Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss
psychiatristA psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry and is certified in treating mental disorders. All psychiatrists are trained in diagnostic evaluation and in psychotherapy...
, an influential thinker and the founder of
analytical psychologyAnalytical psychology is the school of psychology originating from the ideas of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, and then advanced by his students and other thinkers who followed in his tradition. It is distinct from Freudian psychoanalysis but also has a number of similarities...
known as Jungian psychology. Jung's approach to psychology has been influential in the field of
depth psychologyDepth psychology is a broad term that refers to any psychological approach examining the depth of human experience...
and in
counterculturalCounterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition...
movements across the globe. Jung is considered as the first modern psychologist to state that the human psyche is "by nature religious" and to explore it in depth. He emphasized understanding the
psycheIn psychoanalysis and other forms of depth psychology, the psyche refers to the forces in an individual that influence thought, behavior and personality. The word is borrowed from ancient Greek, and refers to the concept of the self, encompassing the modern ideas of soul, self, and mind...
through exploring the worlds of
dreamDreams are a succession of images, thoughts, or emotions passing through the mind during sleep. The content and purpose of dreams are not fully understood, though they have been a topic of speculation and interest throughout recorded history. The scientific study of dreams is known as...
s,
artArt is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music, literature, film, sculpture, and paintings...
,
mythologyMythology is the study of myths and or of a body of myths. For example, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece. The term "myth" is often used colloquially to refer to a false story;...
,
religionA religion is a system of human thought which usually includes a set of narratives, symbols, beliefs and practices that give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life through reference to a higher power, deity or deities, or ultimate truth...
and
philosophyPhilosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing these questions by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on reasoned...
. Although he was a theoretical psychologist and practicing clinician, much of his life's work was spent exploring other areas, including Eastern and Western philosophy,
alchemyAlchemy is both a philosophy and a practice with an aim of achieving ultimate wisdom as well as immortality, involving the improvement of the alchemist as well as the making of several substances described as possessing unusual properties...
,
astrologyAstrology is a group of systems, traditions, and beliefs which hold that the relative positions of celestial bodies and related details can provide information about personality, human affairs, and other terrestrial matters. A practitioner of astrology is called an astrologer...
,
sociologySociology is the scientific or systematic study of human societies. It is a branch of social science that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop and refine a body of knowledge about human social structure and activity, often with the goal of applying such...
, as well as
literatureLiterature is the art of written works. Literally translated, the word means "acquaintance with letters" , and therefore the academic study of literature is known as Letters...
and the arts. His most notable ideas include the concept of psychological archetypes, the
collective unconsciousCollective unconscious, sometimes known as collective subconscious, is a term of analytical psychology, coined by Carl Jung. It is a part of the unconscious mind, shared by a society, humanity and all life forms, that is the product of ancestral experience and contains such concepts as science,...
and
synchronicitySynchronicity is the experience of two or more events that are causally unrelated occurring together in a meaningful manner. To count as synchronicity, the events should be unlikely to occur together by chance....
.
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. He considered the process of
individuationIndividuation is a concept which appears in numerous fields and may be encountered in work by Carl Jung, Gilbert Simondon, Bernard Stiegler, Gilles Deleuze, Henri Bergson, David Bohm, and Manuel De Landa...
necessary for a person to become whole. This is a psychological process of integrating the conscious with the unconscious while still maintaining conscious autonomy. Individuation was the central concept of
analytical psychologyAnalytical psychology is the school of psychology originating from the ideas of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, and then advanced by his students and other thinkers who followed in his tradition. It is distinct from Freudian psychoanalysis but also has a number of similarities...
.
Early years
Carl Jung was born Karle Gustav II Jung in
KesswilKesswil is a municipality in the district of Arbon in the canton of Thurgau in Switzerland.The village was the birthplace of the influential psychiatrist Carl Jung....
, in the Swiss canton (or county) of
ThurgauThurgau is a northeast canton of Switzerland. The population is 238,316 of which 47,390 are foreigners. The capital is Frauenfeld.-History:...
, as the fourth but only surviving child of Paul Achilles Jung and Emilie Preiswerk. His father was a poor rural pastor in the
Swiss Reformed ChurchThe Reformed branch of Protestantism in Switzerland was started in Zürich by Huldrych Zwingli and spread within a few years to Basel , Berne , St...
while his mother came from a wealthy and established 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. An eccentric and depressed woman, Emilie Jung spent much of the 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 because he thought him to be predictable and thought his mother to be very problematic. Although during the day he also saw her as predictable, at night he felt some frightening influences from her room. At night his mother became strange and mysterious. One night he saw a faintly luminous, indefinite figure, coming from her room. The head was detached from the neck and floated in the air, in front of the body.
His mother left Laufen for several months of hospitalisation near
BaselBasel is Switzerland's third most populous city . With 830000 inhabitants in the tri-national metropolitan area , Basel is Switzerland's second-largest urban area....
for an unknown physical ailment. Young Carl Jung was taken by his father to live with Emilie Jung'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 her son's attitude towards women — one of "innate unreliability", a view that he later called the "handicap I started off with" and that resulted in his sometimes
patriarchalPatriarchy is the structuring of family units based on the man, as father figure, having primary authority over the rest of the family members. Patriarchy also refers to the role of men in society more generally where men take primary responsibility over the welfare of the community as a whole...
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.
A 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. "Personality Number 1", as he termed it, was a typical schoolboy living in the era of the time, while "Personality Number 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
totemA totem is any supposed entity that watches over or assists a group of people, such as a family, clan, or tribe.Totems support larger groups than the individual person. In kinship and descent, if the apical ancestor of a clan is nonhuman, it is called a totem...
s of native peoples like the collection of soul-stones near
ArlesheimArlesheim is a municipality in the district of Arlesheim in the canton of Basel-Country in Switzerland. Its cathedral chapter seat, bishop's residence and cathedral are listed as a heritage site of national significance....
, or the
tjurungaA Tjurunga or as it sometimes spelled, Churinga, is an object of religious significance by Central Australian Indigenous Australian people of the Arrernte groups...
s 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. His findings on
psychological archetypesArchetypes are, according to Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, innate universal psychic dispositions that form the substrate from which the basic themes of human life emerge. Each stage is mediated through a new set of archetypal imperatives which seek fulfillment in action...
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 to the ground by another boy so hard that he was for a moment unconscious (Jung later recognised that the incident was his fault, indirectly). The thought then came to him that "now you won't have to go to school any more". 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
epilepsyEpilepsy is a common chronic neurological disorder characterized by recurrent unprovoked seizures...
