in the modern West.

Social action theory and analytical psychology

Weber’s social action theory is concerned with the subjective meanings persons attach to their actions. ⁶ It centres on free will and consciousness: Weber does not contextualize it with any psychological theory as such. ⁷ How then can it be related to Jungian psychology now?

The Kantian philosophical element in Jung’s thought clearly puts him into the same methodological universe as Weber. ⁸ For all that psyche is not mind, then, the notion of the unconscious itself is not problematic for interpretivism. It simply feeds into the complexities of motivation and limitations of self-awareness which interpretive methodology already knows (see Weber, 1978a: 3–22, esp. 9–10, 19; cf. Albrow, 1990: 124–6, 129–31). Weber and Jung both see rationality as limited by a range of factors: physical factors such as age or fatigue, emotions such as anger or love, unconscious motivational forces; and not least, incomplete information in a world not wholly amenable to reason. There is a difference in emphasis. Weber does no more than acknowledge the unconscious, whereas this is Jung’s main concern. But it would be quite wrong to elevate this into a categoric difference. Again, though Jung conceives the individual in terms of a psychic apparatus possessing a history and continuity, his conception is nonetheless existential: the individual lives in the here-and-now and her or his past is subject to her or his present. This again accords with interpretivism.

As to specifically the collective unconscious and the archetypes, Weber certainly would not have balked in principle at this as a transcendental presupposition (cf. Weber, 1949: 81). As a neo-Kantian, he holds that there are innate structures in the mind which project themselves onto the world; these act as objective constraints on what we do and think just as the material world does. ⁹ Culture is no mere reflex of social structure; the thought found in, say, theology or jurisprudence or art has to be engaged on its own terms. ¹⁰ Jung’s elaboration of this in terms of the archetypes need not be a problem here, at least so far as they are projected into culture. His concern with the archetypes within the psyche itself might flag a personal difference in terms of extraversion and introversion: there will be more to say on this. On the face of it, however, it simply reflects the difference between sociology and psychology.

Next is the question of relating Jung’s typology of psychic functions to Weber’s typology of social action. Here Jung’s opposition of thinking and feeling is strikingly similar to Weber’s opposition of ends-rationality and value-rationality. Again, there is the division in both schemata between two forms of rationality and two of irrationality. However, Weber’s irrational pair, affectuality and tradition, seem quite different from Jung’s intuition and sensation, at first sight at least. Moreover Weber does not set out his typology as two cross-cutting axes – though Jung does not always do this.

It is worth exploring this more deeply. For Weber, it is clearly the primary intention of the typology to generate a vision of cultural history (cf. Hennis, 1988: esp. ch. 3). What emerges then from the traditional and affective orientations of social action is the dialogue between tradition and charisma: the original condition of culture into which rationality increasingly intervenes. Comparing this with Jung’s psychic faculties – sensation telling us what things are, intuition telling us what they could be – perhaps there is something of an affinity. And Jung is aware of the same dialogue, as will appear.

Jung, however, did not initially intend his typology for this purpose. His vision of cultural history is rather in terms of the evolving dialogue between consciousness and the unconscious, and of the division between Logos and Eros. I have discussed this above: partly intuitive concepts that Jung resists defining. Through the involvement of the anima/animus, they mediate between the thinking and feeling functions on the one side, and consciousness and the unconscious on the other. The upshot, then, is a vision of modernity as dominated by Logos: a loss of contact with feeling, the irrational functions, the unconscious. This is highly similar to Weber’s vision of ends-rationality driving out the other types of social action – though it has gender resonances that do not appear in Weber. ¹¹ I will return to these matters presently.

Jung identifies two main groups of instincts: sex and aggression. Weber agrees (e.g. Weber, 1978a: 601), though their role for him is more limited: their basic affinity is to the affectual mode of social action. The former instinct obviously feeds into the sociology of gender. The latter surely feeds into the sociology of power: not merely domination, but the state, war and military affairs, vengeance, the protection of personal security, etc. Weber treats these as primary; he does not (like Marxist and other approaches) attribute them to a nexus of state and stratification. Violent social action is primordial (ibid.: 904–10). In short, the relation of instinct to social action and relationships is of a common-sense order.

