Текст интервью с К.Г. Юнгом (интервьюер - Р. Эванс, 1957 г)

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Dr. E. Although the greatness of your works of course, there are facts that in your early works you were to some extent at least associated with Dr. Sigmund Freud and I know it’ll be an interest to many of us to hear a little bit about of how you happened to hear of Dr. Freud and how you happened to become involved with some of his works and ideas.

C.J. Well, as a matter of fact it was in the year 1900, in December, soon after Freud’s book about dream interpretation came out. I was asked by my chief Eugen Bleuler to give a review of the book. I studied the book very attentively and I didn’t understand many things in it, which weren’t clear at all to me. But from most parts I got the impression that it was really new what he was talking about. I thought that this is certainly a masterpiece, full of future. I had no ideas then of my own. I had just begun my career as an assistant in psychiatric clinic. And then I began with experimental psychology, psychopathology. I applied the experimental association method which later was applied in Caprice, a psychiatric clinic in Munich and…and I had results. That reaction to Sigmund’s words was more or less interesting. But the interesting thing was why people could not react to certain Sigmund’s words or entirely in adequate way. And then I began to study these places in experiments where the attention or the capability apparently of the test person began to wave or to disappear. And I soon found out that it is matter of intimate personal affairs people are thinking of or which wears in them even if they momentarily did not think of them, they were unconscious without the words. Nevertheless the depiction came from the unconscious and hindered the expression in speech. And then I in examining all these cases asked whether that was possible and I saw that it was the matter of which Freud called “repressions”. I also saw what he meant by symbolization. And then I wrote the book about psychology of Dementia Praecox now known as schizophrenia. I sent the book to Freud who wrote in Vienna about my association experiments, they were confirmed to go very far. That is how my friendship with Freud began.

Dr. E. Now let’s talk about the of course fundamental ideas. The original psychoanalytical theory was Freud’s conception of libido as far as they brought psyche sexual energy.

C.J. Well you see at the beginning I had naturally certain prejudices against these conceptions. And after a while I overcame them; I could do that from my biological training. And I could not deny the importance of the sexual instinct, you know. But later on I saw that it was very wrong sided because you see man is not only belonged by this sex instinct. There are other instincts as well. As you see the nutrition instinct is as important as the sex instinct although in primitive societies, sexuality plays a role less than food. Food is all important interest and desire. Sex is something they can have everywhere, they are not shy. But the food is difficult to obtain, you see and so it is the main interest. And then in modern societies, for instance, I mean in civilized societies, the power type plays a much greater role than sex. For instance there are many big businessmen who are impotent because all their energy is going into money-making or dictating the laws to everybody and that is much more interesting than attracting women. So you see the inferior: Dr. Adler, the younger, the weaker naturally had the power to put on packs. He wanted to be a successful man. Freud was a successful man; he was on top, and so he was interested only in pleasure and the pleasure principle while Adler was interested mainly in power type.

Dr. E. Sure, I agree. You feel in a sort of a way, a function depends on a personality.

C.J. Yeah, this is quite naturally. This is one of the two ways out to deal with reality. You make a reality an object of your pleasure if you are powerful enough already or you make it an object of you desire, to grab it, to possess it.

Dr. E. Yes. Now of course some observers have thought that perhaps patients of Dr. Freud’s were often individuals who were repressed sexually and then perhaps so many dictators were of this type and that probably was one of the things that reinforced Dr. Freud’s ideas.

