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it, the flame of evil glowers in our moral indignation. It must be so, for it is necessary that someone should feel indignant, that someone should let himself be the sword of judgment wielded by fate. Evil calls for expiation, otherwise the wicked will destroy the world utterly, or the good suffocate in their rage which they cannot vent, and in either case no good will come of it. 
When evil breaks at any point into the order of things, our whole circle of psychic protection is disrupted. Action inevitably calls up reaction, and, in the matter of destructiveness, this turns out to be just as bad as the crime, and possibly even worse, because the evil must be exterminated root and branch. In order to escape the contaminating touch of evil we need a proper rite de sortie) a solemn admission of guilt by judge, hangman, and public, followed by an act of expiation. 
The terrible things that have happened in Germany, and the moral downfall of a "nation of eighty millions," are a blow aimed at all Europeans. (We used to be able to relegate such things to "Asia!") The fact that one member of the European family could sink to the level of the concentration camp throws a dubious light on all the others. Who are we to imagine that "it couldn't happen here"? We have only to multiply the population of Switzerland by twenty to become a nation of eighty millions, and our public intelligence and morality would then automatically be divided by twenty in consequence of the devastating moral and psychic effects of living together in huge masses. Such a state of things provides the basis for collective crime, and it is then really a miracle if the crime is not committed. Do we seriously believe that we would have been immune? We, who have so many traitors and political psychopaths in our midst? It has filled us with horror to realize all that man is capable of, and of which, therefore, we too are capable. Since then a terrible doubt about humanity, and about ourselves, gnaws at our hearts. 
Nevertheless, it should be clear to everyone that such a state of degradation can come about only under certain conditions. The most important of these is the accumulation of urban, industrialized masses-of people torn from the soil, engaged in onesided employment, and lacking every healthy instinct, even that of self-preservation. Loss of the instinct of self-preservation can 
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be measured in terms of dependence on the State, which is a bad symptom. Dependence on the State means that everybody relies on everybody else (= State) instead of on himself. Every man hangs on to the next and enjoys a false feeling of security, for one is still hanging in the air even when hanging in the company of ten thousand other people. The only difference is that one is no longer aware of one's own insecurity. The increasing dependence on the State is anything but a healthy symptom; it means that the whole nation is in a fair way to becoming a herd of sheep, constantly relying on a shepherd to drive them into good pastures. The shepherd's staff soon becomes a rod of iron, and the shepherds turn into wolves. What a distressing sight it was to see the whole of Germany heave a sigh of relief when a megalomaniac psychopath proclaimed, "I take over the responsibilityl" Any man who still possesses the instinct of selfpreservation knows perfectly well that only a swindler would offer to relieve him of responsibility, for surely no one in his senses would dream of taking responsibility for the existence of another. The man who promises everything is sure to fulfil nothing, and everyone who promises too much is in danger of using evil means in order to carry out his promises, and is already on the road to perdition. The steady growth of the Welfare State is no doubt a very fine thing from one point of view, but from another it is a doubtful blessing, as it robs people of their individual responsibility and turns them into infants and sheep. Besides this, there is the danger that the capable will simply be exploited by the irresponsible, as happened on a huge scale in Germany. The citizen's instinct of self-preservation should be safeguarded at all costs, for, once a man is cut off from the nourishing roots of instinct, he becomes the shuttlecock of every wind that blows. He is then no better than a sick animal, demoralized and degenerate, and nothing short of a catastrophe can bring him back to health. 
I own that in saying all this I feel rather like the prophet who, according to Josephus, lifted up his voice in lamentation over the city as the Romans laid siege to Jerusalem. It proved not the slightest use to the city, and a stone missile from a Roman ballista put an end to the prophet. 
With the best will in the world we cannot build a paradise on earth, and even if we could, in a very short time we would 201 

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have degenerated in every way. We would take delight in destroying our paradise, and then, just as foolishly, marvel at what we had done. Moreover, if we happened to be a "nation of eighty millions" we would be convinced that the "others" were to blame, and our self-confidence would be at such a low ebb that we would not even think of shouldering the responsibility or taking the blame for anything. 
This is a pathological, demoralized, and mentally abnormal condition: one side of us does things which the other (so-called decent) side prefers to ignore. This side is in a perpetual state of defence against real and supposed accusations. In reality the chief accuser is not outside, but the judge who dwells in our own hearts. Since this is nature's attempt to bring about a cure, it would be wiser not to persist too long in rubbing the noses of the Germans in their own abominations, lest we drown the voice of the accuser in their hearts-and also in our own hearts and those of our Allies. If only people could realize what an enrichment it is to find one's own guilt, what a sense of honour and spiritual dignity! But nowhere does there seem to be a glimmering of this insight. Instead, we hear only of attempts to shift the blame on to others-"no one will admit to having been a Nazi." The Germans were never wholly indifferent to the impression they made on the outside world. They resented disapproval and hated even to be criticized. Inferiority feelings make people touchy and lead to compensatory efforts to impress. As a result, the German thrusts himself forward and seeks to curry favour, or "German efficiency" is demonstrated with such aplomb that it leads to a reign of terror and the shooting of hostages. The German no longer thinks of these things as murder, for he is lost in considerations of his own prestige. Inferiority feelings are usually a sign of inferior feeling-which is not just a play on words. All the intellectual and technological achievements in the world cannot make up for inferiority in the matter of feeling. The pseudo-scientific race-theories with which it was dolled up did not make the extermination of the Jews any more acceptable, and neither do falsifications of history make a wrong policy appear any more trustworthy. 
This spectacle recalls the figure of what N ietzsche so aptly calls the "pale criminal," who in reality shmvs all the signs of hysteria. He simply will not and cannot admit that he is what 202 

