Carl Jung
The "Face to Face" Interview - taken from:
Internet Archive
Transcript
Do you live here now just with your
secretaries and your
English housekeeper?
Yes.
the surroundings.
Oh yes!
Oh, nineteen.
I think eight, and I suppose one is on the way.
self.
you wouldn't think so! They steal my things. Even my hat
that belongs to me they stole the other day.
remember the occasion when you first
felt consciousness of
your own individual self?
my way to school I stepped out of a mist. It was just as if
I had been in a mist, walking in a mist, and I stepped
out of it and I knew, "I am." "I am what I
am." And then
I thought, "But what have I been before?" And then
I
found that I had been in a mist, not knowing how to differentiate
my self from things. I was just one thing among
other things.
Now was that associated with any
particular episode in
your life, or was it just a normal
junction of adolescence?
nothing had happened before that would explain this sud-
den coming to consciousness.
No. No.
and old-fashioned in the way they
brought you up?
Middle Ages. My father was a parson in the country, and
you can imagine what people were then, you know, in the
seventies of the past century. They had the convictions in
which people have lived since one thousand eight hundred
years.
he punish you, for instance?
most tolerant and most understanding.
or your mother?
mate with the mother, but when it comes to the personal
feeling I had a better relation to my father, who was pre-
dictable, than with my mother, who was to me a very prob-
lematical something.
your father?
Not at all.
Oh no, I knew he was very fallible.
years old. It was hanging together with the fact that I was,
that I knew I was, and from then on I saw that my father
was different.
with realizing the fallibility of
your parents?
my mother, but not during the day. Then she was quite
known to me, and predictable, but in the night I had fear of
my mother.
fear — I have not the slightest idea why.
What about your schooldays now? Were
you happy at
school — as a schoolboy?
In the beginning I was very happy to have companions,
you know, because before I had been very lonely. We lived
in the country and I had no brother and no sister. My
sister was born very much later, when I was nine years
old, and so I was used to being alone, but I missed it — I
missed company — and in school it was wonderful to have company. But soon — you
know in a country school I was far
ahead — and then I began to be bored.
What sort of religious upbringing
did your father give
you?
Oh, we were Swiss Reformed.
church on Sunday.
And did you believe in God?
Oh, yes.
Do you now believe in God?
Now? [Pause.] Difficult to answer. I know. I don't need
to believe. I know.
What made you decide to become a
doctor?
Assyriology, Egyptology, or something of the sort. I
hadn't the money; the study was too expensive. So my second
love
then belonged to nature, particularly zoology, and when I
began my studies I inscribed in the so-called
Philosophical Faculty Two — that means natural sciences. But
then I soon
saw that the career that was before me would make a
schoolmaster of me, you see. But I didn't — I never
thought I had any chance to get any further, because we had
no
money at all. And then I saw that that didn't suit my ex-
pectations, you know. I didn't want to become a school-
master. Teaching was not just what I was looking for. And
so I remembered that my grandfather had been a doctor,
and I knew that when I was studying medicine I had a
chance to study natural science and to become a doctor.
And a doctor can develop, you see, he can have a practice,
he can choose his scientific interests more or less. At all events, I would
have more chance than being a schoolmaster, also the idea of doing something
useful with human beings appealed to me.
difficulty in getting the training
at school and in
passing the exams?
They didn't believe that I could write a thesis. I remember
one case where the teacher had the custom, the habit, of discussing the papers
written by the pupils, and he took the best first. And he went through the
whole number of the pupils and I didn't appear, and I was badly troubled over
it, and I thought well, it is impossible that my thesis can be that bad, and
when he had finished he said: "There is still one paper left over and that
is the one by Jung. That would be
by far the best paper if it hadn't been copied. He has just
copied this somewhere — stolen. You are a thief, Jung! And if I knew where you
had stolen it I would fling you out of school!" And I got mad and said
this is the one thesis where I have worked the most, because the theme was
interesting, in contradistinction, you know, to other themes which are not at
all interesting to me. And then he said, "You are a liar, and if we can
prove that you have stolen that thing somewhere, then you get out of
school."
else then, you see? And I hated that fellow, and that was
the only man I could have killed, you know, if I had met
him once at a dark corner! I would have shown him some-
thing of what I could do.
were young?
them up.
