Carl Jung’s view of Animal “Vivisection.”

Memories, Dreams, Reflections

What fascinated me most of all was the morphological point of view in the broadest sense.

With physiology it was just the opposite.

I found the subject thoroughly repellent because of vivisection, which was practiced merely for purposes of demonstration.

I could never free myself from the feeling that warm-blooded creatures were akin to us and not just cerebral automata.

Consequently I cut demonstration classes whenever I could.

I realized that one had to experiment on animals, but the demonstration of such experiments nevertheless seemed to me horrible, barbarous, and above all unnecessary.

I had imagination enough to picture the demonstrated procedures from a mere description of them.

My compassion for animals did not derive from the Buddhistic trimmings of Schopenhauer’s philosophy, but rested on the deeper foundation of a primitive attitude of mind on an unconscious identity with animals.

At the time, of course, I was wholly ignorant of this important psychological fact.

My repugnance for physiology was so great that my examination results in this subject were correspondingly poor.

Nevertheless, I scraped through. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 101.