In modern sociological literature, one generally makes a distinction among: (1) a group, i.e., a collection of people who are intellectually and on a feeling level related to each other and in which everybody fulfills a certain role; (2) a crowd, i.e., a random accumulation of people; and (3) a mass, i.e., a big crowd which is emotionally and instinctively unified and generally follows a leader.
According to most modern sociological theories the chaotic mass and the well-ordered group were originally closer to each other than they are today. This seems to me not quite accurate. They were not closer, they contrasted even more clearly, but they tended to topple over from one into another more easily; primitive groups easily get out of control, just as groups of young people or of mentally unstable individuals do, but as phenomena in themselves, they are more rigid on a primitive level (taboos!), and chaotic mass phenomena tend to be wilder and more hysterical. Even on the higher level of early civilizations, in the Samurai culture in Japan, for instance, or in the feudal societies in medieval Europe, we see a strong tendency at work toward formal rigidity, because under its cover the emotions and affects are still so powerful that they have to be domesticated by force. However, the more really civilized man becomes, the more his social rules of behavior become more flexible, and instead of a black and white contrast we find a many-colored spectrum of behavioral nuances.
Gustave le Bon and Sigmund Freud assumed that the mass represents the original form of human relationship (Urhorde), but this has proved to be wrong, for even in the most primitive societies which we know today, we find well-ordered social groups; mostly big families and clans seem to form the basis of social order, and sociologists have therefore rashly concluded that the interests of the “we” basically come first, before the interests of the “I.”1 These theories leave out the problem of the unconscious, on its personal as well as its collective level, and therefore suffer from terrible oversimplification. They ignore the role of the archetypes as patterns of mental and emotional behavior and thus overlook certain facts which should be considered more closely.
Following Pierre Janet, Jung distinguishes between a partie superieure and a partie inferieure of all psychological functions including the archetypes. The partie inferieure of an archetype is a pattern of instinctive behavior in the zoological sense of the word; it has more the aspect of an emotional drive and is more compulsive (all-or-none reaction). The partie superieure contains more possibilities of conscious inner realization and is more flexible. Jung compared the psyche to a spectrum, the infrared end of which would be the psychosomatic behavioral impulses, the ultraviolet end the symbolic realizations of meaning or the experience of idées fixes, collective norms, religious inspirations, etc. A group with its social order would be placed closer to the ultraviolet end, the mass with its compulsive emotional reactions would be closer to the infrared end of the color scale. In sociological literature, the group is generally evaluated positively, the mass negatively. This seems to me quite arbitrary, because often in history the fight of a nation, for instance, for its freedom (displaying all the emotional features of a mass phenomenon) has generally been evaluated positively (for instance, the Swiss liberation from Austria). Conversely, reasonably organized groups which stand for a political ideology can dominate a nation so inflexibly that they suffocate all emotional life with its charm and warmth. Thus both ends of the spectrum can be either positive or negative, according to different viewpoints. To me it seems that a middle position between the two poles represents an optimal situation. Sliding toward the infrared end (mass phenomena) produces explosions of too large an emotional and affect content. Aberrations towards the ultraviolet end produce ideological fanatacism and states of religious or political possession. There is no freedom at either end; only in the middle position, between these opposites, does a certain amount of consciousness and with it of individual freedom seem to be possible.
Another oversimplification in sociological literature is the statement that the “we” came historically before the “I.” This seems to be true only insofar as collective consciousness (group consciousness with its rules of behavior) seems to be historically older than “ego consciousness”; it does not apply to the pair of opposites “group-individual,” for individuality is not identical with ego consciousness. A small child, for instance, or an animal, can display a lot of individuality before developing any stable ego consciousness. The group-versus-individual polarity exists already in the animal world. The zoologist Adolf Portmann has pointed out that among groups of animals creative changes of behavioral patterns can only be initiated by individuals. For instance, an individual bird of a flock of migratory birds decides to stay in the same place in winter. If it succumbs, nothing more results; if it survives, however, a few more birds may stay with it the next winter, and thus slowly the whole group sometimes changes its habits.
