Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung , often referred to as C.
G. Jung, was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist
who founded analytical psychology. Jung proposed
and developed the concepts of extraversion
and introversion; archetypes, and the collective
unconscious. His work has been influential
in psychiatry and in the study of religion,
philosophy, archeology, anthropology, literature,
and related fields. He was a prolific writer,
many of whose works were not published until
after his death.
The central concept of analytical psychology
is individuation—the psychological process
of integrating the opposites, including the
conscious with the unconscious, while still
maintaining their relative autonomy. Jung
considered individuation to be the central
process of human development.
Jung created some of the best known psychological
concepts, including the archetype, the collective
unconscious, the complex, and synchronicity.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a
popular psychometric instrument, has been
developed from Jung's theory of psychological
types.
Jung saw the human psyche as "by nature religious"
and made this religiousness the focus of his
explorations. Jung is one of the best known
contemporary contributors to dream analysis
and symbolization.
Though he was a practising clinician and considered
himself to be a scientist, much of his life's
work was spent exploring tangential areas
such as Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy,
astrology, and sociology, as well as literature
and the arts. Jung's interest in philosophy
and the occult led many to view him as a mystic,
although his ambition was to be seen as a
man of science. His influence on popular psychology,
the "psychologization of religion", spirituality
and the New Age movement has been immense.
Early life
Youth
Carl Gustav Jung was born in Kesswil, in the
Swiss canton of Thurgau, on 26 July 1875 as
the fourth but only surviving child of Paul
Achilles Jung and Emilie Preiswerk. Emilie
Preiswerk was the youngest child of Samuel
Preiswerk who was also Paul Achilles Jung's
professor of Hebrew. Jung's father was a poor
rural pastor in the Swiss Reformed Church
while his mother came from a wealthy Swiss
family.
When Jung was six months old his father was
appointed to a more prosperous parish in Laufen.
Meanwhile the tension between his parents
was growing. Emilie Jung was an eccentric
and depressed woman who spent much of her
time in her own separate bedroom enthralled
by the spirits that she said visited her at
night. Jung had a better relationship with
his father due to his mother's eccentricities.
Although normal during the day, Jung said
that at night his mother became strange and
mysterious. Jung said that one night he saw
a faintly luminous and indefinite figure coming
from her room with a head detached from the
neck and floating in the air in front of the
body.
Jung's mother left Laufen for several months
of hospitalization near Basel for an unknown
physical ailment. Jung was taken by his father
to live with Emilie Jung's unmarried sister
in Basel but was later brought back to his
father's residence. Emilie Jung's continuing
bouts of absence and often depressed mood
influenced her son's attitude towards women —
one of "innate unreliability". This was a
view that he later called the "handicap I
started off with" and that resulted in his
sometimes patriarchal views of women. After
three years of living in Laufen Paul Jung
requested a transfer and was called to Kleinhüningen
in 1879. The relocation brought Emilie Jung
in closer contact to her family and lifted
her melancholy and despondent mood.
Childhood memories
Jung was a solitary and introverted child
and was convinced from childhood that, like
his mother, he had two personalities—a modern
Swiss citizen and a personality more suited
to the nineteenth century. "Personality Number
1," as he termed it, was a typical schoolboy
living in the era of the time. "Personality
Number 2" was a dignified, authoritative and
influential man from the past. Although Jung
was close to both parents he was disappointed
by his father's academic approach to faith.
A number of childhood memories made lifelong
impressions on him. As a boy he carved a tiny
mannequin into the end of the wooden ruler
from his pencil case and placed it inside
the case. He then added a stone which he had
painted into upper and lower halves and hid
the case in the attic. Periodically he would
come back to the mannequin often bringing
tiny sheets of paper with messages inscribed
on them in his own secret language. He later
reflected that this ceremonial act brought
him a feeling of inner peace and security.
Years later he discovered similarities between
this personal experience and the totems of
native peoples such as the collection of soul-stones
near Arlesheim or the tjurungas of Australia.
He concluded that his intuitive ceremonial
act was an unconscious ritual that was practiced
in a strikingly similar way in faraway locations
that he, as a young boy, had no way of consciously
knowing about. His findings on psychological
archetypes and the collective unconscious
were inspired, in part, by these experiences.
