Jung, Science, and Technology

Abstract

Jung’s ambivalent attitude to science and technology should be considered in view of his agenda for analytical psychology pitched against the backdrop of how science was generally understood in the early twentieth century, the history of psychology as a science, and the traditional view of technology as the practical application of science. This chapter first highlights Jung’s timely defense of science in lectures presented to educators in the 1920s, noting how significant omissions and alterations in a 1946 revision of the lectures correspond to changes in the backdrop against which Jung was pitching analytical psychology. Next, Jung’s untimely method of investigation is identified, noting that Jung was perceived by his contemporaries as betraying the dream of a scientific psychology. Jung’s own exposition of the dilemma of modern psychology is reviewed in relation to the history of modern psychology. Turning to Jung’s contemplation of technology, this chapter takes a close look at his letter to the editors of Zurcher Student in which he speculates about the effect of technology on the psyche. Finally, it is proposed here to reposition analytical psychology as a technology of the self.