Jung
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For Jung, this was the activation of the same archetypes of ritual, cannibalism and phallus, just represented in different forms. The phallus in the dream was in some respects a dark or shadow Jesus Christ (like the black-garbed Jesuits Carl reported seeing going about their solemn business); what Jung described as ‘a subterranean God “not to be named”’(Jung, 1963, p. 29).
There is also a strong hint in the dream of what would be a long-term area of concern to Jung – the relationship between the archetypal feminine and masculine. Here his mother is heard describing a ‘man eater’, and in later works, notably Symbols of Transformation, Jung (1966) explored symbolism which suggested how the archetype of mother, or ‘the Great Mother’ becomes symbolized in religious and other myths, postulating a ‘battle of deliverance’ from the ‘devouring mother’. This stands in archetypal counterpoint to the notion of ‘God the father’ of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), which place the heavenly Father as the ultimate power. Jung came to see this counterpoint as part of the struggle between the feminine and masculine in human history, and something that plays out in individual psyches.
How might we make sense of this kind of dream more generally? The older Jung saw it, in a way, as evidence of the influence of the collective unconscious on individual human beings. This line of thinking goes:
1 Some dream imagery, when it is as heavily symbolic as in this dream, has meanings that extend beyond (but still include) the individual’s constructions of image and meaning.
2 This is the dream of a three-year-old: how could the psyche of such a young child generate this kind of dream and the symbols in it? Could this not suggest a deeper reservoir of archetypal imagery and influences that can apparently break through the membrane between collective and personal unconscious in such circumstances as this?
3 Jung takes this argument a step further: if this dream conveyed symbolic connections to much deeper and bigger process at work in the human psyche than a little child could have learned or heard about, then there must be some kind of ‘superior intelligence’ (Jung, 1963, p. 29) operating in the unconscious.
This was the dream that set the tone for Jung’s relationship to the unconscious, which he saw as a living force within. For him, we have a responsibility to translate the often disguised messages dreams present to us into active ways of thinking, being and doing. The task is for our ego to take note of what our self may be saying to us through a dream, and for this to influence who and how we are. This way, we ‘individuate’ and become more fully ourselves through a fuller integration of conscious and unconscious elements.
Formative influences: childhood and adolescence
Jung portrayed the period when he was growing up as one when he often felt isolated and misunderstood by his peers, not to mention bored by some of the dry lessons he experienced at school. Although he clearly had friendships, there was an intensely introspective side to his personality that urged him to look inwards for meaning rather than finding it in contact with others.
This tendency showed itself in his dreams such as the one described above, but also in how he seemed to create ways of expressing his personality in symbolic ways. One way was via a manikin, a figure Carl carved from the end of his wooden ruler ‘with frock coat, top hat and shiny boots’ (Jung, 1963, p. 36), then sawed off and kept in his pencil case. The manikin acquired great significance for him because it was a secret – and he kept it hidden in the attic to reinforce this.
The importance of ‘the secret’ came to reflect a growing awareness in Jung that he seemed to have ‘two personalities’: personality number one was his outward-facing presentation or persona of who he was in the world, while personality number two related to the deeper, hidden version of who he was. Jung imagined this character as a wise, powerful older man from a previous era in history who represented the aspect of Jung that was open to dreams, deep rumination, connection with the natural world, and the spontaneous creativity which produced the manikin. This notion of there being more than one version of himself was a precursor to key elements of his model of the psyche.
Key idea: Do we all have a ‘personality number two’?
Jung came to the view that we all have a personality number two: a ’deeper, timeless’ version of ourselves within us, linked to the collective layer of the unconscious. However, Smith (1996) has criticized this idea as a big assumption for Jung to make, based only on his own experiences. This criticism is sometimes deployed more fully – i.e. are Jung’s theories too reliant on his subjective insights?
Did Jung suffer from schizophrenia?
Donald Winnicott (1964), the highly influential British psychoanalyst and paediatrician, has suggested that Jung had ‘childhood schizophrenia’, as revealed by his immersion in vivid imagery from the unconscious, aged three (see above). He speculated that ‘maternal failure’ was at the root of the problem (Sedgwick, 2008) and that the dual personalities (‘number 1 and number 2’) Jung describes from childhood point towards this possibility, as well as how overwhelmed Jung could be by the contents of his unconscious.
Anthony Storr also concluded that Jung’s so-called ‘creative illness’ (1907–13) after he split from Freud had the hallmarks of an episode of schizophrenia (Storr, 1973). Additionally, could Jung’s professional interest in the presentation of schizophrenia – treating numerous patients suffering with what was then called ‘dementia praecox’ at the Burgholzi and his efforts to understand it in his writing (Jung, 1966) – represent an unconscious wish to ‘cure’ himself?
Spotlight: Dementia praecox
‘Dementia praecox’ was the generic term applied to all disorders of a psychotic nature that were degenerative and could be terminal. Jung seemed to concur with the director of the Burgholzi hospital, Dr Eugen Bleuler, that certain patients needed to be categorized differently from this. These were patients whose symptoms (e.g. delusions) would only develop so far before remaining static, or even fading. A few such patients, he maintained (Bleuler, 1911), could even get better and be discharged.