At the age of twelve, and shortly before the
end of his first year at the Humanistisches
Gymnasium in Basel, he was pushed to the ground
by another boy so hard that he was momentarily
unconscious (Jung later recognized that the
incident was his fault, indirectly). A thought
then came to him—"now you won't have to
go to school any more." From then on, whenever
he walked to school or began homework, he
fainted. He remained at home for the next
six months until he overheard his father speaking
worriedly to a visitor of his future ability
to support himself. They suspected he had
epilepsy. Confronted with the reality of his
family's poverty he realized the need for
academic excellence. He immediately went into
his father's study and began poring over Latin
grammar. He fainted three more times but eventually
overcame the urge and did not faint again.
This event, Jung later recalled, "was when
I learned what a neurosis is."
University years
Jung did not plan to study psychiatry since
it was not considered prestigious at the time.
But, studying a psychiatric textbook, he became
very excited when he discovered that psychoses
are personality diseases. His interest was
immediately captured—it combined the biological
and the spiritual and was exactly what he
was searching for.
In 1895 Jung studied medicine at the University
of Basel. In 1900 he began working in the
Zurich psychiatric hospital Burghölzli with
Eugen Bleuler. His dissertation, published
in 1903, was titled "On the Psychology and
Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena."
In 1906 he published Studies in Word Association
and later sent a copy of this book to Sigmund
Freud which led to a close six year friendship
between them (see section on Relationship
with Freud). In 1912 Jung published Wandlungen
und Symbole der Libido (known in English as
Psychology of the Unconscious) which resulted
in a theoretical divergence between himself
and Freud. Consequently their friendship fractured—each
stating that the other was unable to admit
he could possibly be wrong. After this falling-out
Jung went through a pivotal and difficult
psychological transformation which was exacerbated
by news of the First World War. Henri Ellenberger
called Jung's experience a "creative illness"
and compared it to Freud's period of, what
he called, neurasthenia and hysteria.
Army career
During World War I Jung was drafted as an
army doctor and soon made Commandant of an
internment camp for British officers and soldiers
(Swiss neutrality obliged the Swiss to intern
personnel from either side of the conflict
who crossed their frontier to evade capture).
Jung worked to improve the conditions of soldiers
stranded in neutral territory and encouraged
them to attend university courses.
Marriage
In 1903 Jung married Emma Rauschenbach who
came from a wealthy family in Switzerland.
They had five children: Agathe, Gret, Franz,
Marianne, and Helene. The marriage lasted
until Emma's death in 1955 but Jung engaged
in open relationships with other women. His
extramarital relationships with patients and
friends Sabina Spielrein and Toni Wolff were
the most widely known.
Freud
Meeting Freud
Jung was thirty when he sent his Studies in
Word Association to Sigmund Freud in Vienna
in 1906. The two men met for the first time
the following year and Jung recalled the discussion
between himself and Freud as interminable.
He recalled that they talked almost unceasingly
for thirteen hours. Six months later the then
50-year-old Freud sent a collection of his
latest published essays to Jung in Zurich.
This marked the beginning of an intense correspondence
and collaboration that lasted six years and
ended in May 1913. At this time Jung resigned
as the chairman of the International Psychoanalytical
Association where he had been elected with
Freud's support.
Jung and Freud influenced each other during
the intellectually formative years of Jung's
life. Freud called Jung "his adopted eldest
son, his crown prince and successor". As Freud
was already fifty years old at their meeting,
he was well beyond the formative years. In
1906 psychology as a science was still in
its early stages. Jung, who had become interested
in psychiatry as a student by reading Psychopathia
Sexualis by Richard von Krafft-Ebing, professor
in Vienna, now worked as a doctor under the
psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler in Burghölzli
and became familiar with Freud's idea of the
unconscious through Freud's The Interpretation
of Dreams (1899) and was a proponent of the
new "psycho-analysis." At the time, Freud
needed collaborators and pupils to validate
and spread his ideas. Burghölzli was a renowned
psychiatric clinic in Zurich at which Jung
was a young doctor whose research had already
given him international recognition.
Jung de-emphasized the importance of sexual
development and focused on the collective
unconscious: the part of unconscious that
contains memories and ideas inherited from
our ancestors. While he did think that libido
was an important source for personal growth,
he, unlike Freud, believed that libido alone
was not responsible for the formation of the
core personality.
