i
Archetypal Patterns Underlying Edgar Allan Poe’s Short Tales
Rouhollah Zarei
A thesis submitted for the degree of PhD
Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies
University of Essex
July 2007
ii
Abstract
This thesis adopts an Archetypal approach to the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, in an attempt
to unravel at least some of their subtleties and complexities. To date, many different
approaches have been tried on Poe but in a majority of them his personal life issues have
had their hard-to-avoid impact and sometimes diverted the course of discussions to nonliterary areas. Marie Bonaparte’s Edgar Poe is a classic example of how Freudian
psychology is tied to personal matters in its account of Poe’s art, but even Freud mentions
that Bonapartian investigation does not account for the creative genius. The approach
adopted here is meant to offer a new perspective although it is not meant to be either
definitive or all-inclusive. Joseph Andriano’s “Archetypal Projection in ‘Ligeia’: A PostJungian reading,” Steven K. Hoffman’s “Sailing into the Self: Jung, Poe, and ‘MS. Found
in a Bottle’,” Roberta Reeder’s “‘The Black Cat’ as a Study in Repression,” David R.
Saliba’s A Psychology of Fear: The Nightmare Formula of Edgar Allan Poe and Martin
Bickman’s The Unsounded Centre: Jungian Studies in American Romanticism are a few
notable Jungian works on Poe. Nevertheless, Poe has not been systematically or
extensively examined through this approach. In this thesis, there has been an attempt to
extend the scope of the archetypal approach to a wide range of Poe's tales including some
less famous ones. Some tales by him have been chosen and in each chapter one archetype
is selected with reference to the stories in question. Thus, the first chapter addresses the
archetype of the self; the second, that of mother; the third, transformation and rebirth; and
the final chapter treats the interconnection of all possible archetypes in a few more
stories. This approach, if adopted with insight, can help us overcome at least some of the
obstacles standing in the way of understanding not only Poe, but dreams, dream works,
fairy tales, and myths.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to express my heartiest gratitude to my supervisor, Professor Richard Gray,
whose pathfinding remarks, preciseness, and patience made this thesis possible. I would
also like to thank the members of my supervisory board, Drs. Joe Allard and Own
Robinson, for reading the initial drafts of the chapters and their feedback. I am especially
indebted to my mother, my wife, and my daughter, Rojan, who were sources of energy
and hope whenever I felt exhausted during the writing and re-writing of the thesis.
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Contents
Abstract ………………………………………………………….………………………ii
Acknowledgements………………………………….….……………………...……..…iii
Contents……………………………………………………..………..…...……………..iv
Introduction………………………………………………………….…………………...1
Chapter 1: The Archetype of the Self…………………………………………...…….40
Chapter 2: The Archetype of Mother…………………………………………………71
Chapter 3: Rebirth………………………………………………………………….…136
Chapter 4: Archetypal Patterns…………………..…………………….………..…..183
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………..242
Appendix……………………………………………………………………………….251
Bibliography……………………………………………….…………………………..252
1
I. Introduction
The present work attempts to represent Poe through his symbols and by doing so it is
hoped that a new dimension will be discovered in his already multifaceted mansion.
Unlike metaphors that establish a one to one relationship between the tenor and the
vehicle, symbols, because of their complexity, depth and vagueness of nature, have made
various interpretations possible. The danger of approaching symbols is that they might be
interpreted as the critic wishes to them to be not as they are. One way of ‘getting close’ to
the meaning of symbols is to blend a golden mean of generally accepted meanings for
certain symbols with the context in which they appear.
In an attempt to look for approaches that address symbols in a more or less systematic
way, I have decided to examine Poe’s works through an archetypal approach which is
one possible way of understanding Poe. The previous scholarship on Poe is not
necessarily rejected since a work of a great writer as Poe is multidimensional and can be
approached from different angles with illuminating results. All that is aimed in this thesis
is shedding more light on the less discussed aspects of certain stories or on generally less
studied stories. Thus, out of the vast scope of Poe’s narratives, poems and critical
writings, only fourteen short stories have been selected and discussed due to the
limitation of a thesis and, in certain cases, to avoid repetition when dealing with a single
archetype in some more or less similar stories.
