Child Abuse & N~&T. Vol. IO, pp. 555-557. 1986 0145-2134186 $3.00 + .

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CHILDHOOD SEDUCTION AND THE SPIRITUALIZATION

OF PSYCHOLOGY: THE CASE OF JUNG AND RANK

MARVINGOLDWERT,PH.D.

Professor of History, The New York Institute of Technology, New York.

THE PURPOSE of this paper is not to resurrect Freud’s child seduction thesis, which he
abandoned in 1897. Indeed, we have tried to avoid forcing the childhood seductions of
Carl G. Jung and Otto Rank into an all inclusive theoretical model. Yet one fact is certain:
The early sexual seductions of these two great psychological pioneers must have shaped
their mature psychologies. Torn by residual guilt, Jung, the founder of analytical psy-
chology, veered toward a spiritual mysticism and the Father-God as the primary arche-
type within the collective unconscious.
The residue of the early seduction of Rank, who broke with Freud in 1926, drove him
toward the spiritual stance of the artist as the living embodiment of the urge to immor-
tality, which is the constant strand in Rankian psychology. In Rank there developed,
probably as an outgrowth of his trauma, an almost phobic aversion to physical contact,
even handshaking as well as kissing. Born of sexual trauma, Rank’s rejection of physica-
lity was fortified by the knowledge that one of his heroes, Nietzsche, had died of syphilis.
Finally, both Jung and Rank, torn by sexual guilt, sublimated at least a part of their sexu-
ality into religion and philosophy. This was especially true of Rank who channeled the
physical-biological sphere into aesthetic, artistic productivity.
The foregoing notwithstanding, this paper does not seek to present a monocausal, de-
terministic explanation for the divergence of Jung and Rank from Freud’s theory of sexu-
ality. Hence the paper has a limited function: to suggest that sexual seduction in the early
lives of these psychologists is one significant piece in a theoretical tapestry-why both
came to resist Freud’s emphasis on sexuality and adopted the spiritual stance which
marks their place in the history of psychoanalysis.
Robert S. Steele has suggested, “We can find in both Freud’s and Jung’s childhood the
origins of their theories . . .” [I: 211. The same would hold for Rank. Elsewhere, Steele
raises the possibility of childhood seduction in Freud’s early life, pointing to his Catholic
nanny, “We do not know, and perhaps neither did Freud, if his nurse had actually intro-
duced him to sex” [l: 131. Although less is known about the early life of Rank, this paper
will show that childhood seduction actually did take place and was one of the keys to his
later psychological stance.
This said, let us permit both Jung and Rank to relate their childhood tragedies. With
regard to Jung, sometime in his early youth there occurred an episode which he did not
mention in Memories, Dreams, Reflections and left in doubt all of his life. He was the
victim of a sexual assault by a man whose identity he never revealed. This was related in
a letter to Freud, dated 28 October 1907, in which he declared:

Reprint requests to Marvin Goldwert, Ph.D., Center for General Studies, New York Institute of Technology,
1855 Broadway, New York, NY 10023.
555
5.56 Marvin Goldwert

Actually-and I confess this to you with a struggle-l have a boundless admiration for you both as a man and
researcher, and I bear you no conscious grudge. So the self-preservation complex doe, not come from there: It
is rather that my veneration for you has something of the nature of a “religious” crush because of its undeniable
erotic undertone. This abominable feeling comes from the fact that as a boy 1 was the victim of a sexual assault
by a man I once worshiped 12: 951.

Writing in 1903, Rank, then a lonely and frustrated machinist at the age of 19. called his
seduction by an older “friend” the “second important occurrence” in his life [3: IO]:

even today after thirteen years, stands my introduction to erotic experience in my seventh year through one
of my friends, for which I still curse him even today. vividly remembering. With my extraordinary curiosity and
desire for knowledge and my) deep-rooted propensity for experimenting. the foundation stone of my later suf-
ferings was laid at that time: it was at the 5ame time the gravestone of my joy.

These two cases of childhood seduction fit well into the Kempes’ three-pronged pattern
for such traumata:

The perpetrator of sexual abuse tends to be someone the child knows and trusts [4: 161

If one were to look at those factors which might make a child more vulnerable to sexual abuse. one would be
obliged to look at the quality of the child’s relationships. especially with his/her parents 14: 231.

Whether the victim is a young male or a young female. rape is an act of aggressive sexual domination which
the victim feels powerless to prevent. usually because of fear of injur-y. Yet being taken unaware or being
ineffectual in lighting back leaves the young male with seriou\ doubts about his self-esteem and his masculine
identity. Feelings that he should have been able to defend himself or that there might have been some r-eason for
choosing him as a victim, although irrational. may be strong enough to prevent his reporting the rape. Instead.
he may continue to suffer shame and doubts about his normality in silence [4: 39-401.