Journal editor
In 1908, Jung became an editor of the newly
founded Yearbook for Psychoanalytical and
Psychopathological Research. The following
year, Jung traveled with Freud and Sándor
Ferenczi to the United States to speak about
psychoanalysis and, in 1910, Jung became Chairman
for Life of the International Psychoanalytical
Association. While Jung worked on his Wandlungen
und Symbole der Libido (Psychology of the
Unconscious), tensions grew between Freud
and Jung, mostly due to their disagreements
over the nature of libido and religion. In
1912 these tensions came to a peak because
Jung felt severely slighted after Freud visited
his colleague Ludwig Binswanger in Kreuzlingen
without paying him a visit in nearby Zurich,
an incident Jung referred to as "the Kreuzlingen
gesture". Shortly thereafter, Jung again traveled
to the United States and gave the Fordham
lectures, which were published as The Theory
of Psychoanalysis in 1912. While they contain
some remarks on Jung's dissenting view on
the nature of libido, they represent largely
a "psychoanalytical Jung" and not the theory
Jung became famous for in the following decades.
Travels to the USA
In 1909 Jung and Freud traveled to the conference
at Clark University. The event was planned
by psychologist G. Stanley Hall and included
twenty-seven distinguished psychiatrists,
neurologists and psychologists. It represented
a watershed in the acceptance of psychoanalysis
in North America. This forged welcome links
between Jung and influential Americans. Jung
returned to the United States the next year
for a brief visit, and again for a six-week
lecture series at Fordham University in 1912.
Last meetings with Freud
In November 1912, Jung and Freud met in Munich
for a meeting among prominent colleagues to
discuss psychoanalytical journals. At a talk
about a new psychoanalytic essay on Amenhotep
IV, Jung expressed his views on how it related
to actual conflicts in the psychoanalytic
movement. While Jung spoke, Freud suddenly
fainted and Jung carried him to a couch.
Jung and Freud personally met for the last
time in September 1913 for the Fourth International
Psychoanalytical Congress in Munich. Jung
gave a talk on psychological types, the introverted
and extraverted type in analytical psychology.
This constituted the introduction of some
of the key concepts which came to distinguish
Jung's work from Freud's in the next half
century.
Midlife isolation
London 1913–14
Jung spoke at meetings of the Psycho-Medical
Society in London in 1913 and 1914. His travels
were soon interrupted by the war, but his
ideas continued to receive attention in England
primarily through the efforts of Constance
Long. He translated and published the first
English volume of his collected writings.
Red Book
In 1913, at the age of thirty-eight, Jung
experienced a horrible "confrontation with
the unconscious". He saw visions and heard
voices. He worried at times that he was "menaced
by a psychosis" or was "doing a schizophrenia".
He decided that it was valuable experience
and, in private, he induced hallucinations
or, in his words, "active imaginations". He
recorded everything he felt in small journals.
Jung began to transcribe his notes into a
large red leather-bound book, on which he
worked intermittently for sixteen years.
Jung left no posthumous instructions about
the final disposition of what he called the
"Red Book". His family eventually moved it
into a bank vault in 1984. Sonu Shamdasani,
a historian from London, for three years tried
to persuade Jung's heirs to have it published,
to which they declined every hint of inquiry.
As of mid-September 2009, fewer than two dozen
people had seen it. Ulrich Hoerni, Jung's
grandson who manages the Jung archives, decided
to publish it. To raise the additional funds
needed the Philemon Foundation was founded.
In 2007, two technicians for DigitalFusion,
working with the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company,
painstakingly scanned one-tenth of a millimeter
at a time with a 10,200-pixel scanner. It
was published on 7 October 2009, in German
with "separate English translation along with
Shamdasani's introduction and footnotes" at
the back of the book, according to Sara Corbett
for The New York Times. She wrote, "The book
is bombastic, baroque and like so much else
about Carl Jung, a willful oddity, synched
with an antediluvian and mystical reality."
The Rubin Museum of Art in New York City displayed
the original Red Book journal, as well as
some of Jung's original small journals, from
7 October 2009, to 25 January 2010. According
to them, "During the period in which he worked
on this book Jung developed his principal
theories of archetypes, collective unconscious,
and the process of individuation." Two-thirds
of the pages bear Jung's illuminations of
the text.