We have therefore to reckon with two pairs of opposites:
(1) collective consciousness (the “we” or “us”) versus ego consciousness, and (2) group (conscious plus unconscious) versus individual (conscious plus unconscious). Modern sociologists generally evaluate collective consciousness more positively than ego consciousness, the former being more “normal,” the latter tending to exhibit asocial “outsider” characteristics. But we have to consider the fact that this is not generally valid.2 Just as in a single individual, the conscious attitude of a whole group can deviate from its instinctual roots and become neurotic and can then collide with the healthy ego of an individual. I have often observed that a whole neurotic family group will fight its only healthy member. In Nazi Germany anybody who tried to keep his balance was persecuted. Therefore we must ask the question: What is normal? When is the collective “we” more normal than the outsider-ego, and when not? There we get into deep water. Groups can also definitely display typological one-sidedness. In certain American groups an introvert is automatically labeled abnormal, while in the Far East I sometimes saw how the enterprising extravert behavior of a person was met by great distrust. If we stand naked on one leg on Fifth Avenue in order to honor God, we will end up in a psychiatric ward, but if we do the same thing in Calcutta we will be respected as a saint. Where are the ultimate criteria for what is normal or the reverse? Is social adaptation the only important thing? What if the society has become neurotic? Is social adaptation still recommendable, or should the individual find the courage to resist it alone? Where is he to get that courage? These questions are not yet answered in modern sociological theories. As far as archetypes are concerned, this too leads to further unanswered questions. Raymund Battegay observed with his patients that his therapeutic groups always desired to have “their own room” in a manner similar to an animal’s attachment to its territory and similar to the territorial attachment of tribes and nations.3 This territorial attachment is derived from the mother archetype, and with it one has observed that people tend to project the “mother” onto their group, a fact which often leads to all sorts of infantile regressions. But this is not the only possibility: among the Jews living in exile, the Law replaced the territory and proved just as efficient in keeping a group together. In fraternities, bands of warriors, and the like, it is more a common “spirit” or “idea,” i.e., the father archetype, which unites people. Such aspects also can change in the course of history. Hans Marti has shown, for instance, that the Swiss Democratic Constitution was first based more on the patriarchal image of a contract social of men, the Father State, but nowadays has changed more and more into an image of Mother Helvetia, who nourishes her children and who owns the woods, lakes, and earth—all maternal symbols. These two parental images, however, are still not the only possible centers around which human beings assemble. There are many others also.
Sociology has discovered that all groups gather around some kind of a center, which is defined as being concentrated onto a group theme, a group purpose, or a group aim. From this center the existence of all groups depends.4 Either the center has a purely rational purpose, as in sport, commercial, and political groups, or it belongs to a higher order, such as the totem in primitive tribes, or the symbols of religious societies,5 where the center satisfies “a need for transcendental experience.” In sensitivity groups and therapeutic groups, the center consists in the goal of supporting healing tendencies and tendencies of becoming more conscious of one’s social behavior, and of the mutual effects we have upon one another in relationships.
In these descriptions a factor has again been overlooked: the effect of the archetype. Some groups, such as commercial or sports groups, or even some political groups, have only conscious rational aims, but as soon as some hidden or open ideological factor comes into play even they become “emotionally” bound and reveal by that fact that they are under some archetypal influence. The greater the emotional influence of an archetype, the greater becomes the coherence of the group. National Socialism and Communism show this very clearly, the former having been a revival of Wotanism and the latter containing a distorted Savior myth.6
With greater coherence there is always also a greater aggressiveness against outsiders and against “unbelievers.” Such political groups approach the pattern of the groups with greatest coherence: the religious communities which gather around a transcendental center. As we see from the so-called world religions, like Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam, a “transcendental center” can hold much larger societies together than groups with only a rational or semirational purpose. The reason is to be found in the fact that the archetype of the Self is a more powerful archetype than all the others. It manifests itself in monotheistic God images or concepts of the basic Oneness of Being (Tao) or even more frequently in the images of a cosmic man (Anthropos) or God-Man or of a mandala as a symbol which unites the opposites (for instance the Chinese T’ai-chi-t’u).