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he is; he cannot endure his own guilt, just as he could not help incurring it. He will stoop to every kind of self-deception if only he can escape the sight of himself. It is true that this happens everywhere, but nowhere does it appear to be such a national characteristic as in Germany. I am by no means the first to have been struck by the inferiority feelings of the Germans. What did Goethe, Heine, and N ietzsche have to say about their countrymen? A feeling of inferiority does not in the least mean that it is unjustified. Only, the inferiority does not refer to that side of the personality, or to the function, in which it visibly appears, but to an inferiority which none the less really exists even though only dimly suspected. This condition can easily lead to an hysterical dissociation of the personality, which consists essentially in one hand not knowing what the other is doing, in wanting to jump over one's own shadow, and in looking for everything dark, inferior, and culpable in others. Hence the hysteric always complains of being surrounded by people who are incapable of appreciating him and who are activated only by bad motives; by inferior mischief-makers, a crowd of submen who should be exterminated neck and crop so that the Superman can live on his high level of perfection. The very fact that his thinking and feeling proceed along these lines is clear proof of inferiority in action. Therefore all hysterical people are compelled to torment others, because they are unwilling to hurt themselves by admitting their own inferiority. But since nobody can jump out of his skin and be rid of himself, they stand in their own way everywhere as their own evil spirit-and that is what we call an hysterical neurosis. 
All these pathological features-complete lack of insight into one's own character, auto-erotic self-admiration and self-extenuation, denigration and terrorization of one's fellow men (how contemptuously Hitler spoke of his own people!), projection of the shadow, lying, falsification of reality, determination to impress by fair means or foul, bluffing and double-crossing-all these were united in the man who was diagnosed clinically as an hysteric, and whom a strange fate chose to be the political, moral, and religious spokesman of Germany for twelve years. Is this pure chance? 
A more accurate diagnosis of Hitler's condition would be pseudologia PhantasticaJ that form of hysteria which is character- 
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ized by a peculiar talent for believing one's own lies. For a short spell, such people usually meet with astounding success, and for that reason are socially dangerous. Nothing has such a convincing effect as a lie one invents and believes oneself, or an evil deed or intention whose righteousness one regards as self-evident. At any rate they carry far more conviction than the good man and the good deed, or even than the wicked man and his purely wicked deed. Hitler's theatrical, obviously hysterical gestures struck all foreigners (with a few amazing exceptions) as purely ridiculous. When I saw him with my own eyes, he suggested a psychic scarecrow (with a broomstick for an outstretched arm) rather than a human being. It is also difficult to understand how his ranting speeches, delivered in shrill, grating, womanish tones, could have made such an impression. But the German people would never have been taken in and carried away so completely if this figure had not been a reflected image of the collective German hysteria. It is not without serious misgivings that one ventures to pin the label of "psychopathic inferiority" on to a whole nation, and yet, heaven knows, it is the only explanation which could in any way account for the effect this scarecrow had on the masses. A sorry lack of education, conceit that bordered on madness, a very mediocre intelligence combined with the hysteric's cunning and the power fantasies of an adolescent, were written all over this demagogue's face. His gesticulations were all put on, devised by an hysterical mind intent only on making an impression. He behaved in public like a man living in his own biography, in this case as the sombre, daemonic "man of iron" of popular fiction, the ideal of an infantile public whose knowledge of the world is derived from the deified heroes of trashy films. These personal observations led me to conclude at the time (1937) that, when the final catastrophe came, it would be far greater and bloodier than I had previously supposed. For this theatrical hysteric and transparent impostor was not strutting about on a small stage, but was riding the armoured divisions of the Wehrmacht, with all the weight of German heavy industry behind him. Encountering only slight and in any case ineffective opposition from within, the nation of eighty millions crowded into the circus to witness its own destruction. 
	420 	Among Hitler's closest associates, Goebbels and Goring stand 
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out as equally striking figures. Goring is the good fellow and ban vivant type of cheat, who takes in the simple-minded with his jovial air of respectability; Goebbels, a no-less-sinister and dangerous character, is the typical KafJeehausliterat and cardsharper, handicapped and at the same time branded by nature. Anyone partner in this unholy trinity should have been enough to make any man whose instincts were not warped cross himself three times. But what in fact happened? Hitler was exalted to the skies; there were even theologians who looked upon him as the Saviour. Goring was popular on account of his weaknesses; few people would believe his crimes. Goebbels was tolerated because many people think that lying is inseparable from success, and that success justifies everything. Three of these types at one time were really the limit, and one is at a loss to imagine how anything quite so monstrous ever came to power. But we must not forget that we are judging from today, from a knowledge of the events which led to the catastrophe. Our judgment would certainly be very different had our information stopped short at 1933 or 1934. At that time, in Germany as well as in Italy, there were not a few things that appeared plausible and seemed to speak in favour of the regime. An undeniable piece of evidence in this respect was the disappearance of the unemployed, who used to tramp the German highroads in their hundreds of thousands. And after the stagnation and decay of the post-war years, the refreshing wind that blew through the two countries was a tempting sign of hope. Meanwhile, the whole of Europe looked on at this spectacle like Mr. Chamberlain, who was prepared at most for a heavy shower. But it is just this extreme speciousness that is the peculiar genius of pseudologia Phantastica, and Mussolini also had a touch of it (kept Within bounds, however, while his brother Arnaldo was alive). It introduces its plans in the most innocent way in the world, finding the most appropriate words and the most plausible arguments, and there is nothing to show that its intentions are bad from the start. They may even be good, genuinely good. In the case of Mussolini, for instance, it might be difficult to draw a definite line between black and white. Where pseudalagia is at work one can never be sure that the intention to deceive is the principal motive. Quite often the "great plan" plays the leading role, and it is only when it comes to the ticklish question of 
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bringing this plan into reality that every opportunity is exploited and any means is good enough, on the principle that "the end justifies the means." In other words, things only become dangerous when the pathological liar is taken seriously by a wider public. Like Faust, he is bound to make a pact with the devil and thus slips off the straight path. It is even possible that this is more or less what happened to Hitler-let us give him the benefit of the doubt! But the infamies of his book, once it is shorn of its Schwabinger 3 brand of bombast, make one suspicious, and one cannot help wondering if the evil spirit had not already taken possession of this man long before he seized power. Round about 1936, many people in Germany were asking themselves the same question; they expressed fears that the Fiihrer might fall a victim to "evil influences," he dabbled too much in "black magic," etc. Clearly these misgivings came much too late; but even so, it is just conceivable that Hitler himself may have had good intentions at first, and only succumbed to the use of the wrong means, or the misuse of his means, in the course of 
his development. 
But I should like to emphasize above all that it is part and 
parcel of the pathological liar's make-up to be plausible. Therefore it is no easy matter, even for experienced people, to form an opinion, particularly while the plan is still apparently in the idealistic stage. It is then quite impossible to foresee how things are likely to develop, and Mr. Chamberlain's "give-it-a-chance" attitude seems to be the only policy. The overwhelming majority of the Germans were just as much in the dark as people abroad, and quite naturally fell an easy prey to Hitler's speeches, so artfully attuned to German (and not only German) taste. 
Although we may be able to understand why the Germans were misled in the first place, the almost total absence of any reaction is quite incomprehensible. Were there not army commanders who could have ordered their troops to do anything they pleased? Why then was the reaction totally lacking? I can only explain this as the outcome of a peculiar state of mind, a passing or chronic disposition which, in an individual, we call 
hysteria. 
As I cannot take it for granted that the layman knows exactly 
what is meant by "hysteria," I had better explain that the "hys3 [Schwabing is the bohemian quarter of Munich.-EDlToRs.] 
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terical" disposition forms a sub-division of what are known as "psychopathic inferiorities." This term by no means implies that the individual or the nation is "inferior" in every respect, but only that there is a place of least resistance, a peculiar instability, which exists independently of all the other qualities. An hysterical disposition means that the opposites inherent in every psyche, and especially those affecting character, are further apart than in normal people. This greater distance produces a higher energic tension, which accounts for the undeniable energy and drive of the Germans. On the other hand, the greater distance between the opposites produces inner contradictions, conflicts of conscience, disharmonies of character-in short, everything we see in Goethe's Faust. Nobody but a German could ever have devised such a figure, it is so intrinsically, so infinitely German. In Faust we see the same "hungering for the infinite" born of inner contradiction and dichotomy, the same eschatological expectation of the Great Fulfilment. In him we experience the loftiest flight of the mind and the descent into the depths of guilt and darkness, and still worse, a fall so low that Faust sinks to the level of a mountebank and wholesale murderer as the outcome of his pact with the devil. Faust, too, is split and sets up "evil" outside himself in the shape of Mephistopheles, to serve as an alibi in case of need. He likewise "knows nothing of what has happened," i.e., what the devil did to Philemon and Baucis. We never get the impression that he has real insight or suffers genuine remorse. His avowed and unavowed worship of success stands in the way of any moral reflection throughout, obscuring the ethical conflict, so that Faust's moral personality remains misty. He never attains the character of reality: he is not a real human being and cannot become one (at least not in this world). He remains the German idea of a human being, and therefore an image-somewhat overdone and distorted-of the average German. 
The essence of hysteria is a systematic dissociation, a loosening of the opposites which normally are held firmly together. It may even go to the length of a splitting of the personality, a condition in which quite literally one hand no longer knows what the other is doing. As a rule there is amazing ignorance of the shadow; the hysteric is only aware of his good motives, and when the bad ones can no longer be denied he becomes the unscrupu- 
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lous Superman and Herrenmensch who fancies he is ennobled by the magnitude of his aim. 
	425 	Ignorance of one's other side creates great inner insecurity. 
One does not really know who one is; one feels inferior somewhere and yet does not wish to know where the inferiority lies, with the result that a new inferiority is added to the original one. This sense of insecurity is the source of the hysteric's prestige psychology, of his need to make an impression, to flaunt his merits and insist on them, of his insatiable thirst for recognition, admiration, adulation, and longing to be loved. It is the cause of that loud-mouthed arrogance, uppishness, insolence, and tactlessness by which so many Germans, who at home grovel like dogs, win a bad reputation for their countrymen abroad. Insecurity is also responsible for their tragic lack of civic courage, criticized by Bismarck (one need only recall the pitiable role of the Ger- 
man generals). 
	426 	The lack of reality, so striking in Faust, produces a corre- 
sponding lack of realism in the German. He merely talks of it, boasting of his "ice-cold" realism, which in itself is enough to expose his hysteria. His realism is nothing but a pose, a stagerealism. He merely acts the part of one who has a sense of reality, but what does he actually want to do? He wants to conquer the world in spite of the whole world. Of course, he has no idea how it can be done. But at least he might know that the enterprise had failed once before. Unfortunately a plausible reason, that explains away the failure by means of lies, is immediately invented and believed. How many Germans were taken in by the legend of the "stab in the back" in 1918? And how many "stab in the back" legends are floating around today? Believing one's own lies when the wish is father to the lie is a well-known hysterical symptom and a distinct sign of inf~riority. One would have thought that the bloodbath of the first World War would have been enough, but not a bit of it; glory, conquest, and bloodthirstiness acted like a smoke-screen on the German mind, so that reality, only dimly perceived at best, was completely blotted out. In an individual we can this sort of thing an hysterical twilight-state. When a whole nation finds itself in this condition it will follow a mediumistic Fiihrer over the housetops with a sleep-walker's assurance, only to land in the street 
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	427 	Supposing we Swiss had started such a war and had thrown 
all our experience, all warnings and all our knowledge of the world to the winds as blindly as the Germans, and had finally gone to the length of establishing an original edition of Buchenwald in our country. We should no doubt feel very disagreeably surprised if a foreigner declared that the Swiss were one and all completely mad. No reasonable person would be surprised at such a verdict, but can we say it about Germany? I wonder what the Germans themselves think. All I know is that at the time of the censorship in Switzerland we were not permitted to say these things aloud, and now it seems we cannot say them out of consideration for Germany which is laid so low. When on earth, I should like to ask, may one venture to form an opinion of one's own? To my mind, the history of the last twelve years is the casechart of an hysterical patient. The truth should not be withheld from him, for when the doctor makes a diagnosis he does so as part of his effort to find the remedy, and not in order to hurt, degrade, or insult the sufferer. A neurosis or a neurotic disposition is not a disgrace, it is a handicap, and sometimes merely a fafon de parler. It is not a fatal disease, but it does grow worse to the degree that one is determined to ignore it. When I say that the Germans are psychically ill it is surely kinder than saying that they are criminals. I have no wish to irritate the notorious sensitiveness of the hysteric, but there comes a time when we can no longer afford to gloss over all the painful symptoms and to help the patient forget what has happened, merely in order that his pathological condition should remain undisturbed. I would not like to insult the healthy-minded and decent German by suspecting him of being a coward who runs away from his own image. We should do him the honour of treating him like a man and telling him the truth, and not conceal from him that our soul is cut to the quick by the terrible things that happened in his country and were perpetrated by the Germans in Europe. We are hurt and indignant and have no particular feelings of loving-kindness-nor can any amount of determination and will-power twist these sentiments into a Christian "love of your neighbour." For the sake of the healthy-minded and decent Germans one should not attempt to do so; they would surely prefer the truth to insulting forbearance. 
	42e 	Hysteria is never cured by hushing up the truth, whether in 
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an individual or in a nation. But can we say that a whole nation is hysterical? "Ve can say it as much or as little of a nation as of an individual. Even the craziest person is not completely crazy; quite a number of his functions are still normal, and there may even be times when he himself is fairly normal too. This is even truer of hysteria, where there is really nothing wrong except exaggerations and excesses on the one hand, and weakness or temporary paralysis of normal functions on the other. In spite of his psychopathic condition the hysteric is very nearly normal. We may therefore expect many parts of the psychic body-politic to be entirely normal even though the over-all picture can only be described as hysterical. 
	429 	The Germans undoubtedly have their own peculiar psychol- 
ogy which distinguishes them from their neighbours, in spite of the many human qualities which they share with all mankind. Have they not demonstrated to the world that they consider themselves the Herrenvolk) with the right to disregard every human scruple? They have labelled other nations inferior and done their best to exterminate them. 
	430 	In view of these terrible facts, it is a mere bagatelle to turn 
the tables on the Herrenvolk and apply the diagnosis of inferiority to the murderer instead of the murdered, while remaining fully conscious that one is injuring all those Germans who suffered their nation's tribulation with open eyes. It does indeed hurt one to hurt others. But, as Europeans-a brotherhood which includes the Germans-we are wounded, and if we wound in return it is not with the intention of torturing but, as I said earlier, of discovering the truth. As in the case of collective guilt, the diagnosis of its mental condition extends to the whole nation, and indeed to the whole of Europe, whose mental condition for some time past has hardly been normal. Whether we like it or not we are bound to ask: What is wrong with our art, that most delicate of all instruments for reflecting the national psyche? How are we to explain the blatantly pathological element in modern painting? Atonal music? The far-reaching influence of Joyce's fathomless Ulysses? Here we already have the germ of what was to become a political reality in Germany. 
	431 	The European, or rather the white man in general, is scarcely 
in a position to judge of his own state of mind. He is too deeply involved. I had ;;tlways wanted to see Europeans through other ~lQ 

