“What will become of our civilization and of man himself, if the hydrogen bombs begin to go off, or if the spiritual and moral darkness of State absolutism should spread over Europe?”
These and other questions were prompted by the conversations that C.G. Jung had with the publisher of his book, The Undiscovered Self, by Atlantic Monthly Press in 1957. Jung charted a course of how a constitutional state could falter on the road to tyranny. The voice of the masses becomes louder, racist slogans more commonplace, and lies more acceptable. Mob violence begins, and what Jung called a condition of “collective possession” takes place. The larger the crowd, the more insignificant the individual becomes. According to Jung, the only bulwark for a person standing alone in a mass-minded state is a spiritual attitude that provides an anchor against the physical and moral blandishments of the world.
