I originally intended to review Jung and Feminism as part of an article on psychology and its reactionary uses and uselessness to the proletariat. Unfortunately, there is so much to say about the book that it requires its own review.

I. Where Jung and Wehr fit in

Wehr proudly labels herself a feminist and hints that the book, a distilled Ph.D. dissertation, is a much toned-down criticism of C. G. Jung's work, which is a substantial branch of psychology descended from Freud. The Freudian school of psychology was once dominant, but has since surrendered first place to the cognitive school of psychology. Another major school of psychology with less popularity is behaviorism, one with some affinities to Marxism, that I will not cover here.

Cognitive psychology has its attraction for students, especially socially constructed women because it concerns the development of mental processes. This is of obvious concern to mothers and teachers. The notion that there should be a science to improve human learning capacities is a very attractive ideological draw for psychology. In society today where women are taught that their respected role is to raise children well, psychology appears to give women the best of both worlds--a chance to fit into traditional roles and be scientific about it while getting a college degree.

Freud, on the other hand, focussed on sexual motivations and sex-derived behaviors. While cognitive psychology is attractive to women, Freudian psychology's very subject matter is of direct concern to feminists.

Jung and Feminism contains no empirical material, no experiments or studies of histories of people. It is mostly a theoretical work, with lots of generalizations and stories relevant to women, all of which fall within the Freudian tradition.

II. Idealism

Wehr addresses the reasons Jung is popular among women:

"The primary appeal of Jung's psychology to women, it seems to me--based partly on my own experience--is that it is a 'meaning-making' psychology. I Analytical psychology offers a balance to an overly rational, materialistic world and can shed light on the darkness of a soul lacking meaning. It can be the path to a person's spiritual awakening."(1)

The translation for the above should be "Jungian psychology takes women away from the issues of political, economic and military power in society and channels them into areas where they will have no power, but where they will feel unchallenged by men, or anyone else for that matter." The attraction of Jungian psychology is part of the socialization of women in this society.

As if to underscore the point, Wehr writes, "the religiousness of Jung's psychology is an important part of its appeal and strength."(2) Furthermore, according to Wehr, "Jung's view of the contemporary world situation offers the most complete psychological/spiritual explanation of it I know."(3) Throughout the book, Wehr demonstrates hints of awareness that Jung's psychology is an exercise in what Marx criticized as idealism. But idealism is what Wehr is proud of in following Jung.

MIM critics will often say that going back to a 19th century thinker like Marx is not progressive. Yet, in 1987 people still publish books as if it were 1787. In fact, Wehr is kind enough to point out that Jung's philosophical roots are in Kant, an 18th century philosopher, and Plato, an ancient Greek philosopher.(4)

Until everyone recognizes that ideas stem from material conditions, it will be necessary to refer to the 19th century to refute the thinkers of centuries prior to the 19th century. Jung in particular is a particularly clear-cut idealist, in the Marxist sense of the word.

When Wehr speaks of "archetypes of liberation," she is referring to ideas that can be discovered in collective psychic life. This kind of approach comes from Kant: "James Heisig notes that 'Kant had already demonstrated, at least to Jung's satisfaction, that "there can be no empirical knowledge that is not already caught and limited by the a priori structure of cognition.'" Kant's demonstration seemed to Jung to pave the way for his own concept of an inherited, collective, psychic structure that "conditions all experience, conscious and unconscious."(5)

Ultimately, the ideas or archetypes to be found through psychological investigation come from God and are called God-images. For this reason, some Jungists, including Wehr, have simplified Jung to say that the collective unconscious is God and that Jungism is another religion.(6)

Psychology is left to discover those ideas or images left by God in the collective unconscious. That is to say those ideas are already there, just as God-given rights are granted to every individual, according to the founding fathers of the United States.

This kind of philosophy is very compatible with psychology's search for fixed traits in individuals as an explanation for the existence of the status quo. These fixed traits, or "images" in the individual are so permanent that "reason and will are nothing against it."(7) One of the results is that "Internalized oppression in women has the power of this kind of image. It is far deeper than rationality and thought can reach, and therefore, rational thought, or even mere insight, is not powerful enough to silence it. In women, by the time oppression has been internalized, it has the character of fervent conviction."(8) Such is also an explanation for why women cannot simply adopt a rationalist method for liberating themselves, as Marxist feminists would. In Wehr's thinking, women must essentially come to grips with God before they can liberate themselves. Such a plunge into mysticism is a diversion from the rational processes women need to achieve equality, and a further reinforcement of women's powerlessness in the real world.