. With little money in the family, this brought the boy to reality and he realised the need for academic excellence. He immediately went into his father's study and began poring over
Latin grammarThe grammar of Latin, like that of other ancient Indo-European languages, is highly inflected, which allows for a large degree of flexibility when choosing word order. In Latin, there are five declensions of nouns and four conjugations of verbs...
. 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
neurosisNeurosis refers to a class of functional mental disorders involving distress but neither delusions nor hallucinations, where behavior is not outside socially acceptable norms. It is also known as psychoneurosis or neurotic disorder, and thus those suffering from it are said to be neurotic...
is".
Jung had no plans to study psychiatry, because it was held in contempt in those days. But as he started studying his psychiatric textbook, he became very excited when he read that psychoses are personality diseases. Immediately he understood this was the field that interested him the most. It combined both biological and spiritual facts and this was what he was searching for.
He later worked in the
BurghölzliBurghölzli is the common name given for the University of Zurich psychiatric hospital. The hospital is located on "Burghölzli", a wooded hill in the district of Riesbach of southeastern Zurich....
, a psychiatric hospital in
ZürichZürich or Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zürich. The city is Switzerland's main commercial and cultural centre and sometimes called the Cultural Capital of Switzerland, the political capital of Switzerland being Berne...
. In 1906, he published
Studies in Word Association and later sent a copy of this book to
Sigmund FreudSigmund Freud , Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology...
, after which a close friendship between these two men followed for some six years (see section on Relationship with Freud). In 1912 Jung published
Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (known in English as
Psychology of the UnconsciousPsychology of the Unconscious is an important early work of C. G. Jung, published as Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido in 1912.The English translation by Beatrice M...
) resulting in a theoretical divergence between him 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 EllenbergerHenri F. Ellenberger was a Canadian-Swiss psychiatrist, medical historian, and criminologist, sometimes considered the founding historiographer of psychiatry....
called Jung's experience a "creative illness" and compared it to Freud's period of what he called
neurastheniaNeurasthenia is a psycho-pathological term first used by George Miller Beard in 1869 to denote a condition with symptoms of fatigue, anxiety, headache, neuralgia and depressed mood.[The term had been used at least as early as 1829 to label a mechanical weakness of the actual...]
and
hysteriaHysteria, in its colloquial use, describes a state of mind, one of unmanageable fear or emotional excesses. The fear is often caused by multiple events in one's past that involved some sort of severe conflict; the fear can be centered on a body part or most commonly on an imagined problem with that...
.
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 for these soldiers stranded in neutral territory; he encouraged them to attend university courses.
Later life
In 1903, Jung had married
Emma RauschenbachEmma Jung was the wife of Carl Jung, the prominent psychiatrist and founder of Analytical psychology. She came from an old Swiss-German family of wealthy industrialists; that wealth later gave Carl Jung the financial freedom to pursue his own work and interests...
, 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 he had more-or-less open relationships with other women. The most well-known women with whom Jung is believed to have had extramarital relationships were patient and friend
Sabina SpielreinSabina Spielrein was born 1885 into a family of a Jewish doctors in Rostov, Russia, and died there in 1942, murdered by Nazi troops. Her mother was a dentist, her father a physician. She was one of the first female psychoanalysts. Spielrein was married to Pavel Scheftel, a physician of Russian...
and
Toni WolffToni Wolff , was a patient and later a student and lover of Carl Jung. Wolff later became a Jungian analyst. Her extramarital relationship with Jung was openly enacted through a course of ten years...
.
Jung continued to publish books until the end of his life, including a work showing his late interest in reports of
flying saucerFlying saucer is the name given to a type of unidentified flying object with a disc- or saucer-shaped body, usually described as silver or metallic, occasionally reported as covered with running lights or surrounded with a glowing light, hovering or moving rapidly either alone or in tight...
s. 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 JobAnswer to Job is a 1952 book by Carl Gustav Jung addressing the moral, mythological and psychological implications of the Book of Job...
.
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
ChristianityChristianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented by the revelations in the New Testament....
,
HinduismHinduism is the predominant religion of the Indian subcontinent. Hinduism is often referred to as ', a Sanskrit phrase meaning "the eternal law", by its adherents. Generic "types" of Hinduism that attempt to accommodate a variety of complex views span folk and Vedic Hinduism to bhakti tradition, as...
,
BuddhismBuddhism, as traditionally conceived, is a path of salvation attained through insight into the ultimate nature of reality. It encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha...
,
GnosticismGnosticism refers to diverse, syncretistic religious movements in antiquity consisting of various belief systems generally united in the teaching that humans are divine souls trapped in a material world created by an imperfect god, the demiurge; this being is frequently identified with the...
,
TaoismDaoism refers to a variety of related philosophical and religious traditions and concepts that have influenced East Asia for over two millennia and the West for over two centuries. The word 道, Tao , means "path" or "way", although in Chinese folk religion and philosophy it has taken on more...
, and other traditions, Jung perceived that this journey of transformation, which he called
individuationIndividuation is a concept which appears in numerous fields and may be encountered in work by Carl Jung, Gilbert Simondon, Bernard Stiegler, Gilles Deleuze, Henri Bergson, David Bohm, and Manuel De Landa...
, 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.
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.
Jung died in 1961 in
KüsnachtKüsnacht is a municipality in the district of Meilen in the canton of Zurich in Switzerland.- History :Küsnacht is first mentioned in 1188 as de Cussenacho....
, after a short illness.
Relationship with Freud
Jung was thirty when he sent his
Studies in Word Association to
Sigmund FreudSigmund Freud , Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology...
in Vienna. The first conversation between Jung and Freud is reported to have lasted over 13 hours. Six months later, the then 50 year-old Freud sent a collection of his latest published essays to Jung in
ZürichZürich or Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zürich. The city is Switzerland's main commercial and cultural centre and sometimes called the Cultural Capital of Switzerland, the political capital of Switzerland being Berne...
, which marked the beginning of an intense correspondence and collaboration that lasted six years and ended in May 1910. At this time Jung resigned as the chairman of the
International Psychoanalytical AssociationThe International Psychoanalytical Association is an association including 12,000 psychoanalysts as members and works with 70 constituent organizations. It was founded in 1910 by Sigmund Freud, on an idea proposed by Sandor Ferenczi....
, where he had been elected with Freud's support.