Until the Greeks came in touch with India, even Buddha was never represented in human shape, but as a twelve-spoked wheel of stone. To a certain degree the totem symbols of primitive societies represent anticipations of these great God-Man symbols which became internationally uniting forces, and often overlaid or absorbed the local former polytheistic archetypal images. They brought them together in a symbol of “Oneness-plurality” which unites in a paradoxical form the many archetypes and the oneness of the collective unconscious within one form. But these God-Man symbols and mandala images unite a plurality of forms not only in this respect; they also unite a multitude, insofar as the Self within each individual is its own unique Self and the Self of all other human beings as well. This paradox is expressed in Hindu philosophy by the identity of the individual atman-purusha with the cosmic Atman-Purusha. The same holds for the “Buddha” or rather “Buddha-Mind” in Zen and other forms of Buddhism. In our hemisphere the collective aspect of the Self symbol is represented by the idea of “Christ in us,” and in the filiatio through the pouring out of the Holy Ghost, and in the idea that the multitude of believers forms the visible Body of Christ, the Church. Christ has therefore been until now our “group dynamic center,” a fact which is expressed in the allocution of the early Christians who called each other “brother and sister in Christ.”
In the early Church, the psychic life of this archetypal group-center was not only based on conscious tradition but was also kept alive by the inner experiences of individuals, such as the conversion experience of Saint Paul or Saint Augustine, the visions of the martyrs and saints, and the experience of miracles among the simple people. But in the later development of the Church, a tendency to “censor” such experiences prevailed more and more, and collective conscious norms were imposed upon the inner life. This led to splitting up into all sorts of movements which began to cluster around new group centers.
Today we could describe our situation as follows: the most universal groups are Christianity with its God-Man symbol, Christ; Buddhism with its symbol of the universal Buddha-Mind; Hinduism, Islam, and the Marxist movements. The official Christ image suffers from a lack of including the feminine principle, evil and matter, and the Buddha-Mind symbol from a lack of including the real earthly life of man. Both systems reject the symbol-forming activities of the unconscious in man which express themselves in dreams. In Christianity dreams are looked upon as dangerously mystical and heretical, in Buddhism as belonging to the world of illusion. Marxism has also its symbol of a perfect man or Anthropos, but it appears projected not onto one individual but onto a whole class. (The tendency to project it onto a single man turns up in the forbidden cult of persons.) According to Karl Marx, the labor class represents the true man who is solely in harmony with nature, altruistic, creative, and not neurotically degenerated.7 What is psychologically wrong about this Marxist Anthropos symbol is the fact that it is only earthly material and only collective, even a collectivity itself, with no opening toward any individual transcendental inner experience. Maoism is still a riddle for us because, as Jung pointed out, how Marxism will be assimilated by the highly cultured Chinese mind cannot yet be predicted.
The decay of the great international religious centering systems and the unsatisfactory one-sidedness of the compensatory Marxist Anthropos symbol have led modern man into a deep inner isolation and loneliness and evoked a great need in him for social contacts. This, no doubt, has called up the new fashion of group experiences and experiments of most diverse forms. As early as 1923, Jung predicted in his seminar in Cornwall that if the Christian system continued to decay, there would be a regression toward totemistic groups. Some would resemble the Mithraic clubs, and “there would be much bull roaring.” Others would have a lamblike character and play the innocent victim. We now see this realized in the criminal terrorist gangs and in the “innocent” promoters of peace.
