“The Challenge of Giegerich”

Jennifer M. Sandoval, C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles, 2013

There’s no doubt, people have trouble with Giegerich. Upon discovering I would

be giving a talk about him, an experienced Jungian analyst whom I greatly admire told

me, “One of the impacts of reading [Wolfgang] Giegerich is that he makes you feel

stupid…no one can think psychologically except for him.” Of Giegerich’s works, Ginette

Paris states:

[C]ourage and determination are...needed from the reader, to cut through

Giegerich’s heavy hegelian language. He seems to intentionally wrap his ideas in
layers and layers of impossible language and germanic heavyness to protect them
from uninitiated frivolous French amateurs like myself.

Well, this talk is called “Giegerich for Beginners,” not “Giegerich for Dummies,” despite

the fact that we probably all feel like dummies when reading Giegerich at some point or

another. But dummies are not allowed; reading Giegerich demands that we think. Not

only that we think however. He also asks for profound humility and a true commitment to

soul. Another way to say it is that he asks us to put on our thinking caps, get off our high

horse, and roll up our sleeves in service to a relentless devotion to the work of soul.

Giegierich’s “impossible” language includes words like Relentless. Logical.

Absolute. Positive. Negative. Uroboric. Interior. Sublate. Opus Contra Naturam (or a

work against nature). We are probably familiar with most of these words. Ok, maybe

with the exception of “sublate” which was borrowed from Hegel and has the three-fold

contradictory meaning of raising up (as in raise up your hands), preserving, and

cancelling. It’s closest English counterpart is “to kick upstairs” Inwood (1992).

Now sometimes Giegerich will say something a bit tricky, for example, when he

describes the phenomenon of true art:

 Art comes into being through the relentless interiorization of the positivity of the
empirical experience and its ‘realistic’ content into the negativity of the form of
mere fantasy. (2009, p. 365)

For a second I had the thought I might actually try to explain the meaning of this sentence

to you, but only for a second, because I remembered that I don’t really need to. In my

experience, every essay of Giegerich’s is remarkably complete and fully self-contained.

Each has within it all the information you need to understand it – if you actually finish

it... :) In fact, the essay I just quoted from, in which Giegerich critiques Jung’s Red Book,

I read long before I had any inkling of Giegerich’s Hegelian dialectic approach to the

soul and the way he connects it to alchemy. I didn’t yet know that to Giegerich, the soul

is not located in externals or in the world or the person, but rather in the interiority of the

imaginal realm, as “the inner infinite radiance of the concrete phenomenon or situation in

its eachness” (2005, p. 14). “The soul” is not, it must be made, however in such a self-

contradictory (dialectial) way that what is only the produced result is nevertheless at once

the origin of the whole movement” (2005, p. 10).

This paper has been very difficult to write. In preparation I pored over many of

the books and essays Giegerich has written, trying to get at the heart of what he is about

in the hopes of somehow being able to articulate that for you tonight. After many dead

ends, stone walls and frustrated attempts, it dawned on me that I must actually follow the

way of Giegerich and negate my passionate attempted forward movement by applying it

back onto itself. I must get at the heart of getting at the heart. Immediately this statement

backs me out of my literal quest and into a psychological consciousness. I am now

removed from what I want, and into the uroboric realm of the soul’s inquiry… I am

backed into myself, into a deeply subjective place, and I realize that I am not yet able to

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get at the heart of Giegerich’s work. I am a beginner; I can get only at my heart, so I will

speak to that, to what moves me about Giegerich’s work.

You may remember how Jung described the four stages of therapy. The first is

confession, next elucidation, then comes education, and finally transformation. It is in

this final stage, that of transformation, that Giegerich’s notion of psychological

consciousness is applicable, and only in that stage. So it is really important when we read

Giegerich not to get ahead of ourselves, because in the initial stages, patients are often in

need of “down-to-earth help, such as real human attention, sympathy, and understanding;

an honest face-to-face encounter with another human being; guidance through personal

crisis or difficult life situations, or more generally a kind of philosophical practical

wisdom” (2012, p. 216) as opposed to rigorous dialectical inquiry, or the relentless

absolute-negative interiorization of externals. “Only with Jung’s last category [that of

transformation] would we reach the precincts of psychology proper.” (2012, p. 316).

