User:Rgbea/Carl Jung in popular culture

Swiss psychologist and thinker Carl Jung has been an influential figure in many forms of cultural expression.

Influences on culture

• Jung had a 16-year long friendship with author Laurens van der Post from which a number of books and a film were created about Jung's life.
• Jung influenced much of Joseph Campbell's thought.
• The Aura-Soma color divination system relates many of its bottles to Jungian archetypal constructs.

Literature

• Herman Hesse, author of works such as Siddhartha and Steppenwolf, was treated by a student of Jung, Dr. Joseph Lang. This began for Hesse a long preoccupation with psychoanalysis, through which he came to know Carl Jung personally, and was challenged to new creative heights: During a three-week period during September and October 1917, Hesse penned his novel Demian.
• James Joyce in his Finnegans Wake, asks "Is the Co-education of Animus and Anima Wholly Desirable?" his answer perhaps being contained in his line "anama anamaba anamabapa." The book also ridicules Carl Jung's analytical psychology and Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis, by referring to "psoakoonaloose." Jung had been unable to help Joyce's daughter Lucia, who Joyce claimed was a girl "yung and easily freudened." Lucia was diagnosed as schizophrenic and was eventually permanently institutionalized.
• In The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe describes the classic experiment in which Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, under the influence of LSD, explore manifestations of synchronicity by listening to a recording of a drug-induced monologue while watching the Ed Sullivan Show. Also, the central goal of the psychedelic movement, opening the doors of perception, is repeatedly associated with Jungian concepts throughout the book.
• Jung's differentiation between sensing, intuition, thinking, and feeling inspired the categorization of two of the four delineating factors in their personality test. These are the "I" vs. "S" and "T" vs. "F" groupings.
• Jung's influence on noted Canadian novelist Robertson Davies is apparent in many of Davies's fictional works. In particular, The Cornish Trilogy and his novel The Manticore base their designs on Jungian concepts.
• Ted Hughes's 1970 collection 'Crow' shows Hughes's interest in Jungian theory.
• Jung is one of the main characters in Timothy Findley's novel, Pilgrim.
• Jungian ideas make up a large part of the intellectual foundations of the Earthsea stories, the classic fantasy series written by Ursula K. Le Guin.
• The concept of the collective unconscious is one of the main topics in the Dune novel series.
• Jung appears as a major character as a ghost in the novel Between the Bridge and the River by Scottish TV personality Craig Ferguson. He appears as an hallucination to one of the main characters in various parts of the novel.
• Jung's theories about the collective unconscious are a tool used by the character Peter Wilmot to get to know Misty in the Chuck Palahniuk novel Diary.
• Jung appears as a character in the novel "Possessing the Secret of Joy" by Alice Walker. He appears as the therapist of Tashi, the novel's protagonist. He is usually called "Mzee," but is identified by Alice Walker in the afterword.
• Jung appears as a major character in the 2006 novel "The Interpretation of Murder" by Jed Rubenfeld.

Television and film

• George Lucas relied a good deal on the Jung-inspired writings of Joseph Campbell when crafting the original Star Wars Trilogy. Most of the major characters in the film can be seen as Jungian Archetypes.
• Jung's writing was introduced to Italian film maker Federico Fellini in the 1950s and had an effect on the way Fellini incorporated dreams into films after La dolce vita.
• Stanley Kubrick's 1987 film Full Metal Jacket features an underlying theme about the duality of man throughout the action and dialogue of the film. One scene plays out this way: A Colonel asks a soldier, "You write 'Born to Kill' on your helmet and you wear a peace button. What's that supposed to be, some kind of sick joke?" To which the soldier replies, "I think I was trying to suggest something about the duality of man, sir... The Jungian thing, sir."
• The plot of James Kerwin's scifi noir film Yesterday Was a Lie is said to contain multiple Jungian references, and press interviews with the cast and crew confirm that Jung's work in alchemy and dream analysis played a pivotal role in the development of the screenplay.
• In the Emmy award-television show Northern Exposure the radio D.J. Chris Stevens made continual references to Jung's ideas. The show often let the audience into the characters' unconscious by weaving their dreams into the plot. In one episode, Jung appears in a dream and says "while I know about the collective unconscious, I do not know how to drive a truck." He sits in the drivers seat of a semi-tractor.
• Dr. Niles Crane on the popular television sitcom Frasier is a devoted Jungian psychiatrist, while his brother Dr. Frasier Crane is a Freudian psychiatrist. This is mentioned a number of times in the series, and from time to time forms a point of argument between the two brothers. One memorable scene had Niles filling in for Frasier on Frasier's call-in radio program, in which Niles introduces himself as the temporary substitute saying, "...and while my brother is a Freudian, I am a Jungian, so there'll be no blaming Mother today."
• Episode "Urgo", of Season 3 of sci-fi TV series Stargate SG-1 explores the Jungian theory of the duality and the shadow.
• J. Michael Straczynski's Babylon 5 television series used many of Jung's concepts throughout the series.
• In the movie Batman Begins, the character of Jonathan Crane, aka "The Scarecrow", is a Jungian psychiatrist and at the same time personifies one of man's primal archetypes (the Scarecrow).
• Independent film director Tom Laughlin not only makes frequent references to Jung's concepts in his Billy Jack film series, but has also written several books about the man's theories of psychoanalysis.
• Francis Ford Coppola's film Apocalypse Now references Jungian philosophy. In a scene where the widow of a fallen French Soldier comforts Martin Sheen's character, she says "there are two of you, one that loves, and one that kills."
• On a lighter note, in Love at First Bite (1979), the psychiatrist hesitates as he moves to set ablaze the coffin of Dracula in a N. Y. City luxury hotel: "Wait! Would a Jungian do this? No! But I'm not a Jungian --- I am a Freudian!"
• On the new NBC show Raines, Jeff Goldblum's character, Raines discovers his therapist, Dr. Samantha Kohl played by Amanda Stowe, is a Jungian psychiatrist.
• An episode during Season 8 of the TV series Charmed is based on Jung's ideas. The episode is named, The Jung and the Restless. During the episode, witches Piper, Phoebe and Paige are magical knocked unconscious by a potion. While unconscious, neophyte witch, Billie, explores their dreams to find out what are the sisters' true hopes and desires through the symbolism and signs in their dreams.

