Up: [[People]] Created: 2022-10-09 Updated: 2024-12-29 ![[Carl Jung.webp|300]] PSYCHIATRIST. PROFOUND THINKER Switzerland — Zurich 1875-1961 (85 years) Face to Face [BBC interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AMu-G51yTY) with Jung when he was 84 ## How I First Learned of Him Jung’s work has permeated every aspect of the 20th and 21st centuries. Wikipedia reports that he has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philosophy, psychology, art therapy, religious studies, and evolutionary theory. So it’s difficult to know how I first learned of him. He seems to have just always been in my consciousness. Maybe it was through his [[Psychological Types]] theory? That theory was popularized through the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator which I would have been aware of as a teenager or university student. ## Since Then… The connections of Jung’s ideas across disciplines has always fascinated me, making me feel like a ‘student of the world’ whenever I heard of them. But I didn’t have much time to dive into Jung’s ideas until I retired. Then I went, and continue to go, deep! I commenced a Jungian analysis with a wonderful senior analyst named Helen. As of December 2024, we’ve worked together for 5.5 years. I started reading books by Jung and, more so, by contemporary Jungians. I have a healthy collection of my own plus have been the temporary guardian of a 600+ volume collection that I have been reading over the last few years. I regularly attend online classes offered by various Canadian and American friends of Jung groups. I listen to the podcast [This Jungian Life](https://thisjungianlife.com), pay for courses on the [ Jung Platform](https://jungplatform.com) and am a paying member of a superb Substack called ‘The Artemisian’. ## Carl Gustav Jung through the Lens of Instructions for Life ##### PAY ATTENTION Jung lived his psychology. As a young psychiatrist, he read Sigmund Freud’s *Interpretation of Dreams* and was excited by confirmation of his own ideas. He sent books he’d written about word association to Freud. The two worked together for six years, a professional and personal friendship. Hundreds of letters were exchanged between them discussing and connecting ideas. Freud saw Jung as his heir apparent. The relationship came apart when Jung published *Psychology of the Unconscious* which made clear the theoretical differences between the two men. Freud didn’t want any hint of spirituality in psychology and saw Jung as unscientific. Jung didn’t believe that the unconscious was only about repressed sexuality and saw Freud as narrow-minded. Neither would back down. Freud blacklisted Jung, cutting him out of the psychoanalytic movement. Jung resigned some public posts, continued to see patients in his private practice during the day, have dinner with his family (married, five kids), then retired to his study where he’d engage in a self-exploration that he called his *confrontation with the unconscious*. It was a horrible time for him that might have been a breakdown, or a ‘creative illness’. At the very least it was an extended [[Dark Night of the Soul]]. This started when Jung was 39, on the eve of First World War, and went on for many years, resulting in analytical (or depth) psychology. > [!Orbit] [[C. G. Jung]] in *Memories, Dreams, Reflections* > The years when I was pursuing my inner images were the most important in my life — in them everything essential was decided. It all began then; the later details are only supplements and clarifications of the material that burst forth from the unconscious, and at first swamped me. It was the **prima materia** (original matter) for a life’s work. (p. 199) ##### BE AMAZED > [!Orbit] Judith Harris in *The Quotable Jung* > The breadth and depth of Jung’s knowledge ranks among the highest of any civilization, spanning almost sixty years and thousands and thousands of pages. (p. xii) Jung was a genius. He was awarded nine honorary doctorates. He gave the world so many incredible concepts that it would take multiple lifetimes to fully explore their application to our individual lives. Much of this vault is about his work. ##### TELL ABOUT IT Jung shared incessantly. In addition to his one-on-one work with patients, he gave seminars and speeches everywhere he went. He influenced the work of psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, psychologist Erich Fromm, writers Herman Hesse and H.G. Wells, Nobel Laureate in physics Wolfgang Pauli. And many others, including South Korean band BTS who’ve had huge success with their Map of the Soul albums. Jung was also a prolific writer. There are 20 volumes in his *Collected Works* plus a great many ancillary works, some of which are not yet published. Years after his death we’ve now got [[Jung's Red Book]] and his Black Books (journals that fed into the Red Book). These have been hugely impactful to many, including me, informing my life’s work in my remaining years, my [[Blue Box]]. ### Related Notes - [[Jung's Cabinet of Curiosities]]