When
the psychoanalytical movement began with Freud, the main preoccupation of its
pioneers was clinical Freudian psychoanalysis started as a new approach
to psychiatry, and an alternative to the "reduction" of neuroses by
hypnosis. Psychiatry was then a very young science, hesitantly seeking its way
by the side of neurology. It has developed greatly since 1900, but it deals
essentially with the cure of diseased mentalities. It is properly bound to the
study of disorders of the brain and the nervous systems. It concerns itself with
definitely sick people, and with the removal of symptoms by specific treatments.
The
abnormal stresses and the demands for sudden adjustments to unnatural conditions
of living featured by modern civilization have, however, led to a state of
affairs in which the borderland between acute mental sickness and relatively
normal psychological health has become an extensive and thickly populated realm.
Mentally or emotionally unbalanced people crowd our farmlands as well as our
cities. They may not be really sick, in a patho-neurological sense; but they do
not face life with a healthy or wholesome outlook. Their responses to experience
are vitiated, deviated, or thwarted by mental-emotional pressures which blind
them, or so weary them that they lack the power to adjust themselves vigorously
and wholly to new situations. They meet life and people in a fragmentary,
uncertain, frustrated, and meaningless or compulsive manner. We may call these
persons "neurotics." It might be far better to consider them as
individuals who have lost faith in themselves, in human beings, and in life;
persons who have lost the power to give meaning to their experience; for they
have lost their sense of security and the feeling that the universe is ordered,
rich in values, and ensouled by divine intelligence and love.
Psychiatry
usually has nothing constructive to offer to these people —
no more than the modern type of clinical medicine can offer the
millions of tired individuals who are neither diseased nor healthy.
The medical profession today is primarily interested in curing
diseases, not in giving people the power to live fuller, richer
lives. Freud was typically a medical man; his method a reductive,
analytical method — a surgical method. Whatever philosophy he had was a
pessimistic one, which certainly could not stimulate faith in life, a sense of
wonder, or a wholesome feeling of creative joy.
Adler's
reaction against Freud's clinical, pessimistic attitude led him
a
superficial optimism, and a straining of ego and will, somewhat less
obviously
paralleling the glorious "affirmations" of Coue and American New
Thought. Success-psychology aims at the development of big, strong,
positive
egos with glowing "spiritual muscles." Social adjustments may be
successfully
made, but in most cases there is no possibility of real
integration
on an individual basis. The "success" obtained by such individuals
leads, in the end, to a breakdown of the collectivity, because
shadows and frustrations of the "successful," artificially positive
individuals
may have to be absorbed by others, or by the community (and nation) as a whole.
Carl
Jung understood this problem and sought a solution for it in the
collective
depths of the human psyche. The individual who, for some
reason,
cannot adjust in a wholesome manner to the challenge of human nature and social
conventions becomes overly involved and lost in his
difference from others
— in the peculiar ways in which he feels separated
from
the
norm. His salvation is possible only by his reorientation and
adjustment to the norm. But this norm is not only
— as Adler seems to
have
thought
— a social norm, a matter of behavior and success. It is a
growing power. It is the profound source of the common
humanity of all
men and
women. Jung interpreted this common
foundation as a group of
Primordial
Images deep in every person's collective unconscious. The
integration
of the personality results essentially from the progressive
"assimilation"
of these collective-generic, bio-cultural images, which are
presented
by Jung as syntheses of ancestral experiences, the dynamic
concentrates
of mankind's past. The process of integration is pictured also
as
the
"great work" of the individual person, not in isolation from society,
but nevertheless as an essentially individual achievement. Jung, heir to the
Swiss philosopher-alchemist tradition, was an individualist and a mystic.
He met
the universe and humanity within his own
collective depths.
