Greg Mogenson

Wolfgang Giegerich, born in 1942, is a German Jungian analyst who has been a practicing clinician and prolific author since the mid-1970s. After studying and earning a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and a diploma from the C.G. Jung Institute Zurich, he practiced in Germany and has lectured internationally, including at Eranos conferences and Kyoto University. Giegerich's work challenges the empirical scientific basis for psychology, drawing instead on phenomenology, Hegelian dialectics, and alchemy. He advocates for a shift in focus from the individual to the 'soul,' which he defines not as an empirical entity but as the inherent depth and internal infinity of psychological phenomena themselves. His approach views psychology as the 'discipline of interiority,' where phenomena are examined for their own truth without privileging specific content like dreams. He emphasizes the 'objective psyche,' which he prefers to call the 'soul,' as the collective structures of thought inherent to a culture, making it the true subject of psychology, distinct from individualistic approaches.

Giegerich posits psychology as the 'discipline of interiority,' defining interiority as the inherent depth within phenomena themselves. This perspective diverges from traditional approaches by not prioritizing specific psychological contents, such as dreams or myths, as uniquely significant pathways to understanding. Instead, any phenomenon is considered valid for psychological inquiry provided it is viewed as an expression of the soul and approached with a commitment to discerning its truth. This method involves examining phenomena from a psychological viewpoint, allowing their inherent qualities and meanings to emerge without imposing preconceived notions or personal biases.

A central concept in Giegerich's thought is the 'objective psyche,' a term he often prefers to replace with 'soul' due to its richer historical connotations in Western philosophy and psychology. This 'soul' represents the collective frameworks and structures of thought prevalent within a specific culture and historical period. Giegerich argues that this collective soul, rather than the individual psyche, should be the primary subject of psychological study. He views individuals as the conduits through which the soul manifests, with the soul itself framing the horizon of individual experience. This perspective shifts the focus from personalistic psychology to the broader, collective psychological landscape.

Giegerich's methodology emphasizes a detachment from personal biases to allow phenomena to reveal themselves. He advocates for a process where 'thoughts think themselves,' drawing inspiration from Hegelian dialectics. This involves presenting phenomena, such as dreams or cultural productions, to consciousness and observing their inherent movement through positions and negations. Through this iterative 'dialectical analysis,' the depth of the phenomenon is uncovered. This hermeneutic process of 'interiorization' involves penetrating the logical structure of the subject matter, aligning with his definition of psychology as the discipline of interiority.

In clinical practice, Giegerich introduces the concept of 'the soul' as the 'third person of psychotherapy.' This perspective moves beyond viewing the soul as solely belonging to the analyst or patient. Instead, it is conceptualized as an independent entity encompassing complexes, archetypal images, and collective views of consciousness. This 'soul' represents psychology itself in its broadest sense, including all notions of the soul, its pathologies, therapies, and worldviews. By recognizing this third person, psychotherapy gains a more comprehensive and objective dimension.

“There is no such thing as a soul that produces psychological phenomena. The phenomena have nothing behind them. They have everything they need within themselves, even their own origin, their author or subject. ‘The soul’ in my parlance thus does not refer to something real outside of, distinct from, and in addition to psychological phenomenology, but is no more than a still mythologizing, personifying, façon de parler, an expression for the inner soul quality, depth, and internal infinity, of the phenomena themselves as well as for their internal ‘teleology’.”

“For a true psychology, only the soul, which is certainly undemonstrable, merely ‘metaphorical’ and for this reason a seeming nothing, can be the ‘substrate’ and subject of the phenomena. The human being is then their object; he or she is nothing but the place where soul shows itself, just like the world is the place where man shows himself and becomes active. We therefore must shift our standpoint away from ‘the human person’ to the ‘soul.’ ... I am talking of a shift of our standpoint, perspective, or the idea in terms of which we study, just as before, the concrete experience of individuals or peoples.”

“To do psychology, you have to have abstracted from your own thinking, to become able to dispassionately hear what the phenomena are saying and to let the thoughts as which they exist think themselves out, no matter where they will take you and without your butting in with your personal valuations and interests.”

“[the soul] is no longer to be imagined as the individual property of each of the two other persons [in the consulting room, analyst and patient], but must be given independent reality. It is the world of complexes and archetypal images, of views and styles of consciousness, and thus it is also psychology itself, in the widest sense of the word, including all our ideas about the soul, its pathology and therapy, as well as our Weltanschauung.”