Today Jung's and Freud's theories have diverged, however, they influenced each other during intellectually formative years of Jung's life, Freud being already 50 years old at their meeting and well beyond the formative years. In 1906
psychologyPsychology is an academic and applied discipline involving the systematic, and sometimes scientific, study of human or animal mental functions and behavior...
as a science was still in its early stages. Jung, who had become interested in psychiatry as a student by reading
Psychopathia SexualisPsychopathia Sexualis may refer to:* Psychopathia Sexualis, a 1886 psychology book on sexuality by Richard von Krafft-Ebing, see Richard von Krafft-Ebing#Psychopathia Sexualis...
by Richard von Krafft-Ebing, professor in Vienna, now worked as a doctor under the psychiatrist
Eugen BleulerPaul Eugen Bleuler was a Swiss psychiatrist most notable for his contributions to the understanding of mental illness and coining the term schizophrenia....
in Burghölzli and became familiar with Freud's idea of the
unconsciousThe unconscious mind is a term invented by the 18th century German romantic philosopher Ser Christopher Riegel and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge...
through Freud's
The Interpretation of DreamsThe Interpretation of Dreams is a book by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. The first edition was first published in German in November 1899 as Die Traumdeutung...
(1900) 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 Zürich at which Jung was a young doctor whose research had already given him international recognition.
In 1908, Jung became editor of the newly founded
Yearbook for Psychoanalytical and Psychopathological Research. The following year, Jung traveled with Freud and
Sandor FerencziSándor Ferenczi was a Hungarian psychoanalyst.-Biography:Born Sándor Fränkel to Baruch Fränkel and Rosa Eibenschütz, both Polish Jews, he later magyarized his surname to 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
libidoLibido in its common usage means sexual desire; however, more technical definitions, such as those found in the work of Carl Jung, are more general, referring to libido as the free creative—or psychic—energy an individual has to put toward personal development or individuation.- History of the...
and
religionA religion is a system of human thought which usually includes a set of narratives, symbols, beliefs and practices that give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life through reference to a higher power, deity or deities, or ultimate truth...
. In 1912 these tensions came to a peak because Jung felt severely slighted after Freud visited his colleague
Ludwig BinswangerLudwig Binswanger was a Swiss psychiatrist and pioneer in the field of existential psychology. His grandfather was founder of the "Bellevue Sanatorium" in Kreuzlingen, and his uncle Otto Binswanger was a professor of psychiatry at the University of Jena.In 1907 Binswanger received his medical...
in
KreuzlingenKreuzlingen is a municipality in the district of Kreuzlingen in the canton of Thurgau in Switzerland. It is the seat of the district.It is the second largest city of the canton, after Frauenfeld, with a population of over 18,000....
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. 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
MunichMunich is the capital city of Bavaria, Germany. It is located on the River Isar north of the Bavarian Alps. Munich is the third largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Hamburg...
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, also in
MunichMunich is the capital city of Bavaria, Germany. It is located on the River Isar north of the Bavarian Alps. Munich is the third largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Hamburg...
. 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 40 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 unconsciousIn analytical psychology, the personal unconscious is Carl Jung's term for the Freudian unconscious, as contrasted with the collective unconscious. Often referred to by him as "No man’s land," the personal unconscious is located at the fringe of consciousness, between two worlds: "the exterior or...
,' but he also proposed the existence of a second, far deeper form of the unconscious underlying the personal one. This was the
collective unconsciousCollective unconscious, sometimes known as collective subconscious, is a term of analytical psychology, coined by Carl Jung. It is a part of the unconscious mind, shared by a society, humanity and all life forms, that is the product of ancestral experience and contains such concepts as science,...
, 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.
Travels
Jung's first trip outside of Europe was the 1909 conference at
Clark UniversityClark University is a private research university and liberal arts college in Worcester, Massachusetts.Founded in 1887, it is the oldest institution founded as an all-graduate university. Clark now also educates undergraduates...
. The event was planned by psychologist
G. Stanley HallGranville Stanley Hall was a pioneering American psychologist and educator. His interests focused on childhood development and evolutionary theory...
and included 27 distinguished psychiatrists, neurologists and psychologists. It represented a watershed in the acceptance of psychoanalysis in North America. For Jung especially, the experience forged welcome links with 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 UniversityFordham University is a private university in the United States, with three campuses located in and around New York City. It was founded by the Roman Catholic Diocese of New York in 1841 as St...
in 1912. He 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 chieftain Mountain Lake at the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico.
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. She translated and published the first English volume of his collected writings and arranged for him to give 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.
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 BeckwithGeorge Beckwith , was an American expatriate in 1920s Paris and early Jungian associate who accompanied psychologist Carl Jung on his African expedition, 1925-6....
. 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 ElgonMount Elgon is an extinct shield volcano on the border of Uganda and Kenya, north of Kisumu and west of Kitale.-Names:The mountain is named after the Elgeyo tribe, who once lived in huge caves on the south side of the mountain....
, where Jung hoped to increase his understanding of "primitive psychology" through conversations with the culturally-isolated residents of that area. He was later to conclude that the major insights he had gleaned had to do with himself and the European psychology in which he had been raised.
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,
Psychology and Religion, at
Yale UniversityYale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. Yale has produced many notable alumni, including five...
. 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. Unfortunately, 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.
Red Book
In 1913, when he was 38, 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. In 1914, Jung began to transcribe his notes into a large red leather-bound book, which he worked on, on and off, for sixteen years.
When he died, Jung left no instructions about what to do with what he called the "
Red BookThe Red Book, also known as Liber Novus , is a 205-page manuscript written and illustrated by Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung between approximately 1914 and 1930, which was not published or shown to the public until 2009. Until 2001, his heirs denied scholars access to the book, which he began...
". His family eventually moved it to a bank vault in 1984.
Sonu ShamdasaniSonu Shamdasani is a London-based author, editor, and professor at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London WIHM/UCL. His works are on the history of psychiatry and psychology from the mid-nineteenth century to current times.In 2003, he founded Philemon...
, a historian from London, for three years tried to convince Jung's heirs to publish it—they generally said no to every hint of an inquiry about it, and as of mid-September 2009 only about two dozen people had seen it. But Ulrich Hoerni, Jung's grandson who manages the Jung archives, decided to publish it. When money ran low, the Philemon Foundation was founded and raised more.
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 October 7, 2009 (ISBN 978-0-393-06567-1) 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 TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded in 1851 and published in New York City. The largest metropolitan newspaper in the United States, "The Gray Lady"—named for its staid appearance and style—is regarded as a national newspaper of record...
. 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 ArtThe Rubin Museum of Art is a museum dedicated to thecollection, display, and preservation of the art of the Himalayasand surrounding regions, especially that of Tibet...
in
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...
will display the original and Jung's original small journals from October 7, 2009 to January 25, 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
illuminationAn illuminated manuscript is a manuscript in which the text is supplemented by the addition of decoration, such as decorated initials, borders and miniature illustrations...
s of the text.