The archetypal approach is not to be regarded as an indisputable theory to base
everything in Poe on but as the name suggests, it is an approach, not more than a way to
lead us to new regions. Since the psychological or Freudian approach, which provides
2
one major framework of interpreting symbols, has already been applied to Poe, with its
own capabilities and limitations, it has been attempted to approach Poe from an
archetypal perspective. Archetypal approach similarly deals with symbols in a framework
but the structure is more extensive because it attempts to address symbols not as
symptoms in pathological cases but as normal phenomena in the collective unconscious
of mankind.
Jungian approach has become synonymous with the archetypal approach after the name
of the leading practitioner in this field, C. G. Jung. What Jung did to the wealth of human
knowledge before him is to some extent, though by no means exactly, comparable to
what Aristotle did in his Poetics. Aristotle’s theory of literature was based on what was
(being) practiced by the great writers of his time or before. He observed phenomena in
literature and set up a descriptive framework for their better understanding. Jung in a
roughly similar way collected his material from various sources including myths, fairy
tales, his patient’s dreams, anthropology, history, linguistics, philosophy, religions, and
literature since one cannot speak of the collective nature of mankind unless s/he is
considered from all possible perspectives. Andrew Samuels writes:
Jung’s overall approach does suggest the presence of the suspect idea of theory.
After theoretical formula has been obtained from ‘human material’, Jung then
applies it in ‘my practical work, until it has either been confirmed, modified or else
abandoned’ (CW 4, para. 685). Jung goes on to state that the wealth of comparative,
often mythological or anthropological, material serves to introduce, illustrate or
amplify the theory—not to prove it (ibid.). Thus the theory, derived from
observation, exists prior to the listing of the confirming material. I find an
awareness of this approach enormously helpful in understanding Jung’s work. 1
1
Andrew Samuels, Jung and Post-Jungians (London & New York: Routledge, 1985) 4-5 (italic original).
3
There is, however, dispute over Jung’s works being really empirical. Naomi Goldenberg
in “Archetypal Theory after Jung,” referring to Jung’s admiration of Neumann’s the
Origins and History of Consciousness, argues that Jung and Jungians (who Goldenberg
calls the second generation of Jungians who tried to present a “coherent account” of
Jung’s ideas) have tried to clothe their work with “empirical justification”:
We must remember, however, that no “empirical” proof whatsoever was advanced.
An evolutionary maxim was merely adapted to myth and psychology and
considered evidence. Jungians seem to have an inherent fondness for intuitive
methodology coupled with a severe reluctance to admit that it forms the basis of
their conclusions, which they prefer to insist are “empirically derived”. It would
appear that efforts to make the archetype acceptable by placing it outside
psychology have not been successful so far. They have done little more than create
the illusion of entering the other field by borrowing vocabulary specific to it. 2
Goldenberg, however, mentions a third generation of Jungians like James Hillman who
do not invoke facts and empirical proofs to validate psyche and psychology. Instead there
is exploration of the soul through imagination. 3
It is inevitable to draw on material from many disciplines if one is to follow an
archetypal approach. What concerns us in this thesis is Jung’s approach to symbols only.
In his extensive research he concluded that numerous symbols gather under the umbrella
of a few universal symbols that repeat themselves regardless of time and place in the
collective unconscious of mankind. He called them archetypes. Nevertheless, unlike
Aristotle, he tried to avoid forming theories out of his findings in this regard since he
noticed the dynamism and the indefinite nature of archetypes prevented them to have
fixed meanings and that they could be known only approximately. Jung’s notion of
2
Naomi R. Goldenberg, “Archetypal Theory after Jung” Spring: An Annual of Archetypal Psychology and
Jungian Thought (New York: Spring Publications, 1975), 207.
3
Goldenberg, 1975, 208.
4
theories which he called “the very devil” was that our knowledge of the human psyche
was too limited to enable us to form general theories. 4 Furthermore, archetypes are also
examined in the context in which they appear. So, there is no pre-packaged notion of
archetypes. However, there are critics who find the approach not as flexible as what
meant to be. Andrew Samuels, for instance, argues that “analytical psychology has had its
own problems with fixed interpretation based on a pre-existing symbological lexicon.”5
In this thesis, despite all short-comings, there will be an attempt to look critically at some
of Poe’s short tales from a more or less archetypal point of view. It is hoped that this
approach which has not been fully tested on Poe will add another brick to the house of
Poe which was built during his productive lifetime and by his critics ever after.