Realizing the need of modern man to get out of his urban isolation, the Churches on one side, and the left wing movements on the other, try to ride the wave and offer group experiments of all sorts. This, however, is putting the cart before the horse and can only lead to disaster because it prevents the one inner saving event from taking place: the individual’s experience of the Sell The latter can only be found alone, for, as Jung writes: “The patient must be alone if he is to find out what it is that supports him when he can no longer support himself. Only this experience can give him an indestructible foundation.”8
The responsible analyst “therefore prefers individual treatment to collective ameliorations; this accords with the experience that social and collective influences usually produce only a mass intoxication, and that only man’s action upon man can bring about a real transformation.”9
At first it seems a great relief for the individual to feel protected by a group and removed from himself. In the group, therefore, the sense of security increases and the feeling of responsibility decreases. Suggestibility also increases enormously, a fact which includes, however, a loss of freedom, because one falls into the hands of good or evil environmental influences. Even a small group is dominated by a suggestive group spirit. If the latter is good, it can have positive social effects, but this is paid for by a decrease of the mental and ethical independence of the individual. As the group reinforces the ego, one gets more courageous, or even impertinent, but the Self is pushed into the background. That is why weak and insecure people want to belong to big organizations. Then one feels big oneself, but one loses the Self (the devil catches one’s soul) and one’s individual judgment. The leveling down is generally corn-pensated by the fact that one person identifies with the group spirit and tries to become the leader. That is why groups are always full of struggles for power and prestige. These battles are based on the heightened egoism of collective man.10
In a letter in which he deals with this theme Jung adds that he has no objection to group therapy, any more than to Christian Science or the Oxford Movement; it constellates and educates the social behavior of individuals, which sometimes does not come up sufficiently in personal analysis. But because man is always inclined to cling to others, or to “isms,” instead of seeking independent strength in himself, the danger arises that one makes a father or mother out of the group and remains as infantile and insecure as before. If society consisted of highly valuable individuals, it would be worthwhile to adapt to it, but generally it is dominated by weak and stupid people, and thus suffocates all higher individual values. Even if socially positive effects are for the moment achieved, they must be paid for later and then very dearly.11
If we think over these reflections of Jung’s, we must ask: Is our present society at a level on which one would wish to adapt to it? Do we not rather live in an era where it is especially important that independent individuals can resist the stupidity and generally neurotic tendencies of our societies?
It has been objected that if an individual is simultaneously in a personal analysis, the group experiments complement it. I have myself seen, however, and it has been confirmed to me by others, that participation in group experience more often disturbs the individual analysis than helps it, because it stirs up problems at the wrong moment, while in individual analysis the unconscious can “time” their constellation. And with all such individuals who are already socially overadapted (as happens often, for instance, with parsons, managers, and social workers), their dreams show openly that group experiences are obnoxious to them. When urged to participate in a group experiment, one of my analysands dreamed that he was forced to expose his girlfriend naked to a dirty old voyeur. Later he dreamed that the waters of his unconscious had been polluted by others; finally, when he left the group, he dreamed that he had extricated himself from a cheap show! Considering these facts, group experience should never be compulsive. The learning of social adaptation for people who by any chance lack it could be quite sufficiently practised by participating in freely informed (unanalytical) social groups, such as have existed for a long time among clubs in most countries. Whoever, therefore, supports compulsory group experience has departed from the basic values of Jungian psychology.
Who, we must now ask, are the analysts who like to conduct group experiments? They very often find their motivation in the fact that one earns more money with less effort, as some have openly admitted to me. Another motivation lies in the fact that some analysts cannot cope with passionate and demanding transferences of their patients. It is generally admitted that the transference phenomena are weakened in group situations, and the latter thus help to lessen the pressure of the transferences. Jung has shown, however, that transference is the vehicle of the process of individuation, and with it all of healing transformation of the individual.
The individuation process, based on the vehicle of transference, is the conditio sine qua non of true social behavior, for if individuation is not consciously realized “it takes place spontaneously in a negative form, i.e., in the form of a hardening against our fellow men.” The conscious achievement of inner unity needs human relationships as an indispensable condition, for without the conscious acknowledgment and acceptance of our kinship with those around us, there can be no synthesis of the personality. “That is the core of the whole transference phenomenon and it is impossible to argue it away, because relationship to the Self is at once relationship to our fellow man and no one can be related to the latter until he is related to himself.”12 The reducing effect of group therapy as regards the transference is plainly detrimental. It only helps the analyst to evade the problems which any powerful transference poses for him.