Response to Nazism
Jung had many friends and respected colleagues who were Jewish and he maintained relations with them through the 1930s when
anti-semitismAntisemitism is prejudice against or hostility towards Jews, often rooted in hatred of their ethnic background, culture, or religion....
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
NaziNazism, known officially in German as National Socialism , is the totalitarian ideology and practices of the Nazi Party or National Socialist German Workers’ Party under Adolf Hitler, and the policies adopted by the dictatorial government of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945.Nazism is often considered...
régime 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
AryanAryan is an English language loanword denoting variously*in historical or dated usage,**the Indo-Iranian languages and their speakers, viz. the Iranian and Indo-Aryan peoples**the Indo-European languages more generally and their speakers,...
bird of prey with his insatiable lust to lord it in every land, even those that concern him not at all."
There are writings that show that Jung's sympathies were against, rather than for, Nazism. In his 1936 essay "Wotan", Jung described Germany as "infected" by "one man who is obviously 'possessed'...", and as "rolling towards perdition", and wrote "...what a so-called
FührerThe word Führer is 'leader' or 'guide' in the German language, derived from the verb , a cognate of the Old English words faran and fær and the Modern English words derived from the older terms such as now mostly used in compounds such as wayfarer and sea-faring...
does with a mass movement can plainly be seen if we turn our eyes to the north or south of our country." The essay does, however, speak in more positive terms of
Jakob Wilhelm HauerJakob Wilhelm Hauer was a German Indologist and religious studies writer. He was the founder of the German Faith Movement.-Biography:...
and his
German Faith MovementThe German Faith Movement was closely associated with Jakob Wilhelm Hauer during the Third Reich and sought to move Germany away from Christianity towards a religion based on "immediate experience" of God...
which was loyal to Hitler. In April 1939, the Bishop Of Southwark asked Jung if he had any specific views on what was likely to be the next step in religious development. Jung's reply was:
He would later describe the Führer thus: "Hitler seemed like the 'double' of a real person, as if Hitler the man might be hiding inside like an appendix, and deliberately so concealed in order not to disturb the mechanism ... You know you could never talk to this man; because there is nobody there ... It is not an individual; it is an entire nation." In 1943, Jung aided the United States
Office of Strategic ServicesThe Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency .-Origins and activities:...
by analyzing the psychology of Nazi leaders.
In an interview with Carol Baumann in 1948, Jung denied rumors regarding any sympathy for the Nazi movement, saying:
A full response from Jung discounting the rumors can be found in
C.G Jung Speaking, Interviews and Encounters, Princeton University Press, 1977.
Jung and professional organizations in Germany, 1933 to 1939
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 Heinrich Göring, an Adlerian
Alfred Adler was an Austrian medical doctor, psychologist and founder of the school of individual psychology. In collaboration with Sigmund Freud and a small group of Freud's colleagues, Adler was among the co-founders of the psychoanalytic movement as a core member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic...
psychotherapist and a cousin of the prominent Nazi Hermann GöringHermann Wilhelm Göring was a German politician, military leader and a leading member of the Nazi Party. Among many offices, he was Hitler's designated successor and commander of the Luftwaffe...
;
- An 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 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 MeierCarl Alfred Meier was a Swiss psychiatrist, Jungian Psychologist and scholar. He became the first president of the C. G. Jung Institute in Zürich. As successor to Carl Jung, he held the Chair of Honorary Professor of Psychology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in 1949...
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.
Influence
Jung has had an enduring influence on psychology as well as wider society. He founded a new school of
psychotherapyPsychotherapy or personal counseling with a psychotherapist, is an intentional interpersonal relationship used by trained psychotherapists to aid a client or patient in problems of living.It aims to increase the individual's sense of their own well-being...
, called
analytical psychologyAnalytical psychology is the school of psychology originating from the ideas of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, and then advanced by his students and other thinkers who followed in his tradition. It is distinct from Freudian psychoanalysis but also has a number of similarities...
or Jungian psychology.
- The concept of introversion and extraversion.
- The concept of the complex
In psychology a complex is a group of mental factors that are unconsciously associated by the individual with a particular subject or connected by a recognizable theme and influence the individual's attitude and behavior. Their existence is widely agreed upon in the area of depth psychology at...
.
- The concept of Collective Unconscious
Collective unconscious, sometimes known as collective subconscious, is a term of analytical psychology, coined by Carl Jung. It is a part of the unconscious mind, shared by a society, humanity and all life forms, that is the product of ancestral experience and contains such concepts as science,...
, which is shared by all people. It includes the archetypes.
- Synchronicity
Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events that are causally unrelated occurring together in a meaningful manner. To count as synchronicity, the events should be unlikely to occur together by chance....
as an alternative to the CausalityCausality is the relationship between an event and a second event , where the second event is a direct consequence of the first....
Principle, an idea which has even influenced modern physicists.
- The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment is a psychometric questionnaire designed to measure psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. These preferences were extrapolated from the typological theories originated by Carl Gustav Jung, as published in his 1921...
(MBTI) and SocionicsSocionics is a theory of information processing and personality type, distinguished by its information model of the psyche and a model of interpersonal relations. It incorporates Carl Jung's work on Psychological Types with Antoni Kępiński's theory of information metabolism...
were both inspired by Jung's psychological types theory.
Spirituality as a cure for alcoholism
Jung recommended spirituality as a cure for alcoholism and he is considered to have had an indirect role in establishing
Alcoholics AnonymousAlcoholics Anonymous is a worldwide fellowship of men and women who share a desire to stop drinking alcohol, and subsequently maintain their sobriety...
. Jung once treated an American patient (
Rowland Hazard IIIFor other persons named Rowland Hazard, see Rowland Hazard Rowland Hazard "III" was an American businessman and member of a prominent Rhode Island family involved in the foundation and executive leadership of a number of well-known companies...
), suffering from chronic
alcoholismAlcoholism is a term with multiple and sometimes conflicting definitions. In common and historic usage, alcoholism is any condition that results in the continued consumption of alcoholic beverages, despite health problems and negative social consequences...
. 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
ChristianChristianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented by the revelations in the New Testament....
evangelicalEvangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s.Most adherents consider its key characteristics to be: a belief in the need for personal conversion ; some expression of the gospel in effort; a high regard for biblical authority; and an emphasis on the...
Re-Armament movement known as the
Oxford GroupThe Oxford Group was a Christian movement that had a following in Europe and America in the 1920s and 1930s. It was initiated by an American Lutheran pastor Dr. Frank Buchman, who was of Swiss descent...
. 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 ThacherEdwin Throckmorton Thacher , was an old drinking friend of Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill Wilson...
