Memories, Dreams, Reflections

by C. G. Jung

  Like flames suddenly flaring up, these thoughts darted through my mind. Much later, when I reflected upon Freud’s character, they revealed their significance. There was one characteristic of his that preoccupied me above all: his bitterness. It had struck me at our first encounter, but it remained inexplicable to me until I was able to see it in connection with his attitude toward sexuality. Although, for Freud, sexuality was undoubtedly a numinosum, his terminology and theory seemed to define it exclusively as a biological function. It was only the emotionality with which he spoke of it that revealed the deeper elements reverberating within him. Basically, he wanted to teach—or so at least it seemed to me—that, regarded from within, sexuality included spirituality and had an intrinsic meaning. But his concretistic terminology was too narrow to express this idea. He gave me the impression that at bottom he was working against his own goal and against himself; and there is, after all, no harsher bitterness than that of a person who is his own worst enemy. In his own words, he felt himself menaced by a “black tide of mud”—he who more than anyone else had tried to let down his buckets into those black depths.

  Freud never asked himself why he was compelled to talk continually of sex, why this idea had taken such possession of him. He remained unaware that his “monotony of interpretation” expressed a flight from himself, or from that other side of him which might perhaps be called mystical. So long as he refused to acknowledge that side, he could never be reconciled with himself. He was blind toward the paradox and ambiguity of the contents of the unconscious, and did not know that everything which arises out of the unconscious has a top and a bottom, an inside and an outside. When we speak of the outside—and that is what Freud did—we are considering only half of the whole, with the result that a countereffect arises out of the unconscious.

  There was nothing to be done about this one-sidedness of Freud’s. Perhaps some inner experience of his own might have opened his eyes; but then his intellect would have reduced any such experience to “mere sexuality” or “psychosexuality.” He remained the victim of the one aspect he could recognize, and for that reason I see him as a tragic figure; for he was a great man, and what is more, a man in the grip of his daimon.

  After that second conversation in Vienna I also understood Alfred Adler’s power hypothesis, to which I had hitherto paid scant attention. Like many sons, Adler had learned from his “father” not what the father said, but what he did. Instantly, the problem of love (Eros) and power came down upon me like a leaden weight. Freud himself had told me that he had never read Nietzsche; now I saw Freud’s psychology as, so to speak, an adroit move on the part of intellectual history, compensating for Nietzsche’s deification of the power principle. The problem had obviously to be rephrased not as “Freud versus Adler” but “Freud versus Nietzsche.” It was therefore, I thought, more than a domestic quarrel in the domain of psychopathology. The idea dawned on me that Eros and the power drive might be in a sense like the dissident sons of a single father, or the products of a single motivating psychic force which manifested itself empirically in opposing forms, like positive and negative electrical charges, Eros as a patiens, the power drive as an agens, and vice versa. Eros makes just as great demands upon the power drive as the latter upon the former. Where is the one drive without the other? On the one hand man succumbs to the drive; on the other hand, he tries to master it. Freud shows how the object succumbs to the drive, and Adler how man uses the drive in order to force his will upon the object. Nietzsche, helpless in the hands of his destiny, had to create a “superman” for himself. Freud, I concluded, must himself be so profoundly affected by the power of Eros that he actually wished to elevate it into a dogma—aere perennius—like a religious numen. It is no secret that “Zarathustra” is the proclaimer of a gospel, and here was Freud also trying to outdo the church and to canonize a theory. To be sure, he did not do this too loudly; instead, he suspected me of wanting to be a prophet. He made his tragic claim and demolished it at the same time. That is how people usually behave with numinosities, and rightly so, for in one respect they are true, in another untrue. Numinous experience elevates and humiliates simultaneously. If Freud had given somewhat more consideration to the psychological truth that sexuality is numinous—both a god and a devil—he would not have remained bound within the confines of a biological concept. And Nietzsche might not have been carried over the brink of the world by his intellectual excesses if he had only held more firmly to the foundations of human existence.

