*Study of Clouds with a Sunset Near Rome*, Simon Alexandre Clément Denis. Original from Getty Museum. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.

In 1937, Carl Jung delivered a lecture series published in 1938 as Psychology and Religion. Europe stood on the brink of catastrophe. Hitler had annexed Austria in March; the Munich Agreement, signed in September, ceded the Sudetenland to Germany in a desperate attempt to stave off war, and Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels unleashed the anti-semitic pogrom through Kristallnacht, which incited violence against the Jewish citizenry, their businesses, and houses of worship.

The world teetered between denial and dread, haunted by the memory of the World War I and blind to the devastation about to unfold. Against this backdrop of looming destruction, Jung spoke of “civilized savagery”—the terrifying reality that the greatest dangers to humanity were not foreign monsters but unconscious forces within the human psyche itself.

“Look at all the incredible savagery going on in our so-called civilized world, and all of which is derived from human beings and their mental condition! Look at the devilish means of destruction! They are invented by perfectly harmless gentlemen, reasonable, respectable citizens, being all we hope to be…As nobody is capable of recognizing where and how much he himself is possessed and unconscious, one simply projects one's own condition upon the neighbor, and thus it becomes a sacred duty to have the biggest guns and the most poisonous gas.”
— Jung, Psychology and Religion (CW 11, p. 60)

Jung’s words pierced the illusion that destruction was caused only by dictators and their armies. Instead, he insisted, it was made possible by “perfectly harmless gentlemen”—engineers, scientists, and bureaucrats—who contributed to war’s machinery while believing themselves decent, rational, and innocent. The real enemy was not just “out there,” but within: the shadow of fear, denial, and projection that possessed individuals and nations alike.

Conscience as Grace.

At this very point, Jung turned to the role of conscience. Far from being merely a moral burden, conscience—even bad conscience—was, to him, a kind of grace:

“Conscience, and particularly bad conscience, can be a gift from heaven, a genuine grace if used as a superior self-criticism…The sting of bad conscience even spurs you on to discover things which were unconscious before and in this way you might cross the threshold of the unconscious mind and become aware of those impersonal forces that make you the unconscious instrument of the wholesale murderer in a man.”
— Jung, Psychology and Religion (CW 11, pp. 60–61)

In the late 1930s, as Europe drifted toward war, conscience and self-criticism were in short supply. Nations projected their shadow onto their neighbors—each side convinced the other was “possessed by a malevolent devil.” The sting of conscience might have slowed the rush to destruction. Without it, unconscious fear became the ruling force of history.

“The Emperor’s New Clothes,” Philip Gough (Illustrator), *Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales*. (Retold by Naomi Lewis). (1981).

The Emperor’s Illusion.

A century earlier, in 1837, Hans Christian Andersen had written his biting fairy tale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Europe then was also in a state of unrest: the revolutionary waves of 1830 had unsettled monarchies, new national movements simmered beneath the surface, and the Industrial Revolution had unleashed a new “social order.” [2] Andersen, writing from Denmark, spun a fairy tale that captured the peril of collective illusion.

In the story, a vain emperor is duped by swindlers who promise him garments invisible to the stupid and incompetent. Terrified of appearing unworthy, his courtiers—and eventually his entire kingdom—praise the nonexistent robes. The emperor parades naked through the streets until a child cries out the obvious truth: “He’s got nothing on!”

These innocents! What ridiculous things they say!’ said the child’s father. But the whiper passed through the crowd: ‘That child there says that the Emperor has nothing on; the emperor has nothing on!’
And presently, everyone there was repeating, ‘He’s got nothing on!’ At last, it seemed to the Emperor too that they must be right. But he thought to himself, ‘I must not stop or it will spoil the procession.’ So he marched on even more proudly than before, and the courtiers continued to carry a train that was not there at all. [3]

Andersen’s parable, published 99 years before Jung’s lecture, is an uncanny prelude to Jung’s warning. Both speak of how fear, denial, and projection can enchant entire societies. Both suggest that it takes honesty—whether in the form of conscience or a child’s voice—to pierce the spell.

