The Jung cult revisited

During the 1990's, Richard Noll published two sensational (or perhaps sensationalist) book-length attacks on Carl Gustav Jung, "The Jung Cult" and "The Aryan Christ", claiming that the Swiss psychoanalyst was really a sinister, neo-pagan, sun-worshipping cult leader who fancied himself to be the Aryan Christ (of all people!).

Sonu Shamdasani's "Cult Fictions" is an attempt to defend Jung against the charges. The author is a historian of psychology and pro-Jungian scholar. His book is rather short, only about 100 pages. Shamdasani believes that Noll's voluminous works simply rehash old accusations of occultism and cultishness against Jung and that they wouldn't even be worth responding to, had it not been for Noll's claim to have unearthed evidence for the cult claims. The smoking gun evidence is a previously misidentified text which Noll believes was Jung's inaugural address at the founding of his cult, otherwise known as the Psychological Club in Zürich. The year was 1916.

Shamdasani argues, rather persuasively, that the club wasn't a secret cult, that the secret speech was written by Maria Moltzer, and that it's dated later than 1916. I admit I was surprised by the ease by which Shamdasani exposes this document - when I read "The Jung Cult" I rather stupidly assumed that Richard Noll was The Man.
Still, there seems to be a reticence in Shamdasani's work to admit that Jung, while not perhaps a cultist, was nevertheless an occultist. At one point, the author admits: "However, it is one thing to suggest that analytical psychology, as Jung conceived it, contained important esoteric dimensions. It is another to identify correctly what these were". Well, what are they, then? Shamdasani is at pains to paint Jung as a Christian, rejecting Noll's idea that Christianity was simply a cover for Jung's paganism. Well, many Gnostics have also claimed to be Christians, yet the "esoteric dimensions of their work" were similar to "paganism". There is no contradiction between *claiming* to be a Christian and having a message very different from the one espoused by main-line Christian churches. The author actually quotes a statement by Jung in which he positions himself at the "extreme left" of the Protestant spectrum. Thus, Jung sometimes indicated that his Christianity wasn't of the regular sort.

The author also claims that the tradition of French psychology was more important to Jung than the völkisch context. But surely there was more to it than that? Shamdasani doesn't deny that Jung analyzed the Gnostic-Theosophical tradition. The similarities make it difficult to believe that he was completely uninfluenced by this particular stream...

I've skimmed another work by this author, "Jung and the making of modern psychology". Apart from various French psychologists, Jung is said to have been influenced by Schelling, Schopenhauer, Hartmann and Bergson. Nothing dramatic? Perhaps Shamdasani has the same problem as Jung himself, being torn between a religious-spiritual perspective and an empirical-scientific perspective, somehow not knowing how to unite them.

But Sonu, what's so wacky about being a neo-pagan sun-worshipper anyway? ;-)