“Meetings with Jung” by E.A. Bennet Quotations
He [Jung] always treated Freud with respect and called him Professor. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Pages 69-75.
He [Jung] mentioned that in free association tests breathing was restricted when a complex was touched and that this could be related to TB. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 74
He [Jung] listened daily to the B.B.C. and knew that England was the only hope, and that they would never give in. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 24.
He [Jung] said that until 1935 it had seemed possible, in Germany and Italy, that some good could come from Naziism. Germany was transformed; instead of roads crowded with people without work, all was changed and peaceful. Then he saw other things and knew it was evil. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 25.
He[Jung] became so outspoken in his criticisms of Germany that Mrs. Jung was afraid he would get into trouble, with so much German influence in Zürich. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 25
Referring to the rumours of his so-called Nazi sympathies, C.G. told me that his name was on the black List in Germany because of his views, and that he would certainly have been shot at once had he fallen into Nazi hands. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 26
Then he woke and was glad, for he knew that Germany would be beaten by Russia. This, he said, was a collective dream, and very important. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 27
No, the Virgin was the archetypal figure of the soul of man, the anima, and it is only in the soul of man that God can be born, where else could it be? ~Carl Jung, Meetings with Jung, Page 32
He [Jung] dislikes crowds and dislikes majorities, so at Yale he asked for a small hall in which to lecture. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 32
He [Jung] went on to speak of obsessional people as always fearing death; they want to remain adolescent and never grow up. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 44
Freud was kind to people and gave them his interest, that was what cured and that is what always cures – the human contact. ~Carl Jung, Meetings with Jung, Page 48
He [Jung] spoke of unmindful coincidences, that is, coincidences which could not have been anticipated. He gave an example of a dream he had recently of Churchill, and next day he read that Churchill had just passed through
Switzerland. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 49
He [Jung] alluded by way of illustration to the decay of radium, that after about 1400 years the granule of radium had gone. It diminishes at a certain rate; space, time and causation do not account for this. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 50
The shadow can represent the whole of the unconscious – that is both personal and archetypal contents – or just the personal material which was in the background and not recognised, not wanted. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 55
He [Jung] said he had learned never to start an interview beyond a few pleasantries – ‘How are you?’ – but to wait for the patient, because the instincts, the archetypes, lie in between and we don’t know what may be there. ~E.A. Bennet, Meeting with Jung, Page 55
But the spiritual power of the Church has fallen, and Communism is the opposite: it has arisen as the glorification of the materia. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 57
I asked C.G. about the Christmas tree; he said it was a great symbol because it was the life growing in winter, the winter solstice, and that is what Christ is, the light in the darkness. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 59
He [Jung] had on the table the little oil lamp he used when he wrote about the association tests, and always used here – a very soft light. He would not have electric light installed, or the telephone. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 60
He [Jung] values the things he has to do here, the necessary things, little jobs; they are not a waste of time. We get emptied by too much work and these trivial things restore us. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 61
It is better to live and be someone and not get absorbed in activity all the time. ~Carl Jung, Meetings with Jung, Page 61
He [Jung] said this work with the physicist on synchronicity was the last of such writing he would do; it required tremendous concentration and took too much out of him. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 62
He [Jung] told me his wife had started to learn Latin, and also some natural science, after her fifth child went to school. Now she can read all the mediaeval Latin texts. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 62
It was ridiculous for Freud to say there was only one kind of energy, we don’t know what energy is. ~Carl Jung, Meetings with Jung, Page 63
Speaking of intuitive people, he [Jung] said it was important for them to get down to some task and make it real, ‘Otherwise they are like someone looking at that mountain over there through a telescope, and the next thing is they feel they have been there. But they haven’t, they must do the work.’ ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 73
He [Jung] mentioned that in free association tests breathing was restricted when a complex was touched and that this could be related to TB. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 74
He [Jung] doesn’t believe in using a couch, but looks on patients as healthy people interfered with by their neurosis. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 74
He [Jung] spoke of communists as people without ideals, with whom you could never make a treaty; the peace talks were all nonsense, to wear out the Americans. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 77
He [Jung] said it was always like this with his dreams; he would dream of what he would write – like the mediaeval house dream and the notion of the collective unconscious. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 83
It’s no help just to search for causes and then blame the parents. Why not have the parents as the patients? ~Carl Jung, Meetings with Jung, Page 88
At times C.G. has had to re-create a neurosis in order to get vitality into the treatment – for instance when a patient is just flat and deflated. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 89
At breakfast he [Jung] spoke of astrology (one of his daughters is interested in it), and of a German book in which he is criticised for giving support to horoscopes. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 91
Jealousy always means that we see someone else doing what we should have done but for our incapacity or laziness; it is easier to criticize other people. ~Carl Jung, Meetings with Jung, Page 99