II. Critics on Poe
II. A. The Man
Rumi, the thirteenth century mystic poet, speaks of Indian entertainers who had an
elephant on the show in a city where the citizens had never beheld one. A few
overcurious citizens who could not wait until daybreak tried to feel the animal as seeing it
in the dark room was impossible. The one who felt the trunk reported that the animal was
like a water-pipe. The one who touched the ear thought it a fan. Another one who came to
4
Carl Gustav Jung, The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 17, eds. Herbert Read, Michael Fordham, and
Gerhard Adler, trans. R. F. C. Hull (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957) p. 7. Jung’s Collected
Works will hereafter be referred to as “Jung, CW” followed by volume and paragraph numbers,
respectively unless paragraphs are unnumbered which will then be replaced by page numbers.
5
Samuels, 1985, 231.
5
the leg called the animal a big pillar, and the one whose hand reached the back regarded it
as a big throne. Rumi continues that each one experiencing a part fancied that he had got
the whole since they imagined the animal “from their individual perspective” and
“limited organ of touch.” They mistook the “foam with the real sea”. All that was needed,
he goes on, was a candle to be put in the hands of each to help them come to unanimity.
Poe’s case is very similar to that of Rumi’s elephant since very few writers have
attracted such diverse and at times antithetical criticism. There have been numerous
critics discovering some point in Poe’s works and thinking that everything about him had
been discovered. That has been the moment when prejudices have come to the fore,
barring them from receptiveness to other possibilities. Jung is very similar to Rumi in this
respect:
The moment one forms an idea of a thing and successfully catches one of its
aspects, one invariably succumbs to the illusion of having caught the whole. One
never considers that a total apprehension is right out of the question. Not even an
idea posited as total is total, for it is still an entity on its own with unpredictable
qualities. 6
It was for such reasons that Jung was against forming theories. When reviewing the Poe
literature one frequently comes across eureka ejaculations by critics, each exclaiming in
his or her way that Poe is not read and understood as he should be. The implication is that
Poe should be seen only from their stance. This is the danger Rumi and Jung warns us
against when we think or “feel” we have got the whole of something.
The very diversity of opinions is a proof of the depth of Poe’s art. Each critic dives into
Poe’s dark sea, the amount of the catch depending on the extent of the exploration. It
could be the illusory “foam” on the surface, the fish under the surface or the pearl deep
6
Jung, CW 8, par. 356.
6
down
at
the
very
bottom.
Biographical,
textual,
structuralist,
linguistic,
phenomenological, psychological, and even archetypal hooks and nets have been
experimented with Poe, each bringing to the surface new findings. Yet, a quick glance at
the criticism carried out on him indicates that a biographical approach with a
psychological, i.e., Freudian, inclination has formed the bulk of the scholarship. The
establishment of a one-to-one relationship between the personal life of the author and his
works actually began during Poe’s own lifetime. It has continued up until even now,
though with less force.
There have been diverse opinions about Poe’s physical and mental health. A large
majority finds Poe’s art an expression of his neuroses; an early example is Lorine
Pruette’s “A Psycho-Analytical Study of Edgar Allan Poe,” in 1920. She applies the
latest psychological findings of her time to Poe, “The organic inferiority of both lungs
and mind, if we follow the theories of Adler, demanded compensation, which the youth
found in drawing and in writing stories and poems…. His feeling of ‘degradation’ and of
‘inferiority’ fired him with the passionate determination to be ‘on top’.” 7 Or when she
mentions Poe’s characters in fact she has in mind Poe himself, “Poe’s heroes are largely
autobiographical; they are melancholy men, pursued by unrelenting fate; they are
neurotic, hypochondriac, monomaniac, victims of vain delusions; they are the prey of
melancholia, insane from sorrow or from the thirst for revenge.” 8
About a decade later, Marie Bonaparte embarked on an extensive study in the same
vein with similar conclusions in her Edgar Poe. This trend of thought never stopped as
observed by David Sinclair who remarks, “[Poe’s] greatest strength lay in his unique
7
Lorine Pruette, “A Psycho-Analytical Study of Edgar Allan Poe,” American Journal of Psychology 31
(1920): 375.
8
Pruette, 384.