Considering the key criteria now used to diagnose schizophrenia (from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders V), can we effectively conclude that Jung suffered in this way? The three key criteria (APA, 2013) are:
• bizarre delusions
• Schneiderian first-rank auditory hallucinations (e.g. two or more voices conversing)
• disorganized speech.
It is possible to argue that Jung did present with at least two of these in some form. He had vivid fantasies of characters, places and events that often had a ‘grand’ underlying quality (e.g. in The Red Book narrative, he describes having met Elijah and Salome). He seemed to ‘hear’ voices at times (e.g. in 1916 Jung reported the invasion of his house by a crowd of restless spirits who ‘spoke’ to him). While disorganized speech may not have featured as far as we know, delusional and hallucinatory aspects do suggest themselves.
While others have speculated that these could also be seen as a presentation of ‘manic depressive’ version of psychosis (Brome, 1978, p. 168) – what we would now term ‘bipolar disorder’ – the question is hard to answer definitively. While having such experiences, Jung was able to continue working in a high-level professional role and maintain satisfactory family relationships. He had grown up in a setting where religion, and the occult, were vividly present, culturally and psychologically, furnishing his strong imagination with a larger context in which to expand and explore. So the jury remains out on this one, although the suspicion that Jung was vulnerable to psychotic ‘invasion’ remains strong.
As Jung moved through puberty, he reported an experience which felt like a key transition for him. He was walking to school, at the age of 11, and, ‘suddenly for a single moment I had the overwhelming impression of having just emerged from a dense cloud. I knew all at once: now I am myself! It was as if a wall of mist were at my back, and behind that wall there was not yet an “I”. But at this moment… I happ
ened to myself’ (Jung, 1963, p. 49).
Jung reports having felt a strong sense of inner authority arising from this experience, one that also followed a period where he had fainted regularly and forgotten about his treasured manikin in the attic. Frankel (1998, p. 72) observes that, in adolescence ‘the dialectical interplay between separateness and connectedness… expresses… (itself in)… moments of rich psychological experience.’ It seems that Carl experienced such a moment here, signifying a transitional period between childhood and adolescence, which had culminated in this sudden breakthrough of self-awareness.
Spotlight: Jung’s difficult moment at school
Jung reported how a teacher had not believed that a composition he had written was his, because it was ‘too good’. Instead he was quizzed: ‘Where did you copy it from? Confess the truth!’ (Jung, 1963, p. 83). Jung was furious but this incident was salutary in helping Jung listen to, and trust in, himself rather than overreact to outer provocation.
JUNG, HIS FATHER AND HIS FATHER’S RELIGION
The transition described above also needs to be seen in the light of young Carl’s reaction to the faith of his father. Here, it seems that (on the one hand) he wanted to be loyal to his father but, on the other hand, he was finding it increasingly difficult to stomach the tenets of a Christian view of the world which had changed little since the Middle Ages. It was as if the Enlightenment, and the scientific and technical progress that had followed it, had never happened. The Age of Enlightenment (Berlin, 1984) had consisted of a cultural movement of European intellectuals in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who emphasized the primacy of scientific knowledge, reason and the value of the individual over conventional religious beliefs and cultural practices. The religion of his priestly father did not seem to show any cognisance of these developments which had radically changed the way people across the continent viewed the world, and themselves.
Instead, the premise on which his father held to the established theological ‘truths’ revealed in the Bible, and which promised salvation to all who subscribed to them, was, according to one biographer of Jung: ‘You have to believe, not think’ (Bair, 2003, p. 35). That is not to say that father and son could not joust intellectually over the philosophical ideas Carl was beginning to immerse himself in. However, the demarcation between the traditional Christian theology of his father and the rigorous application of scientific and philosophical principles to religious ideas was, Jung realized, becoming a line in the sand between them.
A recurring daydream seemed to confront him with this problem. In it, Carl is walking past Basle cathedral, looking up at the magnificent building silhouetted against a deep blue sky and bright sunshine. He imagines God sitting on his throne up in the sky. God is in his heaven, and all seems right with the world. But then, although he keeps repeating to himself, ‘Don’t think of it, just don’t think of it!’ (Jung, 1963, p. 53), eventually he allows himself to experience the conclusion of the daydream: ‘God sits on his golden throne, high above the world – and from under his throne an enormous turd falls upon the sparkling new roof, shatters it, and breaks the walls of the cathedral asunder’ (Ibid, 1963, p. 56).
As the shock of seeing God shitting on the cathedral, built in praise of Him, passed, Carl’s initial self-reproach for having dared imagine such a thing was replaced by relief at the acknowledgement God had been revealed as less than perfect. There was a sense, for Carl, of God wanting him to ‘sin’ by thinking such thoughts. This not only tested the lad’s courage to break convention, but also provided a fuller picture of the relationship between the divine and the human.
