Carl Jung
(1875-1961)
“My life is a story of the self-realization of the unconscious.”
Jung’s autobiography is Memories, Dreams, Reflections, published in the year of
his death. But rather than a nice chronological report of the experiences of his life, it is an
assessment of influences that shaped his development. Jung analyzed and described his
inner life of dreams, vision, and spiritual experiences. So to understand the theory, we
must understand the man.
Jung had opposing forces in his family life. He was named for his grandfather
who was a professor of medicine, and his mother was involved with the metaphysical, as
far from the world of science and evidence as one could go. Carl Jung was born July 26,
1875 in northern Switzerland. It’s not hard to imagine that the country’s neutrality and
refusal to align with political forces around it, develops a certain openness and lack of
judgment in its citizens. It hardly seems an accident that Jung would be born there and
steeped in the ideas of such a progressive cultures. Jung came along after 2 brothers died
in infancy. This also could have a certain power in one’s development, lending the
survivor to wonder, “Why me?”
His mother was of a nervous disposition and when Jung was six months old he
was sent to live with his aunt, near the Alps, while his mother recuperated in the hospital.
This was the beginning of Jung’s affection for the outdoors, mountains, and lakes. Jung
developed a closeness to nature as he developed his intellectual curiosity. His father was
a local parson, so he was also familiar with death and funerals. At one point he
experienced a dam bursting, with a deadly flood. Jung, only 6 years old, discovered a
corpse of a man buried in the flood. His mother was concerned by his morbid interest in
death. He had some brushes with death himself- a fall that caused severe bleeding from
his head; a near miss during a stumble on a bridge over the Rhine falls. He had no
siblings until he was nine, so he learned to play by himself, which contributed to his rich
imaginative life. He felt little need for others and was an introvert by nature all his life.
Jung’s parents had problems and slept apart. But Jung was disturbed by sounds
coming from his mother during the night and this would be seen in his dreams. In one
dream he saw a shadowy figure coming out of his mother’s room. The head became
detached from the body and floated in the air. Then another head appeared, which also
became detached and floated away.
Jung’s father was a difficult man to get along with, and his mother suffered
emotionally. When it all became too much for a child of Jung’s sensitivity, he would go
to the attic and make-believe with a manikin he had carved as a companion. He
developed secret pacts, wrote scrolls describing rituals, and shared his deepest secrets
with the wooden companion. At age 11, Jung was transferred to a large school in Basel,
and exposed to wealthy schoolmates. Jung recognized his own genteel poverty, and it
gave him a certain compassion for his father. Jung realized how poor his father was and
how difficult his life must be. Jung found school boring and tiresome and as a result
began having nervous fainting spells. He would miss school and have the freedom to
indulge in walks in the woods, and reading what he liked from his father’s library.
While his parents were disturbed by his illness, Jung was happy with the freedom
to do as he liked. At one point he overheard his father discussing his case with a friend,
citing his concern that Jung might not be able to grow up and earn a living as an adult.
Jung recognized the implications of his fainting condition. He never had another fainting
spell. He returned to school and applied himself with vigor. He said he understood the
nature of neurosis from that experience. (The first to recognize the mind-body
connection?)
Even though his father was a pastor, he would not answer any questions Jung had
about religion. He was always told he must have faith, and that would be all he would
need. So religion was confusing to him, and it represented a barrier between him and his
father. (Curious that the work of his father’s life was so difficult for him to actually
discuss with his son.) This contributed to a deep sense of loneliness in Jung. Loneliness is
not always about having no one to be with, it is also about having no one who
understands you or seems to relate to your concerns. Because religion was kept so
completely in the dark from Jung, it became a source of deep conflict and preoccupation.
He studied many sources, trying to answer his questions. Eventually the religious
questions faded into a study of philosophy. His favorite philosopher was Schopenhauer,
who depicted life as it was, without camouflaging the undesirable aspects of humanity.
He discussed suffering, confusion, passion, and even evil.
As Jung moved into adulthood, he became more self-confident and
communicative. He developed some friends, but when he would share his ideas, they
would mock him. He finally realized their hostility was based on his greater knowledge
of subjects they were clueless about. They were unable to talk about such topics, and they
even accused him of being an impostor who made these ideas up out of his imagination.
Even the teachers would accuse him of plagiarism. He retreated into himself again.
Jung was a thoughtful boy, curious about the world, but he had no outlet for his
musings other than his books and imagination. Jung had to decide on a major in college
and finally determined to be a doctor like his grandfather. After Jung’s father died,
money was tight, but an uncle helped take care of his family and other relatives loaned
him money to finish the university. As he was finishing medical school he had several
metaphysical experiences that would influence his ultimate vocational choice.
The first experience happened when Jung was in his room studying. He heard a
loud sound like a gunshot. When he went to the room where he heard it, his mother was
sitting near the large dinner table, which had split from rim to center through solid
walnut. The second experience happened when a large bread knife lying in a bread basket
shattered into several pieces. Upon examination, the knife was found to be sound, and
there was no explanation for the shattering.
