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On February 17 of this year, Marie-Louise
von Franz, psychotherapist and classical scholar, completed her passage
through life—an extraordinary life made all the more remarkable by her
many years of close association with the Swiss psychologist, C.G. Jung.
von Franz was born in Munich in 1915, the daughter of an Austrian baron.
When she was three years old, her family relocated to Switzerland. She
first met Jung when she was an 18-year-old student--shy, introverted, keenly
intelligent, and struggling to understand her relationship with her parents
and to determine which course of studies best suited her. She chose to
study classical languages, and by 1940 she had received a Ph.D. from the
University of Zurich, with a specialty in medieval Latin. With this expertise,
she provided Jung with translations of the medieval alchemical texts which
he needed to pursue his investigation of the psychological basis of alchemy,
in exchange for psychoanalytic sessions and training. By 1949 she had become
an analyst in her own right, and she soon emerged as one of Jung’s closest
collaborators in the development of analytical psychology. Within the Jungian
community she is best known for her studies of the psychological significance
of fairytales and of alchemy, but her deepest and most difficult work is
concerned with the archetypal aspects of the natural numbers.
About two years before his death, Jung
handed to von Franz a small slip of paper upon which he had begun to gather
notes about the mathematical properties of the first four integers, saying,
“I am too old to be able to write this now, so I hand it over to you.”
At the time she did not know whether he intended for her to pursue his
study of number archetypes, or if he simply wanted her to hand it over
to someone whom she might meet that would be suitable for such a project.
After Jung’s death she preferred to assume the latter because she felt
incapable of doing it herself. However, as a long interval passed without
the appearance of anyone to take up the task, she was ‘bitten’ by her conscience
and subsequently entered into a long and intensive period of research and
writing that culminated in the publication in 1970 of her treatise on number
archetypes, Zahl und Zeit (Number and Time, 1974).
As indicated by the subtitle of this
work —“Reflections Leading toward a Unification of Depth Psychology and
Physics”—von Franz’s intention with Number and Time was to continue to
explore the ideas that had grown out of the collaboration of Jung with
the Nobel laureate quantum physicist, Wolfgang Pauli. von Franz was, despite
her reticence, well positioned to take on this work, for she had worked
closely with both men during the decade of their collaboration—helping
each by translating passages from alchemical texts and working with Pauli
to explore the symbolism of his dreams and visions that were related to
his intellectual quest. In the course of this collaboration, which in its
most active phase spanned the years from 1946-54, Jung and Pauli arrived
at a set of propositions about the nature of reality that mark a fundamental
departure from the tenets of the worldview of modern science that has prevailed
since Descartes. Jung and Pauli came to hold that the realm of mind, psyche,
and the realm of matter, physis, are complementary aspects of the same
transcendental reality, the unus mundus. They asserted that archetypes
act as the fundamental dynamical patterns whose various representations
characterize all processes, whether mental or physical. In the realm of
psyche, archetypes organize images and ideas; in the realm of physis, they
organize the structure and transformations of matter and energy and account
for acausal orderedness, as well. Furthermore, archetypes acting simultaneously
in both the realms of psyche and physis were held to account for instances
of synchronistic phenomena.
Jung and Pauli’s collaboration came
to an end in what were to be the later years of their lives, and neither
man was able to pursue these propositions further. Pauli, however, expressed
an interest in exploring the archetypal ideas that form the basis of mathematics,
particularly the idea in arithmetic of an infinite series of integers and
the idea in geometry of the continuum ( Pauli, 1994), and Jung was drawn
to the archetypal nature of natural numbers.
Starting from Jung’s initial hints,
von Franz investigated number archetypes as dynamical ordering factors
active both in psyche and in matter. In Number and Time, she examined aspects
of number and numeration drawn from a wide variety of cultures both ancient
and modern, primitive and technologically advanced. She discussed in particular
detail the qualitative aspects of the structure of the number archetypes
that give rise to the first four integers. As well, she investigated the
dynamical aspects of the number archetypes and their relationship to physical
and psychic energy, and she discussed historical and mathematical models
of the unus mundus and the role of number archetypes in synchronistic phenomena.
