Verdict or Inquiry? The Problem with Putting Jung on Trial

Before I can evaluate Jung's ethics between 1933 and 1940 from the material, I must insist on two prior questions: what precisely do we mean by anti-Semitism, and which historical events within this timeline are we using to make this inquiry of Jung? Without both, we are not doing psychology. We are doing a guilty, not guilty prosecution conducted, conveniently, from the safety and privilege of hindsight.

I think before any fair analysis can be conducted, we must firmly establish the context. Hitler did not rise to power by announcing genocide. Persecution of the Jews began in 1933, around a war with Poland -- real, brutal, and escalating. Common knowledge accepts wartime travesty as part of war's sad nature. However, common acceptance of the harsh realities of war should not be conflated with accepting genocide or silly remarks as condoning racism. Jung resigned in 1940. Systematic mass killing did not begin until 1941. Industrialized extermination did not become explicit Nazi state policy until 1942.

The full architecture of the Holocaust was not visible to most people inside Germany during the years under scrutiny. Superimposing what we know retrospectively onto what was knowable at the time may not be moral clarity, but anachronism. Within that time, yes, Jung made those remarks about Jewish psychology that were published. Rowland rightly notes that institutional proximity carries moral weight regardless of intent. Bair documents real accommodation and a troubling reluctance to resign. I do not dismiss those misgivings.

But I cannot ignore that Jung spent his career constructing a psychology whose central concern is the individual against mass unconsciousness -- the precise psychological mechanism fascism requires. That is not the work of a sympathizer. It is the work of someone who understood exactly what was possessing the psychology of Nazi Germany.