Carl Jung: Encyclopedia II - Carl Jung - Jung's life

Carl Jung - Jung's life

Born in Kesswil, in the Swiss canton of Thurgau on July 26, 1875, Jung died on June 6, 1961. A very solitary introverted child, he was convinced from childhood that he had two personalities— a modern Swiss citizen, and a personality more at home in the eighteenth century. His father was a vicar, but, although Jung was close to both parents, he was rather disappointed in his father's academic approach to faith. Jung wanted to study archaeology at university, but his family was too poor to send him further afield than Basel, where they did not teach this subject, so instead Jung studied medicine at the University of Basel from 1894-1900. The formerly introverted student became much more lively here. Towards the end of studies here, his reading of Krafft-Ebbing persuaded him to specialise in psychiatric medicine. He later worked in the Burgholzi, a psychiatric hospital in Zurich. In 1906, he published The Psychology of Dementia Praecox, and later sent a copy of this book to Freud, after which a close but brief friendship between these two men followed (see section on Jung and Freud).

By 1913, however, especially after Jung had published Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (known in English as The Psychology of the Unconscious) their theoretical ideas had diverged so sharply that the two men fell out, each suggesting that the other was unable to admit he could possibly be wrong. After this falling-out, Jung had some form of psychological transformative experience, exacerbated by news of the First World War, which had a dire effect on Jung even in his own neutral Switzerland. Henri Ellenberger called Jung's experience a "creative illness" and compared it to Freud's period of what he called neurasthenia and hysteria.

Following World War I, Jung became a worldwide traveller, facilitated by the funds he realized through book sales, honoraria, and moneys received for sabbaticals from achieving seniority in the medical institutions at which he was employed. He visited Northern Africa shortly after, and New Mexico and Kenya in the mid-1920s. In 1938, he delivered the Terry Lectures, Psychology and Religion, at Yale University. It was at about this stage in his life that Jung visited India, and while there, had dreams related to King Arthur. This convinced him that his agenda should be to pay more attention to Western spirituality, and his later writings do show deep interests in Western mystery tradition and esoteric Christianity, and especially alchemy.

In 1903 Jung married Emma Rauschenbach. Together they had five children. Their marriage lasted until Emma's death in 1955, but certainly experienced emotional torments, brought about by Jung's relationships with women other than Emma. The most well-known women with whom Jung is believed to have had extramarital affairs are Sabina Spielrein and Toni Wolff. Jung continued to publish books until the end of his life, including a work showing his late interest in flying saucers. He also enjoyed a brief friendship with an English Catholic priest, Father Victor White, who corresponded with Jung after he had published his controversial study of the Book of Job.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Jung's life", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki