Carl Jung and Visionary Fiction
My Articles Featured on Visionary Fiction Alliance Site
It may come as a shock, or at least a revelation, to Visionary Fiction readers and writers that Carl Jung, the eminent Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology, defined Visionary Fiction and described it in detail in a lecture delivered in 1929, “Psychology and Literature,” included in the volume Modern Man in Search of a Soul. Rather than the narrow sub-genre it is often reduced to, Jung depicts Visionary Fiction as a super-genre that forms one of the two major divisions of artistic production: “I will call the one mode of artistic creation psychological, and the other visionary.”
So begins the first of two articles by Vic Smith on the Visionary Fiction Alliance website. Part One presents Jung’s critical differentiation between psychological fiction and visionary fiction and relates visionary fiction to Jung’s process for growth in consciousness: Individuation.
Part Two looks at Jung’s prescription that Visionary Fiction be universal in worldview and scope and his observations on why Visionary Fiction is not necessarily “popular.”
I conclude: “Jung’s essay, a cornucopia of wise commentary, bears reading in full. Some VF elements developed since his time are not included, of course. For instance, only towards the very end of his life (1961) did Jung briefly consider reincarnation as a potential source for his famous archetypes, a fact I, who use past lives extensively in my VF novels, regret he did not have the years to explore. Nor was Jung a VF novelist per se; but his insights, as the pioneer who brought the spiritual element back into the mental health field, are priceless to the author seeking a deeper understanding of Visionary Fiction’s psychological and philosophical infrastructure.”
To read the full articles, click the links above.
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Click this link to order a copy of The Anathemas, a Novel about Reincarnation and Restitution.Copyright 2013 by Victor E. Smith. All rights reserved.
No, not surprised at all, but then I learnt the most about Jung via the writings of his friend, Sir Laurens van der Post. 🙂 Have you ever read “A Walk with a White Bushman”? It’s based on interviews of Sir Laurens and just such a life changing book for me. His actual book on the life of Jung was a bit stodgy in parts, but in interviews he is pure visionary. Highly recommend it!
Odd quirky synchronicity… I bought the book on the day Sir Laurens died. Only found that out that night on TV.