Historian Sonu Shamdasani has noted that Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) has been called

To Shamdasani's list, I would like to add that Jung has also been called völkisch scholar (by Richard Noll), pseudo-mythologist (by Herbert Marcuse), crypto-fascist (by Ernst Bloch), National Socialist (by Wilhelm Reich), sympathizer of Hitler and ‘necrophilous character’ – that is, a lover of death (by Erich Fromm)! As early as the 1930s, the German left-wing psychiatrist John Rittmeister accused Jung of ‘archetypal mysticism’, seeing ‘in Jung's “ahistorical image-collectivism” the symptoms of the frightened and confused bourgeois response to the great social changes of the twentieth century’. More recently, the German sociologist Heinz Gess connected Jungian psychology with neo-fascism and the New Age movements. Grounding his ideological critique on the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, Gess discounted Jung's archetypal theory as representing a legitimization of the capitalist society with its emphasis on the mythical, unchanging and eternal. In Jung's pursuit of organic, psychic wholeness, Gess detected distinct resemblances with Hitler's ambitions and, at the same time, a continuation of a fascist personality type. Judging by these invectives, Jung must have been an abominable character indeed.

From the point of view of historical truth, how serious are these accusations hurled at Jung? Do they correspond to what we know about Jung's beliefs and intentions? Most importantly for our purposes, was his ‘Utopia of Authenticity’ addressed to only certain segments of society, such as pure Germans or the ‘Aryan Race’, with the exclusion of others, such as Jews or socialists? In order to answer these questions, I shall concentrate on Jung's writings, seminars and letters from the late 1920s to the end of World War II.