Between Knowledge and Values

This article is based on the lecture offered at the “Conference on Values in Analytical Psychology”, Strasbourg, June 2024
The tension between science and knowledge on one hand, and values on the other, is as ancient as medicine, the art (or perhaps the craft) of healing. Our trainings and our continuous education also evolve around this line of tension.
Knowledge is general, public, and in the light of the sun. It is, or at least should be, available to everyone who searches for it. Whereas the quest for knowledge, for understanding and explaining the world and its phenomena, is collective, is part of being human, congruent with human nature, values, besides pertaining also to the human condition, are personal, often hidden, to be discovered and shaped and reshaped along the path of life.
Webster dictionary offers more than thirteen different definitions for the word “value”. Yet, here is one more definition that I prefer which explains best the meaning I find for the notion “Values”. Values, it says, are all those unnecessary issues that a person decides to stick to even at the expense of sacrificing their personal needs. Therefore, personal values, of different individuals, can be the opposite of each other when dealing with the same and common event. To quote just one example: Eleanor Roosevelt, in one of her speeches during WW II, maintained that the war going on at that time was a sacred war because its purpose was to ensure a world in which a glass of milk would be guaranteed to every child regardless of nation, race, or religion. At the same time, from the other side of the ocean, General Tojo, Prime Minister of Japan, maintained that the same war was sacred because of the value of dying for the honor of the country and the emperor.
Many historic examples can testify to this ancient tension between knowledge and values. Ancient Greece offers a good one. Two separate systems of medicine were practiced side by side along the shores of the Aegean Sea. The first one was a “Technical Medicine”. Technical comes from the Greek word “techne” meaning art and also craft. This medicine had roots in and evolved from several schools of thought, undoubtedly the most famous and widespread being the Hippocratic School. Common to all technical schools was the application of rational procedures elaborated by intellect and by available knowledge, based on the current state of the art. For the Hippocratic practitioner, the disease emerged from disturbance of the equilibrium between the external environment (i.e., air, food, water, etc.) and the human body. This disturbed equilibrium manifests itself in the disturbed balance of the internal “humors” (body fluids). Equilibrium should be restored through various means that can be taught, learned, put to the test, verified, and discussed publicly (it included changes of habits, diets, potions, physical touch, and many more). Besides this empirical medicine, a second one flourished, the Medicine in the Temples. More than 300 temples dedicated to Asclepius, god of medicine, the so-called “Asclepieia”, have been counted by archaeologists almost everywhere in the classical Greek world. These temples were open and welcomed everyone. The person entering the temple was encountered by a priest who inquired about the person, his issues, and his economic situation. In line with this economic situation, the sacrifice to offer to the god was decided (a bull for the rich, a rooster for the poor, etc.). The person seeking aid then passed through a process of purification and then put to sleep, Hypnos and Oneiros, gods of sleep and dreams, were summoned. Usually, the person was put to sleep on the hide of his sacrificed animal. As psychologists, we would say nowadays that healing was perceived as connected to a sacrifice of mundane wealth. In the morning, he would discuss his dreams with the “ierofantos”, meaning with the one who explains the sacred. The god was giving meaning to the dreams through the priest. So, it was believed. Alternatively, in our words, the priest in touch with his own soul and the soul of the patient interpreted the dream.
Largely, we, analysts, are nowadays the followers of these ancient “Asclepian”, those priests of Asclepius who in search of the personal voice distanced themselves from the generally accepted medical knowledge by listening to the personal soul of those who searched relief from their pains.
But are we really searching for the personal in the way we build our trainings?
Analytical theory, as a body of knowledge, is in the light of the sun. Its principles are published, discussed, and elaborated. It includes a theory on the nature of the psyche, several developmental theories, a theory of complexes, of dream interpretation, typology, insights on synchronicity, alchemy, and many more aspects. As a theory, it is based on values, so I believe, and it is accepted as such collectively by our community of Analytical Psychologists. Such values include encountering the shadow, accepting the reality of the internal world, encountering the libido in images, understanding the images of our dreams and other images of the soul as symbols, living concomitantly in our internal and external world, and many more. All these are values, probably commonly accepted as values of the community.
The question remains: how do we bridge this gap between the body of knowledge accumulated and the collective values of the community on one hand, and the personal experience and the personal meaning one gives to both, on the other?
In other words, do we cultivate and cherish in our trainings and in our life a personal, possibly critical position in front of these collective values? A personal Ethic.
Do we really consider it an ideal to aspire to?
This is the challenge, this is the obstacle, and at the same time, the bridge to pass.
