Carl Jung “Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice” – Quotations
Two Cases From Jung’s Clinical Practice
The very, very first thing I did after my return was to lay down to my wife all the aspects of my complexes, with the resolute consequence and with all psychoanalytic openness. It worked out extremely well, and I realised that I was such a fool, not having told her much before. ~Carl Jung, Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice, Page 33
At the moment I just have three patients who do pay well. I would have enough patients if I would accept them paying me very little, but I don’t like to offer psychoanalysis for tip money. ~Carl Jung, Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice, Page 33
The term hypnosis was coined by James Braid in his book Neurypnology – the Science of Nervous Sleep, in 1843, as part of a terminological revision. ~ Vicente L. de Moura, Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice Page 40
A possible link between Jung and Janet, which may indicate the impact of Janet’s ideas on Jung’s theorising, was Janet’s criticism of Freud’s
exaggeration of sexuality as the only pathogenic factor in mental illness. ~ Vicente L. de Moura, Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice Page 43
As director of the Burghölzli hospital, it was Bleuler who approved and supported the topic of Jung’s dissertation in 1902 ‘On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena’ ~ Vicente L. de Moura, Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice Page 47
In the autumn of 1913, Jung, in retrospect, mentioned that he felt a sense of oppression, as if something was coming in the air. He referred to it not just as if it were coming from a psychic situation, but also from concrete reality. ~ Vicente L. de Moura, Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice Page 67
Nevertheless, he [Jung] decided to go through an experiment with his fantasies. From December 1913 onwards he deliberately evoked them in waking state, as a kind of enacting dramas in his imagination. ~ Vicente L. de Moura, Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice Page 67
I asked myself whether these visions pointed to a revolution but could not really imagine anything of the sort. And so I drew the conclusion that they had to do with me myself and decided that I was menaced by a psychosis. The idea of war did not occur to me at all. ~Carl Jung, Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice Page 67
He [Jung] tried to find inner images that were behind the emotions and noted that, if he would have not done it, he could fall into a neurosis and would be torn apart by the emotions. ~Vicente L. de Moura Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice Page 68
In the interviews with Jaffé, Jung commented in retrospect that he worked on the material in the way it was given by the unconscious and stated that this was the correct approach. ~Vicente L. de Moura Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice Page 68
Important to mention is that Jung was not alone insofar as he was having visions about the menace of a major conflict in Europe. There were many people who had premonitions about a coming catastrophe. ~Vicente L. de Moura Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice Page 69
Just before the war, apocalyptic imagery was common throughout Europe in the arts and literature, in the work of artists such as Wassily Kandinsky and Ludwig Meidner. ~Vicente L. de Moura, Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice Page 69
Particularly in the work of authors and people linked to spiritualism, such as Leonora Piper and Arthur Conan Doyle, there was a sense of prophetic warning about a war. ~Vicente L. de Moura, Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice Page 69
However, with the outbreak of the war, Jung later commented that nobody was happier than him, because he said that he was finally able to understand his dreams and visions. ~ Vicente L. de Moura, Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice Page 69
Jung’s initial aim with the word association experiment was to provide a tool to differentiate mental disorders, and later he focused on the disturbances in the responses. ~Carl Jung, Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice, Page 29
It was his research with the word association experiment that built his reputation in the international psychiatry scene and provided the basis to describe what he called the emotionally charged complex. ~Carl Jung, Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice 29
For me his ideas pointed the way to a closer investigation and understanding of individual cases. Freud introduced psychology into psychiatry, although he himself was a neurologist. ~Carl Jung, Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice 30
The encounter with Freud led Jung to give up the use of hypnosis and turn to psychoanalysis as an instrument of research and treatment. ~Carl Jung, CW 2, para 660.
I in no way exclusively stem from Freud. I had my scientific attitude and the theory of complexes before I met Freud. The teachers that influenced me above all are Bleuler, Pierre Janet, and Theodore Flournoy. ~Carl Jung, Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice Page 32
One could further add that Jung’s research [Word Association] brought a missing element to psychoanalysis, namely, the scientific observation of the concepts and its quantification in a psychological experiment. ~Carl Jung, Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice Page 33
By 1914, Jung had developed a busy therapeutic practice. He worked five days a week, with an average of five to seven hours a day. ~Carl Jung, Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice Page 36
In 1900, C.G. Jung started his work as a practitioner doctor at the Burghölzli mental hospital in Zürich. Jung’s initial interest was in studies related to
anatomical brain research, a passage not included by A. Jaffé in Memories, Dreams, Reflections. ~ Vicente L. de Moura, Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice, Page 28
It is important to note that Jung did not consider his personal fantasies as the only basis for his theory and concepts. As mentioned before, he was interested in historical parallels between his inner experiences and symbolic materials, as presented in myths, religion and primitive psychology. ~ Vicente L. de Moura, Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice Page 75
For Jung, it was imperative that patients should not be reduced to the limits of a method, and that the uniqueness of the personality of the patient was considered. ~ Vicente L. de Moura, Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice Page 80
Further, in a letter to Dr Karl Srnertz from the 19th of December 1942, he stated that every postulation about the psyche must be considered, and that every psychological theory is a subjective statement. ~Vicente L. de Moura, Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice Page 81
Besides, he [Jung] wrote that some scientific achievements have no psychotherapeutic value if these were only empty words without life in them. ~ Vicente L. de Moura, Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice Page 81
Jung’s view was that the inner dialectical process led to the development of the individuation process. ~Vicente L. de Moura, Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice Page 81
There is in the analytical process, that is to say in the dialectical discussion between the conscious mind and the unconscious, a development or an advance towards some goal or end, the perplexing nature of which has engaged my attention for many years ~ Vicente L. de Moura, Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice Page 80
The more deeply we penetrate the nature of the psyche, the more the conviction grows upon us that the diversity, the multidimensionality of human nature requires the greatest variety of standpoints and methods in order to satisfy the variety of psychic dispositions. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 11,
Speaking for myself, I must confess that experience has taught me to keep away from therapeutic ‘methods’ as much as from diagnoses. The enormous variation among individuals and their neuroses has set before me the ideal of approaching each case with a minimum of prior assumptions.
