Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and the Mother Age
The mother age theories of J.J. Bachofen have exercised one of the most profound influences on the Western philosophy in modern times. There is virtually no aspect of Western thought left today that have not been influenced whether directly or indirectly by Bachofenism. The science of psychology is one interesting case study in this context. Psychology is more or less a quasi-scientific redrafting of the mother age theories of J.J. Bachofen. An insightful investigation into the lives of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung readily confirms the fact that psychology is a frantic attempt at giving a scientific credibility to some aspects of Bachofen’s mother age philosophy.
The widespread popularity and influence of Bachofen’s mother age theories at the beginning of the twentieth century led to Carl Jung’s incorporation of Bachofenian concepts into his Analytical Psychology theories.
Carl Jung’s main incursion into Bachofenism is his identification of his own Collective Consciousness concept with the Mother Age stage of human sociological evolution that Bachofen have written about.
As a strong believer in the mother age theories Carl Jung incorporated these mother age ideals into his own Analytical Psychology theories by claiming that the individual psychology of every person is dominated by this subliminal struggle at suppressing the ‘mother stage’ in the psychological development of the human psych.
Carl Jung explains that this is why there is this primary attachment to the mother in the childhood stages of the development of the human psych.
Carl Jung’s theories were evidently Bachofenian. This is more so obvious if we take a closer look at the life of Carl Jung who lived in Basel at a time when Bachofen’s ideology dominated the intellectual circles of Basel and the rest of Europe.
It was in those earlier twentieth century decades that people like the respectable founder of Analytical Psychology, the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung,[1] incorporated mother age theories into his analytical school of psychology ideology and, as philosopher scholars like Ludwig Klages would point out,[2] by declaring that the Collective Consciousness concept he have lectured on all his life was equivalent to the universal mother age that mankind have inherited from the distant past.[3]
Carl Jung was a staunch believer in the beginning of humanity in the form of the universal matriarchy or mother age that Bachofen talked about.[4] The substance of Jung’s analytical psychology is centered on the assumption that inside the collective subconsciousness of humanity is a ‘Collective Consciousness’ of a past matriarchal age which has been repressed since time immemorial through the process of sublimation by the rise of patriarchy that has established the failing modern civilization.[5]
Professor Ann Taylor Allen wrote “The primary attachment to the mother in the individual psyche corresponded, in Jung’s system, to the original matriarchal phase of human development.”[6]
Professor Ann Taylor Allen also noted that Carl Jung was born in Basel “where Bachofen had become a legend in academic circles.”[7] She then observed that all of Carl Jung’s works exhibit clear influence of Bachofen’s matriarchate ideology.[8]
Even Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, which is a psychology of human sexuality,[9] has its roots buried deep in the ideas contained in Bachofen’s Das Mutterrecht.[10] After all, both Freud and Jung were close associates who worked together and developed their theories together for many years before Jung finally left Freud around the year 1912.[11]
Sigmund Freud’s obsessive interest in human sexuality at a time when the debate on the origin of the family was at its peak among philosophical and academic circles throughout Europe and at a time when Bachofen’s matriarchate ideology was the vogue evidently bespoke of the overwhelming influence of Bachofen on Sigmund Freud.[12]
In fact Freud’s theory of the Oedipus complex, which is at the center of the entire Freudian psychology theory, is a direct interpretation of the Bachofenian theory of Matriliny.[13] Professor Ann Taylor Allen simply wrote “Freud’s theory of the Oedipus complex recast Bachofen’s narrative.”[14] Despite Freud’s use of the Oedipus complex theory to explain the rise of patriarchy the entire theory is set in an immanent background of matriliny and matrifocal sociology.[15]
Sigmund Freud was another founder of psychology who was deeply influenced by the teachings and theories of J.J. Bachofen. Freud also lived at a time when the ideology of Bachofen was the vogue among the intellectual circles of Europe.
It is not difficult to trace an apparent connection between Sigmund Freud’s human sexuality theories and Bachofen’s mother age role exchange of the sexes at a time when all European intellectuals were incorporating Bachofen’s ideology into their particular theories.
Freud’s Oedipus complex theory is, on critical analysis, clearly a reinterpretation of Bachofen’s ideology in psychoanalytical terms.
At the beginning of the twentieth century there were, all over Europe, numerous groups of intellectuals who were intransigent advocates of Bachofenism. One such groups was that headed by Stefan George the famous German poet. It was members of ‘George’s Circle’ who influenced the founders of psychology most especially Carl Jung. An elite cliché, the ‘Cosmic Circle’, was a subgroup within ‘George’s Circle’. This Cosmic Circle was most influential in spreading the ideology of Bachofen among intellectuals worldwide.
Sigmund Freud and Carl Jug were actually influenced by members of George’s Circle, a group of German homosexual intellectuals. George’s Circle was an exclusive group of philosophers who were also unswerving Bachofenians.
The cosmic Circle was an elite insiders’ cliché of George’s Circle’s members. This ultra-special cliché of intellectuals, headed by the trio of Karl Wolfskehl, Alfred Schuler and Ludwig Klages, became one of the most influential organs of Bachofenism in Germany.
These German intellectuals refuted the traditional and age old stereotyping of women as useless housewives or housemaids.
The fact is that Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung were influenced, mainly through the mediation of Otto Gross,[16] by an exotic group of male-majority German homosexual intellectuals headed by the influential poet Stefan George.[17] This group, ‘George’s Circle’,[18] was composed of die-hard Bachofen theorists who were avowed believers in a Mother Age as the beginning of mankind.[19]
Out of the ‘George’ Circle’ emerged the ‘Cosmic Circle’, an ultra-Bachofenian cliché that literarily worshipped Bachofen and his Das Mutterrecht ideology[20] – and this is despite the fact that almost all members of this ultra group were men and self-declared homosexuals.[21] This ultra group of German intellectuals was headed by the classical scholar Karl Wolfskehl, the poet Alfred Schuler and the philosopher Ludwig Klages – all three of whom were renowned philosophers of international repute.[22]
These German philosophers, in unanimity with innumerable other theorists all over the Western Hemisphere, pointed out that the Greek philosopher Xenophanes’ cant that the place of a woman is naturally in the home[23] is flatly rejected by all solemn fields of knowledge and even common sense itself. It is the Western civilization’s current social norms that put a woman at home – it is not nature.
These German philosophers demonstrated that mythology, anthropology and archaeology[24] collaborate, in concert, the fact that in prehistoric societies it was women, and not men, who wielded all the sociological powers that men are wielding today.[25] The prehistoric society, as we have mentioned before, was matriarchal.[26]
The Cosmic Circle believed that Bachofen’s matrifocal matriarchate marked the original state of humanity when irrationality, promiscuity and living in harmony with the natural environment constituted the order of the day.[27]
The Cosmic Circle also believed in the impending fall of Western Civilization and its odious accoutrements of technology, patriarchy, Christianity, chastity, war and poverty.[28]
The problem with the Cosmic Circle and the overall George Circle, as one of their most committed female members, Countess Franziska Gräfin zu Reventlow, realized is that they are anti-feminist, perverted sexual psychopaths and Aryan supremacy racists.[29]
The German philosophers demonstrated that in the past it was women who rule the world and not men. They said that this initial mother age was characterized by irrationality, promiscuity and living in harmony with the environment.
These German philosophers also believed in the fall of Western civilization. They condemned the most salient aspects of Western civilization including technology, patriarchy, war, and Christianity.
These German philosophers were, however, anti-feminists, sexual perverts and cruel racists.
