Memories, Dreams, Reflections

by C. G. Jung

  During my first years at the university I made the discovery that while science opened the door to enormous quantities of knowledge, it provided genuine insights very sparingly, and these in the main were of a specialized nature. I knew from my philosophical reading that the existence of the psyche was responsible for this situation. Without the psyche there would be neither knowledge nor insight. Yet nothing was ever said about the psyche. Everywhere it was tacitly taken for granted, and even when someone mentioned it—as did C. G. Carus, for example—there was no real knowledge of it but only philosophical speculation which might just as easily take one turn as another. I could make neither head nor tail of this curious observation.

  At the end of my second semester, however, I made another discovery, which was to have great consequences. In the library of a classmate’s father I came upon a small book on spiritualistic phenomena, dating from the seventies. It was an account of the beginnings of spiritualism, and was written by a theologian. My initial doubts were quickly dissipated, for I could not help seeing that the phenomena described in the book were in principle much the same as the stories I had heard again and again in the country since my earliest childhood. The material, without a doubt, was authentic. But the great question of whether these stories were physically true was not answered to my satisfaction. Nevertheless, it could be established that at all times and all over the world the same stories had been reported again and again. There must be some reason for this, and it could not possibly have been the predominance of the same religious conceptions everywhere, for that was obviously not the case. Rather it must be connected with the objective behavior of the human psyche. But with regard to this cardinal question—the objective nature of the psyche—I could find out absolutely nothing, except what the philosophers said.

  The observations of the spiritualists, weird and questionable as they seemed to me, were the first accounts I had seen of objective psychic phenomena. Names like Zoellner and Crookes impressed themselves on me, and I read virtually the whole of the literature available to me at the time. Naturally I also spoke of these matters to my comrades, who to my great astonishment reacted with derision and disbelief or with anxious defensiveness. I wondered at the sureness with which they could assert that things like ghosts and table-turning were impossible and therefore fraudulent, and on the other hand at the evidently anxious nature of their defensiveness. I, too, was not certain of the absolute reliability of the reports, but why, after all, should there not be ghosts? How did we know that something was “impossible”? And, above all, what did the anxiety signify? For myself I found such possibilities extremely interesting and attractive. They added another dimension to my life; the world gained depth and background. Could, for example, dreams have anything to do with ghosts? Kant’s Dreams of a Spirit Seer came just at the right moment, and soon I also discovered Karl Duprel, who had evaluated these ideas philosophically and psychologically. I dug up Eschenmayer, Passavant, Justinus Kerner, and Görres, and read seven volumes of Swedenborg.

  My mother’s No. 2 sympathized wholeheartedly with my enthusiasm, but everyone else I knew was distinctly discouraging. Hitherto I had encountered only the brick wall of traditional views, but now I came up against the steel of people’s prejudice and their utter incapacity to admit unconventional possibilities. I found this even with my closest friends. To them all this was far worse than my preoccupation with theology. I had the feeling that I had pushed to the brink of the world; what was of burning interest to me was null and void for others, and even a cause for dread.

  Dread of what? I could find no explanation for this. After all, there was nothing preposterous or world-shaking in the idea that there might be events which overstepped the limited categories of space, time, and causality. Animals were known to sense beforehand storms and earthquakes. There were dreams which foresaw the death of certain persons, clocks which stopped at the moment of death, glasses which shattered at the critical moment. All these things had been taken for granted in the world of my childhood. And now I was apparently the only person who had ever heard of them. In all earnestness I asked myself what kind of world I had stumbled into. Plainly the urban world knew nothing about the country world, the real world of mountains, woods, and rivers, of animals and “God’s thoughts” (plants and crystals). I found this explanation comforting. At all events, it bolstered my self-esteem, for I realized that for all its wealth of learning the urban world was mentally rather limited. This insight proved dangerous, because it tricked me into fits of superiority, misplaced criticism, and aggressiveness, which got me deservedly disliked. This eventually brought back all the old doubts, inferiority feelings, and depressions—a vicious circle I was resolved to break at all costs. No longer would I stand outside the world, enjoying the dubious reputation of a freak.

