Coming to Terms with Jung: On Tina Keller’s Memoirs
Foreword
Coming to Terms with Jung: On Tina Keller’s Memoirs
From 1913 onwards, Jung commenced a process of selfexperimentation
which he called his ‘confrontation with the unconscious,’ the details of which have only recently come into public view, with the publication of Liber Novus, his Red Book. 1
During this period he developed his principal psychological theories of the
archetypes and the collective unconscious, refined his notions of psychological types, and above all put forward his notion of the process of individuation.
Jung’s undertalcing may be briefly described. In the winter of 1913, he deliberately gave free rein to his fantasy thinking and carefully noted what ensued.
He later called this process “active imagination.”
He wrote down these fantasies in the Black Books.
These are not personal diaries, but rather the records of a self-experimentation.
The dialogues that form these active imaginations can be regarded as a kind of thinking in a dramatic form.
When the First World War broke out, Jung considered that a number of his fantasies were precognitions of this event.
This led him to compose the first draft manuscript of Liber Novus, which consisted in a transcription of the main fantasies from the Black Books, together with a layer of interpretive commentaries and lyrical elaboration.
Here, Jung attempted to derive general psychological principles from the fantasies, as well as to understand to what extent the events portrayed in the fantasies presented, in a symbolic form, developments that were to occur in the world.
The overall theme of Liber Novus is how Jung regains his soul and overcomes the contemporary malaise of spiritual alienation.
This is ultimately achieved through enabling the rebirth of a new image of God in his soul and developing a new world view in the form of a psychological and theological cosmology.
Liber Novus presents the prototype of Jung’s conception of the individuation process, which he held to be the universal form of individual psychological development.
From a historical perspective, one of the most pressing questions that the publication of Jung’s Liber Novus gives rise to is, What was taking place in Jung’s practice and his circle at this time?
Jung’s selfexperimentation transformed his practice, and led to the development
of what became known as Jungian analysis.
In doing this, he reformulated the practice of psychotherapy.
No longer simply concerned with the treatment of the sick, psychotherapy became a
means of higher personality development for the healthy.
This was to have far-reaching consequences in the subsequent development of
humanistic, transpersonal, and alternative therapies and the proliferation of new soul therapies.
Thus a fuller understanding of what was taking place in Jung’s practice during this period is essential for grasping his role in the formation of modern psychotherapy.
Far from being a solitary endeavor, Jung’s self-experimentation was a collective experiment, in which he took his patients along with him.
Patients were instructed on how to conduct active imagination, to hold inner dialogues, and to paint their fantasies.
He took his own experiences as paradigmatic. In his seminar in Zurich in 1925, he
noted:
“I drew all my empirical material from my patients, but the solution of the problem I drew from the inside, from my observations of the unconscious processes.“2
Without their participation and engagement, Jung would not have been able to develop a new form of psychotherapy from his self-experimentation-and eventually the cross-cultural psychology of the individuation process-through being able to identify typical phases in his own process and that of those around him.
However, accounts from Jung’s patients during this period are few and hard to find, and largely confined to material found in archives and personal papers.
Those that have come to light are generally contemporaneous accounts in diaries and letters.3
It is precisely this lacuna that is filled by Tina Keller’s memoirs, and in an unusual and striking manner, for this is no contemporaneous document, but a sensitive and perspicacious account written in retrospect by someone aware of the historical significance of what she had participated in.
Whilst acknowledging her indebtedness to Jung and Toni Wolff for finding a new orientation, and appreciative of the significance of the new paths in psychology and psychothrapy that Jung was opening up, Tina Keller was by no means an
uncritical adherent of Jung’s school.
This is reflected in the independent critical standpoint by which she evaluates Jung’s procedures during this period, and reflects upon the relation between
her at times challenging and problematic experience of him and her abiding appreciation for the principles of his approach to psychology as means of furthering spiritual development.
At the heart of Liber Novus is an unresolved tension.
At the outset the work is styled as a prophetic work The first section of the work,
Liber Primus, is titled “The Way of What Is to Come.”
Jung sets out his understandings of the religious transformation that is currently at
play in the world, and attempts to divine general principles of collective import from his meditation on the dramatic sequences that arose from his active imaginations.
At the same time, Jung states at the outset that what the work presents is his own way, and that it should not serve as a model:
There is only one way and that is your way. I You seek the path? I warn you away from my own. It can also be the wrong way for you. I May each go his own way. I I will be no savior, no law giver, no master teacher unto you. 4
Thus, my friends, you learn much about the world, and through it about yourself, by what I say to you here. But you have not learned anything about your mysteries in this way; indeed, your way is darker than before, since my example will stand obstructively in your path. You may follow me, not on my way, but on yours.5
The dynamic tension between these two poles-the elaboration of a unique and inimitable individual “Way,” and the desire to derive iterable principles from this of collective significance-is played out in Tina Keller’s encounter and struggles with Jung.
Ultimately, through her separation from the institutionalization of Jung’s psychology, this tension for Tina Keller was resolved in the direction of the first pole.
Her separation from the institutionalization of Jung’s psychology was a testament to her fidelity to what she had originally learnt from Jung.
This institutionalization was based on Jung’s later public writings, in which he sought to translate his insights into a diction acceptable to a medico-scientific audience.
In her memoir, Tina Keller is alive to the gap between these languages, and does not mistake the exoteric conceptual language
of Jung’s subsequent scholarly writings for the esoteric core of his work, as many have done.
The main message of Liber Novus was the notion that in a moment of cultural crisis, the way to spiritual renewal lay in an individual’s turning within, and actively engaging with and being instructed by the figures of their fantasies.
This seems to have had a striking and unanticipated resonance in the present day, and has itself provoked commentary. 6
It is precisely this enterprise that Tina Keller embarked upon, as narrated in this memoir.
At the heart of Jung’s work was a vision that modern psychology and psychotherapy could provide a vehicle for spiritual development in a manner that was no longer being served by institutional religion.
At the same time, Tina Keller’s engagement in this process was conducted alongside her husband Adolf Keller’s critical role in the rise of the ecumenical movement. 7
Adolf Keller himself conducted an extensive dialogue with Jung on
theological matters. 8
With the publication of Liber Novus, we finally have Jung’s firsthand account of his personal transformation-an event that was generative of transformations of the lives of others in his circle and in his practice.
With the publication of Tina Keller’s memoirs, we now have an account from one in the latter category that portrays the atmosphere in Jung’s circle at this time and provides a window into how Jung attempted to put his new conceptions into practice.
Tina Keller’s memoir describes with nuanced precision her attempt to come to terms with Jung-in a manner of speaking, to confront his “confrontation.”
This is a task with which many of us are still engaged today.
Since first coming across her memoir in the Countway library in 1988, I found this a most instructive text that I have periodically returned to, and thought that it should be eventually published.
On being shown the variant manuscripts of her autobiography by Pierre Keller and the late Doris Strauli-Keller, I thought that someone should one day merge these together into one manuscript.
Wendy Swan has done a signal service in this endeavor, skillfully drawing
together the variant versions while making the sources clear, and historically contextualizing them on the basis of her own original research into the life and work of Tina Keller. 9
In so doing, she has provided an essential contribution to our understanding of how Jung’s emerging conceptions were put into practice and engaged with by those in his circle during this critical period, and how psychology could provide a means for spiritual renewal, through the life history of a remarkable woman. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Ph.D, The Memoir of Tina Keller, Page xi-xv
