Carl Gustav Jung 

Carl Gustav Jung
A recent edition of Jung's partially autobiographical work Memories, Dreams, Reflections.
A recent edition of Jung's partially autobiographical work Memories, Dreams, Reflections.
Born July 26, 1875(1875-07-26)
Kesswil, Thurgau, Switzerland
Died June 6, 1961 (aged 85)
Zürich, Switzerland
Residence Switzerland
Citizenship Swiss
Fields Psychiatry, Psychology, Psychotherapy, Analytical psychology
Institutions Burghölzli
Doctoral advisor Eugen Bleuler, Sigmund Freud
Known for Analytical psychology

Carl Gustav Jung (IPA[ˈkarl ˈgʊstaf ˈjʊŋ]) (July 26, 1875, KesswilJune 6, 1961, Küsnacht) was a Swiss psychiatrist, an influential thinker and the founder of analytical psychology.

Jung's unique approach to psychology has been influential in the field of psychology and countercultural movements in Europe, the United States and elsewhere since the 1930s. He emphasized understanding the psyche through exploring the worlds of dreams, art, mythology, world religion and philosophy. Although he was a theoretical psychologist and practicing clinician, much of his life's work was spent exploring other realms, including Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy, astrology, sociology, as well as literature and the arts. His most notable ideas include the concept of psychological archetypes, the collective unconscious and synchronicity.

Jung emphasized the importance of balance and harmony. He cautioned that modern people rely too heavily on science and logic and would benefit from integrating spirituality and appreciation of unconscious realms.

Contents

Biography

Early years

Carl Jung was born Karl Gustav II Jung[1] on July 26, 1875 in Kesswil, in the Swiss canton (state) of Thurgau, as the fourth but only surviving child of Paul Achilles Jung and Emilie Preiswerk. His father, Paul Jung, was a poor rural pastor in the Swiss Reformed Church while his mother, Emilie, came from a wealthy, established Swiss family.

Six-year old Jung.
Six-year old Jung.

When Carl was six months old, Paul Jung acquired a position at a better parish in Laufen and the family moved there. Meanwhile, the tension between Paul and Emilie was growing. An eccentric and depressed woman, Emilie spent much of the time in her own separate bedroom, enthralled by the spirits that she said visited her at night. Emilie left Laufen for several months of hospitalization near Basel for an unknown physical ailment. Young Carl was taken by his father to live with Emilie's unmarried sister in Basel, but was later brought back to the pastor's residence. Emilie's continuing bouts of absence and often depressed mood influenced his attitude towards women — one of "innate unreliability", a view that he later called the "handicap I started off with".[2] After three years of living in Laufen, Paul Jung requested a transfer and was called to Kleinhüningen in 1879. The relocation brought Emilie in closer contact to her family and lifted her melancholy and despondent mood.

A very solitary and introverted child, Jung was convinced from childhood that he had two personalities — a modern Swiss citizen and a personality more at home in the eighteenth century.[3] "Personality No. 1", as he termed it, was a typical schoolboy living in the era of the time, while No. 2 was a dignified, authoritative and influential man from the past. Although Jung was close to both parents he was rather disappointed in his father's academic approach to faith.

A number of childhood memories had made a life-long impression on him. As a boy he carved a tiny mannequin into the end of the wooden ruler from his pupil's 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. This ceremonial act, he later reflected, brought him a feeling of inner peace and security. In later years he discovered that similarities existed in this memory and the totems of native peoples like the collection of soul-stones near Arlesheim, or the tjurungas of Australia. This, he concluded, was an unconscious ritual that he did not question or understand at the time, but which was practiced in a strikingly similar way in faraway locations that he as a young boy had no way of consciously knowing about.[4] His findings on psychological archetypes and the collective unconscious were inspired in part by this experience.

Shortly before the end of his first year at the Humanistisches Gymnasium in Basel, at age 12, he was pushed unexpectedly by another boy. He was knocked to the ground so hard that he was for a moment unconscious. The thought then came to him that "now you won't have to go to school any more."[5] From then on, whenever he started off 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, as they suspected he had epilepsy. With little money in the family, this brought the boy to reality and he realized the need for academic excellence. He immediately went into his father's study and began poring over Latin grammar. He fainted three times, but eventually he overcame the urge and did not faint again. This event, Jung later recalled, "was when I learned what a neurosis is."[6]

Adolescence and early adulthood

Jung wanted to study archaeology at a university, but his family was not wealthy enough to send him further afield than Basel, where they did not teach this subject, so instead Jung studied medicine at the University of Basel from 1894 to 1900. The formerly introverted student became much more lively here. In 1903, Jung married Emma Rauschenbach, from one of the richest families in Switzerland.