AFTER THE CATASTROPHE 
eyes, and eventually I was able, on my many journeys, to establish sufficiently close relationships with non-Europeans to see the European through their eyes. The white man is nervous, restless, hurried, unstable, and (in the eyes of non-Europeans) possessed by the craziest ideas, in spite of his energy and gifts which give him the feeling of being infinitely superior. The crimes he has committed against the coloured races are legion, though obviously this is no justification for any fresh crime, just as the individual is no better for being in a vast company of bad people. Primitives dread the sharply focussed stare in the eye of the European, which seems to them like the evil eye. A Pueblo chieftain once confided to me that he thought all Americans (the only white men he knew) were crazy, and the reasons he gave for this view sounded exactly like a description of people who were possessed. "VeIl, perhaps we are. For the first time since the dawn of history we have succeeded in swallowing the whole of primitive animism into ourselves, and with it the spirit that animated nature. Not only were the gods dragged down from their planetary spheres and transformed into chthonic demons, but, under the influence of scientific enlightenment, even this band of demons, which at the time of Paracelsus still frolicked happily in mountains and woods, in rivers and human dwelling-places, was reduced to a miserable remnant and finally vanished altogether. From time immemorial, nature was always filled with spirit. Now, for the first time, we are living in a lifeless nature bereft of gods. No one will deny the important role which the powers of the human psyche, personified as "gods," played in the past. The mere act of enlightenment may have destroyed the spirits of nature, but not the psychic factors that correspond to them, such as suggestibility, lack of criticism, fearfulness, propensity to superstition and prejudice-in short, all those qualities which make possession possible. Even though nature is depsychized, the psychic conditions which breed demons are as actively at work as ever. The demons have not really disappeared but have merely taken on another form: they have become unconscious psychic forces. This process of reabsorption went hand in hand with an increasing inflation of the ego, which became more and more evident after the sixteenth century. Finally we even began to be aware of the psyche, and, as history shows, the discovery of the uncon- 
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scious was a particularly painful episode. Just when people were congratulating themselves on having abolished all spooks, it turned out that instead of haunting the attic or old ruins the spooks were flitting about in the heads of apparently normal Europeans. Tyrannical, obsessive, intoxicating ideas and delusions were abroad everywhere, and people began to believe the most absurd things, just as the possessed do. 
	432 	The phenomenon we have witnessed in Germany was noth- 
ing less than the first outbreak of epidemic insanity, an irruption of the unconscious into what seemed to be a tolerably wellordered world. A whole nation, as well as countless millions belonging to other nations, were swept into the blood-drenched madness of a war of extermination. No one knew what was happening to him, least of all the Germans, who allowed themselves to be driven to the slaughterhouse by their leading psychopaths like hypnotized sheep. Maybe the Germans were predestined to this fate, for they showed the least resistance to the mental contagion that threatened every European. But their peculiar gifts might also have enabled them to be the very people to draw helpful conclusions from the prophetic example of Nietzsche. N ietzsche was German to the marrow of his bones, even to the abstruse symbolism of his madness. It was the psychopath's weakness that prompted him to play with the "blond beast" and the "Superman." It was certainly not the healthy elements in the German nation that led to the triumph of these pathological fantasies on a scale never known before. The weakness of the German character, like N ietzsche' s, proved to be fertile soil for hysterical fantasies, though it must be remembered that N ietzsche himself not only criticized the German Philistine very freely b~t laid himself open to attack on a broad front. Here again the Germans had a priceless opportunity for self-knowledge-and let it slip. And what could they not have learned from 
the suet-and-syrup of Wagner! 
	433 	Nevertheless, with the calamitous founding of the Reich in 
1871, the devil stole a march on the Germans, dangling before them the tempting bait of power, aggrandizement, national arrogance. Thus they were led to imitate their prophets and to take their words literally, but not to understand them. And so it was that the Germans allowed themselves to be deluded by these disastrous fantasies and succumbed to the age-old temptations 
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of Satan, instead of turning to their abundant spiritual potentialities, which, because of the greater tension between the inner opposites, would have stood them in good stead. But, their Christianity forgotten, they sold their souls to technology, exchanged morality for cynicism, and dedicated their highest aspirations to the forces of destruction. Certainly everybody else is doing much the same thing, but even so there really are chosen people who have no right to do such things because they should be striving for higher treasures. At any rate the Germans are not among those who may enjoy power and possessions with impunity. Just think for a moment what anti-Semitism means for the German: he is trying to use others as a scapegoat for his own greatest fault! This symptom alone should have told him that he had got on to a hopelessly wrong track. 
	434 	After the last World War the world should have begun to 
reflect, and above all Germany, which is the nerve-centre of Europe. But the spirit turned negative, neglected the decisive questions, and sought solutions in its own negation. How different it was at the time of the Reformation! Then the spirit of Germany rose manfully to the needs of Christendom, though the answer-as we might expect from the German tension of opposites-was somewhat too extreme. But at least this spirit did not shrink from its own problems. Goethe, too, was a prophet when he held up before his people the example of Faust's pact with the devil and the murder of Philemon and Baucis. If, as Burckhardt says, Faust strikes a chord in every German soul, this chord has certainly gone on ringing. We hear it echoing in Nietzsche's Superman, the amoral worshipper of instinct, whose God is dead, and who presumes to be God himself, or rather a demon "six thousand feet beyond good and evil." And where has the feminine side, the soul, disappeared to in N ietzsche? Helen has vanished in Hades, and Eurydice will never return. Already we behold the fateful travesty of the denied Christ: the sick prophet is himself the Crucified, and, going back still further, the dismembered Dionysus-Zagreus. The raving prophet carries us back to the long-forgotten past: he had heard the call of destiny in the shrill whistling of the hunter, the god of the rustling forests, of drunken ecstasy, and of the berserkers who were possessed by the spirits of wild animals. 
	435 	While Nietzsche was prophetically responding to the schism 
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of the Christian world with the art of thinking, his brother in spirit, Richard Wagner, was doing the same thing with the art of music. Germanic prehistory comes surging up, thunderous and stupefying, to fill the gaping breach in the Church. Wagner salved his conscience with Parsifal) for which Nietzsche could never forgive him, but the Castle of the Grail vanished into an unknown land. The message was not heard and the omen went unheeded. Only the orgiastic frenzy caught on and spread like an epidemic. Wotan the storm-god had conquered. Ernst Jiinger sensed that very clearly: in his book On the Marble Cliffs a wild huntsman comes into the land, bringing with him a wave of possession greater than anything known even in the Middle Ages. Nowhere did the European spirit speak more plainly than it did in Germany, and nowhere was it more tragically misunderstood. 
Now Germany has suffered the consequences of the pact with the devil, she has experienced madness and is torn in pieces like Zagreus, she has been ravished by the berserkers of her god Wotan, been cheated of her soul for the sake of gold and worldmastery, and defiled by the scum rising from the lowest depths. 
The Germans must understand why the whole world is outraged, for our expectations had been so different. Everybody was unanimous in recognizing their gifts and their efficiency, and nobody doubted that they were capable of great things. The disappointment was all the more bitter. But the fate of Germany should not mislead Europeans into nursing the illusion that the whole world's wickedness is localized in Germany. They should realize that the German catastrophe was only one crisis in the general European sickness. Long before the Hitler era, in fact before the first World War, there were symptoms of the mental change taking place in Europe. The medieval picture of the world was breaking up and the metaphysical authority that ruled it was fast disappearing, only to reappear in man. Did not N ietzsche announce that God was dead and that his heir was the Superman, that doomed rope-dancer and fool? It is an immutable psychological law that when a projection has come to an end it always returns to its origin. So when somebody hits on the singular idea that God is dead, or does not exist at all, the psychic God-image, which is a dynamic part of the psyche's structure, finds its way back into the subject and produces a condi- 
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tion of "God-Almightiness," that is to say all those qualities which are peculiar to fools and madmen and therefore lead to catastrophe. 
This, then, is the great problem that faces the whole of 
Christianity: where now is the sanction for goodness and justice, which was once anchored in metaphysics? Is it really only brute force that decides everything? Is the ultimate authority only the will of whatever man happens to be in power? Had Germany been victorious, one might almost have believed that this was the last word. But as the "thousand-year Reich" of violence and infamy lasted only a few years before it collapsed in ruins, we might be disposed to learn the lesson that there are other, equally powerful forces at work which in the end destroy all that is violent and unjust, and that consequently it does not pay to build on false principles. But unfortunately, as history shows, things do not always turn out so reasonably in this world of ours. 
"God-Almightiness" does not make man divine, it merely fills him with arrogance and arouses everything evil in him. It produces a diabolical caricature of man, and this inhuman mask is so unendurable, such a torture to wear, that he tortures others. He is split in himself, a prey to inexplicable contradictions. Here we have the picture of the hysterical state of mind, of Nietzsche's "pale criminal." Fate has confronted every German with his inner counterpart: Faust is face to face with Mephistopheles and can no longer say, "So that was the essence of the brute!" He must confess instead: "That was my other side, my alter ego) my all too palpable shadow which can no longer be denied." 
This is not the fate of Germany alone, but of all Europe. 
We must all open our eyes to the shadow who looms behind contemporary man. We have no need to hold up the devil's mask before the Germans. The facts speak a plainer language, and anyone who does not understand it is simply beyond help. As to what should be done about this terrifying apparition, everyone must work this out for himself. It is indeed no small matter to know of one's own guilt and one's own evil, and there is certainly nothing to be gained by losing sight of one's shadow. When we are conscious of our guilt we are in a more favourable position-we can at least hope to change and improve ourselves. As we know, anything that remains in the unconscious 
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is incorrigible; psychological corrections can be made only in consciousness. Consciousness of guilt can therefore act as a powerful moral stimulus. In every treatment of neurosis the discovery of the shadow is indispensable, otherwise nothing changes. In this respect, I rely on those parts of the German bodypolitic which have remained sound to draw conclusions from the facts. Without guilt, unfortunately, there can be no psychic maturation and no widening of the spiritual horizon. Was it not Meister Eckhart who said: "For this reason God is willing to bear the brunt of sins and often winks at them, mostly sending them to people for whom he has prepared some high destiny. See! Who was dearer to our Lord or more intimate with him than his apostles? Not one of them but fell into mortal sin, and all were mortal sinners." 4 
	44~ 	Where sin is great, "grace doth much more abound." Such 
an experience brings about an inner transformation, and this is infinitely more important than political and social reforms which are all valueless in the hands of people who are not at one with themselves. This is a truth which we are forever forgetting, because our eyes are fascinated by the conditions around us and riveted on them instead of examining our own heart and conscience. Every demagogue exploits this human weakness when he points with the greatest possible outcry to all the things that are wrong in the outside world. But the principal and indeed the only thing that is wrong with the world is man. 
	142 	If the Germans today are having a hard time of it outwardly, 
fate has at least given them a unique opportunity of turning their eyes inward to the inner man. In this way they might make amends for a sin of omission of which our whole civilization is guilty. Everything possible has been done for the outside world: science has been refined to an unimaginable extent, technical achievement has reached an almost uncanny degree of perfection. But what of man, who is expected to administer all these blessings in a reasonable way? He has simply been taken for granted. No one has stopped to consider that neither morally nor psychologically is he in any way adapted to such changes. As blithely as any child of nature he sets about enjoying these dangerous playthings, completely oblivious of the shadow lurk- 
4 Works, trans. by Evans, 1I, pp. 18-19. 216 