Not so often, but then for good!
country with those peasant boys, it was a rough kind of
life. I would have been capable of violence, I know. I was a
bit
afraid of it, so I rather tried to avoid critical
situations because I didn't trust myself.
Once I was attacked by about seven boys and I got mad, and I
took one, and just
swang him round by his legs, you know, and beat down four of
them,
and then they were satisfied.
Oh, I should say, yes! From then on it was always suspected
that I was at the bottom of every trouble. I was not, but they were afraid and
I was never attacked again.
doctor, what made you decide to
specialize in being an
alienist?
finished my studies practically, and when I didn't know
what I really wanted to do, I had a big chance to follow
one of my professors. He was called to a new position in
Munich, and he wanted me as his assistant. But then in
that moment I studied for my final examination, I came
across a textbook of psychiatry. Up to then I thought nothing about it, because
our professor then wasn't particularly interested, and I only read the
introduction to that book, where certain things were said about psychosis as a
maladjustment of the personality. That hit the nail on the head. In that moment
I saw I must become an alienist. My heart was thumping wildly in that moment,
and when I told my professor I wouldn't follow him, I would study psychiatry,
he couldn't understand it. Nor my friends, because in
those days psychiatry was nothing, nothing at all. But I saw
the one great chance to unite certain contrasting things in myself, namely,
besides medicine — besides
natural science I always had studied the history of philosophy
and such subjects. It was just as if suddenly two streams were joining.
first came in contact with Freud?
then it took quite a while until I met Freud. You see, I'd
finished my studies in 1900 and I met Freud altogether
much later. In 1900 I already read his Dream
Interpretation and the Breuer-Freud studies about
hysteria, but that was merely literary, you know, and then
in 1907 I became acquainted with him personally.
to meet him?
dementia praecox,* as we called schizophrenia then. And I
sent him that book, and thus became acquainted. I went to
Vienna for a fortnight and then we had a very long and
penetrating conversation, and that settled it.
personal friendship?
Oh yes, it soon developed into a personal friendship.
very much, but I soon discovered that when he had thought
something then it was settled, while I was doubting all
along the line, and it was impossible to discuss something
really a fond. You know he had no philosophical education,
particularly; you see I was studying Kant, and I was
steeped in it, and that was far from Freud. So from the very
beginning there was a discrepancy.
me into my later investigation of psychological types.
There are definite attitudes. Some people are doing it in
this way and other people are doing it in another typical way, and there were
such differences between myself and Freud, too.
I am not my own history, or my historiographer. With
reference to certain results, I think my method has its
merits.
so did he.
Yes, oh yes.
the significant features of Freud's
dreams that you noted at the time?
there is such a thing as a professional secret.
prefer not to talk about it.
also indiscreet. Is it true that you
have a very large
number of letters which you
exchanged with Freud which are still unpublished?
Well, not during my lifetime.
your lifetime?
Oh, no, none at all.
I don't think so.
particular importance in them.
They are concerned with personal
matters?
Well, partially. But I wouldn't care to publish them.
eventually part company with Freud.
It was partly,
I think, with the publication of
your book Psychology of the Unconscious.
Is that correct?
because it had a long preparation. You know, from the
beginning I had a reservatio mentalis. I couldn't agree
with quite a number of his ideas.
regard of the historical conditions of man. You see, we
depend largely upon our history. We are shaped through
education, through the influence of the parents, which is by
no means always personal. They were prejudiced, or they were influenced by
historical ideas or what are called
dominants, and that
is a most decisive factor in psychology.
We are not of today or of yesterday; we are of an immense age.
that led me to the idea of certain general historical conditions.
"Doctor! Now! Now you will see. Now look at it. Look up
at the sun and see how it moves. See, you must move your
head, too, like this, and then you will see the phallus of
the sun, and you know, that's origin of the wind. And you see how the sun moves
as you move your head, from one
side to the other!" Of course, I did not understand it
at all.
