break with Freudian psychoanalysis and his subsequent development of an independent analytical psychology went hand in hand with his increasing emphasis upon the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Jung's highlighting of similarities between his own theory and Nietzsche´s thought lent itself to the attempt to differentiate himself from Freud, whose reserved relation to Nietzsche was interpreted by Jung as a failure to question his (Freud's) own scientific assumptions. The argument that Freud was incapable of acknowledging the philosophical background to his approach provided Jung with the possibility of applying his theory of a collective unconscious, an unconscious finding its expression in a creative scientific mind, to psychoanalysis.
Where Sigmund Freud famously failed to engage seriously and openly with Nietzsche’s Thus spoke Zarathustra (1980 [1883-85]), C.G. Jung developed his psychological theory on the basis of a thorough critical engagement with the text and even dedicated a five-year long seminar series to its interpretation (1934-39). But similar to Freud before him he often developed a blind eye to his own contemporary literature and art. As Jung’s writings on Joyce’s Ulysses (Jung 1932) or Picasso’s paintings make (Jung 1932a) evident he tended to reject the symbolic dimension of modernist art and literature and regarded it as a sheer product of the spirit of the times. Again, it was a psychologist of the next generation, Erich Neumann, whose adaptation of Jung’s theory made it possible to apply archetypal theory to modernist art. This article will follow the key differences between Jung’s and Neumann’s understanding of art and literature by looking at their interpretations of main examples of modernism.
KEYWORDS
Erich Neumann, Pablo Picasso, James Joyce, the Great Mother archetype.
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