Discussion Group on the Writings of Carl Jung

[innerspaceboy]

I've mentioned elsewhere that I've joined a Carl Jung social group in my local community. The group is hosted by two retired Jungian professors and meets bi-weekly. I keep a journal for the group, as we're asked to highlight any excerpts from the assigned reading which strike us as noteworthy, and we take turns sharing those quotes and our thoughts about them.

I thought the SCD community might enjoy exploring the depths of Jung's writings along with me, so I'm going to do my best to record my journal entries here. As we each take turns in the group, I keep my responses about the highlighted sections brief, but I feel that the excerpts, themselves are of worth on their own, so I'll make the effort to document them here.

If I exceed character limits per post or posts per day while entering the backlog, please be patient and I'll resume when I am able.

First, I'll share the Meetup Group's official description:

Discussion Group on the Writings of Carl Jung

Join us for deep and engaging discussions of the writings of Carl Jung and his followers. We will focus on primary sources, such as the writings of Carl Jung, the writings of Marie-Louise Von Franz, and discourage sidelines into individuals' personal experiences. This is not a psychology group but rather an "academically" based investigation into the rich and profound vein of depth psychology and topics such as individuation, myth, symbols, and the collective conscious. This is also not a lecture group, but an egalitarian participatory arena where all are expected to have done the readings and contribute. No background is necessary. The group will meet every other week, and will discuss a reading of approximately 30-50 pages. The leaders are not psychologists, but have been leading Jung groups such as this one for over 10 years.

In preparation for the group, I secured a complete digital library of Carl Gustav Jung's Collected Works and Letters (62 books). These include his original 19 texts, a General Index of those texts, alternate editions, Anthologies, and collected Letters.

The group opted to begin with Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Vintage, 1965/1989). The hosts felt it serves as an appropriate introduction to the man and his ideas.

So onward to the highlights and reflections! Thanks for joining me!

[innerspaceboy]

From the Introduction...

"It has become a necessity for me to write down my early memories. If I neglect to do so for a single day, unpleasant physical symptoms immediately follow. As soon as I set to work they vanish and my head feels perfectly clear."

Here Jung describes an act of catharsis which I've experienced directly journaling my own personal trauma history, which seems to parallel what he describes in the introduction when he resolved to extract and document his childhood memories.

Then it states...

"When Jung speaks of his religious experiences in this book, he is assuming that his readers are willing to enter into his point of view. His subjective statements will be acceptable only to those who have had similar experiences—or, to put it another way, to those in whose psyche the God-image bears the same or similar features."

I hope that my position as a secular humanist doesn't impair my ability to see the world through the lens of Jung's vision in this way. But I'm reminded that Joseph Campbell was raised a Roman Catholic, and still I'm able to enjoy his writings and philosophies with great appreciation. And this is further supported by Jung's opening paragraph, where he describes the text as the relating of his own "personal myth," mirroring the spirit of Campbell.

Similarly, it seems that Jung's recollections of his childhood experience with fire felt wholly Campbellian, in line with Greek classical mythos.

Jung's recollections of his earliest formative memories are described in pure poetic form, reminiscent of my beloved Bradbury describing endless boyhood summers in Dandelion Wine. I enjoyed that. And he seems to be cognizant of countless other cultures across the ages, adding a rich context to his work.

I'm enjoying this path of discovery.

[innerspaceboy]

From First Years and School Years:

Jung wrote:

"...as a result of my earlier accidents, I had a certain physical timidity which I was not able to overcome until much later on. This timidity was in turn linked with a distrust of the world and its potentialities. To be sure, the world seemed to me beautiful and desirable, but it was also filled with vague and incomprehensible perils. Therefore I always wanted to know at the start to what and to whom I was entrusting myself."

I strongly empathize with Jung on this point. I felt so ostracized from my youthful peers growing up. I took great care to get to know the people around me deeply and intimately, initiating intricate dialogues about culture, the arts, and sociology. Only then could I relent my anxieties and feel a sense of comfort and trust around those who I could consider intellectual peers.