C.J. This is certainly so that in the end of the Victorian Age there was a reaction of the whole world against the taboos, the sex taboos. One didn’t understand properly any more why or why not. And Freud belongs into that time, a sort of liberation of the mind of such taboos. Research comes to the question of the unconscious. There things become necessarily blurred because the unconscious is something that is really unconscious. It’s not an object, it’s nothing. You only can begin inferences, you know, we have to create a model of this possible structure of the unconscious because you can’t see it. Now you see he came to the concept of the unconscious; chiefly on the basis of the same experience I had made in the association experiment. Namely that people reacted. They saved things; they deepened things without knowing they actually saved them. And this is something you can observe experimentally in association experiment when people cannot remember afterwards what they did and what they saw in the moment when the stimulus fixed the complex. During production experiment you go through your whole life and you will see that the memory fails where there was a complex reaction. And that is the simple fact that Freud has based his idea of the unconscious on. That is what you can see now and again, that people for instance make mistakes in speech or they say things which they don’t mean to say. They just make ridiculous mistakes, you know. There are numerous stories, you know, about how people can betray themselves by saying something they didn’t mean to say, although yet the unconscious meant them to say that. For example, when you want to express sympathy you congratulate somebody instead. That’s very painful, you know, but that happens and this is true. This is something that cause parallel now with the role of school of psychiatry in Paris. There was Pierre Janet who worked out that side of unconscious reactions quite particularly. Pierre Janet in Paris formed my ideas very much. He was a first-class observer, though he had no dynamic theory or psychological theory but a sort of physiological theory of the unconscious phenomenon. In his book “L’йtat mental des hystйriques” there is a certain dissociation of tension of consciousness; it seems below the level of consciousness and first becomes unconscious. Now that’s Freud’s view, too. Only he says it sinks down because it is compressed. That was my first point of difference with Freud. I think there were cases in my observation where there was no repression from above but the thing itself is true. Those contents that became unconscious had withdrawn all by themselves; they were not repressed on the contrary. They had certain autonomy and that these contents that disappear have the power to move independently from my will. Either they appear then among to say something definite; they interfere and speak themselves instead of what I wanted to say or they make me do something which I don’t want to do at all or in the moment I want to use them they suddenly disappear.

Dr. E. What are the most extreme views that we have? They are all around you and Dr. Freud; the ones you mentioned a moment ago. He spoke of the birth trauma. He said that the actual trauma had a very powerful impact on the ego and sure it influences the person?

C.J. Yes, this is very important for an ego that it is born. It is highly dramatic, you know, when you fall out of heaven.

Dr. E. You take a literally position that birth trauma may have a psychological effect…

C.J. Don’t you see this is an event that happens to everybody that exists? To exist you have to be born. So everybody is born and has undergone that trauma. So the trauma has lost its meaning. This is a general fact which you can’t say is a trauma. It is just a fact. You see? Because you cannot observe the psychology that hasn’t been born. Only then you can say what a birth trauma is. Until then you cannot even speak of such a thing. It is just a lack of epistemology.

Dr. E. Doctor Jung, you’ve been talking about very important things and you’ve pointed out that you wanted to look at rather literally and sort of a hungry drive or a drive of nutrition. There’s another fundamental point in development of the ego every more or less orthodox psychological view follows: it is that there’s then another critical level and ego level development.

C.J. Well, Montaigne uses terminology because it is a fact that children are exceedingly interested in their body and doing all sorts of disgusting things, you know. And sometimes such a peculiarity keeps on into later life. It is quite astonishing what you can hear in this respect. Now it is equally true that people who have such preferences also develop a peculiar character. In early childhood a character is already there. A child is not born tabula rasa. A child is born as a high complexity with existing determinants which never wear off through the whole life. And that gives the child his character already in the earliest childhood more recognized as the individuality of a child; although if you observe carefully you’ll see a tremendous difference even in very small children. And these peculiarities express themselves in every way. So first these peculiarities express themselves in all childish activities in the way how it plays with things and persons. There are children who are tremendously interested in all the moving things and they are moving chiefly all the things that affect the body. So they are interested what the eyes do, what the ears do, how far you can bore into the nose with your finger, you know. They will do the same with their anus, they will do…as they say they will play with their genitals. These interests express themselves in a typically childish way in children and later on they express themselves in other peculiarities which are still the same but it doesn’t come from the fact that had once done such a thing in childhood. It is the character that is doing it. There is a definite inherited complexity and if you want to know something about the possible reasons you must go to the parents. So in any case of a child’s neurosis psycho go back to the parents and see what there’s going on because children have no psychology of their own literally taken. They are so much in the mental dominancy of the parents, so much you’re back to see but you’re mystic with the parents. They are reviewed by the paternal or maternal atmosphere. And they express these influences in their childish way. So for instance a child…take for instance illegitimate child: they are particularly exposed to environmental difficulties, for instance a misfortune of the moderate etc. etc. and all these complications. And such a child will miss, for instance a father. In order to compensate for it they choose a part of their body for a father, instead of the father; they develop for instance masturbation. It is often so with illegitimate children that they become erotic or criminal.

