MEMORIES, DREAMS, REFLECTIONS 

by C. G.Jung 

RECORDED AND EDITED BY 

Aniela Jaffe 

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY 

Richard and Clara Winston 

REVISED EDITION 



VINTAGE BOOKS 
A Division of Random House, Inc. 

NEW YORK 



VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, APRIL 1989 
Copyright 1961, 1962, 1963 by Random House, Inc. 

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright 
Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., 
New York. Distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada 
Limited, Toronto. Originally published by Pantheon Books, a division 
of Random House, Inc., in 1963. Final revised edition in hardcover 
published by Pantheon Books, February 1973. 

Originally published under the title "Erinnerungen 
Traume Gedanken." 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 
Jung, C. G. (Carl Gustav), 1875-1961. 

[Erinnerungen, Traume, Gedanken. English] 

Memories, dreams, reflections /by C.G. Jung; recorded and edited 
by Aniela Jaffe; translated from the German by Richard and Clara 
Winston. Rev. ed. 

p. cm. 

Originally published under title: Erinnerungen Iraume 
Gedanken. 

Bibliography: p. 

Includes index. 

ISBN 0-679-72395-1 

i. Jung, C. G. (Carl Gustav), 1856-1939. 2.. Psychoanalysts 
Switzerland-Biography. I. JafF<, Aniela. II. Title. 
1989 



[B] 88-37040 

CIP 

Manufactured in the United States of America 
10 9 8 



Introduction 



He looked at his own Soul 
with a Telescope. What seemed 
all irregular, he saw and 
shewed to be beautiful 
Constellations; and he added 
to the Consciousness hidden 
worlds within worlds. 

COLERIDGE, Notebooks 



THIS BOOK had its inception during the Eranos Conference 
held in Ascona in the summer of 1956. There the publisher Kurt 
Wolff, in conversation with friends from Zurich, spoke of his 
wish to have Pantheon Books of New York publish a biography 
of Carl Gustav Jung. Dr. Jolande Jacobi, one of C. G. Jung's as- 
sociates, proposed that the office of biographer be entrusted 
to me. 

All of us were well aware that the task would by no means be 
an easy one. Jung's distaste for exposing his personal life to the 
public eye was well known. Indeed, he gave his consent only 
after a long period of doubt and hesitation. But once he had 
done so, he allotted to me an entire afternoon once a week for 
our work together. Considering the press of his regular program 
of work, and how easily he tired for even then he was past 
eighty that was a great deal of time, 

We began in the spring of 1957. It had been proposed that 



Introduction 

the book be written not as a "biography/' but in the form of an 
"autobiography," with Jung himself as the narrator. This plan 
determined the form of the book, and my first task consisted 
solely in asking questions and noting down Jung's replies. Al- 
though he was rather reticent at the beginning, he soon warmed 
to the work. He began telling about himself, his development, 
his dreams, and his thoughts with growing interest. 

By the end of the year Jung's affirmative attitude toward our 
joint efforts led to a decisive step. After a period of inner turbu- 
lence, long-submerged images out of his childhood rose to the 
surface of his mind. He sensed their connection with ideas in the 
works he had written in his old age, but could not grasp it 
clearly. One morning he informed me that he wanted to set 
down his recollections of his childhood directly. By this time he 
had already told me a good many of his earliest memories, but 
there were still great gaps in the story. 

This decision was as gratifying as it was unexpected, for I 
knew how great a strain writing was for Jung. At his advanced 
age he would not undertake anything of the sort unless he felt it 
was a "task" imposed on him from within. Here was evidence 
that the "autobiography" was justified in terms of Jung's own 
inner life. 

Some time after this new development, I noted down a re- 
mark of his: "A book of mine is always a matter of fate. There 
is something unpredictable about the process of writing, and I 
cannot prescribe for myself any predetermined course. Thus 
this 'autobiography' is now taking a direction quite different 
from what I had imagined at the beginning. 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 im- 
mediately follow. As soon as I set to work they vanish and my 
head feels perfectly clear." 

In April 1958 Jung finished the three chapters on his child- 
hood, school days, and years at the university. At first he called 
them, "On the Early Events of My Life." These chapters ended 
with the completion of his medical studies in 1900. 

This, however, was not the sole direct contribution that Jung 



Introduction 

made to the book. In January 1959 he was at his country house 
in Bollingen. He devoted every morning to reading chosen 
chapters of our book, which had meanwhile been hammered 
into shape. When he returned the chapter, "On Life after 
Death/' he said to me, "Something within me has been touched. 
A gradient has formed, and I must write/' Such was the origin 
of "Late Thoughts," in which he voiced his deepest and perhaps 
his most far-reaching convictions. 

In the summer of that same year of 1959, likewise in Bollingen, 
Jung wrote the chapter on Kenya and Uganda. The section on 
the Pueblo Indians is taken from an unpublished and un- 
finished manuscript that deals with general questions of the 
psychology of primitives. 

In order to complete the chapters "Sigmund Freud" and 
"Confrontation with the Unconscious/' I incorporated a number 
of passages from a seminar delivered in 1925, in which Jung 
spoke for the first time of his inner development, 

The chapter "Psychiatric Activities" is based on conversations 
between Jung and the young assistant doctors of the Zurich 
mental hospital of Burgholzli in 1956. At that time one of his 
grandsons was working as a psychiatrist there. The conversa- 
tions took place in Jung's house in Kiisnacht. 

Jung read through the manuscript of this book and approved 
it. Occasionally he corrected passages or added new material. 
In turn, I have used the records of our conversations to supple- 
ment the chapters he wrote himself, have expanded his some- 
times terse allusions, and have eliminated repetitions. The 
further the book progressed, the closer became the fusion be- 
tween his work and mine. 

The genesis of the book to some extent determined its con- 
tents. Conversation or spontaneous narration is inevitably 
casual, and that tone has carried over to the entire "autobiog- 
raphy." The chapters are rapidly moving beams of light that 
only fleetingly illuminate the outward events of Jung's life and 
work. In recompense, they transmit the atmosphere of his intel- 
lectual world and the experience of a man to whom the psyche 
was a profound reality. I often asked Jung for specific data on 

vii 



Introduction 

outward happenings, but I asked in vain. Only the spiritual 
essence of his life's experience remained in his memory, and this 
alone seemed to him worth the effort of telling. 

Far more significant than the difficulties of formal organiza- 
tion of the text were those prior obstacles, of a more personal 
kind, to which Jung refers in a letter to a friend of his student 
days. Replying to a request, in the latter part of 1957, to set 
down the memories of his youth, he wrote: 

*. . . You are quite right. When we are old, we are drawn 
back, both from within and from without, to memories of 
youth. Once before, some thirty years ago, my pupils asked me 
for an account of how I arrived at my conceptions of the un- 
conscious. I fulfilled this request by giving a seminar. 1 During 
the last years the suggestion has come to me from various 
quarters that I should do something akin to an autobiography. 
I have been unable to conceive of my doing anything of the 
sort. I know too many autobiographies, with their self-decep- 
tions and downright lies, and I know too much about the im- 
possibility of self-portrayal, to want to venture on any such 
attempt. 

"Recently I was asked for autobiographical information, and 
in the course of answering some questions I discovered hidden 
in my memories certain objective problems which seem to call 
for closer examination. I have therefore weighed the matter and 
come to the conclusion that I shall fend off other obligations long 
enough to take up the very first beginnings of my life and con- 
sider them in an objective fashion. This task has proved so 
difficult and singular that in order to go ahead with it, I have 
had to promise myself that the results would not be published in 
my lifetime. Such a promise seemed to me essential in order to 
assure for myself the necessary detachment and calm. It became 
clear that all the memories which have remained vivid to me 
had to do with emotional experiences that arouse uneasiness 
and passion in the mind scarcely the best condition for an 
objective account! Your letter 'naturally' came at the very mo- 
ment when I had virtually resolved to take the plunge. 

"Fate will have it and this has always been the case with 

1 The 1925 seminar mentioned earlier. 



Introduction 

me that all the 'outer* aspects of my life should be accidental. 
Only what is interior has proved to have substance and a 
determining value. As a result, all memory of outer events has 
faded, and perhaps these 'outer' experiences were never so very 
essential anyhow, or were so only in that they coincided with 
phases of my inner development. An enormous part of these 
'outer* manifestations of my life has vanished from my memory 
for the very reason, so it has seemed to me, that I partici- 
pated in them with all my energies. Yet these are the very 
things that make up a sensible biography: persons one has met, 
travels, adventures, entanglements, blows of destiny, and so on. 
But with few exceptions all these things have become for me 
phantasms which I barely recollect and which my mind has no 
desire to reconstruct, for they no longer stir my imagination. 

"On the other hand, my recollection of 'inner' experiences 
has grown all the more vivid and colorful. This poses a problem 
of description which I scarcely feel able to cope with, at least 
for the present. Unfortunately, I cannot, for these reasons, ful- 
fill your request, greatly as I regret my inability to do so. . . ." 

This letter characterizes Jung's attitude. Although he had al- 
ready "resolved to take the plunge," the letter ends with a re- 
fusal. To the day of his death the conflict between affirmation 
and rejection was never entirely settled. There always remained 
a residue of skepticism, a shying away from his future readers. 
He did not regard these memoirs as a scientific work, nor even 
as a book by himself. Rather, he always spoke and wrote of it as 
"Aniela Jaffe's project," to which he had made contributions. 
At his specific request it is not to be included in his Collected 
Works. 

Jung has been particularly reticent in speaking of his en- 
counters with people, both public figures and close friends and 
relatives. "I have spoken with many famous men of my time, 
the great ones in science and politics, with explorers, artists and 
writers, princes and financial magnates; but if I am to be honest 
I must say that only a few such encounters have been significant 
experiences for me. Our meetings were like those of ships on the 
high seas, when they dip their flags to one another. Usually, too, 
these persons had something to ask of me which I am not at 

fe 



Introduction 

liberty to divulge. Thus I have retained no memories of them, 
however important these persons may be in the eyes of the 
world. Our meetings were without portent; they soon faded 
away and bore no deeper consequences. But of those relation- 
ships which were vital to me, and which came to me like 
memories of far-off times, I cannot speak, for they pertain not 
only to my innermost life but also to that of others. It is not for 
me to fling open to the public eye doors that are closed for- 
ever." 

The paucity of outward events is, however, amply compen- 
sated by the account of Jung's inner experiences, and by a rich 
harvest of thoughts which, as he himself says, are an integral 
part of his biography. This is true first and foremost of his re- 
ligious ideas, for this book contains Jung's religious testament. 

Jung was led to a confrontation with religious questions by a 
number of different routes. There were his childhood visions, 
which brought him face to face with the reality of religious ex- 
perience and remained with him to the end of his life. There 
was his insuppressible curiosity concerning everything that had 
to do with lie contents of the psyche and its manifestations 
the urge to know which characterized his scientific work. And, 
last but not least, there was his conscience as a physician. Jung 
regarded himself primarily as a doctor, a psychiatrist. He was 
well aware that the patient's religious attitude plays a crucial 
part in the therapy of psychic illnesses. This observation coin- 
cided with his discovery that the psyche spontaneously produces 
images with a religious content, that it is "by nature religious/' 
It also became apparent to him that numerous neuroses spring 
from a disregard for this fundamental characteristic of the 
psyche, especially during the second half of life. 

Jung's concept of religion differed in many respects from 
traditional Christianity above all in his answer to the problem 
of evil and his conception of a God who is not entirely good or 
kind. From the viewpoint of dogmatic Christianity, Jung was 
distinctly an "outsider." For all his world-wide fame, this verdict 
was forcibly borne in upon him by the reactions to his writings. 
This grieved him, and here and there in this book he expresses 
the disappointment of an investigator who felt that his religious 



Introduction 

ideas were not properly understood. More than once he said 
grimly, "They would have burned me as a heretic in the Middle 
Ages!" Only since his death have theologians in increasing 
numbers begun to say that Jung was indubitably an outstanding 
figure in the religious history of our century. 

Jung explicitly declared his allegiance to Christianity, and the 
most important of his works deal with the religious problems 
of the Christian. He looked at these questions from the stand- 
point of psychology, deliberately setting a bound between it 
and the theological approach. In so doing he stressed the neces- 
sity of understanding and reflecting, as against the Christian 
demand for faith. He took this necessity for granted, as one of 
the essential features of life. "I find that all my thoughts circle 
around God like the planets around the sun, and are as irre- 
sistibly attracted by Him. I would feel it to be the grossest sin 
if I were to oppose any resistance to this force," he wrote in 
1952 to a young clergyman. 

This book is the only place in his extensive writings in which 
Jung speaks of God and his personal experience of God. While 
he was writing of his youthful rebellion against the church, he 
once said, "At that time I realized that God for me, at least 
was one of the most immediate experiences." In his scientific 
works Jung seldom speaks of God; there he is at pains to use 
the term "the God-image in the human psyche." This is no. 
contradiction. In the one case his language is subjective, based 
upon inner experience; in the other it is die objective language 
of scientific inquiry. In the first case he is speaking as an in- 
dividual, whose thoughts are influenced by passionate, powerful 
feelings, intuitions, and experiences of a long and unusually 
rich life; in the second, he is speaking as the scientist who 
consciously restricts himself to what may be demonstrated and 
supported by evidence. As a scientist, Jung is an empiricist. 
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. 

at 



Introduction 

Although Jung was active and affirmative in the making of the 
"autobiography," for a long time his attitude toward the pros- 
pect of its publication remained quite understandably 
highly critical and negative. He rather dreaded the reaction of 
the public, for one thing because of the candor with which he 
had revealed his religious experiences and ideas, and for another 
because the hostility aroused by his book, Answer to Job, was 
still too close, and the incomprehension or misunderstanding of 
the world in general too painful. "I have guarded this material 
all my life, and have never wanted it exposed to the world; for 
if it is assailed, I shall be affected even more than in the case of 
my other books. I do not know whether I shall be so far removed 
from this world that the arrows of criticism will no longer reach 
me and that I shall be able to bear the adverse reactions. I have 
suffered enough from incomprehension and from the isolation 
one falls into when one says things that people do not under- 
stand. If the Job book met with so much misunderstanding, my 
'memoirs 9 will have an even more unfortunate fate. The 'auto- 
biography' is my life, viewed in the light of the knowledge I 
have gained from my scientific endeavors. Both are one, and 
therefore this book makes great demands on people who do not 
know or cannot understand my scientific ideas. My life has been 
in a sense the quintessence of what I have written, not the other 
way around. The way I am and the way I write are a unity. All 
my ideas and all my endeavors are myself. Thus the 'autobiog- 
raphy* is merely the dot on the i." 

During the years in which the book was taking shape a process 
of transformation and objectivization was also taking place in 
Jung. With each succeeding chapter he moved, as it were, 
farther away from himself, until at last he was able to see him- 
self as well as the significance of his life and work from a 
distance. "If I ask the value of my life, I can only measure my- 
self against the centuries and then I must say, Yes, it means 
something. Measured by the ideas of today, it means nothing." 
The impersonality, the feeling of historical continuity expressed 
in these words, emerges ever more strongly in the course of the 
book, as the reader will see. 

xii 



Introduction 

The chapter entitled "The Work," with its brief survey of the 
genesis of Jung's most important writings, is fragmentary. How 
could this be otherwise, when his collected works comprise 
nearly twenty volumes? Moreover, Jung never felt any disposi- 
tion to offer a summary of his ideas either in conversation 
or in writing. When he was asked to do so, he replied in his 
characteristic, rather drastic fashion, "That sort of thing lies 
totally outside my range. I see no sense in publishing a con- 
densation of papers in which I went to so much trouble to dis- 
cuss the subject in detail. I should have to omit all my evidence 
and rely on a type of categorical statement which would not 
make my results any easier to understand. The characteristic 
ruminant activity of ungulate animals, which consists in the 
regurgitation of what has already been chewed over, is any- 
thing but stimulating to my appetite. . . ." 

The reader should therefore regard this chapter as a retrospec- 
tive sketch written in response to a special occasion, and not 
expect it to be comprehensive. 

The short glossary which I have included at the end of the 
book, at the publisher's request, will, I hope, be of help to the 
reader who is not familiar with Jung's work and terminology. I 
have taken a small number of the definitions from the Worter- 
buch der Psychologic und ihrer Grenzgebiete, with the kind 
permission of its editor, Kurt von Sury, M.D. Wherever possible 
I have elucidated the concepts of Jungian psychology by quota- 
tions from Jung^s works, and have supplemented the dictionary'? 
definitions in the same way. These quotations must, however, 
be regarded as no more than suggestive hints. Jung was con- 
stantly defining his concepts in new and different ways, for an 
ultimate definition, he felt, was not possible. He thought it wise 
to let the inexplicable elements that always cling to psychic 
realities remain as riddles or mysteries. 

A great many persons have helped me with this inspiring and 
difficult task, have shown unfailing interest during the slow 
growth of the book, and have furthered its progress by stimu- 
lating suggestions and criticism. To all of them I offer heartfelt 
thanks. Here I shall mention by name only Helen and Kurt 

xiii 



Introduction 

Wolff, of Locarno, who conceived the idea of the book and 
helped to bring that idea to fruition; Marianne and Walther 
Niehus-Jung, of Kusnacht-Ziirich, who throughout the years in 
which it was taking shape aided me by word and deed; and 
R. F. C. Hull, of Palma de Mallorca, who gave me advice and 
help with unflagging patience, 

ANHXA JAFFE 

December 1961 



Contents 



INTRODUCTION V 

Prologue 3 

I First Years 6 

II School Years 24 

III Student Years 84 

IV Psychiatric Activities 114 
V Sigmund Freud 146 

VI Confrontation with the Unconscious 170 

VII The Work 200 

VIII The Tower 223 

IX Travels 238 

i. North Africa 238 

it America: The Pueblo Indians 246 

Hi. Kenya and Uganda 253 

te>. India 274 

t). Ravenna and Rome 284 

X Visions 289 

XI On Life after Death 299 

XII Late Thoughts 327 

Retrospect 355 

APPENDIX 

L Letters from Freud to lung 361 

it. Letters to Emma Jung from America 365 

Hi Letter to Emma Jung from North Africa 371 

to. RidwrdWilhelm 373 

t;. Septem Sermones ad Mortuos 378 

GLOSSARY 391 

The Collected Works of G G. Jung 403 

INDEX 411 



MEMORIES, 

DREAMS, 
REFLECTIONS 



Prologue 



MY LIFE is a story of the self-realization of the uncon- 
scious. Everything in the unconscious seeks outward 
manifestation, and the personality too desires to evolve 
out of its unconscious conditions and to experience itself as a 
whole. I cannot employ the language of science to trace this 
process of growth in myself, for I cannot experience myself as a 
scientific problem. 

What we are to our inward vision, and what man appears to 
be sub specie aeternitatis, can only be expressed by way of myth. 
Myth is more individual and expresses life more precisely than 
does science. Science works with concepts of averages which are 
far too general to do justice to the subjective variety of an indi- 
vidual life. 

Thus it is that I have now undertaken, in my eighty-third 
year, to tell my personal myth, I can only make direct state- 
ments, only "tell stories/' Whether or not the stories are "true" is 
not the problem. The only question is whether what I tell is my 
fable, my truth. 

An autobiography is so difficult to write because we possess no 
standards, no objective foundation, from which to judge our- 
selves. There are really no proper bases for comparison. I know 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

that in many things I am not like others, but I do not know what 
I really am like. Man cannot compare himself with any other 
creature; he is not a monkey, not a cow, not a tree. I am a man. 
But what is it to be that? Like every other being, I am a splinter 
of the infinite deity, but I cannot contrast myself with any ani- 
mal, any plant or any stone. Only a mythical being has a range 
greater than man's. How then can a man form any definite opin- 
ions about himself? 

We are a psychic process which we do not control, or only 
partly direct. Consequently, we cannot have any final judgment 
about ourselves or our lives. If we had, we would know every- 
thing but at most that is only a pretense. At bottom we never 
know how it has all come about. The story of a life begins some- 
where, at some particular point we happen to remember; and 
even then it was already highly complex. We do not know how 
life is going to turn out. Therefore the story has no beginning, 
and the end can only be vaguely hinted at. 

The life of man is a dubious experiment. It is a tremendous 
phenomenon only in numerical terms. Individually, it is so fleet- 
ing, so insufficient, that it is literally a miracle that anything can 
exist and develop at all. I was impressed by that fact long ago, 
as a young medical student, and it seemed to me miraculous that 
I should not have been prematurely annihilated. 

Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its 
rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part 
that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. Then it 
withers away an ephemeral apparition. When we think of the 
unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot 
escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost a 
sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal 
flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome re- 
mains. 

In the end the only events in my life worth telling are those 
when the imperishable world irrupted into this transitory one. 
That is why I speak chiefly of inner experiences, amongst which 
I include my dreams and visions. These form the prima materia 
of my scientific work. They were the fiery magma out of which 
the stone that had to be worked was crystallized. 

4 



Prologue 

All other memories of travels, people and my surroundings 
have paled beside these interior happenings. Many people have 
participated in the story of our times and written about it; if the 
reader wants an account of that, let him turn to them or get 
somebody to tell it to him. Recollection of the outward events of 
my life has largely faded or disappeared. But my encounters 
with the "other" reality, my bouts with the unconscious, are in- 
delibly engraved upon my memory. In that realm there has al- 
ways been wealth in abundance, and everything else has lost im- 
portance by comparison. 

Similarly, other people are established inalienably in my 
memories only if their names were entered in the scrolls of my 
destiny from the beginning, so that encountering them was at 
the same time a kind of recollection. 

Inner experiences also set their seal on the outward events that 
came my way and assumed importance for me in youth or later 
on. I early arrived at the insight that when no answer comes 
from within to the problems and complexities of life, they ulti- 
mately mean very little. Outward circumstances are no substi- 
tute for inner experience. Therefore my life has been singularly 
poor in outward happenings. I cannot tell much about them, for 
it would strike me as hollow and insubstantial. I can understand 
myself only in the light of inner happenings. It is these that 
make up the singularity of my life, and with these my auto- 
biography deals. 



I 



First Years 



WHEN I was six months old, my parents moved from 
Kesswil on Lake Constance to Laufen, the castle and 
vicarage above the Falls of the Rhine. This was in 1875. 

My memories begin with my second or third year. I recall the 
vicarage, the garden, the laundry house, the church, the castle, 
the Falls, the small castle of Worth, and the sexton's farm. These 
are nothing but islands of memory afloat in a sea of vagueness, 
each by itself, apparently with no connection between them. 

One memory comes up which is perhaps the earliest of my life, 
and is indeed only a rather hazy impression. I am lying in a 
pram, in the shadow of a tree. It is a fine, warm summer day, the 
sky blue, and golden sunlight darting through green leaves. The 
hood of the pram has been left up. I have just awakened to the 
glorious beauty of the day, and have a sense of indescribable 
well-being. I see the sun glittering through the leaves and 
blossoms of the bushes. Everything is wholly wonderful, color- 
ful, and splendid. 

Another memory: I am sitting in our dining room, on the 
west side of the house, perched in a high chair and spooning up 
warm milk with bits of broken bread in it. The milk has a 



First Years 

pleasant taste and a characteristic smell. This was the first time 
I became aware of the smell of milk. It was the moment when, 
so to speak, I became conscious of smelling. This memory, too, 
goes very far back. 

Still another: a lovely summer evening. An aunt said to me, 
"Now I am going to show you something." She took me out in 
front of the house, on the road to Dachsen. On the far horizon 
the chain of the Alps lay bathed in glowing sunset reds. The 
Alps could be seen very clearly that evening. "Now look over 
there" I can hear her saying to me in Swiss dialect "the 
mountains are all red." For the first time I consciously saw the 
Alps. Then I was told that the next day the village children 
would be going on a school outing to the Uetliberg, near Zurich. 
I wanted so much to go too. To my sorrow, I was informed that 
children as small as I could not go along, there was nothing to 
be done about it. From then on the Uetliberg and Zurich became 
an unattainable land of dreams, near to the glowing, snow- 
covered mountains. 

From a somewhat later period comes another memory. My 
mother took me to the Thurgau to visit friends, who had a 
castle on Lake Constance. I could not be dragged away from 
the water. The waves from the steamer washed up to the shore, 
the sun glistened on the water, and the sand under the water 
had been curled into little ridges by the waves. The lake 
stretched away and away into the distance. This expanse of 
water was an inconceivable pleasure to me, an incomparable 
splendor. At that time the idea became fixed in my mind that I 
must live near a lake; without water, I thought, nobody could 
live at all. 

Still another memory comes up: strangers, bustle, excite- 
ment. The maid comes running and exclaims, "The fishermen 
have found a corpse came down the Falls they want to put it 
in the washhousel" My father says, "Yes, yes." I want to see the 
dead body at once. My mother holds me back and sternly for- 
bids me to go into the garden. When all the men had left, I 
quickly stole into the garden to the washhouse. But the door 
was locked. I went around the house; at the back there was an 
open drain running down the slope, and I saw blood and water 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

trickling out, I found this extraordinarily interesting. At that 
time I was not yet four years old. 

Yet another image: I am restive, feverish, unable to sleep. My 
father carries me in his arms, paces up and down, singing his 
old student songs. I particularly remember one I was especially 
fond of and which always used to soothe me, "Alles schweige, 
jeder neige . . ." The beginning went something like that. To 
this day I can remember my father's voice, singing over me in the 
stillness of the night. 

I was suffering, so my mother told me afterward, from general 
eczema. Dim intimations of trouble in my parents' marriage 
hovered around me. My illness, in 1878, must have been con- 
nected with a temporary separation of my parents. My mother 
spent several months in a hospital in Basel, and presumably her 
illness had something to do with the difficulty in the marriage. 
An aunt of mine, who was a spinster and some twenty years 
older than my mother, took care of me. I was deeply troubled 
by my mother's being away. From then on, I always felt 
mistrustful when the word "love" was spoken. The feeling I as- 
sociated with "woman 5 " was for a long time that of innate un- 
reliability. "Father," on the other hand, meant reliability and 
powerlessness. That is the handicap I started off with. Later, 
these early impressions were revised: I have trusted men friends 
and been disappointed by them, and I have mistrusted women 
and was not disappointed. 

While my mother was away, our maid, too, looked after me. 
I still remember her picking me up and laying my head against 
her shoulder. She had black hair and an olive complexion, and 
was quite different from my mother. I can see, even now, her 
hairline, her throat, with its darkly pigmented skin, and her ear. 
All this seemed to me very strange and yet strangely familiar. It 
was as though she belonged not to my family but only to me, as 
though she were connected in some way with other mysterious 
things I could not understand. This type of girl later became a 
component of my anima. 1 The feeling of strangeness which she 

1 For this and other technical terms which are commonly used by Jung but may 
be unfamiliar to the reader or no longer fresh in his mind, see the glossary at 
the end of the book. 

8 



First Years 

conveyed, and yet of having known her always, was a char- 
acteristic of that figure which later came to symbolize for me 
the whole essence of womanhood. 

From the period of my parents' separation I have another 
memory image: a young, very pretty and charming girl with 
blue eyes and fair hair is leading me, on a blue autumn day, 
under golden maple and chestnut trees along the Rhine below 
the Falls, near Worth castle. The sun is shining through the 
foliage, and yellow leaves lie on the ground. This girl later be- 
came my mother-in-law. She admired my father. I did not see 
her again until I was twenty-one years old. 

These are my outward memories. What follow now are more 
powerful, indeed overwhelming images, some of which I recall 
only dimly. There was a fall downstairs, for example, and an- 
other fall against the angle of a stove leg. I remember pain and 
blood, a doctor sewing a wound in my head the scar remained 
visible until my senior year at the Gymnasium. My mother told 
me, too, of the time when I was crossing the bridge over the 
Rhine Falls to Neuhausen. The maid caught me just in time I 
already had one leg under the railing and was about to slip 
through. These things point to an unconscious suicidal urge or, 
it may be, to a fatal resistance to life in this world. 

At that time I also had vague fears at night. I would hear 
things walking about in the house. The muted roar of the Rhine 
Falls was always audible, and all around lay a danger zone. 
People drowned, bodies were swept over the rocks. In the ceme- 
tery nearby, the sexton would dig a hole heaps of brown, 
upturned earth. Black, solemn men in long frock coats with 
unusually tall hats and shiny black boots would bring a black 
box. My father would be there in his clerical gown, speaking in 
a resounding voice. Women wept. I was told that someone was 
being buried in this hole in the ground. Certain persons who had 
been around previously would suddenly no longer be there. 
Then I would hear that they had been buried, and that Lord 
Jesus had taken them to himself. 

My mother had taught me a prayer which I had to say every 
evening. I gladly did so because it gave me a sense of comfort 
in face of the vague uncertainties of the night: 

9 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

Spread out thy wings, Lord Jesus mild, 
And take to thee thy chick, thy child. 
"If Satan would devour it, 
No harm shall overpower it," 
So let the angels sing! 2 

Lord Jesus was comforting, a nice, benevolent gentleman like 
Herr Wegenstein up at the castle, rich, powerful, respected, and 
mindful of little children at night. Why he should be winged 
like a bird was a conundrum that did not worry me any further. 
Far more significant and thought-provoking was the fact that 
little children were compared to chicks which Lord Jesus evi- 
dently "took" reluctantly, like bitter medicine. This was diffi- 
cult to understand. But I understood at once that Satan liked 
chicks and had to be prevented from eating them. So, although 
Lord Jesus did not like the taste, he ate them anyway, so that 
Satan would not get them. As far as that went, my argument 
was comforting. But now I was hearing that Lord Jesus "took** 
other people to himself as well, and that this "taking" was the 
same as putting them in a hole in the ground. 

This sinister analogy had unfortunate consequences. I began 
to distrust Lord Jesus. He lost the aspect of a big, comforting, 
benevolent bird and became associated with the gloomy black 
men in frock coats, top hats, and shiny black boots who busied 
themselves with the black box. 

These ruminations of mine led to my first conscious trauma. 
One hot summer day I was sitting alone, as usual, on the road in 
front of the house, playing in the sand. The road led past the 
house up a hill, then disappeared in the wood on the hilltop. So 
from the house you could see a stretch of the road. Looking up, 
I saw a figure in a strangely broad hat and a long black garment 
coming down from the wood. It looked like a man wearing 
women's clothes. Slowly the figure drew nearer, and I could now 

*Breit' aus die FliJtglein beide, 
O Jesu meine Freude 
Und nimm dein Kuchlein ein. 
Witt Satan es verschlfogen, 
Dann lass die Engel singen: 
Dies Kind soil unverletzet sein. 

10 



First ^ears 

see that it really was a man wearing a kind of black robe that 
reached to his feet. At the sight of him I was overcome with 
fear, which rapidly grew into deadly terror as the frightful 
recognition shot through my mind: "That is a Jesuit/' Shortly 
before, I had overheard a conversation between my father and a 
visiting colleague concerning the nefarious activities of the 
Jesuits. From the half-irritated, half-fearful tone of my father's 
remarks I gathered that "J esu; ft s " meant something specially 
dangerous, even for my father. Actually I had no idea what 
Jesuits were, but I was familiar with the word "Jesus" from my 
little prayer. 

The man coming down the road must be in disguise, I 
thought; that was why he wore women's clothes. Probably he 
had evil intentions. Terrified, I ran helter-skelter into the house, 
rushed up the stairs, and hid under a beam in the darkest corner 
of the attic. I don't know how long I remained there, but it must 
have been a fairly long time, because, when I ventured down 
again to the first floor and cautiously stuck my head out of the 
window, far and wide there was not a trace of the black figure to 
be seen. For days afterward the hellish fright clung to my limbs 
and kept me in the house. And even when I began to play in the 
road again, the wooded hilltop was still the object of my uneasy 
vigilance. Later I realized, of course, that the black figure was 
a harmless Catholic priest. 

At about the same time I could not say with absolute cer- 
tainty whether it preceded this experience or not I had the 
earliest dream I can remember, a dream which was to pre- 
occupy me all my life. I was then between three and four years 
old. 

The vicarage stood quite alone near Laufen castle, and there 
was a big meadow stretching back from the sexton s farm. In the 
dream I was in this meadow. Suddenly I discovered a dark, 
rectangular, stone-lined hole in the ground. I had never seen it 
before. I ran forward curiously and peered down into it. Then I 
saw a stone stairway leading down. Hesitantly and fearfully, I 
descended. At the bottom was a doorway with a round arch, 
closed off by a green curtain. It was a big, heavy curtain of 
worked stuff like brocade, and it looked very sumptuous. Curi- 

11 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

ous to see what might be hidden behind, I pushed it aside. I 
saw before me in the dim light a rectangular chamber about 
thirty feet long. The ceiling was arched and of hewn stone. The 
floor was laid with flagstones, and in the center a red carpet ran 
from the entrance to a low platform. On this platform stood a 
wonderfully rich golden throne. I am not certain, but perhaps a 
red cushion lay on the seat. It was a magnificent throne, a real 
king's throne in a fairy tale. Something was standing on it 
which I thought at first was a tree trunk twelve to fifteen feet 
high and about one and a half to two feet thick. It was a huge 
thing, reaching almost to the ceiling. But it was of a curious 
composition: it was made of skin and naked flesh, and on top 
there was something like a rounded head with no face and no 
hair. On the very top of the head was a single eye, gazing 
motionlessly upward. 

It was fairly light in the room, although there were no win- 
dows and no apparent source of light. Above the head, however, 
was an aura of brightness. The thing did not move, yet I had the 
feeling that it might at any moment crawl off the throne like a 
worm and creep toward me. I was paralyzed with terror. At that 
moment I heard from outside and above me my mother's voice. 
She called out, "Yes, just look at him. That is the man-eaterl" 
That intensified my terror still more, and I awoke sweating and 
scared to death. For many nights afterward I was afraid to go to 
sleep, because I feared I might have another dream like that. 

ITiis dream haunted me for years. Only much later did I 
realize that what I had seen was a phallus, and it was decades 
before I understood that it was a ritual phallus. I could never 
make out whether my mother meant, "That is the man-eater," 
or, "That is the man-eater." In the first case she would have 
meant that not Lord Jesus or the Jesuit was the devourer of little 
children, but the phallus; in the second case that the "man- 
eater" in general was symbolized by the phallus, so that the dark 
Lord Jesus, the Jesuit, and the phallus were identical. 

The abstract significance of the phallus is shown by the fact 
that it was enthroned by itself, "ithyphallically" (Wb 9 "up- 
rigjit"). The hole in the meadow probably represented a grave. 



12 



First Years 

The grave itself was an underground temple whose green curtain 
symbolized the meadow, in other words the mystery of Earth 
with her covering of green vegetation. The carpet was blood-red. 
What about the vault? Perhaps I had already been to the Mun6t, 
the citadel of Schaffhausen? This is not likely, since no one 
would take a three-year-old child up there. So it cannot be a 
memory-trace. Equally, I do not know where the anatomically 
correct phallus can have come from. The interpretation of the 
orificium wethrae as an eye, with the source of light apparently 
above it, points to the etymology of the word phallus ( 0aX6s, 
shining, bright). 8 

At all events, the phallus of this dream seems to be a sub- 
terranean God "not to be named," and such it remained 
throughout my youth, reappearing whenever anyone spoke too 
emphatically about Lord Jesus. Lord Jesus never became quite 
real for me, never quite acceptable, never quite lovable, for 
again and again I would think of his underground counterpart, 
a frightful revelation which had been accorded me without my 
seeking it. The Jesuit's "disguise'' cast its shadow over the 
Christian doctrine I had been taught. Often it seemed to me a 
solemn masquerade, a kind of funeral at which the mourners 
put on serious or mournful faces but the next moment were 
secretly laughing and not really sad at all. Lord Jesus seemed to 
me in some ways a god of death, helpful, it is true, in that he 
scared away the terrors of the night, but himself uncanny, a 
crucified and bloody corpse. Secretly, his love and kindness, 
which I always heard praised, appeared doubtful to me, chiefly 
because the people who talked most about "dear Lord Jesus" 
wore black frock coats and shiny black boots which reminded 
me of burials. They were my father's colleagues as well as eight 
of my uncles all parsons. For many years they inspired fear in 
me not to speak of occasional Catholic priests who reminded 
me of the terrifying Jesuit who had irritated and even alarmed 
my father. In later years and until my confirmation, I made 

*Cf. Symbols of Transformation (CW 5), p. 220. CW refers to the Collected 
Works of C. G. Jtuig, published by Princeton University Press. For a list of these 
works, see pp. 403-410. 

13 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

every effort to force myself to take the required positive attitude 
to Christ. But I could never succeed in overcoming my secret 
distrust. 

The fear of the "black man," which is felt by every child, was 
not the essential thing in that experience; it was, rather, the 
recognition that stabbed through my childish brain: "That is a 
Jesuit/ 7 So the important thing in the dream was its remarkable 
symbolic setting and the astounding interpretation: "That is 
the man-eater/' Not the child's ogre of a man-eater, but the fact 
that this was the man-eater, and that it was sitting on a golden 
throne beneath the earth, For my childish imagination it was 
first of all the king who sat on a golden throne; then, on a much 
more beautiful and much higher and much more golden throne 
far, far. away in the blue sky, sat God and Lord Jesus, with 
golden crowns and white robes. Yet from this same Lord Jesus 
came the "Jesuit;" in black women's garb, with a broad black 
hat, down from the wooded hill. I had to glance up there every 
so often to see whether another danger might not be approach- 
ing. In the dream I went down into the hole in the earth and 
found something very different on a golden throne, something 
non-human and underworldly, which gazed fixedly upward and 
fed on human flesh. It was only fifty years later that a passage in 
a study of religious ritual burned into my eyes, concerning the 
motif of cannibalism that underlies the symbolism of the Mass. 
Only then did it become clear to me how exceedingly unchild- 
like, how sophisticated and oversophisticated was the thought 
that had begun to break through into consciousness in those two 
experiences. Who was it speaking in me? Whose mind had de- 
vised them? What kind of superior intelligence was at work? I 
know every numbskull will babble on about "black man/' "man- 
eater," "chance," and "retrospective interpretation," in order to 
banish something terribly inconvenient that might sully the fa- 
miliar picture of childhood innocence. Ah, these good, efficient, 
healthy-minded people, they always remind me of those opti- 
mistic tadpoles who bask in a puddle in the sun, in the shallowest 
of waters, crowding together and amiably wriggling their tails, 
totally unaware that the next morning the puddle will have 
dried up and left them stranded. 

14 



First Years 

Who spoke to me then? Who talked of problems far beyond 
my knowledge? Who brought the Above and Below together, 
and laid the foundation for everything that was to fill the second 
half of my life with stormiest passion? Who but that alien guest 
who came both from above and from below? 

Through this childhood dream I was initiated into the secrets 
of the earth. What happened then was a kind of burial in the 
earth, and many years were to pass before I came out again. 
Today I know that it happened in order to bring the greatest 
possible amount of light into the darkness. It was an initiation 
into the realm of darkness. My intellectual life had its un- 
conscious beginnings at that time. 

I no longer remember our move to Klein-Hiiningen, near Basel, 
in 1879. But I do have a memory of something that happened 
several years later. One evening my father took me out of bed 
and carried me in his arms to our porch, which faced west. He 
showed me the evening sky, shimmering in the most glorious 
green. That was after the eruption of Krakatoa, in 1883. 

Another time my father took me outside and showed me a 
large comet on the eastern horizon. 

And once there was a great flood. The nver Wiese, which 
flowed through the village, had broken its dam, and in its upper 
reaches a bridge had collapsed. Fourteen people were drowned 
and were carried down by the yellow flood water to the Rhine. 
When the water retreated, some of the corpses got stuck in the 
sand. When I was told about it, there was no holding me. I 
actually found the body of a middle-aged man, in a black frock 
coat; apparently he had just come from church. He lay half 
covered by sand, his arm over his eyes. Similarly, I was fasci- 
nated to watch a pig being slaughtered. To the horror of my 
mother, I watched the whole procedure. She thought it terrible, 
but the slaughtering and the dead man were simply matters of 
interest to me. 

My earliest memories of art go back to those years at Klein- 
Hiiningen. The house where my parents lived was the 
eighteenth-century parsonage, and in it there was a dark room. 

15 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

Here all the furniture was good, and old paintings hung on the 
walls. I particularly remember an Italian painting of David and 
Goliath. It was a mirror copy from the workshop of Guido Reni; 
the original hangs in the Louvre. How it came into our family I 
do not know. There was another old painting in that room which 
now hangs in my son's house: a landscape of Basel dating from 
the early nineteenth century. Often I would steal into that dark, 
sequestered room and sit for hours in front of the pictures, 
gazing at all this beauty. It was the only beautiful thing I knew. 

About that time I must still have been a very little fellow, no 
more than six years old an aunt took me to Basel and showed 
me the stuffed animals in the museum. We stayed a long time, 
because I wanted to look at everything very carefully. At four 
o'clock the bell rang, a sign that the museum was about to 
close. My aunt nagged at me, but I could not tear myself away 
from the showcases. In the meantime the room had been locked, 
and we had to go by another way to the staircase, through the 
gallery of antiquities. Suddenly I was standing before these 
marvelous figures! Utterly overwhelmed, I opened my eyes 
wide, for I had never seen anything so beautiful. I could not look 
at them long enough. My aunt pulled me by the hand to the exit 
I trailing always a step behind her crying out, "Disgusting 
boy, shut your eyes; disgusting boy, shut your eyes!" Only then 
did I see that the figures were naked and wore fig leaves. I 
hadn't noticed it at all before. Such was my first encounter with 
the fine arts. My aunt was simmering with indignation, as 
though she had been dragged through a pornographic institute. 

When I was six years old, my parents took me on an excursion 
to Arlesheim. On this occasion my mother wore a dress I have 
never forgotten, and it is the only dress of hers that I can re- 
call: it was of some black stuff printed all over with little green 
crescents. My earliest recollection of my mother is of a slender 
young woman wearing this dress. In all my other memories she 
is older and corpulent. 

We came to a church, and my mother said, ''That is a Catholic 
church/' My curiosity, mingled with fear, prompted me to slip 
away from my mother and peer through the open door into the 
interior. I just had time to glimpse the big candles on a richly 

16 



First Years 

adorned altar (it was around Easter) when I suddenly stum- 
bled on a step and struck my chin on a piece of iron. I remember 
that I had a gash that was bleeding badly when my parents 
picked me up. My state of mind was curious: on the one hand I 
was ashamed because my screams were attracting the attention 
of the churchgoers, and on the other hand I felt that I had done 
something forbidden. "J esu * ts green curtain secret of the 
man-eater. ... So that is the Catholic Church which has to do 
with Jesuits. It is their fault that I stumbled and screamed." 

For years afterward I was unable to set foot inside a Catholic 
church without a secret fear of blood and falling and Jesuits. 
That was the aura or atmosphere that hung about it, but at the 
same time it always fascinated me. The proximity of a Catholic 
priest made me even more uneasy, if that were possible. Not 
until I was in my thirties was I able to confront Mater Ecclesia 
without this sense of oppression. The first time was in St. 
Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna. 

Soon after I was six my father began giving me Latin lessons, 
and I also went to school. I did not mind school; it was easy for 
me, since I was always ahead of the others and had learned to 
read before I went there. However, I remember a time when I 
could not yet read, but pestered my mother to read aloud to me 
out of the Orbis Pictus, an old, richly illustrated children's 
book, which contained an account of exotic religions, especially 
that of the Hindus. There were illustrations of Brahma, Vishnu, 
and Shiva which I found an inexhaustible source of interest. My 
mother later told me that I always returned to these pictures. 
Whenever I did so, I had an obscure feeling of their affinity 
with my "original revelation" which I never spoke of to any- 
one. It was a secret I must never betray. Indirectly, my mother 
confirmed this feeling, for the faint tone of contempt with which 
die spoke of "heathens" did not escape me. I knew that she 
would reject my "revelation" witlrhorror, and I did not want to 
expose myself to any such injury. 

This unchildlike behavior was connected on the one hand 
with an intense sensitivity and vulnerability, on the other hand 
and this especially with the loneliness of my early youth. 
(My sister was bora nine years after me.) I played alone, and 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

in my own way. Unfortunately I cannot remember what I 
played; I recall only that I did not want to be disturbed. I was 
deeply absorbed in my games and could not endure being 
watched or judged while I played them. My first concrete 
memory of games dates from my seventh or eighth year. I was 
passionately fond of playing with bricks, and built towers which 
I then rapturously destroyed by an "earthquake." Between my 
eighth and eleventh years I drew endlessly battle pictures, 
sieges, bombardments, naval engagements. Then I filled a 
whole exercise book with ink blots and amused myself giving 
them fantastic interpretations. One of my reasons for liking 
school was that there I found at last the playmates I had lacked 
for so long. 

At school, I also discovered something else. But before I go 
into this I should first mention that the nocturnal atmosphere 
had begun to thicken. All sorts of things were happening at 
night, things incomprehensible and alarming. My parents were 
sleeping apart. I slept in my father's room. From the door to my 
mother's room came frightening influences. At night Mother 
was strange and mysterious. One night I saw coming from her 
door a faintly luminous, indefinite figure whose head detached 
itself from the neck and floated along in front of it, in the air, 
like a little moon. Immediately another head was produced and 
again detached itself. This process was repeated six or seven 
times. I had anxiety dreams of things that were now small, now 
large. For instance, I saw a tiny ball at a great distance; gradu- 
ally it approached, growing steadily into a monstrous and suf- 
focating object. Or I saw telegraph wires with birds sitting on 
them, and the wires grew thicker and thicker and my fear 
greater until the terror awoke me. 

Although these dreams were overtures to the physiological 
changes of puberty, they had in their turn a prelude which 
occurred about my seventh year. At that time I was sick with 
pseudo-croup, accompanied by choking fits. One night during 
an attack I stood at the foot of the bed, my head bent back over 
the bed rail, while my father held me under the arms. Above me 
I saw a glowing blue circle about the size of the full moon, and 
inside it moved golden figures which I thought were angels. This 

18 



First Years 

vision was repeated, and each time it allayed my fear of suffoca- 
tion. But the suffocation returned in the anxiety dreams. I see in 
this a psychogenic factor: the atmosphere of the house was 
beginning to be unbreathable. 

I hated going to church. The one exception was Christmas 
Day. The Christmas carol "This Is the Day That God Has 
Made" pleased me enormously. And then in the evening, of 
course, came the Christmas tree. Christmas was the only Chris- 
tian festival I could celebrate with fervor. All others left me cold. 
New Year's Eve alone had something of the attractiveness of 
Christmas, but definitely took second place; Advent had a 
quality about it that somehow did not fit in with the coming 
Christmas. It had to do with night, storms, and wind, and also 
with the darkness of the house. There was something whisper- 
ing, something queer going on. 

I return now to the discovery I made in the course of as- 
sociating with my rustic schoolmates. I found that they alien- 
ated me from myself. When I was with them I became different 
from the way I was at home. I joined in their pranks, or invented 
ones which at home would never have occurred to me, so it 
seemed; although, as I knew only too well, I could hatch up 
all sorts of things when I was alone. It seemed to me that the 
change in myself was due to the influence of my schoolfellows, 
who somehow misled me or compelled me to be different from 
what I thought I was. The influence of this wider world, this 
world which contained others besides my parents, seemed to me 
dubious if not altogether suspect and, in some obscure way, 
hostile. Though I became increasingly aware of the beauty of 
the bright daylight world where "golden sunlight filters through 
green leaves," at the same time I had a premonition of an in- 
escapable world of shadows filled with frightening, unanswer- 
able questions which had me at their mercy. My nightly prayer 
did, of course, grant me a ritual protection since it concluded 
the day properly and just as properly ushered in night and 
sleep. But the new peril lurked by day. It was as if I sensed a 
splitting of myself, and feared it. My, inner security was threat- 
ened. 

I also recall from this period (seven, to nine) that I was fond 

19 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

of playing with fire. In our garden there was an old wall built 
of large blocks of stone, the interstices of which made interesting 
caves. I used to tend a little fire in one of these caves, with other 
children helping me; a fire that had to burn forever and there- 
fore had to be constantly maintained by our united efforts, 
which consisted in gathering the necessary wood. No one but 
myself was allowed to tend this fire. Others could light other 
fires in other caves, but these fires were profane and did not 
concern me. My fire alone was living and had an unmistakable 
aura of sanctity. 

In front of this wall was a slope in which was embedded a 
stone that jutted out my stone. Often, when I was alone, I sat 
down on this stone, and then began an imaginary game that 
went something like this: "I am sitting on top of this stone and 
it is underneath.'* But the stone also could say "I" and think: 
1 am lying here on this slope and he is sitting on top of me." 
The question then arose: "Am I the one who is sitting on the 
stone, or am I the stone on which he is sitting?" This question 
always perplexed me, and I would stand up, wondering who 
was what now. The answer remained totally unclear, and my 
uncertainty was accompanied by a feeling of curious and fasci- 
nating darkness. But there was no doubt whatsoever that this 
stone stood in some secret relationship to me. I could sit on it 
for hours, fascinated by the puzzle it set me. 

Thirty years later I again stood on that slope. I was a married 
man, had children, a house, a place in the world, and a head 
full of ideas and plans, and suddenly I was again the child who 
had kindled a fire full of secret significance and sat down on a 
stone without knowing whether it was I or I was it. I thought 
suddenly of my life in Zurich, and it seemed alien to me, like 
news from some remote world and time. This was frightening, 
for the world of my childhood in which I had just become 
absorbed was eternal, and I had been wrenched away from it 
and had fallen into a time that continued to roll onward, moving 
farther and farther away. The pull of that other world was so 
strong that I had to tear myself violently from the spot in order 
not to lose hold of my future. 

I have never forgotten that moment, for it illuminated in a 

20 



First 'Years 

flash of lightning the quality of eternity in my childhood. What 
this meant was revealed soon afterward, in my tenth year. My 
disunion with myself and uncertainty in the world at large led 
me to an action which at the time was quite incomprehensible 
to me. I had in those days a yellow, varnished pencil case of the 
kind commonly used by primary-school pupils, with a little lock 
and the customary ruler. At the end of this ruler I now carved a 
little manikin, about two inches long, with frock coat, top hat, 
and shiny black boots. I colored him black with ink, sawed him 
off the ruler, and put him in the pencil case, where I made him 
a little bed. I even made a coat for him out of a bit of wool. In 
the case I also placed a smooth, oblong blackish stone from the 
Rhine, which I had painted with water colors to look as though 
it were divided into an upper and lower half, and had long 
carried around in my trouser pocket. This was his stone. All this 
was a great secret. Secretly I took the case to the forbidden attic 
at the top of the house (forbidden because the floorboards were 
worm-eaten and rotten) and hid it with great satisfaction on 
one of the beams under the roof for no one must ever see it! I 
knew that not a soul would ever find it there. No one could dis- 
cover my secret and destroy it. I felt safe, and the tormenting 
sense of being at odds with myself was gone. In all difficult 
situations, whenever I had done something wrong or my feel- 
ings had been hurt, or when my father's irritability or my 
mother's invalidism oppressed me, I thought of my carefully 
bedded-down and wrapped-up manikin and his smooth, prettily 
colored stone. From time to time often at intervals of weeks I 
secretly stole up to the attic when I could be certain that no one 
would see me. Then I clambered up on the beam, opened the 
case, and looked at my manikin and his stone. Each time I did 
this I placed in the case a little scroll of paper on which I had 
previously written something during school hours in a secret 
language of my own invention. The addition of a new scroll 
always had the character of a solemn ceremonial act. Un- 
fortunately I cannot remember what I wanted to communicate 
to the manikin. I only know that my "letters" constituted a kind 
of library for him. I fancy, though I cannot be certain, that they 
may have consisted of sayings that particularly pleased me. 

21 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

The meaning of these actions, or how I might explain them, 
never worried me. I contented myself with the feeling of newly 
won security, and was satisfied to possess something that no one 
knew and no one could get at. It was an inviolable secret which 
must never be betrayed, for the safety of my life depended on 
it. Why that was so I did not ask myself. It simply was so. 

This possession of a secret had a very powerful formative in- 
fluence on my character; I consider it the essential factor of my 
boyhood. Similarly, I never told anyone about the dream of the 
phallus; and the Jesuit, too, belonged to that mysterious realm 
which I knew I must not talk about. The little wooden figure 
with the stone was a first attempt, still unconscious and childish, 
to give shape to the secret. I was always absorbed by it and 
had the feeling I ought to fathom it; and yet I did not know 
what it was I was trying to express. I always hoped I might be 
able to find something perhaps in nature that would give me 
the clue and show me where or what the secret was. At that 
time my interest in plants, animals, and stones grew. I was 
constantly on the lookout for something mysterious. Consciously, 
I was religious in the Christian sense, though always with the 
reservation: "But it is not so certain as all thatl" or, "What about 
that thing under the ground?" And when religious teachings 
were pumped into me and I was told, "This is beautiful and 
this is good/' I would think to myself: "Yes, but there is some- 
thing else, something very secret that people don't know about." 

The episode with the carved manikin formed the climax and 
the conclusion of my childhood. It lasted about a year. There- 
after I completely forgot the whole affair until I was thirty-five. 
Then this fragment of memory rose up again from the mists of 
childhood with pristine clarity. While I was engaged on the 
preliminary studies for my book Wandlungen und Symbole der 
Libido* I read about the cache of soul-stones near Arlesheim, 
and the Australian churingas. I suddenly discovered that I had 
a quite definite image of such a stone, though I had never seen 
any reproductions. It was oblong, blackish, and painted into an 
upper and lower half. This image was joined by that of the 

* Translated as Psychology of the Unconscious, 1917; revised edition, retitled 
Symbols of Transformation (CW 5), 1956. 



pencil box and the manikin. The manikin was a little cloaked 
god of the ancient world, a Telesphoros such as stands on the 
monuments of Asklepios and reads to him from a scroll. Along 
with this recollection there came to me, for the first time, the 
conviction that there are archaic psychic components which 
have entered the individual psyche without any direct line of 
tradition. My father's library which I examined only very 
much later contained not a single book which might have 
transmitted any such information. Moreover, my father demon- 
strably knew nothing about these things. 

When I was in England in 1920, I carved out of wood two 
similar figures without having the slightest recollection of that 
childhood experience. One of them I had reproduced on a 
larger scale in stone, and this figure now stands in my garden in 
Kiisnacht. Only while I was doing this work did the unconscious 
supply me with a name. It called the figure Atmavictu the 
"breath of life." It was a further development of that fearful tree 
of my childhood dream, which was now revealed as the "breath 
of life," the creative impulse. Ultimately, the manikin was a 
kabir, wrapped in his little cloak, hidden in the kista, and pro- 
vided with a supply of life-force, the oblong black stone. But 
these are connections which became clear to me only much later 
in life. When I was a child I performed the ritual just as I have 
seen it done by the natives of Africa; they act first and do not 
know what they are doing. Only long afterward do they re- 
flect on what they have done. 



II 



School Years 



My ELEVENTH YEAR was significant for me in an- 
other way, as I was then sent to the Gymnasium in 
Basel. Thus I was taken away from my rustic playmates, 
and truly entered the "great world," where powerful personages, 
far more powerful than my father, lived in big, splendid houses, 
drove about in expensive carriages drawn by magnificent horses, 
and talked a refined German and French. Their sons, well 
dressed, equipped with fine manners and plenty of pocket 
money, were now my classmates. With great astonishment and a 
horrible secret envy I heard them tell about their vacations in 
the Alps. They had been among those glowing snowy peaks near 
Zurich, had even been to the sea this last absolutely flabber- 
gasted me. I gazed upon them as if they were beings from 
another world, from that unattainable glory of flaming, snow- 
covered mountains and from the remote, unimaginable sea. 
Then, for the first time, I became aware how poor we were, that 
my father was a poor country parson and I a still poorer parson's 
son who had holes in his shoes and had to sit for six hours in 
school with wet socks. I began to see my parents with different 
eyes, and to understand their cares and worries. For my father 
in particular I felt compassion less, curiously enough, for my 

24 



School years 

mother. She always seemed to me the stronger of the two. 
Nevertheless I always felt on her side when my father gave vent 
to his moody irritability. This necessity for taking sides was not 
exactly favorable to the formation of my character. In order to 
liberate myself from these conflicts I fell into the role of the 
superior arbitrator who willy-nilly had to judge his parents. That 
caused a certain inflatedness in me; my unstable self-assurance 
was increased and diminished at the same time. 

When I was nine years old my mother had had a little girl. 
My father was excited and pleased. "Tonight you've been given 
a little sister/' he said to me,, and I was utterly surprised, for I 
hadn't noticed anything. I had thought nothing of my mother's 
lying in bed more frequently than usual, for I considered her 
taking to her bed an inexcusable weakness in any case. My father 
brought me to my mother's bedside, and she held out a little 
creature that looked dreadfully disappointing: a red, shrunken 
face like an old man's, the eyes closed, and probably as blind as 
a young puppy, I thought. On its back the thing had a few 
single long red hairs which were shown to me had it been 
intended for a monkey? I was shocked and did not know what 
to feel. Was this how newborn babies looked? They mumbled 
something about the stork which was supposed to have brought 
the baby. But then what about a litter of puppies or kittens? 
How many times would the stork have to fly back and forth be- 
fore the litter was complete? And what about cows? I could not 
imagine how the stork could manage to carry a whole calf in its 
bill. Besides, the farmers said the cow calved, not that the stork 
brought the calf. This story was obviously another of those 
humbugs which were always being imposed on me. I felt sure 
that my mother had once again done something I was supposed 
not to know about. 

This sudden appearance of my sister left me with a vague 
sense of distrust which sharpened my curiosity and observation. 
Subsequent odd reactions on the part of my mother confirmed 
my suspicions that something regrettable was connected with 
this birth. Otherwise this event did not bother me very much, 
though it probably contributed to intensifying an experience I 
had when I was twelve. 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

My mother had the unpleasant habit of calling after me all 
sorts of good advice when I was setting out for some place to 
which I had been invited. On these occasions I not only wore 
my best clothes and polished shoes, but felt the dignity of my 
purpose and of my appearance in public, so that it was a 
humiliation for me to have people on the street hear aU the 
ignominious things my mother called out after me, "And don't 
forget to give them regards from Papa and Mama, and wipe 
your nose do you have a handkerchief? Have you washed 
your hands?" And so on. It struck me as definitely unfair that 
the inferiority feelings which accompanied my self-importance 
should thus be exposed to the world when I had taken every 
care, out of amour-propre and vanity, to present as irreproach- 
able an appearance as possible. For these occasions meant a 
very great deal to me. On the way to the house to which I was 
invited I felt important and dignified, as I always did when I 
wore my Sunday clothes on a weekday. The picture changed 
radically, however, as soon as I came in sight of the house I was 
visiting. Then a sense of the grandeur and power of those people 
overcame me. I was afraid of them, and in my smallness wished 
I might sink fathoms deep into the ground. That was how I felt 
when I rang the bell. The tinkling sound from inside rang like 
the toll of doom in my ears. I felt as timid and craven as a stray 
dog. It was ever so much worse when my mother had prepared 
me properly beforehand. Then the bell would ring in my ears: 
"My shoes are filthy, and so are my hands; I have no handker- 
chief and my neck is black with dirt." Out of defiance I would 
then not convey my parents' regards, or I would act with un- 
necessary shyness and stubbornness. If things became too bad I 
would think of my secret treasure in the attic, and that helped 
me regain my poise. For in my forlorn state I remembered that 
I was also the "Other," the person who possessed that inviolable 
secret, the black stone and the little man in frock coat and 
top hat. 

I cannot recall in my boyhood ever having thought of the 
possibility of a connection between Lord Jesus or the Jesuit 
in the black robe the men in frock coats and top hats standing 
by the grave, the gravelike hole in the meadow, the under- 

26 



School years 

ground temple of the phallus, and my little man in the pencil 
case. The dream of the ithyphallic god was my first great secret; 
the manikin was the second. It does seem to me, however, 
that I had a vague sense of relationship between the "soul- 
stone" and the stone which was also myself. 

To this day, writing down my memories at the age of eighty- 
three, I have never fully unwound the tangle of my earliest 
memories. They are like individual shoots of a single under- 
ground rhizome, like stations on a road of unconscious develop- 
ment. While it became increasingly impossible for me to adopt 
a positive attitude to Lord Jesus, I remember that from the time 
I was eleven the idea of God began to interest me. I took to 
praying to God, and this somehow satisfied me because it was a 
prayer without contradictions. God was not complicated by 
my distrust. Moreover, he was not a person in a black robe, and 
not Lord Jesus of the pictures, draped with brightly colored 
clothes, with whom people behaved so familiarly. Rather he was 
a unique being of whom, so I heard, it was impossible to form 
any correct conception. He was, to be sure, something like a 
very powerful old man. But to my great satisfaction there was a 
commandment to the effect that "Thou shalt not make unto thee 
any graven image or any likeness of anything." Therefore one 
could not deal with him as familiarly as with Lord Jesus, who 
was no "secret." A certain analogy with my secret in the attic 
began to dawn on me. 

School came to bore me. It took up far too much time which 
I would rather have spent drawing battles and playing with fire. 
Divinity classes were unspeakably dull, and I felt a downright 
fear of the mathematics class. The teacher pretended that al- 
gebra was a perfectly natural affair, to be taken for granted, 
whereas I didn't even know what numbers really were. They 
were not flowers, not animals, not fossils; they were nothing that 
could be imagined, mere quantities that resulted from counting. 
To my confusion these quantities were now represented by 
letters, which signified sounds, so that it became possible to hear 
them, so to speak. Oddly enough, my classmates could handle 
these things and found them self-evident. No one could tell me 

27 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

what numbers were, and I was unable even to formulate the 
question. To my horror I found that no one understood my 
difficulty. The teacher, I must admit, went to great lengths 
to explain to me the purpose of this curious operation of trans- 
lating understandable quantities into sounds. I finally grasped 
that what was aimed at was a kind of system of abbreviation, 
with the help of which many quantities could be put in a short 
formula. But this did not interest me in the least. I thought the 
whole business was entirely arbitrary. Why should numbers 
be expressed by sounds? One might just as well express a by 
apple tree, b by box, and x by a question mark, a, b, c, x, y, z 
were not concrete and did not explain to me anything about the 
essence of numbers, any more than an apple tree did. But the 
thing that exasperated me most of all was the proposition: If 
a = b and b = c, then a = c, even though by definition a meant 
something other than b, and, being different, could therefore not 
be equated with &, let alone with c. Whenever it was a question 
of an equivalence, then it was said that a = a, b = &, and so on. 
This I could accept, whereas a = b seemed to me a downright 
lie or a fraud. I was equally outraged when the teacher stated in 
the teeth of his own definition of parallel lines that they met at 
infinity. This seemed to me no better than a stupid trick to 
catch peasants with, and I could not and would not have any- 
thing to do with it. My intellectual morality fought against 
these whimsical inconsistencies, which have forever debarred 
me from understanding mathematics. Right into old age I have 
had the incorrigible feeling that if, like my schoolmates, I could 
have accepted without a struggle the proposition that a = &, or 
that sun = moon, dog = cat, then mathematics might have 
fooled me endlessly just how much I only began to realize 
at the age of eighty-four. All my life it remained a puzzle to me 
why it was that I never managed to get my bearings in mathe- 
matics when there was no doubt whatever that I could calculate 
properly. Least of all did I understand my own moral doubts 
concerning mathematics. 

Equations I could comprehend only by inserting specific 
numerical values in place of the letters and verifying the mean- 
ing of the operation by actual calculation. As we went on in 

28 



School Years 

mathematics I was able to get along, more or less, by copying out 
algebraic formulas whose meaning I did not understand, and 
by memorizing where a particular combination of letters had 
stood on the blackboard. I could no longer make headway by 
substituting numbers, for from time to time the teacher would 
say, "Here we put the expression so-and-so," and then he would 
scribble a few letters on the blackboard. I had no idea where he 
got them and why he did it the only reason I could see was 
that it enabled him to bring the procedure to what he felt was a 
satisfactory conclusion. I was so intimidated by my incompre- 
hension that I did not dare to ask any questions. 

Mathematics classes became sheer terror and torture to me. 
Other subjects I found easy; and as, thanks to my good visual 
memory, I contrived for a long while to swindle my way through 
mathematics, I usually had good marks. But my fear of failure 
and my sense of smallness in face of the vast world around me 
created in me not only a dislike but a kind of silent despair 
which completely ruined school for me. In addition, I was 
exempted from drawing classes on grounds of utter incapacity. 
This in a way was welcome to me, since it gave me more free 
time; but on the other hand it was a fresh defeat, since I had 
some facility in drawing, although I did not realize that it de- 
pended essentially on the way I was feeling. I could draw only 
what stirred my imagination. But I was forced to copy prints of 
Greek gods with sightless eyes, and when that wouldn't go 
properly the teacher obviously thought I needed something 
more naturalistic and set before me the picture of a goat's head. 
This assignment I failed completely, and that was the end of 
my drawing classes. 

To my defeats in mathematics and drawing there was now 
added a third: from the very first I hated gymnastics. I could 
not endure having others tell me how to move. I was going to 
school in order to learn something, not to practice useless and 
senseless acrobatics. Moreover, as a result of my earlier acci- 
dents, 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 

29 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

filled with vague and incomprehensible perils. Therefore I al- 
ways wanted to know at the start to what and to whom I was 
entrusting myself. Was this perhaps connected with my mother, 
who had abandoned me for several months? When, as I shall 
describe later, my neurotic fainting spells began, the doctor 
forbade me to engage in gymnastics, much to my satisfaction. 
I was rid of that burden and had swallowed another defeat. 
The time thus gained was not spent solely on play. It per- 
mitted me to indulge somewhat more freely the absolute craving 
I had developed to read every scrap of printed matter that fell 
into my hands. 

My twelfth year was indeed a fateful one for me. One day in 
the early summer of 1887 1 was standing in the cathedral square, 
waiting for a classmate who went home by the same route as 
myself. It was twelve o'clock, and the morning classes were 
over. Suddenly another boy gave me a shove that knocked me 
off my feet, I fell, striking my head against the curbstone so hard 
that I almost lost consciousness. For about half an hour after- 
ward I was a little dazed. At the moment I felt the blow the 
thought flashed through my mind: "Now you won't have to go 
to school any more." I was only half unconscious, but I remained 
lying there a few moments longer than was strictly necessary, 
chiefly in order to avenge myself on my assailant. Then people 
picked me up and took me to a house nearby, where two elderly 
spinster aunts lived. 

From then on I began to have fainting spells whenever I 
had to return to school, and whenever my parents set me to 
doing my homework. For more than six months I stayed away 
from school, and for me that was a picnic. I was free, could 
dream for hours, be anywhere I liked, in the woods or by the 
water, or draw. I resumed my battle pictures and furious scenes 
of war, of old castles that were being assaulted or burned, or 
drew page upon page of caricatures. Similar caricatures some- 
times appear to me before falling asleep to this day, grinning 
masks that constantly move and change, among them familiar 
faces of people who soon afterward died. 

Above all, I was able to plunge into the world of the mysteri- 

30 



School 'years 

ous. To that realm belonged trees, a pool, the swamp, stones and 
animals, and my father's library. But I was growing more and 
more away from the world, and had all the while faint pangs of 
conscience. I frittered away my time with loafing, collecting, 
reading, and playing. But I did not feel any happier for it; I 
had the obscure feeling that I was fleeing from myself. 

I forgot completely how all this had come about, but I pitied 
my parents' worries. They consulted various doctors, who 
scratched their heads and packed me off to spend the holidays 
with relatives in Winterthur. This city had a railroad station that 
proved a source of endless delight to me. But when I returned 
home everything was as before. One doctor thought I had 
epilepsy. I knew what epileptic fits were like and I inwardly 
laughed at such nonsense. My parents became more worried 
than ever. Then one day a friend called on my father. They 
were sitting in the garden and I hid behind a shrub, for I was 
possessed of an insatiable curiosity. I heard the visitor saying 
to my father, "And how is your son?'* "Ah, that's a sad business," 
my father replied. "The doctors no longer know what is wrong 
with him. They think it may be epilepsy. It would be dreadful 
if he were incurable. I have lost what little I had, and what 
will become of the boy if he cannot earn his own living?" 

I was thunderstruck. This was the collision with reality. 
"Why, then, I must get to work!'* I thought suddenly. 

From that moment on I became a serious child. I crept away, 
went to my father's study, took out my Latin grammar, and 
began to cram with intense concentration. After ten minutes 
of this I had the finest of fainting fits. I almost fell off the chair, 
but after a few minutes I felt better and went on working. 
"Devil take it, I'm not going to faint," I told myself, and per- 
sisted in my purpose. This time it took about fifteen minutes 
before the second attack came. That, too, passed like the first. 
"And now you must really get to work!" I stuck it out, and 
after an hour came the third attack. Still I did not give up, and 
worked for another hour, until I had the feeling that I had 
overcome the attacks. Suddenly I felt better than I had in all 
the months before. And in fact the attacks did not ^ecur. From 
that day on I worked over my grammar and other schoolbooks 

3* 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

every day. A few weeks later I returned to school, and never 
suffered another attack, even there. The whole bag of tricks was 
over and done with! That was when I learned what a neurosis is. 

Gradually the recollection of how it had all come about re- 
turned to me, and I saw clearly that I myself had arranged 
this whole disgraceful situation. That was why I had never 
been seriously angry with the schoolmate who pushed me over. 
I knew that he had been put up to it, so to speak, and that the 
whole affair was a diabolical plot on my part. I knew, too, 
that this was never going to happen to me again. I had a feeling 
of rage against myself, and at the same time was ashamed of 
myself. For I knew that I had wronged myself and made a fool 
of myself in my own eyes. Nobody else was to blame; I was the 
cursed renegade! From then on I could no longer endure my 
parents' worrying about me or speaking of me in a pitying tone. 

The neurosis became another of my secrets, but it was a 
shameful secret, a defeat. Nevertheless it induced in me a 
studied punctiliousness and an unusual diligence. Those days 
saw the beginnings of my conscientiousness, practiced not for 
the sake of appearances, so that I would amount to something, 
but for my own sake. Regularly I would get up at five o'clock in 
order to study, and sometimes I worked from three in the morn- 
ing till seven, before going to school. 

What had led me astray during the crisis was my passion 
for being alone, my delight in solitude. Nature seemed to me 
full of wonders, and I wanted to steep myself in them. Every 
stone, every plant, every single thing seemed alive and in- 
describably marvelous. I immersed myself in nature, crawled, 
as it were, into the very essence of nature and away from the 
whole human world. 

I had another important experience at about this time. I was 
taking the long road to school from Klein-Hiiningen, 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. 

32 



School years 

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. Curiously enough, at 
this time and also during the months of my fainting neurosis 
I had lost all memory of the treasure in the attic. Otherwise I 
would probably have realized even then the analogy between 
my feeling of authority and the feeling of value which the 
treasure inspired in me. But that was not so; all memory of the 
pencil case had vanished. 

Around this time I was invited to spend the holidays with 
friends of the family who had a house on Lake Lucerne. To my 
delight the house was situated right on the lake, and there was a 
boathouse and a rowboat. My host allowed his son and me to 
use the boat, although we were sternly warned not to be reck- 
less. Unfortunately I also knew how to steer a Waidling ( a boat 
of the gondola type) that is to say, standing. At home we had 
such a punt, in which we had tried out every imaginable trick. 
The first thing I did, therefore, was to take my stand on the 
stern seat and with one oar push off into the lake. That was too 
much for the anxious master of the house. He whistled us back 
and gave me a first-class dressing-down. I was thoroughly crest- 
fallen but had to admit that I had done exactly what he had said 
not to, and that his lecture was quite justified. At the same time 
I was seized with rage that this fat, ignorant boor should dare to 
insult ME. This ME was not only grown up, but important, an 
authority, a person with office and dignity, an old man, an object 
of respect and awe. Yet the contrast with reality was so grotesque 
that in the midst of my fury I suddenly stopped myself, for the 
question rose to my lips: "Who in the world are you, anyway? 
You are reacting as though you were the devil only knows how 
important! And yet you know he is perfectly right. You are 
barely twelve years old, a schoolboy, and he is a father and a 
rich, powerful man besides, who owns two houses and several 
splendid horses." 

Then, to my intense confusion, it occurred to me that I was 
actually two different persons. One of them was the schoolboy 
who could not grasp algebra and was far from sure of himself; 

33 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

the other was important, a high authority, a man not to be 
trifled with, as powerful and influential as this manufacturer. 
This "other" was an old man who lived in the eighteenth century, 
wore buckled shoes and a white wig and went driving in a fly 
with high, concave rear wheels between which the box was 
suspended on springs and leather straps. 

This notion sprang from a curious experience I had had. When 
we were living in Klein-Huningen an ancient green carriage 
from the Black Forest drove past our house one day. It was 
truly an antique, looking exactly as if it had come straight out 
of the eighteenth century. When I saw it, I felt with great 
excitement: 'That's it! Sure enough, that comes from my times/* 
It was as though I had recognized it because it was die same 
type as the one I had driven in myself. Then came a curious 
sentiment 6coeurant, as though someone had stolen something 
from me, or as though I had been cheated cheated out of my 
beloved past. The carriage was a relic of those times! I cannot 
describe what was happening in me or what it was that affected 
me so strongly: a longing, a nostalgia, or a recognition that 
kept saying, "Yes, that's how it was! Yes, that's how it was!" 

I had still another experience that harked back to the eight- 
eenth century. At die home of one of my aunts I had seen an 
eighteenth-century statuette, an old terra-cotta piece consisting 
of two painted figures. One of them was old Dr. Stiickelberger, 
a well-known personality in the city of Basel toward the end of 
the eighteenth century. The other figure was a patient of his; 
she was depicted with closed eyes, sticking out her tongue. The 
story went that old Stiickelberger was one day crossing the 
Rhine bridge when this annoying patient suddenly came up to 
him out of nowhere and babbled out a complaint. Old Stiiclcel- 
berger said testily, "Yes, yes, there must be something wrong 
with you. Put out your tongue and shut your eyes." The woman 
did so, and Stiickelberger instantly ran off, and she remained 
standing there with her tongue stuck out, while the people 
laughed. This statuette of the old doctor had buckled shoes 
which in a strange way I recognized as my own. I was con- 
vinced that these were shoes I had worn. The conviction drove 
me wild with excitement. "Why, those must be my shoes!* I 

34 



School Years 

could still feel those shoes on my feet, and yet I could not ex- 
plain where this crazy feeling came from. I could not under- 
stand this identity I felt with the eighteenth century. Often in 
those days I would write the date 1786 instead of 1886, and 
each time this happened I was overcome by an inexplicable 
nostalgia. 

After my escapade with the boat, and my well-merited 
punishment, I began pondering these isolated impressions, and 
they coalesced into a coherent picture: of myself living in two 
ages simultaneously, and being two different persons. I felt 
confused, and was full to the brim with heavy reflections. At 
last I reached the disappointing realization that now, at any 
rate, I was nothing but the little schoolboy who had deserved 
his punishment, and who had to behave according to his age. 
The other person must be sheer nonsense. I suspected that he 
was somehow connected with the many tales I had heard from 
my parents and relatives about my grandfather. Yet that was 
not quite right either, for he had been born in 1795 and had 
therefore lived in the nineteenth century; moreover he had died 
long before I was born. It could not be that I was identical with 
him. At the time these considerations were, I should say, mostly 
in the form of vague glimmerings and dreams. I can no longer 
remember whether at that time I knew anything about my 
legendary kinship with Goethe. I think not, however, for I know 
that I first heard this tale from strangers. I should add that 
there is an annoying tradition that my grandfather was a natural 
son of Goethe. 1 

1 In regard to the legend, twice alluded to in this book, that Jung was a descend- 
ant of Goethe, he related: "The wife of my great-grandfather (Franz Ignaz Jung, 
d. 1831), Sophie Ziegler, and her sister were associated with the Mannheim 
Theater and were friends of many writers. The story goes that Sophie Ziegler had 
an illegitimate child hy Goethe, and that this child was my grandfather, Carl 
Gustav Jung. This was considered virtually an established fact. My grandfather 
says not a word about it in his diaries, however. He mentions only that he once 
saw Goethe in Weimar, and then merely from behind! Sophie Ziegler Jung was 
later friendly with Lotte Kestner, a niece of Goethe's "Lottchen." This Lotte fre- 
quently came to see my grandfather as, incidentally, did Franz Liszt. In later 
years Lotte Kestner settled in Basel, no doubt because of these close ties with the 
Jung family." 
No proof of this item of family tradition has been found in the available sources, 

35 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

One fine summer day that same year I came out of school at 
noon and went to the cathedral square. The sky was gloriously 
blue, the day one of radiant sunshine. The roof of the cathedral 
glittered, the sun sparkling from the new, brightly glazed tiles. 
I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the sight, and thought: 
"The world is beautiful and the church is beautiful, and God 
made all this and sits above it far away in the blue sky on 
a golden throne and . . ." Here came a great hole in my 
thoughts, and a choking sensation. I felt numbed, and knew 
only: "Don't go on thinking now! Something terrible is coming, 
something I do not want to think, something I dare not even 
approach. Why not? Because I would be committing the most 
frightful of sins. What is the most terrible sin? Murder? No, 
it can't be that. The most terrible sin is the sin against the Holy 
Ghost, which cannot be forgiven. Anyone who commits that sin 
is damned to hell for all eternity. That would be very sad for 
my parents, if their only son, to whom they are so attached, 
should be doomed to eternal damnation. I cannot do that to my 
parents. All I need do is not go on thinking." 

That was easier said than done. On my long walk home I 
tried to think all sorts of other things, but I found my thoughts 
returning again and again to the beautiful cathedral which I 
loved so much, and to God sitting on the throne and then my 
thoughts would fly off again as if they had received a powerful 
electric shock. I kept repeating to myself: "Don't think of it, 
just don't think of it!" I reached home in a pretty worked-up 
state. My mother noticed that something was wrong, and asked, 



the archives of the Goethehaus in Frankfurt am Main and the baptismal register 
in the Jesuitenkirche in Mannheim. Goethe was not in Mannheim at the period in 
question, and there is no record of Sophie Ziegler's staying in Weimar or anywhere 
in Goethe's vicinity. 

Jung used to speak of this stubbornly persistent legend with a certain gratified 
amusement, for it might serve to explain one subtle aspect of his fascination with 
Goethe's Faust; it belonged to an inner reality, as it were. On the other hand he 
would also call the story "annoying." He thought it "in bad taste" and maintained 
that the world was already full of "too many fools who tell such tales of the 'un- 
known father/ " Above all, he felt that the legitimate line of descent, in particu- 
lar from the learned Catholic doctor and jurist Carl Jung (d. 1645)- discussed 
at the end of Chapter VIII was equally significant.- A. J. 



School years 

'What is the matter with you? Has something happened at 
school?" I was able to assure her, without lying, that nothing 
had happened at school. I did have the thought that it might 
help me if I could confess to my mother the real reason for 
my turmoil. But to do so I would have to do the very thing that 
seemed impossible: think my thought right to the end. The 
poor dear was utterly unsuspecting and could not possibly 
know that I was in terrible danger of committing the unforgiv- 
able sin and plunging myself into hell. I rejected the idea of 
confessing and tried to efface myself as much as possible. 

That night I slept badly; again and again the forbidden 
thought, which I did not yet know, tried to break out, and I 
struggled desperately to fend it off. The next two days were 
sheer torture, and my mother was convinced that I was ill. 
But I resisted the temptation to confess, aided by the thought 
that it would cause my parents intense sorrow. 

On the third night, however, the torment became so unbear- 
able that I no longer knew what to do. I awoke from a restless 
sleep just in time to catch myself thinking again about the 
cathedral and God. I had almost continued the thought! I felt 
my resistance weakening. Sweating with fear, I sat up in bed to 
shake off sleep. "Now it is coming, now it's serious! I must think. 
It must be thought out beforehand. Why should I think some- 
thing I do not know? I don't want to, by God, that's sure. But 
who wants me to? Who wants to force me to think something I 
don't know and don't want to know? Where does this terrible 
will come from? And why should I be the one to be subjected to 
it? I was thinking praises of the Creator of this beautiful world, 
I was grateful to him for this immeasurable gift, so why should 
I have to think something inconceivably wicked? I don't know 
what it is, I really don't, for I cannot and must not come any- 
where near this thought, for that would be to risk thinking it at 
once. I haven't done this or wanted this, it has come on me 
like a bad dream. Where do such things come from? This has 
happened to me without my doing. Why? After all, I didn't 
create myself, I came into the world the way God made me 
that is, the way I was shaped by my parents. Or can it have been 
that my parents wanted something of this sort? But my good 

37 



parents would never have had any thoughts like that. Nothing 
so atrocious would ever have occurred to them." 

I found this idea utterly absurd. Then I thought of my grand- 
parents, whom I knew only from their portraits. They looked 
benevolent and dignified enough to repulse any idea that they 
might possibly be to blame. I mentally ran through the long 
procession of unknown ancestors until finally I arrived at Adam 
and Eve. And with them came the decisive thought: Adam and 
Eve were the first people; they had no parents, but were created 
directly by God, who intentionally made them as they were. 
They had no choice but to be exactly the way God had created 
them. Therefore they did not know how they could possibly 
be different. They were perfect creatures of God, for He creates 
only perfection, and yet they committed the first sin by doing 
what God did not want them to do. How was that possible? 
They could not have done it if God had not placed in them the 
possibility of doing it. That was clear, too, from the serpent, 
whom God had created before them, obviously so that it could 
induce Adam and Eve to sin. God in His omniscience had 
arranged everything so that the first parents would have to sin. 
Therefore it was Gods intention that they should sin. 

This thought liberated me instantly from my worst torment, 
since I now knew that God Himself had placed me in this 
situation. At first I did not know whether He intended me to 
commit my sin or not. I no longer thought of praying for 
illumination, since God had landed me in this fix without my 
willing it and had left me without any help. I was certain that 
I must search out His intention myself, and seek the way out 
alone. At this point another argument began. 

'What does God want? To act or not to act? I must find out 
what God wants with me, and I must find out right away." 
I was aware, of course, that according to conventional morality 
there was no question but that sin must be avoided. That was 
what I had been doing up to now, but I knew I could not go on 
doing it. My broken sleep and my spiritual distress had worn 
me out to such a point that fending off the thought was tying 
me into unbearable knots. This could not go on. At the same 
time, I could not yield before I understood what God's will 
was and what He intended. For I was now certain that He was 



the author of this desperate problem. Oddly enough, I did 
not think for a moment that the devil might be playing a 
trick on me. The devil played little part in my mental world at 
that time, and in any case I regarded him as powerless com- 
pared with God. But from the moment I emerged from the mist 
and became conscious of myself, the unity, the greatness, and 
the superhuman majesty of God began to haunt my imagination. 
Hence there was no question in my mind but that God Himself 
was arranging a decisive test for me, and that everything de- 
pended on my understanding Him correctly. I knew, beyond a 
doubt, that I would ultimately be compelled to break down, 
to give way, but I did not want it to happen without my 
understanding it, since the salvation of my eternal soul was at 



"God knows that I cannot resist much longer, and He does 
not help me, although I am on the point of having to commit 
the unforgivable sin. In His omnipotence He could easily lift 
this compulsion from me, but evidently He is not going to. 
Can it be that He wishes to test my obedience by imposing on 
me the unusual task of doing something against my own moral 
judgment and against the teachings of my religion, and even 
against His own commandment, something I am resisting with 
aU my strength because I fear eternal damnation? Is it possible 
that God wishes to see whether I am capable of obeying His 
will even though my faith and my reason raise before me the 
specters of death and hell? That might really be the answerl 
But these are merely my own thoughts. I may be mistaken. I 
dare not trust my own reasoning as far as that. I must think it all 
through once more." 

I thought it over again and arrived at the same conclusion. 
"Obviously God also desires me to show courage," I thought. 
'If that is so and I go through with it, then He wfll give me His 
grace and illumination." 

I gathered all my courage, as though I were about to leap 
forthwith into hell-fire, and let the thought come. I saw before 
me thte cathedral, the blue sky. God sits on His golden throne, 
high above the world and from under the throne an enormous 
turd falls upon the sparkling new roof, shatters it, and breaks 
the walls of the cathedral asunder. 

39 



So that was itl I felt an enormous, an indescribable relief. 
Instead of the expected damnation, grace had come upon me, 
and with it an unutterable bliss such as I had never known. 
I wept for happiness and gratitude. The wisdom and goodness 
of God had been revealed to me now that I had yielded to His 
inexorable command. It was as though I had experienced an 
illumination. A great many things I had not previously under- 
stood became clear to me. That was what my father had not 
understood, I thought; he had failed to experience the will 
of God, had opposed it for the best reasons and out of the deep- 
est faith. And that was why he had ^never experienced the 
miracle of grace which heals all and makes all comprehensible. 
He had taken the Bible's commandments as his guide; he be- 
lieved in God as the Bible prescribed and as his forefathers had 
taught him. But he did not know the immediate living God 
who stands, omnipotent and free, above His Bible and His 
Church, who calls upon man to partake of His freedom, and 
can force him to renounce his own views and convictions in 
order to fulfill without reserve the command of God. In His 
trial of human courage God refuses to abide by traditions, no 
matter how sacred. In His omnipotence He will see to it that 
nothing really evil comes of such tests of courage. If one fulfills 
the will of God one can be sure of going the right way. 

God had also created Adam and Eve in such a way that they 
had to think what they did not at all want to think. He had 
done that in order to find out whether they were obedient. And 
He could also demand something of me that I would have had 
to reject on traditional religious grounds. It was obedience 
which brought me grace, and after that experience I knew what 
God's grace was. One must be utterly abandoned to God; noth- 
ing matters but fulfilling His will. Otherwise all is folly and 
meaninglessness. From that moment on, when I experienced 
grace, my true responsibility began. Why did God befoul His 
cathedral? That, for me, was a terrible thought. But then came 
the dim understanding that God could be something terrible. I 
had experienced a dark and terrible secret. It overshadowed my 
whole life, and I became deeply pensive. 

The experience also had the effect of increasing my sense of 

40 



inferiority. I am a devil or a swine, I thought; I am infinitely 
depraved. But then I began searching through the New Testa- 
ment and read, with a certain satisfaction, about the Pharisee 
and the publican, and that reprobates are the chosen ones. It 
made a lasting impression on me that the unjust steward was 
praised, and that Peter, the waverer, was appointed the rock 
upon which the Church was built. 

The greater my inferiority feelings became, the more in- 
comprehensible did God's grace appear to me. After all, I had 
never been sure of myself. When my mother once said to me, 
"You have always been a good boy," I simply could not grasp it. 
I a good boy? That was quite new to me. I often thought of 
myself as a corrupt and inferior person, 

With the experience of God and the cathedral I at last had 
something tangible that was part of the great secret as if I had 
always talked of stones falling from heaven and now had one 
in my pocket. But actually, it was a shaming experience. I had 
fallen into something bad, something evil and sinister, though 
at the same time it was a kind of distinction. Sometimes I had 
an overwhelming urge to speak, not about that, but only to 
hint that there were some curious things about me. which no 
one knew of. I wanted to find out whether other people had 
undergone similar experiences, I never succeeded in discovering 
so much as a trace of them in others. As a result, I had the 
feeling that I was either outlawed or elect, accursed or blessed. 

It would never have occurred to me to speak of my experience 
openly, nor of my dream of the phallus in the underground 
temple, nor of my carved manikin. As a matter of fact, I did not 
say anything about the phallus dream until I was sixty-five. 
I may have spoken about the other experiences to my wife, but 
only in later years. A strict taboo hung over all these matters, 
inherited from my childhood. I could never have talked about 
them with friends. 

My entire youth can be understood in terms of this secret. 
It iiiduced in me an almost unendurable loneliness. My one 
great achievement during those years was that I resisted the 
temptation to talk about it with anyone. Thus the pattern of my 
relationship to the world was already prefigured: today as 

41 



then I am a solitary, because I know things and must hint at 
things which other people do not know, and usually do not 
even want to know. 

In my mother's family there were six parsons, and on my 
father's side not only was my father a parson but two of my 
uncles also. Thus I heard many religious conversations, theo- 
logical discussions, and sermons. Whenever I listened to them 
I had the feeling: "Yes, yes, that is all very well. But what about 
the secret? The secret is also the secret of grace. None of you 
know anything about that. You don't know that God wants to 
force me to do wrong, that He forces me to think abominations 
in order to experience His grace." Everything the others said 
was completely beside the point. I thought, "For Heaven's sake, 
there must be someone who knows something about it; some- 
where there must be the truth/' I rummaged through my father's 
library, reading whatever I could on God, the Trinity, spirit, 
consciousness. I devoured the books, but came away none the 
wiser. I always found myself thinking, "They don't know either." 
I even searched about in my father's Luther Bible. Unfortu- 
nately, the conventional "edifying" interpretation of Job pre- 
vented me from taking a deeper interest in this book. I would 
have found consolation in it, especially in chapter 9, verses 30 ff.: 
"Though I wash myself with snow water . . , yet shalt thou 
plunge me in the mire." 

Later my mother told me that in those days I was often de- 
pressed. It was not really that; rather, I was brooding on the 
secret. At such times it was strangely reassuring and calming 
to sit on my stone. Somehow it would free me of all my doubts. 
Whenever I thought that I was the stone, the conflict ceased. 
"The stone has no uncertainties, no urge to communicate, and 
is eternally the same for thousands of years," I would think, 
"while I am only a passing phenomenon which bursts into all 
kinds of emotions, like a flame that flares up quickly and then 
goes out." I was but the sum of my emotions, and the Other in 
me was the timeless, imperishable stone. 

At that time, too, there arose in me profound doubts about 
everything my father said. When I heard him preaching about 

4* 



grace, I always thought of my own experience. What he said 
sounded stale and hollow, like a tale told by someone who knows 
it only by hearsay and cannot quite believe it himself. I wanted 
to help him, but I did not know how. Moreover, I was too shy to 
tell him of my experience, or to meddle in his personal pre- 
occupations. I felt myself to be on the one hand too little, and 
on the other hand I was afraid to wield that authority which 
my "second personality" inspired in me. 

Later, when I was eighteen years old, I had many discussions 
with my father, always with the secret hope of being able to 
let him know about the miracle of grace, and thereby help to 
mitigate his pangs of conscience. I was convinced that if he 
fulfilled the will of God everything would turn out for the best. 
But our discussions invariably came to an unsatisfactory end. 
They irritated him, and saddened him. "Oh nonsense," he was 
in the habit of saying, "you always want to think. One ought 
not to think, but believe." I would think, "No, one must experi- 
ence and know," but I would say, "Give me this belief/' where- 
upon he would shrug and turn resignedly away. 

I began making friendships, mostly with shy boys of simple 
origins. My marks in school improved. During the following 
years I even succeeded in reaching the top of the class. However, 
I observed that below me were schoolmates who envied me and 
tried at every opportunity to catch up with me. That spoiled my 
pleasure. I hated all competition, and if someone played a game 
too competitively I turned my back on the game. Thereafter 
I remained second in the class, and found this considerably 
more enjoyable. Schoolwork was a nuisance enough anyway 
without my wanting to make it harder by competitiveness. A 
very few teachers, whom I remember with gratitude, showed 
particular confidence in me. The one I recall with the greatest 
pleasure was the Latin teacher. He was a university professor 
and a very clever fellow. As it happened, I had known Latin 
since I was six, because my father had given me lessons in it. 
So, instead of making me sit in class, this teacher would often 
send me to the university library to fetch books for him, and I 
would joyfully dip into them while prolonging the walk back 
as much as possible. 

43 



Most of the teachers thought me stupid and crafty. Whenever 
anything went wrong in school I was the first on whom suspicion 
rested. If there was a row somewhere, I was thought to be the 
instigator. In reality I was involved in such a brawl only once, 
and it was then that I discovered that a number of my school- 
mates were hostile to me. Seven of them lay in ambush for me 
and suddenly attacked me. I was big and strong by then- 
it was when I was fifteen and inclined to violent rages. I 
suddenly saw red, seized one of the boys by both arms, swung 
him around me and with his legs knocked several of the others 
to the ground. The teachers found out about the affair, but I 
only dimly remember some sort of punishment which seemed 
to me unjust. From then on I was let alone. No one dared to 
attack me again. 

To have enemies and be accused unjustly was not what I had 
expected, but somehow I did not find it incomprehensible. 
Everything I was reproached for irritated me, but I could not 
deny these reproaches to myself. I knew so little about myself, 
and the little was so contradictory that I could not with a good 
conscience reject any accusations. As a matter of fact I always 
had a guilty conscience and was aware of both actual and poten- 
tial faults. For that reason I was particularly sensitive to re-^ 
proofs, since all of them more or less struck home. Although I 
had not in reality done what I was accused of, I felt that I 
might have done it. I would even draw up a list of alibis in 
case I should be accused of something. I felt positively re- 
lieved when I had actually done something wrong. Then at 
least I knew what my guilty conscience was for. 

Naturally I compensated my inner insecurity by an outward 
show of security, or to put it better the defect compensated 
itself without the intervention of my will. That is, I found myself 
being guilty and at the same time wishing to be innocent. Some- 
where deep in the background I always knew that I was two 
persons. One was the son of my parents, who went to school 
and was less intelligent, attentive, hard-working, decent, and 
clean than many other boys. The other was grown up old, in 
fact skeptical, mistrustful, remote from the world of men, but 
close to nature, the earth, the sun, the moon, the weather, all 

44 



living creatures, and above all close to the night, to dreams, and 
to whatever "God" worked directly in him. I put "God" in quo- 
tation marks here. For nature seemed, like myself, to have been 
set aside by God as non-divine, although created by Him as an 
expression of Himself. Nothing could persuade me that "in the 
image of God" applied only to man. In fact it seemed to me that 
the high mountains, the rivers, lakes, trees, flowers, and animals 
far better exemplified the essence of God than men with their 
ridiculous clothes, their meanness, vanity, mendacity, and ab- 
horrent egotism all qualities with which I was only too familiar 
from myself, that is, from personality No. i, the schoolboy of 
1890. Besides his world there existed another realm, like a 
temple in which anyone who entered was transformed and sud- 
denly overpowered by a vision of the whole cosmos, so that he 
could only marvel and admire, forgetful of himself. Here lived 
the "Other," who knew God as a hidden, personal, and at the 
same time suprapersonal secret. Here nothing separated man 
from God; indeed, it was as though the human mind looked 
down upon Creation simultaneously with God. 

What I am here unfolding, sentence by sentence, is some- 
thing I was then not conscious of in any articulate way, 
though I sensed it with an overpowering premonition and inten- 
sity of feeling. At such times I knew I was worthy of myself, 
that I was my true self. As soon as I was alone, I could pass 
over into this state. I therefore sought the peace and solitude of 
this "Other," personality No. 2. 

The play and counterplay between personalities No. i and 
No. 2, which has run through my whole life, has nothing to 
do with a "split" or dissociation in the ordinary medical sense. 
On the contrary, it is played out in every individual. In my life 
No. 2 has been of prime importance, and I have always tried to 
make room for anything that wanted to come to me from within. 
He is a typical figure, but he is perceived only by the very few. 
Most people's conscious understanding is not sufficient to 
realize that he is also what they are. 

Church gradually became a place of torment to me. For there 
men dared to preach aloud I am tempted to say, shamelessly 

45 



about God, about His intentions and actions. There people were 
exhorted to have those feelings and to believe that secret which 
I knew to be the deepest, innermost certainty, a certainty not to 
be betrayed by a single word. I could only conclude that 
apparently no one knew about this secret, not even the parson, 
for otherwise no one would have dared to expose the mystery of 
God in public and to profane those inexpressible feelings with 
stale sentimentalities. Moreover, I was certain that this was the 
wrong way to reach God, for I knew, knew from experience, that 
this grace was accorded only to one who fulfilled the will of 
God without reservation. This was preached from the pulpit, 
too, but always on the assumption that revelation had made the 
will of God plain. To me, on the other hand, it seemed the most 
obscure and unknown thing of all. To me it seemed that one's 
duty was to explore daily the will of God. I did not do that, 
but I felt sure that I would do it as soon as an urgent reason 
for so doing presented itself. Personality No. i preoccupied 
me too much of the time. It often seemed to me that religious 
precepts were being put in place of the will of God which 
could be so unexpected and so alarming for the sole purpose 
of sparing people the necessity for understanding God's will. 
I grew more and more skeptical, and my father's sermons and 
those of other parsons became acutely embarrassing to me. All 
the people about me seemed to take the jargon for granted, and 
the dense obscurity that emanated from it; thoughtlessly they 
swallowed all the contradictions, such as that God is omniscient 
and therefore foresaw all human history, and that he actually 
created human beings so that they would have to sin, and 
nevertheless forbids them to sin and even punishes them by 
eternal damnation in hell-fire. 

For a long time the devil had played no part in my thinking, 
curiously enough. The devil appeared to me no worse than a 
powerful man's vicious watchdog, chained up. Nobody had any 
responsibility for the world except God, and, as I knew only too 
well, He could be terrible. My doubts and uneasiness increased 
whenever I heard my father in his emotional sermons speak of 
the "good" God, praising God's love for man and exhorting 
man to love God in return. "Does he really know what he is 



talking about?" I wondered. "Could he have me, his son, put to 
the knife as a human sacrifice, like Isaac, or deliver him to an 
unjust court which would have him crucified like Jesus? No, 
he could not do that. Therefore in some cases he could not do 
the will of God, which can be absolutely terrible, as the Bible 
itself shows." It became clear to me that when people are ex- 
horted, among other things, to obey God rather than man, this 
is said just casually and thoughtlessly. Obviously we do not 
know the will of God at all, for if we did we would treat this 
central problem with awe, if only out of sheer fear of the over- 
powering God who can work His terrifying will on helpless 
human beings, as He had done to me. Could anyone who pre- 
tended to know the will of God have foreseen what He had 
caused me to do? In the New Testament, at any rate, there was 
nothing comparable. The Old Testament, and especially the 
Book of Job, might have opened my eyes in this respect, but 
at that time I was not familiar enough with it. Nor had I heard 
anything of the sort in the instruction for confirmation, which I 
was then receiving. The fear of God, which was of course men- 
tioned, was considered antiquated, "Jewish," and long since 
superseded by the Christian message of God's love and good- 
ness. 

The symbolism of my childhood experiences and the violence 
of the imagery upset me terribly. I asked myself: "Who talks 
like that? Who has the impudence to exhibit a phallus so 
nakedly, and in a shrine? Who makes me think that God de- 
stroys His Church in this abominable manner?" At last I asked 
myself whether it was not the devil's doing. For that it must 
have been God or the devil who spoke and acted in this way 
was something I never doubted. I felt absolutely sure that it 
was not myself who had invented these thoughts and images. 

These were the crucial experiences of my life. It was then 
that it dawned oh me: I must take the responsibility, it is up to 
me how my fate turns out. I had been confronted with a problem 
to which I had to find the answer. And who posed the problem? 
Nobody ever answered me that. I knew that I had to find the 
answer out of my deepest self, that I was alone before God, and 
that God alone asked me these terrible things. 

47 



Memories, vreams, nejiecnons 

From the beginning I had a sense of destiny, as though my 
life was assigned to me by fate and had to be fulfilled. This gave 
me an inner security, and, though I could never prove it to 
myself, it proved itself to me. I did not have this certainty, it 
had me. Nobody could rob me of the conviction that it was 
enjoined upon me to do what God wanted and not what I 
wanted. That gave me the strength to go my own way. Often 
I had the feeling that in all decisive matters I was no longer 
among men, but was alone with God. And when I was "there," 
where I was no longer alone, I was outside time; I belonged to 
the centuries; and He who then gave answer was He who had 
always been, who had been before my birth. He who always 
is was there. These talks with the "Other" were my profoundest 
experiences: on the one hand a bloody struggle, on the other 
supreme ecstasy. 

Naturally, I could not talk with anyone about these things. 
I knew of no one to whom I. might have communicated them 
except, possibly, my mother. She seemed to think along some- 
what similar lines as myself. But I soon noticed that in conversa- 
tion she was not adequate for me. Her attitude toward me was 
above all one of admiration, and that was not good for me. And 
so I remained alone with my thoughts. On the whole, I liked that 
best, I played alone, daydreamed or strolled in the woods alone, 
and had a secret world of my own. 

My mother was a very good mother to me. She had a hearty 
animal warmth, cooked wonderfully, and was most companion- 
able and pleasant. She was very stout, and a ready listener. 
She also liked to talk, and her chatter was like the gay plashing 
of a fountain. She had a decided literary gift, as well as taste 
and depth. But this quality never properly emerged; it remained 
hidden beneath the semblance of a kindly, fat old woman, 
extremely hospitable, and possessor of a great sense of humor. 
She held all the conventional opinions a person was obliged to 
have, but then her unconscious personality would suddenly put 
in an appearance. That personality was unexpectedly powerful: 
a somber, imposing figure possessed of unassailable authority 
and no bones about it. I was sure that she consisted of two 
personalities, one innocuous and human, the other uncanny. 



