Carl Jung in Time, February 1955

TIME Monday, Feb. 14, 1955 

What drives the psychic machine? Libido, says Jung, but he uses the word differently from Freud: Jung's libido includes all psychic energy. It can flow, says Jung, in either of two directions, in either of two dimensions. When it is flowing forward, from the unconscious to the conscious, a man feels that life is running smoothly as he goes about his business. Psychic energy must also flow in reverse, from the conscious to the unconscious, as when a man relaxes from an active to a pensive or dreamy state. But if this backward flow lasts too long, the libido is being attracted to something in the unconscious that is stirring toward consciousness. If this is not made conscious, it will attract around it similar material which then forms a knot or complex. 



In a religious age, according to Jung, man would not need to get consciously acquainted with his archetypes, because religion provides its own symbols. But Christianity has become so weakened in this respect — largely through the Protestant Reformation, says Protestant Jung —that to millions its symbols now mean nothing. For this reason, says Jung, Roman Catholicism is generally more effective today than other churches, and he rarely finds Catholics in need of individuation. . Says Jung: "[Catholicism] is a full-fledged religion. Protestantism is not. Religions consist of a doctrine and a rite. The ritual does not exist in Protestantism : it has only one leg to stand on — justification through faith alone. The Catholic Church has the rite too, with all its magic effects." Jung himself has not been to church for years, but when asked if he believes in God, he says: "I could not say I believe. I know! I have had the experience of being gripped by something that is stronger than myself, something that people call God." 

Fathers and Sons. One of modern man's troubles, according to Jung, is that he has lost touch with his roots. Americans, for instance, he thinks are not yet at home in their unconscious on a continent wrested so recently from nature; this produces tension and helps account for America's go-getting energy. 



The majority of Jung's patients have been women, and he has had some down-to-earth things to say about the status of woman in the modern world. She has, he thinks, lost the old ideal of marriage ("He shall be thy master"). The tradition that it is the man who generally breaks up a marriage is no longer true: "Today life makes such demands on man that the noble hidalgo Don Juan is to be seen nowhere save in the theatre. More than ever, man loves his comfort . . . There is no longer a surplus of energy for window-climbing and duellos." Woman, meanwhile, will go to greater lengths than ever to find a husband, "by that quiet and obstinate wish that works . . . magically, like the fixed eye of the snake." As men and women adopt more of the roles and interests traditionally attributed to the other sex, Jung thinks a new relationship between them is developing, based on equal partnership.