Dr. E. What are the central parks of the so-called “psycho-sexual development” in the more or less orthodox theory? It’s the so-called Oedipus complex, the complex that matures gradually.

C.J. Well…this is just what I call an archetype. That is the first archetype Freud has discovered, first and the only one. He thinks that this is the archetype. But of course there are many such archetypes look at dream pathology and you will find any amount of them or look at dreams and you’ll find any amount of them. But incest was so impressive to him that he even chose a term “Oedipus complex” because that was one of the outstanding examples of an incest complex. And it is all in the masculine form, mind you, because women have an incest complex, too but there is only Oedipus. So put something else. And he saw this only the term for an archetypal way of behavior in case of a man; a man’s relation, say, to his mother. It also means to a daughter because whatever he was to the mother he would be to the daughter, too. He can be this way or that way.

Dr. E. So then you will accept the Oedipus complex but not in seeing the only importance of it but one of many.

C. J. Of course there are many ways of behavior. You see, Oedipus gives you an excellent example of behavior of an archetype. It is a model of the whole situation. There is a mother, there is a father, there is a son, there is a whole story of how such a situation develops and to what it leads finally. And that is an archetype. You see an archetype always is a sort of abbreviated drama. It begins in such and such a way and it extends to such and such complication and it finds a solution in such and such a way. That is the usual form. As, for instance, take an instinct of building a nest with birds. In the way they build the nest there is the beginning, the middle and the end. It is built just to survive for the certain number of young. The end is rather anticipated. That is the reason why it is the archetype itself: there is no time. It is a timeless condition: beginning, middle and end are just the same, they are given in one. Now that is only against to what the archetype can do. But that’s a complicated question. You know what a behavior pattern is. Now the way in which, say, a river bird builds its nest that is an inherited form in him, he will apply of a certain symbiotic phenomenon between insects and plants. They are inherited patterns of behavior. And so a man has of course an inherited scheme of functioning, you see? His liver and his heart, and his eyes and his brain, they always function in a certain way following its pattern. You only have a great difficulty in seeing it because you can’t compare. There are other similar beings like man that are articulate and could give account of functioning. If that were the case we would know I don’t know what but because we have no means of comparison we are necessarily unconscious about our own conditions but it is quite certain that man is born with a certain functioning, a certain way of functioning, a certain pattern of behavior. And that is expressed in the form of archetypal images or archetypal forms. For instance, the way in which a man should behave is given by an archetype. Therefore the primitives tell such stories, greater education cause full story-telling. For instance they call in young men and the older men perform before the eyes of the younger all the things they should not do. And their dance tells exactly what they should not do. In other way is take tandem of all the things they should not do; of what men used to like but shall not. And that is always supported by mythological tales. For instance, our ancestors have done so and so; and so you shall do or such and such a hero has done so and so and that is your model. For instance, take a teaching of Catholic Church: there are several thousands of saints and show us how…show us model. And they have their legends and that’s Christian mythology. In Greek, you know there was Theseus and there was Heracles, models of fine men, of gentlemen, you know. And they teach us how to behave; they are archetypes, archetypes of behavior. So you see when you have lived under primitive circumstances in the forest among primitive populations then you’ll know that phenomenon; you are seized with a certain spell and then you’ll do a thing that is unexpected. You see the archetype is a force that has autonomy, it can certainly seize you; it’s like a seizure. So for instance falling in love at first sight that is such a case: you see you have a certain image in yourself without doing it of the woman; now you see that girl or at least a good imitation of her and instantly you get a seizure and you are done. And afterwards you may discover that it was a hell of a mistake. Or you see a man is quite capable that is intelligent enough to see that that woman of his choice is not for him but he had been captured. He sees that she is not good at all, that she is a hell of a business and he tells me so. He says: “For God’s sake, doctor, help me get rid of that woman!” He can’t and that is the archetype. That is all the archetype of the anima. It is just a little bit complicated. The anima is an archetypal form expressing the fact that a man has a minority of feminine of female genes. And that is something that doesn’t appear or disappear in him, that is constantly present and it works as female in a man. Therefore already in the 16th century humans call something that a man is an anima. Each man carries his female with himself. But it’s not a mortal invention. Now you see the same is the case with the animus that is a masculine image in a woman’s mind which is not exactly … well sometimes conscious and sometimes it is not conscious but it called into life the moment a woman meets a man who says the right things. And then because what he says is all true and he is the fellow. No matter what he is. Those two are particularly well-founded archetypes, those two. And then you can lay hands on the basis as it was of the archetype; it is exceedingly well defined.