This was a picture the older psychiatrist, analyst and writer would fill in further, principally through his theories on shadow, which will be explored in more detail in Chapter 6. A key part of what makes us human is our darker, messier aspects – the drives, desires, resentments and avarices that we all possess. Jung would suggest that the religious convention of trying to rid ourselves of these and ‘be pure’ for God (a convention which was particularly strong in the Protestantism of his father’s church), was counter-productive. Like Freud’s notion of repression, Jung’s thinking on shadow held to this principle: the more we push away shadow influences, the more likely they are to come back and undermine us (Samuels et al., 1986). You may have already gathered the relevance of this to the religious question. For Jung, God has a shadow, too. We will come back to this in Chapter 16.
Key idea
Jung’s dualistic approach to scientific and psychological study, modelled in his doctoral study on occult phenomena, mentioned above, reflected a lifelong project to maintain balance between objectivity and subjectivity. This in turn reflected a keen awareness of tensions inherent in archetypal dualities: between arts and sciences, what is known and not known, and what can be measured and what cannot. This can be traced back to Carl’s childhood when he began to wrestle with the stark contrast between the beliefs of his father and the scientific principles he was learning about at school, as well as the influence of the mysterious world revealed in his dreams.
Key terms
Collective unconscious: According to Jung, the layer of the unconscious beneath the individual’s personal unconscious. In the collective unconscious, archetypally shared instincts, memories and symbols gathered from across human history across the world, can appear – or ‘constellate’ – in the psyche of the individual dreamer.
Creative illness: The term sometimes used to describe what Jung fell into after his break from Freud. This describes how Jung apparently ‘used’ his breakdown in a creative way, drawing important ideas and images from his forays into his unconscious.
Dementia praecox: The general term applied in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century for patients suffering from delusional and disordered states of mind that we would now term ‘schizophrenia’.
Ego: The centre of our conscious mind, which mediates between this and the unconscious.
Persona: Jung’s term for the ‘mask’ at the front of the ego. This mask will vary according to situation we are in, and we will use this consciously or unconsciously, to adapt to the context. Over-identifying with the persona can lead to ‘a loss of self’.
Schizophrenia: The established current term to describe people who suffer from acute delusional psychoses and other distorted mental states where ego awareness of these states becomes unavailable.
Self: The underlying centre of each human psyche, which also encompasses the whole psyche. Guides the ego, if the latter is able to listen to it.
Dig deeper
American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders V (Arlington, VA: APA, 2013)
Bair, D. Jung: A Biography (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2003)
Berlin, I. (ed.), The Age of Enlightenment: The 18th-century Philosophers (New York: Plume Books, 1984)
Bleuler, E., Dementia Praecox: Or the Group of Schizophrenias (New York: International Universities Press, 1911)
Brome, V., Jung: Man and Myth (London: Macmillan, 1978)
Frankel, R., The Adolescent Psyche: Jungian and Winnicottian Perspectives (Hove: Routledge, 1998)
Freud, S. (1896), ‘The Aetiology of Hysteria’ in Gay, P. (ed.), The Freud Reader (London: Vintage, 1995), pp. 96–111
Jung, C. G. (1902), ‘On the Psychology of So-called Occult Phenomena’ in Jung, C. G., Psychology and the Occult (London: Routledge, 1982), pp. 5–106
Jung, C. G. (1963), Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Glasgow: Fontana, 1995)
Jung, C. G., Man and His Symbols (New York: Dell, 1964)
Jung, C. G., Symbols of Transformation (trans. 2nd ed. Hull, R. and Adler, G.) (London: Routledge, 1966)
Samuels, A., Shorter, B. and Plaut, F. (eds.), A Critical Dictionary of Jungian Analysis (London: Routledge, 1986)
Sedgwick, D., ‘Winnicott’s Dream: Some Reflections on D. W. Winnicott and C. G. Jung’, Journal of Analytical Psychology, 53, 543–60 (2008)
Sm
ith, R., The Wounded Jung: Effects of Jung’s Relationships on His Life and Work (Evanston, ILL: Northwestern University Press, 1996), p. 25
Storr, A., Jung (Modern Masters) (London: Routledge, 1973)
Winnicott, D., ‘Memories, Dreams, Reflections: By C. G. Jung’, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 45, 450–55 (1964)
Fact-check (answers at the back)
1 What was the Swiss social milieu Jung was born into known for?
a Its neutrality
b Its conservatism
c Its architecture
d Its chocolate
2 What did Jung later see the dream he had, aged three, as representing?
a The problem of the Church
b King Phallus
c The problem of cannibalism
d His life’s work in exploring crucial archetypal polarities
3 What is the ‘Great Mother’?
a A giant mother
b An archetype of severe weather
c The collective archetype of the mother
d The symbol of the perfect mother
4 What were Jung’s number one and number two personalities?
a His persona in the world and his secret inner self
b His favourite and second-favourite personalities in fairy tales
c Two imaginary figures inside him
d How he described the shift between feeling whole and feeling split