Long ago Marx criticized the Jung of economics who applied Kant's philosophy: "He does not regard economic categories as the theoretical expression of historical relations of production, corresponding to a particular stage of development in material production, but arbitrarily transforms them into pre-existing eternal ideas, and that in this roundabout way he arrives once more at the standpoint of bourgeois economy."(9)

Wehr asks some damaging questions about the idealist approach in examples concerning women without following through: "If a prostitute were to come to a Jungian analyst's office, the analyst's goal would be to free her from an identification with the unadapted aspect of the hetaira archetypal image [the "characteristic" of someone who forsakes emotional commitment while carrying on brief sexual relations]. The question I raise is, why archetypalize the experience of such a person in the first place? Doing so always gives a cosmic dimension to social arrangements."(10) Here, at least in this case, Wehr recognizes that searching for individual character traits in a prostitute would not have a liberating effect. What she suggests instead is in fact not an endeavor in psychology, but something more akin to the study of social institutions. So the real question Wehr should ask is, "Why do psychology in the first place?"

III. Therapy

From Wehr's point of view the liberation of women is a matter of conducting the proper struggle in psychiatry, which is the practice of psychology. She hammers home the following statement twice in the book:

"Sexism and its psychological companion in women, internalized oppression, are still so widespread in our society that any psychological theory and practice which does not take those facts into account and oppose them unrelentingly is not a freeing therapy for women."(11)

Here Wehr starts with the assumption that it is possible to solve the oppression of women through individual treatment. In reality, there is no evidence that psychiatry has any effectiveness in treating individuals for their many diagnosed problems, unless it is medical treatment for which no psychological theory or psychiatry qua psychiatry is necessary.

IV. Women's self-hatred

Referring to inner voices in women which tell them they have no worth and that their lives have no meaning in the world, Wehr starts to reveal the reactionary agenda in so-called feminist psychology. According to Wehr these voices in women, brought about by society, are part of the internalized oppression of women.(12)

"Therefore, it is on the inner level that this voice wreaks the most havoc, since it paralyzes women from within, causing them to collude in their own destruction, or at a lesser degree of intensity, to accept their own lack of development."(13) In this statement Wehr holds some implicit assumptions common in psychology. One is that a sense of self or self-esteem is a good thing for the individual. Two is that to obtain that self-esteem critical voices must be squelched or balanced out with positive ones. That is to say what is necessary is an adjustment to existing forces that cause degrading images in women's minds.

From a Marxist point of view, this is simply individualist ideology masquerading as the theory behind "therapy." In contrast, Marxists believe the individual is the product of ever-changing material circumstances and institutions--class position, educational institutions, the family, etc. The concept of the "self" is a hangover from religious thinking where God-given integrity and conscience are placed in every individual. There is no scientific evidence that such a thing as the "self" exists.

Wehr can help an individual to adjust to and enjoy existing society and its institutions, but she has nothing to say about the kind of self-criticism that puts an individual within a current seeking to transform society. On the contrary, Wehr's approach precludes the ideological radicalization of women and hence does women profound damage.

Again on the subject of women's negative self-images, at the end of the book Wehr shows how not to criticize Jung while trying to adopt a fence-sitting position:

"By advocating awareness of the social oppression of women, I am not suggesting that women need not be self-critical, that they are innocent and guilt-free, or incapable of doing wrong or wielding power over others in harmful ways. People with poor self-esteem can inflict great harm on others, and indeed often do. But I am pointing to the wounding effects of a misogynist society on women's self-esteem and the corresponding effect of Jung's psychology when he echoes patriarchy's attitudes."(14) Wehr nowhere explains how self-criticism is positive in her scheme of things despite this fence-sitting disclaimer at the end of her book.

What is more, Wehr does not distinguish between revolutionary criticism and self-criticism and reactionary criticism. Of course women are going to face lots of nonsense criticism from the patriarchy. Such criticisms must be invalidated, but this is not possible in a thoroughgoing way without simultaneously undergoing revolutionary criticism and self-criticism. Accepting reactionary criticism is bad, but so is simply avoiding it without a real rebuttal. Conservative women will buy into reactionary criticisms of women. Feminist reformist women will simply avoid the criticisms or "balance" them by building "self-esteem." However, the only way to thoroughly destroy reactionary criticism is to defeat it with the revolutionary criticism of arms, as Marx would say. That way women will no longer have to balance their lives between reactionary criticism and idealist escape.

V. Individual

Women who adopt the individualist approach of psychology also damage themselves by coming to believe that they have stable personality characteristics. Rather than mastering their environment and circumstances, women simply adjust to fit into their environment given certain assumptions about their supposedly permanent personality traits. Those assumptions generally cannot help but be determined by the patriarchy at this time.

The concept of the individual is also reactionary in its own right, not simply for its consequences. While it is indeed reactionary for women to tie their lives to romance with men, it is also reactionary to promote individualism as the solution. The individualist answer precludes collective and cooperative arrangements in life.

The reader can see the anxiety dispersed in Wehr when she explains that it is unnecessary to imitate Jung as if he were Jesus Christ, because Jung himself did not want it that way. "To imitate Jung, then, would be to fall into the same folly. Theoretically, as the self manifests itself increasingly in a human life, the individual becomes uniquely herself or himself--not an imitation of any other."(15) Phhewwww. God worked it out so each of us would be different, implies the idealist Wehr.

