Aniela Jaffe: From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung Quotations
From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung
He [Jung] seemed to be endowed with an unusual “permeability” to events in the background of the psyche. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 10
Prophetic dreams and precognitions were no rarity in Jung’s life, though far from habitual. Whenever they occurred he noted them with surprise – one is tempted to say, with the awe due to the miraculous. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 10
She [Jung’s Mother] left behind a diary in which she noted down all the premonitions, “spookish” phenomena, and strange occurrences she had experienced. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 10
Her [Jung’s Mother] father, Samuel Preiswerk (1799-1870), was head of the reformed clergy in Basel, and as a child she was often assigned the task of protecting him from “spirits.” ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 10
She [Jung’s Mother] had to sit behind him [Her Father] when he was writing his sermons, because he could not bear “spirits” passing behind his back and disturbing him. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 10
Every week, at a fixed hour, he [Samuel Preiswerk] used to hold intimate conversations with his deceased first wife, very much to the chagrin of the second! ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 10
Jung’s psychiatric diagnosis was that he suffered from “waking hallucinations,” though at the same time he dismissed this as a “mere word.” ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 10
Samuel’s second wife, Augusta (née Faber, 1805-1862), Jung’s maternal grandmother, was gifted with “second sight” and could also see “spirits.” ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 10
The family traced this back to an episode when, as a young girl, she [Augusta Jung] lay for thirty-six hours in a state of catalepsy resembling death. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 10
Her [Augusta Jung]gifts, however, could stand the test of a more rigorous judgment: she sometimes saw apparitions of persons unknown to her, but whose historical existence was later proved. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 10
His charming dachshund would look up at us so gravely, as if he understood everything, and Jung used to tell me that the sensitive little creature sometimes whimpered piteously when some occult force manifested itself in the house.” ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 11
“I [Carl Jung] for one am certainly convinced that they are exteriorizations. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 12
After collecting psychological experiences from many people and many countries for fifty years, I no longer feel as certain as I did in 1919, when I wrote this sentence. To put it bluntly, I doubt whether an exclusively psychological approach can do justice to the phenomena in question. ~Carl Jung, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 12
The psychoid archetype is not to be confused with archetypal images or archetypal contents. These belong to the knowable realm of consciousness and occur as analogous motifs in myths, fairy tales, dreams, delusions, etc., at all times and in all parts of the world. ~Carl Jung, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 12
Jung compared the archetype per se to the “axial system of a crystal, which, as it were, preforms the crystalline structure in the mother liquid, although it has no material existence of its own.” ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 13
“Although on the one hand our critical arguments cast doubt on every single case [of apparitions], there is on the other hand not a single argument that could prove that spirits do not exist. In this regard, therefore, we must rest content with a non liquet.” ~Carl Jung, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 13
Jung told me later that in one series of experiments, papier-maché objects (cutouts of angels and beer mats) which had been covered with luminous paint and placed out of reach of the medium rose up in the air and sailed through the room as soon as the medium fell into a trance. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 14
His [Jung] hypothesis is supported by the fact that “in parapsychological experiments decreases of weight up to several kilograms have been observed during the [physical] phenomena, both in the case of the medium and of some of the participants, who were all sitting on scales.” ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 15
At that point, therefore, ionized molecules were going in and out through the surface of the body. Apparently it is these molecules that lead to the formation of the whitish or luminous ectoplasmic mist and also of materialized bodily parts. “If such things can occur,” wrote Jung, “then it is also conceivable that persons in the vicinity of mediums might act as a source of ions – in other words, nourishment might be effected by the passage of living molecules of albumen from one body to another.” ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 15
In later years Jung no longer concerned himself with spiritualistic or occult phenomena and he never evaluated his parapsychological experiments scientifically, yet he did not by any means dismiss them as worthless. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 15
“Although I have not distinguished myself by any original researches in this field, I do not hesitate to declare that I have observed a sufficient number of such phenomena to be completely convinced of their reality. To me they are inexplicable, and I am therefore unable to decide in favor of any of the usual interpretations.” ~Carl Jung, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 15
In a letter of May 1960, he wrote that in so far as the psyche is capable of telepathic and precognitive perceptions it exists, at least in part, in a “continuum outside time and space,” hence the possibility of authentic postmortal phenomena. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 16
