504 BOOK REVIEWS [Sept.

PSYCHOLOGY AND Rr.ucIoN. By Carl Gustav Jung, M. D. (New Haven,Conn. : Yale University Press, 1938.)

This book contains the Terry lectures as delivered by Dr. Jung at YaleUniversity in October, 1937. ( See announcement in this JOURNAL, Nov.,937, p. 722.)

In the three chapters of the little book Jung gives ( i ) a sort of intro-duction to the problem of practical psychology and religion, discusses (2)facts which bear out the existence of an authentic religious function in theunconscious mind, deals (3) with religious symbolism by unconsciousprocesses.

Jung emphasizes that he approaches psychological matters from a scientificand not from a philosophical standpoint. He wants to deal with religiononly in its psychological, phenomenological aspect. The psychological phe-nomena of religion, as any other psychological phenomena, are facts, aretrue, as an elephant is true because it exists. For Jung religion is apeculiar attitude of the human mind . . . . , a careful consideration andobservation of certain dynamic factors, understood to be powers, spirits,demons, gods, laws, ideas, ideals, or whatever name man has given to suchfactors as he has found in his world powerful, dangerous, or helpful enoughto be taken into careful consideration as grand, beautiful, and meaningfulenough to be devoutly adored and loved Religion is to be dis-tinguished from creeds which are codified and dogmatized forms of originalreligious experience.

Religious experience is of eminent importance in not a few neurotic persons.In their dreams, as well as in dreams of normal people, a great wealth ofobviously unconscious material is dug up. Such material is not produced byany individual, but rather created in the collective unconscious of the race.The fact is that certain ideas exist almost everywhere, and at all times, andthey can even spontaneously create themselves quite apart from migrationand tradition.

The scientific attitude cannot overlook that the dogma represents thesoul more completely than a scientific theory, for the latter expresses andformulates the conscious mind alone. Dogmas are encountered in all kindsof religion. Such ideas were never invented. They came into existencewhen mankind had not yet learned to use the mind as a purposeful activity.

Jung warns lest anybody should understand my observations to be akind of proof of the existence of God. They prove only the existence of anarchetypal image of the Deity which, to my mind, is the most we can assertpsychologically about God.

To give some other quotations: We carry our past with us, to wit, theprimitive and inferior man with his desires and emotions, and it is onlyby a considerable effort that we can detach ourselves from this burden. Ifit comes to a neurosis, we have invariably to deal with a considerably inten-sified shadow. And if such a case wants to be cured it is necessary to finda way in which mans conscious personality and his shadow can live together.

Man can live amazing things if they make sense to him.

1938} BOOK REVIEWS 505

A dream or a vision is just what it ought to be. It is not a disguisefor something else. It is a natural product, which is precisely a thing withoutulterior motive.

Religion is a relationship to the highest or strongest value, be it positiveor negative. The relationship is voluntary as well as involuntary, that is, youcan accept, consciously, the value by which you are possessed unconsciously.That psychological fact which is the greatest power in your system is the god,since it is always the overwhelming psychic factor which is called god. Assoon as a god ceases to be an overwhelming factor, he becomes a mere name.His essence is dead and his power is gone.

The gods first lived in superhuman power and beauty on the top of snow-clad mountains or in the darkness of caves, woods and seas. Later on theydrew together into one god, and then that god became man. But the godsin our time assemble in the lap of the ordinary individual and are as powerfuland as awe-inspiring as ever, in spite of their new disguise-the so-calledphysical function. Man thinks of himself as holding the psyche in the hollowof his hand. He dreams even of making a science of her. But in reality sheis his mother and the maker, the psychical subject and even the possibilityof consciousness itself.

The well-meaning rationalist will point out that I am driving out thedevil by Baalzebub and that I replace an honest neurosis by the cheat of areligious belief. Concerning the former I have nothing to reply, being nometaphysical expert, but concerning the latter, I must point out that thereis no question of belief, but of experience. Religious experience is absolute.It is indisputable.

The thing that cures a neurosis must be as convincing as the neurosis;and since the latter is only too real, the helpful experience must be of equalreality.

Only these copious quotations give, in my opinion, some impression ofwhat Jung purports; but they do it, of course, insufficiently. It would nowbe easy enough to enter in some arguments with the author. For instance,how can ideas spontaneously create themselves? Or how could theexistence of an archetypal image of the Deity be proved unless one is apriori willing to accept it? Or in which sense is a dream or a vision anatural product? Or why should only those experiences be absolute whichJung understands to be religious ones? Jung explains that there are thingswe do not grasp with our so-called intelligence, and he discusses such thingspartly in his own terminology. He does this with profound respect formatters religious which is his, as everybody elses, privilege. I do not careif Jung wants to call his method scientific. I wonder, however, why he insistsso energetically on being scientific. After all here are things which justcannot be grasped by the so-called scientific methodologies.

Although Jung declines to be a philosopher or a metaphysician, he doesexpound a rather clearcut Weltanschauung. I feel that whatever will lateron happen to this Weltanschauung, it is Jungs most important contributionto present-day psychology. It is the Weltanschauung of a man who can

5o6 BOOK REVIEWS [Sept.

emphatically say I am convinced of what I know (the italics are Jungs),and who is able to continue wondering with naive enthusiasm. It is a Welt-ansehawung of a man of unusual erudition and wisdom.

EUGEN KAHN, M.D.,Yale University.

SOCIALIZED MEDICINE IN THE SOVIET UNION. By Henry E. Sigerist, M. D.

(New York : W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1937.)Before one has proceeded far in the introduction of this book one is

aware of a growing impression that he is reading propaganda ; as he ap-proaches the body of the work he is sure of it. There results an uncomfortablestate of mind ill suited to a sympathetic perusal of a work dealing with ascientific subject. Propaganda is a proper object of scientific study-butthat is an entirely different matter.

To orient ourselves we may perhaps begin with a quotation or two fromthe introduction. In the Soviet Union there has arisen a new type of societyin which for the first time in history man is not exploited by his fellow-man.May we be pardoned for annexing to that statement a recent remark byComrade Hitler : I trust no mother will ever have cause to weep becauseof any action of mine.

Dr. Sigerist is the William H. Welch Professor of the History of Medi-cine in the Johns Hopkins University, his historical and biographical studiesare well known and one might have looked to him for a more calmly ju-dicial presentation of medical developments in Russia, which would have hadmuch greater value as a work of reference than can be assigned to thepresent work. It is exceedingly difficult, the author concedes, to studythe Soviet Union in a detached way. This is perhaps a consequence of thefact that he had been familiar with the socialist literature since my earlystudent days. It is hardly reassuring to find through the text constant ref-erences to daily newspapers as sources of information. One is unaccustomedto expect such references in support of observations or opinions in reputablescientific publications. This practice Dr. Sigerist justifies as follows: Ina country that develops so rapidly books often have no time to be written,one has to obtain information from newspapers. In our countries this wouldbe a very doubtful source. It is different in the Soviet Union where Pravdarepresents the voice of the party, Lrvestia the voice of the government. Justso! And one recalls the fate of Radek in one of the early purges in Moscowlast year, despite his long associations with one of the newspapers referred to.

Following the introductory chapter, which may be summed up as acompound of eulogy of the Soviet Union and criticism of capitalist countries,the author discusses The Background of Soviet Medicine, wherein he setsforth at some length the Marxian philosophy, presents a picture of TsaristRussia including an outline of Russian medicine before the war, with thegreat Pavlov as the connecting link between the medical science of oldRussia and that of the new r#{233}gime,and finally describes the new social orderfollowing the Revolution of 1917.