Isolation
In the following years Jung experienced considerable
isolation in his professional life, exacerbated
through World War I. His Seven Sermons to
the Dead (1917), reprinted in his autobiography
Memories, Dreams, Reflections (see bibliography),
can also be read as expression of the psychological
conflicts which beset Jung around the age
of forty after the break with Freud.
London 1920–23
Constance Long arranged for him to deliver
a seminar in Cornwall in 1920. Another seminar
was held in 1923, this one organized by Helton
Godwin Baynes (known as Peter), and another
in 1925.
USA 1924–25
Jung made a more extensive trip westward in
the winter of 1924–5, financed and organized
by Fowler McCormick and George Porter. Of
particular value to Jung was a visit with
Chief Mountain Lake of the Taos Pueblo near
Taos, New Mexico.
East Africa
In October 1925, Jung embarked on his most
ambitious expedition, the "Bugishu Psychological
Expedition" to East Africa. He was accompanied
by Peter Baynes and an American associate,
George Beckwith. On the voyage to Africa,
they became acquainted with an English woman
named Ruth Bailey, who joined their safari
a few weeks later. The group traveled through
Kenya and Uganda to the slopes of Mount Elgon,
where Jung hoped to increase his understanding
of "primitive psychology" through conversations
with the culturally isolated residents of
that area. Later he concluded that the major
insights he had gleaned had to do with himself
and the European psychology in which he had
been raised.
United States 1936
Jung made another trip to America in 1936,
giving lectures in New York and New England
for his growing group of American followers.
He returned in 1937 to deliver the Terry Lectures,
later published as Psychology and Religion,
at Yale University.
India
In December 1937, Jung left Zurich again for
an extensive tour of India with Fowler McCormick.
In India, he felt himself "under the direct
influence of a foreign culture" for the first
time. In Africa, his conversations had been
strictly limited by the language barrier,
but in India he was able to converse extensively.
Hindu philosophy became an important element
in his understanding of the role of symbolism
and the life of the unconscious, though he
avoided a meeting with Ramana Maharshi. He
described Ramana as being absorbed in ‘the
self’, but admits to not understanding Ramana’s
self-realisation or what he actually did do.
He also admits that his field of psychology
is not competent in understanding the eastern
insight of the atman ‘the self’. Jung
became seriously ill on this trip and endured
two weeks of delirium in a Calcutta hospital.
After 1938, his travels were confined to Europe.
Last publications and death
Jung continued to publish books until the
end of his life, including Flying Saucers:
A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies
(1959), which analyzed the archetypal meaning
and possible psychological significance of
the reported observations of UFOs. He also
enjoyed a friendship with an English Roman
Catholic priest, Father Victor White, who
corresponded with Jung after he had published
his controversial Answer to Job.
Jung died on 6 June 1961 at Küsnacht, after
a short illness.
Psychology
Jung founded a new school of psychotherapy,
called analytical psychology or Jungian psychology.
Theories
His theories include:
The concept of introversion and extraversion
(although he did not define these terms as
they are popularly defined today).
The concept of the complex.
The concept of the collective unconscious,
shared by all people. It includes the archetypes.
Synchronicity as a mode of relationship that
is not causal, an idea that has influenced
Wolfgang Pauli (with whom he developed the
notion of unus mundus in connection with the
notion of non-locality) and some other physicists.
Introversion and extroversion
In Jung’s Psychological Types, he theorizes
that each person falls into one of two categories,
the introvert and the extrovert. These two
psychological types Jung compares to the ancient
archetypes, Apollo and Dionysus.
The introvert is likened with Apollo, who
shines light on understanding. The introvert
is focused on the internal world of reflection,
dreaming and vision. Thoughtful and insightful,
the introvert can sometime be disinterested
in joining the activities of others.
The extrovert is associated with Dionysus,
interested in joining the activities of the
world. The extrovert is focused on the outside
world of objects, sensory perception and action.
Energetic and lively, the extrovert may lose
their sense of self in the intoxication of
Dionysian pursuits.
Divergence from Freud
Jung's primary disagreement with Freud stemmed
from their differing concepts of the unconscious.
Jung saw Freud's theory of the unconscious
as incomplete and unnecessarily negative.