Dr. E. Doctor Jung, we have been discussing some details of some of the backers in the development of the personality of the individual. And you have very timely a library of the course and some of your fundamental concepts. I wonder if you would mind telling us a little bit about how you conclude this term “persona”.

C.J. Well, this is a practical concept we read in elucidating people’s relation. I noticed with my patients particularly, with people that are in public life that they have a certain way of presenting themselves. For instance, take the doctor. He has a certain way, for instance he has good manners. And he behaves as one expects a doctor to behave. He may even identify himself with it and believe what he appears to be. He must appear in a certain form unless people don’t believe that he is a doctor. And so is the same with a professor. He is also supposed to behave in a certain way so that it is plausible that he is a professor. So the “persona” is partially the result of the demands society has. And on the other side it is a compromise with what one likes to be or with what one likes to appear. So take for instance a parson. He also has his particular manner and as corresponding to the general expectation and he behaves also in another way combined with his persona that is forced upon him by society in such a way that also his fiction of himself. His idea about himself is more or less portrayed or represented. So the “persona” is a certain complicated system of behavior which is partially dictated by society and partially dictated by the expectations or the wishes one nurses oneself. Now, this is not the real personality in spite of the fact that people being sure that this is all quite real and quite honest. Yet it is not! Now, such a performance of “persona” is quite all right as long as you know that you are identical with the way in which you appear. But if you are unconscious of this fact then you get into sometimes very disagreeable conflicts: namely people can’t help noticing that at home, for instance, you appear quite different from what you appear in public. And people who don’t know it stumble over it in the end. They deny that they are like that. But they are like that and then you don’t know which the real man is. Is he the man that he is at home or at intimate relations? Or is he the man that appears in public? It is a question of Jackil and Hide often. In such an occasion there is such a difference that you would always be able to speak of double personality. And the more that is polarized, the more people are neurotic. They get neurotic because they have two different ways they contradict themselves all the time. And it is much of the unconscious of them but they wouldn’t know it; they think they are all one and everybody sees there are two! Some would know him only from one side, others would know him only from the other side and then there are situations that clash because the way you are creates certain situations with people in relations. And these two situations don’t chime instead they are just dissonance. And the more it is the case, the more people are neurotic.

Dr. E. You also use the term “self”. And does this word “self” have a different meaning from ego?

C.J. Oh yes. You see, when I say “self” then you mustn’t think “I, myself” because it is only your empirical self and that is called by the term “ego”. But when it is matter of the self, then it is matter of a personality that is more complete than the ego because the ego consists only of what you are conscious of. You know to be yourself. The whole personality of man is indescribable. His consciousness can be described; his unconscious cannot be described because as I repeat myself, the unconscious is always unconscious. And it is really unconscious, really is not known. And so we don’t know our unconscious personality. We have hints, we have certain ideas but we don’t know it really. Nobody can say where mind ends. That is the beauty of it, you know. It’s very interesting. The unconscious of man can reach God knows where; we are going to make discoveries.

Dr. E. Now another general idea: the terms “introversion” and “extraversion”.