This
approach is not possible for many persons. They would become lost on the way. They
have neither the individual heroism nor the depth of
determination required for this integration of the self by the self
— even with the necessarily
limited help of a psychologist-guide. They need something other than primordial
images as centers of integration. They need not only
an
image
of the "Self," or of divinity; they need a God who is real, who draws
them, who is with them — as well as in them, They need to consider,
a "common root" of humanity, not only as a common foundation or
source
of power and substance, but as the creation of a universal Being who is in His
infinite Mind an "ideal" of them, and who, by His grace, is
helping
them to become like this ideal. The Jungian psychologist is called upon to be a
modernized Hindu guru, with a lesser sense of responsibility and of
psychic identification with his client-disciple. But most people today are not
ready for a guru. They need a "religious teacher" who will not
only "talk" religion, but practice psychology. Fritz Kunkel built his
psychological approach in answer to this need.
Dr.
Kunkel was born near Berlin on September 6, 1889; and when he shifted his
attention from psychiatry proper to psychoanalysis, he was drawn at first to
Adler. He eventually became President of the German branch of the International
Society for Individual Psychology. Perhaps the determining factor in his
attraction to Adler's viewpoint was the fact that during the first World War he
was wounded at the firing line and lost his left arm. Adler's psychology gave
much attention to the psychological results of organic disability, because, as
we saw previously, it is a psychology of conscious overcoming. At the age of 28,
the young Dr. Kunkel found himself facing a crucial readjustment. Twenty-eight
is the time of the theoretical "second birth" — i.e., conscious
emergence into individual selfhood. For Kunkel, this time of emergence was
accompanied by a dire shock and his birth-chart reveals the complex workings of
some compulsion of destiny at the time. In his natal chart, Mars and Saturn are
conjunct in Leo in the 6th house (illness, army service, discipleship, etc.).
When he was wounded (August 20, 1917), the Sun was passing over his natal
Saturn, Neptune and Saturn over natal Venus (also in the 6th house and in exact
opposition to the natal Moon), while the progressed Moon in the 12th house was
coming to oppose the natal Mars. Thus, as Saturn completed its first transit
cycle around his birth-chart, Fritz Kunkel was facing a new life.
A year later, he
married — as Saturn crossed his 7th house cusp and Uranus crossed
his Ascendant. It was not too happy a marriage, but children came, and, out of
the experience of their growth, Dr. Kunkel undoubtedly gained the keen insight
into the relationship of children to parents which not only brought him fame as
a child-psychologist, but also developed into a foundation for his original
contribution to psychology: the principle of the "We-experience."
I
believe that Fritz Kunkel's life can be accurately divided into three periods,
and that he was thus a very significant example of that three-fold rhythm of
personality-growth which I discussed in my books,
The Astrology of
Personality
and New Mansions for New Men.
The first 28 years
constitute the period of family and race expression. Kunkel was raised on large
estates in Prussia; he attended universities in Berlin and
Munich. He experienced the fullness of the upper-class intellectual German
tradition. He was drawn into the war maelstrom, and freed from it
— and potentially from much
more, by "fate." The second period of Kunkel's life, between 28 and
42, divides itself into two halves; it involved the progressive arousal of his
individual spirit under stress and strain. Kunkel won over fate by the
power of his own creativity and faith. The result was the
"We-psychology."
How can a growing person emerge
harmoniously and happily from the matrix of the "primal We"
— as a child, as an adolescent, later as a mature
individual? How can psychology and education help to make this emergence
successful? How can the ubiquitous crises of growth be met? How can the
individual overcome the power of a collective past and any
handicap
of destiny? What faculties are needed? What psychological methods must be
developed? These are the basic lietmotifs to be found in all of Kunkel's books.
