C.G. Jung

172 Pages·1961·10.572 MB·English

by  E.A. Bennet

C. G. JUNG
by
E. A. BENNET
LONDON
BARRIE AND ROCKLIFF
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© 1961 by E. A. BENNET
First published 1961 by
Barrie & Rockliff (Barrie Books Ltd.)
2 Clement's Inn London WC2
Printed in Great Britain at
The University Press
Aberdeen
CONTENTS
page
Preface vii
I Introduction to Jung 1
2 Impressions ofJung's childhood and Youth 9
3 Experience at the BurghOlzli Hospital 21
4 Jung and Freud: Hail and Farewell 33
5 Introverts and Extraverts 63
6 The Mind-Personal and Impersonal 79
7 Mental Life as a Process 104
8 Aion: The Mind in Time 113
9 I. Dreams
II. The Interplay of Opposites: Individuation 126
Appendix
Notable Occasions: an Account of some of
Jung's Birthdays, with the Transcription
of a Broadcast Interview 143
Acknowledgments 155
Bibliography 156
Index 160
v
PREFACE
FOR many readers of his books, C. G. Jung is but a name and
Jung as a person is hardly discernible. To depict some of the
'key' aspects of Jung's work in the setting of his personality is
the aim of the chapters which follow. Each section of the book
might be looked on as an annotation, a supplementary note,
rather than a summary of Jung's teaching, which is already
available and is mentioned here in footnotes for the guidance
of the reader. The selected subject-matter-and the reasons
for the choice and for the decision to omit other topics-have
been discussed with Jung from time to time when I have been
his guest at Kusnacht on the Lake of Zurich or at his 'week
end' house near Bollingen, a quiet village on the shores of the
same lake. An effort has been made to indicate the medical
background of his work, and Jung, always mindful of his
profession, approved of this and agreed that personal references
to him might well be apposite.
A previous plan was that I should write his biography. We
spent some time on this project, and he gave me a great deal of
information about his childhood, his family, his career, and the
development of his ideas. But on reflection he thought this
would be an almost impossible undertaking because of the
variety of his work and the complexity of his personality. In the
end he decided that he must write an autobiography, and he has
done so (as part of a volume-a Life--since written by Mrs.
Anida Jaffe). He finished this far from congenial task-as he
described it-in September I959 and, as it happened, I was
staying with him at the time.
It seemed probable that this book, although in a different
setting, would overlap the autobiography in some ways, but
Jung thought this unlikely and in any case unimportant.
Much of the material has been used in seminars at the Royal
Bethlem and MaudsleylHospitai and in post-graduate lectures
at the Institute of Psychiatry, Maudsley Hospital, London
University. Students often were kind enough to suggest
vii
viii PREFACE
publication of the lectures, and this has been done here to a
limited extent. But there have been many additions for the
information of those who are interested in J ung as a man-a
subject about which there is considerable curiosity and specula
tion, if one might judge from the questions asked about his
personality and way of life.
E. A. BENNET
London, 30th May, 1961
Professor Jung died on 6th June 1961, a few days after this
book had gone to press. In January of this year while I was
staying with him at Kusnacht-Zurich, he was kind enough to
read the whole of the book, then in typescript. He made many
suggestions and corrections in his own handwriting. It may be
assumed, therefore, that the statements made here are in
accordance with his views.
6th June, 1961 E. A. B.
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction to Ju ng
PROFESSOR C. G. JUNG, now eighty-five, has taken a leading
part in altering the attitude of the medical man and the layman
towards sickness of the mind. When he was a student at Basel
University, no one had heard of complexes, of introverts and
extraverts, of mental conflict and dynamic psychology. Neither
health nor sickness of mind was a subject of serious medical
concern, and those in charge of lunatic asylums provided
custodial care without thought of psychological treatment,
mental structure~ and psychopathology. Barbarities, taken for
granted at one time, had passed: there were no fetters, and no
society visitors gazed at the mentally deranged. By present
standards, the nursing may not have been impressive, but
physical violence was no longer used to drive out the evil spirits
responsible for the disorder; there was a tolerant acceptance of
the often amusing peculiarities of the insane, for whom no
treatment was available beyond attention to bodily sickness.
Here and there the mesmerists and hypnotists treated the
symptoms of the less socially disturbed patients, often with
