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Carl Jung applied scientific rigour to mystic wisdom. His alternative psychology provides a framework for psychedelic integration. Only now are its most profound messages coming to light

Evan Roth, ‘Landscapes’ at Wavelength: A Momentary Spring, Beijing Times Art Museum till 1 July

‘The years when I pursued my inner images were the most important time of my life. Everything else is derived from this,’ opens Jung’s masterwork The Red Book.

Leading psychedelic voices say Jung’s established, if exotic, psychology provides an explanatory framework that complements and legitimises the visionary psychedelic experience. Yes, your trippy bullshit is of significance after all.

‘Godfather of Psychedelic Therapy’ Dr Stanislav Grof writes in his definitive work LSD Therapy ‘The only psychiatrist who systematically explored and described many of the transpersonal phenomena we see is Carl Gustav Jung.’

But, “It seems unlikely Jung took psychedelics” writes my Vital tutor Johanna Saponnen in Philosophy of Psychedelics (out now in paperback). Her extensive mapping of Jung’s work comes to mixed conclusions. The acclaimed early 20th century psychologist cautioned fellow intellectuals against the mescaline trend in his correspondence. But his interest seemed piqued by LSD just before his death in 1965 aged 85.

Jung believed delving into our imaginations, instincts and personal mythologies – using techniques he bastardised from alchemy and mysticism – was fraught in itself. Which is possibly fair enough.

“It seems unlikely Jung took psychedelics”

Whether Jung had his wings or not he certainly seemed to know his way around the astral plane, and beyond. Interpreting plus integrating dreams and visions, primeval male and female forces, kabbalistic mental alchemy, re-enchantment, re-storyfication, ‘ancestor work’ the importance of a spiritual practice and – yes – ‘the shadow’ were Jungian tropes. 

He said nature could ‘make us unconscious’ and warned of its potency. Jung was even into embodiment, stressing the importance of a daily yoga practice. He essentially converted to mysticism (despite doggedly maintaining an empirical attitude) after a premonition of the First World War. A spiritual crisis provoked by conflict between his scientific and spiritual sides drove him into isolation. 

“The only psychiatrist who explored transpersonal phenomena is Carl Gustav Jung”

Therein he painted and drew, as opposed to wrote, The Red Book an illuminated train of thought manuscript exploring his most conceptual hypotheses. Jung was so conscious of its obscurity that he only showed it to a handful of confidants. This definitive work of human endeavour was finally published in… 2020. 

It’s not your average mash-up era comeback. And before you conclude the bookish-seeming Jung mustn’t have done his own shadow work, turns out he was a shall-we-say ‘photo polyamourist’ and college jock who swerved penury by marrying an heiress to the IWC Swiss watch dynasty.