Carl Jung Presents an Introduction to His Psychological Thought in a 3-Hour Interview (1957)


Within the Fifties, it was fash­ion­capable of drop Freud’s identify — usually as not in pseu­do-intel­lec­tu­al intercourse jokes. Freud’s pre­oc­cu­pa­tions had as a lot to do along with his fame because the actu­al prac­tice of psy­chother­a­py, and it was assumed — and nonetheless is to a fantastic diploma — that Freud had “gained” the debate along with his for­mer stu­dent and good friend Carl Jung, who noticed reli­gion, psy­che­del­ic medicine, occult prac­tices, and so forth. as legitimate types of indi­vid­u­al­iz­ing and inte­grat­ing human selves — selves that had been in spite of everything, he thought, con­nect­ed by way over bio­log­i­cal dri­ves for intercourse and dying.

Now Jung’s insights per­me­ate the cul­ture, in increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar fields like transper­son­al psy­chol­o­gy, for examination­ple, that see people as “rad­i­cal­ly inter­con­nect­ed, not simply iso­lat­ed indi­vid­u­als,” psy­chol­o­gist Har­ris L. Fried­man argues. Transfer­ments like these grew out of the “coun­ter­cul­ture transfer­ments of the Sixties,” psy­chol­o­gy lec­tur­er and creator Steve Tay­lor explains, “and the wave of psy­cho-exper­i­males­ta­tion it concerned, by psy­che­del­ic sub­stances, med­i­ta­tion and oth­er con­scious­ness-chang­ing prac­tices” — the very prac­tices Jung explored in his work.

Certainly, Jung was the primary “to legit­imize a spir­i­tu­al method to the prac­tice of depth psy­chol­o­gy,” Mark Kasprow and Bruce Scot­ton level out, and “sug­gest­ed that psy­cho­log­i­cal devel­op­ment extends to incorporate excessive­er states of con­scious­ness and may con­tin­ue by­out life, quite than cease with the attain­ment of grownup ego mat­u­ra­tion.” In opposition to Freud, who thought tran­scen­dence was regres­sion, Jung “professional­posed that tran­scen­dent expe­ri­ence lies with­in and is acces­si­ble to each­one, and that the heal­ing and progress stim­u­lat­ed by such expe­ri­ence usually make use of the lan­guages of sym­bol­ic imagery and non­ver­bal expe­ri­ence.”

Jung’s work turned increas­ing­ly impor­tant after his dying in 1961, lead­ing to the pub­li­ca­tion of his col­lect­ed works in 1969. These intro­duced learn­ers to all of his  “key con­cepts and concepts, from arche­typ­al sym­bols to ana­lyt­i­cal psy­chol­o­gy to UFOs,” notes a com­pan­ion information. Close to the tip of his life, Jung him­self professional­vid­ed a ver­bal sur­vey of his life’s work within the type of 4 one-hour inter­views con­duct­ed in 1957 by Uni­ver­si­ty of Houston’s Dr. Richard Evans on the Eidgenos­sis­che Tech­nis­che Hoschschule (Fed­er­al Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy) in Zurich.

“The con­ver­sa­tions had been filmed as a part of an edu­ca­tion­al challenge designed for stu­dents of the psy­chol­o­gy depart­ment. Evans is a poor inter­view­er, however Jung com­pen­sates properly,” the Gnos­tic Soci­ety Library writes. The edit­ed inter­views start with a ques­tion about Jung’s con­cept of per­sona (additionally, inci­den­tal­ly, the theme and title of Ing­mar Bergman’s 1966 mas­ter­piece). In response, Jung describes the per­sona in plain phrases and with each­day examination­ples as a fic­tion­al self “par­tial­ly dic­tat­ed by soci­ety and par­tial­ly dic­tat­ed by the expec­ta­tions or the want­es one nurs­es one­self.”

The much less we’re con­scious­ly conscious of our pub­lic selves as per­for­mances in these phrases, the extra we’re inclined, Jung says, to neu­roses, because the pres­certain of our “shad­ow,” exerts itself. Jung and Evans’ dis­cus­sion of per­sona solely grazes the sur­face of their wide-rang­ing con­ver­sa­tion concerning the uncon­scious and the numerous methods to entry it. By­out, Jung’s examination­ples are clear and his expla­na­tions lucid. Above, you’ll be able to see a tran­scribed video of the identical inter­views. Learn a pub­lished tran­script within the col­lec­tion C.G. Jung Converse­ing, and see extra Jung inter­views and doc­u­males­taries on the Gnos­tic Soci­ety Library.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Carl Jung Impressed the Cre­ation of Alco­holics Anony­mous

Face to Face with Carl Jung: ‘Man Can­not Stand a Imply­ing­much less Life’ (1959)

The Imaginative and prescient­ary Mys­ti­cal Artwork of Carl Jung: See Illus­trat­ed Pages from The Purple E-book

Josh Jones is a author and musi­cian primarily based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness



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