AFTER THE CATASTROPHE 
ing behind him, ready to seize them in its greedy grasp and turn them against a still infantile and unconscious humanity. And who has had a more immediate experience of this feeling of helplessness and abandonment to the powers of darkness than the German who fell into the clutches of the Germans? 
	443 	If collective guilt could only be understood and accepted, a 
great step forward would have been taken. But this alone is no cure, just as no neurotic is cured by mere understanding. The question remains: How am I to live with this shadow? What attitude is required if I am to be able to live in spite of evil? In order to find valid answers to these questions a complete spiritual renewal is needed. And this cannot be given gratis, each man must strive to achieve it for himself. Neither can old formulas which once had a value be brought into force again. The eternal truths cannot be transmitted mechanically; in every epoch they must be born anew from the human psyche. 
217 

444 
445 
446 

THE FIGHT WITH THE SHADOW 1 
The indescribable events of the last decade lead one to suspect that a peculiar psychological disturbance was a possible cause. If you ask a psychiatrist what he thinks about these things, you must naturally expect to get an answer from his particular point of view. Even so, as a scientist, the psychiatrist makes no claim to omniscience, for he regards his opinion merely as one contribution to the enormously complicated task of finding a 
comprehensive explanation. 
When one adopts the standpoint of psychopathology, it is not 
easy to address an audience which may include people who know nothing of this specialized and difficult field. But there is one simple rule that you should bear in mind: the psychopathology of the masses is rooted in the psychology of the individual. Psychic phenomena of this class can be investigated in the individual. Only if one succeeds in establishing that certain phenomena or symptoms are common to a number of different individuals can one begin to examine the analogous mass phe- 
nomena. 
As you perhaps already know, I take account of the psychol- 
ogy both of the conscious and of the unconscious, and this includes the investigation of dreams. Dreams are the natural products of unconscious psychic activity. We have known for a long time that there is a biological relationship between the unconscious processes and the activity of the conscious mind. This relationship can best be described as a compensation, which 
1 [A broadcast talk in the Third Programme of the British Broadcasting Corporation, on November 3, 1946. First published in The Listener (London), XXXVI (1946), no. 930, 615-16; reprinted as an introduction to Essays on Contemporary Events (1947); also published, under the title "Individual and Mass Psychology," in Chimera (New York and Princeton, N.}.), V (1947):3, 3-1l· Here slightly revised. 
-EDITORS.] 
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447 
448 

THE FIGHT WITH THE SHADOW 
means that any deficiency in consciousness-such as exaggeration, one-sidedness, or lack of a function-is suitably supplemented by an unconscious process. 
As early as 1918, I noticed peculiar disturbances in the unconscious of my German patients which could not be ascribed to their personal psychology. Such non-personal phenomena always manifest themselves in dreams as mythological motifs that are also to be found in legends and fairytales throughout the world. I have called these mythological motifs archetypes: that is, typical modes or forms in which these collective phenomena are experienced. There was a disturbance of the collective unconscious in every single one of my German patients. One can explain these disorders causally, but such an explanation is apt to be unsatisfactory, as it is easier to understand archetypes by their aim rather than by their causality. The archetypes I had observed expressed primitivity, violence, and cruelty. When I had seen enough of such cases, I turned my attention to the peculiar state of mind then prevailing in Germany. I could only see signs of depression and a great restlessness, but this did not allay my suspicions. In a paper which I published at that time, I suggested that the "blond beast" was stirring in an uneasy slumber and that an outburst was not impossible.2 
This condition was not by any means a purely Teutonic phenomenon, as became evident in the following years. The onslaught of primitive forces was more or less universal. The only difference lay in the German mentality itself, which proved to be more susceptible because of the marked proneness of the Germans to mass psychology. Moreover, defeat and social disaster had increased the herd instinct in Germany, so that it became more and more probable that Germany would be the first victim among the Western nations-victim of a mass movement brought about by an upheaval of forces lying dormant in the unconscious, ready to break through all moral barriers. These forces, in accordance with the rule I have mentioned, were meant to be a compensation. If such a compensatory move of the unconscious is not integrated into consciousness in an individual, it leads to a neurosis or even to a psychosis, and the same would apply to a collectivity. Clearly there must be something 
2 Cf. "The Role of the Unconscious," above, par. 17. 21C) 

CIVILIZATION IN TRANSITION 
wrong with the conscious attitude for a compensatory move of this kind to be possible; something must be amiss or exaggerated, because only a faulty consciousness can call forth a countermove on the part of the unconscious. Well, innumerable things were wrong, as you know, and opinions are thoroughly divided about them. Which is the correct opinion will be learned only ex effectu; that is, we can only discover what the defects in the consciousness of our epoch are by observing the kind of reaction they call forth from the unconscious. 
	449 	As I have already told you, the tide that rose in the uncon- 
scious after the first World War was reflected in individual dreams, in the form of collective, mythological symbols which expressed primitivity, violence, cruelty: in short, all the powers of darkness. When such symbols occur in a large number of individuals and are not understood, they begin to draw these individuals together as if by magnetic force, and thus a mob is formed. Its leader will soon be found in the individual who has the least resistance, the least sense of responsibility and, because of his inferiority, the greatest will to power. He will let loose everything that is ready to burst forth, and the mob will follow with the irresistible force of an avalanche. 
	450 	I had observed the German revolution in the test-tube of 
the individual, so to speak, and I was fully aware of the immense dangers involved when such people crowd together. But I did not know at the time whether there were enough of them in Germany to make a general explosion inevitable. However, I was able to follow up quite a number of cases and to observe how the uprush of the dark forces deployed itself in the individual test-tube. I could watch these forces as they broke through the individual's moral and intellectual self-control, and as they flooded his conscious world. There was often terrific suffering and destruction; but when the' individual was able to cling to a shred of reason, or to preserve the bonds of a human relationship, a new compensation was brought about in the unconscious by the very chaos of the conscious mind, and this compensation could be integrated into consciousness. New symbols then appeared, of a collective nature, but this time reflecting the forces of order. There was measure, proportion, and symmetrical arrangement in these symbols, expressed in their peculiar mathematical and geometrical structure. They represent a kind of 
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THE FIGHT WITH THE SHADOW 
axial system and are known as mandalas. I am afraid I cannot go into an explanation of these highly technical matters here, but, however incomprehensible they may sound, I must mention them in passing because they represent a gleam of hope, and we need hope very badly in this time of dissolution and chaotic disorder. 
	451 	The world-wide confusion and disorder reflect a similar con- 
dition in the mind of the individual, but this lack of orientation is compensated in the unconscious by the archetypes of order. Here again I must point out that if these symbols of order are not integrated into consciousness, the forces they express will accumulate to a dangerous degree, just as the forces of destruction and disorder did twenty-five years ago. The integration of unconscious contents is an individual act of realization, of understanding, and moral evaluation. It is a most difficult task, demanding a high degree of ethical responsibility. Only relatively few individuals can be expected to be capable of such an achievement, and they are not the political but the moral leaders of mankind. The maintenance and further development of civilization depend on such individuals, for it is obvious enough that the consciousness of the masses has not advanced since the first World War. Only certain reflective minds have been enriched, and their moral and intellectual horizon has been considerably enlarged by the realization of the immense and overwhelming power of evil, and of the fact that mankind is capable of becoming merely its instrument. But the average man is still where he was at the end of the first World War. Therefore it is only too obvious that the vast majority are incapable of integrating the forces of order. On the contrary, it is even probable that these forces will encroach upon consciousness and take it by surprise and violence, against our will. We see the first symptoms everywhere: totalitarianism and State slavery. The value and importance of the individual are rapidly decreasing and the chances of his being heard will vanish more and more. 
	452 	This process of deterioration will be long and painful, but I 
fear it is inevitable. Yet in the long run it will prove to be the only way by which man's lamentable unconsciousness, his childishness and individual weakness, can be replaced by a future man, who knows that he himself is the maker of his fate and that the State is his servant and not his master. But man will reach 
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this level only when he realizes that, through his unconsciousness, he has gambled away the fundamental droits de l' homme. Germany has given us a most instructive example of the psychological development in question. There the first World War released the hidden power of evil, just as the war itself was released by the accumulation of unconscious masses and their blind desires. The so-called "Friedenskaiser" was one of the first victims and, not unlike Hitler, he voiced these lawless, chaotic desires and was thus led into war, and into the inevitable catastrophe. The second World War was a repetition of the same psychic process but on an infinitely greater scale. 
	453 	As I have said, the uprush of mass instincts was symptomatic 
of a compensatory move of the unconscious. Such a move was possible because the conscious state of the people had become estranged from the natural laws of human existence. Thanks to industrialization, large portions of the population were uprooted and were herded together in large centres. This new form of existence-with its mass psychology and social dependence on the fluctuation of markets and wages-produced an individual who was unstable, insecure, and suggestible. He was aware that his life depended on boards of directors and captains of industry, and he supposed, rightly or wrongly, that they were chiefly motivated by financial interests. He knew that, no matter how conscientiously he worked, he could still fall a victim at any moment to economic changes which were utterly beyond his control. And there was nothing else for him to rely on. Moreover, the system of moral and political education prevailing in Germany had already done its utmost to permeate everybody with a spirit of dull obedience, with the belief that every desirable thing must come from above, from those who by divine decree sat on top of the law-abiding citizen, whose feelings of personal responsibility were overruled by a rigid sense of duty. No wonder, therefore, that it was precisely Germany that fell a prey to mass psychology, though she is by no means the only nation threatened by this dangerous germ. The influence of mass psychology has spread far and wide. 
	454 	The individual's feeling of weakness, indeed of non-exist- 
ence, was thus compensated by the eruption of hitherto unknown desires for power. It was the revolt of the powerless, the insatiable greed of the "have-nots." By such devious means the 
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THE FIGHT WITH THE SHADOW 
unconscious compels man to become conscious of himself. Unfortunately, there were no values in the conscious mind of the individual which would have enabled him to understand and integrate the reaction when it reached consciousness. Nothing but materialism was preached by the highest intellectual authorities. The Churches were evidently unable to cope with this new situation; they could do nothing but protest and that did not help very much. Thus the avalanche rolled on in Germany and produced its leader, who was elected as a tool to complete the ruin of the nation. But what was his original intention? He dreamed of a "new order." We should be badly mistaken if we assumed that he did not really intend to create an international order of some kind. On the contrary, deep down in his being he was motivated by the forces of order, which became operative ill him the moment desirousness and greed had taken complete possession of his conscious mind. Hitler was the exponent of a "new order," and that is the real reason why practically every German fell for him. The Germans wanted order, but they made the fatal mistake of choosing the principal victim of disorder and unchecked greed for their leader. Their individual attitude remained unchanged: just as they were greedy for power, so they were greedy for order. Like the rest of the world, they did not understand wherein Hitler's significance lay, that he symbolized something in every individual. He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody's personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him. 
But what could they have done? In Hitler, every German should have seen his own shadow, his own worst danger. It is everybody's allotted fate to become conscious of and learn to deal with this shadow. But how could the Germans be expected to understand this, when nobody in the world can understand such a simple truth? The world will never reach a state of order until this truth is generally recognized. In the meantime, we amuse ourselves by advancing all sorts of external and secondary reasons why it cannot be reached, though we know 
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CIVILIZATION IN TRANSITION 
well enough that conditions depend very largely on the way we take them. If, for instance, the French Swiss should assume that the German Swiss were all devils, we in Switzerland could have the grandest civil war in no time, and we could also discover the most convincing economic reasons why such a war was inevitable. Well-we just don't, for we learned our lesson more than four hundred years ago. We came to the conclusion that it is better to avoid external wars, so we went home and took the strife with us. In Switzerland we have built up the "perfect democracy," where our warlike instincts expend themselves in the form of domestic quarrels called "political life." We fight each other within the limits of the law and the constitution, and we are inclined to think of democracy as a chronic state of mitigated civil war. We are far from being at peace with ourselves: on the contrary, we hate and fight each other because we have succeeded in introverting war. Our peaceful outward demeanour merely serves to safeguard our domestic quarrels from foreign intruders who might disturb us. Thus far we have succeeded, but we are still a long way from the ultimate goal. We still have enemies in the flesh, and we have not yet managed to introvert our political disharmonies. We still labour under the unwholesome delusion that we should be at peace within ourselves. Yet even our national, mitigated state of war would soon come to an end if everybody could see his own shadow and begin the only struggle that is really worth while: the fight against the overwhelming power-drive of the shadow. We have a tolerable social order in Switzerland because we fight among ourselves. Our order would be perfect if only everybody could direct his aggressiveness inwards, into his own psyche. Unfortunately, our religious education prevents us from doing this, with its false promises of an immediate peace within. Peace may come in the end, but only when victory and defeat have lost their meaning. What did our Lord mean when he said: "I came not to send peace, but a sword"? 
	456 	To the extent that we are able to found a true democracy- 
a conditional fight among ourselves, either collective or individual-we realize, we make real, the factors of order, because then it becomes absolutely necessary to live in orderly circumstances. In a democracy you simply cannot afford the disturbing complications of outside interference. How can you run a 
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THE FIGHT WITH THE SHADOW 
civil war properly when you are attacked from without? When on the other hand, you are seriously at variance with yourself you welcome your fellow human beings as possible sympathizer: with your cause, and on this account you are disposed to bl friendly and hospitable. But you politely avoid people who wan to be helpful and relieve you of your troubles. We psychologist: have learned, through long and painful experience, that you de prive a man of his best resource when you help him to get ric of his complexes. You can only help him to become sufficientl) aware of them and to start a conscious conflict within himself. Ir this way the complex becomes a focus of life. Anything that dis appears from your psychological inventory is apt to turn up ir the guise of a hostile neighbour, who will inevitably arouse yom anger and make you aggressive. It is surely better to know tha1 your worst enemy is right there in your own heart. Man's war like instincts are ineradicable-therefore a state of perfect peace is unthinkable. Moreover, peace is uncanny because it breed~ war. True democracy is a highly psychological institution which takes account of human nature as it is and makes allowances fOl the necessity of conflict within its own national boundaries. 
	457 	If you now compare the present state of mind of the Ger· 
mans with my argument you will appreciate the enormous task with which the world is confronted. We can hardly expect the demoralized German masses to realize the import of such psy· chological truths, no matter how simple. But the great Western democracies have a better chance, so long as they can keep out of those wars that always tempt them to believe in externa] enemies and in the desirability of internal peace. The marked tendency of the Western democracies to internal dissension is the very thing that could lead them into a more hopeful path. But I am afraid that this hope will be deferred by powers which still believe in the contrary process, in the destruction of the individual and the increase of the fiction we call the State. The psychologist believes firmly in the individual as the sole carrier of mind and life. Society and the State derive their quality from the individual's mental condition, for they are made up of individuals and the way they are organized. Obvious as this fact is, it has still not permeated collective opinion sufficiently for people to refrain from using the word "State" as if it referred to a sort of super-individual endowed with inexhaustible power 
225 