He [Jung] added that he never has had good reviews; but, like Schopenhauer, ‘People read me, and people will read me. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 101
The average is a statistical truth, and this is a concept; but it implies that there must be exceptions, and there are exceptions to the general rule of space, time and causality. ~Carl Jung, Meetings with Jung, Page 101
This man also asked C.G. if he believed in astrology because he had mentioned it; but, said C.G., it is not necessary to ‘believe’ in such concepts – he simply observes that they are sometimes relevant. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 102
Later we talked again, and C.G. said how interesting it would be if someone were to study the dreams people had under anesthetics; he mentioned one or two examples. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 157
Also he [Jung] spoke of his great interest on reading that a neuro-surgeon, concerned with epilepsy, had stimulated the corpora quadrigemina and the patient had had a vision of a mandala, a square containing a circle. This vision could be reproduced – and was reproduced – by the stimulation. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 157
He [Jung] said he had for a long time thought that the brain stem was important in our thinking life and how interested he was that the corpora quadrigemina, the four bodies, was the area, for it confirmed his idea of the importance of the square and the circle as symbols. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 157
In the evening after dinner, we somehow got onto the subject of numbers which, C.G. said, had a life of their own. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 158
C.G. spoke also of participation mystique – that everything is known. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 162
He [Jung] said that even at school he had always been suspected of being a fraud – as when the teacher refused to believe he had written his essay; there was so much in it the teacher had never heard of that he concluded C.G. had got someone else to write it for him. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 146
He [Jung] struggled with himself about telling her [Emma] but he did so; she was quite undisturbed, and in a way relieved for ever since heroperation she had been preparing for death. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 147
He [Jung] mentioned the witch doctor at Bollingen, whose house on the hill we had seen from the boat yesterday. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 134
The witch doctor has a very ancient book which was given to him by a monk of Einsiedeln who liked him when he was a boy. It is a reprint of an older volume, and contains the so-called sixth and seventh books of Moses. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page134
With it, in the same chamois leather bag, he [Jung] had a little jade Chinese wishing wheel (it looked eighteenth century and was celadon jade with a movable centre). ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 136
Then some left, and C.G. went out and returned with a selection of gramophone records; they were all of Negro spirituals. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 139
The painting of this ceiling was C.G.’s idea; his coat of arms, or the separate parts of it, fill a long panel at one end and at the other end is that of Mrs. Jung. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 182
I asked of his first impressions of the anima and he [Jung] said it came in his dream of the white dove when the little girl stood beside him; she was like his eldest daughter. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 189
The extraverted person cannot value anything from the inside, hence the superficiality of much academic psychology – psychological tests for example, or the physical explanations of mental experiences. ~Carl Jung, Meetings with Jung, Page 194
There is no understanding of the fact that the mind itself has its causality; something from the inner life exerts its influence – ideas just arrive in the mind, or symptoms appear. ~Carl Jung, Meetings with Jung, Page 195
Then when C.G. was in India, he was invited to Mysore State where this man was the guru to the ruler; he was treated very well, stayed in the ruler’s guest-house, and was taken for drives in an ancient but comfortable motor car. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 199
He [Jung] mentioned also the archetypes as the representation of the instincts, that is, the instincts can be expressed in many ways – there are hundreds of possibilities. But one form is selected because it corresponds to the instinct – it is an image of it. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 200.
But the delusion itself is something; one cannot deny its reality because it is unusual. ~Carl Jung, Meetings with Jung, Page 201
This is the puer aeternus and you need it, especially in old age for it keeps people healthy. ~Carl Jung, Meetings with Jung, Page 217
You can’t change people to fit a theory. ~Carl Jung, Meetings with Jung, Page 217
After dinner we sat on the verandah, C.G. behind the little table wearing, as usual, a blue apron, and on the table lay the stone he was carving of the family lineage on the male side. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 219
He [Jung] was particularly interested to see how they [Harvard] had translated the word ‘unconscious’ into Latin, and it was mens vacua, the unknown or unexplored mind. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 220
At the same time he [Jung] showed me a small tumbler of slightly tinted (red or pink) glass, and the rim at the top was sharp all round. He said that at the moment his wife’s mother died the upper part of the glass had broken
off. ~E.A. Bennet, Meeting with Jung, Page 221
Janet never knew his patients; he was the opposite of Freud who could never see beyond his patients, but saw them only through his own theory. ~Carl Jung, Meetings with Jung, Page 222
He [Jung] went on to speak of the natives in Africa – they had a natural psychology. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 236
Unless there is a personal religious experience – realizing from the inside what it means – nothing happens. ~Carl Jung, Meetings with Jung, Page 238
He [Jung] likes to be quiet in the evenings and let his mind unbend, uncoil. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 274.
His [Jung] father was Lutheran, but of the Basel Reformed Church. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 275
C.G. took me to see his carving of Attis at the end of the path near the boat house. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 278.