  Wherever the psyche is set violently oscillating by a numinous experience, there is a danger that the thread by which one hangs may be torn. Should that happen, one man tumbles into an absolute affirmation, another into an equally absolute negation. Nirdvandva (freedom from opposites) is the Orient’s remedy for this. I have not forgotten that. The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong. The numinosum is dangerous because it lures men to extremes, so that a modest truth is regarded as the truth and a minor mistake is equated with fatal error. Tout passe—yesterday’s truth is today’s deception, and yesterday’s false inference may be tomorrow’s revelation. This is particularly so in psychological matters, of which, if truth were told, we still know very little. We are still a long way from understanding what it signifies that nothing has any existence unless some small—and oh, so transitory—consciousness has become aware of it.

  My conversation with Freud had shown me that he feared that the numinous light of his sexual insights might be extinguished by a “black tide of mud.” Thus a mythological situation had arisen: the struggle between light and darkness. That explains its numinosity, and why Freud immediately fell back on his dogma as a religious means of defense. In my next book, Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido,5 which dealt with the hero’s struggle for freedom, Freud’s curious reaction prompted me to investigate further this archetypal theme and its mythological background.

  What with the sexual interpretation on the one hand and the power drive of dogma on the other I was led, over the years, to a consideration of the problem of typology. It was necessary to study the polarity and dynamics of the psyche. And I also embarked upon an investigation extending over several decades of “the black tide of mud of occultism”—that is to say, I tried to understand the conscious and unconscious historical assumptions underlying our contemporary psychology.

  It interested me to hear Freud’s views on precognition and on parapsychology in general. When I visited him in Vienna in 1909 I asked him what he thought of these matters. Because of his materialistic prejudice, he rejected this entire complex of questions as nonsensical, and did so in terms of so shallow a positivism that I had difficulty in checking the sharp retort on the tip of my tongue. It was some years before he recognized the seriousness of parapsychology and acknowledged the factuality of “occult” phenomena.

  While Freud was going on this way, I had a curious sensation. It was as if my diaphragm were made of iron and were becoming red-hot—a glowing vault. And at that moment there was such a loud report in the bookcase, which stood right next to us, that we both started up in alarm, fearing the thing was going to topple over on us. I said to Freud: “There, that is an example of a so-called catalytic exteriorization phenomenon.”

  “Oh come,” he exclaimed. “That is sheer bosh.”

  “It is not,” I replied. “You are mistaken, Herr Professor. And to prove my point I now predict that in a moment there will be another such loud report!” Sure enough, no sooner had I said the words than the same detonation went off in the bookcase.

  To this day I do not know what gave me this certainty. But I knew beyond all doubt that the report would come again. Freud only stared aghast at me. I do not know what was in his mind, or what his look meant. In any case, this incident aroused his mistrust of me, and I had the feeling that I had done something against him. I never afterward discussed the incident with him.6

  The year 1909 proved decisive for our relationship. I had bee
n invited to lecture on the association experiment at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.7 Independently, Freud had also received an invitation, and we decided to travel together. We met in Bremen, where Ferenczi joined us. In Bremen the much-discussed incident of Freud’s fainting fit occurred. It was provoked—indirectly—by my interest in the “peat-bog corpses.” I knew that in certain districts of Northern Germany these so-called bog corpses were to be found. They are the bodies of prehistoric men who either drowned in the marshes or were buried there. The bog water in which the bodies lie contains humic acid, which consumes the bones and simultaneously tans the skin, so that it and the hair are perfectly preserved. In essence this is a process of natural mummification, in the course of which the bodies are pressed flat by the weight of the peat. Such remains are occasionally turned up by peat diggers in Holstein, Denmark, and Sweden.