According to Jung, Freud conceived the unconscious
solely as a repository of repressed emotions
and desires. Jung agreed with Freud's model
of the unconscious, what Jung called the "personal
unconscious", but he also proposed the existence
of a second, far deeper form of the unconscious
underlying the personal one. This was the
collective unconscious, where the archetypes
themselves resided, represented in mythology
by a lake or other body of water, and in some
cases a jug or other container. Freud had
actually mentioned a collective level of psychic
functioning but saw it primarily as an appendix
to the rest of the psyche.
Individuation
Jung considered individuation, a psychological
process of integrating the opposites including
the conscious with the unconscious while still
maintaining their relative autonomy, necessary
for a person to become whole.
Individuation is a process of transformation
whereby the personal and collective unconscious
is brought into consciousness (by means of
dreams, active imagination or free association
to take some examples) to be assimilated into
the whole personality. It is a completely
natural process necessary for the integration
of the psyche to take place.
Besides achieving physical and mental health,
people who have advanced towards individuation
tend to be harmonious, mature and responsible.
They embody humane values such as freedom
and justice and have a good understanding
about the workings of human nature and the
universe.
Persona
In his psychological theory – which is not
necessarily linked to a particular theory
of social structure – the persona appears
as a consciously created personality or identity
fashioned out of part of the collective psyche
through socialization, acculturation and experience.
Jung applied the classical term persona, explicitly
because, originally, it meant the mask which
the actor bears, expressing the role he plays
(see also persona (psychology)).
The persona, he argues, is a mask for the
"collective psyche", a mask that 'pretends'
individuality, so that both self and others
believe in that identity, even if it is really
no more than a well-played role through which
the collective psyche is expressed. Jung regarded
the "persona-mask" as a complicated system
which mediates between individual consciousness
and the social community: it is "a compromise
between the individual and society as to what
a man should appear to be". But he also makes
it quite explicit that it is, in substance,
a character mask in the classical sense known
to theatre, with its double function: both
intended to make a certain impression to others,
and to hide (part of) the true nature of the
individual. The therapist then aims to assist
the individuation process through which the
client (re-)gains his "own self" – by liberating
the self, both from the deceptive cover of
the persona, and from the power of unconscious
impulses.
Jung's theory has become enormously influential
in management theory; not just because managers
and executives have to create an appropriate
"management persona" (a corporate mask) and
a persuasive identity, but also because they
have to evaluate what sort of people the workers
are, in order to manage them (for example,
using personality tests and peer reviews).
Spirituality
Jung's work on himself and his patients convinced
him that life has a spiritual purpose beyond
material goals. Our main task, he believed,
is to discover and fulfill our deep innate
potential. Based on his study of Christianity,
Hinduism, Buddhism, Gnosticism, Taoism, and
other traditions, Jung believed that this
journey of transformation, which he called
individuation, is at the mystical heart of
all religions. It is a journey to meet the
self and at the same time to meet the Divine.
Unlike Freud's objectivist worldview, Jung's
pantheism may have led him to believe that
spiritual experience was essential to our
well-being, as he specifically identifies
individual human life with the universe as
a whole. Jung's ideas on religion gave a counterbalance
to the Freudian scepticism on religion. Jung's
idea of religion as a practical road to individuation
has been quite popular, and is still treated
in modern textbooks on the psychology of religion,
though his ideas have also been criticized.
Alchemy
The work and writings of Jung from the 1940s
onwards focused on alchemy.
In 1944 Jung published Psychology and Alchemy,
where he analyzed the alchemical symbols and
showed a direct relationship to the psychoanalytical
process. He argued that the alchemical process
was the transformation of the impure soul
(lead) to perfected soul (gold), and a metaphor
for the individuation process.
In 1963 Mysterium Coniunctionis was first
published in The Collected Works of C. G.
Jung. Mysterium Coniunctionis was Jung's last
book and focused on the "Mysterium Coniunctionis"
archetype, known as the sacred marriage between
sun and moon. Jung argued that the stages
of the alchemists, the blackening, the whitening,
the reddening and the yellowing, could be
taken as symbolic of individuation — his
favourite term for personal growth (75).