Videogames

• Many parallels are drawn and personified from Jung's theories in the Sega Saturn NiGHTS into Dreams. Each level takes place within parts of the collective unconscious and each boss represents a phycological problem that dwells within each aspect of the mind.
• Jung's theory of the shadow is of central importance in the modern horror roleplaying game Kult, in which reality as humanity knows it is merely an illusion, built to deprive us of our natural divinity. The act of merging with one's shadow is the ultimate step on the path to transcending this spiritual prison.
• The various Jungian ideals and archetypes heavily influenced the modern philosophical, surreal roleplaying game Persona and are one of the reasons cited for its strong, intriguing plot.
• The video games Xenogears and Xenosaga utilize many of the ideas proposed by Carl Jung as major storyline components of the game, and even create physical manifestations of his notions within actual characters, Albedo, Nigredo, Rubedo, etc. The "The Collective Unconscious" is also used in Xenosaga series.
• In the video game Eternal Darkness Jung is mentioned by Edward Roivas, one of the playable characters in the game. Edward tries to compare Jung's collective unconscious to the machinations of Ulyaoth (one of the three ancients).
• In the video game Psychonauts the various levels of the game are inside the minds of certain characters of the game, and, once visited for the first time, can be accessed from a hub known as "The Collective Unconscious".
• In the video game Skate or Die 2 for the NES, the character Lester quotes Jung, saying: "Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also."

Music

• Peter Gabriel's song "Rhythm Of The Heat" (Security , 1982), deals about psychologist Carl Jung's visit to Africa where he had joined a group of tribal drummers and dancers and became overwhelmed with the fear of losing control of himself. At the time Jung was exploring the concept of what he defines as the Collective Unconscious, and was afraid he would come under control of the music, as the drummers and dancers let the music control themselves in fulfillment of their ritual objectives. Gabriel learned about it from Jung's essay Symbols And The Interpretation Of Dreams (ISBN 0-691-09968-5). Gabriel tries to capture this powerful feeling in his song with intense use of tribal drumbeats. The original song title was Jung in Africa.
• Another Peter Gabriel song, "Blood of Eden" (1992), contains references to darkness, reflection and other Jungian concepts. The animus/anima are referenced in the main chorus as follows, "In the blood of Eden lie the woman and the man With the man in the woman and the woman in the man."
• Jung appears in the last row of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band cover, on Edgar Allan Poe's right. Portrayed in this modern pantheon of the collective unconscious, Jung's presence is a tribute to his thought about mass-communication and mass-desire.
• The Police made references to Carl Jung in their album Synchronicity.
• The progressive rock band, Tool, have incorporated ideas from Jung's work into their albums, especially Ænima. Songs such as "Forty Six & 2" and "Ænema" (the title of this song and the title of the album both being derived from Jung's anima) are particularly fraught with references.
• Blue Man Group's "Rock Concert Movement #237" is "Taking the audience on a Jungian journey into the collective unconscious by using the shadow as a metaphor for the primal self that gets repressed by the modern persona and also by using an underground setting and labyrinth office design to represent both the depths of the psyche and the dungeon-like isolation of our increasingly mechanistic society which prevents people from finding satisfying work or meaningful connections with others."
• Singer/Songwriter Steve Taylor satirizes modern psychiatry in "Jung and the Restless" on his I Predict 1990 album.
• In The Irony Of It All by The Streets, the character Terry states that he likes to "get deep" and think about Carl Jung.
• Hey Rosetta's "Becky, I Keep Singing This Song" says "Becky, I keep having this dream in the night where is seems I can fly. But only when no one's around, when the people appear I came tumbling down. Jung, Carl tell me what can that mean? I swear I'm not scared I'm just happy to be here. How can you tell me these beautiful things are holding me back before I even begin... Pull me out of my body and into the black."
• Name appears in lyrics of the song "I love you" by Saigon Kick.
• Jungian concepts are employed throughout the philosophy and lyrics of Jim Morrison, in particular with reference to the collective unconscious ('Universal Mind'), transcendence ("Break on through"), Apollonian-Dionysiann duality ("Day destroys the night, night divides the day..."), alchemy and individuation (The End), and the shamanistic experience of suffering, death and spiritual rebirth as a way to connect with and draw out the repressed unconscious of the audience, as a 'mediator' to guide them through the transcendence process. The Jungian references to the unconscious individuation & transcendence process in the 11 miniute 'The End' spiel are numerous, and the symbolic Oedipous complex of killing the father/re-entering the mother that Morrison so controversially inserted into the song ('Father-yes son- I want to kill you. Mother, I want to ...')references Jung's take on the Oedipus Complex - symbolic for inner freedom, spiritual rebirth and transcendent self-liberation.
• Bob Dylan has employed a lot of Jungian concepts such as individuaton and alchemy in his lyrics.
• The rather famous song used in the "Synchronicity" Volkwagen commercial is titled "Jung at Heart."

WebComics

• The Webcomic Dresden Codak features Tiny Carl Jung as a recurring character. The tiny Jung offers sage advice and psychological council, while also contributing to surreal humor of the strip.