  Having read about these peat-bog corpses, I recalled them when we were in Bremen, but, being a bit muddled, confused them with the mummies in the lead cellars of the city. This interest of mine got on Freud’s nerves. “Why are you so concerned with these corpses?” he asked me several times. He was inordinately vexed by the whole thing and during one such conversation, while we were having dinner together, he suddenly fainted. Afterward he said to me that he was convinced that all this chatter about corpses meant I had death-wishes toward him. I was more than surprised by this interpretation. I was alarmed by the intensity of his fantasies—so strong that, obviously, they could cause him to faint.

  In a similar connection Freud once more suffered a fainting fit in my presence. This was during the Psychoanalytic Congress in Munich in 1912. Someone had turned the conversation to Amenophis IV (Ikhnaton). The point was made that as a result of his negative attitude toward his father he had destroyed his father’s cartouches on the steles, and that at the back of his great creation of a monotheistic religion there lurked a father complex. This sort of thing irritated me, and I attempted to argue that Amenophis had been a creative and profoundly religious person whose acts could not be explained by personal resistances toward his father. On the contrary, I said, he had held the memory of his father in honor, and his zeal for destruction had been directed only against the name of the god Amon, which he had everywhere annihilated; it was also chiseled out of the cartouches of his father Amon-hotep. Moreover, other pharaohs had replaced the names of their actual or divine forefathers on monuments and statues by their own, feeling that they had a right to do so since they were incarnations of the same god. Yet they, I pointed out, had inaugurated neither a new style nor a new religion.

  At that moment Freud slid off his chair in a faint. Everyone clustered helplessly around him. I picked him up, carried him into the next room, and laid him on a sofa. As I was carrying him, he half came to, and I shall never forget the look he cast at me. In his weakness he looked at me as if I were his father. Whatever other causes may have contributed to this faint—the atmosphere was very tense—the fantasy of father-murder was common to both cases.

  At the time Freud frequently made allusions indicating that he regarded me as his successor. These hints were embarrassing to me, for I knew that I would never be able to uphold his views properly, that is to say, as he intended them. On the other hand I had not yet succeeded in working out my criticisms in such a manner that they would carry any weight with him, and my respect for him was too great for me to want to force him to come finally to grips with my own ideas. I was by no means charmed by the thought of being burdened, virtually over my own head, with the leadership of a party. In the first place that sort of thing was not in my nature; in the second place I could not sacrifice my intellectual independence; and in the third place such luster was highly unwelcome to me since it would only deflect me from my real aims. I was concerned with investigating truth, not with questions of personal prestige.

  The trip to the United States which began in Bremen in 1909 lasted for seven weeks. We were together every day, and analyzed each other’s dreams. At the time I had a number of important ones, but Freud could make nothing of them. I did not regard that as any reflection upon him, for it sometimes happens to the best analyst that he is unable to unlock the riddle of a dream. It was a human failure, and I would never have wanted to discontinue our dream analyses on that account. On the contrary, they meant a great deal to me, and I found our relationship exceedingly valuable. I regarded Freud as an older, more mature and experienced personality, and felt like a son in that respect. But then something happened which proved to be a severe blow to the whole relationship.

  Freud had a dream—I would not think it right to air the problem it involved. I interpreted it as best I could, but added that a great deal more could be said about it if he would supply me with some additional details from his private life. Freud’s response to these words was a curious look—a look of the utmost suspicion. Then he said, “But I cannot risk my authority!” At that moment he lost it altogether. That sentence burned itself into my memory; and in it the end of our relationship was already foreshadowed. Freud was placing personal authority above truth.