7
faculty for probing into his own neuroses and translating them into stories of breathtaking
power.”9 Joseph Wood Krutch refers to Poe’s impotency10 and Arthur Hobson Quinn
reminds the reader of Poe’s being spoilt by his parents, 11 or his transference to Roderick
Usher “his own fear of impending mental decay which came at times during his life.” 12 If
Wagenknecht’s claim is true that Poe suffered from heart, brain, and nerve diseases, 13 one
wonders how Poe could live even that short period of life. Added to these is Bonaparte’s
suggestion that homosexuality, though not overt, was deep rooted in Poe. 14 In the
opposite camp we come across a few critics like Hoffman who find Poe mentally healthy,
at least, as far as his works are concerned:
Poe, out of the very peculiarity of his psychic makeup, speaks to us not as a
psychotic but as a man. Few writers have lived with their unconscious pulsations as
close to the surface of their skins. Few have been able to summon these images, or
been as unable to escape them, as was Edgar Poe.15
II. B. The Writer
It is possible to rate Poe up or down. It is difficult to avoid him.16
There is hardly any critic denying the fact that Poe’s loss of parents at an age when any
child naturally is in need of parental care did not leave his works uninfluenced. But the
9
David Sinclair, Edgar Allan Poe (London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1977) 11.
Joseph Wood Krutch, “The Philosophy of Composition,” Poe: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed.
Robert Regan (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967) 41.
11
Arthur Hobson Quinn, Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography (NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1941) 7172.
12
Quinn, 1941, 285.
13
Edward Wagenknecht, Edgar Allan Poe: The Man Behind the Legend (NY: Oxford UP, 1963) 19.
14
Marie Bonaparte, The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe: A Psychoanalytic Interpretation, trans. John
Rodker (London: Imago, 1949) 104.
15
Daniel Hoffman, Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, 1972)
322.
16
William Kurtz Wimsatt & Cleanth Brooks, Literary Criticism: A Short History, 4 vols. (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1957) 480.
10
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extent the biographical data can be taken into consideration varies from critic to critic. To
a typical formalist Poe’s biography is immaterial to his art as seen in Roland Barthes’s
“Textual Analysis of a Tale by Edgar Poe.” At the other end of the pole, every character
or event in Poe’s works is representative of Poe or his immediate family, mostly his
deceased mother and his foster father, John Allan. Within this category fall the Freudians
who support the idea that everything in the work of art could be traced back to the
personal life of its creator as a symptom rather than a brainchild. One Freudian critic goes
so far as to declare, as Richard Wilbur recalls, “if we find Poe unintelligible we should
congratulate ourselves, since if we could understand him it would be proof of our
abnormality.”17 The observation makes sense, of course, as one would be made by a
physician exclaiming, “If we find cancer unintelligible we should congratulate ourselves,
since if we could understand it, it would be proof of our own infection.”
Critics are also divided on the question of Poe’s genius. In his “Fifty Suggestions,” Poe
differentiates between true and pseudo-genius. By ascribing the following definition of
genius “to the world,” he implies his own unbelief, “What the world calls ‘genius’ is the
state of mental disease arising from the undue predominance of some one of the faculties.
The works of such genius are never sound in themselves and, in especial, always betray
the general mental insanity.” 18 A famous observation is by Henry James who regards Poe
as having “the advantage of being a genius” though he holds himself back by saying, “An
enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection.” 19 David
Sinclair expresses doubts for Poe being a genius but he is certain of one thing, “Poe’s
17
Richard Wilbur, “The House of Poe,” Poe: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Robert Regan
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967) 99.
18
Edgar Allan Poe, The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 14, ed. James A. Harrison (New York:
AMS Press, 1965) 177.
19
Eric W. Carlson, ed., Critical Essays on American Literature (Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1987) 82.
9
ability to chart the disintegration of his soul … is more than enough justification for his
inclusion among the immortals.”20 Henrik M. Ruitenbeek in his introduction to The
Literary Imagination: Psychoanalysis and the Genius of the Writer compares the literary
genius and the neurotic and concludes that both are directed by primary-process-thinking:
the neurotic converting it into suffering; the literary genius possessing the talent which
lets him elaborate those processes and his suffering into works of art. He admits that
psychoanalysis can tell us little, if anything, about the source of the talent. 21 It might be
based on such views that Bonaparte’s confession of Poe’s genius proves to be, as a matter
of fact, no praise since she considers it as a “safety-valve for the repressed instincts,”
keeping him away from “prison or the madhouse.”22 Hoffman, too, expresses a similar
view of Poe’s art as an outlet for repressed demonic energies. 23
Poe’s style of writing, too, has been a matter of dispute. There is little disagreement on
Poe’s use of symbolism but the depth of his symbolism varies from critic to critic. Wilbur
believes understanding Poe is impossible unless we understand his symbolic language 24
and goes that far to call him “the most secretive and difficult of our symbolic writers.” 25
To D. H. Lawrence, however, Poe’s style is very different:
All Poe’s style, moreover, has this mechanical quality, as his poetry has a
mechanical rhythm. He never sees anything in terms of life, almost always in terms
of matter, jewels, marble, etc.,—or in terms of force, scientific. And his cadences
are all managed mechanically. This is what is “called having a style”. 26
20
Sinclair, 1977, 14.
