Knowledge in a Nutshell: Carl Jung

The complete guide to the great psychoanalyst, including the unconscious, archetypes and the self

Gary Bobroff

• Publisher: Arcturus
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781839403989
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Psicología junguiana

"Bobroff elegantly distills the essence of Jung's massive body of work into about 230 pages" - Jung Society of Utah Carl Jung was the founder of analytical psychology who revolutionized the way we approached the human psyche. Drawing on Eastern mysticism, mythology and dream analysis to develop his theories, Jung proposed many ideas which are still influential today, including introversion, extroversion and the collective unconscious. Knowledge in a Nutshell: Carl Jung introduces psychologist Jung's ideas in an engaging and easy-to-understand format. Jungian psychology expert Gary Bobroff breaks down the concepts of the psyche, collective unconscious, archetypes, personality types and more in this concise book. He also explores the influence on Eastern philosophy and religion on Jung's ideas, and how spiritualism enriched his theories. With useful diagrams and bullet-point summaries at the end of each chapter, this book provides an essential introduction to this influential figure and explains the relevance of Jung's ideas to the modern world.ABOUT THE SERIES: The 'Knowledge in a Nutshell' series by Arcturus Publishing provides engaging introductions to many fields of knowledge, including philosophy, psychology and physics, and the ways in which human kind has sought to make sense of our world.

Chapter 1

Jung’s Psychology

Where DID Jung come from?

Carl Gustav Jung was born in Kesswil, Switzerland, on 26 July 1875. He was named after his grandfather who had been an illustrious physician (and who may have been the illegitimate son of Goethe).

C.G.’s father was a pastor, as were eight of his uncles. This brought him close to funeral rites and death from an early age. When he was just six months old, his mother developed a nervous disorder and was separated from him for several months. His mother and maternal grandfather (also a respected pastor) were spiritualists who spoke to the spirits of the departed – a practice that was not uncommon among the rural Swiss of his time. When he grew older, C.G. realized that his father’s faith did not animate him, nor fill his life with meaning. That absence struck C.G. profoundly, and the split between his mother’s mediumistic side and his father’s unfulfilled religiosity would define his life.

Two elder children had died before he was born, and C.G. had no siblings until he was nine. Growing up as a solitary child, he spent a great deal of time alone and involved in fantasy. He had several powerful dreams that he would write about later in his life, including one of a fleshy, tree-like pillar. A dreamy young boy, he grew up into a sturdy and fiery red-haired young man.

When he was four years old, his family moved to Basel, a Swiss city known for its tremendous carnival, the largest in Europe. For three days, beginning at 4 am, thousands of masked revellers paraded through town – a ritual that continues to this day.

His father died when he was 20, and he was invited to a séance shortly after, at which his 15-year-old cousin channelled spirits. Around the same time, two paranormal events struck C.G.’s family home: the splitting of a table down the middle for no apparent reason, and the shattering of a knife that was inside a drawer (a knife he kept for the rest of his life). C.G. felt that these events were somehow related to the death of his father.

C.G. won a scholarship and studied at Basel University, where he had a passion for science, philosophy and archaeology. He read Kant, Nietzsche and Swedenborg, and was a member of the Zofingia Club, an intellectual debating group, from 1896 to 1899.

Carl Jung and his wife Emma Rauschenbach. The pair were married on 14 February 1903.

In 1900, he moved to Zurich and began his medical studies. In 1903, he married Emma Rauschenbach (1882–1955), the daughter of one of the wealthiest families in Switzerland. Together they would have four daughters and one son. Their home in Küsnacht was the centre of both his family life and psychological practice, and today his descendants have made it available for private tours.

C.G. was a warm and vital person. He enjoyed physical pursuits, drinking wine and smoking cigars and a pipe. He was magnetic, witty and charming. He liked playing games, and his personality type was more the brother than the patriarchal father figure. A later biographer would write: ‘Everyone who came into personal contact with Jung has commented on his joviality, the twinkle in his eyes, his hearty, infectious laugh and his wonderful sense of humour. He was a good listener and . . . never appeared to be hurried or preoccupied. In conversation he was tolerant of different points of view, flexible in his approach to questions, and simple in speech . . . People felt comfortable in his presence.’1

A 19th-century illustration of the Basel Carnival. The carnival was one of the largest in Europe.

