Part II, A New Ethics for Business, A Depth Psychology Perspective

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The aim of this new approach to business ethics does not presuppose a formula to stop corporate wrongdoing and environmental crimes, but rather to stir the soul and alleviate moral suffering where possible by loosening the bonds of soul from an ineffective immersion in “Logos and Justice” (law and order).

This study will focus on the ethical and psychological aspects of the larceny of worker’s savings and pensions in the name of shareholder’s stock values. It will be about re-visioning the souls of the leaders who pilfer from their employees, customers and communities. It is about the shadow side of the business world. I have a sense that depth psychology’s understanding of the dark side of the human being and his/her cultural surroundings can make an enormous contribution toward a new and better ethic for business. Depth psychology has successfully, through its philosophy and approach to the inquiry of the soul, recommended knowing the Self, the shadow, complexes, and integrating this knowledge as a road to wholeness of the personality.

The key word here is integrating. Integrity, accordingly to Bebbe (1995), “implies an ecological sense of the harmony and interdependence of all the parts of the whole, a felt sense of the entirety of any situation. This ecological consciousness provides integrity with its moral power in relating inner self to outer contingency” (p. 72). Integrity for depth psychology presupposes a connection with ourselves that permits an ethical connection to everything else in the universe.

Coppin and Nelson (2004) remind us that depth psychology “in the last century [...] has taken up the gauntlet that Socrates laid down 2,500 years ago. Classical Athens bears some remarkable similarities to the world today, most notably in the incidence of political and social corruption, moral relativism, and egregious materialism” (p. 21). They continue and add that “Socrates openly declared the most important activity human beings can engage is attention to and concern for one’s soul.” (p. 21). This tending of the soul or psyche confirms once again, to me, the belief that depth psychology can offer an alternative non-religious approach to better knowing the Self, or soul, as Socrates advised us.

Depth psychology’s modes of reflection belong to Sophia (Wisdom) rather than to Logos (Intelligence) in the narrower sense of the word. Wisdom, as a mode of knowing, works with polarities without splitting them apart as of good and evil; it knows from within, by communion. It is filled with contradictions that do not seek resolutions. In contrast, conventional ethics views wrongdoing through the logic of entities. That is either completely materialistic or completely spiritualistic. It operates heroically. It takes good as the norm as it works from logic rather than wisdom.

I believe that our obsession for morals as we intend to practice business ethics in the west is a modern neurosis where the body of rules and regulations for making us ethically (politically) correct citizens has become the bona fide enemy of a real authentic humanistic ethic. Logic-ethics is the cultural affirmation of a business practice under a neurotic state. As Jung metaphorically expressed it, “A neurosis is an offended god,” (CW 7, para.392). What he meant is that energy in us has been repressed, oppressed, split off, projected onto others, and thereby has been wounded or “offended.” To deny this situation is to pathologize what is divine in us, and the collective, and deepen self- alienation.

This study began by trying to understand the moral and ethical roots of business leaders brought up in the West, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim. It continues with the assumptive premise that we, as human beings, try, to the best of our abilities during the course of our lives, according to my understanding, to follow Aristotle’s virtues, to properly read the Bible or the Koran and to observe their commandments, and still we fail to live up to our own standards. Organized religion tells us to worship and fear God, obey his moral strictures, repent, and beware of the devil. The blind lady Justice brandishes her sword and deals in philosophical ethics and punitive law. These are brief expressions of the morals and ethics of the West. Even after 2,500 years of following the teachings of Yahweh, Plato, Jesus, and Mohamed, among many other great prophets, we are still experiencing the worst of times, morally and ethically, in the history of civilization. According to Diamond (1990), the problem appears to lie in the split between good and evil promulgated by Western tradition, a rigid dualism that condemns the daimonic as being evil and evil only. As a new ethic for business leaders, I imagine one which includes and incorporates Jung’s concepts of the shadow and the Self, as well as the aim for wholeness and individuation. Jung’s unifying notion of the shadow serves also to reconcile the sundering imposed upon us by the conflict of opposites. Facing and assimilating our shadows forces the recognition of a totality of being consisting of dualities of good and evil, rational and irrational, masculine and feminine, as well as conscious and unconscious polarities. When we consider and try to incorporate into our ethics for business the psychological concepts of the self and the shadow, then, we are left with the strong impression of trying to convey a basic truth of human existence.