School fears 

This other emerged only now and then, but each time it was 
unexpected and frightening. She would then speak as if talking 
to herself, but what she said was aimed at me and usually struck 
to the core of my being, so that I was stunned into silence. 

The first time I remember this happening was when I was 
about six years old. At that time we had neighbors who were 
fairly well off. They had three children, the eldest a boy of 
about my own age, and two younger sisters. They were city 
folk who, especially on Sundays, dressed their children in a 
manner that seemed ridiculous to me ^patent-leather shoes, 
white frills, little white gloves. Even on weekdays the children 
were scrubbed and combed. They had fancy manners and 
anxiously kept their distance from the tough, rude boy with 
tattered trousers, holes in his shoes, and dirty hands. My mother 
annoyed me no end with her comparisons and admonishments: 
"Now look at those nice children, so well brought up and polite, 
but you behave like a little lout/' Such exhortations humiliated 
me, and I decided to give the boy a hiding which I did. His 
mother was furious, hastened to mine and made a great to-do 
over my act of violence. My mother was properly horrified and 
gave me a lecture, spiced with tears, longer and more passionate 
than anything I had ever heard from her before. I had not been 
conscious of any fault; on the contrary, I was feeling pretty 
pleased with myself, for it seemed to me that I had somehow 
made amends for the incongruous presence of this stranger in 
our village. Deeply awed by my mother's excitement, I with- 
drew penitently to my table behind our old spinet and began 
playing with my bricks. For some time there was silence in the 
room. My mother had taken her usual seat by the window, and 
was knitting. Then I heard her muttering to herself, and from 
occasional words that I picked up I gathered that she was think- 
ing about the incident, but was now taking another view of it. 
Suddenly she said aloud, "Of course one should never have 
kept a litter like thatl" I realized at once that she was talking 
about those **dressed-up monkeys." Her favorite brother was a 
hunter who kept dogs and was always talking about dog breed- 
ing, mongrels, purebreds, and litters. To my relief I realized that 
she too regarded those odious children as inferior whelps, and 

49 



that her scolding therefore need not be taken at face value. 
But I also knew, even at that age, that I must keep perfectly 
still and not come out triumphantly with: "You see, you think 
as I do!" She would have repudiated the idea indignantly: **You 
horrid boy, how dare you pretend such a thing about your 
mother!'* I conclude from this that I must already have had 
earlier experiences of a similar nature which I have forgotten. 

I tell this story because at the time of my growing religious 
skepticism there was another instance which threw light on my 
mother's twofold nature. At table one day the talk turned on the 
dullness of the tunes of certain hymns. A possible revision of the 
hymnal was mentioned. At that my mother murmured, "O du 
Liebe meiner Liebe, du vertounschte* Seligkeif (O thou love 
of my love, thou accursed bliss ) . As in the past I pretended that 
I had not heard and was careful not to cry out in glee, in spite of 
my feeling of triumph. 

There was an enormous difference between my mother's two 
personalities. That was why as a child I often had anxiety 
dreams about her. By day she was a loving mother, but at night 
she seemed uncanny. Then she was like one of those seers who 
is at the same time a strange animal, like a priestess in a bear's 
cave. Archaic and ruthless; ruthless as truth and nature. At 
such moments she was the embodiment of what I have called 
the "natural mind." 8 

I too have this archaic nature, and in me it is linked with the 
gift not always pleasant of seeing people and things as they 
are, I can let myself be deceived from here to Tipperary when 

1 don't want to recognize something, and yet at bottom I know 
quite well how matters really stand. In this I am like a dog 
he can be tricked, but he always smells it out in the end. This 
"insight" is based on instinct, or on a "participation mystique" 
with others. It is as if the "eyes of the background" do the 
seeing in an impersonal act of perception. 

2 Slip of the tongue for erwunscht (longed for). 

s The "natural mind" is the "mind which says absolutely straight and ruthless 
things." (Seminar on Interpretation of Visions [Zurich, privately printed, 1940], 
V, p. iv.) "That is the sort of mind which springs from natural sources, and not 
from opinions taken from books; it wells up from the earth like a natural spring, 
and brings with it the peculiar wisdom of nature." (Ibid., VI, p. 34.) 

50 



School Years 

This was something I did not realize until much later, when 
some very strange things happened to me. For instance, there 
was the time when I recounted the life story of a man without 
knowing him. It was at the wedding of a friend of my wife's; 
the bride and her family were all entirely unknown to me. 
During the meal I was sitting opposite a middle-aged gentleman 
with a long, handsome beard, who had been introduced to me 
as a barrister. We were having an animated conversation about 
criminal psychology. In order to answer a particular question 
of his, I made up a story to illustrate it, embellishing it with 
all sorts of details. While I was telling my story, I noticed that 
a quite different expression came over the man's face, and a 
silence fell on the table. Very much abashed, I stopped speaking. 
Thank heavens we were already at the dessert, so I soon stood 
up and went into the lounge of the hotel. There I withdrew into a 
corner, lit a cigar, and tried to think over the situation. At this 
moment one of the other guests who had been sitting at my table 
came over and asked reproachfully, "How did you ever come 
to commit such a frightful indiscretion?" "Indiscretion?" "Why 
yes, that story you told." "But I made it all up!" 

To my amazement and horror it turned out that I had told 
the story of the man opposite me, exactly and in all its details. 
I also discovered, at this moment, that I could no longer remem- 
ber a single word of the story even to this day I have been 
unable to recall it. In his Selbstschau, Zschokke* describes a 
similar incident: how once, in an inn, he was able to unmask 
an unknown young man as a thief, because he had seen the 
theft being committed before his inner eye. 

In the course of my life it has often happened to me that I 
suddenly knew something which I really could not know at all. 
The knowledge came to me as though it were my own idea. It 
was the same with my mother. She did not know what she was 
saying; it was like a voice wielding absolute authority, which 
said exactly what fitted the situation. 

My mother usually assumed that I was mentally far beyond 

* Johann Heinrich Daniel Zschokke ( 1771-1848), Swiss author of historical novels 
and studies in Swiss and Bavarian history. Cf. Civilization in Transition (CW 
10, par. 850). 

51 



my age, and she would talk to me as to a grown-up. It was plain 
that she was telling me everything she could not say to my 
father, for she early made me her confidant and confided her 
troubles to me. Thus, I was about eleven years old when she 
informed me of a matter that concerned my father and alarmed 
me greatly. I racked my brains, and at last came to the conclu- 
sion that I must consult a certain friend of my father's whom I 
knew by hearsay to be an influential person. Without saying a 
word to my mother, I went into town one afternoon after school 
and called at this man's house. The maid who opened the door 
told me that he was out. Depressed and disappointed, I returned 
home. But it was by the mercy of providence that he was not 
there. Soon afterward my mother again referred to this matter, 
and this time gave me a very different and far milder picture 
of the situation, so that the whole thing went up in smoke. That 
struck me to the quick, and I thought: "What an ass you were to 
believe it, and you nearly caused a disaster with your stupid 
seriousness/' From then on I decided to divide everything my 
mother said by two. My confidence in her was strictly limited, 
and that was what prevented me from ever telling her about 
my deeper preoccupations. 

But then came the moments when her second personality 
burst forth, and what she said on those occasions was so true 
and to the point that I trembled before it. If my mother could 
then have been pinned down, I would have had a wonderful 
interlocutor, 

With my father it was quite different. I would have liked to 
Jay my religious difficulties before him and ask him for ad- 
vice, but I did not do so because it seemed to me that I knew in 
advance what he would be obliged to reply out of respect for his 
office. How right I was in this assumption was demonstrated to 
me soon afterward. My father personally gave me my instruction 
for confirmation. It bored me to death. One day I was leafing 
through the catechism, hoping to find something besides the 
sentimental-sounding and usually incomprehensible as well as 
uninteresting expatiations on Lord Jesus. I came across the 
paragraph on the Trinity. Here was something that challenged 
my interest: a oneness which was simultaneously a threeness. 



School Tfears 

This was a problem that fascinated me because of its inner 
contradiction. I waited longingly for the moment when we 
would reach this question. But when we got that far, my father 
said, 'We now come to the Trinity, but we'll skip that, for I 
really understand nothing of it myself." I admired my father's 
honesty, but on the other hand I was profoundly disappointed 
and said to myself, "There we have it; they know nothing about 
it and don't give it a thought. Then how can I talk about my 
secret?" 

I made vain, tentative attempts with certain of my school- 
fellows who struck me as reflective. I awakened no response, 
but, on the contrary, a stupefaction that warned me off. 

In spite of the boredom, I made every effort to believe with- 
out understanding an attitude which seemed to correspond 
with my father's and prepared myself for Communion, on 
which I had set my last hopes. This was, I thought, merely a 
memorial meal, a kind of anniversary celebration for Lord Jesus 
who had died 1890 30 = 1860 years ago. But still, he had let 
fall certain hints such as, "Take, eat, this is my body," meaning 
that we should eat the Communion bread as if it were his body, 
which after all had originally been flesh. Likewise we were to 
drink the wine which had originally been blood. It was 
clear to me that in this fashion we were to incorporate him into 
ourselves. This seemed to me so preposterous an impossibility 
that I was sure some great mystery must lie behind it, and that 
I would participate in this mystery in the course of Communion, 
on which my father seemed to place so high a value. 

As was customary, a member of the church committee stood 
godfather to me. He was a nice, taciturn old man, a wheelwright 
in whose workshop I had often stood, watching his skill with 
lathe and adze. Now he came, solemnly transformed by frock 
coat and top hat, and took me to church, where my father in 
his familiar robes stood behind the altar and read prayers from 
the liturgy. On the white cloth covering the altar lay large trays 
filled with small pieces of bread. I could see that the bread came 
from our baker, whose baked goods were generally poor and 
flat in taste. From a pewter jug, wine was poured into a 
pewter cup. My father ate a piece of the bread, took a swallow of 

53 



the wine I knew the tavern from which it had come and 
passed the cup to one of the old men. All were stiff, solemn, and, 
it seemed to me, uninterested. I looked on in suspense, but 
could not see or guess whether anything unusual was going on 
inside the old men. The atmosphere was the same as that of all 
other performances in church baptisms, funerals, and so on. 
I had the impression that something was being performed here 
in the traditionally correct manner. My father, too, seemed to be 
chiefly concerned with going through it all according to rule, 
and it was part of this rule that the appropriate words were 
read or spoken with emphasis. There was no mention of the fact 
that it was now 1860 years since Jesus had died, whereas in all 
other memorial services the date was stressed. I saw no sadness 
and no joy, and felt that the feast was meager in every respect, 
considering the extraordinary importance of the person whose 
memory was being celebrated. It did not compare at all with 
secular festivals. 

Suddenly my turn came. I ate the bread; it tasted flat, as I had 
expected. The wine, of which I took only the smallest sip, was 
thin and rather sour, plainly not of the best. Then came the 
final prayer, and the people went out, neither depressed nor 
illumined with joy, but with faces that said, "So that's that/' 

I walked home with my father, intensely conscious that I 
was wearing a new black felt hat and a new black suit which 
was already beginning to turn into a frock coat. It was a kind of 
lengthened jacket that spread out into two little wings over the 
seat, and between these was a slit with a pocket into which I 
could tuck a handkerchief which seemed to me a grown-up, 
manly gesture. I felt socially elevated and by implication ac- 
cepted into the society of men. That day, too, Sunday dinner 
was an unusually good one. I would be able to stroll about in 
my new suit all day. But otherwise I was empty and did not 
know what I was feeling. 

Only gradually, in the course of the following days, did it 
dawn on me that nothing had happened. I had reached the 
pinnacle of religious initiation, had expected something I 
knew not what to happen, and nothing at all had happened, 
I knew that God could do stupendous tilings to me, things of 

54 



School Years 

fire and unearthly light; but this ceremony contained no trace 
of God not for me, at any rate. To be sure, there had been talk 
about Him, but it had all amounted to no more than words. 
Among the others I had noticed nothing of the vast despair, 
the overpowering elation and outpouring of grace which for me 
constituted the essence of God. I had observed no sign of "com- 
munion/* of "union, becoming one with . . " With whom? With 
Jesus? Yet he was only a man who had died 1860 years ago. 
Why should a person become one with him? He was called the 
"Son of God" & demigod, therefore, like the Greek heroes: how 
then could an ordinary person become one with him? This was 
called the "Christian religion," but none of it had anything to 
do with God as I had experienced Him. On the other hand it 
was quite clear that Jesus, the man, did have to do with God; 
he had despaired in Gethsemane and on the cross, after having 
taught that God was a kind and loving father. He too, then, 
must have seen the f earfulness of God. That I could understand, 
but what was the purpose of this wretched memorial service 
with the flat bread and the sour wine? Slowly I came to under- 
stand that this communion had been a fatal experience for me. 
It had proved hollow; more than that, it had proved to be a total 
loss. I knew that I would never again be able to participate in 
this ceremony. "Why, that is not religion at all," I thought. "It 
is an absence of God; the church is a place I should not go to. 
It is not life which is there, but death." 

I was seized with the most vehement pity for my father. All 
at once I understood the tragedy of his profession and his life. 
He was struggling with a death whose existence he could not 
admit. An abyss had opened between him and me, and I saw no 
possibility of ever bridging it, for it was infinite in extent. I 
could not plunge my dear and generous father, who in so many 
matters left me to myself and had never tyrannized over me, 
into that despair and sacrilege which were necessary for an 
experience of divine grace. Only God could do that. I had no 
right to; it would be inhuman. God is not human, I thought; 
that is His greatness, that nothing human impinges on Him. He 
is kind and terrible both at once and is therefore a great 
peril from which everyone naturally tries to save himself* People 

55 



cling one-sidedly to His love and goodness, for fear they will 
fall victim to the tempter and destroyer, Jesus, too, had noticed 
that, and had therefore taught: "Lead us not into temptation/' 

My sense of union with the Church and with the human 
world, so far as I knew it, was shattered. I had, so it seemed 
to me, suffered the greatest defeat of my life. The religious out- 
look which I imagined constituted my sole meaningful relation 
with the universe had disintegrated; I could no longer partici- 
pate in the general faith, but found myself involved in some- 
thing inexpressible, in my secret, which I could share with no 
one. It was terrible and this was the worst of it vulgar and 
ridiculous also, a diabolical mockery. 

I began to ponder: What must one think of God? I had not 
invented that thought about God and the cathedral, still less 
the dream that had befallen me at the age of three. A stronger 
will than mine had imposed both on me. Had nature been 
responsible? But nature was nothing other than the will of the 
Creator. Nor did it help to accuse the devil, for he too was a 
creature of God. God alone was real an annihilating fire and 
an indescribable grace. 

What about the failure of Communion to affect me? Was 
that my own failure? I had prepared for it in all earnestness, 
had hoped for an experience of grace and illumination, and 
nothing had happened. God had been absent. For God's sake I 
now found myself cut off from the Church and from my father's 
and everybody else's faith. Insofar as they all represented the 
Christian religion, I was an outsider. This knowledge filled me 
with a sadness which was to overshadow all the years until the 
time I entered the university. 

I began looking in my father's relatively modest library which 
in those days seemed impressive to me for books that would 
tell me what was known about God. At first I found only the 
traditional conceptions, but not what I was seeking & writer 
who thought independently. At last I hit upon Biedermann's 
Christliche Dogmatik, published in 1869. Here, apparently, 
was a man who thought for himself, who worked out his own 
views. I learned from him that religion was a a spiritual act 

56 



School fears 

consisting in man's establishing his own relationship to God." 
I disagreed with that, for I understood religion as something 
that God did to me; it was an act on His part, to which I must 
simply yield, for He was the stronger. My "religion" recognized 
no human relationship to God, for how could anyone relate to 
something so little known as God? I must know more about God 
in order to establish a relationship to him. In Biedermann's 
chapter on "The Nature of God" I found that God showed Him- 
self to be a "personality to be conceived after the analogy of 
the human ego: the unique, utterly supramundane ego who 
embraces the entire cosmos." 

As far as I knew the Bible, this definition seemed to fit. God 
has a personality and is the ego of the universe, just as I myself 
am the ego of my psychic and physical being. But here I en- 
countered a formidable obstacle. Personality, after all, surely 
signifies character. Now, character is one thing and not another; 
that is to say, it involves certain specific attributes. But if God is 
everything, how can He still possess a distinguishable character? 
On die other hand, if He does have a character, He can only be 
the ego of a subjective, limited world. Moreover, what kind of 
character or what kind of personality does He have? Everything 
depends on that, for unless one knows the answer one cannot 
establish a relationship to Him. 

I felt the strongest resistances to imagining God by analogy 
with my own ego. That seemed to me boundlessly arrogant, if 
not downright blasphemous. My ego was, in any case, difficult 
enough for me to grasp. In the first place, I was aware that it 
consisted of two contradictory aspects: No. i and No. 2. Second, 
in both its aspects my ego was extremely limited, subject to all 
possible self-deceptions and errors, moods, emotions, passions, 
and sins. It suffered far more defeats than triumphs, was child- 
ish, vain, self-seeking, defiant, in need of love, covetous, unjust, 
sensitive, lazy, irresponsible, and so on. To my sorrow it lacked 
many of the virtues and talents I admired and envied in others. 
How could this be the analogy according to which we were to 
imagine the nature of God? 

Eagerly I looked up the other characteristics of God, and 
found them all listed in the way familiar to me from my instruo 

57 



Memories, ureams, Reflections 

tion for confirmation. I found that according to Article 172 "the 
most immediate expression of the supramundane nature of God 
is i) negative: His invisibility to men," etc., "and 2) positive: 
His dwelling in Heaven," etc. This was disastrous, for at once 
there rushed to my mind the blasphemous vision which God 
directly or indirectly (i.e., via the devil) had imposed on my 
will. 

Article 183 informed me that "God's supramundane nature 
with regard to the moral world" consists in His "justice," which 
is not merely "judicial" but is also "an expression of His holy 
being." I had hoped that this paragraph would say something 
about God's dark aspects which were giving me so much trouble: 
His vindictiveness, His dangerous wrathfulness, His incompre- 
hensible conduct toward the creatures His omnipotence had 
made, whose inadequacies He must know by virtue of that same 
omnipotence, and whom moreover it pleased Him to lead astray, 
or at least to test, even though He knew in advance the outcome 
of His experiments. What, indeed, was God's character? What 
would we say of a human personality who behaved in this 
manner? I did not dare to think this question out to its conclu- 
sion. And then I read that God, "although sufficient unto Him- 
self and needing nothing outside Himself," had created the 
world "out of His satisfaction," and "as a natural world has 
filled it with His goodness and as a moral world desires to fill 
it with His love." 

At first I pondered over the perplexing word "satisfaction." 
Satisfaction with what or with whom? Obviously with the world, 
for He had looked upon His work and called it good. But it was 
just this that I had never understood. Certainly the world is 
immeasurably beautiful, but it is quite as horrible. In a small 
village in the country, where there are few people and nothing 
much happens, "old age, disease, and death" are experienced 
more intensely, in greater detail, and more nakedly than else- 
where. Although I was not yet sixteen years old I had seen a 
great deal of the reality of the life of man and beast, and in 
church and school I had heard enough of the sufferings and 
corruption of the world. God could at most have felt "satisfac- 
tion" with paradise, but then He Himself had taken good care 

58 



School Vears 

that the glory of paradise should not last too long by planting in 
it that poisonous serpent, the devil. Had He taken satisfaction 
in that too? I felt certain that Biedermann did not mean this, 
but was simply babbling on in that mindless way that char- 
acterized religious instruction, not even aware that he was 
writing nonsense. As I saw it, it was not at all unreasonable to 
suppose that God, for all that He probably did not feel any 
such cruel satisfaction in the unmerited sufferings of man and 
beast, had nevertheless intended to create a world of contradic- 
tions in which one creature devoured another and life meant 
simply being born to die. The "wonderful harmonies" of natural 
law looked to me more like a chaos tamed by fearful effort, 
and the "eternal" starry firmament with its predetermined 
orbits seemed plainly an accumulation of random bodies without 
order or meaning. For no one could really see the constellations 
people spoke about. They were mere arbitrary configurations. 

I either did not see or gravely doubted that God filled the 
natural world with His goodness. This, apparently, was another 
of those points which must not be reasoned about but must be 
believed. In fact, if God is the highest good, why is the world, 
His creation, so imperfect, so corrupt, so pitiable? "Obviously 
it has been infected and thrown into confusion by the devil," I 
thought. But the devil, too, was a creature of God. I had to read 
up on the devil. He seemed to be highly important after all. I 
again opened Biedermann's book on Christian dogmatics and 
looked for the answer to this burning question. What were the 
reasons for suffering, imperfection, and evil? I could find noth- 
ing. 

That finished it for me. This weighty tome on dogmatics was 
nothing but fancy drivel; worse still, it was a fraud or a speci- 
men of uncommon stupidity whose sole aim was to obscure the 
truth. I was disillusioned and even indignant, and once more 
seized with pity for my father, who had fallen victim to this 
mumbo-jumbo. 

But somewhere and at some time there must have been 
people who sought the truth as I was doing, who thought 
rationally and did not wish to deceive themselves and others 
and deny the sorrowful reality of the world. It was about this 

59 



time that my mother, or rather, her No. 2 personality, suddenly 
and without preamble said, *TTou must read Goethe's Faust 
one of these days." We had a handsome edition of Goethe, and I 
picked out.Fatttf . It poured into my soul like a miraculous balm. 
"Here at last," I thought, "is someone who takes the devil seri- 
ously and even concludes a blood pact with him with the 
adversary who has the power to frustrate God's plan to make a 
perfect world." I regretted Faust's behavior, for to my mind he 
should not have been so one-sided and so easily tricked. He 
should have been cleverer and also more moral. How childish he 
was to gamble away his soul so frivolouslyl Faust was plainly a 
bit of a windbag. I had the impression that the weight of the 
drama and its significance lay chiefly on the side of Meph- 
istopheles. It would not have grieved me if Faust's soul had 
gone to hell. He deserved it. I did not like the idea of the 
"cheated devil" at the end, for after all Mephistopheles had 
been anything but a stupid devil, and it was contrary to logic 
for him to be tricked by silly little angels. Mephistopheles 
seemed to me cheated in quite a different sense: he had not 
received his promised rights because Faust, that somewhat 
characterless fellow, had carried his swindle through right into 
the Hereafter. There, admittedly, his puerility came to light, 
but, as I saw it, he did not deserve the initiation into the great 
mysteries. I would have given him a taste of purgatorial fires. 
The real problem, it seemed to me, lay with Mephistopheles, 
whose whole figure made the deepest impression on me, and 
who, I vaguely sensed, had a relationship to the mystery of the 
Mothers. 5 At any rate Mephistopheles and the great initiation 
at the end remained for me a wonderful and mysterious experi- 
ence on the fringes of my conscious world. 

At last I had found confirmation that there were or had been 
people who saw evil and its universal power, and more im- 
portant the mysterious role it played in delivering man from 
darkness and suffering. To that extent Goethe became, in my 
eyes, a prophet. But I could not forgive him for having dismissed 
Mephistopheles by a mere trick, by a bit of jiggery-pokery. For 

* Faust, Part Two, trans, by Philip Wayne (Hannondsworth, England, Penguin 
Books Ltd, 1959), pp. 76 ff. 

60 



School J^ears 

me that was too theological, too frivolous and irresponsible, and 
I was deeply sorry that Goethe too had fallen for those cunning 
devices by which evil is rendered innocuous. 

In reading the drama I had discovered that Faust had been a 
philosopher of sorts, and although he turned away from philos- 
ophy, he had obviously learned from it a certain receptivity to 
the truth. Hitherto I had heard virtually nothing of philosophy, 
and now a new hope dawned. Perhaps, I thought, there were 
philosophers who had grappled with these questions and could 
shed light on them for me. 

Since there were no philosophers in my father's library they 
were suspect because they thought I had to content myself 
with Krug's General Dictionary of the Philosophical Sciences, 
second edition, 1832. I plunged forthwith into the article on 
God. To my discontent it began with the etymology of the word 
"God," which, it said, "incontestably" derived from "good" and 
signified the ens summum or perfectissimum. The existence of 
God could not be proved, it continued, nor the innateness of the 
idea of God. The latter, however, could exist a priori in man, if 
not in actuality at any rate potentially. In any case our "intel- 
lectual powers" must "already be developed to a certain degree 
before they are capable of engendering so sublime an idea/' 

This explanation astounded me beyond measure. What is 
wrong with these "philosophers"? I wondered. Evidently they 
know of God only by hearsay. The theologians are different in 
this respect, at any rate; at least they are sure that God exists, 
even though they make contradictory statements about Him. 
This lexicographer Krug expresses himself in so involved a man- 
ner that it is easy to see he would like to assert that he is already 
sufficiently convinced of God's existence. Then why doesn't he 
say so outright? Why does he pretend as if he really thought 
that we "engender" the idea of God, and to do so must first have 
reached a certain level of development? So far as I knew, even 
the savages wandering naked in their jungles had such ideas. 
And they were certainly not "philosophers" who sat down to 
"engender an idea of God." I never engendered any idea of God, 
either. Of course God cannot be proved, for how could, say, a 
clothes moth that eats Australian wool prove to other moths that 



Memories, ureams, Reflections 

Australia exists? God's existence does not depend on our proofs. 
How had I arrived at my certainty about God? I was told all 
sorts of things about Him, yet I could believe nothing. None of it 
convinced me. That was not where my idea came from. In fact 
it was not an idea at all that is, not something thought out. It 
was not like imagining something and thinking it out and after- 
ward believing it. For example, all that about Lord Jesus was al- 
ways suspect to me and I never really believed it, although it 
was impressed upon me far more than God, who was usually 
only hinted at in the background. Why have I come to take God 
for granted? Why do these philosophers pretend that God is an 
idea, a kind of arbitrary assumption which they can engender or 
not, when it is perfectly plain that He exists, as plain as a brick 
that falls on your head? 

Suddenly I understood that God was, for me at least, one of 
the most certain and immediate of experiences. After all, I didn't 
invent that horrible image about the cathedral. On the contrary, 
it was forced on me and I was compelled, with the utmost 
cruelty, to think it, and afterward that inexpressible feeling of 
grace came to me. I had no control over these things. I came to 
the conclusion that there must be something the matter with 
these philosophers, for they had the curious notion that God was 
a kind of hypothesis that could be discussed. I also found it ex- 
tremely unsatisfying that the philosophers offered no opinions or 
explanations about the dark deeds of God. These, it seemed to 
me, merited special attention and consideration from philoso- 
phy, since they constituted a problem which, I gathered, was 
rather a hard one for the theologians. All the greater was my dis- 
appointment to discover that the philosophers had apparently 
never even heard of it. 

I therefore passed on to the next topic that interested me, the 
article on the devil. If, I read, we conceived of the devil as origi- 
nally evil, we would become entangled in patent contradictions, 
that is to say, we would fall into dualism. Therefore we would do 
better to assume that the devil was originally created a good be- 
ing but had been corrupted by his pride. However, as the author 
of the article pointed outand I was glad to see this point made 
this hypothesis presupposed the evil it was attempting to ex- 

62 



School Vears 

plain namely, pride. For the rest, he continued, the origin of 
evil was "unexplained and inexplicable" which meant to me: 
Like the theologians, he does not vtfant to think about it. The 
article on evil and its origin proved equally unilluminating. 

The account I have given here summarizes trains of thought 
and developments ef ideas which, broken by long intervals, ex- 
tended over several years. They went on exclusively in my No. 2 
personality, and were strictly private. I used my father's li- 
brary for these researches, secretly and without asking his per- 
mission. In the intervals, personality No. i openly read all the 
novels of Gerstacker, and German translations of the classic 
English novels. I also began reading German literature, concen- 
trating on those classics which school, with its needlessly la- 
borious explanations of the obvious, had not spoiled for me. I 
read vastly and planlessly, drama, poetry, history, and later 
natural science. Reading was not only interesting but provided a 
welcome and beneficial distraction from the preoccupations of 
personality No. z, which in increasing measure were leading me 
to depressions. For everywhere in the realm of religious ques- 
tions I encountered only locked doors, and if ever one door 
should chance to open I was disappointed by what lay behind 
it. Other people all seemed to have totally different concerns. I 
felt completely alone with my certainties. More than ever I 
wanted someone to talk with, but nowhere did I find a point of 
contact; on the contrary, I sensed in others an estrangement, a 
distrust, an apprehension which robbed me of speech. That, too, 
depressed me. I did not know what to make of it. Why has no 
one had experiences similar to mine? I wondered. Why is there 
nothing about it in scholarly books? Am I the only one who has 
had such experiences? Why should I be the only one? It never 
occurred to me that I might be crazy, for the light and darkness 
of God seemed to me facts that could be understood even 
though they oppressed my feelings. 

I felt the singularity into which I was being forced as some- 
thing threatening, for it meant isolation, and that seemed all the 
more unpleasant to me as I was unjustly taken for a scapegoat a 
good deal more often than I liked. Moreover, something had 
happened in school to increase my isolation. In the German class 

63 



Memories, uream$ > Reflections 

I was rather mediocre, for the subject matter, especially German 
grammar and syntax, did not interest me at all. I was lazy and 
bored. The subjects for composition usually seemed to me shal- 
low or silly, and my essays turned out accordingly: either care- 
less or labored. I slipped through with average marks, and this 
suited me very well, as it fitted in with my general tendency not 
to be conspicuous. On the whole I sympathized with boys from 
poor families who, like myself, had come from nowhere, and I 
had a liking for those who were none too bright, though I 
tended to become excessively irritated by their stupidity and 
ignorance. For the fact of the matter was that they had some- 
thing to offer which I craved deeply: in their simplicity they 
noticed nothing unusual about me. My "unusualness" was grad- 
ually beginning to give me the disagreeable, rather uncanny 
feeling that I must possess repulsive traits, of which I was not 
aware, that caused my teachers and schoolmates to shun me. 

In the midst of these preoccupations the following incident 
burst on me like a thunderclap. We had been assigned a subject 
for composition which for once interested me. Consequently I 
set to work with a will and produced what seemed to me a care- 
fully written and successful paper. I hoped to receive at least 
one of the highest marks for it not the highest, of course, for 
that would have made me conspicuous, but one close to the top, 

Our teacher was in the habit of discussing the compositions in 
order of merit. The first one he turned to was by the boy at the 
head of the class. That was all right. Then followed the com- 
positions of the others, and I waited and waited in vain for my 
name. Still it did not come. "It just can't be," I thought, "that 
mine is so bad that it is even below these poor ones he has come 
to. What can be the matter?" Was I simply hors concours 
which would mean being isolated and attracting attention in the 
most dreadful way of all? 

When all the essays had been read, the teacher paused. Then 
he said, "Now I have one more composition Jung's. It is by far 
the best, and I ought to have given it first place. But unfortu- 
nately it is a fraud. Where did you copy it from? Confess the 
truth!" 

64 



Schoolfears 

I shot to my feet, as horrified as I was furious, and cried, "I did 
not copy it! I went to a lot of trouble to write a good composi- 
tion^ But the teacher shouted at me, "You re lying! You could 
never write a composition like this. No one is going to believe 
that. Now where did you copy it from?" 

Vainly I swore to my innocence. The teacher clung to his 
theory. He became threatening. "I can tell you this: if I knew 
where you had copied it from, you would be chucked out of the 
school." And he turned away. My classmates threw odd glances 
at me, and I realized with horror that they were thinking, 
"A-ha, so that's the way it is." My protestations fell on deaf ears. 

I felt that from now on I was branded, and that all the paths 
which might have led me out of unusualness had been cut off. 
Profoundly disheartened and dishonored, I swore vengeance on 
the teacher, and if I had had an opportunity something straight 
out of the law of the jungle would have resulted. How in the 
world could I possibly prove that I had not copied the essay? 

For days I turned this incident over in my thoughts, and 
again and again came to the conclusion that I was powerless, 
the sport of a blind and stupid fate that had marked me as a liar 
and a cheat. Now I realized many things I had not previously 
understood for example, how it was that one of the teachers 
could say to my father, who had inquired about my conduct in 
school, "Oh, he's just average, but he works commendably hard/' 
I was thought to be relatively stupid and superficial. That did 
not annoy me really. But what made me furious was that they 
should think me capable of cheating, and thus morally destroy 
me. 

My grief and rage threatened to get out of control. And then 
something happened that I had already observed in myself sev- 
eral times before: there was a sudden inner silence, as though a 
soundproof door had been closed on a noisy room. It was as if a 
mood of cool curiosity came over me, and I asked myself, "What 
is really going on here? All right, you are excited. Of course the 
teacher is an idiot who doesn't understand your nature that is, 
doesn't understand it any more than you do. Therefore he is as 
mistrustful as you are. You distrust yourself and others, and that 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

is why you side with those who are naive, simple, and easily 
seen through. One gets excited when one doesn't understand 
things." 

In the light of these considerations sine ira et studio, I was 
struck by the analogy with that other train of ideas which had 
impressed itself on me so forcefully when I did not want to 
think the forbidden thought. Although at that time I doubtless 
saw no difference as yet between personalities No. i and No. 2, 
and still claimed the world of No. 2 as my own personal world, 
there was always, deep in the background, the feeling that some- 
thing other than myself was involved. It was as though a breath 
of the great world of stars and endless space had touched me, 
or as if a spirit had invisibly entered the room the spirit of one 
who had long been dead and yet was perpetually present in 
timelessness until far into the future. Denouements of this sort 
were wreathed with the halo of a numen. 

At that time, of course, I could never have expressed myself in 
this fashion, nor am I now attributing to my state of conscious- 
ness something that was not there at the time. I am only trying 
to express the feelings I had then, and to shed light on that twi- 
light world with the help of what I know now. 

It was some months after the incident just described that my 
schoolmates hung the nickname "Father Abraham" on me. No. i 
could not understand why, and thought it silly and ridiculous. 
Yet somewhere in the background I felt that the name had hit 
the mark. All allusions to this background were painful to me, 
for the more I read and the more familiar I became with city life, 
the stronger grew my impression that what I was now getting 
to know as reality belonged to an order of things different from 
the view of the world I had grown up with in the country, among 
rivers and woods, among men and animals in a small village 
bathed in sunlight, with the winds and the clouds moving over 
it, and encompassed by dark night in which uncertain things 
happened. It was no mere locality on the map, but "God's 
world," so ordered by Him and filled with secret meaning. But 
apparently men did not know this, and even the animals had 
somehow lost the senses to perceive it. That was evident, for ex- 
ample, in the sorrowful, lost look of the cows, and in the resigned 

66 



School Years 

eyes of horses, in the devotion of dogs, who clung so desperately 
to human beings, and even in the self-assured step of the cats 
who had chosen house and barn as their, residence and hunting 
ground. People were like the animals, and seemed as uncon- 
scious as they. They looked down upon the ground or up into 
the trees in order to see what could be put to use, and for what 
purpose; like animals they herded, paired, and fought, but did 
not see that they dwelt in a unified cosmos, in God's world, in 
an eternity where everything is already born and everything has 
already died. 

Because they are so closely akin to us and share our unknow- 
ingness, I loved all warm-blooded animals who have souls like 
ourselves and with whom, so I thought, we have an instinctive 
understanding. We experience joy and sorrow, love and hate, 
hunger and thirst, fear and trust in common all the essential 
features of existence with the exception of speech, sharpened 
consciousness, and science. And although I admired science in 
the conventional way, I also saw it giving rise to alienation and 
aberration from God's world, as leading to a degeneration 
which animals were not capable of. Animals were dear and 
faithful, unchanging and trustworthy. People I now distrusted 
more than ever. 

Insects I did not regard as proper animals, and I took cold- 
blooded vertebrates to be a rather lowly intermediate stage on 
the way down to the insects. Creatures in this category were 
objects for observation and collection, curiosities merely, alien 
and extra-human; they were manifestations of impersonal life 
and more akin to plants than to human beings. 

The earthly manifestations of "God's world" began with the 
realm of plants, as a kind of direct communication from it. It was 
as though one were peering over the shoulder of the Creator, 
who, thinking Himself unobserved, was making toys and decora- 
tions. Man and the proper animals, on the other hand, were bits 
of God that had become independent* That was why they could 
move about on tfyeir own and choose their abodes. Plants were 
bound for good or ill to their places. They expressed not only the 
beauty but also the thoughts of God's world, with no intent of 
their own and without deviation. Trees in particular were mys- 



vreums, 

terious and seemed to me direct embodiments of the incompre- 
hensible meaning of life. For that reason the woods were the 
place where I felt closest to its deepest meaning and to its awe- 
inspiring workings. 

This impression was reinforced when I became acquainted 
with Gothic cathedrals. But there the infinity of the cosmos, the 
chaos of meaning and meaninglessness, of impersonal purpose 
and mechanical law, were wrapped in stone. This contained and 
at the same time was the bottomless mystery of being, the em- 
bodiment of spirit. What I dimly felt to be my kinship with 
stone was the divine nature in both, in the dead and the living 
matter. 

At that time it would, as I have said, have been beyond my 
powers to formulate my feelings and intuitions in any graphic 
way, for they all occurred in No. 2 personality, while my active 
and comprehending ego remained passive and was absorbed 
into the sphere of the "old man," who belonged to the centuries, 
I experienced him and his influence in a curiously unreflective 
manner; when he was present, No. i personality paled to the 
point of nonexistence, and when the ego that became increas- 
ingly identical with No. i personality dominated the scene, the 
old man, if remembered at all, seemed a remote and unreal 
dream. 

Between my sixteenth and nineteenth years the fog of my 
dilemma slowly lifted, and my depressive states of mind im- 
proved. No. i personality emerged more and more distinctly. 
School and city life took up my time, and my increased knowl- 
edge gradually permeated or repressed the world of intuitive 
premonitions. I began systematically pursuing questions I had 
consciously framed. I read a brief introduction to the history of 
philosophy and in this way gained a bird's-eye view of every- 
thing that had been thought in this field. I found to my 
gratification that many of my intuitions had historical ana- 
logues. Above all I was attracted to the thought of Pythagoras, 
Heraclitus, Empedocles, and Plato, despite the'long-windedness 
of Socratic argumentation. Their ideas were beautiful and aca- 
demic, like pictures in a gallery, but somewhat remote. Only in 
Meister Eckhart did I feel the breath of life not that I under- 

68 



School Years 

stood him. The Schoolmen left me cold, and the Aristotelian 
intellectualism of St. Thomas appeared to me more lifeless than 
a desert. I thought, "They all want to force something to come 
out by tricks of logic, something they have not been granted 
and do not really know about. They want to prove a belief to 
themselves, whereas actually it is a matter of experience.'* They 
seemed to me like people who knew by hearsay that elephants 
existed, but had never seen one, and were now trying to prove 
by arguments that on logical grounds such animals must exist 
and must be constituted as in fact they are. For obvious reasons, 
the critical philosophy of the eighteenth century at first did not 
appeal to me at all. Of the nineteenth-century philosophers, 
Hegel put me off by his language, as arrogant as it was laborious; 
I regarded him with downright mistrust. He seemed to me like a 
man who was caged in the edifice of his own words and was 
pompously gesticulating in his prison. 

But the great find resulting from my researches was Schopen- 
hauer. He was the first to speak of the suffering of the world, 
which visibly and glaringly surrounds us, and of confusion, pas- 
sion, 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 blind- 
ness 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. 

Schopenhauer's somber picture of the world had my undi- 
vided approval, but not his solution of the problem. I felt sure 

69 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

that by 'Will" he really meant God, the Creator, and that he 
was saying that God was blind. Since I knew from experience 
that God was not offended by any blasphemy, that on the con- 
trary He could even encourage it because He wished to evoke 
not only man's bright and positive side but also his darkness and 
ungodliness, Schopenhauer's view did not distress me. I con- 
sidered it a verdict justified by the facts. But I was all the more 
disappointed by his theory that the intellect need only con- 
front the blind Will with its image in order to cause it to reverse 
itself. How could the Will see this image at all, since it was 
blind? And why should it, even if it could see, thereby be per- 
suaded to reverse itself, since the image would show it precisely 
what it willed? And what was the intellect? It was a function of 
the human soul, not a mirror but an infinitesimal fragment of a 
mirror such as a child might hold up to the sun, expecting the 
sun to be dazzled by it. I was puzzled that Schopenhauer 
should ever have been satisfied with such an inadequate answer. 

Because of this I was impelled to study him more thoroughly, 
and I became increasingly impressed by his relation to Kant. I 
therefore began reading the works of this philosopher, above all 
his Critique of Pure Reason., which put me to some hard thinking. 
My efforts were rewarded, for I discovered the fundamental 
flaw, so I thought, in Schopenhauer's system. He had committed 
the deadly sin of hypostatizing a metaphysical assertion, and of 
endowing a mere noumenon, a Ding an sich, with special quali- 
ties. I got this from Kant's theory of knowledge, and it afforded 
me an even greater illumination, if that were possible, than 
Schopenhauer's "pessimistic" view of the world. 

This philosophical development extended from my seven- 
teenth 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, mis- 
trustful, 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 became noticeably more 
accessible and more communicative. I discovered that poverty 
was no handicap and was far from being tKe principal reason 
for suffering; that the sons of the rich really did not enjoy any 

70 



School Years 

advantages over the poor and ill-clad boys. There were far 
deeper reasons for happiness and unhappiness than one's allot- 
ment of pocket money. I made more and better friends than be- 
fore. 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. Once again it had to do with a subject 
for composition that had aroused my interest. I had worked out 
my paper with particular care, taking the greatest pains to polish 
my style. The result was crushing. "Here is an essay by Jung," 
said the teacher. "It is downright brilliant, but tossed off so care- 
lessly that it is easy to see how little serious effort went into it. I 
can tell you this, Jung, you won't get through life with that slap- 
dash attitude. Life calls for earnestness and conscientiousness, 
work and effort. Look at D/s paper. He has none of your bril- 
liance, but he is honest, conscientious, and hard-working. That 
is the way to success in Me." 

My feelings were not as hurt as on the first occasion, for in 
spite of himself the teacher had been impressed by my essay, 
and had at least not accused me of stealing it. I protested against 
his reproaches, but was dismissed with the comment: "The Ars 
Poetica maintains that the best poem is the one which conceals 
the effort of creation. But you cannot make me believe that 
about your essay, for it was tossed off frivolously and without 
any effort." There were, I knew, a few good ideas in it, but the 
teacher did not even bother to discuss them. 

I felt some bitterness over this incident, but the suspicions of 
my schoolmates were a far more serious matter, for they threat- 
ened to throw me back into my former isolation and depression. 
I racked my brains, trying to understand what I could have done 
to deserve their slanders. By cautious inquiries I discovered that 
they looked askance at me because I often made remarks, or 
dropped hints, about things which I could not possibly know. 
For instance, I pretended to know something about Kant and 

7* 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

Schopenhauer, or about paleontology, which we had not even 
had in school as yet. These astonishing discoveries showed me 
that practically all the burning questions had nothing to do with 
everyday life, but belonged, like my ultimate secret, to "God's 
world/' which it was better not to speak of. 

Henceforth I took care not to mention these esoteric matters 
among my schoolmates, and among the adults of my acquaint- 
ance I knew no one with whom I might have talked without risk 
of being thought a boaster and impostor. The most painful thing 
of all was the frustration of my attempts to overcome the inner 
split in myself, my division into two worlds. Again and again 
events occurred which forced me out of my ordinary, everyday 
existence into the boundlessness of "God's world/' 

This expression, "God's world," may sound sentimental to 
some ears. For me it did not have this character at all. To "God's 
world" belonged everything superhuman dazzling light, the 
darkness of the abyss, the cold impassivity of infinite space and 
time, and the uncanny grotesqueness of the irrational world of 
chance. "God," for me, was everything and anything but "edi- 
fying." 

The older I grew, the more frequently I was asked by my parents 
and others what I wanted to be. I had no clear notions on that 
score. My interests drew me in different directions. On the one 
hand I was powerfully attracted by science, with its truths based 
on facts; on the other hand I was fascinated by everything to do 
with comparative religion. In the sciences I was drawn princi- 
pally to zoology, paleontology, and geology; in the humanities 
to Greco-Roman, Egyptian, and prehistoric archaeology. At 
that time, of course, I did not realize how very much this choice 
of the most varied subjects corresponded to the nature of my 
inner dichotomy. What appealed to me in science were the con- 
crete facts and their historical background, and in comparative 
religion the spiritual problems, into which philosophy also en- 
tered. In science I missed the factor of meaning; and in reli- 
gion, that of empiricism. Science met, to a very large extent, the 
needs of No. i personality, whereas the humane or historical 
studies provided beneficial instruction for No. 2. 

7* 



School Years 

Torn between these two poles, I was for a long time unable to 
settle on anything. I noticed that my uncle, the head of my 
mother's family, who was pastor of St. Alban's in Basel, was 
gently pushing me in the direction of theology. The unusual at- 
tentiveness with which I had followed a conversation at table, 
when he was discussing a point of religion with one of his sons, 
all of whom were theologians, had not escaped him. I wondered 
whether there might possibly be theologians who were in close 
touch with the dizzy heights of the university and therefore 
knew more than my father. Such conversations never gave me 
the impression that they were concerned with real experiences, 
and certainly not with experiences like mine. They dealt ex- 
clusively with doctrinal opinions on the Biblical narratives, all 
of which made me feel distinctly uncomfortable, because of the 
numerous and barely credible accounts of miracles. 

While I was attending the Gymnasium I was allowed to lunch 
at this uncle's house every Thursday. I was grateful to him not 
only for the lunch but for the unique opportunity of occasionally 
hearing at his table an adult, intelligent, and intellectual con- 
versation. It was a marvelous experience for me to discover that 
anything of this sort existed at all, for in my home surround- 
ings I had never heard anyone discussing learned topics. I did 
sometimes attempt to talk seriously with my father, but encoun- 
tered an impatience and anxious defensiveness which puzzled 
me. Not until several years later did I come to understand that 
my poor father did not dare to think, because he was con- 
sumed by inward doubts. He was taking refuge from himself 
and therefore insisted on blind faith. He could not receive it as 
a grace because he wanted to "win it by struggle/* forcing it to 
come with convulsive efforts. 

My uncle and my cousins could calmly discuss the dogmas 
and doctrines of the Church Fathers and the opinions of modern 
theologians. They seemed safely ensconced in a self-evident 
world order, in which the name of Nietzsche did not occur at all 
and Jakob Burckhardt was paid only a grudging compliment. 
Burckhardt was "liberal," "rather too much of a freethinker"; I 
gathered that he stood somewhat askew in the eternal order of 
filings. My uncle, I knew, never suspected how remote I was 

73 



Memories, vreams, nejiecmons 

from theology, and I was deeply sorry to have to disappoint him. 
I would never have dared to lay my problems before him, since I 
knew only too well how disastrously this would turn out for me. 
I had nothing to say in my defense. On the contrary, No. i per- 
sonality was fast taking the lead, and my scientific knowledge, 
though still meager, was thoroughly saturated with the scientific 
materialism of the time. It was only painfully held in check by 
the evidence of history and by Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, 
which apparently nobody in my environment understood. For 
although Kant was mentioned by my theologian uncle and 
cousins in tones of praise, his principles were used only to dis- 
credit opposing views but were never applied to their own. 
About this, too, I said nothing. 

Consequently, I began to feel more and more uncomfortable 
when I sat down to table with my uncle and his family. Given 
my habitually guilty conscience, these Thursdays became black 
days for me. In this world of social and spiritual security and 
ease I felt less and less at home, although I thirsted for the drops 
of intellectual stimulation which occasionally trickled forth. I 
felt dishonest and ashamed. I had to admit to myself: "Yes, you 
are a cheat; you lie and deceive people who mean well by you. 
It's not their fault that they live in a world of social and intel- 
lectual certitudes, that they know nothing of poverty, that their 
religion is also their paid profession, that they are totally un- 
conscious of the fact that God Himself can wrench a person out 
of his orderly spiritual world and condemn him to blaspheme. I 
have no way of explaining this to them. I must take the odium 
on myself and learn to bear it." Unfortunately, I had so far been 
singularly unsuccessful in this endeavor. 

As the tensions of this moral conflict increased, No. a per- 
sonality became more and more doubtful and distasteful to me, 
and I could no longer hide this fact from myself. I tried to ex- 
tinguish No. 2, but could not succeed in that either. At school 
and in the presence of my friends I could forget him, and he also 
disappeared when I was studying science. But as soon as I was 
by myself, at home or out in the country, Schopenhauer and 
Kant returned in full force, and with them the grandeur of 
"God's world." My scientific knowledge also formed a part of it, 

74 



School Years 

and filled the great canvas with vivid colors and figures. Then 
No. i and his worries about the choice of a profession sank be- 
low the horizon, a tiny episode in the last decade of the nine- 
teenth century. But when I returned from my expedition into 
the centuries, I brought with me a kind of hangover. I, or rather 
No. i, lived in the here and now, and sooner or later would have 
to form a definite idea of what profession he wished to pursue. 

Several times my father had a serious talk with me. I was free 
to study anything I liked, he said, but if I wanted his advice I 
should keep away from theology. "Be anything you like except a 
theologian," he said emphatically. By this time there was a tacit 
agreement between us that certain things could be said or done 
without comment. He had never taken me to task for cutting 
church as often as possible and for not going to Communion any 
more. 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 noth- 
m<* to me at all, for the habitual churchgoers struck me as be- 
ing far less of a community than the "worldly" folk. The latter 
may have been less virtuous, but on the other hand they were 
much nicer people, with natural emotions, more sociable and 
cheerful, warmer-hearted and more sincere. 

I was able to reassure my father that I had not the slightest 
desire to be a theologian. But I continued to waver between 
science and the humanities. Both powerfully attracted me. I 
was beginning to realize that No. 2, had no pied-ct-terre. In him I 
was lifted beyond the here and now; in him I felt myself a single 
eye in a thousand-eyed universe, but incapable of moving so 
much as a pebble upon the earth. No. i rebeUed against this pas- 
sivity; he wanted to be up and doing, but for the present he was 
caught in an insoluble conflict. Obviously I had to wait and see 
what would happen. If anyone asked me what I wanted to be I 
was in the habit of replying: a philologist, by which I secretly 
meant Assyrian and Egyptian archaeology. In reality, however, 
I continued to study science and philosophy in my leisure hours, 
and particularly during the holidays, which I spent at home 
with my mother and sister. The days were long past when I ran 
to my mother, lamenting, *Tm bored, I don't know what to 

75 



jyj. &IUUTI&S, untunus, 

do." Holidays were now the best time of the year, when I 
could amuse myself alone. Moreover, during the summer vaca- 
tions at least, my father was away, as he used regularly to spend 
his holidays in Sachseln. 

Only once did it happen that I too went on a vacation trip. I 
was fourteen when, on our doctor's orders, I was sent to Entle- 
buch for a cure, in the hope that my fitful appetite and my then 
unstable health would be improved. For the first time I was 
alone among adult strangers. I was quartered in the Catholic 
priest's house. For me this was an eerie and at the same time 
fascinating adventure. I seldom got a glimpse of the priest him- 
self, and his housekeeper was scarcely an alarming person, 
though prone to be curt. Nothing in the least menacing hap- 
pened to me. I was under the supervision of an old country doc- 
tor who ran a kind of hotel-sanatorium for convalescents of all 
types. It was a very mixed group: farm people, minor officials, 
merchants, and a few cultivated people from Basel, among them 
a chemist who had attained that pinnacle of glory, the doctor- 
ate. My father, too, was a Ph.D., but he was merely a philologist 
and linguist. This chemist was a fascinating novelty to me: 
here was a scientist, perhaps one of those who understood the 
secrets of stones. He was still a young man and taught me to 
play croquet, but he imparted to me none of his presumably vast 
learning. And I was too shy, too awkward, and far too igno- 
rant to ask him. I revered him as the first person I had ever met 
in the flesh who was initiated into the secrets of nature, or some 
of them, at least. He sat at the same table with me, ate the same 
food as I did, and occasionally even exchanged a few words with 
me. I felt transported into the sublimer sphere of adulthood. 
This elevation in my status was confirmed when I was permitted 
to go on the outings arranged for the boarders. On one of these 
occasions we visited a distillery, and were invited to sample the 
wares. In literal fulfillment of the verse: 

But now there comes a kicker, 
This stuff, you see, is liquor e 

I found the various little glasses so inspiring that I was wafted 

6 Wilhelm Busch, Die Jobsiade. 

76 



SchoolY 'ears 

into an entirely new and unexpected state of consciousness. 
There was no longer any inside or outside, no longer an T' and 
the "others,* No, i and No. 2 were no more; caution and ti- 
midity were gone, and the earth and sky, the universe and every- 
thing in it that creeps and flies, revolves, rises, or falls, had 
all become one. I was shamefully, gloriously, triumphantly 
drunk. It was as if I were drowned in a sea of blissful musings, 
but, because of the violent heaving of the waves, had to cling 
with eyes, hands, and feet to all solid objects in order to keep my 
balance on the swaying streets and between the rocking houses 
and trees. "Marvelous/* I thought, "only unfortunately just a 
little too much." The experience came to a rather woeful end, 
but it nevertheless remained a discovery, a premonition of 
beauty and meaning which I had spoiled only by my stupidity. 
At the end of my stay my father came to fetch me, and we 
traveled together to Lucerne, where what happiness! we 
went aboard a steamship. I had never seen anything like it. I 
could not see enough of the action of the steam engine, and 
then suddenly I was told we had arrived in Vitznau. Above the 
village towered a high mountain, and my father now explained 
to me that this was the Rigi, and that a cogwheel railway ran up 
it. We went to a small station building, and there stood the 
strangest locomotive in the world, with the boiler upright but 
tilted at a queer angle. Even the seats in the carriage were tilted. 
My father pressed a ticket into my hand and said, "You can ride 
up to the peak alone. I'll stay here, it's too expensive for the two 
of us. Be careful not to fall down anywhere/' 

I was speechless with joy. Here I was at the foot of this mighty 
mountain, higher than any I had ever seen, and quite close to 
the fiery peaks of my faraway childhood. I was, indeed, almost a 
man by now. For this trip I had bought myself a bamboo cane 
and an English jockey cap the proper articles of dress for a 
world traveler. And now I was to ascend this enormous moun- 
tain! I no longer knew which was bigger, I or the mountain. 
With a tremendous puffing, the wonderful locomotive shook and 
rattled me up to the dizzy heights where ever-new abysses and 
panoramas opened out before my gaze, until at last I stood on 
the peak in the strange thin air, looking into unimaginable dis- 

77 



Memories, ur earns, tiejiecuons 

tances. "Yes/' I thought, "this is it, my world, the real world, the 
secret, where there are no teachers, no schools, no unanswer- 
able questions, where one can be without having to ask any- 
thing." I kept carefully to the paths, for there were tremendous 
precipices all around. It was all very solemn, and I felt one had 
to be polite and silent up here, for one was in God's world. Here 
it was physically present. This was the best and most precious 
gift my father had ever given me. 

So profound was the impression this made upon me that my 
memories of everything that happened afterward in "God's 
world" were completely blotted out. But No. i also came into his 
own on this trip, and his impressions remained with me for the 
rest of my life. I still see myself, grown up and independent, 
wearing a stiff black hat and with an expensive cane, sitting on 
the terrace of one of the overwhelmingly elegant palatial hotels 
beside Lake Lucerne, or in the beautiful gardens of Vitznau, 
having my morning coffee at a small, white-covered table under 
a striped awning spangled with sunlight, eating croissants with 
golden butter and various kinds of jam, and considering plans 
for outings that would fill the whole long summer day. After the 
coffee I would stroll calmly, without excitement and at a de- 
liberate pace, to a steamship, which would carry me toward the 
Gotthard and the foot of those giant mountains whose tops 
were covered with gleaming glaciers. 

For many decades this image rose up whenever I was wearied 
from overwork and sought a point of rest. In real life I have 
promised myself this splendor again and again, but I have never 
kept my promise. 

This, my first conscious journey, was followed by a second a 
year or two later. I had been allowed to visit my father, who was 
on holiday in Sachseln. From him I learned the impressive news 
that he had become friendly with the Catholic priest there. 
This seemed to me an act of extraordinary boldness, and se- 
cretly I admired my father's courage. While there, I paid a visit 
to the hermitage of Fliieli and the relics of Brother Klaus, who 
by then had been beatified. I wondered how the Catholics knew 
that he was in a beatific state. Perhaps he was still wandering 
about and had told people so? I was powerfully impressed by 



School Years 

the genius loci, and was able not only to imagine the possibility 
of a life so entirely dedicated to God but even to understand it. 
But I did so with an inward shudder and a question to which I 
knew no answer: How could his wife and children have borne 
having a saint for a husband and father, when it was precisely 
my father's faults and inadequacies that made him particularly 
lovable to me? "Yes," I thought, "how could anyone live with a 
saint?" Obviously he saw that it was impossible, and therefore 
he had to become a hermit Still, it was not so very far from his 
cell to his house. This wasn't a bad idea, I thought, to have the 
family in one house, while I would live some distance away, in a 
hut with a pile of books and a writing table, and an open fire 
where I would roast chestnuts and cook my soup on a tripod. As 
a holy hermit I wouldn't have to go to church any more, but 
would have my own private chapel instead. 

From the hermitage I strolled on up the hill, lost in my 
thoughts, and was just turning to descend when from the left the 
slender figure of a young girl appeared. She wore the local cos- 
tume, had a pretty face, and greeted me with friendly blue eyes. 
As though it were the most natural thing in the world we de- 
scended into the valley together. She was about my own age. 
Since I knew no other girls except my cousins, I felt rather em- 
barrassed and did not know how to talk to her. So I began hesi- 
tantly explaining that I was here for a couple of days on holiday, 
that I was at the Gymnasium in Basel and later wanted to study 
at the university. While I was talking, a strange feeling of fate- 
fulness crept over me. "She has appeared just at this moment," I 
thought to myself, "and she walks along with me as naturally as 
if we belonged together." I glanced sideways at her and saw an 
expression of mingled shyness and admiration in her face, 
which embarrassed me and somehow pierced me. Can it be pos- 
sible, I wondered, that this is fate? Is my meeting her mere 
chance? A peasant girl could it possibly be? She is a Catholic, 
but perhaps her priest is the very one with whom my father has 
made friends? She has no idea who I am. I certainly couldn't 
talk to her about Schopenhauer and the negation of the Will, 
could I? Yet she doesn't seem in any way sinister. Perhaps her 
priest is not one of those Jesuits skulking about in black robes. 

79 



But I cannot tell her, either, that my father is a Protestant clergy- 
man. That might frighten or offend her. And to talk about phi- 
losophy, or about the devil, who is more important than Faust 
even though Goethe made such a simpleton of him that is 
quite out of the question. She still dwells in the distant land of 
innocence, but I have plunged into reality, into the splendor 
and cruelty of creation. How can she endure to hear about that? 
An impenetrable wall stands between us. There is not and can- 
not be any relationship. 

Sad at heart, I retreated into myself and turned the conversa- 
tion to less dangerous topics. Was she going to Sachseln, wasn't 
the weather lovely, and what a view, and so on. 

Outwardly this encounter was completely meaningless. But, 
seen from within, it was so weighty that it not only occupied my 
thoughts for days but has remained forever in my memory, like a 
shrine by the wayside. At that time I was still in that childlike 
state where life consists of single, unrelated experiences. For 
who could discover the threads of fate which led from Brother 
Klaus to the pretty girl? 

This period of my life was filled with conflicting thoughts. 
Schopenhauer and Christianity would not square with one an- 
other, for one thing; and for another, No. i wanted to free him- 
self from the pressure or melancholy of No. 2. It was not No. 2 
who was depressed, but No. i when he remembered No. 2. It 
was just at this time that, out of the clash of opposites, the first 
systematic fantasy of my life was born. It made its appearance 
piece by piece, and it had its origin, so far as I can remember, in 
an experience which stirred me profoundly. 

One day a northwest wind was lashing the Rhine into foaming 
waves. My way to school led along the river. Suddenly I saw ap- 
proaching from the north a ship with a great mainsail running 
up the Rhine before the storm. Here was something completely 
new in my experience a sailing vessel on the Rhinel My imagi- 
nation took wings. If, instead of this swiftly flowing river, all of 
Alsace were a lake, we would have sailing boats and great 
steamers. Then Basel would be a port; it would be almost as 
good as living by the sea. Then everything would be different, 
and we would live in another time and another world. There 

80 



School Years 

would be no Gymnasium, no long walk to school, and I would be 
grown up and able to arrange my life as I wished. There would 
be a hill of rock rising out of the lake, connected by a narrow 
isthmus to the mainland, cut through by a broad canal with a 
wooden bridge over it, leading to a gate flanked by towers and 
opening into a little medieval city built on the surrounding 
slopes. On the rock stood a well-fortified castle with a tall keep, 
a watchtower. This was my house. In it there were no fine halls 
or any signs of magnificence. The rooms were simple, paneled, 
and rather small. There was an uncommonly attractive library 
where you could find everything worth knowing. There was also 
a collection of weapons, and the bastions were mounted with 
heavy cannon. Besides that, there was a garrison of fifty men- 
at-arms in the castle. The little town had several hundred in- 
habitants and was governed by a mayor and a town council of 
old men. I myself was justice of the peace, arbitrator, and ad- 
viser, who appeared only now and then to hold court. On the 
landward side the town had a port in which lay my two-masted 
schooner, armed with several small cannon. 

The nerve center and raison d&tre of this whole arrange- 
ment was the secret of the keep, which I alone knew. The 
thought had come to me like a shock. For, inside the tower, ex- 
tending from the battlements to the vaulted cellar, was a copper 
column or heavy wire cable as thick as a man's arm, which rami- 
fied at the top into the finest branches, like the crown of a tree or 
better still like a taproot with all its tiny rootlets turned up- 
side down and reaching into the air. From the air they drew a 
certain inconceivable something which was conducted down the 
copper column into the cellar. Here I had an equally incon- 
ceivable apparatus, a kind of laboratory in which I made gold 
out of the mysterious substance which the copper roots drew 
from the air. This was really an arcanum, of whose nature I 
neither had nor wished to form any conception. Nor did my 
imagination concern itself with the nature of the transformation 
process. Tactfully and with a certain nervousness it skirted 
around what actually went on in this laboratory. There was a 
kind of inner prohibition: one was not supposed to look into it 
too closely, nor ask what kind of substance was extracted from 

Si 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

the air. As Goethe says of the Mothers, "Even to speak of them 
dismays the bold." 7 

"Spirit/' of course, meant for me something ineffable, but at 
bottom I did not regard it as essentially different from very rare- 
fied air. What the roots absorbed and transmitted to the copper 
trunk was a kind of spiritual essence which became visible down 
in the cellar as finished gold coins. This was certainly no mere 
conjuring trick, but a venerable and vitally important secret of 
nature which had come to me I know not how and which I had 
to conceal not only from the council of elders but, in a sense, also 
from myself. 

My long, boring walk to and from school began to shorten 
most delightfully. Scarcely was I out of the schoolhouse than I 
was already in the castle, where structural alterations were in 
progress, council sessions were being held, evildoers sentenced, 
disputes arbitrated, cannon fired. The schooner's decks were 
cleared, the sails rigged, and the vessel steered carefully out of 
the harbor before a gentle breeze, and then, as it emerged from 
behind the rock, tacked into a stiff nor'wester. Suddenly I found 
myself on my doorstep, as though only a few minutes had 
passed. I stepped out of my fantasy as out of a carriage which 
had effortlessly driven me home. This highly enjoyable occupa- 
tion lasted for several months before I got sick of it. Then I 
found the fantasy silly and ridiculous. Instead of daydreaming 
I began building castles and artfully fortified emplacements out 
of small stones, using mud as mortar the fortress of Hiiningen, 
which at that time was still intact, serving me as a model. I 
studied all the available fortification plans of Vauban, and was 
soon familiar with all the technicalities. From Vauban I turned 
to modern methods of fortification, and tried with my limited 
means to build models of all the different types. This preoccu- 
pied me in my leisure hours for more than two years, during 
which time my leanings toward nature study and concrete 
things steadily increased, at the cost of No. 2. 

As long as I knew so little about real things, there was no 
point, I thought, in thinking about them. Anyone could have 
fantasies, but real knowledge was another matter. My parents 

T Fatist, Part Two, p. 76. 



School years 

allowed me to take out a subscription for a scientific periodical, 
which I read with passionate interest. I hunted and collected all 
the fossils to be found in our Jura mountains, and all the obtain- 
able minerals, also insects and the bones of mammoths and 
men mammoth bones from gravel pits in the Rhineland plain, 
human bones from a mass grave near Hiiningen, dating from 
1811. Plants interested me too, but not in a scientific sense. I was 
attracted to them for a reason I could not understand, and with 
a strong feeling that they ought not to be pulled up and dried. 
They were living beings which had meaning only so long as they 
were growing and flowering a hidden, secret meaning, one of 
God's thoughts. They were to be regarded with awe and con- 
templated with philosophical wonderment. What the biologist 
had to say about them was interesting, but it was not the essen- 
tial thing. Yet I could not explain to myself what this essential 
thing was. How were plants related to the Christian religion or 
to the negation of the Will, for example? This was something I 
could not fathom. They obviously partook of the divine state of 
innocence which it was better not to disturb. By way of contrast, 
insects were denatured plants flowers and fruits which had 
presumed to crawl about on legs or stilts and to fly around with 
wings like the petals of blossoms, and busied themselves preying 
on plants. Because of this unlawful activity they were con- 
demned to mass executions, June bugs and caterpillars being the 
especial targets of such punitive expeditions. My "sympathy 
with all creatures" was strictly limited to warm-blooded ani- 
mals. The only exceptions among the cold-blooded vertebrates 
were frogs and toads, because of their resemblance to human 
beings. 



Ill 



Student Years 



IN SPITE OF my growing scientific interests, I turned back 
from time to time to my philosophical books. The question 
of my choice of a profession was drawing alarmingly close. I 
looked forward with longing to the end of my school days. Then 
I would go to the university and study natural science, of 
course. Then I would know something real. But no sooner had I 
made myself this promise than my doubts began. Was not my 
bent rather toward history and philosophy? Then again, I was 
intensely interested in everything Egyptian and Babylonian, 
and would have liked best to be an archaeologist. But I had no 
money to study anywhere except in Basel, and in Basel there 
was no teacher for this subject So this plan very soon came to 
an end. For a long time I could not make up my mind and con- 
stantly postponed the decision. My father was very worried. He 
said once, "The boy is interested in everything imaginable, but 
he does not know what he wants." I could only admit that he 
was right. As matriculation approached and we had to decide 
what faculty to register for, I abruptly decided on science, but I 
left my schoolfellows in doubt as to whether I intended to go in 
definitely for science or the humanities. 



Student Years 

This apparently sudden decision had a background of its own. 
Some weeks previously, just at the time when No. i and No. a 
were wrestling for a decision, I had two dreams. In the first 
dream I was in a dark wood that stretched along the Rhine. I 
came to a little hill, a burial mound, and began to dig. After a 
while I turned up, to my astonishment, some bones of prehistoric 
animals. This interested me enormously, and at that moment I 
knew: I must get to know nature, the world in which we live, 
and the things around us. 

Then came a second dream. Again I was in a wood; it was 
threaded with watercourses, and in the darkest place I saw a 
circular pool, surrounded by dense undergrowth. Half immersed 
in the water lay the strangest and most wonderful creature: a 
round animal, shimmering in opalescent hues, and consisting of 
innumerable little cells, or of organs shaped like tentacles. It was 
a giant radiolarian, measuring about three feet across. It seemed 
to me indescribably wonderful that this magnificent creature 
should be lying there undisturbed, in the hidden place, in the 
clear, deep water. It aroused in me an intense desire for knowl- 
edge, so that I awoke with a beating heart. These two dreams 
decided me overwhelmingly in favor of science, and removed all 
my doubts. 

It became clear to me that I was living in a time and a place 
where a person had to earn his living. To do so, one had to be 
this or that, and it made a deep impression on me that all my 
schoolfellows were imbued with this necessity and thought 
about nothing else. I felt I was in some way odd. Why could I 
not make up my mind and commit myself to something definite? 
Even that plodding fellow D. who had been held up to me by 
my German teacher as a model of diligence and conscientious- 
ness was certain that he would study theology. I saw that I 
would have to settle down and think the matter through. If I 
took up zoology, for instance, I could be only a schoolmaster, or 
at best an employee in a zoological garden. There was no future 
in that, even if one's demands were modest though I would 
certainly have preferred working in a zoo to the life of a school- 
teacher. 

In this blind alley the inspiration suddenly came to me that I 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

could study medicine. Strangely enough, this had never oc- 
curred to me before, although my paternal grandfather, of 
whom I had heard so much, had been a doctor. Indeed, for 
that very reason I had a certain resistance to this profession. 
"Only don't imitate/' was my motto. But now I told myself that 
the study of medicine at least began with scientific subjects. To 
that extent I would be doing what I wanted. Moreover, the field 
of medicine was so broad that there was always the possibility 
of specializing later. I had definitely opted for science, and the 
only question was: How? I had to earn my living, and as I had 
no money I could not attend a university abroad and obtain the 
kind of training that would give me hopes of a scientific career. 
At best I could become only a dilettante in science. Nor, since I 
possessed a personality that made me disliked by many of my 
schoolfellows and of the people who counted (i.e,, the teach- 
ers), was there any hope of finding a patron who would support 
my wish. When, therefore, I finally decided on medicine, it was 
with the rather disagreeable feeling that it was not a good thing 
to start life with such a compromise. Nevertheless, I felt con- 
siderably relieved now that this irrevocable decision had been 
made. 

The painful question then presented itself: Where was the 
money to come from? My father could raise only part of it. He 
applied to the University of Basel for a stipend for me, and to my 
shame it was granted. I was ashamed, not so much because our 
poverty was laid bare for all the world to see, but because I had 
secretly been convinced that all the "top" people, the people 
who "counted," were ill disposed toward me. I had never ex- 
pected any such kindness from them. I had obviously profited 
by the reputation of my father, who was a good and uncompli- 
cated person. Yet I felt myself totally different from him. I had, 
in fact, two different conceptions of myself. Through No. 1's eyes 
I saw myself as a rather disagreeable and moderately gifted 
young man with vaulting ambitions, an undisciplined temper- 
ament, and dubious manners, alternating between naive en- 
thusiasm and fits of childish disappointment, in his innnermost 
essence a hermit and obscurantist. On the other hand, No. 2, re- 
garded No. i as a difficult and thankless moral task, a lesson 

86 



Student Years 

that had to be got through somehow, complicated by a variety 
of faults such as spells of laziness, despondency, depression, in- 
ept enthusiasm for ideas and things that nobody valued, liable 
to imaginary friendships, limited, prejudiced, stupid (mathe- 
matics!), with a lack of understanding for other people, vague 
and confused in philosophical matters, neither an honest Chris- 
tian nor anything else. No. 2 had no definable character at all; 
he was a vita peracta, born, living, dead, everything in one; a 
total vision of life. Though pitilessly clear about himself, he was 
unable to express himself through the dense, dark medium of 
No. i, though he longed to do so. When No. 2 predominated, 
No. i was contained and obliterated in him, just as, con- 
versely, No. i regarded No. 2 as a region of inner darkness. No. 2 
felt that any conceivable expression of himself would be like a 
stone thrown over the edge of the world, dropping soundlessly 
into infinite night. But in him ( No. 2 ) light reigned, as in the spa- 
cious halls of a royal palace whose high casements open upon a 
landscape flooded with sunlight. Here were meaning and his- 
torical continuity, in strong contrast to the incoherent fortui- 
tousness of No. i*s life, which had no real points of contact with 
its environment. No. 2, on the other hand, felt himself in secret 
accord with the Middle Ages, as personified by Faust, with the 
legacy of a past which had obviously stirred Goethe to the 
depths. For Goethe too, therefore and this was my great con- 
solation No. 2 was a reality. Faust, as I now realized with some- 
thing of a shock, meant more to me than my beloved Gospel 
according to St. John. There was something in Faust that 
worked directly on my feelings. John's Christ was strange to me, 
but still stranger was the Savior of the other gospels. Faust, on 
the other hand, was the living equivalent of No. 2, and I was 
convinced that he was the answer which Goethe had given to 
his times. This insight was not only comforting to me, it also 
gave me an increased feeling of inner security and a sense of be- 
longing to the human community. I was no longer isolated and a 
mere curiosity, a sport of cruel nature. My godfather and au- 
thority was the great Goethe himself. 

About this time I had a dream which both frightened and en- 
couraged me. It was night in some unknown place, and I was 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

making slow and painful headway against a mighty wind. Dense 
fog was flying along everywhere. I had ray hands cupped 
around a tiny light which threatened to go out at any moment. 
Everything depended on my keeping this little light alive. Sud- 
denly 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 carry- 
ing. I blew, 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. i 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. i, I had to go for- 
ward into study, moneymaking, responsibilities, entangle- 
ments, 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 suc- 
tion 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. 

My view of the world spun around another ninety degrees; 
I recognized clearly that my path led irrevocably outward, into 
the limitations and darkness of three-dimensionality. It seemed 
to me that Adam must once have left Paradise in this manner; 
Eden had become a specter for him, and light was where a stony 
field had to be tilled in the sweat of his brow. 

88 



Student Years 

I asked myself: 'Whence comes such a dream?" Till then I 
had taken it for granted that such dreams were sent directly by 
God. But now I had imbibed so much epistemology that doubts 
assailed me. One might say, for instance, that my insight had 
been slowly ripening for a long time and had then suddenly 
broken through in a dream. And that, indeed, is what had hap- 
pened. But this explanation is merely a description. The real 
question was why this process took place and why it broke 
through into consciousness. Consciously I had done nothing to 
promote any such development; on the contrary, my sympathies 
were on the other side. Something must therefore have been at 
work behind the scenes, some intelligence, at any rate something 
more intelligent than myself. For the extraordinary idea that in 
the light of consciousness the inner realm of light appears as a 
gigantic shadow was not something I would have hit on of my 
own accord. Now all at once I understood many things that had 
been inexplicable to me before in particular that cold shadow 
of embarrassment and estrangement which passed over people's 
faces whenever I alluded to anything reminiscent of the inner 
realm. 

I must leave No. 2 behind me, that was clear. But under no 
circumstances ought I to deny him to myself or declare him in- 
valid. That would have been a self-mutilation, and would more- 
over have deprived me of any possibility of explaining the origin 
of the dreams. For there was no doubt in my mind that No. 2 
had something to do with the creation of dreams, and I could 
easily credit him with the necessary superior intelligence. But I 
felt myself to be increasingly identical with No. i, and this state 
proved in turn to be merely a part of the far more comprehensive 
No. 2, with whom for that very reason I could no longer feel my- 
self identical. He was indeed a specter, a spirit who could hold 
his own against the world of darkness. This was something I 
had not known before the dream, and even at the time I am 
sure of this in retrospect I was conscious of it only vaguely, al- 
though I knew it emotionally beyond a doubt. 

At any rate, a schism had taken place between me and No. 2, 
with the result that T was assigned to No. i and was separated 
from No. 2 in the same degree, who thereby acquired, as it 

89 



were, an autonomous personality. I did not connect this with the 
idea of any definite individuality, such as a revenant might 
have, although with my rustic origins this possibility would not 
have seemed strange to me. In the country people believe in 
these things according to the circumstances: they are and they 
are not. The only distinct feature about this spirit was his his- 
torical character, his extension in time, or rather, his timeless- 
ness. Of course I did not tell myself this in so many words, nor 
did I form any conception of his spatial existence. He played 
the role of a factor in the background of my No. i existence, 
never clearly defined but yet definitely present. 

Children react much less to what grown-ups say than to the 
imponderables in the surrounding atmosphere. The child un- 
consciously adapts himself to them, and this produces in him 
correlations of a compensatory nature. The peculiar "religious" 
ideas that came to me even in my earliest childhood were spon- 
taneous products which can be understood only as reactions to 
my parental environment and to the spirit of the age. The reli- 
gious doubts to which my father was later to succumb naturally 
had to pass through a long period of incubation. Such a revolu- 
tion of one's world, and of the world in general, threw its shad- 
ows ahead, and the shadows were all the longer, the more 
desperately my father's conscious mind resisted their power. It is 
not surprising that my father's forebodings put him in a state of 
unrest, which then communicated itself to me. 

I never had the impression that these influences emanated 
from my mother, for she was somehow rooted in deep, invisible 
ground, though it never appeared to me as confidence in her 
Christian faith. For me it was somehow connected with animals, 
trees, mountains, meadows, and running water, aH of which 
contrasted most strangely with her Christian surface and her 
conventional assertions of faith. This background corresponded 
so well to my own attitude that it caused me no uneasiness; on 
the contrary, it gave me a sense of security and the conviction 
that here was solid ground on which one could stand. It never 
occurred to me how "pagan" this foundation was. My mother's 
"No. 2," offered me the strongest support in the conflict then 

90 



Student Jears 

beginning between paternal tradition and the strange, com- 
pensatory products which my unconscious had been stimulated 
to create. 

Looking back, I now see how very much my development as a 
child anticipated future events and paved the way for modes of 
adaptation to my father's religious collapse as well as to the 
shattering revelation of the world as we see it today a revela- 
tion which had not taken shape from one day to the next, but 
had cast its shadows long in advance. Although we human be- 
ings have our own personal life, we are yet in large measure the 
representatives, the victims and promoters of a collective spirit 
whose years are counted in centuries. We can well think all our 
lives long that we are following our own noses, and may never 
discover that we are, for the most part, supernumeraries on the 
stage of the world theater. There are factors which, although we 
do not know them, nevertheless influence our lives, the more so if 
they are unconscious. Thus at least a part of our being lives in 
the centuries that part which, for my private use, I have desig- 
nated "No. 2." That it is not an individual curiosity is proved by 
the religion of the West, which expressly applies itself to this 
inner man and for two thousand years has earnestly tried to 
bring him to the knowledge of our surface consciousness with its 
personalistic preoccupations: "Non joras ire, in interior e homine 
habitat veritas" (Go not outside; truth dwells in the inner 
man). 

During the years 1892-94 I had a number of rather vehement 
discussions with my father. He had studied Oriental languages 
in Gottingen and had done his dissertation on the Arabic version 
of the Song of Songs. His days of glory had ended with his fi- 
nal examination. Thereafter he forgot his linguistic talent. As a 
country parson he lapsed into a sort of sentimental idealism 
and into reminiscences of his golden student days, continued to 
smoke a long student's pipe, and discovered that his marriage 
was not all he had imagined it to be. He did a great deal of good 
far too much and as a result was usually irritable. Both par- 
ents made great efforts to live devout lives, with the result that 
there were angry scenes between them only too frequently. 

9* 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

These difficulties, understandably enough, later shattered my 
father's faith. 

At that time his irritability and discontent had increased, and 
his condition filled me with concern. My mother avoided every- 
thing that might excite him and refused to engage in disputes. 
Though I reaEzed that this was the wisest course to take, often I 
could not keep my own temper in check. I would remain pas- 
sive during his outbursts of rage, but when he seemed to be in a 
more accessible mood I sometimes tried to strike up a conversa- 
tion with him, hoping to learn something about his inner 
thoughts and his understanding of himself. It was clear to me 
that something quite specific was tormenting him, and I sus- 
pected that it had to do with his faith. From a number of hints he 
let fall I was convinced that he suffered from religious doubts. 
This, it seemed to me, was bound to be the case if the necessary 
experience had not come to him. From my attempts at discussion 
I learned in fact that something of the sort was amiss, for all my 
questions were met with the same old lifeless theological an- 
swers, or with a resigned shrug which aroused the spirit of con- 
tradiction in me. I could not understand why he did not seize 
on these opportunities pugnaciously and come to terms with his 
situation. I saw that my critical questions made him sad, but 
I nevertheless hoped for a constructive talk, since it appeared al- 
most inconceivable to me that he should not have had experi- 
ence of God, the most evident of all experiences. I knew enough 
about epistemology to realize that knowledge of this sort could 
not be proved, but it was equally clear to me that it stood in no 
more need of proof than the beauty of a sunset or the terrors of 
the night. I tried, no doubt very clumsily, to convey these ob- 
vious truths to him, with the hopeful intention of helping him to 
bear the fate which had inevitably befallen him. He had to quar- 
rel with somebody, so he did it with his family and himself. Why 
didn't he do it with God, the dark author of all created things, 
who alone was responsible for the sufferings of the world? God 
would assuredly have sent him by way of an answer one of those 
magical, infinitely profound dreams which He had sent to me 
even without being asked, and which had sealed my fate. I did 



Student Years 

not know why, it simply was so. Yes, He had even allowed me a 
glimpse into His own being. This was a great secret which I 
dared not and could not reveal to my father. I might have been 
able to reveal it had he been capable of understanding the di- 
rect experience of God. But in my talks with him I never got that 
far, never even came within sight of the problem, because I al- 
ways set about it in a very unpsychological and intellectual 
way, and did everything possible to avoid the emotional aspects. 
Each time this approach was like a red rag to a bull and led to 
irritable reactions which were incomprehensible to me. I was un- 
able to understand how a perfectly rational argument could 
meet with such emotional resistance. 

These fruitless discussions exasperated my father and me, and 
in the end we abandoned them, each burdened with his own 
specific feeling of inferiority. Theology had alienated my father 
and me from one another. I felt that I had once again suffered a 
fatal defeat, though I sensed I was not alone. I had a dim pre- 
monition that he was inescapably succumbing to his fate. He 
was lonely and had no friend to talk with. At least I knew no one 
among our acquaintances whom I would have trusted to say the 
saving word. Once I heard him praying. He struggled desper- 
ately to keep his faith. I was shaken and outraged at once, be- 
cause I saw how hopelessly he was entrapped by the Church 
and its theological thinking. They had. blocked all avenues by 
which he might have reached God directly, and then faithlessly 
abandoned him. Now I understood the deepest meaning of my 
earlier experience: God Himself had disavowed theology and 
the Church founded upon it, On the other hand God condoned 
this theology, as He condoned so much else. It seemed ridiculous 
to me to suppose that men were responsible for such develop- 
ments. What were men, anyway? "They are born dumb and 
blind as puppies/' I thought, "and like all God's creatures are 
furnished with the dimmest light, never enough to illuminate 
the darkness in which they grope/' I was equally sure that none 
of the theologians I knew had ever seen **the light that shineth 
in the darkness" with his own eyes, for if they had they would 
not have been able to teach a "theological religion/' which 

93 



, ur earns, Reflections 

seemed quite inadequate to me, since there was nothing to do 
with it but believe it without hope. This was what my father had 
tried valiantly to do, and had run aground. He could not even 
defend himself against the ridiculous materialism of the psy- 
chiatrists. This, too, was something that one had to believe, just 
like theology, only in the opposite sense. I felt more certain 
than ever that both of them lacked epistemological criticism as 
well as experience. 

My father was obviously under the impression that psychia- 
trists had discovered something in the brain which proved that 
in the place where mind should have been there was only mat- 
ter, and nothing "spiritual.* This was borne out by his admoni- 
tions that if I studied medicine I should in Heaven's name not 
become a materialist. To me this warning meant that I ought to 
believe nothing at all, for I knew that materialists believed in 
their definitions just as the theologians did in theirs, and that 
my poor father had simply jumped out of the frying pan into the 
fire. I recognized that this celebrated faith of his had played 
this deadly trick on him, and not only on him but on most of 
the cultivated and serious people I knew. The arch sin of faith, 
it seemed to me, was that it forestalled experience. How did the 
theologians know that God had deliberately arranged certain 
things and "permitted" certain others, and how did the psy- 
chiatrists know that matter was endowed with the qualities of 
the human mind? I was in no danger of succumbing to ma- 
terialism, but my father certainly was. Apparently someone had 
whispered something about "suggestion," for I discovered that 
he was reading Bernheim's book on suggestion in Sigmund 
Freud's translation. 1 This was a new and significant departure, 
for I had never before seen my father reading anything but 
novels or an occasional travel book. All "clever" and interesting 
books were taboo. But his psychiatric reading made him no 
happier. His depressive moods increased in frequency and 
intensity, and so did his hypochondria. For a number of years he 
had complained of all sorts of abdominal symptoms, though his 
doctor had been unable to find anything definite wrong with 
him. Now he complained of the sensation of having "stones in 

1 Die Suggestion und ihre Heilwirkung ( Leipzig and Vienna, 1888 ). 

94 



Student Years 

the abdomen.'* For a long time we did not take this seriously, 
but at last the doctor became suspicious. This was toward the 
end of the summer of 1895. 

In the spring of that year I had begun my studies at the Uni- 
versity of Basel. The only time in my life that I have ever been 
bored my school days at the Gymnasium was over at last 
and the golden gates to the universitas litterarum and to 
academic freedom were opening wide for me. Now I would 
hear the truth about nature, at least its most essential aspects. I 
would learn all there was to know about the anatomy and 
physiology of man, and would acquire knowledge of the dis- 
eases. In addition to all this, I was admitted into a color-wearing 
fraternity to which my father had belonged. Early in my fresh- 
man year he came along on a fraternity outing to a wine-grow- 
ing village in the Markgrafen country and there delivered a 
whimsical speech in which, to my delight, the gay spirit of his 
own student days came back again. I realized in a flash that his 
life had come to a standstill at his graduation, and the verse of 
a student song echoed in my ears: 

Sie zogen mit geseriktem Blick 
In das Philisterland zuruck. 
O jerum, jerum, jerum, 
O quae mutatio. reruml 2 

The words fell heavily on my soul. Once upon a time he too 
had been an enthusiastic student in his first year, as I was now; 
the world had opened out for him, as it was doing for me; the 
infinite treasures of knowledge had spread before him, as now 
before me. How can it have happened that everything was 
blighted for him, had turned to sourness and bitterness? I found 
no answer, or too many. The speech he delivered that summer 
evening over the wine was the last chance he had to live out his 
memories of the time when he was what he should have been. 
Soon afterward his condition deteriorated. In the late autumn 
of 1895 h became bedridden, and early in 1896 he died. 

I had come home after lectures, and asked how he was. "Oh, 

2 'With downcast eyes they marched back to the land of the Philistines, O dear, 
O dear, O dear, how things have changed!" 

95 



still the same. He's very weak/' my mother said. He whispered 
something to her, which she repeated to me, warning me with 
her eyes of his delirious condition: "He wants to know whether 
you have passed the state examination." I saw that I must lie. 
"Yes, it went very well." He sighed with relief, and closed his 
eyes. A little later I went in to see him again. He was alone; my 
mother was doing something in the adjoining room. There was a 
rattling in his throat, and I could see that he was in the death 
agony. I stood by his bed, fascinated. I had never seen anyone 
die before. Suddenly he stopped breathing. I waited and waited 
for the next breath. It did not come. Then I remembered my 
mother and went into the next room, where she sat by the win- 
dow, knitting. "He is dying," I said. She came with me to the 
bed, and saw that he was dead. She said as if in wonderment: 
"How quickly it has all passed." 

The following days were gloomy and painful, and little of 
them has remained in my memory. Once my mother spoke to me 
or to the surrounding air in her "second" voice, and remarked, 
"He died in time for you." Which appeared to mean: "You did 
not understand each other and he might have become a hin- 
drance to you." This view seemed to me to fit in with my 
mother's No. 2 personality. 

The words "for you" hit me terribly hard, and I felt that a bit 
of the old days had now come irrevocably to an end. At the 
same time, a bit of manliness and freedom awoke in me. After 
my father's death I moved into his room, and took his place in- 
side the family. For instance, I had to hand out the housekeep- 
ing money to my mother every week, because she was unable to 
economize and could not manage money. 

Six weeks after his death my father appeared to me in a dream. 
Suddenly he stood before me and said that he was coming back 
from his holiday. He had made a good recovery and was now 
coming home. I thought he would be annoyed with me for hav- 
ing moved into his room. But not a bit of it! Nevertheless, I felt 
ashamed because I had imagined he was dead. Two days later 
the dream was repeated. My father had recovered and was 
coming home, and again I reproached myself because I had 
thought he was dead. Later I kept asking myself: "What does it 
mean that my father returns in dreams and that he seems so 

96 



Student years 

real?" It was an unforgettable experience, and it forced me for 
the first time to think about life after death. 

With the death of my father difficult problems arose concern- 
ing the continuation of my studies. Some of my mother's rela- 
tions took the view that I ought to look for a clerk's job in a 
business house, so as to earn money as quickly as possible. My 
mother's youngest brother offered to help her, since her re- 
sources were not nearly sufficient to live on. An uncle on my 
father's side helped me. At the end of my studies I owed him 
three thousand francs. The rest I earned by working as a junior 
assistant and by helping an aged aunt dispose of her small 
collection of antiques. I sold them piece by piece at good prices, 
and received a very welcome percentage. 

I would not have missed this time of poverty. One learns to 
value simple things. I still remember the time when I was given 
a box of cigars as a present. It seemed to me princely. They 
lasted a whole year, for I allowed myself one only on Sundays. 

My student days were a good time for me. Everything was 
intellectually alive, and it was also a time of friendships. In the 
fraternity meetings I gave several lectures on theological and 
psychological subjects. We had many animated discussions, and 
not always about medical questions only. We argued over 
Schopenhauer and Kant, we knew all about the stylistic niceties 
of Cicero, and were interested in theology and philosophy. 

During my student days I received much stimulation in re- 
gard to religious questions. At home I had the welcome op- 
portunity to talk with a theologian who had been my father's 
vicar. He was distinguished not only by his phenomenal appe- 
tite, which put mine quite in the shade, but by his remarkable 
erudition. From him I learned a great deal about the Church 
Fathers and the history of dogma. He also introduced me to 
new aspects of Protestant theology. Ritschl's theology was much 
in fashion in those days. Its historicism irritated me, especially 
the comparison with a railway train, 8 The theological students 
with whom I had discussions in the fraternity all seemed quite 

8 Albrecht Ritschl (1822-89) compared Christ's coining to the shunting of a rail- 
road train. The engine gives a push from behind, the motion passes through the 
entire train, and the foremost car begins to move. Thus toe impulse given by 
Christ is transmitted down the centuries. A. J. 

97 



Memories, ureams, tiejieciions 

content with the theory of the historical effect produced by 
Christ's life. This view seemed to me not only soft-witted but 
altogether lifeless. Neither could I subscribe to the tendency to 
move Christ into the foreground and make him the sole decisive 
figure in the drama of God and man. To me this absolutely 
belied Christ's own view that the Holy Ghost, who had be- 
gotten him, would take his place among men after his death. 

For me the Holy Ghost was a manifestation of the incon- 
ceivable God. The workings of the Holy Ghost were not only 
sublime but also partook of that strange and even questionable 
quality which characterized the deeds of Yahweh, whom I 
naively identified with the Christian image of God, as I had 
been taught in my instruction for confirmation. (I was also not 
aware at this time that the devil, properly speaking, had been 
born with Christianity.) Lord Jesus was to me unquestionably 
a man and therefore a fallible figure, or else a mere mouthpiece 
of the Holy Ghost. This highly unorthodox view, a far cry from 
the theological one, naturally ran up against utter incomprehen- 
sion. The disappointment I felt about this gradually led me to a 
kind of resigned indifference, and confirmed my conviction that 
in religious matters only experience counted. 

During my first years at the university I made the discovery 
that while science opened the door to enormous quantities of 
knowledge, it provided genuine insights very sparingly, and 
these in the main were of a specialized nature. I knew from my 
philosophical reading that the existence of the psyche was 
responsible for this situation. Without the psyche there would 
be neither knowledge nor insight. Yet nothing was ever said 
about the psyche. Everywhere it was tacitly taken for granted, 
and even when someone mentioned it as did C. G. Carus, for 
example there was no real knowledge of it but only philosophi- 
cal speculation which might just as easily take one turn as 
another. I could make neither head nor tail of this curious 
observation. 

At the end of my second semester, however, I made another 
discovery, which was to have great consequences. In the library 
of a classmate's father I came upon a small book on spiritualistic 
phenomena, dating from the seventies. It was an account of the 

98 



Student Years 

beginnings of spiritualism, and was written by a theologian. My 
initial doubts were quickly dissipated, for I could not help seeing 
that the phenomena described in the book were in principle 
much the same as the stories I had heard again and again in the 
country since my earliest childhood. The material, without a 
doubt, was authentic. But the great question of whether these 
stories were physically true was not answered to my satisfaction. 
Nevertheless, it could be established that at all times and all 
over the world the same stories had been reported again and 
again. There must be some reason for this, and it could not 
possibly have been the predominance of the same religious 
conceptions everywhere, for that was obviously not the case. 
Rather it must be connected with the objective behavior of the 
human psyche. But with regard to this cardinal question the 
objective nature of the psyche I could find out absolutely 
nothing, except what the philosophers said. 

The observations of the spiritualists, weird and questionable 
as they seemed to me, were the first accounts I had seen of 
objective psychic phenomena. Names like Zoellner and Crookes 
impressed themselves on me, and I read virtually the whole of 
the literature available to me at the time. Naturally I also spoke 
of these matters to my comrades, who to my great astonishment 
reacted with derision and disbelief or with anxious defensive- 
ness. I wondered at the sureness with which they could assert 
that things like ghosts and table-turning were impossible and 
therefore fraudulent, and on the other hand at the evidently 
anxious nature of their defensiveness. I, too, was not certain of 
the absolute reliability of the reports, but why, after all, should 
there not be ghosts? How did we know that something was 
"impossible"? And, above all, what did the anxiety signify? For 
myself I found such possibilities extremely interesting and at- 
tractive. They added another dimension to my life; the world 
gained depth and background. Could, for example, dreams have 
anything to do with ghosts? Kant's Dreams of a Spirit Seer came 
just at the right moment, and soon I also discovered Karl 
Duprel, who had evaluated these ideas philosophically and 
psychologically, I dug up Eschenmayer, Passavant, Justinus 
Kerner, and Gorres, and read seven volumes of Swedenborg. 

99 



, Dreams, Reflections 

My mother's No. 2 sympathized wholeheartedly with my 
enthusiasm, but everyone else I knew was distinctly discourag- 
ing. Hitherto I had encountered only the brick wall of tradi- 
tional views, but now I came up against the steel of people's 
prejudice and their utter incapacity to admit unconventional 
possibilities. I found this even with my closest friends. To them 
all this was far worse than my preoccupation with theology. I 
had the feeling that I had pushed to die brink of the world; 
what was of burning interest to me was null and void for others, 
and even a cause for dread. 

Dread of what? I could find no explanation for this. After all, 
there was nothing preposterous or world-shaking in the idea 
that there might be events which overstepped the limited 
categories of space, time, and causality. Animals were known 
to sense beforehand storms and earthquakes. There were dreams 
which foresaw the death of certain persons, clocks which 
stopped at the moment of death, glasses which shattered at the 
critical moment. All these things had been taken for granted in 
the world of my childhood. And now I was apparently the only 
person who had ever heard of them. In all earnestness I asked 
myself what kind of world I had stumbled into. Plainly the 
urban world knew nothing about the country world, the real 
world of mountains, woods, and rivers, of animals and "God's 
thoughts" (plants and crystals). I found this explanation com- 
forting. At all events, it bolstered my self-esteem, for I realized 
that for all its wealth of learning the urban world was mentally 
rather limited. This insight proved dangerous, because it tricked 
me into fits of superiority, misplaced criticism, and aggressive- 
ness, which got me deservedly disliked. This eventually brought 
back all the old doubts, inferiority feelings, and depressions a 
vicious circle I was resolved to break at all costs. No longer 
would I stand outside the world, enjoying the dubious reputa- 
tion of a freak. 

After my first introductory course I became junior assistant in 
anatomy, and the following semester the demonstrator placed 
me in charge of the course in histology to my intense satisfac- 
tion, naturally. I interested myself primarily in evolutionary 
theory and comparative anatomy, and I also became acquainted 

100 



Student Years 

with neo-vitalistic doctrines. What fascinated me most of all 
was the morphological point of view in the broadest sense. With 
physiology it was just the opposite. I found the subject thor- 
oughly repellent because of vivisection, which was practiced 
merely for purposes of demonstration. I could never free myself 
from the feeling that warm-blooded creatures were akin to us 
and not just cerebral automata. Consequently I cut demonstra- 
tion classes whenever I could. I realized that one had to experi- 
ment on animals, but the demonstration of such experiments 
nevertheless seemed to me horrible, barbarous, and above all 
unnecessary. I had imagination enough to picture the demon- 
strated procedures from a mere description of them. My com- 
passion for animals did not derive from the Buddhistic trim- 
mings of Schopenhauer's philosophy, but rested on the deeper 
foundation of a primitive attitude of mind on an unconscious 
identity with animals. At the time, of course, I was wholly 
ignorant of this important psychological fact. My repugnance 
for physiology was so great that my examination results in this 
subject were correspondingly poor. Nevertheless, I scraped 
through. 

The clinical semesters that followed kept me so busy that 
scarcely any time remained for my forays into outlying fields. 
I was able to study Kant only on Sundays. I also read Eduard 
von Hartmann assiduously. Nietzsche had been on my program 
for some time, but I hesitated to begin reading him because I 
felt I was insufficiently prepared. At that time he was much 
discussed, mostly in adverse terms, by the allegedly competent 
philosophy students, from which I was able to deduce the 
hostility he aroused in the higher echelons. The supreme au- 
thority, of course, was Jakob Burckhardt, whose various critical 
comments on Nietzsche were bandied about. Moreover, there 
were some persons at the university who had known Nietzsche 
personally and were able to retail all sorts of unflattering tidbits 
about him. Most of them had not read a word of Nietzsche and 
therefore dwelt at length on his outward foibles, for example, 
his putting on airs as a gentleman, his manner of playing the 
piano, his stylistic exaggerations idiosyncrasies which got on 
the nerves of the good people of Basel in those days. Such things 

101 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

would certainly not have caused me to postpone the reading of 
Nietzsche on the contrary, they acted as the strongest incen- 
tive. But I was held back by a secret fear that I might perhaps 
be like him, at least in regard to the "secret" which had isolated 
him from his environment. Perhaps who knows? he had had 
inner experiences, insights which he had unfortunately at- 
tempted to talk about, and had found that no one understood 
him. Obviously he was, or at least was considered to be, an 
eccentric, a sport of nature, which I did not want to be under 
any circumstances. I feared I might be forced to recognize that 
I too was another such strange bird. Of course, he was a pro- 
fessor, had written whole long books and so had attained un- 
imaginable heights, but, like me, he was a clergyman's son. He, 
however, had been born in the great land of Germany, which 
reached as far as the sea, while I was only a Swiss and sprang 
from a modest parsonage in a small border village. He spoke a 
polished High German, knew Latin and Greek, possibly French, 
Italian, and Spanish as well, whereas the only language I com- 
manded with any certainty was the Waggis-Basel dialect. He, 
possessed of all these splendors, could well afford to be some- 
thing of an eccentric, but I must not let myself find out how far I 
might be like him. 

In spite of these trepidations I was curious, and finally re- 
solved to read him. Thoughts Out of Season was the first volume 
that fell into my hands. I was carried away by enthusiasm, and 
soon afterward read Thus Spake Zarathustra. This, like 
Goethe's Faust, was a tremendous experience for me. Zarathus- 
tra was Nietzsche's Faust, his No. 2, and my No. 2 now corre- 
sponded to Zarathustra though this was rather like comparing 
a molehill with Mount Blanc. And Zarathustra there could be 
no doubt about that was morbid. Was my No. 2 also morbid? 
This possibility filled me with a terror which for a long time 
I refused to admit, but the idea cropped up again and again at 
inopportune moments, throwing me into a cold sweat, so that 
in the end I was forced to reflect on myself. Nietzsche had dis- 
covered his No. 2 only late in life, when he was already past 
middle age, whereas I had known mine ever since boyhood. 
Nietzsche had spoken naively and incautiously about this arrhe- 

102, 



Student Years 

ton, this thing not to be named, as though it were quite in order. 
But I had noticed in time that this only leads to trouble. He was 
so brilliant that he was able to come to Basel as a professor when 
still a young man, not suspecting what lay ahead of him. Be- 
cause of his very brilliance he should have noticed in time that 
something was amiss. That, I thought, was his morbid mis- 
understanding: that he fearlessly and unsuspectingly let his 
No. 2 loose upon a world that knew and understood nothing 
about such things. He was moved by the childish hope of find- 
ing people who would be able to share his ecstasies and could 
grasp his "transvaluation of all values/* But he found only 
educated Philistines tragi-comically, he was one himself. Like 
the rest of them, he did not understand himself when he fell 
head first into the unutterable mystery and wanted to sing its 
praises to the dull, godforsaken masses. That was the reason 
for the bombastic language, the piling up of metaphors, the 
hymnlike raptures all a vain attempt to catch the ear of a 
world which had sold its soul for a mass of disconnected facts. 
And he fell tightrope-walker that he proclaimed himself to be 
into depths far beyond himself. He did not know his way 
about in this world and was like a man possessed, one who 
could be handled only with the utmost caution. Among my 
friends and acquaintances I knew of only two who openly 
declared themselves adherents of Nietzsche. Both were homo- 
sexual; one of them ended by committing suicide, the other 
ran to seed as a misunderstood genius. The rest of my friends 
were not so much dumf ounded by the phenomenon of Zarathus- 
tra as simply immune to its appeal. 

