Tag: Memories Dreams Reflections

Anyone who takes the sure road is as good as dead

March 14th, 2023

“Memories Dreams Reflections” by Carl Jung, “Visions” chapter

“Anyone who takes the sure road is as good as dead” is the most poignant and pithy one liner in the short chapter titled Visions dedicated solely to the visions that Jung had after his heart attack in 1944. The chapter starts with a description of an out-of-body experience where Jung floats above the earth and towards a granite temple.

“It was as if I now carried along with me everything I had ever experienced or done, everything that had happened around me.”

“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.”

“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 excerpt 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?”

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.

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 spatially 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.

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 myself to the current of my thoughts.

Something else, too, came to me from my illness. I might formulate
it as an affirmation of things as they are: an unconditional “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.

It was only after the illness that I understood how important 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 experience 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 workings of fate.

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 strangest part of that chapter may be that Jung predicted the death of his doctor and his prediction was (unfortunately for the doctor) accurate. Part of his vision he writes:

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 coming in his primal form, as a basileus of Kos.”

Then later:

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 going 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 the 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.

Throughout the book Jung laments the fact that as technology rapidly develops, we put all faith in science, and the spiritual and mystical is more and more thought to be ridiculous and laughable. His doctor did not believe him. Coincidence? Maybe. At one point Jung describes his argument with Freud about events occurring that seem to be unexplainable by pure chance or coincidence. (In this video he talks about this belief.)

What is easier for the modern academic to accept is more of a Malcolm Gladwell “Blink” style explanation: perhaps Jung knew that the doctor was going to die because he observed characteristics in the doctor that he had previously observed in other’s close to death, but his conscious mind was not able to articulate those observations. And so his unconscious mind articulated these observations in the form of an image, the doctor as a “basileus of Kos.”

I won’t speculate further. But I understand this exchange a little better with the more Jung I read:

Many years ago, when one of his daughters interviewed him as part of a school project and asked what his religion was, Martin, a nonobservant Jew, answered, “Oh, honey, I’m a Jungian.”
Sara Corbett, “The Holy Grail of the Unconscious“
Excerpt from Memories Dreams Reflections by Carl Jung

March 9th, 2023

“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 rode 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 unselfconsciously 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, toward nebulous goals. He compensates for the loss of gravity and the corresponding sentiment d’incompletitude by the illusion of his triumphs, such as steamships, railroads, airplanes, and rockets, that rob him of his duration and transport him into another reality of speeds and explosive accelerations.”

This excerpt is from the chapter titled “Travels”. I posted this paragraph because I enjoyed the poetic description of “progress.”

One can only imagine what Jung’s thoughts on the internet technologies would be.
Carl Jung on the Importance of Knowing Your Unconscious

February 20th, 2023

Some thoughts inspired by the chapter “Confrontations with the Unconscious” from Carl Gustav Jung’s autobiography “Memories, Dreams, Reflections”

I mentioned that I was reading Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Jung to a coworker and he told me that was funny because there was some controversy this past week about a New York Times article by Kevin Roose where he asked the new ChatGPT powered Bing (search engine) about it’s shadow self. I’m only halfway through the article and it’s getting interesting! Perhaps it’s now important for even our technology to “know thyself”

One thought is that Jung’s theme concerning the importance of understanding the unconscious, integrating the shadow, or (summarily) to “know thyself,” seems to go hand in hand with walking a fine line between sanity and insanity, or normality and abnormality. Concerning his exploration of his unconscious he makes the observation:

“It is of course ironical that I, a psychiatrist, should at almost every step of my experiment have run into the same psychic material which is the stuff of psychosis and is found in the insane.”

That is unambiguous. And makes me wonder: if C.G. Jung, a man of profound intelligence and wit, and a man who makes the top 10 when it comes to investigating his own mind and the mind in general, if this man openly declares himself to border on insanity, what does that say about the rest of us? And what does that say about… me?

Earlier in Memories, Dreams, and Reflections he discusses a fellow psychiatrist whom he encouraged to undergo psychoanalysis with the assertion that in order to be able to help anyone else, he must first understand himself. This man was on the surface completely ordinary and identified as so. Normal job, family, hobbies, etc, etc, the whole 9 yards: a normal guy.