Against this, neither theorist proposes a ‘repression (or shock) theory’ to account for culture itself (Jung, 1954: 110–11, 114–15). The contrast here is with Durkheim as well as Freud: both are, so to speak, creationists. For Durkheim, society is the God that creates Man (sic); for Freud, the Oedipus complex; and Mankind cannot really be thought prior to these things. Weber and Jung, however, are evolutionists: they accept the slow rise from animal to human, a gradual process with no decisive threshold (e.g. Weber, 1978a: 320–1). ¹² Redirection of psychic energy might be entailed in this, but it does not ‘cause’ it. For Jung, the sexual and aggressive instincts keep each other in check. But while these two main groups of instincts are still recognizable, human behaviour is highly complex; the instincts have been extensively modified and differentiated and their original full range is not known. This has been the work of the human learning capacity which inhibits other instincts: it might itself be based on the animal instinct of imitation (Jung, 1954: 81 ff.; Jung, 1964a: 287–8). As to Weber, though he occasionally speaks of psychic energy and its redirection or sublimation, he does not offer any formal considerations – and sublimation is Nietzsche’s term not Freud’s (Gabriel, 1983: 51–2; Kaufmann, 1968: 216–23, 235–46; Ellenberger, 1994: 274, 277, 505, 543). ¹³

Fundamentally, then, for both Weber and Jung, the creation of culture is simply a given of human existence. Their concern is with its trajectories and implications, not with its origins or causes.

What emerges, then, for both thinkers, is an exploration of the problem of rationality and irrationality in human affairs, conducted through an enquiry into cultural history. In this, they both diagnose a distinctive modern western condition of culture and psyche, while avoiding any simple contrast with a unitary pre-modern condition. Rather they set out a two-dimensional space in which a number of tensions and developments are possible. This generates comparative as well as developmental analysis.

To ground the latter, a primordial condition of humankind is adduced. Here Jung relies heavily on the philosophical anthropology of Lévy-Bruhl: the contrast of logical and pre-logical mentalities (Jung, 1964a: 50 ff.; cf. Cazeneuve, 1972). ¹⁴ Weber rather has a two-stage theory: pre-animistic naturalism, followed by an efflorescence of symbolism (Weber, 1978a: 399–407, 420, n. 1). But his sketch (it is no more) seems to serve the purpose of grounding the dialogue between tradition and charisma, rather than being presented as anthropology for its own sake. ¹⁵ Either way, both theorists seem to see primordial irrationality in much the same terms: symbolic thought unconsciously projected onto the environment. For Jung, this is simply the collective unconscious at play. For Weber, it is a mentality that makes exclusively for traditional or affectual social action (ibid.: 17, 319–23, 1133–4; cf. Jung, 1954: 167 ff., esp. 173–7). Primordial irrationality is not static: rather it takes the form of distrust of innovation punctuated by innovative eruptions – which may be acclaimed or suppressed. Into this picture rationality enters, and comes to play an increasing role. Henceforth the two forces for culture-change exist in tension, irrational creativity and rationalization.

Evaluation of this as anthropology is perhaps best left to anthropologists. But one might note Evans-Pritchard’s comment on Lévy-Bruhl, that his error lay not in diagnosing the two modes of thought, but in identifying the one with the primitive and the other with the civilized, rather than seeing them as arising together in all times and places – an error which Weber, among others, did not make (Evans-Pritchard, 1965: 91–2). For both Weber and Jung, the subsequent historical analyses, in which the comparative as well as the developmental dimensions are explored, do seem to work in these terms. Cultural development is a matter of cultural elites: the mentality of the masses remains even now much as it always was (Jung, 2001: 201; Weber, 1970c: 277; Weber, 1978a: 400–1).

For Weber, a major factor in the development of culture is rationality grappling with problems that do not admit of perfect solutions. ¹⁶ This leads to further rationalizing activity; it may also lead to a rebound into the irrational (Weber, 1970c: 281–2). Jung also perceives this; but he views it in terms of the increasing differentiation of consciousness. He focuses then on the irrational rebound, and the rise from the unconscious of new symbolic systems which serve to transcend the contradictions. This again may flag personal extraversion/introversion – or simply the difference between disciplines.

For Jung, the history of culture mirrors the history of the psyche. Weber’s position on this has to be inferred; but the key point is that the history of culture does not reflect the history of society. That in itself is episodic and fragmentary: it can only support comparative study. The history of culture is far more coherent: it is this that must provide the historical spine of a comparative historical sociology. This appraisal, it seems to me, does imply a history of the psyche, though no forcing factor is adduced.