Just as Faust had opened a door for me, Zarathustra slammed 
one shut, and it remained shut for a long time to come. I felt like 
the old peasant who discovered that two of his cows had 
evidently been bewitched and had got their heads in the same 
halter. "How did that happen?" asked his small son. "Boy, one 
doesn't talk about such things/' replied his father. 

I realized that one gets nowhere unless one talks to people 
about the things they know. The naive person does not appre- 
ciate what an insult it is to talk to one's fellows about anything 
that is unknown to them. They pardon such ruthless behavior 

103 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

only in a writer, journalist, or poet. I came to see that a new 
idea, or even just an unusual aspect of an old one, can be com- 
municated only by facts. Facts remain and cannot be brushed 
aside; sooner or later someone will come upon them and know 
what he has found. I realized that I talked only for want of some- 
thing better, that I ought to be offering facts, and these I lacked 
entirely. I had nothing concrete in my hands. More than ever I 
found myself driven toward empiricism. I began to blame the 
philosophers for rattling away when experience was lacking, 
and holding their tongues when they ought to have been 
answering with facts. In this respect they all seemed like 
watered-down theologians. I felt that at some time or other I 
had passed through the valley of diamonds, but I could con- 
vince no one not even myself, when I looked at them more 
closely that the specimens I had brought back were not mere 
pieces of gravel. 

This was in 1898, when I began to think more seriously about 
my career as a medical man. I soon came to the conclusion that 
I would have to specialize. The choice seemed to lie between 
surgery and internal medicine. I inclined toward the former be- 
cause of my special training in anatomy and my preference for 
pathology, and would very probably have made surgery my pro- 
fession if I had possessed the necessary financial means. All 
along, it had been extremely painful to me to have to go into 
debt in order to study at all. I knew that after the final examina- 
tion I would have to begin earning my living as soon as possible. 
I imagined a career as assistant at some cantonal hospital, where 
there was more hope of obtaining a paid position than in a 
clinic. Moreover, a post in a clinic depended to a large extent on 
the backing or personal interest of the chief, With my ques- 
tionable popularity and estrangement from others experienced 
all too often I dared not think of any such stroke of luck, and 
therefore contented myself with the modest prospect of a post in 
one of the local hospitals. The rest depended on hard work and 
on my capability and application. 

During the summer holidays, however, something happened 
that was destined to influence me profoundly. One day I was 
setting in my room, studying my textbooks. In the adjoining 

, 104 



Student "fears 

room, the door to which stood ajar, my mother was knitting. 
That was our dining room, where the round walnut dining 
table stood. The table had come from the dowry of my paternal 
grandmother, and was at this time about seventy years old. My 
mother was sitting by the window, about a yard away from the 
table. My sister was at school and our maid in the kitchen. Sud- 
denly there sounded a report like a pistol shot. I jumped up and 
rushed into the room from which the noise of the explosion had 
come. My mother was sitting flabbergasted in her armchair, the 
knitting fallen from her hands. She stammered out, "W-w-what's 
happened? It was right beside me!" and stared at the table. 
Following her eyes, I saw what had happened. The table top 
had split from the rim to beyond the center, and not along any 
joint; the split ran right through the solid wood. I was thunder- 
struck. How could such a thing happen? A table of solid walnut 
that had dried out for seventy years how could it split on a 
summer day in the relatively high degree of humidity char- 
acteristic of our climate? If it had stood next to a heated stove 
on a cold, dry winter day, then it might have been conceivable. 
What in the world could have caused such an explosion? "There 
certainly are curious accidents," I thought. My mother nodded 
darkly. "Yes, yes," she said in her No. 2 voice, "that means some- 
thing." Against my will I was impressed and annoyed with my- 
self for not finding anything to say. 

Some two weeks later I came home at six o'clock in the eve- 
ning and found the household my mother, my fourteen-year-old 
sister, and the maid in a great state of agitation. About an 
hour earlier there had been another deafening report. This time 
it was not the already damaged table; the noise had come from 
the direction of the sideboard, a heavy piece of furniture dating 
from the early nineteenth century. They had already looked all 
over it, but had found no trace of a split. I immediately began 
examining the sideboard and the entire surrounding area, but 
just as fruitlessly. Then I began on the interior of the sideboard. 
In the cupboard containing the bread basket I found a loaf of 
bread, and, beside it, the bread knife. The greater part of the 
blade had snapped off in several pieces. The handle lay in one 
corner of the rectangular basket, and in each of the other corners 



Memories, Dreams, Re-flections 

lay a piece of the blade. The knife had been used shortly before, 
at four-o'clock tea, and afterward put away. Since then no one 
had gone to the sideboard. 

The next day I took the shattered knife to one of the best 
cutlers in the town. He examined the fractures with a magni- 
fying glass, and shook his head. "This knife is perfectly sound," 
he said, 'TTiere is no fault in the steel. Someone must have 
deliberately broken it piece by piece. It could be done, for 
instance, by sticking the blade into the crack of the drawer and 
breaking off a piece at a time. Or else it might have been 
dropped on stone from a great height. But good steel can't 
explode. Someone has been pulling your leg." I have carefully 
kept the pieces of the knife to this day. 

My mother and my sister had been in the room when the 
sudden report made them jump. My mother's No. 2 looked at 
me meaningfully, but I could find nothing to say. I was com- 
pletely at a loss and could offer no explanation of what had 
happened, and this was all the more annoying as I had to admit 
that I was profoundly impressed. Why and how had the table 
split and the knife shattered? The hypothesis that it was just a 
coincidence went much too far. It seemed highly improbable 
to me that the Rhine would flow backward just once, by mere 
chance and all other possible explanations were automatically 
ruled out. So what was it? 

A few weeks later I heard of certain relatives who had been 
engaged for some time in table-turning, and also had a medium, 
a young girl of fifteen and a half. The group had been thinking 
of having me meet the medium, who produced somnambulistic 
states and spiritualistic phenomena. When I heard this, I im- 
mediately thought of the strange manifestations in our house, 
and I conjectured that they might be somehow connected with 
this medium. I therefore began attending the regular stances 
which my relatives held every Saturday evening. We had re- 
sults in the form of communications and tapping noises from 
the walls and the table. Movements of the table independently 
of the medium were questionable, and I soon found out that 
limiting conditions imposed on the experiment generally had 
an obstructive effect. I therefore accepted the obvious autonomy 

106 



Student Years 

of the tapping noises and turned my attention to the content of 
the communications. I set forth the results of these observations 
in my doctoral thesis. After about two years of experimentation 
we all became rather weary of it. I caught the medium trying 
to produce phenomena by trickery, and this made me break off 
the experiments very much to my regret, for I had learned 
from this example how a No. 2 personality is formed, how it 
enters into a child's consciousness and finally integrates it into 
itself. She was one of these precociously matured personalities, 
and she died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-six. I saw her 
once again, when she was twenty-four, and received a lasting 
impression of the independence and maturity of her person- 
ality. After her death I learned from her family that during the 
last months of her life her character disintegrated bit by bit, 
and that ultimately she returned to the state of a two-year-old 
child, in which condition she fell into her last sleep. 

All in all, this was the one great experience which wiped out 
all my earlier philosophy and made it possible for me to achieve 
a psychological point of view. I had discovered some objective 
facts about the human psyche. Yet the nature of the experience 
was such that once again I was unable to speak of it. I knew no 
one to whom I could have told the whole story. Once more I 
had to lay aside an unfinished problem. It was not until two 
years later that my dissertation appeared. 4 

At the medical clinic Friedrich von Miiller had taken the 
place of old Immermann. In Miiller I encountered a mind that 
appealed to me. I saw how a keen intelligence grasped the 
problem and formulated questions which in themselves were 
half the solution. He, for his part, seemed to see something in 
me, for toward the end of my studies he proposed that I should 
go with him, as his assistant, to Munich, where he had received 
an appointment. This invitation almost persuaded me to devote 
myself to internal medicine. I might have done so had not some- 
thing happened in the meantime which removed all my doubts 
concerning my future career. 

*Zur Psychohgie und Pathologie sogenannter occulter Phanomene: eine psy- 
chiatrische Studte ( 1902); English trans.: "On the Psychology and Pathology of 
So-called Occult Phenomena/' in Psychiatric Studies (CW i). 

107 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

Though I had attended psychiatric lectures and clinics, the 
current instructor in psychiatry was not exactly stimulating, and 
when I recalled the effects which the experience of asylums had 
had on my father, this was not calculated to prepossess me in 
favor of psychiatry. In preparing myself for the state examina- 
tion, therefore, the textbook on psychiatry was the last I at- 
tacked. I expected nothing of it, and I still remember that as I 
opened the book by Krafft-Ebing 5 the thought came to me: 
"Well, now let's see what a psychiatrist has to say for himself." 
The lectures and clinical demonstrations had not made the 
slightest impression on me. I could not remember a single one 
of the cases I had seen in the clinic, but only my boredom and 
disgust. 

I began with the preface, intending to find out how a psy- 
chiatrist introduced his subject or, indeed, justified his reason 
for existing at all. By way of excuse for this high and mighty 
attitude I must make it clear that in the medical world at that 
time psychiatry was quite generally held in contempt. No one 
really knew anything about it, and there was no psychology 
which regarded man as a whole and included his pathological 
variations in the total picture. The director was locked up in the 
same institution with his patients, and the institution was 
equally cut off, isolated on the outskirts of the city like an 
ancient lazaret with its lepers. No one liked looking in that di- 
rection. The doctors knew almost as little as the layman and 
therefore shared his feelings. Mental disease was a hopeless and 
fatal affair which cast its shadow over psychiatry as well. The 
psychiatrist was a strange figure in those days, as I was soon to 
learn from personal experience. 

Beginning with the preface, I read: "It is probably due to the 
peculiarity of the subject and its incomplete state of develop- 
ment that psychiatric textbooks are stamped with a more or 
less subjective character/' A few lines further on, the author 
called the psychoses "diseases of the personality/* My heart 
suddenly began to pound. I had to stand up and draw a deep 
breath. My excitement was intense, for it had become clear to 
me, in a flash of iUumination, that for me the only possible goal 

5 Lehfbuch der Psychtotrte, 4th edn. ( 1890 ) . 

108 



Student Years 

was psychiatry. Here alone the two currents of my interest 
could flow together and in a united stream dig their own bed. 
Here was the empirical field common to biological and spiritual 
facts, which I had everywhere sought and nowhere found. Here 
at last was the place where the collision of nature and spirit be- 
came a reality. 

My violent reaction set in when Krafft-Ebing spoke of the 
"subjective character" of psychiatric textbooks. So, I thought, 
the textbook is in part the subjective confession of the author. 
With his specific prejudice, with the totality of his being, he 
stands behind the objectivity of his experiences and responds to 
the "disease of the personality" with the whole of his own 
personality. Never had I heard anything of this sort from my 
teacher at the clinic. In spite of the fact that Krafft-Ebing's text- 
book 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 in- 
ternal 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. 
Characteristically, the stumbling block that lurks in the path of 
all miracles that turn out too well tripped me up in the very 
subject in which I really excelled, pathological anatomy. By a 

109 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

ridiculous error, in a slide which apart from all sorts of debris 
seemed to contain only epithelial cells, I overlooked some molds 
hiding in a corner. In the other subjects, I had even guessed 
what questions I would be asked. Thanks to this, I cleared 
several dangerous reefs with flying colors. In revenge, I was 
then fooled in the most grotesque way just where I felt most 
certain of myself. Had it not been for this I would have had the 
highest mark in the examination. 

As it was, another candidate received the same number of 
points as I did. He was a lone wolf, with a personality quite 
opaque to me and suspiciously banal. It was impossible to talk 
to him about anything except "shop/* He reacted to everything 
with an enigmatic smile, which reminded me of the Greek 
statues at Aegina. He had an air of superiority, and yet under- 
neath it he seemed embarrassed and never quite fitted into any 
situation. Or was it a kind of stupidity? I could never make him 
out. The only definite thing about him was the impression he 
gave of almost monomaniacal ambition which precluded in- 
terest in anything but sheer facts. A few years afterward he be- 
came schizophrenic. I mention this as a characteristic example 
of the parallelism of events. My first book was on the psychology 
of dementia praecox (schizophrenia), and in it my personality 
with its bias or "personal equation" responded to this "disease 
of the personality." I maintained that psychiatry, in the broadest 
sense, is a dialogue between the sick psyche and the psyche of 
the doctor, which is presumed to be "normal." It is a coming to 
terms between the sick personality and that of the therapist, 
both in principle equally subjective. My aim was to show that 
delusions and hallucinations were not just specific symptoms of 
mental disease but also had a human meaning. 

The evening after my last examination I treated myself fox 
the first time in my life to the longed-for luxury of going to the 
theater. Until then my finances had not permitted any such 
extravagance. But I still had some money left from the sale of 
the antiques, and this allowed me not only a visit to the opera 
but even a trip to Munich and Stuttgart. 

Bizet intoxicated and overwhelmed me, rocked me on the 
waves of an infinite sea. And next day, when the train carried 

no 



Student Years 

me over the border into a wider world, the melodies of Carmen 
accompanied me. In Munich I saw real classical art for the first 
time, and this in conjunction with Bizet's music put me in a 
springlike, nuptial mood, whose depth and meaning I could 
only dimly grasp. Outwardly, however, it was a dismal week 
between the first and the ninth of December, 1900. 

In Stuttgart I paid a farewell visit to my aunt, Frau Reimer- 
Jung, whose husband was a psychiatrist. She was the daughter 
of my paternal grandfather's first marriage to Virginia de Las- 
saulx. She was an enchanting old lady with sparkling blue eyes 
and a vivacious temperament. She seemed t6 me immersed in a 
world of impalpable fantasies and of memories that refused to 
go home the last breath of a vanishing, irrevocable past. This 
visit was a final farewell to the nostalgias of my childhood. 

On December 10, 1900, I took up my post as assistant at 
Burgholzli Mental Hospital, Zurich. I was glad to be in Zurich, 
for in the course of the years Basel had become too stuffy for me. 
For the Baslers no town exists but their own: only Basel is 
"civilized," and north of the river Birs the land of the barbarians 
begins. My friends could not understand my going away, and 
reckoned I would be back in no time. But that was out of the 
question, for in Basel I was stamped for all time as the son of the 
Reverend Paul Jung and the grandson of Professor Carl Gustav 
Jung. I was an intellectual and belonged to a definite social set. 
I felt resistances against this, for I could not and would not let 
myself be classified. The intellectual atmosphere of Basel 
seemed to me enviably cosmopolitan, but the pressure of tradi- 
tion was too much for me. When I came to Zurich I felt the 
difference at once. Zurich relates to the world not by the intellect 
but by commerce. Yet here the air was free, and I had always 
valued that. Here you were not weighed down by the brown 
fog of the centuries, even though one missed the rich back- 
ground of culture. For Basel I have to this day a nostalgic 
weakness, despite the fact that I know it no longer is as it was. I 
still remember the days when Bachofen and Burckhardt walked 
in the streets, and behind the cathedral stood the old chapter 
house, and the old bridge over the Rhine, half made of wood. 

ill 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

For my mother it was hard that I was leaving Basel. But I 
knew that I could not spare her this pain, and she bore it 
bravely. She lived together with my sister, a delicate and rather 
sickly nature, in every respect different from me. She was as 
though born to live the life of a spinster, and she never married. 
But she developed a remarkable personality, and I admired her 
attitude. She had to undergo an operation that was considered 
harmless, but she did not survive it. I was deeply impressed 
when I discovered that she had put all her affairs in order be- 
forehand, down to the last detail. At bottom she was always a 
stranger to me, but I had great respect for her. I was rather emo- 
tional, whereas she was always composed, though very sensitive 
deep down. I could imagine her spending her days in a Home 
for Gentlewomen, just as the only sister of my grandfather had 
done. 

With my work at Burgholzli, lif e took on an undivided reality 
all intention, consciousness, duty, and responsibility. It was an 
entry into the monastery of the world, a submission to the vow 
to believe only in what was probable, average, commonplace, 
barren of meaning, to renounce everything strange and signifi- 
cant, and reduce anything extraordinary to the banal. Hence- 
forth there were only surfaces that hid nothing, only beginnings 
without continuations, accidents without coherence, knowledge 
that shrank to ever smaller circles, failures that claimed to 
be problems, oppressively narrow horizons, and the unending 
desert of routine. For six months I locked myself within the 
monastic walls in order to get accustomed to the life and spirit 
of the asylum, and I read through the fifty volumes of the 
Attgemeine Zeitschrift filr Psychiatric from its very beginnings, 
in order to acquaint myself with the psychiatric mentality. I 
wanted to know how the human mind reacted to the sight of its 
own destruction, for psychiatry seemed to me an articulate 
expression of that biological reaction which seizes upon the so- 
called healthy mind in the presence of mental illness. My pro- 
fessional colleagues seemed to me no less interesting than the 
patients. In the years that followed I secretly compiled statistics 
on the hereditary background of my Swiss colleagues, and 



Student Years 

gained much instruction. I did this for my personal edification 
as well as for the sake of understanding the psychiatric men- 
tality. 

I need scarcely mention that my concentration and self- 
imposed confinement alienated me from my colleagues. They 
did not know, of course, how strange psychiatry seemed to me, 
and how intent I was on penetrating into its spirit. At that time 
my interest in therapy had not awakened, but the pathological 
variants of so-called normality fascinated me, because they 
offered me the longed-for opportunity to obtain a deeper insight 
into the psyche in general. 

These, then, were the conditions under which my career in 
psychiatry began the subjective experiment out of which my 
objective life emerged. I have neither the desire nor the capacity 
to stand outside myself and observe my fate in a truly objective 
way. I would commit the familiar autobiographical mistake 
either of weaving an illusion about how it ought to have been, 
or of writing an apologia pro vita sua. In the end, man is an 
event which cannot judge itself, but, for better or worse, is left 
to the judgment of others. 



IV 



Psychiatric Activities 



THE YEARS at Burgholzli were my years of apprentice- 
ship. Dominating my interests and research was the burn- 
ing question: "What actually takes place inside the 
mentally ill?" That was something which I did not understand 
then, nor had any of my colleagues concerned themselves with 
such problems. Psychiatry teachers were not interested in what 
the patient had to say, but rather in how to make a diagnosis or 
how to describe symptoms and to compile statistics. From the 
clinical point of view which then prevailed, the human per- 
sonality of the patient, his individuality, did not matter at all. 
Rather, the doctor was confronted with Patient X, with a long 
list of cut-and-dried diagnoses and a detailing of symptoms. 
Patients were labeled, rubber-stamped with a diagnosis, and, 
for the most part, that settled the matter. The psychology of the 
mental patient played no role whatsoever. 

At this point Freud became vitally important to me, especially 
because of his fundamental researches into the psychology of 
hysteria and of dreams. For me his ideas pointed the way to a 
closer investigation and understanding of individual cases. 
Freud introduced psychology into psychiatry, although he him- 
self was a neurologist. 

114 



Psychiatric Activities 

I still recollect very well a case which greatly interested me 
at the time. A young woman had been admitted to the hospital, 
suffering from "melancholia." The examination was conducted 
with the usual care: anamnesis, tests, physical check-ups, and 
so on. The diagnosis was schizophrenia, or "dementia praecox," 
in the phrase of those days. The prognosis: poor. 

This woman happened to be in my section. At first I did not 
dare to question die diagnosis. I was still a young man then, a 
beginner, and would not have had the temerity to suggest an- 
other one. And yet the case struck me as strange. I had the feel- 
ing that it was not a matter of schizophrenia but of ordinary de- 
pression, and resolved to apply my own method. At the time I 
was much occupied with diagnostic association studies, and so 
I undertook an association experiment with the patient. In addi- 
tion, I discussed her dreams with her. In this way I succeeded in 
uncovering her past, which the anamnesis had not clarified. I 
obtained information directly from the unconscious, and this 
information revealed a dark and tragic story. 

Before the woman married she had known a man, the son of a 
wealthy industrialist, in whom all the girls of the neighborhood 
were interested. Since she was very pretty, she thought her 
chances of catching him were fairly good. But apparently he 
did not care for her, and so she married another man. 

Five years later an old friend visited her. They were talking 
over old times, and he said to her, "When you got married it 
was quite a shock to someone your Mr. X" (the wealthy in- 
dustrialist's son). That was the moment! Her depression dated 
from this period, and several weeks later led to a catastrophe. 
She was bathing her children, first her four-year-old girl and 
then her two-year-old son. She lived in a country where the 
water supply was not perfectly hygienic; there was pure spring 
water for drinking, and tainted water from the river for bathing 
and washing. While she was bathing the little girl, she saw the 
child sucking at the sponge, but did not stop her. She even gave 
her little son a glass of the impure water to drink. Naturally, she 
did this unconsciously, or only half consciously, for her mind was 
already under the shadow of the incipient depression. 

A short time later, after the incubation period had passed, 



Memories, ureams, Reflections 

the girl came down with typhoid fever and died. The girl had 
been her favorite. The boy was not infected. At that moment the 
depression reached its acute stage, and the woman was sent to 
the institution. 

From the association test I had seen that she was a murderess, 
and I had learned many of the details of her secret. It was at 
once apparent that this was a sufficient reason for her depres- 
sion. Essentially it was a psychogenic disturbance and not a case 
of schizophrenia. 

Now what could be done in the way of therapy? Up to then 
the woman had been given narcotics to combat her insomnia 
and had been under guard to prevent attempts at suicide. But 
otherwise nothing had been done. Physically, she was in good 
condition. 

I was confronted with the problem: Should I speak openly 
with her or not? Should I undertake the major operation? I was 
faced with a conflict of duties altogether without precedent in 
my experience. I had a difficult question of conscience to an- 
swer, and had to settle the matter with myself alone. If I had 
asked my colleagues, they would probably have *warned me, 
"For heaven's sake, don't tell the woman any such thing. That 
will only make her still crazier ." To my mind, the effect might 
well be the reverse. In general it may be said that unequivocal 
rules scarcely exist in psychology, A question can be answered 
one way or another, depending on whether or not we take the 
unconscious factors into account. Of course I knew very well 
the personal risk I was running: if the patient got worse, I would 
be in the soup too! 

Nevertheless, I decided to take a chance on a therapy whose 
outcome was uncertain. I told her everything I had discovered 
through the association test. It can easily be imagined how 
difficult it was for me to do this. To accuse a person point-blank 
of murder is no small matter. And it was tragic for the patient 
to have to listen to it and accept it. But the result was that in 
two weeks it proved possible to discharge her, and she was 
never again institutionalized. 

There were other reasons that caused me to say nothing to my 
colleagues about this case. I was afraid of their discussing it 

116 



Psychiatric Activities 

and possibly raising legal questions. Nothing could be proved 
against the patient, of course, and yet such a discussion might 
have had disastrous consequences for her. Fate had punished 
her enough! It seemed to me more meaningful that she should 
return to life in order to atone in life for her crime. When she was 
discharged, she departed bearing her heavy burden. She had 
to bear this burden. The loss of the child had been frightful for 
her, and her expiation had already begun with the depression 
and her confinement to the institution. 

In many cases in psychiatry, the patient who comes to us has 
a story that is not told, and which as a rule no one knows of. To 
my mind, therapy only really begins after the investigation of 
that wholly personal story. It is the patient's secret, the rock 
against which he is shattered. If I know his secret story, I have 
a key to the treatment. The doctor's task is to find out how to 
gain that knowledge. In most cases exploration of the conscious 
material is insxifficient Sometimes an association test can open 
the way; so can the interpretation of dreams, or long and patient 
human contact with the individual. In therapy the problem is 
always the whole person, never the symptom alone. We must 
ask questions which challenge the whole personality. 

In 1905 I became lecturer in psychiatry at the University of 
Zurich, and that same year I became senior physician at the 
Psychiatric Clinic. I held this position for four years. Then in 
1909 I had to resign because by this time I was simply over my 
head in work. In the course of the years I had acquired so large 
a private practice that I could no longer keep up with my tasks. 
However, I continued my professorship until the year 1913. I 
lectured on psychopathology, and, naturally, also on the founda- 
tions of Freudian psychoanalysis, as well as on the psychology 
of primitives. These were my principal subjects. During the first 
semesters my lectures dealt chiefly with hypnosis, also with 
Janet and Flournoy. Later the problem of Freudian psycho- 
analysis moved into the foreground. 

In my courses on hypnosis I used to inquire into the personal 
history of the patients whom I presented to the students. One 
case I still remember very well. 

"7 



, vreams, nejiecnons 

A middle-aged woman, apparently with a strong religious 
bent, appeared one day. She was fifty-eight years old, and came 
on crutches, led by her maid. For seventeen years she had been 
suffering from a painful paralysis of the left leg. I placed her in a 
comfortable chair and asked her for her story. She began to tell 
it to me, and how terrible it all was the whole long tale of her 
illness came out with the greatest circumstantiality. Finally I 
interrupted her and said, "Well now, we have no more time for 
so much talk. I am now going to hypnotize you." 

I had scarcely said the words when she closed her eyes and 
fell into a profound trance without any hypnosis at all! I 
wondered at this, but did not disturb her. She went on talking 
without pause, and related the most remarkable dreams 
dreams that represented a fairly deep experience of the un- 
conscious. This, however, I did not understand until years later. 
At the time I assumed she was in a kind of delirium. The situa- 
tion was gradually growing rather uncomfortable for me. Here 
were twenty students present, to whom I was going to demon- 
strate hypnosis! 

After half an hour of this, I wanted to awaken the patient 
again. She would not wake up. I became alarmed; it occurred 
to me that I might inadvertently have probed into a latent 
psychosis. It took some ten minutes before I succeeded in wak- 
ing her. All the while I dared not let the students observe my 
nervousness. When the woman came to, she was giddy and 
confused. I said to her, **I am the doctor, and everything is all 
right." Whereupon she cried out, "But I am cured!" threw 
away her crutches, and was able to walk. Flushed with em- 
barrassment, I said to the students, "Now youVe seen what 
can be done with hypnosis!" In fact I had not the slightest idea 
what had happened. 

That was one of the experiences that prompted me to abandon 
hypnosis. I could not understand what had really happened, but 
the woman was in fact cured, and departed in the best of spirits. 
I asked her to let me hear from her, since I counted on a relapse 
in twenty-four hours at the latest. But her pains did not recur; 
in spite of my skepticism, I had to accept the fact of her cure. 

At the first lecture of the summer semester next year, she re- 

118 



Psychiatric Activities 

appeared. This time she complained of violent pains in the back 
which had, she said, begun only recently. Naturally I asked 
myself whether there was some connection with the resumption 
of my lectures. Perhaps she had read the announcement of the 
lecture in the newspaper. I asked her when the pain had started, 
and what had caused it. She could not recall that anything had 
happened to her at any specific time nor could she offer the 
slightest explanation. Finally I elicited the fact that the pains 
had actually begun on the day and at the very hour she saw the 
announcement in the newspaper. That confirmed my guess, but 
I still did not see how the miraculous cure had come about. I 
hypnotized her once more that is to say, she again fell spon- 
taneously into a trance and afterward the pain was gone. 

This time I kept her after the lecture in order to find out more 
about her life. It turned out that she had a feeble-minded son 
who was in my department in the hospital. I knew nothing about 
this because she bore her second husband's name and the son 
was a child of her first marriage. He was her only child. Natu- 
rally, she had hoped for a talented and successful son, and it 
had been a terrible blow when he became mentally ill at an 
early age. At that time I was still a young doctor, and repre- 
sented everything she had hoped her son might become. Her 
ambitious longing to be the mother of a hero therefore fastened 
upon me. She adopted me as her son, and proclaimed her 
miraculous cure far and wide. 

In actual fact she was responsible for my local fame as a 
wizard, and since the story soon got around, I was indebted to 
her for my first private patients. My psychotherapeutic practice 
began with a mother's putting me in the place of her mentally 
ill sonl Naturally I explained the whole matter to her, in all its 
ramifications. She took it very well, and did not again suffer a 
relapse. 

That was my first real therapeutic experience I might say: 
my first analysis. I distinctly recall my talk with the old lady. 
She was intelligent, and exceedingly grateful that I had taken 
her seriously and displayed concern for her fate and that of her 
son. This had helped her. 

In the beginning I employed hypnosis in my private practice 



Memories, ur earns, Reflections 

also, but I soon gave it up because in using it one is only groping 
in the dark. One never knows how long an improvement or a 
cure will last, and I always had compunctions about working in 
such uncertainty. Nor was I fond of deciding on my own what 
the patient ought to do. I was much more concerned to learn 
from the patient himself where his natural bent would lead him. 
In order to find that out, careful analysis of dreams and of 
other manifestations of the unconscious was necessary. 

During the years 1904-5 I set up a laboratory for experimental 
psychopathology at the Psychiatric Clinic. I had a number of 
students there with whom I investigated psychic reactions (i.e., 
associations). Franz Riklin, Sr., was my collaborator. Ludwig 
Binswanger was currently writing his doctoral dissertation on 
the association experiment in connection with the psychogal- 
vanic effect, 1 and I wrote my paper "On the Psychological 
Diagnosis of Facts/' 2 There were also a number of Ameri- 
cans among our associates, including Frederick Peterson and 
Charles Ricksher. Their papers were published in American 
journals. It was these association studies which later, in 1909, pro- 
cured me my invitation to Clark University; I was asked to lec- 
ture on my work. Simultaneously, and independently of me, 
Freud was invited. The degree of Doctor of Laws honoris causa 
was bestowed on both of us. 

The association experiment and the psychogalvanic experi- 
ment were chiefly responsible for my reputation in America. 
Very soon many patients from that country were coming to me. 

1 remember well one of the first cases. An American colleague 
sent me a patient. The accompanying diagnosis read "alcoholic 
neurasthenia/ 7 The prognosis called him 'Incurable/' My col- 
league had therefore taken the precaution of advising the 
patient to see also a certain neurological authority in Berlin, 
for he expected that my attempt at therapy would lead to noth- 

1 The psychogalvanic reflex is a momentary decrease in the apparent electrical 
resistance of the slcin, resulting from activity of the sweat glands in response to 
mental excitement. A. J. 

2 "Zur psychologischen Tatbestandsdiagnostfe," Zentrdblatt f&t Netvenheilkunde 
ttnd Psychiatric, XXVIII (1905), 813-15; English trans.: "On the Psychological 
Diagnosis of Facts," in Psychiatric Studies (CW i). 



Psychiatric Activities 

ing. The patient came for consultation, and after I had talked a 
little with him I saw that the man had an ordinary neurosis, of 
whose psychic origins he had no inkling. I made an association 
test and discovered that he was suffering from the effects of a 
formidable mother complex. He came from a rich and respected 
family, had a likeable wife and no cares externally speaking. 
Only he drank too much. The drinking was a desperate attempt 
to narcotize himself, to forget his oppressive situation. Natu- 
rally, it did not help. 

His mother was the owner of a large company, and the un- 
usually talented son occupied a leading post in the firm. He 
really should long since have escaped from his oppressive sub- 
ordination to his mother, but he could not summon up the resolu- 
tion to throw up his excellent position. Thus he remained 
chained to his mother, who had installed him in the business. 
Whenever he was with her, or had to submit to her interference 
with his work, he would start drinking in order to stupefy or 
discharge his emotions. A part of him did not really want to 
leave the comfortably warm nest, and against his own instincts 
he was allowing himself to be seduced by wealth and comfort. 

After brief treatment he stopped drinking, and considered 
himself cured. But I told him, "I do not guarantee that you will 
not relapse into the same state if you return to your former 
situation." He did not believe me, and returned home to 
America in fine fettle. 

As soon as he was back under his mother's influence, the drink- 
ing began again. Thereupon I was called by her to a consulta- 
tion during her stay in Switzerland. She was an intelligent 
woman, but was a real "power devil/' I saw what the son had 
to contend with, and realized that he did not have the strength 
to resist. Physically, too, he was rather delicate and no match 
for his mother. I therefore decided upon an act of force majeure. 
Behind his back I gave his mother a medical certificate to the 
effect that her son's alcoholism rendered him incapable of ful- 
filling the requirements of his job. I recommended his discharge. 
This advice was followed and the son, of course, was furious 
with me. 

Here I had done something which normally would be con- 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

sidered unethical for a medical man. But I knew that for the 
patient's sake I had had to take this step. 

His further development? Separated from his mother, his own 
personality was able to unfold. He made a brilliant career in 
spite of, or rather just because of the strong horse pill I had 
given him. His wife was grateful to me, for her husband had not 
only overcome his alcoholism, but had also struck out on his own 
individual path with the greatest success. 

Nevertheless, for years I had a guilty conscience about this 
patient because I had made out that certificate behind his back, 
though I was certain that only such an act could free him. And 
indeed, once his liberation was accomplished, the neurosis dis- 
appeared. 

In my practice I was constantly impressed by the way the human 
psyche reacts to a crime committed unconsciously. After all, that 
young woman was initially not aware that she had killed her 
child. And yet she had fallen into a condition that appeared to be 
the expression of extreme consciousness of guilt. 

I once had a similar case which I have never forgotten. A 
lady came to my office. She refused to give her name, said it did 
not matter, since she wished to have only the one consultation. 
It was apparent that she belonged to the upper levels of society. 
She had been a doctor, she said. What she had to communicate 
to me was a confession; some twenty years ago she had com- 
mitted a murder out of jealousy. She had poisoned her best 
friend because she wanted to marry the friend's husband. She 
had thought that if the murder was not discovered, it would 
not disturb her. She wanted to marry the husband, and the 
simplest way was to eliminate her friend. Moral considerations 
were of no importance to her, she thought. 

The consequences? She had in fact married the man, but he 
died soon afterward, relatively young. During the following 
years a number of strange things happened. The daughter of this 
marriage endeavored to get away from her as soon as she was 
grown up. She married young and vanished from view, drew 
farther and farther away, and ultimately the mother lost all 
contact with her. 

122, 



Psychiatric Activities 

This lady was a passionate horsewoman and owned several 
riding horses of which she was extremely fond. One day she 
discovered that the horses were beginning to grow nervous un- 
der her. Even her favorite shied and threw her. Finally she had 
to give up riding. Thereafter she clung to her dogs. She owned 
an unusually beautiful wolfhound to which she was greatly 
attached. As chance would have it, this very dog was stricken 
with paralysis. With that, her cup was full; she felt that she was 
morally done for. She had to confess, and for this purpose she 
came to me. She was a murderess, but on top of that she had 
also murdered herself. For one who commits such a crime de- 
stroys his own soul. The murderer has already passed sentence 
on himself. If someone has committed a crime and is caught, he 
suflFers judicial punishment. If he has done it secretly, without 
moral consciousness of it, and remains undiscovered, the punish- 
ment can nevertheless be visited upon him, as our case shows. 
It comes out in the end. Sometimes it seems as if even animals 
and plants "know" it. 

As a result of the murder, the woman was plunged into un- 
bearable loneliness. She had even become alienated from ani- 
mals. And in order to shake off this loneliness, she had made me 
share her knowledge. She had to have someone who was not a 
murderer to share the secret, She wanted to find a person who 
could accept her confession without prejudice, for by so doing 
she would achieve once more something resembling a relation- 
ship to humanity. And the person would have to be a doctor 
rather than a professional confessor. She would have suspected a 
priest of listening to her because of his office, and of not accept- 
ing the facts for their own sake but for the purpose of moral 
judgment. She had seen people and animals turn away from 
her, and had been so struck by this silent verdict that she could 
not have endured any further condemnation. 

I never found out who she was, nor do I have any proof that 
her story was true. Sometimes I have asked myself what might 
have become of her. For that was by no means the end of her 
journey. Perhaps she was driven ultimately to suicide. I cannot 
imagine how she could have gone on living in that utter loneli- 
ness. 



Memories, ur earns, Reflections 

Clinical diagnoses are important, since they give the doctor a 
certain orientation; but they do not help the patient. The crucial 
thing is the story. For it alone shows the human background and 
the human suffering, and only at that point can the doctors 
therapy begin to operate. A case demonstrated this to me most 
cogently. 3 

The case concerned an old patient in the women's ward. She 
was about seventy-five, and had been bedridden for forty years. 
Almost fifty years ago she had entered the institution, but there 
was no one left who could recall her admittance; everyone who 
had been there had since died. Only one head nurse, who had 
been working at the institution for thirty-five years, still re- 
membered something of the patient's story. The old woman 
could not speak, and could only take fluid or semifluid nourish- 
ment. She ate with her fingers, letting the food drip off them into 
her mouth. Sometimes it would take her almost two hours to 
consume a cup of milk. When not eating, she made curious 
rhythmic motions with her hands and arms. I did not under- 
stand what they meant. I was profoundly impressed by the de- 
gree of destruction that can be wrought by mental disease, but 
saw no possible explanation. At the clinical lectures she used to 
be presented as a catatonic form of dementia praecox, but that 
meant nothing to me, for these words did not contribute in the 
slightest to an understanding of the significance and origin of 
those curious gestures. 

The impression this case made upon me typifies my re- 
action to the psychiatry of the period. When I became an as- 
sistant, I had the feeling that I understood nothing whatsoever 
about what psychiatry purported to be. I felt extremely uncom- 
fortable beside my chief and my colleagues, who assumed such 
airs of certainty while I was groping perplexedly in the dark. 
For I regarded the main task of psychiatry as understanding the 
things that were taking place within the sick mind, and as yet I 
knew nothing about these things. Here I was engaged in a pro- 
fession in which I did not know my way about! 

Late one evening, as I was walking through the ward, I saw 
the old woman still making her mysterious movements, and 

8 Cf. The Psyckogenesis of Mental Disease ( CW 3), pp. 171-72, 

124 



Psychiatric Activities 

again asked myself, 'Why must this be?" Thereupon I went to 
our old head nurse and asked whether the patient had always 
been that way. "Yes," she replied. "But my predecessor told me 
she used to make shoes." I then checked through her yellowing 
case history once more, and sure enough, there was a note to the 
effect that she was in the habit of making cobbler's motions. In 
the past shoemakers used to hold shoes between their knees and 
draw the threads through the leather with precisely such move- 
ments. (Village cobblers can still be seen doing this today.) 
When the patient died shortly afterward, her elder brother came 
to the funeral. "Why did your sister lose her sanity?T I asked 
him. He told me that she had been in love with a shoemaker 
who for some reason had not wanted to marry her, land that 
when he finally rejected her she had "gone off/' The shoemaker 
movements indicated an identification with her sweetheart 
which had lasted until her death. That case gave me my first 
inkling of the psychic origins of dementia praecox. Henceforth 
I devoted all my attention to the meaningful connections in a 
psychosis. 

Another patient's story revealed to me the psychological back- 
ground of psychosis and, above all, of the "senseless" delusions. 
From this case I was able for the first time to understand the 
language of schizophrenics, which had hitherto been regarded 
as meaningless. The patient was Babette S., whose story I have 
published elsewhere. 4 In 1908 I delivered a lecture on her in the 
town hall of Zurich. 

She came out of the Old Town of Zurich, out of narrow, dirty 
streets where she had been born in poverty-stricken circum- 
stances and had grown up in a mean environment. Her sister 
was a prostitute, her father a drunkard. At the age of thirty-nine 
she succumbed to a paranoid form of dementia praecox, with 
characteristic megalomania. When I saw her, she had been in 
the institution for twenty years. She had served as an object 
lesson to hundreds of medical students. In her they had seen the 
uncanny process of psychic disintegration; she was a classic 

4 Cf. "The Psychology of Dementia Praecox" and "The Content of the Psychoses/' 
in The Psychogenesis of Mental Disease (CW 3). 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

case. Babette was completely demented and given to saying the 
craziest things which made no sense at all. I tried with all my 
might to understand the content of her abstruse utterances. For 
example, she would say, "I am the Lorelei"; the reason for that 
was that the doctors, when trying to understand her case, would 
always say, "Ich weiss nicht, was soil es bedeuten" 5 Or she 
would wail, "I am Socrates' deputy." That, as I discovered, was 
intended to mean: "I am unjustly accused like Socrates/' Absurd 
outbursts like: "I am the double polytechnic irreplaceable," or, 
"I am plum cake on a corn-meal bottom," "I am Germania and 
Helvetia of exclusively sweet butter," "Naples and I must supply 
the world with noodles," signified an increase in her self -valua- 
tion, that is to say, a compensation for inferiority feelings. 

My preoccupation with Babette and other such cases con- 
vinced me that much of what we had hitherto regarded as 
senseless was not as crazy as it seemed. More than once I have 
seen that even with such patients there remains in the back- 
ground a personality which must be called normal. It stands 
looking on, so to speak. Occasionally, too, this personality 
usually by way of voices or dreams can make altogether sensi- 
ble remarks and objections. It can even, when physical illness 
ensues, move into the foreground again and make the patient 
seem almost normal. 

I once had to treat a schizophrenic old woman who showed 
me very distinctly the ''normal" personality in the background. 
This was a case which could not be cured, only cared for. Every 
physician, after all, has patients whom he cannot hope to cure, 
for whom he can only smooth the path to death. She heard 
voices which were distributed throughout her entire body, and a 
voice in the middle of the thorax was "God's voice." 

*'We must rely on that voice," I said to her, and was astonished 
at my own courage. As a rule this voice made very sensible re- 
marks, and with its aid I managed very well with the patient. 
Once the voice said, "Let him test you on the Bible!" She 
brought along an old, tattered, much-read Bible, and at each 
visit I had to assign her a chapter to read. The next time I had 
to test her on it. I did this for about seven years, once every two 

5 "I know not what it means": the first line of Heine's famous poem "Die Lorelei." 

126 



Psychiatric Activities 

weeks. At first I felt very odd in this role, but after a while I 
realized what the lessons signified. In this way her attention was 
kept alert, so that she did not sink deeper into the disintegrating 
dream. The result was that after some six years the voices which 
had formerly been everywhere had retired to the left half of her 
body, while the right half was completely free of them. Nor had 
the intensity of the phenomena been doubled on the left side; it 
was much the same as in the past. Hence it must be concluded 
that the patient was cured at least halfway. That was an un- 
expected success, for I would not have imagined that these 
memory exercises could have a therapeutic effect. 

Through my work with the patients I realized that paranoid 
ideas and hallucinations contain a germ of meaning. A person- 
ality, a life history, a pattern of hopes and desires lie behind 
the psychosis. The fault is ours if we do not understand them. It 
dawned upon me then for the first time that a general psy- 
chology of the personality lies concealed within psychosis, and 
that even here we come upon the old human conflicts. Although 
patients may appear dull and apathetic, or totally imbecilic, 
there is more going on in their minds, and more that is meaning- 
ful, than there seems to be. At bottom we discover nothing new 
and unknown in the mentally ill; rather, we encounter the sub- 
stratum of our own natures. 

It was always astounding to me that psychiatry should have 
taken so long to look into the content of the psychoses. No one 
concerned himself with the meaning of fantasies, or thought to 
ask why this patient had one kind of fantasy, another an al- 
together different one; or what it signified when, for instance, a 
patient had the fantasy of being persecuted by the Jesuits, or 
when another imagined that the Jews wanted to poison him, or a 
third was convinced that the police were after him. Such ques- 
tions seemed altogether uninteresting to doctors of those days. 
The fantasies were simply lumped together under some generic 
name as, for instance, "ideas of persecution/' It seems equally 
odd to me that my investigations of that time are almost for- 
gotten today. Already at the beginning of the century I treated 
schizophrenia psychotherapeutically. That method, therefore, is 
not something that has only just been discovered. It did, how- 
ls/ 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

ever, take a long time before people began to introduce psy- 
chology into psychiatry. 

While I was still at the clinic, I had to be most circumspect 
about treating my schizophrenic patients, or I would have been 
accused of woolgathering. Schizophrenia was considered incur- 
able. If one did achieve some improvement with a case of 
schizophrenia, the answer was that it had not been real schizo- 
phrenia. 

When Freud visited me in Zurich in 1908, 1 demonstrated the 
case of Babette to him. Afterward he said to me, "You know, 
Jung, what you have found out about this patient is certainly 
interesting. But how in the world were you able to Hear spending 
hours and days with this phenomenally ugly female?" I must 
have given him a rather dashed look, for this idea had never oc- 
curred to me. In a way I regarded the woman as a pleasant old 
creature because she had such lovely delusions and said such 
interesting things. And after all, even in her insanity, the human 
being emerged from a cloud of grotesque nonsense. Thera- 
peutically, nothing was accomplished with Babette; she had 
been sick for too long. But I have seen other cases in which this 
kind of attentive entering into the personality of the patient 
produced a lasting therapeutic effect. 

Regarding them from the outside, all we see of the mentally ill 
is their tragic destruction, rarely the life of that side of the 
psyche which is turned away from us. Outward appearances are 
frequently deceptive, as I discovered to my astonishment in the 
case of a young catatonic patient. She was eighteen years old, 
and came from a cultivated family. At the age of fifteen she 
had been seduced by her brother and abused by a schoolmate. 
From her sixteenth year on, she retreated into isolation. She 
concealed herself from people, and ultimately the only emo- 
tional relationship left to her was one with a vicious watchdog 
which belonged to another family, and which she tried to win 
over. She grew steadily odder, and at seventeen was taken to the 
mental hospital, where she spent a year and a half. She heard 
voices, refused food, and was completely mutistic ( i.e., no longer 
spoke). When I first saw her she was in a typical catatonic state. 

128 



Psychiatric Activities 

In the course of many weeks I succeeded, very gradually, in 
persuading her to speak. After overcoming many resistances, she 
told me that she had lived on the moon. The moon, it seemed, 
was inhabited, but at first she had seen only men. They had at 
once taken her with them and deposited her in a sublunar dwell- 
ing where their children and wives were kept. For on the high 
mountains of the moon there lived a vampire who kidnaped 
and killed the women and children, so that the moon people 
were threatened with extinction. That was the reason for the 
sublunar existence of the feminine half of the population. 

My patient made up her mind to do something for the moon 
people, and plannecj to destroy the vampire. After long prepa- 
rations, she waited for the vampire on the platform of a tower 
which had been erected for this purpose. After a number of 
nights she at last saw the monster approaching from afar, wing- 
ing his way toward her like a great black bird. She took her long 
sacrificial knife, concealed it in her gown, and waited for the 
vampire's arrival. Suddenly he stood before her. He had several 
pairs of wings. His face and entire figure were covered by them, 
so that she could see nothing but his feathers. Wonder-struck, 
she was seized by curiosity to find out what he really looked like. 
She approached, hand on the knife. Suddenly the wings opened 
and a man of unearthly beauty stood before her. He enclosed 
her in his winged arms with an iron grip, so that she could no 
longer wield the knife. In any case she was so spellbound by 
the vampire's look that she would not have been capable of 
striking. He raised her from the platform and flew off with her. 

After this revelation she was once again able to speak with- 
out inhibition, and now her resistances emerged. It seemed that 
I had stopped her return to the moon; she could no longer es- 
cape from the earth. This world was not beautiful, she said, but 
the moon was beautiful, and life there was rich in meaning. 
Sometime later she suffered a relapse into her catatonia, and I 
had to have her taken to a sanatorium. For a while she was 
violently insane. 

When she was discharged after some two months, it was once 
again possible to talk with her. Gradually she came to see that 
life on earth was unavoidable. Desperately, she fought against 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

this conclusion and its consequences, and had to be sent back to 
the sanatorium. Once I visited her in her cell and said to her, 
"All this won't do you any good; you cannot return to the moon!" 
She took this in silence and with an appearance of utter apathy. 
This time she was released after a short stay and resigned her- 
self to her fate. 

For a while she took a job as nurse in a sanatorium. There was 
an assistant doctor there who made a somewhat rash approach 
to her. She responded with a revolver shot. Luckily, the man was 
only slightly wounded. But the incident revealed that she went 
about with a revolver all the time. Once before, she had turned 
up with a loaded gun. During the last interview, at the end of 
the treatment, she gave it to me. When I asked in amazement 
what she was doing with it, she replied, "I would have shot you 
down if you had failed me!" 

When the excitement over the shooting had subsided, she re- 
turned to her native town. She married, had several children, 
and survived two world wars in the East, without ever again 
suffering a relapse. 

What can be said by way of interpretation of these fantasies? 
As a result of the incest to which she had been subjected as a 
girl, she felt humiliated in the eyes of the world, but elevated in 
the realm of fantasy. She had been transported into a mythic 
realm; for incest is traditionally a prerogative of royalty and 
divinities. The consequence was complete alienation from the 
world, a state of psychosis. She became "extramundane," as it 
were, and lost contact with humanity. She plunged into cosmic 
distances, into outer space, where she met with the winged de- 
mon. As is the rule with such things, she projected his figure 
onto me during the treatment. Thus I was automatically threat- 
ened with death, as was everyone who might have persuaded 
her to return to normal human life. By telling me her story she 
had in a sense betrayed the demon and attached herself to an 
earthly human being. Hence she was able to return to life and 
even to marry. 

Thereafter I regarded the sufferings of the mentally ill in a 
different light. For I had gained insight into the richness and 
importance of their inner experience. 

130 



Psychiatric Activities 

I am often asked about my psychotherapeutic or analytic 
method. I cannot reply unequivocally to the question. Therapy 
is different in every case. When a doctor tells me that he ad- 
heres strictly to this or that method, I have my doubts about his 
therapeutic effect. So much is said in the literature about the 
resistance of the patient that it would almost seem as if the doc- 
tor were trying to put something over on him, whereas the cure 
ought to grow naturally out of the patient himself. Psycho- 
therapy and analysis are as varied as are human individuals. I 
treat every patient as individually as possible, because the solu- 
tion of the problem is always an individual one. Universal rules 
can be postulated only with a grain of salt. A psychological 
truth is valid only if it can be reversed. A solution which would 
be out of the question for me may be just the right one for some- 
one else. 

Naturally, a doctor must be familiar with the so-called "meth- 
ods." But he must guard against falling into any specific, routine 
approach. In general one must guard against theoretical assump- 
tions. Today they may be valid, tomorrow it may be the turn of 
other assumptions. In my analyses they play no part. I am un- 
systematic very much by intention. To my mind, in dealing with 
individuals, only individual understanding will do. We need a 
different language for every patient. In one analysis I can be 
heard talking the Adlerian dialect, in another the Freudian. 

The crucial point is that I confront the patient as one human 
being to another. Analysis is a dialogue demanding two part- 
ners. Analyst and patient sit facing one another, eye to eye; the 
doctor has something to say, but so has the patient. 

Since the essence of psychotherapy is not the application of a 
method, psychiatric study alone does not suffice. I myself had 
to work for a very long time before I possessed the equipment 
for psychotherapy. As early as 1909 I realized that I could not 
treat latent psychoses if I did not understand their symbolism. 
It was then that I began to study mythology. 

With cultivated and intelligent patients the psychiatrist needs 
more than merely professional knowledge. He must understand, 
aside from all theoretical assumptions, what really motivates the 
patient. Otherwise he stirs up unnecessary resistances. What 



memories, ur earns, nejiections 

counts, after all, is not whether a theory is corroborated, but 
whether the patient grasps himself as an individual. This, how- 
ever, is not possible without reference to the collective views, 
concerning which the doctor ought to be informed. For that, 
mere medical training does not suffice, for the horizon of the 
human psyche embraces infinitely more than the limited pur- 
view of the doctor's consulting room. 

The psyche is distinctly more complicated and inaccessible 
than the body. It is, so to speak, the half of the world which 
comes into existence only when we become conscious of it. For 
that reason the psyche is not only a personal but a world prob- 
lem, and the psychiatrist has to deal with an entire world. 

Nowadays we can see as never before that the peril which 
threatens all of us comes not from nature, but from man, from 
the psyches of the individual and the mass. The psychic aberra- 
tion of man is the danger. Everything depends upon whether or 
not our psyche functions properly. If certain persons lose their 
heads nowadays, a hydrogen bomb will go off. 

The psychotherapist, however, must understand not only the 
patient; it is equally important that he should understand him- 
self. For that reason the sine qua non is the analysis of the ana- 
lyst, what is called the training analysis. The patient's treat- 
ment begins with the doctor, so to speak. Only if the doctor 
knows how to cope with himself and his own problems will he 
be able to teach the patient to do the same. Only then. In the 
training analysis the doctor must learn to know his own psyche 
and to take it seriously. If he cannot do that, the patient will not 
learn either. He will lose a portion of his psyche, just as the doc- 
tor has lost that portion of his psyche which he has not learned 
to understand. It is not enough, therefore, for the training analy- 
sis to consist in acquiring a system of concepts. The analysand 
must realize that it concerns himself, that the training analysis 
is a bit of real life and is not a method which can be learned 
by rote. The student who does not grasp that fact in his own 
training analysis will have to pay dearly for the failure later on. 

Though there is treatment known as "minor psychotherapy/' 
in any thoroughgoing analysis the whole personality of both pa- 
tient and doctor is called into play. There are many cases which 

132 



Psychiatric Activities 

the doctor cannot cure without committing himself. When im- 
portant matters are at stake, it makes all the difference whether 
the doctor sees himself as a part of the drama, or cloaks himself 
in his authority. In the great crises of life, in the supreme mo- 
ments when to be or not to be is the question, little tricks of 
suggestion do not help. Then the doctor's whole being is chal- 
lenged. 

The therapist must at all times keep watch over himself, over 
the way he is reacting to his patient. For we do not react only 
with our consciousness. Also we must always be asking our- 
selves: How is our unconscious experiencing this situation? We 
must therefore observe our dreams, pay the closest attention 
and study ourselves just as carefully as we do the patient. Oth- 
erwise the entire treatment may go off the rails. I shall give a 
single example of this. 

I once had a patient, a highly intelligent woman, who for vari- 
ous reasons aroused my doubts. At first the analysis went very 
well, but after a while I began to feel that I was no longer get- 
ting at the correct interpretation of her dreams, and I thought 
I also noticed an increasing shallowness in our dialogue. I 
therefore decided to talk with my patient about this, since it had 
of course not escaped her that something was going wrong. 
The night before I was to speak with her, I had the following 
dream. 

I was walking down a highway through a valley in late-after- 
noon sunlight. To my right was a steep hill. At its top stood a 
castle, and on the highest tower there was a woman sitting on a 
kind of balustrade. In order to see her properly, I had to bend 
my head far back. I awoke with a crick in the back of my neck. 
Even in the dream I had recognized the woman as my pa- 
tient. 

The interpretation was immediately apparent to me. If in the 
dream I had to look up at the patient in this fashion, in reality 
I had probably been looking down on her. Dreams are, after 
all, compensations for the conscious attitude. I told her of the 
dream and my interpretation. This produced an immediate 
change in the situation, and the treatment once more began to 
move forward. 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

As a doctor I constantly have to ask myself what kind of mes- 
sage the patient is bringing me. What does he mean to me? If he 
means nothing, I have no point of attack. The doctor is effective 
only when he himself is affected. "Only the wounded physician 
heals." But when the doctor wears his personality like a coat of 
armor, he has no effect. I take my patients seriously. Perhaps I 
am confronted with a problem just as much as they. It often 
happens that the patient is exactly the right plaster for the doc- 
tor's sore spot. Because this is so, difficult situations can arise for 
the doctor too or rather, especially for the doctor. 

Every therapist ought to have a control by some third person, 
so that he remains open to another point of view. Even the 
pope has a confessor. I always advise analysts: "Have a father 
confessor, or a mother confessor!" Women are particularly 
gifted for playing such a part. They often have excellent intui- 
tion and a trenchant critical insight, and can see what men 
have up their sleeves, at times see also into men's anima in- 
trigues. They see aspects that the man does not see. That is why 
no woman has ever been convinced that her husband is a super- 
man! 

It is understandable that a person should undergo analysis if 
he has a neurosis; but if he feels he is normal, he is under no 
compulsion to do so. Yet I can assure you, I have had some 
astonishing experiences with so-called '"normality/* Once I en- 
countered an entirely "normal" pupil. He was a doctor, and 
came to me with the best recommendations from an old col- 
league. He had been his assistant and had later taken over his 
practice. Now he had a normal practice, normal success, a nor- 
mal wife, normal children, lived in a normal little house in a 
normal little town, had a normal income and probably a normal 
diet. He wanted to be an analyst. I said to him, "Do you know 
what that means? It means that you must first learn to know 
yourself. You yourself are the instrument. If you are not right, 
how can the patient be made right? If you are not convinced, 
how can you convince him? You yourself must be the real stuff. 
If you are not, God help youl Then you will lead patients 
astray. Therefore you must first accept an analysis of yourself." 

134 



Psychiatric Activities 

That was all right, the man said, but almost at once followed 
this with: "I have no problems to tell you about." That should 
have been a warning to me, I said, "Very well, then we can ex- 
amine your dreams." "I have no dreams/* he said. "You will 
soon have some," I responded. Anyone else would probably 
have dreamt that very night. But he was unable to recall any 
dreams. So it went on for about two weeks, and I began to feel 
rather uneasy about the whole affair. 

At last an impressive dream turned up. I am going to tell it 
because it shows how important it is, in practical psychiatry, to 
understand dreams. He dreamt that he was traveling by rail- 
road. The train had a two-hour stop in a certain city. Since he 
did not know the city and wanted to see something of it, he set 
out toward the city center. There he found a medieval building, 
probably the town hall, and went into it. He wandered down 
long corridors and came upon handsome rooms, their walls 
lined with old paintings and fine tapestries. Precious old objects 
stood about. Suddenly he saw that it had grown darker, and the 
sun had set. He thought, I must get back to the railroad station. 
At this moment he discovered that he was lost, and no longer 
knew where the exit was. He started in alarm, and simultane- 
ously realized that he had not met a single person in this build- 
ing. He began to feel uneasy, and quickened his pace, hoping to 
run into someone. But he met no one. Then he came to a large 
door, and thought with relief: That is the exit. He opened the 
door and discovered that he had stumbled upon a gigantic 
room. It was so huge and dark that he could not even see the 
opposite wall. Profoundly alarmed, the dreamer ran across the 
great, empty room, hoping to find the exit on the other side. 
Then he saw precisely in the middle of the room something 
white on the floor. As he approached he discovered that it was 
an idiot child of about two years old. It was sitting on a chamber 
pot and had smeared itself with f eces. At that moment he awoke 
with a cry, in a state of panic. 

I knew all I needed to know here was a latent psychosis! I 
must say I sweated as I tried to lead him out of that dream. 
I had to represent it to him as something quite innocuous, and 
gloss over all the perilous details. 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

What the dream says is approximately this: the trip on which 
he sets out is the trip to Zurich. He remains there, however, for 
only a short time. The child in the center of the room is himself 
as a two-year-old child. In small children, such uncouth be- 
havior is somewhat unusual, but still possible. They may be in- 
trigued by their feces, which are colored and have an odd 
smell. Raised in a city environment, and possibly along strict 
lines, a child might easily be guilty of such a failing. 

But the dreamer, the doctor, was no child; he was a grown 
man. And therefore the dream image in the center of the room 
is a sinister symbol. When he told me the dream, I realized 
that his normality was a compensation. I had caught him in the 
nick of time, for the latent psychosis was within a hair's breadth 
of breaking out and becoming manifest. This had to be pre- 
vented. Finally, with the aid of one of his other dreams, I 
succeeded in finding an acceptable pretext for ending the train- 
ing analysis. We were both of us very glad to stop. I had not 
informed him of my diagnosis, but he had probably become 
aware that he was on the verge of a fatal panic, for he had a 
dream in which he was being pursued by a dangerous maniac. 
Immediately afterward he returned home. He never again 
stirred up die unconscious. His emphatic normality reflected a 
personality which would not have been developed but simply 
shattered by a confrontation with the unconscious. These latent 
psychoses are the bStes noires of psychotherapists, since they 
are often very difficult to recognize. 

With this, we come to the question of lay analysis, I am in 
favor of non-medical men studying psychotherapy and practic- 
ing it; but in dealing with latent psychoses there is the risk of 
their making dangerous mistakes. Therefore I favor laymen 
working as analysts, but under the guidance of a professional 
physician. As soon as a lay analyst feels the slightest bit uncer- 
tain, he ought to consult his mentor. Even for doctors it is diffi- 
cult to recognize and treat a latent schizophrenia; all the 
more so for laymen. But I have repeatedly found that laymen 
who have practiced psychotherapy for years, and who have 
themselves been in analysis, are shrewd and capable. Moreover, 
there are not enough doctors practicing psychotherapy. For 



Psychiatric Activities 

such practice, long and thorough training is necessary, and a 
wide culture which very few possess. 

The relationship between doctor and patient, especially when 
a transference on the part of the patient occurs, or a more or less 
unconscious identification of doctor and patient, can lead to 
parapsychological phenomena. I have frequently run into this. 
One such case which was particularly impressive was that of a 
patient whom I had pulled out of a psychogenic depression. He 
went back home and married; but I did not care for his wife. 
The first time I saw her, I had an uneasy feeling. Her husband 
was grateful to me, and I observed that I was a thorn in her side 
because of my influence over him. It frequently happens that 
women who do not really love their husbands are jealous and 
destroy their friendships. They want the husband to belong 
entirely to them because they themselves do not belong to him. 
The kernel of all jealousy is lack of love. 

The wife's attitude placed a tremendous burden on the pa- 
tient which he was incapable of coping with. Under its pressure 
he relapsed, after a year of marriage, into a new depression. 
Foreseeing this possibility, I had arranged with him that he was 
to get in touch with me at once if he observed his spirits sinking. 
He neglected to do so, partly because of his wife, who scoffed at 
his moods. I heard not a word from him. 

At that time I had to deliver a lecture in B. I returned to my 
hotel around midnight. I sat with some friends for a while after 
the lecture, then went to bed, but I lay awake for a long time. 
At about two o'clock I must have just fallen asleep I awoke 
with a start, and had the feeling that someone had come into 
the room; I even had the impression that the door had been 
hastily opened. I instantly turned on the light, but there was 
nothing. Someone might have mistaken the door, I thought, and 
I looked into the corridor. But it was still as death. "Odd," I 
thought, "someone did come into the room!" Then I tried to re- 
call exactly what had happened, and it occurred to me that I 
had been awakened by a feeling of dull pain, as though some- 
thing had struck my forehead and then the back of my skull. 
The following day I received a telegram saying that my patient 
had committed suicide. He had shot himself. Later, I learned 



that the bullet had come to rest in the back wall of the skull. 
This experience was a genuine synchronistic phenomenon 
such as is quite often observed in connection with an archetypal 
situation in this case, death. By means of a relativization of 
time and space in the unconscious it could well be that I had 
perceived something which in reality was taking place else- 
where. The collective unconscious is common to all; it is the 
foundation of what the ancients called the "sympathy of all 
things/' In this case the unconscious had knowledge of my pa- 
tient's condition. All that evening, in fact, I had felt curiously 
restive and nervous, very much in contrast to my usual mood, 

I never try to convert a patient to anything, and never exercise 
any compulsion. What matters most to me is that the patient 
should reach his own view of things. Under my treatment a 
pagan becomes a pagan and a Christian a Christian, a Jew a Jew, 
according to what his destiny prescribes for him. 

I well recall the case of a Jewish woman who had lost her 
faith. It began with a dream of mine in which a young girl, un- 
known to me, came to me as a patient. She outlined her case to 
me, and while she was talking, I thought, "I don't understand 
her at all. I don't understand what it is all about." But suddenly 
it occurred to me that she must have an unusual father complex. 
That was the dream. 

For the next day I had down in my appointment book a con- 
sultation for four o'clock. A young woman appeared* She was 
Jewish, daughter of a wealthy banker, pretty, chic, and highly 
intelligent. She had already undergone an analysis, but the doc- 
tor acquired a transference to her and finally begged her not 
to come to him any more, for if she did, it would mean the de- 
struction of his marriage. 

The girl had been suffering for years from a severe anxiety 
neurosis, which this experience naturally worsened. I began witihi 
an anamnesis, but could discover notibdng special. She was a 
well-adapted, Westernized Jewess, enlightened down to her 
bones. At first I could not understand what her trouble was. 
Suddenly my dream occurred to me, and I thought, "Good 
Lord, so this is the little girl of my dream." Since, however, I 



Psychiatric Activities 

could detect not a trace of a father complex in her, I asked her, 
as I am in the habit of doing in such cases, about her grand- 
father. For a brief moment she closed her eyes, and I realized 
at once that here lay the heart of the problem. I therefore asked 
her to tell me about this grandfather, and learned that he had 
been a rabbi and had belonged to a Jewish sect. "Do you mean 
the Chassidim?" I asked. She said yes. I pursued my question- 
ing. "If he was a rabbi, was he by any chance a zaddik?" 
"Yes/' she replied, "it is said that he was a kind of saint and 
also possessed second sight. But that is all nonsense. There is 
no such thing!" 

With that I had concluded the anamnesis and understood the 
history of her neurosis. I explained to her, "Now I am going to 
tell you something that you may not be able to accept. Your 
grandfather was a zaddik. Your father became an apostate to 
the Jewish faith. He betrayed the secret and turned his back on 
God. And you have your neurosis because the fear of God has 
got into you/' That struck her like a bolt of lightning. 

The following night I had another dream. A reception was 
taking place in my house, and behold, this girl was there too. 
She came up to me and asked, "Haven't you got an umbrella? It 
is raining so hard." I actually found an umbrella, fumbled 
around with it to open it, and was on the point of giving it to 
her. But what happened instead? I handed it to her on my 
knees, as if she were a goddess. 

I told this dream to her, and in a week the neurosis had van- 
ished. 6 The dream had showed me that she was not just a su- 
perficial little girl, but that beneath the surface were the makings 
of a saint. She had no mythological ideas, and therefore the 
most essential feature of her nature could find no way to express 
itself. All her conscious activity was directed toward flirtation, 
clothes, and sex, because she knew of nothing else. She knew 
only the intellect and lived a meaningless life. In reality she 
was a child of God whose destiny was to fulfill His secret will. 
I had to awaken mythological and religious ideas in her, for she 
belonged to that ckss of human beings of whom spiritual ac- 

6 This case is distinguished from most of Jung's cases by the brevity of the treat- 
ment. A. J. 

139 



memories, ur earns, ttejiecuons 

tivity is demanded. Thus her life took on a meaning, and no 
trace of the neurosis was left. 

In this case I had applied no "method,* but had sensed the 
presence of the numen. My explaining this to her had accom- 
plished the cure. Method did not matter here; what mattered 
was. the "fear of God." 7 

I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they con- 
tent themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the ques- 
tions of life. They seek position, marriage, reputation, outward 
success or money, and remain unhappy and neurotic even when 
they have attained what they were seeking. Such people are 
usually confined within too narrow a spiritual horizon. Their life 
has not sufficient content, sufficient meaning. If they are ena- 
bled to develop into more spacious personalities, the neurosis 
generally disappears. For that reason the idea of development 
was always of the highest importance to me. 

The majority of my patients consisted not of believers but of 
those who had lost their faith, The ones who came to me were 
the lost sheep. Even in this day and age the believer has the op- 
portunity, in his church, to live the "symbolic life/' We need 
only think of the experience of the Mass, of baptism, of the 
imitatio Christi, and many other aspects of religion. But to live 
and experience symbols presupposes a vital participation on the 
part of the believer, and only too often this is lacking in people 
today. In the neurotic it is practically always lacking. In such 
cases we have to observe whether the unconscious will not spon- 
taneously bring up symbols to replace what is lacking. But then 
the question remains of whether a person who has symbolic 
dreams or visions will also be able to understand their meaning 
and take the consequences upon himself. 

There is, for example, the case of the theologian which I de- 
scribed in "Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious/' 8 He had 
a certain dream which was frequently repeated. He dreamt 
that he was standing on a slope from which he had a beautiful 

r Cf. The Symbolic Life, Pastoral Psychology Guild Lecture, No. So (London, 

1954), p, 18. 

8 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (CW 9, i), pp. 17-18. 

140 



Psychiatric Activities 

view of a low valley covered with dense woods. In the dream he 
knew that in the middle of the woods there was a lake, and he 
also knew that hitherto something had always prevented him 
from going there. But this time he wanted to carry out his plan. 
As he approached the lake, the atmosphere grew uncanny, and 
suddenly a light gust of wind passed over the surface of the 
water, which rippled darkly. He awoke with a cry of terror. 

At first this dream seems incomprehensible. But as a theolo- 
gian the dreamer should have remembered the "pool" whose 
waters were stirred by a sudden wind, and in which the sick 
were bathed the pool of Bethesda. An angel descended and 
touched the water, which thereby acquired curative powers. 
The light wind is the pneuma which bloweth where it listeth 
And that terrified the dreamer. An unseen presence is sug- 
gested, a numen that lives its own life and in whose presence 
man shudders. The dreamer was reluctant to accept the associa- 
tion with the pool of Bethesda. He wanted nothing of it, for such 
things are met with only in the Bible, or at most on Sunday 
mornings as the subjects of sermons, and have nothing to do 
with psychology. All very well to speak of the Holy Ghost on 
occasions but it is not a phenomenon to be experienced! 

I knew that the dreamer should have overcome his fright 
and, as it were, got over his panic. But I never force the issue if 
a patient is unwilling to go the way that has been revealed to 
him and take the consequences. I do not subscribe to the facile 
assumption that the patient is blocked merely by ordinary re- 
sistances. Resistances especially when they are stubborn 
merit attention, for they are often warnings which must not be 
overlooked. The cure may be a poison that not everyone can 
take, or an operation which, when it is contraindicated, can 
prove fatal. 

Wherever there is a reaching down into innermost experience, 
into the nucleus of personality, most people are overcome by 
fright, and many run away. Such was the case with this theolo- 
gian. I am of course aware that theologians are in a more diffi- 
cult situation than others. On the one hand they are closer to 
religion, but on the other hand they are more bound by church 
and dogma. The risk of inner experience, the adventure of the 

141 



spirit, is in any case alien to most human beings. The possibility 
that such experience might have psychic reality is anathema 
to them. All very well if it has a supernatural or at least a "his- 
torical" foundation. But psychic? Face to face with this ques- 
tion, the patient will often show an unsuspected but profound 
contempt for the psyche. 

In contemporary psychotherapy the demand is often made that 
the doctor or psychotherapist should "go along" with the patient 
and his affects. I don't consider that to be always the right 
course. Sometimes active intervention on the part of the doctor 
is required. 

Once a lady of the aristocracy came to me who was in the 
habit of slapping her employees including her doctors. She suf- 
fered from a compulsion neurosis and had been under treat- 
ment in a sanatorium. Naturally, she had soon dispensed the 
obligatory slap to the head physician. In her eyes, after all, he 
was only a superior valet de chambre. She was paying the bills, 
wasn't she? This doctor sent her on to another institution and 
there the same scene was repeated. Since the lady was not 
really insane, but evidently had to be handled with kid gloves, 
the hapless doctor sent her on to me. 

She was a very stately and imposing person, six feet tall and 
there was power behind her slaps, I can tell you! She came, then, 
and we had a very good talk. Then came the moment when I 
had to say something unpleasant to her. Furious, she sprang to 
her feet and threatened to slap me. I, too, jumped up, and said 
to her, "Very well, you are the lady. You hit first ladies first! 
But then I hit back!*' And I meant it. She fell back into her chair 
and deflated before my eyes. "No one has ever said that to me 
before!" she protested. From that moment on, the therapy began 
to succeed. 

What this patient needed was a masculine reaction. In this 
case it would have been entirely wrong to "go along/' That 
would have been worse than useless. She had a compulsion neu- 
rosis because she could not impose moral restraint upon herself. 
Such people must then have some other form of restraint and 
along come the compulsive symptoms to serve the purpose. 

142 



Psychiatric Activities 

Years ago I once drew up statistics on the results of my treat- 
ments. I no longer recall the figures exactly; but, on a con- 
servative estimate, a third of my cases were really cured, a third 
considerably improved, and a third not essentially influenced. 
But it is precisely the unimproved cases which are hardest to 
judge, because many things are not realized and understood 
by the patients until years afterward, and only then can they 
take effect. How often former patients have written to me: "I 
did not realize what it was really all about until ten years after 
I had been with you." 

I have had a few cases who ran out on me; very rarely indeed 
have I had to send a patient away. But even among them were 
some who later sent me positive reports. That is why it is often 
so difficult to draw conclusions as to the success of a treatment. 

It is obvious that in the course of his practice a doctor will come 
across people who have a great effect on him too. He meets per- 
sonalities who, for better or worse, never stir the interest of the 
public and who nevertheless, or for that very reason, possess un- 
usual qualities, or whose destiny it is to pass through unprece- 
dented developments and disasters. Sometimes they are persons 
of extraordinary talents, who might well inspire another to give 
his life for them; but these talents may be implanted in so 
strangely unfavorable a psychic disposition that we cannot tell 
whether it is a question of genius or of fragmentary develop- 
ment. Frequently, too, in this unlikely soil there flower rare 
blossoms of the psyche which we would never have thought to 
find in the flatlands of society. For psychotherapy to be effec- 
tive a close rapport is needed, so close that the doctor can- 
not shut his eyes to the heights and depths of human suffer- 
ing. The rapport consists, after all, in a constant comparison 
and mutual comprehension, in the dialectical confrontation of 
two opposing psychic realities. If for some reason these mutual 
impressions do not impinge on each other, the psychotherapeu- 
tic process remains ineffective, and no change is produced. Un- 
less both doctor and patient become a problem to each other, no 
solution is found. 
Among the so-called neurotics of our day there are a good 



many who in other ages would not have been neurotic that 
is, divided against themselves. If they had lived in a period 
and in a milieu in which man was still linked by myth with the 
world of the ancestors, and thus with nature truly experienced 
and not merely seen from outside, they would have been spared 
this division with themselves. I am speaking of those who can- 
not tolerate the loss of myth and who can neither find a way 
to a merely exterior world, to the world as seen by science, nor 
rest satisfied with an intellectual juggling with words, which 
has nothing whatsoever to do with wisdom. 

These victims of the psychic dichotomy of our time are merely 
optional neurotics; their apparent morbidity drops away the 
moment the gulf between the ego and the unconscious is closed. 
The doctor who has felt this dichotomy to the depths of his being 
will also be able to reach a better understanding of the uncon- 
scious psychic processes, and will be saved from the danger 
of inflation to which the psychologist is prone. The doctor who 
does not know from his own experience the numinosity of the 
archetypes will scarcely be able to escape their negative effect 
when he encounters it in his practice. He will tend to over- or 
underestimate it, since he possesses only an intellectual point 
of view but no empirical criterion. This is where those perilous 
aberrations begin, the first of which is the attempt to dominate 
everything by the intellect. This serves the secret purpose of 
placing both doctor and patient at a safe distance from the 
archetypal effect and thus from real experience, and of substi- 
tuting for psychic reality an apparently secure, artificial, but 
merely two-dimensional conceptual world in which the reality 
of life is well covered up by so-called clear concepts. Experi- 
ence is stripped of its substance, and instead mere names are 
substituted, which are henceforth put in the place of reality. 
No one has any obligations to a concept; that is what is so agree- 
able about conceptuality it promises protection from experi- 
ence. The spirit does not dwell in concepts, but in deeds and 
in facts. Words butter no parsnips; nevertheless, this futile pro- 
cedure is repeated ad infinitum. 

In my experience, therefore, the most difficult as well as the 
most ungrateful patients, apart from habitual liars, are the so- 

144 



Psychiatric Activities 

called intellectuals. With them, one hand never knows what the 
other hand is doing. They cultivate a "compartment psychol- 
ogy." Anything can be settled by an intellect that is not subject 
to the control of feeling and yet the intellectual still suffers 
from a neurosis if feeling is undeveloped. 

From my encounters with patients and with the psychic phe- 
nomena which they have paraded before me in an endless 
stream of images, I have learned an enormous amount not just 
knowledge, but above all insight into my own nature. And not 
the least of what I have learned has come from my errors and 
defeats. I have had mainly women patients, who often entered 
into the work with extraordinary conscientiousness, understand- 
ing, and intelligence. It was essentially because of them that I 
was able to strike out on new paths in therapy. 

A number of my patients became my disciples in the original 
sense of the word, and have carried my ideas out into the world. 
Among them I have made friendships that have endured decade 
after decade. 

My patients brought me so close to the reality of human life 
that I could not help learning essential things from them. En- 
counters with people of so many different kinds and on so many 
different psychological levels have been for me incomparably 
more important than fragmentary conversations with celebri- 
ties. The finest and most significant conversations of my life 
were anonymous. 



145 



V 



Sigmund Freud 1 



I EMBARKED on the adventuie of my intellectual devel- 
opment by becoming a psychiatrist In all innocence I be- 
gan observing mental patients, clinically, from the outside, 
and thereby came upon psychic processes of a striking nature. 
I noted and classified these things without the slightest under- 
standing of their contents, which were considered to be 
adequately evaluated when they were dismissed as "pathologi- 
cal." In the course of time my interest focused more and more 
upon cases in which I experienced something understandable 
that is, cases of paranoia, manic-depressive insanity, and psy- 
chogenic disturbances. From the start of my psychiatric career 
the studies of Breuer and Freud, along with tie work of Pierre 
Janet, provided me with a wealth of suggestions and stimuli. 
Above all, I found that Freud's technique of dream analysis and 
dream interpretation cast a valuable light upon schizophrenic 
forms of expression. As early as 1900 1 had read Freud's The In- 

1 This chapter should be regarded as a supplement to Jung's numerous writings on 
Freud. The most important of these are contained in Freud and Psychoanalysis 
(CW 4). Cf. also "Sigmund Freud in His Historical Setting" (1934) and "In 
Memory of Sigmund Freud" ( 1939), in The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature 
(CW 15). 

146 



Sigmund Freud 

terpretation of Dreams. 2 1 had laid the book aside, at the time, 
because I did not yet grasp it. At the age of twenty-five I lacked 
the experience to appreciate Freud's theories. Such experience 
did not come until later. In 1903 1 once more took up The Inter- 
pretation of Dreams and discovered how it all linked up with 
my own ideas. What chiefly interested me was the application to 
dreams of the concept of the repression mechanism, which was 
derived from the psychology of the neuroses. This was impor- 
tant to me because I had frequently encountered repressions in 
my experiments with word association; in response to certain 
stimulus words the patient either had no associative answer or 
was unduly slow in his reaction time. As was later discovered, 
such a disturbance occurred each time the stimulus word had 
touched upon a psychic lesion or conflict. In most cases the pa- 
tient was unconscious of this. When questioned about the cause 
of the disturbance, he would often answer in a peculiarly arti- 
ficial manner. My reading of Freud's The Interpretation of 
Dreams showed me that the repression mechanism was at work 
here, and that the facts I had observed were consonant with his 
theory. Thus I was able to corroborate Freud's line of argument. 

The situation was different when it came to the content of 
the repression. Here I could not agree with Freud. He consid- 
ered the cause of the repression to be a sexual trauma. From 
my practice, however, I was familiar with numerous cases of 
neurosis in which the question of sexuality played a subordinate 
part, other factors standing in the foreground for example, the 
problem of social adaptation, of oppression by tragic circum- 
stances of life, prestige considerations, and so on. Later I 
presented such cases to Freud; but he would not grant that fac- 
tors other than sexuality could be the cause. That was highly 
unsatisfactory to me. 

At the beginning it was not easy for me to assign Freud the 
proper place in my life, or to take the right attitude toward him. 
When I became acquainted with his work I was planning an 

2 In his obituary on Freud (1939), Jung calls this work "epoch-making" and 
"probably the boldest attempt that has ever been made to master the riddles of 
the unconscious psyche upon the apparently firm ground of empiricism. For us, 
then young psychiatrists, it was ... a source of illumination, while for our older 
colleagues it was an object of mockery." A. J. 

147 



academic career, and was about to complete a paper that was 
intended to advance me at the university. But Freud was defi- 
nitely persona non grata in the academic world at the time, and 
any connection with him would have been damaging in scien- 
tific circles. "Important people" at most mentioned him sur- 
reptitiously, and at congresses he was discussed only in the 
corridors, never on the floor. Therefore the discovery that my 
association experiments were in agreement with Freud's theories 
was far from pleasant to me. 

Once, while I was in my laboratory and reflecting again upon 
these questions, the devil whispered to me that I would be justi- 
fied in publishing the results of my experiments and my con- 
clusions without mentioning Freud. After all, I had worked out 
my experiments long before I understood his work. But then I 
heard the voice of my second personality: "If you do a thing 
like that, as if you had no knowledge of Freud, it would be a 
piece of trickery. You cannot build your life upon a lie." With 
that, the question was settled. From then on I became an open 
partisan of Freud's and fought for him. 

I first took up the cudgels for Freud at a congress in Munich 
where a lecturer discussed obsessional neuroses but studiously 
forbore to mention the name of Freud. In 1906, in connection 
with this incident, I wrote a paper 8 for the Miinchner Medizini- 
sche Wochenschrift on Freud's theory of the neuroses, which 
had contributed a great deal to the understanding of obses- 
sional neuroses. In response to this article, two German profes- 
sors wrote to me, warning that if I remained on Freud's side 
and continued to defend him, I would be endangering my aca- 
demic career. I replied: If what Freud says is the truth, I am 
with him. I don't give a damn for a career if it has to be based 
on the premise of restricting research and concealing the truth." 
And I went on defending Freud and his ideas. But on the basis 
of my own findings I was still unable to feel that all neuroses 
were caused by sexual repression or sexual traumata. In certain 

8 "Die Hysterielehre Freuds: Eine Erwiderung auf die Aschaffenburgsche Kritik," 
Mtinchener medizinische Wochensckrift, LIII (November, 1906), 47; English 
trans.: "Freud's Theory of Hysteria: A Reply to Aschaffenburg," in Freud 
and Psychoanalysis ( CW 4 ) . 

148 



Sigmund Freud 

cases that was so, but not in others. Nevertheless, Freud had 
opened up a new path of investigation, and the shocked out- 
cries against him at the time seemed to me absurd. 4 

I had not met with much sympathy for the ideas expressed in 
"The Psychology of Dementia Praecox." In fact, my colleagues 
laughed at me. But through this book I came to know Freud. He 
invited me to visit him, and our first meeting took place in Vi- 
enna in March 1907. We met at one o'clock in the afternoon 
and talked virtually without a pause for thirteen hours. Freud 
was the first man of real importance I had encountered; in my 
experience up to that time, no one else could compare with him. 
There was nothing the least trivial in his attitude. I found him 
extremely intelligent, shrewd, and altogether remarkable. And 
yet my first impressions of him remained somewhat tangled; I 
could not make him out. 

What he said about his sexual theory impressed me. Neverthe- 
less, his words could not remove my hesitations and doubts. I 
tried to advance these reservations of mine on several occasions, 
but each time he would attribute them to my lack of experience. 
Freud was right; in those days I had not enough experience to 
support my objections. I could see that his sexual theory was 
enormously important to him, both personally and philosophi- 
cally. This impressed me, but I could not decide to what extent 
this strong emphasis upon sexuality was connected with sub- 
jective prejudices of his, and to what extent it rested upon 
verifiable experiences. 

Above all, Freud's attitude toward the spirit seemed to me 
highly questionable. Wherever, in a person or in a work of art, 
an expression of spirituality (in the intellectual, not the super- 
natural sense) came to light, he suspected it, and insinuated 
that it was repressed sexuality. Anything that could not be di- 
rectly interpreted as sexuality he referred to as "psychosexual- 

4 In 1906, after Jung sent Freud Diagnostische Assoziationsstudten ( 1906; Eng- 
lish trans, of Jung's contributions in Experimental Researches, CW 2), the cor- 
respondence between the two men began, and went on until 1913. In 1907 Jung 
sent Freud his book Vber die Psychology der Dementia Praecox (English trans.: 
'The Psychology of Dementia Praecox," in The Psychogenests of Mental Dis- 
ease, CW 3 ).-A. J. 

149 



ity." I protested that this hypothesis, carried to its logical 
conclusion, would lead to an annihilating judgment upon cul- 
ture. Culture would then appear as a mere farce, the morbid 
consequence of repressed sexuality. "Yes," he assented, "so it is, 
and that is just a curse of fate against which we are powerless 
to contend." I was by no means disposed to agree, or to let it 
go at that, but still I did not feel competent to argue it out with 
him. 

There was something else that seemed to me significant at that 
first meeting. It had to do with things which I was able to think 
out and understand only after our friendship was over. There 
was no mistaking the fact that Freud was emotionally involved 
in his sexual theory to an extraordinary degree. When he spoke 
of it, his tone became urgent, almost anxious, and all signs of 
his normally critical and skeptical manner vanished. A strange, 
deeply moved expression came over his face, the cause of which 
I was at a loss to understand. I had a strong intuition that for 
him sexuality was a sort of numinosum. This was confirmed by 
a conversation which took place some three years later (in 
1910), again in Vienna. 

I can still recall vividly how Freud said to me, "My dear Jung, 
promise me never to abandon the sexual theory. That is the most 
essential thing of all. You see, we must make a dogma of it, an 
unshakable bulwark." He said that to me with great emotion, in 
the tone of a father saying, "And promise me this one thing, my 
dear son: that you will go to church every Sunday/' In some 
astonishment I asked him, "A bulwark against what?" To 
which he replied, "Against the black tide of mud" and here he 
hesitated for a moment, then added "of occultism." First of 
all, it was the words "bulwark" and "dogma'* that alarmed me; 
for a dogma, that is to say, an undisputable confession of faith, 
is set up only when the aim is to suppress doubts once and for 
all. But that no longer has anything to do with scientific judg- 
ment; only with a personal power drive. 

This was the thing that struck at the heart of our friendship. 
I knew that I would never be able to accept such an attitude* 
What Freud seemed to mean by "occultism'* was virtually ev- 
erything that philosophy and religion, including the rising con- 

150 



Sigmund Freud 

temporary science of parapsychology, had learned about the 
psyche. To me the sexual theory was just as occult, that is to say, 
just as unproven an hypothesis, as many other speculative views. 
As I saw it, a scientific truth was a hypothesis which might be 
adequate for the moment but was not to be preserved as an 
article of faith for all time. 

Although I did not properly understand it then, I had ob- 
served in Freud the eruption of unconscious religious factors. 
Evidently he wanted my aid in erecting a barrier against these 
threatening unconscious contents. 

The impression this conversation made upon me added to my 
confusion; until then I had not considered sexuality as a pre- 
cious and imperiled concept to which one must remain faithful. 
Sexuality evidently meant more to Freud than to other people. 
For him it was something to be religiously observed. In the face 
of such deep convictions one generally becomes shy and reti- 
cent. After a few stammering attempts on my part, the conver- 
sation soon came to an end. 

I was bewildered and embarrassed. I had the feeling that I 
had caught a glimpse of a new, unknown country from which 
swarms of new ideas flew to meet me. One thing was clear: 
Freud, who had always made much of his irreligiosity, had now 
constructed a dogma; or rather, in the place of a jealous God 
whom he had lost, he had substituted another compelling im- 
age, that of sexuality. It was no less insistent, exacting, domi- 
neering, threatening, and morally ambivalent than the original 
one. Just as the psychically stronger agency is given "divine" 
or "daemonic" attributes, so the "sexual libido" took over the 
role of a deus dbsconditus, a hidden or concealed god. The ad- 
vantage of this transformation for Freud was, apparently, that 
he was able to regard the new numinous principle as scientifi- 
cally irreproachable and free from all religious taint. At bottom, 
however, the numinosity, that is, the psychological qualities of 
the two rationally incommensurable opposites Yahweh and 
sexuality remained the same. The name alone had changed, 
and with it, of course, the point of view: the lost god had now to 
be sought below, not above. But what difference does it make, 
ultimately, to the stronger agency if it is called now by one 



name and now by another? If psychology did not exist, but only 
concrete objects, the one would actually have been destroyed 
and replaced by the other. But in reality, that is to say, in psycho- 
logical experience, there is not one whit the less of urgency, 
anxiety, compulsiveness, etc. The problem still remains: how to 
overcome or escape our anxiety, bad conscience, guilt, compul- 
sion, unconsciousness, and instinctuality. If we cannot do this 
from the bright, idealistic side, then perhaps we shall have bet- 
ter luck by approaching the problem from the dark, biological 
side. 

Like flames suddenly flaring up, these thoughts darted 
through my mind. Much later, when I reflected upon Freud's 
character, they revealed their significance. There was one char- 
acteristic of his that preoccupied me above all: his bitterness. It 
had struck me at our first encounter, but it remained inexplica- 
ble to me until I was able to see it in connection with his attitude 
toward sexuality. Although, for Freud, sexuality was undoubt- 
edly a numinosurn, his terminology and theory seemed to define 
it exclusively as a biological function. It was only the emo- 
tionality with which he spoke of it that revealed the deeper 
elements reverberating within him. Basically, he wanted to 
teach or so at least it seemed to me that, regarded from 
within, sexuality included spirituality and had an intrinsic 
meaning. But his concretistic terminology was too narrow to 
express this idea. He gave me the impression that at bottom he 
was working against his own goal and against himself; and 
there is, after all, no harsher bitterness than that of a person who 
is his own worst enemy. In his own words, he felt himself men- 
aced by a "black tide of mud" he who more than anyone else 
had tried to let down his buckets into those black depths. 

Freud never asked himself why he was compelled to talk 
continually of sex, why this idea had taken such possession of 
him. He remained unaware that his ''monotony of interpreta- 
tion" expressed a flight from himself, or from that other side of 
him which might perhaps be called mystical So long as he re- 
fused to acknowledge that side, he could never be reconciled 
with himself. He was blind toward the paradox and ambiguity 
of the contents of the unconscious, and did not know that every- 



Sigmund Freud 

thing which arises out of the unconscious has a top and a bot- 
tom, an inside and an outside. When we speak of the outside 
and that is what Freud did we are considering only half of 
the whole, with the result that a countereffect arises out of the 
unconscious. 

There was nothing to be done about this one-sidedness of 
Freud's. Perhaps some inner experience of his own might have 
opened his eyes; but then his intellect would have reduced any 
such experience to "mere sexuality" or "psychosexuality." He 
remained the victim of the one aspect he could recognize, and 
for that reason I see him as a tragic figure; for he was a great 
man, and what is more, a man in the grip of his daimon. 

After that second conversation in Vienna I also understood Al- 
fred Adler's power hypothesis, to which I had hitherto paid 
scant attention. Like many sons, Adler had learned from his 
"father" not what the father said, but what he did. Instantly, 
the problem of love (Eros) and power came down upon me 
like a leaden weight. Freud himself had told me that he had 
never read Nietzsche; now I saw Freud's psychology as, so to 
speak, an adroit move on the part of intellectual history, com- 
pensating for Nietzsche's deification of the power principle. 
The problem had obviously to be rephrased not as "Freud versus 
Adler" but "Freud versus Nietzsche." It was therefore, I thought, 
more than a domestic quarrel in the domain of psychopa- 
thology. The idea dawned on me that Eros and the power drive 
might be in a sense like the dissident sons of a single father, or 
the products of a single motivating psychic force which mani- 
fested itself empirically in opposing forms, like positive and 
negative electrical charges, Eros as a patiens, the power drive 
as an agens, and vice versa. Eros makes just as great demands 
upon the power drive as the latter upon the former. Where is 
the one drive without the other? On the one hand man suc- 
cumbs to the drive; on the other hand, he tries to master it. 
Freud shows how the object succumbs to the drive, and Adler 
how man uses the drive in order to force his will upon the ob- 
ject. Nietzsche, helpless in the hands of his destiny, had to cre- 
ate a "superman" for himself. Freud, I concluded, must himself 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

be so profoundly affected by the power of Eros that he actually 
wished to elevate it into a dogma aere perennius like a reli- 
gious numen. It is no secret that **Zarathustra" is the proclaimer 
of a gospel, and here was Freud also trying to outdo the church 
and to canonize a theory. To be sure, he did not do this too 
loudly; instead, he suspected me of wanting to be a prophet. 
He made his tragic claim and demolished it at the same time. 
That is how people usually behave with numinosities, and 
rightly so, for in one respect they are true, in another untrue. 
Numinous experience elevates and humiliates simultaneously. 
If Freud had given somewhat more consideration to the psy- 
chological truth that sexuality is numinous both a god and a 
devil he would not have remained bound within the confines 
of a biological concept. And Nietzsche might not have been 
carried over the brink of the world by his intellectual excesses 
if he had only held more firmly to the foundations of human 
existence. 

Wherever the psyche is set violently oscillating by a numinous 
experience, there is a danger that the thread by which one hangs 
may be torn. Should that happen, one man tumbles into an ab- 
solute affirmation, another into an equally absolute negation, 
Nirdvandva (freedom from opposites) is the Orient's remedy 
for this. I have not forgotten that. The pendulum of the mind 
oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and 
wrong. The nvminosum is dangerous because it lures men to 
extremes, so that a modest truth is regarded as the truth and a 
minor mistake is equated with fatal error. Tout passe yester- 
day's truth is today's deception, and yesterday's false inference 
may be tomorrow's revelation. This is particularly so in psy- 
chological matters, of which, if truth were told, we still know 
very little. We are still a long way from understanding what it 
signifies that nothing has any existence unless some small and 
oh, so transitory consciousness has become aware of it. 

My conversation with Freud had shown me that he feared 
that the numinous light of his sexual insights might be extin- 
guished by a '"black tide of mud. w Thus a mythological situa- 
tion had arisen: the struggle between light and darkness. That 
explains its numinosity, and why Freud immediately fell back 

154 



Sigmund Freud 

on his dogma as a religious means of defense/In my next book, 
Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido, 5 which dealt with the 
hero's struggle for freedom, Freud's curious reaction prompted 
me to investigate further this archetypal theme and its mytho- 
logical background. 

What with the sexual interpretation on the one hand and the 
power drive of dogma on the other I was led, over the years, to 
a consideration of the problem of typology. It was necessary to 
study the polarity and dynamics of the psyche. And I also em- 
barked upon an investigation extending over several decades of 
"the black tide of mud of occultism" that is to say, I tried to 
understand the conscious and unconscious historical assump- 
tions underlying our contemporary psychology. 

It interested me to hear Freud's views on precognition and on 
parapsychology in general. When I visited him in Vienna in 
1909 I asked him what he thought of these matters. Because of 
his materialistic prejudice, he rejected this entire complex of 
questions as nonsensical, and did so in terms of so shallow a 
positivism that I had difficulty in checking the sharp retort on 
the tip of my tongue. It was some years before he recognized 
the seriousness of parapsychology and acknowledged the f ac- 
tuality of "occult" phenomena. 

While Freud was going on this way, I had a curious sensation. 
It was as if my diaphragm were made of iron and were be- 
coming red-hot a glowing vault. And at that moment there 
was such a loud report in the bookcase, which stood right next 
to us, that we both started up in alarm, fearing the thing was go- 
ing to topple over on us. I said to Freud: "There, that is an ex- 
ample of a so-called catalytic exteriorization phenomenon." 
"Oh come," he exclaimed. "That is sheer bosh." 
"It is not," I replied. "You are mistaken, Herr Professor. And 
to prove my point I now predict that in a moment there will be 
another such loud report!" Sure enough, no sooner had I said 
the words than the same detonation went off in the bookcase. 

'Published in 1912; English trans.: Psychology of the Unconscious (1917)- Rev. 
edn., Symbole der Wandlung (1952); English trans.: Symbols of Transformation 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

To this day I do not know what gave me this certainty. But I 
knew beyond all doubt that the report would come again. Freud 
only stared aghast at me. I do not know what was in his mind, 
or what his look meant. In any case, this incident aroused his 
mistrust of me, and I had the feeling that I had done something 
against him, I never afterward discussed the incident with him. 6 

The year 1909 proved decisive for our relationship. I had 
been invited to lecture on the association experiment at Clark 
University in Worcester, Massachusetts. 7 Independently, Freud 
had also received an invitation, and we decided to travel to- 
gether. We met in Bremen, where Ferenczi joined us. In Bremen 
the much-discussed incident of Freud's fainting fit occurred. It 
was provoked indirectly by my interest in the "peat-bog 
corpses/' I knew that in certain districts of Northern Germany 
these so-called bog corpses were to be found. They are the bod- 
ies of prehistoric men who either drowned in the marshes or 
were buried there. The bog water in which the bodies lie con- 
tains humic acid, which consumes the bones and simultaneously 
tans the skin, so that it and the hair are perfectly preserved. In 
essence this is a process of natural mummification, in the course 
of which the bodies are pressed flat by the weight of the peat. 
Such remains are occasionally turned up by peat diggers in 
Holstein, Denmark, and Sweden. 

Having read about these peat-bog corpses, I recalled them 
when we were in Bremen, but, being a bit muddled, confused 
them with the mummies in the lead cellars of the city. This in- 
terest of mine got on Freud's nerves. "Why are you so concerned 
with these corpses?" he asked me several times. He was inordi- 
nately vexed by the whole thing and during one such conver- 
sation, while we were having dinner together, he suddenly 
fainted. Afterward he said to me that he was convinced that 
all this chatter about corpses meant I had death-wishes toward 
him. I was more than surprised by this interpretation. I was 
alarmed by the intensity of his fantasies so strong that, obvi- 
ously, they could cause him to faint. 

In a similar connection Freud once more suffered a fainting 

6 For Freud's reaction to the incident, see Appendix I, pp. 

7 See Appendix II, pp. 365-68. 



Sigmund Freud 

fit in my presence. This was during the Psychoanalytic Congress 
in Munich in 1912. Someone had turned the conversation to 
Amenophis IV (Ikhnaton). The point was made that as a result 
of his negative attitude toward his father he had destroyed his 
father's cartouches on the steles, and that at the back of his 
great creation of a monotheistic religion there lurked a father 
complex. This sort of thing irritated me, and I attempted to 
argue that Amenophis had been a creative and profoundly re- 
ligious person whose acts could not be explained by personal 
resistances toward his father. On the contrary, I said, he had 
held the memory of his father in honor, and his zeal for destruc- 
tion had been directed only against the name of the god Amon, 
which he had everywhere annihilated; it was also chiseled out 
of the cartouches of his father Amon-hotep. Moreover, other 
pharaohs had replaced the names of their actual or divine fore- 
fathers on monuments and statues by their own, feeling that 
they had a right to do so since they were incarnations of the 
same god. Yet they, I pointed out, had inaugurated neither a 
new style nor a new religion. 

At that moment Freud slid off his chair in a faint. Everyone 
clustered helplessly around him. I picked him up, carried him 
into the next room, and laid him on a sofa. As I was carrying 
him, he half came to, and I shall never forget the look he cast 
at me. In his weakness he looked at me as if I were his father. 
Whatever other causes may have contributed to this faint the 
atmosphere was very tense the fantasy of father-murder was 
common to both cases. 

At the time Freud frequently made allusions indicating that 
he regarded me as his successor. These hints were embarrassing 
to me, for I knew that I would never be able to uphold his 
views properly, that is to say, as he intended them. On the other 
hand I had not yet succeeded in working out my criticisms in 
such a manner that they would carry any weight with him, and 
my respect for him was too great for me to want to force him 
to come finally to grips with my own ideas. I was by no means 
charmed by the thought of being burdened, virtually over my 
own head, with the leadership of a party. In the first place that 
sort of thing was not in my nature; in the second place I could 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

not sacrifice my intellectual independence; and in the third 
place such luster was highly unwelcome to me since it would 
only deflect me from my real aims. I was concerned with investi- 
gating truth, not with questions of personal prestige. 

The trip to the United States which began in Bremen in 1909 
lasted for seven weeks. We were together every day, and ana- 
lyzed each other's dreams. At the time I had a number of impor- 
tant ones, but Freud could make nothing of them. I did not 
regard that as any reflection upon him, for it sometimes happens 
to the best analyst that he is unable to unlock the riddle of a 
dream. It was a human failure, and I would never have wanted 
to discontinue our dream analyses on that account. On the 
contrary, they meant a great deal to me, and I found our rela- 
tionship exceedingly valuable. I regarded Freud as an older, 
more mature and experienced personality, and felt like a son in 
that respect. But then something happened which proved to be 
a severe blow to the whole relationship. 

Freud had a dream I would not think it right to air the 
problem it involved. I interpreted it as best I could, but added 
that a great deal more could be said about it if he would supply 
me with some additional details from his private life, Freud's 
response to these words was a curious look a look of the utmost 
suspicion. Then he said, "But I cannot risk my authority!" At 
that moment he lost it altogether. That sentence burned itself 
into my memory; and in it the end of our relationship was al- 
ready foreshadowed, Freud was placing personal authority 
above truth. 

As I have already said, Freud was able to interpret the dreams 
I was then having only incompletely or not at all. They were 
dreams with collective contents, containing a great deal of 
symbolic material. One in particular was important to me, for 
it led me for the first time to the concept of the "collective un- 
conscious" and thus formed a kind of prelude to my book, 
Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido* 

This was the dream. I was in a house I did not know, which 
had two stories. It was "my house." I found myself in the upper 
* Psychology of the Unconscious; rev. edn.: Symbols of Transformation (CW 5). 