C.J. It’s simply practical because there are certain people who definitely are more influenced by their surroundings than by their own intentions. But there are other people who are more influenced by subjective factor. Now you see, the subjective factor is very characteristic; it’s very closely stood by Freud as a sort of pathological auto egotism. But this is a mistake. You know we have…psyche has two conditions, two important conditions: one is the environmental influence and the other is the given fact of the psyche as it is born. The psyche is by no means tabula rasa but a definite mixture or combination of genes and they are formed from the very first moment of our life. They give a definite character even to the little child. And that is a subjective factor looked at it from the outer side. Now look at it from the inside. Then it is just so as if you would observe the world. When you observe the world you see houses, you see the sky, you see tangible objects. But when you observe yourself within you see moving images, a world of images generally known as fantasies. Yet these fantasies are facts. This is a fact that a man has such and such a fantasy. And this is such a tangible fact, for instance, that when a man has a certain fantasy another man may lose his life or a bridge is built. These houses are all fantasies. All the things you see were all fantasies to begin with. And fantasy has a proper reality. That is not to be forgotten: fantasy is not nothing. It is of course not a tangible object but it is a fact nevertheless. It is a form of energy. It is not a fact that we can’t measure it. It is a manifestation of something. And that is a reality. It is just as a reality as a peace treaty of Versailles or something like that. It is no more you are conscious of. But it has been a fact. And so psyche of events are facts, realities and when you the stream of images within, you observe an aspect of the world, of the world within; because the psyche, you know… if you understand it as the phenomenon that takes place in so-called living bodies. Then it is a quality of matter. As our body consists of matter, we discover that matter had another aspect that is psyche aspect. So it is simply the world formed within, seen from within. It is just as if we were seeing in another aspect of matter. And so you see the man who is going by the external world, by the influences of the external world, say society or perceptions, sense perceptions: things that he is more valid, you know, because this is valid, this is real. And the man who goes by the subjective factor is not valid because subjective factor is nothing. No, that man is just as when beast because he bases himself upon the world from within. And so he is quite right even if he says: “Oh, this is nothing but my fantasy.” Of course this is the introvert. The introvert of course is always afraid of the inner world. He will tell you when you ask him; he will be apologetic about it. And there’s always resentment. And that’s the world in general, particularly America, for an introvert it’s like hell. An introvert has no place because he doesn’t know that he beholds the world from within. And that gives him dignity; that gives him certainty because nowadays it is particularly: the world hangs on a thin thread, and that is the psyche of man. Assume that certain fellows in Moscow lose their nerve or their common sense, heavens forbid, and the whole world is in fire and flames. Nowadays we are not threatened by elementary catastrophes; there’s no such thing as an H-bomb that is all man’s doing. We are the great danger. The psyche is the great danger. What if something calls wrong with the psyche, you see? So, you see, it is demonstrating to us nowadays what the power the psyche is and how important it is to know something about it. But we know nothing about it. Nobody would give credit to the idea that the psychical processes of an ordinary man have any importance whatever. He just has what he has in awful surroundings: trusts such and such a thing, believes in such and such a thing. And particularly if he has a good house, if he is well-fed then he has no idea at all. And that’s a great mistake because he is just that as what he is born and he is not born as tabula rasa but as a reality.

Dr. E. Would you precede the world that may have already people who are extreme introverts or extreme extraverts?

C.J. Well, you know, Bismarck once said: “God may protect me against my friends; with my enemies I can deal myself alone.” You know how people are: they catch a word and they never schematize along. There is no such a thing as a pure introvert or a pure extravert. Such a man would be in a lunatic asylum. These are all the terms to designate a certain tendency, for instance a tendency to be more influenced by environmental influences or more influenced by the subjective factor. That’s all. And you see there are people who have favorable bands and are just as much influenced from within as they are from out or just as little. And so with all the defining classification, you know, they are only sort of points for orientation. My whole scheme of typology is merely sort of orientation; namely there is such a factor as introversion, there is such a factor as extraversion. The classification of individuals means nothing, nothing at all. This is only the instrumentarium for a practical psychologist to explain, for instance, a husband to a wife. For instance, it’s almost a rule (but I don’t want to make too many rules without being schematic) that an introvert marries an extravert for compensation or one type marries countertype to compliment himself, for instance.

Dr. E. Doctor Jung, we are of course taught with your typology. We of course know of your concepts of thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition.

