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The Devil We Would Overcome
Jung had an instinct that what was wrong with life…was because the feminine was rejected, driven insane, driven mad by a world of men….
And that time when he let himself go and when he landed deep down in what he came to call the collective unconscious, all this rejected feminine in himself confronted him.
— Laurens Van der Post
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“The common denominator in all three is the invincibility of belief. Though each can be found morally reprehensible — Graham for his denial, North for his lies, Dewey for his manipulations — belief allowed them to go forward uncorrupted in the midst of dirty doings, untouched by their own shadows, innocent. And I submit that it is precisely this American habit of belief that appeals to our Main Street mediocrity. Therefore, this same component — whether it be named innocence by literary critics, denial by psychologists, or belief by believers — must be the essence of the American character,…
We must also admit….that we have uncovered the psychological condition that generates American mediocrity. The capacity to deny, to remain innocent, to use belief as a protection against sophistications of every sort — intellectual, aesthetic, moral, psychological — keeps the American character from awakening. The American character remains blind to the fact that the virtues of…
