This interview was published in the Swiss newspaper Die Weltwoche four days after the surrender of the German army in Reims. Its title is “Will souls find peace?” – is still relevant.
Die Weltwoche: Don’t you think that the end of the war will bring about a tremendous change in the soul of the Europeans, especially the Germans, who now seem to be awakening from a long and terrible sleep?
Carl Gustav Jung: Oh sure. As far as the Germans are concerned, we are faced with a mental problem, the importance of which is still difficult to imagine, but its outlines can be discerned in the example of the patients I treat.
One thing is clear to the psychologist, namely that he must not follow the widespread sentimental division between Nazis and anti-regimes. I have two patients who are obviously anti-Nazis, and yet their dreams show that behind all their decency, a pronounced Nazi psychology with all its violence and cruelty is still alive.
When a Swiss journalist asked Field Marshal von Küchler (Georg von Küchler (1881-1967) led the invasion of Western Poland in September 1939. He was convicted and sentenced to prison as a war criminal by the Nuremberg Tribunal) about German atrocities in Poland, he exclaimed indignantly: “Sorry, this is not the Wehrmacht, this is a party!” – a perfect example of how the division into decent and dishonorable Germans is extremely naive. All of them, consciously or unconsciously, actively or passively, share in the horrors.
They did not know anything about what was happening, and at the same time they knew.
The issue of collective guilt, which is and will continue to be a problem for politicians, is for the psychologist a fact beyond doubt, and one of the most important tasks of treatment is to get the Germans to admit their guilt. Already now, many of them are turning to me with a request to be treated by me.
If the requests come from those “decent Germans” who are not averse to putting the blame on a couple of people from the Gestapo, I consider the case hopeless. I have no choice but to offer them questionnaires with unambiguous questions like: “What do you think of Buchenwald?” Only when the patient understands and admits his guilt, individual treatment can be applied.
But how was it possible for the Germans, the whole people, to fall into this hopeless mental situation? Could this happen to any other nation?
Let me digress here a bit and outline my theory about the general psychological past that preceded the National Socialist War. Let’s take a small example from my practice as a starting point.
Once a woman came to me and burst into violent accusations against her husband: he is a real devil, he tortures and persecutes her, and so on and so forth. In fact, this man turned out to be a completely respectable citizen, innocent of any demonic intentions.
Where did this woman get her crazy idea from? Yes, it’s just that the devil lives in her own soul, which she projects outward, transferring her own desires and rages to her husband. I explained all this to her, and she agreed, like a repentant lamb. Everything seemed to be in order. However, this is precisely what troubled me, because I do not know where the devil, previously associated with the image of the husband, has gone.
Demons break into baroque art: spines bend, satyr hooves are revealed
Exactly the same thing, but on a large scale, happened in the history of Europe. For primitive man, the world is full of demons and mysterious forces that he fears. For him, all nature is animated by these forces, which are in fact nothing but his own internal forces projected into the external world.
Christianity and modern science have de-demonized nature, which means that the Europeans consistently absorb demonic forces from the world into themselves, constantly loading their unconscious with them. In man himself, these demonic forces rise up against the seeming spiritual unfreedom of Christianity.
Demons break through into baroque art: spines bend, satyr hooves are revealed. A person gradually turns into an ouroboros, destroying himself, into an image that since ancient times symbolizes a man possessed by a demon. The first complete example of this type is Napoleon.
The Germans show a special weakness in the face of these demons due to their incredible suggestibility. This is revealed in their love of submission, in their weak-willed obedience to orders, which are only another form of suggestion.
This corresponds to the general mental inferiority of the Germans, as a consequence of their indefinite position between East and West. They are the only ones in the West who, in the general exodus from the eastern womb of nations, remained the longest with their mother. They eventually withdrew, but arrived too late.
All accusations of heartlessness and bestiality with which German propaganda attacked Russians refer to the Germans themselves.
Therefore, the Germans are deeply tormented by an inferiority complex, which they try to compensate with megalomania: “Am deutschen Wesen soll die Welt genesen” (Rough translation: “The German spirit will save the world.” This is a Nazi slogan, borrowed from the poem by Emmanuel Geibel (1815-1884) “Recognition Germany.” The lines from Geibel have been known since they were quoted by Wilhelm II in his Münster speech in 1907) – though they don’t feel too comfortable in their own skin!
This is a typical youthful psychology, which manifests itself not only in the extreme prevalence of homosexuality, but also in the absence of the anima in German literature (Goethe is a great exception). This is also found in German sentimentality, which in reality is nothing but hard-heartedness, insensitivity and soullessness.
All accusations of heartlessness and bestiality with which German propaganda attacked the Russians refer to the Germans themselves. Goebbels’ speeches are nothing but German psychology projected onto the enemy. The immaturity of the personality was terrifyingly manifested in the spinelessness of the German General Staff, soft-bodied like a mollusk in a shell.
