The Volk and its unconscious: Jung, Hauer and the 'German revolution'

This article examines the relationship between the Swiss psychiatrist and p sychotherapist C.G. Jung and the German Indologist and volkisch scholar J.W . Hauer, with whom Jung collaborated in the early 1930s. In the latter part of the decade, Jung became increasingly wary of the political implications of volkisch doctrines and Hauer's volkisch ambitions, which reached their apotheosis in the founding of the German Faith Movement. There are two main reasons for Jung's increasing reluctance to co-operate with Hauer. First, as his public image was that of a neutral Swiss, Jung did not want to assoc iate too closely with an openly National-Socialist scholar, whose racial id eas he no longer shared and whose influence in Germany was negligible anywa y. Second, Jung had become more widely known in the Anglo-American world du ring the 1930s, and he did not want to risk his growing reputation there by adhering too closely to openly volkisch doctrines. Yet, although the more explicit elements of volkisch ideology disappeared from his writings, in hi s infatuation with mythical archetypes, he retained some of the more invisi ble volkisch elements in his psychology.