While this rule applies to clinical practice, Geigerich asserts that psychology as a

discipline and mode of thought must be held to the highest standard. I agree with him.

Psychology itself, insofar as it consists of the ideas and theories that contain us, must

always strive for the highest stage of psychological consciousness and attain to that ideal.

Psychology must always be ahead of the individual.

Giegerich states that, “The true locus of the soul is not the empirical individual in

its positivity. Its true locus is psychology, [and] psychology not as it is abstractly

conceived as a science, but as that concrete living thought to which the individual can rise

up” (2005, p. 10). Giegerich pulls no punches here; his latest book What is Soul begins

with the following charge:

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 Showing a complete lack of psychological conscience, Jungians after Jung (with
only James Hillman and a very few others as exceptions) merely acted out Jung’s
psychology in various ways. Armed with Jung’s and, partially, Freud’s theoretical
ideas as their model, they usually went directly, just like that, to the psychic
material to be studied. They interpreted dreams, studied cases, developed theories,
applied psychological concepts to ancient myths and works of literature, and
applied myths and psychodynamic theories to personal biographies and
pathologies. They were given over to the object before them, be it in the form of
experiencing and observing it or in the form of theorizing about it, without
wasting a thought on the subject, on what they themselves as observing or
theorizing consciousness are doing, and on what justification there is, if any, for
such a thing as psychology in the first place. What makes a psychology
psychological? How do our individual assumptions and statements in psychology
tie in with the whole of psychology as well as with modern reality around us? In
what sense can we speak of a soul? Actually, these questions ought to be
answered before one goes to work in psychology. Psychology, one of whose jobs
it is to make conscious, first of all ought to be conscious of itself. (2012, p. 1)

So already, with the very first paragraph, we as psychologists are strongly challenged by

Giegerich to develop our theories with a psychological consciousness.

THINK ONE THOUGHT

Ok. So let’s put on our thinking caps – what does it mean to think? In describing

his idea of the soul as thought, Giegerich references Heidegger’s idea of what it means to

think one thought. Giegerich (2008) notes that a person’s entire work,

(that may be laid down in many volumes and may even include shifts of position)
is the working out and unfolding of this one thought. And this thought is,
according to Heidegger, not ‘thought up’ by the thinker; it comes to him….(p. 43)

Giegerich defines such thinking as not merely “discursive reasoning or the literal

employment of the intellect” – rather, thinking would mean three things:

1. having (having experienced, having been reached and claimed by) a thought;
2. absolute obligation to and constraint by this one thought, no freedom,
necessity;
3. potential openness to any and all phenomena of life in the light of one’s single
thought. (1998, p. 44).

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In his book The Soul’s Logical Life Giegerich (1998) claims “Jung is the thinker of the

soul” (p. 43). As such, Jung was able to experience life, as Giegerich describes,

through this one thought as his lens, one might say. In everything he experienced,
he was able to hold his place in the Notion “soul.” This one thought was binding
for all his psychological work; he did not allow the inherent pull of phenomena to
seduce him into looking at them in the light of perspectives that they might
suggest… He remained faithful to his one thought, the Notion of soul. (1998, p.
43)

It seems then that to think one thought ultimately means to be able to hold one’s place in

an idea, to situate one’s life inside of it, such that all experience is given by and contained

within the thought. The question then may be, ‘have I been reached and claimed by a

thought?’ What might be my thought to think? What is the thought that thinks me?

Such a thought is not merely a superfluous thought to hold in our minds, nor would the

work it demands be one more thing to accomplish in our lives. Rather, being given by a

thought is the unity of expression with being, such that our lives themselves are given by

the work. The thinking of this thought becomes the ground of being for our lives. Such

thinking about thinking can result in psychological or soulful life (Miller, p. xx, 2005).

