Two Jungs: Two Sciences?

Abstract

Two tendencies co-exist within the field of analytical psychology. The first is to locate Jung’s psychology within the established bounds of official science (by for example insisting on its implicit consistency with orthodox scientific findings). The second is to make claims that Jung’s psychology is extra- (or super-) scientific. It seems to me however that neither approach can do justice to the difficulty of the problem Jung has set us. In order to develop a third approach I place Jung’s problematic engagement with science into a creative encounter with the philosophical ideas of Deleuze & Guattari. The French philosophers distinguish two contrasting ways of doing science: “Royal” or “state” science privileges the fixed, stable and constant. “Nomad” or “minor” science emphasizes the malleable, fluid, and metamorphic nature of being. These are not alternatives but “ontologically, a single field of interaction” (Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 367). When it comes to Jung’s writings on science, the irredeemable ambiguity of his psychology shows up in what appear to be two contradictory approaches. One highlights the intrinsically scientific nature of his project and insists upon his empiricism. The other takes the form of a profound and relentless critique of the materialistic, reductive and rationalistic assumptions Jung finds behind the scientific approach. My suggestion here is that the dynamic tension between these two opposing visions of science that forms the crucial condition for the on-going individuation of his psychology.