Towards the end of studies, his reading of Krafft-Ebing persuaded him to specialize in psychiatric medicine. He later worked in the Burghölzli, a psychiatric hospital in Zürich.

Jung in 1910.
Jung in 1910.

In 1906, he published Studies in Word Association and later sent a copy of this book to famed psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, after which a close friendship between these two men followed for some 6 years (see section on Jung and Freud). In 1912 Jung published Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (known in English as The Psychology of the Unconscious) resulting in a theoretical divergence between Jung and Freud and consequently a break in their friendship, both 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.

Later life

Following World War I, Jung became a worldwide traveler, facilitated by his wife's inherited fortune as well as the funds he received through psychiatric fees, book sales, and honoraria. He visited Northern Africa shortly after, and New Mexico and Kenya in the mid-1920s. In 1938, he delivered the Terry Lectures, Psychology and Religion, at Yale University. It was at about this stage in his life that Jung visited India. His experience in India led him to become fascinated and deeply involved with Eastern philosophies and religions, helping him form key concepts, including integrating spirituality into daily life and appreciation of the unconscious.

Jung's marriage with Emma produced five children and lasted until Emma's death in 1955, but he had more or less open relationships with other women. The most well-known women with whom Jung is believed to have had extramarital affairs were patient and friend Sabina Spielrein[7] and Toni Wolff.[8] Jung continued to publish books until the end of his life, including a work showing his late interest in flying saucers. He also enjoyed a friendship with an English Catholic priest, Father Victor White, who corresponded with Jung after he had published his controversial Answer to Job.[9]

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, much as the acorn contains the potential to become the oak, or the caterpillar to become the butterfly. Based on his study of Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Gnosticism, Taoism, and other traditions, Jung perceived that this journey of transformation 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 Sigmund Freud, Jung thought spiritual experience was essential to our well-being.[10]

Jung died in 1961 in Zürich, after a short illness.

Relationship with Freud

Group photo 1909 in front of Clark University. Front row: Sigmund Freud, Granville Stanley Hall, Jung; back row: Abraham A. Brill, Ernest Jones, Sandor Ferenczi.
Group photo 1909 in front of Clark University. Front row: Sigmund Freud, Granville Stanley Hall, Jung; back row: Abraham A. Brill, Ernest Jones, Sandor Ferenczi.

Jung was thirty when he sent his work Studies in Word Association to Sigmund Freud in Vienna. The first conversation between Jung and Freud lasted over 13 hours. Half a year later, the then 50 year-old Freud reciprocated by sending a collection of his latest published essays to Jung in Zürich, which marked the beginning of an intense correspondence and collaboration that lasted more than six years and ended shortly before World War I in May 1910, when Jung resigned as the chairman of the International Psychoanalytical Association.

Today Jung's and Freud's theories influence different schools of psychiatry, but, more importantly, they influenced each other during intellectually formative years of their lives. In 1906 psychoanalysis as an institution was still in its early developmental 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 the Burghölzli and became familiar with Freud's idea of the unconscious through Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) and was a proponent of the new "psycho-analysis". At the time, Freud needed collaborators and pupils to validate and spread his ideas. The Burghölzli was a renowned psychiatric clinic in Zürich at which Jung was an up-and-coming young doctor whose researches had already given him a worldwide reputation.

In 1908, Jung became editor of the newly founded Yearbook for Psychoanalytical and Psychopathological Research. The following year, Jung traveled with Freud and Sandor Ferenczi to the U.S. to spread the news of 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, due in a large part 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 Zürich, an incident Jung referred to as the Kreuzlingen gesture. Shortly thereafter, Jung again traveled to the U.S.A. and gave the Fordham lectures, which were published as The Theory of Psychoanalysis, and 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.

In November 1912, Jung and Freud met in Munich for a meeting among prominent colleagues to discuss psychoanalytical journals.[11]. 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, also in Munich. Jung gave a talk on psychological types, the introverted and the 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.

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.

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 (though not according to Freud), 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 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.

