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This week’s blog is the conclusion of Murray Stein’s lecture on Betrayal, given at Jungian Odyssey 2010. In it he looks at the intense friendship and later dramatic breakup of Carl Jung and Father Victor White.
If you watch the performance of The Jung-White Letters (now available on DVD), featuring Paul Brutsche in the role of C.G. Jung and John Hill as Victor White, O.P., you will witness the trajectory of a relationship begun in the summer of 1945 just after the end of WWII with high hopes and enthusiasm for collaboration between the psychologist on the one side and the Roman Catholic theologian on the other. The arc of their collaboration and friendship rises with rapid acceleration to a zenith (around 1948), then begins to flounder when they enter into a more earnest exchange of views on the nature of God and on the Roman Catholic doctrine of evil as privatio boni (1949-1955), and finally lose its basis and falls into severe disarray and finally into a rupture around what Victor White perceived as a betrayal and Jung then responded to as an unwawarrented attack from White on his integrity. The causal agent of White’s sense of betrayal was Jung’s publication of Answer to Job. “I wonder what induced you to publish it; when you gave me the manuscript to read you were so emphatic that you would not!” (Lammers, p. 259), White writes bitterly after the book was published and translated into English. Earlier he had found the work fascinating, but when he had to answer pointed questions about its contents from his priestly colleagues and his Catholic followers and analysands, he became extremely uncomfortable and felt that Jung had cut the ground out from under him with the publication of this heterodox work.
Certainly from a Roman Catholic theological perspective rooted in the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas, which White knew backwards and forewards and had taught to seminarians for many years, Jung’s views were completely indefensible and out of bounds. How could he, a priest, work with Catholic students and analysands, when the founder of the psychology he was using and had been advocating was putting forward a view of God and the Bible and what must be done by modern men and women that so utterly contradicted what the Church would ever condone? White found himself strangely in the position of Job when betrayed by God – the very basis of his livelihood and professional existence was pulled out from under his feet. Unlike Job, however, he vented his rage with the transference object, C.G. Jung, and separated himself from him, going his own way: “It seems that I am destined to be a wanderer & as homeless physically as I am spiritually.” (ibid.) Ironically, Jung repeated almost exactly with his Answer to Job the very thing he had been dealing with so passionately in the book itself – betrayal.
Perhaps it was inadvertant. From White’s side, it must have seemed like the betrayal of a faithful and pious man (i.e., himself) at the hands of a mistakenly idealized transference object (i.e., Jung). Jung retorted to White’s letter of accusation saying that he had never promised such a thing: “Should I set the light of such an insight ‘under a bushel’?” he cries out. (Lammers, p. 261) He was burdened with a message for humanity, which he felt was urgently needed in the time when the world was on the verge of catastrophic splitting and destruction. He was advocating for consciousness, for individual responsibility, for maturity. Only under such advances in humanity would the world survive, he felt. And White was trying to protect an illusion that robbed people of their initiative, diminished their consciousness of individual responsibility, and had been helpless to prevent the European nations from entering into two horrific wars in the 20th Century.
As Jung looked at the world, the Christian religion, as it had been presented and lived to this point in Europe, was not adequate to contain the powerful splitting tendencies at work in history. It simply hid people’s heads in the sand and foolishly let them believe that everything would come out alright in the end since a good God is in control of history. For Jung, the example of Jesus Christ taught the opposite – the image of the wholly good God is shattered by betrayal, on the cross and ends in tragedy. People have to grow up and take responsibility for history and for the planet and not wait passively for a good God to put things right. One must take a less naïve view of God. This is the message of Answer to Job.
I do believe that Victor White achieved wisdom and did not fall into cynicism as a result of his betrayal at the hands of Jung. In the end he was able to see Jung’s person more clearly, for better and for worse, without casting him utterly aside. The transference object was broken and a new consciousness had space to dawn in him. In a final exchange of letters shortly before White’s death from inoperable cancer in 1960, both men showed gratitude for what they had learned from the other. They had separated but not become antagonists or enemies. Splitting was overcome in favor of holding together the opposites and achieving object wholeness. This is the psychological basis of wisdom.
-Lammers, A. (ed.) 2005. The Jung-White Letters. London: Routledge.