During
the first half of the second 28-year cycle, Kunkel had to seek answers, as it
were, against society by overcoming resistances and pressures,
unhappiness and the personal-emotional karma represented by his Venus,
Mars, and Saturn in Leo (an intercepted sign in the 6th house) in opposition to
the Moon in the 12th house. During the second half of the 28-year period (age
42-56) — after his second
marriage in the winter of 1931-32 — Kunkel was able to
give fuller form to his previous experiences, to demonstrate his wisdom and his
dominant capacity as an educator and teacher. His books became famous and were
published in America. He first came to America in the summer, 1936; then
permanently in 1939. He settled in Los Angeles, where he died in 1955. He wrote,
lectured, held seminars, and engaged in a private practice which he nevertheless
limited in order to pursue his literary and creative work.(1)
The last phase
of Kunkel's life really began when he landed in America (June 23,
1936). Neptune was then crossing his natal Sun, and Pluto his Part
of Fortune; Uranus, entering his 2nd house, was in square to the one
basic opposition (Moon-Venus) of his birth-chart. Saturn, in the
first sector of the birth-chart since the preceding year, indicated
a period of ego-reorientation. But Jupiter was nearing the zenith
— opposed by a conjunction of Mars and Venus in the 4th
house. The demand of his potential public destiny was opposing the rootedness of
his personal life in the ancestral home. The stage was set for
a
third level of overcoming.
Kunkel's
Jupiter holds the basic key to his destiny, just as the transits of Neptune mark
the most significant turning-points in his life. This dominant Jupiter in
Sagittarius, "lord" of the 9th and 10th houses (religion-philosophy
and public professional life), is undoubtedly the "ruler" of the
entire chart. It is the key to Kunkel's psychological doctrines — to the
educational-religious emphasis in his teaching. Indeed the twin principles of self-education
and religious awareness are the foundations of his thought.
At
first, he stressed the passage from the primordial "We-experience" to
the state of individual differentiation and isolation — he knew well the
problems this passage produces as, crisis after crisis, the individual seeks to
reach
his "true center," not only in the surface egohood born of social
overcoming (Adler) but in the depths of unconscious ancestral roots (Jung).
Having experienced this "unconscious of the past" in the depth of his
being, Kunkel then attempted to become aware of its polar counterpart in the
heights of consciousness, the "unconscious of the future." He realized
that it is the "presence of God" that draws man futureward and is
enthroned at the zenith of the psyche.
Kunkel
became interested in religious mysticism, in the Quaker outlook, and in the
living spirit of the Gospel. His book, Creation Continues,
deals with St.
Matthew's Gospel. At his 56th birthday, he began his last life-cycle under a
near conjunction of Jupiter and Neptune on his natal Mercury, and with his
progressed Moon about to cross his natal Pisces Ascendant (if the birth-time he
himself gave is correct). The emphasis is indeed Neptunian-Jupiterian through a
Piscean "focus of attention" (progressed Moon). Saturn is climbing the
rising arc of the birth-chart; Uranus is close to entering the 4th house; Pluto,
on the mid-point between Venus and Mars. A new period was beginning for the
founder of the We-psychology, which was increasingly becoming a God-psychology.
We-Psychology
(as our trend in psychology is usually called) proceeds from the fact that every
human being can only attain to self-experience insofar as he stands in relation
to a group of persons. Even though he may actually live in complete isolation,
he will yet be bound to some group (either in his thoughts or imagination)
through desire or hatred, criticism or hope.
The We-experience is never absent from the inner life of any single person. It
is the factor which compels everyone of us to share inwardly in the life of
others and to intervene — by protestation or criticism, by advocation or contribution,
or by the assumption of authority — in the destiny of groups, families,
nations
and civilizations. (Character, Growth, Education —
Introduction)
The more a person finds himself, the more he discovers that his personal
interest is replaced by his responsibility for the whole. He is really himself
only as far as he is a member of his group; and his group is alive only as it is
related to mankind. The real Self therefore is not "I"; it is "We." Moreover,
the human Self is not only human love and brotherhood; it is at the same time
the creativity of the Creator, working through human individuals. He who really
finds himself finds God. And he may say, as Saint Paul did, "It is no longer I
who live; Christ lives in me" — in this sense our true Self
is the final goal of our religious development. At first it is "I";
then it becomes "We"; and at last it will be "He." (In
Search of Maturity.
