I chanced upon

some Jungian websites today. People I used to know or know of. The internecine squabbles, the typical language, etc. And once again saw the hand-in-glovery of Jungian culture as it now is with the easy progressive nostrums of the EuroAmerican literate classes.

One of the strengths of Jung's approach to the psyche is the role he gives to the shadow. It means that he, at least, if not his disciples, was curious about the marginal and strange and primitive. A quote of his that I always liked, where, in 1912, he urged the budding psychologist

to put away his scholar’s gown, bid farewell to his study, and wander with human heart through the world. There, in the horrors of prisons, lunatic asylums and hospitals, in drab suburban pubs, in brothels and gambling-halls, in the salons of the elegant, the Stock Exchanges, Socialist meetings, churches, revivalist gatherings and ecstatic sects, through love and hate, through the experience of passion in every form in his own body, he would  reap richer stores of knowledge than text-books a foot thick could reveal to him, and he will know how to doctor the sick with real knowledge of the human soul.

Too often the Boomeronian Captivity kept them from listening "with human heart" to parts of the culture that their PC moralism told them was bad.

One of Jung's interests was in the symptom as an ambassador. It can be the spokesman of a process that might not seem connected, at first glance. Or an unsuccessful or costly attempt to solve a real problem. Jungians would look at the phenomenon of female cutting or anorexia not as personal craziness or flaw, but as an indicator of a problem with the situation of women in a patriarchal society. It fit the narrative of female victimization. But would they ever have investigated, say, white supremacist groups not as gangs of morally degraded evil men but as an indicator of a problem with the white race in a changing multicultural society?

Please.

Would it ever have occurred to then to be curious about their own very distinct age, class and ethnic demographic?

Reminds me of a strange relationship I had with a black man who wanted to start a friendship with me. Motivations murky, possibly somewhat sexual. But although he was an accomplished guy, he was, for example, a great fan of Marxoid mountebank Cornel West. When I explained that our values were pretty different and would likely be an obstacle to being friends, that I had become more conservative over the years, rather than asking why, he asked if it was a family tradition and that I was wanting to please my parents. Rather than being curious about the content or the reasons for my change of mind, --something you might expect from a friend--he was looking to diagnose me. Typical, alas.