GET OFF YOUR HIGH HORSE

Giegerich, Like Hillman and Jung before him, is concerned to stress a non-egoic

hegemony of the psyche. (Giegerich, Miller, & Mogenson, 2005). “The person who does

psychology must be the new or other personality. The daimon, the Self, the soul: they are

the ones who alone can produce a psychology that deserves the name” (Giegerich et. al,

2005, p. xv).

Giegerich can seem quite critical, especially with respect to the hubris of the ego.

He says,

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 It is a naïve and narcissistic mistake to take oneself so seriously as to confuse
oneself with the true subject of the soul’s life (what or whom it is about). We are
no more than the stage or place where it happens, but where it happens for its own
sake not for ours. The fact that it needs us to acquire a real presence in the world
and undergo its process of further-determination must not go to our heads as if we
were meant (2012, p. 312).

Ouch. But yes, that ouch is important, because “Doing psychology…demands that we

have…departed from ourselves as ego-personality” (2012, p. 312). This is because

individuation process must rise from individual persons up to the level of humanity, ie,

the concept of man is what has to undergo [individuation]…Practically it means

that the psychologist must not allow himself to have a soft spot, a narcissistic
tender-mindedness, for his own or our collectively cherished ideals, values, and
dogmas (that is, for “the ego”; for “the ego” is nothing else but our most precious
ideals, interests, and beliefs). Psychology is not for sissies…. One has to be able
to take it, where “it” here refers to the ruthless truths brought about by the
objective soul movement or contained in soul phenomena. Ruthless truths as they
manifested, for example, in ancient times in cruel rituals like human sacrifices or
in more modern times in the fundamental ruptures and losses brought about by
scientific and technological progress and the painful collapse of our traditional
values and beliefs. …One has to firmly, unperturbedly hold one’s place vis-à-vis
the soul’s ruthlessness, allowing the painful soul contents to come home to
oneself, to cut into one’s flesh, and to transform, redefine consciousness.
Professionalism: no pity and solidarity with the desperate wish of the ego,
identification with the anima alba, to retain its subjectivism, its innocence, and its
aestheticism. (2012, pp. 311-13)

Giegerich is careful to distinguish this way of being a psychologist from being an actual

person in the world. We might liken what he is describing to inhabiting the analytic

stance, or to the scholarly attitude of the depth psychological researcher. I personally

have difficulty with this kind of “split” in my own life, especially as I become

increasingly aware of the extent to which I fail to think psychologically and am unable to

maintain a psychological consciousness. I watch myself identify fully with instinct or

feeling, knowing that I must experience the process I am in and allow it to fully blossom

in all its anima innocence and sentimental naïveté. This knowledge is often itself

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experienced as a narcissistic cut into one’s own flesh and must be borne, as it reveals the

ego-centric longing to achieve a perfected ideal. Yet to understand this about myself, to

allow it to be as it is, is in itself a step toward psychological thinking. With Giegerich, I

am challenged in the ways I see that I do not think psychologically.

LET’S GET TO WORK: SHADOW BEFORE ANIMA

To me, one of the most important aspects of Giegerich’s ideas is the way in which

he thinks about the shadow. Many of us are familiar with Neumann’s famous book Depth

Psychology and the New Ethic in which he quite scandalously illuminates humanity’s

“scapegoat” mentality, of which we are in the grip when, rather than admit the presence

of our own dark shadow, we project it onto others and call them the “enemy.” You’ve got

the problem, not I. This is also what happens when we look at someone who has

committed a wrong and say, “I could never do what she did.” This scapegoat mentality,

Neumann insisted, in which we fail to see the bad parts of ourselves but rather

unconsciously project them onto others, is the deadliest peril now confronting humanity,

for it prevents us from dealing directly with the negative forces of human nature.

