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Swiss psychologist and thinker Carl Jung has been an influential figure in many
forms of cultural expression.
Influences on culture
Jung
had a 16-year long friendship with author Laurens van der
Post from which a number of books and a film were created about
Jung's life.
The Aura-Soma color divination system relates many of
its bottles to Jungian archetypal constructs.
Literature
Herman Hesse,
author of works such as Siddhartha and Steppenwolf, was treated by a student of
Jung, Dr. Joseph Lang. This began for Hesse a long preoccupation
with psychoanalysis, through which he came to know
Carl Jung personally, and was challenged to new creative heights:
During a three-week period during September and October 1917, Hesse
penned his novel Demian.
James Joyce in his Finnegans Wake,
asks "Is the Co-education of Animus and Anima Wholly Desirable?"
his answer perhaps being contained in his line "anama anamaba
anamabapa." The book also ridicules Carl Jung's analytical
psychology and Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis, by referring
to "psoakoonaloose." Jung had been unable to help Joyce's daughter
Lucia, who Joyce
claimed was a girl "yung and easily freudened." Lucia was diagnosed
as schizophrenic and was eventually permanently
institutionalized.<ref>Bair, Deirdre, Jung A
Biography, Back Bay Books, 2003</ref>
In
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid
Test, Tom
Wolfe describes the classic experiment in which Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters,
under the influence of LSD, explore manifestations of synchronicity
by listening to a recording of a drug-induced monologue while
watching the Ed Sullivan Show. Also, the central goal of
the psychedelic movement, opening the doors
of perception, is repeatedly associated with Jungian concepts
throughout the book.
Jung's differentiation between sensing,
intuition, thinking, and feeling inspired the categorization of two
of the four delineating factors in their personality test. These
are the "I" vs. "S" and "T" vs. "F" groupings.
Jung's influence
on noted Canadian novelist Robertson Davies is apparent in many of
Davies's fictional works. In particular, The Cornish
Trilogy and his novel The Manticore base their designs on
Jungian concepts.
Jung is one of the main characters
in Timothy
Findley's novel, Pilgrim.
Jungian ideas make up a
large part of the intellectual foundations of the Earthsea stories, the classic
fantasy series written by Ursula K.Le Guin.
The concept of the
collective unconscious is one of the main topics in the
Dune
novel series.
Jung appears as a major character as a ghost in
the novel Between the Bridge and the River by Scottish
TV personality Craig Ferguson. He
appears as an hallucination to one of the main characters in
various parts of the novel.
Jung's theories about the collective
unconscious are a tool used by the character Peter Wilmot to get to
know <!--the character?--> Misty in the Chuck Palahniuk novel
Diary.
Jung appears as a character in the novel "Possessing the Secret of
Joy" by Alice
Walker. He appears as the therapist of Tashi, the novel's
protagonist. He is usually called "Mzee," but is identified by
Alice Walker in the afterword.
Jung appears as a major character
in the 2006 novel "The Interpretation of Murder" by Jed
Rubenfeld.
Television and film
George Lucas relied a good
deal on the Jung-inspired writings of Joseph Campbell when
crafting the original Star Wars Trilogy. Most of the major
characters in the film can be seen as Jungian Archetypes.
Jung's
writing was introduced to Italian film maker Federico Fellini in
the 1950s and had an effect on the way Fellini incorporated dreams
into films after La dolce vita.
Stanley Kubrick's
1987 film Full Metal Jacket features an
underlying theme about the duality of man throughout the action and
dialogue of the film. One scene plays out this way: A Colonel asks
a soldier, "You write 'Born to Kill' on your helmet and you wear a
peace button. What's that supposed to be, some kind of sick joke?"
To which the soldier replies, "I think I was trying to suggest
something about the duality of man, sir... The Jungian thing,
sir."
The plot of James Kerwin's scifinoir film Yesterday Was a Lie is said to
contain multiple Jungian references, and press interviews with the
cast and crew confirm that Jung's work in alchemy and dream
analysis played a pivotal role in the development of the
screenplay.
In the Emmy award-television show Northern
Exposure the radio D.J. Chris Stevens made continual
references to Jung's ideas. The show often let the audience into
the characters' unconscious by weaving their dreams into the plot.
In one episode, Jung appears in a dream and says "while I know
about the collective unconscious, I do not know how to drive a
truck." He sits in the drivers seat of a semi-tractor.
Dr.
Niles Crane on
the popular television sitcom Frasier is a devoted Jungian psychiatrist,
while his brother Dr. Frasier Crane is a Freudian psychiatrist.
This is mentioned a number of times in the series, and from time to
time forms a point of argument between the two brothers. One
memorable scene had Niles filling in for Frasier on Frasier's
call-in radio program, in which Niles introduces himself as the
temporary substitute saying, "...and while my brother is a
Freudian, I am a Jungian, so there'll be no blaming Mother
today."
Episode "Urgo", of Season 3 of sci-fi TV series
Stargate
SG-1 explores the Jungian theory of the duality and the
shadow.
In the movie Batman Begins, the
character of Jonathan Crane, aka "The Scarecrow", is a Jungian
psychiatrist and at the same time personifies one of man's primal
archetypes (the Scarecrow).
Independent film director Tom
Laughlin not only makes frequent references to Jung's concepts in
his Billy Jack
film series, but has also written several books about the man's
theories of psychoanalysis.
Francis Ford Coppola's film
Apocalypse
Now references Jungian philosophy. In a scene where the
widow of a fallen French Soldier comforts Martin Sheen's character,
she says "there are two of you, one that loves, and one that
kills."