From her investigation of number archetypes,
von Franz concluded that the primarily collective, quantitative aspects
of number that preoccupy Western number theory are complemented by individual,
qualitative aspects. To illustrate these aspects of number, she cited examples
of the treatment of numbers in ancient Chinese number systems, and concluded
that the Chinese did not use numbers as quantitative sets but as emblems
or symbols: “Numbers thus serve chiefly to make visible the circumstantial
individual aspects of the cosmic unity or whole.”(p. 41) Chinese numbers
also contained an essential relation with time: “In China, numbers signify
organizations which vary in time, or transient ‘ensembles’ of inner and
outer factors within the world-totality.”(p. 41-2)
Common to both Western and ancient Chinese
approaches to number, however, is the use of number in establishing regularity
and order. Jung had stated that ‘[number] may well be the most primitive
element of order in the human mind...thus we define number psychologically
as an archetype of order which has become conscious.” (p. 45) As with all
archetypes, the number archetypes have an inherent dynamical quality--that
is, they represent abstract patterns of rhythmical behavior. von Franz
held that:
The archetypes primarily represent dynamical units of psychic energy.
In preconscious processes they assimilate representational material originating
in the phenomenal world to specific images and models, so that they become
introspectively perceptible as ‘psychic’ happenings.(p. 155)
In Number and Time, the quaternio of
archetypes that underlie the first four integers are discussed in particular
detail. Summarizing their archetypal behavior, von Franz explained that,
Numbers then become typical psychological patterns of motion about
which we can make the following statements: One comprises wholeness, two
divides, repeats and engenders symmetries, three centers the symmetries
and initiates linear succession, four acts as a stabilizer by turning back
to the one as well as bringing forth observables by creating boundaries,
and so on.(p. 74) von Franz postulated that representations of this quaternio
provide the dynamical patterns which underlie all processes of perception
and symbol formation in the psyche and account for the structure and transformation
of matter and energy in the physical world.
Natural numbers appear to represent
the typical universally recurring, common motion patterns of both psychic
and physical energy. Because these motion patterns (numbers) are identical
for both forms of energy, the human mind can, on the whole, grasp the phenomena
of the outer world. This means that the motion patterns engender “thought
and structure models” in man’s psyche, which can be applied to physical
phenomena and achieve relative congruence. The existence of such numerical
nature constants in the outer world, on the one hand, and in the preconscious
psyche, on the other (e.g., in the quaternary structures of the “psychic
center”, the triadic structure of dynamic processes, the dualistic structure
of threshold phenomena, and so forth) is probably what finally makes all
conscious knowledge of nature possible.(p. 166-7)
The dynamical behavior of the number
archetypes, in particular the quaternio, is thus held to characterize all
physical processes and all mental acts of perception and symbolic representation.
Thus, the number archetypes are thought to be universal aspects of symbol
formation. Consequently, as von Franz has pointed out, the number archetypes
should provide the means to construct what Pauli had called a language
which is ‘neutral’ with respect to psycho-physical distinction. Such a
language, as yet undeveloped, would offer an archetypally-invariant basis
upon which representations of all physical and mental processes could be
established.
The cluster of propositions that grew
out of the collaboration of Jung and Pauli constituted a hypothesis about
the role of archetypes in the structuring of reality. Through her research
into number archetypes, von Franz has significantly clarified and extended
their archetypal hypothesis such that it may be restated as follows:
All mental and physical phenomena are complementary aspects of the
same unitary, transcendental reality.
At the basis of all physical and mental
phenomena there exist certain fundamental dynamical forms or patterns of
behavior called number archetypes.
