Jung and His Critics

THERE IS STILL A WIDE RANGE OF OPINION ABOUT C. G. JUNG, over six years after his death. In some fields-literary criticism, for example-his name appears with increasing frequency;' in others, such as folklore and anthropology, his name rarely appears at all, or, if it does, it is usually in a disparaging sense. Within his field Jung has his own group of followers, but also a larger group of detractors, most vociferous of whom are the Freudians. They have been consistently hostile to his theories ever since his break with Freud in 19I3 (though they acknowledge that some of his work prior to the break has lasting value).2 It is surprising that, over the years, and especially since Jung's death, the smoke of old disputes has not settled; that his theories have not once and for all been rejected or adopted, or at least clarified; and that he continues to be of interest to scholars in a number of fields, almost as if he were still a living force. In folklore the prevailing opinion of Jung is largely negative. There is occasional talk of archetypes and the unconscious, but mostly Jung's theories are dismissed as sheer mysticism. When Jung's name is mentioned, it is almost as if one were to call up Frazer or Levy-Bruhl in support of an argument-worse, since Jung was neither a folklorist nor an anthropologist. I want to take another look at some of the criticisms of Jung that weighed heavily with folklorists in the past and see if they are still useful guides to his thought today. There are, in fact, relatively few published criticisms of Jung to go on; however, these few damn so strongly any use of his concepts that one almost forgets that they are very brief and touch upon just a small part of his work. Two criticisms, in particular, probably have done more to influence the thinking about Jung in folklore than any of the others, and these will be examined in detail. The first is that of Weston La Barre in his article, Psychology and Folklore, published in the JOURNAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLORE in I948.3 The second is that of Melville J. and Frances S. Herskovits contained in their Dahomean Narrative, published in I958.4 The fact that both of these criticisms are by anthropologists in no way diminishes their force in folklore; on the contrary, it is precisely because of the close relations between anthropology and folklore in areas where Jung's thought might apply that criticism in either field would likely have reciprocal force in the other. Both La Barre and the Herskovitses are critical, in tones of strongest deprecation, of

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