CIVILIZATION IN TRANSITION 
and resourcefulness. The State is expected nowadays to accomplish what nobody would expect from an individual. The dangerous slope leading down to mass psychology begins with this plausible thinking in large numbers, in terms of powerful organizations where the individual dwindles to a mere cipher. Everything that exceeds a certain human size evokes equally inhuman powers in man's unconscious. Totalitarian demons are called forth, instead of the realization that all that can really be accomplished is an infinitesimal step forward in the moral nature of the individual. The destructive power of our weapons has increased beyond all measure, and this forces a psychological question on mankind: Is the mental and moral condition of the men who decide on the use of these weapons equal to the enormity of the possible consequences? 
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EPILOGUE TO 
"ESSAYS ON CONTEMPORARY EVENTS" 1 
	458 	Germany has set the world a tremendous problem, a prob- 
lem that has to be considered from many angles. The psychological aspect is only one of its many facets. As a psychologist, I am naturally inclined to think it an important facet, but I must leave it to my reader to form his own opinion on this point. My professional concern with the psychology of the unconscious often brings to light things which are still hidden from consciousness but exist in embryonic form; and these contents are ready to break through into consciousness long before the individual has any idea of what his psyche holds in store for him. I had an inkling of what was brewing in the unconscious nearly thirty years ago, for I had Germans among my patients. As early as 1918 I wrote: 
As the Christian view of the world loses its authority, the more menacingly will the "blond beast" be heard prowling about in its underground prison, ready at any moment to burst out with devastating consequences.2 
	459 	It hardly requires an Oedipus to guess what is meant by the 
"blond beast." I had an idea, however, that this "blond beast" was not restricted to Germany, but stood for the primitive European in general, who was gradually coming to the surface as a result of ever-increasing mass organization. In the same article I went on to say: 
1 [Originally published as Nachwort to Autsiitze zur Zeitgeschichte (Zurich, 1946), pp. 117-47. Translated by Elizabeth Welsh in Essays on Contemporary Events (London, 1947), pp. 73-90, which version has been consulted. Unless otherwise indicated, the quotations of and references to Jung's writings are in accordance with the Coil. Works, although the author gives dates of original publication.-EDlTORS.] 2 "The Role of the Unconscious," supra, par. 17. 
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461 
460 