I thought oh, there you are, he's just crazy. But that case
remained in my mind, and four years later I came across a paper written by the
German historian, Dieterich, who had dealt with the so-called Mithras Liturgy,
a part of the Great Parisian Magic Papyrus. And there he produced part of the
so-called Mithras Liturgy, namely it had said there:
"After the second prayer you will see how the disc of
the
sun unfolds, and you will see hanging down from it the
tube, the origin of the wind, and when you move your face
to the regions of the east it will move there, and if you
move your face to the regions of the west it will follow
you."
And instantly I knew — now this is it! This is the vision of
my patient!
But how could you be sure that your
patient wasn't un-
consciously recalling something that
somebody had told
him?
not known. It was in a magic papyrus in Paris, and it
wasn't even published. It was only published four years
later," after I had observed it with my patient.
which was something more than
personal?
and I took the hint.
on the psychological types? Was that
also as a result of
some particular clinical experience?
painful question, you know!
actually was published first in the year 1903, before the
delusion was observed. . Now that gives you all the necessary data for a
diagnosis !
with German patients, you did, I
believe, forecast that a
second world war was very lively.
Well now, looking at the
world today, do you feel that a
third world war is likely?
I have no definite indications in that respect, but there
are so many indications that one doesn't know what one sees.
Is it trees, or is it the wood? It's very difficult to say,
because people's dreams contain apprehensions, you know, but it is very
difficult to say whether they point to a war, because that idea is uppermost in
people's minds. Formerly, you know, it has been much simpler. People didn't
think of a war, and therefore it was rather clear what the
dreams meant. Nowadays no more so. We are so full of apprehensions, fears, that
one doesn't know exactly to what it points.
One thing is sure. A great change of our psychological attitude
is imminent. That is certain.
great danger, and we are pitifully unaware of it. We know nothing
of man, far too little. His psyche should be studied, because we are the origin
of all coming evil.
Well, obviously.
That is an inevitable consequence.
more rational; it's something which —
Well, I don't believe that man ever will deviate from the
original pattern of his being. There will always be such
in a ideas. For instance, if you do not directly believe
personal redeemer, as it was the case with Hitler, or the
hero-worship in Russia, then it is an idea, it is a
symbolic idea.
which have surprised me a little,
about death. Now, in
particular I remember you said that
death is
psychologically just as important as
birth and like it
it's an integral part of life. But
surely it can't be like birth if it's an end, can it?
facts show that the psyche, in part at least, is not dependent
upon these confinements. And then what? When the psyche is not under that
obligation to live in time and space alone, and obviously it doesn't, then to
that extent the psyche is not subjected to those laws, and that means a
practical continuation of life, of a sort of psychical existence beyond time
and space.
Well, I can't say. You see, the word belief is a difficult thing
for me. I don't believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. Either
I know a thing, and then I know
it — I don't need to believe it. I don't allow myself, for
instance, to believe a thing just for the sake of believing it.
I can't believe it. But when there are sufficient reasons
for a certain hypothesis, I shall accept . . . naturally. I should say:
"We had to reckon with the possibility of so and
so" — you
know.
Well now, you've told us that we
should regard death as
being a goal —
Yes.
— and that to shrink away from it is
to evade life and
make life purposeless.
to enable them to do this, when
most of them must in fact
believe that death is the end of
everything?
But this is merely a fact, a psychological fact — it doesn't
mean to me that it proves something. It simply is so. For instance, I may not
know why we need salt, but we prefer to eat salt, because we feel better. And
so when you think in a certain way you may feel considerably
better, and I think if you think along the lines of nature
then you think properly.
Now do you think it possible that
the highest development of man may be to submerge his own individuality in a kind of collective consciousness?
Once there will be a reaction, and I see it setting in.
You know, when I think of my patients, they all seek their
own existence and to assure their existence against that complete atomization
into nothingness, or into meaninglessness. Man cannot stand a meaningless life.