Wotan: Dormant in the Wood

My thoughts return time and again to Carl Jung’s 1936 paper ‘Wotan’. This paper stands out to me as being perhaps his most controversial, given its subject matter, the rise of the Third Reich. Jung’s approach towards the Third Reich is critical, to our contemporary sensibilities however it reads as not being nearly critical enough. Much has been written on Jung’s complex relationship to the Third Reich, a relationship I will not dwell on here.

My interest relates to what the paper elucidates concerning the collective unconscious. Jung’s view of the collective unconscious shifted over the course of his lifetime, and even today it remains challenging to pin his theory down explicitly. One can certainly regard this ambiguity as a weakness; his theories often resisted clear definition and scientific rigor. I tend however to view this ambiguity as a strength, it compels us to draw upon our intuited sense of things. His theories often speak to that neglected space between art and science, a space in my view that seems to lie somehow closer to the human condition.

In brief, our conscious is that within our own field of awareness, whereas the unconscious is that which holds below the threshold. At a personal level, the unconscious is that which has been repressed by us as individuals, whereas at a collective level, the unconscious constitutes inherited qualities, qualities often linked to, but superseding the concept of instinct. The collective unconscious is generally regarded in Jung’s work as a universal, affecting all peoples indiscriminately. In the ‘Wotan’ paper however, the so-called collective unconscious is curtailed in its scope, being rendered as a force which can operate locally, be that geographically, nationally, and/or racially, or rather an ambiguous middle space which combines all three.

Indeed, for Jung, Wotan (or as he’s more commonly known, Odin), the god of war and thunder, is an archetypal force, that lay dormant in the German forest. Christianity had historically repressed this Wotanic force, rendering it primitive and demonic, but as Christianity waned in the early half of the 20th Century, this primeval force could once again resurface, which it did, finding a home in the hearts and minds of the Germanic youth, resulting in the rise of Hitler and in what Jung could not have predicted, the bloodiest world war in history, and the genocide of European Jews.

For clarity’s sake, for the remainder of this paper I am going to refer to this geographical and racialized reading of the collective unconscious as the ‘topographical unconscious’. In my view this reading seems to suggest certain benefits and certain risks. The most obvious risk is the potentially racist implications of there being an intrinsically collective racial psychology. This is a complex area beyond the scope of this paper, so I will keep my thoughts here brief. In recent decades any kind of biological essentialism has fallen out of favour in academia, in favour of social constructivist theories. This move is in keeping with a general trend towards dissolving the interplay between our interior and exterior selves, as it relates primarily to race and gender. Analytical psychology, in elevating the import of this interplay, has found itself often at odds with this general trend. Can we really say that race is merely skin deep? It leads me to wonder if it is possible to imagine a ‘topographical unconscious’ model which recognises racial psychology as a reality, while avoiding all the potential racist pitfalls. Evidently, this will depend on one’s definition of what constitutes racism.

Now finally let us explore the benefits of such a topographical unconscious model. I think beyond anything else it imbues matter and space with a greater weight and value. For, in the same way that we as individuals carry unconscious content that originated in our personal lives, so with this model unconscious content can be transmitted both intergenerationally and into physical space. This deposited unconscious content might consist of images, senses, and/or patterns of thought. It is as if our conscious has a physical dimension to it, one that can leave impressions in the fabric of reality. As strange as this idea sounds, I think we all very often intuitively behave as if this were true. We are naturally inclined to imbue specific spaces with intangible qualities; sacred spaces such as churches, for example, seem to carry within them the weight of those who have historically worshipped within them. In graveyards we feel the presence of death, in homes maybe a sense of security, and in places where atrocities have occurred, perhaps a sense of foreboding or pain. It is my sense that strong emotions, such as joy, grief, rage, peace, and fear, somehow leave a lasting impression on the world around them.

As stated, this elevates the significance of land and space, which should in turn lead us to be more mindful of the spaces we inhabit, and the way spaces have been inhabited historically. It really does matter who walked across the ground that we now inhabit. How did they think? What did they believe? What were their hopes and struggles? If our state of mind ripples out beyond us in this manner, it too gives our states of being far more lasting significance; even when alone we are being affected and affecting far more than the given moment. What impressions upon this fabric of reality do we want to leave? To me this suggests a kind of ongoing psychic interplay within spacetime, wherein nothing is ever truly lost.

Of course, one might feel compelled to interrogate the sense in which such a topographical unconscious model is true. True in a poetic sense? In a metaphorical sense? Or true in a metaphysical sense? Either way it seems that living as if such a model is true might be in itself rewarding and beneficial.

As a final thought, I think one implication of the Wotan paper is that it problematises the usual duel unconscious model that consists of the personal and the collective. Is it not more accurate to conceptualize the unconscious as layered, becoming increasingly universal the deeper one goes?