Advices to readers of Jung

[Mats Winther]

It is rewarding to read Jung, especially since he is a counterweight to modern day rationalism. But you must pick the cherries from the cake, and reject the rest. Forget about his half-baked pagan religion according to which we must integrate the shadow, the anima, and the wise man in due order. That's not how it works. Don't buy his active imagination mysticism according to which the unconscious produces images while the subject is in a waking state. It doesn't work like this (except for schizophrenics). Imagination ought to be unfocused and conscious. And you must cast aside his weird idea about an ambivalent Godhead. Also, don't be fooled by his phenomenalism according to which psychic experiences have the highest reality status. His obsolete epistemology, which he called phenomenology, has been refuted by science. Abstract scientific theory can be perfectly true, no matter what Jung says.

What's more, the concept of four separate psychic functions must be revised, because it contradicts modern science. Jung's view that intellect and feeling are opposing functions is wrong. They are really cooperating functions. See my article, "Intuition is the coalescence of the three psychic functions": http://mlwi.magix.net/intuition.htm .

Jung speculated too much, and his speculations have led many people astray. He thought that speculation was perfectly fine, because what is thought up is "psychic reality".