C.J. Well, there’s quite a simple explanation of these terms and it shows at the same time how I arrived at such a typology. Namely sensation tells you that there is some thinking, roughly speaking tells you what it is. Feeling tells you whether it is agreeable or not, to be accepted or not, accepted or rejected. And intuition… there is a difficulty. You don’t know or nearly how intuition works. So when a man has a hunch you can’t tell exactly where that hunch comes from. It is something funny about intuition. I will tell you a little story. I had two patients. The man was a sensation type and the woman was an intuitive type; of course they felt attraction. And so they took a little boat and went out to the lake of Zurich. And there were those birds that dive for the fish, you know. And then they come up again and you can’t tell exactly where they’ll come up. And so they began to bet: who would be the first to see the bird. Now you would think that the one who observes reality very carefully, the sensation type, would of course win out. Not at all! The woman won the bet completely. She was beating him in all points because by intuition she knew it before. Now, how is that possible? Well, you know, sometimes you can really find out how it works by finding the intermediate links. It is a perception by intermediate links and you only get a result of the whole chain of associations. Sometimes you succeed in finding out but more often you don’t. So, my definition is: intuition is a perception by ways or means of the unconscious. That is as near as I can get. This is a very important function because when you live under primitive conditions a lot of unpredictable things are likely to happen. And then you’ll need your intuition because you cannot possible tell by your perceptions, by your sense perceptions what is going to happen.

Dr. E. For example… what specific example or difference can you give between an intuitive extravert and intuitive introvert?

C.J. Well, you know, you have chosen the most difficult case because one of the most difficult types is an intuitive introvert. An intuitive extravert you can find among bankers or gamblers, that is quite understandable but an introvert variety is more difficult because he has intuitions as to the subjective factor namely the inner world and of course that is though very difficult to understand because what he sees are most uncommon things and he doesn’t like to talk of them if he is not a fool because he will spoil the whole game by telling what he sees because people won’t understand this. For instance, once I had a patient, a young woman who was about 27 or 28 and first words were when I treated her: “You know, doctor, I’ve come to you because I have a snake in my stomach.” I said: “What?!” “Yes, a snake. A black snake coiled up right in the bottom of my stomach.” I must have made a rather bewildered face because she said: “You know, I don’t mean it literally but I should say it was a snake.” Now you see, in our further conversation a little later she said in the middle of out treatment that only lasted for ten consultations that she had foretold me that she would come for ten times and that she would be all right. I said: “How do you know?” “Oh, I got a hunch” – she said. And really about the fifth or sixth hour she said: “Doctor, I must tell you that the snake has risen. It is now about a year.” Hunch. And then on the tenth day I said: “Now, this is our last hour. Do you feel cured?” And she said beaming: “You know it is warming. It came up and came to the front of my mouth and the head was golden.” You see, that same girl when it comes to reality she came to me when she couldn’t hear the steps of her feet anymore because she walked on air literally. She couldn’t hear it and that frightened her. And when she came to me I asked her for her address and then she said: “Oh, it is a sort of pansion.” I never had heard of any pansion, I never had heard of that place. “Well, it’s a very nice place,” – she said. They held young girls there; very nice, very lively young girls and they had a merry time there. I wished they could invite me for their merry evenings. And when I got amused she told me: “Many young gentlemen come in there often and they have a beautiful time but they never invite me.” It turned out that it was a private brothel. And she was totally decent. She came from a very good family. She had found that place I don’t know how and she was totally unaware that they were all prostitutes. For heaven’s sake she fell into a very tough place