CIVILIZATION IN TRANSITION 
Even the primitive's distrust of the neighbouring tribe, which we thought we had long ago outgrown thanks to our global organizations, has come back again in this war, swollen to gigantic proportions. It is no longer a matter of burning down the neighbouring village, or of making a few heads roll: whole countries are devastated, millions are slaughtered. The enemy nation is stripped of every shred of decency, and our own faults appear in others, fantastically magnified. Where are the superior minds, capable of reflection, today? If they exist at all, nobody heeds them: instead there is a general running amok, a universal fatality against whose compelling sway the individual is powerless to defend himself. And yet this collective phenomenon is the fault of the individual as well, for nations are made up of individuals. Therefore the individual must consider by what means he can counter the evil. Our rationalistic attitude leads us to believe that we can work wonders with international organizations, legislation, and other well-meant devices. But in reality only a change in the attitude of the individual can bring about a renewal in the spirit of the nations. Everything begins with the individual. There are well-meaning theologians and humanitarians who want to break the power principle-in others. We must begin by breaking it in ourselves. Then the thing becomes credible.3 
While the first World War was still in progress, I wrote an essay that first appeared in French, which I enlarged and published as a book in Germany in 1928.4 Dealing among other things with the subject of mass psychology, I said: 
It is a notorious fact that the morality of society as a whole is in inverse ratio to its size; the greater the aggregation of individuals, the more the individual factors are blotted out, and with them morality, which depends entirely on the moral sense of the individual and on the freedom necessary for this. Hence every man is, in a certain sense, unconsciously a worse man when he is in society than when acting alone; for he is carried by society and to that extent relieved of his individual responsibility. Any large company composed of wholly admirable persons has the morality and intelligence of an unwieldy, stupid, and violent animal. The bigger the organization, the more unavoidable is its immorality and blind stupidity. (Senatus bestiaJ senatores boni viri.) Society, by automatically stressing all the collective qualities in its individual representatives, puts a premium on 
3 Ibid., pars. 4Sf. 
4 "The Structure of the Unconscious," expanded into "The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious." Both in Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. 
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EPILOGUE TO "ESSAYS ON CONTEMPORARY EVENTS" 
- ._.~._-- --- ---------_ ... _~~-_._-~-----._~-~--------- 
mediocrity, on everything that settles down to vegetate in an easy, irresponsible way. Individuality will inevitably be driven to the wall. ... Without freedom there can be no morality. Our admiration for great organizations dwindles when once we become aware of the other side of the wonder: the tremendous piling up and accentuation of all that is primitive in man, and the unavoidable destruction of his individuality in the interests of the monstrosity that every great organization in fact is. The man of today, who resembles more or less the collective ideal, has made his heart into a den of murderers, as can easily be proved by the analysis of his unconscious, even though he himself is not in the least disturbed by this fact. And in so far as he is normally adapted to his environment, it is true that the greatest infamy on the part of his group will not disturb him, so long as the majority of his fellows steadfastly believe in the exalted morality of their social organization.o 
In the same essay I uttered the almost banal truth: "The 
best, just because it is the best, holds the seed of evil, and there is nothing so bad but good can come of it." 6 I lay particular stress on this sentence, because it always put me in a mood of caution when I had to judge of any particular manifestation of the unconscious. The contents of the collective unconscious, the archetypes, with which we are concerned in any occurrence of psychic mass-phenomena, are always bipolar: they have both a positive and a negative side. Whenever an archetype appears things become critical, and it is impossible to foresee what turn they will take. As a rule this depends on the way consciousness reacts to the situation. During a collective manifestation of archetypes there is always a great danger of a mass movement, and a catastrophe can be avoided only if the effect of the archetype can be intercepted and assimilated by a sufficiently large majority of individuals. At the very least there must be a certain number of individuals who are still capable of making their influence felt. 
In February 1933, lecturing in Cologne and Essen, I said: 
The decidedly individualistic trend of these latest developments is counterbalanced by a compensatory reversion to the collective man, whose authority at present is the sheer weight of the masses. No Wonder that nowadays there is a feeling of catastrophe in the air, as 5 Two Essays, pp. 15of. 
'6 Ibid., p. 181. 
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though an avalanche had broken loose which nothing can stop. The collective man threatens to stifle the individual man, on whose sense of responsibility everything valuable in mankind ultimately depends. The mass as such is always anonymous and always irresponsible. Socalled leaders are the inevitable symptoms of a mass movement. The true leaders of mankind are always those who are capable of selfreflection, and who relieve the dead weight of the masses at least of their own weight, consciously holding aloof from the blind momentum of the mass in movement. 
But who can resist this all-engulfing force of attraction, when each man clings to the next and each drags the other with him? Only one who is firmly rooted not only in the outside world but also in the world within. 
Small and hidden is the door that leads inward, and the entrance is barred by countless prejudices, mistaken assumptions, and fears. Always one wishes to hear of grand political and economic schemes, the very things that have landed every nation in a morass. Therefore it sounds grotesque when anyone speaks of hidden doors, dreams, and a world within. What has this vapid idealism got to do with gigantic economic programmes, with the so-called problems of reality? 
But I speak not to nations, only to the individual few, for whom it goes without saying that cultural values do not drop down like manna from heaven, but are created by the hands of individuals. If things go wrong in the world, this is because something is wrong with the individual, because something is wrong with me. Therefore, if I am sensible, I shall put myself right first. For this I need-because outside authority no longer means anything to me-a knowledge of the innermost foundations of my being, in order that I may base myself firmly on the eternal facts of the human psyche.7 
	463 	In the Terry Lectures, which I gave at Yale University in 
1937, I said: 
We can never be sure that a new idea will not seize either upon ourselves or upon our neighbours. We know from modern as well as from ancient history that such ideas are often so strange, indeed so bizarre, that they fly in the face of reason. The fascination which is almost invariably connected with ideas of this sort produces a fanatical obsession, with the result that all dissenters, no matter how well-meaning or reasonable they are, get burnt alive or have their heads cut off or are disposed of in masses by the more modern machine-gun. We cannot even console ourselves with the thought that such things belong 
7 "The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man," supra, pars. 326ff. 
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to the remote past. Unfortunately they seem to belong not only to the present, but, quite particularly, to the future. Homo homini lupus is a sad yet eternal truism. There is indeed reason enough for man to be afraid of the impersonal forces lurking in his unconscious. We are blissfully unconscious of these forces because they never, or almost never, appear in our personal relations or under ordinary circumstances. But if people crowd together and form a mob, then the dynamisms of the collective man are let loose-beasts or demons that lie dormant in every person until he is part of a mob. Man in the mass sinks unconsciously to an inferior moral and intellectual level, to that level which is always there, below the threshold of consciousness, ready to break forth as soon as it is activated by the formation of a mass .... 
The change of character brought about by the uprush of collective forces is amazing. A gentle and reasonable being can be transformed into a maniac or a savage beast. One is always inclined to lay the blame on external circumstances, but nothing could explode in us if it had not been already there. As a matter of fact, we are constantly living on the edge of a volcano, and there is, so far as we know, no way of protecting ourselves from a possible outburst that will destroy everybody within reach. It is certainly a good thing to preach reason and common sense, but what if you have a lunatic asylum for an audience or a crowd in a collective frenzy? There is not much difference between them because the madman and the mob are both moved by impersonal, overwhelming forces .... 8 
Now we behold the amazing spectacle of states taking over the ageold totalitarian claims of theocracy, which are inevitably accompanied by the suppression of free opinion. Once more we see people cutting each other's throats in support of childish theories of how to create paradise on earth. It is not very difficult to see that the powers of the underworld-not to say of hell-which in former times were more or less successfully chained up in a gigantic spiritual edifice where they could be of some use, are now creating, or trying to create, a State slavery and a State prison devoid of any mental or spiritual charm. There are not a few people nowadays who are convinced that mere human reason is not entirely up to the enormous task of putting a lid on the volcano .... 
Look at all the incredible savagery going on in our so-called civilized world: it all comes from human beings and their mental condition! Look at the devilish engines of destruction! They are invented by completely innocuous gentlemen, reasonable, respectable citizens who are everything we could wish. And when the whole thing blows 
8 "Psychology and Religion," pp. 14f. 
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Up and an indescribable hell of devastation is let loose, nobody seems to be responsible. It simply happens, and yet it is all man-made. But since everybody is blindly convinced that he is nothing more than his own extremely unassuming and insignificant conscious self, which performs its duties decently and earns a moderate living, nobody is aware that this whole rationalistically organized conglomeration we call a state or a nation is driven on by a seemingly impersonal but terrifying power which nobody and nothing can check. This ghastly power is mostly explained as fear of the neighbouring nation, which is supposed to be possessed by a malevolent fiend. Since nobody is capable of recognizing just where and how much he himself is possessed and unconscious, he simply projects his own condition upon his neighbour, and thus it becomes a sacred duty to have the biggest guns and the most poisonous gas. The worst of it is that he is quite right. All one's neighbours are in the grip of some uncontrollable fear, just like oneself. In lunatic asylums it is a well-known fact that patients are far more dangerous when suffering from fear than when moved by rage or hatred.9 
	464 	During the "phoney war," early in 1940, I published a Ger- 
man translation of these lectures. The book was published just in time to reach Germany, but was soon suppressed on account of the passages just quoted, and I myself figured on the Nazi black list. I was a "marked man." After the invasion of France the Gestapo destroyed all the French editions of my books they were able to lay their hands on. 
	465 	I have been blamed in many quarters for allowing myself to 
speak of German "psychopathy." I am-and always was-of the opinion that the political mass movements of our time are psychic epidemics, in other words, mass psychoses. They are, as their inhuman concomitants show, abnormal mental phenomena, and I refuse to regard such things as normal, to say nothing of whitewashing them as excusable blunders. Murder is murder, and the fact that the whole German nation threw itself with all its might into the most infamous war of aggression in history is a crime that nothing can ever wipe out. It is true that very many individuals stood out against it, but they were a small minority. The behaviour of the Germans in general is abnormal; were it not so, we should long since have been ac- 
9 Ibid., pp. 47f. 
232 

EPILOGUE TO "ESSAYS ON CONTEMPORARY EVENTS" customed to look upon this form of war as the normal state of things. 
	466 	Naturally there were plenty of reasons-political, social, eco- 
nomic, and historical-to drive the Germans to war, just as there are in the case of common murder. Every murderer has motives enough to spur him on, or the crime would never be committed. But, in addition to all this, a special psychic disposition is needed to bring matters to such a point. That is why there is such a thing as criminal psychology. Germany was suffering from a mass psychosis which was bound to lead to crime. But no psychosis ever appears out of the blue, it is always the result of a long-standing predisposition which we call a psychopathic inferiority. Nations have their own peculiar psychology, and in the same way they also have their own particular kind of psychopathology. It consists in the accumulation of a large number of abnormal features, the most striking of which is a suggestibility affecting the entire nation. No doubt there are special reasons for this too, otherwise it would not exist. But the existence of reasons does not do away either with the deed or its character. There are plenty of reasons for both crime and madness, but we do not on that account send our criminals and lunatics to recuperate at the seaside. 
	467 	I should like to point out that the idea of speaking of mass 
psychoses did not suddenly occur to me after May 1945; I had done that long before and had given warnings of this tremendous danger, not once but many times. As early as 1916, before the United States entered the first World War, I wrote: 
Is the present war supposed to be a war of economics? That is a neutral American "business-like" standpoint, that does not take the blood, tears, unprecedented deeds of infamy and great distress into account, and which completely ignores the fact that this war is really an ePidemic of madness.lO 
Once this function [of the irrational] finds itself in the unconscious, it works unceasing havoc, like an incurable disease whose focus cannot be eradicated because it is invisible. Individual and nation alike are then compelled to live the irrational in their own 
10 "The Psychology of the Unconscious Processes," in Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology (1917), p. 416. 
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lives, even devoting their loftiest ideals and their best wits to expresing its madness in the most perfect form.11 
	468 	In a lecture given at the British Society for Psychical Re- 
search in 1919, I said: 
If this animation [of the collective unconscious] is due to a complete breakdown of all conscious hopes and expectations, the danger arises that the unconscious may take the place of conscious reality. Such a state is morbid. \i\T e actually see something of this kind in the present Russian and German mentality. An outbreak of violent desires and impossible fantasies among the lower strata of the population is analogous to an outburst from the lower strata of the unconscious in an individuaJ.12 
	469 	In 1927 I expressed myself as follows: 
The old religions with their sublime and ridiculous, their friendly and fiendish symbols did not drop from the blue, but were born of this human soul that dwells within us at this moment. All those things, in their primal forms, live on in us and may at any time burst in upon us with annihilating force, in the guise of mass-suggestions against which the individual is defenceless. Our fearsome gods have only changed their names: they now rhyme with -ism. Or has anyone the nerve to claim that the World War or Bolshevism was an ingenious discovery? Just as outwardly we live in a world where a whole continent may be submerged at any moment, or a pole be shifted, or a new pestilence break out, so inwardly we live in a world where at any moment something similar may occur, albeit in the form of an idea, but no less dangerous and untrustworthy for that. Failure to adapt to this inner world is a negligence entailing just as serious consequences as ignorance and ineptitude in the outer world. It is after all only a tiny fraction of humanity, living mainly on that thickly populated peninsula of Asia which juts out into the Atlantic Ocean, and calling themselves "cultured," who, because they lack all contact with nature, have hit upon the idea that religion is a peculiar kind of mental disturbance of undiscoverable purport. Viewed from a safe distance, say from central Africa or Tibet, it would certainly look as if this fraction had projected its own unconscious mental derangements upon peoples still possessed of healthy instincts.13 
11 Two Essays, pp. 92f.; cf. Collected Papers, p. 432. 
12 "The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits," reprinted in Contributions to Analytical Psychology (1928), pp. 265f. In Ober die Energetik del' Seele (1928) the end of this passage was revised as follows: " ... the mental state of the people as a whole might well be compared to a psychosis." [Cf. The Structure and 
	Dynamics of the Psyche, par. 595.-EDtTORS.] 	13 Two Essays, pp. 202f. 
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	470 	In 1928 I wrote that "the normal person ... acts out his 
psychic disturbances socially and politically, in the form of mass psychoses like wars and revolutions." 14 A year later, in a book which I published in collaboration with Richard Wilhelm, I remarked: 
In this way the fragmentary system is projected and a dangerous situation created, because the disturbing effects are now attributed to an evil will outside ourselves, which is naturally to be found nowhere else than with our neighbour de ['autre cote de la riviere. This leads to collective delusions, incitements to war and revolution, in a word, to destructive mass psychoses.15 
	471 	In November 1932, the year in which Germany's fate was 
decided, I gave a lecture at the Austrian K ulturbund in Vienna, from which I should like to quote the following passage: 
The gigantic catastrophes that threaten us today are not elemental happenings of a physical or biological order, but psychic events. To a quite terrifying degree we are threatened by wars and revolutions which are nothing other than psychic epidemics. At any moment several millions of human beings may be smitten with a new madness, and then we shall have another world war or devastating revolution. Instead of being at the mercy of wild beasts, earthquakes, landslides, and inundations, modern man is battered by the elemental forces of his own psyche. This is the World Power that vastly exceeds all other powers on earth. The Age of Enlightenment, which stripped nature and human institutions of gods, overlooked the God of Terror who dwells in the human soul. If anywhere, fear of God is justified in face of the overwhelming supremacy of the psychic. 
But all this is so much abstraction. Everyone knows that the intellect, that clever jackanapes, can put it this way or any other way he pleases. It is a very different thing when the psyche, as an objective fact, hard as granite and heavy as lead, confronts a man as an inner experience and addresses him in an audible voice, saying, "This is What will and must be." Then he feels himself called, just as the group does when there's a war on, or a revolution, or any other madness. It is not for nothing that our age cries out for the redeemer personality, for the one who can emancipate himself from the grip of the collec- 
14 "General Aspects of Dream Psychology," in The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, p. 272. 
15 Cf. The Secret of the Golden Flower (1932 edn., p. 111). 
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tive and save at least his own soul, who lights a beacon of hope for others, proclaiming that here is at least one man who has succeeded in extricating himself from that fatal identity with the group psyche. For the group, because of its unconsciousness, has no freedom of choice, and so psychic activity runs on in it like an uncontrolled force of nature. There is thus set going a chain reaction that comes to a stop only in catastrophe. The people always long for a hero, a slayer of dragons, when they feel the danger of psychic forces; hence the cry for personality.16 
	472 	There is no need to burden the reader with further quota- 
tions. Of course I never imagined that such observations would have an effect on any large scale, but it certainly never occurred to me that a time would come when I should be reproached for having said absolutely nothing about these things before 1945, that is, before my article "After the Catastrophe." When Hitler seized power it became quite evident to me that a mass psychosis was boiling up in Germany. But I could not help telling myself that this was after all Germany, a civilized European nation with a sense of morality and discipline. Hence the ultimate outcome of this unmistakable mass movement still seemed to me uncertain, just as the figure of the Fiihrer at first struck me as being merely ambivalent. It is true that in July 1933, when I gave a series of lectures in Berlin, I received an extremely unfavourable impression both of the behaviour of the Party and of the person of Goebbels. But I did not wish to assume from the start that these symptoms were decisive, for I knew other people of unquestionable idealism who sought to prove to me that these things were unavoidable abuses such as are customary in any great revolution. It was indeed not at all easy for a foreigner to form a clear judgment at that time. Like many of my contemporaries, I had my doubts. 
	473 	As a psychiatrist, accustomed to dealing with patients who 
are in danger of being overwhelmed by unconscious contents, I knew that it is of the utmost importance, from the therapeutic point of view, to strengthen as far as possible their conscious position and powers of understanding, so that something is there to intercept and integrate the contents that are breaking through into consciousness. These contents are not necessarily 
16 "The Development of the Personality," pp. 177f. 236 