  As I have already said, Freud was able to interpret the dreams I was then having only incompletely or not at all. They were dreams with collective contents, containing a great deal of symbolic material. One in particular was important to me, for it led me for the first time to the concept of the “collective unconscious” and thus formed a kind of prelude to my book, Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido.8

  This was the dream. I was in a house I did not know, which had two stories. It was “my house.” I found myself in the upper story, where there was a kind of salon furnished with fine old pieces in rococo style. On the walls hung a number of precious old paintings. I wondered that this should be my house, and thought, “Not bad.” But then it occurred to me that I did not know what the lower floor looked like. Descending the stairs, I reached the ground floor. There everything was much older, and I realized that this part of the house must date from about the fifteenth or sixteenth century. The furnishings were medieval; the floors were of red brick. Everywhere it was rather dark. I went from one room to another, thinking, “Now I really must explore the whole house.” I came upon a heavy door, and opened it. Beyond it, I discovered a stone stairway that led down into the cellar. Descending again, I found myself in a beautifully vaulted room which looked exceedingly ancient. Examining the walls, I discovered layers of brick among the ordinary stone blocks, and chips of brick in the mortar. As soon as I saw this I knew that the walls dated from Roman times. My interest by now was intense. I looked more closely at the floor. It was of stone slabs, and in one of these I discovered a ring. When I pulled it, the stone slab lifted, and again I saw a stairway of narrow stone steps leading down into the depths. These, too, I descended, and entered a low cave cut into the rock. Thick dust lay on the floor, and in the dust were scattered bones and broken pottery, like remains of a primitive culture. I discovered two human skulls, obviously very old and half disintegrated. Then I awoke.

  What chiefly interested Freud in this dream were the two skulls. He returned to them repeatedly, and urged me to find a wish in connection with them. What did I think about these skulls? And whose were they? I knew perfectly well, of course, what he was driving at: that secret death-wishes were concealed in the dream. “But what does he really expect of me?” I thought to myself. Toward whom would I have death-wishes? I felt violent resistance to any such interpretation. I also had some intimation of what the dream might really mean. But I did not then trust my own judgment, and wanted to hear Freud’s opinion. I wanted to learn from him. Therefore I submitted to his intention and said, “My wife and my sister-in-law”—after all, I had to name someone whose death was worth the wishing!

  I was newly married at the time and knew perfectly well that there was nothing within myself which pointed to such wishes. But I would not have been able to present to Freud my own ideas on an interpretation of the dream without encountering incomprehension and vehem
ent resistance. I did not feel up to quarreling with him, and I also feared that I might lose his friendship if I insisted on my own point of view. On the other hand, I wanted to know what he would make of my answer, and what his reaction would be if I deceived him by saying something that suited his theories. And so I told him a lie.

  I was quite aware that my conduct was not above reproach, but à la guerre, comme à la guerre! It would have been impossible for me to afford him any insight into my mental world. The gulf between it and his was too great. In fact Freud seemed greatly relieved by my reply. I saw from this that he was completely helpless in dealing with certain kinds of dreams and had to take refuge in his doctrine. I realized that it was up to me to find out the real meaning of the dream.

  It was plain to me that the house represented a kind of image of the psyche—that is to say, of my then state of consciousness, with hitherto unconscious additions. Consciousness was represented by the salon. It had an inhabited atmosphere, in spite of its antiquated style.

  The ground floor stood for the first level of the unconscious. The deeper I went, the more alien and the darker the scene became. In the cave, I discovered remains of a primitive culture, that is, the world of the primitive man within myself—a world which can scarcely be reached or illuminated by consciousness. The primitive psyche of man borders on the life of the animal soul, just as the caves of prehistoric times were usually inhabited by animals before men laid claim to them.

  During this period I became aware of how keenly I felt the difference between Freud’s intellectual attitude and mine. I had grown up in the intensely historical atmosphere of Basel at the end of the nineteenth century, and had acquired, thanks to reading the old philosophers, some knowledge of the history of psychology. When I thought about dreams and the contents of the unconscious, I never did so without making historical comparisons; in my student days I always used Krug’s old dictionary of philosophy. I was especially familiar with the writers of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Theirs was the world which had formed the atmosphere of my first-story salon. By contrast, I had the impression that Freud’s intellectual history began with Büchner, Moleschott, Du Bois-Reymond, and Darwin.