Yes, we ourselves may simultaneously exist in both worlds, and occasionally we do have intimations of a twofold existence. ~Carl Jung, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 16
In a condition of profound unconsciousness, with the brain completely inactive, a person can have experiences about which he is able to report on returning to consciousness and which can be verified down to the smallest detail. ~Carl Jung, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 16
Yet insects have no cerebrospinal system at all, but only a double chain of ganglia corresponding to the sympathetic system in man. Jung concludes that the ganglionic system can evidently produce thoughts and perceptions just as easily as the cerebrospinal system. He asks, What then are we to think of the sympathetic system in vertebrates? ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 17
During a coma the sympathetic system is not paralysed and could therefore be considered as a possible carrier of psychic functions. ~Carl Jung, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 17
Of far more importance for Jung’s scientific work than the occult or spiritualistic phenomena we have been discussing (ghosts, and the question of life after death), were certain causally inexplicable events generally summed up as extrasensory perceptions. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 17
“Rhine’s experiments have taught us,” he says, “if practical experience has not already done so, that the improbable does occur, and that our picture of the world only tallies with reality when the improbable has a place in it.” ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 18
It was always preposterous to those of us who knew Jung that he should be thought of as “anti” anything, least of all anti-Semitic. ~Laurens Van Der Post, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 67
His [Jung] whole life was one dedicated, not to the passing of judgment and dispensation of justice in life, but to the understanding of human beings, their innermost spirit and motivations, and the shadows they and their communities cast. ~Laurens Van Der Post, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 67
He [Jung] said to me on several occasions that he found understanding perhaps the most exciting element in life, on one occasion referring to the feeling of having understood objectively as “hellishly exciting.” ~Laurens Van Der Post, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 67
He [Jung] regarded the task of seeking the totality, and understanding it objectively, as truly religious; partial and one-sided seeing, thinking and feeling were almost blasphemy to him. ~Laurens Van Der Post, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 67
“One could say in a sense that Mussolini ruled Italy, but one could not say that Hitler rules Germany. Hitler is Germany. He is more of a myth than a man. He is the loudspeaker that makes audible all the inaudible murmurings of the German soul.” ~Laurens Van Der Post, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 68
Jung’s own spiritual involvement with the war, and his total opposition to all that Germany had come to represent, was borne out by the way he repeatedly dreamed of Churchill. ~Laurens Van Der Post, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 71
He [Jung] told me that he often dreamed about Churchill, and then discovered from the newspaper days later that Churchill, on his way to Cairo, Tehran and other parts of the far-flung war front, had flown over Switzerland on the very night in which he had dreamed. ~Laurens Van Der Post, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 71
When I became his secretary in the autumn of 1955, Jung had just turned eighty. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 74
Jung’s health and vitality had been weakened by an attack of amoebic dysentery in India in 1938, and a severe cardiac infarct in 1944 was the next blow life dealt him. “It was then that life busted me, as sometimes it busts everyone!” ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 74
But, on each occasion, illness and the proximity of death rekindled his [Jung] creative powers, and new ideas sprang to life. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 74
After the journey to India, his preoccupation with alchemy took a central place in an extraordinarily fertile period of scientific work. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 74
Recovery from the cardiac infarct [by Jung] was followed by a phase of intense intellectual activity. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 74
“On the Nature of the Psyche,” Aion, “Answer to Job,” “Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle” – some of his most important writings – appeared in quick succession. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 74
The fatal illness of his wife Emma – she died in November 1955 – marked the time when his [Jung] life was nearing its end. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 74
What was so palpably impressive about him [Jung] sprang from the superiority of a man who had engaged in a life-and-death struggle with the creative daemon and mastered him, but on whom the struggle had left its mark. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 74
When I took up my duties with Jung I had known him for about twenty years – my analysis with him began in 1937, a few months before he went to India. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 74
In 1947 I was made the secretary of the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich, which had just been founded. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 74
Visits and analytical sessions, as well as the work for Jung, had one thing in common: they took place in a protected area sealed off against everyday life, forming islands of peace in the flux of time. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 74.
