Does nothing to diminish Jung's work or his contributions as a major 20th century intellectual. Most of what Noll decries about Jung, such as his focus on myth and spirituality, is pretty obvious to anyone who reads Jung or knows about Jungian analysis, and is hardly 'the secret life' of Jung.
Yes, Jung found science and medicine to be only part of the picture (like most literary and philosophical thinkers and mystics of all ages), and thought there was more at work which was inexplicable. Yes, he dabbled in the occult and spirituality and religion and astrology. He wrote openly about these things in his own works. So using a focus on myth or spiritualism or pseudo-science in an attempt to tarnish Jung simply backfires. And the fact that Jung's estate kept unsavory things about his affairs out of published works does not indicate Jung was a sinister monster--this is pretty standard practice and is true of most literary estates.
Noll attempts to paint Jung's obsession and interest in hauntings and spirits as evidence he was founding a new religion and not a method of analysis. But Jung was open his entire career about his interest in hauntings and spirits, and the much-publicized break with Freud was partly a result of this. This is not "the secret life" of Jung at all. And sure, maybe there is a New Age-y air to Jungian analysis and to the Joe Campbell school of Lit Crit which sprung from Jung's influence on academe. But does any of that diminish Jung's work? Throughout this book Noll routinely praises Jung's accomplishments in the field and mentions how they are still in use or relevant to the field of psychology. I recently read a dialogue about the release of Jung's Red Book which focused anew on this debate in the light of Jung's illuminated manuscript and what it portends for the future of analytical psychology as a science.
Maybe the point, Mr. Noll, is that anyone who regards psychology as a science is wrong. Perhaps that's what bugs you? Psychology is like economics--it gives you some outlines and some ability to explain, but it's mostly a system of belief. So what?
There is a lot of "ooh, here's a sentence in a letter about Jung with the word cult in it. See Jung WAS the leader of a cult!" But the worst most egregious thing about this book is the final chapter which attempts to paint Jung as a Nazi sympathizer and anti-Semite. Throughout the entire book is a continual building of this case, that Jung's ideas about polygamy and German myth and sun-worship and paganism were the same soil out of which Nazism sprung, so therefore Jung is a Nazi and a terrible human as well. The entire last chapter can be summed up in these short passage:
Gene Nameche, to his credit, specifically asked almost all of his interviewees who knew Jung in the 1930s and 1940s about his attitude toward Jews and National Socialism and his possible involvement with the Nazis. The vast majority of [Jung's] disciples absolve him of this. Others equivocate. The truth is no doubt somewhere in between.
Notice the 'logic' of this sequence. Almost everyone said Jung was not Anti-Semitic or Nazi, some don't come out and say it...so the truth is between. What nonsense! The next paragraph goes on to talk about Jung's interest in solar worship and myths associated with the sun, and the swastika was a solar symbol so JUNG MUST BE A NAZI.
Followed by this: "there is no evidence that he was ever a Nazi. This is not to say he opposed the Nazis, either."
Much of the book is sloppy and flip-floppy guilt by association of this nature. BUT--I enjoyed the portraits of some of Jung's 'disciples' and the critique of his cynical use of a niece as a spiritual medium was interesting. Particularly interesting and sensitive are the portraits of Fanny Katz, Edith Rockefeller McCormick, and Constance Long. Noll intends the stories of these women to damn Jung and his 'cult,' but on the contrary they show that Jung was a major part of the intellectual scene at the time, and some drifted in and out of his circle much as is the case with any artist or intellectual of note in a vibrant culture of ideas.
I think this book is worth a read. As an admirer of Jung as a scientist turned mystic and what he attempted I have my biases. The book was insufficiently well-argued to overcome them and I am not convinced by Noll's arguments or evidence. I imagine for someone with anti-Jung biases that the opposite might be the case.