In sincere repentance one finds divine mercy. This is not only a religious but also a psychological truth.
Germany has always been a country of mental catastrophes: the Reformation, peasant and religious wars. Under National Socialism, the pressure of demons increased so much that human beings, falling under their power, turned into somnambulistic superhumans, the first of which was Hitler, who infected everyone else with this.
All Nazi leaders are possessed in the literal sense of the word, and it is no doubt no coincidence that their minister of propaganda was marked with the mark of a demonized man – a limp. Ten percent of the German population today are hopeless psychopaths.
You talk about the mental inferiority and demonic suggestibility of the Germans, but do you think this also applies to us, Swiss, Germans by origin?
We are protected from this suggestibility by our small numbers. If the population of Switzerland were eighty million, then the same thing could happen to us, since demons are attracted mainly by the masses. In a collective, a person loses his roots, and then the demons can take possession of him.
Therefore, in practice, the Nazis were engaged only in the formation of huge masses and never in the formation of personality. And this is also why the faces of demonized people today are lifeless, frozen, empty. We Swiss are protected from these dangers by our federalism and our individualism. With us such mass accumulation as in Germany is impossible, and perhaps in such isolation lies the way of treatment, thanks to which it would be possible to curb the demons.
But what can the treatment turn into if it is carried out with bombs and machine guns? Shouldn’t the military subjugation of a demonized nation only increase the feeling of inferiority and aggravate the disease?
Today the Germans are like a drunken man who wakes up in the morning with a hangover. They don’t know what they did and don’t want to know. There is only one feeling of boundless unhappiness. They will make frantic efforts to justify themselves in the face of the accusations and hatred of the world around them, but this will not be the right way. Redemption, as I have already pointed out, lies only in the full confession of one’s guilt. “Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!” (My fault, my great fault (lat.).)
Every man who loses his Shadow, every nation who believes in his infallibility, will become a prey
In sincere repentance one finds divine mercy. This is not only a religious but also a psychological truth. The American course of treatment, which consists in taking the civilian population through the concentration camps to show all the horrors committed there, is exactly the right way.
However, it is impossible to achieve the goal only by moral teaching, repentance must be born within the Germans themselves. It is possible that the catastrophe will reveal the positive forces, that out of this self-absorption the prophets will be reborn, as characteristic of these strange people as the demons. Who has fallen so low has depth.
The Catholic Church is likely to reap a rich haul of souls as the Protestant Church is split today. There is news that the general misfortune has awakened religious life in Germany: entire communities kneel in the evenings, begging the Lord to save them from the Antichrist.
Then can we hope that the demons will be driven out and a new, better world will rise from the ruins?
No, you can’t get rid of the demons yet. This is a difficult task, the solution of which is in the distant future. Now that the angel of history has left the Germans, the demons will be looking for a new victim. And it won’t be difficult. Every person who loses his Shadow, every nation that believes in its infallibility, will become a prey.
We love the criminal and show a burning interest in him, because the devil makes us forget about the beam in his own eye when we notice the speck in the brother’s eye, and this is a way to trick us. The Germans will find themselves when they accept and admit their guilt, but others will become a victim of obsession if, in their disgust for German guilt, they forget their own imperfections.
Salvation lies only in the peaceful work of educating the individual. It’s not as hopeless as it might seem
We must not forget that the fatal tendency of the Germans to collectivity is no less inherent in other victorious nations, so that they can also unexpectedly fall prey to demonic forces.
“General suggestibility” plays a huge role in today’s America, and how much Russians are already fascinated by the demon of power, it is easy to see from recent events that should moderate our peaceful exultation somewhat.
The British are the most reasonable in this respect: individualism frees them from the attraction to slogans, and the Swiss share their amazement at the collective madness.
Then we should anxiously wait to see how the demons will manifest themselves in the future?
I have already said that salvation lies only in the peaceful work of educating the individual. It’s not as hopeless as it might seem. The power of demons is enormous, and the most modern means of mass suggestion – the press, radio, cinema – are at their service.
Nevertheless, Christianity was able to defend its position in the face of an insurmountable adversary, and not by propaganda and mass conversion – this happened later and turned out to be not so significant – but through persuasion from person to person. And this is the path we must also take if we want to harness the demons.
It is hard to envy your task to write about these creatures. I hope that you will be able to state my views in such a way that people do not find them too strange. Unfortunately, it is my fate that people, especially those who are possessed, think I am crazy because I believe in demons. But it is their business to think so.
I know that demons exist. They will not diminish, this is as true as the fact that Buchenwald exists.
Translation of Carl Gustav Jung’s interview “Werden die Seelen Frieden finden?”