But there are other motivations for which we have to look briefly into the history of psychotherapy. The roots of both priesthood and psychotherapy lie in the primitive phenomenon of shamanism and the existence of medicine men. The shaman or medicine man is mainly concerned with the fate of the individual soul, its preparation for death, its protection after death, and its protection against states of possession by ghosts and demons—i.e., by archetypal powers. He can do this because during his own initiation he has suffered such states of possession and found ways of curing himself.13 The initiation experience of such shamans and medicine men coincides with what we now call the process of individuation.
After this process has taken place, the shaman wins natural authority within his tribe because he represents its most individuated and conscious individual. But already in this early stage we also find the shaman’s shadow, the neurotic (or even psychotic) black magician. The latter demands collective authority on account of his experiences of the ghost world (i.e., the collective unconscious); in doing so he proves to be mentally sick. (Modern examples would be Rasputin and Hitler.) Individuation is ultimately incompatible with any demands for collective power, even if it is veiled by the attitude of a well-meaning, liberal, modest, and moderating group leader! For only the Self can give us natural authority which has not been asked for by the ego. In the early Christian Church the leaders were people of natural authority, which they had acquired by their individual inner experiences and their Christian conduct of life. With the forming of the Church as a collective outer institution, the leaders more and more became people who demanded authority and power, and superimposed collective conscious rules over the spontaneous inner religious life of people. The confessions, as Jung points out, thus began what he calls “the game of shepherd and sheep.”14 “The flock of harmless sheep was ever the symbolic prototype of the credulous crowd.”15 But the blind trust of such a multitude can just as easily be taken in by a wrong goal as by a right one. We see therefore that Communism is more widespread in Catholic countries than in Protestant, because the Church had had a stronger hold upon them before. In contrast to this, in the past, stood the search of the alchemists for Christ or Mercurius as a symbol of the “true man” within. Jung says:
The “true man” expresses the Anthropos in the individual human being compared with the revelation of the Son of Man in Christ. This seems a retrograde step, for the historical uniqueness of the Incarnation was the great advance which gathered the scattered sheep about one shepherd. The “Man” in the individual would mean, it is feared, a scattering of the flock. This would indeed be a retrograde step, but it cannot be blamed on the “true man,” its cause is rather all those bad human qualities which have always threatened and hindered the work of civilization . . . the “true man”16 has nothing to do with this. Above all he will destroy no valuable cultural form since he himself is the highest form of culture. Neither in the East nor in the West does he play the game of shepherd and sheep, because he has enough to do to be a shepherd to himself.17
NOTES
1. Cf. Raymund Battegay, Der Mensch in der Gruppe, vol. 1 (Bern, 1967–72), pp. 10–16.
2. As Clovis Shepherd, in Small Groups (Chandler M. Francisco, 1967), points out, too many modern sociological theories are biased by unconscious emotional prejudices of their authors.
3. Battegay, Der Mensch, vol. 1, pp. 32, 40f.
4. Cf. ibid., p. 32.
5. One distinguishes, therefore, structured groups from focused groups (cf. Shepherd, Small Groups, p. 3).
6. Cf. C. G. Jung, Man and His Symbols (New York: Doubleday, 1964), p. 85.
7. Cf. Robert Tucker, Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963).
8. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12, para. 32.
9. Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14, para. 125. Cf. also Jung’s footnote, ibid.
10. Jung, letter to Hans Illing, 26 January 1955, Letters, Vol 2, pp. 218–19.
11. Ibid., p. 4.53. Cf. the confirmation of these statements by Jung in Kurt W. Back, “The Group Can Comfort, but It Can’t Cure,” Psychology Today, December 1972, pp. 28ff.
12. Jung, “Psychology of the Transference,” in CW 16, para. 445.
13. Cf. Mircea Eliade, Shamanism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), chap. 1, pp. 8, 14.
14. Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14, para. 491.
15. Ibid., para. 347.
16. Jung means the Anthropos, or the Self. “The alchemical Anthropos shows itself to be independent of the dogma,” Ibid., para. 492.
17. Ibid., para. 491.