Giegerich reminds us that the radical and revolutionary gift of depth psychology

is that it confronts modern man

with all those factors that he wanted to close his eyes to. This was true from the
very beginning of psychoanalysis with Freud, who brought about the recognition
of sexuality within a Victorian world, to Jung’s emphasis on the shadow and his
attempt to integrate the idea of evil even into the image of God. The principle of
depth psychology is the lifting of the repressions…” (2005, p. 45)

and our allowing what was repressed and projected back into the fold of ourselves.

Shadow integration is the arrival of the Shadow and our housing him in ourselves
as a (certainly unwanted and uncanny) guest. And his coming is the coming into
being of a psychological consciousness….the shadow is the stranger whose gift to

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 us, if we accommodate him, is the transformation of the world from a world of
positive fact into anima country. (2008, p. 83)

In his remarkable essay “First Shadow, then Anima” Giegerich (2008) extends an

idea of Jung’s suggesting that soul truly emerges only after (or upon) the achievement of

full integration of the shadow. Giegerich describes shadow integration through five

stages, each one following the inexorable advance of the approaching shadow with

corresponding advances in consciousness.

In the first stage, the non-ego is unconsciously projected outside and occurs as an

enemy. Giegerich uses the historical example of the Crusades because the enemy is on

another continent, presenting as “something truly foreign, unknown, and new” (2008, p.

91). Generally speaking, “a new consciousness always approaches us from without, from

abroad, as it were. It is truly encountered as the stranger or enemy out there who has

never before been in us” (2008, p. 91).

In the second stage, the guest is less of a stranger as the projection is drawn closer

into the fold. Giegerich calls this the Heretic or Witch-hunt stage, because it seems as if

“the real danger lies at home” (2008, p. 93). “The guest is thus given a sort of lodging

among us, even if only in the manner of condemnation. Fear…was the first mode of

response to the shadow. Condemnation is the second; it is a way of both accommodating

and resisting him” (2008, p. 93). Instead of projection, we find, on the second level, the

defense mechanism of delegation or scapegoating, which “rescues the innocence of

consciousness and preserves consciousness as well-meaning. …It is still ‘them’ (a

minority, a subculture, individual heretics) who do evil, whereas I am on the side of the

good, of peace, of innocence” (2008, p. 95).

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 In the third stage, or the “Turncoat or Subversion” stage, “The shadow is not

simply with the [enemy] or the [heretic] in other words, still out there. It is

everywhere…The shadow has come much closer” (Giegerich, 2008, p. 97).

This is the stage of skepticism, cynicism, Freud and Nietzche, Marx and Voltaire. This

stage identifies with the shadow. “Ego deserts its previous idealism and joins the former

enemy, the non-ego. It [now] defends heretics and sides with the lower or immoral”

(Giegerich, 2008, p. 98).

The identification with the shadow involves a denial of the opposition or tension

between the ideals and the so-called low instincts. Be careful here; the shadow loses its

shadow quality on this level. It is now ego-syntonic. Also in this stage it is the structure

or system that is blamed. “Consciousness has become conscious of the fact that the

shadow is an integral part of society” (Giegerich, 2008, p. 99).

In stage IV, we reach what Giegerich calls the “Mea Culpa” stage. In this stage

“the incompatibility of the ego’s own shadow and the ego must now be endured. But the

resulting annihilating contradiction must be avoided by some new form of defense. Guilt

feelings are the fourth mode of receiving the guest and of defending oneself against him”

(Giegerich, 2008, p. 100).

The particular defense mechanism here is that of isolation….Guilt feelings are the
phenomenon by which this insulation of the opposites from each other takes
place….The judge does not yet admit that the criminal he condemns is himself.
And the abashed criminal does not yet realize his identity with the judge… With
the mea culpa attitude, that shadow has fully come home; he is truly in me, in the
subject, my very own shadow, as much mine as my ideals… I am identified with
the moral values and with the shadow at once. And thus I have become a living
contradiction, the name of which is “bad conscience,” “guilt feeling.” It is no
longer me and them or me and it (the system). Both are one and the same: me. In
harboring the guilt feeling, I kill myself, and the form of this killing is remorse.
(Giegerich, 2008, p. 101)

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In the Mea Culpa stage, the shadow is a personal failing, so the moral cosmos remains

unimpaired – God is still good (I am bad, it’s not archetypal evil, its my bad). In this

stage, “the guest has been admitted into one’s home” (Giegerich, 2008, p. 103).