Henrik M. Ruitenbeek, ed., The Literary Imagination: Psychoanalysis and the Genius of the Writer
(Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1965) 20.
22
Bonaparte, 209.
23
Hoffman, 1972, 325.
24
Regan, 1967, 100.
25
Carlson, 1987, 171.
26
D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature (New York: The Viking Press, 1961) 69.
21
10
As at the core of any archetypal criticism lies an analysis of symbols, we will, directly or
indirectly, engage with such symbolic discussions throughout the present work.
II. C. The Un/conscious Writer
Critics in all times have been puzzled by one never-ending question about the degree of
the writer’s consciousness or unconsciousness while writing. Most of them agree that the
writer is rarely in full conscious command of his/her work but the disagreement begins
when asked about the extent of unconsciousness since no one has ever been able to
measure up the unconscious of a person to have a full picture of it in mind. Bonaparte’s
view does not calculate the extent of un/consciousness, “Poe, like all writers, wrote what
his unconscious dictated. But, though much of his work depended on the ‘secondary
elaboration’ of conscious or preconscious mental operations, reason alone could not
provide inspiration when that failed.” 27 John Weightman, nevertheless, dismisses this
view of Bonaparte’s as one which “makes short work of Poe, the conscious artist.” 28
Floyd Stovall is of the same opinion when he remarked, “To affirm that a work of
imagination is only a report of the unconscious is to degrade the creative artist to the level
of an amanuensis. I am convinced that all of Poe’s poems were composed with conscious
art.”29 Hennelly, too, referring to “A Descent into the Maelström,” rejects the idea of
Poe’s unconsciousness, “It is, of course, moot whether Poe consciously intended this
psychic and mythic scenario, whether, as Marie Bonaparte argues…, it unconsciously
27
Bonaparte, 135.
John Weightman, “Poe in France: A Myth Revisited,” Edgar Allan Poe: The Design of Order, ed. Robert
Lee (London and Totowa: Vision and Barnes & Noble, 1987) 218.
29
Floyd Stovall, Edgar Poe the Poet: Essays New and Old on the Man and his Works (Charlottesville: UP
of Virginia, 1969) 183.
28
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evolved from his own tortured past, or whether, as I would think, Poe’s intuitive genius
blended with his haunted genealogy to produce a composition of such rich artistic
density.”30 Yet, the free use of “intuitive genius” puts him in the same line as Bonaparte
since one definition of intuition is “perception by way of the unconscious” 31 Wilbur by
regarding Poe’s works and his prose fiction in particular as “deliberate and often brilliant
allegory”32 takes a firm stance on the question of Poe’s consciousness. Julian Symons,
like many middle-of-the-roaders, concludes, “Poe was half conscious and half unaware of
what he was doing.”33 At times, Poe’s art is taken as a journey from unconsciousness to
consciousness, the reverse of which has so far been heard about him, “Poe’s best art is an
attempt to bring the nightmare out of the sleeper’s mind and extend it into the waking
hours for the conscious and rational mind to experience.”34 In this middle position Wellek
and Warren place Poe beside Milton, James, Eliot, Shakespeare, and Dostoevsky as
writers who were both “maker” and “possessed,” “combining an obsessively held vision
of life with a conscious, precise care for presentation of that vision.” 35
II. D. The Universal Writer
In his “Fifty Suggestions” Poe maintains, “The true genius…is necessarily, if not
universal in its manifestations, at least capable of universality.” 36 The implied reference
30
Mark M. Hennelly Jr., “Oedipus and Orpheus in the Maelstrom: The Traumatic Rebirth of the Artist,”
Poe Studies 9.1 (1976): 6-7.
31
Jung, CW 6, par. 899.
32
Regan, 1967, 99.
33
Julian Symons, The Tell-Tale Heart: The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe (London: Faber & Faber,
1978) 238.