Nazism

Although Jung had many friends and respected colleagues who were Jewish, there were allegations that he was a Nazi sympathizer. Jung was editor of the Zentralblatt für Psychotherapie, a publication that eventually endorsed Mein Kampf as required reading for all psychoanalysts. Jung claimed it was done to save psychoanalysis and preserve it during the war, believing that psychoanalysis would not otherwise survive, because the Nazis considered it to be a "Jewish science." He also claimed he did it with the help and support of his Jewish friends and colleagues.[12] This after-the-fact explanation, however, has been challenged on the basis of available documents.[13] There is another school of thought: that Jung wrote the article for the journal, and the reference of Mein Kampf was added after the article had been submitted.[14]

On the other hand, there are writings that show that Jung's sympathies were against, rather than for, Nazis.[15] He voiced his opinions about Hitler and stated that the situation of the crazy passion was becoming dangerous.[16]

Jung served as president of the Nazi-dominated International General Medical Society for Psychotherapy, created by Matthias Göring. One of his first acts as president was to modify the constitution so that German Jewish doctors could maintain their membership as individual members even though they were excluded from all German medical societies. In 1934, when he presented his paper "A Review of the Complex Theory" in his presidential address, he did not discount the importance of Freud and credited him with as much influence as he could possibly give to an old mentor. Later in the war, Jung resigned.

In addition, in 1943 he aided the U.S. Office of Strategic Services by analyzing the psychology of Nazi leaders.[17] See also ongoing discussion in relation to "post-Jungian" interpretation.[18]

In an interview with Carol Baumann in 1948, published in the Bulletin of Analytical Psychology Club of New York, December 1949, Jung explicitly denies rumors regarding any sympathy for the Nazi movement, saying:

It must be clear to anyone who has read any of my books that I have never been a Nazi sympathizer and I never have been anti-Semitic, and no amount of misquotation, mistranslation, or rearrangement of what I have written can alter the record of my true point of view. Nearly every one of these passages [referring to a list of quotations cited against him] has been tampered with, either by malice or by ignorance. Furthermore, my friendly relations with a large group of Jewish colleagues and patients over a period of many years in itself disproves the charge of anti-Semitism.

A full response from Jung discounting the rumors can be found in C.G Jung Speaking, Interviews and Encounters, Princeton University Press, 1977.

Influence

Jung has had an enduring influence on psychology as well as wider society. He has influenced psychotherapy (see analytical psychology, also called Jungian psychology).

Spirituality as a cure for alcoholism

Jung's influence can sometimes be found in more unexpected quarters. For example, Jung once treated an American patient (Rowland H.), 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.

Rowland took Jung's advice seriously and set about seeking a personal spiritual experience. He returned home to the United States and joined a Christian evangelical movement known as the Oxford Group. He also told other alcoholics what Jung had told him about the importance of a spiritual experience. One of the alcoholics he told was Ebby Thacher, a long-time friend and drinking buddy of Bill Wilson, later co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Thacher told Wilson about Jung's ideas. Wilson, who was finding it impossible to maintain sobriety, was impressed and sought out his own spiritual experience. The influence of Jung thus indirectly found its way into the formation of Alcoholics Anonymous, the original 12-step program, and from there into the whole 12-step recovery movement, although AA as a whole is not Jungian and Jung had no role in the formation of that approach or the 12 steps.

The above claims are documented in the letters of Carl Jung and Bill W., excerpts of which can be found in Pass It On, published by Alcoholics Anonymous.[20] Although the detail of this story is disputed by some historians, Jung himself made reference to its substance -- including the Oxford Group participation of the individual in question -- in a talk that was issued privately in 1954 as a transcript from shorthand taken by an attendee (Jung reportedly approved the transcript), 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 Catholics.[21])