, a long-time friend and drinking buddy of Bill Wilson, later co-founder of
Alcoholics AnonymousAlcoholics Anonymous is a worldwide fellowship of men and women who share a desire to stop drinking alcohol, and subsequently maintain their sobriety...
(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 programA twelve-step program is a set of guiding principles outlining a course of action for recovery from addiction, compulsion, or other behavioral problems...
, 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 Carl Jung and Bill W., 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 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 attender (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 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. Jung often drew, painted, or made objects and constructions at times of emotional distress, which he recognized as recreational.
A strand of Dance Movement Therapy named Authentic Movement by its creator, Mary Starks Whitehouse, was developed after several years of undergoing jungian analysis, through applying -and slightly adapting- Jung's techniques of Active Imagination to movement.
Works
Jung was a prolific writer. His collected works fill 19 volumes. Many of his works were not translated into English until after his death. His best known works are
Psychology of the UnconsciousPsychology of the Unconscious is an important early work of C. G. Jung, published as Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido in 1912.The English translation by Beatrice M...
(1912) and
Psychological TypesPsychological Types is the title of the sixth volume in the Princeton / Bollingen edition of the Collected Works of Carl Jung. The original German language edition, "Psychologische Typen", was first published by Rascher Verlag, Zurich in 1921....
(1921).
Literature
- Jung had a 16-year-long friendship with the author Laurens van der Post
Sir Laurens Jan van der Post was a 20th century Afrikaner author of many books, farmer, war hero, political adviser to British heads of government, close friend of Prince Charles, godfather of Prince William, educator, journalist, humanitarian, philosopher, explorer, and conservationist.-Early...
from which a number of books and a film were created about Jung's life.
- Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse was a German Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. In 1946 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature...
, author of works such as SiddharthaSiddhartha is an allegorical novel by Hermann Hesse which deals with the spiritual journey of a boy known as Siddhartha from the Indian Subcontinent during the time of the Buddha....
and Der Steppenwolf, was treated by Dr. Joseph Lang, a student of Jung. This began for Hesse a long preoccupation with psychoanalysisPsychoanalysis is a body of ideas developed by Austrian physician Sigmund Freud and continued by others. It is primarily devoted to the study of human psychological functioning and behavior, although it also can be applied to societies.
...
, through which he came to know Jung personally.
- James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish expatriate author, playwright and poet of the 20th century. He is known for his landmark novel Ulysses and its controversial successor Finnegans Wake , as well as the short story collection Dubliners and the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of...
in his Finnegans WakeFinnegans Wake is a work of comic fiction by Irish author James Joyce, significant for an experimental style, and its resulting reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. Written in Paris over a period of 17 years, and published in 1939, two years before the...
, asks "Is the Co-education of Animus and Anima Wholly Desirable?" his answer perhaps being contained in his line "anama anamaba anamabapa." The book also ridicules Jung's analytical psychologyAnalytical psychology is the school of psychology originating from the ideas of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, and then advanced by his students and other thinkers who followed in his tradition. It is distinct from Freudian psychoanalysis but also has a number of similarities...
and Freud'sSigmund Freud , Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology...
psychoanalysis by referring to "psoakoonaloose." Jung had been unable to help Joyce's daughter, LuciaLucia Anna Joyce , daughter of Irish writer James Joyce and Nora Barnacle, was born in Trieste. Italian was her first language and the language in which she corresponded with her father. She studied ballet while she was a teenager, becoming good enough to train with Isadora Duncan...
, who Joyce claimed was a girl "yung and easily freudened." Lucia was diagnosed as schizophrenicSchizophrenia , from the Greek roots skhizein and phrēn, phren- is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a mental disorder characterized by abnormalities in the perception or expression of reality...
and was eventually permanently institutionalized.
- Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a semi-autobiographical novel by James Joyce, first serialized in The Egoist from 1914 to 1915 and published in book form in 1916...
can be read as an ironic parody of Jung's "four stages of eroticism."
- Jung appears as a character in the novel Possessing the Secret of Joy
Possessing the Secret of Joy is a 1992 novel by Alice Walker.- Plot Summary :It tells the story of Tashi, a minor character in Walker's earlier novel The Color Purple. She comes from Olinka, Alice Walker's fictional African nation where female genital mutilation is practiced...
by Alice WalkerAlice Malsenior Walker is an American author. She has written at length on issues of race and gender, and is most famous for the critically acclaimed novel The Color Purple for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction....
. He appears as the therapist of Tashi, the novel's protagonistA protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, video game, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to share the most empathy...
. He is usually called "Mzee" but is identified by Alice Walker in the afterword.
- Morris West
Morris Langlo West was an Australian novelist and playwright, best known for his novels The Devil's Advocate , The Shoes of the Fisherman , and The Clowns of God . His books were published in 27 languages and sold more than 60 million copies worldwide...
's 1983 novel The World is Made of Glass investigates Jung's relationships with a mysterious woman patient, Toni Wolf, and Emma.
- Miguel Serrano
Miguel Serrano was a Chilean diplomat, explorer and author of poetry, books on spiritual questing and Esoteric Hitlerism...
had a long standing friendship with both Jung and Hesse, which he recalls in El Circulo Hermetico or Record of Two Friendships.
- Robertson Davies
William Robertson Davies, CC, O.Ont, FRSC, FRSL was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor...
alludes to Jung's ideas in his novel Fifth BusinessFifth Business is a 1970 novel by Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor Robertson Davies. It is the first installment of the Deptford Trilogy and is a story of the life of the narrator, Dunstan Ramsay...
and writes frequently of Jung in his letters.
Art
- The visionary
Visionary art is art that purports to transcend the physical world and portray a wider vision of awareness including spiritual or mystical themes, or is based in such experiences....
Swiss painterPainting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . In art, the term describes both the act and the result, which is called a painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, clay or concrete...
Peter BirkhäuserPeter Birkhäuser was a Swiss poster artist, portraitist, and visionary painter, noted for his paintings illustrating imagery from dreams in the context of analytical psychology.- Life and work :...
was treated by a student of Jung, Marie-Louise von FranzMarie-Louise von Franz , the daughter of an Austrian baron and born in Munich, Germany, was a Swiss Jungian Psychologist and scholar. In her native Switzerland, she was known by a pet form of her Christian name, Malus . She worked with Carl Jung, whom she met in 1933 and knew until his death in 1961...
, and corresponded with Jung regarding the translation of dream symbolism into works of art.
- American Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality and struggled with alcoholism all of...
underwent Jungian psychotherapy in 1939. His therapist made the decision to engage him through his art, leading to the appearance of many Jungian concepts in his paintings.
