Nice-flowing conversation with quite a bit of "trenches-earned wisdom" from the guest & some well-aimed probing from the host (which the guest deftly blocked, however; to be continued in the men's group?).
In case you suspect this couldn't be the real JH commenting, one thing that was def. dubious - I would say risible - is the idea the Carl Jung wasn't/isn't popular. Compared to who?! (His reputation is way better than Freud's in 2025, & his influence in the second half of the 20th century competes with just about any comparable cultural icon.)
On this topic, I'd be interested in both your impressions of my current exchange with @neofeudalism & on his essay that parked it, being an endorsement & devleopment of Jung's Neo-Gnosticism: https://substack.com/@neofeudalism/note/c-190104488?
here i respond to my risible observation on the 'popularity' of jung. my use of 'popular' was a bit off target, being that he is popular amongst the off-from-mainstream people. at least that has been my experience. since my 'serious' dive into jung beginning in the early 80s, i found myself encountering with regularity students in university psychology programmes. and i would ask about their study of jung and without exception he was dismissed as a non-experimentalist in a survey course on the roots of modern psychological exploration. when pressed some remembered the idea of the collective unconscious. many had a vague recollection of the name without it being linked to anything actually remembered.
freud on the other hand, was not so casually dismissed and was considered by these university students as being more important and significant. and it is these people who enter into the psychiatric, therapy, counselling and human resource department worlds.
so 'popular' was indeed a mischaracterisation of what i had meant to say: jung is popular with those who manage to avoid mainstream practices while being dismissed from official, ie 'mainstream', psychological discourse.
another impulse for me to use the word 'popular' was because freud successfully extended and perhaps even deepened the idea of the person in life as a victim of their experiences. victim-psychosis as 'popular' isn't risible. it is the core structure we are living in at this time: feminism, woke, zionism, etc. so, while many 'study' jung, few are called to leave their being hell-bent to be the best victim. jung isn't 'popular' in this sense because he argued that the individual is responsible for the hierosgamos, the uniting of the opposites, the integration of the shadow, and the withdrawal of projection. freud successfully promoted we are without personal responsibility, we are victims of complexes and bad parenting, and the demand for the expert.
i see a clear connection between those who have inculcated themselves with jung and those who dive into yoga — for the vast majority, the effort is superficial. hence the success of the plandemic. deference to an external authority. that would not have happened, imo, if those doing 'real' yoga and 'real' jungian shadow-projection-hierosgamos work would have been resistant to authoritarian pressure.
slightly off topic:
in a quick read up on abraxas and the privatio boni in order to better read the essay you link, i came across this. something i had seen many years ago and it was nice to see it again
"...
the unconscious complex can disturb and counteract the conscious will, sometimes to good and sometimes to bad effect. Disturbance can unbalance personality, as in vonFranzís example. Both evil and good can grow in the unconscious in the form of a complex. A collective complex, shared by many, has a cumulative effect. This is due to the pronounced mimetic nature of human beings. People prefer to be like everybody else, and they refrain from contradicting the majority view.
We see this phenomenon today, in the almost religious adoration of the liberal welfare state. VonFranz argues that the welfare state is a mother archetype that induces ìa secret unobtrusive return to matriarchy and materialismî (cf. vonFranz, 1980, pp. 212-15). The Swedish nation feels not only responsible for the welfare of its own citizens, but for all the poor people in the whole world, who can come here and have everything for free. It could be named matriarchal megalomania , a term that ought to be included in the diagnostic manual. But not every citizen is this crazy. It results from the cumulative effect of a collective complex." — from Carl Jung, privatio boni, and the return of Manichaeism By Mats Winther.
I hope you don't mind if I add a comment here. First of all thank you for your early publications on liminality which I discovered first when researching the subject as there was not that much available online about it at the time.
I have also engaged with Neofeudalism on the subject of Gnosticism, on more than one occasion. My sense was that for him it is a dogma and ideological construct in the sense that it provides for him the framework for his pessimism and nihilism which he seems to be comfortable with and I don't think he really wants to budge from his position. However, it did make me wonder why Gnosticism serves that function for some.
Since I am what you might call a "cycle scientist" my view is that one has to consider the era within which Gnosticism developed.
In the Vedic Yuga cycle this happened in the center of Kali Yuga (in the 26,000 precessional cycle version of it). Spiritual systems lean either towards entropy (Gnosticism & Buddism being examples - inferred by Jung) or towards anti-entropy (New Testament Christianity being an example). Old testament Christianity leaned towards entropy. New Testament Christianity towards anti-entropy.
The dividing line between entropy and anti-entropy happened (cyclically) at the bottom of the Yuga cycle in 500 AD. The intertestamental era (between Old and New Testaments) happened during the transition from Old Testament consciousness to New Testament consciousness (not too long before that). Gnosticism is Old Testament consciousness.
Of course entropy and anti-entropy exist in all ages due to duality, so people who are drawn more to entropy (energetically) would be more comfortable with such frameworks, while people drawn more to anti-entropy (energetically and mentally) would be drawn more to Christianity as a model, for example.
hola, leafbox.
i had fun talking with you. thank you for taking time to ask me questions and listen so respectfully to my answers.
Nice-flowing conversation with quite a bit of "trenches-earned wisdom" from the guest & some well-aimed probing from the host (which the guest deftly blocked, however; to be continued in the men's group?).