EPILOGUE TO "ESSAYS ON CONTEMPORARY EVENTS" destructive in themselves, but are ambivalent, and it depends entirely on the constitution of the intercepting consciousness whether they will turn out to be a curse or a blessing. 
	474 	National Socialism was one of those psychological mass phe- 
nomena, one of those outbreaks of the collective unconscious, about which I had been speaking for nearly twenty years. The driving forces of a psychological mass movement are essentially archetypal. Every archetype contains the lowest and the highest, evil and good, and is therefore capable of producing diametrically opposite results. Hence it is impossible to make out at the start whether it will prove to be positive or negative. My medical attitude towards such things counselled me to wait, for it is an attitude that allows no hasty judgments, does not always know from the start what is better, and is willing to give things "a fair triaL" Far from wishing to give the beleaguered consciousness its death-blow, it tries to strengthen its powers of resistance through insight, so that the evil that is hidden in every archetype shall not seize hold of the individual and drag him to destruction. The therapist's aim is to bring the positive, valuable, and living quality of the archetype-which will sooner or later be integrated into consciousness in any case-into reality, and at the same time to obstruct as far as possible its damaging and pernicious tendencies. It is part of the doctor's professional equipment to be able to summon up a certain amount of optimism even in the most unlikely circumstances, with a view to saving everything that it is still possible to save. He cannot afford to let himself be too much impressed by the real or apparent hopelessness of a situation, even if this means exposing himself to danger. Moreover, it should not be forgotten that Germany, up till the National Socialist era, was one of the most differentiated and highly civilized countries on earth, besides being, for us Swiss, a spiritual background to which we were bound by ties of blood, language, and friendship. I wanted to do everything within my feeble powers to prevent this cultural bond from being broken, for culture is our only weapon against the fearful danger of mass-mindedness. 
	475 	If an archetype is not brought into reality consciously, there 
is no guarantee whatever that it will be realized in its favourable form; on the contrary, there is all the more danger of a destructive regression. It seems as if the psyche were endowed 
237 

478 
476 
477 

CIVILIZATION IN TRANSITION 
with consciousness for the very purpose of preventing such destructive possibilities from happening. 
Coming back to the question of "German psychopathy," I am as convinced as ever that National Socialism was the mass psychosis of which I have been speaking for so long. What happened in Germany can be explained, in my view, only by the existence of an abnormal state of mind. But I am open to conviction if anyone can prove to me that the phenomenology of National Socialism belongs to the normal inventory of the psyche. In Italy the mass psychosis took a somewhat milder form. Russia can plead, by way of excuse, the low level of popular education before the Revolution. But Germany was supposed to be a highly civilized country, and yet the horrors there exceeded anything the world has ever known. I therefore maintain that there are peculiar depths in the Germans which present the most violent contrast to their former high achievements. Such a condition is known in psychopathology as a dissociation, and a habitual dissociation is one of the signs of a psychopathic disposition.17 
I am aware that the word "psychopathic" strikes harshly on the layman's ear, and that it conjures up all manner of horrors, such as lunatic asylums and the like. By way of explanation I should like to state that only a very small fraction of so-called psychopaths land in the asylum. The overwhelming majority of them constitute that part of the population which is alleged to be "normaL" The concept of "normality" is an ideal construction. In psychology we speak of the "scope of the normal," thus implicitly admitting that the concept of normality swings between certain limits and cannot therefore be sharply defined. A rather bigger swing, and the psychic process has already entered the sphere of the abnormal. These deviations from the "norm" -and they are very common-pass unnoticed so long as they do not lead to actual signs of disease. But if definite and unmistakable symptoms occur, such as are obvious even to the layman, then the case is clearly "psychopathic" (i.e., a "suffering"7l'aaxnv-of the psyche). The milder forms of psychopathy are the commonest and severe cases are rare. There are countless people who go a little bit beyond the scope of the normal, in one way 17 For the necessary qualifications of this general statement see "After the Catastrophe," pars. 423ff. 
238 

479 
480 

EPILOGUE TO "ESSAYS ON CONTEMPORARY EVENTS" 
or another, either temporarily or chronically. If they get together in large numbers-which is what happens in any crowdabnormal phenomena appear. One need only read what Le BonIS has to say on the "psychology of crowds" to understand what I mean: man as a particle in the mass is psychically ab- 
normal. Ignorance of this fact is no protection against it. 
So anyone whose ears are offended by the word "psycho- 
pathic" is at liberty to suggest a soft, soothing, comforting substitute which correctly reflects the state of mind that gave birth to National Socialism. Far from wishing to insult the German people, my object, as I have said, is to diagnose the suffering that has its roots in their psyche and is the cause of their downfall. Nothing will ever persuade me that Nazism was forced on the German people by the Freemasons, the Jews, or the wicked English-that is really too childish. I have heard that sort of thing too often in the asylum. 
Anyone who wishes to get a vivid picture of the workings of psychopathic inferiority has only to study the way in which responsible Germans-i.e., the educated classes-react to the notm'ious faits et gestes. There is no doubt that a very large number of Germans are chiefly annoyed at having lost the war. A large proportion of them are shocked that the regime of the occupying forces is, in places, harsh, unjust, and even brutal-"after all, the war's over now." They refuse to listen to the accounts of Germany's unspeakable behaviour in Bohemia, Poland, Russia, Greece, Holland, Belgium, Norway, and France. "All kinds of regrettable things did happen, of course, but that was during the war." A slightly larger number admit the concentration camps and the "bad behaviour" in Poland and elsewhere, but in the same breath' begin to enumerate the outrages committed by the English, from the Boer War on, without of course mentioning the war launched by their other psychopath, Wilhelm II. It never seems to occur to them that someone else's sin in no way excuses their own, and that their habit of accusing others merely shows up their own lack of insight. 
Finally we come to a smaller number-the better men of the nation-who confess: Pater) peccavi in caelum et coram te) "we 
IS The Crowd: A Study ot the Popular Mind. Cf. also Reinwald's Vom Geist deT Massen, which has just appeared [1946]. 
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483 
CIVILIZATION IN TRANSITION 
have our share of guilt in the desolation that has spread over the world. We know that we must bear the consequences of a war begun in a spirit of wantonness and criminality, and we would not think of trying to escape our hard fate, not even by comPlaints and accusations." 19 Such a confession can only be answered in the words of the evangelist: "Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet; and bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: For this my son was dead, and is alive again." 20 It makes us feel something of the joy that reigned in heaven over the repentant sinner, and of the discomfiture of the ninety and nine just persons. 
	481 	Yet what meets our eye in the very next sentence? "N ever- 
theless, as people who have declared themselves openly and with honest conviction, as Evangelical Christians, we should and must ... point out with due emphasis that, according to the Gospel, no one is in greater danger than he who, secure in the consciousness of his own innocence) judges and condemns another .... We cannot, indeed we should not pass over in silence the fact that foreign statesmen and their governments also played a decisive part in that first European catastrophe, through their politics both before and after 1918, which were likewise power-politics based on injustice) and that, consequently, they contributed their share to the inflation and the economic crisis, to the impoverishment of the German nation, and thus prepared the ground for the dragon's teeth from which National Socialism sprang up." 
	482 	In the first passage we read that no one has any intention 
of accusing anybody, and in the second comes the accusation. The contradiction passes unnoticed. When confession and repentance are followed by an aggressive defence, the genuineness of the repentance becomes doubtful. As it is hardly credible that the authors of this document consciously set out to sabotage the effect of their confession, we can only conclude-as is unfortunately only too true in innumerable instances where similar arguments are put forward-that there is an astounding uncon- 
19 My italics. Here I am making use of an authentic document, the authors of which I do not wish to expose by name, as they are worthy people whose shortcomings are not a personal fault but a national one. 
20 Luke 15:22£. 
24° 