Television and film
- Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian film director. Known for a distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images, he is considered one of the most influential and widely revered filmmakers of the 20th century.- Rimini :Federico Fellini was born on January 20, 1920 to...
, one of art cinema's most renowned filmmakers, 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 psychoanalysis 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.
- Jung and his ideas are mentioned often, and sometimes play an integral role, in the television series Northern Exposure
Northern Exposure is an American television series that ran on CBS from 1990 to 1995, with a total of 110 episodes. The series was given a pair of consecutive Peabody Awards: in 1991–92 for the show's "depict[ion] in a comedic and often poetic way, [of] the cultural clash between a transplanted New...
. Jung even makes an appearance in one of the character's dreams.
- Television programs have been devoted to Jung; for example, in 1984, an edition of the BBC documentary Sea of Faith was about Jung.
- Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American director, writer, producer, and photographer of films, who lived in England during most of the last 40 years of his career...
's "Full Metal JacketFull Metal Jacket is a 1987 war film by Stanley Kubrick, based on the novel The Short-Timers by Gustav Hasford. The title refers to the full metal jacket bullet type of ammunition used by infantry riflemen. The film follows a squad of U.S...
" makes a mention of Jungian beliefs when the protagonist, Joker, mentions the duality of man he was displaying by wearing a peace button with 'born to kill' written on his helmet.
- Jung and his ideas are referenced in the anime Serial Experiments Lain
Serial Experiments Lain is an anime series directed by Ryutaro Nakamura, original character design by Yoshitoshi ABe, screenplay written by Chiaki J. Konaka, and produced by Yasuyuki Ueda for Triangle Staff. It was broadcast on TV Tokyo from July to September 1998...
.
- In the American TV Series "Frasier" the main character, Frasier Crane
Dr. Frasier Winslow Crane, M.D., Ph.D., A.P.A. is a fictional character on American television sitcoms Frasier and Cheers. He was played by Kelsey Grammer for twenty years, tying the record for the longest-running character on prime-time American television, which was set by James Arness, who...
(Kelsey GrammerAllen Kelsey Grammer , best known as Kelsey Grammer, is an American actor best known for his two-decade portrayal of psychiatrist Dr. Frasier Crane in the NBC sitcoms Cheers and Frasier , and providing the voice of Sideshow Bob on the Fox animated series The Simpsons...
) and his brother, Niles CraneDr. Niles Crane, M.D., Ph.D., A.P.A. is a fictional character on the American sitcom Frasier, a spin-off of the popular show Cheers. He was portrayed by David Hyde Pierce...
(David Hyde PierceDavid Hyde Pierce is an American actor and comedian, best known for his role as psychiatrist Dr. Niles Crane on the NBC sitcom Frasier.-Early life:...
) are both psychiatrists. While Frasier is a disciple of Freud, Niles bases his therapies on Jungian principles.
Music
- An opera, The Dream Healer, based on the book Pilgrim by Timothy Findley
Timothy Irving Frederick Findley, OC, O.Ont was a Canadian novelist and playwright. He was also informally known by the nickname Tiff or Tiffy, an acronym of his initials.-Biography:...
, centres on Jung's efforts to bridge the known and unknown aspects of the human mind.
- Jung appears on the cover of The Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the eighth studio album by English rock band The Beatles. Released in the UK on 1 June 1967, it became a defining album in the emerging psychedelic rock style; it has since been recognised by prominent critics and publications as one of the most influential...
on the top row, between W.C. Fields and Edgar Allan Poe.
- Peter Gabriel
Peter Brian Gabriel is an English musician and songwriter who rose to fame as the lead vocalist and flautist of the progressive rock group Genesis. After leaving Genesis, Gabriel went on to a successful solo career. More recently he has focused on producing and promoting world music and pioneering...
's song "Rhythm of the Heat" (Security, 1982), tells about Jung's visit to Africa, during which he joined a group of tribal drummers and dancers and became overwhelmed by the fear of losing control of himself. At the time Jung was exploring the concept of the collective unconsciousCollective unconscious, sometimes known as collective subconscious, is a term of analytical psychology, coined by Carl Jung. It is a part of the unconscious mind, shared by a society, humanity and all life forms, that is the product of ancestral experience and contains such concepts as science,...
and was afraid he would come under control of the music. Gabriel learned about Jung's journey to Africa from the essay Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams (ISBN 0-691-09968-5). In the song Gabriel tries to capture the powerful feelings the African tribal music evoked in Jung by means of intense use of tribal drumbeats. The original song title was Jung in Africa.
- On the cover of The Police's final album, Synchronicity, which was named after Carl Jung's theory, Sting is seen reading a book called "Synchronicity" by Carl Jung.
- The British composer Michael Tippett
Sir Michael Kemp Tippett OM CH CBE was one of the foremost English composers of the 20th century. -Early years:Tippett was born in London of English and Cornish stock...
was one of the first composers to use Jungian archetypes as the basis for characterisation in his operas, such as The Midsummer MarriageThe Midsummer Marriage is an opera in three acts, with music and libretto by Michael Tippett. The work's first performance was at Covent Garden, January 27, 1955, conducted by John Pritchard...
and The Knot GardenThe Knot Garden is an opera in three acts by Michael Tippett to an original English libretto by the composer. The work had its first performance at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, on 2 December 1970 conducted by Sir Colin Davis and produced by Sir Peter Hall. There is a recording with the...
. The notion of the Jungian reconciliation of opposites pervades the whole of Tippett's output.
- Mentions of Jung's work in Tool's song Forty-Six & 2
Video Games
- The Shin Megami Tensei
, commonly abbreviated as MegaTen, is a Japanese console role-playing game metaseries which was originally based on the novel series Digital Devil Story by Aya Nishitani and has gone to become one of the major franchises of the genre in its native country...
: Persona series of games is based on Jungian psychology.
See also
Topics
- Analytical Psychology
Analytical psychology is the school of psychology originating from the ideas of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, and then advanced by his students and other thinkers who followed in his tradition. It is distinct from Freudian psychoanalysis but also has a number of similarities...
(Jungian Psychology)
- Anima and animus
- Active Imagination
Active Imagination is a concept developed by Carl Jung between 1913 and 1916. It is a meditation technique wherein one's emotions are translated into images, narrative or personified as separate entities. It can serve as a bridge between the conscious 'ego' and the unconscious and includes working...
- Alchemy
Alchemy is both a philosophy and a practice with an aim of achieving ultimate wisdom as well as immortality, involving the improvement of the alchemist as well as the making of several substances described as possessing unusual properties...
- Dream interpretation
For the John Cale minimalist album, see Dream Interpretation Dream interpretation is the process of assigning meaning to dreams. In many of the ancient societies, including Egypt and Greece, dreaming was considered a supernatural communication or a means of divine intervention, whose message could...