He [Jung] spoke of the story of Attis as one of the most beautiful in antiquity and classed it with that of Apollo and Demeter. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 278.
On the wall of the Tower he [Jung] had made a new carving of a woman kneeling; he said she was the mother of Attis. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 278
He [Jung] never finds it irksome to be alone. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 279
C.G. told me to read Dr. Zhivago, a novel by the Russian, Pasternak; it was a wonderful picture of the anima. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 281
There was quite a crowd there and Barker, the professor of English from Cambridge, said, ‘Now Jung, you must know the famous passage in Faust about the setting sun!’ And Jung did know it, and recited it. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 284
‘But,’ C.G. went on to tell us, ‘here was a living myth, for the mountain lit by the sun is said to be the wife of Vishnu; and the myth gives the story and the experience meaning. That is what myths are.’ ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 284
Speaking of dreams he said we must always ask ‘Whose dream?’ ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 289
He [Jung] spoke of Aquarius and the significance of Khrushchev’s visit to America. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 295
The wedding cake is a mandala and the bride and bridegroom are the royal wedding couple, the King and Queen, for that evening, and they preside over the gathering. That is symbolism; it belongs to life. ~Carl Jung, Meetings with Jung, Page 297
“Omnis festinatio a parte diaboli est”,’ he quoted in Latin – ‘all haste comes from the devil’. It is an old alchemical saying. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 297
Typology is a description of specific manifestations of energy. ~Carl Jung, Meetings with Jung, Page 299
St. Paul’s teacher, Gamaliel, was a noted Cabbalist. ~Carl Jung, Meetings with Jung, Page 301
This was the spread of knowledge laterally as well as vertically (that is spiritually), and he [Jung] said he had mentioned this in Aion, and that Pisces – he pronounced it with a hard ‘c’, Piskes – was like this: the sign was a perpendicular and a horizontal fish, they went in opposite directions. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 302
And now we are coming to the end of the Pisces era, as was foretold nearly two thousand years ago by the Arabian astrologer Albumasar. The pre-Christian time was Aries. ~Carl Jung, Meetings with Jung, Page 302
The snake is endless time. [As depicted in images of Mithras] ~Carl Jung, Meetings with Jung, Page 303
So far as mythology goes the interesting thing is that the myths are repeated, that is a fact and a very important one. ~Carl Jung, Meetings with Jung, Page 304
We can have ideas about God; but whether they are ‘true’ or not, or whether they are ‘absolute’, cannot be answered. ~Carl Jung, Meetings with Jung, Page 305.
In his [Jung] father’s room in this house were many zoological specimens in glass vessels; C.G. had earlier a special interest in zoology. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 307
In his [Jung] mother’s room were cages, like bird cages, only they were houses, and they were for the ghosts (that is, the flitting ideas in the mind) to lodge in. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 307
C.G. spoke of Ernest Jones and some of the inaccuracies in his biography of Freud. He said Jones had always been simply a follower of Freud; he had not added any original ideas. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 296
When Jones was writing his book on Freud he never asked him (C.G.) anything about the early years when he and Freud were working together. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 296
I asked him [Jung] again about the carving of the face of Mercury on the stone at the side of the Tower. He said, ‘I got terribly stuck when I was working on synchronicity, in the part about statistics. Then I saw that face in the stone and put my papers away and got my tools and carved it. It was the impish Mercury. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 298
He [Jung] went on, ‘The alchemists knew this hindering thing and Mercury was often mentioned by them as the jester.’ ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 298
His ]Jung’s] study of alchemy had been foreshadowed in his dreams, and his work had always developed in this way – out of his own experiences and dreams. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 84
We looked at some of the many stone carvings he has done; a small one was of a snake which had swallowed a perch and died. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 183
A beautiful stone in the classical style was a memorial to Mrs. Jung; this, he said, was to be put up on the wall by the loggia. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 183
But the detective stories were a rest, chiefly because they had no bearing on his [Jung’s]professional work; and he could sleep after reading them because they were not true. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 187
I asked of his [Jung’s] first impressions of the anima and he said it came in his dream of the white dove when the little girl stood beside him; she was like his eldest daughter. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 189
He mentioned also the archetypes as the representation of the instincts, that is, the instincts can be expressed in many ways – there are hundreds of possibilities. But one form is selected because it corresponds to the instinct – it is an image of it itself is something; one cannot deny its reality because it is unusual. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 201
It is important to be alone and unhurried sometimes, for then we are close to Nature (as he was on the night of this dream); then we can hear the voice of Nature speaking to us. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 203
He was particularly interested to see how they had translated the word ‘unconscious’ into Latin, and it was mens vacua, the unknown or unexplored mind. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 220
He [Jung] had been described as the explorer of the unconscious, and he thought this phrase particularly apt. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 220