After these things happened, Jung began attending séances on Saturday nights. He
was always interested in the occult, and actually investigated a teenaged medium for his
dissertation. Jung’s interests gradually shifted to psychology and pathology. While
studying for his final examinations, he studied a book on psychiatry, and knew it was the
field he was destined to work in. This was so early in the development of psychology,
that his teachers were dismayed that he would choose such an experimental field. He took
an appointment at a famous mental hospital in Zurich. He loved Zurich, by a lake,
surrounded by the Alps. He lived there the rest of his life. Eventually he built a retreat
center on the lake where he studied and had clients. He was especially interested in
knowing what happens within the mind of the mentally ill. He studied with Bleuler at the
hospital, and with Pierre Janet in Paris. He began studying Freud’s studies of hysteria
during the 1890s, and read The Interpretation of Dreams, which Freud published in 1900.
Jung married Emma Rauschenbach in 1903, and she began a collaboration with Jung
until she died in 1955. At the age of 30, Jung began teaching psychiatry at the University
of Zurich, as well as holding the position of senior physician at the Psychiatric Clinic. He
had such a large private practice that he had to resign at the Clinic, but he continued to
lecture on pathology, psychoanalysis, as well as the psychology of primitive people.
Jung began research on the psychic reactions of mental patients. He would use a
word-association test as well as assessing physical expressions of emotions. During the
word-association test, Jung would observe the length of time before a person makes an
association with a word, seeing that as an expression of a complex in the person. His
investigations of complexes developed his reputation in the U.S. He was asked to lecture
at Clark University in Massachusetts in 1909. He began a communication with Freud
during this time, as Jung wrote an article on dementia, using Freudian concepts in 1907.
Freud invited Jung to visit in Vienna in 1907, and so began a great friendship between the
two men. When the International Psychoanalytic Association was founded, Jung was
made first president due to the urging of Freud. Freud referred to Jung as his adopted
eldest son, his crown prince, and successor.
Being the independent sort that he was, however, Jung could not have remained
Freud’s disciple for long. He had to question and develop his own line of thought, which
was something Freud was not comfortable with. He wrote Symbols of Transformation,
even knowing it would probably cost him the friendship with Freud. He resisted writing
the final chapter, “The Sacrifice” because he sensed what a sacrifice the book would be.
The break with Freud was so disrupting to Jung, that Jung resigned his position at the
university, and began what he called “a fallow period.” He did no research or writing,
but he spent the time exploring his own unconscious by analyzing his dreams.
Three years later, he became active again and wrote Psychological Types. (1921)
He actually discussed his break from Freud as well as Adler, and described his taxonomy
of personality types. He was first to define the differences in introversion/ extraversion,
and thinking/ feeling. He began to mentor students in his home, and began traveling in
order to study the mind of primitive men. He went to Tunis and the Sahara Desert. He felt
handicapped in observing these peoples, so he learned Swahili before his next trip to
Africa. It was during this trip that he made contact with the idea of the collective
unconscious. He also traveled to New Mexico to study the Pueblo Indians. Because these
people were so secretive about their beliefs, Jung had to find a more subtle way to study
them. He would just talk about various subjects and read their reactions. When he
discussed something of importance to them, they would react more emotionally. Other
trips included India and Ceylon, and he began studying Eastern religions. Now he
recognized differences in Eastern and Western personalities. He saw the Eastern
personality as introverted and the Western mind as extraverted.
Jung began studying the I Ching, a Chinese text devoted to a system of divination
and struck up a friendship with Richard Wilhelm, an authority on Chinese culture. He
also introduced Jung to the concept of alchemy, and Jung wrote Psychology and Alchemy
(1944) as a result. Jung has been criticized for the far-reaching subjects he studied:
astrology, divination, telepathy, yoga, spiritualism, mediums, flying saucers, religious
symbolism, visions, and dreams. He studied these things as a psychologist, however, not
as a believer. What he wanted to understand was how these subjects revealed the
collective unconscious. He knew the unconscious reveals itself through symptoms,
visions, hallucinations and visions of mental patients. He wanted to understand this
symbolic world, seeing it as a window into the unconscious dynamics within each person.
So these studies were unconventional, but he treated them as scientific sources. He was
so immersed in this visionary world, that he maintained his home life as a sort of
normalizing influence, grounding him in the common world.
In 1922 Jung bought property at the end of Lake Zurich to build a summer house.
He built a strange, African round house with a tower that he used as his private retreat.
The entire family could enjoy the delights of nature, the gardens, the lake, the water. In
1944 Jung broke his foot and then had a heart attack. When he recovered, he returned to
writing, saying he had experienced many dreams, visions, and even deliriums during his
recovery. Emma died in 1955 and other than his daughters and help, his devoted
secretary, Aniela Jaffe came every day to assist him in his scholarly pursuits.
During his life, Jung was awarded many honors from universities as prestigious as
Harvard and Oxford. He received students and writers all his life. He was free with his
time and knowledge, not being afflicted by pride or self-importance. He died in 1961, but
his importance has extended well past his lifespan. The C. G. Jung Institute was founded
in 1948 in Zurich, and teaches many students his method and techniques of analysis.
Other professional groups have developed to continue his inquiries. Jung was always
more interested in the complexity of a single personality than in compiling an organized
theory with principles to be used universally. But his methods can be used to understand
the individual personality. Jung’s own personality was warm, friendly, with a jovial sense
of humor. He was a good listener and an interesting talker, and he always seemed to have
time for the visitor. He made people comfortable in his presence. His interests spanned
the individual, however, into cultural influences, social problems, religious issues, and
even trends in modern art. He mastered English, French, German, Latin, and Greek.
Zurich awarded him their literary prize in 1932. He was a democrat in every sense of the
word. Jung was most interested in the workings of the psyche, saying, “…the sole
purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.”