Psyche & Imagination - Online Abstract
Plenary Presentations

Robert Segal

Jung and Levy-Bruhl

Apart from some brief fieldwork of his own, Jung relied on the work of Lucien Levy-Bruhl, the French philosopher and armchair anthropologist, for his understanding of primitive, or archaic, man. As he did with everything else he studied, so with the work of Levy-Bruhl, Jung psychologized it. The relationship of mystic oneness between primitives and the world became, for Jung, a relationship of oneness between consciousness and the unconsciousness. That oneness was simply projected onto the world. Where Levy-Bruhl attributes primitive thinking to primitive collective representationsa concept taken from Emile DurkheimJung attributes primitive thinking to the state of the primitive unconscious, from which consciousness is not yet differentiated. The experience of identity with the world is the consequence, not the cause, of the experience of identity with oneself.

I raise two questions about Jungs use of Levy-Bruhl. First, does Jung capture the heart of primitive thinking for Levy-Bruhl? For Levy-Bruhl, primitive thinking is distinctive not merely because it makes everything one but, even more, because it simultaneously keeps everything distinct. Primitive thinking is not merely mystic but also pre-logical. Does Jung incorporate this contrary aspect of primitive thinking in his characterization of primitive consciousness? Second, can Jung accommodate the standard criticisms of Levy-Bruhl by other anthropologists? If Jungs depiction of primitive mentality depends on the reliability of Levy-Bruhl, what becomes of that depiction once Levy-Bruhls thesis has been shown to be untenable? Levy-Bruhl himself gradually modified his views during his lifetime, as shown especially in his posthumously published Notebooks. But fellow anthropologists almost unanimously rejected, and have continued to reject, Levy-Bruhls depiction altogether. No anthropologist has encountered a culture, however primitive, that evinces the kind of mentality that Levy-Bruhl postulated. Can Jung retain his own depiction of primitive consciousness in the light of the repudiation of the depiction by Levy-Bruhl?

Robert Segal (details here)