p. 76)
We
have to distinguish between the "unconscious of the past," our racial
memory and inheritance, and the "unconscious of the future,"
containing the infinite pyramid of values,
possibilities,
and tasks, which, as it were, are lying ahead of us. Exactly spoken of, these
values are timeless, but they must be lived in the future. (Ibid, p. 42)
The
power which moves us to love, to strive, to create, is not working through the
past. It is not a blind force, pushing us from behind, as the exploding gasoline
pushes the piston of a motor. It is the creative power of the ultimate end, the
value ahead of us in the infinite future, drawing us like a magnet, training us,
transforming us like a breeder who transforms flowers into more beautiful
flowers. (Ibid, p. 49)
Kunkel's
psychological approach stems directly from that of the Christian mystics; but he
gave to this mystic approach a new formulation in terms of depth-psychology, and
with reference to the profoundly changed background of society. Yet, however
modified the method of spiritual development Kunkel advocates, it finds as its
central core the basic process of interior metamorphosis which the mystics have
described in terms of Christian imagery. Reduced to its simplest form this
central event is a "crisis." Kunkel stresses this need for
"crisis" if there is to be real personal maturity. With the dramatic
intensity symbolized by his Leo planets, he wrote:
The crisis then is the transition from an eccentric, less conscious and less
powerful life — pivoting around
the Ego-image or an idolized image —
to a well-centered, more conscious and more powerful life
— pivoting around the real
Self. This Self proves to be the center both of the individual and of the group,
and therefore transforms the individual into a servant of the group —
that is love; and proves to be also our relation to God, and therefore
transforms individuals and groups into servants of God
— that is faith. The crisis, if it
is complete, means conversion. (In Search of Maturity,
pp. 221-222)
People
are "forced into their crisis by the consequences of their
deviations," and they usually, with great skill, "try to escape,"
postponing the inevitable. But there is no true spiritual development without a
crisis; the purpose of "religious philosophy" is to find the better,
smoother, more effective, less tragic and wasteful way of meeting the crisis.
In his teachings and practice, Kunkel greatly emphasized the value of crisis —
even of nightmares! He was fond of saying to people he met in the evening
— with a glint in his eyes
— "May you have a good
nightmare!" The reason for this attitude may be seen in his birth-chart. On the
whole, one may consider it a smooth and easy chart with a basic grand trine and
powerful sextiles, also a vibrant quintile (aspect of creativeness) of Venus to
Uranus — a very different
chart from the cruciform pattern of Jung's natal planets. The only square
pattern is a very broad one, in which
Neptune and Pluto square the mid-point between Saturn and the Sun
— about nine degrees
distant from either. However, Kunkel's natal Sun is in Virgo, and, as indicated
in my book The Pulse of Life,
Virgo is a symbol of crisis. It represents
the personal crisis; Pisces, social-collective crises.
Kunkel
had Pisces rising. His individual destiny and his original life-purpose
(Ascendant) were stamped by the social crisis of his era; and, as a German, he
was particularly receptive to these values of crisis. But while his birth-land
met the crisis of this era in a regressive (because neo-tribal) manner,
he was able to integrate himself out of it through his inner
revitalization of the Christ-Image. Thus, destiny led him to America just in
time to make it impossible for him to be caught in the disintegration of World
War ll. He was thus, in a sense, an "archetype" of what his people should
have done. He too had been maimed
— as his nation had been in 1918. But he
met his crisis and won. He can therefore be considered an Exemplar for the
collectivity from which he emerged as a creative individual, as a Teacher. This
was his spiritual destiny; but he had to win it, as everyone must. He won with
the power of his elevated 10th-house Jupiter. He was a man with a
"mission." He showed to modern humanity (and especially to Europeans) a
way of crisis-overcoming. This way is the Christed Way — the way made more
successful and glorious by the incorporation of the Christ-spirit through the
crisis.