C.G.’s laugh was so infectious that his secretary Aniela Jaffé told the story of a hiker who, travelling the road above Eranos, a research centre in Switzerland, heard laughter from high above in the mountains and had to come and investigate who this man was.2

In 1910, following the death of her father and her subsequent depression, Toni Anna Wolff (1883–1953) began working with Jung as an analysand. C.G. helped her with her depression and she became one of his greatest helpers and closest confidantes. She was gifted intellectually and psychologically, and when he descended into his period of ‘Confrontation with the Unconscious’, just before and during World War I, she was able to assist him to get through it. Wolff was his ‘psychic lifeguard’ during his time of greatest difficulty, and she became a great psychoanalyst herself – better, some said, than Jung.

In 1922, following the death of his mother, C.G. bought land at Bollingen on Lake Zurich. The following year, he began construction there of a stone tower that was his refuge from the business of family life and society. At his tower, he chopped his own firewood, cooked his own meals and had time for introspection and to get in touch with his inner voice. This refuge was a place of great importance to Jung. On and off throughout his life he lectured and taught at Swiss universities. His writing would make him one of the best-known thinkers of the twentieth century and he would be given honorary degrees by many prestigious American and European universities. He kept a vast correspondence with friends and prominent figures around the world. He died at the age of 86 at his home in Küsnacht, on 6 June 1961.

A photograph of the entrance to Bollingen Tower. Jung continued to extend the building throughout his life.

The Psychology of Jung

The psychology of Carl Gustav Jung unfolds a vast interior world living inside of us. To begin to describe that territory is daunting. Imagine a hologram of our Milky Way galaxy: swirling around, with heights and depths of moving celestial bodies. How to begin to talk about it? How to place it all in a linear fashion (a, b, c, etc)? I ask the reader’s forgiveness as we begin – while it’s exciting to get to the conceptual parts of Jung’s work, we must begin simply and answer some basic questions first. We will take personal psychology as our starting point in this chapter, as it is the closest to our own experience.

THE WORD ASSOCIATION EXPERIMENT

In 1900, after completing his medical studies, Jung began work at the Burghölzli psychiatric hospital in Zurich. A resident in psychiatry, Jung was supervised by Dr Eugen Bleuler, a leading figure in European psychiatry. It was here that Jung made his first original contribution to psychology – the Word Association Experiment.

In the search for an empirical way to evaluate the conditions underlying patient’s illnesses, Jung developed an experiment in which patients were read a series of words and asked to free associate – respond with the first thing that came to their mind. At first, he had no success. Following Bleuler’s lead, Jung had expected associations for certain words to correlate with particular diseases, but they did not. Only after accepting the experiment’s initial failure did a revealing quality appear to Jung within the test results.

Jung noticed that certain words caused patients to delay in their response; it would take longer than the typical 1 to 3 seconds for them to respond. This break in attention was telling; it hinted at something present beneath the surface. Exploring, he found that the delay often occurred alongside changes in facial expression, spontaneous movements, emotional response and other reactions that defied the experiment’s instructions. In the laboratory setting, Jung was able to use instruments to observe the presence of physical symptoms connected to this disruption, which provided evidence of emotional response. ‘He used measures of changes in the pulse rate, fluctuations in breathing, and changes in the electrical conductivity of the skin produced by emotional sweating, in conjunction with the word-association test.’3

Eugen Bleuler was the director of the Burghölzli clinic, and he was a great influence on Jung.

In one example, the word ‘horse’ brought a delay of over a minute. It came out that the participant had been in a runaway horse accident, which they had completely forgotten. This was an example of a difficult experience that had been pushed out of awareness. It was too difficult to bear and was repressed. ‘Repression is an unnoticed, that is an unconscious, response to a conscious situation. Yet the conflict has not vanished; it remains active below the surface of consciousness and may, to our surprise and distress, produce symptoms.’4

This discovery pointed Jung towards something that was operating beneath the surface of awareness. He w...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 • Jung’s Psychology
• Chapter 2 • The Shadow
• Chapter 3 • Inner Work
• Chapter 4 • The Self
• Chapter 5 • Personality Types
• Chapter 6 • Archetypes
• Chapter 7 • Anima and Animus
• Chapter 8 • Synchronicity
• Appendix I • Carl Jung and World War II
• Appendix II • A Field Guide to Jung Today
• Chronology of Jung’s Life and Publications
• Picture Credits
• Copyright