In the fifth stage of “Hospitality or The Accomplished Integration”,

Consciousness…sees through the arrogance and presumption inherent in

the stage of the bad conscience. Precisely by so humbly taking all blame upon
itself and by devaluating the shadow as merely subjective shortcoming without
autonomous reality, the ego inflated itself to become the opposite pole vis-à-vis
the principle of goodness. Human subjectivity had in the last analysis become the
real antagonist of “God.” Now it can be understood that the integration of the
shadow does not mean its literal mine-ness and that the shadow stems solely from
my personal subjectivity. The idea of personal interiority is recognized as the last
refuge, the last stronghold in the ego’s fight for self-preservation or for the
preservation of a harmonious consciousness. The interiorization constituting
personalistic psychology is the last defense against psychology. Now we see that
the integration of the shadow means that it is allowed into consciousness itself
without reserve.
There cannot be two different aspects any more, as in the previous stage,
where I was, to be sure, at the same time the judge or representative of the higher
values and the guilty convict, with each, however, on a different plane or in a
different respect. Now judge and criminal, ideal and faulty reality meet on the
same plane and in the same regard, so that both perish from their inner
contradiction, each going under in the other, so that something else, a completely
new level of consciousness, can emerge instead. When Jung speaks of the
“transcendent function” as that process that brings forth a new consciousness out
of the self-destruction of the opposites inherent in the old consciousness, he may
have something similar in mind. What emerges here is a truly psychological
consciousness. (Giegerich, 2008, p. 103-4, emphasis added).
…
But the surrender to the insight of the existence of another, objective
center does not mean that the acquisition of the previous stage, namely a sense of
subjectivity, interiority, and psychology, has to be lost.... Rather, this sense of
subjectivity is deepened, deepened to such an extent that it becomes apparent that
it is rooted in an entire new dimension, the dimension of (subjective) objectivity
(or objective subjectivity) - which is of course a contradiction. But to be a
contradiction is what constitutes psychology (as a psychological consciousness or
psychological status) and what allows us not only to have, or be the place of, an
imaginal or symbolic life, as we find it during the ages, but to consciously exist as
imaginal (or soul) life. (Giegerich, 2008, p. 105)

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What Giegerich is saying is that in being psychological, one is demonstrating psychology

in the highest sense; one’s perspective has moved into the new dimension - I am the life I

have - and become psychological.

Congratulations! The last three paragraphs I read verbatim from Giegerich… :)

Giegerich, W. (1998/2008). The soul’s logical life. Frankfurt, Germany: Peter Lang,
GmbH.
Giegerich, W., Miller, D. & Mogenson, G. (2005). Dialectics & analytical psychology.
New Orleans, LA: Spring Journal Books.
Giegerich, W. (2005). The neurosis of psychology. New Orleans, LA: Spring
Journal Books.
Giegerich, W. (2007). “Psychology – the study of the soul’s logical life” in Who owns
Jung? (Ed by A. Casement). London: Karnac Books Ltd.
Giegerich, W. (2008). Soul-violence. New Orleans, LA: Spring Journal Books.
Giegerich, W. (2009). Liber novus, that is, The New Bible: A First Analysis of C.G.
Jung's Red Book. Spring Journal, 83, 361-411.
Giegerich, W. (2010). The soul always thinks. New Orleans, LA: Spring Journal, Inc.
Giegerich, W. (2012). What is soul? New Orleans, LA: Spring Journal, Inc.
Inwood, M. (1992). A Hegel dictionary. Wiley-Blackwell.
Paris, G. (nd.). “Rubedo - Artigos”. http://www.rubedo.psc.br/artingle/psytres.htm.

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