Jung first saw Emma Rauschenbach, daughter of a wealthy merchant fromSchaffhausen, in 1896. Jung was sure she was going to be his wife even before he spoke to her. They did get married on 14 February 1903, and had four daughters Agathe, Gret, Marianne, Helen, and a son, Franz. Emma later trained herself to become an analytical psychologist. She did research on Arthurian mythology and the Grail Legend.
Antonia Wolff, herself a Jungian analyst, became Jung’s mistress in 1911. She was his mistress until her death in 1952. Jung also had a short stormy affair with Sabina Speilrein, a Russian analyst. After Emma’s death in 1955, an Englishwoman named Ruth Bailey lived in with him to the end.
Early Influences
Besides his father, Jung’s maternal grandfather and eight uncles were clergymen.So, Jung’s childhood was steeped in religion. This all-pervasive religious atmosphere made him feel that God was one of the most certain and immediate of experiences. This fascination with God remained with him throughout his life. Churches and graveyards were his playgrounds. It exposed him to deaths and burials at an early age. Jung did not find the explanation that Jesus had ‘taken the dead to himself’ very comforting. Many such questions about God troubled him.
In spite of being a clergyman, Jung’s father had lost faith in religion. But he did not have the courage to renounce what he didn’t believe in. He continued being a pious man. Jung tried to help his father out of this crisis of faith but was unsuccessful. Yet the father’s Swiss Protestantism did have a great influence on Jung. Equally strong was the influence of his mother’s pagan spirituality. His mother and maternal grandfather claimed that they had contact with the spirit world and that they regularly communicated with the dead.
Jung internalized both these antithetical influences and he came to believe that he had two personalities. The Number 1 personality stood for his rational conscious personality interested in academic and worldly success. The Number 2 personality was unconscious, otherworldly, and closer to dreams and God. Jung tried to reconcile these two personalities. But by the time he was out of school, his Number 1 personality had taken over totally.
When Jung was four years old, his mother had to be hospitalized for sometime. His father took care of him during that period. Jung felt as if his mother had deserted him. Thereafter he believed that all women were unreliable. He could never completely rid himself of this attitude towards women.
When Jung was between three and four years old, he had a dream which marked the beginning of his speculative life. In the dream, he found a stone-lined hole in a meadow. He walked down a stairway in the hole to reach a dim-lit long rectangular chamber. There was a magnificent throne in the chamber, and on the throne was a large cylindrical object made of skin and flesh. It had a rounded head with a single eye on the top. Then he woke up in terror when he heard his mother say ‘that’s the man-eater’.
This dream made an indelible mark on Jung. He could make sense of the dream only several years later. He recognized the object on the throne to be a phallus. He wondered how a little boy could dream of placing the phallus in an exalted position just as the ancient peoples had done, the worship of Shiva linga (the external phallus) in the case of the Hindus for instance. He felt this indicated the existence of a collective unconscious, over and above the personal one. He could make sense of the ‘man-eater’ only when he came across the motif of cannibalism in the symbolism of the Mass. The Mass is a Christian ritual in which bread and wine representing Christ’s flesh and blood are taken by the devout.
Education
Jung started his formal education at the village school and he enjoyed going toschool. At ten, he was sent to Basel gymnasium, but he hated the years spent here. He was nicknamed ‘Father Abraham’ by other boys.
When Jung was twelve years old, he had an accident and he started having fainting fits. He was happy that he didn’t have to go to school. But once he overheard his father talk of his bleak future. This prompted him to get himself cured by the sheer power of will and he returned to school. Jung repeatedly showed such strength of character in his later life.
Another significant event occurred in the twelfth year. He became aware of a sinful thought trying to force itself into his consciousness. He had a vague idea that the thought was a forbidden one. After a long struggle to keep it suppressed, he decided to let it become conscious. The thought was a fantasy. He saw God sitting on his golden throne in the sky and defecating. A large turd fell on the Basel Cathedral and shattered it. Instead of bringing damnation as his elders had led him to believe, the fantasy brought him peace. Jung felt God had willed him to sin so that he could experience God and his grace directly.
Jung’s uncles wanted him to study theology in college, but his father was against his joining the Church. Jung too had studied enough of philosophy in his final years at school to be interested in a career with the Church. His inclination towards science made him choose medicine. Jung won a scholarship to study medicine at Basel University. When he was in the second year, his father died. The family had to move to Bottminger Mill near Basel. One of Jung’s uncles gave him a loan to continue his studies.