158 



Sigmund Freud 

story, where there was a kind of salon furnished with fine old 
pieces in rococo style. On the walls hung a number of precious 
old paintings. I wondered that this should be my house, and 
thought, "Not bad." But then it occurred to me that I did not 
know what the lower floor looked like. Descending the stairs, I 
reached the ground floor. There everything was much older, and 
I realized that this part of the house must date from about the 
fifteenth or sixteenth century. The furnishings were medieval; 
the floors were of red brick. Everywhere it was rather dark. I 
went from one room to another, dunking, "Now I really must 
explore the whole house." I came upon a heavy door, and 
opened it. Beyond it, I discovered a stone stairway that led 
down into the cellar. Descending again, I found myself in a 
beautifully vaulted room which looked exceedingly ancient. Ex- 
amining die walls, I discovered layers of brick among the ordi- 
nary stone blocks, and chips of brick in the mortar. As soon as 
I saw this I knew that the walls dated from Roman times. My 
interest by now was intense. I looked more closely at the floor. 
It was of stone slabs, and in one of these I discovered a ring. 
When I pulled it, the stone slab lifted, and again I saw a stair- 
way of narrow stone steps leading down into the depths. These, 
too, I descended, and entered a low cave cut into the rock. Thick 
dust lay on the floor, and in the dust were scattered bones and 
broken pottery, like remains of a primitive culture. I discovered 
two human skulls, obviously very old and half disintegrated. 
Then I awoke. 

What chiefly interested Freud in this dream were the two 
skulls. He returned to them repeatedly, and urged me to find a 
wish in connection with them. What did I think about these 
skulls? And whose were they? I knew perfectly well, of course, 
what he was driving at: that secret death-wishes were concealed 
in the dream. "But what does he really expect of me?" I thought 
to myself. Toward whom would I have death-wishes? I felt vio- 
lent resistance to any such interpretation. I also had some in- 
timation of what the drearn might really mean. But I did not 
then trust my own judgment, and wanted to hear Freud's opin- 
ion. I wanted to learn from him. Therefore I submitted to his 
intention and said, "My wife and my sister-in-law" after all, 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

I had to name someone whose death was worth the wishing! 

I was newly married at the time and knew perfectly well that 
there was nothing within myself which pointed to such wishes. 
But I would not have been able to present to Freud my own 
ideas on an interpretation of the dream without encountering 
incomprehension and vehement resistance. I did not feel up to 
quarreling with him, and I also feared that I might lose his 
friendship if I insisted on my own point of view. On the other 
hand, I wanted to know what he would make of my answer, 
and what his reaction would be if I deceived him by saying 
something that suited his theories. And so I told him a lie. 

I was quite aware that my conduct was not above reproach, 
but la guerre, comme a la guerre! It would have been impossi- 
ble for me to afford him any insight into my mental world. The 
gulf between it and his was too great. In fact Freud seemed 
greatly relieved by my reply. I saw from this that he was com- 
pletely helpless in dealing with certain kinds of dreams and 
had to take refuge in his doctrine. I realized that it was up to 
me to find out the real meaning of the dream. 

It was plain to me that the house represented a kind of image 
of the psyche that is to say, of my then state of consciousness, 
with hitherto unconscious additions. Consciousness was repre- 
sented by the salon. It had an inhabited atmosphere, in spite 
of its antiquated style. 

The ground floor stood for the first level of the unconscious. 
The deeper I went, the more alien and the darker the scene be- 
came. In the cave, I discovered remains of a primitive culture, 
that is, the world of the primitive man within myself a world 
which can scarcely be reached or illuminated by consciousness. 
The primitive psyche of man borders on the life of the animal 
soul, just as the caves of prehistoric times were usually inhabited 
by animals before men laid claim to them. 

During this period I became aware of how keenly I felt the 
difference between Freud's intellectual attitude and mine, I had 
grown up in the intensely historical atmosphere of Basel at the 
end of tiie nineteenth century, and had acquired, thanks to 
reading the old philosophers, some knowledge of the history of 

160 



Sigmund Freud 

psychology. When I thought about dreams and the contents of 
the unconscious, I never did so without making historical com- 
parisons; in my student days I always used Krug's old diction- 
ary of philosophy. I was especially familiar with the writers of 
the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Theirs was the 
world which had formed the atmosphere of my first-story salon. 
By contrast, I had the impression that Freud's intellectual his- 
tory began with Biichner, Moleschott, Du Bois-Reymond, and 
Darwin. 

The dream pointed out that there were further reaches to 
the state of consciousness I have just described: the long unin- 
habited ground floor in medieval style, then the Roman cellar, 
and finally the prehistoric cave. These signified past times and 
passed stages of consciousness. 

Certain questions had been much on my mind during the 
days preceding this dream. They were: On what premises is 
Freudian psychology founded? To what category of human 
thought does it belong? What is the relationship of its almost 
exclusive personalism to general historical assumptions? My 
dream was giving me the answer. It obviously pointed to the 
foundations of cultural history a history of successive layers of 
consciousness. My dream thus constituted a kind of structural 
diagram of the human psyche; it postulated something of 
an altogether impersonal nature underlying that psyche. It 
"clicked," as the English have it and the dream became for me 
a guiding image which in tibe days to come was to be corrobo- 
rated to an extent I could not at first suspect. It was my first 
inkling of a collective a priori beneath the personal psyche. This 
I first took to be the traces of earlier modes of functioning. Later, 
with increasing experience and on the basis of more reliable 
knowledge, I recognized them as forms of instinct, that is, as 
archetypes. 

I was never able to agree with Freud that the dream is a "f a- 
ade" behind which its meaning lies hidden a meaning already 
known but maliciously, so to speak, withheld from conscious- 
ness. To me dreams are a part of nature, which harbors no inten- 
tion to deceive, but expresses something as best it can, just as a 

161 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

plant grows or an animal seeks its food as best it can. These 
forms of life, too, have no wish to deceive our eyes, but we may 
deceive ourselves because our eyes are shortsighted. Or we hear 
amiss because our ears are rather deaf but it is not our ears 
that wish to deceive us. Long before I met Freud I regarded 
the unconscious, and dreams, which are its direct exponents, as 
natural processes to which no arbitrariness can be attributed, 
and above all no legerdemain. I knew no reasons for the as- 
sumption that the tricks of consciousness can be extended to the 
natural processes of the unconscious. On the contrary, daily 
experience taught me what intense resistance the unconscious 
opposes to the tendencies of the conscious mind. 

The dream of the house had a curious effect upon me: it re- 
vived my old interest in archaeology. After I had returned to 
Zurich I took up a book on Babylonian excavations, and read 
various works on myths. In the course of this reading I came 
across Friedrich Creuzer's Symbolik und Mythologie der alten 
Volker 9 and that fired me! I read like mad, and worked with 
feverish interest through a mountain of mythological material, 
then through the Gnostic writers, and ended in total confusion. 
I found myself in a state of perplexity similar to the one I had 
experienced at the clinic when I tried to understand the mean- 
ing of psychotic states of mind. It was as if I were in an imagi- 
nary madhouse and were beginning to treat and analyze all the 
centaurs, nymphs, gods, and goddesses in Creuzer's book as 
though they were my patients. While thus occupied I could not 
help but discover the close relationship between ancient my- 
thology and the psychology of primitives, and this led me to an 
intensive study of the latter. 

In the midst of these studies I came upon the fantasies of a 
young American altogether unknown to me, Miss Miller* The 
material had been published by my revered and fatherly friend, 
Theodore Flournoy, in the Archives de Psychologie (Geneva). 
I was immediately struck by the mythological character of the 

* The Symbolism and Mythology of Ancient Peoples (Leipzig and Dannstadt, 
1810-23), 



Sigmund Freud 

fantasies. They operated like a catalyst upon the stored-up and 
still disorderly ideas within me. Gradually, there formed out of 
them, and out of the knowledge of myths I had acquired, my 
book Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido. 

While I was working on this book, I had dreams which pre- 
saged the forthcoming break with Freud. One of the most 
significant had its scene in a mountainous region on the Swiss- 
Austrian border. It was toward evening, and I saw an elderly 
man in the uniform of an Imperial Austrian customs official. He 
walked past, somewhat stooped, without paying any attention 
to me. His expression was peevish, rather melancholic and 
vexed. There were other persons present, and someone in- 
formed me that the old man was not really there, but was the 
ghost of a customs official who had died years ago. "He is one 
of those who still couldn't die properly." That was the first part 
of the dream. 

I set about analyzing this dream. In connection with "cus- 
toms" I at once thought of the word "censorship." In connection 
with "border" I thought of the border between consciousness 
and the unconscious on the one hand, and between Freud's 
views and mine on the other. The extremely rigorous customs 
examination at the border seemed to me an allusion to analysis* 
At a border suitcases are opened and examined for contraband. 
In the course of this examination, unconscious assumptions are 
discovered. As for the old customs official, his work had obvi- 
ously brought him so little that was pleasurable and satisfactory 
that he took a sour view of the world. I could not refuse to 
see the analogy with Freud. 

At that time Freud had lost much of his authority for me. But 
he still meant to me a superior personality, upon whom I pro- 
jected the father, and at the time of the dream this projection 
was still far from eliminated. Where such a projection occurs, 
we are no longer objective; we persist in a state of divided judg- 
ment. On the one hand we are dependent, and on the other 
we have resistances. When the dream took place I still thought 
highly of Freud, but at the same time I was critical of him. 
This divided attitude is a sign that I was still unconscious of 

163 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

the situation and had not come to any resolution of it. This is 
characteristic of all projections. The dream urged upon me the 
necessity of clarifying this situation. 

Under the impress of Freud's personality I had, as far as possi- 
ble, cast aside my own judgments and repressed my criticisms. 
That was the prerequisite for collaborating with him. I had told 
myself, *Treud is far wiser and more experienced than you. For 
the present you must simply listen to what he says and learn 
from him." And then, to my own surprise, I found myself dream- 
ing of him as a peevish official of the Imperial Austrian 
monarchy, as a defunct and still walking ghost of a customs 
inspector. Could that be the death-wish which Freud had in- 
sinuated I felt toward him? I could find no part of myself that 
normally might have had such a wish, for I wanted at all costs 
to be able to work with Freud, and, in a frankly egotistic man- 
ner, to partake of his wealth of experience. His friendship meant 
a great deal to me. I had no reason for wishing him dead. But 
it was possible that the dream could be regarded as a corrective, 
as a compensation or antidote for my conscious high opinion 
and admiration. Therefore the dream recommended a rather 
more critical attitude toward Freud. I was distinctly shocked by 
it, although the final sentence of the dream seemed to me an 
allusion to Freud's potential immortality. 

The dream had not reached its end with the episode of 
the customs official; after a hiatus came a second and far more 
remarkable part. I was in an Italian city, and it was around 
noon, between twelve and one o'clock. A fierce sun was beating 
down upon the narrow streets. The city was built on hills and 
reminded me of a particular part of Basel, the Kohlenberg. The 
little streets which lead down into the valley, the Birsigtal, that 
runs through the city, are partly flights of steps. In the dream, 
one such stairway descended to Barfiisserplatz. The city was 
Basel, and yet it was also an Italian city, something like Ber- 
gamo. It was summertime; the blazing sun stood at the zenith, 
and everything was bathed in an intense light. A crowd came 
streaming toward me, and I knew that the shops were closing 
and people were on their way home to dinner. In the midst of 
this stream of people walked a knight in full armor. He 

164 



Sigmund Freud 

mounted the steps toward me. He wore a helmet of the kind 
that is called a basinet, with eye slits, and chain armor. Over 
this was a white tunic into which was woven, front and back, a 
large red cross. 

One can easily imagine how I felt: suddenly to see in a mod- 
ern city, during the noonday rush hour, a crusader coming to- 
ward me. What struck me as particularly odd was that none of 
the many persons walking about seemed to notice him. No one 
turned his head or gazed after him. It was as though he were 
completely invisible to everyone but me. I asked myself what 
this apparition meant, and then it was as if someone answered 
me but there was no one there to speak: "Yes, this is a regular 
apparition. The knight always passes by here between twelve 
and one o'clock, and has been doing so for a very long time 
[for centuries, I gathered] and everyone knows about it." 

The knight and the customs official were contrasting figures. 
The customs official was shadowy, someone who "still couldn't 
die properly" a fading apparition. The knight, on the other 
hand, was full of life and completely real. The second part of 
the dream was numinous in the extreme, whereas the scene on 
the border had been prosaic and in itself not impressive; I had 
been struck only by my reflections upon it. 

In the period following these dreams I did a great deal of 
thinking about the mysterious figure of the knight. But it was 
only much later, after I had been meditating on the dream for 
a long time, that I was able to get some idea of its meaning. 
Even in the dream, I knew that the knight belonged to the 
twelfth century. That was the period when alchemy was begin- 
ning and also the quest for the Holy Grail. The stories of the 
Grail had been of the greatest importance to me ever since I 
read them, at the age of fifteen, for the first time. I had an ink- 
ling that a great secret still lay hidden behind those stories. 
Therefore it seemed quite natural to me that the dream should 
conjure up the world of the Knights of the Grail and their quest 
for that was, in the deepest sense, my own world, which had 
scarcely anything to do with Freud's. My whole being was seek- 
ing for something still unknown which might confer meaning 
upon the banality of life. 

165 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

To me it was a profound disappointment that all the efforts 
of the probing mind had apparently succeeded in finding noth- 
ing more in the depths of the psyche than the all too familiar 
and "all-too-human" limitations. I had grown up in the coun- 
try, among peasants, and what I was unable to learn in the 
stables I found out from the Rabelaisian wit and the untram- 
meled fantasies of our peasant folklore. Incest and perversions 
were no remarkable novelties to me, and did not call for any 
special explanation. Along with criminality, they formed part 
of the black lees that spoiled the taste of life by showing me 
only too plainly the ugliness and meaninglessness of human 
existence. That cabbages thrive in dung was something I had 
always taken for granted. In all honesty I could discover no 
helpful insight in such knowledge. "It's just that all of those peo- 
ple are city folks who know nothing about nature and the hu- 
man stable," I thought, sick and tired of these ugly matters. 

People who know nothing about nature are of course neu- 
rotic, for they are not adapted to reality. They are too naive, 
like children, and it is necessary to tell them the facts of life, so 
to speak to make it plain to diem that they are human beings 
like all others. Not that such enlightenment will cure neurotics; 
they can only regain their health when they climb up out of 
the mud of the commonplace. But they are only too fond of 
lingering in what they have earlier repressed. How are they ever 
to emerge if analysis does not make them aware of something 
different and better, when even theory holds them fast in it 
and offers them nothing more than the rational or "reasonable" 
injunction to abandon such childishness? That is precisely what 
they cannot do, and how should they be able to if they do not 
discover something to stand on? One form of life cannot simply 
be abandoned unless it is exchanged for another. As for a totally 
rational approach to life, that is, as experience shows, impossi- 
ble, especially when a person is by nature as unreasonable as 
a neurotic. 

I now realized why Freud's personal psychology was of such 
burning interest to me. I was eager to know the truth about his 
"reasonable solution," and I was prepared to sacrifice a good 
deal in order to obtain the answer. Now I felt that I was on the 

166 



Sigmund Freud 

track of it. Freud himself had a neurosis, no doubt diagnosable 
and one with highly troublesome symptoms, as I had discovered 
on our voyage to America. Of course he had taught me that 
everybody is somewhat neurotic, and that we must practice 
tolerance. But I was not at all inclined to content myself with 
that; rather, I wanted to know how one could escape having a 
neurosis. Apparently neither Freud nor his disciples could un- 
derstand what it meant for the theory and practice of psycho- 
analysis if not even the master could deal with his own neurosis. 
When, then, Freud announced his intention of identifying theory 
and method and making them into some kind of dogma, I could 
no longer collaborate with him; there remained no choice for 
me but to withdraw. 

When I was working on my book about the libido and ap- 
proaching the end of the chapter "The Sacrifice," I knew in 
advance that its publication would cost me my friendship with 
Freud. For I planned to set down in it my own conception of 
incest, the decisive transformation of the concept of libido, and 
various other ideas in which I differed from Freud. To me incest 
signified a personal complication only in the rarest cases. Usu- 
ally incest has a highly religious aspect, for which reason tie 
incest theme plays a decisive part in almost all cosmogonies and 
in numerous myths. But Freud clung to the literal interpretation 
of it and could not grasp the spiritual significance of incest as 
a symbol. I knew that he would never be able to accept any 
of my ideas on this subject. 

I spoke with my wife about this, and told her of my fears. She 
attempted to reassure me, for she thought that Freud would 
magnanimously raise no objections, although he might not ac- 
cept my views. I myself was convinced that he could not do so. 
For two months I was unable to touch my pen, so tormented 
was I by the conflict. Should I keep my thoughts to myself, or 
should I risk the loss of so important a friendship? At last I 
resolved to go ahead with the writing and it did indeed cost 
me Freud's friendship. 

After the break with Freud, all my friends and acquaintances 
dropped away. My book was declared to be rubbish; I was a 
mystic, and that settled the matter. Riklin and Maeder alone 

167 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

stuck by me. But I had foreseen my isolation and harbored no 
illusion about the reactions of my so-called friends. That was a 
point I had thoroughly considered beforehand. I had known 
that everything was at stake, and that I had to- take a stand for 
my convictions. I realized that the chapter, "The Sacrifice/' 
meant my own sacrifice. Having reached this insight, I was able 
to write again, even though I knew that my ideas would go un- 
comprehended. 

In retrospect I can say that I alone logically pursued the two 
problems which most interested Freud: the problem of "archaic 
vestiges/' and that of sexuality. It is a widespread error to imag- 
ine that I do not see the value of sexuality. On the contrary, it 
pkys a large part in my psychology as an essential though not 
the sole expression of psychic wholeness. But my main concern 
has been to investigate, over and above its personal signifi- 
cance and biological function, its spiritual aspect and its nu- 
minous meaning, and thus to explain what Freud was so 
fascinated by but was unable to grasp. My thoughts on this 
subject are contained in "The Psychology of the Transference" 10 
and the Mysterium Coniunctionis.^ Sexuality is of the greatest 
importance as the expression of the chthonic spirit. That spirit 
is the "other face of God,** the dark side of the God-image. The 
question of the chthonic spirit has occupied me ever since I be- 
gan to delve into the world of alchemy. Basically, this interest 
was awakened by that early conversation with Freud, when, 
mystified, I felt how deeply stirred he was by the phenomenon 
of sexuality. 

Freud's greatest achievement probably consisted in taking 
neurotic patients seriously and entering into their peculiar in- 
dividual psychology. He had the courage to let the case material 
speak for itself, and in this way was able to penetrate into the 
real psychology of his patients. He saw with the patient's eyes, 
so to speak, and so reached a deeper understanding of mental 
illness than had hitherto been possible. In this respect he was 
free of bias, courageous, and succeeded in overcoming a host 

10 In The Practice of Psychotherapy (CW 16). 

11 CW 14. 

168 



Sigmund Freud 

of prejudices. Like an Old Testament prophet, he undertook to 
overthrow false gods, to rip the veils away from a mass of dis- 
honesties and hypocrisies, mercilessly exposing the rottenness of 
the contemporary psyche. He did not falter in the face of the 
unpopularity such an enterprise entailed. The impetus which he 
gave to our civilization sprang from his discovery of an avenue 
to the unconscious. By evaluating dreams as the most important 
source of information concerning the unconscious processes, he 
gave back to mankind a tool that had seemed irretrievably lost. 
He demonstrated empirically the presence of an unconscious 
psyche which had hitherto existed only as a philosophical postu- 
late, in particular in the philosophies of C. G. Cams and Eduard 
von Hartmann. 

It may well be said that the contemporary cultural con- 
sciousness has not yet absorbed into its general philosophy the 
idea of the unconscious and all that it means, despite the fact 
that modern man has been confronted with this idea for more 
than half a century. The assimilation of the fundamental insight 
that psychic life has two poles still remains a task for the future. 



169 



VI 



Confrontation 
with the Unconscious 



A-TER the parting of the ways with Freud, a period of 
inner uncertainty began for me. It would be no exaggera- 
tion to call it a state of disorientation. I felt totally sus- 
pended in mid-air, for I had not yet found my own footing. 
Above all, I felt it necessary to develop a new attitude toward 
my patients. I resolved for the present not to bring any theoreti- 
cal premises to bear upon them, but to wait and see what they 
would tell of their own accord. My aim became to leave things 
to chance. The result was that the patients would spontaneously 
report their dreams and fantasies to me, and I would merely ask, 
"What occurs to you in connection with that?" or, "How do you 
mean that, where does that come from, what do you think about 
it?" The interpretations seemed to follow of their own accord 
from the patients' replies and associations. I avoided all theoreti- 
cal points of view and simply helped the patients to understand 
the dream-images by themselves, without application of rules 
and theories. 

170 



Confrontation with the Unconscious 

Soon I realized that it was right to take the dreams in this way 
as the basis of interpretation, for that is how dreams are in- 
tended. They are the facts from which we must proceed. 
Naturally, the aspects resulting from this method were so multi- 
tudinous that the need for a criterion grew more and more 
pressing the need, I might almost put it, for some initial orien- 
tation. 

About this time I experienced a moment of unusual clarity in 
which I looked back over the way I had traveled so far. I 
thought, "Now you possess a key to mythology and are free to 
unlock all the gates of the unconscious psyche." But then some- 
thing whispered within me, "Why open all gates?" And promptly 
the question arose of what, after all, I had accomplished. I had 
explained the myths of peoples of the past; I had written a book 
about the hero, the myth in which man has always lived. But in 
what myth does man live nowadays? In the Christian myth, the 
answer might be, "Do you live in it?" I asked myself. To be 
honest, the answer was no. For me, it is not what I live by." 
"Then do we no longer have any myth?" "No, evidently we no 
longer have any myth." "But then what is your myth the myth 
in which you do live?" At this point the dialogue with myself be- 
came uncomfortable, and I stopped thinking. I had reached a 
dead end. 

Then, around Christmas of 1912, 1 had a dream. In the dream 
I found myself in a magnificent Italian loggia with pillars, a 
marble floor, and a marble balustrade. I was sitting on a gold 
Renaissance chair; in front of me was a table of rare beauty. It 
was made of green stone, like emerald. There I sat, looking out 
into the distance, for the loggia was set high up on the tower of 
a castle. My children were sitting at the table too. 

Suddenly a white bird descended, a small sea gull or a dove. 
Gracefully, it came to rest on the table, and I signed to the 
children to be still so that they would not frighten away the 
pretty white bird. Immediately, the dove was transformed into 
a little girl, about eight years of age, with golden blond hair. She 
ran off with the children and played with them among the 
colonnades of the castle. 
I remained lost in thought, musing about what I had just 

i/z 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

experienced. The little girl returned and tenderly placed her 
arms around my neck. Then she suddenly vanished; the dove 
was back and spoke slowly in a human voice. "Only in the first 
hours of the night can I transform myself into a human being, 
while the male dove is busy with the twelve dead/* Then she 
flew off into the blue air, and I awoke. 

I was greatly stirred. What business would a male dove be 
having with twelve dead people? In connection with the emer- 
ald table the story of the Tabula Smaragdina occurred to me, 
the emerald table in the alchemical legend of Hermes Tris- 
megistos. He was said to have left behind him a table upon 
which the basic tenets of alchemical wisdom were engraved in 
Greek. 

I also thought of the twelve apostles, the twelve months of 
the year, the signs of the zodiac, etc. But I could find no solution 
to the enigma. Finally I had to give it up. All I knew with any 
certainty was that the dream indicated an unusual activation 
of the unconscious. But I knew no technique whereby I might 
get to the bottom of my inner processes, and so there remained 
nothing for me to do but wait, go on with my life, and pay 
close attention to my fantasies. 

One fantasy kept returning: there was something dead pres- 
ent, but it was also still alive. For example, corpses were placed 
in crematory ovens, but were then discovered to be still living. 
These fantasies came to a head and were simultaneously re- 
solved in a dream. 

I was in a region like the Alyscamps near Aries. There they 
have a lane of sarcophagi which go back to Merovingian times. 
In the dream I was coming from the city, and saw before me a 
similar lane with a long row of tombs. They were pedestals 
with stone slabs on which the dead lay. They reminded me of 
old church burial vaults, where knights in armor lie out- 
stretched. Thus the dead lay in my dream, in their antique 
clothes, with hands clasped, die difference being that they were 
not hewn out of stone, but in a curious fashion mummified. I 
stood still in front of the first grave and looked at the dead man, 
who was a person of the eighteen-thirties, I looked at his clothes 
with interest, whereupon he suddenly moved and came to life. 

172 



Confrontation with the Unconscious 

He unclasped his hands; but that was only because I was look- 
ing at him. I had an extremely unpleasant feeling, but walked 
on and came to another body. He belonged to the eighteenth 
century. There exactly the same thing happened: when I looked 
at him, he came to life and moved his hands. So I went down 
the whole row, until I came to the twelfth century that is, to 
a crusader in chain mail who lay there with clasped hands. His 
figure seemed carved out of wood. For a long time I looked at 
him and thought he was really dead. But suddenly I saw that a 
finger of his left hand was beginning to stir gently. 

Of course I had originally held to Freud's view that vestiges 
of old experiences exist in the unconscious, 1 But dreams like 
this, and my actual experiences of the unconscious, taught me 
that such contents are not dead, outmoded forms, but belong 
to our living being. My work had confirmed this assumption, 
and in the course of years there developed from it the theory of 
archetypes. 

The dreams, however, could not help me over my feeling of 
disorientation. On the contrary, I lived as if under constant 
inner pressure. At times this became so strong that I suspected 
there was some psychic disturbance in myself. Therefore I twice 
went over all the details of my entire life, with particular atten- 
tion to childhood memories; for I thought there might be some- 
thing in my past which I could not see and which might possibly 
be the cause of the disturbance. But this retrospection led to 
nothing but a fresh acknowledgment of my own ignorance. 
Thereupon I said to myself, "Since I know nothing at all, I shall 
simply do whatever occurs to me." Thus I consciously submitted 
myself to the impulses of the unconscious. 

The first thing that came to the surface was a childhood mem- 
ory from perhaps my tenth or eleventh year. At that time I had 
had a spell of playing passionately with building blocks. I dis- 
tinctly recalled how I had built little houses and castles, using 
bottles to form the sides of gates and vaults. Somewhat later I 
had used ordinary stones, with mud for mortar. These structures 
had fascinated me for a long time. To my astonishment, this 
memory was accompanied by a good deal of emotion. "Aha," I 

1 Freud speaks of "archaic vestiges." 

173 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

said to myself, "there is still life in these things. The small boy 
is still around, and possesses a creative life which I lack. But 
how can I make my way to it?" For as a grown man it seemed 
impossible to me that I should be able to bridge the distance 
from the present back to my eleventh year. Yet if I wanted to 
re-establish contact with that period, I had no choice but to 
return to it and take up once more that child's life with his 
childish games. This moment was a turning point in my fate, but 
I gave in only after endless resistances and with a sense of resig- 
nation. For it was a painfully humiliating experience to realize 
that there was nothing to be done except play childish games. 

Nevertheless, I began accumulating suitable stones, gather- 
ing them partly from the lake shore and partly from the water. 
And I started building: cottages, a castle, a whole village. The 
church was still missing, so I made a square building with a 
hexagonal drum on top of it, and a dome. A church also requires 
an altar, but I hesitated to build that. 

Preoccupied with the question of how I could approach this 
task, I was walking along the lake as usual one day, picking 
stones out of the gravel on the shore. Suddenly I caught sight of 
a red stone, a four-sided pyramid about an inch and a half high. 
It was a fragment of stone which had been polished into this 
shape by the action of the water a pure product of chance. I 
knew at once: this was the altar! I placed it in the middle under 
the dome, and as I did so, I recalled the underground phallus of 
my childhood dream. This connection gave me a feeling of satis- 
faction. 

I went on with my building game after the noon meal every 
day, whenever the weather permitted. As soon as I was through 
eating, I began playing, and continued to do so until the pa* 
tients arrived; and if I was finished with my work early enough 
in the evening, I went back to building. In the course of this 
activity my thoughts clarified, and I was able to grasp the 
fantasies whose presence in myself I dimly felt. 

Naturally, I thought about the significance of what I was do- 
ing, and asked myself, "Now, really, what are you about? You 
are building a small town, and doing it as if it were a rite!" I 
had no answer to my question, only the inner certainty that I 

174 



Confrontation with the Unconscious 

was on the way to discovering my own myth. For the building 
game was only a beginning. It released a stream of fantasies 
which I later carefully wrote down. 

This sort of thing has been consistent with me, and at any 
time in my later life when I came up against a blank wall, I 
painted a picture or hewed stone. Each such experience proved 
to be a rite d' entree for the ideas and works that followed hard 
upon it. Everything that I have written this year 2 and last year, 
"The Undiscovered Self," "Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth," 
"A Psychological View of Conscience," has grown out of the 
stone sculptures I did after my wife's death. 3 The close of her 
life, the end, and what it made me realize, wrenched me vio- 
lently out of myself. It cost me a great deal to regain my foot- 
ing, and contact with stone helped me. 

Toward the autumn of 1913 the pressure which I had felt was 
in me seemed to be moving outward, as though there were 
something in the air. The atmosphere actually seemed to me 
darker than it had been. It was as though the sense of oppres- 
sion no longer sprang exclusively from a psychic situation, but 
from concrete reality. This feeling grew more and more intense. 

In October, while I was alone on a journey, I was suddenly 
seized by an overpowering vision: I saw a monstrous flood cov- 
ering all the northern and low-lying lands between the North 
Sea and the Alps. When it came up to Switzerland I saw that 
the mountains grew higher and higher to protect our country. 
I realized that a frightful catastrophe was in progress. I saw the 
mighty yellow waves, the floating rubble of civilization, and the 
drowned bodies of uncounted thousands. Then the whole sea 
turned to blood. This vision lasted about one hour. I was per- 
plexed and nauseated, and ashamed of my weakness. 

Two weeks passed; then the vision recurred, under the same 
conditions, even more vividly than before, and the blood was 
more emphasized. An inner voice spoke. "Look at it well; it is 
wholly real and it will be so. You cannot doubt it." That winter 
someone asked me what I thought were the political prospects 

2 1957- 

8 November 27, 1955. 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

of the world in the near future. I replied that I had no thoughts 
on the matter, but that I saw rivers of blood. 

I asked myself whether these visions pointed to a revolu- 
tion, but could not really imagine anything of the sort. And so 
I drew the conclusion that they had to do with me myself, and 
decided that I was menaced by a psychosis. The idea of war did 
not occur to me at all. 

Soon afterward, in the spring and early summer of 1914, I 
had a thrice-repeated dream that in the middle of summer an 
Arctic cold wave descended and froze the land to ice. I saw, for 
example, the whole of Lorraine and its canals frozen and the 
entire region totally deserted by human beings. All living green 
things were killed by frost. This dream came in April and May, 
and for the last time in June, 1914. 

In the third dream frightful cold had again descended from 
out of the cosmos. This dream, however, had an unexpected 
end. There stood a leaf-bearing tree, but without fruit (my tree 
of life, I thought), whose leaves had been transformed by the 
effects of the frost into sweet grapes full of healing juices. I 
plucked the grapes and gave them to a large, waiting crowd. 

At the end of July 1914 I was invited by die British Medical 
Association to deliver a lecture, "On the Importance of the Un- 
conscious in Psychopathology," at a congress in Aberdeen. I 
was prepared for something to happen, for such visions and 
dreams are fateful. In my state of mind just then, with the fears 
that were pursuing me, it seemed fateful to me that I should 
have to talk on the importance of the unconscious at such a 
time! 

On August i the world war broke out. Now my task was 
clear; I had to try to understand what had happened and to 
what extent my own experience coincided with that of mankind 
in general. Therefore my first obligation was to probe the depths 
of my own psyche. I made a beginning by writing down the 
fantasies which had come to me during my building game. This 
work took precedence over everything else. 

An incessant stream of fantasies had been released, and I did 
my best not to lose my head but to find some way to understand 

176 



Confrontation with the Unconscious 

these strange things. I stood helpless before an alien world; 
everything in it seemed difficult and incomprehensible. I was 
living in a constant state of tension; often I felt as if gigantic 
blocks of stone were tumbling down upon me. One thunder- 
storm followed another. My enduring these storms was a ques- 
tion of brute strength. Others have been shattered by them 
Nietzsche, and Holderliri, and many others. But there was a 
demonic strength in me, and from the beginning there was no 
doubt in my mind that I must find the meaning of what I was 
experiencing in these fantasies. When I endured these assaults 
of the unconscious I had an unswerving conviction that I was 
obeying a higher will, and that feeling continued to uphold me 
until I had mastered the task. 

I was frequently so wrought up that I had to do certain yoga 
exercises in order to hold my emotions in check. But since it 
was my purpose to know what was going on within myself, 
I would do these exercises only until I had calmed myself 
enough to resume my work with the unconscious. As soon as I 
had the feeling that I was myself again, I abandoned this re- 
straint upon the emotions and allowed the images and inner 
voices to speak afresh. The Indian, on the other hand, does 
yoga exercises in order to obliterate completely the multitude 
of psychic contents and images. 

To the extent that I managed to translate the emotions into 
images that is to say, to find the images which were concealed 
in the emotions I was inwardly calmed and reassured. Had I 
left those images hidden in the emotions, I might have been 
torn to pieces by them. There is a chance that I might have suc- 
ceeded in splitting them off; but in that case I would inexorably 
have fallen into a neurosis and so been ultimately destroyed 
by them anyhow. As a result of my experiment I learned how 
helpful it can be, from the therapeutic point of view, to find 
the particular images which lie behind emotions. 

I wrote down the fantasies as well as I could, and made an 
earnest effort to analyze the psychic conditions under which 
they had arisen. But I was able to do this only in clumsy lan- 
guage. First I formulated the things as I had observed them, 
usually in "high-flown language/' for that corresponds to the 

177 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

style of the archetypes. Archetypes speak the language of high 
rhetoric, even of bombast. It is a style I find embarrassing; it 
grates on my nerves, as when someone draws his nails down a 
plaster wall, or scrapes his knife against a plate. But since I did 
not know what was going on, I had no choice but to write 
everything down in the style selected by the unconscious itself. 
Sometimes it was as if I were hearing it with my ears, sometimes 
feeling it with my mouth, as if my tongue were formulating 
words; now and then I heard myself whispering aloud. Below 
the threshold of consciousness everything was seething with 
life. 

From the beginning I had conceived my voluntary confronta- 
tion with the unconscious as a scientific experiment which I 
myself was conducting and in whose outcome I was vitally in- 
terested. Today I might equally well say that it was an experi- 
ment which was being conducted on me. One of the greatest 
difficulties for me lay in dealing with my negative feelings. I 
was voluntarily submitting myself to emotions of which I could 
not really approve, and I was writing down fantasies which 
often struck me as nonsense, and toward which I had strong 
resistances. For as long as we do not understand their meaning, 
such fantasies are a diabolical mixture of the sublime and the 
ridiculous. It cost me a great deal to undergo them, but I had 
been challenged by fate. Only by extreme effort was I finally 
able to escape from the labyrinth. 

In order to grasp the fantasies which were stirring in me "un- 
derground," I knew that I had to let myself plummet down into 
them, as it were. I felt not only violent resistance to this, but a 
distinct fear. For I was afraid of losing command of myself and 
becoming a prey to the fantasies and as a psychiatrist I real- 
ized only too well what that meant. After prolonged hesitation, 
however, I saw that there was no other way out. I had to take 
the chance, had to try to gain power over them; for I realized 
that if I did not do so, I ran the risk of their gaining power over 
me. A cogent motive for my making the attempt was the convic- 
tion that I could not expect of my patients something I did not 
dare to do myself. The excuse that a helper stood at their side 
would not pass muster, for I was well aware that the so-called 
helper that is, myself could not help them unless he knew 

178 



Confrontation with the Unconscious 

their fantasy material from his own direct experience, and that 
at present all he possessed were a few theoretical prejudices of 
dubious value. This idea that I was committing myself to a 
dangerous enterprise not for myself alone, but also for the sake 
of my patients helped me over several critical phases. 

It was during Advent of the year 1913 December 12, to be 
exact that I resolved upon the decisive step. I was sitting at 
my desk once more, thinking over my fears. Then I let myself 
drop. Suddenly it was as though the ground literally gave way 
beneath my feet, and I plunged down into dark depths. I could 
not fend off a feeling of panic. But then, abruptly, at not too 
great a depth, I landed on my feet in a soft, sticky mass. I felt 
great relief, although I was apparently in complete darkness. 
After a while my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, which 
was rather like a deep twilight. Before me was the entrance to 
a dark cave, in which stood a dwarf with a leathery skin, as if he 
were mummified. I squeezed past him through the narrow en- 
trance and waded knee deep through icy water to the other end 
of the cave where, on a projecting rock, I saw a glowing red 
crystal. I grasped the stone, lifted it, and discovered a hollow 
underneath. At first I could make out nothing, but then I saw 
that there was running water. In it a corpse floated by, a youth 
with blond hair and a wound in the head. He was followed by 
a gigantic black scarab and then by a red, newborn sun, rising 
up out of the depths of the water. Dazzled by the light, I wanted 
to replace the stone upon the opening, but then a fluid welled 
out. It was blood. A thick jet of it leaped up, and I felt nause- 
ated. It seemed to me that the blood continued to spurt for an 
unendurably long time. At last it ceased, and the vision came to 
an end. 

I was stunned by this vision. I realized, of course, that it was a 
hero and solar myth, a drama of death and renewal, the rebirth 
symbolized by the Egyptian scarab. At the end, the dawn of the 
new day should have followed, but instead came that intolerable 
outpouring of blood an altogether abnormal phenomenon, so 
it seemed to me. But then I recalled the vision of blood that I 
had had in the autumn of that same year, and I abandoned all 
further attempt to understand. 

Six days later (December 18, 1913), I had the following 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

dream. I was with an unknown, brown-skinned man, a savage, 
in a lonely, rocky mountain landscape. It was before dawn; the 
eastern sky was already bright, and the stars fading. Then I 
heard Siegfried's horn sounding over the mountains and I knew 
that we had to kill him. We were armed with rifles and lay in 
wait for him on a narrow path over the rocks. 

Then Siegfried appeared high up on the crest of the mountain, 
in the first ray of the rising sun. On a chariot made of the bones 
of the dead he drove at furious speed down the precipitous 
slope. When he turned a corner, we shot at him, and he plunged 
down, struck dead. 

Filled with disgust and remorse for having destroyed some- 
thing so great and beautiful, I turned to flee, impelled by the 
fear that the murder might be discovered. But a tremendous 
downfall of rain began, and I knew that it would wipe out all 
traces of the dead. I had escaped the danger of discovery; life 
could go on, but an unbearable feeling of guilt remained. 

When I awoke from the dream, I turned it over in my mind, 
but was unable to understand it. I tried therefore to fall asleep 
again, but a voice within me said, "You must understand the 
dream, and must do so at once!" The inner urgency mounted 
until the terrible moment came when the voice said, "If you do 
not understand the dream, you must shoot yourself!" In the 
drawer of my night table lay a loaded revolver, and I became 
frightened. Then I began pondering once again, and suddenly 
the meaning of the dream dawned on me. "Why, that is the 
problem that is being played out in the world/' Siegfried, I 
thought, represents what the Germans want to achieve, heroi- 
cally to impose their will, have their own way. "Where there is a 
will there is a way!" I had wanted to do the same. But now that 
was no longer possible. The dream showed that the attitude 
embodied by Siegfried, the hero, no longer suited me. Therefore 
it had to be killed. 

After the deed I felt an overpowering compassion, as though I 
myself had been shot: a sign of my secret identity with Sieg- 
fried, as well as of the grief a man feels when he is forced to 
sacrifice his ideal and his conscious attitudes. This identity and 

180 



Confrontation with the Unconscious 

my heroic idealism had to be abandoned, for there are higher 
things than the ego's will, and to these one must bow. 

These thoughts sufficed for the present, and I fell asleep again. 

The small, brown-skinned savage who accompanied me and 
had actually taken the initiative in the killing was an embodi- 
ment of the primitive shadow. The rain showed that the tension 
between consciousness and the unconscious was being resolved. 
Although at the time I was not able to understand the meaning 
of the dream beyond these few hints, new forces were released 
in me which helped me to carry the experiment with 'the un- 
conscious to a conclusion. 

In order to seize hold of the fantasies, I frequently imagined a 
steep descent. I even made several attempts to get to the very bot- 
tom. The first time I reached, as it were, a depth of about a 
thousand feet; the next time I found myself at the edge of a 
cosmic abyss. It was like a voyage to the moon, or a descent into 
empty space. First came the image of a crater, and I had the 
feeling that I was in the land of the dead. The atmosphere was 
that of the other world. Near the steep slope of a rock I caught 
sight of two figures, an old man with a white beard and a beau- 
tiful young girl. I summoned up my courage and approached 
them as though they were real people, and listened attentively 
to what they told me. The old man explained that he was Elijah, 
and that gave me a shock. But the girl staggered me even more, 
for she called herself Salome! She was blind. What a strange 
couple: Salome and Elijah. But Elijah assured me that he and 
Salome had belonged together from all eternity, which com- 
pletely astounded me. . . . They had a black serpent living 
with them which displayed an unmistakable fondness for me. I 
stuck close to Elijah because he seeme 1 to be the most reason- 
able of the three, and to have a clear intelligence. Of Salome I 
was distinctly suspicious. Elijah and I had a long conversation 
which, however, I did not understand. 

Naturally I tried to find a plausible explanation for the ap- 
pearance of Biblical figures in my fantasy by reminding myself 
that my father had been a clergyman. But that really explained 

181 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

nothing at all. For what did the old man signify? What did 
Salome signify? Why were they together? Only many years 
later, when I knew a great deal more than I knew then, did the 
connection between the old man and the young girl appear 
perfectly natural to me. 

In such dream wanderings one frequently encounters an old 
man who is accompanied by a young girl, and examples of such 
couples are to be found in many mythic tales. Thus, according 
to Gnostic tradition, Simon Magus went about with a young girl 
whom he had picked up in a brothel. Her name was Helen, and 
she was regarded as the reincarnation of the Trojan Helen. 
Klingsor and Kundry, Lao-tzu and the dancing girl, likewise 
belong to this category. 

I have mentioned that there was a third figure in my fantasy 
besides Elijah and Salome: the large black snake. In myths the 
snake is a frequent counterpart of the hero. There are numerous 
accounts of their affinity. For example, the hero has eyes like a 
snake, or after his death he is changed into a snake and revered 
as such, or the snake is his mother, etc. In my fantasy, therefore, 
the presence of the snake was an indication of a hero-myth. 

Salome is an anima figure. She is blind because she does not 
see the meaning of tilings. Elijah is the figure of the wise old 
prophet and represents the factor of intelligence and knowl- 
edge; Salome, the erotic element. One might say that the two 
figures are personifications of Logos and Eros. But such a defini- 
tion would be excessively intellectual. It is more meaningful to 
let the figures be what they were for me at the time namely, 
events and experiences. 

Soon after this fantasy another figure rose out of the uncon- 
scious. He developed out of the Elijah figure. I called him Phi- 
lemon. Philemon was a pagan and brought with him an Egypto- 
Hellenistic atmosphere with a Gnostic coloration. His figure first 
appeared to me in the following dream. 

There was a blue sky, like the sea, covered not by clouds but 
by flat brown clods of earth. It looked as if the clods were break- 
ing apart and the blue water of the sea were becoming visible 
between them. But the water was the blue sky. Suddenly there 
appeared from the right a winged being sailing across the sky. 

182 



Confrontation with the Unconscious 

I saw that it was an old man with the horns of a bull. He held 
a bunch of four keys, one of which he clutched as 'if he were 
about to open a lock. He had the wings of the kingfisher with its 
characteristic colors. 

Since I did not understand this dream-image, I painted it in 
order to impress it upon my memory. During the days when I 
was occupied with the painting, I found in my garden, by the 
lake shore, a dead kingfisher! I was thunderstruck, for king- 
fishers are quite rare in the vicinity of Zurich and I have never 
since found a dead one. The body was recently dead at the 
most, two or three days and showed no external injuries. 

Philemon and other figures of my fantasies brought home to 
me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which 
I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their 
own life. Philemon represented a force which was not myself. 
In my fantasies I held conversations with him, and he said 
things which I had not consciously thought. For I observed 
clearly that it was he who spoke, not I. He said I treated 
thoughts as if I generated them myself, but in his view thoughts 
were like animals in the forest, or people in a room, or birds in 
the air, and added, "If you should see people in a room, you 
would not think that you had made those people, or that you 
were responsible for them." It was he who taught me psychic 
objectivity, the reality of the psyche. Through him the distinc- 
tion was clarified between myself and the object of my thought. 
He confronted me in an objective manner, and I understood 
that there is something in me which can say things that I do not 
know and do not intend, things which may even be directed 
against me. 

Psychologically, Philemon represented superior insight. He 
was a mysterious figure to me, At times he seemed to me quite 
real, as if he were a living personality. I went walking up and 
down the garden with him, and to me he was what the Indians 
call a guru. 

Whenever the outlines of a new personification appeared, I 
felt it almost as a personal defeat. It meant: "Here is something 
else you didn't know until now!" Fear crept over me that the 
succession of such figures might be endless, that I might lose 

183 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

myself in bottomless abysses of ignorance. My ego felt devalued 
although -the successes I had been having in worldly affairs 
might have reassured me. In my darknesses (horridas nostrae 
mentis purga tenebras "cleanse the horrible darknesses of our 
mind" the Aurora Consurgens 4 says) I could have wished for 
nothing better than a real, live guru, someone possessing supe- 
rior knowledge and ability, who would have disentangled for 
me the involuntary creations of my imagination. This task was 
undertaken by the figure of Philemon, whom in this respect I 
had willy-nilly to recognize as my psychagogue. And the fact 
was that he conveyed to me many an illuminating idea. 

More than fifteen years later a highly cultivated elderly In- 
dian visited me, a friend of Gandhi's, and we talked about In- 
dian education in particular, about the relationship between 
guru and chela. I hesitantly asked him whether he could tell me 
anything about the person and character of his own guru, 
whereupon he replied in a matter-of-fact tone, "Oh yes, he was 
Shankaracharya." 

"You don't mean the commentator on the Vedas who died 
centuries ago?" I asked. 

"Yes, I mean him," he said, to my amazement. 

"Then you are referring to a spirit?" I asked. 

"Of course it was his spirit," he agreed. 

At that moment I thought of Philemon. 

"There are ghostly gurus too," he added. "Most people have 
living gurus. But there are always some who have a spirit for 
teacher." 

This information was both illuminating and reassuring to me. 
Evidently, then, I had not plummeted right out of the human 
world, but had only experienced the sort of thing that could 
happen to others who made similar efforts. 

Later, Philemon became relativized by the emergence of yet 
another figure, whom I called Ka. In ancient Egypt the "king's 
ka" was his earthly form, the embodied soul. In my fantasy the 
ka-soul came from below, out of the earth as if out of a deep 
shaft. I did a painting of him, showing him in his earth-bound 
form, as a herm with base of stone and upper part of bronze. 

* An alchemical treatise ascribed to Thomas Aquinas. 

184 



Confrontation with the Unconscious 

High up in the painting appears a kingfisher s wing, and be- 
tween it and the head of Ka floats a round, glowing nebula of 
stars. Ka's expression has something demonic about it one 
might also say, Mephistophelian. In one hand he holds some- 
thing like a colored pagoda, or a reliquary, and in the other a 
stylus with which he is working on the reliquary. He is saying, 
"I am he who buries the gods in gold and gems." 

Philemon had a lame foot, but was a winged spirit, whereas 
Ka represented a kind of earth demon or metal demon. Phi- 
lemon was the spiritual aspect, or "meaning." Ka, on the other 
hand, was a spirit of nature like the Anthroparion of Greek 
alchemy with which at the time I was still unfamiliar. 8 Ka was 
he who made everything real, but who also obscured the hal- 
cyon spirit, Meaning, or replaced it by beauty, the "eternal re- 
flection." 

In time I was able to integrate both figures through the study 
of alchemy. 

When I was writing down these fantasies, I once asked myself, 
'What am I really doing? Certainly this has nothing to do with 
science. But then what is it?" Whereupon a voice within me 
said, "It is art." I was astonished. It had never entered my head 
that what I was writing had any connection with art. Then I 
thought, "Perhaps my unconscious is forming a personality that 
is not me, but which is insisting on coming through to expres- 
sion." I knew for a certainty that the voice had come from a 
woman. I recognized it as the voice of a patient, a talented psy- 
chopath who had a strong transference to me. She had become a 
living figure within my mind. 

Obviously what I was doing wasn't science. What then could 
it be but art? It was as though these were the only alternatives 
in the world. That is the way a woman's mind works. 

I said very emphatically to this voice that my fantasies had 

5 The Anthroparion is a tiny man, a kind of homunculus. He is f ound, for example, 
in the visions of Zosimos of Panopolis, an important alchemist of the third century. 
To the group which includes the Anthroparion belong the gnomes, the Dactyls of 
classical antiquity, and the homunculi of the alchemists. As the spirit of quick- 
silver, the alchemical Mercurius was also an Anthroparion. A. J. 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

nothing to do with art, and I felt a great inner resistance. No 
voice came through, however, and I kept on writing. Then came 
the next assault, and again the same assertion: "That is art." This 
time I caught her and said, "No, it is not art! On the contrary, 
it is nature/* and prepared myself for an argument. When noth- 
ing of the sort occurred, I reflected that the "woman within 
me" did not have the speech centers I had. And so I suggested 
that she use mine. She did so and came through with a long 
statement. 

I was greatly intrigued by the fact that a woman should 
interfere with me from within. My conclusion was that she must 
be the "soul/ 7 in the primitive sense, and I began to speculate 
on the reasons why the name "anima" was given to the soul. 
Why was it thought of as feminine? Later I came to see that this 
inner feminine figure plays a typical, or archetypal, role in the 
unconscious of a man, and I called her the "anima." The cor- 
responding figure in the unconscious of woman I called the 
"animus." 

At first it was the negative aspect of the anima that most im- 
pressed me. I felt a little awed by heri It was like the feeling of 
an invisible presence in the room. Then a new idea came to me: 
in putting down all this material for analysis I was in effect 
writing letters to the anima, that is, to a part of myself with a 
different viewpoint from my conscious one. I got remarks of an 
unusual and unexpected character. I was like a patient in analy- 
sis with a ghost and a woman! Every evening I wrote very 
conscientiously, for I thought if I did not write, there would be 
no way for the anima to get at my fantasies. Also, by writing 
them out I gave her no chance to twist them into intrigues. 
There is a tremendous difference between intending to tell some- 
thing and actually telling it. In order to be as honest as possible 
with myself, I wrote everything down very carefully, following 
the old Greek maxim: "Give away all that thou hast, then shalt 
thou receive." 

Often, as I was writing, I would have peculiar reactions that 
threw me off. Slowly I learned to distinguish between myself 
and the interruption. When something emotionally vulgar or 
banal came up, I would say to myself, "It is perfectly true that 

186 



Confrontation with the Unconscious 

I have thought and felt this way at some time or other, but I 
don't have to think and feel that way now. I need not accept 
this banality of mine in perpetuity; that is an unnecessary 
humiliation/' 

The essential thing is to differentiate oneself from these un- 
conscious contents by personifying them, and at the same time 
to bring them into relationship with consciousness. That is the 
technique for stripping them of their power. It is not too difficult 
to personify them, as they always possess a certain degree of 
autonomy, a separate identity of their own. Their autonomy is 
a most uncomfortable thing to reconcile oneself to, and yet the 
very fact that the unconscious presents itself in that way gives 
us the best means of handling it. 

What the anima said seemed to me full of a deep cunning. 
If I had taken these fantasies of the unconscious as art, they 
would have carried no more conviction than visual perceptions, 
as if I were watching a movie. I would have felt no moral 
obligation toward them. The anima might then have easily 
seduced me into believing that I was a misunderstood artist, and 
that my so-called artistic nature gave me the right to neglect 
reality. If I had followed her voice, she would in all probability 
have said to me one day, "Do you imagine the nonsense you're 
engaged in is really art? Not a bit." Thus the insinuations of the 
anima, the mouthpiece of the unconscious, can utterly destroy a 
man. In the final analysis the decisive factor is always conscious- 
ness, which can understand the manifestations of the uncon- 
scious and take up a position toward them. 

But the anima has a positive aspect as well. It is she who 
communicates the images of the unconscious to the conscious 
mind, and that is what I chiefly valued her for. For decades I 
always turned to the anima when I felt that my emotional be- 
havior was disturbed, and that something had been constellated 
in the unconscious. I would then ask the anima: "Now what are 
you up to? What do you see? I should like to know." After some 
resistance she regularly produced an image. As soon as the 
image was there, the unrest or the sense of oppression vanished. 
The whole energy of these emotions was transformed into in- 
terest in and curiosity about the image. I would speak with the 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

anima about the images she communicated to me, for I had to 
try to understand them as best I could, just like a dream. 

Today I no longer need these conversations with the anima, 
for I no longer have such emotions. But if I did have them, I 
would deal with them in the same way. Today I am directly con- 
scious of the anima's ideas because I have learned to accept the 
contents of the unconscious and to understand them. I know 
how I must behave toward the inner images. I can read then- 
meaning directly from my dreams, and therefore no longer need 
a mediator to communicate them. 

I wrote these fantasies down first in the Black Book; later, I 
transferred them to the Red Book, which I also embellished with 
drawings. 6 It contains most of my mandala drawings. In the 
Red Book I tried an esthetic elaboration of my fantasies, but 
never finished it, I became aware that I had not yet found the 
right language, that I still had to translate it into something 
else. Therefore I gave up this estheticizing tendency in good 
time, in favor of a rigorous process of understanding. I saw that 
so much fantasy needed firm ground underfoot, and that I must 
first return wholly to reality. For me, reality meant scientific 
comprehension. I had to draw concrete conclusions from the in- 
sights the unconscious had given me and that task was to 
become a Me work. 

It is of course ironical that I, a psychiatrist, should at almost 
eveiy step of my experiment have run into the same psychic 
material which is the stuff of psychosis and is found in the in- 
sane. This is the fund of unconscious images which fatally con- 
fuse the mental patient. But it is also the matrix of a mythopoeic 
imagination which has vanished from our rational age. Though 
such imagination is present everywhere, it is both tabooed and 
dreaded, so that it even appears to be a risky experiment or a 
questionable adventure to entrust oneself to die uncertain path 
that leads into the depths of the unconscious. It is considered 
the path of error, of equivocation and misunderstanding. I am 
reminded of Goethe's words: "Now let me dare to open wide the 

6 The Black Book consists of six black-bound, smallish leather notebooks. The Red 
Book, a folio volume bound in red leather, contains the same fantasies couched 
in elaborately literary form and language, and set down in calligraphic Gothic 
script, in the manner of medieval manuscripts. A. J. 

188 



Confrontation with the Unconscious 

gate/Past which men's steps have ever flinching trod." 7 The 
second part of Faust, too, was more than a literary exercise. It is 
a link in the Aurea Catena 8 which has existed from the begin- 
nings of philosophical alchemy and Gnosticism down to Nietz- 
sche's Zarathustra. Unpopular, ambiguous, and dangerous, it is 
a voyage of discovery to the other pole of the world. 

Particularly at this time, when I was working on the fantasies, I 
needed a point of support in "this world," and I may say that my 
family and my professional work were that to me. It was most 
essential for me to have a normal life in the real world as a 
counterpoise to that strange inner world. My family and my 
profession remained the base to which I could always return, 
assuring me that I was an actually existing, ordinary person. 
The unconscious contents could have driven me out of my wits. 
But my family, and the knowledge: I have a medical diploma 
from a Swiss university, I must help my patients, I have a wife 
and five children, I live at 228 Seestrasse in Kiisnacht these 
were actualities which made demands upon me and proved to 
me again and again that I really existed, that I was not a blank 
page whirling about in the winds of the spirit, like Nietzsche. 
Nietzsche had lost the ground under his feet because he pos- 
sessed nothing more than the inner world of his thoughts 
which incidentally possessed him more than he it. He was up- 
rooted and hovered above the earth, and therefore he suc- 
cumbed to exaggeration and irreality. For me, such irreality was 
the quintessence of horror, for I aimed, after all, at this world 
and this Me. No matter how deeply absorbed or how blown 
about I was, I always knew that everything I was experiencing 
was ultimately directed at this real life of mine. I meant to meet 
its obligations and fulfill its meanings. My watchword was: Hie 
Rhodus, hie salta! 

Thus rny family and my profession always remained a joyful 
reality and a guarantee that I also had a normal existence. 

Very gradually the outlines of an inner change began making 
their appearance within me. In 1916 I felt an urge to give shape 

7 Faust, Part One. 

8 The Golden (or Homeric) Chain in alchemy is the series of great wise men, be- 
ginning with Hermes Trismegistos, which links earth with heaven. A. J. 

189 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

to something. I was compelled from within, as it were, to formu- 
late and express what might have been said by Philemon. This 
was how the Septem Sermones ad Mortuos* with its peculiar 
language came into being. 

It began with a restlessness, but I did not know what it meant 
or what "the/* wanted of me. There was an ominous atmosphere 
all around me. I had the strange feeling that the air was filled 
with ghostly entities. Then it was as if my house began to be 
haunted. My eldest daughter saw a white figure passing through 
the room. My second daughter, independently of her elder 
sister, related that twice in the night her blanket had been 
snatched away; and that same night my nine-year-old son had 
an anxiety dream. In the morning he asked his mother for cray- 
ons, and he, who ordinarily never drew, now made a picture of 
his dream. He called it "The Picture of the Fisherman" Through 
the middle of the picture ran a river, and a fisherman with a 
rod was standing on the shore. He had caught a fish. On the 
fisherman's head was a chimney from which flames were leaping 
and smoke rising. From the other side of the river the devil came 
flying through tie air. He was cursing because his fish had been 
stolen. But above the fisherman hovered an angel who said, 
*You cannot do anything to him; he only catches the bad fish!'* 
My son drew this picture on a Saturday. 

Around five o'clock in the afternoon on Sunday the front door- 
bell began ringing frantically. It was a bright summer day; the 
two maids were in the kitchen, from which the open square out- 
side the front door could be seen. Everyone immediately looked 
to see who was there, but there was no one in sight. I was sitting 
near the doorbell, and not only heard it but saw it moving. We 
all simply stared at one another. The atmosphere was thick, be- 
lieve me! Then I knew that something had to happen. The 
whole house was filled as if there were a crowd present, 
crammed full of spirits. They were packed deep right up to the 
door, and the air was so thick it was scarcely possible to breathe. 
As for myself, I was all a-quiver with the question: "For God's 

Privately printed <n.d.) and pseudonymously subtitled "The Seven Sermons 
to the Dead written by Basilides in Alexandria, the City where the East toucheth 
the West" (see Appendix V). 

190 



Confrontation with the Unconscious 

sake, what in the world is this?" Then they cried out in chorus, 
"We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not what 
we sought/' That is the beginning of the Septem Sermones. 

Then it began to flow out of me, and in the course of three 
evenings the thing was written. As soon as I took up the pen, 
the whole ghostly assemblage evaporated. The room quieted 
and the atmosphere cleared. The haunting was over. 

The experience has to be taken for what it was, or as it seems 
to have been. No doubt it was connected with the state of emo- 
tion I was in at the time, and which was favorable to parapsycho- 
logical phenomena. It was an unconscious constellation whose 
peculiar atmosphere I recognized as the numen of an archetype. 
"It walks abroad, it's in the air!" 10 The intellect, of course, would 
like to arrogate to itself some scientific, physical knowledge of 
the affair, or, preferably, to write the whole thing off as a viola- 
tion of the rules. But what a dreary world it would be if the 
rules were not violated sometimes! 

Shortly before this experience I had written down a fantasy of 
my soul having flown away from me. This was a significant 
event: the soul, the anima, establishes the relationship to the un- 
conscious. In a certain sense this is also a relationship to the 
collectivity of the dead; for the unconscious corresponds to the 
mythic land of die dead, the land of the ancestors. If, therefore, 
one has a fantasy of the soul vanishing, this means that it has 
withdrawn into the unconscious or into the land of the dead. 
There it produces a mysterious animation and gives visible form 
to the ancestral traces, the collective contents. Like a medium, 
it gives the dead a chance to manifest themselves. Therefore, 
soon after the disappearance of my soul the "dead" appeared to 
me, and the result was the Septem Sermones. This is an example 
of what is called "loss of soul" a phenomenon encountered 
quite frequently among primitives. 

From that time on, the dead have become ever more distinct 
for me as the voices of the Unanswered, Unresolved, and Un- 
redeemed; for since the questions and demands which my des- 
tiny required me to answer did not come to me from outside, 

10 Faust, Part Two. 

19* 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

they must have come from the inner world. These conversations 
with the dead formed a kind of prelude to what I had to com- 
municate to the world about the unconscious: a kind of pattern 
of order and interpretation of its general contents. 

When I look back upon it all today and consider what hap- 
pened to me during the period of my work on the fantasies, it 
seems as though a message had come to me with overwhelming 
force. There were things in the images which concerned not 
only myself but many others also. It was then that I ceased to 
belong to myself alone, ceased to have the right to do so. From 
then on, my life belonged to the generality. The knowledge I 
was concerned with, or was seeking, still could not be found in 
the science of those days. I myself had to undergo the original 
experience, and, moreover, try to plant the results of my ex- 
perience in the soil of reality; otherwise they would have re- 
mained subjective assumptions without validity. It was then 
that I dedicated myself to service of the psyche. I loved it and 
hated it, but it was my greatest wealth. My delivering myself 
over to it, as it were, was the only way by which I could endure 
my existence and live it as fully as possible. 

Today I can say that I have never lost touch with my initial 
experiences. All my works, all my creative activity, has come 
from those initial fantasies and dreams which began in 1912, 
almost fifty years ago. Everything that I accomplished in later 
life was already contained in them, although at first only in the 
form of emotions and images. 

My science was the only way I had of extricating myself from 
that chaos. Otherwise the material would have trapped me in its 
thicket, strangled me like jungle creepers. I took great care to 
try to understand every single image, every item of my psychic 
inventory, and to classify them scientifically so far as this was 
possible and, above all, to realize them in actual life. That is 
what we usually neglect to do. We allow the images to rise up, 
and maybe we wonder about them, but that is all. We do not 
take the trouble to understand them, let alone draw ethical con- 
clusions from them. This stopping-short conjures up the nega- 
tive effects of the unconscious. 

It is equally a grave mistake to think that it is enough to gain 



Confrontation with the Unconscious 

some understanding of the images and that knowledge can here 
make a halt. Insight into them must be converted into an ethical 
obligation. Not to do so is to fall prey to the power principle, 
and this produces dangerous effects which are destructive not 
only to others but even to the knower. The images of the uncon- 
scious place a great responsibility upon a man. Failure to under- 
stand diem, or a shirking of ethical responsibility, deprives him 
of his wholeness and imposes a painful fragmentariness on his 
life. 

In the midst of this period when I was so preoccupied with 
the images of the unconscious, I came to the decision to with- 
draw from the university, where I had lectured for eight years 
as Privatdozent (since 1905). My experience and experiments 
with the unconscious had brought my intellectual activity to a 
standstill. After the completion of The Psychology of the Uncon- 
scious u I found myself utterly incapable of reading a scientific 
book. This went on for three years. I felt I could no longer keep 
up with the world of the intellect, nor would I have been able 
to talk about what really preoccupied me. The material brought 
to light from the unconscious had, almost literally, struck me 
dumb. 12 I could neither understand it nor give it form. At the 
university I was in an exposed position, and felt that in order 
to go on giving courses there I would first have to find an 
entirely new and different orientation. It would be unfair to 
continue teaching young students when my own intellectual 
situation was nothing but a mass of doubts. 

I therefore felt that I was confronted with the choice of either 
continuing my academic career, whose road lay smooth before 
me, or following the laws of my inner personality, of a higher 
reason, and forging ahead with this curious task of mine, this 
experiment in confrontation with the unconscious. But until it 
was completed I could not appear before the public. 

11 See above, Chap. V, n. 5, p. 155, 

12 During this "fallow period" Jung wrote very little: a handful of papers in Eng- 
lish, and the very important first versions of the essays published in English trans- 
lation as Two Essays on Analytical Psychology (CW 7). The period came to an 
end with the publication of Psychologische Typen in 1921 (English trans.: 
Psychological Types, CW 6.)-A.J. 

193 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

Consciously, deliberately, then, I abandoned my academic 
career. For I felt that something great was happening to me, 
and I put my trust in the thing which I felt to be more im- 
portant sub specie aeternitatis. I knew that it would fill my life, 
and for the sake of that goal I was ready to take any kind of 
risk. 

What, after all, did it matter whether or not I became a pro- 
fessor? Of course it bothered me to have to give this up; in 
many respects I regretted that I could not confine myself to 
generally understandable material. I even had moments when 
I stormed against destiny. But emotions of this kind are tran- 
sitory, and do not count. The other thing, on the contrary, is 
important, and if we pay heed to what the inner personality 
desires and says, the sting vanishes. That is something I have 
experienced again and again, not only when I gave up my 
academic career. Indeed, I had my first experiences of this sort 
as a child. In my youth I was hot-tempered; but whenever the 
emotion had reached its climax, suddenly it swung around and 
there followed a cosmic stillness. At such times I was remote from 
everything, and what had only a moment before excited me 
seemed to belong to a distant past. 

The consequence of my resolve, and my involvement with 
things which neither I nor anyone else could understand, was 
an extreme loneliness. I was going about laden with thoughts 
of which I could speak to no one: they would only have been 
misunderstood* I felt the gulf between the external world and 
the interior world of images in its most painful form. I could 
not yet see that interaction of both worlds which I now under- 
stand. I saw only an irreconcilable contradiction between 
'inner" and "outer." 

However, it was clear to me from the start that I could find 
contact with the outer world and with people only if I succeeded 
in showing and this would demand the most intensive effort 
that the contents of psychic experience are real, and real not 
only as my own personal experiences, but as collective experi- 
ences which others also have. Later I tried to demonstrate this 
in my scientific work, and I did all in my power to convey to 



Confrontation with the Unconscious 

my intimates a new way of seeing things. I knew that if I did 
not succeed, I would be condemned to absolute isolation. 

It was only toward the end of the First World War that I 
gradually began to emerge from the darkness. Two events con- 
tributed to this. The first was that I broke with the woman 
who was determined to convince me that my fantasies had 
artistic value; the second and principal event was that I began 
to understand mandala drawings. This happened in 1918-19. I 
had painted the first mandala 1S in 1916 after writing the Septem 
Sermones; naturally I had not, then, understood it. 

In 1918-19 I was in CMteau d'Oex as Commandant de la 
Region Anglaise des Internes de Guerre. While I was there I 
sketched every morning in a notebook a small circular drawing, 
a mandala, which seemed to correspond to my inner situation 
at the time. With the help of these drawings I could observe 
my psychic transformations from day to day. One day, for 
example, I received a letter from that esthetic lady in which she 
again stubbornly maintained that the fantasies arising from my 
unconscious had artistic value and should be considered art. 
The letter got on my nerves. It was far from stupid, and therefore 
dangerously persuasive. The modern artist, after all, seeks to 
create art out of the unconscious. The utilitarianism and self- 
importance concealed behind this thesis touched a doubt in 
myself, namely, my uncertainty as to whether the fantasies I 
was producing were really spontaneous and natural, and not 
ultimately my own arbitrary inventions. I was by no means free 
from the bigotry and hubris of consciousness which wants 
to believe that any halfway decent inspiration is due to one's 
own merit, whereas inferior reactions come merely by chance, 
or even derive from alien sources. Out of this irritation and dis- 
harmony within myself there proceeded, the following day, a 
changed mandala: part of the periphery had burst open and the 
symmetry was destroyed. 

Only gradually did I discover what the mandala really is: 

18 Reproduced as the frontispiece to The Archetypes and the Collective Un- 
conscious ( CW 9, i ) .A. J. 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

"Formation, Transformation, Eternal Mind's eternal recrea- 
tion.'* u And that is the self, the wholeness of the personality, 
which if all goes well is harmonious, but which cannot tolerate 
self-deceptions. 

My mandalas were cryptograms concerning the state of the 
self which were presented to me anew each day. In them I saw 
the self that is, my whole being actively at work. To be sure, 
at first I could only dimly understand them; but they seemed to 
me highly significant, and I guarded them like precious pearls. 
I had the distinct feeling that they were something central, 
and in time I acquired through them a living conception of the 
self. The self, I thought, was like the monad which I am, and 
which is my world. The mandala represents this monad, and 
corresponds to the microcosmic nature of the psyche. 

I no longer know how many mandalas I drew at this time. 
There were a great many. While I was working on them, the 
question arose repeatedly: What is this process leading to? 
Where is its goal? From my own experience, I knew by now that 
I could not presume to choose a goal which would seem trust- 
worthy to me. It had been proved to me that I had to abandon 
the idea of the superordinate position of the ego. After all, I 
had been brought up short when I had attempted to maintain 
it. I had wanted to go on with the scientific analysis of myths 
which I had begun in Wandlungen und Symbole. That was still 
my goalbut I must not think of that! I was being compelled 
to go through this process of the unconscious. I had to let myself 
be carried along by the current, without a notion of where it 
would lead me. When I began drawing the mandalas, however, 
I saw that everything, all the paths I had been following, all the 
steps I had taken, were leading back to a single point namely, 
to the mid-point. It became increasingly plain to me that the 
mandala is the center. It is the exponent of all paths. It is the 
path to the center, to individuation. 

During those years, between 1918 and 1920, 1 began to under- 
stand that the goal of psychic development is the self. There is 
no linear evolution; there is only a circumambulation of the self . 

** Faust, Part Two, trans, by Philip Wayne (Haimondsworth, England, Penguin 
Books Ltd., 1959), p. 79. 

196 



Confrontation with the Unconscious 

Uniform development exists, at most, only at the beginning; 
later, everything points toward the center. This insight gave me 
stability, and gradually my inner peace returned. I knew that in 
finding the mandala as an expression of the self I had attained 
what was for me the ultimate. Perhaps someone else knows more, 
but not I. 

Some years later (in 1927) I obtained confirmation of my 
ideas about the center and the self by way of a dream. I repre- 
sented its essence in a mandala which I called "Window on 
Eternity." The picture is reproduced in The Secret of the Golden 
Flower (Fig. s). 15 A year later I painted a second picture, like 
wise a mandala, 18 with a golden castle in the center. When it was 
finished, I asked myself, "Why is this so Chinese?'* I was im- 
pressed by the form and choice of colors, which seemed to me 
Chinese, although there was nothing outwardly Chinese about 
it. Yet that was how it affected me. It was a strange coincidence 
that shortly afterward I received a letter from Richard Wilhelm 
enclosing the manuscript of a Taoist-alchemical treatise entitled 
The Secret of the Golden Flower, with a request that I write a 
commentary on it. I devoured the manuscript at once, for the 
text gave me undreamed-of confirmation of my ideas about the 
mandala and the circumambulation of the center. That was the 
first event which broke through my isolation. I became aware 
of an affinity; I could establish ties with something and some- 
one. 17 

In remembrance of this coincidence, this "synchronicity," 
I wrote underneath the picture which had made so Chinese an 
impression upon me: "In 1928, when I was painting this picture, 
showing the golden, well-fortified castle, Richard Wilhelm in 
Frankfurt sent me the thousand-year-old Chinese text on the 
yellow castle, the germ of the immortal body." 

This is the dteam I mentioned earlier: I found myself in a 
dirty, sooty city. It was night, and winter, and dark, and raining. 

18 Cf . "Concerning Mandala Symbolism," in The Archetypes and the CcMective 
Unconscious ( CW 9, i, ), fig. 6 and pp. 363 S. 

i The Secret of the Golden Flower, fig. 10. See also "Concerning Mandala Sym- 
bolism," fig. 36 and p. 377- 
17 On Kichard Wilhelm, see Appendix IV, pp. 3^3-77. 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

I was in Liverpool. With a number of Swiss say, half a dozen 
I walked through the dark streets. I had the feeling that there we 
were coming from the harbor, and that the real city was actually 
up above, on the cliffs. We climbed up there. It reminded me of 
Basel, where the market is down below and then you go up 
through the Totengasschen ("Alley of the Dead"), which leads 
to a plateau above and so to the Petersplatz and the Peterskirche. 
When we reached the plateau, we found a broad square dimly 
illuminated by street lights, into which many streets converged. 
The various quarters of the city were arranged radially around 
the square. In the center was a round pool, and in the middle of 
it a small island. While everything round about was obscured 
by rain, fog, smoke, and dimly lit darkness, the little island 
bkzed with sunlight. On it stood a single tree, a magnolia, 
in a shower of reddish blossoms. It was as though the tree stood 
in the sunlight and were at the same time the source of light. 
My companions commented on the abominable weather, and ob- 
viously did not see the tree. They spoke of another Swiss who 
was living in Liverpool, and expressed surprise that he should 
have settled here. I was carried away by die beauty of the 
flowering tree and the sunlit island, and thought, "I know very 
well why he has settled here." Then I awoke. 

On one detail of the dream I must add a supplementary 
comment: the individual quarters of the city were themselves ar- 
ranged radially around a central point. This point formed a 
small open square illuminated by a larger street lamp, and con- 
stituted a small replica of the island. I knew that the "other 
Swiss" lived in the vicinity of one of these secondary centers. 

This dream represented my situation at the time, I can still 
see the grayish-yellow raincoats, glistening with the wetness of 
the rain. Everything was extremely unpleasant, black and 
opaque just as I felt then. But I had had a vision of unearthly 
beauty, and that was why I was able to live at all. Liverpool is 
the "pool of life." The "liver," according to an old view, is the 
seat of life that which "makes to live/* 

This dream brought with it a sense of finality. I saw that 
here the goal had been revealed. One could not go beyond the 
center. The center is the goal, and everything is directed toward 



Confrontation with the Unconscious 

that center. Through this dream I understood that the self is the 
principle and archetype of orientation and meaning. Therein 
lies its healing function. For me, this insight signified an ap- 
proach to the center and therefore to the goal. Out of it emerged 
a first inkling of my personal myth. 

After this dream I gave up drawing or painting mandalas, 
The dream depicted the climax of the whole process of develop- 
ment of consciousness. It satisfied me completely, for it gave a 
total picture of my situation, I had known, to be sure, that I was 
occupied with something important, but I still lacked under- 
standing, and there had been no one among my associates who 
could have understood. The clarification brought about by the 
dream made it possible for me to take an objective view of the 
things that filled my being. 

Without such a vision I might perhaps have lost my orienta- 
tion and been compelled to abandon my undertaking. But here 
the meaning had been made clear. When I parted from Freud, 
I knew that I was plunging into the unknown. Beyond Freud, 
after all, I knew nothing; but I had taken the step into darkness. 
When that happens, and then such a dream comes, one feels it 
as an act of grace. 

It has taken me virtually forty-five years to distill within the 
vessel of my scientific workythe things I experienced and wrote 
down at that time. As a young man my goal had been to ac- 
complish something in my science. But then, I hit upon this 
stream of lava, and the heat of its fires reshaped my life. That 
was the primal stuff which compelled me to work upon it, and 
my works are a more or less successful endeavor to incorporate 
this incandescent matter into the contemporary picture of the 
world. 

The years when I was pursuing my inner images were the 
most important in my life in them everything essential was 
decided. It all began then; the later details are only supplements 
and clarifications of the material that burst forth from the un- 
conscious, and at first swamped me. It was the prima materia 
for a lifetime's work. 



VII 



The Work 



AMY LIFE entered its second half, I was already em- 
barked on the confrontation with the contents of the 
unconscious. My work on this was an extremely long- 
drawn-out affair, and it was only after some twenty years of it 
that I reached some degree of understanding of my fantasies. 

First I had to find evidence for the historical prefiguration of 
my inner experiences. That is to say, I had to ask myself, "Where 
have my particular premises already occurred in history?" If I 
had not succeeded in finding such evidence, I would never 
fhave been able to substantiate my ideas. Therefore, my en- 
counter with alchemy was decisive for me, as it provided me 
with the historical basis which I had hitherto lacked. 

Analytical psychology is fundamentally a natural science, but 
it is subject far more than any other science to the personal bias 
of the observer. The psychologist must depend therefore in the 
highest degree upon historical and literary parallels if he wishes 
to exclude at least the crudest errors in judgment. Between 1918 
and 1926 1 had seriously studied the Gnostic writers, for they too 
had been confronted with the primal world of the unconscious 
and had dealt with its contents, with images that were obviously 

200 



The Work 

contaminated with the world of instinct. Just how they under- 
stood these images remains difficult to say, in view of the paucity 
of the accounts which, moreover, mostly stem from their 
opponents, the Church Fathers. It seems to me highly unlikely 
that they had a psychological conception of them. But the 
Gnostics were too remote for me to establish any link with them 
in regard to the questions that were confronting me. As far as I 
could see, the tradition that might have connected Gnosis with 
the present seemed to have been severed, and for a long time it 
proved impossible to find any bridge that led from Gnosticism 
or neo-Platonism to the contemporary world. But when I be- 
gan to understand alchemy I realized that it represented the 
historical link with Gnosticism, and that a continuity therefore 
existed between past and present. Grounded in the natural 
philosophy of the Middle Ages, alchemy formed the bridge on 
the one hand into the past, to Gnosticism, and on the other into 
the future, to the modern psychology of the unconscious. 

This had been inaugurated by Freud, who had introduced 
along with it the classical Gnostic motifs of sexuality and the 
wicked paternal authority. The motif of the Gnostic Yahweh 
and Creator-God reappeared in the Freudian myth of the 
primal father and the gloomy superego deriving from that father. 
In Freud's myth he became a daemon who created a world of 
disappointments, illusions, and suffering. But the materialistic 
trend which had already come to light in the alchemists' pre- 
occupation with the secrets of matter had the effect of ob- 
scuring for Freud that other essential aspect of Gnosticism: the 
primordial image of the spirit as another, higher god who gave 
to mankind the krater (mixing vessel), the vessel of spiritual 
transformation. 1 The krater is a feminine principle which could 
find no place in Freud's patriarchal world. Incidentally, he is 
by no means alone in this prejudice, In the realm of Catholic 

1 In the writings of Poimandres, a pagan Gnostic, the footer was a vessel filled 
with spirit, which the Creator-god sent down to earth so that those who strove 
for higher consciousness might be baptized in it. It was a kind of uterus of 
spiritual renewal and rebirth, and corresponded to the alchemical vas in which 
the transformation of substances took place. The parallel to this in Jung's psy- 
chology is the inner transformation process known as individuation (see glos- 
sary). A. J. 

201 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

thought the Mother of God and Bride of Christ has been re- 
ceived into the divine thalamus (bridal chamber) only recently, 
after centuries of hesitancy, and thus at least been accorded 
partial recognition. 2 But in the Protestant and Jewish spheres the 
father continues to dominate as much as ever. In philosophical 
alchemy, on the other hand, the feminine principle plays a role 
equal to that of the masculine. 

Before I discovered alchemy, I had a series of dreams which 
repeatedly dealt with the same theme. Beside my house stood 
another, that is to say, another wing or annex, which was strange 
to me. Each time I would wonder in my dream why I did not 
know this house, although it had apparently always been there. 
Finally came a dream in which I reached the other wing. I 
discovered there a wonderful library, dating largely from the 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Large, fat folio volumes, 
bound in pigskin, stood along the walls. Among them were a 
number of books embellished with copper engravings of a 
strange character, and illustrations containing curious symbols 
such as I had never seen before. At the time I did not know 
to what they referred; only much later did I recognize them as 
alchemical symbols. In the dream I was conscious only of the 
fascination exerted by them and by the entire library. It was a 
collection of medieval incunabula and sixteenth-century prints. 

The unknown wing of the house was a part of my personality, 
an aspect of myself; it represented something that belonged to 
me but of which I was not yet conscious. It, and especially the 
library, referred to alchemy, of which I was ignorant, but which 
I was soon to study. Some fifteen years later I had assembled a 
library very like the one in the dream. 

The crucial dream anticipating my encounter with alchemy 
came around 1926: I was in the South Tyrol. It was wartime. 

1 was on the Italian front and driving back from the front line 

2 This refers to the Papal Bull of Pius XII, Munifcentissiwus Deus (1950), 
promulgating the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Maiy. The new dogma af- 
firms that Mary as the Bride is united with the Son in the heavenly bridal 
chamber, and as Sophia (Wisdom) she is united with the Godhead. Thus the 
feminine principle is brought into immediate proximity with the masculine 
Trinity. Of. Jung, "Answer to Job," in Psychology and Religion: West and East 
( CW 11 ), pp. 458 ff. A. J. 

202 



The Work 

with a little man, a peasant, in his horse-drawn wagon. All 
around us shells were exploding, and I knew that we had to 
push on as quickly as possible, for it was very dangerous. 3 

We had to cross a bridge and then go through a tunnel whose 
vaulting had been partially destroyed by the shells. Arriving 
at the end of the tunnel, we saw before us a sunny landscape, 
and I recognized it as the region around Verona. Below me lay 
the city, radiant in full sunlight. I felt relieved, and we drove 
on out into the green, thriving Lombard plain. The road led 
through lovely springtime countryside; we saw the rice fields, 
the olive trees, and the vineyards. Then, diagonally across the 
road, I caught sight of a large building, a manor house of grand 
proportions, rather like the palace of a North Italian duke. It 
was a typical manor house with many annexes and outbuildings. 
Just as at the Louvre, the road led through a large courtyard 
and past the palace. The little coachman and myself drove in 
through a gate, and from here we could see, through a second 
gate at the far end, the sunlit landscape again. I looked around: 
to my right was the fagade of the manor house, to my left the 
servants* quarters and the stables, barns, and other outbuildings, 
which stretched on for a long way. 

Just as we reached the middle of the courtyard, in front of 
the main entrance, something unexpected happened: with a dull 
clang, both gates flew shut. The peasant leaped down from his 
seat and exclaimed, "Now we are caught in the seventeenth cen- 
tury." Resignedly I thought, "Well, that's that! But what is 
there to do about it? Now we shall be caught for years." Then 
the consoling thought came to me: "Someday, years from now, 
I shall get out again." 

After this dream I plowed through ponderous tomes on the 
history of the world, of religion, and of philosophy, without 
finding anything that could help me explain the dream. Not 

8 The shells falling from the sky were, interpreted psychologically, missiles com- 
ing from the "other side/' They were, therefore, effects emanating from the un- 
conscious, from the shadow side of the mind. The happenings in the dream 
suggested that the war, which in the outer world had taken place some years be- 
fore, was not yet over, but was continuing to be fought within the psyche. Here, 
apparently, was to be found the solution of problems which could not be found 
in the outer world. C. G. J. 

203 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

until much later did I realize that it referred to alchemy, for 
that science reached its height in the seventeenth century. 
Oddly enough, I had entirely forgotten what Herbert Silberer 
had written about alchemy. 4 At the time his book was published, 
I regarded alchemy as something off the beaten track and 
rather silly, much as I appreciated Silberer's anagogic or con- 
structive point of view. I was in correspondence with him at the 
time and had let him know how much I valued his work. As his 
tragic death shows, Silberer's discovery of the problem was not 
followed by insight into it. 5 He had used in the main late 
material, which I could make nothing of. The late alchemical 
texts are fantastic and baroque; only after we have learned how 
to interpret them can we recognize what treasures they hide. 

Light on the nature of alchemy began to come to me only 
after I had read the text of the Golden Flower, that specimen 
of Chinese alchemy which Richard Wilhelm sent me in 1928. 
I was stirred by the desire to become more closely acquainted 
with the alchemical texts. I commissioned a Munich bookseller 
to notify me of any alchemical books that might fall into his 
hands. Soon afterward I received the first of them, the Artis 
Auriferae Volumina Duo (1593), a comprehensive collection of 
Latin treatises among which are a number of the "classics" of 
alchemy. 

I let this book lie almost untouched for nearly two years. 
Occasionally I would look at the pictures, and each time I would 
think, *Good Lord, what nonsensel This stuff is impossible to 
understand." But it persistently intrigued me, and I made up my 
mind to go into it more thoroughly. The next winter I began, 
and soon found it provocative and exciting. To be sure, the texts 
still seemed to me blatant nonsense, but here and there would 
be passages that seemed significant to me, and occasionally I 
even f ound a few sentences which I thought I could understand. 
Finally I realized that the alchemists were talking in symbols 
those old acquaintances of mine. "Why, this is fantastic," I 
thought. "1 simply must learn to decipher all this." By now I was 

* Problems of Mysticism and Its Symbolism (New York, 1917; Gennan edn., 

Vienna, 1914). 

6 Silberer committed suicide, 

2O4 



The Work 

completely fascinated, and buried myself in the texts as often 
as I had the time. One night, while I was studying them, I 
suddenly recalled the dream that I was caught in the seven- 
teenth century. At last I grasped its meaning. "So that's it! Now 
I am condemned to study alchemy from the very beginning/* 

It was a long while before I found my way about in the laby- 
rinth of alchemical thought processes, for no Ariadne had put a 
thread into my hand. Reading the sixteenth-century text, 
"Rosarium Philosophorum" I noticed that certain strange ex- 
pressions and turns of phrase were frequently repeated. For 
example, "solve et coagula" "unum vas" "lapis," "prima ma- 
teria" "Mercurius" etc. I saw that these expressions were used 
again and again in a particular sense, but I could not make out 
what that sense was. I therefore decided to start a lexicon of key 
phrases with cross references. In the course of time I assembled 
several thousand such key phrases and words, and had volumes 
filled with excerpts. I worked along philological lines, as if I 
were trying to solve the riddle of an unknown language. In this 
way the alchemical mode of expression gradually yielded up its 
meaning. It was a task that kept me absorbed for more than a 
decade. 

I had very soon seen that analytical psychology coincided in a 
most curious way with alchemy. The experiences of the al- 
chemists were, in a sense, my experiences, and their world was 
my world. This was, of course, a momentous discovery: I had 
stumbled upon the historical counterpart of my psychology of 
the unconscious. The possibility of a comparison with alchemy, 
and the uninterrupted intellectual chain back to Gnosticism, 
gave substance to my psychology. When I pored over these old 
texts everything fell into place: the fantasy-images, the empirical 
material I had gathered in my practice, and the conclusions 
I had drawn from it. I now began to understand what these 
psychic contents meant when seen in historical perspective. 
My understanding of their typical character, which had already 
begun with my investigation of myths, was deepened. The 
primordial images and the nature of the archetype took a central 
place in my researches, and it became clear to me that without 
history there can be no psychology, and certainly no psychology 

205 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

of the unconscious. A psychology of consciousness can, to be 
sure, content itself with material drawn from personal life, but 
as soon as we wish to explain a neurosis we require an anamnesis 
which reaches deeper than the knowledge of consciousness. 
And when in the course of treatment unusual decisions are 
called for, dreams occur that need more than personal memories 
for their interpretation. 

I regard my work on alchemy as a sign of my inner relation- 
ship to Goethe. Goethe's secret was that he was in the grip of 
that process of archetypal transformation which has gone on 
through the centuries. He regarded his Faust as an opus mag- 
num or divinum. He called it his "main business/' and his whole 
life was enacted within the framework of this drama. Thus, what 
was alive and active within him was a living substance, a 
suprapersonal process, the great dream of the mundus arche- 
typus (archetypal world). 

I myself am haunted by the same dream, and from my elev- 
enth year I have been launched upon a single enterprise which 
is my "main business." My life has been permeated and held 
together by one idea and one goal: namely, to penetrate into 
the secret of the personality. Everything can be explained from 
this central point, and all my works relate to this one theme. 

My real scientific work began with the association experiment 
in 1903. 1 regard it as my first scientific work in the sense of an 
undertaking in the field of natural science. Studies in Word 
Association was followed by two psychiatric papers whose origin 
I have already discussed: "The Psychology of Dementia Prae- 
cox" and "The Content of the Psychoses/* In 1912 my book 
Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido was published, and my 
friendship with Freud came to an end. From then on, I had to 
make my way alone, 

I had a starting point in my intense preoccupation with the 
images of my own unconscious. This period lasted from 1913 to 
1917; then the stream of fantasies ebbed away. Not until it had 
subsided and I was no longer held captive inside the magic 
mountain was I able to take an objective view of that whole 

206 



The Work 

experience and begin to reflect upon it. The first question I 
asked myself was, "What does one do with the unconscious?" 
"The Relations between 1 the Ego and the Unconscious" 6 was 
my answer. In Paris I had delivered a lecture on this subject in 
1916; 7 it was, however, not published in German until twelve 
years later, in greatly expanded form. In it I described some of 
the typical contents of the unconscious, and showed that it is by 
no means a matter of indifference what attitude the conscious 
mind takes toward them. 

Simultaneously, I was busy with preparatory work for Psycho- 
logical Types, first published in 1921. This work sprang origi- 
nally from my need to define the ways in which my outlook 
differed from Freud's and Adler's. In attempting to answer this 
question, I came across the problem of types; for it is one's 
psychological type which from the outset determines and 
limits a person's judgment. My book, therefore, was an effort 
to deal with the relationship of the individual to the world, to 
people and things. It discussed die various aspects of conscious- 
ness, the various attitudes the conscious mind might take toward 
the world, and thus constitutes a psychology of consciousness 
regarded from what might be called a clinical angle. I worked a 
great deal of literature into this book. The writings of Spitteler 
occupied a special place, in particular his Prometheus and 
Epimetheus; 8 but I also discussed Schiller, Nietzsche, and the 
intellectual history of the classical era and the Middle Ages. I 
was presumptuous enough to send a copy of my book to Spitteler. 
He did not answer me, but shortly afterward delivered a lecture 
in which he declared positively that his Prometheus and Epi- 
metheus "meant" nothing, that he might just as well have sung, 
"Spring is come, tra-la-la-la-la." 

The book on types yielded the insight that every judgment 
made by an individual is conditioned by his personality type 
and that every point of view is necessarily relative. This raised 

6 In Two Essays on Analytical Psychology ( C W 7 ) . 

7 "La Structure de I'inconscient," Archives de psychologie, XVI (Geneva, 1916), 
62, 152-79. See CW 7, Appendix 2, "The Structure of the Unconscious." 

8 Carl Spitteler (1845-1924) was a Swiss writer whose best-known works, be- 
sides Prometheus and Epimetheus, include the epic Der Olympische Fruhling 
and the novel Imago. In 1919 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. 



the question of the unity which must compensate this diversity, 
and it led me directly to the Chinese concept of Tao. I have 
already spoken of the interplay between my inner development 
and Richard Wilhelm's sending me a Taoist text. In 1929 he and 
I collaborated on The Secret of the Golden Flower. It was only 
after I had reached the central point in my thinking and in my 
researches, namely, the concept of the self, that I once more 
found my way back to the world. I began delivering lectures 
and taking a number of journeys. The various essays and lec- 
tures formed a kind of counterpoise to the years of interior 
searching. They also contained answers to the questions that 
were put to me by my readers and patients. 9 

A subject with which I had been deeply concerned ever since 
my book Wandlungen und Symbole was the theory of the li- 
bido. I conceived the libido as a psychic analogue of physical 
energy, hence as a more or less quantitative concept, which 
therefore should not be defined in qualitative terms. My idea 
was to escape from the then prevailing concretism of the libido 
theory in other words, I wished no longer to speak of the 
instincts of hunger, aggression, and sex, but to regard all these 
phenomena as expressions of psychic energy. 

In physics, too, we speak of energy and its various manifesta- 
tions, such as electricity, light, heat, etc. The situation in psy- 
chology is precisely the same. Here, too, we are dealing primarily 
with energy, that is to say, with measures of intensity, with 
greater or lesser quantities. It can appear in various guises. If 
we conceive of libido as energy, we can take a comprehensive 
and unified view. Qualitative questions as to the nature of the 
libido whether it be sexuality, power, hunger, or something 
else recede into the background. What I wished to do for 
psychology was to arrive at some logical and thorough view such 
as is provided in the physical sciences by the theory of ener- 
getics. This is what I was after in my paper "On Psychic Energy" 
(1928). I see man's drives, for example, as various manifesta- 
tions of energic processes and thus as forces analogous to heat, 
light, etc. Just as it would not occur to the modern physicist to 
derive all forces from, shall We say, heat alone, so the psycholo- 

9 These works are distributed mainly among volumes 4, 8, 10, and 16 of die 
Collected Works. 

208 



gist should beware of lumping all instincts under the concept of 
sexuality. This was Freud's initial error which he later corrected 
by his assumption of "ego-instincts." Still later he brought in the 
superego, and conferred virtual supremacy upon it. 

In "The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious" 
I had discussed only my preoccupation with the unconscious, 
and something of the nature of that preoccupation, but had not 
yet said anything much about the unconscious itself. As I 
worked with my fantasies, I became aware that the unconscious 
undergoes or produces change. Only after I had familiarized 
myself with alchemy did I realize that the unconscious is a 
process, and that the psyche is transformed or developed by the 
relationship of the ego to the contents of the unconscious. In 
individual cases that transformation can be read from dreams 
and fantasies. In collective life it has left its deposit principally 
in the various religious systems and their changing symbols. 
Through the study of these collective transformation processes 
and through understanding of alchemical symbolism I arrived 
at the central concept of my psychology: the process of indi- 
viduation. 

An essential aspect of my work is that it soon began to touch on 
the question of one's view of the world, and on the relations 
between psychology and religion. I went into these matters in 
detail first in "Psychology and Religion" (1938) and then, as a 
direct offshoot of this, in Paracelsica (1942). The second essay 
in this book, "Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon," is of 
particular importance from this point of view. The writings of 
Paracelsus contain a wealth of original ideas, including clear 
formulations of the questions posed by the alchemists, though 
these are set forth in late and baroque dress. Through Para- 
celsus I was finally led to discuss the nature of alchemy in rela- 
tion to religion and psychology or, to put it another way, of 
alchemy as a form of religious philosophy. This I did in Psychol- 
ogy and Alchemy ( 1944). Thus I had at last reached the ground 
which underlay my own experiences of the years 1913 to 1917; 
for the process through which I had passed at that time corre- 
sponded to the process of alchemical transformation discussed 
in that book. 

209 



Memories, 

It is only natural that I should constantly have revolved in 
my mind the question of the relationship of the symbolism of 
the unconscious to Christianity as well as to other religions. Not 
only do I leave the door open for the Christian message, but I 
consider it of central importance for Western man. It needs, 
however, to be seen in a new light, in accordance with the 
changes wrought by the contemporary spirit. Otherwise, it 
stands apart from the times, and has no effect on man's whole- 
ness. I have endeavored to show this in my writings. I have 
given a psychological interpretation of the dogma of the Trinity 
and of the text of the Mass which, moreover, I compared with 
the visions described by Zosimos of Panopolis, a third-century 
alchemist and Gnostic. 10 My attempt to bring analytical psy- 
chology into relation with Christianity ultimately led to the 
question of Christ as a psychological figure. As early as 1944, 
in Psychology and Alchemy, I had been able to demonstrate 
the parallelism between the Christ figure and the central con- 
cept of the alchemists, the lapis, or stone. 

In 1939 1 gave a seminar on the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius 
Loyola. At the same time I was occupied on the studies for 
Psychology and Alchemy. One night I awoke and saw, bathed 
in bright light at the foot of my bed, the figure of Christ on the 
Cross. It was not quite life-size, but extremely distinct; and I 
saw that his body was made of greenish gold. The vision was 
marvelously beautiful, and yet I was profoundly shaken by it. 
A vision as such is nothing unusual for me, for I frequently see 
extremely vivid hypnagogic images. 

I had been thinking a great deal about the Anima Christi, 
one of the meditations from the Spiritual Exercises. The vision 
came to me as if to point out that I had overlooked something 
in iny reflections: the analogy of Christ with the aurum non 
vulgi and the viriditas of the alchemists. 11 When I realized that 
the vision pointed to this central alchemical symbol, and that 

10 Both studies are included in Psychology and Religion: West and East ( CW 11 ) , 

11 The more serious alchemists realized that the purpose of their work was not the 
transmutation of base metals into gold, but the production of an aurum non 
vulgi ("not the common gold") or aurum philosophicum ("philosophical gold*'). 
In other words, they were concerned with spiritual values and the problem of 
psychic transformation. A. J. 

210 



The Work 

I had had an essentially alchemical vision of Christ, I felt 
comforted. 

The green gold is the living quality which the alchemists saw 
not only in man but also in inorganic nature. It is an expression 
of the life-spirit, the anima mundi or films macrocosmi, the 
Anthropos who animates the whole cosmos. This spirit has 
poured himself out into everything, even into inorganic matter; 
he is present in metal and stone. My vision was thus a union 
of the Christ-image with his analogue in matter, the filius 
macrocosmi. If I had not been so struck by the greenish-gold, 
I would have been tempted to assume that something essential 
was missing from my "Christian" view in other words, that 
my traditional Christ-image was somehow inadequate and that 
I still had to catch up with part of the Christian development. 
The emphasis on the metal, however, showed me the undis- 
guised alchemical conception of Christ as a union of spiritually 
alive and physically dead matter. 

I took up the problem of Christ again in Aion. 12 Here I was 
concerned not with the various historical parallels but with the 
relation of the Christ figure to psychology. Nor did I see Christ 
as a figure stripped of all externalities. Rather, I wished to show 
the development, extending over the centuries, of the religious 
content which he represented. It was also important to me to 
show how Christ could have been astrologically predicted, and 
how he was understood both in terms of the spirit of his age and 
in the course of two thousand years of Christian civilization. 
This was what I wanted to portray, together with all the curious 
marginal glosses which have accumulated around him in the 
course of the centuries. 

As I delved into all these matters the question of the his- 
torical person, of Jesus the man, also came up. It is of im- 
portance because the collective mentality of his time one 
might also say: the archetype which was already constellated, 
the primordial image of the Anthropos was condensed in him, 
an almost unknown Jewish prophet. The ancient idea of the 
Anthropos, whose roots lie in Jewish tradition on the one hand 

12 English trans., under same title, in 1959 (CW 9, **) 

211 



Memories, vreams, tiejiecmons 

and in the Egyptian Horus myth on the other, had taken posses- 
sion of the people at the beginning of the Christian era, for it 
was part of the Zeitgeist. It was essentially concerned with the 
Son of Man, God's own son, who stood opposed to the deified 
Augustus, the ruler of this world. This idea fastened upon the 
originally Jewish problem of the Messiah and made it a world 
problem. 

It would be a serious misunderstanding to regard as "mere 
chance'* the fact that Jesus, the carpenter's son, proclaimed the 
gospel and became the savior of the world. He must have been a 
person of singular gifts to have been able so completely to 
express and to represent the general, though unconscious, ex- 
pectations of his age. No one else could have been the bearer of 
such a message; it was possible only for this particular man 
Jesus. 

In those times the omnipresent, crushing power of Rome, 
embodied in the divine Caesar, had created a world where 
countless individuals, indeed whole peoples, were robbed of 
their cultural independence and of their spiritual autonomy. 
Today, individuals and cultures are faced with a similar threat, 
namely of being swallowed up in the mass. Hence in many 
places there is a wave of hope in a reappearance of Christ, and a 
visionary rumor has even arisen which expresses expectations 
of redemption. The form it has taken, however, is comparable 
to nothing in the past, but is a typical child of the "age of 
technology." This is the worldwide distribution of the UFO 
phenomenon (unidentified flying objects). 13 

Since my aim was to demonstrate the full extent to which 
my psychology corresponded to alchemy or vice versa I 
wanted to discover, side by side with the religious questions, 
what special problems of psychotherapy were treated in the 
work of the alchemists. The main problem of medical psycho- 
therapy is the transference. In this matter Freud and I were in 
complete agreement. I was able to demonstrate that alchemy, 
too, had something that corresponded to the transference- 
is Cf. Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies (New York 
and London, 1959); also in Civilization in Transition (CW 10). 

212 



The Work 

namely, the concept of the coniunctio, whose pre-eminent im- 
portance had been noted already by Silberer. Evidence for this 
correspondence is contained in my book, Psychology and 
Alchemy. Two years later, in 1946, 1 pursued the matter further 
in "Psychology of the Transference," 14 and finally my researches 
led to the Mysterium Coniunetionis. 

As with all problems that concerned me personally or scien- 
tifically, that of the coniunctio was accompanied or heralded 
by dreams. In one of these dreams both this and the Christ 
problem were condensed in a remarkable image. 

