You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Lewin's book has three main parts. Part one historically examines Jung and his politics. The second part discusses the evolution of Jung's theories of the collective unconscious and archetypes; it asks: how well did he construct his theories? Part three considers how he applied his theories in attempting to understand Nazi Germany. The book reaches its climax with what he wrote about the Third Reich.
I found the following points in part one particularly interesting and significant. Lewin's survey of Jung and his politics suggests Jung was more politically informed and sophisticated than some critics have stated. Moreover, Lewin sees him becoming more hostile to the Nazis by May 1934. A letter by Jung to Mary Mellon provides corroborating evidence for Lewin's view: in it Jung said he challenged the Nazis already in 1934 at a reception in Baron von Schnitzler's house in Frankfurt (Jung to Mellon, 24 September 1945). Lewin believes that before World War II Jung was concerned with attempting to understand and explain events in terms of his theories of the collective unconscious. Jung thought that when individuals are caught in a mass movement such as the Nazi movement, then archetypes begin to function.
In part two the author proceeds to examine Jung's collective unconscious and archetype theories which, in his view, contain flaws. One is that Jung proposed racial and national layers of the collective unconscious. Another is a mismatch, Lewin says, between Jung's original ‘neo-Lamarckian’ ideas and his later cultural observations. In Lewin's view, although Jung involved cultural, non-inherited influences on the unconscious in his discussions, he did not reformulate his theories. Lewin regards much evidence that Jung cited for his theories of the collective as due actually to cultural and social factors—not inherited processes.
Part three is, in my opinion, the meat of the book. Lewin states that in the early 1930s despite seeing danger, Jung entertained a hope that archety