From the start, Jungian psychology was too strange to be taught in universities. The fault imparts partly to Jung because he surrounded himself with a group of people that were well under his intellectual level. The second cause rely on the three generations of analysts that have not been able to distinghish Analytical psychology from the New Age lore. Finally, the blame also lies on the publishers who profit from that unfortunate state. Analytical psychology is more folklore than science.
In 1997, David Tacey wrote an article in the Journal of Analytical Psychology titled Jung in the academy:devotions and resistances. It was about the academic resistance to insert Jungian psychology in Psychology courses as well as humanitaires and social sciences.
Many Jungian analysts, interpreters and academics have responded to Tacey. Here, I would like to add my two cents to Renos Papadopoulos' paper Is teaching Jung within university possible?
In his response, Papadopoulos rightfully states that
Jungian psychology has remained almost exclusively connected with analytical practice. Indeed many ‘official' Jungians, which currently means trained Jungian analysts who are members of the International Association for Analytical Psychology, have, rather than welcoming the development, long been mistrustful of the inclusion of their subject matter in academic teaching, fearing that it would become abstract and remote from the direct experience of the analytical domain.
Almost 30 years after the publishing of that statement, nothing has really changed in the field of Analytical psychology. Analysts are the main drive in their field. This is, at the same time, Jungian psychology's biggest strength and its most important weakness. The analysts master analytic practices and when they publish about them, the articles and books are generally correct. The weakness is related to their attachement to New Age topics. In Analytical psychology, there is a strange tangent that reviewers and publishers accept as a regular practice: they never refuse an acquaintance with New Age subjects. As such, we regularly see Analytical psychology books and papers about tarot, astrology, visions, numerology, prophecy, etc. Even David Tacey himself has written a book on that subject: Jung and the New Age. When a "scientific" field espouses such proximities with subjects at the fringe of science, it brands itself as unscientific and frivolous, not a highly researched academic label.
Although right about the weakness of analytical practice, it seems to me that Papadopoulos, has not the right angle when he says that the analysts are fearing that their subject would become abstract if it were included in academic teaching. The observation would have been more logical if he had written that it is the academic teaching that is reluctant to the inclusion of a field based on hypotheses that are unfalsifiable. As a matter of fact, archetypes, to name just one, are more dependent on belief rather than science.
When a field is based more on beliefs than proofs, it withdraws itself from the scientific communauty. Jungians generally see themselves as scientists but their scientific pratices are weird. As we have said above, the peer-review system in Analytical psychology encourage a sort of incest with New Age subjects which is detrimental to the field's reputation. The publishers also bear part of the blame. When a journal, like the Jung Journal, publishes at the same time poetry and essays, it takes more the form of a high school newspaper than a science review.
It is also the Jungians' complex of superiority that works against them. Jungians see themselves as the knowers and every point of view that does not meet their world view is regarded as unacceptable. But all Jungians have the same blind spot in their eyes: they don't understand C. G. Jung' most difficult books. Papadopoulos writes
Yet, as we all know, there is another Jung who would indeed claim that he 'knows' and refuses to explain further, implying that certain insights are only available to the initiates. It seems to me that the detrimental aspects and implications of Jung's gnosticism have not yet been sufficiently appreciated; besides an elitist attitude, these include a closed system of circular tautology: people believe something to be true and whatever they see around them they judge according to these beliefs, whilst all the time they also believe that they are open and that their beliefs are based on real evidence. This approach cannot be enriched by new elements and therefore it cannot develop further; the initiates are convinced that their beliefs are absolutely true and correspond with the reality. This closed approach not only is self-fulfilling but it also promotes fanaticism.
Jungians are unable to read Jung properly. They are probably the only group of "scientists" that does not understand the writings of their most important contributor and founder. In Mysterium Conjunctionis, Jung wrote
“For thirty years I have studied these psychic processes under all possible conditions and have assured myself that the alchemists as well as the great philosophies of the East are referring to just such experiences, and that it is chiefly our ignorance of the psyche if these experiences appear ‘mystic.’” (CW 14, ¶ 762)
How is it possible to avoid the conclusion that Jung's main subject of research in the 30 years prior to this book had been mystical experiences? And when he adds:
“Experience shows that the union of antagonistic elements is an irrational occurrence which can fairly be described as ‘mystical,’ provided that one means by this an occurrence that cannot be reduced to anything else or regarded as in some way unauthentic.” (CW 14, ¶ 515)
How could anyone be blind enough to refuse to see that conjunction of opposites are symbols appearing in mystical experiences?
And finally, when he asserts that
“it now appears that the ‘alchemystical’ philosophers made the opposites and their union one of the chief objects of their work. In their writings, certainly, they employed a symbolical terminology that frequently reminds us of the language of dreams, concerned as these often are with the problem of opposites.”
How can an intelligent person be unable to comprehend that alchemy, as well as Gnosticism, was about mystical experiences ? When one understand what is implied in those three quotes, it becomes clear that Jung inserted gnostic and alchemical studies in his books because they were the historical counterpart to his researches on mystical experiences.
Papadopoulos concludes his article as follows:
whether teaching Jung is possible within an academic environment, is directly connected with my last questions. It ultimately depends, I think, on the readiness of Jungians to abandon monolithic positions and to cease to adopt the role of misunderstood victims (or should we say, geniuses or sages?).
Moreover, it depends on whether we are ready to reframe the whole problem: no longer, focusing exclusively on strategies to get Jung accepted by the academy (as a one-way process) but instead looking forward to the possibility of mutual revitalization through a genuine involvement with the present reality of the academy.
Jungian psychology will access the state of science when its proponents will start to act as real scientists instead of New Age promoters.
For more , see
Carl Jung's Gnosis Mystical Experiences as Signposts of the Individuation Process