considerable success, and left it at that. The mind itself remained
a mystery. In the 'seventies and 'eighties Simon in France and
Lombroso in Italy were keen observers of the bizarre pictures
produced by the patients in mental asylums and attempted to
understand them. But their reports had little effect upon treat
ment. An advance of importance came when the symptoms of
mental illness had been classified and descriptive psychiatry
I
2 C. G. JUNG
encouraged at any rate a few doctors in charge of mental
hospitals to think of insanity as a clinical problem.
Psychiatry was off the main road in medicine and had few
attractions for the medical student. It was little wonder that
Jung's friends and teachers thought him misguided when on
qualification as a doctor he declined an offer as assistant to
one of his teachers at Basel who had recently been appointed to
a chair at a German university. In preference he took a position
at the Burgholzli Hospital on the staff of Eugen Bleu1er,
Professor of Psychiatry in the University of Zurich. There he
remained for eight years, and his work and that of his colleagues
made the hospital famous. Freud and his small group, working
in comparative obscurity in Vienna, were becoming known
about the same time.
In those days no one would have guessed that we were at
the beginning of a new era in psychiatry as well as in every
other department of medicine. The mind itself had become a
centre of interest and research, and this was destined to produce
many unexpected results.
Jung's contribution to this changing scene has been con
tinuous. His first publication came in 1902, and since then
volume after volume has appeared. Some critics have hinted
darkly that no one could have produced so much, that Jung got
others to write his books, and that he added the finishing touches!
His productivity is more easily explained: his education gave
scope for his natural endowments and he learnt at an early age
to think as he wrote, to say what he meant to say, to convey the
impression he wished to convey. Sentence follows sentence
rather slowly as he writes; but there are few alterations.
Like the other pioneers in psychiatry, Jung has had his
share of criticism and misunderstanding. Even today observa
tions about his work are produced with assurance by critics
who know of it at second or even third hand. His books have the
reputation of being difficult to understand, and there is a good
deal of truth in this. We take it for granted that the physician
or surgeon, concerned with the human body, must pursue his
training over many years. Why should we expect that sound
common sense is enough to grasp the mysterious workings of
INTRODUCTION TO JUNG 3
the mind? Of course Jung's books are difficult: they cannot be
read casually, for psychological understanding is not a natural
endowment. The serious student, with sound training, will
find Jung's books practical and informative. His breadth of
scholarship may be rather alarming! But that is hardly a
fault.
He describes himself as an empiricist-one who goes by
experience-and this is accurate. Nevertheless, many think of
him as a remote savant, propounding esoteric, and mystical,
ideas. It is safe to say that the undefined mystical implies some
thing obscure, of dark import, for the word is meant to convey
a polite-or impolite!-rebuke when used by the critics of any
psychological system with which they find themselves in disa
greement. Dr. Ernest Jones tells us that 'Jung had revealed
himself to me as a man with deep mystical tendencies'.! But
Jung is not the only 'mystical' thinker. Freud's psycho-analysis
was also considered by Hoche of Freiburg as 'an evil method
born of mystical tendencies'. 2 And Dr. Edward Glover selects
the same word when he declares that 'Orthodox Freudians
have already challenged [the Klein theory] as a mystical devia
tion'.3 A criticism of the Freudian theory in a well-known
textbook on psychiatry strikes the same note: 'The criticisms
to which Freudian theory can be subjected are so damaging,
that it could hardly have lasted so long in its present form, were
it not for the sectarian orthodoxy and the mystical halo by
which it attracts its followers and adepts.'4
Mystical is about the last adjective his colleagues and ac
quaintances would use in describing lung's active and stimu
lating personality; at all events, his 'deep mystical tendencies'
are by no means obvious. For a visionary, he shows remarkable
capacity for getting to the heart of practical problems in his
work.
Jones, E., Free Associations, London, Hogarth Press
1
(1959), p. 215.
• Jones, E., Sigmund Freud, London, Hogarth Press
(1955), Vol. II, p. 131.
I Glover, Edward, Horizon (1943), Vol. XI, No. 63, p. 21 I.
• Mayer-Gross, W., Slater, Eliot, Roth, Martin, Clinical
Psychiatry, London, Cassell (1954), p. 23.