[ Anyone who wants to know the human psyche will learn next to nothing from experimental psychology. He would be better advised to abandon exact science, put away his scholar's gown, bid farewell to his study, and wander with human heart throught the world. There in the horrors of prisons, lunatic asylums and hospitals, in drab suburban pubs, in brothels and gambling-hells, in the salons of the elegant, the Stock Exchanges, socialist meetings, churches, revivalist gatherings and ecstatic sects, through love and hate, through the experience of passion in every form in his own body, he would reap richer stores of knowledge than text-books a foot thick could give him, and he will know how to doctor the sick with a real knowledge of the human soul. -- Carl Jung]


Carl Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist, who founded the analytical school of psychology. Jung broadened Sigmund Freud''s psychoanalytical approach, interpreting mental and emotional disturbances as an attempt to find personal and spiritual wholeness.

Born on July 26, 1875, in Creswell, Switzerland, the lonely childhood an inclination for dreaming and fantasy that greatly influenced his adult work. He studied in a school near Basel where the elite Germans studied. The social class difference between Jung''s humble origins and his more sophisticated friends became apparent. Years later Jung recalled, for the first time I became aware that I was a poor parson''s son who had holes in his shoes. Although he did well in school he never did really like to attend it. He however had difficulty in mathematics and physical education. One day at school he was knocked down by some boys in the street. His head hit a curbstone. He recovered but was prone to fainting spells, especially whenever he had to attend school. This behavior continued until he heard his father confide in a friend that he had now hardly any money left to spend on Carl''s medical aid. This opened Carl''s eyes and he realized the inconvenience he was causing everyone. This was also the turning point in his life. It got him interested in human behavior and psychology. Carl later recalled, "That is when I learnt what neurosis is."

After graduating in medicine in 1902 from the universities of Basel and Zurich, with a wide background in biology, zoology, paleontology, and archaeology, he began his work on word association, in which a patient''s responses to stimulus words revealed what Jung called "Complexes"- a term that has since become universal. Psychiatry interested him because it combined human behavior and science. In December 1900, the young doctor became a staff physician at Zurich''s Burgolzli Psychiatric Hospital. He applied the method of free association that lent him an insight into the repressed complexes in a person.

These studies brought him international renown and led him to a close collaboration with Freud. With the publication of Psychology of the Unconscious (1912; trans. 1916), however, Jung declared his independence from Freud''s narrowly sexual interpretation of the libido by showing the close parallels between ancient myths and psychotic fantasies and by explaining human motivation in terms of a larger creative energy. He gave up the presidency of the International Psychoanalytic Society and founded a movement called analytical psychology. Jung started to practice at his home in the village of Kensett on the shore of the Lake of Zurich. He received patients from all over the world. He abandoned Freud''s "couch therapy" in which the patient lay on the couch and talked endlessly without interruption from the doctor, who just took noted and made terse judgments, Jung, instead sat across from his patients. "I confront the patient as one human being to another. Analysis is a dialogue demanding two partners; the doctor has something to say but so has the patient."

Jung''s work with the lesser known realm of the unconscious made him a success with the patients, his patient listening to the words and sentences uttered by the mentally ill enabled him to treat them. His success amongst the psychiatrists of the day was phenomenal. He wrote more than 30 books and hundreds of articles on the unconscious.

Like Freud he believed in the power dreams to interpret the workings of the unconscious. Dreams symbolized ignored or rejected aspects of our own personality.

Jung journeyed around the world and studied various religions and myths. He asked people to report their dreams in the minutest detail. He was astonished to observe that across cultural barriers people''s dreams were similar. They showed the appearance of repeated motifs." Just as the body shows a common anatomy over and above all racial differences, so too the human psyche possesses a common substratum transcending all difference in culture and consciousness." Jung named this the "collective unconsciousness." He later made a distinction between the personal unconscious, or the repressed feelings and thoughts developed during an individual''s life, and the collective unconscious, or those inherited feelings, thoughts, and memories shared by all humanity. The collective unconscious, according to Jung, is made up of what he called "archetypes," or primordial images. These correspond to such experiences as confronting death or choosing a mate and manifest themselves symbolically in religions, myths, fairy tales, and fantasies.

According to Jung there were two kinds of dreams; the "big" ones and the "little" ones. The "big" dreams were the ones with poetic force and beauty that occurred mostly during the critical stages of life such as puberty, onset of middle age and within sight of death. The "little" dreams were about everyday occurrences. Jung put a lot of premium to the quality and the contents of the dreams. Dreams he observed often directed and tied to convey important messages to the people. They must he felt learn to listen and interpret correctly.

Towards the end of his life when Jung was in his 86th year he dreamt of a more beautiful version of his second home, the beloved "tower" at Bollinger, bathed in radiant light. A voice told him that it was now finished and ready for him. He also saw that as he wandered down to the shore of the lake, he saw a mother wolverine teachings her pup to swim. Jung believed this was a clear message to prepare him for water was to the young wolverine.

Perhaps the best compliment that Jung received in his lifetime was from the victims of Second World War, who haunted by the horrors of the war could lead normal lives until the therapy of Carl Jung purged and they started life a new. Explorer and author Laurens van der post was a similar victim of the war. At his wife''s urgings he met Carl Jung whom he thought would be a pompous scholar with little compassion in him. But instead he confronted a captivating man, bubbling with energy. As they talked his "feelings of isolation and loneliness" from the years of imprisonment in Japanese prisoner-of-war camp "vanished". Jung''s healing touch had cured Post as nothing else had and he said, "I have known many of those the world considers great, but Carl Jung is almost the only one of whose greatness I am certain."

During his remaining 50 years Jung developed his theories, drawing on a wide knowledge of mythology and history; travels to diverse cultures in New Mexico, India, and Kenya; and especially the dreams and fantasies of his childhood. In 1921 he published a major work, psychological Types (trans. 1923), in which he dealt with the relationship between the conscious and unconscious and proposed the now well- known personality types, extrovert and introvert.

Jung''s therapeutic approach aimed at reconciling the diverse states of personality, which he saw divided not only into the opposites of introvert and extrovert, but also into those of sensing and intuiting, and of feeling and thinking. By understanding how the personal unconscious, Jung theorized, a patient can achieve a state of individuation, or wholeness of self.

Jung wrote voluminously, especially on analytical methods and the relationship between psychotherapy and religious belief. Books like the Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Memories, Dreams, Reflection continue to fascinate the reader even today. They present him with the richness of Jung''s mind. As a review in the New York Times declared, "People are reading Jung now because his concerns are theirs. The lifelong search for meaning and wholeness that Jung recounts is one they too are embarked on".

He died on June 6, 1961, in Kensett.