Projection and the Collective Shadow.

Jung’s analysis of projection reads like a psychological commentary on Andersen’s tale. Just as the courtiers projected their own fear of inadequacy onto one another, nations in Jung’s day projected their shadow onto their neighbors. To admit weakness was unthinkable, so it became easier to demonize the other. Fear, Jung argued, is more dangerous than hatred. Fear distorts reality, fueling arms races and pre-emptive strikes. The tragedy of 1938 was not simply the aggression of one nation but the collective blindness of many, each unwilling to see its own shadow at work.

In The Undiscovered Self (1957) Jung writes:

None of us stands outside, humanities black collective shadow whether the crime occurred many generations back or happens today it remains a symptom of a disposition that is always an everywhere present, and one would do therefore do well to possess some ‘imagination for evil,’ for only the fool can permanently disregard the conditions of his own nature. In fact this negligence is the best means of making him an instrument of evil harmlessness and naïve are as little helpful as it would be for the color of patient and those in his vicinity to remain unconscious of the contagiousness of the disease on the contrary, they lead to projection of the unrecognized evil into the ‘other.’ This strengthens the opponents of position in the most effective way, because the projection carries the fear which we involuntarily and secretly fear for our own evil over the other side considerably increases the formidableness of his threat. What is even worse, our lack of insight deprive us of the capacity to deal with evil. [CW, Vol. 10, Para. 572]

To remain unconscious within the collective shadow allows the individual to detach from what lurks in one’s own shadow. Projection becomes an act of debasing self and other simultaneously.

*Bloemenzee* (1895), Theo van Hoytema. Original from The Rijksmuseum. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.

where to begin.

Jung’s words remain a call to responsibility. They remind us that civilization without consciousness is savagery dressed in fine clothes. To confront the collective shadow is no small task—but it begins with the individual willingness to notice our fear, to own our projections, and to resist the seduction of blaming the neighbor for the demons we refuse to face.

Here the tale of the emperor becomes more than a children’s story. Like the child who blurts out that the emperor is naked, conscience is the voice that disrupts collective illusion. It stings, unsettles, and demands that we turn our gaze inward before condemning the neighbor. Without this discriminating faculty, we remain unconscious instruments of destructive forces. With it, we take the first step toward genuine responsibility and transformation.

In 1837, Andersen warned of the danger of illusion. In 1938, Jung warned of the danger of projection. Today, nearly two centuries after Andersen and almost a century after Jung, their words converge as prophecy. Political polarization, global conflicts, and fear-driven rhetoric echo the very dynamics they described: societies parading in denial, citizens colluding in illusions, nations convinced the devil is always “over there.”

Jung provides a where and how to begin anew:

If only a worldwide consciousness could arise that all division and all fission are due to the splitting of opposites in the psyche, then we should know where to begin, but if even the smallest most personal stirring of the individual psyche—so insignificant in themselves—remain as unconscious and unrecognized as they have hither to they will go on accumulating and produce mass grouping and mass movements which cannot be subjected to reasonable control or manipulated to a good end. All direct efforts to do so are no more than shadowboxing the most infatuated by illusion being the gladiators themselves. [CW, Vol. 10, Para. 572]

To pause, to examine our motives, to endure the sting of conscience is an act of both individual courage and collective healing. The greatest danger is not that the world contains evil, but that we remain unconscious of our Shadow we carry into it. To face it, with conscience as our guide—and with the honesty of the child who dares to speak truth—is to begin walking the long path toward responsibility, wholeness, and perhaps, a more humane future.

Notes

[1] Jung, C. G. (1938). Psychology and religion. Yale University Press.

[2] Williams, R. (1958). Culture and society 1780-1950. New York: Columbia University Press.

[3] Andersen, Hans Christian. Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales: retold by Naomi Lewis. Illustrated by Philip Gough, Puffin Classics, 2004.

[4] Jung, C. G. (1957). The undiscovered self. Princeton University Press.