Discussing his concept of the “New Ethic”, Erich Neumann compared the development of consciousness to the development of Ethics. For this discussion, I believe we can use the terms of ethics and values interchangeably as I believe we all agree that recognizing and assuming responsibility for the whole personality is one of the most, if not the central value of Analytical Psychology, and is at the same time the cornerstone of the New Ethic.
This developmental process of consciousness and of identifying and recognizing our personal values develops along the life of the individual, is guided by his developmental tendencies, and is based on universal archetypal principles.
The Old Testament offers a good amplification of the development of ethics and values. In the oldest part of the Bible, the so-called historical books from Deuteronomy through the books of Samuel and Kings, no personal sin is recognized. The society is condemned for abandoning God, and the sins accumulate over generations until the wrath of God falls upon the people.
However, books edited generations later, like the “Books of Chronicles”, show a different attitude. Now, each person is responsible before God. No longer is the son held responsible for the sins of the father.
Yet, even here, the values are communal; they represent the reign of the collective consciousness
The next personal mental leap will be the relation to the “Internal Voice”. That which may place the individual in a position where he does not necessarily adopt the values of the collective. Sometimes it happens that securing the fulfillment of those personal needs of the individual may run counter to collective values. Surprisingly, says Neumann, it happens that assuming collective values and by so doing avoiding evil and conflict turns out to be “unethical” from the standpoint of the “Voice”.
The problem remains and it is made more clear: how do we reconcile the teaching of a theory with the personal way of experiencing it? With the personal meaning one gives to knowledge? To the criticism one needs to develop in respect to every collective truth.
Our trainings are conducted in groups, we have reading lists, we write and we lecture, meet at conferences, we are linked to our schools of thoughts, limited by lineage of our teachers who have “imprinted” their learned authority and their conflicts.
Contrary to this situation previously described, listening internally to our Voice implies a continuous critical attitude, a continuous defining of one’s values, a continuous scrutiny of theory vis-à-vis the personal meaning one gives to it, in line with one’s values.
Do we support this line, do we encourage a personal approach to theory, and do we emphasize how theory is metabolized and comes to life in our psyche or of our students, or do we just tend to promote knowledge?
I am not sure I know the answer.
Recent events in my Jungian society highlighted my understanding how distant we Jungians are, in troubled and distressed days, from the respect and the acceptance due to colleagues who differ in their set of values. How difficult it is “to swallow” the other when their views based on their personal values differ from the common and “warm” collective majority.
When writing these lines Israel is involved once more in a brutal war. A ferocious attack in the south of the country causing many losses of lives and many kidnapped civilians awoke all ancient Jewish-Israeli demons. All Jewish cultural and historical complexes were activated and a no less ferocious war of revenge was released. A revenge spreading indiscriminately death and destruction. It seemed some kind of blindness took over the land incapacitating the people to open up to the suffering of the other.
Statements by some members of our society about the futility of the war or showing concern for its brutality or caring for the suffering of others have been moved aside by those who felt immersed in their personal fear and sorrow. A need to join in a collective declaration showing professional concern and worry of the physical and mental state of the kidnapped appeared. A need to agree, of being together.
Apparently, who could oppose.
But there were some.
Some members who felt that a collective declaration, any collective declaration, was in contrast with their beliefs. Or others who maintained that publication of such a declaration would be in line with those who tend to stop the war. A war they considered so just.
A heated debate ensued and continues with threats to remove members or threats of others to leave or to resign if their perspective is declined.
It is too early to foresee these days how this conflict will evolve. Whether our society will survive this crisis.
I mention this real-life example to show how easily we, analyzed analysts, tend to succumb to processes of collectivization. How non-receptive we can be to the diverse Voice of the other, how slippery is the road to regression, from the New Ethic back to the Old Ethic, where the shadow, the alien, “the other” is to be removed or eliminated.
We fail in political challenges of daily life and no less in interpreting our psychological theories.
The subject of my talk is values of training and continuous education, I want to close with words of love and respect to my teacher who was not a Jungian but he was more.
I remember myself shaking as I was entering the hospital on my first day as a resident in psychiatry. My boss, who was to become my venerated teacher, greeted me with a stern look and said: “Don’t ever forget, symptoms have meanings”.
Indeed, symptoms have meanings, and I never forget it, but not only symptoms have meaning. I keep reminding myself that also theories and values must be given a personal meaning, otherwise, they lose their vitality.

Yehuda Abramovitch M.D. (IIJP)

Photo: “Cicero Denounces Catiline in the Roman Senate” by Cesare Maccari