Jung, Neumann, and Elijah

The writings of Carl Jung and his brilliant protégé Erich Neumann continue to advance psychology, psychotherapy, and the creative arts including film, literature, and painting. For both thinkers, all humanity shares an inborn collective unconscious, filled with timeless, energizing mental patterns. They powerfully affect how we view the world and develop within. Jung called these patterns archetypes, discovering that they manifest across history and culture in fairy tales, legends, and myths.

The Prophet Elijah

Intriguingly, both Jung and Neumann (who came from Protestant and Jewish backgrounds, respectively) regarded the prophet Elijah as among the most significant of all archetypal figures. Especially in light of current interest in Neumann's unfinished legacy (he died suddenly of illness at the age of 55), it seems important to highlight their mutual focus on this legendary and sacred figure.

It's well known, of course, that Jung was deeply interested in diverse religions throughout his life. The son of a Swiss clergy, he had a strong sense of the transcendent beginning in his early years, and continuing through adolescence and adulthood. Partly for this reason, he and his mentor Sigmund Freud (19 years older) in Vienna increasingly came into conflict. As Jung recounted in his memoir Memories, Dreams, Reflections, when their relationship finally shattered in 1913, he descended into a period of near-madness. Jung related that an unexpected, and initially bewildering, series of dreams and visions catalyzed his full recovery—and the crucial, healing figure to emerge was Elijah.

"In order to seize hold of the fantasies," Jung recalled, " I frequently imagined a steep descent. [Eventually] I found myself at the edge of a cosmic abyss ... [I saw an old man who] ... explained that he was Elijah, and that gave me a shock ... Elijah and I had a long conversation ... [He was] the figure of the wise old prophet and represents the factor of intelligence and knowledge." In Jung's memoir, he went on to describe how "after this fantasy, another figure rose out of the unconscious. He developed out of the Elijah figure. I called him Philemon [and he guided me to deeper self-understanding]." In recent years, Jungian scholars have analyzed such popular media characters as Gandalf and Yoda as compelling archetypes of the wise old man.

Jung's most extensive discussion of Elijah didn't appear in his scholarly writings, but rather in a letter to a correspondent in 1953. It was a reply to Father Bruno de Jesus-Marie, a Carmelite priest born as Jacques Froissart in Bourbourg, France, in 1892. A highly respected theologian, writer, and editor, he had founded the annual Congress of Religious Psychology, bringing philosophers, psychiatrists, and theologians together to integrate spiritual wisdom with contemporary psychology. Undoubtedly for this reason, Jung addressed in detail Father Bruno's question: How can we verify the existence of an archetype?

A Living Archetype

In Jung's letter, he chose Elijah as an example: tracing Elijah’s presence in the Hebrew Bible and its legendary tradition known as the midrash and, later, in both the Kabbalah and medieval Christianity. Because the luminous figure of Elijah has sustained humanity’s imagination “from the remotest times to our day, “Jung asserted, "this proves irrefutably that Elijah is a living archetype [Jung's emphasis added] giving birth to new forms of [expression] … He represents the ideal compensation not only for Christians but for Jews and Moslems as well.”

Crucially for Jung, living archetypes like Elijah exist deep in our collective unconscious. Independent of our conscious ego, they may suddenly appear in dreams and waking reveries. Seemingly emerging out of nowhere, they beckon and seek to engage us. The purpose? To spur our inner growth toward wholeness—and, especially for Westerners, to dampen the ego and better welcome the unconscious.

Thus, Jung stressed to Father Bruno that a living archetype like Elijah “'gets itself chosen'” rather than is deliberately chosen.” In the therapeutic technique known as active imagination that Jung pioneered, he encouraged individuals to heed the messages brought by such timeless figures in the psyche—or else, he often warned, suffer harmful emotional and even physical effects.

In Neumann's recent, posthumously published two-volume work The Roots of Jewish Consciousness, he extended Jung's conception of the Elijah archetype into the social realm involving family, friends, neighbors, the wider community, and all humanity. Drawing on the Kabbalah and early Hasidism, Neumann emphasized that we each have a spark of the "Elijah soul," whose purpose is to nurture and uplift others. As Neumann well knew, Elijah had long been identified in Jewish belief as having been transformed into an angel who returns to earth in countless disguises to aid those in need and—crucially for Neumann—harbors the messianic age.

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“Elijah is said to be the precursor of the Messiah,” Neumann stated in Roots, “[Elijah’s] redemptive function is the crucial fact in the world, from which comes the emphasis on the individual, on the here-and-now … and to human service.” Depending on the individual’s soul, Neumann intimated, the “Elijah spark” varies in scope and intensity, but everyone has a vital part in bringing redemption to the world.

Neumann always had the greatest admiration for his mentor Jung, and their published correspondence shows that he knew of Jung's visionary encounter with Elijah as an inner guide. The fact that Jung achieved enduring stability and life purpose not long after that event undoubtedly strengthened Neumann's belief in the uplifting power of this timeless, archetypal figure.