I dreamed once more that my house had a large wing which 
I had never visited. I resolved to look at it, and finally entered. 
I came to a big double door. When I opened it, I found myself in 
a room set up as a laboratory. In front of the window stood a 
table covered with many glass vessels and all the paraphernalia 
of a zoological laboratory. This was my father's workroom. How- 
ever, he was not there. On shelves along the walls stood hun- 
dreds of bottles containing every imaginable sort of fish. I was 
astonished: so now my father was going in for ichthyology I 

As I stood there and looked around I noticed a curtain which 
bellied out from time to time, as though a strong wind were 
blowing. Suddenly Hans, a young man from the country, ap- 
peared. I told him to look and see whether a window were open 
in the room behind the curtain. He went, and was gone for 
some time. When he returned, I saw an expression of terror on 
his face. He said only, "Yes, there is something. It's haunted in 
there! 77 

Then I myself went, and found a door which led to my 
mother's room. There was no one in it. The atmosphere was 
uncanny. The room was very large, and suspended from the 
ceiling were two rows of five chests each, hanging about two 
feet above the floor. They looked like small garden pavilions, 
each about six feet in area, and each containing two beds. I 
knew that this was the room where my mother, who in reality 
had long been dead, was visited, and that she had set up these 

** In The Practice of Psychotherapy ( CW 16 ). 
" CW 14. 

213 



Memories, ur earns, Reflections 

beds for visiting spirits to sleep. They were spirits who came in 
pairs, ghostly married couples, so to speak, who spent the night 
or even the day there. 

Opposite my mother's room was a door. I opened it and 
entered a vast hall; it reminded me of the lobby of a large hotel. 
It was fitted out with easy chairs, small tables, pillars, sumptuous 
hangings, etc. A brass band was playing loudly; I had heard 
music all along in the background, but without knowing where 
it came from. There was no one in the hall except the brass band 
blaring forth dance tunes and inarches. 

The brass band in the hotel lobby suggested ostentatious 
jollity and worldliness. No one would have guessed that behind 
this loud fa9ade was the other world, also located in the same 
building. The dream-image of the lobby was, as it were, a 
caricature of my bonhomie or worldly joviality. But this was 
only the outside aspect; behind it lay something quite different, 
which could not be investigated in the blare of the band music: 
the fish laboratory and the hanging pavilions for spirits. Both 
were awesome places in which a mysterious silence prevailed. 
In them I had the feeling: Here is the dwelling of night; whereas 
the lobby stood for the daylight world and its superficiality. 

The most important images in the dream were the "reception 
room for spirits" and the fish laboratory. The former expresses 
in somewhat farcial fashion the coniunctio; the latter indicates 
my preoccupation with Christ, who himself is the fish (ichthys) . 
Both were subjects that were to keep me on the go for more than 
a decade. 

It is remarkable that the study of fish was attributed to my 
father. In the dream he was a caretaker of Christian souls, for, 
according to the ancient view, these are fish caught in Peter's 
net. It is equally remarkable that in the same dream my mother 
was a guardian of departed spirits. Thus both my parents ap- 
peared burdened with the problem of the "cure of souls," which 
in fact was really my task. Something had remained unfinished 
and was still with my parents; that is to say, it was still latent 
in the unconscious and hence reserved for the future. I was 
being reminded that I had not yet dealt with the major concern 
of "philosophical" alchemy, the coniunctio, and thus had not 

214 



The Work 

answered the question which the Christian soul put to me. Also 
the major work on the Grail legend, which my wife had made 
her life's task, was not completed. 16 1 recall how often the quest 
for the Grail and the fisher king came to my mind while I was 
working on the ichthys symbol in Aion. Had it not been for my 
unwillingness to intrude upon my wife's field, I would un- 
questionably have had to include the Grail legend in my studies 
of alchemy. 

My memory of my father is of a sufferer stricken with an 
Amfortas wound, a "fisher king" whose wound would not heal 
that Christian suffering for which the alchemists sought the 
panacea. I as a "dumb" Parsifal was the witness of this sickness 
during the years of my boyhood, and, like Parsifal, speech 
failed me. I had only inklings. In actuality my father had 
never interested himself in theriomorphic Christ-symbolism. 
On the other hand he had literally lived right up to his death 
the suffering prefigured and promised by Christ, without ever 
becoming aware that this was a consequence of the imitatio 
Christi. He regarded his suffering as a personal affliction for 
which you might ask a doctor's advice; he did not see it as the 
suffering of the Christian in general. The words of Galatians 
2:20: "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me," never pene- 
trated his mind in their full significance, for any thinking about 
religious matters sent shudders of horror through him. He 
wanted to rest content with faith, but faith broke faith with 
him. Such is frequently the reward of the samficium intellectus. 
"Not all men can receive this precept, but only those to whom it 
is given. . . . There are eunuchs who have made themselves 
eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able 
to receive this, let him receive it." (Matthew ignif.) Blind 
acceptance never leads to a solution; at best it leads only to a 
standstill and is paid for heavily in the next generation. 

The theriomorphic attributes of the gods show that the gods 
extend not only into superhuman regions but also into the sub- 

16 After the death of Mrs. Jung in 1955, Dr. Marie-Louise von Franz took up the 
work on the Grail and brought it to safe harbor in 1958. Cf. Emma Jung and 
Marie-Louise von Franz: The Grail Legend, trans, by Andrea Dykes, New York 
and London, 1930). A. J. 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

human realm. The animals are their shadows, as it were, which 
nature herself associates with the divine image. The "pisciculi 
Christianorum" show that those who imitate Christ are them- 
selves fish that is, unconscious souls who require the cura 
animarum. The fish laboratory is a synonym for the ecclesiastical 
"cure of souls/' And just as the wounder wounds himself, so 
the healer heals himself. Significantly, in the dream the deci- 
sive activity is carried out by the dead upon the dead, in the 
world beyond consciousness, that is, in the unconscious. 

At that stage of my life, therefore, I was still not conscious of 
an essential aspect of my task, nor would I have been able to 
give a satisfactory interpretation of the dream. I could only sense 
its meaning. I still had to overcome the greatest inner resistances 
before I could write Answer to Job. 

The inner root of this book is to be found in Aion. There I 
had dealt with the psychology of Christianity, and Job is a 
kind of prefiguration of Christ. The link between them is the 
idea of suffering. Christ is the suffering servant of God, and so 
was Job. In the case of Christ the sins of the world are the cause 
of suffering, and the suffering of the Christian is the general 
answer. This leadsjnescapably to the question: Who is respon- 
sible for these sins? In the final analysis it is God who created 
the world and its sins, and who therefore became Christ in 
order to suffer the fate of humanity. 

In Aion there are references to the bright and dark side of the 
divine image. I cited the "wrath of God/* the commandment 
to fear God, and the petition "Lead us not into temptation/' The 
ambivalent God-image plays a crucial part in the Book of Job. 
Job expects that God will, in a sense, stand by him against God; 
in this we have a picture of God's tragic contradictoriness. 
This was the main theme of Answer to Job, 

There were outside forces, too, which impelled me to write 
this book. The many questions from the public and from patients 
had made me feel that I must express myself more clearly 
about the religious problems of modern man. For years I had 
hesitated to do so, because I was fully aware of the storm I 
would be unleashing. But at last I could not help being gripped 
by the problem, in all its urgency and difficulty, and I found 

Olfi 



The Work 

myself compelled to give an answer. I did so in the form in 
which the problem had presented itself to me, that is, as an 
experience charged with emotion. I chose this form deliberately, 
in order to avoid giving the impression that I was bent on pro- 
claiming some eternal truth. My Answer to Job was meant to 
be no more than the utterance of a single individual, who hopes 
and expects to arouse some thoughtfulness in his public. I was 
far from wanting to enunciate a metaphysical truth. Yet the 
theologians tax me with that very thing, because theological 
thinkers are so used to dealing with eternal truths that they 
know no other kinds. When the physicist says that the atom is 
of such and such a composition, and when he sketches a model 
of it, he too does not intend to express anything like an eternal 
truth. But theologians do not understand the natural sciences 
and, particularly, psychological thinking. The material of 
analytical psychology, its principal facts, consist of statements 
of statements that occur frequently in consistent form at 
various places and at various times. 

The problem of Job in all its ramifications had likewise been 
foreshadowed in a dream. It started with my paying a visit to my 
long-deceased father. He was living in the country I did not 
know where. I saw a house in the style of the eighteenth century, 
very roomy, with several rather large outbuildings. It had 
originally been, I learned, an inn at a/spa, and it seemed that 
many great personages, famous people and princes, had stopped 
there. Furthermore, several had died and their sarcophagi were 
in a crypt belonging to the house. My father guarded these as 
custodian. 

He was, as I soon discovered, not only the custodian but 
also a distinguished scholar in his own right which he had 
never been in his lifetime. I met him in his study, and, oddly 
enough, Dr. Y. who was about my age and his son, both 
psychiatrists, were also present. I do not know whether I had 
asked a question or whether ipy father wanted to explain some- 
thing of his own accord, but in any case he fetched a big 
Bible down from a shelf, a heavy folio volume like the Merian 
Bible in my library. The Bible my father held was bound in 
shiny fishskin. He opened it at the Old Testament I guessed 

217 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

that he turned to the Pentateuch and began interpreting a 
certain passage. He did this so swiftly and so learnedly that I 
could not follow him. I noted only that what he said betrayed 
a vast amount of variegated knowledge, the significance of which 
I dimly apprehended but could not properly judge or grasp. I 
saw that Dr. Y. understood nothing at all, and his son began to 
laugh. They thought that my father was going off the deep end 
and what he said was simply senile prattle. But it was quite 
clear to me that it was not due to morbid excitement, and that 
there was nothing silly about what he was saying. On the con- 
trary, his argument was so intelligent and so learned that we 
in our stupidity simply could not follow it. It dealt with some- 
thing extremely important which fascinated him. That was why 
he was speaking with such intensity; his mind was flooded with 
profound ideas. I was annoyed and thought it was a pity that 
he had to talk in the presence of three such idiots as we. 

The two psychiatrists represented a limited medical point of 
view which, of course, also infects me as a physician. They 
represent my shadow first and second editions of the shadow, 
father and son. 

Then the scene changed. My father and I were in front of the 
house, facing a kind of shed where, apparently, wood was 
stacked. We heard loud thumps, as if large chunks of wood were 
being thrown down or tossed about. I had the impression that 
at least two workmen must be busy there, but my father indi- 
cated to me that the place was haunted. Some sort of poltergeists 
were making the racket, evidently. 

We then entered the house, and I saw that it had very thick 
walls. We climbed a narrow staircase to the second floor. There 
a strange sight presented itself: a large hall which was the 
exact replica of the divan-i-kaas (council hall) of Sultan Akbar 
at Fatehpur Sikri. It was a high, circular room with a gallery 
running along the wall, from which four bridges led to a basin- 
shaped center. The basin rested upon a huge column and 
formed the sultan's round seat. From this elevated place he 
spoke to his councilors and philosophers, who sat along the 
walls in the gallery. The whole was a gigantic mandala. It 
corresponded precisely to the real divan-i-kaas. 

218 



The Work 

In the dream I suddenly saw that from the center a steep 
flight of stairs ascended to a spot high up on the wall which 
no longer corresponded to reality. At the top of the stairs was 
a small door, and my father said, "Now I will lead you into the 
highest presence." Then he knelt down and touched his fore- 
head to the floor. I imitated him, likewise kneeling, with great 
emotion. For some reason I could not bring my forehead quite 
down to the floor there was perhaps a millimeter to spare. 
But at least I had made the gesture with him. Suddenly I knew 
perhaps my father had told me that that upper door led to a 
solitary chamber where lived Uriah, King David's general, 
whom David had shamefully betrayed for the sake of his wife 
Bathsheba, by commanding his soldiers to abandon Uriah in 
the face of the enemy. 

I must make a few explanatory remarks concerning this dream. 
The initial scene describes how the unconscious task which I 
had left to my "father," that is, to the unconscious, was working 
out. He was obviously engrossed in the Bible Genesis? and 
eager to communicate his insights. The fishskin marks the 
Bible as an unconscious content, for fishes are mute and un- 
conscious. My poor father does not succeed in communicating 
either, for the audience is in part incapable of understanding, in 
part maliciously stupid. 

After this defeat we cross the street to the "other side," where 
poltergeists are at work. Poltergeist phenomena usually take 
place in the vicinity of young people before puberty; that is to 
say, I am still immature and too unconscious. The Indian 
ambience illustrates the "other side." When I was in India, the 
mandala structure of the divan~i-kaas had in actual fact power- 
fully impressed me as the representation of a content related to 
a center. The center* is the seat of Akbar the Great, who rules 
over a subcontinent, who is a "lord of this world," like David. 
But even higher than David stands his guiltless victim, his loyal 
general Uriah, whom he abandoned to the enemy. Uriah is a 
prefiguration of Christ, the god-man who was abandoned by 
God. "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" On top 
of that, David had "taken unto himself" Uriah's wife. Only 
later did I understand what this allusion to Uriah signified: 

219 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

not only was I forced to speak publicly, and very much to my 
detriment, about the ambivalence of the God-image in the Old 
Testament; but also, my wife would be taken from me by death. 

These were the things that awaited me, hidden in the un- 
conscious. I had to submit to this fate, and ought really to have 
touched my forehead to the floor, so that my submission would 
be complete. But something prevented me from doing so en- 
tirely, and kept me just a millimeter away. Something in me was 
saying, "All very well, but not entirely." Something in me was 
defiant and determined not to be a dumb fish: and if there 
were not something of the sort in free men, no Book of Job would 
have been written several hundred years before the birth of 
Christ. Man always has some mental reservation, even in the 
face of divine decrees. Otherwise, where would be his freedom? 
And what would be the use of that freedom if it could not 
threaten Him who threatens it? 

Uriah, then, lives in a higher place than Akbar. He is even, 
as the dream said, the '^highest presence,'* an expression which 
properly is used only of God, unless we are dealing in Byzantin- 
isms. I cannot help thinking here of the Buddha and his relation- 
ship to the gods. For the devout Asiatic, the Tathagata is the All- 
Highest, the Absolute. For that reason Hinayana Buddhism has 
been suspected of atheism very wrongly so. By virtue of the 
power of the gods man is enabled to gain an insight into his 
Creator. He has even been given the power to annihilate Crea- 
tion in its essential aspect, that is, man's consciousness of the 
world. Today he can extinguish all higher life on earth by radio- 
activity. The idea of world annihilation is already suggested by 
the Buddha: by means of enlightenment the Nidana chain 
the chain of causality which leads inevitably to old age, sickness, 
and death can be broken, so that the illusion of Being comfes 
to an end. Schopenhauer's negation of the Will points prophet- 
ically to a problem of the future that has already come threat- 
ingly close. The dream discloses a thought and a premonition 
that have long been present in humanity: the idea of the crea- 
ture that surpasses its creator by a small but decisive factor. 

After this excursion into the world of dreams, I must once more 
come back to my writings. In Afon I embarked upon a cycle of 

220 



The Work 

problems that needed to be dealt with separately. I had at- 
tempted to explain how the appearance of Christ coincided with 
the beginning of a new aeon, the age of the Fishes. A syn- 
chronicity exists between the life of Christ and the objective 
astronomical event, the entrance of the spring equinox into the 
sign of Pisces. Christ is therefore the "Fish" (just as Hammurabi 
before him was the "Ram"), and comes forth as the ruler of the 
new aeon. This led to the problem of synchronicity, which I 
discussed in my paper "Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting 
Principle." 17 

The Christ problem in Aion finally led me to the question of 
how the phenomenon of the Anthropos in psychological terms, 
the self is expressed in the experience of the individual. I at- 
tempted to give an answer to this in Von den Wurzeln des 
Bewusstseins ( 1954 ). 18 There I was concerned with the interplay 
between conscious and unconscious, with the development of 
consciousness from the unconscious, and with the impact of the 
greater personality, the inner man, upon the life of every individ- 
ual. 

This investigation was rounded out by the Mysterium Co- 
niunctionis, in which I once again took up the problem of the 
transference, but primarily followed my original intention of 
representing the whole range of alchemy as a kind of psychology 
of alchemy, or as an alchemical basis for depth psychology. 
In Mysterium Coniunctionis my psychology was at last given its 
place in reality and established upon its historical foundations. 
Thus my task was finished, my work done, and now it can stand. 
The moment I touched bottom, I reached the bounds of scien- 
tific understanding, the transcendental, the nature of the arche- 
type per se, concerning which no further scientific statements 
can be made. 

The survey I have given here of my work is, of course, only a 
brief summary. I really ought to say a great deal more, or a 

17 In C. G. Jung and W. Pauli, The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche 
(New York and London, 1954); also in The Structure and Dynamics of the 
Psyche (CW8). 

18 The essays in this book are mostly contained in volumes 8, 9 (i), and 11 of the 
Collected Works. 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

great deal less. It is an improvisation, like everything I am re- 
lating here. It is born of the moment. Those who know my 
work may possibly profit by it; others perhaps will be impelled 
to look into my ideas. My life is what I have done, my scientific 
work; the one is inseparable from the other. The work is the 
expression of my inner development; for commitment to the 
contents of the unconscious forms the man and produces his 
transformations. My works can be regarded as stations along 
rny life's way. 

All my writings may be considered tasks imposed from within; 
their source was a fateful compulsion. What I wrote were things 
that assailed me from within myself. I permitted the spirit that 
moved me to speak out. I have never counted upon any strong 
response, any powerful resonance, to my writings. They repre- 
sent a compensation for our times, and I have been impelled to 
say what no one wants to hear. For that reason, and especially at 
the beginning, I often felt utterly forlorn. I knew that what I 
said would be unwelcome, for it is difficult for people of our 
times to accept the counterweight to the conscious world. Today 
I can say that it is truly astonishing that I have had as much 
success as has been accorded me far more than I ever could 
have expected. I have the feeling that I have done all that it was 
possible for me to do. Without a doubt that life work could have 
been larger, and could have been done better; but more was not 
within my power. 



VIII 



The Tower 



GRADUALLY, through my scientific work, I was able to 
put my fantasies and the contents of the unconscious on 
a solid footing. Words and paper, however, did not seem 
real enough to me; something more was needed. I had to achieve 
a kind of representation in stone of my innermost thoughts and 
of the knowledge I had acquired. Or, to put it another way, I 
had to make a confession of faith in stone. That was the begin- 
ning of the "Tower," the house which I built for myself at 
Bollingen. 

It was settled from the start that I would build near the water. 
I had always been curiously drawn by the scenic charm of 
the upper lake of Zurich, and so in 1922 I bought some land in 
Bollingen. It is situated in the area of St. Meinrad and is old 
church land, having formerly belonged to the monastery of 
St. Gall. 

At first I did not plan a proper house, but merely a kind of 
primitive one-story dwelling. It was to be a round structure with 
a hearth in the center and bunks along the walls. I more or less 
had in mind an African hut where die fire, ringed by a few 
stones, burns in the middle, and the whole life of the family 

223 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

revolves around this center. Primitive huts concretize an idea of 
wholeness, a familial wholeness in which all sorts of small do- 
mestic animals likewise participate. But I altered the plan 
even during the first stages of building, for I felt it was too 
primitive. I realized it would have to be a regular two-story 
house, not a mere hut crouched on the ground. So in 1923 the 
first round house was built, and when it was finished I saw that 
it had become a suitable dwelling tower. 

The feeling of repose and renewal that I had in this tower 
was intense from the start. It represented for me the maternal 
hearth. But I became increasingly aware that it did not yet 
express everything that needed saying, that something was still, 
lacking. And so, four years later, in 1927, the central structure 
was added, with a tower-like annex. 

After some time had passed again the interval was four 
years I once more had a feeling of incompleteness. The build- 
ing still seemed too primitive to me, and so in 1931 the tower- 
like annex was extended. I wanted a room in this tower where I 
could exist for myself alone. I had in mind what I had seen in 
Indian houses, in which there is usually an area though it 
may be only a corner of a room separated off by a curtain 
to which the inhabitants can withdraw. There they meditate for 
perhaps a quarter or half an hour, or do Yoga exercises. Such an 
area of retirement is essential in India, where people live 
crowded very close together. 

In my retiring room I am by myself. I keep the key with me 
all the time; no one else is allowed in there except with my 
permission. In the course of the years I have done paintings 
on the walls, and so have expressed all those things which have 
carried me out of time into seclusion, out of the present into 
timelessness. Thus the second tower became for me a place of 
spiritual concentration. 

^ n *935> the desire arose in me for a piece of fenced-in land, 
I needed a larger space that would stand open to the sky and to 
nature. And so- once again after an interval of four years 
I added a courtyard and a loggia by the lake, which formed a 
fourth element that was separated from the unitary threeness of 
the house. Thus a quaternity had arisen, four different parts of 



The Tower 

the building, and, moreover, in the course of twelve years. 

After my wife's death in 1955, I felt an inner obligation 
to become what I myself am. To put it in the language 
of the Bollingen house, I suddenly realized that the small 
central section which crouched so low, so hidden, was 
myself! I could no longer hide myself behind the "mater- 
nal" and the "spiritual" towers. So, in that same year, 
I added an upper story to this section, which represents 
myself, or my ego-personality. Earlier, I would not have 
been able to do this; I would have regarded it as presump^ 
tuous self-emphasis. Now it signified an extension of con- 
sciousness achieved in old age. With that the building 
was complete. I had started the first tower in 1923, two 
months after the death of my mother. These two dates are 
meaningful because the Tower, as we shall see, is connected 
with the dead. 

From the beginning I felt the Tower as in some way a pkce 
of maturation a maternal womb or a maternal figure in which I 
could become what I was, what I am and will be. It gave me a 
feeling as if I were being reborn in stone. It is thus a concretiza- 
tion of the incjividuation process, a memorial aere perennius. 
During the building work, of course, I never considered these 
matters. I built the house in sections, always following the con- 
crete needs of the moment. It might also be said that I built, 
it in a kind of dream. Only afterward did I see how all the 
parts fitted together and that a meaningful form had resulted: 
a symbol of psychic wholeness. 

At Bollingen I am in the midst of my true life, I am most 
deeply myself. Here I am, as it were, the "age-old son of the 
mother." That is how alchemy puts it, very wisely, for the 
"old man/* the "ancient," whom I had already experienced as a 
child, is personality No. 2, who has always been and always will 
be. He exists outside time and is the son of the maternal un- 
conscious. In my fantasies he took the form of Philemon, and he 
comes to life again at Bollingen. 

At times I feel as if I am spread out over the landscape and 
inside things, and am myself living in every tree, in the plashing 
of the waves, in the clouds and the animals that come and go, 

225 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

in the procession of the seasons. There is nothing in the Tower 
that has not grown into its own form over the decades, nothing 
with which I am not linked. Here everything has its history, and 
mine; here is space for the spaceless kingdom of the world's and 
the psyche's hinterland. 

I have done without electricity, and tend the fireplace and 
stove myself. Evenings, I light the old lamps. There is no running 
water, and I pump the water from the well. I chop the wood and 
cook the food. These simple acts make man simple; and how diffi- 
cult it is to be simple! 

In Bollingen, silence surrounds me almost audibly, and I live 
"in modest harmony with nature." l Thoughts rise to the surface 
which reach back into the centuries, and accordingly anticipate 
a remote future. Here the torment of creation is lessened; 
creativity and play are close together. 

In 1950 I made a kind of monument out of stone to express 
what the Tower means to me. The story of how this stone came 
to me is a curious one. I needed stones for building the enclosing 
wall for the so-called garden, and ordered them from the quarry 
near Bollingen. I was standing by when the mason gave all the 
measurements to the owner of the quarry, who wrote them down 
in his notebook. When the stones arrived by ship and were un- 
loaded, it turned out that the cornerstone had altogether the 
wrong measurements; instead of a triangular stone, a square 
block had been sent: a perfect cube of much larger dimensions 
than had been ordered, about twenty inches thick. The mason 
was furious and told the barge men to take it right back with 
them. 

But when I saw the stone, I said, "No, that is my stone, I 
must have itl" For I had seen at once that it suited me perfectly 
and that I wanted to do something with it. Only I did not yet 
know what. 

The first thing that occurred to me was a Latin verse by the 
alchemist Arnaldus de Villanova (died 1313). I chiseled this 
into the stone; in translation it goes: 

1 Tide of an old Chinese woodcut showing a little old man in a heroic landscape. 

226 



The Tower 

Here stands the mean, uncomely stone, 
"Tis very cheap in price! 
The more it is despised by fools, 
The more loved by the wise. 

This verse refers to the alchemist's stone, the lapis, which is 
despised and rejected. 

Soon something else emerged. I began to see on the front 
face, in the natural structure of the stone, a small circle, a sort of 
eye, which looked at me. I chiseled it into the stone, and in the 
center made a tiny homunculus. This corresponds to the 'Tittle 
doll" (pupilla) yourself which you see in the pupil of 
another's eye; a kind of Kabir, or the Telesphoros of Asklepios. 
Ancient statues show him wearing a hooded cloak and carrying 
a lantern. At the same time he is a pointer of the way. I dedicated 
a few words to him which came into my mind while I was work- 
ing. The inscription is in Greek; the translation goes: 

Time is a child playing like a child playing a board game 
the kingdom of the child. This is Telesphoros, who roams 
through the dark regions of this cosmos and glows like a star 
out of the depths. He points the way to the gates of the sun 
and to the land of dreams. 2 

These words came to me one after the other while I 
worked on the stone. 

On the third face, the one facing the lake, I let the stone 
itself speak, as it were, in a Latin inscription. These sayings are 
more or less quotations from alchemy. This is the translation: 

I am an orphan, alone; nevertheless I am found everywhere. I 
am one, but opposed to myself. I am youth and old man at one 
and the same time. I have known neither father nor mother, be- 
cause I have had to be fetched out of the deep like a fish, or 
fell like a white stone from heaven. In woods and mountains I 
roam, but I am hidden in the innermost soul of man. I am mortal 
for everyone, yet I am not touched by the cycle of aeons. 

2 The first sentence is a fragment from Heraclitus; the second sentence alludes to 
the Mithras liturgy, and the last sentence to Homer (Odyssey, Book 24, verse 12), 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

In conclusion, under the saying of Arnaldus de Villanova, I 
set down in Latin the words "In remembrance of his seventy- 
fifth birthday C. G. Jung made and placed this here as a thanks 
offering, in the year 1950.'* 

When the stone was finished, I looked at it again and again, 
wondering about it and asking myself what lay behind my 
impulse to carve it. 

The stone stands outside the Tower, and is like an explanation 
of it. It is a manifestation of the occupant, but one which remains 
incomprehensible to others. Do you know what I wanted to 
chisel into the back face of the stone? "Le cri de Merlinr For 
what the stone expressed reminded me of Merlin's life in the 
forest, after he had vanished from the world. Men still hear 
his cries, so the legend runs, but they cannot understand or 
interpret them. 

Merlin represents an attempt by the medieval unconscious 
to create a parallel figure to Parsifal. Parsifal is a Christian hero, 
and Merlin, son of the devil and a pure virgin, is his dark 
brother. In the twelfth century, when the legend arose, there 
were as yet no premises by which his intrinsicf meaning could 
be understood. Hence he ended in exile, and hence e 'le cri de 
Merlin 9 which still sounded from the forest after his death. 
This cry that no one could understand implies that he lives on 
in unredeemed form. His story is not yet finished, and he still 
walks abroad. It might be said that the secret of Merlin was 
carried on by alchemy, primarily in the figure of Mercurius. 
Then Merlin was taken up again in my psychology of the un- 
conscious and remains uncomprehended to this dayl That is 
because most people find it quite beyond them to live on close 
terms with the unconscious. Again and again I have had to 
learn how hard this is for people. 

I was in Bollingen just as the first tower was being finished. 
This was the winter of 1923-24. As far as I can recall, there was 
no snow on the ground; perhaps it was early spring. I had 
been alone perhaps for a week, perhaps longer. An indescrib- 
able stillness prevailed. 
One evening I can still remember it precisely I was sitting 

228 



The Tower 

by the fireplace and had put a big kettle on the fire to make hot 
water for washing up. The water began to boil and the kettle to 
sing. It sounded like many voices, or stringed instruments, or 
even like a whole orchestra. It was just like polyphonic music, 
which in reality I cannot abide, though in this case it seemed to 
me peculiarly interesting. It was as though there were one or- 
chestra inside the Tower and another one outside. Now one 
dominated, now the other, as though they were responding to 
each other, 

I sat and listened, fascinated. For far more than an hour I 
listened to the concert, to this natural melody. It was soft music, 
containing, as well, all the discords of nature. And that was 
right, for nature is not only harmonious; she is also dreadfully 
contradictory and chaotic. The music was that way too: an out- 
pouring of sounds, having the quality of water and of wind 
so strange that it is simply impossible to describe it. 

On another such still night when I was alone in Bollingen 
(it was in the late winter or early spring of 1924) I awoke to 
the sound of soft footsteps going around the Tower. Distant 
music sounded, coming closer and closer, and then I heard 
voices laughing and talking. I thought, 'Who can be prowling 
around? What is this all about? There is only the little footpath 
along the lake, and scarcely anybody ever walks on it!** While 
I was thinking these things I became wide awake, and went to 
the window. I opened the shutters all was still. There was no 
one in sight, nothing to be heard no wind nothing nothing 
at all. 

"This is really strange,** I thought. I was certain that the 
footsteps, the laughter and talk, had been real. But apparently 
I had only been dreaming. I returned to bed- and mulled over 
the way we can deceive ourselves after all, and what might have 
been the cause of such a strange dream. In the midst of this, I 
fell asleep again and at once the same dream began: once more 
I heard footsteps, talk, laughter, music. At the same time I had a 
visual image of several hundred dark-clad figures, possibly 
peasant boys in their Sunday clothes, who had come down from 
the mountains and were pouring in around the Tower, on both 
sides, with a great deal of loud trampling, laughing, singing, 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

and playing of accordions. Irritably, I thought, "This is really 
the limit! I thought it was a dream and now it turns out to be 
reality!" At this point, I woke up. Once again I jumped up, 
opened the window and shutters, and found everything just the 
same as before: a deathly still moonlit night. Then I thought: 
"Why, this is simply a case of haunting!" 

Naturally I asked myself what it meant when a dream was 
so insistent on its reality and at the same time on my being 
awake. Usually we experience that only when we see a ghost. 
Being awake means perceiving reality. The dream therefore rep- 
resented a situation equivalent to reality, in which it created a 
kind of wakened state. In this sort of dream, as opposed to 
ordinary dreams, the unconscious seems bent on conveying a 
powerful impression of reality to the dreamer, an impression 
which is emphasized by repetition. The sources of such realities 
are known to be physical sensations on the one hand, and arche- 
typal figures on the other. 

That night everything was so completely real, or at least 
seemed to be so, that I could scarcely sort out the two realities. 
Nor could I make anything of the dream itself. What was the 
meaning of these music-making peasant boys passing by in a 
long procession? It seemed to me tiiey had come out of curiosity, 
in order to look at the Tower. 

Never again did I experience or dream anything similar, and 
I cannot recall ever having heard of a parallel to it. It was 
only much later that I found an. explanation. This was when I 
came across the seventeenth-century Lucerne chronicle by Renn- 
ward Cysat. He tells the following story: On a high pasture of 
Mount Pilatus, which is particularly notorious for spooks it is 
said that Wotan to this day practices his magic arts there Cysat, 
while climbing the mountain, was disturbed one night by a pro- 
cession of men who poured past his hut on both sides, playing 
music and singing precisely what I had experienced at the 
Tower. 

The next morning Cysat asked the herdsman with whom he 
had spent that night what could have been the meaning pf it. 
The man had a ready explanation: those must be the departed 
folk sdlig Ltit, in Swiss dialect; the phrase also means blessed 

23 



The Tower 

folk namely, Wotan's army of departed souls. These, he said, 
were in the habit of walking abroad and showing themselves. 

It may be suggested that this is a phenomenon of solitude, 
the outward emptiness and silence being compensated by the 
image of a crowd of people. This would put it in the same class 
with the hallucinations of hermits, which are likewise com- 
pensatory. But do we know what realities such stories may be 
founded on? It is also possible that I had been so sensitized 
by the solitude that I was able to perceive the procession of 
"departed folk" who passed by. 

The explanation of this experience as a psychic compensation 
never entirely satisfied me, and to say that it was a hallucination 
seemed to me to beg the question. I felt obliged to consider the 
possibility of its reality, especially in view of the seventeenth- 
century account which had come my way. 

It would seem most likely to have been a synchronistic phe- 
nomenon. Such phenomena demonstrate that premonitions or 
visions very often have some correspondence in external reality. 
There actually existed, as I discovered, a real parallel to my ex- 
perience. In the Middle Ages just such gatherings of young 
men took place. These were the Reislaufer (mercenaries) who 
usually assembled in spring, marched from Central Switzerland 
to Locarno, met at the Casa di Ferro in Minusio and then 
marched on together to Milan. In Italy they served as soldiers, 
fighting for foreign princes. My vision, therefore, might have 
been one of these gatherings which took place regularly each 
spring when the young men, with singing and jollity, bade fare- 
well to their native land. 

When we began to build at Bollingen in 1923, my eldest 
daughter came to see the spot, and exclaimed, <4 What, you're 
building here? There are .corpses about!" Naturally I thought, 
"Ridiculous! Nothing of the sort!" But when we were construct- 
ing the annex four years later, we did come upon a skeleton. It 
lay at a depth of seven feet in the ground. An old rifle bullet was 
imbedded in the elbow. From various indications it seemed evi- 
dent that the body had been thrown into the grave in an ad- 
vanced state of decay. It belonged to one of the many dozens 

231 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

of French soldiers who were drowned in the Linth in 1799 and 
were later washed up on the shores of the Upper Lake. These 
men were drowned when the Austrians blew up the bridge of 
Grynau which the French were storming. A photograph of the 
open grave with the skeleton and the date of its discovery 
August 22, 1927 is preserved at the Tower. 

I arranged a regular burial on my property, and fired a gun 
three times over the soldier's grave. Then I set up a gravestone 
with an inscription for him. My daughter had sensed the pres- 
ence of the dead body. Her power to sense such things is some- 
tiling she inherits from my grandmother on my mother's side. 

In the winter of 1955-56 I chiseled the names of my paternal 
ancestors on three stone tablets and placed them in the court- 
yard of the Tower. I painted the ceiling with motifs from my 
own and my wife's arms, and from those of my sons-in-law. The 
Jung family originally had a phoenix for its arms, the bird ob- 
viously being connected with "young," "youth," "rejuvenation." 
My grandfather changed the elements of the arms, probably out 
of a spirit of resistance toward his father. He was an ardent 
Freemason and Grand Master of the Swiss lodge. This had a 
good deal to do with the changes he made in the armorial bear- 
ings. I mention this point, in itself of no consequence, because it 
belongs in the historical nexus of my thinking and my life. 

In keeping with this revision of my grandfather's, my coat of 
arms no longer contains the original phoenix. Instead there is a 
cross azure in chief dexter and in base sinister a blue bunch of 
grapes in a field d'or; separating these is an estoile d'or in a f ess 
azure. 3 The symbolism of these arms is Masonic, or Rosicru- 
cian. Just as cross and rose represent the Rosicrucian problem of 
opposites ("per crucem ad rosam"), that is, the Christian and 
Dionysian elements, so cross and grapes are symbols of the 
heavenly and the chthonic spirit. The uniting symbol is the gold 
star, the aurum philosophorum. 

The Rosicrucians derived from Hermetic or alchemical phi- 
losophy. One of their founders was Michael Maier ( 1568-1622), 
a well-known alchemist and younger contemporary of the rela- 

3 Translated from the language of heraldry: a blue cross in the upper right and 
blue grapes in the lower left in a field of gold; a blue bar with a gold star. 



The Tower 

tively unknown but more important Gerardus Dorneus (end of 
the sixteenth century), whose treatises fill the first volume of the 
Theatrum Chemicum of 1602. The two men lived in Frankfurt, 
which seems to have been a center of alchemical philosophy at 
the time. In any case, as Count Palatine and court physician to 
Rudolph II, Michael Maier was something of a local celebrity. 
In neighboring Mainz at that time lived Dr. med. et. jur. Carl 
Jung (died 1654), of whom nothing else is known, since the 
family tree breaks off with my great-great-grandfather who 
lived at the beginning of the eighteenth century. This was Sig- 
mund Jung, a civis Moguntinus, citizen of Mainz. The hiatus is 
due to the fact that the municipal archives of Mainz were burned 
in the course of a siege during the War of the Spanish Succes- 
sion. It is a safe surmise that this evidently learned Dr. Carl Jung 
was familiar with the writings of the two alchemists, for the 
pharmacology of the day was still very much under the influence 
of Paracelsus. Dorneus was an outspoken Paracelsist and even 
composed a voluminous commentary on the Paracelsan treatise, 
De Vita Longa. He also, more than all the other alchemists, 
dealt with the process of individuation. In view of the fact that a 
large part of my life work has revolved around the study of the 
problem of opposites, and especially their alchemical symbolism, 
all this is not without a certain interest. 

When I was working on the stone tablets, I became aware of 
the fateful links between me and my ancestors. I feel very 
strongly that I am under the influence of things or questions 
which were left incomplete and unanswered by my parents and 
grandparents and more distant ancestors. It often seems as if 
there were an impersonal karma within a family, which is passed 
on from parents to children. It has always seemed to me that I 
had to answer questions which fate had posed to my forefathers, 
and which had not yet been answered, or as if I had to complete, 
or perhaps continue, things which previous ages had left un- 
finished. It is difficult to determine whether these questions are 
more of a personal or more of a general (collective) nature. It 
seems to me that the latter is the case. A collective problem, if 
not recognized as such, always appears as a personal problem, 
and in individual cases may give the impression that something 



is out of order in the realm of the personal psyche. The personal 
sphere is indeed disturbed, but such disturbances need not be 
primary; they may well be secondary, the consequence of an 
insupportable change in the social atmosphere. The cause of 
disturbance is, therefore, not to be sought in the personal 
surroundings, but rather in the collective situation. Psycho- 
therapy has hitherto taken this matter far too little into ac- 
count. 

Like anyone who is capable of some introspection, I had early 
taken it for granted that the split in my personality was my own 
purely personal affair and responsibility. Faust, to be sure, had 
made the problem somewhat easier for me by confessing, "Two 
souls, alas, are housed within my breast"; but he had thrown no 
light on the cause of this dichotomy. His insight seemed, in a 
sense, directed straight at me. In the days when I first read 
Faust I could not remotely guess the extent to which Goethe's 
strange heroic myth was a collective experience and that it 
prophetically anticipated the fate of the Germans. Therefore 
I felt personally implicated, and when Faust, in his hubris 
and self-inflation, caused the murder of Philemon and Baucis, I 
felt guilty, quite as if I myself in the past had helped commit 
the murder of the two old people. This strange idea alarmed 
me, and I regarded it as my responsibility to atone for this crime, 
or to prevent its repetition. 

My false conclusion was further supported by a bit of odd 
information that I picked up during those early years, I heard 
that it had been bruited about that my grandfather Jung had 
been an illegitimate son of Goethe's. 4 This annoying story made 
an impression upon me insofar as it at once corroborated and 
seemed to explain my curious reactions to Faust. It is true that I 
did not believe in reincarnation, but I was instinctively familiar 
with that concept which the Indians call karma. Since in those 
days I had no idea of the existence of the unconscious, I could 
not have had any psychological understanding of my reactions. 
I also did not know no more than, even today, it is generally 
known that the future is unconsciously prepared long in ad- 

*See above, Chap. II, n. i, pp. 35-36. 



The Tower 

vance and therefore can be guessed by clairvoyants. Thus, when 
the news arrived o the crowning of Kaiser Wilhelm I at Ver- 
sailles, Jakob Burckhardt exclaimed, "That is the doom of Ger- 
many." The archetypes of Wagner were already knocking at 
the gates, and along with them came the Dionysian experience 
of Nietzsche which might better be ascribed to the god of 
ecstasy, Wotan. The hubris of the Wilhelmine era alienated 
Europe and paved the way for the disaster of 1914. 

In my youth ( around 1890) I was unconsciously caught up by 
this spirit of the age, and had no methods at hand for extricating 
myself from it. Faust struck a chord in me and pierced me 
through in a way that I could not but regard as personal. Most 
of all, it awakened in me the problem of opposites, of good and 
evil, of mind and matter, of light and darkness, Faust, the inept, 
purblind philosopher, encounters the dark side of his being, his 
sinister shadow, Mephistopheles, who in spite of his negating 
disposition represents the true spirit of life as against the arid 
scholar who hovers on the brink of suicide. My own inner con- 
tradictions appeared here in dramatized form; Goethe had 
written virtually a basic outline and pattern of my own conflicts 
and solutions. The dichotomy of Faust-Mephistopheles came to- 
gether within myself into a single person, and I was that person. 
In other words, I was directly struck, and recognized that this 
was my fate. Hence, all the crises of the drama affected me per- 
sonally; at one point I had passionately to agree, at another to 
oppose. No solution could be a matter of indifference to me. 
Later I consciously linked my work to what Faust had passed 
over: respect for the eternal rights of man, recognition of "the 
ancient," and the continuity of culture and intellectual history. 5 

Our souls as well as our bodies are composed of individual ele- 
ments which were all already present in the ranks of our an- 
cestors. The "newness" in the individual psyche is an endlessly 
varied recombination of age-old components. Body and soul 
therefore have an intensely historical character and find no 

5 Jung's attitude is shown in the inscription he placed over the gate of the Tower: 
Philemonis Sacrum Fausti Poenftentia (Shrine of Philemon Repentance of 
Faust) . When the gate was walled up, he put the same words above the entrance 
to the second tower. A. J. 

235 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

proper place in what is new, in things that have just come into 
being. That is to say, our ancestral components are only partly 
at home in such things. We are very far from having finished 
completely with the Middle Ages, classical antiquity, and 
primitivity, as our modern psyches pretend. Nevertheless, we 
have plunged down a cataract of progress which sweeps us on 
into the future with ever wilder violence the farther it takes us 
from our roots. Once the past has been breached, it is usually 
annihilated, and there is no stopping the forward motion. But it 
is precisely the loss of connection with the past, our uprooted- 
ness, which has given rise to the "discontents" of civilization 
and to such a flurry and haste that we live more in the future 
and its chimerical promises of a golden age than in the present, 
with which our whole evolutionary background has not yet 
caught up. We rush impetuously into novelty, driven by a 
mounting sense of insufficiency, dissatisfaction, and restless- 
ness. We no longer live on what we have, but on promises, no 
longer in the light of the present day, but in the darkness of the 
future, which, we expect, will at last bring the proper sunrise. 
We refuse to recognize that everything better is purchased at the 
price of something worse; that, for example, the hope of greater 
freedom is canceled out by increased enslavement to the state, 
not to speak of the terrible perils to which the most brilliant dis- 
coveries of science expose us. The less we understand of what our 
fathers and forefathers sought, the less we understand ourselves, 
and thus we help with all our might to rob the individual of his 
roots and his guiding instincts, so that he becomes a particle in 
the mass, ruled only by what Nietzsche called the spirit of 
gravity. 

Reforms by advances, that is, by new methods or gadgets, are 
of course impressive at first, but in the long run they are dubious 
and in any case dearly paid for. They by no means increase the 
contentment or happiness of people on the whole. Mostly, they 
are deceptive sweetenings of existence, like speedier communi- 
cations which unpleasantly accelerate the tempo of life and 
leave us with less time than ever before. Omnis festinatio ex 
parte diaboli est all haste is of the devil, as the old masters 
used to say. 

236 



The Tower 

Reforms by retrogressions, on die other hand, are as a rule 
less expensive and in addition more lasting, for they return to 
the simpler, tried and tested ways of the past and make the 
sparsest use of newspapers, radio, television, and all supposedly 
timesaving innovations. 

In this book I have devoted considerable space to my subjec- 
tive view of the world, which, however, is, not a product of ra- 
tional thinking. It is rather a vision such as will come to one who 
undertakes, deliberately, with half-closed eyes and somewhat 
closed ears, to see and hear the form and voice of being. If our 
impressions are too distinct, we are held to the hour and minute 
of the present and have no way of knowing how our ancestral 
psyches listen to and understand the present in other words, 
how our unconscious is responding to it. Thus we remain ig- 
norant of whether our ancestral components find an elementary 
gratification in our lives, or whether they are repelled. Inner 
peace and contentment depend in large measure upon whether 
or not the historical family which is inherent in the individual 
can be harmonized with the ephemeral conditions of the present. 

In the Tower at Bollingen it is as if one lived in many cen- 
turies simultaneously. The place will outlive me, and in its lo- 
cation and style it points backward to things of long ago. There 
is very little about it to suggest the present. If a man of the six- 
teenth century were to move into the house, only the kerosene 
lamp and the matches would be new to him; otherwise, he 
would know his way about without difficulty. There is nothing 
to disturb the dead, neither electric light nor telephone. More- 
over, my ancestors' souls are sustained by the atmosphere of the 
house, since I answer for them the questions that their lives once 
left behind. I carve out rough answers as best I can. I have even 
drawn them on the walls. It is as if a silent, greater family, 
stretching down the centuries, were peopling the house. There I 
live in my second personality and see life in the round, as some- 
thing forever coming into being and passing on. 



IX 



Travels 



f. NORTH AFRICA 

A THE BEGINNING of 1Q2O a friend told me that he 
had a business trip to make to Tunis, and would I like to 
accompany him? I said yes immediately. We set out in 
March, going first to Algiers. Following the coast, we reached 
Tunis and from there Sousse, where I left my friend to his busi- 
ness affairs. 

At last I was where I had longed to be: in a non-European 
country where no European language was spoken and no Chris- 
tian conceptions prevailed, where a different race lived and a 
different historical tradition and philosophy had set its stamp 
upon the face of the crowd. I had often wished to be able for 
once to see the European from outside, his image reflected back 
at him by an altogether foreign milieu. To be sure, there was my 
ignorance of the Arabic knguage, which I deeply regretted; 
but to make up for this I was all die more attentive in observing 
the people and their behavior. Frequently I sat for hours in an 
Arab coffee house, listening to conversations of which I under- 
stood not a word. But I studied the people's gestures, and espe- 
cially their expression of emotions; I observed the subtle change 

238 



Travels 

in their gestures when they spoke with a European, and thus 
learned to see to some extent with different eyes and to know the 
white man outside his own environment. 

What the Europeans regard as Oriental calm and apathy 
seemed to me a mask; behind it I sensed a restlessness, a degree 
of agitation, which I could not explain. Strangely, in setting foot 
upon Moorish soil, I found myself haunted by an impression 
which I myself could not understand: I kept thinking that the 
land smelled queer. It was the smell of blood, as though the soil 
were soaked with blood. This strip of land, it occurred to me, 
had already borne the brunt of three civilizations: Carthaginian, 
Roman, and Christian. What the technological age will do with 
Islam remains to be seen. 

When I left Sousse, I traveled south to Sfax, and thence into 
the Sahara, to the oasis city of Tozeur. The city lies on a slight 
elevation, on the margin of a plateau, at whose foot lukewarm, 
slightly saline springs well up profusely and irrigate the oasis 
through a thousand little canals. Towering date palms formed a 
green, shady roof overhead, under which peach, apricot, and fig 
trees flourished, and beneath these alfalfa of an unbelievable 
green. Several kingfishers, shining like jewels, flitted through 
the foliage. In the comparative coolness of this green shade 
strolled figures clad in white, among them a great number of 
affectionate couples holding one another in close embrace 
obviously homosexual friendships. I felt suddenly transported 
to the times of classical Greece, where this inclination formed 
the cement of a society of men and of the polls based on that 
society. It was clear that men spoke to men and women to 
women here. Only a few of the latter were to be seen, nunlike, 
heavily veiled figures. I saw a few without veils. These, my 
dragoman explained, were prostitutes. On the main streets the 
scene was dominated by men and children. 

My dragoman confirmed my impression of the prevalence of 
homosexuality, and of its being taken for granted, and promptly 
made me offers. The good fellow could have no notion of the 
thoughts which had struck me like a flash of lightning, suddenly 
illuminating my point of observation. I felt cast back many cen- 
turies to an infinitely more naive world of adolescents who were 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

preparing, with the aid of a slender knowledge of the Koran, to 
emerge from their original state of twilight consciousness, in 
which they had existed from time immemorial, and to become 
aware of heir own existence, in self-defense against the forces 
threatening them from the North. 

While I was still caught up in this dream of a static, age-old 
existence, I suddenly thought of my pocket watch, the symbol 
of the European's accelerated tempo. This, no doubt, was the 
dark cloud that hung threateningly over the heads of these un- 
suspecting souls. They suddenly seemed to me like game who 
do not see the hunter but, vaguely uneasy, scent him Turn" 
being the god of time who will inevitably chop into the bits and 
pieces of days, hours, minutes, and seconds that duration which 
is still the closest thing to eternity. 

From Tozeur I went on to the oasis of Nefta. I rode off with 
my dragoman early in the morning, shortly after sunrise. Our 
mounts were large, swift-footed mules, on which we made rapid 
progress. As we approached the oasis, a single rider, wholly 
swathed in white, came toward us. With proud bearing he rclde 
by without offering us any greeting, mounted on a black mule 
whose harness was banded and studded with silver. He made 
an impressive, elegant figure. Here was a man who certainly 
possessed no pocket watch, let alone a wrist watch; for he was 
obviously and unself-consciously the person he had always 
been. He lacked that faint note of foolishness which clings to the 
European. The European is, to be sure, convinced that he is no 
longer what he was ages ago; but he does not know what he 
has since become. His watch tells him that since the "Middle 
Ages" time and its synonym, progress, have crept up on him and 
irrevocably taken something from him. With lightened baggage 
he continues his journey, with steadily increasing velocity, to- 
ward nebulous goals. He compensates for the loss of gravity and 
the corresponding sentiment cFincompl&itude by the illusion of 
his triumphs, such as steamships, railroads, airplanes, and rock- 
ets, that rob him of his duration and transport him into another 
reality of speeds and explosive accelerations. 

The deeper we penetrated into the Sahara, the more time 
slowed down for me; it even threatened to move backward. The 

240 



Travels 

shimmering heat waves rising up contributed a good deal to my 
dreamy state, and when we reached the first palms and dwell- 
ings of the oasis, it seemed to me that everything here was ex- 
actly the way it should be and the way it had always been. 

Early the next morning I was awakened by the various un- 
familiar noises outside my inn. There was a large open square 
which had been empty the night before, but which was now 
crowded with people, camels, mules, and donkeys. The camels 
groaned and announced in manifold variations of tone then- 
chronic discontent, and the donkeys competed with cacopho- 
nous screams. The people ran around in a great state of excite- 
ment, shouting and gesticulating. They looked savage and 
rather alarming. My dragoman explained that a great festival 
was being celebrated that day. Several desert tribes had come 
in during the night to do two days of field work for the mara- 
bout. The marabout was the administrator of poor relief and 
owned many fields in the oasis. The people were to lay out a new 
field and irrigation canals to match. 

At the farther end of the square there suddenly rose a cloud of 
dust; a green flag unfolded, and drums rolled. At the head of a 
long procession of hundreds of wild-looking men carrying bas- 
kets and short, wide hoes appeared a white-bearded, venerable 
old man. He radiated inimitable natural dignity, as though he 
were a hundred years old. This was the marabout, astride a 
white mule. The men danced around him, beating small drums. 
The scene was one of wild excitement, hoarse shouting, dust, 
and heat. With fanatic purposefulness the procession swarmed 
by, out into the oasis, as if going to .battle. 

I followed this horde at a cautious distance, and my dragoman 
made no attempt to encourage me to approach closer until we 
reached the spot where the "work" was going on. Here, if pos- 
sible, even greater excitement prevailed; people were beating 
drums and shouting wildly; the site of the work resembled a 
disturbed anthill; everything was being done with the utmost 
haste. Carrying their baskets filled with heavy loads of earth, 
men danced along to the rhythm of the drums; others hacked 
into the ground at a furious rate, digging ditches and erecting 
dams. Through this wild tumult die marabout rode along on his 

241 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

white mule, evidently issuing instructions with the dignified, 
mild, and weary gestures of advanced age. Wherever he came, 
the haste, shouting, and rhythm intensified, forming the back- 
ground against which the calm figure of the holy man stood out 
with extraordinary effectiveness. Toward evening the crowd 
was visibly overcome by exhaustion; the men soon dropped 
down beside their camels into deep sleep. During the night, 
after the usual stupendous concert of the dogs, utter stillness 
prevailed, until at the first rays of the rising sun the invocation 
of the muezzin which always deeply stirred me summoned 
the people to their morning prayer. 

This scene taught me something: these people live from their 
affects, are moved and have their being in emotions. Their con- 
sciousness takes care of their 'orientation in space and transmits 
impressions from outside, and it is also stirred by inner impulses 
and affects. But it is not given to reflection; the ego has almost 
no autonomy. The situation is not so different with the Euro- 
pean; but we are, after all, somewhat more complicated. At any 
rate the European possesses a certain measure of will and di- 
rected intention. What we lack is intensity of life. 

Without wishing to fall under the spell of the primitive, I 
nevertheless had been psychically infected. This manifested it- 
self outwardly in an infectious enteritis which cleared up after a 
few days, thanks to the local treatment of rice water and calo- 
meL 

Overcharged with ideas, I finally went back to Tunis. The 
night before we embarked from Marseilles I had a dream which, 
I sensed, summed up the whole experience. This was just as it 
should be, for I had accustomed myself to living always on two 
planes simultaneously, one conscious, which attempted to un- 
derstand and could not, and one unconscious, which wanted to 
express something and could not formulate it any better than by 
a dream. 

I dreamt that I was in an Arab city, and as in most such cities 
there was a citadel, a casbah. The city was situated in a broad 
plain, and had a wall all around it. The shape of the wall was 
square, and there were four gates. 

The casbah in the interior of the city was surrounded by a 

242 



Travels 

wide moat (which is not the way it really is in Arab countries). 
I stood before a wooden bridge leading over the water to a dark, 
horseshoe-shaped portal, which was open. Eager to see the 
citadel from the inside also, I stepped out on the bridge. When I 
was about halfway across it, a handsome, dark Arab of aristo- 
cratic, almost royal bearing came toward me from the gate. I 
knew that this youth in the white burnoose was the resident 
prince of the citadel. When he came up to me, he attacked me 
and tried to knock me down. We wrestled. In the struggle we 
crashed against the railing; it gave way and both of us fell into 
the moat, where he tried to push my head under water to drown 
me. No, I thought, this is going too far. And in my turn I pushed 
his head under water. I did so although I felt great admiration 
for him; but I did not want to let myself be killed. I had no in- 
tention of killing him; I wanted only to make him unconscious 
and incapable of fighting. 

Then the scene of the dream changed, and he was with me in 
a large vaulted octagonal room in the center of the citadel. The 
room was all white, very plain and beautiful. Along the light- 
colored marble walls stood low divans, and before me on the 
floor lay an open book with black letters written in magnificent 
calligraphy on milky-white parchment. It was not Arabic script; 
rather, it looked to me like the Uigurian script of West Turke- 
stan, which was familiar to me from the Manichaean fragments 
from Turf an. I did not know the contents, but nevertheless I had 
the feeling that this was "my book," that I had written it. The 
young prince with whom I had just been wrestling sat to the 
right of me on the floor. I explained to him that now that I had 
overcome him he must read the book. But he resisted. I placed 
my arm around his shoulders and forced him, with a sort of 
paternal kindness and patience, to read the book. I knew that 
this was absolutely essential, and at last he yielded. 

In this dream, the Arab youth was the double of the proud 
Arab who had ridden past us without a greeting. As an in- 
habitant of the casbah he was a figuration of the self, or rather, 
a messenger or emissary of the self. For the casbah from which 
he came was a perfect mandala: a citadel surrounded by a 
square wall with four gates. His attempt to kill me was an echo 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

of the motif of Jacob's struggle with the angel; he was to use 
the language of the Bible like an angel of the Lord, a messen- 
ger of God who wished to kill men because he did not know 
them. 

Actually, the angel ought to have had his dwelling in me. But 
he knew only angelic truth and understood nothing about man. 
Therefore he first came forward as my enemy; however, I held 
my own against him. In the second part of the dream I was the 
master of the citadel; he sat at my feet and had to learn to 
understand my thoughts, or rather, learn to know man. 

Obviously, my encounter with Arab culture had struck me 
with overwhelming force. The emotional nature of these unre- 
flective people who are so much closer to life than we are exerts 
a strong suggestive influence upon those historical layers in our- 
selves which we have just overcome and left behind, or which 
we think we have overcome. It is like the paradise of childhood 
from which we imagine we have emerged, but which at the 
slightest provocation imposes fresh defeats upon us. Indeed, our 
cult of progress is in danger of imposing on us even more child- 
ish dreams of the future, the harder it presses us to escape from 
the past. 

On the other hand, a characteristic of childhood is that, 
thanks to its naivet6 and unconsciousness, it sketches a more 
complete picture of the self, of the whole man in his pure in- 
dividuality, than adulthood. Consequently, the sight of a child 
or a primitive will arouse certain longings in adult, civilized 
persons longings which relate to the unfulfilled desires and 
needs of those parts of the personality which have been blotted 
out of the total picture in favor of the adapted persona. 

In traveling to Africa to find a psychic observation post out- 
side the sphere of the European, I unconsciously wanted to find 
that part of my personality which had become invisible under 
the influence and the pressure of being European. This part 
stands in unconscious opposition to myself, and indeed I at- 
tempt to suppress it. In keeping with its nature, it wishes to make 
me unconscious (force me under water) so as to kill me; but my 
aim is, through insight, to make it more conscious, so that we 
can find a common modus vivendi. The Arab's dusky complexion 

244 



Travels 

marks him as a "shadow," but not the personal shadow, rather 
an ethnic one associated not with my persona but with the 
totality of my personality, that is, with the self. As master of the 
casbah, he must be regarded as a kind of shadow of the self. 
The predominantly rationalistic European finds much that is 
human alien to him, and he prides himself on this without real- 
izing that his rationality is won at the expense of his vitality, 
and that the primitive part of his personality is consequently 
condemned to a more or less underground existence. 

The dream reveals how my encounter with North Africa af- 
fected me. First of all there was the danger that my European 
consciousness would be overwhelmed by an unexpectedly vio- 
lent assault of the unconscious psyche. Consciously, I was not a 
bit aware of any such situation; on the contrary, I could not 
help feeling superior because I was reminded at every step of 
my Europeanism. That was unavoidable; my being European 
gave me a certain perspective on these people who were so 
differently constituted from myself, and utterly marked me off 
from them. But I was not prepared for the existence of uncon- 
scious forces within myself which would take the part of these 
strangers with such intensity, so that a violent conflict ensued. 
The dream expressed this conflict in the symbol of an attempted 
murder. 

I was not to recognize the real nature of this disturbance until 
some years later, when I stayed in tropical Africa. It had been, 
in fact, the first hint of "going black under the skin," a spiritual 
peril which threatens the uprooted European in Africa to an 
extent not fully appreciated. "Where danger is, there is salva- 
tion also" these words of Holderlin often came to my mind in 
such situations. The salvation lies in our ability to bring the un- 
conscious urges to consciousness with the aid of warning 
dreams. These dreams show that there is something in us which 
does not merely submit passively to the influence of the uncon- 
scious, but on the contrary rushes eagerly to meet it, identifying 
itself with the shadow. Just as a childhood memory can sud- 
denly take possession of consciousness with so lively an emotion 
that we feel wholly transported back to the original situation, 
so these seemingly alien and wholly different Arab surroundings 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

awaken an archetypal memory of an only too well known pre- 
historic past which apparently we have entirely forgotten. We 
are remembering a potentiality of life which has been overgrown 
by civilization, but which in certain places is still existent. If we 
were to relive it naively, it would constitute a relapse into barba- 
rism. Therefore we prefer to forget it. But should it appear to us 
again in the form of a conflict, then we should keep it in our con- 
sciousness and test the two possibilities against each other the 
Me we live and the one we have forgotten. For what has appar- 
ently been lost does not come to the fore again without sufficient 
reason. In the living psychic structure, nothing takes place in a 
merely mechanical fashion; everything fits into the economy of 
the whole, relates to the whole. That is to say, it is all purposeful 
and has meaning. But because consciousness never has a view of 
the whole, it usually cannot understand this meaning. We must 
therefore content ourselves for the time being with noting the 
phenomenon and hoping that the future, or further investiga- 
tion, will reveal the significance of this clash with the shadow of 
the self. In any case, I did not at the time have any glimmering 
of the nature of this archetypal experience, and knew still less 
about the historical parallels. Yet though I did not then grasp 
the full meaning of the dream, it lingered in my memory, along 
with the liveliest wish to go to Africa again at the next oppor- 
tunity. That wish was not to be fulfilled for another five years. 

ii. AMERICA: THE PUEBLO INDIANS 
(Extract from an unpublished MS.) 

We always require an outside point to stand on, in order to 
apply the lever of criticism. This is especially so in psychology, 
where by the nature of the material we are much more sub- 
jectively involved than in any other science. How, for example, 
can we become conscious of national peculiarities if we have 
never had the opportunity to regard our own nation from out- 
side? Regarding it from outside means regarding it from the 
standpoint of another nation. To do so, we must acquire suffi- 
cient knowledge of the foreign collective psyche, and in the 
course of this process of assimilation we encounter all those in- 

246 



Travels 

compatibilities which constitute the national bias and the na- 
tional peculiarity. Everything that irritates us about others can 
lead us to an understanding of ourselves. I understand England 
only when I see where I, as a Swiss, do not fit in. I understand 
Europe, our greatest problem, only when I see where I as a 
European do not fit into the world. Through my acquaintance 
with many Americans, and my trips to and in America, I have 
obtained an enormous amount of insight into the European 
character; it has always seemed to me that there can be nothing 
more useful for a European than some time or another to look 
out at Europe from the top of a skyscraper. When I contem- 
plated for the first time the European spectacle from the Sahara, 
surrounded by a civilization which has more or less the same 
relationship to ours as Roman antiquity has to modern times, I 
became aware of how completely, even in America, I was still 
caught up and imprisoned in the cultural consciousness of the 
white man. The desire then grew in me to carry the historical 
comparisons still farther by descending to a still lower cultural 
level. 

On my next trip to the United States I went with a group of 
American friends to visit the Indians of New Mexico, the city- 
building Pueblos. "City," however, is too strong a word. What 
they build are in reality only villages; but their crowded houses 
piled one atop the other suggest the word "city,*' as do their 
language and their whole manner. There for the first time I had 
the good fortune to talk with a non-European, that is, to a non- 
white. He was a chief of the Taos pueblos, an intelligent man 
between the ages of forty and fifty. His name was Ochwiay 
Biano (Mountain Lake). I was able to talk with him as I have 
rarely been able to talk with a European. To be sure, he was 
caught up in his world just as much as a European is in his, but 
what a world it wasl In talk with a European, one is constantly 
running up on the sand bars of things long known but never 
understood; with this Indian, the vessel floated freely on deep, 
alien seas. At the same time, one never knows which is more en- 
joyable: catching sight of new shores, or discovering new ap- 
proaches to age-old knowledge that has been almost forgotten. 

"See," Ochwiay Biano said, "how cruel the whites look. Their 

247 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

lips are thin, their noses sharp, their faces furrowed and dis- 
torted by folds. Their eyes have a staring expression; they are 
always seeking something. What are they seeking? The whites 
always want something; they are always uneasy and restless. 
We do not know what they want. We do not understand them. 
We think that they are mad." 

I asked him why he thought the whites were all mad. 

"They say that they think with their heads/' he replied. 

"Why of course. What do you think with?" I asked him in 
surprise. 

"We think here," he said, indicating his heart. 

I fell into a long meditation. For the first time in my life, so it 
seemed to me, someone had drawn for me a picture of the real 
white man. It was as though until now I had seen nothing but 
sentimental, prettified color prints. This Indian had struck our 
vulnerable spot, unveiled a truth to which we are blind. I felt 
rising within me like a shapeless mist something unknown and 
yet deeply familiar. And out of this mist, image upon image 
detached itself: first Roman legions smashing into the cities of 
Gaul, and the keenly incised features of Julius Caesar, Scipio 
Africanus, and Pompey. I saw the Roman eagle on the North 
Sea and on the banks of the White Nile. Then I saw St. Augus- 
tine transmitting the Christian creed to the Britons on the tips of 
Roman lances, and Charlemagne's most glorious forced con- 
versions of the heathen; then the pillaging and murdering bands 
of the Crusading armies. With a secret stab I realized the hol- 
lowness of that old romanticism about the Crusades. Then fol- 
lowed Columbus, Cortes, and the other conquistadors who with 
fire, sword, torture, and Christianity came down upon even 
these remote pueblos dreaming peacefully in the Sun, their 
Father. I saw, too, the peoples of the Pacific islands decimated 
by firewater, syphilis, and scarlet fever carried in the clothes the 
missionaries forced on them. 

It was enough. What we from our point of view call coloniza- 
tion, missions to the heathen, spread of civilization, etc., has 
another face the face of a bird of prey seeking with cruel in- 
tentness for distant quarry a face worthy of a race of pirates 
and highwaymen. All the eagles and other predatory creatures 

248 



Travels 

that adorn our coats of arms seem to me apt psychological 
representatives of our true nature. 

Something else that Ochwiay Biano said to me stuck in my 
mind. It seems to me so intimately connected with the peculiar 
atmosphere of our interview that my account would be incom- 
plete if I failed to mention it. Our conversation took place on the 
roof of the fifth story of the main building. At frequent intervals 
figures of other Indians could be seen on the roofs, wrapped in 
their woolen blankets, sunk in contemplation of the wandering 
sun that daily rose into a clear sky. Around us were grouped the 
low-built square buildings of air-dried brick (adobe), with the 
characteristic ladders that reach from the ground to the roof, or 
from roof to roof of the higher stories. (In earlier, dangerous 
times the entrance used to be through the roof.) Before us the 
rolling plateau of Taos (about seven thousand feet above sea 
level) stretched to the horizon, where several conical peaks 
(ancient volcanoes) rose to over twelve thousand feet. Behind 
us a clear stream purled past the houses, and on its opposite 
bank stood a second pueblo of reddish adobe houses, built one 
atop the other toward the center of the settlement, thus 
strangely anticipating the perspective of an American metrop- 
olis with its skyscrapers in the center. Perhaps half an hour's 
journey upriver rose a mighty isolated mountain, the moijntain, 
which has no name. The story goes that on days when the moun- 
tain is wrapped in clouds the men vanish in that direction to 
perform mysterious rites. 

The Pueblo Indians are unusually closemouthed, and in mat- 
ters of their religion absolutely inaccessible. They make it a 
policy to keep their religious practices a secret, and this secret 
is so strictly guarded that I abandoned as hopeless any attempt 
at direct questioning. Never before had I run into such an 
atmosphere of secrecy; the religions of civilized nations today 
are all accessible; their sacraments have long ago ceased to be 
mysteries. Here, however, the air was filled with a secret known 
to all the communicants, but to which whites could gain no 
access. This strange situation gave me an inkling of Eleusis, 
whose secret was known to one nation and yet never betrayed. 
I understood what Pausanias or Herodotus felt when he wrote: 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

"I am not permitted to name the name of that god.'* This was 
not, I felt, mystification, but a vital mystery whose betrayal 
might bring about the downfall of the community as well as of 
the individual. Preservation of the secret gives the Pueblo In- 
dian pride and the power to resist the dominant whites. It gives 
him cohesion and unity; and I feel sure that the Pueblos as an 
individual community will continue to exist as long as their mys- 
teries are not desecrated. 

It was astonishing to me to see how the Indian's emotions 
change when he speaks of his religious ideas. In ordinary life he 
shows a degree of self-control and dignity that borders on fa- 
talistic equanimity. But when he speaks of things that pertain to 
his mysteries, he is in the grip of a surprising emotion which he 
cannot conceal a fact which greatly helped to satisfy my curi- 
osity. As I have said, direct questioning led to nothing. When, 
therefore, I wanted to know about essential matters, I made 
tentative remarks and observed my interlocutor's expression for 
those affective movements which are so very familiar to me. If I 
had hit on something essential, he remained silent or gave an 
evasive reply, but with all the signs of profound emotion; fre- 
quently tears would fill his eyes. Their religious conceptions are 
not theories to them (which, indeed, would have to be very 
curious theories to evoke tears from a man), but facts, as im- 
portant and moving as the corresponding external realities. 

As I sat with Ochwiay Biano on the roof, the blazing sun ris- 
ing higher and higher, he said, pointing to the sun, "Is not he 
who moves there our father? How can anyone say differently? 
How can there be another god? Nothing can be without the 
sun." His excitement, which was already perceptible, mounted 
still higher; he struggled for words, and exclaimed at last, 
"What would a man do alone in the mountains? He cannot 
even build his fire without him." 

I asked him whether he did not think the sun might be a fiery 
ball shaped by an invisible god. My question did not even 
arouse astonishment, let alone anger. Obviously it touched noth- 
ing within him; he did not even think my question stupid. It 
merely left him cold, I had the feeling that I had come upon an 

250 



Travels 

insurmountable wall. His only reply was, "The sun is God. 
Everyone can see that." 

Although no one can help feeling the tremendous impress of 
the sun, it was a novel and deeply affecting experience for me 
to see these mature, dignified men in the grip of an overmaster- 
ing emotion when they spoke of it. 

Another time I stood by the river and looked up at the moun- 
tains, which rise almost another six thousand feet above the 
plateau. I was just thinking that this was the roof of the Ameri- 
can continent, and that people lived here in the face of the 
sun like the Indians who stood wrapped in blankets on the 
highest roofs of the pueblo, mute and absorbed in the sight of 
the sun. Suddenly a deep voice, vibrant with suppressed emo- 
tion, spoke from behind me into my left ear: "Do you not think 
that aU life comes from the mountain?" An elderly Indian had 
come up to me, inaudible in his moccasins, and had asked me 
this heaven knows how far-reaching question. A glance at the 
river pouring down from the mountain showed me the outward 
image that had engendered this conclusion. Obviously all life 
came from the mountain, for where there is water, there is life. 
Nothing could be more obvious. In his question I felt a swell- 
ing emotion connected with the word "mountain," and thought 
of the tale of secret rites celebrated on the mountain. I replied, 
"Everyone can see that you speak the truth/' 

Unfortunately, the conversation was soon interrupted, and so 
I did not succeed in attaining any deeper insight into the sym- 
bolism of water and mountain. 

I observed that the Pueblo Indians, reluctant as they were to 
speak about anything concerning their religion, talked with 
great readiness and intensity about their relations with the 
Americans. "Why," Mountain Lake said, "do the Americans not 
let us alone? Why do they want to forbid our dances? Why do 
they make difficulties when we want to take our young people 
from school in order to lead them to the kiva ( site of the rituals ) , 
and instruct them in our religion? We do nothing to harm the 
Americans!" After a prolonged silence he continued, "The Amer- 
icans want to stamp out our religion. Why can they not let us 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

alone? What we do, we do not only for ourselves but for the 
Americans also. Yes, we do it for the whole world. Everyone 
benefits by it." 

I could observe from his excitement that he was alluding to 
some extremely important element of his religion. I therefore 
asked him: "You think, then, that what you do in your religion 
benefits the whole world?" He replied with great animation, "Of 
course. If we did not do it, what would become of the world?'* 
And with a significant gesture he pointed to the sun. 

I felt that we were approaching extremely delicate ground 
here, verging on the mysteries of the tribe. "After all," he said, 
"we are a people who live on the roof of the world; we are the 
sons of Father Sun, and with our religion we daily help our 
father to go across the sky. We do this not only for ourselves, but 
for the whole world. If we were to cease practicing our religion, 
in ten years the sun would no longer rise. Then it would be 
night forever/' 

I then realized on what the "dignity," the tranquil composure 
of the individual Indian, was founded. It springs from his being 
a son of the sun; his life is cosmologically meaningful, for he 
helps the father and preserver of all life in his daily rise and 
descent. If we set against this our own self -justifications, the 
meaning of our own lives as it is formulated by our reason, we 
cannot help but see our poverty. Out of sheer envy we are 
obliged to smile at the Indians* naivete and to plume ourselves 
on our cleverness; for otherwise we would discover how im- 
poverished and down at the heels we are. Knowledge does not 
enrich us; it removes us more and more from the mythic world 
in which we were once at home by right of birth. 

If for a moment we put away all European rationalism and 
transport ourselves into the clear mountain air of that solitary 
plateau, which drops off on one side into the broad continental 
prairies and on the other into the Pacific Ocean; if we also set 
aside our intimate knowledge of the world and exchange it for 
a horizon that seems immeasurable, and an ignorance of what 
lies beyond it, we will begin to achieve an inner comprehension 
of the Pueblo Indian's point of view. "All life comes from the 
mountain*' is immediately convincing to him, and he is equally 



Travels 

certain that he lives upon the roof of an immeasurable world, 
closest to God. He above all others has the Divinity's ear, and 
his ritual act will reach the distant sun soonest of all. The holi- 
ness of mountains, the revelation of Yahweh upon Sinai, the in- 
spiration that Nietzsche was vouchsafed in the Engadine all 
speak the same language. The idea, absurd to us, that a ritual 
act can magically affect the sun is, upon closer examination, no 
less irrational but far more familiar to us than might at first be 
assumed. Our Christian religion like every other, incidentally 
is permeated by the idea that special acts or a special kind of 
action can influence God for example, through certain rites or 
by prayer, or by a morality pleasing to the Divinity. 

The ritual acts of man are an answer and reaction to the ac- 
tion of God upon man; and perhaps they are not only that, but 
are also intended to be "activating," a form of magic coercion. 
That man feels capable of formulating valid replies to the over- 
powering influence of God, and that he can render back some- 
thing which is essential even to God, induces pride, for it raises 
the human individual to the dignity of a metaphysical factor. 
"God and us" even if it is only an unconscious sous-entendu 
this equation no doubt underlies that enviable serenity of the 
Pueblo Indian. Such a man is in the fullest sense of the word in 
his proper place. 

UL KENYA AND UGANDA 

Tout est bien sortant des mains de 
fAuteur des chases Rousseau. 

When I visited the Wembley Exhibition in London (1925), I 
was deeply impressed by the excellent survey of the tribes under 
British rule, and resolved to take a trip to tropical Africa in the 
near future. 

In the autumn of that year I set out with two friends, an 
Englishman and an American, for Mombassa. We traveled on 
a Woerman steamer, together with many young Englishmen 
going out to posts in various African colonies. It was evident 
from the atmosphere aboard ship that these passengers were 
not traveling for pleasure, but were entering upon their destiny. 

253 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

To be sure, there was a good deal of gay exuberance, but the 
serious undertone was also evident. As a matter of fact, I heard 
of the fate of several of my fellow voyagers even before my own 
return trip. Several met death in the tropics in the course of the 
next two months. They died of tropical malaria, amoebic dys- 
entery, and pneumonia. Among those who died was the young 
man who sat opposite me at table. Another was Dr. Akley, who 
had made a name for himself as the founder of the Gorilla Reser- 
vation in Central Africa and whom I had met in New York 
shortly before this voyage. 

Mombassa remains in my memory as a humidly hot, Euro- 
pean, Indian, and Negro settlement hidden in a forest of palms 
and mango trees. It has an extremely picturesque setting, on a 
natural harbor, with an old Portuguese fort towering over it. We 
stayed there two days, and left toward evening on a narrow- 
gauge railroad for Nairobi in the interior, plunging almost im- 
mediately into the tropical night. 

Along the coastal strip we passed by numerous Negro villages 
where the people sat talking around tiny fires. Soon the train 
began to climb. The settlements ceased, and the night became 
inky black. Gradually it turned cooler, and I fell asleep. When 
the first ray of sunlight announced the onset of day, I awoke. 
The train, swathed in a red cloud of dust, was just making a turn 
around a steep red cliff. On a jagged rock above us a slim, 
brownish-black figure stood motionless, leaning on a long spear, 
looking down at the train. Beside him towered a gigantic cande- 
labrum cactus. 

I was enchanted by this sight it was a picture of something 
utterly alien and outside my experience, but on the other hand 
a most intense sentiment du deja vu. I had the feeling that I had 
already experienced this moment and had always known this 
world which was separated from me only by distance in time. 
It was as if I were this moment returning to the land of my 
youth, and as if I knew that dark-skinned man who had been 
waiting for me for five thousand years. 

The feeling-tone of this curious experience accompanied me 
throughout my whole journey through savage Africa. I can re- 
call only one other such recognition of the immemorially known. 

254 



Travels 

That was when I first observed a parapsychological phenome- 
non, together with my former chief, Professor Eugen Bleuler. 
Beforehand I had imagined that I would be dumfounded if I 
were to see so fantastic a thing. But when it happened, I was 
not surprised at all; I felt it was perfectly natural, something I 
could take for granted because I had long since been acquainted 
with it. 

I could not guess 'what string within myself was plucked at 
the sight of that solitary dark hunter. I knew only that his world 
had been mine for countless millennia. 

Somewhat bemused, I arrived around noon in Nairobi, situ- 
ated at an altitude of six thousand feet. There was a dazzling 
plethora of light that reminded me of the glare of sunlight in 
the Engadine as oiie comes up out of the winter fogs of the 
lowlands. To my astonishment die swarm of "boys" assembled at 
the railroad station wore the old-fashioned gray and white 
woolen ski caps which I had seen worn or worn myself in the 
Engadine. They are highly esteemed because the upturned rim 
can be let down like a visor in the Alps, good protection against 
the icy wind; here, against the blazing heat. 

From Nairobi we used a small Ford to visit the Athi Plains, a 
great game preserve. From a low hill in this broad savanna a 
magnificent prospect opened out to us. To the very brink of the 
horizon we saw gigantic herds of animals: gazelle, antelope, 
gnu, zebra, warthog, and so on. Grazing, heads nodding, the 
herds moved forward like slow rivers. There was scarcely any 
sound save the melancholy cry of a bird of prey. This was the 
stillness of the eternal beginning, the world as it had always 
been, in the state of non-being; for until then no one had been 
present to know that it was this world. I walked away from my 
companions until I had put them out of sight, and savored the 
f eeling of being entirely alone. There I was now, the first human 
being to recognize that this was the world, but who did not 
know that in this moment he had first really created it. 

There the cosmic meaning of consciousness became over- 
whelmingly clear to me. "What nature leaves imperfect, the art 
perfects," say the alchemists. Man, I, in an invisible act of crea- 
tion put the stamp of perfection on the world by giving it objec- 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

tive existence. This act we usually ascribe to the Creator alone, 
without considering that in so doing we view lif e as a machine 
calculated down to the last detail, which, along with the human 
psyche, runs on senselessly, obeying foreknown and predeter- 
mined rules. In such a cheerless clockwork fantasy there is no 
drama of man, world, and God; there is no "new day" leading 
to "new shores/* but only the dreariness of calculated processes. 
My old Pueblo friend came to my mind. He thought that the 
raison cTStre of his pueblo had been to help their father, the sun, 
to cross the sky each day. I had envied him for the fullness of 
meaning in that belief, and had been looking about without 
hope for a myth of our own. Now I knew what it was, and knew 
even more: that man is indispensable for the completion of crea- 
tion; that, in fact, he himself is the second creator of the world, 
who alone has given to the world its objective existence with- 
out which, unheard, unseen, silently eating, giving birth, dying, 
heads nodding through hundreds of millions of years, it would 
have gone on in the prof oundest night of non-being down to its 
unknown end. Human consciousness created objective existence 
and meaning, and man found his indispensable place in the 
great process of being. 

By the Uganda railroad, which was then being built, we traveled 
to its provisional terminus, Station Sigistifour (sixty-four). The 
boys unloaded our quantities of equipment. I sat down on a 
chop box, a crate containing provisions, each one a man's head- 
load, and lit a pipe, meditating on the fact that here we had, 
as it were, reached the edge of the oikumene, the inhabited 
earth, from which trails stretched endlessly over the continent. 
After a while an elderly Englishman, obviously a squatter, 
joined me, sat down, and likewise took out a pipe. He asked 
where we were going. When I outlined our various destinations, 
he asked, "Is this the first time you have been in Africa? I have 
been here for forty years." 

"Yes," I told him. "At least in this part of Africa/' 
"Then may I give you a piece of advice? You know, mister, 
this here country is not man's country, it's God's country. So if 
anything should happen, just sit down and don't worry." Where- 

256 



Travels 

upon he rose and without another word was lost in the horde of 
Negroes swarming around us. 

His words struck me as somehow significant, and I tried to 
visualize the psychological state from which they had sprung. 
Evidently they represented the quintessence of his experience; 
not man but God was in command here in other words, not 
will and intention, but inscrutable design. 

I had not come to the end of my meditation when our two 
automobiles were ready to set off. Our party piled in with the 
baggage, eight men strong, and we held on as best we could. 
The shaking I received for the next several hours left no room 
for reflection. It was much farther than I had thought to the 
next settlement; Kakamegas, seat of a D.C. (District Commis- 
sioner), headquarters of a small garrison of the African Rifles, 
and site of a hospital and fantastically enough a small insane 
asylum. Evening approached, and suddenly night had fallen. 
All at once, a tropical storm came up, with almost incessant 
flashes of lightning, thunder, and a cloudburst which instantly 
soaked us from head to foot and made every brook a raging 
torrent. 

It was half an hour after midnight, with the sky beginning to 
clear, when we reached Kakamegas. We were exhausted, and 
the D.C. helpfully received us with whisky in his drawing room. 
A jolly and oh-so-welcome fire was burning in the fireplace. In 
the center of the handsome room stood a large table with a dis- 
play of English journals. The place might easily have been a 
country house in Sussex. In my tiredness I no longer knew 
whether I had been transported from reality into a dream, or 
from a dream to reality. Then we had still to pitch our tents 
for the first time. Luckily, nothing was missing. 

Next morning I awoke with a touch of feverish laryngitis, 
and had to stay in bed for a day. To this circumstance I owe 
my memorable acquaintanceship with the "brain-fever bird," a 
creature remarkable for being able to sing a correct scale, but 
leaving out the last note and starting again from the beginning. 
To listen to this when one is down with a fever is to have one's 
nerves strained to the breaking point. 

Another feathered inhabitant of the banana plantations has a 

257 



Memories, Dreams, 'Reflections 

cry which consists of two of the sweetest and most melodious 
flute tones with a third, frightful sour note for an ending. "What 
nature leaves imperfect . . ." The song of the "bell bird/' how- 
ever, was one of unalloyed beauty. When it sang, it was as 
though a bell were drifting along the horizon. 

Next day, with the aid of the D.C., we rounded up our column 
of bearers, which was supplemented by a military escort of three 
Askaris. And now began the trek to Mt. Elgon, whose fourteen- 
thousand-foot crater waif we soon saw on the horizon. The track 
led through relatively dry savanna covered with umbrella aca- 
cias. The whole district was densely covered with small, round 
tumuli between six and ten feet high old termite colonies. 

For travelers there were resthouses along the track round, 
grass-roofed, rammed-earth huts, open and empty. At night a 
burning lantern was placed in the entrance as protection against 
intruders. Our cook had no lantern; but as a compensation he 
had a miniature hut all to himself, with which he was highly 
pleased. But it nearly proved fatal to him. The previous day he 
had slaughtered in front of his hut a sheep that we had bought 
for five Uganda shillings, and had prepared excellent mutton 
chops for our evening meal. After dinner, while we were sitting 
around the fire, smoking, we heard strange noises in the dis- 
tance. The sounds came closer. They sounded now like the 
growling of bears, now like the barking and yapping of dogs; 
then again the sounds became shrill, like shrieks and hysterical 
laughter. My first impression was: This is like a comic turn at 
Barnum and Bailey's. Before long, however, the scene became 
more menacing: we were surrounded on all sides by a huge 
pack of hungry hyenas who had obviously smelled the sheep's 
blood. They performed an infernal concert, and in the glow of 
the fire their eyes could be seen glittering from the tall elephant 
grass. 

In spite of our lofty knowledge of the nature of hyenas, which 
are alleged not to attack man, we did not feel altogether sure 
of ourselves and suddenly a frightful human scream came 
from behind the resthouse. We snatched up our arms (a 
nine-mm. Mannlicher rifle and a shotgun) and fired several 



Travels 

rounds in the direction of those glittering lights. As we did so, 
our cook came rushing panic-stricken into our midst and babbled 
that a fizi had come into his hut and almost killed him. The 
whole camp was in an uproar. The excitement, it seemed, so 
frightened the pack of hyenas that they quit the scene, protest- 
ing noisily. The bearers went on laughing for a long time, after 
which the rest of the night passed quietly, without further dis- 
turbance. Early next morning the local chief appeared with a 
gift of two chickens and a basketful of eggs. He implored us 
to stay another day to shoot the hyenas. The day before, he said, 
they had dragged out an old man asleep in his hut and eaten 
him. De Africa nihil certuml 

At daybreak roars of laughter began again in the boys' quar- 
ters. It appeared that they were re-enacting the events of the 
night. One of them played the sleeping cook, and one of the 
soldiers played the creeping hyena, approaching the sleeper 
with murderous intent. This playlet was repeated I don't know 
how many times, to the utter delight of the audience. 

From then on the cook bore the nickname "Fizi." We three 
whites already had our "trade-marks." My friend, the English- 
man, was called "Red Neck" to the native mind, all English- 
men had red necks. The American, who sported an impressive 
wardrobe, was known as "bwana maredadi (the dapper gentle- 
man). Because I already had gray hair at the time (I was then 
fifty), I was the "mzee" the old man, and was regarded as a 
hundred years old. Advanced age was rare in those parts; I saw 
very few white-haired men. Mzee is also a title of honor and 
was accorded to me in my capacity as head of the "Bugishu 
Psychological Expedition" an appellation imposed by the For- 
eign Office in London as a lucus a non lucendo. We did visit 
the Bugishus, but spent a much longer time with the Elgonyis. 

All in all, Negroes proved to be excellent judges of character. 
One of their avenues to insight lay in their talent for mimicry. 
They could imitate with astounding accuracy the manner of ex- 
pression, the gestures, the gaits of people, thus, to all intents 
and purposes, slipping into their skins. I found their understand- 
ing of the emotional nature of others altogether surprising. I 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

would always take the time to engage in the long palavers for 
which, they had a pronounced fondness. In this way I learned 
a great deal. 

Our traveling semi-officially proved advantageous, since in 
this way we found it easier to recruit bearers, and we were also 
given a military escort. The latter was by no means superfluous, 
since we were going to travel in territories that were not under 
white control. A corporal and two privates accompanied our 
safari to Mt Elgon. 

We could not help the chief by hunting the hyenas, and con- 
tinued on our way after the adventure. The terrain sloped 
gently upward. Signs of Tertiary lava beds increased. We passed 
through glorious stretches of jungle with huge Nandi flame trees 
flaunting their red blossoms. Enormous beetles and even larger 
brilliantly colored butterflies enlivened the clearings and the 
edges of the jungle. Branches were shaken by inquisitive mon- 
keys as we advanced further into the bush. It was a paradisal 
world. Most of the way we still traversed flat savanna with deep 
red soil. We tramped mostly along the native trails which 
meandered in strikingly sharp turns. Our route led us into the 
Nandi region, and through the Nandi Forest, a sizable area of 
jungle. Without incident we reached a resthouse at the foot of 
Mt. Elgon, which had been towering higher and higher above 
our heads for days. Here the climb began, along a narrow path. 
We were greeted by the local chief, who was the son of the 
laibon, the medicine man. He rode a pony the only horse we 
had so far seen. From him we learned that his tribe belonged to 
the Masai, but lived in isolation here on the slopes of Mt. 
Elgon. 

There a letter awaited us from the governor of Uganda, re- 
questing us to take under our protection an English lady who 
was on her way back to Egypt via the Sudan. The governor was 
aware that we were following the same itinerary, and since we 
had already met the lady in Nairobi we knew that she would 
be a congenial companion. Moreover, we were under consider- 
able obligation to the governor for his having helped us in all 
sorts of ways. 

I mention this episode to suggest the subtle modes by which 

260 



Travels 

an archetype influences our actions. We were three men; that 
was a matter of pure chance. I had asked another friend of mine 
to join us, which would have made a fourth. But circumstances 
had prevented him from accepting. That sufficed to produce an 
unconscious or fated constellation: the archetype of the triad, 
which calls for the fourth to complete it, as we have seen again 
and again in the history of this archetype. 

Since I am inclined to accept chance when it comes my way, I 
welcomed the lady to our group of three men. Hardy and 
intrepid, she proved a useful counterpoise to our one-sided 
masculinity. When one of our party came down with a bad case 
of tropical malaria, we were grateful for the experience she had 
acquired as a nurse during the First World War. 

After a few hours of climbing we reached a lovely large clear- 
ing, bisected by a clear, cool brook with a waterfall about ten 
feet in height. The pool at the bottom of the waterfall became 
our bath. Our campsite was situated about three hundred yards 
away, on a gentle, dry slope, shadowed by umbrella acacias. 
Nearby that is, about fifteen minutes* walk away was a na- 
tive kraal which consisted of a few huts and a boma a yard 
surrounded by a hedge of wait-a-bit thorn. This kraal provided 
us with our water bearers, a woman and her two half -grown 
daughters, who were naked except for a belt of cowries. They 
were chocolate-brown and strikingly pretty, with fine slim fig- 
ures and an aristocratic leisureliness about their movements. It 
was a pleasure for me each morning to hear the soft ding-clang 
of their iron ankle rings as they came up from the brook, and 
soon afterward to see their swaying gait as they emerged from 
the tall yellow elephant grass, balancing the amphorae of water 
on their heads. They were adorned with ankle rings, brass brace- 
lets and necklaces, earrings of copper or wood in the shape of 
small spools. Their lower Ups were pierced with either a bone or 
iron nail. They had very good manners, and always greeted us 
with shy, charming smiles. 

With a single exception, which I shall mention shortly, I never 
spoke to a native woman, this being what was expected of me. 
As in Southern Europe, men speak to men, women to women. 
Anything else signifies love-making. The white who goes in for 

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Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

this not only forfeits his authority, but runs the serious risk of 
"going black." I observed several highly instructive examples of 
this. Quite often I heard the natives pass judgment upon a cer- 
tain white: "He is a bad man." When I asked why, the reply was 
invariably, "He sleeps with our women." 

Among my Elgonyis, the men busied themselves with the cat- 
tle and with hunting; the women were identified with the 
shaniba, a field of bananas, sweet potatoes, kaffir (grain sor- 
ghum), and maize. They kept children, goats, and chickens in 
the same round hut in which the family lived. Their dignity and 
naturalness flow from their function in the economy; they are 
intensely active business partners. The concept of equal rights 
for women is the product of an age in which such partnership 
has lost its meaning. Primitive society is regulated by an un- 
conscious egoism and altruism; both attitudes are wisely given 
their due. This unconscious order breaks up at once if any dis- 
turbance ensues which has to be remedied by a conscious act. 

It gives me pleasure to recall one of my important informants 
on family relations among the Elgonyi. He was a strikingly 
handsome youth by the name of Gibroat the son of a chief, 
charming and distinguished in manners, whose confidence I had 
evidently won. To be sure, he gladly accepted my cigarettes, but 
he was not greedy for them, as the others were for all sorts of 
gifts. From time to time he would pay me a gentlemanly visit 
and tell me all sorts of interesting things. I felt that he had some- 
thing in mind, some request that he somehow could not voice. 
Not until we had known each other for some time did he 
astonish me by asking me to meet his family, I knew that he 
himself was still unmarried, and that his parents were dead. The 
family in question was that of an elder sister; she was married 
as a second wife, and had four children. Gibroat very much 
wanted me to pay her a visit, so that she would have the op- 
portunity to meet me. Evidently she filled the place of a mother 
in his life. I agreed, because I hoped in this social way to ob- 
tain some insight into native family life. 

"Madame etait chez elle" she came out of the hut when we 
arrived, and greeted me with utter naturalness. She was a good- 
looking woman, middle-aged that is, about thirty. Aside from 

262 



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the obligatory cowrie belt, she wore arm and ankle rings, some 
copper ornaments hanging from the greatly extended ear lobe, 
and the skin of some small game animal over her breast. She 
had locked her four little "mtotos" in the hut; they peered out 
through cracks in the door, giggling excitedly. At my request she 
let them out; but it took some time before they dared to emerge. 
She had the same excellent manners as her brother, who was 
beaming joyfully at the success of his coup. 

We did not sit down, since there was nowhere to sit except on 
the dusty ground, which was covered with chicken droppings 
and goat pellets. The conversation moved in the conventional 
framework of semi-familial drawing-room talk, revolving around 
family, children, house, and garden. Her elder co-wife, whose 
property bordered on hers, had six children. The boma of this 
"sister'* was some eighty yards away. Approximately halfway 
between the two women's huts, at the apex of a triangle, stood 
the husband's hut, and behind that, about fifty yards away, a 
small hut occupied by the first wife's already grown son. Each 
of the two women had her own shamba. My hostess was ob- 
viously proud of hers. 

I had the feeling that the confidence and self-assurance of her 
manner were founded to a great extent upon her identity with 
her own wholeness, her private world made up of children, 
house, small livestock, shamba and last but not least her 
not-unattractive physique. The husband was referred to only in 
an allusive way. It seemed that he was sometimes here, some- 
times not here. At the moment he was staying at sofne unknown 
place. My hostess was plainly and unproblematically the em- 
bodiment of stability, a veritable pied-a-terre for the husband. 
The question did not seem to be whether or not he was there, 
but rather whether she was present in her wholeness, providing a 
geomagnetic center for the husband who wandered over the 
land with his herds. What goes on in the interior of these "sim- 
ple" souls is not conscious, is therefore unknown, and we can 
only deduce it from comparative evidence of "advanced" Euro- 
pean differentiation. 

I asked myself whether the growing masculinization of the 
white woman is not connected with the loss of her natural whole- 

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Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

ness (shamba, children, livestock, house of her own, hearth 
fire); whether it is not a compensation for her impoverishment; 
and whether the feminizing of the white man is not a further 
consequence. The more rational the polity, the more blurred is 
the difference between the sexes. The role homosexuality plays 
in modern society is enormous. It is partly the consequence of 
the mother-complex, partly a purposive phenomenon (preven- 
tion of reproduction). 

My companions and I had the good fortune to taste the world 
of Africa, with its incredible beauty and its equally incredible 
suffering, before the end came. Our camp life proved to be one 
of the loveliest interludes in my life. I enjoyed the "divine peace" 
of a still primeval country. Never had I seen so clearly "man and 
the other animals'* (Herodotus). Thousands of miles lay be- 
tween me and Europe, mother of all demons. The demons could 
not reach me here there were no telegrams, no telephone calls, 
no letters, no visitors. My liberated psychic forces poured bliss- 
fully back to the primeval expanses. 

It was easy for us to arrange a palaver each morning with the 
natives who squatted all day long around our camp and watched 
our doings with never-fading interest. My headman, Ibrahim, 
had initiated me into the etiquette of the palaver. All the men 
( the women never came near) had to sit on the ground. Ibrahim 
had obtained for me a small four-legged chiefs stool of ma- 
hogany on which I had to sit. Then I began with an address and 
set forth the shauri, that is, the agenda of the palaver. Most of 
the natives spoke a tolerable pidgin Swahili; and I for my part 
would manage to speak to them by making ample use of a small 
dictionary. This little book was the object of unwearying ad- 
miration. My limited vocabulary imposed upon me a needful 
simplicity. Often the conversation resembled an amusing game 
of guessing riddles, for which reason the palavers enjoyed great 
popularity. The sessions seldom lasted longer than an hour or an 
hour and a half, because the men grew visibly tired, and would 
complain, with dramatic gestures, "Alas, we are so tired." 

I was naturally much interested in the natives* dreams, but at 
first could not get them to tell me any. I offered small rewards, 
cigarettes, matches, safety pins, and such things, which they 



Travels 

were eager to have. But nothing helped. I could never completely 
explain their shyness about telling dreams. I suspect the reason 
was fear and distrust. It is well known that Negroes are afraid of 
being photographed; they fear that anyone who takes a picture 
of them is robbing them of their soul, and perhaps they likewise 
fear that harm may come to them from anyone' who has knowl- 
edge of their dreams. This, incidentally, did not apply to our 
boys, who were coastal Somalis and Swahilis. They had an Arab 
dream book which they daily consulted during the trek. If they 
were in doubt about an interpretation, they would actually come 
to me for advice. They termed me a "man of the Book" because 
of my knowledge of the Koran. To their minds, I was a dis- 
guised Mohammedan. 

One time we had a palaver with the laibon, the old medicine 
man. He appeared in a splendid cloak made of the skins of blue 
monkeys a valuable article of display. When I asked him about 
his dreams, he answered with tears in his eyes, "In old days the 
laibons had dreams, and knew whether there is war or sickness 
or whether rain comes and where the herds should be driven/* 
His grandfather, too, had still dreamed. But since the whites 
were in Africa, he said, no one had dreams any more. Dreams 
were no longer needed because now the English knew every- 
thing! 

His reply showed me that the medicine man had lost his 
raison <&tre. The divine voice which counseled the tribe was no 
longer needed because "the English know better." Formerly the 
medicine man had negotiated with the gods or the power of 
destiny, and had advised his people. He exerted great influence, 
just as in ancient Greece the word of the Pythia possessed the 
highest authority. Now the medicine man's authority was re- 
placed by that of the D.C. The value of life now lay wholly in 
this world, and it seemed to me only a question of time and of 
the vitality of the black race before the Negroes would become 
conscious of the importance of physical power. 

Far from being an imposing personality, our laibon was only a 
somewhat tearful old gentleman. He was the living embodiment 
of the spreading disintegration of an undermined, outmoded, 
unrestorable world. 

265 



Memories) Dreams, Reflections 

On numerous occasions I brought the conversation around to 
the numina, especially to rites and ceremonies. Concerning 
these, I had only a single piece of evidence. In front of an 
empty hut, in the middle of a busy village street, I had seen a 
carefully swept spot several yards in diameter. In the center 
lay a cowrie belt, arm and ankle rings, earrings, the shards of 
all sorts of pots, and a digging stick. All that we were able to 
learn about this was the fact that a woman had died in this 
hut. Nothing whatsoever was said about a funeral. 

In the palaver the people assured me with considerable em- 
phasis that their neighbors to the west were "bad" people. If 
someone died there, the next village was informed, and in the 
evening the body was brought to the midpoint between the two 
villages. From the other side, presents of various sorts were 
brought to the same spot, and in the morning the corpse was no 
longer there. It was plainly insinuated that the other village de- 
voured the dead. Such things never happened among the El- 
gonyi, they said. To be sure, their dead were laid out in the bush, 
where the hyenas took care of them in the course of the night. 
In point of fact we never found any signs of burial of the dead. 

I was informed, however, that when a man dies, his body is 
placed on the floor in the middle of the hut. The laibon walks 
around the body, sprinkling milk from a bowl on to the floor, 
murmuring, "Ayik adhista, adhista ayikr 

I knew the meaning of these words from a memorable palaver 
that had taken place earlier. At the end of that palaver an old 
man had suddenly exclaimed, "In the morning, when the sun 
comes, we go out of the huts, spit into our hands, and hold 
them up to the sun.'* I had him show me the ceremony and de- 
scribe it exactly. They held their hands in front of their mouths, 
spat or blew vigorously, then turned the palms upward toward 
the sun. I asked what this meant, why they blew or spat into 
their hands. My questioning was in vain. "We've always done 
it,** they said. It was impossible to obtain any explanation, and I 
realized that they actually knew only that they did it, not 
what they were doing. They themselves saw no meaning in this 
action. But we, too, perform ceremonies without realizing what 



Travels 

we are doing such as lighting Christmas tree candles, hiding 
Easter eggs, etc. 

The old man said that this was the true religion of all peoples, 
that all Kevirondos, all Buganda, all tribes for as far as the eye 
could see from the mountain and endlessly farther, worshiped 
adhista that is, the sun at the moment of rising. Only then was 
the sun mungu, God. The first delicate golden crescent of the 
new moon in the purple of the western sky was also God. But 
only at that time; otherwise not. 

Evidently, the meaning of the Elgonyi ceremony was that an 
offering was being made to the sun divinity at the moment of its 
rising. If the gift was spittle, it was the substance which in the 
view of primitives contains the personal mana, the power of 
healing, magic, and life. If it was breath, then it was roho 
Arabic, ruch, Hebrew, ruach, Greek, pneuma wind and spirit. 
The act was therefore saying: I offer to God my living soul. It 
was a wordless, acted-out prayer which might equally well be 
rendered: "Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit/ 9 

Besides adhista the Elgonyi we were further informed also 
venerate ayik, the spirit who dwells in the earth and is a 
sheitan (devil). He is the creator of fear, a cold wind who lies 
in wait for the nocturnal traveler. The old man whistled a kind 
of Loki motif to convey vividly how the ayik creeps through 
the tall, mysterious grass of the bush. 

In general the people asseverated that the Creator had made 
everything good and beautiful. He was beyond good and evil. 
He was rnzuri, that is, beautiful, and everything he did was 
rrizuri. 

When I asked: "But what about the wicked animals who kill 
your cattle?" they said, "The lion is good and beautiful.'* "And 
your horrible diseases?'* They said, "You lie in the sun and it 
is good." 

I was impressed by this optimism. But at six o'clock in the 
evening this optimism was suddenly over, as I soon discovered. 
From sunset on, it was a different world the dark world of 
ayik, of evil, danger, fear. The optimistic philosophy gave way 
to fear of ghosts and magical practices intended to secure pro- 

267 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

tection from evil. Without any inner contradiction the optimism 
returned at dawn. 

