JUNG, CARL G.

(1875–1961)

Swiss founder of psychotherapy. Jung’s ideas and techniques have had considerable influence onneoshamans, including their explicit use ofvisualizationand common stress onindividuation. Jung has been described byDan Noelas a shaman himself, “because he opened up shamanichealingpossibilities to an entire culture: ours.” He also calls Jung “a modern Merlin” and discusses his “initiatorydescent to what he called the objective psyche, [which led] to the insight that inner images are the soul’s substance, [and] provides the radical psychological legacy realized in the work of the post-Jungianimaginalpsychologists.” Noel’s definition of this version of “Western shamanism” is a “soulful spirituality, in artful touch withdreamsand imaginings, including especially those which connect us to our wounding, can be a shamanic spirituality of imaginal healing.” This admirably summarizes the project and work of many of Jung’s psychotherapeutic heirs, including James Hillman, and is evident in Sylvia Perera’s treatment of theDescent of Inanna. It is also a fine summary of what Jung may have intended in his many books, lectures, and other work and encapsulates his inspirational role in the Eranos Conferences at Ascona, Switzerland, in which many formative thinkers of the 20th century, especially the Jungians and mythologists influential on neo-shamanism, participated.