and that’s all because of sensation. She didn’t see reality but she had hunches like anything and they came off. Now you see, such a person cannot possibly speak of her experiences because everybody would think that she’s absolutely crazy. I myself was quite shocked. I thought: “For heaven’s sake is it the case of schizophrenia?” Because you don’t usually hear that kind of speech but she assumed that the old man of course knows everything and he even understands that kind of language. So you see, when intuitive introvert would speak what he really perceives then he would be misunderstood; so they learn to keep things to themselves and you hardly ever hear them talking about these things. That is the great disadvantage but it is an enormous advantage in another way, not to speak of the experiences they got in human relations. For instance, they come into the presence of someone they don’t know and certainly they have inner images and these inner images give them more or less complete information about the psychology of the partner. It can also happen that they come into the presence of somebody whom they don’t know at all and they know an important piece of the biography of that person and not aware of it they tell the story. So you see the introvert intuitive has in a way a very difficult life although one of the most interesting lives but it is often difficult to get into their confidence. It’s just a sort of skeleton to which you have to add the flesh or it is, say, a country mapped out by the triangulation points and that doesn’t mean they consist of triangulation points. It is only in order to have the idea of the distances; and so it is a means to an end, it only makes sense such a scheme when you deal with practical cases. Well, talking about the case of that intuitive girl who suddenly came out with the sense that she had a snake in her belly. Well, that is a collective symbol. That is not an individual fantasy; that is a collective fantasy. It is well known in India, perhaps she has nothing to do with India, but we have it, too because it’s generally human. For the first moment I thought perhaps she was crazy but she was only highly intuitive. It is known in India; it is basis for the system of tantrism. This is “kundalini“, it’s certainly kundalini. And that is something known to some few specialists; generally it’s not known that we have a certain omen. But that is a collective fantasy. It may be so that the unconscious can be so disagreeable. And in most cases people would become less neurotic if they could admit the things which are all difficult and disagreeable and inconvenient. So, there is always a certain amount of depression but that is not the main thing. The main thing is that they are really unconscious. And you see, if you are unconscious about certain things that ought to be conscious, then you are dissociated. Then you are a man whose left hand never knows what the right hand is doing and contradicts with the right hand. Now such a man is hampered all over the place. Then we have a problem. That is a problem for an intellectual man. And then I say: “I have no answer. You have no answer.” Now, what are we going to do? Now we must see what you dream because the dream is the manifestation of the unconscious side. Now you’ve never heard of the unconscious side. So I must explain to him about the unconscious and that the dream is a manifestation of it and if he succeeds in the dream we might get an idea about that power that makes him think like that. In treatment, for instance in treatment of neurosis you have to do with a person’s unconscious for quite a while and then only dreams come sure that the collective unconscious is touched upon as long as there is material for the person’s nature. You have to deal with the personal unconscious but when you get to, say, to a question, to a program which is no more merely personal but also collective; you get collective dreams. And then we are there, where we can begin with the observation of the unconscious. And then day by day one goes on by the data that the unconscious produces. You see, we discuss the dream and that gives a new surface to the problem and he will have another dream and the next dream gives again an answer because the unconscious is in the compensation that is related to consciousness. And after a while we get the whole picture. And if we have a full picture and the essence of the moving stamina then well, he can be cured. But in the end it is a moral question whether the man applies on the alert or not.