It was a profoundly stirring experience for me to find, at the 
sources of the Nile, this reminder of the ancient Egyptian con- 
ception of the two acolytes of Osiris, Horus and Set. Here, evi- 
dently, was a primordial African experience that had flowed 
down to the coasts of the Mediterranean along with the sacred 
waters of the Nile: adhista, the rising sun, the principle of light 
like Horus; ayik, the principle of darkness, the breeder of fear. 
In the simple rites performed for the dead, the laibons words 
and his sprinkling of milk unite the opposites; he simultaneously 
sacrifices to these two principles, which are of equal power and 
significance since the time of their dominance, the rule of day 
and of night, each visibly lasts for twelve hours. The important 
thing, however, is the moment when, with the typical sudden- 
ness of the tropics, the first ray of light shoots forth like an 
arrow and night passes into life-filled light. 

The sunrise in these latitudes was a phenomenon that over- 
whelmed me anew every day. The drama of it lay less in the 
splendor of the sun's shooting up over the horizon than in what 
happened afterward. I formed the habit of taking my camp 
stool and sitting under an umbrella acacia just before dawn. Be- 
fore me, at the bottom of the little valley, lay a dark, almost 
black-green strip of jungle, with the rim of the plateau on the 
opposite side of the valley towering above it. At first, the con- 
trasts between light and darkness would be extremely sharp. 
Then objects would assume contour and emerge into the light 
which seemed to fill the valley with a compact brightness. The 
horizon above became radiantly white. Gradually the swelling 
light seemed to penetrate into the very structure of objects, 
which became illuminated from within until at last they shone 
translucently, like bits of colored glass. Everything turned to 
flaming crystal. The cry of the bell bird rang around the hori- 
zon. At such moments I felt as if I were inside a temple. It was 
the most sacred hour of the day. I drank in this glory with 
insatiable delight, or rather, in a timeless ecstasy. 

Near my observation point was a high cliff inhabited by big 
baboons. Every morning they sat quietly, almost motionless, on 

268 



Travels 

the ridge of the cliff facing the sun, whereas throughout the rest 
of the day they ranged noisily through the forest, screeching 
and chattering. Like me, they seemed to be waiting for the sun- 
rise. They reminded me of the great baboons of the temple of 
Abu Simbel in Egypt, which perform the gesture of adoration. 
They tell the same story: for untold ages men have worshiped 
the great god who redeems the world by rising out of the dark- 
ness as a radiant light in the heavens. 

At that time I understood that within the soul from its pri- 
mordial beginnings there has been a desire for light and an 
irrepressible urge to rise out of the primal darkness. When the 
great night comes, everything takes on a note of deep de- 
jection, and every soul is seized by an inexpressible longing for 
light. That is the pent-up feeling that can be detected in the eyes 
of primitives, and also in the eyes of animals. There is a sadness 
in animals' eyes, and we never know whether that sadness is 
bound up with the soul of the animal or is a poignant message 
which speaks to us out of that still unconscious existence. That 
sadness also reflects the mood of Africa, the experience of its 
solitudes. It is a maternal mystery, this primordial darkness. 
That is why the sun's birth in the morning strikes the natives as 
so overwhelmingly meaningful. The moment in which light 
comes is God. That moment brings redemption, release. To say 
that the sun is God is to blur and forget the archetypal experi- 
ence of that moment. "We are glad that the night when the 
spirits are abroad is over now," the natives will say but that is 
already a rationalization. In reality a darkness altogether differ- 
ent from natural night broods over the land. It is the psychic 
primal night which is the same today as it has been for count- 
less millions of years. The longing for light is the longing for 
consciousness. 

Our blissful stay on Mt. Elgon neared its end. With heavy hearts 
we struck our tents, promising ourselves that we would return. I 
could not have brought myself to think that this would be the 
first and the last time I would experience this unlooked-for 
glory. Since then, gold has been discovered near Kakamegas, 
mining has begun, the Mau-Mau movement has arisen among 

269 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

those innocent and friendly natives, and we too have known a 
rude awakening from the dream of civilization. 

We trekked along the southern slope of Mt. Elgon. Gradually 
the character of the landscape changed. Higher mountains, 
covered with dense jungle, verged on the plain. The color of 
the inhabitants grew blacker; their bodies became clumsier and 
more massive, lacking the grace of the Masai. We were entering 
the territory of the Bugishu, where we stayed some time in the 
resthouse of Bunambale. It is situated at a high altitude, and 
we had a splendid view of the broad Nile valley. From there we 
went on to Mbala, where we were met by two Ford trucks that 
took us to Jinja, on Lake Victoria. We loaded our baggage onto a 
train of the narrow-gauge railroad; once every two weeks it went 
to Lake Kioga. A paddle-wheel steamer whose boiler was fired 
by wood picked us up and after a number of incidents brought 
us to Masindi Port. There we transferred to a truck and so 
reached Masindi Town, which is situated on the plateau that 
separates Lake Kioga from Albert Nyanza. 

In a village on the way from Lake Albert to Rejdf in the Sudan 
we had a very exciting experience. The local chief, a tall, still 
quite young man,' appeared with his retinue. These were the 
blackest Negroes I had ever seen. There was something about 
the group which was not exactly reassuring. The mamur* of 
Nimule had given us three askaris as an escort, but I saw that 
they as well as our own boys did not feel at all easy. After all, 
they had only three cartridges each for their rifles. Their pres- 
ence, consequently, was a merely symbolic gesture on the part 
of the government. 

When the chief proposed that he give a rigoma (dance) in 
the evening, I assented gladly. I hoped that the frolic would 
bring their better nature to the fore. Night had fallen and we 
were all longing for sleep when we heard drums and horn 
blasts. Soon some sixty men appeared, martially equipped with 
flashing lances, clubs, and swords. They were followed at some 
distance by the women and children; even the infants were pres- 
ent, carried on their mothers' backs. This was obviously to be a 

1 El mamur, literally, prefect or governor. 



Travels 

grand social occasion. In spite of the heat, which still hovered 
. around ninety-three degrees, a big fire was kindled, and women 
and children formed a circle around it. The men formed an outer 
ring around them, as I had once observed a nervous herd of 
elephants do. I did not know whether I ought to feel pleased or 
anxious about this mass display. I looked around for our boys 
and the government soldiers they had vanished completely 
from the camp! As a gesture of good will, I distributed cigarettes, 
matches, and safety pins. The men's chorus began to sing, 
vigorous, bellicose melodies, not unharmonious, and at the same 
time began to swing their legs. The women and children tripped 
around the fire; the men danced toward it, waving their weap- 
ons, then drew back again, and then advanced anew, amid 
savage singing, drumming, and trumpeting. 

It was a wild and stirring scene, bathed in the glow of the 
fire and magical moonlight. My English friend and I sprang to 
our feet and mingled with the dancers. I swung my rhinoceros 
whip, the only weapon I had, and danced with them. By their 
beaming faces I could see that they approved of our taking 
part. Their zeal redoubled; the whole company stamped, sang, 
shouted, sweating profusely. Gradually the rhythm of the 
dance and the drumming accelerated. 

In dances such as these, accompanied by such music, the na- 
tives easily fall into a virtual state of possession. That was the 
case now. As eleven o'clock approached, their excitement be- 
gan to get out of bounds, and suddenly the whole affair took on 
a highly curious aspect. The dancers were being transformed 
into a wild horde, and I became worried about how it would 
end. I signed to the chief that it was time to stop, and that he 
and his people ought to go to sleep. But he kept wanting "just 
another one." 

I remembered that a countryman of mine, one of the Sarasin 
cousins, on an exploratory expedition in Celebes had been struck 
by a stray spear in the course of such a rigoma. And so, dis- 
regarding the chiefs pleas, I called the people together, dis- 
tributed cigarettes, and then made the gesture of sleeping. Then 
I swung my rhinoceros whip threateningly, but at the same time 
laughing, and for lack of any better language I swore at them 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

loudly in Swiss German that tikis was enough and they must go 
home to bed and sleep now. It was apparent to the people that I 
was to some extent pretending my anger, but that seems to have 
struck just the right note. General laughter arose; capering, 
they scattered in all directions and vanished into the night. For 
a long time we heard their jovial howls and drumming in the 
distance. At last silence fell, and we dropped into the sleep of 
exhaustion. 

Our trek came to an end in Rejf on the Nile. There we stowed 
our gear onto a paddle-wheel steamer which just succeeded in 
docking at RejM; the water level was almost too low for it. By 
this time I was feeling burdened by all that I had experienced. 
A thousand thoughts were whirling around me, and it became 
painfully clear to me that my capacity to digest new impressions 
was quickly approaching its limits. The thing to do was to go 
over all my observations and experiences and discover their in- 
ner connections. I had written down everything worth noting. 

During the entire trip my dreams stubbornly followed the 
tactic of ignoring Africa. They drew exclusively upon scenes 
from home, and thus seemed to say that they considered if it 
is permissible to personify the unconscious processes to this ex- 
tent the African journey not as something real, but rather as a 
symptomatic or symbolic act. Even the most impressive events 
of the trip were rigorously excluded from my dreams. Only 
once during the entire expedition did I dream of a Negro. His 
face appeared curiously familiar to me, but I had to reflect a 
long time before I could determine where I had met him be- 
fore. Finally it came to me: he had been my barber in Chatta- 
nooga, Tennessee! An American Negro. In the dream he was 
holding a tremendous, red-hot curling iron to my head, intend- 
ing to make my hair kinky that is, to give me Negro hair. I 
could already feel the painful heat, and awoke with a sense of 
terror. 

I took this dream as a warning from the unconscious; it was 
saying that the primitive was a danger to me. At that time I was 
obviously all too close to "going black/' I was suffering an at- 
tack of sandfly fever which probably reduced my psychic re- 

272, 



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sistance. In order to represent a Negro threatening me, my 
unconscious had invoked a twelve-year-old memory of my Negro 
barber in America, just in order to avoid any reminder of the 
present. 

This curious behavior of my dreams corresponds, incidentally, 
to a phenomenon which was noted during the First World War. 
Soldiers in the field dreamt far less of the war than of theii 
homes. Military psychiatrists considered it a basic principle that 
a man should be pulled out of the front lines when he started 
dreaming too much of war scenes, for that meant he no longer 
possessed any psychic defenses against the impressions from 
outside. 

Parallel to my involvement with this demanding African en- 
vironment, an interior line was being successfully secured within 
my dreams. The dreams dealt with my personal problems. The 
only thing I could conclude from this was that my European 
personality must under all circumstances be preserved intact. 

To my astonishment, the suspicion dawned on me that I had 
undertaken my African adventure with the secret purpose of 
escaping from Europe and its complex of problems, even at the 
risk of remaining in Africa, as so many before me had done, and 
as so many were doing at this very time. The trip revealed itself 
as less an investigation of primitive psychology ("Bugishu Psy- 
chological Expedition," B.P.E., black letters on the chop boxes!) 
than a probing into the rather embarrassing question: What is 
going to happen to Jung the psychologist in the wilds of Africa? 
This was a question I had constantly sought to evade, in spite of 
my intellectual intention to study the European's reaction to 
primitive conditions. It became clear to me that this study had 
been not so much an objective scientific project as an intensely 
personal one, and that any attempt to go deeper into it touched 
every possible sore spot in my own psychology. I had to admit 
to myself that it was scarcely the Wembley Exhibition which 
had begotten my decision to travel, but rather the fact that the 
atmosphere had become too highly charged for me in Europe. 

Amid such thoughts I glided on the peaceful waters of the 
Nile toward the north toward Europe, toward the future. The 
voyage ended at Khartoum. There Egypt began. And thus I ful- 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

filled my desire and my plan to approach this cultural realm 
not from the west, from the direction of Europe and Greece, 
but from the south, from the sources of the Nile. I was less in- 
terested in the complex Asiatic elements in Egyptian culture 
than in the Hamitic contribution. By following the geographical 
course of the Nile, and hence the stream of time, I could find 
out something about that for myself. My greatest illumination 
in this respect had been my discovery of the Horus principle 
among the Elgonyi. That whole episode, and all that it meant, 
was dramatically called to mind again when I saw the sculp- 
tured cynocephali (dog-faced baboons) of Abu Simbel, the 
southern gate of Egypt. 

The myth of Horus is the age-old story of the newly risen 
divine light. It is a myth which must have been told after human 
culture that is, consciousness had for the first time released 
men from the darkness of prehistoric times. Thus the journey 
from the heart of Africa to Egypt became, for me, a kind of 
drama of the birth of light. That drama was intimately con- 
nected with me, with my psychology. I realized this, but felt 
incapable of formulating it in words. I had not known in ad- 
vance what Africa would give me; but here lay the satisfying 
answer, the fulfilling experience. It was worth more to me than 
any ethnological yield would have been, any collection of weap- 
ons, ornaments, pottery, or hunting trophies. I had wanted to 
know how Africa would affect me, and I had found out. 

iV. INDIA 2 

My journey to India, in 1938, was not taken on my own initia- 
tive. It arose out of an invitation from the British Government of 
India to take part in the celebrations connected with the twenty- 
fifth anniversary of the University of Calcutta. 

By that time I had read a great deal about Indian philosophy 
and religious history, and was deeply convinced of the value of 

2 On his return from India, Jung contributed two articles to the magazine Asia 
(New York, January and February issues, 1939): "The Dreamlike World of 
India," and "What India Can Teach Us." They are included in Civilization in 
Transition (CW 10). A. J. 



Travels 

Oriental wisdom. But I had to travel in order to form my own 
conclusions, and remained within myself like a homunculus in 
the retort. India affected me like a dream, for I was and re- 
mained in search of myself, of the truth peculiar to myself. 

The journey formed an intermezzo in the intensive study of 
alchemical philosophy on which I was engaged at the time. This 
had so strong a grip upon me that I took along the first volume 
of the Theatrum Chemicum of 1602, which contains the princi- 
pal writings of Gerardus Dorneus. In the course of the voyage I 
studied the book from beginning to end. Thus it was that this 
material belonging to the fundamental strata of European 
thought was constantly counterpointed by my impressions of a 
foreign mentality and culture. Both had emerged from original 
psychic experiences of the unconscious, and therefore had pro- 
duced the same, similar, or at least comparable insights. 

India gave me my first direct experience of an alien, highly 
differentiated culture. Altogether different elements had ruled 
my Central African journey; culture had not predominated. 
As for North Africa, I had never had the opportunity there to 
talk with a person capable of putting his culture into words. In 
India, however, I had the chance to speak with representatives 
of the Indian mentality, and to compare it with the European. I 
had searching talks with S. Subramanya Iyer, the guru of the 
Maharajah of Mysore, whose guest I was for some time; also 
with many others, whose names unfortunately have escaped me. 
On the other hand, I studiously avoided all so-called "holy 
men." I did so because I had to make do with my own truth, 
not accept from others what I could not attain on my own. I 
would have felt it as a theft had I attempted to learn from the 
holy men and to accept their truth for myself. Neither in Eu- 
rope can I make any borrowings from the East, but must shape 
my life out of myself out of what my inner being tells me, or 
what nature brings to me. 

In India I was principally concerned with the question of the 
psychological nature of evil. I had been very much impressed by 
the way this problem is integrated in Indian spiritual life, and I 
saw it in a new light. In a conversation with a cultivated Chi- 
nese I was also impressed, again and again, by the fact that these 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

people are able to integrate so-called "evil" without 'losing face." 
In the West we cannot do this. For the Oriental the problem of 
morality does not appear to take first place, as it does for us. To 
the Oriental, good and evil are meaningfully contained in na- 
ture, and are merely varying degrees of the same thing. 

I saw that Indian spirituality contains as much of evil as of 
good. The Christian strives for good and succumbs to evil; the 
Indian feels himself to be outside good and evil, and seeks to 
realize this state by meditation or yoga. My objection is that, 
given such an attitude, neither good nor evil takes on any real 
outline, and this produces a certain stasis. One does not really 
believe in evil, and one does not really believe in good. Good or 
evil are then regarded at most as my good or my evil, as what- 
ever seems to me good or evil which leaves us with the para- 
doxical statement that Indian spirituality lacks both evil and 
good, or is so burdened by contradictions that it needs nird- 
vandva, the liberation from opposites and from the ten thousand 
things. 

The Indian's goal is not moral perfection, but the condition 
of nirdvandva. He wishes to free himself from nature; in keeping 
with this aim, he seeks in meditation the condition of image- 
lessness and emptiness. I, on the other hand, wish to persist in 
the state of lively contemplation of nature and of the psychic 
images. I want to be freed neither from human beings, nor from 
myself, nor from nature; for all these appear to me the greatest 
of miracles. Nature, the psyche, and life appear to me like di- 
vinity unfolded and what more could I wish for? To me the 
supreme meaning of Being can consist only in the fact that it is, 
not that it is not or is no longer. 

To me there is no liberation a tout prix. I cannot be liberated 
from anything that I do not possess, have not done or experi- 
enced. Real liberation becomes possible for me only when I 
have done all that I was able to do, when I have completely 
devoted myself to a thing and participated in it to the utmost. 
If I withdraw from participation, I am virtually amputating the 
corresponding part of my psyche. Naturally, there may be good 
reasons for my not immersing myself in a given experience. But 
then I am forced to confess my inability, and must know that I 

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Travels 

may have neglected to do something of vital importance. In this 
way I make amends for the lack of a positive act by the clear 
knowledge of my incompetence. 

A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions 
has never overcome them. They then dwell in the house next 
door, and at any moment a flame may dart out and set fire to 
his own house. Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget 
too much, there is always the danger that the things we have 
neglected will return with added force. 

In Konarak (Orissa) I met a pandit who obligingly offered to 
come with me on my visit to the temple and the great .temple 
car. The pagoda is covered from base to pinnacle with exqui- 
sitely obscene sculptures. We talked for a long time about this 
extraordinary fact, which he explained to me as a means to 
achieve spiritualization. I objected pointing to a group of 
young peasants who were standing open-mouthed before the 
monument, admiring these splendors that such young men 
were scarcely undergoing spiritualization at the moment, but 
were much more likely having their heads filled with sexual 
fantasies. Whereupon he replied, "But that is just the point. How 
can they ever become spiritualized if they do not first fulfill 
their karma? These admittedly obscene images are here for the 
very purpose of recalling to the people their dharma [law]; 
otherwise these unconscious fellows might forget it." 

I thought it an odd notion that young men might forget their 
sexuality, like animals out of rutting time. My sage, however, 
resolutely maintained that they were as unconscious as animals 
and actually in need of urgent admonishments. To this end, he 
said, before they set foot inside the temple they were reminded 
of their dharma by the exterior decorations; for unless they were 
made conscious of their dharma and fulfilled it, they could not 
partake of spiritualization. 

As we entered through the gate of the temple, my companion 
pointed to the two "temptresses," statues of two dancing girls 
with seductively curved hips who smilingly greeted all who en- 
tered. "Do you see these two dancing girls?" he said. "Their 
meaning is the same. Naturally, this does not apply to people 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

like you and me, for we have attained to a level of consciousness 
which is above this sort of thing. But for these peasant boys it is 
an indispensable instruction and admonishment." 

When we left the temple and were walking down a lingam 
lane, he suddenly said, "Do you see these stones? Do you know 
what they mean? I will tell you a great secret." I was astonished, 
for I thought that the phallic nature of these monuments was 
known to every child. But he whispered into my ear with the 
greatest seriousness, "These stones are man's private parts/' I 
had expected him to tell me that they signified the great god 
Shiva. I looked at him dumfounded, but he only nodded self- 
importantly, as if to say, "Yes, that is how it is. No doubt you in 
your European ignorance would never have thought so!" When 
I told this story to Heinrich Zimmer, he exclaimed in delight, 
"At last I have heard something real about India for a change!" 

When I visited the stupas of Sanchi, where Buddha delivered 
his fire sermon, I was overcome by a strong emotion of the kind 
that frequently develops in me when I encounter a thing, per- 
son, or idea of whose significance I am still unconscious. The 
stupas are situated on a rocky hill whose peak can be reached 
by a pleasant path of great stone slabs laid down through a 
green meadow. The stupas are tombs or containers of relics, 
hemispherical in shape, like two gigantic rice bowls placed one 
on top of the other (concavity upon concavity), according to 
the prescripts of the Buddha himself in the Mahd-Parinibbdna- 
Sutta. The British have done their restoration work in a most 
respectful spirit. The largest of these buildings is surrounded by 
a wall which has four elaborate gates. You come in by one of 
these and the path turns to the left, then leads into a clockwise 
circumambulation around the stupa. At the four cardinal points 
stand statues of the Buddha. When you have completed one 
circumambulation, you enter a second, higher circuit which runs 
in the same direction. The distant prospect over the plain, the 
stupas themselves, the temple ruins, and the solitary stillness of 
this holy site held me in a spell. I took leave of my companion 
and submerged myself in the overpowering mood of the place. 

After a while I heard rhythmic gong tones approaching from 
the distance. A group of Japanese pilgrims came marching up 

2,78 



Travels 

one behind the other, each striking a small gong. They were 
beating out the rhythm of the age-old prayer Om mani padme 
hum, the stroke of the gong falling upon the hum. Outside the 
stupas they bowed low, then passed through the gate. There 
they bowed again before the statue of the Buddha, intoning a 
chorale-like song. They completed the double circumambulation, 
singing a hymn before each statue of the Buddha. As I watched 
them, my mind and spirit were with them, and something within 
me silently thanked them for having so wonderfully come to the 
aid of my inarticulate feelings. 

The intensity of my emotion showed that the hill of Sanchi 
meant something central to me. A new side of Buddhism was 
revealed to me there. I grasped the life of the Buddha as the 
reality of the self which had broken through and laid claim to a 
personal life. For Buddha, the self stands above all gods, a unus 
mundus which represents the essence of human existence and 
of the world as a whole. The self embodies both the aspect of 
intrinsic being and the aspect of its being, known, without which 
no world exists. Buddha saw and grasped the cosmogonic dig- 
nity of human consciousness; for that reason he saw clearly that 
if a man succeeded in extinguishing this light, the world would 
sink into nothingness. Schopenhauer's great achievement lay in 
his also recognizing this, or rediscovering it independently. 

Christ like Buddha is an embodiment of the self, but in an 
altogether different sense. Both stood for an overcoming of the 
world: Buddha out of rational insight; Christ as a foredoomed 
sacrifice. In Christianity more is suffered, in Buddhism more is 
seen and done. Both paths are right, but in the Indian sense 
Buddha is the more complete human being. He is a historical 
personality, and therefore easier for men to understand. Christ 
is at once a historical man and God, and therefore much more 
difficult to comprehend. At bottom he was not comprehensible 
even to himself; he knew only that he had to sacrifice him- 
self, that this course was imposed upon him from within. His 
sacrifice happened to him like an act of destiny. Buddha lived 
out his life and died at an advanced age, whereas Christ's ac- 
tivity as Christ probably lasted no more than a year. 

Later, Buddhism underwent the same transformation as Chris- 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

tianity: Buddha became, as it were, the image of the develop- 
ment of the self; he became a model for men to imitate, whereas 
actually he had preached that by overcoming the Nidana-chain 
every human being could become an illuminate, a buddha. 
Similarly, in Christianity, Christ is an exemplar who dwells in 
every Christian as his integral personality. But historical trends 
led to the imitatio Christi, whereby the individual does not pur- 
sue his own destined road to wholeness, but attempts to imitate 
the way taken by Christ. Similarly in the East, historical trends 
led to a devout imitation of the Buddha. That Buddha should 
have become a model to be imitated was in itself a weakening 
of his idea, just as the imitatio Christi was a forerunner of the 
fateful stasis in the evolution of the Christian idea. As Buddha, 
by virtue of his insight, was far in advance of the Brahma gods, 
so Christ cried out to the Jews, "You are gods" (John 10:34) ; but 
men were incapable of understanding what he meant. Instead 
we find that the so-called Christian West, far from creating a 
new world, is moving with giant strides toward the possibility 
of destroying the world we have. 3 

India honored me with three doctorates, from Allahabad, Be- 
nares, and Calcutta representatives of Islam, of Hinduism, and 
of British-Indian medicine and science. It was a little too much 
of a good thing, and I needed a retreat. A ten-day spell in the 
hospital offered it to me, for in Calcutta I finally came down 
with dysentery. This was a blessed island in the wild sea of new 
impressions, and I found a place to stand on from which I 
could contemplate the ten thousand things and their bewilder- 
ing turmoil. 

When I returned to the hotel, in tolerably good health, I had 
a dream so characteristic that I wish to set it down here. I found 
myself, with a large number of my Zurich friends and acquaint- 
ances, on an unknown island, presumably situated not far off 
the coast of southern England. It was small and almost unin- 
habited. The island was narrow, a strip of land about twenty 
miles long, running in a north-south direction. On the rocky 
coast at the southern end of the island was a medieval castle. 
3 On the problem of the imitatio, cf. Psychology and Alchemy, Part I (CW 12). 

280 



Travels 

We stood in its courtyard, a group of sightseeing tourists. Before 
us rose an imposing belfroi, through whose gate a wide stone 
staircase was visible. We could just manage to see that it termi- 
nated above in a columned hall. This hall was dimly illuminated 
by candlelight. I understood that this was the castle of the 
Grail, and that this evening there would be a "celebration of the 
Grail** here. This information seemed to be of a secret character, 
for a German professor among us, who strikingly resembled old 
Mommsen, knew nothing about it. I talked most animatedly 
with him, and was impressed by his learning and sparkling in- 
telligence. Only one thing disturbed me: he spoke constantly 
about a dead past and lectured very learnedly on the relation- 
ship of the British to the French sources of the Grail story. Ap- 
parently he was not conscious of the meaning of the legend, 
nor of its living presentness, whereas I was intensely aware of 
both. Also, he did not seem to perceive our immediate, actual 
surroundings, for he behaved as though he were in a classroom, 
lecturing to his students. In vain I tried to call his attention to 
the peculiarity of the situation. He did not see the stairs or the 
festive glow in the hall. 

I looked around somewhat helplessly, and discovered that I 
was standing by the wall of a tall castle; the lower portion of 
the wall was covered by a kind of trellis, not made of the usual 
wood, but of black iron artfully formed into a grapevine com- 
plete with leaves, twining tendrils, and grapes. At intervals of 
six feet on the horizontal branches were tiny houses, likewise of 
iron, like birdhouses. Suddenly I saw a movement in the foliage; 
at first it seemed to be that of a mouse, but then I saw distinctly 
a tiny, iron, hooded gnome, a cucullatus, scurrying from one lit- 
tle house to the next. <c Well," I exclaimed in astonishment to 
the professor, "now look at that, will you . . ." 

At that moment a hiatus occurred, and the dream changed. 
We the same company as before, but without the professor 
were outside the castle, in a treeless, rocky landscape. I knew 
that something had to happen, for the Grail was not yet in the 
castle and still had to be celebrated that same evening. It was 
said to be in the northern part of the island, hidden in a small, 
uninhabited house, the only house there. I knew that it was 

281 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

our task to bring the Grail to the castle. There were about six 
of us who set out and tramped northward. 

After several hours of strenuous hiking, we reached the nar- 
rowest part of the island, and I discovered that the island was 
actually divided into two halves by an arm of the sea. At the 
smallest part of this strait the width of the water was about a 
hundred yards. The sun had set, and night descended. Wea- 
rily, we camped on the ground. The region was unpopulated 
and desolate; far and wide there was not a tree or shrub, nothing 
but grass and rocks. There was no bridge, no boat. It was very 
cold; my companions fell asleep, one after the other. I con- 
sidered what could be done, and came to the conclusion that I 
alone must swim across the channel and fetch the Grail. I took 
off my clothes. At that point I awoke. 

Here was this essentially European dream emerging when I 
had barely worked my way out of the overwhelming mass of 
Indian impressions. Some ten years before, I had discovered 
that in many places in England the myth of the Grail was still a 
living thing, in spite of all the scholarship that has accumulated 
around this tradition. This fact had impressed me all the more 
when I realized the concordance between this poetic myth and 
what alchemy had to say about the unum vas, the una medicina, 
and the unus lapis. Myths which day has forgotten continue to 
be told by night, and powerful figures which consciousness has 
reduced to banality and ridiculous triviality are recognized 
again by poets and prophetically revived; therefore they can also 
be recognized "in changed form" by the thoughtful person. The 
great ones of the past have not died, as we think; they have 
merely changed their names. "Small and slight, but great in 
might," the veiled Kabir enters a new house. 

Imperiously, the dream wiped away all the intense impres- 
sions of India and swept me back to the too-long-neglected 
concerns of the Occident, which had formerly been expressed 
in the quest for the Holy Grail as well as in tie search for the 
philosophers* stone. I was taken out of the world of India, and 
reminded that India was not my task, but only a part of the way 
admittedly a significant one which should carry me closer 
to my goal. It was as though the dream were asking me, "What 

282 



Travels 

are you doing in India? Rather seek for yourself and your fellows 
the healing vessel, the servator mundi, which you urgently need. 
For your state is perilous; you are all in imminent danger of 
destroying all that centuries have built up." 

Ceylon, the last stage of my journey, struck me as no longer 
India; there is already something of the South Seas about it, and 
a touch of paradise, in which one cannot linger too long. Co- 
lombo is a busy international port where every day between five 
and six o'clock a massive downpour descends from a clear sky. 
We soon left it behind and headed for the hilly country of the 
interior. There Kandy, the old royal city, is swathed in a fine 
mist whose tepid humidity sustains a luxuriant vegetation. The 
Dalada-Maligawa Temple, which contains the relic of the Holy 
Tooth (of Buddha), is small, but radiates a special charm. I 
spent a considerable time in its library, talking with the monks, 
and looking at the texts of the Buddhist canon engraved on 
silver leaves. 

There I witnessed a memorable evening ceremony. Young 
men and girls poured out enormous mounds of jasmine flowers 
in front of the altars, at the same time singing a prayer under 
their breath: a mantram. I thought they were praying to Bud- 
dha, but the monk who was guiding me explained, "No, Buddha 
is no more; He is in nirvana; we cannot pray to him. They are 
singing: 'This life is transitory as the beauty of these flowers. 
May my God 4 share with me the merit of this offering/ " 

As a prelude to the ceremony a one-hour drum concert was 
performed in the mandapam, or what in Indian temples is called 
the hall of waiting. There were five drummers; one stood in each 
corner of the square hall, and the fifth, a young man, stood in 
the middle. He was the soloist, and a very fine drummer. Naked 
to the waist, his dark-brown trunk glistening, with a red girdle, 
white shoka (a long skirt reaching to the feet), and white tur- 
ban, arms covered with shining bracelets, he stepped up to the 
golden Buddha, bearing a double drum, "to sacrifice the music." 
There, with beautiful movements of body and arms, he 
drummed alone a strange melody, artistically perfect. I watched 
4 God = deva = guardian angel. 

283 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

him from behind; he stood in front of the entrance to the 
mandapam, which was covered with little oil lamps. The drum 
speaks the ancient language of the belly and solar plexus; the 
belly does not "pray" but engenders the * meritorious" mantram 
or meditative utterance. It is therefore not adoration of a non- 
existent Buddha, but one of the many acts of self-redemption 
performed by the awakened human being. 

Toward the beginning of spring I set out on my homeward 
voyage, with such a plethora of impressions that I did not have 
any desire to leave the ship to see Bombay. Instead, I buried 
myself in my Latin alchemical texts. But India did not pass me 
by without a trace; it left tracks which lead from one infinity into 
another infinity. 

V. RAVENNA AND ROME 

Even on the occasion of my first visit to Ravenna in 1913, the 
tomb of Galla Placidia seemed to me significant and unusu- 
ally fascinating. The second time, twenty years later, I had the 
same feeling. Once more I fell into a strange mood in the tomb 
of Galla Placidia; once more I was deeply stirred. I was there 
with an acquaintance, and we went directly from the tomb into 
the Baptistery of the Orthodox. 

Here, what struck me first was the mild blue light that filled 
the room; yet I did not wonder about this at all. I did not try 
to account for its source, and so the wonder of this light with- 
out any visible source did not trouble me. I was somewhat 
amazed because, in place of the windows I remembered having 
seen on my first visit, there were now four great mosaic frescoes 
of incredible beauty which, it seemed, I had entirely forgotten. I 
was vexed to find my memory so unreliable. The mosaic on the 
south side represented the baptism in the Jordan; the second pic- 
ture, on the north, was of the passage of the Children of Israel 
through the Red Sea; the third, on the east, soon faded from my 
memory. It might have shown Naaman being cleansed of 
leprosy in the Jordan; there was a picture on this tiieme in the 
old Merian Bible in my library, which was much like the mosaic. 

284 



Travels 

The fourth mosaic, on the west side of the baptistery, was the 
most impressive of all. We looked at this one last. It represented 
Christ holding out his hand to Peter, who was sinking beneath 
the waves. We stopped in front of this mosaic for at least twenty 
minutes and discussed the original ritual of baptism, especially 
the curious archaic conception of it as an initiation connected 
with real peril of death. Such initiations were often connected 
with the peril of death and so served to express the archetypal 
idea of death and rebirth. Baptism had originally been a real 
submersion which at least suggested the danger of drowning. 

I retained the most distinct memory of the mosaic of Peter 
sinking, and to this day can see every detail before my eyes: the 
blue of the sea, individual chips of the mosaic, the inscribed 
scrolls proceeding from the mouths of Peter and Christ, which I 
attempted to decipher. After we left the baptistery, I went 
promptly to Alinari to buy photographs of the mosaics, but could 
not find any. Time was pressing this was only a short visit 
and so I postponed the purchase until later. I thought I might 
order the pictures from Zurich. 

When I was back home, I asked an acquaintance who was go- 
ing to Ravenna to obtain the pictures for me. He could not locate 
them, for he discovered that the mosaics I had described did not 
exist. 

Meanwhile, I had already spoken at a seminar about the origi- 
nal conception of baptism, and on this occasion had also men- 
tioned the mosaics that I had seen in the Baptistery of the 
Orthodox. 5 The memory of those pictures is still vivid to me. The 
lady who had been there with me long refused to believe that 
what she had "seen with her own eyes" had not existed. 

As we know, it is very difficult to determine whether, and to 
what extent, two persons simultaneously see the same thing. In 
this case, however, I was able to ascertain that at least the main 
features of what we both saw had been the same. 

This experience in Ravenna is among the most curious events 
in my life. It can scarcely be explained. A certain light may 
possibly be cast on it by an incident in the story of Empress 

5 Tantra Yoga Seminar, 1932. 

285 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

Galla Placidia (d. 450). During a stormy crossing from Byzan- 
tium to Ravenna in the worst of winter, she made a vow that 
if she came through safely, she would build a church and have 
the perils of the sea represented in it. She kept this vow by build- 
ing the basilica of San Giovanni in Ravenna and having it 
adorned with mosaics. In the early Middle Ages, San Giovanni, 
together with its mosaics, was destroyed by fire; but in the 
Ambrosiana in Milan is still to be found a sketch representing 
Galla Placidia in a boat. 

I had, from the first visit, been personally affected by the figure 
of Galla Placidia, and had often wondered how it must have 
been for this highly cultivated, fastidious woman to live at the 
side of a barbarian prince. Her tomb seemed to me a final legacy 
through which I might reach her personality. Her fate and 
her whole being were vivid presences to me; with her intense 
nature, she was a suitable embodiment for my anima. 6 

The anima of a man has a strongly historical character. As a 
personification of the unconscious she goes back into prehistory, 
and embodies the contents of the past. She provides the individ- 
ual with those elements that he ought to know about his pre- 
history. To the individual, the anima is all life that has been in 
the past and is still alive in him. In comparison to her I have 
always felt myself to be a barbarian who really has no history 
like a creature just sprung out of nothingness, with neither a 
past nor a future. 

In the course of my confrontation with the anima I had actu- 
ally had a brush with those perils which I saw represented in the 
mosaics. I had come close to drowning. The same thing hap- 
pened to me as to Peter, who cried for help and was rescued by 
Jesus. What had been the fate of Pharaoh's army could have 
been mine. Like Peter and like Naaman, I came away un- 
scathed, and the integration of the unconscious contents made 
an essential contribution to the completion of my personality. 

6 Jung himself explained the vision as a momentary new creation by the un- 
conscious, arising out of his thoughts about archetypal initiation. The immediate 
cause of the concretization lay, in his opinion, in a projection of his anima upon 
Galla Placidia. A. J. 

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Travels 

What happens within oneself when one integrates previously 
unconscious contents with the consciousness is something which 
can scarcely be described in words. It can only be experienced. 
It is a subjective affair quite beyond discussion; we have a par- 
ticular feeling about ourselves, about the way we are, and that 
is a fact which it is neither possible nor meaningful to doubt. 
Similarly, we convey a particular feeling to others, and that too 
is a fact that cannot be doubted. So far as we know, there is no 
higher authority which could eliminate the probable discrepan- 
cies between all these impressions and opinions. Whether a 
change has taken place as the result of integration, and what the 
nature of that change is, remains a matter of subjective convic- 
tion. To be sure, it is not a fact which can be scientifically veri- 
fied and therefore finds no place in an official view of the world. 
Yet it nevertheless remains a fact which is in practice uncom- 
monly important and fraught with consequences. Realistic psy- 
chotherapists, at any rate, and psychologists interested in 
therapy, can scarcely afford to overlook facts of this sort. 

Since my experience in the baptistery in Ravenna, I know 
with certainty that something interior can seem to be exterior, 
and that something exterior can appear to be interior. The actual 
walls of the baptistery, though they must have been seen by my 
physical eyes, were covered over by a vision of some altogether 
different sight which was as completely real as the unchanged 
baptismal font. Which was real at that moment? 

My case is by no means the only one of its kind. But when 
that sort of thing happens to oneself, one cannot help taking it 
more seriously than something heard or read about. In general, 
with anecdotes of that kind, one is quick to think of all sorts of 
explanations which dispose of the mystery. I have come to the 
conclusion that before we settle upon any theories in regard to 
the unconscious, we require many, many more experiences of it. 

I have traveled a great deal in my life, and I should very much 
have liked to go to Rome, but I felt that I was not really up to 
the impression the city would have made upon me. Pompeii 
alone was more than enough; the impressions very nearly ex- 
ceeded my powers of receptivity. I was able to visit Pompeii 

287 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

only after I had acquired, through my studies of 1910 to 1912, 
some insight into the psychology of classical antiquity. In 1912 
I was on a ship sailing from Genoa to Naples. As the vessel 
neared the latitude of Rome, I stood at the railing. Out there 
lay Rome, the still smoking and fiery hearth from which ancient 
cultures had spread, enclosed in tie tangled rootwork of the 
Christian and Occidental Middle Ages. There classical antiq- 
uity still lived in all its splendor and ruthlessness. 

I always wonder about people who go to Rome as they might 
go, for example, to Paris or to London. Certainly Rome as well 
as these other cities can be enjoyed esthetically; but if you are 
affected to the depths of your being at every step by the spirit 
that broods there, if a remnant of a wall here and a column 
there gaze upon you with a face instantly recognized, then it be- 
comes another matter entirely, -Even in Pompeii unforeseen 
vistas opened, unexpected things became conscious, and ques- 
tions were posed which were beyond my powers to handle. 

In my old age in 1949 I wished to repair this omission, but 
was stricken with a faint while I was buying tickets. After that, 
the plans for a trip to Rome were once and for all laid aside. 



288 



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Visions 



A THE BEGINNING of 1944 I broke my foot, and this 
misadventure was followed by a heart attack. In a state 
of unconsciousness I experienced deliriums and visions 
which must have begun when I hung on the edge of death and 
was being given oxygen and camphor injections. The images 
were so tremendous that I myself concluded that I was close to 
death. My nurse afterward told me, "It was as if you were sur- 
rounded by a bright glow/* That was a phenomenon she had 
sometimes observed in the dying, she added. I had reached the 
outermost limit, and do not know whether I was in a dream or an 
ecstasy. At any rate, extremely strange things began to happen 
to me. 

It seemed to me that I was high up in space. Far below I 
saw the globe of the earth, bathed in a gloriously blue light. I 
saw the deep blue sea and the continents. Far below my feet lay 
Ceylon, and in the distance ahead of me the subcontinent of 
India. My field of vision did not include the whole earth, but its 
global shape was plainly distinguishable and its outlines shone 
with a silvery gleam through that wonderful blue light. In many 
places the globe seemed colored, or spotted dark green like 

289 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

oxydized silver. Far away to the left lay a broad expanse the 
reddish-yellow desert of Arabia; it was as though the silver of 
the earth had there assumed a reddish-gold hue. Then came the 
Red Sea, and far, far back as if in the upper left of a map I 
could just make out a bit of the Mediterranean. My gaze was di- 
rected chiefly toward that. Everything else appeared indistinct. 
I could also see the snow-covered Himalayas, but in that direc- 
tion it was foggy or cloudy. I did not look to the right at all. I 
knew that I was on the point of departing from the earth. 

Later I discovered how high in space one would have to be to 
have so extensive a view approximately a thousand miles! The 
sight of the earth from this height was the most glorious tiling I 
had ever seen. 

After contemplating it for a while, I turned around. I had been 
standing with my back to the Indian Ocean, as it were, and my 
face to the north. Then it seemed to me that I made a turn to 
the south. Something new entered my field of vision. A short dis- 
tance away I saw in space a tremendous dark block of stone, 
like a meteorite. It was about the size of my house, or even 
bigger. It was floating in space, and I myself was floating in 
space. 

I had seen similar stones on the coast of the Gulf of Bengal. 
They were blocks of tawny granite, and some of them had been 
hollowed out into temples. My stone was one such gigantic dark 
block. An entrance led into a small antechamber. To the right of 
the entrance, a black Hindu sat silently in lotus posture upon a 
stone bench. He wore a white gown, and I knew that he ex- 
pected me. Two steps led up to this antechamber, and inside, 
on the left, was the gate to the temple. Innumerable tiny niches, 
each with a saucer-like concavity filled with coconut oil and 
small burning wicks, surrounded the door with a wreath of 
bright flames. I had once actually seen this when I visited the 
Temple of the Holy Tooth at Kandy in Ceylon; the gate had 
been framed by several rows of burning oil lamps of this sort. 

As I approached the steps leading up to the entrance into the 
rock, a strange thing happened: I had the feeling that every- 
thing was being sloughed away; everything I aimed at or 
wished for or thought, the whole phantasmagoria of earthly ex- 

290 



Visions 

istence, fell away or was stripped from me an extremely pain- 
ful process. Nevertheless something remained; it was as if I now 
carried along with me everything I had ever experienced or 
done, everything that had happened around me. I might also 
say: it was with me, and I was it. I consisted of all that, so to 
speak. I consisted of my own history, and I felt with great cer- 
tainty: this is what I am. "I am this bundle of what has been, 
and what has been accomplished." 

This experience gave me a feeling of extreme poverty, but at 
the same time of great fullness. There was no longer anything 
I wanted or desired. I existed in an objective form; I was what I 
had been and lived. At first the sense of annihilation predomi- 
nated, of having been stripped or pillaged; but suddenly that 
became of no consequence. Everything seemed to be past; what 
remained was a fait accompli, without any reference back to 
what had been. There was no longer any regret that something 
had dropped away or been taken away. On the contrary: I 
had everything that I was, and that was everything. 

Something else engaged my attention: as I approached the 
temple I had the certainty that I was about to enter an illumi- 
nated room and would meet there all those people to whom I 
belong in reality. There I would at last understand this too 
was a certainty what historical nexus I or my life fitted into. I 
would know what had been before me, why I had come into be- 
ing, and where my life was flowing. My life as I lived it had 
often seemed to me like a story that has no beginning and no 
end. I had the feeling that I was a historical fragment, an ex- 
cerpt for which the preceding and succeeding text was missing. 
My life seemed to have been snipped out of a long chain of 
events, and many questions had remained unanswered. Why 
had it taken this course? Why had I brought these particular 
assumptions with me? What had I made of them? What will fol- 
low? I felt sure that I would receive an answer to all these 
questions as soon as I entered the rock temple. There I would 
learn why everything had been thus and not otherwise. There I 
would meet the people who knew the answer to my question 
about what had been before and what would come after. 

While I was thinking over these matters, something happened 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

that caught my attention. From below, from the direction of 
Europe, an image floated up. It was my doctor, Dr. H. or, 
rather, his likeness framed by a golden chain or a golden 
laurel wreath. I knew at once: "Aha, this is my doctor, of 
course, the one who has been treating me. But now he is com- 
ing in his primal form, as a basileus of Kos. 1 In life he was an 
avatar of this basileus, the temporal embodiment of the primal 
form, which has existed from the beginning. Now he is appear- 
ing in that primal form/' 

Presumably I too was in my primal form, though this was 
something I did not observe but simply took for granted. As 
he stood before me, a mute exchange of thought took place be- 
tween us. Dr. H. had been delegated by the earth to deliver a 
message to me, to tell me that ihere was a protest against my 
going away, I had no right to leave the earth and must return. 
The moment I heard that, the vision ceased. 

I was profoundly disappointed, for now it all seemed to have 
been for nothing. The painful process of defoliation had been 
in vain, and I was not to be allowed to enter the temple, to 
join the people in whose company I belonged. 

In reality, a good three weeks were still to pass before I could 
truly make up my mind to live again. I could not eat because all 
food repelled me. The view of city and mountains from my sick- 
bed seemed to me like a painted curtain with black holes in it, 
or a tattered sheet of newspaper full of photographs that meant 
nothing. Disappointed, I thought, "Now I must return to the 
*box system* again." For it seemed to me as if behind the horizon 
of the cosmos a three-dimensional world had been artificially 
built up, in which each person sat by himself in a little box. 
And now I should have to convince myself all over again that 
this was important! Life and the whole world struck me as a 
prison, and it bothered me beyond measure that I should again 
be finding all that quite in order. I had been so glad to shed it 
all, and now it had come about that I along with everyone 
else would again be hung up in a box by a thread. While I 
floated in space, I had been weightless, and there had been 

1 Bas&eus king. Kos was famous in antiquity as the site of the temple of 
Asldepios, and was the birthplace of Hippocrates. A. J. 

29* 



Visions 

nothing tugging at me. And now all that was to be a thing of 
the pastl 

I felt violent resistance to my doctor because he had brought 
me back to life. At the same time, I was worried about him. "His 
life is in danger, for heaven's sake! He has appeared to me in his 
primal form! When anybody attains this form it means he is go- 
ing to die, for already he belongs to the 'greater company'!" 
Suddenly the terrifying thought came to me that Dr. H. would 
have to die in my stead. I tried my best to talk to him about it, 
but he did not understand me. Then I became angry with him. 
"Why does he always pretend he doesn't know he is a basileus 
of Kos? And that he has already assumed his primal form? He 
wants to make me believe that he doesn't know!" That irritated 
me. My wife reproved me for being so unfriendly to him. She 
was right; but at the time I was angry with him for stubbornly 
refusing to speak of all that had passed between us in my vision. 
"Damn it all, he ought to watch his step. He has no right to be 
so reckless! I want to tell him to take care of himself." I was 
firmly convinced that his life was in jeopardy. 

In actual fact I was his last patient. On April 4, 1944 I still 
remember the exact date I was allowed to sit up on die edge 
of my bed for the first time since the beginning of my illness, and 
on this same day Dr. H. took to his bed and did not leave it 
again. I heard that he was having intermittent attacks of fever. 
Soon afterward he died of septicemia. He was a good doctor; 
there was something of the genius about him. Otherwise he 
would not have appeared to me as a prince of Kos. 

During those weeks I lived in a strange rhythm. By day I was 
usually depressed. I felt weak and wretched, and scarcely dared 
to stir. Gloomily, I thought, "Now I must go back to this drab 
world." Toward evening I would fall asleep, and my sleep would 
last until about midnight. Then I would come to myself and lie 
awake for about an hour, but in an utterly transformed state. 
It was as if I were in an ecstasy. I felt as though I were floating 
in space, as though I were safe in the womb of the universe 
in a tremendous void, but filled with the highest possible feel- 
ing of happiness. "This is eternal bliss," I thought. "This cannot 
be described; it is far too wonderful!" 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

Everything around me seemed enchanted. At this hour of the 
night the nurse brought me some food she had warmed for 
only then was I able to take any, and I ate with appetite. For a 
time it seemed to me that she was an old Jewish woman, much 
older than she actually was, and that she was preparing ritual 
kosher dishes for me. When I looked at her, she seemed to have 
a blue halo around her head. I myself was, so it seemed, in the 
Pardes Rimmonim, the garden of pomegranates, 2 and the wed- 
ding of Tifereth with Malchuth was taking place. Or else I was 
Rabbi Simon ben Jochai, whose wedding in the afterlife was 
being celebrated. It was the mystic marriage as it appears in 
the Cabbalistic tradition. I cannot tell you how wonderful it 
was. I could only think continually, "Now this is the garden of 
pomegranates! Now this is the marriage of Malchuth with Tife- 
reth!" I do not know exactly what part I played in it. At bottom 
it was I myself: I was the marriage. And my beatitude was that 
of a blissful wedding. 

Gradually the garden of pomegranates faded away and 
changed. There followed the Marriage of the Lamb, in a Jeru- 
salem festively bedecked. I cannot describe what it was like in 
detail. These were ineffable states of joy. Angels were present, 
and light. I myself was the "Marriage of the Lamb." 

That, too, vanished, and there came a new image, the last 
vision. I walked up a wide valley to the end, where a gentle 
chain of hills began. The valley ended in a classical amphi- 
theater. It was magnificently situated in the green landscape. 
And there, in this theater, the hierosgamos was being celebrated. 
Men and women dancers came onstage, and upon a flower- 
decked couch All-father Zeus and Hera consummated the mys- 
tic marriage, as it is described in the Iliad. 

All these experiences were glorious. Night after night I floated 
in a state of purest bliss, "thronged round with images of all 
creation." 3 Gradually, the motifs mingled and paled. Usu- 

2 Pardes Rimmonim is the title of an old Cabbalistic tract by Moses Cordovero 
(sixteenth century). In Cabbalistic doctrine Malchuth and Tifereth are two of 
the ten spheres of divine manifestation in which God emerges from his hidden 
state. They represent the female and male principles within the Godhead. 

3 Faust, Part Two. 

294 



Visions 

ally the visions lasted for about an hour; then I would fall asleep 
again. By the time morning drew near, I would feel: Now gray 
morning is coming again; now comes the gray world with its 
boxes! What idiocy, what hideous nonsense! Those inner states 
were so fantastically beautiful that by comparison this world 
appeared downright ridiculous. As I approached closer to life 
again, they grew fainter, and scarcely three weeks after the first 
vision they ceased altogether. 

It is impossible to convey the beauty and intensity of emotion 
during those visions. They were the most tremendous things I 
have ever experienced. And what a contrast the day was: I was 
tormented and on edge; everything irritated me; everything was 
too material, too crude and clumsy, terribly limited both spa- 
tially and spiritually. It was all an imprisonment, for reasons 
impossible to divine, and yet it had a kind of hypnotic power, 
a cogency, as if it were reality itself, for all that I had clearly 
perceived its emptiness. Although my belief in the world re- 
turned to me, I have never since entirely freed myself of the 
impression that this life is a segment of existence which is en- 
acted in a three-dimensional boxlike universe especially set up 
for it. 

There is something else I quite distinctly remember. At the 
beginning, when I was having the vision of the garden of pome- 
granates, I asked the nurse to forgive me if she were harmed. 
There was such sanctity in the room, I said, that it might be 
harmful to her. Of course she did not understand me. For me 
the presence of sanctity had a magical atmosphere; I feared it 
might be unendurable to others. I understood then why one 
speaks of the odor of sanctity, of the "sweet smell'* of the Holy 
Ghost. This was it. There was a pneuma of inexpressible sanctity 
in the room, whose manifestation was the mysterium coniunc- 
tionis. 

I would never have imagined that any such experience was 
possible. It was not a product of imagination. The visions and 
experiences were utterly real; there was nothing subjective 
about them; they all had a quality of absolute objectivity. 

We shy away from the word "eternal," but I can describe the 
experience only as the ecstasy of a non-temporal state in which 

295 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

present, past, and future are one. Everything that happens in 
time had been brought together into a concrete whole. Nothing 
was distributed over time, nothing could be measured by tem- 
poral concepts. The experience might best be defined as a state 
of feeling, but one which cannot be produced by imagination. 
How can I imagine that I exist simultaneously the day before 
yesterday, today, and the day after tomorrow? There would be 
things which would not yet have begun, other things which 
would be indubitably present, and others again which would 
already be finished and yet all this would be one. The only 
thing that feeling could grasp would be a sum, an iridescent 
whole, containing all at once expectation of a beginning, sur- 
prise at what is now happening, and satisfaction or disappoint- 
ment with the result of what has happened. One is interwoven 
into an indescribable whole and yet observes it with complete 
objectivity. 

I experienced this objectivity once again later on. That was 
after the death of my wife. I saw her in a dream which was 
like a vision. She stood at some distance from me, looking at me 
squarely. She was in her prime, perhaps about thirty, and wear- 
ing the dress which had been made for her many years before 
by my cousin the medium. It was perhaps the most beautiful 
thing she had ever worn. Her expression was neither joyful 
nor sad, but, rather, objectively wise and understanding, with- 
out the slightest emotional reaction, as though she were beyond 
the mist of affects. I knew that it was not she, but a portrait 
she had made or commissioned for me. It contained the begin- 
ning of our relationship, the events of fifty-three years of mar- 
riage, and the end of her life also. Face to face with such 
wholeness one remains speechless, for it can scarcely be com- 
prehended. 

The objectivity which I experienced in this dream and in the 
visions is part of a completed individuation. It signifies detach- 
ment from valuations and from what we call emotional ties. In 
general, emotional ties are very important to human beings. But 
they still contain projections, and it is essential to withdraw 
these projections in order to attain to oneself and to objectivity. 
Emotional relationships are relationships of desire, tainted by 

296 



Visions 

coercion and constraint; something is expected from the other 
person, and that makes him and ourselves unfree. Objective 
cognition lies hidden behind the attraction of the emotional 
relationship; it seems to be the central secret. Only through ob- 
jective cognition is the real coniunctio possible. 

After the illness a fruitful period of work began for me. A 
good many of my principal works were written only then. The 
insight I had had, or the vision of the end of all things, gave 
me the courage to undertake new formulations. I no longer 
attempted to put across my own opinion, but surrendered my- 
self to the current of my thoughts. Thus one problem after the 
other revealed itself to me and took shape. 

Something else, too, came to me from my illness. I might 
formulate it as an affirmation of things as they are: an uncondi- 
tional "yes** to that which is, without subjective protests 
acceptance of the conditions of existence as I see them and 
understand them, acceptance of my own nature, as I happen to 
be. At the beginning of the illness I had the feeling that there 
was something wrong with my attitude, and that I was to some 
extent responsible for the mishap. But when one follows the 
path of individuation, when one lives one's own life, one 
must take mistakes into the bargain; life would not be complete 
without them. There is no guarantee not for a single moment 
that we will not fall into error or stumble into deadly peril. 
We may think there is a sure road. But that would be the road 
of death. Then nothing happens any longer at any rate, not 
the right things. Anyone who takes the sure road is as good as 
dead. 

It was only after the illness that I understood how impor- 
tant it is to affirm one's own destiny. In this way we forge an 
ego that does not break down when incomprehensible things 
happen; an ego that endures, that endures the truth, and that is 
capable of coping with the world and with fate. Then, to experi- 
ence defeat is also to experience victory. Nothing is disturbed 
neither inwardly nor outwardly, for one's own continuity has 
withstood the current of life and of time. But that can come to 
pass only when one does not meddle inquisitively with the work- 
ings of fate. 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

I have also realized that one must accept the thoughts that 
go on within oneself of their own accord as part of one's reality. 
The categories of true and false are, of course, always present; 
but because they are not binding they take second place. The 
presence of thoughts is more important than our subjective judg- 
ment of them. But neither must these judgments be suppressed, 
for they also are existent thoughts which are part of our whole- 
ness. 



XI 



On Life after Death 



WHAT i HAVE to tell about the hereafter, and about 
life after death, consists entirely of memories, of im- 
ages in which I have lived and of thoughts which ha^e 
buffeted me. These memories in a way also underlie my works; 
for the latter are fundamentally nothing but attempts, ever re- 
newed, to give an answer to the question of the interplay be- 
tween the "here" and the "hereafter." Yet I have never written 
expressly about a life; after death; for then I would have had to 
document my ideas, and I have no way of doing that. Be that 
as it may, I would like to state my ideas now. 

Even now I can do no more than tell stories "mythologize." 
Perhaps one has to be close to death to acquire the necessary 
freedom to talk about it. It is not that I wish we had a life after 
death. In fact, I would prefer not to foster such ideas. Still, I 
must state, to give reality its due, that, without my wishing and 
without my doing anything about it, thoughts of this nature 
move about within me. I can't say whether these thoughts are 
true or false, but I do know they are there, and can be given 
utterance, if I do not repress them out of some prejudice. Preju- 
dice cripples and injures the full phenomenon of psychic life. 

299 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

And I know too little about psychic life to feel that I can set it 
right out of superior knowledge. Critical rationalism has ap- 
parently eliminated, along with so many other mythic con- 
ceptions, the idea of life after death. This could only have 
happened because nowadays most people identify themselves 
almost exclusively with their consciousness, and imagine that 
they are only what they know about themselves. Yet anyone 
with even a smattering of psychology can see how limited this 
knowledge is. Rationalism and doctrinairism are the disease of 
our time; they pretend to have all the answers. But a great deal 
will yet be discovered which our present limited view would 
have ruled out as impossible. Our concepts of space and time 
have only approximate validity, and there is therefore a wide 
field for minor and major deviations. In view of all this, I lend 
an attentive ear to the strange myths of the psyche, and take 
a careful look at the varied events that come my way, regardless 
of whether or not they fit in with my theoretical postulates. 

Unfortunately, the mythic side of man is given short shrift 
nowadays. He can no longer create fables. As a result, a great 
deal escapes him; for it is important and salutary to speak also 
of incomprehensible things. Such talk is like the telling of a 
good ghost story, as we sit by the fireside and smoke a pipe. 

What the myths or stories about a life after death really 
mean, or what kind of reality lies behind them, we certainly do 
not know. We cannot tell whether they possess any validity be- 
yond their indubitable value as anthropomorphic projections. 
Rather, we must hold clearly in mind that there is no possible 
way for us to attain certainty concerning things which pass our 
understanding. 

We cannot visualize another world ruled by quite other laws, 
the reason being that we live in a specific world which has 
helped to shape our minds and establish our basic psychic 
conditions. We are strictly limited by our innate structure and 
therefore bound by our whole being and thinking to this world 
of ours. Mythic man, to be sure, demands a "going beyond all 
that/* but scientific man cannot permit this. To the intellect, all 
my mythologizing is futile speculation. To the emotions, how- 
ever, it is a healing and valid activity; it gives existence a glam- 

300 



On Life after Death 

our which we would not like to do without. Nor is there any 
good reason why we should. 

Parapsychology holds it to be a scientifically valid proof of 
an afterlife that the dead manifest themselves either as ghosts, 
or through a medium and communicate things which they 
alone could possibly know. But even though there do exist such 
well-documented cases, the question remains whether the ghost 
or the voice is identical with the dead person or is a psychic 
projection, and whether the things said really derive from the 
deceased or from knowledge which may be present in the un- 
conscious. 1 

Leaving aside the rational arguments against any certainty 
in these matters, we must not forget that for most people it 
means a great deal to assume that their lives will have an in- 
definite continuity beyond their present existence. They live 
more sensibly, feel better, and are more at peace. One has cen- 
turies, one has an inconceivable period of time at one's disposal. 
What then is the point of this senseless mad rush? 

Naturally, such reasoning does not apply to everyone. There 
are people who feel no craving for immortality, and who shud- 
der at the thought of sitting on a cloud and playing the harp 
for ten thousand years! There are also quite a few who have 
been so buffeted by life, or who feel such disgust for their own 
existence, that they far prefer absolute cessation to continu- 
ance. But in the majority of cases the question of immortality 
is so urgent, so immediate, and also so ineradicable that we must 
make an effort to form some sort of view about it. But how? 

My hypothesis is that we can do so with the aid of hints sent 
to us from the unconscious in dreams, for example. Usually we 
dismiss these hints because we are convinced that the question 
is not susceptible to answer. In response to this understandable 
skepticism, I suggest the following considerations. If there is 
something we cannot know, we must necessarily abandon it as 
an intellectual problem. For example, I do not know for what 
reason the universe has come into being, and shall never know, 

1 Concerning "absolute knowledge" in the unconscious, dE. "Synchronicity: An 
Acausal Connecting Principle/' in The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche 
(CW8),pp.48iff. 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

Therefore I must drop this question as a scientific or intellectual 
problem. But if an idea about it is offered to me in dreams or 
in mythic traditions I ought to take note of it. I even ought 
to build up a conception on the basis of such hints, even though 
it will forever remain a hypothesis which I know cannot be 
proved. 

A man should be able to say he has done his best to form a 
conception of life after death, or to create some image of it 
even if he must confess his failure. Not to have done so is a vital 
loss. For the question that is posed to him is the age-old heritage 
of humanity: an archetype, rich in secret life, which seeks to 
add itself to our own individual life in order to make it whole. 
Reason sets the boundaries far too narrowly for us, and would 
have us accept only the known and that too with limitations 
and live in a known framework, just as if we were sure how 
far life actually extends. As a matter of fact, day after day we 
live far beyond the bounds of our consciousness; without our 
knowledge, the life of the unconscious is also going on within 
us. The more the critical reason dominates, the more impov- 
erished life becomes; but the more of the unconscious, and the 
more of myth we are capable of making conscious, the more of 
life we integrate. Overvalued reason has this in common with 
political absolutism: under its dominion the individual is pau- 
perized. 

The unconscious helps by communicating things to us, or 
making figurative allusions. It has other ways, too, of informing 
us of things which by all logic we could not possibly know. 
Consider synchronistic phenomena, premonitions, and dreams 
that come true. I recall one time during the Second World War 
when I was returning home from Bollingen. I had a book with 
me, but could not read, for the moment the train started to 
move I was overpowered by the image of someone drowning. 
This was a memory of an accident that had happened while 
I was on military service. During the entire journey I could not 
rid myself of it. It struck me as uncanny, and I thought, "What 
has happened? Can there have been an accident?" 

I got out at Erlenbach and walked home, still troubled by 
this memory. My second daughters children were in the garden. 

302, 



On Life after Death 

The family was living with us, having returned to Switzerland 
from Paris because of the war. The children stood looking rather 
upset, and when I asked, "Why, what is the matter?" they told 
me that Adrian, then the youngest of the boys, had fallen into 
the water in the boathouse. It is quite deep there, and since he 
could not really swim he had almost drowned. His older brother 
had fished him out. This had taken place at exactly the time I 
had been assailed by that memory in the train. The uncon- 
scious had given me a hint. Why should it not be able to inform 
me of other things also? 

I had a somewhat similar experience before a death in my 
wife's family. I dreamed that my wife's bed was a deep pit 
with stone walls. It was a grave, and somehow had a suggestion 
of classical antiquity about it. Then I heard a deep sigh, as if 
someone were giving up the ghost. A figure that resembled my 
wife sat up in the pit and floated upward. It wore a white gown 
into which curious black symbols were woven. I awoke, roused 
my wife, and checked the time. It was three o'clock in the morn- 
ing. The dream was so curious that I thought at once that it 
might signify a death. At seven o'clock came the news that a 
cousin of my wife had died at three o'clock in the morning. 

Frequently foreknowledge is there, but not recognition. Thus 
I once had a dream in which I was attending a garden party. 
I saw my sister there, and that greatly surprised me, for she had 
died some years before. A deceased friend of mine was also 
present. The rest were people who were still alive. Presently I 
saw that my sister was accompanied by a lady I knew well. Even 
in the dream I had drawn the conclusion that the lady was 
going to die. "She is already marked," I thought. In the dream 
I knew exactly who she was. I knew also that she lived in Basel. 
But as soon as I woke up I could no longer, with the best will 
in the world, recall who she was, although the whole dream was 
still vivid in my mind. I pictured all my acquaintances in Basel 
to see whether the memory images would ring a bell. Nothing! 

A few weeks later I received news that a friend of mine had 
had a fatal accident. I knew at once that she was the person 
I had seen in the dream but had been unable to identify. My 
recollection of her was perfectly clear and richly detailed, since 

303 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

she had been my patient for a considerable time up to a year 
before her death. In my attempt to recall the person in my 
dream, however, hers was the one picture which did not appear 
in my portrait gallery of Basel acquaintances, although by 
rights it should have been one of the first. 

When one has such experiences and I will tell of others like 
them one acquires a certain respect for the potentialities and 
arts of the unconscious. Only, one must remain critical and be 
aware that such communications may have a subjective mean- 
ing as well. They may be in accord with reality, and then again 
they may not. I have, however, learned that the views I have 
been able to form on the basis of such hints from the uncon- 
scious have been most rewarding. Naturally, I am not going to 
write a book of revelations about them, but I will acknowledge 
that I have a "myth" which encourages me to look deeper into 
this whole realm. Myths are the earliest form of science. When 
I speak of things after death, I am speaking out of inner prompt- 
ing, and can go no farther than to tell you dreams and myths 
that relate to this subject. 

Naturally, one can contend from the start that myths and 
dreams concerning continuity of life after death are merely 
compensating fantasies which are inherent in our natures all 
life desires eternity. The only argument I can adduce in answer 
to this is the myth itself. 

However, there are indications that at least a part of the 
psyche is not subject to the laws of space and time. Scientific 
proof of that has been provided by the well-known J. B. Rhine 
experiments. 2 Along with numerous cases of spontaneous fore- 
knowledge, non-spatial perceptions, and so on of which I have 
given a number of examples from my own Me these experi- 
ments prove that the psyche at times functions outside of the 
spatio-temporal law of causality. This indicates that our con- 
ceptions of space and time, and therefore of causality also, are 
incomplete. A complete picture of the world would require the 
addition of still another dimension; only then could the totality 
of phenomena be given a unified explanation. Hence it is that 

3 Extra-sensory Perception (Boston, 1934); The Reach of the Mind (New York, 
1947). 

304 



On Life after Death 

the rationalists insist to this day that parapsychological experi- 
ences do not really exist; for their world-view stands or falls by 
this question. If such phenomena occur at all, the rationalistic 
picture of the universe is invalid, because incomplete. Then the 
possibility of an other-valued reality behind the phenomenal 
world becomes an inescapable problem, and we must face the 
fact that our world, with its time, space, and causality, relates 
to another order of things lying behind or beneath it, in which 
neither "here and there" nor "earlier and later" are of impor- 
tance. I have been convinced that at least a part of our psychic 
existence is characterized by a relativity of space and time. This 
relativity seems to increase, in proportion to the distance from 
consciousness, to an absolute condition of timelessness and 
spacelessness. 

Not only my own dreams, but also occasionally the dreams of 
others, helped to shape, revise, or confirm my views on a Me 
after death. I attach particular importance to a dream which 
a pupil of mine, a woman of sixty, dreamed about two months 
before her death. She had entered the hereafter. There was a 
class going on, and various deceased women friends of hers sat 
on the front bench. An atmosphere of general expectation pre- 
vailed. She looked around for a teacher or lecturer, but could 
find none. Then it became plain that she herself was the lecturer, 
for immediately after death people had to give accounts of the 
total experience of their lives. The dead were extremely inter- 
ested in the life experiences that the newly deceased brought 
with them, just as if the acts and experiences taking place in 
earthly life, in space and time, were the decisive ones. 

In any case, the dream describes a most unusual audience 
whose like could scarcely be found on earth: people burningly 
interested in the final psychological results of a human Me that 
was in no way remarkable, any more than were the conclusions 
that could be drawn from it to our way of thinking. If, how- 
ever, the "audience" existed in a state of relative non-time, 
where "termination/* "event," and "development" had become 
questionable concepts, they might very well be most interested 
precisely in what was lacking in their own condition. 

At the time of this dream the lady was afraid of death and 

305 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

did her best to fend off any thoughts about it. Yet death is an 
important interest, especially to an aging person. A categorical 
question is being put to him, and he is under an obligation to 
answer it. To this end he ought to have a myth about death, 
for reason shows him nothing but the dark pit into which he is 
descending. Myth, however, can conjure up other images for 
him, helpful and enriching pictures of life in the land of the 
dead. If he believes in them, or greets them with some measure 
of credence, he is being just as right or just as wrong as some- 
one who does not believe in them. But while the man who de- 
spairs marches toward nothingness, the one who has placed his 
faith in the archetype follows the tracks of life and lives right 
into his death. Both, to be sure, remain in uncertainty, but the 
one lives against his instincts, the other with them. 

The figures from the unconscious are uninformed too, and 
need man, or contact with consciousness, in order to attain to 
knowledge. When I began working with the unconscious, I 
found myself much involved with the figures of Salome and 
Elijah. Then they receded, but after about two years they reap- 
peared. To my enormous astonishment, they were completely 
unchanged; they spoke and acted as if nothing had happened 
in the meanwhile. In actuality the most incredible things had 
taken place in my life. I had, as it were, to begin from the be- 
ginning again, to tell them all about what had been going on, 
and explain things to them. At the time I had been greatly 
surprised by this situation. Only later did I understand what 
had happened: in the interval the two had sunk back into the 
unconscious and into themselves I might equally well put it, 
into timelessness. They remained out of contact with the ego 
and the ego's changing circumstances, and therefore were ig- 
norant of what had happened in the world of consciousness. 

Quite early I had learned that it was necessary for me to in- 
struct the figures of the unconscious, or that other group which 
is often indistinguishable from them, the "spirits of the de- 
parted." The first time I experienced this was on a bicycle trip 
through upper Italy which I took with a friend in 1911. On the 
way home we cycled from Pavia to Arona, on the lower part of 
Lake Maggiore, and spent the night there. We had intended 

306 



On Life after Death 

to pedal on along the lake and then through the Tessin as far 
as Faido, where we were going to take the train to Zurich. But 
in Arona I had a dream which upset our plans. 

In the dream I was in an assemblage of distinguished spirits 
of earlier centuries; the feeling was similar to die one I had 
later toward the "illustrious ancestors" in the bkck rock temple 
of my 1944 vision. The conversation was conducted in Latin. 
A gentleman with a long, curly wig addressed me and asked a 
difficult question, the gist of which I could no longer recall after 
I woke up. I understood him, but did not have a sufficient com- 
mand of the language to answer him in Latin. I felt so pro- 
foundly humiliated by this that the emotion awakened me. 

At the very moment of awakening I thought of the book I 
was then working on, Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido, and 
had such intense inferiority feelings about the unanswered 
question that I immediately took the train home in order to get 
back to work. It would have been impossible for me to continue 
the bicycle trip and lose another three days. I had to work, to 
find the answer. 

Not until years later did I understand the dream and my re- 
action. The bewigged gentleman was a kind of ancestral 
spirit, or spirit of the dead, who had addressed questions to me 
in vain! It was still too soon, I had not yet come so far, but 
I had an obscure feeling that by working on my book I would 
be answering the question that had been asked. It had been 
asked by, as it were, my spiritual forefathers, in the hope and 
expectation that they would learn what they had not been able 
to find out during their time on earth, since the answer had 
first to be created in the centuries that followed. If question 
and answer had already been in existence in eternity, had al- 
ways been there, no effort on my part would have been neces- 
sary, and it could all have been discovered in any other century. 
There does seem to be unlimited knowledge present in nature, it 
is true, but it can be comprehended by consciousness only when 
the time is ripe for it. The process, presumably, is like what 
happens in the individual psyche: a man may go about for many 
years with an inkling of something, but grasps it clearly only 
at a particular moment. 

307 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

Later, when I wrote the Septem Sermones ad Mortuos, once 
again it was the dead who addressed crucial questions to me. 
They came so they said "back from Jerusalem, where they 
found not what they sought." This had surprised me greatly at 
the time, for according to the traditional views the dead are 
the possessors of great knowledge. People have the idea that 
the dead know far more than we, for Christian doctrine teaches 
that in the hereafter we shall "see face to face." Apparently, 
however, the souls of the dead "know" only what they knew at 
the moment of death, and nothing beyond that. Hence their 
endeavor to penetrate into life in order to share in the knowl- 
edge of men. I frequently have a feeling that they are standing 
directly behind us, waiting to hear what answer we will give 
to them, and what answer to destiny. It seems to me as if they 
were dependent on the living for receiving answers to their 
questions, that is, on those who have survived them and exist in 
a world of change: as if omniscience or, as I might put it, omni- 
consciousness, were not at their disposal, but could flow only 
into the psyche of the living, into a soul bound to a body. The 
mind of the living appears, therefore, to hold an advantage over 
that of the dead in at least one point: in the capacity for attain- 
ing clear and decisive cognitions. As I see it, the three-dimen- 
sional world in time and space is like a system of co-ordinates; 
what is here separated into ordinates and abscissae may appear 
''there," in space-timelessness, as a primordial image with many 
aspects, perhaps as a diffuse cloud of cognition surrounding an 
archetype. Yet a system of co-ordinates is necessary if any dis- 
tinction of discrete contents is to be possible. Any such operation 
seems to us unthinkable in a state of diffuse omniscience, or, as 
the case may be, of subjectless consciousness, with no spatio- 
temporal demarcations. Cognition, like generation, presupposes 
an opposition, a here and there, an above and below, a before 
and after. 

If there were to be a conscious existence after death, it would, 
so it seems to me, have to continue on the level of consciousness 
attained by humanity, which in any age has an upper though 
variable limit. There are many human beings who throughout 
their lives and at the moment of death lag behind their own 

308 



On Life after Death 

potentialities and even more important behind the knowl- 
edge which has been brought to consciousness by other human 
beings during their own lifetimes. Hence their demand to attain 
in death that share of awareness which they failed to win in life. 

I have come to this conclusion through observation of dreams 
about the dead. I dreamed once that I was paying a visit to 
a friend who had died about two weeks before. In life, this 
friend had never espoused anything but a conventional view of 
the world, and had remained stuck in this unreflecting attitude. 
In the dream his home was on a hill similar to the Tullinger hill 
near Basel. The walls of an old castle surrounded a square con- 
sisting of a small church and a few smaller buildings. It re- 
minded me of the square in front of the castle of Rapperswil. 
It was autumn. The leaves of the ancient trees had turned gold, 
and the whole scene was transfigured by gentle sunlight. My 
friend sat at a table with his daughter, who had studied psy- 
chology in Zurich. I knew that she was telling him about psy- 
chology. He was so fascinated by what she was saying that he 
greeted me only with a casual wave of the hand, as though to 
intimate: "Don't disturb me." The greeting was at the same 
time a dismissal. The dream told me that now, in a manner 
which of course remains incomprehensible to me, he was re- 
quired to grasp the reality of his psychic existence, which he 
had never been capable of doing during his Me. 

I had another experience of the evolution of the soul after 
death when about a year after my wife's death I suddenly 
awoke one night and knew that I had been with her in the south 
of France, in Provence, and had spent an entire day with her. 
She was engaged on studies of the Grail there. That seemed 
significant to me, for she had died before completing her work 
on this subject. Interpretation on the subjective level that my 
anima had not yet finished with the work she had to do 
yielded nothing of interest; I know quite well that I am not yet 
finished with that. But the thought that my wife was continuing 
after death to work on her further spiritual development how- 
ever that may be conceived struck me as meaningful and held 
a measure of reassurance for me. 

Ideas of this sort are, of course, inaccurate, and give a wrong 

309 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

picture, like a body projected on a plane or, conversely, like 
the construction of a four-dimensional model out of a three- 
dimensional body. They use the terms of a three-dimensional 
world in order to represent themselves to us. Mathematics goes 
to great pains to create expressions for relationships which pass 
empirical comprehension. In much the same way, it is all-impor- 
tant for a disciplined imagination to build up images of intangi- 
bles by logical principles and on the basis of empirical data, 
that is, on the evidence of dreams. The method employed is 
what I have called "the method of the necessary statement." It 
represents the principle of amplification in the interpretation of 
dreams, but can most easily be demonstrated by the statements 
implicit in simple whole numbers. 

One, as the first numeral, is unity. But it is also "the unity," 
the One, All-Oneness, individuality and non-duality not a nu- 
meral but a philosophical concept, an archetype and attribute 
of God, the monad. It is quite proper that the human intellect 
should make these statements; but at the same time the intellect 
is determined and limited by its conception of oneness and its 
implications. In other words, these statements are not arbitrary. 
They are governed by the nature of oneness and therefore are 
necessary statements. Theoretically, the same logical operation 
could be performed for each of the following conceptions of 
number, but in practice the process soon comes to an end be- 
cause of the rapid increase in complications, which become too 
numerous to handle. 

Every further unit introduces new properties and new modi- 
fications. Thus, it is a property of the number four that equations 
of the fourth degree can be solved, whereas equations of the 
fifth degree cannot. The necessary statement of the number 
four, therefore, is that, among other things, it is an apex and 
simultaneously die end of a preceding ascent. Since with each 
additional unit one or more new mathematical properties ap- 
pear, the statements attain such a complexity that they can no 
longer be formulated. 

The infinite series of natural numbers corresponds to the in- 
finite number of individual creatures. That series likewise con- 
sists of individuals, and the properties even of its first ten 

310 



On Life after Death 

members represent if they represent anything at all an ab- 
stract cosmogony derived from the monad. The properties of 
numbers are, however, simultaneously properties of matter, for 
which reason certain equations can anticipate its behavior. 

Therefore I submit that other than mathematical statements 
(i.e., statements implicit in nature) are likewise capable of 
pointing to irrepresentable realities beyond themselves such, 
for example, as those products of the imagination which enjoy 
universal acceptance or are distinguished by the frequency of 
their occurrence, like the whole class of archetypal motifs. Just 
as in the case of some factors in mathematical equations we can- 
not say to what physical realities they correspond, so in the case 
. of some mythological products we do not know at first to what 
psychic realities they refer. Equations governing the turbulence 
of heated gases existed long before the problems of such gases 
had been precisely investigated. Similarly, we have long been in 
possession of mythologems which express the dynamics of cer- 
tain subliminal processes, though these processes were only 
given names in very recent times. 

The maximum awareness which has been attained anywhere 
forms, so it seems to me, the upper limit of knowledge to which 
the dead can attain. That is probably why earthly life is of such 
great significance, and why it is that what a human being 
"brings over" at the time of his death is so important. Only here, 
in life on earth, where the opposites clash together, can the 
general level of consciousness be raised. That seems to be man's 
metaphysical task which he cannot accomplish without 
"mythologizing." Myth is the natural and indispensable inter- 
mediate stage between unconscious and conscious cognition. 
True, the unconscious knows more than consciousness does; 
but it is knowledge of a special sort, knowledge in eternity, usu- 
ally without reference to the here and now, not couched in lan- 
guage of the intellect. Only when we let its statements amplify 
themselves, as has been shown above by the example of nu- 
merals, does it come within the range of our understanding; only 
then does a new aspect become perceptible to us. This process is 
convincingly repeated in every successful dream analysis. That 

3" 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

is why it is so important not to have any preconceived, doc- 
trinaire opinions about die statements made by dreams. As soon 
as a certain "monotony of interpretation" strikes us, we know 
that our approach has become doctrinaire and hence sterile. 

Although there is no way to marshal valid proof of continu- 
ance of the soul after death, there are nevertheless experiences 
which make us thoughtful. I take them as hints, and do not 
presume to ascribe to them the significance of insights. 

One night I lay awake thinking of the sudden death of a 
friend whose funeral had taken place the day before. I was 
deeply concerned. Suddenly I felt that he was in the room. It 
seemed to me that he stood at the foot of my bed and was asking 
me to go with him. I did not have the feeling of an apparition; 
rather, it was an inner visual image of him, which I explained to 
myself as a fantasy. But in all honesty I had to ask myself, "Do I 
have any proof that this is a fantasy? Suppose it is not a fantasy, 
suppose my friend is really here and I decided he was only a 
fantasy would that not be abominable of me?" Yet I had 
equally little proof that he stood before me as an apparition. 
Then I said to myself, "Proof is neither here nor there! Instead 
of explaining him away as a fantasy, I might just as well give him 
the benefit of the doubt and for experiment's sake credit him 
with reality." The moment I had that thought, he went to the 
door and beckoned me to follow him. So I was going to have to 
play along with him! That was something I hadn't bargained 
for. I had to repeat my argument to myself once more. Only then 
did I follow him in my imagination. 

He led me out of the house, into the garden, out to the road, 
and finally to his house, (In reality it was several hundred yards 
away from mine.) I went in, and he conducted me into his 
study. He climbed on a stool and showed me the second of five 
books with red bindings which stood on the second shelf from 
the top. Then the vision broke off. I was not acquainted with his 
library and did not know what books he owned. Certainly I 
could never have made out from below the titles of the books he 
had pointed out to me on the second shelf from the top. 

This experience seemed to me so curious that next morning I 

3X2 



On Life after Death 

went to his widow and asked whether I could look up some- 
thing in my friend's library. Sure enough, there was a stool 
standing under the bookcase I had seen in my vision, and even 
before I came closer I could see the five books with red bind- 
ings. I stepped up on the stool so as to be able to read the titles. 
They were translations of the novels of Emile Zola. The title of 
the second volume read: "The Legacy of the Dead." The con- 
tents seemed to me of no interest. Only the title was extremely 
significant in connection with this experience. 

Equally important to me were the dream-experiences I had 
before my mother's death. News of her death came to me while I 
was staying in the Tessin. I was deeply shaken, for it had come 
with unexpected suddenness. The night before her death I 
had a frightening dream. I was in a dense, gloomy forest; fan- 
tastic, gigantic boulders lay about among huge jungle-like trees. 
It was a heroic, primeval landscape. Suddenly I heard a piercing 
whistle that seemed to resound through the whole universe. 
My knees shook. Then there were crashings in the underbrush, 
and a gigantic wolfhound with a fearful, gaping maw burst 
forth. At the sight of it, the blood froze in my veins. It tore past 
me, and I suddenly knew: the Wild Huntsman had commanded 
it to carry away a human soul. I awoke in deadly terror, and the 
next morning I received the news of my mother's passing. 

Seldom has a dream so shaken me, for upon superficial con- 
sideration it seemed to say that the devil had fetched her. But to 
be accurate the dream said that it was the Wild Huntsman, the 
"Grunhutl" or Wearer of the Green Hat, who hunted with his 
wolves that night it was the season of Fohn storms in January. 
It was Wotan, the god of my Alemannic forefathers, who had 
gathered my mother to her ancestors negatively to the "wild 
horde," but positively to the "saUg lut" the blessed folk. It was 
the Christian missionaries who made Wotan into a devil. In him- 
self he is an important god a Mercury or Hermes, as the Ro- 
mans correctly realized, a nature spirit who returned to life 
again in the Merlin of the Grail legend and became, as the 
spiritus Mercurialis, the sought-after arcanum of the alchemists. 
Thus the dream says that the soul of my mother was taken into 

3*3 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

that greater territory of the self which lies beyond the segment 
of Christian morality, taken into that wholeness of nature and 
spirit in which conflicts and contradictions are resolved. 

I went home immediately, and while I rode in the night train 
I had a feeling of great grief, but in my heart of hearts I could 
not be mournful, and this for a strange reason: during the entire 
journey I continually heard dance music, laughter, and jollity, as 
though a wedding were being celebrated. This contrasted vio- 
lently with the devastating impression the dream had made on 
me. Here was gay dance music, cheerful laughter, and it was im- 
possible to yield entirely to my sorrow. Again and again it was 
on the point of overwhelming me, but the next moment I 
would find myself once more engulfed by the merry melodies. 
One side of me had a feeling of warmth and joy, and the other of 
terror and grief; I was thrown back and forth between these con- 
trasting emotions. 

This paradox can be explained if we suppose that at one mo- 
ment death was being represented from the point of view of the 
ego, and at the next from that of the psyche. In the first case it 
appeared as a catastrophe; that is how it so often strikes us, as if 
wicked and pitiless powers had put an end to a human life. 

And so it is death is indeed a fearful piece of brutality; 
there is no sense pretending otherwise. It is brutal not only as a 
physical event, but far more so psychically: a human being is 
torn away from us, and what remains is the icy stillness of death. 
There no longer exists any hope of a relationship, for all the 
bridges have been smashed at one blow. Those who deserve a 
long life are cut off in the prime of their years, and good-for- 
nothings live to a ripe old age. This is a cruel reality which we 
have no right to sidestep. The actual experience of the cruelty 
and wantonness of death can so embitter us that we conclude 
there is no merciful God, no justice, and no kindness. 

From another point of view, however, death appears as a joy- 
ful event. In the light of eternity, it is a wedding, a mysterium 
coniunctionis. The soul attains, as it were, its missing half, it 
achieves wholeness. On Greek sarcophagi the joyous element 
was represented by dancing girls, on Etruscan tombs by ban- 

3*4 



On Life after Death 

quets. When the pious Cabbalist Rabbi Simon ben Jochai came 
to die, his friends said that he was celebrating his wedding. To 
this day it is the custom in many regions to hold a picnic on the 
graves on All Souls* Day. Such customs express the feeling that 
death is really a festive occasion. 

Several months before my mother's death, in September 1922, 
I had a dream which presaged it. It concerned my father, and 
made a deep impression upon me. I had not dreamed of my fa- 
ther since his death in 1896. Now he once more appeared in a 
dream, as if he had returned from a distant journey. He looked 
rejuvenated, and had shed his appearance of paternal authori- 
tarianism. I went into my library with him, and was greatly 
pleased at the prospect of finding out what he had been up to. I 
was also looking forward with particular joy to introducing my 
wife and children to him, to showing him my house, and to tell- 
ing him all that had happened to me and what I had become 
in the meanwhile. I wanted also to tell him about my book on 
psychological types, which had recently been published. But I 
quickly saw that all this would be inopportune, for my father 
looked preoccupied. Apparently he wanted something from me. 
I felt that plainly, and so I refrained from talking about my own 
concerns. 

He then said to me that since I was after all a psychologist, he 
would like to consult me about marital psychology. I made 
ready to give him a lengthy lecture on the complexities of mar- 
riage, but at this point I awoke. I could not properly understand 
the dream, for it never occurred to me that it might refer to my 
mother's death. I realized that only when she died suddenly in 
January 1923. 

My parents* marriage was not a happy one, but full of trials 
and difficulties and tests of patience. Both made the mistakes 
typical of many couples. My dream was a forecast of my mother's 
death, for here was my father who, after an absence of 
twenty-six years, wished to ask a psychologist about the newest 
insights and information on marital problems, since he would 
soon have to resume this relationship again. Evidently he had 
acquired no better understanding in his timeless state and 

3*5 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

therefore had to appeal to someone among the living who, en- 
joying the benefits of changed times, might have a fresh ap- 
proach to the whole thing. 

Such was the dream's message. Undoubtedly, I could have 
found out a good deal more by looking into its subjective mean- 
ing but why did I dream it just before the death of my mother, 
which I did not foresee? It plainly referred to my father, with 
whom I felt a sympathy that deepened as I grew older. 

Since the unconscious, as the result of its spatio-temporal rela- 
tivity, possesses better sources of information than the conscious 
mind which has only sense perceptions available to it we are 
dependent for our myth of life after death upon the meager 
hints of dreams and similar spontaneous revelations from the 
unconscious. As I have already said, we cannot attribute to these 
allusions the value of knowledge, let alone proof. They can, how- 
ever, serve as suitable bases for mythic amplifications; they give 
the probing intellect the raw material which is indispensable for 
its vitality. Cut off the intermediary world of mythic imagina- 
tion, and the mind falls prey to doctrinaire rigidities. On the 
other hand, too much traffic with these germs of myth is dan- 
gerous for weak and suggestible minds, for they are led to mis- 
take vague intimations for substantial knowledge, and to 
hypostatize mere phantasms. 

One widespread myth of the hereafter is formed by the ideas 
and images centering on reincarnation. In one country whose 
intellectual culture is highly complex and much older than ours 
I am, of course, referring to India the idea of reincarnation is 
as much taken for granted as, among us, the idea that God 
created the world, or that there is a spiritus rector. Cultivated 
Hindus know that we do not share their ideas about this, but 
that does not trouble them. In keeping with the spirit of the 
East, the succession of birth and death is viewed as an endless 
continuity, as an eternal wheel rolling on forever without a goal, 
Man lives and attains knowledge and dies and begins again 
from the beginning. Only with the Buddha does the idea of a 
goal emerge, namely, the overcoming of earthly existence. 

The mythic needs of the Occidental call for an evolutionary 
cosmogony with a beginning and a goal. The Occidental rebels 



On Life after Death 

against a cosmogony with a beginning and mere end, just as he 
cannot accept the idea of a static, self-contained, eternal cycle 
of events. The Oriental, on the other hand, seems able to come 
to terms with this idea. Apparently there is no unanimous feeling 
about the nature of the world, any more than there is general 
agreement among contemporary astronomers on this question. 
To Western man, the meaninglessness of a merely static universe 
is unbearable. He must assume that it has meaning. The Oriental 
does not need to make this assumption; rather, he himself em- 
bodies it. Whereas the Occidental feels the need to complete the 
meaning of the world, the Oriental strives for the fulfillment of 
meaning in man, stripping the world and existence from himself 
(Buddha). 

I would say that both are right. Western man seems pre- 
dominantly extraverted, Eastern man predominantly intro- 
verted. The former projects the meaning and considers that it 
exists in objects; the latter feels the meaning in himself. But the 
meaning is both without and within. 

The idea of rebirth is inseparable from that of karma. The 
crucial question is whether a man's karma is personal or not. If it 
is, then the preordained destiny with which a man enters life 
represents an achievement of previous lives, and a personal con- 
tinuity therefore exists. If, however, this is not so, and an im- 
personal karma is seized upon in the act of birth, then that 
karma is incarnated again without there being any personal con- 
tinuity. 

Buddha was twice asked by his disciples whether man's karma 
is personal or not. Each time he fended off the question, and 
did not go into the matter; to know this, he said, would not con- 
tribute to liberating oneself from the illusion of existence. 
Buddha considered it far more useful for his disciples to medi- 
tate upon the Nidana chain, that is, upon birth, life, old age, and 
death, and upon the cause and effect of suffering. 

I know no answer to the question of whether the karma which 
I live is the outcome of my past lives, or whether it is not rather 
the achievement of my ancestors, whose heritage comes to- 
gether in me. Am I a combination of the lives of these ancestors 
and do I embody these lives again? Have I lived before in the 

3*7 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

past as a specific personality, and did I progress so far in that 
life that I am now able to seek a solution? I do not know. 
Buddha left the question open, and I like to assume that he 
himself did not know with certainty. 

I could well imagine that ! might have lived in former cen- 
turies and there encountered questions I was not yet able to 
answer; that I had to be born again because I had not fulfilled 
the task that was given to me. When I die, my deeds will follow 
along with me that is how I imagine it. I will bring with me 
what I have done. In the meantime it is important to insure that 
I do not stand at the end with empty hands. Buddha, too, seems 
to have had this thought when he tried to keep his disciples 
from wasting time on useless speculation. 

The meaning of my existence is that life has addressed a 
question to me. Or, conversely, I myself am a question which is 
addressed to the world, and I must communicate my answer, for 
otherwise I am dependent upon the world's answer. That is a 
suprapersonal life task, which I accomplish only by effort and 
with difficulty. Perhaps it is a question which preoccupied my 
ancestors, and which they could not answer. Could that be why 
I am so impressed by the fact that the conclusion of Faust con- 
tains no solution? Or by the problem on which Nietzsche foun- 
dered: the Dionysian side of life, to which the Christian seems 
to have lost the way? Or is it the restless Wotan-Hermes of my 
Alemannic and Prankish ancestors who poses challenging rid- 
dles? 

What I feel to be the resultant of my ancestors' lives, or a 
karma acquired in a previous personal life, might perhaps 
equally well be an impersonal archetype which today presses 
hard on everyone and has taken a particular hold upon me an 
archetype such as, for example, the development over the cen- 
turies of the divine triad and its confrontation with the femi- 
nine principle; or the still pending answer to the Gnostic 
question as to the origin of evil, or, to put it another way, the 
incompleteness of the Christian God-image. 

I also think of the possibility that through the achievement of 
an individual a question enters the world, to which he must 

3** 



On Life after Death 

provide some kind of answer. For example, my way of posing 
the question as well as my answer may be unsatisfactory. That 
being so, someone who has my karma or I myself would have 
to be reborn in order to give a more complete answer. It might 
happen that I would not be reborn again so long as the world 
needed no such answer, and that I would be entitled to several 
hundred years of peace until someone was once more needed 
who took an interest in these matters and could profitably tackle 
the task anew. I imagine that for a while a period of rest could 
ensue, until the stint I had done in my lifetime needed to be 
taken up again. 

The question of karma is obscure to me, as is also the problem 
of personal rebirth or of the transmigration of souls. ~WIth a 
free and open mind" I listen attentively to the Indian doctrine 
of rebirth, and look around in the world of my own experience 
to see whether somewhere and somehow there is some authentic 
sign pointing toward reincarnation. Naturally, I do not count 
the relatively numerous testimonies, here in the West, to the be- 
lief in reincarnation. A belief proves to me only the phenomenon 
of belief, not the content of the belief. This I must see revealed 
empirically in order to accept it. Until a few years ago I could 
not discover anything convincing in this respect, although I kept 
a sharp lookout for any such signs. Recently, however, I observed 
in myself a series of dreams which would seem to describe the 
process of reincarnation in a deceased person of my acquaint- 
ance. But I have never come across any such dreams in other 
persons, and therefore have no basis for comparison. Since this 
observation is subjective and unique, I prefer only to mention its 
existence and not to go into it any further. I must confess, how- 
ever, that after this experience I view the problem of reincarna- 
tion with somewhat different eyes, though without being in a 
position to assert a definite opinion. 

If we assume that life continues "there," we cannot conceive 
of any other form of existence except a psychic one; for the life 
of the psyche requires no space and no time. Psychic existence, 
and above all the inner images with which we are here con- 
cerned, supply the material for all mythic speculations about a 

3*9 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

life in the hereafter, and I imagine that life as a continuance in 
the world of images. Thus the psyche might be that existence in 
which the hereafter or the land of the dead is located. 

From the psychological point of view, life in the hereafter 
would seem to be a logical continuation of the psychic life of 
old age. With increasing age, contemplation, and reflection, the 
inner images naturally play an ever greater part in man's life. 
"Your old men shall dream dreams/' 3 That, to be sure, presup- 
poses that the psyches of the old men have not become wooden, 
or entirely petrified sero medicina paratur cum mala per longas 
convaluere moras* In old age one begins to let memories unroll 
before the mind's eye and, musing, to recognize oneself in the 
inner and outer images of the past. This is like a preparation for 
an existence in the hereafter, just as, in Plato's view, philosophy 
is a preparation for death. 

The inner images keep me from getting lost in personal retro- 
spection. Many old people become too involved in their 
reconstruction of past events. They remain imprisoned in these 
memories. But if it is reflective and is translated into images, 
retrospection can be a reculer pour mieux sauter. I try to see the 
line which leads through my life into the world, and out of the 
world again. 

In general, the conception people form of the hereafter is 
largely made up of wishful thinking and prejudices. Thus in 
most conceptions the hereafter is pictured as a pleasant place. 
That does not seem so obvious to me. I hardly think that after 
death we shall be spirited to some lovely flowering meadow. If 
everything were pleasant and good in the hereafter, surely there 
would be some friendly communication between us and the 
blessed spirits, and an outpouring upon us of goodness and 
beauty from the prenatal state. But there is nothing of the sort. 
Why is there this insurmountable barrier between the departed 
and the living? At least half the reports of encounters with the 
dead tell of terrifying experiences with dark spirits; and it is the 

3 Acts 2:17; Joel 2:28. 

4 The medicine is prepared too late, when the illness has grown strong by long 
delay. 

320 



On Life after Death 

rule that the land of the dead observes icy silence, unperturbed 
by the grief of the bereaved. 

To follow out the thought that involuntarily comes to me: the 
world, I feel, is far too unitary for there to be a hereafter in 
which the rule of opposites is completely absent. There, too, is 
nature, which after its fashion is also God's. The world into 
which we enter after death will be grand and terrible, like God 
and like all of nature that we know. Nor can I conceive that 
suffering should entirely cease. Granted that what I experi- 
enced in my 1944 visions liberation from the burden of the 
body, and perception of meaning gave me the deepest bliss. 
Nevertheless, there was darkness too, and a strange cessation of 
human warmth. Remember the black rock to which I came! It 
was dark and of the hardest granite. What does that mean? If 
there were no imperfections, no primordial defect in the ground 
of creation, why should there be any urge to create, any longing 
for what must yet be fulfilled? Why should the gods be the 
least bit concerned about man and creation? About the continu- 
ation of the Nidana chain to infinity? After all, the Buddha op- 
poses to the painful illusion of existence his quod non, and the 
Christian hopes for the swift coming of this world's end. 

It seems probable to me that in the hereafter, too, there exist 
certain limitations, but that the souls of the dead only gradually 
find out where the limits of the liberated state lie. Somewhere 
"out there" there must be a determinant, a necessity condition- 
ing the world, which seeks to put an end to the after-death 
state. This creative determinant so I imagine it must decide 
what souls will plunge again into birth. Certain souls, I imagine, 
feel the state of three-dimensional existence to be more blissful 
than that of Eternity. But perhaps that depends upon how 
much of completeness or incompleteness they have taken across 
with them from their human existence. 

It is possible that any further spell of three-dimensional life 
would have no more meaning once the soul had reached a cer- 
tain stage of understanding; it would then no longer have to re- 
turn, fuller understanding having put to rout the desire for 
re-embodiment. Then the soul would vanish from the three- 

321 . 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

dimensional world and attain what the Buddhists call nirvana. 
But if a karma still remains to be disposed of, then the soul re- 
lapses again into desires and returns to life once more, perhaps 
even doing so out of the realization that something remains to 
be completed. 

In my case it must have been primarily a passionate urge to- 
ward understanding which brought about my birth. For that is 
the strongest element in my nature. This insatiable drive toward 
understanding has, as it were, created a consciousness in order 
to know what is and what happens, and in order to piece to- 
gether mythic conceptions from the slender hints of the un- 
knowable. 

We lack concrete proof that anything of us is preserved for 
eternity. At most we can say that there is some probability that 
something of our psyche continues beyond physical death. 
Whether what continues to exist is conscious of itself, we do not 
know either. If we feel the need to form some opinion on this 
question, we might possibly consider what has been learned 
from the phenomena of psychic dissociation. In most cases 
where a split-off complex manifests itself it does so in the form of 
a personality, as if the complex had a consciousness of itself. 
Thus the voices heard by the insane are personified. I dealt long 
ago with this phenomenon of personified complexes in my doc- 
toral dissertation. We might, if we wish, adduce these complexes 
as evidence for a continuity of consciousness. Likewise in favor 
of such an assumption are certain astonishing observations in 
cases of profound syncope after acute injuries to the brain and 
in severe states of collapse. In both situations, total loss of con- 
sciousness can be accompanied by perceptions of the outside 
world and vivid dream experiences. Since the cerebral cortex, 
the seat of consciousness, is not functioning at these times, there 
is as yet no explanation for such phenomena. They may be evi- 
dence for at least a subjective persistence of the capacity for 
consciousness even in a state of apparent unconsciousness. 5 

The thorny problem of the relationship between eternal man, 

5 Cf . "Sjmchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle," in The Structure and 
Dynamics of the Psyche ( CW 8 ) , pp. 506 ff. 



On Life after Death 

the self and earthly man in time and space was illuminated by 
two dreams of mine. 

In one dream, which I had in October 1958, I caught sight 
from my house of two lens-shaped metallically gleaming disks, 
which hurtled in a narrow arc over the house and down to the 
lake. They were two UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects). Then 
another body came flying directly toward me. It was a per- 
fectly circular lens, like the objective of a telescope. At a distance 
of four or five hundred yards it stood still for a moment, and then 
flew off. Immediately afterward, another came speeding through 
the air: a lens with a metallic extension which led to a box a 
magic lantern. At a distance of sixty or seventy yards it stood 
still in the air, pointing straight at me. I awoke with a feeling of 
astonishment. Still half in the dream, the thought passed through 
my head: "We always think that the UFOs are projections of 
ours. Now it turns out that we are their projections. I am pro- 
jected by the magic lantern as C. G. Jung. But who manipulates 
the apparatus?** 

I had dreamed once before of the problem of the self and the 
ego. In that earlier dream I was on a hiking trip. I was walking 
along a little road through a hilly landscape; the sun was shining 
and I had a wide view in all directions. Then I came to a small 
wayside chapel. The door was ajar, and I went in. To my sur* 
prise there was no image of the Virgin on the altar, and no cruci- 
fix either, but only a wonderful flower arrangement. But then I 
saw that on the floor in front of the altar, facing me, sat a yogi 
in lotus posture, in deep meditation. When I looked at him more 
closely, I realized that he had my face. I started in profound 
fright, and awoke with the thought: "Aha, so he is the one who 
is meditating me. He has a dream, and I am it." I knew that 
when he awakened, I would no longer be. 

