The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Faust as Jung's Myth and Our Own

This paper is a meander through Jung's opus, following the thread of Goethe's Faust, and a reflection on Faust's meaning for our own times. Goethe's great drama gives us a story line for our times: We are Faust. We have made a bargain with the devil for enormous power over the earth. We have committed crimes against nature and humanity for the sake of more land, more energy, more destructive capacity. We have murdered that loving old couple, Baucis and Philemon, who hosted the god in his disguise as a homeless wanderer. We are haunted by Faustian guilt about melting glaciers, rising seas, the fate of the salmon. Jung, whose psychology can be described as an amplification of Goethe's Faust, saw it as his ethical task to take on Faust's guilt. He placed an inscription over the gate of his home at Bollingen that read: Philemonis Sacrum-Fausti Poenitentita (Shrine of Philemon- Repentance of Faust). This resonates over the years and speaks to our current ethical dilemmas.