The man told Jung that he didn’t dream. Jung told him “You will soon” and noted that saying that to someone is enough to make any relatively normal person have and remember a dream that same night. (And sure enough, I had a dream that night and have continued to have and remember them since then and have started a dream journal, because if I don’t write them down right away, they are lost, I forget them. How many dreams have I forgotten in this way? That then gives me the impression that I don’t dream often?)

Anyway, Jung’s coworker patient continued to not dream for some weeks but then came in with a dream to share. The result: Jung ended the therapy. Told him: “You’re right, you are normal!” when he was anything but. That’s not an exact quote, let me find some:

“I have had some astonishing experiences with ‘normality.’”

“I realized that his normality was a compensation.”

“His emphatic normality reflected a personality which would not have been developed but simply shattered by a confrontation with the unconscious.”

He was too normal to be helped!

This makes me think of people and times when I’ve wondered to myself: should I say what I really think? Would that help them or is it too much?

When someone spends their life pursuing one course of action and one set of beliefs… sometimes it is past the point where you can do any good by introducing a new belief or poking holes in their dogma. And this explains why most old people are so set in their beliefs. Once you commit past a certain point… you’ve got to see it through.

Jung states that he’s in favor of psychotherapy by professionals but when it comes to the “layman” he holds the opinion that – yeah, check it out. A theme of this memoir indeed seems to be “know thyself.” Try to understand yourself. Question yourself. Because if you don’t… insanity awaits you!

But as far as practicing psychoanalysis on other’s, Jung has words of caution for the dinner table psychologist: “I am in favor of non-medical men studying psychotherapy and practicing it; but in dealing with latent psychoses there is a the risk of their making dangerous mistakes.”

I find this disturbingly relatable and to return to my thought: I think being honest is one of the most important ideals for a person to have, but again I wonder if at times I’ve said too much when I should have kept my mouth shut.

What is it that Marcus says? I didn’t find the quote I was looking for but this one will do: “It’s silly to try to escape other people’s faults. They are inescapable. Just try to escape your own.” The quote I was looking for was more specifically about not admonishing people if it’s not going to do them any good.

I wonder if I’ve made the mistake of violating that prescription… To act against both Jung and Marcus is surely a sin.

Taking a step back: so it’s true! The “normal people” are indeed the craziest of us! I’ve had this thought before (and the image of Christian Bale from “American Psycho” comes to mind) but it’s interesting to have some confirmation from perhaps the most respected psychologist.

“Unpopular, ambiguous, and dangerous, it is a voyage of discovery to the other pole of the world,” is how Jung describes the investigation of the unconscious. And he is critical of Nietzsche for losing himself in thought: “I was not a blank page whirling about in the winds of the spirit, like Nietzsche.” Jung shows great respect and admiration for Nietzsche at times but is straightforward about his opinion of the latter years: he lost it. Lost himself in thought. Delved so deep that he lost touch with reality. (What’s the story about the horse? I think he had a public breakdown when he witnessed a horse beaten and declared himself one with the horse while crying in the street. (Citation needed…))

So if this investigation is so dangerous then why do it? As I said earlier, Jung seems to be of the opinion that the dangers of not doing so are worse (until you reach that point of ‘normalcy’ where you the unconscious half of you is no longer reachable to yourself…).

A general theme of this memoir and maybe his work and philosophy in general seems to be: if you don’t investigate yourself / your unconscious / your shadow side, then you will never be a complete person, and the fracture between the two parts of yourself will cause you and those in your life a lot of pain and… you might end up going completely insane.

Well look at that… I’ve written an article and didn’t even stick to my original idea, or develop it. But now having further evidence of my skill of blabbering on… perhaps there is hope for this blog after all!

But having not stuck to the program, here is a more uplifting quote that I will end with:

“What a dreary world it would be if the rules were not violated sometimes!”

– C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, and Reflections, from the chapter titled “Confrontations with the Unconscious”

Tag: Memories Dreams Reflections

Anyone who takes the sure road is as good as dead

Excerpt from Memories Dreams Reflections by Carl Jung

Carl Jung on the Importance of Knowing Your Unconscious

Some thoughts inspired by the chapter “Confrontations with the Unconscious” from Carl Gustav Jung’s autobiography “Memories, Dreams, Reflections”