Jung found that the medical textbooks said nothing of the human mind. He pursued the study of human soul by joining the university debating society, the Zofingia Club. After reading a book by Krafft–Ebing, he realized that both biology and spiritual sciences converge in psychiatry. Jung decided to become a psychiatrist. A few paranormal incidents at home also inspired him to take up Psychiatry.
In December 1960, Jung joined the Burghölzli Mental Hospital attached to the University of Zürich as an Assistant Staff Physician. He worked under a leading psychiatrist Dr. Eugen Bleuler. He was made the Senior Assistant Staff Physician in 1902. In that year he submitted his M.D. dissertation On the Psychology and Pathology of so–called Occult Phenomena.
In this doctoral dissertation, the subject of investigation was his fifteen year-old cousin, Helen Preiswerk. Over a period of two years Jung had attended séances in which Helen was the medium. His dead grandfather Samuel Preiswerk was her spirit guide. Helen would dissociate and become a totally different person in her trances. Jung inferred from his investigations that a part of the unconscious mind split off and took over the conscious mind resulting in the appearance of a totally different personality in the same person. Interestingly enough, Jung realized much later that Helen had a crush on him and her trances were meant to attract his attention.
After getting his MD, Jung studied theoretical psychopathology for a semester under Pierre Janet at the Salpêtrière in Paris. He was exposed to Charcot’s work on the unconscious and Janet’s work on multiple personalities. He returned to work as the Senior Staff Physician at Burghölzli Hospital. He joined the medical faculty of Zurich University. He conducted courses on hypnotic therapy, psycho-neuroses and psychology.
During this period, Jung worked on word association tests and developed the concept of complexes. He also worked on insanity, known as dementia praecox or schizophrenia in medical jargon, and discovered the ‘method in madness’. These investigations led to the publication of Studies in Word Association and The Psychology of Dementia Praecox.
Personal life
Jung first saw Emma Rauschenbach, daughter of a wealthy merchant fromSchaffhausen, in 1896. Jung was sure she was going to be his wife even before he spoke to her. They did get married on 14 February 1903, and had four daughters Agathe, Gret, Marianne, Helen, and a son, Franz. Emma later trained herself to become an analytical psychologist. She did research on Arthurian mythology and the Grail Legend.
Antonia Wolff, herself a Jungian analyst, became Jung’s mistress in 1911. She was his mistress until her death in 1952. Jung also had a short stormy affair with Sabina Speilrein, a Russian analyst. After Emma’s death in 1955, an Englishwoman named Ruth Bailey lived in with him to the end.
Freud, friend to foe
Jung’s work on word association and psychosis had impressed Freud. They started corresponding in April 1906. Jung met Freud in Vienna in March 1907 and they talked non-stop for 13 hours on their first meeting. Freud wanted Jung to join the psychoanalytic movement for two reasons - one, because he was brilliant, the other, because he was not a Jew. Most Psychoanalysts at that time were Jews and Freud did not want Psychoanalysis to become a purely Jewish enterprise.
Soon Jung became a front-ranking member of the psychoanalytic movement, and was declared its crown prince in March 1909. Jung became the first president of the International Psychoanalytic Association and the editor of its journal. Freud warned Jung to defend psychoanalysis from ‘the black tidal mud of occultism’. This rattled Jung very much because he himself was interested in the occult and the paranormal. He suppressed the urge to answer sharply. At that very moment a strange thing happened. There came a loud noise from the bookcase in the room. Jung believed it was due to his own Number 2 personality trying to topple the bookcase.
In September 1909, Jung accompanied Freud to give lectures at Clark University. On the journey they tried analyzing each other’s dreams. Freud was not very forthcoming in giving his personal details. Freud’s paternal attitude and his intolerance of differing views created a rift between the two. Jung did not accept Freud’s theory of infantile sexuality and his method of therapy. He believed psychosis had nothing to do with sexual instincts. Moreover, Freud did not approve of Jung’s interest in parapsychology and astrology.
