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This chapter in the book Lingering Shadows is very dense and takes some unravelling. The first section is concerned with the notion of scapegoating. Ulanov spends some time reminding us of Mosaic ritual from which the word ‘scapegoat’ derives: the hope that the national shadow may be loaded on to a goat which is sent, out of the camp, into the wilderness, leaving the nation purified. A twin goat was burnt as an offering to God.
She then spells out psychological scapegoating, to be seen in individuals and groups and nations. If we can only get rid of this trait, this person, this group of people, we can hope for better times.
She points out that Jewish thinkers have insisted that the scapegoating of the Jews is unique and different from other instances. She suggests that the uniqueness lies in their perceived relationship with God. We envy what we see as a special relationship with the Ultimate. It is mysterious, and exclusive, and intolerable—to other siblings.
But we are also aware that the Ultimate summons us all to a transcendent receptivity. That summons is also intolerable, and we hate Judaism which reminds us of this summons. We wish to expunge and liquidate the reminder.
We expect Jung, who was deeply concerned with evil, and getting his patients to own and integrate their shadows, in his turn to face his own. If he has failed to do this we perceive him to have double-crossed us. He has let us down.
Jung applied ‘types’ to whole nations. Ulanov does not want us to condemn Jung out of hand for his anti-Semitism, but urges us to face our own shadows—and especially not to be just observers in the consulting-room. She urges us to accept the feminine mode of consciousness as this ‘recognizes evil both without sentimentality and without enthusiasm for grand ways of fixing it’.
There is much to be reminded of in this chapter about the pain of relating to the centre with regard to the Jewish nation. I was however left with an uneasy question of whether the word ‘cross’ is