I was expected, Jung explained, never under any circumstances to allow myself to be irritated by his anger, nor by his occasional “grumbling,” his roarings and cursings! ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 75
I was further expected [by Jung] not to try to make myself indispensable. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 75
In Jung’s eye this well-known female aim was nothing but a secret demand for power; and the conscious or unconscious craving for power was for him the dark shadow, the root of countless evils, above all in human relationships. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 75
Jung never ruled out the possibility that life knew better than the correcting mind, and his attention was directed not so much to the things themselves as to that unknowable agent which organizes the event beyond the will and knowledge of man. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 75
Jung possessed a small antique mortar of shining bronze, which he used as an ashtray. Smoldering matches sometimes flared up again and started to consume everything in the vessel. Anyone who solicitously tried to blow out the little conflagration was mockingly chided or gravely rebuked. Don’t interfere! ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 75
Suffering accepted can gradually change into strength, composure, serenity; joy that remains heedless can change all too quickly and all too often into sorrow and restlessness. ~Carl Jung, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 76
The sorrows of life, the wretchedness of the times, were alive and present for him [Jung] every moment as realities that had to be endured. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 76
Although it might be regarded as “interfering with nature,” Jung, being a doctor, did not of course disapprove of treatment by medication. Only, he was very chary of using sleeping pills, particularly on himself. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 77
Even when he was long past eighty, he [Jung] felt the rare occasions on which he had to resort to a soporific as a “moral defeat,” and this pained him. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 77
Usually he [Jung] enjoyed a wonderful, deep sleep, and plenty of it, the result not only of his good constitution but of his close and positive communion with the unconscious. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 77
His [Jung] disturbed sleep was most quickly restored in his Tower in Bollingen, where in earlier years he would often spend weeks by himself. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 77
Above all it had been sailing, letting himself [Jung] go with the wind, that brought relaxation and inner peace. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 77
Enchantment like that is the oldest form of medicine. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 77
Only lasted time and emptiness were a burden to him [Jung], though they too are part of the whole. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 78
Nothing but illness could prevent him [Jung] from casting his vote, even in old age, and every Swiss knows the sense of responsibility and consciousness of duty this entails. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 78
Jung belonged to the “freethinking” or Democratic party. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 78
It may be remarked parenthetically that he [Jung] supported women’s right to vote, a right hitherto non-existent in Switzerland and a subject of fervent disputes. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 78
A sizeable collection of small Asiatic sculptures was added later, and finally his [Jung] valuable collection of alchemical books. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 78
In a letter (May 1957) he wrote: “‘You should make friends again with the nearest things,’ said Nietzsche and didn’t. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 79
Observation belongs to the world of sensation, which must be considered his [Jung] “inferior function,” his intuition and thinking being highly differentiated. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 79
But as the nature of the psyche is not straightforward and does not always obey the laws of logic, these inconsistencies are only apparently out of place; they reflect psychic truth better than straightforward thinking. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 79
To Jung it seemed better, more honest, and wiser to look the possibility of disharmony in the eye and, once it had got that far, not to evade it, but rather to try to overcome it by frank discussion followed by an understanding silence. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 80
Jung had a high opinion of the undistorted judgment of children and the sensibleness of their reactions. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 80
In any collectivity emotions are dynamite; they easily lead to senseless squabbles and make collaboration difficult if not impossible. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 80
“Jung’s binges were rare but loud.” Nobody enjoyed laughing as much as Jung; nobody made others laugh as he could. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 80
After the death of his wife his [Jung] laughter became rarer and quieter. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 80