484 

EPILOGUE TO "ESSAYS ON CONTEMPORARY EVENTS" sciousness of the fatal impression that such an attitude is bound to create. 
Furthermore we must ask: Has Germany openly admitted 
that she is conscious of her guilt, if she now "judges and condemns" others? It seems to have escaped the notice of the authors that there are plenty of people in Europe who are capable of forming their own judgment, and who are not hoodwinked by such unconscious naIvetes. Thus our document turns into a rather indiscreet monologue thoroughly in keeping with the clinical picture. Parents and teachers, judges and psychiatrists, are well acquainted with this mixture of repentance and lust for revenge, this same unconsciousness and indifference to the disastrous impression one makes, this same self-centred disregard of one's fellow men. Such an attitude defeats its object: it sets out to evoke an impression of repentance, and the next minute it defends itself by launching an attack. This manoeuvre simply makes the repentance unreal and the defence ineffectual. It is too unconscious to serve any purpose, quite unadapted and not equal to the demands of reality. There is an old saying that goes: "Sickness is diminished adaptation." The kind of adaptation here illustrated is of no value either morally or intellectually; it is inferior, and psychopathically inferior at that. 
In saying this it is not my intention to accuse or condemn. 
I am obliged to mention it only because my diagnosis has been doubted.21 A medical diagnosis is not an accusation, and an illness is not a disgrace but a misfortune. As early as 1936 I pleaded for compassion in judging the German mentality.22 Even now I adopt the standpoint of the therapist, and therefore, in the interests of the patient, I must emphasize the necessity for complete insight without any extenuating provisos. It avails him nothing to cultivate only a half-consciousness of his condition, and to cover up his other half with illusions whose colossal dangers he has just experienced in the most terrible form. My sympathy with the lot of the Germans is great, and I am only too painfully aware that my chances of being able to help are exceedingly small. I can only hope and pray that one of the worst 
21 Nor does my diagnosis include every individual German. I have heard statements from Germans which were spoken like a man and were not vitiated by that infantile weakness which underlies the German Kraftmeier style. 
22 Cf. "Wotan," supra, par. 398. 
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dangers now threatening Germany, besides economic distress, may soon some to an end, and that is her spiritual isolation. National isolation combined with mass psychology and centralization are Germany's bane. The task she has to fulfil is not political but spiritual, and the gifts she possesses for this are practically unique. We should therefore help and support this side of her nature by all the means within our power. 
* 
	485 	I cannot bring this epilogue to a close without saying a few 
words about the outlook for the future. No nation has ever fallen so low as the Germans and none has ever branded itself with such a stigma, which generations will not be able to wash away. But when a pendulum swings so violently in one direction, it is capable of swinging just as far in the other-if we may apply this analogy to the psyche of a nation. I do not know whether it is justified from the ethnopsychological point of view. I only know that, in the psyche of an individual with a tendency to dissociation, there can be violent oscillations, with the result that one extreme necessarily leads to its opposite. Provided, however, that he remains in full possession of his human qualities and thus has a mean value, I am inclined to think that the minus is balanced by the plus. In other words, I believe there is a faculty for regeneration in the Germans that might be able to find the right answer to the terrific tension between the opposites which has been so evident during the past twelve years. In this endeavour Germany would not be isolated, for all the positive spiritual forces which are at work throughout the civilized world would stand by her and sustain her effort. The struggle between light and darkness has broken out everywhere. The rift runs through the whole globe, and the fire that set Germany ablaze is smouldering and glowing wherever we look. The conflagration that broke out in Germany was the outcome of psychic conditions that are universal. The real danger signal is not the fiery sign that hung over Germany, but the unleashing of atomic energy, which has given the human race the power to annihilate itself completely. The situation is about the same as if a small boy of six had been given a bag of dynamite for a birthday present. We are not onte hundred per cent convinced by his assurances that no calamity will happen. Will man be able to give up toying with the idea of another war? Can we at last get 
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EPILOGUE TO "ESSAYS ON CONTEMPORARY EVENTS" 
it into our heads that any government of impassioned patriots which signs the order for mobilization should immediately be executed en bloc? 
	486 	How can we save the child from the dynamite which no one 
can take away from him? The good spirit of humanity is challenged as never before. The facts can no longer be hushed up or painted in rosy colours. Will this knowledge inspire us to a great inner transformation of mind, to a higher, maturer consciousness and sense of responsibility? 
	487 	It is time, high time, that civilized man turned his mind to 
fundamental things. It is now a question of existence or nonexistence, and surely this should be subjected to the most searching investigation and discussion. For the danger that threatens us now is of such dimensions as to make this last European catastrophe seem like a curtain-raiser. 
243 

IV 
THE UNDISCOVERED SELF 
(Present and Future) 
[Written in spring 1956 and first published as Gegenwart und Zukunft, supplement to Schweizer Monatshefte (Zurich), March 1957; issued as a book (paperback) later in 1957 (Zurich). Translated from the original ms. by R. F. C. Hull. A section of the translation was published as "God, The Devil, and the Human Soul," The Atlantic Monthly (Boston), CC:5 (Nov., 1957; Centennial Issue); the entire translation, with revisions by the American editors, was published in book form as The Undiscovered Self (Boston and London, 1958), carrying the note: "This book was prompted by conversations between Dr. Jung and Dr. Carleton Smith, director of the National Arts Foundation, which brought it to the attention of the editors of the Atlantic Monthly Press," and a dedication: "To my friend Fowler McCormick." The present text is a further revision of the original translation.-EDlTORS.] 

1. THE PLIGHT OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN MODERN SOCIETY 
	488 	What will the future bring? From time immemorial this ques- 
tion has occupied men's minds, though not always to the same degree. Historically, it is chiefly in times of physical, political, economic, and spiritual distress that men's eyes turn with anxious hope to the future, and when anticipations, utopias, and apocalyptic visions multiply. One thinks, for instance, of the chiliastic expectations of the Augustan age at the beginning of the Christian era, or of the spiritual changes in the West which accompanied the end of the first millennium. Today, as the end of the second millennium draws near, we are again living in an age filled with apocalyptic images of universal destruction. What is the significance of that split, symbolized by the "Iron Curtain," which divides humanity into two halves? What will become of our civilization, and of man himself, if the hydrogen bombs begin to go off, or if the spiritual and moral darkness of State absolutism should spread over Europe? 
	489 	We have no reason to take this threat lightly. Everywhere in 
the West there are subversive minorities who, sheltered by our humanitarianism and our sense of justice, hold the incendiary torches ready, with nothing to stop the spread of their ideas except the critical reason of a single, fairly intelligent, mentally stable stratum of the population. One should not overestimate the thickness of this stratum. It varies from country to country in accordance with national temperament. Also, it is region ally dependent on public education and is subject to the influence of acutely disturbing factors of a political and economic nature. Taking plebiscites as a criterion, one could on an optimistic estimate put its upper limit at about forty per cent of the electorate. A rather more pessimistic view would not be unjustified either, since the gift of reason and critical reflection is not one of man's 
. outstanding peculiarities, and even where it exists it proves to 
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491 
492 
49° 

CIVILIZATION IN TRANSITION 
be wavering and inconstant, the more so, as a rule, the bigger the political groups are. The mass crushes out the insight and reflection that are still possible with the individual, and this necessarily leads to doctrinaire and authoritarian tyranny if ever the constitutional State should succumb to a fit of weakness. 
Rational argument can be conducted with some prospect of success only so long as the emotionality of a given situation does not exceed a certain critical degree. If the affective temperature rises above this level, the possibility of reason's having any effect ceases and its place is taken by slogans and chimerical wishfantasies. That is to say, a sort of collective possession results which rapidly develops into a psychic epidemic. Under these conditions all those elements whose existence is merely tolerated as asocial under the rule of reason come to the top. Such individuals are by no means rare curiosities to be met with only in prisons and lunatic asylums; For every manifest case of insanity there are, in my estimation, at least ten latent cases who seldom get to the point of breaking out openly but whose views and behaviour, for all their appearance of normality, are influenced unconsciously by pathological and perverse factors. There are, of course, no medical statistics on the frequency of latent psychoses-for understandable reasons. But even if their number should amount to less than ten times that of the manifest psychoses and of manifest criminality, the relatively small percentage of the population figures they represent is more than compensated for by the peculiar dangerousness of these people. Their mental state is that of a collectively excited group ruled by affective judgments and wish-fantasies. In a milieu of this kind they are the adapted ones, and consequently they feel quite at home in it. They know from their own experience the language of these conditions, and they know how to handle them. Their chimerical ideas, sustained by fanatical resentment, appeal to the collective irrationality and find fruitful soil there; they express all those motives and resentments which lurk in more normal people under the cloak of reason and insight. They are, therefore, despite their small number in comparison with the population as a whole, dangerous as sources of infection precisely because the so-called normal person possesses only a limited degree of self-knowledge .. 
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THE UNDISCOVERED SELF 
Most people confuse "self-knowledge" with knowledge of 
their conscious ego-personalities. Anyone who has any ego-consciousness at all takes it for granted that he knows himself. But the ego knows only its own contents, not the unconscious and its contents. People measure their self-knowledge by what the average person in their social environment knows of himself, but not by the real psychic facts which are for the most part hidden from them. In this respect the psyche behaves like the body, of whose physiological and anatomical structure the average person knows very little too. Although he lives in it and with it, most of it is totally unknown to the layman, and special scientific knowledge is needed to acquaint consciousness with 
what is known of the body, not to speak of all that is not known, which also exists. 
What is commonly called "self-knowledge" is therefore a 
very limited knowledge, most of it dependent on social factors, of what goes on in the human psyche. Hence one is always coniing up against the prejudice that such and such a thing does not happen "with us" or "in our family" or among our friends and acquaintances. On the other hand, one meets with equally illusory assumptions about the alleged presence of qualities which merely serve to cover up the true facts of the case. 
In this broad belt of unconsciousness, which is immune to conscious criticism and control, we stand defenceless, open to all kinds of influences and psychic infections. As with all dangers, we can guard against the risk of psychic infection only when we know what is attacking us, and how, where and when the attack will come. Since self-knowledge is a matter of getting to know the individual facts, theories are of very little help. For the more a theory lays claim to universal validity, the less capable it is of doing justice to the individual facts. Any theory based on experience is necessarily statistical,' it formulates an ideal average which abolishes all exceptions at either end of the scale and replaces them by an abstract mean. This mean is quite valid, though it need not necessarily occur in reality. Despite this it figures in the theory as an unassailable fundamental fact. The exceptions at either extreme, though equally factual, do not appear in the final result at all, since they cancel each other Out. If, for instance, I determine the weight of each stone in a bed of pebbles and get an average weight of five ounces, this tells 
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