A Psychological Approach to Ethics

A Psychological Approach to Ethics

A PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO ETHICS

ABSTRACT This article has the purpose of calling attention to C.G. Jung's archetypal concept of the Self as an approach to ethics. The distinction between simple morality and transcendent ethics is established. Comparison is made between the archetype of the Self and Kant's Categorical Imperative. Freud's Superego, however. is assimilated to a "natural" outlook on morality, such as the notion of Altruism in sociobiology. The Superego is only the psychic effect of the current moral code, which could be explained either culturally or as a Lamarckian acquired characteristic of the Unconscious. Jung's transcendent ethics is expressed in an "ethical mandala.

This article has the simple purpose of calling attention to the possibility of an approach to ethics from Jung's archetypal conception of the Self. The whole of Jung's psychology is, of course, up to a certain point, ethical. It is not only a theoretical conception of the psyche and a method of cure, but it also teaches a way of life. Yet there are few essays in which Jung deals specifically with the mystery of moral and ethical behavior. The fundamental work in this connection is a small essay, “A Psychological View of Conscience”, published in 1958 №.

Of all the theories published on the subject by Jung's disciples, the best known is Neumann's Depth Psychology and New Ethics.2 I confess, however, that I am often incapable of understanding exactly what, from the point of view of ethics, the concept of "acceptance of evil" or 4'integration of the shadow" means. No clear explanation exists, to my knowledge, of what "aceptance of evil" really entails, nor is there a clear distinction between the two types of evil, the evil we suffer (malum poenae or malum quod patimur of St. Augustine), and evil we do or cause (malum culpae or malum quod agimus). The first type is a central issue in religion, as we know. Jung dealt with it in his controversial “Answer to Job"3 . But only the second type of evil is the direct concern of ethics.

We may ask, then, what does it mean to "accept evil," for instance, in Auschwitz? How could you? Brother Maximilian Kolbe perhaps did accept the malum poenae when he voluntarily offered himself for suffering and death, to replace another prisoner who was condemned to die of hunger in a dark cell. That is how he became a saint. On the other hand, the man who "accepts" the evil that is in himself is simply a criminal. The SS warden for instance, if you take the expression to its full significance. The problem of ethics deals precisely with the inner struggle between opposites, the evil we may suffer and the evil we may cause. Such is the inner struggle that fills an essential and eternal part of the human condition. No amount of lucubration around the “integration of the shadow” as proposed in the process of individuation, seems satisfactory to clarify the issue. If this is not so, then I really never understood the implications of Jung's conception of the dynamics of the psyche.

Another point I would like to challenge is whether or not there is indeed such a thing as “new ethics." The growth of ethics in the perennial