This does not create conflict between sociological and psychological modes of attribution of ‘objective’ meanings (as might arise, say, with Marx and Freud). Meaning is subjective: it appears in the outer world because we put it there. In this, our various concerns – psychological, social, natural – overlie and inform each other. The process, initially unthought, enters consciousness and becomes subject to rationalization. Meanwhile, we select constructively from the cafeteria that culture presents to us, in accordance with our subjective preferences or affinities. Our social structural and material situations may certainly be a factor in this. But Weber’s sociology of religion details the sociological consequences of psychological processes, not the sociological determinants of consciousness (Weber, 1970c: esp. 269–70). Again, Jung explicitly admits the social structural dimension, though he rarely pursues it (e.g. Jung, 1970: 130, n. 4, also 151; see also Jung, 1959: 22).

To sum up, then, Weber’s and Jung’s oeuvres appear to be methodologically coherent and indeed complementary. Weber thematizes social structure, culture and consciousness; Jung thematizes culture, consciousness and the unconscious; both acknowledge the full spectrum. Their approaches converge in an account of cultural history focused on modernity.

Themes in cultural history

Both Weber’s and Jung’s treatments of cultural history are largely organized around religion. This in terms of two cross-cutting themes: comparison of the Great World Religions in East and West, and the evolution of religion from its primitive beginnings to the Great World Religions. These come together in the consideration of western modernity. ¹⁷

It will be useful to take the comparative theme first. Weber identifies two syndromes: emissary or ethical prophecy in the West, exemplary prophecy in the East. The emissary prophet is God’s messenger, who demands our obedience; the exemplary prophet rather teaches by the example of ‘his’ life. With this, religious rejection of the world in the West has typically taken the form of asceticism; in the East, that of mysticism. The ascetic sees himself as a tool for carrying out God’s work; the mystic sees himself as a vessel to be filled with God’s presence (Weber, 1978a: 544–51).

These contrasting forms, ascetic and mystic, may be seen as the extravert and introvert modes of religious rejection of the world. Jung indeed held that it was a fundamental difference between western and eastern civilizations, shaped by their religious traditions, that the former are extraverted while the latter are introverted (Jung, 1970: 481).

But the contrast surely holds at the personal level too: Weber is an ascetic whereas Jung is a mystic (cf. Derman, 2008: 68). ¹⁸ The deeper implications of this I will take up at the end. Meantime, the question is how the difference is reflected in their theoretical concerns. Weber’s main concern is with the sociological impact of religious economic ethics: asceticism is an important component in the aetiology of the comprehensive rationalization of western modernity. Asceticism is also found in the East, and mysticism in the West, but these are relatively minor traditions and have not had the same kind of impact. Jung, however, is mainly concerned with the needs of the psyche, as consciousness becomes increasingly differentiated, for a supporting symbolic framework in culture. Accordingly, he evaluates eastern and western religion alike above all by their mystical traditions, where this need is most consciously met. For Weber, asceticism and mysticism are equally valid as religion. Jung sets little value on asceticism, and indeed rather distrusts it.

Weber accounts for the different trajectories of religious thought in West and East, bringing in both social structural and environmental factors (Weber, 1978a: 447–50, 551–6). The total dependence of agriculture in western Asia on irrigation, and hence on a powerful king ruling through a bureaucracy, made for the identification of an all-powerful creator God; emissary prophecy and asceticism follow from this. In the Far East, agriculture is rain-fed; there are kings and bureaucracies, but with a more limited role in flood control. This made for the identification of an impersonal cosmology of forces; exemplary prophecy and mysticism follow. This syndrome is also more tolerant of secular thought – though the great historical setting for that has been the city-state, unique to the West, which arises in the absence of kings and bureaucracies and is free from priestly domination (Weber, 1981: 316–22).

Within this broad comparative frame, other factors are identified: the religious affinities of different classes and other social groups, as conditioned by their changing fates; different types of bearers of religious action, such as priests, prophets and intellectuals, and the typical conflicts between them, etc. A central theme in all this is historical contingency: how far marginal figures such as prophets or lower-class intellectuals, or marginal peoples such as the Jews, have made for historical outcomes quite different from the priestly religions of the mainstream civilizations.

