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.
This paper begins with childhood memories of reports on the Korean War on radio as a child. This enables an insight into the familial and ancestral base of this childhood experience. The author connects these insights to Jung's overwhelming response to the outbreak of the First World War. Through the inner experience of conflict as a counterpart of the War, Jung understood the inner split that he had experienced since childhood. The line of Goethe's Faust he employs to illustrate this factor proves to be the fundamental insight of this paper: Two souls alas are housed within my breast/And each one strives for mastery there. The inner split in the individual psyche as a fundamental source of the drive to war is followed by a brief survey of the causes of war, including Jung's comments on war in the Red Book. There, Jung emphasizes that the origin of war lies in the failure to admit the split in our individual psyche, and that the warlike urge is against the other who manifests those qualities we reject in ourselves. The further exploration of this basic theme leads to the biblical story of Cain and Abel, and the murder of a brother who becomes the unbearable other. War in Heaven, and the struggle of Satan against the deity becomes the primordial archetypal ground for an understanding of all instances of War. The split in deity itself is indeed to be understood as the fundamental archetype of War.