Influences on culture

Literature

Art

Television and film

Music

See also

Topics

People

Organizations

Notes and references

  1. ^ As a university student Jung changed the modernized spelling of his name to the original family form. Bair, Deirdre (2003). Jung: A Biography. New York: Back Bay Books, pp. 7–8, 53. ISBN 0-316-15938-7. 
  2. ^ Jung, C.G.; Aniela Jaffé (1965). Memories, Dreams, Reflections. New York: Random House, p. 8. 
  3. ^ Memories, Dreams, Reflections, pp. 33–34. 
  4. ^ Memories, Dreams, Reflections, pp. 22–23. 
  5. ^ Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 30. 
  6. ^ Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 32. 
  7. ^ Hayman, Ronald (1999). A Life of Jung. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., pp. 84-5, 92, 98-9, 102-7, 121, 123, 111, 134-7, 138-9, 145, 147, 152, 176, 177, 184, 185, 186, 189, 194, 213-4. ISBN 0393019675. 
  8. ^ A Life of Jung, pp. 184-8, 189, 244, 261, 262. 
  9. ^ In Psychology and Religion, v.11, Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Princeton. It was first published as "Antwort auf Hiob," Zürich, 1952 and translated into English in 1954, in London.
  10. ^ Crowley, Vivianne (2000). Jung: A Journey of Transformation:Exploring His Life and Experiencing His Ideas. Wheaton Illinois: Quest Books. ISBN 978-0835607827. 
  11. ^ Jonest, Ernest, ed. Lionel Trilling and Steven Marcus. The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud New York: Anchor Books, 1963.
  12. ^ Mark Medweth.« Jung and the Nazis », in Psybernetika, Winter 1996.
  13. ^ Richard Noll (1997), « The Aryan Christ », Random House.
  14. ^ Stevens, Anthony, "Jung : a very short introduction", Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2001. ISBN 0192854585
  15. ^ C.GJung,‘ Die Beziehungen zwishen dem Ich und dem UnbewBten’, chapter one,second section, 1928. Also,C.G.Jung‘ Aufsatze zur Zeitgeschichte’, 1946. Speeches made in 1933,1937 are excerpted. He was protesting the "slavery by the government" and the "chaos and insanity" of the mob, because of the very fact that they were the part of the mob, and were under its stong influence. He wrote that because of the speeches he delivered, he was blacklisted by Nazis. They eliminated his writings.
  16. ^ Wotan, 1936.
  17. ^ Article Jung, Carl Gustav in Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.
  18. ^ ArticleThe Recent Attacks on Jung: Answer to the Post-Jungians
  19. ^ Jung, C.G. and Wolfgang Pauli, The Interpretation of Nature and Psyche, New York: Pantheon Books, 1955
  20. ^ Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. (1984) Pass It On: The Story of Bill Wilson and how the A.A. message reached the world. New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. ISBN 0-916856-12-7, pp. 381-386
  21. ^ Jung, C. G.; Adler, G. and Hull, R. F. C., eds. (1977) Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 18: The Symbolic Life: Miscellaneous Writings, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, ISBN 978-0-691-09892-0, p. 272, as noted 2007-08-26 at http://www.stellarfire.org/additional.html
  22. ^ ""Laurens van der Post"" (HTML). Retrieved on 2007-12-02.
  23. ^ ""Hermann Hesse"" (HTML). Retrieved on 2007-12-02.
  24. ^ Bair, Deirdre. Jung: A Biography. 
  25. ^ ""Possessing the Secret of Joy"" (HTML). Retrieved on 2007-12-02.
  26. ^ Birkhäuser, Peter; Marie-Louise von Franz, Eva Wertanschlag and Kaspar Birkhäuser (1980-1991). Light from the Darkness: The Paintings of Peter Birkhäuser. Boston, MA: Birkhäuser Verlag. ISBN 3764311908. 
  27. ^ ""Rhythm Of The Heat by Peter Gabriel", Song Facts" (HTML). Retrieved on 2006-12-16.

Further reading

There is much literature on Jungian thought. For a good, short and easily accessible introduction to Jung's thought:

Other good introductory texts include:

Good texts in various areas of Jungian thought:

And more academic texts:

For the Jung-Freud relationship:

Personal recollections of Jung:

For critical scholarship on Jung from the perspective of historians of psychiatry:

Jung bibliography

Works arranged by original publication date if known:

An early writing by Jung, dating from around 1917, was his poetic work, The Seven Sermons To The Dead (Full Text). Written in the persona of the 2nd century religious teacher Basilides of Alexandria, it explores ancient religious and spiritual themes, including those of gnosticism. This work is included in some editions of Memories, Dreams, Reflections.

External links

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Persondata
NAME Jung, Carl Gustav
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION Swiss psychiatrist, influential thinker, and founder of analytical psychology
DATE OF BIRTH July 26, 1875
PLACE OF BIRTH Kesswil, in the Swiss canton (state) of Thurgau
DATE OF DEATH June 6, 1961
PLACE OF DEATH Zürich, Switzerland