Early Life

Photo of Yours Truly: Carl Jung

Photo courtesy of Google Images

I was born in Switzerland in Kesswil, the fourth child (although I was the only one to survive) of my parents, Paul Achilles Jung and Emilie Preiswerk. My grandfather was my professor of Hebrew and my father was a pastor in the Swiss Reformed Church, while my mother was from a wealthy family. When I was six months old, my father was appointed to a better job, but the arguments between my parents got worse. I thought my father was a better person because he was more predictable and my mother I didn’t like so much because she was troublesome. At night, my mother changed. She became strange and unpredictable and always said spirits visited her at night! One time, I even saw a strange, glowing figure leave her room in the middle of the night! But when my mother left to the hospital for some injury, I went to live with my aunt. Because of my mother, I was heavily influenced to believe that women were not to be trusted. I had two personalities when I was younger. One was of a typical schoolboy, and the other was an influential man from the past. I remember many things from my childhood that have continued to influence me to this day.

One time, I carved a tiny little mannequin into the end of a wooden ruler and always revisited it with my own memories written on slips of paper in my own language! I was incredible, even as a child. The things I did were similar to some rituals in Australia, and sparked some of my research when I grew up. One time, at school, I was pushed by this other boy (we were just having a puny argument!) so hard that I was knocked unconscious for a second—after that experience, I would always faint whenever I thought of school or academics. It was rather peculiar, and I only recovered once I accidentally overheard my father discussing my “illness” worriedly. It got me thinking, and I realized how important it was that I be brilliant in my academics—my family did not have much money to support me if I did not succeed on my own. After overhearing my father, I went to his study and studied Latin grammar as hard as I could, although I fainted three times, I was brave enough to overcome it!

I hadn’t really planned to study psychiatry, because it was still regarded with contempt back then, but I realized how interesting it was. I was, in part, influenced by my father because of his profession—I knew I wanted to study something both biological and spiritual! I sparked a friendship with Sigmund Freud after sending him a copy of my book, “Studies in Word Associations.” After publishing my next book in 1912, “Psychology of the Unconscious,” we had an argument about our beliefs in the psychological field and broke our friendship. What a depressing thought as it revisits me… People tell me that after I refused to admit that I might be wrong and that he refused to admit that he might be wrong, I fell into a period of depression and “hysteria”, Freud’s term for it. I don’t really remember it all, it is rather hazy and blurry to me, sort of like one would see a dream.