Jung does not attempt explanation at this level, but comes directly to the question how early choices in religious thought set the future course of cultural development. Thus as soon as spirit and nature were differentiated, the East turned to the one and the West to the other: the civilizations of India and China are spiritually competent but materially inept, while with the West it is the other way round. This is the introversion and extraversion referred to earlier. The East has always had a grasp of religion as psychology. The West, however, insisted that it concerned a reality ‘out there’ – God and Jesus are outside ourselves (Jung, 2001: 195–6; Jung, 1970: 475–93; Jung, 1993: 542–5). This led to a view of evil as cosmological principle and its consequent rejection, and the development of an incomplete and unbalanced symbolism – a Trinity rather than a Quaternity (Jung, 1970: 57–63). This forms the essential background to the distinctive modern western condition. But this argument is best taken later.

At the finer level, Jung’s account does chime with Weber’s. He distinguishes religion from ‘mere creed’: the organized religion of priests which has lost or suppressed awareness of its true meaning and only serves its own interests. (Yet its symbols, dogmas and rituals may still have psychologically supportive value – so long as people believe in them.) True religion, however, is carried forward by prophets and intellectuals who stand outside and in opposition to priesthoods (Jung, 1993: 577–80; Jung, 1964a: 256–8; Jung, 1970: 8–9, 43–5).

Now to take up the other theme, the evolution of religion. Weber’s considerations here focus on the development, and subsequent fate, of prophetic salvation religion out of the matrix of pagan polytheism, mystery cults, philosophical schools, etc., in the ancient world, ¹⁹ with a sketch of preceding anthropological stages (Weber, 1978a: 399 ff.; cf. Weber, 1970b, 1970c). He describes the development from spirits to gods to pantheons of functional gods to monotheism; a process in which religion is rationalized, but paradoxically is also irrationalized, in the creation and elaboration of a symbolic world to which one’s fate has been displaced. Ethical gods rise to prominence; with this, the relationship to the god takes on an ethical, rather than a magical or ritual, character. The nature and relationship to the gods become matter for intellectual speculation, which increasingly encounters paradoxes as the gods are conceived as greater than humanity, superordinate rather than subordinate to nature. Thus there arises a conflict between faith and reason; in particular there arises the problem of how a world dominated by powerful ethical gods can be pervaded by evil.

Jung’s account parallels much of this, although his focus is different: the evolution of the psyche and its mirroring in culture. He often argues this through a contrast of primitive and modern mentalities, drawing, as already indicated, on Lévy-Bruhl (Jung, 1964a: 50–73; cf. Cazeneuve, 1972). ²⁰ But this frames a historical thesis.

Initially, mental life is wholly unconscious, and the contents of the collective unconscious are projected onto the outer world. Humankind thinks, but is not yet aware that it thinks. Natural, social and psychic processes are superimposed on each other. As consciousness emerges, however, these projections are increasingly withdrawn. The spirits become fewer and less remote, and their scope is diminished as the world becomes subject to materialistic, scientific thought. Increasing differentiation of consciousness thus is mirrored in symbolic systems which are more tightly focused, more complex and integrated. The spirits become a pantheon of gods, in time to become one God, who finally becomes man. At the same time, the symbols themselves become subject to rational consideration. The character of the gods changes: from simply being powerful and capricious, they acquire a rational and ethical character – differentiation of consciousness includes the development of rational and moral judgement. The individual then increasingly finds himself or herself crucified between incompatible opposites – such as faith and reason, or good and evil. These conflicts cannot be rationally resolved, but only reconciled through symbols which transcend their contradiction: the images, rituals and dogmas of unconscious origin which are elaborated in religion (Jung, 1970: 82–5; Jung, 1983: 135–7; Jung, 1959: 44–5; Jung, 1993: 196–9, 360–3).

Thus the evolution of consciousness entails an increasing dependence upon symbolic systems, but also an increasing exposure of these symbolic systems to rational scrutiny. In this, the needs of the unconscious may well be sacrificed to the demands of reason. Symbolic systems thus are subject to periodic crisis and need of renewal.