When describing his persistent fainting fits and his discovery of neurosis, I was inspired by Jung's determination and committedness to press on with his work and to surmount the challenge of his fits. If he could overcome that challenge, then I may well likely be able to overcome the psychological adversities in my own life.

And Jung wrote:

"I was taking the long road to school from where we lived, to Basel, when 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 came upon myself. Previously I had existed, too, but everything had merely happened to me. Now I happened to myself. Now I knew: I am myself now, now I exist. Previously I had been willed to do this and that; now I willed. This experience seemed to me tremendously important and new: there was "authority" in me."

I can relate to this epiphany through an internal experience I had following my divorce. I reached a watershed moment where I resolved to break free of the toxic patterning which had led to a string of unhealthy partnerships and began forging healthy, intimate relationships with people who truly loved me for who I am and whom I could love wholly and honestly in return. It was a life-changing self-realization which increased my emotional availability.

And Jung described multiple

"...experience(s) that harked back to the eighteenth century."

These recollections warmed my heart. I am quite anachronistic, eclectic, and eccentric, and often feel as if I were from another time. I've fully-furnished my home in Neo-Victorian antiquity and routinely dress in period clothing. How I would love to have experienced the cultural renaissance first-hand! But I do my best to function as part of this present world of hyper-meta-modernism. It feels as if Jung is speaking directly to me here.

And finally I wish to remark how disheartening it was to learn that Jung was ostracized for his progressivism, much like I was for the first half of my life as I mentioned. It reminds me of James Joyce whose dying words were heartbreakingly, "does no one understand?"

[innerspaceboy]

The rest of Chapter 2: School Years:

Pg 88

But the great find resulting from my researches was Schopenhauer. He was the first to speak of the suffering of the world, which visibly and glaringly surrounds us, and of confusion, passion, evil—all those things which the others hardly seemed to notice and always tried to resolve into all-embracing harmony and comprehensibility. Here at last was a philosopher who had the courage to see that all was not for the best in the fundaments of the universe. He spoke neither of the all-good and all-wise providence of a Creator, nor of the harmony of the cosmos, but stated bluntly that a fundamental flaw underlay the sorrowful course of human history and the cruelty of nature: the blindness of the world-creating Will. This was confirmed not only by the early observations I had made of diseased and dying fishes, of mangy foxes, frozen or starved birds, of the pitiless tragedies concealed in a flowery meadow: earthworms tormented to death by ants, insects that tore each other apart piece by piece, and so on. My experiences with human beings, too, had taught me anything rather than a belief in man's original goodness and decency. I knew myself well enough to know that I was only gradually, as it were, distinguishing myself from an animal.

Pg 89

This philosophical development extended from my seventeenth year until well into the period of my medical studies. It brought about a revolutionary alteration of my attitude to the world and to life. Whereas formerly I had been shy, timid, mistrustful, pallid, thin, and apparently unstable in health, I now began to display a tremendous appetite on all fronts. I knew what I wanted and went after it. I also apparently unstable in health, I now began to display a tremendous appetite on all fronts. I knew what I wanted and went after it. I also became noticeably more accessible and more communicative. I discovered that poverty was no handicap and was far from being the principal reason for suffering; that the sons of the rich really did not enjoy any advantages over the poor and ill-clad boys. There were far deeper reasons for happiness and unhappiness than one's allotment of pocket money. I made more and better friends than before. I felt firmer ground under my feet and even summoned up courage to speak openly of my ideas. But that, as I discovered all too soon, was a misunderstanding which I had cause to regret. For I met not only with embarrassment or mockery, but with hostile rejection. To my consternation and discomfiture, I found that certain people considered me a braggart, a poseur, and a humbug. The old charge of cheat was revived, even though in a somewhat milder form.

Pg 95

The farther away I was from church, the better I felt. The only things I missed were the organ and the choral music, but certainly not the "religious community." The phrase meant nothing to me at all, for the habitual churchgoers struck me as being far less of a community than the "worldly" folk.