  After my first introductory course I became junior assistant in anatomy, and the following semester the demonstrator placed me in charge of the course in histology—to my intense satisfaction, naturally. I interested myself primarily in evolutionary theory and comparative anatomy, and I also became acquainted with neo-vitalistic doctrines. What fascinated me most of all was the morphological point of view in the broadest sense. With physiology it was just the opposite. I found the subject thoroughly repellent because of vivisection, which was practiced merely for purposes of demonstration. I could never free myself from the feeling that warm-blooded creatures were akin to us and not just cerebral automata. Consequently I cut demonstration classes whenever I could. I realized that one had to experiment on animals, but the demonstration of such experiments nevertheless seemed to me horrible, barbarous, and above all unnecessary. I had imagination enough to picture the demonstrated procedures from a mere description of them. My compassion for animals did not derive from the Buddhistic trimmings of Schopenhauer’s philosophy, but rested on the deeper foundation of a primitive attitude of mind—on an unconscious identity with animals. At the time, of course, I was wholly ignorant of this important psychological fact. My repugnance for physiology was so great that my examination results in this subject were correspondingly poor. Nevertheless, I scraped through.

  The clinical semesters that followed kept me so busy that scarcely any time remained for my forays into outlying fields. I was able to study Kant only on Sundays. I also read Eduard von Hartmann assiduously. Nietzsche had been on my program for some time, but I hesitated to begin reading him because I felt I was insufficiently prepared. At that time he was much discussed, mostly in adverse terms, by the allegedly competent philosophy students, from which I was able to deduce the hostility he aroused in the higher echelons. The supreme authority, of course, was Jakob Burckhardt, whose various critical comments on Nietzsche were bandied about. Moreover, there were some persons at the university who had known Nietzsche personally and were able to retail all sorts of unflattering tidbits about him. Most of them had not read a word of Nietzsche and therefore dwelt at length on his outward foibles, for example, his putting on airs as a gentleman, his manner of playing the piano, his stylistic exaggerations—idiosyncrasies which got on the nerves of the good people of Basel in those days. Such things would certainly not have caused me to postpone the reading of Nietzsche—on the contrary, they acted as the strongest incentive. But I was held back by a secret fear that I might perhaps be like him, at least in regard to the “secret” which had isolated him from his environment. Perhaps—who knows?—he had had inner experiences, insights which he had unfortunately attempted to talk about, and had found that no one understood him. Obviously he was, or at least was considered to be, an eccentric, a sport of nature, which I did not want to be under any circumstances. I feared I might be forced to recognize that I too was another such strange bird. Of course, he was a professor, had written whole long books and so had attained unimaginable heights, but, like me, he was a clergyman’s son. He, however, had been born in the great land of Germany, which reached as far as the sea, while I was only a Swiss and sprang from a modest parsonage in
a small border village. He spoke a polished High German, knew Latin and Greek, possibly French, Italian, and Spanish as well, whereas the only language I commanded with any certainty was the Waggis-Basel dialect. He, possessed of all these splendors, could well afford to be something of an eccentric, but I must not let myself find out how far I might be like him.

