Carl Gustav Jung was born July 26, 1875, in the small Swiss village of Kessewil. His father was Paul Jung, a country parson, and his mother was Emilie Preiswerk Jung. He was surrounded by a fairly well educated extended family, including quite a few clergymen and some eccentrics as well. The elder Jung started Carl on Latin when he was six years old, beginning a long interest in language and literature -- especially ancient literature. Besides most modern western European languages, Jung could read several ancient ones, including Sanskrit, the language of the original Hindu holy books.
Carl was a rather solitary adolescent, who didn't care much for school, and especially couldn't take competition. He went to boarding school in Basel, Switzerland, where he found himself the object of a lot of jealous harassment. He began to use sickness as an excuse, developing an embarrassing tendency to faint under pressure. Although his first career choice was archeology, he went on to study medicine at the University of Basel. While working under the famous neurologist Krafft-Ebing, he settled on psychiatry as his career. After graduating, he took a position at the Burghoeltzli Mental Hospital in Zurich under Eugene Bleuler, an expert on (and the namer of) schizophrenia. In 1903, he married Emma Rauschenbach. He also taught classes at the University of Zurich, had a private practice, and invented word association at this time! Though not the first to analyze dreams, his contributions to dream analysis are perhaps the most influential and certainly the most extensive. His approach to human psychology is unique in that he placed primary emphasis on understanding the human psyche by means of exploring the world of dreams, art, mythology, world religion and philosophy. Although he was a theoretical psychologist and practicing clinician for most of his life, many of his most important contributions extend into the realm of the humanties disciplines: from comparative religion and philosophy, to art and literature criticism. Many pioneering psychological concepts were originally proposed by Jung. Some of these are: The Archetype, The Collective Unconscious, The Complex and Synchronicity. His books could be a practical source of information almost uncomparable. For example, his observations based on almost 60 years of practice, having patients from all over the world show that only 2-3% of people having mental problems are Catholics, all the rest are mostly Jews and Protestants. 44 pages (A4 format) |