The differences between the two increased to such an extent that it affected their personal relationship as well. On two occasions Freud fainted after arguments with Jung. Jung publicly voiced his differences with Freud while lecturing at Fordham University, New York, in 1912. The final break came with the publication of Psychology of the Unconscious. He resigned from the International Psychoanalytic Association in 1914.
Confrontation with the Unconscious
Jung suffered from psychosis for seven years from 1913 to 1919. He spent these years in complete isolation trying to get in touch with his unconscious through dreams, fantasies and supernatural visions. Jung felt that a proper understanding of psychosis could only come through an experience of psychosis. Hence, he did not look at this period as that of sickness. He produced the Septem Sermones ad Mortuos by automatic writing in three days, and created the first mandala painting in this period.
Jung had a near–death experience in 1944. He became delirious following a heart attack. He had an out-of-body experience of meeting a Hindu in a cave in space. The vision ended when his doctor appeared in his primal form and declared that he wasn’t going to die then. Jung was sure that this meant the doctor would die in his place. The day Jung recovered totally, 4.4.44, the doctor fell ill and died soon after. Jung had several visions following this experience and he understood the nature of soul. These supernatural experiences prepared him to write all his major works.
Jung and the Nazis
In June 1933, Jung was made the President of the Germany based General Medical Society for Psychotherapy to prevent its Nazification. Being a Swiss citizen, Jung did not have to be afraid of the Nazis. He turned the Society into an international organization with different national sections to protect it from Nazi influence. He allowed membership through any national group to help the Jewish analysts in Germany.
In September 1933, M. H. Goering, cousin of Nazi Reichemarschall Herman Goering, became the President of the Society’s German section. Goering issued a supplement supporting Nazi ideology with one of the issues of the Society journal, Zentralblatt. This was done without Jung’s knowledge. Since Jung was the editor of Zentralblatt, he was accused of anti-semitism. Jung resigned as President in 1939 when the Nazi influence spread to other national groups. Goering declared himself President of the International Society and transferred its headquarters from Zurich to Berlin. Jung was black listed and his works banned in Germany.
Platforms for Jungian Psychology
ung now started his own school of Psychology and called it AnalyticalPsychology. He founded the Analytical Psychology Club in Zurich in 1916 with Edith Rockefeller McCormick’s patronage. The Eranos Conference was started in 1923 by Olga Frobe–Kapteyn to popularize Jung’s theories. Seminars on Analytical Psychology and Eastern Philosophy were organized at her villa at Lake Maggiore, Italy. Mary Mellon, an American, founded the Bollingen Foundation and published the Eranos lectures and Jung’s collected works. The C. G. Jung Institute to teach and practice Analytical Psychology was founded in 1948.
Travels and Exploration
Jung traveled extensively to give lectures and to study other cultures. His lectures were very popular in Europe and America. In his attempt to find universal psychological themes in various religions, he spent some time with the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico. He explored the cultures of North Africa and later visited Kenya and Uganda to ‘study the European’s reaction to primitive conditions’. He discovered a sense of ‘the stillness of the eternal beginning, the world as it had always been, in the state of non-being’.
In 1938, Jung visited India to attend the 25th anniversary of the Indian Science Congress at Calcutta. The University of Calcutta, the Benaras Hindu University and the University of Allahabad awarded him honorary doctorates.
Last days
Jung built a tower-like house with a ‘maternal feel’ in Bollingen after his mother’s death. It had no electricity or running water. This, Jung felt, would bring him closer to nature and his Number 2 personality. He added the second storey after his wife’s death to represent the ‘extension of consciousness achieved in old age’. Above the door of his house was written, ‘Invoked or not invoked, the God will be present.’
Jung was made the Honorary Citizen of Küsnacht on his eighty-fifth birthday in 1960. He finished his last work Approaching the Unconscious just ten days before his death. Jung took out the best wine in his cellar and had it on the last evening of his life. He died the next day, 6 June 1961, in his house on the lake at Küsnacht. As if to prove his theories of the supernatural, a great storm broke across the lake within an hour.
Jung and his ideas attracted admiration as well as criticism. Evaluating his own life, he wrote ‘I am satisfied with the course my life has taken. I am astonished, disappointed, pleased with myself… In spite of all uncertainties, I feel a solidity underlying all existence and continuity in my mode of being… Life is – or has – meaning and meaningless. I cherish the anxious hope that meaning will preponderate and win the battle’.
