Jung's Student Years - Chapter III

This chapter concerns Jung's student years from teen to early adulthood. Like many his age, he struggled with discovering his identity and career path. (Heck, I know many middle age folks with that dilemma.) Young C.G. had an academic bent and was interested in many subjects especially history, philosophy and science. His path was ultimately determined after he had a significant dream which concerned nature. The dream clarified his decision to study science at the college level. From there Jung debated what area of science to study, finally settling on medicine. What is interesting is that even before Jung wrote about dreams and the importance of the subconscious mind, he intuitively knew, understood and acted upon that knowledge when received. Dreams continued to be of major concern to Jung, and some were the fore bringer of theories and concepts to come (for example, one dream in which he held a tiny light and saw a large black figure he describes as "his own shadow on the swirling mists, brought into being by the little light I was carrying. Though infinitely small and fragile in comparison with the powers of darkness, it is still a light, my only light.") Dreams were the light that clarified Jung's inner darkness.

It was also at this time, that Jung identified his "number one" personality as his primary self. Although he left "number two" behind in this integration, he did not deny it or declared it invalid. Jung believed his "number two" was the origin of his dreams and superior intelligent. The "number two" can "hold his own in the world of darkness."

Jung continued to be interested in philosophy and spirituality. His "knowing" was based on his actual spiritual experience. His father, however, became discontented with his faith, which to Jung was fairly rote and hallow. Jung pitied his father for never having had a direct experience of God and for limiting his pursuit to the realm of intellect. He tried to discuss these issues with his father but was never successful. It appeared that Jung was frustrated by his father's rote answers to his questions. Jung described it this way, "God would assuredly have sent him by way of an answer one of those magical, infinitely profound dreams which He had sent to me without being asked, and which had sealed my fate." To Jung, experience was the only thing that mattered. His father in turn appeared to be empty and tired by any such discussion.

Once in school his father visited him at a frat outing. Jung had a realization about his father's life and identified his own early love of learning. Jung sadly wondered what had happened to his father over his life time. He saw that "everything was blighted for him, had turned to sourness and bitterness." Eventually, his father's condition worsened and he died. The primarily impact of his father's death was financial. Although financing his studies was then more difficult, Jung learned the value of simplicity during his time of poverty.


At the end of what I think was his second semester in college, Jung came upon a library book on spiritualistic phenomena. He took quite an interest in this area and began his dissertation on the topic. His mother's "number 2" personality encouraged his interest, but his colleagues and friends were skeptical and unsupportive. Jung was open to psychic phenomena and believed there "might be events which overstepped the limited categories of space, time and causality." Some mysterious and unexpected events occurred in the Jung household the summer of 1898. Two objects broke with a loud crash. One was a large and substantial solid walnut table which split from rim to center. Weeks later, a bread knife blade snapped off into several pieces. No one was around and the events were never explained. He actually took the knife blade to a cutler who told him it could not have exploded and would have had to been deliberately broken. Jung kept a part of the knife blade with him throughout his life. (I wonder how he would have described the symbolism of that piece to him). He also met a young medium through a family member. Over time, Jung uncovered some fraudulent activity in regards to her “events” but continued to look for verification of her predictions.

His medical studies were good but he had difficulty with the animal dissections. "I could never free myself from the feeling that warm-blooded creatures were akin to us and not just cerebral automata."

This was a good time in Jung's life. He loved the study of stimulating topics and also had developed friendships, so he no longer wrote about feeling isolated. Earlier Goethe's Faust was extremely influential to Jung's thinking. At this time, he was also enthusiastic about Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra. Jung felt that Nietzsche only discovered his "number two" personality later in life and "did not understand himself when he fell head first into the unutterable mystery." Nietzsche, Jung said was trying to capture the attention of the world "which had sold its soul for a mass of disconnected fact." (Ain't that the truth today? The more information is thrown at us almost instantaneously through digital and other formats, the more disconnected the facts become and the more fractured and jarred we become.)

Although Jung was invited to become an assistant to a doctor in internal medicine. This was an envious appointment, but Jung turned it down to study psychiatry. In 1900, Jung began working as an assistant at the Burgholzli Mental Hospital in Zurich. He continued his study by reading through the 50 volumes of the major psychiatry text of the time. (The profession was far from being what it is today. The fact that the field was so open and mysterious may have held a special interest to Jung.) He found his colleges as interesting psychologically as his patients. Jung described his decision this way, "I saw that once again, I had obviously got myself into a side alley where no one could or would follow me. But I knew - and nothing and nobody could have deflected me from my purpose - that my decision stood, and that it was fate."