What the book ends up recommending should be relabelled selfish narcissism for women. Men are supposed to become a little less selfish and women are supposed to be more selfish. That would be the perfect balance in Wehr's view. Even men would benefit from this adjustment, according to Wehr.(16)

VI. Adjustment

"Individuation [the process of becoming an independent person] is the core process in analytical psychology. It is the goal of life and the way one becomes truly oneself--the person one was always intended to be. Individuation is both process and goal."(17)

The above quote is quintessential individualist, idealist adjustment ideology. It's individualist because it says the goal of life is to become an individual. It's idealist because it speaks of becoming "the person one was always intended to be." Wehr should have added "intended to be by God." Finally, the statement is adjustment-oriented in its totality because its goal is to fit into what God had in mind, which is obviously the status quo.

Another sign of Wehr's inclination to have patients adjust to systematic oppression, instead of overthrowing it, is her stance on sex between the psychiatric analyst and the client. Criticizing Jung, she says he "omits consideration of the power differential between analyst and analysand. If a male analyst has intercourse, or even engages in flirtation, with a female patient, he will be playing into her social conditioning to find her worth in her attractiveness to a man. This confirmation of her sexual attractiveness will not help her emerge to full personhood, since any therapy that does not challenge internalized oppression in a woman is not a freeing therapy for her."(18) Jung had had a long-term romantic relationship with at least one client.

In the above quote, Wehr unintentionally gives the system of oppression credit. Wehr writes as if analysts were the only men with more power than women. She then proposes a solution that implies the solution is changing of individual practices concerning sex. Yet the very practice she proposes reinforces the problem she is speaking of. Having sex with the analyst does not help the woman, says Wehr, but not having sex does, again confirming that the woman's self-worth has to do with her individual sexual behavior. Wehr leaves out the reality that the whole problem of the woman's oppression is located somewhere outside the question of having sex with an analyst. The adjustment that Wehr suggests for clients is that they sometimes build a self-image apart from sexual attractiveness, a self-image hinging on withholding sex.

Adjustment number two that Wehr proposes is that somehow the power differential between men and women can be modified so that powerful men do not have sex with powerless women. If society prevents analysts from having sex with analysands, that's one step forward, says Wehr. Other inept feminists have applied the same logic in targeting professor-student relations or boss-employee relations for prohibition. Feminists in each area have their favorite power differential for prohibition. None of these feminists propose communism with its equality of classes and genders, the only real solution to the problem.

Feminists supporting adjustment number two never stop to think through the implications of what they are saying. In society there is a group of heterosexual men and there is a group of heterosexual women. (By the way, the argument is unchanged for lesbian and gay relations stratified by class.) The two groups are unequal in power regardless of sexual policies concerning analysts, professors or even employers. Prohibiting sex between any individual woman and any individual man or any subgroup of women and subgroup of men does nothing to solve the power differential. Any individual heterosexual woman who manages to have a more "equal" romantic relationship can only do so at the expense of other women who must then choose from men even more powerful, or not have sex. In the United States today, the vast majority of women do not choose asexuality, and end up with men much better-off economically and an average of five years older. Equality is not a matter of individual choice, so it is not the fault of any individual. The contradiction of the power differential and "self-esteem" in sex cannot be solved on an individual basis or a policy basis. The only solution is equalization of the genders overall.

Another example of Wehr's adjustment ideology, which is common in psychology as a whole, comes in her discussion of neurosis. We have seen that Wehr sees thoroughgoing criticism and self-criticism as unnatural. She never really considers that maybe women should be angry with themselves and with society and not simply adjust to it by balancing whatever pair of opposites comes along even if both are oppressive--having and not having sex to build self-hood for example.

Neurosis, according to Jung, is a conflict between the individual's conscious being and the unconscious being. Neurosis is something people need psychiatrists for, according to psychiatrists. "People experience neurosis under many guises in their lives, perhaps as a relationship conflict, or as depression, or as inability to do work."(19) It is typically assumed in psychology that one should not have relationship conflicts, get depressed about the oppressive system we live in or find work unappealing. When these things happen, the psychiatrists say the individual has a neurosis, instead of saying imperialism should be overthrown. The thinking of psychiatrists on this point is both self-interested and protective of the status quo. They make money trying to help people who are square pegs fit in round holes.

Notes:
1. Demaris S. Wehr, Jung and Feminism: Liberating Archtypes, Boston: Beacon Press, 1987, p. 6.
2. Ibid., p. 7
3. Ibid., p. 8
4. Ibid., p. 28
5. Ibid., p. 78
6. Ibid., pp. 77-97
7. Ibid., p. 94
8. Ibid., p. 22
9. Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1978, p. 217. Italics removed.
10. Wehr, p. 116
11. Ibid., p. 11
12. Ibid., pp. 18-21
13. Ibid., p. 20
14. Ibid., p. 121
15. Ibid., p. 96
16. Ibid., p. 114
17. Ibid., p. 49
18. Ibid., p. 72
19. Ibid., p. 58

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