Jung gives an extended account of the crucial development of Judaeo-Christian thought in this frame (Jung, 1970: 355–470). This relates how Yahweh developed consciousness and a rational, ethical character, and flows into an analysis of the Christian myth as an account of God’s experience of the individuation process: Jesus’ incarnation as God’s emerging ego; his death as the transfer of identity from the ego to the self. Here Jung argues, Kantian-fashion, that metaphysical truths are unknowable: it is the God-archetype that he is concerned with (Jung, 1993: 550–1). Again, Jesus himself fulfilled the myth because he let himself be possessed by the Christ archetype. In unsettled times when paganism is losing its credibility, the symbolic support provided by this dogma should prevent the Christian’s experience of individuation from becoming a psychotic episode (ibid.: 579–80). ²¹

This brings us to another issue: the individual in history. Weber approaches this mainly through the notion of charisma (intellectuals have mostly had impact through charismatic figures taking up their ideas). Charismatic individuals are found in many fields: war, politics, the arts, as well as religion. Charisma is typically episodic: it breaks through tradition, but then becomes routinized to form a new tradition. Charisma has been the main force for radical change outwith the modern rationalized era. There are two sides to charisma: on the one hand, the individual who makes a claim to specialness; on the other, an audience that affirms this claim. Weber says little as to the psychology that is involved, on either side. In particular, as regards the Old Testament prophets, he simply indicates psychopathology and leaves it there (Weber, 1952: 286–96, see esp. 288). ²²

Jungian psychology however bears directly on this. At times of cultural crisis such as the end of paganism or now, when culture fails to keep pace with the evolution of the psyche, the traditional repertoire of symbols becomes obsolete. New symbols then will form themselves in the psyches of certain susceptible individuals, who become possessed by the archetypes they embody and act them out in their lives (Jung, 1970: 419–29; Jung, 1993: 165–8, 579–80, see also 344–51). Typically the priesthood will seek to turn these into a new tradition – a ‘creed’ in Jung’s sense. Religious intellectuals who subject the experience and the resultant symbolism to conscious interpretation may then find themselves in conflict with the priests. As to the audience affirming the charismatic individual, it is again a matter of letting themselves be vicariously possessed by the archetype. Jung sometimes refers to this as a ‘psychic epidemic’, especially in the context of modernity (Jung, 1954: 177–80; Jung, 1964a: 179–93 – see esp. 185).

Finally, modernity. Weber’s diagnosis of this refers to rationalization and disenchantment (cf. Tenbruck, 1989; Hennis, 1988: esp. chs 1, 4 and 5; Sica, 2000; Scaff, 2000). Rationalization (basically, reordering in a more thought-out way), is a general long-term tendency across many fields of society and culture. It tends, however, to be excluded from the economy: agriculture and the organic life-cycle are rather the realm of magic, while crafts and trades are the realm of traditional stereotyping and secrecy. Where rationalization has had a clear field is in speculative thought, especially theology. It is distinctive for the West that Protestant theology redirected rationalization into the economy; hence its modern pervasion of all areas of society and culture.

Weber says much less about disenchantment – a term he apparently took from Schiller (Weber, 1978a: 506; Weber, 1970d: 138 ff.; Weber, 1970b: 350–7; cf. Weber, 1968: 226 ff.; see also Tenbruck, 1989: esp. 48 ff.; Hennis, 1988: chs 2 and 4). In its primary sense, it means the displacement of magic by science, a cause-and-effect realm not amenable to prayer or ritual. Though Weber also speaks of the remoteness of the cultured individual from the organic life-cycle (Weber, 1970b: 355–6). Disenchantment like rationalization goes far back in history: the rejection of magic by intellectuals helped shape Jewish prophecy.

Disenchantment then for Weber seems to be shorthand for the whole syndrome of post-Protestant modernity: secularization, the move from agriculture to industry, increasing urbanization. It represents a comprehensive expulsion of magical beliefs and religious values from our perceptions of both the natural world and the social order. These no longer possess validity in public life; society is now wholly an affair of impersonality and expediency. All religion is now seen as irrational, and survives only in personal relationships and individual mysticism. This leaves its mark on, for example, art and literature, which must either be on the same intimate scale or else be fraudulent and impermanent. The impact for the individual is a sense of meaninglessness and purposelessness: we do not know how to live our lives.