On a lighter note, in Love at First Bite
(1979), the psychiatrist hesitates as he moves to set ablaze the
coffin of Dracula in a N. Y. City luxury hotel: "Wait! Would a
Jungian do this? No! But I'm not a Jungian --- I am a Freudian!"
On the new NBC show Raines, Jeff Goldblum's character,
Raines discovers his therapist, Dr. Samantha Kohl played by Amanda
Stowe, is a Jungian psychiatrist.
An episode during Season 8 of
the TV series Charmed is
based on Jung's ideas. The episode is named, The
Jung and the Restless. During the episode, witches Piper,
Phoebe and Paige are magical knocked unconscious by a potion. While
unconscious, neophyte witch, Billie, explores their dreams to find
out what are the sisters' true hopes and desires through the
symbolism and signs in their dreams.
Videogames
Many
parallels are drawn and personified from Jung's theories in the
Sega Saturn NiGHTS into Dreams. Each level takes
place within parts of the collective unconscious and each boss
represents a phycological problem that dwells within each aspect of
the mind.
Jung's theory of the shadow is of central importance
in the modern horror roleplaying game Kult, in which reality as humanity knows it is
merely an illusion, built to deprive us of our natural divinity.
The act of merging with one's shadow is the ultimate step on the
path to transcending this spiritual prison.
The various Jungian
ideals and archetypes heavily influenced the modern philosophical,
surreal roleplaying game Persona and are one of the reasons
cited for its strong, intriguing plot.
The video games
Xenogears
and Xenosaga
utilize many of the ideas proposed by Carl Jung as major storyline
components of the game, and even create physical manifestations of
his notions within actual characters, Albedo, Nigredo, Rubedo, etc.
In the video
game Eternal Darkness Jung is mentioned by
Edward Roivas, one of the playable characters in the game. Edward
tries to compare Jung's collective unconscious to the machinations
of Ulyaoth (one of the three ancients).
In the video game
Psychonauts the various levels of the game
are inside the minds of certain characters of the game, and, once
visited for the first time, can be accessed from a hub known as
"The Collective
Unconscious".
Music
Peter Gabriel's song "Rhythm Of The Heat"
(Security , 1982), deals about psychologist Carl Jung's
visit to Africa where he had joined a group of tribal drummers and
dancers and became overwhelmed with the fear of losing control of
himself. At the time Jung was exploring the concept of what he
defines as the Collective Unconscious, and was
afraid he would come under control of the music, as the drummers
and dancers let the music control themselves in fulfillment of
their ritual objectives. Gabriel learned about it from Jung's essay
Symbols And The Interpretation Of Dreams (ISBN
0-691-09968-5). Gabriel tries to capture this powerful feeling in
his song with intense use of tribal drumbeats. The original song
title was Jung in Africa.<ref> </ref>
Another Peter Gabriel song, "Blood of Eden" (1992), contains
references to darkness, reflection and other Jungian concepts. The
animus/anima are referenced in the main chorus as follows, "In the
blood of Eden lie the woman and the man With the man in the woman
and the woman in the man."
Jung appears in the last row of the
Beatles'
Sgt.Pepper's Lonely Hearts
Club Band cover, on Edgar Allan Poe's right. Portrayed in this
modern pantheon of the collective unconscious, Jung's presence is a
tribute to his thought about mass-communication and mass-desire.
The
progressive rock band, Tool, have incorporated ideas
from Jung's work into their albums, especially Ænima. Songs such as "Forty Six
& 2" and "Ænema" (the title of this song and the title of the
album both being derived from Jung's anima) are particularly
fraught with references.
Blue Man Group's "Rock Concert Movement #237"
is "Taking the audience on a Jungian journey into the collective
unconscious by using the shadow as a metaphor for the primal self
that gets repressed by the modern persona and also by using an
underground setting and labyrinth office design to represent both the
depths of the psyche and the dungeon-like isolation of our increasingly
mechanistic society which prevents people from finding satisfying
work or meaningful connections with others."
In The Irony Of It All by
The Streets, the
character Terry states that he likes to "get deep" and think about
Carl Jung.
Hey Rosetta's "Becky, I Keep Singing This Song" says
"Becky, I keep having this dream in the night where is seems I can
fly. But only when no one's around, when the people appear I came
tumbling down. Jung,
Carl tell me what can that mean? I swear I'm not scared I'm
just happy to be here. How can you tell me these beautiful things
are holding me back before I even begin... Pull me out of my body
and into the black."
Name appears in lyrics of the song "I love
you" by Saigon Kick.
Jungian concepts are employed throughout the
philosophy and lyrics of Jim Morrison, in particular with reference
to the collective unconscious ('Universal Mind'), transcendence
("Break on through"), Apollonian-Dionysiann duality ("Day destroys
the night, night divides the day..."), alchemy and individuation
(The End), and the shamanistic experience of suffering, death and
spiritual rebirth as a way to connect with and draw out the
repressed unconscious of the audience, as a 'mediator' to guide
them through the transcendence process. The Jungian references to
the unconscious individuation & transcendence process in the 11
miniute 'The End' spiel are numerous, and the symbolic Oedipous
complex of killing the father/re-entering the mother that Morrison
so controversially inserted into the song ('Father-yes son- I want
to kill you. Mother, I want to ...')references Jung's take on the
Oedipus Complex - symbolic for inner freedom, spiritual rebirth and
transcendent self-liberation.
Bob Dylan has employed a lot of
Jungian concepts such as individuaton and alchemy in his
lyrics.
The rather famous song used in the "Synchronicity"
Volkwagen commercial is titled "Jung at
Heart."
WebComics
The WebcomicDresden Codak features Tiny Carl Jung as a
recurring character. The tiny Jung offers sage advice and
psychological council, while also contributing to surreal humor of
the strip.
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