His [Jung] impatience was due not only to his temperament – astrologically he was a Leo – but also to his extreme sensitivity, which both enriched and burdened his life. It was an enrichment because it gave him the extraordinarily differentiated awareness I have already spoken of; it was a burden because it encroached upon the personal realm and manifested itself as touchiness. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 81
Jung was touchy, his feelings were easily hurt and needed sparing in order to display themselves. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 81
As usually happens, he [Jung] found the weaknesses of others which were also his own the hardest to bear. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 81
But then he [Jung] became serious and began telling me about himself and the sensitiveness that had tormented him from early youth, how it had encumbered him in his relationships and made him unsure of himself, how ashamed it had made him feel, but how, because of this same impressionability, he had perceived beauties and experienced things other people scarcely dreamed of. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 81
Bach, Handel, Mozart, and the pre-Mozartians were pure joy to him. He [Jung] had a penchant for Negro spirituals. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 82
But whenever a concert pianist gave a recital on the grand piano at the house in Küsnacht – the last one was the Russian, Ania Dorfmann – he was impressed by Jung’s genuine feeling for music. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 82
Experiences of the inner world, he explained, above all of dreams, had engraved themselves indelibly in his memory as with a stylus. It was exceptional for him [Jung] to tell the same dream in different versions. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 83
Jung was wonderfully lavish with his thoughts; we could ask as many questions as we liked. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 83
Neighbors far and wide sent messages to Mrs. Fröbe, complaining about this unwonted disturbance of the peace, but in vain. Jung was slightly tipsy, and so were all the others – rather more so than less. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 84
He [Jung] was thoroughly enjoying himself, encouraging those who were still too sober to pay due homage to Dionysus. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 84
Before going to Africa in 1926 he [Jung] learned Swahili, which stood him in good stead during palavers with the natives in Kenya and Uganda. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 85
He [Jung] had no Hebrew, which he regretted very much, especially after he became acquainted with the texts of Jewish mysticism, which he would have liked to have read in the original. But it seemed to him too late to start studying a new language. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 85
He [Jung] had a smattering of Arabic, probably acquired in youth from his father, Pastor Paul Jung, who had graduated not as a theologian but as an Arabist. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 85
After the death of his [Jung] wife, his four daughters and his daughter-in-law – each the center of a large family of her own –took turns staying with him for a while, to keep him company. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 85
In earlier years his [Jung] son, who now lives with his family in the Küsnacht house, was his best sailing companion, and up to the end father and son formed a well-attuned team in the country life at Bollingen. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 85
Because of his wife’s severe illness the atmosphere in the house was muted, and it touched me to see how Jung took over the function of the master. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 85
“I have never counted upon any strong response, any powerful resonance, to my writings,” “They represented a compensation for our times, and I have been compelled to say what no one wants to hear. … I knew that what I said would be unwelcome, for it is difficult for people of our times to accept the counterweight to the conscious world.” ~Carl Jung, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 86
He [Jung] could never get it into his head that his language, his way of thinking, was not easy for outsiders to understand, and that the powerful impression made by his words, his voice and gestures, and the whole effect of his personality deceived the listener: he thought he understood what in reality remained dark to him. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 86
Jung was all the more pleased and grateful for the successful interviews, such as those with Mircea Eliade, Georges Duplain, Georg Gerster, Gordon Young, Richard Evans, and John Freeman. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 86
Jung seldom initiated a correspondence, but in later life his sense of responsibility bade him answer nearly all the letters that reached him from the outside world – private letters came under other rules. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 86
A distinguishing mark of his [Jung] correspondence is that the great bulk of it was conducted with people unknown to him. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 86
Letters [Jung’s] to the well-known or famous were in the minority. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 86
He [Jung] never disdained to answer the questions of an unknown woman or a quite simple man, to explain to a young girl something she didn’t understand, or even to give advice to a prisoner. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 86