In case you suspect this couldn't be the real JH commenting, one thing that was def. dubious - I would say risible - is the idea the Carl Jung wasn't/isn't popular. Compared to who?! (His reputation is way better than Freud's in 2025, & his influence in the second half of the 20th century competes with just about any comparable cultural icon.)
On this topic, I'd be interested in both your impressions of my current exchange with @neofeudalism & on his essay that parked it, being an endorsement & devleopment of Jung's Neo-Gnosticism: https://substack.com/@neofeudalism/note/c-190104488?
hola, jh.
here i respond to my risible observation on the 'popularity' of jung. my use of 'popular' was a bit off target, being that he is popular amongst the off-from-mainstream people. at least that has been my experience. since my 'serious' dive into jung beginning in the early 80s, i found myself encountering with regularity students in university psychology programmes. and i would ask about their study of jung and without exception he was dismissed as a non-experimentalist in a survey course on the roots of modern psychological exploration. when pressed some remembered the idea of the collective unconscious. many had a vague recollection of the name without it being linked to anything actually remembered.
freud on the other hand, was not so casually dismissed and was considered by these university students as being more important and significant. and it is these people who enter into the psychiatric, therapy, counselling and human resource department worlds.
so 'popular' was indeed a mischaracterisation of what i had meant to say: jung is popular with those who manage to avoid mainstream practices while being dismissed from official, ie 'mainstream', psychological discourse.
another impulse for me to use the word 'popular' was because freud successfully extended and perhaps even deepened the idea of the person in life as a victim of their experiences. victim-psychosis as 'popular' isn't risible. it is the core structure we are living in at this time: feminism, woke, zionism, etc. so, while many 'study' jung, few are called to leave their being hell-bent to be the best victim. jung isn't 'popular' in this sense because he argued that the individual is responsible for the hierosgamos, the uniting of the opposites, the integration of the shadow, and the withdrawal of projection. freud successfully promoted we are without personal responsibility, we are victims of complexes and bad parenting, and the demand for the expert.
i see a clear connection between those who have inculcated themselves with jung and those who dive into yoga — for the vast majority, the effort is superficial. hence the success of the plandemic. deference to an external authority. that would not have happened, imo, if those doing 'real' yoga and 'real' jungian shadow-projection-hierosgamos work would have been resistant to authoritarian pressure.
slightly off topic:
in a quick read up on abraxas and the privatio boni in order to better read the essay you link, i came across this. something i had seen many years ago and it was nice to see it again
"...
the unconscious complex can disturb and counteract the conscious will, sometimes to good and sometimes to bad effect. Disturbance can unbalance personality, as in vonFranzís example. Both evil and good can grow in the unconscious in the form of a complex. A collective complex, shared by many, has a cumulative effect. This is due to the pronounced mimetic nature of human beings. People prefer to be like everybody else, and they refrain from contradicting the majority view.
We see this phenomenon today, in the almost religious adoration of the liberal welfare state. VonFranz argues that the welfare state is a mother archetype that induces ìa secret unobtrusive return to matriarchy and materialismî (cf. vonFranz, 1980, pp. 212-15). The Swedish nation feels not only responsible for the welfare of its own citizens, but for all the poor people in the whole world, who can come here and have everything for free. It could be named matriarchal megalomania , a term that ought to be included in the diagnostic manual. But not every citizen is this crazy. It results from the cumulative effect of a collective complex." — from Carl Jung, privatio boni, and the return of Manichaeism By Mats Winther.
https://www.academia.edu/42136617/Carl_Jung_privatio_boni_and_the_return_of_Manichaeism
i'll go now to look neo-gnosticism.
Hello Jasun,
I hope you don't mind if I add a comment here. First of all thank you for your early publications on liminality which I discovered first when researching the subject as there was not that much available online about it at the time.
I have also engaged with Neofeudalism on the subject of Gnosticism, on more than one occasion. My sense was that for him it is a dogma and ideological construct in the sense that it provides for him the framework for his pessimism and nihilism which he seems to be comfortable with and I don't think he really wants to budge from his position. However, it did make me wonder why Gnosticism serves that function for some.
I can recommend an article on Substack by The New Platonic Academy which gave me some clarity on this and also confirmed what I had intuited: https://thenewplatonicacademy.substack.com/p/the-heroic-ascent
Since I am what you might call a "cycle scientist" my view is that one has to consider the era within which Gnosticism developed.
In the Vedic Yuga cycle this happened in the center of Kali Yuga (in the 26,000 precessional cycle version of it). Spiritual systems lean either towards entropy (Gnosticism & Buddism being examples - inferred by Jung) or towards anti-entropy (New Testament Christianity being an example). Old testament Christianity leaned towards entropy. New Testament Christianity towards anti-entropy.
The dividing line between entropy and anti-entropy happened (cyclically) at the bottom of the Yuga cycle in 500 AD. The intertestamental era (between Old and New Testaments) happened during the transition from Old Testament consciousness to New Testament consciousness (not too long before that). Gnosticism is Old Testament consciousness.
Of course entropy and anti-entropy exist in all ages due to duality, so people who are drawn more to entropy (energetically) would be more comfortable with such frameworks, while people drawn more to anti-entropy (energetically and mentally) would be drawn more to Christianity as a model, for example.
Yuga Cycle for Reference:
https://static.wixstatic.com/media/551d89_b8d9214da25a4a389d94fdb7ed0807e8~mv2_d_1600_1594_s_2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000%2Ch_1000%2Cal_c%2Cq_80/file.jpg
Good discourse and several themes resonated - thank you.