1983) [By] [s]ome definitions [...] occultism [is] the belief that nature possesses secret properties contradicting the presumed laws of science; a dedicated occultist believes that those properties can be manipulated through adept exercises of magic. Esotericism is the broader project that weds occultism to self-transformation. Spiritualism is the attempted practice of communicating with the dead through seances. Mysticism purports to bring the seeker into direct experience of, even merger with, a transcendent deity. Gnosticism, broadly conceived, is the intuitive apprehension of deep truth without a felt need for corroborating evidence. Theosophy, uncapitalized, is gnostic and esoteric lore that relates human destiny to speculation about the origin, nature, and governance of the universe. Finally, in its capitalized form Theosophy refers to the specific theosophical doctrines and organizations launched by Madame [Helena Petrovna] Blavatsky.

Frederick Crews
"The Consolation of Theosophy" in
New York Review of Books (9/19/1996)

1984) [We should never] be surprised when occultism [...] links arms with reactionary ideologies. Sooner or later, the gnostic habit of thought battens upon vitalism, the belief in a life force that cries out to be unshackled from convention. And fascist doctrine stands ready to give vitalism a nationalistic and nostalgic twist: we must inhale the spirit of our warrior ancestors, who knew no democratic legalism and harbored no pity for the unfit and the foreign. [...] [W]e should not overlook the broad epistemic likeness between Theosophical dreamers and the ideologues who smoothed the way for the terroristic Nazi state. The common factor was their shared rejection of rational empiricism. By pretending that reliable knowledge can be obtained through such means as clairvoyant trances and astrological casting, the original Theosophists encouraged their German colleagues to "uncover" in prehistory just what they pleased: and the resultant myth of how Aryan hegemony was broken by quasi-simian races formed a template for the infectious post World War I story of betrayal by Jewish materialists and the vindictive Allies. The whole visionary apparatus - the vitalists sun cult, the mystic brotherhood, the pygmy usurpers, the lost ancient continents, the millennial cycles, even the idea of a conspiracy by a cabalistic "Great International Party" of diabolical anti-traditionalists - was already there in [Madame Blavatsky's] The Secret Doctrine. There needed only a specific historical grudge and a fevered demagogue to set in motion the march toward paranoid eugenics and actual extermination of the "polluting" social elements.

We need to remind ourselves, after such an example, that esoterically acquired convictions are not always and everywhere a menace. In a stable democracy such as our own, manifest occultism tends to produce more amusement than terror. And, in fact, a direct line of descent connects Theosophy to an array of ludicrous and generally harmless New Age practices that now surround us, from astrology, crystal gazing, homeopathy, and pyramid power to Wicca nature worship, prophecy, channeling, past-life regression, goddess theology, belief in extraterrestrial visitation, and obeisance to self-designated gurus and ascended masters. [...] Although one can agree with Carl Sagan's contention, in his recent book The Demon-Haunted World, that such fads reflect a popular revolt against science and a lamentable resurgence of superstition, it would be perverse to mention them in the same breath with Nazi ideology.

Frederick Crews
"The Consolation of Theosophy II" in
New York Review of Books (10/3/1996)

1985) [O]ne occult atavism [...] can bear deadly consequences: it is the psychotherapeutic practice [...] Although many tend to assume that psychotherapy rests on authenticated discoveries about the mind, the talking cure was actually born in a climate of occultism, retained its gnostic affinities in the anni mirabili of its modern flowering, and has yet to make an altogether clean break from those affinities. Contemporary therapists who are struggling to render their profession more accountable to ethical and empirical norms may not realize it, but they are at war with an irrationalist legacy that deserves to be identified as such. [...] [This does not mean] that psychotherapy is doomed to be a hermetic art or that it serves no useful function, nor even that contemporary Freudians and Jungians ... retain Freud's and Jung's own predilictions for the paranormal. [...] All such pronouncements on the basis of origins alone must be resisted as illogical and anti-historical.

At the same time, an awareness of the gnostic strain in Freud and Jung does cast a suggestive light on the central issue that now confronts, and radically polarizes, the therapeutic community throughout the West: whether caregivers should address themselves to helping clients cope with their current dilemmas as they perceive them or, rather, send those clients on a regressive search for a hypothetical early past and initiate them into "knowledge" of repressed traumas and interjected personages. There is all the difference in the world between "taking a history" - investigating the relationships and vicissitudes that have predisposed the patient to act in self-defeating ways - and producing a previously unsuspected, artifactual history that is dictated by boilerplate diagnostic expectations. The cabalistic penchant lingers precisely insofar as therapists insist that true healing must entail a confrontation with some predetermined class of memories, powers, insights, buried selves, or former incarnations. And it is no coincidence that the dangers of drastic harm are all clustered at that end of the therapeutic spectrum.

[...] [W]e might venture to hope that psychotherapy, as an institution that likes to maintain good-neighbor relations with science, will someday make a full reckoning with its gnostic component. All those therapists who acquire "knowledge" by first applying suggestive pressure and then disregarding its influence on their findings are more akin to mediums than to physicians. Do they really want to continue down the yellow brick road that leads from Mesmer and Puysegur through Freud and Jung to the latest promises of cure via channeling, rebirthing, and past-life regression? And will their guides never tire of issuing discreet caveats about "going too far" with diagnostic procedures that actually go in circles?

If I remain pessimistic about the thoroughgoing reform of psychotherapy, it is because of a powerful factor [...]: the unquenchable human thirst for meanings that can ease our doubts, sanction and regulate our urges, and flatter our self-conception. Established religion, Theosophy, and psychotherapy as it is often - by no means always - practiced have all plied the same trade, and with degrees of success that owe nothing to the demonstrable cogency of their assertions. [...] The gods, Jung told the dissatisfied and yearning Western bourgeoisie, already reside within our heads, they find us quite interesting and lovable, and they are eager to imparts their secrets to us. Does mere empirical rationality stand a chance against an appeal that speaks so directly to our needs?

Frederick Crews
"The Consolation of Theosophy II" in
New York Review of Books (10/3/1996)