There are philosophical assumptions underpinning this. The world has no meaning in itself; moreover it is somewhat resistant to our rational understanding. Again, our dealings both with the natural world and with each other do not of themselves make ethical sense. Religion has basically arisen out of these dilemmas; with rational prophecy of salvation, attention is directed to another world which saves the face of this world. At the same time, our lives confront us with different value-spheres – e.g. art, religion, politics, sexuality, economics, intellectual life – which are incompatible with each other. The natural religious reflection of this is polytheism: the different value-spheres and orientations are ruled over by gods who are in conflict with each other. Prophetic (ascetic) religion only imposed a hierarchy on this, privileging one value-sphere and subordinating or suppressing the others. With this broken down, we are now returned to a situation of polytheism without gods, which we can only deal with by making choices and taking responsibility for them as to what gods (so to speak) we will follow.

Jung’s account fits closely with this, both in philosophical assumptions and in cultural diagnosis (he too is influenced by Schiller). He speaks of ‘the historical process of world despiritualization’ (Jung, 1970: 85), traceable from earliest civilization and reaching its culmination in western modernity (ibid.: 83–5, 245–6). ²³ The crisis he refers to variously as the Renaissance, the Reformation, or the Enlightenment: basically he has in view the rise of Protestantism, materialism and science. These lead to the characteristic development of modern society: industrialization, urbanization, large-scale societies where individuality is lost (Jung, 1964a: 247–305; cf. Jung, 2001: 222).

This has a long aetiology. The Protestant Reformation itself may be attributable to the imposition on the Germanic tribes of a more developed religion stemming from ancient civilization. There was too much of the pax Romana in the Church for the barbarian temperament to endure, and its dogmas and symbolism were too remote from immediate religious experience. Doing away with the Church’s mediations released energies but made for a split between consciousness and the unconscious: henceforth each went its way. That this disruption of the natural rhythm of cultural/psychic evolution is diagnostic for the modern West, is revealed by comparison with India, where no such disruption occurred (Jung, 1970: 46–7; Jung, 1964a: 527–8).

Though again, the Reformation or Renaissance might also be seen as a compensatory adjustment: an age of lateral expansion (explorations, materialism) to compensate for the vertical, over-spiritual age that preceded it (Jung, 1959: 43; Jung, 2001: 177–8). And Christian civilization was always vulnerable. This comes from Christianity’s development of an unbalanced symbolism: a Trinity rather than a Quaternity. One quadrant is suppressed: that representing evil, nature, the earth, the unconscious, the feminine (Jung, 1970: 57–63; Jung, 1993: 557 ff.). This is a factor of Judaeo-Christian extraversion: God ‘out there’ and evil a cosmological principle. (Buddhism then is a more complete, as well as more consciously insightful, religion.) Compounding this, Christianity quickly became a creed, a thing of dogma and ritual, rather than a living mystical religion. Conscious appreciation of its symbolism only survived underground, in Gnosticism or alchemy (Jung, 1993: 520–34, 537–81).

Jung’s basic concern here is with the attrition of the symbolic systems upon which the psyche depends for its integration and balance. Ritual and dogma did provide a symbolic scaffolding for psychic processes, effective at an unconscious level so long as people believed in them. When the Enlightenment swept these away in favour of materialism and science, the unconscious was effectively lost: the mind came to be seen simply as consciousness, rationality. Our unconscious now finds no reflection in our culture and is incomprehensible – indeed largely uninterrogated – and wayward (Jung, 1993: 109–22, 370–6, 383–5). The consequences are dual. On the one hand, we project our unconscious contents onto others, especially our shadow side: we believe of others the evil that we cannot see in ourselves. And we ourselves may become possessed: an unconscious content may take us over. These are collective phenomena, psychic epidemics, with above all political consequences such as Nazism or the cold war. Materialism and extraversion combined make for submission to society and the state rather than to inner realities, to the destruction of the individuality that alone could resist such things. This is also seen in the eccentricity, instability and lack of restraint in our religious, economic and cultural affairs. On the other hand, we are individually subject to widespread neuroses and psychoses, and a sense of meaninglessness and purposelessness in our lives as the psychological malaise of our times (Jung, 1964a: 247–305; Jung, 1964b: 79–103).