Any specific process, physical or mental,
is a particular representation of certain of these archetypes. In particular,
the number archetypes provide the basis for all possible symbolic expression.
Therefore, it is possible that a neutral
language constructed from abstract symbolic representations of the number
archetypes may provide highly unified, although not unique, descriptions
of all mental or physical phenomena.
von Franz was not satisfied with Number
and Time; she called it, “a rather unreadable book” and regretted that
it had failed to communicate and provoke discussion of its central tenets.
With it, she had tried to take Jung’s initial hints somewhat further and
to show that a “real, absolute isomorphism is present,” between representations
of the number archetypes as they appear in the psyche and in the physical
world. She said, “I was able to take this up to the number four. Then it
became too complicated, and at that point I also hit my head on the ceiling,”
(von Franz, 1992, p. 37) just as Jung, too, had hit his head on the ceiling
prior to turning the project over to her.
With Number and Time, von Franz unquestionably
leads the reader through forbidding terrain--assuming extensive knowledge
of Jungian psychology, as well as knowledge of major developments and issues
in twentieth century physics and mathematics. She has attempted to create
a discourse between the areas of depth psychology and physics, with the
intent of working toward their ultimate unification—a task which can only
be seen as Herculean. At present there are two factors which have helped
to improve the accessibility of Number and Time. The first is the publication
in 1992 of von Franz’s Psyche and Matter, a collection of twelve of her
essays and lectures which clarify and amplify much of the content of Number
and Time, and as such it comprises a suitable companion volume to it. The
second factor is the emergence in the past decade of a growing interest
in the collaboration of Jung and Pauli, including the publication of their
correspondence and much valuable secondary source material.(for references
see Card, 1991, 1992, 1998; Robertson, 1995)
From the vantage point offered by these works, it is now possible
to reassess the importance of von Franz’s work on number archetypes: by
developing and refining the central ideas of the Jung-Pauli collaboration,
she has pointed, through her examination of the number archetypes, to the
way by which Pauli’s psycho-physically neutral language might be obtained.
If this should ever be achieved, it could become the means for the development
of a post-Cartesian archetypal science in which a unified inquiry into
the nature of mind and matter could take place. If this is so, then von
Franz’s most obscure work would easily become her most important. It is
hoped that the essay which follows will help to advance von Franz’s work
and be seen as a fitting tribute to her.
Further reading
CARD, C.R., (1991), The Archetypal View of Jung and Pauli, Psychological Perspectives, #24 and #25 ( Los Angeles: C.G. Jung Institute)
CARD, C.R., (1992), The Archetypal Hypothesis of Wolfgang Pauli and C.G. Jung: Origins, Development and Implications, in K.V.Laurikainen and C.Mononen, eds. Symposia on the Foundations of Modern Physics, Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co., p.382.
CARD, C.R., (1998), The Emergence of Archetypes in Present-Day Science and its Significance for a Contemporary Philosophy of Nature, Mind in Time, (Hampton Press, forthcoming). The German version of this paper was published in T. Artz, et al., Philosophia Naturalis, Wuerzburg, Koenigshausen & Neumann, 1996, and the English version is published in the e-journal, Dynamical Psychology (http://goertzel.org/dynapsyc/).
von FRANZ, M.L. (1974), Number and Time, Northwestern University Press, Evanston
von FRANZ, M.-L. (1992), Psyche and Matter, Shambhala, Boston.
JUNG, C.G. and W. Pauli, (1955), The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche, Pantheon, N.Y.
PAULI, W.,(1994), “Ideas of the Unconscious from the Standpoint of Natural Science and Epistemology”, Wolfgang Pauli: Writings on Physics and Philosophy, C.P. Enz and K. Von Meyenn, ed., Springer-Verlag, 1994, Berlin, p.149.
ROBERTSON, R. ( 1995) Jungian Archetypes: Jung, Goedel, and the History
of Archetypes, Nicolas-Hays, York Beach, Maine.