The
center of crisis in Kunkel's chart is the conjunction of Mars and Saturn in Leo
— with Saturn close to the "Christ-star" Regulus. Regulus, the
"Heart of the Lion," is the Christ-star because it refers to the
spiritual transformation of the center of the emotional personality into a
Christ-center, the Heart of Man. When the "red lion" (of the
Alchemists) becomes the "white Christ," Man is born within and through
the individual human being. The "red lion" in the Germanic myth is
Frederick Barbarossa (the Red Beard), whose caricatural and degenerate
expression was Hitler, with the little mustache. Germans were taught to expect
the reappearance of their great Emperor. But the Emperor can only reappear in
spiritual value as the Christ — whose "kingdom is not of this world."
The proud Mars-Saturn power must be broken, in the realm of the heart (left side
of the body), before the heart can be purified and is able to welcome the
"presence of God." This is the crisis, common to many
— especially to
all potential leaders, including religious leaders!
This
crisis is further centered in Kunkel's chart at the Descendant, the cusp of the
house of marriage and partnership, which falls between the Leo Saturn and the
Virgo Sun. The Sun is also the mid-point of the arc between Venus and Uranus — a
quintile aspect. The "partner" is then the
center
of crisis, receiving the full blow of the squaring Neptune and Pluto. These two
planets stand alone, north of the exact line of opposition of Moon to Venus
which links the 12th and 6th houses; thus they act as a focal point of stress,
in the 3rd house and Gemini. Saturn is the karma; the Sun is the
overcoming, in creativity; the Descendant is the field of overcoming. The
challenger is the Neptune-Pluto conjunction
— that is, the collective
destiny and mentality of modern man. Jupiter is the message
— and the Messiah within. It
is the Light of Creative Meaning. Jupiter is also in near-quintile to Uranus and
semi-quintile to Venus. Thus a creative chain of approximate quintiles and
semi-quintiles relate the planets above the Venus-Moon line — which tends to be
a line of deviated, or "karmic," consciousness.
Later on, I shall discuss the educative possibilities which astrological
practice affords, along with the concept of religious self-education, one of the
latest developments in Dr. Kunkel's psychological approach. But let me now point
out that our present period constitutes a collective, global crisis
— made
particularly acute by the possibility of a nuclear catastrophy. Every responsive
individual not tightly insulated by the structures of his ego is necessarily a
participant in this crisis. The teaching of a method to solve the crisis —
whether in its generalized social aspect, or as focalized through an individual — is thus the most important need of this day and age. The problem affects many
more men and women that those who are ready for psychiatric care. It cannot be
solved by an Adlerian glorification of the conscious "I," and the path
of Jungian depth-psychology makes too many demands on both the psychologist and
the client to be practical for the average individual.
Something
more is obviously needed. What Freud took out of psychology must be reinstated,
but in a new way. We may call it "the Soul,"
or "God," or "Faith," or "the Master." One thing
seems certain: either human beings will very soon have to use some revitalized
or new psychological method enabling them to transform themselves as creative
persons,
meeting and solving their crises freely and on an individual basis
—
or else, humanity will have to be swept by the compulsive fervor of a new
world-religion oriented toward solving crises on a
collective basis.
Perhaps
both solutions can be integrated; but we must recall that in Christendom the
individual salvation of the mystic was very much subservient to the collective
salvation of the mass of the faithful. Even today, the value of an
individualized solution to today's crisis must be powerfully stressed with
utmost convincingness if it is to be made acceptable to the many.
1.
His
translated books are: Let's Be Normal
(1929);
God Helps
Those (1931);
What it Means to Grow Up
(1936);
Conquer Yourself
(1936);
Character,
Growth, Education
(1938); How Character Develops
and
In
Search of Maturity
(1943) were written in English
— the last book is particularly
remarkable.
Astrology
and the Modern Psyche
