Memory of Emma Jung by Sheila Moon
C.G. Jung, Emma Jung and Toni Wolff: A Collection of Remembrances
Memory of Emma Jung by Sheila Moon
A few weeks ago I was walking in the spring woods and recalling Emma Jung-that incomparable Swiss “godmother”-and I was going back to the initial meeting with her.
In the midst of my memories suddenly I realized that I probably would never have written my first novel for young people without her!
This awareness was so startling that I had to stop and examine it, because she never knew about the book, and I never knew about it either, until after her death.
Soon after my first return to Zurich after that sad and unexpected event, I dreamed that she came to me in the garden at Kusnacht, greeted me warmly, smiled, and said, “You must start writing.
Write some pages every day.” And the dream ended.
I had not come to Zurich planning to write. I had come to study again at the Jung Institute, to explore myself further , and to travel in between learnings.
However, because of my deep trust in and feeling for Emma Jung, I took the dream literally as well as psychologically.
I set aside rime each day for writing . And I wrote faithfully. Remembering how she had always suggested, and honored, and discussed with me, many “active imaginations,”
I began with a childhood memory of walking with my dog in hills above the sea.
The remembering very quickly moved into a strange scene of my dog and myself falling down a small hole into another world, a fantasy world.
More than a year and more than 400 handwritten pages later, the active imagination came to its end. Much had been inwardly realized in the writing.
Emma Jung’s wisdom lived in it-a gracious and no-nonsense wisdom which I began to realize in the telling.
A bookish friend read these pages, then pushed me to make a juvenile novel of the writing. Eventually I did. It became Knee-Deep in Thunder.
I remember our first meeting in Kusnacht. I was uneasy at first, bur the unease did nor last longer than it rook the maid to announce me and usher me in.
What I saw was a warm smile, an outstretched hand, and a wise, earthy, quiet, welcoming woman.
As I recall, I began to cry.
I came to know her as person, as analyst, as a strong and quiet feminine being with her own ideas, her Swiss humor, her graciousness, and her quiet sensitivity.
In all my analytic work I had never before worked with a sensation type. I was that, and I had always sat opposite intuitive and/or feeling personalities, because they put me to the rest of reckoning with my other half. Bur now I found that sensation could be a rich gift.
The way in which Emma Jung sat, arose, walked, smiled , and spoke was a gift to me because it restored my trust in that which I was at the core of being.
She sat quietly-as some animals have a way of doing-as if all that was needed was being there and seeing.
She listened, her hands usually very quiet in her lap. When she spoke, it was to the point and filled with knowledge, wisdom , and caring.
A memory of Dr. Jung: he had walked along the lake to the hotel where Mrs. Jung was to join us to sit outside and talk.
I said, “Shall I go for Mrs. Jung?” Dr. Jung turned to me and said, “I don’t send for my wife to come to me, I go to her,” and he left to get her. ~C. G. Jung, Emma Jung and Toni Wolff – A Collection of Remembrances Pages 42-43