Brilliant. I am so with Jung on this one. And fascinating that due to their relationship White was able to work through his own initiatory experience of ‘betrayal’ – live the ‘Christ’ journey and gain his own wisdom from it. Inevitable paradoxes….
Thank you Steve for bringing this idea to the table for discussion. I am reminded of a woman who I was caring for who was dying of cancer. I discuss her on my blog rosesstonesoup.blogspot.com Her view of God and religion were seemingly unchanged from childhood. She was a Catholic. She was in therapy with me for the last two years of her life and her belief system was turned upside down and from her perspective she had to confront a betrayal of that belief system. She felt tested by God as was Job and believed she lived a devout and faithful life. Why would he bring this upon her? This cancer that was now ravaging her bones and causing her pain. Her view of God and good and evil was being transformed from a more a naive state to a more individuated state and as she incorporated more of a belief that the shadow aspects of her life were just as important and just as much a part of her nature as the “good” aspects her views started to change. Her final dream before she died was most telling. She was in a dark wet place underground and someone was instructing her on how to catch rats and place them in a burlap bag. She was horrified recounting this dream and described how she was instructed then to eat the rats. The symbolism of this dream speaks to this incorporation of the more unpleasant aspects of ourselves that lie in shadow. I am reminded of the eating of the apple in the mythology of the garden of Eden represents the same thing, the incorporation of the “evil” aspects of ourselves and movement out of the naive realm into the realm of individuated self.
When I finished reading the Jung-White Letters awhile back, most of my sympathies, much to my surprise, were with White, not Jung. Murray’s articulation of the events surrounding the publication of Answer to Job helps explain my reaction.
Thank you.
Jung did not betray White he stuck to his principles and did not give in to the pressures of someone that allegedly knew the content of the sacred scriptures. Now, I know that Victor White was a theologian but not once in his career did he mention the esoteric science (mathematical and grammatical science use to sturcture the text), which indicates he only had a theological opinion of the surface literal teachings of the scriptures, which pales to insignificants to the esoteric teachings. Now Jung knowledge of the psyche coincides with those esoteric teaching and thus stay true to himself and his God.
In my view the case of Jung and White is one of dueling idealizations and dueling betrayals. White thought he had found someone who could help him break open the encrusted views of the Catholic Church and foster a more psychologically enlightened view of spiritual development. White’s attempt to do this was heroic, carried on in the face of a great deal of mistrust from the church authorities who had his fate in their hands. As one raised on Thomism, I found some of White’s writings to be astounding – “where did he find that (something supporting Jung) in Aquinas?” White was the kind of scholar who saw deeply, way beyond the level of understanding presented in college courses.
Jung’s idealization consisted in thinking that he had finally found a theologian who could understand and accept his psychology. Previously he had found little understanding from theological circles, starting with his father and other relatives who were ministers. Jung broke with Freud over the idea that libido covered a much wider range of instinctual drives than sexuality, up to and including the religious instinct. Analysis of religious myths featured prominently in his psychology. His lifelong feeling of aloneness was reinforced by the fact that no theologian could understand or accept his views. Jung, too, was heroic in carrying on in the face of this aloneness.
Jung and White needed each other, and at first the romance was heady. They really did help each other intellectually and support each other emotionally. But in the end a relationship foundered over the issue of the privatio boni. Each stuck to their guns in defending their own lights. I think that neither, in the end, was totally capable of understanding where the other was coming from. In this sense they necessarily betrayed each other. The idealization of “the one who would understand” was broken.
Both felt a great deal of pain. There was a break. But in the end there was a reconciliation of sorts, especially as White’s death approached. In the letters each expressed respect and concern for the other, in the face of the fact that the opportunity to do so would soon be cut off.
Could Jung and White’s two opposing points of view be treated as opposites that need to be held in tension until a “third” can arise? They were not able to carry this forward in their own lifetimes. I hope the process has not been terminated.
Thanks Michelle, Donato, Ed & both Williams for such great comments! William – you clearly known a lot about the relationship with Victor White. Have you seen the DVD yet? Do try to watch if you haven’t yet; it is very powerful. We too hope the process of holding the tension between these two opposites is not terminated yet. We do plan to keep holding some dialogue on this topic; perhaps another full seminar. Stay tuned!