Breaking The Spell Of Disenchantment

One of the most powerful narratives gripping scientists, intellectuals, and the general culture in Europe during the early decades of the twentieth century was that the world had become disenchanted: stripped of genuine mystery, lacking inherent meaning, and unrelated to any spiritual or divine reality. In Breaking the Spell of Disenchantment, Roderick Main examines various ways in which C. G. Jung's analytical psychology, developed during this same period, can be seen to challenge that dominant narrative.

After explaining the complex and ambivalent nature of disenchantment and the many different responses to it, Main shows how the Jungian process of individuation intrinsically fosters a culturally much needed reenchantment of the world, though in a way that also continues to acknowledge the role of both disenchantment and naïve enchantment. He then focuses in turn on Jung's lifelong engagement with anomalous phenomena, his concept of synchronicity as a principle of acausal connection through meaning, and his implicit panentheistic metaphysics to show in greater detail how, contrary to disenchantment, analytical psychology affirms genuine mystery, inherent meaning, and relationship to spiritual or divine reality.

The vision that emerges is of a particularly rich and distinctive form of holism, valuable not only for psychotherapy but also as a critical perspective on some of our current social, political, and environmental crises, insofar as these have roots in the still prevalent story of disenchantment.

This is Volume 8 in the Zurich Lecture Series Collection.

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

1. Disenchantment

Disenchantment in Weber's "Science as a Vocation"

Jung's Experience of Disenchantment

Responses to Disenchantment

Jung's Response to Disenchantment

Individuation

Breaking the Spell of Disenchantment: The Countermagic of Individuation

Enchantment-Disenchantment-Reenchantment

Jung, Weber, and the Unio Mystica

Conclusion

Endnotes

2. Mystery

Jung's Studies and Experiences of Anomalous Phenomena

Synchronicity as a Framework for Understanding Anomalous Phenomena

Synchronicity and Categories of Anomalous Phenomena

Synchronicity and Jung's Anomalous Experiences

Jung's Focus on the Meaning of Anomalous Phenomena

The Meaning of Jung's Anomalous Experiences

Conclusion

Endnotes

3. Meaning

The Meaning of "Meaning" in "Meaningful Coincidence"

"Shaking the Security of Our Scientific Foundations" Meaning in Science

Conclusion

Endnotes

4. Metaphysics

Jung and Metaphysics

The Theistic Roots of Disenchantment

Panentheism

Jungian Psychology as an Instance of Modern Panentheistic Thought

The Undoing of Disenchantment

Panentheistic vis-à-vis Disenchanted Science and Religion

Conclusion

Endnotes

Biographical note

References

Index

Roderick Main, PhD, works at the University of Essex, UK, where he is a professor in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies and Director of the Centre for Myth Studies. His previous books include The Rupture of Time: Synchronicity and Jung's Critique of Modern Western Culture and Revelations of Chance: Synchronicity as Spiritual Experience.