For an American who described himself as “just a little fellow, fifty-eight years old and employed as a packer,” he [Jung] did his best to answer the question: What did he think about reincarnation. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 86
But sometimes among them were letters that deserved special consideration, such as those from a seventy-year-old spinster bearing the name of an old Zurich family. Jung had seen her only once a few years earlier and diagnosed senile schizophrenia. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 86
Jung wrote it in [Undiscovered Self] English, because, he said, this forced him to express himself with the greatest simplicity. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 87
It [Undiscovered Self] was completed only a few weeks before his [Jung] death. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 87
Our work together on the memoirs had begun in 1957, and I have given an account of its genesis in the introduction to that book [Memories Dreams Reflections]. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 87
Nothing could distract him or break through his [Jung] concentration; it was a cardinal law that he was never under any circumstances to be spoken to while writing. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 87
Now and then Jung prepared his own mixture [Tobacco] – a solemn performance at which I had to assist. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 88
The mixture [Tobacco] was kept in a dark bronze box, which for some unaccountable reason bore the name “Habbakuk.” ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 88
Jung was no cigarette smoker, but after luncheon he allowed himself a Brazilian cigar, which he would offer also to his friends. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 88
Occasionally he smoked a Brissago, or a strange, snake-like, dark, exotic cigar the name of which I unfortunately never learned. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 88
Smoking was one of the pleasures of the day. “A little tobacco assists concentration and contributes to one’s peace of mind,” was his justification to his doctor. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 88
Jung liked playing patience. He had no compunction, now and then, in an emergency, in helping fate a little by switching the cards around. The game had to come out, dammit! ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 88
Another source of relaxation [for Jung] was reading detective stories, which lay around everywhere and were piled up in stacks on the topmost floor of the house. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 89
He [Jung] liked English thrillers, but Simenon was his favorite. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 89
For Jung the figure of the detective was a modern version of the alchemical Mercurius, solver of all riddles, and he was entertained by his heroic deeds. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 89
He [Jung] also enjoyed science fiction. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 89
There was nothing romantic or gushing about it [Bollingen]; it was a genuine rootedness in his own earth, a communion with the whole countryside. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 90
In the rough surface of the heavy blocks of hewn stone forming the walls of the Tower he saw [at Bollingen] figures, just as one does in clouds or inkblots, and their outlines became the ground plan for several carvings. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 90
There was the laughing head of the trickster that Jung said looked like Balzac, and a naked female form with arms outstretched towards a mare – he called it Pegasus. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 90
After he [Jung] bought the land [Bollingen] in 1922, he evolved an amusing game he was much addicted to, which consisted in digging new channels for the water to flow along in clear, rippling streams. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 90
Then followed a simple but delicious meal: soup [Jung’s] – generally an enriched Knorr or Maggi packet-soup – a dish filled with an abundance of cheeses, butter, bread, and fruit. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 91
A cup of coffee and sometimes a liqueur ended the meal. It is well known that Jung was a connoisseur of wine. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 91
Unfortunately I no longer remember what wines Jung preferred. But I do know that at times he much enjoyed a simple country wine, and at others a glass of burgundy. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 91
Cocktails he [Jung] detested. Seldom, or only on special occasions, did I stay in the Tower until evening. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 91
As the thought of death had been his [Jung] familiar for many decades, it did not come as an enemy, although he was familiar also with the pain caused by the finiteness of life. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 91
The spectacle of eternal nature makes me painfully aware of my weakness and perishability, and I find no joy in imagining an equanimity in conspectu mortis. ~Carl Jung, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 91
As I once dreamt, my will to live is a glowing daimon, who sometimes makes the consciousness of my mortality hellish difficult for me. ~Carl Jung, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 91
A couple of hours after his [Jung] death there was a violent thunderstorm, and lightning struck a tall poplar in the garden beside the lake, where he was accustomed to sitting. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 92