Alcoholics Anonymous
Jung recommended spirituality as a cure for
alcoholism and he is considered to have had
an indirect role in establishing Alcoholics
Anonymous. Jung once treated an American patient
(Rowland Hazard III), suffering from chronic
alcoholism. After working with the patient
for some time and achieving no significant
progress, Jung told the man that his alcoholic
condition was near to hopeless, save only
the possibility of a spiritual experience.
Jung noted that occasionally such experiences
had been known to reform alcoholics where
all else had failed.
Hazard took Jung's advice seriously and set
about seeking a personal spiritual experience.
He returned home to the United States and
joined a First-Century Christian evangelical
movement known as the Oxford Group (later
known as Moral Re-Armament). He also told
other alcoholics what Jung had told him about
the importance of a spiritual experience.
One of the alcoholics he brought into the
Oxford Group was Ebby Thacher, a long-time
friend and drinking buddy of Bill Wilson,
later co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).
Thacher told Wilson about the Oxford Group,
and through them Wilson became aware of Hazard's
experience with Jung. The influence of Jung
thus indirectly found its way into the formation
of Alcoholics Anonymous, the original twelve-step
program, and from there into the whole twelve-step
recovery movement, although AA as a whole
is not Jungian and Jung had no role in the
formation of that approach or the twelve steps.
The above claims are documented in the letters
of Jung and Bill W. (i.e., Bill Wilson), excerpts
of which can be found in Pass It On, published
by Alcoholics Anonymous. Although the detail
of this story is disputed by some historians,
Jung himself discussed an Oxford Group member,
who may have been the same person, in talks
given around 1940. The remarks were distributed
privately in transcript form, from shorthand
taken by an attender (Jung reportedly approved
the transcript), and later recorded in Volume
18 of his Collected Works, The Symbolic Life
("For instance, when a member of the Oxford
Group comes to me in order to get treatment,
I say, 'You are in the Oxford Group; so long
as you are there, you settle your affair with
the Oxford Group. I can't do it better than
Jesus.'" Jung goes on to state that he has
seen similar cures among Roman Catholics).
Art therapy
Jung proposed that art can be used to alleviate
or contain feelings of trauma, fear, or anxiety
and also to repair, restore and heal. In his
work with patients and in his own personal
explorations, Jung wrote that art expression
and images found in dreams could be helpful
in recovering from trauma and emotional distress.
He often drew, painted, or made objects and
constructions at times of emotional distress,
which he recognized as more than recreational.
Political views
Views on the state
Jung stressed the importance of individual
rights in a person's relation to the state
and society. He saw that the state was treated
as "a quasi-animate personality from whom
everything is expected" but that this personality
was "only camouflage for those individuals
who know how to manipulate it", and referred
to the state as a form of slavery. He also
thought that the state "swallowed up religious
forces", and therefore that the state had
"taken the place of God"—making it comparable
to a religion in which "state slavery is a
form of worship". Jung observed that "stage
acts of state" are comparable to religious
displays: "Brass bands, flags, banners, parades
and monster demonstrations are no different
in principle from ecclesiastical processions,
cannonades and fire to scare off demons".
From Jung's perspective, this replacement
of God with the state in a mass society led
to the dislocation of the religious drive
and resulted in the same fanaticism of the
church-states of the Dark Ages—wherein the
more the state is 'worshipped', the more freedom
and morality are suppressed; this ultimately
leaves the individual psychically undeveloped
with extreme feelings of marginalization.
Germany, 1933 to 1939
Jung had many friends and respected colleagues
who were Jewish and he maintained relations
with them through the 1930s when anti-semitism
in Germany and other European nations was
on the rise. However, until 1939, he also
maintained professional relations with psychotherapists
in Germany who had declared their support
for the Nazi regime and there were allegations
that he himself was a Nazi sympathizer. In
his work Civilisation in Transition, Collected
Works Volume X, however, Jung wrote of "... the
Aryan bird of prey with his insatiable lust
to lord it in every land, even those that
concern him not at all."
In 1933, after the Nazis gained power in Germany,
Jung took part in restructuring of the General
Medical Society for Psychotherapy (Allgemeine
Ärztliche Gesellschaft für Psychotherapie),
a German-based professional body with an international
membership. The society was reorganized into
two distinct bodies:
A strictly German body, the Deutsche Allgemeine
Ärztliche Gesellschaft für Psychotherapie,
led by Matthias Göring, an Adlerian psychotherapist
and a cousin of the prominent Nazi Hermann
Göring;
International General Medical Society for
Psychotherapy, led by Jung. The German body
was to be affiliated to the international
society, as were new national societies being
set up in Switzerland and elsewhere.