34
David R. Saliba, A Psychology of Fear: The Nightmare Formula of Edgar Allan Poe. (Lanham: The UP
of America, 1980) 52.
35
René Wellek and Austen Warren, Theory of Literature (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976) 85.
36
Poe, 1965, CW 14, 177.
12
of this observation, consciously or unconsciously made, is to Poe himself as a writer.
This suggests another criterion for genius: universality. The general notion of universality
is timelessness and placelessness with “familiarity” as one simple test—staring us in the
face all the time. Hoffman is referring to the idea of universality when he remarks,
“Although the characters in his tales are without exception fantastic personages, they
must touch some deep, responsive nerve hidden in ourselves.”37 Elsewhere he maintains,
“There was often complexity of implication, a plumbing of the abyss of human nature,
and a strange webwork of consistency among the poems and tales.” 38 When the ancients
talked about the concept of macrocosm and microcosm, they were touching the universal
in mankind, believing that in the same way that everything in the cosmos falls within a
closely knitted web, so does human both in his/her relation to the outside world and to
him/herself.
In this study an attempt will be made to establish Poe’s place in the related web of
humanity, not as the “Other,” the apparently sick man—neurotic, homosexual, alcoholic,
necrophilic—but as “one of us,” the apparently healthy. Out of the meagre research
carried out on Poe from a Jungian perspective, a few critics can be mentioned. David
Symons believes that Poe’s life gives corroboration for many of Bonaparte’s ideas but in
relation to his works, he finds them dogmatic. 39 Roger Forclaz, too, in “Psychoanalysis
and Edgar Allan Poe: A Critique of the Bonaparte Thesis” supports the idea of
approaching Poe through Jung rather than Bonaparte who, as he puts it, “created a
mythical image of Poe that does not at all correspond with reality” and whose “use of
37
Hoffman, 1972, xiii.
Hoffman, 1972, xii (emphasis added).
39
Symons, 1978, 229-230.
38
13
‘science’ has not explained Poe’s genius.”40 Similarly, Martin Bickman in The
Unsounded Centre: Jungian Studies in American Romanticism adopts, in opposition to
Bonaparte’s method, a Jungian approach “to lure others further and deeper into
unexplored spaces.”41 David Saliba in A Psychology of Fear: The Nightmare Formula of
Edgar Allan Poe, like Bickman, encourages a Jungian reading of Poe, “[T]he fact that an
application of Jungian psychology and present-day nightmare theory to Poe’s best gothic
works illuminates our understanding of them is evidence of the consistency and
universality of their structure and meaning.” 42
These critics’ insistence on terms such as “clarification,” “illumination,” “unexplored
spaces” gives us an impression of their finding some “candle” and their closeness, not
necessarily to precise unanimity, but to a general “whole” of the creature before them.
The author is never writing in isolation: he is the Universal Man helping us find our way
back to our past and present which make up us all.
III. Jung as a Writer: Poet or Scientist?
Andrew Samuels maintains that Jung “was constantly aware that, in psychological
research, there is more of an overlap between observer and observed than is usually the
case and that personal preferences and constitutional factors play a large part.”43
Similarly, Roger Brooke explains that the etymology of the word ‘poet’—to make—
40
Carlson, 1987, 194.
Martin Bickman, The Unsounded Centre: Jungian Studies in American Romanticism (Chapel Hill: North
Carolina U.P., 1980) 148.
42
Saliba, 1980, 241.
43
Samuels, 1985, 4.
41
14
involves both the subject and object of transformation and concludes that this is an
attribute of poets. He argues,
[T]o say Jung was a poet is not to say that his psychology is merely a product of
empty fantasy. It speaks, rather, to the intrinsic, irreducible, and mutually
transformative relationship between him and his subject matter. If Jung’s personal
vision is present in his work, so too, and no less, is the reality that gave that vision
its place. There is a difference between poetic vision and hallucination. 44
Brooke continues that “the poet’s imagination is an attempt to see accurately what is
there and to find precisely the right words to speak what is seen. Poetic work is both
disciplined and committed to accuracy.” 45 Brooke believes that Jung “was powerfully
aware that the historical significance of the rise of psychology was as a reaction to
rationalism, materialism, and the death of God, and he saw that no-one was truly healed
who had not recovered a ‘religious outlook’ on life.”46
Another reason why Brooke, like Fiedler, considers Jung a poet is his metaphoric
language: “Through metaphor reality becomes intensely alive, yet at the same time
remains strangely elusive. This tension, which is between the revealing and concealing of
that about which the poet speaks, is central to Jung’s understanding of psychology and
the archetypes. It is also central to existential phenomenological ontology and the
hermeneutic method.”47 Thus, “in the post-Enlightenment age of technology”, Brooke
argues, “Jung uses pre-Enlightenment language in an attempt to be at once
phenomenologically accurate and a therapeutic hermeneut who reconnects experience to
its authentic ground.”48 He continues further, “The pre-Enlightenment language of myth,
44
Roger Brooke, Jung and Phenomenology (London & New York: Routledge, 1991) 7.