As should be clear, the seduction of young Jung and young Rank fits the pattern set
forth by the Kempes, especially with regard to vulnerable family backgrounds. The per-
petrators of both rapes were trusted older “friends.” Furthermore, both Jung and Rank
were the products of splintered families, which fostered their tragedies as well as its se-
cret burial in the unconscious. In the case of Jung, his father, born of an illustrious family
of theologians and professionals, was a weak, disappointed country parson. His mother,
the stronger of the two, had traumatically “abandoned” young Carl at the age of 3 to
enter a hospital in Base], possibly for emotional illness stemming from her unsatisfactory
marriage. This separation, though temporary, left a permanent psychic scar on Jung who
declared, “From then on, I always felt mistrustful when the word ‘love’ was spoken. The
feeling I associated with ‘woman’ was for a long time that of innate unreliability. *Father,’
on the other hand. meant reliability and-powerlessness” [5: 301. Later Jung would
frankly reveal, “My parents’ marriage was not a happy one, but full of trials and diffi-
culties and tests of patience. Both made the mistakes typical of many couples” 16: 271.
In such a family milieu. to whom could young Carl relate the secret of his seduction?
And so he suffered in silence and shame, doing his utmost to repress the trauma. He
simply could not rely on his weak-willed father, nor on his strong but volatile mother.
Therefore, Jung, in a prudish era when discussion of sex was taboo, made a boyhood
retreat, as did Rank, into a -‘delight in solitude” 17: 321.
In his flight from animality. Jung landed at a very early age in the lap of the God-arche-
type and spiritual mysticism. At the age of I I. possibly the year of seduction, he later
recalled, “. . the idea of God began to interest me. I took to God, and this somehow
satisfied me because it was a prayer without contradictions” 17: 37). Here we have the
origins of Jung’s interest in spiritual-religious forces, rooted partly in a childhood rejec-
tion of sexual animality. Here we have, in capsule form, a partial explanation for Jung’s
 Childhood seduction 557

later resistance to Freud’s emphasis on sexuality. Indeed, as early as July 1906, before he
had become Freud’s crown prince, Jung. then a young psychiatrist. denounced the
master’s sexual theory in his The PsychdoRy of Dementia Pruecox [8: 451.
In spite of such resistance, from 1907 to 1913 Jung became closely associated with
Freud, to the point where he was deemed the latter’s successor. Such close associations,
rooted in psychic and theoretical ambivalence, might have awakened in Jung the memory
of his seduction by the trusted, anonymous older man. Plagued by guilt and shame, Jung
would later denounce vehemently Freud’s sexual trauma thesis, and, perhaps in defensive
denial, he universalized the phenomenon:

It soon became evident that the sexual trauma could not be the real cause of the neurosis. for the simple reason
that the trauma was found to be almost universal. There is scarcely a human being who has not had some sexual
shock in early youth, and yet comparatively few develop a neurosis in later life 18: 471.

Rank, too, could not reveal his secret to a splintered, working-class family which ren-
dered him vulnerable to suffering in silence. Rank’s father was an alcoholic, given to
violent outbursts of temper. Although close to his loving but simple mother, Rank noted
that his early life “lacked parental guidance” [9: 21. Otto and his older brother Paul had a
“complete falling out” 19: 31 with their troubled father. Bitter at his parents, Rank was
forced to enter a technical school to learn the machinist’s trade. A resentful Rank later
declared, “1 grew up, left to myself” and 1 “spent much time alone” [9: 31. Like Jung.
young Rank retreated into isolation.
Just as Jung discovered God and anti-animal spirituality at the age of 11, Rank at age I5
“suddenly awoke” 19: 141 to a new and wonderful creature whom he later came to ide-
alize-the artist. In his flight from animality, Rank voraciously read philosophy, litera-
ture. and regularly attended concerts and the theater. He was himself determined to be-
come a creative human being, an artist, who, in spite of Freud’s kindness and concern for
him. could never accept his master’s diagnosis of the artist as a neurotic sublimating his
sexual drives. Indeed, it seems likely that. after many years of devoted service to psycho-
analysis. Rank provoked his defection because he felt an intense conflict between his own
urge to creativity and the rigid dogma of orthodox psychoanalysis. Finally, there is the
possibility that Freud’s paternal mentorship evoked in Rank the unconscious fear of se-
duction by an older man.
For both Jung and Rank sexual seduction in early youth was a factor, one among many,
for their spiritualization of psychology. Rejecting the biological animality of Freud’s theo-
ries. they strove to reorient psychology to a higher spiritual plane: God archetype and
immortal artist. Indeed. in his later years Rank, stressing the urge to immortality, landed
like Jung in the lap of God and religion [IO]. Very likely in both cases their flight from
animality into spirituality was rooted. in part, in the sexual traumata of their early youth.

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