The Jewish Complex, Whose Complex Is It?

In 1934, attempting to extricate himself from the accusation of connivance with the Nazis, Jung conjectured about the existence of a Jewish complex. Recently, Jungian analyst Tirzah Firestone has argued that Jews suffer from a Jewish cultural complex which revolves around clusters of tribal traumatic experience. This discussion takes up from both Jung and Firestone addressing the question: The Jewish complex, whose complex is it? Stressing the relational element of Jung’s complex theory, developed into a theory of cultural complexes by Singer and Kimbles, the author of this paper, whose grandfather died in Auschwitz, places the Jewish complex among us Westerners, Jews and non-Jews. The Jewish complex is considered an affectively charged shared mental representation of a traumatic history, whose denouement is the Shoah, that affects us all. Cultural complexes such as the Jewish complex need to be understood relationally if there is to be any form of ‘resolution’.