Brooke, 1991, 8.
46
Brooke, 1991, 8.
47
Brooke, 1991, 8.
48
Brooke, 1991, 49.
45
15
alchemy, folktale, and dream is congruent with the primordial structures of psychological
life; it does not tear experience in two.”49 Brooke concludes that hermeneutics helps
modern humanity recover its soul and is used, broadly speaking, by Jung to recover the
pre-Enlightenment, mythic foundations of psychological life. 50
To speak of Jung as a poet leaves him exposed to charges of being unscientific.
Samuels maintains that the charge is levelled against all depth psychologies:
[They] are held to be unscientific because they deal with unprovable areas. In the
sense that no one can finally prove the existence of, say, the Oedipus complex, this
might be so. But Oedipal theory makes sense of such diverse phenomena as a child
preferring one parent to the other, the question of the origin of sexual identity,
reasons for perversions, hopeless partner choice in marriage, and so on. We may
have to conclude that, in part, psychology is not like other sciences. 51
Samuels quotes Rycroft who “observes that he ‘suffers from the not uncommon
constitutional defect of being incapable of understanding Jung’s writings.’ And Glover
concluded that ‘from the point of view of scientific exposition, Jung is at the best of
times a confused writer’ (1950, p. 69).”52 These charges might be answered by Jung
himself who contends, “Science is the art of creating suitable illusions which the fool
believes or argues against, but the wise man enjoys their beauty and their ingenuity,
without being blind to the fact that they are human veils and curtains concealing the
abysmal darkness of the Unknowable.”53 Elsewhere, possibly playfully as Samuels
thinks, he expresses a preference for dogma over scientific theory:
49
Brooke, 1991, 41.
Brooke, 1991, 39.
51
Samuels, 1985, 5.
52
Samuels, 1985, 5.
53
Jung, C. G., Letters, vol. 2, ed. G. Adler in collaboration with A. Jaffe. Trans. R. Hull (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976) 57.
50
16
[F]or a certain type of intellectual mediocrity characterised by enlightened
rationalism, a scientific theory that simplifies matters is a very good means of
defence because of the tremendous faith modern man has in anything which bears
the label ‘scientific’.… In itself any scientific theory, no matter how subtle, has, I
think, less value from the point of view of psychological truth than religious dogma,
for the simple reason that a theory is necessarily highly abstract and exclusively
rational, whereas dogma expresses an irrational whole by means of imagery. This
guarantees a far better rendering of an irrational fact like the psyche. 54
Samuels argues that the problem with the language of Jung and to an extent postJungians is that they wanted to render the shifting fluid language of the unconscious as
concrete and literal because reification not only tempts one to apply a predetermined
theory but it bypasses the role of the psyche in psychology. 55 Esther Harding, however,
finds scientific language incapable of dealing with issues of life, “The scientific
method…eliminat[es] the subjective and psychological factors as far as possible and then
concern[s] itself with the objective or relatively objective data which remain. Such a
process excludes the human element and results necessarily in a mechanical concept of
life.”56
Poe can be approached by a Jungian reading from the fact that both were busy
translating the workings of the unconscious: one in plain and at time metaphoric
language, the other in an imaginative and more or less symbolic one; both were
descendents of the post-Enlightenment Romantic tradition who had faith in the language
of dreams. To both reason and rational thinking were not the only ways to understanding
but individual imagination and emotions played a part in human experience, within or
without. Susan Rowland finds more links between Jung and Romanticism:
54
Jung, CW 11, 81, quoted in Samuels, 1985, 4.
Samuels, 1985, 6.
56
Esther Harding, Women’s Mysteries: Ancient and Modern (London: Rider, 1982) 7.
55