- Archetypal literary criticism
Archetypal literary criticism is a type of critical theory that interprets a text by focusing on recurring myths and archetypes in the narrative, symbols, images, and character types in a literary work. As a form of literary criticism, it dates back to 1934 when Maud Bodkin published Archetypal...
- Archetypal pedagogy
Archetypal pedagogy was developed by two authors Clifford Mayes and Frederic Fappani . It is in the Jungian tradition and directly related to Analytical psychology.- Archetypes and Pedagogy :...
- Archetypal psychology
Archetypal Psychology is a vein of inquiry into the psyche inaugurated in the early 1900s by Dr. Carl Gustav Jung. Dr. Jung and his followers, as well as Mircea Eliade, imagined the psychology of the archetypes from studying anthropology and archeology reports of their times, and weaving it into...
- Depth psychology
Depth psychology is a broad term that refers to any psychological approach examining the depth of human experience...
- Personality Test
A personality test aims to describe aspects of a person's character that remain stable throughout that person's lifetime, the individual's character pattern of behavior, thoughts, and feelings. An early model of personality was posited by Greek philosopher/physician Hippocrates...
- Process of individuation
Individuation is a concept which appears in numerous fields and may be encountered in work by Carl Jung, Gilbert Simondon, Bernard Stiegler, Gilles Deleuze, Henri Bergson, David Bohm, and Manuel De Landa...
- The concept of the "Logos" in Jung
' is an important term in philosophy, analytical psychology, rhetoric and religion.Heraclitus established the term in Western philosophy as meaning both the source and fundamental order of the cosmos....
- Collective unconscious
Collective unconscious, sometimes known as collective subconscious, is a term of analytical psychology, coined by Carl Jung. It is a part of the unconscious mind, shared by a society, humanity and all life forms, that is the product of ancestral experience and contains such concepts as science,...
- Jungian interpretation of religion
- Jungian Type Index
The Jungian Type Index, or JTI, is an alternative to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator . Introduced by Optimas in 2001, the JTI was developed over a 10-year period in Norway by psychologists Thor Ødegård and Hallvard E: Ringstad...
- Jung Type Indicator
The Jung Type Indicator , introduced by Psytech International, is an alternative to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator . It assesses personality type based on the psychological functions proposed by Carl Jung, but also incorporates the theories of Isabel Myers and her mother, Katharine Briggs...
- Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment is a psychometric questionnaire designed to measure psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. These preferences were extrapolated from the typological theories originated by Carl Gustav Jung, as published in his 1921...
- Keirsey Temperament Sorter
The Keirsey Temperament Sorter is a self-assessed personality questionnaire designed to help people better understand themselves and others. It was first introduced in the book Please Understand Me...
- Socionics
Socionics is a theory of information processing and personality type, distinguished by its information model of the psyche and a model of interpersonal relations. It incorporates Carl Jung's work on Psychological Types with Antoni Kępiński's theory of information metabolism...
People
- Carl Alfred Meier
Carl Alfred Meier was a Swiss psychiatrist, Jungian Psychologist and scholar. He became the first president of the C. G. Jung Institute in Zürich. As successor to Carl Jung, he held the Chair of Honorary Professor of Psychology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in 1949...
- First president of the C. G. Jung Institute in ZürichThe C.G. Jung Institute in Zürich, Switzerland was founded in 1948 by the psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung, the founder of Analytical Psychology ....
- Herbert Silberer
Herbert Silberer was a Viennese psychoanalyst involved with the professional circle surrounding Sigmund Freud which included other pioneers of psychological study as Carl Jung, Alfred Adler and others...
- Alfred Adler
Alfred Adler was an Austrian medical doctor, psychologist and founder of the school of individual psychology. In collaboration with Sigmund Freud and a small group of Freud's colleagues, Adler was among the co-founders of the psychoanalytic movement as a core member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic...
- Rowland Hazard III
For other persons named Rowland Hazard, see Rowland Hazard Rowland Hazard "III" was an American businessman and member of a prominent Rhode Island family involved in the foundation and executive leadership of a number of well-known companies...
- member of the Oxford group
- Marie Louise von Franz - Founder of the C. G. Jung Institute in Zürich
- Richard Wilhelm
Richard Wilhelm was a German translator. He translated many philosophical works from Chinese into German that in turn have been translated into other major languages of the world, including English...
- Translator of the I ChingThe I Ching , “Yì Jīng” , Classic of Changes or Book of Changes; also called Zhouyi, is one of the oldest of the Chinese classic texts. The book contains a divination system comparable to Western geomancy or the West African Ifá system...
- Bill W.
William Griffith Wilson , also known as Bill Wilson or Bill W., was the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous , a fellowship of 100,800 support groups world-wide dedicated to helping alcoholics achieve sobriety...
(Bill Wilson) founder of Alcoholics Anonymous
- Sabina Spielrein
Sabina Spielrein was born 1885 into a family of a Jewish doctors in Rostov, Russia, and died there in 1942, murdered by Nazi troops. Her mother was a dentist, her father a physician. She was one of the first female psychoanalysts. Spielrein was married to Pavel Scheftel, a physician of Russian...
- colleague
- Toni Wolff
Toni Wolff , was a patient and later a student and lover of Carl Jung. Wolff later became a Jungian analyst. Her extramarital relationship with Jung was openly enacted through a course of ten years...
- colleague
- Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology...
- Joseph Campbell
Joseph John Campbell was an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work is vast, covering many aspects of the human experience...
- popularizer of Jungian ideas
- Erich Neumann
Erich Neumann may refer to:*Erich Neumann , Nazi politician*Erich Neumann , Psychologist and writer...
- developer of matriarchal mythological adaptations of Jungian thought
Organizations
- International Association of Analytical Psychologists
The International Association for Analytical Psychology is the international association of those who practice analytical psychology, which is to say, psychology in the tradition of Carl Jung. It is based in Zurich, Switzerland and was founded in 1955. It is has member associations in 28 countries....
- International Association for Jungian Studies
Formed in 2002, the International Association for Jungian Studies is a learned society for Jungian scholars and clinicians. The IAJS differs from the dominant international Jungian organization, the International Association of Analytical Psychologists , in that the IAAP accepts only clinicians ...
- The Philemon Foundation
The Philemon Foundation is a non-profit organization that has set itself the task of preparing a new edition of Carl Jung's Collected Works, including many new manuscripts that were previously thought to be lost or had not yet been translated...
Further reading
Introductory texts include:
- The Portable Jung, edited by Joseph Campbell
Joseph John Campbell was an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work is vast, covering many aspects of the human experience...