I had this dream after my illness in 1944. It is a parable: My 
self retires into meditation and meditates my earthly form. To 
put it another way: it assumes human shape in order to enter 
three-dimensional existence, as if someone were putting on a 
diver's suit in order to dive into the sea. When it renounces 
existence in the hereafter, the self assumes a religious posture, 

3*3 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

as the chapel in the dream shows. In earthly form it can pass 
through the experiences of the three-dimensional world, and by 
greater awareness take a further step toward realization. 

The figure of the yogi, then, would more or less represent my 
unconscious prenatal wholeness, and the Far East, as is often the 
case in dreams, a psychic state alien and opposed to our own. 
Like the magic lantern, the yogi's meditation "projects" my em- 
pirical reality. As a rule, we see this causal relationship in re- 
verse: in the products of the unconscious we discover mandala 
symbols, that is, circular and quaternary figures which express 
wholeness, and whenever we wish to express wholeness, we em- 
ploy just such figures. Our basis is ego-consciousness, our world 
the field of light centered upon the focal point of the ego. From 
that point we look out upon an enigmatic world of obscurity, 
never knowing to what extent the shadowy forms we see are 
caused by our consciousness, or possess a reality of their own. 
The superficial observer is content with the first assumption. But 
closer study shows that as a rule the images of the unconscious 
are not produced by consciousness, but have a reality and 
spontaneity of their own, Nevertheless, we regard them as mere 
marginal phenomena. 

The aim of both these dreams is to effect a reversal of the re- 
lationship between ego-consciousness and the unconscious, and 
to represent the unconscious as the generator of the empirical 
personality. This reversal suggests that in the opinion of the 
"other side," our unconscious existence is the real one and our 
conscious world a kind of illusion, an apparent reality con- 
structed for a specific purpose, like a dream which seems a re- 
ality as long as we are in it. It is clear that this state of affairs 
resembles very closely the Oriental conception of Maya. 6 

Unconscious wholeness therefore seems to me the true spifitus 
rector of all biological and psychic events. Here is a principle 
which strives for total realization which in man's case signifies 
the attainment of total consciousness. Attainment of conscious- 

6 A tendency to question the locus of reality manifested itself early in Jung's 
life, when as a child he sat upon the stone and toyed with the idea that the 
stone was saying, or was, "I." Cf. the well-known butterfly dream in Chuangtzu. 
A. J. 

324 



On Life after Death 

ness is culture in the broadest sense, and self-knowledge is there- 
fore the heart and essence of this process. The Oriental 
attributes unquestionably divine significance to the self, and 
according to the ancient Christian view self-knowledge is the 
road to knowledge of God. 

The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something 
infinite or not? That is the telling question of his lif e. Only if we 
know that the thing which truly matters is the infinite can we 
avoid fixing our interest upon futilities, and upon all kinds of 
goals which are not of real importance. Thus we demand that 
the world grant us recognition for qualities which we regard as 
personal possessions: our talent or our beauty. The more a man 
lays stress on false possessions, and the less sensitivity he has 
for what is essential, the less satisfying is his life. He feels limited 
because he has limited aims, and the result is envy and jealousy. 
If we understand and feel that here in this life we already have 
a link with the infinite, desires and attitudes change. In the final 
analysis, we count for something only because of the essential 
we embody, and if we do not embody that, life is wasted. In our 
relationships to other men, too, the crucial question is whether 
an element of boundlessness is expressed in the relationship. 

The feeling for the infinite, however, can be attained only if 
we are bounded to the utmost. The greatest limitation for man is 
the "self"; it is manifested in the experience: "I am only that!" 
Only consciousness of our narrow confinement in the self forms 
the link to the limitlessness of the unconscious. In such aware- 
ness we experience ourselves concurrently as limited and eter- 
nal, as both the one and the other. In knowing ourselves to be 
unique in our personal combination that is, ultimately limited 
we possess also the capacity for becoming conscious of the 
infinite. But only then! 

In an era which has concentrated exclusively upon extension 
of living space and increase of rational knowledge at all costs, it 
is a supreme challenge to ask man to become conscious of his 
uniqueness and his limitation. Uniqueness and limitation are 
synonymous. Without them, no perception of the unlimited is 
possible and, consequently, no coming to consciousness either 
merely a delusory identity with it which takes the form of 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

intoxication with large numbers and an avidity for political 
power. 

Our age has shifted all emphasis to the here and now, and 
thus brought abput a daemonization of man and his world. The 
phenomenon of dictators and all the misery they have wrought 
springs from the fact that man has been robbed of transcend- 
ence by the shortsightedness of the super-intellectuals. Like 
them, he has fallen a victim to unconsciousness. But man's task 
is the exact opposite: to become conscious of the contents that 
press upward from the unconscious. Neither should he persist 
in his unconsciousness, nor remain identical with the uncon- 
scious elements of his being, thus evading his destiny, which is 
to create more and more consciousness. As far as we can discern, 
the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the 
darkness of mere being. It may even be assumed that just as the 
unconscious affects us, so the increase in our consciousness 
affects the unconscious. 



3*6 



XII 



Late Thoughts 



AY BIOGRAPHY of myself , must, I think, take account 
of the following reflections. It is true that they may well 
strike others as highly theoretical, but making "theory" * 
of this sort is as much a part of me, as vital a function of mine, as 
eating and drinking. 



What is remarkable about Christianity is that in its system of 
dogma it anticipates a metamorphosis in the divinity, a process 
of historic change on the "other side." It does this in the form of 
the new myth of dissension in heaven, first alluded to in the 
creation myth in which a serpent-like antagonist of the Creator 
appears, and lures man to disobedience by the promise of in- 
creased conscious knowledge (scientes bonum et malum), The 
second allusion is to the fall of the angels, a premature inva- 
sion of the human world by unconscious contents. The angels 
are a strange genus: they are precisely what they are and cannot 
be anything else. They are in themselves soulless beings who 

1 In the original sense of the Greek iheorein, 'looking about the world," or the 
German Weltanschauung. A. J. 

3*7 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

represent nothing but the thoughts and intuitions of their Lord. 
Angels who fall, then, are exclusively "bad" angels. These re- 
lease the well-known effect of "inflation/* which we can also 
observe nowadays in the megalomania of dictators: the angels 
beget with men a race of giants which ends by threatening to 
devour mankind, as is told in the book of Enoch. 

The third and decisive stage of the myth, however, is the self- 
realization of God in human form, in fulfillment of the Old 
Testament idea of the divine marriage and its consequences. As 
early as the period of primitive Christianity, the idea of the in- 
carnation had been refined to include the intuition of "Christ 
within us." Thus the unconscious wholeness penetrated into the 
psychic realm of inner experience, and man was made aware of 
all that entered into his true configuration. This was a decisive 
step, not only for man, but also for the Creator Who, in the 
eyes of those who had been delivered from darkness, cast off His 
dark qualities and became the summum bonum. 

This myth remained unassailably vital for a millennium until 
the first signs of a further transformation of consciousness began 
appearing in the eleventh century. 2 From then on, the symptoms 
of unrest and doubt increased, until at the end of the second 
millennium the outlines of a universal catastrophe became ap- 
parent, at first in the form of a threat to consciousness. This 
threat consists in giantism in other words, a hubris of con- 
sciousness in the assertion: "Nothing is greater than man and 
his deeds." The otherworldliness, the transcendence of the 
Christian myth was lost, and with it the view that wholeness is 
achieved in the other world. 

Light is followed by shadow, the other side of the Creator. 
This development reached its peak in the twentieth century. 
The Christian world is now truly confronted by the principle of 
evil, by naked injustice, tyranny, lies, slavery, and coercion of 
conscience. This manifestation of naked evil has assumed ap- 
parently permanent form in the Russian nation; but its first 
violent eruption came in Germany. That outpouring of evil 
revealed to what extent Christianity has been undermined in 

2 See Aion ( CW 9, ii), pp. 8a ff. 



Late Thoughts 

the twentieth century. In the face of that, evil can no longer be 
minimized by the euphemism of the privatio boni. Evil has be- 
come a determinant reality. It can no longer be dismissed from 
the world by a circumlocution. We must learn how to handle it, 
since it is here to stay. How we can live with it without terrible 
consequences cannot for the present be conceived. 

In any case, we stand in need of a reorientation, a metanoia. 
Touching evil brings with it the grave peril of succumbing to it. 
We must, therefore, no longer succumb to anything at all, not 
even to good. A so-called good to which we succumb loses its 
ethical character. Not that there is anything bad in it on that 
score, but to have succumbed to it may breed trouble. Every 
form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be al- 
cohol or morphine or idealism. We must beware of thinking of 
good and evil as absolute opposites. The criterion of ethical ac- 
tion can no longer consist in the simple view that good has the 
force of a categorical imperative, while so-called evil can reso- 
lutely be shunned. Recognition of the reality of evil necessarily 
relativizes the good, and the evil likewise, converting both into 
halves of a paradoxical whole. 

In practical terms, this means that good and evil are no longer 
so self-evident. We have to realize that each represents a judg- 
ment. In view of the fallibility of all human judgment, we can- 
not believe that we will always judge rightly. We might so easily 
be the victims of misjudgment. The ethical problem is affected by 
this principle only to the extent that we become somewhat un- 
certain about moral evaluations. Nevertheless we have to make 
ethical decisions. The relativity of "good" and "evil" by no 
means signifies that these categories are invalid, or do not exist. 
Moral judgment is always present and carries with it charac- 
teristic psychological consequences. I have pointed out many 
times that as in the past, so in the future the wrong we have 
done, thought, or intended will wreak its vengeance on our souls. 
Only the contents of judgment are subject to the differing con- 
ditions of time and place and, therefore, take correspondingly 
different forms. For moral evaluation is always founded upon the 
apparent certitudes of a moral code which pretends to know pre- 
cisely what is good and what evil. But once we know how un- 

3*9 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

certain the foundation is, ethical decision becomes a subjective, 
creative act. We can convince ourselves of its validity only Deo 
concedente that is, there must be a spontaneous and decisive 
impulse on the part of the unconscious. Ethics itself, the decision 
between good and evil, is not affected by this impulse, only made 
more difficult for us. Nothing can spare us the torment of ethi- 
cal decision. Nevertheless, harsh as it may sound, we must have 
the freedom in some circumstances to avoid the known moral 
good and do what is considered to be evil, if our ethical decision 
so requires. In other words, again: we must not succumb to 
either of the opposites. A useful pattern is provided by the neti- 
neti of Indian philosophy. In given cases, the moral code is 
undeniably abrogated and ethical choice is left to the individ- 
ual. In itself there is nothing new about this idea; in pre-psychol- 
ogy days such difficult choices were also known and came under 
the heading of "conflict of duties/* 

As a rule, however, the individual is so unconscious that he 
altogether fails to see his own potentialities for decision. Instead 
he is constantly and anxiously looking around for external rules 
and regulations which can guide him in his perplexity. Aside 
from general human inadequacy, a good deal of the blame for 
this rests with education, which promulgates the old generaliza- 
tions and says nothing about the secrets of private experience. 
Thus, every effort is made to teach idealistic beliefs or conduct 
which people know in their hearts they can never live up to, and 
such ideals are preached by officials who know that they them- 
selves have never lived up to these high standards and never 
will. What is more, -nobody ever questions the value of this kind 
of teaching. 

Therefore the individual who wishes to have an answer to the 
problem of evil, as it is posed today, has need, first and foremost, 
of self-knowledge, that is, the utmost possible knowledge of his 
own wholeness. He must know relentlessly how much good he 
can do, and what crimes he is capable of, and must beware 
of regarding the one as real and the other as illusion. Both 
are elements within his nature, and both are bound to come to 
light in him, should he wish as he ought to live without self- 
deception or self-delusion. 

330 



Late Thoughts 

In general, however, most people are hopelessly ill equipped 
for living on this level, although there are also many persons to- 
day who have the capacity for profounder insight into them- 
selves. Such self-knowledge is of prime importance, because 
through it we approach that fundamental stratum or core of 
human nature where the instincts dwell. Here are those pre- 
existent dynamic factors which ultimately govern the ethical de- 
cisions of our consciousness. This core is the unconscious and its 
contents, concerning which we cannot pass any final judgment. 
Our ideas about it are bound to be inadequate, for we are unable 
to comprehend its essence cognitively and set rational limits to 
it. We achieve knowledge of nature only through science, which 
enlarges consciousness; hence deepened self-knowledge also re- 
quires science, that is, psychology. No one builds a telescope or 
microscope with one turn of the wrist, out of good will alone, 
without a knowledge of optics. 

Today we need psychology for reasons that involve our very 
existence. We stand perplexed and stupefied before the phe- 
nomenon of Nazism and Bolshevism because we know nothing 
about man, or at any rate have only a lopsided and distorted 
picture of him. If we had self-knowledge, that would not be the 
case. We stand face to face with the terrible question of evil and 
do not even know what is before us, let alone what to pit against 
it. And even if we did know, we still could not understand "how 
it could happen here." With glorious naivet6 a statesman comes 
out with the proud declaration that he has no "imagination for 
evil/' Quite right: we have no imagination for evil, but evil has 
us in its grip. Some do not want to know this, and others are 
identified with evil. That is the psychological situation in the 
world today: some call themselves Christian and imagine that 
they can trample so-called evil underfoot by merely willing to; 
others have succumbed to it and no longer see the good. Evil to- 
day has become a visible Great Power. One half of humanity 
battens and grows strong on a doctrine fabricated by human 
ratiocination; the other half sickens from the lack of a myth 
commensurate with the situation. The Christian nations have 
come to a sorry pass; their Christianity slumbers and has neg- 
lected to develop its myth further in the course of the centuries. 

331 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

Those who gave expression to the dark stirrings of growth in 
mythic ideas were refused a hearing; Gioacchino da Fiore, Meis- 
ter Eckhart, Jacob Boehme, and many others have remained 
obscurantists for the majority. The only ray of light is Pius XII 
and his dogma. 3 But people do not even know what I am re- 
ferring to when I say this. They do not realize that a myth is 
dead if it no longer lives and grows. 

Our myth has become mute, and gives no answers. The fault 
lies not in it as it is set down in the Scriptures, but solely in us, 
who have not developed it further, who, rather, have suppressed 
any such attempts. The original version of the myth offers ample 
points of departure and possibilities of development. For ex- 
ample, the words are put into Christ's mouth: "Be ye therefore 
wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." For what purpose do 
men need the cunning of serpents? And what is the link between 
this cunning and the innocence of the dove? "Except ye become 
as little children . . ." Who gives thought to what children are 
like in reality? By what morality did the Lord justify the taking 
of the ass which he needed in order to ride in triumph into 
Jerusalem? How was it that, shortly afterward, he put on a dis- 
play of childish bad temper and cursed the fig tree? What kind 
of morality emerges from the parable of the unjust steward, 
and what profound insight, of such far-reaching significance for 
our own predicament, from the apocryphal logion: "Man, if thou 
knowest what thou dost, thou art blessed; but if thou knowest 
not, thou art accursed and a transgressor of the law"? 4 What, 
finally, does it mean when St. Paul confesses: "The evil which I 
would not, that I do"? I will not discuss the transparent proph- 
ecies of the Book of Revelation, because no one believes in 
them and the whole subject is felt to be an embarrassing one. 

The old question posed by the Gnostics, "Whence comes evil?" 
has been given no answer by the Christian world, and Origen's 
cautious suggestion of a possible redemption of the devil was 
termed a heresy. Today we are compeDed to meet that question; 
but we stand empty-handed, bewildered, and perplexed, and 
cannot even get it into our heads that no myth will come to our 

3 See above, Chap. VII, n. , p. aoa. 

4 Codex Bezae ad Lucam 6, 4. 



Late Thoughts 

aid although we have such urgent need of one. As the result of 
the political situation and the frightful, not to say diabolic, tri- 
umphs of science, we are shaken by secret shudders and dark 
forebodings; but we know no way out, and very few persons in- 
deed draw the conclusion that this time the issue is the long- 
since-forgotten soul of man. 

A further development of myth might well begin with the 
outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles, by which 
they were made into sons of God, and not only they, but all oth- 
ers who through them and after them received the filiatio 
sonship of God and thus partook of the certainty that they 
were more than autochthonous animalia sprung from the earth, 
that as the twice-born they had their roots in the divinity itself. 
Their visible, physical life was on this earth; but the invisible 
inner man had come from and would return to the primordial 
image of wholeness, to the eternal Father, as the Christian myth 
of salvation puts it. 

Just as the Creator is whole, so His creature, His son, ought to 
be whole. Nothing can take away from the concept of divine 
wholeness. But unbeknownst to all, a splitting of that wholeness 
ensued; there emerged a realm of light and a realm of darkness. 
This outcome, even before Christ appeared, was clearly pre- 
figured, as we may observe inter alia in the experience of Job, 
or in the widely disseminated Book of Enoch, which belongs to 
immediate pre-Christian times. In Christianity, too, this meta- 
physical split was plainly perpetuated: Satan, who in the Old 
Testament still belonged to the intimate entourage of Yahweh, 
now formed the diametrical and eternal opposite of the divine 
world. He could not be uprooted. It is therefore not surprising 
that as early as the beginning of the eleventh century the belief 
arose that the devil, not God, had created the world. Thus the 
keynote was struck for the second half of the Christian aeon, 
after the myth of the fall of the angels had already explained 
that these fallen angels had taught men a dangerous knowledge 
of science and the arts. What would these old storytellers have to 
say about Hiroshima? 

The visionary genius of Jacob Boehme recognized the para- 
doxical nature of the God-image and thus contributed to the 

333 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

further development of the myth. The mandala symbol sketched 
by Boehme 5 is a representation of the split God, for the inner 
circle is divided into two semicircles standing back to back. 

Since dogma holds that God is wholly present in each of the 
three Persons, He is also wholly present in each part of the out- 
poured Holy Spirit; thus every man can partake of the whole of 
God and hence of the filiation. The complexio oppositorum of 
the God-image thus enters into man, and not as unity, but as 
conflict, the dark half of the image coming into opposition with 
the accepted view that God is "Light." This very process is tak- 
ing place in our own times, albeit scarcely recognized by the 
official teachers of humanity whose task, supposedly, is to un- 
derstand such matters. There is the general feeling, to be sure, 
that we have reached a significant turning point in the ages, but 
people imagine that the great change has to do with nuclear 
fission and fusion, or with space rockets. What is concurrently 
taking place in the human psyche is usually overlooked. 

Insofar as the God-image is, from the psychological point of 
view, a manifestation of the ground of the psyche, and insofar 
as the cleavage in that image is becoming clear to mankind as a 
profound dichotomy which penetrates even into world politics, a 
compensation has arisen. This takes the form of circular symbols 
of unity which represent a synthesis of the opposites within the 
psyche. I refer to the worldwide rumors of Unidentified Flying 
Objects, of which we began to hear as early as 1943. These ru- 
mors are founded either upon visions or upon actual phenomena. 
The usual story about the UFOs is that they are some kind of 
spacecraft coming from other planets or even from the fourth 
dimension. 

More than twenty years earlier (in 1918), in the course of my 
investigations of the collective unconscious, I discovered the 
presence of an apparently universal symbol of a similar type 
the mandala symbol. To make sure of my case, I spent more than 
a decade amassing additional data, before announcing my dis- 
covery for the first time. 6 The mandala is an archetypal image 

5 Reproduced in The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (CW 9, i), p. 

*97- 

6 In the commentary to The Secret of the Golden Flower ( 1931) (CW 13). 

334 



Late Thoughts 

whose occurrence is attested throughout the ages. It signifies the 
wholeness of the self. This circular image represents the whole- 
ness of the psychic ground or, to put it in mythic terms, the 
divinity incarnate in man. In contrast to Boehme's mandala, 
the modern ones strive for unity; they represent a compensation 
of the psychic cleavage, or an anticipation that the cleavage will 
be surmounted. Since this process takes place in the collective 
unconscious, it manifests itself everywhere. The worldwide 
stories of the UFOs are evidence of that; they are the symptom 
of a universally present psychic disposition. 

Insofar as analytical treatment makes the "shadow" con- 
scious, it causes a cleavage and a tension of opposites which in 
their turn seek compensation in unity. The adjustment is 
achieved through symbols. The conflict between the opposites 
can strain our psyche to the breaking point, if we take them 
seriously, or if they take us seriously. The tertium non datur of 
logic proves its worth: no solution can be seen. If all goes well, 
the solution, seemingly of its own accord, appears out of nature. 
Then and then only is it convincing. It is felt as "grace/* Since 
the solution proceeds out of the confrontation and clash of 
opposites, it is usually an unfathomable mixture of conscious 
and unconscious factors, and therefore a symbol, a coin split 
into two halves which fit together precisely. 7 It represents the 
result of the joint labors of consciousness and the unconscious, 
and attains the likeness of the God-image in the form of the 
mandala, which is probably the simplest model of a concept of 
wholeness, and one which spontaneously arises in the mind as a 
representation of the struggle and reconciliation of opposites. 
The clash, which is at first of a purely personal nature, is soon 
followed by the insight that tie subjective conflict is only a 
single instance of the universal conflict of opposites. Our psyche 
is set up in accord with the structure of the universe, and what 
happens in the macrocosm likewise happens in the infinitesimal 
and most subjective reaches of the psyche. For that reason the 
God-image is always a projection of the inner experience of a 
powerful vis-&-vi$. This is symbolized by objects from which 

7 One of the meanings of symbolon is the tessera hospiUditatis between host and 
-guest, the broken coin which is shared between two parting friends. A. J. 

335 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

the inner experience has taken its initial impulse, and which 
from then on preserve numinous significance, or else it is char- 
acterized by its numinosity and the overwhelming force of that 
numinosity. In this way the imagination liberates itself from the 
concretism of the object and attempts to sketch the image of 
the invisible as something which stands behind the phenome- 
non. I am thinking here of the simplest basic form of the 
mandala, the circle, and the simplest (mental) division of the 
circle, the quadrant or, as the case may be, the cross. 

Such experiences have a helpful or, it may be, annihilating 
effect upon man. He cannot grasp, comprehend, dominate 
them; nor can he free himself or escape from them, and there- 
fore feels them as overpowering. Recognizing that they do not 
spring from his conscious personality, he calls them mana, 
daimon, or God. Science employs the term "the unconscious," 
thus admitting that it knows nothing about it, for it can know 
nothing about the substance of the psyche when the sole means 
of knowing anything is the psyche. Therefore the validity of 
such terms as mana, daimon, or God can be neither disproved 
nor affirmed. We can, however, establish that the sense of 
strangeness connected with the experience of something objec- 
tive, apparently outside the psyche, is indeed authentic. 

We know that something unknown, alien, does come our way, 
just as we know that we do not ourselves make a dream or an 
inspiration, but that it somehow arises of its own accord. What 
does happen to us in this manner can be said to emanate from 
mana, from a daimon, a god, or the unconscious. The first three 
terms have the great merit of including and evoking the emo- 
tional quality of numinosity, whereas the latter the uncon- 
scious is banal and therefore closer to reality. This latter 
concept includes the empirical realm that is, the commonplace 
reality we know so well. The unconscious is too neutral and 
rational a term to give much impetus to the imagination. The 
term, after all, was coined for scientific purposes, and is far 
better suited to dispassionate observation which makes no meta- 
physical claims than are the transcendental concepts, which are 
controversial and therefore tend to breed fanaticism. 

Hence I prefer the term "the unconscious," knowing that I 

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Late Thoughts 

might equally well speak of "God" or "daimon" if I wished to 
express myself in mythic language. When I do use such mythic 
language, I am aware that "mana," "daimon," and "God" are 
synonyms for the unconscious that is to say, we know just as 
much or just as little about them as about the latter. People 
only believe they know much more about them and for certain 
purposes that belief is far more useful and effective than a 
scientific concept. The great advantage of the concepts 
"daimon" and "God" lies in making possible a much better 
objectification of the vis-d-vis, namely, a personification of it. 
Their emotional quality confers life and effectuality upon them. 
Hate and love, fear and reverence, enter the scene of the con- 
frontation and raise it to a drama. What has merely been "dis- 
played" becomes "acted." 8 The whole man is challenged and 
enters the fray with his total reality. Only then can he become 
whole and only then can "God be born," that is, enter into 
human reality and associate with man in the form of "man." By 
this act of incarnation man that is, his ego is inwardly re- 
placed by "God," and God becomes outwardly man, in keeping 
with the saying of Jesus: "Who sees me, sees the Father." 

It is at this point that the shortcomings of mythic terminology 
become apparent. The Christian's ordinary conception of God 
is of an omnipotent, omniscient, and all-merciful Father and 
Creator of the world. If this God wishes to become man, an 
incredible kenosis (emptying) 9 is required of Him, in order to 
reduce His totality to the infinitesimal human scale. Even then 
it is hard to see why the human frame is not shattered by the 
incarnation. Theological thinkers have therefore felt it necessary 
to equip Jesus with qualities which raise him above ordinary 
human existence. Above all he lacks the macula peccati (stain 
of original sin). For that reason, if for no other, he is at least a 
god-man or a demigod. The Christian God-image cannot be- 
come incarnate in empirical man without contradictions quite 
apart from the fact that man with all his external characteristics 
seems little suited to representing a god. 

8 Cf. "Transformation Symbolism in the Mass," in Psychology and Religion: West 
and East ( CW 11 ), pp. 249-5<> 

9 Philippians a: 6. 

337 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

The myth must ultimately take monotheism seriously and put 
aside its dualism, which, however much repudiated officially, 
has persisted until now and enthroned an eternal dark antago- 
nist alongside the omnipotent Good. Room must be made 
within the system for the philosophical complexio oppositorum 
of Nicholas of Cusa and the moral ambivalence of Jacob 
Boehme; only thus can the One God be granted the wholeness 
and the synthesis of opposites which should be His. It is a fact 
that symbols, by their very nature, can so unite the opposites 
that these no longer diverge or clash, but mutually supplement 
one another and give meaningful shape to life. Once that has 
been experienced, the ambivalence in the image of a nature-god 
or Creator-god ceases to present difficulties. On the contrary, the 
myth of the necessary incarnation of God the essence of the 
Christian message can then be understood as man's creative 
confrontation with the opposites and their synthesis in the self, 
the wholeness of his personality. The unavoidable internal con- 
tradictions in the image of a Creator-god can be reconciled in 
the unity and wholeness of the self as the coniunctio opposi- 
torum of the alchemists or as a unio mystica. In the experience 
of the self it is no longer the opposites "God" and "man" that are 
reconciled, as it was before, but rather the opposites within the 
God-image itself. That is the meaning of divine service, of the 
service which man can render to God, that light may emerge 
from the darkness, that the Creator may become conscious of 
His creation, and man conscious of himself. 

That is the goal, or one goal, which fits man meaningfully 
into the scheme of creation, and at the same time confers mean- 
ing upon it. It is an explanatory myth which has slowly taken 
shape within me in the course of the decades. It is a goal I can 
acknowledge and esteem, and which therefore satisfies me. 

By virtue of his reflective faculties, man is raised out of the 
animal world, and by his mind he demonstrates that nature has 
put a high premium precisely upon the developmerit of con- 
sciousness. Through consciousness he takes possession of nature 
by recognizing the existence of the world and thus, as it were, 
confirming the Creator. The world becomes the phenomenal 

335 



Late Thoughts 

world, for without conscious reflection it would not be. If the 
Creator were conscious of Himself, He would not need conscious 
creatures; nor is it probable that the extremely indirect methods 
of creation, which squander millions of years upon the develop- 
ment of countless species and creatures, are the outcome of 
purposeful intention. Natural history tells us of a haphazard 
and casual transformation of species over hundreds of millions 
of years of devouring and being devoured. The biological and 
political history of man is an elaborate repetition of the same 
thing. But the history of the mind offers a different picture. 
Here the miracle of reflecting consciousness intervenes the 
second cosmogony. The importance of consciousness is so great 
that one cannot help suspecting the element of meaning to be 
concealed somewhere within all the monstrous, apparently 
senseless biological turmoil, and that the road to its manifesta- 
tion was ultimately found on the level of warm-blooded verte- 
brates possessed of a differentiated brain found as if by 
chance, unintended and unforeseen, and yet somehow sensed, 
felt and groped for out of some dark urge. 

I do not imagine that in my reflections on the meaning of man 
and his myth I have uttered a final truth, but I think that this is 
what can be said at the end of our aeon of the Fishes, and per- 
haps must be said in view of the coming aeon of Aquarius (the 
Water Bearer), who has a human figure and is next to the sign 
of the Fishes. This is a coniunctio oppositorum composed of two 
fishes in reverse. The Water Bearer seems to represent the self. 
With a sovereign gesture he pours the contents of his jug into the 
mouth of Piscis austrinus which symbolizes a son, a still un- 
conscious content. Out of this unconscious content will emerge, 
after the passage of another aeon of more than two thousand 
years, a future whose features are indicated by the symbol of 
Capricorn: an aigokeros, the monstrosity of the Goat-Fish, 11 
symbolizing the mountains and the depths of the sea, a polarity 

10 Constellation of the "Southern Fish." Its mouth is formed by Fomalhaut 
( Arabic for "mouth of the fish" ) below the constellation of the Water Bearer. 

II The constellation of Capricorn was originally called the "Goat-Fish." 

339 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

made up of two undifferentiated animal elements which have 
grown together. This strange being could easily be the primor- 
dial image of a Creator-god confronting "man," the Anthropos. 
On this question there is a silence within me, as there is in the 
empirical data at my disposal the products of the unconscious 
of other people with which I am acquainted, or historical docu- 
ments. If insight does not come by itself, speculation is pointless. 
It makes sense only when we have objective data comparable to 
our material on the aeon of Aquarius. 

We do not know how far the process of coming to conscious- 
ness can extend, or where it will lead. It is a new element in the 
story of creation, and there are no parallels we can look to. We 
therefore cannot know what potentialities are inherent in it. 
Neither can we know the prospects for the species Homo sapiens. 
Will it imitate the fate of other species, which once flourished on 
the earth and now are extinct? Biology can advance no reasons 
why this should not be so. 

The need for mythic statements is satisfied when we frame a 
view of the world which adequately explains the meaning of 
human existence in the cosmos, a view which springs from our 
psychic wholeness, from the co-operation between conscious 
and unconscious. Meaninglessness inhibits fullness of life and is 
therefore equivalent to illness. Meaning makes a great many 
things endurable perhaps everything. No science will ever re- 
place myth, and a myth cannot be made out of any science. For 
it is not that "God" is a myth, but that myth is the revelation of a 
divine life in man. It is not we who invent myth, rather it speaks 
to us as a Word of God. The Word of God comes to us, and we 
have no way of distinguishing whether and to what extent it is 
different from God. There is nothing about this Word that could 
not be considered known and human, except for the manner in 
which it confronts us spontaneously and places obligations upon 
us. It is not affected by the arbitrary operation of our will. We 
cannot explain an inspiration. Our chief feeling about it is that 
it is not the result of our own ratiocinations, but that it came to 
us from elsewhere. And if we happen to have a precognitive 
dream, how can we possibly ascribe it to our own powers? 
After all, often we do not even know, until some time afterward, 

340 



Late Thoughts 

that the dream represented foreknowledge, or knowledge of 
something that happened at a distance. 

The Word happens to us; we suffer it, for we are victims 
of a profound uncertainty: with God as a complexio opposi- 
torum, all things are possible, in the fullest meaning of the 
phrase. Truth and delusion, good and evil, are equally possible. 
Myth is or can be equivocal, like the oracle of Delphi or like a 
dream. We cannot and ought not to repudiate reason; but 
equally we must cling to the hope that instinct will hasten to our 
aid in which case God is supporting us against God, as Job 
long ago understood. Everything through which the "other will" 
is expressed proceeds from man his thinking, his words, his 
images, and even his limitations. Consequently he has the tend- 
ency to refer everything to himself, when lie. begins to think in 
clumsy psychological terms, and decides that everything pro- 
ceeds out of his intentions and out of himself. With childlike 
naivete he assumes that he knows all his own reaches and knows 
what he is "in himself." Yet all the while he is fatally handi- 
capped by the weakness of his consciousness and the corre- 
sponding fear of the unconscious. Therefore he is utterly unable 
to separate what he has carefully reasoned out from what has 
spontaneously flowed to him from another source. He has no 
objectivity toward himself and cannot yet regard himself as a 
phenomenon which he finds in existence and with which, for 
better or worse, he is identical. At first everything is thrust upon 
him, everything happens to him, and it is only by great effort 
that he finally succeeds in conquering and holding for himself 
an area of relative freedom. 

Only when he has won his way to this achievement, and then 
only, is he in a position to recognize that he is confronting his 
instinctive foundations, given him from the beginning, which he 
cannot make disappear, however much he would like to. His 
beginnings are not by any means mere pasts; they live with him 
as the constant substratum of his existence, and his conscious- 
ness is as much molded by them as by the physical world around 
him. 

These facts assail man from without and from within with 
overwhelming force/ He has summed them up under the idea of 

34* 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

divinity, has described their effects with the aid of myth, and 
has interpreted this myth as the "Word of God," that is, as the 
inspiration and revelation of the numen from the "other side." 



II 

There is no better means of intensifying the treasured feeling 
of individuality than the possession of a secret which the in- 
dividual is pledged to guard. The very beginnings of societal 
structures reveal the craving for secret organizations. When no 
valid secrets really exist, mysteries are invented or contrived to 
which privileged initiates are admitted. Such was the case with 
the Rosicrucians and many other societies. Among these pseudo- 
secrets there are ironically real secrets of which the initiates 
are entirely unaware as, for example, in those societies which 
borrowed their "secret" primarily from the alchemical tradition. 

The need for ostentatious secrecy is of vital importance on the 
primitive level, for the shared secret serves as a cement binding 
the tribe together. Secrets on the tribal level constitute a helpful 
compensation for lack of cohesion in the individual personality, 
which is constantly relapsing into the original unconscious 
identity with other members of the group. Attainment of the 
human goal an individual who is conscious of his own peculiar 
nature thus becomes a long, almost hopeless process of educa- 
tion. For even the individuals whose initiation into certain se- 
crets has marked them out in some way are fundamentally 
obeying the laws of group identity, though in their case the 
group is a socially differentiated one. 

The secret society is an intermediary stage on the way to in- 
dividuation. The individual is still relying on a collective organi- 
zation to effect his differentiation for him; that is, he has not yet 
recognized that it is really the individual's task to differentiate 
himself from all the others and stand on his own feet. All col- 
lective identities, such as membership in organizations, sup- 
port of "isms," and so on, interfere with the fulfillment of this 
task. Such collective identities are crutches for the lame, shields 
for the timid, beds for the lazy, nurseries for the irresponsible; 
but they are equally shelters for the poor and weak, a home port 

34* 



Late Thoughts 

for the shipwrecked, the bosom of a family for orphans, a land 
of promise for disillusioned vagrants and weary pilgrims, a herd 
and a safe fold for lost sheep, and a mother providing nourish- 
ment and growth. It would therefore be wrong to regard this 
intermediary stage as a trap; on the contrary, for a long time to 
come it will represent the only possible form of existence for the 
individual, who nowadays seems more than ever threatened by 
anonymity. Collective organization is still so essential today 
that many consider it, with some justification, to be the final 
goal; whereas to call for further steps along the road to au- 
tonomy appears like arrogance or hubris, fantasticality, or simply 
folly. 

Nevertheless it may be that for sufficient reasons a man feels 
he must set out on his own feet along the road to wider realms. 
It may be that in all the garbs, shapes, forms, modes, and man- 
ners of life offered to him he does not find what is peculiarly 
necessary for him. He will go alone and be his own company. He 
will serve as his own group, consisting of a variety of opinions 
and tendencies which need not necessarily be marching in 
the same direction. In fact, he will be at odds with himself, and 
will find great difficulty in uniting his own multiplicity for pur- 
poses of common action. Even if he is outwardly protected by 
the social forms of the intermediary stage, he will have no de- 
fense against his inner multiplicity. The disunion within him- 
self may cause him to give up, to lapse into identity with his 
surroundings. 

Like the initiate of a secret society who has broken free from 
the undifferentiated collectivity, the individual on his lonely 
path needs a secret which for various reasons he may not or can- 
not reveal. Such a secret reinforces him in the isolation of his 
individual aims. A great many individuals cannot bear this isola- 
tion. They are the neurotics, who necessarily play hide-and-seek 
with others as well as with themselves, without being able to 
take the game really seriously. As a rule they end by surren- 
dering their individual goal to their craving for collective con- 
formity a procedure which all the opinions, beliefs, and ideals 
of their environment encourage. Moreover, no rational argu- 
ments prevail against the environment. Only a secret which the 

343 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

individual cannot betray one which he fears to give away, or 
which he cannot formulate in words, and which therefore seems 
to belong to the category of crazy ideas can prevent the 
otherwise inevitable retrogression. 

The need for such a secret is in many cases so compelling that 
the individual finds himself involved in ideas and actions for 
which he is no longer responsible. He is being motivated neither 
by caprice nor arrogance, but by a dira necessitas which he him- 
self cannot comprehend. This necessity comes down upon him 
with savage f atefulness, and perhaps for the first time in his lif e 
demonstrates to him ad oculos the presence of something alien 
and more powerful than himself in his own most personal do- 
main, where he thought himself the master. A vivid example is 
the story of Jacob, who wrestled with the angel and came away 
with a dislocated hip, but by his struggle prevented a murder. In 
those fortunate days, Jacob's story was believed without ques- 
tion. A contemporary Jacob, telling such a tale, would be treated 
to meaningful smiles. He would prefer not to speak of such mat- 
ters, especially if he were inclined to have his private views 
about the nature of Yahweh's messenger. Thus he would find 
himself willy-nilly in possession of a secret that could not be dis- 
cussed, and would become a deviant from the collectivity. 
Naturally, his mental reservation would ultimately come to light, 
unless he succeeded in playing the hypocrite all his life. But any- 
one who attempts to do both, to adjust to his group and at the 
same time pursue his individual goal, becomes neurotic. Our 
modern Jacob would be concealing from himself the fact that 
the angel was after all the stronger of the two as he certainly 
was, for no claims were ever made that the angel, too, came 
away with a limp. 

The man, therefore, who, driven by his daimon, steps beyond 
the limits of the intermediary stage, truly enters the "untrodden, 
untreadable regions/' 12 where there are no charted ways and 
no shelter spreads a protecting roof over his head. There are no 
precepts to guide him when he encounters an unforeseen situa- 
tion for example, a conflict of duties. For the most part, these 

Favst, Part Two. 

344 



Late Thoughts 

sallies into no man's land last only as long as no such conflicts 
occur, and come swiftly to an end as soon as conflict is sniffed 
from afar. I cannot blame the person who takes to his heels at 
once. But neither can I approve his finding merit in his weak- 
ness and cowardice. Since my contempt can do him no further 
harm, I may as well say that I find nothing praiseworthy about 
such capitulations. 

But if a man faced with a conflict of duties undertakes to deal 
with them absolutely on his own responsibility, and before a 
judge who sits in judgment on him day and night, he may well 
find himself in an isolated position. There is now an authentic 
secret in his life which cannot be discussed if only because he 
is involved in an endless inner trial in which he is his own coun- 
sel and ruthless examiner, and no secular or spiritual judge can 
restore his easy sleep. If he were not already sick to death of the 
decisions of such judges, he would never have found himself in a 
conflict. For such a conflict always presupposes a higher sense 
of responsibility. It is this very quality which keeps its possessor 
from accepting the decision of a collectivity. In his case the court 
is transposed to the inner world where the verdict is pro- 
nounced behind closed doors. 

Once this happens, the psyche of the individual acquires 
heightened importance. It is not only the seat of his well-known 
and socially defined ego; it is also the instrument for measuring 
what it is worth in and for itself. Nothing so promotes the 
growth of consciousness as this inner confrontation of opposites. 
Quite unsuspected facts turn up in the indictment, and the de- 
fense is obliged to discover arguments hitherto unknown. In the 
course of this, a considerable portion of the outer world reaches 
the inner, and by that very fact the outer world is impoverished 
or relieved. On the other hand, the inner world has gained that 
much weight by being raised to the rank of a tribunal for ethi- 
cal decisions. However, the once unequivocal ego loses the pre- 
rogative of being merely the prosecutor; it must also learn the 
role of defendant. The ego becomes ambivalent arid ambiguous, 
and is caught between hammer and anvil. It becomes aware of a 
polarity superordinate to itself. 

By no means every conflict of duties, and perhaps not even a 

343 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

single one, is ever really "solved," though it may be argued 
over, weighed, and counterweighed till doomsday. Sooner or 
later the decision is simply there, the product, it would seem, 
of some kind of short-circuit. Practical life cannot be suspended 
in an everlasting contradiction. The opposites and the contra- 
dictions between them do not vanish, however, even when for 
a moment they yield before the impulse to action. They con- 
stantly threaten the unity of the personality, and entangle life 
again and again in their dichotomies. 

Insight into the dangers and the painfulness of such a state 
might well decide one to stay at home, that is, never to leave 
the safe fold and the warm cocoon, since these alone promise 
protection from inner stress. Those who do not have to leave 
father and mother are certainly safest with them. A good many 
persons, however, find themselves thrust out upon the road to 
individuation. In no time at all they will become acquainted 
with the positive and negative aspects of human nature. 

Just as all energy proceeds from opposition, so the psyche too 
possesses its inner polarity,> this being the indispensable pre- 
requisite for its aliveness, as Heraclitus realized long ago. 
Both theoretically and practically, polarity is inherent in all 
living things. Set against this overpowering force is the fragile 
unity of the ego, which has come into being in the course of 
millennia only with the aid of countless protective measures. 
That an ego was possible at all appears to spring from the fact 
that all opposites seek to achieve a state of balance. This hap- 
pens in the exchange of energy which results from the collision 
of hot and cold, high and low, and so on. The energy underlying 
conscious psychic life is pre-existent to it and therefore at first 
unconscious. As it approaches consciousness it first appears 
projected in figures like mana, gods, daimons, etc., whose numen 
seems to be the vital source of energy, and in point of fact is so 
as long as these supernatural figures are accepted. But as these 
fade and lose their force, the ego that is, the empirical man 
seems to come into possession of this source of energy, and 
does so in the fullest meaning of this ambiguous statement: on 
the one hand he seeks to seize this energy, to possess it, and even 

346 



Late Thoughts 

imagines that he does possess it; and on the other hand he is 
possessed by it. 

This grotesque situation can, to be sure, occur only when the 
contents of consciousness are regarded as the sole form of 
psychic existence. Where this is the case, there is no preventing 
inflation by projections coming home to roost. But where the 
existence of an unconscious psyche is admitted, the contents of 
projection can be received into the inborn instinctive forms 
which predate consciousness. Their objectivity and autonomy 
are thereby preserved, and inflation is avoided. The archetypes, 
which are pre-existent to consciousness and condition it, appear 
in the part they actually play in reality: as a priori structural 
forms of the stuff of consciousness. They do not in any sense rep- 
resent things as they are in themselves, but rather the forms in 
which things can be perceived and conceived. Naturally, it is 
not merely the archetypes that govern the particular nature of 
perceptions. They account only for the collective component of 
a perception. As an attribute of instinct they partake of its dy- 
namic nature, and consequently possess a specific energy which 
causes or compels definite modes of behavior or impulses; that is, 
they may under certain circumstances have a possessive or ob- 
sessive force (numinosity!). The conception of them as 
daimonia is therefore quite in accord with their nature. 

If anyone is inclined to believe that any aspect of the nature 
of things is changed by such formulations, he is being extremely 
credulous about words. The real facts do not change, whatever 
names we give them. Only we ourselves are affected. If one were 
to conceive of "God" as "pure Nothingness," that has nothing 
whatsoever to do with the fact of a superordinate principle. We 
are just as much possessed as before; the change of name has 
removed nothing at all from reality. At most we have taken a 
false attitude toward reality if the new name implies a denial. 
On the other hand, a positive name for the unknowable has the 
merit of putting us into a correspondingly positive attitude. If, 
therefore, we speak of "God'* as an "archetype," we are saying 
nothing about His real nature but are letting it be known that 
"God" already has a place in that part of our psyche which is 

347 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

pre-existent to consciousness and that He therefore cannot be 
considered an invention of consciousness. We neither make Him 
more remote nor eliminate Him, but bring Him closer to the pos- 
sibility of being experienced. This latter circumstance is by no 
means unimportant, for a thing which cannot be experienced 
may easily be suspected of non-existence. This suspicion is so 
inviting that so-called believers in God see nothing but atheism 
in my attempt to reconstruct the primitive unconscious psyche. 
Or if not atheism, then Gnosticism anything, heaven forbid, 
but a psychic reality like the unconscious. If the unconscious 
is anything at all, it must consist of earlier evolutionary stages 
of our conscious psyche. The assumption that man in his whole 
glory was created on the sixth day of Creation, without any 
preliminary stages, is after all somewhat too simple and archaic 
to satisfy us nowadays. There is pretty general agreement on 
that score. In regard to the psyche, however, the archaic con- 
ception holds on tenaciously: the psyche has no antecedents, is 
a tabula rasa, arises anew at birth, and is only what it imagines 
itself to be. 

Consciousness is phylogenetically and ontogenetically a sec- 
ondary phenomenon. It is time this obvious fact were grasped 
at last. Just as the body has an anatomical prehistory of millions 
of years, so also does the psychic system. And just as the hu- 
man body today represents in each of its parts the result of 
this evolution, and everywhere still shows traces of its earlier 
stages so the same may be said of the psyche. Consciousness 
began its evolution from an animal-like state which seems to us 
unconscious, and the same process of differentiation is repeated 
in every child. The psyche of the child in its preconscious state 
is anything but a tabula rasa; it is already preformed in a recog- 
nizably individual way, and is moreover equipped with all spe- 
cifically human instincts, as well as with the a priori foundations 
of the higher functions. 

On this complicated base, the ego arises. Throughout life the 
ego is sustained by this base. When the base does not function, 
stasis ensues and then death. Its lif e and its reality are of vital 
importance. Compared to it, even the external world is sec- 
ondary, for what does the world matter if the endogenous im- 

348 



Late Thoughts 

pulse to grasp it and manipulate it is lacking? In the long run 
no conscious will can ever replace the life instinct. This instinct 
comes to us from within, as a compulsion or will or command, 
and if as has more or less been done from time immemorial 
we give it the name of a personal daimon we are at least aptly- 
expressing the psychological situation. And if, by employing the 
concept of the archetype, we attempt to define a little more 
closely the point at which the daimon grips us, we have not abol- 
ished anything, only approached closer to the source of life. 

It is only natural that I as a psychiatrist (doctor of the soul) 
should espouse such a view, for I am primarily interested in how 
I can help my patients find their healthy base again. To do that, 
a great variety of knowledge is needed, as I have learned. Medi- 
cine in general has, after all, proceeded in like manner. It has 
not made its advances through the discovery of some single 
trick of healing, thus phenomenally simplifying its methods. On 
the contrary, it has evolved into a science of enormous com- 
plexity not the least of the reasons being that it has made bor- 
rowings from all possible fields. Hence I am not concerned with 
proving anything to other disciplines; I am merely attempting to 
put their knowledge to good use in my own field. Naturally, it is 
incumbent upon me to report on such applications and their 
consequences. For certain new things come to light when one 
transfers the knowledge of one field to another and applies it in 
practice. Had X-rays remained the exclusive property of the 
physicist and not been applied in medicine, we would know 
far less. Then again, if radiation therapy has in some circum- 
stances dangerous consequences, that is interesting to the phy- 
sician; but it is not necessarily of interest to the physicist, who 
uses radiation in an altogether different manner and for other 
purposes. Nor will he think that the physician has poached upon 
his territory when the latter points out certain harmful or salu- 
tary properties of the invisible rays. 

If I, for example, apply historical or theological insights in 
psychotherapy, they naturally appear in a different light and 
lead to conclusions other than those to which they lead when 
restricted to their proper fields, where they serve other purposes. 

The fact, therefore, that a polarity underlies the dynamics of 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

the psyche means that the whole problem of opposites in its 
broadest sense, with all its concomitant religious and philosophi- 
cal aspects, is drawn into the psychological discussion. These 
aspects lose the autonomous character they have in their own 
field inevitably so, since they are approached in terms of psy- 
chological questions; that is, they are no longer viewed from the 
angle of religious or philosophical truth, but are examined for 
their psychological validity and significance. Leaving aside 
their claim to be independent truths, the fact remains that re- 
garded empirically which is to say, scientifically they are 
primarily psychic phenomena. This fact seems to me incon- 
testable. That they claim a justification for themselves is in 
keeping with the psychological approach, which does not brand 
such a claim unjustified, but on the contrary treats it with spe- 
cial consideration. Psychology has no room for judgments Kke 
"only religious" or "only philosophical/' despite the fact that 
we too often hear the charge of something's being "only psycho- 
logical" especially from theologians. 

All conceivable statements are made by the psyche. Among 
other things, the psyche appears as a dynamic process which 
rests on a foundation of antithesis, on a flow of energy between 
two poles. It is a general rule of logic that "principles are not to 
be multiplied beyond the necessary." Therefore, since interpre- 
tation in terms of energy has proved a generally valid principle 
of explanation in the natural sciences, we must limit ourselves to 
it in psychology also. No firm facts are available which would 
recommend some other view; moreover, the antithetical or 
polaristic nature of the psyche and its contents is verified by 
psychological experience. 13 

Now if the dynamic conception of the psyche is correct, all 
statements which seek to overstep the limits of the psyche's 
polarity statements about a metaphysical reality, for exam- 
ple must be paradoxical if they are to lay claim to any sort of 
validity. 

The psyche cannot leap beyond itself. It cannot set up any ab- 
solute truths, for its own polarity determines the relativity of its 

ls Cf. "On Psychic Energy," in The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche 
(CW8). 

350 



Late Thoughts 

statements. Wherever the psyche does announce absolute 
truths such as, for example, "God is motion," or "God is One" 
it necessarily falls into one or the other of its own antitheses. 
For the two statements might equally well be: "God is rest/' or 
"God is All." Through one-sidedness the psyche disintegrates 
and loses its capacity for cognition. It becomes an unreflective 
(because unreflectable) succession of psychic states, each of 
which fancies itself its own justification because it does not, or 
does not yet, see any other state. 

In saying this we are not expressing a value judgment, but 
only pointing out that the limit is very frequently overstepped. 
Indeed, this is inevitable, for, as Heraclitus says, "Everything is 
flux/' Thesis is followed by antithesis, and between the two is 
generated a third factor, a lysis which was not perceptible be- 
fore. In this the psyche once again merely demonstrates its anti- 
thetical nature and at no point has really got outside itself. 

In my effort to depict die limitations of the psyche I do not 
mean to imply that only the psyche exists. It is merely that, so 
far as perception and cognition are concerned, we cannot see 
beyond the psyche. Science is tacitly convinced that a non- 
psychic, transcendental object exists. But science also knows 
how difficult it is to grasp the real nature of the object, especially 
when the organ of perception fails or is lacking, and when the 
appropriate modes of thought do not exist or have still to be 
created. In cases where neither our sense organs nor their 
artificial aids can attest the presence of a real object, the diffi- 
culties mount enormously, so that one feels tempted to assert 
that there is simply no real object present. I have never drawn 
this overhasty conclusion, for I have never been inclined to 
think that our senses were capable of perceiving all forms of be- 
ing. I have, therefore, even hazarded the postulate that the 
phenomenon of archetypal configurations which are psychic 
events par excellence may be founded upon a psychoid base, 
that is, upon an only partially psychic and possibly altogether 
different form of being. For lack of empirical data I have neither 
knowledge nor understanding of such forms of being, which are 
commonly called spiritual. From the point of view of science, it is 
immaterial what I may believe on that score, and I must accept 

SSl 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

my ignorance. But insofar as the archetypes act upon me, they 
are real and actual to me, even though I do not know what 
their real nature is. This applies, of course, not only to the 
archetypes but to the nature of the psyche in general. What- 
ever it may state about itself, it will never get beyond itself. All 
comprehension and all that is comprehended is in itself psychic, 
and to that extent we are hopelessly cooped up in an exclusively 
psychic world. Nevertheless, we have good reason to suppose 
that behind this veil there exists the uncomprehended absolute 
object which affects and influences us and to suppose it even, 
or particularly, in the case of psychic phenomena about which 
no verifiable statements can be made. Statements concerning 
possibility or impossibility are valid only in specialized fields; 
outside those fields they are merely arrogant presumptions. 

Prohibited though it may be from an objective point of view 
to make statements out of the blue that is, without sufficient 
reason there are nevertheless some statements which appar- 
ently have to be made without objective reasons. The justifica- 
tion here is a psychodynamic one, of the sort usually termed 
subjective and regarded as a purely personal matter. But that 
is to commit the mistake of failing to distinguish whether the 
statement really proceeds only from an isolated subject, and is 
prompted by exclusively personal motives, or whether it occurs 
generally and springs from a collectively present dynamic pat- 
tern. In that case it should not be classed as subjective, but as 
psychologically objective, since an indefinite number of indi- 
viduals find themselves prompted by an inner impulse to make 
an identical statement, or feel a certain view to be a vital ne- 
cessity. Since the archetype is not just an inactive form, but a 
real force charged with a specific energy, it may very well be 
regarded as the causa efficiens of such statements, and be un- 
derstood as the subject of them. In other words, it is not the 
personal human being who is making the statement, but the 
archetype speaking through him. If these statements are stifled 
or disregarded, both medical experience and common knowl- 
edge demonstrate that psychic troubles are in store. These will 
appear either as neurotic symptoms or, in the case of persons 
who are incapable of neurosis, as collective delusions. 

35* 



Late Thoughts 

Archetypal statements are based upon instinctive precondi- 
tions and have nothing to do with reason; they are neither ra- 
tionally grounded nor can they be banished by rational argu- 
ments. They have always been part of the world scene repr&- 
sentations collectives, as Levy-Bruhl rightly called them. 
Certainly the ego and its will have a great part to play in life; 
but what the ego wills is subject in the highest degree to the in- 
terference, in ways of which the ego is usually unaware, of the 
autonomy and numinosity of archetypal processes. Practical 
consideration of these processes is the essence of religion, insofar 
as religion can be approached from a psychological point of 
view. 

HI 

At this point the fact forces itself on my attention that beside 
the field of reflection there is another equally broad if not 
broader area in which rational understanding and rational 
modes of representation find scarcely anything they are able to 
grasp. This is the realm of Eros. In classical times, when such 
things were properly understood, Eros was considered a god 
whose divinity transcended our human limits, and who there- 
fore could neither be comprehended nor represented in any 
way. I might, as many before me have attempted to do, venture 
an approach to this daimon, whose range of activity extends 
from the endless spaces of the heavens to the dark abysses of 
hell; but I falter before the task of finding the language which 
might adequately express the incalculable paradoxes of love, 
Eros is a kosmogonos, a creator and father-mother of all higher 
consciousness. I sometimes feel that Paul's words 'Though I 
speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love" 
might well be the first condition of all cognition and the 
quintessence of divinity itself . Whatever the learned interpre- 
tation may be of the sentence "God is love,*' the words affirm 
the complexio oppositorum of the Godhead. In my medical ex- 
perience as well as in my own life I have again and again been 
faced with the mystery of love, and have never been able to 
explain what it is. Like Job, I had to 'lay my hand on my 
mouth. I have spoken once, and I will not answer/* (Job 40:4 f .) 

353 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

Here is the greatest and smallest, the remotest and nearest, the 
highest and lowest, and we cannot discuss one side of it without 
also discussing the other. No language is adequate to this 
paradox. Whatever one can say, no words express the whole. To 
speak of partial aspects is always too much or too little, for only 
the whole is meaningful Love "bears all things" and "endures 
all things'* (i Cor. 13:7). These words say all there is to be 
said; nothing can be added to them. For we are in the deepest 
sense the victims and the instruments of cosmogonic "love." I 
put the word in quotation marks to indicate that I do not use it 
in its connotations of desiring, preferring, favoring, wishing, and 
similar feelings, but as something superior to the individual, a 
unified and undivided whole. Being a part, man cannot grasp 
the whole. He is at its mercy. He may assent to it, or rebel 
against it; but he is always caught up by it and enclosed within 
it. He is dependent upon it and is sustained by it. Love is his 
light and his darkness, whose end he cannot see. "Love ceases 
not" whether he speaks with the "tongues of angels," or with 
scientific exactitude traces the life of the cell down to its utter- 
most source. Man can try to name love, showering upon it all 
the names at his command, and still he will involve himself in 
endless self-deceptions. If he possesses a grain of wisdom, he 
will lay down his arms and name the unknown by the more un- 
known, ignotum per ignotius that is, by the name of God. 
That is a confession of his subjection, his imperfection, and his 
dependence; but at the same time a testimony to his freedom 
to choose between truth and error. 



354 



Retrospect 



WHEN PEOPLE SAY I am wise, or a sage, I cannot 
accept it. A man once dipped a hatful of water from a 
stream. What did that amount to? I am not that stream. 
I am at the stream, but I do nothing. Other people are at the 
same stream, but most of them find they have to do something 
with it. I do nothing. I never think that I am the one who must 
see to it that cherries grow on stalks. I stand and behold, ad- 
miring what nature can do. 

There is a fine old story about a student who came to a rabbi 
and said, "In the olden days there were men who saw the face 
of God. Why don't they any more?*' The rabbi replied, "Because 
nowadays no one can stoop so low/* 

One must stoop a little in order to fetch water from the 
stream. 

The difference between most people and myself is that for me 
the "dividing walls" are transparent. That is my peculiarity. 
Others find these walls so opaque that they see nothing behind 
them and therefore think nothing is there. To some extent I per- 
ceive the processes going on in the background, and that gives 
me an inner certainty. People who see nothing have no cer- 

355 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

tainties and can draw no conclusions or do not trust them even 
if they do. I do not know what started me off perceiving the 
stream of life. Probably the unconscious itself. Or perhaps my 
early dreams. They determined my course from the beginning. 

Knowledge of processes in the background early shaped my 
relationship to the world. Basically, that relationship was the 
same in my childhood as it is to this day. As a child I felt my- 
self to be alone, and I am still, because I know things and must 
hint at things which others apparently know nothing of, and 
for the most part do not want to know. Loneliness does not 
come from having no people about one, but from being unable 
to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or 
from holding certain views which others find inadmissible. The 
loneliness began with the experiences of my early dreams, and 
reached its climax at the time I was working on the unconscious. 
If a man knows more than others, he becomes lonely. But lone- 
liness is not necessarily inimical to companionship, for no one 
is more sensitive to companionship than the lonely man, and 
companionship thrives only when each individual remembers 
his individuality and does not identify himself with others. 

It is important to have a secret, a premonition of things un- 
known. It fills life with something impersonal, a numinosum. A 
man who has never experienced that has missed something im- 
portant. He must sense that he lives in a world which in some 
respects is mysterious; that things happen and can be experi- 
enced which remain inexplicable; that not everything which 
happens can be anticipated. The unexpected and the incredible 
belong in this world. Only then is Me whole. For me the world 
has from the beginning been infinite and ungraspable. 

I have had much trouble getting along with my ideas. There 
was a daimon in me, and in the end its presence proved de- 
cisive. It overpowered me, and if I was at times ruthless it was 
because I was in the grip of the daimon. I could never stop at 
anything once attained. I had to hasten on, to catch up with my 
vision. Since my contemporaries, understandably, could not per- 
ceive my vision, they saw only a fool rushing ahead. 

I have offended many people, for as soon as I saw that they 
did not understand me, that was the end of the matter so far as 

356 



Retrospect 

I was concerned. I had to move on. I had no patience with peo- 
ple aside from my patients. I had to obey an inner law which 
was imposed on me and left me no freedom of choice. Of course 
I did not always obey it. How can anyone live without incon- 
sistency? 

For some people I was continually present and close to them 
so long as they were related to my inner world; but then it 
might happen that I was no longer with them, because there 
was nothing left which would link me to them. I had to learn 
painfully that people continued to exist even when they had 
nothing more to say to me. Many excited in me a feeling of living 
humanity, but only when they appeared within the magic circle 
of psychology; next moment, when the spotlight cast its beam 
elsewhere, there was nothing to be seen. I was able to become in- 
tensely interested in many people; but as soon as I had seen 
through them, the magic was gone. In this way I made many 
enemies. A creative person has little power over his own life. 
He is not free. He is captive and driven by his daimon. 

"Shamefully 

A power wrests away the heart from us> 
For the Heavenly Ones each demand sacrifice; 
But if it should be withheld 
Never has that led to good? 

says Holderlin. 

This lack of freedom has been a great sorrow to me. Often I 
felt as if I were on a battlefield, saying, "Now you have fallen, 
my good comrade, but I must go on." For "shamefully a power 
wrests away the heart from us." I am fond of you, indeed I love 
you, but I cannot stay. There is something heart-rending about 
that. And I myself am the victim; I cannot stay. But the daimon 
manages things so that one comes through, and blessed incon- 
sistency sees to it that in flagrant contrast to my "disloyalty" I 
can keep faith in unsuspected measure. 

Perhaps I might say: I need people to a higher degree than 
others, and at the same time much less. When the daimon is at 
work, one is always too close and too far. Only when it is silent 
can one achieve moderation. 

357 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

The daimon of creativity has ruthlessly had its way with me. 
The ordinary undertakings I planned usually had the worst of 
it though not always and not everywhere. By way of compen- 
sation, I think, I am conservative to the bone. I fill my pipe 
from my grandfather's tobacco jar and still keep his alpenstock, 
topped with a chamois horn, which he brought back from 
Pontresina after having been one of the first guests at that newly 
opened Kurort. 

I am satisfied with the course my lif e has taken. It has been 
bountiful, and has given me a great deal. How could I ever have 
expected so much? Nothing but unexpected things kept hap- 
pening to me. Much might have been different if I myself had 
been different. But it was as it had to be; for all came about be- 
cause I am as I am. Many things worked out as I planned them 
to, but that did not always prove of benefit to me. But almost 
everything developed naturally and by destiny. I regret many 
follies which sprang from my obstinacy; but without that trait 
I would not have reached my goal. And so I am disappointed 
and not disappointed. I am disappointed with people and disap- 
pointed with myself. I have learned amazing things from peo- 
ple, and have accomplished more than I expected of myself. I 
cannot form any final judgment because the phenomenon of 
lif e and the phenomenon of man are too vast. The older I have 
become, the less I have understood or had insight into or known 
about myself. 

I am astonished, disappointed, pleased with myself. I am dis- 
tressed, depressed, rapturous. I am all these things at once, and 
cannot add up the sum. I am .incapable of determining ultimate 
worth or worthlessness; I have no judgment about myself and 
my life. There is nothing I am quite sure about. I have no defi- 
nite convictions not about anything, really. I know only that 
I was born and exist, and it seems to me that I have been car- 
ried along. I exist on the foundation of something I do not 
know. In spite of all uncertainties, I feel a solidity underlying 
all existence and a continuity in my mode of being. 

The world into which we are born is brutal and cruel, and at 
the same time of divine beauty. Which element we think out- 
weighs the other, whether meaninglessness or meaning, is a 



Retrospect 

matter of temperament. If meaninglessness were absolutely pre- 
ponderant, the meaningfulness of life would vanish to an in- 
creasing degree with each step in our development. But that is 
or seems to me not the case. Probably, as in all metaphysi- 
cal questions, both are true: Life is or has meaning and 
meaninglessness. I cherish the anxious hope that meaning will 
preponderate and win the battle. 

When Lao-tzu says: "All are clear, I alone am clouded," he is 
expressing what I now feel in advanced old age. Lao-tzu is the 
example of a man with superior insight who has seen and ex- 
perienced worth and worthlessness, and who at the end of his 
life desires to return into his own being, into the eternal un- 
knowable meaning. The archetype of the old man who has seen 
enough is eternally true. At every level of intelligence this type 
appears, and its lineaments are always the same, whether it be 
an old peasant or a great philosopher like Lao-tzu. This is old 
age, and a limitation. Yet there is so much that fills me: plants, 
animals, clouds, day and night, and the eternal in man. The 
more uncertain I have felt about myself, the more there has 
grown up in me a feeling of kinship with all things. In fact it 
seems to me as if that alienation which so long separated me 
from the world has become transferred into my own inner world, 
and has revealed to me an unexpected unf amiliarity with my- 
self. 



359 



Appendix I 



LETTERS FROM FREUD TO JUNG 1 



Vienna IX, Berggasse 19 
April 16, igog 

DEAB FRIEND, 

... It is remarkable that on the same evening that I formally 
adopted you as an eldest son, anointing you as my successor and 
crown prince in partibus infidelium that then and there you 
should have divested me of my paternal dignity, and that the divest- 
ing seems to have given you as much pleasure as investing your per- 
son gave me. Now I am afraid that I must fall back again into the 
role of father toward you in giving you my views on poltergeist phe- 
nomena. I must do this because these things are different from what 
you would like to think. 

I do not deny that your comments and your experiment made a 
powerful impression upon me. After your departure I determined to 
make some observations, and here are the results. In my front room 
there are continual creaking noises, from where the two heavy Egyp- 
tian steles rest on the oak boards of the bookcase, so that's obvious. In 
the second room, where we heard the crash, such noises are very rare. 
At first I was inclined to ascribe some meaning to it if the noise we 
heard so frequently when you were here were never heard again 
after your departure. But since then it has happened over and over 
again, yet never in connection with my thoughts and never when I 
was considering you or your special problem. (Not now, either, I add 
by way of challenge.) The phenomenon was soon deprived of all sig- 
nificance for me by something else. My credulity, or at least my 
readiness to believe, vanished along with the spell of your personal 
presence; once again, for various inner reasons, it seems to me wholly 

1 Reproduced with the land permission of Ernst Freud, London. 

361 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

implausible that anything of the sort should occur. The furniture 
stands before me spiritless and dead, like nature silent and godless 
before the poet after the passing of the gods of Greece. 

I therefore don once more my horn-rimmed paternal spectacles 
and warn my dear son to keep a cool head and rather not understand 
something than make such great sacrifices for the sake of understand- 
ing. I also shake my wise gray locks over the question of psycho- 
synthesis and think: Well, that is how the young folks are; they really 
enjoy things only when they need not drag us along with them, where 
with our short breath and weary legs we cannot follow. 

Now I shall exercise the privilege of my years to turn loquacious 
and tell you about one more matter between heaven and earth which 
cannot be understood. A few years ago I took it into my head that I 
would die between the ages of 61 and 62, which at that time seemed 
to leave me a decent period of grace. (Today that leaves me only 
eight years still to go. ) Shortly afterward I made a trip to Greece with 
my brother, and it was absolutely uncanny to see how the number 61, 
or 60 in conjunction with i and a, kept cropping up on anything that 
had a number, especially on vehicles. I conscientiously noted down 
these occasions. By the time we came to Athens, I was feeling de- 
pressed. At our hotel we were assigned rooms on the second floor, and 
I hoped I could breathe again at least there could be no chance of 
No. 61. However, it turned out that my room was No. 31 (which, 
with fatalistic license, I regarded as after all half of 61-62). This 
wilier and nimbler figure proved to be even better at dogging me 
than the first. 

From that day until very recently the number 31 remained faith- 
ful to me, with a 2. all too readily associated with it. But since I also 
have in my psychic system regions in which I am merely avid for 
knowledge and not at all superstitious, I have attempted to analyze 
this conviction. Here it is. My conviction began in 1899. Two events 
coincided at that time. The first was my writing The Interpretation of 
Dreams (which, you know, is dated ahead to 1900); the second, my 
being assigned a new telephone number, which I have to this day: 
14362. It is easy to establish the link between these two facts: in the 
year 1899, when I wrote The Interpretation of Dreams, I was 43 
years old. What should be more obvious than that the other figures 
in my telephone number were intended to signify the end of my life, 
hence, 61 or 62? Suddenly there appears a method in this madness. 
The superstition that I would die between 61 and 6z turns out to be 
equiyalent to the conviction that with the book on dreams I had com- 



Appendix I 

pleted my life work, needed to say no more, and could die in peace. 
You will grant that after this analysis it no longer sounds so non- 
sensical. Incidentally, the influence of Wilhelm Fliess plays a part in 
this; the superstitition dates from the year of his attack on me. 

Here is another instance where you will find confirmation of the 
specifically Jewish character of my mysticism. Apart from this, I only 
want to say that adventures such as mine with the number 62 can 
be explained by two things. The first is an enormously intensified 
alertness on the part of the unconscious, so that one is led like Faust 
to see a Helen in every woman. The second is the undeniable "co- 
operation of chance," which plays the same role in the formation of 
delusions as somatic co-operation in hysterical symptoms or linguistic 
co-operation in puns. 

I therefore look forward to hearing more about your investigations 
of the spook-complex, my interest being the interest one has in a 
lovely delusion which one does not share oneself. 

With cordial regards to yourself, 
your wife and children, 
Yours, 

Freud. 



Vienna IX, Berggasse 19 
May 1 



DEAR FRIEND, 

... I know that your deepest inclinations are impelling you toward 
a study of the occult, and do not doubt that you will return home with 
a rich cargo. There is no stopping that, and it is always right for a per- 
son to follow the biddings of his own impulses. The reputation you 
have won with your Dementia 2 will stand against the charge of 
"mystic" for quite a while. Only don't stay too long away from us in 
those lush tropical colonies; it is necessary to govern at home. . . . 
With cordial greetings and the hope that you will write me again 
after a shorter interval this time. 

Your faithful 
Freud. 

2 See above, Chap. V, n. 4, p. 149. 

363 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 



Vienna IX, Berggasse ig 
June 15, 1911 

DEAR FRIEND, 

... In matters of occultism I have become humble ever since the 
great lesson I received from Ferenczi's experiences. 8 1 promise to be- 
lieve everything that can be made to seem the least bit reasonable. As 
you know, I do not do so gladly. But my hubris has been shattered. I 
should like to have you and F. acting in consonance when one of you 
is ready to take the perilous step of publication, and I imagine that 
this would be quite compatible with complete independence during 
the progress of the work. ... 

Cordial regards to you and the beautiful house 
from Your faithful 
Freud 

*Cf. Ernest Jones, Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (New York, 1953-57), 
III, pp. 387 f. 



Appendix II 



LETTERS TO EMMA JUNG 
FROM AMERICA 

(1909) 



September 6, 1909, Monday 
At Prof. Stanley Halts 
Clark University, Worcester 

.... So now we are safely arrived in Worcester! I have to tell you 
about the trip. Last Saturday there was dreary weather in New York. 
All three of us were afflicted with diarrhea and had pretty bad 
stomach aches. ... In spite of feeling physically miserable and in 
spite of not eating anything, I went to the paleontological collection, 
where all the old monsters, the Lord God's anxiety dreams of Crea- 
tion, are to be seen. The collection is absolutely unique for the 
phylogenesis of Tertiary mammals. I cannot possibly tell you all I saw 
there. Then I met Jones, who had just arrived from Europe. Around 
half -past three we took the elevated and rode from 42nd Street to the 
piers. There we boarded a fantastically huge structure of a steamer 
that had some five white decks. We took cabins, and our vessel set 
sail from the West River around the point of Manhattan with all its 
tremendous skyscrapers, then up the East River under the Brooklyn 
and Manhattan Bridges, right through the endless tangle of tugs, 
ferryboats, etc., and through the Sound behind Long Island. It was 
damp and chilly, we had belly aches and diarrhea and were suffering 
from hunger besides, so we crawled into bed. Early on Sunday 
morning we were already on land in Fall River City, where in the rain 
we took the train to Boston and immediately went on to Worcester. 
While we were en route, the weather cleared. The countryside was 
utterly charming, low hills, a great deal of forest, swamp, small lakes, 
innumerable huge erratic rocks, tiny villages with wooden houses, 
painted red, green, or gray, with windows framed in white (Hoi- 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

land!), tucked away under large, beautiful trees. By 11:30 we were 
in Worcester. We found the Standish Hotel a very pleasant place to 
stay, and cheap also, "on the American plan," as they say here that 
is, with board. At six in the evening, after a well-deserved rest, we 
called on Stanley Hall. He is a refined, distinguished old gentleman 
close on seventy who received us with the kindest hospitality. He has 
a plump, jolly, good-natured, and extremely ugly wife who, however, 
serves wonderful food. She promptly took over Freud and me as her 
"boys" and plied us with delicious nourishment and noble wine, so 
that we began visibly to recover. We slept very well that night in the 
hotel, and this morning we have moved over to the Halls'. The house 
is furnished in an incredibly amusing fashion, everything roomy and 
comfortable. There is a splendid studio filled with thousands of books, 
and boxes of cigars everywhere. Two pitch-black Negroes in dinner 
jackets, the extreme of grotesque solemnity, perform as servants. 
Carpets everywhere, all the doors open, even the bathroom door and 
the front door; people going in and out all over the place; all the 
windows extend down to the floor. The house is surrounded by an 
English lawn, no garden fence. Half the city (about a hundred and 
eighty thousand inhabitants) stands in a regular forest of old trees 
which shade all the streets. Most of the houses are smaller than ours, 
charmingly surrounded by flowers and flowering shrubs, overgrown 
with Virginia creeper and wisteria; everything well tended, clean, 
cultivated, and exceedingly peaceful and congenial. A wholly differ- 
ent America! This is what they call New England. The city was 
founded as long ago as 1690, so it is very old. Much prosperity. The 
university, richly endowed, is small but distinguished, and has a real, 
though plain, elegance. This morning was the opening session. Prof. X 
had first turn, with boring stuff. We soon decamped and took a de- 
lightful walk through the outskirts of the town, which is surrounded 
on all sides by small and minute lakes and cool woods. We were 
ecstatic over the peaceful beauty of the surroundings. It is refreshing 
and reviving after the life in New York. . . . 



Clark University 
Worcester, Massachusetts 
Wednesday, September 8, igog 

. . . The people here are all exceedingly amiable and on a decent 
cultural level. We are beautifully taken care of at the Halls' and 

366 



Appendix II 

daily recovering from the exertions of New York My stomach is al- 
most back to normal now; from time to time there is a little twitch, 
but aside from that, my general health is excellent. Yesterday Freud 
began the lectures and received great applause. We are gaining 
ground here, and our following is growing slowly but surely. Today I 
had a talk about psychoanalysis with two highly cultivated elderly 
ladies who proved to be very well informed and free-thinking. I was 
greatly surprised, since I had prepared myself for opposition. Re- 
cently we had a large garden party with fifty people present, in the 
course of which I surrounded myself with five ladies. I was even able 
to make jokes in English though what English! Tomorrow comes my 
first lecture; all my dread of it has vanished, since the audience is 
harmless and merely eager to hear new things, which is certainly 
what we can supply them with. It is said that we shall be awarded 
honorary doctorates by the university next Saturday, with a great deal 
of pomp and circumstance. In the evening there will be a "formal 
reception." Today's letter has to be short, since the Halls have invited 
some people for five o'clock to meet us. We have also been inter- 
viewed by the Boston Evening Transcript. In fact we are the men of 
the hour here. It is very good to be able to spread oneself in this way 
once in a while. I can feel that my libido is gulping it in with vast 
enjoyment . . . 



Clark University 
Worcester ', Mass. 
September 24, 1909 

. . . Last night there was a tremendous amount of ceremony and 
fancy dress, with all sorts of red and black gowns and gold-tasseled 
square caps. In a grand and festive assemblage I was appointed 
Doctor of Laws honoris causa and Freud likewise. Now I may place 
an L.L.D. after my name. Impressive, what? . . . Today Prof. M. 
drove us by automobile out to lunch at a beautiful lake. The land- 
scape was utterly lovely. This evening there is one more "private 
conference" in Hall's house on the "psychology of sex." Our time is 
dreadfully crammed. The Americans are really masters at that; they 
hardly leave one time to catch one's breath. Right now I am rather 
worn out from all the fabulous things we have been through, and 

367 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

am longing for the quiet of the mountains. My head is spinning. Last 
night at the awarding of the doctorate I had to deliver an impromptu 
talk before some three hundred persons. . . . Freud is in seventh 
heaven, and I am glad with all my heart to see him so. ... 

I am looking forward enormously to getting back to the sea again, 
where the overstimulated psyche can recover in the presence of that 
infinite peace and spaciousness. Here one is in an almost constant 
whirlwind. But I have, thank God, completely regained my capacity 
for enjoyment, so that I can look forward to everything with zest. 
Now I am going to take everything that comes along by storm, and 
then I shall settle down again, satiated . . . 



Albany, N. Y. 
September 18, 

. . . Two more days before departure! Everything is taking place in 
a whirl. Yesterday I stood upon a bare rocky peak nearly 5600 feet 
high, in the midst of tremendous virgin forests, looking far out into 
the blue infinities of America and shivering to the bone in the icy 
wind, and today I am in the midst of the metropolitan bustle of 
Albany, the capital of the State of New York! The hundred thousand 
enormously deep impressions I am taking back with me from this 
wonderland cannot be described with the pen. Everything is too big, 
too immeasurable. Something that has gradually been dawning upon 
me in the past few days is the recognition that here an ideal po- 
tentiality of life has become reality. Men are as well off here as the 
culture permits; women badly off. We have seen things here that in- 
spire enthusiastic admiration, and things that make one ponder social 
evolution deeply. As far as technological culture is concerned, we lag 
miles behind Ajnerica. But all that is frightfully costly and already 
carries the germ of the end in itself. I must tell you a great, great 
deal. I shall never forget the experiences of this journey. Now we are 
tired of America. Tomorrow morning we are off to New York, and on 
September 21 we sail! . . . 



368 



Appendix II 

Steamer Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse 
North German Lloyd 

BREMEN 

September 22, 1909 

. . . Yesterday morning I shook the dust o America from my feet, 
with a light heart and an aching head, for the Y/s plied us with won- 
derful champagne. . . . As far as abstinence goes, I've arrived on very 
shaky ground indeed, in point of principle, so that I am honorably 
withdrawing from my various teetotal societies. I confess myself an 
honest sinner and only hope that I can endure the sight of a glass of 
wine without emotion an undrunk glass, of course. That is always 
so; only the forbidden attracts. I think I must not forbid myself too 
much. . . . 

Well, then, at ten o'clock yesterday morning we sailed, to our left 
the towering whitish and reddish heaven-storming towers of New 
York City, to our right the smoking chimneys, docks, etc., of Hoboken. 
The morning was misty; New York soon disappeared, and before 
long the big swells of the ocean began. At the fireship we dropped 
the American pilot and then sailed on out "into the mournful waste- 
land of the sea." It is, as always, of cosmic grandeur and simplicity, 
compelling silence; for what has man to say here, especially at night 
when the ocean is alone with the starry sky? One looks out silendy, 
surrendering all self-importance, and many old sayings and images 
scurry through the mind; a low voice says something about the age- 
oldness and infinitude of the "far-swelling, murmurous sea," of "the 
waves of the sea and of love," of Leukothea, the lovely goddess who 
appears in the foam of the seething waves to travel-weary Odysseus 
and gives him the pearly veil which saves him from Poseidon's storm. 
The sea is like music; it has all the dreams of the soul within itself 
and sounds them over. The beauty and grandeur of the sea consists 
in our being forced down into the fruitful bottomlands of our own 
psyches, where we confront and re-create ourselves in the animation 
of the "mournful wasteland of the sea." Now we are still worn out 
from the "torment of these last days." We brood over the past few 
months, and the unconscious has a lot of work to do, putting in order 
all the things America has churned up within us. ... 



369 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

Steamer Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse 
North German Lloyd 

BREMEN 

September 25, igog 

. . . . Yesterday there was a storm that lasted all day until nearly 
midnight. Most of the day I stood up front, under the bridge, on a 
protected and elevated spot, and admired the magnificent spectacle 
as the mountainous waves rolled up and poured a whirling cloud of 
foam over the ship. The ship began to roll fearfully, and several times 
we were soaked by a salty shower. It turned cold, and we went in for 
a cup of tea. Inside, however, the t>rain flowed down the spinal 
canal and tried to come out again from under the stomach. Conse- 
quently I retired to my bed, where I soon felt fine again and later 
was able to consume a pleasant supper. Outside from time to time a 
wave thundered against the ship. The objects in my cabin had all 
come to life: the sofa cushion crawled about on the floor in the semi- 
darkness; a recumbent shoe sat up, looked around in astonishment, 
and then shuffled quietly off under the sofa; a standing shoe turned 
wearily on its side and followed its mate. Now the scene changed. I 
realized that the shoes had gone under the sofa to fetch my bag and 
brief case. The whole company paraded over to join the big trunk 
under the bed. One sleeve of my shirt on the sofa waved longingly 
after them, and from inside the chests and drawers came rumbles 
and rattles. Suddenly there was a terrible crash under my floor, a 
rattling, clattering, and tinkling. One of the kitchens is underneath 
me. There, at one blow, five hundred plates had been awakened 
from their deathlike torpor and with a single bold leap had put a 
sudden end to their dreary existence as slaves. In all the cabins round 
about, unspeakable groans betrayed the secrets of the menu. I 
slept like a top, and this morning the wind is beginning to blow 
from another side. . . . 



370 



Appendix III 



LETTER TO EMMA JUNG 
FROM NORTH AFRICA 

(1920) 



Grand Hotel Sousse 

Sousse Monday, March 15, 1920 

This Africa is incredible 

. . . Unfortunately I cannot write coherently to you, for it is all too 
much. Only sidelights. After cold, heavy weather at sea, a sparkling 
morning in Algiers. Bright houses and streets, dark green clumps of 
trees, tall palms' crowns rising among them. White burnooses, red 
fezzes, and among these the yellow uniforms of the Tirailleurs 
d'Afrique, the red of the Spahis, then the Botanical Gardens, an en- 
chanted tropical forest, an Indian vision, holy acvatta trees with 
gigantic aerial roots like monsters, fantastic dwellings of the gods, 
enormous in extent, heavy, dark green foliage rustling in the sea 
wind. 

Then thirty hours by rail to Tunis. The Arab city is classical 
antiquity and Moorish middle ages, Granada and the fairy tale of 
Baghdad. You no longer think of yourself; you are dissolved in this 
potpourri which cannot be evaluated, still less described: a Roman 
column stands here as part of a wall; an old Jewess of unspeakable 
ugliness goes by in white baggy breeches; a crier with a load of 
burnooses pushes through the crowd, shouting in gutturals that might 
have come straight from the canton of Zurich; a patch of deep blue 
sky, a snow-white mosque dome; a shoemaker busily stitching away 
at shoes in a small vaulted niche, with a hot, dazzling patch of 
sunlight on the mat before him; blind musicians with a (hum and 
tiny three-stringed lute; a beggar who consists of nothing but rags; 
smoke from oil cakes, and swarms of flies; up above, on a white 

371 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

minaret in the blissful ether, a muezzin sings the midday chant; be- 
low, a cool, shady, colonnaded yard with horseshoe portal framed in 
glazed tiles; on die wall a mangy cat lies in the sun;ia coming and 
going of red, white, yellow, blue, brown mantles, white turbans, red 
fezzes, uniforms, faces ranging from white and light yellow to deep 
black; a shuffling of yellow and red slippers, a noiseless scurrying of 
naked black feet, and so on and so on. 

In the morning the great god rises and fills both horizons with his 
joy and power, and all living things obey him. At night the moon is so 
silvery and glows with such divine clarity that no one can doubt the 
existence of Astarte. 

Between Algiers and Tunis He 550 miles of African soil, towering 
up to the noble and spreading shapes of the great Atlas range, wide 
valleys and plateaus bursting with grapes and grain, dark green 
forests of cork oak. Today Horus rose out of distant, pale mountains 
over an unending green and brown plain, and from tie desert there 
sprang up a mighty wind which blew out to the dark blue sea. On 
rolling, gray-green hills yellow-brown remains of whole Roman cities, 
small flocks of black goats grazing around them, nearby a Bedouin 
camp with black tents, camels, and donkeys. The train runs into a 
camel which cannot make up its mind to get off the tracks; the beast 
is killed; there is a great running up, shrieking, and gesticulating of 
white-clad figures; and always the sea, now deep blue, now hurting 
the eyes with its glitter in the sunlight. Out of olive groves and palms 
and hedges of giant cactus floating in the flickering, sun-shot air rises 
a snow-white city with divinely white domes and towers, gloriously 
spread out over a hill. Then comes Sousse, with white walls and 
towers, the harbor below; beyond the harbor wall the deep blue sea, 
and in the port lies the sailing ship with two lateen sails which I 
once painted!!!! 

You stumble over Roman remains; with my cane I dug a piece of 
Roman pottery out of the ground. 

This is all nothing but miserable stammering; I do not know what 
Africa is really saying to me, but it speaks. Imagine a tremendous sun, 
air clear as in the highest mountains, a sea bluer than any you have 
ever seen, all colors of incredible power. In the markets you can 
still buy the amphorae of antiquity things like that and the 
moonlll! . . . 



372 



Appendix IV 



RICHARD WILHELM 



I first met Richard Wilhelm at Count Keyserling's during a meet- 
ing of the "School of Wisdom" in Darmstadt That was in the early 
twenties. In 1923 we invited him to Zurich and he spoke on the 
I Ching 1 at the Psychology Club. 

Even before meeting him I had been interested in Oriental philoso- 
phy, and around 1920 had begun experimenting with the I Ching. 
One summer in Bollingen I resolved to make an all-out attack on the 
riddle of this book. Instead of traditional stalks of yarrow required by 
the classical method, I cut myself a bunch of reeds. I would sit for 
hours on the ground beneath the hundred-year-old pear tree, the 
I Ching beside me, practicing the technique by referring the result- 
ant oracles to one another in an interplay of questions and answers. 
All sorts of undeniably remarkable results emerged meaningful con- 
nections with my own thought processes which I could not explain 
to myself. 

The only subjective intervention in this experiment consists in the 
experimenter's arbitrarily that is, without counting dividing up the 
bundle of forty-nine stalks at a single swoop. He does not know how 
many stalks are contained in each bundle, and yet the result depends 
upon their numerical relationship. All other manipulations proceed 
mechanically and leave no room for interference by the will. If a 
psychic causal connection is present at all, it can only consist in the 
chance division of the bundle (or, in the other method, the chance 
fall of the coins). 

During the whole of those summer holidays I was preoccupied 
with the question: Are the I Chings answers meaningful or not? If 

1 The 1 Ching, or Book of Changes: English trans, by Cary F. Baynes, from the 
German version of R. Wilhelm (New York and London, 1950). The origins of 
this ancient Chinese book of wisdom and oracles go back to the fourth mil- 
lennium B.C. 

373 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

they are, how does the connection between the psychic and the 
physical sequence of events come about? Time and again I en- 
countered amazing coincidences which seemed to suggest the idea of 
an acausal parallelism (a synchronicity, as I later called it). So 
fascinated was I by these experiments that I altogether forgot to take 
notes, which I afterward greatly regretted. Later, however, when I 
often used to carry out the experiment with my patients, it became 
quite clear that a significant number of answers did indeed hit the 
mark. I remember, for example, the case of a young man with a 
strong mother complex. He wanted to marry, and had made the ac- 
quaintance of a seemingly suitable girl. However, he felt uncertain, 
fearing that under the influence of his complex he might once more 
find himself in the power of an overwhelming mother. I conducted 
the experiment with him. The text of his hexagram read: "The 
maiden is powerful. One should not marry such a maiden/' 

In the mid-thirties I met the Chinese philosopher Hu Shih. I 
asked him his opinion of the I Ching, and received the reply: "Oh, 
that's nothing but an old collection of magic spells, without signifi- 
cance/* He had had no experience with it or so he said. Only once, 
he remembered, had he come across it in practice. One day on a walk 
with a friend, the friend had told him about his unhappy love affair. 
They were just passing by a Taoist temple. As a joke, he had said to 
his friend: "Here you can consult the oracle!" No sooner said than 
done. They went into the temple together and asked the priest for an 
1 Ching oracle. But he had not the slightest faith in this nonsense. 

I asked him whether the oracle had been correct. Whereupon he 
replied reluctantly, "Oh yes, it was, of course . . /' Remembering 
the well-known story of the "good friend" who does everything one 
does not wish to do oneself, I cautiously asked him whether he had 
not profited by this opportunity. "Yes," he replied, "as a joke I asked 
a question too." 

"And did the oracle give you a sensible answer?" I asked. 

He hesitated. "Oh well, yes, if you wish to put it that way/' The 
subject obviously made him uncomfortable. 

A few years after my first experiments with the reeds, the I Ching 
was published with Wilhelm's commentary. I instantly obtained 
the book, and found to my gratification that Wilhelm took much the 
same view of the meaningful connections as I had. But he knew the 
entire literature and could therefore fill in the gaps which had been 
outside my competence. When Wilhelm came to Zurich, I had the 
opportunity to discuss the matter with him at length, and we talked a 

374 



Appendix IV 

great deal about Chinese philosophy and religion. What he told me, 
out of his wealth of knowledge of the Chinese mentality, clarified 
some of the most difficult problems that the European unconscious 
had posed for me. On the other hand, what I had to tell him about 
the results of my investigations of the unconscious caused him no 
little surprise; for he recognized in them things he had considered to 
be the exclusive possession of the Chinese philosophical tradition. 

As a young man Wilhelm had gone to China in the service of a 
Christian mission, and there the mental world of the Orient had 
opened its doors wide to him. Wilhelm was a truly religious spirit, 
with an unclouded and farsighted view of things. He had the gift 
of being able to listen without bias to the revelations of a foreign 
mentality, and to accomplish that miracle of empathy which enabled 
him to make the intellectual treasures of China accessible to Europe. 
He was deeply influenced by Chinese culture, and once said to me, 
"It is a great satisfaction to me that I never baptized a single Chi- 
nese!" In spite of his Christian background, he could not help recog- 
nizing the logic and clarity of Chinese thought. "Influenced" is sot 
quite the word to describe its effect upon him; it had overwhelmed 
and assimilated him. His Christian views receded into the back- 
ground, but did not vanish entirely; they formed a kind of mental 
reservation, a moral proviso that was later to have fateful conse- 
quences. 

In China he had the good fortune to meet a sage of the old school 
whom the revolution had driven out of the interior. This sage, Lau 
Nai Siian, introduced him to Chinese yoga philosophy and the psy- 
chology of the I Ching. To the collaboration of these two men we 
owe the edition of the I Ching with its excellent commentary. For the 
first time this prof oundest work of the Orient was introduced to the 
West in a living and comprehensible fashion. I consider this publica- 
tion Wilhelm's most important work. Clear and unmistakably Western 
as his mentality was, in his I Ching commentary he manifested a de- 
gree of adaptation to Chinese psychology which is altogether un- 
matched. 

When the last page of the translation was finished and the first 
printer's proofs were coming in, the old master Lau Nai Siian died. 
It was as if his work were completed and he had delivered the last 
message of the old, dying China to Europe. And Wilhelm had been 
the perfect disciple, a fulfillment of the wish-dream of the sage. 

Wilhelm, when I met him, seemed completely Chinese, in outward 
manner as much as in his way of writing and speaking. The Oriental 

375 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

point of view and ancient Chinese culture had penetrated him 
through and through. Upon his arrival in Europe, he entered the 
faculty of the China Institute in Frankfurt am Main. Both in his 
teaching work and in his lectures to laymen, however, he seemed to 
feel the pressure of the European spirit. Christian views and forms 
of thought moved steadily into the foreground. I went to hear some 
lectures of his and they turned out to be scarcely any different from 
conventional sermons. 

This reversion to the past seemed to me somewhat unreflective 
and therefore dangerous. I saw it as a reassimilation to the West, and 
felt that as a result of it Wilhelm must come into conflict with him- 
self. Since it was, so I thought, a passive assimilation, that is to say, a 
succumbing to the influence of the environment, there was the danger 
of a relatively unconscious conflict, a clash between his Western and 
Eastern psyche. If, as I assumed, the Christian attitude had originally 
given way to the influence of China, the reverse might well be tak- 
ing place now: the European element might be gaining the upper 
hand over the Orient once again. If such a process takes place with- 
out a strong, conscious attempt to come to terms with it, the un- 
conscious conflict can seriously affect the physical state of health. 

After attending the lectures, I attempted to call his attention to 
the danger threatening him. My words to him were: "My dear 
Wilhelm, please do not take this amiss, but I have the feeling that 
the West is taking possession of you again, and that you are becoming 
unfaithful to your mission of transmitting the East to the West/' 

He replied, "I think you are right something here is overpowering 
me. But what can be done?'* 

A few years later Wilhelm was staying as a guest in my house, and 
came down with an attack of amoebic dysentery. It was a disease he 
had had twenty years before. His condition grew worse during the 
following months, and then I heard that Wilhelm was in the hospital. 
I went to Frankfurt to visit him, and found a very sick man. The 
doctors had not yet given up hope, and Wilhelm, too, spoke of plans 
he wished to carry out when he got well. I shared his hopes, but had 
my forebodings. What he confided to me at the time confirmed my 
conjectures. In his dreams, he revisited the endless stretches of deso- 
late Asiatic steppes the China he had left behind. He was groping 
his way back to the problem which China had set before him, the 
answer to which had been blocked for him by the West. By now he 
was conscious of this question, but had been unable to find a solution. 
His illness dragged on for months. 

376 



Appendix TV 

A few weeks before his death, when I had had no news from him 
for a considerable time, I was awakened, just as I was on the point 
of falling asleep, by a vision. At my bed stood a Chinese in a dark 
blue gown, hands crossed in the sleeves. He bowed low before me, as 
if he wished to give me a message. I knew what it signified. The 
vision was extraordinarily vivid. Not only did I see every wrinkle in 
the man's face, but every thread in the fabric of his gown. 

Wilhelm's problem might also be regarded as a conflict between 
consciousness and the unconscious, which in his case took the form of 
a clash between West and East. I believed I understood his situation, 
since I myself had the same problem as he and knew what it meant 
to be involved in this conflict. It is true that even at our last meeting 
Wilhelm did not speak plainly. Though he was intensely interested 
when I introduced the psychological point of view, his interest 
lasted only so long as my remarks concerned objective matters such 
as meditation or questions posed by the psychology of religion. So 
far, so good. But whenever I attempted to touch the actual problem 
of his inner conflict, I immediately sensed a drawing back, an in- 
ward shutting himself off because such matters went straight to the 
bone. This is a phenomenon I have observed in many men of im- 
portance. There is, as Goethe puts it in Faust, an "untrodden, un- 
treadable" region whose precincts cannot and should not be entered 
by force; a destiny which will brook no human intervention. 



377 



Appendix V 

Septem Sermones ad Mortuos 
(1916) 



Jung allowed Septem Sermones ad Mortuos (Seven Sermons to the 
Dead) to be published privately as a booklet. He occasionally gave 
copies to friends; it was never obtainable at bookstores. Later he 
described it as a sin of his youth and regretted it. 

The language is more or less in the style of the Red Book. But 
compared with the endless conversations with inner figures in the 
Red Book, the Seven Sermons form a self-contained whole. They 
convey an impression, if only a fragmentary one, of what Jung went 
through in the years 1913-1917, and of what he was bringing to birth. 

The Sermons contain hints or anticipations of ideas that were to 
figure later in his scientific writings, more particularly concerning the 
polaristic nature of the psyche, of life in general, and of all psycho- 
logical statements. It was their thinking in paradoxes that drew Jung 
to the Gnostics. That is why he identifies himself here with the 
Gnostic writer Basilides (early second century A.D.) and even takes 
over some of his terminology for example, God as Abraxas. It was a 
deliberate game of mystification. 

Jung consented to the publication of Seven Sermons in his Mem- 
oirs only hesitantly and only "for the sake of honesty." He never 
disclosed the key to the anagram at the end of the book. 



The Seven Sermons to the Dead written by Basilides in 
Alexandria, the City where the East toucheth the West 

Sermol 

The dead came back from Jerusalem, where they found not what 
they sought. They prayed me let them in and besought my word, and 
thus I began my teaching. 



Appendix V 

Harken: I begin with nothingness. Nothingness is the same as 
fullness. In infinity full is no better than empty. Nothingness is both 
empty and full. As well might ye say anything else of nothingness, as 
for instance, white is it, or black, or again, it is not, or it is. A thing 
that is infinite and eternal hath no qualities, since it hath all qualities. 

This nothingness or fullness we name the PLEROMA. Therein 
both thinking and being cease, since the eternal and infinite possess 
no qualities. In it no being is, for he then would be distinct from the 
pleroma, and would possess qualities which would distinguish him as 
something distinct from the pleroma. 

In the pleroma there is nothing and everything. It is quite fruitless 
to think about the pleroma, for this would mean self-dissolution. 

CRE ATURA is not in the pleroma, but in itself. The pleroma is both 
beginning and end of created beings. It pervadeth them, as the light 
of the sun everywhere pervadeth the air. Although the pleroma 
pervadeth altogether, yet hath created being no share thereof, just as 
a wholly transparent body becometh neither light nor dark through 
the light which pervadeth it. We are, however, the pleroma itself, for 
we are a part of the eternal and infinite. But we have no share 
thereof, as we are from the pleroma infinitely removed; not spirit- 
ually or temporally, but essentially, since we are distinguished from 
the pleroma in our essence as creatura, which is confined within time 
and space. 

Yet because we are parts of the pleroma, the pleroma is also in us. 
Even in the smallest point is the pleroma endless, eternal, and entire, 
since small and great are qualities which are contained in it. It is that 
nothingness which is everywhere whole and continuous. Only figura- 
tively, therefore, do I speak of created being as a part of the pleroma. 
Because, actually, the pleroma is nowhere divided, since it is noth- 
ingness. We are also the whole pleroma, because, figuratively, the 
pleroma is the smallest point (assumed only, not existing) in us and 
the boundless firmament about us. But wherefore, then, do we speak 
of the pleroma at all, since it is thus everything and nothing? 

I speak of it to make a beginning somewhere, and also to free you 
from the delusion that somewhere, either without or within, there 
standeth something fixed, or in some way established, from the 
beginning. Every so-called fixed and certain thing is only relative. 
That alone is fixed and certain which is subject to change. 

What is changeable, however, is creatura. Therefore is it the one 
thing which is fixed and certain; because it hath qualities: it is even 
quality itself. 

379 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

The question ariseth: How did creatura originate? Created beings 
came to pass, not creatura; since created being is the very quality of 
the pleroma, as much as non-creation which is the eternal death. In 
all times and places is creation, in all times and places is death. The 
pleroma hath all, distinctiveness and non-distinctiveness. 

Distinctiveness is creatura. It is distinct. Distinctiveness is its es- 
sence, and therefore it distinguished. Therefore man discriminateth 
because his nature is distinctiveness. Wherefore also he distinguish- 
eth qualities of the pleroma which are not. He distinguished them 
out of his own nature. Therefore must he speak of qualities of the 
pleroma which are not. 

What use, say ye, to speak of it? Saidst thou not thyself, there is no 
profit in thinking upon the pleroma? 

That said I unto you, to free you from the delusion that we are 
able to think about the pleroma. When we distinguish qualities of the 
pleroma, we are speaking from the ground of our own distinctiveness 
and concerning our own distinctiveness. But we have said nothing 
concerning the pleroma. Concerning our own distinctiveness, how- 
ever, it is needful to speak, whereby we may distinguish ourselves 
enough. Our very nature is distinctiveness. If we are not true to this 
nature we do not distinguish ourselves enough. Therefore must we 
make distinctions of qualities. 

What is the harm, ye ask, in not distinguishing oneself? If we do 
not distinguish, we get beyond our own nature, away from creatura. 
We fall into indistinctiveness, which is the other quality of the 
pleroma. We fall into the pleroma itself and cease to be creatures. 
We are given over to dissolution in the nothingness. This is the death 
of the creature. Therefore we die in such measure as we do not 
distinguish. Hence the natural striving of the creature goeth towards 
distinctiveness, fighteth against primeval, perilous sameness. This is 
called the PBINCIPIUM INDIVIDUAHONIS. This principle is the essence 
of the creature. From this you can see why indistinctiveness and non- 
distinction are a great danger for the creature. 

We must, therefore, distinguish the qualities of the pleroma. The 
qualities are PAIBS OF OPPOSITES, such as 

The Effective and the Ineffective. 

Fullness and Emptiness. 

Living and Dead. 

Difference and Sameness. 

Light and Darkness. 

The Hot and the Cold. 

380 



Appendix V 

Force and Matter. 

Time and Space. 

Good and Evil. 

Beauty and Ugliness. 

The One and the Many. etc. 

The pairs of opposites are qualities of the pleroma which are not, 
because each balanceth each. As we are the pleroma itself, we also 
have all these qualities in us. Because the very ground of our nature 
is distinctiveness, therefore we have these qualities in the name and 
sign of distinctiveness, which meaneth 

1. These qualities are distinct and separate in us one from the 
other; therefore they are not balanced and void, but are effective. 
Thus are we the victims of the pairs of opposites. The pleroma 
is rent in us. 