Carl Gustav Jung, one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century, began as a psychiatrist, then became a psychoanalyst equal in stature to Freud, and finally set out to establish Analytical Psychology.
Armed with an extensive knowledge of a wide variety of subjects, he came up with a grand theory of psychology that not only explained human psyche in its normal and abnormal plight, but also showed the road to salvation.
His greatest discovery was the idea of collective unconscious. He brought recognition to intuitions, dreams and visions as valid sources of knowledge, and unraveled the significance of myths, religion and the occult.
Several of the terms introduced by him such as extrovert, introvert and complexes have become a part of the everyday language.
1875 Born on July 26, at Kesswil, Switzerland.
1885 Joined school at Basel.
1895 Went to Basel University for medical training.
1900 Got his medical degree. Joined the Burghölzli Mental Hospital as Assistant Staff Physician.
1902 Submitted his dissertation on occult phenomena and obtained his degree in psychiatry. Studied psychopathology at the Salpêtrière in Paris.
1903 Married Emma Rauschenbach. Started experimental researches on Work Association.
1905 Appointed as Senior Staff Physician at Burghölzli Mental Asylum.Became lecturer on the medical faculty of Zurich University.
1906 Published Studies in Word Association. Started correspondence with Freud.
1907 Published The Psychology of Dementia Praecox. Met Freud in Vienna.
1909 Resigned from Burghölzli Mental Hospital to start private practice. Visited USA with Freud to lecture on psychoanalysis at Clark University. Received honorary degree of LL.D.
1910 Became the first President of the International Psychoanalytic Association.
1912 Visited USA to lecture at Fordham University and publicized his differences with Freud. Published Psychology of the Unconscious.
1913 Broke with Freud.Resigned Lectureship at Zurich University. His own psychosis, ‘confrontation with the unconscious’ began.
1914 Resigned as President of the International Psychoanalytic Association.
1916 Wrote the Septa Sermones ad Mortuos and made the first mandala painting. Founded the Analytical Psychology Club.
1918 Became the commandant of the camp for interned British soldiers at Château d’ Oex.
1920 Traveled to Algeria and Tunisia.
1923 Mother died. Built a tower-like house at Bollingen.
1925 Went to New Mexico and studied the Pueblo Indians. Visited Kenya, Uganda and the Nile.
1928 Started studying alchemical texts.
1930 Became vice-president of General Medical Society for Psychotherapy.
1933 Visited Egypt and Palestine.
1934 Founded the International General Medical Society for Psychotherapy and became its first President.
1935 Appointed titular professor at Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, Zurich. Tavistock Lectures at the Institute of Medical Psychology, London.
1937 Terry Lectures on Psychology and Religion at Yale University, USA.
1938 Visited India to attend the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Indian Science Congress at Calcutta. Awarded honorary doctorates by the Universities of Calcutta, Allahabad and Banaras.
1939 Resigned as President of the International General Medical Society for Psychotherapy.
1942 Quit the professorship at Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule.
1943 Appointed to the Chair of Medical Psychology at Basel University.
1944 Resigned the Basel Chair due to critical illness.
1955 Wife died in November.
1957 Started work on his semi-autobiographical work Memories, Dreams, Reflections.
1961 Died at Küsnacht.
THE COLLECTED WORKS OF C. G. JUNG
Volume 1. Psychiatric Studies
Volume 2. Experimental Researches
Volume 3. The Psychogenesis of Mental Disease
Volume 4. Freud and Psychoanalysis
Volume 5. Symbols of Transformation
Volume 6. Psychological Types
Volume 7. Two Essays on Analytical Psychology
Volume 8. The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche
Volume 9. Part-I The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Part-II Aion
Volume 10. Civilization in Transition
Volume 11. Psychology and Religion: East and West
Volume 12. Psychology and Alchemy
Volume 13. Alchemical Studies
Volume 14. Mysterium Coniunctionis
Volume 15. The Spirit in Man, Art and Literature
Volume 16. The Practice of Psychotherapy
Volume 17. The Development of Personality
Volume 18. The Symbolic Life
MAJOR WORKS
On the Psychology and Pathology of So-called Occult Phenomena, 1902
This was the dissertation submitted by Jung to Zurich University for his medical degree. Jung interpreted the séances of his fifteen-year-old cousin and introduced the concept of unconscious personalities.