(Viking Portable), ISBN 0-14-015070-6
- Edward F Edinger, Ego and Archetype, (Shambhala Publications
Shambhala Publications is an independent publishing company based in Boston, Massachusetts. According to the company, it specializes in "books that present creative and conscious ways of transforming the individual, the society, and the planet". Many of its books deal with Buddhism or related topics...
), ISBN 0-87773-576-X
- Another recommended tool for navigating Jung's works is Robert Hopcke's book, A Guided Tour of the Collected Works of C.G. Jung, ISBN 1-57062-405-4. He offers short, lucid summaries of all of Jung's major ideas and suggests readings from Jung's and others' work that best present that idea.
- Edward C. Whitmont, The Symbolic Quest: Basic Concepts of Analytical Psychology, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1969, 1979, ISBN 0-691-02454-5
- Anthony Stevens, Jung. A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1994, ISBN 0-19-285458-5
- The Cambridge Companion to Jung, second edition, edited by Polly Young-Eisendrath and Terence Dawson, published in 2008 by Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press is a printer and publisher granted a Royal Letters Patent by Henry VIII in 1534. It is the world's oldest continually operating book publisher...
.
Texts in various areas of Jungian thought:
- Robert Aziz, C.G. Jung’s Psychology of Religion and Synchronicity (1990), currently in its 10th printing, is a refereed publication of The State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-7914-0166-9.
- Robert Aziz, Synchronicity and the Transformation of the Ethical in Jungian Psychology in Carl B. Becker, ed. Asian and Jungian Views of Ethics. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1999. ISBN 0-313-30452-1.
- Robert Aziz, The Syndetic Paradigm:The Untrodden Path Beyond Freud and Jung (2007), a refereed publication of The State University of New York Press. ISBN 13:978-0-7914-6982-8.
- Edward F. Edinger, The Mystery of The Coniunctio, ISBN 0-919123-67-8. A good explanation of Jung's foray into the symbolism of alchemy
Alchemy is both a philosophy and a practice with an aim of achieving ultimate wisdom as well as immortality, involving the improvement of the alchemist as well as the making of several substances described as possessing unusual properties...
as it relates to individuation and individual religious experience. Many of the alchemical symbols recur in contemporary dreams (with creative additions from the unconscious e.g. space travel, internet, computers)
- James A Hall M.D., Jungian Dream Interpretation, ISBN 0-919123-12-0. A brief, well structured overview of the use of dreams in therapy.
- James Hillman
James Hillman is an American psychologist. He studied at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich, developed archetypal psychology and is now retired as a private practitioner.-Biography:...
, "Healing Fiction", ISBN 0-88214-363-8. Covers Jung, Adler, and Freud and their various contributions to understanding the soul.
- Andrew Samuels, Critical Dictionary of Jungian Analysis, ISBN 0-415-05910-0
- June Singer, Boundaries of the Soul, ISBN 0-385-47529-2. On psychotherapy
- Marion Woodman
Marion Woodman, born August 15, 1928, is a Canadian mythopoetic author and women's movement figure. She is a Jungian analyst trained at the Jung Institute in Zürich, Switzerland...
, The Pregnant Virgin: A Process of Psychological Transformation ISBN 0-919123-20-1. The recovery of feminine values in women (and men). There are many examples of clients' dreams, by an experienced analyst.
- Frederic Fappani
Frederic Fappani is a French writer and Jungian psychologist. As a neo-Jungian scholar, he has produced the first book-length studies in French on the pedagogical implications and applications of Jungian and neo-Jungian psychology, which is based on the work of Carl Gustav Jung...
," Education and Archetypal Psychology ", Ed.Cursus, Paris.
Academic texts:
- Andrew Samuels, The Political Psyche (Routledge), ISBN 0-415-08102-5.
- Lucy Huskinson, Nietzsche and Jung: The Whole Self in the Union of Opposites (Routledge), IBSN 1583918337 Excellent analysis of the highly significant anticipation and influence of the philosophy of Nietzsche on Jung.
Jung-Freud relationship:
- Kerr, John. A Most Dangerous Method : The Story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein. Knopf 1993. ISBN 0-679-40412-0.
Other people's recollections of Jung:
- van der Post, Laurens, "Jung and the story of our time", New York : Pantheon Books, 1975. ISBN 0394492072
- Hannah, Barbara, "Jung, his life and work; a biographical memoir", New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1976. SBN: 399-50383-8
Critical scholarship on Jung by historians:
- Richard Noll
Richard Noll is a well-known author and clinical psychologist. Currently he is Associate Professor of Psychology at DeSales University in Center Valley, Pennsylvania. He is best known for his publications in the history of psychiatry, including two critical volumes on the life and work of Carl...
, The Jung Cult: Origins of a Charismatic Movement (Princeton University Press, 1994); and
- Richard Noll
Richard Noll is a well-known author and clinical psychologist. Currently he is Associate Professor of Psychology at DeSales University in Center Valley, Pennsylvania. He is best known for his publications in the history of psychiatry, including two critical volumes on the life and work of Carl...
, The Aryan Christ: The Secret Life of Carl Jung (Random House, 1997)http://www.beatrice.com/interviews/noll/
- Sonu Shamdasani
Sonu Shamdasani is a London-based author, editor, and professor at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London WIHM/UCL. His works are on the history of psychiatry and psychology from the mid-nineteenth century to current times.In 2003, he founded Philemon...
, Cult Fictions, ISBN 0-415-18614-5. Critique of the above works by Noll.
- Sonu Shamdasani
Sonu Shamdasani is a London-based author, editor, and professor at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London WIHM/UCL. His works are on the history of psychiatry and psychology from the mid-nineteenth century to current times.In 2003, he founded Philemon...
, Jung and the Making of Modern Psychology : The Dream of a Science, ISBN 0-521-53909-9. A comprehensive study of the origins of Jung's psychology which places it in a historical and philosophical context. The author calls this a "Cubist history".
- Sonu Shamdasani
Sonu Shamdasani is a London-based author, editor, and professor at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London WIHM/UCL. His works are on the history of psychiatry and psychology from the mid-nineteenth century to current times.In 2003, he founded Philemon...
, Jung Stripped Bare, ISBN 1-85575-317-0. Critique of Jung biographies.
- Bair, Deirdre
Deirdre Bair is an American biographer who has gained acclaim for her biographies of Samuel Beckett, Anaïs Nin, Simone de Beauvoir and Carl Jung. In 1981, she received the National Book Award for her Beckett biography. She recently published Calling It Quits, a book about divorce late in...
. Jung: A Biography. Boston: Little, Brown and Co, 2003.