Carl Gustav Jung was born on July 26, 1875, in Kesswil, Switzerland. His early life was difficult, as his father Paul, a country parson in the Swiss Reformed Church, was poor and unable to provide Carl with sufficient food or answers to his questions about religion and faith, while his mother Emilie had two personalities, warm and loving by day, uncannily psychic by night. For most of his childhood Jung played alone, out in nature, his only sibling, Trudi being born when Carl was nine. Carl was bright: his father taught him Latin when he was six years old, and he did well in school, except for mathematics, which he hated.[1]
As he grew up, Jung knew he would not become a cleric like his father, but finally decided to take up his grandfather’s profession as a physician. After getting the usual rigorous gymnasium education, Jung went to the University of Basel, while living at home to save on expenses. The anatomical dissection courses Jung found distasteful: the hands-on work of touching bodies did not appeal to him.[2] So he chose as his specialty the emerging field of psychiatry. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on the psychic activities he observed among his Preiswerk relatives.[3]
After post-doc training under Pierre Janet in Paris, Jung went to work at the Burghölzli Psychiatric Clinic in Zurich, where he dealt with patients while conducting experiments designed to reveal the presence of complexes via the Word Association Test.[4] Jung’s reports of the results of these experiments brought him to the attention of the nascent psychological community in both Europe and America. The most significant of these contacts was that of the renowned “discoverer” of the unconscious, Sigmund Freud, who was 19 years older than Jung–old enough and esteemed enough to “hook” Jung’s father complex.[5]
While Jung looked up to Freud, throughout the nine years of their close connection Jung had misgivings about both Freud (e.g. his faintings, his dogmatism)[6] and his theories (e.g. infantile sexuality, libido as only sexual in nature).[7] Freud appreciated Jung’s Gentile/Christian background and expected him to be his heir and carry on his work.[8] At Freud’s behest, Jung took on the leadership and administration of the International Psychoanalytic Association, a role for which Jung was ill-suited due to his Introverted nature. In addition to his Introversion Jung had an independent mind and realized he had to stay true to his own values and empirical understanding. A break was inevitable.
It came in 1912, with the publication of Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (Symbols of Transformation, CW 5), in which Jung explicated his view of libido as being general psychic energy,[9] and symbols as powerful and not to be reduced to signs, as in Freud’s reductive method.[10] Jung knew that, given Freud’s rigid dogmatism, he would be cast out of the psychoanalytic community.
There followed nearly a decade of ostracism, which Jung spent in in-depth self-analysis, the substance of which we can now read with the 2009 publication of Jung’s Red Book. By day he would see patients–growing an international practice mostly by word of mouth–and by night he would commune with his “inner world,”[11] dialoging with the Self, the anima, and various other figures. This fallow time Jung later regarded as one of the most crucial and valuable intervals, as the source for many of the experiences and ideas central to the formation of his analytical psychology.[12]
Over time, some of his early patients stayed in Zürich, working with Jung and supporting his educational endeavors in his public lectures and other activities. Slowly some people in this group became trainees, putting their own experience of analysis to use in analyzing others.[13] Inevitably, given the nature and values of our culture, this initial casual system became institutionalized–a reality Jung did not like, but had to accept. When Joe Henderson and Jo Wheelwright had to leave Switzerland as World War II broke out, they told Jung they would set up a training program in California and Jung urged them to “keep it loose.”[14] Jung’s focus always was on the individual person, one-on-one encounters, small-size groups and minimal red tape and bureaucracy. Reluctantly, after both New York and San Francisco had up-and-running Jung Institutes, Jung agreed to permit the formation of an Institute in Zürich.[15]
In 1944 Jung broke his leg, then had a heart attack, followed by a long recuperation that came with a near-death experience.[16] With this second lease on life Jung determined he would pursue his own interests and this meant delving more deeply into the arcane subject of alchemy, which Jung came to understand was something like a proto-form of analytical psychology. Four of Jung’s major works came out of these last years of his life.[17] (CW 12,13,14 & 16).
By his 85th birthday in 1960, in the big celebration the Swiss always have to mark major birthdays, it was obvious to all that age was finally slowing Jung down. In May of 1961, he had a slight stroke which slurred his speech, followed by a more serious stroke later in the month that sent him to bed.[18] In his last days his thoughts showed his concern for humanity: he had a death-bed vision which his daughter wrote down–a vision in which most of the Earth was devastated, but not the whole planet.[19] He died at his home in Kusnacht on June 6, 1961, a few weeks shy of his 86th birthday.
