When the Great Mother Met the Harlequin: Jung and Neumann on Art, Archetypes and The Spirit Of The Times

Abstract

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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