There is a sort of typical way in which the integration of consciousness takes place. Namely, the average way is the analysis of dreams, for instance. You become acquainted with the contents of the unconscious that is, to begin with, all personal material: successive questions, questions of the individuals, difficulties in adapting to environmental conditions and so on. Now, it is a regular observation that when you talk to an individual and this individual gives you an insight into its inner preoccupations, interests, emotions, and the rule was hands over his personal complexes. Then you get slowly and regularly into the situation of authority; you become a point of reference. You know you are in possession of all the important items in a person’s development. I remember for instance, I analyzed a very well-known American politician and he told me many secrets of his trade. And suddenly he jumped up and said: “Oh, God! What have I done? You’ll get a million dollars for what I’ve told you now”. And I said: “Well, you can sleep in peace, I won’t betray you”. Now you see, it shows that the things people hand out are not merely indifferent things. When it comes to something emotionally important, then they hand out themselves; they hand out a big emotional value as if they trusted you with the administration of the rest and so tie your hands. I often hear things could affect other people publically known or it should give me if I had any blackmailing tendencies an unlimited power to blackmail them. Now you see, that creates an emotional relationship to the enemies. And that is what Freud called detractions which are the central problem of analytical psychology. It is just so as if these people handed out their whole existence and that can have very peculiar effects upon the individual. He can say either “I hate you for it” or “I love you for it” but he is not indifferent to them. And there is then a sort of emotional relation between the patient and the doctor. Now, when you hand out such materials then these contents are associated with all the important persons in the life of a patient. Now, the most important persons are father and mother; that comes up from childhood, so the first problems are with parents, as a rule. So, in handing over your infantile memories about the father or about the mother; you hand over the image of one or another and then it just as if the doctor had taken the base of the father or of the mother. I had quite many patients who called me “Mother Jung” because they handed over the mother in me. But you see it is quite irrespective the personality of the analyst. They simply disregard the functions as if he were a mother or the functions as if he were a father, the central authority. Now, that is a particular case of projection but Freud doesn’t exactly call it “projection”, he calls it “transforms”. That is an allusion to an old superstitious idea of handing over disease, transferring a disease on an animal or handing over a sin upon the scapegoat. And scapegoat means that this information will disappear. So, they hand over themselves in the hope that I can swallow that stuff and digest it for them. And so I’m the high authority and naturally I’m also prosecuted by the correspondent resistances and face all the emotional reaction they have had against their parents. Now, that is a structure how to work through first in analyzing the situation because a patient is like a slave, a dependent upon the doctor like a patient with an open stomach on the operation table. He is in the hands of surgeon to get better or worse. And so the thing must be finished. And so we have to work through that condition in the hope that we arrive on the situation, where the patient will be able to see that I’m not the father or the mother, but an ordinary human being. Now, everybody naturally should assume that such a thing would be possible. For instance a patient could arrive at such an insight, when he is not a complete idiot, that I am just a doctor and not emotional fever of his fantasies. But that is very often not the case. So, I had a case of an intelligent young woman; she was a student of philosophy, very good mind. You would expect easily that she would see that I’m not a parental authority but she utterly unable to get out of the delusion. And in such a case when one always has recourse to the dreams, one would ask the unconscious: “What do you say on such a condition?” You see, actually she says to her unconscious: “Of course he is not my father” but she feels like that, it is like that and she says to me: “I depend very much on you”. And what does the unconscious say? Now the unconscious produce dreams in which I really assume the very cure as a whole. You know quite soon she was sitting on my knees and I was like a very tender father to the little girl and more and more her dreams became emphatic in this respect. Namely that I was a sort of giant and she is a very little female thing, a little woman in the hands of an enormous being. And the last dream of hers (I cannot tell you all the dreams she had) was that I stood in a field of wheat, an enormous field of wheat that was ripe and I was a giant. I held her in my arms like a baby. And the wind was blowing all that field of wheat. You know, when the wind is blowing there are waves in wheat. And with these waves I was swaying as if putting her to sleep. And she felt as being in the arms of God. And then I thought: “Now the harvest is ripe. I must tell her.” And I told her: “What do you want? And what do you project from me because you are not conscious of it. It’s the idea of deity. You don’t possess it therefore you see it in me.” You know she had a rather tense relation in education. Of course it all vanished later on and something disappeared from her world; the world became merely personal and the conception of the world was non-existent, apparently. But, you see the idea of deity is not an intellectual idea; it’s an archetypal idea. Therefore you find it practically everywhere on the piece of another name. You know, even if it had the name Mana it means extraordinary, effectual quality even if you don’t know a person at all. So she certainly became aware of an entirely pagan image that comes fresh from the archetype. She had no idea of the Christian God or Testament. It was a pagan god, a god of nature. He was the wheat himself or the spirit of the wheat, the spirit of the wind. And she was in the arms of that Norman. That is a living experience of an archetype. That made a tremendous impression upon that girl and instantly it cracked. She saw what she really was missing, that missing value. It was in the form of protection from my side because as the dream says she is in the arms of that archetypal idea. That is a luminous experience and that is what people are looking for: an archetypal experience that is incorruptible value. That is a sort of liberation. And that is of course mixture complete. It has much as she can realize such an experience; she is able to continue her path, her way, her individuation. The acorn can become an oak and not a donkey. It naturally takes its course. She will become what she is at the beginning.

Now, we think that we can be born today and live without history. That is a disease. That’s absolutely abnormal because man is not born every day. He is once born in a specific historical setting with specific historical qualities and therefore he is only complete when he has a relation to his senses. It’s just as if he were born without eyes and ears when you are growing without any connection with the past. That is a mutilation of the human being. Now, I saw through my practical experience that this kind of proceeding had the most extraordinary though beautiful effect. And so, you see, in our days we have such and such view of the world, such and such a philosophy. But in the unconscious we have a different world. And that we can see through the example of alchemistic philosophy that behaves to the medieval unconsciousness exactly like the unconscious behaves to ourselves. And we can construct or even predict the unconscious of our days when we know what it had been yesterday. That is in a few words the development of my ideas.