It is exceedingly difficult to write anything definite or descriptive about the progression of psychological states. It always seemed to me as if the real milestones were certain symbolic events characterized by a strong emotional tone. ~Carl Jung, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 94
In his memoirs he [Jung] describes early childhood experiences, dreams, unusual games, frightening experiences; these can be understood as preparations for the later creative phases of his life. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 94
“At that moment I heard from outside and above me my mother’s voice [in a dream]. She called out, ‘Yes, just look at him. That is the man-eater!’ That intensified my terror still more, and I awoke sweating and scared to death.” ~Carl Jung, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 94
Jung concludes his description of this dream: ‘‘My intellectual life had its unconscious beginnings at that time.” ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 95
A few years later the dream came true: Jung fell into a neurotic conflict between creativity and inertia. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 95
Seen in the light of depth psychology, a man’s destiny is always shaped at the point where his fear lies. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 95
Jung recalls in his memoirs that he experienced the phallic figure as a “subterranean God ‘not to be named’,” who appeared to him throughout his youth as the antagonist of the trusted, bright Lord Jesus. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 95
“A few weeks later I returned to school, and never suffered another attack. The whole bag of tricks was over and done with! That was when I learned what a neurosis is.” ~Carl Jung, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 96
The result of his [Jung] ordeal was “a studied punctiliousness and unusual diligence. Those days saw the beginnings of my conscientiousness, practised not for the sake of appearances, so that I would amount to something, but for my own sake.” ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 96
For the time being I am undergoing the curse of letter-writing. Only through submission to detestable duties can one gain a certain feeling of liberation which induces a creative mood. In the long run one cannot steal creation. ~Carl Jung, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 96
In 1903, at the age of twenty-eight, he married Emma Rauschenbach, and in 1906 moved into his own house in Küsnacht near Zurich. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 96
The dissertation, “On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena” (1902), dedicated to his fiancée and written at the suggestion of Eugen Bleuler, his chief, formed the prelude to the first creative period. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 96
When Jung was twelve years old, the “fatal resistance to life in this world” obtruded once more and led to a neurosis. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 96
He suffered from more or less genuine fainting spells and stayed out of school for a half year or more. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 96
“I frittered away my time with loafing, collecting, reading, and playing. But I did not feel any happier for it; I had the obscure feeling that I was fleeing from my self.” ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 96
In this first creative phase Jung’s interest was turned more to the dark aspects of the psyche: the realm of the occult, the unconscious background and its feeling-toned complexes, which he discovered by means of the association experiments, and above all, the chaotic world of the insane. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 97
Freud returned thanks for Jung’s Studies in Word Association, which he had received from Jung as a gift but had already bought and read beforehand. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 97
We are the men of the day over here. It is very good to be able to enjoy this side a bit. I feel that my libido is enjoying it in full measure. ~Carl Jung, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 98
Freud on his side made the mistake of plying Jung with his paternal demands and moreover named him his successor or, as he himself said, the ‘‘crown prince.” Jung resisted this from the beginning. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 98
Psychic incest can be overcome only at the price of a sacrifice. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 99
When old age and death begin to cast their shadows, other psychological necessities are constellated which differ from those of the expansive phase of youth. ~Carl Jung, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 99
“And let those who go down the sunset way do so with open eyes, for it is a sacrifice which daunts even the gods.” ~Carl Jung, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 99
After his separation from Freud, nearly all of Jung’s former friends and acquaintances fell away from him. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 100
After the parting of ways with Freud, a period of uncertainty began for me. It would be no exaggeration to call it a state of disorientation. I felt totally suspended in mid-air, for I had not yet found my own footing. ~Carl Jung, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 100
“In the case of bad books, it is enough that they get written. Good books, however, want to realize themselves and begin to pose questions which one would rather leave others to answer” ~Carl Jung, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 101
