

The Holy Grail of the Unconscious - cesare
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/magazine/20jung-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine

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gruseom
It's hard to think of many things less resonant with the HN crowd than Jung.
But this is a good article about a pivotal event for anyone who is interested
in him.

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herrherr
Can you explain that further? Btw, an interesting read.

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gruseom
Jung was a mystic whose work is largely an articulation of traditional
religious and symbolic thought in modern terms. Although he always called
himself a scientist, most people nowadays would consider that a silly claim.
(He did some experimental work in his early years, but nothing related to Jung
qua Jung.) Rather, he was as close as you'd get to a shaman in a respectable
early 20th century Swiss doctor. If you like the idea of a magical dream-world
with completely different laws than those of the physical universe, Jung's
your man.

Accordingly, Jung is incongruous with the technical/scientific bias of the HN
crowd. I'm sure there are a few people who are or would be interested in him,
but if posts about the likes of C.G. Jung ever became prominent here (which
they won't), they'd get ripped to shreds. If you doubt that, go read his
foreword to the I Ching.

Personally, I think Jung is fascinating and his ideas in some ways are
attractive, though I could never figure out how to actually make use of his
writings.

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aamar
Jung's writings do often give the impression of importing mysticism into
science or of mysticism for its own sake, an impression sustained by some of
his critics, supporters, and this (fairly good) article.

However, after reading most of his collected works, the overall thrust of his
work seems the opposite -- to grapple deeply with the mystical and have it
yield to the conscious, probing tools of analysis (if not quite science).

In the Jungian view, myth, folklore, archetypes, scripture, and dreams are
common artifacts along the path towards understanding unknown, threatening
things. Rigorous analysis (the article overstates this when comparing this to
solving quadratic equations) can yield insights into what unknowns an
individual, culture, or organization is grappling with and the progress that
has been made.

Unfortunately, Jung did not lay out this kind of explanation in an accessible
or concise manner. Some followers have improved on the situation:
[http://www.amazon.com/Maps-Meaning-Architecture-Jordan-
Peter...](http://www.amazon.com/Maps-Meaning-Architecture-Jordan-
Peterson/dp/0415922224)

Hacking and startups repeatedly put people on the edge of what is known; a
hacker's daily trade is in conjecture and hypothesis. When things work well,
conjectures can be tested definitively, safely, and in small pieces; therefore
the unknown can be conquered routinely. When that is not possible, hypotheses
solidify into myth and legend, and progress can still be made. But a startup
has to be able to break down and understand those myths over the long run,
salvage what is useful, and discard what is not.

~~~
gruseom
That's a valiant attempt to connect the dots from Jung to startups, but if
you're willing to be that arbitrary you can connect anything to anything.

 _the conscious, probing tools of analysis (if not quite science)_

There's no "quite" about it. There is an enormous intrinsic gap between
analysis as practiced by Jung and science in the modern Western sense. That's
not a criticism; I am no idolator of Western science (and have been a fan of
Jung for years, though not of Jungians). But let's not pretend that Jung's
writings would find any place in a peer-reviewed experimental journal.