2. The qualities belong to the pleroma, and only in the name and 
sign of distinctiveness can and must we possess or live them. 
We must distinguish ourselves from qualities. In the pleroma 
they are balanced and void; in us not. Being distinguished from 
them delivereth us. 

When we strive after the good or the beautiful, we thereby forget 
our own nature, which is distinctiveness, and we are delivered over 
to the qualities of the pleroma, which are pairs of opposites. We 
labor to attain to the good and the beautiful, yet at the same time we 
also lay hold of the evil and the ugly, since in the pleroma these are 
one with the good and the beautiful. When, however, we remain true 
to our own nature, which is distinctiveness, we distinguish ourselves 
from the good and the beautiful, and, therefore, at the same time, 
from the evil and the ugly. And thus we fall not into the pleroma, 
namely, into nothingness and dissolution. 

Thou sayest, ye object, that difference and sameness are also 
qualities of the pleroma. How would it be, then, if we strive after 
difference? Are we, in so doing, not true to our own nature? And 
must we none the less be given over to sameness when we strive after 
difference? 

Ye must not forget that the pleroma hath no qualities. We create 
them through thinking. If, therefore, ye strive after difference or 
'sameness, or any qualities whatsoever, ye pursue thoughts which 
flow to you out of the pleroma; thoughts, namely, concerning non- 
existing qualities of the pleroma. Inasmuch as ye run after these 
thoughts, ye fall again into the pleroma, and reach difference and 
sameness at the same time. Not your thinking, but your being, is 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

distinctiveness. Therefore not after difference, as ye think it, must ye 
strive; but after YOUR OWN BEING. At bottom, therefore, there is only 
one striving, namely, the striving after your own being. If ye had this 
striving ye would not need to know anything about the pleroma and 
its qualities, and yet would ye come to your right goal by virtue of 
your own being. Since, however, thought estrangeth from being, that 
knowledge must I teach you wherewith ye may be able to hold your 
thought in leash. 

Sermo II 

In the night the dead stood along the wall and cried: 

We would have knowledge of god. Where is god? Is god dead? 

God is not dead. Now, as ever, he liveth. God is creatura, for he is 
something definite, and therefore distinct from the pleroma. God is 
quality of the pleroma, and everything which I said of creatura also 
is true concerning him. 

He is distinguished, however, from created beings through this, 
that he is more indefinite and indeterminable than they. He is less 
distinct than created beings, since the ground of his being is effective 
fullness. Only in so far as he is definite and distinct is he creatura, 
and in like measure is he the manifestation of the effective fullness of 
the pleroma. 

Everything which we do not distinguish falleth into the pleroma 
and is made void by its opposite. If, therefore, we do not distinguish 
god, effective fullness is for us extinguished. 

Moreover god is the pleroma itself, as likewise each smallest point 
in the created and uncreated is the pleroma itself. 

Effective void is the nature of the devil. God and devil are the first 
manifestations of nothingness, which we call the pleroma. It is in- 
different whether the pleroma is or is not, since in everything it is 
balanced and void. Not so creatura. In so far as god and devil are 
creatura they do not extinguish each other, but stand one against the 
other as effective opposites. We need no proof of their existence. It is 
enough that we must always be speaking of them. Even if both were 
not, creatura, of its own essential distinctiveness, would forever dis- 
tinguish them anew out of the pleroma. 

Everything that discrimination taketh out of the pleroma is a pair 
of opposites. To god, therefore, always belongeth the devil. 

This inseparability is as close and, as your own life hath made you 
see, as indissoluble as the pleroma itself. Thus it is that both stand 
very close to the pleroma, in which all opposites are extinguished and 
joined. 



Appendix V 

God and devil are distinguished by the qualities fullness and 
emptiness, generation and destruction. EFFECTIVENESS is common to 
both. Effectiveness joineth them. Effectiveness, therefore, stahdeth 
above both; is a god above god, since in its effect it uniteth fullness 
and emptiness. 

This is a god whom ye knew not, for mankind forgot it. We name it 
by its name ABRAXAS. It is more indefinite still than god and devil. 

That god may be distinguished from it, we name god HELIOS or 
Sun. Abraxas is effect. Nothing standeth opposed to it but the ineffec- 
tive; hence its effective nature freely unfoldeth itself. The ineffective 
is not, therefore resisteth not. Abraxas standeth above the sun and 
above the devil. It is improbable probability, unreal reality. Had the 
pleroma a being, Abraxas would be its manifestation. It is the effective 
itself, not any particular effect, but effect in general. 

It is unreal reality, because it hath no definite effect. 

It is also creatura, because it is distinct from the pleroma. 

The sun hath a definite effect, and so hath the devil. Wherefore do 
they appear to us more effective than indefinite Abraxas. 

It is force, duration, change. 

The dead now raised a great tumult, for they were Christians. 

Sermo III 

Like mists arising from a marsh, the dead came near and cried: 
Speak further unto us concerning the supreme god. 

Hard to know is the deity of Abraxas. Its power is the greatest, 
because man perceiveth it not. From the sun he draweth the sum- 
mum bonum; from the devil the inftrnum mdlum; but from Abraxas 
LIFE, altogether indefinite, the mother of good and evil. 

Smaller and weaker life seemeth to be than the summum bonum; 
wherefore is it also hard to conceive that Abraxas transcendeth even 
the sun in power, who is himself the radiant source of all the force of 
life. 

Abraxas is the sun, and at the same time the eternally sucking 
gorge of the void, the belittling and dismembering devil. 

The power of Abraxas is twofold; but ye see it not, because for 
your eyes the warring opposites of this power are extinguished, 

What the god-sun speaketh is life. 

What the devil speaketh is death. 

But Abraxas speaketh that hallowed and accursed word which is 
life and death at the same time. 

Abraxas begetteth truth and lying, good and evil, light and dark- 

383 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

ness, in the same word and in the same act. Wherefore is Abraxas 
terrible. 

It is splendid as the lion in the instant he striketh down his victim. 
It is beautiful as a day of spring. It is the great Pan himself and also 
the small one. It is Priapos. 

It is the monster of the under-world, a thousand-armed polyp, 
coiled knot of winged serpents, frenzy. 
It is the hermaphrodite of the earliest beginning. 
It is the lord of the toads and frogs, which live in the water and go 
up on the land, whose chorus ascendeth at noon and at midnight. 
It is abundance that seeketh union with emptiness. 
It is holy begetting. 
It is love and love's murder. 
It is the saint and his betrayer. 

It is the brightest light of day and the darkest night of madness. 
To look upon it, is blindness. 
To know it, is sickness. 
To worship it, is death. 
To fear it, is wisdom. 
To resist it not, is redemption. 

God dwelleth behind the sun, the devil behind the night What 
god bringeth forth out of the light the devil sucketji into the night. 
But Abraxas is the world, its becoming and its passing. Upon every 
gift that cometh from the god-sun the devil layeth his curse. 

Everything that ye entreat from the god-sun begetteth a deed of 
the devil. 

Everything that ye create with the god-sun giveth effective power 
to the devil. 

That is terrible Abraxas. 

It is the mightiest creature, and in it the creature is afraid of itself. 
It is the manifest opposition of creatura to the pleroma and its 
nothingness. 

It is the son's horror of the mother. 
It is the mother's love for the son. 

It is the delight of the earth and the cruelty of the heavens. 
Before its countenance man becometh like stone. 
Before it there is no question and no reply. 
It is the life of creatura. 
It is the operation of distinctiveness. 
It is the love of man. 
It is the speech of man. 

384 



Appendix V 

It is the appearance and the shadow of man. 
It is illusory reality. 

Now the dead howled and raged, for they were unperfected. 

SermoIV 

The dead filled the place murmuring and said: 

Tell us of gods and devils, accursed onel 

The god-sun is the highest good; the devil is the opposite. Thus 
have ye two gods. But there are many high and good things and 
many great evils. Among these are two god-devils; the one is the 
BURNING ONE, the other the GROWING ONE. 

The burning one is EROS, who hath the form of flame. Flame giveth 
light because it consumeth. 

The growing one is the TREE OF LIFE. It buddeth, as in growing it 
heapeth up living stuff. 

Eros flameth up and dieth. But the tree of life groweth with slow 
and constant increase through unmeasured time. 

Good and evil are united in the flame. 

Good and evil are united in the increase of the tree. In their 
divinity stand life and love opposed. 

Innumerable as the host of the stars is the number of gods and 
devils. 

Each star is a god, and each space that a star filleth is a devil. But 
the empty-fullness of the whole is the pleroma. 

The operation of the whole is Abraxas, to whom only the ineffec- 
tive standeth opposed. 

Four is the number of the principal gods, as four is the number of 
the world's measurements. 

One is the beginning, the god-sun. 

Two is Eros; for he bindeth twain together and outspreadeth 
himself in brightness. 

Three is the Tree of Life, for it filleth space with bodily forms. 

Four is the devil, for he openeth all that is closed. All that is 
formed of bodily nature doth he dissolve; he is the destroyer in 
whom everything is brought to nothing. 

For me, to whom knowledge hath been given of the multiplicity 
and diversity of the gods, it is well. But woe unto you, who replace 
these incompatible many by a single god. For in so doing ye beget 
the torment which is bred from not understanding, and ye mutilate 
the creature whose nature and aim is distinctiveness. How can ye be 

385 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

true to your own nature when ye try to change the many into one? 
What ye do unto the gods is done likewise unto you. Ye all become 
equal and thus is your nature maimed. 

Equality shall prevail not for god, but only for the sake of man. 
For the gods are many, whilst men are few. The gods are mighty and 
can endure their manifoldness. For like the stars they abide in 
solitude, parted one from the other by immense distances. But men 
are weak and cannot endure their manifold nature. Therefore they 
dwell together and need communion, that they may bear their sepa- 
rateness. For redemption's sake I teach you the rejected truth, for the 
sake of which I was rejected. 

The multiplicity of the gods corresponded! to the multiplicity of 
man. 

Numberless gods await the human state. Numberless gods have 
been men. Man shareth in the nature of the gods. He cometh from 
the gods and goeth unto god. 

Thus, just as it serveth not to reflect upon the pleroma, it availeth 
not to worship the multiplicity of the gods. Least of all availeth it to 
worship the first god, the effective abundance and the summum 
bonum. By our prayer we can add to it nothing, and from it nothing 
take; because the effective void swalloweth all. 

The bright gods form the celestial world. It is manifold and infi- 
nitely spreading and increasing. The god-sun is the supreme lord of 
that world. 

The dark gods form the earth-world. They are simple and infinitely 
diminishing and declining. The devil is the earth-world's lowest lord, 
the moon-spirit, satellite of the earth, smaller, colder, and more dead 
than the earth. 

There is no difference between the might of the celestial gods and 
those of the earth. The celestial gods magnify, the earth-gods dimin- 
ish. Measureless is the movement of both. 

Sermo V 

The dead mocked and cried: Teach us, fool, of the church and 
holy communion. 

The world of the gods is made manifest in spirituality and in 
sexuality. The celestial ones appear in spirituality, the earthly in 
sexuality. 

Spirituality conceiveth and embraceth. It is womanlike and there- 
fore we call it MATER COELESTIS, the celestial mother. Sexuality en- 



Appendix V 

gendereth and createth. It is manlike, and therefore we call it PHAIJLOS, 
the earthly father. 

The sexuality of man is more of the earth, the sexuality of woman 
is more of the, spirit. 

The spirituality of man is more of heaven, it goeth to tie greater. 

The spirituality of woman is more of tie earth, it goeth to the 
smaller. 

Lying and devilish is the spirituality of the man which goeth to the 
smaller. 

Lying and devilish is the spirituality of the woman which goeth to 
the greater. 

Each must go to its own place. 

Man and woman become devils one to the other when they divide 
not their spiritual ways, for the nature of creatura is distinctiveness. 

The sexuality of man hath an earthward course, the sexuality of 
woman a spiritual. Man and woman become devils one to the other if 
they distinguish not their sexuality. 

Man shall know of the smaller, woman the greater. 

Man shall distinguish himself both from spirituality and from 
sexuality. He shall call spirituality Mother, and set her between 
heaven and earth. He shall call sexuality Phallos, and set him be- 
tween himself and earth. For the Mother and the Phallos are super- 
human daemons which reveal the world of the gods. They are for us 
more effective than the gods, because they are closely akin to our 
own nature. Should ye not distinguish yourselves from sexuality and 
from spirituality, and not regard them as of a nature both above you 
and beyond, then are ye delivered over to them as qualities of the 
pleroma. Spirituality and sexuality are not your qualities, not things 
which ye possess and contain. But they possess and contain you; for 
they are powerful daemons, manifestations of the gods, and are, 
therefore, things which reach beyond you, existing in themselves. No 
man hath a spirituality unto himself, or a sexuality unto himself. But 
he standeth under the law of spirituality and of sexuality. 

No man, therefore, escapeth these daemons. Ye shall look upon 
them as daemons, and as a common task and danger, a common 
burden which life hath laid upon you. Thus is life for you also a 
common task and danger, as are the gods, and first of all terrible 
Abraxas. 

Man is weak, therefore is communion indispensable. If your com- 
munion be not under the sign of the Mother, then is it under the sign 

37 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

of the Phallos. No communion is suffering and sickness. Communion 
in everything is dismemberment and dissolution. 

Distinctiveness leadeth to singleness. Singleness is opposed to com- 
munion. But because of man's weakness over against the gods and 
daemons and their invincible law is communion needful. Therefore 
shall there be as much communion as is needful, not for man's sake, 
but because of the gods. The gods force you to communion. As much 
as they force you, so much is communion needed, more is evil. 

In communion let every man submit to others, that communion be 
maintained; for ye need it. 

In singleness the one man shall be superior to the others, that every 
man may come to himself and avoid slavery. 

In communion there shall be continence. 

In singleness there shall be prodigality. 

Communion is depth. 

Singleness is height. 

Right measure in communion purifieth and preserveth. 

Right measure in singleness purifieth and increaseth. 

Communion giveth us warmth, singleness giveth us light. 

Sermo VI 

The daemon of sexuality approacheth our soul as a serpent. It is 
half human and appeareth as thought-desire. 

The daemon of spirituality descendeth into our soul as the white 
bird. It is half human and appeareth as desire-thought. 

The serpent is an earthy soul, half daemonic, a spirit, and akin to 
the spirits of the dead. Thus too, like these, she swarmeth around in 
the things of earth, making us either to fear them or pricking us with 
intemperate desires. The serpent hath a nature like unto woman. She 
seeketh ever the company of the dead who are held by the spell of 
the earth, they who found not the way beyond that leadeth to 
singleness. The serpent is a whore. She wantoneth with the devil and 
with evil spirits; a mischievous tyrant and tormentor, ever seducing 
to evilest company. The white bird is a half-celestial soul of man. He 
bideth with the Mother, from time to time descending- The bird hath 
a nature like unto man, and is effective thought. He is chaste and 
solitary, a messenger of the Mother. He flieth high above earth. He 
commandeth singleness. He bringeth knowledge from the distant 
ones who went before and are perfected. He beareth our word above 
to the Mother. She intercedeth, she warneth, but against the gods she 
hath no power. She is a vessel of the sun. The serpent goeth below 

388 



Appendix V 

and with her cunning she lameth the phallic daemon, or else goadeth 
him on. She yieldeth up the too crafty thoughts of the earthy one, 
those thoughts which creep through every hole and cleave to all 
things with desirousness. The serpent, doubtless, willeth it not, yet 
she must be of use to us. She fleeth our grasp, thus showing us the 
way, which with our human wits we could not find. 

With disdainful glance the dead spake: Cease this talk of gods and 
daemons and souls. At bottom this hath long been known to us. 

SermoVII 

Yet when night was come the dead again approached with lamen- 
table mien and said: There is yet one matter we forgot to mention. 
Teach us about man. 

Man is a gateway, through which from the outer world of gods, 
daemons, and souls ye pass into the inner world; out of the greater 
into the smaller world. Small and transitory is man. Already is he 
behind you, and once again ye find yourselves in endless space, in 
the smaller or innermost infinity. At immeasurable distance standeth 
one single Star in the zenith. 

This is the one god of this one man. This is his world, his pleroma, 
his divinity. 

In this world is man Abraxas, the creator and the destroyer of his 
own world. 

This Star is the god and the goal of man. 

This is his one guiding god. In him goeth man to his rest. Toward 
him goeth the long journey of the soul after death. In him shineth 
forth as light all that man bringeth back from the greater world. To 
this one god man shall pray. 

Prayer increaseth the light of the Star. It casteth a bridge over 
death. It prepareth life for the smaller world and assuageth the 
hopeless desires of the greater. 

When the greater world waxeth cold, burneth the Star. 

Between man and his one god there standeth nothing, so long as 
man can turn away his eyes from the flaming spectacle of Abraxas. 

Man here, god there. 

Weakness and nothingness here, there eternally creative power. 

Here nothing but darkness and chilling moisture. 

There wholly sun. 

Whereupon the dead were silent and ascended like the smoke above 

389 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

the herdsman's fire, who through the night kept watch over his 
flock. 

ANAGRAMMA: 

NAHTRIHECCUNDE 

GAHINNEVERAHTUNIN 

ZEHGESSURKLACH 

ZUNNUS. 

(Translated by H. G. Baynes) 



39<> 



Glossary 



Amplification. Elaboration and clarification of a dream-image by 
means of directed association (q.v.) and of parallels from the human 
sciences (symbology, mythology, mysticism, folklore, history of reli- 
gion, ethnology, etc.). 

Anima and Animus. Personification of the feminine nature of a man's 
unconscious and the masculine nature of a woman's. This psychologi- 
cal bisexuality is a reflection of the biological fact that it is the larger 
number of male (or female) genes which is the decisive factor in the 
determination of sex. The smaller number of contrasexual genes seems 
to produce a corresponding contrasexual character, which usually re- 
mains unconscious. Anima and animus manifest themselves most 
typically in personified form as figures in dreams and fantasies 
("dream girl," "dream lover"), or in the irrationalities of a man's 
feeling and a woman's thinking. As regulators of behavior they are 
two of the most influential archetypes ( q.v. ) . 

c. G. JUNG: "Every man carries within him the eternal image of 
woman, not the image of this or that particular woman, but a defini- 
tive feminine image. This image is fundamentally unconscious, an 
hereditary factor of primordial origin engraved in the living organic 
system of the man, an imprint or 'archetype' [q.v.] of all the ancestral 
experiences of the female, a deposit, as it were, of all the impressions 
ever made by woman . . . Since this image is unconscious, it is al- 
ways unconsciously projected upon the person of the beloved, and is 
one of the chief reasons for passionate attraction or aversion." 

(The Development of Personality, GW 17, p. 198) 

"In its primary 'unconscious' form the animus is a compound of 
spontaneous, unpremeditated opinions which exercise a powerful in- 
fluence on the woman's emotional life, while the anima is similarly 
compounded of feelings which thereafter influence or distort the 
man's understanding ('she has turned his head'). Consequently the 
animus likes to project itself upon 'intellectuals' and aH kinds of 
*heroes,* including tenors, artists, sporting celebrities, etc. The anima 

391 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

has a predilection for everything that is unconscious, dark, equivocal, 
and unrelated in woman, and also for her vanity, frigidity, helpless- 
ness, and so forth.'* 

(The Practice of Psychotherapy, CW 16, par. 521) 

". . . no man can converse with an animus for five minutes without 
becoming the victim of his own anima. Anyone who still had enough 
sense of humour to listen objectively to the ensuing dialogue would 
be staggered by the vast number of commonplaces, misapplied 
truisms, cliches from newspapers and novels, shop-soiled platitudes 
of every description interspersed with vulgar abuse and brain-splitting 
lack of logic. It is a dialogue which, irrespective of its participants, is 
repeated millions and millions of times in all languages of the world 
and always remains essentially the same." (Aion, CW 9, ii, p. 15) 

Tie natural function of the animus ( as well as of the*anima ) is to 
remain in [their] place between individual consciousness and the 
collective unconscious [q.v.]; exactly as the persona [q.v.] is a sort of 
stratum between the ego-consciousness and die objects of the external 
world. The animus and the anima should function as a bridge, or a 
door, leading to the images of the collective unconscious, as the 
persona should be a sort of bridge into the world." 

(Unpublished Seminar Notes. "Visions" I, p. 116) 

Archetype, c. G. JUNG: "The concept of the archetype ... is derived 
from the repeated observation that, for instance, the myths and fairy- 
tales of world literature contain definite motifs which crop up every- 
where. We meet these same motifs in the fantasies, dreams, deliria, 
and delusions of individuals living today. These typical images and 
associations are what I call archetypal ideas. The more vivid they 
are, the more they will be coloured by particularly strong feeling- 
tones . . . They impress, influence, and fascinate us. They have their 
origin in the archetype, which in itself is an irrepresentable, uncon- 
scious, pre-existent form that seems to be part of the inherited struc- 
ture of the psyche and can therefore manifest itself spontaneously 
anywhere, at any time. Because of its instinctual nature, the arche- 
type underlies the feeling-toned complexes [q.v.] and shiares their 
autonomy." (Civilization in Transition, CW 10, par. 847) 

"Again and again I encounter the mistaken notion that an archetype 
is determined in regard to its content, in other words that it is a kind 
of unconscious idea (if such an expression be admissible). It is neces- 
sary to point out once more that archetypes are not determined as 



Glossary 

regards their content, but only as regards their form and then only 
to a very limited degree. A primordial image [9.1?.] is determined as 
to its content only when it has "become conscious and is therefore 
filled out with the material of conscious experience. Its form, however, 
. . . might perhaps be compared to the axial system of a crystal, 
which, as it were, preforms the crystalline structure in the mother 
liquid, although it has no material existence of its own. This first ap- 
pears according to the specific way in which the ions and molecules 
aggregate. The archetype in itself is empty and purely formal, nothing 
but a facultas praeformandi, a possibility of representation which is 
given a priori. The representations themselves are not inherited, only 
file forms, and in that respect they correspond in every way to the 
instincts, which are also determined in form only. The existence of 
the instincts can no more be proved than the existence of the arche- 
types, so long as they do not manifest themselves concretely." 
( The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, CW 9, i, pp. 79 f.) 
". . . it seems to me probable that the real nature of the archetype 
is not capable of being made conscious, that it is transcendent, on 
which account I call it psychoid [qr.t?.].* 

( The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, CW 8, p. 213) 

Association. The linking of ideas, perceptions, etc. according to simi- 
larity, coexistence, opposition, and causal dependence. Free associa- 
tion in Freudian dream interpretation: spontaneous ideas occurring 
to the dreamer, which need not necessarily refer to the dream situa- 
tion. Directed or controlled association in Jungian dream interpreta- 
tion: spontaneous ideas which proceed from a given dream situation 
and constantly relate to it. 

Association test Methods for discovering complexes (9.1?.) by meas- 
uring the reaction time and interpreting the answers to given stimulus 
words. Complex-indicators: prolonged reaction time, faults, or the 
idiosyncratic quality of the answers when the stimulus words touch 
on complexes which the subject wishes to hide or of which he is not 
conscious. 

Complex, c. G. JUNG: "Complexes are psychic fragments which have 
split off owing to traumatic influences or certain incompatible tenden- 
cies. As the association experiments prove, complexes interfere with 
the intentions of the will and disturb the conscious performance; they 
produce disturbances of memory and blockages in the flow of associa- 
tions [qr.tx]; they appear and disappear according to their own laws; 

393 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

they can temporarily obsess consciousness, or influence speech and 
action in an unconscious way. In a word, complexes behave like inde- 
pendent beings, a fact especially evident in abnormal states of mind. 
In the voices heard by the insane they even take on a personal ego- 
character like that of the spirits who manifest themselves through 
automatic writing and similar techniques." 

( The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, CW 8, p. 121 ) 

Consciousness, c. G. JUNG: "When one reflects upon what conscious- 
ness really is, one is profoundly impressed by the extreme wonder of 
the fact that an event which takes place outside in the cosmos simul- 
taneously produces an internal image, that it takes place, so to speak, 
inside as well, which is to say: becomes conscious." 

(Basel Seminar, privately printed, 1934, p. i) 
"For indeed our consciousness does not create itself it wells up 
from unknown depths. In childhood it awakens gradually, and all 
through life it wakes each morning out of the depths of sleep from 
an unconscious condition. It is like a child that is born daily out of 
the primordial womb of the unconscious." 

(Psychology and Religion: West and East, CW 11, pp. 569 f . ) 

Dream, c. G. JUNG: "The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost 
and most secret recesses of the psyche, opening into that cosmic night 
which was psyche long before there was any ego-consciousness, and 
which wiH remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness 
may extend . . . All consciousness separates; but in dreams we put 
on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwell- 
ing in the darkness of primordial night. There he is still the whole, 
and the whole is in him, indistinguishable from nature and bare of 
all egohood. Out of these aU-uniting depths arises the dream, be it 
never so childish, grotesque, and immoral." 

(Civilteation in Transition, CW 10, pars. 304 f.) 

Extraversion. Attitude-type characterized by concentration of interest 
on the external object. See Introversion. 

God-image. A term derived from the Church Fathers, according to 
whom the imago Dei is imprinted on the human soul. When such an 
image is spontaneously produced in dreams, fantasies, visions, etc. it 
is, from the psychological point of view, a symbol of the self ( q.v. ), of 
psychic wholeness. 

394 



Glossary 

c. c. JUNG: "It is only through the psyche that we can establish that 
God acts upon us, but we are unable to distinguish whether these 
actions emanate from God or from the unconscious. We cannot tell 
whether God and the unconscious are two different entities. Both are 
border-line concepts for transcendental contents. But empirically it 
can be established, with a sufficient degree of probability, that there 
is in the unconscious an archetype of wholeness which manifests it- 
self spontaneously in dreams, etc., and a tendency, independent of 
the conscious will, to relate other archetypes to fids centre. Conse- 
quently, it does not seem improbable that the archetype produces a 
symbolism which has always characterized and expressed the Deity 
. . . The God-image does not coincide with the unconscious as such, 
but with a special content of it, namely the archetype of the self. It 
is this archetype from which we can no longer distinguish the God- 
image empirically." 

( Psychology and Religion; West and East, CW 11, pp. 468 ) 

"One can, then, explain the God-image ... as a reflection of the 
self, or, conversely, explain the self as an imago Dei in man." 



Hierosgamos. Sacred or spiritual marriage, union of archetypal figures 
in the rebirth mysteries of antiquity and also in alchemy. Typical 
examples are the representation of Christ and the Church as bride- 
groom and bride (sponsus et sponsa) and the alchemical conjunction 
of sun and moon. 

Individuation. c. G. JUNG: "I use the term 'individuation* to denote the 
process by which a person becomes a psychological 'in-dividual/ that 
is, a separate, indivisible unity or 'whole.*" 

( The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, CW 9, i, p. 275) 

Individuation means becoming a single, homogeneous being, and, 
in so far as 'individuality' embraces our innermost, last, and incom- 
parable uniqueness, it also implies becoming one's own self. We could 
therefore translate individuation as 'coming to selfhood' or 'self-reali- 
zation/ " ( Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, CW 7, par. 266) 

"But again and again I note that the individuation process is con- 
fused with the coming of the ego into consciousness and that the ego 
is in consequence identified with the self, which naturally produces 
a hopeless conceptual muddle. Individuation is then nothing but ego- 
centredness and autoeroticism. But the self comprises infinitely more 

395 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

than a mere ego ... It is as much one's self, and all other selves, as 
the ego. Individuation does not shut one out from the world, but 
gathers the world to oneself.** 

{ The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, CW 8, p. 226 ) 

Inflation. Expansion of the personality beyond its proper limits by 
identification with the persona (q*v.) or with an archetype (</..), or 
in pathological cases with a historical or religious figure. It produces 
an exaggerated sense of one's self-importance and is usually compen- 
sated by feelings of inferiority. 

Introversion. Attitude-type characterized by orientation in Me 
through subjective psychic contents. See Extraversion. 

Mana. Melanesian word for extraordinarily effective power emanat- 
ing from a human being, object, action, or event, or from supernatural 
beings and spirits. Also health, prestige, power to work magic and to 
heal. A primitive concept of psychic energy. 

Mandala (Sanskrit). Magic circle. In Jung, symbol of the center, the 
goal, or the self (q.t?.) as psychic totality; self -representation of a 
psychic process of centering; production of a new center of person- 
ality. This is symbolically represented by the circle, the square, or the 
quaternity (q-v>), by symmetrical arrangements of the number four 
and its multiples. In Lamism and Tantric Yoga the mandala is an 
instrument of contemplation (yantra), seat and birthplace of the 
gods. Disturbed mandala: Any form that deviates from the circle > 
square, or equal-armed cross, or whose basic number is not four or 
its multiples. 

c. G. JUNG: "Mandala means a circle, more especially a magic circle, 
and this form of symbol is not only to be found all through the East, 
but also among us; mandalas are amply represented in the Middle 
Ages. The specifically Christian ones come from the earlier Middle 
Ages. Most of them show Christ in the centre, with the four evange- 
lists, or their symbols, at the cardinal points. This conception must be 
a very ancient one because Horus was represented with his four sons 
in the same way by the Egyptians . . . For the most part, the man- 
dala form is that of a flower, cross, or wheel, with a distinct tendency 
toward four as the basis of the structure." 
(Commentary to Secret of the Golden Flower, CW 13, par. 31, mod. ) 

"Mandalas . . . usually appear in situations of psychic confusion 

396 



Glossary 

and perplexity. The archetype thereby constellated represents a pat- 
tern of order which, like a psychological View-finder' marked with 
a cross or circle divided into four, is superimposed on the psychic 
chaos so that each content falls into place and the weltering con- 
fusion is held together by the protective circle ... At the same time 
they are yantras, instruments with whose help the order is brought 
into being." ( Civilization in Transition, CW 10, par. 803 ) 

Numinosum. Rudolf Otto's term (in his Idea of the Holy) for the in- 
expressible, mysterious, terrifying, directly experienced and pertain- 
ing only to the divinity. 

Persona. Originally, the mask worn by an actor. 

c. G. JUNG: "The persona ... is the individual's system of adapta- 
tion to, or the manner he assumes in dealing with, the world. Every 
calling or profession, for example, has its own characteristic persona. 
. . . Only, the danger is that [people] become identical with their 
personas the professor with his text-book, the tenor with his voice. 
. . . One could say, with a little exaggeration, that the persona is 
that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others 
think one is." 
( The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, CW 9, i, pp. 122 f . ) " 

Primordial image. (Jakob Burckhardt) Term originally used by Jung 
for archetype (q.v.). 

Psychoid. "Soul-like" or "quasi-psychic." 

c. G. JUNG: *. . . the collective unconscious . . . represents a 
psyche that . . . cannot be directly perceived or 'represented/ in 
contrast to the perceptible psychic phenomena, and on account of its 
'irrepresentable* nature I have called it 'psychoid.* * 

( The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, CW 8, p. 436) 

Quaternity. c. G. JUNG: "The quaternity is an archetype of almost uni- 
versal occurrence. It forms the logical basis for any whole judgment. 
If one wishes to pass such a judgment, it must have this fourfold 
aspect. For instance, if you want to describe the horizon as a whole, 
you name the four quarters of heaven. . . . There are always four 
elements, four prime qualities, four colours, four castes, four ways of 
spiritual development, etc. So, too, there are four aspects of psycho- 
logical orientation ... In order to orient ourselves, we must have a 

397 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

function which ascertains that something is there (sensation); a sec- 
ond function which established what is is (thinking); a third function 
which states whether it suits us or not, whether we wish to accept it 
or not (feeling), and a fourth function which indicates where it came 
from and where it is going (intuition). When this has been done, 
there is nothing more to say. . . . The ideal of completeness is the 
circle or sphere, but its natural minimal division is a quaternity." 

(Psychology and Religion: West and East, CW 11, p. 167) 
A quaternity or quaternion often has a 3 + i structure, in that one 
of the terms composing it occupies an exceptional position or has a 
nature unlike that of the others. (For instance three of the symbols of 
the Evangelists are animals and that of the fourth, of St. Luke, is an 
angel.) This is the "Fourth/' which, added to the other three, makes 
them "One," symbolizing totality. In analytical psychology often the 
"inferior" function (i.e., that function which is not at the conscious 
disposal of the subject) represents the "Fourth,** and its integration 
into consciousness is one of the major tasks of the process of indi- 
viduation 



Self. The central archetype (<JM>. ); the archetype of order; the totality 
of the personality. Symbolized by circle, square, quaternity (9.1?.), 
child, mandala ( q.v. ) , etc. 

c. G. JUNG: ". . . the self is a quantity that is supraordinate to the 
conscious ego. It embraces not only the conscious but also the un- 
conscious psyche, and is therefore, so to speak, a personality which 
we also are. . . . There is little hope of our ever being able to reach 
even approximate consciousness of the self, since however much we 
may make conscious there will always exist an indeterminate and in- 
determinable amount of unconscious material which belongs to the 
totality of the self." 

(Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, CW 7, par. 274) 

"The self is not only the centre but also the whole circumference 
which embraces both conscious and unconscious; it is the centre of 
this totality, just as the ego is the centre of consciousness." 

(Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12, par. 44) 

". . . the self is our lif e's goal, for it is the completest expression of 
that fateful combination we call individuality . . ." 

( Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, CW 7, par. 404) 

Shadow. The inferior part of the personality; sum of all personal and 
collective psychic elements which, because of their incompatibility 



Glossary 

with the chosen conscious attitude, are denied expression in life and 
therefore coalesce into a relatively autonomous "splinter personality" 
with contrary tendencies in the unconscious. The shadow behaves 
compensatorily to consciousness; hence its effects can be positive as 
well as negative. In dreams, the shadow figure is always of the same 
sex as the dreamer. 

a G. JUNG: <<r The shadow personifies everything that the subject re- 
fuses to acknowledge about himself and yet is always thrusting itself 
upon him directly or indirectly for instance, inferior traits of charac- 
ter and other incompatible tendencies.** 
( The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, CW 9, i, pp. 284 f . ) 

*'. . . the shadow [is] that hidden, repressed, for the most part in- 
ferior and guilt-laden personality whose ultimate ramifications reach 
back into the realm of our animal ancestors and so comprise the 
whole historical aspect of the unconscious. ... If it has been be- 
lieved hitherto that the human shadow was the source of all evil, it 
can now be ascertained on closer investigation that the unconscious 
man, that is, his shadow, does not consist only of morally reprehensi- 
ble tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities, such as 
normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative 
impulses, etc." ( Aton, CW 9, ii, p. 266 ) 

Soul. c. G. JUNG: If the human [soul] is anything, it must be of un- 
imaginable complexity and diversity, so that it cannot possibly be 
approached through a mere psychology of instinct. I can only gaze 
with wonder and awe at the depths and heights of our psychic nature. 
Its non-spatial universe conceals an untold abundance of images 
which have accumulated over millions of years of living development 
and become fixed in the organism. My consciousness is like an eye 
that penetrates to the most distant spaces, yet it is the psychic non-ego 
that fills them with nonspatial images. And these images are not pale 
shadows, but tremendously powerful psychic factors. . . . Beside 
this picture I would like to place the spectacle of the starry heavens 
at night, for the only equivalent of the universe within is the universe 
without; and just as I reach this .world through the medium of the 
body, so I reach that world through the medium of the psyche." 

( Freud and Psychoanalysis, CW 4, pp. 331 f . ) 

*lt would be blasphemy to assert that God can manifest Himself 

everywhere save only in the human soul. Indeed the very intimacy of 

the relationship between Cod and the soul automatically precludes 

any devaluation of the latter. It would be going perhaps too far to 

399 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

speak of an affinity; but at all events the soul must contain in itself 
the faculty of relation to God, i.e. a correspondence, otherwise a con- 
nection could never come about This correspondence is, in psycho- 
logical terms, the archetype of the God-image [q.v.]" 

(Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12, par. 11) 

Synchronicity. A term coined by Jung to designate the meaningful 
coincidence or equivalence (a) of a psychic and a physical state or 
event which have no causal relationship to one another. Such syn- 
chronistic phenomena occur, for instance, when an inwardly per- 
ceived event (dream, vision, premonition, etc.) is seen to have a 
correspondence in external reality: the inner image of premonition 
has "come true**; (fc) of similar or identical thoughts, dreams, etc. oc- 
curring at the same time in different places. Neither the one nor the 
other coincidence can be explained by causality, but seems to be con- 
nected primarily with activated archetypal processes in the uncon- 
scious. 

c. G. JUNG: "My preoccupation with the psychology of unconscious 
processes long ago compelled me to look about for another principle 
of explanation, because the causality principle seemed to me in- 
adequate to explain certain remarkable phenomena of the psychology 
of the unconscious. Thus I found that there are psychic parallelisms 
which cannot be related to each other causally, but which must be 
connected through another principle, namely the contingency of 
events. This connection of events seemed to me essentially given by 
the fact of their relative simultaneity, hence the term 'synchronistic/ 
It seems, indeed, as though time, far from being an abstraction, is a 
concrete continuum which contains qualities or basic conditions that 
manifest themselves simultaneously in different places through paral- 
lelisms that cannot be explained causally, as, for example, in cases of 
the simultaneous occurrence of identical thoughts, symbols, or psychic 
states." ("Richard Wilhelm: In Memoriam," CW 15, par. 81, mod.) 

"I chose this term because the simultaneous occurrence of two 
meaningfully but not causally connected events seemed to me an 
essential criterion. I am therefore using the general concept of syn- 
chronicity in the special sense of a coincidence in time of two or more 
causally unrelated events which have the same or a similar meaning, 
in contrast to 'synchronism/ which simply means the simultaneous oc- 
currence of two events.** 

( The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, CW 8, p. 441 ) 

400 



Glossary 

"Synchronicity is no more baffling or mysterious than the discon- 
tinuities of physics. It is only the ingrained belief in the sovereign 
power of causality that creates intellectual difficulties and makes it 
appear unthinkable that causeless events exist or could ever occur. 
. . , Meaningful coincidences are thinkable as pure chance. But the 
more they multiply and the greater and more exact the correspond- 
ence is, the more their probability sinks and their unthinkability in- 
creases, until they can no longer be regarded as pure chance but, for 
lack of a causal explanation, have to be thought of as meaningful ar- 
rangements. . . . Their 'inexplicability* is not due to the fact that the 
cause is unknown, but to the fact that a cause is not even thinkable 
in intellectual terms." ( Ibid., pp. 518 f . ) 

Unconscious, the. c. G. JUNG: "Theoretically, no limits can be set to 
the field of consciousness, since it is capable of indefinite extension. 
Empirically, however, it always finds its limit when it comes up 
against the unknown. This consists of everything we do not know, 
which, therefore, is not related to the ego as the centre of the field of 
consciousness. The unknown falls into two groups of objects: those 
which are outside and can be experienced by the senses, and those 
which are inside and are experienced immediately. The first group 
comprises the unknown in the outer world; the second the unknown 
in the inner world. We call this latter territory the unconscious! 9 

(Aion, CW 9, ii, p. 3) 

". . . everything of which I know, but of which I am not at the 
moment thinking; everything of which I was once conscious but have 
now forgotten; everything perceived by my senses, but not noted by 
my conscious mind; everything which, involuntarily and without pay- 
ing attention to it, I feel, think, remember, want, and do; all the 
future things that are taking shape in me and will sometime come to 
consciousness: all this is the content of the unconscious." 

(The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, CW 8, p. 185) 

"Besides these we must include all more or less intentional repres- 
sions of painful thoughts and feelings. I call the sum of all these con- 
tents the "personal unconscious/ But, over and above that, we also 
find in the unconscious qualities that are not individually acquired 
but are inherited, e.g., instincts as impulses to carry out actions from 
necessity, without conscious motivation. In this 'deeper' stratum we 
also find the . . . archetypes . . . The instincts and archetypes to- 
gether form the 'collective unconscious/ I call it 'collective' because, 

401 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

unlike the personal unconscious, it is not made up of individual and 
more or less unique contents but of those which are universal and of 
regular occurrence." (Ibid., pp. 133 f . ) 

The first group comprises contents which are integral components 
of the individual personality and therefore could just as well be con- 
scious; the second group forms, as it were, an omnipresent, unchang- 
ing, and everywhere identical quality or substrate of the psyche 
per ser ( Aion, CW 9, ii, p. 7) 

The deeper layers* of the psyche lose their individual uniqueness 
as they retreat farther and farther into darkness. Xower down/ that 
is to say as they approach the autonomous functional systems, they 
become increasingly collective until they are universalized and ex- 
tinguished in the body's materiality, i.e., in chemical substances. The 
body's carbon is simply carbon. Hence *at bottom' the psyche is 
simply 'world/ * 

(The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, CW 9, i, p. 173) 



402 



The CoUected Works of C. G. Jung 



The publication of the first complete collected edition, in English, of 
the works of C. G. Jung has been undertaken by Roudedge and 
Kegan Paul, Ltd., in England and by Bollingen Foundation in the 
United States. Sir Herbert Read, Dr. Michael Fordham, Dr. Gerhard 
Adler, and William McGuire compose the Editorial Committee; the 
translator is R. F. C. Hull. Since 1967, Princeton University Press has 
been the American publisher. 

In the following list, dates of original publication are given in 
parentheses (of original composition, in brackets). Multiple dates 
indicate revisions. 

Dagger (t ) denotes volumes in preparation. 

1. PSYCHIATRIC STUDIES 

On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena 
(1902) 

On Hysterical Misreading (1904) 

Cryptomnesia (1905) 

On Manic Mood Disorder (1903) 

A Case of Hysterical Stupor in a Prisoner in Detention (1902) 

On Simulated Insanity (1903) 

A Medical Opinion on a Case of Simulated Insanity ( 1904) 

A Third and Final Opinion on Two Contradictory Psychiatric Diag- 
noses (1906) 

On the Psychological Diagnosis of Facts ( 1905) 

2. EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCHES 

TRANSLATED BY LEOPOLD STEIN 

IN COLLABORATION WITH DIANA RIVIERE 

Studies in Word Association (1904-7, 1910) 

The Associations of Normal Subjects (by Jung and F. Rikhn) 

An Analysis of the Associations of an Epileptic 

403 



The Collected Works of C. G. Jung 

The Reaction-Time Ratio in the Association Experiment 

Experimental Observations on the Faculty of Memory 

Psychoanalysis and Association Experiments 

The Psychological Diagnosis of Evidence 

Association, Dream, and Hysterical Symptom 

The Psychopathological Significance of the Association Experiment 

Disturbances in Reproduction in tihe Association Experiment 

The Association Method 

The Family Constellation 

Psychophysical Researches (1907-8) 

On the Psychophysical Relations of the Association Experiment 
Psychophysical Investigations with the Galvanometer and Pneumo- 
graph in Normal and Insane Individuals (by F. Peterson and 

Jung) 

Further Investigations on the Galvanic Phenomenon and Respiration 
in Normal and Insane Individuals (by C. Ricksher and Jung) 

Appendix: Statistical Details of Enlistment (1906); New Aspects of 
Criminal Psychology (1908); The Psychological Methods of 
Investigation Used in the Psychiatric Clinic of the University of 
Zurich (1910); On the Doctrine of Complexes ( [1911] 1913); On 
the Psychological Diagnosis of Evidence (1937) 

3. THE PSYCHO GENESIS OF MENTAL DISEASE 

The Psychology of Dementia Praecox ( 1907) 

The Content of the Psychoses (1908/1914) 

On Psychological Understanding (1914) 

A Criticism of Bleuler's Theory of Schizophrenic Negativism (1911) 

On the Importance of the Unconscious in Psychopathology (1914) 

On the Problem of Psychogenesis in Mental Disease (1919) 

Mental Disease and the Psyche ( 1928 ) 

On the Psychogenesis of Schizophrenia ( 1939) 

Recent Thoughts on Schizophrenia (1957) 

Schizophrenia (1958) 

4. FRETJD AND PSYCHOANALYSIS 

Freud's Theory of Hysteria: A Reply to Aschaffenburg (1906) 

The Freudian Theory of Hysteria (1908) 

The Analysis of Dreams ( 1909) 

A Contribution to the Psychology of Rumour ( 1910-11) 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

On die Significance of Number Dreams ( 1910-11) 

Morton Prince, "Mechanism and Interpretation of Dreams**: A Criti- 
cal Review (1911) 

On the Criticism of Psychoanalysis (1910) 

Concerning Psychoanalysis ( 19151) 

The Theory of Psychoanalysis (1913) 

General Aspects of Psychoanalysis (1913) 

Psychoanalysis and Neurosis (1916) 

Some Crucial Points in Psychoanalysis: The Jung-Loy Correspond- 
ence (1914) 

Prefaces to "Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology" (1916, 1917) 

The Significance of the Father in the Destiny of the Individual 
(1909/1949) 

Introduction to Kranefeldt's "Secret Ways of the Mind" (1930) 

Freud and Jung: Contrasts (1929) 

5. SYMBOLS OF TRANSFORMATION (1912/1952) 

Original German version, Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido, 1912 ( = 
Psychology of the Unconscious); present extensively revised version, 1952. 

Appendix: The Miller Fantasies 

6. PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES (l92l) 

Appendix: Four Papers on Psychological Typology (1913, 1925, 1931, 
1936) 

7. TWO ESSAYS ON ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY 

On the Psychology of the Unconscious ( 1917/1926/1943) 
The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious ( 1928) 

Appendices: 

New Paths in Psychology ( 1912) 

The Structure of the Unconscious (1916) 



8. THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE 
PSYCHE 

On Psychic Energy (1928) 

The Transcendent Function ( [19161/1957) 

405 



The Collected Works of C. G. Jung 

A Review of the Complex Theory ( 1934) 

The Significance of Constitution and Heredity in Psychology ( 1929) 

Psychological Factors Determining Human Behaviour (1937) 

Instinct and the Unconscious (1919) 

The Structure of the Psyche ( 1927/1931 ) 

On the Nature of the Psyche ( 1947/1954) 

General Aspects of Dream Psychology (1916/1948) 

On the Nature of Dreams ( 1945/1948) 

The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits ( 1920/1948) 

Spirit and Life (1926) 

Basic Postulates of Analytical Psychology (193*) 

Analytical Psychology and Weltanschauung (1928/1931) 

The Real and the Surreal (1933) 

The Stages of Life ( 1930-1931) 

The Soul and Death ( 1934) 

Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle (1952) 

Appendix: On Synchronicity (1951) 



g. PART i 

THE ARCHETYPES AND THE COLLECTIVE 
UNCONSCIOUS 

Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious (1934/1954) 

The Concept of the Collective Unconscious ( 1936) 

Concerning the Archetypes, with Special Reference to the Anima 

Concept (1936/1954) 

Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype (1938/1954) 
Concerning Rebirth (1940/1950) 
The Psychology of the Child Archetype ( 1940) 
The Psychological Aspects of the Kore (1941) 
The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales ( 1945/1948 ) 
On the Psychology of the Trickster-Figure ( 1954) 
Conscious, Unconscious, and Individuation (1939) 
A Study in the Process of Individuation ( 1934/1950) 
Concerning Mandala Symbolism (1950) 

Appendix: Mandalas (1955) 



406 



Memories 9 Dreams, Reflections 
9. PAHT it 

AION: RESEARCHES INTO THE 
PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE SELF 



10. CIVILIZATION IN TRANSITION 

The Role of the Unconscious (1918) 

Mind and Earth ( 1927/1931) 

Archaic Man (1931) 

The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man (1928/1931) 

The Love Problem of a Student ( 1928) 

Woman in Europe (1927) 

The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man (1933/1934) 

The State of Psychotherapy Today ( 1934) 

Wotan (1936) 

After the Catastrophe (1945) 

The Fight with the Shadow ( 1946) 

Epilogue to "Essays on Contemporary Events" (1946) 

The Undiscovered Self (Present and Future) (1957) 

Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth (1958) 

A Psychological View of Conscience (1958) 

Good and Evil in Analytical Psychology ( 1959) 

Introduction to Wolffs "Studies in Jungian Psychology** (1959) 

The Swiss Line in the European Spectrum (1928) 

Reviews of Keyserling's "America Set Free" (1930) and "La Rvolu- 

tion Mondiale" ( 1934 ) 

Complications of American Psychology (1930) 
The Dreamlike World of India (1939) 
What India Can Teach Us ( 1939) 

Appendix: Documents (1933-1938) 



11. PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION: 
WEST AND EAST 

Western Religion 

Psychology and Religion (The Terry Lectures) ( 1938/1940) 

A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity ( 1942/1948) 

Transformation Symbolism in the Mass (1942/1954) 

407 



The Collected Works of C. G. Jung 

Forewords to White's "God and the Unconscious" and Werblowsky's 

"Lucifer and Prometheus" ( 1952) 
Brother Klaus ( 1933 ) 
Psychotherapists or the Clergy ( 1932) 
Psychoanalysis and the Cure of Souls ( 1928) 
Answer to Job ( 1952) 

Eastern Religion 

Psychological Commentaries on "The Tibetan Book of the Great 
Liberation" (1939) and "The Tibetan Book of the Dead" (19357 

1953) 

Yoga and the West ( 1936 ) 

Foreword to Suzukis 'Introduction to Zen Buddhism" ( 1939) 
The Psychology of Eastern Meditation (1943) 
The Holy Men of India: Introduction to Zimmer's "Der Weg zum 

Selbst"(i944) 
Foreword to the "I Ching" ( 1950) 

12. PSYCHOLOGY AND ALCHEMY (lQ44) 

Introduction to the Religious and Psychological Problems of Alchemy 
Individual Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy ( 1936) 
Religious Ideas in Alchemy ( 1937) 
Epilogue 

13. ALCHEMICAL STUDIES 

Commentary on "The Secret of the Golden Flower" (1929) 
The Visions of Zosimos ( 1938/1954) 
Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon (1942) 
The Spirit Mercurius (1943/1948) 
The Philosophical Tree ( 1945/1954) 

14. MYSTERIUM CONIUNCTIONIS: 

AN INQUIRY INTO THE SEPARATION AND 

SYNTHESIS OF PSYCHIC OPPOSITES 

IN ALCHEMY (l95S~S6) 



408 



Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

15. THE SPIRIT IN MAN, ART, AND LITERA- 
TURE 

Paracelsus (1929) 

Paracelsus the Physician ( 1941) 

Sigmund Freud in His Historical Setting (1932) 

In Memory of Sigmund Freud (1939) 

Richard Wilhelm: In Memoriam (1930) 

On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry ( 1922) 

Psychology and Literature (1930/1950) 

"Ulysses": A Monologue (1932) 

Picasso (1932) 

l6. THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHOTHERAPY 

General Problems of Psychotherapy 

Principles of Practical Psychotherapy (1933) 

What Is Psychotherapy? ( 1935) 

Some Aspects of Modern Psychotherapy (1930) 

The Aims of Psychotherapy ( 1931) 

Problems of Modern Psychotherapy (1929) 

Psychotherapy and a Philosophy of Life (1943) 

Medicine and Psychotherapy ( 1945) 

Psychotherapy Today (1945) 

Fundamental Questions of Psychotherapy (1951) 

Specific Problems of Psychotherapy 
The Therapeutic Value of Abreaction ( 1921/1928) 
The Practical Use of Dream-Analysis ( 1934) 
Psychology of the Transference ( 1946) 

Appendix: The Realities of Practical Psychotherapy [1937] 

17, THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY 

Psychic Conflicts in a Child (1910/1946) 

Introduction to Wickes's "Analyse der Kinderseele* (1927/1931) 

Child Development and Education (1928) 

Analytical Psychology and Education: Three Lectures (1926/1946) 

The Gifted Child (1943) 

The Significance of the Unconscious in Individual Education (1928) 



The Collected Works of C. G. Jung 

The Development of Personality ( 1934) 
Marriage as a Psychological Relationship ( 1925) 

FINAL VOLUMES! 

Posthumous and Other Miscellaneous Works 
BOdiograpky of C. G. Jungs Writings 
General Index to the Collected Works 



Related Publications 

C. G. JUNG: LETTERS, 1906-1950 

Selected and edited by Gerhard Adler in collaboration with Aniela 

Jaff6. 1972, Princeton University Press (EolUngen Series XCV). 

(A second volume, 1951-1961, in preparation.) 

C, G. JCTNG: PSYCHOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS. A NEW ANTHOLOGY OF His 
WRITINGS, 1905-1961 

Selected and edited by Jolande Jacob! in collaboration with R. F. C. 
Hull 1970, Princeton University Press (Bottingen Series XXXI). 

ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY: ITS THEOBY AND PRACTICE (THE TAVISTOCK 

LECTURES) 

By C. G. Jung. 1968, Pantheon Books; 1970, Vintage Books. 



410 



Index, 



Aberdeen, 176 

"Abraham, Father," 66 

Abu Simbel, 269, 274 

acceptance, 297 

Acts of the Apostles, 320 

Adam, 88 

and Eve, 38, 40 

adaptation, social, 147 

addiction, 329 

adhista, 266, 267, 268 

Adler, Alfred, 153 

Advent, 19 

Africa, 2388, 253#> 275, 
effect of, on Europeans, 245 
hidden purpose of journey to, 

273 

afterlife, 299:8 
aggression, 208 
aigokeros, 339 
Akbar, 218, 219, 220 
Akley, Dr., 254 
Albany (N.Y.), 368 
Albert Nyanza, 270 
alchemy, 2Oiff, 233, 275, 338 

feminine principle in, 202 

Greek, 185 



language of, 205 
literature of, 2O4f 
and psychology, 221 
and psychotherapy, 212 
and religious philosophy, 

alcoholism, i2of 

algebra, 278 

Algiers, 371 

Alyscamps, 172 

Allahabad, 280 

AUgemeine Zeitschrift fur 
Psychiatrie, 112 

All Souls* Day, 31$ 

Alps, early memory of, 7 

altar, red stone as, 174 

Amenophis IV, 157 

America, 120, 246ff 

Jung and Freud in, 158, 

Americans, and Pueblo religion, 

2Slf 

Amfortas, 215 
Amon-hotep, 157 
amplification, 310, 316, 379 
analysis, first, 119 

lay, 136 

training, 13 if 



411 



Index 



analysis (continued) 

varying methods, 13 if 
anatomy, 100 
ancestors, links with, 232 

stone commemorating, 232 

world of the, 144, *9* 
angel(s), 244 

bad, 3*8 

fall of , 3*7, 333 

see also Jacob 
anima, 8, 182, i86ff, 309, 379f 

conversations with, i86F 

historical character of, 286 

negative aspect of, 186 

positive aspect of, 187 
Anima Christi, 210 
anima mundi, 211 
animals, experiments on, 101 

identity with, 101 

relation to world, 66f 
animus, 186, 379f 
annihilation, world, 220 
Anthroparion, 185 and n 
Anthropos, 211, 221, 340 
Aquarius, 339, 34 
Arab culture, effects of contact 
with, 244f 

youth, dream figure, 242f 
Arabia, 290 
archaeology, 84, 162 
archetypes/archetypal images, 
22f, 161, 173, 221, 261, 318, 
347, 38of 

actuality of, 352 

of immortality, 302 

numinosity of, 144 

rhetorical language of, 178 

Wagner's, 235 
Aries, 172 
Arlesheim, 16, 22 
arms, of Jung family, 232 
Arnaldus de Villanova, 226, 228 
Arena, 306 
art, early memories, i$f 

fantasy building and, i8sf , 195 



Artis Auriferae . . . , 204 
Asldepios, 23, 227 
association, 381 

experiments, ngf, 120, i47f, 

206 

test, 381 

Assumption, of Mary, 2O2n 332 
Athai Plains, 255 
atheism, 348 

and Buddhism, 220 
Atmavictu, 23 

Augustine of Canterbury, St., 248 
Augustus, 212 
Aurea Catena, 189 and n 
Aurora Consurgens, 184 
aurum non vulgi/philosophorum,. 

210 and n, 232 
authority and truth, relation in 

Freud, i47ff 
autobiography, Jung's attitude to, 

onff, sff 

awareness, maximum, 311 
ayik, 266, 267, 268 



baboons, 268f, 274 
Babylonia, 162 
Bachofen, J. J., 111 
baptism, 285 
Baptistery of the Orthodox, 

see Ravenna 
Basel, 111, 160, 164, 198 

Gymnasium, 24 

Museum, 16 

University, 86 
basileus, 292 
Bathsheba, 219 
bell bird, 258,268 
Benares, 280 
Bergamo, 164 
Bernheim, H., 94 
Bethesda, pool of, 141 
Bible, dream figure, 207 
Biedermann, A. E., 56, 59 
Binswanger, Ludwig, 120 



412, 



Index 



biology, 340 

Bizet, G., no, 111 

Black Book, 188 and n 

"black man," 14 

Bleuler, Eugen, 255 

blood, jet of, fantasy figure, 179 

sea of, fantasy figure, 175 

smell of, in North Africa, 239 

vision of rivers of, i7$f 
body, historical, character, 23$f 
Boehme, Jacob, 332, 3336, 338 
BoUingen, 22$& 

inscription over Tower, 235*1 

Jung's life at, 225f 
Bolshevism, 331 
Bombay, 284 
book in unknown script, dream 

figure, 243 

bookcase, detonation in, i5$f, 36 if 
boundlessness, 325 
C4 box system," 292 
brain, differentiation of, 339 
**brain fever" bird, 257 
brass band, dream figure, 214 
Bremen, 156 
Breuer, J,, 146 

British Medical Association, 176 
Biichner, L., 161 
Buddha, 220, 2788, 3i6ff, 32if 
Buddhism, 278ff 

Hinayana, 220 
Bugishu, 270 
Bugishu Psychological Expedition, 



building games, childhood 

memory of, i73f 
Bunambale, 270 
Burckhardt, Jakob, 73, 101, ill, 



Burgholzli, inf, 

Busch, Wilhelm, 76 

butterfly dream, Chuang Tzu's, 



Cabbala, 294 

Caesar, Julius, 248 

Caesars, 212 

Calcutta, University of, 274, 280 

cannibalism, 14 

Capricorn, 339 

caps, ski, 255 

caricatures, 30 

carriage, green, 34 

Carus, C. G., 98, 169 

casbah, 242f 

cases, clinical: 

depressed young woman who 
attempted murder of children 
with infected water, nsf 
woman with paralyzed leg who 
fell into spontaneous trances, 
n8f 
alcoholic with mother complex, 

i2oE 
woman who confessed to murder 

of friend, i22f 
old woman who made 

shoemaking movements, i24f 
Babette S., schizophrenic, 

12$f, 128 

old woman who heard God's 

Voice, i26f 
girl, catatonic, who f antasied 

living on moon, i28ff 
"normal" doctor who dreamed 

of being lost in mediaeval 

buildings, 134^ 
man with jealous wife, who shot 

himself, I37f 
Jewish woman with apostate 

father, 1385 
theologian who dreamt of lake 

in woods, i4of 
woman who slapped her 

employees, 142 
castle, golden mandala, 197 

of Grail, dream figure, 281! 
catatonia, 124, i28ff 



4*3 



Index 



cathedral(s), and "forbidden 
thoughts," s6ff 

Gothic, 68 
Catholic Church, early memories, 

i6f 
causality, chain of, 220 

law of, and psyche, 304 
Celebes, 271 

center, circumambulation of, ig6f 
ceremonies, Elgonyi, st66ff 
Ceylon, 283, 289 
chamber, subterranean, dream 

image, nff 
character, God's, 56ff 
Charlemagne, 248 
Chassidim, 139 
Chattanooga, 272 
cheating, accusation of, 64f 
childhood, self and, 244 
Christ, astrological prediction, 
211 

as embodiment of self, 279 

as fish, 214, 221 

and new aeon, 221 

as psychological figure, 21 of 

reappearance of, 212 

as suffering servant, 216 

teaching of, 332 

Uriah as prefiguring, 2igf 

vision of, 2iof 

"within us," 328 

see also Jesus 
Christianity, and Buddhism, 279f 

and change in divinity, 327 

Jung's attitude to, acf, ssf 

metaphysical split in, 333 

and symbolism of unconscious, 
210 

undermining of, 328ff 
Christmas, childhood memories of, 

19 

chthonic spirit, 168 
Chuang Tzu, 32471 
churingas, 22 



Cicero, 97 
circle, 336 
civilization, modern, discontents of, 

236 

clairvoyance, 235 
Clark University, 120, 156, 3658: 
cognition after death, 308 
Colombo, 283 
Columbus, 248 

comet, childhood memory of, 15 
Communion, Holy, 53^ 56 

Jung's first, ssff 
community, religious, 75 
compensation, 44 

dreams and, 133, 164 

hallucinations as, 231 

for inferiority feelings, 126 

normality as, 136 
competitiveness, 43 
complex(es), 38 if 

personified, 322 
complexto oppositorum, 334, 338, 

34i> 353 

compositions, school, 64, 71 
compulsion neurosis, 142 
concepts, valuelessness of, 144 
confessor, analyst's need of, 134 
confirmation, instruction for, 52 
conjunctio, 212, 214, 297 

oppositorum, 339f 
conquistadors, 248 
conscience, guilty, 44 
consciousness, 382 

cosmic meaning, 25sf 

development/raising level of, 
311, 338f 

level of, after death, 3o8f 

light and, 269 

need to increase, 326 

psychology of, 207 

total, 324 

transformation of, in eleventh 
century, 328 



414 



lonstance, Lake, early memory of, 

7 

Jordovero, Moses, 29471 
Jorinthians, First Epistle to, 354 
orpse(s), and flood, early memory 

of, 15 

peat bog, 156 
and washhouse, early memory 

of, a 

of wounded youth, fantasy 

figure, 179 
>ortes, Hernan, 248 
ortex, cerebral, 322 
reation, man's consciousness and, 
*55f 

myth of, 3*7, 33$f , 348 
Dreuzer, Friedrich, 162 
3rookes, Sir William, 99 
xoss, as mandala, 336 

and rose, 232 
aroup, pseudo-, 18 
Urusader, dream figure, i64f, 173 
Urusades, 248 
rucullatus, 281 
culture and sexuality, 149* 
customs official, 163, 165 
:ynocephati, see baboons 
Dysat, Rennward, 230 

Dachsen, 7 

Dactyls, 18511 

iaimon, 336, 337, 344* 34$, 349, 

353, 356 

Dalada-Maligawa, temple, 283 
dance, African, 27oF 
Darwin, Charles, 161 
David, King, 219 

and Goliath, painting, 16 
dead, conversations with, igif 

disposal of, among Elgonyi, 266 

knowledge of the, 308! 

land of the, 191 
death, brutality of, 3*4 

need for myth about, 306 



premonition of, 303 
as seen by ego and psyche, 314 
death wishes, 156, 159, 164 
degrees, honorary, from Clark 

University, 120, 3655 
from Indian universities, 280 
dejb vu f 254 
Delphi, oracle of, 341 
delusions, collective, 352 
dementia praecox, see 

schizophrenia 

departed souls, procession of, 23o 
depression, n$f 
descent, steep, fantasy of, 181 
destiny, affirming one's own, 297 

sense of, 48 
development, idea of, 140 

psychic, goal of, 196 
devil, the, 39, 46, 47, 5$, 59, **, 

98, 228, 267 

dharma, need to fulfil, 277 
diagnosis of psychiatric patients, 

"4 

dialogue, analysis as, 131 
dichotomy, psychic, modern, 144 
dictators, 326, 328 
dignity, sense of, as child, 26, 33f 
disintegration, psychic, I2$f 
dissociation, psychic, 322 
divan-i-kaas, 218 
divinity, metamorphosis in, 327 
doctor, see therapist 
vision figure, 292 
doctorates, see degrees 
dogma, sexuality as, 150 
Dorneus, Gerardus, 233, 275 
dove, white, dream figure, i7if 
drawing, childish difficulty with, 29 
dream(s), 382 
of Africans, 265 
analysis of, 120 
and bringing unconscious to 
consciousness, 245 



41$ 



Index 



dream(s) (continued) 

as compensation for conscious 

attitude, 133 
described by woman in trance, 

118 

as facade, 161 
and immortality, 
interpretation of, 

and therapy, 117 
Jung's and Freud's mutual 

analysis of, 158 

monotony of interpretation, 312 
precognitive, 340 
as psychic defenses, 2yaf 
and psychic transformation, 209 

SPECIFIC INSTANCES: 

of phallus in subterranean 

chamber, i2ff 
of enlarging ball, 18 
of enlarging telegraph wires, 

18 
of digging up bones of 

prehistoric animals, 85 
of radiolarian in wood, 85 
of little light in fog, 88 
of father after his death, 96 
of looking up at woman on 

hill, 133 
of being lost in mediaeval 

building and finding idiot 

child, 135 
of girl with father complex, 



of kneeling to hand girl 

umbrella, 139 
of lake in woods, 141 
of multi-stpried house, i$8f 
of ghost of customs official, 

163 

of knight in Italian city, i64 
of white dove transformed 

into girl, i7if 
of row of tombs, lyaf 
of great frost, 176 



of tree transformed by frost, 

176 

of Siegfried, 180 
of horned old man sailing 

across sky ("Philemon"), 



of magnolia tree on island in 

Liverpool, 198 
of alchemic books in library, 

202 
of manor house near Verona, 

and being caught in the 

seventeenth century, 203 
of laboratory containing fish 

and reception room for 

spirits, 2i3f 
of father studying fish-skin- 

bound Bible, and poltergeist 

phenomena, 2i7ff 
of footsteps and music at 

Bollingen Tower, 22gf 
of struggle with Arab prince, 

and book in unknown 

script, 243 
of Negro barber, 272 
of castle of Grail, 28 if 
of wife after her death, 296 
of wife's bed as pit, 303 
of deceased sister at garden 

party, 303 
of lecturing on life experiences 

after death, 305 
of assembly of spirits who 

spoke Latin, 307 
of dead friend learning of 

psyche, 309 
of deceased wife in Provence, 

309 

of Wild Huntsman, 313 
of father, presaging mother's 

death, 315 
of reincarnation, 319 
of UFOs, 3*3 
of yogi in chapel, 323f 



416 



Index 



dress, mother's memory of, 16 
. drives, psychic, 208 
drowning, synchronistic memory, 

302 

drum concert, aSsf 
drunk, first experience of being, 77 
dualism in Christian myth, ssyf 
Du Bois-Reymond, E. H., 161 
Duprel, Karl, 99 
duties, conflict of, 330, 344f 
dwarf, fantasy figure, 179 
dysentery, 280 

Eckhart, Meister, 68, 332 
eczema, 8 

education, shortcomings of, 330 
ego, analogy between human and 
God, 57 

development of, 348f 

God as supra-mundane, 57 

lack of autonomy, 242 

relation to unconscious, 209 
ego-consciousness, 324 
ego-instincts, Freud and, 209 
Egypt, 273, 274 
Egyptian religion, 268f, 274 
eighteenth century, experiences 

recalling, 34 
Eleusis, 249 
Elgon, Mt, 258ff 
Elgonyi, 259^ 
Elijah, 181, 182, 306 
emotions, detachment from ties of, 
296 

and images, 177 

living from, 242 

negative, 178 

and religion in American 

Indians, 250 
Empedocles, 68 
energy, exchange of, 346 

place in psychology, 35 

psychic, 208 
Engadine, 253, 255 



England, 23 

Grail myth in, 282 
Enoch, Book of, 328, 333 
enteritis, 242 
Entlebuch, 76 
epilepsy, 31 
epistemology, 92 
equations, 28, 310 
Erlenbach, 302 
Eros, issf, 182, 353 
Eschenmayer, K. A. von, 99 
eternity of childhood world, 20 
ethics, decision in, 329^ 
Europe, seen from outside, 247 
Europeanism, consciousness of, and 

Africa, 245 
evil, eruption of, 328f 

Gnostics and, 332 

God and, 60 

imagination for, 33if 

Indian view of, 275f 

origin of, 318, 332 

problem of, x, $8f , 63 

reality of, 329 

exteriorization, catalytic, 155 
extraversion, 382 
eye, and phallus, 13 

Faido, 307 

fainting spells, 30, 288 
faith, loss of, 140 
falls, memories of childhood, 9, 17 
fantasies, 176 
meaning of, 127 
Miller, 162 

and psychic transformation, 209 
INSTANCES: 

of escaped soul, 191 

of fount of blood in cave, 179 

of Philemon, 183 

of sailing ship on Rhine, 81, 82 

of steep descent, Elijah and 

Salome, 181 
Fatehpur Sflcri, 218 



417 



Index 



father, domination in Judaism and 

Protestantism, 202 
Jung's attitude to, 8, 24*, 4^f , 

Saf , 55* , 73 
primal, 201 

projection on Freud, 163 
see also Jung, Johann Paul 

Achilles 

father complex, 138, 139, 157 
father murder, fantasy of, 157 
Faust, see Goethe 
fear(s),ofGod,47,i39 

night, gf 

Ferenczi, Sandor, 156, 364 
flius macrocosm*, 211 
fire, play with, 20 
fish, Christ as, 214 
dream figure, 213 
as symbol, 216 
fisher-long, 215 

''Fisherman, Picture of the," 190 
fishes, age/aeon of, 221, 339 
Fliess, Wilhelm, 363 
flood, childhood memory of, 15 

vision of, 175 

Flournoy, Theodore, 117, 162 
Fliieli, 78 
flying objects, unidentified, see 

UFOs 

Fomalhaut, 33gn 
foreknowledge, spontaneous, 304 

see also precognition 
fortification, 82 
four, the number, 310 
Frankfurt, 233, 376 
Franz, Marie-Louise von, 21511 
freedom, man's, 220 
Freemasonry, Jung's grandfather 

and, 232 
Freud, Sigmund, 114, 120, 128, 

i46ff, 201, 209, 212, 367, 368 
and authority, 158 
bitterness, 152 
evaluation, i68f 



fainting fits, 157 

Interpretation of Dreams, i4$f 

Jung's break with, 167, 199, 206 

Jung's interpretations of Freud's 
dream, 158 

Jung meets, 149 

letters to Jung from, 36iff 

one-sidedness of, igsf 

regards Jung as his successor, 157 
frogs, 83 

frost, dream symbol, 176 
future, advance preparation of, 
234* 



Galatians, Epistle to, 215 
Calk Placidia, 286 

tomb of, 284 
games, memories of childhood, 18, 

173* 

Gaul, 248 

Germans, fate of, and Faust, 234 
Germany, eruption of evil in, 328 
Gerstacker, F., 63 
ghosts, 301 
giantism, 328 
giants, race of, 328 
Gibroat, 262 
girl(s), early memories of, 8f 

meeting with at Fliieli, 79f 
gnome(s), 185*1 

dream figure, 281 
Gnostics/Gnosticism, 162, 182, 189, 

20of, 205, 318, 332, 348 
Goat-Fish, 339f 
God, ambivalence of, 216 

analogy with "secret," 27 

as archetype, 347 

character of, 56ff 

childish interest in, 27 

dark aspects of, 58 

as ego of universe, $7 

fear of, see fear 

immediacy of, 62 



Index 



God (continued) 

incarnation of, 328 

influencing by ritual, 253 

Jung's conception of, xf, 36ff, 45 

as monad, 310 

and nature, 45 

"not to be named," 13 

obedience of will to, 40, 46f 

philosophy and, 6 if 

relation of Jesus to, 55 

seing face of, 355 

and sin, s6F 

split, 334 

terrible nature of, 40, 47 

validity of term, 336f 
Godhead, feminine principle, 2O2n 
God-image, 382 
"God's country," 256 
"God's world," 72, 78 
gods, theriomorphic attributes, 



Goethe, 188, 206 

Jung's legendary kinship with, 
35 and n, 234 

Faust, 60, 80, 82, 87, i88f, 206, 

234f *94, 3*8, 377 
gold, green, 2iof 
good, relativization of, 329 

succumbing to, 329 

and evil, see evil 
goodness, God's, 59 
Gorilla Reservation, 254 
Gorres, J. von, 99 
grace, 39^, 335 
Grail, Holy, 165, 215, 281, 309, 

313 

Castle of, dream figure, 28of 
grapes, dream symbol, 176 

heraldic, 232 
Grynau, bridge of, 232 
guilt, unconscious, 122 
guru, 183, 184 

spirit as, 184 
gymnastics, dislike of, 2gf 



H., Dr., 292 
Hall, Stanley, 366 
hallucinations, compensatory, 231 

meaning of, 127 
Hammurabi, 221 
Hartmann, Eduard von, 101, 169 
haste, 236 
haunting, at Bollingen Tower, 22OJF 

of Jung and his family, i9of 
heaven, dissension in, 327 
Hegel, G. W. F., 69 
Heine, Heinrich, 126*1 
Helen, 182 
Hera, 294 

Heraclitus, 22711, 346, 351 
hereafter, nature of, 32of 
Hermes, 313, 318 
Hermes Trismegistus, 172 
hermits, hallucinations of, 231 
hero myth, 179 

snake in, i8if 
Herodotus, 249f, 264 
hierosgamos, 294, 383 
Himalayas, 290 
Hiroshima, 333 
histology, 100 
Holderlin, F., 177, 245, 357 
Holy Ghost/Spirit, 98, 141, 333, 

334 

sin against, 36 

sweet smell of, 295 
"holy men/* Indian, 275 
Homer, 22711 

Homo sapiens, prospects of, 340 
homosexuality, in modern society, 
264 

in North Africa, 239 
homunculus(-i), 18511, 227 
Horace, 71 
Horus, 21 if, 268, 274 
hubris, 328 
humic acid, 156 
hunger, 208 
Huningen, 82, 83 



4*9 



Index 



Hu Shih, 374 

hut, African, 22sf 

hyenas, 258f 

hymn, parapraxis in, 50 

hypnosis, iijff 

Ibrahim, 264 

I Cfctng, 373ff 

identity, group, 342, 

idiot child, dream figure, 135 

Ignatius Loyola, St., Spiritual 

Exercises, 210 
Ikhnaton, 157 
Iliad, see Homer 
illness, visions during, a8gS 
image(s), and emotions, relation, 

177 

primordial, 385, see also 

archetypes 

imagination, mythopoeic, 188 
imtiatio Christi, 140, 215, 280 
Immermann, 107 
immortality, see afterlife 
incarnation, 337f 
incest, 130, 166, 167 
India, <*, 19, 274ff, 289 

houses, 224 

and reincarnation, 316 
individuation, 196, 2Oin, 209, 296, 
346, 383f 

Dorneus and, 233 

secret societies and, 342 

Tower as concretization of, 225 
inferiority, feeling of, 4of 
inflation, 328, 347, 384 

danger of, 144 
initiation, religious, 54 
insects, 67, 83 
instinct(s), 2o8f 

for life, 349 

integration, see unconscious 
intellect, 70 
intellectuals, unsatisfactory 

patients, i44f 
introversion, 384 



island, of Grail, dream figure, 28of 
in Liverpool, dream figure, 198 
"isms," 342 

Italy, Swiss mercenaries in, 231 
ithyphallic symbol, see phallus 
Iyer, S. Subramanya, 275 

Jacob, fight with angel, 244, 344 

Janet, Pierre, 117, 146 

jealousy, 137 

Jerusalem, 308 

Jesuit, childhood memory of, 11, 

17, 22, 26 
Jesus, as archetype, 211 

childhood conception of, gf, i3f , 

26f 

relation to God, 55, 98, 337f 

as savior of world, 212 

and temptation, 56 

see also Christ 
Jinja, 270 

Joachim of Flora, 332 
Job (and Book of Job), 42, 47, 216, 

*ao, 333, 341, 353 
see also WORKS, Jung's Answer 

to Job 
Joel, 320 

John, Gospel of, 87, 280 
Jone$, Ernest, 365 
judgment, good and evil as, 329 
Jung, Carl (d.i645), 36*1, 233 
Jung, Carl Gustav (Jung's 

grandfather), 35 and n, 86, 

111, 232, 234 
Jung, Carl Gustav (subject of 

book), works of, see WOBKS 
Jung, Emilie Preiswerk (Jung's 

mother), attitude to, 24f 
Jung as her confidant, 5 if 
dreams at time of her death, 

313*. 3*5f 

early memories of, 7f 
as guardian of spirits, 214 
parting from, 112 
personality of, 48ff 



Index 



Jung, Emma Rauschenbach (Jung's 

wife), 2157* 

Jung, Franz Ignaz (Jung's great- 
grandfather), 3511 
Jung, Johann Paul Achilles (Jung's 
father), goff, 111 

death, gsf 

dreams concerning, g6f, 315! 

early memories of, yf 

as "fisher king," 215 

religious collapse of, 90, gaff 

as student of fish, 213 
Jung, Sigmund, 233 
Jung, Sophia, see Ziegler, Sophia 
justice, God's, 58 

Ka, 184 

kabir, 23, 227, 282 

Kakamegas, 257, 269 

Kandy, 283, ago 

Kant, Immanuel, 70, 74, g7, gg, 

101 
karma, 3i7ff, 322 

family, 233, 234, 317^ 
kenosis, 337 
Kerner, Justinus, gg 
Kesswil, 6 
Kestner, Lotte, 35n 
Keyserling, Count, 373 
Khartoum, 273 
kingfisher, 183 
Kioga, Lake, 270 
Klaus, Brother, 78 
Klein-Huningen, 15, 32 
Klingsor, 182 
knife, broken, io$f 
knight, dreamfigure, i64f 
knowledge, of the dead, 311 

unfolding of, to ripe 
consciousness, 307 

unrecognized, sofiE 
Kohlenberg (Basel), 164 
Konarak, 277 



Koran, 240, 265 
Kos, 292 and n 
Krafft-Ebing, R. von, 108 
Krakatoa, eruption, 15 
krater, 201 and n 
Krug, W. T., 61, 161 
Kundry, 182 
Kiisnacht, 23, 189 

laboratory, dream figure, 213 
laibons, 265, 266, 268 
lake, dream figure, 141 
Lao-tzu, 182, 359 
lapis, 282 

and Bollingen stone, 227 

and Christ, 210 
laryngitis, 257 
Lassaulx, Virginia de, ill 
Laufen, 6 
Lau Nai Suaii, 375 
lay analysis, 136 
lens, dream figure, 323 
letters, to Emma Jung, s^sff, 37iff 

from Freud, s6iff 

to student friend (ig57), t?i**ff 
Levy-Bruhl, L., 353 
liars, habitual, 144 
library, dead friend's, vision figure, 
312 

dream figure, 202 
Me, resistance to, 9 
light, God as, 334 

soul's desire for, 26g 
lingams, 278 
Linth, 232 
Liszt, Franz, ssn 
liver, ig8 

Liverpool, dream figure, ig8 
Locarno, 231 
Logos, 182 
loneliness, 17, 41 

in childhood, ig4, 356 
love, 353f 

Jung's attitude to, 8 



Index 



Lucerne, Lake, 33, 77 78 
Luke, Gospel of, 332*1 

Maeder, A., 167 
magnolia, dream figure, 198 
MaM-Parinibbdna Sutta, 278 
maid, early memory of, 8f 
Maier, Michael, 232, 233 
Mainz, 233 
Malchuth, 294 and n 
man, as second creator, 256 
/ruma, 336f, 346, 384 
mandala(s), 188, igsf, 218, 324, 

334f, 384f 
Boehme's, 335 
casbah as, 243 
Chinese elements in, 197 
disturbed, 384 
as path to individuation, 196 
"Window on Eternity," 197 
Ynandopom, 283* 
"man-eater/' phallus/Jesuit as, 12, 

14 

manikin, carved, 2 iff 
Mannheim, 36*1 

manor-house, dream symbol, 203 
numtf&fn, 2&3f 
marabout, 24 if 
Markgraf en, 95 

marriage, mystic/of the Lamb, 294 
Marseilles, 242 

Mary, Assumption of; 20211, 332 
Masai, 260, 270 
Masindi, 270 
mass, threat of absorption into, 212, 

236 
Mass, the, cannibalism symbolized 

in, 14 

psychological interpretation, 210 
materialism, 94 
mathematics, 27ff, 310 
Matthew, Gospel of, 215 
Mau-Mau, 269 
Maya, 324 



Mbala, 270 

meadow, dream image, iif 

meaning, consciousness and, 339 

of human existence, 340 

and meaninglessness, 3$8f 
medicine, development of, 349 

Jung's decision to study, 86 
medicine man, 265 
meditation, Indian, 276 
Mediterranean, 290 
medium, spiritualistic, 106 
meetings, personal, Jung on, wf 
megalomania, 125, 328 
memories, childhood, 6ff 
Mephistopheles, 60, 235 
mercenaries, mediaeval, 231 
Mercurius, 185*1, 228, 313 
Merlin, 228, 313 
Messiah, 212 

methods, therapeutic, 13 if 
Milan, Ambrosiana, 286 
milk, early memory of, 6f 
Miller, Miss, i62f 
mimicry, Negro, 259 
mind, natural, 50 and n 
Minusio, Casa di Ferro, 231 
miracles, 73 
Mithras liturgy, 227/1 
Moleshott, J,, 161 
Mombasa, 254 
monotheism, 338 
moon, fantasy of living on, isigf 

new, 267 

moral judgments, 320^ 
mosaics, f antasied, at Ravenna, 

28 4 f 

mother, Jung's, see Jung, Emilie 

Preiswerk 
mother complex, 121 

and homosexuality, 264 
Mother of God, 202 
Mothers, the (Faust), 60, 82 
mountain, in Pueblo religion, 251 
"mud, black tide of," 150, 152, 154 



Index 



Miiller, Friedrich von, 107 
multiplicity, inner, defense against, 

343 

mummification, 156 
mundus archetypus, 206 
Munich, Psychoanalytic Congress 

(1912), 157 
Munot, 13 
murder, attempted, dream theme, 

243* 

music, 229 

"myself/* discovery of, 32f 
mysterium coniunctionis, 295 

death as, 314 
myth(s), and life after death, 300, 

304 

loss of, 144, 332 
personal, 3, 171, 199 
relation to cognition, 31 if 
and science, 340 
survival of, 282 
mythologems and psychic realities, 

3ii 

mythology, 131, 162 
mzee, 259 

Naaman, 284, 286 

Nairobi, 254, 255 

Nandi, 260 

national standpoints, seeing from 

outside, 246f 
nature, delight in, 32 

and God, relation, 45 
Nazism, 331 
necessary statement, method of, 

310 

Nefta, 240 
neo-Platonism, 201 
neti neti, 330 

neurasthenia, alcoholic, i2of 
neurosis(es), 352 

first realization of, 32 

Freud's own, 167 

Freud's theory of, 148 



in intellectuals, 145 
mother complex and, 121 
optional, 144 
and religion, x 
and undeveloped lif e, 140 
see also compulsion neurosis 
New Mexico, 2478 
New Testament, 41, 47 
New Year's Eve, 19 
New York, 254, 365 
n'goma, 27off 
Nicholas of Cusa, 338 
nicknames, 259 
NidSna, chain of, 220, 280, 317, 

321 
Nietzsche, F. W., 73, loif, 153, 

177, 189, 207, 235, 253, 3i8 
night fears, 9f , i8f 
Nile, 268, 273, 274 

White, 248 
nirdvandva, 154, 276 
nirvana, 322 

"normal" persons, analysis of, i34f 
North Sea, 248 
Nothingness, God as, 347 
nuclear physics, 334 
number(s), childish conception of, 

28 

Freud and, 3$2f 
series, 3iof 

numinosity/mwranosttm, 336, 385 
of archetypes, 347 
of sexuality, 150, 151, 154 

obedience to God, and grace, 3Qf 

occultism, 150 

Ochwiay Biano, 247ff 

Oex, Chateau de, 195 

old age, psychic life of, 320 

old man, archetype of, 359 
"other" self as, 33f , 446 , 22$ 
and young girl, myth, 182 

Old Testament, 47, 220, 328 

one, as archetype, 310 



4*3 



Index 



one-sidedness, psychic, 351 

opera, nof 

opposites, confrontation of, 345 
in hereafter, 341 
liberation from, 276; see also 

nirdvandva 

problem of, 232, 233, 235, 35<> 
psychic, synthesis of, 334 
tension/conflicts of, 335 
united by symbols, 338 

optimism, Elgonyi, 267 

Orbis f 'ictus, 17 

organization, collective, 343 

Origen, 332 

Osiris, 268 

"Other," the, 26, 45, 48 



palaver, 

Paracelsus, 209, 233 

paradise, s8f 

paralysis, 118 

parapsychological phenomena, 137, 

304* 
parapsychology, 151 

and afterlife, 301 

Freud and, 155 
Pardes Bimmonim, 294 and n 
Paris, 207 
Parsifal, 215, 228 
participation mystique, 50 
Passavant, J., 99 
passions, acknowledging, 27 ji. 
past, archetypal memory of, 246 
paternalism, Gnostic, 201 
Paul, St., 332, 353 
Pauli, W., 221 and n 
Pausanias, 24gf 
pencil-case, 21, 33 
perception, unconscious, $of 
persecution, ideas of, 127 
persona, 245, 385 
personality, explanation of, as goal 
in life, 206 

normal, in schizophrenics, 126 



primitive element in, 244f 
Peter, St., 285, 286 
Petersen, Carl, 120 
phallus, underground, dream of, 

12, 22, 26f, 41, 174 
Philemon, vision figure, i82f, 190, 

325, 335* 

Philemon and Baucis, 234 
Philippians, Epistle to the, 33/n 
philosophy, 6if, 68f 
phoenix, 232 

photographs, Negroes and, 265 
physics, 208, 349 
physiology, 101 
pigs, slaughtered, early memory of, 

15 

Pilatus, Mt., 230 
Pisces, sign of, 2ai 
Piscis austrinus, 339 
Pius XII, 202n, 332 
plants, 67, 83 
Plato, 68, 320 
play, see games 
Poimandres, 2oin 
polarity, inner, of psyche, 346, 



poltergeists, 2i8f, 361 

Pompeii, 287 

Pompey, 248 

Pontresina, 358 

poverty, 7of , 97 

power principle, 153, 193 

pram, early memory of lying in, 6 

prayer, childhood, gf, 19, 27 

precognition, 155; see also 

foreknowledge 
prestige, 147 
priest, Catholic, childhood memory 

of, 11 
primitives, psychology of, 117, 162 

and secrets, 342 
privatio front, 329 
problems, collective and personal, 



4*4 



Index 



profession, choice of, 72ff, 848 
progress, 236, 240 
projection(s), 130, iGsf, 296, 323, 

335 

God-image and, 335 
Provence, 309 
psyche, 98 

complexity of, 132 

contempt for, 142 

as dynamic process, 3$of 

functioning outside causality, 304 

historical character of, 235f 

individual and mass, 132 

life, spaceless and timeless, 319 

objectivity of, 99, 183 

prefonnation of, 348 

primitive, 160 
psychiatry, 108, naf 

as dialogue, no 

and psychology, 114 
psychoanalysis, 117 
psychogalvanic experiment/reflex, 

120 
psychoid, 385 

base, of archetypal 

configurations, 351 
psychology, analytical, and 
observer's bias, 200 

and alchemy, 205 

assumptions underlying, 155 

"compartment," 145 

contemporary need of, 331 

relation to psychiatry, 114 

scope of, 350 
psychosis(es), 108 

content of, 127 

latent, 118, 135 

material of, 188 

meaningful connections in, 125 

psychological background of, 



results, 143 
puberty, 18 
Pueblo Indians, 247ff 

religion of, 
pupil of eye, 227 
Pythagoras, 68 
Pythia, 265 

quadrant, 336 
quaternity, 



rabbi, 355 

radiation therapy, 349 

radioactivity, 220 

radiolarian, 85 

ram, Hammurabi as, 221 

rationalism, and parapsychology, 

305 
Ravenna, 284^ 

Church of San Giovanni, 286 
reading, 63 

childish passion for, 30! 
reality, impression of, in dreams, 



psychotherapy, and alchemy, aia 
methods, 
minor, 132 



keeping hold on, 189 
rebirth, 317 
"Red book," 188 and 
Red Sea, 290 
reforms, 236f 
Reimer-Jung, Frau, 111 
reincarnation, 234, 316, 319 
Reislaufer, 231 
Rejaf, 270, 272 
relationship(s), doctor-patient, 137, 

143, 145 

relativity of space and time, 305 
religion, and alchemy, 209 
Jung's attitude to, xff, 568 

in childhood, 22 
meaning of, 57fiE 
and psychic transformation, 209 
and psychology, 2091", 353 
of Pueblo Indians, 249^ 
and symbolic lif e, i4of 



4*5 



Index 



Beni, Guido, 16 
representations collectives, 353 
repression, 147 
resistance(s), 131* 14 1 * **>2 
results of therapeutic treatment, 

143 

Revelation, Book of, 33* 
"revelation, original," 13, 17 
Rhine, J. B., 304 
Rhine, sailing vessel on, 80 
Ricksher, Charles, 120 

Rigi,77 

Riklin, Franz, Sr, 120, 167 

rite $ entree, 175 

Ritschl, Alhrecht, 97 and n 

ritual, 253 

Romans, imperial, 248 

Rome, 212, 287f 

Rosarium Phdosophorum, 205 

rose, heraldic, 232 

Rosicrucianism, 232, 342 

Rousseau, J. J., 253 

Rudolph II, 233 

Russia, 328 

S., Bahette, i25f, 128 
Sachseln, 76, 78 
Sahara, 239, 247 
St. Gall, monastery of, 223 
saUg Lot, 230, 313 
Salome, i8if, 306 
salvation, danger and, 245 
Sanchi, 278f 
sanctity, odor of, 295 
sarcophagi, Greek, 314 
Satan, 10, 333 
"satisfaction," God's, s8f 
savage, brown-skinned, dream 

figure, i8of 
scarab, 179 
Schiller, 207 
schizophrenia, no, 1155, 125 

therapy, i27f 
schizophrenics, language of, iasf 



school, memories of, 17$, 248: 
school-fellow, attack on, 44 
Schoolmen. 69 
Schopenhauer, 6g, 79, 97, *oi> 

220, 279 

science, 67, 72, 331, 333 
and myth, 340 
and the transcendental, 351 
Scipio Africanus, 248 
sculpture(s), first memories, 16 
and literary work, 175 
obscene, and spiritualization, 

277f 

second half of life, x 
secret(s), ascertaining patients', 117 
childhood, 22, 41 
and individuality, 342ff 
in religion, 249f 

Secret of the Golden Flower, The 
(Wilhelm and Jung), 197, 204, 
208, 334 

secret societies, 3426: 
self, 208, 221, 243f, 386 

as archetype of orientation, 199 

divine significance of, 325 

as goal of psychic development, 

196 

as limitation, 325 
self-knowledge, 33of 
seminars (1925), vii; (1932), 285 
sentiment cTincompUtude, 240 
Septem Sermones ad Mortuos, see 

WORKS 

serpent, black, fantasy figure, 18 if 

paradisal, 327 
servator mundi, 283 
Set, 268 
seventeenth century, getting caught 

in, 203, 205 
sexuality, Freud and, 1486, 201 

Gnostics and, 201 

instinct of, 2o8f 

and neurosis, 147, 148, 14OJF , 168 
Sfax, 239 



426 



Index 



shadow, 181, 218, 235, 245, 335, 

386f 

Arab as, 245 
shamba, 262, 263, 264 
Shankaracharya, 184 
shells, dream figure, 203 
Shiva, 278 
Siegfried, 180 
Sigistifour, Station, 256 
Silberer, Herbert, 204 and n, 213 
Simon ben Jochai, 294, 315 
Simon Magus, 182 
sin, responsibility for, 216 

unforgivable, 36 
Sinai, 253 
singing, by Jung's father, early 

memories of, 8 
sister, 112 

Jung's, birth of, 25 
skeleton, found at Bollingen, 23 if 
skulls, dream figure, 159 
sky, evening, childhood memory 

of, 15 

snake, see serpent 
solitude, delight in, 32 
Son of Man, 212 
Sophia, 202n 
soul, 3&7f 

historical character, 235f 
loss of, 191 
see also anima 
soul-stones, 22, 27 
souls, cure of, 214, 215 
Sousse, 238f, 37if 
spacelessness, 305 
space rockets, 334 
Spanish Succession, War of, 233 
species, transformation of, 339 
"spirit/* 82, 267 

spirit, the, Freud's attitude to, 149 
spirits, reception room for, dream 

figure, 214 
spiritualism, g8f 
Spitteler, Carl, 207 and n 



spittle, 266, 267 

splitting of personality, 2off, 33*?, 

44* , 74* , 86ff , 8 9 f , 234 
statuette, eighteenth-century, 34 
stone, at Bollingen, 226ff 

effect of contact with, 175 

at Kusnacht, 23 

and manikin, 21, 26f 

philosophers', see Lapis 

red, as altar, 174 

in slope, and self -relation, 20, 42 

in space, seen in vision, 290 
"stork" and childbirth, 25 
Stiickelberger, Dr., 34 
stupas, 278f 
Stuttgart, no, 111 
suggestion, 94 
suicide, urge to, 9 
summum bonum, 328 
sun, in Elgonyi religion, 267 

in Pueblo religion, 2$of 
sunrise, tropical, 268f 
superego, 201, 209 
superman, 153 
surgery, 104 
Sury, Kurt von, xiii 
Swedenborg, 99 
symbol(s), alchemy and, 2O4f 

meaning, 335 and n 

neurosis and, 140 

and transformation, 209 
"sympathy of all things," 138 
synchronicity, 138, 197, 221, 231, 

302, 374, 388f 
syncope, 322 

table, emerald, i7if 

splitting of, 105 
table-turning, 106 
Tabula Smaragdina, 172 
Tao, 208 

Taos Indians, 247ff 
Tathagata, see Buddha 
Telesphoros, 23, 227 



4*7 



Index 



temple, rock, vision figure, 
textbooks, psychiatric, io8f 
Theatrum Chemicum, 233, 275 
theologians, difficulties of, 143 
theory, 327 
therapist, need of self-knowledge, 



and patients* affects, 142 
rapport with patient, 143 
Thomas Aquinas, St., 69, 18411 
thought, acceptance of, 298 

forbidden, 368 

objectivity of, 183 
throne, dream image, 12, 14 
Thurgau, 7 
Tif ereth, 294 and n 
time, and duration, 240 
timelessness, 305, 306 
timidity, physical, 29 
toads, 83 

tombs, Etruscan, 314 
Tooth, Holy, Buddhist relic, 283 

Temple of, 290 
Totengasschen, in Basel, 198 
Tower, the, see Bollingen 
Tozeur, 239, 240 
trance, spontaneous, 118, 119 
transference, 137, 212, 221 
transformation, alchemical, 209 

psychic, alchemy and, 221*1 

vessel of, 201 
transmigration of souls, 319 
trauma, first, lof 
trees, 67 

triad, archetype of, 261, 318 
Trinity^ 334 

Jung's father and, 53 

Mary and, 2O2n 

psychological interpretation, 210 
truth(s), absolute, 351 

eternal, 217 

psychological, reversible, 131 
Tullinger hill, 309 
Tunis, 238, 37if 



turd, f ailing from God's throne, 39 
Turfan, 243 
typhoid fever, 116 
typology, 155, 207 
Tyrol, South, 202 

Uetliberg, 7 

UFOs, 212, 323, 334 

Uganda, 256$ 

Uigur script, 243 

umbrella, dream figure, 139 

uncle, Jung's, 73f 

unconscious,' 169, 331, 3s6f, 347, 



anima and, i86ff 

not arbitrary, 162 

autonomy of, 187 

collective, 138 

origin of concept, 158 

and conscious, interplay, 221 

and ego-consciousness, 324 

integration of contents with 
consciousness, 287 

its knowledge, 311 

knowledge from, 30 if 

levels of, 160 

need of instruction, 306 

negative effects of, 192 

as process, 209 

psychology of, and history, 205 

realization of, 3, 5 
understanding, drive toward, 322 
unidentified flying objects, see 

UFOs 

unio mystica, 338 
uniqueness, and Limitation, 325 
unity, 310 

circular symbols of, 334f 
university, Jung's withdrawal from 

lecturing, 193 
unum vas/una medicina/unus lapis, 

282 

unus mundus, 279 
Uriah, 2igf 



428 



Index 



vampire, lunar, fantasy of, 129 
vas, alchemical, 20 in 
Vauban, 82 
Verona, 203 
vessel, healing, 283 

see also Grail; vas 
vestiges, archaic, 168, 173 and n 

see also archetypes 
Vienna, 149, 150 

St. Stephen's Cathedral, 17 
viriditas, 210 
visions, childhood, x, 18 

of Chinese, 377 

of Christ on cross, 210 

of dead friend's library, 312 

of earth seen from space, etc., 
2898 

of flood, I75f 

of garden of pomegranates, 294 

of hierosgamos, 294 

during illness, 289$ 

of mosaics at Ravenna, 284$ 
Vitznau, 77, 78 

vivisection, 101 . . 

voices, heard by schizophrenic, 126 

Wagner, 235 
water, early memory of, 7 
Water Bearer, see Aquarius 
Wembley Exhibition, 253, 273 
whites, American Indian view of, 



wholeness, divine, 333 

image of, 333, 334f 

mandala figures and, 324 

prenatal, 324 

psychic, sexuality and, 168 

unconscious, 324f 
Wiese, river, 15 
wig, man in, dream figure, 307 
Wild Huntsman, dream figure, 313 
Wilhelm I, 235 

Wilhelm, Richard, 197, 204, 208, 
373^ 



will, Schopenhauer's conception, 
69f, 220 

Winterthur, 31 

wise old man, i8if 

wolfhound, dream figure, 313 

woman, Jung's attitude to, 8f 

"woman within me," 186 
see also arrima 

women, African, aSiff 

as "conf essors" for analysts, 134 
white, masculinization of, 26sf 

Worcester (Mass.), 365** 

WordofGod, 34off 

word association, 147 

WORKS, Jung's: 

Aion, 211, 215, 216, 220, 221, 

328/1 

Answer to Job, xii, 2i6f 
Archetypes and the Collective 
Unconscious, The, 140% 



Civilization in Transition, 5111, 

21271 

"Concerning Mandala 

Symbolism," I97n 
"Content of the Psychoses, The," 

I2$n, 206 
"Dreamlike World of India, 

The," 274n 
"Flying Saucers: A Modern 

Myth," 175, 2i2n 
Freud and Psychoanalysis, 14671 
"Freud's Theory of Hysteria," 

14871 
Mysterium Coniunctionis, 168, 

213, 221 

"On Psychic Energy," 208, 350*1 
"On the Psychological Diagnosis 

of Facts," 120 and n 
Paracelsica, 209 
Practice of Psychotherapy, The, 

i68n> 2i3n 
Psychiatric Studies, 10771 



4*9 



Index 



WOBKS, Jung's (continued) 

Psychogenesis of Mental Disease, 

The, 124**, i5^ 
Psychological Types, 193*1, 207 
"Psychological View of 

Conscience, A," 175 
Psychology and Alchemy, 209, 

210, 213 

"Psychology and Religion," 209 
Psychology and Religion: West 

and East, 2 ion 
"Psychology of Dementia 

Praecox, The," 125*1, 149 

and n, 206, 363 
"Psychology of the 

Transference, The," 168, 213 
Psychology of the Unconscious, 

The, 22n, 15511, 15811, 193; see 

also Wandlungen und Symbole 

der Libido 
"Relations between the Ego 

and the Unconscious, The/' 

207, 209 
Secret of the Golden Flower, 

The (Wilhelm and Jung), 

197 and n, 204, 208, 334n 
Septem Sermones ad Mortuos, 

i9of 3<>8 
"Sigmund Freud, ein Nachruf ," 

14671 
"Sigmund Freud in His 

Historical Setting," 146*1 
"Structure of the Unconscious, 

The," 207*1 
Studies in Word Association, 

149*1, 206 

Symbolic Life, The, 140*1 
Symbols of Transformation, 

13*1, 22n, i55n, 158*1 
"Synchronicity: An Acausal 

Connecting Principle," 221, 

301*1, 322*1 
"Transformation Symbolism in 

the Mass,*' 337*1 



Two Essays on Analytical 
Psychology, 193*1, 207*1 
"Undiscovered Self, The," 175 
Von den Wurzeln des 

Bewusstseins, 221 
Wandlungen und Symbole der 
Libido, 22, 155, 163, 196, 
206, 208, 307 
"What India can Teach Us," 

274*1 

"Zur Psychologic und Pathologic 
sogenannter oceulter 
Phanomene," 107*1 
world, man as objectivizing, 255f 
meaning of, 317 
outer, seen as hostile, 19 
urban, 100 
World War I, 176 

continued within psyche, 203*1 
preparation for, 235 
Worth, 6, 9 

Wotan, 230, 231, 235, 313, 318 
wound, unbeatable, 215 
writings, Jung's, view of own, 222 

Yahweh, 151, 253, 333 

Gnostic, 201 

yoga exercises, 177, 224, 276 
yogi, dream figure, 323]? 

zaddik, 139 

Zeus, 294 

Ziegler, Sophie, 35*1 

Zimmer, Heinrich, 278 

Zoellner, 99 

Zola, Emile, 313 

zoology, 85 

Zosimos, 185*1, 210 

Zschokke, Johann Heinrich, 51 

and n 
Zurich, 111 

Lake of, 223 

Psychiatric Clinic, 117, 120 

University of, 117 



430