Studies in Word Association, 1906
Jung used word association tests to show that patients’ seemingly senseless responses to stimulus words were due to unconscious emotional connections. He coined the term complexes for such clusters of words, images and ideas with a common underlying emotion.
The Psychology of Dementia Praecox, 1907
In this book on dementia praecox, now called schizophrenia, Jung tried to make sense of the apparently senseless utterances and delusions of the insane. He showed that these were an attempt by the psychotic patient to create a new reality.
Psychology of the Unconscious, 1912
The views expressed by Jung here were contrary to those of Freud. The break with Freud was complete with the publication of this book. This book was later published as Symbols of Transformation.
The Seven Sermons, 1916
Jung in one of his psychotic episodes produced the Septem Sermons ad Mortuos. It was the result of ‘automatic writing’ that lasted for three days.
Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology, 1916
In these papers Jung described the process of active imagination, and introduced the terms personal unconscious, collective unconscious, individuation, animus, anima and persona.
Psychological Types, 1921
This was Jung’s work on the psychology of the conscious mind. He introduced the term’s extrovert and introvert, and described the eight possible psychological types of people.
Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 1928
The Secret of the Golden Flower: a Chinese Book of Life, 1929
The co-author Richard Wilhelm was a Sinologist. He asked Jung to write a commentary on the ancient Taoist text The Secret of the Golden Flower. This aroused Jung’s interest in alchemy and Chinese mysticism. It helped him formulate the concept of the self.
Modern Man in Search of a Soul, 1933
In this collection of essays, Jung dealt with subjects ranging from dream analysis and literature to the psychology of religion.
Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice
Jung gave a series of lectures at the Institute of Medical Psychology, Tavistock, London, in 1935. These Tavistock Lectures were published as Analytical Psychology in 1968.
Psychology and Religion, 1938
Jung gave Terry lectures on Psychology and Religion at Yale University, U.S.A. in 1937. These were published in 1938. In this book and Paracelsica, he developed the theme that the collective unconscious forms the basis of religious expression.
Paracelsica
Psychology and Alchemy, 1944
Aion, 1951
Answer to Job, 1952
Mysterium Coniunctionis, 1955-56
Jung regarded these the most important of all his books. In these books he showed the psychological significance of alchemy and religion, and further developed the concept of individuation.
Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1962
Jung started work on this semi-autobiography in 1957. It was partly written by him, the rest recorded and edited by his secretary Aniela Jaffé. It was published a year after his death.
• Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.
• As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
• We need more understanding of human nature, because the only real danger that exists is man himself….. His psyche should be studied because we are the origin of all coming evil.
• Wherever an inferiority complex exists, there is a good reason for it. There is always something inferior there, although not just where we persuade ourselves that it is.
• Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.
• The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.
• The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.
• A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.
• Fortunately, in her kindness and patience, Nature has never put the fatal question as to the meaning of their lives into the mouths of most people. And where no one asks, no one needs to answer.
• Among all my patients in the second half of life…. there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life.
• The images of the unconscious place a great responsibility upon a man. Failure to understand them, or a shirking of ethical responsibility, deprives him of his wholeness and imposes a painful fragmentariness on his life.
• Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose it’s meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better to take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.
• Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.
• Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. If people can be educated to see the lowly side of their own natures, it may be hoped that they will learn to understand and to love their fellow men better.
• Masses are always breeding grounds of psychic epidemics.
• The man who promises everything is sure to fulfill nothing, and everyone who promises too much is in danger of using evil means in order to carry out his promises, and is already on the road to perdition.
• The wine of youth does not always clear with advancing years; sometimes it grows turbid.
• One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feeling. Curriculum is necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.
• The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.
• A collection of a hundred great brains makes one big fathead.
• The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.
• Nothing worse could happen to one than to be completely understood.
• It all depends on how we look at things, and not on how they are themselves.
• To confront a person with his own shadow is to show him his own light.
• Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy between the genius and his human qualities that one has to ask oneself whether a little less talent might not have been better.
• The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.
• Nothing worse could happen to one than to be completely understood.
• It all depends on how we look at things, and not on how they are themselves.
• To confront a person with his own shadow is to show him his own light.
• Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy between the genius and his human qualities that one has to ask oneself whether a little less talent might not have been better.
• In every human being there is a special heaven, whole and unbroken.