During the First World War he acted as a health commissioner, and in 1918 he became commandant of the interned British prisoners of war at Château d’Oex, for which he received a citation from the British. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 101
Having yielded to the pull of the unconscious and let himself fall into the depths, Jung experienced a superabundance of inner figures. It amounted to an individual revelation that went on for several years. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 101
A younger anima figure emerged in place of a mother-anima. At that time he met Toni Wolff, who became his helper in the intellectual penetration of the world of psychic images and remained his helper until her death in 1953. Alchemically, she was his “soror mystica.” ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 104
A younger anima figure emerged in place of a mother-anima. At that time he met Toni Wolff, who became his helper in the intellectual penetration of the world of psychic images and remained his helper until her death in 1953. Alchemically, she was his “soror mystica.” ~Carl Jung, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 104
As a result he [Jung] produced the “Septem Sermones ad Mortuos,” a kind of poem in Gnostic style, which differs from the other fantasies by its concentrated language and content. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 104
Individuation means the progressive integration of the timeless background; we might even say of the unconscious self in the time- and space-bound individual. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 104
“It became increasingly plain to me that the mandala is the center. It is the exponent of all paths. It is the path to the center, to individuation.” ~Carl Jung, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 105
It was only after a decade of intensive research and testing that Jung published these ideas; he did so in a book, written jointly with Richard Wilhelm, on the Chinese alchemical Taoist text The Secret of the Golden Flower. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 105
As much as he loved to give free rein to his thoughts and intuitions – in conversation for example (he called this “mythologizing”) – his hypotheses had to be thoroughly supported by facts before he presented them to the world. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 105
Jung never completely recovered from Wilhelm’s premature death in 1930. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 105
“That was the first event that broke through my isolation. I became aware of an affinity; I could establish ties with something and someone.” ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 105
Now he knew where he had to set to work scientifically in order to find the historical antecedents of his personal experiences: it was alchemy. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 105
Psychological Types began a new creative period, which Jung described as the phase of “supplements and interpretations” of his fantasies. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 106
The first caesura occurred in 1944 when Jung suffered a heart attack and nearly died. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 106
In 1946 Jung took the decisive step: at his Eranos lecture he formulated his hypothesis of the psychoid quality of the archetype. “It is exceedingly difficult to write anything definite or descriptive about the progression of psychological states. It always seemed to me as if the real milestones were certain symbolic events characterized by a strong emotional tone.” ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 106
From the ‘‘initiation into the realm of darkness” it would appear to have been decreed by fate that Jung’s creative impulse should tend toward the negative pole of the psychic opposites. ~Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 106
Jung’s most important reflections on a unitary background, psychoid or neutral in nature, are to be found in his last major work, Mysterium Coniunctionis, especially in the final chapter, “The Conjunction,” which for a long time he feared writing because of its formidable content. ~ Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 28
Having been stimulated by Karl Kerényi’s book on the Aegean Festival in Faust Part II, he began working on Mysterium Coniunctionis in his sixty-sixth year; he finished the two volumes sixteen years later. ~ Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 107
With the hypothesis of a transcendental unitary world Jung had reached the limits of his understanding. ~ Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 107
“We do not know whether what we on the empirical plane regard as physical may not, in the Unknown beyond experience, be identical with what on this side of the border we distinguish from the physical as psychic.” ~Carl Jung, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 107
In that transcendent reality the physical and psychic seem to be identical. ~ Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 107
Microphysics is groping its way into the unknown mystery of matter, depth psychology into the unknown mystery of the psyche, and the two sciences have developed concepts which are remarkably analogous. ~ Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 107
In other words, the multiplicity of the world seems to rest on a foundation of unity. ~ Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 108