Why Are We Celebrating Jung’s Sesquicentennial?
We celebrate the life and work of C.G. Jung for his many important contributions to psychology, as well as the useful tools he developed and, more broadly, his impact on our modern culture.
Jung’s Important Contributions to Psychology.
Jung provided the discipline of psychology with a host of concepts that have enriched our culture and the lives of people–concepts like archetypes, the collective unconscious, the complex, the shadow, individuation, and libido as psychic (not just sexual) energy.[20] The empirical scientist that he was, Jung recognized the reality of the psyche and described its entropic effects. He also developed the system of psychological types that inspired Isabelle Briggs and Katherine Myers to create the widely-used Myers-Briggs Type Instrument.[21]
Jung’s Useful Tools.
In his own self-analysis, as well as with his work with patients, Jung found the process of making mandalas useful for gaining insights and psychological relief in times of tension and trial.[22] He invented the practice of “active imagination”[23] and taught it to his patients and students, and, in the last decades of his life he found valuable parallels between the insights and discoveries of the medieval alchemists and his own practice of psychotherapy.[24]
Jung’s Impact on Our Culture.
From Broadway plays to literary criticism, Jung has had a major impact on the arts, religion and secular society. By developing the implications of Joachim de Flora’s “Holy Ghost movement,”[25] Jung got the epithet “Father of the NewAge,”[26] and he warned of the “forlorn” situation churches would face in the years ahead.[27] He was indeed a prophetic figure and a genius of the twentieth century. As the dozens of Jung Institutes now disseminate his “brand” of psychology, more opportunities open up for people to have ready access to Jungian analysis and the soul healing it provides.[28]
We owe Carl Gustav Jung a huge debt, in so many venues, for so many reasons, so it is certainly appropriate that we cherish his achievements and celebrate his birthday.
[1] Cf. Jung (1965), 17; Hannah (1976), 41. and Oeri (1977), 4.
[2] Bair (2003), 41.
[3] CW 1 has the text of Jung’s dissertation.
[4] For Jung’s report of the WAT results, see CW 2 ¶1-1014.
[5] Hannah (1976), 87.
[6] CW 15 ¶56.
[7] CW 4 ¶779.
[8] Hannah (1976), 103.
[9] CW 4 ¶779.
[10] CW 6 ¶788.
[11] Jung (1965), 170-199; on the “inner world,” see CW 7 ¶325-327.
[12] Ibid., 199.
[13] E.g. Barbara Hannah, Marie-Louise von Franz, Esther Harding, Kristine Mann, Joseph Wheelwright and Joseph Henderson.
[14] Giannini (2004), 480.
[15] This was in 1948; Bair (2003), 529-531.
[16] Ibid., 496-502; in a letter to Kristine Mann, Jung described his near-death experience; Letters, I, 357-359.
[17] CW 12, 13, 14 and 16, the full texts of which are available on our Jungian Center website.
[18] Hannah (1976), 346-348.
[19] Ibid., 347.
[20] Hopcke (1989) provides a succinct overview of these concepts.
[21] Myers (1980), x.
[22] CW 18 ¶271.
[23] CW 9i ¶319.
[24] CW 12 ¶175.
[25] CW 9ii ¶s137-144.
[26] Boynton (2004), 8.
[27] CW 9i ¶393.
[28] Here’s what you have to do to locate an analyst near you; go to the IAAP web site (URL is https://iaap.org); on the menu bar click on “About the IAAP;” then scroll down to “Member Societies.” This will bring up the list of all the societies (i.e. groups of analysts who have collaborated to create a society); these are listed geographically. scroll down until you find the society in your geographical region. In some cases, like North America, there are a lot of societies; find the one closest to where you live (e.g. if you live in Brattleboro, Vermont, choose “New England”); then click on the name of the region, and it will bring up the name of the society, the address, the phone number, their email address and their web site. next, click on that web site address and up will pop the home page of that society, and in their menu bar you should see “Find an Analyst.” click on that and the names, contact information and location of the analysts who are part of that society will show up. scroll down the list to find the analyst(s) closest to where you live. You will see their contact info; if you click on their email address, a window automatically opens for you to send the analyst(s) an email.