The ideal would naturally be to have no assumptions at all. But this is impossible even if one exercises the most rigorous self-criticism, for one is oneself the biggest of all one’s assumptions, and the one with the gravest consequences. Try as we may to have no assumptions and to use no readymade methods, the assumption that I myself am will determine my method: as I am so will I proceed. ~ Vicente L. de Moura, Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice Page 81
Psychogenic disturbances, quite unlike organic diseases, are atypical and individual. With growing experience, one even finds oneself at a loss in making a diagnosis. Theneuroses, for example, vary so much from individual to individual that it hardly means anything when we diagnose ‘hysteria’. […] What we have said about diagnosis is also true of therapy in so far as this takes the form of an individual analysis. It is just as impossible to describe a typical course of treatment as it is to make a specific diagnosis. This radical, not to say nihilistic statement, naturally does not apply to cases where a method is employed as a matter of principle.
As my life entered its second half, I was already embarked on the confrontation with the contents of the unconscious. My work on this was an extremely long-drawn-out affair, and it was only after some twenty years of it that I reached some degree of understanding of my fantasies. First I had to find evidence for the historical prefiguration of my inner experiences. That is to say, I had to ask myself, “Where have my particular premises already occurred in history?” If I had not succeeded in finding such evidence, I would never have been able to substantiate my ideas.
Therefore, my encounter with alchemy was decisive for me, as it provided me with the historical basis which I had hitherto lacked. Analytical psychology is fundamentally a natural science, but it is subject far more than any other science to the personal bias of the observer. The psychologist must depend therefore in the highest degree upon historical and literary parallels if he wishes to exclude at least the crudest errors in judgment. ~ Vicente L. de Moura, Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice Page 75
From the beginning I had conceived my voluntary confrontation with the unconscious as a scientific experiment which I myself was conducting and in whose outcome I was vitally interested. […] I was voluntarily submitting myself to emotions of which I could not really approve, and I was writing down fantasies which often struck me as nonsense, and toward which I had strong resistances. For as long as we do not understand their meaning, such fantasies are a diabolical mixture of the sublime and the ridiculous. […] A cogent motive for my making the attempt was the conviction that I could not expect of my patients something I did not dare to do myself.
The excuse that a helper stood at their side would not pass muster, for I was well aware that the so called helper – that is, myself – could not help them unless he knew their fantasy material from his own direct experience, and that at present all he possessed were a few theoretical prejudices of dubious value. This idea – that I was committing myself to a dangerous enterprise not for myself alone, but also for the sake of my patients – helped me over several critical phases. ~ Vicente L. de Moura, Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice Page 76
He (the patient) must make himself as conscious as possible of the mood he is in, sinking himself in it without reserve and noting down on paper all the fantasies and associations that come up. Fantasy must be allowed the freest possible play, yet not in such manner that it leaves the orbit of its object, namely, the affect, by setting off a kind of ‘chain-reaction’ association process. The whole procedure is a kind of enrichment and clarification of the affect, whereby the affect and its contents are brought nearer to consciousness, becoming at the same time more impressive and more understandable. ~ Vicente L. de Moura, Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice Page 77
Psychogenic disturbances, quite unlike organic diseases, are atypical and individual. With growing experience, one even finds oneself at a loss in making a diagnosis. The neuroses, for example, vary so much from individual to individual that it hardly means anything when we diagnose ‘hysteria’. […] What we have said about diagnosis is also true of therapy in so far as this takes the form of an individual analysis.
It is just as impossible to describe a typical course of treatment as it is to make a specific diagnosis. This radical, not to say nihilistic statement, naturally does not apply to cases where a method is employed as a matter of principle. ~Vicente L. de Moura, Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice Page 80
Just so with a man about his books. He does not want to tell of the secret alliances, the faux pas of his mind. This it is that makes lies of most autobiographies. […] And just as a woman erects her stronghold of power in her sexuality and will not give away any of the secrets of its weak side, so a man centres his power in his thinking and proposes to hold it as a solid front against the public, particularly against other men. He thinks if he tells the truth in this field it is equivalent to turning over the keys of his citadel to the enemy. ~Carl Jung, Two Cases from Jung’s Clinical Practice Page 74
