Between 1933 and 1941, C. G. Jung lectured at the Swiss Federal Institute
for Technology (ETH).
General Introduction
ERNST FALZEDER, MARTIN LIEBSCHER, AND SONU SHAMDASANI
Between 1933 and 1941, C. G. Jung lectured at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology (ETH). He was appointed a professor there in 1935.
This represented a resumption of his university career after a long hiatus, as he had resigned his post as a lecturer in the medical faculty at the University of Zurich in 1914.
In the intervening period, Jung’s teaching activity had principally consisted in a series of seminars at the Psychology Club in Zurich, which were restricted to a membership consisting of his own students or followers.
The lectures at ETH were open, and the audience for the lectures was made up of students at ETH, the general public, and Jung’s followers.
The attendance at each lecture was in the hundreds: Josef Lang, in a letter to Hermann Hesse, spoke of six hundred participants at the end of 1933, 1
Jung counted four hundred in October 1935 .2
Kurt Binswanger, who attended the lectures, recalled that people often could not find a seat and that the listeners “were of all ages and of all social classes: students … ; middle-aged people; also many older people; many ladies who were once in analysis with Jung.”3
Jung himself attributed this success to the novelty of his lectures and expected a gradual decline in numbers: “Because of the huge crowd my lectures have to be held
in the auditorium maximum.
It is of course their sensational nature that
enchants people to come. As soon as people will realize that these lectures
are concerned with serious matters, the numbers will become more
modest.
Because of this context, the language of the lectures is far more accessible
than Jung’s published works at this time.
Binswanger also noted that
“Jung prepared each of those lectures extremely carefully. After the lectures, a part of the audience always remained to ask questions, in a totally natural and relaxed situation. It was also pleasant that Jung never appeared at the last minute, as so many other lecturers did. He, on the contrary, was already present before the lecture, sat on one of the benches in the corridor; and people could go and sit with him. He was communicative and open.”5
The lectures usually took place on Fridays between 6 and 7 p.m.
The audience consisted of regular students of technical disciplines, who were
expected to attend additional courses from a subject of the humanities.
But as it was possible to register as a guest auditor, many of those who had come to Zurich to study with Jung or undertake therapy attended the lectures as an introduction to Analytical Psychology.
In addition, Jung also held ETH seminars with limited numbers of participants, in
which he would further elaborate on the topics of the lectures.
During the eight years of his lectures-which were only interrupted in 1937, when Jung travelled to India-he covered a wide range of topics.
These lectures are at the center of Jung’s intellectual activity in the 1930s, and
furthermore provide the basis of his work in the 1940s and 1950s.
Thus, they form a critical part of Jung’s oeuvre, one that has yet to be accorded
the attention and study that it deserves.
The subjects that Jung addressed in ETH lectures are probably even more significant to present-day scholars, psychologists, psychotherapists, and the general public than they were when they were first delivered.
The passing years have seen a mushrooming if interest in Eastern thought, Western hermeticism and mystical traditions, the rise of the psychological types industry and the dream work movement, and the emergence of a discipline of the history of
psychology. ~Ernst Falzeder, Martin Liebscher, and Sonu Shamdasani, ~Psychology of Psychology and Yoga Meditation, Introduction, Page xvii-xviii
