Jung's mediatory science as a psychology beyond objectivism

In this paper, the author argues that Jung's non‐objectivist – yet scientific – epistemology and his empirical/hermeneutic methods of inquiry situate him within a psychological tradition that, in many respects, began with William James and, today, is finding expression in the work of many non‐Jungian cognitive scientists. In an effort to encourage dialogue between Jungians and scholars within related intellectual traditions, the author presents evidence from the corpus of Jung's work that demonstrates that, like William James, Jung intentionally rejected the absolutist claims of objectivism and the opposite position on ‘anything goes’ relativism, emotivism, or subjectivism. Instead, Jung forged a path that led to the meta‐psychological position similar to internal realism (Putnam 1981) or experientialism (Lakoff 1987) and to a theoretical psychology that gave a central place both to unconscious cognitive structure and to imagination. This he labelled a ‘mediatory science’. The psychological theories developed within this mediatory science framework represent an early articulation of key constructs that are currently used by a number of cognitive scientists seeking to understand how we make sense of experience.