Modern ‘man’s great problem is loss of instinct (Jung, 1964a: 284–92, cf. 466–7): loss of contact with the natural world, with our own natures, and with our unconscious, leaving us living in an abstract realm of rational thought and of words. Ironically, this was inherent in Christianity from the outset, in the doctrine that ‘in the beginning was the Word’ – Logos (Jung, 1970: 289–91; Jung, 1964a: 284–92, see esp. 286). In a sense, the wheel has come full circle.

Jung sees positive aspects here too – culture like the psyche is self-regulating. The revaluation of nature in science, of the body in sport or in dancing, of sex: all are compensatory (Jung, 1964a: 93–4, 103). So is the development of a science of the unconscious: psychology itself (Jung, 1993: 364, 384–5). Again, as outlined earlier, the emancipation of women holds a promise of the rebalancing of Logos and Eros, and the recovery of a symbolism for the unconscious (Jung, 1964a: 130–3). ²⁴

What is striking, then, is not merely the similarity between Weber’s and Jung’s visions of modernity, but also that, for both, this is grounded not so much in a theory of modernity as in a theory of humankind’s existential situation and its implications for the structure of consciousness. They both see meaning as a projection of the mind not a given of the universe; they both see contradictions that reason cannot resolve but simply has to live with; they both see incommensurate spheres of human activity that find their natural expression in polytheism (see, for example, Jung, 1970: 86–8). Though for Jung, this should be expressed in terms of the psyche, as involving both conscious and unconscious processes.

Where they differ most is that, while Weber never doubts that the ego must be the centre of the psyche, Jung holds that the individuation process entails the transfer of the sense of identity from the ego to the self, the psyche’s true centre. Weber holds that hierarchy and discipline must be self-imposed on one’s personality; Jung considers that an organic harmony and unity of purpose can be developed.

In other words, as I have already suggested, where Weber is an ascetic, Jung is a mystic. Even so, Jung comes closer to Weber than one might expect. He is sceptical about westerners returning to Roman Catholicism or, even more, taking up eastern religions, and rather holds that the disenchantment of the modern West has to be endured – albeit in terms of a psychologically interpreted individuation experience (e.g. Jung, 1970: 529–37; Jung, 1993: 358–407 esp. 370–6). Indeed, like Weber, he invokes here the Protestant notion of Calling! (Jung, 1954: 167–86, see esp. 175–6; Jung, 1993: 111–22, 167–72; Weber, 1970d; Weber, 1970e).

This difference goes beyond temperament into values: given the biographical relation for each of intellectual oeuvre to psychological crisis, it could hardly be otherwise. ²⁵ Weber holds that it is the ascetic route that led to western civilization and that it cannot be abandoned. Nor should it be: asceticism lends itself to action in and transformation of the world, and political commitment in the modern world is in continuity with this. Jung does not value asceticism. (He also lived to see more of the 20th century, which might well disillusion him with politics.) Even so, Jung is no quietist or reactionary: his position is rather that effective action requires self-knowledge. A solution is a synthesis of opposites which transcends the conflict between them. Merely inverting the problem – taking sides – solves nothing.

These differences of temperament and values should be kept in perspective. Weber’s and Jung’s difference of emphasis in the factors limiting rationality is underpinned by a shared ironic view of rationality – not merely the untoward consequences of rationality in modernity, but, rather, philosophical reservations as to how far rationality ever was appropriate to our lives and to this world. This is a more fundamental issue than Jung’s thematization of the unconscious – which Weber does acknowledge.

Conclusion

What then comes of this attempt to consider Jungian psychology in relation to sociological theory?

Two things are immediately apparent. One is that Jung has a great deal to say to sociology. The other is that the way he fits in is completely different from Freud.

The classic location of Freud in sociological theory is in the area of ideology and consciousness, or collective mentalities – however this is expressed. Its ground is in the family and childhood, seen as socialization, i.e. personality formation – social values are grounded in the superego. The family then is where social structure and values/ideologies meet. This gives an orientation to continuity rather than to change: to the reproduction of (capitalist) society. With this, it is also an orientation to how society makes us rather than to how we make society: to structure rather than to agency, determinism rather than free will and consciousness. Both psychoanalysis and the traditions in sociological theory that use it have that bias – regardless of their attempts at mutual critique (Bocock, 1976; Gabriel, 1983).

