Tuesday, June 07, 2011

Jung the spy?

Carl Jung, part 2: A troubled relationship with Freud – and the Nazis | Mark Vernon

This is interesting.

The Guardian is running a series on Jung, as a way of noting the 50th anniversary of his death.

In this second part, I knew about the conflict with Freud before (from Jung's autobiography), but I didn't know about his WWII activities:

Jung is also accused of complying with the Nazi authorities, in particular with Matthias Göring, the man who became the leader of organised psychotherapy in Germany, not least because he was the cousin of Hermann Göring. In fact, Matthias put Jung's name to pro-Nazi statements without Jung's knowledge.

Jung was furious, not least because he was actually fighting to keep German psychotherapy open to Jewish individuals. And that was not all. Bair reveals that Jung was involved in two plots to oust Hitler, essentially by having a leading physician declare the Führer mad. Both came to nothing.

It has also come to light that Jung operated as a spy for the OSS (the predecessor to the CIA). He was called "Agent 488" and his handler, Allen W. Dulles, later remarked: "Nobody will probably ever know how much Prof Jung contributed to the allied cause during the war."

This could well form the basis of some fanciful fictionalised movie, I think. (It'd be good to see a fictional psychotherapy session between Jung and Hitler!) I like that genre of film.

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