Why Study Jung?

Why study Jungian Psychology? Some of the writings of Carl Jung himself are so difficult to plow through that the average reader, without background study and assistance, would undoubtedly turn aside. Yet, there is an ever-growing number who would pursue the study in spite of the challenge. In the coming months I plan to explore selections from Jung's copious writings as a way of getting at his contributions to the whole realm of our understanding of our psyches, for clearly his work has had an impact upon thinking in our time. It seems only fitting to begin with Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung's autobiography, recorded and edited by Aniela Jaffe. It is in this book that Jung, then in his 80's, reflects upon what in his life he feels "has proved to have substance and a determining value." (Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. ix)

The book begins with the statement, "My life is a story of the self-realization of the unconscious." (p. 3) A brilliant student first interested in archeology, Jung became a scientist, doctor, and psychiatrist; but always he remained a man in search of himself charting a course of individuation. While he studied the working of the human psyche in the world around him through his patients, foreign cultures, and writings in many fields, he also worked on his own process. Eventually, that led him to begin building his "Tower" at Bollingen, a project that became both a part and a symbol of his process.

Jung was a man who moved facilely between two worlds - that outer, transitory world in which we move as physical beings and the rich world of his inner development - the latter being the one which ultimately concerned him the most. As he neared the end of his life, Jung admitted to having forgotten the details of much of his outer life. Jaffe says that the chapters of the "autobiography" only fleetingly touch on the outer events of his life. They are more concerned with "the atmosphere of his intellectual world and the experience of a man to whom the psyche was a profound reality." (p.vii) And it is in this area that Jung made his contribution to psychology. By his example and through his writings Jung shows us that the self-realization of the unconscious is an ongoing process which, unlike many popular theories in developmental psychology, comes into its fullest later in life rather than being complete with the tasks of early adulthood (finding a mate, establishing a career and such.) And unlike Freud, the endpoint of the process is not the development of mature relationships but the integration and balance of the individual mind itself.

Go To Page: 1 2