There is a lock-and-key relationship here: sociological theory presents a lock, to which Freudian psychoanalysis seems to possess the key. Lock and key validate each other: while the key turns the lock, and the lock is turned by the key, there is no reason to question either of them. This surely is the ultimate reason why alternative psychodynamic theories have not received consideration.

With Weber and Jung, nothing of this obtains. Weber focuses on conflict and change; he does not give the ideal realm a key function in securing continuity. He has little use for the concept of socialization: the interpretive conception of social reality does not require it. He dismisses the functionalist approach to the family in favour of a conflict approach – and he is more concerned with the household (Weber, 1978a: part 2, chs 3 and 4, cf. 688–91; Weber, 1981: ch. 2). On childhood he says little, but implicitly its location may be remote from the adult destiny – Weber is very aware of migration, especially rural–urban migration (e.g. Weber, 1978a: 1237). Equally, children may actually be raised by migrants (servants, slaves) from another culture. Children then have actual fates, while social relationships and organizations may recruit quite variously.

Jung has little interest in childhood (Storr, 1973: 72; Jung, 1954: passim; Jung, 2001: 97–116): the aetiology of the psyche lies in its cultural history. Family relationships may be of concern for how they have conditioned the growth of the adult personality, but the basic process is the unfolding of an innate pattern (Jung, 1993: 239–40). He rejects the concept of the superego; conscience implies a critical distancing from society’s values, not mere internalization (Jung, 1964a: 437 ff.). The individual consciousness is an arena of conflict between ideas from the ‘collective consciousness’ and universal ideas from the collective unconscious (Jung, 1993: 111–13; see also Jung, 1954: 167 ff., esp. 174): ‘between collective consciousness and the collective unconscious there is an almost unbridgeable gulf over which the subject finds himself suspended’ (Jung, 1993: 112).

Paradoxically, the impact of all this is to free the field from aetiological and functionalist commitments, and to open it for empirical enquiry – presumably in terms of comparative historical sociology, rather than the traditional reliance on anthropology. ²⁶

For me, these considerations govern the use of Jung in sociology now. It should not take the form of a new attempt at over-arching theory. For the project of over-arching theory is one of synthesis: to achieve logical closure of theory, on the assumption that classical sociology has already established a comprehensive body of primary enquiries. This has costs: any issues that classical sociology failed to deal with cannot find a place in post-classical synthesis. Gender is a case in point; the natural environment is surely another. ²⁷ The purpose of bringing Jung into sociology, then, is to augment our powers of exploration, not explanation.

There is another aspect: Jungian psychology as epistemology. This is the question of the ‘personal equation’: how we construct the world differently according to our different individual psychologies. Shamdasani (2003: 29–99) argues that this was a lasting concern for Jung, starting from the identification of Freudian and Adlerian theory with extraversion and introversion. (Simmel [1959a, 1959b] has comparable concerns, both as regards the personal equation in philosophy, and as regards the interweaving of epistemological and ontological issues in sociology.) We might look at fundamental differences and debates in sociological theory in the same light.

I will not put forward a detailed analysis here. The dimensions are obvious enough: structure vs action, consensus vs conflict, political commitment vs value freedom, etc. –these are to be seen as constructions of the social world subject to such innate psychological differences as extraversion and introversion, Logos vs Eros, etc. I admit the problem of showing this empirically within the sociological community. (As to Weber and Jung themselves, their psychological crises comprised individuating experiences, which tend to transcend original personality type.) Nonetheless, the suggestion remains intuitively attractive.

Of course this reflects on the question of sociology as epistemology – the claim that knowledge is socially rather than individually determined. This however is not a territorial dispute between the disciplines of sociology and psychology. It is a division within sociological theory itself, and as such can be brought under the ‘personal equation’ as above. Only certain structure approaches claim to take philosophy (and psychology) under supervision – Merton’s (1973) ‘paradigm for the sociology of knowledge’. Other approaches – interpretive and humanistic sociologies and cultural anthropological traditions – hold that sociology and/or anthropology are not competent to do this. ²⁸

I stress that it is reflexive analysis that is proposed here. Sociology has seen enough of ‘critiques’ from positions that set themselves above criticism. Indeed, sociology seems increasingly to be stretched between poles of dogmatism and nihilism, each leading alike to a refusal to acknowledge the content of any others’ communication. Jung’s thought could perhaps suggest a way for sociology to reintegrate its fragmented discourse.