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The Aryan Christ

The Secret Life of Carl Jung

by Richard Noll

Summary

In his second published work on Carl Jung, clinical psychologist Richard Noll attempts what he has described as "a spiritual biography." Jung, whom Freud had chosen as his successor, parted ways with his mentor over methodological differences in their approaches to psychotherapy. Meticulously researched, "The Aryan Christ" incorporates previously unpublished material to create a portrait of the psychotherapist's private and public lives that is certain to be controversial.

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Media Reviews

"A fascinating, carefully researched study of the origins of Carl Jung's highly original, influential version of human psychology, and a work likely to generate intense debate. Noll's goal here seems to be to deepen and expand arguments...that Jung didn't so much intend to develop a new form of psychoanalysis as to create a new pagan religion, one that was a unique (and alarming) blend of ``German mysticism, Hellenistic paganism, and Gnosticism,'' colored by Jung's growing anti-Semitism. Noll focuses primarily on the first two decades of the century, the period that saw Jung aggressively shape his revolutionary theories and break with Freud (he had been Freud's chosen successor). He traces in great detail Jung's fascination with the many arcane schools of mysticism current in northern Europe at that time, uncovering groups, books, and some bizarre would-be prophets, and he demonstrates the ways in which Jung incorporated their teachings into his theories. He also stresses the importance of a little-known incident in 1913 during which Jung, after repeatedly inducing a trancelike state, imagined that ``his head changed into a lion and he became a god.'' This occurrence, Noll argues, is a central event in Jung's life, validating for the Swiss thinker the idea that he was a pagan savior, sent to summon Aryan culture back from the failed religion of Christianity (``a Jewish religion,'' Noll describes Jung's view, ``that was cruelly imposed on the pagan peoples of Europe''). All of this is bound to be intensely controversial, and Noll doesn't help his case by a sometimes scattershot approach. Still, there is much here that's hard to refute, and the image of Jung that emerges from this thoughtful study is deeply disturbing. Surely not the final word, but nonetheless an important, angry work of historical revisionism."

   -- Kirkus

"[Noll] places Jung dreams and theories in the context...of contemporary mythological studies, showing how virtually all his supposed revelations can be found in books by once-popular authorities like Friedrich Creuzer and Franz Cumont."    -- Walter Kendrick

   -- New York Times Book Review

""[Noll]...has unearthed some interesting new material. Trouble is, the truths he reveals are mixed up inextricably with half-truths and untruths."    -- Lawrence W. Jaffe

   -- San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

Bibliographic Details

Publisher: Random House Inc
Published date: 1997
Size: 6.5 x 10 inches
Weight: 1.45 pounds
Pages: 334

Publisher's Notes

Carl Gustav Jung, along with Sigmund Freud, stands as one of the two most famous and influential figures of the modern age. His ideas have shaped our perception of the world; his theories of myths and archetypes and his notion of the collective unconscious have become part of popular culture. Now, in this controversial and impeccably researched biography, Richard Noll reveals Jung as the all-too-human man he really was, a genius who, believing he was a spiritual prophet, founded a neopagan religious movement that offered mysteries for a new age.The Aryan Christ is the previously untold story of the first sixty years of Jungs life--a story that follows him from his 1875 birth into a family troubled with madness and religious obsessions, through his career as a world-famous psychiatrist and his relationship and break with his mentor Freud, and on to his years as an early supporter of the Third Reich in the 1930s. It contains never-before-published revelations about his life and the lives of his most intimate followers--details that either were deliberately suppressed by Jungs family and disciples or have been newly excavated from archives in Europe and America. Richard Noll traces the influence on Jungs ideas of the occultism, mysticism, and racism of nineteenth-century German culture, demonstrating how Jungs idealization of "primitive man has at its roots the Volkish movement of his own day, which championed a vision of an idyllic pre-Christian, Aryan past. Noll marshals a wealth of evidence to create the first full account of Jungs private and public lives: his advocacy of polygamy as a spiritual path and his affairs with female disciples; his neopaganism and polytheism; his anti-Semitism; and his use of self-induced trance states and the pivotal visionary experience in which he saw himself reborn as a lion-headed god from an ancient cult. The Aryan Christ perfectly captures the charged atmosphere of Jung's era and presents a cast of characters no novelist could dream up, among them Edith Rockefeller McCormick--whose story is fully told here for the first time--the lonely, agoraphobic daughter of John D. Rockefeller, who moved to Zurich to be near Jung and spent millions of dollars to help him launch his religious movement. As Richard Noll writes, "Jung is more interesting . . . because of his humanity, not his semidivinity." In giving a complete portrait of this twentieth-century icon, The Aryan Christ is a book with implications for all of our lives.

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