Every authentic and complete relationship is permeated by the feeling of eternity, for in the background the timeless monocosmos which has split apart is reunitd in the two lovers. ~ Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 108
“The living mystery of life is always hidden between Two, and it is the true mystery which cannot be betrayed by words or depleted by arguments” ~ Carl Jung, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 108
Fundamentally, his entire work is to be understood as a psycho-religious statement, a progressive interpretation of the numinous by which man is consciously or unconsciously filled, surrounded, and led. “My lifework is essentially an attempt to understand what others apparently can believe” (letter, 21 May 1948). ~ Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 108
From a psychological point of view, a God-image is nearer the unutterable, mysterious ground of the psyche and the world the more clearly we can perceive its intrinsic paradoxicality, i.e., the more strongly its immanent contrariety stands out. ~ Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 108
At bottom one then finds the chthonic and spiritual in one and the same God-image: light beside darkness, creative power beside destructive will, goodness and love beside anger and injustice. ~ Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 108
In the midst of this conflict, Jung, now seventy-six years old, once more fell seriously ill – this is the second caesura in his final creative phase. In a fever he wrote down his Answer to Job, as if from inner dictation. ~ Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 109
“If there is anything like the spirit seizing one by the scruff of the neck, it was the way this book [Answer to Job] came into being.” He [Carl Jung] wrote in a letter (17 July 1951). ~ Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 109
Answer to Job is the psychological exegesis of a Biblical text, but also a confession, and this accounts for its passion. ~ Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 109
I bet Jacob’s punches he handed to the angel were not just caresses or polite gestures. They were of the good hard kind; as you rightly say, ‘with the gloves off’. – That is one side of my experience with what is called ‘God’. ‘Coarse’ is too weak a word for it. ‘Crude’, ‘violent’, ‘cruel’, ‘bloody’, ‘hellish’, ‘demonic’ would be better. That I was not downright blasphemous I owe to my domestication and polite cowardice. ~Carl Jung, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 109
The preponderance of darkness remained the decisive factor in Jung’s work to the end of his life; it also determined his attitude to that unspeakable transcendental power named God. “One can love God, and must fear him.” ~ Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 109
Consciousness is the supreme virtue, for it directs awareness to the existence of the inner and outer worlds, the light and dark worlds, and in this way clothes them with reality. Jung spoke in his later years of the “miracle of reflecting consciousness” and of the “cosmic meaning of consciousness.” ~ Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 109
Consciousness has, however, another aspect: apprehending the world and ourselves and knowing of the polaristic nature of the psyche compel us to adopt a more reflective and modest attitude toward life, and especially a more tolerant attitude toward our fellow men. ~ Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 109
It is not presumption that drives me, but my conscience as a psychiatrist that bids me fulfill my duty and prepare those few who will hear me for coming events which are in accord with the end of an era. … I am, to be quite frank, concerned for all those who are caught unprepared by the events in question and disconcerted by their incomprehensible nature. ~Carl Jung, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 110
“The whole future, the whole history of the world, ultimately springs as a gigantic summation from these hidden sources in individuals. In our own most private and subjective lives we are not only the passive witnesses of our age, and its sufferers, but also its makers. We make our epoch.” ~Carl Jung , From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 110
“A change in the attitude of the individual can bring about a renewal in the spirit of the nations.” ~Carl Jung, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 110
Even in old age Jung was never the wise man standing above life, which he loved and knew how to enjoy. ~ Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 110
His [Jung] wisdom was of a different kind: it was the wisdom of a man who had looked deep into the human heart, including his own, but suffered under the enormous paradoxicality of existence. His attitude toward his own death, also, was not one of detached acceptance. ~ Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 110
He [Jung] complained very humanly about the brutality of old age, which drained him of his powers one by one. But he had discovered that the psyche reaches out into a sphere of timelessness, and so he came to the conviction that it does not end even in death. ~ Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 110
“I can only remark that every single book was written with all the responsibility I could muster, that I was honest, and have presented facts which in themselves are not out of date. I would not wish any of my publications undone and I stand by everything I have said.” ~ Carl Jung, From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Page 110