  In spite of these trepidations I was curious, and finally resolved to read him. Thoughts Out of Season was the first volume that fell into my hands. I was carried away by enthusiasm, and soon afterward read Thus Spake Zarathustra. This, like Goethe’s Faust, was a tremendous experience for me. Zarathustra was Nietzsche’s Faust, his No. 2, and my No. 2 now corresponded to Zarathustra—though this was rather like comparing a molehill with Mount Blanc. And Zarathustra—there could be no doubt about that—was morbid. Was my No. 2 also morbid? This possibility filled me with a terror which for a long time I refused to admit, but the idea cropped up again and again at inopportune moments, throwing me into a cold sweat, so that in the end I was forced to reflect on myself. Nietzsche had discovered his No. 2 only late in life, when he was already past middle age, whereas I had known mine ever since boyhood. Nietzsche had spoken naïvely and incautiously about this arrheton, this thing not to be named, as though it were quite in order. But I had noticed in time that this only leads to trouble. He was so brilliant that he was able to come to Basel as a professor when still a young man, not suspecting what lay ahead of him. Because of his very brilliance he should have noticed in time that something was amiss. That, I thought, was his morbid misunderstanding: that he fearlessly and unsuspectingly let his No. 2 loose upon a world that knew and understood nothing about such things. He was moved by the childish hope of finding people who would be able to share his ecstasies and could grasp his “transvaluation of all values.” But he found only educated Philistines—tragi-comically, he was one himself. Like the rest of them, he did not understand himself when he fell head first into the unutterable mystery and wanted to sing its praises to the dull, godforsaken masses. That was the reason for the bombastic language, the piling up of metaphors, the hymnlike raptures—all a vain attempt to catch the ear of a world which had sold its soul for a mass of disconnected facts. And he fell—tightrope-walker that he proclaimed himself to be—into depths far beyond himself. He did not know his way about in this world and was like a man possessed, one who could be handled only with the utmost caution. Among my friends and acquaintances I knew of only two who openly declared themselves adherents of Nietzsche. Both were homosexual; one of them ended by committing suicide, the other ran to seed as a misunderstood genius. The rest of my friends were not so much dumfounded by the phenomenon of Zarathustra as simply immune to its appeal.

  Just as Faust had opened a door for me, Zarathustra slammed one shut, and it remained shut for a long time to come. I felt like the old peasant who discovered that two of his cows had evidently been bewitched and had got their heads in the same halter. “How did that happen?” asked his small son. “Boy, one doesn’t talk about such things,” replied his father.

  I realized that one gets nowhere unless one talks to people about the things they know. The naïve person does not appreciate what an insult it is to talk to one’s fellows about anything that is unknown to them. They pardon such ruthless behavior only in a writer, journalist, or poet. I came to see that a new idea, or even just an unusual aspect of an old one, can be communicated only by facts. Facts remain and cannot be brushed aside; sooner or later someone will come upon them and know what he has found. I realized that I talked only for want of something better, that I ought to be offering facts, and these I lacked entirely. I had nothing concrete in my hands. More than ever I found myself driven toward empiricism. I began to blame the philosophers for rattling away when experience was lacking, and holding their tongues when they ought to have been answering with facts. In this respect they all seemed like watered-down theologians. I felt that at some time or other I had passed through the valley of diamonds, but I could convince no one—not even myself, when I looked at them more closely—that the specimens I had brought back were not mere pieces of gravel.

  This was in 1898, when I began to think more seriously about my career as a medical man. I soon came to the conclusion that I would have to specialize. The choice seemed to lie between surgery and internal medicine. I inclined toward the former because of my special training in anatomy and my preference for pathology, and would very probably have made surgery my profession if I had possessed the necessary financial means. All along, it had been extremely painful to me to have to go into debt in order to study at all. I knew that after the final examination I would have to begin earning my living as soon as possible. I imagined a career as assistant at some cantonal hospital, where there was more hope of obtaining a paid position than in a clinic. Moreover, a post in a clinic depended to a large extent on the backing or personal interest of the chief. With my questionable popularity and estrangement from others—experienced all too often—I dared not think of any such stroke of luck, and therefore contented myself with the modest prospect of a post in one of the local hospitals. The rest depended on hard work and on my capability and application.