This resonated with my own experience maturing and developing a contempt for religiosity. I was pleased to learn that Jung found Schopenhauer's existentialist writings appealing or even invigorating, just as I had felt encountering Russell, Dawkins, Hitchens, and other leading secular figures of the atheist movement. I understand Jung was religious, but I'm interested to learn how he felt that religion was a way to follow one's spiritual path, which I see he termed, "individuation."

[innerspaceboy]

Chapter 3 - Student Years

A Note From Google AI, which I queried to clarify my understanding of Jung's use of the term's "No 1" and "No 2" -

In Carl Jung's psychology, "No. 1" and "No. 2" refer to two distinct aspects of a person's personality, where "No. 1" represents the conscious, social self (the persona) while "No. 2" represents the unconscious, more primal, and often hidden self, often associated with the shadow archetype; essentially, the "everyday" personality versus the "inner" personality.

Pg 111:

About this time I had a dream which both frightened and encouraged me. It was night in some unknown place, and I was making slow and painful headway against a mighty wind. Dense fog was flying along everywhere. I had my hands cupped around a tiny light which threatened to go out at any moment. Everything depended on my keeping this little light alive. Suddenly I had the feeling that something was coming up behind me. I looked back, and saw a gigantic black figure following me. But at the same moment I was conscious, in spite of my terror, that I must keep my little light going through night and wind, regardless of all dangers. When I awoke I realized at once that the figure was a "specter of the Brocken," my own shadow on the swirling mists, brought into being by the little light I was carrying. I knew, too, that this little light was my consciousness, the only light I have. My own understanding is the sole treasure I possess, and the greatest. Though infinitely small and fragile in comparison with the powers of darkness, it is still a light, my only light.

This dream was a great illumination for me. Now I knew that No. 1 was the bearer of the light, and that No. 2 followed him like a shadow. My task was to shield the light and not look back at the vita peracta; this was evidently a forbidden realm of light of a different sort. I must go forward against the storm, which sought to thrust me back into the immeasurable darkness of a world where one is aware of nothing except the surfaces of things in the background. In the role of No. 1, I had to go forward—into study, moneymaking, responsibilities, entanglements, confusions, errors, submissions, defeats. The storm pushing against me was time, ceaselessly flowing into the past, which just as ceaselessly dogs our heels. It exerts a mighty suction which greedily draws everything living into itself; we can only escape from it—for a while—by pressing forward. The past is terribly real and present, and it catches everyone who cannot save his skin with a satisfactory answer.

I absolutely adored every facet of Jung's employment of subconsciously-manifested metaphor here, from the storm of time to the literal shadow of the shadow self. This was indeed a great illumination, just as he called it, encompassing the nature and roles of the duality of the self. Here his dream inspires us to press forward as he says, no matter what obstacles the fates place in our path.

Pg 135 -

In spite of the fact that Krafft-Ebing's textbook did not differ essentially from other books of the kind, these few hints cast such a transfiguring light on psychiatry that I was irretrievably drawn under its spell. The decision was taken. When I informed my teacher in internal medicine of my intention, I could read in his face his amazement and disappointment. My old wound, the feeling of being an outsider and of alienating others, began to ache again.

But now I understood why. No one, not even I myself, had ever imagined I could become interested in this obscure bypath. My friends were astounded and put out, thinking me a fool for throwing up the enviable chance of a sensible career in internal medicine, which dangled so temptingly before my nose, in favor of this psychiatric nonsense.

I saw that once again I had obviously got myself into a side alley where no one could or would follow me. But I knew—and nothing and nobody could have deflected me from my purpose—that my decision stood, and that it was fate. It was as though two rivers had united and in one grand torrent were bearing me inexorably toward distant goals. This confident feeling that I was a "united double nature" carried me as if on a magical wave through the examination, in which I came out at the top.

I think it's great to have documentation of the clinching moment where Jung resolved to become a psychologist. Few moments of the past century have had a cascading impact of magnitude that we bear witness to here.