The International Society's constitution permitted
individual doctors to join it directly, rather
than through one of the national affiliated
societies, a provision to which Jung drew
attention in a circular in 1934. This implied
that German Jewish doctors could maintain
their professional status as individual members
of the international body, even though they
were excluded from the German affiliate, as
well as from other German medical societies
operating under the Nazis.
As leader of the international body, Jung
assumed overall responsibility for its publication,
the Zentralblatt für Psychotherapie. In 1933,
this journal published a statement endorsing
Nazi positions and Hitler's book Mein Kampf.
In 1934, Jung wrote in a Swiss publication,
the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, that he experienced
"great surprise and disappointment" when the
Zentralblatt associated his name with the
pro-Nazi statement.
Jung went on to say "the main point is to
get a young and insecure science into a place
of safety during an earthquake". He did not
end his relationship with the Zentralblatt
at this time, but he did arrange the appointment
of a new managing editor, Carl Alfred Meier
of Switzerland. For the next few years, the
Zentralblatt under Jung and Meier maintained
a position distinct from that of the Nazis,
in that it continued to acknowledge contributions
of Jewish doctors to psychotherapy.
In the face of energetic German attempts to
Nazify the international body, Jung resigned
from its presidency in 1939, the year the
Second World War started.
Response to Nazism
Jung's interest in European mythology and
folk psychology has led to accusations of
Nazi sympathies, since they shared the same
interest. He became, however, aware of the
negative impact of these similarities:
There are writings showing that Jung's sympathies
were against, rather than for, Nazism. In
his 1936 essay "Wotan", Jung described the
influence of Hitler on Germany as "one man
who is obviously 'possessed' has infected
a whole nation to such an extent that everything
is set in motion and has started rolling on
its course towards perdition." and wrote
Jung would later say that:
In an interview with Carol Baumann in 1948,
Jung denied rumors regarding any sympathy
for the Nazi movement, saying:
Cultural influence
Literature
Laurens van der Post, afrikaner author who
claimed to have had a 16-year-long friendship
with Jung, from which a number of books and
a film were created about Jung's life. The
accuracy of van der Post's claims about the
closeness of his relationship to Jung have
been questioned.
Hermann Hesse, author of works such as Siddhartha
and Steppenwolf, was treated by Joseph Lang,
a student of Jung. For Hesse this began a
long preoccupation with psychoanalysis, through
which he came to know Jung personally.
Art
The visionary Swiss painter Peter Birkhäuser
was treated by a student of Jung, Marie-Louise
von Franz, and corresponded with Jung regarding
the translation of dream symbolism into works
of art.
American Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock
underwent Jungian psychotherapy in 1939 with
Dr Joseph Henderson. His therapist made the
decision to engage him through his art, and
had Pollock make drawings, which led to the
appearance of many Jungian concepts in his
paintings.
Contrary to some sources, Jung did not visit
Liverpool but recorded a dream in which he
had, and of which he wrote "Liverpool is the
pool of life, it makes to live." As a result
a statue of Jung was erected in Mathew Street
in 1987 but, being made of plaster, was vandalised
and replaced by a more durable version in
1993.
Television and film
Federico Fellini brought to the screen an
exuberant imagery shaped by his encounter
with the ideas of Carl Jung, especially Jungian
dream interpretation. Fellini preferred Jung
to Freud because Jungian analysis defined
the dream not as a symptom of a disease that
required a cure but rather as a link to archetypal
images shared by all of humanity.
BBC interview for Face to Face with John Freeman
at Jung's home in Zurich. 1959.
A Dangerous Method, a 2011 film directed by
David Cronenberg, is a fictional dramatisation
of Jung's life as a psychoanalyst between
1904 and 1913. It mainly concerns his relationships
with Freud and Sabina Spielrein, a Russian
analyst who became his lover, and later his
student.
Matter of Heart (1986), a documentary on the
famous Swiss psychoanalyst, Carl Gustav Jung,
featuring interviews with those who knew him
and archive footage of Jung.
