People: PERSONALITY

CARL GUSTAV JUNG, of Zurich, is not only the most famous of living psychiatrists, he is one of the few practitioners of that craft who admit that man has a soul. And by soul, Jung means not just a psychiatric psyche but the old-fashioned kind that might even go to heaven. He is an unabashed user of the word “spiritual,” and a strong believer in the practical utility of conceptions like God and the Devil. Unlike the orthodox followers of Sigmund Freud, who attribute most of mankind’s mental troubles to the sexual conflicts of infancy, Jung maintains that the religious instinct is as strong as the sexual, and that man ignores it at his peril. Though his ideas cut freely into areas traditionally assigned to the mystic, the theologian and the philosopher, he maintains stoutly that he is a scientist. His methods, in his own view, are as empirical as those of Albert Einstein.

The ebullient state of Dr. Jung’s own psyche is a striking argument for the soundness of his ideas. He is a massive 7 6-year-old man, who seems to row himself joyfully about his home in suburban Küsnacht with large, oarlike hands. He lives a happy domestic life with his wife, who is a practicing psychiatrist; they have 19 grandchildren. He speaks English with an American accent and vocabulary, explaining that he considers American English more emotional and directly influenced by the unconscious mind than English English is. His white hair usually looks as though he had just come in out of a high wind. His laughter often shakes the walls of the room, and he will discuss his ideas by the hour, sometimes humorously, with nearly anybody who happens to visit him. These discussions, accompanied by toothy grins and constant puffs from a pipe, are so lengthy and enthusiastic that they sometimes seduce him from more important work.

AT the moment, the work consists of a three-volume treatise on alchemy—part of a veritable library of esoteric and clinical literature which Jung hopes to leave behind as his testament to humanity. This may seem a somewhat bizarre occupation for a psychiatrist. But Jung explains that alchemy is one of those fantastic areas in which the mind has expressed itself unconsciously—a world of mysterious symbolism which can be interpreted psychologically, just as dreams are. There are times when Dr. Jung actually seems to resemble a sorcerer rather than a psychiatrist. He loves to sprinkle his writing with scholastic terms from the Middle Ages. His home is filled with strange Asiatic sculptures. He wears a curious ring, ornamented with an ancient effigy of a snake, the bearer of light in the pre-Christian Gnostic cult. When hard at work, he often disappears for days into a towered, castlelike hideaway across the Lake of Zurich, where he does his own cooking, and diverts himself by chopping wood and carving esoteric inscriptions on large blocks of granite. Jung has long since given up his psychiatric practice, and now devotes his working hours to exploring the dim boundaries where science meets the irrational.

How does one reduce the idea of God and the Devil to scientific terms? In Jung’s view, they are manifestations of age-old archetypes present in the more obscure layers of the human mind since the earliest times. Jung’s discovery of these archetypes dates from before 1912 when, as an associate of Freud, he noted that myths, fairy tales and religious visions were similar in many ways to dreams, and could, like dreams, be interpreted as emanations from the unconscious mind. Jung also noted that the myths and religious symbols of widely differing peoples and epochs had certain marked similarities, and were apt to include the same cast of characters. Among these characters he discerned a primordial image called “the shadow,” which was usually embodied in figures like Satan. Others were the “anima” (the “woman in man,” i.e., the female component of the masculine psyche, represented concretely in images ranging from Helen of Troy to the modern pin-up girl), the “animus” (corresponding male image, in the female psyche), the “great earth mother” (representing the material aspects of nature), the “wise old man” (personification of the spiritual principle, i.e., God). If all mankind dreamed more or less alike in its legends and religious symbols, it was reasonable to suppose the existence of a universal unconscious mind—a vast reservoir of wisdom from which these dreams arose. Jung termed this reservoir the “collective unconscious,” thereby adding a new dimension to the Freudian psyche. The goal of Jung’s therapy, unlike that of Freud, lay in what he called “individuation,” a process by which the archetypes and other disturbing elements of the unconscious were brought to full consciousness. It was essentially a religious experience, and a way of life.

THE religious, esthetic and anthropological ramifications of Jung’s ideas have tinged an astounding amount of contemporary thinking. Religious men, ranging from Hindu yogis to Christian theologians, have studied Jung, though the latter have found his dream world of primordial archetypes to be a pagan rather than a strictly Christian one. Orthodox Freudians have denounced his ideas as pure mysticism. Artists, poets and dancers have found in them a new vein of poetic inspiration.

Jung himself is inclined to agree with both his admirers and his critics. His own conception of religion is so eclectic, that it embraces everything from Catholicism to Hinduism, Taoism and Zen Buddhism, and finds truth of some sort in nearly every form of dogma and ritual. “His principal weakness, aside from overeating,” a close associate recently remarked, “is his habit of seeing all points of view and agreeing with practically everybody.” “The idea an an all powerful being,” says Jung himself, “is present everywhere, if not consciously recognized, then unconsciously accepted…I consider it wiser to recognize the idea of God consciously; otherwise, something else becomes God, as a rule something quite inappropriate and stupid, such as only an ‘enlightened’ consciousness can devise.”

WHEN Jung is not pondering the relation of modern man to his soul, he is apt to be found sailing a small ketch on the Lake of Zurich, or reading an endless chain of violent detective stories, sometimes at the rate of one a day. Though his large, snow-peaked figure is a familiar sight in and around Zurich, very few of his fellow citizens have the slightest idea who he is, and most of them think of him vaguely as a pleasant old man who likes people and dogs. Dr. Jung, in approaching a dog, will pat its head and observe gravely that dogs dream, and therefore have some part in the collective unconscious too. “Oh yes,” he will continue, “certainly the higher animals participate in it. It is easy to communicate with them. Of course, with the lower forms it is more difficult. Personally, I have never been able to establish a satisfactory rapport with a snake …” The closest rapport Jung has ever established is evidently the relationship he holds with scores of former women patients. Four-fifths of his patients have been women, and their ecstatic reaction to this experience has been so universal that Zurich wits have evolved a name for the type. They call it the Jungjrau. This slightly embarrasses the still rosy-cheeked Dr. Jung. “It’s silly,” he protests. “After all, I am an old man—much too old to have any vices.”