  During the summer holidays, however, something happened that was destined to influence me profoundly. One day I was sitting in my room, studying my textbooks. In the adjoining room, the door to which stood ajar, my mother was knitting. That was our dining room, where the round walnut dining table stood. The table had come from the dowry of my paternal grandmother, and was at this time about seventy years old. My mother was sitting by the window, about a yard away from the table. My sister was at school and our maid in the kitchen. Suddenly there sounded a report like a pistol shot. I jumped up and rushed into the room from which the noise of the explosion had come. My mother was sitting flabbergasted in her armchair, the knitting fallen from her hands. She stammered out, “W-w-what’s happened? It was right beside me!” and stared at the table. Following her eyes, I saw what had happened. The table top had split from the rim to beyond the center, and not along any joint; the split ran right through the solid wood. I was thunderstruck. How could such a thing happen? A table of solid walnut that had dried out for seventy years—how could it split on a summer day in the relatively high degree of humidity characteristic of our climate? If it had stood next to a heated stove on a cold, dry winter day, then it might have been conceivable. What in the world could have caused such an explosion? “There certainly are curious accidents,” I thought. My mother nodded darkly. “Yes, yes,” she said in her No. 2 voice, “that means something.” Against my will I was impressed and annoyed with myself for not finding anything to say.

  Some two weeks later I came home at six o’clock in the evening and found the household—my mother, my fourteen-year-old sister, and the maid—in a great state of agitation. About an hour earlier there had been another deafening report. This time it was not the already damaged table; the noise had come from the direction of the sideboard, a heavy piece of furniture dating from the early nineteenth century. They had already looked all over it, but had found no trace of a split. I immediately began examining the sideboard and the entire surrounding area, but just as fruitlessly. Then I began on the interior of the sideboard. In the cupboard containing the bread basket I found a loaf of bread, and, beside it, the bread knife. The greater part of the blade had snapped off in several pieces. The handle lay in one corner of the rectangular basket, and in each of the other corners lay a piece of the blade. The knife had been used shortly before, at four-o’clock tea, and afterward put away. Since then no one had gone to the sideboard.

  The next day I took the shattered knife to one of the best cutlers in the town. He examined the fractures with a magnifying glass, and shook his head. “This knife is perfectly sound,” he said. “There is no fault in the steel. Someone must have deliberately broken it piece by piece. It could be done, for instance, by sticking the blade into the crack of the drawer and breaking off a piece at a time. Or
else it might have been dropped on stone from a great height. But good steel can’t explode. Someone has been pulling your leg.” I have carefully kept the pieces of the knife to this day.

  My mother and my sister had been in the room when the sudden report made them jump. My mother’s No. 2 looked at me meaningfully, but I could find nothing to say. I was completely at a loss and could offer no explanation of what had happened, and this was all the more annoying as I had to admit that I was profoundly impressed. Why and how had the table split and the knife shattered? The hypothesis that it was just a coincidence went much too far. It seemed highly improbable to me that the Rhine would flow backward just once, by mere chance—and all other possible explanations were automatically ruled out. So what was it?

  A few weeks later I heard of certain relatives who had been engaged for some time in table-turning, and also had a medium, a young girl of fifteen and a half. The group had been thinking of having me meet the medium, who produced somnambulistic states and spiritualistic phenomena. When I heard this, I immediately thought of the strange manifestations in our house, and I conjectured that they might be somehow connected with this medium. I therefore began attending the regular séances which my relatives held every Saturday evening. We had results in the form of communications and tapping noises from the walls and the table. Movements of the table independently of the medium were questionable, and I soon found out that limiting conditions imposed on the experiment generally had an obstructive effect. I therefore accepted the obvious autonomy of the tapping noises and turned my attention to the content of the communications. I set forth the results of these observations in my doctoral thesis. After about two years of experimentation we all became rather weary of it. I caught the medium trying to produce phenomena by trickery, and this made me break off the experiments—very much to my regret, for I had learned from this example how a No. 2 personality is formed, how it enters into a child’s consciousness and finally integrates it into itself. She was one of these precociously matured personalities, and she died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-six. I saw her once again, when she was twenty-four, and received a lasting impression of the independence and maturity of her personality. After her death I learned from her family that during the last months of her life her character disintegrated bit by bit, and that ultimately she returned to the state of a two-year-old child, in which condition she fell into her last sleep.